Fruit! (and cheese)

Holy sheepshit... 

I was about to give up on the plant - like, literally pull it out by the roots and toss it into the woods - when I found two tiny green tomatoes!

I have no idea what to do next, other than marvel at them, but I will figure that out.

If, as P suggested, this plant is a metaphor for my life, then I guess there is hope.

*smiles in spite of self*

Heirlooms

Missing my soul friends. Missing when I had them.

Missing beer and round table discussions. Missing how we laughed.

Missing my mom. Missing the years before I learned that life was complicated.

"That inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude..."

"Memory is the happiness of being alone..."

Missing me.  Missing my dancing heart.

Vines and weeds. And a frog.

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

I don't know who said that, but it's pretty right on. 

I also don't have a segue from that thought into my original intention for writing today. It just happened to pop into my head as my hands hovered above the keys. And it's not a bad Idea to remind myself of that fairly regularly - to stop comparing myself to every. Freaking. Person. Everywhere, because I inevitably either find myself lacking (which sucks and isn't at all accurate), or I feel superior, which, dammit, ends up making me feel bad.

But anyway. Original intention. 

Words and thoughts and words and thoughts and some more thoughts, and some words. 

You don't get them this time. Ha.

And maybe, this time, I don't really need to type them. 

Because as I think them, I see that they lead to a solution upon which I have landed many, many times already.

I need to choose happiness.

But here's the rub: choosing that comes with risk, and risk is the biscuit I choke on almost every time.

That's where I'm stuck. 

And damn, even the words and thoughts are stuck now. Like a tangle that keeps coming around on itself, each time passing "Choose happiness!" and "Caution, risk!"

So... maybe instead of drowning in words and thoughts (and words and thoughts), I figure out how to weed some of them out more often. Like I did a moment ago. (Ha.)

The ink and paper... I'll put it there. The ink and paper can be the starter pots, the seedlings, the compost, the nutrients, the, um, fertilizer - everything that helps grow - and also where I trim, untangle, weed, and encourage. Not that I can't and won't do that elsewhere, too... but I think the ink and paper is where I must do it first. And often.

I'm not sure how that makes the risk less scary, and I'm not sure if the metaphor here is really connected to the literal anymore. I'm not even sure it matters. There's a plan.

As I wind this up, I see that I wrote this so I could write the next one.

Which I won't do here.

Ha.

Gotta go. I have a frog to eat. And later, perhaps a little pruning.

Oh, and I have four blooms now.

Fruitlessly Prolific*

Today I discovered and read a handful of "sent" messages from me to someone far away and long ago.

They were... thick. Full. Too much. And, if memory serves, such messages were plentiful.

How did that person not drown, I'm wondering. How did they stay afloat in my words and words and words for so long?

They probably did it because they loved me and were as broken as I was at the time. But I realize now, just today, how much from me this person had to have choked down.

Too much. 

That's how I was during that season, with that person. I forced too much upon them. 

I've since stopped doing that when it comes to love, or even like. When I consider what I have poured out to others over the years, whether it was spilled, forced, coaxed from me, or even taken, it was usually too much.

So much so that now... now I allow very little. Sometimes not even a drop. Or, when I do have love (or, again, even friendship) to give, I disguise it with humor, with apologies, with indifference. Or I give nothing at all.

My single tomato plant is bursting with leaves. I have two small blooms - late - looking at the ground.  Harvest time is nigh, and I have have an awkward oxymoron* and uncomfortable irony in my basket.

I suppose I could add hope, though, to make things a little more bountiful. I have learned from those old messages from me, rambling and wearisome as they were (I gladly swept them into the refuse after reading).

So instead of beating myself up over my young(er) misguided missives, instead of comparing my actions to his or anyone else's, instead of apologizing, I'll reap what's good and useful.

I can learn to start again... and to stop before it's too much. It truly isn't too late in the season. There is room and time for so much more.

And I'll be thankful - to myself - for it.

Indeterminate

I planted a tomato plant a week or three ago. We shall see.

Well... maybe.

I learned just a few minutes ago that tomato plants can be determinate or indeterminate.

Guess which kind mine is.

In the grand scheme of things, this really means nothing, other than I'll need to buy a larger cage for it rather than one of those smaller, cool, colored ones.

But, I mean, indeterminate.

Of course it is.

Phishmeal

There was an album I played over and over and over during the summer of 1993, the summer I moved to a crazy little town where I had always been (and, upon moving away a year later, still remained) an interloper.

I thought by moving there I was taking the highway through the great divide, but I think I was really just cutting my head off so I could weigh it.

I don't remember the actual figure, but it was heavy.

In fact, I'm not even sure, twenty-four years later, what the great divide is.

"We could have come so very far in at least as many years..."

Yeah, no idea.

Anyway, the album was Phish's "Rift," and most of us in the crowded little wannabe commune I lived in were very into it. No one there was a true Phish-head, so no one minded that it was a studio album rather than a live set, and many of us dug the conceptual vibe. At one point, though, one roommate said, while looking directly at me, "That Phish album gets played... so much..."

Yes, it did, because I loved the album and I owned both it and the best sound system in the house. So, yes. I played that Phish album. So much. The music was excellent, seemingly perfect. And the lyrics... oh, the lyrics. Intricate, clever, crazed, confusing... They got inside my head. I knew them all, or thought I did.

And they certainly seemed to know me.


I mean, I DID struggle with destiny up on the ledge, as the title song suggested. After all, I had made the choice to move from home to a place that had always seemed mysterious and magical. How brave, I convinced myself, to step away from the comfortable and into the unknown. It wasn't easy, but I was doing it!

Of course, I chose to ignore the truth: that destiny was "glaring" at me, that I hurt myself and others by struggling with my destiny until, "defeated, she slipped off the edge." I mean, I mostly believe that we make our own destinies. So, looking back on that summer, I steered myself into what I thought was a garden, what turned out to be a maze.

And when winter came, "it's ice... An icy clump that lies beneath the ground."

I can admit now how scary the lyrics were to me. Not ghost-and-monster scary, but into-my-psyche scary. Even at the time, I knew the words felt ominous, even the funny ones. And they seemed to mirror the confusion I was hiding after moving there, living in a world where I didn't truly belong, pretending not to miss the world where I did.

My friends did have knives. The skin did peel back slowly from my knee. Don't even get me started on the prickly hairs. I laughed outwardly, and laughing, I inwardly fell apart.

Then, "silence contagious in moments like these..."

That's kind of what it came to. I became too introspective over the course of that year I lived there. Confused, I said, "This isn't me." I hovered in the unity of the others, never belonging. Ashamed, I slowly lost my grasp on myself, my own destiny. I labeled myself a failure for never truly fitting in this magical garden and for only getting out of that maze by climbing under a wall and escaping.

As far as I know, I'm the only one who saw it this way. Most everyone else probably thought I was just quiet, or maybe a bitch. There might have been one or two to whom I tried to explain how lost I was, or who recognized it on their own.

Anyway, after a year, my horse was overburdened and I needed to set a different course. I could no longer avoid the self-created obstacles that terrorized my view. Divine creation had seemingly heard me, and had squashed me with fear. I had gone astray from myself, my true destiny.

And so I moved back home.

It has taken me a long time to get over that year. Parts of me probably still hang on to parts of it I shouldn't. And while "Rift" still has a solid spot among my most-played and most-loved, there's still a twinge, still a tingle when I consider it. Even as I play it loud and dance and inevitably sing along, I still think about that year, that fear.

As I chose the album today, I thought about it again, about that rift I created in myself, in my destiny.

But I also recognized something.

I realized how very far I have come in the many years since. While those years have been a maze of their own, and have involved plenty of lengthwise and diagonal sleeping, I think maybe I finally may have made it over the rift, out of the mazes, and maybe even through the great divide.

I'm no longer struggling with destiny. I'm finding my voice. It's certainly no pyramid with limestone blocks dragged from the mountaintop. There's no two-car garage. And my voice surely isn't bringing anyone to their knees.

But all things reconsidered, that's not really what I want anyway.

Love-apples

I realize Valentine's Day is more for lovers, but anymore, I'm focusing on just the love.

Sure, one reason for that may be that any beaux I have recently(ish) entertained weren't Valentine material.  And yes, it IS a lonely, lonely feelin' when yer valentine is wrong (nod to the '97s). 

Moreover, though, it was Valentine's season when we began to lose my sweet mom.  I can still see the hospital halls and waiting rooms decorated with hearts and cupids. The cases at the donut shop where I stopped to buy her a secret maple cream-filled when she started to get really, really sick was full of pink-and-red-frosted treats.  She sent me a Valentine's text from her room at Marietta Memorial.

The memory of losing her is what I now associate with Valentine's Day.

In the past, I faced this day thinking about whether or not I had "someone," whether my son's cards were ready to go for the classroom party, whether or not I'd receive a Valentine of some sort...

Now the day arrives with the memories of my last two weeks with my mother.  

So the only way I can possibly face this time of year is to focus on the love.

My mom knew me better than anyone else on this planet knew or knows me.  Her love was and is the purest love ever in my life.  My mom truly believed in love.  She lived it.

And while today has been okay, I know the next couple of weeks will be rough.  Like Christmas, it has been harder the second year around.  I know my sister feels all this, too... She was also blessed to know the strength and comfort of our mom's love, and she was there at the end, too.  I know she feels what I'm feeling.  I'll be sure to tell her I love her today.  Knowing I have my her, and knowing that she knows this same pain, makes this time of year easier to face.

Life without our mom will never feel quite right, and this day will probably never feel quite like a reason to celebrate, regardless of who I'm with or not with. I imagine I'll associate Valentine's Day with saying goodbye for a long, long time to come.

Still, I'll carry on.  And I'll believe that love will see me through.

Gone to seed

I live with privilege.  I have white skin, I'm (lower) middle class, I'm straight, I have insurance through my employer (the state legislators don't mind that I pay more for it each year, but anyway), I was born in this country, my parents were born in this country.  Overall, I probably won't be immediately affected by this country's wretched new president and his hateful policies.  But many people are being hurt by them, and that's not okay.

So far, the only thing I know that I can really do is educate my son and my students about empathy and inclusiveness, and also to call my representatives daily to let them know my thoughts on what is going on.  I do the former, though I have yet to do the latter.

I'll be honest, though.  The news wears me out.  And yes, it bothers me that because of my privilege, I feel okay staying away from the news.  The news making me sad and mad is so much easier than fearing deportation, than not being let into a country that claimed it would welcome you, than discrimination or toxic water or no healthcare.

So I'm not sure how to reconcile it.  I have to be okay myself in order to help others.  And I feel like I'm not okay when I take in too much of the negative from the media.  And really, it seems like that's all there is with this new administration - negative.

I don't have an answer.  For now, I have to keep avoiding it.  I have to.  I still feel like I only have enough for myself, my son, my family, and my job.

How do I get stronger?  How do I refill so that I have enough to be a part of the solution to this horrid person who's now running our country?  I'm not empty anymore.  I'm not crushed and buried.  But I'm tired.  Life wears me out as it is.  How do I energize?

I don't know.  I don't want to be silent.  But I have to take a break.  Which is a privilege, I know.