The great machine

in the dining room, i sit at the table. it's dark and cool and the sounds of the refrigerator and the occasional train passing by are all that surround.  did i leave the life i used to know by mistake? by becoming too comfortable? or was it something far worse, that i truly was happy here once before.

i seem to have forgotten how i got here. maybe it was all the reckless smoking or the shameless sex. maybe it was that i used to drink to forget, just to wish the world away. odd enough, i've forgotten without a drink.

and so you'll call, or more accurately, send a message via social media because that is how the world works now. and i'll tell you, "it's fine. i got out of that place." then the pause. the big gap that illustrates everything while being nothing, we no longer have a common ground. the exchanges are short now and they're as cold as the coffee i'm not drinking anymore.

you were my lover in the darkest days. my soul and my passion on the brightest. i drew you with lines that seemed infinite and painted you with strokes so delicate no one believed they were ever mine. you were the one thing i could never believe was mine.

so i threw a kayak into the back of our old farm truck and drove to the end of the road where there's just open shore line and this dying grass touches the waves still wildly alive yet cold as though they are no longer. i paddle out until i can see the sun rise and it's still the most beautiful thing to me. the way it kisses the horizon and ignites the entire hemisphere.

it used to be you and me on this frozen sea. but you spent your whole life begging for a connection.  imagining and demanding a kind of love that would surpass even life. and you found a way to cling to everything; something like a god, cigarettes, a song, and at one point me. i knew it was unrealistic and the only way something could last that long was if it were internal. so i tried to teach you how to run from it all, "let's get out of here," i'd encourage. 

we never went anywhere. we never lasted forever. 

when you allow yourself to be so vulnerable, so truly exposed, it's like letting go. it's like i just opened my mind and let it seep out; what a mess i've made. what a horrible mess. 

out here, on the water, i'm vulnerable again. the waves crashing into me the wind howling. my own body working against me as my joints begin to ache, lips chapped and nose runs. it's cold and the water grows rougher as the winds pick up. i guess it was because i became an addict early on. i turned to drugs and escalated quickly. nothing was ever good enough. 

then you came along and i was addicted to you. i craved you and i long for you in your absence. i would carve the wound you became just to feel it deeper; to keep you closer.  out here, i can watch the world spin like a great machine. when it comes to you, i am blind. 

Hands, forbidden

my nose somehow savors the unmasked musk of unbathed body. malicious musician, my hands are forbidden. our touch, a taboo and those memories become untrue. vehement, uncouth, burning your youth with shots and cigarettes and shameless sex. 

i realized today that you're leaving me with nothing left. so i've tried  to rest, but eyelids test me with images emblazoned, pasted, trapped of you -- where each nap is a nightmare called reality. and so it's a night where i might take a walk at three a.m. past a meth dealer's house i know, and i'm not sure i want you here or not but you can have the necklace I made with tears I've caught. In the morning someone will say that I'm built of poetry and you know as well as i,  just how prosaic my thinking can be. i know you'd agree. your dragging your heart; i'm dragging my feet behind you and it looks to me a bit like art.  in a few days you tell me secrets and i respond with my lies, saying "mmhmm.," "oh god!," and  "okay." once you've passed your burden on to me, you turn and walk away. and i do the same to you.

i tell you that we'll have a few drinks you by yourself and I'm on my own until we're too drunk to drive and our keys have been taken away. In the morning i might ask, "where did you wake up?" in some apartment with your clothes wet from alcohol spilt on the floor and rain soaked clothes because you went outside to smoke. You know i'd be doing the same thing all the while hoping that i help myself to a faith like yours and get better, but we can't get dry. not here. not like this. so keep chapping your lips kissing all those girls that fall so fast and fall so hard because you know everything i gave is like everything i write. lacking life.

it isn't impossible to get home without a car key. 

Growing

This week has been a struggle. It seems like I clear one hurdle just to be presented with another one. After facing some hardships and struggling with some major health concerns, I received word that I'm being talked poorly about in an online forum by women that claim to be my "peaceful" and "natural" mothering peers... Such hypocrites. Although I'd love to call them out on these accusations and proclaim, "I feel for you" (I really do) it would serve no purpose. Best to put one foot before the next and keep walking. When it rains, it pours right?

 Well, let’s just say that 2012 has been the mother of all monsoons.And this got me thinking… 

Life really gets in the way of motherhood. It gets in the way of how I would like to mother my sweet boy. It gets in the way of simply enjoying being his mother. Just when I see the opportunity to carve out a few days to just be with and completely present for him, something seems to bring that to a grinding halt. 

 I absolutely adore being his mama with all my heart. I just deeply wish I could enjoy him more, without the stress of betrayal. I wish I had the backbone to deal with the hurt and keep a wall up instead of showing the entire world (virtually) my emotional crumble. I wish that life would allow me the space to catch my breath so that my sweet boy and I could enjoy some peace and calamity together. I feel so guilty sometimes that he has to share me with the challenges life has thrown our way; financially, emotionally, and most recently medically.And here I express my frustration - so bitterly disappointed in myself (in my weakness) and as this sweet boy's mama. It is my responsibility to guide him through these challenges, showing him how to cope with and grow from them. There is not another way for him to experience this side of life. I never wish these burdens to be placed in his hands directly. 

 Although life is not full of clarity and virtue everyday all of the time, it is also not a giant monsoon. It has its periods of discourse and its periods of harmony. We happen to be struggling through a period of real discourse right now. The sadness I feel is a result of the high ideals I have about how motherhood should look for my son, especially since he's at an impressionable age while all of this is going on around him.My son may not get it entirely at his young age, but he is not oblivious to the craziness going on around him either. He's a part of it. My job is to guide him through it, help him understand it, and when needed, help him heal from it. Because that is what motherhood is all about. I am supporting this beautiful little soul as he grows and everything we are dealing with is part of that.

 Looks like I just might be growing too...

Intensity

I spend much of my lesiure time these days emerged in heavy reading through which, I have gained a new grasp on the ideas of Thich Nhat Hanh, T'ai Hsu, and similiar scholars. How incredible is it that we, as free thinkers, have soverignty over ourselves? Sometimes I lose sight of myself in the midst of the changes in my life, to whichever extent they may occur. Usually people become busier and busier, day after day, especially in our fast-paced world.

Revisiting old, familiar places after a long time, I am continously astonished by these very changes. They cannot be helped. Yet, if an individual allows herself to become completely involved in the excitement of her busy life, she will be lost. The solace I have been searching for will allow me to keep my mind calm and constant so as to keep me away from the noisy world, even though I am gridlocked in the midst of it. The strangest part of all of this is that the reading I've done is primarily regarding zen. Yet, zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our everyday routine.

I have spent the past twenty-three years, my entire lifetime, hoping to live and to love with an intensity which I've only ever honestly been able to posess in art. It is an intensity which describes the relative purity and visual strength of color. I suppose what I ought to seek instead is a world in which the colors are subdued, reminiscent of a work by Whistler and more in sync with the sublime found in art and literature.

In the romantic era, that sublime became of it's own importance. Revealing what was felt took precedence over reporting what was seen. The value placed on the intuitive and emotional romanticisms was anticipated by that very essence. I felt for a long time that I was at a standstill. I would swallow that lump in the back of my throat and share the words, 'I love you' with someone whom I did, in fact, care for tremendously. Only, realizing then that I'd arrived at the point in each of our lives where we need to surrender ourselves to defeat. The reality that resulted from that situation was that the man I'd spoken to was unable to hear me anymore. Our hands were sad; our bones grew tired; we were choking on dirt. Because we are human, we enjoy all aspects of life as long as we protect ourselves and keep our guard up. I do this by looking at my life as an unfolding big mind, I do not care for any excessive joy, so I have to carry imperturable composure.

I have spent a wealth of time being angry about the way things have turned out with my relationships (at every level), hoping that the sun would suck the earth dry and my pain with it. I wished that it were physically possible to stab the skyline until it blead and I knew that it would make no diffrence because blood comes from privilege too. The final conclusion is that to find true peace, we need to be the peace which we hope to see. I hurried myself in intensity because I wanted to make that impression on those around me and upon the world. In all actuality, I feel sublime in wilderness landscapes, storms, melodramas and in simply being with someone who acts like we are the happiest people on earth. The other side is to let go of the past and recognize that althouh, I often wonder and hope for only the best for those I have lost along the way, I wonder where I will be when they find it.

Bruce Lee and Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski wrote, "Often the best parts of life were when you weren't doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can't be quite senseless because you are aware that it is senseless and your awareness of sensselessness almost gives it sense." To carry on with the redundancy, this makes sense.

The past few days I have spent doing nothing along set guidelines. Even my professional life these days is not scheduled, where I come and go as I please. Yet I find myself feeling quite content. Only recently I was heartbroken, lost and clinicallly depressed; while I still suffer from each of these, I can think more clearly and am learning to cope with each burden seprately in its own right. The people which I surround myself with lately have helped tremendously. I used to see the world like Bukowski which was, to say it bluntly, not the most pleasant of viewpoints.

And how is it that I ever believed I'd seen the world in one clear way? Well, it's simply that I am foolish and naive. I, in all honesty, don't even know what it means to be 'worldly'. As it is here, a figure of speech, it probably means to be a rogue of sorts with no care for god. In this sense, pretaining to the people or laity' secular, not ecclesiastical, religious, et cetera. It doesn't even have anything to do with actually 'knowing' of the world. People have often said I speak and write as though I've experienced a lot, like I'm some worthy person of offering my opinion, and worse, them seeking it. These are people whom believe that I have the ability of stating my feelings clearly. While I am flattered by their assumptsion, I wonder why it is that this claim is made. So lately I've been taking a closer look at the dynamic. Based on that observation which my friends and colleagues make, I believe that I have somehow exposed myself and therefore, am projecting my shame and embarassment onto these people (and that includes you).

I look at writing like any other, often more illustrative, art form. Take for example, documentary photography. I guess that wehre photography is concerned, I've always thought that a photographer's goal was to leave those viewing her subject asking questions. The other goal would be for the photograppher to try and keep herself out of the photo and to let it play out like a narrative. Granted, it is the ultimate conclusiion that the artist behind the camera is, in fact, a part of her photo in tone alone; yet, at first the goal being very much evident.

Rhetoric is just one of those arts. It is the art of writing or speaking effectively. In a lot of ways when I write online, I can share this goal by leaving my identity behind. I can virtually disappear, had I choosen an alias. Unfortunately, it seems that those individuals reading this see past the cold feeling of plack text againgst the glow of a white screen and the emotionless fromat in which I write. I don't expect words to touch any person and I'd prefer that they don't. some people reading this haven't got a clue about me. They might not even know my name which is ideal to me (I realize this is impossible for those reading via facebook). I feel sometimes like it'd be much easier to live where no one knows my name or my story, instead they just had this, a raw jumble of words and a great hope for making sense of things much larger than the human mind.

Sometimes I watch old clips of Bruce Lee (something I first learned to do from my friend, Holly). I love his knoweldge to flow and let flow. "Be like water," he says. While I would love to know and understand the true weight of water, I am walking lightly upon a virtual tightrope. Conflicting emotions in the face of certain change are perhaps understandable from an on-looker's perspective and perhaps might be the reason those around me seem to proclaim I think and write logically. It's the sorting out of those emotions which is more difficult than undergoing the actual changes in my relationships; be it intimate, friendship or immediate to my family.

So while it all might seem clear as you sit on the opposite of this screen, and my hope is that this will; I sit and type what seems redundant and crazy. There is no sure way of knowing that a sound mind will be able to create that same stability with words on paper. Language and existance are questioning. That might be the bottom line and I struggle daily to accept this.

Choices are often the precursor of fears and always the initiator of free will. I'm working toward a lifestyle in which I act to exercise that very free will; directing my outward actions toward choices that will serve my destinyy (as the saying goes, "check yourself before you wreck yourself". Unfortunately, wondering the entire time if the drugs and past relationships have already 'wrecked' me). Fear must be controlled or transmuted if ti's truly personal growth that a person is after, but fear can be useful to showing exactly where she may need to go to achieve those very choices. I dance around subjects sometimes because I have A.D.D. and also because it's much simplier than facing them head on. So one might imagine my confusion when friends and strangers alike approach me, believing that any of this is logically in place.

The point is that I'm finally understanding that fear is not the only option; choice is. I think of how ridiculous it is that people actually believe I make sense because it's a jumble of a sorting process - everything I post here. It's my self-help, you could say, because I'm too frugel for buying pyschology books and too embarassed to check them out of the librray. I'm insane. Nonetheless, I believe that any person can be at peace, emotionally, the very instant she chooses to be. with awareness and a healthy dose of detachment, a person can exercise her right to choose which emotion serves her moment to moment. Now, THAT is a new feeling!