Tag: joy

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

my coffee is better when it’s in a smaller cup…

Lovelovemotherexpletive

and other things i’ve noticed.

*it’s about the preciousness of it, the necessity of loving it while I have it, for it will soon be gone.

I’m going to stash a bunch of things I’ve written here, and see if the utterly disconnected can be connected, because webs webs webs you know.

  1. The golden woman child that I keep at my core, that dancing molten thing that runs my system, is she percolating, stretching out, trying to send gold out my fingertips, and I’m being sensible and wearing the correct waterproof gear?
  2. where is the wildness in me? Do I want to locate it, really? Will I go along for the ride in joy or will I hold on tight with my just-so gloves and complain about my lack of planning?
    A woman in her carriage, being bounced around, or the driver on top, recklessly bearing down the path… Please let me be the driver. I want to be the driver, gloves on, but driving wildly, on. On.
  3. Life is glorious. Maybe I should actually focus more on my distractions, that is where the joy lives.
  4. And there was so much hope, hope that we would sleep in, that things would be cancelled, although I knew it was not going to come to pass. I tried to let them down softly. At this point, there is only one who still wants to run outside in the dark, trampling snow and bringing in snowballs. I felt myself saying no to an invitation, knowing that next year she may not invite me out, might not even go out, and could feel the snow fall from the branches softly on this part of my life.
  5. I’m my own flit and scurry today, my brain and its wanderings having meshed. The definition of flighty, I suppose. Far from flaky, though, my layers are thick and spangled throughout with scarlet and deepest midnight blue, with the occasional birch bark interlude.
  6. Oh good lord. Don’t I hang on? Drag my dolls through the dirt like so much appalacian storytelling?  I can’t even say anything here. Pulling along behind me all my old stories, the exes now that I am a grown woman, the hurts and slings and arrows, all piled up on that dirty little rag doll.
    I wonder if she’s some inner landscape I have been avoiding? The ways in which she changes and ages, the things that finally fall off of her. If anything does. She appears more worn down than amputated.
    Frazzled, ragged, worn. The words I’m using for my oldest cares. The ones I don’t investigate because they might feel fresh if I should pick them up and dust them off. And I’m not of an age to play with dolls anymore.
    I wonder how she’s tied to me. If there’s a cord cutting that is possible for imaginary doll friends who carry all the old cares, the old hurts and sorrows. And if there is, would she become something I mourn, once I cut her loose?

And there you have it. Some of it. Bits and bites and I’m just curating at this point, making my little cups of strong coffee, cherished.

-kate

Humanity

summer lists and tips

Lovelovemotherexpletive

like the boat my father-in-law lost in the harbor, she tips, and leans, and slowly sinks. the heat, my friends, the heat, and she’s only half way done.

In my fiftieth year, I set myself some goals, which is a thing I am wishy washy about, being as they are, something of a new year’s resolution, bound for sinking.

but with the joy of a number like fifty, there is something so satisfying in the attempt. I would like to have fifty beach visits this year, and fifty books. I am small-wishing, a possibly achievable goal, and one which I will really enjoy attempting.

books, as you know, are harder to read when your mind has shifted to the quick and tempestuous nature of the phone. the ability to pay attention has weakened, and i want it back. At work at the farm, I have to listen while I seed, or drive, so there is that change to my life of reading.

I am currently listening to Jane Eyre. and c’mon. there is so much that I have forgotten and my relationship with Mr. Rochester is so deeply changed. What a goddamned scoundrel. I want to rush to grab Jane and take her away from the living RedFlag.

And I listened to the Grass Harp last month, and man, I was surprised by moments of deep love for some of those characters. And the treehouse and the desire to escape to one. and love, what does it mean to love, and to love hard, the tiniest of things. Oh my laws.

I’ve been to the beach seven times this month, and that is seven times more than I went last summer, which is part of my deeply needed change taking place. There is, there, a way to grab back your own soul from what buildings your body builds around it. I’ve lost track of how many staircases there are in my way these days, and I need to get back to the simple shoreline of my self.

Town beach, Westport,MA.

I’m here. There are a few things I am failing at, and I’ve got no choice but to look at them. And that is tough and very unliked. But there are so many more things that I am swinging right through. And today I will cut some flowers from my garden. I’m taking my dirty feet out there as soon as I’m done here, and I will be astonished, and so will my kitchen table.

i love you guys out there in the world, because you read my words, and i feel in company, and thats pretty damn valuable to me.

and while the boat may drift, she is not counted out just yet.

  • me.
Humanity

A doozy. And a birthday. And heat.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

1. I was outside watering my garden and a young buck came strolling through. I called out to him as he came close, asking if he saw me, checking in to see if he was alright, thinking, I think, that I’d go get him a carrot. He was close enough that i could see the fuzz on his antlers and count the elk spots on his flank. When I called to him, he just looked at me for a minute and then moved along. No beef.w

He came through near to the chickens, and then my dog noticed him and lunged towards him and he ran off through the bushes. There was no real emergency, my dog is a member of the cowardly lion crew.

2. I turned fifty. My lovely man got me the gift of my best friend for the week, and i took all those days off. It was a real joy bomb and I’ll take it, again and again.

3. I’m wearing booty shorts, at my daughter’s painfully awful softball game because it is in the 90s and humid and if I could lie down until the fall, I would. Welcome to my booty.

4. i will write more. I got myself a little bitty keyboard that sits on my lap so i can type onto my phone. I’m using it now. I’m a tech-genius and now I can write anywhere I want to, pen or no pen.

See my cute keyboard? And my barely theres?

5. 50. It might be time to get a job that can sustain me and the kids. I’m going to have to sell the house, and the more I say it, and share it aloud, the more okay I’m going to be with it. There is time still to get along with it. But it must and will be done.

6. I’m very stubborn. Very. Very. Very. It is very hard for me to handle number 5 and I rail against it. So small and demeaning, and it activates my stubborn nature, and none of this is helpful or practical or rational. Digging in for the sake of digging in is idiotic.

7. I’m 50 now. I should grow the fuck up. And write more. I hate feeling sheepish about coming here. That’s utterly ridiculous.

Love you though. Do.

-me.

Humanity

Not sure at all. a list of course.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m about three skin layers away from hysteria. And they are transparently thin sometimes.

And I’m back to smoking, and there is, in the addiction, the belief that if I could just go outside and have a minute to myself, everything would re-set itself, and I’d be fine, it would ease my mind somehow. and it’s a lie, every time, it’s a lie. I’m sitting here with minutes to myself right now, inside, and at the typer, and I am not escaped, and I am not even needing escape. It’s a trick of the mind, and I resent the bastards who’ve encouraged the ‘on the road’ shit that tells me I need to wander in order to find. Without and within, you know what I’m saying? I’m not a badass because I smoke, I am a craven addict.

My boys are both teaching themselves to play guitar. There is much to say about that. pride and cringes and whatnot.

Tissue paper thin. My eleven year old daughter suddenly resents me. It is a hard change to swallow, no matter how well I can identify and depersonalize.

I just planted the last of the dahlias. Saving something over the winter to plant again and have hopes for, is possibly my pride moment of the year, aside from the guitar thing and the fact that my daughter is a flaming badass.

I’m trying to get my ducks all lined up to lower some of my expenses this year. Everything takes time, especially when you add in my fearful procrastination. I had to make two cold calls to gather appointments this morning, and it made me unable to go in to my most part time job. Too many things.

The nerves and anxieties of having to ask a stranger for help? An appointment? When that is literally their job, to field these calls? And still, I am crippled? Why am I still 11 years old and of the middle school innards?

These steps. Get the trampoline listed on the giveaway page. Wait for someone to come and get it. They cancel. List it again. Finally goes, to become a chicken run for someone else. Heavens to Betsy.

Find policy. Wait three weeks to gather the nerves to call what I actually know will be a good resource. Wtf.

I had to wait for my tax return to fix the leaking upstairs bathtub. So, had to first do taxes, then get quote, then bleed from the eyes in horror and refuse to use said bathroom until I got another quote. Got refund. Then called friend of friend, young young young and he did it for 150. All done. No ceiling teardown, no mold remediation and suddenly I am at two working bathrooms and I didn’t even have to do my damn taxes for anything afterall. Which of course, is a lie. Hello school systems! Hello working highway departments! Hello bridge repair! I love you, of course you can have my taxes! Thank you for your service!!

Call the garage that will handle the car once its towed. Mother of god, I am ridiculous. Does anyone specifically pray to mary? I always found that easier, but felt like I was sneaking around or being a cheat somehow or that maybe she wasn’t a real choice, and that, in the face of my wavering beliefs in anything other than the big dad figure in the sky. and my less wavery belief that we all get what we dream of in the end anyhow, as long as we try not to do harm. I’m extremely lucky to have had the dad I did. Even with his questionable rage practices. As a parent now, I am less confused by fits of rage.

All these multiple step processes and they’ve been with me for weeks or months and yes, I know the ‘break it into baby step’ methods but hell gods, that only works if you can take steps at all. I’ve got to go register my kid for a soccer camp in the summer. This, she will resent me for also, but at least i will cut down on her screen time for one whole week while i am incessantly working. sigh. all hail summer.

love you guys. hope to get out the writing bugs more often…

me.

*The fact that now I have to wait for a call back is breaking me. I’ll have a whole ‘nother breakdown when it arrives. This is probably unsupportable materials.

Putting the treasure back in the pizza. Yes.