What is fair?

we step boldly across each other

certain in our certitude,

rapt carriers of our ignorance

the mesh requires vines,

an interweaving of bests and

inspiration - you can keep your

ignorance, but lay, please lay

your best over me

and I will grow strong in you,

best in you

-SER

Fair is how you are to yourself — A conversation with Shaun.

“But that’s not fair!” She says to me.

“What’s not fair?”

“He was supposed to give me the same. Everyone else got equal amounts and I got less because he doesn’t like me.”

“Why are you still there?”

“What?”

“Why are you still there?”

“At work?”

“Yes.”

“Because I need the money, the insurance. How else am I supposed to live?”

“This is living for you?”

…(Silence)

“Your first statement of its not being fair; what’s fair?”

“Equal amount for equal work. If Sarah gets twelve for the same amount of time I put in, then I should also get twelve. Not fair is his giving me less because he doesn’t like me as much as her.”

“Then he’s acting naturally.”

“What?”

“Naturally. Nature. Nature doesn’t know fair. It’s a concept we humans created. If he truly doesn’t like you, then naturally he will have a tendency to lessen your benefits to assuage his emotional context. This shouldn’t be surprising.”

“But it’s still not fair!”

“Do you want to know what fair truly is?”

…(Rapt attention)

“Fair is how you are to yourself.”

…(Absorbing)

“All of life is unfair. No one is born under a special life-clause that guarantees fairness. Nothing about our genetics perpetuates fairness. We have built-in pathways, most of us, for empathy, which, in the end, results in bonding with one another in familial patterns. But there is no fairness legacy. We favor the presumption that we are all born of equal value, but are not equal in our gifts, our strengths, our expression—and this ‘not being equal’ flies directly in the face of the concept of fairness. The first one to cry ‘that’s not fair’ automatically puts themselves in the position of a victim. Perpetuating victimhood is not fair to yourself.”

 “But shouldn’t-“

“Shouldn’t assumes some self-context you’re applying to another. There is no intelligence in assuming another will automatically cater to your values, or sense of fairness for yourself. We each walk this earth as self-contained creating individuals. If I value you because you have demonstrated, consistently, favorable interactions and outcomes that bolster my sense and action of fairness to and for myself—and I inspire the same in return—then we will both walk the earth together, stronger. Two individuals whose value is honored.”

“Well…how does this apply to work and my boss?”

“Speak openly and clearly without the victimized emotional context. Let him know your value. If he refuses to honor it, then move up the chain over his head. Speak your truth and value until you’ve exhausted the chain. If you still aren’t valued, then move on. Find people and places where you are valued for your self-expression, your gifts, your strengths. It is the one true way you can find fairness. Fair is how you are to yourself. 

At the end of life you must ask the question: have I lived my expression truly, honestly? Have I lived it under a diminished victim presence, or have I treated myself well and with value? 

Victims don’t express their truth, they demand from others and their energy is shunted to the effort of feeding their emotional context. That is a waste of the expression of life. It is uninspiring. How often does one favor the company of a victim over the inspired expression of someone who knows their value and expresses it positively?”

…(Silence)

“Stars die when contracting upon themselves; they fail under the weight of their own gravity. We too die under the weight of our own gravity, the feeding of negative states. A star extending outward, expressing truly all it is, inspires life. When it has given all it is, it becomes part of those it has touched. The expression of life continues. “

…(Thinking, takes a deep breath.) “Well, then I hope there’s another job out there for me, because I don’t think my boss is going to like my expression.”

“The universe favors true expression. The universe is bigger than your boss.”

(Smiles)

My child and religion

My child, today I am going to discuss religion since you have started asking questions. 

I take her hand; she is strong, playful, curious. We find a large boulder near a brook and we sit. I pull her onto my lap, arms around her, but lightly, so that she can break free easily if she so wishes. Our eyes squint from the sparkling caused by the sun on the water. The boulder beneath us is comfortable and smelling of moss. Bird song and flap of wing play our ears. And then there is quiet, except for a tiny breeze touching leaves against one another and the sound of water moving over rock. I kiss her soft hair and begin.

“There are three things in life that we all must take in, what we must understand: proof, or truth; theory; and belief.

Now truth is a funny thing. It can be a certainty to all men and life, like physics, where a rock thrown travels at a certain speed and distance depending on what force we apply and what angle we release the rock -“

“And air resistance,” she interrupts in her little voice, her mouth clearly enunciating the word resistance as if it held some special meaning.

“And air resistance. Good. You are very sharp today.” I give her another kiss on the head.

“But truth can also be a personal thing. I have many truths and so do you. They help define us as separate and unique. Special. We all have them. And some of us even express our truths well. Like you, with your tree climbing and your smile and your drawing and the way you say re-sist-ance.

You truths come from all your experiences, all your play and thoughts you think and all the physical things that make you be able to run fast, or give you your hair color.”

“Like from mommy.”

“Yes, you have both of us in you, and a little from my parents and hers and their parents and on and on. Mommy’s and my puzzle pieces fit together. My DNA clicks together with her DNA and the genes express to make you.”

“Mommy has the baby machine.”

“Yes, that’s one reason why she, and all girls, are special. Most of them, with their bodies, can create a child who can create things — including another child. We men can only create things for the child to live in, to play with, to ride in.” 

“Men are special, too.”

“Yes they are. But you will learn: men shape the world; women hold it together.”

I sense she has another question, feel her mind processing, but I guide her back. “That is a lesson for another day.

“So we have truths for all of us, and then we have individual truths. Now there is also something called theory. Theory is an idea we think might be true and we want to prove it somehow. It comes from a desire to know a cause from an effect. Like, if I think that more people on the street will look at a person with green hair than with brown, I take steps to put a person on the street with green hair, and then later one with brown, and sit back and look at what happens.”

“Green hair,” she giggles.

“Yes. Green hair. So here my theory can be proven or not. If my theory is proven, then it is a good theory and it has truth under the conditions I tested it. If it is not proven, then maybe I change the conditions, like trying the green-haired person in more than one city, or may all of them. If it still isn’t proven, then my theory has no truth under the conditions I tried.

Either way, it is either true, or it is not true. And it can be a truth for all, or just an individual truth.

Now there is one more thing called belief. Belief doesn’t require the desire to prove anything like a theory does. Religions are based on belief, and for those who invest themselves — give the direction of their lives — in that belief; they require no proof.

It is tied to individual truths, because one cannot believe in a god like Vishnu or the Father of Jesus, Jesus Himself, or Allah just because someone else tells you to. You have to have it in you, some experience that drives you toward investing in that belief, or you are simply going through the motions because everyone else is. And that is an empty existence for an individual.

I will teach you of other religions like Catholicism. I will have Amar tell you about Hinduism and Sy about Islam and others will tell you about Buddhism, and so on. You will go forth with knowledge, as that is the best way to know more things.

Not all people have to have religion to have happiness. There are many who don’t. They go through life finding happiness in simple things like the smile of a child, or the scent of a flower, or the hug from someone they love. They find a purpose in life doing things they love, expressing themselves through climbing mountains, or drawing, or singing, or helping people, or figuring out math problems. There are as many different purposes to life as there are individuals.

Some people spend all their lives looking for a purpose; some people try to give you one. Beware of those who try to give you one. Your purpose is your own, so is your discovery of it. Let no one try to tell you what it is.”

What’s purpose?” she asks, looking up at me.

“It’s your reason for living — why you do things.”

“What’s mine?”

“Just be who you are. It is found in your desire to express yourself,” I tap her on the chest. “You keep listening to what is in you and keep expressing the joy that is in there and you will find your purpose.”

She sighs and leans heavily against me. We watch the sunlight on the water and dragonflys skimming the surface and edge of the brook, green transparent wings shimmering. In the distance, a bird sings a high melody, pure and clean. 

I lean in to her ear. “I love you,” and before she can reply, “and that is a purpose too.”

She holds my arms tight, thinking.

Expectations

Hmmm, an interesting pause as I write this one. Expectations. Expectations are like some cute little kittens you snuggle up against your neck. But not just kittens: soft orange kittens with little white paws and a moist nose and tiny mewling voice that tickles your neck just below your ear. 

Not only that, but they also stay that way, perpetually in a state of hurt-your-body cuteness, forever available for you when you need a lift or distraction from what life sometimes unpleasantly brings. 

And not only that, there are as many of them as you want. You can keep them all to yourself, buried in fur with cute licking mouths, or share them with anyone in the world you deem worthy. 

That’s expectation. It doesn’t require anyone else, only an unfiltered (through the prism of reality) and unchallenged desire. 

Those with certain expectations often find that experience has been working behind your back creating other plans. Life’s experience is not just your own. We all have some input in this. If you want to curb unrealistic expectations, you have to look at a few things, especially if it involves another human being. 

1. Communicate.

This one kills most people (sometimes literally). Either there isn’t any communication, or there is not being able to communicate effectively, you know, where the other person actually comprehends what you’re saying, and where you allow for the other person to respond back, freely. 

With regards to relationships (as this is what this article is focused on, if you haven’t guessed), you have a few ingredients that make up good communication. 

Respect for the other - which means their viewpoint, their desires, the way they process things. 

A desire and curiosity to understand the other person - give them time to talk in their own time.

A willingness to believe that it is just possible you may be wrong about some issue.

An ability to freely apologize.

A willingness to work toward a conclusion that benefits both. I always hear about “compromising” and I dislike the crap out of that word. “Work toward a conclusion that benefits both” is so much better. It’s a positive. It’s a freakin benefit for crying out loud. Who could complain about that?

The reason I go on about communication is simply because a lot of expectations are internalizations that don’t see the light of day until they aren’t met. If you don’t communicate a desire, how will the other person know what it is? And don’t you dare give me this ultra-crap about “they should just know”. If you’ve said that, feel free to spank yourself with nice, spiky ignorance stick. 

Anyone here live inside someone else’s head? Raise hands. Hmmm. So then you don’t really know what another person is thinking, now do you? How can you expect the same from them? 

There are times when you may do things for someone that meets certain needs or desires and the other person didn’t even have to ask. Great for you. You’re either very thoughtful, in which case these things will best be labeled under “gifts” with no expectation for return, or you’re a people pleaser and need to understand why. People pleasers tend to give of themselves until there is no “themselves” left to give. There is help for that. Seek it before you disappear.

Some people do things for others because they expect others to do for them in return - of equal or greater value. Bad mojo. These are people I like to put in the “weed” pile in my life. I’m sure there are piles you have of your own. If you are only doing something because you expect the other person to do the same for you AND you don’t tell them what you expect in return AND don’t get what you want in return, then you have no one to be angry with but yourself. 

I suspect people like that don’t reveal their expectation to others simply because they know they will eventually end up in someone’s weed pile, either that, or they’re clinging to expectations overrides their wisdom.

 Open communication tends to dissolve unrealistic expectations. Seek it out. Practice it.

2. Understand humans, accept them and accept their variety.

Human beings, generally, tend to operate in a manner that favors their best interests. Call it survival. We are all like that to one degree or another, those who aren’t like that at all are most likely not around for us to pick on. Expectations, voiced or not, are a demand on another being whose interests may not lie along the same paths as your own. 

Human variety also throws a cog in the machinery, as we each view each other from a completely unique perspective. What you may see as valuable may not be anywhere close to what someone else views as valuable.

Also, we each may or may not have certain sensitivities and intuition that keep us in tune with another or our surroundings. If two people’s interests lie very close on the same path, toward the same goal, then there may be overlaps in thought and action that negate the need for expectations entirely. But don’t leave it up to chance in any event, not if you really want something. Communicate your needs and desires. And give someone slack if they don’t see your perspective right off the bat.

3. Give yourself a break.

Expectations are based on a desire or need for a particular outcome. This is all fine and good if the expectations are centered on you, stem from you, and only include you. But give yourself a break there too; you are human. We sometimes fail to meet our own expectations because of outside influences beyond our control, or because of an unrealistic understanding of our own abilities. If you need improvement in some area or other, seek honest opinions from people who will speak honestly and without prejudice, i.e. people who see you for who you are. 

Demands and unrealistic expectations from parents are often repeated in a child later in life. This has the flavor of not living in your own skin, accepting your own value in life, finding your own path. You are valuable, just as you are. The whole of this picture we call life needs your piece to make it complete - no matter what anyone says (including you).

People who don’t have a lot of expectations are often the ones who are more pleasantly surprised in life when good things come their way. They are also less likely to be devastated when something less good happens. Overall, remember that your expectations rarely affect just you and they often cause more trouble in the long run than simply just asking for what you want.

Dyslexia: A Process

I can’t claim my dyslexia expresses itself in the same way as the majority of people who have it; though I suspect a great many of them will relate to what I write here. 

I’ve been studying myself, over the last 4-5 years in particular, and think I have a better way I can relate some of what I, and others with dyslexia, go through on a daily basis to those who might have a hard time grasping/realizing the processes involved internally.

First thing; I want to try a little exercise with you. With the following exercise I want you to try to be aware of what is actually going on in your brain as you process the task I put you through. Simply, try to be aware of the demand of focus your mind shifts into, how it closes off the external to some degree, and engages a part of the brain that is required for the process.

Exercise (you are allowed to round up, the exact number to the decimal point is not required)

Take the number 13 and divide it by 2.

(Remember to try and be aware of how your mind is shifting into another mode)

Take that number and add 4.

Divide by 2 again.

Add 23.

Now that you have that number, and hopefully paid attention to how your brain shifted to a more intense mode of focus, I will relate that to dyslexia. 

With dyslexia, that process you just went through, is nearly the same focus required to discern SMIPLY into SIMPLY.

Same effort, or focus. 

More focus is required to process the following:

“Teh which standard by aech known is hcaracter.” 

Into:  

“The standard by which each is known is character.”

You can see how great parts of phrases can be interpreted in a mixed-up fashion, not just character switching, but also structure order. 

I have had numerous corrections in the writing of this article so far, where the letters were jumbled and needed to be back-spaced and deleted and retyped to make something easily legible for you - and that’s what slips past the “overseer” in my head that regulates my particular pathway to the written word (it also applies to speech).

Most everything I write has to have a pause period in my mind, where the words are un-jumbled and corrected with a feedback mechanism I have developed over years and years of writing and listening to people (which is a task all on its own sometimes). 

What I envision in my head is entirely visual, words too. They take place in my mind as objects with a physical “presence” or feel. (Now I realize there may be a bit of synesthesia going on here, but that is another article all it’s own.)

Try translating the feeling of “mud” into words, and you’ll get an idea of what I have to process when changing my visuals of even text into written word.

This translation process came into conflict with my job at an international shipping corporation, especially during the first year or so there. 

In order to reduce the chance of placing the wrong package on the wrong truck on the wrong shelf, supervisors would tell employees to take their marker and circle the printed numbers on the package (that identify truck and shelf location) so as to help focus their minds on getting the right number into the right truck.

My mind doesn’t work like that.

My process is seeing text as objects or impressions; letter and number shapes, color, and feeling that are associated with other impressions in my mind related to which truck it goes into (and many other associations for that matter - thus the need for a specific amount of focus). 

When I shift from an interpreting/associating mode to a drawing mode, as in circling the number on a package, my brain goes into a realm where there are no restrictions, no end to possibility - and no easy link back to which number/letter shapes goes to which truck. 

Drawing mode, for me and other artists, places me in the immediately realized environment; in the now, with little to zero attachment to language or language-related data. In fact, I’ve experienced writing after a drawing session, one where I’ve spent a good hour or so immersed, and I cannot accurately explain the difficulty reattaching to what letters meant.

For other people at work, the circling thing seemed to help them focus. For me it made things even more difficult. There were two distinct battles going on in my mind for dominance; one pertaining to language processing of data I didn’t write, but needed to interpret-relate, and one to the ever-potential where my creative mind wanted to fill in it’s own words, visuals, impressions within the circle I drew. 

I stopped doing the circling thing and my rate of getting the right package in the right truck on the right shelf went up; well above everyone else. 

Poetry

What I write is related to visual impression. To me, a visual in my head = physical feel. Not just what an object actually feels like in reality, but some interpreted impression I actually feel in my mind. It also equals emotional context, and continual branch-pathways to other related information.

This rich pool of information makes my poetry visually rich.

You may ask, “how on earth do you do anything with all this going on in your head for everything you hear, feel, smell, taste, or see?”

The answer is simply that I filter out a lot of data, rather it is subdued in its importance. It’s the equivalent of not paying full attention to the sound of the air flowing through the A/C vents, or the refrigerator humming in the background, or the hum of overhead fluorescent lighting while I listen to someone speaking. 

When I write poetry, or much anything for that matter, I have to sort through a lot of relational data. Strong impression to feeling is associated to strongly connected visuals in my mind and experience, and they are then translated to word. Most everything is done in my head, and with some exceptions, what you see as a final draft is actually my first draft. I have an editing process that whittles away some extraneous words after, but for the most part it is all processed internally. 

This has an interesting relation to how I would do math in school. When a teacher would say “show your work”, I would have a difficult time translating what was going on in my head to get to my answer. Asking someone like me to show my process may require quite a bit of time :) Back then, I didn’t have the awareness I do now of my own internal process. 

Reading

For me the challenges of getting past some of my twisting of letters is less of an effort than to read an author who does not connect visually to me. I struggle through some text, some sentences and structure that is dry and not immediately related to a visual flow. This makes reading some authors an immense labor, where my mind tries to interpret not only their foreign sentence structure , but their conceptualization of material. 

Prior to my own self-study, I would get frustrated and have little use for text that hit me that way. Now I get frustrated because of the labor involved, but I now understand it isn’t me, it’s the author. In my perspective, good authors and less have everything to do with how well they translate imagery. 

Early on in my childhood, comic books held sway and directly connected text to visuals. This kept me reading and later, writing. I still read some of them to this day, they are a great foundation for those with dyslexia.

Listening, or: sound words

Dyslexia doesn’t limit itself to just written text. Some of us have auditory dyslexia too (yes, I am included here).

The same way the brain has to process text for visuals, the brain has to translate sound words into the same. The translation difficulty also works in reverse, where my own spoken words can sometimes come out jumbled, mixed up. Then there are times where the brain gets overloaded and someone speaking words at me makes no sense whatsoever. At those times you may see me straining, tilting my head, or hear me say, “Excuse me?”,or, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that first part…” which has very little to do with my hearing in most cases, which is excellent; I know, I’ve been through extensive medical testing trying to figure myself out. This has everything to do with understanding the sound words coming at me.

When the brain gets overloaded, nothing spoken makes sense. It doesn’t last long, seconds, but in that time the brain gives up completely trying to figure out what was just said. It’s an in-the-moment process, where word sounds come to me as a complete garbled mess, as if all the consonants had been smeared with the vowels into a paste, or some alien vocalization that has absolutely no substance or related meaning. Sound is translated into a visual and texture, and it too has to make some sort of related sense to me. And when it does, it then has to go through the same letter and word-switching process that written text does. 

Hopefully, this will give you a better understanding of the processing the mind of a dyslexic has to go through, so that understanding can be passed on to someone near you who may be having difficulty with this disability. Awareness is the first step to understanding. 

We each have to find the process that works for us. And though we can try other options, we have to understand that in the end; what works for us - works for us.

I am a Survivor

I am a survivor

Youth…hmmm. I think that says enough. Blog over.

…

…

Okay, fine, I'll write more.

My only disclaimer here, to protect the innocent, is that I'm not going to use real names. Okay, they are actually real names, but I'm writing this so you don't think I'm using real names. Heck, I might even just switch the people around so you don't really know who was actually where doing what. 

So says me.

There's a lot of controversy about how much we protect kids nowadays from simple things like running with scissors, running with sharp sticks, running with the wrong crowd…yeah, you know who you are. Leather jacket and tattoos, indeed. As a child on the farm, leather jackets actually came from cows you fed and petted the week before, and tattoos came from being stuck with an ink pen during a fight with your brother. 

Y'all have gotten too complicated with worry in this day and age. I'm going to recall a few incidents for you now that were culled from talking with a couple of my sisters, brother, mom, and my uncle Don; a man who easily carries on the tradition of his mother in telling a good and interesting story that keeps you sitting still and shutting your mouth with attention.

This first one, we'll call her Denise for the sake of the article, makes one wonder just what the heck she did wrong in a previous life to have had this type of penance dished out.

She has a brother, let's call him Scott, who dropped her down a flight of stairs when she was about 2 weeks old. She was wrapped in a blanket and didn't even cry, her mother said. I imagine it had to be one awesome, well-padded blanket, either that, or she got something jarred loose that disconnected her crying mechanism. I'm sure she made up for that not crying later in life, though. The doctor back then - I'm sure just getting finished pulling a bite-down stick out of a patient's mouth - said that children that age had such soft bones that nothing was probably broke. My non-doctor musing says that she had even softer bones after that fall. But that's just me.

Turns out that Denise also had a radio dropped on her head; assailant unknown. This wasn't a tiny transistor radio either. Back then radios were build to more sturdy specifications and bulk than they are today, durable enough say to withstand even a good thunk over the head of a small child. And you wonder why a lot of the items we use today have rounded corners. Thank Denise and her test-head.

Brothers Scott, and let's call the other one Dennis, didn't stop there. They used to tie Denise to a tree because they didn't want to play with her. Seems her sister, let's call her Tammy, had been sufficiently restricted at times, as well. With Tammy you can hardly blame them. I forgot to ask if this had been done in strong winds or during lightening storms, or when packs of wild dogs roamed the area…I imagine Scott and Dennis didn't quite care either way. Play was important back then, and that took precedence.

Scott and Dennis also pushed Denise off the garage roof, telling her it wouldn't hurt. Now I'm not one to comment too harshly in this case. In my defense I had mattresses down for my sisters to fall onto, and I didn't push, mine was demonstrate first; convince later. I thought ahead with the mattress thing, though mom probably wondered why there was grass on the backs of some of them later... And just what is it with all that crying stuff when faced with a challenge like that? Jeesh. 

Those pesky sisters had something called "memory" too. Wonder if a fall down a flight of stairs helped in Scott's case with Denise. I'm sure she remembers things just fine nowadays.

Tammy, ill-fated sister of Scott and Dennis, had also been pushed out into the cornfield and left there when she was about 5 months old. Come'on, there was play to be engaged in and a baby in a stroller or wagon, was surely a limiting factor. Even I understand that one. And her parents eventually found her sleeping, though the corn was pretty high at that point. Almost as if they had practice searching for babies or something, they were that good.

Not to be outdone though, Denise had been left in a church after holy mass by her parents; let's call them Don and Betty for this article. In their defense, and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, they did have a bunch of other kids to pack into that vehicle. There wasn't a head count, so it was easy to overlook little 5 year-old Denise. Easy. And they did care about her, they did. It wasn't until the priest knocked on their door at home later, little Denise in hand, that they did the V-8 smack on their heads and realized they had forgotten something.

Camping is also a baby-losing endeavor. Little Denise again. Seems her father Don, missed attaching the lower covering to the fold out bunks that extended from the camper. Denise eventually rolled out of the camper onto the ground. It wasn't until Don and Betty heard the crying beacon of the infant, that they knew something was amiss. It took a while, with all that lack of lighting and all, but they did find her outside on the ground, screaming into the night like she had a right to do that or something. I guess if anyone earned that right, it was Denise.

And you thought crying was just about wanting to be fed or something annoying like that. Heh. 

I asked Betty if Denise had been hurt that time and she replied emphatically, "No, our kids were tough!" 

They had to be Betty, they had to be :)

Not to be completely outdone, there is a sister of mine, let's call her Soni, who had a few incidents worth mentioning. Another brother, let's call him LaDon, managed to drop her on her head twice. He was 4 at the time, good infant-holding age. His recall of the incident? "She had a big head and all the weight went that way."

Turns out she also got stepped on as an infant by her other brother, let's call him Glen. The oldest sister, let's call her Faye, laid the child sweetly on the floor near the entrance to the living room, and then covered her with a blanket. I was sitting nearby watching whatever was on TV at the time, and I remember seeing Glen walk in and promptly step on Soni. In the ensuing surprise and anger, these words came out of their mouths: Faye - "Who steps on a baby!", Glen - "Well who puts a baby in the middle of the floor?!"

All I could think of at the time was seeing Glen take that squishy step. Soni was just cryin' fine though. 

Soni also wasn't a fan of the orange couch as an infant, promptly preferring the air-drop to the green carpet. Something tells me she was just asking to be stepped on.

Speaking of which, even the livestock got in on the action. Cocoa, not a nice cow that day, managed to rush into the barn, prior to milking, and step on Soni in the process. But don't worry, she was around 3 years-old at that point and could handle herself.

I seem to also recall her getting a bump on the head…ok, a tad more than a bump, from playing near me. We were in the haymow hanging and playing on the steel cable that supported the barns wood beam foundation. Well, there was this mass of steel coupling where the two cables joined and I was jerking them back and forth in a testing-of-strength type thing, and Soni came up to play, too. I took one hard jerk on that cable, felt and heard the thunk of steel on hard head, and looked over to find Soni's head bloody, her mouth open in a cry that screamed the remaining pigeons out of the barn. Now what were the chances she would place her head right next to that chunk-of-steel coupling? They were pretty good that day.

My other sister, she shall be called Jackie for this, enjoyed playing in the haymow, too. Add a couple of brothers to the mix and it becomes less likable. LaDon and I had made this rope-and-pulley system that raised kids high off the floor of the haymow. We were ingenious. Talented. We had vision. Part of that vision didn't include Jackie plummeting to the wood floor onto her butt when the rope broke, but we couldn't visualize everything ahead of time. I remember the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that we broke her; she had a worse feeling I'm fairly certain. She did manage to squeeze out of her agony and lungs, "get the milkman". She thought she was dying and I didn't quite contradict her at that time, thinking the same. We ran to go get the milkman. I don't think he got involved at all, but Jackie survived.

She survived long enough to break her arm on the saw-horse jump I had made for us kids. You place a wooden saw horse out in the grass yard, put some good jumping mattresses behind it, and then round up some kids to jump over the thing. Jackie ran for her turn as I was walking back from one of mine. I did remember hearing a hard hit on that wood that I hadn't heard before, seeing the inevitable flop onto the mattress, and then Jackie getting up crying hard and running around holding her arm.

I have to say I hadn't taught them all a safety course prior to the jumping, but in my defense, none of the other kids got broke.

Jackie also got lost in J.C. Pennies, recovered by a nice police officer who gave her an orange soda, and she also ran headlong into an electric fence at another time. 

I have to join her on the electric fence thing, though I had the benefit of much more speed. Yep, dad had moved the fence lines without telling us. I took my bike hard and fast down the normally unrestricted field to the pond when something caught my throat and knocked me clean off the bike. I slammed backwards five feet, the bike continued for another fifteen. 

Seems we got tough necks.

And no, at that speed you don't feel an electric jolt from the electric fencer at all.

I could go on about how LaDon got shot in the foot - cowboy booted foot, might I add - by another brother of his who shall remain nameless lest everyone think there's a common denominator to all these injuries…come to think of it now, the brother in question ended up shooting 3 of his brothers with a bb gun; foot, upper thigh, middle of the back - hey, he said it wasn't loaded!

LaDon nearly drowned in the pond. Yep, slipped under the water without a splash. I jumped off the embankment, plunged in and saved him. 

No, I did not push him under. That was later on, so he says. Playing shark with my other brother, we apparently knocked them off the raft into the water, turning it over on them, and then somehow they had trouble breathing under the thing. 

I'll take his word for it. I did save him prior, so I think that evens things out.

My other sister, we'll call her Rhonda (I have 8 of these tough siblings, by the way), was jumping off a parked hay wagon while we were playing superheroes. I had already made the jump, moving aside the ropes that were strung up to hold the bales in from the side opening, and was flying away first. I then looked back to find Rhonda struggling against a rope around her neck, legs kicking in the empty air, a look of wild strain on her face. Well, I flew back, arms outstretched as if I was actually flying…the silly things you do when you're immersed in play…and lifted her up so we could get the rope off her neck. I imagine that at that young age she hadn't yet had her neck toughened up enough by electric fences.

There were more. I nearly got speared in the back from a sharp and rusted piece of steel as I fell from a tree ten feet to the ground. I hadn't nailed down that one board on that limb and off I flew. Such a soft landing on the outstretched branch below, and that's when I looked next to my shoulder and saw the steel. That spanked the reality of the situation right into me hard.

I was nearly crushed to death by several hundred pounds of frozen silage. In winter we dig with multi-tined forks into the silage (chopped corn, stalks and all) stored in a concrete storage silo. The silage closest to the wall was always impossibly frozen, so we'd hollow out a center hole and work our way down. Well, come spring and the thaw, the outer wall of silage decided to melt enough and fall inward. I was up there alone, when I heard a deep, tearing sound. I looked and saw the whole wall of silage coming down at me. I rushed to the side as fast as I could, though everything truly seemed to move in slow motion, and just missed it covering me. It landed partially against my leg without pain.

Gives one a different perspective.

Then I was successfully taken out by a little bacteria from a pitchfork I had been dragging on the barn floor behind me. I pulled the fork up only to set it back down into the heel of my ankle by accident. There was blood, some pain, but nothing that would equal what would come later. I was in the hospital for almost 2 months. At one point an experimental medicine was used and, well, I'm alive and have my foot working just fine. 

I only recently found out about the experimental medicine. Some people would say that explains much about me.

There are more stories. But you've read enough now. Suffice it to say we definitely grew up in a less restricted environment. We survived and became tougher for it. Toughness was applauded and admired, and it went right along with play. Hard play was the catalyst that inspired growth, prepared us for what was to come in life. We don't shun a lot of the hard stuff that many do in the new generations being raised, having experienced things the way we did. Our trials and pain brought us closer, taught us about ourselves and the value of those around us when in time of need, and when not. 

Telling these stories to each other around the table that night raised in us the strength of family, that we are there for each other, that we would do most anything to see each other safe and together. But also knowing deeply, that we all get to the same spot by different roads. And that bumpy roads make for an interesting ride.

Shaun Rudie

Survivor, Rudie farm

Our Presence, Christmas 2011

She presses up next to me, nearly touching, her body turned as if about to embrace me from the side. She has a very welcoming energy and I frequently think she is going to talk to me as if we’re old friends. I’ve never seen her before, but a part of me seems to know her. She orders her food, having trouble hearing the person behind the counter, and again she moves as if about to touch me or make a comment, she turns her face to me and opens her mouth to speak, smiles, then closes it. She wears a wedding ring and rocks her hips side-to-side in the fashion of one who is used to holding a child there, comforting it. I get my order and move off, she stays close until I depart, smiling.

Certain people speak out to me, drawing out my intimate observations; some scream quietly to be written about.

It’s December 23 and my mind moves over the flow of people at the International Mall. A constant meter-spiking conversation-white background noise presses on the ears. Voices flower around me from bodies of every size, wrapped in colors that pull as well as poke one’s eyes.

There is no overall style, other than clothed, though a few push that. The variety of human shapes and sizes make challenging work for the clothiers, though egos often distort the designers intent - and sometimes outright kills it. Many of us are a testament to the engineering strength of cotton, though Santa has made even that fashionable; compassion, generosity, and love know no shape, so we all have potential.

It’s truly amazing when one thinks of the number of languages, dispositions, statements of “I”, colors, cultures, thoughts and beliefs, and that we come to one location like this to showcase, share, smile, complain, lust after, love, envy, dream, desire.

Most of us are not isolationists on the macro, and many have no concern about expressing themselves in some way. This is one of my ways; observations of people. And there are many to observe; from the young mother who engages her child with big smiles, while occasionally touching the bothersome silver piercing at her lower lip, to the surgeon who has difficulty hearing my soft-voiced reply describing just what it is I’m doing here with my notepad and small writing (seems everyone writes larger than I), he says he’s nearly deaf, and I notice the fine clear plastic slipping into his ear canal, but I am soft-spoken usually, which makes for an interesting struggle of lip-reading from him, to the child who finds himself on the other side of the tables, both hiding and trying to get his mother’s attention while being just careful enough not to fall off the chairs, to the number of fashionable mother-daughter pairs walking about, some nearly mirror images of each other - and not often in the mother’s favor - youth has its own look, regression stands out, to the woman next to me in purple t-shirt and matching headband who watches me write while chatting with her husband, her glances at my notepad turn into full head-on attempts at reading what I’ve written from an upside down perspective, I let her see it rather than cover it up, figuring she’d have a little challenge reading my word art anyway, to the haggard father who exemplifies the word “haggard”, pushing a stroller that seems built to hold up his faltering steps, weary, shadowed eyes under gray hair that seems to stand up due to a weak electrical charge; his wife, eight content, measured steps ahead of him, carries another child at her chest, wears a smile that seems to say "payback is so worth it".

There is so much inner and outer movement here, I spend nearly four hours this day watching and reading it all.

We are a world of people gently, boldly, secretively trying to express ourselves. The struggle is in holding ourselves in, and it is our crime against nature to do so. Share yourself this holiday, be true to your needs, your desires, your expression of your truth, your loves… and the world will move.

Merry Christmas

Of Mice and Men

A little about how I come to write this article first. I have a very good friend, Lissette, who keeps tabs on just how long it’s been since I’ve written my last blog, and with her little pokes at my subconscious I swipe my arms across my metaphorical table, knocking aside all my other projects I need to get done before life passes me by, and focus on easing the stress of her poking finger. It is a strong finger. I imagine she could break rock with the thing now.

I’ve had several topics that I want to write about flitting around in my head, so I wasn’t quite sure which to elaborate on. That’s kind of a problem with me, I have too many and often get weighed down by them and the notebooks filled with other writing ideas going back to my early high school. Yep, fifty hours a day would allow me time, I think. 

So, I sat down and opened my trusty Scrivener program for writing, my hands poised over the keyboard. A topic about youth and creativity had been with me for a few weeks and I thought for sure that would be what started to purge from my subconscious, but it had other ideas. I generally allow a moment of pause, a state of peace where I think of nothing and let the images in my mind take form, sometimes a phrase or word becomes prominent and that becomes the kernel for what I am about to write. 

This time, “of mice and men” came to the fore. Words appear as physically shaped objects in my mind, in this case “of mice and men” floated forward through a shifting image-cloud of impression of merging memories and extrapolated thought…its a rather rich field to see, and perhaps one day I’ll be able to work photoshop or aftereffects enough to get you a visual idea. So far words are my only palette and you’ll forgive me if I paint with colors you may not have seen before, but until I can more accurately convey what goes on in me, this is all I’m able. Another struggle of mine, this being able to communicate well enough. Ah well..

So, of mice and men. Many threads of experience and thought tie together for this one, not all of them pleasant, but all important.

Disclaimer: When I state facts or generalizations about men, it does not in any way include all men and it is clearly understood that there are women who share some of the same directives of thought and purpose/goals and understanding. This article does not preclude them, nor wish to downplay their unique strengths. My viewpoint is mine alone based on my experiences. And I just may use the male form of speech in my pronouns because I’m being lazy male.

So there. (You may imagine me sticking out my tongue here.)

When is a man a man?

Short answer: when he is true to himself.

This covers an incredible gamut in the experience of the individual, but is really quite simple. Men often get caught up in the extraneous directives laid down by their fathers or mentors and society as a whole. What they often lose sight of are the important things in life. 

When trying to conform their lives to those directives, something is lost; a connection to the threads that matter.

In my mid to later 20s I made a lot of money, I got caught up owning and working two businesses 7 days a week, which, except for the fact of the lack of sleep and stress from my ex at the time, I did enjoy the work. What I did lose connection to was my family, not my ex and step son, but my born-on-the-farm-siblings and associated relatives and friends; those people who mattered when everything else fell away.

And more than that, I lost connection to who I was. 

There were many factors that contributed to that, including an ex who didn’t want me to write because of her own overwhelming fears, but in the end it was that lost connection that put me in a teetering position that left little of me around to actually enjoy life. It became a process where in quite moments I would pull myself out of the grey and just say, “do the work”. It’s a mentality that exists with me today, but has an entirely different meaning. 

Back in those days “do the work” was a mentality I used to push aside that extreme emptiness I was feeling and to just continue day to day, to trudge through the grey and darker presence my life had become. I didn’t think about future, had merely enough to just get through the loss of self I was feeling.

Directly at the end of that marriage, and the sale of my businesses, I wrote a 139,000 word novel in three months. I had a lot to say. I was finally able to say it, and I was happy. I have continued saying it to this day, with new words, new stories and, though I have so much ahead of me, I have so much already written and in the books, as the saying goes.

The pursuit of money was never a goal of mine; doing good things true to myself was, and is. Men lose sight of that. They lose sight of themselves because of their accepted societal mien, which can at times be both inspiring and demoralizing, dispiriting. There is balance, but only if an individual understands his true desires and what brings his life meaning. 

Does going to a job you hate every day bring your life meaning? Does not taking the time to sit and chat with your sister, brother, cousins, friends, spouse, bring you meaning? They are a thread to welcome parts of you you may have forgotten.

With understanding there is meaning. 

What is it you don’t understand about yourself? With that understanding the superfluous falls away, or becomes recognized for what it is. 

Men as mice know nothing of meaning, they all become diminutive and very much the same. They get put in boxes, mazes, they get experimented on and are looked down upon. They eek out a living scrabbling for food, keeping ahead of predators, and scraping their teeth down to sharp nubs for the gain of a few more holes in the wall. With enough holes the wall falls down, and with it your house. What’s the condition of the house of your life?

As men who feel the need to support the weight of the world, we have to ask the question: what’s supporting us? 

Being true

When something is true in carpentry, it is straight. One can look down the end of a freshly planed board and see a line that would make your mother proud. 

Being true to ourselves is like that. There is a straight-line connection to that which makes us, us. It is a line we have to frequently look back to when our minds get caught up in all these pretty curves in the world. That connection to being who we are is essential and unique to the process of inspiring others. If that connection weakens we have to shore it up, and the best way to do that is through some creative endeavor and with time in nature. 

Planting seeds, nourishing them, and watching them grow is a creative endeavor, more so because it gets us in touch with nature - an important component of the creative process. Drawing, painting, singing, writing, building, sculpting, grappling, and the like are all creative expressions, especially where there are no bounds or rules, just pure expression driven from your straight-line connection that intrinsic desire within each of us.

Creative play is a hugely beneficial as well, physically or verbally. When was the last time you actually got down and dirty and just all out played. Being adult simply means that you should know when to play. And it’s more frequent than you think.

If you have always had a desire to do something, something that actually made it past the well-meaning, and not, critics of your childhood - and yourself - then you owe it to the world to do it. We are inspired through variety and we welcome you to the pool of the creative to move this world, no matter how small it is. Do it. Make the choices that will benefit you and those around you today. 

A wise uncle of mine would often say, ”tomorrow never comes”. 

The counter to that is, “I’ll do it tomorrow (or next week, or after I retire, ad infinitum)”.

How many dreams and potentially world-inspiring impulses have been killed by, “I’ll do it later”.

It matters.

Be true to yourself and you’ll have meaning.