energy

I haven't written much because I feel like a one note guitar player with no amplifier. I'm putting all of my diminished energy into becoming normal--I hear the laughter and shouts of "not possible". In ten months I will weigh 190 lbs. I last weighed 190 in High School. My family has never seen me normal in any sense of the word. I have heard so many stories of desperate, courageous people at the meetings I attend. Last week this little bit of a lady stood up and told her story about weighing 300lbs. About having high blood pressure, sleep apnea, acid reflux and migraines. Now they are all gone leaving only the human being. I have heard variations on that story for the past 9 weeks. People filled with so much low self worth that they can hardly walk-- literally and figuratively climbing out of a dark pit. A word about that dark pit. It is very small and gets smaller with time. Then one day the sun shines through the new spaces of your moving frame-areas of your being become re-illuminated. For me that means poems and books to write--crazy projects like the radio show and the film we are making on suicide prevention. Classes to give and people to meet, places to go without fear of becoming a burden-and grandchildren to tell stories too--about enchanted hummingbirds and how when their Aunt Julia was a child she helped put the color blue back into a rainbow and on and on.

thinking out loud

My second weigh- in is coming up on Monday, Sept. 13 and I am thinking more about the future than ever before. At the rate I'm losing weight in seven months I will be a normal weight. Sounds incredible to write about the future when I had made my peace with moving on to the next world. Now, I have to readjust my thinking. At my beginning weight of 400lbs. my world was small and getting smaller. There is an inverse ratio of physical size and the size of the world a person lives in. There is so many things I couldn't do--such as going for long walks with my wife--even strolling down to beautiful Green Acre with my grandchild seemed like a trip to the moon on gossamer wings. Fears change. The world is suddenly quite large and more unknown than ever and the unknown generates fear. In this case the fears are welcome--embraced even. As life should be embraced. Life should be so vast that it becomes impossible to put your arms around and not the other way around. By that I mean life could not embrace me--could not get its arms around me. All this is not to say physical size is the only factor in creating a too small world. I have friends who suffer from severe depression that certainly shrinks the world they live in. I also work with individuals and interview individuals with disabilities and that can shrink your world. I have a memory of my friend Kathy coming to the radio station for an interview. Although we are on the first floor, the front entrance had about a two inch lip that was really difficult to get her electric wheel chair over. We strained to push the chair. I thought and still think about how at that moment the horizon of her world was two inches away--not somewhere faraway where the sky meets water or earth-- beautiful pristine line that separates two very different kinds of beauty. Kathy's horizon was a grimy strip of two inch high concrete--a formidable wall of a prison. So my prayer and hope for all my friends is that you walk your entire life around a beautiful mountain lake where the clouds come down for a swim on a warm summer afternoon and that this "sea of joy" be able to contain your reflection.

Google voice

In my new life of calling strangers getting up at six a.m. and going to meetings I need an economical phone-especially after a 624.00 cell phone call has made me an outcast. I am currently living in a van by the river and my family says I have joined the Peace Corp. Free Google voice to the rescue, I still wet my pants calling strangers and talking about being a food addict but now I can do it for free--wait a minute! That doesn't sound right. I should be charging to humiliate myself. Verizon charges 10cents a minute. I should at least charge 20cents for a simple humiliation--40 cents for a soul baring-I need to move and grow a mustache humiliation. But I digress. How about Google Buttons? No one sews buttons! No one! Even the Pope wears robes because no one sews buttons!! Now that I have lost weight I have to pay to get buttons replaced when I inhaled and shot buttons out across the living room causing the cat to go deaf. Now people are afraid of me and my buttons. I have to take them to complete strangers at a dry cleaner to sew them back on. How about Google buttons? Hold your garment close to the computer screen and mouse click on Google buttons. What good is a lousy computer if it can't even sew a button a shirt. I think the Pope said that first-I don't know. I'm just a fat man getting up at dawn eating low fat yogurt. Don't ask me these questions until I'm normal.

Just One More Day

Getting down to the end with our film on suicide prevention. I can't describe the filming today. Better to let the film and the participants speak. Here is my introduction:

Just One More Day

Our only desire in making this film is to help one person. We don't know the name of this person and maybe we never will. If you're watching this film, and you choose life, then everyone involved has been richly repaid.
We do ask the audience to keep in mind that anyone of us could be sitting in those chairs trying to live with a severe disability and that anyone of us could be struggling to stay alive "for just one more day".
I ask myself: "What have I learned?" Why did these individuals survive?" The answer I have learned listening to the interviews is that they all had someone they could reach out to in their most dangerous moments. Those moments when they looked north, south, east, west, above their heads and below their feet and could find no path to safety. Someone provided a glimmer of light and they were able to see the first step out of hell. That someone doesn't need to be the world's wisest therapist--just someone who cares.
We have one request. Be that someone who cares.

A miracle a day...

...keeps the doctor away. As I lose almost a pound a day, I gain a miracle in exchange. Not a bad trade. I am at Green Acre this week doing my part to encourage fellow writers of books and other art forms for children. On the third floor of the 19th century inn is the preserved room where Abdu'l-Baha stayed in 1912. I have not been there in years because of weight and bad knees. Today's miracle is that I will go there after the morning class and prayer for a particular family. This poem appeared a few mornings ago left on my pillow by the Poetry Angel. I know I did not write it or wish to write it because I will attach a memory to it that will live as long as I live.

A Thousand Balloons

I am a leaf in the wind that has
fallen from the Tree of Life
no matter where the wind takes me,
it is still Your Sky.
I awake with the dawn currents
I go to sleep with the night breeze
and in between I listen for Your Wisdom
heard in the rustling of the trees
in the impatience of the waves yearning
for Your Shore
It is Your Breath that has filled a thousand balloons
And when You inhaled, they returned to You.

Of Dreams of Dignity

Lots of old friends this week at Green Acre. One friend of my youth is bound for Croatia in a few weeks. He wanted to play pool last night and I obliged. I also invited another friend that I usually play with albeit infrequently. We laughed better than we played. I had to call it quits after an hour and a half. On this new plan where I am losing almost a pound a day, I run out of steam quickly--especially at night. Another old friend is here who lives in Italy. It is her sister I want to tell a story about. I woke up in tears thinking about her. For me, love comes easy, but this lady I truly admired. We served on a Baha'i Summer School Com. in N.Y.. Her family background of Persian and English might explain the aura of dignity that surrounded her. Debbie had an unerring sense of what was respectful in all situations, but I don't want to imply she was stuffy. She put up with my calls during meetings when I would go crazy with being in a meeting and declare "free form dancing time" She smiled when I danced on my hand- made oak coffee table in our living room. Our summer school group would meet on our enclosed porch. Maybe it's my own lack of stamina after a long day that makes me understand the memory of her getting to her feet and wordlessly leaving the meeting. We knew it was brain tumor pain getting to be too much. Not a word of complaint--just a ladylike departure back to her two adorable children and husband to recover. She passed away a month after the school session that summer. I don't have too read musty history books to learn about heroes. They bounced on my knee as a child and clapped along with her sister as I played ping pong with their father. Now for the "Of dreams of Dignity" part. Some months after that summer, our beloved treasurer was looking for a Baha'i book. She found the book in a box she had brought home from the summer school. Now I should say none of us were really qualified to run a ten day all volunteer summer school. Our treasurer was irreplaceable though because, despite all the scholarships, we dispensed there was always lots of money left over. We attributed the excess to God the Humorous(Actually attribute of God in the Writings) rather than bookkeeping error. Anyway, inside of the misplaced book she finds a sizable check for the summer school that was donated by our late lamented Debbie during the last session. It was in memory of her Persian husband's uncle. The summer school had an "In Memoriam" fund. Our treasurer was horrified and immediately called the husband. He had been having dreams of his uncle and Debbie. They were greatly concerned about money for the Baha'i Fund. The husband thought the meaning was that they were urging more contributions to the Baha'i Fund. He had called his far flung family telling them that Debbie and Uncle so-in-so. wanted them to give much more. Two mysteries were solved. The husband had been unable to balance and close out Debbie's checkbook because there was still a ck unaccounted for six months after her passing and a large sum of money in the account. He wrote out a new check and explained to the relatives. Her sense of dignity for her and her family would not let her rest in peace. I woke up with the memory of Debbie and this story. I can never think about her without crying. Heroes should never bounce and laugh on my knee and leave this world too soon. I wrote in my journal earlier this morning. "Too beautiful for this world. No garden, a fitting setting. The aromas fail to envelope. So off she went to the Garden of God. Her flower blooms on the highest hill and we--poor bound souls to this dust can only swirl around her."

Eliot Days

I know the world is nuts-terrible things happening to wonderful people. But in this little corner of Maine the asylum has passed us by. The townspeople have been planning for four years to create ten days of Bicentennial events. Our town is two hundred years old. There was a play at Green Acre that depicted a 1910 planning meeting for the first hundred years. The actors dressed in period clothing which for most of the actors meant opening their bedroom closet and making a selection. Each day has been filled with activities. There was a Ballroom dance with three hundred people dancing the night away. My dear friend Lorraine arranged for my books to be sold at a craft fair exclusive to residents of Eliot--nice pocket money. My favorite event was held at the ancient Grange Hall. A waterproof rubber mat was place over the floor, the lights dimmed, a hum of excitement traveled through the audience--the big show was finally here! "Octogenarians on Ice" A gallant troop twirled and whirled, jumped and spun. Their costumes were provided by the sponsor--"Maine Artificial Hips". The hips are made from super hard and flexible recycled lobster shells. Federal stimulus money provided the start- up money. Some of the hips have been recalled when the individual attempts to sit on the pot. The embedded memory in the shells sometimes recall their demise in a boiling pot of water at the Weathervane Restaurant makes them spring a foot in the air. Now, some elders with bad knees appreciate that boost to a standing position, but most experience worrisome heart palpitations and want a refund or a side order of onion rings. Anyway, a grand night out. I caught a wool garter belt from the star which I have been using as a sweat band during the recent hot spell. Well, goodnight all and watch for things that go bump in the night--it might be two eighty year old skaters colliding.