poem

Yesterday I read this poem, Advice, by Robert Crawford, in the TLS:

When you are faced with two alternatives
Choose both. And should they put you to the test,
Tick every box. Nothing is ever single.
A seed's a tree a ship's a constellation.
Nail your true colours to this branching mast.
END QUOTE/POEM

Nothing is every single-- Lynn Ruth writes a story and now she's doing stand-up. I used to think that life was all about choosing and selecting carefully but with that attitude you only live half a life. Life is about being receptive to the things that pull at your heart. Intuition is more foolproof than reason and following your intuition will lead you to the true colors of your destiny and dream. It takes courage to live like that and I am still learning because it also takes work and patience, but it's worth the journey.

Life is stranger than fiction

Happenstance! Where would we be without it? That wonderful moment when you take an unexpected turn and suddenly you have discovered a treasure. I was browsing the net just before my seventieth birthday and saw SAN FRANCISCO COMEDY COLLEGE . I opened the link and saw the class schedule. On a whim, I wrote and said, "I would like to write a story about this college."
I received a phone call not two days later from Kurtis Matthews and he said, "I love small Jewish women."
I said, "You just found one."
And that started a career in stand-up comedy that continues to this day. It has branched out into story telling and has created much needed laughter in a world altogether too thirsty for a joke.
This wasn't as shocking an event as throwing a doll into a chil'ds face and injuring him, Inez. Yet it was just as surprising for me.
Happenstance. The best part of what life has to offer!
Lynn Ruth
April 29, 2005

another tooth

Caroline's second tooth fell out this morning, so now she has a gaping hole and tries to say "Sally is selling seashells by the seashore."

Years ago, when William had a little friend over and when the two of them had been excluding Caroline all afternoon, Caroline, barely two years old, picked up her doll by the leg, started swinging it and hurled it in a perfect arc at the boy's face. Out flew a tooth, blood flowing from the sobbing boy's mouth and at the door, ringing the doorbell, was the boy's mother. It was embarrassing as the reality of what had actually happened seemed so far removed from reality, but the story has become a classic in our repertoire of teething stories.

Life is stranger than fiction. That's why we as writers have such a ball: if only you pay close attention, you have another subject for another story. To hold a mirror up to nature, that's what Shakespeare said. Mimesis. Write what you know. All good art has a foothold in reality...which is why I never bother to read science fiction.

living your age

Life is a layering procedure and each day adds another layer to what you have created. The longer you live, the better your life becomes because you and only you have fashioned it into the shape you need it to be if you are to realize your fullest potential . The problem too many of us have is that we are determined to pick at the layers other people are creating. We evaulate their lives and try to change them one way or another instead of minding our own unique project which is the person we are trying to become. At the end of life when our faculties begin to diminish, we can only hope that we are always aware of the riches we alone have produced. I am not going to waste time waiting for that decline. As of this writing, my underwear is dry, I am articulate, my life is blooming and the garden it is in is a charismatic delight.
So you see, Inez you have nothiing to fear for a long long long time. Just keep adding those rich, delicious layers.

Erasmus, age and Iraq

Erasmus said something to the extent of that while we're babies talking gibberish and shitting our pants, everyone is ooh-ing and aah-ing but when we do the same thing 80 years later, we're put in a nursing home. Some cultures value and respect age more than others. America is obsessed with youth and beauty. Maybe that's why we're in Iraq...we lack the wisdom to see the insanity of our ways.

And how did we get here from dreaming and seeking? Back to you, my favorite sage and buddy, the one and only Lynn Ruth Miller,

Inez

changing directions

When we lose a part of our bodies we lose a part of ourselves and in Caroline's case at least, she can be confident that when she regenerates that tooth she will have a new smile and a new ability to thay her ethes and enunciate her syllables. A brand new dream for Caroline! For her mom perhaps the term would be watching another dream happen rather than liviing it. Hopefully her front tooth is not lodged in a cantalopue but firmly fixed in her gums for the forseeable future.

trailer trash poetry-- a bit of reality to put the big dream off

My daughter Caroline is six. For two weeks Caroline's front tooth was dangling on a remnant of her gums and yesterday she bit into a cantaloupe and voila we had a piece of cantaloupe with a baby tooth. Now the other front tooth is balancing, yet holding on for dear life, crooked but bold. When Caroline opens her mouth to smile at me I think two words: trailer trash.
In the car today she said to me: "I like this part of town because it hassss grassss to roll in, ssshade from the treesss to read a book in and pretty flowersss I would like to pick and put in a vassse." Trailer trash poetry. I have a daughter with one front tooth. I am living the dream.

Inez

we are all living the dream

If we are to live our lives instead of reacting to stimuli we meet every day, we need to set our sights on a vision. The trick is to let the lives we lead, the people we meet and the challenges we must meet tweek the vision and color it realistically. When I was young, my dream was to fall in love, marry and have lots of children. As my life progressed through divorces and disappointments I suddenly realized that the very things I labeled as disappointments were the stepping stones to the unique dream I was creating. Now ,at 71, I am living a new vision and I love it. It wasn't the first pattern or anything like that first plan but it is a magic dream nonetheless because I move forward in my life, make new discoveries and start unexpected and delightful careers that lead to other surpises and adventures. We are all livng our dreams, Inez. The trick is to accept responsibility for them because we created them day by day and year by year.
Lynn ruth

Dare to Dream

The other day I asked my students whether they had a dream. Most of them acknowledged having dreams as children but these fizzled as they got older. Only one out of ten had a dream they hoped to realize. I was stunned.

Does this mean life, adult life is always a compromise? Is the dream dead? Dare we not dream anymore? Are dreams for dreamers or can we be realists and still have dreams? Don't we compromise and slowly lose ourselves when we discard our dreams? Isn't the dream, any dream, the core, the essence of who we are?

Inez (still dreaming)