Reaching for the Moon

“Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it,” responded Goddard. “Once realized, it becomes commonplace.”

I started with this picture yesterday and wrote a short story around my frequent comment that "I would rather live in a cardboard box..."
I didn't like it enough to post, so I cut it and decided to start again.

This little girl reaching for the moon inspires me, so I typed those words in my browser and the above linked story about Robert Goddard - The Moon Man came up. The author says, "Eighty-five years ago today, pioneer Robert Goddard launched the first liquid fueled rocket. We take a look back at the man ridiculed for his belief that rockets would one day reach the moon."

I think it is harder these days not to believe in your own dreams than it is to believe; there is so much inspiration and so many success stories. It is certainly a greater risk not to reach for the moon than it is to try. So many of us think we have security in a job, a steady paycheck - no matter how miserable we may be day after day, punching a clock, taking orders, doing tasks we despise for pay that never seems like enough. I suppose there are a lucky few who have found their "spots". But I hear so often things like, "I'm so glad it's almost 5 o'clock." or "It's hump day...only two more to go. I can't wait for the weekend." I remember wishing the day away. Wishing my life away. It was robbing my soul. 

Yesterday my pastor stopped by my little "Studio Variety Store" where I do sewing and alterations out my garage and sell a few bags of high-end Petcurian pet food, pet treats, a few lollipops, T-shirts and other stuff. Today I did some ironing for a lady who drove up to my gate while my hair was still wet and my face was in the middle of being put on (war paint?). 

"I know you're not open yet....do you do ironing." "Hmm", I thought for a minute, "Yeah, I could do that."
"Oh, wonderful!" she said, "I'm on spring vacation from teaching and I promised myself I wasn't going to work through it." 

There is nothing like having the freedom of choice. Even if it comes at a huge risk to do so. My pastor had come from a business meeting. He wanted to ask me if I would be willing to host a Koinonia group at my home. "Eeek!" I cringed, "Oh, my house is in no shape to host a group. I'm horrified. I am so sorry my house is in this shape!"
He said, "You are an artist. I understand."

Oh my gosh. I wish it were that simple. Let me tell you all of all my excuses....oh, never mind. It is what it is, but it is in no shape to host a group. It is really more that I would rather be a business person than a housekeeper. That is the truth. Housework seems like such a waste of time. There are so many other, more valuable and important things to do than ...eeek, housework!
Who doesn't love a clean house? But I would rather write, sew, iron, pet dogs, listen to birds chirp, water plants, did I say sew? I want to be online investigating downtown Tempe as a new place to think about visiting the SBA for consideration of a better "location, location, location!" I would rather be checking out American Express's website to see if the author of the "Website for Dummies" book was right, a great site to model.

Pastor Lupe and I talked about business and the state of our little community. We talked about things we might do to improve it or ways we can all help each other. We talked about the progress of our Church's idea of a community garden. 
We talked about our city politics and the ways we think it is interfering with any progress to a good end. 
He has a wonderful passion for our little town and has himself chosen rather to "live in a cardboard box" (tongue in cheek) than to give up on his belief that this is the right thing for him to be doing. He makes great sacrifices for it too, and we all appreciate it, believe you me. We love our church. And we believe it will grow. But we trust God for that. We just keep reaching out for the moon... the sun and the stars, and rowing the boat.
 

I'm looking out my desk window and as we speak, the man in the moon is looking right at me. It is still light outside, my canaries are getting ready for lights out, chirp, chirp, one dog is under my desk, the other just snorted, sighed rather, in contentment on her pile of blankets (her "spot"), waiting for Mom to finish and go in for the night.

We will all get up together again tomorrow. We will plan for better things and get busy rowing the boat to get there. I'll do the things I forgot to do today. Maybe I'll sneak in a tiny little tiny bit of eeek, housework, (dishes at least) and a lot of other creative venturing into the unknown for the sheer determination to "rather live in a cardboard box" than give up on my chase to the moon, my vision that may seem like a joke to some". Not to me it don't, (doesn't)!

See what Wiki has to say about "rowing the boat"...
Meaning: The lyrics have often been used as a metaphor for life's difficult choices, and many see the boat as referring to one's self or a group with which one identifies.[2] Rowing is a skillful, if tedious, practice that takes perfection but also directs the vessel.[3] When sung as a group, the act of rowing becomes a unifier, as oars must be in sync in a rowboat. The idea that man travels along a certain stream suggests boundaries in the path of choices and in free will.[4] The third line recommends that challenges should be greeted in stride while open to joy with a smile.[5] The final line, "life is but a dream", is perhaps the most meaningful. With a religious point of view, life and the physical plane may be regarded as having equivalent value as that of a dream, such that troubles are seen in the context of a lesser reality once one has awakened.[6] Conversely, the line can just as equally convey nihilist sentiments on the meaninglessness of man's actions. Some have questioned the song's implied necessity to row one's boat downstream. This may in fact be a commentary on the paradoxical nature of time's arrow with respect to man's free will in a universe of materialistic causality.[7]

Don't Rob Another Man's Castle Lyrics by Eddy Arnold

follow this link to see
what kind of world you could create if all you had was cardboard.

The Cinderella Complex

 
"The word 'Cinderella' has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes are unrecognized, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect."

Currently I am meandering through "Building a Web Site for Dummies"... In it he says "If you're going to win in business, you win not because you're doing something, but because you're being yourself....What do you love most in the world? Whatever is your true passion is also your natural business. If you do anything else with your life, you can't give it the same kind of energy. That's plain old human nature. Who gives 100 percent all the time if they don't care about the outcome?"

Who knows what kind of recognition or success we can achieve and possibly even bring ourselves out of obscurity if we are being true to ourselves, being who we really are.

Even though it would seem that Cinderella was being rescued by a knight in shining armor, it was because of her ability to dream and hang on to that dream, even in the face of humility and oppression that she was finally seen for who she really was. 

We don’t really know the rest of the story. We can make up whatever we want. Perhaps her knight supported her in a business of her own. Maybe he got her a nanny so she could paint and draw. 

The thing about Cinderella is that, before the Knight came along, she kept her vision and believed in it, however futile it seemed. She didn’t give up. She just kept dreaming the same dream, singing the same song.

To me the Knight represents independence not dependence. She was freed from obscurity and oppression. She was given a chance to blossom into who she really was.

She didn’t suffer from the Cinderella Complex!

I’ll say not. 
 

Castles In The Sky

Excerpted from a short story: Glass Slippers Are Only Found in Fairy Tales

 

….The massive carved wooden door opened just before she could reach for the pull. Two young men sauntered out, gazing their approval of her as she crossed in front of their gesture to let her in. Thanking them, without acknowledging their faces, she entered and paused for a second or two before passing through the double-swinging saloon doors that took her inside the lounge. The squeaking was always just enough to announce an arrival, and at random, heads would discretely turn to qualify the new entrant.

She strutted in. 

In a hurry to reach a mirror to restore her wind lost beauty and apply some color to her muted lips, she eased her way through the standing crowd. The dim light, softly red with yellow accents, caught the glitter thread running through her blouse and bounced off the contours making it appear as though little sequins were splashed all over the front. 

She nodded a quick hello to two or three people before reaching the dance floor, filled with couples roving the tile in unrelated rhythm to the mellow, upbeat music pounding out of the speakers just in front of them. 

Once past the clatter of the bartender’s frantic attempt to keep up with the orders being screamed at him, she realized the lead singer was singing “their” song. A rush of nostalgia sent a shiver through her, causing her face to flush and her knees to become weak.

“This is crazy”, She thought, “I’m supposed to be over this”.

She was sure she felt his presence, but wouldn’t look. She was grateful the lights were dim. She was sure it was obvious, the weakness in her stride, as she continued to excuse herself past the dance floor, through the spectators on the edge, in her blunder, causing one man to raise his arm too suddenly and splash his hounds tooth jacket. She begged his forgiveness and went on, taking the least obvious route.

The door on the left side of 
the bandstand leading through the waitress preparation area of the kitchen took her a good ten steps to get through, and at the other end was a junction where there was a second doorway. That was where he usually hid. There was a corner where one could become virtually invisible, a group of people almost always lurking around it. She hurried past it without raising an eye, afraid he’d be there now.

In the solace of the restroom, she fished nervously for her lipstick.

“How has it gotten to this point?” She asked herself. That first encounter so long ago had been so sublime. It wasn’t really a meeting. It was an aura, a static like that of clothes being drawn together by invisible electricity. …

    

 The squeaking of the back door had announced his quiet approach, and it was only as he eased onto the stool, almost without effort, that she turned for a second look. His dark, subtle appeal had drawn her to leer around the man who had so hastily taken the stool between them. She was almost aggravated at this intruder, but was too happy that night, filled with an inner peace found in the comfort of an old, familiar place and the contentment of being among people who knew how she was and whom made no demands.

She continued to dance on and off rather regularly. The man who had sat next to her seemed taken by the attention she was allowed for that night, thinking, she supposed, that she must be worthy of such notice.

He kept provoking conversation that she grew weary of. It allowed her, though, to see without looking, the handsome man behind him, and it flattered her ego knowing he might, too, be taken 

by her popularity for the evening. But he just sat there. 

         The gray in his sideburns appeared white in contrast to the charcoal velour sweater he was wearing. Every once in awhile his broad jaw would release a perfectly square, white smile that proved his skin was dark, tanned instead of the white that it too seemed behind a dark mustache. She felt like a little schoolgirl passing anonymous notes to a boy secretly admired. The conversation was all for him, hoping he’d pick up on something. He just laughed, quietly to himself. 

         It almost appeared as though he had his head hung over the glass he 
kept a continuous hand on, stirring occasionally to busy himself. Turning it with one hand and holding the napkin up around the bottom with the other, he’d wipe off the droplets of moisture that had formed on the outside. Then again he’d lift it, take a sip, replace it to the counter and go through the ritual over and over again, almost each time smiling or laughing, a glint of light darting from his eyes. He was watching too. Taking it all in, perched on his barstool like a bird perched on a high limb, he was waiting for a safe place to land.

    

It surprised her when he came up to her back and asked her for a dance, too late though, because she had already nodded acceptance to Louie standing on the dance floor waving her out. 

“I’m sorry”, she said, “Someone already asked me, maybe the next song?”

“Are you always this popular?”

“Most of the time.”

Louie didn’t really dance. He just dragged his feet and waved his arms, circling her as he sang along with the band. It was a strain to keep a rhythm to match his offbeat effort and her mind wasn’t on it. She was thinking how she must have sounded. “Most of the time”, she’d said. “He was probably trying to flatter me and I couldn’t even take a compliment without coming off smug”, she thought.

She didn’t notice when he left. All she knew was that his glass was gone and he didn’t return, not even first names. Malaise replaced the 

euphoria she’d started out with, so she decided to go home.  ……

Keeping up with the Joneses

Because I am not just a business owner but also a Baby Boomer business owner; and as if that isn't enough, I am a Jonesing Baby Boomer business owner, of the "The Generation Jones", I find myself especially compelled to see what everyone is up to and how everyone else is doing things. Where are trends going?

It seems that culture has profound influence on what we become, where things go. Upon reading about the "Gen Jones", (the group of the Baby Boomer Generation born from 1954–1965, of which I fall into and who are said to have jonesing tendencies), I realize that the meanderings of my life have been influenced by an underlying current that I was largely unaware of. At least until now. 

"It is said that Jonesers were given huge expectations as children in the 1960s, and then confronted with a different reality as they came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, leaving them with a certain unrequited, jonesing quality.")

(the slang word "jones" or “jonesing”, meaning a yearning or craving)

Being a small business owner and realizing that marketing trends and public relations have all been meandering not so slowly and almost exclusively into the world wide web, it has become clear that there is no diversion away from this dangerous learning curve, curva peligrosa. Learning to navigate these murky waters has become a challenge worth relishing. I have started appreciating the virtual world like I didn’t know I could. Good old necessity. I guess because it is such a creative environment. 

I have been meeting so many interesting, mostly very young people, all of them teaching in their virtual ways of how to keep up with the virtual Joneses. They’re all so smart and accomplished. I am blown away daily at their seeming lack of fear.

I wonder what generation analysis says about their expectations or what they have been confronted with in the way of reality as they came of age in these virtual days.

Have they been left with any unrequited qualities? Shall we call them “Generation Virtuals”? Whatever their label, they are a reservoir of virtual gold.

Meandering ("not leading by a straight line or course to a destination") has several descriptions and connotations. For me it simply infers that something hasn't gone directly there.

Having a kind of gypsy mentality, I have taken many routes in my destination thus far. I have been meandering. I feel as if I am meandering when I am surfing all over the web for inspiration to write. It feels like I am idling, perhaps wasting time. But at every turn, in every nook and cranny, the circuitous journey leads me to places I never imagined I'd go, exposes me to things I never thought I'd care about, carves out an even greater depth and impression into my understanding.

What has been a trend for too long now has been to go faster, travel farther, do more, consume more. I have always lamented this underlying Jonesing sensibility I suspected lurking about. I have always yearned and craved a simpler life than the one that envies others or feels a dissatisfaction with the wealth I have.

I think the upcoming trend is going to be toward simpler, minimalistic interpretations of the things that have been before. Away from conspicuous consumption. For as I have witnessed with just simply a domain name search, there is nothing new under the sun. If you can think of it to do, it has been done. But I also am advised by the witness of the cleverness I see every day that there is always a new way to express it.

Take tweetygotback as a perfect example. You go girls! An awesome job well done. They took what already was and made more of it.

As Thom Hartman always says, "Good on you!" And thank you too, Thom Hartman. Good on you for all you do. You're a true Baby Boomer.