In response to an Isabel prompt : some of that quote that brought me to my knees last time, what is in your margins, baby? what’re you constantly underlining, again and again, like new every time?
Colors, always colors. I’m downright a.d.d. when it comes to distraction by beauty. Color, shape, the painting I no longer do, the detraction of value from myself for that. Oh. So much. Slight miss, peeled off, scraped off, value gone, value gone. Not creating, not. Scrape, peel, scrape peel, bare walls left. And more, peeled, scraped down to studs. And then what? Where then? Shelter gone. Zero. And wind. The wind blows through. Again. That’s my underline, right there. the biggest one. over and over. manic. manic. manic.
I keep finding these men, these men who really cannot fit a woman into their lives, and I keep thinking of their loss, to lose me, this valueless non-creator, and then I see again that I am so uncertain I can do this all again and I know I use them to distract, like pretty shiny pennies.
Can I live on macaroni and cheese with an occasional tomato thrown in? Is rickets a thing for me now, on this pirate ship of a pandemic house? Am I at sea now, for months at a time, while the kids take their boats out again and again and I am home… rocking in my chair on the waves.
I’m not there anymore, I’m not there anymore, my chant when I wake from the bad dreams. Still, five years out. Anxieties about something so far gone. This brain, and where she roams when I sleep. Poor thing.
I stick my head in the plants. I run my hand through the rice. I light the tree until I feel the itch for space and emptiness . and it itches. And I return to dreaming of painting.
I woke up at four today. I feel pleasure in this, though I acknowledge that my evening will be affected. I have added another thousand words to the work writing and I am so glad and also, sad that there is still so much more to go and I’m running down my timeclock. Sometimes I think I deserve this, this halfass pride in work that I don’t want anyone to read. You know those cheapass romances that you buy for .99 on amazon? That’s me. I write that shit. sometimes. Welcome to the ambivalence. And return.
The potato bugs have moved in, must be the season of… what? Mate? Coldness? They are everywhere. Slow moving creature of prehistory. I love how peacefully we coexist. I’m not sure when we decided we could, but we did.
I keep meeting addicts. I keep finding them, the sharp, the intelligent, the weak, the traumatized. I find them, I love them. I have shifted away from taking them in, housing them, and that’s the change in the margins. Just a color change, same words, but progress. Big.
I understand how deeply I need winter. This return of the cold, the dark. The stay home. Pandemic or no. this is the acorn buried deep. This is the time I understand how to protect my children. Stay. Warm. Socks. Hats. Lights. This is the time I understand.
Found this quotation in my desk drawer and thought of you. “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it live your way some distant day into the answers.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Number 3 and number 8 😭💔 Beautifully put! And that photo knocked me out!
Found this quotation in my desk drawer and thought of you. “Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or books written in a foreign tongue. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it live your way some distant day into the answers.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke