Little betty. Big Appalachia.

Today—October 3, 2010. I write. On this here laptop. In my little apartment. In Appalachia amidst small town Beckley, West Virginia.

I once read or overheard or totally imagined the phrase that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself. Thank God the heart knows no bounds, nor the conflicts to which it can become entangled. Thereby saying, I have strong and earnest wants not to write, but like the poor little stray cat outside my door that beckons my heart to rescue him from the cold, I write to rescue--to salvage my memory to some avail. Yet, funny how it all orchestrates—I don’t really ever rescue the cat, but the cat frees me and I never write to rescue my fleeting thoughts, but my thoughts, once written, somehow let loose the mind to color outside the lines. So, without hesitancy, I take heed in my attempt to color wildly.

Well, dear ole Appalachia done gone stolen my dear little pumpkin heart. I must say, I’ve excelled quite a bit more than I had anticipated in learning the language here. Here are a few learned translations so far:

“She done went and got the sugar”: She is diabetic.

“Now hunee do right for me now with dat der pee-la.”: Fix my pillow now before I bitch slap you, fool.

“Oh lawd have merr-seeee, I can’t stand it”: It’s time for you to hurry up and fetch my pain medication.

“She done had one of her kids out”: One of her kidneys failed and was removed.

There were a few more but I fail to recollect them currently. Each person I have encountered has somehow enlivened me with his/her streams of character that come rolling out, each in a manner worthy of remembrance. Just the other day I had a patient who had come in with a couple of fractured ribs and possible fractured femur. Upon extracting from her what had brought about her current condition, this is how the frail, small-framed, old woman with fiery, lit eyes responded, “ I tail you what, I ne’er believed such a thang in my whole damn life, I was looking for one of those thar clippings that you hang on your dawr to scare dem kids at Halloween, and I was’a passin the end of da aisle der with my buggy, and some hurryin ladee was speedin in her buggy and damn ran straight into my side—oh lawd, dat der buggy hurt me almost to death.” After letting the words from her mouth be absorbed in my temporal lobe to process this incident, all I could do was envision this occurrence taking place in the ever infamous Wal-mart. And goodness, I so highly respect these individuals for their raw honesty, well, more like their hostile honesty. But if they think something, you bet yourself damn straight you will hear it. These are their lives, the way that they live and be and thrive, and to be a part of their experience and seek life together with these wise elders of Appalachia bids me no higher privilege.

And the nurses I collaborate with are extraordinary. They all have their crazy entwined family dynamics and dysfunctional familiarities that I feel such a warm spirit of humanness and welcomed with all my funky facets and impromptu caprices. One of the nurses informed me of having an anxiety attack on my behalf—since I came here to West Virginia not knowing anyone and was okay with that. No one verbalized their thoughts, but I could see in their faces how only a pure pagan would leave her family to encounter a world of unknown. Also, many were enthralled with my eating habits after introducing them to “quinoa” and sharing it with everyone.”Whoaaaa…” they said with a new sparkle in their eyes. You would have thought they had just discovered a rare diamond of sorts. Often, they tend to categorize me as one of those “earthy girls” since one time, after asking me what my favorite pastime was, I quickly exclaimed, “Oh I love to skip through the forest and meet with the wind!” They didn’t chuckle, they down right heaved and hoed at my forest fanciness. They thought it was hilariously odd, while I took a tender delight in knowing that the forest had become a common home to my heart.

And people from the hippie town nearby retorted and exclaimed in horror how Beckley is a soul-sucking hellhole, but how can anyone discard a community of people? Just due to their differences? There is rich life amidst this community. Discarding a community is like discarding a three-legged dog to the streetside--purely heartless in every regard. Every bit of me wants to sit down those damn prideful hippies and maybe we could watch Pocahontas together. As it is, it is an ever-reoccurring theme. When will we learn? I love the cycle of life, but I hate the accepted, apathetic ignorant-surged opinions that continue to further our separations as humans.

Often friends and family call to inquire of my current condition, ensure that I am happy here, and then creep up the bravery to ask the haunting and opposed but forced question of whether I am lonesome or not. I tell them I don’t know--that if what I feel often is lonesomeness, I don’t think it is wrong or bad or terrible feeling. It just comes and goes as a cloud floats by—some fluffy and bright, and some heavy, tormenting with exalting rains, but lovely in its passing. Why yes, God sure does get the uncanny view in seeing us process and progress. I can only imagine that it must be some kind of sight. But more often than not, I tell them when I am not in the hospital, I am out exploring. Ever since the dream encounters I had while in Oregon, I have held an insatiable drive and want and blood-firing fuel raging to explore the unknown. Here exist the rolling hills, the trees, the rivers, the leaves, the hanging rocks, all waiting to be fully known by every embodied soul alive. Out in Oregon I didn’t understand my craving for the howling wind, for the tuning melodies of the western tanager, for the chorus of dancers in the blades of grass, and the strange, glistening peculiarity of design in each sprawling flower petal.

But, for once, I had come to a most generous revelation of my surrounding kin. Here, with everything that took forth breath and my tunnel of spiraling imagination I went back to when I was just six years old. We had just bought 50 acres in West Georgia and my father was gleaming, highed, awed, and heightened in his purest adoration for the Earth as he called me over, hurriedly. “Beth, beth, come see this!” With calloused and wrinkled hands he grabbed my arms and sat them close to his. Leaning and kneeling on my bare knees, I watched as my father earnestly dug with the nails of his hands and the fortitude of his forearms into the sun-beamed ground. His excitement was contagious. I could hardly await the discovery. Finally he scooped out some large quantity and sat back as fragments of soil, clay, pure particles of mystery churned between his fingertips and dripped back onto the ground. He grabbed my wrist, squinted his eyes and spoke softly, “Beth, I want you to feel this dirt. Really feel the dirt; feel the dirt, be the dirt.” Like any adventure-seeking, wild-eyed six year-old, I yearned to be engrossed in the splendor of such an ordinary artifact. And to be the dirt, whatever that meant in the grown up figurative language, I so greatly wanted to absorb the dirt’s being.

Though the dirt didn’t provide the life, it was a mighty force and factor in life’s activation. Life pulsated itself from dirt and the cycle would one day return itself to it. But undoubtedly I was instilled with this all-encompassing reverence for dirt, a sustainable producer to life, at my small age. This reverence was what awakened out in Oregon--- an expansive heartache for my family—my family that came from dirt and all the creatures that expanded the heavens and earth—and all inexplicably deserving of veneration and care. The woodpecker, the rhonedendron, the madrones, the zinnas, the butternut squash, the silly trout, the human beings. Something mighty has burst through into us. And somehow we are all in it together. Finally, I had recognized other members of my family, each with a language of their own and a character of their own--each to know, to delight in, embrace and seek out amidst our days together.

I want to sing the hymns of the birds, dance with the rhythms of the tree branches, light up with the lightning bugs, churp back with the crickets. I want to communicate as an embodied soul, who can’t help but leap for pure joy at the very recognition of my own kin.

Extreme encounter.

Hitting up the big life in NM-- meeting new friends that crawl, jumping on the trampoline, hunting for mushrooms-- the regular life that most ordinarily exists out here. But prior to coming to NM from Oregon, I met a dear friend with whom I had always dreamed of encountering. And right before I departed, we incidentally collided. It was an extreme encounter. So, I share a little jingle-- a little jangle-- in his (or perhaps her) honor:

Twas a washin my face and a cleanin the skin
With my contacts out and the shutter came again
I clenched my arms and squinched my eyes
Who was that a twattin outside the outhouse door?
Trying to tank on in-- in some form of disguise?

Then I saw those five curled toes that clutched the door
I heard not a sound, but I could hear the roar--
Yes, the roar of the wild trying to see
What did you want?? What!! You wanted to greet me?

I grabbed the jutted edge of the door and opened with a swing
To see your tiny head poking out-- while dressed in a white and black coating
As you, wide-eyed and scared, gazed daringly into my face
And I grinned and in shock attempted not to hyperventilate!

Excited! Excited! I wanted to squeeze your little being
For so long I had wished and prayed your arrival
And not to my dismay, you came so blissfully!
But you stayed not so long--as I held my arms open wide-- ready to embrace.
But oh no! You turned, lifted that fluffy tail,
And caused me to hesitate.

Time paused as I awaited blindly for your stench of fear.
But you lifted that tail and glanced back, saying,
"Beth, today, I got no stank for you in my rear."
Then he scurried into the woods to venture into the night
Leaving me peacefully in the bathroom-- with no stink and no fright.





Stinkin and a stunk-in? Or a'smellin' a dear skunk-in?

Bub, bub, BUBBLES

A couple of days ago I spent approximately one-half of an entire day with bubbles. They are fascinating little spheres of air and soapiness that spur on such trivial happiness. And given my inuitive analysis and far-fetched relation to such things, here are my conclusions:

Ironically, life is just a bunch of bubbly bubbles. Sometimes people and places provide fresh, fragrant smelling soap and allow me to create big new bubbles. This is exciting...they grow and they grow and the splendor of their enormity slams me. And then sometimes I just spend all my days hopping from one slippery bubble to the next. Falling, yes, but the hopping is such energizing vitality! But then some little punk ass kid comes along and sees to it hilarious to burst my beautiful creation, leaving only me really knowing and treasuring the growth of such ornate beauty. Then, regretfully, sometimes all the bubbles burst by some air-raiding, bubble-popping monster. Bitter, yes, bitter, I become. Spoiled, yes, how spoiled I am--to have been such a benefactor of such things. Then with high hopes I stringently search the vast skies in hopes of some prized bubble to cling to, to hop upon. Nothing. A damned emptiness of bubbles. Then a thought comes over me. Yes, yes, I have a strong inclination that there are more bubbles. Simply put, though, I have not the eyes nor the heart yet to see or create them. The bubbles will come, yes, both small and finite, and yet also deep, expansive and encompassing...just as I will come along, so will they. Yes, so will they.

Ain't No Reason Things Are This Way

"There ain't no reason things are this way.
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday."

When I first heard this song, I immediately reacted, "Oh yeah, great song. Great lyrics." Ironically, though, I heard the song, entitled it as "awesome", explained it to others how awesome it is, how it speaks truth, and then I returned to "live this way, we do it every day." No explanation for why life is the way that it is-- and certainly no explanation for why we do what we do. Ain't no reason...if I can't explain it, then why not write a note of observation in light of it? I cannot decide whether this song is illuminating, or if I think it's a shrewd mound of horse shit. Quite possibly a combination of both.

Since graduating and gratefully transitioning out of the "studying portal" that had encompassed me, I vowed to research and collectively attempt to understand how the crap society got to where it is today-- lest not answering the question, but consequently exploring the process of our current state.

I think a pivotal point in my search was one night I was laying in bed, listening to Bill Moyers and heard that in the last 2008 presidential election, the financial industry spent a riveting 400 billion dollars on lobbying for specific congressional candidates and elections. $400 BILLION dollars. I was astounded, and wondered what might be the monetary means to feed the world's hungry and provide clean drinking water. I found my results. According to the United Nations Human Development Report, $80 MILLION would grant access to clean water, food, social services, and education to the world's poor for TEN years.

What? Really? Unbelievable, I thought. I could not refrain myself from acting out my anger (Books thrown at the wall again. My sincere apologies dearest wall). I know we care about the world, despite the disproportional distribution of wealth. We do care, but why do we repress the pain that would enable us to exponentially care for the world? We experience the pain, the horror, the dreadfulness of our present day. They're familiar feelings. Deep in our hearts, we understand the essence of compassion: that there is no peace in me until there is a peace for you as well. The pain of the world-- imparted and experienced by each one of us. The urge of compassion is essential to our existence while the relations we make with people and the Earth reach a deeper level of understanding. The pain in itself is disheartening, but serves a purposeful motion to trigger forth some remedial action. Just like a body that suffers physical pain requires immediate attention and nurturing, so too a thorough, generalized pain in our world indicates an opportunity to heal, and to do so together. Pain for the world is not the enemy that hurts us, but our willingness to frivolously discard and dull its existing presence. Unless we deeply experience this pain and forgo repressing it, we may not generate any substantial healing that is capable of happening.

My intention in writing this is to get to the root of why we don't care. Or why I don't care. Or, not that we don't care, but honestly, we don't care to let the pain engross us to again, generate any way of life different than we know. "It's how they always been and how they intend to stay." Mentally, we have been disfigured entirely. All these are fears, ones I have faced and still fight. Others I've read about and compiled here:

1. Fear of the actual pain itself. Got pain? Pop that there pill. Remedies are instant and easy, haven't you heard? If you let the pain get to you too much, it may affect your ability to cope with daily life. That pain could make you fall apart and worst of all, make you a MESS.

2. Fear that the despair will utterly consume us, making us ineffective in reasoning why such things are happening. Will such despair destroy my faith as I know it-- scared that my faith will be deemed as inadequate?

3. Fear of the appearance of despair. Smile brightly. You are on the road to success...you are in the United States of America...turn that frown upside down! The feelings of this pain are thought of as lagging confidence and a lack of hope and general perseverence. We immediately endorse and respond with doctrinal messages of hope that inwardly call us to press on--- but are we resorting to an instantaneous form of remedy that thwarts our path to really experiencing the pain?

4. Fear of the "smart people". Frankly, I am terrified and sometimes extremely timid toward the more informed intellectuals who are sharply educated on the social issues and pain of our world. By now I have undergone a number of instances looking like an idiot, getting those "You didn't know that?" looks, and sometimes even laughed at. It's humiliating-- but who cares about my reputation. My ignorance and inept knowledge in regards to the world is constantly shown. Ask the questions. Better now that our ignorance is made aware to us than 30 years down the road.

5. Fear of feeling responsible for the pain. How do I go about my activities of daily living knowing that we are doing so at the expense of the natural world and the well-being of others? This is my hardest to deal with--- I must learn HOW to deal with these feelings rather than dislodging them to some outer space within.

6. Fear of burdening others. We should proceed onward in order to keep family and friends from worrying about us and seemingly diagnosing us as "depressed." My parents continually think I am in and out of depression. Don't ever let such a diagnosis extinguish the feelings felt for the world. It's just an attempt to make you numb and ineffective.

7.Fear of becoming overly emotional and unstable. True, we are a culture led way too much by emotion, and lacking discipline, but here to say that a mere objective mindset founded on reason outweighs the validity of a "subjective" stance based on intuitions and feelings is absurd. I know being a woman and deemed "unstable and emotional" is highly unfavored and looked down upon by the dominant society. We are expected to shove our feelings inward in an attempt to operate normally with an appearance of confidence and strength.

8. One of the greatest fears: that the powers of pain are too extreme for us to handle or effectively do something. God not only gave us a mind, but a heart as well. Both to fully connect, both to think and feel, and to openly discuss and contemplate-- which hopefully fuels thought into action. We don't want to accept the fact that we didn't create ourselves, and we do not have the ultimate control over our lives. We want to have direct control over our emotions and what it feeds into-- thereby narrowing our focused areas of attention to our extent of direct control. When employing only fractions of our hearts and minds to our itty, bitty controlled areas of attention, our impact is significantly lessened.

Of course these mental fears have evolved over time and subtly communicated to us-- most of the time without words, but rather in underlying expectations guided by societal forces (such as the urges of society to: CONSUME. STAY PUT. OBEY. DIE HAPPY. )I cannot help but wonder if we were highly influenced to engage in the pain for our world then what mighty renewal may be set before us.

I have personally noted also how even the Christian culture that promotes going against the world and the heinous streams of society, finds itself still operating in the same systematic way of thought, but with different means of justification. Though this may be paradoxically understood, I still find myself believing perfect love casts out all fear. But that statement is meaningless if I am not to become aware of the fear or the pain, but rather dislodge it like all other mischievous emotions.

My hope is that we will again listen to the people and pain of our world, and feel it. Not run away or get a hunky hearty feeling of compassion, and then return to we "can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday." I suck at it, need help and daily encouragement. Sometimes the best thing is the only thing you have: prayer.

Once again, I find myself baffled as to my reoccurring illusory state of mind. How many countless, irrevocable moments have gone by as I have pursued the liberation of my thoughts, fears and inhibitions-- in hopes to "first fix myself, so I can help fix the world"? Tending to my weaknesses, invigorating my senses, revitalizing the awareness within me in hopes of one day effectively transforming some aspect of the outside world. Sequentially, I should care for my inner self as I collect and gather the shredded fragments that consistently implode within. I should become informed and enlightened, and THEN action of paramount effect will prosper in the world. How foolish of an illusion!

"Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation -- and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready."

We routinely "ready" ourselves up, when the healing is interwoven between us, God, and our world. We're not in this world alone, nor can we heal alone.

She proceeds on, "The world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of and for the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened." (Joanna Macy) Speak it, sister.

The human heart longs for freedom--longs for fascination-- it longs. The deep cries unto deep-- the craving never vanishes, the longing never subdued, and the heart not yet stopped from beating. How absurd that our bodies are even actually tactile, present, and that for some odd reason this spirit inside of us is contained within a mass full of micro cellular life. I see old ladies with a wild spirit of fire that await the day their bodies will comply with the LIFE of their human spirit.

For all will be made ALIVE in Christ.

It is here that the human spirit takes the dare, the climb, the venturing not to a place unknown, but to a dimension unknown-- to a way of life unknown-- where the inconceivable is conceived. Into God-- so simple in his complexity, and yet so complex in his simplicity.

Once the human spirit is set free and made alive, there is no treading water, only treading a sweet, awe-inspired reverence-- infused with the very miracle of life.

Yummy, yums, yum. A dedication to you, FLOUR.

My old lady friends and I were baking some yummy biscotti yesterday and became amazingly intrigued with the power of flour. I mean flour is the base to BREAD. All bread. Flour is an incredible thing. And you know what?? All the poetry in the world only talks about the cool and pretty "flower." So, here is a fine dedication to the honest,wholesome FLOUR-- the foundation of any baked good in the whole wide world. All you bakers out there, brace yourself, this is a pretty powerful dedication:

FLOUR

Oh you small little bits of grainy stuff in the bowl,
You have such soft and fluffy power to which you hold!

I know we all think of you as dull, white and distinctively bland,
But you deliver such a product of yumminess- it's hard to withstand!

What are you really, though, flour---wheat and chemicals churned together?
And yet you are the base to these fine treats that we heavenly savor.

So, THANK YOU flour-- you may not be noticed or even realized,
Because without you, bread would just be a lump of crap in some disguise.