On Dating.......

When I ask a man how OLD he is,,,I am NOT referring to DOG YEARS...

Here's a good "Toby Story"....
I was in the supermarket about an hour ago in yoga pants and a turquoise top and flip flops...
So I'm feeling the PINEAPPLES,,lol...and this guy in a beautiful suit, very tan...walks over and says, "That's a GORGEOUS COLOR on you"...
(kind of elegantly actually)
and I, being the self deprecating yet arrogant woman that I am, said
"Jeeez, you should see me when I REALLY look good!"
And he said,"Let's try and make that happen.."...
And I literally RAN AWAY, leaving him agape...
WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME ?????
I'm so ridiculously aloof to men.....
Thoughts ?

On "Getting Away"....

How far away must one travel in order to REALLY be 'AWAY' ?
Can we simply lock our LOCAL, bedroom door
and sequester ourselves for a long weekend without phone or laptop ?
Would that qualify as "Getting Away" ?
Or..
Must we really LEAVE ?
Board a plane...fly to an 'un-charted' location ?
Is that really FURTHER ? Really ??
More REMOTE somehow ?
Are we AWAY, at times, EVEN while we are still HERE ?
What exactly IS "GETTING AWAY" ?

On Fathers...

The FIRST TORAH commandment to a Father is:

"Teach your child to SWIM..."

Curious, right ?
Why would such a seemingly abstract tenant be the FIRST ?
Well.....
It's not so abstract really...
The message is quite clear...

in other words:

Teach your child to SURVIVE...

Teach your child to CHOOSE LIFE...

Teach your child to LIVE...

An INGENIOUS, LIFE-AFFIRMING message really.......

"Teach your child to swim.."

Is it Possible ??

Do you think that it's REALLY possible to "take care" of oneself TOTALLY...
while aggressively taking care of someone else ?
Does one side suffer ?
Can we give 100% to 2 entities at once ?
According to my "humble" calculations, we each have in our "handbag" of resources...
only 100% in entirety...
Based on this premise, it would be virtually IMPOSSIBLE to GIVE 200%...
Right ?

Have "Hashtags" Replaced Search Engines ?

Things are moving VERY, VERY quickly....
The worlds of technology and communications seem to have melded into
ONE BIG ELECTRIC, THINK TANK...
You buy a computer on Wednesday, and by Friday, it's OBSOLETE...
You hear tidbits and snippets of conversations, and you'd SWEAR you were in a foreign country...
Because you don't UNDERSTAND ONE WORD of what they're saying...
And so...
from where I sit,
there are TWO choices here...
You can
 1) Become obsolete yourself, while clinging to your old ways,
 hoping against hopes that you will NOT be left ALONE...
or
2) Get off your stubborn ass, and JUMP IN, FEET FIRST...
Sink or Swim !!
And BELIEVE ME, my friends.,,,,
If THEY can do it, so can YOU....

So it's that time of year...

when things tend to end..at least for the season...
The Cycles of life continue.....
The Seasons...
Ecclesiastes' words come to mind...
Schools gives the kids a good, long break...
Schedules relax...
The days get hot and the sun stays up there in the sky for LONG periods of time...
Thursdays end the work week...
Generally, there is a kind of collective "sigh of relief" which one can almost hear in the quiet of the long days...
And way up in the sky...
high above all of this GENERAL, HUMAN LAPSE in activity,
 there floats an ethereal blanket of "whimsy"...
GOLD in color....a soft gold...
almost like a HALO really...
An AURA of GOLD stretches its silky, smoky haze across the entire SEASON somehow...
And one gets the distinct feeling that this AURA
 holds within it a collection of MEMORIES,,,of IMAGES...
of CONCEPTS....of CREATION somehow..
Let's call it a "Creative Sanctuary"....
And this place...this "ethereal cacophony of wonder and light"..
Well...
It actually SWAYS back and forth softly...rhythmically...
It LIVES...it breathes...
Are you getting the picture ?

My Baby Graduated From Middle School Today...

...all 5'11" of him...
And sitting there in the audience of proud parents, it suddenly occurred to me....
that ALL the baby-ness was gone...
And in front of me stood a man....no longer a child...not at all...
And in this moment of EPIPHANY , I realized that he was no longer an "open book"...
that his life was his own...
his private thoughts and actions were no longer MINE to scrutinize and analyze....
but HIS, to contemplate and initiate in his own way....in his own time....
And this awakening on my part was fraught with NOSTALGIA....with EMOTION...
We WANT our children to thrive and to grow...
We spend our "parental lives" aspiring to this VERY outcome...
And yet, the BITTERSWEET knowledge that a door is closing hangs over the scene....
NOT in a SAD way exactly.....but in a POETICALLY JARRING way...
And I need to close now because my tears are saturating the screen as I type...
And so it goes.....

Superficiality ??

What separates "soft news" from "hard news" ?
Which is more significant ?
Is it somehow advantageous to KNOW the "hard stuff" ?
or..
Is it really just as well to dabble in the "TRITE" ?
As I stand up indignantly for WORLD ISSUES...hunger, devastation, terrorism,,,
it occurs to me that MAYBE I oughta cut these "denialists" some slack ...
MAYBE they're just trying to keep their heads above water ...
MAYBE they go home at night and weep for the people and things gone awry....
I'm HOPING against hopes that they're not weeping and pining for the CHANEL SUITS of yesteryear...

When does a LIE become the Last Straw ?

How many of you have LIED before ?
I'm going out on a limb and guessing that ALL of you have LIED upon occasion...
So, based on that theory....
When does a LIE become something "other" than "normal" behavior ?
When does Lying BREAK the trust ?
BREAK the relationship ?
When does a LIE lead us to a point of NO RETURN ?
When does Lying actually BREAK SACRED COMMANDMENTS ??
Furthermore...
When is TELLING a LIE OK ?
When is it warranted ?
Necessitated ???
Thoughts ?

And ALL of this ESOTERIC INFORMATION is being HURLED at us...

We are certainly living in a time of HIGH INTENSITY SPEED....
Information is flying at us....
veritable BOATLOADS of information...
And our poor little brain has no real choice , but to filter 'said' information...
Because there is NO WAY to "Process" EVERYTHING at this level of lightening speed...
So we pick up SNIPPETS...CRUMBS...
of once potentially 'whole' concepts...
And in doing so, we inevitably lose CONTEXT in its ENTIRETY...
And make no mistake,
LOSING CONTEXT IS DECIDEDLY NOT the goal.....

So what are we really being left with, you ask ?
Well....
Bits and Pieces, it would seem,  of fragmented, ESOTERIC matter...
disguarded as a result of their SHEER DENSITY...
Shamans say that "Words have WEIGHT"...
I say that CONCEPTS are pieced and sottered together like a puzzle of gold dust...

Does this make sense ?

 

Timothy Post....Pilgrim.....

Timothy Post, Pilgrim, sat atop a BIG rock ,parched, crying,
wondering where his "group" had disappeared to...
He had lost his way some 4 days prior...
Here's what had happened:
Far off in the distance, Timothy had seen a gathering of Trees.....
like a Green Haze of foliage...
And there had been something so captivating about this "ball of green",
that he had begun walking toward it...
almost beyond his own will...
It had been a kind of "longing" that his body had felt at the sight of the "Emerald Mirage"...
He had walked and walked and walked....for DAYS....
Yet the beautiful Green Ball had never seemed to be any closer...
And then, on the fourth day, Timothy realized that he was VERY, VERY FAR AWAY
 from his fellow Pilgrims...
that he had, on some level, "Left the Building"...
Well...
the young man had not eaten a bite since the walk began....
He had gone 4 days with no water to boot...aside from the few drops of rain he'd swallowed 2 days prior,,,,
As he sat, weeping, parched,  on the rock,,,,
he felt a profound and BITTER YEARNING for his Mother Country.....
for England...
for the fog and the mist and the crust-less sandwiches,
 and the all-together HUMOURLESS blokes ....
Where was he anyway ?
What was this strange and empty place ?
For some bizarre reason, he reached randomly into his jacket pocket at that moment and,
JOY of JOYS,,,, 
he pulled out a FULLY Wrapped, chocolate bar!!!
At least,,,,,he could eat....


 

It's a NEW DAY...

She sat on the lilac-covered veranda...
on a blanket made of CRYSTAL and Cinnamon...
And she tore away at the petals of a "gilded flower"...
All the while wondering where the road would lead her..
(She hated the word "PATH")...
But not as much as she detested the word "JOURNEY"..
ewwwwwwwwww
In any case, there she sat...in deep contemplation...
as the "much-too-early" heat enveloped her in its VORACIOUS GRIP...