Spinning

I’ve been percolating for a few days on this idea of change. Why are most humans so uncomfortable with change? One of my friends recently told me she did wash, not because she was out of clean clothes, but because she was out of her favorite clean clothes. See what I mean? We like to get cozy with certain things, places and patterns in our lives and just stay there. Like our favorite clothes, our patterns are our comfort. That is, until our patterns become a rut. That, how ever is a whole ‘nother matter and I’m just contemplating the why of change in the here and now. (Remember, I’m really practicing being rather than doing, and being means just being here and now).

So I watched a good movie a few nights ago, Martian Child. I got it because that handsome guy John Chusak is in it and I figured even if the movie was a bomb the scenery would be great , and the movie was actually good and John was looking great. He’s aging with style and I’m looking forward to the release of the movie he wrote and produced called War Inc., due out in October. Originally scheduled for release last spring, now it won’t be out ‘till after the elections- geeze, wonder why? Dan Ackroyd will be in it as well, it’s a follow up to the movie Grosse Pointe Blank that they did together way back when, so that right there makes it worth seeing.

Any-hoo, in Martian Child John’s character makes a long speech about how weird this whole life is, we are spinning on a planet ( 700 to 1000 miles an hour depending on if you are at the equator or the poles), around a spinning star ( the sun spins at a speed of 4,400 miles an hour) in the spinning arm of galaxy ( our galaxy spins at 140 miles a second) that’s spinning across the universe ( at 190 miles a second), meanwhile every atom in our body is spinning and I said Eureka! That is it!

Maybe we all cling to our favorite clothes because we are so tiny, little, small. We are to small to actually see and feel all this enormous movement that is going on all around us but maybe at some instinctual level we know, we can feel, our DNA twirl, our atoms spinning, our earth revolving around the sun which spins in a solar system, spinning in a galaxy that spins out across the never ending void of the universe.

Just look around you, every moment is change and every season is change. Just sit in the yard and watch the lawn grow, the flowers bloom and die. Or drive around your favorite town. Homes go up, buildings come down, business opens and another closes. Look at your photo album, you once looked like that, every day you changed a little, now you look like this. It can’t be stopped.

You are constantly changing, as your cells die and new ones are replacing them. You think you have the same body your whole life, but really, all your cells are replaced many times over your life so even your same body is an illusion. No wonder we are grasping for a little stability!

We are so little, tiny, small that we can’t feel the earth spinning, but maybe we know. Maybe somehow we do feel all this never ending motion that makes up our very being and our whole incredibly humongous environment. Maybe at some level all that large moving stuff makes us feel like an ant holding onto the branch of a tree in the fall wind. Holding on for dear life as everything swirls on around, holding on just trying to remain with feet planted .

Maybe we are just craving some small spot of stillness. A place of no movement. A place to hold on. Maybe our favorite clothes, the painting that has hung on that wall in that house for 30 years, the favorite recliner tattered and worn, the familiar grocery store with every item exactly where we expect it to be helps us to forget for a moment that we, just like everything else in existence are spinning. Maybe we can’t help this clinging, maybe we think if we let go of our familiar, our routine our same whatever- maybe we think we are going to spin right off into space.

And even though a favorite shirt lasts maybe 8 or 10 years, and that is an amazing infinitesimal amount of time when it comes to the span of time in space, maybe because we are so small, just having that same thing, place, person or routine for ten years makes us confident, gives us stillness and a thread of consistency to hang on to. Maybe it makes us feel like we are moving in the stillness rather than still in the movingness. Maybe it gives us a feeling of rest.

Maybe we are resistant to change because if we can just hold a few things still in our tiny lives, we can feel like we are bigger than we are. We can feel like we are in control. Then maybe our intuitive understanding of the vastness and the speed of it all won’t be quite so scary.

Three in One Post

Well, it’s been a very busy week and I’ve had numerous ideas for posts flitting through my mind and no time to stop and pitter pat on the keyboard. Now here I am, on Thursday morning feeling like I haven’t earned my keep, haven’t provided enough entertainment for my blog readers this week, and I know ya’ll are missing me because you have said you do when I don’t post on a regular basis.

So a smattering of ideas for posts have come in the past week and of course I’ve kept notes. I noticed the article on the internet a few days ago, John Cusack has a stalker! OH MY GOD! Well, can you blame her? I mean he is without a doubt the handsome-ist movie actor. Oh, and did you see him in “Identity”? No more mister nice guy and what a shocker of an ending. I can’t say, in case you didn’t see it.

Anyway, poor John, he has some crazy girl following him everywhere he goes. He had to get a restraining order, and now she’s violating it. It must be creepy to have to wonder if “she’s out there” every time you leave the house. He’s gotta be wondering if she adores Mark David Chapman too. If you don’t recognize the name search John Lennon + NYC + assassination.

Meanwhile the lady has to be really nutty, I mean she apparently throws bags of rocks over his fence that contain love letters and screw drivers ( hint, hint) and the last time she was arrested ( for what it does not say) she gave Mr. Cusack’s address as her home address. Now that’s a novel way to impress a guy and get him to notice you. You can get a print out of your arrest record and show it to him, “see Honey, how much I love you, we belong together, it says so right here!”

Meanwhile it’s rumored she also has a stalking relationship with Tom Cruise. Now I know she’s crazy. I say “honey, wake up and smell the coffee”. I mean, have you ever, has anyone ever, seen so much as one photo of cutie pie John Cusack with a girl? Yes, on movie posters maybe, because he’s one of those romantic hero types but honestly, in any other photo has he ever been captured in the presence of a girl? I think not, and what is it about that guy friend who always ends up in his movies as his sidekick? He’s cute too if ya know what I mean.

Crazy stalking girl- Get a Life, Move on, he’s not for you.

Then we have idea # 2 from this week:

I happened to see a couple of kids outside the library this week. They were young teens, both very stylish. One boy, one girl. They were obviously together, but not together because although they were throwing sideways glances at each other, and standing close enough that they occasionally touched shoulders and giggled a bit, they were not together because each one had a phone in hand, screen flipped up and they were intent on typing.

Interesting way to “court”. Be in presence physically, but keep your eyes on the screen and talk to someone else. I don’t know, it seems to me like the divorce rate will go up when this wave starts to marry. Either that, or stock in companies that produce gadgets that allow us to not be with the person we are with will go up. What’s gonna happen to these poor kids when they have to talk about job choices, where to live or the baby?

Are they going to have sex while they IM or watch TV? WHAT? People already do?

Madre De Dios! Am I that old? I’m starting to think the world has gone crazy, so I must be old, that’s a sure sign, right? What happened to talking to the person you are dating? Giving your attention fully and gazing in sublime pools of honeysuckle water eyes? Holding hands instead of mini computers? Actually talking with the person you are standing in front of? All I can say is Bless the Beasts and Children.

Idea # 3 for this week:
I was watching an old video tape of Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman. Remember her? And the 3,456, 347, 678 little girls named Michaela spawned during the mid-eighties?

I always watched that show. That was back when I still watched TV. No, I don’t watch TV anymore, I had my cable unplugged in 2000, when I was writing my first book and I never had it plugged back in.

If I want to stare at the tube I do what I was doing last night, watch a videotape or DVD of a movie or TV program. I never have to watch a commercial, I have no idea what the idols are doing and I’ve never seen a celebrity dancer. I don’t think I’m missing much. If I hear rumors about a great series, I can always watch it on DVD later and do it in my own time, not once a week at the networks time.

Any-hoo, I was reminded of how peaceful the fictional Colorado Springs of Dr. Quinn’s time was. How much the towns folk cared for each other, and the allowances small town folk have to make for each other. I mean, if you live in a small town, you are pretty much stuck with every one else there, like it or not. You can’t just blend into the crowd in a small town, you have to deal with your neighbors on a regular basis, like it or not. Maybe you learn to ignore. Maybe you learn to accept. Maybe you learn to support. Maybe you learn to ride a horse and get the hell ‘outta Dodge, I mean, Colorado Springs.

I had a little trip down memory lane because the tape I was watching had the commercials on it as well as the program and the news breaks were from a station in Austin. So the tape has to be pre-1986. It was Christmas time, judging from the holiday ads. It was cold, the storm center was flashing a tape of letters across the bottom of the screen. A freeze warning for Central Texas. Gadzooks! That is cold for Austin.

Dominos Pizza was spending billions on their holiday advertising campaign and those old phones with a portable hand set, remember them? The ones that had a recharge base with an answering machine (and everything!) right there in it? They were a hot Christmas item.

Someday archeologists will just watch old commercials rather than have to get all dirty digging up ruins.

OK, Idea # 4- well, that one is so good it needs a post all its own. The weekend is coming. My taxes are done. Check back next week. Peace, Meandering