.85616438

For Christmas, in 1993, I received a stapler. A sturdy, black metal Stanley Bostitch stapler, model B660. While it may seem like one of those regifting kind of gifts to some, to me it was special. It was the year I started my business, and the stapler was a “you're on your way, go for it!” gift that said “I know you can do it!”

I don't know if anyone, myself included, imagined this business would still be going strong some 16 years later! Or maybe we did. Either way, it seemed important to note that I used my last staple from that original gift this morning. The 5,000th, according to the box. That's an average of .85616438 staples per day.

We don't often note these small, inconsequential things. We staple away for 16 years in the same way we put a key in the front door or eat a meal at the kitchen table or pet the cat in the morning. But there are small blessings in each...a roof over our head, nourishment that sustains us, good companions on our journey, and people who knew all along “you can do it!”

Letting Go

Every week, via email, I get my horoscope courtesy of Rob Brezsny (www.FreeWillAstrology.com). His words are wise and wacky and wonderful. I think they appeal to me most because they are symbolic, rich in analogies and mysteries you have to think about for a while.

This week, for example, he bid those of us born under the sign of Cancer "to make 'in the buff on the holy mountaintop' your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or makes you high."

At first, I didn't get it. I thought maybe this was one of those weeks when my orbit just wasn't in sync with the rest of the planets.

And then, today, in a series of events that made me definitely "out of orbit" in an angry and I've-had-enough sort of way, I got it. Because, in the process of angry and I've-had-enough, a small whisper of realization got louder and louder.

"It is time to let go of this."

To be honest, it has been whispering it for many years, I just chose not to listen. I was afraid to let go. I was afraid of the consequences. I was afraid of what I might find, or not find, if I sloughed off yet another layer of something I'd been holding on to.

"It is time to let go of this," I heard myself say out loud.

And then I called my friend Martha to verify.

"Well, it's about time!" she said with much enthusiasm.

Apparently, she'd heard the same whispers and was wondering when I would get around to it.

About an hour or so later, a friend emailed to say she was trying "put faith in front of fear" today, and I breathed in her words, deeply.

"It is time to let go of this."

There is a certain synergy happening here, and I feel it. With that one simple, powerful sentence--there is change, and validation, and release.

I feel…lighter.
Naked, one might even say.

Gone the Familiar

She arrived in '97 at the age of 10, after her first "Mom" died. After my Dad died, and life felt suddenly empty.

We needed each other, I think. I needed her, certainly.

"She's grieving," said a Reiki Master, a few months later, as she held her hand above CJ's tiny six-pound frame. "Here," she said, then slowly eased her pain.

Later than night, CJ scaled the loft-wall above my bed and landed with enthusiasm on the pillow next to my head. It was the first time she came to me, uncalled.

Each night thereafter, she would come to bed with me, sitting by my head as I relaxed, tossed to the right, tossed to the left and began to fall asleep. She knew the routine. It was only after I'd tossed one final time that she would tap at the blankets for me to let her in, and curl into my stomach for the night.

In the morning, she'd get impatient. Four hits of the snooze button was enough for her, and she'd begin pacing up and down the bed as if to say, "OK, it IS time to get up now." When I didn't listen, she'd stick her face in mine--"Hello?"--her whiskers making me sneeze awake.

They say cats are either born from jungle cats or desert cats. If there were ever a species of water cats, those were CJ's ancestors. She loved to drink from the faucet, or neglected glasses of water. She took her place on the rim of the sink when I brushed my teeth or washed the dishes--looking ready to pounce. In later years, she began taking showers with me. At first, I thought she was being silly and senile. And then I realized she'd stopped grooming herself--no doubt the arthritis made it more difficult than a brief stroll through the tub. She even seemed to enjoy the morning blow-dry!

In the summertime, CJ would sit on the screen porch, watching the birds fly by and lounging in the sun for hours. In winter, she took to the warmth of the computer monitor and slept all day above me as I worked. She cursed the day the flat screen arrived--work hasn't seemed the same since.

When the day was done, I'd turn off the TV, shut off the lights and head upstairs--with CJ no more than two steps behind me, every night.

It's difficult to talk about her--and her sisters Emily and Crystal--without sounding like the stereotypical single woman, the "cat lady" and all that. But she was--they are--my constant companions.

CJ, though, was special. She and I shared a bond that seemed, at times, almost human. Familiar. Often, when we sat together, she would stretch herself out and rest her paw on my hand. When I was sick or sad, she'd pay special attention and snuggle in just a little closer.

On her last day, she went out on the screen porch. It was a warm March morning, and she sat for a while, under a blanket I draped over her. She seemed to enjoy the sun, bright in her face, and the sound of the birds making ready for spring. So, we stayed there a while, and I rested my hand on her paw, snuggling in just a little closer...one last time.


"As strong as you were,
tender you'll go.
I'm watching you breathing,
for the last time.
A song for your heart,
but when it is quiet,
I know what it means
and I'll carry you home."

- James Blunt

Can I Have My Technology on the Side, Please?

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I like my technology in small doses. A little bit of convenience here and there doesn't hurt, but I just don't feel the need to be plugged in all the time.

Sometimes, it doesn't make sense. Case in point: on Thursday, I needed to make a change to my checking account, so I called the direct line at my bank and this is how things went...

"Hello, thank you for calling your bank. How may I help you?" asked the customer service woman.

"I need to make a change to my account, and I'm wondering, is this something I can do over the phone or should come in to the bank?"

"Do you have access to our online banking?" she asked, which was not the yes or no answer I was looking for.

"I don't know." I responded.

"Well, give me your account number and I'll find out for you."

I gave her my number, and she put me on hold while she went to access my account.

"It looks like you set up online banking in 2005," she said, some five minutes later.

"Oh, I didn't know that."

"Do you remember your User ID and Password?"

"No."

"Ok, well, if you can answer your security question, then I can give you your User ID and Password."

Security question asked and answered correctly, she gave me my online banking info and explained, in detail, how to go to the website, which buttons to click, which numbers to enter where and so forth.

"Thank you," I said as I got online and hung up the phone.

Click this button. Now this one. Enter my User ID and Password.

"We're sorry, but this is not the correct information. Please enter your User ID and Password." read the screen.

Click this button. Now this one. Enter my User ID and Password, again.

"We're sorry, but this is not the correct information. Please enter your User ID and Password."

Click this button. Now this one. Enter my User ID and Password, again.

"We're sorry, but there have been too many attempts to access your account. We have now locked you account for security reasons. For the unlock key, please enter your email address here."

Apparently, "If at first you don't succeed..." does not apply with online banking.

Click this button. Now this one. Enter email address. Press return.

"Thank you. Your unlock key will be emailed to you shortly. DO NOT CLOSE THIS BROWSER WINDOW until you receive your unlock key."

So I sat and waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. No email. No unlock key. BROWSER WINDOW OPEN.

Elapsed time since initial phone call: 35 minutes. I closed the browser window and called the direct line at the bank.

"Hello, thank you for calling your bank. How may I help you?" asked the customer service man.

"I was trying to make a change to my account online, but I seem to have entered the wrong information and now I'm locked out. It's been 15 minutes, but I still haven't gotten an email with the unlock key."

"Sometimes it takes a while." he said.

"Is this something you can help me with?"

"No, you'd need to call our Online Banking Customer Service Department and they can walk you through the process."

"OK, well, let me go back to my very first question then. I need to make a change to my account, and I'm wondering, is this something I can do over the phone or should come in to the bank?"

He laughed. "Sure, give me you account number."

Tap tap tap, I hear in the background. Two or three questions asked and answered. Tap tap tap.

"You're all set. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

Elapsed time since second phone call: 3 minutes.

Five Things

"Are you taking your vitamins?" asked my naturopath.

Why did I suddenly feel like I was going to confession? "Bless me father, for I have sinned, it's been three days since I've taken my vitamins." Even the giant pill container labeled Monday through Friday sitting right in front of the coffee pot--which I worship daily--has not inspired me.

The story goes like this...several years ago, my neighbor Marty told me she aspires to do five creative things a day. It was that comment that inspired me to try to add a little creativity into my own life--with pretty good results. Better results than the giant pill container, that's for sure.

I was thinking about the "five things" this morning, as I'm beating myself up for not taking my vitamins, not walking more, not eating better...not...and not...and not...all, of course, prompted by my naturopath's simple, gentle question.

My response to her question was this, "You know, in my ideal life, I would remember to take my vitamins, and walk more...."

In my IDEAL life? Who am I kidding? The only difference between my "life" and my "ideal life" is me! Right? There's not really much getting in the way of the ideal besides me.

And so I got to thinking...how hard would it be to remember to do five things a day? Five simple, don't take a lot of time, fill up those idyll moment in between work and dinner and dinner and sleep? Five things? How hard could that be?

The Five Things:

1. Take Vitamins
2. Move (walk, exercise, just move)
3. Drink Water
4. Put lotion on
5. Read or Write or Do Artwork

That's it. Those are my five things. It doesn't sound too hard, does it? Certainly manageable.

I figure if I post a few little reminder notes around the house, I may just be able to do this! Ideally, anyhow.

Will you join me? Can YOU do five things a day that you want to but don't seem to get to? And if so, what are YOUR five things?

A Good Book

What is a good book? For me, it's the one that grabs you, right on that first page, and makes you want to stay a while. "Nevermind the dishes, the laundry, the list of things to do—stay here and read some more," it says.

In a basket next to my sofa is a stack of good books. Or so I like to think. I haven't read them yet. To be honest, I haven't been much for reading lately. I'm too antsy. I can't sit still that long, right now. It's a phase.

I'm not sure what made me even think about reaching for a book yesterday, but I did. A well-worn John Steinbeck hardcover from 1961. I've never read Steinbeck, but I found it at the annual library book sale on the Green and it looked kind of fun. It's called "Travels with Charley" and is the telling of his travels cross country with his French poodle Charley in a pickup truck camper called Rocinante.

I wasn't sure what to expect. But, a dozen or so pages in, I was laughing so hard my cats looked at me with some concern.

"I thought I might do some writing along the way," writes Steinbeck. "perhaps essays, surely notes, certainly letters. I took paper, carbon, typewriter, a compact encyclopedia, and a dozen other reference books, heavy ones. I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. I knew very well that I rarely make notes, and if I do I either lose them or can't read them. I also knew from thirty years of my profession that I cannot write hot on an event. It has to ferment. I must do what a friend called 'mule it over' for a time before it goes down. And in spite of this self-knowledge, I equipped Rocinante with enough writing materials to take care of ten volumes. Also I laid in a hundred and fifty pounds of those books one hasn't gotten around to reading—and of course those are the books one isn't ever going to get around to reading. Canned goods, shotgun shells, rifle cartridges, tool boxes and far too many clothes, blankets and pillows, and many too many shoes and boots, padded nylon sub-zero underwear, plastic dishes and cups and a plastic dishpan, a spare tank of bottled gas. The overload springs sighed and settled lower and lower. I judge now that I carried about four time too much of everything."

I couldn't help but think of the giant red suitcase I carted with me to France last year, packed to the brim with all of the useful things I would need (and of course did not exist in a place like Paris)—enough socks, paper, pens, t-shirts, Q-tips and Zantac to last six months I think!

And then, while I was laughing and remembering that whirlwind vacation and being glared at by my cats, something very interesting happened. I sat still. Sat still for two hours, as a matter of fact!

A good book indeed.

The Walter Cornell Theory of Observation as It Applies to Pablo Neruda

I have a story for everything. Just ask anyone who knows me. I've been telling stories since I was little...perhaps that's why I've been a writer most of my life.

The tricky part about stories is that you have to remember them in order to tell them. I do that by naming the small moments and minutia after people. For example, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" will always be known as the "Norman Kraft Song." Norman was the first boy who ever asked me to dance...to "Stairway to Heaven," of course. When I write, I often use the "JKL Method of Writing," named after my high school English teacher, who impressed upon his students the importance of good and well-organized writing. (My sister, as a matter of fact, now teaches the "JKL Method of Writing" to her students!)

These names help me capture the essence of the story, filing them away neatly for use sometime later. Like "The Walter Cornell Theory of Observation."

There are two parts to the "The Walter Cornell Theory of Observation" story. The first often gets included in the "How I Started My Own Business" story, in the Assistance Usually Comes with a Price Tag chapter. The second, and by far the more interesting part, is the "Theory of Observation" story.

"The Walter Cornell Theory of Observation" story goes like this. Walter was talking about the importance of paying attention to things. "Look around the room," he said, "and count all of the things that are blue." And so I did. "Now, he asked, "how many are brown?" I had no idea how many were brown, because I'd been paying attention to blue.

I often think about "The Walter Cornell Theory of Observation" when something begins to appear in my observations with alarming regularity. You know what I'm talking about, right? You overhear someone talking about puffins, and the next thing you know, they're all over the place--an Animal Planet special, the cover of the magazine you happened to pick up, the bumper sticker on the car in front of you. An invasion of puffins!

The funny thing is, the puffins were probably there all along. You've just been paying attention to them more because they're right there, at the front of your brain, center stage in your consciousness. You see them because, like blue, you were paying attention to them.

Paying attention to...Pablo Neruda. A while ago, I read Sue Monk Kidd's book The Mermaid Chair. In the opening pages appeared a quote by Pablo Neruda:

I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire;
I love you as one loves certain dark thing,
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

His words were so beautiful, I used them in a collage I was working on at the time. "I love you...secretly, between the shadow and the soul." Who was this Pablo Neruda?

Turns out, Pablo Neruda is a Nobel Prize winning poet from Chile. "You know, I've always wanted to learn Spanish," offered a friend of mine without prompting, "so I can read Pablo Neruda's original poems." There he was again.

"Movies You'll Love," read the Netflix button. At the top of the list? Il Postino, in which "Mario Ruoppolo (Massimo Troisi), the mailman on an Italian island, pines from afar for a beautiful waitress. When exiled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (Philippe Noiret) comes to live on the island...."

And then, last week...I was wandering around the library, looking for inspiration. I stepped aside for a woman to pass me, turned around, and there--at eye level: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda.

Like Walter's request, I had taken the time to pay attention. I allowed space for the suggestion to roam around in my brain for a while. And in return? Perfect words for a collage, an interesting conversation with a friend, a good movie, and a book of poetry I can't put down.

Paying attention is critical for a writer. You never know where those small moments will lead you, what you'll discover along the way, and where the story might go from there.

Finding Emily

A long time ago, a friend of mine gave me a book called "The Book of If." Subtitled "Questions for the Games of Life and Love," it's a collection of hypothetical questions like "If you found out for certain there was a Heaven and Hell, would you change your life?" and "If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do?" The questions are sometimes funny, sometimes thought-provoking, and always good conversation starters. It's a fun little book to have around for parties or road trips or idyl nothing-to-do moments.

It was during one of those rare, idyl nothing-to-do moments that I flipped to page 300 something and read, "If you could recite a poem to your lover, which would you choose?"

“Hypothetical indeed,” I thought to myself. The only poem I can confidently recite is Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"--not exactly lover material, but an impressive party trick!

And then, slowly, I remembered. I remembered Emily.

It's been years since I read Emily Dickinson's work, a constant companion in college. And so, I ran upstairs and dusted off a small, well-worn hardcover collection of her poems and found...

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port--
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Home = Mom and Pop

As I write, my favorite local “department store” is having a Going Out of Business sale. It was the kind of store where you could find just what you were looking for. Special event? Big date? Vacation? You’d find the perfect blouse or skirt or pair of shoes, with accessories to match. Not only that, but you’d recognize the materials they were made out of--good quality materials, made to for last years, not just this season.

A friend of mine says it was the place folks used to go for Girl Scout and Boy Scout uniforms. We had one in the town where I grew up--it’s where we bought our gymsuits (does anyone remember gymsuits?) It was the kind of place where they took the time to say hello, to ask how you were and mean it. The kind of place where they’d ask if you needed help not because they were afraid you were shoplifting, but because they really could offer assistance if you asked. And all you had to do was ask.

But, despite the crowds of people pouring in for the department store’s big sale, despite the lines in the three small dressing rooms and the “record sales” reported by the owner, the store will be gone by mid-August. In its place? A cookie-cutter Coldwater Creek, I hear. Good cheap clothes that everyone within driving distance of their 300 stores across the country is wearing.

Soon to follow, no doubt, that tsunami of chain stores apparently necessary in any growing community. A Starbucks for $10 coffees. A benign Barnes & Noble. An Applebee’s for “homecooked” processed foods. A Payless Shoes and a payless hardware store and a payless gift shop.

In a time when “shopping” has become a pastime, I suppose “payless” is the key. Those colorful flyers that come in the mail each week have become the “calendar of events” for many. “Did you hear they’re having a huge sale on giant glow-in-the-dark Buddha statues this weekend? I have to get some of those!”

Who cares if the giant glow-in-the-dark Buddha statues were made in China? Who cares if they’re made of materials that will congest our landfills when we throw them out--and we WILL throw them out, next year, when giant glow-in-the-dark giraffes are all the rage. Who cares if the store pays their workers minimum wage without healthcare? Who cares if the store does nothing to support the community in which it does business? Who cares?

YOU should. Because downtown, next to the Starbucks and the Barnes & Noble and the Applebee’s are a host of small, locally owned “mom and pop” businesses maintained by members of your community, your neighbors. Businesses that support local events, local organizations, local charities, and local school programs. Businesses who have done so for years, if not generations.

They are businesses that are part of the fabric of your community, part of its unique character. Afterall, you don’t see your town’s tourism brochure promoting the great dining experiences of the local Olive Garden and Taco Bell. The “Where to Shop” section of the local website rarely touts the charm of the town’s Wal-Mart or BJ’s.

Who cares? We must. Because, in our enthusiasm for dirt cheap, ON SALE, glow-in-the-dark whatchamacallits that we have to, got to, need to have NOW...we’re losing the very essence of what makes your town and my town HOME-towns.

Perhaps we don’t need a place where you can purchase the latest in gymsuit fashions, but we certainly need the people and places that support our communities, that speak to the character and tradition of our towns, that make our towns the places we want to call home.