Ouch

We were made to bleed
and scab
and heal
and bleed again
-- Ani Difranco

I hate that feeling that accompanies someone’s failure to recognize the goodness and value of my friends and family. The teacher who feels compelled to clip my kid’s imagination, the boyfriend who could never never deserve my roommate, the employer that devalues the towering level of competence my friend brings to the task.

Who hasn’t had one of these phone call or couch conversations with someone you love? One where you looked at their slouched shoulders, listened to that sad mumble from their mouth.

The clarity you have from the outside of this sadness can’t penetrate it. Sure, you can state the obvious: the bootcamp ethos of the teacher, the algae goo dwelling in that boyfriend's heart, the mediocre ass-backwards of the workplace...but the timing is all wrong. Sitting on my couch, or cradling the telephone I am befuddled by how seldom the daily work we take on is appreciated. More than our deeds we have this enormous capacity to love, to inspire, to create. What is more amazing than that? What could be more admirable? What are we to make of the often occurence of being scrutinized, blamed, or battered by the critic du jour? Who hasn't sat on both sides of this sad scene?

And the worst part is that, love you as I do, I can't fix it. I’ve got Kleenex, and a couple of zings for the offender but I can’t fix it. The pain has to run its course. Eventually the person dries their eyes, and emerges on the other side of this - they graduate the grade, ditch the boyfriend, locate the office supply stash at some new job.

But in that moment, when everything hurts, its hard to believe that the essence of a person, for lack of a more exact term, the spirit is a vast and renewable resource. It gets all of us through. Sad or lost as you might feel, sweetheart, you just have to wait for it.

Lunar Eclipse

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection. --Buddha

After a full day of freakishly cold weather and a forecast for cloudy night skies McKibbin and I ventured out to the end of our driveway and watched the total lunar eclipse last night. Cold as it was, the eclipse was lovely.

Celestial events often inspire a unique kind of humility within me. These moments hold the potential to shift my perspective away from daily gripes, or the preoccupations that inspire fitful sleep. I’d like to say last night's eclipse inspired some deep pondering on my part. Nope. The cold air made for a swift brain freeze. McKibbin stood audience to my rudimentary impersonation of Carl Sagan which essentially means I used the phrase “billions and billions” at the crux of every statement. After some time he threw down a few “billions and billions” of his own. We giggled, white vapor hung between us, and the earth’s shadow slowly spread over the moon's surface.

Not a bad way to spend an epoch of time.

Slow Feet Sleepy Brain

When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake. – Narrator from the movie Fight Club

After a fitful night of something I can’t really call sleep it was early this morning when I gave up the fight. The pillow wasn't any more comfortable, my eyelids weren't any heavier than they were an hour ago so I untangled myself from the covers and slipped downstairs.

There is some trick to navigating my house in the dark. Old houses are an auditory mine field with stairs that moan, doors that squeak, and hot water pipes that clank.

I’m not so well organized that my running shoes are waiting for me by the door. I found them eventually and silently bundled up in layers to run a lap around my neighborhood. I like winter mornings when the streets are quiet, the sun is slow to rise.

I’ve never been a fast runner; the slow steady method works so long as I don’t expect to win any races. I started training last week for a half-marathon in May. My run this morning was part of an eleven-week conversation where my brain tries to make the case to my body that running 13.1 miles is an acceptable proposition. The half-marathon was a goal I toyed with for about ten years before actually completing it for the first time last Spring. Sometimes my body yelps or moans to remind my brain that this effort would have been a lot easier ten years ago. My twenty-something body didn't have so many creaks or complaints. The recuperation time was substantially quicker. Ah, well, youthful bodies are wasted on the young.

Running in the winter is this strange blend of extremes. The cold red cheeks and white fingers occupying the same body as the rapid-fire of one's heartbeat and sweat glands. The intersection of extremes occurs somewhere in my chest cavity. Its affected both by the cold, dry air and the steady, deep breaths running requires.

My quiet morning ended with the clank of the hot water pipes in the shower, the hiss of the coffeepot. The sun eventually made its appearance; the rest of my family emerged from their bedsheets. Stairs moaned. Doors squeaked.

Spreadin Some Lovins

I have tickets to hear Amory Lovins speak at the Lied Center tonight. Lovins is one of those wonky, engineering types who graduated from Harvard. He is revered in certain circles but largely obscure to most of us. It’s a real shame because this is a guy who has advocated energy conservation since the Opec Oil Crisis of the mid-seventies. He called for a Soft Path approach to energy policy (insulation, green construction for buildings, higher gas mileage, energy efficiency…the most inexpensive megawatt of electricity or barrel of oil is the one you don’t consume… etc.)

In a world that is increasingly cynical its hard to throw around words like visionary or hero without feeling geeky. But this guy has the goods. Take any moment in history, any group of people I could spend ten minutes with, and Amory Lovins shows up in the top five of my list every single time.

Because I’m pumped up to attend this lecture tonight, I felt compelled to put his name out there. Ask somebody who Paris Hilton is, or Tito Jackson and most people could offer a passing reference as to why they’re noteworthy. Ask us to conjure a visionary who has dedicated his life to advocating energy conservation and the collective mind draws a blank. I thought I’d offer Amory Lovins as a person to fill in that blank.

To learn his particulars, search on youtube, or check him out here:

http://www.sqwalk.com/blog2006/000764.html
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3265.html
http://rmi.org/sitepages/pid41.php
https://secure.bioneers.org/node/518

Clearing the Air

It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. – Dan Quayle

Naomi and I were up early this Monday morning to pack her lunchbox and prattle a little bit about our day. She had a book to read me for extra credit. Music class, always a favorite in her heart and mind, was a mentionable item on the agenda today as well. I made a brief comment that most of my day would be consumed by air quality issues. Naomi has a visual reference for the emission stacks at my workplace. She knows we have to be careful what, and how much goes up those stacks. It’s a basic understanding of what goes up comes down eventually.

I'll digress here, though I didn't this morning, to be a complete bore amongst adults and provide a level of detail unfit for my kid. My Monday was consumed by a decision handed down by the Federal court last Friday. The court essentially scrapped the EPA Mercury rules, affectionately know as CAMR which I would decode as an acronym but life too short to spend bogged down in obscure references, which puts the EPA and regulated community back to the drawing board on mercury.

Anyway, back to the breakfast table. Naomi and I spoke of her music class, packed her lunchbox. We slapped some Spanish rice in a warm thermos, string cheese, juice box... I staged some reluctance on the fresh strawberry score just to make her feel she pulled a fast one. She nodded through my brief reference to air quality being the focus of my day. I listened to a book about a girl named Kit. We polished off the morning with coats, backpacks, boots and we were out the door. As I drove her to school, I silently congratulated us both on a morning sans screaming or crying. Yay, me! I thought, I might get the hang of this parenting gig yet.

We pulled up to the school building, I opened her door, and Naomi burst out of the car like she had just been uncaged. She was running, full clip, toward the building screaming, “Run, Mommy, its raining poison lava from the sky!” This wasn’t one of those sing-songy screams kids will sometimes do in a misguided attempt to be cute; this was a slasher-movie-don’t-take-a-shower-at-the-Bates-Hotel scream.

I stood there, stunned, both by what a fast runner she is and how utterly consumed she was in this vivid scene in her imagination. Poison lava? If the poison doesn’t get you the scalding temperature of the molten lava will? What’s a mom to do but join her kid’s slasher movie and scream her way into the school building?

Note to self: hold off on further elaborating the acid rain rules to Naomi.

_____________

I filed this Op-Ed piece on the Democratic Presidential race under the category of thoughts I've had that are better articulated by someone a lot smarter, with lots more political sway. Yep, she copied my idea. Copy cat.

Balancing the Scales

The first Democratic Caucus in Nebraska this Saturday.

It will sound blasphemous to say, but generally when election time rolls around I get out of bed with a groan. Its not like my sense of civic responsibility propels me to skip and bound out into the street anxious to vote. I generally have to wake up early, leave work before five, bribe my daughter to accompany me or otherwise negotiate some way to duck into the voting booth.

The caucus sounded like a more involved process which was to hard sell me on. Part of me rallied with a brief reminder that generations of women fought for the right to participate directly in the political process. Part of me rallied when I reminded myself I am a role model for my kid.

Then I thought of a speech I heard my father give several years ago at a "Get Out the Vote" rally. He asked the group to envision the most politically illiterate person you know. The one who drives you crazy. The one who gets your blood pressure up, or makes your eyes roll. That political discussion you resent for having occupied both your time and brain space.

Its not tough to conjure the image of that guy in the cubicle, the distant relative who shows up for family occasions, the woman at the check out stand you can't help but over hear, the television or radio pundit, etc. Now envision all of those people lined up at the polling booth. Scary, hunh? There's the motivator! Without you at the polling booth, the whole system crumbles as those people shape the future of this country. Balance out the scales a little. Cough up a little bit of time this Saturday and offer a thoughtful vision for the future.

Click here to enter your address and find your caucus location in Lancaster county.

Roar

My brother, Matt, put up his first art show tonight. He gathered a series of breathtaking photographs from his African honeymoon and put them up at his wife's art studio. I was among the first of a crowd of people who came to admire his work.

First off, I must compliment the photographs. They were delightful. Most of them were extremely close up (the back of an elephant's ear, the weathering skull of a water buffalo, the direct gaze of a lion) so the textures, shadows, and gradations in color of each image spilled out from the frame. His work transported me to faraway places my skin has never touched.Secondly, I want to admire Matt's willingness to share his work. Even the seasoned photographers I know speak with a visible discomfort of having one's work displayed. I've heard the experience feels like nakedness.

There was something brave about all of us when we were younger; an adventurous spirit that embraced new things. We spoke openly about our latest learning curve. Many of us loose that bravery as we grow older. We make choices, we focus in certain areas. We become more of certain things, cast off other ideas. Outside of the natural focus of our lives everything becomes a little fuzzier. If we speak of our passions at all, we put a sideways slant to them. Polite qualifiers start any sentence that might hint we are more complicated than our resume. I'm a closet musician. I'm an armchair astronomer. I moonlight as a photographer. I putter around with entomology. We think we have to be perfect at something before we would consider putting it face forward to the world.

I admire the stunning work of photography Matt displayed tonight. I am honored he would share his work with, not just me but, anyone in the Burkholder Project. I applaud his willingness to step out of his own mold, to put up his latest great adventure without qualifying it. The center of him that conjures such strength leaves me inspired.