What is the Law?

In the Free and Sovereign Nation of Stacietania, there is but one law: Show Up or Shut Up.

I admit I made that law when I was in deep pain. I had sold myself short for years (decades?) and allowed people to sooth me with words into putting up with less-than-honorable behavior. I don't want to pile on my ex here, because I still coparent with him. But we stopped being good for each other a long time before we divorced. The words turned out to be empty, as words so often are. We live in a world where people do not live with integrity. Weak people say things they don't mean and don't hold themselves to their word.  And we all let them do it because we have all felt that impulse. It is easier to say things than to do things. And so we all live with empty promises and empty threats. And guess what? It leaves us empty.

It hurt me a lot to live that way. I wanted to be in my strength. But as long as I allowed myself to be placed at the low end of the table in people's lives, I did nothing to honor myself. Whether or not I felt I deserved it, I accepted less. I played the concubine, but I wanted to be the queen. My power was drained away from me. In truth I gave it away. It made me bitter. I got angry.

At some point I hit the rock bottom of taking emotional abuse from the world. I set the rule for other people in my life: Show Up or Shut Up. To be around me, people had to be true to their word. Deeds were what I looked at. It was hard, because words are pretty and easy. I had to be willing to cut my circle of trust down to the bone. I broadcast my intention to put up with no bullshit.
Like I said, I thought that rule was just for other people. It was my protection against pain. People who were all talk had less access to me. There would be no acceptance of half-measures. I was a hardass about it. I learned to sharpen and hone the word NO. I used it to cut a lot of people out of my life that didn't have the strength to handle the new me. I chose quality over quantity. It sounds lonely, but it was fine. It helped. I got hurt less. Not to say never, but I had to learn that some of my hurts in life happened because I had permitted them to. I sorta hoped that the people left in my life would follow the law, and that was enough. Not exactly.

Stripping it down further, I realized that I needed to Show Up or Shut Up for myself. Romantic relationships were an Achilles Heel for me. I felt that in a romance I should be able to get my needs met more if I applied the law to people and held them to a high standard. I can see that it wasn't a bad idea, but it was a skilled archer with a good bow but the wrong target. My needs really are not for another person to fill. When someone else wanted me to behave a certain way to make them happy, I balked. That sort of codependent thinking was a trap. I didn't want to be solely responsible for another person's feelings. That didn't feel right. That was a bottomless pit.

I started looking at, and in fact made a list, of the things I thought a relationship would provide me. I could see that I was externalizing my power. There I was, all strong or so I thought, giving away the keys to my inner core. I thought that was what I was supposed to do. When I looked at that list, I started to see that there were some ways I provide those things for myself. For example:

• I wanted security for myself and my son. 

• Okay. I went back to school and got a job that would make more money
• I used some of that money to buy better insurance in case something went wrong.

• I wanted love and to not be lonely.
• Guess what? Being married to the wrong person didn't make me feel loved, and in fact was one of the loneliest times in my life.
• I resolved to spend more time with friends and my son and my pets.
• I wanted sex
• Crap. You got me there. I might have to have other people in my life for that.
• But not always. 

In the end, at the end of my last relationship, I realized I could replace my last boyfriend with a sturdy ladder and a good vibrator. It wasn't worth keeping that person around to get stuff off of the top of the fridge or change a light bulb. The depth of feeling wasn't there for me to continue with him. So I broke it off, because my soul wasn't being nourished by it. 

And he fired back by calling me a Selfish Bitch. Because he knew me enough to know those words would hurt me. 

I figured I would be alone. I was scared, but determined to make a life one way or another. Alone if need be. I wouldn't settle. Working on my Masters' Degree, I focused on the goals above. Make it better, more secure. More friends. More love, less bullshit. I would Show up and Shut up for myself. I would quit bitching and start living in earnest.

Then in the back of my mind I remembered that unique and amazing guy who said to call if I was ever single. He had ideas about what to do about that. So the craziest thing happened. I dropped him a text. I put my heart out on a string in the most vulnerable way possible. That beat up, battered and scarred heart that didn't appear to be worth much to anyone else. Not even to me sometimes. I offered it anyway.

It took him a day and a half to respond, during which time I figured it was just talk. Empty words. And I would soon be dealt-I figured-a crushing ego blow. I had called his bluff and he was going to have to admit that it was just an off the cuff remark and he didn't mean it really. 

Only that is not what happened. 

Turns out he was picking his own heart up, from where it jumped out of his chest and landed from my sudden, unexpected pronouncement.  And there was my heart, offered up. Only he didn't see it as a nearly ruined thing. He cradled it close and laid a healing hand on it. And that thing managed to warm him the way it was never able to even knock the outer layer of frost off of other people. I don't know which of us was more surprised. 

Suddenly, like every person on a journey to enlightenment, I had a giant epiphany. And one of such stunning simplicity. I needed to Show Up for him. What made this real for us both was me shaking my schedule and budget until both bled, and I few across the country. And he was waiting to embrace me. And we made it real. The one law I had created to shield myself from other people applied to me as well. If I wanted to be close to him, I needed to follow it myself.

My heart feels good for the first time in ages. Everyone notices. I am gobsmacked by how happy I am. I'm a delirious lovefool. The world seems to be a little less harsh because I have softened up. I set down that bitterness I was drinking and I feel better. So many different things are happening. I want to show up for the people in my life more now. My friends, my parents, my son. I feel centered and secure. I am slowly daring to feel hopeful. Yes, I give him a lot of credit for being awesome. But I had to allow it, too. 

Show Up or Shut Up is still the law of the Free and Sovereign Nation of Stacietania. It is a just law, that applied to all, brings a lot more peace than I thought. 

Return From The Dead

I never intended for my blog hiatus to be over two years long. After the gross trolling/stalking experience. I was just going to let things cool down and then resume my writing in this space. It is mine, after all.

Then things got busy. I went back to school. I moved a few times. Trauma. Violence. Eventually some tepid validation and weak sauce justice.

Then Trump got elected. I hid from that version of reality for about one day. Then I knew I needed to use my voice for good, or my version of it anyway. That makes me back in the game of being a general purpose agitator.

So many changes.

Truth is, I can't be me without writing, and the academic papers I have been doing for the last year and a half are not going to satisfy what my muse wants. Let's get real, who knows what kind of bait a muse needs? They are fickle little fuckers. Mine needs me to misbehave, to flood the hotel bathroom with bubble bath, to drink champagne and raise my Kundalini. I need to go Gonzo around at a time in my life that revolves being a single parent with a lot of responsibility.

So, welcome to what is not a rebirth per se, but perhaps a reanimation. I like Zombie imagery. They are a juggernaut. Mere death doesn't stop them.

If my muse shows up, then super yay! But I'm showing up. I intend to have shit to say. Jump in with me. Throw tomatoes if you wanna. All comments will be moderated, and abuse will, as always, be deleted. How about just being respectful of the space?

Subscribe if you wanna. Look back over the archives if you like. Suggest topics if you want to watch me rant.

Thanks for stopping by.

Troll Reminder

This is a public service announcement. This blog is my personal space where I can write the opinions I have about my own corner of the world, from my perspective. I post poetry, restaurant reviews, and other assorted silliness. The content is controlled by me alone.

As such, trolling comments and negativity are not tolerated and will be summarily deleted.

New Slang: Suit Farm

Just another Stacie-ism:

Suit farm: any restaurant where lawyers and investment bankers congregate in large groups.

The Fundimental Unfairness of Addiction

God, this is awful. Horrible that this exists. Some of the logic I just can't grasp or totally endorse. But so beautifully and painfully written. As the adult child of an alcoholic/substance abuser, I find my empathy strained. I have been hurt. I have been neglected and abused so that my father could use, so that he could serve the unholy twin gods of whiskey and cocaine. I have my challenges in life, but I have never been reduced to helplessness, and for that I am grateful. Truthfully, I want someone to blame.

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/mar/09/russell-brand-life-without-drugs

Some artists have to contend with this unending misery in order to create. And then some get swallowed by it. My own brother went down the rabbit hole of drinking too much and I watched helplessly from a far distance as he went missing and turned up dead on the floor of his own apartment. I had said that he was burning too intensely to carry on for long, and rightly predicted that we would have to contend with putting him in the ground. The circumstances surrounding his death are clouded partially in mystery, but it is well documented by the Navy that he was having a major drinking problem before he died. He was 25.

I want to blame my father, or his father who schooled him in the ways of the bottle and emotional abandonment. I want to rage at the loss of my brother, my college fund, at my hopes for family normalcy. I want to show him how he made me feel worthless. I want to level these things at my dad. But then I look at him, and I see a frail, sickly, and finally sober shell of what my mom says swept her off her feet in hopeless romance. I don't see the man who wrote her drippy romantic, soulful poetry. I don't see the young man who pushed me on the swing as a very small child.  I see someone who, if faced by the full measure of my experience, would crumple like burnt tissue. He's there, burnt already, and holding his shape by sheer force of will. A whisper would scatter him.

Really, that dynamic, romantic artist is gone. Like the angelic boy soprano he was, when he hit puberty he did not mellow into a mature tenor. He cracked and was no more. He couldn't ever after carry a tune any more than he could carry responsibility or joy. He couldn't deal. He was a lead pencil in a broadband world. His capacity was reduced to nil.

I hear from him every few months now. I see that he is trying to be somewhat present in my life. He calls after months of forgotten or failed attempts to remember I am a part of his family. I hear his remorse. If I wanted to reconcile with my father, he is still here on this planet. I see his desire for my forgiveness. I blankly and without much feeling absolve him, my hands in a nonmagic gesture of benediction. I tell him I need nothing from him, not so much because it is true, but because I know I will never truly get what I need, not from him anyway. I am letting him off the hook. I have given what I can to him. I have thrown years of love down a dark hole to him, but he never took my lifeline. He only memorably told me that he wished I was born male so he could punch me in the face. No amount of telling me feebly that he loves me now will erase that. That takes bigger, more fearless and transcendent love that he just cannot produce or hold in his heart. I am left to work on it within myself. Despite being told I am worthless, I have to believe in my worth, love myself, and somehow forgive a man who probably was too wasted to remember saying that to me and shattering me into fragments.

Maybe only other addicts can really understand him, really help him. I am from the other world, with all my judgements and moral superiority for having never fallen prey to the bottle or the freshly chopped line. The hole in me mirrors the hole in him. I fill it with minor peccadilloes, perhaps. I am no saint. But somehow my need to consume Chex Mix doesn't seem to interfere with my ability to love others, although perhaps parts of myself. I am sometimes driven by the desire to be perfect, even though that conceit is the worst form of self-loathing.

But, lacking perfection, how am I to offer myself to the world? How do I consider myself worthy of the love I want in my life? I can bake a killer cake, save the life of a sick person, and even comfort the dying. But what if people knew that I couldn't save my brother? I couldn't heal my father? I couldn't be enough to stop the gnawing monster of addiction from greedily devouring the people I cared most about? Does it matter how kind or good I am? I will bet it does, to people with the capacity. But some people lack that. You can call down to them forever, and ultimately have to rise up from the chasm's edge and step back, lest you fall in yourself.

I am not an addict. I know I can go to Al-Anon for support if I wanted to. I just don't want my father's failings to define me.

I am trying to resonate with kindness and compassion in my life. This lesson is a hard one. It is going to take a lot more work. But I am alive today. I am aware today. I am grateful for that. The frustrated tears I shed over this are just part of the landscape. I don't have to be perfect. I just have to be trying to be good. That is enough. That is a lot more than others may have. Just by virtue of looking at this and attempting to unravel the Gordian Knot , I am better than I was on days when I merely felt sorry for myself. One day I will claim my destiny and cut the knot with one stroke and be done with it. Alexandrian solutions are not lost on me. In the meantime I hope I can at least see it for what it is: a yoke bound to an ox-cart. Just a symbol of what could be. Can I combine my conqueror's heart with the will toward compassion? I can try.

In which My Dream is the Literal Truth

     I just had an intense dream that I walked into an abandoned, filthy, house and found it full of sick and deformed people, all hiding in the darkened corners, including children with contaminated medical equipment jutting from their bodies. I was trying to help, but I couldn't touch one without getting swarmed by dozens. They were all hungry, thirsty, love-starved, and untouchably dirty.
     I was trying to bake bread, boil water, find medicine, bathe people, and soothe crying people, and was overwhelmed by the suffering around me.
     It didn't occur to me to just leave. I kept trying. I asked for help. And even though the throngs kept growing and pressing, I didn't stop trying to alleviate the suffering.
     In my way, in my waking life, I am doing this. But it is hard. I keep trying, but my soul could use some refreshing.

Legoes and Lunacy

Here's a rant for you about how old and broken down I am: I have been out of my Effexor for 2 days because the pharmacy decided they had to order it for me. I also was at home today with my 5 year old son. This is my day when I am feeling a bit emotionally edgy:
1. Jacob pitched a giant, GIANT fit about his shoes, because he wanted to wear the socks that are still in the laundry, not these other socks. FYI, there would be more of these socks available if he didn't leave the dirty socks everywhere for the dog to chew on and destroy and sometimes eat entirely.
2. Had to take Jacob to an audiology appointment for the school district because Jacob has an IEP. We were late because of the fit about the socks and shoes. The socks and shoes got put on/taken off and thrown in the car about three times. Grrr. Jacob has totally perfect hearing, but I have to have a long conversation about his IEP anyway, even though he is only Speech Only and no longer developmentally delayed. Woman is not listening to me. 
3. We went to feed the ducks at the park and it rained on us.
4. After getting perturbed at me for not being available when he asked, Tony is not available to have lunch with us.
5. Go to the post office. Don't have enough paper to wrap the book I am trying to mail. Have to buy a thing even though I had already printed the postage at home.
6. Take Jacob to Marshalls for more socks, but they don't have the EXACT ones he wants, so no new socks or shoes for him. We did, however, find a SpiderMan watch. Cool.
7. Take watch out of package, and the battery is dead.
8. Go to nearby jewelry store to get the battery replaced. Kid is all over the store, trying to go behind counters and open stuff he has no business opening. Grrr. 
9. Put on watch. Jacob now gives me the minute by minute update on where the big and little hands are. My eyelid starts to twitch.
10. We go get lunch. My contact lens, despite putting drops in my eyes, starts to freak out during the meal. Jacob makes the world's largest burp at the table, causing a grown man nearby to remark on it.
11. Go home and I am dying for a nap. Kiddo, not so much. He decides to go play with his legoes. He comes in every two minutes to ask me to find the one itty-bitty piece that will be the lynchpin of the tractor he is trying to make. Then the labradoodle vomits up a whole child's sock on the bedroom floor. I have a headache. I tell Jacob I am going to have a short bath before I look for the lego.
12. Kiddo now decides that he needs to actually watch me take a bath and make editorial comments about my body. Great. Yes, I do know that parts of me stick up out of the water. I stick my head under the water, but I can still hear him talking. I come up just in time for him to ask me about the legoes again. He has lined them up on the edge of the tub, pointing out that he needs another one like THIS one, right here.
13. I get out of the tub. I realize that playing with These things is NOT as I remember. Now there a billion teeny-tiny strangely shaped bits that have to be arranged exactly according to the diagram, or it is all wrong. I have a headache, trifocal glasses, and am a quart low on serotonin reuptake inhibitor.
14. I spend the next 35 minutes finding all the little itty-bitty lego bits and then painstakingly building the lego tractor and farmhouse. Little Guy watches, but doesn't help much. Unless by helping, you mean trying to jam his Captain America Lego Guy into the house, knocking some of it down, which must be rebuilt.
15. Dog flops down on the pile of blocks, and must be moved while not disturbing the Lego city. 
16. Hubby comes home, and I am ready to die. Not bad for a day off, huh?

Embracing Lunacy

At this point, I must accept the idea that I may in fact be totally insane. At least in isolated parts of my life. You can't have tons of energy and a very vivid imagination for long before someone else thinks you are crazy. I will admit I have a very warped perspective on a lot of things, but my mind is the only place I have to live, so I deal with it.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure it is all relative, and just because something is perceived by my mind or experienced by my senses, sixth or otherwise, doesn't meant it isn't real or true.

And my mind works overtime. I have compared it to the restlessness of a shark, continually moving just to stay alive. When your brain is going all the time like that, it takes you to some strange places. Sometimes my flights of fancy allow me to come up with creative solutions for problems. Sometimes I cook up unusual stories or characters that I write down and make my feeble attempts at art with. Other times, I devolve into anxiety, depression, and worry.

I may not actually be insane. That oversimplifies. Insane people can't function at all. They have no connection to the common reality. I manage to have a demanding job and maintain relationships with people. I just have all this extra stuff. So, if anything, I am super-sane. Better yet, I could define sanity (functional life) along the spectrum of experiences as being in the middle, like the spectrum of visible light. Then religious ecstasy and intuition would be ultrasanity, whereas depression and melancholy would be infrasanity. I just came up with those words, and therefore hold the rights to them.

If you follow that logic, and I will contend that there is a peculiar logic to it, most people have a mix of all three. Some folks vibrate right in the middle, and live quite ordered and sensible lives. Others, and most of the artists I know, exist in the liminal spaces where the common shared reality blurs into imagination. I have patients in the hospital that suffer in the outer areas almost exclusively, or may pass through lucid moments only briefly on their excursions from one extreme to the other.

Go too far to either extreme of course, and you get the life threatening outcomes of mania and suicidal ideation. Biological life thrives in a narrow range of pH, and so our minds thrive in areas where we, as social animals, get the most positive feedback. There is social acceptance in being sane. Falling even a little outside that make you a delightful eccentric, and a lot outside it makes you homeless. So unless you have others around you to endorse your version of reality, you are gonna be pretty lonely.

I don't know about you, but that concept make me feel a whole lot better about my situation.

Who am I? Marie Antoinette?

While I am all for eating cake, I otherwise bear little resemblance to the much-maligned and entirely beheaded former queen of France. But among her often-ridiculous affectations an possessions, she had something I am starting to understand the need for: a retreat in the form of a hobby farm village. It was a tiny, working mini-farm with a herd of 8 cows and one bull. The farm provided food for the parties that the queen held there, and gave her a chance to escape the intrigues of palace life and play peasant while it pleased her to do so.

Of course, the farm itself was run by a real farmer, appointed by the queen. She couldn't be expected to make the thing an actual going concern, could she? She'd get callouses or something. Of course, the fact that the queen amused herself by milking carefully washed cows was part of the reason she lost her head. Being frivolous while glaring class divides exist in your country tends to piss people off. Never mind that this was how she was raised, having been treated to gardens and menageries as a child. Le Petit Trianon was probably an immense comfort to a person whose main (and failed) function as a person was to produce a viable Dauphin.

Of course, I am not under the kind of pressure she was under. Nobody gave me much crap for being entirely unable to conceive. Actually, Marie Antoinette had several children, so she is well up on me there. But I'm still considered a mostly worthwhile person, I figure.

But this isn't about political pressure and class warfare. It isn't even about the indignity of infertilty. It's about goats.

Or rather, it is about farm animals in general. Whether it is inspired by Jacob's endless collection of books extolling the virtues of farm life (The duck says "quack"!), or the fact that I love fresh goat cheese, or the other fact that some of my friends are getting a chicken coop, I suddenly find myself fantasizing about having a few farm animals of my own. Not because I want to go back to my country-fried roots. I don't want 100 head of anything. I just want a vanity farm. Just a garden and few cool animals that would, given care, provide me with the makings of goat cheese and butter and eggs. Not like I don't buy that stuff at the farmer's market, anyway.

Animals are cute. They do funny things. There is something sort of sweet about the pugnacious affection of goats in particular. But I am dreaming if I think I have time, given my hectic work schedule, to milk a freaking goat or sticking my hands under a bunch of chicken butts for my breakfast omelet ingredients. Plus, there are the, um, poop issues. I whine about picking up after my labradoodle's messes. What would I do with the output of a 135-pound nanny goat?

But surely you can see the appeal. Living closer to the land and having your kid grow up caring about other living things. Having fresh food that hasn't been processed eight different ways before reaching said kid's mouth. The romantic idea of animals that come running when they see you, even if it is only because you are the one that feeds them.

Oh yeah. Feed. That shit's expensive. In what economy do I figure I live? One where they don't build houses right on top of each other? Not really.

So what is that feeling about? Maybe I am just craving a little extra space and a pastoral sort of arrangement. It sounds nice. But given the fact that I left the small town/rural area I came from for lots of reasons, shoveling manure among them, it probably isn't going to happen.

I have a lot of half-baked ideas lately. I'm trying to figure myself out. I contain multitudes and contradict myself daily. (Thank you Walt Whitman, for saying it best.) Who am I? Certainly not Marie Antoinette, but I can appreciate the no-win aspects of her life in that no matter what she tried to be, she lost her head because of libelous public opinion. It might be good to be the king, but it seems like being the queen kind of sucks. At least she had her farm, where she could pretend life was simpler. It was probably fun while it lasted.

Is Obsession Love?

So, today is John Taylor's 51st birthday. I'll hasten to point out here that I did not have this penciled in red on my calendar, but got a reminder on Facebook from the Duran Duran fan page. But it did give me a moment's pause to remember him fondly, and I realized that I have similar feelings for some of my old lovers. That warm-if-distant affection that never quite goes away.

I was obsessed with John Taylor from at least 1983 to 1988. I was an epic Duranie of the highest order. I LOVED them. I had John Taylor's haircut, even. Yes, I had a spectacular, aquanet-crunchy mullet, but that is a subject for another time. It made me happy. I loved the music, the style, the guyliner, all of it. And in my secret heart, I still do love it, although perhaps not with the capital "L" of my teen years.

I know I am capable of  my obsessions from time to time. They called me OCD girl in Anatomy class for the way I studied. Obsession can be useful when applied to academic pursuits, but love probably isn't in the same class of things that can benefit from that much attention.

I'm wondering to myself if I applied that same sort of devotion to my boyfriends in the past? I wonder what it is like to have a relationship with me. I'm all intensity and ferocity and passion. I want to break open my lovers and get to the gooey middle and taste the true depth of them. That might be scary, I guess, but I don't judge their flaws like they worry I would. I want them to give me a reason to be their biggest fan. I ask a lot of people. I want to know people on the deepest level possible. I want to try their favorite breakfast cereal and see if I like it too. I want to listen to their favorite records and see what effect the people who influenced them will have on me. If there were a Tiger Beat magazine that had my real friends on the cover I would totally buy it. I go deep or go home, because surface associations are next to useless to me.

I love John Taylor. I don't really know him at all, but whatever feelings I nursed for him as a young woman full of hormones burn in me still. He's getting older and so am I, but I still would probably pee my pants with excitement if I met him in person. But as we age together, I know that he has shaped me as much as anyone else I have loved. I gave oatmeal another chance because he loves it. So I guess obsession sometimes is good for me.

My Son the Architect

Long term followers of this blog (if there are any) may recall that I had a very vivid dream that I had a son who was an architect. In the dream I was immensely proud of an adult son who had built a whole Utopian city. It was very modern, with lots of beautiful colors and angles.

This is what my son made with his blocks on my bed this morning.

Integrity

It is a slippery moral world. When I was a kid, right and wrong was pretty simple. My mom was pretty good at letting me know when I wasn't doing the right thing, like when we went to the clothing store and I hid in those display roundabouts from her. I got swift and decisive correction. There was no cake before dinner. We went to church on Sundays, whether I wanted to or not. Oh, and about that, Jesus went with me everywhere, like a mini-tenant in my heart. So even the stuff my mom didn't know about, there was always God to keep an eye on me.

I was a bit of an odd kid. Part tomboy, part nature sprite, I communed with the many trees in my grandparents' yard. I sang to the ocean during those summers at Cape Cod. I tracked the wildlife all over the Grand Tetons and the Black Hills. I studied the field guides and could name them all. I didn't have anyone to teach me how to make a daisy chain, but I always wanted to wear one in my hair.

I grew up, like I suppose we all must but only some of us do. I still love nature and never see enough of it. I work really hard. In my job as a registered nurse I deal with the ethics of life and death and the medicine in between on a daily basis. Right and wrong isn't all that clear cut anymore. Even my mom will sometimes eat cake before dinner, and Jesus and I are on cordial speaking terms, but some of his followers as well as some unjust circumstances have created real distance in that relationship. I don't really feel like God notices or cares about me on a daily basis that much.

I try my best to live my life with integrity. Here's the lowdown in the form of a wiki quote:

"Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy,^[1] in that it regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs."

At any rate, I am a passionate person and really appreciate honesty. I at least am honest with myself. Even if I am doing something in my personal life that isn't necessarily falling neatly into the "right" or "wrong" column, I know my motivations for what I do, and I make my choices for the most part with my eyes open.

Not all of my choices make me happy, but usually I learn from them either way, and see the wisdom of the outcome for the long game. Sometimes doing the right thing means making choices that make me completely miserable. Other times doing something sorta wrong ends up being the choice that leads to something really good. What is good for society at large isn't always what is going to be good for me. That different drummer is working a fast masmoudi in me when the rest of the world is doing Sousa marches. I'm a little warped. I have said before that trying to conform and always be "good" really takes me out of my integrity with myself.

I'm trying to remember these things as I strive for wholeness after a long stressful period, and during the recent stresses too. I need to focus on the things I know give me a feeling of peace: watching a chipmunk groom its fur, listening to the sound of the turbulent spring-swollen river, finding the mots juste to comfort a wounded friend, using my brain to figure out how to alleviate the symptoms of my patients when the drugs just aren't cutting it.  

I may eat my dessert first, but it is an uncertain world. It isn't all about me, but if I can't be true to myself, I sure as hell can't please anybody else. I need to slow down and focus. I need to lace up my hiking boots. I need to drink more water and less coffee. I need to be in the present moment and attend to the work that is in front to of me. I need to take my son to Cape Cod and teach him how to sing to the ocean waves. He needs to feel the tickle of a hermit crab walking over his hand. There's lots of happiness to be had in the world, and lots of right and wrong ways to the top of the mountain (and guess what? they all get there!). What matters most is truth and love and facing my fears. I know I'll riddle it out my way, and that way is just fine even if others do it different.

Dream-Travel Lags

Image: Cebu, Philippines

I was dreaming last night that I was taking a big trip to a tropical place, and that my son had to come on a later plane than me for some reason. Since he is only three and has never traveled anywhere, I was terrified he would get lost. I kept calling at every step to make sure he was a step behind me like he was supposed to be. It was so scary, and at one point I was screaming. I screamed myself awake, and Tony had to settle me back down.

Sometimes I wish that I didn't have such vivid nightmares, the ones that leave me trembling like that. Of course, if I couldn't dream that vividly, I would miss out on the beautiful dreams that I also have, the ones that nourish my abilities in my waking life. The ones that give me peace.

I guess I am just destined to be an intense dreamer. I just wonder: do I dream that way because I have an intense life, or is my life dramatic and intense because of the way I dream?

Poetry-The Other Side of the Coin

Fierce Warrior Mother

Sword and dagger, fists clenched

Against the world’s injustice

Run into the flames when others run out.

Sharp barbs fly from acid tongue

Defending and offending alike

Bristle and shoulder against the storm

Endure it when the brimstone rains.

But also, wounded healer

Living with losses that leave glacial craters

Untouchable places and unloved faces

Barely breathing sometimes.

Trying to embrace the grotesque

The inner wretch that sees no light

The pressing madness at the window

The burden of all that truth.

Some people can only handle one of me

They choose sides, adamantly demand

That I be only that-an avenging force

Or something they can save with love.

I live on the dancing edge of the coin

As it rolls toward uncertain ends.

Balanced with laughter and force of will

A world of wonder in my hands.

4-15-11

Poetry-Mirror Image

I sit in the bookstore coffee shop
Writing something so raw and true
That tears flow slow and unchecked
Into my corporate coffee.


Collecting myself and wiping my eye
I return to this world of dirt
Perception clearing, I look up
And see you, pen in hand, looking back.

Have you been writing about me?
My auburn hair in tangled curls
As I bents over my notebook, weeping
Silent, heedless, trance-like?

Does my pain only exist
In your world of fiction as a background piece?
Am I the peculiar detailed figure
Your protagonist notices before his path diverges?

I stretch, I yawn. You watch, you scribble.
Makes me want to pick my nose
Or scratch my ass to see if you follow,
To see how far I can take you with me.

Or could I stand and strip myself bare
Walk over to you and plant a kiss
On your astonished lips, and say
Thank you for seeing me at all?

4-5-11

Dead Batteries All Around.

There is something just awful about knowing that you are at dangerous levels of life burnout and you can't take a break. Half the reasons that I am feeling at loose ends are ones that I can't discuss due to confidentiality laws. It seems that as a nurse and as a foster parent, I have to be burdened with more secrets than I am expressly comfortable with. I can't talk about my kids or my work very much.

I was supposed to go to have an appointment with Little A's therapist today to discuss how she is doing. I set aside the time, I skipped putting on makeup because I fully expected to spend the therapeutic 50 minutes crying my eyes out. I packed a bag with lots of under-eye concealer to apply after the appointment and before going to work.

I went out to my Jeep and tried to start it. It went "click, click, click". That's it. The thing was running fine yesterday, and today...nada.

So I open the hood and peer inside. Now, I know how to change my own oil and do a tune up, but fixing actual problems on my car is another matter altogether. So there I am in my pink nursing scrubs, looking under the hood like the answer is gonna jump right out at me, and further that I would know how to fix it. Of course that made me feel like a dork. So I called Tony and he said it was a dead battery, and he was gonna buy me a new one and head home with it.

So I had to call and cancel the cry my eyes out appointment. I went back in the house and made some of those cinnamon rolls that come in the pop-open tin. As I ate one, I felt properly sorry for myself. All in all, it wasn't even a huge crisis. We had the money for the battery, and Tony replaced it pretty quickly. The car started right up. But it had thrown my flow off. It was frustrating on a day when I had multiple things to do before work. As it is, I am not even going to be late for work or anything, but my personal battery feels like it is going "click, click, click".

I am having that thought again. The one where I need to go take a retreat and recharge myself. I need to find my spiritual core and get grounded. I need to do yoga and sit among trees and feel the breeze on my skin. As it happens, I am going to go to work in about 20 minutes and won't be home until after midnight.

I'm lucky that the car didn't die at some other, less opportune time or place. It could have been much worse. Could have been better, too, though,.

If you see me by the side of the road with my hood up, at least honk and wave. I'm just looking for answers even if I don't understand how things work and might not even know how to fix them.

Cupid and Psyche

I

Cupid and Psyche, Antonio Canova, 1796

As often happens when I have even a little time to myself, I am thinking about myths and legends. This morning it is the peculiar romance of Cupid (or Eros) and Psyche.  Stories where gods fall in love with mortals are of particular interest to me. 

I love this sculpture, pictured in part, above.  The hands of the figures are so tender, it is amazing to imagine that this was once a piece of featureless marble. The anatomy is soft and beautiful as they caress each other. They are captured in the lips parted moment before a passionate kiss. 

Psyche had the misfortune of being born so beautiful that she made Venus jealous. Making a goddess feel envy is often cause for terrible punishment in these tales. Yet Psyche prevails and even gets to drink ambrosia and become immortal herself. That Cupid falls in love with her because he scratches himself with his own arrow is unfortunate. That Psyche is merely beautiful and not also wise is also a drawback. But It is a mysterious and charming story, full of invisible forces and ardent lovers that insist on having the lights off.

Without love, the world grows old and loses its color. Cupid and Psyche had a child together, the Goddess Volupta, who personifies sensual love and is one of the Three Graces. The gods didn't have that before. It took the human touch to create it. 

What the hell is my point? I'm just rambling, mostly. But in part I harbor a secret wish that I could contain some spark of inner beauty that would cause the divine to look on me favorably and create something of worth in me. Something that is unique in the world and fills it with pleasure and joy.

Instead of God the Father, this is God the Lover, and it is an interesting concept. It would be nice to have an intimate and mutually loving relationship with a god, even a minor one. Most of the time I experience the divine as largely indifferent to the minutiae of my life experience. Wouldn't it be nice to have a kiss of greeting and have God ask, "Honey, how was your day?"

Living Passionately

Image by Paula Scarletta


When I am in good form, and working at the top of my game, I strive always to live passionately. Of course, lately, I have been stunned into silence and even illness by the drama and baggage and heavy feelings surrounding the return of Little A and the short stay of Baby B.

As I sit here drinking water and taking antibiotics and trying to recover from the total shock to my system, I am noticing how down  and low-vibrating this situation has made me feel. I have had zero energy for writing or for making other kinds of art. That spiraled down into a total creative void and finally physical wear and tear. It was like my body just totally went on strike to get me to notice that I had started to live my life in a way that was not going to be consistent with my happiness.

Of course I know that having kids will put a damper on your energy. Especially my kids, because they come from backgrounds that mean they have certain special needs in the parenting department. Well, A does. J has made such progress and I have bonded with him such that he seems easy and the relationship is pretty relaxed most of the time.

I am nowhere near my usual energy level at the moment, but it has forced me to use my time for contemplation. It is going to take me a little bit to rebuild my strength. While I do that I am going to try to remain focused on what really matters, and that is being true to who I really am. Too often I allow the people in the county building tell me how to parent. The fact is that I am a slightly peculiar person and my kids enjoy me more if I can go with it and just be myself.

I'm happier when I am entertaining friends, experiencing and making art, supporting the artists I know, dancing, being in nature, and helping other people. It raises my energy level to do those things. It brings me down to do paperwork, do things out of obligation rather than by choice, and spending time in places that are filled with negative energy and negative people.

I'm not really sure how long we are going to have Little A this time. Things seem pretty uncertain at the moment. But if I am going to enjoy her in her good moments, I need to have enough energy to be awake for it. Little by little, I need to raise the bar for myself and follow those passions where they lead.

Monet & Me

Monet's Garden at Vétheuil, 1881 (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA)

This painting is following me around. Although it is quite a popular piece, I have been noticing it a lot lately. I was looking online for some new prints to put in my house, this one caught my eye again. I am going to need to buy a print of it. 

My love of the Impressionists flows naturally from my mother and grandmother, of course. For years and years before I ever had children, this seemed a perfect piece to hang in a nursery. It seems peaceful to me. As I was researching it this morning, I discovered that it was painted after the death of the artist's wife Camille, and that this garden, landscaped by Monet himself, was planted at a rented house. He had to get special permission from his landlord to do it.

To say that nurseries have been on my mind lately would be an understatement. The last week has been a flurry of activity and then nervous waiting to see if we can work out the details to move Little A and her baby sister Little B into our house. They are currently in an emergency foster care placement, and we would like to care for them. It is a huge unknown and a huge gamble. We could have them only for a few months. There is always the slimmer than slim chance that they would stay with us longer. Any other placement would have been unthinkable right now, as we are still waiting to finalize Little J's adoption. But A lived with us for 2 years, and to be honest I wouldn't mind visiting the piece of my heart that she carries.

So I have been seeing this print everywhere lately. The most recent sighting was in the restroom of an Italian delicatessen that Tony and I went to for lunch yesterday. Seeing it so out of context seemed a soothing omen. Either we are meant to get these girls and it is going to work out this time, or even if we lose them we are going to be okay.

Monet threw himself into his work after losing his wife, and painted some of the most lasting images of his career during that time in his life. I'm no Monet of course, but I know a little bit about epic loss and the dramatic and beautiful aspects of suffering.

Of course, I would prefer it if I could capture some of the peaceful cheerfulness of this painting. Who knows how Monet was actually feeling when he painted it. Perhaps he loved sunflowers because it is impossible not to smile while gazing upon them. Somebody remind me to plant some in the spring.

Angry Old Fat Women Need Love,Too!

RANT ALERT!!!!

Hey, guess what? I'm feeling a little pissed off today and here's why:

According to our popular culture:

It is okay to be fat as long as you are funny.

You can be hot if you are older, but only if you are skinny.

You can be sexy if you are curvy but not TOO MUCH.

You can be a feminist, but why be so ANGRY?

It is okay to be angry, but for cryin' out loud, get some botox so you don't LOOK angry. And don't be fat and angry.

But if you are middle aged, overweight, and dare to try to feel even the slightest bit attractive, good freaking luck. You can be old and hot or fat and hot, but both??? Nobody wants to see that.

I'm pitching fits. Culturally speaking, there is no place for me. Sexually speaking, at least in terms of popular culture, I am dead in the water, and any complaining about it is just old-lady bitching. Women who are younger than me seem to come away with the impression that because I look like a soccer mom, that I never had any fun when I was younger. I actually had a girl tell me that she just can't picture me ever being the type to wear a short skirt and drink and generally get into trouble.

In other words, I have become harmless. My femme-fatale days are over to other people, and apparently I was the last to get the memo. Whatever sensuality I possess is now expected to be subdued, refined, or, you know, invisible.

Not that I haven't mellowed with age, but that is just crap. I have no desire to be compared to a fine wine that gets better with age. I am different, but like all women in their forties, I am deeply aware of and interested in my sexual life. Like many women with naturally curvy bodies, I want to enjoy mine.

So here it is:

I'm aging, just like you are. ALL OF YOU. I'm also fat by many standards. I have little wrinkles from worrying on my forehead.

I also really enjoy sex, and I am probably better at it than you are. So there. I'm not self censoring any more for your comfort.