We the People

After a few months, I return to my laptop and a need to share has found its way to the top again. Thank you for returning. This time, no proclamations of my timeliness with this blog, only to say that I’ve surfaced. For the moment. Why is it that with everything that we can study, invent, discover or analyze, the human being and all of our intricacies, remains the most fascinating? I recently said this to an artist friend of mine when I viewed an especially revelatory and hypnotic piece she just finished. She is an amazing artist who captures many subtle nuances of the human face and emotion that shine their way through a face. Like her paintings, a face and stance of a body can hold a multitude of facades and energies all at the same time. It sometimes feels like there are universes of discovery in many people that I’ve either known for a good amount of time or that I’ve met for the first time. And this is not just based on things that can come out of a mouth; it is an energy that comes through a person’s being for me and it can never be something that’s put on. I just see it. I don’t think I am seeing anything that anyone else doesn’t see, it’s just that I like to ruminate on it, sometimes automatically. Roll it around in my mind for the whys and hows. And there are certainly those humans that are appealing and wondrous and those that repel like two sides of a battery that are automatically pushed away from each other. However, when I look at the picture above it is a bit of a freak out too because all of those energies together form a group; it can be intoxicating and lift me to a higher level (as with an incredibly good music concert) or it can make me feel like getting the hell out because of pushing, heat or…oh yea, there are madmen with guns everywhere (but I will not venture down that horrid road right now). I will only say that if I followed the inclinations of those I see around me, with today’s political and social landscape, I may have lost my mind altogether by now. I like to know the information that’s out there regarding this White House’s regime and yet there is WAY too much of a perverse mess to sort it out in a neat and even somewhat satisfying way so there are loose ends flying this way and that. Put simply, how does one keep a head above water with the thousands of bits of stimuli flying our way?

The above was written in smitten July. I never completed said blog but liked some of the thoughts I had so I am being unprofessional and probably silly and just leaving it to start off my blog. WELCOME TO AUTUMN! The unofficial start of our year. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, has the right idea in deeming this the new year. Bah January. Did the Summer leave us satisfied? The depths of relaxation are achieved but at the end of the party, it’s sort of like a hangover and here we are! “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” says the seductress Summer to the officious Autumn. Yet September also brings about change and a real new chapter is starting for me. After being a person-mom who works solely for her home needs and children, and after thoughts of a magazine (restarting The Nyack Villager), working as a newborn photographer and then most recently retail (mostly very BORING) I have gone back to one of my first loves. Teaching children. Having always said that I needed to bring out the once unknown writer in a 10 or eleven year old kid and bearing witness to the flight of the new godsend of creativity, I have decided to lick my wounds of our horrid planet and be healed by raw innocence. By seeing the world once again through the eyes of a three year old I am reminded of the world of play, the ID vs. ego or superego and what life was like when your ass was wiped by someone else. THREE? Yes, I teach three year olds. I have been at it for over a month and trying on the fact that my time is most definitely not my own anymore is MINDBLOWING on many levels. I forgot that our sheer mechanics of rounding a simple circle on a page or cutting with scissors are just a couple of tricks that a human picks up with another week, month or decade. Yet the need for approval, feeling proud or accomplished, enjoying the company of a new friend or a simple deep hug become basic desires even at the age of three. What is most beautiful for me is viewing earthly wonderments that those who have a few decades under their belt just take for granted. The crunching of a leaf, mixing together of yellow and blue to create green paint, a popping sound your mouth you can make with a finger like a cork releasing…these are all taken in with saucer eyes; absolute joy and excitement.

Still adjusting to a nine hour day that’s given to an institution and not myself, the rebel and Jack of many trades wants to run. I’ve also been put into the system again. Fingerprinted, CPR’ed, know truly what sexual harrassment is through a three hour seminar, sign in and out with a FOB. It’s all okay but I miss my house. I am always reminded how we live many lives in one really. Chapters end and then new ones start up almost simultaneously. All any of us wish for I think is balance. And to be needed and appreciated. Enjoy this crisp, gorgeous weather.