Saturday, July 24, 2010

Skullcandy

Last Sunday I decided to venture out and buy a pair of headphones for our home PC so that when I wanted to listen to music or video clips while I’m on the PC in the family room, I can freely do that without having to worry about disturbing M while he’s reading or watching TV.

So we went to Best Buy and got some advice from a patient young man, very tall, very skinny, a huge mass of long, golden brown curls haloing his head. Since I’ve never owned headphones before (I know, hard to believe), I had amusing questions for the young man like, “do you think that little hole in the front of my computer speaker is for earphones? How can I be sure?”)—but he answered all my questions with a bemused look (you can also plug these headphones into the similar little hole you will find in the IPod you have). He warned me that the earphones were quite powerful so I should take care not to blast my ears to kingdom come on the first try.

I wanted something fairly inexpensive since I had no idea what I was doing, but of high quality that would shut out ambient sound pretty well so that I don’t have to hear the Nuggets game in the background when I’m listening to Joni Mitchell. I ended up walking out with the somewhat age-inappropriate earphone brand “Skullcandy”, thoroughly secured in snappy clear and black plastic packaging decorated with ominous looking skulls. The brand name has made me feel slightly more dangerous than I have any business feeling, I think. 

I went home and plugged these headphones into the little hole in the speaker without incident, and then (being careful to keep the volume low at first), tried listening to a song I had recently downloaded to iTunes, Bonnie Rait and John Prine’s version of John’s “Angel from Montgomery.”

Wow. It was wonderful.

Now I understand better why my kids make sure they have music wherever they go, in the current age a possibility when previously it was not.

The music came through beautifully, in all its nuances and glory, and I was left wondering why on earth I had waited so long to treat myself to this “skull candy.” I was so transfixed that an annoyed M had to stand right in front of me waving his arms to get my attention—he’d been trying to talk to me from behind, and I hadn’t heard a thing. In the classic teenage move I lifted up one of the earphones and said, “WHAT??”

Anyway—lesson learned. This was another reinforcement of the importance of treating my brain regularly to new experiences and sensations—great music, books, art, nature, conversation. What else have I been unwittingly starving for? And what are you starving for?

Remember what the dormouse said,
Feed your head. Feed your head. Feed your head.

                        "White Rabbit" - Grace Slick

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Finding My Voice

                                                 Maggie Kuhn
  
After a long blog drought it struck me on a hike today that what I wanted to write about was finding my voice.  Have I finally found my voice after these many years, or not?  And what does that really mean?  To me it means speaking the truth out loud, clearly, kindly, rather than “stifling myself” constantly.  I stifle myself because of fear—fear of rejection, of authority, of dismissal, of my own sense of worthlessness.

I think finding my voice is not a one-time achievement but an ongoing quest.  I’ve won some battles in this respect but I’ve not won the war, since I often still have to drag myself kicking and screaming to the point where I’ll speak up even when it is absolutely warranted.  Part of me firmly believes that if I actually spoke my mind clearly, honestly and kindly at every opportunity that there might be such a radical change in my life that it would become unrecognizable.  Often it seems ever so much safer to be satisfied with the sounds of silence (Paul Simon had much to say on this topic).

But more and more I’m noticing physical reactions to my forced silences that might be strong hints that I really must speak out more—reactions like insomnia-producing pain from my jaws due to the clenching and grinding I’m unconsciously doing day and night. 

A wise woman asked me recently if I was singing these days.  I am not—even though the songs and their lyrics were always a source of joy and a way I could express deep ideas and emotions in my life no matter what was going on.  So the other night I got out the songbooks, pulled up a chair on the back porch, and told myself I only had to sing three songs and then I could quit if I wanted.  Of course, I sang many, many more—folks songs, spirituals, Leonard Cohen, James Taylor, John Prine.  It felt good.

At work and in my personal life, I’ve often kept my silence rather than be shut down or dismissed.  I think it’s dismissal that’s most painful; it feeds into my thought patterns about losing another person’s love or esteem.  But in my saner moments I know that someone else’s dismissal of me or my ideas is often much more about them than it is about me.
 
When I was young, my father (who I loved dearly) had particularly strong ideas about a child’s behavior.  A child was to be obedient (even though he himself was not in his own childhood, as his stories revealed).  Above all, a child should not “talk back,” but should show respect for her parents.  At times I was chastised for talking back when, in truth, I had no idea that I was guilty of this nefarious and disrespectful deed.  If I did talk back there were usually consequences that to me seemed devastating—mainly "the look" or angry yelling.  I’ve never been able to tolerate being yelled at without becoming incredibly upset about it—and so I’ve developed a variety of techniques for avoiding yelling and conflict of any sort. 

Many of these techniques can be used constructively—diplomacy, fairness, kindness, strong listening skills, excellent verbal skills, empathy.  But in the end it is only with great willpower that I’ve steeled myself over the years to “talk back” to those who have power over me.  I have to overcome a myriad of unpleasant physical reactions, including tears, trembling, a shaky voice, clamminess, hot flashes and a sinking stomach.  Not to mention the catastrophic mental responses like fear that I will lose the love or esteem of the person I’m confronting, questions about how important this issue really is (when weighed against my very survival), questions about whether I am perhaps dead wrong about this particular issue after all, and fear that speaking up at this juncture will irrevocably destroy the relationship and the person I’m confronting will lose respect for me or never speak to me again.  To someone who is not familiar with this kind of conflict avoidance, these fears must seem incredibly neurotic.

The interesting thing is that often when I finally force myself to have a conversation with the person in question I find that they have a perfectly reasonable response, or at least a response that does not result in the end of the world as I know it.  Of course, this isn’t always the case, and sometimes I have battles that leave me the worse for wear or that lead to more trouble for me.  But even then I usually feel as though they were battles worth fighting in the end—words worth saying for my own self respect. One of the first confrontations of this sort I remember daring to have in my life was, not surprisingly, with my father.

I was around 21.  My father had decided he didn’t want to “subsidize” my “shacking up” with M any longer.  I was finishing school and my parents were still paying some of the expenses, although I had a job.  I was living with M (we would not be married until many years later) and we were absolutely in love.  We are still together today, 39 years later.  Despite all my efforts to avoid confrontation on this, it was clear that I had to stand up to my father.  I was shaking so hard I could barely speak, even though it was a hot summer night on the deck looking out on the deep green, firefly-lit Indiana woods.  My mother fluttered around in the background like a firefly herself as the confrontation became more heated.  I had learned many of my confrontation avoidance techniques at my mother’s feet and I realize now she might have feared she would lose me somehow if the confrontation continued.  But I gathered together every inch of courage I had and told my father that if he was suggesting I choose, the choice would not be in his favor, and that I would support myself from now on in order to remove money from the equation.  The consequence:  voices were raised but the world did not end, and over time my father came to respect, trust and love M.

Many confrontations have happened since then—usually with far more angst beforehand than they deserved and with much better outcomes than I had expected.  And so, I have found my voice—I just have to keep finding the courage to use it.


People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
                                                Paul Simon

Do you have a story to tell about finding your own voice?

Monday, July 5, 2010

24


Today I have a son who is 24 years old.  He’s many things including a mountain climber and a risk-taker—and he loves Boulder.  I know well that he also has a growing wanderlust and I would predict road trips and other adventures in the not so distant future.  Neil Young really had it right:

Old man, look at my life
Twenty-four and there’s so much more
Live alone in a paradise
That makes me think of two.
Love lost, such a cost.
Give me things that don’t get lost
Like a coin that won’t get tossed
Rolling home to you…
                              Neil Young

When I was 24 it was 1977.  Just a few months before my September birthday, M and I had packed everything we owned (mainly books, a typewriter and two guitars) into a tan square-backed VW and moved ourselves from Bloomington, Indiana (where at the time both cheap housing and jobs were in scarce supply) to Boulder, Colorado, mainly to follow our dream of living near the mountains.  I had graduated two years before.  We left everything behind in Indiana—all our friends, our family, our low-paying jobs, the abundant green of Hoosier woods, the orange-red of the Indiana fall.  I am surprised now that we had the courage to make such a monumental change, but at the time it seemed like exactly the right move.  We did have each other, after all.

It was May.  We were blessed with warm, summery weather and we had no idea how lucky we were about that—we camped in a tent for a week at the Wagon Wheel Campground up Four-Mile Canyon, and then we found rooms in a house on the corner of Arapahoe and Lincoln, right across from the public library.

Our housemate was a very strange ex-Californian named Peter, who was older than he wanted us to think, and who had been writing a screenplay for many years.  He was short, blond and tanned, and looked like a misplaced stubby little surfer.  His mother was wealthy and he seemed to have a limited but steady income from his mother to follow whatever dreams he might have.  He had once been a member of a cult on the West Coast, the subject of the screenplay.

We weren’t in Indiana anymore.

The year we came to Boulder a lot of construction was going on along a street called Pearl; they were building some kind of new-fangled outdoors mall where the street would be closed off for a few blocks and only pedestrians would be allowed. 

We were both writing a lot—M in longhand, I with my trusty little electric typewriter that my grandfather had given me when I started college.  We’d saved up enough money to not have to work for at least a couple of months.  It was a time of shining hope and vast optimism.  Ten years, later, Shannon, you were already one year old.  Happy 24th ! 

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
And may your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
                              Bob Dylan

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Independence Day

As M suspected, it was sunny up in Breckenridge this morning, despite being gloomy in Boulder.  We drove west on 70 across The Great Divide and when we emerged from the Eisenhower Tunnel, as if we had journeyed from Kansas to the Land of Oz, we had blue sky and a 4th of July parade, which was in full swing down Main Street with Corvettes, flags, kids, dogs and firemen.  The folks of Breckenridge do have the USA spirit. 

After quite a bit of searching we finally located our favored Breckenridge independent coffeehouse, The Crown, and found a great seat in an alcove just inside the front door with a fine view of the red-white-and-blue hubbub continuing on the street below.  The Crown has antique mirrors set into carved dark wooden hutches and four stone cupids mounted in a row on one wall and two crystal chandeliers. It is a fine place any time of the year.

On our way back to the car later we passed firemen in the middle of the still blocked off Main Street letting groups of thrilled children handle fire hoses, each group pointing at the other and just close enough to get everybody a bit wet. 

Parades are different now than they were when I was a kid.  Today parades have lots of shiny red and blue streamers and glitter and decorated high tech baby strollers and Corvettes.  When I was a kid, all the girls and women got together and spent many hours in the days leading up to the parade making flowers out of pastel Kleenex—you stacked together the tissues, tied them in the middle, then fluffed them out to make pale pink, green, blue or white blossoms.  These were painstakingly woven into the chicken wire shapes built over the vehicles used as the bases for the parade “floats.”  Then, on the day of the parade, the prettiest girls in school graced these floats, sitting high atop them in their pastel prom dresses and slowly waving to the crowd with white-gloved hands.  One girl got to wear the crown—having won the honor of being queen for a day.  Was I ever one of these girls?  No, I was on the sidelines wearing denim, peace symbols and a go-to-hell hat.

Also—we always had multiple marching bands in their uniforms playing Sousa and there were always pom-pom girls and baton twirlers and there was always a drum major leading the parade and marking time with his staff.  Humanitarian men called Shriners wearing red fezes drove little motorcycles in little circles along the parade route. 

Today, none of this was in evidence—nary a piccolo player nor a tuba blower nor a drummer nor a Shriner could be found.  But there was still a lot of hooting and cheering and American spirit, all the same.  The parade concluded with a spirited reading by a man dressed in 1776 garb.  When we first heard the voice coming over the loudspeaker I wondered whether we might be hearing a modern-day Tea Party diatribe, but in fact it turned out to be the actual  Declaration of Independence, indeed a radical document if you ever heard one.  Happy 4th of July! 

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Random Acts of Beauty and Musings On Escape


We take a journey to Denver for the day, and the city presents some quirky images in our sojourn around Lodo and down by the river.  A random act of beauty presents itself—colorful crocheted flowers woven into the metal grid of a construction fence.  We ask a local guy passing by which group did this and he explains that it happened just a couple of nights ago—an unnamed group of girls showed up, wove the flowers into the fence, stood back admiring their handiwork and smiling, then moved on.  These small moments of loveliness do come along if you keep your eyes open.

We spend awhile writing at the desk with the blue lamps at the Starbucks next to Confluence Park, and then  wander into Union Station, with the sign that says “Travel by Train,” and the big old wooden benches and the high arched windows.  Train stations always give me the urge to travel, and trains are a great way to really see what your passing through on the journey.  There are trains that go west over the divide through Glenwood Springs and all the way to San Francisco--if a person were ever to take a great notion to quietly escape her life and journey incognito for a few days, or weeks, or months.