Piece of Cake

Cream cake, Lake Bled, Slovenia

I’ve had my share of cake this year; a trip to Europe: a writer’s conference in Denver; an extended stay in the desert; a visit with family in the Pacific Northwest combined with the annual pilgrimage to Ashland, OR to bask in the wisdom of the bard.  I was looking to let the rest of the year slide. Then Lesley popped up at Bucket List Publications suggesting the year’s not done and challenging her fans to write a list of five things to accomplish before 2012 ends.

  I tripped over the word accomplishment.  Haven’t I accomplished enough for one year? Then la petite voix in my head said “they don’t have to be BIG accomplishments.” So here goes:

1. Walk a trail at Yosemite
2. Celebrate my mother-in-law’s 90th birthday with family
3. Help someone heal
4. Organize just one of my photo projects
5. Draft 50,000 words of my next novel in November’s NaNoWriMo

You see what happened by the time I got to item # 5.

If you check out Lesley’s list, you’ll see she likes to live large. Me, I like to live in a large world but next year I’d like to conserve some energy to give to God as temple offering. I’m going to attempt to pare down my resolutions; No bucket list next year, more like a shot glass approach—quick, powerful, done.

1. Start something
2. Finish something
3. Celebrate something
4. Kill something
5. Figure something out

Most fun will be identifying what to kill. This year, I killed my landline. Pre-election season was a brilliant time to do this. My house is blissfully quiet. I save money on a redundant service and minutes in a day checking to see if the light on my answering machine is blinking. I’m motivated to actually go see people so I don’t lose all my friends.

Panorama, Bled, Slovenia

Little in life is a cakewalk. Whether 30 amazing adventures crowd your calendar or five activities challenge you to make changes, list making pushes you to accomplish something that is often harder than you imagined it would be.  So leave a little room for a piece of cake.

The "Zowie" Factor

It was senior date night at the cinema last night. Couples of a certain age packed the theater to cluck at Hope Springs, a movie in which unhappy Meryl Streep drags repressed Tommy Lee Jones off to intensive couples counseling. Midway through the movie I leaned over and whispered to my date, “why doesn’t she just rearrange the furniture?”

We rearrange our marital furnishings about once a decade. I used to literally move the furniture around when my husband went on a business trip. I did it for effect. He never knew what he would come home to, so to save his shins from nasty bruising(“Ouch! You moved the table!”) he made sure not to go away too often or be gone too long.

Our most recent re-arrangement is a getaway in the desert. We’ve had a lot of fun establishing a home to fit priorities that are different from our normal daily life. This culminated in our choice of an area rug to define a grouping of comfy mission style furniture. It came down to a choice between this—

Choice #1

and this—

Choice #2

Conversation #1:

Me: Well, the colors are perfect.

He: And it fits the theme. The pillow will work.

Me: But, it’s kind of a cliché.

He: I was thinking that, too.

Conversation #2:

Me: Wow! Not what I would have picked but

He: Very different from what I thought we said we wanted but

Me: It has energy

He: It has emotion

Me: Yes! It makes me feel good!

He: Will your pillow work?

Me: No, but I don’t care. It’s...zowie.

When “zowie” is part of your mutual vocabulary, your chances of needing marital counseling diminishes.

Pillow for sale

Bunnies and bells

At sunrise this bunny hops across the rocks to the orange tree in our backyard. Sheltered by the leafy canopy, she rises on her tippy toes and gently nibbles the vegetation. Then she capers up a rocky incline and sits erect and still, facing the morning light. Do bunnies meditate? I think they do.

We go about our business and so does she until about two o’clock. In the heat of the day, she shows up under the orange tree for her nap. She’s scooped out a place in the rocks where she can lower her belly into earth cooled by irrigation. She wiggles down, gets comfy and places her head on a rocky pillow for a snooze.

These bells were once employed by my son-in-law’s family to call ranch hands to meals. Now they grace the wall of our desert getaway. I’ve always enjoyed the process of setting up a new home. It’s a chance to create change. We will live differently here. If I can keep distractions at bay, I will write more. It’s that’s a big “if,” because it’s my nature to engage.

“You went to water aerobics,” said my friend Sandy. “That’s a slippery slope!” She’s right. I also signed up to hear the pastor of the church we attend in the desert present his vision for senior ministry, “just so I can get ideas to bring home to our deacon board,” I assured my husband. Can I strike a balance between being neighborly and being reclusive? I hope I can.

Fretting Over Worship

Ragre Kabanova | dreamstime.com

I’ve been wandering around in a spiritual desert with my ancestors, the Israelites. I close my eyes and see myself in a crowd of people looking for something new. 

God is not against innovation. In Deuteronomy 12:8 He tells His people: Your pattern of worship will change.  He points out that presently they are doing as they please, but that He’s got something different in mind for them.

When we look for churches to attend while we are traveling it’s tempting to recreate what we’re used to, but that’s missed opportunity. Today we attended Radiant Church in Surprise, AZ. Setting aside that it is a mega-church in full pastor search mode, it is a church full of young people with a healthy dash of elders for seasoning. Best of all, the young people are in charge! At least they were this Sunday.

Regional divides

There are places I travel where I still hear the old saw “Oh, you’re from California, the land of the fruits and the nuts.” That’s the time when my tendency to stereotype fires up on all four burners. If you want to talk about nuts, there are sections of the U.S. where fresh fruits and vegetables don’t appear on any restaurant menus (unless it’s okra disguised as a corn dog).

I get teased for being a fussy foodie. My idea of comfort food is sushi or the perfect dark chocolate sea salt caramel. In my mother-in-law’s hometown comfort comes battered and deep fried.

Thinking about the cheery man who last offered the stale commentary on my state of origin, I took a deep cleansing breath and began to consider what we all could do to cultivate an appreciation for our differences before we jump to ridicule.

1. Relax and enjoy. Sample what another region savors. While I believe a steady diet of carbs will kill me, one hush puppy won’t hurt, and they taste yummy. Okay, I’m more likely to indulge in a hush puppy than you are to sample raw fish. I’ll give you that one.
2. Open your heart. Yes it’s difficult to watch a man dance down the street in a pink tutu, but if you let a slender youth with spiked hair advise you on makeup, you’ll probably learn something.
3. Remember. The divides are legion. Besides regional, we judge cultural, socio-economic and generational differences. Skinny jeans and stilettos may look ridiculous on you (or not), but you have to admit they look darling on your daughter. She’ll figure it out when she starts developing bunions, just like you did. Caveat: If it’s your mom adopting every new fad and she’s in danger in breaking a hip falling off her rollerblades, do stage an intervention. She won’t recover fast.
4. Practice tolerance. I’m mystified how abstainers can get buzzed on soda pop, which I consider should be an illegal substance, then burn me over an innocent glass of Pinot Noir, which should be on the Surgeon General’s list of healthy foods.
5. Embrace change. And if you can’t, at least don’t throw your body in front of the bus unless you have a cause worth dying for.

Stage vs. Street Performance

Public displays of strong feelings make me nervous, especially when people take to the streets.  I prefer rage delivered in short bursts from a stage. I suppose the street is a stage of sorts, but watching trained actors reveal studied emotions touches my heart. Seeing people chant on cue and shout into a camera lens, not so much.

Actors are people who understand the motives of the characters they portray. They play out their drama for calculated effect. If I am devastated, it is the contract I made when I bought my ticket. When the performance is nuanced, I will learn something new about the world and about myself. My heart will be changed.

 To effect real transformation, hearts must change. To my mind, that is more likely to happen in a theater or a house of worship than in the street.

Not that some protestors don’t have a legitimate grievance. They want a piece of an overpriced pie that some (1%) enjoy and most (99%) can no longer find on the store shelf. However, when the goons in activist’s clothing peel off to go loot and deface stores, I lose the thread of the drama and begin to worry about welfare of the people who work in those stores. When people shout into a video camera, “You have to give me money!” they don’t move me, they just scare me. When students who borrowed huge amounts of money to attend pricey four-year colleges don’t believe they should have to pay it back that just motivates me to ask: “Didn’t you do the math on that?” Even in the best economy that’s not smart.

I care deeply about people who can’t get a decent start at a job or career they prepared for, doing work that society needs. But I can’t sort them out in the street. Give me two hours in a theater to chew on a well crafted drama that helps me make sense of a situation.

 Throwing a brick through a window may be cathartic but while the bricks fly, scores of millionaires in China are making plans to emigrate, and half of them are heading our way. I seriously wonder how that will affect the pie.

The tents are starting to come down, the cameras have moved on to Black Friday, and we are left with a mandate as old as time.

Borderline

When life changes and the family dynamics suffer a seismic shift, it’s time to reframe the future.  I’m still adjusting to a universe in which my parents’ generation has disintegrated. As the stars fall around me and the galaxy rearranges itself above my head, I will draw new borders for my life. Then, I will cross them.

My new borders will feature places that comfort and inspire me.  I pull out an atlas and search for a favorite city.  It could be as close as San Francisco or as far away as Paris. It does have to be accessible – a place I can tuck up in for cultural feasting.  

I think I’ll start my western border at the Pacific coastline and look for a signature beach town to call my own. When my soul needs soothing, I need to rest my eyes on the horizon and fill my ears with Poseidon’s throaty roar.

My western border will extend from the Puget Sound to San Diego. From there I will draw a line through the Sonoran Desert to Santa Fe and then wiggle my pencil over to pick up Chicago and the Upper Michigan Peninsula before I scurry back to the Pacific Coast.

Like a proud spider contemplating her intricate web, I will hang out in my corner of the Sierras. When I spot something juicy in another corner of my world, I’ll scuttle over and check it out.

New holidays are in order.   We’ll downsize old favorites like Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We’ll celebrate Columbus Day with a trip to an unexplored mecca and Valentine’s Day with a romantic adventure. No dutiful recycling on Earth Day for us, we will choose a day to dub Big Sky day and celebrate it in the air.  

Our seasons won’t be related to the weather but to our mode of transportation – Wings, Wheels, Waterways and Wanderings. Our seasons are not consecutive they are whimsical, like the weather, and when we run out of money – the ice floe, baby; new vistas.