love

Reasoning work versus Playful rhyme

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Entering the ring, wearing the blue silk, business casual trunks and weighing in at a whopping weight of the world status of four hundred and fifty seven pounds is our challenger!  She’s mean, she’s tough – she stomps on daisies and eats b-u-n-n-y  r-a-b-b-i-t-s for breakfast!! Give it up for the Queen of Restraint, the Bitch of the Boardroom – MS. AFFLICTED!!

[The capacity crowd boos and throws popcorn.]

And now, flying in to reclaim her original title – she’s calm, she’s beautiful – she makes us laugh and cry with her peaceful kind of love and takes her man’s b-r-e-a-t-h  a-w-a-y!!  Wearing tye-dye trunks and weighing in at a compact fighting feather weight as light as air is our people’s choice champion – put your hands together for our Woman of the World, Child of the Universe and the Zen Goddess – HARMONY’S CHILD!!

[The crowd goes wild – screams and cheers echo all the way to the moon.]

The two fighters are poised in their corners.  Ms. Afflicted is snarling and blood is pouring from her mouth as she has just bitten the head off of a baby chick. She is already dripping with a grimy, gray sweat and pounding her fists together. Harmony’s Child hovers above the canvas in the lotus position, eyes closed chanting the love of the ages oblivious to not only Ms. Afflicted, but the millions of eyes and hearts on her every breath. She glows with a light of serenity that secures her place in life.

Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

The bell sounds.

————————————–

And, by bell, I mean the alarm clock goes off and I start my day which frequently resembles the equivalent of a Rocky Balboa sized prize fight with me battling the demons of responsibility, all cut up and swollen screaming for my family and love much like he did with Adrian.

My reality lies somewhere in between harmony and affliction.  I don’t think I am much different from most folks trying to live their lives amid the human race. And yet, I masterfully convince myself that I am the only one who struggles, who is unable to work an eight hour day, get the kids to/from school, make dinner, clean the kitchen, do the laundry, walk the dog, please the husband and fulfill creative desires without neglecting the ones she loves. My affliction is adept at making sure I feel unworthy to have these children or the true love of a husband or even the talent to write a blog. So, I don’t do any of it and the house becomes a mess, the kids watch TV and a stoic silence erupts between my husband and I. I become brainwashed to believe that my children despise me, that my husband only tolerates me because it would be too difficult to leave, and that no one will ever understand and appreciate my writing much less consider it genius enough to publish.

I read another woman’s blog the other day – clusterfook.com, which I highly recommend – and someone apparently accused her of being depressing.  She has been fighting cancer for over five years (I believe) and is chronicling her journey through a blog. I am fighting having a day job wishing I was at home writing Nobel Laurette poetry and those interminable ten pounds that I cannot seem to get rid of off my ass. My site is depressing – hers is remarkable. And the most remarkable part is that she would probably not compare our two struggles in the way I do.

The truth is that we both receive some sort of relief from writing about our lives and pain and joys and sorrows. We both carry on the tradition of humanity that began in caves thousands and thousands of years ago with simple figures drawn on the rock and grunts around a warming fire that turned into many languages of expression.

My prayers are for Lisa’s voice to delight the fires of her family for many, many more years as well as the rest of us peeking into her world through our brightly lit LCDs and keyboards.

And me?  Well, I’ll keep on-keeping on.  I’ll try new things like a joint writing project with another blogger and maybe playing at photography and work on old ones like accepting and trusting life, each other and the universe.

Upon considering Breakfast…

/ autumncircles / 1 Comment

Don’t we all have some Holly Golightly in us?  The incessant race to get away from ourselves into the imagined person we want to be?  Running away from love to find more misery and reason to run instead of staying where we can find comfort and joy?  Is it the fear of not finding that comfort and joy to be enough that keeps us on the run? What if we were to find the love of our lives to not be all that we had ever been told to dream?  Or the happiness we are taught to spend a lifetime searching for to be a let down when we arrive there? Better to run from misery to misery, right, they never disappoint do they?  Sadness and despair are determined to not fail at their success.  But love and happiness – we have tricked our minds and hearts to believe they may not be real or lasting.  Do we ever believe the same about despair?  We all to often convince ourselves we will NEVER feel different, that we will always feel miserable.  What if we could swap out that same old fucking formula?  Trade out misery for happiness?  Keep sadness at bay rather than joy?

As deeply as pain can grip a hold of our hearts so can contentment and peace because they are our true selves.  We are born happy, unmarred, innocent souls with a treasure trove of laughter and acceptance and oneness.  It is only as we are aged by grownup time that we begin to filter out our original nature and retain the fear we are taught.

I did not know I was afraid of the dark until someone brought fear into my darkness.  I did not know how to be sad until it was told to me that must be why I cry.  I recognize this now that I have children with whom I have unknowingly taught fear much like it was taught to me.  That can be the only explanation for a grown woman to be afraid of a smile so all encompassing that it could lift me off the ground into the waiting arms of my spirit who unconditionally loves every molecule I am made of.

Should we never fear anything?  No.  Should we accept all that exists in our lives?  No.  Is it always up to us to find our happiness?  Yes.  Is this where the limits of my capabilities to stretch beyond this concept end?  Yes, for now.

I allow the din of many other voices to crowd my heart until it may burst into a million pieces.

I must let go to allow the symphony of the fugue fill my being until it pulsates with the life force that maintains its beauty.

But sometimes, I foget how to get to Tiffany’s…

Egocentricity

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

It has come to my attention that all of my posts have one major concern – Me.  I write about My feelings, My desires, My fears, My angst – pretty much, if it has to do with Me, I’ll write about it.  I’ve written about childhood humiliations, mid-life crises, relationship joys and woes, every kind of female “issue”, and parenthood challenges – all from behind the very specific Kathleen-focused pinwheel of topics.

Honestly, I did not set out to write a blog with an all-you-can-eat buffet of my emotional stew du jour.   I have some indication that I am a bit of a decent writer with a solid ability to express myself in ways that engage other people.  I intended to marry this expandable skill with the numerous social, economic, cultural and world-wide issues that face the human race, thereby bringing about a crisp commentary from one of the ordinary class of humans – middle-middle class working woman with a husband, two kids, a dog and a mortgage.

Instead, I have a series of blog posts filled with metaphorical anecdotes concerning my hormones, insecurities and day dreams.

Is there something wrong with this?

I must have decided there is not since I continue to write about these things that fill my ever shrinking cognizant capacity.

Clearly, even in this confessional opus, my number one concentration is My inability to write about someone other than Me!

However, before I toss my garbley goulash into the pig trough and start writing about other subjects where I have some great authority like the best ways to get cinnamon gum out of a washing machine, or how to collect old baby food jars until they overflow into the outdoor shed, or remain at a job you don’t like for nearly a decade without literally jumping out the window – I should like to state that I don’t believe any one of us can truly write about anything other than our own experience.

Even if I were to write about the life and times of Mickey Mouse, it would be colored with my intense personal impression of said rat based upon everything that has occurred in my life up to this point.  Suppose Mr. Mouse and I differ in opinion on how to bring about peace without using violence?  Would it then be possible to write objectively about Mr. Mouse’s career in which he engaged his country in not one, but two extended wars?

Maybe a better human than me could, but I am pretty sure I have given up trying to be objective.  (Especially where Mickey is concerned – don’t even get me started on a grown mouse who has a clubhouse full of perky sidekicks who only know how to sing his praises.)

So, I’ve decided – if anyone is 1) actually reading this and 2) in a place of even remotely caring about it – that I am going to continue to write about what I am faced with each moment on a cellular level – Me.

After all, stew is a meal in itself!