Perspective

I just started listening to a podcast called Ear Hustle. It is relatively new, only 4 episodes so far. Which works out well because I am relatively new to having a child in prison, and this is like a connection to him. I keep hoping I will hear his voice in the background (as it takes place in his current prison), or maybe he will get interviewed. Yes, I did not really picture this as an aspiration for my child. I can see the bumper sticker now: "My Kid is the Ear Hustle Inmate of the Month!"









Ear Hustle is quite good. I recommend it to anyone, whether you have had a prisoner in your life or not.

I was listening to it today while working in my yard. For perspective, I am on call this weekend, and thus not exactly "free", but as I listened to the stories of the inmates, while sweat poured down my face from pulling weeds (yes, I am a wimp), I felt so very free. Houses, gardens, work so often feel like traps or cages or something we do while we wait for the good part of life to start. Which is ironic given house-garden-work represents the American dream.



Turns out life is just life. You wake up (if lucky), go to work (if lucky), eat some good food (if lucky), try to exercise (if lucky), walk your dogs (if lucky), do the wash for the millionth time (if lucky). Unless you are in prison, or a war zone, or a drug addict or super sick or mentally ill without good treatment or poor or Donald Trump. Whom I do not suppose has done a load of wash in his entire life.

artist http://www.lizavonrosenstiel.com/gallery/


I posted on Strava the other day.


I have not been posting my runs all that often, because I am really slow now. I mean I was never super fast, but could run 7 min miles for a prolonged period, up until that *cough* extra 30 lbs. Freaking steroids. So anyway, I posted the other day all whiny about my slowness and was reminded by someone "yeah, just be glad you can run."

As my teenager would say, "oh, snap!"

So today I ran and posted it because, let's face it, I do like my social media, and just had done my rounds at the inpatient hospice unit, then walked the hospice labyrinth and somehow it felt OK that I ran like a slug on quaaludes. Which might be slightly redundant.



Who ya calling a slug?

Another thing that gave me perspective recently was listening to The Brothers Karamazov on Audible.com. Which took 37 hours and 8 minutes to be read aloud to me. One part was really funny, about the over-specialization of doctors:

"I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send you to Paris: there's a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he says, I don't treat left nostrils, it's not my specialty, but after me, go to Vienna, there's a separate specialist there who will finish treating your left nostril."

I also liked getting to know Stinking Lizaveta (and her unfortunate son). Because a band I like quite a bit derived its name from her.



The perspective I gained in "Brothers K" was:
1) I am not the worst parent in the universe. It is amazing the Brothers K made it to adulthood.
2) It was probably not worth 37+ hours of my life.
3) Some guy READ FOR 37 HOURS DOING ALL THE ANNOYING CHARACTERS.
4) Stinking Liz is mute though, so that part was easy.
5) Dostoevsky did not like doctors much. His Dad was a doctor, and he grew up playing in the gardens of a hospital for the poor. He did seem to like courtroom drama. A lot. A whole, whole lot.
6) Russian novelists of a certain era seemed to lack editors.

I don't have an editor either, so there. Ha. It's my blog and I can share my perspective for as long as I want to.

My parents both died a long while ago. Coming up on the 21st anniversary (deathiversary?) for my Mom next week. They may have left the earth prematurely, but their perspective on life and love and compassion and humor had a big impact on me. A cousin recently sent me this picture of them.
You might think it odd that they are turning their back. But I know them, and they were just being goofy. Perspective.

  

Running amongst the giant redwood trees gives me goose bumps, even after all these years. They are really big. Even the young ones. The old ones are just so stunningly massive, it feels like being in the presence of a living piece of history, like the kind of history you find on timelines long before anyone was doing much besides scratching off their cave lice and dragging their fists in the dirt. Perspective.

The point? I don't really know. I thought I did but I see now that life has no point, so to speak. We just keep showing up until we don't. What makes it bearable is noticing. Noticing the funny and horrible and beautiful and goofy and painful.

artist: Jianhong H.

One guy who is a master of this art of noticing is actually playing my town tonight. Still out there playing, after all these years.

I am on call pretty much every day of life. For work, which is truly painful, but hey, I have a job I love so....I try to keep perspective. But I am also on call for life. I am waiting for the next little thing, which I suspect involves walking the dogs given their impatience with this endless blog post. Thank goodness beepers are no longer a thing, because if life was paging me on a beeper all the time, I just do not think I could take it.
Life: "beep, beep, beep"
Me: "Fucking pager, what is it now?"
Life: "come out and play, stat!"