I see a news report on America's involvement in Libya and Mr. Obama's refusal to follow his legal community's recommendations to ask Congress for permission, and I remember my years passionately protesting the Vietnam War. I support the congressmembers who sued Mr. Obama.
I watch and listen to Rachel Maddow making us aware of how so many states are circumventing the Roe vs. Wade ruling and shutting down women's options for abortion, and I remember when I became unintentionally pregnant and almost died from an underground abortion performed by a 90-year-old man living in a row house in the slums of a city, before abortions were legal. I'm afraid for women who become unintentionally pregnant and can't find a safe way to terminate their pregnancies.
My African Grey Carmen fluffs her wings, lifts one foot high in the air, and bobs her head up and down as we dance in the living room to music tracks on Lance and Huguette's latest CD, and I remember my years of friendship with those two wonderful Canadian entertainers who perform winters in Florida as a duo. I miss them and wish them well.
And while laughing at Carmen's version of dancing, I remember the day I screamed one of those werewolf-victim-horror-movie screams into the receiver and dropped the phone a second after I answered a potential employer's phone call while Carmen was perched on my other hand. She flew for the phone I was holding to my ear and sank her beak deeply into my neck and down my back in eight places, bloodying my hand as I tried to pry her off my back. I managed to pick up the phone and tell the employer I'd call him back in a few minutes after I stopped the bleeding. Carmen had bitten me a fraction of an inch next to my jugular vein. I stopped the bleeding. The caller's eardrum was likely split, but he hired me as an editor in his company anyway. I'm grateful for the times Carmen makes me laugh, and I NEVER pick up a telephone or the TV remote control when she is not safely bolted inside her cage!
I work with my voice student and comfort her when she gets frustrated and cries, remembering the college years when I ran out of the room crying during my weekly voice lessons with my 70-year-old Hungarian opera star teacher, Lilly Justus. I wonder if I'm a strict, focused, exacting teacher like Justus, demanding the utmost effort from my students, but never letting them know it's okay to not be able to get there--yet.
I learn that my first husband has died, and just when I start to feel sad and remember how deeply I loved him, I remember how he lied under oath to the Catholic priests on a statement he signed in order to get our marriage annulled in the Catholic Church so he could marry a girl from a strict Catholic family. The marriage was annulled, but his false testimony could have sent me to prison. I'll write that story sometime, and for this moment, I'll balance my memories in that gully of disparity between my adoration of him and my anger and disappointment, mostly (now I know) at myself for my consent to his abuses.
I think about drinking an alcoholic beverage to soothe emotional pain, and I remember the last time I drank twenty years ago. I was taking Lithium prescribed for my bipolar disorder and got alcohol poisoning. Certain that I would die any moment, I crawled on my hands and knees to my bed and climbed onto it while the man I loved stood over me furiously shouting every curse word and insult in his military vocabulary and calling me every filthy name he could think of. For this moment, I'm keepin' that memory green, and I refuse to drink any alcoholic beverage.
My friend who is on a cross-country road trip calls and tells me the antibiotics she's on for a sinus infection aren't working, and I remember my years on the road with my band when one (or more) of us got sick and went to hospital emergency rooms for medical care. Now there are walk-in clinics. I tell her it's okay to stop in a city and find one of those and spend a few hours waiting to see the doctor to get a prescription for a different antibiotic. One's health always comes first, I've learned.
My human mind is always scanning the landscape of present and past and galloping off into fantasy, possibility, and imagination. Controlling my mind to "not think" about or submerge negative or painful events takes too much energy, but I try always to be mindful of my thoughts and to sort out imagination and fantasy from reality so I can choose which ones I will focus on and act on.
Mistakes and life experiences are our teachers, and experiencing every rich blessing in the moment calls out imagination, memory, and associated meanings and emotions.
Kahlil Gibran writes in "The Prophet, "The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"
For this moment, I will give myself permission to be totally human and revel in my joyful kangaroo mind as it turns cartwheels and leaps now into the present moment, now into imagination, and now into the past years of my rich, fully-lived life, without boundaries or limitations.
Letting my mind loose to wander can cause a public relations problem. Yesterday wasn't the first time a good friend has said, "Renelle, you think too much!"
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