October Movement...
Following Life and Moving Through Time

Hi!

Yes, it is now October, fall is really at hand, the year is moving quickly on. I will turn 49 in about 6 weeks, yikes!

It has been an eventful year: life has been hectic, stressful and rewarding, life has been new and life has been emotional, life has been incredibly enlightening and painful, life is good. I love being alive- don't you?

Wake up, smell the coffee- drink life in. Yes, it is very good, and yummy.

"People need joy. Quite as much as clothing. Some of them need it far more."
-- Margaret Collier Graham

IF YOU ARE A WOMAN, CLICK ON THESE WORDS TO SEE JOY...
IF YOU ARE A MAN, CLICK ON THESE WORDS TO SEE JOY...

Ah yes... the bane of middle age, keeping the weight off...

Guess I am a teeny bit eclectic... here is an email I received from my mom's neighbor, Doreen. Those of you that know me know that I am not a fundamentalist like Will and that I do not like organized religion much at all, but I am spiritual and believe in meaning and life and love.

This is a lovely story, read it and insert whatever word you wish in place of Jesus (sorry Will!) that makes you comfortable so that you can acknowledge that which touches your soul.

Subject: God

"Tomorrow morning," the surgeon began, "I'll open up your heart..."

"You'll find Jesus there," the boy interrupted.

The surgeon looked up, annoyed "I'll cut your heart open," he continued, to see how much damage has been done..."

"But when you open up my heart, you'll find Jesus in there," said the boy.

The surgeon looked to the parents, who sat quietly.

"When I see how much damage has been done, I'll sew your heart and chest back up, and I'll plan what to do next."

"But you'll find Jesus in my heart. The Bible says He lives there. The hymns all say He lives there. You'll find Him in my heart."

The surgeon had had enough. "I'll tell you what I'll find in your heart. I'll find damaged muscle, low blood supply, and weakened vessels. And I'll find out if I can make you well."

"You'll find Jesus there too. He lives there."

The surgeon left.

The surgeon sat in his office, recording his notes from the surgery, "...damaged aorta, damaged pulmonary vein, widespread muscle degeneration. No hope for transplant, no hope for cure.
Therapy: painkillers and bed rest. Prognosis:, " here he paused, "death within one year."

He stopped the recorder, but there was more to be said. "Why?" he asked aloud. "Why did You do this? You've put him here; You've put him in this pain; and you've cursed him to an early death. Why?"

The Lord answered and said, "The boy, my lamb, was not meant for your flock for long, for he is a part of My flock, and will forever be. Here, in My flock, he will feel no pain, and will be comforted as you cannot imagine. His parents will one day join him here, and they will know peace, and My flock will continue to grow."

The surgeon's tears were hot, but his anger was hotter. "You created that boy, and You created that heart. He'll be dead in months. Why?"

The Lord answered, "The boy, My lamb, shall return to My flock, for he has done his duty: I did not put My lamb with your flock to lose him, but to retrieve another lost lamb."

The surgeon wept.

The surgeon sat beside the boy's bed; the boy's parents sat across from him. The boy awoke and whispered, "Did you cut open my heart?"

"Yes," said the surgeon.

"What did you find?" asked the boy.

"I found Jesus there," said the surgeon.

Ok, back to the state psychiatric hospitals theme... I worked at Western State Hospital (click on picture to connect to site about historic psychiatric institutions) from the mid to late '80s. It was a "nicer" institution than Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan that I wrote about last month in that patients had some privacy and basic respect. It too was an interesting place to work and has given me a couple of stories...

Let's see, yes, I remember that I also had a patient with a shoe/foot fetish there too. He was gaunt and looked kind of like that Manson guy... he wanted to reach down and touch my shoes at times and I had to set limits. He was actually a service-connected vet but was not at the VA hospital- they were paying for him to be at WSH because he had injured too many of their staff attacking them- always interesting to have him alone in my office, but we did fine.

Once while I was alone in my office I heard something bang on the floor and some yelling, I went to the hallway and staff from the unit above us were coming in the door, having heard the noise up there too. In the dining area were several overturned tables and a couple of patients being held back from attacking each other. Seems we had two "Christs" sitting next to each other and they had difficulty with there being more than one of them.

I had another client that I worked with more than once. I remember one time him telling me how he would go through openings in our reality and talk to people in other dimensions and interact- it was very interesting and I told him so but advised him to be very careful about who he shared this experience with. Later he told me how he had been on one of the "back" wards and a male staff person did not like him (he seemed to make a lot of people not like him) and he showed me a scar on his arm from a hot cigarette lighter being held there- which he said was done to him by this staff person. He also said that once this staff person, who worked the evening shift where there is less supervision around, locked him into a craft room with a large, aggressive male patient who proceeded to rape him while the staff person and some other patients watched. I reported these things, and I do know that staff person was moved to day shift for "re-training", as is the custom with such things there, and later moved back to the evening shift when he was finished "re-training". The workers' union there always supported staff members accused of abuse- it has tainted my view of unions. Once when I was no longer working there but was screening patients for a community mental health center that were ready to leave, I ran across this client on a unit with the same male staff person working there and the client was beside him self in terror. I complained to management and caused a rucus, they did move the client and felt that I was just causing trouble- guess I was.

For about a year I managed a residential unit on the grounds there at the hospital. One of my social worker friends referred a client to me from his caseload that we normally would not have accepted but my friend assured me that the fellow would be fine. I came over to his unit to interview the man and he was a huge, Baby Huey kind of guy, who spent the whole time saying "Don't worry, I won't hurt anyone". I kept hoping no one would overhear the interview as they would think I was crazy to accept the man. He came to my program and did fine, stopping by my office daily to tell me a joke- the jokes were always rather pitiful and lacking but he was trying hard to entertain me. He was profusely thankful for the opportunity to be in our program and we were able to transition him to a program in the community- there are a lot of people that have a place in life if given some support and a chance.

Another client I remember was not even on my caseload but on the caseload of a friend and co-worker on my unit. The client had a manic-depressive disorder and was quite manic on this admission. She was fairly young, in her mid to late 20s and while manic was acting quite promiscuous and male clients were at times waking to find her naked on top of them. She refused her medications because, like many manics, she enjoyed her high. Her treatment team was at a loss and worried about her and I overheard her nurse saying that. At that time we could involuntarily give medications to patients if a second psychiatrist agreed that is was in the client's own best interest, but that was normally done with medications for psychosis that you could give in shot form. All of the medications for manic symptoms were in oral form. I matter-of-factly suggested to this patient's nurse that they get a second opinion and give her liquid meds via a feeding tube- crude but effective. The treatment team did pursue this and she stabilized, eventually being able to be discharged back to her home community. The reason I am telling this story is that it did not have a happy ending, and life threw us a curve ball. When you work with severely disturbed psychiatric clients you are sometimes able to get them doing remarkably well and moving on in life in a more normal fashion, with hopes and dreams that then become actually possible. But those times are also very dangerous- because once people are "clear" they begin to realize what they have been doing, what their lives have been, what time they have lost- they are at risk for suicide. This client did not make it through the period of questioning how she had spent the last 10 years of her life, through the period of coming to terms with her past actions, through the period of re-forming her direction in life. She committed suicide. She was intelligent, attractive and she became lost in this complex maze of emotions, feelings and needs that we all try to find our way through, some of us faced with what seem like insurmountable tasks that we must complete in order to continue on the journey. We all need the support of others, we all need connection in life to grow, and sometimes we simply need those things to keep living.

One of my daughters loved the Disney animation classic Cinderella and when she was young we watched it approximately 500 million times. Her sister would grow weary of the repetition at times, but she has grown into a pretty patient being and this may have helped...

At any rate, my lovely, charming daughter is dancing her own dance now, finding her way. She is determined, strong and full of herself again- the two of us continue to celebrate her.

Lava lamps... yes, those were the days, back when Will, now Reverend Will, and I and friends would hang out, doing things we no longer do, things that were part of the process. At any rate, Will's email is not working right and I was trying to let him know I am visiting Michigan in November- to see if he would come to my folks' house and see what life has done to and with me and I can see him.

He did get an email to me, commenting that I am writing a lot about my past and that I should write about my dreams for the future... Yes, I have been writing my stories of the past, and what I am up to right now. This has been a very tumultuous year for me, have been concentrating on the here and now, the one day at a time thing. For the future I am looking forward to my girls being off and on their own soon so that I can have the same for myself. I plan to take some more computer classes, maybe a dance class, and likely more than that but the brain has not gone that far yet... I'll let you know, later.

This has been an incredible year, many, many changes- did I say that before? Divorce, workplace re-organizations, dealing with the alcoholic child, friends and lovers from the past reappearing, the alienation of children going thru divorce, financial overload, no one in my bed at night still, and redefining myself to boot. Yes, a challenging year, a year of discovery. Life is good; I like myself.

Robert Frost wrote the wonderful poem The Road Not Taken- the camel pulling the carriage picture links to a cool site brought to my attention by my lifelong friend, Grappler. The guy with the site (Gene) likes antique farm equipment, and Robert Frost- he can't be all bad...

I read a business planning kind of book about ten years ago, and one thing it said has stuck with me: that you are faced with decisions and you make them, yet you never know what the outcome of the decisions you did not make was, and so you continue on, making decisions, with the benefit of only the information you have about the outcome of the decisions you did make, you never have the benefit of the information you would have had of the decisions you did not make, your future decisions are made without the benefit of that information, and so your choices in some way become limited by the limited information you have gathered, limited by what you have already chosen. I do not know if I have taken the road less traveled, or the one more traveled, just the one I have taken, and I will continue on that road, making decisions that limit my experience to those that I do take, and there is no other way. You only get to make one decision, no matter how many options you chose from. The decisions could be different at different times or stages of our lives, yet we only get to make them once, at the time that they are presented. There is really no room for regret, because there is no option of going back, that I know of. Regrets only stymie the progress we have available to pursue. Do I wonder about the decisions I did not make? Of course. Would I do things differently if I had the life experience then that I have now? Of course. I would be in a very different place now, if that were the case, however I do not know if I would be happier, or wiser. Sometimes, many times, adversity is actually our friend, it teaches us much more than it's cohort- happiness can lead to complacency, and I have not had to worry much about that. Life has not given me what I expected, I think it rarely does for anyone. Maybe I think too much, but I do not know how to be any other way. Some people are amazed by the musings they see on my pages, others simply express the same/similar thoughts as me and have no amazement at my stuff. The world is full of different people, they are all interesting. I like myself, and that is what is important. How can it not be so? Sometimes I give a simple answer- at least there must have been times I have given a simple answer, but, mostly I do not. We are all special people. In fact, I am not all that sure that we are all separate persons at all, but that is the subject of yet another diatribe... I do not think there is one special person who will make life "right" for us, but there are persons with whom we have a special connection, whatever the source of that is, and those are the persons I/we seek out, for better or for worse, and, again, I know of no other way to proceed- how could you not chose to be with those people you feel a special connection to? And sometimes you discover that you are the only one of the pair of you who felt that connection, and you wonder where it came from...

Out of every crisis comes the chance to be reborn, to reconceive ourselves as individuals, to chose the kind of change that will help us to grow and to fulfill ourselvs more completely.-- Nena O'Neil

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Daphne and Bruce!!!

Both Daphne and Bruce have recently had birthdays, welcoming another year and the continuing opportunity to be alive and work on the crossword puzzle of life. Daphne and Bruce brighten my work day, bringing humor and insights.

My lifetime listens to yours.-- Muriel Rukeyser

Yes, Carol is a hoot... full of life and giving so much to those around her... Those of us who know her count knowing her as a blessing and are sending her our energy and prayers these days.

Inside yourself is a place where you live all alone... that's where you renew the springs that never dry up."-- Pearl S. Buck

Click on Carol's picture for a video expressing my feelings about MS- good for laughing out loud, and maybe for some little expression of hostility... (it's a big file and took forever to load on my computer but eventually did...) ciao

THE CAROL UPDATE... NEWS FROM EVT. PROV. HOSPITAL

10/18/02: Everyone at work is concerned about Carol and sends their love to her. She is sitting up now, waiting for the legs to move and continuing to share the light inside of her. The beautiful flowers in a vase that is a pitcher with bamboo shoots painted on it and the silky feeling teddy bear are from co-workers, with more presents to follow...

Do not keep saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" Nobody knows how it can be like that.-- Richard Feynman, on quantum physics

Ah yes, the complexities of living in a world that is not as we wish it would be... once again learning that being present and knowing that wherever you are at any given moment is exactly where you are supposed to be, that even though you are having a hard time and don't know the answers, the fact is that we don't get to know the answers. So, in my current angst of trying to find my way and find the answers, it is helpful to refocus on the fact that I am searching for something that is not to be had, that finding our way IS our task and that as we are present every day and every minute we will find our way, making choices that feel right.

I saw Linda Waterfall at a Seattle Folklore Society concert on the 19th; in her last song she sang about love. The lyrics said something like: love is like the universe, there is no reason for it to exist, but, there it is.

There are a lot of things that we know exist but that can't be measured or seen, aren't there? A lot of the things that make it feel sooo good to be alive are like that- and that's just the way it is.

Life is a lot like a goofy dance... The divorce is final, and after 22 years my last name is changing back from Kearney to Jardot. It is hard to express or measure what that all means; it is not what we set out to do, not what we envisioned, not what we dreamed of... Maybe as we age one of the things we learn to do is to dream real dreams, dream dreams that may actually come true in our waking hours. We can hear and read all we want about people, relationships, love, but it is inside that the learning occurs.

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."- Agnes Repplier

Life is a continual process of growth, or non-growth, but the non-growth shapes our lives too, as others out-strip us and move on, while the non-growth of others that we are close to inevitably affects our relationship with them because it changes them by not changing them.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."- Carl Jung

"Growth demands a temporary surrender of security."- Gail Sheehy.

Security is not all it's cracked up to be... it can lead to stagnation- then again, it would be nice. But I, like many others, have left the safety of the harbor, exposing myself to the wind, letting it blow warmly through my hair... mmmm, the breeze is invigorating... I will comb my hair later.

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."- John A. Shedd

MAKE A TARGET OF YOURSELF, QUICK, WHILE YOU CAN...
AND HAVE FUN :)

Click on the Farside cartoon at right and it will take you to a Larson site... enjoy.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!


Halloween is at hand, just remember to temper your revelling so you don't end up like Mr. Pumpkin at left...

And maybe consider getting an independent appraisal of your chosen costume so you don't end up like the guy at right...

And don't forget to include man's best friend...

"This whole act's immutably decreed. 'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders."- Herman Melville, Moby Dick


CLICK FOR: Pictures of Barbara's Costume Party!!

I received a nice email from my friend Prudence. I think I have gotten it before. A good way to end the month...


Subject: red marbles

During the waning years of the depression in a small southeastern Idaho community, I used to stop by Mr. Miller's roadside stand for farm-fresh produce as the season made it available. Food and money were still extremely scarce and bartering was used, extensively. One particular day Mr. Miller was bagging some early potatoes for me. I noticed a small boy, delicate of bone and feature, ragged but clean, hungrily apprizing a basket of freshly picked green peas. I paid for my potatoes but was also drawn to the display of fresh green peas. I am a pushover for creamed peas and new potatoes. Pondering the peas, I couldn't help overhearing the conversation between Mr. Miller and the ragged boy next to me. "Hello Barry, how are you today?" "Hello, Mr. Miller. Fine, thank ya. Jus' admirin' them peas ... sure look good." "They are good, Barry. How's your Ma?" "Fine. Gittin' stronger alla' time." "Good. Anything I can help you with?" "No, Sir. Jus' admirin' them peas." "Would you like to take some home?" "No, Sir. Got nuthin' to pay for 'em with." "Well, what have you to trade me for some of those peas?" "All I got's my prize marble here." "Is that right? Let me see it." "Here it is. She's a dandy." "I can see that. Hmmmm, only thing is this one is blue and I sort of go for red. Do you have a red one like this at home?" "Not 'zackley .....but, almost." "Tell you what. Take this sack of peas home with you and next trip this way let me look at that red marble." "Sure will. Thanks, Mr. Miller." Mrs. Miller, who had been standing nearby, came over to help me. With a smile she said: "There are two other boys like him in our community, all three are in very poor circumstances. Jim just loves to bargain with them for peas, apples, tomatoes or whatever. When they come back with their red marbles, and they always do, he decides he doesn't like red after all and he sends them home with a bag of produce for a green marble or an orange one, perhaps."

I left the stand, smiling to myself, impressed with this man. A short time later I moved to Colorado but I never forgot the story of this man, the boys and their bartering. Several years went by each more rapid than the previous one. Just recently I had occasion to visit some old friends in that Idaho community and while I was there learned that Mr. Miller had died. They were having his viewing that evening and knowing my friends wanted to go, I agreed to accompany them. Upon our arrival at the mortuary we fell into line to meet the relatives of the deceased and to offer whatever words of comfort we could. Ahead of us in line were three young men. One was in an army uniform and the other two wore nice haircuts, dark suits and white shirts ... very professional looking. They approached Mrs. Miller, standing smiling and composed, by her husband's casket. Each of the young men hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, spoke briefly with her and moved on to the casket. Her misty light blue eyes followed them as, one by one, each young man stopped briefly and placed his own warm hand over the cold pale hand in the casket. Each left the mortuary, awkwardly, wiping his eyes. Our turn came to meet Mrs. Miller. I told her who I was and mentioned the story she had told me about the marbles. Eyes glistening she took my hand and led me to the casket. "Those three young men, who just left, were the boys I told you about. They just told me how they appreciated the things Jim "traded" them. Now, at last when Jim could not change his mind about color or size... they came to pay their debt. "We've never had a great deal of the wealth of this world," she confided, "but, right now, Jim would consider himself the richest man in Idaho." With loving gentleness she lifted the lifeless fingers of her deceased husband. Resting underneath were three, exquisitely shined, red marbles.

Moral: We will not be remembered by our words, but by our kind deeds. Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. A wish for you! A day of ordinary miracles: A fresh pot of coffee you didn't make yourself. An unexpected phone call from an old friend. Green stoplights on your way to work or shop. Your keys right where you look. A friendly smile from a stranger and a knowing look from someone close. And feeling some human touch that is startlingly tender. I wish you a day of little things to rejoice in. A day of happiness and perfection -- little bite-size pieces of perfection that give you the funny feeling that Life is smiling on you, holding you so gently because you are someone special and rare. They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire lifetime to forget them.

If you have comments on my topics or content, please send them to me at:

Comments received from responding humans and my responses can be accessed by clicking on the picture of Ken's 1962 Wheel Horse Garden Tractor at left; Ken was the originator of the idea for this...

CLICK for ongoing writings/quotes from JUDITH VIORST'S book: Necessary Losses
(Last Added to 9/25/02...)

Music: Click on Lips (Should be loaded about the 3rd try...) Bonnie Raitt, "Love Letter" Page Created October 2002