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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: cycles

Gulls Fishing

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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choice, cycles, woman

Does it all begin with waking up with an eye to the sun and giving thanks for a nice long stretch in a warm house with good food and nice neighbors? Gratitude? Does it all begin with writing down everything I’m thinking since the night transpired (dreamless, again) sorting emotions like seeds into baskets and weeds on a pile for compost? Perhaps it all begins with visualizing what I want, what I believe can be.

I don’t know where it began, or begins, and maybe that’s not what’s most important, but writing it down sure is. I began the day in the usual way with a mug of lukewarm coffee and a walk on the beach, but then I changed the plan: the air was still and the sun quite warm for that hour of morning so I went back in the house, collected my stuff (camera, binoculars, pens, journal, phone) and gave myself the best morning. Had a nice text with my son, too!  Then I settled in to… settling in. Just watching a gull catch a fish in the lowering tide for once. They never seem to catch what they dive in for, but she got it this time! I cheered for her. I watched pleasurecraft, container ships, and crab boats go by. Dog walkers, a jogger, and met my favorite neighbor and we chatted for a while.  In between, the writing. The sorting. Listing my choices. In this becalmed state I believed that right now I can choose what to feel and believe, what to give, what to hold on to or let go. Writing down my choices helped me visualize the outcome of each. Last week I chose to deal with my flow on the beach instead of curled up on the couch, and you know what? The distraction was quite helpful.

I don’t know if it will happen every day; it might just be a coincidence. It might just be that I’m at the end of a hormonal low and now the light is looking better.  It might be coincidence that since I chose breath over breath-holding, fruit instead of cheese and crackers, walking instead of folding over, writing instead of reading the same old story, can it be true that the birds are singing louder? That Johnny Cash is playing outside my window? That new life arrived two doors down, and I was allowed to be a teeny part of welcoming him home? Can it be coincidence that I feel good today, good enough to keep writing and not give up on what a life can be?  Did I write it, believe it, hope and good vibe it into being?

What the fuck else am I gonna write into being?  Oh, mama, that’s a scary.  And I wanna go there!

Blankets

05 Friday Feb 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

cycles, mother, woman

I carry around the blanket my dad rested beneath on the day he died. They gave it to me at the funeral home, and I stuffed it in the back of my car. I wasn’t ready to do anything with it.  I keep thinking it’s the place where he took his last breaths, let it remain with me as it is, perhaps with a few of his breaths caught in the fibers.  I folded it on Tuesday.

I thought to myself last night how silly it must seem, a grown woman carrying around a blanket like some kind of Linus looking for security?  Not exactly.  But I think I have a purpose for it now.

I asked myself this morning what to keep, what to bring, what to throw away? Why don’t I keep my son’s baby blanket, the one he came home from the hospital, in my purse? I mean, if blankets matter so much, should I keep that in my car, too?

But no.  He’s here. He occupies yards of me, this young man whose feet kicked my ribs, fit in the palm of my hand. He is filled with life and strange noises and beautiful expressions, intelligence that defies his peers and makes it hard for him to walk comfortably in the world.  No blanket is needed to be reminded of the life within him.

I wonder what blanket they’ll cover me with when it’s my time? Will it be the purple one that says “We ❤ You Mom” that my mother had made for me when I carried my son?  The one we don’t use very much because it’s been unraveling slowly, and it’s not quite long enough to cover a full-grown body?  Or maybe they’ll just staple Post-it Notes to my body covered with questions and accusations. No. I will be covered with a blanket I don’t recognize by hands that I do.

Is That All You Got?

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Butch, cycles, daughter, goddess, Lee Jun Fan, lover, mother, son, warrior, woman

Did I actually brew some kind of mystical, magical, improbable, miracle of thing called “kid” inside me, one that fluttered every time I drank a vanilla shake, or rearranged the walls of my ribs?  Was I the master-keeper of the organs of life, nursing, nurturing, and winging it, clueless with a book and a prayer (and a whole lotta leaning on the neighbors downstairs?)  Oh yeah; got the scars to prove it, and a husband that might still be traumatized by the event.

Was that me on the bed that very first time, lying back in secluded daylight, fingertips teaching that place that only seemed to resonate when I scanned the acres of posters on my walls of a man with coffee eyes, long, bronze hair, thick hands grasping a microphone, quadriceps-bursting blue jeans, who air-raid alarmed me or growled esoteric poetry, expiring me with inhaled breaths I’d never breathed before?

Was that me holding your hand? Was I really there watching you work so hard to breathe such little breaths, fighting to keep life in your cold fingers, stone calves, your words and wants and needs unknown, then walking away from us and I never knew if you were afraid and if we did everything we should have, knowing I should have been there better for you, man with a weak voice but stubborn to the end?

Was that me, holding horse, flowing through the pain with fierce determination, refusal to fail, and a few laughs between the minutes on the clock face, knowing there would be no other outcome but 45 minutes of thigh-erupting shaking pain, breath, flow, and some joy in accomplishment at the conclusion of the clock, new sash in hand, and probably not as much respect we hoped to gain from the master, but it was more than we had when we first walked in?  Was that me, finally believing you, that the whole world wasn’t trying to hurt me?

Was that me, naked in New Jersey waves watching sunrise bleed through the layered veils of black sky, diamond stars having the sense to bow out and leave, unlike my heart that never knew why?  La Mar heard confessions and tears, prayers, supplications and said scornfully, “Is that all you got?” So I drove home, some kind of empty pen.  Was that me, I ask, every morning, again?

I am woman, therefore weak, because I’d been beaten, defeated.  Look at what remains.  Woman can be strong if she trains herself against the world, girds herself against weakness, builds walls and turns her back on happiness–it’s safer that way. She will survive and attain anything she wants as long as she is armored and angry and calls the shots.  But has she the tools to survive the onslaught of life, the harrowing, the sorrow, the fleeting joy (how can it last?)  because she is woman? Warrior, strong, because she is no tender reed who bends in the wind, but rooted like omnipotent, arm-stretching oak!  But what about all the rest who carried, who came, who held, who lost, who forget all the strength she had–and will have again–because she is woman who sheds and cries and loses and grieves and gives and receives? Who dares love? What prayer for her, what talisman, what happy ending could she ever write?

Goddess, creator, destroyer, survivor, call down your gales; I’m not afraid of your pantheon!  I do not know where I am going, and still do cry because I cannot undo all that I wrought, but with your help I will get there, one way and the other. I suppose I will never dehydrate for lack of tears to drink, but I will never lose because when I yield I cannot break.

Cycles part II

18 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

cycles, daughter, evolving

The moon is waxing now, a bright belly of silver growing thicker before the shadow beside it.  Perhaps it is race memory, one we can finally touch and see when we look at the moon and see the burgeoning belly of a mother she goes through her phases.  How lucky we are to be able to see this cycle, faithfully, consistently, every month, keeping us company in the dark as we walk the long driveway back home, opening the door to who knows what when we get there.

We’re familiar with the phrase and the warm feelings we have when we say “the miracle of life.”  Once in a while I see a gravid woman and I wonder what everyone else thinks when they see her belly.  Got some baby going on there, I say to myself and I remember my own baby-making days, those early times.  Then I turn away and get back to the business of the day which is usually selling auto parts, largely having forgotten the art of patience.  I am not a patient person by nature, and it shows in the way I raised my son and the way I handle myself and my customers… but I am quite patient with my co-workers for some reason. Maybe it’s because I need allies?  Do I have this same patience for my writing? No.  Perhaps I would write more if I did.

Today I ask, do we have that same awe-inspiring feeling when we see a person taking their last steps out of the living world? Do we give the same appreciation, respect, and awe for the “miracle of death?” No. I know we don’t. Because it’s a leave-taking, one we did not ask for and certainly did not give permission to receive.  Yesterday I began meditating on the miracle of death, watching over a human being–someone I love–struggling to stay in this world yet somehow knowing they have to move on into the next.  The nurse wondered if my father needed something for anxiety (ah, those magic pills) and we said no, he’s ok right now.  I’d like to ask the nurse for something to help me with my anger… but that’s too easy, isn’t it?

The moon will wane into darkness, just as she sets each night into the ocean waves. Each setting is a new beginning, a moonrise for someone else out there beyond the waves. I told someone that a long time ago, and I wonder if those words are remembered.  I suppose what’s more important is that I know it is true. Each breath has a beginning and end. Can I sit still long enough and appreciate?

Cycles

17 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

cycles, daughter, not writing, turnturnturn

Writing now feels like I am beginning in the middle of things instead of the beginning.  As a woman who is mildly OCD, it’s important to start at the beginning, chapter one, with the first word, not leaping haphazardly around from thought to thought like a cricket on a hot skillet. Ever see a bead of mercury slide this way and that, it doesn’t know where it’s going but for the hands that are tilting the surface it sits upon?  That’s how I feel these days, and it doesn’t lend itself to much creativity.

Starting this story at the end makes no sense, but I have limited time to write and less mental energy to do so.  So here goes. My father is at the end of his life’s journey courtesy of cancer. My brother uprooted his whole life and moved back here to be with him as he goes through this, these last eight months. They lived in my house in the finished basement apartment and renewed their familial bonds. My brother is handling as much as he can because he’s not working a full time job as I am.  He is handling everything beautifully and we have full confidence in him.  I struggle with the guilt of getting to work on time and trying to be a good worker bee, making lots of mistakes because I’m a tad angry and preoccupied (tad=very) instead of being by their sides. In the meantime, I’ve closed the valves on creativity for now.

Today I’m applying for FMLA (family medical leave), and I hope they don’t give me too much garbage about it. But it needs to be done and they can just deal with it.   Just like the pile of laundry on the couch needs to be folded and two-day old dishes in the sink need to be washed.  There is coffee in my cup now and… I hope I won’t come home too tired to have a beer before bed as it has been for the last eleven days.

Create in a storm when the heart is breaking and the mind has no clue what it’s thinking? I suppose it will come back eventually.  It did once before.  Until then, I have a pile of clean socks to keep me company.

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