heart upheavals come
and go and we are still here
we are made to live
JSmith 11/21/2016
The only safety…
19 Nov 2016 Leave a comment
when someone loves you
your name feels safe in their mouth
your heart is their gem
JSmith 11/19/2016
Safety that counts…
19 Nov 2016 Leave a comment
being seen and heard
gifts to those we meet in life
gifts of wings and joy
JSmith 11/19/2016
Be not afraid…
18 Nov 2016 4 Comments
First you cry, that’s what they say…unless you’re stunned into silent disbelief, in which case you walk around still living and breathing in a world that turned strange in an all too familiar direction overnight while you were sleeping…and you keep doing this – living while dead…and then ten days in, you’re spending possibly the last warm evening of the season outside with your husband…and he starts telling you things he’s never told you before about how life changing it was for him to love and care for your former mother-in-law for the last six years of her life, and how important it became to him that she not be afraid…and like that, you find yourself back with your dad in the nursing home while he slides deeper into dementia and can’t find the handholds, and he knows what’s happening, sometimes, and he’s afraid…and you’re there to reassure him and encourage him back to peace…and when he’s dying, and he knows it, and he’s afraid…you’re there to warm his chest with your hands and remind him about love and forgiveness, and to let him go…and to stay right there until the fear of the unknown leaves his eyes and his agonized lungs call it a life and end the struggle.
That might be when you finally cry, because maybe the enormity of what has transpired has funneled down to this one fact: you can’t BE THERE for everyone you love when it’s their turn in the barrel and shit gets real, and they are justifiably afraid. But you’re going to wish you could be…so much.
Now that you’ve kicked DENIAL’s ass, you can slope right on down the road into ANGER, wherein you make it clear to one and all that their opinion is not your reality. In addition, it’s where you figure out who really loves you, because they so have their work cut out for them, by which we mean how long can you watch somebody implode, and still maintain radio silence?
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” ~Gloria Steinem
There’s no point in BARGAINING, what’s done is done, and you hope to skip the DEPRESSION stage because you have to wonder if you’d come back.
So what about ACCEPTANCE, then, the accepted final stage of grief and loss? Not happening. You can accept that it happened, but not that it’s normal, and you know that means you’ll be at odds with about half your family and acquaintances for the duration, whatever it turns out to be. Your friends will be right where they’ve always been – in your corner and ready to defend you from pain and harm – but some of the relationships in your life will be and already are fraught with tension and division.
Borrowing generously from Amanda Diebert’s moving blog piece called “Dear Trump Supporter who says they love me” …
“A man actively promised to dismantle and harm my family. To destabilize the security of my child. To harm relatives and friends and you still voted for him.
“Those other reasons matter more to you than my life and my family. It was on the line and you chose. That is the reality.
“And I know, I know that makes you really angry that I actually said it. That I won’t let you off the hook. We have a long history and you’ve made it clear I’m supposed to apologize for making you feel guilty with all my social media posts about my sadness and my anger. I should get over it already. Your guy won and you are such a nice person and how dare I…
“First of all, you love me? Stop telling me how to grieve.
“Yeah, I know that’s not WHY you voted for him {his racism, misogyny, homophobia, et.al.}, but again, it didn’t stop you. Actively applauding someone who is doing wrong does make you culpable.
“I’m tired. ……. I do not have to apologize for you hurting me.
“You hurt me and now you are telling me I am not allowed to be sad or scared or angry.
“At the very least you allowed me to be hurt by someone else while you condoned that abuse with a ‘yes’ vote. You gave it your stamp of approval and now you are telling me my pain doesn’t exist.
“That is not love.
“I keep being told (by the people who harmed me) that I need to be a model example of ‘we go high.’
“…this is a long road. It’ll take a while, but you said you love me and you didn’t mean to hurt me.
“So let me heal while you do the work to show that you recognize the pain you caused and are working to minimize its impact.
“If you don’t want to do that work: okay.
“By ‘okay’ I do not mean I forgive you or that we are cool. I mean, you have made a decision and I will react to it accordingly. Notice I didn’t say respect it. A blatant disregard for the well being of others is not worthy of respect. But I will acknowledge this is a choice you made and I will walk away.
“Also, yeah, I do judge you for this. I’m being super honest about that, just in case you thought I might try to gaslight you too.”
You can read Amanda’s blog piece here: You Say You Love Me
I relate to everything she wrote – she’s a woman and she describes the pain of people who are my world. Nothing in the days, weeks, and months ahead will be easy, and much of it won’t be pretty. But I vow never to accept those things as “the new normal.” That kind of acceptance is a bridge too far.
Sacred Sound of the Universe
06 Nov 2016 2 Comments
Constant Reader will remember my brutal fall on the ice in January and the mystifying soundtrack that has inhabited my skull ever since. After nine months’ time, during which the music has morphed from one personality to another, and countless days when I’ve found myself astonished that Kim can’t hear it because it’s so overwhelming and all-enveloping, I’ve finally stumbled across an answer that resonates with me.
It’s a passage from THE NIX, by Nathan Hill, in a scene from the tumultuous 1960 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Allen Ginsberg has seated himself cross-legged in the grass, palms raised to the universe, listening, as the hordes of protesting flower children stream past him toward an unseen ambush.
“He wants to soothe them. ‘The way forward is like water.’ But he knows it isn’t good enough, isn’t radical enough to calm the wild appetite of the young. And so Ginsberg strokes his beard, closes his eyes, settles into his body, and answers in the only way he can, with a deep bellow from the bottom of his belly, the great Syllable, the sacred sound of the universe, the perfection of wisdom, the only noise worth making at a time like this: Ommmmm.
“He feels the hot holy breath in his mouth, the lifted-up music breath released from his lungs and his gullet, from his guts and heart, his stomach, his red blood cells and kidneys, from his gallbladder and glands and the long spindly legs he sits on, the Syllable issues from all these things. If you listen quietly and carefully, if you are calm and you slow down your heart, you can hear the Syllable in everything – the walls, the street, the cars, the soul, the sun – and soon you are no long chanting. Soon the sound settles into your skin and you are simply hearing the body make the sound it has always made: Ommmmm.”
The music inside my head is simply the sound my body has always made, and when I’m intentional about calming every cell and listening it sounds like Ommmmm, the sacred sound of the universe. It’s a G-major and I would deeply miss it now if it ever went away…
Suspense, you’re killing me…
05 Nov 2016 Leave a comment
the hours pass snail-like
finish line is close at hand
we will all survive
JSmith 11/05/2016
Fickle Fall
26 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
fall is full of whim
having its way with the world
running hot and cold
JSmith 10/26/2016
Paean to a Shower
07 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
so privileged, yo
joy of squeaky-clean chassis
water fresh and warm
JSmith 10/7/2016
The sleeper wakes…
03 Oct 2016 Leave a comment
Since yesterday fell on a Sunday it was all about grazing, napping, TV sports, and trying to mentally get my poop in a group for starting a new week, which happened today, actually.
There’s now a handy list of ESSENTIALS taped to my bathroom mirror, providing steady inspiration and focus for being something other than retired, because it’s so hard to stay on task. My happiest day is one where the calendar is a wasteland – a blank slate – but a never-ending string of those can become tedious and full of ennui, so a new LIST and a soupçon of discipline are called for at this point.
There are things I need to get down in words, and that happens best when the crowded house at the top of my neck has been freed from clutter. Working on it…
So for now, my list reminds me to do things like:
- Get up
- Shower
- Accomplish one thing every day
- Do other stuff
I’ll be chugging down the tracks in no time, because I THINK I can, darn it. Admonitions about writing show up three times on THE LIST, because what else is it about? Getting rid of the crap, within and without, opening blinds AND windows, bringing all fresh air onto the scene…preparing to snuggle in and put words on the page through the fall and winter months. So yeah, thanks for listening… 💋
Stream of consciousness…
21 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
Being retired and to a degree physically limited means I end up with a lot of quiet hours when my brain free-wheels. For instance, today I’m deeply conscious of the fact that Facebook has given us a string of expressive emojis, but as with all things social – and human – we need more. A few helpful suggestions: an icon that means “I agree with your comment but not the meme/link/article attached”; a general WTF choice; one that says “Jeez, I’m sick of this shit”; one for “If I see this post again in my feed I’ll do bodily harm to whomever is in my path”; like that. It would be easy-peasy for the coding gurus and it seems so little to ask in return for our unwavering fealty to their product, amirite?
* Summer truly kicks into gear shortly before it’s over, spring and fall in Kansas are mere blips on the seasonal chart, and winter lasts for freaking ever. And if that seems like a fair deal to you, you’re probably voting for someone I wouldn’t hire to manage a Christmas kiosk.
* Much like summer, life takes its own sweet time getting underway, and some of the most vital lessons aren’t mastered until we’re past middle age and don’t need them as urgently. That strikes me as sad, but I can’t call it unjust – maybe some humans just figure out how to pay attention better and sooner and it’s my bad for being such a happy-go-lucky farm girl and believing most of what I was told, far past when I should have figured it out.
* I thought it would take a lot longer to get old, and the day I own it is theoretically far into the future, but here I am, watching where I place my feet, being aware of my environment at all times, simply because there’s nothing like a broken bone for holding up progress. Not sure how many falls I have left in me before I’m under house arrest, so caution beats impulse now, deflating as that is.
* The trouble with submitting to what hurts – bodily, mentally, emotionally – and sitting down to wait for the pain to end is that the day never comes when it doesn’t make you wince, and it gets worse not better, so whatever it takes you have to do, think, feel that thing until you can work it out the ends of your toes before it morphs into a permanent personality and/or lifestyle change. It takes work.
* The sum total of today’s musings is that if I couldn’t read books and write words I would be verbally frustrated, a big weather baby, a past-dweller who could never move on, and a chronic aging whiner who gave up and let all the chips fall. Writing as therapy isn’t free, but it’s amazingly no-cost in its effectiveness since the toll it does extract is added back to our personal pile at the end, when the results speak for themselves and we’ve managed to acknowledge our own hearts and find some truth. Takes a LOT of work.
* Here’s how much work: I started musing on Monday and we’ve landed smack on HumpDay already! There’s much to be said in favor of having something to show for your work, and this isn’t it, bwahahahahaha!!
* Oh, but look! This morning when we click Farcebroke’s LOVE icon we get a sweet surprise. Think of the possibilities …
Have a happy, whimsical, lighthearted day if life permits…and if your heart is breaking I send you hug vibes and empathy. ❤️
Everyday advice…
05 Sep 2016 4 Comments
life is brief, don’t let
a self-regarding turdball
bring heartache to you
JSmith ~ 9/5/2016
The calm before the earthquake…
03 Sep 2016 10 Comments
Another beautiful Saturday morning in the neighborhood – Farmers Market is busy, #lfk is opening her arms to us as always, the sun’s shining, 67º and easy. Friends who are family have included us in their 3-Day Labor Day Blow-Out, so the day promises lazy fun around the pool and great food including BANANA PUDDING!!
The Official Saturday Breakfast that hasn’t diminished an iota in more than twelve years of Saturdays – always the best-tasting, most satisfying meal of the week – has been humbly savored. And now Kimmers is in his Happy Place, the one with the stove, putting together a big pot of beans & hotlinks for the Framily. The sun is in its heaven and all’s right with the world – we’d make every day look pretty much like this if it were in our power.
Turns out, and experience teaches us this, there’s bloody little we control, and there are watershed events as we roll through life that abruptly stop the momentum and make us take an accounting. Therefore, second, third, eleventh chances cannot be overrated, and spending vital chunks of the past week with my cherished baby sister has driven that point home as nothing else has in years. It’s never a bad idea to stop and take a look under our public face, down to the one we wear for our own use, and past that to the Real Us. A fresh face-off (see what I did there?) with mortality is an exquisite motivator to change what needs changing, fix what needs fixing, just DO it, now instead of someday.
To close out The Week That Was, we had an earthquake mere seconds after Kim took the sunrise picture. It was apparently 5.6 at its epicenter, 3.2 here, 235 miles northeast. Rattled things pretty energetically up here on the 4th floor…but after the earthshaking week behind us it was only an entertaining blip.
I hope your Labor Day celebrations will be earthshaking in all the best ways.
The Weekend that Was
29 Aug 2016 1 Comment
Monday morning is here again and it’s one I’m happy to greet with a smile – it was quite a weekend. Let’s just say for now that I’ve gone at life this morning with new-found intention and it’s already paying dividends. So far, and it isn’t even noon yet, I’ve eaten a bagel brought to me by Kim, who zipped to Einstein’s and back on his bicycle – you’re finished, pneumonia! I’ve been to my (physical) therapist for an hour of stretching that made me ravenous and sleepy. Did I nap? Oh, no, there’s life to be re-jumpstarted!
The bed looks almost unslept-in, so I can slide by on that for now. There’s a big load of towels in the washing machine having their second hot bath in three days because I spaced them off sometime around…Saturday, maybe, and left them gathering moss in the machine. The bills are in a neat pile for payment and sitting where I can’t miss them – they’ll wait right here until I get sick of looking at them and do what’s called for.
And now through no fault of my own it’s after 1pm and I’ve consumed a Five Guys baby cheeseburger and fries because it’s what Kim wanted for lunch, yay! When you’ve been as scary ill as he’s been you get to choose for the foreseeable future, and I’m not one to stand in the way of desire.
Also, my current project, for the first time in weeks, is open on my desktop and spread across the top of the chest next to me and on the bed. I’m ready to read it all again, edit where I must, and move on. That feels good.
The weekend left me smiling because for the most part it was so unbelievably sweet. And even the bitter portion of it holds a sweetness that’s almost too precious to talk about.
Kim and I try for an adventure a day, sometimes as simple as sitting on the balcony just out of the rain and watching the light show. Last Friday he broke out the hot-rod and we drove to a small town nearby. Our mission, which was to sell a few antique pieces so we can quit paying to store them, hit a slight delay so we drove on down the street in search of a late lunch, and lo, there was Luigi’s, looking quaint and enticing. Mid-afternoon, ours was one of three occupied tables, and it was wonderful. Clean-smelling wood everywhere, tranquil, all sounds wrapped in cotton. We were seated in a window nook and presented with our choice of delicious Italian fare, accompanied by a generous pour of the house Pinot Noir, and the best bread & oil we’ve experienced anywhere. Wow, well-kept secret, Luigi’s, and we so needed that cozy pause in the space/time continuum.
Saturday’s date was a walk through the cut to Ladybird Diner for a malted vanilla phosphate and a piece of lemon blueberry crumb cake while we soaked up our daily quota of Vitamin D at a sidewalk table. The rest of the day consisted of various sportsing, all involving balls and keeping score, as they do.
Sunday morning brought sad news, which is where the bitter joins the mix. Something tragic took place and someone died, someone we knew, and it’s heartbreaking. The sweetness, the heart-lurching precious part is that my sister and her big amazing cat Jade both woke up to a new day, sunshine, and ongoing life – because circumstances, people, the rotation of the earth conspired to move them out of harm’s way. It was the kind of close call that makes you and your big sister sit up and pay close attention. We talked all afternoon on the balcony, shared a bottle of wine, laughed, cried, and got the healing process underway. There’s always so much to be grateful for. Always.
And life is good, don’t ever think otherwise.
August wanes…
23 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
the summer doldrums
full of silence and ennui
my bestie is borked
JSmith 8/23/2016
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