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Tag Archives: wisdom

Armloads of Anger

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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angry woman, healing, neighbor, sorting, Universe, wisdom

It is two AM and no one is helping you move another armful of what appears to be sweaters down to the U-Haul truck. Glare at me all you want, baby, but you reap what you sow.

Sea green doors, bright yellow walls, white highlights … pagodas in a narrow courtyard lit by soft orange light. People come and go here where I live, revolving doors, no surprise living in a military community while others stay for a long time. I observe everyone (and myself) from the balcony or pagoda or water’s edge when it’s not too hot and not too cold ooh baby it’s just right. I observe kindnesses with each other, our plants, our dogs, our stray cats, and the not-so-kind things like when you let the door slam behind you that shakes my apartment. I’ve seen the mixed bag that is humanity, mostly for good, and I try not to dwell on the nuisances.

Since the first day I saw you I knew you as an angry woman. I’m no bubble of joy, so noticing your anger wasn’t hard. I marked you down as Recognized, Noted, Proceed Accordingly. Still, I waved or nodded or tried to make contact with you, as we all did, but you refused basic neighborliness and concern in general. Eyes forward, stomping ingress and egress, always. Every time I saw you walking from the parking lot to your apartment with your (husband?) all I could hear was you berating him and swearing terribly at him while he just looked forward and took it all. He disappeared and there were rumors. All I know is that I don’t see him or the little french bulldogs anymore and your demeanor has not changed. There were many social gatherings here at the apartment and you did not partake but were always welcome. You remained aloof and angry every day of every year I’ve been in your orbit. Just seeing you has been stressful which is not your problem but mine.

This afternoon a U-Haul truck pulled up and I watched as they moved your furniture. I was surprised you let them move most of that in the bathtub-fulls of pouring rain and wind. Later I saw you and said, “Hi. Looks like you’re leaving us?” Question mark, trying to be nice. She fixed a laser-beam gaze on me and said, “YES. I AM,” as if I was the reason for her pain and need to leave. It was an unexpected reaction, it confounded me, and I’m writing it out here now: Hey girl, I’m not the reason for your pain and suffering. We gave you ample opportunity to relate but you kept your door closed. I’ve been watching you for hours move boxes and bags and armfuls of “stuff” and I wonder where did you put it all in these tiny apartments? I can feel your anger in every box you walk out to the truck — by yourself. Where are your family and friends to help you move? I did that when I was a teenager: “I’m going to pack all this MYSELF and I don’t need YOUR HELP and FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. I’m going to take armloads of all my stuff out to the truck all day and night without your help because I don’t need you!!” She saw me on the balcony and gave me that “Fuck you” look again, and I just can’t fathom why, we’ve only had three words between us. The landlord will need to repave the balcony from the venom she’s dripping behind.

I am typically grumpy and crabby but not always angry. At least I am approachable and I will laugh and smile with you. I recognize my demeanor and try to keep it tamped down so I can be socially acceptable in public while at home I fume and steam in the four corners of my room, alone. It works out pretty well. You, lady, are a steam train that cannot be stopped and no one wants to.

I should light a candle for your brokenness. I should let it be water off a seal’s back. I should ask the universe to show you a way to heal and ask it to help you let that shit go. It’s not hard, but all I got now is just, “Good luck wid dat, hating the world. That’s the stuff that gave me chest pains. Maybe someday you’ll figure out you reap what you sow.”

My Remains Ask You To Examine What Matters

28 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

anger, change, colin kaepernick, crickets, Equality, future, grace, justice, love, nature, peace, silence, wisdom

morning crickets, disorganized, a messy symphony, out of time and tune like a first grade choir. they are young and vigorous, excited, eeping out of time like i’ve never heard before and we love them, dearly love them, dabbing our eyes with pride and ready for more.

green water with long whitecaps in the bay, ambassadors to the hurricane’s arrival. white sky turned gray for days, cloud processionals form impressive figures like gray knitted blankets, then icebergs moving fast in a distilled sunset sky that dispenses piss water instead of whisky.

i hear you. i hear you all. i allowed you to take over me like some drunk uncle at the barbecue who knows better. our burgers were adequate, filled our stomachs but we really didn’t want cheese on ours and not exactly burnt on one side.  it all works out in the end because we’re family and we take what we get, even after I told you all to fuck off because i can’t take your flag-waving bullshit anymore. We’re a family. I can do better, and so can we.

my anger is constant. it simmers long and sometimes a bubble pops and you get hit with the spray of “fuck off,” a little stain on your favorite faded t-shirt or that gauzy thing you wore for the first time today.  i try to keep her in check, in the cauldron, but after 16 days, sometimes it goes critical and that nicey girl, the one you thought was so well spoken and decent and measured bursts and she… she will not forget it.  she’s been wrestling your vipers and her vipers. my unwieldy elbows knocks the cauldron over and now another job:  own the disaster. the strife. the discord, the worry, the ransom, the fear, the woman, the apple, the evil, the world. I mop up the bloody mess and wring the rags out into the cauldron to begin again. again.

then i seek to breathe. to hold. to measure. to examine and find a way to spread the peace. the love. the wonder. the beauty. the magic. the grace. the harmony. the creation.  to own and love and share that thing i cannot see that made me and made you and reach for your fingertips in our birth and in our death, the turning wheel that pricked my finger and gave me a sword to fight my own dragons.

Momma said if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.  I believe she was so right, so very right. But when you believe, you need to stand for it, all the way, not stare at your toes and be a neutral pussy.  Take a stand, make a change, have courage in your convictions, and fuck what your father thinks.  Our future isn’t about measuring mother wounds, and it isn’t about lobby money and power. It’s about people rising up and telling the world the world matters, YOU matter, everything on it matters, we can do better, and I will walk with you peacefully, barefoot, and speak for you loudly, peacefully, forcefully. Otherwise, my silence means I accept the wrongs, the ill-doings, the damage, the hurt, the shoulder-shrugging extinctions.

Be brave, my fellow humans. Be brave and be kind and be giving. Be tolerant. Be listening. Be strong. Be happy. Be comforted. Be loving, and be one. Be ready to speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. Stand your ground not for us but our earth and life that we cannot yet imagine will come because our time here is already done.  The future is fragile and we can sow the seeds to make it beautiful-strong.  Put love on your tongue. It’s not impossible. We are right and good and brave as we walk barefoot through all of our dust.  Bless you for taking a knee and asking for the wisdom to discern what matters.

March 15 dream

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

accident, choice, dream, experience, wisdom

Daylight.  The accident happened, but I had no idea how, a complete blank.  I walked away from the scene and the only thing I could see was that I had apparently been driving Mike’s Oldsmobile 98, and it had some damage to the headlight and grill for which I felt bad about but nothing else.  I guess it was an SVA? I leaned on the car and took inventory of my own damages, much worse than the car, but how? I was covered in road rash, some deep, some superficial but all my nerves were screaming. Two broken back ribs. Pain. I looked over at the building across the way, building number 1111, but one of the red plastic numbers had fallen off. I felt I needed to remember the address for some reason.  No purse. No cellphone.  No people. Just a one-car accident on a side street close to an intersection.  I started walking but an ambulance rolled up, no lights or siren.  Two men put me on a gurney, covered me with a sheet and strapped me down with three black nylon straps. Then came the waiting. Watching the world go by as I lay in pain waiting for them to get me to a hospital. But then they were gone.

I lifted my body up best I could to look around and saw me and the gurney were in the middle of the street behind the Olds, no ambulance.  The straps weren’t very tight so I got out of them and kind of rocked the gurney down the hill and it landed in the parking lot of the building I saw earlier. Waiting. Nothing but pain. There was something between my knees, a large, rectangular black thing.  I opened it and it seemed like a sophisticated phone so I started punching buttons and numbers. A woman’s voice from far away, “What is your emergency?” I explained, haltingly, the accident, the gurney, then nobody. It seemed to take forever for her to understand. Finally she said, they’re on a side street now.  A toddler stuck in a ditch pipe, his grandfather was supposed to be watching him so everyone was mad at him now, and they’re trying to get the kid out.  I guess I was supposed to wait?

I lay there and thought about my thumb drive. Where was it? I had a project due for college. As I lay there I thought about all the research, the fat file of papers full of jumbled notes and clippings that became a perfect, finished product ready to hand in. Where was it?

###

Notes on the dream.  When I was around 17, I got into a really bad car accident. The officer was adamant that he take me to the hospital, but I refused. I was afraid for some reason of making my parents mad. He took me back to my boyfriend’s house on a dark road covered with three inches of greasy snow, making me promise that I’d get checked out in the morning. Somebody dropped me off at the hospital, and I went in alone to get my neck checked out. I’d never done the hospital thing before.  They put me on a gurney in the hall and told me to wait for radiology. Okay. I was a very sheltered 17-year-old who didn’t know squat about life, so I sat in that hall, no book, no phone, no nothing, feeling like a prisoner on gurney island listening to what sounded like a baby down the hall being murdered for hours, no exaggeration.  I didn’t know I could have gotten up off that gurney, walked away and asked to wait somewhere else. I know now that I don’t have to sit, stay, be quiet, or do anything else somebody tells me on command.  I can choose for myself. This morning as I lay in bed grabbing those details and putting them in my basket before they could evaporate, I thought about the predicament of my dreaming self vs what I can do today.

Congressman Brat asked his constituents

22 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

compromise, don't give up, politics, scream, wisdom, Women's March

when pressed on overturning EPA regulations,  “Do you want to be poor or do you want to be rich?”   I sent him this message:  Are you okay with drinking oil?

the_scream

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