. Spinning .

Doing 50 mph on Route 118 to Goshen yesterday, I almost pulled a screeching U-ee when I spotted the rocks.

Long-time readers of Spinning will recall, but I’ll just throw a brief summary here of my interest in finding a good rock. My pre-paid funeral arrangements include being crispy-fried and dusted into a little (preferably something pretty with a nice design) metal box and buried out in the woods with a rock atop the spot that simply is carved with “Susan”.

Ever on the lookout for the perfect rock—I just don’t think that J will bother looking too long or too hard, and worry about what the hell he’d come up with—I spotted a wonderful display at a nursery in Litchfield of stones of varied colors, textures and forms, most about a foot or two high and about a coupla-two-tree wide. Luckily there was another traveler behind me so decided that I’d stop in on the way back home, and at the very least, price them out. This good fortune of extra time gave me the chance to reason it out.

Good thing I didn’t stop and make a complete ass of myself. These rocks must have weighed in at half a ton each. I doubt that J would have appreciated dragging one of them babies out to the woods. Even if I did manage to get one home and set it someplace in the backyard to await its purpose, I have the feeling that there it would remain for all eternity, and J would simply stick me someplace in the ground close by.

In discussing these rather somber final arrangements with my friend in Goshen, I reiterated the need to find a rock prior to necessity so that her husband could do the required carving of my name. Unfortunately, we tend to get a bit silly in some conversations, and I’m beginning to worry that, as she said, I’m going to end up with someone’s old pet rock with my name scrawled on in Magic Marker.

Against his obvious lack of attention to my worries on the subject, I could only threaten J that if there is a God and Heaven, I swear I will haunt him til my rock is fully carved and nicely set in place among the maples and pines. He said, “okay.”

My only fear in mixing cultures and blending them together too smoothly is the loss of some of our finest points of diversity—particularly in the area of food.

With St. Patrick’s day upon us, while I’m sure I’ve both Americanized and Polishcized my preparation of corned beef and cabbage, I do wonder what the traditional Irish methods of cooking it are? I use a pressure cooker, a flat cut of corned beef, bayleaf, peppercorns, paprika, sage and rosemary and cook that for one hour with a single can of beer only. After an hour, I’ll add potatoes, carrots, cabbage wedges and sometimes onions and cook for another fifteen minutes (times are counted when pressure is reached). Hmmmmm.

This is a typical-woman thing to do, and I don’t care who hears me say it: Why do women still believe that cooking and baking will cure everything from the common cold to cancer, and even beyond? Sneeze, and we’ll make chicken soup because you know it’s more powerful than “God bless you.” You call and tell me somebody died, and while I’m still on the phone I’m pulling things out of the refrigerator and cabinets and have the butter melted before you say goodbye. Men just wouldn’t, when faced with tragedy, rev up the Mix Master.

Nobody died, thank goodness, but I’ve baked two dozen cupcakes today (don’t feel bad, my fellow Narrativers, but my poor father mentioned last week about how he hadn’t had Black-Bottom Cups in years, and that’s what you were eating at the meetings). Then I made a huge pot of beef soup with barley, lentils, soup shank, carrots, broccoli, celery, potatoes and the kitchen sink. I’ve just stuck a lasagne in the oven. All of these will be portioned out for us, the elderly, and the ill. Our little platoon of chowhounds, whose last words on earth, I can foresee, will be, “More, please.”

And you know, no matter how good all this expended energy makes me feel for its productivity and giving spirit, I must admit: I have never been to even the most elaborately prepared and home-catered funeral where it managed to raise the dead.

Just realized how hard and heavy I’ve been hit with what I’ve come to term my “devils” lately, and it seems to be more than coincidence, or perhaps I’ve simply adopted them by way of explanation. They’ve shown up in all my poetry, and prick me with their firey pitchforks of doubt. In the last post, I took a compliment to my writing, perhaps a bit too greedily, taking “there” to mean Spinning, whereas it might have meant Confrontation which would be more likely, and that Spinning would be “here” instead. But it doesn’t matter, because as is most often the case with obsessive writers, a few good words will urge them further into the furnace and indeed, I have spent all morning working on a story.

Was taking it as just another of my peccadillos, and so in stride, but then something tempted me into taking the Tarot Card Quiz at Quizilla, and now I’m wondering if perhaps I oughtn’t plan on attending church some Sunday morn. But with my tendency to survive despite my tendency to sabotage the same, I fear a congregation of innocents and holies would fall down in more than swoon when I walked in.

So here’s my tarot tale, taken twice (in an effort to both ensure accuracy and try for a nicer reading):

You are the Devil card. The Devil is based on the figure Pan, Lord of the Dance. The earthy physicality of the devil breeds lust. The devil’s call to return to primal instincts often creates conflict in a society in which many of these instincts must be kept under
control. Challenges posed by our physical bodies can be overcome by strength in the
mental, emotional, and spiritual realms. Pan is also a symbol of enjoyment and rules  our material creativity. The devil knows physical pleasure and how to manipulate the physical world. Material creativity finds its output in such things as dance, pottery, gardening, and sex.

The self-actualized person is able to accept the sensuality and usefulness of the
devil’s gifts while remaining in control of any darker urges. Image from The Stone Tarot deck.

http://hometown.aol.com/newtarotdeck/

Which Tarot Card Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I’m back and feeling better for a couple days of traveling. And oh, the places I have been!

I’ve been running back and forth between England and Malaysia, my Land Rover stuffed with my belongings, and determined to bring me searching through the foreign faces until sadly, my traveling companion died in hospital in Kuala Lipis and this trip came to an end.

I’ve felt the dry African heat upon my face that made my skin so tight the slightest breeze seemed like the cold of Paris late in the year. Paris was, I fear, a visit out of season. And my new friends were having problems so I must admit I was on the edge the entire time.

Machu Picchu was wet with rain and river, and the living things in the forest were about as bearable as the tour group which I finally abandoned to seek out Incan history on my own.

I’ve eaten birthday cake—homemade, like none you’ve ever tasted; cream cheese frosting thick upon the top and between the layers so you could separate and lick them partially clean and still have enough left to make you want to sticky-finger up all the crumbs from your plate.

There was a family that I stayed a week with for a day here in Connecticut, and I tried so hard to understand them but they didn’t even seem to understand themselves. I couldn’t turn my back, I rewrote their story as an offer of a hopeful ending and beginning to their lives.

You say you don’t believe me, that I could not have done all this—and truly, I haven’t told the half of it—and yet been gone two, maybe three days at the most?

But it’s true; I went via Confrontation, Issue No. 84/85. Partly inspired by this post on The Great Lettuce Head, and desperately needing to mentally journey far, far away for just a little while, I have been reading. Yes, and writing—loads of poetry that while not good, took the place of conversations that I simply couldn’t face the last few days, and some rewriting on the fictional end of life.

It was a welcome respite from reality, this journey of the mind, and gave perspective to the healing power of the pen.