summer flew by...

and I didn't even get the laundry caught up before it was time to go back to school.

hahaha

I enrolled for 14 hours, biting the bullet and enrolling for those awful obligatory computer courses. Tell me why I must earn a piece of paper to prove to the government that I know what I've been doing for 35 years? THEN my disability insurance company let me know they had decided that they wouldn't pay for my college after all; I was considered too old to be a marketable commodity by the time I obtain a degree.

well...

So I dropped the freakin' computer classes. Why bother with that career path? I am so burned out on computers AND the hordes of fresh-faced babes/dudes being regurgitated from college computer courses who will work 18 hours a day for one-third what I make. So I guess I am not marketable after all. I'll just live to be 100 to show 'em; I may be huddled on the wharf with a begging bowl, but I can tell myself proudly that I did not allow the Establishment to manipulate me.

Anyway I am not getting any younger or richer.

Here's my treatise on body image:

wait
wait

weight...I am thinking about weight. as if that is any surprise. I was born to think about weight. I was raised to regard my body as my enemy. I was conditioned to regard sexuality and self-love as anathema. The screaming contradictions that were crammed into my head are mind-boggling now that I pull them out, one-by-one:

I must be feminine
but neutral – as in neutered, asexual --
but every inch a lady
in the Mrs. Beaver Cleaver’s mom sense of the concept.
I must eat every morsel on my plate because
somewhere ragamuffins
(with whom my mother would not even consider allowing me to play)
were starving:
little yellow, brown and black ragamuffins who – it goes without saying –
were not as good as me and were certainly not going to heaven –
but who were starving nonetheless and deserved our pity.
I must never draw attention to myself,
but I must learn to speak up in a confidently audible tone.
I must never spend time in front of a mirror,
preening and primping,
but I must always comport myself with pride.

wait
wait

Weight does seem to be the perfect answer:
the way to flee without going away.
wait
It was the perfect answer, but it blotted out the sun, in a way.
weight
but now I have perfected this body armor; it is an impenetrable fortress.
It guards me; it holds me prisoner.
It is a habit that holds a gun on me and at any moment, that gun may fire.
It has outlived its usefulness, but how to dismiss it?
like a boarder who had worn out his welcome,
like a tiresome lover,
like the old friend who has remained
absolutely the same since high school

Once someone told me how beastly it was for me to be fat,
that I was taking food from the mouths of starving millions.
That was a body blow; the catechism of my childhood,
“clean your plate because children are starving in China”
shattered into shards of disbelief.
wait
weight
On one of the few actual dates I had before my marriage,
a young man looked at me and asked “why are you fat?”
I remember being flabbergasted –
as if it was a choice, I thought.
But now I see it was a choice, made long before I could articulate
or reason my way through the contradictions and mysteries.
I do not remember how I answered;
I do remember wondering if he asked me out
just to ask me that question.
weight
wait
Now i am slippin’ and slidin’ off the slope of 55.
I have never in my life felt attractive or
comfortable in my own skin unless I am alone.
I have, in spite of all odds, experienced success and happiness.
I am considered rather brave and pretty damned smart.
But this – this weight – is my dragon.
I want to vanquish this dragon while I am still strong and able,
before the demons that the weight can unleash on me rush in
to exact their toll – as they (and the demons of cigarette addiction)
have done to my sister. I want to tell the demons
WAIT
I was obedient and the least you can do is wait
weight

mudders day

barely a blip on the radar screen of time

us

you and me

humans

mankind

(talk about an oxymoron)

that’s us

the ones with opposable thumbs

the ones who can reason

the ones who make tools

the ones who build bombs

the ones who spill oil

the ones who poison oceans:

we are barely a blip on the radar screen of time

but we will be the ones to bring this planet

to its knees

we flew to the moon

but we can’t cure cancer

we can’t cure aids

we built the pyramids

but we can’t keep the peace

van gogh painted "starry night"

and Hitler built Auschwitz

ideals i felt when i was young

seem naive and impossible

monsters walk among us

stealing children

for unspeakable cruelty

and death

men drunk on power

savage their brothers

rape their sisters

babies starve

innocents suffer

and everyone bleeds

if jesus walked this earth today

would he not weep again?

I worked in the garden early mudders day, then made guacamole and tacos. Took a nap

after I showered and drank a lovely cold Corona Light. Got my pattern making class today.

then got to work on English comp papers and term paper tomorrow. It is very hard to be

62, and in classrooms with people who have little world experience and still manage to laugh

up their sleeves at the frumpy old lady in class.

hmmmmph

cinco de mayo -- hold the tequila please

Time is the sea – tumbling blue and gray ahead of me –

I dangle a tentative toe in the froth of its edge –

the water appears to go on forever, but of course,

I know that it does not.

It comes to an end.

Do we get to choose the sort of end we want?

a quiet and wet tumbling over the edge of the world

into cloaking and numbing darkness?

(Oh yeah – that’s the one I want – as long as it is quick!)

or carried by a great, unforgiving tsunami,

full of the varied shrapnel of our lifetimes,

full of bruises and blood, kisses and hugs, love and loss –

carried and slammed against the detritus

of some desolate unfamiliar shore?

I am no longer standing at the sandy beach of the beginning.

I have survived the swells and storms, the dead calms

and the occasional sucking vortex of shock.

Am I within seeing distance of the place where there be dragons?

It is God’s little joke that I am almost 62 years old,

and while there will none of those so-called golden years,

there will undoubtedly be plenty of more years (fool’s gold maybe?),

working, saving, suffering, aching, losing loves and warmth

and capacities and skills and respect.

Will my modest little craft simply glide in innumerable little figure eights

at the edge because my tough pioneer genetic history has me trapped here until I am a doddering 95 or so?

Do we grow too old to dream? I am still full of dreams and many times

feel quite silly for it. Do I have a right to want it all?

It is God’s big joke on all us formerly arrogant and confident baby boomers

that Wall Street has driven silver spikes through our hearts

and scampered away with our money, snorting with giggles and guffaws.

Our kids are fighting wars we don’t believe in.

Our leaders are posturing buffoons

who wouldn’t know a middle-class American

if we were all clearly labeled as such.

So are we having a nice day?

Have we stopped worrying so we could be happy?

Are we patriotic enough?

Will we ruin this pretty planet?

Will the icebergs melt?

Are the people in PEOPLE really that important?

What is a celebrity anyway?

Why are we making them rich?

Don’t you wish we had saved all those old Mother Earth magazines

so we could hie ourselves up into the pristine mountains somewhere

and live simply and safely?

Me too.

I am writing a term research paper on gastric bypass and the whole "obese epidemic" brouhaha. This world is so tuned into the image our eyes behold. Believe me, the old saw "beauty is only skin-deep" is proven every week when People magazine hits the newsstands. I cannot believe the triviality that most folks have wrapped their heads around. My daughter has almost died from a botched gastric bypass and 2 subsequent surgeries.All is madness and the asylum is amok.