Paradox

“One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret.”
—Barry Lopez



[Photo by N. J. Jackson.]

Are You Following Your Dreams?

Sorry posts have been so lean lately. Here’s a little something for you, whether your glass is half full…

“Follow your dreams. They know the way.”

—Kobi Yamada

or half empty…

“I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later.”
—Mitch Hedberg

[Art by Odilon Redon.]

When A Remake Won’t Do

This economy has driven many people into dire straits. Some have nearly folded under the weight of adversity; others have reinvented themselves.

If you’re somewhere in the middle—struggling with becoming that cloying, self-help symbol of transformation, the butterfly, and can’t achieve enough lift-off to finish the job of changing your life—then I have an easier visualization technique for you caterpillars in stasis.

I have a dream.

That is, I had a dream about a species of butterfly that doesn’t progress beyond the caterpillar stage. Just when this caterpillar can no longer sustain life as it is, instead of cocooning her/himself, s/he latches on to whatever might serve as wings—leaves, fabric, plastic bags—and flies.

In my dream, the butterfly that arrested my attention was as big as a dinner plate and having trouble flying. Its movement was arduous and erratic. This was largely due, I think, to the butterfly’s choice of wings: a sunny-side-up egg and a golden waffle from someone’s al fresco breakfast plate. Yes, the desperate butterfly I saw chose items of different weights and viscosity that kept him off-balance and made flight awkward. Yet he persevered, even with syrup dripping here and there. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Upon waking, this segment of my dreams seemed initially like a complete non sequitur. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated its appropriate symbolism.

I came to believe that the “breakfast-food butterfly” represented every person who’s ever been hobbled by something—be it financial woes, chronic illness, or emotional turbulence. Sometimes when you struggle against the odds, transformation isn’t in the cards. The most practical option is to make do with what’s at hand in order to get by, get on, get ahead.

Latch on to whatever propels you and rise. It may not be beautiful. It may be nothing you ever aspired to or even wanted, but it’s far better to make do than not do.

[Butterfly photographer unknown; graphic art from Skirt! magazine.]

Home, Home on the Hill

Periodically we peruse sale listings for properties. We often find something we like but can’t afford, or something we can afford but don’t like, or something we like but refuse to pay anything close to the asking price. Rarely do we experience that Goldilocks Moment where something is Just Right. Until this month.

The listing was for a summer house, a cabin. A LOG cabin, to be exact. It sat in some woods on a hill near the Kentucky River and the price was right. Sure, it was a fixer-upper, but that was part of the appeal for my husband. He delights in building and fixing things and constantly tinkering with improvements (the Kaizen attitude toward home ownership).

We started fantasizing about our lifestyle there, wondered about the neighbors, seriously considered a boat… But the detail in the listing that really stoked our imaginations was the acre of property on which the cabin sat. For a couple of gardeners currently deprived of their gardening, an acre sounds like Eden.

We couldn’t stop imagining our lives in that log cabin overlooking a river and surrounded by vegetation. Yet of all the photos attached to the listing, none gave us an inkling as to how the cabin was situated on the acre. So we drove out to see it yesterday.

The “neighborhood” was gorgeous: houses hidden in lush wooded lots, the river palisades in view. “Our” cabin stood atop a steep hill across the road from an expansive (and better) property that really did overlook the water. As we climbed the steep, crumbling limestone steps from the road to the porch and patio of our dreams, with more steps above to reach the actual cabin, I started to suspect that growing old here might prove challenging. Directly behind the cabin rose most of the acre of land promised in the listing: a wall of rock.

Yup. We’d be buying an acre of land all right, but it would be a vertical acre and practically useless to us. It was a deal-breaker.

We had to laugh. At least we had experienced a beautiful drive to a place we’d never been. I guess now we can redirect our fantasies to winning the losery (i.e., lottery).

Note: The pooch in the pics was the sentry of the ’hood and bounced around like a wicked-fast Slinky. To make friends with her, we threw sticks for her to fetch—over and over and over again.

I Dream of…

Scattered about this blog are references to one of my grandmothers. She’s pictured here in a photograph I’m pretty sure she never wanted to share with anyone. She NEVER let anyone see her unless she’d styled her hair and makeup for the day. She didn’t mind you seeing her in her robe, but she had to “have her face on.”

I like this pic largely for its naturalness. My grandmother isn’t posing for the photographer.

I also like it because it’s my grandmother at an age of dreams instead of memories. Everything’s possible in this moment. She hasn’t yet created all the stories of her life.

Today would have been her 100th birthday, an age she vehemently opposed reaching.

Happy Birthday, Gammy! I hope you’re rediscovering your glamour and your dreams.

Follow Your Dreams?

Stranger In A Strange Land – No. 22

Lots of self-help “gurus” tell us to Dream Big to get what we want out of Life. “Follow your dreams and the money will follow,” they advise.

There are plenty of people who have done just that. We know this because they’ve taken the extra step of flaunting their stories across the media to remind us of their success.

But I suspect there are plenty more folks who took off after their dreams while the money fell far behind. Maybe didn’t even bother following. So I’ve little faith in the advice of the self-help experts.

Until today. My husband woke this morning and said he’d just had the strangest dream.

This is nothing new. My husband often relays the vivid alternative life he leads while asleep. So I presumed I was about to hear a variation on a theme.

But no. This time, instead of dreaming the fantastical or improbable, what unfolded was more anchored in reality. My husband had established a successful new business. It was a cafe where you could buy a gun and an artful cupcake, too. The business’s name was “Protect and Serve.”

If you live north of the Mason-Dixon Line, you’re probably shaking your head right now. But I have to tell you that sugary-sweet food is as popular in the Bluegrass as firearms. Guns and cupcakes could be a perfect combination here. That zany dream might just be my husband’s ticket to a new career and financial security.

Cue the orchestra: “To dream the impossible dream…”

How sweet it is.

[Cupcake pic from Travel Gal; Tiffany & Co. Smith & Wesson from Rock Island Auction Company.]

This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, just select Stranger in a Strange Land from the right of Lull, under “Choose a topic that interests you.”

It’s Headed This Way

Said my dental hygienist yesterday, “I sure hope 2012 is a better year than this one was.”

“Me, too,” I sputtered. Although I’ve said that for the last six years. Each year has brought me new and unexpected challenges (which is a nice way of saying pain and trouble).

For the record, I don’t buy into that “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” crap. Nor do I subscribe to the “You’re given only as many trials as you can handle” baloney.

One of my favorite lines in Steven Kotler’s A Small Furry Prayer is: “I had come into adulthood equipped with the essentially romantic delusion that life would get easier.”

Amen to that, Steven. I operated under the same delusion, though in retrospect, I realize my grandmother tried to feed me the truth early on. Her version of Cinderella had the wannabe princess end up marrying a used-car salesman. I missed her point.

A similar delusion has us believing every year that the NEW year will be different and better than the last—maybe even GREAT! But I’ve wised up. I refuse even to pretend that 2012 will bring happiness and improved economies and world peace.

However, I will agree that 2012 will be different. At least it will be for me. The New Year may throw me whatever it wants—natural disasters, death, illness, you name it. I’ll be ready for it. This year I insist on being the victor, on being in control. I plan to meet each challenge of 2012 with new strength (both physical and emotional) and resolve. If I can’t catch all the curveballs thrown at me, I will at least duck their trajectories.

But for you, Dear Reader? May the New Year rise to your highest expectations and fulfill your every dream…

Gambling for a Job

ay back when, in the 1980s, I met numerous people (most of them actors) who lied in order to clinch a job. They “embellished” their computer expertise (that is, they said they knew how to operate one when they didn’t), and it worked for all of them. They acquired their computer skills successfully while on the jobs, and their organizations benefited from their employment.

This was concurrently appalling and revelatory news to me. It never occurred to me that you could pretend to be the employee the employer wanted in the interview and then become that ideal employee once in the job. It’s not in my nature to pass myself off as someone I’m not.

The job market is much tougher now and those ’80s shenanigans are harder to pull off. I wonder how many job-seekers are willing to lie if it gets them through a door. I wonder how many succeed.

I did something similar once, though I put no one except myself at risk.

I was auditioning for a small-town production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown and was slated to read for one of the girl parts. But I didn’t want to be a girl. I wanted to be the DOG. The director was auditioning only men for the role of Snoopy, so I knew I was not only up against worthy talent, but up against a prejudiced vision as well.

I thought long and hard about how much I wanted the role and how competitive I would have to be to win it. Was I up to the task?

I hatched a plan so antithetical to my personality that I still marvel at it: I schemed to throw my audition. I would purposely botch my reading for a girl part and finagle an audition for Snoopy, during which I had to be so sensational that no one could imagine anyone else in the role.

The first part of my plan—botching the audition—was the worst. Being a failure and seeing it reflected in the faces of an audience would be humiliating. It would knock me out of the running for all the human characters in the musical and, if the second part of my plan didn’t work, would knock me out of the show completely. What’s more, my plan was a little lean on detail. I had no idea how to wheedle that second audition. Fortunately, the director ended up relieving me of this concern.

The night of the callbacks (callbacks are the repeat auditions for a select number of actors who make the first cut—much like second and third interviews in a job hunt), after the director had seen all he intended to, he asked if anyone wanted to read for a part they hadn’t yet been asked to read for. My hand shot up.

I performed my song-and-dance routine. I gave it my all and had a great time doing it. By the time I finished, it didn’t matter anymore whether I’d changed the director’s mind or didn’t get cast. What mattered was that I had done everything in my power to attain a goal. I had lived through humiliation and stepped outside my comfort zone. I felt changed … enhanced, somehow … new.

Though searching for employment in today’s economy is soul-breaking work, I would never advise you to compromise your integrity for a paycheck. But stretching boundaries and going for a long-shot dream job? Absolutely. The preparation you’ll undergo to make others believe in you can make you believe in yourself. And that’s worth more than any job.

That’s what I thought, anyway, after auditioning for the musical. I was okay with not getting a part. But when the cast was announced, it seemed the director had reconsidered his gender-biased notion of Snoopy.

I became a long-eared pooch for an entire summer. My high-risk gamble for a job with no pay paid off.

[See more designs by Alejandro Paul.]