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Wednesday, September 25, 2013

SLOW GOINGS

someone deleted the beginnings of this posting.  don't know who it was, perhaps i inadvertently left this machine open, perhaps a kid trying to sneak 'game minutes' got carried away and took his life into his own hands, unwittingly.  wait 'til he gets home.  (yeah, right, like i'll remember to enforce something i completely have no evidence about... and won't even remember by the time 3:30 rolls around.)

Today is my first day. 
I like the sentence, but meant it as part of a longer story, though perhaps all my kvetching is unneccessary.  Rode my bike this morning, for ten miles on a beautifully clear autumn day, near the ocean, where the blue hits you right in the sternum and you can't fake it. rode slowly, and quickly, and was passed twice by the same group of people who looked older than me, but probably aren't, they just didn't have kids, or pendulous nursing breasts, or mismatched biking outfits cobbled together with yogatypestretchable clothing. 
My dad watched the babe, which used to be a questionable practice, because he wants so much to be doing other things.  But my mother goes for surgery tomorrow to remove her gall bladder and is succumbing to mind-numbing fear about the whole process. We are in heavy prayer rotation here, real moments of goosebump focus.
On Saturday I ride in a 25 mile fundraising thing called the Rodman Ride for Kids.  Once my mom is done, I'll turn some of the prayers towards myself, I think.  I'm just hoping to not throw up, and to not have to have an emergency vehicle get involved with my bad self.   My sister made me do it, and I am trying not to think about how the ride is essentially twice.five what i did this morning.  shitfuckhead.
the middle boy, freshfaced kindergartener extraordinaire, was home two days this week recovering from uncontrollable bowel incidents and puke. supah. but secret?  i loved having him home. i got almost nothing done, because i was watching him play with the babe, draw pictures of monsters and cool ass hands... giggling with a little girlbaby as he pushes her in a wagon. the idea that this experience is limited in time and space hurts my heart but i am feeling downright miraculous in being aware of it. a bittersweet vine.

i've now polished off a coffeeroll and am working my way through some overlarge gumdrops. they are almost too much.
evidently this bike riding thing will not result in weight loss.

poooof. 

Friday, September 20, 2013

Five Minute Friday: She

I wasn't going to write about it, didn't know how, but then the prompt was She... so here it is.

A woman I only vaguely know jumped off a bridge.  She jumped, she fought her rescuers. She fought against what some might call salvation.  Her decision had been made.  She did not find relief.

She is alive, she is being cared for, as best the world knows how.

I am wordless, almost. struggling with what must be horror, for her, for her kids and husband.  what makes it not enough?  what makes the light break through for some of us and not for some of us?
these are big eggs, in these baskets we weave. and in which we are carried. 

I am filled with thought, and can't bear some of what passes through, and if I have hope and trepidation for her, I have as much for me. 

There isn't any easy path, is there? and the shuffle of the rocks on the way to the path/in the path is both ominous and confirming. and I guess its what you choose to focus on, if you can tear your gaze from what hurts and what does not glimmer.

Please let us all hold her in the Light today. 


link to Five Minute Friday.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Don't Know Much...

aw, aaron neville with his creepy ass voice and his wacked out style choices. . . aw...

i'm old dudes. old. i'm trying to stay away from the computer in order to better fill my days this week, and last... and i'm feeling sort of awash in insecurity and repetitions, nauseating repetitions.
shocking, but i haven't figured out what to do with all my spare time yet.
went curtain shopping with my mother. hmph. she's really weak, exhausted by the walk to the ridiculously misnamed 'hardware' store... makes me feel old and weak myself, to do readjustings like this... makes me feel so damn old and weary.
and lonesome.
i've been told my ego is involved in my exhaustion, my hurt. is there any other way? do we have anything to 'hurt' but sense of ego? is very consciousness a form of ego? is it?
are we giant puffs of air, white dandelion floats in the air, unless we have thought, reaction, ego?

blagh.

Today,
Don't Know Much...

creepy ass aaron neville, man.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Mercy

Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend 5 collective minutes writing on a single prompt.
Here’s how it all got started, back story, details and all. The short version is:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word. (On your blog or in the comments).
It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week.
- See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/09/five-minute-friday-mercy/


Mercy:

besides the inevitable tune that runs through my mind, mercy, mercy, me.... buhbumbuhbum...
what do i have to offer? to whom do i offer mercy?  i stutter on the thinking, the word seems both too weighty and too weak for me to use with fluency.  my children get my forgiveness, my attempts at humor when i am furious or frustrated, but is that mercy? it feels like we've been given a respite from war, on the international stage, and that is a godgiven mercy, perhaps.  i'm hoping.  what is mercy? really.... it reaches out beyond my family unit, i wonder if it is something i've been utilizing in any way... connections to respite, rest...time outs... maybe that is where it lies? my second youngest has started kindergarten and i have entered the realm of 'almost 40 searching for oneself woman who has finished all the laundry and does not know what to do with herself'... and so maybe this timeout is a mercy, a space granted wherein i can figure it out, or, if i listen hard enough, i can hear my path sorting itself out, the rock and stones crumbling their ways, readying a space for my feet to trod.  may be a mercy. 

hmm.  done with my five.  hmm..

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Falling off a cliff.

thud.

bus door closes, more with a clankclunk than a thud, but my heart has dropped out of my body onto the road and i just stand there as it sweeps past me and away...

ah, the transition into another phase of life just arrived.  and whilst i have a babe in arms, i am right in the dank thick of it, this realization that my time with young children is finished. Numbers one and two are now in school fulldays, full weeks... (oye, the babe in arms is certainly young, but time is marching marching)  Now is the summer of my discontent? no.
Maybe i will spend this time finding out where all of the quotes that dance through my mind's eye have their births... because it is here, the big 'what do i do now' time. 

As Chakra Carol agreed with me yesterday after a desparate last minute appointment was garnered, I am 'one of those women' who're about to hit their 40s and have to 'find themselves'.  I am.  DAMNIT. 

i'm going to make a macrame owl and howl at the mooon... dye my hair and do some more yoga. dress the baby in ridiculous little girl clothing, with bows in her hair and tights that droop at her ankles. I'm going to wear the same four outfits until spring, alternating my eighteen sweaters, or even wearing doubles.
i'm going to miss my kids a lot. i don't want to have all the laundry done at once, i want something to stay dirty because i can't handle the sight of all the counters in this house, and knowing that there is no excuse for their clutter,  their clutter is my clutter and right now i want to cling to it, in denial of what clutter there is in my heart. my heart walnut is comfortable, after all. i know its dimensions, its crannies.

dig?

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Listen.

When I began, I'd just come from Quaker Meeting wherein politics and violence meet their end.  unless they don't, because we live in these United States, and people Will insist on their individuality, and all...

in the hearts and minds of many, in and beyond our Meeting, there is much confusion, much 'don't know what to do!' about Syria, about war in general, about how to go about our daily lives without fear and trembling about the state of the world.  

I think many many people have transformed their fears into angers. and I think it started back in 2001, September... we all lost our minds, our security, our faith in the mundane...  and never got any of them entirely back. we pine for what we have lost, our innocence, our common faith in goodness, whatever it is we have lost track of... and not knowing how to handle such longing, we get mad.  I know I do, personally, and I think it explains the world, to see all these men and women 'outraged' all the time, and to translate it as a deep and abiding fear. . . why should any of us know how to assimilate this kind of fear?  we 'first worlders' know too much and too little, about places far far from us, the earth is being polluted, the waters are rising, the storms are increasing in intensity... its all our fault, the crazies are being led by crazies, breezes now carry toxins, the militance is leading to violence and threat, and assault.  it doesn't seem like anyone is a force for de-escalation, it all seems inevitable.  and to top it off, what once was an effective govt, or so we had believed, is now swamped in incompetence, vitriol and all of the violence and threat and fear and anger that we are all feeling, and so..even the government can't help us see our way free.  (if anything, they are a harbinger of all of our negative feelings about the world.)

In my prayers lately, when I can find the space to focus, I've been trying to quiet myself and my body in order to listen.. for a response, for direction.  I spend an awful lot of time in a litany of requests, a 'seeking' of the Light, a 'how would this look as a post?' or 'in conversation'... drivel which certainly distracts from the arrow direct to the center that I am really looking for.  So I've been really trying it, putting myself into a cyclone of quiet, brushing off the chatter of my mind, and opening up to listen...

and its been good. 
capital G.
There is a lot out there to balance the fear.  It is more than being 'mindful', it is more than focusing on the flowers or the individuals, or even our individual innerworlds. . . but they are within it, yes? the balance? within the maelstrom, the bits of glitter floating or whirling by... the moments our kids are happy and we catch them at it...
I'm not ending this on a positive note, not suggesting that you write down your gratitudes and Syria won't be in turmoil anymore or that thousands of people aren't starving to death as i type. they are, right now.  it isn't fair, it isn't someone else's responsibility either.

God hasn't whispered in my ear, that I know about, he/she does know I'm mostly deaf, i assume. . .  but I am listening, making my ground more fertile for what may come.  and I'm turning away from fear and anger, maybe not dealing with all my feelings of 'resignation' for what is happening, but doing what I can to make my world, and that of my children and my community, more ready for peace. . . blahg.
is this true? sounds good, yes, but so lame, and not big enough to leverage against all that is its opposite. . .  but i feel like i am tucking in, watching my kids ready themselves for their small first days, dealing with my slow transition away from babies and young children into middle childhood and my own middle-age.  mind you, i still have a bonified baby in the house, but i see its end almost as clearly as i see its present moment. 
what to do..when there is nothing to be done? when is there nothing to be done, exactly?

boy, a long one.

(winded.)