Wordgasbord

The picture is as unrelated as the rest of this post may seem in general.  I've got many things swimming around in my head and they're just not all...related.  And probably not all worthy of their own place, so here we are. Prepare for a jumble-up of things.

I think...I might see myself as the goose in this picture.

I just put the last piece of my New Mexico trip together.  This is none too soon as I'll be headed there Wednesday. On Friday night I got in touch with my lovely host who has also volunteered to be the driver for more adventures than I even knew I had coming.  It was awesome, and it made it seem real.  I mean, I knew in my head it was real since the day I bought the tickets, but it was more of a way to cope, as weird as that sounds. It gave me something good to hang on to.  It's the promise of something that's mine, that I love, that...(honk!honk!) isn't gonna hurt me.  Having it to hang on to has helped me have something to do, something to look forward to, and just...something that's  mine. I don't like the "mine mine mine" thing in general, but I think this time, this trip...has to be mine.

Of course, as soon as I put the final pin in it, and booked the last thing I needed to, I immediately went to bed that night anxious.  I thought it was just me, and I found out from at least 2 separate people today that it isn't...but I usually get trip dread.  No matter how much I originally looked forward to something, it'll be a day or two before I'm actually supposed to go and I will suddenly dig my heels in, cross my arms over my chest and go "I.don't.wanna."  It's always real when it's happening- I should know by now that it's just a...knee-jerk phase that will pass, but at the time, my brain thinks it's reality.  I shouldn't go.  I'm not going.  This was a bad idea. I don't want to go.

The trip dread came around fairly early, which I'm going to count as a good thing. Because now that the panic/dread is over I can concentrate on what I need to get done and not worry about it.

I wonder why it is that happens, you know?  I know full well that I'm going on this trip because I *need* this trip.  I know I'm going because I need a place and a space to heal.  Because I need something that's mine. Maybe it's just resistance to change and it's programmed in.  I think it has to be something like that, because as much as my heart is absolutely waiting to breathe in the whole thing, this crazy dread overrode even that.

Which got me thinking...even when change is a good thing. Even when it's temporary...we resist.  When good things come our way, sometimes our impulse is just to shut the door.  Because good things are scary.  Some would say scarier than bad. The heights are only frightening because we know how far they are from the ground, and how much it'd hurt to fall to it.

Right now, I feel this way more intensely. I'm more about shut doors than open ones.  And yes, my internet was down for 2 weeks straight and that's really a big player in why I didn't write...but...it's also because I'm afraid of good right now. Afraid to let my heart run wild. Or even take a few steps.

I ran across this today:

"Ships are always safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for."

(Ignore American history for a second, just go with me)

We talked today about speaking up or not speaking up.  Do or do not. To be or not to be. I'm watching so much heartbreak and sadness and still trying to figure out my own.

It's easier to hide. It's easier to stay inside under the blankets and watch tornado shows for 2 weeks straight. (not that I would know...).  It's easier to fall back to bad habits, to get self destructive or reckless, and to stay exactly where you are because even though you're miserable, it's familiar.

It's easier, but it's not what ships are for.

It's not what life is for.
It's not what I want for my life.
It's not what I want for the lives of people I love.
I don't know where you're at, or who's reading this and what you're going through.
But don't let the dread stay too long.  Don't let sad and dark and broken keep you from life.
And don't think I have it figured out. I don't.  I just know I want to figure it out.

The TL:DR is here, folks: (I can't really say it better than the Navajo did way, way before I got here)

Hold on to what is good even if it is a handful of earth. 
Hold on to what you believe even if it is a tree which stands by itself. 
Hold on to what you must do even if it is a long way from here. 
Hold on to life even when it is easier letting go. 
Hold on to my hand even when I have gone away from you. 

Fly Away From Here

These are the Sangre de Cristo mountains as seen from White Rock, NM.  I've got a special relationship with these mountains, and this overlook.  This was where I came the day I moved to New Mexico, when a double rainbow stretched the width of the view.  It's where I used to walk to while I was still adjusting to the altitude.  It's where I biked to at 5 in the morning because I'd been up a straight 36 hours and was freaked out by what I'd just done to myself,  moving cross-country.  It's pretty close to the view I used to see around 6 am when I was finished with the first bake of the bagels at Ruby K's and I had the bread in the mixer.  I'd take my coffee and my cherry turnover and sit on the steps by the Parasol and face the mountains and watch the sunrise.   It's where I'd crawl out on the rocks and think, or draw, or cry, or laugh.  I ended up lying flat on the rock holding on for dear life when I let the storm I'd been watching creep up on me, and I also went here illicitly on my first day home from the hospital when my kidneys freaked out even though I wasn't supposed to go anywhere. 

That sunset became very special to me.  I've got a million pictures of me sitting right here.  I've got pictures from when I spent the better part of 3 hours watching the light change and fade away.  Sometimes I can smell it when I look at this picture- juniper and rock and sagebrush. When it would rain, all I had to do was open the window a little bit and it would perfume the whole house. 

There's something about the way the sun is on your shoulders out there-it antiques the rocks and fades the facades but it's friendly somehow.  The closeness, though sometimes downright hazardous in its intensity, used to make me feel a little more connected somehow, and a little less alone.  The warmth almost seemed protective most of the time.

The color of those sunsets- the shocking blue of the sky and then the purples and oranges and pinks and yellows...I know that they happen everywhere from time to time, but out there it seemed like the daily art show.  Nothing is more breathtaking than a painting on a canvas that stretches out over the mountains for miles in every direction.  Sometimes the display almost made me feel guilty- like little old me shouldn't be able to experience that kind of decadence every day.  

Life's been rough here lately.  I've been sad, and I've been hurt, and I've been frustrated. Some of the pain I've felt and am feeling recently is of an intensity I don't know if I've felt before.  

But the silver lining is, I've done something about it.   Long about New Year's Eve I'd been thinking I needed to get back.  I needed to feel those things again, even just for a visit.  I've never been able to explain why I felt so strongly that I belonged there, but I do, and I feel the pull.  I was driving a friend home in the very early hours of 2013, and my brain exhaled "I need to go home." when I was talking with him about New Mexico.   It took me by surprise. All this time in the suburbs and I guess I wondered if anywhere was home, and if that was anything more than a memory.   But I think your heart knows things before your brain most of the time, at least those sorts of things. 

As of tomorrow, I have a ticket "home"

I can't wait.  I won't be going to White Rock, but I will be back to my red dirt, mountains, juniper, sagebrush and desert skies.  I'll get to see people who changed my life, and go back to places that I could always run to.  I'll get to feel the sun right at my side, and let everything else fall away.  I know it might sound ridiculous to some, but I honestly feel like going home right now will help heal some of these wounds, if even just for a little bit.  

I can't wait. 

Borrowed Time

I've had these words pressing against my ribs trying to get out all weekend, but I'm finding it hard to write in spite of that. 

Earlier this week, a friend of mine was in the middle of handling a loss on their in-law's side. They'd been up since 3 am trying to keep the slightest handhold on the situation, and the exhaustion- emotional and physical, was reading on their face. 

The death was sudden, completely unexpected.  In the grand scheme of things, I don't know which is worse. 

But as I talked to this person, I saw it rock their world, even though it wasn't someone they were personally close to. We talked some more and they mentioned that "you don't really think about it but anything could happen, any time, and you could lose someone you love."

That thought was particularly unpleasant to me where I'm at now, because there's at least one relationship in my life that is absolutely not right right now.  If something were to happen now...to me or them...it's a thought I don't want to follow through on, though that's instantly where my brain went.

As I studied my friend's face though, I saw a genuine shock in their eyes. And I didn't understand it, I guess?

My brain instantly went "well of course anyone could be gone in an instant."

My brain doesn't go there, it lives there.  Maybe my heart too.

I don't know if I mentioned it here before or not, and I probably didn't, but now seems like the time.

I knew loss before I knew much of anything in the world. I knew what the void was like that a person leaves behind.  I knew that nobody you meet in your future can fill the hole in your past, and there's no piece that completes the puzzle.  

My dad was gone about two weeks after I got here.  A birthday, a birthday, then a funeral. 

I have a strange relationship with grief.  I had to figure out what was missing, then figure out if it was ok to grieve, then figure out how to do it, both as an adult and as a child. I had to deal with the fact that people weren't always going to accept my loss as real or tangible to me, since I was so young.  Many times I felt I had to find a secret way to go through it, because I didn't think people would understand why or why now, and I didn't know how to explain. 

I had to figure out how it affected my life, too.  I don't believe that we're only a product of our circumstances and genetics, but I do believe they can have a deep impact on our lives. 

For me...it's that I feel like I've always carried around a ticking clock.  That I'm constantly aware that all time is borrowed time.  In the darkest corners of that it's the expectation that people will always leave. 

I know a few things about this.

It makes me fight too hard sometimes. It makes me push so hard to fix things that I just break them again or make things worse. 

It makes me weak sometimes too. It makes me go the other way and let people walk all over me because of the fear I have of losing them otherwise.

It can be good too though. I think that it makes me love harder in the good ways too.  Growing up knowing you don't have another shot sometimes makes you want to make sure that people know they're loved.

It gives me wisdom to know that there's things that are way more important than this fight right now.

I'm writing this because I couldn't not.  I'm writing this because I can't explain it to the person I want to right now.  I'm writing this because there are things that are so much more important than the way you or I feel right now.  I'm writing this because we're all on borrowed time. 

March 1- Clock

(In case you wondered, I've decided to do a photo a day challenge. As per usual, I'm already behind, but this time, I fully intend to make it up and keep it up, because I am now sure I can do something for thirty days straight, and this time around the block, i want it to be writing.  The photo's gonna be the prompt.)


It started simple.  The dark would be interrupted by soft oranges and yellows, the evening clouds would part. Clear blue would stretch across the sky most days, but on certain days the blackness would only cede to grey. Though the bright fingers of the sun would pry eyes open before they were ready, its warm touch was missed, and the earth was cold those days.

But more often, the sun cut a path through the sky. In the middle of the day it hung above, cutting its light into those without shade, making great mirrors out of lakes and oceans, fading colors, melting ice, warming earth.

Sometimes the light stretched out forever, and some times it hid beneath clouds.  A stone was carved and stood in a common place in the open.  As the sun went through its paces, a shadow was cast, and we followed.

Then the wheel. Then the cogs.  A rhythm followed the shadow, a pulse. Numbers.  The cogs and gears and mechanisms turned and it was 1.  Then 2.  The time between insignificant perhaps.  Days subdivided into hours.  Early morning hours, for sleep or work.  Daylight hours, for work, for exploring while the shadows were at bay. Nighttime hours, for dinner, for rest, for socializing as long as the lanterns had oil.

But soon enough it never had to be dark. Soon enough the space between one and 2 became set aside.  Minutes. Minutia. This precision, this pulse driving life to an ever rising pace.

Then time zones, so we could deign to make the hours bend to our will.  So we could pretend we had any control over the light and when it came and went.

Cogs and gears a thing of the past, we crush crystal, let it flow liquid.  The number is luminescent so we can always see it, always watch it advance.  So we always know when to expect the sun, so we know when it is time to start a new day, or time to end one.

Such precision now that races aren't won by a nose, they're won in bits of time so small that blinking seems like blindness.

Still we aren't satisfied. Since splitting the atom, we want to drive deeper even if we've gone to the core.  Now a clock won't do.  Time tracked seems a waste of time, and an object that only speaks in seconds seems a vanity.  "Yes, time....but what else?"

The silver hands of wristwatches atrophy, forgotten in jewelry drawers as the batteries die.

We find time where we find bank balances, messages from friends, entertainment, recipes,pictures we take to remember moments we didn't want to pass.  We find time on things that also cook our food in minutes instead of slow simmering hours.  We don't find time on its own, and we don't find time alone. But maybe we should.

Lemons and a Full Moon

I’m out at dinner. My original plan for the night was to avoid alone as hard as I possibly could, despite a laundry list of things to do, up to and including actual laundry.  And maybe that was unhealthy and maybe not.  Anyway, despite my attempts to find a tablemate,  I’m on a stool watching the tail end of rush hour.  I like to come sit here for lunch during days off or on weekend, and people watch.  Right now, from this same spot, it’s closed storefronts and an empty candy store.

I walked out here, since it was one of the things on my to-do list, and I didn't see so much as a soul all the way up until I crossed the street to get to the restaurant.  I’d say the universe is conspiring, but there’s a big orangey full moon making things a little less dark.

Someone on facebook, the fount of all “knowledge” these days, said something about needing to learn how to be alone.  I think she had a good point, though I don’t feel like one of those people who can never be alone.  Just a weekend or two ago, I spent almost 36 straight hours alone,  watching tornado shows, writing, doing photo projects…

I've had a lot of alone throughout my life, for better or for worse- I tend to think of it as for better, mostly-for the better.  I learned to be independent, and I learned a lot more about myself sooner than a lot of other people did growing up.  I started out as an only child in a single parent house.  I attended a small private school that was not in my town, so my friends didn’t live down the street.

But lest this sound like a sob story- I loved my childhood.  I built forts and collected matchbox cars and my little ponies and tried to fly for just a few seconds using a contraption I built out of butterfly nets and then launching myself off the skateboard ramp the landlord’s son had built in the big meadow that was my backyard.  I was a spy, an Indian, a pioneer, and a Boxcar child.  I read, and I drew and my imagination soared.

I had a special relationship with my mom, and I got unique opportunities as a child to interact with adults more often than most kids do, just because I was there.  I had more to learn about being around kids, I think.  I got a brother and sister when my mom remarried. I was 10.  I had to learn things like sharing a room and whose turn it was for the radio, and how to cope with someone always being in the bathroom.  I wouldn’t trade it for the world, and it was a piece that my life was missing that I didn’t even know about.

I think there’s different kinds of alone though.  Sometimes alone is teamed up with sad, and on you like some sort of leaden shadow. I’m not used to that alone.  To me, alone is a warm blanket in front of a well-tamed hearth.  But then sometimes there it is, clawing at your throat from the inside, that creeping aching cry crawling out of your heart.

The good thing about people, specifically the people you love, is that when that loneliness creeps in, they can be the warm blanket that keeps it out.   And they do, and they have, and they will again. 

But some nights, it’s you and that shadow, and you have to deal with it.  And you won’t feel strong enough.  That’s how I started this walk.  The full moon was hazed over, no one was around and I was trudging through the mud.  It was cold and icy, and I kept slipping.   And I got mad, because dammit, I was trying, wasn’t I? 

I started to think about all the alone times with the full intention of wallowing.  About being up in Los Alamos and not seeing anyone most days or even most weeks.  About best friends far away from here, about people who probably didn’t see that they were a light in my day. 

And whatever, some of that was bad.  But I did it anyway.  I learned a trade. *I* packed my car up and moved. *I* hiked the canyons.  *I*kept my promise to myself.  No matter how I am feeling right now, I got off my ass, and I walked my mile and someone else’s, and I figured it out.

I’m not ok, and I don’t like it, and I wish it wasn’t the way it is right now.   And I’m consistently 2 milliseconds from unleashed floodgates.  I’m 70 things and none of them are great.  But I’m moving. And I’m moving because I’m brave, and I’m strong, and I’ve got to.  I’ve got no guarantee anything will change, though I hope it does, but I have my own two feet to stand on, and for now that has to be enough.

What I Did

I wouldn't erase the last post. It's the truth.  Right now, I'm extremely sad, hurt, lonely, and scared.  Right now I'm angry, and desperate, and angry.  Had I mentioned angry?  Right now I feel helpless.  Right now I feel like I'm going to watch things burn out of control with a bucket of water in my hand.  Right now, I feel like setting some fires, but I know if I were to do that I would end up chasing every ember so nothing gets so much as singed.

But...I don't want to go to bed that way.  Snow is falling outside and I want half a chance to enjoy that.

My eyes still burn, my throat is dry, and I can't see how I'll sleep in the next two hours, despite the fact that the storm means I'll need to be up at least that much earlier to get to work.

I probably did a hundred things wrong tonight out of anger and sadness and desperation.

But you know what I did right?
I kept a promise to myself.

See, a friend of mine on Twitter and I got in a casual conversation about yoga.  How we used to dabble and wanted to re-dabble.  So we decided to team up, and do it "together" in different states. At the same time, I had been thinking about how I'd started a countdown a few months ago- I wanted to work out for 30 days straight no stopping, to establish a habit and prove I could stick to it.  I think I lasted about 9 days, and I gave it up.  This time, I've counted down from 30 to 16.  On top of that, I started a new partnership with one of my closest friends- we were going to train for a 5k.  I've never been a runner.  I don't think I can be a runner.  But the more I thought about it...why can' t I be?  So I started.  And I got frustrated, and I felt weak, but I kept going.  The way I'd pictured that going in my head was that my friend and I would do our first mile together, and that we'd cross the finish line of a real legitimate 5k together too.  Well, the first mile didn't get run together.  Tonight I found out that I don't have a partner anymore.

But here's the thing.  I've done the work.  I've run. I've run AND kept the yoga up.  I've started paying more attention to what I'm eating and tried to drink more water and rarely if ever drink soda anymore.  And I've done damn well at it.  On.my.own.  The yoga reminds me it's great to have a partner.  We bitch about hard poses, we laugh, we are frustrated together...and we keep each other honest.  I'm glad for it.

I'm not one to sit and brag about my acccomplishments but I will say this.  I may not be graceful with my yoga anymore or yet, but I feel the muscles in my body shaping and changing.  I see my balance getting better. I feel it.

I'm doing it.

In the past month, I've gotten 3 photos published to the Chicagoist in their local photographer daily feature. Photography is something I really love, and want to pursue more.  And while I don't have a DSLR yet, and sometimes I only have my iPhone, I've been able to work on it.

I've made huge progress in the project I was working on to move all my photos to a new computer and catalogue them.

I visited with a friend who needed a friend and rediscovered the circle of us from around the fire, and what I always knew, that those bonds would hold.

I started small on my promise to myself to read 12 books this year, and in my fishing found A Calendar of Tales by Neil Gaiman. The project inspired me, and I wrote "Second" yesterday...the first real non-blog writing I've done in a long time.

I'm playing in band on Tuesdays and working hard on the music.

I paid off a school loan today!

I'm spending time with family and reconnecting with friends when I can.  I'm telling the people I love that I love them.

I'm damn proud of the 16 on the post-it note beside my mirror.
Because tonight I am sad and lonely and powerless and angry and hurt and desperate.
But tonight, I kept moving.

Tonight I can't fix the problems, but I can remember what I can do.
This month I've found I focused so much on what I can't do or that I'm not doing right....
I've been letting myself and everyone else tell me I'm not enough.
But I am.  And I can. And I will.

What else is there to say?