She stood on the Michigan Avenue curb in her light coat and short green paisley dress for 10 minutes, legs cold, waiting for the #24 bus. She knew she wasn't going to work at Ma Bell any more. The opaque gray of the cement, of the late winter sky, of her drawn mother's face, of the dreaded steel desk at the office, was close and heavy about her. She stepped back from the stop and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the bus had gone. She boldly curled her fingers and extended her thumb to catch a ride to Berkeley. She wanted to reach the photographs in LIFE magazine. Color swirls of what the world looks like with LSD. Loose, smiling people bedecked with flowers and arrogance in a distant west-coast land of free thinking. An open, wild, unpredictable world. Impossible for on her stern, conscribed path of this is what you will do; this is the way it will be. Possible in just a simple step away to miss the bus. No ingratiating apologies to the warship-chested telephone company supervisor. No hesitating, no disappointing call home. No call home at all. No suitcase, no money, and no idea of what it might be like beyond the flat, flannel horizon of Indianapolis. It was 1969, a time of violence, disillusionment, and vision. The Beatles had pushed music through to the other side beyond the blood stains the assassinations of Malcolm X, Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King had left on the pale hopes of reason. She yearned to join the hip, those changing the world, not knowing she was seeking an oxymoron: mass individualism. The dipping of her thumb into the morning traffic was an irreversible move into the swift rapids of elsewhere. Into the restless current of society's change. More quickly than She had ever imagined, she was whisked away forever from a clear role in society, in her family, to world of experimentation and independence that was packed full of people. But, she found herself on a bus again, just of a new color, over and over again. ^^^ "You're on the bus or off the bus" was the gauntlet thrown down by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, innocent themselves of their bus being controlled by a different side of the same bus token: You can only think THIS. Sooner or later though, you gotta get on a bus. Even if you choose individualism, you go mass transit, mass transfer. Osmosis really. Assimilation. Many times I have stood stubbornly in the acrid fumes of the abandoned or missed buses of my idealism and waited for the right bus to come, with the right destination on the scrolling front sign. But never did one come that she didn't have to eventually get off. Mass osmosis took me to and away from tear gassed anti-war demonstrations in Washington DC, single parenthood, urban alleys, Brown county woods, aurora borealis in Alaska, college ten years late, corporate America, and 100 feet beneath the surface of the ocean. Every time I think I am hitchhiking by myself into new territory or walking a trail solo, I realize that I am not alone. Dismissing advice given about vitamins, rejecting high heels shoes, refusing to have a religion, living alone, writing a book, making sauerkraut, helping someone die, having a rare medical condition-wherever I go, someone is already there. My thoughts come to me through the tides of society. I inhale the air of humanity and install the filters of those within the circles of influence. I am like a ball in a pinball machine, heading in one direction or another because I've been knocked that way. Yet each day I awake feeling alert and engaged with the new before me. And I no longer resent the company I keep with each new thought, for who could ask for more than companions who shine light on information, toss the questions, and point the way?
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This last summer I was covered up with apple scraps. The leavings of two five-gallon white tubs of apples picked from the tree that grows next to the vegetable garden I tend. It was only a partial harvest, but it was enough to cause trouble. I knew what I was in for. Every time I have an apple tree in my life, peeling, coring, cooking, drying, repeat, repeat, repeat, takes over everything for a week or two, right about the same time that the tomatoes demand canning and freezing. As bags of dehydrated apples multiplied across my kitchen counter, so did heaps of apple core tubes and red curls of skin created by the hand-crank peeler borrowed from Steve (just like the one I sold at auction when I got rid of almost everything before moving to town). Some I cooked down into a nice apple bourbon jelly. But there a limit to how much jelly I want in my life, so I tried my hand at making apple scrap vinegar. Out on the shady front porch, in gallon pickle jars and an old crock, stinky apple scrap water frothed, bubbled, fermented and transformed into “must” and ultimately into the most exquisite apple cider vinegar I have ever tasted. The process invites in wild bacteria and puts it to good use. There are domesticated, predictable bacteria used commercially, and then there are the unruly, wild ones. In the air, all around us. Some good, some bad. We like the good. They are the power behind sour dough, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, bourbon, sauerkraut, yogurt, and exotic kefir and kombucha. They fuel the transformation of kitchen scraps to black dirt in compost piles. We hate the bad. The Clostridium botulinum that causes botulism. The Corynebacterium diphtheriae that causes diphtheria. The Borrelia burgdorferi that causes Lyme disease. All of them are wild creatures equal in the eyes of nature. We try to keep our lives in narrow corrals, controlled and domesticated, predictable like commercial bacteria. But life is not that way. It is wild like the bacteria that swirl around us. And we fear the wild, the unknown, and the unforeseen. Yet it is this very Shiva of wildness, this destruction, fermentation, and transformation of the ordinary and predictable that is the froth of creativity and growth. It is in this wildness, when it appears in our lives, when it bursts open with strange and disruptive horrors, that we can find renewal. It is here when we are forced to drop the precious scraps of familiar, like piles of old cores and peels, to mutate into new, often better, versions of ourselves. I want to tell people when I hear them mourning the loss of what was, that this collapse can be glorious. That the breaking down of the dulling static opens the universe of the thrilling dynamic. That it is the most natural part of life. That a new form, refreshed by transformation and fermentation, is being offered. To look for that outstretched hand. But I don’t. I know they can’t hear me. The roar of disaster and grief too loud. Maybe I should just introduce some good wild into their lives. Small gifts of apple scrap vinegar, sauerkraut and kimchi. Loaves of sour dough bread. Or, of course, the traditional bottle of good bourbon. Outside the small aluminum frame window, the green maple leaves were stirring softly in dappled late summer sunlight. Inside, I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. My guts were churning and my heart was racing. Unsuitable comments swelled like stuck oatmeal in my throat.
Things weren't going well for me in the discussion group. Across the room a woman was talking about something I wasn't interested in. I wanted to dismiss her. Didn't want to listen to her. Wanted to redirect the conversation my way. I like to think that I've made progress in learning how to respect other’s opinions, listen, make space in my world for doing things differently than how I would do them. And, I have. I am able to pull back, calm down, and absorb in ways that were impossible for me when I was younger. But not always. It’s like having an allergic reaction. All my buttons get pushed, all of my alarms go off, and adrenaline surges through my being. I’m rude. I interrupt. Refuse to acknowledge. Resent that person's very presence. Critically judge how and what is done and said. Feel my skin ripple with resistance and impatience. There are some people who have this response to me. Every word that comes out of my mouth annoys. My very presence in the room, or maybe upon the earth, irritates. While I was thinking about this the other night, a recent The Atlantic magazine article, “Masters of Love,” popped into my head. It was about what makes relationships work and not work. How it’s really all about how kind, how generous, couples are to each other. I know, I know. So much pap. But I have to confess since my era of horrible geezer dating followed by falling in love with Steve, my curiosity about what makes relationships work and not work has been high. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce, separation or chronic bitterness. Of all marriages, only 30% end up in healthy and happy relationships. The other 70% can barely stand to be around each other. Research by marriage therapist John Gottman shows that people in dysfunctional relationships suffer from the fight or flight response all of time. Contempt, it turns out, is what tears couples apart. Eye rolling, sarcasm, lip curls. The arrogant, angry disregard of each other. Shutting out. The underlying message to the other person: you don’t matter. And kindness is what keeps couples together. Eye contact, indulgence, a slight smile. The generous, warm acceptance of each other. Making room. The underlying message to the other person: you matter. I think this applies across the board to all types of relationships. I was telling Steve about this the other day. His question was: “Why? Why does this happen??” The article didn't really answer that. Maybe a few people have a natural inclination to make the space, time and attention needed for kindness. That’s not my inclination. My inclination is to be selfish and focused on my needs. That’s what I know about me, and that’s what I must turn away if I want to harvest all that the world offers me. I can be selfish and kind simultaneously for kindness is it's own reward, on the physical level. Kindness elevates levels of dopamine in the brain, giving a natural high. It produces the hormone oxytocin in the brain and throughout the body, dilating the blood vessels and keeping blood pressure low and reducing the levels of free radicals and inflammation in the cardiovascular system that cause aging. Kindness positively impacts the vagus nerve which is sort of an electrical circuit that links our heart, lungs, and gut to the brain-base. I'm pretty good at being mindful and generous to Steve when he is around, and our relationship might be one of the 3 in 10. I'm not so good at paying attention and being kind when it is really hard. When I’m not getting the conversation I want. When someone looks at me with daggers and dismisses me. Stop, breathe, and relax. Drop my resistance. Set aside my judgments. What good are they? Bring a spirit of scanning for what's positive, what I can be thankful for, to each interaction. Be kind. Really, it shouldn't be that hard. |
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