Words

When I was 14 years-old, in 8^th grade, I had an English teacher who I did not appreciate at the time, but who did a lot for me, in ways that I only saw later. He once gave my class a challenge to write a paper that would explain to someone else the instructions to tie a shoe. He said that anyone who wrote a paper that could be followed to the letter, and end with a tied shoe, would receive an “A” for the quarter. I relished the way this challenge made me think intensely about every word I put on paper. I tied a shoe, stopping at every step to write down what was being done, so I could use written words to describe the exact process. I knew I was incapable of vocally describing such an act to anyone, but I was comfortable in believing I could successfully describe such a task on paper in a way that would help another human understand what I was trying to convey. The teacher had different students come up in front of class to try and follow the instructions of every paper written, as the papers were read aloud, to see if the instructions in each paper could help someone tie a shoe. A student named Monty was the one who followed the words of my paper, as it was read. At the end of the reading of my paper, Monty had tied his shoe. I was the only student in that class whose paper ended this way. I knew something very important at that moment:  if I could find a way to convey something real in written words, I could successfully communicate with another human.

This same English teacher made us write daily journals. He had us name our journals, the way Anne Frank named her diary “Kitty.” I named my journal “Sigh Lentz,” and told my teacher this meant I was supposed to remain silent, so I did not need to keep a daily journal. He told me that the name was great, which meant I needed to write “Two” pages a day, instead of just one. I still have some of those journals I wrote many decades ago. I look at them now, and can hear my teenage self, testing the waters, trying to see if anyone would listen to the words dying to leak out of me. I was too young, and way too messed up, to write the things that I truly needed to release, but I did get to use those journals to learn quite a bit about written communication. I already knew that I was meant to write things, I just had no idea who would ever be safe, and trustworthy enough, to read such words.

I have written a lot, ever since I wrote my first poem (http://sighlentz.blogspot.com/2015/09/fiction.html) when I was around eight or nine. Most of those words had never been seen by anyone.  Unfortunately, my childhood education was severely stunted by the stress I was under, so my ability to convey English in its proper written form is far from correct.

Starting 8 years ago, I took some college courses, including a handful of English classes where a wonderful instructor taught me a lot, and got the first story I wrote for her class published. The experience was amazing, opening a new world of communication for me, and giving me quite a bit more knowledge about the horribly complex rules of written English words. (I SO wish I was fluent in a language like Spanish, because my blog would be full of a lot less mistakes if I could write it in a language that made any damn sense...) 

[Edited on Sept 5, 2023, to say that while taking this college course, it was assumed I had learned the basics about the English language.  After all, I did graduate high school in 1984.   My English professor was later surprised to realize I knew nothing about sentence structure, and couldn't identify nouns or adjectives or anything to do with the basics of writing.  For me, writing is like playing guitar.  I play what I hear, but can't read a damn note. End of edit]

This past year, I shared some of my darkest words with another human.  It did not turn out well. 

Technology is dicey, and written words about dark truths can be dangerous. I always knew my darkest words were not something that just anyone could hear. Monty could tie that shoe way back in 8^th grade, because he was totally open to just listening to my words, and no one else was interfering. Real life is not some classroom. It is humans, each of whom is dysfunctional in some way, doing their thing to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish. I think this is why I like communicating with other species. Human communication is too complicated for me to ever grasp.

I love words. I love writing. I hate words. I hate writing.

Written words saved me. And destroyed me.

A bit ago, I stepped outside to watch the space station fly over. I have signed up for notifications from NASA (https://spotthestation.nasa.gov/signup.cfm) so I can watch as various humans orbit our earth, in a dance that involves very important communication between human-created machines, computers, and instruments, as well as an understanding of physic's laws that humans have discovered and communicated to others over centuries, and communication between those handful of humans on the space station, and a ground crew willing and able to listen and communicate in response. I think of each human up there as I watch them fly over, and wonder who it was in their lives that gave them the support every human requires to accomplish anything good humans are capable of accomplishing. I wish everyone could be supported, and communicated with, in a way that brought out the good each human is born capable of accomplishing. Humans are capable of so much good. And so much bad.

This past year has healed me. And devastated me.

And written words will always be the only release I know.

Talking to animals

Kittens from yesterday's clinic

A deer who communed with me as I left for yesterday's clinic

A critter that spoke with me this week

White rabbit on my hillside.

The bird who talks to me.  Its nest is under that eave.

One of our recent conversations.

I love animals.  I always have.  I am blessed to be able to try and help critters with some of what I do in my daily life.

I am not an animal whisperer.  Hell, I cannot even communicate successfully with most humans, much less other living creatures.  But every day, I am in contact with all kinds of critters, and the contact I have with species outside of my own is very special.

Along the road I drive to get to my home in a tiny rural town, there are feathered critters I call "Surfing birds."  I am not a birder, and know nothing about identifying specific kinds of birds.  But since moving here in '92, my kids and I discovered that every spring, a weird thing starts to occur.  A certain kind of bird would swoop down in front of our vehicle and fly in front of it for awhile, then fly away.  This occurs throughout spring and summer.  The birds seem to have a Swallow-type shape, but are smaller than the Swallows I can identify.  After about three years of witnessing this strange behavior, I recognized something familiar about what they were doing:  they were catching, and then gliding on, the wind currents that sweep up the front of cars.  These birds were riding wind waves.  I have ever since called them "Surfing birds," and I truly believe they behave this way for the simple pleasure of it, as it serves no other purpose I can see.  I have never found proof of this in literature or online, but because I have witnessed this phenomenon faithfully for the past 24 years, I am quite sure it exists.  Some birds know how to use the creation of cars to hang ten.  I love it when they choose to surf my car.

A couple of days ago, a praying mantis spent time on my hand, looking at me whenever I spoke, and joining in with me as I surveyed the fields and trees around us.  We spent about 6 minutes together. 

Two herons used to fly over my home, back in the early '90's when I first moved here.  They flew over our place often, specifically on some days that were especially hard for me, and this brought me some comfort.  A few years later, the female of this pair was shot by someone on the river walkway in town.  After that, the male would sometimes fly over my home, on his own, in heartbreaking solitude.  His flights became a kind of prayer for me, a prayer for my children, and a prayer for him.  I do not know exactly what he was feeling as he flew over alone, but I'm quite sure he grieved the loss of the one who once flew beside him.

Two birds built a nest under my back eave this spring.  One of them started to "talk" to me on a regular basis.  This continued throughout the incubation and raising of the birds' offspring.  I would step outside, and this bird would whistle, and wait for my response.  Then we would talk.  I recorded some of our "conversations" on my phone.  Now that this bird's babies are raised and gone, the nest has been vacated, and we no longer have daily conversations, but the bird does come back once in awhile, and speaks with me. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was present for the last moments on earth of a cat who has meant the world to me the past few years.  I spent time with this cat often, and talked to her a lot, even though she was deaf.  I knew her eyes heard me.  She was a beloved member of a beautiful family, and it was a simple quirk of fate that brought us together as she passed on.  There was a moment, soon before her passing, where she and I awaited the test results that would decide her fate, and her head suddenly leaned against my arm, and rested.  That moment will forever remain in my mind, a connection that surpasses words.  

Early this past Sunday morning, a white rabbit appeared on my hillside.  I wanted to get close enough for a good picture, but I did not.  The rabbit was back that evening.  I wish this rabbit luck, as it survives the rural area where we live. There are plenty of coyotes who would find this rabbit easy to spot at night in our terrain, and make a quick meal of such a critter. 

I am blessed to drive transports of cats to a spay/neuter clinic in a nearby state.  During the loading of the van, I do not get a chance to meet every cat, but once on the road, there are often certain cats who start to vocalize.  I respond to each of them, and get to know their voices.  Once we arrive and unload, I start to get to know the many furry souls who just spent time with me on the road.  I also get to connect the various voices I had communed with to the faces that go with the specific voices I just spent road-time talking to.  I love these trips, and the talks I am blessed to experience.  I cherish getting to know these beings, in both pre- and post-op.  I just finished one of these trips a few hours ago.

My communication with creatures thought of as "animals" means more to me than I can put into words.  I am thankful, every day, for these beings.  I would give anything to see humans learn to communicate with each other as well as some animals have communicated with me.  The world would experience much less violence.

Dancing with Giants

On the morning of August 7, 1974, when I was 8, a human being did one of the most amazing things anyone has ever done:  he danced with giants.

I vaguely remember knowing that someone had once wire-walked between the Twin Towers, but I do not remember knowing any other details.  In 2009, my daughter and I watched a documentary called "Man on Wire," and both of us were enthralled.  Philippe Petit's story is amazing, and in 2015, a movie about his historic feat, entitled "The Walk," was released in theaters. I watched this movie for the first time a couple of days ago.  While I enjoyed the documentary a bit more, this movie was beautiful to view. 

Philippe Petit experienced something with those towers that no other human, before or after, ever came close to experiencing. While never touched on directly in the movie or the documentary, the pain Philippe went through on 9-11 must have been excruciating. The actions of others destroyed the giants he had danced with, and destroyed so many other humans in the process. There always seems to be humans who love to destroy.

To me, the art of that moment in '74 is as powerful as Picasso's Guernica, or Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Philippe's ability to find trust for the towers, the steel cable, and himself, in order to perform such a dance, is beyond my imagination. I think that the reason humans continue to exist is because, while many attempts to accomplish difficult tasks fail, sometimes a human does achieve the impossible.

I find something oddly comforting in knowing that at a moment when I was 8-years-old, another human was briefly dancing with giants.

Public Bathrooms

I am going through a lot, right now.  I have no idea how I will deal with any of it.  But one thing has been troubling me recently, and I have finally had enough.  So, I'm blogging my thoughts on this subject.

This whole transgender bathroom issue is such bullshit to me. My step-mother, and her female camera-carrying friend, used public restrooms to take photos of children in a lot of places. No one blinked an eye, as Pam and her friend were exploiting children. They were women, in women's restrooms or changing rooms. They caught nobody's attention. Predators do not have a certain gender or appearance. They know how to do what they do in the least obvious way possible.

The human being who is trying to accept and live with their own mind's gender is not at ALL the person you need to fear.

Most predators are blending in and will not be visible to you at all. They are in your neighborhoods, your churches, your schools, and yes, even your families. My answer to this whole bathroom issue is simple: make sure you or someone you trust takes your kids to public restrooms until they are older, and teach your kids that any person who enters their private space for any reason, without permission, should be told “No.” Let go of these damn beliefs that transgender humans are the ones who are a danger to children. PREDATORS are the danger, and trust me, the majority of predators who daily misuse/target/traffic children, know very well how to blend in and remain anonymous. This whole bathroom issue only spreads bigotry and hatred, while doing nothing to protect children.

Gift

T-shirt, stub, and confetti from 2004

For my 39th birthday, my sister got us both very good seats for the Rose Garden concert during Prince's Musicology Tour in 2004.  Other than one performance given by my daughter, this is the best concert I ever attended.

The teenager in me is devastated at the loss of this amazing artist. 

Thanks, Kid, for the gift of that concert.

RIP Prince

RIP Pat Conroy

“The safe places could only be visited; they could only grant a momentary intuition of sanctuary. The moment always came when we had to return to our real life to face the wounds and grief indigenous to our home by the river.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

“I take account of my life and find that I have lived a lot and learned very little.”
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad


“Hurt is a great teacher, maybe the greatest of all.”
― Pat Conroy, My Reading Life

“The tide was a poem that only time could create, and I watched it stream and brim and makes its steady dash homeward, to the ocean.”
― Pat Conroy, South of Broad

A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal. Pat Conroy
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pat_conroy.html

"A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal." ― Pat Conroy

A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal. Pat Conroy
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/pat_conroy.html

“My own tears seemed landlocked and frozen in a glacier I could not reach or touch within me.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

“A story untold could be the one that kills you.”
― Pat Conroy

“I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

"When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children” ― Pat Conroy

“A family is one of nature's solubles; it dissolves in time like salt in rainwater.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides


"I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child.  It so affects me." ― Pat Conroy

I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child. It so affects me. Pat Conroy
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/patconroy660909.html

I still get weepy when I see a father being nice to his child. It so affects me. Pat Conroy
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/patconroy660909.html

“And in that instant was born the terrible awareness that life eventually broke every man, but in different ways and at different times.”
― Pat Conroy, The Water is Wide


“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”
― Pat Conroy, Beach Music

Angel Wings

My kids and I created our own Christmas traditions, and stayed home almost every year to enjoy them together as they grew up.  But, back in '98, my mom and sister took my kids on one of their favorite trips, to Disneyland for Christmas break.  Right before they drove off in my mom's car to head for the airport, my 8-yr-old daughter dropped back in the snow, to make me a snow angel, so I wouldn't miss her too much over Christmas.  This is the photo I took of her angel.

A few years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Tom Prasada-Rao music.  The first time I heard "Angel Wings," it became my favorite holiday song.  It also made me think of my daughter's snow angel from the Disney Trip.

Here is the link to Tom's beautiful song: Angel Wings

I wish a blessed holiday season to all my friends and family.

Fiction

When I was little, and first started reading books of any length, my favorite author was C.S. Lewis.  The Narnia Chronicles were books I read over and over.  My favorite character from those books was Fledge, the flying horse in The Magician's Nephew. 

When I first started writing, at about 8 or 9 years-of-age, I wrote poems.  This was the first poem I ever wrote on my own:

Animals live
Animals die
Who is there to cry
When people die
Many will cry
But hardly anyone cries
When an animal dies

This poem was written because I saw how nobody cared about a dog that had been hit by a car and was dying on the road in front of the church we attended one Sabbath.  This scene was how my writing voice was born.  I saw something that hurt my heart, I could not vocalize or cry about it, so I wrote it down.  My writing has followed this pattern ever since.  I witnessed or felt something, and I wrote it down.

As I got older, I sometimes wanted to try and write stories like C.S. Lewis wrote.  But every time I sat down to write, the words that came out were always autobiographical.  I sometimes felt like that meant I was a very selfish person.  I felt like I should be able to tell another person's story, or tell a fanciful story to make others happy.  I wanted to make up wonderful tales, and transport people to good places.  I could not do it, no matter how much I wanted to. 

I have, over the years, attempted to turn the words that kept trying to come out of myself into a work of fiction, where names and places and situations were changed up enough that no one would recognize anyone or anything, but the truth would still be there, buried under all of the changes.  This never worked.  These attempts to disguise my truth were dismal failures, and I knew it, even as I tried to do the writing.  I labored over outlines, changing names, making up fictional towns, and finally throwing it all away.  I decided I was not meant to write fiction, even though people like J.K. Rowling, and even one of my uncles, do exactly the thing I wish I could do:  they create fictional characters and stories in their minds, and are able to communicate those stories in written words.

I know my own voice, now, and realize I was never meant to write fiction, or write books, or write for profit, or even for an audience.  I had to write what needed to get outside of me, because it would kill me if it stayed inside.  And I had to get it out, even if no one believed me.  From my first poem on, the things I have written have been my only voice for the pain I carried. 

I'm glad I was not able to write fiction.  I'm glad I was given a voice to keep myself alive. 

Palette

Palette

My muse and I have had a love/hate relationship for many years.  Every time I write without the help of my muse, the words are difficult to find, and the writing never feels whole to me.  A couple weeks ago, I started the comedic "BB Gun Story" that I have wanted to write for years, and I can already tell it is going to take me a lot of work.  I was starting to feel angry at the part of myself that can hand me words so easily, impatient with my source of inspiration for abandoning me yet again, especially after we bonded so well during this past April's A-Z Blog Challenge.  I was troubled that my muse does not at all seem interested in making people laugh with words, like I am.  I pushed away the keyboard this morning, and said aloud, "What the hell is it with these damn tears you keep trying to hand to me?"

And I finally saw it:  my muse is not a rebellious teen, trying to fight me at every turn.  She is not a spoiled child, stamping her foot and pouting because I won't do what she wants with her words.  I have always known that writing is painting with words.  I just never stopped and realized what kind of paint shimmers on the palette held by my source of inspiration.  Every unshed tear I swallowed as a child was lovingly collected and protected by the one who gives me words.  Each of those words is a priceless treasure, a glittering drop of pain from the child I once was, and my muse has patiently held those tears, on a palette that I have not allowed myself to acknowledge, for my whole life.  In order to make peace with my source of inspiration, I am going to have to accept what the words from my muse are, and treat that medium with the compassion it deserves.  I know the palette is not filled with an unlimited supply of these drops.  One day, the palette will be dry, ready to fill with a new type of pigment.  Meanwhile, I am going to honor the words my muse gives me, until the last teardrop falls.

 

Cherished Object--For the CHERISHED Blogfest

My Grandad Smith had a small farm on a few acres in Pasco, WA.  I loved our visits to Grandad's place when I was a child.  He had a pasture behind the house that often had cattle or horses grazing on it, and when I was older, there were large pipes and sprinklers that irrigated that pasture.  But I have memories of the original irrigation method my Grandad once used, back when I was still a very young toddler. 

The Columbia River is the source of water that is used to irrigate the farmland around the Tri-Cities, WA.  Before the canals were created for irrigation, all of that area was a semi-arid steppe, basically sagebrush-covered desert.  Once the irrigation canals were built, water from the Columbia transformed parts of that desert into fertile farmland.  One of the original irrigation methods was called pioneer irrigation.  A piece of ground was sloped, and along the highest edge of that ground, water from canals ran in iron or earthenware pipes underground and came up into small basins formed in the earth at intervals along the high ground, with furrows dug from the downward side of those basins to let gravity usher the water into the pasture.  There were no faucets to turn off and on.  Instead, the canal water came up through a small pipe into the floor of each basin, and a wooden plug was placed into the hole at the bottom of the basin to stop the flow of water.  When one wanted to water the pasture, one simply walked the high slope of that piece of land, removing the wooden plugs so the canal water would come up into the basin, and flow through the furrow down into the pasture.

Some of my favorite earliest memories are walking with my Grandad along the edge of his pasture, watching him lift the wooden plugs from the small basins of earth, and seeing the water bubble up from the ground through the hole where the plug had been.  As I got old enough to pull up the plugs by myself, he would let me join in the act of making water magically appear out of the ground. 

Many years later, after my Grandad had died and the sale of his property was pending, I had to make my last visit to his farm, to say goodbye to the place I loved most on earth.  As I stood behind the house, looking across those few acres I loved, I suddenly remembered walking the edge of Grandad's pasture with him when I was very young.  I wondered what might have happened to all those wooden plugs, which had become obsolete so many years ago.  My adult feet carried me along the road at the edge of his pasture where my childhood soles had once walked alongside his large work-boots.  Weeds and brush had grown up along the edge of the pasture where the irrigation line had been, but when I stopped and looked beneath one large sage plant, I could just make out the packed edge of one of the old basins, still there beneath the overgrowth.  I started moving the brush aside, and that's when I spied one of the old wooden plugs, laying on the ground inside the dry basin.  As I picked it up, I was filled with emotion from the memories it held.  I finished walking the pasture edge, and at the end of that walk, I had found a total of eight plugs.  I placed them in my car, then turned and reluctantly bid that property farewell. 

When I got home, I set the wooden plugs on my counter, and wondered what I could do with them, in order to make something for myself and my children out of those special pieces of my childhood.  I did not want to carve or sand or paint them.  I felt that would destroy the magic I knew they still contained.  Then it came to me:  I could make crosses.  So, I made four wooden crosses of the plugs, one for me, and one for each of my three children.  I placed my cross above the front door of our home, and set aside the other crosses for each of my kids, to take with them whenever they flew my coop.  Those crosses I set aside are all in the homes where my children now live, and my cross remains above the door of my house.  It is a cherished object, two pieces of wood that still contain bits of earth from a place I loved, still contain traces of my tiny hands and the hands of my Grandfather.

As I took the cross down to take a close-up photo of it for this blog, I could feel the magic it still holds.  I was transported back to a time long ago, when a tiny child walked beside a man in an Oklahoma Tuxedo, making water magically rise up from the ground.  I cherish this cross.