Humanity

Hello Zucchini. POW! BANG!!

Lovelovemotherexpletive

HELLO…

Adele and Lionel Ritchie. PeW! PeW! I feel them both, simultaneously.

Me, straddling the eras. eras, eons, you pick. I have been quiet. The house is currently in a lull, a small space in the summer speedby, I am feeling like a hello again is in order. Here are some things:

GEEWHIZ! I feel so young on the inside. Very young, so much younger than the young ones around me. Maybe it’s the humility I carry, or the sparks of joy that I seek and find that I juggle in my heart. So young. 51 years I’ve lived. There’s much more certainty than there used to be, and much more shrug.

DANGIT! I’m doing two jobs this summer, and one of them is in a class of kids that need one-on-one attention from an adult in order to ‘assimiliate’. They are straight up otherworldly, in some cases, and there is so much to say about this, and I’m not done yet, one week left, and I need time to process. BUT BOY, let me tell you, I know a lot more about what my boundaries are in terms of what sorts of classrooms I want to work in. It’s good to know your boundaries, without trauma forcing you into them. so says I. (Although, truth be told, our first day together was a little traumatizing for all of us. An extra adult was sent in for day two, let it suffice to say.)

GOLLY! I feel healthy and strong and most of this is because today the heat has retreated a little bit, and I can breathe and there is life in my limbs. And because I’ve got a whole afternoon and evening off from working anywhere. Six days a week is too much, it does not allow for thinking or writing and even the reading that i can squeeze is just an excuse to dull my brain and strain my eyes into prep for sleep.

FUCKSAKE! My own garden is a disaster, but the work farm is an explosion of produce and there is a lot of juggling going on with the zucchini over there. Cabbages, zucchini and the summer squash. good god. oh my god the eggs. so many thousands of eggs. please let us pray to the gods of quiche for release. temporary though it may be, let the frittatas be done.

i’m listening to the audiobook of 1961’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I think audio is best for this one, the reader has such a lovely monotone for the Man from Mars. Its a science fiction, about a human raised on Mars, who returns to Earth, upsetting many of the norms of the time. quite anti-church, quite free lovin’. I’m enjoying. We’ll see where it ends up.

I’d love to start writing again. Oh boy, would I. I’d also love to see my words above my head, like POW! SHAZAM!! FUCKYOU! but only because my current classroom is too young to read.

you know?

lovelove,

me.

zucchini
Photo by Ellie Burgin on Pexels.com

Humanity

Adrift: eating crackers. drinking coffee.

Lovelovemotherexpletive
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today i had my writing group, like i do every monday and have done for years now. one friend in the carolinas, and one in cornwall. we share a prompt, do a ten minute write and then share with each other. we’re all different in style but all skilled, even me. And mostly i say that because these women tell me so. and i trust them and admire their own skill. they are really quite strong people, and i really appreciate that, and the years we’ve been together.

today’s prompt had me writing about my dubious center. and what that meant was that, in the world, when i think about ‘centering, grounding down, placing myself at the center of the universe’… I find myself bobbing along in the water.

its not exactly what is planned when one thinks of those things. I have a physical and emotional sense that i am adrift, gently so, but adrift. no feet on the ground. I’m not struggling, just awash with the waters.

I trust my imaginative plane as much as some people trust their god, or their tarot, or their psychic. I do. So, as I float about… what does it mean that i can’t stay still, that my foundation is afloat? Is it bad? Is it the world? Has the utter crazy of the global and national scene just knocked my roots from under me? The hope that is a usual tether has been snipped and I’m off.

What does it mean? And if i’m doing just as much garden and farm and outdoors scrabbling in the dirt as any other time, do i need to change my drift/head for shore? Am I supposed to be connected, dialed in? Is my life in such an expanse that i cannot see the bottom? cannot see the land?

What is it? Where are you finding yourself these days?

Humanity

hello my name is…

Lovelovemotherexpletive

worry.

bursting joy.

writer.

reader.

dullard.

mother.

friend.

generous.

self-centered.

grieving.

selfless.

addict. (coffee, sugar, man, and phone, and probably cigarettes if i ever have one again)

list-bearer.

resigned.

hopeful.

bored.

confused. (i thought the little guys would win, we’d keep a govt of, for, by the people, but that’s not what’s happening. how is this what we’ve made?)

worry. (again, yes, needed.)

farmer.

teacher.

color overwhelmed.

bag packer.

ride or die-r.

laugher.

Who are you?

kid holding a bunch of orange straws.
Humanity

well hello there, back from retreat.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I went on a four-day retreat by myself to a cabin in the woods with no running water or indoor plumbing. I kept myself warm with a woodstove, and at night it was five degrees. I hauled water from the house up the road to make my tea and coffee. I read at least four entire books. I did use my phone, no lie, but not really, at the same time. And I brought a puzzle, and worked on it. There was a sofa and a bed in a loft, and I snuggled right down into what in fact is one of my dreams, unhurried silence. I confess I didn’t wear my hearing aid all the time. The resulting pressure-free life was pretty good. By day four I was well and done with outhouse-life, but until then I could really do it just fine. The cold was invigorating, and felt friendly. The view from the outhouse seat was uninterrupted trees. (no door) And it was a retreat cabin owned by a Quaker organization so it was CHEAP. It is not everyone’s idea of retreat, but it hit all my spots.

There’s a lot to say about it. and someday I will. but I started writing morning pages while I was there, three pages every day, emptying out the vessel onto paper, and i’ve kept it up. today my head is full of cotton balls and so i’m having a hard time finishing, so i decided to come over here instead and it is counting, it is. It has been two full weeks. Fourteen days of writing daily. and I’m really proud of that. And it has been writing for myself, unchecked, uncensored and I’ve come to think its really healthy for my mental health, to get some of this cotton candy out of my head. I am an enormous daydreamer, absolutely swooning in the past or in a story about the trees when I should be doing taxes or writing a simple sentence. The number of times I catch myself staring off into space when I’m in the middle of writing is astonishing. ACTUALLY ASTONISHING. like, unbelievable to me, how much my brain runs off and jumps the fence.

Big revelations of the retreat:

  1. My anxiety can really ruin my life experience. And it has no bearing on actual life, unless it involves freezing to death because the fire goes out, but even then… it still needs to be addressed. I need to get a therapist.
  2. I really do think I should be reading more, and wish I could figure out how to get paid for it. Editing is a good step but so few and far between and I don’t have the time or energy to hustle for it. Plus, I barely have the time, and I need an empty house and I refuse to ask for that, as the universe will provide that soon enough.
  3. I am a part of the magic of nature, as much as a cardinal. May I do as little harm and bring as much joy. (this is my heart tattoo now.)
  4. I want to go back to school, but not an educator’s classroom, I want more training in situ for kids with special needs, which guess what? is every single one of them, some more complicated than others.

So there. I am off to see a wicked important basketball game today, at which i will shout and hoot and holler, because I’m actually crazy for basketball. Sigh. The complications of us all.

love you guys,

kate

photo of northern cardinal perched on brown tree branch
Photo by Tina Nord on Pexels.com
Humanity

trying to keep my cup small

Lovelovemotherexpletive

its easier to overflow when you start small, fyi.

wish i could teach the value of small things to other people. there has to be a crack somewhere so i can get in, so i can show this. just a sliver.

the value of small things.

realizing that as much as i love people, and i really do, i can’t handle more than two or three at a time. this is a direct reflection of my hearing loss. the insecurity is overwhelming and I feel directly the shrinking, the ways in which i try to make my own self invisible to counter the possibility of embarrassing myself, or just being lost while surrounded by people. so, i left a conference i wanted to be at today, because it was lunchtime and too much small talk. and i don’t exactly know how i feel about leaving, but i am trying to honor my small cup, and i was overwhelmed and starting to feel isolated, and i needed to leave. so i did.

i’d love to grow flowers, but i listened to a flower farmer at this farmer’s conference and I don’t think I want that. I want to make a hundred dollars in a summer from the yard, or maybe double or triple that, but I don’t want to be a farmer. i don’t have the wherewithal for it. (unless you know two or three people who could build it all for me? cuz, man, if i could start with a greenhouse and some long beds? maybe we’d be talking.) but still, just the stand by the road. that’s it. that’s all. little cups.

i’m hoping to switch things up a little this summer, maybe give me some time to grow my own garden. last year i didn’t have the time and it was a shade of sadness.

yesterday i was bemoaning my lack of writing, and lovely bob leaned over and put his arm on my shoulder and said simply, ‘you do not have the time.’ and he was right. and here i am, finding it and forgiving myself for the times when i choose a movie or a nap instead of productivity.

trying to keep it small, folks.

small things have great value.

love you much,

kate

Browsing at a TJMAXX and not buying this, but loving it?: My medicine after leaving the conference.