I am here/now with your heart;
I hold your hands in here/now.
-Dainin Katagiri Roshi
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
are you my mother?
i looked over at the woman to the mat on my right and thought i was looking at my mother. it had been a long time. she had the short, curly hair. the feminine, true woman look. she had the physique. she had the smile, the face. but she could not have been my mother. i needed her today.
my posture toward her, for less than an hour, became that of a daughter. she was less practiced than me, and i wanted to show her respect. she was a woman. she looked like my mother. i wanted her to take me out to coffee and model a life for me. i wanted her to model a perspective. but this woman, truly not my mother, would have no perspective on my situation. she may have hers. but who could she possibly be besides someone with an eerily similar appearance? my mom would be 61. but she didn't make it to 35.
i remember going to aerobics with my mom. i don't know that she ever made it to yoga. she would do her work-out, and i would do ballet and tap. it was mother/daughter time of some sort. that and going to the pool. we had four years of some of this stuff. of course i will never forget her. of course i still look for her, but it has been so long since the likes of her has caught my attention.
taking the bus from bellevue to omaha every day to go to my christian elementary school, i would look out the window into the windows of cars to see if my mom was out there. i wanted her to be out there. i dreamed about her and what i imagined could be her new husband. sometimes they lived in a castle. sometimes they lived in the pacific northwest. i wondered if she would ever send for me. later, i wanted to see the pictures of her, when they found her dead, but my dad begged me to never see those. he hadn't. he wanted us to remember her the way she was.
but it was so hard for me to remember anything besides a prickly leg, a stick of orange trident gum. i remember her encouraging me to eat plums not sugary cereal, wash my face like it was the most important thing i would ever do. i kept asking how many more years until i can drive?
my dad used to always tell me how my mom could do back-bends. "she could do the bridge and reach over to the floor with her mouth and pick up a hankerchief." he was clearly thrilled by her flexibility.
growing up, i would look at pictures of her and think she was so beautiful. how could she have been my mother? who was this woman? i was jealous of her perfect body, thinking maybe i had that in me somewhere, wondering when i would have the stamina to stick to a diet and exercise routine that would get me there.
when i started yoga again in lincoln, i began to remember that i had always been flexible. i remembered my brother kyle telling me not to sit with my legs bent backwards, that it was bad for my knees. but it didn't hurt. why would it be bad for me?
the first time i ever did yoga was in berkeley. it brought me great happiness. i would come home and get stoned with amy and monique, and all i would want to do was those poses. there was something amazing about seeing my body like that, my self like that, not just sitting behind some desk but engaged in something that seemed true to me.
at five willows, i began to see my body re-form in the mirror and saw my mom's body. it was the one thing i had of hers. i don't have her face, though we may share some characteristics. i don't have her voice, though sometimes it might be similar. i am not her in any way i can identify except my body. the fitter i get, the more i see her.
today, sitting beside the woman i revered as my mother, i wished i could go back and tell my mother she was beautiful. influenced by barbies, i wished she had long hair when i was little. i didn't get her short, curly hairstyle. when my dad started dating again (right away), i thought i'd put in my request: date someone with long hair. it was shallow. i was four.
roxana, the yoga teacher, came by today and suddenly wanted me to do the bridge. i was in shoulderstand, one of my specialties, and she wanted me to try some new moves she just learned in spain. there i was thinking of my mom, and roxana is asking me to do the bridge. only me. i did. it was easy. i was confident. i was my mother's daughter.
in shivasana, roxana had us imagine a color that would bring us safety. i needed it. i visualized myself in purple, my favorite color since i knew what colors were. my mom's favorite color was yellow. i hated yellow growing up. everything was yellow. our carpet, our wallpaper, our house. a psychiatrist came over to our house once and said yellow is the favorite color of the depressed. it's kind of like false hope. i've thought about this numerous times re-reading charlotte perkins gilman's "yellow wallpaper." on the only acid trip i ever took at 16, i started to tear down the yellow wallpaper in my room. i'd always wanted it down. i would rather have torn wallpaper, beige walls, than have to keep looking at this stuff i'd hated, that had no relationship to my own aesthetic.
when i came home from visiting my aunt jan in arizona when i was 7, my dad had a new bed for me. i had been begging for a canopy bed with a purple ruffle and a purple bedspread for years. every time i saw the sears catalog at my grandma's house, i would rip out the purple bedding and show my dad i wanted it. i came home to a canopy. he had ordered a white canopy, a white bedspread. i couldn't understand it. he thought it looked best. he was having a party at our house for people from the museum. it had inspired him to shop.
when i woke up from shivasana, body filled in purple, i was slow to move to my side, to raise again into lotus position. when i looked to my right, the woman who was not my mother was gone. she is always gone.
i wondered why it was my destiny to always have her gone. to always be alone. to always wonder why. to never have her. to always want her. to never have that feeling of someone older to look up to. to never feel like i was walking in some kind of shadow i could re-shape or understand.
the only shadow i walk in is suicide. it is not life. that is something i keep creating for myself. there have been a few periods where it felt easy. where it felt like i was in the right place with the right people at the right time. recently it felt more right than ever. my spirit was happy. my spirit could reach through walls.
i wonder where my mom is. if there is some part of her inside me. pulling back my purple bedspread at night, i have recently been more thankful for the sacrifices and the pain that brought me to be.
if my mom truly loved my dad, she must have suffered so much when he went back to his wife. once, when i told my dad i can't handle my situation, he said my mom said that to him, too. he was reminiscing. he was still in those moments. 26 years since she is gone, he still lives in those moments so often. they had 12 years.
this morning at 6am, when i hadn't slept because of the partying neighbors once again and had gone online to find other apartments, my dad promised to help me move anywhere i needed to move. he doesn't want me to feel unsafe. he doesn't want me up all night. he said start shopping. he has never broken a promise to me. i really haven't realized before how, aside from replaying his tape over and over and over again about law school, he wants what is best for me. there is a love that reaches across the telephone. sometimes his canopy has been white when i needed purple.
and what about getting what we need? is there a place for that? what about getting life's one due? my mom broke the promise she made to me that she wouldn't die after my grandpa did. she found herself obsessed by empty garages. i wondered today why she didn't just drive through a stoplight? wouldn't it have been quicker? but then she could have hurt someone in the other car.
i guess a kindness of hers is that she didn't take me with her. my dad told me inappropriately as i was growing up that she had threatened to do that. i guess that's how he made it as as single parent. he was glad she didn't take me with her.
the garage that she ended up choosing belonged to a jerk. his name is phil godawa. he lived in a fancy fontenelle hills apartment with his wife joanne. years later, they moved in down the street from me, across from the artist, sue, and joanne told me that my mom had been parked in phil's garage. phil was not a very nice man. though i think he did feel sorry for me. i'm not sure if he found my mom. i wouldn't want to ask him. all i remember is a police officer named russell.
she died in a grey buick riviera. while we were in corpse pose today, roxana told us that some yogis can get their heartbeat so slow in corpse pose that if you hooked them up to life-detecting machines, they would technically be declared dead.
i wondered if my mom had a chance to move and then to die just a little bit every day, like i do in yoga, if she would have made it. could yoga have saved her?
i used to wonder if she had been more academically successful in high school, if she hadn't had a reading disability, could she have made it? but her body, like mine, would have thrived in yoga. she could have taught it. she would have had something to teach me, although she believed she never did.
i don't know where to end this or how. that is the big question during times like this.
i moved to lincoln because brad was here. because i needed to be near my best friend. we never hung out here. he had moved on. i ran into him one time in andrews hall, and he was shocked that i had cut off all my hair. he visited me once a couple years later in lincoln, when i was married to clint. he came to our house, saw our dog, we went to the mill.
everything in life, mine anyway, though, changes. not my love for people. never that. yesterday kelly and i were talking about how we didn't expect these places in our paths. she is 9 weeks pregnant. we started talking about if we would ever be pregnant 7 years ago, before either of us were married. four years later, three months apart, we were both married, at each others' weddings. my marriage did not last. her love with christophe, beautiful, did. i always thought they should have a baby. they were too good together, too beautiful and similar, not to. i cried when i read on email that she was pregnant. she's not there yet. her body is growing.
on our last walk a couple months ago, she told me about the benefits of the rhythm method. she had read a book. she knew the secrets. she told me not to get on the pill. i joked about this yesterday on our walk. kelly has always been saddened by the way that women she knows seemed to be reduced only to mothers, only talking about diapers, bottles. she wants to keep talking about art and culture. she wants to work full-time. keep working on her phd. she will create with christophe what she needs. she believes in that.
i look forward to small things right now. i look forward to seeing my dad again. going to see "happy-go-lucky" with kelly. i try to look forward to christmas eve. people at yoga are saying hi to me, speaking to me. i keep being surprised when this happens. i feel gone. i am looking for myself, for the deeper part of me, for the wholeness, out the window on the bus. i am looking through windows to find myself, to find my happiness, to find that stirring again.
i don't know if when i wake up, where she will be? i drink a latte with a shot of mint from meadowlark. i wait for my soon-to-be wusband (new term i heard on the radio) to help me figure out cable. i look for viewing content, reading content, that will soothe my soul. i remind myself i don't have to do much. i lower my expectations. i wait.
i
my posture toward her, for less than an hour, became that of a daughter. she was less practiced than me, and i wanted to show her respect. she was a woman. she looked like my mother. i wanted her to take me out to coffee and model a life for me. i wanted her to model a perspective. but this woman, truly not my mother, would have no perspective on my situation. she may have hers. but who could she possibly be besides someone with an eerily similar appearance? my mom would be 61. but she didn't make it to 35.
i remember going to aerobics with my mom. i don't know that she ever made it to yoga. she would do her work-out, and i would do ballet and tap. it was mother/daughter time of some sort. that and going to the pool. we had four years of some of this stuff. of course i will never forget her. of course i still look for her, but it has been so long since the likes of her has caught my attention.
taking the bus from bellevue to omaha every day to go to my christian elementary school, i would look out the window into the windows of cars to see if my mom was out there. i wanted her to be out there. i dreamed about her and what i imagined could be her new husband. sometimes they lived in a castle. sometimes they lived in the pacific northwest. i wondered if she would ever send for me. later, i wanted to see the pictures of her, when they found her dead, but my dad begged me to never see those. he hadn't. he wanted us to remember her the way she was.
but it was so hard for me to remember anything besides a prickly leg, a stick of orange trident gum. i remember her encouraging me to eat plums not sugary cereal, wash my face like it was the most important thing i would ever do. i kept asking how many more years until i can drive?
my dad used to always tell me how my mom could do back-bends. "she could do the bridge and reach over to the floor with her mouth and pick up a hankerchief." he was clearly thrilled by her flexibility.
growing up, i would look at pictures of her and think she was so beautiful. how could she have been my mother? who was this woman? i was jealous of her perfect body, thinking maybe i had that in me somewhere, wondering when i would have the stamina to stick to a diet and exercise routine that would get me there.
when i started yoga again in lincoln, i began to remember that i had always been flexible. i remembered my brother kyle telling me not to sit with my legs bent backwards, that it was bad for my knees. but it didn't hurt. why would it be bad for me?
the first time i ever did yoga was in berkeley. it brought me great happiness. i would come home and get stoned with amy and monique, and all i would want to do was those poses. there was something amazing about seeing my body like that, my self like that, not just sitting behind some desk but engaged in something that seemed true to me.
at five willows, i began to see my body re-form in the mirror and saw my mom's body. it was the one thing i had of hers. i don't have her face, though we may share some characteristics. i don't have her voice, though sometimes it might be similar. i am not her in any way i can identify except my body. the fitter i get, the more i see her.
today, sitting beside the woman i revered as my mother, i wished i could go back and tell my mother she was beautiful. influenced by barbies, i wished she had long hair when i was little. i didn't get her short, curly hairstyle. when my dad started dating again (right away), i thought i'd put in my request: date someone with long hair. it was shallow. i was four.
roxana, the yoga teacher, came by today and suddenly wanted me to do the bridge. i was in shoulderstand, one of my specialties, and she wanted me to try some new moves she just learned in spain. there i was thinking of my mom, and roxana is asking me to do the bridge. only me. i did. it was easy. i was confident. i was my mother's daughter.
in shivasana, roxana had us imagine a color that would bring us safety. i needed it. i visualized myself in purple, my favorite color since i knew what colors were. my mom's favorite color was yellow. i hated yellow growing up. everything was yellow. our carpet, our wallpaper, our house. a psychiatrist came over to our house once and said yellow is the favorite color of the depressed. it's kind of like false hope. i've thought about this numerous times re-reading charlotte perkins gilman's "yellow wallpaper." on the only acid trip i ever took at 16, i started to tear down the yellow wallpaper in my room. i'd always wanted it down. i would rather have torn wallpaper, beige walls, than have to keep looking at this stuff i'd hated, that had no relationship to my own aesthetic.
when i came home from visiting my aunt jan in arizona when i was 7, my dad had a new bed for me. i had been begging for a canopy bed with a purple ruffle and a purple bedspread for years. every time i saw the sears catalog at my grandma's house, i would rip out the purple bedding and show my dad i wanted it. i came home to a canopy. he had ordered a white canopy, a white bedspread. i couldn't understand it. he thought it looked best. he was having a party at our house for people from the museum. it had inspired him to shop.
when i woke up from shivasana, body filled in purple, i was slow to move to my side, to raise again into lotus position. when i looked to my right, the woman who was not my mother was gone. she is always gone.
i wondered why it was my destiny to always have her gone. to always be alone. to always wonder why. to never have her. to always want her. to never have that feeling of someone older to look up to. to never feel like i was walking in some kind of shadow i could re-shape or understand.
the only shadow i walk in is suicide. it is not life. that is something i keep creating for myself. there have been a few periods where it felt easy. where it felt like i was in the right place with the right people at the right time. recently it felt more right than ever. my spirit was happy. my spirit could reach through walls.
i wonder where my mom is. if there is some part of her inside me. pulling back my purple bedspread at night, i have recently been more thankful for the sacrifices and the pain that brought me to be.
if my mom truly loved my dad, she must have suffered so much when he went back to his wife. once, when i told my dad i can't handle my situation, he said my mom said that to him, too. he was reminiscing. he was still in those moments. 26 years since she is gone, he still lives in those moments so often. they had 12 years.
this morning at 6am, when i hadn't slept because of the partying neighbors once again and had gone online to find other apartments, my dad promised to help me move anywhere i needed to move. he doesn't want me to feel unsafe. he doesn't want me up all night. he said start shopping. he has never broken a promise to me. i really haven't realized before how, aside from replaying his tape over and over and over again about law school, he wants what is best for me. there is a love that reaches across the telephone. sometimes his canopy has been white when i needed purple.
and what about getting what we need? is there a place for that? what about getting life's one due? my mom broke the promise she made to me that she wouldn't die after my grandpa did. she found herself obsessed by empty garages. i wondered today why she didn't just drive through a stoplight? wouldn't it have been quicker? but then she could have hurt someone in the other car.
i guess a kindness of hers is that she didn't take me with her. my dad told me inappropriately as i was growing up that she had threatened to do that. i guess that's how he made it as as single parent. he was glad she didn't take me with her.
the garage that she ended up choosing belonged to a jerk. his name is phil godawa. he lived in a fancy fontenelle hills apartment with his wife joanne. years later, they moved in down the street from me, across from the artist, sue, and joanne told me that my mom had been parked in phil's garage. phil was not a very nice man. though i think he did feel sorry for me. i'm not sure if he found my mom. i wouldn't want to ask him. all i remember is a police officer named russell.
she died in a grey buick riviera. while we were in corpse pose today, roxana told us that some yogis can get their heartbeat so slow in corpse pose that if you hooked them up to life-detecting machines, they would technically be declared dead.
i wondered if my mom had a chance to move and then to die just a little bit every day, like i do in yoga, if she would have made it. could yoga have saved her?
i used to wonder if she had been more academically successful in high school, if she hadn't had a reading disability, could she have made it? but her body, like mine, would have thrived in yoga. she could have taught it. she would have had something to teach me, although she believed she never did.
i don't know where to end this or how. that is the big question during times like this.
i moved to lincoln because brad was here. because i needed to be near my best friend. we never hung out here. he had moved on. i ran into him one time in andrews hall, and he was shocked that i had cut off all my hair. he visited me once a couple years later in lincoln, when i was married to clint. he came to our house, saw our dog, we went to the mill.
everything in life, mine anyway, though, changes. not my love for people. never that. yesterday kelly and i were talking about how we didn't expect these places in our paths. she is 9 weeks pregnant. we started talking about if we would ever be pregnant 7 years ago, before either of us were married. four years later, three months apart, we were both married, at each others' weddings. my marriage did not last. her love with christophe, beautiful, did. i always thought they should have a baby. they were too good together, too beautiful and similar, not to. i cried when i read on email that she was pregnant. she's not there yet. her body is growing.
on our last walk a couple months ago, she told me about the benefits of the rhythm method. she had read a book. she knew the secrets. she told me not to get on the pill. i joked about this yesterday on our walk. kelly has always been saddened by the way that women she knows seemed to be reduced only to mothers, only talking about diapers, bottles. she wants to keep talking about art and culture. she wants to work full-time. keep working on her phd. she will create with christophe what she needs. she believes in that.
i look forward to small things right now. i look forward to seeing my dad again. going to see "happy-go-lucky" with kelly. i try to look forward to christmas eve. people at yoga are saying hi to me, speaking to me. i keep being surprised when this happens. i feel gone. i am looking for myself, for the deeper part of me, for the wholeness, out the window on the bus. i am looking through windows to find myself, to find my happiness, to find that stirring again.
i don't know if when i wake up, where she will be? i drink a latte with a shot of mint from meadowlark. i wait for my soon-to-be wusband (new term i heard on the radio) to help me figure out cable. i look for viewing content, reading content, that will soothe my soul. i remind myself i don't have to do much. i lower my expectations. i wait.
i
Friday, December 12, 2008
passionate honesty of the midwest
i just saw this description of a lincoln band and liked it:
There’s a passionate honesty to middle America - it’s deep-rooted and straightforward...
(I've never heard of this band before but may go see them next saturday night)...
Few places embody that better than Lincoln, Nebraska, home to Word/Warner Bros. newest rock outfit, Remedy Drive. A four-piece, four-brother band (David, Philip, Paul and Dan Zach), Remedy Drive has been cranking out their own brand of music as a full time indie for the past 5 years. The band’s debut release, “Daylight Is Coming” was produced by Ian Eskelin (All Star United) and will be nationally available August 26, 2008.
With a message of hope for the searching and a desire to reach beyond a static life for something bigger, Remedy Drive combines a heart-on-a-sleeve sensibilities with their one-of-a-kind live show - the Midwest has never felt like this before!
There’s a passionate honesty to middle America - it’s deep-rooted and straightforward...
(I've never heard of this band before but may go see them next saturday night)...
Few places embody that better than Lincoln, Nebraska, home to Word/Warner Bros. newest rock outfit, Remedy Drive. A four-piece, four-brother band (David, Philip, Paul and Dan Zach), Remedy Drive has been cranking out their own brand of music as a full time indie for the past 5 years. The band’s debut release, “Daylight Is Coming” was produced by Ian Eskelin (All Star United) and will be nationally available August 26, 2008.
With a message of hope for the searching and a desire to reach beyond a static life for something bigger, Remedy Drive combines a heart-on-a-sleeve sensibilities with their one-of-a-kind live show - the Midwest has never felt like this before!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
the monarch
terri's wisdom during shivasana was really cool today... i won't be able to capture it all. first, a major concept in yoga is that the breath is the spirit. the spirit is what generates our abilities to experience love and bliss.
when we learn to control the breath, we have more connection with the spirit. the diaphragm is the site of our intuition, and the heart is the site of compassion... the stronger our diaphragm, the more intuition we have, and intuition increases compassion... runners probably get a lot of this stuff...
then she was talking about the guidance that we get from the earth, from the universe... she was saying that monarch butterflies have no gps system (though i know a lot of scientists study how birds know how to migrate)... she was saying that the monarchs get guidance from the earth, and after they leave mexico, they are different butterflies than they were before they left on the journey. when they go home, they are changed butterflies.
terri was talking about how our intuition will awaken us to our needs which will lead us home.
she also talked about elephants and the love they have for their families takes them from water and food to water and food. their love guides them...
interesting metaphors she was mixing, that love is equivalent to guidance from the universe, from the earth. that the guidance and the love that we get changes us. and leads us home, wherever that might be, where our needs are met.
when we learn to control the breath, we have more connection with the spirit. the diaphragm is the site of our intuition, and the heart is the site of compassion... the stronger our diaphragm, the more intuition we have, and intuition increases compassion... runners probably get a lot of this stuff...
then she was talking about the guidance that we get from the earth, from the universe... she was saying that monarch butterflies have no gps system (though i know a lot of scientists study how birds know how to migrate)... she was saying that the monarchs get guidance from the earth, and after they leave mexico, they are different butterflies than they were before they left on the journey. when they go home, they are changed butterflies.
terri was talking about how our intuition will awaken us to our needs which will lead us home.
she also talked about elephants and the love they have for their families takes them from water and food to water and food. their love guides them...
interesting metaphors she was mixing, that love is equivalent to guidance from the universe, from the earth. that the guidance and the love that we get changes us. and leads us home, wherever that might be, where our needs are met.
Monday, December 8, 2008
i used to be desperate for readership
hmmm... she says. it is 12:24, she has been to the grocery store. there is too much creepiness in her neighborhood to attempt to do laundry now, to go next door. she should sleep, but she's afraid of the feeling of not being able to do it again. of that desperation. of being here and not knowing where there is. the whole coming or going thing. she wishes she had christmas lights up but feels wrong to make such a commitment. she appreciates that others have. but wonders about their commitment anyway.
an old friend of her sister and brother's has facebooked her "it looks like something's up. take a look at pictures of my pets. they never fail to make me happy."
that friend doesn't know that she had pets of her own. she had six cats and a dog and a house and a husband who cared about her. maybe he didn't get her fully. should anybody expect that? someone could get you and then not be there for you. so what is the importance of all that?
were the pets important? appreciating and loving another being feels important. it can be entertaining. with pets, the worst shit you deal with is that very thing. there isn't much else to confuse. the whole loyalty thing. a pet may run away, but if they do, you know it's their nature. you know it's not likely to be a rejection. though that would hurt, too. i miss kyla or at least the idea of her. i wonder if i will ever get my dog back. i will not get my life back as it was. but i left it because i thought there was something more. was i wrong?
life can be anything you make it. you just have to have the energy for it. supposedly, the body has the energy for what it wants. it's interesting, though, how the body can be pulled in different and opposing directions. as i write this, i have no idea what i'm going to say next, and yet here it goes, it flows.
i was walking in the grocery store thinking that i did not know if i would ever write again. i could find the paper towels but not the toilet paper. i was doing something practical. i was considering cookies. i didn't really feel like buying them, but i thought how cookies seem like the best thing in the world to a kid. and maybe they are. that's as far as the meaning resides. i also had the smurfs. fruit roll-ups. my dog. walks in the snow. i liked that stuff.
i know there will be more meaning again. the fact that i don't know my current meaning, or at least i don't know what it means, well, maybe it's beautiful. maybe it's just tired. maybe the right side of me isn't another person, it's me. it's my frustration. it's the part of me that isn't free. no one can bind me. only i can do that by choice. only i can do that by feeling. but i think i get to choose which feelings i want to have on some level. i think that's what monique's saying.
my right sides feels in many ways paralyzed. i want to implicate another person. i want to implicate myself, but i don't know how to do it. i feel like there's nothing left for me to do but wait, move, or sleep. they are so basic. there is a job search. there is therapy. there is laundry. there is the nefarious moving on. there is the pain. there is the love. there is the constriction. there is the freedom. the freedom to drive around and around and around waiting for the hours to pass, wondering if the goal of my sight would see me.
it is something missing sharing a bed with someone. it something having had that and losing that. it is something getting a brief taste of that and then being alone all over again. it is some kind of pain. the noise my neighbor makes becomes less bearable. the sarcasm of know-nothing 7th graders becomes too much. the incessant squeaking of the door to the portable as the kids think of nothing but going to the bathroom, throwing wads of paper makes me know why people say migraine. i have not had one, i don't think. i never want to have one. i never want to need sleeping pills. i never know what comes next. every day is a different call from an automated system. i write no lesson plans. i write emails. i try to write something that captures my life, that creates it, and yet as soon as you've invited another participant, as soon as you've opened, you've re-invited the uncertainty.
i was not happy with the security i had. it did not feel right after a time. it did not feel right after exposure to what seemed something more. my decisions made sense. they did. do they now?
i see myself and think i like who i see. i think that the person i see reflects just fine whoever this decision-maker is inside. i think we can be friends. there's more to work out. but i think she is going to be alright. we've just got to do something about that right side, that paralysis. we've got to sleep. we've got to do more than powerade and the occasional morning.
an old friend of her sister and brother's has facebooked her "it looks like something's up. take a look at pictures of my pets. they never fail to make me happy."
that friend doesn't know that she had pets of her own. she had six cats and a dog and a house and a husband who cared about her. maybe he didn't get her fully. should anybody expect that? someone could get you and then not be there for you. so what is the importance of all that?
were the pets important? appreciating and loving another being feels important. it can be entertaining. with pets, the worst shit you deal with is that very thing. there isn't much else to confuse. the whole loyalty thing. a pet may run away, but if they do, you know it's their nature. you know it's not likely to be a rejection. though that would hurt, too. i miss kyla or at least the idea of her. i wonder if i will ever get my dog back. i will not get my life back as it was. but i left it because i thought there was something more. was i wrong?
life can be anything you make it. you just have to have the energy for it. supposedly, the body has the energy for what it wants. it's interesting, though, how the body can be pulled in different and opposing directions. as i write this, i have no idea what i'm going to say next, and yet here it goes, it flows.
i was walking in the grocery store thinking that i did not know if i would ever write again. i could find the paper towels but not the toilet paper. i was doing something practical. i was considering cookies. i didn't really feel like buying them, but i thought how cookies seem like the best thing in the world to a kid. and maybe they are. that's as far as the meaning resides. i also had the smurfs. fruit roll-ups. my dog. walks in the snow. i liked that stuff.
i know there will be more meaning again. the fact that i don't know my current meaning, or at least i don't know what it means, well, maybe it's beautiful. maybe it's just tired. maybe the right side of me isn't another person, it's me. it's my frustration. it's the part of me that isn't free. no one can bind me. only i can do that by choice. only i can do that by feeling. but i think i get to choose which feelings i want to have on some level. i think that's what monique's saying.
my right sides feels in many ways paralyzed. i want to implicate another person. i want to implicate myself, but i don't know how to do it. i feel like there's nothing left for me to do but wait, move, or sleep. they are so basic. there is a job search. there is therapy. there is laundry. there is the nefarious moving on. there is the pain. there is the love. there is the constriction. there is the freedom. the freedom to drive around and around and around waiting for the hours to pass, wondering if the goal of my sight would see me.
it is something missing sharing a bed with someone. it something having had that and losing that. it is something getting a brief taste of that and then being alone all over again. it is some kind of pain. the noise my neighbor makes becomes less bearable. the sarcasm of know-nothing 7th graders becomes too much. the incessant squeaking of the door to the portable as the kids think of nothing but going to the bathroom, throwing wads of paper makes me know why people say migraine. i have not had one, i don't think. i never want to have one. i never want to need sleeping pills. i never know what comes next. every day is a different call from an automated system. i write no lesson plans. i write emails. i try to write something that captures my life, that creates it, and yet as soon as you've invited another participant, as soon as you've opened, you've re-invited the uncertainty.
i was not happy with the security i had. it did not feel right after a time. it did not feel right after exposure to what seemed something more. my decisions made sense. they did. do they now?
i see myself and think i like who i see. i think that the person i see reflects just fine whoever this decision-maker is inside. i think we can be friends. there's more to work out. but i think she is going to be alright. we've just got to do something about that right side, that paralysis. we've got to sleep. we've got to do more than powerade and the occasional morning.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
quest for sincerity
"The quest for sincerity is like the quest for a perfect lawn." write the editors of Action Yes.
another little interesting bit stolen from tyler
i just liked this connection between the collective unconsciousness, pop culture, and current events...
earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.
earlier this evening while eating a dinner of eggs scrambled with spinach and garlic along with some buttered olive bread my roommate mentioned that he had had a dream about barak obama last night, bill clinton was in the dream too. which is funny, because i had a dream about barak obama on saturday night. five months ago i had had a dream about john mccain: we were at some kind of party and mccain kept side hugging me really tightly, too tightly i thought. anyway, about the obama dreams, i wondered out loud if a lot of people had been having obama dreams, reading about beyonce saying she fell asleep on election night with tears of joy in her eyes. chris, my roommate, matter of factly stated that a mass of barak obama dreams is a sign of an "archetypal paradigm shift." i'm not exactly sure what this means, but it makes sense that we all have experienced something amazing together, and that this experience would show up in our collective unconsciousness, not to get all jungian on you, but you know what i mean. it's that same kind of symbol making that made the trade center attack about more than lost lives;that an image gets imprinted, whether we like it or not. thus, the power of poetry or whatever you call it. the importance of symbols, that we're not entirely in control of the meanings we assign. anyway, we finished talking and the dishes got cleaned.
a little piece on waking up
stolen from tc...
An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by your mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.
An alarm clock is one way to wake up. There are others, like gradually, with the sun rising in the East, to be shook awake by your step brother, or by your mother in the early early morning. To be sleepy until one jumps in the water; to sit on the warm grate while the freezing cold festers. Mornings like these.
a time for endings/new beginnings
terri the yogi talked about how we are three weeks away from a new season. it is a time of endings and new beginnings, a time to empty the mind of emotional attachments that are no longer serving us and become a vase. our minds are no good to us when they're full. so we have to decide what to let go of in order to have peace.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
interesting words from pete, the therapist
we are all magnets. we draw people to us, probably depending upon how well we're taking care of ourselves.
when people focus on another person who they can't help, they are in a rut. a very narrow rut.
when people focus on another person who they can't help, they are in a rut. a very narrow rut.
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