BUT DO YOU HEAR ME, INEZ

One of the most difficult challenges of human intercourse is to make ourselves truly understood. I am supposedly a wordsmith and yet all too often I say something in haste that is totally misconstrued. I think that is a major problem in all our relationships. We "read" people by their mannerisms, how they dress, their voice inflections and the way they present their words, as well as the phrases they actually say. Yet,in this modern world, most communication is done on a keyboard or over a telephone and sadly, too small a per-centage is done face to face. This is a terrible tragedy. We are forgetting how to communicate with one another with our whole selves. What a frightening loss! It is costing us the rich satisfactions, the joyous connections possible a social existence.
In my family, we comunicated around the kitchen table. We discussed our angers, our delights, our hopes and our hungers. We grew to understand one another and we learned whom to respect and whom to fear.
When I say I truly did not like my mother and the materialistic, biased life style she espoused, I know whereof I speak. She showed me who she was on every level.
Today, I have not spoken to my nieces and nephews face to face more than a dozen times. Although I tell them I love them and care about them, I am just saying words. We have no idea who we are to each other or whether we are valued for anything but genetic reasons.
My friends and I talk to one another very often but we rarely SEE each other; and so the inevitable happens: We anger one another with presumptuous remarks that were not meant to be insulting, demanding or insensitive at all. They were written in haste, edited by spell-check and sent without re-reading.
Understanding! Where has it gone? We are in the midst of a communication explosion. The world is overwhelmed with information about every person, every nation, every disruption or discovery in the universe. And yet we have no idea how to make ourselves understood. We don't see the humanity, the beauty...the need each one feels ..the affection, the caring, the grasping for a love we all ache to know.
I find this an immense loss; a modern disaster far greater than Katrina or re-electing George Bush! And so I say to you, Inez: "I know you read me, but do you really hear me...in your heart?"
I like to think you do.

rejection as the stepping stone to success

I am part of a mentoring group in which I am a mentor to a Berkeley student who is exploring his/her vocation and I have noticed that in my mentoring I am doing a lot of self-reflection, hoping that the lessons I've learned are a warning or a reminder for my mentee to choose or lose a certain career path or vocation. I hardly have all the answers and in a sense I feel more jaded by life, a little more realistic and a little more human. In one of our overall get-togethers one the of the mentors (a 90-year-old whom I adore because she has such power & spirit)said: "I don't think you ever really reach your goal in life but that does not mean you should stop reaching for the stars." I thought that was wonderfully balanced, real and at the same time optimistic, or rather hopeful and encouraging. I've had some rejection in my job lately-- not from my students but because of administrative hierarchy (i.e. the difference between lecturers and tenured staff) plus some politicking that I don't want to go into here because god knows who reads this damn blog, but all I can say is that where these kinds of rejections used to get me down on myself, I have learned to roll with the punches more and see rejections in a career or in writing as learning experiences-- the key is to distance oneself, objectify the experience (i.e. not take it personally) and learn. Rejection has taught me more than success and rejection becomes a whole lot more attractive if you see it as the stepping stone to success, rather than the reason for hanging yourself from the highest rafter in the house or diving off the Golden Gate. At the same time, rejection can have no educational value whatsoever when the person who does the rejecting has a different taste, personality or ethics-- rejection is subjective and can be unacceptable in that sense, but still I think we should try and be humble even if we disagree and feel we've been unfairly judged...and from there we can turn it into something positive for ourselves by trying again, trying harder and once again keep our eye on the stars....

FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS

I don't qualify for government programs. I was removed from disability pay and down-sized to early retirement when I was 69 because Ohio didn't think I was worth supporting anymore. Simple as that. they noted that I taught so I could pay for food on the 375.00 they gave me and they balked. I didn't work for the right people to get social security. I save the money I earn so I have accumulated too much to qualify for medical or both sections of medicare. I cannot get the prescription program they provide. When I ask for legal aid, they tell me I am not poor enough or my issues are not life threatening. My income is less than half the amount considered poverty level but I have managed to accumulate too much in the bank to qualify for property tax assistance or any relief program for the poor, including food, clothing or transportation. I must pay full price.
And I am delighted.
There is no one to take care of me but me. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. That is what keeps me writing, walking, painting, joking, surviving by the skin of what teeth I have remaining. You see me Inez because if I sit back and expect anyone or any agency to take care of me I will perish. Period.
No tears for me, my friends. You should envy me. I have the freedom to live as I please and the intelligence to know what I want and how I want to be. I deserve applause. I am capable of doing what needs to be done. I am 72 and I can earn what it costs to feed myself. I can find a way to do absolutely marvelous wonderful adventures that I would not have time for if I spent my time standing in line at welfare agencies.I do not take pills for depression because I do not have time to be depressed. I have a life to live. I do not have a moment to be sick. I only have thirty more years to get to Italy, teach English in Spain, go to Costa Rico, star on the fringe in Scotland, perform in London, publish the other 9 books, learn to sing, get a seven letter word in a Scrabble game..only thirty more years to be me.
That time will vanish in a blink of an eye.
I often ask myself, how did I manage to survive and live such a comfortable exciting life and I must tell all of you who do not believe how very poor I am IN MONEY, that the way I did it and continue to do it is to believe completely that somehow, I can provide for myself.
I have a sweet friend who said, "If I collapse, who will come save me?" She lives alone.
That thought has simply never occurred to me. I do not want to be saved because I know that if I collapse, no one will lose a mother, a wife, an aunt, only a friend and not a very close one at that. I will leave when it is my time and then....I will be no more and that is a good thing. We need to be wise enough to realize when we are finished. When I have done my job and lived my life it will be TIME to leave. I have done so much more than live a life; I have lived my dream.
And that is what its all about.
It isn't about how you can get the government to pay your way. It isn't about who is going to get your estate or how you can get money you don't earn by being destitute. It is about living your own unique life. . . the one you have the tools to live because you are you.