Phoebe Kate

Well, if the lyrics of a song originally popularized by Barbra Streisand (and subsequently performed by every nightclub singer, famous or obscure) are true,  then “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

Luckiest?  In exactly what way, pray tell?

I think codependent, dysfunctional, insecure, immature and lacking self-esteem come a lot closer to the truth.  But that wouldn’t have made much of a love song, would it? 

Our cultural notions of romance aren’t especially healthy ones, psychologically speaking.  The idea that we are pathetic half-people desperately seeking someone to complete us and make us whole is a creepy concept at best and an express lane to emotional casualty at worst.  Up until relatively recently, being single past the age of twenty-something was a major social stigma, just a little less awful than leprosy.  You were pitied by your married friends.  You were suspected of being maladjusted, having intimacy issues, being a misogynist (if male) or a misandrist (if female), a misanthrope, a closet gay, or a sleazy sleeparound with an excess of hormones, a lack of moral fiber and a serious problem with commitment.

Okay, so now we can have relationships and choose to not marry and nobody except religious fundamentalists will point a finger of blame at us.  As a society, we’ve come a long way, baby, haven’t we?

Wrong.

We may be liberated, but someone forgot to de-program us.  We’re still frantically trying to locate our MIA Other Half and we’re going through partners so fast we need a score card to keep track of them.  I see men and women of all ages doing it — young, mid-life and golden oldie.  I hear it, like a recurring theme, in commercials for E-Harmony and other online dating services.  We still believe that there’s one special person out there somewhere who’s our perfect complementary counterpart  – and if we don’t find him or her, we’re the emotional equivalent of a one-legged marathon runner. 

Humans — even the very best among us — are imperfect and not very reliable crutches.  Love and emotional dependency are two very different (and perhaps mutually exclusive) things.  Unless we’re strong enough to make it on our two feet, we’re a poor risk for a healthy relationship with anyone else. 

Sorry, Barbra.  People who need people aren’t lucky — or happy either.  They’re just — well — needy.  And desperate.  

–phoebe kate             

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a 2007 Arkansas law worded in such a way it permitted children of any age (down to newborn) to wed with parental consent.  I really didn’t think anything could top that legislative faux pas.

Oh, silly me!  Underestimating our lawmakers’ ability to screw things up!

Late breaking news, people.  All you parents in Nebraska, heads up — this is big.  Your fair state just passed a law allowing you to abandon any child up to the age of (are you ready for this?) nineteen.  That’s nineteen years old, not nineteen months.

Laws regarding the abandonment of newborns are common — California, for instance, permits parents to legally abandon an infant to a hospital or “safe haven” up to 72 hours after birth.  But Nebraska is boldly pioneering uncharted territory in the child welfare world – without really intending to, of course.

Up until now, about all you could do with obnoxious and/or hormonal adolescent is threaten to send them to juvie boot camp, a boarding school run by some strict religious sect, military school or Grampa’s farm (and we all know that old geezer won’t take no sass and no nonsense.)  Ahhh, but now, the gloves are off and it’s no hold barred for Nebraskan parents whose state motto is “Possibilities…endless.” 

Did your kid go to the mall to get jeans but instead came home with a stud in the tongue, a ring in the nose, an eyebrow piercing and a new BFF who’s Goth?  Is your daughter dating a guy twice her age with serpent tats and a Harley you can hear in the next county?  Is your son wearing tees emblazoned with swastikas and hiding his copy of Mein Kampf under the mattress instead of issues of Penthouse?  Are you at your wits’ end that your (formerly) adorable little Amber is screaming, ”I hate you I hate you I hate you I wish you were dead!” as she slams her bedroom door in your face?  Is it trying that once-trustworthy Trevor is tanking up on your Tanqueray and taking his girlfriends up to the king-size waterbed in your bedroom when you’re out?  Did somebody under the age of 19 just get the 3rd speeding ticket and drive your insurance cost through the roof (as well as eating you out of house and home when he’s not getting in trouble with the cops)?  Does your house reek of weed even though the kids tell you it’s your latest Glade Plug-In air freshener?

No more need to raise your voices or make idle threats…if you live in Nebraska, that is. If you don’t and you have kids from 9-19, you might want to consider moving there.  It might have seemed like a bright idea twelve years ago to have three kids spaced out a year apart.  Now, well, you just might be seeing that from a little differently POV.  No more need to go through a rough patch with your teens or wait for one of those awful “phases” to end.   

The half-witted legislators who bungled this half-baked bill are leaving it up to the courts to sort out, of course.  And we all know how fast the hand of jurisprudence moves, don’t we?  In the meantime, “foundling” and “orphan” may take on a whole new meaning in the Midwest.

–phoebe kate 

“Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.” –Unknown

Yes, how true, how very true. It is the ultimate - because it’s so *!@#*&!* hard to do.

Even the most laid-back and mellow of us (and that category does not include yours truly) have aims of some sort — major or minor, from 5-Year Plans for career or financial success down to inconsequential quotidian particulars, like what to wear today and what to eat for lunch and which DVD from Blockbuster to watch tonight. And most of us — dare I say all of us (unless we’re living saints or extremely enlightened, neither of which yours truly is) — well, we don’t enjoy it one bit when things don’t go as we want or as we expected.

Ironically, small disappointments and setbacks can sometimes drive us the craziest. I’m hardly thrilled when my writing schedule gets disrupted or a peaceful evening at home turns into a night of entertaining thanks to unexpected guests or I’m side-tracked from going to the one-day, 50% off shoe sale at Belk or a pleasure trip has to be canceled or I get stuck in traffic when I’m in a hurry.

Then we’ve got the real biggies that so often blindside us and truly turn our well-ordered lives upside down and inside out. War, natural disasters, societal upheavals, job loss, career changes, financial reversals, life-threatening illness, death in the family — they’re always just waiting in the wings to make their calamitous appearance on our stage.

The wise “Unknown” is trying to tells us that we only make ourselves more unhappy and frustrated by struggling against what can’t be changed. I don’t think the underlying problem is selfishness in wanting our own way or having the cosmic toss of the dice always be in our favor. Moreover, it’s just that we hate, more than anything else, to realize how little we’re actually in control of our circumstances. Perhaps that’s the reason we get so upset when insignificant things go awry — if we fluff it so badly with the small stuff, what chance do we have to successfully forge our way to success in the matters that truly count? Deep down inside, we’re all fundamentally control freaks, whether we admit it or not. “Going with the flow” — when it’s not going in our preferred direction — is very scary.

I live on the NC coast. I’m not a swimmer, but my kids are. My two sons are surfers and have been caught in those oft-deadly rip currents more times than I’d care to dwell upon. Of course, as a mother, this has given me premature gray hair (and given L’Oreal Preference in the very attractive dark blonde shade a steady customer.) However, the reason that my boys have survived the dangerous tides that take out an unfortunate number of people every year is that they’ve learned one vital thing. To never try to go against the rip current, but paddle parallel to shore until you get out of it. It’s not as big as it seems. If you keep your cool and stay calm and focused, you come to the end of it and can swim safely back to home.

And so it is with life.

Now, if I can only remember that lesson tomorrow… Hmm, maybe I should take up swimming?

–phoebe kate

A few days ago, I blogged about how all creative works — art, architecture, writing, music, whatever — reflect the creator of it.  It’s inevitable.  It comes from somewhere deep inside you.  And as you paint it or sculpt it or write it or compose it or design it, it is an expression of you.

And then, after you’ve done the best you can with it, something happens.  Like human children, you gestate it and birth it and work with it and when the process is complete, one day (usually to your surprise) it stands independently and becomes an entity unto itself apart from you and hopefully speaks to people you never imagined would be touched by what you made. 

As Geof Huth, a contemporary visual poet, states: “Art is created and supported by human beings, so the systems of their lives (their biographies, their interrelationships, their artistic and personal tendencies) are important to art in general…  Art, though, has to survive on its own. It has to exist as an esthetic experience on its own.”

There’s an odd experience that happens sometimes when you look at something you’ve created after several years have elapsed.  I’ll be rummaging through my files and run across some forgotten story or poem that was published 5 or 10 years ago that I frankly don’t even recall writing.  I’ll read it — the inexorable inner critic ready, of course, to wince at all its shortcomings and want to tear it up or rewrite it – and I’ll sit there, shaking my head in astonishment as I keep returning to the first page to stare in disbelief at the byline, and say, ”I wrote that?”

That’s the moment you realize, when time and emotional detachment have given you a different perspective, that artistic works are far more than just appendages of your personality and experience, but have a life force of their own that surpasses your talent and skill at the moment of creation.

Geof Huth has an interesting blog – check out his sandglyphs on California beaches.  Very cool.

–phoebe kate       

I’m a compulsive reader.  Not only do I always tote a book and magazine in my commodious Kenneth Cole handbag when I go out, but I will unfailingly read whatever appears in front of my face.  I’m talking anything here, people.  

Tracts from religious proselytizers and handouts from campaign workers on the street corner.  Flyers in supermarkets and department stores.  Newspaper inserts hawking products I don’t want or use.  Catalogues from plumbing and electrical supply companies.  The weather report for cities I won’t be anywhere near that day.  Obituaries for people I don’t know, articles about subjects I don’t care about and you better bet I read all that fine print that nobody else does on contracts.  

I have a particular fondness for those patient information sheets you get with prescription drugs.  Do you realize the “death” is a side effect for everything from eyedrops to dietary supplements?  It’s all the more ironic to find that dire little warning on the meds that you’re ostensibly taking to keep you alive longer, like blood pressure and cholesterol pills.  And I can tell you exactly what’s in that expensive monthly flea treatment that you put on your cat or dog that could end them up in the pet cemetery.

Anyway, speaking of animals, I came across an article today telling people what kind of dog they should get, based on their astrological sign.  I don’t believe in horoscopes and all that stuff, but you know I read it nonetheless and learned that, as a Virgoan, my fur-ever canine friend would be a (ta-da!) Weimaraner. 

The article insisted this breed was the perfect match for the discriminating, aesthetic, meticulous and uber-responsible Virgoan because of its strong-willed personality, elegantly sleek appearance, need for a firm but gentle hand and boundless energy requiring punctual walks.

Oh yes, and Weimaraners absolutely require a highly organized owner to provide a structured life in order to curb the destructive behaviors for which the breed is infamous. 

What?!?!?!

Do I need to become a behavioral therapist for an animal who looks naked and unfinished because it has no fur, will challenge my authority and ignore my directions even more than my own kids did, drag me away from the intellectual pursuits at which we non-athletic, highly cerebral Virgoans excel and turn this fastidious perfectionist into a sweaty mess as I try to wear the inexhaustible monster out by running it all over the neighborhood several times a day?

And on top of that, as if to add insult to injury, if I don’t shadow the damn beast 24/7, it will turn my Italian leather shoes and the legs on my Great-Great-Grandmother’s Queen Anne table into chewy toys!

Okay, so there’s the biggest drawback of being a compulsive reader — you risk wasting time by perusing printed material that’s silly and useless.  But the good thing is that voracious and opportunistic reading teaches you very early in life what so many people seem to forget these days — namely, you can’t believe everything you read.

–phoebe kate