Tonight nature drove me nearly mad and speechless. Scott and I went to Rocky Butte so he could capture the sunset for a project he’s working on. We climbed the stone stairs to Joseph Hill Park. Lovers lay in the soft clover scented grass; some embraced, kissing on the surrounding rock walls. And a man had set up his camera pointing east.

From Rocky Butte one has a near 360° view. I knew that the sunset would be spectacular but I did not know that the full moon would rise as though out of the south side of Mt. Hood as the earth turned. At 7:50 something, it’s ghostly paleness appeared.

I have a friend, Scott. He’s a very good friend. He is a thinker, a writer, a reader, a lover of conversation. He will engage anyone in conversation… in deep philosophical conversation, political discussions, speculative “fantasmic” discourse, historical, fact-based ideology and events, a compliment on a tattoo, hair-color or the menu and quality of food and drink being served. No subject is out of range, no person is out of bounds if within hearing distance and even slightly receptive. He makes friends out of acquaintances and acquaintances out of strangers. He is no intellectual lightweight. He is educated and holds two degrees, one in English literature and another in Library and Information Science. He is an academic who is no longer at university but studies incessantly, nonetheless.

Scott can speak intelligently and knowledgeably on apparently any subject, be it concrete or the ethereal, yet he does not shy away from what he does not know. Though he has extensive volumes of information that he accesses without difficulty, he is also a very good listener. In some ways, he may at times appear to lack insight into his own humorous faux pas, particularly when he is briefly enamored with a pretty girl on the street or in a café. In that, he is a normal male. I will call him on it when I hear sexism slip into our conversation but he is always willing to admit the unintentional gaffe.

Scott just turned 40 years old, yet if the hours that we spend drinking and conversing in cafes are any indication, he enjoys hanging out with this soon to turn 68-year-old hippy. He is as happy as I am to while away the afternoon deep in enjoyable tête-à-tête. Regardless of my myriad of mindsets on any given day or his mood created by any given interaction with self or others, we engage in free-flow contemplative conversation that digs deep and wide. My soul longs for this interaction and always has. I don’t pretend to have the knowledge that he has… nor the memory to call upon all that I have learned in my years at university. But our conversations stir the deep recesses and open new horizons.

My interests today are varied and numerous and travel across a vast plain of philosophies. I am deeply interested in the ideas expressed by Alan Watts, Rumi, Sadhguru, the Buddha, Carl Jung, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and many other big thinkers both dead and alive. These folks offer big ideas, be they religious or secular (I doubt that these two ways of thinking are separable) and they excite me and yet I have found, offer no solution to my questioning. Questions, in my mind, require no answers and never have. I sincerely do not harbor any expectations. I am satisfied that my mind/soul is stirred and that there are people ten thousand times more bright than me who have the same questions. To be a skeptic and not a believer, is to be open to learning.

So, perhaps that is enough about me and my friend for now, though knowing these tidbits as a prelude will go a long way in understanding the title of this post.

Our last late afternoon meeting was on, what I would call, a perfect, sunny and warm day with a strong breeze blowing. We were sitting in a café with our usual drinks, a mocha in his hand and a green tea in mine. We had come to a place new to me. It was beautiful; windows surrounding the entirety of the front and sides of the building with fully glass doors, so it was open to the gardens peeking into the softly lit interior. Folks were on their laptops and it was nearly silent with the exception of a few folks at one table speaking softly. Laden bookshelves surrounded the interior walls. It was clearly a place of inward pursuit. There was one table available just a little too close to the couple sitting just behind. I say too close because my dear friend has a voice that is resonate but at times can be construed as loud. I have noticed that at times it is in an effort to pull others into his conversation and other times it is simply his rich reverberate tones. I knew this day would be no different.

I pushed the table away from the couple engrossed in writing and saw that the man moved from where he was sitting, nearest to our table, to the far side of the table. Before he moved, I noticed that written on his computer screen was the word Milwaukee. I miss read it as Mil wau kee and thought he might be writing about the native American tribes of the area known as Milwaukee. “Interesting”, I thought, but nothing more. The table rocked and my beautiful tea rocked with it spilling creamy goodness across the table. Dismayed, I cleaned it up, lamenting that I would be missing a sip or two of the tea. Damn, I hate it when that happens.

Scott got his drink and bagel and sat down and we began to chat. I so look forward to our time together. I never know where our conversation will take us but I am assured that it will be stimulating. I know that I will leave our time together enriched. After years of conversing, I have come to a point in our relationship where I feel comfortable to challenge his assumptions. We got onto the subject of whether he should pursue his PhD., of which I am favorable. He is so smart and can reiterate just about anything that he has learned in the decade he spent in school, as well as the decades of learning on his own. But I know that he would thrive in a pursuit of his own arguments. From any conversation, this one included, we often approach the futility of discourse.

If I were to label my leanings it would be postmodernism. This skeptic embrace of the everything saturates my thinking, therefore my writing. I won’t go into it now but suffice it to say, one can run into many a cul-de-sac and even dead ends in trying to discuss anything at all. And I have to say that it is half the joy of conversation with Scott… getting to this point. We ventured into many notions of reality and non-reality bringing into the conversation, Derrida, Nietzsche, Sartre, as well as others, Stoics, Materialists, Idealists, all of whom Scott is much more on speaking terms with than myself. And soon, Scott invited Hegel into the discussion.

Hegel piqued the interest of the man sitting behind us. “I heard you speak of Hegel”, he said. “Not many speak of Hegel these days”, he continued. I turned to encounter a man who immediately caught my interest. His bright eyes were helped by round, red, spectacles. He had an engaging smile, with one missing tooth. His slight build seemed healthy. His hair, a curly salt and pepper. In our defense, I said, “We’re talking about how little we know about anything and how hard to is to talk about anything if we are even able to say anything at all.” He said, “No, go on. I’m curious and if you don’t mind, I will just eavesdrop on your conversation. Go on.”  This was an invitation to Scott to talk about what he has learned over the years, which he does very well. And finally, I said, “What do you know about Hegel; what are you thinking about what we are saying?”

This brought him to our table and the conversation continued venturing into the history of Russia, Stalin, Hitler and WWII… what fascinating men were sitting at our table. I was entranced by such illuminating stories. I did little but listen for at least an hour with small interjections… Scott and Joe (he later introduced himself simply as Joe) carried the discourse. Scott mentioned that I had been through some difficult times of which I had suffered greatly. Joe turned to me with sincere interest and asked about what difficult times I had suffered. I listed only polio and cancer. Joe said, “Do you think often of suicide?” My answer was, “Yes, of course.” It seems that this did not surprise him. I often quote Albert Camus, the French essayist, novelist, and playwright, from the opening line of the Myth of Sisyphus, “The only serious philosophical problem is suicide. Deciding whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that.”

This idea of suicide is not new to me but is especially relevant since I retired. I have, statistically, another 20+ years to live barring a terrible accident or illness. My aunts on both sides of my family have lived long. But I know that if I were unable to live a full life, I would not want to go on living… in a wheelchair, hooked up to any kind of a machine or dealing with chronic pain.

As a child, I was placed in an iron lung. The view of the world from this perspective is through a mirror above one’s head. Fortunate for me, my body rejected the iron lung and I began to recuperate from paralysis within one very long day. As an adult, I have wondered about the love of a mother for a child. To what use is it for the child to be kept alive, to spend a life, barely alive inside of a metal tube that will compress the child rhythmically to imitate natural breathing. What love is this? Is it not the ultimate selfishness?

As an adult, I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. After surgery, I suffered through eight months of terrible chemotherapy. I was sick beyond sick. I was sick to death and daily thought I would die of the chemo drugs alone. I turned the infusions into a fantasy of sitting under a shaman’s tree while poison dripped into my veins. I was drugged so as not to run screaming from the room. I was sick until the next treatment that tore out my hair, ripped at my nervous system, screwed with my everything. I would not do it again… no, not under any circumstances.

What I said to Joe, as I have said to Scott a hundred times is, it would not be hard for me to die. At this point Joe invited his companion to join us. He said, “Tell her what you have told me.” So I did. What I found out from them is that Margaret (I’m not sure this is her real name) is the twin sister of Joe’s wife. His wife/her sister died of cancer less than two years before. This woman meant everything to these two people. Joe said that daily life with her thrilled him. She was his soulmate. Margaret was devastated by this loss but what was worse, was that she also lost her husband about the same time. She often thought of suicide. Life without these two people was meaningless to her. We had many things in common besides the understanding that living another twenty years or so had no special appeal. I asked her if having a partner gave meaning and made a difference. Her answer was an affirmative, adamant, yes!

From here, we had many words among the four of us. Joe turned to me and looked me in the eyes as we discussed love, soul partners, psychedelics and their meaning for us at this time of life, what things made our lives joyous, what we do with our time, in what do we find pleasure. We found that we were very compatible. He asked if he could call me. He asked many more times and I typed my phone number into his phone. As he stood up to leave, he held my hand and said he would call. Margaret stood up to leave and we hugged one another. There was magic happening. As Joe walked out the door, he turned and said, “I will call you”.

When I left the café with Scott, I felt a sensation that had long been dead in me. I was almost giddy. Had I met someone who would be meaningful to me? Would this person be someone to make life worth living? Those who know me well, know that I had given up on ever finding someone to spend my time with. I had always said that I had been well loved three times and that was enough for me, but there was still that sense of aloneness that lingers. There is that, that I feel deeply, that I do, to accept where I am right now right here. But this encounter with Joe and Margaret stirred me.

My first feelings were insecurities. I am an older woman with the scars of life written on my body. I no longer fit tightly and smoothly in my skin. But would a man of his age, being with a woman of my age expect me to appear 20, 30, 40 or even 50… In the course of the afternoon, I found that he was 64. A man of ideal age, intellect and interests. I had always doubted that I would find an older man of interest to me. I was not interested in young men either but particularly doubtful that I would be attracted to a man of my age. But here I was, all dreamy, all soft and fluttery, hopeful that something might come of this.

I called Tannis excited, nervous. I told Hannah about the encounter, trepidation creeping into my story. I waited a day for the phone call. O.K. He’s not a teenager, he’s got a life, he’s busy, he writes, he reads, he has friends and family. I would wait I told myself, but I couldn’t help the great anticipation. Days have passed now, in fact a week has gone by and I still think about the awaited call but no longer do I believe it will come. My thought is that I typed in the wrong number. I am a magnanimous typo artist. I generously throw around letters and words that have hilarious and sometimes disastrous results. I won’t share any of my most embarrassing errors in order to save myself from ridicule. This, to say that I believe that Joe was being sincere and really intended to call me. But I haven’t ruled out that there could be many other reasons: he and Margaret talked and decided that I wasn’t the person to pursue. He had seconds thoughts and decided that he had jumped to conclusions about wanting to see me, talk to me. Most likely, I will never know why he hasn’t called.

This is not a sad ending, though it’s not the one I had projected. Through this experience, I have learned many things about myself. First and foremost is that there is a possibility that I might love and be loved again. At this age, I was convinced that I would never be attractive or be attracted again. Boy, was I wrong. All of the right things stood at attention… and I mean all of the right things.

I have had a revelation about my past relationships. Jack and I met at the age of 16. Though we divorced at the age of 46, I had never grown up. Growing up often requires being with yourself, to learn about yourself, to pursue your dream. Meeting so young and staying together for that many years, means for me, that I had never really grown into the person I might have been. I was never able to give myself in a way that I might have if I had known myself. Our ending, without intervention, was inevitable under those circumstances.

My relationship with Ramiro was meant only to show me that I was a happy, joyous, celebratory, funny, adventurous woman. I danced through those three years with him and shed copious tears at our demise. But our relationship was not meant to be long term.  I learned volumes about Cuban culture, which included everything from Santeria to Latin dancing and learned to speak fluent Spanish. But, I brought only my childish, emotional self to the table.

The thirteen years spent with Dhillon should only have lasted as long as his first lie. But my philosophy then was, “Stay as long as you can. Leave when you have to”. How sad is that? But I lived by that credo. Those thirteen years took a toll on me. I wish I could say that I learned a lot from this non-relationship, but I can’t. To be perfectly honest, I mostly just tolerated my time with him. And if I want to continue to be honest, it wasn’t his fault. It lay totally at my feet. He was just being him and I was not being true to myself. What else could come of it but a certain ending.

So those are my three great loves. I was not great at all in any of them. I was wholly absent. With Jack, I was clueless. With Ramiro and Dhillon, I have no excuse.

Just at the thought of maybe being in a new relationship brought a lot to the surface. I am glad to have more of me out in the light. I am a better person for my brief and serendipitous encounter with Joe and Margaret, even if nothing more comes of it.

Scott drew the interest of a truly deep man to our table, perhaps my ideal man. Scott, I’m so glad we’re friends for so many reasons.

Joe, if you’re out there and somehow the universe provides a way for you to read this… and if I did give you the wrong number, I am the sorry one.

Just thinking this morning… as you display the American flag for the 4th of July… contemplate for just a moment about what that flag really represents.

Think about being of a global mentality, not nationalistic, not patriotic, not about building walls to shut people out, not about killing people who are not like you, not about who’s stealing your jobs, not about robbing other people of their natural resources and occupying land that we are not invited into.

Think about, just for a moment, how our country was founded on the usurping of land that was already occupied and the mass murder of native peoples already living on this continent for our (that’s you, white people) own gain.

Think about the Black people who were brought here as slaves, not paid, not free, not welcomed, not loved, not equal. Thnk about the new Jim Crow. Think about, still, how they are singled out for failure and are still not accepted as equals… equal in anyway.

Think for a moment about your heritage… where your people came from… if you are not native. How did your people get here? Weren’t they immigrants?

Think about our young men and women who have been sacrificed because our military and corporate government commands them to war. Think about the making of more and more disillusioned and suicidal veterans every day, every year, every decade, every century.

Think about how, instead of us being the salvation of the world… a great country that others can look up to, we are becoming more and more feared and hated and becoming a political laughing stock in the world.

Think about how worried you are about corporate greed and the destruction of the environment for economic gain for a few. Think about how hard it is for us to find well paying jobs, affordable housing, affordable health care, a decent and an equitable education for all. Think about the failing infrastructure, not just in your city but, nation-wide.

Think about big pharma and the drugging of America. Think about GMO and the poisoning of our food and water and how we don’t seem to have any control over how our sustenance has been usurped by Monsanto and other large corporate chemical companies.

Think about a lot more as you raise that American flag in the next couple of weeks. Think about whether you are really proud of what we have become. Think about the future of our children and our grand children and future generations. Think about whether we can heal the wounds of the American people inflicted by the wealthy and powerful.

Think about what you might do to change this; change this with your neighbor, your colleague, your co-workers, your family, your friends… Think about how you might help to open a few eyes, to open a few arms, to open a few hearts.

Think about speaking up when you hear hate talk. Speak up when you see injustice. Speak up when more war is begun and more war continues. Speak up when sick people want to rule America.

Think about what you are saying when you fly that flag. Think about what our flag means to the other… the disenfranchised, those who stand at the end of a loaded weapon held by an American on their own soil… in their own houses, those who are suffering war at our hands. Think about what the other might think that we deserve…

Think about it..

Last night, late… in the deepest part of night, in quiet reverie, I was listening to Alan Watts. Earlier in the evening, I had a fairly dogmatic conversation in which I denounced all language, belief and thought, and even life itself, as meaningless,  valueless and useless. I wondered if I had come on too strong and maybe offended a tender soul.

So, here I was, awake… looking to Watts to sooth my soul. Since he is a profound thinker with a  broad perspective and wide knowledge, I can count on him to help me find my way out of my darkest contemplation. These are not dark in the sense that they are negative but come when looking at things squarely without fear no matter how far from comfort I go. Eventually, I fell asleep to the sound of wisdom emanating from a very wise heart with my conscience greatly assuaged.

I woke up thinking: so this life we’re living is an illusion. it is just a dream. I can live with that. I have found that this idea resonates somewhere within me. I have no idea whether it is a/the truth or not. Being very post-post modernist leaning, truth and such words hold little meaning for me.

My lifetime of experience in this body, in this place, at this time, began almost 68 years ago… longer if I count from the time Dad’s sperm penetrated Mom’s specific egg that made me. Since that time, moment by moment, I’ve been subject to the experiences of this dream, the pain, the pleasure, be it physical, mental and/or psychological.

There exists within me memory of my life (this I know because they are a part of my experience) and each and every memory affects the present (whether or not my past experience affects my future, I am yet to confirm since I never get to the future). The physical part of my existence is the most obvious because of the evidence; these are things I can prove. These, neither you nor I can deny: my weight, (heredity, too much food?), my weak arm (the consequence of polio), the scars speak to the life I have lived. Harder to reach, confirm or prove are the memories that are  ephemeral; not concrete… emotional and psychological but show up unwarranted, like it or not. This can be shown by asking at least two people to share their experience of the same event. Often the memories vary in a broad range. Some of our memories are good and bring joy and contentment and some are bad and continue to weigh us down until the day that we lay down for good; even what happened to us five minutes ago continues on with us until the desintegration of this form,  beginning point: conception, end point: the complete dissipation of this physical form.

Now, we don’t… can’t know what happens to the energy, or call it spirit if you will, after we are no longer in a shape to contain that energy. But, while we’re here, we are this one person in this one body with identifying memory of ourselves. This is all we have. Who we are in this present moment, in this physical form, is the accumulation of all that we have been and done from inception… the sounds and feelings in the womb, the abundance or lack of familial closeness, friendships and loneliness, hatred, fear, jealousy, excitement, intoxication,  fullness and emptiness, joy, sexual pleasure or pain, even bliss.

Because of technology, we have been increasingly able to record memory that endures for longer and longer periods of time. Beginning with drawing in dirt, in sand, on stone, in clay, on wood and leaves and paper and so forth and eventually on to the development of recorded language,  writing and the ability to read, and later still, to photography and moving images, film, animation… until we come up to the present day where there is a camera and/or audio device in practically every hand.

So what I’m thinking is…  so what if it is all a dream? Yesterday is gone, the very last minute is gone, the last breath we took is over… it’s all slipping by at a rapid rate… it seems like an increasingly rapid rate but the memories remain in our bodies, our minds, our psyches and they affect profoundly the present moment, how we face or are incapable of facing fear, whether or not we are communicative or are withdrawn in relationships, whether or not we have physical capacity or are disabled, whether or not we can reproduce one of our own kind and raise another conscious human being… all of this we carry with us until the end.

It is only our ability  to see or to awaken to the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, there is something that exists before  this form is created by the coming together of the parts of two other forms like ourselves. Does it exist after this one  body, made of not very durable stuff, disintegrates into the earth? Suppose then that the memories, be they pleasant or painful, do not have to negatively affect our time here in the physical and perhaps we don’t need to forget our experiences in order to live an enlightened existence. Imagine then that we can embrace our experiences to date and continue to live daily, enhanced by the pain and pleasure, knowing how transient life in this one body of water and dust is.

So trying to reject the memories seems fruitless. It seems right to live fully, embracing the entire experience from beginning to end. What does it matter that we are living a dream? It is our dream for now and soon will end. Really, what difference does any of it make?

Dad grew up loved in a two bedroom house with Grandpa, Grandma and a beloved but wild, younger sister, Wilma. They lived happily in working man’s St. Johns, the northern most part of Portland, heating the cozy house with coal and surrounded by Grandma’s carefully tended gardens. They were a part of a big, sweet, close-knit family that spread out from Portland to Rainier.

Grandma’s nine sisters and brothers and her mom and dad, Ida Belle and Egbert Womack, came out to Oregon from Kentucky before the turn of the century, traveling the long distance by train. Great-grandma was the grand-daughter of one of Kentucky’s infamous plantation owners. They said of him that he was as kind to his slaves as he was to his race horses.

Great-great grandpa’s enormous house slave was a favored character in Grandma’s stories of her childhood. The stories of her past were my favorites; I could see the people and places in my mind’s eye as if I’d been there. My memory has faded and I lament that I can’t remember her marvelous name, but I remember that she had twelve children. Grandma and her siblings would dance around her, pulling at her skirt and the ties of her apron as she washed their laundry, begging her to recite all of their names, names that were strange to their ears. Ethelile is the only one I remember. When she tired of their foolish game, she’d holler, “Get out of here or I’ll grease you with this bar of soap and swallow you whole.” Even though they loved her, they believed she would swallow them whole. They’d scatter out of her reach only to return later to madden again like a bunch of yellow jackets on a picnic ham. Tobacco had made her grandpa’s fortune.

Grandma said all the kids cried all the way to Oregon, heart-broken to leave their grandma and grandpa and their favorite nanny. But after a long journey, they arrived at their destination, Rainier, Oregon, located on the mighty Columbia river. There they set up home on some acres in the barely settled territory.

Logging and saw mills were a way of life then in the verdant Pacific Northwest. Young men worked, felling virgin forests with gigantic handsaws and using big chains to pull trees by horse and oxen to the river for transport. Grandma’s young brother, Gilbert, lost his life dancing on a log jam on the wild Columbia.

After finishing school, Grandma became a phone operator and eventually met Grandpa, a cooper. When I knew Grandpa, he died of a stroke when I was still young, he was missing parts and whole fingers on both hands. The huge saw blades in the wooden barrel mill took many fingers, hands and arms of the men that manned them and sometimes would take a man’s life.

The two of them, Edward and Jessie, moved to St. Johns many years even before the beautiful bridge was built. After Dad was born, they lived on Leonard St. until dad was four or five.

Dad watched Theodore Roosevelt high school being built. His black lab followed him in his wooden wagon around the block to watch the men at work.

Dad passed through James John grade school and graduated from Roosevelt, that lovely school building he witnessed appear from the ground up. He was a letterman, a dancer, a joker, he loved the girls and he was a good son.

They moved from Leonard to Jersey St., just a few blocks away, where Dad and Aunt Wilma grew up in their tiny house with the lovely garden. Grandpa converted the garage into a small house that we all called the “little house”. Just about everyone lived there at one time or another. We spent many happy days in this garden.

Grandpa taught Dad to hunt and fish, so a passionate hunter and fisherman he was until his dying day. As kids, we’d go fishing with Dad on slippery, muddy slopes, crawling over large, wet boulders to get to a spot on a roaring, fall swollen river for Steel-head or for spring Chinook. Or we’d be out in a boat on a lake or in the Willamette and Columbia rivers or over the bar for any salt water catch or on the beach at the coast where Dad cast his line from his largest poles. We’d wake before dawn to dig for clams at low tide. We grew up dirty, sandy, sunburned or sopping wet and freezing cold and happy. We camped in a canvas army tent, in canvas and flannel sleeping bags. We suffered mosquitoes and bee stings. We dug for night-crawlers with flashlights out in the cool night air, our shoes getting soaked as the dew settled on the grass, just so we could go fishing.

I can still smell the banana oil he used to clean his hunting guns in our living room. It probably wasn’t banana oil but it smelled like it to me. Dad was an excellent shot and bagged deer, pheasant, geese and duck. He grew up alongside his dad and his black labs.

Mom never questioned that Dad readied for fishing and hunting in the living room, though we had a full basement. Guns and fishing poles were spread out, resting against the fireplace and tables; and tackle boxes filled with lures and bobbers and line and weights and bullets and shot gun shells were common sights in our house.

After high school, Dad went to work for the Union Pacific Railroad. And then the Army called him up and sent him to fight in the Phillipines, just barely 18 years old.

He had only one story to tell us kids and I don’t think he meant to tell us. Maybe I overheard him as he talked to some of his friends. Or maybe I asked him about the Japanese sword in the dark corner of the closet in his bedroom and the Japanese flag that was folded in his handkerchief drawer and the US military ribbons and medals in his jewelry box on his dresser. Or maybe it was the old, small book in German, covered in black leather with a hole driven clear through as by a nail that piqued my curiosity. Or was it the red bound Mien Kampf on the book shelf that caused me discomfort. I don’t know… but the uncomfortable, distressing story goes that out in the jungle, Dad came up on one side of a log just as a young Japanese soldier rose on the opposite side. With one look into each others eyes, they realized that one of them must die. The Japanese boy lost his life there. Dad brought home his flag and sword.

After the war, Mom and Dad met, standing in line at a liquor store and were soon married and after came three children, Steven Larry, Karen Lea and Kristi Louise. You could say that we lived happily ever after until Dad was killed in a car accident at 52 years of age. Happy yes, but life is more complicated than that.

Dad loved to bowl, play golf and as you know, hunt and fish. He and Mom went out dancing.  We had family vacations and loving large families on both Mom and Dad’s side. Mom was one of ten, so we had family galore with reunions and holidays spent together.

But…

After the war, Dad went back to work again on the railroad, but not for long. He tried sales, he tried being a longshoreman, he tried a stint in the office of Acme Fast Freight, but it was pretty obvious that Dad was dissatisfied with work. We had a house, a boat, seemingly everything a family could need or want. There were some hushed disagreements. Some not so hushed arguments. Dad liked his beer and his scotch maybe a little too much. But our family stuck together like glue. Nothing was more important to Dad than family.

My memories of Dad are good. He was fun, sometimes dangerously so. He was a strict parent. He was loving. He was always there. All of these traits were good for bringing up a family. It was only after I grew out of childhood that I saw Dad as a man, separate from us, Mom and us kids, and that man was not simple, but complicated. There was something wrong. Was it the war that disturbed his peace? Was it the general absurdity of life? Was it unfulfilled hopes and dreams?

Since Dad is gone, since he left us so young, we will never know. But one thing I know for sure is that he loved us, he met our needs and we all had a short, relative post-war carefree childhood bubble… at the expense of our father’s well-being.

Though I have left out many, many stories about my life with Dad, I  have written this short and insufficient tale to say you gave us everything you had to give, Dad. I love you.

So this is where we begin before we end. This is not as hard as it might at first seem if you think rationally. You still believe in love and that love is defined in your mind and heart as a monogamous thing. And why shouldn’t you, it is what you were conditioned to believe.

Sex, love and monogamy are what I am talking about. Sex and monogamy are easily defined but love with all of its expectations is not. But for the sake of getting through this, let’s say that I will talk about love as a “feeling” between two people, not family love or friend love, but a physical and emotional tie between two people, something that starts out based on a surge of hormones, somehow foolishly hopeful that, in our society anyway, it will lead to a monogamous relationship. I am his and he is mine sort of a thing.

We are brought up in our society to believe that if we “fall in love” the next obvious thing is that we ought to solidify the relationship in some way. Make a commitment; promise a lot of things that have been proven impossible to keep. We are only human, for god’s sake. Our so called “Christian’ based society founded on patriarchal, puritanical precepts has built a structure of laws to protect those sacred vows that boil down to “I will have sex with only you” professed during civil and religious ceremonies and we believe that those “laws”, if you will, extend to a committed relationship between two people. “We will be faithful”, meaning that we will not flirt or fuck other people and if we do, the result will be that civil law will back us up and the laws of support promised and given to us by our family and friends if we are the “victim” of an unfaithful partner. We have become the victim if our partner has sex with someone else. In the heat and passion of sexual ardor, people make commitments unwittingly. “I love you; this is mine and no one else can touch it; o.k.? Promise me.” And then when the object of our desire gives “it” a way to someone not in our committed relationship we are all undone. Come on now! You know what I’m talking about.

If you look at the statistics and if you are to believe what you read and hear you will see what I am talking about and will begin to come around to my way of thinking. The reality that monogamy is a choice, that is not often chosen, is clear. If you are not convinced, pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or listen to the radio. The media has a cruel way of bringing reality into the open. Man indulges in sex with people other than those with whom he has promised to be faithful, and that in spite of the consequences that result in a society that says that it believes in monogamy and that is the truth. And if we are honest with ourselves, it has always been that way. How many news stories, novels, songs, tales, legends and myths are written to tell the story of sexual betrayal? And we can all relate. It is a rare person who can say they have not experienced the pain of betrayal even if imagined and even though it might have been the tiniest painful pinch. Let’s talk about jealousy if you are still resisting. You see your partner’s glance linger a bit too long, a conversation that seems a bit too intimate, a phone call, a slip of paper, a none too convincing excuse for coming home a little late a little too often.

Woman will remain monogamous for multitudinous reasons. To name just two: she is feeling “loved” which I will put into quotes because love is a completely subjective term, if she needs the security of having a man who can provide for her or for her and her children, (now she will remain faithful in this situation even if it is not good) she will feel satisfied enough to not seek other men. She will need attention, tenderness, support and the most difficult for a man to give his woman is a friendship. Men on the other hand do not equate sex with love. Yes, men write love songs, even cry when there is a breakup of a relationship (or a breach of confidence) in which they felt secure. But this is mainly need and not so called love. A man alone cannot stay alone for long. As my ex-son-in-law, puts it, a man has “a need to spread his seed”.  They do not need love to have sex. They’re not wired this way. They just need a woman, any woman. And not even necessarily a woman, right?

Man does not want to be monogamous. Everything in his biology says that it is wrong. He might think it is a good idea when he is drawn to a woman. He wants to possess her, make her his and his alone so he will promise her anything. He will tell her whatever he thinks she wants to hear. He is tricked by what he has seen in romantic movies, what he has heard in church, what he has been taught at home. But it is not long before he begins to wander in mind and body. It is in his nature. It’s a biological thing. I once had an intensely religious man tell me that given the right circumstances and feels assured that he would not be found out, any and every man will have sex with women other than his wife. Do we need to have someone tell us that this is so? It is happening all around us.

Believe me. This is not what I want for my life or for the women that I love, but when my heart is burning with jealousy or my heart has been broken once again, I must face the truth. And it hurts to know that because of what women believe, that we should have a monogamous man, we will be hurt again and again. If this is so, then why does jealousy exist? Our body and mind react: anger, sadness, confusion, sleeplessness… thoughts of revenge, feelings that only lead to actions that we will regret or even will suffer grave consequences for which we will pay dearly. Is it nature or nurture that we care at all where he is or what he is doing?

I conclude that the only real “love” is the feeling that a woman has for her children, but not even every woman has this so called love or attachment; there are anomalies.

Then there are changing societal mores… women’s rights, for instance, women who are much more independent in this new world. Monogamy is just among the many types of relationships extant today. Perhaps this will all be moot in the not too distant future. But for now, betrayal in a monogamous relationship at the least can lead to a breakup and at the most can lead to murder.

This is a never ending conversation…

Never felt so out of control… There are times when I am face down in the grass. I’m not quite hairless… yet. I lay in my own wool and it pokes me. Lightening strikes and I writhe helpless in its power. Its target… muscles and joints. My earth is shattered. I thought I knew what was happening. I come crashing, no defense.

Owww!!!! I cry out and I am ignored. It’s taking me to the edge. I know it. They say I will come back. It doesn’t feel like it. Food, any kind of sustenance tastes like metal. I call Cappucini but his nurse doesn’t respond. Owwww! I cry into the phone and I get no response. They are used to hearing people cry. They’re thinking… Do you want to survive? I’m thinking… but is it suppose to hurt like this?

The colors are brilliant right now… the greens are mind-boggling. The wisteria makes me crazy with its heady fragrance…

Hold me, I say with tears in my eyes… don’t let go or I’ll fall, I’m falling anyway. Blow my hair away in clouds. Put it in and make me feel warm, alive. Don’t be afraid, I’m not contagious. I smell of gunboats… petroleum and cast iron, but I’m still a woman. How long will you stay? Until you feel only bones? I’ll come back… I promise. My hair… my muscles… my eyes, without tears.

I am happy to be alive… I might die. I can do that. It’s hard to come here and easy to leave. Stay as long as you can. Leave when you have to. I’ll walk slow and determined.

I’m planting a garden. I want to go to a wedding in Ojai in July. I want to see how much he loves me. I want to see Ancel and Enora grow. I want to love them and be loved by them.

I love my scar that runs from my pussy to my heart. It curves around my belly button, a map from here to there. What do you think that says about me?

I am better than I have been in two weeks but they shoot me up again on Thursday and then I go down again. Down again. Five more times…. I will go down again. Now I am frightened. I know what’s coming… It waits for me in a shining bag that hangs above my head. I lie in a nice anatomically designed chair. They try to find a vein and it hurts… everything hurts. Then I lay there trying not to think about the poison that drips into my vein for 6 hours. I taste it on my tongue. I am sedated so I don’t scream, “What the FUCK!”, and scare the other patients.

I am at the shamans. He knows what he is doing. I lay at his feet while he streams a potion of tree bark into my open wound. I’m O.K. now… in good hands now… kill a rooster, dust me with ashes, blow smoke in my face, sing your songs. Turn the fucking T.V. off. Don’t you know what is happening to us? “Are you O.K. Mrs. Peterson?” “Fuck no. I’m not O.K.” I shout inside but smile with blind eyes so as not to see the people with hair, full face, and quick gait. “Sure, I can drive”, I’ll say as I stumble out of the office. “I can fly. Can’t you?” I certainly hope that somebody can.

This is miserable. I am miserable. But in my misery I see god in everything. My life, though it hurts and is scary, is good. I am still here. I have a friend lying in a hospital dying. Children hurt everywhere for millions of reasons. My suffering is small. I am fine. I am following the “slender threads”.

Post Script: 2016

I wrote this piece sometime in 2005 when I was undergoing intense chemo therapy for a possible death sentence type cancer. Without chemo, I had a 1% chance of surviving the rare and aggressive disease. It has been, almost to the day, 11 years since beginning an equally aggressive treatment. Maybe I am a couple of weeks early.

Six weeks after traumatic, invasive surgery, I spent one eight hour day, every week for eight months sitting in a chair with two types of chemicals dripping, first into the veins in my arms, and eventually into a sorely placed port in my chest. Infusion chemo took my hair away after the first treatment. It took away my strength. It took away clear thinking, my sense of well-being, my strong immune system. It took away many things, but it gave me more time on planet earth… to see the garden grow.

As I read this essay this evening, I decided to share it. Who knows, it just might ring a bell. It might be timely. It might be interesting.

I’ve been home now exactly two weeks. Each time I go to the grocery store I spend from between $50.00 to $80.00 and I’ve been to the store about four times! Each time, I think to myself, “What a a major rip off.” I want to tell everyone what I paid for a papaya in Vallarta… what I paid for tortillas, tomatoes, garlic, rice… I really want to scream. Why is this happening in Portland… and throughout the US? In Vallarta I spent about $20.00 a week, if that, for food; fresh food right off the trees, bushes and fields, and I ate high on the hog!

It doesn’t seem right to pay so much for things that grow on trees. I know, you would say to me, “We pay for growers, pickers, packers, truckers and grocers.” But we have statistics that tell us how many children in the US are malnourished in this country of wealth. Wealth… not my family. We struggle to put nutritious food on the table in sufficient quantities for the four of us. I’m not talking in abundance. When we splurge and buy something other than the necessities, that money comes out of somewhere else. Some bill has to wait. Something doesn’t get paid in order to have a “treat”.

We, our family, are better off than many others. We have steady money coming in. Others do not. Some children go hungry everyday and right here in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. And we call Mexico poor. We are poor. We are poor at heart. We are poor in compassion. We are poor in knowing how to feed our citizens.

Oh, yeah. There’s enough food being produced. We just make it hard to get at. We make it too expensive. We make it unavailable. We make it inaccessible. WE need to let people sell food out of their houses. Let vendors sell in the streets. Let people fish without an expensive license. Let people truck food around in the neighborhoods in the back of their cars, from the beds of their pickups… Let there be free lunches and dinners and breakfasts for children in the schools, in the parks, in the streets.

I lived cheap in Vallarta. Why does my rent in Portland have to be nearly 3 times what it was in Mexico? Why do my utilities have to be more than double and triple here in Portland? Why does food cost 8 times more? Why does a house cost $500,000+ in North Portland? Why is rent for a simple, old ranch style house or a tall-skinny over $1500.00/month? This is a crime against American citizens whose minimum wage is $9.25? You do the math and figure out how we are suppose to live.

Yes, I found the foreign investors exploitation of the Mexican people and their land intolerable. I could not understand the acceptance of usurping culture for entertainment. I couldn’t, for the life of me, get why people who have free garbage service still throw their garbage all over the streets and in natural areas. I didn’t get why when all the spay and neuter clinics are free, people still allow their dogs and cats to breed like rodents.

Living in Mexico was a revelation. We think we’re not free because of big government and too many regulations. Try living where there is no DEQ. Coming back to Portland is a marvel of an experience. Little to no garbage in the streets, most animals fixed and on leashes, less environmental pollution that even 10 years ago and we’re still trying to make it better. There is open protest against coal exportation, oil drilling, fracking… But we are a mess, nevertheless.

Education should be improved and affordable. Racism is one of our biggest unresolved issues. No one should go hungry. Everyone should have access to health care. Everyone should have a roof over their head. Bullying should end. War should end, just stop sending money and weapons around the world to support war. We should not be participating in religious or cultural hatred. And there’s so much more.

In talking to many Mexicans, the question was always, “What are you doing here?” My heartfelt, inadequately compassionate and embarrassed answer was, “I can sit my big, fat American ass down anywhere I please, even in your neighborhood whether you like it or not. I can, as long as I can pull down $1500.00/month, move anywhere I want to in Mexico. But nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. You can’t cross our border and we’re making it ever harder for you to come.” Resentment? You can bet your big, fat American ass on it! In every Mexican neighborhood are large signs painted on walls along the streets demanding, “Be nice, your livelihood depends on it.” How would you like these types of signs in your neighborhood?

I knew from my first week in Mexico that I wanted to come home. I found it hard to lounge on the beach while Hannah was struggling to find affordable housing for her and Ancel and Enora while I could make a big difference in their lives just by coming home. Secondly, my tolerance for heat and humidity had greatly diminished since living in Mexico 21 years ago. But the biggest impetus for my return was that my tolerance for observing the disparity between the tourists and ex-pats and the Mexicans was just not there. Perhaps if I hadn’t plopped myself down in a Mexican neighborhood and had lived nearer the ex-pats and those amenities developed just for them, it wouldn’t have been the daily slap in the face that it was.

All this to say that I am glad I came home. I love being with the family and my friends. I see the US in a new light but that is not to say that I have donned rose colored glasses; to the contrary. There is a lot to say about being in the familiar. And this is not to say that I will not return to Mexico someday. I am thinking that it might be better to have extended visits… perhaps a month or two at a time in different locations.

Stay tuned.

<!–more–> If you have been reading my posts previously, you know that I had a totally uninvited and unexpected awakening. As usual, this epiphany had to break down my door and bowl me over. Of course, I would have preferred for it to be not quite so scary but sometimes we’re not given the choice.

I like visitors. I’ve never expected that people or spirits would have to wait for an invitation from me before showing up at my door. As is my experience, good things usually come with their arrival regardless of the tidings or appearance. And if I were to be totally honest, I would have to say that the totally unexpected part is not completely accurate; the uninvited, yes, because I prefer to be oblivious if I can help it… but it rarely works out that way. I had a feeling that my time was well over due for a visitation.

I want to be honest with myself but when I’m not being transparent, I usually don’t know it. Like my moving to Mexico for instance; this is the perfect example. Maybe if I had been more willing to look at myself and my dream in the light of my age and circumstance, I wouldn’t have had to go through the falderal of packing up my life and flying down here, just to move back in two and a half months.

You know when someone says, “I told you so”, and you think, “shut the fuck up, I’m learning as fast as I can “? Well, that’s where I’m at. And it’s not been in vain.

After a week of cleaning, eating and sleeping, I got over my drug induced physical weakness and panic mode. I was still as determined as ever to go “home”. I emailed Rebecca and told her what had happened and explained to her that I wanted to get out of the lease. “I’m afraid that I physically can’t manage climbing the stairs to do laundry, getting onto the buses, walking on the streets, being so alone”, I told her. I got no sympathetic email back. I got a terse note, reminding me that I had signed a lease. If I wanted out of the lease, “find someone to take it over”. Period. No mention of the chocolates just a “good luck finding someone now that it’s the low season”. Having rented to who she thought would be a long term renter, she was justified in her response. Well, as it turned out, someone rented the house right away and July 18 for a move in date was perfect for the new renter and for me.

So, at that time, I gave myself about seven weeks here in Vallarta. I didn’t want to just fly out of here. Although there are moments when that’s exactly what I want to do. What should I do with my time that I have left? I won’t stay at home and cry, protecting my knees, I’ve got to go out and see what’s going on.

I have this nagging feeling that I might regret going home, but I have a clear sense of joy that I will be able to help Hannah. I also know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my dream to move to Mexico was an old one. It was a dream that developed so long ago and was no longer relevant. But I would have always wondered if I should have retired here if I hadn’t come and tried this.

There are still so many questions I have that will never be answered with surety: What if I came down here with a partner? Would I be so lonely? What if Hannah didn’t need me? Would I stay? What if I’d moved into an ex-pat community? Would I have been so conscious of the disparities between the vacationers and those that make the vacation what it is? But I believe that I can answer them fairly easily: Nothing I do can change the discomfort I feel around the exploitation of Mexico and worse yet, nothing I can do can change the situation at all. More than anything, I need and want to be close to my roots, to my friends and family. And I still think could die in this house, in this city and no one would know for several days.

The following posts to this blog will be about Karen at large in Vallarta. I invite the unseen guests of my past hopes and dreams to dialogue with me consciously. I want to “show up and face the reality of my life” as it is, not in false hopes and aspirations, otherwise, I might have to have another rude awakening and that was not fun.