Tag: writing

Humanity

so much

Lovelovemotherexpletive

bob made it through an open heart episode. A surgery in which he was laid bare. Incredible things. He lived here for a month, poor babe. My former father in law died. I spent a lot of time with that family as they moved through the days. I had to stop doing that. My friend told me that i wasn’t grounded because i was a faerie, and what about that. and i went to quaker meeting today because my son led me back. there is earth and spirit everywhere you look.

i’ve been thinking in posts and wounding myself because i don’t write anymore, so here i am, while ducking another responsibility. I don’t know, maybe i’ll just never figure it all out. its birthday/holiday/too much time right now and i’m buckling in and down and hiding behind bob’s right arm pretty regularly. just get through it. dirt and air.

its very windy. i have brussels sprouts waiting for me in the fridge. i am making hamburger helper tonight, poor children. (your mother needs comfort food.) i’ve stopped eating bags and bags of candy and it is so good, but i am full of craven craves. Also, the whole heart thing means a whole never ever approach to cigarettes, which are a very bad but enjoyable reprieve from clean air and responsibility.

things are stirred up, dust and ash, and I’m glancing out, with my hair in Viking braids, either waiting to kill something, or maybe just yell into the wind. but there is blood in my mouth, and i don’t know what that means.

see? so much.

love you, and have missed you.

kate

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Humanity

its sunday. books and bob.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

i’m home. all of my kids are here. my man bob is here, and he is recovering. (Everything went as expected and the crisis is just now losing its bubbling simmer.) There is a fire going and i have two days off in a row, plus more to come. recovery will be slow, and then leap, and then slow again. i’m glad the week of hospital is over, and he and i will have the opportunity to out-stubborn each other over and over again in the next weeks. how many times per hour do you think i can ask what his pain level is? or offer him drinks? food? we will see. i’m overly skilled at obsequiousness.

but also this:

i’ve had more time off in the past week than i usually do, because i have asked for it, and needed it, sometimes to go to the ICU, sometimes to get gift cards for nurses, and I think i’ve fallen into the woolf-y world of recognizing how much my creative brain needs more space. just having some mornings to myself this week has sent me to books, to writing. just two mornings, and the space – the space has been full, and my heart and anxiety fully engaged in another, but really, deeply, I have appreciated it. (only the space, not one other aspect. not one.) the ability to dither, to think, to idly spin in the kitchen.

I listened to Pride and Prejudice in my drives this past two weeks. I’ve also hit up a bunch of Agatha Christie. I listened to one audio detective type series which took place in the US, with an American protagonist, but it was read by a British reader, and the words were pronounced in British format and it made me insane. INSANE. Also, the Grass Harp. so beautiful, and a tree in a house and an escape. You’ll see. I set myself the task of fifty books this year, my fiftieth, and there is no way I will make it. But I’m still reading much more than I have been, so I’m thankful for the impulse.

and this:

One of the things on my list for my fiftieth year was a getaway for myself, and I booked it before all this stuff with Bob, and now I know how much I will need it. See? February, four days in a cabin stoking a woodstove and using an outhouse. There is electricity and a tiny kitchenette. Me and me. four days.

In some ways I do think I will come back different. less tied to my device, more settled in ways that are from my past, i’ll be so happy to see everyone when I get back. I’m moderately thrilled about it. I’ll add some more books to my list, I am sure. And I’ll bring plenty of socks and sweaters.

But that is not until February. And there is a whole lot that will happen between now and then, and I’m here for it, and glad of it.

love you guys,

me.

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.