Tag: repetition

Humanity

I love us.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Its spring and I’ve started to want to rake things. I just volunteered to clean the duck pen out on a day that I don’t usually work because the weather has changed and I am in love with everything. Try and stop me.

(my farmer will pay me, don’t worry.)

I love the smell of too cold dirt, getting muddy at its edges, as it, too, feels itself.

I love the people doing the jobs, the cashiers, the bus drivers, the people who’s real lives are outside of the work they do, but they’re showing up. showing up and showing up. keeping the world on its feet.

I love the people who say what they do as their identity. How incredible. God bless ’em, showing up and showing up. artists, farmers, healers, plumbers, keeping the world in water and wisdom, maybe even beauty if we get lucky. we so often do.

I love that so many humans have pets. come on and love a strange little beastie, come on. I love Bella the cat and Eddie the dog and the ten little wee dinosaur birds that are chirping in the next room. I also love the nearly 1500 big dinosaur birds that I get to feed each week. Them’s a lotta bird.

I love all the kids, all of them, with all of the learning they still have to do, and all they have to teach us as they do. (especial love today to trans kids and the kids without a box. holding them to the deepest depth of my ability. how incredibly brave they are to make something new.)

I love watching kids grow. I love watching spring hit this part of the earth. Yellow has begun to arrive and I am captured.

I love the candy, oh man, I do. too much. I could fill notebooks on the days when candy has gotten me through. My teeth are sad, sometimes, and probably my internal organs, but my god, I love it, and the relationship we have.

I love good parents and the ones who love their kids. I love all of us. the hard work we do for them. the way we love them long after they leave the house we first met them in. forever and a day.

I love the weirdos. I do. The truth is, everyone is a little bit weird. so, guess what?

I LOVE US!!

(This message brought to you by the sun, and the dirt and the outside.)

Humanity

I’m good at…

Lovelovemotherexpletive

What are you good at?

In my mind this week, I’ve been writing a whole post on what I’m bad at, because I’m awful at so many things. Like breakups, and shame. So bad at them, and also, the math. But I need to switch it, don’t I? Can I live like that?

I’m good at looking at things and appreciating them. the shape, the line, the light. The beauty in the minute, the large, the fantastical and the mundane.

Sometimes I am good at capturing it in type.

I’m good at being with kids, making them feel loved. I’m good at making brownies, from a box, but good at it, still.

I’m way fantastic at self-deprecation, which needs work, surely.

I’m good at making clutter, and tidying it, and letting go of things. I’m good at staring quietly off into the corner, good at making the most of a pregnant pause.

I was good at being pregnant. Feeling my rotund self amidst the madness of the rest of it.

I am good at color, filling the house with the things of whatever the season, color beyond belief. The circus-ing of things.

I am good, mostly. Though it makes my eyes well up, I think it is true. I try, I try to be right with the world, this green and blue breathing thing, full of creatures.

I am good at reading c.s. lewis, and good at ignoring the bits I don’t like.

I’m good at being stubborn. Oh yes. Another problematic one, but still, so good.

I’m good at making baked ziti. And collecting santas.

I’m good at brewing nice coffee. I’m good at growing things, tending things, nourishing things.

I’m good at piling on blankets, and wood, and sweaters. I’m good at feeding the dog, the cat and soon, the baby chicks.

I’m good at seeming to lose control and reining it back in. reeling sometimes, in all the ways, another thing I am good at.

I’m getting better at saying no. the opportunities to practice coming more often lately.

I’m good at being cozy. I’m good at needing so little, despite the ‘so much’ around me.

I’m good at dreaming. I’m good at making do.  

A good ten minutes of freewriting, that’s all that was. Thank you Maddie and Pippa. We all should do a little focused action on what we are good at. We . ARE. GOOD.

-lovelove

Despite our best plans…
Humanity

Silver or gold. A prompt.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I wrote this in twelve minutes, you try.

Silver or gold? Is it a question, or a statement?

What do you think? Is it the wealth of the boat ladies down by the shore, you’d expect gold but it’s the class, the class of the plain silver, the ‘I’m so wealthy and have been for so long, that I don’t need to do anything ornate. I’m a New England Smith for goodness sakes.’ the gold is for the Italians, the Jews, the flash.

Silver or gold? The friendships, the new ones, the old ones? I don’t know which is which, I think I probably have some of the new England boat lady in me, although I’m sure they’d dispute me, but heavily mixed with the chicken shit and mud of the maine dairy farmer, and my friendships range but none are pure. None.

Silver or gold? On the tree, a mix of both. It’s the sparkle for me, the way in which the light catches and is reflected and yet also stays in place, static and kinetic.

My kids sparkle.the dog does not. He’s a solid peace of lead. Lovely for what you need, but leaden. Don’t put your tongue on him.

Silver or gold? Both. A slurry, that molten mercurial slither. Harry potter on audio. A night alone to make a fire and look at a tree and watch truly terrible but pretty movies.

Silver or gold? snowflakes hang around the kitchen . I think they are the evergreens, despite their whiteness. Did she just call snowflakes the evergreens, despite all evidence to the absolute contrariness of that sentence? Absolutely. (third person self-referencing just temporary, i swear)

Silver or gold? The singing snowman puts them together, no ‘or’, but an ‘and’. Both, inclusive.

Silver or gold? Maude is in here somewhere? The slurry perhaps. The mixing of metals and the melt into a new form.

The visiting room at the facility, the ways in which the lovers of the newcomers cling to their patients, not knowing anything but relief that the crisis is past, that they have survived it, unlike all the people who were not here. Who didn’t make it, who didn’t get found in time.

Silver and gold? The earrings that dangle in the ears of women, the bells, the come see me, the decoration at the heart of womanhood. What is it to refuse them? to not have silver or gold, anywhere, just flesh and fabric covering bones and blood. Nothing more.

Silver or gold? Working? Plaid shirts and Vermont in mind. Mountains and old guys in pickup trucks. Which one is that?

Hey there. Do a prompt. See what you get.

love you, do.

-kate

person holding gold and silver round coins
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com
Humanity

five minutes, the first.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m struggling lately, with grief, loneliness, the feeling that I’m not doing enough, that things are too busy, too slow, that my thoughts and feelings are not what I am proud of. I’m having flashes of bitterness, and want everyone to know it, so I feel less of a sham and a liar. I can tell you to find the beauty out there, but if I’m all pestilence and shame, who am i?

so yes, this is extreme but I’ve given myself the task of five minutes to write and post it. why? i can’t find the reason in it, myself, but I’m going to force it, force the five-minute higglepiggle of words and hope that I find something in it to truly put my attention on.

believe it or not, it’s only been a little under two minutes and my fingers can fly.

I’ll go back before posting and fix the typos. (in coming back, now, i figure to explain: i can do absolutely anything for five minutes, so maybe this will help me get my fingers back in order…I’m not saying I’ll produce anything more exciting than limp lettuce, but it’ll be OUT of me, and that is a good place for some of this sh*t to be…)

but this is what i’m looking at: my slippers, looking prim and pointing themselves at the fire. maybe i should make one. its rapidly getting dark, and while i can still see the gold leaves on the tree outside the window, it is technically night and i won’t leave the house again.

the kids are away, so the candy wrappers next to my slippers are mine. there is no excuse. no one to roll my eyes at for their slovenly ways. who raised them anyhow? who raised me? have i been raised, in truth? have i ?

there’s a small soccer ball under the table and I’m thinking about ted lasso, and how it’s so sweet to watch what might be an actually good character, on tv, like, as something we should emulate or something, rather than a Kardashian or her fucking insane ex-husband.

why we feed the bad and angry wolves rather than the sweet curled up ones? i will never know.

such as it is,

love love,

kate

white chick on cabbage
And this photo? Why not? Photo by Toni Cuenca on Pexels.com
Humanity

self-effacing humor.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

oh god, i am so good at it. making less of myself, in a very funny way. always so funny. if there weren’t funny there, you might get concerned, and god knows, i don’t want any attention.

i was pawing through the junk corner to find a notebook to make a grocery list. It used to be just a junk drawer, but things have spread.

I found one, and in flipping to an empty page, i found some old writings, from back when i had time and a brain that was fluid and beautiful. there is no date but subject matter declares it to be several years old.

i’m going to quote from my own self here, there is no way to humbly quote oneself, so give me a pass today. context: i must’ve had an ugly/tense exchange with the ex via text, and was having the ugly/tense reaction privately in ink. It is not funny, as private doesn’t need that bit, does it? but I do love the imagery. Here it is:

Damnit. the time flows already, that wine river of regret. these things i want to be finished with, the list goes on and murders me firsthand with little to no hesitation.

the ex of course, i want to be done, to have no time in which i still have to cajole and negotiate with his ego.

to be done with doubt, to be done and finished and finally grown up, to be finished. my impatience is legion, doubts sway my progress and i fold and fold and fold in, like origami layered, no swan but a tank of layers, a solid block of onion skin. seems so doubt enters when i am self-effacing.

self-effacing. what a term. a thinning one does to oneself and how transparent will i allow myself to become as i go?

me.

—

Right? it seems an opposition, this tank of folding and self-effacing humor, but it isn’t… its just another game of hiding. Ooh boy, yes.