Laurie Menzies James

INEXPLICABLE. The “reality” of every life is truly beyond the capacity of words.

How can we begin to put a “label” on the multiplicity, the levels of complexity, of a life within its given “dash” (that marker we place in between the dates of our arrival and departure from this location within time and space)?

I have worn many labels so far in this life: daughter, alcoholic, lawyer, wife. Many of those “titles” (Esq., Mrs.) no longer apply.

But I’m still here. I have simply expanded beyond the words that used to de-“scribe” me. I am no longer trapped by an “image.” Once you see through the smoke and remove the mirrors, you can find the “real thing.” And that reality, my friends, is hard to pin down in a word.

As my “story” goes …

My husband died in the fall of 2019. I hadn’t met him until I was almost 40 and never thought he would leave so soon. Our life together now seems almost like a dream I once lived. Not long thereafter I left the practice of elder law. Money and status couldn’t convince me to gain from a legal system that enforced laws killing people for their own good by depriving them of love.

Love is the only cure for all of life’s madness and the last thing that smart people would ever think of.

The entire tapestry of my old life was torn to shreds and that gave me time to inspect the fabric. To my surprise, I found a lot of “synthetic” reality had been interwoven with what I thought was real.

Highly educated in the “current” system, I became a successful swimmer and wore the suit of a shark in its “stream of commerce.”  I happily swam along without looking under the surface until my citizen-“ship” sprung a leak.

Did I live in some watery world that I hadn’t noticed before? If I think I live on land, why would I “settle” for “just-ice”? Had someone pulled some wool over my eyes and made me a sheep that had simply learned to follow the leader? Why do they give you a “sheepskin” after you prove you can sufficiently spit back the current version of reality being written by those in “author”-ity?

I have been studying. By examining the words that we use to describe everything, my eyes have been opened to a world that exists beneath the surface of what we think is real. I do not have answers for anyone else. But I have taken back the pen of my own story. I am now the one “AS-KING” the questions.

And my new book is about ready to surface.

If you want to give me a new label, you can now call me the author of my own script with this thing called life.