"Vienna Waits for You"

What do you need?


What do you need to do?

We are confronted with expectations, requirements, demands, and conflict every day. Every one of us.

Even opportunities. For example, Annika got a letter today with exciting news, she "is eligible" for the Denver Pageant! What a shame she went to college instead. And we're going to toss out the Capitol One credit card offer she got today too.

What do you need?

I stood in front of a room filled with Army chaplains once, high-ranking ones, no less, and asked them that question (to ponder internally) and they were so dumbfounded they sat stone-faced and then responded as if I'd asked them to take off all their clothes and dance.

What do you need? Most of us are conditioned to ignore the question. My spouse was trained to follow the "JOY" principle: Jesus first, others second, and yourself last. Well, you can only imagine how much time and energy Jesus can take, and then, there's others. Their needs are a bottomless pit. So he didn't get around to considering himself more than, oh, about once every decade or so. He, like too many of you, still spends a lot of time saying , "Uh, duh, I don't know," when asked the question.

What do you want? Even that is hard to answer. My favorite form of torturing my husband is to insist he decide where we're going for dinner. "What do you want?" It isn't easy to learn to listen to oneself, to listen hard and long and carefully enough to come to an answer.

Seriously, it is too easy to listen too hard to the external voices and implied expectations, requirements, demands, conflicts, and opportunities that show up in front of us every day. I'm sure you've heard the wisdom urging us to not let the urgent replace the essential.

So, what is essential?

I cancelled my therapy appointment today in order to stay home and watch the U.S. Open Men's Final between Nadal and Djokovic. And, in a funny twist, my therapist called me first to cancel and I know that, while she really may have needed to go home and give medicine to her pets, what she really needed and wanted to do was watch the match too.

Some things are essential. Even when they seem frivolous. Or outrageous. Or expensive, or stupid, or even mean. Yes, true. Sometimes work is not essential, even if it feels urgent.

What I will gain from this match today is essential affirmation of giving yourself heart and soul to what you really love. Affirmation of being "all in" and passionate, and, most of all, having belief in yourself.

It occurred to me the other day that I should have kept playing tennis longer. I wasn't bad. In fact, I was rather good. Surprise! Tennis was and still is such a head game, a game of confidence and will perhaps more than any other. I once beat myself in a match where I was up a set and four games, because I freaked out: "this girl is too good; I can't really beat her." And I didn't.

I could've used several more years working with a sports psychologist. Seriously. Belief in oneself. Confidence. Internalization of all those essential platitudes about being able to do what we set out to accomplish. "It's never too late..." I can't even think of them now.

If we focus on the urgent instead of the essential, we get caught up in pleasing others, following rules, doing the 'right' thing, and putting off what we really need. Need.

Joy is actually meant to be joy, not "JOY."

Watching tennis is one of the things that helps me get back in connection to the essentials. To be reminded that passion rules. Real passion.

There are times we can't afford, for any variety of reasons, to avoid the urgent. But, still, we need to find time, often, to step back and evaluate. What am I doing? What do I need? Where is the passion?

Another friend has been wrestling with these questions. In fact, several friends and acquaintances are struggling with these questions right now, starting with giving themselves permission to even ask. But they are leaning in close, leaning in close to listen to their heart, their instincts, their true voice, and making choices that feed their passion, not the merely urgent. Breathtaking choices. And life-giving ones.

Now, having made some essential decisions over the past several years and having had some made for me, due to illness, I am at a wonderful place where I can choose to give life to one of the passions I've had for years.

Did you know, there are 771 versions of white? Pick one.

Oxford white is the one we chose. Our family room is being transformed, finally, to indulge my schizophrenia (not actually) about loving the sea and loving mountains, at the same time. It is ironic, living in Colorado, that our home itself reflects the love Dave and I share for the Cape shores. There are lobster buoys leftover from treks along the beach, and even a lobster trap we got from a lobsterman who was about to burn it after its long and faithful career. It's not kitschy, just a definite turn in that direction. So "Nantucket white" is the order of the day. And we can pretend we're there as we sit among the rope and boats and buoys.

A small passion, not one of the bigger ones. But there's this song I like, "Vienna Waits for You," and every time I hear it, I hear my name.

What about you? What do you need?

"Easy Rider"

Sunday.

Sabbath.

No need to work my brain too hard. Just some musing after a trip up the mountain and back.

I'd love your reactions. Musing. Additions.


First of all, a hurricane named Igor. This has fumbling, bumbling, falling apart, ineffective, petering out written all over it. Marty Feldman, we love ya still! Igor seems to be spinning his wheels out in the middle of the Atlantic, far from land, out in the middle of nowhere. No big surprise there.

Did you know, "professional eater" is an actual occupation. A guy ate a few dozen burritos or chincillas or whatever and the article describing the event identified the winner as "a professional eater." Can I get a gig like that? (without the excess!)

Macy's big ad today promises "Whatever it is that dazzles, delights or excites your senses, this Fall you'll find it at Macy's." I'm looking forward to their mountain side of glistening gold aspen, a bottle of Viognier, and the thrill of riding my bike down the mountain at 45 mph. How they pull this off, I have no idea but it's convenient for us that a Macy's is just a mile away.

It should be no surprise I suppose that, if we can see the top of Mount Evans crystalline clear from Belleview, Hampton and Arapahoe Roads, we can also see these roads stretching out like ribbons, from the top of Mt. Evans.

Does anyone else have a dog that refuses to eat its food unless someone is sitting at the kitchen table?

Singing the Ode to Joy, the choral movement from Beethoven's 9th, after really learning the score, learning my part and having it nailed, as part of a really good choir has gone on my bucket list. What odd thing is on yours?

A new study from Turkey shows that men with a higher BMI last, oh, never mind.

Why did they stop making those Brach's Halloween candies that are pure sugar shapes of not just pumpkins or candy corn, and have more interesting flavors?

"We're available." That is, no kidding, Panasonic's new advertising phrase. "We're available?" Isn't that like a doctor drumming up business by promising, "I'm breathing." Or a bookstore that boasts, "we're open."

"We're available. That is as lame is Igor.

What's meandered along your neurons while out wandering around today?

Sixteen candles / Smoke gets in your eyes

Let's get this out of the way right off.

I am disgusted with Poland. You may have noticed that I've not written about Poland much lately. Frankly, I haven't written about much at all lately. But that's another story.

Poland is irritating. Poland at the moment is extremely irritating. Poland, in fact, just pisses me off. If I lived there now, I'd consider taking a very long vacation to Tahiti. Or Antarctica. Or the moon. I'm that pissed off.

The Poles, every last one of them, yes, let's just generalize and paint everyone with the same broad brush, after all, we do a good job of that here from time to time. "All Muslims are...." "Islam is...."

But this has nothing to do with that. No, this is still about Poland. And how a disturbing minority -- not really every last one -- of Poles are being manipulated by maudlin and outdated emotional hysteria.

As you remember, a plane crashed last April near Smolensk, in Russia, killing the President of Poland, his wife, many senior members of the government of all parties, military leaders, and family members of victims of the Soviet massacre of 20,000 Polish elite in 1940. It was a horrible tragedy. The entire country grieved. The entire country was in shock, and mourning, no matter their political inclinations. A state funeral was held for the President and his wife and the media was saturated with tributes and other appropriate means of inviting public involvement in the mourning process.

Within hours of the plane crash, dozens of Poles began doing what Poles do best, bringing candles in tribute, in this case, to the Presidential Palace. And being Poles, the candles were rather naturally assembled in the shape of a cross. No problem. Thousands of thousands of candles were eventually left there in a tribute to the late President.

And left there. And left there. And left there. The new President was elected. He moved in. The candles didn't move out. Sane, rational, respectful people suggested perhaps it was time for the cross of candles to be retired. Or moved.

Outrage! For one thing, the whole mess got bolloxed up with sentiments about the cross, a religious thing about the cross. "You would take away the cross?!" Sacrilege.

But most of all, the twin brother of the deceased President has stirred the emotions of a rump minority of conservative Catholics who protest without ceasing any attempt to move the candles. And this same twin brother, an unsuccessful candidate for President in the election to succeed his brother and the Parliamentary leader of the main opposition party, PiS -- and yes, there are jokes about its name -- is pretty much out of control. Accusing everyone who does not daily bow down in obeisance to the late Lech of emotional cruelty.

I feel for the man. It had to have been the greatest shock a twin could ever sustain. He has years of grieving ahead of him. It won't be easy.

But sadly, he has used his own mourning to manipulate masses of simple folks who see in PiS all that is traditionally virtuous --- patriarchy, anti-contraception, anti-feminist, myopic self-absorption, anti-European, anti-semitism --- in their country. And won't let it go. So the politics of Poland are paralyzed.

Nothing new there. But really. Enough already. There are roads to build, businesses to license and support, health care to reform, tax structures that need attention. But nothing is happening. Poland is stuck. Again.

As an American, of course, it's impossible to be haughty about one's country's political life. We're a mess as well. And irritating.

So let's be clear: there is not one thing we can boast of, politically, in relation to our Polish friends. But I can still be irritated as all hell. With a big mess in my backyard, why go off looking for another one across the sea?

So, for the moment, however much I do love Poland and admire so much of its sassy resilience, I'm not thinking I want to be like Poland when I grow up. In fact, I think it's time for Poland to grow up.

"I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now"

"...I mean, life has to be sloughed: has to be faced: to be rejected; then accepted on new terms with rapture. And so on, and so on; till you are 40, when the only problem is how to grasp it tighter and tighter to you, so quick it seems to slip, and so infinitely desirable it is."
___Virginia Woolf


So the writer told a new young friend. Obviously, she was well past 40 by that time and more and more desperate to hold on to a slippery life, tighter and tighter.

This is not going to be literary criticism. Or biography. At least not Virginia's. I simply want to borrow her images. And especially the one.

"...life has to be sloughed..."

It seems to have been a time for sloughing. Transition. Giving away. Giving over, letting go.

We let go, as if she was ever ours to hold on to, our youngest daughter, escorted her to the opening of the next chapter of her life. University.

How far away is New York City? It isn't to be measured in miles. Those are easily erased with text messages, skype, and even, gasp, telephone conversations. How far is New York City from here?

A life.

A new life.

One opens. For her. But also for us.


I wrote last in this space that I was feeling old. Too old. I don't think that was it. Not quite, not exactly.

I was sloughing. Letting go. Facing reality. It is now this time. It is now. Simply now. But the difference between before and now, and now and after, is disorienting. As it often is. Not often, always.

"Life has to be sloughed."

A time to hold on, a time to let go. A time to stay, a time to move, a time to be firm, a time to be loose, to relax, to be less. There is a time to hold on tighter and a time to give.

I disagree with Virginia. Or, rather, more exactly, honestly, my life is different than hers. She needed to hold on tighter and tighter as she grew older. Not necessarily to happy avail. I find the opposite is true for me. There is more to let loose, to set free, to watch fly off into the skies.

The mistake is to mistake the times for what they are, and are not. The mistake is to hold when it is time to hand over. To stay when it is time to go. To measure in terms of what has rather than what one has given.

So now we have given our two daughters more completely to their own selves. We have given them their futures to shape and shade, to claim. To lean into and discover. And for them, too, it is time to slough off old skin, old stuff.

One girl has found a home in a sweet, friendly neighborhood in an enormous city of some eight million. Her big sister is a woman on her own, having earned a degree and found a job in her field, found her own place to live and is now creating for herself a home. They will both be part of us forever. This will always be their home home. But not like before. We have faced a reality, found new options and opportunities, new places and energies and vocations, people, loves, likes, restaurants, tastes, tolerances.

We have rejected -- one must always not choose something to choose something -- and we have accepted on new terms with rapture.

Rapture!

This is a time for rapture.

(Not the rapture, in which case, I want your BMW.) But rapture. Joy. Illumination.

And young-ness. Having sloughed, faced, rejected, and felt very old in the process, I'm feeling young again with rapture. With all there is to accept. To do, to try, to learn, to work at and work out, to agonize over and push for.

Yep. Two weeks ago I was old. In fact, "I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now."


p.s. I'm serious about the car thing. In case of rapture, I'm taking your car.