This morning I woke up with black circles around my eyes, a smoker's voice and the energy quota of a snail. Most people felt they understood what was up. But one friend cheerfully asked, "What's your problem?" I laughed a little and slowly walked away. How do I explain? Maybe I never can. Maybe you just have to be there. Maybe I'll try, as I explore what a few days in the aftermath of a storm taught me.
The reality is that most people thought that searching for bodies would suck me dry, leave me depressed or stressed. This was a nearly forgone conclusion with many. It didn't. While I'd obviously rather rescue a living human I feel honored to bring closure to a family who would otherwise wonder what became of their relative or perhaps stumble upon their husband, wife, or child's mangled or dismembered body. I have the protection of not knowing the person whose shell became a part of the twisted debris tossed aside by an insatiable storm, they do not.
Why do I spend the evenings alone by the lake to silently reflect?
I climbed over acres, if not miles of rubble, most of it was unrecognizable splinters. I'd see a doll, a pair of jeans, video tape, a photograph of children, a motorcycle chain and a jewelry box all a dull, gritty, angry brown. As I walked I realized each of the items represented someone's life, their money and their hopes. I came across a father, a mother, a grandmother as I walked, each one staring blank at the shards that had been their home. Each one forcefully met my eyes with theirs and with a feverish passion of thankfulness named the people in their family that were alive, their neighbors and friends. While they stumbled in light tennis shoes over boards bristling with nails, cement blocks on edge and the dusty splintered trees, they all had the same conclusion, "We have our lives."
We have our lives. The contents of their homes ripped open, gutted like the prey of an angry dog.
We have our lives. Their cars rolled and tossed by the careless hand of an enraged child.
We have our lives. Photographs of their children, healthy, happy and proud buried in the mud, slowly decomposing.
We have our lives. Vulnerable, stripped and bare.
We have our lives. Their hearts full of thankfulness.
We have our lives. Their hands full of supplies for their neighbors; the one who was deaf, the one who lost a loved one or the ones who sat in mute coma at the place where their front door should have been.
We have our lives.
And so tonight I stood beside the lake, throwing a pebble in and watching the ripples move away. The trees around me reached toward heaven in a majestic verdant hymn of grace. On my heart a heavy responsibility laid bare, throbbing, bleeding fire throughout my soul...
I have my life...
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life. Show all posts
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
Experiencing YMSB
I'm deaf, although a few minutes ago I wish I were more deaf. The cilia in my ears is flattened and an eternal hum, buzz and ring reverberates in stereo around my frontal cortex. Something like a good pair of headphones stuck on the emergency broadcast system and you can't tune it out, off or to a lower volume.
Never mind my ears. The other day while running down the beach and through the sandy Florida streets early in the morning I saw a sign hung on moldering bleached pinkish, brown bricks that said, "Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB) - Thursday 8pm". I went early and was the first one in line. Sad I know, but I've been to YMSB shows in Durango and the line snakes out further than I wanted to stand on a wet, gelid Florida night. A woman and her father came stand with me and chat. She's a lawyer who does medical malpractice lawsuits, he's retired and checking out chics, professionally, it appeared. She and I got into a vigorous and illuminating discussion. We took up standing positions along the upstairs rail, front and center and waited watching the crowd below go on a collective and expensive bender.
When it all started there were a few "hoppers" up front that felt the word dancing meant constantly flinging themselves vertically away from the earth's gravitational pull only to find themselves being rudely yanked back by it's unceasing grip.
There were three men to my right that I called the judges. All were well over the age of veiled peeking and had degenerated into twelve year old males, engaging in the, "punch, nudge, wink, har har," view of females. They pointed and assessed expertly, mouths obtusely agape at the bouncing, lissome females in the crush below.
People behind me waved their arms in the air in erratic patterns, hopped and bowed to the rhythm of the base, mandolin, banjo and guitar. The iniquitous rhythm drove even the most upright person to nod their head like a seizing bird.
I wondered if I took a video with all the sound gone if all of you would think I visited an asylum for fun. Everyone looked like they'd come undone.
Like molecules moving from different states people's movements changed throughout the night. At first with maximum space the people flowed, jostled and hurled themselves as if molecules in the gaseous state (something is just not right with that sentence). Collisions were infrequent and fully elastic.
As the night became darker, the music louder and the crowd denser their movements were more like that of a liquid. Some formed bonds and bounced around but most could still fling themselves in abandon before hitting the next person.
Finally we hit solid. It was flesh from wall to wall. At this point each molecule's degree of freedom was limited to simply quivering from side to side. Most of the real motion was up and down. Bonds were formed and broken regularly throughout the crowd. People, well sozzled, were kept up right and jumping by their neighbors. It was at this point I decided I'd had enough of the balcony and was going to join the solid on the floor.
It looked like the concerts in Colorado but missing were the distinct little pillars of smoke that shown the way to a pot pipe and a pinch of the good stuff. But although they were visibly absent the affects were still there. People upstairs were unmistakably chemically loony, whirling in large circles with arms flying out beside them like streamers and eyes inscrutably looking at the tongue and groove ceiling. Girls sat in darkened corners fixated by the bits of dirty torn carpet near their feet.
Down on the ground floor I squeezed my way through bulky fat middles and skinny eyeball jabbing elbows until I was in the middle of the solid. At this point they began to sing one of the songs that always makes me laugh, "Granny Won't You Smoke Some". What a hilarious song. Up and down the crowd surged. What had taken me so long to join the solid? It was fun dodging elbows and being pummeled by rings of fat as they orbited the twirling bodies to which they were loosely attached. And hearing my shoes schluck off a floor covered in drying beer and mud. It was fun, I know this appears sarcastic but I enjoyed the experience.
Social lubricant had greased the wheels and one fine young man up front pulled up his shirt showing his scrawny chest to the boys on the stage. Save two members, the band looked bored. They've seen it all and mentally they were off in Tahiti on a beach just like you and I when we're at work from 9am-5pm. Likely they were likely aided by a chemical agent that we'd be fired for having. The two front and center fed on the energy of the crowd and it was hitting feverish.
I was considering coming home early, you know midnight or one, like the pathetic old person I am but decided to stay a little more. I was not disappointed. They pulled out all the volume the speakers had and jammed out "Crazy Train," another favorite of mine and from the reverberating howl everyone else's too. The crowd bounded up and down and up and down hands flying and waving people yelling and singing.
Strobes broke us into vignettes of the moment. I was there hopping, singing and crossing my fingers that all the jumping would help build muscle to avoid injury when I ran. The boy behind me with his hoody askew was leaping with two arms in the air while bowing and thrashing around. He fell on me several times not being as much part of the solid as he should have been with that much induced instability. Sweetly, he screamed a sincere mushy drunken apology in my ear each time.
Suddenly a great gap in the crowd appeared in front of me. Three people were on the floor. A trampling at a YMSB concert? Unthinkable. Then I saw they were kneeling, heads down in the gummed, muddy beer floor. I thought perhaps they had decided they wanted beer so badly and were so high they were licking it off the floor but not wanting to make too many assumptions I decided to ask. They were looking for the glasses. Being the only one that saw one of everything rather than with wobbly, double vision I found the glasses quite quickly. YEY! Everyone around gave me a hugs. Hands soaked in mud and beer stuck lovingly to my back and hair. It made my night. I know what it's like to have lost your glasses.
It was time to go and the solid began to melt and once out the door it nearly instantaneously sublimed back into a gas. Released from their solid state most of the molecules were teetering down the street appearing unable to shoulder the responsibility of holding themselves upright. One helpful teeterer perhaps in his twenties and with frightening brown curls that shot straight out from his head shouted at me in his profound deafness to put on my coat, didn't I know it was cold? The streets barren, had been almost silent, neon lights bouncing off of wet, glimmering asphalt.
It was cold the wind blowing off the crashing waves a few hundred yards to the left but I was warm, sweating. "Thanks Mom," I wanted to yell back to my helpful teeterer in my own state of hearing loss. What a night.
Never mind my ears. The other day while running down the beach and through the sandy Florida streets early in the morning I saw a sign hung on moldering bleached pinkish, brown bricks that said, "Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB) - Thursday 8pm". I went early and was the first one in line. Sad I know, but I've been to YMSB shows in Durango and the line snakes out further than I wanted to stand on a wet, gelid Florida night. A woman and her father came stand with me and chat. She's a lawyer who does medical malpractice lawsuits, he's retired and checking out chics, professionally, it appeared. She and I got into a vigorous and illuminating discussion. We took up standing positions along the upstairs rail, front and center and waited watching the crowd below go on a collective and expensive bender.
 |
| YMSB - Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Jeff Austin & Adam Aijala |
There were three men to my right that I called the judges. All were well over the age of veiled peeking and had degenerated into twelve year old males, engaging in the, "punch, nudge, wink, har har," view of females. They pointed and assessed expertly, mouths obtusely agape at the bouncing, lissome females in the crush below.
People behind me waved their arms in the air in erratic patterns, hopped and bowed to the rhythm of the base, mandolin, banjo and guitar. The iniquitous rhythm drove even the most upright person to nod their head like a seizing bird.
I wondered if I took a video with all the sound gone if all of you would think I visited an asylum for fun. Everyone looked like they'd come undone.
 |
| It was a good show for a small venue. |
As the night became darker, the music louder and the crowd denser their movements were more like that of a liquid. Some formed bonds and bounced around but most could still fling themselves in abandon before hitting the next person.
Finally we hit solid. It was flesh from wall to wall. At this point each molecule's degree of freedom was limited to simply quivering from side to side. Most of the real motion was up and down. Bonds were formed and broken regularly throughout the crowd. People, well sozzled, were kept up right and jumping by their neighbors. It was at this point I decided I'd had enough of the balcony and was going to join the solid on the floor.
It looked like the concerts in Colorado but missing were the distinct little pillars of smoke that shown the way to a pot pipe and a pinch of the good stuff. But although they were visibly absent the affects were still there. People upstairs were unmistakably chemically loony, whirling in large circles with arms flying out beside them like streamers and eyes inscrutably looking at the tongue and groove ceiling. Girls sat in darkened corners fixated by the bits of dirty torn carpet near their feet.
Down on the ground floor I squeezed my way through bulky fat middles and skinny eyeball jabbing elbows until I was in the middle of the solid. At this point they began to sing one of the songs that always makes me laugh, "Granny Won't You Smoke Some". What a hilarious song. Up and down the crowd surged. What had taken me so long to join the solid? It was fun dodging elbows and being pummeled by rings of fat as they orbited the twirling bodies to which they were loosely attached. And hearing my shoes schluck off a floor covered in drying beer and mud. It was fun, I know this appears sarcastic but I enjoyed the experience.
Social lubricant had greased the wheels and one fine young man up front pulled up his shirt showing his scrawny chest to the boys on the stage. Save two members, the band looked bored. They've seen it all and mentally they were off in Tahiti on a beach just like you and I when we're at work from 9am-5pm. Likely they were likely aided by a chemical agent that we'd be fired for having. The two front and center fed on the energy of the crowd and it was hitting feverish.
I was considering coming home early, you know midnight or one, like the pathetic old person I am but decided to stay a little more. I was not disappointed. They pulled out all the volume the speakers had and jammed out "Crazy Train," another favorite of mine and from the reverberating howl everyone else's too. The crowd bounded up and down and up and down hands flying and waving people yelling and singing.
 |
| Strobes |
Strobes broke us into vignettes of the moment. I was there hopping, singing and crossing my fingers that all the jumping would help build muscle to avoid injury when I ran. The boy behind me with his hoody askew was leaping with two arms in the air while bowing and thrashing around. He fell on me several times not being as much part of the solid as he should have been with that much induced instability. Sweetly, he screamed a sincere mushy drunken apology in my ear each time.
Suddenly a great gap in the crowd appeared in front of me. Three people were on the floor. A trampling at a YMSB concert? Unthinkable. Then I saw they were kneeling, heads down in the gummed, muddy beer floor. I thought perhaps they had decided they wanted beer so badly and were so high they were licking it off the floor but not wanting to make too many assumptions I decided to ask. They were looking for the glasses. Being the only one that saw one of everything rather than with wobbly, double vision I found the glasses quite quickly. YEY! Everyone around gave me a hugs. Hands soaked in mud and beer stuck lovingly to my back and hair. It made my night. I know what it's like to have lost your glasses.
It was time to go and the solid began to melt and once out the door it nearly instantaneously sublimed back into a gas. Released from their solid state most of the molecules were teetering down the street appearing unable to shoulder the responsibility of holding themselves upright. One helpful teeterer perhaps in his twenties and with frightening brown curls that shot straight out from his head shouted at me in his profound deafness to put on my coat, didn't I know it was cold? The streets barren, had been almost silent, neon lights bouncing off of wet, glimmering asphalt.
It was cold the wind blowing off the crashing waves a few hundred yards to the left but I was warm, sweating. "Thanks Mom," I wanted to yell back to my helpful teeterer in my own state of hearing loss. What a night.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
The Greatest Summer
Remember all the things I was going to do this summer? It was a short list but had two things in it I'd never done and wanted to do, try to do photography professionally and publish one short story. Perhaps you'd like to know how it's gone? I was so gung ho and shared it with you guys to hold me to it.
I didn't. I didn't even start down that road. Instead I have two jobs, one redoing a website for the NCSU Biology department and another playing super girl who can do everything and replace anyone in the front office of a Dermatologist's office. Far cry from what I wanted isn't it? Life happened as it often happens to us, fast. What I needed to do for the summer changed three weeks into it based on decisions that I did not control. It's a long story...
I have a friend, he likes to say that planning is like peeing into the ocean. He's right. Life is less about always achieving my goals and more about making them and then practicing holding them lightly, not grasping them so tightly that I go down with them when they're lost at sea. And as I watched those plans be swept away this summer I eventually smiled as they disappeared because there is always tomorrow. Tomorrow will be full of new plans, new goals and new challenges. The sea that I am continually challenging will flow around me and through me making me the a woman of greater insight, compassion and perspective.
Truthfully, I love the Biology job. My boss is a brilliant woman, a neuroscientist, and I enjoy chatting with her talking about big plans for the department and for the website. I'm directing the automation of the site to keep it's updating painless and later I will tweak its layout and give the pages better focus. It's something I'm very good at and it's nice to be the expert sometimes.
The dermatologist job is teaching me how a Dr's office is run. The daily grind of keeping one alive and well. This is an amazing opportunity if I should ever decide to run my own someday.
The dermatologist job is teaching me how a Dr's office is run. The daily grind of keeping one alive and well. This is an amazing opportunity if I should ever decide to run my own someday.
Currently...
...I'm trying to write secondaries. Secondaries are the second application that all medical schools require you to fill out. Most have 3-5 essays they want you two write, no two the same. I have come down with a viral case of writer's block and each paragraph is a physical fight. I fish words from my brain like I fish broken bits of eggshells from my eggs in the morning. It each word is an elusive hunt often not meshing with the one before. It will get done... once I'm done writing this.
...I'm trying to write secondaries. Secondaries are the second application that all medical schools require you to fill out. Most have 3-5 essays they want you two write, no two the same. I have come down with a viral case of writer's block and each paragraph is a physical fight. I fish words from my brain like I fish broken bits of eggshells from my eggs in the morning. It each word is an elusive hunt often not meshing with the one before. It will get done... once I'm done writing this.
...my father-in-law lays dying, his tubes disconnected, life flowing from his body. Life is short and it's not worth getting too spun up about.
After running around Lake Lynn this morning I stopped by the grocery store and heard this song. It reminded me of my plans this summer of all the plans I've made over the years and failed at completing, plans that I may never get to complete... It's all about perspective...
The Greatest
by Kenny Rogers
...He makes no excuses, He shows no fears
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers
He just closes his eyes and listens to the cheers
Little boy, he adjusts his hat
Picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says I am the greatest the game is on the line
And he gives his all one last time
Picks up his ball, stares at his bat
Says I am the greatest the game is on the line
And he gives his all one last time
And the ball goes up like the moon so bright
Swings his bat with all his might
And the world's so still as still can be
And the baseball falls, and that's strike three
Swings his bat with all his might
And the world's so still as still can be
And the baseball falls, and that's strike three
Now it's supper time and his mama calls
Little boy starts home with his bat and ball
Says I am the greatest that is a fact
But even I didn't know I could pitch like that.
Little boy starts home with his bat and ball
Says I am the greatest that is a fact
But even I didn't know I could pitch like that.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
To the Unknown
Tested this morning and I am now a certified General Class HAM. YEOW!!! YIPPEEE! *JUMPING* One goal for the summer down and a couple more to go and those may not get accomplished. But more on that later.
Just as important, I finished the dreaded personal statement last night and I can now apply to medical school. Once I push that button the future is shot into the unknown and it's out of my hands. I don't particularly like that part of it. I'm more comfortable when there's something left for me to do, to control and to perfect. It's good for me, pushes me to be still and exercises my character. Jumping into activity isn't scary for me, jumping into stillness, into waiting, terrifies me.
So I'm looking over the edge and about to let go... wish me luck.
Just as important, I finished the dreaded personal statement last night and I can now apply to medical school. Once I push that button the future is shot into the unknown and it's out of my hands. I don't particularly like that part of it. I'm more comfortable when there's something left for me to do, to control and to perfect. It's good for me, pushes me to be still and exercises my character. Jumping into activity isn't scary for me, jumping into stillness, into waiting, terrifies me.
So I'm looking over the edge and about to let go... wish me luck.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The Business of Being Alive
My expectations are fairly low regarding the mountains of the east and Smokey Mountain National Park did little to raise them. It's still early in the high country, not many leaves or flowers and the pinnacle of a few thousand feet the views were brown. Not horrible, it's hard to imagine being out in the woods and it being horrible ever. Every place, like nearly every human, has something to appreciate. Something wise to bestow on the person who sits for a short minute of contemplation at its heart.
On down to Transylvania County. That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.
Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.
Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.
Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something. On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern. Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way.
I found direction there. Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams. But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now. Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.
Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on. I like that. It's true. I have to try. I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came. I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.
At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down. If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.
- To Shel...
 |
| Dry Falls |
On down to Transylvania County. That's the place to go. Waterfalls that sent sound waves to beat your backbone, roar down gaps in sheer mossy cliffs. Forests that pulled in the mist like a breathy hint of lace and little towns with sweaty, bearded men driving trucks piled with rakes and shoves as well as alabaster skinned men in button down shirts, Italian leather and cars. I saw few women.
 |
| Out the Window |
Little restaurants could be found, covered in ivy, surrounded by green ponds, lit by candle and owned by people who came looking to run away from the life they had built for themselves and never went back. Gregarious entrepreneurs with more life experience than most have in 100 years and a penchant for kissing the women that visit their place.
 | |
| Horacio's |
Antique shops with brand new merchandise shyly beckon from nearly every stomach lurching corner. I started to count and then gave up wondering how many people it took to keep these havens of commerce thriving in a place that looks like you leave on vacation and come back to find your shop entombed with vines, centipedes and trees.
Unlike the arid peaks of the west the rain forest of the east crawls and hums with six, eight or hundred legged life all going somewhere and eating something. On the way back from a warm shower with a tiny button in the wall that you pumped ferociously to get 3 minutes of pressure, I found a centipede with a fringe of tiny yellow legs. These legs moved in a sinusoidal pattern from back to front. All the legs bunched together in one spot as it tickled along the ground and this bunched up spot flowed up its body in a perfect sin wave pattern. Beautiful in a squirmy sort of way.
I found direction there. Purpose for the summer anyway. Another summer of no money. A summer of rice, beans, Ramen Noodles and dreams. But dreams to chase that I'll never get to chase for years if I don't do it now. Someday I need to get a real job. Something that will take my soul from 9-5 and give me a decent living in return, but it appears that won't be this summer. I have settled on trying to sell at least three of my stories and perhaps write more to send out.
Lower priority but still a priority is to put my name out to do portrait photography and see what comes to me. Why not? Like the Italian in the little ivy covered restaurant pointed out. You try and if you fail you get down, do two push ups and move on. I like that. It's true. I have to try. I may fail but I'll never know if I don't hurtle myself down mountainside taking the challenges as they came. I prefer landscape/nature photography but why not try, I have the skill and a good camera and I can always stop when I tire of it.
At the top of a mountain one can prepare, mitigate risk, visualize success and enjoy the view but life isn't lived at the top. It's lived either climbing up or hurtling down. If I try to stay at the top it loses it's ecstasy. The view is made sweeter by the sweat, the agony and the sensuous experience of being physically and mentally engaged in the business of being alive.
- To Shel...
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