entertaining infinity

start where you are

A couple of friends recently asked me about my lack of blog contact.  Talking to one of these peeps the other day, I realized what's been going on in the push/pull that's resulted in these long stretches of quiet in blog-land: there's been some stuff going on in my "real life" that I haven't wanted to write about publicly (to all you 10 or 15 regular readers ...) (that is, if you're still there ...), but it's been hard to write about anything but that, and since I wasn't willing to reveal all here, it was easier not to blog ... or to just touch base by writing about the weather.  But I've missed the community that I have in blog-land, and I want to write and be here and engage again, so ...

I've decided to take a page from the stuff I tell the women in my writing group: If you don't know what to write about, or you're feeling stuck, just start where you are. 

And while you may not follow what comes next today; or you might read stuff into it; you might have no idea what I'm talking about; you may wonder what the heck is going on in my life (or if i'm even talking about my life?) ... but if nothing else, for those who have been wondering, here it is: contact ... from where I am.

Mixed up, mashed up.  Coming, going. Too much of not enough but we want what we want and there's no way to stop it even if we wanted to.  Openings, challenges, new roads, and the world keeps on spinning.  (too many spinning plates in the air sometimes ...)  Inertia feels so good, doesn't it?  Doesn't it?  So much promise, so many possibilities, too many choices.  The right choice for right now sings softly and fiercely as bills and dust and to-do lists fly around and we try to listen and try to do better.  Still, we rush on ahead, we wait, get annoyed and fight the urge to flip the bird.  We scratch the itch, indulge the want, wait until the gas light comes on empty.  Worry what they'll think; worry they won't notice.  Wonder if we have it easy (even though it can feel hard) since we have beds to sleep in, food to eat and blogs to blahblahblah in?  What's the gift in this challenge?  What would the Dali Lama do, and why then oh why can't I? 

Let the mind wander, let the pen run, see what shows up. 

(i'll be back ...)

tug of war

Last weekend six year old Beaner-twin-girl commented on how weird the weather had been, saying that Spring and Winter were playing tug of war.  What a brilliant way to describe what's been going on here on the east coast.

In the last couple of days it seems that Winter has totally dropped out of the game, leaving Summer to take up the slack: it's been in the upper 80s for 3 days, and the weather gods say we're in for one more upper 80s day before Spring digs her feet in and pulls us back to 60-ish days.

And at the same time, as I watch my blog turn into a commentary on the weird Joisey end-of-first-quarter weather and not much else, I find myself in my own version of tug of war ... wondering what the hell I'm still doing here in blog-land. 

Recently a pretty regular reader asked me what purpose the blog served ... and while he qualified - asking if it was a means of connection ... an offshoot of the writing group and the back-burner-ed dream of solopreneurship ...  I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't really a way of saying: Why the hell are you still doing it? 

But whatever the question was, my answer would probably be the same: Dunno. I've probably never really known, but most of the time the "why" didn't matter because I was having so much fun writing and linking and playing and saying whatever I felt like and having some people read and comment and play with me. Or not.

But I also go through these phases w/blogging - more in the last year or so - where I consider putting it down (giving it up) because it doesn't DO anything.  It's not building exposure for a business; my connections with fellow travelers on a creative playground are limited (and fading, cause the less i blog, the less i seem to check in on others blogs and the less they check in on me... ) and that seems to have made me more guarded about what I will and won't share here ... which dilutes the voice, which makes me less engaged (which makes you reader peeps less engaged, i'm sure ...) ... vicious circle (kvetch, kvetch, blahblahblah).

Perhaps the winter of my blog discontent and the glorious spring are having a tug of war.  I feel the push and pull more lately, but I'm digging my heels in; I don't know why, but it still feels like there's something here for me (and maybe for you loyal readers and lurkers too) ...? Maybe it's time for blog re-invention? ... less blahblahblahing? ... or a little more?  Dunno.  But I'm still in the game.

math that i like

The New Math website is brilliant (and often hysterical).  This one felt particularly fabulous today ... since it was HAILING when I drove to work.  (yes, i know promised i would not reduce ze blog to weather reports ... but i didn't say when ...)

winding (still)

I promise that my blog will not become a daily weather report, but c'mon ... SNOW?  We had SNOW yesterday; cold, blustery, gray-day snow.  In NJ for cryin' out loud. 

You might expect snow in April in Maine, or Colorado, or Minneapolis ... but New Jersey? WTF?

OK, granted, it was 63 and sunny today, but really ... snow on April 8th?  How windy IS this labyrinth? (oh, wait ... that's the point, isn't it? you don't get to know ... y'just keep walking ...) (daaaamn)

(but really ... spring baby ... you can do it; come on ...) 

almost ... (winding)

Sunday was so beautiful ... the first day where it really felt like Spring was coming.  And while I was errand running, I popped over to a nearby Unitarian Church to walk their labyrinth.  Good to remember the winding, circuitous path of the labyrinth on a day like today when it's gray and windy and in the low 40s and it feels like winter again.  Spring IS coming ... we'll make it.

(clearly, this is a pep talk to self, right?)

 

daring

April.  (ahh)

While we're still feeling that crazy not-quite-winter/not-quite-spring weather here in Joisey, the simple change of the date on the calendar brings with it just a little more hope for renewal.

So, isn't it fitting that National Poetry Month is also in April?  As Poets.org say on their NPM FAQ page: "T. S. Eliot wrote, April is the cruelest month. It is our hope that National Poetry Month lessens that effect."  (me too)

I love poetry.  For those who read my irregular musings with any regularity, you know how I do; I look forward to The Dodge Poetry Festival like a little kid looks forward to Santa.  Listening to poetry is a spiritual experience for me; an invitation to the sacred.

And while I write a lot (but clearly, not that often here), I don't identify as a poet.  I'm a prose writing gal pretty straight on down the line, but when I was a kid, I wrote poems like crazy. 

In junior high, my journal was the place I vented in excruciating detail about the crush I had on Randy (or bill or scott or ... whoever the boy of the week was), or how I was annoyed with any one of my they-don't-understand-me family, but poems (and song lyrics) were where I poured my soul without the story.  It was all feeling, all raw emotion and energy. 

I don't know when or why I stopped playing with poetry, but other than the rare stab I've taken over the years in my writing groups, poetry's something I read, hear, and love, but it's not something I do.

Then, in the last several months, I've been feeling a pull to write differently ... a little experimentally; and so I started playing with poems again (might post some if i'm feeling braver). When I was reminded that it was National Poetry Month, I went to Poets.org to see if I could get some ideas and inspiration for this month's writing group.  Almost immediately, I fell in love with this poster image ... and found the question simmering at the back of my mind a lot.  While I was wandering the site, I'd noticed NaPoWriMo.  NaPoWriMo (national poetry writing month) is an offshoot of NPM; and while I've been aware of it for a few years (a few of my blog buds participated in years past) I'd never even considered taking the plunge. 

The idea of NaPoWriMo is to do a full-on poem every day and post it to your blog, and while I'm not open to that much quick-change discipline and universe disturbance at once, I thought I'd venture out on a smaller scale: 140 characters of smaller, to be exact. 

Yep, this month I've committed to a Twitter version of NaPoWriMo - a 140 Twitter poem(ish) every day for the month.  It might be poetry, and it might suck.  (and it might be poetry that sucks ...) But I'm going to play with the structure and see how it goes.

If you dare to disturb the universe just a little, I invite those who Twitter to follow me @uncle_deb; let me know you're playing, and hashtag your bits with #twitterpoetrymonth and lets see if maybe, by months end, one or two of those 140 character poem-ish's inspires a little of that junior high passion. 

And when the month's done, we'll look at the universe, and well see ...

5

About this time 5 years ago, I was standing in a hospital room holding my mom's hand, waiting.  The doc said it was only a matter of time ... an hour, maybe less.  When he came downstairs to the surgical waiting room he'd told us: We can't put her back together, and I remember thinking he was talking about Humpty Dumpty, only he was talking about my mother. I know the docs busted their humps to make things right, going to great lengths to save her, but she was tired and there had been one complication on top of another, and meanwhile, the cancer was still quietly doin' its thing. 

One of the interns cried when he saw me come upstairs to the room where they'd moved her; he'd fallen in love with my mom (as many did) and like so many others who loved her - he was clinging to that slim bit of hope, even though he later told me I shouldn't have; I knew better. 

I was alone with her when she died; my father and brother had gone downstairs to wait for my sister to arrive, and even though Mom wasn't awake, I talked to her, just in case she could hear.

That morning she'd asked me to come to the hospital early; she wanted me there before Dad and Bean arrived because she knew she might not make it out of the surgery and she wanted to talk.  We had always talked a lot, and there had been plenty of conversations about what might come after we'd shuffle off this mortal coil, even before she got sick.  That morning she told me that she wasn't concerned for herself: If I wake up dead, I wake up dead, she laughed; it's all of you that I'm worried about.

But we'd be OK I told her; not that we would like it, but we'd be OK.  I said it that morning, and I said it again in that room with the curtains drawn.  And we are OK.  We miss her; her absence is always felt, but we have done OK. We keep on keepin' on; what else are you going to do?   

And while I thought about it today (hard not to on the anniversary), I wasn't overcome with huge waves of sadness just because it's the day.  Sometimes I get sad about it for no particular reason, but today it just hung around like a mist.  It's there, but you can still see through it.

And I guess it helps that I get something in a way that I've only fully gotten it since the sun rose on March 31, 2004: That until the day when you wake up dead, you wake up alive, and you get on with it. 

 

first day of spring '09

two great things that go great together ... (no, make that three)

Legos and The Princess Bride.  Brilliant.  (i'm such a geek.)

(as you wish)

(as you wish)

This is pretty awesome too: Star Wars lightsabers mashed with Inigo's vindication duel in The Princess Bride.  (oh yes, my geekiness is legendary.)

(as you wish)

sun, sun, sun here it (almost) comes ...

Turned the clocks ahead last weekend and am already feeling the difference.

I love daylight saving time; I hear some people kvetch that they hate waking up in the dark, but I don't mind: it's light by the time I leave the house, and it's light when it's time to leave the office - color me happy.  And while I really love that DST has moved up a couple of weeks, I also notice that I've been bracing myself because it's still not spring yet (even though the crocuses and some other spring flowers have bravely begun their push). The hint of the spring just feels like a tease to me now.  I can't relax into it because there's no assurance that winter has breathed its last.  Must get through just a few more unpredictable weeks.

And in the meantime, I notice that I'm starting to come out of the winter-funkness just a little bit more.  The other day, a friend mentioned that he'd been worried about me; he'd noticed that I was turning down invitations a fair bit this winter and said it seemed like I was hunkered down at home a lot.  He wasn't the first to notice; over the years I've learned a lot about how the winter funk impacts me by listening to friends comment about the difference in my energy from season to season.   

I try to be open about it; I tell them that it happens, and how it usually manifests, but I suppose I still hide a lot about it too.  I don't want people to worry about me (there's nothing they can do), I don't want them to think I'm weak (although i often find myself thinking it's a weakness of character), and I REALLY don't want anyone to try to talk me out of it.  (it's not something i can be talked out of; it completely defies logic, and talking about it does no good; it just makes me feel pathetic). Nope, I'd rather just hunker down and ride it out.

Sometimes I wonder if it's what bears feel like.  Depressed?  Hell no, I'm hibernating; it's what I DO.   (grrr ... now leave me alone while i chow on some carbs and sleep a lot more than usual.)

It's just that, when people point out the difference, I'm reminded that I'm like two different people: the spring/summer/fall Deb, and the late fall/winter Deb.  Late fall/winter Deb is not a  complete basket-case ... depressed and immobile (although i'm sure in a clinical way, what happens to me is a form of depression).  But if she's not bummed out/depressed, she's not energetic and up-beat either; she's just a slow mover ... one who feels like she's got a coat of molasses on every inch of her body (and no, not in a good way, you pervy readers ...). 

Funny thing is, every year I convince myself I'm doing better at it.  And yes, I probably am doing better: I recognize how it gets to me, and I have more and better coping mechanisms - but it's still there and once the spring explodes, I wonder how I made it through.  

So ... while I start to wake up, enjoy the "more light" and wait for spring to really unfold, I wonder if you lurking readers have any recommendations for me? (beyond what i already do: the SAD lamp, exercise, and an escape to warm weather at least once in the winter ...).  (i suppose anti-depressants are an option too, huh?)  Do any of you go through this?  How do you cope?  What do you do to get through?