Sidereal Musing

Still..

2011-12-02T10:08:00.000-06:00

I have been taking a time out from being in a relationship, suddenly noticing that I have spent my entire life metaphorically holding my breath, afraid to expose myself as a fraud. The truth seems to be that I was so used to being controlled that I had no sense of who I really am as a person. So after 8 months of being single, and 6 months of deliberately not dating, I find that I am feeling better, more like myself. However, I still miss C, more than ever. He still won't talk to me other than the occassional text. When I see him in person, I still just really want to make him smile. And it always hurts when I realize that he isn't going to love me, or most likely ever be friends with me again. In someways, I feel like I am getting what I deserve. The more I try to get him to talk to me, the more I push him away. At the least, I want his forgiveness and the most I want is for him to love me again. I hate these words as I write them, they will make no difference, and if anything show me as more pathetic than ever. Or is that my fears of being vulnerable

Impossible Blue

2011-05-02T16:04:00.001-05:00

The sky is an impossible blue, a heart wrentching blue, one that defies the definitions and the connotations we adfix to the four simple letters. I stare into the sky, thinking, watching in childlike fascination as the soft spun spiderweb clouds churn and swell. The sun is still up but I know that I must sleep soon or I will be a basketcase tomorrow.

I think about the week ahead, all work and no play it seems. My sister moves my stuff this weekend, so I will have to be close to a computer in case there is any issues. The cost of a phone call from here is too drastic for either of us. Hard to imagine my life as I know it shipped off into dark storage somewhere, clinical remains, dull, quiet. This boring person hid in books, hid in solitary sports, hid in gyms, hid in darkened movie theaters, hid in dimmed cars. So quiet, so soundproofed that no one heard the screaming from inside of me, the rebellion trying to get out. Is out now, outlandish and owly, an old spaghetti western cowboy, a kung fu expert lost at the bottom of a bottle, any old cliche one can think of, that is me right now.

The flowers here are in bloom, especially the silky white masses that hang from the trees. Soon they will weep, weep those white petals like so many tears that have falled from many an eye. Some things are universal, it seems. The blue of the sky, the blue of water, the blue of rain, the blue of those tiny little flowers that poke up from the corner gardens. Beyond the blue, there lies so much but it is easy to get lost in it, in this.

Soul Delay

2011-04-26T14:48:00.001-05:00

William Gibson describes jet lag best as soul delay. That one's body has been removed from one's soul, with a tiny thread to connect them until the soul is able to catch up to the body. Travel is a wonderful adventure, but upon arrival, I am feeling listless and odd, out of sorts. Back into my mostly solitude in Denmark, I am already forgetting how good it felt to spend time with my friends and my family.

Denmark is having beautiful sunny weather, and my ultra fair skin shows a faint tan where I walked in the sun for an hour the last couple of days. I was studying, and I started falling asleep. Then I was going to bed, but got caught up in the instant gratification of online games, the click becomes it's own reward, and I am an obedient money, no longer ready for sleep.l

Homecoming

2011-04-23T23:15:00.001-05:00

It feels like home here, more than ever. My family and I prepared an Easter eve meal, with ham, mashed potatoes, gravy, green been casserole, fresh Italian salad, pistachio fruit salad, cream cheese roll ups, 3 types of pie, veggie casserole, cookies, Danish chocolate & candies. Afterwards, we played a strange game of soccor, that evolved into dodgeball into all out war. It was a happy day, very happy. Nice to be home.

Sane again

2011-04-22T23:58:00.001-05:00

Suddenly, life seems sane again. My family around me, I feel like I finally am where I belong. The evening passes in a happy blur, the inside joked, the familiar arguments, the feeling of belonging that just isn't there other wise. I ve been asked out for a date two monthes in the future by someone I think is very sexy, but also risky. I don't want to get my hopes up, an sure he will forget by the time I am back, but also strangely hopeful. A nice date with an attractive man. But the pessimistic part says I have already been forgotten by someone while in Denmark, why risk making it two? But relations with others are more than just a sum of numbers.

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In Film

2011-04-22T02:27:00.001-05:00

Seated in the darkness of a theater, it is easier to be alone. Perhaps I am strange, I love seeing movies alone. Always a staple of hard times, the anonymity of a seat in a room full of strangers makes it easier to laugh like I need to laugh, no disapproving voice telling me that I am being obnoxious, and it its easier to suspend belief, to enjoy the magic as just another stranger in the darkness.

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When determination has fled

2011-04-19T18:23:00.001-05:00

I spent so long inbetween. After we broke up last time, I just decided that I would have to get used to being treated like shit, that it wasn't going to change, & maybe this was how love really was like, the loneliness & the pain. The jealousy that any & everything came before me, that there was an understanding out would be made up to me at some point, and year after year, no, it only got worse. He is taking it bad now, part of me feels bad, sad got him. But the other part wants to yell, what is different now? Only tje illusion is gone, tje illusion of a happy life together. A drawing back of the curtains, only. We should be able to see plainly now, no angels, no ghosts, just two people not meant to be together.

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Queen of Poems

2011-04-19T17:58:00.001-05:00

Poetry surrounds me, a sea of pages, luminous words on high bond paper, my kingdom. And I, a queen deposed, parceling each away. Each boxed, branded, stacked, counted. I have too many, I think though only in this state, only when moving. I write more now. Without a lover to betray with my words, it seems easier to express my self, without someone to not listen to my words, I feel new energy here, new urgency. Repression begets repression, and suddenly tje source of my creative block becomes known: the words I wouldn't let myself say prevented me from saying anything. So joy in my sorrow, a small consolation, losing my love, I regain a poem. What toil, a diamond, incubated for four long years.

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Kindness

2011-04-18T22:07:00.001-05:00

So disengagement, disentanglement begins. Reclaiming what is mine from the wreckage of what was ours. When you say yes to one thing, you simaltaniously say no to many others. I believe it is for the best, but it doesn't make it easier. Saying goodbye is never easy.

Goodbye to Denmark

2011-04-16T14:37:00.001-05:00

The corridor of the night unravels from this window. My thoughts are on my upcoming flight home, and the future. Denmark has changed my lens, has changed the way I look at the world, and it is time to reconcile my old life that I left and my new one. I see that I have made things too difficult, always clinging to a relationship, always trying to make something work. But if it broken, sometimes the thing is beyond repair. If you are unhappy doing what you are doing, then it is time to do something different.

I don't at this time have a good idea of what direction I will be heading in, only a heady sense that the world is open to me, that there is more choices for me than I can comprehend, an inspired feeling of possiblilty that I have not felt rising in me since I was beginning college, so long ago. Perhaps I can get back into school, a more practical field of study. Perhaps I can move to a different area. Perhaps I will look for a new job.

I just know that my life up until now has been treading water, trying to keep my head above it, but now I realize that one can be underwater as long as you hold your breath. The feeling of irriation when I do the same thing more than a few weeks in a row. So, best might be something that can change from one day to the next.

My last night here I am spending in the quiet, feeling aloneness--not quite lonely, just very aware of being alone. Seems the best thing is to float on, to be mindful but not afraid, to say yes more, to realize somehow it will all work out. When you say yes to something, you are saying no to other things, whether you know it or not. I have said my yeses, and now I am learning the nos that I have said. Life is a grand accident, and I am a humble witness.

Pool at Nightfall

2011-04-15T08:16:00.001-05:00

The eastern windows look out unto the lake. The last encroaching colors of night close in, a dark cloaked rider skillfully gains the castle, lays siege, over takes it in a single moment. Stars become the smoking embers flung from such a fire. The Tahiti blue dazzle is reflected up on the glass, into each of the massive windows. The teams of swimmers, multiplied and wavering, a psychedelic dream at odds with the conquering henchmen of night outside.

I stand in the warm pool, feeling my pores open, my emotions, the essence of me spilling out. I have lost much time here. I look at those dedicated: the runners upstairs, sweat dripping down their flushed faces, as they pump their arms and legs, automations on machines. I should be up there, purging myself of carby pleasures, the marzipan, the rye bread, the dried apricots, the passion fruit, the Japanese cherries, the Indian flat bread. I should be up there running off my two Blackbirds, the Guinness, the barley, the hops, the malt, the vodka shot, the tequila shot.

My swimsuit is a mess of colors, mesmerizing in the rippling waters, for the moment, my fear is transparent. I am submerged, an iceberg, only what little presentable is shown. My glasses are off, and I am blind. I try to memorize the vague and brilliant colors. My shame is less stable when I can't see how I look. Water is the most intimate, and now I feel the most dirty and compacted, feeling flesh that I don't know against mine, feeling grippy tiles beneath my feet. No one else is reacting, this is a lesson for me. No one else thinks this is strange. This experience is only mine.

Saying Goodbye to the Sea of Dead Languages

2011-04-14T09:01:00.001-05:00

Ironic that after so many years studying languages that no one ever speaks, I have thrust myself out into a world where I am the minority. Today, I am saying goodbye to the sea of dead languages, the seas of the dead heroes I have long worshipped, those old ghosts that I have carried with me for decades.

The joy of studying dead languages was many fold. My life plan was something of a patchwork quilt that was based somewhere between the life pattern of John Milton and Stephen King, and with boundless enthusiasm and no common sense, I ran forth carrying not only scissors but words as well. My well meaning, I hope, guidance counselor told me to do what I love. Well, I loved everything. No one once told me the dangers of not actually studying to find a job.

The rigors of decline and memorizing Latin, the tables and noun endings, a soothing balm to the anxiety I felt to be alive and in the world. The uber-nerd, I hid behind glasses, huddled between books. Dead languages were great. There was no danger of going to a country and having to speak to someone. I couldn't talk to those right next to me, much less the hoards across the world. I choose instead to talk to the dead, the dying, the dust of the earth. Translating poetry was a veil, I didn't have to expose my own writing this way, and could still be known as a poet.

Here and now, though, is different. I find I have forgotten all the useful knowledge I once had, gone in disuse and a life gone awry. Spanish, German, Latin, Greek. So much of my life invested, and thrown away.

So, I am saying goodbye to the sea of dead languages, the seas of the dead heroes I have long worshipped. I am setting aside my puerile and petulant dreams that have left me undone. I take up this burden, the risk of trying to communicate with the living, the breathing, the breeding, in spite of the fear. Is it better to talk to ghosts or be one? Perhaps I shall soon know.

Enemy

2011-04-13T14:46:00.001-05:00

Now, I cut through water, through life, differently than before. Single, streamlined, sleek. None of the security of a relationship and none of the costs. Back and forth, I practice all the moves I have learned, the timid and tidy giving way to the passionate and tumultuous.

I don´t care who sees anymore. Something reptilian and unthinking surfaces here, the frigid water more intimate a touch than I have experienced in a long time, cold probing fingers that unite me with every single person that has been or will be in this water.

I practice, breathe in, feel my body lift in response. Breathe out, feel myself sink. I begin swimming laps, slowly, warming up into my old injuries, my bad left shoulder and the cracking right ankle. Powerlifting was such a different sport, and yet they are the same in many ways. Here it is just me, my head and my body and whatever voices I choose to replay for myself. Learning my own body like a landscape, like a text. Each and every day moving over it, taking time to notice and adjust, and move on.

Chlorine clings to me, turns my hair colors, makes my skin dry, but inside the water, all I hear is my heart. I know that it continues to beat strong in my chest, and somehow things will be okay. The point is not, as I previously guessed, to keep one's head above water, but to recover and move forward. Water is not the enemy, I am.

Meantime

2011-04-11T14:24:00.001-05:00

So, in the meantime?

The play on words here: Meantime, the time between two events, the segway from one plot to the subplot, the space separating words;  MEANtime, the way they feel-gritty and grainy, a life like the old movies, jumpy and unsteady, like life was sand rubbed into your eyes and now sits right behind your eyelid.

I have been trying to get out and about, to say yes to new experiences where I would have always said no. Discipline is out the window. To start saying yes, there is little time for the involved thinking that I usually partake in, there is little time for the pen and ink sketches. Everything now is quick and dirty, and there are no lines to distinguish.

I am suffering from classic shyness, where after forcing myself out into the world, the fear is there: I said too much, I did the wrong thing, I offended, I snapped, I cried, I didn't know the right thing to say. After my performance of life, I am now sitting on the bench in the dark, awaiting curtin call, awaiting review, awaiting response.

Sending the first text out into the night, I shut off my phone, afraid of the answer or no answer.  And I know better. Foolish thinking convinced me things were different here, but no, I think this one is universal.

There was a beautiful thing there, shining briefly, a coin at the bottom of the pool.  But just now, I clutched my hands for it, grabbed in deparate imprecision, and the coin became a fish and disappeared, a glimmer. Is this what I gave up what I had for?

But again, paradox. If not for said sad coin, now lost to me, I would for sure have been tied forever in the cycle of unhappiness and wanting already establised in the relationship.

Why am I pining for a man I can't have, want to convince them I am something good enough to invest in? For a second, things seemed different, but no, it's not so. So I am asking, where is the man that wants me? Inside and out, good and bad. I don't think such a man exists tonight, and am afraid of how long the night, this night will be. I am undecided, turn my ringer on and off once more.

Is it better to hear the silence for sure, or be eclipsed in darkness?

Loneliness: Poison and Cure

2011-04-11T13:38:00.001-05:00

Loneliness is at once the poison and it's own cure. Surprising and illogical, but also true. The nights and days, everything in between are now awash in colors of singleness. It is to cut the waters of the world in a different way. To no longer be secure that I am okay, I have some sort of mooring. Instead I am an escaped oragami ship sailing across the ocean, each day is at once better and worse then the previous.

The poison was there: Each day, in and out, the absence of communication, the essential reaffirming actions of creating words and passing them along. Here in a foreign country, I felt just as lonely as I did when I was with the one I loved, maybe less so. It really made no sense. Finally, the light dawned that no, he is choosing someone else over me, every single day.

The cure: Carried the same venom as the poison, the silver bitterness swollowed whole and is there, in my belly. Unmoored, yes, but not anchored either. I can't explain the course of thought or actions that brought it about. Only a moment when the whole world was about to collapse, and suddenly the wrong person, the wrong kind of person was there. Or the right one. Again, the paradox, the thing is itself and something different. I can't seem to tell today which is which.

Celebrate

2011-03-16T12:13:00.000-05:00

The liminal, tidal, the slim silver lining between this world and the next. The walls are thin, and I listen without trying to my neighbors confersation on the phone, one loud voice continuing on and on. Time is different here, despite the internet, the world clocks, the digital ringing sounds as I dial you up. Somewhere there is someone who supposedly loves me, but the disconnect echos more from here. My brightest secret, clutched close to my heart, afraid to hope that this love is it, afraid after too many south bound relationships, washed out romances. Passions are overrated, I tell myself. Go with the good guy, but even the best asshole remains an asshole. The unanswered email, the secret slipping off of chat mode, the short and odd calls, nothing groundbreaking, just the realization that no one is listening. The questions asked continue unanswered, the future looms, dooms ahead. What is it you want? We want? The questions never get answered, and as much as I love you, it is me realizing that silence speaks volumes, that it is indeed golden, a big golden shit sandwich of no, negative, Neij. Do we have a future? If so, what is in it? A house? Kids? Marriage? What about shorter terms, what do you want for our anniverary? How should we celebrate? You say, you are not here, why should we celebrate, but smiling. But I also am wondering if this is the real answer.

Ides of March and Jettisoned Items

2011-03-15T10:59:00.001-05:00

Denmark, such a beautiful country. There is something here, the country, the land, the water, that really gets to me. Perhaps it being unable to communicate brings me back to my intrinsic aloneness, a feeling I have always had, an awareness that I am and always will be alone in the universe, that I am strange and different. Perhaps it is the reverting to an illiterate, unable to understand the simplest of signs here. I feel more myself here than I have in a while. I have settled in here, living more comfortably here than I could imagine. Missing my family is a big drawback for me, being the people who I feel I am more myself with. I have had a lot of time to think of friends that I have not kept in contact with, and have tried to some extent to connect with them again, but it seems the tides are changing, and I have just been too late. Irony is there, of course. My married name, the name of a good friend, the name of my very first boyfriend, all Danish. Perhaps I was collecting hints, then. But in the last few years, I have more been letting go than collecting, and these heralds of my Danish life were jettisoned asea much before today.

Ides of March and Jettisoned Items

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Detours in the Midst of Darkness

2010-04-26T04:01:00.001-05:00

So I have been relegated to an overnight shift at work indefinitely, not brought back to my original shift as was promised with the rest of my crew. Supposedly the decision was made based on senority and on qualifications, but I have over and above that of other workers who were moved to day and afternoon shifts.

The underlying issue is that my supervisor is apparently offended that I tried to transfer out of his department. For the duration of my shift, I have in effect fallen off the face of the earth, perhaps thinking that I could get back to normal once I went back to my regular 5 am to 3:30pm shift.

This is not to be, I now realize, and will have to push myself to get back into my healthier and more artistically productive habits, since what seemed like a detour has become my life. Isn't this so often the case?

And probably time to start looking at some other options...

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Spring Sprang Sprung

2010-04-18T17:15:00.001-05:00

Yes, again the spring buds are opening, dropping sticky resin and seed hulls onto my car. The sky is the light gray of light cloud cover, the breeze is light. The air is full of bird chirps and children playing soccer and tag. I dreamt last night that I moved to Iowa, into a tiny town where I was to become a farmer, running combines over golden fields of corn. I tried to buy the things I needed at the little store, but ended up buying books and books and books, and carried them home in my arms down wooded sidewalks.

Overnights are continuing to wear on me, but not enough to make me quit. The weekends flash at light speed. Words come to me, and I am working on my writing, but not the way I want to. I feel dislocated, migrant without a place to write. I am reading "Lipstick Jungle" by Candace Bushnell.

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Summary

2010-04-12T05:04:00.001-05:00

The apartment building is waking up, creaking, dripping, rattling to life now, as I type this. These neighbors, people I would not recognize on the street or the store, share their most intimate activities through these walls, their sex, their bowel movements, their conversations, their wakings and snoring all unfiltered through the walls we share.

April continues to be the cruelest month, as Eliot wrote, first buds on the trees, first warmth in the air, the first roadkill squirrel by the park crowded over by crows. March was both lion like and lamb like, non segragated, all together, a fierce and meek fondue of moods. Excitement and fear.

February, short sword of a month, frugal and spendthrift came and went. Valentine's Day brought me back to Chris, and we have been very happy together, lazing about and eating. My disciplined exercise and writing routine went out the window in the weeks before we actually got back together, and I have been avoiding my wiiFit because of the ever increasing graph. I am still working overnights, 5 days a week while he works 4 days, so we will have a few hours in the evenings.

The downside is that I lose my overtime opportunities and without an office or even staying in the same place everynight, I am not producing. Which upsets me. But what about happiness? Is there truth in the addage "Fat and Happy?"

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Post Holidays Thoughts

2010-01-04T04:31:00.001-06:00

The holidays are over, finally. And really, it was great. I spent time with my friends and my family, got a chance to relax away from work, and a lot of free time. The record breaking snowfall here in Grand Forks made getting around very difficult. I spent my Christmas visit to my hometown snowed in at first my mom's and then my sister's houses. Where I was forced to relax, watch movies, socialize and not worry about getting anything done or go to the gym, or whatnot. It's been a difficult time for me, having broken up with my boyfriend of nearly 3 years shortly before Christmas, but sometimes that how life goes, I guess.

This has been the best breakup that I've had, and it seems we will remain friends afterwards, no small feat. Everyone asks why, and why then, and really there are no simple answers. The easiest would be neither one of us were happy and too many bad things happened between us without being resolved. Knowing that I would have to accept a extravagant gift from him and facing his family while pretending we were ok was too big a challenge for me. It felt like I was living a lie.

So soon I'll be moving, I'll be packing up these books and finding some place I can live on my own. The sense of coming freedom is intoxicating. For now, though, still living with my ex, I find myself dealing with the post-breakup talks, the controlling behaviors of someone who wants to resume our relationship where we left off, and my own sense of guilt for ending what wasn't a terrible relationship, just not right for us. Such is life, as they say.

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New Poem Published

2009-12-21T18:12:00.000-06:00

My poem "Apollo goes to the Supermarket" appears in The Smoking Poet's Winter 2009-10 Issue #13, you can find it here at: http://www.thesmokingpoet.net/id11.html, along with many other poems by talented authors. I am very honored to be published among these virtual pages.

Lost Somewhere Inbetween

2009-12-21T17:56:00.000-06:00

I've been MIA from life for the last few weeks, it seems. Newly resingle, I am trying to get sorted out but am failing to do so. Answering all the questions, why? , why now?, where are you going to live?, what are you going to do?, and really I don't know. I just feel relieve at being out of a toxic relationship and sadness for possibly losing one of my best friends as well, it remains to be seen. So I've been pulled in every single direction by now, and I still don't have it all together.

So here it goes.

Stranglehold on Reality

2009-11-17T07:52:00.001-06:00

Okay, so a rundown of what I've been reading these days. My as yet untitled technique for reading a bunch of books at once most of the time stems from the mass of ideas that I used to have during high school and college, reading a lot of unrelated materials to fuel my creative fires. It's slower, but richer than blazing through a book at lightening speed.

Just finished rereading "The Hobbit," which I read for the first time during a library sleepover in elementary school: on a mat with the flashlight I brought for the night hike and my favorite worn, torn quilt tucked into the stacks so I wouldn't get in trouble again for keeping people up. I thought 9 pm was way too early to go to bed, and finished the whole book that night. This time through, it did take me a bit longer. I'm also reading "My life with Picasso," "The Hollow Man," and the latest issue of Golden Handcuff Review. In the car, I've been listening to John C. Maxwell's "How Successful People Think," one on public speaking and a book on personal finance. So, that should keep me busy for a while.

But maybe, sometime soon, I will have to pull an all night reading spree of something fun in bed, by flashlight perhaps.

Setback Vs. Failure

2009-10-21T17:47:00.002-05:00

This morning after work, I was walking on the treadmill at the gym and beating myself up for some lack of willpower over this weekend. Okay, so a lot of lacking.  Not only did I no write those days, or study for my licensing exam, but I seriously was eating everything in sight. Oh yes, I will eat the espresso-drizzled chocolate creme brule after the chicken parmesan.

But sometimes having a setback is important. It gives one a chance to rally towards a goal, to reaffirm one's desire to achieve those goals, ask for help, and try a new approach. These things can bring success if applied, and will help avoid longterm failure. Giving up too soon is the best way of failure.  Progress may be slow sometimes, but taking the right actions more often will get me there sooner.

Here's to baby steps in the right direction!

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Deleting Yesterday

2009-10-20T01:54:00.002-05:00

October is half over, and this year is flying by, it seems. There just isn't enough time in the day, in the week, in the year to do all the things that I want to do, and retrospectively, I feel that I am too impatient both with myself as a person and with the process of creating art and writing in general. Case in point, I deleted all or most of my content off my blog because I don't feel that I'm writing about the right subjects, or too confessional or personal matters for my tastes. At one point, my blog was my lifeline to reality, the thing that kept me strong in a marriage that was collapsing around me. Deleting too much and too often can be a problem when it feels like I've created nothing, and I feel like a failure. I am trying to commit to myself, and to my writing. I need someone to foster that creative passion in me, and I'm the only one I have to do so.

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Sleep, Perchance to Dream

2009-10-06T16:59:00.003-05:00

I dreamed about writing again last night. It feels so weird to have a book written in a dream to wake up to have been sleeping, but it seems to be a shift somewhere if I am dreaming about writing in the same way that I dream about the things I am doing at work, that the process is becoming more real, more intrinsic piece of me. I will take that.

I can't help being sad though, that all those words are being lost when I wake up. Maybe there's nothing there, like the sample letters from high school typing where the text, up close is really random lines of letters or quigley lines to indicate shape.

But what if there was something there?

How best to capture the lines that I'm composing in my sleep before they evaporate in wakefulness?

I also found some new sites that I've been spending a lot of time on. Goodreads.com, a networking site for booklovers where you can follow your favorite authors, compare book lists and write reviews. I'm trying to focus on recent reading and the big milestone books that I remember for being mind-opening, or like comfort-food, just enjoyable escape reading. When I get caught back up in my life, I'll take advantage of the review feature, where you can notify your friends what you thought. The second is Dublit.com, a site focusing on the oral tradition of poetry. Poets submit both text and audioshorts, to get more of the coffeehouse open mike night feel. Both great sites, and really great excuses not to be doing chores and other boring things.

Dreaming of Circadian Disruptions

2009-10-05T22:33:00.001-05:00

My work life is tampering with my body's natural rhythm. Tomorrow is the start of my new overnight shift. This is the fifth shift or department for me since May. Originally, I woke up at 3am to write before work at 5. My new shift goes from 7pm to 5:30 am. I will be still working at my old arrival time. This will take some adjusting, me thinks.

Rumor is 3 of my co-workers have quit recently, bringing the total to 4 since August. Chris, my boyfriend/co-worker is even more restless now, and I expect it to get worse.

He shook me awake without waking himself up at 4pm. The guilt of oversleeping washed over me, as it always does since I worked 2 jobs on no sleep when I was married washing away the most wonderful dream I've had in ages. Sleep is a luxury, and one I will indulge in like another woman might enjoy ice cream--lots of self-control and then a binge.

Dreams have always been important to me. I enjoy them. I have very weird, biazarre dreams that seem more real, and I remember longer than real-life events that occcurred. Sometimes I can't tell which ones are real and which are fake. I had my first orgasm very early in life during a dream. If Chris cheats on me in my dream, or acts like an ass in any other way, I'll be mad at him even so. If he can't be a guest in my head and be behaved, then he deserves it. And my dreams took several steps up the weird scale when I quit smoking in 2007.

What's worse, is no one cares! None of my friends or Chris really enjoy hearing about my dreams, and most are just disturbed by them. Like when I befriended a pumkin that got hit by a car. Just weird looks, no sympathy. I guess I really am strange.

But in this dream, the one he shook me awake from, I wish I had it back. I was doing a print of a wild, stylized tree on a hill as the cover illustration of my new book of poetry. I wrote a whole book in my dream, but can't even remember the title I had choosen.

Clearly, Undefined

2009-10-03T13:08:00.001-05:00

I have two minds about October. I downright hate it for being the door closed on summer and Indian summer, for being the door opening into winter hibernation, the gateway to the Big Freeze. I hate October for having the prefix "octo" in it, indicating the number eight when it's really the tenth month, a grudge I carry over from being a kid who thought she learned something cool and turned out was completely untrue.

I love October in some ways. It's a return to tending the self after a summer of travel and adventure and being extroverted. It's a return to libraries, desks, books, and all the familiar features that are abandoned at first hints of 50 degree weather. I love the turning leaves, the chilly bite in the air at night on more than a couple drunken walks home in my life. The first time I fell in love. Haystack rides with a youth group in the fall. Getting into step of a new school year.

Perhaps most right now, it's being back memories of the first days of being separated from my abusive husband. Sepember 25th is the anniversary of the day I finally left him, and the early days of October always bring it back to me how scared, alone and messed up in the head I was. But it was one of the best things I've done for myself, and in a sense has become a different door: a door into my new, happy life.

Lazy Saturday

2009-09-26T15:26:00.000-05:00

I feel extremely lazy today and have accomplished nothing. At all. So, since my gym has been closed since Monday, and inertia is really hard to over come, I will do my best to get going. If I don't, my whole weekend will disappear and I won't have anything to show for it. So, drink my tea, shower, and get out of the house is my big important plan for today. And write something here, and later on, work on some more poems. I really have been going stir crazy without getting much intense exercise, I feel like a high tension coil about to burst.

Busy-ness of Business

2009-09-22T01:17:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it is too easy to forget that sometimes the hardest worker doesn't necessarily get the most done. More depends on taking the right actions more often, then necessarily moving in arcs of busy movement. So best invest that time and effort into activities that will directly aid the reaching of the goal, rather than just being moving for the sake of moving. Fall is moving in, it was chilly and misty tonight, more a drizzle than anything, reminder that time stops for no one, that winter is swiftly approaching, and like it or not, our lives are changing, just one breathe at a time.

Quote of the Day

2009-09-15T21:08:00.001-05:00

"Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence."

H.L. Mencken

Mementos, Music and Time

2009-09-15T00:08:00.002-05:00

Memento, a token left behind, a rememberence. Something used to hold on to memories. I remember a year ago, trying in vain to buy an album from the band Memento, only to find out it was nearly impossible. I cried. I had a few songs from various sampler CDs, but guess no one else really cared for them, and they disbanded and ran into the hills of forgotten musicians. All the songs have a religious tilt to them that appeals to me, a reorganizing my strict upbringing with my poetic ear. Which, upon mentioning, makes me want to hear "Fall on your Knees," by the Mellowdrones: a rock song based on the Christmas melody. I really am behind the times though, as both where released in 2003 or so.

It does seem that as I recover, as I feel better and more sure of myself as a person, the further behind me the depression is, the less that music matters to me. I used to have to finish listening to a song before I got out of my car, I used to feel comforted more by the right song that by any people who were trying to help and support me. At once, I feel sad by this, but also like things are being put into perspective, a more centered and balanced view of the world. I still love music, but its place is smaller in my life.

Time is an extraordinary thing. It gives mementos, and then takes away the need to hold on to them as memories fade away. Time creates music, the space between the notes is just as important as the notes themselves, and it removes it from importance.

Quote of the Day

2009-09-14T09:01:00.001-05:00

"A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."

Roald Dahl, author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" & "James and the Giant Peach"

Thoughts on a Sunday Night Concerning Writing

2009-09-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

What really makes a writer? So what if I write hundreds of thousands of words that no one ever sees, no one ever reads, am I really considered a writer? I am looking down the creative funk that I've been in, a tunnel with a dim light on the other end, trying to outthink the thing: Why am I having such a hard time doing what I love? Why am I feeling so creatively empty? Part of the cause is when I abandoned my big goal of writing a novel, I neglected to create any other goals in the meantime. Another part is hearing someone I know described as a "failed writer," very shocking to me, since the very idea that a writer can fail at writing seems forgien to me.

So, perhaps if I redefine my goal. "Published author" seems good, since not only is it some one actively writing, but someone putting in the effort of editing, submittin g work that is being read, and up to a quality that it is getting published. Perhaps having enough publishing credits to one's name that one can be listed in the Poets and Writers author directory. So for short term, that is my goal.

Patience and persistance are both virtues I need to cultivate these days, both in myself and with the creative process in general. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was War and Peace. I am writing part-time. I have relationships and family and friends, and a full-time job. I will have to give some stuff up, it seems. There's some events I won't be attending, a few activities that I will have to cut back on, a few books that will go unread--small sacrifices towards my bigger goals.

Also, I've been thinking about going back to school lately to salvage some sort of degree out of all those years of school and no life, and lots of wasted money. I am thinking about in the next year or two, as it will shake up my finances quite a bit, but more than anything, I want to have some more creative intellectuals in my life, people that don't think I'm crazy for wanting the things I want in life.