My mental circus, inside and out.

an encounter with a rickety old cart

After taking Max for a walk and then pleasantly writing all day,  Emma went out to buy some summer clothes.  She's gained a few pounds, and so had to keep reminding herself:  "It's just body."  Aging, weight-gain, the inevitable decline of this old rickety cart. .. Emma feels that if she has worked hard at detaching herself from the importance of it, she'll stay happy through all of her later years.  But it is not easy, especially with the perpetual hair crisis (now raggedy, in her eyes, with roots growing in).  

Here is the irony.  So Emma was walking out of the mall with her bag of turquoise crinkly skirts, whispery white shirts, busty tshirts (accentuate the positive as she was once relentlessly taught), and linen pants to hide the cellulite, when suddenly a voice behind her said, "Can I ask you something?"  She stopped and turned to see a man, short, muscular, African American, in a tight T and jeans.  He said, "I saw you and I had to ask you, Will you go out with me?" 

This was pretty stunning.  Emma peered at him.  "I'm sorry, but I'm not dating at all.  I'm taking care of my grandson these days. But if I were to date, I would consider it."  Maybe Emma didn't really mean that last bit.  But who knows.  In a former, unfortunately slutty incarnation, she just might have.

He looked so disappointed!  He made a final plea for a lunch date. Emma declined, saying she was flattered.  He said, "I'm not trying to flatter you.  I mean it."  Then he said, "I'm 38." Emma was not at all sure why he said this, but she countered, "I'm almost 50!"  Then she thought, but perhaps he already knows I'm old, which is why he wanted to impress me with his youth?

After that, Emma had to be extra cautious not to engage in a lot of self-ing.   A body is not a self.  And it's still a rickety old cart, even if Emma is somewhat (not overly) fond of it.

Posted by: EmmaPele at May 29, 2006 08:16 | link | comments (2)

sun and mud

Emma has walked in the woods holding hands with lots of boys, but none as wonderful as Max.  Max has learned two new words, "nice" and "hon", which he uses all the time.  "Nice" is planting his hand in a sun-warmed mud puddle.  "Hon" is holding out his muddy hand to Emma to help him up a hill.   The two straggle home sun-touched and streaked with dried mud.

THEME MUSIC:  Jack Johnson's Chicken Little Soundtrack

Posted by: EmmaPele at May 27, 2006 05:07 | link | comments (1)

make your blog profitable?

In her research, Emma discovered that publishers have been observing the blogosphere, and finding that many blogs by women are self-help.  They therefore expect to market more self-help books, thus making sure that there is no space left uncommercialized.  So, if you write a really good self-help blog, especially with lots of raw self-deprecating personal revelation about your road to redemption, maybe you could pick up a publisher. However, since the Oprah debacle over the Frey memoir, you'll probably have to tell the truth. 

Posted by: EmmaPele at May 26, 2006 20:09 | link | comments (1)

Howdy, Ma'am

Every morning, Emma gets up and thinks, "Life is tremendous!"  It's not that she doesn't suffer with obsessions, negative thoughts, desires, aversions, cravings, old jealousies, ego damage, or any of the other mental formations that plague all of us poor old humans struggling along on the planet.  But the training has proven the benefit of rising above and never clinging to these arisings.

She has heard of many women her age who suddenly find their greatest happiness now, when all the turmoil of mating and reproduction have passed away.  There's no desperation to please.  No more sense of incompleteness.  The world begins to ignore you, and then you can be quite happy in yourself.  And yet the world also knows what power you have, since you have mothered it.   The world calls you "Ma'am," and you find that somehow funny, because you can't think of yourself as a "Ma'am."  The first time it happens, you want to fall down laughing.

 

Posted by: EmmaPele at May 25, 2006 19:24 | link | comments (1)

A visit

Yesterday, Emma went  as chaperone on a colleague's class trip to a Holocaust museum, and heard a survivor who was in the labor camp Plaszow, the same one in Schindler's List.  This survivor had been brutalized by the SS overseer played by Raiph Fiennes in the movie.  Despite his age, he was calm, loving, open, centered, and without conceit or bitterness. The docent pointed out to the class that not many survivors are left, and that it would be increasingly rare to hear that kind of living testimony.  Emma, as anyone knows who has read this blog with any steadiness, is cynical about the current scholarship of the Holocaust and the motivations of its historians.  The museum is devoted to teaching tolerance to young people, a simple and noble goal, without ego, that helped restore Emma's faith.

Posted by: EmmaPele at May 25, 2006 09:08 | link | comments