what you need.

Hello blog reader friends. Can I call you that?

When you're writing for a blog, or writing in general, it can be lonely. You're writing for other people to read, but you aren't there when they read it, so it feels very far away. There's a large disconnect in this grasping attempt at connection.

I can't give you something whole tonight. Can I give you the fragments I have?

I was thinking this weekend, I haven't written on the blog in awhile. Then I opened it to discover I haven't written in over two weeks. I am sorry, but my brain had to be devoted to other things. And you'll be happy to know I was writing, just not here.

Don't stop to think now. Don't stop to think about your failures or shortcomings. Don't stop to think. The moment I roll back on my haunches and raise my eyes to the ceiling, the moment I say to myself: What should I write next? then it's too late.

I have been thinking lately about the urge to structure and control time. I suffer at the mercy of this urge often, although I'm getting better at letting myself relax. Still, it takes a conscious effort. On a late Sunday afternoon, I'll start to feel a bit frantic and stressed and then I'll remind myself: You don't have to do anything.

leaps.

This is what it's like to be an independent lady.

I got to work this morning, wearing one of my four hipster-cool professional outfits. I wore a belt over my shirt in another attempt to make it look like I have more than four hipster-cool professional outfits. Got to work, looked in the mirror, belt looked dumb, took it off. And then I realized my shirt had a hole in it. Not a hole in the armpit or the seam or a tiny hole no one will see. It's a big ass hole right on my stomach where a tiny patch of stomach skin is shining through. It's the kind of hole you get when you wear a shirt over and over and over because you're an independent lady who is out in the world making not-much-money.

The beautiful thing about this day is that I don't care.

Some people love to plan life out. They imagine a big picture and the various twists and turns they hope their lives will take. While I'm a planner to my very core, I hate the big plans. Hate isn't even exactly the right word - I am incapable of planning my life in this way. I have no desire.

You want me to plan a vacation? A grocery list? An independent ladies' dinner? Done.
You want me to plan my life? Not gonna happen.

listen.

The noise in your head is so loud that you can't listen to music, you can't listen to the radio, you can barely listen to the sounds of cars on the street and the wet thud of your boot heel. There is too much in your head and you are tired, so tired, of noticing everything and feeling everything and swallowing it up until you can't find yourself. Where will you find peace? What will you do when you walk in the door and tears form in the corners of your eyes? How will you understand?

Sit down and write. Sit down and read. Sit down and meditate.

Remember this: sometimes there's no great meaning to the world and each passing emotion. They exist. Let them.

Now, listen.

I mean, listen.

LISTEN!

Listen to your own thoughts and feelings and every other sound in this world around you. Just listen! Stop asking, thinking, making, excusing, explaining. Just listen.

When you are done listening and you feel full, then pick up your pen to write again. Have something to eat. And write again.

security in the sky.

Yesterday the inside of my head lit up when someone told me that the only real suffering is discontent. And I said to myself, This is how I live my life. I cling to what has been, I try to fight the change, I grasp for what is not here yet. Listen, I do this because I'm a human being. You do it too. We all do it. But the new awareness I've had is that I live my life with fear of suffering. And perhaps that fear is the real suffering.

It makes sense to me. Do you see what I mean?

Let me tell you about security. Here is the honest truth. Over the course of several years, I lost what was once a very devout Christian faith. It was the very core and center of my life. And the years passed and it slipped away from me and suddenly I saw it with new eyes and I let it go. Then, one morning, a sunny summer morning on some wooden steps with a plate of eggs in my lap, I was saying the words: I don't think I believe in God. I can tell you that it was relief and freedom because it was. I can also tell you that it was a new fear and loneliness that I had never known.

be here.

Some while ago I read something, I can't remember where. A post on a blog or maybe an essay. It was about fear and this reassurance: Anything could happen, but it usually doesn't. I've been letting my brain chew on this thought for a few weeks now.

I carry a lot of fear around with me. I don't usually acknowledge it to myself, or even anyone else. I am afraid of losing things and people that I love, afraid of people dying or abandoning me, afraid of them abandoning themselves, afraid of change and the unknown and feeling out of control. Usually my fear is something I push back when it surfaces. But lately it has been fighting it's way through, sharp pricks and wet eyes. I am forced to confront it every day and I am confronting it now head on. I am tired of living with the constant expectation that something evil is just around the corner.

Over the weekend, I read a piece in the latest issue of Poets & Writers that was about writing as healing and discovery in the face of a spouse's death. I read the first sentence, "On the night my husband died..." and immediately the black hole opened up in the pit of my stomach. Death, there it is, looming over me and everyone else I love.

memories of a gorilla suit.

I can't remember what I ate as a child. I know I ate things, I know we had meals. There are pieces, mostly memories of melting cheese on chips and watching I Love Lucy. There's the sugar bomb cereal that none of the neighbor kids were allowed. They always wanted to sleep over for the breakfast.

I don't understand why I can't remember the meals, years and years of my life. What was I eating? In my adult life, I structure my entire day around what I'm going to eat and when. I love food and I love to make it. I will gladly devote my entire evening to buying groceries and making a meal. I read food blogs like it's my job.

Memory is a funny thing. The pieces that carry through, the things you remember, and the things that are lost. Years of life, significant acts, eating, all lost. In this moment now, you can't imagine a time when you'll forget. Can't imagine not remembering the feel of that hand or the way the Boston air smelled after a cold December rain. But you might forget.

woman with the gray bun.

This happened first: I tried to make myself write something about lists. Or write a list. I don’t know, it wasn’t working. I was staring out the window and taking unnecessary bathroom breaks. I was trying to mold my mind and fool my creative juices into producing something other than what they want.

Here’s what I really want to write about today: a stranger. I write at the risk of sounding a little crazy. I might be because I make friends with strangers in my mind. I’ve said it before: I see the same random sets of strangers each day as I walk to and from work. I spend about an hour each day walk-commuting and passing by people on the street. The familiar ones have nicknames in my head. I’ve imagined various lives and stories for them. I feel relieved when we pass on the sidewalk. I wonder where they are when we don’t.

My favorite stranger is the old woman with the gray bun. I always pass her at the fence around the big green space by the college. She’s average size with a steady walk. Her hair is always pulled back, center part, into a bun. She wears large framed plastic glasses, the kind that rest on your cheeks and lift up and down as you talk or smile. I have never seen her talk or smile, but I imagine it would make her glasses dance. She always wears a long skirt and sensible shoes. A fanny pack is buckled over her sweater or turtleneck. She carries a large leather briefcase in her right hand and her right step hits a little harder. Yesterday it was cold and she was wearing a yellow quilted down vest. Her glasses were a little foggy.

encouragement & discontent.

I haven't done any freewriting in 4 days. Apathy and discontent have a strange way of paralyzing a person.  The cold air is numbing my fingers. I have a headache. The world is full of bad things. Excuses, all.

I have been thinking today on goals set and goals achieved, on the path we are walking and what comes at the end. There are too many things to make sense of tonight. Too much hurt in the world, confusion in my own life and others. Too many questions that I don't have the power to answer. Too many people being born, too many people dying, too much suffering, too much greed.

I am searching hard for something lately. I am here. I am creating the life that I want to lead and every day it is the life I want and every day I am grateful, grateful, grateful. It's a story that lots of people have lived and lots of people have heard, it's not original or unique, but it's mine and that's why I care.

I have to remind myself of things often, the things that I believe and don't believe. That I am committed and capable.

The answer is to write, it is always to write. Just reminding myself.

I read an interesting piece by Langston Hughes yesterday - I hadn't seen it before. It's worth reading.  Salvation - Langston Hughes

snacking.

I have been deep in my own head a lot these days. It feels full and alive, but also disconnected from my body, from my hands, from my feet walking back and forth. In awareness, I'm trying to make an effort to keep myself connected to the physical things of life. Here's a list of ways to keep myself grounded and awake to the world:

-go for a run/walk to work without my iPod
-cook/bake for 30 minutes or more
-eat a meal and focus on the food
-write letters
-sit on the deck
-practice physical creation (painting, drawing, sewing, knitting)
-laugh out loud at funny things

Those things that connect us to the present moment and to the world around us, the world in our hands - those things make the writing and our minds better. They give depth to the world that exists inside the walls of my brain.

I went through some sort of Buddhist phase about a year ago. I spent a lot of time thinking about presence, mindfulness, connection to the moment. I have been reminded lately how difficult it is to stay grounded in the present moment. So much is defined by looking forward to the next thing, but you get there and......what? It is so difficult to just appreciate the richness of the time and space I am in now. The gifts that are here. There will always be absence of some sort or another. There will always be something to look forward to, more to hope for. It is hard to stay here. But it's good to practice.

It's also good to snack, especially when you write.