its time to stop soul crushing.

if you know me or have had more than a 6 minute conversation with me, you know i love the soul. the soul is the real you, the bluebird that wants to sing out the message you have inside, the sermon to loveliness and realness and poppies and sunshine and childhood and yes and it is fragile and soft and beautiful and all things good and lovely in the world. i say lots of things are my favorite activity, but my #1 favorite activity in life is finding out the message of people's souls. nothing makes me happier. sometimes it takes hacking down brick walls with a shovel and reaching like you've never reached before, pounding with both fists, getting out your chainsaw, but i can usually find it with time and effort. the thing is, its usually worth the investment, because people's souls are incredibly beautiful. i like to visualize what every person's soul looks like--a seaside mural, a lone bluebird warbling to the heavens, the sound of claire de lune by debussy, a field of poppies stretching out forever. sometimes the soul is buried so deep you can't even see it at first, but its always there, and people want to share their souls, even if they feel nervous at first. everyone wants to be understood. everyone wants to be real. the problem is, life beats you up and people are mean and people bruise each other's bluebirds, so you push your soul down to the dark interior of your being, covering it all up in a big pile of meaninglessness and defenses, defending your soft heart with walls of apathy and jadedness. i guess what got me down today is i realized there is enough hunger, poverty, sadness, depression, illness, and so forth in the world to crush people's souls, that no one needs other people crushing their soul too. the universe is capable of enough soul crushing on its own, without people helping it along. the scary thing is the soul crushing done by other people is the most devastating. look at the holocaust. look at the wife you know who is desperate for her husband's attention. look at the lonely girl that feels like she has no friends. look at the abused child. sometimes people don't even realize they are doing it, but i see it happening everyday, all the time, and sometimes i just want to yell out to the world wake up! pay attention! you are crushing people's souls! you are crushing my soul! sometimes its just not caring, or not showing people you care, or treating people like less than the bluebirds they are, or being so inwardly wrapped up that you can't look beyond yourself to other souls in need. in a song by jewel (i know, who quotes jewel), she says we are all fragile flames. i agree. we are all gold inside, buried treasures, warbling bluebirds, and we should treat each other as such. we are all fragile. in a poem i wrote once i said cup the bluebird in tiny hands, gently, gently (i love to quote myself). in a much better poem t.s. eliot wrote, he ends it with this:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

i feel like that whimper is the last sound of the soul as it is dying, crushed too many times by too many people not caring, too many people not listening, too many people not treating each other right, too many people forgetting to tell other people they matter.

im sending a desperate plea out into the internet world right now. a message in a blog bottle. this is what it says:

dear humanity,
be gentle with each other. be nice to each other. care about each other. look for people's bluebirds. care about the message of their soul. tell them they matter. cup their bluebirds in tiny hands, and never, ever bruise it, even when you are tempted to. help combat hunger by loving your neighbor. we're all hungry. stop soul poverty by listening. we are all poor. fight against cancer by spreading love. we all have cancer of the heart. leave notes. if you think something nice in your head, say it. hug your mom. kiss your girlfriend. tell people how you feel. give gifts. ask people about themselves. care enough to listen to their answer. remember their answers. don't crush souls. build souls. pay attention . make people feel like they matter. forget yourself. be good. be true. help people's bluebirds come out and sing. be sincere. be real. let your bluebird out even when its hard. even when people bruise it. be a sermon to loveliness. sing like the mountains are singing back. its a happier way to be. its time to stop contributing to the soul crushing. its time to combat the soul crushing, and it starts with a listening ear and a quiet hug and finding the beauty deep in each person's heart. we'll get better with practice. but we got to start somewhere, so i say we start today, right now, at 6:53 PM on Wednesday April 9, 2008. i know we can do it humanity. its up to us.

sincerely,
shannon elizabeth mehner.

shes keepin it real. im really into blogging about people i love these days.

her parents are hippies. her mom dated prefontaine. i met her at the age of 14, when i was still wearing pleather pants and chasing the cool. she was something real in a sea of high school. sometimes your soul tells you where to go even when your mind isn't grown up enough to know why you're being led somewhere. we were different. i loved makeup. she loved soccer. i loved kevin jones. she loved jack kerouac. from the outside, it looked like a mismatch. but my soul conquered, and we became friends. birds of a feather flock together, even when one of the birds is dressed in pleather. im glad my soul is smarter than i am.

we liked music. we liked books. we liked hating on high school. we liked hanging out with our friends that had graduated and were so college hip. we liked sitting in her station wagon and discussing our mature 16 year old perspectives on life and teenage social classes. shes probably the only real friend i had in high school. real as in she actually cared, real as in she let the bluebird out of her heart once in a while even at the risk of social rejection and bluebird bruising by 17 year olds trying to win battle for biggest biotch. i was buried in coolness and insecurities and unsureties, but she dug deep and she found me. she was probably the first person beyond my family that really dug into me like that, that stuck her shovel in and said lets find something real even though you've covered yourself in black eyeliner. she taught me how to listen to the bluebird in my heart. she appreciated my bluebird. she told me "damnit, let your bluebird sing! He has such a lovely voice!" she is just one of those people. she is real. she can't not be.

i got a boyfriend. we drifted apart. i still hate that situation even though we reconciled over aim (a reunion of wnderchic and irbysan). we love each other again. we dont talk that often these days, but ill never forget. you dont forget stuff like that, becuase it is filed away in your soul's permanent files, with a sticky note that says "this person changed me forever," and a reminder on your to do list--"thank so and so for helping to create me."

well its time for some spring cleaning cause my soul is tired of piles of untouched to do lists. thank you meredith irby for helping to create me--thank you for seeing beyond the pleather. you are a hippie among men, a bluebird among sparrows, a reality in a world of high schoolers chasin the cool, and ill never forget that you helped me learn how to sing.

the mujer from tennessee. or a tribute to one of the best.

her name is deanna. she is 5'8,'' wears a size 10 shoe, is from Tennessee, cusses like a sailor, and pulled herself up by the boot straps in life. She's the kind of person that flips you the double bird if you say she can't do something. she hates exercise, loves colors and big earrings, and will become your best friend in 3 minutes. she got discounted lunches in elementary school because her mom didn't make enough to pull them above the poverty line. her southern drawl comes out something fierce when she gets mad.

when she was 18 she decided to go to mexico. the folks at home didnt know why she wanted to go to a dirty country full of dirty people. but she flipped them the double bird and said "forget you, im going". and she did. she fell in love with a name named jorge. he bought her earrings and was fascinated by this mujer from tennessee, a whirlwind of woman that knew her mind and burped in public. he wooed her with flowers and promises. he was lying. he broke her heart.

it didnt matter. she flipped him the double bird and said you can't keep me down, and you cant ruin mexico for me. mexico changed her life. a part of her heart opened. a whole country full of horchata and laughing and hospitality. it reminded her of the south. she had to come home at the end of the summer, but she couldnt forget the scent of mexican laundry.

she changed her major to latin american studies. her mom threw a fit. she flipped her the double bird and said "sorry mama, but this is what i want for my life". she couldnt forget the faces of the people. she couldnt get rid of the feeling that she belonged there, that the people needed her. a small town girl with big dreams, and a love for fiestas.

so she went back to mexico, flipping double birds by the minute to everyone telling her she was crazy. she studied migration. she peed on the ground and lived on a rancho. she didnt understand why these people had to eat beans for every meal and didnt know how to read. she wanted to say to the mexican government "what the hell is going on?" and flip them the double bird. she didn't, because she'd get shot and she'd have to practice her spanish a bit more before that. but she kept on caring.

she came back and kept studying. she still misses mexico. she dreams of swimming across that wide river that divides mexico from texas alongside the wetbacks coming over to pick fruit to make enough cash to buy their children shoes. she says shes going to wear her tennessee drivers license on a chain around her neck, and when the border patrol shoots her down thinking shes an illegal, boy theyre going to be in for a surprise. "we shot one of our own!" theyre going to say, and maybe someone will think about that a little bit. when she tells you about this dramatic death she has planned for herself, she laughs, but you can tell she means it. "one of our own?" she finishes, her face getting more somber. "I bet thats what God says about everyone they shoot in that river."

maybe one day she will swim across that river with her tennessee drivers license hanging around her neck. maybe one day she'll convince the world mexicans are people too, people that deserve shoes for their children. for now, she is deanna, the mujer from tennessee that flips the double bird to people that try to keep her caged, a free bird singing in a southern drawl, and one of my best friends.

diesta like you mean it.

as prime minister of the world, i make the laws. and i think my new law is that everyone in the world, at precisely 4:36 PM MST, has to quit whatever they are doing and dance their pants off for 22 minutes. I think this may be the solution to world hunger, poverty, depression, obesity, heartache and all other issues plaguing the universe. maybe not the cure all, but definitely a way to alleviate some of these travesties and bring some more joy into the planet. dancing is good for the soul. good for the body. good for the mind. good for the heart. and if everyone, every day, HAD to dance, dance like no one was watching, dance like they had ants in their pants, dance like their life depended on it, i think the world would be a little brighter and hearts would be a a little happier and a little less genocide would take place. not siesta. the world sleeps enough. its obviously not helping. the answer is diesta. diesta is the solution. diesta for 22 minutes, and then return to normal life. i will have to ask the dj of the world to make a dope playlist for the event, which will be piped in through a worldwide speaker system that i am working on installing. just imagine it with me. at 4:36 PM MST, back that thang up comes on from africa to jamaica to alaska to georgia, and everyone must stop, drop and back their thang up to the heavy beats of juvenile. families will be reunited. wars will end. love will be found. feuds will be forgotten. and we will all engage in some good old fashioned booty popping. one worldwide dance partay, and everyone is invited. no bouncer at this door. bring your shimmying arms and your belly rolls. its going to revolutionize the world folks. diesta or die.

im mad.

im mad at the usa. i need to be out of the country. this is the longest ive been in the country for years. i think my soul is breaking.

tomatoes like apples.

today i sat outside the library in my stunna shades and read a book and felt happy about the birthday of life and love and wings and the sun. while i was sitting there, a couple next to me talked, and i listened. i felt invisible. i wasnt invisible, but almost.

she brought him tomatoes. she was nervous to bring him the tomatoes, i could tell from her voice. he had said they were his favorite a while back, and she remembered. he laughed because she gave them to him and he said no knife to slice them? and she kept saying, i thought you eat them like an apple. then he would say thank you. i could tell from his voice he wanted to say thank you for real, it means a lot, but he couldnt say it. it was stuck inside. she kept apologizing for not bringing a knife. he ate the tomatoes. all of them. you could tell they were a little bit in love. probaby not even dating, but a little bit in love.

he kept asking her if she liked tomatoes. she said yes, but not just plain like he was eating them. she would laugh nervously. he would repeat the question. they talked about tomatoes for one half hour. i listened to the whole conversation without ever seeing what they looked like, busy being invisible. i didnt really want to see them, just listen. i liked listening to the ebb and flow of their voices, the anxious undertones, her nervousness at presenting him with this gift, at revealing that she cared, his pleasure to receive it. all unspoken, and so, so beautiful.

it was a perfect dialogue for a perfect afternoon. tomatoes eaten like apples, giving and receiving, laughing and loving, and me invisible beside it all.

ever wonder where gummy worms come from?

have you ever tried the gummy eggs (trolli sour brite eggs to be exact) that are supposed to be what gummy worms come out of? all i have to say about this little treat is they make you sweat. i dont know why, i dont know what, but we ate some today in the cougareat and being the enormous appreciator of candy i am, i thought i would love them. which i did, but they make you sweat. go to your local walmart, cruise the kid candy aisle, and experience the birthplace of gummy worms, these strange little tie-dye egg creations, and tell me what you think, because i'm still figuring out what to think about it all. also wear a muscle tee and put on a good swipe of deoderant, because they are going to make you sweat.