here today

 

bamboo & mermaid caves

my friend's father, or rather my sort of friend's father - oh, never mind - some guy once lectured some girl by telling her she should not be like bamboo, bending in the prevailing wind. that she should stand up straight & tall and sure & steady.

but bamboo is a powerful plant grows anywhere, tall, leafy, home to panda bears & if I had to name a plant after my friend the mermaid I would choose bamboo it is a survivor you see. you can stick it in a funny pot in a hospital room and tell it that the only way to make it is to have an awful surgery with a wire up the arm and then the removal of a rib and the bamboo will say No Thank you Very Much but no. and then it will turn around and quietly get back to the work of growing up taller than you ever expected.

all this is to say, having gotten lost in my metaphor and searching, probably through the thick trunks of a bamboo jungle, for a way out - all this is to say that the mermaid made it back last night. she is home in her mer-cave.

last night ben & I watched casablanca and there is the line, that famous line, ...the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. and there is truth to that line perhaps not the truth that was intended but my truth for the line is that yes the world is crazy but that the three little people are connected to every other person so if you separate them out they are tiny but put everyone together and there you have a mountain of beans. oh, it is very early in the morning and I am quite tired, perhaps not making sense. anyhow, here's looking at you kid...

Posted by: 120pages at 05:43 | link | comments (4) |

sing for me, please.

I never write dear blog unless there is something terrible.

I never write when life is sunny. When Ben & I have finished painting our house all on our own, ben on a twenty five foot ladder with two rods duct-taped together, a paintbrush stuck on the end. Me, hanging out the dormer windows, crouched there reaching up with one hand, the other clutching the frame.

I never write about my clients who I adore and who come back week after week while we work on their stories, their narrative about who they are, why they are here and how they triumph each minute of every day.

I never write about the incredible films I've seen lately including The Lives of Others which blew my mind in every way and then 3:10 to Yuma the kind of movie my dad would love. Movies about redemption earned the hard way and the awful truth about this life which is that it is ultimately lived Alone.

I never write about the vagina shaman I've been seeing who giggles with me, hands on my belly, soul touching mine.

I have been busy, I have been happy, I have been expanding exponentially outwards but today I am not here for that.

Today I sing a song for the Mermaid who cannot sing right now. She is dear to me and we as friends have been through hell and back again on a twenty year cycle that right now sits with angel wings in her hospital room keeping watch over her because I can’t. Today I have spent every minute in prayer while sitting in my office talking insurance and assets-under-management.

Tonight I will be with my clients and for each of them I will pack up the parts of me that worry for my friend and set them aside for later so that I can be present and complete as I sit and together we weave their stories. Tonight will be a test of how to keep two worlds separate my world of worry never colliding with their worlds of pain while together we create a new world where hope rules benevolently.

Later I will visit for even sick she is a late night girl and I will tell her about the research I did on the vascular surgeons one of them went to Harvard and another interned at the Mayo clinic and we will laugh at my need to make lists on sticky notes of the curriculum vitaes of these men who might not be called on because after all nobody is sure yet why she is there.

Today I sing a song for the Mermaid with a diamond core who will live forever but right now she is hurting and scared and mostly alone. And if you can sing, if anyone is out there who can sing right now please join me because this dear girl this friend of mine believes and I believe that we are all one voice.

Posted by: 120pages at 13:25 | link | comments (1) |