Cryptic Thoughts on Sprite

Isn't it the worst thing when something like a Sprite from a soda fountain, whose color won't reveal it's missing ingredient, ends up only being soda water because the sweet syrup has run out?  Have you ever had that happen to you?  Have you ever gleefully gulped through the straw what you thought would be cold and bubbly and painfully sweet only to be shocked by the naked plainness of it's sugar catalyst?  Even though it's just carbonated water there is a moment when the taste is not only empty, but bitter.  Not only disappointing, but completely unfulfilling.  Have you doubted your tastebuds before you believed the soda was to blame?  Have you ever doubted yourself that way, in a moment of disappointment and shock?  Have you ever blamed yourself for not getting what you expected?

Sometimes what we want seems so simple and sometimes, still, we just don't get it.  

What Elton Teaches Me

Sometimes I get to watch my puppy nephew, Elton.  He's 4 months old, a Chihuahua-Dachschund mix, very smart and extremely loving.  He's also a great teacher.  Here's what I've learned (so far) from spending time with this guy:

People really do want to connect, but they desire a safe way to do so.  Dogs are one of the ways we can safely communicate with each other.  I notice while walking Elton, that people say Hello and smile more often than when I'm walking alone.  I think I'm still learning about this phenomenon, but in the meantime I've definitely learned that I really like saying hello to my neighbors and smiling back at them. 

Watching Elton walk down the sidewalk with such unabashed pride and joyful innocence makes me smile from someplace deep inside of myself.  It's heartwarming.  It's a genuine love for a living thing, outside of myself, simply because.  I can only imagine this is multiplied exponentially with one's own children.  

Every living thing (but especially Elton) needs warmth and touch.  Elton is unapologetic in his asking for love and comfort when he needs it.  He has no problem requesting that his needs are met.  He finds his way into a warm lap or a warm bed when he is ready to rest his weary puppy body.  And when he gets there, he releases.  He sleeps til he dreams.  He trusts and he enjoys.  He just knows how to sleep, and it seems the key to that is a willingness to be vulnerable and to trust the world around him.   Elton is teaching me that one of the ways I can sleep better is to trust that everything is just as it should be.  The world, my life, is safe and complete.  Tomorrow morning I will eat breakfast and go on a walk and see some friends and maybe play a little, too. And even if there isn't someone for me to curl into at night, there are people on this planet who love me, and that's enough.  

Be willing to wait for the reward.  Elton is realizing that there are rewards for good behavior.  He's learning that sometimes he has to wait for his treat, and it's very frustrating, but he's learning that it's out of his control (for the most part).  So he does what he knows, he continues to learn what he can, and waits for the rewards he knows he is due.  

I know this is not ground-breaking blog material.  There are probably hundreds of books, blogs, poems, and elementary school papers written on this very subject.  I don't mind.  It's new to me.  I've been successfully avoiding the obligation, responsibility, and commitment it takes to take care of another living being, and that doesn't just apply to babies and puppies and kittens.  It applies to my relationships with people, including myself.  

Elton is teaching me that there are deeper sacrifices we can make in life.  Fully taking on the responsibility of another living being includes a great amount of sacrifice, but the rewards are rich and cannot be replaced with any other experience.  And when it comes from a genuine place of care and love, it feels nothing like obligation.  It feels like a gift, to give from the heart, a certain tenderness or care we are born to give to each other and ourselves. It makes me consider the places in my life I've been unwilling to let go of the need to fiercely protect my independence and comfortable single life, and in that choosing, have locked out the deeper experiences of loving.  

I still have a lot to learn from Elton.  But I am grateful for his precious puppy life and his absolute willingness to just be here with me while I learn about loving.  

And I'm grateful to the people in my life who have loved and do love me while I learn so many things about how I want to love and be in this world.  

Thanks, Elton.  

For What I'm Worth

I'm leaving my job.  I'm making a slightly lateral move to another restaurant.  I have lots of creative reasons why I'm doing this:  'Because I'm ready for a new challenge.'  'Because any movement is better than standing still at this point.'  'Because I want to learn something new.'  'Because there is no existing opportunity for upward mobility.'

All of these are true, but they are not the absolute truth.  The absolute truth is, I could make more money and work less hours somewhere else.  Period.  I have known this absolute truth for the past 6 years, and still I've staid.  I'm curious about this.  I'm curious why, after losing health insurance, taking a pay cut that was masterfully disguised as a hypothetical raise, being told that the benefit to taking on more responsibility was the opportunity to work more hours, and receiving little or no reward, financial or otherwise, for hard work, dedication, and consistency, I STAID.  I didn't question, I didn't demand, I didn't look for another job.  I just staid and accepted that something was better than nothing.  I found the good in it and focused on that instead.

I've been talking to the other women I work with (it's a predominantly female staff, and all of the people sharing my position/wage/responsibilities are women), and asking them why they stay.  I've been asking them if they're happy, if they make enough money, if they are satisfied with their jobs.  Every single one of them has answered with a resounding NO, to each question.  I started thinking about some things.  I started thinking about the fact that women are still payed significantly less than men in our culture.  I started thinking about the struggle my roommate is going through in asking for what she absolutely deserves at her job.  I started thinking about the time when I asked for a raise and was told, NO, and I hadn't planned for that response.  I remembered what it felt like to then have to make the conscious choice to stay and make less than I deserved.

And there are two conversations worth exploring here; the first is the topic of women in the workplace and fair and equal pay / the second is the topic of women in this life and asking for what we want, need, and deserve.  This post will be about work, maybe because it's a safer subject than the latter.  But there will most certainly be a post about the second.  In a sense, they're one in the same, they are enmeshed, but still can be separated for the sake of examination.

I'm realizing that, in more ways than I've even begun to know, women are constantly staying quiet.  There is a fear, maybe ancient, that we will lose something if we speak up.  Our culture, and most definitely our corporate culture, has created an environment that is designed to bring shame to women who ask for more.  Everything around the topic of money is veiled in secrecy.  Why CAN'T we talk about how much we make?  Why isn't it our right to discuss money in the workplace?  There should be no secrets if it's done fairly.  We have been conditioned to believe that we are breaking a cardinal rule when we ask someone about their salary, while no one even flinches at the gossip flung around the break room about someone else's marriage or sex life or neuroses.  A culture of absolutely blinding bullshit storms has been designed to keep us all from knowing or asking.  What about the truth?  What about transparency?

I'm thinking, also, about how women disown their responsibility to change this.  How we blindly accept the discomfort of accepting less than we deserve.  We blame ourselves, we feel empathy for the business that isn't ours when it's struggling, we invest our time, energy, talents, and more into something that will never pay out.  It is a horrible investment.  We stay when there is clearly no room for growth.  We stay when we aren't getting paid enough.  What would happen if we all said, we'll leave if you don't meet this request? What would happen if we stood together and asked for what we want?  What would we do, collectively, if the answer was no?

If the answer was yes, we would get paid what we deserve (that would be nice, right?).  If the answer was no, there would be a lot of very talented, dedicated, hard-working women looking for work.  What could we create then?  There's a lot of possibility there.

I know that I can only start with me, and I am.  I'm leaving the familiarity of this underpaid position and asking for more.  But I want to do more than that.  I want to find the white guy in the wizard's chamber and pull him out from behind the wheels and levers and microphone where he's been telling us that the world we live in is good as it is, and I want to kindly send him to a great therapist and burn it all down, but not before getting behind the microphone once just to say, 'You can have it, ladies.  You deserve it, ladies.  Ask for more.  You have always had permission.  And thanks for all your hard work.'

Still Craving, After All These Years...

I like spoonfuls of sugar.  I have a relentless desire for sweetness.  If you don't learn it from knowing me, you'll see it from being around me.  If somehow you completely miss it, you've got much bigger problems than I can wrap my head around at this moment.

I often get pissed at the the ways we all regulate our sugar sharing in life.  Everyone's rationing it out like it might disappear suddenly.  Protection, defense, denial, proving.  All these powerful ways we find to keep what we've been given to give, just in case we might need it eventually.

I can't relate.

For years I gave it away, and quite honestly it felt great.  After some time I realized that no one was willing to reciprocate and I've been trying to reconcile that for a while.  I'm not that great, really.  Not that humane or understanding or compassionate.  I just love loving.  I just so want to know it, the way some people become obsessed with steam engines or native plants or solar systems or specific religions.  That's the way I want to love another person.

And even though I know it's so much simpler than that, I'm still here in this moment.  Still craving the experience of complete surrender, after all these years.

Random Thoughts (while watching a movie)

I would like to take a vow of silence, for at least a day, sometime very soon.  (I will write about it)
Kissing and Hugging are very cute things humans do.
Cancer is very scary and a sad sad thing.  I hate it.
I have no idea how long it takes to bake a potato.  I'm baking one right now so we'll see.
Sad people create neat things like art and poetry.
A definite measure of a true/good friend is when you aren't embarrassed in front of them.
I'm alright with having a non-productive day today.
Yes, this idea of silence feels really good.
I'd like to dress up as a cowgirl and go line dancing.
I'd like to spraypaint something.  Like the street.  I'd like to make a grand statement that way.
What's important to me: FUN and LOVING.
I'd like to write more fairytale-like stuff.
I am blogging and watching a movie and just bought a book on Amazon.  I think in addition to a day of silence I am going to have a day without technology.  I'll read my newly purchased book that day to reconcile things.
When I spraypaint the street, I'll also say things like: Have some tea -or- I love this -or- Take pictures -or- Baked potato.

Tea Water

Love was seeing you, see me.
It was me laying myself down
(a deliberate choice)
Onto the dark, wet earth
and willfully undressing
while you, unmoved and feigning patience, 

watched me place each piece
of clothing around my body
While you watched me unbutton and surrender
To you
All while I watched, as long as my eyes were still my own to claim,
You, watching me
Unzip my flesh and gladly peel
My ribs open.
I desired to show you every part of me, although I didn't exactly.
My flesh and bones lay around me
as a worn and deflated, discarded costume
with the faint impressions of a life once lived within it.
Then Love was you, I thought,
gathering what you could of me
(what you thought were the most important parts)
and wrapping the sullied, cold heavy pieces of me
in your jacket
and carrying them to a place you called Home
Where I would never consider pulling myself open
that way
again.
Where you painted onto my tongue, a story that was never meant to be mine.
Where you pieced me together with your purpose.
Then Love became me,
handing you your worn, familiar jacket
and sweetly kissing your forehead
walking naked from the waist down
wearing only a sodden wool cloak, soaked through,
into the ocean this time
to become a solute dissolved into the salt water
Not really knowing what would become of me
but knowing that the dark and quiet expanse of that unknown felt
the more desirable choice.
Death and love are as real and inescapable 

intangible and infinitely changing

infinitely beginning and ending
as the mist that becomes the cloud that shades the sun
that releases the rain that feeds the herbs and the rivers
that become the tea water I sip
as I sit alone
whole and waiting.

The Meaning of Love

Love.  It's this intangible yet dominating, thing?  It's what we deny or seek every day of our lives.  It is innate, it is necessary, it is a shape-shifter, ephemeral and constant at once.
I'm attempting to define it, which is a funny thing about language and human beings.  But, I'm going to try, so that I can then attempt to live by it/with it/through it more intentionally.  This week I'm going to examine it.  Or maybe this month.  Until I'm finished.  I'm going to ask people and I'm going to ask myself again and again.

Here's the first attempt:
Love is the soul's nourishment.  It is something we all want to know, but don't just know how to do.  It is an action and a state of being.  It is vulnerable and soft and very very big.  It looks through soft, naked eyes and sees just what is in front of it.  Just sees.  It surrenders to it's own softness and vulnerability.  Looks adoringly at it's own complexity and changing definition.  Love commits.  Love makes difficult choices.  Love is, intention and energy.  Love is, thoughtful.  Love listens.  Love is patient.  Love is very quiet (it doesn't have to say much to be understood) and has it's own unique style of humility.   The kind that isn't stoic or proclaiming.  Just, doesn't mind waiting because it is enough on it's own.  Love is enough on it's own.  It can stand alone and will stand alone waiting.  Love is loose and flexible.  Love is sure of itself.  Love is not controlling or demanding, but has boundaries and needs, too.