The Mutt of Life

Posted on February 19, 2012 by pamwhite

The other day I got a certificate in the mail. I had completed another course, had another few letters after my name if I chose to put them there. I don’t choose. My pedigree is extensive with gets and begats and doesn’t begin to express who I am or how I got here.
It’s not that the cum laude isn’t important, but the laurels pale in relation to the ground they grew in and on. It’s my experience and what I do with it that ribbons me.

We are all a mixture of genetic and experiential inputs and impulses. Every thought dictates our next action, every action dictates our results. If I let my certificate, whatever it says, dictate how I feel about myself I might as well hide behind the pedigree and be done with it.
The walk of my life needs a path and the path needs dirt and rocks. I mustn’t forget that. The days of exasperation spent in pursuit of my highest goals are the soles of my feet and the strength in my heart.
“…once you fully apprehend the vacuity of a life without struggle you are equipped with the basic means of salvation.” Tennessee Williams, “The Catastrophe of Success.”
When I look at the pulsing path of my life I don’t feel the triumphs so much as the friends and the songs. The sometimes riotous music of my peers and the eras I’ve experienced.
Part of the air I’ve breathed has been the expression of those around me. Virtual and actual. I remember how good it felt to add Bucky Fuller as one of my mentors though I never knew him or met him. Ditto John Cage.
It was a revelation to be free of my immediate influences and enter the world of possibility.

Someone To Watch Over Me

Posted on January 5, 2012 by pamwhite

There is something elemental in our need to be seen. We’re hard-wired for it. We need it, we want it and we give it back. My dog Cho and I stare at each other. A nod across the room tells us we’re connected. A smile on his lips leaves a smile on mine. He counts the smiles back and forth as I do.

It’s not about anthropomorphizing so much as that we are both predators and it’s what we do. We’re hard-wired. Last night the moon was getting full and it was bright enough to wake me. Cho was up too. The thing about being human was that I happened to have my iPhone near me and, wanting to know more about the moon, I looked in the APP store for information about the moon.

So now I have this cool and beautiful moon on my phone. It tells me how far, how big, how much illumination, moonrise and moonset, and compass information that I do not understand. It also tells me random facts – three at a time. Of course I want more.

What Cho knows about the moon he won’t say. I think what he knows is actually not insignificant and he is happy to share space with me – here space and there space. We curled up in the bright light and told stories until we fell asleep.

When I was very young I was lucky to have someone who let me wake her up to go look at the moon. She would hold me up to the window in the bathroom where I could see the moon shining over the Missouri River. It was as beautiful a sight as any there is and my appreciation hasn’t waned since I first saw it.

The connection with the moon is older than I can imagine, it’s close and far – enough to make my head spin. Man in the moon, green cheese, gold, silver – it doesn’t matter. Both Cho and I know that the moon is there, it just is. And that’s enough.