The passage of time, so organic and so arbitrary, gave me a surprise... I looked at my tatoos and was shocked to see them. How long have those been there??

It's been seven months to the day since my last post, how funny.  Time is so funny.  Heh. I didn't plan this.  

I woke up to the second exquisite rainy morning this week, feeling as I did yesterday, that I was waking up in a cabin somewhere on the North Shore.  Languishing in bed for about five seconds I turned to the book I was nearly done reading at page 816.  I knew what was coming. I've read this book so many times that the thing is nearly in tatters which is strange because until the last few years it was a rule of mine never to read a book more than once; there are so many why waste time re-reading?  Then I got out of bed, made coffee and french toast and finished watching the travesty of translation from book into film, The Time Traveler's Wife.


Apparently I have a bone to pick.  Or something.


Both of these stories culminate in the death of a husband, each at 40ish years of age.  Death has been a strong theme this year, giving me much to consider. Being a semi-social person and not in fact a recluse who never sees other living souls, I have heard a handful of stories over the years about a person awash in a tide of deaths.  I think you have known these folks too, perhaps you are one of them, who have spoken of numerous deaths in the span of a year or less.

I have always feared this time and in the back of my mind wondered when it would be my turn.  

In my childhood there was only one, my stepfather Bill.  In my twenties it was Edyth Ann, Heather and my big orange kitty, Shelley... each death was devastating in its own unique way. Ten years later, this February, it was JayBee, though his death would show me something, maybe even a million things that just mean one thing.  I'm weary of the statements in my head that want to be said and written; if I have learned anything at all it's that I know so little.

side note: Strangers in Paradise is coming to mind, another story whose final arch involves the death of a male partner... a scene just before a plane crash when David says to Katchoo, "You must confess!" to which Katchoo replies, "I confess I love you. I confess I love the clouds in summer. I confess I love this ocean... and so many things beneath it. But all I'll miss is you... Francine."

I know, in the next couple of months that I will be taking the next fork in the road and leaving this state to go home to Illinois, back to my family.  However much I know that Minnesota remains I also know there isn't any coming back, even though I'm sure to visit.  It's not so much the place as the time I must say good bye to now.  It's the proverbial river I can't stick my foot into twice.

I came here in 1995 having aimed for Seattle, fell in love and fell in love and fell in love and became entangled and lost and lost... thank you all for that.  When I found my apartment on Grand I found a deeply needed refuge and another great love that would help me get even more lost, lost enough and sick enough to really find myself.  What seems so impossible to commit to text is a bold enough statement that perhaps it looks like I'm asking for a challenge (I'm not).

Having searched and dug in and wept and struggled and rejoiced and... there are so many threads I wish I could describe right here but I'll settle for telling you this: I was repaired, made whole again and thankful for the revelations brought by the terrible tearing.  I feel equipped with the gifts of perspective and a clear open heart.  I believe the truth about myself and I know this requires constant reflection and unerring honesty.  I have worked hard for the stripes that enable me to say this and I feel that I can say it in large part because of my teacher and friend, JayBee:

I do not fear death.  All that we are, all that we will ever be, is who we are in this moment and what we carry within us and engender between us.

I understand, for the moment, that I do not miss you because you are not gone.  I still here your giggle, still feel your breath, still see you with your pants down wiggling and laughing in the sunshine.

FYI: This is a piece of the boulder that's been living in my mouth for far too long.

Thank you JayBee for the tiniest, simplest gesture of your fingers to your lips.

Over a month ago I obligated myself to something I never had any real interest in: I said I had so much to tell you and to watch for me May 31st.

I love this blog. I love that people read what I post here. I love that people both familiar and strange comment and interact with me through this medium but sometimes I feel obligated to write in a manner that pleases and/or addresses "you." I have allowed myself to be swayed by what I think you will think and as a consequence I have chosen silence.

This behavior has choked me and done a disservice to any of you that visit here. Here and now I revoke this action. I have said this not so much for your benefit as for my own edification. I am trying to say I respect this space more than I have shown and we deserve better.

xoxo

It would be silly to think I could summarize or catch you up on all that's been happening since May 31st, let alone January, so I'm not going to try. I have reached the shore of my one year journey. I know what I want from my life. It's tempting to say that I am thoroughly surprised by my desires but this would be false. I knew when I was a teenager - I knew the day I left home at seventeen in my 1980 Chevy Malibu wagon. I have been running from it, denying it or distracting myself from it mainly because I thought I needed something else, something more. How could what I really want be so simple? How does the source of all the heartbreak and bottled grief of the last fifteen years amount to something this uncomplicated? I almost feel foolish. Almost. It's like learning the rules of perfect grammar in order to fully break them.

I realized this year that the apple of my self never fell far from my mother's way of thinking. I absorbed her mindset and got ahead of myself in many ways, made things more complicated or more fantastical than they really needed to be. My notions about starting a business are a perfect example. I thought I needed to have this big multi-million dollar concept and the millions to achieve it. As it turns out I barely need an oven and some mixing bowls.

This idea applies to every area of my life. I no longer require mementos, keepsakes or book markers. All I need, all I want, is to hold the people I love, to feel the experience of this life in my bones, on my skin, in my mind and heart. Food, shelter, love; healing, gardening, art, family.

The best thing I could have done for myself on the brink of last year's depression was to give myself time without pressure, time without obligation and the space to see the space I require. It was so tempting to want to fill this space with commitments and to forget what I set out to learn about myself.

To seal the deal I am having a massive yard sale this weekend; there won't be any panic this time. I will unburden myself of 100's of unnecessary objects that can be turned into cash flow, burn what shouldn't be read ever again and donate what isn't sold. Mostly I'm keeping my bed, sofa and kitchen table.

None of this stuff is my life. I don't have a life with my life, I don't have a relationship with a relationship, a pile of shells or a pile of agates does not replace the beauty that brought it to my palms in the first place. I have held on to absurd amounts of objects to fend off my scarcity fears: fear of being alone, fear of being hungry, fear of death, fear of inaction, fear of failure...

All that I have, all that I am, all that I will ever be is inside me now.

Sharing The Love - It's The Gift That Keeps On Giving

What I'm Learning: Against A Backdrop Of Beige Curtains

For JayBee

I've been thinking about our art night gathering. I am looking forward to the relief of expression that comes with your companionship. I've been thinking about stories I want to tell; draw out. I kind of feel like I'm getting to know myself again, remembering ideas that I've had and never followed through with. This is fantastic!

I've learned/am learning that I like to approach a drawing with an idea or story or feeling in mind, something I want to convey because it has intrinsic value. I've learned that an insecurity I've felt as an artist, until now, is that I have nothing to say in my work, let alone anything interesting. (Where did I learn to judge my ideas/myself so severely? ) I am learning that the dialogue in my head is interesting, if only to me and very much worth pursuing. I feel like a conscious co-creator with Chaos and Joy. It's beautiful to think like this, see this, us, earth.

Just a few months ago I'd have told you that this passage struck the heart of me to pieces because it reflected my own intimate thoughts so clearly; I had grown to resent and avoid my sketchbooks and journals...

At first the passage of time, marked clearly by each recorded date, gave her half-conscious pleasure, but time in a book can pass through many days in an hour and still drag at the spirit as heavily and specifically as its own confining skeleton. There is no freedom in a journal. It is an accurate record of the prisoner. Even his greatest fantasies are only fantasies of a man trapped in time. A year had passed when Evelyn set down the book, but it was someone else's year. She had not turned on the lamp of her own evening. - Jane Rule, Desert Of The Heart

Now I can tell you this:

"... of a meadow that seems as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked. I feel as if I might walk on forever, without coming to the end of it." -Kate Chopin, The Awakening

"She began to look with her own eyes: to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon opinion' when her own soul had invited her." -Kate Chopin, The Awakening


I am reacquainting myself with how to listen and observe, to engage the way I did when I made/had the time to see, i.e. when I was in art school nearly ten years ago, and my 'job' was to look and seek and learn to tell the stories, to engage with and be educated by as much as I am able, with the drama of the garden around me.

Good God this is fun!

ps
I am in love with the curtains in my bedroom. For six years I have almost totally loved my bedroom windows... but now that they are curtained in shiny coffee-with-cream and white colored floor length panels I am 100% in love, love, love. I am a textile whore, oh yeah!



*the honeybee image is from a Victoria&Albert Museum postcard set
*the blue text postcard is made by Calavaria of Portland