Maybe

Maybe it was that extra piece of toast I stopped to make for breakfast. Nothing like warm peanut butter and mom's apple butter on rice bread. Maybe it was the fact that I needed to stop in the studio and twiddle a little more on that painting. Who knows the cause. Maybe it was those few extra minutes I clung to the pillow. But that fifteen minutes late going to the gym turned into 30 minutes late going out the door to work. It meant the trains were less crowded, for sure. Definitely more milk of human kindness flows through me and out toward my fellows when they are fewer in number.

Maybe it was the extra 45 minutes of sleep that I got last night, the book I read on the train to work or some happy lyric from a song that drilled its way into my brain. Could have been the weather, too. Ahhh sunshine. But I found myself walking down the street wearing a smile. Confident like I've just rediscovered my crown in a dark closet corner and finally dusted it off. This is the walk of a person who needs nothing, and knows that no one really needs anything. And once she needs nothing, she can stop feeling the pinch of not having it. Whatever it is. I've got all the it I can handle.

Maybe.

the $5 question

Alone, walking downtown with a free afternoon. Free because you are too busy to see me, again. Work, again. OK, but I don't feel like going home. I'd like to walk in the air and the sun while it's here to be had.

Just then I pass the animal adoption center on Grand. Through the glass I see rows of dogs plying their tricks of the waggling tails and poked noses to earn a loving home. Turn, I double back on my steps and go in.

It smells pretty strongly of kibble, not the most offensive odor possible for a room filled with canines. I enter and am instantly greeted with barks as I pass each cage. On each is a little sheet of info describing the dog. What breed? Age? Color? Has it had its shots? Male or female? Name? Reason for surrender? There are mutts and hounds of every color. And the reasons for surrender get even more imaginative. "Conflict with other pet. Moved to no-pet apartment. Allergies."

It's no leap to see a parallel with data I've filled out on various online dating (excuse me, social networking) sites. Age? Body type? Eye color? Height? Religion? Brief description? We're all just in our little electronic cages waggling our wares for some love.

And reasons for being left go? "She...Refused to have sex with partner who prioritized career over relationship. Refused to have sex with partner after discovering wife. Is not the right person. Not the right time. Is too selfish."

At one cage I find "Hound, tan & black, Male." His sheet is amended with a handwritten "I'm shy, be patient." As I finger the paper said shy hound comes running toward me with the most honest brown eyes I've seen on a male so far this year. He looks up at me and I look down at him and it's instant love. A wet, black nose presses up to the cage by my hands, begging for affection.

"Name: Alf, reason for surrender: unkown"

This is the romance. He sees me, I see him, and we see only happiness could possibly follow. Alf! We're perfect for each other! I don't just want the dog. I want the lifestyle that goes along with having a happy dog. I'm in a fairy tale where we go for long walks on the beach every morning and play in the park every night no matter what the weather. He cuddles by my feet while I work and smiles happily every time I've entered a room. A happy vista spreads out in my imagination. This rosy scene makes no account for what happens to Alf when I go to work or visit my mom for long periods of time. Our romance is all leap and no look. We're both still in our cages, on good behavior, and haven't faced the day of reconning over soiled rugs or disappointed hearts.

Why doesn't this sweet dog have a home yet?

"May I ask, why haven't you found a man yet?"
"So, where's the hubby?"
"So, why is a woman like you still single?"
"So, where's your date? You're here all ALONE??"

I am sick of the escalating barrage of these questions. The answer must be spun gold that everyone must have! So, next time I get asked I will charge my interrogator $5 to find out! I plan on growing rich!

The answers?

"I haven't been the right partner for someone, yet."
"I got hungry on the plane and ate him."
"Well, like Katherine Hepburn said: 'I could have the admiration of many men or the criticism of one. Which would you choose?'."
"I'm not alone, I'm talking to you."

I have to keep reminding myself that I've never done this before. I've never done this day before. I'm winging it and being patient. I'm reminding myself that there's no hurry. I'm trying to let go and make room for your priorities (and not letting go of mine, either). Everyday I make myself dump the baggage of how that guy back then wasn't right or how I didn't bring my best person to the table and remind myself that I've just plain never done this before.

Me and Alf, well, our hearts are perfect for each other. But his big hound body and my smallish flat are not a great mix. My schedule and his desire to run around could be a toxic combo. I'm not the right human for him, and so I pat his wet nose, wish him the best and walk on. We'll do ok, puppy, and both find that home where we grow past those moments when we disappoint our significant humans to be loving companions.

Singing Seed

I round the corner to my desk this morning and see a small boy staring up at me. Yet another co-worker has brought their small child to work. I wonder only briefly as to what circumstances repeatedly turn our cubicle farm into romper room. All day I can hear the little boy playing with his toys in his mother's work space. Toy trucks clatter along walls while he amends with noise of engines and crashes. What did little boys ever play with before the invention of the car? Oh wait, play is a modern privilege of children.

For most of the day I notice a particular sound rising above the din. The little boy is singing. There was a little girl here a few weeks ago who also couldn't resist the urge to sing. Oh yeah, children sing.

At some point when we were little Dad's tape player was discovered. Our first experiments at sound design began. I remember hearing my own voice for the first time and being amazed at how strange and tinnish it sounded. We'd record and record over recordings until the tape was a layered montage of burps, farts, giggles, goofy noises with an under-tone of singing. I was singing out some nonsense, not even a melody as much as a sustained noise making, and my brother taped it. So there you go. Proof that I, too, was a child that sang.

Next comes the obvious question, when did I stop singing? Probably everyone in this office was a child that sang. So why, as we all proceed through our day, do we not hear discussions carried on in some sustained, melodic speech rather than our regular adult staccato? Who told us to stop singing? When did we out - grow the giggle?

Did some sour faced older sibling tease me out of my singing? Was it having attention called to my behavior on the school bus which announced the unacceptability of this habit? Was it all the times that mom yelled at me to "act right" and "be a young lady"? I seemed to be in constant admonishment to calm down, sit still, act right, ... and my favorite "act like yourself". By my lights I was being myself and my self was not very calm, still or, apparently, right.

Maybe that's what's pushed me in recent years to get back into choir. Practicing is the perfect excuse for singing in the shower or humming as I go down the street. I suppose it's never too late to get your song back.

The silence

Somebody on my local network has a strong taster for 80's music. Bored with the daily pounding of public radio, I snoop through their iTunes library. I give a brief ear to the Bangles, Bananarama, the Cars, Alan Parsons project, even Toto. Thin melodies and saccharine electronics almost make my teeth hurt. I wonder if these bands were really that bad or if production back then simply hadn't yet figured out how to use synthesizers to fill out a sound? No.. NO... these melodies are truly bad. Maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have blanked out the 80's?

At the beginning of the 80's I was a tall kid jealously eyeballing my older sisters as they got their own clothes, got to wear makeup and came home from high school with lots of smart looking books. I counted the years off until I would be studying from real books that offered some real insight into the world as fifth grade was pretty mind numbing. Nothing about what I was learning seemed to matter. But my sisters? They could argue back with my parents from things they had learned in their classes. I wanted THAT education.

They also began to amass a collection of records. At every birthday or Christmas there would be a large, flat, square package or two for them which revealed albums by Styx, Abba, Peter Frampton, Michael Jackson, Lief Garrett, Foreigner, etc. I tried to play along. One Christmas two vinyls showed up under the tree: "Let's Disco" which featured music on one side and instructions on how to disco dance on the other, and "Pieces of Eight" by Styx. First we put on the disco album and stumbled about the living room trying to learn the steps. Then, as there was only one musical device in the house and record players didn't come with headphones, we all listened to Styx. I liked both records. I thought Styx had some pretty cool tunes to them, so I got up and tried to perform my new disco moves to it. I was so not cool, so not one of the big girls.

But these songs in my anonymous co-worker's playlist don't bring back memories of my earlier years. I've never heard this music before. They remind me of the years I spent in silence. I was on my way to doing what my big sisters had done. I had a 14th birthday in the fall of my freshman year of high school. As a gift I received a Culture Club record (possibly an early sign of my becoming a fag hag?). That Christmas I was given "Purple Rain" by Prince. At the unsubtle urging of my sister I tuned into Buffalo's one black radio station and got hooked on Run-DMC, Curtis Blow, the Furious Five, Sugar Hill Gang and other rappers.

And then the music stopped.

My brother, at some point in that stretch of time, became born again and fell in with a particularly virulent crowd of pop-culture-haters. He began to lecture me constantly about the evils of "rock" music. How the beat was devilish. How I was being hypnotized to doing bad things. He started pulling me into his room every evening to listen to radio preachers. They were vehement and convinced of their rightness by an ability to string together sentences from diverse scriptures. They convinced me, who did not know otherwise, yet, that I was on the path to hell if I chose to ignore them. So I turned off my radio. I turned off the 80's. I listened to radio preachers. I did whatever I could to not conform to the popular culture affectionately called "the world" by my new Christian radio mentors.

Quickly I grew very lonely. I couldn't get too close to my friends at school unless I could justify their church-going qualities with my ever watchful brother. I lied to him because some of my friends were atheists (or worse.. Methodists!). I know I should have been stronger. But this is the person who used to beat me up as I was small and he already had a pretty effective cause-and-negative-effect mechanism set up in my mind. I was scared to death. Every little thing I did had implications that I was doing something wrong and therefore damming myself. The two vinyls I had been gifted from the previous year were marched out of the house and burned while I looked on.

Everyone could tell I was some weirdo, the freak. I wore strange clothes and could supply no answer to that all important inquisition of high school social categorization "So, what music do you listen to?" It was like freezing to death from the inside out. I wanted so badly to conform. I wanted to get a loud, lopsided hair cut, put on garish makeup and enjoy the sounds I heard coming to me from the radios in cars, on the bus, in the art room. But I was just too afraid of the consequences.

I had, and have always had, one small advantage over my brother. I have a more critical mind and more (although not GREAT) social intelligence. Where he took the fundamentalist message, printed it on his mind as "true" and has never once to this day strayed from his original thesis, I began to question. The initial rush of good feelings conversion affords faded pretty quickly. I started having more and more moments where the judging, angry, vengeful God described by the preachers just didn't make sense and certainly did not seem like something I wanted to serve. I started realizing that having good, Christian thoughts all day was just too much damned work.

By the time I was a senior I figured out how to outsmart my brother, the judge of all things musical. I was playing horn more and more seriously and this meant listening to more orchestral music. F~ didn't know anything about orchestras or composers and deemed what I was listening to as "ok" because it didn't have "that rock music beat". Little did he know of how many classical composers died of venereal disease. I didn't keep it tame for long. I brought in Peter Menin, Dmitri Shostakovich, and the loudest, drum poundiest, most dissonant, most modern orchestral music I could get my hands on. The third movement of Shostakovich's fifth was my angry anthem.

Six months after leaving home I bought "Abbey Road" in a tape store in New York City. I started down the long and winding road back toward sanity. I don't regret the silent years anymore. They've let me find a great empathy for others who find themselves swept away in a tsunami of idealism or subsequently washed up on the beach of disillusion. Heck, this way, I don't have a pile of vinyl records that can't be played anymore. This way I was a teenager who sat and did her homework and who didn't get messed up with boys. "Jesus" kept me from drinking for 3 years and may have afforded me just enough time to get a real education and some good work habits under my belt.

The silent years have shown me what a thorny stem the eternal bloom of unconditional love bears. I don't think my brother is right. He was never right to beat me, he was never right to bully or terrify me in the name of any god or being. But I no longer see him as wrong. Whatever his persistently dysfunctional methods of dealing with his little sister have been, he was just a human doing the best he could with the tools he had.

small and sweet

Just the tiniest sickle of light hangs above the western horizon like a Mona Lisa smile on the approaching night. Sweet little smirk, one could miss it if looking for something flashier between the clouds. Sneaky moon.

Re-onion

I'm not sure whether to be happy or to barf. It's coming up on my high school reunion and those people ... THOSE people... are coming out of the woodwork. Time plays funny tricks. I'm having online conversations with folks I wouldn't have talked to 20 years ago (and the feeling was mutual). The disdain of youth apparently ran out of steam. I feel better talking with them because I finally live well in my own skin. Who had to do that hard work? Not them.

In the mean time people I knew better in my teens approach with a familiarity towards someone I no longer am. She disappeared 3 metamorphoses ago. You remember who? Who did what? Now, would I hold that kind of shit against you? Ah, it's the folks we held close who know where the weak spots are (or were). Please let's not mention that year I was born-again? And I'll kindly spare the details of my drug-addict phase.

If only we could have had a hint back then and realized that all the posturing, all of the fear, all that thin ice we teetered upon in chunky heels, would soon melt away. If we could have only gotten a clue as to how silly it all was. How quickly we'd look back and regret the mile high curled hair and the mullets, not to mention those garish 80's colors. I wonder what people that age today will regret in later years? The tatoos? The ear expanders? The dred locks or droopy drawers? Where on earth do they make those balanced, well adjusted kids who are immune to fashion and put all their energy into their gifts and intelligence? Even the best of us were just not those kids. (sorry, Fred)

But, we came of age at the end of the cold war. By the time some of us were doing our summer slumming in Europe we could go on the cheap by hitting former Eastern Block countries. (well... I did!) We matured during the death of Keynesian economics. We remember the death of John Lennon like the our parents remembered JFK being shot. We were there at the birth of rap music and cable television. We weren't drafted into a foreign war. We are ephemeral miracles.

I give a holler to the class Salutatorian who has avoided the lot for 20 (or more) years. Only I know where to find her. Come on lady, it's time. Just show up.

Dad for a day

I listen to a program about facing death as I flip stations while on the road. At the beginning of her "talk about death" project the host's father was alive. By the time she concluded, he had passed away and half of the content became a discussion of whether his death was peaceful relief or exhausted suffering.

Sometimes I wish I could have Dad back for a day. Sure, I know I connect with him at odd times in lucid dreams. But sometimes I wish I had him here in the flesh. I'd put him in the car here right next to me, drive him around and ask him about things in my life that I'd like his advice on. Really, I'd use it to get him talking about his life. I'd like to know his part of all the stories I've heard. I'd ask him about my job. I'd show him my art. I'd find some old cars to go look at. I'd talk about all the photographs he took of us as we were little - all posed next to his cars. I'd ask him about this guy or that situation. I think I'd let him be my dad for the first time since I hit puberty.

That's just it, really. For one day I'd like a dad.