Walls Are Meant for Painting Over (Blog #220)

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Last night I slept in a twin-sized bed, the one I slept in from childhood until the summer I moved out of my parents’ house at the tender age of twenty-eight. My dad’s best friend growing up was a guy named Ronnie, and Ronnie’s dad, Roger, handmade the bed, which has a trundle, sometime before I started remembering things. Roger worked for a local furniture company during the day, and at night he’d craft his own furniture, which he said was his therapy. I guess he needed a lot of it (who doesn’t?), since Roger not only made my bed, but also made my entire bedroom suite, part of which I said goodbye to last year when I had the estate sale. What remains, however, is the bed, a nightstand, a dresser, a toy chest, and some other piece of furniture I can’t describe but that my sister spilled nail polish on when we were kids, so it needs refinishing.

Anyway, most of that furniture is crammed into the room I grew up in. I’ve been staying in a different room since I moved back home–my sister’s old room–but sometimes I go into my old room to search for things or practice yoga. The room itself is smaller than my sister’s, but it currently has more floor space. Twin beds, after all, don’t take up much room. Today I went in there to exercise, and I noticed a small chip in the brown paint, really no bigger than a sunflower seed. Beneath it were tiny flecks of baby blue and dark grey–baby blue from when we moved here when I was five, dark grey from when I was in high school and decided to remodel, replacing the cartoon train border with a Coca-Cola one.

I don’t usually think much about it, but sometimes when I’m in my old room, I’m swept away by nostalgia. The blinds are wide, aluminum, something I picked out at some point and matched with a retro fabric band that holds them together. Around the window is a set of adjustable shelves we had custom-made. Now they hold some of my dad’s collectables and a few family photos, one of me in a Boss t-shirt, trying to be all sexy, as if that’s possible when you’re thirteen. But I can still remember the way I alphabetized my CDs on those shelves, exactly where my collection of Tim Sandlin books went. Around the top of the room are other built-in shelves that once held my collection of Legos, Batman toys, and Coke bottles. Now those things have all been sold, and God knows where they ended up, other than my memory.

When I think about the trundle-bed, I remember Dad used to hide me in the trundle part whenever my friends would come over and play hide-and-seek. At bedtime he’d tuck me in real, real tight on both sides so that I couldn’t wiggle or squirm. Then he’d turn out the lights, and there I’d stay, all wrapped up until morning, since I hadn’t yet experienced the need to get up in the middle of the night to pee. But something about the pressure of the tightly tucked-in sheets, I guess, made me feel safe. Then again, I didn’t think much about safety back then or whether or not the world was a scary place to live. Not like I do now. I just assumed everything would be all right.

When I was a kid, the bed had a regular mattress. But when I was a teenager, Roger came over to the house and reinforced the sides in order to convert it into a waterbed. I can still see him placing the brackets. Anyway, it’s been that way ever since, although it usually stays unplugged, unheated, and unused unless my nephews are visiting. When I was in my mid-twenties, I wrote an essay about the bed. I’d have to dig it up, but my dad still jokes about it because I basically blamed my small bed for my not growing up sooner. After all, twin beds don’t offer a lot of room–for growing, stretching out, or spending the night with someone else. I guess Dad thinks things would have been different, life would have been better for me, if I’d gotten a bigger bed before I moved out in my late twenties. (Maybe he thinks I would have moved out sooner.) But today I told him, “Dad, I’m fine. I was being poetic.”

Getting far in life has absolutely nothing to do with where you’re physically standing.

Of course, I prefer a bigger bed. They are great for spreading out, certainly for hosting others. Not that I’ve done any hosting since moving back in with Mom and Dad, but I did pick the bed in my sister’s old room because it’s larger–king-size, I think. Plus it’s been easier to not be in my old room. I guess sometimes when I go in there, it does feel like I haven’t gotten very far in life. Like, here I am–thirty-seven, same fucking town, same fucking room. But then I look at the picture of that thirteen-year-old kid, I remember everything we’ve survived in the last twenty-four years, and I’m reminded that growth and getting far in life have absolutely nothing to do with where you’re physically standing.

The bed in my sister’s room is just all right. It used to belong to my aunt and her husband, so I’m guessing the mattress is at least as old as I am. Anyway, my back has been hurting since I moved back home, and I’ve simply been blaming it on the fact that I was in a car accident or that my back just hurts sometimes. But since my back didn’t hurt while I was in Colorado and New Mexico, I decided to warm up the waterbed to see if it would make a difference. And whereas I can’t say that my back has felt like a miracle today, I do think it’s been better.

More than anything else, crawling into bed last night truly felt like coming home again. My sister’s old room is on the corner of the house, and it’s always cold this time of year. But my old room is in the middle of the house–it’s smaller, warmer, cozier. Of course, the waterbed itself is warm, the sheets flannel and inviting. Crawling under the covers last night felt like slipping into the biggest hug. Pulling the comforter across me, I could feel the pressure, the okay kind that makes all the other pressures of life seem bearable. All it felt–familiar–as if I’d been there and done that ten thousand times before. Obviously, I had, and it’s no wonder I slept better than I have in maybe a year, even if my toes were a little crowded. Now part of me wants to hold on to that bed forever, as if it had the power to turn back the clock and make everything all right again. But another part of me knows it can’t do that–that’s my job. Beds, after all, are meant only for sleeping, just as walls are meant for painting over and boys are meant for growing up.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Your life is a mystery. But you can relax. It’s not your job to solve it.

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How Wide My Branches (Blog #195)

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Once again, I’m blogging while the sun is up. I hope this doesn’t become a habit. I mean, it’s all right. I woke up early to get ready to go out-of-town. For the last three hours, I’ve packed, showered, and gone to Walmart to get my “subscriptions” filled to deal with my current skin inflammation. I swear, my nipples are so red, it looks as if I’ve been breast-feeding. Anyway, I’ve quite literally packed almost everything I own for this trip. I might as well just throw the rest of my shit in the car and go ahead and move. Maybe I’ll meet Zac Efron in Colorado and that will be that. A girl can dream.

My main stress today has been “getting on the road.” I love a good road trip, but I hate getting ready for them. You know how it goes–all the shit to move around, trip after trip from inside the house to the car. My hair products alone weigh enough to make for a decent Crossfit workout. But I digress. The other big stress has been what to write about. It seems like I just did this last night, and other than spotting a few lesbians at Walmart, not much has happened. I guess we could talk about the yogurt I’m currently eating or the fact that my pharmacist said to not put the antibacterial ointment on my nipples as if it were axle grease.

I wonder if he thought I would enjoy that sort of thing.

Just now a man pulled in our driveway and hopped out of his truck with his two sons. Last week his uncle knocked on our door and asked if he could take some of the Chinese Chestnuts that had fallen from our tree into our front yard. “Sure, take all you want,” I said. Well, I guess our nuts are becoming a town hit, since the guy told his nephew about them, and he later came by and asked if he could bring his kids to get some. I remember being excited about this sort of things when I was younger. My sister and I would put the tops of carrots in little saucers of water, watch them sprout into little forests. Once a man came over and helped plant apple trees in our backyard. I was so excited, like I was going to be Johnny Appleseed or something, spend my summers hanging from the branches. Eventually they died, but before they did, our white-haired neighbor with painted-on eyebrows made a few killer apple cobblers.

As part of getting ready to go out-of-town, I dismantled the Lego set I put together several weeks ago. It’s not for certain, but I’m hoping to see my sister on this road trip, and I’d like to give the Lego set to my nephew. Since he’s seven, I’m assuming he doesn’t read my blog and that it will be a surprise. Anyway, when I put the Lego set on the kitchen table, my dad said, “How old are you?” Well, I put my shoulders back and said, “I’m thirty-seven, thank you.” Tonight I’ll be staying with my friend Megan, and she said she and her son were building a castle this afternoon. Honestly, this excites me. Just because you get older, I don’t think that means you have to lose your childlike sense of wonder. My therapist says that growing up means you don’t act childish, but you can–and should–be curious.

Earlier my friend Kara sent me a text with best wishes for my road trip. I said, “First, thanks! Second, help! I don’t know what I’m going to write about today.” Well, being the dutiful friend and eternal student that she is, Kara sent me a list of suggestions–road-trip snacks, pictures with roadside attractions, etc. My favorite, however, was “How quests have to start with questions.” Until she said it, I hadn’t thought of my trip as a quest, but I guess it is. Ultimately, I’m doing this because I’m looking for something besides Zac Efron–knowledge, self-discovery, more peace of mind. On the surface, the question I’m asking looks like, What’s this all about? Deep down, it looks more like, Who am I and what am I really doing here (like, on the planet)? I don’t expect to have those questions answered in a weekend, but perhaps a piece of the puzzle will come together.

Maybe that’s what I like about it–the mystery of it all. I can pack and plan all I want to, but I really don’t know what’s going to happen. I may stop and see some friends next week who are staying in New Mexico, but they said they may leave early if the weather gets bad. So I’m trying to be up for anything, to remain open and curious. For a planner like me, it’s not easy, and it’s kind of like I’m planning to be spontaneous. This makes even me shake my head. But I do think it’s exciting, not knowing exactly what lies ahead. Like those who plant seeds, my constant hope is to simply remain in fertile soil and tend gently to myself, all the while wondering what will become of this tree and how wide my branches can reach.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Who’s to say that one experience is better than another?

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Trying to Stay in First Person (Blog #142)

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Last night I found out my friend Brian doesn’t have a smart phone and spends very little time on Facebook. (These people exist.) Additionally, despite the fact that he’s straight and lives in the south, his life doesn’t center around sports. He said, “I try to live my life in first person.” I took this to mean that he preferred to have his own real experiences rather than simply watching someone else’s virtual ones.

Genius.

Honestly, this is something I struggle with. I don’t spend a lot of time watching sports or reading celebrity gossip magazines, but I do tend to get caught up in the lives of others on Facebook, the life of Zac Efron on Instagram. I honestly don’t even follow the man, but I do often get enamored with the online lives and bodies of certain dancers or yoga instructors–people with “perfect” physiques–people I don’t even freaking know. My therapist says that social media is “impression management,” so I try to remind myself that a lot of it is smoke and mirrors, but it’s a challenge.

In writing there’s something called point of view, and it basically answers the question, “Who the hell is telling this story?” Generally speaking, point of view can either be omniscient or limited. Omniscient means that the storyteller knows EVERYTHING–they’re like God. They can know what’s happening in two places at once, and they can also know what every character is doing and thinking. Limited, however, typically follows the experience of one character, and is usually told either in first person or third person. In first person, the main character might say, “I woke up this morning. I cleaned my ear with a Q-Tip. I can wonder what my friend is doing, but I can’t know because I’m not God.” In third person, someone else tells a story about one character, and they only know that one character’s actions and–maybe–his thoughts. Harry Potter is like this. Harry got on the train to Hogwarts–whatever. As a reader, we don’t know what Ron and Hermione are doing–unless Harry Potter is with them.

Now that we have that lesson out of the way.

Today I had lunch with my writer friend Marla. I told her about Brian’s “first person” comment, and she said she recently had an epiphany (or, as Smee says in the movie Hook, “an apostrophe”) around the same subject when she got all worked up about what someone else was doing, what someone else was thinking. (I’ve done this once or twice myself. Maybe you have too.) But then she realized that she’d slipped into omniscient or third-person narrative, instead of staying in first person. In short, she’d started telling someone else’s story instead of her own.

Byron Katie refers to this sort of thinking as being in someone else’s business. She says there are only three types of business in the entire world–mine, yours, and God’s. If I dye my hair blonde or say the F word–that’s my business. What you do with your hair and your mouth–that’s your business. Everything else, like tornadoes and hurricanes and when either one of us dies–that’s God’s business. Katie says that being outside your own business never feels good, and the problem is that you have to leave yourself in order to do it. In other words, if you’re worried about your sister in New Mexico, then she’s there in New Mexico and you’re mentally there in New Mexico, so who’s left right here, right now for you?

Uh, no one, that’s who.

This evening it’s been a challenge to stay in first person and in my own business. I mean, it’s had its moments. I spent a couple of hours putting together the Lego set I bought last week. It turned out to be this tree house thing, and it was super fun. The whole model folds in half, and when it does a bridge automatically collapses. When it opens back up, the bridge automatically raises. I actually laughed out loud with excitement. Notice the bluebird, the telescope, and the little lantern by the flag. How creative!

When the Lego project was over, however, my thoughts started drifting to the future–what will happen next, whether or not I’ll be poor for the rest of my life. This sort of thing happens constantly. But as I think about it now, I realize that this is just another way of being outside my right here, right now business (of putting the Legos together, going for a walk, or writing this blog). Specifically, it’s a way of trying to be in God’s business, since he’s obviously the only one who can know what’s going to happen next.

With Mom having cancer, I’ve been worrying a lot about her future too, the future of our family. It seems the diagnosis and the treatments are starting to affect her mood, her joy, and it’s difficult for me to watch her struggle. Of course, I want to do anything I can to assist her, and at the same time I notice that my mood, my joy, are affected whenever I leave the first person (I love you and what can I do to help?) and enter the third (Mom’s life is so hard and she must be hurting).

Personally, I think I could spend the rest of my life trying to stay in first person and out of everyone else’s business. I mean, it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s MUCH EASIER to get wrapped up in the online lives of others, to start worrying about what someone else is doing or thinking, even to start telling God how he needs to do things, despite the fact that he obviously knows more than I do. (He really does have an omniscient point of view.) But I’m reminded tonight that true joy comes from being present and not imagining you’re life (or the life of anyone else) to be any different than it is in this moment. To me that means that whether I’m playing with Legos or simply sitting in a room with my sick mother while I listen to her breathe, that has to be more than enough because it’s the life I actually have now–raw, honest, and real.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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A mantra: Not an asshole, not a doormat.

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Nudged Down the Rabbit Hole (Blog #137)

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Today I’ve felt like Alice chasing the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. When I woke up at three this afternoon–as my friend Andy says, “We’re dancers. If it’s before four in the afternoon, it’s morning.”–the first thing I saw was a text from my friend Vicki. She said she was reading a book called Freedom Seeker by Beth Kempton and that I should check it out, that it was currently available on Kindle for two dollars. (Okay. You had me at two dollars.) So despite the fact that I’m currently in the middle of five or six books, I bought the book and started reading it after breakfast, or, as my grandpa would say, supper.

So far, the book discusses practical ways we can regain our sense or feeling of freedom, and it talks a lot about birds and bird cages, for what I hope are obvious reasons. And as if my life weren’t weird enough already (last week I got invited to eat by two total strangers–and said yes), the book says to be on the lookout for birds and bird feathers because the universe can communicate that way. (This is, in fact, something I believe and have blogged about, but I still roll my eyes a little whenever someone else says it. Like, oh yeah, sure–a bird feather is the new burning bush.)

Anyway, the book also said that one way to recover one’s sense of freedom is to be more adventurous. It said that if you have dreams of spending your time rock climbing, you can start small–go for a hike. If you dream of being more flexible, you don’t have to go crazy–stretch for five minutes. The idea is that we often fantasize about the lives we want and think they’ll “just happen,” but we don’t take steps toward them. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s as far as I got before moving on to other projects.

Now I’ll progress to something far more fascinating.

This evening I went to Walmart.

I went to Walmart for the express purpose of buying a bottle of hemp lotion because I like the smell of it and one of my creativity assignments is to do something small to make myself feel special and luxurious. (Apparently using the little bottles of lotion you get from motels doesn’t qualify.) So I was just going to get one thing–lotion–oh, and a loaf of bread for Mom and Dad. Well, as I was walking in the front door, a couple was coming out, and I was thinking about that whole being more adventurous thing, how the book suggested one way to do that was to talk to strangers. So I smiled–and they smiled back. There, I thought, baby steps.

So get this. Immediately after my small adventure, I looked up and saw the word “adventure” on a display by the self-checkout section. Hum, that’s weird. Then I started thinking about another creativity assignment (there are A LOT of these damn things) I have to do in order to indulge my inner child–eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, finger paint, shit like that. So I thought, what the hell, and bought a box of Legos. I mean, I used to LOVE Legos. I collected Legos, had them ALL OVER MY ROOM. But I haven’t bought or built a set in probably twenty years. So that was it–I bought lotion, a loaf of white bread, and Legos. Because I’m thirty-six.

Notice the box says it’s recommended for ages 7 to 12. Also notice–I swear I didn’t see this when I picked out the set–it says, “Treehouse ADVENTURES.”

When I got home, a box of shoes a friend gave me several months ago caught my eye. The outside said, “Fit for adventure.” Okay, we’ve officially entered the Twilight Zone. Anyway, I stuck the Legos in the closet for later this week, and when I did, I saw a light switch cover another friend gave me last year when I was remodeling the house I used to live in. It’s basically a little machine–it has a lever up top with a knob you move from side to side that–through a series of mechanisms–makes the switch go up and down. It’s the coolest thing ever, and I’ve been telling myself, I’ll use it when I have my own place. But keeping with the theme of adventure, I thought, Why not now? It’s fun. It makes me happy. So I hung it up. (See the picture up top.)

Okay, two more weird things. While looking at Facebook, I saw an advertisement for some self-helpy stuff–an online course of sorts. Well, it’s not unusual to see that typle of thing in my news feed, but the website had a freaking bird on it–front and center. Okay, I’ll think about it. I’m not biting yet. Then I saw a posted article about the benefits of lying on your back with your legs up a wall. (It’s a yoga pose called–get ready–legs up a wall). Again, this sort of thing isn’t out of the ordinary, but most of the day I’ve been focused on a low-level pain in my leg that I don’t want to get worse–and I’ve been telling myself that God and the universe are smart enough to figure this damn problem out. So I tried it.

First I’d like to say that it ain’t easy to get and keep your butt up against a wall while lying on your back. I mean, maybe for you it is. But if you’ve never tried it and want to–just take your time. Also, look out for any doorstops on the baseboard. YOWZA. Anyway, while I had my legs up the wall, I discovered a muscle, tendon, or something attached to my right kneecap that DID NOT feel good. In fact, when I tried to stretch it, it hurt so bad that I nearly jumped out of my skin and immediately started doing Lamaze.

HEE–HEE–WHO (Fuck). HEE–HEE–WHO (Damn).

Part of me thinks that I’m crazy for even considering the idea that God speaks to me through shoe boxes and advertisements on Facebook. That being said, I don’t believe in accidents, and there are plenty of days when I DON’T notice the word adventure, when I DON’T stop scrolling long enough to see a bird, when I DON’T have time to try a new stretch that would make even John Wayne whimper.

Whereas I know that I can blow a lot of smoke up my own ass at times, I have been asking God a lot of questions lately, so I like to think that all of these “coincidences” all just God nudging me in the right direction. Caroline Myss says, “Prayers are answered immediately, but how they are answered is often a mystery that unfolds at the pace that I can handle.” So I’m trying to be open to the idea that answers to prayers–at least clues–can show up anywhere, even at Walmart, even in my Facebook feed. And maybe that makes me feel like Alice going down the rabbit hole, but honestly I’m ready to have my world turned up side because it wasn’t working the other way (when I was in charge). Yes, I’m ready for a little adventure, ready to play with Legos again, ready to see where the nudges of God take me.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Your life is a mystery. But you can relax. It’s not your job to solve it.

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