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creative

Serious was in her DNA. But she could cover it up with an acceptable amount of humor. She was able to make people laugh. In fact, that was what she missed about her isolation, that guttural laugh that she on numerous occasions produced with friends.

About her isolation, one has to wonder why. To that moment when everything shifted. Well maybe it didn’t “just” happen? Sometimes things just evolve and are what they are. They don’t have to have any great break trough or break down. They just happen.

She knew that she like being alone. She was never lonely. And she could go days and only interact with that grocery store clerk or the gas station attendant. It was calming to not have to participate sometimes. To not have to be present. Because to not be present in a conversation or in a relationship, what is the point of either. So she had always given 110% when it came to both. Never regretting either or any. But liking the ability to keep some for herself. To store up if you will.

Maybe that’s where the story is or was. Hidden or bubbling just below the surface. Which makes her sound shallow. Which she was never really accused of. But it was a way to avoid it.

She kept herself so busy with others that she didn’t have to pay attention to herself. She could give everything to those around her and then not have time or the energy to bother with anything else. She didn’t mind that. Kind of liked it. But she knew she needed to do what she was meant to do. She hoped that it was writing?

What if after all the thinking, contemplating and preparing to get herself perfectly aligned to write she had no real talent or ability to carry a story or an idea and she would forever just pound out words on the page. Words that never went anywhere or meant anything that no one wanted and most certainly didn’t want to pay for! What then? Where was the idea that would stick?

That day on the bus was just another day. The weather was good and without incident she bought her four apples, three bananas and a yogurt. It was Wednesday after all.

Later that day while on the streetcar she noticed a nicely dressed young man. Maybe thirty, not much more than that. She noticed that he had a map of the streetcar out and unfolded. He was looking at the map and then up at the map in the streetcar. As she looked closer she realized that the map had been laminated. She had never seen that map laminated before? Had he gotten it that way? Or did he do it himself. She then noticed his brief case. She thought that he must be either very successful or very important. The briefcase was one of those very sturdy one, aluminum maybe? But it was a light color of brown. Very nice, she thought. She watched as he folded the map and opened his briefcase to put the map back. As he opened the case she noticed that for the most part it was empty. Except for 3 other laminated maps.

Her father had a briefcase when she was a child. He was very important and she only saw him on Sundays, sometimes during the week, but rarely. He was a gentle and quiet man, but very busy and very important. She knew he was important because of the crease between his eyebrows. He was very serious all the time. He was also gone frequently, traveling on business.

She didn’t see much of her mother either. She was busy planning party’s, at the club or traveling with her father. So mostly she saw the maid, the cook and her nanny. And while well cared for and watched over closely she was left to do just about what ever she wanted. As long as she went to school and made good grades, which she did.

The house they lived in was big. Not enormous, but big for the town that it was in. It actually was most of the town. Close to 800 acres. There was a stable for the horses a green house, a church and houses for the people who worked the land and building for her father. Many of the people who lived in the town worked for her father.

When her father was home on Sunday’s breakfast would be served on the sun porch. They would walk to church then back to the house for reading, maybe a game of cards and supper. Sometimes they would have company for supper. None of her parent’s friends had children. Well they had children but they were older so none of them really cared to play with her so she was once again left to her own imagination.
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creative

solitude

She wore bowling shoes and carried a basket like Dorothy. It was hard to tell if the plaid pants she had on were long Capri’s or short because she carried a few extra pounds. But she didn’t care because the colors where coordinated. Red’s, blacks and white. Bowling shoes were not her only pair of shoes, but one of her favorite. She liked them mostly because she, from time to time would notice people looking at them. They rarely said anything to her about the shoes. But often smiled or even giggled. She wrote that off as her contribution to happy for the day. People were so unhappy. If her shoes brought on a smile, maybe it was the first in a long while.

It’s hard to imagine the hundreds of people you see every week or even every day. Who they are, where they come from, what makes them happy? Are they happy? Sometimes you see someone and you know … or do you.

She got on the bus and sat down with a smile on her face. She seemed happy and carefree. But maybe I was the first person to see her in days. Maybe she walked through life believing that she was invisible. Maybe she had been invisible for so long that see grew to appreciate it or understand it. Or just accept it as the way life would be. After all, did she really need more than she had?

Life had not handed her a bad story. Just, in her opinion, one with not much flavor. She was born, went to grammar school and high school. She went off to college with everyone and didn’t quite fit in. It seemed that those around her is where stuff happened. At least she knew some people that exciting things happened to. Actually she was fine with watching all of it. She didn’t really like much being in a spotlight or attracting the attention that other did. She felt it was too much responsibility to be there and she wasn’t sure she could adequately deliver a worthy product. So she was find with sitting back.

As she road the bus that day to fill her basket; who cared about childhood or college? The mundane needed to be completed. She needed four apples, three maybe four bananas and a yogurt.

As the streets past and the numbers got smaller she wondered who she would see. Feeling more or less invisible she didn’t often notice people around her either. Well she might not have noticed them, but she was careful and always aware of their space. It came as a second nature to move through the day like she was the only one there. How often had someone stepped in front of her or blocked her view of something? Like she wasn’t there? She always thought it odd, but just moved over to another spot hoping for a clear view.

The basket was actually a bit bigger than that one that Dorothy carried and it didn’t have a cover on it. But it was just right for what she could carry at any given time. She didn’t originally get the basket for errand. But on her way out one day she saw the basket out of the corner of her eye and was compelled to take it along. That was 7 years ago. She knew by now that if she was by chance seen somewhere along the way, she would be remembered for the basket if nothing else.

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creative

He used the “N” word!

And said to me that I needed to embrace my inner narcissism. How the hell do I do that?

I had dinner with a friend on Wednesday night. It’s always an interesting meeting up with MM. We met when I was a recruiter a few years back. Not that I’m not still a recruiter, but I do other things too. I think he called me after applying to a position and asked if we could meet so he could find out more about the company. Of course I said yes. But then I’m crazy that way!

He said to me before dinner that I needed to embrace my narcissistic side. He said that was my problem, I wasn’t narcissistic enough. GAD! That was after he told me my tweets were half-hearted. I don’t disagree! Kinda refreshing when someone is straight with you.

Narcissism is a noun, an inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.

1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself. See Synonyms at conceit.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one’s own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.

Did I find a typo on dictionary.com?

I guess I’m not crazy this way. I have for many years easily navigated the life that is mine with the idea that, it’s not about me. Well, it’s not. So I ask again, how do I do that?!

I like myself, might even say I love myself. But excessive, yeah that doesn’t feel right.

I feel like there is more to this than these few words here. But I don’t think I’ve processed it in its entirety. I mean, on a certain level, I get it. But actually I don’t.

Hmm, I’m thinking this post is lame, but I’m determined to post everyday this month. And I don’t actually think this one fit’s the theme, MITZVAH. But it is what it is.

I guess I could say that the act of kindness was his honesty. And how I don’t think some see the benefit in that kind of honesty and would take something like that personally. Well it is personal, but you have to glean from that what it means to you the person. And how someone might think enough of you to push you a certain way or a direction that you yourself didn’t think you could go. Or needed to go.

I think I have to think about this some more.

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creative

a little more work

Is what the post that I started working on for tonight is going to need. So, you get this.

I think that I wanted to do documentaries before I really knew what a documentary actually was. What I knew was, I didn’t want the stories to go away, to die with those who had told them. My fear now is that they have faded and changed with age and the unfortunate result of that age.

I didn’t do a very good job of keeping track my self. Procrastination I guess. But the stories are important. Like any story, there is fabric and texture. Elements, to some degree that are who I am and a part of who I have become.

To me they have been the truest part of my life. Pure in their content and to me clear in the intent. Simple tales of life and love.

There is a line in the movie “Adaptation”, “change is not a choice”. One can certainly participate in change, but it often is not a choice. Very often it is presented to you before you even realize what is happening.

For me those stories also represent a different time. A time before everything changed. Young innocence trusted and believed that love was unconditional.

I try to think about them and what was important at the time they were being told. They had no real significance to that exact time other than they made us laugh. They were stories of humor; adolescent adventure and pranks only siblings can play on each other. Stories that mark an era and time of dearth and longing. Longing for more or just enough to get to the next day.

My only connection to what shaped those who came before me are hidden in those tales. Tuck away in the minds that have faded. Gone with those who have already left this earth.

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The images are all yellow now. But they are the true keepers of the stories.

The Green Parrot was a restaurant in Columbus KS. My Aunt Irene and her husband Levi Runyon “ran the restaurant” Grandma used to say. With the rest of the family they left Neodesha to help them.

Driving into Columbus Kansas even for me has a certain familiarity about it. Maybe it’s because those who came before me walked here, lived here and loved here.

Even after 75 years after the fact I can imagine what it looked like, smelled like and how the people existed. I have a feel for the pace of the traffic, the colors, the texture…the air.

The texture or core of the story is that these two people fall in love and in the strangest reality develop an unconditional love for each other. The kind of love usually reserved for that of parent and child. This love produces children who don’t necessarily love unconditionally. They have somehow learned to love with conditions attached. Basically not gleaning any of the love that their parents lived or exhibited.

They married on October 14, 1933. Best guess is that they met sometime around 1930-1931. Marguerite’s sister Irene and her husband Levi ran a restaurant in Columbus Kansas called the Green Parrot. Gerald was born in Miami Oklahoma, where they got married but grew up in Columbus.

Gerald was born on June 22, 1911. Marguerite was born in Neodesha KS on July 14, 1915. Their story is truly a great love story.

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creative don't speak...don't speak!

NaBloPoMo?

Yes, yet another test of ones ability to commit to something for 30 days. I’ve long said that I have commitment issues. Sure, sure I’ve had jobs for longer than 30 days. I finished high school and college (second time around). But I think my attention span for most everything in my life is, as they say, of a gnat.

Twice now I’ve started NaNoWriMo. Twice now I’ve fallen ridiculously short of 50,000 words. I just plain ole run out of steam, words or imagination. Not sure which. Can’t commit myself to the reason behind that, to busy not finishing other things. I did decide that since the main, or only character in this year’s NaNoWriMo wanted to be a writer that I would combine all the short stories that I’ve written. Including last years. I almost hit 30,000 words. So even cheating I didn’t make it. Maybe I’m destined for the short story circuit?

Last month I discovered National Blog Post Month. Of course, one more thing to try not to finish! So I secretly started yesterday. Actually posted it about 11:57pm. So it doesn’t really count. But I was on the right track.

What I didn’t realize that unlike November, December NaBloPoMo has a theme, MITZVAH. What the hell is that? I’ve been to a Bat and Bar Mitzvah. But by itself does it mean something entirely different? So this much I know, it’s of Jewish origin. So Wikipedia here I come for the full description. “The term mitzvah has also come to express an act of human kindness.” Oh, cool! I think I can put yesterday’s post in that category?

And I think I can write about expressions of human kindness. And it makes me think of the movie, Marvin’s Room. Diane Keaton’s character while picking up pills of the floor, says to Meryl Streep’s character;

Bessie: I’ve been so lucky. I’ve been so lucky to have Dad and Ruth. I’ve had such love in my life. … and I’ve had such…..such love.

Lee: Yes, they love you very much.

Bessie: That’s not what I mean. No. I mean that I love them. I have been so lucky to be able to love someone so much.

What are we missing that we don’t practice more acts of kindness. And not random, all the time! I know, I know! I was thinking the other day that maybe really deep down I’m Pollyanna? Good God!

After almost 49 years and a true understanding of who I am (or think I am) for at least 40 of those, am I really a Pollyanna? People have called me funny, sardonic, but never Pollyanna.

By the way, the movie Pollyanna with Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, Adolphe Menjou and Agnes Moorehead, was made in or released in 1960.

Pollyanna’s philosophy of life centers on what she calls “The Glad Game”, an optimistic attitude she learned from her father. The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation.

I took this idea, turned it a bit and suggested it to some friends who have kids. Amazing kids. But the kids are running the house a bit right now. And know exactly how to work it … cause they are so smart! And not just because I know them and love’m, but cause they are smart!

When they want to change the direction of things that seem to not be going their way they get very sad. Well, really don’t we all. They get very sad and say, “I’m sad and I need a hug.” How can you resist that! I can’t. My suggestion was, how about changing that up a bit, “I’m happy and need a hug.”