I hope you'll dance

When you have the choice to sit it out or dance,

I hope you'll dance.

                                                                                               Lee Ann Womack

When I hear a bow drawn across the strings of a fiddle in 3/4 or 4/4 time, my chest gets tight and my legs ache. I need to dance. It's like needing to sneeze but can't. It's visceral. Humans are hard-wired to dance. All cultures dance--except Southern Baptists.

When I was in college, I dated a boy who, incidentally, grew up to be a judge. He loved to dance and was the best country-western dancer I ever partnered. We'd drive over from Georgetown to go dancing at the Skyline Ballroom.

The building is still there. It's been through many permutations from lingerie modelling to an oriental buffet, but its glory days were as a country-western dance hall where some of the legendary country music musicians played.It was a classic Texas dance hall with a low slung ceiling and a hardwood dance floor. There were picnic tables and benches shoved against the wall with small, round red plastic ashtrays on the top, along with years of the carvings of adolescent obscenities and for a good time call. The beer came in pitchers. If you didn't drink beer, the choices were bottles of tepid Big Red, Coke, and Dr. Pepper, served like an afterthought with no glass and no ice. If anyone asked for water, it came straight from the tap along with the assumption you were ill.

I remember the truckers and the ranch hands. Dancing with them, I was moving in a space smelling of Dial Soap, starch and bleach. To this day, it is cleanest smell I know. No talk. Only dancing. How men that large and rough could float me around a dance floor remains a mystery to me. At the end of the dance, my partner would steer me back to David with a nod to him and a deft touch to hat brim and thanks for the dance, Ma'am to me. That's heady stuff when you're twenty.

We drifted apart to other people, and I stopped dancing. Not at once but less and less until I wasn't dancing at all. I never had relationship with another a man who danced for the sheer love of it. David and I would have danced with a hog if it could waltz and two-step. Instead, I spent my life with men who danced as a grim duty if they danced at all. Sad for them but sadder yet for me because I knew what we were missing.

Unlike sex and riding a bicycle, the time does come when we've forgotten how to do things we once loved because we stopped doing them far too soon. I despise the platitude, It is never too late. It's an excuse for the worst kind of procrastination. It's soothing self-deception so we don't have to face the fact that there is time now gone that we can never recapture.The day does come when it is too late. My body doesn't remember the steps or how to stay in time with the rhythms--except in my mind.

Fortunately for me, the nature of social dancing has changed. No one needs a partner or a lot of space. Now if I'm moved by the music being piped in, I dance in public restroom stalls. It's a real treat to be in a restroom limited to one person. I lock the door and use up the entire space. Public restrooms are now my dance floors, kinda sad but better than no dance floor at all.

I rarely dance at home because in upsets the cat. But when I know Bruce Springsteen is queued up on my playlist, I throw the cat in the closet and just let it rip.

ªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªªª

Once in a while on impulse, I'll pull off of the loop onto the access road and flip on the hazard lights. I sit looking through the windshield at a small, sagging building, now a blight in the midst of a medical complex. If I look long enough, the complex fades along with the city lights and the stars show up again. The dilapidated building shrugs itself back to the plain, sturdy one I loved.Through my thin, cotton dress, I can feel the sleeve of David's starched shirt as he grabs my hand and we trot across a dirt parking lot toward the open doors. Waiting inside are friends, beer and hours for us to use up dancing to music from a fiddle, guitars, and an upright piano.

I turn off the hazard lights and pull back onto the freeway leaving the girl behind and taking the woman--with an ache in her legs--home.

trials in public places

Some days it doesn't pay to get up from a nap.

It's 4:30 p.m. on Friday, and I have to go to the grocery. I'm phobic about grocery stores because I'm overwhelmed by the choices. Who on God's earth needs 15 varieties of salsa when entire nations are starving? This causes me to have an existential crisis behind the canned peas, and it all goes downhill from there. This is why I don't cook. If I can't get it at a convenience store, then I don't need it.

Sitting in the parking lot psyching myself up to go in, I get a call telling me I didn't get a gig I was looking forward to. Especially stinging was the fact I was going to do it for free. After I'm all gracious and understanding, The caller tells me he had to make the call because he wasn't at the meeting. I told him it was a good rejection call, and I knew from experience how hard they are to make so he could go deal with his toddler who had ripped open a box of Fruit Loops while Dad is making a hard call. His weekend will be better because I've had 20 years in the workplace and was kind.

I make my usual wild dash with my list which never varies--ever. I look neither up nor side to side. If I could find a decent pair of blinders many of my problems would be solved because I wouldn't see the 15 brands of salsa.

Do pretty good. Don't have to breathe into my small paper bag which I take along in case I hyperventilate, which I have done in there before.

I have too many items to go through the self-checkout line even if I fudge on the maximum limit. This means I must go through a regular checkout line. I won't go into the reasons why that will unsettle me for days. This lane actually had a bagger which is not good either. Context: I live in second-story walk-up. I know exactly how much weight I can carry up with one hand. I can deal with multiple trips to the car and up the stairs, but I must be able to carry the freakin' bag with one hand.

I ask the cashier to tell the bagger not to put all the liquids in one bag. She tells him. Twice. When I begin unloading my basket into the car I get to a bag I cannot lift. I look in. All liquids. I look in another bag. The same thing. Sometimes one is pushed over a line, and life altering decisions are made.

I return to the store with my basket and 40 pounds of liquids. I find the bagger, and for the fist time in my life I played the Age Card.

"Son, do you have a grandmother?"
"Yes Ma'am."
"I am a grandmother. I live in a second story apartment with no elevator. That means I carry up my own groceries."
"Yes Ma'am."
"Look in these bags, and tell me what you see."
"A lot of bottles?"
"Your checker told you twice not to put all the liquids in one bag."
"Oh."
"Son, do you know what liquids are?"
"Yes Ma'am, stuff that's in those bottles. (This was not a kid with any of the widely recognized challenges.) Oh yeah, you wanted them in different bags."
"Right. We will keep this between us, and I will not speak to your supervisor. But the next time you see a person who resembles a person like me or a woman with a baby strapped on struggling with a screaming toddler who just pulled all the magazines of the rack, don't put all her bottles in one bag. OK?" It was a bittersweet moment. Played the Age Card but also saved some young mother from going berserk somewhere, sometime soon.

I stop at the Red Box knowing I'll need distraction tonight. There is a teenage couple going through every movie and discussing the merits of each. I'm dead on my feet. I can stand there all night. The girl steps aside and tells me to go select my movie because they can't make up their minds. No shit.

I select my movie and the boyfriend says to me, "Ma'am do you know that's a really violent movie?"
"Yes, son I do. I've already seen it three times but thanks for the heads-up." Violent diversion in hand, I trudge back to my car to re-bag the groceries.

boo

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-leggedy beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

                                            Traditional Scottish Prayer

I ramp up for the holiday season beginning with Halloween and concluding with the Feast of the Three Kings in January. Sadly, the Feast of the Three Kings is iffy since the year I whacked Baby Jesus in two cutting the Kings’ cake. One person got the top half and another the bottom. It unsettled some of the guests.

This year I hosted a Halloween party for four grandmothers, two mothers, and ten children ages 12-2 at my 950 sq.ft. apartment. The invitation read, Wear your costume or your most comfortable clothes. The guests included Indiana Jones, a kitty, an Asian warrior, a pirate princess and a baby dragon who was very cute but a tad gamy having worn the costume daily for about two weeks. Two children opted for comfortable clothes, and one showed up in business casual.

Many of these children live on a diet of water, tofu and raw vegetables, so I thought how fun it would be to load them up with the famous HEB lard and sugar cookies topped off with a quarter inch of festive icing. The grocery also makes birthday cakes. Think the cookie dough baked in cake pans. My adult children still clamor for HEB Birthday Cake. With age, they’ve abandoned the theme cakes. Now they are just hot for the sugar and fat.

Also there was candy, hard core candy like Smartees, candy corn, M&M’s and Halloween shaped gummies. (I’d rather handle grubs than any form of gummy candy.) A polite little guest would come to me and ask if they could have a package of M&M’s. I’d respond with, Of course you can, Darling. Take six. None of their adults noticed being otherwise occupied woofing down the HEB cookies.

The children left with party bags full of yummies made from sugar, chemical dyes and petroleum distillates. Interestingly, they were judicious in their consumption of party food. Their drivers, however, were careening off the walls from the sugar and fat having not been similarly judicious.

Out of ten children gathered in a very small space, no one cried, peed their pants, or got into a fight. It was one my most successful parties.

If I am rigorously honest, which I hardly ever am, I must admit to one of the guest’s good intention gone awry. This involves the baby dragon and the cat. You must have context. I had closed two doors for the party, my bedroom door and the door to my study. The cat was in my bedroom to protect her from sticky fingers and also give her access to her litter box.

I’m visiting with a guest and in walks the baby dragon in the stinky costume. She takes my hand and says, Grammy, come and see. She opens the door to my bedroom. (A closed door in a grandparent’s house is merely a mild inconvenience to a grandchild. It certainly does not communicate STAY OUT.)

See kitty?

Yes, I do see kitty. Kitty is on my bed looking long suffering and oddly misshapen.

Kitty is very soft. She has lotion.

Oh, my. Kitty did indeed have lotion. Baby dragon had applied about quarter cup to a very fluffy cat’s exposed side...only. Talk about slicked down.

I am not always a good person, but to my credit I do not laugh at humiliated cats, and I do not scold children whose attempts at a kind gesture lack a certain finesse. As we leave the room, I look over my shoulder and lock eyes with the moisturized cat. It’s going to take me the rest of the day to lick this crap out of my fur! And indeed it did.

st. francis and the bobster

As you may know, or not know nor care, Sunday was the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. This is the bird-guy whose likeness stands in many a yard with homeowners clueless about who he is and why he’s standing in their yard.

His classic depiction is with birds on his shoulders and assorted other creatures at his feet, a nod to the legend that when he had no human audience he would preach to the birds. Other animals were added over time in the name of artistic license or market appeal. Sad to say, there are no indigenous Texas creatures at his feet. He is absent the horned toad, turkey buzzard and rattlesnake. We must cut some slack. He was Italian and Italy has been civilized a lot longer than Texas, as have Italian animals. A guy in the hydrangeas with buzzards on his shoulders and armadillos at his feet is just wrong.

Many churches have a blessing of the animals on St. Francis’s Feast Day. Sadder but wiser from past mishaps and fatalities, parishes now have gentle guidelines, e.g. rules for this event. For example, no loose pythons, nothing with fangs or venom in or out of cages, no insects because one pet cricket is another pet’s lunch. No pets with poop too large to be removed with a swipe of one paper towel.

If the pet is sickly, poisonous, or fails the poop test, a picture of the pet may stand in for the real thing. Love and mercy find their way home no matter what the vehicle.

Meeting all the criteria, Bob qualified for an on-site blessing. Later that afternoon, I find Bob, tiny eyes squeezed shut, conked out on his basking rock. Intense spiritual experiences can be exhausting not to mention being sloshed about in one's feeding bucket for the 20 minute drive to St. Julian’s in the company of five children in a closed vehicle.

Somewhere, St. Francis is smiling.

black holes and faeries

We've thrown away the faeries,

And driven out the elves.

Now, we're putting out the stars.

We harbor Death within ourselves.

                                                                                                                             Me 1970's following introduction to black hole theory

I lost something important when men went to the moon. When I look at the moon now, I don't see the tremulous, translucent membrane. I see a landscape of grey rocks strewn with the rubble we left behind…the rubble we always leave behind. That one small step for man smashed our lyrical, luminous, and mystical relationship with the moon. And whose life is better for the effort? We should be more careful where we step.

Our fate is to live on the planet during frightening and wondrous times. Earth has been a demanding place for humans from the get-go, but somehow you and I were hoodwinked into believing that we would be exempt. Most of us in the upper and albeit shrinking middle class hold the expectation of well-being as a kind of birthright.

Intellectually we know better, but at the gut level we resist the notion that we too could be co-mingled with a drunk driver at an intersection. Our child could be at the next school targeted by someone with an assault rifle. Perhaps it is our sister in seat B-11 who never makes it to Newark for Thanksgiving.

We knowingly build great cities below sea level and take it personally when the sea returns and sweeps away our best efforts. We ignore the fact that we are guests on this planet and boorish guests at best. In that respect, we don’t live in a tender, forgiving world. We never did.

Oh, but the wonder of being alive at this moment. Our time is unique in human history. When Gutenberg published the Bible on his behemoth, crude printing press, who knew? When the proverbial apple fell for Newton, who knew? When the iPad made its appearance, who knew? Who didn’t? We are witnesses to a profound change in the way human beings process information, perceive the world, and relate to each other

Today we are knitted together by the unseen fibers spun of code and algorithm. We watch political revolutions staged and directed on mobile phones through social media applications like Twitter and Facebook.

I’m glad I’m here as an active participant in a fundamental shift of my species, but, unlike previous generations, I’m aware the shift is happening and I'm alternately scared and thrilled.

We are going to places we’ve never been before both within and outside ourselves. We don’t have a guide. Did anyone remember to mark the boundaries and put the cat out? Could we, in fact, fall of the edge of the earth? The physical world and mathematics were the touchstones of our past, but what are our touchstones if technology is changing the way we process information and relate to our perception of reality which is also subject to alteration—not only our perceptions but the nature of reality itself?

I hope with all my heart that we think large, majestically even, that we don’t lose our imagination and our courage. Computer scientist, Jaron Lanier says the issue is not that technology has taken over our lives, but that it has not given us enough back in return. Whose fault is that? Why don't we ask more of the technology we ourselves made ?

Look what we get when we ask. Technology lifts us on its shoulders so we can see the indescribable glory that surrounds this fragile earth, our island home. And if that isn’t wonder enough, it now allows us to hear the music of the spheres. The spheres were singing all along, but who knew? They sing in registers too low for the human ear to hear. We can hear them now and their songs are not unlike the whales’ songs. Technology gave us the means to hear both the whales and the stars singing because we asked.

There is no way back. Forward is our only option. We must tread gingerly, however, for who knows what lies beneath our heel?

If you see a faery ring in a field of grass

Very lightly step around.

Tip-toe as you pass.

Last night faeries frolicked here,

And they’re sleeping somewhere near.

If you see a tiny faery,

Lying fast asleep.

Shut your eyes and run away.

Do not stay to peek.

Do not tell.

You’ll break a faery spell.

                                                                                                                   William Shakespeare

About the links:

 

Music: At the site, choose audio.

 

Stars: Hubble Images: You can stream them to your computer. The images put things in perspective for the rest of the day.

 

Whales: Enjoy yourself. Site always has whale singing in real time, whatever that is.

 

Know another good nerdy link? Share it with us who haven't outted ourselves from  the Nerd Closet yet...or ever.

 

12th of september, 2011

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

  

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine

                                                                   Finlandia



back in the saddle again

Thanks to all of you who let me know you missed the blog. I missed it too, but there were hard, hard times for someone I love, and I had nothing left over.

I’ve decided I want to be the Ordinary Voice again. The new has worn off being divorced and growing old. Everyone is growing old, most of us are divorced or will be, and I’m running out of enthusiasm for the perspective. I’m beginning to bore myself.

The Ordinary Voice can hold forth on any topic in the world…and she probably will. So read on and discover what it's like to live in Bob World.

[I’m in the process of relocating all the Aging and Divorced entries to the Ordinary Voice site. Also I suggest you book mark this site since permutations of the title have bred like fruit flies when I wasn't looking.]

bob

Bob is a Texas Red-Ear Slider. That’s a turtle, and he is about the size of a silver dollar. He was rescued from the wilds, if you can call a nature trail that butts up to a private golf course the wilds. In any case, Bob’s life took a new direction by a chance encounter with the two grandsons: the one with the amber eyes and his younger brother with a scientific interest in creature-poop. You would think that the poop of the common moth has little to commend itself as intellectual conversation, and you would be wrong.

They safely transported Bob home, their home not his as he was already home. The harsh truth is they abducted Bob. However, given the size of his turtle brain, I don’t think he knows that.

Bob now lives in a terrarium on a bookshelf connecting the kitchen to the family room which is akin to living by the Interstate. Amber Eyes oversees the terrarium, employing the artful use of Feng Shui. The point is to keep the Chi flowing in Bob World. There is no plastic grass or cheesy treasure chests. Nothing unusual about that given they are the children of a mother who lunges at me if she sees me try to drink a diet Coke. It’s au natural with free-flowing Chi for Bob.

The eldest, not overly fond of turtles, is in charge of feeding Bob. She doesn’t put up with any foolishness meaning she is the least likely to kill him with affectionate over-feeding. She removes him to a small bucket at feeding time. He eats extruded, paper-pulp pellets with a stench so bad projectile vomiting is the only reasonable response. Bob loves it. He flops and paddles about in the bucket and then snarfs that nasty stuff right down. Along with food there is the added benefit of getting him out of the house on a regular basis.

One day, Bob was observed scampering. Who knew? Apparently Texas Red Ears have the ability to scamper. Granted, his routine doesn’t vary much. He goes at a clip over one rock and under another concluding with a belly flop into his pond from his basking rock. He only scampers clockwise. Some of us think he would scamper counter-clockwise if transported below the equator.

Bob also practices yoga. He’s mastered Breathing with Intent. No surprise there. In turtle world, that’s a technique you master early. Otherwise, you don’t have a later. One of the more elegant turtle yoga positions is Double Fans. Think extended back flippers with webbed toes stretched wide. With neck extended, it is the more advanced position, Double Fans with Handle.

I like Bob. Well no, it’s more than that. I’m smitten. My life has come to this. I have a crush on an amphibian with a projected lifespan longer than mine.