life experience

Hot shame and cross blogging

/ autumncircles / 2 Comments

In this new world of blogging and having blogging friends and commenting acquaintances, I, too, felt some flashes of hot shame while reading others comments.

One in particular caught me as I read a friends blog that referred to my blog and the comments posted on it.  It triggered that flash of hot flaming shame I know only too well and struggle daily to keep under wraps.

There buried in the numerous comments from her fans was a remark that flushed me with that same flash of red over my head and down to my toes as if the person screamed it in my face hoping to get me to move.

“..so carefully constructed it was clear the author was taking few risks…”

Had she read my blog entries?  Was she writing about me?  Why does it bother me?  Of course I edit and change and exaggerate to bring my warped sensibilities to the small world I call mine.  From there cascaded a shame attack and run of what I’d written through my head.

I’ll show them, I thought, I’ll just write – unedited for 15 minutes and see where it gets me.

And that is what I am doing right now.  Writing plain and simple from my head to my fingers to my keyboard without hitting the delete key or backstroke – unless I misspell hte wodr.  (hahaha)

I set a timer and promised myself to do this at least once – not go back and sensor myself.  However, in doing so, I find little to write about.  I want so much to take these plain words from my lips and make them unique and flowered like Texas bluebonnet hills beside busy highways.

It’s the writer’s greatest dream, isn’t it?  To achieve absolution from all of the soul searching and human angst with a few strokes of a pen or taps on a keyboard.

6 minutes left.

My brain works much faster than I a can possibly keep up with in reality.  I certainly hope that I can spill out what is inside into a jumbled mess on white paper and then go back like a jigsaw puzzle to make sense out of it, rearrange it, alter it, give it a make over, and make it more enjoyable for someone else to relate to in some fashion.

I find it hard to believe that anyone could actually like the way I write without this added layer of cut and paste.  Maybe that is my old insecurities rearing their not-too-attractive head inside my much too comfortable skin these days.  I still, after all these years, want people to like me.  Like what I do.  Like what I say.

3:45

The other comments referred to Buddha and struggle and joy being one in the same (my paraphrase – remember, I cannot go back and check or fix).  If this is true, me and Buddha are tight.  There are moments when the joy I feel is so intense that a small pain erupts in my chest.  My daughter’s eyes.  Her giant, brown eyes that seem to go on forever.  My son’s smile – the one he lets me see only by chance anymore because he is trying to be so grown up, so tough at nine.

These are joys and they pang my heart.  Can you imagine what I make of my actual struggles?

Only a minute to go now…

I cannot even perform this exercise without trying to do it “correctly” – constantly checking my time to see if I’ve “cheated.”  What the fuck is wrong with my brain that I won’t let this totally go?  Will it be gone when it’s my time in heaven?  What if I don’t believe there is a heaven or hell?

Uh-oh…time’s up…

Will have to leave the rest for another post.

I guess I don’t type as fast at I thought.

(And, yes, these last four lines were typed outside of my self-imposed 15 minute timer…;o)

Meant to be you and me questionaire

/ autumncircles / 2 Comments

At what point does a reason stop being a reason and start being an excuse?

For example, I have hormones currently regulated by mother nature and let’s just say that the old broad ain’t so consistent in either timing or intensity.  This is the reason for my periodic and sometimes drastic mood swings – not because I am a loser or a bad person or an untimely bitch.  There is plausible proof of some internal body electrical misfires.

I may or may not have consciously known this over the course of my thirty years dealing with an “electrical” cycle.  However, since having my “junction box” removed last year while retaining my “generators”, the whole issue has been more in the forefront of my daily cognitive functions.  (Please note:  blogger apology for the crude metaphor – I didn’t want to scare off the men who may possibly be reading this with words like menstrual, uterus, or ovaries – ;o].)

Do I still have reason to let these power failures affect me now that I am more self-aware?  Or do I use them as an excuse for my behavior thereby circumventing the implementation of actual adjustments in my life – regular exercise, strict diet, and possible HRT resulting in a more than moderately different person?

Like I said, it’s been thirty years – surely I am supposed to have dealt with it by now, right?  What if it were a different ailment – one not so illusive with more apparent physical signs and reactions like cancer?  Would the deadly ramifications offset the attitude and thereby provide some leniency?  Or MS?  Are those complications severe enough to warrant a hall pass on likability?  Or leprosy? Could the skin lesions alone grant me access to Barbara Walters’ ten most fascinating people regardless of my sporadic inability to be kind?

What if the malady was even more slippery and less socially acceptable to discuss like MPD?  Could I continue to blame the evil Mary Kate for my tantrums and outbursts indefinitely?  What about alcoholism?  Which program step is it that forces me to stop attributing my behavior to the drinking or alcoholic tendencies?  How about a deeply painful and repressed sexual abuse from childhood?  How long could I continue to live my life in reaction to such an abuse before the universe tells me to get over it?

In other words, to morph some extremely tired cliches, when do I stop sitting around calling a spade a spade and pick up the damn shovel to move enough dirt to turn the freaking mountain into an oasis?

Would that depend on the inherent caliber of person I am or am perceived to be in the greater era of history?  Who and what decides that?  Would I let it affect the person I am meant to become?  Or would I become that person because of it?  Which came first – the saint or the miracle?

Would Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu have become Mother Teresa had she also had to battle cancer her whole life?  What if Gandhi were an alcoholic?  Would he have become the humble giant of peaceful leadership we still hold in highest esteem today?  Suppose the Buddha was a leper?  Would the isolation have hastened his reach to Nirvana or prevented it?  How about Jesus?  What if he’d been abused before a section of humanity realized he was their Son of God?  Wouldn’t he have still grown up to be the Messiah for the two billion Christians in the world today?

My hormonal swings are clearly dwarfed by these larger and possibly offensive comparisons I have attempted to develop but they are currently my albatross with which I have to decide how much longer I am to let choke me.

The list is long of people in history, religion and our everyday lives of those who have eclipsed these seemingly minor to literally earth shattering situations to become luminaries, spiritual centers and generally happy individuals.

Am I willing to join them?

Are you?

Pinter and the practice of pause

/ autumncircles / 5 Comments

It has been a long time since I studied Harold Pinter’s work in a scholarly fashion and yet I was saddened by his recent death.  I love the seemingly simplistic dialogue in his plays that were anything but simple.

Pinter had the miraculous gift to put ordinary people into misleading situations that often brought about emotionally brutal results.

And, of course, the pauses.

Cannot help but love the pauses.

When I was an actor, interpreting the air and being alive during those pauses was more than an exhilarating challenge – it was akin to  becoming a prima ballerina.  To get it right could take years of experience and training and yet it needed to appear effortless to anyone watching.

It could be as basic as letting the directed time pass until your next line or it could be as difficult as thinking of the eight million things you want to say until the sound of the scripted words makes the journey from the bottom of your diaphragm through the saliva pooling at the back of your throat where it finally escapes through your possibly trembling lips.

Those are the pauses I remember.  Those are the pauses I have more experience with in my real life.  I have never, ever been even remotely adequate at allowing time to pass without marking every second with a blistering bombardment of questions waging gangland warfare on my conscious state.

Fortunately, as I’ve gotten older and have less time in which to participate in these paralyzing games, the previously determined pauses are fewer and their duration far shorter.

The unexpected pause, however, still, well – gives me pause.

A comment from one of my kids that pierces my sternum because it comes from someone too young to couch it behind anything but the truth.

A pointed remark from someone I had believed was not capable of tossing them out at me especially when it is repeated and shared with others.

The extra wrinkles, continuous pain from a distant surgery, and rapid mood shifts that I was not warned about occurring so early in my aging age.

The moment unimaginable news is delivered about someone I love that absolutely alters my cellular makeup.

The intensity and reason for the pause may have varying levels of degree and importance within whatever hierarchy the linear part of my brain has placed on my life while the pause itself reverberates the same Pinteresque array of colors in the other.  Together, they create an internal conversation akin a stage play performed by extremely talented actors without an audience.

Voice on the Phone
You know, it was our anniversary on Monday.

Pause. [Me thinks “oh, shit” what do I do now?  How mad is she? I really did mean to call – even picked out a present but just ran out of time to get it done.]

Me
Oh. Yes. I am sorry. I forgot.

Pause. [Me thinks the Voice on the Phone is thinking, I cannot believe you didn’t call – what does that say about you?  What does that say about your relationship with me?]

Voice on the Phone
Yes.  Well, I almost forgot, too, until he reminded me.

Pause. [Me thinks well, crap, you forgot my birthday more than once.  I didn’t realize we were keeping score but now that I know we are I guess it’ll have to be game-on.]

Me
Well, I am sorry I forgot – Happy Anniversary.

Pause. [Me thinks I don’t want to fight with this person.  I want to love this person and have this person love me without conditions like I thought it was supposed to be.  Will it never be possible?]

Voice on the Phone
Thanks.

Silence. [Me thinks I won’t outlive this one either.  It will be added to the ever-present grade-book that I don’t know where it is hidden nor the grading system in which to get a passing grade.  I guess that’s okay as long as I remember the rules I was never told.]

Me
Okay.  So, I’d like to order a large sausage pizza with light sauce and black olives?

Voice on the Phone
Will that be for pickup or delivery?