someone somewhere

She made a pretty penny in real estate.
but never did fall in love.
She had a certain taste for fixer-uppers,
for sledge hammers and roller brushes
perfecting and moving on.

Pocket Guide to Grace: Lesson 76

When you find that the world is spinning, hold onto something stable and stop turning yourself around.

drunken daffodils

The daffodils clearly had also had too much to drink during the night.  They stood slouched and hung over the puddles and the sopping grass.  I felt comfort in their kinship, their rebellious vibrancy .  Though oppressively loaded with the evenings's storm, these daffodils were shining in chorus, singing gleaming hymns despite the fog, despite the burdensome grey of the morning.

I had no idea why I was awake.  The sun must of come up, I figured, though I couldn't see it.  I couldn't recall sleeping, but I also couldn't recall not sleeping.  As I pieced together the evening, I became pretty sure that I had still been awake and pushing words through my whiskey seasoned vocal chords long after the bars put us to the streets.  I was with the boy again, probably saying words I'd regret if i ever remembered them, probably talking myself right into bits of sleep caught on his shoulder.  But now I was awake, disoriented, (perhaps broken-hearted), and hanging out with slouched and singing daffodils.  We were all still intoxicated.

I had been sitting on my back steps for at least an hour, but I wouldn't go in until I had found whatever there was to be found in the morning.  The knuckles on my index fingers were smudged with my eye makeup, and all of my fingernails were black-tipped and gritty.  I  cleaned the salt-spots off of my glasses with my dress, and gave up trying to remember the evening.

The weight of the air comforted my weighted heart.  The fog in the back yard forgave the fog in my mind.  The daffodils seemed to say "Hey, we've all had it rough.  Be still, and shine."

This was the first day of spring.  Soon after, my life and the magnolia tree above the daffodils exploded into bloom.

exclamation

the short hand for my reflections on life these days is:

!!!

The end.

Digital Rain Drops

I just went for a run in the rain to put my laundry into a dryer.

I ran, did the laundry business, ran back.  

I've got no hat on, and open top shoes, and my forehead and socks are sopping it up.  And my glasses are all speckled with water which just make every light become a gigantic star in my face.   And it's kind of cold and that feels so good!  I've got this added bonus, a gifted pashmina scarf keeping my neck all soft and warm while the rest of me is tickled with big ol' sloppy April drops.  And theres totally an IPA in my belly and rain on my face and the speed of my jog reminds me that it's spring and that I can run and that I can move and life is so freaking good!

How glorious it is to run in the rain!

And then there's this thought that comes to my mind:

"'Running in the Rain, Running to Stand Still!' I should post that as my Facebook status when I get back."

At this point I can actually see my house.

What!?!?!   I'm running in the fucking rain, and it's AWESOME and I'm all chilled out on hops and spring and love of life, and i've got STARS like crazy in in front of my fucking EYES, and now I'm thinking about Facebook and status updates with U2 references!  "Oh, there's my house where I can (and have to) tell the world, on Facebook (because that's the world, right?), how I am So living up life.  

Living it up so much that though I resisted updating my status on Facebook, I did pause to write this blog.

Viva, friends, fucking viva. 

Impulsive Brain Consumption

I do hope that my friends here were all organ donors.

Just in case you needed a dose of Dianimal behavior.  Roar.

Loving Editor

Someone I trust says, "Don't touch it.  It'll hurt."  So I don't touch it (in this hypothetical scenario, at least).

That's because I've been hurt, and so I can recall the experience of being in pain.  I'm not looking for pain, so I'm not going to touch it.

If I had never ever been hurt, and therefor had no memory reference for the experience of pain, well, I'd probably touch it.  Why not?

Learning is non-linear.  I hope to remember that.  It allows so much grace.  

I haven't written in a while.  I've been seeking humility (and I do get so distracted!).  It's a non-linear lesson.  Is there any room for humility in the blog world?  

We shall see.

I went to Walden Pond Monday.  I was walking around the pond with a new friend, enjoying the peace.  Then just as I was about to open up my mouth, a gentle, silent, laugh stopped me.  "Not everything is to be shared."  I spend so much time trying to find peace from the words-words-words, and I was about to dump the chatter that I seek to free myself from into the ears of a man who seemed very peaceful.  Instead I found the gentle, silent laugh that devoured the need to speak, ate the words out of my throat.  The loving editor intervened.  Peace retained...silence...clear water...sparkling....now.

The funny thing about this blogging business is that since I've started writing and posting, I've become very conscious of how much bullshit comes out of my head and out of my mouth or onto the page.  So much chatter, and none of it real.  I've written about 50 unpublished blogs, and I've purposely shut myself up here and there for the first time in, oh, maybe, ever.  I am praying, walking, riding my bike past the buds turning to flowers right before my eyes, and asking the loving editor to remain, to help a sister out.  I may be her most difficult case, but i do believe she loves me and is going to stick around.

It's a silent, gentle laughter.  A jolly nature.  A soul's whisper.  A simple acknowledgement, "yes."

Pocket Guide to Grace: Lesson 28.3

Step one:  Create a to-do list.

Step two:  Add a few things at the end that you've already done.

Step three: Cross those things you've already done off.  Good Job!

Step four: Proceed with life (as in go ahead and get distracted)

Step five:  Lose your to-do list.  Just fucking lose it.

Step six:  Forgive yourself for losing your to-do list.  Really.  Fuck it.  

Step seven: Proceed with your day.  

Step eight: Catch yourself getting pissed at yourself for the things you didn't do.

Step nine: Forgive yourself again.  This may help:  "What are you going to get an award in Heaven for doing everything perfectly?  No!  So then, fuck it!"  (thanks, Tesia, for that one.)

Step ten: Proceed to bed time.  Go to bed. (I know that's two steps, but, again, fuck it. We're done honoring rules of to-do lists here)

Step eleven: Oops, you're thinking of those things again.  

Step twelve:  Let it go.  No one is perfect.  Isn't that great?  You're supposed to be, well, flawed.  Good Job!

Step thirteen: Let it go again.

Step fourteen: Again

Step fifteen: Repeat steps twelve through thirteen until drifting into a very peaceful rest.

Good Night.  Peace out.

The animals feed themselves.

I quit the farm.

After Thanksgiving Dinner, my aunts and cousins told me I had to start playing Farmville, a virtual-farming game that is available through Facebook.

"We can give each other gifts," Jessie said.  "I gave Ang and Tom reindeer this morning."  She was snickering.  They know it's silly, but they're all doing it anyway.

"I really can't, guys.  I don't have cable or a gaming system for a reason, I get hooked on that shit and then I don't do what I'm supposed to do in real life.  I have way too much on my plate right now to take up another addiction."

"You can spend as much or as little time as you want" Auntie Lori says, "You have to get a farm!"

"I can spend as much or as little time as I want on Facebook, but somehow I always spend way more time than I want.  Really, I don't need one more reason to be online, I got to like pay bills and eat meals and stuff."

By the end of the night I agreed to get a farm.  Fuck it.  It's just a silly Facebook game.

By Christmas I had a very sweet farm.  I had more crops and animals and "points" than most of my family. Jessica sent me an e-mail just a few days before Christmas.  "Can't wait to see you.  Nice farm.  What's your secret?  I'd like to know"

I e-mailed back:   "Insomnia's my secret."

Which was half the truth.  I had spent many a late night farming when I was too sleep deprived to do much else.  You just point and click.  Point and click.  Point and click.  Then you buy barns and houses and pretty little decorations.  My excuse for farming during daytime hours was that "I needed something mindless," and it sure was.  I even had some free child-labor via the exploitation of my niece, who loved the game.

There was another, much dirtier truth.  I was competing with my most recent ex-boyfriend.

I spent HOURS working on a virtual farm almost entirely to make mine cooler and better than his.  He was competing with me, too.  I knew it.   I could see it in his crop circles.

"The truth shall set you free."  Well... What is the truth really?  That it was a waste of time?  That it was childish and petty?  That that game is totally stupid?

I like this truth: Once upon a time I had a virtual-farm habit.  It was short lived, in the scheme of things, and it's over now.  


I left a sign on my "farm" that says "I've skipped town.  Don't worry, the animals feed themselves."  This was over a week ago.

That same evening, Tesia and I stopped at her plot in the Northampton community gardens.  It was one of the first nights of the year that we could be outside without shivering, and neither of us had been to her garden all winter.  We pulled the car right up to the edge, and used the headlights as lanterns as we went to inspect what the winter had done.

We wandered around the dark plot.  She was looking for garlic and I was just dancing.  Really.  Skipping and jumping and then, just like a little kid, hollered "It's here!  It's here!  It's really Spring."  As Tesia moves into the light from the car I say "I want to farm.  Real farming.  Real gardening.  Real life."

I looked down at the clumpy dirt, waiting to be tilled and fertilized and loved, and could imagine a very very sweet garden.

(photo by Micheal R. Mosall  www.mosallphotography.com)

Viva St. Patrick's Day

Yes.  I'm wearing green.  So is my Mostly-Polish-American house mate.

I was hoping to get to work and find the three year old that I nanny for dressed in his snake shirt, just to be ironic.

No one knows a thing about St. Patrick, except that he wasn't Irish.  The story is that he was English, during the Roman Empire, which made him a Roman.  The Roman's had ignored that silly little island with those odd Celts for quite some time, but finally, they decided to convert the people.  Thus enters St. Patrick.  Or so the story goes.

Revered amongst a drinking nation and highly honored in the cities across America where the drunken ancestors of the mostly-oppressed mostly-drunken-Irish immigrants settled and multiplied (and multiplied and multiplied), the reportedly-English St. Patrick has somehow become the hero of Irish culture even to the people who's families have not set foot in a Catholic Church in generations.  He's so loved that Americans of all heritages pretend to be Irish for his special day.  They're all, of course, jealous of the beer and whiskey.

The Irish are an excepting people, they'll let anyone drink with them, then move in. (well, this is true for the Catholics, I don't know about those Protestants)  The Irish-American Catholics have held onto this welcoming drunken spirit.  I do adore it so.

Really, I am Irish.  Don't even try to tell me otherwise.  I know, I know, you say "You're American, idiot".  And well, it's true, I'm American, but my family is SO Irish.  We're not even really conscious about it. ("We're Irish right?" my older cousin asks.  "Yes, more than anything else," I reply) We're all about family pride.  And drinking.  And pushiness and persistence.  And adopting any person with a Christmas dinner under 10 to join our crew, and bring their family (and hell, why not their friends, too?) I mean, what's Christmas without serving yourself from an buffet of dishes strewn over every surface and then searching for a seat?

We were talking about a different Holiday, though, won't we? (or wasn't I?, rather)

My only 100% Irish friend told me that he had heard somewhere that St. Patrick may have been Scottish, and though it wasn't Irish, it eased his mind just a little to think perhaps he at least wasn't English.  He then told me that his mother was having six people stay at her home this coming weekend so that they could attend the parade.

I went to an Irish Catholic school where we didn't even have classes on March 17th.  We just partied (sans Guinness or Jameson, of course) I don't know if they celebrate St. Patrick's day in public schools these days.  They certainly celebrate St. Valentine's day, but given that his name is now archaic and novel, it is easy to drop the "Saint" from the day.  And hearts! Chocolate! Of course the schools are fine with this.  How do we get kids exited about regular old clovers that don't even have four leaves? Or little scary men in odd suits that lie and tell you there's pots of gold at the end of the rainbow?  What's up with those pots?  No kid has ever seen a pot like that.  And how do we get them excited about stout?  Or Irish whiskey?

Well, they'll learn the wonders of pretending to be Irish-Catholic for a day in their own time, I suppose.

I'm not Atheist, I just find this pretty funny:

No worries.  I'm not bah humbugging this wonderful holiday.  I'll be drinking Guinness and eating Dubliner cheddar, this evening.   I was raised Irish-Catholic.  I have my pride.