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Thursday, May 29, 2014

Sorry, a slipup.

Do you really slip UP? well, i am in mid-slip, it seems.  Away from writing, away from not-grieving.  This holiday weekend just jacked me all up.  Between grief and worry, I was a hot mess and did not get no respect, nor relief from any of it, in any way.  The babe had a bugbite which slowly swelled and consumed her entire left leg. (and by 'consumed', i mean, 'made her mother insane with worry'.) Tiny bodies and swelling are not a super mix, and so i was consumed, and my husband had so little patience with it, i really needed to punch him in the head, but didn't, and so sublimation takes on its own radical presence in the days.
i need to start using paper to write. paper, for gods sakes. PAPER.
its time to take a restock, a look at the inventory, an eventual reshelving of the current stock and so on and so forth.  buying, selling, producing to buy, sell.  you dig?

I went to see Chakra Carol yesterday and while she really beseeches me to stop with the self-loathing, i seem to be having a hard time with that one, she also tells me to finish with the 'give it a year' thing of the grief.  also, trouble.
HubsJ covered me so I could go. so there is that. no head punching.
restock, trouble.

slip. up.
I think I am going to take the month off, and check back in again in July.  June is my month to turn 40, avoid many school fieldtrips and school events and shindigs and so on, so there is that.  but i am sick to death of how much time i spend staring at a screen. i don't even think i read anymore. i can't be sure, because i have the memory of the fish.
I hope I'll be reading other people's writings still, cause i enjoy the hell out of them. get the joy. but i just want to get clean, man, and the only way i can see to do it is to go back a few steps, to when i had an inner world full of words and self-unloathed.
some people can their tomatoes, i need to find some PAPER.

sustenance. 

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Mug on a Rail

I set my coffee mug down on the railing of the deck this morning.  It was one of those moments that stand out.  a new deck, a first time with a railing! in my own morningtime life, a first time with a railing that is not at the beachhouse of the past, i almost took a photo...but it was the first time, and i didn't want to miss it in order to get the camera.  blue mug, fresh and unstained wood, green grass beyond... new sun coming over the trees.
the mosquitos chased me away shortly, anyhow, so i've got the minutes to sit here. . .  but i am going to plant them out of commission as soon as i find me some lemongrass.  there is already a plant called 'dusty miller' out there, which makes me remember how much i would like a friend called 'dusty miller'.  wouldn't you?  hey, lets call dusty, see what she's doing today...

dusty miller = artemesia... pretty silver leafed thing that flying bugs think is smelly.

a lot of things settled into me in this moment this morning, as the mug landed.  my dad has died. he has popped off the earth. my mom is a much bigger part of my life right now than i'd ever have envisioned and sometimes that overwhelms me with grief. my moments at 5:30 am are my only quietude, and i'm going to have to use them better with summertime arriving, rely on them for more sustenance than i have been.  some things are finished, some things are not, somethings will never be.

i'm getting 'used to'/'resigned'/'competent at' being busy with the kids afterschool and in the evenings. driving places, ferrying, eating quick carry-able meals... last night we went to a marionette show with/for the kindergartener in our midst.  it was an absolute delight. an amazing dazzle of a moment for kids and beauty and simply complex artistry. similar to the bonsai exhibit i saw in brooklyn at the botanical garden.  even in new york, there isn't any way to make bonsai trees 'fabulous'... they are, in their form, vessels of patience, quietude, observation... bloom. . . artistry of the simple set. no neon need apply.

my husband in his way has challenged me to dream/plan for where i want to be in five years.  i have been home with kids for 7 years now. seven! and my hearing has taken such a turn that i really don't think i would do a good service to a classroom of kids anymore.  so what to do? how to be? who to be?  so far, i've just mildly entertained the thoughts, but i need to really think about it, really mull it, as this next month is my turn 40 month, and i would like to begin a revolution in my path. 
what a phrase.
revolution in my path.  shoot.
and you? 
what lies in your path? 


Monday, May 19, 2014

Day Old Coffee

i'm not proud, i'll drink it.  i usually do, in fact, drink the dregs of yesterdays pot when i wake up.

lately, the sun and i have been tussling and i'm up by 5:30, which, frankly, hurts a little bit.  minor sunburn from 5 hours at the ballfield this weekend.  the sun is exerting her lifeforce, i suppose.

hubsJ is freaking from the busy-ness of the weekend.  i am sad and sorry about that. after all this time, i still try to get him out of that mood, which ends up in an argument and makes it all worse.  why can't i just leave him to that mood? it sucks, but it is his, and not mine.  i am sad and sorry about it all.        i am, at the same time, thrilling because the week-days are finally going to slow down.  afterschool stuff is finished, both kids ride the bus home, mama doesn't even have to turn the engine over if there is food in the house.  pretty amazing. not necessarily great for a slightly agoraphobic me.  so slight it is almost inappropriate wordchoice.  i like individual people a whole lot. and loathe big systems for people. politics, education, politics, etc. 

for a hot minute, i thought i'd get involved in the politics of this town but i am feeling fatalistic this morning, and so, think that minute may have passed.  how can you get involved in something for which failure may be certain? hmm... do you really want to get involved in something for which manipulation of emotions, ( propaganda) is the status quo?
oye.

hubsJ and my father in law built a deck off the back of the house.  where previously there was a deathdrop to the ground from the sliding glass doors, there is now a 16 foot long stretch of lumber.  its amazing.  and i'm still able to feel like its not really there, some hallucination of the light.  very weird.

i'm gardening. but the waiting game is on, there is a woodchuck in the yard and i'm finding myself insane with 'checking on the carrots'.  yes, i think there are problems in my emotional makeup, but they are slight.  :) 

i realized in talking to someone i really like that self-deprecation can end up insulting other people as well.  chew on that.  eg.  she says... 'how is one of my favorite families?'... i say,  'oh, you have so many, we're not really your favorites'...
meant it in good nature, and she wasn't slapping me, but i did apologize, take it back and gobble a bit about my own awkwardness. 

maybe i should make some fresh coffee now.  looks like a long day ahead.  sunshiney and all.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Mothers day away.

I'm on my way to the opposite end of the world from the hippy farm life, grey hair in a bun, straightforward looks, intense focus.  I'm goin' to Brooklyn, baby.  home of the 'fuggedaboutit', the pizza slice, the occasional anarchist stronghold, the wealthy student/struggling artist wannabe, the ghetto, the yelling on the street at night, the best and worst smells in the world... ... try and stop me. 
my mom and i are hopping a train to see my brother. my sister, businesswoman, is already there, so we'll meet her for dinnah after her work is done.  my brother is a suburban boy at heart- don't tell him i said that- so he is driving us around town.  the most walkable city in the world can in fact, be driven.  who knew?

its the longest i've been away from the babe.  i'm quite upset already and i haven't even left. didn't sleep well last night, trying to stay in the moment but failing with wild abandon.  oldest boy is off to a retreat for the youth of Quaker Meeting so its HubsJ with babe and the Six Year Old ... ah.  home will be fine, but I'm just pbbbt.

Its going to be sad, i think, although i might get to walk the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, so I'll have a real tree to look at ... but sad, nonetheless.
I'll be glad to see my brother's place, its new to him and I'd like to see where he's going to keep growing up that cutie little kid he has. We'll even see Vanessa Williams, who at this point is like a frozen yogurt shop, she's everywhere... so, yeah, it'll be fine, i just can't work myself up to get excited about it.   i want to stay home. like, as in,  rock hiding. let me putter around, following the 18 month old from grape hyacinth to birdbath, to picnic table and so on and so forth.

for mother's day dinner? ! PIZZA!!! because i love it! and it will signal my triumphant survival of the weekend. 

Take it easy, see you when i'm done guzzling the slices...

Monday, May 5, 2014

The Hippy File

I went to an event this weekend that has me thinking quite a bit, about myself, my dreamplaces, my judgementalness, my own place in the universe, etc. 
Ridiculous, yes?  yes.  

I messed with the colors a bit because it is so far from capturing the reality, i just opted for surreality...




It was a May Day celebration at the farm of a man we go to Quaker Meeting with... J** is 80plus years old, a cantankerous character, who frequently nods off in the midst of all that quiet worship.  When he does speak it is during announcements to tell us of a choral group meeting somewhere and doing oldschool singing in the round or something similar.  He and his wife have been having May gatherings for the 12 years they've been married and the gatherings have been going on for two decades before that.  There was a MayPole and everything.  I've never actually seen one done before, as far as I can remember and man, the fluttering of the ribbons at the start is one of the more beautiful things I have ever seen.  ever.  (and i have seen a lot of beauty, babies, a LOT...i know you have too...:)  it was like a movie of a hippy production, a throwback to what i vaguely remember of the childrens' events of my early youth... my kids wandered and wove and lost track of things as they moved in the circles they moved in. . . it is thrilling to see their lives, sometimes.
There was a play with puppet horses, sculptural pieces with floating shimmery bits, and linen rag manes... there were fiddles, there were maybe a hundred people and it was a potluck.  (really, a potluck! ... hippy, lots of glutenfree, beanoriented dishes, and someone even brought fish..:) but there were also brownies and juiceboxes, and snapple.
There was a barn, kids in the hay... there was a house, with door open to the chill ... superwarm low-ceilinged kitchen, smelled of bread, wide worn floorboards, golden warmth, joe in the corner with dog at his feet, some kids ate at the table, maybe grandkids, maybe strangerkids... the porch of the house had so many tools, and doodads, and old comfortable chairs.. and an exercise bike that was just a bike on a stand, so it was trapped from motion... the tomatoes had been planted which made me leap at the bit and try to plan when i'm going to do that this week. two huge glass jugs, huge! for what? .. a picnic table, a skateboard, 4 loppers, a skull of a cattle cow that J** had once raised.
there was a wood-fired kiln to bake pottery, and a whole building for all the other steps.
there was a tractor parked next to a car. a whole mess of chainlink fencing in a heap grown over with grass.  it was freaking gorgeous. really.

there were many women comfortable in themselves, of an age beyond my judgementalness...
and the wife of J**, i had been looking forward to meeting for ages, and found myself tonguetied by my own flightiness, unconnectedness.  I felt my tentative hold on the world at this event.  this was a place of rootedness, calamity and mess of decades, decisions made and followed through and abandoned.
there were so many gardens left unplowed, waiting a cycle of the moon.

In my judgementalness, There were many there that i found hyper annoying, but that is my own problem, yes?  the hyper dancing for the drums, the drunken linenpant wearing energy worker, the adults pissed off at my kid because he went his own direction decorating the maypole and didn't 'follow the rules'... the german lady who was just being german when she yelled at me for setting my trash down next to her... had my hands full with moving the kid, the bag, the blanket, etc out of the sudden downpour... german.

But what is really the pendulum my thoughts are pinging towandfro is a love and longing for connectedness like that, or maybe its a need for more authenticity.  as much as i loved that place, i imagine that in winter, when empty of the community , it is truly at its most breathtaking... and breath-allowing.  so am i looking for the community or the communion? are they exclusive of one another?

i found the place moving, almost heartbreaking to be there.  the kids were out of my purview, the babe was going up and downstairs, getting dirty, finding paths near the tulips, planted a dozen years ago, if not a generation.  even after this writing, i'm not sure what it was that moved me so, although i think i will dream of that kitchen many times more.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Mess: Five Minute Friday

Mess:

waking up first in the morning, mad. at a sameold sameold routine, flush with marital routine. . . mad...
kids rush, dress for 'dresslikeateacherday'... we need more male teachers, it gets difficult for boys in kindergarten to find clothes they're willing to wear to dress like a woman.  strange choices. backwards day? flipflop day?  lots of choices...
the mess of marital discord is like that stinking whale carcass that is making internet rounds.  what has great beauty is having a moment of fester and it stinks to holy hell.  (if hell is holy.  i suppose it must be if it was created by something Good.)
blagh.
I hate starting days like this.  all the trite 'don't go to bed mad' sayings weren't loud enough for me in this 12th year of marriage and avoiding eye contact takes all the spirit out of my anger.   I am tired and trying to think of what can get me over my hurdle this morning... no retail therapy option, trying to stay away from the magic of badforme food. 

there is of course, this writing therapy... and i'm hoping it'll alleviate some of my resentment and repetitious assault on what is this marriage i am in. 

noone ever lets on how difficult it is.... unless for them, it is truly not difficult.  is that for real?

i am in a season of stink, a grief-stricken calamity of spring.  yingyanging back and forth internally.  waiting desperately for something longer than a half hour of sun. 

thinking of my kids and how much i loved them yesterday made me want to gobble up the dirt... stick my face in it and glory at its richness... how weird is that mess?...
maybe something to do with hope, and growth... should be making eye contact more, maybe.  dirtface.

all done with my five minutes... no edits, yet again...



- this is from the Five Minute Friday prompt at http://lisajobaker.com/2014/05/five-minute-friday-mess/