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Thursday, June 1, 2017

Writing wiring





I spent some time going back through old journals this week.  I was looking for funniness in the past year, as it always floats just below all the water in my well.  Humor, ladies, I have.

And it has been so striking to me.  I have little interest in going back through the typing here, but the journals, while truly sporadic, have a wealth.. It is the difference between the most beautiful photograph of a chocolate cake, delectable in its shading and lighting work .. and the actual cake, that you are allowed to taste.
   
What is true about handwriting is that speed is changed, automatic editing occurs in the curving of the letters.  A forced slow down. More thought. More consideration, a tangible process wherein words are actually weighed, in a rhythm with thought...


The delay of gratification, the impossibility of sharing spontaneously is the stonework in the well...Our new ability to write and share simultaneously has given us all trouble, already, and it is still a relatively new phenomenon. The stillness with which our thoughts sit on paper is important, and I miss it more than I, even now, recognize. (Tricky, that.)

Not all that is immediately expressed is a true expression, and certainly not a clear expression.  I know that from my experience of my own filterless mouth when it comes to hard times with the stranger and stranger J.  When the immediacy is altered, when the threat of the 'share' is gone, the true has a greater potential to show itself.  Do you think?  At least, the potential is larger, I think.

Yah? There is a lot there.
Here is some of what I found delightful ...

I have a very hard time with the opaque nature of my own feelings.

Oh God. I love naps. I hate naps. Torture. Torture.

I double knot my own shoes.

..pears in their golden shapes.  (IN their shapes? Is it something separate from its shape? )

- the fundamental unknowability of mothers.
(This one was in Pickle Me This.a great blog by Kerry Clare that I read when I find moments, and the post was good too... so go check it out...It is such a good and true thought.). So, it wasn't my funny, but I made note. And it is delightful in its weight.
 
Gently-baby bird- gently.

:) wmx




Wednesday, May 31, 2017

SURGE... and SURGE again...

The light here just goes on and on... Sometimes I'm just blown back onto my heels.
And as spring has now so fully sprung, there is so much green it is almost a flavor. 



So there is dancing, and whirling ... and some chanting of 'mine, mine, mine!!!' As i am finally getting closer to who I was before I was buried for so long. 
There is fear and anger, and surges of both catch me off guard on a regular basis. 

So there.  So it is.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Retreat. And a Year.

I just got back from a Quaker Retreat for kids grade 2-grade 6.  Its the fourth or fifth of these in which i have been a 'staffer', which essentially means that I play with kids all weekend and make them feel safe at night when we all scatter over the property and fall to the ground with weary.
* I am SO good at making kids feel safe, its like a superpower.  I am good at it with grown ups too, especially now that I feel so much safer in my own home life.

Everyone should get to feel safe where they are. Everyone.
Its amazing what a little safety can do. Its a great place to leap off...

But anyhow, and also.  I was at this same retreat center a full year ago, on my first retreat as staffer.  I had gotten my almost ex-husband out of the house four months prior, and just heard that he was in love, deeply. He is a fast mover, yes. He is still with that person, too, and I could have a lot to say about that, but won't. But am glad that was not something I went ahead and did, so lets just leave it at that.

I was such a goddamned hot mess.  Met a lovely man (a happily-in-relationship one, turns out) which freaked me out and I spent a lot of the first weekend avoiding eye contact and thinking obsessively.  And now, we are friends and it doesn't freak me out, and I'm so glad to meet happy and complicated people.
* One of the things I did not have a year ago was my own dear friends, and now I do.  J was not a good friend to me. There were so many reasons for that, but I made it a slow jam priority for the year, to find new connections and I feel really accomplished in the gathering of a people who are delighted by me and in whom I find some real comradery.


I cried a lot that first retreat and journaled a lot and worried a lot that maybe I shouldn't be with kids.  I must I was a real and thorough mess, and I just barely made it through. I called my missing child every night and wept.

 And this time? I laughed and played and made kids and grown ups feel safe. And loved and held and cherished. My phone battery died.  I did try to charge it but the car charger wasn't working.  It was good that I didn't know. The babe was sick at the babysitters and there was nothing I could have done about making it right from there.  SO instead I made s'mores and sang lullabys by a campfire with 28 children.  There were two boys there who had never roasted a marshmallow.  Boy, the learning curve is steep.  The fire claimed tears and marshmallows aplenty. And some of the tears were mine. And I was so content to let them go.

The retreat center is in the middle of Massachusetts and has cabins and woodstoves and log piles that stretch for miles, and so many of them.  The land is curated into beautiful and more beautiful and it is impossible not to feel cherished by the universe when you are in a place of meditation amidst kickball.  And while 'cherished' may slip over into hokey, it is the language of these retreats, and also happens to be true.

Its a really wonderful community of adults, who work at these things. Sometimes with kids in attendance, sometimes with grandchildren, and sometimes because they live for this kind of work.

AH. So, and then.  I woke up early and angry the last two days because of bad dreams wherein I was prodded painfully by J's girlfriend. They were fights that I began.  And 'physically prodded' is literally descriptive as it involved knuckles and elbows.  Very peculiar though she is particularly lanky and angular.  It is an interesting back and forth to consider, especially in the dream world.  That I would be so happy and amazed at how far I have come in a year, and have my brain and subconscious throw me a bitter bone in the midst. A reminder that I am certainly not done.  I do feel like flat-out anger might be my next dipping pool.  We'll see.  I've already spent a lot of time being angry, and so much of it during the marriage... we'll see what it looks like with so much time passage.

Just a fair warning: look out.
:) and there will be much more to be said about this...

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Mornings. Musings in (Literally) Wild Disarray...

Ala Cynthia Lee... @restoried.explorations on instagram...
what could i do to make my morning contain more magic.  I find it so easy on the days of sun and spring ... laundry on the line, oh my!! but add a little cloud cover, a boy who won't put his sneakers on or a pile of poo in the hallway courtesy of the dog i call 'asshole' in my head too often, whom i love to pieces, disregarding the poo at every turn... complications yes.

How can i add more magic?  Hm.

Drink the coffee while it is still hot. Tattoo the location of the mug on my palm?

Time, time, time. . .  .to see what's become of me... bangles... i can't help it, i still want to be the little vixenish lead singer and I'm still used-to-be blond and still not a singer after all.

- just heard a man called Jeremiah order his food.  I LOVE THAT NAME. And automatically love him too.  I'm sure he deserves it.

-I've made a pledge of sorts to go sit in a coffee shop once a week and write something there. The mild socialization i will get from people-watching might benefit my coffee-addled self.

-for sure, less of the social media. For sure.



-I've got some things percolating for the summer and I'm really mostly pleased.  I'm a little bit daunted too, frankly, as it is definitely new and a little bit outside of my experience, even. I need to ask for help, and I will. I'm actually going to go do that now, while I am thinking about it - and before i forget for another couple of days... summer is far away, but it really isn't...

-ok, done. Waiting.

-Also realized that a mom friend from preschool has a husband named Zeb.  I just have always been swept away by those didiah biblical names.  I just can't imagine any harm coming from a name like that. Right?

-did you know that the teeny tiny black caterpillars that will turn into gypsy moth motherfuckers also pack an itch punch? Yes. This is like a little fuzzy poisonball that is covering all the surfaces of my yard. Yet another reason to burn it all to the ground.  They say you have to stand in ash to be reborn.

- no really, that one up above is a little creepy.  I'm not going to become an arsonist.  I've got too many things on my list to become.


Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Joy Bubbles: Surviving Divorce...

The past couple of days I have lived in delight.  Everything has been bubbles of joy and the kids and I have been singing, and dancing, and laughing all around the town.  And I've made some bigger realizations, like

1.i should check out cochlear implants, I'm really tired of not hearing conversations, and if there is a medical solution to my insularity, then I should investigate.  This is a multi-step process and may take years.

2. I have been looking at why I've been so bubbly, and besides 'where i am in my cycle' and 'the moon', the only thing I can see is that I've been journaling and writing here a ton more, even if it is still not much.  And Every therapist and person of spirit that i have met in the past year has called me a 'writer', literally, and it is time for me to take them, and myself, a little bit seriously. I mean, tarot readers, reiki masters, angel spirit workers.. all of them... and friends, friends have called me that too... i mean, really?? So maybe i need to write because it brings out my bubbles and relegates crap and monkey mind to the bin where it belongs.

3. I'm doing this stuff on my own, I'm filled up with bubbles of joy on my own, too. And I have handled more in the past year than I ever thought I would, in terms of dealing with an entire reshuffling of the world order and understandings of marriage and love and how little I knew someone I spent 15 years of life with, or thought I did. And I"m still managing my gigantic home, building raised beds, and planting foods and taking care and giving love and presence to three kids, a tortoise, two cats, a bunch of chickens and a dog.. most of the days of the week, and I'm sane... really.

But joy bubbles, really. I'll take them as long as they last.

4. I'm throwing out random invitations all the time now, and my home and heart can handle it.  So- come visit, come stay... we'd all love to see you.

LOVE LOVE,

Wmx

Monday, May 1, 2017

Motherhood: lies and truths ...

All the things I cannot say.  Because I mostly spend my time with children... (But that's the first of many lies ...)

Tell the boys I am not going to another goddamned store searching for basketball cards. Ever. Fuck em.

I'm so beyond tired of fast food but am too goddamned lazy to pack food for driving in the car.
I mean, come on, it involves more groceries and more Tupperware and so I may, in fact, be saving the world. (And i don't go to mcdonalds, i do have standards.)

I'm not going to eat sugar anymore except for the occasional donut, because it kills me and is so clearly responsible for some of my mood swings. I mean, CLEARLY.

It is not healthy to call someone 'dickface' in your head. Especially if they are an 'educator'.

Empty playgrounds. Sad? Peaceful? Paused?

Tell me something. Message me something.  Someone in Texas reads here. What up Texas?!

And I do a bang up job most of the time, except when i am tired.  Guess who calls every.single.fucking.time. ?  I am going to blame the sugar. The many many forms of sugar.

This is tiny, and I have many many more lies and tells to tell...



Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Fuck your Foggy magic.

A friend of mine wrote about how she found a moment of compassion in the midst of a longer space where she was lost in fears and doubts. A hellacious monkey mind misery, and she found that small, still space in which compassion and understanding shine their lights... And that moment of compassion really illuminated things for her, and allowed her a measure of space in which to hold love for herself and for her love.

It was all part of a morning ritual that she has with her coffee... 

And, of course, the beautiful mug with the steam rising and the soft lights... all there...

Get all that? I got to read it, as it was in a post that floated into my days.  I was really touched by the addition of compassion to such a seemingly mundane ritual. (And one that I mostly do in an unthinking and vague fashion, every day).  ... And i told her so... and she said to me, essentially this.... 'I promise you that the moment before compassion was just as messy as any you have had.  Which is the magic moment?'

MY MIND HAS BLOWN UP, and is lying in little shreds all over the kitchen floor.

   Is all this crap just the magic moments I am being forced to practice with ?

Are my magic moments filled with sadnesses and memories that have lost their meaning and angers over the non-existence of closure or peace? AND HOW DO I GET MYSELF TO RECOGNIZE THE MAGIC OF THE MISERY?
Fucksake.

This past month I had a job.  It was the most perfect Segway into working for the first time in a decade ever. It was part -time, when I could get there and the boss was a man I went to high school with and while i may make him a smidge uncomfortable, I am incredibly comfortable with him. So, all in all, a perfect set-up, and was just to last a month, so its even over now, as I write.

And the kids got sick, all of them. One of them missed an entire week of school.  (Couldn't-go-to-the-job-sick) I got sick, motionless on a sofa for two days. Motionless.  (No work) And then the sickness extended into vacation and it was the most goddamned stressful, maddening horrifying time of realization for me.  That I am in a really fucking hard place, that I have three kids, and when they are sick, the world shuts down. That any job I ever have is going to have to be prefaced by, "i have three kids and I'm the solo caretaker.'...That I am doing this by mySELF,  no grandparents can babysit when there is such calamity in the house... and i really have no idea how i am going to continue or what the hell it is going to look like.  I did put them all in a school/extended camp/daycare one whole day during vacation and they loved it, so that is an excellent thing to know. And it took up half the money that i made during that whole week. WEEK of part-time work, ONE day of childcare for three.
I am feeling very crazy about all of this, and I am trying to not be filled with Rage at J's every carefree move.

Finding compassion for myself?
Fuckno. Just lots of fear and questions ... and yes, daffodils and lavender.  I'm going to be fine, but man, when i get freaked out, its big, and I try like a motha to focus on the moment to moment and to enjoy the hell out of my flipping amazing kids ....

But holy hell, i am in the rock and hard place. (And I'm getting child support and alimony, but that is finite and i fucking hate it, so i want to  flamethrow myself out of this trap. )

SO WHAT? THIS is the magic? WHAT THE FUUUUUUUCK?  (Kermit arms) 

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Coffee in the Car. And rain.

Been doing a lot of waiting today.  Sort of a disorganization on my part... arrived before a store opened, had no practical choice but to wait.. arrived at school a half hour early... have no other practical choice but to wait... can't multitask, no book and the radio is too jangling today.  Just sit.

In general my patience has been lengthening... there is so much that I am waiting for, that no 'action' on my part will effect... i have no practical choice but to wait.  And I've been overwhelmed by how much my clothing has gone grey... I'm almost always in grey or black and i think its somehow symptomatic of the waiting.. the midlands of the psyche.

And it is pouring rain here and every straight line is puddling.
And it is astonishing how comforting the sound of the rain is.  I could nap while walking, talking, waiting... a lull and in this spring?  A hope for wildly effusive blooms in the next weeks...

I'm still painting and while I've made my first grey painting, I am still constantly #coloroverwhelmed and I paint myself like armor when I need the fortitude.  Not where you can see it... :)

In New England we've been having serious drought, though less publicized than California because we've done almost nothing to address it. ...  Isn't that funny?  We've done nothing, so its like it doesn't exist.
.Ha. Brilliant.
How'd we all get so gifted at self-delusion? Why are we making these choices?

The grey, the color, the slick, the curve. What are you doing while you wait?


Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Compartments

I'm sorry that I haven't been writing lately. There is just always a lot going on... I have chunks of time free from 9-12 in the morning and then I spend the rest of the time driving here and there and shuffling kids and errands and there is a flurry of in between.... but... compartment. . .

I love this word... puts me in mind of ikea cabinets, tiny Swiss cubbies of organizing madness.  Symbols of cleanliness and godliness in a very distanced, respectful fashion.
It must be a truly satisfying arrangement, cleaning up, putting everything in its place, seeing how segmented life can be when you just have enough compartments.

Its not a real satisfaction, for me, because it would be entirely delusional.  I appreciate it in other women/mother's lives, I suppose, if it fits for them.

I've sort of given up on them.  ITs all messy.  I myself don't fit into one, my kids don't really care what goes where and we all, in our non-OCD ways contribute to an enormous house-wide compartment that truly, has no sides and spills into the roadway once the weather changes...

Currently my house is full of crowded corners. There are the things I am trying to clear out of J's. Yes, still.

It is a situation that makes sense, but I dread the 'day' when he comes to 'clear out' and so am really trying to take care of packing that up and getting as much of it out of my space as I can.  My grand plans, too, are on hold until he and his things are cleared out and I can take action on yard sales and burnings of things left behind.

Is the past in a compartment? It is so changeable and fluid, I don't see how it could be... but it certainly has no present day play, so it should be dead.  Packed up and stored.  But it isn't, is it?

I'm working hard these days on making it not matter so much to me.  It is a thing I have carried on my skin for a long time, making meaning where there isn't any present day play.  And it is time and has been time to shed that particular skin.    

Naked, baby. Naked.

Is there a naked compartment?  Oh, IKEA, I think you may have failed me.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Cigarettes

I'm well on my way to quitting, finally, mostly.  I've had three in the past month. And because the three have been in the past week, i am quibbling and adding the 'mostly'... I started by having a sickness, a fevered inability to walk outdoors or imagine drawing a deep breath that wasn't for sleep... and it just rolled from there.  The kids have noticed, I have noticed.

I think about it a lot and the three that I've had in the past week have been wonderful, unfortunately.  I know that, if you haven't smoked at any point in your life, you just don't understand.  And i'm here to take a stab at helping you with that. (Because? Man, get out of here with your practicality. Get the hell out.)

Its possible you scorn the smokers, that you make that face when you smell that smell, that you feel a righteous indignation when you see the mom on the front stoop smoking while the littles play... but man... man...

My friends and I smoked cigarettes in high school when we could get a pack with the spare change we found on the floor of the car.  If you don't think that taxes have done anything, I am going to put a large glowing arrow on the beginning of my paragraph here... packs are ten to eleven dollars now and  we never could have started if that was the case when i was sixteen...

I smoked with alcohol and in bars when I was in my twenties, and it was cool. Bad girl stuff.... toughening up a suburban middle-class, okay family white girl, I suppose.  But the key point in that sentence was the DESIRE to be toughened up... because here it is... when i step out of the kitchen, the house and sit down and have a cigarette, I feel like a badass, I feel separate and distinct from the work of the home, the work of the mother, I feel my spirit RISE and get ready to do battle... and its surprising and not surprising how all the work of the home can really deaden that feeling of RISE.

Its like a sparkle light... (if you can manage to take Cancer out of it, and really, who the hell can?! I mean, come on ... this shit will actually KILL you.)...a tiny ember of The Who i used to be when i really was a badass.


But its on its way out of my life, like so many things this year.. and I don't quite know what to do to get in touch with my badass... i suppose i could start drinking whiskey but really I've had enough of that for awhile...
What do you do to feel your strength? Your badass?



Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Resistance was Futile

In the far distant pages of this blog you can read so many many references to repetition and ruts and problems that just seem to lurk ..... one of the problems of repetition and looming presences that won't dissipate is that you slowly start lurching and tensing and changing your own behavior in such subtle and small ways that you aren't even aware that it is going on until you find yourself to be a zombie entire.
( i just finished reading a zombie book, my first ever, and i won't jump into the genre but it was good... The Girl With all the Gifts... M.R.Carey)

Anyhow... one of the things I did in my fifteen years of lurch is to become the resistor.  Instead of being a full player in the game, I was the reactor, the crazed attempt at balancing became an instantaneous NO... a 'hold on, lets think about it' which turned into and was seen as a solid negativity, a rejection of spontaneity or something like that... its all past now and so some of it fades...when you are trying to keep things safe, you can really lock yourself down and keep whole families in boxes from the fear.

It is lovely and true to say that it is mostly gone now, and I can freely roll my shoulders and have literally NO desire to eat brains.
But J is a big trigger, and I can find myself envisioning punching him in the head, even while deep in grief about his choices, and this past week he took the kids to an exciting event and while he was describing it, i cut him off at the knees with a 'i'd think it was boring'... conversation over, thank you.

So much fun.

I've thought about that for a week because it was so primal and so unplanned and so kneejerk and literally untrue and thoughtless. I've been working really hard to step away from all of that and its upsetting to see how ingrained and patterned I still am when it comes to the original source material of the contagion.

And while the title of this post was done quickly, it becomes more and more apt as I type along... all that resistance i did, the attempts at balancing, trying to keep things safe for the kids and me, all of it was 'good at the time' and maybe preserved something for longer than it would have otherwise, but the damage that I did to myself during all that time, spending all that time focusing on other people? To the absolute and utter squash of my true nature, which i am still uncovering, now, at 42...?
That ain't right, my friends. That ain't right.

So I'm grabbing my shovel and my pickax or whatever you fight zombies with these days and I'm getting off the bus and going out into the night to fight a good fight. And i'm very certain I will prevail... very certain.


Thursday, February 16, 2017

Kitchen Table Truths

Well, its not entirely true that i don't care about valentine's... but i don't care about the way J has done it with me, or that I don't have a love right now to celebrate it.  I spent the evening with a hot bath, a sushi roll and a stroll through a bookstore and was smiling at strangers with ease and sincerity.  The world is a beautiful place, and it is actually easy to be happy with it.

This past two weeks have really been a trip, on the internal horizon and ..in the depths i was able to reach out, share some of what was going on ...  and I am so thankful for all the wild varieties of friends that I have that respond to the call in text, thought bubbles and speech. It has the lushness of pink to it, and i'll take it gladly.

My four year old has discovered glitter and is fully capable of decorating tables and kitchens in their entirety, in gold and green... and its another part of a kitchen truth that i would not ever trade for expensive underwear or a box of chocolate... and so my comfort level slouches above sea level like in the first of days...


I find that my house is more consistently messy, I blame the dog but realize that the problem of the larger house and the woman who is not a 'neatnick' in any way is that some corners are just lost entirely...
And again I feel it part of my identity, part of something that will change as I get farther along this path... as the kids grow, as I downsize or upsize as the case may be.  The housemaking, homemaking mystery that is so strong with me... can you freely include the mess in that? There is no 'set up' that exists here... no perfectly clean spot wherein the cherished wooden toys reside.. i am a place, my house is a place of all of it, from the first trilobite to the smart phone.. and all the dust bunnies of the world... o yes.

Again, i ask you... can you catch any of that drift?  Oh, I hope so.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

SIX sentences, that's it...

I'm pretty deep into myself these days. Seems a bit much actually, and i'd like a break.  Had two weeks of being sick, or tending sick and tentatively, i think a break has arrived.  Its valentine's today, and I don't really care, but am aware of my own independence in a different way on this day. Just wanted to get this out there, to say hello, to make my stab into the heart of the day... LOVE and BEST HOPES TO YOU, TODAY AND EVERY.SINGLE.DAY...

Monday, February 6, 2017

anticipation predilection

* oh god! Predilection was spelled wrong.  OH GOD. Ugh. Heebies...

i've set myself a task to use my writing desk as a writing desk. to look into what i want to do with a sense of anticipation.
to look into who i am with a sense of anticipation.

Curiosity.

anticipation.

its a very mysterious collection of moments for me at the present and i confess to being entirely ignorant of where it is going.

right now i am just starting a series of ideas in type that i can work with at a later date.  it feels like a good start and i'll feel good that i've gotten two down.

I worry, even as i move along, that if i plan, or organize, something will be lost from me and my voice. I'll be swallowed by page upon page of grocery list, moon phases or journal entries...

I suppose it it the same risk that my kids are facing, when they discover something that isn't easy for them, and it throws them, and makes them doubt themselves.
What would i tell them? How it might mean more to work at something, really own it, mold it with the sweat of your brow? And that risk is scary and one needs to recognize bravery in the heart. Sometimes it won't work out, and sometimes it will.

And if i tell myself that? Am i really in a place to believe myself?

...When i have a daily battle to sweep those little niggling fears out the door... those 'will i be alone?'s and the 'ofcoursehesmarried, i'm not meant for THAT kind of guy'..'he wouldn't like me anyway'... they are momentary, but sometimes they can darken the room in their shadow fall ... the work to sweep them is a necessary vigilance...
When i have this daily struggle, how do I face the kids with solidity and surety?

How do I make the struggle and the insecurity worth the value of sweat? Is that a sentence that you can get through? When you are not even sure that you are invited to play, how do you convince yourself to give it every.last.breath.? How do you decide which direction to run?


Its hard enough to do for myself, how do i make it a blood-knowledge in the kids? That the risk joins its brothers on the grandstand...

(I found this here old post half-started, and I wonder if I have already used pieces of it? It echoes on itself... and so I risk repetition and I do hate that ...)



Thursday, January 26, 2017

Depth

O, I was at a march. And I was standing in a sea of faces that looked so similar to mine that it gave me pause. Sparkling eyes, north face, patagonia, llbean, humor, conviction, passion, disbelief, angry humor, ovaries and the like ... O, I was at that march. Boston has a long and storied history of throwing down with money and teabags ...

When they said (and i misheard) that an asian line dancing group was going to perform, i said that i was going to have to go.

But no, it were lions, not line-dancing, and they were ushering in change in the twitches and twines they performed.

Deafness has the best sense of humor. It does. The misheard are always better than reality.

Thank you notes have been written.  (I kid you not, and yes, i like notes, a lot... but really? What's more kind and considerate and white than the thank-you note?)

How sweetly we women were treated, like dainty white women or something... is this white girl rabble-rousing? Is it a problem?  Is the problem mine because i can't see strength in these days of political insanity being a quiet peaceful strength? I downright WANTED people to get arrested.
Betty Crocker needs to go down in a headlock.

I'm in a new state of seek.  I want nothing more than to dive down to where the pressure on the ears is pain. I'm tired of playing nice with people who cannot match my depth, and I'm weary of treading water in these shallows.

I Feel like i started leaving the shallows when my dad died.  Losing faith in the world of fairness and 'what should be' and 'if i just wait and be good, it'll turn out just fine'... and finally, i asked for a break from my difficult and struggling and unfun marriage, because i didn't think things would turn out fine anymore and the waiting was killing me minute by minute.

And I didn't even know how close I came to being totally squashed. I didn't even know. SO while I wouldn't wish this heartbreaking year on anyone, I recognize its parts for a rebirth, and possibility is ripe again, and this wish to be deeper in the world is one I will hold.

In some moments I wonder if the dissatisfaction is a problem for my personality, but then I look at what is happening in the world and see my reflection so clearly ... so I let that go... My dissatisfaction has led me to this ...




Friday, January 20, 2017

MONIE MONIE (part two)

FUCK. I'm having the same bad morning this morning that I had so many flipping times during my marriage... a hangover from bad news, so to speak.  And BECAUSE I DID THIS WHOLE FUCKING THING IN ORDER TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING TO ME AND MY KIDS, I am frustrated in a sort of in a different place than I was for the past ten years or so.  A decade.  So. Well.

Different place. Much more better.  Not as much sorrow and anger for me, but actually a dose more rage for the kids. Whole bag less care for the whys... Interesting.
Humanity is what it is and I'm still carrying around my good bones but still...

Distance really is a bellringer, i tell you.

Probably none of this makes any sense . Bellringer, what?

But. Anyhow. Money.
Part two.

I think because we were very middle class growing up and had a middle-lower-class neighborhood and my parents made clothes 'special' whereas many of my friends just 'got them' , i have always been aware of where i have fit in financially amongst my peers.  Sometimes I had more, but more often I had less, or it was more of a struggle not having the cool clothes and so forth. Sometimes I can hear myself saying no to the kids because i don't want them to miss that feeling, I don't want them to assume they can have it all.. I think it makes them more real and more connected to the world to hear the no and to have to come to grips with it.  My kids have an awful lot.  My nos are pretty insignificant in their lives, and probably feel arbitrary to them.  Money weirdness.  As an adult now, its something i wish were easier to talk about with friends... i have a lot of curiousity about how people spend their money, how much debt they carry and so forth. How do they afford shopping, is it budgeted, do they have to be careful or is it thoughtless, for instance? What about credit cards?

Money.  Work.  I have worked since i was fifteen and work ethic is strong with me.  I like to work. Thank you Bowie family genetics.  Put me on a farm and I'd be the clydesdale. I've always been able to find work and filled my heart and mind with sustenance from the jobs I've chosen.

When i was first married, I couldn't find the work i wanted and we lived on student loans entirely... i was very depressed while i waited for the work. . . then i slowly got work, and a second job and we still lived on student loans.  When we moved to start his next program we were back to loans and my unemployment and employment as homemaker magic-maker mother. (Fireworks, baby, FIREWORKS) ... And then he got work but it paid for a mortgage and two more weeks of the month. Loans. And the help of the state with food for us . Thank you for that, state.
And then ...........within the space of a month, our income tripled.  ............I remember getting a deposit for five thousand dollars and just needing to lie down.  I bought a blanket for the bed that I'd been wanting. It was 99 dollars and I couldn't believe I had the freedom to get it.  I am keeping it in the settlement because I am the only one who knows what I am talking about or what it meant to me.
Amazing.

And now, I am divorcing the income earner in the equation.  He is being generous in that he is giving more than the state demands, and we are splitting most things, but not that loan debt.  I have my own but he will be paying back what we lived on together while i sort out how to restart my financial life and get my feet back underneath me after being knocked on my ass.

So, this is the setup I find myself in presently.

RING DEM BELLS.

The bann is on the door, but there ain't no wedding happening...

RING DEM BELLS.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Money, roots and shoots.. (part one)

Money:

It has come to my attention over and over again, that it is one of the many issues that I have that I should look at. In this winter of my discontent (take 2), I am looking at it.  They say she is unemployed, yes, but she may reach nirvana, and isn't that going to be amazing?

Yeah, I'm being so sarcastic, it actually feels dirty.
So don't read the above.

Anyhow, money.  At its roots, it will reflect back onto my parents, and their parents... The dad who was very poor but had most-of-the-time enough and sometimes not enough... (no winter coat in Maine) , the mom who had more than enough and expected the same (but not an easy family,no.) .  And the way they worked together to grow their family and show us the uses of money.  My dad was factory management eventually and planned and saved and invested money and left my mom situated well for the rest of her life when he died suddenly at 68.  He bought us the expensive sneakers at the mall because he wasn't aware of comparison shopping and my mom made him take them back... My mom did the household budgeting but didn't pay the bills, and i mean that literally, he took that responsibility.  I remember a story she tells of making a casserole for the two of them in their early marriage which was so terrible (she didn't pour off the water from the hotdogs--- don't even. Don't even.). And my dad wouldn't throw it away because of money and they ate it.
Another one:  my mom's favorite aunt sent her 50 bucks as a gift and my dad said they had to use it for bills.

Right? There's a lot in those stories.  A care, a counting... some bullying, on both their parts I think, money as a power tool...and a thing of loss and privilege.

And the person i admire most in the world is my grandmother, my dad's mom.  She had a crap husband and six kids and managed to feed them when he left to find work in another state, she killed her own chickens, made her own butter and not out of anything but necessity.  She kept busy, filled her time with food and 'making' and was the smartest thing in a recliner when I knew her.  She laughed like a bowl full of jelly, for real, and I've wanted to talk to her and my dad so much about J and what I could ever have done about it all... and about me, where I go from here.  I think I get a lot of my self-recrimination from a failed comparison to my Grammie Bowie... not one she would ever have endorsed, by the way... its a romanticizing of depression-era living and my parallel world is full of it... and i see its flaws and carry them anyway.

These are my roots.
Get some Cindi down below...

Money Changes Everything : Cindi Lauper
https://youtu.be/pp4suZ4jNXg
https://youtu.be/pp4suZ4jNXg


Thursday, January 5, 2017

New Year 2017 and some Hallelujah chorus ERUPTS... somewhere...

It has been a year. Of many many endings and some fits and starts, but so many of the endings... I'm so glad that it is over, that we celebrate an encapsulation and I get a chance to look forward with a real knowledge that I won't have to repeat any of that, ever.  All the first days on my own, those first packing ups, a more true understanding of what i thought was a marriage. . .new friends, with a wider world of experience than i'd ever have expected,  holidays on my own, first time traditions for the kids, for me.  I got a fake christmas tree this year in order to avoid an old tradition, and the need for help, and the deforestation of the world...  and at first it nearly broke me ... but then, when it was up independently and quickly and already lit and boom, It was a really great thing... a 'mine' thing... I only missed the smell ... (and i remedied that with a candle, baby...) so much so that i saved and got myself a gigantic one the day after Christmas on super sale... . So now I have two.. and the days will be LIT.


:) 

I did a lot of yoga over New Year's and an awful lot of dancing... yoga style.  I felt my body sink right back into itself. There was a retreat and a sister and a very old friend surprise.  ANd so much damn laughter.  Fall off your seat laughter. And I have missed that for years and years.  YEARS AND YEARS.  Why would anyone live in a place like that? Without those laughs? I've got a lot of questions, and I get to be my own guide for a while, with an open road as well.  Get that. 

I know what I need to do, just not necessarily how to do it.  But I'm figuring it out... and it may include tiny sips of whiskey, it may involve some whacked out painting, a drum or two and it will definitely involve fortitude, quiet peace and delight.

I do hope that I write more but am looking into starting it up somewhere more anonymous, as J's connection to it is still a slight tinge on my ability to speak plainly, i suppose.  Or something like that.  You know. Meh. I don't know.  I have a real attachment to the name and to the spot.  I can work on it.