life

We did this to ourselves

/ C.B. Kent / Leave a comment

The thing of it is, we created this mess.

It’s easy to blame, villainize, point fingers and condemn. We’ve taken sides, and we all know our side is the right one, in our heart-of-hearts we know.

Like many of you (ok, none – I know I’m writing this purely for my own amusement and no one is actually reading this blather but me), I’m sitting here in my bubble, hidden away from society behind a keyboard which gives me safety and anonymity to spew forth whatever drivel I choose. Lies, truths, it doesn’t matter. No one is going to hold me accountable. No one cares. And that’s how we’ve gotten here. We just don’t care about one another. We sort of co-exist but it’s not a community, and it’s certainly not the kind of existence that fosters growth and understanding. We are all alien to one another, strange and indifferent, and it’s because we do not have to actually interact with one another in any meaningful way. We share that we are human, but, maybe that’s being generous. We are homo sapiens who happen to occupy the same piece of rock out of the some-quantity-larger-than-the-largest-number-I-can-comprehend of rocks there are in what we casually call “space”. We have taken something unique, wonderful, and maybe even somewhat miraculous, and turned our existence, our humanity, into something quite trivial.

We are heading toward extinction.

Okay, maybe I’m being melodramatic. It’s hard to look out of the bubble and not see the hate, the hate-breeding, the awfulness of our human nature, and still be hopeful. It is painful to know that we are allowing our “have vs have-not” culture to take over and continue to sow discontent among us. It is painful to see how we are destroying one another instead of working harder to build each other up. It shouldn’t be about me winning and you losing; it should be about me winning and ALSO you winning, and maybe you even come out ahead of me. Imagine that, me putting you first, or better, by putting you first I, too, stand to gain?

Isn’t that what loving thy neighbor is about?

We seem to have forgotten what it is to be a neighbor, not just in the “my house is next to your house separated by a fence” way. Being a neighbor is being mindful and aware that you are NOT the only person around and you HAVE to co-exist with other people, not just the ones immediately next to you but ALL of them. You are my neighbor in the grocery store, in the mall, six states away, six countries away. You are only a stranger when I choose to see you that way. 

Co-existing, loving your neighbor, or not, all of this is a choice. And this is why I am terrified of where we are and why I am struggling to see a way forward. We got ourselves here and we desperately need to find a way out.

When the levee breaks

/ C.B. Kent / 2 Comments

When you know an inevitable thing like death is going to happen, you put it out of your mind.

When the inevitable thing, without warning or prompt, gets a timetable, it becomes the centerpiece of your life, on display where you can’t avoid it, no matter which direction you turn.

I accepted that my mother would die long ago; as she aged, I knew the time was getting closer, but I hadn’t considered that other forces would intervene, bringing closer to soon.

The prognosis isn’t great. It’s not the worst it could be, no, and that’s likely coming eventually. I’m angry at the idea that she could suffer. No matter my disagreement with her, I never wished her harm. I never wished a fate such as the one she has before her.

I’ve always known my mother’s eventual death would force my hand in some way. My decisions now have another influential factor now that I know my time with her is actually short.

I can do what I can, which is spend more time with her, get her house in order, take care of things as they happen. Relocation isn’t an option but a more frequent visit schedule is. My life is going to be impacted, this is a fact. I just hope that my absence isn’t going to estrange me from my loved ones. I hope the ones I love will understand this is a temporary thing, and that I need them now more than ever before.

Weathering the storm

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Living in the Northeast, I brace myself for the inevitable every winter. It’s gotten easier over the years; planning and prepping in advance make a huge difference in my ability to cope. Mastering the snowblower doesn’t seem like a big deal but it is when your 3-car driveway is covered in a foot-and-a-half layer of snow. Today’s storm brings me here.

I am, uncomfortably, keenly aware of the isolating feeling a storm creates. There’s no one to make me a cup of tea or pour me a drink when I walk into the house, snow-covered and shivering. It’s worse when the power goes out; sitting in the dark and cold (my next house will have a fireplace) is bearable during the day, but at night, reading by candlelight under a pile of blankets only goes so far. One night like that can be fun. More than that, and all I want to do is sleep to pass the time, and even then, I don’t sleep well or much. I envy my friends living in communities where gathering together is the norm, not the exception.

I think about how privileged I am, to have a solid roof over my head and walls that keep the wind and most of the cold out. I think about my ancestors and how they might have survived brutal conditions. Were they truly of hardier stock? How did the poorest among them survive? Did the poorest, those truly suffering with no support, survive? In the coldest place on earth people choose to live there. Or maybe they don’t have a choice, and they accept, and adapt. Together.

Other people make it easier. As a friend taught me recently, shared pain is lessened; shared joy increased. I would happily plow snow every day for the rest of my life if there was someone on the other side of the door, waiting for me with a cup of tea and a kiss.

 

 

A Psalm of Life

/ C.B. Kent / 1 Comment

The older gentleman slowly lowered himself to the empty stool to my left. One of the younger women tending the griddle half-turned, her right hand still expertly flipping the pile of hash browns for an order, and gave him a huge grin. “Coffee?” she asked, and he nodded, returning the smile, dentures gleaming.

“You a local?” he asked me. I shook my head. “From Massachusetts.” He proceeded to ask specifically where, and it turned out he used to live a couple of towns over from where I now live. His eyes were probably not as bright as they used to be, but his voice, though a touch gravelly, was clear and resonant.

I turned to the corn muffin that had been placed in front of me, warm and lightly brown from the griddle and slathered with just the right amount of butter. I was about to take a bite when I felt a light tap on my upper arm.

“You see this?” He was holding a drawing of a barn, the lines so clear and precise I thought at first I was looking at a woodcut. “I drew this,” and a gnarled finger pointed to the name written in block letters in the left lower corner. At first I thought he was going to try to sell it to me, but with a slightly shaking hand he put it back to where it apparently lived, propped up on the corner of the counter. I asked him if he was an artist, and he chuckled, “No, I was a mechanical engineer. I picked up a book on how to draw and tried it.” He pointed to other drawings hung up in various places around the diner, his, and a few clearly made by children. I suddenly felt like I was eating at someone’s house for the first time, welcome yet unsure of the customs.

My breakfast of eggs, hash browns and bacon appeared before me and I tucked in. The woman behind the griddle, I think her name was Nancy, asked the gentleman if he wanted something to eat. “Can I make you whatever I want?” she asked mischievously. He declined, but she gently insisted. A lemon poppy-seed muffin was negotiated.

“She is a lovely woman, so charming. You should watch how she works, so fast, and everything comes out just right.” He wasn’t wrong. The tiny cooking area was just big enough for Nancy and the owner of the place, and side-by-side they produced orders, never getting each other’s way.

He tapped me on my arm again and with a smile intoned the following:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.
He laughed and patted me on my arm. I laughed with him, because that’s what you do. His words were familiar but I couldn’t place them.
“That woman, she’s just lovely. And watch how fast she works!” He gestured a fast motion with his hands. There was a pause for a bit. A waitress poured more coffee in mugs that had the diner’s – the owner’s – name.

 

“After the War – I was in the Navy – they discharged me to the bottom of Texas. I said, ‘How am I supposed to get home from here?'” I assumed he meant Galveston but I wasn’t going to interrupt. He proceeded to tell me how he hitchhiked up to New Hampshire, given lifts by good samaritans all the way. One of them was apparently a woman in a Buick convertible. My mind’s eye saw a robin’s-egg-blue car, the woman wearing a kerchief that fluttered in the wind. He never said how long it took.
He turned towards me again.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
   Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
   And things are not what they seem.
He emphasized the word “not” with his finger. When he got to the second verse, I listened more carefully, and wondered if in some small church around the corner he delivered sermons.
Life is real! Life is earnest! 
   And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
   Was not spoken of the soul.
And he laughed and patted me on the arm again. Was he trying to tell me something? As I scooped up the last of my eggs, I realized customers where stopping to say hello to him as they left the diner. They call people like him “fixtures”.
During a pause in orders, Nancy  leaned over the counter and said to him, unprompted,”You know you’re my favorite.” He laughed. A moment later he said, “You should watch how she works, so fast! And what a charming woman. Just lovely.”
There was a small mound of hash browns left on my plate and a few swigs of tepid coffee in my mug. Could I, would I, at an age when all I will remember are the stories but not what I had done the day previously, be a fixture in a place like this?
As I started to gather myself to leave, there was a third delivery of the poem, and just as the others, emphatically sincere. He laughed heartily, as if this were a riddle that I was meant to unravel.
I found the answer later, which like all riddles is always hidden in plain sight. He was a sailor, after all.
Lives of great men all remind us
   We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
   Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Resolve

/ C.B. Kent / Leave a comment

Resolve (verb): decide firmly on a course of action
Resolve (noun): firm determination to do something

I had the best of intentions when I started this blog. I was going to post resolutely, frequently, I was going to organize my thoughts in a meaningful manner and then share them with the world. This blog had a purpose, hence its name.

Here’s the awful truth: I seem to have…misplaced…my resolve. Over the course of the last several months, I went from “fiercely determined” to “abjectly silent”. It has been difficult, here in the ether as well as in the flesh, to speak. I feel like my words are falling into a hole in my stomach, each word weighing several pounds, and every day I sink deeper and deeper towards the ground.

So where does that leave us, reader? I have made no New Years resolutions yet I am resolved to not give up. I’ve not yet hit bottom even though I can reach out and touch it if I wanted to. For those of you who care about such things, I’ve an appointment with a therapist next week.

How this all started

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I’m 42 and thinking about my eventual death.

It’s not like I’m dying right now. Okay, well, if you want to be pedantic about it, yes, we’re all dying right now. And we’re all going to die at some point. Not something many of us think about unless we’ve got good reason to.

Whether or not this is a “good reason” is a matter of opinion. I can tell you that watching my mother age and, recently, move closer to her death, caused something in me to ping. I can’t stop thinking about how I’m living my life and how I want to live leading up to my death, which could be at any time. I can’t stop thinking about how I want to die, were I given the choice. So I’m getting it all out here so that I don’t drive myself and others crazy by just keeping it all in my head.

Welcome, and I hope we all stay long enough to get something out of this.