Word of the Week - 136

With thanks to Plaisanter's Flickriver site.

Word of the Week:  MUCILAGE

These are days, it seems, to think about what exactly IS the glue that holds us together, either to maintain a congruity with self or a plural binding of one to another.  There is something, beyond gravity, centripetal force, magnets, chewing gum or baling wire, that stops us from dissolving into fragments.  Its forms are as numerous as are we who rely on its existence.

At its most exalted it is sticky and honey-sweet, with names like optimism, kindness, beauty and love.  It is scent, known to transport us in memory to other realms and times, or words, as used by poets to translate, impossibly, the ineffable into language.  It is color or form that jars the heart.  It is magic, mostly unintentional, the product of man or nature simply bringing forth what must be brought.

It is experiences shared, even if known in solitude.  It is recognition of me in you.  It is music, sounds raised in thanksgiving or lament.  Perhaps beyond all else it is music.

If I understand anything of the universe, it is this:  we are not meant to be divided nor to seek or invent ways that make us unalike.  We survive with each other, it is how we will thrive.  Our hands reach out to comfort.  With vocabulary we soothe and support.  In the rock-hard moments we remind one another that there are softer times.

We are the glue, aided by the wonders amid which we sometimes flounder, wonders which lift our spirits, replenish our hope.  There is no wonder too small or obscure to be considered medicinally adhesive.  It only requires - demands - the ability to illuminate what has been dimmed.  Circumstances have been known to abandon us in dark caves and haunted houses of the mind.  For me, the image of a rose, bodies of water from a puddle to a fountain, canal, river or ocean, the thought and, one hopes, the taste of dark chocolate, works of art, a hummingbird outside the window, the voice of a loved one or even sight of their name reconnect me to frightened and lost parts of myself.  They secure me to a greater circle where light prevails.

This is a gummy business and we serve as human fly paper to one another.  As we abide, fastened, we joke, we sing, we listen, we doze.  Our thoughts may wander but we, it is hoped, do not.  We are tethered for the long ride.  That is what's real.  Anything else is the illusion.

Word of the Week - 135

Wrestling a demon, one of many.

Word of the Week:  CONSISTENCY

My two great adversaries are gravity and consistency.  To turn an act into a habit is the product of focus, determination and time.  Landing on the same square, as it were, with each daily leap.  Letting not rain nor dark of night be a reason to slide, to neglect, to procrastinate or to be half-assed.  As to gravity, I tend to drop things a lot or they leap from my grasp, plus the earth seems constantly to pull me closer.  I used to be considered tall.

Somewhere, once, I read that it takes 30 days to create a habit.  Oh, if only.  Maybe if one is under the age of, say, 35.  When one is more than twice that number, well, do the math.  All I know to do is begin, and continue.  I've reached a point, much as I thought it would never come to this, when the day contains too few hours for all my intentions.  Certainly if what I intend is to do a thing well.  And who wants a sub-par habit?  I'm sure I have quite enough of those already.

The vow to self of returning to art as a daily product, not a for-sale sort of product, but a thing brought into existence in whatever form, whatever medium, is a current priority.  I have not yet committed to a specific amount of time every day.  I'd already be in trouble if I had.  As long as it is something that I can call art, I feel successful.  I have not betrayed myself.  Whew.  As I have said many times before, if it were easy, everyone would do it.

So a day becomes parcels, liked packed lunches.

Bento boxes.

On different days, the portions of each habit-in-the-making vary in size.  Too much consistency goes against my basic nature.  Perhaps it needs to be a dual word week - consistency and balance, with each day allowed to bring its own set of circumstances, to set its own schedule.  The fact that the world seems to see rigid consistency as more virtuous than flexible consistency is one of those slippery places.  I don't do rigid well.  I don't do rigid at all.  And thus, the challenge.

On the other hand, a day full of bento boxes would not be the worst thing.  I could reclaim time spent cooking and use it for art or serenity or stretching.  Meanwhile, we, as they say, start where we are with what we have and do what we can.  One can do no more. 

Word of the Week - 134

Lynda Barry's art and thought here.

Word of the Week:  ALLOW

"...when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all."  Lynda Barry

Enlightenment, in my world, refers to the process that takes me, by leaps or shuffles, from being  unknowing on any particular topic to be a bit less unknowing.  Example: I may twitch for a while if I stop eating dark chocolate in the quantity I prefer but I won't die.

We who have survived and emerged from places of trauma, terror, damage and examples of the bad behavior of others may have moments of doubt about our skills, our competence, our okayness.  We come to consciousness with too little knowledge about nuance, grey areas, moderation.  We are likely unfamiliar with allowing ourselves to be however we are in any moment.  Or, if not unfamiliar, still uncomfortable.  Unexpectedly, Lynda Barry's book, SYLLABUS is helping me experiment with the discomfort of being.  Lynda Barry, generally, is an appropriate direction in which to turn when discomfort shows up.  Hiding out with her characters as they speak her words, one is less likely to feel alone.  We discover smart people have covered this ground before and lived to tell the tale.

From Lynda Barry's WHAT IT IS.

Allow implies patience, a certain fullness of spirit, benevolence, compassion.  In allowing ourselves to be who and how we are, we make it possible to become whatever is next.  One way we learn to allow is to break old rules and habits, forbid behavior that leads us straight into the sort of trouble that fosters shame.  Ms. Barry has much clearer examples of how we may get out of our own creative way and, better still, how we may stop thinking about being anything but of service to our goals, desires and intentions.  As I remind myself when it seems a lengthy process, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it already.  We, you and I, are worth the time and the trouble. 

From Lynda Barry's SYLLABUS.

Word of the Week - 133

Illustration by Gabriel Pacheco.

Word of the Week: UNCOMMON

Let us not be content with the ordinary, the too-familiar, the comfortably common.  Let us venture a bit further afield, either in our minds or our steps, to places not-quite-known.  Let us befriend the strange.

Firstly, I believe on some level that it is ALL a mystery.  What do we really know?  How little of what does or may exist have we actually encountered and how much remains beyond the edge of our acquaintance?  Most, that is the answer.

Even within ourselves are caverns, craters of immeasurable depths.  We ourselves are as the ocean, of which less than 5% has been explored.  Think of it!  On a day when we feel at the high end of Smarty Pants-osity, we are actually rather short of the mark, not because we are lacking but because there is so much that remains, for now, unknowable or unseen, unimagined or, at the very least, rare.  Which is, you ought not to be surprised, the good news.  So much to discover.  The time of explorers is not behind us, don't let the history books fool you.  Just this month researchers learned there are four species of giraffes, not only one as had been assumed.  What other secrets are hiding in plain sight?

Mr. Kesey (of the quote above) was not one to accept much at face value, certainly not to accept it as promoted by the establishment.  I hope this doesn't tilt your planet too severely, but they don't always tell us the truth and they don't always know the answer.  In addition to existing mysteries, we have the power to fashion our own, to weave stories and paint pictures in which unknowns comfortably lurk.

All the most choice bits are not necessarily sitting under spotlights in display cases or showroom windows.  They may have burrowed in at the bottom of the Mariana Trench or could be skulking and incognito just about anywhere.  They hide within human hearts and keep life fresh with their occasional, often startling revelations.  Attend well.  Allow the world to surprise you, baffle you, and ultimately charm you.  It is waiting to do just that. 

Shirley (not her real name) and the nearly-unbearable radiance

Art by Anna Silivonchik.

"I am my own lowering sky," thought Shirley.  "I am my own foreteller of misfortune.  I am Eeyore without the humor of irony."

With a mind that leaned, from years of habit and indoctrination, toward a fondness for putting on the white glove and setting out in search of grime, of which there was ever an abundance, Shirley knew the bum's rush was the only right action.  Don't let it get a toe across the threshold.  It not only reached above the door frames for schmootz, it gasped in alarm at any muscle twinge or skin irritation, racing, shrieking, down the inevitable highway toward agony and very bad news.

"I am Chicken Little and the sky is almost always falling," she said to herself.

And yet.  This was not an unceasing state of mind, for Shirley was actually not confused about much of anything.  She was not a pessimist but had been trained in the ways of vicious self-criticism, the unlearning of which, she knew absolutely, would take her the rest of her life.  And beyond.  The visual that came to her was a hapless child who had somehow, alone on a teeter-totter, slid down to one end and needed to get back to the middle where balance existed.  It was a tough, splintery scooch along that ancient board, slow going and painful.  She supposed unlearning a thing must take at least as long as the learning of it.  "Crap sandwich," she said, thinking if that were true there would be  decades needed for this particular educational curve.

What she believed, in a manner that might be described as "set in stone," was that each creature, each being of any and all species contained a unique brilliance, that each of those brilliances was essential for the well-being of the whole and that the loss of any was a loss indeed, measurable, just not by any instruments yet devised.  In her best, least white-glove-plagued moments, she knew it was true of her, though she might not have been able to assign it words.  She could feel the warmth of her inner flame, knew when traces of it showed up in thoughts or conversations, in simple intuition-inspired acts, in the prompting of kindness, in language that came to her, or rather through her, like channeling a greater wisdom.  And no matter how cloaked, how dampened and covered, how walled in and plastered over a flame had been, it persisted in each life form for as long as life continued.

It was not the sort of thing chatted about idly.  When the knowledge found Shirley, she imagined it was akin to being struck by lightning.  She was positive singeing had occurred, accompanied by a whiff of smoke.  To think, to even entertain the possibility that this was, as she assumed a Truth with a capital T, humbled her as nothing ever had.  And the responsibility, the task of bringing that nearly extinguished candle into the world to add its glow, "No," was her first reaction.  "Not me.  I can barely maintain on more days than I can count, the thought of just showing up for the most ordinary things overwhelms and depletes me.  Now this?  No."  Yet she knew the answer wasn't no but yes. 

Yes, Shirley, yes.  It is a process.  Give it time.

To be continued

Word of the Week - 132

Art by Miroco Machiko.

Word of the Week:  UNTAMED

Not domesticated or otherwise controlled.

After a great many years and actually hearing the equivalent of "What will the neighbors think?" as I grew up, I am coming to a gradual and reluctant peace with being under-domesticated.  There are turns of mind that simply do not adhere to rules of what some might call normal behavior.  Not that I believe in normal as an existing thing.  I think there is ideal, then there is pretty much everything else.

For some an untamed state may manifest with variant hair, clothing, piercings, modes of transportation, lifestyle and numerous outward signs with which I am unfamiliar.  In others it may reflect more a way of thinking, of seeing, that does not quite line up with the indicated borders.

Though the dictionaries do not seem to offer it as a choice, the word "unsquelched" probably comes closer to the state which has occupied my thoughts.  As squelched indicates forcefully silenced or suppressed, then its opposite would be determinedly outspoken or assertive.  In short, being one's self, true, authentic.

A voice or voices within are, I believe, always urging us toward our own truths, toward the inhabiting of our authentic shapes, so to speak, not seeking camouflage as creatures less brilliant than we are, usually for the sake of others' comfort.  Each of us shines with a unique light which, if dimmed, can exist no other way.  The world will have to get by somehow without it, an unquantifiable loss.

Believing in the rightness, rather than the wrongness, of us being us is a source of swelling optimism.  The tiniest loosening of that too-tight belt of self-squelching can free our minds, hearts and spirits.  We expand, not in miserly, mincing half-steps but in a gush, a whoosh, a genie-out-of-the-bottle burst of what was too little becoming, suddenly and happily, enough.  We are meant to be one with all that is wild and wonderful, big and beautiful and oh-so-bold, never to be silent and small again.

Word of the Week - 131

Peter Weller,  "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai."

Donald Sutherland, photo by Bardo Fabiani for Getty Images.

Word(s) of the Week: BOYFRIEND VISION BOARD

What I love about movies is a story almost too long to tell.  This will be a tiny sub-section, the idea shamelessly borrowed from one of my son's friends.  The two of them - as do I - take great pleasure in burrowing into older movies, no era excluded.  The 70s and 80s are particularly rich.  She has found those pictures to be full of tasty morsels for what she has proclaimed her Boyfriend Vision Board.  In short and on a rotating basis, it is the imaginary wall-covering eye candy of actors as they were.  Recent inhabitants included the bearded Sterling Hayden from Robert Altman's THE LONG GOODBYE and James Garner as seen in THE ROCKFORD FILES.

When my son discovered a remastered Blu-ray of THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI had been released by Shout Factory, well, things were looking up.  The title conjured an image of Peter Weller as that young actor and my boyfriend board began to take shape.  

Film, like amber, has the ability to seal time.  I try to understand how it must feel to be an actor, held forever at 27 or 38 or 49, to be swooned over by succeeding generations of fans, while enduring ordinary human aging, as though one had traded that face for this.  It is not different for us regular types, the mirror, gravity and all that constantly catching us by surprise.  But an actor's face, once upon a time only seen so much larger than life on a theater screen, has truly been the stuff of dreams for billions of us since Hollywood began to sweep humanity under its spell.

Take a reflective moment.  Who is on your vision board today?  Young Donald Sutherland, as seen above, is there with Mr. Weller, both of whom I still delight in seeing. My son's friend limits her choices to four at a time, no easy task.  I'll stop at two for now and lose myself in the fantasy of who else will make the team this week.