Friday, May 27, 2011

Write More of THAT

This week I took the 'Harmless' Harmon Killebrew piece to our interim writing group - the one that has sprung up between semesters.  In some ways I like this impromptu group better.  The people who attend are among my favorite writers (yes I have favorites) and I get to hear new voices as well.  It's more relaxed and has more writing sharing than a usual class.  How nice would it be to have a couple classes during the semester that were all small group like this?  That would be an incredible luxury.

Anyway - they loved this piece.  And as we were discussing it, many of them who are familiar with the rest of my memoir-ic (that is TO a word :-P) writing commented on how different that piece felt to those others.  Then came the inevitable request for more pieces around the same subject.  When I did a check to see how that felt in my body there was quite a bit of resistance to sharing any more of that.

That resistance is what I want to gently explore today.

Regular blog readers know my childhood was no picnic - alcoholic and generally absent father, cold distant female-loathing mother, abused physically, verbally and sexually.  The writing hasn't been ALL about that, but I have been working through the shadow stuff for a long time and the writing reflects that.  When I get tired of that I write about my love of science or my spiritual path.  I do not address the tiny points of light that exist for me in my childhood.  Those little fairy lanterns that lit my way through one craptastic moment to a little oasis where I could exhale.  Oasis strung together by the faintest of spider's silk.

So why was it easier to show people the broken parts?  I don't know.  When I first started writing, I was afraid to show people those parts too, believing they would think less of me if they knew - a legacy from my mother maybe who still believes that things ARE perfect if they simply look perfect to the casual observer.  That if I never let them see how fucked up I was, they might see me as perfect.  The thing is that I am not perfect.  I don't want to be.  Trying to maintain that facade became increasingly difficult and required a lot of energy and lies.  I finally got fed up with it and in a fit of anger let it all go.  I started writing about the shadowbits and my small group encouraged it.  They listened week after week as I prosed or poemed my way through the whole closet of shite.  I made roses out of that manure by writing some hard pieces of such gorgeousness I still can't believe that they are truly from my hand.

Maybe I have become a bit too comfortable there wallowing in the shit like a pig farmer immune to the smell of his charges who eats his lunch even as he mucks out the pig pen.  The peeps are always kinda pushing me to investigate those uncomfy-est of places.  But why this one?  They are such sweet lovely gentle memories.

I have these good memories locked up tightly.  I don't pull them out and brush my fingers over faces departed or sigh for their sweetness.  Don't get me wrong - I will do that in a New York minute for an ex- boyfriend or something my mother said that wounded me - will hunker down in the corner and talk to my preciousssssss memory.  But not these.  These have been hermetically sealed in a vault where they could remain untainted forever.  To even think about writing to them makes me shifty seated.  I don't want to do this.  I don't want to let them out.  I don't want to lose them.  They are my lifeline, all that stood between me and insanity.  They are the sparsely numbered foundation upon which I am built.   Remove any one and the Jenga tower falls.

Last week, I let one squeak out and it made me wobble a bit, but I'm still standing.  So maybe it's possible to let them go - to speak to the memories that are at the very heart of who I am.  Makes me feel naked.  Funny how often writing does exactly that for me.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

The Power of Words

I have blogged about this before - the power of words.  Think back to when you were in High School and someone called you a name that hurt you.  Just the energy of the word alone was enough to wound.  We have all experienced it.  We all understand it in this negative form.  And yet we are unable to stop using our own words against ourselves.  Do they carry less sting just because we are the ones to wield them?  Nope.  


Somedays I lose my patience with folks as I gently try to re-direct their thinking and their words to those that are more positive.  The positive words' energies are equally powerful, but they fail to see the potential that speaking about themselves in a loving and supportive way would bring.  It makes all the difference in the world folks!!


Even a magician knows about the power of words.  Abrakadabra after all is based on the Aramaic in which abra (אברא) means "to create" and cadabra (כדברא) which means "as I say", providing a translation of abracadabra as "create as I say"**.  


As I speak, so shall it be.  


Think about it.  What are you creating with your words?  




**swiped from Wikipedia....c'mon you don't really think I'm fluent in Aramaic do you?

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I'm Not Really Feeling It

I don't know why that is, but over the last couple weeks it's like someone switched the writing switch to the OFF position and didn't bother to tell me they were doing it.

I make the appointment at my desk every day for an hour.  I sit and twirl my hair, sip coffee and let my brain off its leash.  But it just sits there like a big ole male lion waiting for the lionesses to hunt, kill and bring back a tasty idea.  And when the hour is up and I haven't written a word, I slip out of my chair and get on with the day.  Most days, I never come back to that chair to write.  Although I will come back to check email, google some weird thought, look at match profiles (ho-hum), shop online a bit.  But this never lasts long before I am up and restlessly pacing again.

Maybe it's because in my head I was to be working by now.
Maybe it's because the weather is nice enough most days now to play outside.
Maybe my brain needed a break.
Maybe it's just summer.
Maybe it's the end of the writing semester at WWfaC.

I could go on, but will spare you.  So I am not writing.  Big whoop.  It's not the end of the world.  No one is injured by that.  And I refuse to feel guilty about it.  I see my writer friends trying to eke out 30 minutes in which to write, and here I sit with entire days of writing time and just the blank page to keep me company.  For months that has been enough.  But today it just isn't.  And there's nothing wrong with that.

When I started my blog I was quite content to write a piece every week or so.  When did I decide that I had to write one every day?  Really?  What if I have nothing of worth to say today.  Surely silence would be better than drivel droppings from my frontal lobes.

I am not unhappy that there are few words for me today.   Maybe I need to miss them a little so that I can be happy when they return and are there dancing onto my page.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Meandering Post About Lions

I dreamt last night I was wandering through Spring Grove Cemetery.  Not surprising, I have spent a lot of time there over the last five years due to my hobby obscura and have learned more than most people will ever know about its stately grounds and hidden beauties because of my fellow hobbyists.  SGC is the second largest cemetery in the US, behind only Arlington.  It houses 19 Champion Trees - the largest of their species in the state.  Sandra schooled me on that factoid and I feel obligated to share it so that locals can really appreciate this cool locale in their back yard.  The cemetery is designed to also be an arboretum and encourages all sorts of activities there.  But I digress.

In my dream I am wandering through the grounds near the front with all its over the top statuary and mausoleums.  The sunlight is filtered through the leaves of the trees dappling the ground.  All around me is lush and green.  I am completely calm and at peace as I move about without seeming destination in mind.  It feels good to move this way.  I begin catching glimpses in the distance of a lion also seeming to meander among the headstones.  A young male Barbary lion.**  I am not afraid of the lion.  Nor do I seek him out.  He never gets any closer to me, but seems to be meandering his own path.  The last time I see the lion he is being led away on a leash by a figure all in black and wearing a bowler hat like in the Magritte painting.  That makes me wistful.  I want the lion to roam free and to chance seeing him there.

An interesting dream that I documented and will take to dream group to see what they have to say about it.  In and of itself perhaps not majorly life altering.  Until I got this weird urge to go see Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  The movie was on my list, but so were a lot of other ones.  Suddenly I have to go see it and it has to be today.  NOW would be even better.  So I throw down breakfast, pull on some clothes, brush my teeth and hair and go.

Amazing movie.  I love cave art always have.  The idea that neolithic mankind felt the same urge to create links me to them over 20 thousand years.  But this cave is different.  Pristine.  The oldest known paintings created by man that survive and only recently discovered.  The floor is littered with skulls from cave bears.  The usual antelope and horses are shown.  But there are also walls with cave bears and entire prides of cave lions that I have never seen depicted in cave art.  As the camera pans across the wall of lions I start to cry.  Oh gawd - what now.  The lions are just so real.  And here is an artist's interpretation of an extinct species that I will never see except in these pictures.  Suddenly those twenty thousand years don't seem so far away at all.  And because the movie is shot in 3D there is the sense that I can reach my hand out there in the dark theater in Newport, KY and touch these beasts on a wall in Chauvet, France.  A sense that I might live in a world where cave lions still wandered.

I have a deep personal connection to lions.   Doubt it check out the chucks I'm doodling. Shoes to me are also symbols of wandering.  I DO like my barefeets, but inside only.  Outside requires a bit more protection.

So what's up with the lions?  Dunno.  They're not talkin.  Just kinda popping in and out.  If they got something to say, I wish they would get on with it.  Yeah - as if lions can be coerced to do ANYTHING.... these are giant CATS remember?


As an aside - while I was googling for pix of SGC I might include I came across the photo (left).  Yeah I know exactly where that is in SGC.  There's a pair of them.  This melancholy looking one and another more alert looking one.  They were donated by the same person who gave UC their famous pair of lions Mick and Mack - Jacob Hoffner.  I told you I knew alot about the cemetery.  BTW - note that this is a Barbary lion.  So what the hell?   Are the very statues coming to life and walking my dreams?  Tomorrow definitely calls for a trip to SGC and see what's up.



**I became very interested in lions a while back.  Before that I thought lions were all one species - a lion was a lion was a lion.  I was surprised to find that while there is a single genus species, Panther leo, there are numerous subspecies.  Sadly those subspecies have suffered from hunting, habitat destruction and avid collection for sport or zoological specimens since the Romans.  Subspecies characteristics have been lost as zoological specimens have interbred.  So what constitutes a 'true Barbary lion' is unclear to me.  By my definition, arbitrary though it may be, it is a lion that has the traditional light colored mane behind which grows a darker mane that is sometimes black.  That darker hair extends down the chest, neck, back and the back of the legs.  I included a picture just for reference.

Summaland

i am a child born to the sun
my existence closely bordered by Memorial and Labor days
born to inflatable suburban swimming pools
to time off
to heat
to grilled hot dogs, chips and cherry Kool-Aid
to shorts and flip-flops
to Lord of the Flies set in a Catholic neighborhood
to liberal doses of Off
to Red Rover until the street lights came on
to swimming in Minnesota lakes
to Coppertone's coconut aroma
to linseed oil in my ball glove
to lightening bugs in a jar
to rhubarb sauce

i am never quite as me
outside the land that is Summer

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Five Minutes in Mary's Brain

Photo by John Lund aka Stock Photo Guy
what is that thing?
why have i never seen one before?
can i play with it or use it?

what if everything i know about my world is a lie?
does anyone really tell the truth?
or are we all subject to our own thousand filters?

what if that thing up there i call the sky is not blue at all?
what is blue anyway?
who decided that?

what if i really know nothing about the world?
what if science is wrong in every assumption?
what if art is really truth?
what if art is also a lie?
how do i decide between the two?

what if my eyes see one thing and my brain tells me it is another?
which of those is truth?
is my truth the same as yours?
and if all of our truths are really different, then does truth really exist?

if I leave here and travel someplace, do I really move?
or is it all smoke and mirrors created in my brain?
am i really a teeny tiny borg - the fourth of five?

just what or who is god?
does he/she even exist?
can i touch them?
hear them?
do they hear me or even give a shit?
how do they feel about what we do here in their name?

wow, who is that singing on my iPod?
how come i didn't know i had that?
and how did it get onto there?
is it magic?
or is it message?
is it truth?
or is it a brain bubble?
is it perhaps god?



This is kinda what it's like inside my head ALL THE TIME.  I inserted the breaks so you could catch your breath.  But in reality there are no breaks.  

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Commercial TV Has Its Uses

The other night I'm watching TV - not unusual in and of itself.  But, that night I am watching it live versus something on the DVR.  I love fastforwarding through the commercials more than I can say.  I got up to go the the kitchen where I heard some cool voice.  I wandered back out to the living room, but by then the commercial was over.  I only knew it was a car commercial of some kind.

Weeks later I would finally see it again - Subaru Forester.  Scrambling then to youtube for an artist's name, Sean Hayes, and the song title - Powerful Stuff - then to Amazon to download some of his music.

It's been a long time since I have encountered a musical artist who lit me up like this one does.  You know the ones whose music hits you squarely in the solar plexus.  Whose vocal stylings are just a musical representation of something deep inside you.  I have this theory that I can pretty much profile a person by their music collection (or their book collection).  So kick back, listen and tell me what you think.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

"Harmless" Harmon Killebrew


I know.  Hold onto your hats blog readers because I am about to blog about BASEBALL.  Which is freaky and weird since, as an adult  I generally find it to be a slow and boring affair.  

I spent summers until I was 14 visiting my grandparents in Minnesota.  They had a cottage there on Lake Pelican near Pelican Rapids.  I had no idea how deeply those summers would affect me for the rest of my life, but I am absolutely glad that I had them.  They are the one part of my childhood that approached something akin to normal.

There were no children at the lake for us to play with, so we played games amongst ourselves where we never did that at home.  We ate every meal outside on a folding aluminum table.  We ate fish from the lake, vegetables from the tiny garden.  We swam most of the day or until our lips turned blue under my grandfather's watchful eye.  We freely roamed the countryside and nearby farmlands without fear of abduction or worse.  We snitched packets of sugar from the breakfast table that we would feed to the horses that lived a mile away.  We threw rocks into the stock tank at the Oldabandonedbarn.  That would give me killer precision at softball later.  We walked 2 miles in our dime store flipflops over gravel roads down to Els Resort for penny candy or around The Triangle for no reason other than  a child's nomadic need.  It was idyllic in every sense of the word.

The lake cottage was small and 3 adults and 5 kids would never have fit in there.  As the only girl I shared a bedroom with my mom.  My grandparents the other and my brothers were relegated to the room above the boathouse.  I always envied them that, the ability to escape the watchful eye of so many adults.  But sleeping in the house gave me certain privileges like access to the bathroom and falling asleep to the laughter of the people on Johnny's couch as my grandparents watched the Tonight Show.

It also means I got to see parts of my grandparents that my siblings did not.  I saw their quiet moments of togetherness.  My grandparents were married for over 50 years - something I can't even begin to comprehend in today's  world of fast food relationships.  I never saw them hug or kiss.  They slept in separate beds.  But I never doubted that they loved each other.   They spent all day apart, perhaps a pattern left over from the days when my grandfather was a telephone lineman for Bell.  Maybe it just worked out that way so as to keep peace.  I just don't know.  I can't remember them having very many conversations, but there was an energy between them that felt good and right and not at all like that between my parents.  That silent energy intrigued me.  Still does.  It was like a river that flowed between them always.  When my Grampa died, the river stopped and my Grami became lost without it, without him.  She lived another seven or eight years after that, but it was as if she always looked for him.

The cottage was my Grami's domain and I avoided it.  She was a stern woman who scared the crap outta me well into her 80's.  Her idea of fun was housework, cooking and all kinda things we considered chores.  Too much my Mama's daughter for that.  My grandfather on the other hand was warm and charismatic.  I remember following him around like a cub.  He gave us small tasks to do down at the lake or in the garden.  He took us fishing every day.  He let the noise of children break into his well-deserved lake silence and never got angry or short with us.

One of my favorite places to hang with him was in his workshop - a room out in the carport with his tools.  It always smelled like sawdust out there.  I think he went out here to escape from my Grami, my mom, and, yes, even us kids.  But sometimes he would let one of us into his domain, his holy of holies.  Other than the smell, the thing I remember most is the small radio on which he would listen to the Twins games.  I played with the curls of wood that fell off the planer onto the floor.  Or maybe I would just sit on the floor with my knees tucked under my chin content to be with someone who made me feel so safe.  Maybe he let me in because I revered that quiet as much as he did.  I can still remember how he would shake his head and talk about "Harmless" Harmon Killebrew when he came up to bat.  I thought Harmless was a strange name for a parent to give a kid.

Only years later would I understand it was a nickname my grandfather had given him.  Killebrew is best know for being a power hitter - second only to the Babe in the American League.   He retired at the top of the right-hand HR hitter board (Yes baseball stats - from ME!?!?)  He acquired the name Harmless because to my Grampa those runs never came when the Twins needed them most, but instead would come when they were leading by 4 or 5 runs.

I saw on the Yahoo feed today that Harmon Killebrew passed away age 74 from the complications of esophageal cancer.  He will undoubtedly be eulogized for his many accomplishments today.  I just wanted to add a few of his lesser known ones.  His name will forever be linked to a workshop where there is an older man shaving down a screendoor while a small girl sits on the floor and quietly plays with the wood shavings and basks in the silent flow of the river.  I can close my eyes and am right there.  Only a big league hitter like Harmon Killebrew has the power to knock you back that far in time.

RIP Harmon Killebrew.  Tell him I said hi.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Is There a Dating 12 Step Program?

No really.



Hi my name is Blue and I am a serial dater.

WHEW!

Not by choice mind you.  I would absolutely prefer to be nested in a relationship with someone smart as shit and equally funny.  And the only way one can get THERE is to continue to date.

I like dating.  There I said it.  I have come along way since those nerve wracking first dates after my little break where I fussed for hours about wardrobe and wanted to hurl all the way through it.  Knowing that probably wouldn't make a good first impression was probably the only thing that kept me from doing it.  I am less concerned now about impressing them and more concerned about whether they impress me - which is how it should be.  Or at least it gets equal time.

I used to kid that I wanted to date my way around the world.....but just in case the Universe is listening (and isn't it always) that was a JOKE!  I'm getting a little jet-lagged and traveling without baggage is getting harder and harder to do.....so could we pleeeeeease get on with it and find someone to sit in that seat across from me?

Thanks for listening

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Rock the Universe

Many years ago one of my friends introduced me to Mike Dooley's Notes from the Universe I was immediately and irrevocably in love.  These little daily notes from the Universe made me smile, laugh, think and ultimately helped change the way I view the world.  They opened my eyes to viewing the world like a Star Trek holodeck and making it be what I wanted with my the energy of my thoughts and intentions.  The cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs thing is that IT WORKED!


For example:  I had plans yesterday to letterbox with Phil and his girls.  The weatherman was right, when I woke up it was grey and raining.  That all day kinda rain.  Just like it has been for the last 6 weeks.  We decided to go anyway.  The girls starting singing this little anti-rain ditty


Rain 
Rain 
Go away
Come back tomorrow 
If you may.  


Yeah - it was kinda like this
Apparently rhyming is very important if you are gonna change the weather on the holodeck.  Instead of being annoyed by their incessant backseat singing, I encouraged it.  Phil and I joined in.  We did it fast, slow, quiet.  We funked it up.  We drummed our thighs and the dash till we were breathless with the giggles.  In other words we put some serious mojo behind it.  And all day long we had dry weather while all around us was grey, overcast and rainy.  It did rain at lunch, but they sang again and it stopped.  We traveled around in our little cone of dry.  Those are some powerful little weather mages he's got there.


I'm not the only one who is investigating the holodeck magics - not even close.  Recently I saw Thor (hot Norse gods with a V-cut - of COURSE I saw it)  and there was a snippet of conversation that made me stand up and go HELL YEAH!


Jane Foster: Describe exactly what happened to you last night. 
Thor: Your ancestors called it magic... 
[Thor skims through a book on Norse mythology] 
Thor: ...but you call it science. I come from a land where they are one and the same. 


 I am no longer the victim of anything.  I no longer wallow in the bad story.  I no longer feel helpless and alone.  If that isn't magic, I don't know what is.   Oh and that weather that surrounded us all day yesterday - YUP we got it today.  Course the little weather mages said it could, so I'm not surprised.

Friday, May 13, 2011

A Pair of Daddy's Girls

One of the things my mom and I disagree about is our spiritual paths.  Hers is traditional, the religion of my childhood - Roman Catholic.  Mine are more based in indigenous practices.  Having been raised in her religion, I do understand it.  I respect its beauty.  Its ritual and its deep mystic traditions.  But there are just too many blasted rules.  No place for women.  And I am not encouraged to talk to god directly even though god and I regularly conversed through most of my childhood.

We fought about that a lot during the four years I lived with her.  We fought about other things too.  Mostly we just fought.  We are good at that.  Put us in a small space and we will go there eventually.  I wish it had been different, but my mom hates women, hates herself.  That makes her toxic to be around for any woman who loves herself - especially this woman who was just learning to do that.

I now live about a half mile away.  Amazing what a difference that space makes.  Anyway....I was mowing her grass yesterday when my dad stopped by to say hello (for those people who don't know my dad has been dead for over 25 years).  I always find him hanging around there watching over my mom.  Continuing to do what he has always done which is to love her.  Just much more perfectly than ever he did while he was here.  We had a quick confab about some things and then he was off.

I mowed a few more passes when someone else came in - my mom's dad.  My grampa.  Just suddenly he was there.  Kissed me on the cheek and said tell your mom I love her and miss her.  Then he was gone.  I finished mowing and put the mower away.  Wondering the whole time how to say that to her so she would hear it and not just start an argument.  In the end, I trusted it enough to just say it while we sipped tea.  "By the way.  Grampa said hi.  That he misses you and loves you."  She got sad which wasn't his intention at all.

I have tried to get her to talk to him directly knowing he would be right there if she wanted it.  But she can't let go of her own beliefs enough to let him in.  Ironically though today I saw that she believes that I can which is a huge shift for her.  So, I hope that someday soon she will believe that for herself too.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Not Quite a Match

I have been a subscriber of match.com on and off for over four years.  Yeah - I know.  But in the modern age with a full life, a career, friends, family, etc.  it's almost impossible to bump into someone you can relationship with. I tried that for 15 years and came up with bupkiss.  I blame two of my older brothers who were using match and being successful for my fall from grace.

It makes a certain amount of sense and the nerd girl likes things that are logical.  You plug your likes and dislikes into a computer and it compares and contrasts (see there IS a use for those essay questions after all) and out pops potential date material.  I have several things that narrow the pool of potential candidates v a garden variety woman.  I am curvy round in a society that says only stick thin is good.  I am smart in a society that says silly stoopid is better.  I am deeply committed to an alternative spiritual path when the Chicken Littles insist on mainstream or nothing at all, intellectual men seeming to choose the latter.  I know who I am, I know what I am looking for, I know the things that I can't tolerate in a relationship (full list provided on request).  And I expect the dudes I date to know as much about themselves.

And therein lies the rub.  I am starting to realize (cut me some slack, I am a little slow on the uptake - a socialtard) that most people don't have a flying fuck of an idea of who they are much less what they really want in a partner.  And the blame for unsuccessful relationship ALWAYS lies outside themselves.  Really??  To me there is no such thing as an unsuccessful relationship.  There are those that don't work for any number of reasons, but they are not failures.  Not even close.  They simply are.  One thing I have learned is that any success requires that I just be me and not who I think they want me to be.  (Yes - I did do this.  For years).

Anyway, I have tried to learn from each dating experience (match or otherwise), each person with whom I shared a bit of email space or time.  So that you may benefit from my missteps or maybe just have a good laugh.

Lee - absolute crazy mother fucker.  Right out of the box.  Stalker of the first water.  STILL stalks me almost FIVE YEARS LATER.  Found me on FB recently and emailed me how I broke his heart (we never met??) and how he is happily married now.  Really then why are you stalking me on FB I wonder?  Lee taught me to have a care in the cyber-dating world because there were some mentally ill people out there looking too.

Mishawaka man (how sad - I can't even remember his name).  Oh wait - Doug!  His name was Doug.  Great emails.  Funny, sweet.  I owe him the whole idea of vanilla sex.  Never met.  Because he decided that I would never relocate and be happy.  News to me.  Funny how often thing get decided about how I feel or think, things I will do or won't do, without ever consulting me.

Home-slice (yeah he will always be the Homeslice.  Thanks for that Sherry).  Homer broke my heart into little tiny pieces.  I learned that sometimes people are incapable of saying their truth and that they will behave in such a way as to force your hand to do what they could not - walk away.  But I discovered that there is a whole other level to a relationship that transcends the physical/emotional/mental.  I want that.  And I discovered I could take the big hit and stand back up.  Admittedly it took a few tequilas or ten or twelve.  But, I didn't know that about myself before then.  And I think in some ways I was so afraid of having my heart broken that it kept me from even trying.  Without the H-slice, I would never know that.  I am grateful to him for that lesson.  I care about him still, but in a more or less generic humanitarian kinda way.

Terry - Mr 5 minute man.  Responsible for the creation and implementaion of dating rule #5 and it's corollary principle.

James the I,  aka James the Disappearing - great email for three weeks.  Funny, smart, wise ass, adorable.  Just the way I like em.  Then POOF!

Homer go round #2.  A lot of people thought I was a capital M moron for swimming in that pool again.  But, I regained so much of myself in doing it that I consider it a success.  Screw what y'all think.  Phllltttt.  Same ending as round 1 but this time I was prepared for it.  So HA!

Frank - Ah Frank.....the opener of Pandora's box of sex.....the Magicman.  I learned more than magic from dating him.  LOTS more.  Unfortunately we were absolutely incompatible in any way other than physically.  Hmmmmm....that suggest that that piece is probably the easiest to acquire - physical compatibility.  That anyone can become a good lover if they are willing to talk about it.  Yes - he taught me how to talk abut sex.  How to claim what I wanted.  How to show someone that.  How to bring a man to his knees with just my words.  In the end we were just too different in every way outside of bed and we had to end it.  DAMMIT!  LOL.  But Frank had one more trick up his sleeve.  Frank is my model for how to conduct a good break up.

Jeff - YIKES!  What was I thinking.  This dude PROPOSED on our first date (strike one).  Course he was drunk off his ass (strike 2).  That should have told me a lot right there.  Many weeks of dating later, I realize that Jeff wasn't interested in me, he was interested in having a wife.  A wife that would fit into his life.  Anyone could fit that mold - except me.  He never asked me a single question about what I thought or felt about anything.  Surprising how few of them ever do - ask about me that is.  But they will go on at length about themselves as if they are the most interesting subject to the entire world.  So I got to use my new found 'Breaking Up' Skill Set to end it.

Chris ended up in rehab before we ever dated - Thank G for small favors there.  And man was he a talker - WHEW!  I needed a nap after skyping him.

Ken who was very charming - but a complete liar.  Came on a little too strong and I ditched him as kindly as I could as quickly as I could.

Re-enter James the Disappearing Man for Pt II.  Yup.  Did I mention that I am a socialtard?  Yup.  This one kinda smarts a lot because James is almost exactly the kind of dude I imagine myself with in every way.  Six months of email.  Some of THE most memorable dates I have ever had.  Then POOF!  Again.    If I didn't know better I might think the Magicman made him disappear his absence is that complete.

So, now it's just me again......and my computer.....and match.com.  But honestly I'm kinda tired of the BS and the crap ass behavior.  So intending a good one to be next or at least someone who is bodacious amounts of fun.  Or both.  ORDER UP!

Monday, May 9, 2011

Still Unemployed

Just a quick blog, then I am out to chase the sun before it zips off again.

I am feeling kinda blah.  Today was supposed to be my first day of work at a new job.  Creating that job is taking longer than expected.  At least in ordinary reality.  So the date has been pushed back at least two weeks.  Maybe I jumped the gun a bit and switched the ancestors away from the job gig a bit prematurely and there hasn't been the oomph needed to finish.  They rocked that so hard and quickly I imagined it would flow easily from there.  Switched them onto another task - one they keep telling me NO.  I keep pushing.  OK.  Not really a no.  More of a not yet.  So today, moving them back to the task that needs finishing.

In anticipation of going back to work, the last two weeks have been chock-full of activities - lunches with friends, family stuff, movies, dinners, etc.  Not really a moment in there to breathe.  An empty weekend due to the evaporating BF in which to catch my breath and feel the pulse beneath my  feet again.

Today just kinda bouncing off the walls with nothing that NEEDS doing.  Oh christ don't get me wrong, there are things to do.  Just nothing that is demanding doing.  I was prepared for full frontal assault.  Instead there is the void.

Not complaining......just busy imagining what I am going to do these next two weeks that will carry me laughing into employment once more.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Alma, Illinois 1965

i saw a cool butterfly and raced
ahead on the trail
and when i turned to come back
i was alone

hey, where'd ya go?

i am four wandering toward dollhouses
then suddenly lost in swallen's
no familiar legs, no shepherd hand to hold

everything so big and strange on the lower shelves
crying and gulping out descriptions
to the nice older uniformed man
when I see brass buttons on a
familiar royal blue corduroy coat
and i breathe safe once more
chastized but safe

that sense of doom when the GPS died
in Alma, Illinois and I had no idea where I was
even less of where I was headed or why I was there.

going back to dining solo
staring at the emptiness across from me
listening to the hollow scrape of
the fork on my plate bounce off the four walls
where recently there was laughter

it has never grown easier that sense
of finding myself suddenly alone
where moments before I was cherished and safe.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Another Public Readaround

I started with Women Writing for a Change in the fall of 2007 after doing a weekend retreat they offered.  Right away I recognized kindred spirits in the facilitators and innately understood how it all worked.  Enrolling that fall seemed a no-brainer.  I have never felt as naked, as vulnerable as I did that first semester.  Every word seemed to peel off a little more of my skin.  

Each class begins with a poem.  One of the very first poems Kathy Wade shared was The Book of Hours by Joyce Sutphen.  I was inspired by the poem to try to list my best 12 hours.  12 simple memories of light and beauty.  I tried and failed to write that piece for days.  What I wrote instead was a piece about the shadow hours, my darkest moments.  It was a scream in the dark.

I sat on that piece for weeks, afraid to read it to my small group.  Compelled by the power of those words, I would eventually do that.  My small group then encouraged me to read it at the Public Readaround.  I could not bring myself to do it that first semester.  Only three other people had heard that piece, until tonight.  Four and half years later, I finally read that piece out loud at the public readaround.  My small group was right.  Those were good and powerful words that I found in the shadows.

I no longer felt naked and vulnerable.  I felt strong.  I felt heard.  I felt empowered.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

I am watching Celebrity Apprentice (Yes, this is what unemployment has reduced me to.  Thankfully over in a few weeks).  Right as The Donald is about to disclose the booted contestant, a scrolling text starts at the bottom and I think "What now?"  We are in the middle of spring Rainfest 2011 here in Greater Cincinnati, the Ohio is flooding its banks and random tornadoes are at their height.  What I see instead makes me sit up and punch the volume way up and stop paying attention to the boardroom.

The scroll says Osama bin Laden is dead.


Wha??  Suddenly The Donald and his atrocious comb-over no longer holds my mocking attention.

I watch in fascination as the reports come in.  In their wake is a kind of sadness at the extreme and, to me, unnecessary loss of human life on both sides of this conflict over the last 10 years.  I see people dancing and celebrating the death of this man and I am shaken.

Please don't misunderstand me.  OBL was a tyrant......in his day.  But his power web was broken a long time ago.  I am not sorry he is gone from the planet.  He needed to go.  I understand that for most of the US he has become THE symbol of terrorism.  Some people even believing that if we chop off the head of the snake that is terrorism, that the rest will die.  Personally I think we could all learn from Hercules and the hydra here.  New and more brutal tyrants will come.  It is the way of things in this world.

My reaction is not to OBL's death.  He is a wicked man.  It is to the reaction to that news that I am seeing.  That celebration will be fodder for Al Jazeera and will incite the re-birth of the very thing they celebrate removing tonight and the cycle will begin again.  A cycle of hate.  A cycle that includes no attempt to understand another's point of view.

I am not an eye-for-an-eye person.  I'm not exactly a turn the other cheek either, just ask my family.  I just don't see how a mother left to grieve the loss of her child in Afghanistan will make a mother in the USA feel one whit better about the grief of losing her own child.  To me, both losses are unacceptable.

Part of me simply wishes that the reaction to the news of OBL's death had been less Girls Gone Wild and more Act Like You Been There.

Today I will remember those who lost their life on both sides of this unholy war and I will pray for peace.

 I have written a lot about my belly - series of poems dedicated to it. I happen to like my belly. Always have Oh, I know it's not what ...