Looking Forward

We were dropping something off at a PR guy's office Monday and there, next to his computer, was an old Remington typewriter and a TV with little subordinate TVs built in that reminded me of those pictures of LBJ in the White House watching multiple screens. Once this was sophisticated office technology. We looked forward to having such things. (Well maybe we would have been pining for an IBM Selectric type ball electric typewriter.) I remember longing to have...an electronic calculator! Yes, I was of the slide rule generation.

At least, back in the day, I was looking forward. I don't find I do that much any more. Not that I live in the past. Not at all. I'm locked firmly in the present.

It's a present where you could be seduced by dreams of one sort or the other, but quickly slide back to the reality of physical decline (yours and other people's) and limited expectations. Being firmly retired (seven years) and barely into my sixties and living as comfortably as we are? Beyond my wildest expectations but not beyond my dreams. I dreamed of fortunes to lavish things on myself and, especially, others---friends and charities.

If only you felt that you were going to stay healthy and wealthy enough to have the imagined gadgets and adventures and didn't feel that there are many things you'll never do or have. The fact that you don't even want some of the things, that's good. But the feeling of limitation isn't always pleasant.

In 2001, after 9/11 I started working on a list of things "I'd never care to do" and things "I one day (still) hope to do or do again." Among the 'nevers?' Ride a motorcycle. Among the "hope to dos?" Travel to every country where women are not subjugated. It seems like a list I ought to work on some more. I'll look forward to that.

Scarier Than Halloween

Some people like scary movies. They like being scared? That's what they say. I've finally learned to watch scary movies by disassociating. It's a movie. It isn't happening. It's easier with fanciful big monsters crushing toy cars and trains. I used to hate 'scary music.' You know, the stuff they play to heighten the scenes when you want to yell at an actor to not open a door or go off alone or some such. FFP would watch something on TV and it would have scary music and I'd yell my disgust from the other room.

I've gotten better. Really. But still. Real life scares me enough.

I am not scared of death. Not mine, not anyone's. The fact of it, that each of us 'owes one' suits me. No. I know one day a bus will come my way or there will be some other accident or, more likely, now that I've made it through all these decades, one or more organs will quit doing their work.

Not afraid to die. Know that the choices for friends and relatives are stark, too: mourn me or I mourn you.

But, really, everything leading up to that state is scary. The world is a frightening place. Sure I feel safe just now in my condo. More or less. Lots of people are looking over their shoulders every moment. But I know things are stalking me and my family. Disease and decline.

Every day we read about wars and financial crises and hate crimes and running out of health insurance. Bad things happen to people we know and people far away.

Who needs Halloween to get scared?

[SoCo shop window reflection entitled "Day of the Dead Shadow."]

Where Were You?

Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California. I happened to notice a news story today in my news feed (I probably subscribe to too many feeds because I'm always behind...just like the newspapers). Anyway, this is the earthquake that collapsed a double-deck portion of a freeway in Oakland. I was nowhere near the earthquake. I was, in fact, about 6000 miles away in the south part of France. Nevertheless, I remember it well. I walked from a little country inn perched near Mougins Village in France to the village to buy newspapers. Both the International Herald Tribune (in English) and the French paper had huge headlines about the earthquake. My friends and I crowded into a public lounge at the inn (the only place with a TV) and watched coverage. We were frustrated when they cut off the voice of someone they were interviewing to dub in the French translation. I read the French newspaper (with the aid of my pocket electronic translator) and they described the freeway scene with the collapsed deck on the cars below as 'coffins of concrete.'

Thinking back to that time twenty years ago, made me realize how we connect to big events and disasters based on where we are and what we are doing...even if it's far away from the site.

I finished listening to cassettes in my car about British Kings and Queens. I still can't remember all the Georges and all the hanky-panky and wars. But, of course, I remember when Princess Di was killed. I was home for that one and I think FFP woke me up to tell me the news. A short time later I was in Paris and there was a memorial near the underpass where the wreck occurred.

We all remember where we were when Kennedy was assassinated (if we were alive). I was in History class.

And, of course, 9/11. I saw the first report of the plane flying into the WTC on a tiny 5inch B&W TV we kept in the bathroom at the Shoal Creek house. I think I also heard about the 1994 Northridge earthquake on this TV. I called my Northridge friend. The phones were out. I called my friend in San Dimas and my Northridge friend was there (thankfully).

In 1981 we had a big flood in Austin. Thirteen people died in and around Shoal Creek. I remember the party in the unfinished penthouse of a bank building on 15th Street, watching the storm develop. And leaving early because we were in black tie and sunburned and uncomfortable and, after we got home and changed, deciding not to go out again because it was raining so hard. And waking the next morning incredulous at the destruction and amazed at the debris line in our backyard.

I don't remember when I first heard about August 1, 1966, the day Charles Whitman mounted the UT tower to bring down people with a high-powered rifle. I was in Sacramento, California on a trip with my sister. So I wasn't even in Texas. Little did I know how close Whitman came to changing my future, though, gunning down someone a few scant feet from my future husband, someone I didn't even know at the time.

I think the message is this: if there is going to be a disaster, you should be close to me. I'll be far away or, at least, oblivious and safe. But we always remember a lot about the time, don't we? And where we were.

Stories We Tell Ourselves

We only deal in narrative, really. Oh, we think we are about emotions and feelings and such: love, hate, sadness, desire, curiosity, learning, meditating. But we can only think about these things, it seems, in the context of the stories we tell about ourselves and others, about places we moved through and things we've touched and seen and events we attended.

Today's picture is a shop window reflection at Uncommon Objects on South Congress. I've always been curious about the photos for sale in shops like this. Important enough to take and develop in that era before digital cameras and yet somehow leaving a family and its narrative and ending up in a bin for sale by an antique dealer. I've even bought a few in the past, thinking I'd just invent a narrative to go with it. Of course, inventing stories, fiction I think it's called, is something I've always had problems with because of the whole 'making it all up' part.

I've been taking a writing class ("Writing Your Life As A Woman" conducted by Dean Lofton) and what I notice in this class (which is focused on just getting the writing out and seeing where it goes, writing from prompts about real things in your life) is that no one just writes "I am happy" or "I was sad" or "I felt lost." Instead, they tell what they were doing constructing that emotion with details. Sometimes the listeners can't even tell that the scenes in the narrative create the emotion but suddenly there are tears from the reader.

I have my stock stories and the other day I was telling one of them and I started to wonder about some of the details. And then I realized that the detail didn't really matter as much as the reason why I hung on to that particular narrative. There was something I wanted to convey about my life in this world and the story was key to it. The story was neither fact nor fiction. It had an element of truth but the retelling made it important.

I frequently talk about the class I took before that was similar to the one Dean is conducting. I talk about how I enjoyed scribbling to writing prompts, reading and listening to others read and following up with writing 'sessions' with a friend. I tell about the hundreds of scraps of paper and dozens of notebooks of all sizes and shapes that I filled up with scribbles and notes and lists and have trouble tossing. (I'd done this for years before that class and have for years after.) I tell that because I want people to understand that I trust writing as therapy and a path to emotion. I sometimes mention that I didn't particularly care for that other instructor.

When I review those old writings, I sometimes say I'm sad or happy or excited. And that's the dullest thing in the world to read. But sometimes I read about the exact exercises I did, what I weighed, what I ate, what errands I did, where I went shopping and what I bought. I find a word I encountered written down, maybe with the definition, maybe not. I tell people I love words, but I tell them with stories. About trying to 'read' the dictionary. And about how when I was programming I'd be writing something and have to look up a word for some reason. (This was back before spell check, online dictionaries, etc.) And I would actually think: "That's the most fun I had all day long." It tells you something beyond "I love words."

Sometimes, though, we tell ourselves a story about a time in our lives that is not really false exactly but just wrong. If we wrote something down during that time, we might edit that story and make it a little more true to ourselves. Today I read some journal entries (actually a wad of yellow legal pad paper written on one side) from 1985. I remember at the time being sort of a lazy goof. Writing a journal when I should have been working. Stuff like that. But reading about the code I wrote and the thought I put into it and the things I was doing outside work and the thought that was going into my diet and exercise, I thought "Hmmm...maybe I had it together a little bit and had some good ideas. Maybe the fact that no product emerged to take the PC-DOS world by storm was not completely, entirely my fault." And yet, it's just a narrative either way. A way of putting the emotions of that time, and before, and since into a frame that I can relate to and that others can as well.

[Note: I'm determined to hit 'Publish' on this even though it doesn't seem to say much. The reason is that there are four unpublished drafts in Visible Woman before this one. The titles are: Free Ideas, People You Know, Ups and Downs and Exceedingly Random. They have semi-clever pictures attached. They languish. My three readers are disappointed. Just must publish something.]

Homebody

[FFP took this yesterday from our balcony, looking south at sunset. All the clouds were reflecting sunset in the east and south. I didn't look at the actual sunset, but FFP went to the pool deck on nine to take some pictures there, too.]

When I was in school or working, sometimes a sick day sounded like the best thing in the world. Bundled up in bed with some books or newspapers, watching mindless TV. Yeah. Even if a box of Kleenex was needed nearby and you were in a drug fog, it didn't sound so bad, staying home with your entertainments. As DVDs and cable TV came along, it sounded even better.

Truthfully, though, there never seemed to be a good day to be sick (or pretend to be). Always an important event at school, a customer visit at work or a critical deadline or bug to fix.

Yesterday I felt almost perfect. Not quite, one niggling problem but nothing that would keep me from doing just about anything. But...I'm retired. And, in what is really sort of a rare confluence of events, there was no errand, Dad duty, tennis, social event or really any good reason to leave the condo. I needed exercise, but there is a gym steps across the hall.

So I stayed on the tenth floor of the 360 condos for an entire day. Fact is it's been thirty-six hours now because a little rain nixed tennis this morning. Yesterday, Forrest interviewed someone in North Austin, worked out at Westwood, grocery shopped for his mom and us, went down to get the mail and later a package delivery, had lunch with someone at Garrido's downstairs, drove his lunch date home, went to the parking garage with a load of recycling and went to the pool deck to take pictures at sunset. Today, he's been to the dentist (on foot) and to the little grocery downstairs for banana bread.

Yesterday, I cleaned the master bedroom (change and wash linens, dust, vaccum, even the blinds). I took the time to ponder some of the books and objects in there. There are a lot of books I want to read, one I need to read and return to its owner. Today I'm working on some laundry. I have a plan to dust the office and vacuum in here when FFP is away on a lunch date. Maybe.

I watched "Pierrot Le Fou" off and on on a Netflix DVD. Godard's film is really a celebration of settings and objects in Cinemascope. "Life" as Godard said "in Scope. " That's what I thought while watching it. That's what he claimed in a quote I found later on imdb.com.

I read all the papers, did the daily puzzles. I read papers from Sunday and other old papers that I hadn't gotten around to reading.

I did some of the paper reading while glancing at CNN, listening to the iPod (Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, etc.) and riding the exercise bike in the gym across the hall. I also listened to the iPod while cleaning while FFP was out, blasting it in all the apartment's speakers.

I wrote a blog entry (see below) that was much more coherent than this one.

I reviewed all our credit card and bank accounts and Dad's, too.

I watched the Dallas Cowboys play football while FFP slept in his chair. I would have watched a movie or TV but I kept thinking he would wake up and, besides, I was reading papers and working puzzles. Actually, it was sort of an interesting game.

I stepped out on our balcony from time to time to check on construction and de-construction: the Austonian, the W, the courthouse, the decommissioning of the Tom Green Water Treatment plant and some noisy street destruction by the city. (They are putting in a water line to Seaholm track that necessitates tearing up the street every other day.) I watched the sunset reflected in the non-west sky.

I ate yogurt, cereal, a banana, nachos, some hummus. I drank a lot of coffee and, in the evening, a couple of glasses of a rosé FFP opened.

It was just like those pretend sick days in my dreams. Listening to music, TV, DVDs, papers, little chores. Just staying home. Being home when others are out and about. Reveling in all the entertainments and catching up.

But, now, well, I've got a bit of cabin fever. I feel I need to go get on the elevator and go to another floor at least. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a recluse.

Magpie

[Photo: February 2008, MOMA museum reflection self portrait in a shiny airstream trailer included in an exhibit. Would a magpie be attracted to a shiny airstream? For sure a peacock would...they love to preen or maybe fight their reflections.]

Let's go back a bit. It's March, I think, 1999. I don't have any online journals from then and I can't find any computer files from this time. I have typed in some paper journals from the '90's but none include this exact time period. So the following is from memory. Faulty, faulty memory.

I was reminded this morning of magpies when I read one of my favorite online journals and John Bailey posted a little haiku (or, at least a poem, I never remember poetry rules) in today's entry that involved a magpie.

Anyway, it's March 1999. I am in a rehab center in the Denver area with my parents, visiting my sister. There is snow outside and there are large black and white birds flying around. It's pretty. Those birds were magpies and they were the first I'd ever seen. I'd heard people called magpies because they were attracted to every shiny object that came along. But I guess I'd never looked the bird up in a book and seen how striking the bird was, large and black and white. I wished I had a picture of them against the snow. My dad enjoyed seeing them, too, and knew what they were I think. He loves nature and new things and always loved seeing things and going places where you might see something new.

The life of our immediate family had undergone a sea change in the December before (1998). My sister had suffered a cranial aneurysm. By a miraculous chain of events she got to the hospital and survived a repair of it. Unfortunately she developed subsequent ischemic strokes and suffered some brain damage and partial paralysis during three weeks of ICU. Now she was in a rehab facility learning to walk again and use her right arm and undergoing cognitive therapy and such. My parents were old enough at this point (they were 77 and 82) that I vetoed them visiting my sister for months. My brother-in-law and my grown nieces were providing the support my sister needed. They didn't need to worry about old folks falling on an icy patch, etc. This had made for a solemn Christmas at our house in Austin. As I remember it we got continued news of complications from Denver. We did the little things that make a holiday (eating, drinking, working a jigsaw puzzle, exchanging gifts) but our minds were on my sister for sure. My parents had trouble swallowing that she was so ill. Parents never expect to see their children in that condition, even if the child is fifty-five.

Finally, in March they were set on visiting my sister in rehab. Of course, it was still winter in Denver. I was still working. I must have taken some vacation. I arranged for us to fly up there and rent a car and stay in a hotel. I determined that I'd look after the parents so as not to interfere with my brother-in-law and nieces, all ready if not overwhelmed by the now months of the ordeal at least not needing another thing to worry about. I don't remember if I flew to Dallas and met my parents there. I do remember renting the car and getting a Subaru Forrester with four wheel drive. The weather wasn't bad. A little snow, no blizzards or really slick roads. I delivered my parents from door to door.

I remember being so glad to actually talk to my sister and see that she still had her voice (although its timber and pace was changed forever), lots of cognitive ability and a drive to get better. The insurance company was trying to dismiss her from rehab as having recovered as much as possible (before she walked again, which she has been able to do for the last decade) and when an insurance rep visited, she reached up with her right hand to shake hands with the woman. The woman did a little double take, knowing it was a left brain injury but having read that she wouldn't recover use of her right side. Sure my sisters arm and hand were weak and spastic but she lifted it from the sheets toward the woman's hand. (She got her reprieve and learned to walk with a cane and use her right arm more.) Dad accompanied her to one therapy session and my mom, niece and I chatted in the room. We somehow started talking about a relative who had divorced and were trying to remember the first spouse's name or something like that. We could not remember. We asked my sister when she came back. She knew right away. OK, I thought, a lot of long term memory intact. Still it hurt to watch her struggle to play checkers on a giant board with Velcro pieces.

When you are in the midst of a struggle like that, if focuses your attention. We'd been feeling that even hundreds of miles away but up close we joined the local relatives in a scenario that heightened everything going on with one woman's therapy and dampened everything outside that reality.

Then I looked out the window and saw the magpies. My dad identified them, probably. Maybe he told a story about seeing magpies somewhere before. The world outside intruded on our myopic view. Things might not get better but they would change and there was a world outside this crisis.

Looking For Inspiration

I was running through old pictures looking for inspiration and I found this reflection in the window of the (now razed) Las Manitas on Congress Avenue. This was taken in July of 2008. The Austonian across the street was just climbing up to the sky. Oddly there are two fliers in the window that caught my eye. One is for a writing class that my friend Dean Lofton runs. However, I wouldn't meet her until months after this picture. There is also a flier for the Austin Film Festival film camp. AFF is one of my 'causes' and I'm currently drumming up business for a fundraiser for their Young Filmmakers Program. I doubt I noticed these things at the time. Just shooting the reflection of the Austonian construction in the window of a restaurant that was making way for a hotel that has yet to be started.

Why do I need inspiration anyway? I see people every day who have passion for their jobs, causes, projects or art. The work compels them. They don't have to find out what it needs to be. That's the secret to being inspired. it just comes at you and you can't resist the work.

Sigh...it isn't happening. In spite of that I'm going to go read the tiny fragment of a novel I have on my computer. Which will, no doubt, elicit a bigger sigh.