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Archive for the ‘love’ Category

Shoes That Get Around … Dammit!

Posted in Family, Loss, love, Men, News, Older women, Sex, tagged , , , on January 12, 2011| 8 Comments »

I heard a story the other day about a woman who recently found herself standing in a pair of my three-year-old shoes … shoes that were feeling very comfortable until the day they sliced my feet off and left me to hobble on bloody stumps.

Members of the confab gathering around … apparently a lot of us wear the same sized slippers … have asked for my thoughts. They tell me she’s around my age and had been thinking herself well-married, happy, safe only to learn that her devoted husband had shifted his devotion from her to someone else.

She was blindsided … a very nasty way to take a blow … completely unprepared for the drastic change to life, and in the man she’d considered for many years a life partner.

“Who is this guy, and what did he do with my husband?” is the question she’s asking now, and with good reason since “this guy” is nothing like that guy. Or is he? Can you really miss that much in someone you’ve been sleeping beside night after night for decades? Apparently, yes.

With interesting timing, this article came across my radar this morning. Titled “He’s the One Who Cheated and Left; So Why is He So Angry At You?”, if nothing else, it proves that those old shoes sure get around.

I couldn’t understand why my ex never expressed remorse for what he’d done to me, just regret at what our daughter suffered. He’d always been extremely concerned about me while we were married, worried about my health, mental and physical. He’d always apologized every time he blew up at me. I was stunned at his coldness. He did say to me on various occasions that he felt “guilty” but he never apologized or showed any empathy for my suffering.

Sound familiar?

I don’t know the newly-dumped woman, so am in no position to give a hug and add to the chorus now teaching her the words to “I Will Survive” and encouraging her to sing at the top of her voice.

Not that she’s there yet. It takes time to move from “alone and petrified” to “savin’ all my lovin’ for someone who’s lovin’ me” … a LOT of time.

Unfaithful husbands–even husbands who have always been loving– can be inexplicably brutal. The incongruence between you makes it all worse. He’s already found a new partner, and doesn’t feel the loss of the marriage. You, on the other hand, are shattered, terrified of the future and collapsing on friends and relatives. His happiness is the unkindest cut of all. He’s already detached from you, or is in the process of detaching, which makes him excruciatingly insensitive.

Apparently, there are reasons for the excruciating insensitivity … not that it’s any excuse for it:

“Infidelity is harder on women, who are more vulnerable to feelings while men are a law unto themselves,” explains psychoanalyst Simone Sternberg. “Men don’t allow themselves to empathize with women’s suffering. It’s too threatening. Also underneath male supposed indifference or even hostility is self-hate which they project onto the wife. They can’t afford to empathize or they’ll have to experience the full force of that emotion.”

Well, whoopiefuckingdoo …

Oops. Sorry. Okay. Not sorry … and still pissed off when I allow myself to dwell, but, hey, I’m entitled to my feelings, too. There is, after all, such a thing as consequences, as William Congreve noted way back in the 1600s:

“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”

Being burned leaves scars that can itch and tug and it’s not in any furious, scorned woman’s mandate to forgive or forget, only to get on with it.

That’s about my only advice to anyone finding their feet now bound in those old shoes … get on with it. There’s nothing else you can do. Suck on the bitter pill … it won’t choke you … remember the flavor, and try to avoid the queue that forms in front of those dispensing another dose.

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Feckin’ musicians …

Posted in Celebrities, love, Men, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, Writers, tagged , on January 8, 2011| 11 Comments »

Thanks completely to my dear friend Robbie, I’m now deep into Keith Richards’ “Life”. Not only am I enjoying the read, it’s setting me off in many directions through time, but criss-crossy-convoluted as Keith jumps through all of his.

I’m recalling events directly Stones involved, from the first time I saw them in concert … I must have been 13 or 14 at the time … Brian Jones was alive, of course, Jefferson Airplane opened for them, but before Grace Slick — a girl named Nicki Anderson (not sure of the spelling) sang with them then … to my personal experience with the charming Mr. Richards in New York many years later.

Also coming to mind are the times and the music, the many moments in life set against the backdrop the timeframe dictates and scored by the Rolling Stones. Although I’m not exactly chuffed by the fact that I am now a woman of a certain age, I wouldn’t trade the experiences my era provided for the perky tits of tepid Twentiesville or the smooth-faced bland of Thirtyopolis.

Nope. Although I’m quite a bit younger than Keith and without so much of the rode-hard-put-away-wet-look he’s earned and mastered, living through the time I lived provided something special.

I started young, which ended up being a good thing as by the age of 16 I’d been sent to the hinterlands. Before that, however, I was in the right place at the right time to witness the reinvention of the wheel that rolled over just about every aspect of life as it had been known, and being without much in the way of parental supervision or smarts I had access with buddies or a bus pass providing transport.

Art, literature, fashion, music … all experienced a rebirth, and what popped out was earth-shattering, unexpected. All these changes were considered by many to be mere flashes in the proverbial pan, but considering how many present-day teens flock … and pay a fortune … to hear Keith rockin’ it at 60-some, that would seem to have been a short-sighted view.

Reading through his version of life as I pass this day in paradise, though, I’m wondering how deep the impact of all that change had on me.

For sure, the image of being June to a Ward had little appeal as the world shifted from 50s dregs to 60s mania, although Ricky with the conga was pretty hot. And speaking of Ricky, Ozzie may have had the suit and the nebulous ‘job’, but when his youngest picked up a guitar … well, did they get any cuter? If anyone wanted to be Harriet, I didn’t know them.

Like every teenage girl of the time … and no few teenage boys, as well … I entertained fantasies of portions of life partnered with one of the rock gods who filled every corner of my life from the walls of my bedroom to the tunes playing endlessly everywhere. Not only were they amazing to hear and watch, creative, explosive and beautiful, they were also dangerous bad boys who literally marched to a different drummer.

I watched Jim Morrison stumble around and was enchanted. Coming across Jimi Hendrix blowin’ chips outside the Fillmore was almost a religious experience. (Apparently, it was the flu … yeah, right … ) And I still swear I levitated Country Joe McDonald three feet into the air once at the Avalon …. but the acid was really good in those days, and he didn’t seem to mind too much, although he could be grumpy.

No, there weren’t a lot of ‘nice young men’ taking the stage at that time, at least not in the classic sense of ‘nice’, and I liked that. The rude, crude and raw attracted me like a fly seeks shit and the drama of it all stripped the coating from the wires making everything alive.

What followed was a long string of musician boyfriends … mainly guitar players, although there were a few drummers mixed in, but they are a fidgety bunch … and some were very nice, polite young men who kept their manners about when my parents were looking. None were as dangerous as they appeared to be, nor mean, but some did break my heart and all required ego-feeding at regular intervals. (Funny thing is, the non-musical men had the same bloody ego issues with much the same bloody demands. Go figure. But the fact that they didn’t hang their dicks around their necks demanding adoration did make some difference.)

Gaps happened, years that had no musician serenading day-in-day-out, but soon enough … for sure … they’d pop up again. After my first divorce I went on the road with a wonderful bunch of guys … still friends after all these years … and came across more as decades passed. I fell in love with some. Some fell in love with me. All-in-all … well, it was what it was.

As regular readers know, my last relationship was with … yeah, you’ve got it — a musician … another ‘bad boy’. (And who knows if it’s really bloody over or just on pause, as the contact continues daily and the fat lady has yet to sing real loud.)

My lot now is to figure out if it’s the bad boy thing that draws me or the fucking music. Did Keith and his ilk ruin me for guys with regular jobs? Will I put up with anything as long as there are songs dedicated to me and named for me? Or … do I actually LIKE it? Can strife really be settled with a strum? Is there magic in music soothing my soul even when my nerves fray and my temper flares? Do I NEED the drama?

Reading Keith’s life reminds me that musicians aren’t “normal” people, and thinking on my life has me realizing I’m not “normal” either. As I wasn’t built for mopping in pearls, some aren’t made to put on a suit and head for a ‘job’ and a box and a handle… and maybe … just maybe … that’s okay.

OR …

Maybe it’s time I set aside my … what? fascination? attraction? tolerance? … for musicians and developed more of an appreciation for nice, for reliable & honest, for passions of a sort that don’t require being charted … for those who are satisfied being stars in their worlds and neither need nor seek wider adulation.

The rules broken by Keith Richards and the bulk of my childhood heroes left little in their wake to ski on since the ideas of happy coupledom continued to be based more on June and Ward than Mick and Marianne and that left some confusion over both goals and expectations. Sure, John and Yoko pulled it off, but for the most part musicians have not made for a whole lot of traditional relationships still thought of as ideal. In general, they are demanding, self-centered, self-indulgent, temperamental and insecure, traits that manifest in high levels of self-motivation and creativity, and in behavior not always conducive to a comfortable home life and monogamy.

I’m an artist, which means I must be crazy, and the art and crazy in others draws me … even when my art takes that infernal backseat to theirs. My art is words, and often my words are undervalued … used … considered less than what appears on canvas, sculpted, composed in notes and chords … yet demanded for adulation of all of those. Artists appreciate art and understand the requirements for creating, however, so although what I do may be seen as a useful appendage to musical endeavors it is valued and my work is validated and the processes that take me where I need to go are never questioned.

Writing happens in isolation, not on a stage in front of an audience, and kudos come … when they do … quietly and singularly –“Nice job. Really liked your story. It touched me.” — so is work requiring a different set of needs, but creation is creation, something I have a deep and abiding respect for.

I know how a book gets written, how a poem takes form, how an actor climbs into the skin of a character, even how paint can be applied to canvas with beautiful results, but musicians are versed in a language I can hear, yet never fully understand (and I don’t mean Spanish). The process of creating music seems like magic, magic that casts a spell. It always has.

Does that mean I will forever be subject to falling under the power?

Shit.

Gee, thanks, Keith …

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A New Trial of Time

Posted in Hopeful thoughts, Loss, love, On getting older, Poetry, tagged on January 1, 2011| 6 Comments »

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
~Thomas Hood

Although an arbitrary demarcation of something quantum physics says doesn’t exist, there’s no denying the impact of the turn of the year on the fragile psyche of frail humans … okay, on the fragile psyche of this frail human — new years freak me out!

New Year’s eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie

There’s something more than unnerving in the idea that one year has just gone by in an eye-blink, that a whole bunch of stuff happened in those twelve months, much of which deserves rumination, and this morning I teeter on the cliff edge of yet another that will pass as fast and present as much … or more … I’ll have incorporated into my history this time next year.

Yikes!

I have great hopes for 2011, even some plans, and this morning a determination to make this one great year. Of course, those are precisely the thoughts I had on New Year’s Day 2010.

For the third year running, life is in tumult with so much out of my control that simply hanging on is about the best I can manage. Sure, I’ll plod along day-by-day doing the things that need doing, avoiding pitfalls I can see or sense and spend no little energy visualizing the desired path, but after the last couple of years know only too well that at any moment I could hear that brief scream that signals incoming.

I’d like to think I’ve learned enough to trust only the trustworthy, love only those who deserve my love, chose only the best options available … as Tennyson said:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Amen, Alfred. And I’ll be greeting true with open arms if I recognize the fucking thing.

If all goes well, 2011 should be a year of change … big, positive change seeing me having wrestled back some control, moved house, simplified things considerably and set up comfortable circumstances for me and the kids that will provide enough security to allow stepping back from the dance on the rim of the precipice and a chance to gather strength rather than squander it in anxiety and the depleting efforts of fighting for every fucking step.

Of course, the reality is that we only have so many of these new beginnings, and there’s always the chance the last one was the last one. That would be quite disappointing. I very much hope there’s time to reap rewards for hard work, that my last love was not my LAST love, that seeds sown come to fruition. Conversely, however, another year like the last few … well … I’m not so hot on that.

Today, there’s no way to know if it’s “a kindlier dozen” ahead, more of the same or something even more diabolical. Experience tells me thoughts of “it can’t get any worse” are utter nonsense and there is no guaranteed swing of the pendulum shifting from crap to contentment, but there is hope.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot

So, the old year is over, the new has begun … it will bring what it brings and be dealt with as it unfolds. I will do what I always do — plod and write — and January will turn to February and Cj will be six in April and Sam will be nine in November and another year will be added to the outbox. I will seek out joy, love my kids, treasure my friends, embrace adventures and hope and hope and hope.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. ~Edith Lovejoy Pierce

My sincere wish to all that 2011 fills your book with joy, love, kindness and peace …

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A right good-will draught …

Posted in Friends, History, Loss, love, Men, Music I like, On getting older, tagged , on December 31, 2010| 8 Comments »

Christmas 2010 is history and we’re now at New Year’s Eve … the traditional day for making lists and checking them often, adding, subtracting, watching hopes multiply and dividing the wheat from the chaff.

MMX was not a great year, but since death didn’t intrude into my immediate world, it wasn’t terrible, either. It was what it was, and it’s over.

Before flinging my arms wide in welcome to 2011, I’ll say goodbye to the old year and dance with its ghosts for a while.

Although I love Burns’ Scots version, a translation into modern English helps make the point:

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
and surely I’ll buy mine !
And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine ;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

We two have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine† ;
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

CHORUS

And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
And give us a hand o’ thine !
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne.

CHORUS

To all dear friends, to those I love and who love me, to the casual reader who pops in on occasion, to everyone who wandered through my world over the past 365 days … although seas between us braid hae roar’d, I offer gratitude, my hand and a right good-will draught o’ kindness.

Adios 2010 …

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I ain’t afraid of no Ghost of Christmas Past

Posted in Children, Family, Island life, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Seychelles, tagged , on December 13, 2010| 9 Comments »

Jaren kissing me goodbye on his way to a Christmas Party

No, he doesn’t look a bit like the kindly grandfather-like figure in the 1951 movie version of “A Christmas Carol”, probably because I never had a grandfather. My Ghost of Christmas Past is a nebulous shape-shifter morphing around as he drags me from scene to scene. Since this isn’t about the guide, but the journey, it matters little since he does employ that cool fade technique.

Fade in:

Christmas morning. Suburban living room. 1950s.

An oval braided rug echos forest green drapes and the dark brown of a skirted sofa framed by blond wood side tables. Tree in one corner lit with bulbs the size of thumbs, some glowing white through scrapes and scratches in their paint and reflecting on massive amounts of tinsel. The sound and smell of percolating coffee invades from the kitchen. My maternal grandmother sits and smokes as we wait for Christmas to start.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, same house.

My brothers and I wear new flannel pajamas our mom made. A sewing basket sits beside the sofa. A sock with a light bulb stuffed in the toe awaits darning.

A walnut table has been added to the room. Intricately carved legs are my duty to dust. It had been in Grandma’s house before she died, now it is my mother’s.

A bicycle! What a beauty! Blue and white with a basket attached to the handlebars. Ribbons and bows.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different house, different town.

Oak floors polished by some guy sliding my brothers and me around on towels to buff the wax. Much bigger tree, same strings of lights with more scratches. Dad promised French pancakes for breakfast. Christmas Eve dinner had been at the hotel with us running in and out of the kitchen and getting festive with the cooks and waitresses that worked for our dad.

We go to Mass. I’m in the fifth grade at St. Joseph’s and Sister Mary Stanislaus would not be happy if I didn’t put in an appearance. My father refuses to go through the motions … no genuflecting, no standing, no kneeling … and although I’m embarrassed by the idea that he doesn’t know what’s expected, he impresses me with scoffing. The music was nice, though, and I like to sing.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different house, back to the first town, different family.

Crowded suburban house with a step-mother and five step-sibs in addition to me and two brothers. My mother sends fudge and a Barbie doll that looks like her. My brothers and I don’t share the fudge with the others.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, apartment next to the freeway so new it smells like paint and plaster, just us again.

Tiny tree on a table in a small living room. Y.A. Tittle gives my little brother a football uniform. All our gifts are from someone famous. None say they are really from Dad, but we get the joke.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, another new apartment.

Christmas dinner at a restaurant that makes great hot turkey sandwiches.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, different family.

Chinese food with a new step-family.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, different town, different family.

Mom’s house in Small Town USA. Moronic step-father reads the paper upside-down … or might as well. Jenn and Jaren are little and my brothers wear out the batteries in their Star Trek communicators before Christmas Eve is over. I get a TV from Mom. A brother gets an ID bracelet.

A turkey neck simmers on a back burner, the grinder comes out from the bottom drawer and a turkey is stuffed with Grandma’s recipe. Green jello. Stuffed celery. Pumpkin pies on the washing machine.

Fade to: Calendar flipping through years …

Fade in:

Christmas Day, huge Victorian house in mid-town California city.

A tree stands fourteen-feet tall in the doorway, lights reflected in the oak floors. Burgundy walls and green rugs add a festive feel.

Husband once again has coerced me into letting him open one gift on Christmas Eve. As always, he chooses the BIG box with the fancy wrapping paper. As he does every year, he falls for the socks. Jenn is home from college. Jaren is living in the basement apartment. Brothers are there with girlfriends. Dad has written a poem and we give him a computer. Step-sisters come with Chinese food and their families. The guys play basketball in the living room once the mayhem of gift opening is cleared.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different, different house, different country, different husband.

Doors wide open to catch the morning breeze as the plastic tree rotates. Cj crawls around wearing Rudolf antlers. Sam waits for Christmas to start as the kettle boils. The mess from the annual Christmas Eve party has been cleared away. We open our gifts, smile, play with the kids and their new toys, then dress and head to Gay’s for Christmas lunch.

Dissolve to:

Same day, different year, same house, no husband.

Friends spend Christmas Eve with us and are still around in the morning to help open gifts and spread cheer. Fiance is on Skype from Mexico watching and commenting and hopes are expressed that the next year won’t see us so far flung. Kids play with their new stuff.

Fade to black.

If life is to follow Victorian fiction, these scenes should dovetail into a viz from a Ghost of Christmas Present where I learn yet more about the true meaning of this holiday.

Hm.

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John Lennon: What could the world be now?

Posted in Celebrities, History, Hopeful thoughts, Loss, love, Music I like, News, Poetry, Writers, tagged , on December 8, 2010| 12 Comments »

Yesterday I wrote about infamous dates, an appropriate topic on Pearl Harbor Day.

Today is another one of those. Although not on the same scale of lives lost or immediate consequence, December 8, 1980 saw a moment that defines a generation, and world, thirty years after the fact of an act of murder.

The death of John Lennon put paid to an era born in the sixties and dying with John.

It could be the timing was coincidental … another decade had closed and the 80’s loomed large and voracious. Flower-power was giving way to the darker, disenchanted tones of Goth, Ronald Reagan was White House-bound and the 80s stretched before us like a ladder to be climbed one pricey rung after the other.

Could it be, however, it was the event that instigated at least some of the changes?

The violent death of a gentle musician and poet at the hand of a publicity-seeking nutjob seems a demarcation point.

Perhaps my rearview mirror has fogged over the past 30 years, but I recall the decades before Dec. 8, 1980 as hopeful … angst-ridden, yes, but that angst flowed from frustration that the world wasn’t moving quite quickly enough toward the peaceful garden we could still imagine at the time.

We’d seen our share of horrors, but felt we’d learned stuff … important stuff that could and would matter. We felt it was possible to actually give peace a chance.

Greed started driving the bus in the 80s and angst turned to the stone of cynicism. As communism fell by the wayside, that perceived specter morphed into the solid form of expanding markets, multiple debt crises, famine and a whole bunch of wars.

Hippies turned into Yuppies, Porsche became the new VW van and conspicuous consumption took over where conscientious objection left off.

Even the drugs got meaner as coke and crack took the place of acid and weed and ad copy became a viable outlet for poets since the pay was so much better.

I’m guessing those who missed the world John Lennon lived and influenced will consider this a geezer ramble … revisionist history not appreciative of the wonders of the past three decades, or not appreciative enough.

Could be. Could be.

But I can’t help but wonder how different the last thirty years might have been if that fuckwad Mark Chapman had not decided to stake his claim to fame by blowing holes through one of the world’s most important proponents of thoughtful consideration and hope.

The music, alone, we’ve been robbed of has left us poorer.

So … on this day, as every 8th of December, I celebrate the life and rue the death of John Lennon, wonder and imagine …

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Free-floating Anxiety Before Tea

Posted in Children, Health, Loss, love, Men, My Chinese Checkered Past, On getting older, Poetry, tagged on November 28, 2010| 12 Comments »

Sounds almost pleasant, doesn’t it? It’s not. Oxymoronic in its essence, free-floating anxiety sees the anxious bit hijacking anything that might be considered free and the sucker floats like a anvil.

Anxiety that lacks a definite focus or content.

And that, folks, comes before the first cup of tea.

I have always lived with demons … depression being the biggest bugger with the fiercest bite … but anxiety is rather new to me. Sure, I’m a worrier. What woman isn’t, especially living alone and having kids to raise? But it’s not often my worries cause me to lose sleep.

In fact, I usually sleep fairly well; I drop off without effort, and if disturbed have little to no trouble drifting back into slumber. Yes, my sleep is dream-plagued/blessed and often not as restful as I’d like, but I do sleep and for the allotted hours.

No, it’s not the sleeping that’s my issue, my demon … whatever … but the waking.

Before my eyes open I now realize I’ve shifted from sleep to awake by the sudden onset of that free-floating anxiety thing. It takes a bit of time to recognize and even more to run it through the filters: I’m late; I’m early; I’m breathing; kids are okay; nothing horrible happened in the night; scan the list of what’s on for the day; yes, I’m here alone. Check. Check. Check.

So, why am I shaking and where is this panic over a new day coming from? Am I sixth-sensing portents of doom? Has a shit asteroid been plummeting toward me in the night? Why is every drop of sadness in my body rushing in to welcome another twenty-four hours of the same old crap? Is the day now tainted? Have I contaminated the glass of opportunity by dropping in a dollop of shite with my quaking hands? Will these backed-up tears cloud my vision? Or drown me?

Tea. I need tea.

And thus begins my day.

It’s not every day that starts this way. Thankfully, I do go through periods where I wake up like a normal person, slowy and with a lovely touch of fog misting my corners. On those mornings my eyes open, the view presents itself in all its glory and potential rolls out in front of me. Those occasions take a second cup of tea to bring recognition of and appreciation for the ease of sliding into what had been tomorrow.

More often than not, however, it’s choking sad and shaking panic that form my salute to the sun.

I can trace the roots of this relatively new … what? … affliction? … waking nightmare? … free-floating anxiety … yeah, that’s it.

Close to eighteen months ago my waking moments changed drastically with the 6-am-ish phone call that told me my son was dead. And although this will not only sound trite, but obvious, I’ve not been the same since.

It’s a fact of life that the older we get, the longer our loss list grows. Over the past few years I’ve lost a lot … a son, a husband, a great love, all semblance of security, the last vestiges of youth, a load of nerve, hopes, dreams, wishes … even, from time to time, the will to live. (Yes, I have a list of gains, too, but I’ve just passed a week being thankful and that’s not what this is about this morning.)

I can deal with each and every loss … one-by-one, please … but first thing in the morning and before I’m fully awake? Not so well. Not at all, actually, since dealing isn’t what happens when I’m trembling and feeling the sting of tears before my eyes even open.

The result, of course, of this free-floating shit is an effort to flail a lasso about and pull it close enough to examine just what the fuck it might be. That sure pulls out the list, and as my mind leaps like a frog across sinking lily pads I am forced to recollect most every crappy thing that has happened, may happen or will happen. And I haven’t even peed yet …

At least I get words out of it, heh? Here are a few from this morning:

Good Morning, Sword

Within my realm I awaken each day
to a view of the sea and bird song
It is in my power to make what I may
But the first works I utter are:
What’s wrong?

I don’t see the sword hanging over my head
but I know that it’s there and suspended
by something no stronger than one single hair
if should break means the world is
upended …

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QWERTY Crag Clinging

Posted in Hopeful thoughts, love, Men, Poetry, Sex, tagged , , on November 24, 2010| 20 Comments »

Perched on an emotional ledge as I have been for the past while, I find myself using my fingers to hang on to the cliff face with the hope the persistent ache resulting reminds me to keep the grip and not slide … plummet? … leap? … cavort? … into the abyss, or whateverthefuck it is, below.

The crag I cling to is QWERTY-shaped, and like velcro needs multiple connections doing a little dance to keep the stickiness happening.

Some shards pulled away by the friction between the rock and the hard place the other day got a comment that’s kept me busy lately while I hang around:

Have you ever considered writing poetry about anger? I read these yesterday, couldn’t sleep last night, don’t know why poetry about anger kept swirling around my thoughts.

So, thanks to Amy, it’s anger raising its fiery, swollen head and keeping me clenching …

Pissed off. What’s a Girl to Do?

To spew my anger ‘cross a page
would mean acknowledging my rage
It seems I was raised way too girly-ous
to allow such blatant show of furious

An emphasis on contemplation …
consider each and every view …
and be no reason for vexation:
The mandate for a girl’s milieu

Not that some don’t infuriate
when what they should do is placate,
but I have faced consequences dire
when releasing my indignant ire

It’s not that I don’t have a temper
I do, but somethings can be learned:
There’s no need to just sit and whimper’
but formulate through each slow burn …

It’s helpful oft’ times to rattle a cage
and channel off more than a bit of outrage
through get-backs oh-so-very terse
in fits of pique disguised as verse.

Unfortunately, the season doesn’t help much …

The First Noel

The first Noel I hear
as we come toward the end of the year
will convey no festive tingling
but could earn a testes jingling
and a very hearty round of “Fuck you, Dear”.

And … of course, the usual angst that confounds and confuses …

Man: Optional?

I’m perpetually disappointed by
the sex that feels anointed by
the fact they sport a penis,
or it they

Although seemingly unfettered
and somehow strangely flattered
by a mass secreting phlegm
along the way,

they find their bits impressive
even when the thing is restive
and can’t ever keep their hands
too far away

There’s no doubt that cock’s amusing
and I’m very fond of using
the appendage on ’bout any
given day,

but if suddenly to find it
hanging ’round there, I would bind it,
not assuming special powers
in its sway

Since I wasn’t born with boy bling,
that male Lincoln Log-like toy thing,
it’s not possible to ‘get’ that
need to play

with it inside things or outdoors,
(little pickiness between whores)
just ’bout any hole will do it
So they pray:

Fall down to your knees in full praise …
or upon your back with legs raised …
just give some place for to aim and
shout “Hooray”

for the penis now he rises …
no, no need to think in sizes …
just appreciate the sight of
that beauTAY!

If the thing could only speak it
would hardly need the geek it
uses to transport it ’round
each day

Truly, women are from Venus
and we’ll never have a penis
other than the ones we borrow.
That’s okay

There’re no shortages of offers
from those pleased to fill our coffers
and occasionally the man attached
will stay

round long enough to carry
a few burdens, even marry,
giving more than just their penis
and a lay

But …

I’m perpetually disappointed by
the sex that feels anointed by
the fact they sport a penis …
or it they

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“Sisterhood is powerful.” ~Robin Morgan

Posted in Friends, love, Men, Sex, Women's rights on November 20, 2010| 4 Comments »

I’ve spent no little time taking on men in a WTF-is-with-them-anywhoo? sort of way over the past months, so it’s time I set my blaster on stun and turned it toward my own gender.

As this article suggests, as it is, “Holding Up a Mirror Along with the Bullhorn: Why Women Can’t Lay All the Blame Elsewhere”.

When we consider issues of gender in this country, we tend to assess the progress and prospects of the American woman through an amorphous sort of “look how far we’ve come” or “look how far we haven’t come” analysis, eyes trained on the Man and related cultural influences that have historically beaten us back. It’s a legitimate exercise. And yet, as we do this, I think it’s also valid to consider a related, if more elusive and controversial, component to the contemporary female experience, one we’d much prefer to sweep under the rug. And that’s the degree to which girls and women are — or are not — nurturing each other’s ascent.

To be fair, it’s not a one-side thing, this accusing.

In passing, also, I would like to say that the first time Adam had a chance he laid the blame on woman. ~Nancy Astor

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rise above, does it, Girls?

Yes, Madeleine Albright got it right when she said, “There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women”, but another woman who made it big in the man’s world that is politics, Bella Abzug, references another issue …

I prefer the word homemaker, because housewife always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.

Ay, there’s the rub.

So much of my yammering on the duplicitous nature of men has rather ignored the huge part played in those dramas by women only too happy to bounce on someone else’s trampoline.

Although it’s sometimes merely circumstance that leads women into a dally with another’s dolly, there are those who prefer to play with a Ken who has a Barbie:

The hooked and booked man is like a forbidden temptation. That’s what makes him irresistibly attractive to a woman. He stirs a challenge in her. She feels a sense of power in attracting a man who is already taken. What makes him the catch for her is his confidence, experience and authority. The excitement stems from the fact that he’s already taken.

Having seen infidelity from every angle … yes, I admit to taking a wander over posted ground where “No Trespassing” was writ large a few times … I have first-hand experience on both sides of the fence. Although I never set out with an intention to encroach, it happens, and since the end results vary between a shrug, a sly and secret smile and nuclear holocaust I’m not recommending a hop into that pasture to anyone.

Of course, an intentional invasion is a declaration of war and there are none-to-few who quite happily lob a grenade into a mine field, sit back and wait for the massive explosions one would expect from such a provocative act. Sometimes the earth settles and they plow it for a while, but they’re always on the lookout for new incoming that can rip apart their tidy furrows.

Truth be told, women don’t like women much, and trust them even less. Sure, we have girlfriends … and FFS! we do need and treasure them … but women in general? Not so much. If to men we are the sugar and spice of life, to each other we are arsenic; in controlled amounts helpful and healing, but otherwise poison.

Divide et impera, hey, Ladies? That is the result the lack of sisterhood leaves us with. Playing into the hands of men … in any old way … has done us little good as a gender, and it’s only when we make the effort to join hands and hearts and minds that we have any luck at all in climbing ladders or breaking ceilings or gaining control of such basics as our own bodies.

So … Girls … maybe it’s time we developed a new perspective. I suggest this thought: You wouldn’t think of using another woman’s douche bag, so why in hell would you use another woman’s douche bag?

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Memo to self: It’s a day … live it!

Posted in Health, History, Loss, love, My Chinese Checkered Past, News, On getting older, science on November 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness. ~James Thurber

Not that I have a lot of it spare, but I have been thinking about time quite a bit lately — the non-existance of, the travel through, the wastes of.

You reading me often and in various places must have noticed I have a monkey mind … and I’m not talking evolutionary remnants of a brow ridge but the aptly descriptive Buddhist term for one whose brain is: unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable. Yeah … that would be what happens under my hair most of the time, illuminated here in an article listing six steps to living in the moment.

“We’re living in a world that contributes in a major way to mental fragmentation, disintegration, distraction, decoherence,” says Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace. We’re always doing something, and we allow little time to practice stillness and calm.

When we’re at work, we fantasize about being on vacation; on vacation, we worry about the work piling up on our desks. We dwell on intrusive memories of the past or fret about what may or may not happen in the future. We don’t appreciate the living present because our “monkey minds,” as Buddhists call them, vault from thought to thought like monkeys swinging from tree to tree.

I’m a worrier by nature, a ponderer by profession and with a conscience that rarely has me leaving things to rest, all which have me agitating and ruminating when I should just be experiencing.

Today’s Huff Post puts me in this moment, however, so I pause to consider the ideas in an article called: How Often Are We on Mental Autopilot? You Might Be Surprised.

Although I’m not surprised a study suggests people spend 46.9% of their brain time doing a wander, nor that most don’t consider it a particularly happy path, there is some interesting science in the report.

They discovered that people have two distinct ways of interacting with the world, using two different sets of networks. One network for experiencing your experience involves what is called the “study by Kirk Brown found that people high on a mindfulness scale were more aware of their unconscious processes. Additionally these people had more cognitive control, and a greater ability to shape what they do and what they say, than people lower on the mindfulness scale. If you’re on the jetty in the breeze and you’re someone with a good level or mindfulness, you are more likely to notice that you’re missing a lovely day worrying about tonight’s dinner, and focus your attention onto the warm sun instead. When you make this change in your attention, you change the functioning of your brain, and this can have a long-term impact on how your brain works too.

Living where I do and working from my veranda, I have developed the habit of pulling myself out of my work or my ass or wherever my head might be at any given moment at intervals throughout the day to take some time to gaze upon and appreciate the beauty on offer. Right now, it’s a sapphire sea, the viridescent forest and a few puffy, white clouds navigating their way westward that fill my soul right along with my eyes. Throw in a couple of long-tailed tropic birds and the fruit bats in my jack fruit tree and I’m breathing again in that way I forget to breathe when my mind is full of whatever I’m writing, my heart is heavy with longing for what is no more and my nerves fray with concern over the illusive ‘what’s next’.

Inspired by beautiful music, I once wrote for the description of the video that went along with it:

“For me, one of the most precious gifts the universe gives is the Now, and the Now embraced is the Eternal Hug … a gift without conditions of past or future, but only the joy of the moment. And what is life but a series of moments?

The moments bringing those words are now in my past, but I can and do continue to conjure their joys.

It’s remembering to do it that’s the key:

“Mindfulness is a habit, it’s something the more one does, the more likely one is to be in that mode with less and less effort… it’s a skill that can be learned. It’s accessing something we already have. Mindfulness isn’t difficult. What’s difficult is to remember to be mindful.” I love this last statement. Mindfulness isn’t difficult: the hard part is remembering to do it.

Having studied the work of Abraham Maslow way back when, I trust his assessment of moments.

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

But life does do its bit to beat that out of a girl, doesn’t it?

I’m not one for wallowing in regrets, and it’s too often the future that robs me of moments; not the desire of it, but the anxiety over having some asteroid of shit fall from this clear blue sky and splatter on my life. It’s an ancestor who provides perspective and a bit of solace on this concern:

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time. ~Abraham Lincoln

True enough, thankfully, and one day leads to another.

Yep. This moment is now the past and the next is still the future and each letter I type becomes a sentence and sentence is a pretty good description of life.

As for quantum physics and that business about the past, like the future, being indefinite and existing only as a spectrum of possibilities … well, I rather like a poet’s version today:

Forever is composed of nows.
~Emily Dickinson”

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