Lately I've been thinking about friendship. Linda was a big influence. I met Linda in 1980. She had 6 years sober then. I was just getting used to living without booze. Back then I didn't realize that life (aging) has definite stages. So does sobriety. When I was in my twenties I had no idea that by the time I was 50 I would be relating incidents by the decade. I had good friends but I took them for granted.

Linda was a beautiful soul. She was a very small blonde woman with a big goofy smile. She had buck teeth and big thick glasses. She looked like a bunny rabbit. One of my first memories of her was her laugh. I heard it across the room. Her laugh was high pitched and lasted forever. She was funny as Hell and crazy as a loon. I loved her on sight. I'm not sure exactly how she became my best friend, but there was no decision making process involved. I never questioned why we were drawn to each other. In hindsight I guess we were alike. Sometimes it's how you feel....the under the surface pain that draws people together...complementary relationships. We were loose ends that wrapped around each others lives. I have had many friends before and since. Some of them simply faded out of my life. But Linda was the kind of friend that became a part of you. I will never let go of Linda.

Linda was one of those people that noticed everything and she tried to explain it to me. She had grown up wealthy. Her parents (in 1980) still lived across the street from White Rock Lake, surrounded by "old money" Dallas. She married an engineer. He gave her their life plan on their wedding night and pretty much stuck to it for 10 years. Linda had 3 kids. A boy around 13 and 2 girls(10 and 6). The husband was seeing other women. Finally she found her courage.

I really got to know her when she was going through her divorce. I was a woman in my 20's trying to stay out of trouble. She was a woman in her mid 30's that was looking for trouble. She rented a house not far from the group. We talked for hours. We laughed at everything. She introduced me to some great galleries and the Dallas music scene.

 When she moved out of her parents house at 21 she moved in with her husband. She was in a nasty custody battle for her kids. When her kids were with her ex it was the first night she had ever slept in a house alone. She had trouble making decisions (she'd never had to make them before). She kept cigarettes all over the house in little ornate cigarette boxes. She smoked while she talked. We went to movies and concerts together. She never stopped talking. She told me her life. I still remember how her parents met and how she spent her wedding day.

This is where the story gets strange. Because Mick was strange. Mick was a big handsome guy. He was dramatically handsome. He had soulful eyes and jet black hair with grey streaks in it. I met him when I was volunteering in a Alcoholic Rehab Unit, where he was getting sober.

Mick was very charming. Actually, he was just my type. People were always impressed with him. He knew how to impress. The only real date we ever went on was to a party for the German ambassador. I'm not sure how he got invited, but lots of people there seemed to like him. He professed his love for me 20 minutes after we met. I kept him at arms length. Maybe I was waiting for him to sober up. Maybe I just recognized the devil for once.

Linda got access to his medical records where she worked. Yes, apparently his Dad had murdered his Mom somewhere near the Grand Tetons. She thought that was the root of his problems.Mick admitted that every woman he'd ever been in a relationship with had been institutionalized for various mental problems. Linda believed he was picking sick woman.

Up to that point, I had missed the desperation in her eyes. She was lonely. She was living a little vicariously through me. I was dating a couple of guys and Mick told everyone he was going to marry me. The truth was I was tempted to sleep with him, but marriage was not on my agenda back then. Whatever he was selling I wasn't buying.

Linda didn't like being alone. She asked Mick to move in with her strictly as a roommate. She was already losing her custody case and that sealed the deal. Linda bought lots of lumber and supplies. Mick was now a carpenter. Linda told me she was in love with Mick. They didn't look like a couple.  She bought him a little red truck.

Somewhere along the way Linda became the group treasurer. All the donation money, most of it cash, was going through her hands. She started dipping in the till. She was struggling to keep him in projects. She was just struggling to keep him, I guess. She started drinking like a demon was following her and maybe he was. All the women that I knew tried to help her, but she never got sober again.

The last time I saw Mick he got me to one side and told me that if we could be together he would dump Linda. When I told him to forget it he cried. The last time I saw Linda she was going to hock her parents silver and getting ready for a cross country trip with her "soulmate"

Six months later we got the news that Linda hung herself in a halfway house in the Midwest. Mick had dumped her there and left. I said before that I will never let go of Linda. She will be my friend as long as I live. But I let go of the sadness. I got free of the ghost...I accepted her sad ending. And I want to say right now that I am most grateful to my friend Lucy for showing me how to do that. Because when I met Lucy....Linda met Annie. Many people may not read this far down on the blog. But I wish to acknowledge a debt of graditude to Lucy...Who may not read this at all.....Thank you for that amazing dysfunctional family picnic where I found my heart.

Maybe, about 6 months after that Mick tracked me down and called me. He wanted to know where Linda was buried and pay his respects to her parents. He wanted my home phone number. I told him to go Fuck himself. He laughed and said he couldn't believe I was still alive. I hung up. I never heard from him again. But for years I kept thinking I saw him. The devil in a little red truck that Linda bought him.

 

 

And I will soar beyond myself.

I refuse to be earthbound.

I reject the edges of my box.

I deny the labels on it's cardboard surface.

 

 

I am not predictable and though you may

 Recognize my voice

 I will call from different phones.

 

 

If you look into my eyes and see a stranger,

Do not turn away.

The soft journey of the soul is like a quilt

Covering our time together.

 

 

When the curtains part we will both know.

 

Beg me to be still and quiet and I will comply.

But compliance is not surrender.

Freedom rests and freedom flies.

But there must be wings to touch the sky.

 

I am what I am.

I am a fingerprint....

I am an eclipse....

 

My recycled soul celebrates the sunrise.

I was once wearied and trapped in overlapping lifetimes,

But tonight I know for certain that the promises will tuck me in.

Sometimes slowly like a rainbow postponed,

 while the storm leaves a savage legacy,

 Sometimes quickly like a lightening strike in the dark....

 

But they always come to those who seek them.

  

You might want to go to Video (button on the Rt)....then my Favorites (on the screen) or Music then My Favorites!

Over Mexican food my good friend and sometime lover says to me. "You are the most difficult woman I have ever met. I don't know whether to take you to bed....tell you I love you.... or make you a casserole."

My answer to to him was "All three.....I'll take the casserole first."

So he calls me to tuck me in and tell me I'm beautiful....In my book that is a most acceptable lie. I don't even care that he is a Republican....he cooks and he tells the kindest lies.  

I live in Texas. I read the Boston Globe. Don't ask me why. I’ve never been to Boston....

There was a most amazing article in the Globe this morning. And I realized 1) Bush is waging war with America on all fronts (I kind of suspected this before) 2) More than anything I respect consistency, because it tells you who someone is….3) Even if I don’t agree with a policy,religious view or law I find it more palatable if it is a reflection of a true moral or social commitment held by the person or group that’s spouting it...4) I do not believe in capital punishment....I am whole heartedly in favor of stem cell research ......

 

This article made me think and it's too well written to try and paraphrase so I'm posting it below....

 *****Bush, the ethicist-in-chief

By Daniel Klein & Thomas Cathcart

| July 12, 2007

 IN A BRIEF ceremony in the East Room of the White House on June 2, President Bush vetoed legislation permitting federally funded embryonic stem cell research, declaring, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

The Ethicist-In-Chief's final word on the subject caught our eye right off the bat because we've always had a soft spot in our hearts for The Ethical. ......

 .... But unfortunately we went to school way before children were left behind, and that takes all the fun out of the pronouncement made by The Ethicker (as he calls himself). We're thinking particularly of our reading of that 18th-century, German, pronouncement-pooper, Immanuel Kant. Manny maintained that rational ethical actions must stem from principles or maxims "whose universality as a law you can at the same time will," and further, that this is the "only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself."

 Now we admit that our German is severely limited ("Salzkartoffel" and "Gerstensaft" pretty much exhaust our vocabulary), and that even in translation Kant is one abstruse kartoffel. But at least one thing he is saying is that if you're going to justify one action by an absolute principle, your other actions need to be consistent with that same principle. Come to think of it, our Cub Scout leader taught us more or less the same thing.

So what are we to make of Principled George's penchant for executing human beings in unparalleled numbers during his term as governor of Texas? He's on record as saying capital punishment serves as a deterrent of possible future murders and rapes, which sounds an awful lot like he's following a principle that says, "It's OK to take a human life in the hope of saving another human life." And that just doesn't seem to gel with his lofty pronouncement that, "Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical." Actually, it sounds more like its opposite.

But, hey, maybe we're just quibbling. Going from an abstract principle to a particular action is always a dicey business, as any bioethicist will tell you.

Take the doctor in the following story: A woman is in her doctor's office, and suddenly shouts out, "Doctor, kiss me." The doctor looks at her and says that it would be against his code of ethics to kiss her. About 20 minutes later the woman again shouts out, "Doctor, please, kiss me just once." Again he refuses, apologetically, but says that as a doctor he simply cannot kiss her. Finally another 15 minutes pass, and the woman pleads with the doctor, "Doctor, Doctor, please kiss me just once!!" "Look" he says, "I am sorry. I just cannot kiss you. In fact, I probably shouldn't even be sleeping with you." So maybe we've totally misjudged Mr. Bush. Perhaps he isn't a Kantian after all, but a Marxist, as in Groucho, who famously said, "These are my principles; if you don't like them, I have others."*********

Call me old fashioned but I guess I’m just trying to say I still like to be kissed when I’m being screwed