THE Return

 The words have returned to me, in a very big way.

Oh, they never left entirely. I could scribble out a poem, describe an evening on my porch, share a summer shower, and most especially I could write a lengthy rant and make others laugh at my horrible life, because I was making a joke of it, even while complaining and whining and feeling sorry for myself. 

Always, always, a thin trickle of words remained. 

But I was used to a river! A wide, full, flowing river, hopefully with a waterfall or an underground component that popped back out of a rock wall.

Not just a babbling brook, although those could be fun. 

Not a nearly dried up creek bed full of rocks that crack and turn to powder in the heat of everyday. 

And not just things. Not just weather, and birds, and description of static objects.

My words were persons, and lives, and with voices and thoughts of their own. With in-jokes and griefs and crying-until-laughing, and laughing-until-crying. 

These persons wanted needed me to tell their stories so that they did not dissolve unnoticed into the midsts of mists. 

But I could only share moments of them, if even that much.

Somewhere I lost them.

My words had gone, and with them gone, so was I. I was no longer the Voice, or the Participating Narrator, or however my role could be defined. 

I was not them and they were not me, and so I was no longer I, and their very existence was at risk. 

Sometime in the autumn of this past year, they came back. A whole gang of them started shouting at me, even waking me every three or four hours in the night. 

Mostly they were saying, "Look at Me! Here is My Story!" That was okay. I could watch and listen and wander off into dreamland, often a mixture of their presence and my lack of presence. I need do nothing but be aware, and I needed only to be aware of their existence. 

Soon, they compelled me to creating them for others, and I did. Not always easily, not often quickly, but the more I did it, the more I felt myself again becoming.

I am me! I am Here! I am me!

I finished that story and did a second draft, and sent it out to a few chosen readers that I thought would offer good commentary. So far the reviews have brought up good points, but I've not heard from one section of my chosen readers. I don't know yet what does or doesn't work for that class (for lack of a more precise word.)

As I waited to hear from my readers -- I am seriously considering this as a venture into self-publishing, or print-on-demand, or whatever it's called these days -- I began another story with my fingers and there was a third story stirring into existence in my mind. 

These last two were abruptly and rudely shoved out of place by a compulsive need to write a fan fiction piece about a young child trying to make sense of the death of a parent. 

It wrote itself in ten days, wringing me out from the inside out. That's why it took so long to write it. It left me too exhausted to communicate. 

I slept. 

I slept, I wrote, I ate, with occasional trips to the doctors (5 or 6 of them) because I am old. But mostly I stayed home, with two sets of people pushed to the back of my mind, squabbling for my attention, while this child was trying to make his world make sense again. 

That exact type of compulsion to write is a rare event. It was really almost like what psychic scribes (I forgot the correct term) describe. As if someone else was melding with me, using my mind and body to do what theirs could not.

And I am concerned, my friends, for surely a compulsion of that strength and with that urgency was MEANT to be heard/seen by someone, perhaps to make sense of their topsy-turvy world. 

I just hope that somehow I am getting the word out to the right person. 

Fan fiction seems a strange platform for delivering such a message. 

I don't do fan fiction. The people in my own head tell me this or that is wrong with the other peoples characters and turn them into who they are. I have a sincere respect for any writer who can make someone else's character breathe, and can do it right, but that is a skill I have never ~quite ~ had.

I can only hope that the same energy that produced it reaches across or through the void and finds its target.

Whoever you are, I hear you. I feel you. I even love you. 

Because I, too, have been there.

You are not alone. 

Somewhere In My Mind

 There's an 'understanding' that wandering through one's own mind is a bad thing. As children, as soon as we are indoctrinated into the education system, we are told to "quit daydreaming". We are discouraged from coloring chickens neon colors. Our off-beat rhythms are discarded because they "don't exist." (then how did we create them in the first place?) Music should have rhythm, tune, melody, and harmony -- never mind that our ears and our minds are filled with garbage trucks, tankers, revved-up motorcycles, children screaming, doors slamming, and many other types of discord.

Inside one's own mind is a place to be avoided. It can't be taught; it cannot be reached. One who lives in an isolated spot is an oddity, a weirdo, an object of pity and ridicule.

An outsider.

This continues through our growing-up years, and into our grown-up years, and sometimes we find ourselves trying to program our children into the same ruts and roadways of communal living. 

Because humans are social creatures, and without organization and codes of behavior, life will be chaos. Anarchy. Different.

Different.

As we age, though, we are "allowed" by society a little more room for vagueness, wonder, and wandering. 

***********

I used to think it was the saddest thing when old people would no longer recognize their in-person loved ones. When they call grandchildren by a (long dead) brother's name. When they ask where their spouse has gone. When they marvel and grieve at the same time at a child with a beloved's eyes. 

When they tell you to your face that they can't visit with you today because you and a sibling are coming to take them somewhere. 

So sad. 

But Now, as I age, and as I spend more time with my memories and my dreams of days and lives gone by, it doesn't seem so sad or bad.

I am spending time with people I love(d), and who love(d) me. In my mind, I am present with them, no matter who is at the door, or sitting with me on the porch, or by my bedside as I roam beyond my body's abilities. 

Besides, how can that fat old woman be my granddaughter? She's a little girl with bright eyes and curly hair that won't stay combed. 

And that guy over there, you can't fool me. That beard can't fool me. That's my brother, who went away decades ago. It's so good to see him again, and didn't he always like to make a fool of everybody with see-through pranks?

Now, there are some whose memories bring violence and fear and anger. They may harm themselves or others. They should be cared for as needed.

There are some whose only thoughts, if thoughts they be, are of pain and messes, and the failure of the body. They too should be cared for, and eased as much as is possible.

These, the ones with no peace and no escape, are the truly sad cases, and the most needy. Try to love them, care for them, and grieve as you must for the lost loved one, overwhelmed by too much today and no escape into either tomorrow or yesterday.

But do not grieve for me.

I am with friends.

I am with family.

I am loved.

I love.

And I am, finally and at long last, who I am. Lime green chickens and 9/8 tempo with lots of slam-bang-crash and an occasional screech.

I am me and I am happy here.

Somewhere in my mind. 

Rita's Birthday Presence (Not Presents) SURPRISE!

 Today was my sister's birthday.

So, of course, I had a doctor's appointment. I have had an appointment nearly every birthday this year. I even had to have Rita drive me to one on her son's birthday, which was shameful. It was a drive I could normally make myself, but for whatever reason couldn't this time. 

When I had this appointment come up on her birthday, a more difficult drive, and a case of take this appointment or wait three months for the next one, I knew I didn't want to do that to her on her day.

She probably wouldn't have minded too much. She likes to drive. She likes to help. And I could buy her lunch at one of her favorite places if she took me. 

Unless, of course, she had other plans with friends, or lunch with Josh or Ron or something. Not impossible for her, and sometimes it feels like encroaching to ask -- an invasion of privacy, which is indeed a BIG DEAL to me.

Without consulting her, I decided my gift to her would be a day of respite from me and my not-so-pressing needs. 

I could do this myself.

I would do this myself. 

(And tell her about it later. I'm not completely altruistic.)

Appointment was afternoon, so car would be good for the trip. No rain or humidity. Not too chilly. Not too hot. 

I had got both an address and directions from the office I was going to, with a predetermined idea of where it was, based on the numerical address and what I knew of the area. 

So off I went. 

Made good time. Took me 45 minutes to make a 45 minute drive, so that was good. Got me there about a half hour early, because I was unsure of exactly which building I was to go to, and those medical outbuildings can be clumped together in some really awkward and barely accessible configurations.

So I drove around.

And around.

And around.

And around some more.

I pulled up Google maps on my phone, and tried to get it to speak to me. I even remembered to turn the sound up on the phone so that I might be able to hear what it said. Yay me. (Too bad my car didn't want to assist me in hearing, but since I was mostly touring parking lots, I had plenty of freedom to pull over and recheck the directions.)

The directions given had me making the same round-and-rounds that I had already been on. 

I came out, once again, onto the main entry point/parking lot, and I'll be darned if I didn't see a Rita's-type vehicle coming from the Mediplex to exit. And I wasn't even in Williamsburg, where another Rita-vehicle lives that I pass going to doctor.

This was a good one, too. It even had the Bengal plate on the front. I wondered if it had any other Bengals stuff on it, like hers, and the thought crossed my mind that it would be just my luck that she had been coming down there at this time anyway, and it would NOT have been an intrusion or a reliance that was an imposition. 

Wouldn't that just be my luck?

That was my luck. 

Oh well, odd as it was, it was a bit of good luck. She knew her way around down there, and she knew more about the entire area than I did, so maybe she could help me out.

She likes being able to help people out, so that could be my passive birthday gift to her maybe. 

Although it was strange.

I gave her the address, she put it in her phone, I showed her what my phone was reading, and we set off with her leading me -- around in the same old big circuit I had already driven so many times. (That made me feel better. At least she was the same lost as me, based on the information I had.)

Finally, we stopped again, and she said, "we're gonna have to call them," so I looked up the number and called it. She thoughtfully spoke for me -- I am not good at voice communication, although I don't usually mess up this badly.

The result is that we were on the wrong damn road!

We got much better directions this time, and she volunteered to once again lead the way, for which I was grateful. Who knows what crazy loop-de-loop I'd end up on on this other road with the same possibilities of problems. 

So my birthday present to Rita ended up being a gift to me -- of her presence. 

As I waited for the doctor and entourage, I tried to think where I may have miscommunicated. And I do think I figured it out. The first directions I had got was from someone who asked me if I knew where the hospital was. I said I did, yes, straight down Beechmont and turn on Five Mile. (There's another turn -- which is the roundabout  hill-climbing road I got lost on --and signs to follow, but I shortcutted those right out of the conversation.)

Anyway, she said "That's right, and our building number is 7575." 

I turned right instead of left, and onto another road, when I should have turned left and stayed a minute. So I had input the number with the wrong road and therefore, since I did not know it was the wrong road, I spent over a half hour looking for an address that wasn't there. I also helped my sister get lost in this non-existent place. 

Happy birthday, Rita, and I hope you can appreciate the fact that I tried to save you from me-dramedy on your own day.

 

Keys to the Kar

I am such an IDIOT! 

Or maybe just brain dead. 

Took Tammy to Kroger and decided at last minute to take her car. So we went to the store, came back out, and got in. I took keys off the keyring and put in ignition, but the key would not turn. It would not go forward, backward, jiggle up or down or anything. 

We called home and David told us to do all the stuff we had already done. It still didn't work. 

Ended the phone call and Tammy was still trying to get it to work. 

I started to say something about all the jiggly things maybe weighing it down too much, when I suddenly noticed that there were NO jiggly things. So I checked my keyring.

Yup. That's what I did. 

Sitting in a hot parking lot with the sun beating down on us, we were trying to start the Escort with keys belonging to the Crown Vic.
(On the plus side, they didn't work. That's always good to know.)

Starling Road on a rainy night

I wish I could have taken pictures on my drive home. The shiny road through the dark trees, the huge sky with rolling clouds and intermittent sparks and splashes of lightning; orange and blue and white. I pulled off a couple times to try to get a video but of course the lightning stopped when I did, or just wasn't as impressive. My motion going toward it somehow added to the visual drama. It was beautiful and otherly.
At one point on the road, I slowed way down. It appeared that I was approaching something like a large pillar, just a wide dark shape, going up and up. I wondered at first if it was the water tower, although I was pretty sure I hadn't come that far yet, and also I thought the tower was farther off the road, and NOT on a sharp curve. Also, didn't it have multiple legs, not just one column?
I passed a house with porch lights, and there was a street/yard light farther on. The top of the column seemed to spread.
So maybe it was a tree?
There are some massive trees along that road, but again none that I thought were that huge and that close to the road.
The streetlight shone down from above the top.
The top of the hill.
The pedestal was the wet road rising up a hill, through normal sized third or fourth growth trees. The spread at the top was rising above these trees to open fields, and the plowed and tumbled sky with its flickering and inconsistent lights.

A slice of time.

It's been a grayish rainish day today and now that night is creeping in, the sunlight has taken on a misty mystic haze of almost-but-not-quite-a-rainbow light.

The air glows like golden dust.

The sun is behind the trees now. The trees are haloed in the diffused light. Not quite colors quiver as leaves tremble.

Along the alley, a long lazy ray of white light makes its way down the pavement, perfectly placed evenly with the edges. At those edges, where the light meets the grass, the color blossoms into golden fizz, dancing above the ground.

I reach for my phone, my only camera, and try to capture this ethereal moment that was already fading.

I cannot, of course. The magic is beyond both my skill and the phone cameras abilities.

I hope my words have helped you to see it. A slice of time such as this is meant to be shared,and i am sharing it with you.

Dollar Store Invasion.

www.fastcompany.com/90278384/why-dollar-stores-are-bad-business-for-the-neighborhoods-they-open-in?fbclid=IwAR3cqFpYVeM481_4wlCFaPw_gn4QL2sJMFTrJSlmO35VIOcKP2V_VvW3V64

As someone living in a food semi-desert, I disagree with some of this. Before dollar stores started popping up, we had to drive miles for reasonable assortments of groceries, OR we had to buy them at overpriced convenience stores and gas stations.
I do agree it places an additional strain on mom-and-pops, but so does any new business with the same prospects. We are fortunate here that we have a family owned (and expanding) set of convenience stores that are reasonably priced.

The only larger store in my current town is a save-a-lot. Dollar General and Family Dollar often have name brand foods for the same price or less than this bigger store. There are Kroger, Wal-Mart, and IGA stores in several different directions, but why go to them when the 'Dollar$' are both available and reasonable and don't use a lot of gas? And this is in an only semi desert for shopping. 

Part of the reason for new stores is that the older stores can no longer carry all the products that the citizens need. The buildings need to be larger, and with more adaptable for usage space.
In some cases the buildings, equipment, and utilities are no longer compatible. Or adaptable.
These are solid reasons for a new building.
(it's my hope that the old building's next life has been planned, because I hate stores that let old building sit and rot.)

As with most of life, there is no clear yes or no choice here. No black and white; no either/or. The situation is not good OR evil. It's more likely to be good AND evil, at the same time, in subtle shades of gray -- or maybe even loud brilliant colors.

It's life.
It's how things are. 

Betterhelp.com

There have been commercials for the betterhelp organization for a while. It is a part of the fresh(er) focus on mental health, and a building step in making online treatment more available.

The most frequent commercials are a man in a gym and a man in a parachute. 

The ad with the man in the gym is pretty good. One man sees another lifting weights from a bench (bench pressing?) and he gets stuck, The man hurries over to offer help and the man in need refuses, on grounds of family and pride and all that stuff. 

The man offering his help does not walk away saying, "choke then," or abandon the endangered man. While the action shown is not a resolution, it gets the point across that sometimes turning down help can be a passive surrender or suicide. And that the idea is  -- strange. 

But it is the other commercial that I want to talk about. 

The parachute ad takes my breath away. 

The person pulls the cord and the parachute doesn't deploy. He says something along the lines of "oh no, what will I do?"

Another skydiver near him says "grab hold of me; we can go down together." 

And no-parachute says "Oh no, I dont want to ruin your experience."

Like watching him go splat is going to convey joy to the experience? Knowing that it was preventable?

For quite a while, I dismissed that to the stupid commercial category in my brain, with the cat litter that says try it for yourself, and the man who doesn't want chicken blood in his chicken.

But this is more than that. 

It has layers.

Pretty wonderful layers, when you think about it.

That's the insidious things about mental illness. 

Often, when you need help, you don't want to ask for it. You want to do it yourself. Not involve others. 

Another trick it plays is to limit your vision and close your mind. 

In the skydiver's case, he sees jumping, chute opening, landing, is THE WAY it's done. Anything else is wrong. Any other way is wrong. He has already messed up the event for everyone. His chute didn't open and now everyone will know what a klutz (at best) he is, and they'll all hate him for ruining this day. 

But the other diver knows that a rescue can be effected, Things will change; the standard rules may have to be adapted, but they can both have a successful landing if they work together. 

He refuses, because of 'messing up the experience.'

As I said before, as if a big splat isn't going to do that anyway.

He can't see that, though. 

It's just not in his frame of reference. His mind is closed to any other possibility.

There is no solution that allows a standard outcome. Therefore, his reasoning ability stops at: there is no solution. Period. 

And that, my friends, is why and how people can and do commit suicide. They can see no other solution. No way out. 

Not even when there are others nearby saying this will work, this can be tried, this can help. Let me help.

The man falling cannot think beyond there is no solution, even though he is the one placing the period at the end of the sentence. In reality, there are commas and colons and other punctuation that will carry the thought beyond a full stop in that place.

This is the nature of a mental illness.

This is the illness, in many cases. 

This illness can be cured. 

There are as many ways to a cure for the mind as there are for the body. Medicines, therapies, training. As the body can be trained, so is the mind. If it wasn't so, we would all remain helpless crying babies, and we would not survive long. There would be no survival, no growth, no adaptation.

And, for me, this commercial, brief as it is, manages to convey some hint of that being the wrong message.

As long as one is capable of seeing beyond the "usual" "expected" "should-bes"

As long as the mind is open. 

Monday's Misadventures

My Monday , the last day of February 2022

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Well the day started out when I reached out to turn off my CPAP machine and my glasses jumped off the stand and hid. I swear I heard them giggling while I was trying to find them.

Also, my internet was out. Again.

My sister Rita happened to be in town and she came  by and crawled around on my floor patting the carpet and moving stuff around, instead of me doing it for the thousandth time. Or was it the millionth?

She didn't have it easy finding them, although I think the only giggles she heard were ours, at the ridiculous situation.

But she did find them, in a place that had been checked multiple times. 

But she did it!

Yay Rita!

Now that I have my glasses again, I can get started on today's life, which was going to laundromat and grocery store and pharmacy. 

I went to Marathon laundromat in Mt Orab because they are a better value laundromat and because I have prescriptions to pick up at Kroger's, which is across the road. I can get it all done. 

Every other machine is out of order.
Because of that I had to use two smaller washers, so I ran out of money. 

No biggie, I'll go to the ATM at the attached Marathon Mart. What a joke. 

The ATM is not being serviced. 

They don't do cash back at the register, either. 

 I don't get to dry my clothes. At least not here and now. Unless I want to leave my laundry and my parking space.Guess I'll stop off in Bethel to do that job. My luck, their ATM will also not be working.

I was running out of belief in my day.
I should have stayed in bed when my glasses went into hiding, and my internet was gone.

When I went to Kroger, I decided I may as well shop since I needed to Cashback. (ATM costs @$5, Cashback is fifty cents). So after I have cashed out and put my card away, the girl tells me she is running a cashless register. 

I have to take my receipt to customer service to get my $20.

At customer service there was a line (of course) and the person right in front of me was buying money orders - you know how time consuming that can be- and then his bank wouldn't do the card transaction the way it was supposed to. "This is why I buy money orders," he said. (Been there done that.)





So I came home, my clothes still wet, and put groceries away. My clothes shouldn't mildew overnight, and if they do, I'll just have to figure it out.

And when I got home, I still had no internet . I am in an outage. Yay me.

At least this time I have data and telephone.

When I came out of Kroger's, I couldn't find my car. I walked right to where I had parked it and there was this shiny almost black car sitting there.

So I walked around the other lanes, went back to store and walked back out to the same spot where I had parked it.
And it was there this time!
I owe Hailey a big apology. My car really does look completely different when you approach it from the passenger side. (She made the same mistake once when I picked her up at school.)

But I had no need to look for the helpers, because they were looking out for me. At the laundromat, in the store, and several times in the parking lot.

That makes it, overall, a very good day.

"George has passed."

 "George has passed."

Word began circulating early Sunday in our small town. The hushed tones, shaded with loss and awe, and the meandering wandering of "Is this true?" ans "How did you hear?", because it was somehow as unbelievable as it was believably inevitable.

George. 

The old fisherman.

The old farmer

The old friend.

Our man about town.

Our story teller.

Our history.

Most small towns have or have had a "George." The person who knows everyone, goes everywhere. The one who talks with everyone, and listens in return. The one who just is his marvelous self.

This is a loss, as it always is, when a piece of history drops into the infinity of the past. How strange the streets will seem, when the weather warms and human hibernations come to an end. 

Someday, sometime, a former resident will ask about him, and someone will have to share the news.

The news will be as striking as it was Sunday morning, when it was a word of mouth shout. 

This news will never be old, until all of us at the end of his story have followed him. 

Until then, let us keep his memory alive.

More importantly, let us keep his meaning alive, to share and care.

Services will be private, as is fitting. In the end, the public man 'belongs' with those he's chosen. The public man, everyone's friend, belongs firstly to himself. 

Let us give him the dignity of true respect.

Let us Remember him.

https://www.ecnurre.com/obituaries/George--R--Rooks?obId=24092725#/obituaryInfo