just words

beat to a pulp
not the long, slow erosion
but spontaneous, relentless, brutal pummeling
one word after another
they land them like punches, see,
felt in the gut
before the head or the heart even knows what happened

but oh it happened alright
every
single
time

and when you finally figure out you’re broken
more words come at you
just to make sure you understand
it’s all your fault
but hey you must be crazy
everybody knows that anyway

who wins?
who wins?

what makes it impossible
to deliver words with wings
to speak like a smoothing hand
or an open palm cupped to hold
to utter like an embrace?
what prohibits kindness 
even in anger or tension
what makes that an obscenity?
what compels the use of a word
as a numbing blow?
they will tell you
you asked for it
you deserved it
you
had 
it 
coming

when you break again
and again
can healing still come?
look at the power of a syllable:
knife club gun
kiss.
put two syllables together
and speak the truth:
I am.

open like the sky

My heart is soft toward so many things. My heart opens like the sky for butterflies, or purring cats and smiling dogs, for the wind in the trees, for children in their tears or laughter or deep concentration, for strangers in their tentative hellos, for loved ones in their foibles and certainties and even in their angry moments. My heart responds with ease and joy and readiness to a beautiful, complicated world under the soul-sea of the heavens.

So I am surprised that this ready heart of mine remains aloof in a certain respect. How is it that my lone inner self, part of the ocean of being otherwise held so benevolently in my heart, is somehow almost invisible in there? 

I want my heart open to the me in me, giving love and solace and care there. Laughter and delight, too. It is, paradoxically, the me in me that is this wonderful heart so soft toward so many other things, is it not? Today, I allow my tender, embracing heart to reach everywhere.

notice what’s beautiful

For today, I notice what’s beautiful.

The world is so much more than what turns up on a screen. So for today, I look around me and notice what’s beautiful. And it is everywhere.

I notice the cat’s gentle eyes. I notice the early morning trill of a bird. I notice the way the sun sparkles across the river, the graceful branches of the trees. I notice your smile reaching into your eyes.

Looking up, and noticing, there is beauty all around me.

Today, each day, I notice what’s beautiful.

doodles: loneliness

 

 

 

secrets

In my newfound zeal for fun reading, I lately launched into a true story, Annie’s Ghosts, by Steve Luxenberg. I’m still just getting into the thing, but, basically, the book explores a family’s discovery that their mother had a sister about whom she never breathed a word. The author attempts to find out about this woman, what happened to her, and why – and why she was a family secret.

As I drifted off to sleep after dipping my toe into this story, I couldn’t help but think about the murky territory of secrets.

It seems to me that the vast majority of secrets are born in shame. And shame is born in judgment. Even perceived judgment is born in judgment.

As I look at my own family, friends, and acquaintances over the years, there have been an astonishing number of secrets – some big and some little – that folks have carried, almost always in shame and often to someone’s detriment.

If a thing is too shameful of which to be spoken, it simply then becomes a burden on our hearts. In shame, we carry the judgment of ourselves and the projected judgment of others who actually know nothing about the secret.

Once we’ve determined something’s a secret, it also becomes a barrier. We may be very honest people who try to do things right, but, now, on some level, we are dishonest. It is a conflict. It also serves to keep us separate and alienated to some extent, no matter how warm and loving we may be. Shame stands between us.

There are the secrets we carry on behalf of others, too. We allow someone to unburden themselves of their secret, and then we must bear it, too. Sometimes these shared secrets themselves become a judgment, in an awful twist.

Incredibly, some of our secrets are about good things, which we still yet feel shame to disclose.

We learn very early in life the lessons of judgment and shame in the arms of our families. Our institutional religions and systems of education cement these concepts with vigor. Media then continue to bang the drum for us.

Shame is a compelling motivator in life, that sadly does an awful lot of damage. It’s true that shame, once acknowledged, can move us to improve ourselves, change for the better. It’s the shame we bury and carry that cripples us.

As usual, though, it all comes back to fear and love. And both sides of the equation are the same.

Those who would wield the weapon of judgment are burdened to look at their own fear, and to seek a loving answer.

Those who carry shame are burdened also to recognize their fear, and to seek a loving response.

Funny how that works.

So much for lighthearted reading. We’ll see how the book turns out. 🙂

setback and opportunity

It took me awhile to finally accept it, but my sewing machine was abandoning me. There was no getting the tension right, stitches were loose or tangled or skipped. I fussed with the tension, changed needles, cleaned the machine. Nothing I did changed anything, in fact, it was getting worse. It got bad enough that I finally realized that the stitches, or the lack of them, simply were completely unacceptable.

This machine is like my right arm. I think in sync with it. We have stitched miles together for years and years. I can’t bear to let it go.

A few years ago, I found one on eBay and bought it as a backup for precisely such a moment. I broke that baby out.

All was well for a little while. Just a little while. Soon, however, it became clear there would be no zig zag stitches. Then, there came an odd noise. Finally, there was a growl and the needle just snapped during straight-and-level stitching. The replacement needle simply slammed into the bobbin. It was done.

It would appear that these machines are just getting old enough, and well-used enough, that they’re ready to retire.

This is a pretty troubling development for me. I need to sew. My old machine knows how I think. I knew what to expect from it, how to work with it. It’s got little pencil marks on it that only the two of us understand.

I thought about taking the machine in for repair, but I have serious doubts that any repair would last long, as old as my machine is.

It would appear that now I am going to have to learn a new machine.

I am trying to digest this. It’s uncomfortable. I also realize that I can’t stew too long, because one day – and I’m sure it won’t be long – I will have need of my machine.

Change. It’s just hard.

Nevertheless, after all these years, I suppose a new machine could be an opportunity. I will have to learn all about my new friend. After a tentative, unbearable glance at new machines, online, it appears likely that it will have tons more stitches than my old machine – so much to explore, right? It might even thread itself. Huh. And, of course, if I take the plunge and invest in a new machine, I will certainly want to justify it by putting it to plenty of use, right?

Change, after all, is a given in life. Sometimes we invite it, and other times, it is foisted upon us. Either way, best to buck up, practice smiling, be curious, and wade in.

I believe it was Einstein who said,

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Still, I’m not quite past my grief just yet. I’m going to open up my backup machine and have a look at the innards. Maybe, just maybe, there’s something fixable in there.

beloved books

I read a lot, but in recent years I’ve noticed I don’t read a lot of fiction. Lately, however, I happily stumbled across the Blue Mood Café blog, and it somehow opened my eyes to what I’ve been missing.

As I perused her comments in the Best of 2018 post, something clicked. I decided right then to make reading for enjoyment a bigger part of my 2019 picture.

Happily, her top two 2018 picks were right there on the shelf at the local library:  Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren (the author is actually two people), and Unravelling Oliver by Liz Nugent.

I blasted right through those two books before 2019 even started. The first was probably not exactly my cup of tea, but the second hit the sweet spot.

This was just ridiculously self-indulgent reading, particularly with Unravelling Oliver, a mystery which was pretty much impossible to put down. What fun!

Whew! I felt kind of guilty about suspending time like that, but not enough that it prevented me from dipping into yet another book.

This time, I revisited a book that has long been on my shelves. It’s a very much beloved book that I read with my children. I love children’s literature in general, but The Wind in the Willows is one of the special ones. I wanted to read it again, but somehow never could quite allow myself to indulge. Until now.

I shamelessly plucked it off the shelf, and dove in.

Right off the bat, I was in that dreamy place by the river, steeped in Kenneth Grahame’s delicious language.

How can one not just absolutely love the characters? I want a Rat in my life, desperately.

At any rate, it was an awesome trip down memory lane and, really, into another world.

I love that I have now been able to give myself permission to just read with abandon – wherever my whim takes me. It’s kind of funny to realize the subconscious constraints I placed on myself in this area.

It also made me realize that I put a whole heck of a lot of similar constraints on myself generally. I’m all about what I’ve got to do, what I should do, what I’m not doing, what makes sense for me to do, but not a whole lot of what I just want to do, what I’d really like to do.

That’s actually a pretty big realization with some broad implications. I think there is more to come on this topic.

By the way, Blue Mood also mentions several challenges one can participate in, and I admit I am tempted. If I set a goal to read a certain number of books, it might encourage me to really let myself go wild with this recreational reading. Living on the edge, heh?

How about you? Got any beloved books of your own?

change must be

I remember it with both joy and melancholy.

I was finally preparing to leave. Everything was just about packed up. The house was already taking on that empty feeling. It was getting down to the wire, just days before saying goodbye to this place that I dearly loved but felt I had to leave.

I don’t know what made me look out just then.

I went deliberately to the window, and gazed out, the field stretching away to the west. And there she was, so close I could almost have touched her.

The fox stood still outside my window. There was a profound aura of peace and magic about this elusive, beautiful animal. I knew she was there on purpose. I knew we were connected somehow. Then, as if satisfied that her work was done, she disappeared.

I lived there for fifteen years, and never saw a fox before that day.

I was simultaneously calmed and distressed by the fox’s visit. I couldn’t help but wonder why the fox came to me. Was this reassurance about the path upon which I was about to embark? Or was this a warning?

It hurts to recall this moment. Stepping back into this particular past always does. Much pain and sadness surrounds the memory.

And yet, there is such beauty and peace and sense of connection in the memory, too. Even joy.

Like so much, I carry the fox in my heart.

Change must be. The fox knows, and she goes with me.

tracks made

Christmas happened, and now the focus shifts to the new year. The news media helpfully supplies us with recaps ad infinitum of what went down in 2018. It isn’t pretty, either. Nevertheless, they will rush us along toward Times Square and the sparkling globe countdown to 2019.

Seems like a reasonable time to look back over one’s own year, the highs, the lows… the lessons. Always lessons, you know, always.

This was a pretty huge year for me, and it was not an easy one. I made some big changes in my life, and faced some harsh difficulties. Looking back, I can see that the effort was worth it.

Letting go:  The changes I made somehow allowed me to finally, finally let go of some things to which I had been desperately clutching. Letting go was a huge, difficult years-long lesson; or, perhaps, the lesson was that refusing to let go is unbearably painful and one owes it to oneself and others to find a way to let go.

“There is something in the pang of change, more than the heart can bear. Unhappiness remembering happiness.” Yep, Euripedes said that.

Courage: The changes I made took courage. Change does, in fact, take courage. And I found that I have lots of it. Good to know.

Perseverance: Yes, thankfully there are those angels that meet you on the path here and there, but ultimately you are alone on the journey. No one can take your steps for you – you’ve got to do the work. That said, the angels are critical to shine a light for you, make you see a bit of the path just ahead and help you see it’s possible. I hope I can do the same for others.

Discipline: I faced some health hiccups which served to remind me to take care of my physical self better. This basically translates to establishing better discipline to run or walk, and to make the effort to feed myself well. Discipline is a challenge in other areas as well, like, for example, creativity. Discipline is a hugely important area of exploration for me across the board.

Boundaries – a lesson I thought I had already learned – once again became a subject for which I am apparently doing a thesis or something. The adventure continues.

Failures: Failure happens. Mistakes really are made. Pick up. Dust off. Learn. Regroup. Smile. Charge on.

Compassion: I felt burdened all year long to find the ways that I could bring active compassion where it matters. This applied to myself, to others, and to the world.  The events in the news media I mentioned earlier – they matter in this respect, too. Rather than be daunted by the foreboding material presented, the challenge is to remain in compassion and to work for positive change.

As I reflect back, there’s lots more. This was a rather epic year for me. I guess, though, I’m still sort of getting it all into focus.

And there is the path ahead.  Hence, 2019.

note to self: I am safe