ON FRED LEAVING

October is one of my favorite months. It's a colorful, sensual time beginning with the chill in the air, the smell of damp decaying leaves in the woods, the crinkle of dried leaves underfoot and the incredible freshness of the Maine mountain air. The clouds change and you are more likely to see a mackerel sky when there are contrasting air masses. This October came with a rough opening...a flu hit me that left me breathless and weak for about 15 days. Then, I turned 60. Talk about a chill...I guess it is hard to avoid the natural inclination to conduct a life review at the beginning of each new decade, and with the magnifying glass in hand and the questions pushing my gaze further and further back, I look back in hopes of discovering a new path for this stage of my life. I sometimes imagine myself as a brightly colored leaf drifting on the wind. Where will I land? And when I do...what growing process will begin? The sunny warm days push back against the cool windy days and frost nights. The wrestling match of air masses begins in earnest but the cold won't win out until November. October sunshine is special...golden, honey colored light that slants through the windows in the late afternoon. It has a dual nature like bittersweet...the parasitic plant that pops out bright yellow berries that burst into orange berries when the yellow jacket pops. Driving up the North Road the other day, we encountered a weasel. He seemed ambivalent about crossing the road and we got to watch him for a bit while he acted like he couldn't decide if he wanted to be on one side of the road or the other. The bracing chill of loss has visited several times so far this fall. There is a far away look as I gaze out the window and write...a bitter to the sweet. Lately, we have been experiencing a noticable increase in the number of folks our own age that are passing away. Most recently, a dear friend was taken after a motorcycle accident left him brain dead. This week we heard about a dear old friend from our past life in Marblehead who passed away day before yesterday out of the blue. All I know is, his brain started to bleed and he died Wednesday night. That was Fred. He was a good friend beginning in 1973-74...a jeweler who worked hard and steadily for all these years. I can see him now wearing his head gear eye piece that let him work on tiny things up close. He liked to smoke a cigar that, years ago, was a pipe. He loved to visit when I went in to his shop and we often talked about philosophy and the nature of life on this planet Earth. He came from a Jewish background, and I was brought up Unitarian and occaisionally we would discover big differences in the way we perceived what we believed to be our spiritual responsibilities as human beings alive on this planet. There was a quote that became our nugget of shared truth..."God loves an idle rainbow no less than a laboring sea." We talked about work ethic, duty and responsibility and I was taken by the image of God loving a rainbow because when we were first becoming friends, I was unemployed and exploring art...but feeling guilty about it. My puritanical roots just wouldn't let me have fun and Fred helped me to see the value in doing things that don't make me any money. Years later, when I left my first husband and just had to get out of Marblehead, Fred helped me escape by purchasing jewelry for a good price. He was kind and smart and a warm man who could also play a mean fiddle. His demeanor was humble and he always had a twinkle in his eye. The most juiced up I ever saw him was when he was working on some sacred Jewish artifacts...or a gorgeous sterling siver chalice that was for a local temple.

I let Fred into my heart. He put a few of my small dreams into jewelry reality. He made me a heart pendant that I designed when I first met my soulmate, Stephen. I had an idea and he made it a necklace. He also made our wedding rings. And when I had a sense that we would be leaving Marblehead, I had him set three small diamonds into my wedding band as symbols of my 3 men; Stephen, Sam and Will ...the loves of my life. That change in my wedding band was an effort to replace my grandfather's ring that was stolen from me when I moved to New York City. It made me feel whole again. But when my beloved father died in 1995, Dad gave me a sterling ring with thunderbirds on it. It was too big for me and Fred suggested I make it into a pendant. It has since become a sterling silver drum that holds a pinch of my fathers ashes inside. I was all nervous about making something with dad's ashes but after hammering things out with Fred in the realm of conversation, I made peace with my own odd request and love that pendant to this day. Fred took the time to know me even as he sat at that bench with his day's work ahead of him and his eye piece on his forehead.

Now he is gone. His life is a crisp orange leaf riding the wind to a distant strange ground and I will never again get to hug him. This losing of leaves is happening more and more frequently reminding me that I am now in the autumn of my life. The sacred wind is blowing...and some of those dancing leaves swirling in circles are members of my circle but only for a time. Every soul that leaves life on this Earth is another reminder that all we really have is today...this one wild moment in our one wild life. So...enjoy the wild ride on the winds of change and when your last leaf drifts slowly to the ground...let there be a field of garlic patiently awaiting the blanket of dying leaves to sustain it's growing once the bitter cold of winter is passed. Glory be. May you labor no more as you rest in peace FRED FINKEL...and may I count my blessings, my loves, my days as gemstones in a necklace linked by love.

ON TO THE SIXTIES

The sun is setting over the final hours of life in my 50's. At 4:25 on Friday morning, I turn 60. I keep saying these words to myself over and over and still they sound hollow and empty. But this change of decade seems harder than the rest. Oh, it's probably because I've never been here before and all the other decades are in the past. But when I say 60's, all I can imagine is free love, long hair hanging in my eyes, the fear in my parent's eyes, bell bottoms and beads and the change in the music. Woodstock was actually in 1969...so the images I have of the sixties are really the late sixties unless I care to recall the horrors in Life Magazine of racial tensions escalating as the work towards civil rights began in ernest. Strangely, I still feel like the same person...a shy, awkward, adolescent that cares way too much about what other people think and not nearly enough about how I feel. I can tap into her in a flash. She hovers around the periphery of things weighing out how it looks, how she feels, whether or not it's worth diving into and usually deciding that the risk of embarrassment is just too high given the learning curve to achieve mastery. Thank God we all get old. At least the wisdom of experience brings true learning and all that the nervous teenager carefully crosses out as weird, dull, old fashioned is entered gracefully as our children bring us up to our full human stature. I must say...my kids did more to make me the adult I am today than my parents did. It's almost like we are cartoon sketches of ourselves in adolescence with an emphasis on the defining lines...me/not me. But it takes your 20's, 30's and 40's to work out the substance and the colors and the facial expressions that reveal the heart truthfully. As a teenager, I smoked. It was part of being cool. Of pretending not to care. It was self preservation in a family of smokers because the smell wasn't nearly as bad as if you didn't smoke. So I couldn't beat em...so I joined em. I cared more about the looks of the package than what was inside. But that was a result of the focus of the times. For years, as a girl...it was all about looks. Looks and books. I had a need. From the time I was 10 years old, I had to have blank books for filling. I liked to write poems or jot down observations...or note a profound thought.  Something in me always reached for what was inside and if nothing was there, I'd make it up. Now there are three shelves of spiral bound, hard bound, cloth bound and even metal bound books hidden away in an upstairs closet. Because my mother was always busy with her 5 daughters...I tended to try to figure things out for myself. Besides...parents in those days usually focused on themselves. It was the era of children being seen but not heard...in other words, keeping silence. I spent inordinate time alone trying to figure things out by writing and by listening to music. Words have always been important and yet frustrating tools of communication. So what am I saying? I'm saying that I feel no different. I still feel that 18 year old perched on the threshold of adulthood. I still feel the awkwardness, self consciousness, judgements, doubts and hang-ups. Standing on the threshold of old age about to be 60...I am plagued with the same mental traps, knots and confusions. I am scared to enter old age as I was scared to enter adulthood as I was scared to enter motherhood. From this older vantage point I have the experience to know not to be defined by my fears and yet I still must wrestle the same forces that chew on my thoughts...sew seeds of self doubt...and try to convince me that I shouldn't care. I care. I care a lot. I care so much that even the candidates debates can send me to my room with memories of arguing parents and endless bickering about things that don't seem so important. I see the patterns. I see the growth rings. I see the spiral's upward spin and I know that each stage brings opportunities to become something more than we've ever been before and the stage always comes inconveniently...I'm never quite ready to jump when the time to jump comes...and yet I must jump. That is the only way to enter the flow...just jump and go with it. So here I am watching the sun go down on my 50's and still trying to understand what it was all about and in two day's I will turn 60 and another 10 year cycle begins anew. If I keep watching the sun set...will I miss the dawn. That is my fear...that my moment will come and I'll miss it because I'm so focused on a moment that happened last week or last night. They way it was always seems to could the way it is. You'd think knowing this would make it easy for someone to jump into the now...especially after practicing entering 6 decades. But it isn't easy. It is a daily challenge to be fully present to the present and yet it seems to be the key to being fully alive. So this is my birthday wish as I enter my 6th decade...I wish to be fully present to the now in looks and books, because I am still that cartoon teenager no matter how old I get and my 87 year old mother probably is too.  On your mark, get set....

IT ISN'T EASY BEING GREEN

On Wednesday night, the first presidential debate took place on the tube in my living room while I became sicker by the moment with some kind of disgusting flu that blossomed into a bronchitis and the feeling of an elephant sitting on my chest. (interesting image) I felt assaulted by the debate. It reminded me of my teen age years sitting up in my third floor bedroom listening to my parents argue. I distinctly remember the coldness of the house...doing my homework under my covers...wanting to barf because of the absurdity of my parent's repetitive arguments and the feeling of helplessness to offer something that might shed light and create peace so that I wouldn't be forced to choose between them. I felt the old pain in my ear canals, the pressure in my head...especially behind my eyes. The TV sound was noise assaulting my oversensitized mucus membranes. Perceiving the 2012 Presidential debate as parental disharmony is taking things just a bit too personally. Oh. But I was getting sick. This whole political polarity makes me sick. As if anything will change for a 60 year old unemployed woman by choosing either candidate. Sorry folks. You make your own reality based on the choices you make minute by minute...day by day. And so do I.

I'm going to vote for Obama because I truly believe he needs another 4 years to rectify the situation that Bush created and he is clearly making progress even if it doesn't fulfill promises made, he is moving in the right direction. But when Obama referred to "clean coal" in his debate, my jaw dropped. That and his coziness with Monsanto causes almost as much discomfort in my heart as Romney's pompous idiocy and his affinity for the big money. Of course Romney is bought and paid for and by people who could give a shit about me, or folks like me who work hard but earn low wages and care more about our quality of life than having intercontinental bank accounts. The value difference between Obama and Romney is the word "care". I want to vote for a man that cares...and not for a man who could care less. But every human that is handed the power of President Of The USA, is susceptable to corruption. I want a president that can address the big issues...the environment...climate change...protecting wildlife...keeping house for Planet Earth so that our children's children have a place to live. Unfortunately, I've yet to see a politician who is brave enough to get to the heart of the matter and strong enough to assume leadership in the environmental arena. Big oil owns them all and Romney was downright scary in his debate...he is a ruthless moneymonger and a threat to basic freedoms of press and broadcasting. Destroying public radio? Firing Big Bird? Come on. There are issues on the table here and now...why focus on destroying living things...like PBS? He doesn't care about the arctic..he doesn't care if Tar Sands pipeline covers the country. He wants more oil and gas and coal. His focus is on American fossil fuels and lacks imagination for safe sources of clean energy. He also lies and cheats. Did you see him using a cheat sheet at the debate? Not kosher.

I don't think it is Snuffleupagus that is sitting on my chest. It feels more like a circus elephant who is chained to greed going round and round in familiar circles because that is the known and familiar. When I can take a deep breath, I cough up green stuff and there is a whole feeling in my heart. I definitely empathize with Big Bird. I empathize with the oil slicked Eagles, gulls, dolphins,seals,and the polar bears seeking ice flows so they can feed. All of these creatures...like PBS...are living and offer every human who wants to partake, a piece of their wild magic as long as they have a place to live in peace of this planet. I empathize with the dying oceans, the crumbling reefs and dying habitat for more species than can be counted because we are destroying what we don't even know. And there isn't any time. The clock stops ticking soon on the ability to rectify some of the human damage done to Earth's creation. We are very nearly too late.

I'm going to vote. I'll vote for Obama. Even if he thinks there is such a thing as clean coal. There is a way for wildlife and people to live peacefully on this planet but only if humans care. At least he cares about people's access to healthcare, education...like any elephant worth her weight, the small and frail among the herd are protected by the big and strong. It's natural. Many countries provide healthcare for their citizens. It is not communism or socialism...it's CARE. So if you are one of my many Republican friends, do what you will with my blessing and I will try not to hold your choice against you. But someone please tell me what you see in that smug uncaring individual that is running against Obama? And please, don't try to change my mind. My heart is green and if you've ever planted a seed, you understand that growth takes time and patience to blossom and fruit...and if you neglect the seed that is planted, you will not find sustenance in it's fruit. It's up to all of us to care...about Earth and about each other...no matter what color we are...no matter what we believe...no matter who we love. We are all here for a reason...two legs, fourlegs, trunks and roots, fur, feather and we are all at the mercy of our human capacity to foul this planet to a farethewell. The least we can do is care.

Mister Rogers knows...there are many ways to say I love you...and here he tells the senate...you just have to copy the link and paste to your browser because I'm a techtard. Ooops. Is that politically incorrect?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q&feature=youtu.be