Maria Scott Herndon: Fabric Of Being

Today I am writing to expel an increasing collection of thoughts from my head and on to virtual paper. Thoughts I can look at and organize, weed out or improve upon. I am sensitive. I know this about myself. I’ve done my best to insulate myself from the cruelties of life. I prefer to keep my brain, and my heart, free from all the suffering of the world. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible for me to completely avoid current events, politics, and all the ways human beings hurt each other and the world around them. Here’s the thing- even when I’m not out actively seeking the news, when I’m really trying to stay over here in my zen little lane- the damn news is everywhere. I used to think that watching the news, reading up on current events, and so on made me a “well informed citizen”. What it actually made me was afraid. Afraid of terrorists, nuclear weapons and the swine flu. I was afraid of lots of invisible enemies I didn’t even know I had. Left unchecked, fear can become a p...

A cigarette dangled ever so weakly from his chapped lips. His eyes were closed and his hands gripped a cold bottle of Stella, his only companion for the night. Everyone else had gone home. The bar was dusty and dark. Clouds of smoke gathered in mid air and hovered like vicious ghosts above the ground. Most of the chairs had been placed upside down on the dirty tables, the barkeep was cleaning glasses with his greasy towel and the waitress was handling a broom ever so clumsily to collect broken pieces of glass that had assembled throughout the evening. It was now four o’clock in the morning and heavy rain was falling outside. There were no stars in the heavens tonight. “You gonnah head home soon, pahl?” the barkeep asked hi remaining customer. “The bah’s closed you know.” “I am aware.” The cigarette man said. “I will leave now.” He crushed his limp cigarette and poured the remaining drink down his throat. His gulps were big and loud. Each gulp sounded like the cry of a drunken seagu...

Luck. Is there such a thing? I don't think so. I think "luck” is a cop out. It's a word we've treasured word over time. We cherish it because it implies hope. Luck suggests that there are powers outside of ourselves that work in our favor; elves for ourselves. The truth is that things like winning the lotto, missing a flight on a doomed plane, or even meeting the love of your life is more about probability and statistics. Most of the goodness comes from hard work and the decisions we make. We strive to get what we want in life. We make decisions, big and small and we have to live with those decisions. Sometimes we make mistakes but sometimes we thrive. I haven't always felt this way. Like the rest of us, the years have taught me plenty. I went from having a sort of a hippie-dippy ideology where everything was up to chance and that we were fools to think we had any hand in shaping our own lives to realizing the power of simply being aware of good opport...

I stood aimlessly at the check-out stand embracing a six-pack of two-ply toilet paper. The clock reads 8:15, as I itemize the groceries; I toss them on to the conveyer belt. A woman about 70 or 75 cuts into line, two steps before me with a package of ravioli and a loaf of French bread. Dinner by 9:30 and bed by 10:00, I figured as I observed her. No children, no hips, no husband, no ring, a dog, no a cat, I presumed, sits curled on barely worn paisley sofa waiting her lonely owner's return. Standing behind me was a twenty something girl. I remembered a young me. Then I realize that my own daughters were older than she is. I clung the toilet paper rolls to my chest. It’s in the cold, brightly lit grocery stores where life gets very real. I glanced at the Cosmo propped precociously in its wire shelving. I always feel a little resentful at magazines like these make money by attempting to make women feel like they’re not good enough offering topics galore on how to diet,...

  As the day looms and time marches on, sometimes the smell of my fear becomes more pungent. While my determination to make middle age an era of opportunity and adventure, there is just something about actually crossing over the great divide  that I can't not wrap my mind around. A moment in time, a mere second and here I am halfway through my fifties. Sometime overnight I’m going to cross the great abyss of sixty. Logically, I know, that if the fates allow,  I’ll wake up in the same bed, in the same body, but sometime during the night when the moon steals the light from the sun, time will steal from me another decade. I have no need to mourn the loss of perky boobs or a thin waist.  My confidence and body have now finally crossed paths and whilst there’s a few things I would tweak, I’m certainly not crying over the loss of my twenties’ body. Sometimes I look at people the same age as me and am overcome with the sensation that I am surrounded by ol...

Sam Kapp was a sax player. He was an Aspie, which means he was afflicted with the mental disability known as Asperger's Syndrome, a form of high-functioning autism. A lot of people know about it now, but not when Sam was growing up. Nobody could put a finger on what was really wrong with Sam. Everybody concluded that he was just basically slow because he didn't try to play touch football or baseball or even hopscotch and although he hardly talked at all, when he did open his mouth and respond to teachers or waitresses or secretaries, it was always something odd. It was odder than odd. It was so off-the-wall weird it often made people uncomfortable. His parents feared he was retarded but not stupid enough to be committed so, through third grade, he sat on the bunk bed in his room looking at pictures in National Geographic and Dr. Seuss; Cat in the Hat, or naked African virgins. Sam  watched TV. He couldn't actually work the TV. ...

When we see a destitute man hunched over a shopping cart or a stained woman in rags with the top of shoes on callused feet, do we feel a sympathetic sense of indignation? Do we feel compassion? If they did have shoes, could we stand inside them? It was 1983, I was waiting in a friend's car while she ran into a nearby shop. Something from across the street caught my eye. It was somehow off key relative to the music of the city. I studied the stirrings of newspapers and plastic bags. A cough of exhaust from passing bus unveiled a vague shape of a woman amongst the pandemonium of torn magazines, Styrofoam cups, McDonalds burger wrappers, grocery bags and various other urban droppings. Nearby, stood a granny pull-cart filled with still more bags. She was shaped by the debris of her city, She appeared to be organizing and reorganizing various discarded plastic bottles and aluminum soda cans with genteel precision of a collector of fine crystal. Every so often, she'd abruptly sto...

I am at my soul's window behind the shaded curtains of cautious tribulation. I stay safely encased within my rotund frame protected against the eyes of men. I somehow traded sensuality for personality. I figure if I can make them laugh than I am not dependent upon my body to impress. Thus, I have long since lost the battle to set my own standards of beauty and embrace my specific femaleness. I have let myself be measured by the likes and dislikes of Vogue magazines, commercials on television or the bodies of women twenty years my junior. I was thin as a child and through young womanhood. I was a lifeguard for the very beaches I now avoid. Subconsciously, the origin of the weight is based in fear; fear of sexual expectation. Nothing could have prepared me for the startling irony I was to discover. My largeness has rendered me invisible. Within this invisibility I find great freedom. If a man is walking in my direction, I can look him full in the face without being afraid of...

I am the child of a single parent who was a Narcissist. I didn’t always know she was a Narcissist. I didn’t always know there was anything wrong with the way she behaved. I didn’t always know that she was not like everyone else. However, something felt off kilter, but I didn’t know what it was. My mother trained me to tell her that everything she did was right. And when I did not agree with her, I was a bad daughter who betrayed her and then used guilt to keep me in line. A thought of my own was forbidden. Yet, my mother took credit for all my accomplishments. The fact that I've had so few accomplishments as an adult might have something to do with that. Who knows? The low self esteem that plagued me throughout my lifetime has made it very challenging to be a good student, employee, girlfriend and especially a mother. My mother projected the image of the perfect parent who happens to have an imperfect child. She covered herself efficiently. She used her charm to control ho...

You know how you feel now – so isolated and alone? Wishing someone/anyone would see you/hear you/recognize that you have value? That’s how it is, sweetie. You’re going to be feeling that for the rest of your life. Get used to it. And you know how you’re always chasing boys around the playground? Writing their names on your notebook…sometimes making up a name, just so people will think you have a boyfriend? How the ones you like always let you know they have a crush on someone else? That’s pretty much the way it is. And then, there’s school. You never manage to get your work done on time. Everyone thinks you’re smart, but you’re really just scraping by. Too bad. You’re going to take those lousy habits with you throughout your life and it’s really going to fuck you up. I don’t know what to tell you about that. You think you’re kind of funny looking now? Well, you are. You won’t change much. You’ll never grow out of the “interesting” stage. No one is going to be coming after ...