I see you Lynn Ruth Miller

Dear Lynn Ruth,

I am writing this one to you rather than use the comment option-- so every one can see that I see and acknowledge you. And I am not a fellow grandmother, though if I were, I'd like dick jokes, too. People talk a lot these days about how polarized our society has become since the last two elections. I don't think we are...we self-segregate-- soccer moms talk to soccer moms and senior citizens put themselves away with other senior citizens so they can all talk about the nth rerun of Lawrence Welk. We put up gated communities to push out people, who are not like us. We don't make eye contact with homeless people because we are afraid they are going to ask for cash. Serving a free meal to homeless youths one day, one of the kids said to me that by-passers' lack of eye-contact made her feel all the more that she no longer mattered, a permanent persona non grata in America. I now make eye contact with every homeless person I see...

I love to teach at Berkeley because I don't have to talk to fellow moms at the grocery store but I can see and hear what makes college kids tick these days. I love crossing the boundaries to meet people who may be the total opposite of what I am. When I went to your house, Lynn Ruth-- that was the first time I was at your house, there was a party going on and I said to my husband: look around the room and tell me what you see...what we saw was all different age groups and people from all walks of life. I attributed this to your talent, Lynn Ruth, for you know how to cross the boundaries of segregation and know how to connect with a 4-year-old and an 84-year-old. You make them laugh and you make them cry and even though there are petty souls out there who discriminate in order to self-segregate, there are also plenty of people like me who do not see your age but who see your young spirit, your humor and your beautiful humanity. Don't obsess with the comments of the little people in this world but live your life like you have been living it and you will be seen. I see you all the way, and that's what matters.
Your friend, Inez

The invisible age

I have now reached an age when people consider me insignificant. I am a single, elderly woman. I have no importance in their minds and my existence pulls no weight in the greater picture. Therefore they do not take my opinions or my needs seriously; my presence has no impact and my sanctity as a human being is ignored. I realized this to my unending dismay in that horrible court case where both the Richard Romanski and Renee believed it was perfectly all right to deny me my rights and ignore my written proof because I did not matter. I carried no weight in their world. I was not blonde, Christian and ethnically desirable.
I saw this again at Our Little Theater last weekend. I had gone there to do a set and one of the comedians didn't recognize me. He saw an elderly woman sitting in a small comedy club and could not figure out why I was there. I was not what he considered a typical audience. I should have been home baby-sitting the grandchilren or sleeping in front of a television set. So he turned to me with the kind of smile you give to deaf,incompetent invalids and he said, "And what brings you out tonight?" Of course I should have said something like "I like to hear dick jokes," but I didn't.
Instead I accepted that to him my presence, my laughter, my currency as an audience member did not exist. This happened again at Harvey's when one comedian could not believe that I was actually laughing at his jokes. Why was I "getting" them? They weren't about me.
You do not have to be old to become invisible. Sadly, society does this to black people, poor people if they "look" it, children and anyone who has a poor command of the language.
Perhaps our appearance (and this is how we are being judged) is a shorthand to give us a reading of a person, but this reaction is far more than that. It is a flagrant denial of another human being's status in society The viewer is putting himself on a superior level. HE belongs. HE matters. HIS wants are rights. The lesser people, those he considers beneath him need not be protected and their personas deserve no respect.
No wonder our children are turning to drugs; our elderly want to die rather than appear old. We have taken away their right to be themselves at any age. Yet it is each unique self that is the contribution we need to make it a richer world. What a sad loss for us as a society and what a horrible wounding blow to those who become invisible.

My Path

As I look back on the decisions I have made in my life and the direction these decisions have taken me I am convinced that some unknown force, call it fate, call it random chance, has guided me to the life I live today and that life is indeed where I want to be at this moment. The teaching career I was so sure I wanted seemed to fade into a journalism career that melted into creative non-fiction. The creative non fiction and the fiction came together in my one woman show and there I was on stage telling everyone else that they could realize their dreams as I have done. The thing I omitted is that the dream I am living is not the dream I had when I was planning my life 50 some years ago. I wanted to be a wife and a mother. Period. I realize now that as each moment unfolded in my life I was pushing myself farther and farther from that particular nirvana. Something in my psyche said, "That isn't your path Yours is a lonely one, a creative one, and an uphill road because you are defying pre-conceived notions."
The beauty of that kind of progress is that if you are a true eccentric and I am beginning to believe those tendencies have been lurking in my personality for many more years than I like to admit, you do not realize you are defying convention when you take your quantum leap into new careers, new ways of thinking and making great ideas happen. You think you are making the only logical choice available.
So I say we must accept that the past is over. We cannot change it. It is valuable only because it gives you the buiding blocks you need for your future, but in reality the only thing you have is this moment.
It is really difficult to live in that moment when you are thinking about how it will clear the way for tomorrow's victories.
Perhaps that is the challenge...and keeping those two options in balance is indeed "treading your own path."
I am trying.

why bother?

My son (9) just told me this afternoon (while I lay on the couch riding the waves of nausea because of a blinding migraine): "In five billion years the sun will expire and take all of us with us in a burning inferno." This started me on the discussion of mortality, yes with a migraine-- easy to do because when the pain gets really bad I'm at my most suicidal.
Like I have said earlier, I don't believe in Heaven but always had this notion of us "living on" in the DNA of our offspring and the words of our books. "Shit, William," I said, "Where does that leave us? And whatever we try to do in our lives? Why even reach for perfection if perfection disappears into the big incinerator as well?"
"I dunno," said Will,"but if I can 't study marine biology or astronomy, I think I'll try philosophy." Caroline (7) was in the room and I asked her, cross-eyed from my migraine: "Does not this bother you?" "Na," she said, "I live now and that's what counts." She continued to draw, her favorite thing.

Still...I have been thinking of chuckin' it all, sell my expensive Orinda real estate before the bubble bursts and find a little cottage by the sea in New Zealand. Here's to life and trying NOW...
Happy New Year to you all!

Being me

I think my biggest enemy has always been myself. I have held my accomplishments up to the stellar achievements of others and felt that the quality of what I do has fallen short. I think that is very sad for me because I have soured my quality of life. I mean to change that attitude. Life is not a football game. There is no winner. Life is a golf game where your competition is your previous score, not that of the guy next to you. Indeed I look back over my very long life and I cannot say I have written the greatest novel, painted the finest picture, done the best comedy, taught the most exciting class but I can say that the writing I do now is far more textured and profound than the writing I did when I started on this road 62 years ago. I look at my paintings and I know that the artistic excitement of what I am producing now has far more depth than it did with those first tentative oils I painted in Bloomington,Indiana forty years ago.
As for teaching....ah that has always been my hidden gift. I think in reality the teaching I do now is more freeing my students to be themselves instead of telling them a fact they must learn.
That is a good thing.
Self image: that has always been my downfall. To me I am homely, inadequate, blundering and failing at everything I try. I look back now and I realize that those blunders where tiny steps that took me closer to my rainbow. Those failures were detours that we all must experience if we are to choose the best road for us to travel. And what is beautiful but the way you make others feel about themselves? Homely is only a statement the mirror makes.
I do not want to sound like a Pollyanna but I do believe that we need to love our efforts instead of our results or we will waste our dreams on negative evaluations of what we did NOT do instead of what we learned. We need to take what life gives us and run with it. What a waste to long for what you do not have or did not get. You need to go get it instead of pining away for it. And you need to be sure you really want that elusive utopia you can't quite cup in your hands.
More thinking as I start the new year....more wondering...more seeking.

Money

In our society, money is the ultimate punishment and the greatest reward. Note how many e-mails we receive telling us we have won a lottery we never entered and offering us something apparently for nothing. It is now 2006, and for the past 72 years I have spent my life trying to juggle what monies I have so that I can maximize what they provide for me in material necessities and comforts. My resolution is to change that attitude. Money is only a means (but not the only one) of providing for oneself and in my case I am totally responsible for my welfare. I have decided that I will no longer allow myself to feel personally wounded when it suddenly costs me twice as much from my finite pension to drive my car or eat dinner. I will spend what I must spend to live the best I can and trust that somehow I will be able to proceed. My psyche will be the richer for it.
I have spent the greater part of this year fighting a woman who robbed me of over 1600 dollars and all that time spent battling her could have been spent writing a new book, painting a marvelous picture, developing a fabulous comedic routine. What a terrible waste! And it is all the more of a tragedy because my own time is finite. I know not how much longer I have to enjoy the challenging life I have created. I can no longer worry if I have enough money to go the places I want to see or accomplish the goals I have set my sights upon. I must just DO them and trust to I know not whom that the bounty of the universe will provide. I must not waste my precious moments fighting those who rob me....and every single woman of a certain age has experienced the same profound insult to her integrity ...but let their own karma destroy them. This is not my role. My job now is to live joyously and out loud.
And I will.