Asked my students to write a poem tonight about how to make the most out of one's life before death comes a knocking. We'd been studying Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good NIght," and after a discussion, we just spit out a poem. Here's what I wrote:
This can't be it.
This can't be it.
I say waking at a new day
There's a window
I see it
A hole in the net
A girl with a novel
she has not mastered yet.
String out a message
put it in a bottle
ship it to shore
tell them I'm trapped.
And then what? Wait?
No!
Ask - ask - ask
for the scissors to use to cut
through this netting.
I am not a fish meant for supper,
but a super Salmon who must
travel upstream,
then I shall die
millions of eggs safely spawned.
Monday, April 30, 2007
"You Can Look Up at the Stars and Still Not See the Light"
It's 3:32 pm and I have wet hair and need to be at school by 5 pm. I worked all late morning and afternoon on my online classes. Soon, soon, I will be this deep into an afternoon and still working on one thing: MY WRITINGS.
I pant at the thought.
My dreams have been detailed and wild, vivid with color, again, interior work. Trying to get dressed for an event and rummaging through my dresser, truly making choices, and panicking because everyone is leaving and I'm still not dressed!
How symbolic is that?
Well, I'm blow drying my hair, throwing some work clothes on, and leaving for school. In five weeks from today, I will be wearing jeans and long gone.
I pant at the thought.
My dreams have been detailed and wild, vivid with color, again, interior work. Trying to get dressed for an event and rummaging through my dresser, truly making choices, and panicking because everyone is leaving and I'm still not dressed!
How symbolic is that?
Well, I'm blow drying my hair, throwing some work clothes on, and leaving for school. In five weeks from today, I will be wearing jeans and long gone.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Freedom Comes with a Bite
Came home from my 3-hour class and felt really groggy. Maybe it's because I stayed up til 3:30 in the morning talking to my brother. It was good, though. We are a good team at knocking sense into the other when whichever is feeling scared or as I call it 'forgetting to walk on the water' and instead, as Eileen says, 'glug, glug, glug' down you go.
This tremendous gift of four months to write (say it with me) is heady and in the past few days I have gone from euphoria to euthanasia. From the smooth step amongst the waves to bomb diving downward into the choppy seas.
So I came home and purposely did not turn the tv on - at least for an hour - this is one addiction or babysitter I must wean from. Then I ate my leftovers of sweet and sour chicken with rice. Another intervention is needed there. And then I crashed. Awaking 20 minutes later (damn peri-menopause) I turned on the boob tube. Then I turned it right back off. I lit a candle I purchased at Eckerd's after coming in from school. The scent is cucumber-melon. Putting on my shoes, I had a mad craving for something entirely ridiculous. I mean, it's Saturday night, and people are maybe drinking, maybe eating, at the movies, making out, falling in love, are nakedly alone, but how many I ask you are craving circus peanuts?
I headed to CVS for the 99 cent bag and I didn't care who knew.
There, I grabbed a small bottle of hair shine, something I'd heard about on the Style Network. Okay, tv isn't all bad. Then I moseyed over to the magazine aisle and pounced on Prevention's Summer Workout issue. More ab exercises than there'd be circus peanuts in the puny bag. I inwardly giggled knowing I was now hedonistically headed for the corn syrup candy which ironically was further up from the magazines.
I surveyed the bags of sweets without remorse. Wait a minute. What? No circus peanuts? There had to be a mistake. Eckerd's sure has them when I'm fried and need to snarl them down!
There were none and it was too late in the evening to make it to Eckerds. My only option was to duck into Dunkin Donuts and suck down a bowtie.
Frustrated I went over the rows of candy expecting the peanuts to jump out at me like long lost family. Nothing. I even reviewed with intensity the candy bars, maybe some peanuts were nestled in behind the Mars bars?
Nothing!
So I snatched a large box of Hot Tamales, the kind you'd sneak into the theater. More corn syrup to coat my angst.
I bought a can of disinfectant, too, as I went up to the clerk at the register. I also bought a stack of blank cds so I could burn a few for my mother to thank her for her enormous generosity. This I decided was worth the trip and incoming calories.
I walked home and felt the cool spring air. I was free. I really didn't need this candy. I didn't need comfort food. I knew it. Everything that went into my mouth since I found I had been saved from an unlived life started to startle me. Why am I eating this? It's nasty and not good for me.
I ate three-fourths of the hot tamales and read Prevention. In the back it held many great recipes and I knew I was to begin a better eating pattern. The box of candy sat next to me. It sat in my gut. Nothing felt right.
I stood and decided to take a bath. I threw away the remaining candy. I knew I was preparing to wash a lot more than city dirt off me. I was becoming cleansed. And this may be the first summer I wear a two-piece to the beach.
This tremendous gift of four months to write (say it with me) is heady and in the past few days I have gone from euphoria to euthanasia. From the smooth step amongst the waves to bomb diving downward into the choppy seas.
So I came home and purposely did not turn the tv on - at least for an hour - this is one addiction or babysitter I must wean from. Then I ate my leftovers of sweet and sour chicken with rice. Another intervention is needed there. And then I crashed. Awaking 20 minutes later (damn peri-menopause) I turned on the boob tube. Then I turned it right back off. I lit a candle I purchased at Eckerd's after coming in from school. The scent is cucumber-melon. Putting on my shoes, I had a mad craving for something entirely ridiculous. I mean, it's Saturday night, and people are maybe drinking, maybe eating, at the movies, making out, falling in love, are nakedly alone, but how many I ask you are craving circus peanuts?
I headed to CVS for the 99 cent bag and I didn't care who knew.
There, I grabbed a small bottle of hair shine, something I'd heard about on the Style Network. Okay, tv isn't all bad. Then I moseyed over to the magazine aisle and pounced on Prevention's Summer Workout issue. More ab exercises than there'd be circus peanuts in the puny bag. I inwardly giggled knowing I was now hedonistically headed for the corn syrup candy which ironically was further up from the magazines.
I surveyed the bags of sweets without remorse. Wait a minute. What? No circus peanuts? There had to be a mistake. Eckerd's sure has them when I'm fried and need to snarl them down!
There were none and it was too late in the evening to make it to Eckerds. My only option was to duck into Dunkin Donuts and suck down a bowtie.
Frustrated I went over the rows of candy expecting the peanuts to jump out at me like long lost family. Nothing. I even reviewed with intensity the candy bars, maybe some peanuts were nestled in behind the Mars bars?
Nothing!
So I snatched a large box of Hot Tamales, the kind you'd sneak into the theater. More corn syrup to coat my angst.
I bought a can of disinfectant, too, as I went up to the clerk at the register. I also bought a stack of blank cds so I could burn a few for my mother to thank her for her enormous generosity. This I decided was worth the trip and incoming calories.
I walked home and felt the cool spring air. I was free. I really didn't need this candy. I didn't need comfort food. I knew it. Everything that went into my mouth since I found I had been saved from an unlived life started to startle me. Why am I eating this? It's nasty and not good for me.
I ate three-fourths of the hot tamales and read Prevention. In the back it held many great recipes and I knew I was to begin a better eating pattern. The box of candy sat next to me. It sat in my gut. Nothing felt right.
I stood and decided to take a bath. I threw away the remaining candy. I knew I was preparing to wash a lot more than city dirt off me. I was becoming cleansed. And this may be the first summer I wear a two-piece to the beach.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
A Lump in the Throat
Listening to Lucinda Williams' "West" and the song of the same name is playing. It soothes and rakes my soul at the same time. It reminds me of my love of someone and something. I love the West...not the West as Ed, my ex used to speak of as where he wanted to be once the girls and I moved to NYC, but The West that I know of as the Southwest, mi hermana. The desert. The sun. The heat that only comes from that. I think of how I marveled at my first heavy snowstorm in New York. I got an email from a former colleague who had lived in Mass., and now in Albany, NY. She basically was laughing with or at me, not sure, at my nouveau crush on the snow, a desert rat like me.
I let it go and playfully defended myself by telling her I'd lived in Michigan and Alaska as a child.
The snowfall in the Northeast still takes my breath away and dictates the steady pace of my air intake. When the snow comes, I want it to keep coming down until I am safe in my little apartment where the cats sleep all day.
Such is the same with my desert. "Come out West and see, the best that it can be," sings Lucinda, and I promise her I will as itunes rolls into Roseanne Cash and "Seven Year Ache."
This morning I awoke to Russell, our black and white cat, pestering me. He is such a pest! But that's why we love him: He's odd. So after telling him to get lost for the umpteenth time, I laid there and realized I had awakened to a state of grace. This is why being a pest like Russell pays off. I saw my hole in the net and just kept asking.
In the past three days since receiving grace, I have started a journal on this experience and it has been marvelous. Everything is marvelous. I am in the flow, my dharma, my place. People look at me at my work as if I am the greatest phenomenon or the biggest chipley (sic) (cry baby/spoiled). I'm not sure which and I don't care what they think. I also don't begrudge them anything. I am just glad to be the representative of what it looks like to climb over the wall of impossibility and despair. Sure my jeans are torn, but they only remind me of the struggle, the fight to get here.
Here.
I had a dream two nights ago, early in the morning after not being able to sleep for most of it. I couldn't stop thinking of my wellspring of hope suddenly producing more water than I ever imagined. So around 3:30 I finally dozed off and went deep. I dreamed of my mother. She had been playing with children, maybe her grandchildren, and trying to keep up. She was winded and happy, but the mother in me sensed she was not taking care of herself and looking down I saw her shoes had come off and I saw her feet, the one frozen from the botched operation, the other just free, naked without socks. I chided her and prepared to put her shoes on which suddenly turned to those beige ones podiatrists give for foot problems. Again I realized she did not have socks on and I said this to her when she interrupted me with, "Would you give me a big hug?" And in relaying this to you, I am crying once again, as I do everytime I try to discuss this dream.
I rose up and hugged my mother and I hugged her so hard and with such emotion, my brain burst with electricity and energy and suddenly I was awake and in my mind's eye I saw a gang of men in an old black 1940's convertible driving too fast around a bend on a mountain's edge. I let it all play out as I laid on the bed, filled with tenderness and angst for my mother. I told her of this dream the next day and she gasped saying that was good, and that was all she wanted.
I think my mother is preparing to drive into the unknown, the source, the land of energy from where we came. Last night I felt sad after reading an email from her stating such inbetween the lines. And I thought is one hug enough? Was it a bear hug of good-bye?
When I left for NYC 10 years ago, I leaned down to kiss my mother and I felt the softness of her face, which is what I remember and wish for when I think of the one who has been my arch enemy on more than one occasion and who has now become my avenger. Is this a sweet new beginning or resolve at the end of the day?
The desert will be cooler without her. And what I love about it will not be as strong for the girl born in Colorado and raised in Utah will not be there. And that changes everything.
I let it go and playfully defended myself by telling her I'd lived in Michigan and Alaska as a child.
The snowfall in the Northeast still takes my breath away and dictates the steady pace of my air intake. When the snow comes, I want it to keep coming down until I am safe in my little apartment where the cats sleep all day.
Such is the same with my desert. "Come out West and see, the best that it can be," sings Lucinda, and I promise her I will as itunes rolls into Roseanne Cash and "Seven Year Ache."
This morning I awoke to Russell, our black and white cat, pestering me. He is such a pest! But that's why we love him: He's odd. So after telling him to get lost for the umpteenth time, I laid there and realized I had awakened to a state of grace. This is why being a pest like Russell pays off. I saw my hole in the net and just kept asking.
In the past three days since receiving grace, I have started a journal on this experience and it has been marvelous. Everything is marvelous. I am in the flow, my dharma, my place. People look at me at my work as if I am the greatest phenomenon or the biggest chipley (sic) (cry baby/spoiled). I'm not sure which and I don't care what they think. I also don't begrudge them anything. I am just glad to be the representative of what it looks like to climb over the wall of impossibility and despair. Sure my jeans are torn, but they only remind me of the struggle, the fight to get here.
Here.
I had a dream two nights ago, early in the morning after not being able to sleep for most of it. I couldn't stop thinking of my wellspring of hope suddenly producing more water than I ever imagined. So around 3:30 I finally dozed off and went deep. I dreamed of my mother. She had been playing with children, maybe her grandchildren, and trying to keep up. She was winded and happy, but the mother in me sensed she was not taking care of herself and looking down I saw her shoes had come off and I saw her feet, the one frozen from the botched operation, the other just free, naked without socks. I chided her and prepared to put her shoes on which suddenly turned to those beige ones podiatrists give for foot problems. Again I realized she did not have socks on and I said this to her when she interrupted me with, "Would you give me a big hug?" And in relaying this to you, I am crying once again, as I do everytime I try to discuss this dream.
I rose up and hugged my mother and I hugged her so hard and with such emotion, my brain burst with electricity and energy and suddenly I was awake and in my mind's eye I saw a gang of men in an old black 1940's convertible driving too fast around a bend on a mountain's edge. I let it all play out as I laid on the bed, filled with tenderness and angst for my mother. I told her of this dream the next day and she gasped saying that was good, and that was all she wanted.
I think my mother is preparing to drive into the unknown, the source, the land of energy from where we came. Last night I felt sad after reading an email from her stating such inbetween the lines. And I thought is one hug enough? Was it a bear hug of good-bye?
When I left for NYC 10 years ago, I leaned down to kiss my mother and I felt the softness of her face, which is what I remember and wish for when I think of the one who has been my arch enemy on more than one occasion and who has now become my avenger. Is this a sweet new beginning or resolve at the end of the day?
The desert will be cooler without her. And what I love about it will not be as strong for the girl born in Colorado and raised in Utah will not be there. And that changes everything.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"Rebels are We, Born to Be Free...Just Like the Fish in the Sea!"
My blog, "Take it to the Limit," takes a new turn today. Gone, done, did, is the plea for the financing of my dream. It's happened. Thank you! And now, I move on to my work, my real work. So this blog may turn to a new direction, more of what I am, more of where I have been going but did not know until NOW. Until I witnessed that indeed to ask, and ask, and ask, and ask, pays off. If you don't have, it's because you haven't asked. Even if it takes 51 years.
In six weeks, I will be completely free to write. I can get up at five in the morning and write and be with myself alone - or on a crowded ferry headed to the Statue of Liberty - until the equally wee hours of another morning if I choose. The creativity that is coming with this surge of freedom is surreal. Suddenly wordy Sheela is at a loss for words. But they are there. Stuck deeply down in the muck of my soul. This summer is a summer of excavation and exploration. I am the kid in the candy store. I've been sent to Disneyland. I am in Nirvana.
Yesterday when I went to school to tell my boss, crazy things happened prior. I did a shitload of laundry earlier in the day that left me fried after pulling the granny cart with the massive loads up five flights only to jam it into the ironwork of the hallway next to my neighbor's file cabinet out for removal. I had a meltdown. What if the benefactor refused and regained her senses? What if, what if, what if?! I festered in my stew of disbelief until Leila came out, yanked the cart and me up and out of my misery and told me everything would be alright and why didn't I call her and tell her I had this mountain of clothes outside the door?!
I went to work, staggering and mumbling incoherently only to discover the cap on my bottled water had not been tightly screwed on when I shoved it into my bag. My gradebook was soaked. How prophetic. I arrived at school, late, and my students in my first class announced they had not yet seen the second half of North Country, part of their notetaking assignment for essay number three. So I went up the hallway, got the tv cart and tv and hauled it back to the classroom only to get to the doorway and to feel the entire mass tilting toward the floor! My toiling with the granny cart had strengthened me enough to shove my foot under the now missing part of the cart and to grab the television with one hand and still hold onto the cart. I called for my students and one ran back up the hallway to find the missing wheel. We reattached everything and I put the movie on and told them I'd be right back. I knew now was the time to tell my boss.
She looked at me at first with anxiety. I was leaving her with a large load of students. This was going to be one of my heavier semesters, I was sure of it, and why not, I needed the money. She tried to coax me into teaching a few days a week until she realized I really was gone. And then she looked at me with "new eyes" that told me she understood that I had found "the hole in the net," as Deepak Chopra says, "and was swimming out to my own reality."
Funny thing is on Saturday, before I ever knew my reality was coming, I walked my street where three trees line the park across from my building. I've stared at those trees for now ten years. In my spiritual studies, I look at those trees to represent the way nature does not resist and is what it is. Those trees have taught me a lot in this decade. I looked at them after not looking at them for quite a while. I've been long in discontent and constant misery. But I looked at them on Saturday and again they told me to be myself. Resist not.
This morning the meltdown is gone and I am here. I can see my summer. The consistency. And still the unknown. My mind wants me to start worrying again. What if, what if, what might come?
I'm not resisting anymore. The netting that held me is gone. It's time to swim.
Free.
In six weeks, I will be completely free to write. I can get up at five in the morning and write and be with myself alone - or on a crowded ferry headed to the Statue of Liberty - until the equally wee hours of another morning if I choose. The creativity that is coming with this surge of freedom is surreal. Suddenly wordy Sheela is at a loss for words. But they are there. Stuck deeply down in the muck of my soul. This summer is a summer of excavation and exploration. I am the kid in the candy store. I've been sent to Disneyland. I am in Nirvana.
Yesterday when I went to school to tell my boss, crazy things happened prior. I did a shitload of laundry earlier in the day that left me fried after pulling the granny cart with the massive loads up five flights only to jam it into the ironwork of the hallway next to my neighbor's file cabinet out for removal. I had a meltdown. What if the benefactor refused and regained her senses? What if, what if, what if?! I festered in my stew of disbelief until Leila came out, yanked the cart and me up and out of my misery and told me everything would be alright and why didn't I call her and tell her I had this mountain of clothes outside the door?!
I went to work, staggering and mumbling incoherently only to discover the cap on my bottled water had not been tightly screwed on when I shoved it into my bag. My gradebook was soaked. How prophetic. I arrived at school, late, and my students in my first class announced they had not yet seen the second half of North Country, part of their notetaking assignment for essay number three. So I went up the hallway, got the tv cart and tv and hauled it back to the classroom only to get to the doorway and to feel the entire mass tilting toward the floor! My toiling with the granny cart had strengthened me enough to shove my foot under the now missing part of the cart and to grab the television with one hand and still hold onto the cart. I called for my students and one ran back up the hallway to find the missing wheel. We reattached everything and I put the movie on and told them I'd be right back. I knew now was the time to tell my boss.
She looked at me at first with anxiety. I was leaving her with a large load of students. This was going to be one of my heavier semesters, I was sure of it, and why not, I needed the money. She tried to coax me into teaching a few days a week until she realized I really was gone. And then she looked at me with "new eyes" that told me she understood that I had found "the hole in the net," as Deepak Chopra says, "and was swimming out to my own reality."
Funny thing is on Saturday, before I ever knew my reality was coming, I walked my street where three trees line the park across from my building. I've stared at those trees for now ten years. In my spiritual studies, I look at those trees to represent the way nature does not resist and is what it is. Those trees have taught me a lot in this decade. I looked at them after not looking at them for quite a while. I've been long in discontent and constant misery. But I looked at them on Saturday and again they told me to be myself. Resist not.
This morning the meltdown is gone and I am here. I can see my summer. The consistency. And still the unknown. My mind wants me to start worrying again. What if, what if, what might come?
I'm not resisting anymore. The netting that held me is gone. It's time to swim.
Free.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
"She Knows the Highest Stakes"
You know that scene in "The Sound of Music," where Julie Andrews sings, "For all of my wicked childhood, I must have done something right"?
That is what I feel today.
I have a benefactor.
The daddy of my novel is my Mama!
Yes, you heard right. My mother, giving all glory to God, has agreed to fund me for a sabbatical to finish my novel! Sitting stunned on the futon for the past two hours, sleeping for another one, and downing a deadly Pepsi (not even Diet!) I am coming alive to the notion that I am a free woman!
Four months of creative freedom in NYC!
Four months that I am accountable to no one BUT ME! No employer, no students, no nagging dread that I have left a chore undone. My work is the novel and I have from June to September to hatch my baby!
Mama, I love you.
I think I'm going to have to take a walk to The Promenade rather than do housework at this moment as I had planned. I'm jumping out of my skin. A ritual of thanks seems in order. Blessings are mine.
I want to tell you: If you think you cannot ask the Universe, the source, God, again and again, you are wrong. Ask. I have been asking for now nearly a year. I have felt the budding of needing a conglomerated amount of alone time to do a piece of work for the past four years. I know now it was my novel, thinly written but a fetus of 11 chapters. Now, I will put on the meat, strengthen the bones, and build the brain! The soul and heart have always been there.
It was there at conception.
"Who doesn't know what I'm talking about? Who's never left home, and struck out, to find a dream and a life of their own, a place in the clouds, a foundation of stone?" - The Dixie Chicks
To My Mama.
That is what I feel today.
I have a benefactor.
The daddy of my novel is my Mama!
Yes, you heard right. My mother, giving all glory to God, has agreed to fund me for a sabbatical to finish my novel! Sitting stunned on the futon for the past two hours, sleeping for another one, and downing a deadly Pepsi (not even Diet!) I am coming alive to the notion that I am a free woman!
Four months of creative freedom in NYC!
Four months that I am accountable to no one BUT ME! No employer, no students, no nagging dread that I have left a chore undone. My work is the novel and I have from June to September to hatch my baby!
Mama, I love you.
I think I'm going to have to take a walk to The Promenade rather than do housework at this moment as I had planned. I'm jumping out of my skin. A ritual of thanks seems in order. Blessings are mine.
I want to tell you: If you think you cannot ask the Universe, the source, God, again and again, you are wrong. Ask. I have been asking for now nearly a year. I have felt the budding of needing a conglomerated amount of alone time to do a piece of work for the past four years. I know now it was my novel, thinly written but a fetus of 11 chapters. Now, I will put on the meat, strengthen the bones, and build the brain! The soul and heart have always been there.
It was there at conception.
"Who doesn't know what I'm talking about? Who's never left home, and struck out, to find a dream and a life of their own, a place in the clouds, a foundation of stone?" - The Dixie Chicks
To My Mama.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Take Me Home
I hate the tediousness of grading. That as well as the in-class pressure is why I never wanted to teach. I've been grading midterm tests since Saturday and I'm sick of it. Inbetween I've tried to live. For the past half an hour, I laid on the futon and played Soundscapes on tv and just let my spirit roam. I found myself in places such as my grandparents home in Moab, over to the side of the house where grandpa would retreat to the basement to work on his train set. Then I was driving Mom home from Beaumont Hospital, decades ago, the hot sun beating down on the Nova, as we sped along. I felt the sun on my face, heard the radio playing, saw my Mom, head back on the rest of the seat, her eyes closed after a long and laborious day as a medical secretary, after knowing - all along - she was meant for more.
I ended up on Transmountain, then near Ed's grave. I wondered what Sederwall was doing right now, in the hills of New Mexico?
I opened my eyes and knew I had to flatten and tape up the cardboard before leaving.
Weary, the music and release had taken me somewhere where I could find reprieve. I almost picked up the phone and called my friend Luis to beg him to be my investor. Last night I couldn't sleep after reading about Virtue Ethics for a class. The connections floored me and so much came to light.
It was as evident as the sun on the hood of a car now long gone.
I ended up on Transmountain, then near Ed's grave. I wondered what Sederwall was doing right now, in the hills of New Mexico?
I opened my eyes and knew I had to flatten and tape up the cardboard before leaving.
Weary, the music and release had taken me somewhere where I could find reprieve. I almost picked up the phone and called my friend Luis to beg him to be my investor. Last night I couldn't sleep after reading about Virtue Ethics for a class. The connections floored me and so much came to light.
It was as evident as the sun on the hood of a car now long gone.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Woody Winces
I am having such a good day! I stayed up last night until 3 am waiting for the nor'easter. It trickled in but by now at 4:23 pm EST, it's beating down. I love it. Sounds like music to me. I wish you could see it, hear it. Nature floors me, humbles me, revives me.
I awoke at 12:30 pm. My kidneys and cats were pounding on me to wake up! I did and made banana pancakes, sausage with sundried tomatoes and basil, and one egg. Yummy. Lots of coffee. Just heard yesterday that drinking coffee takes off a year of your life. I can afford that for the stimulation and meditation it brings me.
Watched "The Fisher King" and it was fabulous. That's the kind of writing turned visual I love! Made me cry. Then I decided it was time to grade the midterms for my online classes and left the television on a lecture on history and the pope. I've horribly translated what the actual lecture was but it was background noise for me. I am stlll not out of the woods: utter silence traps me. I need the sound of human voice. How can you be with vibrant young women for 22 years and not miss it? So I keep the tellie on and it soothes me.
Now I'm headed to do the dishes with Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." One of his best. Who doesn't sweat her sister being the love of who you love? I know my ex secretly panted over my sister in the early days. Neither thinks I know that, but I do. My sister thought nothing of him but he adored her even though he accused her of breaking us up. I found that funny and sweet.
Who cares now?
I don't.
I won the prize: two stunners who are mega full of life.
I win.
My apartment is brimming with candles burning against the soothing gray sky and dark tree branches. I wonder if spring will ever come?
I am full of life within.
Woody is wincing over the thought of having a brain scan in the movie. He's such a nervous nellie. Funny that his jangling would become life from art. Terror turned true. Marrying his wife's adopted daughter did that become his arrival at worry? But does it bring him happiness that tells everyone to fuck off?
The nor'easter tells me to keep going.
I awoke at 12:30 pm. My kidneys and cats were pounding on me to wake up! I did and made banana pancakes, sausage with sundried tomatoes and basil, and one egg. Yummy. Lots of coffee. Just heard yesterday that drinking coffee takes off a year of your life. I can afford that for the stimulation and meditation it brings me.
Watched "The Fisher King" and it was fabulous. That's the kind of writing turned visual I love! Made me cry. Then I decided it was time to grade the midterms for my online classes and left the television on a lecture on history and the pope. I've horribly translated what the actual lecture was but it was background noise for me. I am stlll not out of the woods: utter silence traps me. I need the sound of human voice. How can you be with vibrant young women for 22 years and not miss it? So I keep the tellie on and it soothes me.
Now I'm headed to do the dishes with Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters." One of his best. Who doesn't sweat her sister being the love of who you love? I know my ex secretly panted over my sister in the early days. Neither thinks I know that, but I do. My sister thought nothing of him but he adored her even though he accused her of breaking us up. I found that funny and sweet.
Who cares now?
I don't.
I won the prize: two stunners who are mega full of life.
I win.
My apartment is brimming with candles burning against the soothing gray sky and dark tree branches. I wonder if spring will ever come?
I am full of life within.
Woody is wincing over the thought of having a brain scan in the movie. He's such a nervous nellie. Funny that his jangling would become life from art. Terror turned true. Marrying his wife's adopted daughter did that become his arrival at worry? But does it bring him happiness that tells everyone to fuck off?
The nor'easter tells me to keep going.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Who's Your Daddy?
A big, BIG nor'easter is headed to New York. Batten down the hatches. I've already gone up to the roof and tied down the door that won't seem to cooperate and lock anymore. I laugh every time I rope it down. I imagine myself as a rodeo girl lassoing a calf (never would I do that to a sweet calf). I feel each time like singing, "I am woman, frickin' hear me roar!"
I have a friend and co-worker who was impressed I do my own taxes. Huh? I've been divorced for 19 years, I'd better know how to do my own taxes. I can't imagine someone else having my finances (although I am more than willing to offer up my accounting skills to anyone who wants to try).
But I like being the boss of me. I can hear my mother, "God is the boss of you." That's what I said, "I'm the boss of me."
This past week three more chapters fell down from the sky. A mighty big thank you. As I was writing, I looked at the clock and realized I had lost an hour, and I looked down at the page and smiled: finally, I've found a forum where my words stick. Saved the best for last.
Let's be real; I'm still in the trimester of this young 'un and it is my first novel and just like any new mom there's always hoardes of Mamas to tell the newbie how it goes. But right now it's just me, being all Steven King like, and keeping it close to my chest. I love the process.
I love my purpose.
I'm listening to Toby Keith on Channel 140. I love his vibratto. He reminds me of my buddy who's no more. No, he's not dead but he is to me. I miss him. So I listen to Toby and think of him.
He's my daddy.
I have a friend and co-worker who was impressed I do my own taxes. Huh? I've been divorced for 19 years, I'd better know how to do my own taxes. I can't imagine someone else having my finances (although I am more than willing to offer up my accounting skills to anyone who wants to try).
But I like being the boss of me. I can hear my mother, "God is the boss of you." That's what I said, "I'm the boss of me."
This past week three more chapters fell down from the sky. A mighty big thank you. As I was writing, I looked at the clock and realized I had lost an hour, and I looked down at the page and smiled: finally, I've found a forum where my words stick. Saved the best for last.
Let's be real; I'm still in the trimester of this young 'un and it is my first novel and just like any new mom there's always hoardes of Mamas to tell the newbie how it goes. But right now it's just me, being all Steven King like, and keeping it close to my chest. I love the process.
I love my purpose.
I'm listening to Toby Keith on Channel 140. I love his vibratto. He reminds me of my buddy who's no more. No, he's not dead but he is to me. I miss him. So I listen to Toby and think of him.
He's my daddy.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
"I'm Learning How to Live (Without You)" - Lucinda Williams
I am on Leila's laptop this morning and a penny has been sitting next to it for days. Just one penny.
I love it.
It is raining, windy, and the sky is a soothing gray. I am in my apartment and cozy like this at 9:37 am EST and may remain like this until I leave for school at 4 pm. Hallelujah!
Last night, I came home from school, watched Top Design, ate a burrito, and more of that damn cheesecake from Eastover, and fell into a funk and only until just a few minutes ago did it leave. When the cats were pestering me round eight, as they love to do, I could have thrown them out the window, but instead fed the pesky loves of my life.
Leila left me a note on the table and it soothed a lot. She and I are going for sushi tonight. Reason to live.
I think I need a vacation.
Now that sounds really 'chipley' (crybaby) because I have a fantastic schedule and should be ever so grateful and I am! I guess any routine gets old after a while. And it is midterm week at the school where I teach and that means surly students because they are being lambasted in every class and the aftermath of stacks and stacks of grading that HAS to be turned in three days after the midterm exams have been given out.
I've decided that if I couid find a customer service online job or wordprocessing, something where I was lodged at home, 24-7, well, that at least I could have some consistency. Commerical writing does not seem to spring from me. However, what I am learning is that - as is every aspect of life - writing is a process and I am growing as a writer (whether I know it or not) and who knows what might spring from me in this seclusion? Yes, I am growing that greedy. I want total consistency.
The novel, ever growing, deserves it.
Saw Peter Gelb, General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera on Charlie Rose on Good Friday and he said an artist's needs must be met in order for him or her to go on stage and give a full performance without worrying.
Aha!
I realized I was not being a big baby by asking the universe for support, for investors. So I'm still asking. I need 'a womb of my own' where I can go into my cocoon and produce! Get lost in the community I am making up, linked to my reality.
So I'm in a better place today. I am learning to trust, more and more, my instincts. That what my heart pangs for is correct. Even by marrying the man who fathered two tremendous daughters, it all matches up. Leila pulled me out of the fire last night and cooled my weary brow - even while she is going through her own trauma. I try to do the same for her and Sarah continues to give us fodder for a better day. She charges from us, too. It all works.
So things are as they should be and I am learning to live in the present.
I am learning how to ask.
I love it.
It is raining, windy, and the sky is a soothing gray. I am in my apartment and cozy like this at 9:37 am EST and may remain like this until I leave for school at 4 pm. Hallelujah!
Last night, I came home from school, watched Top Design, ate a burrito, and more of that damn cheesecake from Eastover, and fell into a funk and only until just a few minutes ago did it leave. When the cats were pestering me round eight, as they love to do, I could have thrown them out the window, but instead fed the pesky loves of my life.
Leila left me a note on the table and it soothed a lot. She and I are going for sushi tonight. Reason to live.
I think I need a vacation.
Now that sounds really 'chipley' (crybaby) because I have a fantastic schedule and should be ever so grateful and I am! I guess any routine gets old after a while. And it is midterm week at the school where I teach and that means surly students because they are being lambasted in every class and the aftermath of stacks and stacks of grading that HAS to be turned in three days after the midterm exams have been given out.
I've decided that if I couid find a customer service online job or wordprocessing, something where I was lodged at home, 24-7, well, that at least I could have some consistency. Commerical writing does not seem to spring from me. However, what I am learning is that - as is every aspect of life - writing is a process and I am growing as a writer (whether I know it or not) and who knows what might spring from me in this seclusion? Yes, I am growing that greedy. I want total consistency.
The novel, ever growing, deserves it.
Saw Peter Gelb, General Manager of The Metropolitan Opera on Charlie Rose on Good Friday and he said an artist's needs must be met in order for him or her to go on stage and give a full performance without worrying.
Aha!
I realized I was not being a big baby by asking the universe for support, for investors. So I'm still asking. I need 'a womb of my own' where I can go into my cocoon and produce! Get lost in the community I am making up, linked to my reality.
So I'm in a better place today. I am learning to trust, more and more, my instincts. That what my heart pangs for is correct. Even by marrying the man who fathered two tremendous daughters, it all matches up. Leila pulled me out of the fire last night and cooled my weary brow - even while she is going through her own trauma. I try to do the same for her and Sarah continues to give us fodder for a better day. She charges from us, too. It all works.
So things are as they should be and I am learning to live in the present.
I am learning how to ask.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Im'i's Spells Misogyny
Here is a letter I tried to send to The View regarding the Imus situation, but my computer wouldn't send it, so I sent it to NOW and I'm showing it here.
Dear Elisabeth,
I want to applaud you in your forthrightness and
courage to speak the truth concerning the Imus
situation! Usually when you speak, I cringe since I am
a liberal and you seem to be a conservative. But, I
have to tell you, you are right on this and Rosie and
the others are wrong!
I used to be a youth advisor at Washington Irving High
School for the YMCA's Teen Action program and there I
was taught how to give workshops to the teens. One
workshop I was shown was the Power chart. This
involved showing the students how powerful some groups
are and how powerless others are, depending on age,
gender, class, and race. I am a white woman so I have
certain power in this patriarchal system, but I also
have less power than a white man, but I have more than
a black woman. A black man has more power than a black
woman, but less than a white man. And on it goes. This
opened my eyes considerably.
Now I teach writing at a two-year college in Brooklyn
and have shown my students - thanks to the textbook -
Gloria Naylor's "Mommy, What Does the Word 'Nigger'
Mean?" as well as "Hate Radio" and more.
I have studied the role of our patriarchal system for
sometime. Women - all of us - are second class
citizens. White women have more power than black women
as well the other races under this system. Yes, things
are changing but not fast enough. White men - all of
them - are first class citizens. White men have more
power than black men as well as other races.
Black men as well as white men, can lean heavily
toward misogyny.
This is what the Imus issue is all about! It's not
just racism. It's misogyny. Yes, black men and most
men feel a real freedom to discredit women - under a
patriarchal society - and this is why it is so
IMPORTANT that Imus be the first to be fired for
misogyny. The way he said the Tennessee women were
"cute" and the Rutgers women, well you know.
It's misogyny!
Howard Stern, all of them are guilty of this! Society
is guilty of this.
I applaud you because you are touching on the issue.
It is not easy, but you had the courage to do it.
Rosie didn't. Joy didn't, and Barbara didn't.
When you bash the powerless, you must stand trial.
That is not freedom of speech, that is an 'ism'!
In Naylor's essay she writes that while some whites do
not say racist things, they are most likely thinking
it.
Thank you for speaking out.
Sincerely,
Sheela
Dear Elisabeth,
I want to applaud you in your forthrightness and
courage to speak the truth concerning the Imus
situation! Usually when you speak, I cringe since I am
a liberal and you seem to be a conservative. But, I
have to tell you, you are right on this and Rosie and
the others are wrong!
I used to be a youth advisor at Washington Irving High
School for the YMCA's Teen Action program and there I
was taught how to give workshops to the teens. One
workshop I was shown was the Power chart. This
involved showing the students how powerful some groups
are and how powerless others are, depending on age,
gender, class, and race. I am a white woman so I have
certain power in this patriarchal system, but I also
have less power than a white man, but I have more than
a black woman. A black man has more power than a black
woman, but less than a white man. And on it goes. This
opened my eyes considerably.
Now I teach writing at a two-year college in Brooklyn
and have shown my students - thanks to the textbook -
Gloria Naylor's "Mommy, What Does the Word 'Nigger'
Mean?" as well as "Hate Radio" and more.
I have studied the role of our patriarchal system for
sometime. Women - all of us - are second class
citizens. White women have more power than black women
as well the other races under this system. Yes, things
are changing but not fast enough. White men - all of
them - are first class citizens. White men have more
power than black men as well as other races.
Black men as well as white men, can lean heavily
toward misogyny.
This is what the Imus issue is all about! It's not
just racism. It's misogyny. Yes, black men and most
men feel a real freedom to discredit women - under a
patriarchal society - and this is why it is so
IMPORTANT that Imus be the first to be fired for
misogyny. The way he said the Tennessee women were
"cute" and the Rutgers women, well you know.
It's misogyny!
Howard Stern, all of them are guilty of this! Society
is guilty of this.
I applaud you because you are touching on the issue.
It is not easy, but you had the courage to do it.
Rosie didn't. Joy didn't, and Barbara didn't.
When you bash the powerless, you must stand trial.
That is not freedom of speech, that is an 'ism'!
In Naylor's essay she writes that while some whites do
not say racist things, they are most likely thinking
it.
Thank you for speaking out.
Sincerely,
Sheela
Sunday, April 8, 2007
My Peeps
What a wonderful day. If only Sarah could have been home and not in Boston. But it was delightful. Cooking, drinking a tad bit of Chilean wine, making cheesecake, eating Peeps and just being with loved ones.
The flowers on the table smile at me. The futon welcomes me. I am home. I should be working online but I am going to rest and relax.
Hope springs in me.
Happy Eastover.
The flowers on the table smile at me. The futon welcomes me. I am home. I should be working online but I am going to rest and relax.
Hope springs in me.
Happy Eastover.
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
For Lack of a Better Word
Lots going down today. I feel like Stevie Ray Vaughn's song, "The Sky is Crying," figuratively and physically. Wiped out. Woke up to two phone calls from two great friends. Anna wanted to tell me some good news and as soon as I get some coffee in me will call her back. And Marylynn was out and about and off work this week and wanted to grab coffee, but I am not fit for friend nor beast today. I'm just not in a good place.
My Manhattan classes are wearing me down, especially the 8:30 one. It's amazing how one person can change the entire dynamics of a classroom. Incredible. Luckily that person comes once every third class but I am going to have to do something, just tell the entire class their grade (as well as the verbal mouth) that part of their grade is in jeopardy for all the rude and incessant talk. For now, for today, I'm letting it roll off me. I'm so over all of this. I know the good I am doing, have done. I know I have paid my dues. Paid off some huge sin somewhere and I know I am ready to move on.
So for that realization, it, and the good, is all good.
Time to make the coffee.
Other than that, family life is good. Leila, Sarah, good. So I'm good. My family back home, well, that's another story. Steve and I are truly trudging through the tundra. There are no mistakes. But here's the deal...after all these years he and I are still trying to create and instead of heavy support and praise, we get messed with, pushed aside, relagated to the back of the bus because we aren't playing the game. None of this is said or even done. It is simply the absence of good hearted energy, action put to the faith, but again, none of this matters unless I say it matters. It is simply the will I exert within that changes my World.
It will never stop me. Nor will the talking jag student. It's all water off this duck's back. I know who I am: I am Leila and Sarah's Mom and I am a writer who has trouble sleeping but is learning how to fly.
And yes, 'the sky is still crying' yet it is what causes the buds to spring. This seed is growing.
On a lighter note, I'm planning a feed on Sunday and this is Leila's birthday month, so there's another celebration coming, and I want to have a fun dinner party for some of my friends who are writers and good souls. I'm having a Martha Stewart moment in planning it and the ray of sunshine I need to get through this rain.
Check out my brother's new blog: http://ontheborderofart.blogspot.com or check out his art at: http://homepage.mac.com/stevenhastings/Menu37.html. Or simply click under my fav links: Steve's the King.
Go out (or in) and create. Find the real treasure.
Peace.
My Manhattan classes are wearing me down, especially the 8:30 one. It's amazing how one person can change the entire dynamics of a classroom. Incredible. Luckily that person comes once every third class but I am going to have to do something, just tell the entire class their grade (as well as the verbal mouth) that part of their grade is in jeopardy for all the rude and incessant talk. For now, for today, I'm letting it roll off me. I'm so over all of this. I know the good I am doing, have done. I know I have paid my dues. Paid off some huge sin somewhere and I know I am ready to move on.
So for that realization, it, and the good, is all good.
Time to make the coffee.
Other than that, family life is good. Leila, Sarah, good. So I'm good. My family back home, well, that's another story. Steve and I are truly trudging through the tundra. There are no mistakes. But here's the deal...after all these years he and I are still trying to create and instead of heavy support and praise, we get messed with, pushed aside, relagated to the back of the bus because we aren't playing the game. None of this is said or even done. It is simply the absence of good hearted energy, action put to the faith, but again, none of this matters unless I say it matters. It is simply the will I exert within that changes my World.
It will never stop me. Nor will the talking jag student. It's all water off this duck's back. I know who I am: I am Leila and Sarah's Mom and I am a writer who has trouble sleeping but is learning how to fly.
And yes, 'the sky is still crying' yet it is what causes the buds to spring. This seed is growing.
On a lighter note, I'm planning a feed on Sunday and this is Leila's birthday month, so there's another celebration coming, and I want to have a fun dinner party for some of my friends who are writers and good souls. I'm having a Martha Stewart moment in planning it and the ray of sunshine I need to get through this rain.
Check out my brother's new blog: http://ontheborderofart.blogspot.com or check out his art at: http://homepage.mac.com/stevenhastings/Menu37.html. Or simply click under my fav links: Steve's the King.
Go out (or in) and create. Find the real treasure.
Peace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)