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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Short stack, and her pee.

Today, the toddler peed the bed, second night in a row.  'Today' being sort of wistful speaking, as it was four in the morning, the netherworld of not yesterday but not really fully today.  As I am the only moving body in the house, I am out of the pee-soaked bed, and down to make coffee at four in the morning.  The family bed that has been instituted since J moved on is full of pleasures and pitfalls, i tell you.  I am very happy to be so physically close to my almost eleven-year-old, as I am VERY aware that his time in my bed is limited by his mounting hormonal onslaught. The eight and the three, are menaces to sleep, as their legs and voices move throughout the night.  The stories we tell are wonderful, magically charged versions of the fairy tales, full of whatever characters they request that night... and my penchant for setting scenes...

we have small yellow houses surrounded by flowers in the deepest darkest parts of the greenwoods.  We have pine trees that stretch up to tickle the clouds.. picket fences crawling with vines... (almost foreboding, no?) ... friendly wolves napping on the grass... old couples happily drinking tea. . .
These are good moments and I hold them tight to my heart these days.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Bits, tiny bits of me, in the midst of the bathtub cries...

I did finish a book this weekend, even crying in the bathtub couldn't stop me. It is a lovely small thing, 

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. 

it is almost laughable to write a synopsis of it, because you won't believe its beauty if i do.  An extremely literate, successful father and husband suffers a stroke and becomes a person with 'locked-in' diagnosis.  He can turn his head and blink his eye.  He narrates this book to a friend who transcribes his words letter by letter as he stares and blinks at letters in a pattern particular to his needs. The entire book takes place in a rehab wing.
There are moments of sadness and choke.  But only moments. . . there are whole passages devoted to the foods he imagines, the vistas he replays...
it is one of those things that makes you stop your crying, because your life allows you to walk to your own window and let the world nourish you.
A worthy reminder. WORTHY.

Monday, March 28, 2016

Work, its all work.

Typing on a teeny computer keyboard, and trying to figure out how I'm going to learn all the things I need to learn right now ...In some ways I feel like I am back in high school, romanticizing in full ignorance of the possibilities ahead... Most of the things I am having to learn while my panties are in a bunch.  I am emotionally wrecked by the 'girlfriend' and totally feel swamped by it. It is not that I want to live with him, or have sex with him... It is that I want him to want me, and he doesn't.  I want him to know that I am the most powerful woman in the world, and he doesn't. And in fact, he doesn't even like me.

fool.

And that is very normal, and i get it, but it is also completely HIGH SCHOOL.

He is a talented person, but his treatment of me has been remarkably different than his in-office personality, and the break has been illuminating and freeing for me in many ways, and is now officially heading towards paper works of divorce.

And so, I am needing to tally my 'monetary needs' so I can finally be paid for all the housework and child-rearing that I have done whilst he was in school and living the difficult life of a student and full-time worker and socializer.  Seriously, his work is hard, it's just that he gets an awful lot of bennies that I am particularly sensitive about right now.  I have a lovely life, but it has an awful lot of contingencies that make me feel a lot more 'single mother of three' than 'single'...

The process of tallying figures that will be my only income is both frightening and funny. What if I forget something?* How will I pay for the fridge breaking? (Touch wood.) I haven't had income for ten flipping years, how do I accommodate this? and then funny, because I am sortof getting to make my own salary for my new job, and thats just unavoidably grinworthy. Its been a long time since I've been paid.  I'M GETTIN' PAID!

I am in need of work... and my own salary, free of 'child support'.  Anytime you press on one of those ads on the side, I get a penny.  I never ever knew that people clicked on ads, but evidently? Yes! I have a full twenty cents waiting for me in the virtual world... I've been making my plans on how to spend it.

I'm going to start editing and proofreading from home, am studying up on my grammars and sentence structures, but all this will take time, unless you know you want me to work for you right this second.
I'm making plans, and doing work, and crying in the bathtub.  Its a doozy.

The biggest job I have right now, aside from being an even keel for the kids, is not getting freaked out by the future...
will i be alone forever? will i find a man to do womanly things with? Will he be a nice one? What am I going to do if money is scarce? or stops? I have no retirement, goddamnit!  What if the 'woman' works here? Does everybody know?  Do they pity me? Think me unlovable? scorned? ( i DO seriously walk down the halls of the school and feel shame and fear that everyone knows and is pitying me. it is overwhelming. and it is a big job to get myself out of it.  sometimes i am successful.but mostly i've been crying in the bathtub.)





*
( and i do get how priviledged and lucky i am that his salary has afforded us both this lifestyle and this 'time' to figure out money without having to sell the house and so i am always aware of this in my crisis, that we are so lucky to have it, and that is enough, and it is so lucky and amazing, financially speaking)

Friday, March 25, 2016

One Sentence. whammy.

J. has a girlfriend, or whatever the equivalent is, for old people.
whammy.
It doesn't change anything, really. but it was a whammy to hear, and to try to navigate through .  J picked up the phone while she was still in the house.  moron. but, done.
I just need people to be frank. subtlety and manipulation have no place in my space anymore, and it is beyond the beyond right now.
whammy.
not unexpected, and not heartbreaking, because my heart done broke a long time ago.  but still a whammy. feels pretty fast.  but then, he has a lot of time that most folks who are parents, do not.
i think i probably have some work to do on my feelings about this.  i'm trying to acknowledge the rage without letting it run free.  rage, hurt, jealousy of the experience, not of the woman.
isn't it amazing, and so sad, that i'm jealous of his freedom and not of the woman.  i wish her well and will feel doubly sad for J. when it ends, too.
who knows? maybe it won't?!

ah, these things.

gooooo whammy!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Self-crisis, momentarily...

one of the goals, arguably, in life is to be more free of the 'what other people think of me' triangle.
i say arguably, because even in making it a goal, we are putting a certain amount of notice and weight on what others think in the first place. and there are tons and tons of other goals, for everyone.
however.
for me, there is no argument. I need to think less of other people and their thoughts of me. In truth, they are not thinking of me at all.  ah!
I am trying more and more to trust my gut, to do what gives me pleasure, straight up. I am doing more and more with the kids, which makes me feel right in the world, and I am also saying no more often to them, clearly and without arguing their pleas of 'thats not fair', 'you're so mean'... and hmmm, oh, the wordless body-on-the-floor-fling.... Just simple, clear.

again.
however.


I'm very far from not caring. very far.  I'm finding it more and more difficult to handle my own self-doubt and self-critique, and all the made-up scenarios in which people are judging me, one way or another, even in comments or no comments, and so on and so forth...

I'm working on looking into my eyes more often, making sure that I know I am in there.  In the Frey book, A Million Little Pieces,  he had a recurrent battle to try to look at his own eyes, and whilst I am no addict, and my shames are not his, I have found a reservoir of shame in me during this divorce process, that I have been surprised by.
shame is a tricky bitch. I've been reading a Brene Brown book, Daring Greatly, in which shame is distinct from guilt in this way... one is 'i am bad' and one is 'i have done something bad'...
shame is a tricky, tricky bitch.

I do go see Chakra Carol soon, so maybe I can jump back on that COURAGE wagon.  There is so much more...
do you have these times?





*i don't know how to link anymore, i'm hooked to amazon affiliates but don't think i know how to work it, would never recommend anything just for amazon's benefit, so no fears... but am proving to be a real and true luddite. still can't figure out how to reply to comments...

Monday, March 21, 2016

What I finished this weekend.

Finished Books, a trio:

Ruth Rendell's 'A Demon in My View'... really lovely writing... a mystery, a love story, unrequited and requited loves, a psychopath, a murder or a few of those... not overly graphic, but psychopaths cannot be entirely de-frocked, can they? A gathering of characters in an apartment building and their circling private lives, and the variety is slow and steady and percolating.  lovely.  i would read another.

James Frey's 'A Million Little Pieces'.... a story of addiction and rehab. not what i thought i was getting into, but still glad once i had begun.  first person, memoir-like, and it wasn't til i was three quarters of the way through, that i began to doubt the ability of such a 'rough' to do this writing, and to have survived, and to have had such friends. evidently, there was no little controversy about this element. but i liked it anyhow, for his determination to be separate from the 12 steps, for his faith in himself, and for the constancy of doubt from those around him, and from the reader.  I imagine I am not alone in suspecting his inevitable downfall, again, which is horrible and yet who really gets to be that lucky 15% who maintains and doesn't whirlwind down? can it be the famous author? the famous basketball player? aren't the golden tickets already gone?

David Douglas Duncan's 'the fragile miracle of martin gray'... what a strange little thing this was. so strange. haunting and both empty and full at once.  Martin Gray is a man who has survived what would kill us all. The deaths of two families, one to Concentration Camps and one to fire.  Fuck the Golden Tickets, right?  Who are the resilient? Printed in 1979, the sparsely prose-d book is full of photographs of Martin walking his dog, staring off into the distance, building yet a third family.  The writing is fluid, but mysterious, as if the content and the form were at odds. There are hints of religiosity, but clandestine ones. The author is clearly overwhelmed by Martin's continued 'life' in the presence of such tragedy.  I include here the photos of family #3... the photos are luminous, and spare.  so 70s. Who are the resilient?





The question of resilience is a big one for me these days.  It was a good weekend of reading, though the sparse writing in the Martin Gray left me with more questions than anything else... and sometimes that is good. I was able to hang with the not-knowing, as my phone was essentially out of use...

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Lumpy

some of the things that i thought i was escaping are still very much a part of my life and
i am downright sodden by it. almost struck motionless by the threat and the familiarity of the threat. and my disbelief that i am still experiencing something i thought i had made this disastrously difficult choice to escape.
i feel like an idiot for my shock and awe still being alive and well in this, the third month.


i am trying these days to focus on something other than escape, as that part is finished for me. the escape was made.
but i am trying to see myself as fertile with it, ripe for a planting.
a big bag of dirt swinging lumpily by the door of the shed, dripping potential.

can a thing swing lumpily?

i tell you, a real future as a writer, this one.

sodden is a great word though.

i want to be martin's aunt joan, in doc martin.  anyone? thats what i am aiming for.  maybe surprising as she clearly has twenty years or more on me, but i obviously have issues.  I need more chickens i think. and some large billowy linen shirts.  and a low-ceilinged kitchen.

i would really, really,
really, have liked escape to be a real thing. but it isn't. just a change, a hard and continuously sad change. just another stone on the road and i am very tired of trying so hard to frame it positively.

I'm taking my lumps, see?

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Last night... bedtime story and a sentence that ran on...

Rambling: 


The bedtime story last night to the three who sleep in my bed with me, almost every night...this is how i remembered it when i jotted it this morning... so forgive the running together of things... was of two very old people living in the old house at the top of the hill, the house falling sloped and apart as they all aged together. They were named Benny, and Julia. And the garden outside the house, left all untended for years. The boys asked how long, i say five years, so it is not 'ancient times' but a recent dissolve... old hairy carrots can still be found. Big and brambly and still necessarily a garden. And the bunnies that lived in the yard, the bunnies. And the bunny who was the leader who spent his time on the porch looking in on them having tea, and wishing for a house of his own. and his name was Harold.

Off he goes down the big wide hill, in search of materials to build the house. He hops hops along the fence, the farther he goes, the more sturdy the materials become and the more he is interested in using them. Along and along and along he hops until the fence becomes more and more intricate and ends with a large and long box, with a single window facing the fence. Inside it he looks, and sees a large unmoving pig. And on his back, he has wings. The bunny hops all around the edges of the box, but the only way in or out seems to be somehow connected to that window. Slowly, tentatively, he begins to try to talk with the pig.

Together they manage to figure out how to free him, and he and the bunny walk and hop their way all along the fence, all along, until finally it starts weakening, its gaps becoming clear... and becoming the fence in its dilapidations that is close to the hill and the garden of the bunnies. At once, the bunny says, ‘pig, pig, pig! What are you doing?! You have wings>!>@’... the pig shuffles and shakes his shoulders and unfurls his wings spreading them wide and white... He takes off directly up, and flies up the hill to land in the garden.

Bunny gets up there finally, and together they look into the house of the people having tea. They decide together that there will be no more house-building, and they live happily ever after in the garden, under the stars and the sky above…

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Heart burst.

It is interesting, now that there is no man in this house. It is. There is so much more space for me, for my femininity to expand, for my heart to burst on a regular basis.   In the bursting, I am finding more and more of that space, that stretch into what i was, both ten years ago, when blisses and innocence started to be eroded by his issue, and when I started to withdraw into what i thought was the way to handle it... and now i know, it was the way i chose, but it wasn't the only possibility, and i am so sad for the way it has turned out, for all of us.

but motherhood? which also happened ten years ago, not at all coincidentally, and my baptism into the world of inter-connectivity, universal goo and the denial/explosion of the idea of independence? yeah, that is what causes the true heart burst.  Looking at these people that I have birthed, and now are seeding themselves about the world as they walk in this dirt i have prepared?  there is nothing else right now.  the world is rich. its my blood which is making it throb.
dude.
and there is no way in the world i will apologize for this wildness. or ever, even for one second, change the way i have handled this absorption into a more true universe.  perhaps there is a archetypal feminine in me afterall.  the primordial ooze.
there is no Atlas.  there is simply Mother.

and I am she.

Friday, March 11, 2016

Shapes




o so good.
spring is coming. i've got dirt under my fingernails...

if you're on instagram, join with me... !

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

bad books.

i finished a book that i'm not even going to name here, because it was so much a book i don't want anyone else to read.  There is some sort of self-punisher in me these days, the same person who is suddenly watching romantic comedies, family comedies, marital comedies, and so on... when the kids are away and i am sitting alone on my couch with my re-found glass of wine and a frozen dinner of deliciousness.  Frozen dinners may not be the height of fine dining but you know what?  NO DISHES!  really!  its sort of incredible to walk into the kitchen and find, literally, no mess. its really awesome. but i digress.

so this unnameable book. has 'wife' in the title, and is all about a woman's decision to leave her crap husband.  i read the whole thing, so light, so beachy. . .  but get this? it is SO simple, the man is SUCH a turd, she is SO wealthy, her fabulous gay brother has a large house just WAITING for her to visit, her old, handsome, independently wealthy beau is just lurking at the door to WHISK her to her new life...
why would anyone like a book like this? does escapism really help? who wants to escape with such a delusion?  I think this sort of thing literally hurts women, by giving them something so completely illusionary ( i know, its not actually a word.)  to believe in... simplistic.

(lets not talk about why i read it to its end... man, i am a sucker for hope ... i thought the ending might really pull it out. but no. delusions indeed.)

The problem with all of this? is that it is so complicated. and it is truly exhausting to try to communicate right now. and i have to hope that time will help with that. more and more and more time.  It is SO difficult, because most of the emotions have been boiled away to leave just reactions, and while we are trying so hard to do what feels right and honorable to our own selves and for our children, we are definitely suffering from what i see as the ceaseless difficulty.  And I am working so hard on my negativity...

and then? moments of ease.
working seamlessly for kids.
ah...

so damn complicated.  but i am going to retain my delusional hope that it will get easier.
maybe its the effect of too many of those movies.  damn julia roberts. damn her.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Why Not? twelve tiny poems, courtesy of the magnet board.


my favorite is Barn Supreme.  I think i could live with that.  and i can keep mixing those others til insanity sets in... sable mist would be pretty rich.  or midnight hog.  gorgeous devour. sob midnight...you see.  word are good. so little.

Monday, March 7, 2016

Chakra Carol does it again.

My therapist is called Chakra Carol... because she is a reiki and cranial-sacral practitioner and when i first met her, she was all about the chakras and i learned a lot about all this stuff i knew nothing of at the time. (dudes, she DOES NOT refer to herself as Chakra Carol, and also, there is no beading or macrame in her whole house.none.)  and also, i like the mild reference to Chaka Khan that I echo everytime i call her Chakra Carol. Who doesn't want to think of Chaka Khan now and again?

anyhow, when freaking out to her about how much i was relying on a faith i don't really have, she pinned me down, like a bug on a board.

its not faith.  its admitting that you don't have a damn thing to do with it, its completely out of your control and you choose to be full of COURAGE anyhow.

its not faith, or a lack of it...  its COURAGE.


somebody give me a goddamned medal.

http://yazmar.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/chakapress2.jpg

Thursday, March 3, 2016

One Sentence, yes, again.



lie down in a bed of thimbles.
glory in the stories of a
thousand loves.






so much of the peter pan these days. here.
i've tried to attach this blog to a googlesomething, and now its all whacked.  forgive.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

I want me some ritual. Flip.


It doesn't really seem to be part of my actual makeup though, the repetitions of things... While i could daydream myself silly in a Catholic mass replete with Latin and incense, and glory in the redrobedvelvety goodness of it, it is more of a distanced love than a practical one. The stained glass, the lit candles... they are a goodness that matches the smell of brewing coffee in the morning... but, for me, the smell has more promise than delivery in it.
and i love coffee.

a flip.
being married for so long to someone who loves repetition as an art form and a communication mode, 'if i say it many times, have the same conversation twice, it must be true/important/noticed/poetic/repetitious'... there is nothing wrong in it, but i am now shearing off from my 'expressed need for ritual, right down to sometimes being okay with instant coffee.

change it up. change it up.  mantra for some days.

and the constancy of change meets the ever inflexible pounding of waves. within each wave is a constantly changing particulate.

change it up.

sometimes that means i'm going for a ritual.

a flip. again.

and an acknowledgement that i'm too porous for ritual.  it goes right through me and out the other side. and i'm still substantial somehow, still maintain my stand-up structure, though the waters pour through.

-things aren't clean, things aren't 'posed'. the coffee mug is dirty, the whole house is, as well. the light is still perfect, and always is. i'm one of those popupfrogs that you can flip and flip and flip when you flick it with your finger... simple, plastic, flip.  not all flips are perfect.  you don't always end up where you started. you end up flipped.