The Sea Inside Us

We went to the ocean today and it was shrouded with Jack The Ripper in London fog right at the water's edge.  Strange. The walk up Salmon Creek Beach was grey and lacking the bright blue just on the other side of the highway.  We walked and watched little sandpipers hustle across the wet sand with such rapidity that you could barely see their bird legs move.  The surf was way up and tumultuous and we walked on.  Families gathered regardless of the lack of sun and it was warm on this mid-September day.

My family have flown from Texas to Hawaii in the last few days for a vacation and a wedding.  Photos show that incredible place on the earth that photos don't even do justice to and I dream of a day when I can body board in the warm water of the ocean, exercising some hard earned vacation time and reflect upon the sky that mirrors the sea that mirrors the sky.

I imagine, one day, maybe in a year, floating on my back in the Hawaiian sea and turning my thoughts towards the sea inside us, turbulent and calm, powder blue and grey, tropical and northern California rough.

The Ink Is Dry And Still Waiting For The Other Shoe To Fall

I think I may laminate my letter from my new employer.  I may frame it.  I may have it blown up into a poster.  Okay, maybe I shall just relish the moment for a moment.  Because, like so many people who have looked for work and never received responses or interviews or even a passing glance, I am now suspicious and wait for the fine print to become the big print.  How could we not? 

After over a year of scrounging, unrelentingly scouring the Internet, applying, revamping my resume,  questioning myself, asking friends, panicking, raging, wailing, doubting, wondering if I should move, wondering if I should stop living, wondering, wondering, wondering like millions of other humans, I have doubt.

However, right here to my right, I have a printed letter of an offer of employment.  It makes me cry just looking at it.  Of course, I have thought of all the people still looking.  We are like survivors from The Titanic and I now have survivor guilt.  I cannot celebrate because my brethren are still out there.  True enough, who knows how this will go for me.  That doesn’t even matter and that sucks.
 
I know, inside, what this process has been like and I remember every month, every rejection, every turn in this pitted road and I know that I am weathered and worn like a smooth rock on the bottom of a still, still pond.  The water is cold and clear and my understanding of what it is like to be over 50 and unemployed in America is carved on my character.  That’s why, tonight, the ink is dry and I am still waiting for the other shoe to fall. I have lots of company.  Think millions of people. 

The Curtain Call Of Morning

The dawn began to emerge behind the darkened silhouettes of the trees in the front yard, dark blue then royal then grey blue, as if a curtain were being lifted on this corner house in slowly awakening neighborhood about to come to from a night of sleep or, in my case, sleepless ness. This moment at dawn is a fragile time to me, inviting hopes for the day, recounting regrets or hardships of the night.  I have had many dark nights of the soul in the last year and I can feel the tension of doubt and worry in my body as I sit on the couch, looking out at the veil being lifted upon a new day.

All that is lost is not found though some spiritual slogan books may try to tell us that.  A different perspective seems to come with time and with turning the past over in my mind, a sautéing of sorts, a wrestling match between mind and heart.  This is how I come to understand how I shall proceed and value myself during difficult times or denigrate myself for not living up to my own sense of right.

This morning, in those moments as the light changed and I drank my coffee and reflected on my journey, I found the changing blues to be a sign of the dynamic nature of being human on this earth.  Lessons are laid at my feet whether I summon them or not.  Whether I look down and welcome those obstacles with grace or with my hair on fire can be the deciding moment of truth.  The curtain call of morning can be my talisman or my foe depending on the message left in the dust.

Going The Distance Regardless Of The Outcome:The Griffin Clan

I await the confirmation of a job that I fought very hard to get chosen for and continued to apply to the grocery monstrosity now gone corporate carnivore. Just to say I did actually, though it is based upon a tested understanding that no job will ever be forthcoming at The Queen Mary or any other of the stores. I have reached 100 applications since July of 2010. Now I am done. Really and truly done. Most sincerely done.

 I am not sure what to do with the feelings left behind by that kind of effort. I may need to do some kind of ritualistic burning at the coast or maybe a 100 white doves, oh wait those are pigeons anyway, or maybe 100 black balloons popped with a very large 10 penny nail! I just think I need a dream colonic.

Just because we have dreams doesn’t mean that they will be granted wishes. Looking for work in 2011 is nothing like any of that. In fact, today I heard about a man working at a coffee shop that was laid off after 32 years. A true, real life story. There are lots more where that came from this year.

I made it to the 100^th application and I can say that I was deemed overqualified for Dishwasher and under qualified for Cashier. Somewhere in between those two lies the great wasteland of working for a corporation with profits out of this world. A militaristic machine that sells natural food to the middle class masses. There is nothing natural about that my friend.

Going the distance regardless of the outcome is my moniker, values and ethics whether I am volunteering or working for a paycheck. Those qualities are part of my Celtic ancestry and I cannot help it whether I want to or not.  Any employer who cannot see the fire in my eyes needs a new set of eyes.

The Reflecting Pond

This afternoon, after I did some volunteering in the office of a place that I have been coming to since December, I walked over to one of the resident's apartment to help a gal who has been on this planet for 97 years.  Today, I found her sleeping on the couch as she did not feel well.  We chatted for a bit and I found the payment that she needed to make and took care of that for her.  It was a very small thing to do for her and I was glad to help.

However, images of her keep floating through my mind since I came home.  She has very recently experienced the death of her husband who was 99 1/2.  She has been his caregiver for some time, at her 90 something age and now that has come to an abrupt end.  She seems lonely when I see her and talk with her and that is what has struck a deep chord within me and I cannot shake it. 

In the short time that I have worked with her balancing the checkbook and doing some filing ,it has been so clear just how sharp her mind is to me.  She is very savvy about details and yet, emotionally, her spirit has always been an assertive and somewhat dominate, frank and sometimes curt one.  Not everyone wants to warm their hands at that fire. 

However, I have seen a fragility and vulnerability in the woman who rides her electric scooter to Oliver's for a quick latte'.  That woman also graduated from Vassar and has a shrewd understanding of political and social issues.  She is alone now though and I find myself worrying about her.   None of us really know what life will hold for us and to me, she is one of my mirrors. I have a great desire to understand what the reflection is showing me.

Grief In Pema Chodron's World

I have been tending to some viral invasion today, on this 10th year anniversary of the 9/11 deaths.  I wore my flag T-shirt and thought of many things while I drank tea, took Vitamin C, Grape Seed extract, Golden Seal and drank that awful Echinacea tea.  Feeling sick is not my thing and gets in the way of all the things that I wanted to do this weekend.  My lymph nodes told the story that I had to concede. 

For me, death of those close to me can bring on a very deep darkness that pulls me under and can stop the world from turning.  Wasn't it just that feeling that swept over us 10 years ago today?  I have a sister who was a professional flight attendant that day in 2001 and so I felt even more powerless as the days after 9/11 came to rest in my chest, my throat and my heart as she talked to me and we cried over our phone connection between California and Texas.  For the following months and years, every time my sister got on an airplane, I held my breath.  Many of us did that same thing and, we could never come to resolve any of it.  Never.

I say a prayer, in my own way today, for all of us who lived on that day and dealt with death, with grief, sorrow, terror, betrayl, wretchedness and such anger.  Anger that would never be quenched.  And so, like I have come to do every day for the past seven years or so, I often turn to Pema Chodron for insight.  She is the one who always seems to tell me what I don't want to hear and what I always need to hear to help me keep the pod bay doors open to my heart. 

"....we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us.  We always have this choice."  -Pema Chodron from The Pocket Pema Chodron.