Prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe

My talismans are

an Our Lady of Guadalupe coin polished by my thumb
a My Little Pony figurine and
a Bakugan sticker
all stuffed in the console of my car

Help me embrace the world with compassion
whatever you do to the least of us, you do to me, She says
Help me embrace others
you do not have to put yourself over others to be loved by me, She says

and every word I think
my exhaustions
my frailties
are polished by Her thumb, over and over

I am Her talisman.

Special thanks to New Mexico artist Robin Lassiter for her vision of art, We Are Luminous Beings.
robinlassiterart.blogspot.com

Munnay

I will write today. I will find time between the Toys R Us trip to buy Tinker Bell shoes and coloring books (which I am truly, totally excited for, no shit) and the library and naps and lunches and dinners and cleaning the food off the walls. I'll write something poetic, probably, deep enough for readers to crawl into and make themselves comfortable, relax in repose until they have to crawl back out into their own busy lives. I


sorry, got interrupted there. Was doing a "Mr. Krabs" impression for my 22-month-old. "Moneymoneymoneymoneymoney."

will clearly articulate some inner truth of my life today. I

"Moneymoneymoneymoneymoneymoney." Now my kid is rubbing her hands together. "Munnay. Munnay." Sweet.

Her laughter is a pleasing counterpoint to Spongebob in the background.

I forgot what I was doing.

Be Awesome

To all you strong women out there:

You've walked there in your mind to what could be, you've asked "Why not?" Follow your own footsteps to the edge of reason. You might have to get around some cobwebby trolls who whisper "It'll never work" or "You don't have time to be awesome right now." Some of you with strong conflict resolution skills will politely but firmly ask them to step aside. The rest of us will have to get them off balance somehow and push them into the weeds, then taunt them and run.

The Truth

He made the case for freedom of thought and expression - and a certain humility regarding one's own cherished beliefs - on the grounds that, no matter how much certainty is in our own hearts, human beings cannot know for sure which truths are true, and that believing we can leads us down a terrible path. --Cullen Murphy

The truth today. Objective fact. Behaviors. Actions.

I did not cross everything off of my list. I rushed my child to bed so I could pay bills. I thought of my children at 2:15 pm and wished I could be with them. My stomach hurt too much to exercise. I received my budget deadline, 15 days from now. I took a project away from my best employee. I had a difficult time forming thoughts. I realized, at least three times, that I need a couple of hours alone to think. I watched Pawn Stars. I weighed the pros and cons of two decisions. In one week I will question my decision. My mind spent more time with the unknowns than with the knowns. I struggled to make pleasant conversation. I made it look easy. I lost two pounds. I wish I had a nemesis - an easy person to blame for all my self-doubt.

You are old enough to wonder, to ask, to reject what is presented to you simply because it was presented to you. But you also cling to the idealism of youth. You feel there must be some single, all-defining Truth - and you think that once you find it, all that once confused you will suddenly make sense. --Brandon Sanderson

I am acutely aware I need to do our taxes and visit C with her new baby. I don't know when I will have the time. I am more honest with a pen than a keyboard. I will need to type this later. I am overwhelmed with the amount of work I have. I feel like I'm doing nothing well. I badly want to accept a C grade from myself. I want to accept occasional failure. I work with amazing people who don't tell me what they really think because I am their boss. If I quit work tomorrow, no duties or tasks would be important enough to warrant an immediate replacement for me, at least in this merger, this economy, where government is shrinking and putting more on workers is the "right" thing to do. The truth, right now, is that we are all grateful to have a job, and to have the job of the guy who just retired on top of our full-time jobs, and the truth is we cannot complain, or we shall be looked upon as lazy, or inefficent. In the name of great efficiency, the great Truth of work, we absorb the duties of those forced out, praying that we get to keep our two jobs and no pay raises. Government is too big, too inefficient, so we need less people, less resources.

The moment we allow the economic calculus to invade everything, then nothing becomes worthwhile anymore. --E.F. Schumacher

My truth is saying no. And yes, my job feeds and houses and clothes my family, and I need my job. So I say no to small things, strategically, so that I don't end up sleeping at the office, so my employees can go home to their personal lives. And the real truth is that I would like to say no, but I don't.

Leisure and time to think are luxuries we cannot afford in today's economy. The truth is I have everything I want except the time to enjoy it.

I believe that people have their own Journey. --Brigid the Tri-Babe

Letter to Fourteen Year Old Me

Dear Me,

Oh, dear me, dear me, sounds like I'm wringing my hands. You're thirty four now. Seems hard for a fourteen year old to imagine, I'm sure, her life twenty years gone.

I'm jealous of you, the fourteen year old me, nostalgic for you. All of your boyfriends and various states of undress with your boyfriends are approaching, and I remember the idea of first love and horny sex but that's all it is, an idea. I don't have the energy these days to relive it. I envy you those times, but not the heartbreak. I say there is nothing I can do to save you from that pain, nor would I want to. You got your heart broken many times, but it led you to the man you are married to today. You have pilot projects, test cases, comparison studies ahead of you. I don't advocate hesitation or caution when it comes to love.

If I could infuse you with confidence in middle school and high school, I would.

You are still a writer, you'd be pleased to know that. Ramblings and poems and navel-gazing stuff and trying to make sense of the world, and some of our stuff is published.

The things you remember are not the classes, or the college classes, or the jobs. The strongest memories are being outside in nature with the ones you love. Your best memories are the times you don't get credit for, where you are merely enjoying yourself.

Your only regrets are the way you have treated people. At some point in the next twenty years sarcasm will become a crutch, and you'll spend years disentangling yourself from it and forcing yourself to speak openly, and see the world openly.

You do live in a city, even though you never thought you would. But you take your son fishing and camping. Your children pretty much rock. But don't worry about that yet. Enjoy just you for a while.

You gained a bewildering confidence somewhere along the way.

Try again to get into that creative writing class in college. Go on those trips, goof off, lay in the sunshine more.

The best things that happen to you are other people. Be open to them.

And put some sunscreen on your face, because we get skin cancer at 25, at a time we don't have health insurance, for God's sake.

And just be prepared: the only constant is change.

My sister has begun a women's group, to talk about those things that are extremely important to talk about but are shunned in mainstream culture, or ridiculed, or forgotten. Women's lives are intricate and not just for Oprah magazine. One of the group members had a suggestion: "It is an idea for women to contemplate their life journey, and to write yourself a letter. The letter is from the person you are now, to the person you were 10 or 20 years ago, telling yourself what you would like to say to your younger self, to spare yourself pain or to help yourself on the way if you could have... Here are very poignant examples to inpsire you.think I will do this activity-http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Letters-to-My-Younger-Self-Trisha-Yearwood-Barbara-Boxer/1"

Fran's First Town Meeting

Oliver sat in the back like he was watching a trainwreck.

Rio Luna's courtroom doubled as the Town Council's meeting place. The five men huddled behind the judge's bench, shoulder to shoulder, squeezing their chairs together to fit behind the large wooden block. The gavel was pushed aside but the message was not lost on Fran.

The Chairman had a shaggy gray moustache, the hairs of which floated when he talked. The other council members nodded up and down along with the Chairman's voice.

The issue was paint. To be specific, paint the Chairman called gaudy and "not at all in the spirit of the Rio Luna town philosophy of conduct." The person in question was young, and female, and new. Not really new, because she was born in Rio Luna, but new because she decided to paint the bar a different color after she inherited the business from her deceased father. New because she had just added a small renovation to her bar and was serving coffee in the morning.

The paint was neon and the style was semi-Victorian, and the few tourists that flew through Rio Luna on their way to Vegas preferred it, rather than the old cafe with vinyl seats.

And the old cafe was owned by the Chairman's brother. Fran took her coffee at the bar.

The young bar owner, in her twenties, poor thing, was rubbing her thumbnail with her index finger, over and over again, and was looking sideways at the council, making eye contact, but keeping her head averted all the same. Her testimony was fractured and nervous, and no one in the meeting remembered what she said.

Fran sat at the folding table behind the podium, put together in her button-up dress. To her amazement, the only emotion she could muster was amusement.

The Chairman finished speaking, and said, "Well, Fran, unless you have a response to that, I will call a vote to close the bar. I think we've all decided."

Fran said, "Two words come to mind." She pointed at the Chairman. "Pontificator." She pointed to the other four men behind the judge's bench. "Sycophants."

The court room was silent. Fran wasn't sure if they were stunned or if they needed a dictionary.

Denver traffic report

the highway is a metallic millipede
with thousands of cars for legs

stop still slow still stop still slow still stop

sinuous movement

the other appendages and I
we're in this together
moving downtown
only to reverse course and
crawl home after dark

I know why Enri writes on the train