just write it out

there’s nothing particular that is on my mind, but a little stream of consciousness is good for the soul

i’ve starting lifting weights and today i did hex cage deadlifts – i think that’s the term- i know it’s dead lifts but i’m using a trainer for the first time ever and she’s tracking everything for me. i’d love to keep her on my team but i could only afford 8 sessions and so soon i’ll be finding a new, traditional gym. anyway, this morning at 6:30 I found myself deadlift 35kilos or about 77lbs – plus whatever the cage weighs – you don’t get credit for the weight of the apparatus that holds your weight, but I digress. the point i’m making is I did 6 reps at 30k and then 4 sets of 8 reps at 35 kilos which calculates to a total of 1300 kilos or 2860 lbs, thereabouts. when it adds up it’s kinda mind blowing.

presently my trainer writes out all the numbers. soon i’ll need to do that and i’m not looking forward to it but also it will be interesting to watch the numbers and how the correspond to my changing body. same goes for tracking food.

it all feels a little obsessive, but successful change doesn’t happen by chance. to make change last, for consistency to become transformative you have to stay on top of things and systematically create the consistency in your life. Or at least that what i’ve read from a lot of people who seem to be making change last.

new things

I found an old journal from high school. The entries feel awkward and painfully earnest- cringe is the term one could use- but they are real, unfettered, and filled with a sense of absolute certainty. As a teenager, everything feels immediate and intense because it’s never been felt before and there’s no possible way anybody else could be having These Big Feelings. Only later do you realize EVERY ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS was having those Big Feelings. In my writing, the only thing bigger than my feelings were my plans for my future. A numbered list was nearly printed in the front cover and continued through the 2nd page.

(Un)fortunately, I shared this journal with my daughter & we had tears in our eyes laughing through some of the entries. I let her keep it, but now she claims to have never seen it. I am wagering she took it to share with friends and it was misplaced. I’d be terrified to tell me, too, but it’s a Big Emotion I’d hug her through because those pages show I knew as little about the world as we all do at the tender age of 15, 16, 17. The thing about that journal & the dreams within its pages is that I completed very few of them, but I also have done things I had yet to know existed or that I’d love.

At 51 years old I’m just beginning to live a whole new version of another life. People talk about getting older, bodies hurting, and the word ‘can’t’ seems to generously pepper to many conversations. I recently had someone ask me, “Why are you doing so much? What are you training for?” I had to smile because I have barely gotten started, but I answered, “I’m training to be able to do whatever I damn well please when I am 90.”

I am blessed to have avoided injuries or to have worn out parts of my factory model, but that’s in part because I was not a sports kid. I was fairly strong and had decent endurance while in the Navy, but didn’t really start getting into strong condition until my kid was a toddler and I decided to train for a Tough Mudder race. Then single parenting hit and I more or less stopped. Then got serious about Krav Maga for a few years. Then Covid stopped the world. Now, I am getting going again with weight lifting, learning to breathe fire, and reconnecting to dance.

I can’t wait to see what unfolds when I have access to a strong body I’ve built to climb, lift, dance, swim far better than most people ”my age” who made choices not to find the new things, but to regret what they never did.

Keep moving. Live Large. Don’t say can’t.

dory’s birthday

Today, I woke in a room, of the home of friends, I call family. We’ve been through the wringer together & have come out as different people. I love these people in ways I may never love some family because they love me in ways my family doesn’t understand. In the past, through misunderstanding based on half stories, I burned bridges across these friendships to a degree most would never forgive, but when I recognized I’d burned down the wrong bridges, these friends listened. They cautiously trusted and extended a hand, a willingness to rebuild. It took time, but here we are building lives and growing another year older together.

The birthday we celebrate today is of a man who spends his life celebrating others. He’s a master of arts that are not placed on walls but in the hearts and souls of the thousands he has touched. For decades he has fed artists building impermanent Big Art that will only physically exist a short time, but will live within each person that interacts with the art for their lifetime. Through food & community, he creates safe spaces for people to recharge and return to their work and play.

He’s a diva of high order, with a collection of hats and manties, only to be outshined by his fabulous voice. And all of that is second, when you witness the love he has for his wife. The world they have created – it truly is an oasis of love, art and comfort.

To my dear friend, thank you for being born.

get on it

I just had the auto-renew kick in for this page so I suppose I should write here more often. Lawd knows I am writing everything and keeping a journal and all those things, but all those things don’t end up here.

Shyness, fear of vulnerability, imposter syndrome, fear of success, fear of failure… fear that know one will come to my party.

Maybe all of that … but imma work on trying to post more … for future me if nothing else.

an improv life

Through postponing dreams I learned how to be with myself. I learned to listen more than talk. I learned the power of patience. I learned that life is not a train to be ridden in whatever direction you hop on. You can get off the train at any moment because there is no script – Life is improv – and with that I will spend the next 20, 30, 40 years beginning each day not with what I wish could be but with the joy of choosing: yes, and.

silent listen

listen is the active form of silent-

each is the other and in being silent we can listen – 

to others, to ourselves, to the whispers of the future that is leading us to it and the past to which we remain in until we allow ourselves to be silent and listen to our present, which will present our future.

as we conduct, we must listen & honor the necessary pauses in the symphony that is our life. Silent moments are still active. Passive motion is rest and in rest is the restoration needed to play the next verse.

silent … listen

erin

he lived on the edges.

in summer he turned up on benches – mornings, i would often see him sitting at a picnic table, with a used coffee cup full of fresh coffee and a muffin at the grocery store nearby. the store gave free refills if their logoed cup was used so the cups got reused whether they were first bought by our unhoused or found, discarded by a customer.

with the evening sun, he’d sit in the triangle park at the end of my block, boots neatly tucked at his side their tongues pulled forward to air out the day’s sweat. he wiggled his toes to a song of his memory or just as a welcome to the open air. i often stopped to say hello – sometimes i’d give him a popsicle and other times he shared what he was eating with my dog. his speech was always clear and deep, kind and cheerfully cadenced- bright blue eyes shone and you could see him thinking. he excitedly shared the plots of books he was reading or told me about a new plant he’d discovered. after some time, he found a guitar, two strings missing, and began teaching himself to carry broken melodies.

i asked him once how long he’d been living outside and if he’d like to be in a home again. he told me he doesn’t belong inside, that it makes him feel anxious. he said he gets enough to get by and quickly changed the subject to tell me he found out how to get free kolaches from a bakery nearby.

on this day we sat and watched the sky, “where are you from,” i asked. “illinois, near chicago.”

“i have friends in naiperville, they lived in joliet before that.”

“i’m just a few towns up … weaton,” he says with a brightness. we sit in silence for a bit then he tells me he was a wrestler there in high school … his beard shuffles as a smile surfaces, “funny thing happened the other day… This gang type guy came up to me, I don’t know why but he says “you wanna mess with me you mess with the cartel” and I was thinking like ‘this guy is crazy.’ He doesn’t know who I am – so I say, “you wanna mess with me you mess with a wrestler from weston.” that guy backed down.”

he pet my dog, a gentle pyrenees retriever mix with silky long fur. they stared at each other, “You are the dog with eyes as wise as the forest.”

from orig v 3-22-2022

books of dreams

I spent only a week, barely looking at screens, my glasses used for evening, reading, and writing in my journal – sometimes not even then for now my hand and glasses simply keep lines straighter – who needs lines

but today had to come, with its return to a manufactured bug in the program of life identified as work, and my eyes quiver and shake against the bug’s light that pours from the screens where we sink our days in exchange for pay … my eyes take in this sanitized correction copy of the world and try to shake free from its digitized imbalance

“Where? Where is the open road,” ask my eyes, “… where is harsh sunlight, and sand to settle upon?”

“it’s out there… replies my soul … we will be immersed in it again … but for now we will witness the world from the books of our dreams”

 

 

ed from original v 5-21-2022