An interlude of tranquility

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Just one interlude of tranquility, please.

This instant! 

Is it somehow cognitive dissonance to demand an interlude much less an interlude of tranquility to manifest out of thin air?  I think so. 

Tranquility, I think, grows slowly.  It is not rushed, demanded, or ordered about.  It is a rock hosting moss – the green coating develops slowly and requires one to be still. 

Tranquility can be – is – precarious.  For most of us, it can be destroyed in an instant.  Soft falling snow on a peaceful landscape turns into a tree crashing through one’s roof.  Or frozen pipes burst.  Or the power goes out. The quiet happiness of home and hearth is destroyed in an instant.

To disassociate so rapidly from tranquility, deep and quiet and blissful, to stress.  To disaster.  To mayhem.  Is perilous

and

dangerous and damaging. 

A disaster of its own.

Modern life is not adapted for this.

The natural biological response for these incidents is for the primitive brain – the one we aren’t allowed to operate with in this the first quarter of the first century of the latest millennium – to take control. Due to this, because of this, as a direct result of this, our bodies and our brains are flooded with the chemicals that depend on fight, flight, or freeze, and we are allowed to do none of those and be deemed to be good people, good parents, good employees, good anything.

And they certainly do nothing to help us with the situation at hand.

But there we are — swimming (treading water or maybe drowning) in the toxic miasma of an old response inadequate to the disaster at hand.  And so we need an interlude of tranquility to reset and restore, which now feels like an impossibility. 

I can demand satisfaction.

Challenge fates to a duel.

Rail against an unjust universe. 

Or I can sit quietly here with my right hand on my heart and my left hand petting the small, rhythmic breathing bundle of unconditional love known as Emmylou-the-Dachshund and wait for the moss to grow while I meditate on all the good things still available to me.

Toxic Coping Mechanisms

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I would have loved to have had an eavesdropper to a text conversation I had yesterday. 

Photo by Polish photographer Jacek Stankiewicz.

I’ve been big on drawing boundaries for the past two years. I have or had some people in my life who just either take me for granted without any reciprocity or just downright treat me badly. 

As appropriate, I’ve been calling out their behavior and telling them I won’t have it any longer.  A few of them I’ve said goodbye to. 

Yesterday, I got a text message I didn’t understand.  After re-reading it – understanding dawned on me.  I explained I knew nothing about any of it and couldn’t comply with their request. They were gracious and understanding.  I then texted the person who provoked the original text.  I got a very curt response, though I hadn’t been adversarial, placing the blame on me.  I had been sure it wasn’t malicious. I was concerned.  This was someone I love and someone who loves me.  I said, “That smells like gaslighting.”  They spit out defiant and terse words through their fingertips into a texting app that was the very definition of gaslighting. Noxious smell confirmed.

I gave no warning.  That person is now completely out of my life like a boil on my butt that has been properly excised by a medical professional.

And I feel proud of myself.  I will mourn the loss of the love we had for one another. Not loss.  I think love never dies, although it can stagnate. That’s where we are now.

In my quest, begun two decades ago, of working when possible to accept folks and their quirks, me included, I put up with a lot of bad and questionable behavior.  Including from myself.  Due to the circumstances of my life and my own innate personality, I have had a lifetime of people-pleasing. In fact, this holiday season has revealed a few more folks who are taking advantage of that aspect of me. There will be warnings if warranted, but I will be excising boils like a surgeon of exceptional skill if need be.

I am now, very much, all about pleasing my own myself.  I have always been a hedonist, but now I will insist on emotionally healthy pleasure.

People-pleasing is not in and of itself a bad thing to do.  Be kind.  Be a mentor.  Be a friend.  Say please and thank you. Especially thank you.  Be lavish with compliments and praise, but don’t do it because you fear what will happen if you don’t.  That makes it inauthentic. Do it because in a truly genuine manner, and not because you are trying to avoid their unpleasantness if you don’t.  If you do it to keep the peace or to avoid confrontation, that’s not healthy.  It shouldn’t be a coping mechanism to just get through the day. Needing to always walk on eggshells is poisonous to the heart, the soul, and the mind.   

Perhaps this is just the wisdom of age.  I don’t know, but I am going to work very hard from here on out to both accept folks for their quirks (still including myself) while also having boundaries firmly drawn with a large paint brush. Bright red paint, I think, to signal a warning.  Boundaries have been drawn to keep me from returning to my bad habit.  Boundaries drawn to protect me from those who would take advantage.  Boundaries from the parts of myself to keep me from using toxic coping mechanisms.

My tranquility is primary now, and that will require nurturing and reciprocal relationships that aren’t just loving, but respectful.  Still including the relationship I have with myself.  Especially that one.

Reading Rage

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I’m looking at an image by Canadian artist Denis Chiasson.  I see with an old woman’s eyes now.  The image is not as clear as I need it to be to discern if she is holding a pen.  I choose to think she is.  I also choose to believe she is reviewing a card she just inscribed for someone.  Perhaps to accompany a gift. 

She looks a lot like me in my youth.  Thin.  Angular.  Limber.  But she is too still.  At that age, I was a blur, always moving, always doing.  I inscribed many cards with heartfelt sentiments, but often while standing in line at the post office or while talking on the phone at work. 

Perhaps the woman in the image is just reading.  

I did read a lot.  Incessantly.  If I wasn’t working or dancing or getting ready for those two activities, I was reading – lost in other worlds. 

I delighted in well-researched historical novels with the occasional foray into romance.  Kathleen Woodiwiss was a favorite of mine in that genre.  It wasn’t until later that I realized she was poisoning my mind.  Love does not start with rape.

What strange times I’ve lived through.

I preferred, at first, to read on the sofa, sometimes reclining and sometimes sitting, moving to the bed about an hour before I needed to shut off the light.  Eventually, I read in bed whenever I could. 

I am reviving my reading habit.  The events of the last 12 years took it from me, not the least of which is the age of my eyes and the arthritis in my hands.  Holding a book can be uncomfortable, particularly while supine.  I have brushed the dust off the Kindle, and it’s a godsend.  It weighs nothing, and I can enlarge the print.  It’s been a fabulous return to the magic of squid juice on wood pulp – a phrase Frank X. Walter uses to describe writing.  But in this case it’s pixels on glass.  Or something like that. I no longer even try to keep up with the terms of new tech.

I used to carry books with me everywhere.  Since I held the opinion that the thicker a book was the better it was – a publisher would not put the money into such if it weren’t an exceptional story – the tomes I lugged around were huge.  Some were nearly a 1000 pages.  Coupled with a typing speed of more than a hundred words a minute and a lifetime of earning my living at a typewriter or keyboard, it’s no wonder my hands ache. 

The Kindle will be so much easier.  It will slip into most of my purses and weighs nothing – a boon to cramping arthritic hands. 

Technology continues to be good to me. 

Can you imagine the wonder of the printing press?  Gutenberg changed the world.  A revolution, but like all new technology, it wasn’t without controversy.

I despise Artificial Intelligence (see? – new tech controversy), but Google’s AI finds a half-remembered meme. 

Terms like “reading rage” or “Pamela-fever” described the concern that grew as books became easier and easier to own and literacy spread like a virus. 

Crescendoing in the 1800s, “Reading Rage” sparked debates over the new media’s impact. Google AI also tells me that Pamela-fever refers to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela and that Goethe’s Werther, along with Pamela, challenged social conventions and encouraged independent thought, provoking a backlash.  I understand parents particularly feared for their teenage kids. 

In these years of constant new media and new tech, parents still worry for their children. Some things do, in fact, not change.

I’ve read Pamela, though I don’t remember it, but I have no Goethe in my brain other than a quote here and there.  I’ll rectify that. He’s considered a classic, and there are many classics on Kindle for free or pert near.  Anything that inspires independent thought and challenges social norms is right up my alley.

It looks to be another gloomy day.  I will delight in crawling underneath sheets and blankets with my beloved dachshund Emmylou nestled against my back – reading.  And then no doubt napping. 

An enjoyable day ahead of me.  I think. 

I hope so for you as well.  Happy Boxing Day.

She Had Good Reason

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Were I to die and were I to be notorious enough to have a newspaper article that attempted to sum up my life, I would want the headline to read: She had good reason.

I quickly lose patience with people who think I don’t make decisions with care.  Or don’t research things. Or any manner of failings on my part to explain the utter weirdness and chaos of my life.  I do not invite chaos.  It crashes the party and is obnoxious until the cops or the ambulance comes, whichever is first.  I might be slow to call 9-1-1, but I didn’t invite or provoke the insanity of my life’s course.

I overthink everything and decisions are hard for me.  I make a Ben Franklin list with the pros and cons of any one situation.  If I notice myself trying to find reasons to pad one column or another, I know that either my intuition is kicking in or my inner child.  I then have to tease out which one.  My intuition I trust.  My inner child is a spoiled brat, and I try not to indulge her too much although many would say the confetti has already been tossed.

So, rest assured if I have made a decision, it was done with care and research.  For the most part, I don’t care if you agree or disagree with it unless you can demonstrate that you are in possession of knowledge that I am not.  But don’t assume I’m operating on whims.  It might look that way, but no.  No. no and no.

My best friend in high school’s mother was named Peggy.  Peggy loved me and I her.  It was her fondest hope that her son and I would marry but alas my best friend was gay.  After I moved back here after a seven-year sojourn in the Midwest, I was having problems with the school system. My friend, his mother, and I were sitting around talking when I mentioned I was resisting the urge to blow up the board of education.  Peggy started to ask me something that began with “Have you” and then she stopped.  Looked at me and said, “I forgot.  You only look incompetent.” 

I howled with laughter.  And I still do.  And I must still look incompetent given the number of people who question my choices. 

Maybe that makes for a better headline.  She only looked incompetent.  Yes.  I think so. Yes.  That’s it. Words

Text Box: If your life were summed up in a newspaper headline, what would that headline be or what would you want it to be?Office items on a tableShe Had Good Reason

Were I to die and were I to be notorious enough to have a newspaper article that attempted to sum up my life, I would want the headline to read: She had good reason.

I quickly lose patience with people who think I don’t make decisions with care.  Or don’t research things. Or any manner of failings on my part to explain the utter weirdness and chaos of my life.  I do not invite chaos.  It crashes the party and is obnoxious until the cops or the ambulance comes, whichever is first.  I might be slow to call 9-1-1, but I didn’t invite or provoke the insanity of my life’s course.

I overthink everything and decisions are hard for me.  I make a Ben Franklin list with the pros and cons of any one situation.  If I notice myself trying to find reasons to pad one column or another, I know that either my intuition is kicking in or my inner child.  I then have to tease out which one.  My intuition I trust.  My inner child is a spoiled brat, and I try not to indulge her too much although many would say the confetti has already been tossed.

So, rest assured if I have made a decision, it was done with care and research.  For the most part, I don’t care if you agree or disagree with it unless you can demonstrate that you are in possession of knowledge that I am not.  But don’t assume I’m operating on whims.  It might look that way, but no.  No. no and no.

My best friend in high school’s mother was named Peggy.  Peggy loved me and I her.  It was her fondest hope that her son and I would marry but alas my best friend was gay.  After I moved back here after a seven-year sojourn in the Midwest, I was having problems with the school system. My friend, his mother, and I were sitting around talking when I mentioned I was resisting the urge to blow up the board of education.  Peggy started to ask me something that began with “Have you” and then she stopped.  Looked at me and said, “I forgot.  You only look incompetent.” 

I howled with laughter.  And I still do.  And I must still look incompetent given the number of people who question my choices. 

Maybe that makes for a better headline.  She only looked incompetent.  Yes.  I think so. Yes.  That’s it.