Twenty Years Ago I Pissed And Got Off The Pot

Happy New Year!

I have spoken of many dark things this week. I've looked at things that need to change in myself. I've come up with a plan for the new year to achieve what I absolutely cannot fail at achieving in order to walk into my fortieth birthday next year feeling strong, healthy, and gorgeous. I think it might be a little funny how much faith I put into the changing of one year for the next. Life doesn't always show us the best place to begin change but the new year is an obvious annual starting gate. It feels good because January is so quiet and serious. January is when the weak get killed off by hunger, the elements, or frustrated sufferers of SAD.

I believe in mostly simple things. You know how some people get in a car accident and suddenly they get feverish about Jesus and how the light came and grabbed them out of the jaws of death and so now they're not going to beat their loved ones any more or have affairs, or cheat the tax man or take drugs? An accident creates this concise juncture at which point you can take off in a whole new direction. I'm not sure why so many people find Jesus at these moments...I mean, why not just realize that being drunk sucks shit and kills people and feels like hell on the bones and everyone ends up hating you? Why shouldn't that be enough reason to change?

For me the new year is a great starting point. Birthdays are too. My birthday happens to be six days after the new year.

When I was 17 years old I was still cutting myself and I was slowly coming out of an intense nervous breakdown that I'm not actually sure anyone knew about and going out with really stupid boys who mistook me completely for a dolt who follows and worships and pines and all the time I had no respect for them but used them for a very rich fantasy life. I never put out so they all left me pretty quick anyway. I remember sitting at some diner with this guy who was my boyfriend but who was screwing around on me and treating me like trash and I had him (and everyone) thinking I was so smitten that I was really going to marry him. I think my friend Carrie has always been onto my every facade and stupid crap.

I looked at the people I was with in the diner, late into the sleazy night, and realized that the worst thing was that I treated myself worse than any boyfriend ever had. I felt indignation that boys didn't respect me, truly want me, or actually particularly care about me. I suddenly saw that the indignation was because I actually thought I was worth their respect. I realized that in spite of myself I felt I was worth more than their cheap compliments and lack of chivalry. I realized I was better than them but treating myself worse than they were by carving into myself all the time.

I was going to turn 18 years old in a couple of weeks of that realization. I asked myself what the hell I was doing? I told myself, in my usual habit of having long involved conversations with myself, that if I was going to spend the rest of my life cutting into my own flesh then I was no better than the worst human and I may as well just kill myself. Because if torturing myself was the only way I knew how to deal with myself and my life then it wasn't really worth my investment of love and care.

It was your classic piss or get off the pot moment in life. A completely transformative moment in which I asked myself the one question that mattered more than all the other ones because even though I hadn't jumped off the cliffs like I had planned on doing almost three years prior I had continued to completely fixate on the theme of killing myself and in the meantime I opened myself up with every sharp instrument I could find.

So I asked myself to decide: are you going to live or die by your own hand? Because if you are not going to kill yourself you need to treat yourself like you matter, you old slag!

No, I didn't really call myself a slag, seeing as I never put out for boys.

I took a hard look at myself. I imagined what life would be like if I decided I wasn't going to hurt myself or commit suicide. How would life look if I had just enough optimism to assertively progress forward? How does one deal with the pain and the impossible frantic toxic self loathing that is the other side of my inevitable coin? How does one, as crazy as me, calm that awful threatening in my own spirit?

The most important thing was that I had seen that I really did care about myself and that my need to hurt myself was an irrational and desperate response to disturbing stimulation in my life and to traumatic past experiences that I had not been able to process because I was not able to look at them without wanting to die a little every time I did. Getting that glimpse of self love made me feel that I was worth the effort to attempt to heal.

Epiphanies often seem sudden and finite. You see the light and have all the answers because God handed them to you in a moment of clarity. I don't think that's really what happens. No one gets all the answers at once. The real epiphany is the grand opening of previously closed mental paths that allow something new to be learned. Obviously it's never going to be God with me because I see in terms of nature; human nature; wild nature; natural organization of an enormous universe representing a very well tuned and designed working order.

As I approached my eighteenth birthday I lost the dubious boyfriend (he may have dumped me, I'm not sure, it is irrelevant since he was already fooling around on me and I couldn't care less) and I tried figuring out what my path of mental recovery was going to be. I really couldn't figure it all out. I think I sensed at the time that the path itself wasn't nearly as important as the intention and all the things I was learning in consequence.

So I made a deal with myself: stop hurting yourself. It won't be accomplished immediately. All I promised was to stop cutting my own skin. Stop forcing myself to physically bleed to prove life. To prove pain. To prove that I was broken: message received! All I promised was that I would stop cutting and I would take one step at a time to try and find ways to heal myself. I agreed with myself that it would take time. That it might take a lifetime.

I promised myself that I was choosing to live.

And all that that entails.

For a suicidally obsessed person that is a huge promise. I think there's always a part of myself that still recognizes the risk.

That new year was one in which I was crossing the thresh hold of a new year with a really fresh step. I made that solemn promise to myself and I kept it. Even to this day. I can't tell you how often I have had to fight off the urge to lapse back into the thought of death, the comfort of oblivion. It isn't that I've ever really wanted to kill myself since then, but I've had to fight my mind from seeking comfort in those old grooves of thought.

I have kept that promise to myself ever since. It is the hugest piece of optimism I have ever indulged in: to be alive for another year and happy to be here to celebrate it even when the going has been intense.

That was over twenty years ago.

So when people talk about how they hate New Year's resolutions because they never keep them I can't commiserate. I think that when it really matters you can keep them. But you have to recognize a serious need. Needing to lose five pounds is not serious. Hoping to like your boss a little more isn't particularly pressing. But when you realize that change needs to happen or you may as well be dead-it feels a little more urgent.

The new year is a great stepping off point.

The diving board for reaching yourself. For reaching others.

I wrote my own epitaph and the main thing is that I want people to remember of me that I never gave up. I never stopped trying. I just kept hoping and let that carry me through it all.

I allow myself to hope, always. Without it the human spirit sickens and dies.

I think that's what the new year is really all about. It's about allowing ourselves to keep hoping, through the dark months of winter, that we'll still be alive in the spring time. That the flowers will bloom again and bear fruit that we can eat. We close one chapter so that we can begin a new one.

I nearly lost all my sense of hope this year. The most dangerous thing a person can do. Especially anyone who has lost all hope before and sought solace in dreams of the grave.

So I am one hour into the new year and I feel the changing of the guard like it is meant to be felt: that the new guard brings with it more alertness, determination, and discipline.

We just sat on our "front" porch in the cold and drank champagne and felt our good fortune to be in a house we love, have a healthy kid we love, and to live in a state we love. Life is good.

So right now I am giving a little call out to all my mentally ill brethren who have been where I've been- come with me into the new year, alive, and brimming with regenerative hope for change and for healing. All change takes time. No change happens over night but our intentions of change can take us deep into new terrain. Our intentions to heal can lead us to the answers we need. Don't be afraid to hope again. Don't be afraid to let yourself dream of a better year. Don't be afraid to look to yourself for some strength. Everyone needs others to lean on but we must all, in the end, depend on ourselves to start our own engines.

We can do it!

Happy new year everyone!!!

Stripped Down When Dressed Up

Hello long hour. I'm listening to the timber of a smoke at twilight, the way it coils itself into the light like liquid air. I want to go back only for the smoke. I remember this day, when I sat for pictures. Devastated, because it seemed like the fiber of the universe had become brittle and dry with age, and had begun falling through my fingers into piles of dust telling time. I was twenty eight years old. It was the first time I had a nervous breakdown in almost ten years. But I never called it that the second time around. There was so much more at stake. Entrenched deeper into the tangle of love and family.

I remember how I cried at some point while we were busy pretending I wasn't going to cry in front of the camera. I don't cry. I'm not a crying female. I am strong. When I hurt I have places to tuck it all out of view. I might never forgive you for seeing me cry.

In this picture I have been betrayed in some way by every parent and grandparent I have and I am declaring myself an orphan. I've been disowned and disregarded and sent spinning with this awful mangled heart that leaks fluid mostly for my brother and my sister because I would do almost anything to keep them more whole than myself. And then, at last, it is for myself.

I could have decided not to do the pictures. But I remember knowing at the time that I would regret not doing it. That I would feel it far into the future. That I would later need these pictures for something. I am not a vain female. But I am a piece of work. A real piece of work. I think I knew that other change was coming. Change I couldn't know yet. Change that would cause me to need a physical point of reference. Change that would require me to remember who I was in order to finally become the woman I've been turning into since I was born.

I have never considered myself beautiful. I speak out of the side of my mouth. With or without cigarettes I always talk like an old school Hollywood gangster. My face is lopsided and I am not an elegant person. There is something clumbsy and clod-hopping about the way I push forward in the world.

But I have always been photogenic. In person I am awkward and halting. I will break your finest wine glasses and have to stick my foot in my mouth a hundred times a night, but if I am silent and I let you photograph me you will catch something else. Even when I'm fat. It isn't beauty, I think, but that queer drive to make others feel alive. It makes me wonder if photographs really do have the power to steal a person's soul.

I have no urge to act. I can't deliver a line to save my life and I'm eternally grateful that my life threatening experience doing improvisational acting in a Dicken's Faire workshop wasn't video taped. With a couple of notable exceptions I generally dislike actors and dancers. I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

Yet, how different is posing for a photograph? I think the silence of it and the simultaneous contradictory noise of it appeal to me. Here is an image reflecting something quietly or loudly- but always without words. Not unlike so many vignettes we reel across the silver screen of the subconscious memory. Is it vain? I think it tells the story of who we really are. Stripped down when we're dressed up. It's about the medium. I like to find myself in photographs while some people need to find themselves in dance, theater, or maybe abstract art. We all seek to see ourselves. I am no different than every other Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Except that my name is Angelina. Patron saint of all Mad Housewives. A collection of contradictions. Now grown fat.

What I especially love about this picture is that it's the one that showed me my own nose. I don't care for little button noses. Nor skinny noses. Nor ski jump noses. You know that nose that nearly all American delusional women aspire to? The nose that drives so many women to the nose knife? I hate that nose. It's insipid. It's an offense. It smells nothing. It is pinched and crippled. I want a nose to be a thing of beauty- chiseled from bone and made to smell life! What I love best in a woman's nose is a bump in the middle of a nose that appears to be modeled from a Roman Goddess. Those babes did not have stupid tiny turned up noses- they had gorgeous shapely ones that can smell the feet in the wine!

In this picture you can see the smallest hint of a bump forming. No, really, look closer! It has grown a little more significant with time. But this picture was the very first hint that my nose was not done shaping itself. I am proud of this shadow of character. I have earned it.

Life is like a series of photographs glued together on a cork board. Little stretches of isolated soul to commemorate the diversity of life's offerings. We revisit with joy, with ambivalance, and wtih sorrows inexpressable.

The Last Apology

We always knew this was gonna be like clawing our way out of tombs. Nails breaking on the weather scrubbed stone. Skin scraping into the light; streaked with blood and the cold of our own breath. We could tell it was going to be a shit time long before we got here to the present.

I know you're pissed at me. Please don't look at me as though I was already dead.

There is no way to apologize to myself without sounding like I have lost my mind. Who cares? Self talk has always been a slightly unhinged affair and is, ironically, the main thing that has preserved my sanity the most over the years.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that whenever it gets especially tough I make things worse by eating more cheese and drinking more beer. I'm sorry that I have let myself drink so much beer for so long that I can drink any Russian under the table without losing my shit for a second. I'm sorry that for the last three years I have let all my self discipline degrade under the weight of this stress and this never ending crisis our life has been. I know that it has led us here to where we are today. To this point of awful self loathing.

I'm sorry that I have let us gain over 75 pounds in the past three years. I know that it was natural to gain weight after breaking the hip and not walking for months. But I could have exerted more self control to prevent the mental damage this weight gain has created. I could have prevented this amount of weight gain.

I'm sorry that I have spent so much time telling everyone I'm sorry for things that couldn't possibly be my fault and all this time I have neglected myself.

I'm sorry I couldn't protect myself without also breaking myself. I'm sorry for so much.

I slip uncomfortably between the "me"s and the "us"s and the "you"s, all me, all the time. Plurals and singulars weaving in and out with no order.

I can't change what has already passed.

Things are closer than they appear in the rear view mirror.

Can you forgive me and allow us to move ahead? Will you let this awful neglect become the past that we have overcome?

Please believe that I wish I'd saved up all my inappropriate apologies and put them by like a dowry for your spirit. I wish I'd taken each one and layered them with ivory silk in a cedar trunk so that you could see that each one of those apologies I let slip into the air between me and other people were really for you because you deserved more apologies than you ever got. I wish I'd caught them like butterflies and pinned them to your hair because I know that you were too afraid to ask for them yourself.

There is only one left and you can ask for it now. Ask.

Take this apology and pin it to your throat like the jewel it is. Let it be your winter compass, snowbird- let it lead you into spring.

I am so sorry that I couldn't be our own parent, our own friend, our own knight in shining armor, or even our own comedienne. I'm sorry that I was too young to know how to be anything but a frightened child. I'm sorry that I was never able to grow up fast enough. I've never caught up. I'm still breathless from the ride.

But you see what love motivated me? It always looked like self loathing when really I just wanted some way to deflect the real danger from our flesh, from our spirit, because I felt love for this corporeal nightmare, this little light our spirit always had. It got so hard to keep the night light lit. We wanted to die anyway. But you see that it was love and care that made me try so hard? I just didn't know how to be the person we needed.

Looking through the telescoping past you can see that it was always love we wrote.

Come, let's light the path, others follow in the dark behind us.



Note: Next up is the plan to recover my body and bring it back into a healthy fold and it may take more than one post to lay that one out. This is all coming out fast and furious but not panicked or stressed. I want to string the path out before I cross into the new year. I want to uncover as many obstacles that I may find ahead before I get to them.

I think I have passed the darkest point now and I think anyone who keeps reading will find that I am excited and also in the middle of forgiving myself. I've already forgiven everyone needing forgiving for the abuse part of my past. I truly did that a very long time ago. I've been angry with myself though and I'm feeling it slip away now.

I hope that everyone else who has been through similar experiences as I have can do the same for themselves. And any time you see words from Blaize- pay attention! She is a wise lady. So, are you ready to start feeling the warmth and light that are stirring under the snow and ice? Winter protects life by holding it still until it is time for the sap to run. People are not much different.

You Can't Get Off This Train Without A Rope

Before true hideosity set in.

A girl in her element.

Chickens moult, people do too.

Time for a 100% overhaul.

For those of you who read the post I wrote and then deleted yesterday, I am sorry. I am sorry if I hurt friends and would-be friends. I cannot take back the sentiments because they were raw and true. I can only say that if I had the money for a therapist I would have saved that one for the couch and not put it here. A lot of things end up here because I don't have anyone appropriate to tell my most troubling and grief inducing feelings and experiences to.

I missed the chance to symbolically acknowledge the solstice and to go through the ritual of writing my troubles and disappointments down and then burning them. Which I now realize is what I need to do. So I'm going to do it late. There's still the less mystical more Roman approach of the New Year coming up and it's just as good a time for a personal overhaul and a release of past disappointments, of which I have quite a few.

The disappointments that need burning are these:

The infamous incident of the Needle Junkie t-shirts which marked the complete collapse of all trust I had left in the universe and in myself: It had to be. This whole year was about scouring out the last of my faith. Down to the funky-ass crumbs.

That when I hit rock bottom my support system turned out to be somewhat absent: It isn't the responsibility of friends and family to pick up the goddamn pieces of me that cracked up and fell all over the floor. The bulk of comfort garnered during the toughest moments came from people I've never met in real life. Thank you for that.

The therapist who made me more angry and lost: Well, there's no excuse. I can't put that one on my own shoulders. But there's nothing anyone can do about the fact that chemistry rules our lives. Her chemistry and mine- OIL AND WATER.

The teacher who made my kid's school year complete torture: She sucked. I've since found out that mine was not the only kid whose year was completely rotten for the same reason. We never liked her. She didn't like us. That's the way it goes.

Friends not liking my kid: It's a fact of life that not everyone you meet is going to like you or your kid. There's nothing to be done about it. I don't like every one's kids either.

Not getting a job with the city: They're still the big time losers. As bad as it made me feel that my own city wouldn't hire me for work I would have given 150% to, if they were ever to get a glimpse of what they missed out on? They would feel way worse than me.

Death of a business: Lesson learned. The Etsy shop goes next.

My inability to apply proper strength of will to weight loss goals: Disappointment in myself is much worse than disappointment in others because I have to live with myself until I die. I not only didn't make any progress in this department this year, I actually got bigger to my limitless shame. The black hole of shame threatens to devour me and I can hear voices out there saying "just do it". I'll get on that right after I amputate my own foot.

Me not being enough of an advocate for my son: I let him get stepped on by too many people, made unnecessary excuses for him, and let my concern for other people's opinions of him matter too much. Fuck everyone else's opinion of him. I'm lucky to have a kid with such a strong sense of self. It's time to get him the support he both deserves and needs.

Guilt for getting us into a deeper financial pickle: Shed the guilt lady! Buying this house has done me a world of good and we'll get out of this mess this coming year. This house was one of the actions that helped me restore some faith. It was worth the pickle.


That I have continued to tell people "It's alright" to make them feel better about something when it isn't alright with me and won't be until they make amends: An old habit that is as tenacious as a cockroach in a nuclear meltdown. There are a lot of things people have said to me, or done to me that aren't cool and I continually excuse them from having to say they're sorry. Probably because I know they won't and I don't want to find out that people I care about aren't sorry for hurting me. Time to stop excusing the behaviors of others and if they don't excuse themselves? Let 'em loose.


It's been a rough year times 100. I obviously have a huge load of crap to unload into the fires in order to grow something fresh from the nutrient rich ashes. I was thinking that I might erase this entire blog. Kill all trace of Dustpan Alley. But that comes only from a place of frustration. Instead of killing off what has been a conduit of strength and support from strangers, I should let go of last year completely now. Start fresh inside. Like an engine overhaul. I have sooty engine and I won't go anywhere until I clean out the gunk. We had to do that with our Volkswagen a few years ago. It was really expensive and sucked big time.

I don't have a lot of money to rework my engine. The one last real extravagance we are going to purchase for our anniversary present which comes up in a couple of weeks is a new bathtub. One that is great for soaking in. That will be my meditation center and my detox unit. Whatever else happens this coming year- I'll be damned if I go another year without one of the most significant methods of de-stressing that I have ever known that didn't come out of some form of bottle.

Now it's time to go downtown in the snow. With snowshoes on. And be mellow. And free of this sooty stupid crap I've been wearing in a thousand pound locket around my neck.

May you also let go of all the crap that's holding you back. Let's move forward together and see what we can make of 2009!

Conversations With 1998, A Shaky Vintage

(What I wrote in 1998)

I am most afraid of myself when others are afraid of me.

I want to say that I am uncomfortable with the fact that in general I dislike people tremendously, but I find that it isn't at all true: I should be uncomfortable with this fact, but I am not. Most people are pretty obnoxious.

I am myself no butterfly, it should not please me to wear a dead one on my breast.

***

Would that I could be the amber, luminescent, hoarding the soft beams of twilight collecting in the contours of someone Else's throat. Holding inside of me the body of life and light and all the warmth of remembering, being, and pulse bright, hold all the wonders of suspended flight, remembered wings inside of me, and yet be- myself- still free.

***

The human mind is a formidable instrument. Actually, I was just going to say that the human mind is a terrible thing, period. But the first line sounds so much loftier.

***

I get lost for a fractional moment in notes and sound and numbers and vibrations and I float ; somewhere beyond the reach of mortal hands, body gone, nothing but air celebrating the mathematical arrangement of life.

***

I live and thrive in the landscape of the dead. I surprise myself with bursts of brilliant color cutting through grey blankets of air, set against a backdrop of leafless branches. It was all a dream, then, that I floated amongst people unseen. For I was seen. And even heard. I'm just uncertain of what it was they all saw and heard. What sounds did my life emit? I know it matters not, but is merely the curiosity of the voyeur, myself.

***

Shedding selves with the memory of hours. I am one person who lives and cries in the unpeopled shadows, laughs in rooms full of faces, breathes in new languages and exhales exhausted wasted knowledge, old language. And then I am another person walking, as in a dream, seeing a sea of faces approach, recede. Separated by some barrier of heart and experience. I watch myself watching others. Two parallel people whose points may never meet the full length of forever.

***************

In the present moment I would like to become a Leonard Cohen song. Right now I need to become "Halleluja" or else I need to ingest it a thousand times in order that it become mine.

Also contemplating how much it might hurt me to ask everyone in my life who's known me what they thought/think of me. I want to get in their heads to see if what I saw/thought matches what they saw/thought. Yet this is such a dangerous road. I'm wondering if what I thought of myself is what everyone else thought of me too but am afraid this may cause me much more reason to repent than I am prepared to accept. Looking through these old passages makes me hungry for dangerous truth.

There are no pews deep enough to take the depressions of my knees' spiritual regress.

Letting Go Of A Perfect Day

Flight is what I think of when I see my dog galloping through the carpet of of fallen leaves in the hazelnut orchard near our house. Like I'm seeing a spirit nearly take off, leave all connection to earth behind in pursuit of heavenly scents. Her muscles are so fine, so dense, and when she leaps she shimmers with beautiful design.

This is the end of a perfect day. You have no idea how many superstitions I am braving by saying that out loud. There is not a single second of it that I would change. I hope to god that the people who have diligently kept track of this life log have observed the change in tenor that it has taken over the past few months? For people like me there will always be an element of dark in the days, a generous portion of agony and rock throwing. Fact of my life. Yet it is most decidedly true that the last few years have been colored by deep obscurity of rhythm, of light, and of path.

So I am in a position to particularly notice when a day is perfect.

I am falling into pace.

This morning started with a family snuggle. We all woke up late for getting the kid to school but we still took the time to snuggle up and have a good morning. Then I settled into reading my messages, checking my flickr friends out (a morning ritual), and then getting happily stuck in facebook land connecting with old friends.

Philip is going to visit with a lot of loved old friends of his tonight- flying to California (paid for by these same friends because he couldn't afford to go- how unbelievably sweet is that?!) and I am so happy he is getting a chance to cut loose and take a little breather from us people who need him and love him so much. He gets few breaks and deserves so much. Normally, I would not count a day as perfect with my love flying away from me- it's just that I am so happy he is getting to do something just for himself- it counts as perfect.

Then there's the storms. Weather is here! All day it has been raining hard, then completely clearing up for five minutes- with blue sky and brief appearance of bright sun- then turning black again with some gusts of wind. Not the extreme wind that was predicted, but enough to push a little at these old windows. Talk of snow on Sunday...feel like a school kid anticipating the excitement of having to stay inside next to the kitchen stove or wrap up in a thousand layers of pungent wool to keep the frost from biting skin.

I put things away. I paid some bills. We've been receiving a lot of final notices lately. I have put quite a few to rest. I actually saw the bottom of my laundry hamper. I swear to you that it has been three years since I have gotten completely to the bottom of it!

I ate soup. I vacuumed. I folded (and put away) clothes. Last Friday I did some cleaning too. It's starting to feel like there's sense to this life, order, and consistence. My house feels warm, it feels calmer, it feels almost functional: where everything has a place and is in it. It's starting to feel like I don't need to apologize for the state of chaos as people enter into it.

My kid came home soaked but, like me, doesn't mind being soaked if it means entering into a cozy home with light, warmth, and dry clothes. He watched Pokemon while I worked on my sewing room.

Sewing room, writing room, crafting room, thinking room...my room. How lucky is it in this life to have one's own room? I realize how fortunate I am and today, taming the frightening mess, I was able to value it fresh. This is a room in which I can bat the demons back to hell. In which I can write whatever it is that needs writing. Make what needs making. Here is my magic lair, like Merlin's crystal cave.

Today I can see the floor in here. I haven't seen it for a couple months. You saw the pictures, you know I'm not lying! I made enough progress today that I almost feel myself unfolding again. I can almost feel my hands fashioning curtains out of all this fabric I have. Curtains for the windows of this old house, through which I watch storms unfurl themselves. Through which I will one day see roses opening and vegetables reaching obscene height.

I am an active participant in my own healing, but it cannot be denied that in life there is a lot that is out of our control. I have been trying to heal for so long and it has felt like trying to push out of a grave of dirt.

I am a spiritual person, though I do not believe in God or Jesus (is there anyone left who doesn't know this?) but those of us who find our spirituality in the stars, in the soil, and in the design of nature are not exempt from our own kind of prayer.

Let it be this. Let it be now.

My season is here.

Four old friends have suddenly buoyed me up and they need to know how much it makes me happy! I am afraid for all of you to see me now. I feel some shame. But I am coming to know that it isn't my body or my face that you find friendship in, but in my spirit. My spirit is ever the same. Thank you for coming back to me Chelsea, Sharon, Carrie, and Autumn. Again, and again. Somehow it makes me feel like all is right with the world when I hear from you. When you count me among your own.

Winter is a time of rebirth and joy for me. It is, in fact, when I was born. It is the hour when I shine the most, like a snow bird. Perhaps that is the real reason I am covered so thoroughly in my own down*. I become completely alert and alive in the cold, the hail, rain, dark, close days. It's why I travel almost exclusively in winter. I want the icicles, the frigid air, the pelting rain. I think I see into the soul of the world in winter.

Now it is time to let go of a perfect day.

I know that the universe can drop bombs on us at any time. I'm used to that. But I think it's alright to enjoy this minute without asking for the evil eye to perch itself in my mirror? I don't know what tomorrow will bring, which is why it's so hard to move on from here. The temptation to believe that if I write from here to eternity that nothing will change is strong.

I think one of my innermost beliefs is that if I keep writing I can make magic last forever.

I hope you all had a perfect day too.






*Unpoetic reference to my hairy self.

Starlings In The Chimney

On Thanksgiving day we had an incredible interruption to a quiet morning when two Starlings came swooping into the office with the dog following in hasty pursuit. I shrieked and yelled for someone else in the house to come and help as the cats started circling the poor confused birds who kept attempting to exit the room through the glass window. No one came and I quickly checked the two front doors (yes, we have two!) and they were both closed which required me to wonder how the hell this tangle could have begun?

Finally my boys came in to help and all of us kept trying to catch the birds before the cats and dog. Some people might have let the carnivores have the birds since they are not a greatly loved species of bird, but I couldn't. Not because I think it would be wrong but because I am one of those few people who love Starlings. I love their calls and how they change their feathers over the course of the season. The come back to the same places to nest every year.

We finally succeeded in catching them by throwing a sweater over one like a net and a dishcloth over the other. One immediately escaped when taken outside but this one I managed to hold onto long enough to tell it how sorry I was for the fright and to tell it how I love its kind and, of course, to snap a couple of pictures.

It then eased out of my grasp like silk and flew off.

The only way it could have entered my house was through the chimney.

I have heard people say that Starlings are aggressively pushing out other native North American bird species and are therefore considered to be nasty little pieces of bird work. When I have expressed my love of them I have received horrified looks in return. Apparently brought here by humans from Europe we are held in account for this invasion and are supposed to find a way to limit their spread to preserve the habitat for the native species.

I can't help but see the parallels between these birds and the Europeans who came to North America on their scourgey boats bringing with them their syphilis and other diseases and killing off with virus and sword nearly all the native North Americans.

So are we suddenly mad for protecting native species of flora and fauna because we realize what awful vermin we, ourselves, are? I can't help but see two sides of this. One is that nature itself sometimes delivers new aggressive species onto the shores of quiet unspoiled lands without the help of human interference. Sometimes in nature it takes aggressiveness and adaptability to survive and if the Starling has it, but some other native birds don't, things shift accordingly in a completely natural way.

Perhaps the same can be said of humans. Perhaps in the natural order of things the humans shift and adjust also. Perhaps it is savage truth that the Europeans who landed here on North American shores have the right of might.

But it can't go both ways. Either Starlings are stronger and more aggressive and therefore have a right to their new habitat, stolen from other weaker species, or they are invasive and need controlling. And whatever the answer is, it must be the same answer for humans. So which is it?

Perhaps through my love of Starlings I can be kinder to my fellow human kind. Perhaps I can see the early European settlers in a less negative light and also rejoice in the fact that in the coming years they will be out bred by the African Americans who settled here not long after the Europeans (against their will for the most part!!) and by the Hispanic people who have shaped and worked so much of this land and gotten so little credit for it.

The point being that everything shifts and adjusts on earth and I need to remember this. I am kinder to Starlings than to humans. Yet I have almost always taken the side of the Native Americans to the early European settlers.

Perhaps I should not be so concerned with humans out-breeding every other animal on earth because what always happens when a species of animal becomes too abundant for the resources at hand who has no natural predators is that they begin to die of starvation, disease and thirst. These laws are not limited to the animals we consider wild life. We are a part of the wild life. These laws apply to us too. It isn't something we can avoid. It isn't something that we can prevent from happening in a lab or by praying. No God and no science can miraculously increase the natural resources of our planet, it can only convert what is already here.

I find this calming. Here is the key to not caring about all the billions of babies being born to take my water and my food, to compete with my one child for all that he'll need for survival. We will all inevitably pay the price and eventually there will be fewer of us and a lot fewer of all other animals because the earth can only support a certain amount of animal life and it is bigger than us, there is order, there is this incontrovertible order to life. I take comfort there.

I would like to not contribute to any more of the using of resources than is strictly necessary and that is what I strive to become: a person mindful of everything I consume and use and I would like to become lighter and lighter in every way possible. I am not perfect, but I strive to improve all the time.

But I cannot ask the Starling to stop nesting. I cannot ask the Starling to go back to where it came from. It is here now. A part of our North American Melting pot. Like all the other people , animals, plants, and insects who come here from around the world.

Welcome little birds. You are beautiful and I hope you did not get too injured by my house!

An Unfinished Long List Of The Little Things
that make me glad I'm not dead yet

If anyone wants to know what my sense of humor really is...watch The Flight Of The Concords and you will have it all right there. I think the first person to tell me about it was my friend Chelsea. We share some movie and show watching taste in common, but she also loves The Office which is a show that makes me want to stab myself with a Bic pen or staple my head to the wall. There's something mean about The Office and depressing so that if there's any humor there it's completely lost in translation. Probably because of everyone loving The Office and assuming I would love it and being SO WRONG I took a brief hiatus from listening to any one's recommendations for movie and show watching.

Then my friend Laura sent me a YouTube clip of The Flight Of The Concords and without remembering that this was the duo that was recommended to me I watched the clip. Not without trepidation, actually, because most video clips people want me to be amused by are stupid. Sorry, but that's true. I watched anyway, preparing to tell Laura a lie "Oh- that was...amusing." Instead it made me laugh out loud against my will.

Fast forward...I found the first season of their show at my video store and figured why not check it out. Last night we watched the first four episodes and I haven't laughed so hard at entertainment in a very long time.

I am now convinced that Jemaine is my alter ego.

The lyrics constantly catch me off guard, I think I know what's coming next and then it takes a second for what they really said to sink in and it's just...

I'm being ridiculous. I love that show. I am extremely jealous of the writing, of the acting. If I could be reborn to be that brilliant and funny I would. Deadpan, dry, banal, human, dorky rather than sad and mean, humor that reveals foibles without vitriol. Seeing work like that makes me want to give everything I've worked for up. Why bother writing? I'm just an un-fun person who doesn't like games or jokes or riddles* and especially puns and plays on words which are usually just juvenile attempts to appear clever- I'm feeling more and more like a bitter old Bukowski writing about fat drunk people being left naked in broke-down motels.

So, today is the big turkey day. Not a great day for actual turkeys. It's 9am and right now, all across America people are greasing up those big birds to start cooking them because supposedly they take just about all day to cook. Martyred mothers are cursing under their breath at tradition and sighing loudly for everyone in the family to hear. I've always wondered how come people don't buy birds that haven't been unnaturally over-fed for six months, a leaner bird would surely cook in much less time (with the added benefit of being healthier)?

Another tradition I've never quite understood is why people feel they have to eat Thanksgiving dinner at 3 or 4 pm. What's the deal with that? Is that so everyone can nap a little before dessert? Other than sounding kind of depressing, I guess a nap isn't a bad thing after over eating to the point of discomfort as many Americans pride themselves on doing for this Holiday.

Me? I rarely over-stuff myself on Thanksgiving. I certainly eat more than normal, but since being overstuffed can make one want to vomit (just ask the ancient Romans) and I'm emetaphobic, I prefer to be more circumspect.

So about this whole being thankful thing...

I'm thankful for a lot of things lately and I don't need a special day to recognize this but I do love that we have one holiday that is centered around thankfulness for not starving to death, that is not about shopping, that is all about gathering around the dinner table with whatever we can afford to put on it. I do wish that everyone was lucky enough to have something, anything, to put on theirs. While some families are engorging themselves on over-fat birds others will be lucky if they each get a bowl of boxed macaroni and cheese. For those families I wish better fortune in this coming year and that they may experience the kindness of community to get them through.

• I am thankful for our credit cards that have allowed us to live a decent life for a whole year of making not even enough money for the mortgage. Without those cards we would have lost everything a long time ago and not had beer to soothe our very knotted and frayed nerves. Although credit cards are the devil to pay back and we have a very long hard road ahead of us, we have been fortunate to have had them when we had no cash for food.

• I am thankful to have such a great husband. I don't take him for granted** because I know that there is no one else on earth who could love me as much as he loves me and although we get annoyed with each other and sometimes want to hit each other with heavy objects, he is my very best friend in life, he is handsome, he is kind, he is a great father (in fact- before I married him I was 100% sure I would never want to have children), a weird character, a genius artist, and I just love him. We have been married almost sixteen years and I still love being married. That says it all right there.

• I am thankful to have my mom live close by to us. We have had many ups and downs over the years and I've said unkind things to her, I've nagged her about things, I've enjoyed her generosity, and she always still loves me. When she was in California and we were up here in Oregon, I really missed her. She and I have both come a long way as people and whereas I was horrified the first time I realized how much I'm like my mom (many many years ago) I have come to feel incredible pride to have been on the receiving end of so many of her good qualities. Sorry mom, I still sometimes roll my eyes at your crazy like I did as a teen- but there is no woman in the world I would rather have as my mom and having you close by makes me feel very happy!

• I am thankful for both herbal and modern medicine. Maybe it seems silly to be thankful for my medication, but if you were me trying to be a mom and a wife and remain a live person you would understand how important it is that I have the help of medication to trick you all into thinking I'm a relatively sane and normal person. I am also thankful that Philip just received his free three month supply of asthma meds (you have to be poor enough to qualify) and now he can start to actually breath comfortably. We haven't been able to afford them and it scares me to hear Philip breathing without their help. Though we both depend on modern medicine, I am also thankful for herbal medicine which I plan to re-incorporate into my life more than ever this year. It's a way of life I grew up on and have tremendous respect for. This year I found out that the anti-fungal salve my mom and I made works well for athlete's foot, but not on jock itch. (Oh, should I have kept that to myself?)

• I am thankful that Max has been having fewer and fewer bloody noses. I am specifically thankful for it today because last night he had a really persistent gusher and left bloody trails all over my floors, was freaked out and therefor difficult to help, and later, seeing the dried blood crusted underneath all my nails I remembered that this used to sometimes be a daily event. Sometimes even more frequent than that. Last night's gusher tired me out so much that I understand the weariness of the last few years more sharply. On top of being thankful that he has been having so many fewer bloody noses, I'm thankful that this is one of the very few medical issues he has. So many children have worse problems than that and if I had enough of my own heart left over to spare some I would give their mothers some of mine to help them get through the awful pain they must go through.

• I am thankful to have all the pets I do. They make every day of my life richer, funnier, and cozier. Some of them even give me eggs to eat and manure for the garden! The dog has given me a deep appreciation for her kind that I could only have gotten from loving an actual dog of my own. My cats are the sweetest, cutest girls and it gives me joy everyday to look at them and know that without us they probably would not be alive today at all. We loved our Ozark a lot and still remember him and talk about him, but the truth is- he was such a difficult cat and it's so nice that this time around we have two that get along, don't go far from the house, aren't mean to the dog, don't bite our toes every morning at 5am, are very snugly, and don't fight other cats or wild animals. I will never understand people who don't like having animals in their homes to share their life with.

Lastly, I am thankful for all the little things that make life worth living. Living a good life isn't about one big triumph. It isn't about being a movie star or a superhero, though those sound like fine things to be. It isn't about your job promotion or necessarily at all about how you make the money everyone has to make in order to have a comfortable place to live. So to end this already incredibly long post, I will list the little things that I believe are what make my life so good in spite of not having my paycheck yet and being hounded by my banks all week:

Get ready, this is a very long list...

Good coffee every morning, weird fake food to make me laugh, my son's cheeks which is all that's left of his babyhood, the smell of onions sauteing, soup bubbling on the stove, my cookware which was a huge extravagance when I got it but which has given me pleasure every single day I've used them for the past eight years, my Pilivuyt dish wear,

Nope, not done yet. I think you might find your list just as full....

my weird ghetto door, a brand new Razor Point pen, a fresh notebook, being awake before everyone else, watching snow fall, watching rain fall, picking vegetables in my garden, picking them at my favorite local farm, beer, toast with butter and jam, my great grandmother's china (what's left of it after the fire), my other random pieces of old china, a new bar of soap, kitchen scrub sponges, doing dishes on a very cold day, a freshly cleaned house, clean sheet night, hot baths filled with herbal or salty additions, cats purring,

Tired yet? I warned you. Seriously. Life is full of little pleasures if you just notice them.

my dog curling up against my legs when we go to sleep, PG Tips tea with cream and sugar (I don't indulge often because of the caffeine and my heart palpitations), Agatha Christie books, making excellent tarts, babies smiling at me in the grocery store, grocery shopping, people watching, learning to make new things, canning, drying my own herbs, shelling dried beans, growing things, cut flowers and branches all over my house, colorful painted walls, curtains, dinner with friends,

Dudes, there's more and you should know that when you've come to the end of this extensive laundry list of what makes my life good- I have only scratched the surface of the "little things"!

random wonderfully strange conversations with Max, medical TV shows, television, plaid, polka dots, roses, picking nettles with my good friend Nicole, reading Riana's blog, magazines, cookbooks, garden books, oh hell- ALL BOOKS, NOT reading Posy Gets Cozy, my grey hairs, walking by myself with headphones on, writing, pubs full of weird taxidermy, writing poetry however bad it might be, kitty chins, dog muzzles, lemon trees, old friends who love me even though I exasperate them, avocados, playing old 78's, old movies,


From now on, when I hear that someone is depressed beyond belief and asks me what the point of living is, this will be their first assignment- to make a list of the little things that they enjoy. If the list is smaller than 2o I will recommend therapy and medication.


touching herbs, seeing pretty teeth, the sounds my hens make, coming home, winter, bare trees, rose hips (for many reasons), taking trains, the sound of trains passing through town, frost, hats, the incredible scarf Emma knit for me, conversations with myself, mail, thunder storms, writing letters to Kelly, visiting the library, hanging out with my brother and sister, hanging with my brother and sister kvetching at a pub on the Isle of Skye escaping from the adults,


You have to open your eyes. You have to turn off your BIG expectations of life. Because as it turns out, they don't matter a whole lot.


hanging out in pubs with Philip, climbing the dunes with my kid dog and husband, dry champagne, eggs for breakfast, looking at all my jars of home canned food, sour cherries, foraged food, collecting nuts, making potions, mixing bowls, reading garden catalogs, choosing roses to plant, noticing and naming roadside plants, writing anything, finding out other people's little life details, staying home on New Year's Eve, lying on the floor, spring bulbs popping up through snow, cabbages growing in the garden, the smell of jasmine on summer evening air, digging up potatoes,


There is literally no end to this list. It has become my reason for being. When you've stopped noticing these little details, you need to make changes in your life. Life often sucks and there is enough sorrow in the world to suffocate all of us. Some of us get suffocated by the sorrow out there that isn't our own and need extra help quieting the noise out of our heads. There is always going to be starvation, fighting, death, taxes, abuse, crimes of fashion, and loss. So it's important to enjoy and relish these very small details of joy, satisfaction, and pleasure.

If I believed in God I would say that he gave us the senses to enjoy these details as a way of getting through the other nasty crap he seems to think his "children" deserve. I would believe that life isn't about working towards heaven or hell but about reflecting in ourselves what either of those places might be in our spirits, in the present, on this earth.

But I don't believe like that. I believe what matters is what we do with our lives right now, not because of some strange promise of things to come after death, but because now is what we have. It's really all we have. Ever. Right now.

So go be with your family and friends, and if you don't have any of them, go to a shelter or church where others are gathered to dish out kindness and sustenance. Enjoy the camaraderie of the moment and whatever small pleasures you can. It absolutely 100% matters. If you enjoy those little things now you will find yourself with more pleasant memories to temper the bitterness that life inevitably dishes out than you thought possible.

Lots of love to all of you out there. I'm glad you're alive with me.








*My kid is really into riddles right now, it's killing me slowly.

**This might not be his story.

I'm Not A Racist, I'm A Species-ist

Chick, who is part lab, part pit, and part bull mastiff.

I have recently gotten into two discussions about pit bulls with friends. Apparently I can't possibly have any opinion that doesn't champion the underdog. Is it possible that I am mistaken in thinking that this "breed" has been maligned unfairly? Doesn't it seem a little unfair that the Pomeranian that killed an infant hasn't given Pomeranians more bad press than it did?

I think Pomeranians are scary little dogs. But, whatever.

The pit bull is the devil-du-jour and I don't think any information I can dig up or any debating on my part is going to change anyone's opinion.

The more I talk with people the less I like them (I really like the friends I was talking about pit bulls with though, so I'm now speaking more in general terms in case anyone was feeling singled out). The more I hang out with animals the more I like them and think they are better than us.

I did always spend a lot of time in the chicken coop as a kid.

I was not kidding when I said that I don't believe humans are superior to other animals. You can look at all my beliefs and see that that is always the guiding principle.

The reason I argue with people so much over things is that not very many people share my point of view. I see all beings as having qualities that make them equally valuable on this earth and I don't see any beings as having anything that sets them apart as superior. Supposedly us humans are better because we can think and discern good from evil. I really haven't seen a whole lot of discernment between good and evil amongst people.

So all my arguments start off with the belief that dogs are equal in worth to humans on this planet as far as "right to live here on earth" is concerned. Or as far as "right to be treated with respect" is concerned.

I concede, for anyone who cares, that pit bulls are a more dangerous dog than many other breeds because of their tendency not to let go when fighting. Statistics support that pit bulls are responsible for a large percentage of the fatal dog attacks in our country. I've just had my head sunk in all kinds of statistics and this much can be supported. When a pit bull attacks, it is a more dangerous animal than a Pomeranian. Except for when Pomeranians suddenly need to sacrifice an infant to the tiny-dog altar.

What was also made clear from information gathered from a couple of different sources is that a lot of people don't actually know what a pit bull is and the people reporting attacks (who didn't die, obviously) can't be reliably counted on to recognize a pit bull. I just took a little quiz and I failed it. Can you pass?

People mostly focus on the fatal dog attacks. Less attention is given to nonfatal bites. After all, who cares, right? Who's going to get outraged at a little scratch? (Unless it's a scratch from a pit bull of course because while people will make excuses for a lab they will not make any excuses for a pit).

I'm not sitting here trying to convince anyone to love pit bulls because I know I won't succeed unless I spend about four days glued to reading material and then spit it out very carefully and simply for every one's reading displeasure. Even then, it's not like they're my favorite dog, I merely find myself defending a group of dogs who deserve some defense.

I'm just saying what's on my mind as it comes to me after reading a bunch about dog attacks and breed information. I thought it was interesting that in temperament tests amongst dog breeds at certain facilities**, pit bulls passed the tests at a higher rate than Labrador retrievers. But people, does this surprise me? No. Because in all the years that I was afraid of dogs it wasn't pit bulls chasing me down the street or Dobermans gnashing their teeth at me or Rottweilers who lunged and nipped me. It was black labs. And I was bit by an Australian Shepherd mix once too.

Someone isn't going to believe that information so I'm going to have to dig it up again when I have more time. It was on an SPCA site, possibly in the Bay Area.

One of the sites also compared the number of children killed by dogs every year to the number of children killed by parents every year. You want to know who kills more precious babies?

Well it isn't the pit bulls winning that contest.

Human parents kill more of their own babies a year than any dogs do.

I consider humans much less predictable than dogs and in fact, a lot more dangerous. In spite of the fact that I spent the first twenty five years of my life horribly frightened of ALL dogs, I haven't ever had nightmares about them whereas I am haunted in my sleep by the tremendous violence of man.

Humans suck.

There, I've said it.

A couple hundred thousand Iraqis were killed in an unprovoked attack from my people. How can I feel that there is any argument that can put humans in a beneficial light? We blacken everything we touch. We breed ourselves so extensively that the only places we aren't exhausting natural resources are places where we haven't figured out how to survive in yet. We kill off other species, we suck up the viscous bones of the earth's previous species to use to fuel a revolution of pollution and then we have the gall to turn around and decide that we have the right to snuff out a species of animal because it kills some people every year.

You know, I think that if I was ever to turn suicidal it would not be out of depression or anxiety like it would have been if I'd killed myself as a teen. It would be from shame for my species. It would be from shame for humans and the darkness we've brought to the planet.

I guess that's also a kind of sorrow. I suppose it's a constant solace to me that no matter how much we learn from science, none of us will ever figure out how to really cheat death.

I think I liked us better when we weren't quite walking upright and we had to have more respect for our landscape and other beasts because we were a lot more vulnerable then and had no reason to develop arrogance. We got killed by other animals a lot more often. We blended in with our atmosphere, with the other species on earth.

Humans suck.

I do think it's funny that here I am aching for dog rights, wishing that people would stop mistreating animals in general and dogs in specific, and stop trying to put the problem on the dogs instead of on ourselves.

If you dare say that there is one breed of dog that is just plain bad, are you also a person who looks at an entire race of people and believes them to be just plain bad? In my book it's the same thing. It's the same crime.

Don't worry, I realize that I am almost alone in this tiny universe of mine. I know you don't agree. Neither of us are going to change though are we? No.

It's funny that I used to be so damn scared of dogs and I have, over the last fifteen years, become more and more educated about them, more involved with them, more interested, less scared, more amazed, more enamored, more compassionate, more understanding...resulting at last, in having my own dog for the first time in my life three years ago. Since then I have only become more experienced at handling and getting to know canines and this has increased my respect for them in general.

I will still cross a street or turn a corner to avoid coming close to a dog wandering around without an owner. I haven't grown stupidly complacent. Dogs are still animals with bigger teeth and claws than mine. I think being cautious with ALL DOGS is smart. I think being careful is smart.

I've come to realize that I prefer animals to people for the most part. I respect them more. The honest truth is that if all humans, including myself, were to die today, the earth would be a much better place for it.

I already hear the little voices out there calling me melodramatic, irrational, and emotional. Some things never change. I've been hearing it all my life. I'm used to it. It's stupid to dismiss someone because they are emotional, but it's an easy target. I'm an easy target.

I will just turn my attention to the other life forms all around us, I will listen to the sound of the rain chinking through my kale leaves, or hear the blanket of mist muffle the noises everywhere else in the early morning, and I will listen to the frog who calls out to sexy frog girls through the cold while hidden from my view by arum italicum leaves, and to my hens who shuffle and scuffle and live small lives in hay and who tell me they really don't like that weird bean dish I made and could I please give them some more fruit scraps? I will sit here and wish I was a beetle trenching deep into the hummus.

I'm not a racist but it becomes clear that I am a species-ist.

Note: I keep trying to temper things by saying that I don't love pit bulls, but the truth is I happen to be incredibly enamored of bull dogs as a general group and I can't help but be mesmerized by the beauty of many different dogs I've met who were pit bull mixes. So, let me just say that there's something about most bull dogs that I find magnetic.

*"pit bull" is a description used for a variety of separate breeds that may or may not have the same danger level. I have found out that even I don't really know what a real "pit bull" is. The real pit bull is the American Pit Bull Terrier. Because these breeds share general physical characteristics amongst them it is easy to confuse them. But I think you all know that I'm referring to your average pit bull-style dog here.

**I found larger breed temperament study at this site and pit bulls do not pass at a higher rate than Labs, but they still pass at a high percentage.

How Much Is That Girl In The Window?

If I told you what just flew into my mind it would be "What if we could buy back who we used to be?". What a completely useless what if question. As so many of them are. One of the concepts heavily covered in Cognitive Behavior Therapy is the idea of core beliefs. Core beliefs are the underpinnings of everything that motivates us whether negatively or positively. Core beliefs are the underwear our spirits have on. You can hem and haw about a thousand things but ultimately you believe a few things almost incontrovertibly. To change those beliefs is like moving mountains or reshaping flesh like a plastic surgeon's knife.

I spent some time examining mine a few years ago. I don't think I was able, at the time, to recognize them all. You almost have to turn out your lights to find them because you take them so much for granted you can't see them with your conscious mind. Your subconscious knows all about them. You have to peel away at all your skin, all your rationalizations, all your behaviors, and all of your words to find them. Any thought you have, any comment you make can be traced back to some original basic belief. The foundation of everything that comes out of your life.

That's pretty big stuff. You'd think it would be easier to get at.

Exposing those beliefs can be raw. Frightening. Revealing. A relief. A revelation.

I will show you some of mine, but I can't ever show them all. This is elemental stuff. You scratch at this stuff and I could flake into a pile of ash like ancient silk.

• People are not superior to other animals, just different.

• People cannot be trusted, cause pain, and are savage.

• Sex is a violation of a woman's body.*

• Every action counts.

• We are each responsible for the experience we have in life.

I am so out of shape that riding my bicycle anywhere is quite a heaving experience. I am trying to do more of my errands on my bicycle. I went downtown to the grocery store the other day when it was cold out, crisp like icicles, misty in that soft way fall can be, and it felt so good to feel my blood moving to warm my skin. There's something so exhilarating about feeling cold air hit warm cheeks. I had my bicycle baskets full of Brussels sprout stalks and other local produce and my bike was weighted not only with my considerable heft but with the bags of groceries. I felt so pretty. It seems like the most ridiculous thing to say. But I did. Riding down the street on my old bicycle with the blood in my cheeks and the air in my lungs, I felt pretty.

I think the worst thing about being me is knowing that I used to inspire so much more chivalry in the world and now it is so much rarer. Perhaps that is not important to some people but to me it means a lot. I'm not a feminist in the modern sense of the word. I like to feel feminine, perhaps because I hated it so much when I was a teen, I like to feel pretty and I like to feel that others see that I'm not the clod-hopping old man I sometimes act like. I like to feel evidence of that.

That's another core belief but I can't actually put it to real words lest I freak myself out and cause deep and everlasting pain to myself. Interpret that how you will.

I'm a strong person but I want to be valued as a fine piece of glass.

I used to feel pretty as I walked alone on the streets of San Francisco. Not beautiful, not sexy. But pretty like a peach blossom you admire just before it drifts away from the branch into a breeze, floating like a paper lantern to some spot you haven't yet reached. I feel pretty when my body is in motion, being used like a machine, when I am pushing it towards the horizon with the wind in my sails. When my body feels flight.

I also feel pretty when no one is looking. I believe my magic fades under scrutiny.

It may be a shade of my crazy. Doesn't really matter.

I want to be in the air more often. I need to fit that in.

I want doors to open. I want protection.

It's what my dreams are of when they aren't extremely violent and dark. They are full of chivalry. Not sex, which means so little in the big scheme of life, but that protection, kindness, thoughtfulness, and --

I can't really talk about it anymore. It is too ridiculous. Something I am incredibly uncomfortable about. The fact that when I have fantasies it isn't about sex but about chivalry. Chaste chivalry. I'm not sure what it says about me but I am so uncomfortable with it.

What I do know is that this has been such a great autumn and things are falling into place. Good things. I am not how I wish to be remembered right now. I have not reclaimed myself in all the ways I need to but something is opening up that was closed before. Clamped shut with blood held back, bruising. I feel the winter coming like a mother calling to its child. I walk to winter with every happiness and a little excitement too. Coming home never felt so good.

Change takes time. To change you have to know what underwear your spirit has on. Don't fool yourself. Know what's under there before you rip the scaffolding down.




*Not a healthy or comfortable core belief.













I smell like the damned. (Totally random thought I didn't want to forget I had.)

Life Owes Us Nothing

I almost forgot about my notes to a suicidal friend who asked "But what meaning is there to life?" all the time. An urgent question she needed an answer to in order to grope her way through her suffocating head to where the air was clear. She was certain that life had no meaning and without meaning it is better to be dead. I heard her and I understood what she was asking. We go through so much pain in life, maybe some more than others, and we look back and ask "What was all of that for?". It feels like the only way we can pick up our feet again to move forward away from pain is if pain has a reason, a purpose.

We make up reasons all the time. But I don't believe that the big picture has reason. I believe in karma only because it is so completely obvious that we get what we give. I believe it makes a difference how we act and how we think. But I don't think that there is some grand plan for each of us in life. I don't think there is one purpose for us or one path. I don't believe that life is about purpose. Unless you think living as long as possible is purpose.

We live because we are alive. We stay alive until we die because we are built with an instinct to survive. I think it's that breathtakingly simple.

Maybe life feels better when we have focus, when we have a plan, and when we use the gifts we were given with our corporeal equipment. Achievement is admirable, but sometimes it gets in the way of everything that really counts. Like breathing. Sleeping. Noticing the texture of the soil underneath our feet and caking under black fingernails.

In the past three years of struggling to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, what path I'm supposed to be taking, and what I'm supposed to achieve in this life I forgot about the letters. I forgot what I used to tell ailing spirits. I forgot the words I used to say.

I'm remembering it now because I have been listening to so many other people like me struggle in the same way and the old reassurance comes tumbling out of my mouth without over thinking.

Stop beating against the glass like a trapped moth. This is life. This is what it is. Right here, right now. There's no such thing as "supposed to" or "should". Our job is to breath. Life isn't complicated. We make it complicated because the hardest thing of all is to accept simplicity. We have no right to expect to live for any specific amount of time. We have no right to expect no sorrow. We have no rights. All we have a right to is this millisecond. The one we're having right now.

Everything else is just extra.

Why bother living life? Because one second of pure air, pure love, pure happiness is worth all the pain we humans inevitably inflict upon each other and on ourselves. Why bother living life? Because coffee at 5:30 in the morning is the best experience in the world. Because one great night spent eating home made food with friends while drinking beer or wine and talking politics passionately is worth all the rest of the time when life sucks.

Just living, and living well, is enough reward for being alive. A life in which no awards are won, no publicly recognized achievements are made, or in which nothing remarkable has apparently happened is still a tremendous achievement in itself if it was lived with senses awake and memory sponging up the liquid light of every morning.

I said so many times that there is no grand purpose but to enjoy pinching the leaves off of herbs to put in an omelet. There is no greater reason for living than to love another being. To notice the shifting precipitation in the air and to watch the lightening from a perch. This is what it's about: the minutiae.

Mothers in my age group are obsessed with advising new mothers to "Enjoy every minute of your baby's early years because they go so fast". What kind of pressure is that? What a huge burden to put on someone. You don't have to enjoy every minute of it and you won't. What's important is to take care of the person you brought here. What's important is to enjoy those impossibly tiny minutes in which you are both laughing so hard you pee your pants and not chastise yourself for all the times your baby made you want to die of exhaustion. Stop worrying about whole lifetimes and just try to be present right now.

What I told my friend who wanted to know why she should bother living is that it doesn't matter what her life looks like to anyone when she gets to the end of it. There is no neon sign that says "Congratulations! You did what you were supposed to! You may now die with pride!" What you see when you look back is not how you should be moving forward. Out of pain. What you see when you look back has already been. Cannot be changed. Cannot give greater meaning to this moment we are in. Right now.

When you stop asking what life is "supposed" to be you will realize that it already is what it's supposed to be. Full of pain, love, laughter, shame, propellant, flight, stagnation, hunger, danger, abuse, kindness, creation, all of it.

Oxygen. Life is about oxygen in our lungs. Blood in our veins with a pump to keep it fresh. That's all it is. We can live it or lose it. It owes us nothing. It gave us everything already.

So stop breaking your feathers against the dank glass. Stop thrashing yourself against this wall of your own making.

Sit still.

Breath.

That's all there is and it's a gift because none of us did anything to deserve it.

What Is In My Head
(is now in yours)

I once said that rain hitting my face while riding my scooter feels like bullets*. I would like to add that sometimes rocks hitting your knees while on your scooter feels like bullets too. Or maybe rain feels like rocks but I like to be dramatic. When traveling at a speed of 60 miles per hour and a rock hits you anywhere on your body you don't particularly care if it's a rock, a marshmallow, or a squirrel because the main point is that it hurts like fucking hell.

Sometimes when I'm going really fast on my scooter I wish I could completely take off; be like a smear of light stealing other people's air as I speed past them. It makes me feel a little bit like an asshole. And a man.

When a dog doesn't want to see you, they have no inhibitions about letting you know. Today was the first day I ever stood around a dog whose hackles are up and teeth showing to say nice things to him. I think that shows how far I've come from hiding in the coffee Roastery's bathroom whenever a dog would come in.

I saw a dead kitty on the side of the highway and I said "meow" to its spirit.

It makes me really sad that there is a product so sub-standard that it has to be called "chocolate flavored chips".

I'm really thankful I don't pee my pants all the time. I wonder if I should present this gratitude at the Thanksgiving table.

I know it's terribly "western" of me, but I think eating the sperm of an animal is not a whole lot different than drinking its pee. It may not be bad for you (being sterile) but bodily fluids (including blood) as food really trips me out. I might still be thinking about it tomorrow morning.

For those of you with very dirty minds, the conclusion that you have come to about me is correct.**

Do any of you understand just how very much I despise balloons? I didn't think so.

I think it's important for everyone to recognize what they're good at and celebrate that. Even if what you're good at is counting raisins or picking fur out of sweaters. That takes patience. Don't let the rest of the world keep you from your empowerment.

There are a lot of people busy out there, right now, feeding yeast. I think that's just about as brilliant as it gets. I get very excited talking about yeast. Not yeast infections...yeast that we tenderly feed sugars to and encourage into full bloat mode so that our breads will rise, our grapes ferment, and our sodas fizzle. It's harvest and in my area and that means a lot of people working very hard to serenade the yeast that is now hanging out in the grape juice.

The owner of a winery has decided to call me Denise. Do Denises generally have chin hairs? I've decided to be Denise for this guy. It means that I can start calling him Ralph.

It freaks me out that almost all the Oregonian election candidates have six or seven children. I almost want to not vote for them just because of that. Except for the Catholic one. I kind of wanted to vote for him anyway. But only because the Catholics here are insanely outnumbered by the more fiery hot and bothered faiths. Catholics have the best music and art. But obviously I'm not going to base my voting on how many children a person has.

I will absolutely base my voting on a candidate's stance on a woman's right to choose.

I will also base my voting on how a person looks. I don't think you can be a really put together human being if the picture you send out of yourself for your campaign looks like a federal prison mug shot.

I'm super bummed that Sarah Sidle has left Gil. Seriously bummed. Can't anyone have a good relationship anymore? Damn it.

SO NOT surprised that Madonna and Guy are getting divorced. Now I just wish they hadn't stolen that African child.

*As if I would know how that feels.

**For those of you who need it spelled out: I don't think human sperm is sexy "food" either. Pointing out how salty it is will not make it more appealing to me. Yes, prude prude prude me. I rather like to think of it as being discerning, rather than prudish.