For giggles (and to get my feet wet) yesterday I was looking at jobs in Ireland. After flipping through a couple of ads I decided I’d send my resume in response to one of them, but I kept stalling out on what to say in the cover letter - not only because it’s been a few years since I had to play that game, but also because of the whole “American” misconception.

Half joking, I solicited my friend “Codie the party boy” for help and the results are freaking hi-lar-i-ous. I added a picture I had laying around and now I think I might actually hurt myself. This morning I was literally laughing so hard tears were streaming and my face is sore. Of course the downside is I’m stuck wondering what my eulogy might sound like.

Moving on…edited lightly, this is what he came up with:

Dear Schmoe,

Please sit down, and let me tell you about the ways I’ll be kicking your ass. My name is Maigh. Not Meg, Meyeg, or Meagan. Fuck this up, once, I dare you. May-g, if you’re curious. I have a last name, but this is hardly of your concern. I need one, and one only call. If you want more, put a .com on the end of it, pretend you’re going to have some input on the decision I’m making for you whilst you browse.

The moon; did I hang it? Please. I was long off and on my way hanging stars. You shoot for the stars and hope to clear the trees? How do you think the stars got there, boy? I know kung fu, I’ll flip you.

I’m very accomplished, validated, generally correct, and more or less, one bitchin broad. If you want gentle, pick the front, or the back, of my hand; you’ll get that and no more. I’ve got more game than Parker Bros. I’ve said it before, don’t make me say it again, I’ll flip you. I know people.

I’m better than your children and their “ding-ding here comes the shit-mobile” drawings.

I’m faster, smarter, stronger, sharper, shorter, taller, longer and a bloody good bit prettier than not only you, but yours. The cat’s ass personified; yours truly.

The fact that you are in need only exhibits my omnipotence. I metabolize other’s desperation. Plato, or one of those prats, said it best; “Behold My Glory”. If I shrugged…

I’ll allow you to conquer that of which you never thought possible, because I can. BEICA. BEcause I CAn.

I take what I need, demand what I deserve, settle for naught, and don’t buy my bling on eBay.

I use “I” a lot, because it’s all about me.

Kind thanks for nothing and Sincerely,

Maigh

The year creeping to a close prompts my soul with a gentle nudge - it’s time for reflection. There is space allocated for review of growth and of regression, of challenges met head on and of adversity avoided.

It wasn’t an easy year for me.

Breaking down and letting go to make room for healing is never easy. It’s also not always successful. In my minds eye, my mantra is displayed in flashing lights - you’re never given more than you can handle. Tumors, heartbreak, financial woes, loss of loved ones and childhood dreams are all manageable. All of them. Mantra no. 2 enters the room - everything happens for a reason.

I could not muster the strength to continue if I didn’t believe those words. In pretty print on your monitor now or dancing across the synapses in my psyche they’re equally true and without flaw.

Roots that had withered have been nurtured and fed and allowed to reach deep into the earth again. With a substantial foundation, all things are possible. Reaching up-up-up for the sunshine and the heavens is done with ease, the enjoyment of the air whipping past me and through me is unthinkably satisfying.

At the close of last year I reviewed new foods in my repertoire, and this year I review a new self. Sensations, realizations and honest observations of myself and the world that swirls around me. Most of which I can’t share with you - but I can share this:

I’m whole.

This year I visited the land where my father took his first breath. I stood alone and tall on another continent, in another country, another realm. It didn’t feel brave at the time, but others tell me it was. All I know is it felt like home.

So here we are, mere days from celebrating my birth and mourning my parents. It’s an annual dance between the oil and water that slosh around in my psyche. The bliss and heartache that memories bring with them. That churn and roil and refuse to be ignored by my souls core. I’ll get up early Sunday morning to sit quietly in the cold on the bank of a lake north of here, my grieving place. I’ll laugh by myself and be genuinely and deeply thankful for the good times right along with the bad. I’ll think of the anam caras that have been with me through the journey, and those I haven’t opened to yet. I’ll let my mind trace the silhouette of time and allow the pleasure of the remembrance to course through me. I’ll set no expectations for the future - that way it’s all just a long string of lovely surprises.

All the way, the essence of my father will be along side me. I’ll hear his soothing, familiar voice cutting through his smile as as clear as I did 14 years ago when he quoted a poem and turned it into a directive : “make life one grand, sweet song!”

Go Postal. (this will remain until it’s over)

I am unmotivated. Uninspired. I am going through the motions of a city life and its constant go-go-go and neglecting my souls hunger by substituting with the junk food that is rushed society.

Alas, this is my life.

I woke at 5:45 to get bagels from the only place my boss likes, got a box of Joe to go from the Star-Schmucks next door and now find myself, two hours later; at my desk plenty hopped up on a grande mocha and still doing everything possible to NOT deal with this stack of crap staring at me from the corner of my nice windowed cell.

Bouts of apathy and general disgust of society are awkwardly intertwined with a zeal for everything the universe has to offer. Frustration with the American standard is replaced by a gratefulness for shelter and the self-regulated love I intermittently find myself enveloped in. It’s the dance. Always the dance. The waltz and cha-cha and grind of our hope filled but mostly pointless reality. From stem to stern we dance across the empty waves attempting wildly to focus on the horizon through the eye-patch with the squawking of the token parrot that never ends. It’s elegant and awkward and satisfying when you get it just right and find yourself ~balanced~. What a show.

Unsure what it all means, we wander. You’re not exempt. We go through the motions with our grocery store runs and our 9 hour containments with The Man lacking a greater purpose. Look for it in volunteer work, in comedy, in children.

Does it fill you up?

Brilliant philosophy on stunning, colorful art : Steve Keene

Early Saturday afternoon I walked out of the art store and made my way along Peachtree in the clingy Atlanta air. Turning up 8th Street, something caught my mind and held it firmly. An older man, moving at a tender and measured pace, was up a small hill about 15 yards ahead of me.

I observed him from a distance, oddly intrigued, and slowed my stride. As I closed in I could see his hands clasped behind his back, holding three weathered books as though they’d been in his hands for years. I built his history rapidly, imagining him as a scholar in his youth, maybe an instructor at an all-boy preparatory school in the north. I could picture him pacing in a sun filled classroom and imagined the evolution of his family brought him to the south years ago, or maybe a long forgotten lover. I smiled.

Although I was moving at a deliberately sluggish pace, our paths met quickly. I attempted to make additional noises as I neared so as to not startle him, and the closer I came the more aware I was that he is body was anchored. He leaned forward at what I estimate was a nearly 35 degree angle, age had taken hold of his posture. When I took the final strides to pass him on the lumpy southern concrete, he said something in a hushed voice. I paused along side him and leaned to look him in the face, afraid he might be confused or asking for help in a whisper. He looked at me with big blue eyes that were riddled with the rings and milky glaze that age bestows upon them, hidden behind thick lenses and oversized dark plastic frames. He smiled.

With the toothy grin he began. “Oh, hello miss…” in vibrant voice and an accent that wasn’t English and wasn’t “American”. The speech pattern of the properly educated people of the east of the US in the 1950’s - beautiful with its clear annunciation and near musical cadence. He continued on, and thanked me for “snapping him back” because he had just been trying to “bring something back to mind”. A speech, he said. One he wanted to recite, it was from the Franco Prussian War and in his struggle to recollect it, he had lost himself in thought. “I could have walked for hours,” he said “if you hadn’t come along. Who knows where I might have ended up.”

We easily chatted about America and how we’ve perverted the judicial system that the Quakers founded, how we continue to be both the big brother and the bully on the playground with other nations. His contributions were legitimately and deeply founded in real history whereas mine were regurgitated anecdotes and analogies, but he seemed to enjoy them just the same.

All in all, it was only a 10 minute exchange at best that I held with this little old man. His generous smile and boundless spirit contaminated me. I doubt I’ll ever cross his path again, and it was unusually hard to drive away.

Seems there’s a lot of that lately.

The rest of the weekend was grand, most of my mission files now have “accomplished” stamped across them in red ink and all-caps. My exhaustion has not been fed with any satisfaction, but I remain hopeful that one day, I’ll get enough sleep.

Women today are fucked.

I’m serious. We’re burdened with diverse and confusing messages about what being a woman is.

The intricately choreographed dance whose steps are never performed with perfection challenges our psyches with chronic indifference daily.

Be independent without neglecting your vulnerabilities. Be assertive without being aggressive. Be polite and forgiving without allowing yourself to be walked upon.

You know, it’s not just our personal lives that displays this conflict; studies have shown that women in the workplace today make less money than their male counterparts. And before you go all Gloria Steinem on me, this has nothing to do with the feminist movement or burning your bra. There is one very brutally simple reason: women today (typically) don’t ask for what they want or what they need. We are programmed to be polite and yet we’re programmed to be strong and somehow jumbled up in our brainwashing is the message that because we are strong, independent women we don’t “need” anything and we certainly shouldn’t ask for anything. “Thanks, I’ll just have a sugar packet and a glass of water.”

Bullshit. I need a raise. I need to be taken care of. I need my space. I need sunshine and fresh air. I need to be considerate of my own feelings, and worry less about yours. Because guess what? I was probably subtle and kind and forgiving when I expressed myself the first time and you chose not to listen to my girl-speak. Men today just don’t seem to * get it * unless they’re wholloped across the chin and cheek with a hefty piece of timber.

As young girls we play tea party, catering even in youth to others and their happiness. In our suggestible years we’re trained to consider others feelings before our own, making sure everyone is happy.

Boys, on the other hand, are on the lawn playing football and crushing each other. Each one for himself, still focused on the good of the team and failing to carry hard feelings off the field.

So if I’m in touch enough tell you what I want or need, and you ignore my requests and then you wind up hurt as a result, who does that burden fall on?

Once upon a time, the brilliant minds that control the yellow stripes in parking lots had the foresight to mix sand in with the paint. This way when it rained, the eye-sores that mark the walk / don’t walk / park / don’t park areas would remain grip-a-licious.

I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the way the recipe must have been destroyed. Unable to replicate from memory or reverse engineer, they did what they could. They painted. Without sand.

My problem with this presented itself last night as one weary and hungry traveler (that would be me) wanted only to stop at Whole Foods, pick up something for supper, go home and collapse.

As I strolled across the parking lot in the thick air and black asphalt of the after rain, I found myself stepping on what we’ll call “The Yellow”. Now luckily, I didn’t wipe out, but I did lose my ground for a split second and was reminded of the black ice of my frigid home and the havoc it wreaked on the spine.

So there it is. On the way back to the car I played dodge-the-paint, which I shouldn’t have to. Isn’t it an OSHA requirement or something?

Maybe I’ll just start carrying a bucket of sand around in the back of the Jeep along with a can of The Yellow and make my own adjustments as I see fit. Or you could just buy me a paint wand.

Vigilante safety they’ll call it. There will be headlines everywhere. Maybe I’ll even wear a cape.

As the adult child of a couple of booze hounds, I’m what you might call codependent.

My friend Alison articulated it well - I’ll paraphrase. Simply put it makes me like the Crocodile Hunter of humans. I feel the need to collect injured or weak animals, nurse them to health and re-release them to the wild.

It also means I have a hard time saying no and it’s easy for people to take advantage of me. I’m generous by nature and overly generous by defect.

So, in my old age and with the encouragement of friends, I’m learning to say the new magic word. It’s not always what I want to say and when I do it there are feelings of guilt, but I’ve also learned that there are people out there who prey on my weakness. People that I give to without thinking or question who come back time and again and ask for more. Acceptable? Nah, I don’t think so.

These are the people you will never be able to call at night. Ones who will fail to consider returning any generosity you showed without question or expectation of return. These are the ones that will leave you empty handed and empty hearted and manage to make you feel as though you have done something wrong.

Having born witness to physical abuse I wonder sometimes if this isn’t worse. Would I rather have a black eye or a bruised soul?

Which leaves me here. Extracting these individuals from my life like thorns from my palm after squeezing the stem of ridiculously expensive shrub/weed/flower. I consider how I might have enjoyed it’s beauty and life force had it not been for the unavoidable and brutally painful wretched little daggers.

It’s funny. I might feel sorry for myself if I wasn’t so busy feeling sorry for them.