Reaching Toward Each Other

She wasn’t looking, but there he was
Waiting
A slight touch on her shoulder
sent a shock through
All of her

He said, “Be still my beating heart,”
and they both laughed
Never to go back
to the way things used
to be

No dream can match
this love of theirs
Not diminished
but greater with
Time passing

Those who have not
yet found
the other half
of their soul
Cannot understand

I hope they do
Some day.

Another "Reaching Toward Another"

Reaching Toward Another

A friend once warned me that if I took the drug Wellbutrin I should be prepared to lose weight, because I would crave nothing. She both looked and sounded intense, and that’s exactly how she said it: “You will crave nothing.” I did take it, and she was wrong. I craved right through the Wellbutrin. Actually, I understand crave in all its’ conjugations: I crave, I craved, I have craved, I am craving, I will have craved. If you say them all out loud, fast, you start to hear words like raving and crazy, and yes, I understand those, too.


What would it be like to crave nothing? Does the Dalai Lama crave? I heard him interviewed on public radio yesterday, and he does seem quite calm in his discussion of what he wants (peace, it would seem), although he wants it so much that one might call it craving. Perhaps more a yearn than a crave. I don’t yearn; I definitely crave.


Another friend once told me that the best exercise one could do when trying to lose weight (I wasn’t) was the “push away” (from the table). After I’d pushed her off her chair, she went on to explain that one should always leave the table able to say “I sure could use some more of that”. So I told her what she could use some more of, and then spent the next thirty years trying to understand what she meant. I’ve done of my best navel gazing around the idea.


It’s evolved into the question of “what is enough?” Be it love, food, money, sex, chocolate or vacuuming, it’s one of the hardest questions for me to answer. I tend to reach for the chocolate more often than the vacuum cleaner, but both plague me, having actually vacuumed the air around me, trying to catch the dust before it’s settled, craving a clean house.


As age mellows me (still waiting for the mellowing part), perhaps my craving will settle into yearning, yearning will yield to hope, hope to contentment, contentment to peace of mind, which is what I’ve really craved all along.

JanEO
2/23/10

REACHING TOWARD ANOTHER

He comes over and puts his paw on my lap
and when that doesn’t work he stares at me with his chin propped on my arm

She gazes at me with real baby blues while she waggles all four limbs up in the air
and opens and closes tiny fists

As we pass on the sidewalk our eyes briefly catch
and our steps make the smallest hesitation as we silently greet

While I sit in the lobby my empty gaze is filled by the throng of milling people
and then I see the woman in the green sweater and she sees me

You are across the room, I look up as you make a small pucker of your mouth
and cover your heart with your hand

Another Face

About Face


Face it.
It’s
All
About face.

Get
Shit faced
And
Face the Music,
Baby Face.

Face facts;
Get a
Face Lift.

Face off!

Face forward
Dog Face.

If you can’t be
Two faced,
At least
Interface
With a
Poker Face.

Face first,
Until you’re
Blue
In the face.

JanEO
2/19/10

Hi Everybody!

I don't know Jean Smart--the one who's playing me. I was going to propose Shirley MacClain or Queen Latifa! I'm off to the land of snow this morning. Loving this blog! Let's keep it going! See you on the 25th. Love, Linda

The Cast of Characters

Please help cast the inevitable screen version of our combined blog, From Detox to Retox.  So far, I'm seeing:

• Rone':  Meryl Streep (Rone' called dibs on Meryl, but Angelica Huston remains a possibility)
• Janet:  Sharon Stone
• Kara:  Jennifer Garner
• Lea:  Lauren Hutton
• Linda:  Jean Smart
• Melissa: Scarlett Johanssen
• Kathi:  Mary Louise Parker
• Deb:  Glenn Close

and featuring a special appearance by Renee Zellweger as Denise

 

Please speak up if there is an obvious mis-casting or missed opportunity -- and think red carpet!!!!

 

 

Missing Signs

Looking back, Wanda realized she should have noticed the early signs. There was the time when she was eighteen, sitting in the passenger seat with her pregnant belly obscuring the view of her feet, as Pete drove along an old back road that stretched from Fredericksburg to Abilene. They'd left San Antonio early in the morning in order to get to his parents' house by dusk. Somewhere between Mason and Brady, Wanda asked him to stop, and he'd said, "No time to stop."

"But Pete, I really have to pee, and besides my legs are cramping- I gotta get out and stretch."

"You wanna get out? I'll let you out, but you ain't gettin' back in," he said.

"Come on, Pete. It will just take a minute. Isn't there a gas station coming up soon?"

Pete swerved to the side of the road, cussing and yelling that he wasn't about to stop at a gas station- that if she had to take a piss so badly, she could do it on the side of the road.

"If you ain't back in exactly 3 minutes, I'll leave your fat ass."

Wanda began to cry, making Pete all the angrier. The car screeched to a stop, so she heaved herself out and headed for a bush. Just as she squatted, she heard the car engine rev.

"Surely he's playing around- he wouldn't leave me- 8 months pregnant- out here in the middle of nowhere," she thought. Wanda finished in time to see Pete pull away, leaving her behind, struggling to pull her pants back on. Sobbing, she sat down in the grass, not knowing what to do. After a few minutes, she got up, wiped her eyes on her sleeve and started to walk. Because she felt humiliated and afraid, she didn't want anyone to see her, but the land along the road was barren save for a tree here and there, leaving her no choice but to stay within sight of the street. It didn't much matter- no cars appeared in either direction for as far as she could see. She walked for what seemed like forever...

Wanda had forgiven him and would continue to forgive him for the next eight long years. She realized now Pete had had some kind of hold on her, and she'd stayed with him through 2 more babies, through his awful temper and his drunken rages, through his physical and emotional abuse, through her isolation. But now she sat on the floor of her tiny apartment, her college degree, earned on weekends and nights, in one hand- and her divorce decree in the other, and all she felt was relief.

you know you're old when.....

You are mentoring a 4th grader and he needs help writing a story about his favorite place which is the family cabin. The cabin, he proudly tells you, was built in the 1900s.

The next project he needs help with is writing something that begins with "I have a dream that....." His dream is that everyone will take better care of the earth. Let me tell you that when I was in 4th grade my vocabulary didn't include the words environment, conserve, ecology,or preserve. And, green was the color of the grass. Ok. Maybe I was an environmentalist at that age. But, my dreams had nothing to do with taking care of our planet.

ok, I figured it out--this is going to be great! I love reading your words here. It's like a party you can come to whenever you want, right? I'll be out of town all next week--but I'll try to do a six-word memoir before I leave.

Wednesday at the Valero

On a rainy morning in February I drive to the 24-hour Valero. Austin Highway is slick, headlights streak along the pre-dawn road.

Standing in line to pay for my coke, I eavesdrop on the conversation between the clerk—her name tag says Missy—and one of her regulars, the coffee and paper man wearing a baseball cap. Missy is beaming. “I bought my first house!” she says, “A little cottage.”

Quaint, I thought, the word: cottage. I imagine a little cottage nestled in trees, a storybook dwelling, two cats in the yard, lights twinkling in the window. I can hardly wait to get my turn, so I can congratulate her for her purchase.

"You gotta have something to do when all’s you do is work and go home by yourself,” Missy said—to both of us, me and the coffee man. “Me, I got my animated farm.” Suddenly the lights went out in my mental picture and the cats disappeared. She hadn't bought a cottage after all; she’d added a piece to her virtual farm.

“Friend me on Facebook,” she said to the man. “We can send each other presents.” I imagine cartoon roses and candy bars flowing back and forth, clerk to customer.

As I was walking out, a real flesh and blood man bundled up against the rain was huddling under the eaves. Shivering, he needed bus fare to get home, he said. At five in the morning, there’s always someone at the Valero station who needs bus fare, a doughnut, fuel for his broken-down truck.

In my actual car, heading home to my actual house, the voice on NPR is telling me the number that signifies the dollar amount that CEOs of big banks are receiving this year. I try to imagine the number of zeroes it would take to write those numbers.

Maybe Missy could turn all those zeroes into eggs on her Facebook Farm, organic ones that even poor people could buy. Maybe those Fat Cats could Friend the bums and clerks, the scattered orphans of Haiti. Maybe they could Friend the world.

I've Got It!!

I've got it! It came to me last night, and now I need everyone to get on board and boost me with encouragement. Here it is: you know how everyone's making a fortune cooking their way through julia, or living their year according to oprah? Well, I'm going to drink my way through the "Bartender's Guide", and here's the best part, WHILE I go vegan -- and blog about it!!! I'm thinking of calling it "From Detox to Retox" --do you just love it??? Come on everybody -- cheers! (get it?)

It'll be one part "Drunk on the Information Highway", and two parts "Eat, Drink, Pass Out", with a twist. (get it again?) It will be full of mixed metaphors! (get it yet again?) This is too much fun already. Should I organize it alphabetically, and start with an Apple Martini? Or regionally, and start with local Tito's vodka out of Austin? I figure I'll write about the drinks before, during and after consumption, and I'll be so "sensitive" (read: weak) from the vegan diet that the alcohol will have full effect. You know, shaken AND stirred. Oh my god. This is so good I'll never have to work again. I'll share all the spoils (I mean spills) with all of you!

Whaddya think? Hmmmm.....????