Personal Growth

The Irony of Life, or Why I Hate Throwing Things Away

/ Pam Goode / 2 Comments


A few weeks ago, I decided to take a leap — a big one for me. But after years of “NO, I Might Need That!” I felt in the depths of my soul that it was time to purge, to let go and live happily ever after with what I already have — mostly, to feel lighter myself.

Ohhhhh how very wrong I was. Or right. Or something in between. The truth is that I just don’t know, because purging is not in my wheelhouse. But a week or so ago, something in me changed, and I hit the LEAP button. Had I done a positive thing that would make life easier, or had I just wildly tossed all the supplies that I’ll certainly need on Monday?

And in truth I wasn’t even quite sure what my end goal was, but I was definitely certain that some sort of action needed to happen. How did I know? Honestly, that part remains a bit fuzzy, but I forged ahead anyway, enlisting the help of a friend and going at it Big Time.

So we put on old clothes and sat on the floor for hours and climbed through years of well-stashed “but I might need this!” mosaic supplies, eyeing each piece relentlessly. And then, after filling boxes upon boxes upon boxes of glass and china that I reluctantly deemed “will never be used” … I tossed it. Okay not all of it, but so many boxes that my back still hurts, AND I’ve lightened half of my supplies. What was I thinking?

It’s a funny thing. One day life seems perfect, and the next day you realize you’re only using half of what you’ve collected over the years and maybe you DON’T need it all. And maybe you don’t even know exactly why, but you see the path and it’s calling you. And then I shed my very-long-time way of seeing, and suddenly now it’s hard to remember what I gave away.

And even more surprising, I found myself joyously making art again and planning classes.

So very often it’s the journey that finds us.

Strapped for Time?

/ Pam Goode / 19 Comments

Strapped for TimeSo the good news is that it’s 2016 and I’m wandering down an empty lane in Paris on lle St. Louis. I’m thrilled to be here, but a bit anxious. “In Paris?” you ask? Well, yes. My conundrum is worrying how I’m going to meld myself into this fabulous opportunity while simultaneuosly meeting a deadline. Cause, you know — Paris/Work … Paris/Work ….. Yes, time has me by the short hairs, and I don’t like it one bit.

And then I glance up, and in an instant my entire attitude changes and I burst out laughing, my feelings blatantly displayed for all to see. Honestly, how likely is it that someone would have taped up this clock and dropped it onto my path on the very day that I’m (more than) tremblingly overloaded?

Strapped for time — that’s me, and a big THANK YOU to the universe for letting me laugh it out in a big way.

Time is so often a deterrent, isn’t it? We all want more of it, but we’re quick to specify that we want *this* kind of time and not *that* kind of time. More time with those we love, and less time paying bills. More time to learn and create, and less time studying for finals. More time to savor a good meal, and less time standing in supermarket lines. Of course there are a few enlightened souls among us who can make the most of the lines and the numbers and the tests and even find joy there, but mostly we tend to try bargaining. “Dear Time, I will gladly pay you Thursday for a Cheeseburger on Wednesday.” And so it seems we spend our lives racing toward the world we think we want rather than changing the way we experience it.

Is this the way I want to live? Nope. Nope. And Nope.

I want to look at life, live life, and love life in a way that feeds my soul now and forever. Doing so isn’t impossible — the truth is that so much of it is up to us. So change isn’t dependent on time, and time doesn’t always equal change. Look at it this way: If I allot eight hours and fifteen minutes to a flight, I can walk the streets of Paris tomorrow instead of Charlotte. That’s a huge plus, but I wonder — can I *feel* Paris in an instant on any day of any year?

To an extent, yes. But I can also dedicate eight hours to writing a proposal and get absolutely nothing of value accomplished. So the concept of time is pretty wishy washy in my book, and how can I hold myself so accountable to wishy washy?

I can’t, and I won’t, and I don’t have to. I need to step it up. Now.

Let’s say I have ten great years left, fifteen good ones, and five glad-to-be-here years. At 25, I figured I was young enough to feel my way through it, and I did. But forty hit me like a deer in the headlights. And now at 60 (or so), planning my Next Ten Fabulous Years has became high priority, and I’m working it in every direction I can grab. Fortunately I’ve learned along the path that life is pretty much exactly what you make it.

Get going.

And today I plan to look at this giant, banded timepiece a new way: I’m not the one  who’s strapped. I won’t be the one who’s strapped. I think it’s time to breathe, dream, plan, work, and grab my joy. Sometimes You Gotta.

Beach Poetry

/ Pam Goode / 4 Comments

Some days the wind is so merciless
that the few birds venturing out
hasten in their flight,
cursing the rougher movements, the lack of food,
the strain of wings.

Some days the sand blows so briskly that it stings,
minuscule dots of quartz and glass
co-mingling
with the sharper air that
pulls my breath away.

Some days seem ripe for staying in
and lolling here and there on
softer sofas than this.

Yet some days lay splendidly before us,
mingling breath and sea and quartz
into our dreams.

© Pam Goode 2023 (Poem)

Image by Ben Wiid

Kodachrome: The Power of a Photograph

/ Pam Goode / 2 Comments

As a girl with a mirror, I never saw myself as ugly, despite my stubbornly cow-licked hair. I was short-ish and thin, with dark hair and darker eyes that could see to China and back. Out with my mother as a child or with friends in high school, I could feel eyes on me despite my shyness and disdain for beauty products. I had only a handful of photographs from those days, but it was enough. I knew my mirror well then, not because I was vain, but because I needed to see who was behind those eyes — where she came from, what she thought, where she would go. She didn’t spill any of the answers, but I had a passable understanding of her from year to year.

Coming to know who you are is a very personal journey. I’ve never been comfortable on the lens end of a camera, and early photos illustrate that all too well. So while I pulled at non-compliant hair and did my best to fit in, I was invariably the awkward girl in any photograph. And a photograph, no matter how random, how good, how bad, how bland or how earth shattering, changes the way you see yourself, does it not? Even if I could have convinced my brain that I don’t really look like that, or at  least not all the time, it’s quite clear that this is the face I show to the world more often than not. But we are never just an awkward face.

My mom hated having her picture taken, and solved the issue by grimacing garishly and sticking her tongue out for every click of the button. It was a pretty effective way to erase the possibility that maybe this was her real face, her real soul, being shown. And why? She was beautiful.

It made me sad.

Thirty years later, I received an unexpected package from a very-long-ago boyfriend that held a cd filled with images he had captured in college. Back in the 70’s when few of us had cameras and even fewer had good ones, he was rarely without his Ricoh. To this day, he remains the only person, outside of my children, who could capture an image that showed my soul, simply because somewhere among those 1,095 days we spent together, I finally relaxed in front of the ever-present lens and let it see me.

And in a flash I was given the ability to see the girl I was, the girl I am, rather than the girl I’d been carrying around for decades. It made me happy.

Imagination / Perception / Memory: They live on in us regardless of how closely they match the actuality, don’t they?

Waiting

/ Pam Goode / 6 Comments


Is there a purpose in waiting? I feel a bit like it’s a vigil, which makes sense. I know it will mean a bevy of time, a tsunami of pain, a gasping of fear.

I can do that.

What it doesn’t require is my personal presence, but most definitely my spiritual presence.

And I can do that.

What it doesn’t promise is a requested outcome, allowing only my prayers.

What is does promise is waiting. I don’t mind waiting, and yet I hate it. Or maybe I don’t hate waiting, but I hate the reason.

Some reasons are joyous. Some, uncertain. Others, life changing.

And the time it takes to receive an answer of “yes, it’s this, and it will be okay. Probably” is both momentary and lifelong.

And the time it takes to receive an answer of “yes, it’s this, and I’m sorry,” is also both momentary and a lifetime.

Lifetime. Lifelong.

I’m not sure I like those words anymore.

I like the word forever. And ever and ever and evermore.

“The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Love to All

Clouds

/ Pam Goode / 9 Comments


I love clouds.

In fact I love them like crazy and I don’t even bother wondering why — I just look up in awe every day, gasp a little, and snap. Honestly, there’s not a day that I arrive home without some new cloud photo stashed in my computer.

This one was snapped at dusk near my daughter’s house, and I can’t help wondering when the fire will capture her too.

And it’s an interesting thing about clouds — I almost always miss the grand finale. I suppose it’s because I tend to come home at 5 or 6 and stay there. And even though the clouds are everywhere around me, my house is secluded, the trees abundant and tall, and to be honest, I forget.

Yes, I forget what isn’t in front of my eyes at a given moment. We’re all like that to some extent, but you know what? It’s a huge flaw in our day to day. Too often, the magic is exactly where we don’t look.

But then … on the days that I have a bit more leeway, I might walk out of the grocery store or bookstore or starbucks and BAM — I’m gobsmacked by the pulsing light that streaks the sky with gusto, almost as if the sky accidentally broke and, in the time it took to fit the pieces back together, we’ve almost, almost, forgotten that moment of magic.

Because we humans — we really need to learn to SEE.

Love to All

The Really, Really, Really Bad Day

/ Pam Goode / 12 Comments

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.”
(Quote by Bill Watterson)

Today I was totally prepped for a great day. My husband has been on the other side of the continent for a week, and he flies home tonight. I’m wearing my Happy Clothes, saved for special days. The house is clean. Ish. I’ve amassed a neatly folded give-away pile with oooooooodles of my favorite (too small) outfits, we’re deep in the dregs of summer, which means we’ll soon be cooler (right?), I’m on break from cleaning the attic (self-imposed), and the garden flowers are joyously blooming despite daily basking in the bowels of hell.

But then — who knows, but something clicked — or unclicked, and hell threw open that door. And I’d say I haven’t been able to shake this Very Bad Day, but the truth is that I’m just not ready. Because you have to be real. You have to walk through these things rather than around. Otherwise they never go away, and just bury themselves in your psyche instead.

So I looked up Bad Day quotes. And honestly, they totally sucked except for Hobbes and Bill, so I made my own.

Snark: an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.

Blech. I really, really don’t like snarky people. We all have so much goodness deep in our hearts — why waste it on the opportunity to hurt someone?

And I guess that’s the extent of it. I haven’t been shot or robbed or suffered a great loss. I have endless happy choices at my fingertips. But today, I guess what I really am is sad.

And I am. I’m really, really sad.

Footnote: Hobbes, named for philosopher Thomas Hobbes, is Calvin’s stuffed tiger and best friend.

Those Days

/ Pam Goode / 5 Comments

I got a fast car.
You got a car with a little bit of rubber,
keeping us slow when the slow is good,
and we’re loving the life in between,
in between.

Dolled up right for yesterday
and hunting tomorrow
in a hungry way,
gotta go, gotta go, gotta
go again, cause that’s surely
most all that we know.

Oh that’s surely most all
That we know.

We know.

© Pam Goode

Dingle Bells!

/ Pam Goode / 7 Comments

I’m just back from two and a half days in and around beautiful Dingle, Ireland and surroundings, and I regret to say that there’s no way I can show you everything. I’ll start out with several of our first stops and will try to keep up with my favorites a few at a time.

I never quite realized that there’s only one way to get to Dingle unless you happen to be driving a large truck or bus. All these years I suspected that my co-travelers were having fun torturing me, but apparently not. So yes, we did the Connor Pass, which is either miraculously gorgeous or head-spinningly dangerous, depending on your tolerance for screaming. The road is long and indeed winding, and the fog! Thick as thieves!

One of the highest mountain passes in Ireland, the path is winding and narrow, and the height is 410 meters (or 1345.13 feet) about sea level. With sheer drops and some roads too narrow for two cars to pass (they’re forced to back up and let one move forward at a time), a lot of people consider it great fun. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s absolutely a standout experience.

Closer to ground level, the sea is everywhere, and much closer to my comfort zone.

Below, you’ll see some of my favorites from Day 1.

Enjoy!

Left to Right and Top to Bottom:

1-3 are images from the Connor Pass.

The last six photos are from a beautiful and very secluded beach. Isn’t nature incredible?????


Inspired by a month-long artist residency graciously provided by Olive Stack Gallery, Listowel, Ireland, Day 18

Gotta Write

/ Pam Goode / 1 Comment



Dear Self: I started this blog in 2007.

Sixteen years ago.

Is that long? Not so long, considering that I’ve taken plenty of breaks. I don’t remember why, but I doubt it was for a lack of words. More likely it was simply business — family, jobs, travel, the basic what-we-do that seems to determine every morsel of our daily dailies.

But even from the start, there was such a beauty to the practice of writing. I wrote much, much more than I blogged, keeping most of it private until I found my comfort zone, which primarily means that I simply stopped worrying about what other people thought.

Boring? Often, no doubt. Redundant? Oh yeah. We all have our passions, and they’re not a one-and-done deal. Self-centered? Sure, but … as writers, we pull from within ourselves. That’s not a bad thing — we all need to pay more attention to what we have to offer instead of just sitting on it for no good reason.

My major focus has always been watching, listening, and working to understand life — the joys, generosity, foibles, kindness, hatred, simplicity, and so much more. I’m drawn again and again to grasp the tiny moments — the ones we often don’t notice or think we’re too busy to for.

And that’s not true. So not true.

The image at the top of my blog is me — my mind, my joy — grabbing moments and jotting them down as quickly and legibly as I can, particularly on walks — a phone in one hand and a scrappy piece of paper full of scribbles in the other. Like everyone else on the planet, I usually think I’m “too busy” with this or that, which sometimes includes staring into space and letting my mind follow its will without judgment.

What I’ve learned:

Listen more than you talk.

Be free with support for others.

Share when asked.

Write without worrying if it’s good or bad. The more you write, the better it gets.

Say Yes when it’s a healthy response.

And most importantly, Let That Shit Go.

Really.

Inspired by a month-long artist residency graciously provided by Olive Stack Gallery, Listowel, Ireland, Day 14