Humanity

The end, my friends.

i should definitely not type this.

However. Tomorrow, they all go back to school, and my work day ratchets right out to fill the space. A whiz-bang.

I’ll be fine. It also happens on a tuesday, when they spend their night at their dad’s. So i will come home to a house that is quiet and empty of all the things. except seedlings, the house is full of seedlings. And i’ve been told the farm is ready to take more of my seedlings, so there will be two locations full of seedlings in a hot minute. So much explosion of growth.

And writing. (i’m not ending it)

I’ve had a really hard time getting my writing job done. really hard. I’m so damn afraid to take a break because I fear never going back. I still owe one and a half books, so I’m tied to it some. BUT goddamn. All I feel is dread about myself, and my inability to lock it down, focus, fit it in, make it work while the kids are home, spend all my spare minutes on it, all that jazz. It is not the feeling I want flourishing right now. It hurts my head.

But what happens if I stop it? If I stop saying I am paid for my words? What then? I feel a blankness descend when I think about a life when I am not talking about it, or playing with a word or two. what the hell man. I’ve painted, and stopped. I’ve grown things and stopped. I’ve quilted and stopped. The constant has been here, this blogging crater I fall into once a week or so. What if I stop writing? Will I curl up and die on the inside? I might. I don’t have a lot of faith in my inner fortitude on this one.

Will I be more upset with myself if I don’t die? Will THAT be the real death? The ability to soldier on without the beauty of the word? The end of it all. the no-spark.

I know. Maybe you can’t follow all that. Its a mood. Like the bookstack I might never get to.

like taxes.

like taxes.

  • love you guys,
  • love love.
selective focus photo of pile of assorted title books
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com
Humanity

Who she what? January.

Cynthia Lee prompt today:

Introduce yourself.

and its time, to reintroduce myself to this new crew, here. and, happily, it can fall into list form.

  1. I am she who is a mother, to three, through and through. they consume much of my world, and i feel the skin peel off when they are not here, and the great joy that they have love in other houses, even though that is complicated and more skin peels.
  2. I am the one who compulsively defends. Compulsively. I think it is in my personality to see all the sides, the justifications, and sometimes that hurts the ones I am actually loyal to. “Who’s side are you on?” is the refrain of the hurt. I’m always on their side, though, every single time.
  3. I am one of those captured by beautiful things, and you’d be surprised at (and not) what I am caught by. Chaos, Simplicity, Complexity, Decking materials, fireplaces, typefaces, brick, deterioration, pattern, waterdroplets, owl pellets, dew.
  4. I am she who sinks deep into thought, the otherworldly, the rehash of things long done, the pitterpatter of fairy toes, the simply blanks of looking. there is a meditation in my blankness that not even i can understand.
  5. I’m of age, a weaver of my beauties, a grasp at tendrils of divine, a pull of greenlife, a beat of mothering. I cannot wait to see what comes of that.
  6. I worry. I think to prepare for the worst, and know I could not ever handle that, and know I could, too. And I am betwixt and between which one I could stomach.
  7. I am the hedonist, the seeker of pleasure, gratification and sense. Finding one to match that is proving elusive. There are so many rules I can’t understand, and stumble over. Intuition and expectation street fight in muck.
  8. I’m the eyeroller. (thank god not every call is facetime) The one who allows so much bullshit to pass without confrontation. Zero confrontation. Do not mistake my lack of confrontation for respect. It is not that. I will let you have your ego. You keep it. Tend it, love it. I don’t give a shit.
  9. I’m the one who struggles with taking care of myself beyond pleasure. I am not good at the hydration and the physical fitness. I am not. I love the donuts. I’m not on many of my lists of things to do. I am also she who works on that list, every day. I’m trying, sometimes.
  10. I am the one who loves the list, the way in which you get the small capsules to read, the bits. I wrote a story in my 20s called Bites, and I loved the format and still do, of small bits and nibbles of story, and the blanks are yours, yours to roll around in, like poetry.

love love,

me.

Woah. I am she of the up-close, too. Good lord.
Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO NINE: round things

11/9/2020

Today I want to write about round things: full circles, or partial ones, I don’t care and am not feeling particular.

  1. I think roundness is the wave of the future, cresting being a curve I can get into.
  2. I’m looking at an old plastic drink cup full of eggs, it should be on everyone’s countertop, but maybe if it were, I would stare at it less. A cup full of curve.
  3. Our faces, all of our faces have it in common, this round, a series of squashed and stretched circles, combining to our individual mashups. So much fullness just rolling around in us, of us.
  4. I have a painting in my kitchen of the stains the bottom of a glass can make. I spent a lot of time with a red wine drinker in my early days, and I am less-constantly, but still dealing with it, it was an ugly and dying time, and long, so long. But the painting is beautiful, and I keep it to acknowledge that past and deeply bow to what I have done with it. It is on the wall of beautiful things.
  5. The round mouth of a coffee cup. The joy of that first sip, better than all the rest. (thank you tina, for the soundtrack I will carry now for the day.)
  6. My Instagram can go back to my small actions for breonna taylor. My brain has reconnected and it’s a full circle everywhere. The black and indigenous communities carried biden into office (and hopefully trump out, eventually, the whiney baby!) and none of the work has been completed in the circle to make the community a nation-wide one. All Americans.
  7. I sit near two wrought-iron plant-holding objects. They are as round as can be, and have been empty and sitting in their spot for at least a year, if not two. I don’t know what to do with them except look, trace their lines with my eyes.
  8. My former mother-in-law found them somewhere. I’ve known her since I was 15 and loved her then, my favorite teacher. She has lung cancer and dementia now. I cooked for her and her husband this past six weeks of treatment and visited each week. The first time I cooked, I lost my bits and sobbed into the food. It’s a lot. It’s all a lot. I wanted her for my mom in so many ways, then i got her as family. and its a lot.
  9. There is this illusion in me that circles don’t hurt, the roundness means no piercing, no wound. The first bullets were round though, right? and the simplest things can pop a balloon. So I am pierced, and deflated and flying around the room sometimes, my wholeness radically rearranging. And there is always still laundry, which is humor, but truly sometimes, a lifeline.  A way to ‘do my job’ that never ends, and pulls me back down to purpose.
  10. Every houseplant is centered in a round. There is one in an owl’s head that is somewhat rectangular, but they are all still centered. Still. Centered.  Its all about ‘around again.’ Perhaps I am too strong with the metaphors. Bring it back, Kate. Bring it back full circle.
Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO FIVE

11/5/2020

what do you avoid?

1.I avoid turning across traffic, or difficult intersections. I’ll drive out of my way just to not have it in my life. I think I’m a genius, and a coward beyond the realm of practicality.

2. I avoid making doctor calls, beyond reason. BEYOND REASON.

3. I avoid solitary dudes on walking paths.

4. I avoid completing lists in a timely fashion, evidently the phone is something I should avoid more often. No joking around. I need to break it, I recognize it fully as an addiction and i’m staring at it next to me, as.i.type. AS I TYPE.

5. I avoid the television until after dinner, even though I am home. There is nothing there for me except baby yoda.

6. I’m wishing for a different prompt already because I find that I’m avoiding the real things I avoid. i avoid vegetables, especially leafy greens, i don’t care how good they are for me. i don’t care.

7. I avoid eye contact with people I think still have the power to hurt me. Sometimes I am really caught off guard. It might be that they begin to see me as prey.

8. I’m avoiding a real relationship, I’m terrified and acting very awkwardly with very nice people. Part of it is that i think i can have a real relationship with absolutely anyone, because I love pretty freely, and now i begin to see the harm in that, looking back. (to me)

9. I avoid notice, all the time, but, you haven’t noticed.  

(that’s just funny.)

  1. Hows this? My computer won’t let me make a ten. I’m avoiding a ten, like nobodies business and the whole gang is getting in on it?

What are you avoiding?

I’m also avoiding the news, for hours at a time, because I am not able to consume the information without great emotional upheaval. And I avoid that. Tomorrow for sure, I’m needing to turn my focus somewhere else, I need to tell you about the details I am surrounded by. I love where I am sitting, where I do my work, what I have to gaze at. I do. Its love.

-what are you avoiding?

-uwmofo

Humanity

GREENWOMAN, undercover.

I am in a spot of bother, as Toad says in Wind in the Willows, at some point. I am. I’m having to learn this whole quarantine thing all over again, as a single woman/mom, starting at week 78. all this food that I keep having to make, the weekends that I sit alone in my living room, the lonely lonely lonely. I fucking lost my shit because my kid threw a green bean at me. I almost cried. Laughing would have been way better. But I’m frazzled.

guys, I can’t handle tv anymore. its the most depressing and deeply sad thing ever. and yet, at 8 pm at night, there is nowhere else I can be, nothing I can concentrate on.

and I hate my phone. madly. and it never leaves my side. and I think I have carpal tunnel from it.

I went for a walk this morning, a short one, because I was going to do an online yoga class. its happening right now, i’m not doing it. its too much social pressure because they might see me, and i’m not fit, and they might see me.

yoga teachers are SOOO judgey.

i’m having microwave popcorn for breakfast.

I planted cucumbers this morning, and watered everything, and put the eggs out by the road for unsuspecting shoppers. Its 4 minutes before 9. did I mention that I took a walk? before 6 am? because I need to make this day longer?

I read an excellent book. And herein lies the GreenMan reference. And I’m not sure I have the werewithal to write it up with the sincerity it deserves.

Lanny, by Max Porter. Lanny is the little boy of an artist’s green dream. (I say). Weirdly charming, full of the world of mystery, magic and growth. witness to the beauty of the world. curious. birds eggs, northern lights, bowers, toad stools, charcoal smudges. illuminated.

and its about him. and you have to read to the end, because of what you hold dear, you have to.

as a friend said, notice what you value, and love that you love that. be consoled.

I love it too.

sigh. more hours to fill now.

-hang tight.

uwmf

Love on a Walk Unwifedmotherexpletive