DOPE

It occurs to me that maybe this thing that you can’t stop doing
has nothing to do with weak character.
Maybe not a single thing at all to do with original sin,
demonic oppression,
gross laziness,
or your piteous lack of self-control.

What if it has to do with being human,
primate,
mammal,
vertibral,
carbon-based,
sentient?

What if it has to do with the irrefutable fact that
our brains are wired to do things
without our conscious permission,
because it’s the only way such complex organisms can
do everything we must,
and inherent in that complexity are glitches,
because perfectly-functioning machines are the
business of Hollywood fantasy,
not life on this planet?

We have these beautiful, grotesque, inscrutable brains
that fire up limbically when primal needs must be met
and cerebrally for the times when options are appropriate,
especially in we who have evolved
into analytical beings
(which we must, of course,
to beat ourselves silly
over behaviors that
our cats just plain old revel in).

It’s just the way we are.
Driven by
sometimes dueling,
sometimes collaborating
nervous and endocrine systems,
our brains firing signals to guide our behaviors,
based on the chemicals flooding our bodies,
and making our choices seem
very limited, indeed.

Maybe it has to do with
your brain being wired and fired a little bit
differently
than the brains of people
untouched by addictive tendencies.

Maybe the size of that entire group is hyperbolized anyway,
since most of us hide
what controls us for as long as we can,
erroneously assuming we are alone and
shun-worthy.

But don't we all have the
neurons firing signals to our brains,
and neurotransmitters communicating and
creating neural pathways that become
mighty bridges over time?

Mighty, mighty hard-to-tear-down bridges,
even with the biggest of psychic bulldozers,
so amazing is the power of our brains.

We all have the dopamine rush.
Were amygdalic,
basal ganglianic,
electrically-charged,
synaptically triggered,
fueled and re-fueled by the
dopamine rush.

The dopamine rush.
It makes your brain feel good
when you travel those mighty neural bridges in
the way you’ve set them up to be traveled
by the behaviors you’ve come to even predict in yourself,
albeit long after your reptilian brain,
(I call mine Liz)
already knew you’d be indulging in this way.

There’s a reason your mother
calls the hippies
‘dope fiends’,
but she probably doesn’t know that
she is one too.

Maybe she doesn’t know about the dopamine fix of overspending,
she only knows that it makes her feel good
to head to the mall when dad calls to say
he won’t be home for supper.

He won’t be home for supper because
the gambling boat dopes out his mind
and comes even before family…until the guilt,
which magically goes away with a shot or two
of Jack.

The cynical bartender knows,
but he doesn’t care because he's watching the clock,
counting the minutes until he can get home
to his porn girls,
who are so much easier to deal with than
real women who want real things.
Besides, it's so much more of a rush this way,
that real women don’t do much for his libido these days.

He never has to look into the eyes of the
girls on the screen,
but if he did, he wouldn’t see much.
Most of them only make the movies after a
snort, or a swallow, or a needle in the arm, because
this job…even THIS job is worth it for the dope.
The dope.

And the man who made them stars
thought he’d only make a movie or two,
until the paychecks rolled in,
smelling like freedom from the welfare days of his youth,
and now he couldn’t stop if he tried.

His little girl stays with her grandmother most nights
while he’s working,
and doesn’t mind much because
most of the time she can find
Oreos and ice cream bars and Mountain Dew
in grandma’s kitchen,
and when she takes them to her room and eats them while watching TV,
she doesn’t really think about missing dad.

And, so, I’m thinking that
maybe we’re all really
very much the same.

Whether we challenge our
human tendency toward screwing it all up
with the ridiculously hard first step of
telling the truth to someone we love,
showing up in a musty church basement and
saying our name out loud,
going to a grain elevator for a first weigh-in on a scale that won’t break,
making the shut-off-the-internet call,
cutting up the credit card,
or checking in with our suitcase
at the front desk...

We all have our dope.

And, I’m thinking that maybe,
instead of a curse,
we could start seeing it as
another thing that makes us very much like
everybody else we've ever met.

And, maybe, it’s one more reason to
reach out our hand to
the nearest fellow-fienders we encounter,
and tell them that they are not alone.

And ask for help when we need it.

And hold on to each other’s hands
as though our fragile, flawed,
marvelous, miraculous,
incredible, one-and-only
lives depend on it.

Because, maybe they do.

The Girl With the Secret

I found this crumply piece of paper in Kadison's backpack today. She's agreed to let me share it's contents with you. She thinks it's odd that I would want to share an unfinished play, but I love it SO MUCH exactly the way it is that I don't even care if it never gets finished. Of course, when she DOES finish it, I'll share the whole thing. Here's the preview.
By the way, the only editing I've done is punctuation and format, to make it a little more easily readable. Enjoy!

THE GIRL WITH THE SECRET

By Kadison Lentz

Narrator: Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She had a secret.

Rodney (shouting from audience. Audience does not expect him to be there): SUCH AS...??

Narrator: Uh, well...not time to tell you yet, but...she's a zombie.

Rodney: NO SHE ISN'T!

Narrator (to the audience): Sorry, there. I think he has the wrong story in mind.

Rodney: EAT MUSH AND DIE, YOU FILTHY DIRTBAG!

Narrator: Ahem. She had just lost a tooth, but not yet told anybody...

STAY TUNED, DRAMA FANS! :)

How I see it right this minute. Hurry. It changes.

A couple of years, ago, I plopped a bowl of Spaghettios down in front of Kadison for lunch one day, and she didn't eat them. This is a newsflash item, in case you were wondering. My kid never met a bowl of Spaghettios she didn't like.
This day, however, she didn't even pick up her spoon. Didn't touch them. Just stared.
After getting drinks, or whatever mom-like thing I was doing, I sat down with her, and noticing her odd behavior, I said , "Kadi, why aren't you eating?"
She immediately responded, "The voice in the Spaghettios says, 'Don't even think about it.'"
Um...okay...?
I responded with my typical compassion. "Fine, then that leaves more for me." I scooted her bowl over to myself and stuffed a heaping spoonful into my mouth.
It was the most rotten, rancid, disgusting, toxic thing I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing.
I have no idea how Spaghettios go bad. But, I will never forget what Spaghettios-gone-bad tastes like! I never spit anything out so undignified-ly fast in my LIFE!
My guru-child found this highly amusing. "Told ya. You need to listen better, mom."
I thought of this story today when a friend sent me a message saying that it 'hurts her spirit' to see me post things about my 'inner voice' or 'the universe' when I must really mean 'God', or, better yet, 'Jesus'.
I thanked her for her comment, and told her she'd inspired my next blog!

Here's the thing.:
Call it God if you want to. Call it Jesus, Mohammed, Allah, Buddha, or Fannie May. Call it The Universe. Intuition. Higher Self. The Tao of Winnie the Pooh. Inner Voice. Your dead Uncle Filmore.

The Voice in the Spaghettios does not care.

It is only Pure Love.

It's really just that simple.

Maybe I can't possibly be cuter?

Anyone who wears denim knows that there is a mostly unexplainable fine line between a perfect find, and perfectly WRONG. I don't know what it is, but we all know right and wrong when we see it, where our denimwear is concerned.
Well, today I found THE perfect denim jacket at Salvation Army. It made me look much cuter than nature intended. I giggled for several minutes at my cute self in the mirror. The cost? $6.50.
Then, I found brand new green jeweled sandals that made me gasp, and fit like they were made for my feet. $2.00.
When I giddily got them, along with my purchases for Pete and Kadison, to the check-out line, I knew immediately and unquestionably that I was meant to put them on the return rack and let someone else be delighted with them.

And I did.
I'm not saying I'm not still thinking about them. I'm devoting a damn BLOG to them!
But, I know they weren't meant to be mine.
And I don't know why.
I just know that my inner voice told me very clearly that these things were meant to bless someone else.

Don't get me wrong. I am fully aware that I am NOT that unselfish! I deserve no kudos for my self-restraint, my selflessness, my intuitive giving.

Pul Eeez.
Try to take my mint Oreos, beotch.

I just know that the things I've been working on learning are creating changes in my universe that I cannot deny.
I do not understand how my thrift-shop AHA moment has anything to do with anything. But I know that it happened, that I am listening, and that I am living in profound gratitude.

And whatever chick is going to be wearing my jacket and shoes must need more help in the cute department than I do.
I'm just sayin'.

I could fill several blogs with the interesting things I've been learning lately, but I know they are meant mostly for me, and anyone else would be too bored to read it all.

But, I don't think it's just happenening to me! Anyone else having growing bliss or growing pains lately? Tell me stuff, please! I'm a SPONGE! :)

Flyin' the shutthehellup flag.

When Kadison was a toddler, just learning to identify and name shapes, 'square' came out 'queer'. And, she had difficulty distinguishing a 'queer' from a rectangle. I almost ran the car off the road the day she saw a flag and said, "Wook, Mama! Queer fag!"
I kept that story alive for her, wisely or not. Being a budding free-thinking rational mind, she now says this with great irony, and especially loves being able to say it when she sees a rainbow flag. She got her own pride flag out of her closet today and said it; "Wook, Mama! Queer fag!" just out of habit. Kind of an insider thing between us, I suppose.
Her two visiting friends looked at each other in horror, her benevolent intent having not quite translated. "Hey, that's mean! We have a cousin who is a lesbian, and we don't like it when people call gay people names!"
Deep breath. A lot of protesting and embarrassed explanations and backtracking from Kadison.
And, a lot of thinking by her mom.
I'm not going to ask my daughter to stop saying 'queer fag'. We get the joke. We're in on it. We stand firmly on the side of love. Having no question about it, we have lost our sensitivity to certain aspects of the silliness of making it an issue.
But, here's what I have to get into my head:
If I'm allowed to use words for my gay and lesbian friends that would be unkind in other contexts, and I'm allowed to call my girlfriends 'bitches' because I'm one, too, and I'm allowed to lovingly call someone a fat-ass because a lifetime of weight struggle has desensitized me to the word...then...
I can NOT EVER roll my eyes or shake my head, or in any other way pass judgement on African-Americans who call each other 'nigga'.
I don't have to like it.
I just have to shut my fat-ass bitch fag-hag fomo self up and deal with it.

To the hawk who stole the baby rabbit from the nest in my front yard

When the mother rabbit returned to her nest, she screamed.

It was the same scream that came from the body of the tiny offspring I helplessly watched you swoop down upon minutes earlier.

I do not wonder that the two different cries of agony were identical in intensity.

I have to believe that you, too, are a mother.

To not hate you irrationally for an impulse over which you have no more control than breathing, I choose to imagine you feeding your bald, pink, hatchlings.

And, in this kinship, I become as much you as I am the agonized mother rabbit.

For the good of my young, I might just be capable of tearing the flesh of another's precious child, not of my own blood or kind, while pleading, "Forgive me, forgive me. It had to be done".

So, care for your babies now and be at peace.

My baby is safe and fed, so I will weep for the mother whose nest is empty.

What scares me

Am I worth it? How
can I contribute? Do you
regret saying yes?