Saturday, February 19, 2005
Rosemary and Thyme
Today was one of those days I moved back here for. Gorgeous.I dozed past 11 while the birds chirped, drank my coffee on the 'porch' then cranked open the hatches, opened the door and windows, hauled everything out into the sunshine and cleaned all day. Now I am broiling a herbed fresh rainbow trout and pouring a glass of wine so I can eat outside.
This kind of day is just not the same in a condo in the downtown of a city. Today was the first day I've had like this in nine and a half years. That's sad.
Last night I dreamt that I was hanging out with my family and Matt called to see if I wanted to go out and watch some live music. For some reason I thought this was strange and he asked me if we did that as a family event, like his did.
Then he asked me whether the closet my parents had kept me in had soft walls or not.
Obviously, I need more fresh air.
lyric at post:
..no I'll stand my ground, won't be turned around
and I'll keep this world from draggin me down..
Friday, February 18, 2005
Half Finished Thoughts.
And a Poem.
You know when you've got almost nothing big left to worry about and everything gets a bit easier to see? There's been some big fat asses in my way for a while, and I'd say that things feel different (ha!) but I think it's just little things for a bit. At least I hope so. The big things of the last few months are behind me now and there's not much left to lose at this point. I don't mean that in a bad way, not at all.
I never actually promised I'd make any sense. Just so you know.
My doctor's favorite plant is the hedge.
Okay it's not but I've been saving that line for ages and never get to use it. I met a new doctor today. Cause yanno, there's GP's and specialists and videographers and camera men. Oh wait, no, that was that weird surgery I haven't gotten around to telling you about yet. Or did I?
Anyways, this is one of those specialists I get to drag about with me these days. I think he's brilliant. After two minutes I would have lit myself on fire without a second thought if he'd told me it would be good for me. How many doctors actually say things like, "It has been so great to meet you. I'm really glad."? Seriously? Doctor's like my GP and him are rare and not only do they deserve my undying love and affection and yes, even your firstborn child (I'm not having any, sorry, I had to promise yours) - they have it.
Since I work in the hospital he was telling me about when they filmed Intersection down where my office is. I work with Richard Gere and Sharon Stone germs. That's kinda cool.
I forget sometimes how people react to you when you're happy. I went to the bank to put some money in Matt's account and the lady introduced herself to me, asked my name and shook my hand. How weird is that? I told her I wasn't a customer but I'd be a regular since I owe Matt so much money I'll be in there every payday until my teeth fall out and we could have wheelchair races across the floor. I swear she giggled.
I love grocery day. But I get all confused because I do not know what to eat first. I want all of it right now. NOW!
You know how you get those foot cramps and you have to dance around the house for ages to make them go away? But you think they're gone and then go to do something and suddenly, in the midst of a delicate movement such as scratching the corner of your eye, they return with eight times the force and agony? I dare you to experience that whilst hopping and screaming in a home the size of a bus.
One of my credit card companies called last night to offer me some insurance that would pay me a $100 a day (after the first three days) for any hospital stay. $200 if my spouse and I were in the hospital at the same time, blah blah blah blahde blah. Although I have NEVER done this before, I am not ashamed at all to say I actually said (but only after the first three 'no thank you's')... "Hey, that's great! I've smoked for 23 years and had lung cancer not long ago. How much did you say that insurance was a month? $6.95? And it's good till I'm 70? Wow, that's another 35 years!"
They got off the phone pretty quick, I tell ya. I think maybe buddy felt bad but seriously, you have to be a special kind of person to do that kind of job. To talk so fast people who don't want to talk to you can't get a word in edgewise and then refuse to hear NO. Repeatedly. I don't think they'll be calling back. Pity.
I quite enjoyed that.
I think that may be it for now, I have run out of steam. Emails and catching up tomorrow, still.
Oh, yeah, the poem. The last one, I think, by good ol' Al.
Optimist
In a black mood
there seems little reason to live
after a quarrel at least
a rejection of some kind
or when ennui fogs the lens
you look at the world with
and even sex dies down
into proof of the virility
of a habit
But it passes
(one hemlock for the road)
it passes.
Shall we dance?
lyric at post:
..I believe disease is coming
I believe that's why I'm running
Keep living..
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Thursday is TV Night
huh. well. yeah.I don't have much to say. I'm posting and then taking a night off to watch TV and read a book. I am, however, calm. And smiling. And very behind in emails. So, I'm smiling at you and hoping y'all can wait until Saturday.
And I'm hungry because I got home and I was out of propane and had to go back out (but OH MY GOD, it felt so much better to find I'd run out at 5 pm than at 5 AM, I cannot tell you.)
I think all the reactions just been burnt out of me. Caaaaaaalm. Or maybe nothing else can go wrong. (knockwood). But, calm is boring, innit and I'd bet after two weeks you'd be begging me to go out and get in some sort of JENTHING.
Hey! New word! Jenthing. Jennything.
"I shall be out this weekend participating in a jenthing and shall not allow you to distract me from my mission."
"How dare you suggest I had jennything to do with that fire that burnt down your barn. "
HA! I like it. I'm brilliant.
lyric at post:
..all I ever wanted, a chance to catch my breath
to see the world go by and lay my ghosts to rest..
Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Perspective
It's hard to give up on an idea. There's been too much stress for me and the things that used to not faze me in the slightest - things I would just sit down, take a deep breath and then work out - have been things that absolutely throw me out of whack, instantly. I know that's stress, I know I've been through a lot. I know I've chosen these things. I know, I know, I know.For some reason, having this portion of the money from the equity in my house in the bank, up front and ready to go, seemed like the final hurdle I had to jump after all this other crap of getting to this point. I'd hung a lot of stuff on it, like I'd forgotten everything I've ever learned about my life and actually thought this would signal smooth sailing for the rest of the year.
Last night, as I took a breath between alternately yelling at my mom and trying to make her agree that I really was a loser, she said "Why don't you talk to Cheryl about what happened today? She's good with the ideas."
I said, "Do I really want my landlady to know that much about my finances or what's going on?"
She says, "Well, if you don't leave in January, don't you think they'll notice?"
So, once I finished with the tear-flooding of my living room and shorted out the phone, I called my landlady/friend/surrogate family and told her I wanted to come over and run some ideas by her since I'd run into a large glitch in my plans.
She made some tea for us and then we worked it out. I don't have anyone to run ideas by and so sometimes I think I'm doing the right thing but there's no one to tell me that maybe I'm not. No advice out there in lala land for Jen. Which may be what causes the biggest fuckups in my life. Whatever, it can't be helped, but at least I have Cheryl to tell me if I'm being reasonable at least.
One of the things she said to me was, "When you called and said you had run into a big glitch, I immediately thought, one - the cancer's back, two - you lost your job."
She had a point, yeah?
Of course, she immediately followed it by, "I think this is why you are so skinny, you're utterly dehydrated all the time - you never used to be this way, what has the big scary city done to our Jen?"
(I don't think it was the city, I think it's Matt's fault. All of it. Even the scar on my chin from when I was five and fell off my bike.)
Did I say that out loud?
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Today is Not the Day We Find Out What Happens Then
It actually seems to be getting easier to get back up. Or maybe I've lost my mind. Maybe it doesn't matter.So. Cry. Cry a little more. Call Philly and cry on her. Yell, "I don't fucking CARE about anyone else!" when your dear sweet mother says, "Well, there's always someone else worse off than you."
..... then.... regroup.
I'm regrouped. I'm at two alternative options. Either one will work fine, I think. Just a little differently.
And maybe, in the end, a little better.
Down for the Count
If I still lived in my condo, then everything would be hunky dorey>Because I changed my entire life in preparation for a year long buildup to leaving and the condo became a rental, there are a bunch of caveats that don't fit.
So here I am. Without the money.
There isn't a choice on whether to just get back up off the floor again and again but at what point can I just not take anymore disappointment and heartache and pain? What happens then?
Monday, February 14, 2005
You Know, It's a Little Weird
(Blah Blah Blah)
I'm not happy with how that came out. Although, it's already been seen by most of the planet I've taken it back out for now. Violated a major rule of blogging, I know. You can kill me later....But, I have babbled on enough and so I leave with a little more Al Purdy. One a little more in the mood of this day of the year, and how, in an obscure way - I feel about all of you....
Winter at Roblin Lake
Seeing the sky darken & the fields
turn brown & the lake lead-grey
as some enormous scrap of sheet metal
& wind grabs the world around the equator
I am most thankful for knowing about
the little gold hairs on your belly --
Alfred Purdy
The Cariboo Horses
(amen)
lyric at post:
..everything I am
and everything in me
wants to be the one
you wanted me to be
I'll never let you down
even if I could
I'd give up everything
if only for your good
so hold me when I'm here
right me when I'm wrong
you can hold me when I'm scared
you won't always be there
so love me when I'm gone..
Preempting the Monday Bumper Sticker
It's that time of year, again.
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Sunday Morning
A Whole Lotta Thoughts
Cabot woke me up at 7 am today by knocking over the Dri-Z-Air in the bedroom. The water in it ends up being chemically treated by whatever those little white pellets are and so doesn't soak into anything (including anything you try to clean it up with) and leaves a funny slippy residue on everything it touches.I cleaned it up as best I could, put food out for the little feller and tried to go back to sleep. I've got my period though and my lower back just aches no matter what position I try to sleep in - I did manage it for a little while but the dreams I had were full of their very own kind of ache.
Finally giving up, I shower, notice the hot water heater isn't kicking in again and make my thrice weekly call over next door to let them know and leave to drive 'into town'.
Just up the road from me is a golf course and although it is just past 8:30 am, the golf worshippers are already out in force. Directly across the road is an Anglican Church, parking lot full of it's own celebrants.
I drive a minimum of 12 hours a week these days (strange after driving 12 hours a YEAR for the last nine years) so weekly I check Miss Betsy LaRue's vital fluids and top up her right front foot as she's got a slow leak.
From there, I head over to the library to drop off some books I've finished and then drive through Tim Hortons for a coffee before turning around and heading back towards home. I drive by the golf course where my brother works and slow down to pace a deer as it crosses over from the course to the front yards of the houses across the street. Driving on, I'm smiling and some of the deer's beauty and grace has taken the place of the dream residue.
I headed down to the beach by my house, a childhood place where I never took Matt and, for now, one of the few I can actually visit to find a little peace. My coffee, a book and I tuck ourselves into the side of a log.
Mostly though, I don't read, I just sit and sip my coffee and listen to the waves come crashing in about eight yards in front of me.
I was thinking about belief, about a way to find a path I can follow back to a certainty that lately has been a bit shaky. I know that this is a change from most of my life when I never felt any kind of certainty at all and that gives me hope. A life where there has been no surety of faith now has a little bit to build on. To realize that I had actually found it, if only briefly and in a form that begs a transformation to become my own - was a little like a small miracle all itself this morning.
If I am to travel and to travel alone, I will have to let go of the small rituals and the stability of the 'things' in my life. And too, I have to find a way to allow something else to make a new home in their place. A new kind of belief that I can always find familiar and comforting in a new world that will be full of unfamiliar things. A new world where I cannot just 'go home' to find security again.
This morning my life touched three things that would, I think, fall under the heading of the things that our society worships. The church. A sport. Nature.
Many people define their religion as a belief. They pin their hopes and understanding of this life on the framework that their religion gives to them. I'm not so good with organized religion. I think I've always needed to find my own faith, that it is not something that can just be given to me and lived without question and, as well, that it is a search that I've not been particularly successful in so far.
As I sit here, home again, at my kitchen table talking to you I can look up and see, a hundred feet away, two small rams pacing before pausing and running at each other - I can hear the crunch their heads make as they collide and I wince as their horns dig in. There is a cow sidestepping to get out of their way and the two miniature donkeys in the paddock ignore all of them, choosing instead to continue eating the nettles. I experience more wonderment and reverence in these moments than in anything else in life.
I believe that nature is it's own belief system. That it's spirituality lies in its reminder that it is egoless, constant, structured and wild. That, without the influence of mankind, it exists in a perfect state of balance. A balance that is breathtaking and sacred and that no matter where you are in the world, nature can always serve as an end result, a starting point and a solid foundation for all other forms of belief.
To travel, far from the familiar and all of the security it holds, is to give up control. I will have to find a way to balance that with something inside of me that will provide, in some way, what I am leaving behind. Thomas Moore says that travel, for the heart and soul, requires real magic. That one has to find ways to arrive fully, body and soul, in a new place, and how to make the getting there a voyage of enchantment. It is an abandonment to fate that entails surrender to storms and calm seas, both. To find, in each place, the genus loci, the spirit of a place. Marsilio Ficino said that, "Everywhere the world is alive and breathes, and we can absorb it's spirit."
I came home to my horoscope, which said, in part...Perhaps it is time to investigate your beliefs. Are they providing you with the help you need to get where you wish to be?
I've believed this past couple of years that there is a reason I am on this path, that I have become better at listening to the voice of my soul, that I have given myself up to following it's wishes and that I am heading in the right direction. That the aimlessless and lack of purpose I've always felt within me had a voice that I was too afraid to hear. That I feel this even in the midst of the fear that flashes through me like a sudden squall on a regular basis, serves only to reinforce my choices.
The last few months have been difficult and it will be a while yet before the hurt is diluted enough to live unseen beneath the surface but, in the meantime, little step by little step, my strength comes from a different place. I hope that these things I come to will do their part in preparing me for what I'm hoping to do next year, which at this point is by no means assured. I believe, in my heart, that this is the direction I am to go and after the things I have already done to prepare, that anything else is unimaginable.
At the same time, I remember that three months ago, I knew that there was a possibility Matt would leave me, but in my heart, it was unthinkable that it would come to pass. Maybe my heart was right, it still feels that even with the very different way I have come to see Matt over this last four weeks. But, too, my heart's conviction was relying on another's heart as well. That, I think, was my mistake - to take what was in my heart and use it to shape my belief in Matt's heart.
Today, on the beach, I thought that maybe building my faith outward from my heart hasn't been the right path to follow, maybe instead, I'm being told that it needs to start outside of me first. That I need to build a framework on something that is available to me in every place on earth, before I can anchor a part of it within myself. A religion, if you will, that begins with the beginning, with life. All life. Even the life that resides in places and things.
A girl, an early morning and a beach.
A beach where, rightly enough for now, the only footprints are her own.
