Finding Your Center

Posted by random olio

I have dabbled in ceramics and pottery over the years. One of the books that I love, still own, and look at every so often is called: “Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person.” The author talks about the ideas behind centering your life, and living in a balanced place. The author juxtaposes centering in life with centering a pot on a potter’s wheel.

one of my pieces…

It is not easy, but with practice, skill, and persistence, a potter can throw a chunk of clay on a potter’s wheel and quickly center it. I remember in college my ceramics professor told us of a blind potter. The potter was amazing at centering because they were not looking at the clay to see if it was centered. They could tell just by feeling the way it spun around the wheel. We spent a few classes trying to center the clay while blind folded. That was an amazing experience to me. It taught me how to approach the wheel in a different way, and gave me almost a quiet, calm anytime I started out on the wheel on my way to centering.

If a potter begins to form the clay before it is centered then two things will happen: either his pot will come out lopsided or it will get so off-center that it will come off the wheel or fall over and the potter will have to start over. So it makes sense for the potter to spend more time in the beginning to make sure that the pot is centered, rather than go fast and have to start over again.

What a metaphor for life. If we just took the time at the beginning of a project, trip, plan, etc to find our center and be balanced we would not have to go back and start over again. If we go off course, we just have to go back to our center. Just as on a potter’s wheel, if we go off-center, we can bring it back to the middle and re-center if needed. This is only if we have not made it so off kilter that we have to start over completely, or if we have added too much water that the clay is too elastic and it is not possible to bring it back to its original form.

The potter teaches us to always go back to our center when we feel life has led us astray. Stop. Go back to center. Sometimes we have to change course. In the end, life falls into place when we start from our center.

Cheerleading, Wax, and Spiders

Posted by random olio

I have a confession to make. Yes, you may laugh as some folks do when I tell them. Okay, I will just come out and say it: “I was a cheerleader.” Gulp. I said it. Have you stopped reading? No, okay, good. Ready for the rest of the blog that might mention cheerleading?

I just finished reading “It’s Not About the Pom-Poms: How a 40-Year-Old Mom Became the NFL’s Oldest Cheerleader–and Found Hope, Joy, and Inspiration Along the Way” by Laura Vikmanis. At the age of forty, Laura is the oldest NFL cheerleader. When I first heard of her book, the idea intrigued me. How did she do it? How did she make the team, and how did her body handle it? You can find the answers and so much more in her book.

Laura went through a horrible and abusive marriage, and came out stronger, more independent, and in control of her life. It is a must read for anyone that might be in a tough marriage (she gives you a picture of how she made it through her divorce), as well as a view into NFL cheerleading. NFL cheerleading is definitely not as glamorous as it may look on the outside. AND – they make no money at all! Laura was a Cincinnati Bengals (called the Ben-Gals), and the pay was $75 a game. They only cheer at home games (about 10 a season) so that equals $750 a year. They do not get paid for the hours they practice (they spend more time in practice then the football players do). They are not paid for manicures, highlights, hair cuts, waxing, etc. yet they are expected to ALWAYS look perfect on and off-season. Wow. Is it really worth it?

While I did not make note of any specific quotes from her book, I did write down this quote in her section specific to body waxing. As said by Jerry Seinfeld:

“I will never be able to understand how a woman can take boiling hot wax, pour it on her upper thighs, rip the hair by the root, and still be afraid of a spider.” Page 124

I guess I am not that kind of woman because I can handle hot wax and spiders, although I know some men that cannot handle either. From my view of Laura I think she can too.

“Homesick For A Place That Never Existed?”

Posted by random olio

“Have you ever been homesick for someplace that doesn’t actually exist anymore? Someplace that exists only in your mind?” page 103

A quote from the book: “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” by Jenny Lawson. A memoir about her life, at times hilarious, blunt, and sassy. The above quote makes me think of what I often feel. Do you ever go over old memories in your head, sometimes over and over again to see if you still remember the smallest details? I think about things from my childhood that make me nostalgic. Things that made me happy as a kid. Was it my mom’s chocolate chess pie that I LOVED and no longer have the recipe for, but have NEVER been able to recreate. Or, remembering times when we would somehow end up on my parents king size bed laughing and tickling each other. Did that really happen? I know it did, but with so much time that has passed I often wonder, was there one time when that happened, or was it many times that created my memory?

We all have a part of us that sugar coats the bad aspects of life. Often over time we forget the bad parts. The ones that made us cry, or feel horrible about ourselves, or alone. There are times when I make a nice creme brulee shell over the painful parts of my childhood, and others show the raw memories of abuse and abandonment. Which is why I related so much to what Jenny says here:

“He quietly said (as if to himself) that the memories of the places we’d been before were always more golden-tinted in retrospect than they had ever been at the time, and I nodded, surprised that he’d known more than he’d let on. He was right, but I didn’t know if that made it better or worse. Was it worse to be homesick for a time that was once home, but now lived only in your own mind … or to be homesick for a place that never really existed at all?” 103-104

I think my homesickness comes as a picture of what I dreamed a family and home life could have been. When I miss my parents and my family together, it is more from telling myself what it would be like to still have parents that are alive. Parents that I can call up when I am having a hard day, or when I needs some words of advice. Honestly though, my parents were never really those kinds of parents. Maybe I feel that way because they passed on when I was so young, that I had to move on with my life without having them fill the roles of advice giver, supporter, and nurturer. In the end, my imagination of what my relationship could have been if they were alive is what makes me homesick.

Does that mean I am “homesick for a place that never really existed at all?”

ah memories: my maroon bike with banana seat!

Do You Listen 100%?

Posted by random olio

A few months ago I came across “You Learn by Living” by Eleanor Roosevelt. I wish I had read it many years ago. She inspired me more than any other first lady. One idea (of the many I wrote down) was about listening. I feel that over the past few years we as a society have become horrible listeners. There are too many other things happening around us. Our phone is ringing, we are getting a text message, sending an email, or in the middle of a level of Angry Birds. We multi-task. I myself am just as much to blame. I am a hard-core multi-tasker. I of course feel like I do an amazing job at it, but do I really? I feel like I do, but I often wonder if I am just trying to make myself feel better about all that I am trying to do at once. This is what she says about listening:

“If such a search is to be successful, however, you will need two qualities which you can develop by practice. One is the ability to be a good listener. The other is the imaginative ability to put yourself in the other person’s place; to try to discover what he is thinking and feeling; to understand as far as you can the background from which he came, the soil out of which his roots have grown, the customs and beliefs and ideas which have shaped his thinking.” P. 136

Three short sentences that are jam-packed with ideas. Do you have an “imaginative ability to be a good listener?” To me that means going to extremes to make sure that the person you are engaged with knows you are listening, and that…you ACTUALLY are. What if you tried that for one week? What if you made sure that every conversation and interaction you had, you were focused 100%? I would like to try that over the next week and see if I can tell the difference in how I connect with others. Do I feel I understand them more, retained more information, and better executed on my part of the conversation? Did I tell someone I would follow through on something?

I also love where she says: “the imaginative ability to put yourself in the other person’s place; to discover what he is thinking and feeling” – it is something I try to do. See, I love learning about people. You could say people fascinate me. I always have the thought in my mind: “put yourself in their shoes.” I think it helps to relate to others who might be different from you, that might even have an opposite upbringing and life experience. I think it gives a person empathy when interacting with others.

So, are you with me? Do you want to try to listen 100% over the next week?

Go Away I’m Reading

Posted by random olio

Such a clever title for a book: “Leave Me Alone I’m Reading” by Maureen Corrigan. I was intrigued by the title, but found that the book itself was not as interesting to me. The author went between her own life and then experiences of characters from other books. I was more engaged when I read the parts about her life, her father and mother, and of course reading.

In my own life, reading has been a way to go into the world of others. Which is why I loved these quotes from her book:

“In our daily lives, where we’re bombarded by the fake and the trivial, reading serves as a way to stop, shut out the noise of the world, and try to grab hold of something real, no matter how small.” page xvii

Later on the same page she says:

“Reading offered companionship as well as escape.” page xvii

and:

“…but constant reading kept pulling me away from the world of my childhood, the world of my parents.” page xxviii

Lastly:

“Words can summon up a skyline from the dark; they can bring back the people you loved and will always yearn for. They can inspire you with possibilities you otherwise would have never imagined; they can fill your head with misleading fantasies. They can give you back your seemingly seamless past and place it right alongside your chaotic present. page 184

I can relate to all these quotes. There have been times when a good book has offered companionship while my husband was away on business travel, or when traveling on an airplane myself. At other times the story in a book has reminded me of my parents and grandparents and the experiences I had with them. Other books take me into the life of someone else and then jettison me back to my own childhood where I uncover experiences I did not ever remember. I then begin to piece together a memory that had never before surfaced. There are many ways to engage in a book, and countless ways to experience the story and memories – past, present, and future.

How do you experience books in your life?

Oh, shh. I am off to finish my book. Okay, I wish. I have to go to work instead.