Mrs. Fitz's Story Emporium

Emotions are what we manufacture. Feelings are who we are.

Emotions are intense and brief, like rain.
Feeling are deep and flowing, like a river.

Emotions are frivolous and distracting, like fashions.
Feelings are solid and reassuring, like beauty.

Emotions erupt and disrupt, like commercials.
Feelings endure and connect, like art.

Emotions control, like heat.
Feelings console, like warmth.

Emotions are fancy, like cake.
Feelings are fine, like cotton.

Let’s categorize people in more ways to get to know them better. It’s time. Political party affiliation, country of origin, gender and all that, has got us just closer to stupid. Let’s try something else. For instance:

1. People who use exclamation points and those who don’t! The former fear they won’t be heard. The latter fear they will be.

2. People who use three names and those who don’t. The former have a harder time filling out forms. The latter don’t fill out forms.

3. People who wear flip-flops and those who don’t. The former are able to afford shoes but believe their feet ought to be both seen and heard. The latter have tried that and know, with absolute certainty, that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

4. People who bring a bottle of wine to your party that they received from a guest to their own party, and those who don’t bring wine. The former are preferred.

5. People who talk and people who listen. The former achieve lofty positions of authority and power. The latter are authoritative and powerful.

This is about a woman walking along Belmont Avenue.She walked with great purpose, like Chicago women do, flat and forward. She didn’t swivel at all. She navigated the sidewalk like an upended pair of scissors. She didn’t walk like a lady. She didn’t move like a woman. In all manner, she was a city gal.

This is about a woman walking the aisle of a Southwest airline 727.She blew down the airline aisle, skirt filling the passage with colors of watermelon, ginger and apple. She was a picnic tablecloth in motion and her girl walked in front of her like a mighty-mini Amazon child, all tight hair buns, pink squiggle bows, marching mama to the toilet at the rear of the airplane.

…so different from the other ladies on the plane, ladies doing business. These in crisp black and white. Shirts. Pants. Shoes. Black and white, like 10 pt. newsprint on paper, slotted nicely in their seats.

This Mum and her pup were different, a new breed or a very old one. I thought to call them SHE-tas! giving a cool name to a timeless breed of mums, babes, grandmas who marked their territory wherever they were. I wondered if on land sometimes they faded, got sucked into the scape of land we all inhabit when we arent’ flying.

Actor Cary Grant projected the quality of stillness. Yul Brenner projected restraint but not stillness. Yul Brenner had scary emotion within that he reined in; yet it remained palpable, not seen on the surface, like danger.

Cary Grant was different, still all the way through to his core, where a reservoir of emotions were accessible to him, to pick & choose which to allow.

Yul Brenner appeared to have ready access to two emotions – passion and anger. Cary Grant basically had all of them, with the possible exception of self-love.

Saint Agnes was a martyr, dying for her faith in a gruesome way. The religious order of women who taught at my grammar school were Sisters of St. Agnes. Both they, and Saint Agnes herself, are the closest I had to career role models from 1957 to 1968 in Elhmurst, Illinois.

I learned that women come in a wide variety of sizes but act a lot alike. They know deep things they will share if you ask them; but sometimes they won’t. And, being smart is how women are; but sometimes it causes them pain.

Only one Sister had taken the name of a man saint, disciple and gospel writer Mark, and her choice suited her.

Sister Mark wasn’t masculine, but she was physical. This says something, since the black habit is so huge, it was hard to tell for certain if any body was in there. The sleeves were like bells, so she rolled ’em up to get out of the way her hands wanted to go. She laughed like a big kid, loudly and not always when you expected it. Her cheeks chubbed out of the white head thing that covered every cranial part that wasn’t face. You could tell she like to eat, really enjoyed it.

There are lots of reasons folks don’t write. Lack of talent isn’t one of them.

Reason #11: Folks don’t write because it takes control away.

Men will either be distracted or feel left out of this analogy but it’s a pretty good one. Writing is like breast feeding. At first it feels odd and makes you feel like something is required you don’t know how to do. Milk comes in but it isn’t a dramatic event. The baby and yourself kind of flub it up and fiddle around to get the feeding going. At first, you don’t know if it’s working. Is baby getting enough? Is baby getting anything? Will you have enough? How will you know if you have enough?

Then, after a few rounds, you realize that the act of nursing causes milk to come. More feeding causes more milk. Here’s the unusual part: You then need to nurse the baby, not just because you wish to nourish, but you need to nurse to relieve the fullness that gets pretty heavy and extremely distracting. BUT, the more you nurse, the more milk.

I can’t think of anything else that is like this except writing.

The best way I know to handle this grow-flow of thoughts and ideas is to let some of it out. Pick just one thing and jot it down. If you can’t identify a specific, use a form. Let the form remind you there is a way to control all this even if you don’t feel that way. Write a list. Write a dialogue. Write a letter.

There are lots of reasons folks don’t write. Lack of talent isn’t one of them.

Reason #14 Why folks don’t write: They aren’t ready.

Many think that not being ready is a poor excuse for not writing; but most good and fun things require readiness – decisions, love, belief. Writing is like this.

What IS a poor excuse is labeling the unreadiness as procrastination. That offers a rationale for the state of unreadiness but it is not an answer. Also, procrastination is a symptom not a cause.

The best way I know to deal with not-ready-to-write-ness is to get ready. That will spur one of three actions:
1. Do something that is a stab at getting ready, such as research.
2. Do something that is related to writing, such as reading.
3. Do something that (seems) unrelated to writing, such as running.

The second best way I know to deal with not-ready-to-write-ness is movement. Any kind. With music is good.

This is about a tree that grows opposite our new condo on Sheffield:

The tree is waving its notice-me branches with all its leaves frantically waving, giggly, shimmy-shaking in the morning winds.

I think this brazen display is a ruse, a desperate attempt by a 45-foot tree to distract attention from its trunk, a sorry sight if freshness is your forte. It’s a glum-trunked tree. However, it is the tallest tree on two blocks running south of Belmont on Sheffield Avenue.

Unless it can grow 10 feet higher, it can’t aspire to lush roundness at its crown. It’s squished with a brick building on its east and busy street on its west. I don’t know how long it has been branching only north-south but its football shape is impressive and tenacious.

In Elmhurst where I grew up, trees were free to arch, spread wide and whisper as one corridor of green along streets with names like Sunnyside and Fair View. Dutch Elm disease thinned the herd during the 1960s but enough remain so the town name is no embarassment. Elmhurst’s Elms are content and restful. Our Sheffield tree is an independent with some substantial swiggle left in her old trunk.

Here is a chat between a grown up daughter and her dying Mom about God:

What about God?

What about who? God?

Yes, you know. The Big Kahuna. All Knowing. Light of the World. Imperial Majesty of the Universe. Creator.

Sounds like him, yes.

Do you believe?

Well, that’s two questions isn’t it? I mean there’s the God person-entity and then there is believing. I DO believe. If I went around not believing I’d contradict BE-ing. I’d negate existing. Does a flower believe? Of course. Otherwise it would cease being a flower. It might wake up one morning an eensy weensy sprout, see the sun overhead, stretch down its tiny green flower feet and wiggle in deeper, drink up water and grow. It believes.

But what about God? The heaven master, the rule maker, the judge. The God guy?

Him? Hmm. We invent what we require in order for believing to be fun, like the flower stretching its little root toes to grow. How could we habitate this place without a purpose? We can’t. Impossible. So, we invent God. Not that He invented us. I think history didn’t get that part right. It’s the other way round.

So the God that sees what we do and banishes some to Hell, others to heaven. That’s bunk?

I think some writers have very vivid imaginations.

So, you’d say God is dead?

I think God is waiting for us to need Him again. Sad thing, I think we stopped inventing Him too long ago. What we are left with is a rerun.

Well, I do believe in God, a nice kind of God. I like to think that God is comfort.

That’s your mother, dear. Not God.

I’ve known Joe for about 20 years and lately is the first time I’ve seen him mad.

He treads his part of earth lightly, disturbing little, asking little. Why then did a disease pummel him? Why him? Why not take down a vicious man, a tyrant man, a destroyer? It’s disproportionate. This disease, which shall remain nameless here so it doesn’t get any special attention, this disease is like a rampaging rockslide barreling down to flatten a gerbil.

The upside is that Joe can now get mad. His gerbil-ego grew and emerged one day in proportions of a gigantic rage, foreign and frightening and taking a menacing shape.

This rage is beautiful. The power of this disease is of no account compared to it.

I thought rage was an explosion of emotion, born of despair or self-absorption – sometimes both. Now I see it can be the first note in a song of self.