Taking control, taking charge, taking care are incredible attributes.  It is a comfort to know someone's got your back; rewarding to give it back.

In a conversation with a hard-headed and very bossy friend this week, we talked over her loss of both parents in one short year.  The rushing of tight schedules from work to home to hospitals to feeding theirs dogs to sorting through a lifetime of precious possessions piled up over the grief.  It worked.  Her bigger feelings were smothered until her father's last breath, and then the silence. No sooner than it happened, she was rushing to solve everyone else's drama.

The momentum and adrenaline were still pumping like sitting in a car with the motor running after a car crash.  The spinning out of control stops.  You are still alive, but everything has changed.

Being in charge can be as addictive as Jack Daniels.  It fills the empty heart with numbing action and uninformed purpose.  In fact, it's such a revered characteristic that our culture enables the condition even when it has become out of balance. "Wow, she is so capable!"

For me the big question needs to be: Are you capable enough to be with your bigger feelings?  After coping with an inherited chemistry which doesn't allow my synapses to fire correctly, I've had to create methods of being with my being.  Sometimes depression or grief is a harsh teacher making you learn long division over and over until you ask for help and compassion because you can't find the answers.

The compassion for the soul has to be facing the blackboard, erasing the long division and writing a new, relevant story of being.  The story of right action does not become driving or fixing or running away.  Right action can become walking a tight rope.  Quiet focus, best effort and balance are key. You'll know there is a net below, but still slow your steps.

The last couple of months I've been wrangling with all things non-poetic.  This may not be a big deal for most, but it's a lack of oxygen for me.  Another form of poetry I have intentionally silenced has been music.  I love to be immersed in music and its altering effect on mood, inspiration, memory. The soundtrack right now to this block of time is reflection. Can I just listen to silence for a while?  This has been quite informative, really.  I can trace soundtracks to every phase of my life and experience a total recreation of that time.  Sometimes I can take it and sometimes it hits me like a ton of bricks.

The mix tape I made for my one-year-old daughter thirty years ago is probably my favorite.  I still hear some of the tracks when I'm grocery shopping at Kroger.  That's a good soundtrack. 

There are so many transitions happening in my life at this time, I have to be present to navigate them.  Sometimes the mix tape has to be my intuition: where do I turn; how do I do this by myself; how do I ignore what is no longer relevant?  

When I walk through the woods lately, I don't feel lonely with my thoughts.  I wonder how I will feel when I replay this soundtrack in a few years.

painting from the book "What's Left" by a participant of the Alzheimer's Art Therapy program

Walking into December,

empty shells crunch

under winter boots.

Wasted fruit returns

to earth.

I grow wiser.

Since I love playing around with words, this phrase is irresistible. During the Victorian Era the Leisure Class would spend time inventing croquet and breeding corgies and employing faintin' couches. The other Class would be the unwashed masses. 

Personally I have always gotten antsy with too much "leisure" time on my hands. I don't find it interesting to participate in any of the above or reality TV involving Wives or Corona beer scenarios. Half an hour with a beer and a breeze and I'm all done. Is it the new hurry up and get it "not done"? 

My nature is to turn everything on its head, so this acrobatic word game is a Romper Room for my thoughts. Let's use the Magic Mirror and proceed. My first question is: What is leisure? I can only answer for me; but I also open the floor to anyone curious enough to ask the same question. The late fashion designer, Alexander McQueen, was asked in an interview how he celebrated after a premiere of his latest creations and McQueen answered: "I go home and watch bad sitcoms."  John Lennon and Yoko Ono would watch the entire Jerry Lewis MS Labor Day Marathon in bed. I had to think about my favorite moments of leisure. The Obi-wan Kinobe of leisure time for me would be back-to-back episodes of the Dog Whisperer, but that is school for me and my dog, so it may not be considered leisure.

Now, what would be considered the "unwashed masses'" leisure time? I'm sure I would fall into that category if my net worth were used as an indicator. The leisure I can afford would be this moment. I know when I've squandered it; I know I'm in the chips when I immerse myself in the moment. I've had enough empty ones to know the difference.

Oh, the bell on my alarm clock tells me this Leisure Class 101 is dismissed. This unwashed mass is creating some time I forgot I owned and dip into a hot bath to create some leisure time.

Last night I walked into my house after another day spent sitting in one spot with my legs tucked under a desk. Need I say more? I was ready for my Mizunos (favorite running shoe) and dog leash clinking for a quick walk before the sunset. As I rushed to beat the dark, I passed my son with his chin propped on his fists, then forehead held by palms. A John Donne poem with scrawl on both margins was the culprit. "I can't decide why he used this metaphor to describe love."

Thinking this would be a snap, I asked: "Would you read it to me?" He did. "Read it again." He did. "One more time." All right. I grabbed a pen light, the poem, the dog and my son. "Let's take a walk and read the poem while we are in motion." By now it was nightfall, so the pen light served as our guide to our walking interpretation. I start a tangent about love and bargaining and leverage. He stopped me: "No, No. We've got to stay within the context of the poem." I'm flummoxed at this point. 

As we return from our walk, this frustration is mounting. We go back to the Donne drawing board. Exasperated I ask: "What does it mean to you?" In a desperate way to end all of this, he said: "Love is competition." I ran for the Roget's. "Contend, battle, contest." He begins to calm, "Contest." 

Then another escalation in his anxiety; "I just wasted an hour!" Hmm. My inner humanity said silently: "Wow, he wasted as hour." Then my inner parent remembered what only a child can bring out of me. "This hour was not wasted. We walked Bugsy, read poetry, talked poetry, and it will never happen exactly like that again." Of course, every time I've said anything of substance as an object lesson to my children, it's been the first time I've "learned the lesson."

Side note: If I ever had to dissect poetry, I would never write it again. I am a Luddite poet. Sorry John Donne.

The time will come 
when, with elation, 
you will greet yourself arriving 
at your own door, in your own mirror, 
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
 
You will love again the stranger who was your self. 
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart 
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you 
all your life, whom you have ignored 
for another, who knows you by heart. 

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes, 
peel your own image from the mirror. 
Sit. Feast on your life. 

Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

This week I was necessarily drawn to my bath time. After sitting through a trial in criminal court (day job disclaimer) with few breaks for stretching, my legs were two pain-filled limbs. When I walked into my door, the soreness and fatique brought tears to my eyes. The usual elevating and exercise only left me frustrated with no relief.

Ding Dong. Good evening. I remembered my bathtub. Massage therapist in a drum! I filled it with water as hot as I could stand with a mixture of eucalyptus, peppermint and some good old Epsom salts and a few other detoxing gems. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ahhhhh. Always takes a minute to get used to the water. Then I'm able to lie back, weightless as I'm being held by the warm hands of the water.

That moment of respite from the gravity of the day dissolved the unrelenting tension.

The most pleasant side effect was: My anxiety floated away. Remember your faucet. Remember to turn it on and fill your bath as a gift to yourself to enhance your life in this body. Lighten up when your are being held.

A few years ago I started looking at my journaling in a different way. I began to see it as a poem. I had a dear friend in his 90s spurring me on and seeing the beauty in what I was saying. He wasn't exactly without credential himself. He was a minister, a teacher of esthetics, a satirist, and a beacon of light for me.

During the time he was dying, I had just begun to mix essential oils into perfumes and oils to create a healing method of coping with losing him. He was my muse. Where would I be without writing for him, for showing him my new scents. Then I found out he had NO sense of smell. None! So I was on my own. I had to trust my own nose.

I came across a quote by Samuel Johnson this morning. I totally rewrote it for myself. (My poetic license has not expired.) 

Always set a high value on spontaneous Art. She whose inclination prompts her to cultivate her Art of its own accord will give to her more than when she has been at pains to attach others to her. 

I am not going to put quotation marks around it since I rewrote the whole freaking quote. Oops.

Last week I was preparing my previous car to become the new mode of transportation for my boys. The right front tire was low, so I took it around the corner to our neighborhood mechanic. First he filled the tire with air, then dropped it into a huge galvanized pan filled with water. Immediately the bubbles helped us trace the pinpoint in the tire causing all the problems.

As I drove home I thought: I guess my bath is my repair for any loss of power I may be having through my day. Bubble bubble toil and trouble, down the drain.

Edging over shallows

As we wade Into

parts Unknown.

t.parker ©2007

www.thefreshroom.com

Something about the word "reinvention" makes my adrenaline buzz and my ideas flash with a paparazzi frenzy. Before I understood what reinvention really meant, (aside from Madonna) I was always reinventing, but chalked it up to being an ungrounded dilettante. In other words, I felt a little critical of that insatiable urge to have an idea and make it happen. Really, I would say, even a wee bit guilty. And I would go further to say, ashamed that I would be so undisciplined to go the route of the imagination as opposed to the status quo.

I had this adolescent notion that the status quo would be my protection. I mean, you don't bite the hand that feeds you, right? Well, after my war of attrition, the hand has drawn back a nub. The phantom limb is pointing me to the unknown territory of being openly inventive. No apologies, unless I forget where I am. 

If you Google Athena, you'll see how the oracle is Queen. If I may dumb it down a little; guys came to her for advice on guy things, but needed a strong woman to ask. After all I've been through life-wise, I draw on that trait and ask myself: WWAD? What would Athena do?

It is sort of like: When the vulnerable path of being seen as an artist of any sort is taken, I need the protection of wisdom; not the status quo. And boy, I will appropriate (see steal) wisdom anywhere I can get it. It is my boat as I set out over these uncharted waters in me.                                                                                                 Image:  "After the bath" by Jerry Dreesen 2006