two days ago, it was september 1st. i was married on september 1st, 1996. two days ago would have been my 17th wedding anniversary.
i wouldn't go back. my ex is happier where he is, and so am i, but still... there's that wistful part of me that can't help thinking about hearth and home and family, things that are scarce for me at this point in my life. that life i had was as close as i've gotten so far.
cuz i totally look like this
the concept of home is still problematic. i've been turning over options. i don't make enough at present to afford rent. sad but true. i don't. i'm looking for better work, but nothing so far.
that means that i have to find a way to make work the shit i got. thousand trails has a campground near here. it's actually occurred to me that it might be kinda fun to fix up my trailer and live out of a campground for a while. $450 something buys you a year-long camping pass in one of their "zones". you can stay at any one place for 14 days before you have to move for a week, and then you can go back again. there's one campground on the outskirts of morgan hill and another one about an hour away in paicines. anyway, that's just the working theory so far.
of course, my whatever and i are still doing well, and we've talked about what's going to happen. we don't have plans for anything to change, but of course that's no guarantee of anything.
this shit is EXACTLY why people have nightmares about these guys
completely pointless non-sequitr clown ad for, of course, whiskey.
because utter and absolute inebriation is perhaps the only environment in which a grown man can approach the mindset necessary to be capable of dressing like a clown...
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tired today. feeling like i'm fighting something AGAIN. could not get my energy going yesterday, and it feels like today is worse.
we were supposed to go fishing today, but everybody in the house is as tired as i am. my whatever has his son over, and his grandson, and everybody is tense. i think it's because my whatever can't stand to have people in his house for very long. it's weird how he's comfortable around me, frankly.
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my whatever's son, jesse, just said:
"a twinkie is one ingredient away from being plastic, and yet they're sinfully delicious when fried".
i'm not going to ask how he knows this. i'm just going to bow to his superior twinkie knowledge.
sometimes i think, this is such a great relationship. sometimes i think, my whatever and i have something worth fighting for.
other times, i can't imagine how shit is going to work out. the landlord won't let me move in with him, and after i'm kicked out as of 01/01/2013, i won't be able to stay here anymore if he's not here.
and yet, he's lived here for the last 16 years. he's not going to move. just yesterday he opened up his kitchen window, looked out and said, "i'm so glad i can see fields when i open my window, and not another apartment".
i can't ask him to move. i can't see any way forward for us after the new year.
does anyone know who this is, really? does anyone care enough to go find out?
i do. Of course i do. it's my modus operandi, my raison d'etre... i research everything. i climb the mountain because it's there. i ask the nasty question: "who the hell is this guy and why the fuck does he dress like that?"
turns out this is buckethead, aka brian patrick carroll. "he has been voted number 8 on a list in GuitarOne magazine of the "top 20 greatest guitar shredders of all time"... proof positive that you can't judge a guitarist by his/her featureless white mask and kentucky fried chicken bucket hat. sometimes people do crazy shit because they're JUST THAT GOOD.
Of course, i can't use that excuse, but hey, it does work for some people.
things are weird, as always. i sure hope there's a meaning to what i'm going through, because if all i'm doing is just spinning my wheels and wasting my time on earth, then damn, am i ever going to have words with mama goddess when i get up to the great big sustainable-permaculture-family-farm-hippy-commune in the sky.
my whatever's son is visiting - right now he, his girlfriend and his girlfriend's daughter are all out in the pool messing around.
my daughter is out with my niece calla, grandma and grandpa. they're at gilroy gardens for the day. i didn't even bother to ask to go with them, nevermind the fact that i don't get to see my daughter for more than a few hours every two weeks...
i decided that today would be a writing day. i have indeed done some writing, though mostly just of the "reading over old stuff and rewriting" kind of writing.
i desperately need to get crackin' on the rhav story, because that's the closest to being done and it's book-length, which is the next hurdle i need to get over. sell a book, dammit ericka, sell a book!
i've been given an eviction notice. it's not the end of the world, though it felt like it at the time.
oh woe is me... *looking around for tiny violin*
of course, it ain't snowing here. it just doesn't snow here. i don't have to be out until dec 31st of this year, and really, that's a good long time to have to figure shit out, but still...
right now it just doesn't seem real. i'm sure as soon as the weather starts getting cooler, it'll start to become a whole lot more real.
in the last week and some i've been living in a bad place, emotionally and spiritually. i've struggled with jealousy, rage, loneliness, and grief. i've cried. i've struggled to feel close to anyone, and pretty much failed.
i have no idea why.
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i sat alone in the living room of my whatever's house one night. he was asleep in the bedroom, and i'd closed the door so i wouldn't wake him up.
remember how i've said i'm looking for a home i've never felt i had?
i was just absolutely despondent. i was crying hard, silently, which always strikes me as kind of pathetic, and i kept saying, to myself maybe, or maybe to mama goddess, i don't know: "please, i don't want to do this anymore, please..."
a thought came to me, clear as anything, almost like a voice in my head. i saw a picture of dorothy's ruby slippers in my mind. i've always loved how they looked in the movie, all sparkling and red. i saw them sparkling in my mind, and i could hear glinda's voice saying, "but you've ALWAYS had the power to go home..."
sparklesparklesparkle...
then dorothy asked, as she always does, "but why didn't you tell me?"
glinda answered, "you never would have believed me. you had to learn it for yourself."
it hit me, i've always had the power. even at this moment, trying to write this out, i realize i don't really understand that thought yet, but i know in my gut, i've always had the power, to make a home maybe, or to stop being involved in something that makes me feel bad?
i went onto ebay and ordered a cheap necklace with a ruby slipper pendent. i'm wearing it right now, and thinking about what it is i need to do.
clearly something big is going on, but i don't understand what. gotta go get ready for work now, and think some more about this...
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another quick thought: my whatever is just a guy, you know? he's not the devil, he's not saint anybody, he's just a guy.
a lot of what i'm feeling centers around him, and it occurs to me that he hasn't changed at all. i'm the one swirling around him like a hurricane.
i can imagine, oddly, that when the chaos, smoke and horror finally die away, he's just going to be standing there same as always. he may not be my whatever anymore, but whatever's happening now, it's not about him.
it's about me.
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can't remember when i stared this entry, but it was a few weeks back, i think. i don't know why i didn't post it at the time. i haven't worn the ruby slippers necklace again, but the thought still lingers.
just for the record, i'm feeling a lot better today. not great, but at least i'm moving forward again.
cuz everybody looks this good after suffering a huge existential crisis, right?
i'm currently on the phone with the foodstamp guys, trying to get my account straightened out. yes, i know how that sounds. i do indeed suck in that i can't get a better job that pays me enough money to survive and gives me benefits, but i've been looking and applying for years, and walmart has been the best i've been able to do so far. you have a better job you want to give me, go ahead and judge me after i've turned it down. i won't, promise. try me.
my current time on hold is 22 minutes, waiting to speak to a "phone agent". you would not believe how hard it is to find anything like a real human being to talk to.
how to put my thoughts into words?
the point of this blog right now, for me, is to open my life to the fresh air. what that means, i think, is that i want to yank off the bandaid and expose all the rotten crap i've been holding on to so that it all heals up.
maybe what i'm trying to say is, if there are parts of my life i don't want to expose to the open air and to public view, i don't want those things to be part of my life? not sure. this is going to take some thinking.
i don't mean, by the way, that i'm going to bare all aspects of my personal life. i'm not going to tell the world about my sex life, except in that i have one, and it's open and honest and hopefully as abundant as possible.
i couldn't even begin to tell you whether or not this is a valid method of doing anything. at 48, i feel like i'm allowed some room to experiment. i am certainly allowed the right to make mistakes without being judged for them.
baby steps, y'all. baby steps...
ok, finally off the phone. after all that, i was 35 minutes on hold, only to be told by the lady on the phone that my case had been closed and i need to reapply.
*sigh*
went to the website, reapplied, and now i wait for them to contact me. that will probably be in about a month.
yesterday i went to santa clara valley med center to try and get my health care coverage issues worked out. it takes me $20 in gas every time i go there, round trip, because i'm driving my huge old diesel pickup. i got there, waited in line and then was told i didn't have the right paperwork. i almost started crying right there at the front desk, but then i turned around and marched myself right out again and just drove home. no point at all in raging against that particular machine. it would be like schmacking a t-rex with a rolled-up newspaper. you're not going to get anything done any faster, and the t-rex, if it noticed you at all, would just eat you alive.
accomplishing anything productive with a government agency is like trying to build the hoover dam with handfuls of damp sand out of a beach bucket. every step forward takes forever, two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, one step back, and just when you think you've gotten something accomplished, the water surges up and washes away about half your work.
this is one of those blog entries that's taking me a few days to write...
(caveat: i'm having a really bad couple of days. take this all with a grain of salt, ok?)
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you read those cutesy sayings on facebook: you're strong, you're wonderful, you deserve to be loved...
that may be so, you may deserve to be loved but that doesn't mean you ever will be.
likewise, you might be able to convince yourself that you're strong and beautiful and wonderful, but then someone comes along and gives you the stink eye for whatever weird reason, and your doubts and insecurities rise up like the anti-christ to devour you whole.
the problem is, the whole world has an opinion on who and what you are, probably formulated on a moment's impression, and they share this opinion with you in every single interaction, every instance of body language, every time they respond to your emails or your postings on facebook or even when they're driving past you in their car and they stare too long.
the standard ego and sense of self worth is generally sufficient to the task of standing up to shallow interactions that are perceived as negative/judgmental. it's when they get closer to home, and more persistent, that the ego begins to take a beating it can't easily recover from.
should mention, my daughter lives with my ex right now. we have joint
physical and legal custody, but he has a more stable living situation, a girlfriend who lives with him who helps with the kids,
and access to better schools, as well as a better paycheck, to be
perfectly blunt. i made a really nasty decision that i frequently
regret, but she's where she should be right now and so am i, and i need
to keep reminding myself of that.
my ex lets me see my daughter only two weekends out of the month. he makes decisions about how much time he's going to let her come see me and he never questions whether or not he has the right to do this. there's nothing i can do unless i'm willing to go back to court and drag us all through the mud in front of a judge.
he didn't work for the entirety of our daughter's first 9 years. i had to carry his dead weight throughout our almost 15 years of marriage. he used me up in all possible ways, and now he tells me i'm a deadbeat, i'm lazy, i'm insane (really. he said that), and a handful of other things, all along the lines of "things are shitty for you and it's all your fault", and he's not the only one saying things like that.
sometimes it scares me, the things i can't let go of. sometimes i feel like i can't move forward because of all the crap that cements me into my past...
my daughter has said all along that she wants to live with me, and it's been really hard trying to explain to her why she needs to stay with papa. when we first separated, she was still in that little kid stage of needing to be with me, and she cried every time she had to leave.
that used to piss my ex off so much - my daughter told me he'd yell at her every time she cried. i tried explaining it to him a number of times. never took.
recently, she's been getting more independent, as she should, and she's showing that she doesn't need to be near me all the time anymore. one weekend not too long ago, she spent most of her time across the street playing and with the neighbor girl. i spent a lot of that weekend crying, missing her and yet wanting her to play with her friends.
i feel like the world is systematically stripping from me everything i love and/or care about. in my daughter's case, it's right and good that she learns how to live without me, and i'll do everything i can to encourage her to do it, and yet...
sometimes i wonder if i really belong anywhere. not talking about suicide. i'd never do that. just wondering why it feels like there's no one place in the world that will ever be mine. click on the picture for a link to a poem...
someone i know made a comment about how i'm doing things, coming right out and telling me i'm a horrible mother, and that she's seen cats that are better mothers. this person made these comments for a number of reasons, but oddly, not for the reasons you'd think. i was getting yelled at because, even though i hadn't seen my daughter for two weeks, i was expected to continue to NOT see her because i had a cold.
i don't care who you are or how secure you are, it hurts when someone says something like that. i asked her why she felt the need to be so rude, when i hadn't been rude to her. i didn't get a particularly comprehensive answer, but i didn't expect one.
it's really hard to keep your head up and keep believing you can accomplish anything significant, when most of what you hear is someone telling you how much you suck.
when i get alone and quiet, though, and i have a bit of time to let this stuff pass, i usually manage to regain my equilibrium.
thought: maybe the reason why i just can't seem to pick myself up lately is that even if mr bluebird of happiness DID desire to alight on my shoulder, he would soon be devoured by mr happy snake, who has taken up residence and is QUITE content where he is, thank you very much.
zippity doo dah, zippity yay, my oh my what a wonderful... SQUAWK!!!! ACCKKK gargle erggghhhh....
mr happy makes me peaceful. he stops and stares up at me and i swear he's giving me lovie eyes. all the snakes make feel that way. there's mr happy the ball python, stimpy the orange corn snake, and roscoe, my baby cornsnake, the one that actually belongs to me. even fatty the argentinian tegu gives me the lovie eye, and he's a cranky old dinosaur.
but honestly, it feels like that's about all the peaceful i can find in my life these days. there are good moments, of course, but they're lived in an environment of emptiness that scares me and that i'm afraid is going to eventually consume me.
yes, i am trying to get back on my antidepressants. i promise i won't do anything foolish. really.
my whatever has gone camping with his cousins up in the mountains, and i had a party in his house while he was gone. >;}~
ok, i'm not really that evil, but still.
at the moment, we've got the only internet on the property, so visiting family all congregated here in mike's living room last night. they kinda trickled in one at a time while i was making radiatore alfredo, not because i'm that hoity toity a cook, but honestly, all i had in the fridge was frozen chicken breast, a single broccoli crown, a jar of alfredo sauce, some garlic and yellow onion, and half a box of radiatore.
all sizzle and no roast? not me. i got june cleaver HANDLED!
so while my beautiful offspring was outside playing with her cousins, i was cooking slap-together dinner and listening to my workout mix on mike's really great speakers.
family started trickling in and the party just grew from there.
i passed around the three corona's we had in the fridge, and my kinda-adopted-sister-laura's fiance dave dug into his music library and shared a bunch of his tunes with me. we got video of him channeling stevie wonder. i'll try to post it later, promise, cuz there's nothin' like embarrassing the crap outa potential new fodder... um... i mean FAMILY.
long story short, we sat around mike's living room getting silly and having a really good time.
i normally do not enjoy parties, not in the least, or even company all that much. i'm very much a loner, and the effort involved in getting ready for a party, getting TO the party, and then wandering around trying to be nice to people you don't know very well... THAT'S way too much work. i always find myself edging towards the door, and once i'm out, i heave a big sigh of relief and perform the mental equivalent of loosening my tie as i climb in my car to go home and be alone and quiet again.
but this was really fun, totally spontaneous, and i made a new friend. REALLY happy laura found herself such an all-around nice guy.
i was gonna spend a lot more time coming up with cool stuff for this entry, and then i realized that the day is getting away from me and i'm WAY too much of a perfectionist. gonna go get out in the real world now, and maybe i'll post more later.
last night we "fake-camped" in the corral garden, in the firepit we "liberated" last year from the foreclosed house behind ours. damn. i shoulda got a picture. we made hotdogs, joked about the girly tablecloth, fired up the coleman lantern, got smoke in our clothes and our hair, burned a few hotdogs over the fire, and laughed. my whatever's youngest son came over and joined us outside, spent some time talking with his dad after i went to bed, then took off back to walnut creek where he lives.
insert random picture of campfire here...
last time we had a fire, there were bats swooping down to get the bugs that were drawn to the light. that was last summer, as i recall. i huddled inside my hoody and finally bolted screaming for the safety of the house.
i can face angry dogs without mussing a hair (have. frequently). i can handle and feed big ol' snakes. love snakes. i can wrangle cats and horses and kids. i never use a flashlight in the dark, and i joke that this is because i'm the meanest thing out there anyway. the dark does not scare me at all. i feel most comfy, as it happens, walking around in the silence outside at 2am. love how peaceful the world gets when everybody else is asleep.
can't handle bats. phobic. FO-BICK. the little brown bat is a mouse with wings. tiniest critter EVER. they make me run screaming. stupidest thing you ever saw. i'm ashamed. deeply.
ok, seen like this, it does look pretty creepy. they just seem really unnatural to me. photo courtesy of luke ormand. check his blog here: wild long island photography. brilliant stuff, maynard!
(turns out, upon a bit of reading, that the probable reason why there aren't any bats around this year is because they're dying in droves from a disease called "white nose syndrome". horrible fungal infection, 95% mortality rate, no known cure. much as bats scare the bejesus out of me, i have to admit they're worth their weight in gold as mosquito catchers, and i love all animals, even the creepy ones...)
worked today till 5:30pm, came home to find my whatever was entertaining his brother and his brother's girlfriend. i can't remember the last time his brother came up to see him, so this was a very cool thing. i came in, put on my grubbies, and then we chatted and shit, talked geraniums, played with snowshoes, cat of terror, laughed, etc etc, before they took off to go watch fireworks.
my whatever and i went back inside, and we both fell asleep. work kicked the crap out of me, and i actually felt kinda sick.
and that about wraps up the 4th of july for me.
morgan hill's annual 4th of july parade. i was a volunteer safety marshal last year, but i had to work this year. i AM sorry i missed this. it was really fun. we've got a really great parade. check out the photos from the morgan hill times... but i think you have to have an account on the website to view them. your call. cool pictures. i have to admit, i love living in morgan hill. first time in a really long time i've felt like i belonged to a community.
random thought: almost cried at work because 11 years ago, on the 4th of july 2001, my mom died of cancer. i purposefully did not write a big, prominent paragraph about this fact. i did not mention it first thing. i'm just telling you this so you don't think i'm weird. i don't know what today was about, but it wasn't mostly about my mom's death. i didn't have a quiet moment to myself to think about my mom's death. i may have to take some time tomorrow, call my mom's sister and have a bit of a grieving space with her.
other than that, no epiphanies, no great spiritual change, nothing remarkable happened, except that my whatever didn't appear to have a problem with his son knowing i pretty much live here. i asked if we should cancel our sleepover and he said no, no reason to cancel. he didn't seem to care that his brother knows for that matter. don't know what to think about that. guess there's no point in analyzing it, and frankly, i feel pretty comfy not analyzing anything. the world is what it is.
left my whatever a $20 for utilities - i figure i should start paying him something since i'm here using the lights and whatnot when he's gone at work.
ok, tired. achy. still feel kinda sick. gonna take my sorry ass off to bed, in my trailer tonight. that's all i gotta say about that.
you know what's weird about writing a blog post over the course of several days? you start out with one idea and it gets orphaned when you find a few others you like better. having said that...
i live on about an acre of land, owned by adopted "in-laws", up in the hills above the town of morgan hill, california, about a mile away from chesbro reservoir. to call it home is a bit of a stretch: i sleep in my 20-ft travel trailer that's parked out back near the barn, and spend most of my time in the house of my friend/boyfriend/whatever, who rents a mother-in-law unit from my in-laws. some nights i sleep with him. most not. we both like it that way, to be honest. i'm finding that what i thought made me happy when i was younger and in my "producing a family" period is entirely different from what i know will make me happy now.
which, quite honestly, means i have to give up my pretensions of normalcy (and yes, i did once have them) and admit that i'm a pagan/gypsy/hippy/alternative lifestyle kinda gal. even my own daughter doesn't understand why i don't want to get married again, ever.
i kind of like the idea that my whatever and i could be together purely because we want, second by second, to be in the company of no one else. i like the thought that there's nothing at all in the world, no oath or legal bond or any other constraint, on our having to stay together. we just ARE together, in such a fundamental way that any attempt to legalize our togetherness would automatically result in it dissipating like a soap bubble.
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weird tangent. kinda wanted to rebuild my trailer for a while, you know? maybe design it as my own little space, make it all artsy and cute and self-sufficient. i imagined something like a real gypsy vardo...
note the stove. comments to follow.
here's another concept - the hippy vw bus repurposed into the hippy vw vardo. yes, sorry, i do really love how this little thing looks!
love the... well.. the EVERYTHING, actually. not quite sure how one drives down the freeway at 65+mph without destroying the rooftop garden, but artists, i suppose, cannot be bothered with minutiae.
ok, just found another site with more pictures of this great little house: "kushti bok"...
i've been going through a lot of homesteading blogs, and tiny house blogs, etc etc. at some future point i'll add a listing of the ones i like best. right now, i'd just like to share with you the following manufacturer of marine stoves, navigator stove works.
the "cod"...
the "halibut". this one is kinda like my wet dream - the fishy door has an actual OVEN behind it! it's $1000 more expensive than the cod, but hell, this is a dream anyway, right??
i'd seen many pictures of vardos with these little tiny stoves set into their sides, but never known where to find one before. wow. i think i'm in love. more on this later.
i'd been coming here to morgan hill on the weekends to work on my writing for about three years before my ex and i separated, and in fact, that trip up here each weekend was one of the reasons i knew it was time for us to put an end to things.
looking around my whatever's house, in which i'm currently sitting and typing, i'm reminded that this isn't home either. not sure how i feel about that. we have about the same level of love for each other - what we recently decided was "let's take some time to find out where this is going" kinda love. we have a really deep friendship and we make each other happy. we each do things for the other that we wouldn't do for anyone else on the planet. it's actually been a healthy experience, to learn how to just BE with him and not expect all kinds of weird shit. i don't know where we're going and most days i don't care.
odd, that this is really an analogy for the state of my entire life.
i made a decision about a year and some back, to get rid of 90% of what i own, and i've moved in that direction, sometimes willingly, sometimes not, ever since. i can look back at the time since my actual divorce, and see the patterns of loss... no, that's harsh and rather self-pitying. i should say, the patterns of "stripping away".
having a hard time forgiving my ex for the things he took from me. a lot of those things involve some physical object, and the concepts represented by that physical thing. we lost our home because of him. i blame him for dragging his feet and not wanting to have sex EVER, so we couldn't have a second child. i lost fifteen years of my life to his passive aggressive BS.
basically, my marriage was a perfect example of trying to swim upstream. i hit every rock on the way and the current was hell.
went camping this weekend with my whatever. we went to pinnacles national monument outside hollister, friday night to sunday morning. i called it our "shakedown cruise".
for the first time, we saw california condors. gotta tell you, that was something amazing. i'm still kinda jazzed about it.
his tent works great but the double-high queen-size mattress sucked. hugely. he couldn't get his power inverter to work and i wound up borrowing somebody's battery-powered air compressor (note: NOT an air pump for blowing up huge-ass air beds but a BICYCLE style air compressor.) took almost an hour to inflate the airbed, and i had to use my lungs to augment the flow of air. yes, i blow. stop snickering.
i started out thinking his monstrous camp chef two-burner stove was way more firepower than we needed, since i'm a coleman camp stove kinda gal and have been for a long time, but it turned out to be a godsend when we discovered we couldn't make a campfire owing to the fire danger.
we turned the thing broadside to the table and turned the burners up.
this stuff is all modular, btw. you just need extra hoses and splitters off your propane tank. now my whatever is salivating to add this lovely little device to his camping arsenal. me too, for that matter.
on a slightly related note, i'm getting tired of slaving for minimum wage at all hours of the day and night. it's hard to get a night to spend with my whatever, and we can't do much on the weekends because i always have to work. decided to try kelly temps to see if i could find some bankers hours kinda work. i've had good luck with them in the past. i'll have to check out some other temp agencies too, i think.
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my in-laws have a barn, an actual barn that was built to hold horses, which got converted into living space up above, and storage space down below. i lived in the apartment up above until i couldn't pay the rent anymore, which is when i moved down into the trailer.
best picture i have of the barn, as seen looking through the garden that used to be a horse corral. the top section of the barn with the little windows is where the apartment is. it runs the length of the building.
the apartment was filled with my stuff. just moving in, i had boxes lined up in the living room that stayed there for months and months. the clutter was unimaginable. i could barely walk.
eventually i got those boxes cleaned up, but the bedroom was still full of crap. recently, i had to move all my stuff out of the apartment and down into the storage room. i got rid of another load of crap. see the pattern?
now the storage room is loaded with boxes. most are no longer just jammed with crap - they hold books, or personal stuff, or my daughter's toys she's not ready to get rid of yet, all labeled and neatly stacked. i have five big duffel bags full of clothes.
so now it's time to start sorting through these boxes to get rid of stuff. i think of this as the first winnowing.
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i was going to say something pithy about "the harder you work, the
luckier you are", but i couldn't find a picture that worked at all. then
i started to think about what hard work got me, and the honest answer
is, i'm not sure anymore. getting rid of 90% of what i own, and every
day i empty one more box. right now, first, it's books. i'm scared that i'll get
done, look around an empty storage room, and all i'll have is...
nothing.
rationally, i know that's stupid, but i guess i have a lot of old ghosts running around up in my head that need some serious exorcizing...
more on the good red road. i'm reminded of the phrase mitakuye oyasin (mee-DAH-koo-yeh oh-YAH-sheen). this is a lakhota phrase that translates to "all my relations", and it refers to the unity and connectedness of all life.
started thinking about the good red road this morning, about what i needed to do to change, and about the interconnectedness of all creation. found a prayer, of which mitakuye oyasin is a part:
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the website i got this image from didn't credit the artist. if you're the artist, let me know and i'll give you credit for this image - it's beautiful...
Aho Mitakuye Oyasin....All my relations. I honor you in this circle
of life with me today. I am grateful for this opportunity to acknowledge
you in this prayer....
To the Creator, for the ultimate gift of life, I thank you.
To the mineral nation that has built and maintained my bones and all foundations of life experience, I thank you.
To the plant nation that sustains my organs and body and gives me healing herbs for sickness, I thank you. To the animal nation that feeds me from your own flesh and offers your loyal companionship in this walk of life, I thank you.
To the human nation that shares my path as a soul upon the sacred wheel of Earthly life, I thank you. To the Spirit nation that guides me invisibly through the ups and
downs of life and for carrying the torch of light through the Ages, I
thank you.
To the Four Winds of Change and Growth, I thank you.
You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not
live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent,
co-creating our destiny. One not more important than the other. One
nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above
and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.
Thank you for this Life.
----------------------------------------------
"there is no place in the transcendent consciousness for any of the
baggage you may still be carrying. all the shoulds and shouldn'ts that
may have dominated your consciousness are to be released and left at
this crossroads."
today seems to be all about paths. everywhere i turn, i see the word "path", or i run across concepts of path. as i mentioned last night, i do see my path forward, but i realize i didn't get it all right last night. my path has two parts: the first isn't actually writing. the first is getting rid of 90% of what i own. i think i won't be a writer and i won't know any peace until i accomplish that goal.
at this moment i have so much physical, spiritual and emotional clutter i can barely stand up straight in my own body. i think it's time for me to get off the computer and go work on getting rid of some of the physical stuff, which will in turn get rid of some of the emotional clutter, and THAT in turn will help me get rid of the spiritual clutter.
not much to say tonight. got home from work at 11:15, it's now 12:41am, and i don't feel like i can sleep yet. i'm tired, i'm even sleepy, but i don't want to sleep yet.
irrational shit, or maybe not so irrational: my best friend ellen, hereafter referred to as LN, can see the future. in bits. not even the necessarily useful bits.
me, i see paths. i see the possibilities. i don't see what will happen. i see the road i need to take. to where? wow. i'm not sure i can even answer that. here's an example.
for years i asked the universe (god, creator, mama goddess, whatever you call your higher power) to make me a writer. well ok. i'm a writer. then i asked to be an author, as in a published writer. ok, been there, done that too.
i also wanted to be the red baron when i grew up. i too desired a doghouse that could turn into a sopwith camel.
then i expressed to the universe the desire to finally make my living as a writer. "this," i said, "is the life i want!"
so now the universe, i think, has done me the courtesy of taking me at my word, and has set my feet on this path.
problem is, i'm fighting it. don't even know why. things have been really rough for me the last few years, and i have a very taoist belief that that only happens when one is going in the wrong direction. i know i've used this analogy before, but bear with me because it's a good one, one of my favorites, and it always applies: think of tao, or the way, the path, that is, as swimming in a river. when you're going the wrong way, you're swimming against the current. you hit every rock on the way. BAMBAMBAMlol. everything is harder, everything goes wrong, and no matter how many times you ask why, there's never an answer. because it's just wrong, i guess, is the answer.
so when you turn around and go the right way, suddenly everything is easy. you're swimming with the current now, and it carries you around all the rocks. everything goes right.
add mojitos and gently swirl to mix...
so, now to my point about paths, and about seeing mine. i asked to make a living as a writer. as long as i'm fighting it, and doing everything BUT, my life is going to be impossibly hard, and it's going to get harder and harder with each day.
my only possible path forward is as a writer. there are no other paths open to me anymore, and that's my own damn fault.
wow, well, or i'm psychotic, you know, either way.
ok, all of which ruminating leads me to wonder if i'm just a bit closer to answering the big question: who am i?
maybe i'm just a writer? maybe the angst, existential or otherwise, is pointless. i know how to write, i've gotten compliments and positive encouragement from every professor i've ever written for, i know how to create query letters, i know how to solicit editors. maybe i'm there already and i just don't realize it?
and on that note, off to bed. for some reason, i'm thinking of the good red road, and of walking it as a dream path...
the good red road is another way to say tao. clearly, paths are important to me right now.
toodles and g'night, all
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
didn't think to write today until about an hour before i've got to be leaving the house for work, which way isn't enough time.
cool thing to share: homestead survival blog... apricot vodka. i'm not a drinker, but this looks good even to me. provided you could find nice ripe perfect apricots, this would be a guaranteed rocker. not everything they post rocks, but they have a lot of nice ideas, and they showcase some other cool blogs, so definitely one of those places worth wandering through.
still working on who i am. had another great email from my brother-in-law, but haven't had a quiet moment to absorb it all yet. talked with my guy last night about lots and lots of stuff - he's kind of thinking the same thing as me, i.e. time to go through the hoarded wads of clothes he hasn't worn and even missed, and thin the herd.
i'm way too much of a perfectionist, and it sabotages a lot of what i do. i think of something i want to accomplish, but then i get all bogged down in "i need X amount of time, and oh, i should do THIS before i do THAT, and..." etc etc ad nauseum, ad infinitum. i wind up never doing the thing i wanted to do.
my brain... imagine what happens when i sneeze
so today, cleaned out ONE plastic bag full of bathroom stuff. cleaned some stuff off the kitchen table. getting ready for work early.
mental clutter is every bit as horrible as physical clutter.
one more thought and then i'm gonna boogie: i know a lady who's just about to hit the nasty rapids of break-up with a guy she loves desperately and considers to be her soul mate. only problem, this guy does not feel the same way about her and has been telling her from the beginning. granted, like most guys he probably unwittingly did and said things that could have helped her feel a bit more attached than she should have, but guys don't get girlspeak, and ultimately, we're all responsible for not recognizing the signs of incompatibility, right?
i know it was my fault with that one guy i loved so desperately, who lived FIVE THOUSAND MILES AND SOME TEN-TWENTY TIME ZONES AWAY FROM ME. how i ever managed to delude myself into thinking we were soul mates is beyond me, but i was really vulnerable, and i believed the things he said.
problem is, we ladies like to create a rosy vision of our relationships, and we disregard all evidence we might be presented with that disagrees with this rosy vision, until the day our rosy vision slips so far out of whack with the reality of the way the guy is behaving towards us, that we crack like lizzie borden and start hunting around in the back of the pantry for that old axe...
yup.
nice stable single lady seeks SWM for permanent, screamingly dysfunctional relationship in which man will fulfill the role of matrimonial accessory, and constantly mirror the woman's worth to the world by a neverending array of actions, behaviors and gifts designed to point out how important the woman is to the man....
i'm tempted to try and talk to her, to help somehow, because i know intimately every second of the hell she's about to create for herself. been there. done that.
but i already know nothing i say is going to help. i could give you every reason WHY i know nothing i say is going to help, but there's no point. in the end, she never listened to him when he talked about what he did and didn't want, so she'll never listen to me.
maybe this is just something the universe requires everyone to face alone until you finally figure it out. "wow. he's not the right guy for me and i need to acknowledge that and let go of him before i get all weird and obsessive"?
dunno. i just know in my gut i can't help her.
got a headache. i've been sick for a few days. my back is killing me and now i have cramps. i'm SO tempted to call in sick to work and i already know i won't.
obligatory lolcat of cute kitteh havin' teh sick...
whatever happened to the old, irresponsible me? i miss her. she was a lot more fun.
toodles, all... *sniffle sniffle*
Monday, June 11, 2012
wanted to start my day by writing. got a brilliant email from my brother-in-law this morning. just brilliant. hit a bunch of sores spots, made me think, asked some questions i can't answer. best kind of email.
big question: why is there a discrepancy between what i say i want, and what i'm creating (in my personal life)?
"What you truly want and are creating is what you have, not what you say you want. What you are creating is what you have and where you are going. homelessness or nearly so? you create what your attention is on, fear or desire."
which led me to wonder, what am i creating?
i've played on an online sim (simulated world) for several years now. it's called second life. it's pretty fun, although when you're unhappy, it can become very addictive, and i think a lot of the people who go on probably ARE looking for a place to correct the problems in their life.
here's me on SL:
i added the beer and pizza recently. i don't actually drink beer in RL
note the tiger. that's an AI program. it's pretty simplistic, but a lot of fun, and of course i think of it as real. that's batu khan. next, note the gypsy caravan there on the right. that's been my "home" in SL almost from the beginning. by home i mean, wherever i'm hanging my hat, that vardo comes out. so does the campfire and batu and my buddha so i can meditate. the purple light thingie = windchimes.
and in real life, i live in a trailer. it's not anywhere near as nice as my vardo in SL. it's a 20-ft 1985 komfort bunkhouse.
this looks a lot like mine. i don't have the teeny window up at the top near the front, and mine's a lot older-looking and more beat up.
what i actually want is what i'm creating. what am i creating? having recently discovered Walden (the book, not the geographical location), i'm starting to gain some clarity about the things i want, but everything is still very fuzzy yet.
i absolutely positively don't want a cubicle. ever again. please, god, no, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. but working at walmart is not a permanent thing either, and there has to be some money coming in. even thoreau had to work his beanfield...
of course i want to write, but for god's sake, there's a reason i've never taken the plunge and just done it. it's not because i can't. it's not even because i'm not good. i've had professors tell me it's a shame i'm not wirint, that i'm wasting my talent and my time.
there are lots of things in this world i don't do well, but the one thing i DO have... is that i can write.
it's because i'm scared, somehow, or there's something there in me that wants me to keep trying and failing, that wants to devour any self-worth i may ever develop, to the point that i've spent my life trying to squeeze myself into a succession of boxes, NONE of which ever fit.
i've written posts before about my inner children - there are two: livia and pippi. livia is everything conniving and hateful about court intrigue and politics. think game of thrones meets roman empire. in fact, remember that there's a reason game of thrones and dallas and all these kinda shows are popular: cuz THEY'RE BASED ON REAL LIFE AND IN REAL LIFE, SOME PEOPLE ARE POISONOUS ASSHOLES...
so that's livia. my poisonous asshole. every single time i try to do something, livia is right there whispering poisonous words into my ears, trying to get me to believe all manner of awful things about myself.
pippi is just a scary, out-of-control child who does dangerous shit to decide whether or not the dangerous shit is worth doing. yes, she's revered and iconic as a symbol of rebellion, but to me, she's as much stupid rebellion as anything else. she's all animal id, without the basic overlay of commonsense you kinda need to survive.
this isn't a topic i can finish today. gotta go get cleaned up for work. i just wanted to start my internal conversation and see where it leads me...
came home from work around midnight. boss gave me the chance to work some overtime, and i took it. pulled up to hear holly, rottweiler of terror, barking her lungs out.
this is not an actual picture of holly, but it looks a lot like her. if this had been an actual rottweiler of terror, you would have received instructions on how to pacify. butt scratchies are your best bet.
sigh. like she hasn't been listening to my truck pull up in the driveway at odd hours for the last almost four years now. i jumped out and ran to where she could see me. once she sees it's me, she stops. my landlords were woken up, though. they turned on the outside lights and everything. honestly, that dog...
work's getting harder. i have a herniated disk and it's getting worse, and now i can't take advil or aleve anymore because i'm getting an ulcer, so i spend 8 hours on my feet gritting my teeth and hissing and hoping customers don't notice when i freeze and go pale. pain in the ass, quite literally, but there's nothing i can do right now.
read some edgar allan poe in the last week and some. utterly unimpressed. his "murders in the rue morgue" i can liken to someone trying to cash in on that crazy sherlock holmes trend - everyone's been reading about sherlock holmes lately, so maybe i'll write a murder mystery or two and i'll make it JUST LIKE sherlock holmes... oh, except i'll do away with all that tedious plot development, and my guy won't have any of those stupid idiosyncrasies that just get in the way of me expounding upon the science, oh, and people are too stupid to figure shit out for themselves, right? everybody likes after-the-fact exposition better anyway. right? am i right?
sincerest apologies, mr allan poe, but i must slap you upside yo fool head. SCHMACK!! that's for being an annoying prick. sorry. it had to be done.
somewhere around the 40th page, while the author was laboring tediously on about some very nearly unrelated scientific principle, i cashed out. utterly dropped edgar and refused to pick him up again. angsty, victorian sentimental goth bullshit.
then i picked up "walden" by henry david thoreau, and holy crap, there they were, all these wild thoughts i'd been having about the pointless accumulation of wealth for wealth's sake, and the "we gotta have a bmw and a mercedes only we live in a 1974 single-wide mobile home", and all that other stuff, just out there in the open, in actual printed words, and WOW, i felt so light suddenly. validated, in point of fact.
i've lived a very long time knowing that my family loves me because i'm me, but honestly, that ericka, why won't she ever get her head straight and out of the clouds and settle into the real world and just take care of her business like the rest of the world does? honestly, she acts like she's 12...
i have no words. i just really don't. honestly, i wonder how i've survived all these years.
ok, carla, if you're reading this, i know i make you crazy, but it's ok, i don't mind that you think i'm insane and immature. specially not now that i've got mr henry david thoreau to point the way. i'm not insane and immature... i'm a TRANSCENDENTALIST! it's got to be ok, if there's a word for it and everything...
still reading the book. still wrapping my head around it. more later. it's almost 2am, mike is going to be awake in two hours and i need to be asleep NOW. ex-freakin'-hausted...
forgot how this feels. it's a release to write, even when no one reads it.
right now it's 11:19pm, wed, 6/6/2012. anniversary of d-day, for another 40 minutes.
i'm in the house. mike is asleep in the bedroom. every so often i hear him snore, and it makes my insides feel warm.
mike is hard to explain. i guess he's my boyfriend, but we have complicated issues with commitment. honestly, i don't feel like going into it more deeply. he's here, i'm here, he's snoring happily, and that's as complex as that needs to get at this moment.
tonight i still need to go upstairs into the barn and move some more of my stuff around. it's intimidating. i keep putting it off.
the apartment over the barn was going to be my home. i had visions of sitting up there with the woodstove going, doing my writing at my rolltop desk, maybe getting up every so often to make a snack or get some coffee. i imagined peace, i imagined the thoughts and dreams flowing... like every other home, it's gone now. i don't even want it back, because the price i'd have had to pay for it would have been unlivable. any peace i might have had would have fled.
as it is, going up there to do anything is hard. it hurts. i don't want it, but i can't quite give up the might-have-beens, standing there looking around. it's a lot like losing love, i guess. you know you can't go back to him, he lied, he was a shit, but the might-have-beens take a long time to fade, and you can't stop remembering how good it was, when it was good...
i guess i've been looking for home for a very long time. every time i think i've got it, it turns out to be fake, unreliable. i thought my ex was home, and where we were, was home. i thought that for fifteen years, up until the moment i realized i couldn't stand to lose one more thing to him. we owned a real house. we lost it. well, i did what i could, but he wouldn't get a job to save his life, or mine, for that matter. we lost the house because i couldn't do it on my own, and my own was all i had.
so the mobile home in north san jose that came next, that should have
been home. i found that by complete luck and nerve, and i made it work with
the money we had, and my ex still couldn't be bothered to get a job or
contribute more than a few hundred a month that didn't barely cover food, let alone rent and utilities.
that was my house, and there's my truck. the front had all my plants. i liked the neighbors, and my daughter had her best friend in the house behind us. the plan was, when i got it, that we'd save up and buy some land, and move the mobile home on the land, to live in while we built a house. that didn't work either. when i was finally used up and couldn't give any more and said so, we lost that house too.
so now i'm sitting at the corner of an old school desk, in the house of a man i care greatly for, but he's not my home either. i sleep in my travel trailer. all i have is my truck and my trailer, which i guess is more than some people have, but they aren't home any more than any of the other places i've been since i left my parents' house. if home is uniquely mine, than i've never actually had one, not that lasted. not that i could hold on to.
i don't know who i am and i don't know where my home is. sometime i can handle those thoughts. other times, especially late at night when i'm tired, i can't ignore them. they turn into the ghost of a house, with empty windows and ivy crawling all over the falling down walls. they whisper around like skittery rat claws and wind sighing through broken places.
wow. it really is time to go face the shit i have to face up in the barn, and then go to bed and forget all this for a while.
this is going to be short. i'm telling myself that because otherwise i'm going to get overwhelmed and i won't finish, and this whole thing about re-booting my blog won't happen. maybe then i won't go back and write at all. maybe THEN i'll wind up in a trailer park for the rest of my life, living out the white trash dream of lola, who was a showgirl...
and that's way too sad and weird to contemplate, so here's my attempt at writing a short and sweet blog.
ok, not sweet. nothing about my life has been particularly sweet lately.
my last post was jan 2010. i was still married then, but not for much longer. i was in the kitchen putzing around. i can't remember that exact day, but i do remember the feel. we lived in a mobile home, and the kitchen was kinda dark and kinda pokey, but it had a nice window and the table was comfy, and i could have my coffee and a piece of toast and sit at the kitchen table and blog.
what i wanted was "practical magic". what i got was "weasley household"... still, it was home.
which is not what's happening today, but i don't feel like going into all the details. short and sweet, my husband and i grew apart, as people do, and went our separate ways. i'm living in my travel trailer on a property in morgan hill, and trying to get rid of most of the crap i own. my life has winnowed down to this moment (you know, winnowing? that process where you toss the chaff in the air and the wind blows it away and you're left with just the wheat bits? no? ok, look at this...) and the sad bit is, it hasn't finished winnowing yet.
this is not going to be a funny post. please do not look for humor here. i'm aware that angst is boring, but i'm writing this possibly as much for me as for you. read or not. i like you and i want you here, but these are the words that need to be said, and you may not find yourself entertained.
here's the basic issue: i was functional. i had my problems, but they were hidden away. i struggled, and generally succeeded, in maintaining the look of someone a lot more mainstream than i ever actually was.
i'm weird. i don't fit anywhere. i talk too loud, i laugh too loud, my conversation is usually about stuff that doesn't make sense to most people, and i don't want to drive a new car and/or live in a new house. i'm 48, i'm an intensely sexual being, i have multiple piercings, i want tattoos, or at least more henna, and i think everything has a soul. i even talk to my truck like he's alive. well, he is, but that's another story.
i'm reminded of hasan elahi, who was harrased after his name was accidentally added to the us watch list. his response? since they were so interested in where he was going and what he was doing, he took pictures of everything. yes. EVERYTHING. (well, not THAT, but he does take pictures of every bathroom he visits, every meal he eats, every airport...) his website is here. his ted speech is here. brilliant. just brilliant.
his thought: if you don't define yourself, others will do it for you. he called it "being forced to take my identity into my own hands".
so my problem was, and remains, that i don't really know who i am. trite, yes, i know, and a vastly over-scrutinized theme. take the words literally. i don't know who i am.
i have many different definitions i can apply, but none of them fit. like my religion, i don't have a name for who i am. i'm not even sure why i need to define myself.
another point i like about hasan's blitz of personal information - you can spend all day going through his website, and still only have a rudimentary knowledge of who he is and what his life is like.
wow. not short and sweet at all.
ok, i'm going to end this here for today, as i need to go eat something and get ready for work.
who am i? i'm not someone who fits within the parameters of "normal american woman". i get tension from family and friends as a result of this. i am in a constant state of tension now, as i attempt to reduce the components of my life down to a bare minimum, and to redefine myself in a way that allows me to live a simple, peaceful life. this desire is earning me resistance, sometimes very derogatory resistance, from family and friends, in a way i can't understand, and i need to understand it.
