Just Be Happy

It’s so very sad to think of where the world may end up and how little choice there really is about making much of a change aside from whatever one can, might, may, will do on their own to abate the coming extinction event and even that gives little solace to whatever soul one thinks they have; so it seems all the better to be happy now rather than to put it off any longer.

Whether or not to have a straw is a terribly laborious endeavor and uses far too much solar energy consumed in calories made by plants and offers no apparent fat reducing benefit in its exchange for having wasted all that energy thinking about it for so long. Better just not to think or bother reaching for one, a straw, at least don’t bother to think about it the next time you don’t reach for one or bother to utter the word, “no”.

Don’t think, just don’t. Find a better use for that same fuel spending, use it to make a smile.

If free will is true, it is only insomuch as which button one buttons first and even that is something decided by an incident of becoming that was an on-top-of–genetic choice a mother or grandmother or her great grandmother’s mother’s mother’s mother made while she was pregnant — according to Dr. Sapolsky and he has spent enormous amounts of solar unit calories to make his way to knowing this.

Nature/nurture — both.

So why care about the next generation or this one for that matter? Some will, some won’t and that was decided in the mothers-squared-innumerous-times epigenetic psyche too — and the ones who do will likely live less long unless they have a large enough circle of friend who support their kind of thinking and behavior.

Stress kills. Find a way out of it.

It’s best to just be happy — and tread lightly.

 

No Other Way

Whatever disappointment there might be in never having had a worthy, lasting lover — it would have been more disappointing to have lived less solitarily in misery. 

No matter the deficit to health and longevity there might be in the lack of a community circle or coalition of friends, a moia — the benefit of the peace associated with any missing contempt or discord in an unhappy one might suffice to make up a little for the lack thereof in a different, possibly equally significant way.

Where are they hiding — those ones who one can get along with? Maybe there are actually those who fare better without any outside intervention. Does anybody know if there are any made as such or should one try to change if one is able?

But still, it isn’t over and there can always be that a road untraveled yet could expose another option — one that has in it a hand to hold and walk along with — and remain pleasant. One where the other is enough the same or just the right different — a perfect measure of both or simply happen to have come along at proper timing.

If one has only one is one enough?

There are plenty to tell the story of how bad it can get after any good that it might have been has been exhausted. And there are those who have ways of telling of mistakes that can be avoided if one wants to — but most don’t — want to know or try to avoid what doesn’t look at all like it could possibly be a mistake — yet.

It’s fun to go along before things start getting rough — it’s not so fun to keep from going any further once the roughness seems to have gotten to be more than anyone can possibly bear.

More than anyone can possibly bear seems more possible to bear than something being bearable in solitude it seems most people think.

Unbearable or alone — the lesser of two evils — equal measures of the same distraught.

It has made a difference in how she proceeded that she started out for the most part in a system of aloneness. Even though there were others in the equation, they were all circling the family circle in a circle of spiraling dysfunction — no outer circle — each to each’s own demise or prosper upon the disintegration of the unit. All a matter of time as everything is, even good things are.

Things change.

Good leavings are rocks as opposed to sand from which to build upon again though.

But it’s all just life. There are no guarantees. Each moment is an opportunity for a new discovery — another chance to find a thing, the thing, that has gone missing up to then no matter the place one might have started.

There is no pity for any other than those that don’t continue to bother. They are the losers of the shining that is in so many sorrows. Keep getting up and going — there is no other way of knowing.

 

 

 

Advantage To Madness

So, since my old device was biting the dust and completely untrustworthy, I now have a new one for typing these posts on and it has sound which the old one did not and hadn’t had for probably a year or more. I’m having a horribly hard time not listening to lectures on YouTube all day — because I LOVE learning new things — and have been trying to convince myself all day that I was hunting for inspiration for writing. The most recent one is a lecture by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky about behavioral evolution — God only knows now how I got to him, but when I saw him pop up in the “recommended for you” section, I jumped on it — and his was after several others.

I watched a documentary about him, Dr. Sapolsky, years ago and his work with primates and found him irresistibly fascinating. He is a very engaging speaker and I simply couldn’t resist a Stanford University-level education series — the link is for the second part and it goes on and on — I will likely watch them all. And they’re free of commercials!

Of course, one thing leads to another and as he was outlining what his course would entail in the first lecture, part 1, he brought up required reading and one book was Chaos by James Gleick. He went on to state that some percentage of people who read it will have a life-changing experience and will have no use for meditation thereafter due to the mind-altering experience they will have. I found that so compelling that I ordered a copy of the book. Not willing to risk mushrooms or other psychedelic inducements and still not disciplined enough to try meditation or yoga, I’m looking forward greatly to the hope I have for this book to enlighten me.

And it didn’t stop there because somewhere in this second part he brought up the question of whether or not there is an advantage to madness. That was beyond my resistance so I typed the question into my browser and came to a sight called LessWrong that is jam packed with information about thinking — “improving reasoning and decision making” — right up my alley.

You must be able to see where I’m going with this by now. The best I think I can do for today — since it’s quickly approaching 12 pm, (even though there are a couple of drafts left incomplete before this that didn’t meet with my own expectations) — is a confessional of sorts and this post is it.

Tomorrow’s another day (for watching lectures??)

One True Sentence

Odd that a new device could cause a rift in thinking. It’s just a thing and how can a thing change the manner in which words accrue upon the same virtual page as where they did before except only now arriving there through a newer instrument of delivery?

Somehow they were though, not wanting to travel the same distance without making their way from the air, to her head more difficult than they did previous to this same but different mode of liberation.

It was all in her suddenly defunctioning head.

She was even finding herself leaving the perfectly working new device–
that was on top a box on top of her lap while they were all with her outstretched on top of her comfortable bed and where there could also be playing in the background, on the same device, an audio thing that was instructional or entertaining and available to be brought back forward for seeing at the click of a key–
to walk into the kitchen where the old, nearly defunct device was being buried already under a heap of accumulating papers on a table–
like she needed to see it, to touch it, to turn it on to find herself again–
once writing on the new device had managed to rift her thinking.

Crazy how a rhythm can change the whole scenario–
algorithms so to speak–sets of rules to be followed–
sounds somewhat neurotic.

There it was lying almost dead not much able any more to be the difficult friend it had before. What seemed clear was that things inspire. The old device had had a certain way of influencing all of her thinking…
“Must get this on paper before the thing shuts down.”
“Can’t look that up or it will make the thing shut down or hang up.”
“Can’t move the thing from where it is because it needs to be attached to that plug and that Ethernet cord because WiFi is unreliable, possibly unavailable when and/or if the thing can even be turned on this time.”
“I shall write with a pen and paper while the thing takes whatever time out that it has decided it happens to want to and shall look things up in books with paper words instead in the meantime.”

This new device was fully cooperative, leaving her no drama with which to engage. Was it boredom or just a new dance to learn–either way something was changed–good or bad yet to be determined but highly suspicious of being or becoming a good thing.

“Poor old difficult thing.”

Another neurotic behavior–anthropomorphizing.

The cats were out in the studio so she could even take this new wonderful friend, this new device to sit with her to think in the little mudroom. She would do that then because the battery was low and there is a functioning three-pronged outlet available in her nearly defunct whole house out there.

How cool it would be if a brand new house could be built around this brand new fancy cheap thing and maybe a whole new life where even fear of intimacy could even, also, finally be made defunct.

Ah, the thrills and chills of a new thing.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

Her Favorite Critics

She checked out Wuthering Heights from the library because she just couldn’t make herself labor through trying to read Jane Austen any longer. For all the hoopla so many make about her, she really wishes she could make herself — read some of it — but it just isn’t in her good sense and sensibilities to bother with. She typed in to her browser, “why do people like Jane Austen so much” and the only thing that made any sense was a comment following a raving post about her that said “if she was writing in these times, she would be writing for General Hospital.” It wasn’t that she even got that much out of whatever she was able to read because all she got out of it was a similarly draining convoluted narrative like reading the book of Genesis in the Bible — just too many begets — begets for Jane being all the convoluted lines of relations of who knows who knows who or which of them might be married or intended or hopefully intended and far too many words in that doing — no economy whatsoever it seemed — seeming to take forever to get to any weight. Now, the Bronte sisters, they look a little more promising — at least the introduction by Charlotte in the second edition of the publication of Emily’s book where she is disclosing how the publishing of it came about in the first place — even that was more compelling than Jane Austen. 

So, what she figured by the popularity of Jane and the comment revealing what she might have discovered if she’d been able to endure, people want common. They want General Hospital or a romance novel like what they might find at a checkout counter before boarding a plane — most people — and any that don’t are rarer to find and certainly probably not sufficient to make a living on and why so many might write things that are common.

“I watched a movie about Jackson Pollack and you know what? When he finally got to a point in his tortured life of painting where others thought, ‘now there’s an artist’, he didn’t want to paint anymore because everybody from that point on wanted him to spit them out like he was a machine or something. The doing lost all of its value and any meaning for him as an artist.”

She had just read something she’d written to one of her favorite critics — a friend, an old boyfriend, who wrote a story with her once upon a time. Actually he wrote it and she expanded upon it because he gave up to easily, letting the story of a little Christmas tree end by the poor little tree lying in a ditch somewhere. She had wanted the little Christmas tree to have a better ending than that so took what he had written and enlarged upon it — taking the little tree to a recycling facility and back up to his forest family and friends. He loved what she wrote — not quite at first because at first it hurt his feelings some — and that silly little story became their child, something that kept them together, at least on a string, for many years thereafter, even until now — “When are you ever going to finish The Little Christmas Tree and send it off to a publisher?” he’d ask on just about every occasion he used it as an excuse to call her.

Anyway, he loved the way she wrote even when he couldn’t understand the meaning, so she decided to read Floating Dress Dancing to him to see what his reaction was since not one single person bothered to read it and it had been like a Jackson Pollock moment to her — a moment when you finally get something out of yourself that you’ve wanted to get out and it comes out just the way you want it to and even though you love it, no one else gets it. He didn’t get it either but still said he loved the way it sounded. “There’s something in there and I want to know. And even though I don’t understand it, I love the way it sounds and the way the words make you think about other things.” That was enough — actually what she wanted. She told him the story behind it. He understood it more but what she really wanted was for him to understand why no one getting it or liking it should matter anyway.

“You know how you love to sing and would be a singer writing and singing music if you could make yourself do the difficult work of pushing through the artistic barriers but you don’t care if anyone hears it or not, you just have to do it because it is a thing inside you wanting out? Well, that was Jackson Pollock but he pushed through the barriers and arrived to where he saw a thing and knew that it was good. I want to push through those barriers,” she said and hoped she could whether anyone ever got her or not. She just wanted to know that she could do it — get to a place where the getting to is felt in all it’s magical measure. She was hoping though that the getting there wouldn’t have her wanting to end it all like Jackson Pollock did.

“Yeah, I understand,” he said. “Do you want me to sing the latest things I’ve written?” he asked.

She let him sing — over the phone.

“You’re my pillar,” he said. “You’ll always be my pillar. Do you know what I mean when I say that you are my pillar?” He went on to explain. They were still connected by some kind of string but The Little Christmas Tree still wasn’t published. Maybe it never would be.

 

 

One O’clock PM

There was a set of bunk beds in the room and a single bed and all three young girls slept in the same room. The mother slept in the other room. All rooms were wall to wall, floor to ceiling furnishings since the house was so small, “a cracker box” the mother would call it and stacking furniture was just about the only way to store their ever-increasing stuff. The mother didn’t like to throw things away, especially not anything that could serve as memorabilia once the girls were grown and gone. She lived for her girls.

The house had jalousie windows and let a lot of heat or cold in, even when closed, so it was hard to manage temperatures. The slats were useful for the girls to get back in if they managed to lock themselves out though, being latchkey kids and all. They slept with giant puffs in the wintertime since there was only a wall heater in the living room that didn’t seem to have the capacity to get the heat through the little hallway and if it did it was quickly siphoned out the jalousie window pane gaps. Summer was managed with a swamp cooler that brought in more gnats than it pushed out any cool air. They mostly spent the summer at the NCO club swimming pool. Their dad had left them that at least.

The mother worked five days a week and was the sole provider and when the weekend came around, she was determined to sleep in no matter what. Her three daughters weren’t allowed to start any activities or have any friends over until she was awake which might be one o’clock pm or even later. They were kind of expected to sleep in too. They hated it — putting off their weekend until so late in the day was utterly depressing — all their friends out already having played for hours.

Nothing lasts forever though.

It was 1pm when she woke up this morning. She couldn’t believe it when she looked at the clock. The kitties had been pouncing across her for hours but it didn’t seem to register until she was completely ready for it to register. It made her the same kind of depressed that it did when her mother made them wait to get up when they were younger and she vowed to stop the staying up so late that she had gotten back into the bad habit of doing again lately. As if she could.

Maybe it was even because of all that perceived sense of wasted time from childhood that made her value so much every second of every day and made it hard for her to imagine putting anything off for sleeping. But her body made her sleep even with the kitties jumping on her trying to remind her they were hungry.

“You’re going to sleep your life away,” one of her old boyfriends used to say as he was getting up at 5am. Seemed like every boyfriend she’d ever had got up at 5am. Well, most were fairly successful and it has always been said that it is only possible to be very successful if one is an early riser. None were very successful at relationships though — there must be a different set of rules for that.

And then, of course, there are all the stories about famous people who hardly slept or sleep at all or only took or take naps during the day.

What does waking early have to offer — CEOship of a fortune five, private jets, trophy wives and extra girls, billions upon billions of dollars? Maybe an invention but it all mostly circulates around the concept of the money. And mostly men. They can afford to wake early — they have wives, girlfriends or for-hire housekeepers so they can start right away on doing what they want to — whatever will make them the most money or famous. When they wake early it is to exercise, read emails, simple things that make lining up CEOship easier. They seldom mop a floor or clean a tub out. When women wake early, more often it is to make the man’s coffee or his breakfast lunch and dinner and clean the house between all that by the time he gets back home so he can work at whatever he wants to in peace and perfect comfort.

Female success — racking up clean dishes, floors and tubs and cooking millions of meals and yummy ones.

Of course, here she is lucky enough not to have a man to have to make coffee for or cook or clean but still, where is her success? Ah, she sleeps too much or too late or doesn’t get up early.

“Why can’t success be found in late hours just as easily as early ones,” she wonders, and “who says I’m not successful?”

She thinks of her mother and how successful her mother finally felt, later in her life when she was able to do whatever she wanted to without worrying about cleaning a house, if she ever did — because she no longer had three girls to worry much about since they’d all grown up and were worrying about themselves.

She had made sure each of them had a car right by the time they needed one. She found ways to keep those cars repaired, even if it meant staying friends with the friends of the boyfriend she had to forfeit because the kids came before anything else and the boyfriend just didn’t like that very much — even though she cooked and cleaned for him. She looked in papers and found job ads she thought they might like and spurred them on to get those jobs. But finally, after all her hard work of making sure there were puffs to keep them warm when jalousie windows were leaking out all the warm air, she was able to move them all up to a bigger house that had forced-air heating that came through all the vents in each of the many more rooms and casement windows that closed up tight to keep the warm air in. She stayed in that same house and once the girls were gone, that was her luxury and success — and she still had all the memorabilia to prove what she had done.

All the men she’d known that got up at 5am have died now, all in bad health, and all their heirs are fighting over all the money that they made and couldn’t take along. None of them kept a wife but they all went through many women who she suspects swept their floors and cooked or at least did other little details that kept them somewhat happy — even if it was just to be a young thing hanging on their arm and gushing over them.

“He was a great dad. He had three businesses,” was the obituary for one who died “peacefully” alone in a nursing home, no mention of the children by his side.

We all die alone, no one can do it with us. As much as they all tried, their mother died without them around her too — she went when they left to take the mother’s sister home to rest.

One o’clock or five pm it really doesn’t matter much in the bigger scheme of things it seems, unless you want to be included in the search engine results of “what famous people don’t sleep very much”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Floating Dress Dancing

Long arms, long legs — stuffed into a pair of long and skinny split-crotch black lace leotards
and then covered by a dress made of green sheer that only could disguise the silhouette beneath by intermittent raised darker green flocked sunflowers.

She floated in her floating dress dancing through the party not stopping to meet anyone
marveling only at her own sense of freedom
knowing that she was nearly out in public naked
showing off her new found skinny freedom.

The green sheer dress with the flocked green sunflowers
hangs in the older woman’s closet waiting for the black lace split-crotch leotards to want to dance again.

The woman waits for elongated bones missing some of the flesh they have acquired since that first time dancing in the floating dress.

 

 

Her Favorite Room

There’s a little room on one side of the house that was added on by other owners somewhere along the line. It’s just under 70 square feet total — 7’6″ one way and 9’3″ the other — just a little bigger than a prison cell which is 6 feet by 8 feet as a standard. It has two doors that can let the prisoner free at any time though — one that opens to the outside right under a huge scraggly tree and the other into the living room — which was as big as the house was before adding this wing on and there is no barbed wire except for a barbed-wire heart hanging on the scraggly tree. The add-on goes the full depth of the house so, past the feet that makes the little prison room is what they divided for doing laundry and it’s somewhat bigger than the 7’6″ of the mudroom — but not much and comes off the kitchen and then goes out to the back.

She calls the little prison-sized room the mudroom because she imagines the other people made it as a way of coming in without landing right in the living room and a place to kick off dirty shoes because the door that leads outside is on the front of the house. Visitors have a lot of trouble trying to figure out where to go because, beside the two front doors, there is a studio.

She gave up on kicking off dirty shoes because she traipses in and out all day long and mostly for gardening reasons, so what she does now is keeps extra flips at the door and exchanges wet, dirty ones for less than wet and dirty ones, but still manages to bring in lots of silt, sand and organic stuffs that the kitties love — outside stuff to sniff, sniff, sniff.

She doesn’t come in through the mudroom because the door is trouble for various assorted reasons, so unless it’s a particularly wonderful day outside and the kitties are in the studio, the door stays locked and things are stuffed under it to keep critters like snakes and tarantulas out — she has both of them living outside and wants to keep it that way even though some have already come in to visit.

She took a shower with a tarantula once — it was a Psycho kind of scene. Another time the whole city police force lined up in front of her house to all come in to find a snake. Every single cop she knows of, working in her city, came through her house that night. One really big policeman came out holding a tiny snake and took it across the street to release it in the schoolyard! Mind you, she had called for animal control.

She painted the mudroom Your Highness — an ACE Hardware muted purple color — a very long time ago and has never looked back. It doesn’t make her feel happy per se, but it doesn’t make her feel sad — just makes her feel like herself since that shade of purple says a lot about herself to herself. She’s thought about changing colors, but never does. It is just the right intensity not to reflect too much light so makes the little room a perfect retreat because of its cocoon like nature. The ceiling is low and can easily be touched and the two-in-one window that takes up most of the width of the wall on the south, sloped side is up high and has glass that slides from bottom to top for letting breezes in through screens.

The little room has a sofa that just makes the fit along one wall. She’s tried every arrangement possible and always goes back to the sofa being there. She uses it like a lounge. There are a total of seven pieces of furniture in the tiny space — the sofa, a round coffee table, a nightstand that acts as a side table for a lamp, a little vintage wooden cigarette stand — that has been in the family forever and gone from her to her sister and back to her with her sister adding more colorful paint embellishments — with a smaller lamp on it for subtler lighting and magazines, a swivel chair in the next corner going round and then a three shelf cart that holds a TV for watching VHS old movies that can be seen from the sofa or the chair. The seventh piece is a wooden stool that just fits behind the TV cart and often has a big dictionary on it for looking up good words.

It’s her favorite room to go to when she really wants to relax throughout the course of the day. And even though it is on the west side and therefore gets the setting sun and even though it is horribly insulated because it was a stick-built add-on with a flat roof, a fan is enough in the summer and a little space heater heats it up real fast in winter because it’s so very small. And there is a curtain at the door to keep heat in or let heat out — depending on which is being the bother.

Her sister came to live with her for a few months many years ago now. She’d give that room up in a heartbeat if she could bring her sister back. The room was just big enough for a twin size mattress and the rest of her stuff spilled out into the living room. Her sister loved to keep the door open so she could look out to the scraggly tree and beyond. They had five dogs between them and two cats so after awhile, it became such a nuisance to be worrying about doors and cats getting out that they just flung it all open and the cats had a free-for-all. One of them ran away. He was 14 years old and very beloved but her thinking was that he had wanted out for all those 14 years so it was a gift she would finally give him since it was all too much for her and her sister to keep up with and her sister had to come first. He stayed around for quite awhile but she watched as he kept creeping farther and farther atop the fence footer looking out into the wild blue yonder. He finally made the decision.

Bye, bye Peter Rabbit. He was such a very good cat and they had loved each other well but he had been sick off and on and she wonders if maybe he left to die. Orphan Annie stuck around for many years thereafter.

The house had carpeting in it when she moved there but she hates carpet so it wasn’t very long before she yanked it all out and started painting the concrete floors.

So, she went in there today because the cats were already out in the studio and the screen door that she has propped up to keep cats out could be moved away and let her come and go freely — and while she was sitting in there this morning, she started thinking about how anyone can stand living in a prison cell without going out of their mind and felt very sorry for any of them if they don’t have doors where they can go freely out to sit underneath a tree.

She did think too though that six feet by eight feet is just about as much space as any one person really needs for feeling rather comfy and except for the control thing, she might be able to make herself happy in a little space like that. She’s often thought that she should get a little travel trailer, park it in the carport and convert the house into a sewing center except for all the city issues. The mudroom has served as a dressing room when she was doing alterations and many, many city workers came and went without asking any questions — a lot of cops wanting patches on their uniforms too — but plenty of city workers that might know lots about any codes that she was breaking. No one ever said a word.

It’s hard to believe that 1439 words can be written about one room, but since her days of reading Thoughts Of Home in House Beautiful eons ago and that being the main inspiration for her to want to start writing in the first place, she decided today would be a start of paying homage to that guiding force and every once in awhile now, she will put something in the category of Thoughts Of Home. She’ll try to do something better next time.

 

 

 

Shape Of Legs

Words get batted around all night trying to hit a home run story by morning. It’s not intentional anymore than it is essential — there is nothing available to thwart the pitcher, catcher or batter — and as one of the great analyzers of thought once said, “one is everyone in their dreams” — so there is a conspiracy going on and it actually goes on during the day as well as night — especially if the morning arrives before the hit.

She could still see the original shape of her baby legs under the extra layer of age and cells — fat or other skinny kinds of cells that simply come with age and change the shapes of things.

Some things just can’t be hidden.

“One of the first things I looked at when you girls were born,” her mother had said early on in her life, “was whether or not you had ankles. I looked at your noses and your ankles.”

Fingers and toes, they must have been a given.

Baby legs are cute no matter how they look or whether or not they have ankles. Baby anything is cute but it is possible to tell how a thing might turn out in the long run, so her mother was checking that her babies didn’t have any of her own self-determined defects. It was all in their best interest.

What ever was the shape of legs to mean to the rest of her life, only her mother knew at her birth but would go on to explain in countless subliminal and obvious ways as would the rest of the world.

“Does she have big thighs?”

John: Did you hear, someone moved into the old Klickner place? A woman.
Grandpa: A woman?
John: Yeah.
Grandpa: Did you mount her?
John: Ohhh, Dad!
Grandpa: Well the woman, does she have big thighs?
John: No!
Grandpa: No?! Then what’s the problem? If I was a young fella like you, I’d be mounting every woman in Wabasha.

— 1993 Grumpy Old Men

When she heard those words in the movie they drudged up some that had long ago been logged in memory for future reference: Best to not have big thighs.

According to the movie, at least, if you ever wanted to be mounted — but by the sound of things it would be better to not have big thighs at all — if you did, you’d better go into some kind of hiding.

There’s no getting around it, there is no way to be perfect, and it should be made a crime to start a baby out thinking it could ever come to be some imaginary thing a mother thinks it should be.

She woke up thinking about her baby legs but also about Jackson Pollock because right before she went to bed, with her not so baby legs stretched out in front of her, she watched a movie about his life — so by morning she wanted to know some more about him.

When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.  —Jackson Pollock, My Painting, 1956

Getting in the zone — she thinks of the drafts piling up in virtual space. Sometimes it just can’t be gotten to but later parts can be copied and pasted and a masterpiece can be created. It feels like a masterpiece when the zone has been gotten to — whatever anyone else might think.

So in the movie, someone said, “something’s missing, something’s not there.” When they finally started saying, “Wow, that’s it. That’s Art.” Jackson Pollack fell apart. They expected him to keep producing like he was a machine or something.

“What a shame it seems to be that artists need money,” she thinks.

There is no way of knowing, because she was only seeing it in a movie that was how someone else was seeing how Jackson Pollock had been and even though it was based on lots of archival documents, interviews and even another movie of the actual him being filmed while painting, it wasn’t 100% possible to know for sure, but it appeared that his mother had been quit important to how he saw himself. It was probably highly unlikely that it had anything to do with the shape of his legs — whether or not his thighs were big or if he had any ankles — but nonetheless, his mother’s glares and disapproval had been depicted as an influence to how he felt about himself — and not a positive one.

There are so many things that can interfere with keeping a thing from coming through.

Are there any artists that aren’t tormented? Poor Jackson and his poor wife — they had bigger things than his mother to overcome — but in the end what beauty they each made and what he personally likely only could have made because of the influence of his wife. She can keep that to her credit.

“To live is to struggle.” ~ Rene Dubos

Today when she woke up after batting things around in dreams and semi-conscious streams of waking thought she started the day off wondering, “Will this be the day that I don’t bother?” The movie about Jackson Pollack was interfering now. “How does anyone get that good!?” And he had far more than three strikes coming against him.

Jackson Pollock didn’t think Jackson Pollock could be that good until Jackson Pollock was — up to then he was only guessing but he never stopped believing.

“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” ― Sigmund Freud

Her own mother had a mother who had a mother who likely said things that made her children feel badly about themselves. Just can’t let things like that keep the truth of what one really is from coming through. Bat, hit, take whatever shape of legs you have to make that run for home. The only strikes against one are the ones one thinks they own.

She’d like to own a Jackson Pollock painting but decides she’d better settle for painting the shape of her legs which she has come by far to terms with.

 

 

Why Are Men

“Hello sweet Boy Boy. Are you being a cry baby boy today? Cry, cry, cry. Do you want to go out to your room? Is that why you are crying?”

Men don’t cry.

He jumped up on her lap and rolled over so she could pet his tummy. He’s a Tuxedo Cat with a tiny voice and a Got Milk mustache who has to be scrunched up to fit because he is so big. His tummy looks like argyle — diamonds linking in the middle. He’s the sweetest thing, twice the size of the girl cat but a big ball of mush who can be mauled any time and sticks his tongue out to lick her face whenever it gets near. The girl cat puts her paws up to push her face away.

She always thinks of the Squirmy Wormy toy made out of a piece of fuzzy knit with eyes on, that she played with as a child. He moves in undulating waves as her hand smooths over his fir just like the toy did.

Cats are girls and dogs are boys no matter what they really are. For some reason, that is what it seems.

Is it that men are thought of as firm and straight, not sinuous like most girls and undulating cats? Dogs are muscled and not as pliable?

She wonders, “Why are men supposed to make the living?”

Men hunt, women gather. Who decided that divide? No man has ever made her living.

Dogs hunt so do cats.

Oh sure, she signed the paper that year of the law suit that said “Do you believe you have been discriminated against because of your gender” and ended up with several thousands of dollars.

“Thank you men for paying up, a little of that discrepancy.”

Many of the women wouldn’t because they were afraid of the men bosses and thought they might loose their little girly place in the line that the men were forming.

She didn’t care — she’d take the money and run, run, run if she had to.

“It’s a man’s world. You need to be beautiful in a man’s world, because men make all the decisions and they like a girl that looks good.” The message she got growing up and men are dogs came with it.

It must be difficult being a man — as she wonders where the term dog pile came from — and have to run over everyone all the time.

dogpile: People commenting at the same time, without realizing others are jumping on the person as well, do not make a dogpile. The requirement is to join in with an angry group to yell at an easy target, or to get popularity points for being seen to agree with the group. They see that everyone else is doing something, and they copy it.

Good old boys, dog piles, if everyone else is doing something…

She won’t call men “dogs” — when they’re behaving badly — because she thinks too much of dogs but it is hard not to think that a dog is a boy whether it is or not and to think of a cat as a girl.

Men don’t cry. Dogs hunt so do cats. It’s a man’s world. men are dogs. Good old boys. dog piles. when they’re behaving badly.

“Men Behaving Badly”

Sexy kitten. Pussy cat. Kitten. Catty.

Dogs are boys and cats are girls — except when one’s a bitch.

She wonders where she got these ideas for identifying genders.

Artist: Sebastien Millon