Waiting for the ships to land…

There are days I just wish the extra terrestrials would land and take over or that the evil robot overlords would finally move out from behind their clever disguises. Those appliances lining my kitchen counter are just biding their time, I know it. How long before they become sentient and just start rooting through my things while I sleep?

There are some days when being ruled by a giant toaster sounds pretty good, I admit. Generally I feel this way after a week of political debates or theological arguments. Suffice it to say, this being an election year and weird American commercial theology being what it is, I’m looking a little more carefully at my toaster these days.

Arguing politics and theology wears me out or maybe it just bores me. I’m no rocket scientist but I think I do alright where cogent discussion is concerned. I can follow a stream of conversation, I can add in my own understanding of things. I confess, I’d rather buy the golden rule than buy gold even knowing it’s possible it’ll come back and bite me on the ass later. Maybe I’m a sucker for hoping that the good in people will win out eventually.

I’m posting today because honestly I don’t know how I’m going to last out this election cycle. Between the graphs about who is responsible for the US Debt and the fake email warnings about the president being a secret Muslim and the passive aggressive tweets or FB statuses about the State of the Union address or the state of the church in America I just don’t know how to maintain the “peaceful” and “loving” attitude I’ve hoped to muster in times like this.

The best solution I can consider is to go into a cave somewhere absent all forms of communication and wait it out. Some of my less techie friends think this is an awesome solution for me. They already believe I’m over-loaded electronically and they’re not wrong. That’s why I keep them around. Sometimes I actually listen to them. Sometimes.

It’s a crazy thing, waiting for the aliens to land.

My older brother used to scare me with stories about aliens, sneaking into our window in the middle of the night. He’d say they were gathering information on us, that we wouldn’t even know they had come except for maybe a blurry memory or a strange dream or a bruise a day or so later we don’t remember getting. I slept with my head under the covers for longer than I care to admit. I wasn’t afraid that they were coming to take over the world. I was afraid only for myself and maybe for my sister who shared the room with me. Then again, I didn’t know much about the world then. When I was a kid the big world outside my own neighborhood was not even on my radar. Why would it be?

The news of the world is hard on grown ups. Being a grown up is hard on grown ups. And I’m tired. I mediate fights all day long between my children, it’s exhausting. I don’t want to watch Congress act the way my children do when they are fighting over pie or television or which cartoon hero is better. What leads me into depression around these conversations is that EVERYONE THINKS THEY ARE RIGHT. No one is willing to consider the other view. Have you ever tried to mediate an argument in which everyone thinks they are right and there is no convincing the other party to consider shifting their position? Cherry pie lovers are notoriously unmovable where lemon meringue is concerned. It’s fruitless.

The bottom line here is that I am sick of swimming through the bullshit of modern politics and american cultural weirdness and I don’t see that changing in my lifetime. It’s depressing. That’s defeatist, I know. Sorry about that. If I held to my belief system I suppose I’d pull myself out of that and join Occupy Wall Street or make a stand of some kind against the wall of overwhelming before me. I’d take action. Maybe. But I’m tired.

It’s easier to hope that my toaster comes to life.

Fotos: Night and Day…

This is a slightly different take on Fotos:Friday.

Today I’ve got two videos, both are politicians, both are singing.

This first one surfaced a while back, while Herman Cain was still a candidate for the Republican presidential ticket. I remember watching it and having some negative feelings about it.  Now, as a point of context, I will tell you that I am a Christian and I love gospel music. When my father in law would break into “I come to the garden alone” with his deep, strong voice in the middle of a family gathering it always took me apart. I was fully convinced of his sincerity. Maybe it’s because I knew him and I knew the way he lived his life. He was a great man. The whole world is poorer for losing him a few years ago.

This video though, I don’t know if it’s because there were already scandals around Mr Cain or because I didn’t care for his political ideas or because I thought he was a little off kilter in general, but I didn’t buy it. I just didn’t buy it. I’m not questioning his faith here, I’m simply saying I was unconvinced of his sincerity in this moment.

Today, I came across another video. This one of President Obama singing one line of an Al Green tune. Now, let’s keep in mind that I admit, I like (most of) President Obama’s political ideas and I like the person he appears to be.

 

What is the difference? Is it context? Gospel versus R&B? Republican versus Democrat? Christian versus Secular? Who knows. But something is different…something important.

Food for thought….

I’ve been a bit quiet over here lately. It isn’t that I haven’t had anything interesting to say, I just haven’t had a lot of brain space to type it up in any cogent form, well, except where Paula Deen is concerned, apparently.  You can find that over at Drama Free Fitness.

For the uninitiated, here is a brief recap of the Paula Deen situation.

Television chef and media guru reveals she was diagnosed with Diabetes three years ago but continued to push high sugar/high fat/high calorie foods through various media channels during that time as she worked out her spokesperson deal with a pharmaceutical manufacturer.

For a longer view take a look at the article at the New York Times...right here….

In keeping with the “drama free” moniker I try to steer clear of politic-ish stuff on Drama Free Fitness. For this reason my post over there may actually sound as though I’m defending Paula Deen’s actions which is really not my intention. My post there places its point firmly in the category of “Are people angry at her for continuing to be Paula Deen?”  She’s not a fitness guru, she’s not a wellness expert. She’s a television chef. One of her signature dishes is deep-fried cheesecake, people. That she turned up with Diabetes is not such a crazy leap. The woman has been a ticking time bomb for quite a while.The focus of the post on Drama Free Fitness is more about wondering who Paula Deen will BE in the future, in light of all this.

I wanted to take this apart a little more today after reading some great commentary by friends and acquaintances. As I looked at it more deeply I discovered that the “drama” part of all this does not boil down to one simple issue at all. Everyone I read or talk to who is pissed off about this has a slightly different slant on WHY they are pissed. I’m sure I won’t hit on everybody’s gripe but I thought I would outline a few at the very least, as I understand them. I can do that easily here at Mrs Metaphor. This is not a drama free zone. So, here are some of the issues I did not address on DFF…feel free to add in your own take in the comments.

1)People are angry because she hid the diagnosis for three years.

In my Drama Free Fitness I fall back to the “getting her ducks in a row” excuse which is probably true to some extent. It’s the least drama laden route and one I think has some merit.  That being said, nobody likes to be lied to. In reality, while the possible emotional part of her motive (embarrassment, shame, fear, anger) might be a familiar one to anybody diagnosed with Diabetes, let’s just remember too that she’s got an awful lotta cash to cushion her “fall from grace.” Most of us don’t have the kind of safety net Paula Deen has in place already. It makes her lying seem as though it stems more from greed than anything else. It makes us less likely to cut her some slack.

2) People are angry because she pushed unhealthy foods while she knew she was Diabetic.

One person compared it to cigarette manufacturers pushing their wares while not telling us that they are carcinogenic all those years. That might be a bit extreme. We’re talking about one woman here and I doubt she ever boasted the health benefits of her foods. Even so, it makes a point.

3)People are angry because she flagrantly misrepresents true Southern Cooking.

Having spent 6 years in Nashville I can tell you that I know a number of amazing southern cooks now. They have schooled me well. My friend, Dara Carson has put it this way- “Not all Southern cooks and sacred kitchen traditions are about disregard to health. Southern food is about “gracious traditions,” and though I love a lot of things about Paula, I do hope more people understand Southerners are very health-focused, too. We invented farm-to-table!”   If Paula Deen’s work already casts a shadow on that tradition then hiding her condition only makes it worse.

4)People are angry that she worked out a sponsorship for a drug company before she revealed her illness.

Some say that she waited for greedy reasons, that she was just waiting for her paycheck to come in from Novo-Nordisk before she told the public about her condition. Paula Deen asserts that she was approached by the drug company without their knowing of her condition. It seems a bit far-fetched, I suppose it’s possible. The problem is that while it secures a role for Paula Deen going forward it’s a little odd to ask people to trust your word as you hawk a medication after you’ve just spent three years living a lie.

5)People are angry because she was never a good role model and people bought into it.

Chef Anthony Bourdain has long been a critic of Paula Deen. His biting commentary was already well in force before this announcement came out and he isn’t wrong in his opinion. Paula Deen has built an empire on deep-fried cheesecake. What else is there to say? This announcement though really set him off. After all this time he laid claim to the big “I told you so.” I think his Tweet from yesterday says it well,

“Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

Whether you agree with Bourdain or not, he does speak to some of the anger showing up around this and I respect that.

I know that I have by no means covered all the angles of this. In fact, there are a large number of people who would come out in Paula’s defense. It’s safe to say that not everybody is mad at her. Her largest base of support is going to keep buying her food, cookbooks, DVDs, what have you. Paula Deen is not going to be living in a van down by the river because she is now Diabetic or because she hid it from the world for three years. She’s not going to go to prison.

She’s not going to be cancelled on TV. She’s not going to lose her book contracts. She is going to continue to prosper, I promise you that.  Maybe that’s another reason people have an emotional response to this. Most of us don’t have the margin needed to sustain a blow to our health let alone a blow to our career. It’s not jealousy, it’s just common sense. Here is a woman who is held up as a role model now for diabetics. Should this multimillion dollar cupcake pusher who hid her condition for three years really be the poster child for Diabetes?

Food for thought.

nowhere man…

My Uncle Ed died this week. He was about 75.

It came out of nowhere but not really.  My mom’s older brother was always something of a mystery to me. Growing up he lived with his little family an hour or more from us. He lived on a stretch of farmland that I don’t think he farmed. He lived in a trailer and he had a mynah bird and a layabout dog named Max. It’s strange what I remember from those years. I remember getting carsick on our way there to visit him after his daughter was born. I remember the little store near his place was owned by a man named Ed Morton. He had a lot of beef jerky and soda pop in there. I remember when he and my dad and Mr Morton opened a paint manufacturing business together out there in the middle of nowhere and I remember when they closed it, amid unanswered questions and quirky circumstances.

I remember the day he had packed up everything, following an argument with my grandmother and moved his family away from all of us. We did not know where they’d gone. I never overheard my parents talk about it with our extended family or with each other. I suppose as kids we did ask about him, where he’d gone but I can’t recall asking, I can’t recall hearing an answer.

He was tall and always tanned in my memory of him. He was an imposing figure with a deep, booming voice and loose-fitting clothes. He always seemed to be pondering something heavy, even when he joked he appeared to me to be carrying the weight of the world.  He may have scared me when I was growing up but I liked him a lot. I missed him when he left Cincinnati under that shroud of secrecy.

After a number of years my mom found him and his family. I think she’d been searching a long time for her big brother. I think she missed him more than she let on during those years. She found him because like his father, his namesake, he didn’t have a middle name, just an initial, “B.”  She found him before the internet and without a private investigator. To be honest it’s a mystery to me how she came across his phone number listing in Brandon, Florida but she did and then suddenly he was found.

We visited him in Florida not long after this. They were family but unfamiliar. Uncle Ed had lost something vital, something strong. He seemed broken to me as I saw him through my teenager lens.

I had seen him maybe a handful of times over the last 20 years. The dates and the occasions escape me. My mom kept in touch. She’d visit him, talk with him on the phone. I saw him after his son, my cousin, Scott, died of complications from his congenital heart condition. I remember Uncle Ed had lost a lot of weight. I remember him shuffling around the house, uncertain.  After his wife died suddenly several years later of an aneurysm it was if more of his soul chipped away. He soldiered on though and I lost track of him again. I was steeped in my own life by then, my own family, my own struggles and joys.

I like to remember him best by the stories my mom tells. I like to think most of my mom staying with him while my dad was in Vietnam. My brother was young and my mom was pregnant with me. I like to think of him driving my mom to the hospital at Wright Patt Air Force Base when she went into labor with me. I like to remember that he worked at Wright Patt, that he was a rocket scientist, that he worked on projects for the government and that he quit, for moral reasons, I thought. I don’t know if that’s true but I like to think it’s true.

I like to remember that he started a strange, entertaining tradition of sending the turkey neck from a Thanksgiving previous, to one of his siblings and that the siblings would freeze it and send it back to him some time later. I like to remember that he told great stories, that he smelled like scotch and cigarettes and that as a kid it didn’t occur to me that this combination was unhealthy.

When my mom called me to say he’d died of a massive heart attack, we think (we hope) peacefully,  in his sleep, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel sad or empty or at a loss. Uncle Ed had always been something of a nowhere man, a story we told, a memory we had, a ghost of sorts. In truth, he was lost to me long ago.  Writing this, at this moment, I do have a sense of the grief. Writing this today is a way of filling up that space I’d been holding for him all these years and in so doing I see how important his story has been to mine. In writing this I can see the space between the stories we tell, the pain we hold, the time we wish we had and things we wish we’d said, the people we didn’t know we’d miss.

Goodbye, Uncle Ed. I pray peace and comfort to you after a strange, disquieted life. I pray peace for all of our family in the wake of our loss. We will miss you. We always have missed you.

Edward B. Thompson 

pour me out…

This poetry Tuesday finds the fruits of a few weeks of long hand poetry composing. It was a valiant effort sitting at the cold desk, watching the trucks come down the alley outside my window, scrawling on that lined pad. It must have been an old and cheap lined pad because the pages kept falling out after I’d turn a page. Nevertheless, it pulled some poetic things out of me, I think. Most of them are disjointed, some of them are crap, a few of them are dark but not completely crap.

This one I wrote and then took to the computer to chop up and dress for the plate to be served. I don’t usually have trouble titling my poems so it’s weird to me that this one seems to defy any attempt I take to name it.  The best I could come up with was “Seven words for Gluttony” but I couldn’t really explain why I’d call it that if you asked, so…it remains Untitled.

Untitled

pour me out

when I am too full

of fear and pride

of choice and frailty

pour me out

when I am holding everything inside

life leaking

on sidewalks

on pillows

on staircases

pour me out

when I cannot know

how empty

will be

will feel

will look

until at last

I am no longer

drowning

in my own

parched

skin

pour me out

©adc 2012

I am not the monolith…

“Ugh.”

That’s the word of the day, the week, the year (so far…)

“Blech” and “Ack” run neck and neck for second place. I’ll consider any one syllable utterance able to accompany a heavy sigh at this point.

It’s not “writer’s block” exactly. It’s more “writer’s weary” perhaps. That might not be entirely accurate. I’m not weary from the efforts of writing. I’m weary from mothering and moving and domestic engineering endeavors altogether. Life is crazy right now. Aw, who are we kidding? Life is always crazy.

But to illustrate my real commitment to keeping up on my writing goals I’ll tell you that at this very moment I am blogging from the bathroom.  Don’t panic, I’m sitting on a small bench and waiting patiently at my youngest child’s request, while he takes a shower. He doesn’t like to be alone. He thinks our bathroom is “creepy.”  Luckily, he’s still young enough that me sitting in here keeping him company is not “creepy.”  So there’s that.

If I was anyone else apart from Mrs Metaphor I’d say the above paragraph would end up being my entire post for the day, the whole meat of the meal so to speak, but I am Mrs Metaphor and I have a reputation to uphold.

Generally my children like to be alone. They like working things out for themselves but they’re not afraid to ask for help. When I began homeschooling lo’ those many years ago I promised myself that I’d always say “yes” when they asked for help and clearly, I’ve kept that going. It has its drawbacks, blogging from the bathroom being one of them I guess, but overall things do work out eventually. The other three do dress themselves and figure out things on their own now. Miles is funny though, he’s capable of fiery independence one moment and clingy reliance the next. He is the embodiment of every angst and every joy in the house. I confess there are moments often in which I don’t know what to do with him or how to react and it weighs on me.

He’s the child with whom I spend the most time and so, he’s the child with whom I have the least patience. He’s the one I feel I have to hold close every single night because I am afraid he gets the short end of the stick which is a little crazy because more often than not, the stick is not a stick at all. It is actually a heavy black monolith and it feels as though it’s resting on my shoulders all the time.  It’s what I have to give and it’s what I have to give. It can be overwhelming, the responsibility of it all.

In my never-ending search for balance and harmony it’s helpful for me at this point to step back a little and to realize that I am not really meant to carry this block of stone around, in fact I’m not sure it’s really possible for me to carry it around at all. In reality, that monolith doesn’t move, time courses around it, life courses around it, like water around rocks in a stream.

In times like this, sitting in the bathroom waiting for the youngest child to get over his fears and let me work in peace it’s important for me to remember that I am not the monolith. I am the water as much as any other member of this family. I’m as changeable and uncertain as us all. The monolith is a good place to hang out, a smooth surface upon which to climb and bask in the sun a little perhaps. My great hope as I bask, water coursing around me and the clouds rolling in, is that I might remember that I am not the monolith and that this weight, the weight of the world, doesn’t rest on me.

fotos: salt(water) and light

There is some good illustration here…my oldest son captured by the computer describing the very sharks swimming before him…there’s some good lesson here-
pay attention, be present
no swimming.

the pains of sleep…

Having been on this parenting road for the last 14 or so years I can tell you the thing I took for granted bc (before children) was sleep. This is a common refrain for parents everywhere. Now that all of my kids are more or less sleeping in their own beds and more or less sleeping all night long one might suppose that my sleep has gotten back on schedule. However, it seems I’ve gained some kind of super spidey sense along the way. No matter how deep a sleep I’m in I wake with a start at the smallest cough or whimper coming from any room in the house. I sit bolt upright, listen a moment to scope the situation and decide best action. It comes in real handy at stomach flu season.

Unfortunately, this means that I’m still absent long periods of uninterrupted snoozing.

Add to that the exciting addition of stress induced insomnia I’ve been rockin lately and it’s a recipe for daytime restlessness, crankiness and even mild depression. It really cuts into my ninja parenting skillz.

So for this here poetry tuesday I’m turning to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for some somber insights. It’s not my normal gig where poetry is concerned but it’s got its share of awesome in those rhyming lines.

Enjoy-

The Pains of Sleep

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o’er all my soul impressed
That I am weak, yet not unblessed,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night’s dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper’s worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin, -
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.

Inquiring minds want to know…

I wish I had and I hope I do…

I’d love to say that I typically spend the last day of the year looking back and reflecting upon the many blessings, trials and occurences of the previous 12 months. I think this would be an excellent habit. I do have friends who have this habit. They are very together people and I like them a whole lot. I find I am way too scattered for this. And then I think, well maybe if I developed a habit of reflection on the last day of the year I would not be so scattered. It sounds good, in theory and certainly I can’t recommend my current method of scrambling and then feeling bad about it later.

This often leaves me with a number of “I wish I hads.”  I wish I had kept my temper better. I wish I had eaten well. I wish I had remembered to pay the gas bill. I wish I had taken the Tupperware off the stove before turning it on.

“I wish I had” is a nearly useless statement. Regret has its place, certainly but sitting here, on the edge of 2012, feet dangling and looking into the abyss before me I know that carrying a list of regrets from the wide expanse of land behind me isn’t going to make my flight off the edge into a new year any less dangerous or any more enjoyable.

Making resolutions seems to be the natural response to “I wish I had” but being “resolved” feels like a lot of weight too. Resolution is a pair of big heavy iron shoes stomping all over the landscape. I don’t think that the edge of the unknown needs me stomping into its crevices, feet first.  Instead, I’ll begin 2012 with “I hope I do…”

I hope I do more to love people

I hope I keep my temper

I hope I remember how loved I am

I hope I am always aware of the beauty around me

“I hope I do” is a great winged suit, ready to fly. It is not without danger. Hope is its own reward, always present tense, always in the moment. For 2012, let’s be here and do this, shall we?