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Monday, February 29, 2016

Meditation Station

This time on Meditation Station: meditation is good, gives you more 'space' in your inner world.  you don't have to burn incense or wear a braid to be a meditator.  you don't even have to own yoga pants. you might even like yourself more.

true, true, all true. Love the Familiar.
Love it more and more until it finally affects your practice. GO ON.
Love the Familiar.

(i am hoping to affect my practice, spread my deep breaths into more aspects of my life, man.  I need me some deep breaths.)

the book?     It is not focused on the mystical, the goal of Nirvana-angel-status-enlightenment is not stressed, the book is called.... 10% Happier by Dan Harris. .
It is impossible to be a reporter named Dan and sink into the metaphors beyond the metaphors and the bead and macrame... It is not meditation for dummies, but it is simply straightforward and light.  and maybe that it what meditation is... just pretty simple, right? quiet your monkeyaddled brain and be kind to yourself while you do it.  practicing compassion for yourself lets you in on compassion for others and we'll all be better for that.  right?


Its well-written, and easy to get through, and acknowledges cynicism in a way that is helpful and comfortable to me as the reader.  Judgement friendly, you see.

Next up? a fantasy about dragons.  seems to be around 600 pages and my toddler has started moving her naps up to 4:30 in the afternoon, so it may be that my next book report doesn't happen until i get a job that has a lunch break. we'll see.


Friday, February 26, 2016

the kids are away

every weekend, the kids are away.
i'm susceptible to swigs of panic about them.  their dad is wonderful with them but not always, and assuredly, not me.
he is working on it but the work that I have to do is tremendous (and all i can do anything about) and involves a lot of faith.  and, as you may know if you have ever read my tiny little black letterwords before, faith is something i just don't have a grip on.
slippery bastard.
the kids need their dad.

fucksake.

anyhow. while the kids are away, i have learned, it is important to have things 'to do'.  I made the mistake of thinking i'd luxuriate in myself and drink wine and have lots of cheese over valentine weekend and it nearly drove me right off the highway into the shrubbery.  and honestly, i couldn't give less of a shit about that particular holiday.  with me, J never went in for sentimentality, so there weren't any big ritualized holidays... my first mother's day i was nearly hysterical until he stopped 100 feet from my parents house and bought me some flowers.  seriously, intimately hysterical. and?  all better with the introduction of flowers.  like magic.
again. shrubbery. it was just the nothingtodo-ness of it, the space to fill, the mind to listen in on...

and so, with the kids being away, i oscillate between a wide open joy at the freedom to choose, to pee in solitude, to dance, to have wine, to eat late and watch crap tv... and feeling sort of scared to have too long at home without distraction.  my monkey mind is a hellacious bitch, and i don't want to be alone with her once it gets dark.



and there is still fear.  all the unknowns of what will go on in this next year, the financial worry, the changes in myself that will render me 'changed'.. the fear rides hand in hand with that bike-down-the hill-with-no-hands, dance-in-the-kitchen sensation and it can be nauseating to flit between them.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Lo.

I thought that because it was ended, that the constant dashing of my hopes would end.  When one is thrown against the rocks of the shore again and again, the scar tissue is fierce, and doesn't enable one to see clearly the beauty of the wave and the rock.   I had hoped .  and I had recognized the rock for its particular strength.
I had thought it over, and this morning and yesterday's morning, I have found myself sinking low and low.

Lo.




-it is very different now, yes, but the sadness is growing, i think. within the difference, there is more loss for me, and little change in him, and that colors over so many things with a deeper sadness.



-someday, i may be less vague. but can you see the shapes and colors of it anyhow?

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

And in the beginning, she said these things...

written at the beginning:

what i will be Missing this year:

husband, warm arms, compliments, criticisms, arguments, shared responsibilities, wonderful warm and rich foods, variety, physical companionship, family, tension, threat, trepidation. ...having realizations of the sort that make me sad about who i have become in these last years... answering the phone with a dull 'hello.' when i know it is him, so that he will think i am busy and harried by life, and so give me sympathy.  i don't think i've answered with a 'recognition' voice in a few years... what is this? why would i have done that?  the things i have tricked myself into... maybe there is no room for ritual in my life because i have had so many unconscious ones. what would it be like to be calling into that?
why did i have to work so hard to feel noticed?  Why is busy so damn valuable?  How long has that been going on ?
its 6:20 am and i just realized i don't have to wake hubsJ anymore. flutters of panic and relief, at once. what a very strange ride this is.



what i will be doing this year:

painting, planning, evolving. sloughing off some of the 'rules' i've accumlated in the past ten years, i can feel them slipping away already, presumptive permission... those rules i've carried to keep the boat still in the water... how quickly can i slough them off as i pick up my own breeze?!  ( the word slough is just perfectly perfect right now, use it! go, wild into the woods and fling it about!) finding ways to make money come into this house, and still manage to be the presence in the house, tricky fixings, this one.
answering the phone with recognition.  going whole days without being afraid. letting go of all the anger born of anxiety. Reading.  Getting familiar with self-help categories. (fuck.me.ugh)


--no judgement, lots of vaguery. i am completely shifted and yet, lack the language to share the shift, stuck in oldness and repetition, in my mirror stuck as well, minute to minute differences.
and amazing to KNOW that things have already changed so much for me, in the month plus that this has been happening... What is hard is going to stay hard, as conversations with HubsJ are fine so often, and filled with ancient wrongs so often, like a teenaged eyeroll in a situation of gravity. awful, and i can't see a way to better times right now.
But me? Oh yeah, the boat is flying through some perfectly sized waves, all faith sits at the rudder, and i can go anywhere.
minute to minute.


(faith at the rudder. see any problems for me with that one?shit.)

Monday, February 22, 2016

Slow Dawn, Slow Down

i've realized lately that much of my perspective-gain has to do with the age of my kids, the slow dawn of kids who can care for themselves, feed themselves, dress themselves.... and the change in life momentum that it brings to me.  fuckup of a marriage or not, this is a momentous shift.  I can read books WHILE kids are in the house, and awake.  i have painted, i have ironed, i have showered, all in the company of kids...

this is astonishing, and so NEW. and its a sunlight in the greenleaved spring slow-to-warm awakening.  as if time has slowed down, and my head turns ponderously to look about.  and that light, it is all about... 

i can't believe i'm coming out of the fog of early childhood.  and, as always, the one who plays the mother is walking on her own.  why is this? is it a characteristic of the female to not be able to share? or is it a mirage? OR, is there some truth in it? the interdependence of the mother and the children... true interweavings...that seem to be the domain of me in this game, and its a difference that has seemed obvious for years in the male.  NOT that the relationship is less, just not interwoven to the same degree.  Male identity has not been so co-opted, so pervasively changed.  I'm not complaining, or resenting, just noting the necessity of this woman's need to notice these things, to re-assess her role in her familial role, and to re-examine the parts and pieces that make her up... I'm on it.

Friday, February 19, 2016

vomitosis

in type, i am quick on my feet. supahquick.

in real life, less so.  what i think is a 'witty rejoinder' or an answer to something which catches me completely off guard... is less so.
and sometimes i say things that are wrong, just to fill the space, or maybe i thought it right but it wasn't, and

unless they are perfect and right to the person receiving them,

apologies are meaningless.

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Bizarro Anne Shirley


just finished reading 'wild' by cheryl strayed, which had been recommended by several to me, specifically.  and i did, i did, i did like it.
 it is still fresh by my side and i'd like it to keep going, i'd like to watch her unravel and ravel and i'd like to be not talking, by her side, as i hike my own narrow path.

all along, i was with her.  I felt like Sebastian and the never ending story, i was there, i was watching, a pair of eyes beyond the tent walls...
 i could feel her release at believing her mother was just the other side of the river. a tiny sentence, an untalked revelation...  a literal spacing, a burble containing heartbeats of the beloved. the silence of the walking, the walking. dependance on the foot, unreliability of the foot, irrelevance of the foot. winnowing. WINNOW.
one of my favorite words, ever.
winnowing.


the book is open. the box is laid low.
the plans have been blown to shit
and the wind is still gusting.


-wmx

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Ah, right. (not high.)

'the natural object is always the adequate symbol'. . . pound

'no meaning but the things'...  william carlos williams


right, the rock, baby, the rock.
thats all, thats all... i am channeling jazz in my voice and motions right this very second. smooth.


Friday, February 12, 2016

One sentence..yah, more...

A rock has such permanence in its wood, more presence than a man, more...

it's actions irresolveable.


A tree in Charlie Appleton's wood. Really, thats his real name... and oddly enough, this rock, totally moved by man, is not at all the rock I was struck by.  But it works, oh boy, it does. 

Thursday, February 11, 2016

Shits and giggles.

My dad used to say that... its not all shits and giggles, you know.
I can't, right now, think of what exactly he meant, but I do know this marriage wasn't. It wasn't all terrible, and it wasn't much fun.  I wasn't a victim of anything, but in my inability to depend on HubsJ, I was certain.
Inconsistency is surprising, after all, in that all it takes is those few times, to be a certain thing.  Its part of the definition.... And a mamabear superwoman rises from the ground to protect and defend and maintain and shore up defenses.
Rather than remove the source of all that hurt and growing anxiety years ago, I kept waiting for him to address his issues, to chose me over them, and I suppose it was Love that made those choices, and now simple Self-Preservation has stepped in instead... the whole self, the self which includes the bodies of the three children, whose selves I am still somewhat responsible for. Love is there, but she is riding side saddle, and has a mask and a scarf, and it is downright hard to recognize her sometimes.... at least, i think that is who that is.  

I can feel some of the ice cracking up in me, I've been having more fun with the kids, feel more free to have people to the house, knowing what will be there.  First, I have to re-introduce myself to some of my friends, I have been missing for awhile.  It is slow, and sometimes I am wearing a grizzly mask when I don't want to, and it is scratchy and smells of old rubber, an old face I am putting on because it is habit.

I don't mind the shits, really, as long as I get some giggles.  And I can feel them just around the corner.  It will be nice to let some of that hyper-alert guardwiththetaser go. Tasers have their own weight you know, and of course, there are accidents...

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Donald Trump is a total asshole.

(gratuitous hate title. but one which should be on everyone's lips. everyone's.)

I had planned today to go to the Art Museum nearby, citified as we get around here.  Drove there, even.  Realized that i mostly wanted to go so i could say that i had gone, and didn't want to spend the dough on entry, when Sundays are always free.  It would be cool and distracting to take the kids some Sunday.  I do love museums, and I love the inspiration that they provide.  But I get so overloaded, that I end up on speedwalk and almost run myself out of there.  Maybe I should do one item at a time, I might do better bringing a notebook or a journal with me to focus on just one... ONE.

My brain is just on highjinks status all the time these days.  I can't really focus well on details, and I am frequently telling my self to shut the fuck up, because I am spending so much braintime on make-believe and it just really
sucks.

It varies from day to day. My father-in-law keeps giving me books and I am stacking them, stacking them, against the time I have alone,
but then, i fill that time with activity, so the stack remains.  not a problem, but i am pining slightly for the space wherein my reading brain lies.

It'll return, I know.
I have again started taking pictures of life's vignettes, established by the toys in the house. It is good, and inspiring, and less likely to make me sprint outdoors. Although, there is always that possibility to make life exciting...

Monday, February 8, 2016

Teacups and Saucers...

In my dreamlife, I long for more teacups.  and saucers.  and the lifestyle that contains them.  the quiet morning in the sunlight, the ritual of the fine porcelains...

but I am not of the Canadian or British empires. my feet are mired in my American coffee ways, and i am truly a mug.
Mug.
make that a romantic one, can you?
mugh.

I am working on it...

For lovely and different book reviews, including children's, you should go read here,  at PickleMeThis... she's been having a teacup friday, where she shows you her current cup and saucer. tiny, delightful.

The book reviews are good, and illustrative, and give you enough to go on... I found the Polnit writings because of her, and am so happy that I have...

(this is a just one sentence writing that has spilled... mwah)

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

My god.

Do i change my entire blog premise? the name, even?  am i no longer a wife, because someone thinks me not a good one? i suppose so, since it is the husband who says so...

but my god...

can i be a non-wife? a no-longer wife?

as a generic term for 'woman', i still could claim it, helpmate, and so on...
since the helping of others is still going on.
Do I want it anymore?  How do i reshape that word, instead of re-shaping myself, as i've done for so long, in the quest to fill it?