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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Monthly Archives: June 2017

DILLIGAF

30 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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How You Like Me Now, life, Norn, They Live

Look it up if you don’t know what it means.  I am in official IDGAF mode, and it’s been wonderful.

I’ve pulled the sunglasses off to walk the world in a carefree way, smiling as I go, content that I DNGAF. Not two. Not one. Not a fraction or percent of one. I have none left to give today.

Since giving myself permission to NGAF, my pen has not stopped inking. Perhaps I spend too much time thinking about how to fix myself and fix the world while I’m at it, and I need to spend more time doing what I love doing:  Complaining! No, that’s not it, but damn I’m good at it.  Web surfing for news and writing! No, that’s not it, but I like that quite a lot. Reading and writing in silence! Yeah. That’s my ticket.

Today I DNGAF about clean air or water, healthcare for all, dismantling of nuclear weapons, peaceful resolutions to all conflicts, climate change, tolerance, religion, race, class, gender, puppies, kittens, a living wage, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s tweets, self help, self care, self-cleaning ovens, or helping a little old lady across the street.  She’s on her own, man, I mean it was her idea to cross there in the first place. She’s a big girl, she’ll figure it out.

I DNG one flying rats F about anything at all today, and by golly we’ll see if I still feel the same tomorrow.  Meanwhile, I shall assume the mantle of Norn (that’s Norn with the capital N, thank you, not the lowly lowercase norns who are honorable mention wannabes) and see what I do with you. On paper, anyway.

*fades to black,  “Mama Said Knock You Out” playing tinny in the background*

Awake

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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awake, ocean, sleepless

Sleepless means I slept in your bed, eventually, studying the cottage paint pale in the moonlight until I could finally rest. I listened to trucks and cars and motorcycles traveling a dark road at a strange hour of the night.  They know who they are and where they’re going, but it’s all just invisible sounds to a woman trying to stop her mind from thinking and find her way into anesthetic sleep after a long, good day. I touched your arm.

I started writing something in my head that night, something about my other bed where blunt leaves nod and toss not so far from my window in the wind, a bed that squeaks horrendously if I move my head or blink or think. I began writing a little thing comparing nights and beds and trees and leaves but I didn’t get up to write it down, naturally.  I forgot everything.

Sleepless means I’m up at all hours, I sleep at strange hours, I write and walk and eat and drive at strange hours, not avoiding people necessarily, but it happens and I like it.

I’m awake when you’re getting home from a long night out. I see you in uniform heading out for the day. I see you come home to greet your cat on the windowsill, or sliding in and putting on the tube, a movie that emanates from your window, some kind of drama with raised voices that calls me to come and make sure everything’s all right.  Sleepless means I heard your fireworks at 10:30 but didn’t look out the window to see; I was reading, and I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

Sleepless means I can tell the time and weather by the sky as I lay prone looking out my bedroom window, heartburn burning, and this morning the birds were full up and at ’em.  I pulled on leggings and went outside, felt the air and realized I’d need a warmer shirt so I pulled on the flannel I keep hanging on my chair and took a walk, barefoot, braving the woodshavings and other ridiculous stuff that accumulates on the balcony.  The sand was comfortably cool.  I picked up plastic bags and threw them away, wondering how anyone could still be using these things.  The sun was still below the rim of the teacup but you can tell where he will rise by the intensity of the light.  Dogs on leashes because they are naughty, dogs running free because they obey.  Neighbors avoid neighbors because it’s a hallowed time, this silent, molten rising.

Sleepless means I pulled on clothes and dragged my phone down to the ocean in case I saw something. I tried to capture the waves breaking behind the breakwaters, for the wind is north, northwest again.  The water and air seem to be the same temperature in my lungs and on my feet, but the wave breaks in my eyes are not the same as what my camera sees. That’s all right. I will wander back to my cave and think about things.

20170628_055010.jpg

Help Us Move On

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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family, flat earth, future, science, son, truth

Long solo drives require that I have good music, and when I’m tired of that I have a good story to listen to on CD.  I never had a reason to get into books on tape when they first came out, but I have come to value them now.  After listening to four music CDs, I was ready to hear an audio book. The story asked me to suspend reality, to believe that a cyclops, the last of his kind, wandered an island and all that that entails.  The authors wrote a story that makes me believe. Yes. Why not?

I drove to New York to attend my son’s graduation from high school, and it was a wonderful day.  He is a beautiful thing in this world, not the standard teenage sheep, but a wild spirit full of deep thought, creativity, and the rebelliousness that comes along with not playing inside the lines or staying inside the box.  He’s cultivated some true friends along his journey, friends that certain parts of society might label sinners and sodomites.  He spent graduation night with his “fruit” friends, a name he lovingly calls them, and I am glad he was with them.

The next day I took a long walk with my dear friend in a local park and then we sat at one of the benches under the pavilion to continue our conversation in some shade.  We noticed a long-haired person lying on one of the bench seats, but he was keeping to himself so we kept on chatting.  He got up from his bench and asked if he could bet us that he could change our view of everything in one minute.  He was about 20 with lots of full, brown hair, board shorts, a tank top, and he wore a long pendant that had what looked like a dragon with wings outspread, but there was a symbol underneath my old eyes couldn’t make out and I didn’t want to get closer to discern.  I said, “I won’t bet you, but what’s on your mind?”  And he sprang into preaching the view of flat earthers.  Oh gawd… really?  Sigh.  My friend sunk into her cell phone while I engaged the young man in his beliefs, not trying to debunk him because you can’t tell an alcoholic to stop drinking just as you can’t tell a flat-earther not to believe.  I understood his reluctance to believe in what science espouses because it’s all just a conspiracy to get us to be afraid and conform and turn away from God, but once he said, “Just like they pound it into our heads that we have to accept trans people as normal….” all my light-hearted goodwill shut down.  I no longer wanted to let him take up any more of my time. I stopped engaging him with questions, I think he got the idea that I was done, so he got in his car and drove away.  All I could think was that if my son had been sitting there, he would have been up in that guys face, and it would not have gone well.

I am driving a car that no one could ever believe existed.  We are defeating diseases that no one could ever believe we could.  We build towers and bridges, planes, vessels, and armament that no one would ever believe could be true all those years ago, but here we are. I am typing my thoughts on a keyboard and screen knowing that there are people who will refute the science of vaccination.  I can’t disprove it, so proving it is impossible, like proving the moon does not have a light of her own, which she does not.  Right now I can’t prove that Newton and his society wanted to control the world with fear, nor can I disprove it. Only you can, and I ask that you spread the word of reasonableness. I want to ask that everyone set aside their emotion and look beyond yourself, your children, your grandchildren, and their children.  We are alone in the universe at the moment, not because the earth is flat but because we haven’t found anyone else yet, and even if we did, we need to take care of each other as we would brother and sister.   I would like to stress that the future is not white and god-fearing hetero, but it’s a future that understands we are tender, fragile humans that would like to go on, but you must use science to do so.  Science is not the enemy, no matter what anyone says.   Your beliefs are relevant and no one should ever shut you down, but at a certain point you need to believe that one plus one equals two. And those two need to embrace and keep the whole thing going.

A Wet Graduation.

23 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Graduation, life, love, proud, son

Do you remember the day you graduated from high school?  Was it a big day? A long, tired, sad but happy joyful tearful day? Maybe your parents dropped some cash to have a catered family gathering to celebrate the day, or you all met at the diner so Mom wouldn’t have a lot to clean up afterwards? Bellies full, lots of reflection and hopefully laughter and too many pictures?  Perhaps everyone repaired home and went to their separate rooms while you changed your clothes and charged back out the door with friends to spend the night doing what teenagers and young adults do when there’s no parents or teachers around.

The school my son attended has a very small population of students, many of whom live on campus because society just can’t handle them anywhere else, in the “normal” places.  Those students are handed over to the school and, once there, most of the parents wash their hands of them. They don’t show up when the kids get in trouble, when their grades are poor–or when they graduate.  My heart broke for the young lady who graduated yesterday and her living parents did not show up to see her receive her diploma, to watch her next steps into the world. Faculty and friends were surrogates and that made the ache a little less.

We celebrated my son’s graduation yesterday with a small group of family.  It’s been a difficult road for him and us and his teachers. He wasn’t easy on himself or anyone else because he’s not a typical teenage sheep that follows the rules and stays between the lines or inside the box.  He is a wild spirit with a huge heart, a deep thinker and deeply creative.  I hope he never loses those qualities as he finds his way in a society that expects us to be productive, to behave and be normal.  It took me a long time to learn and accept he’s just being himself, and that his self doesn’t look like the kind of child my parents expected me to raise.  He is a beautiful thing in this world, and I couldn’t be more proud of him.

He said goodbye to that school as only he can, with his girlfriend, jumping into the campus pool with their clothes on.  May there be many more wet, beautiful days to come for them all.

Being In The World

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Ares, bandwith, birds, life, truth, wheelhouse, writing

Good morning, world.  It’s my favorite kind of day, when the clouds and humidity put a veil between me and the sun.  I doubt it will rain, but the sky wants me to believe it will. Everything is still.  Leaves on the trees are greener on days like these, allowed to show their true colors instead of being washed out by the sun’s rays.  My prayer plant’s leaves are more erect, they appreciate the softer canopy and lift their leaves in appreciation.  Haze covers the sky and the horizon so I cannot see across the bay.  What I see is only in near focus, not afar.

I woke thinking about something someone said to me long ago.  He became CEO after being plucked from his accounting office to lead the company.  He was variable as the weather, and my feelings towards him was equally variable.  He said something to me, publicly, humiliatingly, that left me with no response, but in these days of living quietly, of reflection, I realized what I should have said just then. It was a learning moment that passed me by.  Some might say I should be grateful for it.  If we are lucky we learn how to accept and rise from our mistakes and be humbled, grateful for the things we endured in the past, that we can develop our selves and become stronger persons.  Meanwhile, we wrestle with the hurt and grief that never leaves us. And that is not wrong.

It’s a morning where the black kids, employees of the building owner, head back from filling up their hands with buckets of paint and cordless drills, singing–not rapping–but singing.  I appreciate their youth, their working in the hot sun, and still maintain a good attitude against it all. I messed with them this morning, and we laughed, and god, it’s just what I needed.

As I write, the lady finch has finally stopped calling.  I’ve been up since dawn, and she hasn’t stopped making that sound, that “chew” or “two” sound, loudly, over and over and over again. I don’t know if she’s trying to protect her nest or keep away a prospective mate. She’s like Mrs. Roper on Three’s Company.  Why did Stanley put up with her? I wished she would go away last year, and that feeling is back again, but then I remember how silent the world is in winter without her.  I often wonder how she survives her passionate, endless “chew” or “two” call, hours on end, without stopping for food or drink?  Finches are tiny things, and I thought for sure I’d find her body in the parking lot by now, done in by fervor and lack of hydration, but she is stronger than that.  As I write this, her calling has stopped. A reprieve for my ears and for her body, too?  Perhaps she’s feeding or drinking fresh water somewhere.  When I stepped outside last night, all was still. No birds. Tree limbs frozen. The world is changing around me and it’s awesome. I can’t decide if I like activity or silence more.

As for this moment, it’s all about discovery.  Who has access to unending energy, bounty, the desire to create vs. those who watch red balloons floating away and make wishes? Meanwhile, I closed all my windows and turned on the a/c because my spirit, the god of war who turns his back on infants who cry incessantly, needs a rest.

I See You.

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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social media

And then one day, it was all gone. It started with Facebook. The world tipped sideways running for Instagram and Snapchat after Facebook disappeared. All those pictures, all those private messages. Gone and gone, gone the way of Vines. Tinder, Twitter, Tumbler… gone. We had no way to tag each other in family pictures or deliver 140-character salvos. No more cat videos or frog memes. No more pics of our dimpled babies sharing summer ice cream. No more wedding fails or fishing fails. No more n-word posts from that girl you know is so much more. The only way we could offer our condolences was in person, or by picking up the phone if we were simply too far away.
 
Black night bloomed because nobody checked their phones in their beds while waiting on sleep. Lovers drew hearts and funny faces on each other’s skin instead, asking, “Does that feel good? Do you like that?”
 
It was the cramp heard ’round the world, all those young people’s hands suddenly grasping pens trying to figure out cursive. The loss of spell-check was called a tragedy.
 
The night social media died the world mourned. But we started seeing hazel and blue and coffee brown eyes and freckles and blonde hairs on our cheeks. We grew about 1.5 inches taller since we were no longer looking down into a glowing screen of infinite wisdom, hate, horror, irony, caring, sharing, and love. All that was left was finding out what our real voices sound like, and discovering we have real thoughts that cannot be captured with a picture of a heart or a snake.
 
“What’s that, daddy?”
“It’s the moon, sweetie. It’s been there a while, and I promise it’ll be back again tomorrow. Wanna come out with me and see?”
There was a long pause. She had nothing better to do, so she shrugged and said, “I guess.”

June 14

14 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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sarcasm, whatever

Another blessed day where I rise in sunlight. Hello pretty plants, look at you growing!  Another blessed day where I pick at last night’s leftovers. My zucchini needs some salt and butter love. What’s this? Another thundershower expected this afternoon?  And a beautiful bug on my front door, painted like a mumu from the 1970s, orange with giant white flowers. Good morning, cat lady neighbor dressed in a sassy printed dress, off to work you go. Good morning, lady who works in the realty office two doors down who can’t seem to remember what time the office actually opens.

Another blessed day to reflect after reading the news. The news is self-inflicted, you see. I shouldn’t do it but I do. I guess it’s another blessed day when I find out we haven’t bombed North Korea (or NOKO, if you watch Fox News.)  Another day to decide if I am going to split myself in two post-news, to reach down for the anger or to take it in stride. To assimilate the information, write about it and put it away.

So I come to the page filled with sarcasm and snark, only wanting to say, “God bless guns.” I mean, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about without them, right? God bless politics, it just makes the world a more interesting place. God bless religion, too, while we’re at it, I mean, where would humans be without existential crises?  Yahoo for news! For stuff to write about!  For reasons to avoid social media (or tend it with fervor and obsession.)  We’ve got nothing better to do, eh?

Another blessed day to curate a to-do list. Get ready for some thunder! What’s for dinner?  God bless the farmer and the butcher and the fisherman who brought me this plate of stuff that I didn’t have to raise a hand to put here.   Another day to be grateful for air conditioning and frozen peas.

I should be writing, but all I have is a shrug and sarcasm which I hope (I wonder if that’s the same kind of hope as a Trump hope) that I will translate into true gratitude and some blood on a page.

A Little Paper Chaos Would Be All Right Just About Now

12 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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chaos, order, writing

Writing tools.  Life tools.

Eating, drinking, and sleeping well.

Surrounding oneself with beauty.

Taking challenging dives to earn and learn from the experience. (You and your writing will be better for it.)

Read.  Repeat.

Write. Repeat.

And for the love of all that’s good in this world… don’t forget which thumb drive you saved your stuff on.

Or … did you not save it? Or did you save it 15 times in 15 different versions and now nothing makes sense, hiding behind 15 subfiles of what you called being organized?

When your house is neat as a pin but your writers shed is filled with rusty Sandisks and unmarked thumb drives (the ones you will grab if the house catches fire in the middle of the night instead of grabbing clothes because you sleep naked no matter what your mother said) because you don’t want to print anything anymore for fear of making your house look like a half-baked hoarder lives there, landslides of paper collecting dust, spiritual landmines of defeat… one should decide to start printing shit out.  Go with the paper landslides.  The headache of sorting it all from directory or thumb drive is Herculean and possibly Sisyphean.

That is all.

 

Of Gemini, Vanilla, and Truth

11 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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anger, evolving, Gemini, mother, peace, truth, unobtainium, vanilla, woman

It’s the dog-walking hour, the hour before the sun takes your breath away. It’s the hour of elderly neighbors standing on the sidewalk telling naughty jokes, or breakfast with a neighbor before church lets out so we are guaranteed a seat in the cafe.

And now is the writing hour, the time before my gumption heads for a sofa and a dogeared book, the hour that I will stand barefoot on the cement balcony to watch neighbors go by with their groceries or work on their next hangover before they deploy, thinking about things I cannot repair or undo with a swish of my wand.

Nothing is the same as it was last year on this spit of land, least of all me.  The beach is wide and flat now. Neighbors are missing and favored dogs have passed away. New dogs and new neighbors have come.  But always, the pastel sky and the wonder of the wheel is present. I opened a journal to read where my heart was on this day last year. Nothing is the same, as it should be, but some things I still carry forward I see.

Today would have been Mom’s birthday, a Gemini through and through. She wouldn’t appreciate that pagan description, but oh well. One thing you could count on with Mom: you never knew who you were getting in a day.  Her moods shifted quickly, and I wonder now if the happy happy joy joy sing-song Mom was for real or just one way she masked her pain? Or maybe both? I will never know, and that’s okay.  But in those days, watching her devolve from parent to child trapped in a desperately lonely life frightened me.  She used to sit at the kitchen table paging through a big Sears catalog picking out rugs and clocks and furniture that she said would look great in the house she imagined. These were not casual musings.  It was hard feigning pleasant conversation about how this rug would go with that sofa, hey how about this one, but I couldn’t tell her I didn’t want to be part of her game.

It’s funny how you can pick up pretty seashells to keep or share, or pick up grocery bags full of cigarette butts, plastic bags and bottles from the same spit of land: the ocean just coughs up more of both every day.  I have two good hands that can manage both, and I struggle to remember this.  Sometimes I feel a very distinct two of me, truly torn, and on those days I worry for my spirit.  I recognize the gentle, rational, creative me and then there is the angry, fightful one, and often the angry one wins, the one that cannot handle the song Hallelujah.   I forget that I have the ability to manage whatever the world throws at me with both hands.  It’s the reason I don’t reply to most social media posts, or the reason I give you one word responses: Momma said if I don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.  Well.  On those Two-of-me days I want to create new social media sites where I give myself permission to vent and rant and troll the trolls, to hate the hate– a “safe” place to curse the darkness instead of being the light.   On those days, it is easy to judge others, to rage at injustice or simply complain about a visitor disparaging another person’s sweet dog.  On those days I forget I am free to seek another venue where I can return myself to kindness because anger is just too easy. Now, I am not wrong to feel pissiness, anger, or the rage, just as I am not wrong to want the peace that lives in me, that wells up and allows me to cry.  But feeling the peace, the beauty, the truthful good, when it wells up wide and deep, it often makes me feel overwhelmed and afraid.  It nudges out the anger, my protective shield:  how can I face you, or anything, anyone, naked?  I feel like a piece of beached jellyfish that everybody pokes with a stick or scoops up and tosses back into the ocean.  Most days, for the sake of my peace, I will show you some calm vanilla, a quiet void of non-words. On the days I don’t feel torn in two, when I feel strong and whole, viable and certain, useful and creative, I can speak and write truthfully and happily from my vulnerable place.  I can manage me and you with both hands, but those days are rare, and I want something more.   So.

Here’s to weaving the All-of-me’s together, the polyester, cotton, paper, leather, seaweed, barbed wire, and spider silk together, to threading them with my glitter beads and wampum and balsa, to painting them with silver stars and onyx night, adding a touch of unobtainium, and everything will be just all right — so you and me can know who you are getting on more than any given day.

A Day Of Silence

06 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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authentic, meditation, silence, truth, woman

Soft.  Soft.

Yesterday, full of meditation.

Full focus on being present.

Refocus. Refocus. Refocus.  Because the mind wanders so easily,

treading paths that sound like jealousy, heresy, inadequacy

detours around

a little girl’s pain

a woman’s leaving

music that reverberates in my bones

dredging a stick through embers

igniting memories and regrets

calling me back to my body that sits in silence, suffering

writing thank you notes and apologies in ink and in blood

so much good will that do unless I put these hands to use.

Yesterday, full of silence.

No candle, no ritual.

Reflection,  insomnolent

Your pure truth was a light for me, your woman’s authenticity.

I’ve never been clear with anyone and not sure I ever will be,

but I learn from you and I hear and remain sleepless.

All I can be is grateful for voices I trust in a field where I walk

looking for wisdom, peace, and silence

amid chuckholes that break a horse’s leg.

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