Tag: writing

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

flibbity. or, finding the beauty in the mundane.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

today is another day to miss and mourn my lively senses and their formerly rich role in my life. perhaps.

I’ll still wave my hope flag in the world despite all that is happening and the ways in which the bad guys seem to win all the time. bigger guns, fat wallets, less compassion and zero empathy. fuck ’em all and dig your little garden. or bunker, what have you.

why haven’t the mega-rich all been set on fire?

It is not my hope that they get set on fire, but that I regain my sense of wonder, my ability to find the sparkles amongst the drudgery.

I’ve got these free hours and i’m trying to take care of all the little buggers, the paperwork the health insurance people want, the bill from the eye appointment, the slowdown on paying off the credit card, these small little important things. but i have the time and finally, the will, to pigeonhole the papers. i’m hoping to be able to clean off my kitchen table entirely sometime this week, and the paper piles may be the end of me.

its too soon to garden and i’m craving it. i just keep telling myself its too soon, and i’m spitting at myself. at the farm i am seeding hundreds upon hundreds of babies. kale and choy and many many rainbow chard. it is beautiful in there. but at home? i must wait. sigh.

this is just me, trying to write more, and not all drama-like. the mundane probably has beauty in it too, right?

right?

the beauty of the paper pile? the majesty of the bills?

-lovelove you,

me.

trays of joi choi seedlings just barely out of the dirt.
Humanity

Hoard and Cave

Lovelovemotherexpletive

It used to be so much easier to write. I feel that truth. My days had more blank space and my mind was not as full of the minutiae of the day to day. the laundry is now and will forever be there, but somehow, even with young ones, i was able to throw down words in a way that felt cathartic, and creative somehow.

yellow duckies in line on a concrete floor
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

now i have more consciousness about who is reading, more private children, (and they can read), more ego, i guess, in terms of not wanting to embarass myself or anyone else. i can get really tired of people thinking i’m odd. i’m only as odd as the next guy. and i’m not talking about the naked guy at the beach. It gets old, and being embarassed is not that good a feeling, it seems to ride side-saddle to shame.

i’m in the winter of a farm life, treasuring the time i have now that the ground is frozen, spending hours and hours at home, reading, gazing at the fire, eating too much, worrying about the money that is not coming in, the weight that is coming back, knowing how close spring is, and the return of the too much, all the while still awaiting a real snow. I should have already started the eucalyptus seeds but i’m feeling stubborn, and i want my cave-in to be complete, whole. Me in a blanket fort for days. Coffee and cookies and potato-cheese products delivered at will. That’s all. And money, money would be good too. but, just stacks. I think i could stuff a pillowcase just fine. Or, maybe not, but i could certainly use it as a coaster for my coffee mug.

Hoard, and Cave.

Thats where I’m at, friends. Happy January.

love love,

me.

*I’m a branch swinging wildly in the wind. I’m just hoping I stay attached, or that the crash is not devastating.

Humanity

Couple things.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m not a fan of these months of melancholy and memory. I know I’ve said it before, but they are hard hard, and this weekend was a doozy, mixed in with some whizbang sex and more tears than I thought I could shed while still being silent.

  1. I’m going to be fifty in June. Not really a big thing, in reality, and i’m happy to be alive and aging. But my mom is 78 and just recovering from a surgery and not feeling well and the combination is bringing mortality and life choices to a much larger screen near you.
    The choices I’ve made leave me entering my fifties working at a job which pays a fairly low hourly wage for very demanding work. I love it, but also dream of an actually fulfilling paycheck. but i really do love it. so what to do.
  2. I’m noticing that my ability to be teased is REALLY low. My eldest is home from college for two days now and he’s broken my spirit twice already. I know that he is surrounded only by peers there and forgets social niceties, but my god, the burn is real. I’m close to the veil.
  3. I can see so clearly the sins of others. (and by sins i mean human flaws, people, human flaws) but I know that I have so many of my own. Why am i so competitive in situations where there is no game at all? My ex has a lot of loose money, and I do not. I spent at least two weeks wildly obsessing about the expense of insuring another new driver, when the other parent had just assumed he would be doing it. miscommunication? assumptions? either way, the experience of the two weeks trying to ‘figure it out’ and failing? all mine. not my best time. In no dream can I afford to insure another car and a teenaged boy driver. In no dream. And it crushed me and I was flat.
  4. Its also become more scary to come and write here because I haven’t been doing it, and that builds on itself, so I am here today to try and cut it off at the knees. (if you know me, please tell me to keep writing, here, because my god, i’m getting scared of life without it. what do i have if i have no creative outlet? what.)
  5. The number of times I’ve said, ‘i’ll figure it out’ this week has been too many. I never made a list so I’m guessing I’m totally fucked. I don’t know what I’m figuring out anymore. I’ll probably keep the house, (of course i will, i’m just kidding) and I’ve got wood if I get chilly, so .. I’m guessing some stuff has been figured out. as for the rest of it? we’ll see….
    At least one of the things is the application of the sixteen year old to be a driver. And that rests in the hands of the folks at the DMV. bless them. And that fifteen year old redhead white boy just got his hair done into cornrows. There is much to discuss. Beautifully done, but still.
  6. I think five is good, but here I am at six. Half dozen. So, I love you, I love spilling some of my guts to you. I hope you are warm and have the lights you need to see in the darkness.

love love,

kate