Experiment

I’m conducting an experiment called Life.  Proving and disproving in equal parts.  I can be impulsive instead of methodical.  I arrange things in proper order trying to please.  I gather materials, read instructions (sometimes followed and sometimes ignored), watch what happens and record what I am able in words.  On the cusp of this day I am struck by the trial and error of this experiment and how random a lot of what comes and goes in life feels. 

Experiment is defined at dictionary.com.
1.  a test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc.
2.  the conducting of such operations, experimentation
3.  (obsolete)  experience

Seriously, doesn’t life feel that way sometimes?  That we are consciously or not conducting a tentative discovery procedure as we gather our resources and move through our days testing theories.  We have certain ideas of how things should or could be and we head in the direction they point, adding and mixing and stirring new ingredients of locations, persons, experience.  Much of what we think is sure may turn out to be no so.  Many reactions we don’t expect come to pass. 

We learn.  We find success doesn’t always mean a good outcome.  Being alone is a blessing sometimes.  A person can love unconditionally.  Being a present parent is a giant pain but totally worth it as an investment in a child.  Chocolate makes most things at least a bit better.  A lot of who dies and who lives is unfair.  Really, all kinds of things are totally unfair and there isn’t much use in wanting life to be fair (I long to disprove this to no avail).

I’d like to know how the experiment turns out, if I am doing the right things.  Conflictingly I am in no hurry to get to the end.

                This Is Just a Test

Tubes percolating, gravity driven floating zygote in novel dark drifting
gifting some lass and lad with life they are not prepared for no matter
what books read or written baby blows the lid off beakers and boobs

Booboos heal and scab and without kneecaps who feels the hard floor
searching for more crumbs dropped, soon scooped and licked, weighed
record whose eye color and seeing size and proper scale of proportion 

Pudgy marshmallow roast middle grade toaster treat kisses, noble gas
devil may care about safety spectacles, beer goggles instead teen time
we lack listening when told by old and bold because we think we know

Better get the whole body figured out, read the right tome while home
with a secret between Danny and Sandy amid songs longing and leather
not a touch too much or too little heat to keep the heaping heart full

Cooking and changing, creating balanced solutions without blowing up
tiny cup of toxic concoction offered by hereditarily engineered science
become light one flowing, growing daily dropper full of faith at a time

Peaches

A local roadside produce stand is a fabulous find.  Fresh peaches, watermelon, tomatoes, cantaloupe and cucumbers are delicious.  I count it among the positive things about my home that such a spot rests on a nearby highway on my summer driving route.  Recently a friend and I were dishing over how mind-blowingly wonderful the peaches purchased there have been.  My pal made a statement that stuck with me.  It was something like, “In the summer I try to eat peaches every day because they are just so delicious right now.” 

Dictionary.com defines the noun peach.
1.  the subacid, juicy, drupaceous fruit of a tree Prunus persica, of the rose family.
2.  the tree itself, cultivated in temperate climates.
3.  a light pinkish yellow, as of a peach.
4.  (informal)  a person or thing that is especially attractive, liked, or enjoyed.

I think mindfully about peaches now each time I eat one or share a bowlful of freshly peeled and pared fruit with my family.  It makes me wonder what else happens so simply each day that I can savor.   What can we take in on a seemingly ordinary, routine day that is just for us at this time - so perfect right now? 

We can offer ourselves actual fruit and also perhaps consider what metaphorical peaches we can give ourselves.  The view out a window of a fully leafed tree?  The gusty breeze that always blows on the cusp of a summer evening storm?  The colors of the dry, hot, earth spreading along a dirt road, spraying orange dust behind as we drive?  The sacred silence of being alone?  A tingly-cold drink of ice water?   The just right bumps and curves of a favorite chair?  A popsicle with a joke on the stick? 

It is so easy to dwell on what we don’t have instead of the simple pleasure and enjoyment that we do possess.  We so long for fantastical things to make our life seemingly perfect that they distract us from the simple daily richness we might have already.  Too often we become victim to the media images that tell us we do NOT have enough, we need more or different stuff while simple, nearby peaches rest uncelebrated.

We likely all agree life has work and needs to fill in it.  No doubt it is correctly said that life ain’t all peaches and cream.  Maybe sometimes it is just plain peaches and that can be wonderful enough.      

Jim-dandy

fuzzy friend - a fruit - ripe fresh from picking

perfect with dabs of dirt and a small bottom bruise

perfect with thin skin and hard center pitted heart

perfect offering hues orange red and yellow brown

perfect with blush lopsided cheeks offering sweet

perfect only now in summer heat, choose to eat

perfect treat which proffers fleeting familiar yield

gently round beneath lips lightly kissing a prize

Pooped

I have been having fun since school let out at the end of May.  So much fun in fact that I am totally pooped! 

Dictionary.com defines the adjective pooped as an informal word meaning fatigued, exhausted. 

In the last seven weeks I have been wading off to swim team practice in the mornings and swim meets two evenings a week armed with towels and chairs and snacks and sunscreen.  I arranged and attended a pizza pool party for my oldest daughter to celebrate turning twelve.  A mermaid themed waterpark bash was the wish of my other daughter to turn six in splashy style so I made that happen, too.  To mark my son’s tenth birthday, I tromped through the woods masked, sweaty and armed with a paintball air gun shooting and being shot at with my son and his friends.  My 14^th wedding anniversary arrived in the mix, too, as did a couple of potluck dinners and out of town guests.  We have been to the state museum, friends’ houses, and bi-weekly karate classes.  I have tried to maintain a commitment to regular yoga practice while also working to build the ability to teach yoga.  The beautiful South Carolina coast and the Blue Ridge Mountains called my family to come for visits.  How blessed am I to have all these wonderful opportunities?  But, all of these delightful events required planning and execution.

Let it not be misinterpreted, I am not complaining.  Just noticing.  Noticing how much rest my body would like.  Noticing how we can overextend ourselves even with positive behaviors.  Noticing how my six year old daughter slept 14 hours last night. 

This household is headed for some rest.  Next on the agenda is, well, nothing.  I’m shooting for not one event this week so we can hunker down and avoid the encroaching heat.  It is time for us to find some stillness.  Maybe we can get to playing some of the great games garnered as birthday presents.  Maybe we can watch my rainbow colored thigh welt, courtesy of paintball, heal.  Maybe we can look over the photos of the fun things we have done.  Maybe we can allow my dear, sweet baby child an age-appropriate bedtime.  Maybe we can eat tomato pie and cucumber salad from the garden-fresh produce arriving in abundance.  We might slurp popsicles on the fan-cooled porch and tell the stories we’ve written as we worked our way toward being pooped by the middle of July.

Dog-tired

piled people puppies pooped, tuckered

plum spent of fun ideas, doings decadent

delicious desserts, dainty dinner dresses

blue bruises, red ribbons, birthday cakes

drip castles, cucumber vines, campfires

paintball, picnics, the pool to cool bathe

splash bodies tanned calf brown soft

youth under aging palms rubbed safe

beneath brother sun so much fun begun

best arms of mother Juno first knowing

as August hits the hot will make us rest.

Study

I am a school-loving kind of gal.  I have always enjoyed what back in the day might be called “book learning” and embrace the chance to study new things.  It brings me joy to learn!  In recent years I am discovering that the desire to learn facts and phrases outside of me is quite possibly an extension of wanting to learn about myself.  How do I fit into all this knowledge abounding? 

At dictionary.com study is defined as a verb without an object in four entries.
1.  to apply oneself to the acquisition of knowledge, as by reading, investigation or practice.
2.  to apply oneself; endeavor.
3.  to think deeply, reflect, or consider.
4.  to take a course of study as at college.

There are so many wise people sharing themselves and their knowledge in person and through books.  I study with them to perhaps fill myself with tools and find the best way of living.  Study doesn’t have to involve a book.  It can be listening to someone talk.  It can be enjoying music.  Any endeavor in which we apply ourselves can be an act of study.  Cooking.  Gardening.  Writing.  Exercise.  Working.  Meditation.  Everything can teach us.  Anything can offer opportunity to think deeply, reflect, or consider.

Taking time to study is also not necessarily pleasant all the time even if purely voluntary.  Continuous time spent in the acquisition of knowledge often makes me tired.  Sometimes makes me bored.  Sometimes seems too hard.  Sometimes doesn’t make sense.  Sometimes I learn things I truly cannot understand or that my gut tells me to reject or that conflict with some information I already assume to correctly possess.  Sometimes I learn things I did not want to know.

I feel camaraderie as I study with fellow folks I know are right there with me approaching life as a kind of classroom.  We want to know more so that we can know ourselves. 

Schooling

sponge soaked in abundance, spilled
information leaping

lapping up pages scribbled by hands
holding heart queries

answers with questions never simply
accepting squeeze

intuition wrings what we don’t know
may harm or make

us lighter.  With inquiry bodies discern
true knowledge

a quest for you without smoked mirrors
instead clear sight

All

I read an article in the July/August 2012 Atlantic Magazine discussing why women cannot have it all.  I worry this pits the stay at home mother against the employed elsewhere mom.  Instead of fighting we might collectively assert that all is a false idol we determine to reject.

Dictionary.com offers two entries for the noun all.
1.  one’s whole interest, energy, or property
2.  (often initial capital letter) the entire universe

Employees need flexible work options.  Gender should not determine salary.  A living wage is morally imperative.  However, the myth of happiness in having it all can undermine what may be a pretty good life, like a carrot held just out of reach.  It makes a mule plow and plow but I wonder how many tasty tufts of grass are trodden over by that hungry work animal unnoticed and tilled under instead of eaten along the way.

There are facts.  People cannot be both married and not, cannot simultaneously run a meeting and read a book to a child.  Money is essential.  Females bear babies.  Having a parent at home full time puts financial pressure on the employed partner.  Women sometimes have dreams beyond motherhood.  Men and women both parent.  Life with people in it is complicated.  We benefit from one another’s happiness.   

Folks have outside employment part time, full time, not at all.  Every situation has bumps.  A parent with a satisfying career may, just before stepping out the door to a fabulous daycare hear from a freshly potty trained toddler, “I have to poop.”  In a meeting one might watch time tick past the start of gymnastics.  A contented telecommuter may have a child puking relentlessly and won’t finish their work until staying up all night.  One might find in the tenth year of homemaking that finances force a return to work outside the home and they are behind in earning potential.  A married person might long for space, a single person for companionship.  Night nursing a baby knowing your entire financial future depends on someone else can be scary.    

The problem with all may be its antonyms:  none, zero.  If we don’t have all do we feel we have nothing? 

Utter

If the universe was me would I have to keep it clean
behind the scenes, floundering papers properly filed
find freelancers and fresh faced full time tellers to count
money, monkeys, mountains, mates, and metronomes
making enough cash to cover calculated costs alone

If the universe was you would you organize origins
set vacations with family holiday feasts gulped, gutted
grate ginger for stomach acid, acetaminophen for pain
pat tiny tushies after succeeding in races, tests, taxes
collect fine wine, sedated sacrificial lamb sleeps alone

If the universe is us to share we might portion parts
freckles, feces and fetid failures, sunspots and sonatas
cries and sighs and words of love languished long
even if gone sate souls striving in constant hunger
need not if we nourish, flourish, know beings all one