Drive.

There are of a handful of ways to progress: determination, zest, passion, and in my humble opinion, drive. Drive, in this manner is not to be confused with determination, as it is fueled by another element outside of determination. I have subscribed to determination for the better part of a decade. It is the formula of twice the "no's" to the "that's impossible", mixed in equal parts to a self-made "there has to be more than this" mixture.  That has worked many times that I have felt it would not. Drive however, is a whole other beast. Drive is feeling and ambition mixed with solid, 140-proof kick-your-ass awesomeness. 

I stumbled upon drive recently.  Unexpectedly actually.  Come to find out, I am without zest if not for failure.  And as life would have it, I have failed. A lot. Drive appeared at the intersection of this is how amazing your life is (just out out of reach) and that blase  feeling of going through the motions day after day.  My internal workings operate most of time on formulas.  I wouldn't call them math formulas, or even of a chemical nature. They're life mixtures of circumstances to experience.  My drive comes in small, stabbing, insecurity measures of an "I may be less than thou" facade, and I fain at the time I will not feel that = drive. Drive, as one would have it in the day and life of an antiquated letter-writer, socially-soluble listener of issues, and want-er for the best and better of all for everyone, woman of my stature - is a well practiced skit in the Ego.  I don't like ego, so this is a *huge* deal.  My entrance on stage during the first airing of "Drive" involves my right eye being squinted, left hip out with hand upon it (nails are probably painted cherry red) and the heels I don are the neon orange ones that speak to my second and third layers of personality.  In this presentation, my other identity is unafraid, absolutely not insecure, ...unhinged.  My hair is big -  in a Farrah Fawcet kind of way, and my smile does not elude to the thoughts that would be fondling themselves while sifting through old ashes. 

Damn ashes. 

Burned and still rendering ...

No, not rendering.  They're dead. This is drive, after all. Drive in its present form is one helluva mastermind. That siren red lipstick is going to be a daily occurrence, and the plan meeting drive is  unabashed, completely assured, and salable. Gong to work on delineating what needs be the constant: food, for one. Food brings friends.  Friends bring stories. And stories bring support (this is assuming the food is good).  My food is good.  Drivers have good food.  Hang on, woman with drive...does that mean I'm a driver?  I'm a good driver for that matter.  Either way - my fingernails may have dirt beneath the nail bed, and my feet will most definitely contain earth-matter, but I will still be polished.  To the point that seeking "drive" is going to be on everyone's next best doers list.  Sign on up; I love company and I could use a hand in maintaining focus. 

 

Angels in the Wings

I summon the courage to leash myself to a phone line, clipping the curtailed wire to my scarf and get on my best “I am a state agent” voice as I answer calls. This being day two of living life like Freyda Perrl it isn’t very bad. I’ve noticed I’m smiling more, judging less and kicking my feet whenever I get excited. So far I have made excellent efforts at living life like I was nearly six months old.

*Ring* Ring* … “call from Claims” comes the automated voice. I run through my introduction to find the gentleman on the other end is a retired State Trooper – a man whom I know personally. He has answered many a call from me with my residence being in his jurisdiction and luck of him being on the other end of my cries for assistance. Keep in mind this was during a time when domestic situations were a daily occurrence; some violent, most heart-breaking, and many of them involving a very young, innocent boy.

In any event, I verify his call and then cross into a “Hey, I know you!” conversation. I explain who I am and my recollection of him as he banters back and forth reminiscing on who I might be as he can’t see my face. He remembered and gasps with a, “I have been looking for you!” Thirty-four years on the job with every level of perpetrator in his crosshairs of justice, and he has been looking for me?

“I’ve looked for you,” he exclaims. “You were here and then, all of a sudden, you were gone. I would go to where you used to work and describe you because I couldn’t remember your name. No one would give me any information as to your whereabouts, so I figured they were protecting you because of how violent your ex was. But here you are.”

We followed up our conversation with me wishing him luck with his new endeavors and him congratulating me for getting out alive.

I paused.

There really are angels out there, masquerading as regular people yet serving to protect others. He must have impacted the ebb and flow of my life – like the butterfly effect – at points outside my call to my fellow NYS agency. There is no way that he could not have. Investment of energy, even of thinking; is impacting another person’s life. And only now, almost a decade later do I find out that he was quite significant to me being where I am today. He has had some impact on my health, most-definitely my mental well-being and maybe even my survival.

My birthday being a few days ago, and at the commencement of reaching thirty-three the thought occurred to me that Jesus was sacrificed at thirty-three. An awakening that maybe I had not accomplished all that I set out to do at 18 – not nearly as much as Jesus had done by this age. Hysteria of having my life to this point marked with a large, red “F” took hold and I froze. My thoughts stayed only in that thread…what have you done? What do you aspire to do?

…to help, to feed and nourish, to aide and support, to encourage, assist and fight for those I love; for the under-represented, the discouraged and the sad. To change fear to strength and work from the inside-out while making the outside shine. That is what I want to do. But how? What does that all mean? On a higher level of understanding, I feel that I have done that; am doing that - particularly after processing my phone call. I have expended energy, love and care toward those that encircle my life. Still, it is not enough. I am ravaged by this urge to do what I am, not just be what I do.

Drawn. I am drawn to a calling not yet found.

By Purpose & Passion: Connecting the Dots

If all great changes are preceded by chaos, this is going to be epic.

My well-roundedness can sometimes be lost in translation. This is the thought pattern that occurs as I perch; the glorified receptionist whose brain and exuberance are metastasizing. With each phone call that comes through, I answer with less enthusiasm than the one before it; counting the tick-tick-tock of state issued equipment. I write, I think, I paint, sketch, pray, plan and scheme while working – yet, I am not complete until I go home. “Don’t gripe or complain” the voice o’er my left side calls – “you’re working while a majority of the population is unemployed”.


“But don’t forget,” comes the right, “that every day you’re not doing what you should be, you are losing time that you will never get back”. The arguing and logic lines continue like this for some time until one or the other gives in to economic reasoning. The economics of it dictate that I continue working to continue working. My illusions of grandeur shrivel to a pile of well-formed, yet slow-to-implement remnants of what I should be doing. And at some point of my reckoning I succumb to perspective – keeping oddly positive about those situations clearly out of my control. Like the dried remnants…with a shift of perspective they garner new light as dehydrated intentions. So, in essence, they are simply in storage until the timing correlates with the water supply in order to bring those intentions back to life.

Meanwhile, I am eluding the happenstances that squeeze the energy and vitality from my limbs. It is not that I have no plans – only that I have far too many for a day. A new moon occurred just the other day as I was busy stoking the stove. It is as if each time I turn around, someone has grown or moved, or is in the process of transitioning to something, someone or to somewhere else.

I am standing still.

It passes too quickly and not fast enough.

Relevance of the Score Keeper

Initially, the idea was to weigh happenstances against experience and decipher enough of the situation to tell if I had progressed. In theory, the idea was manageable – upon initiation however, it is proving quite difficult. The lines of reference are skewed to allow for only small portions of progress when I really feel like I am walking backwards, instead of forward.

And so, I am contemplating.

Contemplation always seems to help in some manner. Life perspective is a multistep scenario: see it. Process it. Implement it. Allocate the outcome by screening out the troublesome. I am, I believe – looped in the processing stage. A lot. What this amounts to is that I keep score against myself rather than for myself; an epiphanial-tragedy. That is what I shall deem this exercise of a thought-provoked existence. Epiphanial-tragedy. I get a great idea and make dire efforts toward initiating or implementing it for myself or family, and then …I falter. So in essence, the score-keeping is the marked effort that is in fact, holding me back.

In an essence, our daily processing becomes the start of a new story every day while altering the ending as we go; an endless do-over opportunity. The magic however, is in the act of letting go of the process; the score-keeping and enabling that whole “like begets like” action to occur by putting out there what we want to get back. My mother would often say that “the more you give, the more you get,” which to the ten-year-old, insinuated the physical giving: clothes, belongings, money. The same is true for the metaphysical – love, care, energy – these elements when given, bring more of the same in return. And how does one plagued with the epiphanial-tragedy keep score against that? Instead of a savings account, it is an investment portfolio chock full of high-yield eternal stocks.

It’s like country singer Dwight Yoakam emphasized in his song, Waterfall: “my heart still believes that love for what we need, can be enough”. It can and is enough – so long as the tally marks don’t form alongside the action. And with that, we do have an everything.

For He who is Her All

She waited with bated expectation for the man who governed her world.  He would present just as soon as the silver lining to their already magnificent dream, appeared.  They knew it would happen, and on most days she was able to forgo the wart of worry that was slowly metastasizing on her forehead, for the Chardonnay conversationalists she touted to in the evening.  They seemed to understand her speech as she recalled the memories of her man and they would nod in agreement as her eyes drifted upward toward the window with query of a new arrival.  Fridays were her favorite day because they closed the gap on all of the concern brewed in 1-degree weather throughout the week.

She remedied to remind him at each turn of conscience that he was the very reason for everything in her life.  Often, he would smile, get a warmed expression and remind her of the same.  The onslaught of romanticism would grow each time that she saw him and somewhat sicken her Chardonnay guests.  It was worth it though.

Never would he be caught, senility or not, without knowing - with absolute certainty, that she loved him and that destiny had befallen their marriage.