Under Pressure

I often write about Ms. Wonder in my missives here on The Circular Journey. And why not? After all, I do write about actual happenings in my version of reality, and the one known as Wonder figures into a lot of happenings.

My public often asks questions that can be summarized as, how do you two remain such a happy couple?

I could try to list all the ways we navigate married life but that would run into several pages. However, an example of how we work together might provide a better explanation.

"How did you get it that hot?" she asked after sipping the freshly brewed vanilla-flavored, oat-milk latte. It was my first attempt to make one at home.

"Just clear your mind," I said and with my eyes closed, I formed a mudra with my fingers and brought my hands up to the level of my lower dantian.

Let's pause here for station identification. If mudra and dantian are new words for you, let's suffice by saying I touched my thumbs with my index fingers and brought my hands to waist level.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes... "Just clear your mind," I said.

"No, get past that," she said giving me a look that served as a warning that she was in no joking mood.

"Alright," I said, without mudras and with my eyes looking into her eyes. "Fix in your mind the concept of hot."

"No! No! No!" she said pointing a finger at me and shaking it back and forth. "I have eleven minutes before a conference call. Just spill it."

We Genomes are quick on the uptake and I dedeuced that she meant business. Although I hate to do such a thing, I divulged the unadorned (read boring) version of what I knew about the process. No dragons figured into it. No elves were involved. The mythic quest was only implied.

"Now make me one," she said, "hot like yours."

"How many ounces," I said.

"I want one just like yours," she said.

"Just like mine," I said and I meant it to give me a few seconds more to remember how I'd made the first one. It was a bust, of course, too much pressure.

"Just like mine?" I said. Another attempt to allow a few seconds more for magical inspiration. It sometimes works; not often I admit but sometimes.

"Exactly," she said.

Well, no time was wasted in getting everything laid out and filled up. Of course, I felt pressure pushing down on me; the kind of pressure that one feels when white-knighting it for the precious damozel. The kind of pressure that David Bowie and Freddy Mercury sang of in the 1980s; pressure that can bring a building down.

All I could do, under the circumstances, was appeal to my Higher Power, commend my soul to God, and leap into it.

 

You Can Do This and More

You will need no explanation of the scene I'm about to describe. You've been there yourself often enough. Only three check-out lanes were open in our local gourmet market on the evening before a long holiday weekend. The lines waiting to pay were backed up to the kombucha coolers.

"Three lanes open for Memorial Day weekend," said the Wonder, and of course you and I both know that she was spot on because I already said that.

After several long minutes that seemed like half the morning, we were next up to be did-you-find-everything-you-needed? I felt the relief that one can only feel when the wait finally ends. I mean I had long since bored myself silly re-visiting old text messages, voice messages, and articles with subject lines like 17 Things Celebrities Do That You Don't.

The teller began ringing up the locally grown and gluten-free and was moving at a satisfactory pace. In, my mind, I was already carting the goods to the car, bunging them into the hatch, and getting on with Friday evening, which as you well know is pizza night at Chatsford Hall. And not just any pizza. It was a Margherita pizza with cauliflower crust.

At some point, I dimly became aware that someone nearby was calling my name. I looked round to search for the name-caller and imagine my surprise when it turned out to be Ms. Wonder and she was standing right beside me. She gave me a peculiar look. Difficult to describe it. And then she began gesturing toward the corner of the shop where they keep the good stuff.

"Sprouted bread!" she said with some urgency in her tone.

Now, this is one of those remarks that leave me without a solid comeback. You may have a ready response for it but not me. It got right over my head. It was my turn to give her a look.

"Squirrely," she said.

If I was flummoxed before, I was lying in a heap on the floor now. How did she learn of my childhood nickname and why did she take this particular moment to start using it?

"Get sprouted bread from the cooler," she said.

We Genomes have minds like steel traps, of course, and I immediately realized that:

1) the teller was ringing up the last half-dozen items...and
2) Ms Wonder was adamant that we would be leaving with a loaf of sprouted bread

We Genomes are men of action, of course, and it was with me the work of an instant to turn, rocket through the vegetable bins, and stand in front of the bread coolers. With thoughts of that precious Wonder enduring the glares of shoppers waiting in line behind her after she'd answered in the affirmative when asked if she'd found everything, I wasted no time making my decision.

I grabbed the first loaf I saw. It was the Big 16. But as I turned to face Ms. Wonder and the teller, who were now 4 vegetable bins and 6 checkout lanes away from me, I saw the pleading look in Wonder's eyes and then felt the universal male urge to be the knight that saves his lady from the dragon. She needed me to live up to my reputation--that of moving in mysterious ways my wonders to perform.

I saw something else when I made that turn at the bread cooler. I saw another loaf of sprouted bread with a label that read, Squirrely. I immediately knew two things, because didn't I say that we Genomes are pretty damned smart?

I knew to put the Big 16 back and grab the Squirrely. It will seem incredible to you but in that instant, I had bandwidth enough to be grateful that Wonder didn't know about my childhood nickname after all. And I'll tell you why I was able to make room for gratitude even though the pressure had hotted up. The reason is that I'd found the solution.

When I'd looked into those green eyes in those last few moments, I felt that the only thing I had to live for, in that present moment, was making her happy. I would be her knight.

"Hurry!" the Wonder called.

I took one longish step toward the cashier and cocked the arm, if that's the word I want, seeming to fall effortlessly back into high-school football form. That's right. I rocketed that loaf of sprouted bread high above the heads of shoppers and up into the stratosphere of the Sprouts market.

Up and up, as dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly, that loaf of bread arched across the dome of the market and every eye in the store followed it. Made me think of the way we watched the space station cross the sky one moonless night last winter.

Having almost reached escape velocity, but failing by a percentage point, the seeded missile paused for a heartbeat near the air conditioning ducts and then began its descent, slowly at first but with increasing velocity. If I didn't know better, I would swear to you that it became incandescent as it reentered the earth's atmosphere.

Small children clutched their mother's Athleta-wear. Women screamed and abandoned their shopping carts. Faint-hearted men clutched the walnut handles of their 2nd amendment rights.

Not to worry; Ms. Wonder was at the receiving end and she's one woman who's forever cool in a crisis. She one-handed that loaf and slid it across the scanner without missing a tic.

It was a perfect ending and the applause from the other shoppers and employees made it a perfect day. You've heard it before and it remains forever true, my friends, life comes hard and fast and it pays to be prepared. Fierce qigong!

No Place Like Home

I woke this morning to that old familiar feeling of fingers walking up the thigh. You probably know the feeling I mean. My first thought, as I lay there underneath the blanket, was that if fingers are ankling up the leg, then the hand doing the walking belongs to the ghost that resides on the third floor of the Inn of the Three Sisters in the Genome ancestral home in Pittsboro. 

If you're not familiar with Pittsboro, it's the village that lies beside the Haw River south of Chapel Hill and is not to be confused with Saxapahaw, which also lies beside the Haw River. Easy to tell them apart; they're spelled differently.

But I've jumped the rails again. The topic is the ghost that's tickling my thigh. To face this ghost, as you may recall from an earlier post, requires a steel resolve if that's the term. But resolve isn't always abundant and it's been in short supply in recent days. I took a moment to breathe deeply and to muster the will.

Be still, I said to Princess Amy, who you probably know as that almond-shaped cluster of gray cells sitting on her throne in the middle of my brain. She's fond of stamping her foot and yelling, Off with their heads! or alternatively, Run for your life! I believe Napoleon had the same temperament.

As I lay in bed, taking my moment, I happened to remember an old saw I heard somewhere--it may belong to Ms. Wonder. The gag I mention goes something like this (I paraphrase, of course): There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Well, you know how we Genomes are; men of action! I took that tide at the flood and threw back the duvet ready to claim the pot of gold or whatever it was the man had in mind.

Well, imagine my surprise, to discover not a pot of gold and not a ghost. It was Abbie Hoffman, the white-gloved assassin, walking up my leg and I was not in Pittsboro but back home in Durham! And Durham is a good place to be. All's well that ends well and all that.

Now, I would be misleading my public if I said that the prospects of late have been more than bleak. The birds have been singing out of tune and I'm pretty sure I overheard the bluebird talking about cashing in her chips and retiring to Miami. 

But today is different, which isn't surprising because nothing is permanent, as the man said.  Was it the Buddha or Shakespeare? I get them confused. But surely it was one of the other. They seem to be responsible for everything that's worth repeating. Have you noticed?

Wen, the Eternally Surprised, my once and future martial arts master, taught me that life comes hard and fast and that the prudent person is ready for anything. How to be ready he never said exactly but I gathered that it required acceptance rather than resistance.

Though things came that close to falling apart over the last few days, the flame of fierce qigong never died and I was able to extricate myself from the looney bin that is my limbic system without a stain on my character. Almost no stain. Very little stain. No stains that won't come out in the wash.

Where once the birds seemed to be in an unending argument, today they sing as though spring were just around the corner. It's a positive frame of mind and it's contagious. I share that positive outlook today and it's due in no small part to paying attention to those birds. Master Wen might say it's due to simply paying attention--period.

Whatever the cause of my new attitude. I'm not questioning it. I'm just happy that knotted sheets didn't enter into it. I must give Ms Wonder credit for helping to clean my mental windows so that I could see more clearly. That's all I'm going to say about it for now.

I will say that it's good to be home again. There's no place like it.

Saying Goodbye to Mom

"As-salamu alaykum," I said to the Music Man who stands at the corner of Highway 55 and Starbucks asking for money and orange juice.

"W'a alaykum assalaam," he replied giving me a big wave of the hand and a bigger grin. There is a good chance we actually used the common tongue in our greeting because someone in the car behind me was insistent on making a left-hand turn and the Music Man and I, as you well know, always strive to spread sweetness and light wherever we may. There was just no time for a miscommunication in Arabic, and as for the French language, as far as I am aware, it isn't on the Music Man's menu.

"How are you making it?" I asked. "Do you have enough water... coffee?"

"I don't drink coffee. What I need is a big orange juice," he said.

I know! Orange juice! But if you are one of the many who hang onto every word I write, which is the minimum requisite for membership in the Inner Circle, then you know all about this Music Man and his fondness for the muck they squeeze from oranges. My father used to say that it takes all kinds to make a world, and I'm thinking he wasn't so far wrong.

"Hang on," I said. "I'll come about." I set the sails on Wind Horse to tack sharply and tied up at the Starbucks in the same slip I'd just left. Taking advantage of the retail systems in place in the Kingdom of the United States, for I lived there many years and am familiar with the procedures, I was able in less than 15 minutes to be sharing the corner once more with the Music Man, and working out the logistics necessary to transfer the tissue restorer, if that orange sludge can be considered a t.r.

The Man, as I'm sure you know, has to bring sharp awareness to the legs to get them moving in the desired direction. He did this now. Then he hooked the walking cane over the arm and reached first for the water, and then for the juice. I pay close attention to his movements because I study the technique of this master of the cane, as I expect to need his skills in the coming years.

"Good move," I said in reference to choosing the water first and my cingulate cortex opened its mouth to say that fruit juice is not a healthy way to get energy. But I decided to give this discussion a miss. Probably not germane to the topic at hand.

"You got to know how to survive in this weather," he said with a great deal of certainty and authority. I nodded as I do each and every time he shares this wisdom with me. I'm grateful to know that he doesn't open up like this to everyone--only the initiated. 

"And the wind chill," I added, noticing that the breeze had gotten up since I left Chatsford Hall only a few minutes before. He nodded and then tilted his head back and poured the contents of the water bottle down the funnel.

"Rem acu tetigisti," he said, although memory tells me that he translated from the Latin in real time. He may actually have said, "You got that right." Then in answer to my unasked question, he said, "I'm doing good." We have the kind of understanding, this Music Man and I, that doesn't always require speech.

"Happy to hear it," I said.

"It takes more than a chilling mist to get me down," he said, "As long as I take my medicine, I can make it--heat, cold, rain, whatever. I came to Durham in 1981 and I worked for many years at Duke Hospital," he said to get things going for this Music Man is practiced at taking advantage of every opportunity to tell a story, "and then I worked in the food-service industry. I'm used to having to work hard. Never had it easy."

Then his face lit up a bit and he asked, "Hey, how's your mom?"

He sees my mom when we come this way to visit the Dollar Tree behind the coffee shop, and he regularly asks about her.

"Thanks for asking," I said and then gave up the bad news that she passed last December. He nodded and was silent for a moment. Then he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, and that twinkle brought a corresponding twinkle to mine. We began chuckling and then laughed out loud. It wasn't my mom's passing that got us going. It was her often heard lament, brought on by her feeling that she'd lived too long already, that she would, "probably live until Jesus comes back."

After the hearty laugh, we both became silent again. He gave my shoulder a whack, at least I think it was intended to be a whack. It was more of a robust pat, if you get my meaning. His instability, what with the shaky legs and braces and whatnot, prevent him getting in a really good slap.

"I miss my mom," he said. "I was good to her like you were to your mom. I was born Down East and don't know who my real parents were. I was adopted when I was just a baby by a good Christian couple who didn't care about what color a baby's skin was. In those days, most people wanted babies with light complexions. Didn't want babies with dark complexions," he said with a finger pointed toward his cheek."

"I'm glad they found you," I said. "I'd hate to think I'd come here every day without seeing you. Sometimes talking to you is the difference in having a sky filled with clouds or blue skies and sunlight."

He gave me a look and I realized I had not made my meaning clear. "Inside my head," I mean, "cloudy day or sunny day in my head." Then, as if it would clarify things even further, I said, "There's a crazy little princess living in my head and it's her day I'm talking about."

"You better go then," he said, "cause I got enough problems without dealing with no crazy little princess living in somebody's head. Besides, I got music to make."

Oh, Mom, if you're reading this, the Music Man said 'Hello,' and that he will miss seeing you at the Food Lion. I miss seeing you there too. I miss seeing you everywhere. I miss watching Hallmark Christmas movies with you. But just like I promised you, Ms Wonder and I are living happy, joyful and free.

I'm sure we'll be talking more later but right now I have places to go and things to do. In fact, I've got music to make.

Love you, Mom.

Don't Even Think About It

I woke this morning with that feeling you get sometimes that if the feet don't touch the floor in about 3 seconds, Gabriel will blow his ram's horn and judgement day will set in with uncharacteristic heat! Not that Gabriel was anywhere to be seen or heard. It was Sagi that attracted attention this morning.

Sagi, as you already know, is the caramel-colored tabby who has a way of running back and forth down the hallway at 4:45 AM every morning. He races to the sound of his own music, something that sounds a little like, "Rrrbbbttthh." I have reason to believe that he means to sound like Yellow #46 getting off the starting line in the Grand Prix World Championship.

I heard him coming down the hallway from the laundry room, then he rounded the corner outside the guest bedroom and into Ms Wonder's office where he caroomed off the wall with a Plubberly-whump! Sorry but it's the best approximation I have.

At the sound of his wall-crashing turn-around, I bounded out of bed with a silent Eureka! And I'll tell you why. I'd just had an epiphany, much like the one Archimedes had with the exception that he bounded out of a bath and I out of a bed, and of course he'd discovered the principle of displacement and I hadn't. I'd discovered the key to becoming a successful writer.

Out in the hallway, I became entangled in caramel-colored tabby as he was making his way back down the stretch. "Alright, Rossi!" I called out to him. He's a big fan of Valentino Rossi, having watched all the YouTube videos of his races. "I'm up already! Rilassare, rilassare."

As I approached the boudoir of the resident woman of wonder, I could hear the Whitewater River cascading over 400 feet down the mountainside near Cashiers. My first thought on hearing the sound of that highest fall in the Carolina upcountry is that it's out of earshot here in the Renaissance District of Durham. The sound I heard must be the sound of Ms Wonder's bath. And so it proved to be.

"Poopsie," I said, falling into the familiar at what may have been too early an hour. "I've made a remarkable discovery!"

"You didn't come to bed last night," she said and I thought it a bit cold considering the warmth of my opening remark. "You must have been out 'till all hours with the remains of the writer's conference."

"I was not out 'till all hours," I said. "I got home before 2:00 AM and I was with some old friends of the North Carolina Writers Network. We had a quiet conversation in an all-night coffee house in Raleigh."

"Good," she said. "Now you won't have to bore me talking about it."

"You won't think it boring when I tell you of the realization that came to me while listening to their drivel," I said. "You know how wannabe writers are always asking successful writers what it takes to become a successful writer?"

"I've always wondered what young writers do," she said. Can you believe she said that? She can be irritating sometimes, but still, the upside overwhelms the down.

"Yes, that's what they do," I said. "And it's the sensible thing for them to do. They ask, How does one become a successful writer? And this is the answer they get--from every successful writer: To become a successful writer, one must write."

"Oh, I've heard a variation of that," she said. "I once heard Terri Gross ask that question of a writer she interviewed on Fresh Air. The author said, if I remember correctly,  To become a writer, all you have to do is put pen to paper."

"Excuse me," I said because this had gotten right past me.

"You know, pen to paper," she said, "it's something people used to do before the mid-1980's." At this moment, she rose from the bath like Venus rising from the sea. I assisted with the towel and the guiding hand. "You must get tired of young writers asking that question," she said. "I mean it's such an obvious rule--writing to become a writer."

I didn't answer immediately because a cold hand had taken hold of the heart. Once again I'd approached this woman of mystery and wonder with an exciting subject, one that I was heavily invested in, and what did she do? 

I tell you what she did. Diversion, obfuscation and subterfuge! That's what she did. Pen to paper my sainted aunt! Emerging from the bath without warning! I knew I must act quickly and I delivered the best option I could come up with on short notice.

"Well, if you think that the key to becoming a successful writer is self-evident, as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put it, then consider this: If it's as easy as all that, then why are we still asked the question?"

I was hoping the reference to the founding father would win some points with her and her momentary silence was taken as a good sign. Would it improve the reviews and give me a boost up in the ratings. A small boost is what we strive for, we mere mortals, when yoked unevenly with those who breathe the rarified air of Mt. Olympus--beings like this Ms Wonder.

"And besides, young writers don't ask me that question," I continued. "Young writers don't want to write for magazines, they want to write  best-selling books."

"But that's not practical is it? Not everyone can write a book. Besides, isn't writing magazine articles a good way to work toward writing a book?"

"Did you say, not everyone can write a book? Who hasn't written a book? I've met a few individuals who aren't in print but even they admit that they would write a book if they could be paid for it."

I was beginning to feel more secure now. I felt that I was on a roll and building momentum, and I wasn't going to stop now.

"The way to become a successful writer, and this is the discovery I told you about, is to forget about writing," I said. "Put writing completely out of mind. If the thought pops into your head, let it fade away, as recommended on the covers of those mindfulness magazines. If you would keep it, let it go."

"But how will that make you a writer?"

"Here's an example for you," I said. "If you become an recognized actor on television or get a co-staring role in a movie, you are assured of writing a New York Times best selling book, complete with photos."

"That's not so easy," she said.

"OK, I'll give you that. But consider this idea. If one goes into politics and becomes mayor of a major city, and there are no qualifications for this that I'm aware of, then a block-buster book follows with movie rights sold."

That's not so easy either," she said.

"OK," I said. "I've saved the best for last. All one needs to do is become a YouTube celebrity. It's easy, it's free, and anyone can do it. People do it all the time and the next thing you know, they have a book publishing deal."

"Let me guess," she said. "You've decided to become a successful writer by starting an Internet TV channel? Genome TV."

"Eureka!" I said. "I hadn't thought of that but it's a great idea. Thank you, Wonder. I'll begin today. I know the perfect theme for it too!"

"I'll just bet you do," she said and I admit that I was quite happy with myself for winning her approval.