Every now and again in my life there are repetitions of ideas or words or conversations - it happens to everyone that I know, sometimes more, sometimes less, but it is difficult to go an entire year without a day of someThing. There were two things recently - one of which I cannot remember, the other was Mystic. As in Pizza and Connecticut. I wondered where it would lead. There are some themes which are not really for contemplation, rather they are like the flashing light for don't walk or slow down or almost to go.
It helps to counteract the beginnings of the cool down after the move. I am gaining weight, the kittens are well and healthy, the job is being what it is, but it isn't changing, and suddenly the past is swooping in on soft huge wings to cover and smother me when I am making turkey soup or sorting through cards or reading a beloved book, or doing crosswords.
The distraction back to the world of productive thought is a good and useful and enjoyed and somewhat desperately grabbed.
I think of the quiet and dark of the womb - well, quiet, not so much, but definitely dark. The quiet is for the cave of the bears who pace in my psyche, comfortable in their sleep, sharing dreams and birth and rest all winter until the spring comes and I am again given to the wandering, snuffling loss of my self into the world. Summer is a time of great confusion for me, it always has been. Winter is the time when I know myself best, when I am most at peace. And this year, I can be at peace without a draft on my face.
The books I find seem to be filled with rhythms and words that I understand in a way I could not have imagined even months ago. I find the goddess a carefully approached entity, I am careful not to get too close, for I know how easily she folds you in to herself. But I cannot stay away for long. I enjoy too much the danger of treading close to the fire, to the energy of the words, that place where all could be lost is where I find what that is.
Now I am hungry and must go downstairs to make some bad food for my tummy. All are well and healthy and maneuvering through this season joyfully if not smiling.
Wednesday 28 November 2007
Wednesday 21 November 2007
this is not the blog you’re looking for
Rather, not the blog I was going to write. I have Things to talk about, Big Important Things to say words about. Not to be confused with having Big and Important Things to Say myself. I prefer to let others act, and to be the critic, the observer, the person who doesn't have to synthesize the information or provide the ridiculous sound bite. In other words, I am not yet ready to be the person whose words I want to ridicule.
It will come. I am not worried. I'm writing again. The more words there are, the more likely they are to become fuel for someone else's fire.
So it was snowing. the kittens watched it for a good hour this morning, Miss Ethel's head jerking about trying to find one flake, one movement, one thing to follow to the ground, one thing to watch but everything else prevented it, she couldn't stop from looking at every flake as it fell past the window, the large breezy window in the front room, at the end of the runway of wood.
Boris is much too laid back to be distracted that way. He is a sucker, though, for getting right in my way every time I read or write on my writing desk. He will stand on it, butt heads with me (literally) and prance about to get love, until I stop what I am doing and pet him and he's had enough and walks away. Since he also hasn't figured out that if he doesn't kill me on the way to the food bowl, he will continue to get fed, I do not take it personally.
Tomorrow is thanksgiving. One of "those" holidays, so correctly smirked at. Not because it is a bad idea or inappropriate to celebrate through gratitude, or with much food from the recent harvest, or the coming of one's family before the winter begins, but because the origin story is really cheesy. I don't care how true it is. It's a fucking made for TV movie and we all know it.
I grew up in a church associated with the Congregationalists. For those of you who have had better things to do than study the history of the Christian churches in the colonies and then the US, they were very like the Puritans. Most of the East coast was Congregationalist for a very long time, the church founded Harvard and Yale and that college where Richard Jewell worked before he was accused of putting those bombs around the Olympics that year. We are a very tense people, as you would be if you were the descendants of a group of people who believed that no matter what you do in life, your afterlife has been determined from before your birth - predestination is the word for that belief and all of its extrapolations. Conservative Calvinistic Congregationalists. There is a reason we did not have business cards or a song.
There is something fundamentally wrong with making the teachings of John Calvin even more conservative. These people didn't dance or wear anything but black or grey. Okay, I can get behind that - not my style, but that doesn't give me the right to say don't do it - even West Coast Zoot suits were mostly monochromatic because of the rationing, and they made it cool. They made it really fucking cool, but I digress. What I can't get behind is the double whammy that comes after predestination has been presented - if you are marked for heaven, it is shown through beauty and wealth, but just because you are beautiful and wealthy doesn't mean that you are marked for heaven, it just means that ugly poor people aren't. And - now, this is where I start to twitch - it is morally required of all beautiful people to help the non-chosen ones to live good and God-fearing lives, for even though they are not destined for heaven their time in hell can be made less if they have lived according to God's Laws (What I learned from studying Shakespeare: the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism as seen through the eyes of the faithful).
They got on boats. My theological ancestors left from Leiden (Holland) and came here. On a boat. And then they got off of the boat and the rest is an odd mix of fact and fantasy told as History.
Thanksgiving was a bigger holiday in my church than any other. Even Easter. Well, we liked each other and Lenten dinners were a big hit, so why be glad when it's over. Congregationalists, appropriately contrary to their name, don't congregate unless they have to. And they like to be seen congregating. They are an odd bunch. I am glad that we left behind the mystics, though. I just don't think that a faith that is as pragmatic (to a degree) as I was raised to be has much room for mysticism. Also, there are a lot of wise people who are really ugly - how can you trust an ugly (bound for hell, remember) person to help guide you on your way to a greater understanding of god?
Now there is much eating and rejoicing in each other's company to offset the dread that in one month it will be time to do this all again, hopefully in someone else's house (Not Me!) and with gifts! More money, more expense, more dishes. Great.
This year there is much for which to be thankful in my family. Some years the gratitude is directed less personally. I will not share with you my list of things for which I am thankful. I find something in every day, therefore, the list is too long to be remembered, much less shared.
The sun has come out a bit. Just in time to melt the slush that will turn into ice the second that sun drops down past the stadium.
Oh - I added new pics of the babies and I from this morning.
See, told you it wasn't what I wanted to say - I am thinking of taking that one slightly more seriously. Also, I keep losing the page where the quote is. Cough.
It will come. I am not worried. I'm writing again. The more words there are, the more likely they are to become fuel for someone else's fire.
So it was snowing. the kittens watched it for a good hour this morning, Miss Ethel's head jerking about trying to find one flake, one movement, one thing to follow to the ground, one thing to watch but everything else prevented it, she couldn't stop from looking at every flake as it fell past the window, the large breezy window in the front room, at the end of the runway of wood.
Boris is much too laid back to be distracted that way. He is a sucker, though, for getting right in my way every time I read or write on my writing desk. He will stand on it, butt heads with me (literally) and prance about to get love, until I stop what I am doing and pet him and he's had enough and walks away. Since he also hasn't figured out that if he doesn't kill me on the way to the food bowl, he will continue to get fed, I do not take it personally.
Tomorrow is thanksgiving. One of "those" holidays, so correctly smirked at. Not because it is a bad idea or inappropriate to celebrate through gratitude, or with much food from the recent harvest, or the coming of one's family before the winter begins, but because the origin story is really cheesy. I don't care how true it is. It's a fucking made for TV movie and we all know it.
I grew up in a church associated with the Congregationalists. For those of you who have had better things to do than study the history of the Christian churches in the colonies and then the US, they were very like the Puritans. Most of the East coast was Congregationalist for a very long time, the church founded Harvard and Yale and that college where Richard Jewell worked before he was accused of putting those bombs around the Olympics that year. We are a very tense people, as you would be if you were the descendants of a group of people who believed that no matter what you do in life, your afterlife has been determined from before your birth - predestination is the word for that belief and all of its extrapolations. Conservative Calvinistic Congregationalists. There is a reason we did not have business cards or a song.
There is something fundamentally wrong with making the teachings of John Calvin even more conservative. These people didn't dance or wear anything but black or grey. Okay, I can get behind that - not my style, but that doesn't give me the right to say don't do it - even West Coast Zoot suits were mostly monochromatic because of the rationing, and they made it cool. They made it really fucking cool, but I digress. What I can't get behind is the double whammy that comes after predestination has been presented - if you are marked for heaven, it is shown through beauty and wealth, but just because you are beautiful and wealthy doesn't mean that you are marked for heaven, it just means that ugly poor people aren't. And - now, this is where I start to twitch - it is morally required of all beautiful people to help the non-chosen ones to live good and God-fearing lives, for even though they are not destined for heaven their time in hell can be made less if they have lived according to God's Laws (What I learned from studying Shakespeare: the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism as seen through the eyes of the faithful).
They got on boats. My theological ancestors left from Leiden (Holland) and came here. On a boat. And then they got off of the boat and the rest is an odd mix of fact and fantasy told as History.
Thanksgiving was a bigger holiday in my church than any other. Even Easter. Well, we liked each other and Lenten dinners were a big hit, so why be glad when it's over. Congregationalists, appropriately contrary to their name, don't congregate unless they have to. And they like to be seen congregating. They are an odd bunch. I am glad that we left behind the mystics, though. I just don't think that a faith that is as pragmatic (to a degree) as I was raised to be has much room for mysticism. Also, there are a lot of wise people who are really ugly - how can you trust an ugly (bound for hell, remember) person to help guide you on your way to a greater understanding of god?
Now there is much eating and rejoicing in each other's company to offset the dread that in one month it will be time to do this all again, hopefully in someone else's house (Not Me!) and with gifts! More money, more expense, more dishes. Great.
This year there is much for which to be thankful in my family. Some years the gratitude is directed less personally. I will not share with you my list of things for which I am thankful. I find something in every day, therefore, the list is too long to be remembered, much less shared.
The sun has come out a bit. Just in time to melt the slush that will turn into ice the second that sun drops down past the stadium.
Oh - I added new pics of the babies and I from this morning.
See, told you it wasn't what I wanted to say - I am thinking of taking that one slightly more seriously. Also, I keep losing the page where the quote is. Cough.
Sunday 18 November 2007
poem after felix’s
this pleasure in the silence of the sun and the breeze and the paper-soft dead leaves is only made because of the absence of you, for how could i stop and look and see the world around me when there is you to see instead. how to feel the breeze on my face when my hand itches to hold yours, to touch your cheek, your warmth. there is no room in me for the world when you are near. there is no room in the world for me when you are living in it so close to me. but here, alone in the park with the cobbles underfoot and the dancing death of so many leaves just waiting for that final rain, snow, wind to bring them off of their branches and into their sleep, here i can see what you had eclipsed. here i remember and know that without the shadow of you, the sun would shine not at all.
a pair of lovers stopped their chat as i walked through the gates of the park today. i did not envy them their togetherness. i pitied their noise in such loveliness as i saw all around me. they stayed silent, perhaps out of respect, more likely out of paranoia, such is the egotism of all lovers. and i walked free.
a pair of lovers stopped their chat as i walked through the gates of the park today. i did not envy them their togetherness. i pitied their noise in such loveliness as i saw all around me. they stayed silent, perhaps out of respect, more likely out of paranoia, such is the egotism of all lovers. and i walked free.
Tuesday 13 November 2007
I’m only here because this is where the phone is
I have been overly publicly grateful. I have unpacked many boxes. I have still not found the screws to put the desk together, even though they were on the china cabinet and I grabbed them specifically and put them ... somewhere? ...
The kittens are racing each other from one end of the apartment to the other. There is enough hallway that they don't even have to start at the far end to get going at break neck speeds. The kittens sleep on me. And when I say "on me" I am speaking literally. There is no cuddling on the side. There is lying on my hair, my arm, my leg, my face at times. Ethel is small enough that she can curl up around my skull and until I move in an unfortunate way and receive small claws in my scalp, I don't even know that she's there.
The books are entirely unpacked. They are oddly shelved, but I will have plenty of time and space for cataloging and re-organizing. I am thinking of grouping the craft and needlework books together, the cookbooks together and the dress-up books together, lined up by size, of course. As for the others, I am seriously considering putting them in order by date of acquisition. Which means that I get to keep most of the very fragile children's books in the front room and relegate the ever more trashed trade books to the sort of non-room-place. I really need to come up with something to call that room. It has a purpose, but who wants to take people a tour of their apartment and have the second room people walk through to be "the place where I keep everything I can't find any other place for. And my closet." My One Closet. And the track lighting. I may move something else in there at some point. Definitely not a sitting room. Too many mirrors. Ug.
The kitchen is completely fun and fits me well.
I've just had news that someone relatively unconnected to me has passed away. That seems a very cold sentiment and why should it matter, but it does. He was the husband to someone for whom I care very much. He has been in a vegetative state for more than a decade. Their two children have grown up without him and now have a good male role model who loves their mother very much. Their mother has struggled and, like most of us who can only handle the struggle for so long, has found happiness and has raised children who are enjoyable and intelligent and completely wacky people. I like them very much. She has no idea how she could have raised them to be so utterly un-screwed up. Her utter confusion is wonderful to watch. I send good thoughts to them and to the family of the man who has passed away. I know that it cannot be an easy thing to watch someone deteriorate slowly and feel totally powerless to stop it or to stop whatever suffering may come with it without ending that person's life totally. From what I understand, his body stopped on its own. He was ready to go.
It all does go away eventually. If you let it. The pain, the ecstasy, the frustration, the confusion. If you let it go - it leaves. I have what is occasionally an unpardonably long memory, and occasionally it is unpardonably short. There are some emotions that will allow me to forget that I have been treated with uncommon kindness or uncommon disrespect. There are head spaces which do not always allow me to be as aware of my surroundings and their impact on me as I would like. I imagine it is similar for most people.
Last evening I read poetry for the first time in ages. Read the same poem three times for the joy of it.
Been finding little bits of my past lying about in boxes. I have been putting them on my refrigerator (which is HUGE) just because they make me happy.
The move was good. Having people over to help me get started unpacking was good.
My phantom appendix does not want me to sleep on my left side right now, but that is an acceptable price to pay, I think.
The kittens are racing each other from one end of the apartment to the other. There is enough hallway that they don't even have to start at the far end to get going at break neck speeds. The kittens sleep on me. And when I say "on me" I am speaking literally. There is no cuddling on the side. There is lying on my hair, my arm, my leg, my face at times. Ethel is small enough that she can curl up around my skull and until I move in an unfortunate way and receive small claws in my scalp, I don't even know that she's there.
The books are entirely unpacked. They are oddly shelved, but I will have plenty of time and space for cataloging and re-organizing. I am thinking of grouping the craft and needlework books together, the cookbooks together and the dress-up books together, lined up by size, of course. As for the others, I am seriously considering putting them in order by date of acquisition. Which means that I get to keep most of the very fragile children's books in the front room and relegate the ever more trashed trade books to the sort of non-room-place. I really need to come up with something to call that room. It has a purpose, but who wants to take people a tour of their apartment and have the second room people walk through to be "the place where I keep everything I can't find any other place for. And my closet." My One Closet. And the track lighting. I may move something else in there at some point. Definitely not a sitting room. Too many mirrors. Ug.
The kitchen is completely fun and fits me well.
I've just had news that someone relatively unconnected to me has passed away. That seems a very cold sentiment and why should it matter, but it does. He was the husband to someone for whom I care very much. He has been in a vegetative state for more than a decade. Their two children have grown up without him and now have a good male role model who loves their mother very much. Their mother has struggled and, like most of us who can only handle the struggle for so long, has found happiness and has raised children who are enjoyable and intelligent and completely wacky people. I like them very much. She has no idea how she could have raised them to be so utterly un-screwed up. Her utter confusion is wonderful to watch. I send good thoughts to them and to the family of the man who has passed away. I know that it cannot be an easy thing to watch someone deteriorate slowly and feel totally powerless to stop it or to stop whatever suffering may come with it without ending that person's life totally. From what I understand, his body stopped on its own. He was ready to go.
It all does go away eventually. If you let it. The pain, the ecstasy, the frustration, the confusion. If you let it go - it leaves. I have what is occasionally an unpardonably long memory, and occasionally it is unpardonably short. There are some emotions that will allow me to forget that I have been treated with uncommon kindness or uncommon disrespect. There are head spaces which do not always allow me to be as aware of my surroundings and their impact on me as I would like. I imagine it is similar for most people.
Last evening I read poetry for the first time in ages. Read the same poem three times for the joy of it.
Been finding little bits of my past lying about in boxes. I have been putting them on my refrigerator (which is HUGE) just because they make me happy.
The move was good. Having people over to help me get started unpacking was good.
My phantom appendix does not want me to sleep on my left side right now, but that is an acceptable price to pay, I think.
Friday 9 November 2007
Because I just can’t help myself...
Phases of Moving – The Picture of Before
Phase 1 involves getting all of my stuff out of my parents' house.
Phase 2 is getting the keys.
Phase 3 is packing at the old house.
Phases 4-8.6 involve the movers moving things.
Phase 9 = beer
Phase 10 = friends + books
Phase 11 begins when my parents arrive with the kittens and more snacks or beer, I haven't decided which to ask for.
Phase Oh My God Who Cares Anymore!?!?! will, I think, be when it's been all it can be and there's still more to do.
I would like to acknowledge that these phases were listed, and therefore numbered, in the order I thought of them. There is nothing sequential about them in reality. Nothing happens chronologically in a move. The clock is there to taunt you. It is a challenge, a duel to the death with the technology of time in western thought. This will be a very challenging move.
I am so fucking excited. I dislike being in limbo. I need to see that there is a very definite end in sight - and that sight is tomorrow evening.
Phase 1 involves getting all of my stuff out of my parents' house.
Phase 2 is getting the keys.
Phase 3 is packing at the old house.
Phases 4-8.6 involve the movers moving things.
Phase 9 = beer
Phase 10 = friends + books
Phase 11 begins when my parents arrive with the kittens and more snacks or beer, I haven't decided which to ask for.
Phase Oh My God Who Cares Anymore!?!?! will, I think, be when it's been all it can be and there's still more to do.
I would like to acknowledge that these phases were listed, and therefore numbered, in the order I thought of them. There is nothing sequential about them in reality. Nothing happens chronologically in a move. The clock is there to taunt you. It is a challenge, a duel to the death with the technology of time in western thought. This will be a very challenging move.
I am so fucking excited. I dislike being in limbo. I need to see that there is a very definite end in sight - and that sight is tomorrow evening.
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