I have a super great old friend from college, Jen. She’s a writer (here’s her book) and a journalist. And a mom.

She lives in Des Moines and recently she acquired chickens.

She and her husband and her kids have chickens in their backyard. 

Do you ever look at your friends, when they do something cool/amazing/odd/wonderful/outrageous and think:

“Uh oh.”

Here it comes. The Existential Chicken Crisis.

The other day, my friend Deb was over and she mentioned chili or something and then she said:

“Ah I saw that article you posted on Facebook, what was it? The 10 Foods You Should  Never Eat? And I thought OH NO!! Here I thought I was doing something great, making homemade chili! But I use CANNED TOMATOES! Ah shit. They were on that list.”

See?

Uh oh. Existential Tomato Crisis.

There are times — many times — when I have wished I were a moron. Existential Chicken Crises are definitely one of them.

Oh don’t worry. It’s not a permanent feeling. It’s just passing moment when I think:

“OH wouldn’t it be so much easier if I were an idiot and didn’t notice ANYTHING at all and could just work as a waiter forever, and then come home and roll around mindlessly on my Made in China sectional, right after I put ALL of the wrappers from my fast food — include the recyclable and compostable ones — in the trash can?

Then I have  to say no to myself. My days of waiting tables and eating quesadillas at midnight — for the most part– are over. That’s fine with me.

It’s just then I have to DEAL with the new information. I have to DECIDE: am I going to be a person who hosts chickens in MY backyard, or am I going to keep buying them from the chicken factory?

Or something in between.

Once new information seeps in, it makes just living a decent life a tussle.

I don’t think it’s keeping up with the Joneses so much. It’s keeping up following our own ideology: what our family wants to be.

Existential Chicken Crisis commence.

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–
Part of the December “If Only in My Dreams” series. Thanks.

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If I were not awake before my alarm, I would have missed this delicate lavender sunrise, which isn’t all that different than any other perfect sunrise I’ve seen in the past, except that today it reminded me that being awake is the point, after all.

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Last night, when the kids were tucked sweetly in footie pajamas and in bed, I started racing through a list of things I wanted to get done before I hit the hay myself.

The list looked something like this:

• do dishes
• sort through 5 bins of summer clothes
• write blog post
• make contact with other life forms
• make sure all the kids’ school paperwork is in order for the week
• finally made a google spreadsheet of all the kids’ family-friend contact lists
• Prep for writing gig for the next day
• eat ice cream
• have sex with husband
• laundry (natch)
• go for a walk
• make friends
• find myself
• be a better person
• free the world of injustice
• join my husband on the sofa to watch “Fringe.”

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You ever get a bit of time where you feel like you are just dry out of ideas? I never seem to be out of ideas, but it seems like lately I keep hitting a wall of no.

The wall of no has quite a few people sitting on top of it, their hairy legs dangling down. They sit up there and look down at me and whenever I feel like hauling myself up and over, they eyeball me and say:

“Nope.”

My life has all kinds of odd characters in it at the moment: social workers, supervisors, assistant professors, attorneys, life coaches, tree trimmers and the like. So you just never quite know who it will be that day, sitting up there, when I look up.

The oddest person I see up there — and the most common, of course — is myself.

Usually dressed up in a big hat.

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If you ask this question,
I answer:

Wake up,
Kiss cheeks,
Move sheets up to pillows
Move aside blinds.
(Daylight must have its way).

Eat food.
Water from a tap.
Frozen bagels scorched
In that metal box.
Spread plates around the
Craigslist table.
Brush crumbs from cheeks.

Get dressed.
Move the hampers to move
The clothes, to spin the
Daily cycle of wet then
Soapy, then wet then
Wrung and wrinkled
Tossed, fluffed, with
Nubby balls.

Work.
Soft black buttons
Willing to say
Anything to my
Fingertips
If I just give
In.

Eat again.

Bury face in hair
Bury face in shoulder.

Eat again, passing
Rites and telling
Time.

Reading then
–finally
Tucking.

TV awhile
Knit maybe.
A page, then

Into the night and sleep.

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Ahhh. Today was one of those most perfect days.

I was so happy because my zen-wonderful brother-in-law/sister-in-law and their kids were visiting. They have such a nice way of arriving with their own unplanned, unhurried, not-worried manner. They are — or seem to be — just quite happy to hang out at our house and chill.

I mean, we do try to ensure their kids don’t get to over-stimulated by the small ones around here — but I find when this isthmus of my family visits, I have no active desire to plan anything too much in advance.

Yeah, we do end up doing things. Like once we all went to the beach. Another time, the big kids went to NYC for a day. Another time it was a big dinner out. But the majority of the time is just hang out, wander the house, do what you feel like doing, but don’t feel in any rush to get any of it done right at the moment.

I love this feeling. Mostly I attribute this zen-flow to my earth-mother-goddess sister-in-law Karen, who shimmies her way through life without even seeming to unsettle her core.

Or maybe it’s my brother-in-law, who travels through life at a slightly more revved up speed than Colin, but does so at a long-distance pace. He and Colin share that wonderful sort of vision of  life — swallowing the day in corn cob increments while being completely able to assess the impact of multiple linear factors on the final outcome.

All this is my way of saying — Ahhhh. What a great day. Less of plans and routine, more of family, and breathing and warm rain showers… makes my poet heart happy.

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an amazing book!

There has been a small book on my bedside table for a couple months now. I opened it once, and after that I did not touch it.

The book actually doesn’t seem to sit or even lie on the table. It seems to hover– held aloft from the earth and all its possessions from the energy of its message.

Which, of course, I cannot speak of, because I have not yet really read it.

Tonight it fell open to  the middle, to page 55, the last page of the chapter “We Have What We Need.”
Here’s what I read, without intention.

“Then the next time you lose your heart and you can’t bear to experience what you’re feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in…. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves.

“This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering — yours, mine, and that of all living beings.” -- Pema Chödrön

When I received this book, Colin looked at the cover and said: “How appropriate!” and smiled.

I had only just started taking swimming lessons, to overcome my fear of deep waters.

I bought goggles, then, so when I finally was willing to open my eyes, under water, I could see.

I could see, but my mind would leap and my breath disappear at the sight of the deep end’s floor sloping away from me.

Fear is a well-worn path– one we often know so well, we don’t realize we are careening down its rutted spine simply by feel– eyes screwed shut.

Fear is a tentacled nightmare and it grows bigger, wilder heads in the black pit of abandoned sleep.

The way legs move below the surface is beautiful and erratic. We forget our legs in a swimming pool, like we forget our weight. Like we forget our weighty attachments.

Change the way you see it and lean in.

Note: “Taking the Leap” isn’t available on Audio, but you can download the Kindle version Here!

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Yesterday in class, my student Mike had clearly lost faith.

I didn’t know why. But I could see that he was lost. I had asked the entire class to write for a page in response to the question: “Who are you in a group?” followed by “What do you fear about working in  groups?”

They didn’t have to show it to anyone. They just had to write. For a page.

But Mike wouldn’t. He just didn’t. He wrote 2 or 3 bullet points (I could see his paper), and sat with his hands folded while the other were lost in thought and writing.

What Writing Isn’t

Writing is not the solution to our problems. It is not the answer. It is not cash in our bank accounts, or even a calling. Writing is not who we are and it is not a place. Writing is not an art form.

What Writing Is

When my other students — reticent at they were — picked up their pens and started answering the questions I gave them, they answered what writing is.

Writing is pounded dirt road. It is the means. It is a periscope and a doorway.

Or rather, writing is an piece of glass on the road. You can pick it up and look through it.

The tree is still the tree. But the glass you look through changes how you see the tree.

Writing is a tool.

Today it might be a hammer. Tomorrow it might be a loud, whining drill, poking holes in everything.

Poets keep their Swiss-made hand chisels sharp, using them on hard woods and at fine angles.

Beginning writers bludgeon the paper with chain saws while wearing blindfolds. It’s no wonder they often come into class limping and whimpering. Arms tired and faces scratched and bloody.

Don’t Fear the Chainsaw

It’s no wonder Mike refused to even write around the question. A question on fear, when he was already terrified and sure of the end result.

After, Mike came to talk to me for an hour. After we talked, he wrote a full page, non-stop, in 10 minutes. I glanced at it and handed back to him without comment.

Because it wasn’t mine. It was his.

Writing is yours. It is not for the teacher or even for the audience.

Yes, we have thoughts FOR the audience when we write. Yes, in certain circumstances there are expectations and consequences.

We manifest through our tools, whether we use them or not.

Writing — whether greasy and spent on the page or dusty and capped inside the pen — exists.

And so do you.

*****

From my “For Writers, By Writers” Series

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I just stopped by this blog by one of my favorite tweeps, @ArtemisRetreats, and I realized I feel like a fake.

That’s right, I am a big, neverending puff of hot air.

My blog is supposed to be this place where I can just write from the center of me, where I can change and progress and examine the world, through the lens of my own flaws and failures and joys.

But I suck at at that. I feel overexposed and bossy and unwilling to be flat on the top of the water’s surface.

I’m pretty words, but I am just light reflecting off broken shards of someone’s busted old sideview mirror. Lying in the dirt of an old parking lot in a forgotten part of town.

I am tired of being followed. I am tired of being watched and of being climbed on and conquered like a embattled hill. I am tired of wondering who is taking notes on the drudgery of my life, and taking tally of my own score: you know. Just in case. Just in case.

Just in case St. Peter or some other angel stops by to quiz me on whether I’ve been abiding my my own principles.

God forbid I catch a breath and stop the spinning, in between attempts at being good.

Easter is coming. Time to rotate the decor.

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