Heidi Beth

Duran Duran came over today

I followed millions and watched Thriller. I sat with my heart in my hands because it was my childhood sitting there in the room with me. The childhood that has been coming back to me in strong emotions in recent months, crying, "Look at me, feel what I couldn't feel when I was 12, when I had to focus on staying safe." I watched the whole video. I could see again clearly that Michael Jackson has had a great influence on dance(among other things obviously). I also realized that life on earth in America was painfully difficult for youth in the 80's. Seeing it from the perspective of a 37 year old mother of 2, from the perspective of someone who was half real and half created for the audience of her peers until 11 years ago. After Thriller I watched Beat It and parts of a few other of his videos. Then I wanted to hear Duran Duran. I wanted to remember those long sunlit afternoons in Allison Utech's living room listening to The Chaufer, Hungry Like the Wolf...dancing because we had this energy, this creative energy and no guidance, no help in channeling it to good. Oh that those who can may connect with those who are lonely. I look back and think we could have been connecting with our elders. I'm idealistic about this. I see these lost eyed people wheeling themselves slowly around nursing homes and I wonder who would come out and live again if there were more dancing. Not necessarily to Duran Duran. I wanted to hear the Chaufer even though I know not what it is about. I know that it sounds like beauty and longing. I don't listen to the words and I don't intend to. I listen to the sound of the music, the shadow shape of the words as if they are not words at all and that's how I found meaning to it when I was younger. It was longing and love, wind on my face and I was dancing in to it. I haven't talked to Allison in years. I miss her. That's what I have done this afternoon. I sit on my couch, earphones in, traveling the swift distance between then and now. The tears come, I am enveloped in a memory of dust in the light that streamed in her front window in the room next to the record player. The room with hardwood floors, the room just for company that needed to be dusted regularly. But in the afternoon, before working parents came home it was ours, we were alive and we were happy.

Joining the chorus

Everyone has a comment about Michael Jackson. I'm no different. So far I haven't reflected on his career, his talent, his amazing contributions to the world. I've been thinking about the person who had to live in his skin. The person who seemed to want to do right, regardless of the small or large mistakes he made. My first thoughts were so sad. I cried for his soul. I see him as the poster child for the most damaged adult child of a dysfunctional family/society(though I don't know anything about his family...guess I could read up on it pretty easily now). He's also the poster child to give us an image of cancerous materialism. I watched a slide show of his career on yahoo news last night. I cried that he is human yet seemed so uncomfortable in his own skin, so desperate to get out. I cried because someone so potentially beautiful had become such a horrible image. I don't know what we think we're doing in our society. We each have an idea of why we're here, what we're supposed to accomplish and give in our life time. For some it's simply a not knowing. A going along in the wave of energy that engulfs a soul and hides reason. Could this be it, riding waves of just going along and anything to mask the pain. I was just like the rest, obsessed with Michael Jackson for several years. I probably wanted to marry him. I don't remember. I memorized Thriller, the song and the video. But remembering that and thinking that his talent is gone from this world are not what bring tears. It's that this spiritual being suffered in a way most of us can not imagine because he shared his talent, did what he had a passion for, made his livelihood in front of us all and we judged him constantly. You are so great! You are so deformed! You are so sick! You are brilliant! Can he rest now, ignore the criticism and praise that have flared up after his unexpected death and be answerable only to a loving God. That's the way it's always been anyway.

time

Picking red and black raspberries at 6pm. A tour of the garden by Maya. She's so articulate now. I was out there with the mosquitoes, the damp air that is summer in Illinois. I listened to Teresa splash in the little blue plastic pool near the play set near the new trampoline with the big net.

Driving with a quiet mind to the coop food store. A walking meditation through the aisles. Dental floss, bar of castille soap, 2 kinds of hummus, chips. I resisted the chocolate. Eying items one by one, weighing the possibilities in a part of my thinking that I can not see if I look directly at it. Outside I sat on a wooden patio seat, laid my food out, read a bit of Pratchett, looked at the sky, the people walking by, not very many on Sunday after 6pm. I called in to a 12 step meeting. I listened. The Serenity prayer, The Problem, The Solution, The Twelves steps, The reading from text, the sharing as each voice gave it's story, it's slice of understanding.

I walked slowly to the car. Once the ac was on, I leaned the seat back, kept listening, closed my eyes, waited. My body sank in to the seat, relaxed. I knew a car pulled up next to me, someone got out then got back in a bit later. I didn't look. I knew the little car was black. Eyes open now, I looked at all the clouds. I did not see shapes, I saw sky, big and beautiful, far away and all around me. Time passed slowly. As I listened I nodded recognition. I didn't give a piece of my story today. I did last week, I will later.

This was two and a half hours alone.