Creeping up on Sixty

In a few days I'll be sixty years old. I've never been shy about examining the inner stew that I am, but there's something about that milestone that seems to require not only a closer look, but also a categorizing of it. There's a bizarre necessity to write about it all as if it were something that can prepare others as they embark upon the same precipice, or maybe warn them that there be monsters beyond a certain age. So here's a few entertaining monsters I stumbled across in the last few months leading up to this point.

1. The past becomes endlessly more fascinating than when we lived it.

People I knew decades ago suddenly came back into my mental present time. It wasn't so much a desire to reconnect with them as it was curiousity. I wanted to know how closely or how far apart the different paths we took from the same point actually took us. So I used this internet tubes thing and googly googled a few of them. I didn't find the ones I was looking for (isn't that always the truth?), but I did stumble upon a few of them by accident while searching for something else.

For example, I found one of my old art professors while I was using an image search tool to find someone else's work. It was a brain cramp moment when I saw the similarities that probably neither of them would see because it's their art, after all, but I could see because I was the outside observer to both of them. So of course I wrote him an email and said hello.

The next one was even more bizarre. A friend who was going to visit the Los Angeles area wanted to find a Vegan restaurant to eat at while she was there. I offered to be the friendly neighborhood googler and come up with the perfect place. I found it, a few blocks from where her conference was going to be held and as I was reading the website, a very distinctive name leaped out at me. I had exactly three friends in High School and she was one of them. We weren't blood friends or even the kind of friends who swore to name each other's first born after them. But I was grateful to her, for the memory of her because I could say for the rest of my life that I knew three people in High School who didn't suck. That was worth at least an email.

2. Change is not always inevitable.

I also reconnected with a goodly amount of ghosts from the past who seemed happy to hear from me. We exchanged a few emails and then let the silence between us grow again as the same reasons we did so in the first place were still there.

The most disturbing in a holy calcification batman sort of way was someone I really admired when I was in my twenties. He was an amazing writer who seemed to have such a phenomenal and perceptive way of looking at and writing about life. He was easy to find as he had self-published enough books, pamphlets, treatises, and manuals to level a fairly large forest.

But in all that copious amount of self-flagellation there was barely anything new that reflected decades of life. He was writing about the same things, in the same language, with the same passion as he did forty years ago. It was as if nothing of life had touched him in any way. He was literally the same man he was then. I was sad for him.

And I knew I could write whatever I wanted to about him because  he would never read this blog.  He has a disdain for the internet, for the social aspect of it. He said it distracted him from real life and he only used it to take orders for his books and answer book related emails. It explained the time warp that claimed his soul in the late 70's and never gave it back.

But the saddest for me were some of the women. They're the kind of women who always bring me a sense of deep sorrow when I read their obituaries, the women who lived and died within a few miles of where they were born. The obituaries are always filled with the children they birthed, the gardens they grew, the things they did for others. And how they never left home, neither physically or metaphorically.

But for a few short years when we were in college together, they had dreams we shared over wine, weed, and eternal blooming hope. These same women were going to travel the world, they were going to write the great novel, paint the masterpiece, find the cure for cancer, become the first woman President. Instead, their obituaries will say they lived and died a few miles from where they were born, and will describe the children they birthed, the gardens they grew, the things they did for others. I wanted to ask them why they gave up so easily but I knew they would never see themselves as having given up so there was no point in asking, no point in trying to recreate a past that died the day they graduated and took the path right in front of them instead of venturing out a bit to see what else was out there.

In the end, all the searching and googling and writing ended up with the same result: the good people were still good, the bad people were still bad, the boring were still boring, and the interesting ones had all disappeared into a world where they couldn't be found so they could go on being interesting without others expectations of what interesting was supposed to mean.

3. Expectations are like assholes, no matter how much we deny it.

The most surprising thing I discovered was that some of the people I connected with had expectations I'd be a certain this or that and were disappointed that I went my own way. They weren't interested in what I had done with my life, in the new paths I had carved through resistant wildnernesses, in the way I had managed to live a life of honor, ethics, integrity and love, and still survive on my own terms, by my own wits, and with no one telling me what to do but me.

Yes, I'm surprised that I make my living with art created digitally with cameras, computers, and scanned hand-drawn and created images. Yes, I'm surprised that I make my living writing about what I do, that I've channeled my passion for words into something that gives me pleasure, that allows me to share some of what I believe and most of who I am with people all over the world. Yes, I'm surprised that I've sold things with my art in just about every country in the world, all the provinces in Canada, and every state in America. Yes, I'm surprised that I've written to and shared dreams, philosophies, world views, visions, hopes, despairs, sadness, joy, sorrow, and love with people all over the world.

So I'm surprised when people I connected with again always said they thought I'd be a writer or an artist or an activist, but they never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing. It makes me wonder why they expected me to limit myself to one thing when there were so many options. It makes me sad that they see me as unusual and different and an exception to how they thought I should live.

I want to say to them that all I really wanted was to make a difference. I didn't want to go through life without leaving my mark on it. I figured with so many options available to me that I had no choice but to exercise them all if I was truly going to make a difference by having lived. So far, I think I'm accomplishing what I set out to do.

4. Some wounds don't heal.

Of course there are people I think about, people I loved, people I trusted, people I let into my life too easily and by the time I noticed they were bad people it was too late to shut the door. They are me as much as any of my art or my words or my actions. But the deep wounds don't heal. I can still feel sad, angry, upset, afraid when I remember them. I can let myself love them even after they hurt me. But there are some paths you can't walk backwards on and the path of wounds is one of them. I leave them alone, let them remain as lessons, as reminders that no matter how many good and decent people you know in life and call friend, the biggest assholes will always be the ones whom you loved the most. Age and time doesn't seem to even that out any. I hoped it would, but it seems some wounds are timeless and are meant to be with us in that shape and form for life. Maybe in the next decade I'll figure that one out to where I can explain it better.

Winter Pond by northwest_photograph
Large format printing by Zazzle

Creeping up on Sixty

Closure

The update on my mother is that after spending all day and most of the night yesterday contacting all the records divisions of various counties in California to see if they had a death certificate for anyone matching my mother's name, age, and/or description, my cousin found out she died in Las Vegas and had never made it to California. She was cremated and is in one of those pleasantly named crypt memorial "parks" in Las Vegas.

First of all, other than an immense sense of relief that it is over, I have to say that my faith in the essential goodness of human beings has been heartily reaffirmed. I talked and corresponded with some of the nicest, most caring people on the planet. These clerks didn't have to go out of their way to help me. They had nothing invested in helping find a missing 87 year old woman who was dead and buried who knew where.

But they did with a kindness and compassion that brought me to tears many times over. California, you have some astonishing public servants. Value them for the good people they are. So many went out of their way to help me, even to the point of tracking down where my mother had died and having the Las Vegas coroner call me this morning.

The only exception that stood out in the sea of kindness was Marin County. If you have to die somewhere, make sure you can at least crawl to the next county...or have money to buy someone's interest. Enough said about them. Karma's a bitch and it will find them too one day. I will forever see that place as California's sore thumb and avoid it like the plague it is. And I will also forever know that all the kindness that surrounds them will more than make up for their cruel indifference. Such as the balance of earth, time, and human nature.

I gained some and I lost some in all this. I gained a new appreciation for my cousins on both sides of the family. Not only are they exceptional people, but they chose as their mates other exceptional people. They really took to heart the words "you must be kind" that both Jerry Garcia and Kurt Vonnegut conveyed so beautifully.

I learned to appreciate the strength of my sister, the youngest in our family who held it together as a strong and powerful woman. After what she's been through in her life, to see her this way is an unforgettable affirmation of the awesomeness of inner strength. I don't know how she dealt with it all privately and I hope it was merciful and she was easy on herself. She deserves to praise herself as much as we all need to thank her for taking on the brunt of this.

I only did what I do best, write letters, talk to people, and find a way to push aside the sadness over what might have been instead of what was. The saddest thing is the knowledge my mother died alone with no family. But it was her choice as was much of her life. She really had no family other than the husband she lost several years ago. If she loved anyone it was him, for all his faults, his cruelty, his horrible treatment of us children. In her mind he always was the man who saved her even if she had to pay for that salvation every day of her life. Still, I see now in retrospect that the decay in her personality began the day he died. She no longer had anyone to be against the world with and was left to fight alone. It was more than she could handle alone and yet she chose by her actions to be alone.

One day my brother will understand just how much he is her son and maybe that will be the day we can finally sit down and talk with each other as reasonable adults. Until then he is as much a casualty of war as we all are. It just took longer for his wounds to manifest.

I am convinced she went the way she wanted to go, quickly, privately and with all the details taken care of before any of us knew she was gone. She controlled her passing as she controlled her life and that was her choice. I must respect and honor that.

I feel both a sadness and a sense of freedom and understand so well what Anais Nin wrote about our parents giving birth to us twice, the second time when they die. I am new today. I am free. The fear is gone and there is only one direction, up.

And yet, I know how clearly I am not and will never be my mother. I have always had a close circle of friends, people I love, people who would notice if I was missing for a few hours and would send out the hounds if it was longer than a day. I will not die alone. I will have a crowd around me propping me up so I can get one last dance in before I go, and I will be loved and cherished and missed. In that knowing is the realization that the wounds of the past can heal. We just have to want ourselves badly enough.

Just yesterday I wrote to a former professsor friend whose art blog I accidently stumbled across. I had spent several minutes admiring his incredible work, noticed the familiar name and wrote to him. One of the things I said was in the time since I graduated from college and now, I have always been my own bear. Yes, it hasn't led me to the kind of life many people would have chosen for me, but it did lead me to a life I chose for myself. In the end, that is all we really have, isn't it?

Love Poem and Log on Beach by orsobear
Browse Love Posters

Closure

Imperfect Humans and the cleansing of memory

The end of one year and the beginning of another seems to set ghosts dancing on the edge of my days until I acknowledge them in some way. I usually pacify them by writing a poem, making some art, or just sitting with a glass of wine and remembering what they brought to my life, what would be lacking without their transit through my reality, and how they left the dust of some of themselves on me in some way.

Today the ghost took the shape of a man I met many years ago. I was at a very disillusioned point in time. I'd just survived a serious illness and wasn't sure I wanted to get my hopes up and believe I was going to live. I was like a rock in the river that the water washes over in degrees of cold, heat, purity, and sediment-stuffed surprise attacks. He was the ultimate cynic and of course I had to check out what made him this way because he seemed to come by it so naturally it was almost a gift.

There's an old joke that the most dangerous words a woman can say are "I can save this man." But in his sense of salvation it was less the man himself I wanted to save, than it was I wanted to understand what he represented. I thought if I could understand the depths of the system that made him who he was, I could learn something previously unexplored about the nature of war and use it for peace in that roundabout way of believing if you know the enemy, you can defeat it on its own battlefield.

For us the battlefield was mental. He was arrogant, opinionated, highly intelligent in that raw, forced disciplined way of being intelligent that comes from systemic discipline rather than desire to know and understand. He spent much of his life as a piece of machinery in a country that didn't value him as a human being beyond what he could contribute as a functioning piece of working asset.

That made him shit to relate to in any way but intellectually, and in that he excelled. His mind was a mysterious path that I jumped in eagerly to explore. I wanted to know what made him so cold to those he professed to love with a passion found only in the pages of his favorite literature, and I realized it was because he never learned to value human beings. He grew up knowing he could be easily replaced at any time, that he had no value beyond what he could provide in the moment, and that if he wanted to succeed in maintaining a relative and safe anonymity, it was best not to dwell too long in the emotional realm because that was the path to danger.

Of course this was unacceptable to me. I was and am the ultimate romantic when it comes to people's mental playgrounds. I know there's something special hidden inside everyone and I dig and dig until I get a glimpse of it. Sometimes that's enough for me, and at other times it is the hand that reaches out and drags me down the rabbit hole.

He was the biggest rabbit hole I ever fell into and it was a trip that while I have no desire to ever repeat again, I wouldn't trade for anything because it gave me an understanding of what war, what meanness, what lack of respect for a humanity creates in a population.

I'm a stubborn woman and because I believe in people's essential goodness, I was able to relate to him in a way that satisfied me at the time. I stuck to the path that we shared: literature, cultural music, and nature. I didn't want to look too deeply inside the part of him that was cruel and callous, that could profess friendship and then cut your heart the next day for his own amusement.

He was the little Prince of every mother who thinks her son is the chosen one, and the nightmare of every woman who tried to relate to him on an emotional level. I watched him go through relationships as if they were disposable jars he could stuff with his dreams and then throw away when they became too ordinary.

I think if anything defined him, other than being a train wreck son of a flawed human system, it was that he feared the ordinary. As he was growing up, the sensitive child he must have been at some time was brutally smacked down and he learned to adapt and mimic the ordinary mediocrity of existence. He didn't stand out. He didn't draw attention to himself. He merely existed.

But within that existence there was a lovely and nurturing escape: books. It was our deepest connection to each other, this eternal appreciation of books as lifesaving devices. I always carried a book around with me as a child. It was my foil against the shyness that haunted me most of my young life, the fear of interacting with strangers, the terror that someone would hurt me or tease me or try and destroy me. For him, it was the small glimmer of hope that maybe one day life would resemble something close to what he read about rather than what he was forced to live on a day to day basis.

But for both of us, the books that saved us also spoiled the ordinary for us. We could never settle for anything that was tedious, mediocre, boring. Life had to imitate art or it was neither life nor art.

I eventually couldn't handle how he treated women, the callousness in which he broke their hearts and walked away without a second glance when they stopped being princesses in magical kingdoms needing rescuing, and instead became ordinary women. I could understand it, but I couldn't condone it. So I walked away. It broke my heart in a way I never expected it to, but to stay would have damaged my honor, my integrity, my sense the world as a beautiful place.

Even after all these years he remains in my thoughts and for him, for all the potential that I hoped he would one day realize, I made something beautiful for him, something to contemplate, something to say thank you for the first lessons on what it meant to point a camera at something and have it return back at least a small piece of what the eyes and heart saw and created together.

Gandhi Quotations by orsobear
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Imperfect Humans and the cleansing of memory