Writing with Rox weekly prompt—Just Because You're Neurotic...

Jude's portrait of stressed out Mama. The "lines" above my eyes are my worry wrinkles.

"Are you paranoid?" Jeffrey the plumber asks me, this fine Sunday evening of Memorial Day Weekend.  We are standing in my bedroom bathroom at 9:30 p.m. watching the drain spin it's clear water like a delicate top, a sight that typically pleases a plumber.

Okay. I know what some of you are thinking. But bear with me; remember: I'm not paranoid, I'm Jewish.

"No," I answered a little too quickly. I  searched the plumber's lips for a smile, uncertain if he is accustomed to asking such things to total strangers with a straight face. "I mean, not really..." I didn't tell him that earlier in the day I dragged Jude to the only service station open on Memorial Day Sunday so I could get my fluids checked. "Has it been running clunky?" the service guy asked.

"No," I admitted. "It just has a funny smell."

"Has it been making a 'eeeeerrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiii' sort of sound when you turn?"

"No," I said. "Again. Just the smell."

"Well, it looks good to me!" he said, slamming the trunk.

"Really? Are you sure? Safe to drive?"

"Yup."

He explained the funny smell, but I don't remember the exact terms he used. Knowing Odelle, my Hyundai, has a leak in her tranny box (case?) (which I manage with routine level checks), I am always suspicious. But no, I didn't tell Jeffery the plumber.



It's not that I wanted Roto Rooter to show up at 9 pm; I called at 3 pm requesting an appointment on David's recommendation who is likely tired of me calling him up for every thing gone wrong or suspicious-acting in families mechanical, pipe, electric, handy, computer, etc. To make a long story short,  Friday night my toilet downstairs overflowed. After that, it's all a little hazy. Somehow I had turned it into a disaster in my mind. Likely because the car was also acting up. Likely because I have memories of Ma cursing at all the machines in a panic when we were kids.

"So call Roto Rooter," Dada said.

After tinkering in that little box of water with all the flushing parts atop the toilet, Jeffrey the plumber asked me what the problem was. "It's flushing just fine," he said, watching the bowl fill and swirl clean. After that we ran the kitchen faucet. "This is beautiful," he said. "Is it not draining fast?" I leaned in. "I guess so," I admitted. "It's just that it clogs sometimes."

"Does it make a 'glunk glunk glunk' sound and then gurgle?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said. He filled it all the way up again, just to be sure. Sure enough, it was starting to clog. "See!" I said.

"I put the stopper in," he explained.

"Oh. Well... it looks like that when it drains slow," I reasoned.

He shone his flashlight under the sink, searching.

I stood around not knowing what to do. I felt guilty that nothing was acting wrong. "Okay. Let me know if you need anything...Would you like a glass of water?"

"No," came his hard answer from under the sink. Then it occurred to me he might of thought I was making a wise crack. What kind of an idiot offers a plumber water? At least I didn't offer him a plum.

I retreated into the dining room.

I obediently followed him from sink to toilet upstairs where he proceeded to flush the toilets, run the water a bit in the sinks, and command me to "come over here."

"Yes?" I said, a half-folded pair of  Two-Cute-Face's shorts in hand.

"Are you seeing how this water is draining like a top?" I peered, once again, over the tub and into the emptying drain.

"Is that how you can tell it's all good?" I asked. "If the water goes down like a top?"

"There's nothing wrong here, Roxanne," he said, "this is how you want sinks and tubs to behave." Clearly he'd seen his fair share of rebel plumbing and this was not it. The pride he felt for my well behaved pipes caused me to view the flowing water as a work of art. How had it gone unappreciated for so long?

"Are you paranoid?" he then asked.

"You mean we don't have to do the sewer line thing?" I asked, having no clue really what that meant. After talking to David, I just assumed something involving the sewer or the "main," or whatever would be inevitable.

"I'm not even going to charge you," he said, and headed downstairs and out.

I am often accused, often by me, of living in a dreamworld because I am so far out-of-touch with how things work. Similarly, I am awful with directions, prefixes, and spacial relations.  I am relentlessly hard on myself about this. True, it's consoling knowing the upside to this dysfunction is high creativity, but creativity doesn't help when you are lost two blocks from home.

And true, I have been called "paranoid," though I prefer the term neurotic. It's endearing.


So, come on. Cheer me up. You must have a story like this. What brings out the paranoia/neurotic in you? What in this world do you simply not get? What is your mechanical-mind disaster story? Plumber story?

And lastly, my neurosis tend to flare when I need a good vacation. Some time to shake off the superfluous, get out of the city, have some fun, and be peaceful. That's why I'm going for the very first time to Madeline Island in September. Won't you join me?

Writing with Rox weekly prompt—Knock on your Neighbor's Door Day

I like to make up holidays. Partly to make fun of the ones we have and partly because they so clearly reflect what is so functional and dysfunctional with the world.

The truth is, I like to indulge in the fantasy of an evolved world where we don't need the excuse of holidays to feel loved, do what we love, spend time with loved ones, give gifts, have something to look forward to, etc, because everyday is full of these moments. I've written about this before here in a vision of Loveland, my future city of love light.

The one I made up yesterday during Weds afternoon Intuitive Writing was "knock on your neighbor's door day." On this day, anyone can go knock on anyone's door and ask to come in and join them in their lives for a day. No questions asked, all welcome. You knock, they let you in, you take off your shoes, make yourself at home, and have a big meal, maybe go on an outing. Nothing huge has to happen; you just know you have a place to go no matter what and are welcome no matter what and can stay as long as you'd like.

The idea brought back of memory of last summer when Too-Cute-Face and I were biking home from Lake Calhoun by all those huge houses on Xerxes. We'd been lamenting the lack of parental nurturing in our lives, even in our forties. Wishing for the little things: a meal out, encouragement on a hard day, celebration on a good one, invitations to dinner, etc. I told him I missed being able to go down to my dad's house on the beach in Playa del Rey and doing yoga while he played piano. I missed having a soft sunny place like that to go where I knew I was welcomed all the time (by dad, mind you, not his wife, which is likely why I wasn't flying down there more often). We wondered what would happen if we knocked on one of those big gated doors on Xerxes and invited ourselves in. We could bring the drum and the guitar and maybe sing a few songs together, we mused.

My therapist reminds me that this eternal longing I have for "big community" has to do with growing up without one and always longing for one. I think watching too much TV depicting large happy families has a lot to do with it too. Ma, usually running out the door, late for something, called all those shows which I drooled over daily, "fucking stupid," or "totally unconscious," which was true, but confusing: What was better, big stupid family, community or no community at all?

What holiday would you like to put on the calendar?

In the meantime, come and knock on my door... I'll be waiting for you. (Yes, even Three's Company was one of those shows I wanted to step inside of). But seriously, the Beach community awaits you for writing, sharing, taking off your shoes, getting comfy, and just knowing you are safe and loved and welcomed for your stories, your silence, your truth, loudness, and what and wherever else they dream  you on and off the page.

WRITING WITH ROX weekly prompt—In Memoriam

Daniel writing at the Beach,  May, 2011, at a yoga and writing retreat

In Memoriam
Daniel Hennessy, student, spirit brother, writer, poet, friend

As soon as I received the email from Daniel's wife Lynne, subject line "Daniel Hennessy," I knew that he had left his body and moved onto the eternal sunrise. But how can that be? I wondered in that infinite nanosecond before clicking on the message, how can it be? He's happy now. He's doing great. Life is good. It can't be.

I opened the email and read from Lynne that Daniel died unexpectedly last Thursday evening. "I know you two were close and I'm sorry to have to break the news in this way," she wrote.

I pushed aside my Greek Yoghurt and looked up at the sky. I exhaled with shocking volume and locked eyes with the blue of the sky contrasted against the white of the clouds, the same watercolor blue of Daniel's eyes. "Why brother?" I asked. "Why?"

I remembered the first time I met those watery blue eyes in the summer of 2010 at the Loft.  Intuitive Writing. How familiar they were, how much relief they brought, not only to me, but also to the students he shared his stories with in that class. How that class led to another and another, then several epic email exchanges, some in Spanish, some in intuitive flow.

The last email I received from him last July said: "Hey Rox, goin' pretty good.  Lot of travel this summer plus motorcycle camping in state parks.  Lynne is building a portfolio of state park pastorals...sometimes she uses her motorcyle for an easel....How you?" 

I did not write back.

I'm still waiting for an answer. It's coming. First I have to deal with the grief. Get past the denial. I'm still in denial about my father's death; I keep telling Too Cute Face that "when you meet my dad someday..." because I know how much they'd fall in love with each other upon meeting and part of me truly believes it will happen. So it's going to be a while.

"It's not important how he died," Lynne later wrote, "but how he lived."

And how I can speak to how he lived and how he wrote. The seductive literary drawl of his reading voice, especially when reading a chilling childhood memory, where he managed to weave humor into horror. (We both write of our mothers as "Ma," and we both mean the same thing.).

Yes, I can speak volumes to how he lived, suffered, healed, married, wrote, thought, felt, and celebrated among friends and family last May, that beautiful sunny celebratory day that was his wedding day and a day I will never forget because everything, even the stillness, twinkled.

And  I plan to write those volumes. But not today. Today is not about making anything more or adjectivial or big of the loss over or the life that was Daniel, but just to say I will miss you brother, writer, friend, lover of all beings, watercolor eyes, happy drumming man, love animal, poet wanderer, and eternal sunrise... your stories—both on and off the page, ones we created together, one's I had the pleasure of hearing—will live in me for a lifetime, and when the time is right, breathe some of that eternal sunrise back into the world.

Daniel laughing with writing friends

the two Beauties
by Daniel Hennessy

Alan Watts said we did not
come into this world, 

we come out of it.

Well, there's the rub.

Because there is a nostalgia, too.
That I am a visitor on this lovely planet,
that my real home is in the sunrise, 
and that I am reminded of this
by the glance of an infant.

Well, that infant came out of something, too.

Like dew.

Who are we?

Whether you knew Daniel, or perhaps your own "Daniel," all thoughts and feelings  are welcomed and wanted. Love, Rox

Writing with Rox Weekly Prompt—Proud Teacher Moments

Dearest Students, Friends, Writing with Rox Beach Community of now, then, to be, whenever....

Your words are gifts! Offerings. I'll say it and say it. And say it. It goes something like this:

and the tree was happy...

Every single time a piece of raw writing is shared around the table here at the Beach, (or the Loft, or typed up and shared with others, eventually made into a book, a gift, a dream, a song, a quilt, an anything—or a nothing—, etc) the universe is happy. Why? Because you have offered your raw truth, the part of you that is most fully alive, most fully you, fully real, fully vulnerable, human, community. Why? Because the way I see it, the universe does not know how to be anything but itself: trees cannot stop themselves from budding and falling; weather cannot retreat just because spring is here; sunsets are not beautiful on our behalf, yet recognizing them as such is instinctual; and the moon will round upon the edges of the earth, milking the horizon, even if no one notices; and rocks will cradle water, and water will run freely... No part of nature, but the humankind, questions whether or not it ought fully be itself in all it's truth today.  So: when we allow ourselves to be all of who we are on the page, and if want be, share that being with others, we perhaps begin to integrate that into the way we live our lives, and then offer that same fullness of being into the universe.

In case I haven't said it enough, I am so grateful to all of you for sharing your gifts with me. Each story shared takes root in me, to be remembered sometime when I most need it—if not now, maybe in seventy years. In your stories, I've remembered joy and have been granted resolution, peace, forgiveness, compassion, and the relief of knowing I am not alone—physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. You've been there. You've done that. And even though I cannot relate today, I will tomorrow and boy will I be glad to know someone else has been there.

And the biggest gift of all is that we begin to see that we become the heroes of our own lives, cliche as it sounds. Because comes a time when you look back on something you wrote and go, wow, I can't believe "she" actually did that! How did she ever get through that? And you realize that she is you.

You wouldn't think so, but just writing about what you did this morning (start with "this morning..." and just go from there, see where it takes you...) and going from there, writing and sharing the truth of what you may consider an everyday mundane Minnesota morning and the uniquely you details of it, can and will change someone's life.



Today one of my students (among many, to whom I am one teacher) sent a link to a story she wrote that was published in today's Star Tribune! It's full of gifts and wisdom. Please enjoy!

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/goodlife/205273101.html