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I am completely fried. The flames from both ends of the candle have met in the middle and there is nothing left.
Work sucks. Both works suck. I have finally reached a place where I want to have a life, not just have vacations, not just work. I want to have fun. I want to spend time with Russ. I want to spend time with Kelsea. I want to write for a living. I want to sell my pictures. I don’t want to be under anyone’s thumb. I want to travel, film, be Two For the World, and answer only to myself and a partner of my own conscious choice.
Yesterday, early in the morning, after an hour of sleep, I was standing in front of the mirror and I had a vision of myself. I have had these before, sometimes through seeing an actual person, and sometimes just in my mind’s eye; I’ll recognize that I am looking at myself a few years from the moment, and what I see is what I need to work towards. And I’ve achieved these visions. Yesterday morning’s was such a vision.
I was sitting at the edge of a hammock on a beach under the palms. My hair was longer and highlighted by the sun. I was nut-brown and slender, wearing a bikini top and a short sarong. And I was writing, which was, in this vision, my livelihood. But most importantly, I was peaceful and happy. It radiated off of this envisioned self.
It now feels like a wonderful goal.
I haven’t spoken much about my impending divorce for some time. I guess that’s good. I’ve been focused on trying to barely hold things together in my life, trying to figure out who I am, what may be in store in the future – little things like that. Actually, I thought we were all squared away in terms of Pat knowing we were getting divorced, and we have been getting along pretty well. In agreement over most things Kelsea, he makes me food from time to time, helps out a little here and there when I am in a tight time spot.
But today, he missed taking Kelsea to the orthodonist, an appointment that has been on the calendar forever, that I left work early to attend – and yes, leaving work early is a big deal, as my boss is in town and I’m on probation anyway. (And now I have to go in late because they were kind enough to reschedule her for 8:20 tomorrow.) I reminded him on the phone this morning. We discussed detailed arrangements on the phone yesterday. And after I reminded him on the phone this morning, he made plans for Kelsea’s aunt to take her for the day and he went up to play poker. I certainly don’t begrudge Kelsea time with her aunt on Spring Break. But I did get mad at him about forgetting
Perhaps I overreacted? It shouldn’t be that big a thing. But somehow it was. And I was mad and wanted to be mad. Well, apparently, since we are getting divorced, I no longer have the right to be mad at him. He apologizes and I should just accept it and be fine with it. Maybe I should. But he yells at me, and feeds me his usual line of how he’s just a screw-up and I’m perfect. Which makes it all about “poor him”. I’ve been through this same arguement for years. YEARS. This is how he reacts when he’s wrong, and I wind up telling him he’s not a screw-up and apologizing. Amazing how quickly we slip back into the old instinctive relationship patterns.
When I came home, I called him to tell him that I’d be turning the phone off, because my battery was low and I couldn’t charge up until morning. He said he was almost going to come over to have a talk with me. He’d been drinking. I told him I was not going to engage in any discussion with him when he’d been drinking. Of course, that didn’t really work, but at least he didn’t come over. He did proceed to ask me if we were ever going to be husband and wife again, to which I said “No” which hurt me, even though it’s what I want. And then he told me to file the papers, he didn’t care if I had a job or not (has he ever?) He just wants to get on with his life. I told him I’d get to it when I had time, or he could file them himself. Well, of course, he wouldn’t do that. He won’t even sort through the mail. I’ll still do it on my own timetable. But he accused me of making it all about how much money I was going to get out of it. Hmm. Right. That’s what I’m all about.
He yelled at me for a while about Kelsea and her headgear agony and how I had to fix her attitude. And then he and Kelsea talked for a while. I’m pretty sure he did what he usually does when he’s been drinking – just repeat the same things over and over.
But after I hung up, I sat on the kitchen floor and cried. I went back to that place of “how can I do this to him?” “I should have tried harder.” “If I stayed, maybe he’d stop drinking.” “If I stayed, maybe he’d get a job.” “I’m ruining his life.” “I’m hurting him. I don’t want to hurt him.” “He’s going to be lonely. He can’t be without me.” I hadn’t been back to that place for a while. It was awfully easy to slip back into though. Even though as I was driving away, he was telling me that he just had so many things on his mind to keep track of – an email he got this morning, and one other thing, and I’m thinking “I’m supposed to feel SORRY becasue you’re so busy and your brain is just so damn cluttered? Excuse me?” But I still went back to that place of being wrong in leaving him, wrong in not sticking it out, wrong in not trying harder, wrong in not just sucking it up as my lot in life. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
When I said to Kelsea that I was sorry I didn’t try harder to make it work, she said “Don’t be a newb. You did the best you could. Not everything is your fault.” She’s a good person.
It’s hard. It really is. It hurts to see how love becomes toxic – or perhaps how it always has been, and I’ve just never seen it. How I have wasted so many years trying to get someone to be happy and to love me. He does love me in his own way, but he’s never been happy. And how I feel bad about feeling bad – I feel bad about feeling like I wasted those years.
Toxic — am I? An asset — have I ever been?
Heavy sigh. But enough whining.
I feel happy.
That may not sound like much to most people, but it is huge for me.
It’s been a long time since I could say that and really mean it.
But today, that’s what I feel.
And this is despite a bout of flu-ish-ness. Thank DOC for Tamiflu. When these definitely flu-like symptoms appeared on Thursday morning, I came home to work and started taking this stuff. The results are interesting. The worst of the symptoms have been staved off – fever is practically non-existent, muscle aches, stomach stuff, headache and “general malaise” are present but tolerable – not the “I wish I were dead” flu. At the same time, I can tell that the flu is in my body. I keep picturing something from Stephen King’s “The Stand,” going on in there, good and evil battling it out in the desert of my cells.
After a luxurious night, complete with Chinese food, a viewing of Under the Tuscan Sun, and an intimate sleep, I woke at 6:00, went back to sleep until 9:00, and lay in bed for a while listening to my favorite bird and planning my day to myself. “A while” turned into almost 2 hours, and it was up and out to breakfast at Dot’s. I still felt good, all the way through breakfast, though the new book I started over the morning meal was perhaps not a good dining choice. “Charlatan” opens with a vivid description of a quack doctor’s surgical insertion of goat testicles into a human. Yum? Or not so yum? You decide.
Following breakfast, a trip to my favorite local used bookstore was in order, since it was just up the street. But upon arrival, I started feeling like the flu was about to kick my ass and didn’t want me roaming around Boulder County today. Still, I bought eight books. I swear, this is like an addiction. I’ve recently visited a few blogs of individuals who focus on books and book reviews, and they all have a list of what’s in line to be read. If I were to try such a thing, it would look like a library catalog. And yet, I cannot resist. It’s shameful. Perhaps I will add a couple of page to “Lists”: Books in Queue and (as my Mother maintained) Desiderata.
Unwilling to give in to feeling icky on a lovely day, I visited my favorite secondhand clothing store, where good sense won out over good taste and I did not buy the beautiful white lace sweater for $38. Which means I win! I saved $38! Somehow, the cost of books (albeit used) is never prohibitive, but the cost of clothes is. Perhaps that means I’m meant to lie around naked, reading. Sounds good to me.
My photographic eye was on this morning, and there must have been 100 things I wanted to capture in pictures. I only caught a few, but Monkeyeye will be offering another Weekend in Pictures come tomorrow night. I wish every road had a walking path paralell to it. I would love to walk along the roadside and take the pictures I see, but I am hesitant to lay my life on the line for the sake of art. Drivers are generally distracted and/or insane.
One of my favorite (uncaptured) images of this morning was that of a huge, fuzzy brown llama, herding twin newborn lambs down a hillside at a dead run. I did stop and took a few pictures of the sheep, but that visual was once in a lifetime, not to be repeated, and so it will live on in my memory.
This sharing of a soul with someone else is a wonderful thing, especially when that soul feels good.
While Spring officially started yesterday, today is the first day I really feel it. I can SMELL it in the air. Some of the flowering trees are starting to bloom. The willows are that yellow-green they turn when they bud. It’s wonderful. We made it through a harsh winter, harsh in so many ways.
Later — Well, the flu bug is not agreeing with me, so I spent the rest of the day cybertravelling from Bozeman to Cornwall. And I’ve started compiling a workshet of bizarre festivals to document for Two For The World.
I got up long enough to cook some catfish, and Paint Your Wagon is on TCM. It’s one of my favorite movies and I had decided in bed this morning that I’d watch the DVD – and lo and behold, here it is! The movie speaks to my wandering, wild spirit. It’s a nice thing tonight.
Yes, it was a good day.
Let me tell you this now
While the words hang in my heart
Like a wave before it vanishes on the shore.
I would rather never feel your touch
Or see your smile again
Than feed the sadness that now lives in your eyes,
Than have you forsake the world.
I want only to cause you joy.
You grieve now for a long, almost perfect love
That you feel you have killed.
Yes, do grieve.
Wander in the drab, sad, wild landscape of the heart where we only go
When forced,
Never by choice.
And when you leave, it will be to reclaim your past,
Which is not dead,
Or to stake a claim to your future
Which spreads before you.
I will be there as sun or as shadow.
Which one, you will decide.
But my heart has merged with yours
As two lovers bodies do in an embrace,
Not to be parted
Until I die in your arms
Or the wave vanishes upon the shore.
My offering has been given
To no one but you
And will not be given twice.
If it is my time to wander
In the moors of loss,
I will for you.
My feet know some familiar paths in the black landscape.
But I do not want it.
But I do want you
With me
Hands on mine, shaping dreams
To fullness.
I may not have that.
They may stay dreams.
You may roam the wasteland of pain
Until you find your way
Back to a home that is not me.
Then I will find scant comfort
In the unwelcome, familiar wind,
Longing in the moon,
Until I too have vanished on the shore,
Like a wave of words
Finished in its own time.
The largest settlement on the Caribbean island of Saba is called The Bottom. Saba offers one of the most terrifying and dangerous take-off and landing experiences of any airport in the world. Another of the island’s main settlements is called Hell’s Gate. And to top it all off, there is one road on the island, aptly named “The Road.”
I love the Caribbean. It has called to me in shimmering whispers since I was 8 years old. My first, once-in-a-lifetime trip did not occur until I was 42. On that trip, I found the “me” that had been missing for many, many years. And once-in-a-lifetime turned into as-often-as-possible.
As I’ve been thinking about my life, all these changes and new beginnings, these islands (or other islands) play a huge role in the vision I’m putting out into the universe.
Saba is a place I’ve always wanted to visit. The people are lovely. It is untouristed, because it’s hard to reach and has no wonderful beaches, casinos, or resorts. It does have great hiking, superb diving, ladies at the community center who make lace by hand, and an air of being frozen in a comfortable time. And it has a medical school, which feels kind of out of place, but there it is.
I know just where I’d stay and just what I want to see. I’d take a million pictures during the day and lay in a hammock on the edge of the Elfin Forest (yes, that’s what it’s called) and look at a million stars at night.
I just haven’t been able to get there yet.
I realized this morning that perhaps I need to appreciate the island’s irony before I am ‘invited’ to visit, which leads back to my opening paragraph.
The flight to somewhere new, somewhere you have never been, is often scary. No, not just scary – terrifying. And yes, sometimes, downright dangerous. But 9.7 times out of 10, you land on your wheels, sweaty, your heart pounding so hard you can see your shirt move, but you’ve landed. You did not plunge to your death off the cliff into the sea.
That new place is daunting, unfamiliar. But you’re there. Explore it. Or stay on the plane, which is now going nowhere for a short while, but will be going back to where you came from, making that heart-in-mouth journey pointless, and making you a total chicken. Your choice.
Get on The Road. It will take you past Hell’s Gate. It can take you to The Bottom. But from The Bottom, The Road climbs back up to vistas of the sea, and the indulgences of lush, tropical, natural beauty, making the arduous trip worth everything it may have cost you, in money and in spirit. Your soul will be richer for the journey.
The Captain used to call me his “Queen of the Caribbean.” They call Saba the “Unspoiled Queen of the Caribbean.” While I am, by no measure, unsullied, I believe this island and I will relate quite well to one another when the time comes.
I have never been a big spender in real life, but I have always had the soul of one. My dad used to show me advertisements for jewelry in the New York Times, cover the prices and ask me which one I liked best. I would invariably pick the most expensive piece, and he would be very pleased. “Ah, my little sweetie has fine tastes,” he would say, “I raised you right.”
The most expensive dress I ever bought was about $130. I got it at a vintage store perhaps 23 years ago, and it still hangs in a closet in Pat’s house. It’s a sapphire blue silk velvet evening dress from the 1940s, and looks like something you’d wear to the Oscars. I don’t think I could fit into it anymore, but it’s nice to have.
The most expensive pair of shoes I ever bought were about $175. I got them on clearance at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City on the night they lit the tree in Rockefeller Center, perhaps 15 years ago. They were Italian designer stilettos, pointy-toed and sparkling. After watching the tree lighting, I went to an Irish Pub, drank champagne, and showed them off at the bar. When I lamented that extravagance, my Dad sent me a check to pay for them, making them a gift from him, just because.
I don’t spend much at all now, except on bills, groceries, the occasional book. And orthodontia, karate lessons, and People-to-People programs, but you can’t count those.
Some things DO come with very high emotional price tags. I try very hard to understand that. Not that I don’t think it’s justified – sometimes high emotional prices are. And heaven knows I have paid one by uprooting myself from my placid, flaccid life four months ago. I’m still paying – I’m on the installment plan, I guess.
But if you make the choice to invest – in a person or a future or a dream – and then you find you’re uncomfortable with the investment, or worse yet, you don’t even recognize yourself as the person who invested because you’ve changed so much, what do you do? Cut your losses? Become a hermit? Indulge in endless self-flagellation?
One question is “Did YOU make the choice to invest, or were you just dabbling in the market, and someone else suddenly invested it all for you before you were ready, before you were sure?” Is that why coming to terms with this investment, this change, is so terribly hard? That you weren’t in control of it?
It is difficult to look inward and say, “This is who I was. This is who I am becoming. I am a work of art in progress. But these are my core elements. My true colors. Not the things my life has defined me as, but the qualities of me that have always been and always will be.” It’s sometimes hard to see those qualities (the old forest and the trees thing), and sometimes they seem to become amorphous before your very eyes, changing, moving, taking on shapes and patterns that are unfamiliar and frightening. However, you must trust that the core is still the core, despite all outward appearances to the contrary.
My calendar quote for today is “Any dream can become reality if only we believe in it enough.” Soggy platitude? Perhaps. But if you’re on the path, paying the price, by your own hand or someone else’s, believing things like that can’t hurt. Bravery, faith, change. All wrapped up in one fine, expensive package.
In my heart, I know I am preparing for a journey, though whether it is physical, emotional, spiritual, or all of the above, I do not yet know. So, back to Wikiquotes to try to stimulate some sense of place within the concept of the journey.
“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” ~ Lao Tzu
“Anything we fully do is an alone journey.” ~ Natalie Goldberg
“Go forth on your path, as it exists only through your walking.” ~ Saint Augustine (354-430)
“He who strays discovers new paths.” ~ Nils Kjær
“It’s only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.” ~ P. D. Ouspensky
“Look at the stars lighting up the sky: no one of them stays in the same place.” ~ Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD)
“The only way out is through.” ~ Geneen Roth
“The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sages steer by.” Chuang-Tzu
“Traveling is like flirting with life.” ~ Advertisement
“In the meadows of the mind no-one travels so far as he who knows not where he is going” – Oliver Cromwell
“When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels from turning in the cages of our personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,…” ~ D.H. Lawrence, Escape
“Embrace the detours.” ~ Kevin Charbonneau
“A traveller. I love his title. A traveller is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from – toward; it is the history of every one of us. It is a great art to saunter.” -Henry David Thoreau
“A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.” William Shedd
“The longest journey is the journey inwards.” Dag Hammarskjold. Markings, 1964
“What is a journey? A journey is not a trip. It’s not a vacation. It’s a process. A discovery. It’s a process of self-discovery. A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. A journey shows us not only the world, but how we fit in it. Does the person create the journey or does the journey create the person? The journey is life itself. Where will life take you?” – LV commercial
Today’s calendar quote is “Be bold in your vision and daring in your goals.”
The weekend’s was “Peace is never weak, for beneath its calmness lies great strength.”
The weekend was good. Had a lovely dinner Friday night, took myself out to breakfast on Saturday morning, had a great (albeit easy) hike on Sunday. I felt happy.
But with the morning, I wake hating the idea of coming to work, my support system in turmoil, and I’m back on the tilt-a-whirl with the psychotic monkey at the controls. I just want a little emotional consistency from day to day. I guess that is too much to ask at this juncture, so I will continue to cherish the days when I have a modicum of peace, like yesterday, and gird my loins for the rest of life as we now know it.
Yesterday, my photographic eye opened, as it sometimes does when I find a bit of internal stillness, and when that happens it is a joyous experience. The camera becomes an extension of my vision, but with the ability to focus on tiny details that are beautiful yet unacknowledged by the masses, or grand vistas that many see, but don’t stop to look at. The weekend in pictures is summated at MonkeyEye (see the link under “Images” to the right.)
Now, today, I am heads down at work, grateful that meetings have been shifted, knowing what needs to be done today and curious as to what outside factors are influencing my life in what ways – and when will I know? I just know that something is happening. It reminds me of my college days, when I would just sit on the floor in the hallway of the dorm for hours (sometimes until the wee hours), because I was waiting for something. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, I just knew I was waiting for something. And usually nothing would come, but at some point, I would know that I was done waiting. Whatever I had been waiting for, wherever it was happening, had happened, and it was okay, and I could go on to bed. It was wierd.
My longing for Anegada grows stronger daily. I need the serenity of the wide white beaches, the music of the palm fronds, the calm of the anchorage in the morning, the necessary luxury of slowing down and regrouping for the new life ahead. But it is not to be right now.
I am edgy in my bones and I don’t like it. Not one bit.
Sign observed in Phoenix: Pizza Express Psychic
Does that mean they know if you’re going to call? Or do they know what you want before you tell them?
Phoenix Cemetery: Green Acres
Most unfortunate that the song from the ‘60s show by the same name started running through my head. And why were there no tombstones? Only ground markers. Would a tombstone disrupt someone’s view?
Vengeance is mine sayeth the wife. If my situation with Pat were completely reversed, I still wouldn’t screw him over. 50/50. No one will ever owe me anything for loving them – or for stopping.
It’s lovely to hear from people in the blogosphere that they like my writing, especially since I’m getting such negative feedback from my boss on that very subject. Guess you can’t please everybody.
Why do doctors’ offices always call you at 5:00 pm to tell you that they have your biopsy results — and they are now closed, so if you want your biopsy results, you can call them in the morning? Why not just call you in the morning? Kind of sadistic, if you ask me…
My daughter crawled into bed with me at midnight the other night to tell me that she was proud of me. She said that she knew I’d made some hard choices to make my life better, and that even though not everyone agreed with those choices, I was brave enough to do it, and she loved me for it. She’s 12. Perhaps you can see how I have no words to express my feelings about that.
When Kelsea stays at the Cottage, it’s like a scene from “The Waltons” at bedtime (except with just two people). We talk to each other from our beds down the little hall – we can do so for an hour. It warms my heart.
The morning when I left for Phoenix, I had my hand on the doorknob when the coyotes started barking and yipping in the dry creekbed. I looked out the kitchen window and saw two of them, under the light of a snow sky, making their way across the grounds. They were so close I could have touched them had I gone out the kitchen door. After they passed, I followed their tracks in the fresh snow to my truck. Rather mystical.
Health Report:
MRI: Yes, I have a brain.
Blood Work: Yes, I have blood.
Colonoscopy: Yes, I have a colon.
Soul Retrieval: Apparently, my soul is intact, as there was nothing the spirits could do for me. Or else I’m beyond hope.
Stay tuned….
I’m sitting in the Phoenix Sky Whatever Airport. It’s got a great name, but it’s a terrible airport – although the burritos are good. I’ve been up since 2:00 am Phoenix time. (Phoenix is such a cool word, isn’t it? And the spelling is awesome.) It’s now 6:30 pm Phoenix time and my plane back home is delayed. Delayed. The board says “Minor Delays. Sorry Folks.” The attending airline staff have tucked their tails between their legs and run. I drove to the airport this morning in a blinding snowstorm at 3:30 am, stalled by a snowplow, to have the flight delayed 45 minutes for de-icing. I’d rather they de-ice than not. And now I want to go home. (So I can get up and do it all again in a few hours – not the Phoenix part of it, just the work part of it.)
But I’m sitting here. Having had my three (yes, three) martinis. Having had the old newspaperman from Wyoming ask me if he was too obvious in his staring occasionally at the hounds. (Yes, he was and I told him so – sigh, where is my BFM?) Listening to the guy next to me talking – at 6:30 something in the evening, about how he handled the meeting with the customer – a combination of fly-on-the-wall, PowerPoint and white board approaches, and oh, wasn’t he clever? NO. Not for me. I may have been like that once, back when I didn’t realize that the rest of my life, my future was important, and I was a New York (or name a city) Nobody’s Girl. But now I sneer inside. I disadmire the shoes of the businessman next to me. I wonder why he doesn’t call his wife at this hour, instead of gloating about a sales meeting to his colleague. (Yes, he’s married – I see the ring – and guys don’t wear traveling rings like women do.) He’s younger than me. And what does he know? What does he want? What does he have left to learn, in his opinion – or in my opinion? He’s a Sales Guy (capital letters are intentional.) He lives to make money so he can have vacations that are relatively luxurious. So he can keep up with the Joneses. (Does anyone use that phrase anymore? And who the hell are the Jonses? And how did they make so much money? A meth-lab in the big house on the hill?) He turns his back on the ombre of green to yellow of the Phoenix sunset to check his blackberry. NO.
I face the sunset, insufficient palm trees on the horizon. I touched one today, during my break, and the fronds did not make music in the wind, as they do in Jost van Dyke or Anegada or Tulum.
My favorite question to ask of strangers now, regardless of their age, is “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Some people have considered it. Most haven’t. And it takes them aback. (“I’m 61. I AM grown up. Is she suggesting that I’m not doing what I have always wanted to do??? I don’t want to look at that!!!!”) I like taking people aback. I always have. I always will.
But now, no matter who talks to who, or who stares at what, I’m sitting in the Phoenix Sky Whatever Airport, watching the sunset and wondering when my plane is going to come in. When I can go home.
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