From an Upper Floor

Bucket or also known as Rain Hats. . . .

When I was young , there were people in my circle, friends of parents, or neighbors sitting on their porches whom we thought were wise old people.  They were mainly with time on their hands it seemed, obviously going nowhere.  What happened to all of them?

I really don’t know, just remember they were there.  Their hands were always busy.  Old men were whittling wood pieces, turning out to be beautiful birds or art carvings I wished were mine.

Women were sometimes talking but their hands were knitting or crocheting lacy coverings for pillows or antimacassars?  That is an old word coming to mind.

It is a covering for the backs of stuffed chairs to prevent soiling from greasy heads.  (Britannica Dictionary)  Since people nowadays shower each day, we no longer have need of them.

But when they talked, it was always something I did not know but wondered. No one close could enlighten me.  But these old people would and I hung with them.  They were full of things worth knowing.

No one said they were wasting time or too old to do good.  Because they were wise in ways of man and had knowledge about things no one talks of anymore or cares to research.

When talking to a friend today I mentioned these wise ones, saying their minds were always in conference while their hands were busy, as I do in  finishing  this life but unable to conjure up the energy to do what was normal before.  The word worth noting and operative, is unable.

It is a grave mistake we make in not learning a craft or having something to do with one’s hands.  Sometimes even thought cannot be summoned.  Sometimes and this is important, never without hope and never without knowledge that somewhere will be time for what we have refined.

To keep the larger picture in mind is imperative.  Remember,  we are in class. History is full of people who first came with an idea ahead of its time; elsewhere, yes, here, no.

But important it has always been to teach something the hands can do.  In hard times, emotional, economic, or inopportune, when one cannot accomplish what needs be,  the work of the hands create a sane oasis.

So this week, I laid aside the knitting needles, picked up a crochet hook and made some bucket hats.

Close to where they live, the family gathers to enjoy what is left of the summer.  And Emma E. basks in the attention and love her presence assumes.  And this should be the right of every child chosen to come to us.  Because we choose them.

I have mentioned before that for over half a century I have told our sons thank you for choosing me as your mother.  Because I chose you and have loved you long before the world ever was.  Because I know I was before I am.  Not believe, not hope nor anything else, but know.

I think once we learn this truth, we have to act responsibly.  Every teen ager has shouted I did not ask to be born!  But we did.  For reasons long forgotten.  Mainly because we are unaccountably good and wanted to make a difference,  because we needed to learn certain things and our choice of parents is insanely correct.

Hard to swallow when in retrospect our childhoods have been unbelievably difficult, when we know we could have learned what we needed to know with less pain.  But our painful tract forced memory to surface and provided a history we could access.

We found we could still love, for instance, because at some juncture someone cared enough to teach us how.  If not accessible, life still teaches us to learn what love requires.

My Mentor, the Nazarene, said to us all, as the twig is bent. . . And bent we are before arrival and proceed with our intentions, but are different no matter how vehemently parents claim I treat them all the same!  Still the bent twig shows us that our history before we are in this place, will continue to shape our adventure.

Emma E.  is fortunate with her history and chosen family.  She is embraced fiercely with love and with everyone attending her with concern to her development.  This I wish for all souls entering a new world;  to be wanted and loved into being, to be given the tools necessary to grow and enhance life in all aspects.

Not to be given tools is to handicap the child.  To encourage pursuit of reasons why, the earnestness  to consider all work sacred, to learn to observe keenly, but most of all to understand that learning is what life demands of us.

With these, the deep satisfaction gives the greatest joy, a rich legacy.

photo by Joe Hallissey III

‘You Are My Best To Be.’. . .

I could hear the words . . ‘too bad all the others could not have been made this way.’  And the response was that this is what creativity was all about.  That with each new effort there is improvement.  And the creator of the art or article was encouraged with each effort.

Would it eventually be perfect?   No, because each thing to be done, whether a seam or incorporation of an idea would have to be perfected.  As the creator is not satisfied with his creation and the art is itself the material to be worked with a life of its own and a desire to incorporate whatever is native to it, there could not be perfection.

The last two printed fabrics I worked on, with different stretch, different designs wished for a different approach with ideas of how to use them, so I did.  Not with perfection, but adequate, with the total effect pleasing.

With people, individuals, each is a new creation, a new world created.  Each becomes a dreamer of his world, a new world to go spinning into space.  In one of my poems last lines, ‘you are my best to be.’  I might add, for my world.  As the each is the best for his world created.

With what he is, she is, no one could have done it better.  Consider what they had as given, the heritages, genetic, cultural, climatological, religious, what they create, no one could do it better.   There is no model upon which they create, for each is the world unto himself.  And the worlds are as many as there are people.

Live and let live.  I cannot criticize anymore.  I know the weight of my burdens.  I could not carry the weight of yours which I cannot know.  But let me help you.  I can do that. . . . .

Nature’s New Arrival . . . 

I bent and bowed and gathered
all things to me.  I sifted and sorted and
with much pain separated the grains of man.
Filing to completion, I noted the encumbrances
saddled to my Earth.

In the midst of morning I chased the night
to an empty place and began anew
to observe the travesties inclined to Nature.

She wound from her spool of variegated yarn
and proposed a multi colored libation.
We sipped together and studied closely
our inventions.  We joshed and gurgled
in our cups and found our brains quite addled.

Too much too soon we disposed of
the marvelous concoction and decided. . .
she at her best was better than I, and I,
no more befuddled looked upon you and knew

you are my best to be.

art by Claudia Hallissey

Apriori. . . .

Oftentimes what is considered decent, normal behavior we label a success of magnitude.  In this world of the aberrant we have lived so long that the decent is a surprise.    There are souls among us who have volunteered to help heal this behavior.  And have put themselves in jeopardy doing so.

They have known worlds where deeds of good are commonplace, the norm.  These are the expected of daily life.    These persons are versed to the enth degree with worlds where they are familiar.  They are souls born into this world of linear measurement  but are already familiar with a thunder rolling quantum god of whom I write.

They are also versed in worlds where decent civilized behavior is mandatory.  Here they are met with reckless abandon of institutions which have been centuries in the making and are tossed into what is kindergarten for them.  Coming with the intent that growth would be on the agenda, what is now found are the young lost in the maelstrom.

The young expected courage and find spinelessness.  They see panic and fright in adults and greed in powerful hands.  That icons symbolizing centuries of man’s desire to translate the divine into the material shows that the past is still happening.  Not only are the icons being smashed but the humans who built them.

The sibling grandfather, born with the desire to invest in the greater good,  was homeschooling his exceptional grandsons and puzzling, asked, why must good behavior be taught while bad seems innate?  Are we at home with the bad or is it a result of frustration?

Is it why this Earth is the best classroom in the Universe and we work toward education as a human right for everyone?  It is the only way we wipe out bigotry with its stereotypes.  Where man notes that please and thank you must be learned, we are surprised that even love for one’s children of one’s body must be learned and demonstrated.

Do you wonder why the latter comes as a surprise and a hesitation to so many? We were told as the twig is bent. . . apriori?  From where?  It deserves thought.   Begin.