Striking Oil: Gushers

A gusher isn't just the black stuff ejected from the bowels of the earth, it can also be a person. Gusher persons are those whose motives are to pour their oils of flattery over another individual while hoping the flattery and attention will pour back. A day with a gusher is like a day on a tread mill. Over and over, you have to endure the hugging and constant flattery you witness as the gusher envelopes its victims in an embrace. They approach with open arms and those within range, can find nowhere to hide. A fit of coughing or turning suddenly to sneeze sometimes works to fend off the cooing attacker. But if you are unprepared you have to endure the kind of contact that I find trite, silly and offensive. I do not want someone to invade my personal space and muss me up with hugging. A nice shake of the hand or a smile is perfectly adequate to indicate friendship. There is no need to press a body against mine unless I invite  that kind of contact. Worse however is to watch a gusher after the hug. The complimenting phase comes next. "Oh you are so nice, so smart, so thoughtful, so cute, so kind..." Every sentence is fraught with superlatives. There is none of the mediocre here. Then come the corny jokes that begin with "I'll bet you..." with attendant broad grins showing off the latest in shiny dental craft and a tilting of the head with a slight baby-talk tone. Well, you know what I mean if you have been involved with a gusher.  When the gusher runs out of oil, words in fact, the pats and rubs begin. they coo and ooh and ahh while rubbing the middle of your back or the side of your arm. Your skin crawls but it is hard to disengage from the tepid "soup" of the gusher's aura. You might try my favorite, and dig out your phone while indicating with a nod of the head toward the corner that you are taking a call that is necessary. It's as hard to turn off a people-gusher as it is to stop an oil well but once you have identified the offending gusher, bleeping him or her off your call list and e mail might help. But you know how oil is: hard to mop up.

No, It Isn't Funny

This morning I listened to a radio program interview of two young women who were asked their opinion about a current "hit" that was topping the charts. Segments of the song were played. Evidently there is also a video production of it, having two versions, one called "safe", the other that sounded like salacious scat as described.  Now, I am not a crazy who thinks that pop music on its own, can drive normal youth to perform acts that are criminal.  Lots of other influences may, but music alone cannot do that. Few young people listen carefully to the lyrics and are more interested in the beat and moving to it.  But what concerned me were the comments by the two young women.  One believes that when radio hosts choose persons to comment on issues, they are well chosen from some kind of norm. When the song was played, the lyrics were so jumbled and lost in the volume, that until the interviewer repeated them verbally, I had not heard them clearly. In fact, I wish I hadn't. The words were outrageously abusive to women in the crudest way. I can't see any female wanting to listen to this kind of thing let alone condone or defend it.  But these two women who sounded reasonably well-educated and verbal, said they didn't see the harm since it was all in fun. They saw rape as a joke and said  that even the performer didn't take it seriously. Fun? A joke? Is that the way young women see their roles? Do they see themselves as mere objects to be used and abused and it's funny? Rape is never funny. Nor is it a joke. I found their remarks worse than the lyrics. Surely, young women want to be regarded as worthy of respect and value. Surely, in an age of the equality of the sexes and the value of contributing to society as human beings together is where youth is heading. I felt saddened by what these individuals were thinking. When they are wives and mothers, is this what they want to remember as their radio interview experience? I realize they were only two people out of a host of other young women who daily face inequality in this world. They were ill chosen and I hope they were joking.

In Trust

Sometimes you don't trust and you believe you have reasons. There has been a suspicion lurking in your mind. You tell yourself, there is history here. That person betrayed a trust previously, therefore, it is likely to happen again. You find all sorts of evidence for your feelings. You spend nights thinking about how you can learn if you are right or wrong about your growing doubt. You begin to observe, to find evidence to support your thoughts that you are being betrayed. You know it's crazy but your emotions get in the way and you become trapped in a kind of hell that roils around in your mind and begins to take over your usual sense of balance and reason. Finally, you make a decision based on your paranoia and confront the issue harshly with the individual only to hear denials or possibly anger that shuts down any further chance of communication that would give you some relief. That's exactly what you wanted to avoid but here you are left with nothing but further frustration and worse, enveloped in a thoroughly negative environment that you alone have created. That is how distrust can take over your life and ruin it. So given that, how do you rebuild yourself. Hard as it will be, given your penchant for not trusting, you have to glean what belief you have in your good side. You have to learn to trust yourself first and to believe in yourself before you can do that with anyone else. List all the good things about yourself and your life. What do you do that is great? What do you do that has been successful? What are your talents and abilities? Forget the downside and the past and start right here. Now you are bigger than suspicion. You have value and worth. You can overlook others who have a negative influence on your life. What they do is their problem, not yours. You are fine. You don't need anything more than what you are and what you have. If others want to be with you, they enter your world. You promise yourself, you will never look to what someone can for you but what you can do for yourself and for others. Trust is you. It is all you want and all you need.

Selling Out

The day comes when you decide to sell your place. It all seems so easy. Just call up one of those companies with their flashy signs and it's done. Oh my dear, you have just enlisted into a scary club. It is not easy, it is not without care. It's a pain in the place you can't name. Your life and your property are no longer what you thought was yours. You are taken over and told what to do and how to do it and when to do it. Your life is no longer in your hands, but in those of  Mr or Ms Real Estate Agent and nothing is real any more. The first step is to learn what you thought your place was worth was a mental aberration. The "market" looms and what you need to get in terms of money to buy your dream home is but a fairy tale apparently. Once the shock of reality hits home, the next step is the viewing of your treasure. The idea is to remove all encumbrances to what you thought was pretty nice so that the buyers will be "able to see themselves in your place". Huh? After hiding everything you thought was appealing and enticing, you are asked to go away while other people are traipsing through your personal space. You hope these characters poking into every corner of your life are not casing the joint. Then come the offers - if you are lucky - and these are depressing in that they are not your idea of worth. If you happen to like one and do a deal, along come the "subjects". Now if you think these are your loyal subjects kneeling at the altar of your lovely abode, think again. These "subjects" are stumbling blocks to the stepping stones in the buying of your home. Complaining gets you nowhere: a pat on the head and a jab in the side for your inability to understand what you have to do to bend under the yoke of real estateism if you want to sell, Baby. Your idea of a quick sale is fading rapidly and you feel intimidated and unsure if you want to go through these gates at all. (Your old place is looking better each day.) Buying and selling don't seem to jibe - ever. When you want out and they want in are two different planets. Money matters enter the scene and there are additions of costs - inspections, taxes, assessments, hook-ups, moving and storage, interim loans, mortgages and on and on. Your hair is now very white to match your complexion but it's too late. You are in it up to your neck. The realtor is king or queen and you are the peon. Just when you are ready to let it all go, you are told you can't anyway. You have a contract. Eventually,  the dust clears and you have packed up and moved or live in a cheap motel while you await getting into your new place but you just let it all happen helplessly and allow the tide take you where it will.  One day it will all be over and you will have the joy of unpacking the mountain of boxes and finding out that you have survived. Poorer but wiser, you are now wondering where you are when you wake up each morning. You're home. You earned it.

Jams

The planet has become jammed with not only too many people, it is also inundated with silly ideas. Advertisers who once gave information on a product are now printing a page, all black with the opposite page showing a crack of light in a doorway. Under it is a tiny white dot com. That's it folks. Human curiosity does the rest. And then there are the suggestions that if you don't use this boxed little snack with a ton of mind enhancing additives in little Charlie's school lunch box, you are a failed working parent. The ads with pictures supposedly not insulting your consumer intelligence, suggesting that mom and dad forgot to turn off the sprinkler that morning leads to what they are doing this evening after partaking of the latest enhancer in blue or yellow. It's all about ideas. The world is running out of them and thus craziness ensues. On seeing that thousands of bees were employed to form a bottle for a whiskey company that is putting out a new brew with honey in it, seems to me a stretch. I can imagine a board room table with the usual trendy bottles of water,  free pens and swingy leather chairs surrounded by minimalist steel furnishings and stunning views of other alike glassed-in towers, all in their greys, trying to outdo each other to impress the rich blob at the end of the table. Hmm, let's see, honey? We need to sell the honey we are sticking into our alcohol. Why yes. Honey means bees but not just a paltry few on a cute designer label, let's grab thousands. Never mind that the we don't have enough of them in the first place. Buy them for jinx sake. After all, we make a pile of moola, we can afford a lot of bees. But what to do with them? Aha, they make hives. Hey, says a junior well down the side of the marble table top, how about talking the bees into making a bottle shaped like ours. The boss stops fiddling with his pen and points it, at the ingenue. Son, you're on. Get some bees and don't forget the Humane Society and the no-animals-were-harmed-in-the-making thing. That's the way the advertising field works. There are so many dumb ideas jammed into the ad world that anything as stupid as this works. It is poked into cyber spin and thousands of human Bs take a look. The bigger the viewer number, the bigger the coverage. Voila, an idea is born. Of course, someone a very long time ago came up with a real bee drink. They used to call it mead.

Island Mine

When you sail on the sea, you find an island that is small and its beach, welcoming. You anchor and from afar, peruse the shore. You know you must be there on that island.  It awaits you. You dive into the cool water and swim to the island that is strange but familiar. You stay. It is strange but somehow home. In this place, you stay and find delightful, it begins indelibly, to build into a compendium of experiences and moments, even  clashes ending  in greater understanding and knowledge of it, that adheres you to itself. Beyond the island beach, there is a thick mist, but here,  the waters are sparkling clear and bright. Here, on this nameless island shore, it is fresh and compelling and undeniable. You must not delve into the cloud that could lead to trouble and darkness, but you have only to ignore it and concentrate on what you love to, have to see. There, could lurk danger and strife but that's not a place you want to enter and thus, your curiosity diminishes as you turn toward only the sun, the shore, the waters. You love this far off island for what it is, just as it is. You swim through its long waters. Your happiness is not what lies inside the island but what you see in beauty and the love of being there. Nothing is logical or demanding of faculty. You stay.  The joy continues for long years and you  are very close and one with the island that you know.  But you remember the time when you swam out and however pleasant and welcoming, you know it is not entirely your island. Your own island is far behind you and you are on one whose shore is home in a sense, but its interior, a mystery. You feel something there could attack but you won't know, can't and don't know its dangers and so you  keep away from that darkness. It is not why you came and thus it can have no effect upon you.  Darkness belongs to others. What you savor is the  warmth of  silver beaches,  refreshing water, discoveries to be found merely on the fringes and nothing more. What roils inside, doesn't matter because one day, all will be swept away, even  the island itself and everything on it.  Nothing matters forever, and though the inside must believe it is the island with pride and self-obsession, it is ignorant of what surrounds it, what holds it together, what gives it substance and character and beauty and attractiveness. "No man is an island...every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main", therefore, no matter how self-important are the inner depths of this island, they remain only a part of what surrounds it. To swim to this island is all, to lie on its beach and revel in its beauty on the sand and rock and no more, is worth all the trials and effort.  To be there and allow no thought of going back is all that matters.

Cutting Edge

For men, a haircut is routine, but for a woman, going to the hairdresser is akin to an appointment with a shrink. There, you are what you truly are. Your hairdresser, is not the in and out for a bargain cutter, but the person with whom you have shared secrets and sessions for years. There's nothing wrong with a quickie cut but those who frequent that kind of salon are missing something that is worth the bucks.  The something of which I speak, is the sharing of personal confidences. Hairdressers are trained to be good listeners while doing their hair jobs and they are usually good at both. As they trim and shape and perhaps colour, they are giving you more than that. These wonderful folk, can touch your head and know your soul. Tightness and scalp problems, scars, improperly kept tresses all tell a story that lips need not express. When she or he, regard a head, they attempt to heal at the same time. My hairdresser must have a PHD equivalent in massaging while shampooing. As I rest my neck against a sink lip that innovatively comes up to my nape instead of I, trying to scrunch down onto its, Katherine massages my head in slow circles, her thumbs pressing areas she feels need attention and gently slides over those that are merely sleeping. After what seems a bit too much out-time, I am moaning in a relaxed state that a glass of sherry could never induce. Then it's time for the colour and cut. Colour these days is not a stinking, burning experience, but an application of the finest layers of foamy liquid served onto your awaiting locks from three or more bowls of foamy fragrant whipped  delight. No more, are there noisy dryers to sit under as you sip the coffee, tea or bottled water brought to you along with a pile of the latest pictorial fashion or Hollywood magazines no one would pick up other than in a salon. While perking in your foil headdress, you read the most outrageous, unbelievable gossip and gaze longingly at equally decadent piles of jewelry in photos that seem from another planet. You have stepped out of your reasoning, sensible world into another place. For a short time. The last step, that of the final set and the new you in the mirror, you are ready to pay up and re-enter the real world, while feeling entirely much more able to face its challenges.

Beating The Heat

Summer's here at last, but with a vengeance. It's a heat wave. Wave? Kind of a misnomer since a nice cool wave would, indeed, be pleasant. We no sooner get our fondest wish for the sun of summer and wham, along come the complaints. It's too hot. Can't stand the heat. Turn on the AC. Most of the discomforts of a heat wave are minor but some are horrendous. Forest fires, floods from the sun melting snows,  holiday accidents and sun effects on frail human frames. Seems you can't win. Strangely, knowing the bad effects of sun on the body, there they are, the sun worshippers, setting  future wrinkles, risking cancer and burns as they lie on the beach thinking that the thin layer of not-frequently-enough-applied sun screen will protect the largest organ of their bodies. While a rich tan seems to mean something to some in spite of the warnings, just wait until the fourth or fifth decade of your life and the effects lying in wait will enter the scene. Don't blame genetics for all the wrinkles, blame your hours in the sun. There is hope, however. On passing a crowded city beach recently, I noticed a number of shelter units that were easily erected. Their four "legs", stuck into the sand, and under the relieving shade were chairs and other picnic items. Seemed like a great idea to me. I am not sure if I want to see hoards of these things all lined up at  waterside but the idea is heading in the right direction. The privacy of designating your own space makes it a good idea, too. How these things are received by park and beach authorities is another question. On a foray to a hot climate lately, I was fortunate to find a hotel that handed out one of these sites at the beach, to each room. No more were folks going down to pool or sea side at five in the morning ensuring a lounge - or, greedily, toweling too many of the best ones.  This method meant that your shelter was pre-destined and it was yours only. It made life on the sand simpler. You went there when it suited you and at any time, it was there waiting. Instead of a rivalry for the best spots, laying competition aside, a feeling of relaxed friendship and camaraderie ensued. You were invited to join people under their shelters or you could invite others to use yours if they had a large group and you would not be there. The arrangement made sense to me. You had the choice of being in the sun outside your shelter, or not. You felt a degree of personal space in which to leave your towels and enjoy the privacy of your very own few square feet reserved for an uninterrupted snooze or read. Ahh, wish I were there now, a nice sea breeze wafting inside my shelter and a glass of something icy on the little table beside me. Sigh.