All By Itself

My mother would have have been eighty-six in October. She was smart and beautiful, though, I don't think she knew. Today, I wonder where she is and in what form. Is she in the tree outside my window? Has she created her own version of heaven on some corporeal plane? Or has she gone beyond all that? Is part of what my therapist calls, "The Great Love?" I want her essence to be separate, at least some of it. Her laugh. She laughed sometimes until tears ran down her face. Would literally pitch forward with the force of it. Nothing like watching a strong woman absolutely surrender. I want her laugh back. I want it to exist somewhere, not in a tree, all by itself.

Out There

Out there
you'll see it all.
The floating ends
will meet and mend,
and you will be yourself,
your fully-formed,
though always changing,
self of selves.
Every clumsy backward look
will pay for itself.
Every tear you've cried,
or wanted to cry,
will set your broken bones.
The rips in your heart
will no longer
need to be guarded
by steel girders,
banyan trees,
or even rice paper [...]

Deborah Mears

Fast Runner

I have been in the eye of a storm, and now I know what I need to do. Someone from a 12 step meeting once told me if you want to know God's will, just keep going until you hit a wall and then turn left. Saw a wonderful film Friday night called The Fast Runner. A man gets out of alignment with himself and then finds himself again. A hero's journey Joseph Campbell would have loved. The guy hit a wall and keeps turning intuitively in the right directions.

Sleep While I Drive

A verse from a Melissa Etheridge song has been playing over and over in my mind this week on the bus coming in to work. The idea of traveling out of town with someone is exponentially appealing. Would I be the driver, or the woman sleeping? Or am I both?

Come on baby. Let's get out of this town.
I got a full tank of gas with the top rolled down.
There's a chill in my bones.
I don't want to be left alone.
So, baby, you can sleep while I drive.
Ill pack my bag and load up my guitar [...]
I got some money I saved.
Enough to get underway,
And, baby, you can sleep while I drive.

Starlight, Starbright

Today marks the two year anniversary of the death of my friend, Paula. Wherever you are, I am remembering you.

Moving In

I have indelicate knees. the word I thought of when I was stretching the other day. A scar on the right knee represents a home run. I was a baseline hitter so having that rare home run recorded in my right knee is nice in an odd way. Slid across home base on my knees and sliced myself open on a fin-shaped rock. Sixteen stitches. I have other scars. Actually, scars on both knees tell stories from my tomboy youth I remember only in sketches. Indelicate. Today, at the gym, I was stretching again, and for some reason, I smelled one knee. Felt a sense of tenderness. Sweat. Smelled like sweat. My sweat. Unlike anyone else's. I have been camping out in this body for some time now, and, finally, I want to move in. Be in these knees.

Tying My Shoes

Tonight, watched The Triplets of Belleville with my housemates. Had an odd sensation my very skin cells were soaking up the art, color, and creativity, that my pores were starving. I am worried about myself. My work is flattening me. I can't remember the last time I really laughed. Just busted out laughing. Maybe, I'm the wrong kind of person for my work. I care too much. I'm terrible at all the computer aspects--oh, maybe not terrible, but challenged. And I know it. My co-workers know it. What I am I think is a teller of stories. Instead the stories I hear are taking over my stories. I was a good writer, professional writer. In my adult career, what I was best at, though, was as a demonstrator of toys. I intended to work in the Pike Place Market in a hands-on kite and toy store for the summer. I stayed for three years. All day long, playing, I watched people shed their adult skins and emerge as children. I made little money, had no benefits, and could hardly wait to get to work in the morning. In her book, Exuberance, Kay Redfield Jamison wrote about a scientist who hated to tie his shoes in the morning because tying his shoes slowed him down and he yearned to get to work. The work he loved. I want that, to feel that way about tying my shoes.

My Poet's Soul

I have not wanted to admit it. Work is kicking my butt. Too often I find myself facing down angry people in small rooms. "Get bigger," I tell myself. "Don't look afraid." But I am afraid. I am trembling inside my clothes. A co-worker told me tonight she was impressed at how professional I sound on the phone. "You sound so sure of yourself," she said. I am not sure of myself. I took a lot of acting in college. I am using it. Inside my head, I stutter, I falter, I pray. I pray The Serenity Prayer prayer a dozen times a day in the rest room on my breaks. I go in there because the phones aren't ringing, and I can recall at least for a moment, my poet's soul.

Our Dog

I was raised on five acres in Lake Stevens, a hobby farm. We had gardens, an orchard, a forest, a creek, a long lawn made for children, a barn, cows, goats, pigs, and chickens. A dog, a Samoyed, named Lisa, came one day in the back of a pick-up truck and stayed for eleven years. Her greatest delight was to love us, bound after us, a blur of white in the high field grass. I have a picture of me at age eight, barefoot, in a straw hat and green dress, arms wrapped fiercely around her. Of all the animals we had, she is the one I have never stopped missing. I would dearly love to have her right now, lying next to me.

A Sacrament

Tough day at the office. I stood in the kitchen of an old friend and asked for a hug. She was moving towards me the minute the words left my lips. When her arms closed around me, I sobbed once, twice, and started talking. Couldn't eat. Had to talk. She said, "You need to eat. You need to eat and talk. I know you have a hard time doing both at the same time but you have to eat."I've heard her say that a hundred times in the twenty-six years I've known her. Another kind of sacrament, a sacrament of friendship.

Almost Fifty

I want to roll back the clock. I was on my way to empty the garbage, and suddenly keenly aware I am almost fifty. I heard an interview with Dustin Hoffman; he said he felt more secure about his mortality when he could double his age. At age twenty, likely reach forty, at forty still possibly reach eighty. At fifty, he realized he would likely not reach a hundred: a rite of passage for him. I am yearning to be a decade younger, to buy back time I've lost to life events, to depression, especially. Stride up to a clerk on the ethereal plane, and say, firmly, "Yes, I'd like ten years. "Think quality of life," my friend, Deb, said recently, "not length of life." Just now, the swallows were darting through the trees in our garden. One flew so close to me, I almost felt the air rush back from its wings. I got to have that. Fifteen months to fifty.

Astral PJ's

Few things in this world are better than flannel pajamas, precisely, flannel worn to silk-thin softness, even frayed, scent of Tide, pink with silly cats. A fabric so devoted to my well being that, surely, if I died while sleeping, it would shuffle with me into the afterlife.

Wisdom

A friend of mine is a nanny to a 4-year-old. She asked him, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" He answered, "Myself."

Paradise

An email from Maggie, my Al-anon sponsor: "For many of us, recovery is being dragged kicking and screaming into paradise."

Where I Belong

My friend, Deb, says, your bedroom should give you a feeling that "at the end of the day, this is really where I belong." I'm decluttering and I'm going to go for that.