Tag: writing

Humanity

Sunday, I slept til 8:30 am, a miracle.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Sleep.

a miracle. my head is a little foggy, but there is coffee nearby, and a kid with a tiny tv in her lap. the table is cluttered again, as is regular, and there is a christmas tree bowling set-up, an empty water bottle on its side and an unattached cord, a wide fat white candle, two empty glasses and a box of magic cards. every chair has something on it. a scarf, a stolen coat, a gifted denim shirt, and a pretty brown bag that used to have dumplings in it. it is quite lovely really, that bag, especially for a bag that is explicitly for ‘take away’. i love it when the mundane are treated with craft and meaning.

i’m not sure what i came here to write about today, just know that i needed to. i’ve finished a book lately, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and it was wildly familiar, while being utterly separate from any experience I’ve ever had. Maybe as a former sidecar to an alcoholic, I recognize it? Maybe its my dream of escape returning, that young mother’s delusional dream? The main character willfully and determinedly tries to drug herself into sleep for a year, in the sincere hopes that when the sleep is done, there will be clarity, blueberries at the end of the rainbow and such. The names of the pills were mostly foreign to me, but I sure do know that my alarm bells will ring if anyone ever mentions any of them to me. but the dream of somehow waking up? a true deep waking up? oh yes. I feel that dream, have lived that one.

maybe that’s what sleeping is all about, for me. the hope for the waking up well-rested, the clarity of mind and purpose. the appreciation of the coffee and the clutter with an uncluttered mind.

and then again, maybe sleeping is just about sleeping. resting. breaking the mind from its yoke.

I guess thats what i came here for, to talk miracles, and waking up, and sleeping. I’m not going to lie, I’m not sure what you’ll make of it. but i’m here for it, still a little bit groggy, because the wakeup was unclear. Definitely cluttered. Its a beginning, and there is alot more. Dare I mention the yoke of ‘woke’? HAAAAA. i dared, and it felt awful, and I’m sorry. But my grimace is heading towards light-hearted on that one, sort of. ugh. sorry.

what’re your daily miracles? How do you wake up in the morning? What is your sleep like? what are the waking dreams?

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

img_4577
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.