I admit it. I am addicted.
I can't seem to stop watching Jericho. Of course they planned it this way - that toward the end of the first season you would stop everything in your life - you would drop all social activities unless they involve others watching Jericho with you, you would stop sex, eating, anything that got in the way of watching the riveting final hours of a town constructed from the post-Apocalypse. But I have it on DVD, which makes it far worse, as those of you whom watch TV shows on DVD know full well.
For the last couple of months, about the time span I have had these DVD's on hand, I have also ramped up meditation practice to, on average, 1 hour/day (as part of Shambhala Guide requirements, but I am also happy to report that it has helped my practice a TON) and I have also started working out regularly (3-4 times a week, swimming or elliptical at the Y) and both of these activities, as regular habits, are almost addictive - I feel off when I don't do them, and clear when I do do them. For instance, yesterday, I had this tremendous anxiety about getting back to work after a week of basically vacation in Toronto, and after watching an episode of near-war situation Jericho, of course. But the fact that I had both worked out and meditated in the morning set me up to see the anxiety pretty quickly, regard it, acknowledge it, and get to work anyway, wading through the piles of emails and getting my online class set up for WCATY.
But what if meditation and exercise didn't have to fight Jericho? I won't be asking that until I am all caught up with the show, I fear. In the meantime, writing also tends to fall by the wayside (you see it wasn't in my list of regular healthy activities ramped up up there) - it has gone back into the perilous position of something I don't do just to do, regardless of how I feel (which is where things like contemplative/meditative practices and exercise MUST go for me, lest I forget the part where I love them and believe I hate them until NOT doing them makes me totally nuts).
So here I am. Baby steps. A meditation instructor recently told a friend of mine "Just sit for 5 minutes", as she was having anxiety returning to meditation after long absence. And I feel like I can use that, too. "Just sit down and do the blog, baby, you don't have to write a chapter of the novel and three letters all in one day". It's the "making up for lost time" feeling that I have a hard time shaking - I used to have it, almost ridden with guilt, at the end of every weekend, and I certainly have it still after vacations, where the lack of structure, which is a necessary freedom now and again!, also means that things I don't do without structure fall apart.
From the "good news" side, I have finally nailed down one very significant aspect of organizing my days, besides the exercise and meditation (and writing!) in the last week alone. For a long time I have plagued myself with uber-long to-do lists, and I have tried prioritizing them and giving myself a break when I don't finish them, but it always feels like there's some super human me on the other side of the fence getting it all done (Yeah, me, 5 years ago. Ugh. Not going back to that!). Starting Tuesday, my first day back from vacation, I made a two-thing to do list (both were pretty complex, mind you, but I knew all I had to do) and then, I did both things, plus a few extras while I was at it, but the key thing is that I got the two things done that would have made me nuts had I not done them (sounds like common sense, but I'm not so good at this particular task!) and didn't worry about anything else. I gave myself space, and didn't feel guilty when some of it went to a Jericho fix. All this while PMS'ing! Not bad!
This afternoon, some of the tension returned and I discovered I wanted to fill it with a list of things to do, and so choosing to write was choosing space and acknowledgment over busy work. This feels like a shift long-coming, and I am sure it won't be without struggle, but if I can learn to work in this realm instead, this realm of reckoning and choosing to feel the tension over filling it, things could be a lot more peaceful in my life. I recognize that I have an awful lot of room in my life right now, for two more weeks, anyway, and actually celebrating that, even if with tv, or best with fall walks and calling people, DOING NOTHING, is great. Some kind of something - step, improvement, cause for cheer, to be feeling instead of filling.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Monday, October 01, 2007
A Very Novel Novel
The search for the novel inside me continues. Like Michelangelo, I don't think that I am making anything up - writing this whole time has felt much more like divining. Recently, one of my students whom I am also tutoring has gotten into exploring mixed genres of writing, and in particular, shows very strong aptitude for lyric essays (please check Seneca Review online for great examples!) She pointed out to me that she thought my "project" sounded like it might be suited to this form, too, but it's taken me weeks of that suggestion stewing in my head, along with many articles and reviews and examples sent my way from her (also for her benefit, of course!) to get me to actually experiment with the form. This is the first try, and I am really pleased with it. Here it is, in not-very-edited form. Please keep in mind use of first person here is mostly fictional, though the emotional intent is similar to real life, the facts, fact-sounding though they may be, aren't.
Comments are welcome!
---------from "Stranger Ancestors" (working title of "novel" in progress)----------------
My mother kept silent from age 42 to 50.
In the later years of life, the inner ear recedes in on itself and makes of any noise a maze.
Though hearing aids can assist the sounds in entering deeper into caves of the cochlea,
it is rare to ever recover whole sounds.
She claimed she couldn’t hear, too.
How does one dis/prove a deaf/mute?
Such guilt to even assume she’d waste any of her very few words
on a lie like that.
Often, in grief or response to similar trauma, subjects lose their ability to hear
earlier than the typical timespan, which is chemically predisposed to occur in the mid seventies. Sometimes, because of this early loss, the shocked subjects refuse to speak.
My father-in-law has a similar early hearing loss. But he isn’t silent at all. In fact, he
constantly interrupts, not having heard others’ words, and jolts and juggles his own sounds, constantly pretending he can hear everything, including himself.
Women are more likely, socially, to respond to this largely genetic indisposition with silence, rather than arrogance. Being the quieter sex trains such subjects for the reticence and subtleties of early hearing loss. Many embarrassing incidents can be avoided this way; however, lifetimes of social interactions also crumble in these cases, compounding the loss.
I am lucky they never met. Imagine what a holiday mess that would be! My father-in-law wailing away without explanation, his stream of consciousness impotence in face of his auditory ignorance. And my mother, pushed over by the force of his steam train presence, would have heard his intention loud and clear, pounding her butterfly heart, like an action across the world making impacts unseen.
Ironically, it has been found that the inappropriate overly-loud speaking to the deaf so commonly found on the part of the hearing is often a parallel behavior in the deaf themselves, as they have no volume regulator of their own. Rather than looking into the face of the listener – who may reflect back a shame or pity they’d rather not see – they newly, early, nearly-deaf often choose, especially male subjects, to barrel forward without bar.
I read a fantastic book on sign language when my mother was 43, after she’d been silent a year. I hoped we could learn to “speak” to each other this way, but I of course missed the point that she was done communicating altogether. The book, “Train Go Sorry,” has become irrefutable confused in my mind with another book published in the same era, “French Lessons,” as both are memoir-fact books, and had similar facts, tone and even colors on the covers. When I moved to France for a study abroad year, the two became even more interlinked, as I often felt both dumb and deaf in the face of speaking French every single day.
Because second languages are stored in a separate part of the brain from the primary or mother tongue (except, of course, in the case of being raised from birth in a plura-lingual environment), stroke research has found and been able to point at the strange ability of otherwise mute stroke survivors becoming able to speak, fluently and without question, their secondary or tertiary languages, but without being able to either recognize or form their mother tongue, regardless of age.
My maternal grandmother had had a stroke when I was young and for a few days, it is rumored, all she could speak was French, being that she had learned it when she was a child, though later, as a teenager in school. I remember her mostly in French, and so I felt strangely close to her in France, and yet, I had the hardest time parsing out anything beyond the basic nouns and verbs I needed to get enough food to eat. Beyond that, at bars and on the street, as soon as I missed just one word, I would become so ashamed that I couldn’t stick to the frame of the speaker, whether directed at me or not, and the world would grow grey and silent in misunderstanding. I wrote to my mother about this near the end, having had no contact with her all the year, feeling so distant from her without her face to see. I expressed a great deal of sympathy for how she must have felt the last few years, and thanked her for passing on the French her mother had taught her. I hoped she had broken her vow and read the letter, feeling me touch her through it. She died a day after my exams were over, and I flew home early for her funeral.
Studies find that babies cannot hear, after the age of 16 months, the basic sounds of languages other than their mother tongue and any other languages sung constantly in their presence from their time in the womb. This is striking because many sources now confirm that when a baby is actually born, or perhaps soon before, it is born with the potential to hear and discern all languages, and this deafness of human potential is a fast and distinct loss. It can never be regained later in life, though aptitude toward language learning can assist in regaining some semblance of discernment of differing sounds.
I found the letter, months later, unopened on her desk.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Entreat/Retreat
Last weekend I taught my second residential writing retreat for my home students here in WI. It was a lovely time - the weather was impeccable (still pretty much is!), the number of students smaller than last April, and I was calmer than the first time, both because of my confidence level calming down and also because of having the "first retreat in that location" down from earlier this year. My life leading up to the retreat was less hectic, too.
I'd love to teach more retreats. I plan to keep as many classes during the week as I currently have, but the retreats, especially now that a core of my students attend them and also do a great job of holding space for the newer students - are a real bonding space for all of us, and a real chance to take the practices deeper. I have a few retreats in mind - I want to do four a year, three in the Arena WI location we've been doing it (a lovely old farmhouse with 200 acres of hiking land and goats and horses and great views) and in the winter, one at the Shambhala retreat center near Plymouth, WI. Then, I have in the pipes a few other ideas - non-residential retreats (like what I taught in Florida) - in particular, one the weekend before New Year's Eve for folks to process the year and visualize what they want out of the New Year - and yoga and writing combined retreats with one of my students, who is a yoga teacher in town and has expressed really similar teaching philosophies to mine.
All of this is spurred on too, not just by time and adjustment, but the support from the group of teachers at Marquette, where I will begin teaching in the spring. Little did I know when I rejected my acceptance to the Contemplative Education Masters at Naropa in order to have more time to teach that I would be able to find a community, be paid to be a part of one, nonetheless!, in which I could do a lot of the same research, discussion, exploration and be supported by similar approaches to the Naropa program. This month's reading focuses on how to balance intuition and intellect in teaching, how to leave room for space and koans and also get the grading done. We have our first big monthly meeting today, this afternoon in Milwaukee, and I am actually *excited* about it - excited to continue working in this ecumenical group, excited to follow up the retreat from last spring which surprised me with the diversity and acceptance (various breeds of Catholics alongside various breeds of Buddhists and other even atheists) - something I didn't expect to find in academia. Certainly, perhaps because of my parents' extreme academic mentalities and intellectualism, I never expected to find the kind of teaching I do - very intuitive, non-graded, well thought out for certain but non-standardized for even more certain - not only validated but encouraged in a well-reputed academic university. Let's hope this is just the beginning!
Off to go hear the Venerable Khandro Rinpoche speak in Milwaukee as well this weekend. For years I have wanted "a teacher" and just recently, ironically right before this 40-something young and perky teacher's visit, I have settled into realizing that I have many teachers and I am likely more a many teacher person than one teacher person. She fits the bill -challenging and young, favored by the feminist queer set, reputed to be edgier than Pema Chodron (also related to the Shambhala Lineage) and it may still work out - we'll see, I'm not decided yet. But training for Shambhala Arts is starting up in Minneapolis next month and I am most likely to continue on the track I am on - learning through teaching, and workshops related to that and the arts, than to go and study with one particular teacher. It might just be resistance, too, so we'll see. Regardless of outcome I am exceptionally grateful at the moment for the potential for growth that continues in my life and the myriad manifestations of the work I've done so far and that others have done for me. Hallelujah!
I'd love to teach more retreats. I plan to keep as many classes during the week as I currently have, but the retreats, especially now that a core of my students attend them and also do a great job of holding space for the newer students - are a real bonding space for all of us, and a real chance to take the practices deeper. I have a few retreats in mind - I want to do four a year, three in the Arena WI location we've been doing it (a lovely old farmhouse with 200 acres of hiking land and goats and horses and great views) and in the winter, one at the Shambhala retreat center near Plymouth, WI. Then, I have in the pipes a few other ideas - non-residential retreats (like what I taught in Florida) - in particular, one the weekend before New Year's Eve for folks to process the year and visualize what they want out of the New Year - and yoga and writing combined retreats with one of my students, who is a yoga teacher in town and has expressed really similar teaching philosophies to mine.
All of this is spurred on too, not just by time and adjustment, but the support from the group of teachers at Marquette, where I will begin teaching in the spring. Little did I know when I rejected my acceptance to the Contemplative Education Masters at Naropa in order to have more time to teach that I would be able to find a community, be paid to be a part of one, nonetheless!, in which I could do a lot of the same research, discussion, exploration and be supported by similar approaches to the Naropa program. This month's reading focuses on how to balance intuition and intellect in teaching, how to leave room for space and koans and also get the grading done. We have our first big monthly meeting today, this afternoon in Milwaukee, and I am actually *excited* about it - excited to continue working in this ecumenical group, excited to follow up the retreat from last spring which surprised me with the diversity and acceptance (various breeds of Catholics alongside various breeds of Buddhists and other even atheists) - something I didn't expect to find in academia. Certainly, perhaps because of my parents' extreme academic mentalities and intellectualism, I never expected to find the kind of teaching I do - very intuitive, non-graded, well thought out for certain but non-standardized for even more certain - not only validated but encouraged in a well-reputed academic university. Let's hope this is just the beginning!
Off to go hear the Venerable Khandro Rinpoche speak in Milwaukee as well this weekend. For years I have wanted "a teacher" and just recently, ironically right before this 40-something young and perky teacher's visit, I have settled into realizing that I have many teachers and I am likely more a many teacher person than one teacher person. She fits the bill -challenging and young, favored by the feminist queer set, reputed to be edgier than Pema Chodron (also related to the Shambhala Lineage) and it may still work out - we'll see, I'm not decided yet. But training for Shambhala Arts is starting up in Minneapolis next month and I am most likely to continue on the track I am on - learning through teaching, and workshops related to that and the arts, than to go and study with one particular teacher. It might just be resistance, too, so we'll see. Regardless of outcome I am exceptionally grateful at the moment for the potential for growth that continues in my life and the myriad manifestations of the work I've done so far and that others have done for me. Hallelujah!
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Ours is not to question why
The last two mornings I have woken with what Chogyam Trungpa calls "Early Morning Depression". Sad, tender heart with a sense of mourning and aimlessness, no desire to face a day which, on the surface, is totally approachable: no major stresses, no major happenings, and the most perfect weather the Midwest can get imho: 70's, cloudy, windy, almost no humidity. Yet, the first two hours or so of the morning, certainly that first hour of semi and real consciousness merging, are spent feeling grumpy, overwhelmed before I even begin. I used to feel this a lot more often - it's gotten "better", meaning, less frequent and less overwhelming. The obvious trigger is PMS - and once I've been awake long enough to realize this, I take the appropriate herbs and things relax a lot. Yesterday, I went to the Co-op (something I rarely do considering how close I live to it, for a spontaneous breakfast purchase or the like) and got a nothing muffin, and asked Becky for the freshest anti-cold juice she could make me (side symptom is that lungs, throat and sinuses are reacting to the clotting grief) and enjoyed them in the semi-sun with the latest Dan Savage column.
Becky and I have been talking a lot lately about how appreciation is an often-forgotten antidote to many things. Even appreciation can be appropriated and used against yourself - oh I am depressed because I am not appreciating my situation enough, blah blah blah. But true appreciation, giving the things I enjoy and desire a chance to show their face in the field of manure that seems to be my mornings - is actually helpful, and mostly available. For instance, I got my heart of hearts car last week for a super sweet deal, as Becky's and my car (a one dollar hand me down from her parents, which lasted us a year) died full on last week. Even during that occurrence - me stranded in Fitchburg on the way to test drive the car I was certain I was going to (and did) buy - I had an appreciation of the humor of the way things sometimes fatefully crash together, and of the high winds and weather, the crispness of the air and the cost of the tow truck, of how we didn't wind up stranded in that old Toyota Wagon near Milwaukee or Chicago, which were trips taken recently and planned on again in the upcoming future. I appreciate that I appreciated those things in those moments. I wonder, actually, if I am more able to do this in "crisis" moments than in everyday life. Perhaps this is why CTR really focuses so much on "Ordinary/personal world" - our day to day maintenance, relationships, carpooling, work and break time. Though certainly some folks don't handle crises "well", I have known a large number of folks, myself included, who excel in crisis, but somehow tend to fall short in daily life. This sounds judgmental as I write it - it's not a performance issue, but more how a moment in alarm is somehow sharper, clearer to me and easier to act in than in the fuzzy morning, even if what is making it fuzzy are the very things I like most - soft sun, new kitten in my lap, meditation.
Let me recount the tale of the the car transfer, as it is a doozy. Becky and I bought her parents' second car last year for the low low price of a dollar, and we put a few hundred into it, shared between the two of us. It got us through a winter of driving to Milwaukee for Shambhala Training programs, trips to Chicago and Milwaukee for holidays, and even got Becky to Northern Minnesota and Southern Illinois. It was a Toyota Camry, 1990, the wagons that some folks still love so much and they don't make anymore. We knew there were going to be other costs coming up soon - an oil leak slowly getting worse, brake lines rusted from some time in the garage in disuse. I was even entertaining the idea of putting a few hundred more into it to get me to Milwaukee/Marquette over this upcoming winter, but in my deep heart I knew I'd need to get a much more reliable car. A couple of weeks ago, we were aimed to go to Plymouth Wisconsin for a meditation instructor training program, and I went to get the oil changed and a fuel-ish smell checked out. Turns out the fuel lines are both rusted together and also falling apart (so much for the strength of a union, eh?) and they informed us the car was on the way out and certainly not to take it out of town. So we took another friend's car to the retreat - or, started to - only I burned her clutch disk while getting used to her clutch, which is especially picky, and there was a big panic with smoke and we wound up taking a THIRD car, because we feared the second cars' clutch fork was BROKEN. I set aside in last week time to ask friends who know cars how to buy a new one, and scoured Craigslist for a couple of days, emailing folks about used but still good Honda and Toyota Sedans, but my heart wasn't in it. Sure, they are sturdy, reliable cars, and sure I can no longer afford the Saabs that my ex used to fix for me for free, but I needed something that would make me happy, too, and boring sedans just don't do that. I never said it aloud, but what I really wanted was a Subaru - an Impreza Outback, a hatch with stationwagon size but a cuter back end. Ask, even silently, and sometimes things get delivered - for one appeared, cherry red, incredible deal, on Craigslist the second day. After a flurry of emails and hoping someone else hadn't gotten to it first, I drove the now-dead (at the time dying) Toyota out to Fitchburg on the edge of Friday afternoon to test drive the Suby. The old car DIED (I heard the last fuel line POP just a mile from his house) and I succumbed myself to it so simply, without resentment or panic, because it just seemed to make so much (absurd) sense. I called a tow company, and then Erika, my former roommate, who came to get me and take me to the new car. We drove it and I fell in love - yes, this is a car I could drive to Milwaukee once a week, with Becky out to Colorado next year, and anywhere in the interrim in town and to Chicago to visit folks like Birdfarm. He agreed to take it to my mechanic, and we got the very last appointment of the day - all to find out it needs some work, more than he or I realized. At this point, I turned to him and asked if he'd lower the price and he and I negotiated outside of the Car X, and he said I could take the weekend to think it over. "Oh no" I said "I am sure if you are. I have my checkbook on me (had to take out a loan) and I have no car. I'll drive you back to Fitchburg and we can sign the title there, if you don't mind." He was clearly blown out of the water, and needed to think about it himself, but in the end, he was as happy as I was to have his search to sell the car done in less than two days. And so we did. I registered it yesterday.
In recounting this funky tale of seeming fate, my appreciation increases for how the unknowing we have about any situation sometimes leads to what we call auspiciousness, or coincidence, and sometimes leads to murky mornings without direction. I realize I don't always have to get a "prize" like the Suby to appreciate things. And I realize I can't be appreciating 24/7. So I'll go have a cup of coffee, grateful I had the time to write, grateful even for a floor I have time to sweep so I can appreciate it clean instead of resenting it as dirty. And when I get sad, I will cry, hopefully, without worry. This is appreciation too, accepting without judgment, regardless of the status of the situation - it need not be perky and cute like my new-to-me Suby in order to be something I can say I am grateful exists. And for the things that are seemingly beyond gratitude, things I really don't appreciate exist, nor do I see myself appreciating? Who knows. There's always room to learn. Ours is not to question why.
Becky and I have been talking a lot lately about how appreciation is an often-forgotten antidote to many things. Even appreciation can be appropriated and used against yourself - oh I am depressed because I am not appreciating my situation enough, blah blah blah. But true appreciation, giving the things I enjoy and desire a chance to show their face in the field of manure that seems to be my mornings - is actually helpful, and mostly available. For instance, I got my heart of hearts car last week for a super sweet deal, as Becky's and my car (a one dollar hand me down from her parents, which lasted us a year) died full on last week. Even during that occurrence - me stranded in Fitchburg on the way to test drive the car I was certain I was going to (and did) buy - I had an appreciation of the humor of the way things sometimes fatefully crash together, and of the high winds and weather, the crispness of the air and the cost of the tow truck, of how we didn't wind up stranded in that old Toyota Wagon near Milwaukee or Chicago, which were trips taken recently and planned on again in the upcoming future. I appreciate that I appreciated those things in those moments. I wonder, actually, if I am more able to do this in "crisis" moments than in everyday life. Perhaps this is why CTR really focuses so much on "Ordinary/personal world" - our day to day maintenance, relationships, carpooling, work and break time. Though certainly some folks don't handle crises "well", I have known a large number of folks, myself included, who excel in crisis, but somehow tend to fall short in daily life. This sounds judgmental as I write it - it's not a performance issue, but more how a moment in alarm is somehow sharper, clearer to me and easier to act in than in the fuzzy morning, even if what is making it fuzzy are the very things I like most - soft sun, new kitten in my lap, meditation.
Let me recount the tale of the the car transfer, as it is a doozy. Becky and I bought her parents' second car last year for the low low price of a dollar, and we put a few hundred into it, shared between the two of us. It got us through a winter of driving to Milwaukee for Shambhala Training programs, trips to Chicago and Milwaukee for holidays, and even got Becky to Northern Minnesota and Southern Illinois. It was a Toyota Camry, 1990, the wagons that some folks still love so much and they don't make anymore. We knew there were going to be other costs coming up soon - an oil leak slowly getting worse, brake lines rusted from some time in the garage in disuse. I was even entertaining the idea of putting a few hundred more into it to get me to Milwaukee/Marquette over this upcoming winter, but in my deep heart I knew I'd need to get a much more reliable car. A couple of weeks ago, we were aimed to go to Plymouth Wisconsin for a meditation instructor training program, and I went to get the oil changed and a fuel-ish smell checked out. Turns out the fuel lines are both rusted together and also falling apart (so much for the strength of a union, eh?) and they informed us the car was on the way out and certainly not to take it out of town. So we took another friend's car to the retreat - or, started to - only I burned her clutch disk while getting used to her clutch, which is especially picky, and there was a big panic with smoke and we wound up taking a THIRD car, because we feared the second cars' clutch fork was BROKEN. I set aside in last week time to ask friends who know cars how to buy a new one, and scoured Craigslist for a couple of days, emailing folks about used but still good Honda and Toyota Sedans, but my heart wasn't in it. Sure, they are sturdy, reliable cars, and sure I can no longer afford the Saabs that my ex used to fix for me for free, but I needed something that would make me happy, too, and boring sedans just don't do that. I never said it aloud, but what I really wanted was a Subaru - an Impreza Outback, a hatch with stationwagon size but a cuter back end. Ask, even silently, and sometimes things get delivered - for one appeared, cherry red, incredible deal, on Craigslist the second day. After a flurry of emails and hoping someone else hadn't gotten to it first, I drove the now-dead (at the time dying) Toyota out to Fitchburg on the edge of Friday afternoon to test drive the Suby. The old car DIED (I heard the last fuel line POP just a mile from his house) and I succumbed myself to it so simply, without resentment or panic, because it just seemed to make so much (absurd) sense. I called a tow company, and then Erika, my former roommate, who came to get me and take me to the new car. We drove it and I fell in love - yes, this is a car I could drive to Milwaukee once a week, with Becky out to Colorado next year, and anywhere in the interrim in town and to Chicago to visit folks like Birdfarm. He agreed to take it to my mechanic, and we got the very last appointment of the day - all to find out it needs some work, more than he or I realized. At this point, I turned to him and asked if he'd lower the price and he and I negotiated outside of the Car X, and he said I could take the weekend to think it over. "Oh no" I said "I am sure if you are. I have my checkbook on me (had to take out a loan) and I have no car. I'll drive you back to Fitchburg and we can sign the title there, if you don't mind." He was clearly blown out of the water, and needed to think about it himself, but in the end, he was as happy as I was to have his search to sell the car done in less than two days. And so we did. I registered it yesterday.
In recounting this funky tale of seeming fate, my appreciation increases for how the unknowing we have about any situation sometimes leads to what we call auspiciousness, or coincidence, and sometimes leads to murky mornings without direction. I realize I don't always have to get a "prize" like the Suby to appreciate things. And I realize I can't be appreciating 24/7. So I'll go have a cup of coffee, grateful I had the time to write, grateful even for a floor I have time to sweep so I can appreciate it clean instead of resenting it as dirty. And when I get sad, I will cry, hopefully, without worry. This is appreciation too, accepting without judgment, regardless of the status of the situation - it need not be perky and cute like my new-to-me Suby in order to be something I can say I am grateful exists. And for the things that are seemingly beyond gratitude, things I really don't appreciate exist, nor do I see myself appreciating? Who knows. There's always room to learn. Ours is not to question why.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
101
Could be the Depeche Mode tour album or video. Or, it could be that this is my 101st post.
Yay!
Some of those posts were Prayas', so I can't claim that all of them are mine. But I've basically been the poster on this blog for over a year now, and somehow 101 feels like a nice number to arrive at. This blog has more and more been a place where a particular kind of non-linear writing practice occurs - snippets of daily life, plotted out in no particular fashion, then sew back together as I slowly write about them in the same space. Sometimes the result is emotional chaos, sometimes I am as surprised as you all who read it to see where it goes and how it all links together. That's practice for you - as my teacher, Paula, used to say, "Practice makes practice".
The too-hot sun of our recent 90-plus degree weather is creeping in over my shoulder and onto my lap, a bit like a nagging kitten. So I am going to stop here for today. Know that the novel is progressing (I hope to post some chunks here soon), getting rich into Chicago history and linking my "family" in its fictional state with Al Capone. Aviva is growing rapidly but definitely still a kitten (visit Flickr to see grotesquely cute pictures!) and Dylan and I are doing well. Domesticating is a quiet enterprise, slyly satisfying. Something I have looked forward to for years. Yum.
Yay!
Some of those posts were Prayas', so I can't claim that all of them are mine. But I've basically been the poster on this blog for over a year now, and somehow 101 feels like a nice number to arrive at. This blog has more and more been a place where a particular kind of non-linear writing practice occurs - snippets of daily life, plotted out in no particular fashion, then sew back together as I slowly write about them in the same space. Sometimes the result is emotional chaos, sometimes I am as surprised as you all who read it to see where it goes and how it all links together. That's practice for you - as my teacher, Paula, used to say, "Practice makes practice".
The too-hot sun of our recent 90-plus degree weather is creeping in over my shoulder and onto my lap, a bit like a nagging kitten. So I am going to stop here for today. Know that the novel is progressing (I hope to post some chunks here soon), getting rich into Chicago history and linking my "family" in its fictional state with Al Capone. Aviva is growing rapidly but definitely still a kitten (visit Flickr to see grotesquely cute pictures!) and Dylan and I are doing well. Domesticating is a quiet enterprise, slyly satisfying. Something I have looked forward to for years. Yum.
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