"Dungeon"

I used to manage a billionaire's estate.  You can see photos and read about it here.  There was a dungeon in the bell tower basement with a real executioner's sword.  There was even a skeleton.  It was plastic, but the billionaire and I laughed about it.  I didn't laugh about the sword.  It gave me the creeps.  The beautifully etched designs on the blade were worn where it had hacked off heads.  Ew.

Once again IF gave the Friday word on Monday so I don't feel very cooperative about writing more about dungeons.  Let's consider it my not so silent protest.

I've been exploring my teenaged brain lately.  What a mess!  Maybe all teenaged brains are, but I'm pretty sure mine was more messed up than most.  I grew up, mostly got my act together, and pushed the teenage years into a hidden corner of my mind.  I hid it so effectively that's it's been a challenge to excavate it.

Of course you might ask, why bother?  So glad you asked.  Because ignoring the past doesn't make it go away.  Its lurking influence effects my life in subversive ways I can't identify because I hid things so thoroughly from myself.  I think that's true for many of us, though I suspect most are content enough not to bother figuring this stuff out.

I talk with a high school friend sometimes.  We walk down memory lane and each of us is surprised by the things the other remembers of our lives back when, especially the bad stuff.  I call her my "Truth Teller" because she calls things as she sees them.  We play a very important role for each other because we can verify each other's lives.

Maybe you're still lucky enough to have all your friends and family.  I haven't been so lucky.  I've lost a lot of people and part of my life seems to disappear with each death.  Part of these people disappears every time someone else dies who knew my people and knew my life the way it used to be.

In a way, writing about my missing people is a way to keep them alive in a different form.  They aren't forgotten.  The impact they had on my life lives on through me and the others whom they touched when they were alive.  I can only hope I've had some positive impact on others and someone will remember me when I'm gone.

Examining my teenaged life isn't about the happy memories though.  It's about hard times and bad decisions.  It's remembering people who had both light and dark sides, or some who only had dark sides.  Hiding from those realities is like locking a part of myself in a dungeon.  I am who I am today because of who I used to be and who I used to know.

It's a quest.  I want to live my life with every element in it, without editing things into what I wish it was.  I want to celebrate other people in their entirety too.  In the end, we don't love perfect people.  Learning from our bad decisions and accepting our flaws make us infinitely more interesting and loveable in the end.

"Hibernate"

I have cycles, and sometimes those cycles require crawling into my den and hibernating. Sometimes I feel like a bear sleeping away the winter, and sometimes I feel like I'm hidden in my cocoon turning into a butterfly. Hibernating lets me rest and heal from my last burst of interaction with the world.

I’ve been on some employer-enforced retreats too, but it’s hardly an actual “retreat” when you take all of your coworkers and bosses with you. We shivered in cold cabins and bonded over flip charts while trying to make left-brained people understand the point of brainstorming without footnotes. Really, couldn’t we all bond much more effectively over dinner and drinks in a warm restaurant? I’m not quite sure why upper management guys seem to think climbing on ropes suspended on telephone poles is a good idea.

For all that, I’ve enjoyed work retreats. I’m a good camper and enjoy helping the camping-impaired survive campfire songs and toasted marshmallows. I like this kind of thing so much that I managed a retreat center for a year when I told my then-husband to getmethehelloutofIndianaand BACK TO OHIO any way possible. I made bouquets of flowers for the cabins, brushed away the spiders and chipmunk nests, and had some wine by the campfire – then retreated to my house with central heating. Good times. It was kind of like Girl Scout camp for adults, and I got to live in 130 acres of pristine woods overlooking the Grand River, one of two rivers designated “wild” and “scenic” in Ohio. (The other river with that designation is the Chagrin, where I spent my childhood.)

This retreat center is a rich man’s folly/tax write off. He is blind, so if you look closely in the photos, there are posts strung with rope along all the paths. This was a help to him, but also for the groups of blind kids who came out to catch their first fish. Blind kids fishing isn’t exactly a safe activity, but we all survived the flying fish hooks. My lifeguard skills came in handy for the double pools too, because a lot of those kids didn’t know much about swimming. I wanted to wrap some of those kids in bubble wrap during their visits. When guest-free, I liked to float around on my back in those pools at night and listen to the owls hooting in the surrounding woods. Blissed out.

The bell tower bonged every 15 minutes and chimed out every hour. I hated 12 o’clock. Bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bong, bonggggggggg… (Ironically, I currently live by Catholic seminary's bell tower.) The owner said he had his first wife’s skeleton in the basement of the tower, but I checked and it's a plastic skeleton. What's real is the 1500’s executioner’s sword mounted on the wall. You can tell it’s an executioner’s sword because it doesn’t have a point. There’s no reason for a point when you’re cutting off heads. The rest of the bell tower is a vertical art museum. I found that a bit ironic for a blind guy, but he also has a 4 foot tall jade mermaid in there which he can appreciate by touching. It’s a gorgeous sculpture, but very few people get to appreciate it since the tower is locked almost all of the time.

Managing a retreat center was actually quite a bit of work, so when I had the opportunity to move across the street to 100 acres of pristine woods without responsibilities, I jumped at the chance. That place became my actual retreat, and I came out of an artistic hibernation with a prodigious burst of paintings and a new style.

For those of you who read my last post, a big maple tree came down in my yard this week. I got out loppers, clippers, and a bow saw and dismantled the crown on my own. When my next door neighbor John Jr. came out, I offered him firewood for labor, and he came over with a chainsaw. When the tree bested his chainsaw, he recruited another neighbor with a bigger chainsaw. I heaved logs over the fence in a very messy pile while John Sr. filled me in on neighborhood gossip and the evils of government. There’s still quite a bit of tree on the ground, 15 foot long x 5 foot high, but it’s raining and I’m spending time inside with my Epsom salts. Maybe I can get some wet wood to burn in the fireplace?