pantoum's Diaryland Diary

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HELP WANTED

Just returned from the optometrist and my dilated eyes are slowly adjusting to this bright world. Whee! The sun is powerful after this procedure, even though I barely reached home before big fat raindrops started splashing all over the lettuce and toilet paper that I was carrying inside with the mail.

From Rob Breszny's site

HELP WANTED. Practical dreamers with high emotional intelligence needed to become experts in the following subjects: the art of possessing abundant resources without feeling greed or a sense of superiority; the science of cultivating luxurious comfort in a way that does not lead to spiritual sloth; and a knack for enjoying peace and serenity without diluting one's ambition.

He is so freaking cool, tells this great story about being on the highway beside a woman in a convertible Jaguar who was so busy talking on her cell phone that she cut him off in traffic and he had to slam on brakes to keep from rear-ending her. She changed lanes again and his immediate response was to yell, especially after she slowed down, pulled up alongside his window, glared at him, and shot him a bird.

Then he looked down at this cool origami star that a friend made for him and he was suddenly filled with love instead of rage. He decided that angry Jaguar woman needed this gift more than he did so, so he threw it into her car. The intricate star landed on the seat beside her and she picked it up and looked at it, got the most flabbergasted look on her face. Then she got into the far right lane and slowed down.

I love that story, especially because I am prone to road rage when I forget to pay attention. I don't like this attitude that everyone else on the road should be moving at whatever speed is most convenient for me, but I guess I must subconsciously believe this at some level—how else do I explain my irritation when they aren't going as fast as I would like to go in the lane in which I would like for them to be driving?

After my grandmother died, I drove home from ICU in a daze at 2 a.m. after spending the past thirty minutes holding her hand as she drew her last breaths. My mother sent me to the store for coffee and coffeecake as soon as I got there, because she knew that people would be coming over as soon as they heard in the morning.

The all-night Kroger is beside the hospital and, as I drove by the hospital, the hearse was pulling out with what had to be the body of my grandmother. (Yes, the town is that small.)

I loved her and knew she lived to be eighty-six in relatively good health up until a few days before she died, and most of the time I do understand how thankful everyone should be that this was the case, but I lost it when I saw the hearse, just stopped my car right there in the middle of the highway and started sobbing.

Now, when I get really irritated at drivers, I try to remember that I currently live in a town with a big cancer center, in a place where many people on the road are sometimes here because someone they love is dying or struggling to live with limited options. And—at least more often than I did this time last year—I just, well, yield, and realize that they are doing the best they can too and maybe there are profound things distracting them from paying attention to the speed limit.

Rob B. writes the all-time best horoscopes going and also enlightening books. He imagines the world as a Beauty and Truth Laboratory, a place where you can find beauty everyday if you bother to pay attention.

Here's a "sacred advertisement" from his website, take from his book Pronoia (the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings):

It's time for the Gratitude Fest. Write thank-you notes to the creatures, both human and otherwise, that have played seminal roles in inspiring you to become yourself. Who have been your guides along the way, both the purposeful teachers and the inadvertent helpers? Who has seen you for who you really are? Who has nudged you in the direction of your fuller destiny and awakened you to your signature truths? Who has loved you very, very well?

Have been thinking about that. This list is anything but exhaustive, but here goes, off the top of my head:

Creature Guides
• When I was 14 and running away from home often, I would strap my guitar to my back with a piece of rope, sling it over my shoulder, hop on my bicycle, and peddle to a nearby golf course where I'd settle into a lean-to and play guitar. If I got hungry and had no money, I'd ride my bike up to the Waffle House and ask if there was anything I could scrounge. Feral cats lived near the dumpsters behind the place and I'd watch them and tell myself that I could survive on my own, out in the relative wilds of this protected golf course, by scrounging just like them if it ever came down to that
• Owls (because when I really need to see one, I always do—and often in the most unlikely places)
• The great blue herons that I have seen constantly since the Ginger's mother died. (I saw maybe two of them in the forty-one years before her death, but have seen at least thirty of them in the past twelve months.)
• The funny ducks at the gardens that splash me when I hang out by the water and watch it get dark
• The frogs that make music by the water
• Fireflies, wherever I encounter them
• Butterflies
• My cat Cosmos, who could always read my moods and who put his paws around my neck sometimes and hugged me or just settled in against me and purred, loving and trusting me regardless—and that damn Dickboy better not abuse to my sweet cat.
• The goldfinches and fat robins and woodpeckers and hummingbirds and all the other birds that hang out on my deck and splash in my birdbath and make me laugh with their silly antics
• Dolphins and porpoises, because every time I see them dancing in the ocean, it's a miracle
• Whales, for the same reason

Purposeful Teachers
• My paternal grandmother
• My ex Ginger, who loved me extravagantly, taught me how to feel, and perhaps inadvertently nudged me in the direction of my fuller destiny by, as Pottergrrl says, doing me the favor of leaving me for Dickboy
• The Ginger's mother, Mom, who also taught me how to feel and who talked about deep truths with me
• The Ginger's father, Pop
• Shakespeare, my mentor and dear friend, who is no doubt responsible for my, first of all, being alive today, and second of all, believing in myself and my power in the world
• My professor Liz, who encouraged me to send my writing out into the world and to see myself as a writer
• All of my friends, but especially Musicgrrl and Filmgrrl and Zulu
• My little brother Lad
• My ex Tree
• My boss, who is a hard ass but also a kind ass, and who believes in me without doubt when I need for her to do that. And she encourages me.
• My father, who was one hard, hard man. One of the greatest lessons he taught me was the art of enduring pain and then getting back up again to take some more.
• My fragile mother, who manages to love despite suffering from a disease that sometimes convinces her that this world is an evil, wicked place where everyone, including her children, is out to get her

Inadvertent Helpers
• Mrs. Burckhalter, my fourth-grade teacher who tied my left hand behind my back and made me stay in all recess and write with my right hand, ( left-handedness MUST be evil, you see, coz Satan sat on the left side of God), because she reinforced what I was already discovering by age nine—that most religious fundamentalists are as far away from the lessons of Jebus as it is possible to be and prefer to use the Bible as a weapon
• My high school guidance counselors who told me that I shouldn't take college-prep courses because my parents never finished college (so wouldn't I be more comfortable calculating bowling scores?). This offended me so much and made me more determined to show them they were wrong about me.
• Joanne, a former advertising agency owner (went out of business. Imagine that!), who said "You're just not creative, Bird." There are many, many things in this world that I am not, but no one with accurate perception could ever accuse me of not being creative. Instead of feeling inadequate, I heard this and understood that some people's perceptions are just plain skewed and the best thing I can do is to get as far away from them as I can as quickly as I can. (I also learned that I didn't have to settle for selling my soul, since I left there and then found a better job that paid the same salary.)

•

And now I have to work on an electronic-publishing policy for work, but can at least do this in the comfort of my own home.

7:56 p.m. - 2005-07-13

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