life – Spread Your Dreams

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.

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

mom

As I laid down and waited for sleep to take me to tomorrow, I heard a child in the parking lot below,

“Hey what does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Hey, hello?! What does the car tell you?”

shuffle shuffle his little feet went –

“Mom!! what does the car tell you?”

He so deeply wanted his mom to answer the joke. Her silence was an exhaustion he did not understand. The tenor and the pleading sound of the word ‘mom’ made my psychic cackles go up – I felt for her. He had probably been telling this joke all day and jokes like it for days. She hadn’t tuned him out, but just wanted 20 seconds of silence.

The word mom. Mom. Mom.

It’s a monolith precursor of asks and needs and wants – a monolith of demands and expectations that never seem to pause. It’s often a child’s first word and the word that turns every unique individual woman who has a child into a martyr servant-being for at least 18 years. Even if your life’s quest is to be a Mother, the constant, intensity of the chant of needs will become exhausting.

The thing about the word ✨Mother✨ is that it takes away the woman who you were- sometimes even before you had truly become her. As soon as this title is placed upon your shoulders the world believes it has a right to criticize and speak down to you – in addition to the criticism and juvenilizing that happens to women for merely existing – as if you cannot be trusted to care for your child in your best intentioned manner. As if your choices, background, experience, education, or any other aspect should be up for judgment much less condemned by strangers; women who have chosen not to have kids, or men.

As a mother, your mere existence is questioned at every turn. You are criticized within an inch of your life, but honored one day a year with a Hallmark card and a box of chocolates. Oh darling! Being a mom is a Gift!

The word mother is not lifted up as a goddess term in our culture, but weighed down into a diminutive caretaker. Mothers are rarely praised for what they give their children, which is the best years of the first chapter of their life. Often mothers later feel obligated to give years beyond the best of their youth, thieving from the greatest of the wilding and free crone years. Mothers are expected to give everything and yet people say, “Oh but you can do it all … of course you can have a career … of course you can finish school … of course you can have time to write.” And YES that can all happen, but in order for it to be balanced there has to be support and boundaries and not everything will get a mother’s full attention. Mothers can do it all- but that doesn’t mean they can do it all perfectly.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the tears may fall.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the jokes will not be heard.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the world can become too loud.

When mothers are exhausted and just done the wine may flow.

When mothers are exhausted and just done they may need to simply rest, but the world does not embrace their need to take rest.

Next time your the mothers in your life seem to be fading, do not wait for them to ask for help- that is not something we are good at. Next time a mama is fading, step in and offer to drop off dinner, ask when you can pick up a kid for a few hours, ask if they need help grocery shopping so they can spend an hour doing nothing.

Next time you hear a child hollering for a mama’s demand driven attention just let the mama know they will be ok – they don’t have to provide the punchline to every joke. More importantly they should not be the punching bag or punchline of society’s criticism.

displaced, of sorts

I am not in the right place. I don’t mean I took a wrong turn and will be late for lunch or showed up at the wrong building for a doctor’s visit.

No, it’s the constantly nagging sensation that I’m in the wrong space. Instead of feeling anchored and stable, though all signs indicate I am, I feel like I’m floating in my life – unmoored within a forgotten bay with an eddy current being all that keeps me from moving toward elsewhere. It’s a sense of not belonging – that there’s something I just can’t attach to here because my attachment point is somewhere else that I haven’t identified.

It’s not the need to run. It’s not that I don’t want to face something. I am content in myself and my general life; rather, it’s this intangible sense that I’m simply in the wrong place. However, at this juncture in life I must keep remain in the eddy that is my daughter and I’m not going to leave her. She will be finishing high school soon and on her own journey. I don’t know where she’ll choose to go or what will happen but then I will have time to find my right place and who knows that right place may not actually be a place at all. Instead, it may be the momentum of the open road. The thing is, while I’ve been in a relative homeostasis for the last 17 years, I’ve never imagined being in a place and having all of the accouterments of permanence around me. To my heart, the world is my home and perhaps that’s why I feel as if I’m in the right wrong place. It’s not that I am presently in the wrong place specifically, but more that being in a specific place for an extended period of time does not compute with my nomadic psyche. As with all things, though, only time will tell and until that time I will continue to grow and think, interact with and experience life. Until the next chapter begins, I will continue to enjoy this interesting life and have as much fun as possible in this cosplay of a person who lives the repetitive nature of the day-to-day.

wily life

I have been in a holding pattern. A bit of the blues have had their grippy way with me and my writing has sunk from the surface. I was doing so very good at writing everyday and getting work transcribed and then I tanked. I never know when it will happen or why and often don’t realize it has happened until I look up and realize a week or three has passed. This time, I caught myself, the weight of a new day holding me in bed – the sadness and anxiety to overcome in simply sitting up. Making deals with myself to get up, go pee, put slippers on, feed the dog, boil the water, portion the coffee grounds … stepping through each step of my morning with the pressure of a drill sergeant. Sometimes I wonder if I am not one but two, simply because there’s part of me that won’t feel capable of moving and another part that is screaming orders and demanding action. I experience both and move forward as one. This is a strange and wiley life.

sixteen returns

I was contemplating all the things I contemplate when I masturbate. The places I’ve been, the things I’ve done, a couple of the people I’ve done- because they’re only a couple that really turn up in the darkness of my solitude- and amongst all of those thoughts 16-year-old me came roaring through and mad-as-hell.

Suddenly, we were back together on a train in 1991 and heading into Athens, Greece. She looked at me and said, “What the fuck happened to you? We were going to see the world, learn languages, fly planes, embed into war zones. TELL THE STORIES. Where you are today … that is not US, but I am stuck with YOU. I did not sign-up for the bullshit life your decisions have made for us, but there I am- sitting with you in a fucking office- day after day- feeling blood pressure and cortisol spike.”

“I get it. I don’t want to be there either, but Arwen is my heart and I can’t live all those dreams things until she’s launched.”

“I love her too, she’s my kid too and she wants the adventurous life you HAD, but better. SHE said it. So why did you fuck it up? Why did you stop being free and living your adventure?”

“I fell in love a man who had potential.”

“Was it really love,” it wasn’t a question, she knew the answer.

“We know now it wasn’t … it was hope, but it felt like what I thought love should feel like. I fell into the arms of what-if and potential felt safe.”

“You/me/us. We were the ones with potential. We always made our-self safe. You let us down.”

“I am fully fucking aware, but I love my kid and WE will get to launch soon too. The dreams never stopped, they just got delayed.”

It was enough to calm the 16-year-old that still sits within my heart. Her dreams will come true.

new year, new day

happy new year … time is shorter than ever for us and I intend to sop it up with glee. I will write more and read more and walk more and watch the world instead of screens and meet new people and try new things. I will keep in learning to fix old things and re-use instead of replace. I’ll meet more dogs and observe more birds. I won’t keep my mouth shut when my soul nudges me to speak. I hope to share most of my days with friends, and maybe lovers, but space and time will not be wasted begging people to join me in the joys of life that I have left to celebrate.

Some days will be hard. Some days will be sad. Some days I will want to be entirely alone and feel even more empty, and it will all be too much, but those days will pass, as they always have because life is cyclical.

I will miss some things and be surprised by tripping into others- I won’t be stingy with my presence by worrying over where I could be- I’ll open my heart and marinate in where I am. If I am no longer engaged, I won’t lose myself in wondering if I should stay, but arrange a graceful exit- or just cut strings depending on the situation.

In this new day, let it be known both my home and heart are always open to break bread & hold space for others who want to grow, heal, love, and live. I am here to celebrate each of us and to hold you when all you can do is cry because the tears prove we are still surviving.

We are each a beautiful soul- each a speck of the universe that is a universe in each of us. It is inconceivable that we are in these meatsuits topped with an organic computer, the likes of which the most advanced of the organic computers can barely conceive, and we just incoherently fumble through our lives- barely looking up from the machines we’ve made and are now using as oracles to guide us on how to live. It’s an obscene waste of the miracle of life’s magic and while they are useful, I vow to re-connect with the world beyond the screen, using these machines to grow human connection, rather than limit my time from others. I’m 50 this year and life is only going to get bigger. I’ve been learning and letting go and now I get to use all those tools to really begin loving & living.

From those of you near my age (or for godsake younger), I don’t want to hear how your body is too old now or how something you loved can no longer be done. Do not excuse yourself out of living because you’ve lived your days into a bored or stifled place. Your body may ache from inertia, but it’s not done unless you let it be. Each day is a new day and each day we are gifted a choice whether or not to let our soul shine brightly through the conduit of our meat suit or to let our soul dim. Our big ol’ brains will work to compute a shoulda-woulda-coulda triangulation of the easiest path of decisions on living to draw out the baseline shelf life of your meat suit, but is that really that life your soul deserves? In the end, our brains short circuit and our meat suit ceases to function, but that small voice that has believed in you more than your brain could ever imagine … that soul light wants to shine. Your soul doesn’t want to live at baseline, your soul wants to be the MVP of it’s universe and as we are each a speck of the universe and a whole universe within- BE your MVP.

I will do nothing if not encourage others to declare the same joyfully reckless assault against inertia & apathy. We haven’t survived all the bullshit life has thrown at us just to sit in the corner and wait to die. Every day we wake up, life is a new opportunity, a new story to write. Let your soul shine. Claim your story.