My darling Zachariah...

The whole idea of it makes me feel like I'm comming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache or the headaches I get from reading in bad light-
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it's too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible by drinking a glass of milk in a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage as it does today,
all the dark blue speed out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It's time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I would shine.
But now when I fall on the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.




Billy Collins "The Art of Drowning"

Restlessness...

Well, okay.

I need to just say it and get it off my chest...

Monogamous relationships are difficult. Every year I get older I seem to stuggle a little bit more against the social conformity in which I was brought up. Now, here's the question, is it simply rebellion that strikes a chord in me or am I really wanting something I can't quite put my finger on?

I want to dance to the beat of primative drums, I want to swim naked in a sea of passion, I want to smell the freshness of life and death. To be touched but not wounded, to give and not be suffocated...

I want to see beyond the scope of what people present and to love imperfection with abandon.

Am I doing this right?

Okay, so, I quit my job today.

You know, lots of reasons... But I'm really thinking, "can I afford it?" Why is it that money is so damn important? I mean I tell myself that it's not and I don't need any more than I have, but am I really telling the truth? If I am, then why am I afraid I've done something wrong? So, no more movies or maybe not so much eating out, beyond that my income doesn't affect the household that much. I just get the feeling I should be contributing more...

Being a grown up is hard.

The more things change, the more they stay the same

I was thinking today about the ebb and flow of our lives. How all things change and move and grow in a physical sense, but also in a spiritual and emotional one as well. My children for instance are maturing into some of the finest people I know, but sometimes as I'm scratching their back or serving them dinner or kissing them goodnight, I see them as they have been since the time that they were born. I see a little baby wrapped up warmly against the cold. I see a todler falling over, a 5th grader in the school spelling bee... I see them all, all at once in my minds' eye.
In my daughter, I see myself. In my eyes I see my mother and her mother before her. Time is the sun around which our lives orbit and the dynamic of change is the energy that controlls it's tide. Many of my relationships have changed and grown and died in these last years, and as the change is inevitable I am comforted by the thought that everything is as it should be. I could be a better person, I could acomplish more goals, love more deeply, forgive more freely. You name it. Life just is what it is.
So why do we struggle against it? Why do we allow ourselves to be overcome and washhed away. Someday, maybe tommorrow, I will cease to exist here on this planet. The dying often times come to a place of peace and letting go, I have come to this place too. Instead of finding deppression and loss I have found a place of joy and deep beauty and grattitude.

I love my life, whatever it chooses to be, and I'm greatful it is what it is...

Thank you...
Mom, Dad, Frances, Uncle Tim, All my Grandparents, Mrs. Garbanati, Zach, Chance, Mason, Dewey, Fran, Patti, Holli, Renee, Theresa, Sue, Chelley, Susan Freberg, Richard, Mark, David and Holly Watson, my special brother James, Tom Dahlstrom, Wyane Atkinson, Don and Wanda Walding, Lee and Elsie Eyer, Kermit and Beverly Hollingsworth, Rachel and Jason and Hannah, Jane and Henry and Charles and Ernest and all the rest I don't know yet, Tim, Brenda, Greg and Jennifer and Zach and Sam, Tyron and Ronny and Sylvia, Kathy and Robert Wheeler, Nadine Armstrong, Steven Goldstien, and especially Morgan my best friend.

All of you have taught me in a pivital way just what I needed to help me become who I am at this moment, and I am greatful...

Morgan

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But, let there be spaces in your togetherness,
and let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love;
let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls...

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the Hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in eachother's shadow.



Khalil Gibran

Spackle knives, dandelions and spoons...

I was at the park the other day, it was one of those exceptionally beautiful days where the temperature and the breeze and the clarity of the air culminate into an atmosphere of contentment. It was the kind of day that makes you stop, take a deep breath, close your eyes and just... be.

So, I'm at the park enjoyong this a-typical time durring the week and I just start watching things around me. Well, more specificaly the people around me. Moms with their children, adults with puppies, teenagers laying in the grass laughing. People reading books while listening to music or just napping in the afternoon. Then my attention is grabbed by a few small children playing together, they were all probably close in age, I'm guessing sixish. You know the kids I'm talking about. Kindergarten age. The kids that are always running, jumping, swinging their arms usually all at the same time.Everything at this age is BIG, every movement. Kids at play fascinate me. Maybe it's because I had the kind of childhood that so many of us did, the kind that doesn't foster imaginative play-time. Maybe it's because I can see the socio-interaction of adults in the way that children interact with eachother when they don't think anyone is looking. Boys typically at this age are just starting to notice girls are "diiferent" and are just starting to figure out what this new information exactly means in their life. This is usually the time when boys start playing rough and pretending to blow stuff up, making lots of unusual noises instead of using their vocabulary. Girls on the other hand tend to start noticing the things around them that are "pretty", like flowers and clouds and ribbons in their hair. Girls also find it annoying, at this age, that boys don't just sit on the grass and talk instead of trying to dig or climb stuff while making uninteligable, gutteral noises. In watching these particular children there are three boys and a girl playing under a massive old gnarled tree, probably about six feet around with parts of the root system poking like veins through the soil. The shade from the tree prevents any grass from growing there so it's just dirt. This, however is perfectly fine with the boys who imediately sit down and start pushing the dirt into piles, while the girl stands on the ridge of a root looking down suspiciously at the boys.
After a few minutes of interaction with eachother I notice one of the boys. The "leader" of the group pulls from his pocket a small spackle knife. The boys, of couse, are elated each in turn wanting to hold the desired object and talking about how cool it is and what an awesome thing to happen to have in a pocket. At this point, the girl most decidedly leaves the group and plops down to hunt some clover and pick dandelions for her mother. The boys though, in a hustle of excitedand animated activity, decide that they are going to attempt to chop down the tree with the spackle knife. Cheers and affirmative grunts issue from all the boys present and this, this is what caught my attention.

How pleasing would it be to have that kind of thought process?! I mean really. Think about it! All that confidence with just enough ignorance and naivete mixed in. To be a child again. To live in a world where things like chopping down trees with spackle knives and digging to China with spoons are really possible. To have such a view of your place in the world and the faith of your mastery over every situation. To believe that you live in a world where everything is big and it's not scary.

Wow.

Happy Birthday to me

In just a few short days I will be turning 37.

All in all, I have LOVED my thirties and have been eagerly awaiting the forties. (Really, no kidding.) Today, however, I had a pang... an age pang I guess you would call it.
Today I was thrown over for a younger woman. A twenty year old, slim, fit, long haired, pre- childbirth girl. I have not as yet had this particular experience in my life, the majority of my friends being older than myself. So, it just came as such a big shock when my company was not um..."hip" enough.

So, here I sit, at my computer, getting a different view of the future of my life. Typing to an anonymous reader...

Instead of skiing in California.

Beautiful...

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face,
and show the world all the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You're gonna find, yes you will, that you're as beautiful as you feel.

Waiting at the station with a workday wind a-blowing,
I've got nothing to do but watch the passers by.
Mirrored in their faces I see frustration growing.
They don't see it showing, why do I?

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face,
and show the world all the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You're gonna find, yes you will, that you're as beautiful as you feel.

I have often asked myself the reason for the saddness.
In a world where tears are just a lullaby,
If there is any answer, maybe love can end the madness.
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try.

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face,
and show the world all the love in your heart.
Then people gonna treat you better.
You're gonna find, yes you will, that you're as beautiful as you feel.



Carole King

Here's the deal...

The more and more I think about it, the more I'm realizing it is not unhappiness I'm feeling. It's very simply boredom. I mean I love my life, really honestly. I never in my childhood imagined I could be this happy. Yet, there is a restlessness ...
I want better food, I want to read more and better books, I want more sex, you know? Am I the only one out there who feels like they're in a rut? It's not that the quality or quantity of these things in my life now is bad, it's just the same. Same ol', same ol'. For the last ten years. Seriously, maybe I could go to the Mediteranian, that would be different.
I wonder if there's a thirty-something woman there that's thinking, "Maybe I should go to America."?

I'm just bored...

Maybe I should go get something pierced...