Got that Coming Around Again Feelin’

Patti said: “I haven’t been writing much for fear of cyber-whining.”

Ohhhh Patti. I hear you.

I counted. There are TWELVE posts from the last six months in my blog’s draft folder that are almost 100 percent flushed out. But each time, when I got near the end and thought about hitting “PUBLISH” I stopped myself.

Just. Couldn’t. Do it.

There’s a lot of noise at the moment and I admit, I’d rather be hiking with the dog.

In remote British Columbia. With no cell service.

Last thing I want to do is to BE a noisemaker. Like, dude. Just SSHHHHHHHH already, OK? Right?

Feelin’ Groovy

Remember that song?

“Slow down, you move too fast. Ya got to make the mornings last…”

I have this distinct feeling that if I heard that song on the radio right now (WHAT EVEN IS A RADIO??) I might smash its transistors to bits.

I am not feelin’ groovy. In the last three years, I watched my mom die of leukemia, I effed up my knee and both ankles, and put on 25 pounds as a result of trying to regulate my depression. And that OTHER THING HAPPENED which does not need to be mentioned.

A really big side effect of being married with family– for me — is navigating to a daily realization that I still have 100 percent say in WHO I AM. Even though I have 1000 percent responsibility in taking care of kids, house, piles of crap, activities, gifts, the dog, collecting firewood, and all that other life ephemera.

So, now a dozen years into marriage, four (or seven) years into adoption and a few months into a DumpTruck presidency… I’m coming around to the realization that who I am is (and also is not) that solitary chickee who lived for leaning against the blue walls at The Cup and Saucer in the River Market and writing in a notebook.

Life piles on

We pile it on ourselves. When Colin and I lived in London — before kids — we lived in 650 square feet. Our next home? 2400 square feet.

This led rapidly downhill into the American pastime of filling up the space we had with stuff we would then have to take care of… and eventually get rid of. (Or leave in our will to our kids to dispose of).

What character is it I’m thinking of? The one carrying all of its junk on its back wherever it went? Standby while I google it…

Ah yes. The Junk Lady in “Labyrinth”.

The stuff I love becomes a distraction, my problem and misery. And how I know it — being enlightened as I am — yet how I still hang on.

And so the stuff props me up. I lean against it and it relies on me to dust it, to repair it, to just add water or ‘AA’ batteries or a tank of gas or oil or snow tires or a summer tune up or a fresh coat of paint or a fresh coat of dye, or maybe just the roots this time.

Later I’ll head to the carwash, but swing by the library on the way to drop off the borrowed DVD, and then the dump to recycle the used batteries on our Bad Batteries Bin which is overflowing. And I’ll swing by Myra’s to drop off the boxes of books the kids have outgrown and (there are quite a few) so she can move them on to another’s family heap.

Coming Around Again

By the afternoon, you know I will have gotten a lot of “stuff” done, but, yet, not a single poem written.

I have found my solution is not a linear one. I have to move slow and unevenly to change direction. I have to feel the turn of the season in the light.

And I have some kind of plan — not drawn as an outline but as woven in my spirit. Remembered feelings whispered from the past that coax me on.

The Pen

The sandy road, the bright green two-inch lizard
little light on the road

the pen that writes by itself
the mist that blows by, through itself

the gourd I drink from in my sleep
that also drinks from me

—Who taught me to know instead of not to know?
And this pen         its thought

lying on the thought of the table
a bow lying across the strings

not moving
held

— by Jean Valentine