For your personal enrichment

Winter Survival: 

Tips from a Midwesterner to snowbirds or full time residentsof the Southwest US

Winter can be a difficult time of year, especially if you live in the Sonoran desert. First of all, there may be too much warmth and sunshine. This can lead to optimism, energy, and a tan. To prevent these problems, plan to engage in moderating activities: stay inside, close the blinds, put the thermostat at 30 degrees Fahrenheit, make a mug of cocoa, and watch only the Hallmark channel. Plan to sleep ten to twelve hours daily.

Second, by living in the Southwest United States, there is an abundance of delectably fresh, ripe, and affordable produce. Consuming these foods can certainly confuse the body and mind about the normal miserable state required to experience winter to its fullest. Therefore, it is best to avoid shopping at local fresh markets. Instead, invest your grocery dollars in the canned- and frozen foods section of a large grocery or bulk chain store. The harsh lighting, oversized displays, uncooperative SUV-sized carts, and crush of families with small, unhappy children will really keep you in the emotional state of dejectedness.  

PRO TIP: Pick up miniature hot-sauce collections, chocolate variety packs, or bath and body baskets to give as Christmas gifts in the front and center sections of chain stores. Retailers have cheated the people in their supply chain to deliver a low-cost, low quality item to you, and your purchase helps perpetuate the cycle!

Finally, desert-dwellers do not face the challenge of commuting through ice, slush, or snow. This is essential to the winter experience. To compensate, it is recommended that residents contract with local ice arenas to dump byproducts of rink grooming into their neighborhood. While individuals won’t benefit from the need to defrost and scrape off their personal vehicles, they will face the irritation of how to navigate thoroughfares unaddressed by snow trucks. This leads to annoyance and a lowered propensity to be social, perfect for replicating the authentic Midwestern winter doldrums.

Fourth of July

This great country was built on oppression

Vows and treaties and promises broken

Unrestrained appetites for land and injustice

Claiming a god who gives us these rights

Capitalism, the foundation to our house of hatred

The scent of money and class are putrid

You can do anything if you’re the white one percent

May god and government pity the rest

Pick up your weapons and shoot down your brothers

All blame is on you, the vile brown Other

Your rage is because of your “absentee father”

Not because we fucked you both over

Fourth of July, your freedom’s a lie

Independence from accountability

Freedom to destroy the lives of the many

Patriotism to hypocritical ideals

So let’s blow shit up in the name of celebration

A fitting tradition for a violent nation

#makeamericagreatagain

Paradise

Paradise

It was just a stand of trees

at the edge of another field

for years I passed without a glance

until a cheerlessly sunny January day

I suppose there's always romance in how things used to be

and not everywhere can be wild

the smoke on the horizon is what caught my eye

drawing close, I saw metal machines had done their rape-and-pillage work

and sons of Adam were cremating the evidence

I paused to watch and grieve

then out from the edge of the wood still standing,

a pheasant in his resplendent garb

cautiously advanced

and then retreated from this human's presence

oh paradise, you are not lost

we mowed you down and plowed you up

and called it progress

I suppose there's always romance in how things used to be

and not everywhere can be wild

It was just a stand of trees

at the edge of another field

oh paradise

Hope

I cannot afford for hope to be the attractive flourishes that counteract my occasional doubt. It must be sturdy, dependable, wholly realized--and hard won. The difference between the two is like using ballet slippers when you really need a good pair of rain boots: you start out thinking you can plie your way past a little problem and end up heel-to-knee in crap. Better to start out knowing what you're in for and dress accordingly. Unfortunately, this type of hope is only obtained by use, so don't expect it to show up if you aren't willing to take the risks necessary to gain it. And once you have it, it must be aired: tell others there is reason to have hope and encourage it in them. If kept under wraps, hope suffocates quickly.

-s


Hope

Hope be not a flimsy thing
Hanging by some tender string
A gilded but temporal dream
Suspended o'er a pit

But Hope be shining sword at hip
Torch as close as fingertip
Buccaneer with curling lip
In face of fiery dragon

Hope be truly only such
If borne in trembling maiden's touch
Beneath her bosom firmly clutched
And lending her more valor

For had she not its shape in hand
There would not be the strength to stand
And firmly thus, much can withstand
Though Fear still bloom nearby

Givers and Takers

List everything you do.

Now list everything you do in which there is a live, dynamic connection of your true self with something or someone outside of you.

Now give yourself a big hug for surviving in a world whose preset is not nurturing to the human spirit.

Big News: We can't make it alone.

"Yeah, I know," you think.

But how does your life reflect that idea?

Does it mean that accepting help makes you a "Taker"? Let me explain.

I grew up the daughter of do-it-yourself parents. My father is an amazing fabricator. My mother is a gifted seamstress and whiz at all things house-holding. While holding a full-time factory job and raising my brother and I, they designed and personally built the country home into which we moved in the winter of 1986. Once there was spring thaw, our family painstakingly planted one thousand tiny pine seedlings into 5 of the 15 acres my parents had decided to convert from cornfield into homestead. There was electricity but no plumbing in the kitchen. The house was heated by wood my father searches out and hand harvests. Many summers were spent growing, canning, or freezing vegetables. In other words, hard work isn't just a catch phrase, it is a core belief going back generations of our family.

So I naturally believed that I can and should do everything that needs to be done. Oh, how wrong I was.

I think the pressure started to get to me right away that first winter. I had ongoing problems with stomachaches, and they started morphing into headaches around my sixth year. 25 years later, I'm still struggling with the need to do it "all by myself" and paying for it with nasty headaches and other chronic pain. It's only because of many hours of conversations with caring, intelligent people that I today recognize I need to lower my expectations and loosen my grip on my imagined obligations. The few things that must be done in life can be done on more flexible terms, without resentment, and in partnership. Dependence on strength from outside myself is the cornerstone of survival. I have much will, but it is not the unconquerable machine of accomplishment I once believed. When I am humble enough to share my life and my needs with others, they are blessed to bless me. This still short-circuits something in my hard-wiring, but when I can slow down enough to choose to override it consciously, I am always glad I reached out.

Maybe you, like I, believe that it's more blessed to give than to receive and this idea of being a "taker" flies in the face of being a "giver". Perhaps you would do well to reconsider. Frame it as a sponsor once did for me: I grow by giving. I cannot give to you unless you are willing to accept. You serve me by asking for help. If all the world were hands ready to feed but there were no hungry mouths, the hands would be useless. If all the world were hungry mouths, there would be a terrible clamor. But if there are hands and mouths, there are purposes for both. And there is no permanence in either role. To refuse to accept ones current position is to deny a great opportunity to grow.

Make a list of the times when you give by opening yourself to be helped, and you may find as I have, that they are also your times of greatest connection. This connected place is where you will thrive.

Now go give. (And take.)
-sk

New poem: "Dedicated"

Focus.

If I want to focus, I either need something loud enough to drown out the din in my mind, or I need something quiet enough that I have to hold still to catch it. This is a tricky thing to find, so sometimes I would rather be consumed by something or someone because it's less mental work for me to do. What I allow to consume me can become just as dangerous as the din. But danger isn't always bad: it can be an excellent place to find closeness that won't happen under other circumstances.


Dedicated

Burn me up

With your laser beam eyes

Gravitas can’t be denied

The way you bare your teeth

And breathe in fire

Light up the night sky

Sometimes you're a canary

Sometimes you're a butterfly

For now you are a blacksmith

Pump the billows hot

Lava-glowing embers dance

Beneath your iron-weakening gaze

Swing your hammer down

Forge a bond

That holds deep truth

Golden Lemons?

If this is the crap in my fan, let me re-purpose it as fertilizer to help me bloom where I'm planted.

these moments, these circumstances: J at low of himself but not yet bottom, my body hurting for all the strain of my mind, longing for intimacy with you and your followers, to love and be loved, safe in you, to find healing, to find connection for my children, to be supported, to have permission internally to be messy without losing myself in hopelessness and unable to cope with my children's lives. Let me find the boundary of my acceptance of the beloved but rejection of the behavior. Protecting, loving, teaching, and guiding my children in a way that shows them health and fullness instead of reaction, fear, and weakness.

lemons.

Hip-hop duo Atmosphere suggests "If life hands you lemons, you paint that sh** gold." I think it denies that lemons are good and have a purpose, though they may be sour on their own. It also perpetuates the false but intoxicating belief that self-will is mightier than any opposition.

Let me not lie about the content of my life, covering it over with something more attractive but false. Let me instead accept it as it is, measure out how it can be useful, and fall to the task with gracious dedication instead of rosy denial or grim determination. Let me accept that I cannot control anything outside of myself. I can act according to my will, but that is the point where innumerable variables affect results. 

If I simply live in compliance with what I believe is the leading of the Spirit, checking myself with the principles of Loving, True, Kind, Necessary, I can rest in assurance that my Higher Power will use my actions according to his plan. After all, he wouldn't be much of a higher power if he couldn't use all actions to his purpose.

The fear for me here is that my wrong actions will cause me to experience more hurt or pain, and further slow my progress towards accomplishment. This seems like a justified fear to me. At times in the past when I've made mistakes, I've had to pay for those things with regret, guilt, punishment, painful consequences, etc. I don't want to make mistakes because it reinforces to me that I can't get stuff right and it cuts into my productive time. Perhaps that's learning: you're more careful to consider what you do so you don't get negative results. But if it becomes crippling, maybe that's the point when you have to just take an action you believe is right and then accept that there will be learning with it.

change.

I want to see good things in my life. I have many good things, and I can focus on them now that I've cut some obligations. to build on those good things and cut away the less-good things will help me keep moving forward.

I've been told that I present a game-face, a composed, held-together face. I don't feel like that's what I do. But I do know I'm really afraid that people will see me as the mess I am, so maybe I construct a front. I don't know. I'm just trying to keep some composure so I can have a strand of professionalism. Messy people don't remain employed. The problem is, my body's falling apart behind the scenes so it doesn't matter how I look, I can't remain employed if I can't function. and more than employed, I can't conduct my life period: parenting, housekeeping, self care, friendships. I guess I have to find a middle ground or a more honest representation. I'm not going to go around looking like crap on purpose so that people don't utilize me, but I also have to give them a clue about my limitations. I've been playing in my head with making this button that proclaims what I can't say out loud to everyone: "Done pretending I have it all together" or "NEW! with Lower Expectations" or "Save those high standards for the next U2 record" or even "Waaaaaay Less than Perfect." Maybe I should just make a disclaimer button: "WARNING: If I commit to anything in your presence, please don't accept it.  I am not superhuman, and I am already over-committed. I may be convinced that your project is the exception to this disclaimer, but THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS. The fine print: I want to help you but I can't. I hate to disappoint you which is why I say yes instead of no, like I should. Reality says I can't please everyone. I have to live within my resources, so I'm learning to say no."**

If we keep the weeds out of the garden but then crowd the plants, the plants cannot flourish. If we space them appropriately and tend them well, they can grow. If we add "fertilizer", we may think it stinks at first, but as it breaks down in the sunlight with water and time, it will produce a better, bigger, more beautiful result.

Go spend some time in the sunlight and break that sh** down into something useful.

-s


*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Life_Gives_You_Lemons,_You_Paint_That_Shit_Gold
**http://www.zazzle.com/no_more_commitments_button-145355132575434427