The June Moon and more musing about Pandora

I just stood outside on my back patio and stared up at that beautiful, far away circle. I always smile and yet feel a desperate but blunted pain as each year goes by. I swear to you it smiles back with the same melancholy emotion. "We" know what we shared so many years ago.

i see the moon and the moon sees me,
the moon sees someone that i'd like to see.
god bless the moon,
god bless me,
god bless the someone that i liked to see.

I ran away from home when the bottom fell out of my soul in 2006. I ran to the shore with my best friend Becky. We both had wounds we needed to lick. She is my soul mate, not my lover, but the dearest friend God/Goddess/Universal Power/Our Power We Access Within Our Own Selves or the collective power of the innate goodness in mankind, the kind Anne Frank believed in until the moment she died. I was given that. I don't know if I deserve it but I won't rock the boat. She is a part of my genetic makeup. I will never give her up... and confidently I can say, she will never give me up. After all, she promised to play the bagpipes, Amazing Grace, at my grave side burial. I hope she is still practicing.... no, actually I don't. It would be better if she was off key to the point that everyone, including her started laughing.... and all just sang in unison, off key, but in unison, that beautiful song. Perhaps someone who understands my love of dance as prayer will step up the beat, clap and dance and circle with joy under the sun. (unless its 30 below and everyone is grumpy) maybe they can meet somewhere else and do it.... but someone has GOT to do it. The Highland Fling would also be fun as hell to teach everyone at the grave site. Becky taught me to do it in the receiving area of Walmart when she was 19 and I was in my 30's. I would love to be looking down at everyone dancing like lunatics around my grave. After all, I have been doing that for everyone else (well not over their graves but their performances) for years here in Boise and enjoying myself. Ya'll owe me!!! I will put enough in my Will to pay for a pint for everyone before ya'll begin. 3 if its 30 below.

But where was I going with this? Pandora.... she is still laying across my bed. As I had stated, it can be as simple as "how are you today?" that can unleash something you weren't quite ready for. In 2006, the box was opened by someone else because I was too afraid of what I knew lay inside for me if the truth came out. My (then) husband, confronted me when I came back from the shore. Asked me to come up stairs, sat me down and said, "I know you are a lesbian."

Now there is a moment. It goes in slow motion... almost as if you are dying and seeing your life past before you. There is a battle. I learned that although Bill never should have said, "I did not have sex with that woman!" I can't say that I wasn't tempted to backtrack and..... try to return to the facade with promises of all sorts and bargaining for forgiveness.... it all flashed in a second. But there was this small door at the end of all the turmoil that I knew I could walk out of with my truth and get it over with. "just say YES I AM." The turbulence of a secret would be over in an instant. Just tell the truth. Don't lie because I have learned a few things in my life. One is never park at the Flying M and then go some place else, and never lie over a question someone is asking you because 99.9% of the time, they all ready know the answer and they are not really seeking your truth but your integrity.

Pandora's box was opened this time by a desperate husband trying to find answers to why his wife was becoming a stranger. Had the tables been turned. I would have peeked in side for the answer too. He will never forgive me for not being brave enough just to say it before he found it. But I pray one day he will find some respect for me in the fact that, when confronted, I told the truth.

Happy PRIDE

musings of Pandora

Pandora's Box - it can be as infinitesimal as the accepted social norm of asking a person you havent seen for awhile "how are you?" that is why i always give that person asking, a crooked smile and say, "are you just being cordial?" then i lower my head and look deep into their eyes and say, "or do you really want to know?" still smiling but more like the cheshire cat instead.

Obsession Over a Myth with Such Possiblities for Interpretation....

Although in Hesiod's "Works and Days", these actual evils are not specified by name, except for Hope (or actually Hopelessness, to be exact)

"But the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands and scattered, all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils, and the sea is full. Of themselves diseases come upon men continually by day and by night, bringing mischief to mortals silently; for wise Zeus took away speech from them."

stories of the distant past
stories of the not so distant past
ponderings of politics
ponderings of parenthood
ponderings of friendships
ponderings of relationships....

ponderings before the split second you think of yourself as you want to be and what you really are. The feeling you have when you look in the mirror. Before the defenses. They race, you know. To see who gets there first. The vulnerable and the bravado. They fight and cloud your true vision of the truth and the fair, if in fact, "fair" actually exsists in this world.

WHY THE HELL THIS WOMAN WOULD COME TO ME TONIGHT I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND.

My muse is not always angry or suspect. She is always bearing a gift in her arms. Whether it is a dying preying mantis or some erotic imaginings of a sexual soul. But tonight, she brought me this entire woman. She laid her before me and said, "She has no answers for you. She is a myth. A story. Worn and weaved into the very fabric of our lives from the beginning of time. Not "our" time but of all time.
She has been said to be the reincarnation/epitome of Eve. However, excuse me "muse" but I don't believe Eve was the beginning of all evil. So I will not go there. It feels as if there is something else in this gift you gave me tonight.

Time and attention will tell. I hope I don't miss the mark in the lesson you have brought me. I feel there are arcs and angles I am to find that will edit my surface conclusion of this woman, of this lesson carefully hidden inside a myth which will guide me to the stories I can feel banging at the wooden box. Screaming, crying and some just crossly objecting to not being heard. Some sitting in the corner afraid to have to be heard at all.

Time, not Doing...

I recently took my two young daughters to see their sister graduate HS and then to see grandparents whom they haven't seen in 3 years.

My daughters are used to living in two different worlds. One world is of things and constant "doing and entertainment". This leads to a lot of complaints from them that they "are bored". The other world they live, their life with me. Poor but imaginative. We groom the church gardens and watch sunsets from Table Rock and go to church where they are free to just be themselves.

Unfortunately, they get more of one life than the other. While visiting G and G, they were immediately bored. When I tucked them in that night we all laid out the bed while they read to me. We talked about how much connection to family, blood or otherwise, was the most important thing in life. That all the adventures in the world would never replace the quiet time one spends keeping company and remaining still with people we have history with. They listened but I didn't know how much they assimilated.

The next day, adventure struck. We had a wonderful day of climbing mountains and echoing our voices in the canyon, with Grandpa in tow and sometimes leading the way. They played football (you should have seen my oldest throw a football, holy crap.) We played volleyball. We had fun.

That night as I laid down to sleep I wondered if anyting I had said to them the night earlierthey would remember.

The next morning, after finding breakfast, my oldest sat down in front of the tv and was flipping through the channels and she ran across the Indy 500. "Grandpa!" she yelled, "the Indy 500 is on. I have always wanted see it! Come watch it with me." His face lit up like a Christmas tree. He settled in on one side of the couch and she the other. They shared the same blanket. That eleven year old watched the entire Indy 500 with her grandpa. I sat and watched them watch the Indy 500. I even took a picture of the two couch potatoes watching the Indy 500. She got it. She is eleven. She understands. Maybe not as deeply as someone at 50. But she got it. She adores her grandpa and she gave him such a gift that day. I am so proud of her. I am so happy for my dad and I am grateful the words were given to me in the right manner that reached them that night.

Its the time we spend together with the people we love that is the most important. The most memorable. The most valuable. Everything else, is superfilous.

nina