Late Summer

I`m up early on my last summer day with A. She is heading to the cottage with her dad. I fully expect not to hear from her for the next two weeks because every time I have been away, or she has, I hear nothing. Her father does not answer the phone. I feel that`s deliberate. I don`t know what to do anymore.

I prepare her as best I can. I hope for the best.  I let her go.

How should a person be? I wasn`t left with any answers. Thanks, a lot, Sheila.

I think my big question is . . . What am I doing here? And I haven't been able to answer that question. There doesn`t seem to be any resounding answer from the Universe and I don`t seem to have any internal sense of purpose - beyond feeling compelled to mother well and express myself clearly to those I love.

Art should, I think, ask us to consider our circumstances critically. We enjoy art, I think, because we are seduced into doing so by whatever particular form it takes.

Recently, I`ve been wasting a lot of my time on entertainment . . . wasting being a harsh word, but . . . I feel that my efforts to create and facilitate entertainment haven`t helped me grow in any way and I expect that everything I do can increase my understanding or further my sense of connection to ideas or people. Again, my challenge seems to be trying to forge connections and I cannot figure out why it isn`t happening.

What does it take to really connect? E.M. Forster was all about that. He was hugely influential for me. `Only connect!`

But what if you want to connect and no one else is really interested? What do you do then?

Can art be a means to connect without fear or threat? Maybe.

Maybe all I can do is withdraw . . . to muddle my way through some form of creative expression that will make me feel . . . even if no one else does.

How Should a Person Be?

The title of this post comes from Sheila Heti's novel, that I downloaded onto my new kobo and have been reading since we left the desert.

Her novel is making me feel less alone, less strange, less like a failure.

Maybe everyone feels a little like a failure, but probably not. E doesn`t. And he doesn`t think about meaning. I asked him, 'What makes your life meaningful,' and he said, 'I don`t think like that.'

Whenever I try to talk to him, that is the kind of response I get. He is perfect, has done everything he ever wanted to, doesn't have any regrets, and doesn't think about the future, beyond planning for his perfect children's perfect lives.

I can't talk to anyone else because they are all busy.

It is difficult to find kindred souls, and I do believe in them. My daughter is one, but she`s still a kid.

So . . . where does that leave me? I talk to my 7-year-old. Our conversations sometimes make sense, but often are so clogged in make-believe they don't make any sense at all.

Most of what I think doesn't make any sense either, so we're okay.

I just lost the rest of my post . . . about how you can worry about how you should be only when you have the luxury of time that allows you to do so. With kids, that vanishes. All you can worry about . . . is how to make it through the day, or week, or summer, or school year, or childhood.

That`s the next movie I want to see - Childhood.

We saw Palo Alto  in the desert. It felt like a movie about living in the desert.

I think the desert is easier to live in than the wilderness. There is less to attend to.

How should I be? Apparently, according to the signs I`ve been seeing, I should be nothing much of anything at all . . . the universe keeps shutting doors. Bam! Not for you. Bam! Sorry! Bam! Think of something else.

Funny that Heti`s mind never goes that way . . . her gripes are with others. She knows she's right where she should be.

Lessons from the Desert

So, in beginning to think about this post, I was reminded of the fact that Jesus also went into the desert. I am not religious, but I opened my little red Gideon bible, given to me in 1978, and it opened to this passage:
             Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

This was a prolonged chapter about fasting and temptation and Jesus sending the devil away. Was this the whole desert section? I`m not sure. Maybe I am confusing wilderness and desert. I live in the wilderness . . . I just visited the desert.

I loved the desert. I felt it taught me a number of valuable lessons. I`ll try to summarize them here:

1. what appears stark and barren may be thriving with beauty and life
2. look closely
3. breathe deeply
4. drink water
5. step carefully
6. attend to yourself in the heat

Oh, there`s more . . . but for me the desert was mostly just soothing with muted colours of sage and terra cotta; contrasting textures of pointed cacti, waving rounds of brush, corrugated mounds of red rock, and dusty, bloodish sand; delicate purple flowers white lacy branches; and sweeping blue skies.

E and I were there so he could ``conduct research.`` While he did that . . . I wandered about Albequerque . . . spying on the Breaking Bad RV tour and reading in sun soaked squares. Later, we retired to our desert resort . . .

So, as I fantasized about escaping our less-than-ideal marriage, I was lulled into acquiescence by our
luxurious surrounds.

This is marriage. I forgot our 2nd anniversary this year, cotton, but rode a horse named Cotton at the resort, as he munched his way through the desert to the shores of the Rio Grande at sunset. E rode ahead, on a horse named Topaz, a survivor of a rattlesnake bite. We reconciled ourselves to each other and whatever this is . . . struggling with stepkids and bio-parents, with our orange not apple marriage, with mid-life and foul tempers, with the messy richness of clashing cultures, bad manners, and good intentions.

Easier, please. I`d just like it to be a little easier.

Suffice it to say, I can relate to Walter White.