Tuesday
Jul122005
Once More Around the Mulberry Bush
Tuesday, July 12, 2005 at 12:27AM
Just now, asleep and the beep of the cell wakes me, checking to find birthday wishes from T3, just midnight here - the clock flipping over to another year, 3 pm on the farm outside of Perth. Laying in the dark, I hear it begin to rain then steadily increase until now it drums against my metal roof as I can't fall back to sleep, missing far away friends.
Earlier, I was sitting here watching the cat eat the leftovers of *my* leftovers from last night's family birthday dinner. He even ate a cauliflower. Really, I just put it there to see if he'd eat it. One major bonus in having a scavenging street cat, I suppose.
I was thinking that one thing the cat has on Lacey (and I'm not speaking ill of the dead) is that if I'm eating something he doesn't like then he just wanders off but Lacey was so damn cute in her denseness and optimism that she was utterly sure that every bite I lifted up was going to be something different from the thing it just was that she didn't like.
But then again, I think, is that really a good trait, when you get right down to it or in the bigger scheme of things or whatever direction we're going in today?
Everything has been so erratic, emotional, painful, difficult these past couple of weeks I didn't know what this year's birthday post was going to be about, really, until just right now. And so, this year, with this birthday, I have to step backwards into the past to learn again something the Munchkin spent so many years trying to teach me.
Even though I struggle and loathe and fear what is happening lately, I'm striving for the optimism (and denseness) for the surety of mind and heart that the next forkful will be something completely different, something I *like* - instead, as lately, of every bite being something somehow wrong.
My last ten birthdays have been in a city where a million people show up for my party (the Stampede) and it's 35 degrees, 10 days of endless parties and happy people - this year, it's rainy, 18 degrees and there's nobody here. It's wrong.
Last year, I turned 35 and two days later, Matt was there and my heart was lost. This year, it's 36 and I flutter in circles like a bird with one forever broken wing. Still an everywhere in my night and a feeling in my morning Matt has become a series of images. Sensations so strong that I can feel them moving inside of me. Images so vivid that sometimes I am sure the phone will ring and I will hear him say that it's time for one of us to come home.
I said before that this would never feel right, that he could leave and I could let him go but that it would always feel wrong to me. So far, it still does. No matter what the truth of it is for him. My truth is all that is important here - my truth is what needs to be carried inside of me. It may be a belief contrary to all available evidence these days but, if I have to call it faith or even idiocy instead of truth - I shall do so.
The work. It has become an anger without purpose, without any kind of coherent form. Like a huge wildfire that begins by eating the trees, somewhere along the way the fire has taken on a life of it's own as if it doesn't even need fuel anymore. It burns and grows and destroys, not because it needs to but because that's what it does - that is what it is - for everyone involved.
I have to choose. I had to choose. Is it worth it to grovel this out and spend the next 9 months letting it eat me away, this fire that cannot be stopped - because I am the one that has rationally chosen to keep it, to feed it, even by inaction? I choose to stay, when I'm the one who can choose to leave. Is this a battle I want to fight? I believe that the end does not justify the means - not in this case.
I got this far this year by listening to my heart. By following my heart. Lately, I have tried to rationalize and reason through this bit and everything is wrong upon wrong. I have to admit, deep down, that I can't always get to the truth of things through the use of my brain alone, that trying to do that has always steered me in the opposite direction of the path I desire. Conscious reason has its limitations. Sometimes it is my heart that must tell me what to do. And I have to learn to listen when it speaks because it's not shouting, it's not arguing fact and reason with my brain. It is whispering to me and right now it is whispering that returning to reason after making the leap to listening with my heart is the only injustice here. The only injustice and it is the one I am causing.
It is time to choose to continue to be as brave with my heart as I usually am with the rest of me.
The accident. Although I had grown into my face and occasionally suspected I was good looking it was never something I ever felt. I think my 'new' face has the look of something that was broken and healed, something strong, something I can't define. I think it's better than it was. I like it more every day. I still don't think it's beautiful but it now has *a* beauty that feels brave and unselfconscious. It changes me. It betters me.
So, this birthday comes to this - can I show that I am one who will answer for the bitterness of this world with grace? Can I choose the moment to fight and find the moment when it is right to be stronger in walking away? Can I be hopeful, can I find it in me to trust my own heart - to embrace one possibility, ANY possibility than the angry ones I see before me? Hate can be stilled with a tone of voice, silenced with a kind gesture or stunned by beauty and if those things cannot be found outside of me then I must try harder to find them inside of me. If my world has to turn on a single point, then let that be the enduring poetry of hope.
I can't just simply allow myself to fall back into the herd of steer mindlessly lurching toward the big dark barn where the mooing stops. Secretly, but less and less so as I move through these days and nights of uncertainty and fateful things, I think - I feel - I know - more and more - that things will work out. That soon now I can take the world and convince it to do what I ask.
Happy Birthday to me.
but if you have
Earlier, I was sitting here watching the cat eat the leftovers of *my* leftovers from last night's family birthday dinner. He even ate a cauliflower. Really, I just put it there to see if he'd eat it. One major bonus in having a scavenging street cat, I suppose.
I was thinking that one thing the cat has on Lacey (and I'm not speaking ill of the dead) is that if I'm eating something he doesn't like then he just wanders off but Lacey was so damn cute in her denseness and optimism that she was utterly sure that every bite I lifted up was going to be something different from the thing it just was that she didn't like.
But then again, I think, is that really a good trait, when you get right down to it or in the bigger scheme of things or whatever direction we're going in today?
Everything has been so erratic, emotional, painful, difficult these past couple of weeks I didn't know what this year's birthday post was going to be about, really, until just right now. And so, this year, with this birthday, I have to step backwards into the past to learn again something the Munchkin spent so many years trying to teach me.
Even though I struggle and loathe and fear what is happening lately, I'm striving for the optimism (and denseness) for the surety of mind and heart that the next forkful will be something completely different, something I *like* - instead, as lately, of every bite being something somehow wrong.
My last ten birthdays have been in a city where a million people show up for my party (the Stampede) and it's 35 degrees, 10 days of endless parties and happy people - this year, it's rainy, 18 degrees and there's nobody here. It's wrong.
Last year, I turned 35 and two days later, Matt was there and my heart was lost. This year, it's 36 and I flutter in circles like a bird with one forever broken wing. Still an everywhere in my night and a feeling in my morning Matt has become a series of images. Sensations so strong that I can feel them moving inside of me. Images so vivid that sometimes I am sure the phone will ring and I will hear him say that it's time for one of us to come home.
I said before that this would never feel right, that he could leave and I could let him go but that it would always feel wrong to me. So far, it still does. No matter what the truth of it is for him. My truth is all that is important here - my truth is what needs to be carried inside of me. It may be a belief contrary to all available evidence these days but, if I have to call it faith or even idiocy instead of truth - I shall do so.
The work. It has become an anger without purpose, without any kind of coherent form. Like a huge wildfire that begins by eating the trees, somewhere along the way the fire has taken on a life of it's own as if it doesn't even need fuel anymore. It burns and grows and destroys, not because it needs to but because that's what it does - that is what it is - for everyone involved.
I have to choose. I had to choose. Is it worth it to grovel this out and spend the next 9 months letting it eat me away, this fire that cannot be stopped - because I am the one that has rationally chosen to keep it, to feed it, even by inaction? I choose to stay, when I'm the one who can choose to leave. Is this a battle I want to fight? I believe that the end does not justify the means - not in this case.
I got this far this year by listening to my heart. By following my heart. Lately, I have tried to rationalize and reason through this bit and everything is wrong upon wrong. I have to admit, deep down, that I can't always get to the truth of things through the use of my brain alone, that trying to do that has always steered me in the opposite direction of the path I desire. Conscious reason has its limitations. Sometimes it is my heart that must tell me what to do. And I have to learn to listen when it speaks because it's not shouting, it's not arguing fact and reason with my brain. It is whispering to me and right now it is whispering that returning to reason after making the leap to listening with my heart is the only injustice here. The only injustice and it is the one I am causing.
It is time to choose to continue to be as brave with my heart as I usually am with the rest of me.
The accident. Although I had grown into my face and occasionally suspected I was good looking it was never something I ever felt. I think my 'new' face has the look of something that was broken and healed, something strong, something I can't define. I think it's better than it was. I like it more every day. I still don't think it's beautiful but it now has *a* beauty that feels brave and unselfconscious. It changes me. It betters me.
So, this birthday comes to this - can I show that I am one who will answer for the bitterness of this world with grace? Can I choose the moment to fight and find the moment when it is right to be stronger in walking away? Can I be hopeful, can I find it in me to trust my own heart - to embrace one possibility, ANY possibility than the angry ones I see before me? Hate can be stilled with a tone of voice, silenced with a kind gesture or stunned by beauty and if those things cannot be found outside of me then I must try harder to find them inside of me. If my world has to turn on a single point, then let that be the enduring poetry of hope.
I can't just simply allow myself to fall back into the herd of steer mindlessly lurching toward the big dark barn where the mooing stops. Secretly, but less and less so as I move through these days and nights of uncertainty and fateful things, I think - I feel - I know - more and more - that things will work out. That soon now I can take the world and convince it to do what I ask.
Happy Birthday to me.
Reader Comments (10)
Happy birthday, Jen.
Happy Birthday, dear Braveheart.
And many more, much better, ones to come.
{hugs}
I for one remain stubbornly optimistic. For both of us.
*runs away giggling*
...then suddenly stops as he realizes "DAMMIT...that means *my* birthday is three months away!"
*walks away muttering under his breath*
All the best,
david
This will be a better year.