- clear out basement
- lose ten pounds
- eat more fruit
- define "more" - maybe I did
- fathom my own heart
- replace carpet with wood floors
- get to Ansel Adams and Annie Lebowitz at Corcaran Gallery
- double my writing production
- double my submissions (I think I did that one)
- get my laptop to connect to the internet properly
- reload photoshop
- double the number of blog postings (tada!!!!! - did it).
- contribute to world peace (or whirled peas)
Monday, December 31, 2007
A Good Catch
Two men recently shared with me that they were "a good catch." Interesting development, I think. They are not at all similar. Well, except in the traditional sense of good catch: they each are healthy (relatively), attractive, good fathers, hold good solid jobs that are in demand, own properties, have ex-wives that are truly ex, can dance, can cook, and are gentlemen. They are not gamblers, drunks, addicted, or abusive. But it raises some questions: one, would I be looking for/spending time with a "bad catch?" Two, what is "a good catch?" If I am the short stop and the ball off the batter's bat comes right at me and I catch it, is that a "good catch?" If I throw chum overboard and every variety of fish shows up but I impale the cheek of an oversize rockfish, is that a "good catch?" If I am dating, seeing men of character, substance, humor, kindness and they are, are they all good catches? A good catch may seem like a wonderful prize to someone who is hoping to ensnare, to trap, to capture.
I am not. Just ask anyone who knows me well; catching is not difficult; holding is the tough task. I suspect that is the case for most and I've just got a track record that reveals my truth more than most.
Perhaps it is a romantic notion, but I think, when it is right, we will be drawn to one another, not catching one another, but with that sensation where the heart is overfull at the sight of the other and not at all confining, but open and outpouring.
I'm just trying to let you hear me as I am.
Important things
the last day of 2007
i shopped for doreen's gift
and picked up a white shirt
and confirmed that i do
not ever want to stop in
Marshall's again just to see
if there is something there.
There isn't.
And I returned the laser level
to home depot and went to
best buy and bought a 19"
flat screen monitor that
I can return
And a dvi to vga converter
and came home to help
dylan fix his computer but
turns out it's not the
monitor after all and as i was
downstairs on my laptop
finally checking email from two
days ago, and sara phoned and
checked in for the year end
and before her evening begins
with friends. when we hung up,
i heard the tv on
and dylan rarely watches tv.
yes he was watching.
What's this?
Donnie Darko.
What's it about?
Uh, it's about a teen-ager. It's, well,it's about
a teen-ager.
And I sat down to watch
it with him. Because it
seemed like it might matter
and if it didn't, what costs? But
if it did, what loss.
It was about a teen-ager
and so much more. The tenuous
connection between what does happen
and what can happen and how we all
are knitted together.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Points of No Return
Kismit; synchronicity; fate; luck; puzzle pieces falling into place; happy coincidence. This is my day of happy coincidence.
I woke this morning from a dream; a dream that I was still working at the Temple; searching through a stack of papers to find some detail for Beth; going to the sanctuary to make sure the candles were in place; then to an auditorium and outside in the courtyard, a statue and in front of the statue Sara, as a girl of ten or eleven, with her friend, Beth, taking turns at performing cartwheels; their limber backs, long arms, stretched and easy with life, no future but the promise of anything they might imagine; sunlight on the grass and strands of Sara's sunstreaked hair winking with the light, swinging around her cheek as she landed hard on the ground in an imperfect cartwheel, smiling. She is undisturbed by her imperfection. Then I was back inside and Charles asks why I am in the building and I realize I don't have the keys anymore, that I'd turned them in, and a woman was just leaving my office and before the door shut, I slipped inside to get the piece of paper and left it on Doreen's desk and woke wondering what I've left undone.
Stretching in my sheets and wondering what day is this? Is it a work day? Where am I to be? The muddled mind of a few extra days off trying to organize my orbit. Slowly realizing, I belonged no where. No one anywhere was waiting for me; waiting for me to show up, to call, to clean up, to even get up. This was the start of my day; a dream of a place I don't belong and will not return and a dream of Sara to a time that she cannot return. The steps we take, tapping along the walk, not even aware of the door slowly closing behind us.
At the end of my day, I was driving home with Sally and as I passed the intersection at Cape St. Clair, a small car merged behind mine, turned into my neighborhood, turned down my street, all the way down, allowing me the space to pull up a bit and then back into my parking space. Dylan, smiling his same smile that to me is just as the smile he has had since a toddler, generous and genuine. He'd been driving to his father's house but at the intersection, he saw a red Prius and realized it was me and followed me home. Dylan has a new guitar, a Les Paul Gibson, beautiful and suited so well to him. He followed me and showed it to me and said he'd spent two hours playing it and it was so beautiful that he thought he might cry. That is who he is now; a musician. My son is a musician who has played long enough and has had music throughout his life, such that he'd spend all his savings so he might make a beautiful sound. He will never be without music, without his fingers plumbing notes out of the dark. Sara will never be without her friends, even the ones who are gone like Beth.
There are moments in our lives that are informing our future from which we are blinded in our blurry life. And in the background, maybe in our peripheral vision and just at the zenith of our hearing, the door softly clicks, closed.
I woke this morning from a dream; a dream that I was still working at the Temple; searching through a stack of papers to find some detail for Beth; going to the sanctuary to make sure the candles were in place; then to an auditorium and outside in the courtyard, a statue and in front of the statue Sara, as a girl of ten or eleven, with her friend, Beth, taking turns at performing cartwheels; their limber backs, long arms, stretched and easy with life, no future but the promise of anything they might imagine; sunlight on the grass and strands of Sara's sunstreaked hair winking with the light, swinging around her cheek as she landed hard on the ground in an imperfect cartwheel, smiling. She is undisturbed by her imperfection. Then I was back inside and Charles asks why I am in the building and I realize I don't have the keys anymore, that I'd turned them in, and a woman was just leaving my office and before the door shut, I slipped inside to get the piece of paper and left it on Doreen's desk and woke wondering what I've left undone.
Stretching in my sheets and wondering what day is this? Is it a work day? Where am I to be? The muddled mind of a few extra days off trying to organize my orbit. Slowly realizing, I belonged no where. No one anywhere was waiting for me; waiting for me to show up, to call, to clean up, to even get up. This was the start of my day; a dream of a place I don't belong and will not return and a dream of Sara to a time that she cannot return. The steps we take, tapping along the walk, not even aware of the door slowly closing behind us.
At the end of my day, I was driving home with Sally and as I passed the intersection at Cape St. Clair, a small car merged behind mine, turned into my neighborhood, turned down my street, all the way down, allowing me the space to pull up a bit and then back into my parking space. Dylan, smiling his same smile that to me is just as the smile he has had since a toddler, generous and genuine. He'd been driving to his father's house but at the intersection, he saw a red Prius and realized it was me and followed me home. Dylan has a new guitar, a Les Paul Gibson, beautiful and suited so well to him. He followed me and showed it to me and said he'd spent two hours playing it and it was so beautiful that he thought he might cry. That is who he is now; a musician. My son is a musician who has played long enough and has had music throughout his life, such that he'd spend all his savings so he might make a beautiful sound. He will never be without music, without his fingers plumbing notes out of the dark. Sara will never be without her friends, even the ones who are gone like Beth.
There are moments in our lives that are informing our future from which we are blinded in our blurry life. And in the background, maybe in our peripheral vision and just at the zenith of our hearing, the door softly clicks, closed.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
In the Stacks
Well beyond her reach
on the highest rack, Cordelia
searches the stacks.
Rare manuscript, not for the gilded
page, the gold embossed leather title
like royalty. Blind, her fingers
know the skin, rubbed and oiled,
trace the crease of the elbow
where the binding forms the spine.
He is here, in the stacks, in the
yellowed pages, caught in the maelstrom,
undone, well beyond her
reach.
on the highest rack, Cordelia
searches the stacks.
Rare manuscript, not for the gilded
page, the gold embossed leather title
like royalty. Blind, her fingers
know the skin, rubbed and oiled,
trace the crease of the elbow
where the binding forms the spine.
He is here, in the stacks, in the
yellowed pages, caught in the maelstrom,
undone, well beyond her
reach.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Solitary Second
The road under her feet,
her ally; road grit, shin splint
sorcerer. The solitary champion,running
against her shadow,her heart beat,
leaping the felled log, cutting
the corner close, branch braising
her hip, leaving a lover's blush
against her hip.
As on the court, her back-
hand stronger than straight on, left-
handed inconsistency flying
over the fence or
right at you. Duck and cover,
play the net, go for the long
shot. He passes near, running close
to the tree line, ahead and
behind the blind. His courage wrapped
in the knot of terror snaking
along his satorious. Blazing
impoverished trails to Atlantis
never arriving, fishtailing into
the drift, collision muffled by enjamb-
ment. She traced his trajectory,
gathered bark, created salves,
massaged, grew titanium thin, perfected
her forehand, still left-handed, ill-
suited for partners playing, returning
to the grit beneath her sole, running solo.
her ally; road grit, shin splint
sorcerer. The solitary champion,running
against her shadow,her heart beat,
leaping the felled log, cutting
the corner close, branch braising
her hip, leaving a lover's blush
against her hip.
As on the court, her back-
hand stronger than straight on, left-
handed inconsistency flying
over the fence or
right at you. Duck and cover,
play the net, go for the long
shot. He passes near, running close
to the tree line, ahead and
behind the blind. His courage wrapped
in the knot of terror snaking
along his satorious. Blazing
impoverished trails to Atlantis
never arriving, fishtailing into
the drift, collision muffled by enjamb-
ment. She traced his trajectory,
gathered bark, created salves,
massaged, grew titanium thin, perfected
her forehand, still left-handed, ill-
suited for partners playing, returning
to the grit beneath her sole, running solo.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Everyone just wants to be . . .
happy. Right?
We think we know what makes us happy:
- a new car, an expensive new car, with a moon roof so we can always see the moon. (Well not always. Sometimes the moon isn't visible. We are already wasting our happy.)
- losing eight pounds. (Unless you are underweight and then you would want to gain, but the point is that somehow your body comes in sync with that perfect vision of your body. For many women that might be Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron, but for someone who always longed to raise her leg in a perfect arabesque, like me, my perfect body would be the body of Suzanne Farrell, with fabulous turnout, great feet, doe-like eyes, a long neck.)
- landing your dream job with a private office, a key to the executive suite, a private plane at your disposal, minions. (Except that for me my dream job would include horse stables converted into writing kiosks for writers visiting my writers' refuge and the doors would be unlocked and my dog would have run of the house and the grounds and I might go months without using or thinking of the word "executive.")
- winning the lottery. Yes, that one might enable me to achieve the Demeter's Den dream, but would it come with publicity and difficult decisions regarding who to help and how and resentments when I said, "No." So winning the lottery would not make me happy.
This morning, I was happy. Why was I happy? What happened? What amazing windfall did I experience that I stood in utter joy, in the moment, glad to be alive?
I "had to" walk the dog before I went to work. It was cold this morning, 28 degrees with a light snow and just enough wind to cut right through my skirt and leggings cold. I grab a plastic bag to pick up Sally's droppings. I wrap my scarf over my head like a hat, put on my coat and zip it so I can turtle my chin into it, and pull on gloves. I put the leash on Sally and she tugs me down the front steps. As soon as we reach the grass across the street, Sally halts; her nose twitching, her ears like signal receptors on full alert. She jerks towards the woods, her nose mapping the ground. Insistently, her paws clawing the earth and pulling as if I were a barge she had to bare.
"No. Stop Sally." I pull hard on the leash. "We go this way." I try to lead her up the hill, to our little bluff where she quite efficiently "gets busy" for me in the mornings so I am not late to the office. Sally is a good girl. She does stop. She does turn. She starts toward me and seems as if she will walk up that hill. But her nose hits the ground and she turns and leaps back toward the wood, toward the small hill that goes down and around behind the last townhouse, where the woods are deep and a muddy artery runs through the base of that gully. I stand still.
"Sally." She does not turn toward me but her right ear flicks in my direction in recognition. "Sally," I command with all the sternness I can muster. She turns her head, appeals to me with her eyes, gives a small whimper, and returns immediately to her watch. Sally has important business. Sally knows why she is here. Intent, focused, all her senses engaged, she is truly here. I don't think I should resist that. So I follow her lead. My shoes slip a bit on the muddy silk and we go toward the gully, round the bend, reach a crest. The air is sharp with snow; my lungs braced with cold, my heart happy.
Sally stills. Her posture very solid, her tail raised. I follow her line of sight; between the brown tree trunks, the fall leaves, a rack of a buck, then the majestic chest and shoulders, frozen cadence of a stilled buck comes together, like the fragmented moments of our lives that end up telling the real story come together. Once you can get paste the bracken, your sight is clear and you wonder how you hadn't seen it earlier. I can see the buck. I see the buck see me. We are looking at one another. We stand and breathe and look and I am full of the recognition of something I don't need to understand. Three seconds at best, but the reach is much longer. Sally's softest whimper sends the buck fleeing for shelter, the heavier blanket of deeper woods.
"Good girl, Sally." I rub the hair soft as pudding behind her ear. "Good girl. Thank you, Sally." And for moment, I feel like Suzanne Farrell knowing I'd turned out of my routine, had sure footing, and at least, for a moment, a buck had looked into my eyes. I was happy.
I am happy. This is that nature of happy. Creating, writing, looking at the world, engaging, slurping it up; this is my definition of being happy.
We think we know what makes us happy:
- a new car, an expensive new car, with a moon roof so we can always see the moon. (Well not always. Sometimes the moon isn't visible. We are already wasting our happy.)
- losing eight pounds. (Unless you are underweight and then you would want to gain, but the point is that somehow your body comes in sync with that perfect vision of your body. For many women that might be Angelina Jolie or Charlize Theron, but for someone who always longed to raise her leg in a perfect arabesque, like me, my perfect body would be the body of Suzanne Farrell, with fabulous turnout, great feet, doe-like eyes, a long neck.)
- landing your dream job with a private office, a key to the executive suite, a private plane at your disposal, minions. (Except that for me my dream job would include horse stables converted into writing kiosks for writers visiting my writers' refuge and the doors would be unlocked and my dog would have run of the house and the grounds and I might go months without using or thinking of the word "executive.")
- winning the lottery. Yes, that one might enable me to achieve the Demeter's Den dream, but would it come with publicity and difficult decisions regarding who to help and how and resentments when I said, "No." So winning the lottery would not make me happy.
This morning, I was happy. Why was I happy? What happened? What amazing windfall did I experience that I stood in utter joy, in the moment, glad to be alive?
I "had to" walk the dog before I went to work. It was cold this morning, 28 degrees with a light snow and just enough wind to cut right through my skirt and leggings cold. I grab a plastic bag to pick up Sally's droppings. I wrap my scarf over my head like a hat, put on my coat and zip it so I can turtle my chin into it, and pull on gloves. I put the leash on Sally and she tugs me down the front steps. As soon as we reach the grass across the street, Sally halts; her nose twitching, her ears like signal receptors on full alert. She jerks towards the woods, her nose mapping the ground. Insistently, her paws clawing the earth and pulling as if I were a barge she had to bare.
"No. Stop Sally." I pull hard on the leash. "We go this way." I try to lead her up the hill, to our little bluff where she quite efficiently "gets busy" for me in the mornings so I am not late to the office. Sally is a good girl. She does stop. She does turn. She starts toward me and seems as if she will walk up that hill. But her nose hits the ground and she turns and leaps back toward the wood, toward the small hill that goes down and around behind the last townhouse, where the woods are deep and a muddy artery runs through the base of that gully. I stand still.
"Sally." She does not turn toward me but her right ear flicks in my direction in recognition. "Sally," I command with all the sternness I can muster. She turns her head, appeals to me with her eyes, gives a small whimper, and returns immediately to her watch. Sally has important business. Sally knows why she is here. Intent, focused, all her senses engaged, she is truly here. I don't think I should resist that. So I follow her lead. My shoes slip a bit on the muddy silk and we go toward the gully, round the bend, reach a crest. The air is sharp with snow; my lungs braced with cold, my heart happy.
Sally stills. Her posture very solid, her tail raised. I follow her line of sight; between the brown tree trunks, the fall leaves, a rack of a buck, then the majestic chest and shoulders, frozen cadence of a stilled buck comes together, like the fragmented moments of our lives that end up telling the real story come together. Once you can get paste the bracken, your sight is clear and you wonder how you hadn't seen it earlier. I can see the buck. I see the buck see me. We are looking at one another. We stand and breathe and look and I am full of the recognition of something I don't need to understand. Three seconds at best, but the reach is much longer. Sally's softest whimper sends the buck fleeing for shelter, the heavier blanket of deeper woods.
"Good girl, Sally." I rub the hair soft as pudding behind her ear. "Good girl. Thank you, Sally." And for moment, I feel like Suzanne Farrell knowing I'd turned out of my routine, had sure footing, and at least, for a moment, a buck had looked into my eyes. I was happy.
I am happy. This is that nature of happy. Creating, writing, looking at the world, engaging, slurping it up; this is my definition of being happy.
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