tonight i went back and reread the blog i wrote in 2006 about my adventures in new mexico and colorado with pam.
that was a truly enjoyable road trip, and i had forgotten much of what i had done. as i read, however, i came to appreciate the fact that i am a good writer. at times i laughed out loud. at times i smiled to myself because i knew as i read it that it was quality work.
as i type away tonight on this blog, i realize that i do still have the potential to go back to writing well. i am very rusty. really rusty, actually. i don't feel much of a flow going as far as creativity is concerned. but i am also open to the concept that i have to start writing something, anything, on a more regular basis. if i practice, i may get my chops back.
sometimes i think about my love for music when i was younger and my absolute need for years to play my guitar and sing everyday. for a long time i routinely played at least 2 hours daily, and that included after i got out of college and was working. it was part of who i was at the time.
and now the guitars are hanging up on the wall, and playing them is surely not quite the pleasure it once was because i REALLY am out of shape in that area. but i do pick them up every once in a blue moon, stand around playing along with the records, singing. i know that doing that does make me sort of happy. it also makes me a little sad to know i won't probably ever be able to be as good or as passionate about this as i was as a kid. i have a tendency after awhile to sigh and put the guitar back up, sort of sad, sort of mellow, sort of tired, sort of happy. i can't imagine what it would be like to be a performer at my age, especially when your voice starts to go a bit, your guitar playing isn't what it was, isn't as fluid, isn't as crisp. i imagine it would be pretty hard to face that, especially if it defines who you are in your own mind. i didn't pick a profession that had me retiring as a lesser version of who i was in the beginning. that comes from not having a job rooted in a lot of physicality. i have a brain centered career. the more i do, the more i add to my brain, the wiser i could become...well, that is as long as i don't start to have the brain farts on a constant basis! :)
so i will continue to sit in front of computer at 2 a.m. on a friday night listening to old 70's tunes, scratching the rotating parade of cats who are walking in front of the computer monitor, blocking my view, slowing me down, demanding attention. i stretch my neck, yawn, try to find a reason to stay here and keep writing. i would like to just lie down right here and not move. i'd like to stop yawning. i guess i should just stop typing now and go to bed...yes, i think i will. good night, muses of writing.
Friday, September 16, 2011
refocus
the night before i returned to school i woke up around 5:30 from a dream that involved my old friend MJ. as i lay there in and out of sleep, i was drawn into a calm place in which i suddenly felt as if i had finished a mission. it made me a bit sad. i have been skipping around the subject of mortality a lot in the last few month, most likely induced by my slow bodily disintegration. not that i haven't been calmly coming apart for a long time, but it is getting harder, and after long periods of just feeling tired and unmotivated, it gets hard to refocus and find something new to concentrate upon. a good day, one in which i felt pretty ok and had some satisfaction about how i spent my time, can do wonders for my motivation.
i had been in sort of zen state of calm despite the left turn i have had to take with my relationship with austin. i sort of felt like i was completed with the missions. there didn't appear to be anything else that i felt like i had been sent to do or achieve. so i just laid there, sort of sad, and sort of resigned.
on the way to work i came up to the first stoplight after i got off the interstate and the light turned yellow. i had one of my moments of hesitation about whether to shoot the light or stop. usually, i shoot it. this time, i slammed on the brakes.
i didn't realize how hard a stop it would be, and i skidded to the lip of the intersection. rightly so, i had braked, for the light was at red by the time i came to a halt.
my foot was solidly planted on the brake still as i happen to glance into the rear view mirror in time to see a huge white tree trimming truck, complete with trailer, barreling full blast right towards me. i saw him sliding sideways trying to miss me, but i knew it was coming and could only watch...
and then he somehow slid past me into the right hand lane and roared across the intersection well after the light had turned red, seemingly not slowing at all, even after he had cleared the intersection.
it seemed like i sat there for 2 minutes with my foot frozen on the brake, stunned. it was more of a shock, however, the next day.
for a week i had had something annoying rolling around in my trunk, and i had been too lazy to get out and check on it. i was at WAWA filling up the car with gas, and i was going to head from there to charlottesville to deliver austin's baseball playbook to him. while i was filling up the gas and had the time, i opened the trunk.
what had been rolling around was the full tank of propane gas that i had purchased the week before in anticipation of hurricane irene and not being able to cook. the empty 5 gallon gas tank that i had never filled up was also in there. then i got it.
i took the detour home to rid myself of those items and spent some wondering time. wondering why i had not immediately taken those things out of my car when i had returned the day i got them. normally, i am phobic about driving with gas in the car, period. how i could have ridden around for a week with flammables in the trunk is beyond me.
but what was NOT beyond me was the fact that had the trimming truck hit me, i would have been immediately incinerated.
i got the message. i still have work to do.
i had been in sort of zen state of calm despite the left turn i have had to take with my relationship with austin. i sort of felt like i was completed with the missions. there didn't appear to be anything else that i felt like i had been sent to do or achieve. so i just laid there, sort of sad, and sort of resigned.
on the way to work i came up to the first stoplight after i got off the interstate and the light turned yellow. i had one of my moments of hesitation about whether to shoot the light or stop. usually, i shoot it. this time, i slammed on the brakes.
i didn't realize how hard a stop it would be, and i skidded to the lip of the intersection. rightly so, i had braked, for the light was at red by the time i came to a halt.
my foot was solidly planted on the brake still as i happen to glance into the rear view mirror in time to see a huge white tree trimming truck, complete with trailer, barreling full blast right towards me. i saw him sliding sideways trying to miss me, but i knew it was coming and could only watch...
and then he somehow slid past me into the right hand lane and roared across the intersection well after the light had turned red, seemingly not slowing at all, even after he had cleared the intersection.
it seemed like i sat there for 2 minutes with my foot frozen on the brake, stunned. it was more of a shock, however, the next day.
for a week i had had something annoying rolling around in my trunk, and i had been too lazy to get out and check on it. i was at WAWA filling up the car with gas, and i was going to head from there to charlottesville to deliver austin's baseball playbook to him. while i was filling up the gas and had the time, i opened the trunk.
what had been rolling around was the full tank of propane gas that i had purchased the week before in anticipation of hurricane irene and not being able to cook. the empty 5 gallon gas tank that i had never filled up was also in there. then i got it.
i took the detour home to rid myself of those items and spent some wondering time. wondering why i had not immediately taken those things out of my car when i had returned the day i got them. normally, i am phobic about driving with gas in the car, period. how i could have ridden around for a week with flammables in the trunk is beyond me.
but what was NOT beyond me was the fact that had the trimming truck hit me, i would have been immediately incinerated.
i got the message. i still have work to do.
music is a circle game
at this point, a normal person would be in bed. but here i sit, typing, listening to music from my past, and it seems to me all a circle game. i just keep coming back to the same soundtrack and it makes me happy and sort of mellow.
the edges of those teenage memories aren't really sharp anymore. sometimes it is like watching a blurry tv with the sound turned down. and then other times i listen to the music and see myself in my bedroom with my guitar trying to play a peter, paul and mary song, getting up and resettling the needle back into the same groove, again. i just never got tired of listening over and over to the same song until i had it down. a lot of time spent in my bedroom sitting on my bed, playing a song, no one hearing me do it. i liked playing, i liked thinking about performing in front of people, you know, the rock star thing. but really, i just wanted to play. i never could learn to read a lick of music, no matter how hard i tried. but i could play by ear and read chords out of a book. but music...nope. and i never did get over the awkwardness and nervousness i felt when performing in front of a crowd. alcohol helped a lot once i got to college, but in high school i didn't have much to soften the anxieties.
joan baez and peter, paul and mary. folk songs. then jim croce records and john denver's greatest hits. and there were others - cat stephens, loggins and messina's first album, sittin' in, and then linda ronstadt's heart like a wheel album. one linked to another one, and on to the 45's of carly simon and anticipation and you're so vain. roberta flack's first time ever i saw your face, hey, that's no way to say goodbye, killing me softly.
the odd thing about this circle game is that 40 years later in my head i still come back to that bedroom, stand around with my guitar, look out that window and down that long driveway and it isn't the same as it was 40 years ago. it wasn't a happy time for me, period. as a matter of fact, it was pretty fucking miserable. but time has done the right thing, i guess. it has blurred the sharp edges of life a bit, softened them. but it has left the good stuff, the music, sharp and crisp and vital. it brought me a lot of pleasure, a lot of confidence, a lot of escape then. and it does the same for me now.
the edges of those teenage memories aren't really sharp anymore. sometimes it is like watching a blurry tv with the sound turned down. and then other times i listen to the music and see myself in my bedroom with my guitar trying to play a peter, paul and mary song, getting up and resettling the needle back into the same groove, again. i just never got tired of listening over and over to the same song until i had it down. a lot of time spent in my bedroom sitting on my bed, playing a song, no one hearing me do it. i liked playing, i liked thinking about performing in front of people, you know, the rock star thing. but really, i just wanted to play. i never could learn to read a lick of music, no matter how hard i tried. but i could play by ear and read chords out of a book. but music...nope. and i never did get over the awkwardness and nervousness i felt when performing in front of a crowd. alcohol helped a lot once i got to college, but in high school i didn't have much to soften the anxieties.
joan baez and peter, paul and mary. folk songs. then jim croce records and john denver's greatest hits. and there were others - cat stephens, loggins and messina's first album, sittin' in, and then linda ronstadt's heart like a wheel album. one linked to another one, and on to the 45's of carly simon and anticipation and you're so vain. roberta flack's first time ever i saw your face, hey, that's no way to say goodbye, killing me softly.
the odd thing about this circle game is that 40 years later in my head i still come back to that bedroom, stand around with my guitar, look out that window and down that long driveway and it isn't the same as it was 40 years ago. it wasn't a happy time for me, period. as a matter of fact, it was pretty fucking miserable. but time has done the right thing, i guess. it has blurred the sharp edges of life a bit, softened them. but it has left the good stuff, the music, sharp and crisp and vital. it brought me a lot of pleasure, a lot of confidence, a lot of escape then. and it does the same for me now.
Monday, September 5, 2011
old music is a blanket
"won't you please read my signs, be a gypsy...tell me what i hope to find deep within me...because you can't find my mind, please be with me..."words from an old eric clapton album, 461 OCEAN BOULEVARD. i find that old music is sort of a thin, comforting blanket, a worn pair of shorts, a cat in the lap. i guess listening to my high school and college music in a certain time period does it for me. i am not sure WHY that time period is so important. i was pretty unhappy and screwed up then. but i was playing my guitar, singing, escaping in a lot of ways. music was certainly probably the most important one. despite crappy things, the music seems to stay, and the memories, or at least the feelings attached to them, have faded into grey. sort of like a tv on with the sound off.
last night i spent a fast five hours downloading music from all eras, all types, all associated with something in my life. country music, music from tv shows, 60's tunes from when i was a kid, high school stuff. as i write this, i am playing the playlist entitled 1974-75. i downloaded all of the music that popped into my head from that time that was something i associated with it. there is more to download, but i was happy to have it to do what i am doing right now...listening to music that makes me relaxed and happy, and writing.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
reachin' landin's, turnin' corners...
i have reached a point where i think i have completed a couple of my life missions, which puts me in a very strange space.
is my work here completed? am i in a wind down phase? what am i supposed to do next?
to answer the first question, i would say that i have completed mission #1, which had something to do with be a support system for MJ. this is not to say that i didn't learn anything from the long trip over the years. i have. i realized a lot about my need to be important to someone, or not to be as the case may be. Where has that old friend gone...on to her own life, finally. I don't feel the need to be there anymore. as far as friends go, this was never a relationship of equals. it was more of me being the fierce guardian angel, one who hoped at point i would be recognized as having some important value in her life. that is not the case, and really, it never really was. regardless, it has taken me 35 years to be ok with what it was all about, and i have flown away from that spot.
more than that first mission, i have thought for awhile that i have completed the second, most important mission, which was to be some sort of guide for my son. i don't feel that i have failed in that mission, only that part of it is having to fly away from that spot and observe, not participate. separation is hard for anything that you do. most definitely hard for me. i am sort of wandering into a wilderness that seems both familiar and distant. i am not scared per se. i am just sort of tired and willing to move on.
i like this song for its majesty. the video shows that. the song is a good reflection of my thoughts.
"February Song"
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day
Morning is waking up
And sometimes it's more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It's in front of your eyes
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
Sometimes it's hard to find the ground
Cause I keep on falling as I try to get away
From this crazy world
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes
Opens his eyes
is my work here completed? am i in a wind down phase? what am i supposed to do next?
to answer the first question, i would say that i have completed mission #1, which had something to do with be a support system for MJ. this is not to say that i didn't learn anything from the long trip over the years. i have. i realized a lot about my need to be important to someone, or not to be as the case may be. Where has that old friend gone...on to her own life, finally. I don't feel the need to be there anymore. as far as friends go, this was never a relationship of equals. it was more of me being the fierce guardian angel, one who hoped at point i would be recognized as having some important value in her life. that is not the case, and really, it never really was. regardless, it has taken me 35 years to be ok with what it was all about, and i have flown away from that spot.
more than that first mission, i have thought for awhile that i have completed the second, most important mission, which was to be some sort of guide for my son. i don't feel that i have failed in that mission, only that part of it is having to fly away from that spot and observe, not participate. separation is hard for anything that you do. most definitely hard for me. i am sort of wandering into a wilderness that seems both familiar and distant. i am not scared per se. i am just sort of tired and willing to move on.
i like this song for its majesty. the video shows that. the song is a good reflection of my thoughts.
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day
Morning is waking up
And sometimes it's more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It's in front of your eyes
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
Sometimes it's hard to find the ground
Cause I keep on falling as I try to get away
From this crazy world
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I've known is lost and found
I promise you I, I'll come back to you one day
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won't be long
Til he opens his eyes
Opens his eyes
hallelujah
i am finally sitting in front of this computer, typing, listening for the umpteenth time the song "Hallelujah" in its various versions by jeff buckley and k. d. lang.
it has taken me a year to get here.
a lot of key logs have been moved in my log jammed life. big ones. and maybe i will get to talking about some of them if i come back here, and maybe i won't. so i will just deal with today.
today i went to school to work on a saturday to complete a purge of my desk and files that i started yesterday.( hurricane irene hit us last saturday, a long day of stress waiting for the electricity to go out, which it never did. ) in the purge i found a few pictures of austin when he was young, elementary school beginnings. i was struck with how happy he looked, innocent, open.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
some thoughts on imperfect parenting
probably the biggest challenge as a parent is making divisions between the roles of parents and the obligations we have to ourselves as individuals. separating the two is hard, and often results in a split persona, parent or person.
i have never been a good liar or a good faker. emotions are all over me like hair, and you can't miss them. trying to hide them is almost always a failed exercise, so over the years i just have stopped trying. it hasn't won me any battles, but at last i can just be free to be myself. i guess. which means, basically, that i have been a person and a parent, and the line has been blurred, often with disasterous results. i have never been able to adapt to the individual roles, and now i will pay for it.
Where i am now? Who am i now? it's said that no matter how you try to rectify the mistakes of your parents, you will duplicate them or, better yet, invent new traumas for your own children. obviously, i bought into some of that, trying to be more affectionate, to be honest, to not hide anything from austin, all things i longed for from a parent. i wanted a relationship with him. i have one. but my honesty has apparently backfired on me, and i don't have a clear solution or many choices in trying to correct the error.
i have been going to see sue fuller for a number of months, and i think for the first time in my life, i am actually making progress towards living my life with a little less baggage. the confrontation that i had with my mother this summer was quite the freeing experience. not that i haven't gone back to some old habits with her, but i am surely a little less afraid and apprehensive about dealing with her. she doesn't have the power over me that she once had. i have forgiven her for doing what she did. i have never believed that the sources of her anger towards me were intentional, just like my sins and mistakes with austin were not intentional. but it makes for a terrible pattern of behavior in terms of how i look at the people i care for and what i expect from them in the form of proving that they really do care about me.
always, always, always i have sought approval and validation from my mother that i was lovable and a good person. she is incapable of doing that in the manner that i deemed to be normal...hugs, attention towards you that isn't negative. an awful pattern it has been. i have expanded the horizon for validation to include all of the people who are close to me, if anyone is.
what i have realized is that there is never enough to convince me that someone really cares about me. i have put up a wall and even if someone does do things for me out of kindness or caring, i don't fully accept the acts as legitimate. i don't feel that i am worthy of caring for. and i am suspicious of any gestures, as they could be found to be merely gestures and baseless in their sincerity.
i poured a lifetime of love into austin, and now i am standing quite alone, haven driven him away i guess by my poverty of spirit. i know that he hates my imperfections, especially my health issues. he feels guilty and he feels heavy with the burden of being the one person i now look to for validation of love. on the outside, the scenario is pretty bleak. one on one time with him is awkward and i don't know how to talk to him or even approach him. his attitude now is one of picking, again, as he did last spring, trying to use anger as a way to distance himself from me. sue seems to think that his automatic response to me is one of guilt and then anger. he doesn't want to have to see me like i am, nor does he want to help me when i need help. he knows, because i have told him so, that i don't have anyone else in my life. i never thought that caring for someone would be a burden and that you would eventually learn to hate seeing them because they remind you of what you don't want to do or be.
obviously, my first response to understanding this was to talk to him. but about what? why don't you like being around me? well, now i know. so what to do?
i have to continue with life as i have been living it since he went to college, which is being wholly independent of him and his demands and learn to function without his emotional input. independence now means doing things by myself, including the hard physical things that i have needed him to help me with. it is confusing and saddening when i have to beg for help and he is mean about it. it seems by all logic that if someone you care about needs help, you help them because you love them. in the perfect world, i guess this would count. but i dont' live in that neighborhood anymore, and i haven't for a long time. austin has changed his address in a lot of ways, and this is one of them. this isn't home to him anymore and he is more comfortable at his dad's house. there are no emotional demands from his there i guess. what i ask him to do is hard for me, but just annoying for him. there doesn't seem to be any common ground anymore between the two of us, even baseball. i understand where he is. but that doesn't make me any less sad.
sue says that i have to learn to believe that he really does love me, which will require me to reexamine the parameters of how a person shows this to me in a way that i would believe. right now, trying to do nice things for him or be pleasant isn't enough. he just rejects it and it just makes me mad and more rejected. so i have to learn to make myself happy and not think about how he hurts me.
certainly i need to find pleasure in my own day to day life and explore the possibilities of how to make myself feel whole and valid, and not just by the things that others do or give to me. christmas has always been one of the few times when i look for the validation (other being birthday) and i have most often been devalued if it is based on effort towards doing something especially for me. every christmas holiday presents its own issues and problems. this year's is my gearing up for rejection for a month from austin. what i have to do is concentrate on making the time happy for me, and the hopefully, happy for him. he is going to do whatever he wants to do, and i know i am a postscript with the mind set he has now.
i have freed him from the two christmas obligations that we had, which are trimming the tree and putting up the outside lights. these are things that i enjoy, even without him, so i will do them in the spirit of happiness...for me.
i have never been a good liar or a good faker. emotions are all over me like hair, and you can't miss them. trying to hide them is almost always a failed exercise, so over the years i just have stopped trying. it hasn't won me any battles, but at last i can just be free to be myself. i guess. which means, basically, that i have been a person and a parent, and the line has been blurred, often with disasterous results. i have never been able to adapt to the individual roles, and now i will pay for it.
Where i am now? Who am i now? it's said that no matter how you try to rectify the mistakes of your parents, you will duplicate them or, better yet, invent new traumas for your own children. obviously, i bought into some of that, trying to be more affectionate, to be honest, to not hide anything from austin, all things i longed for from a parent. i wanted a relationship with him. i have one. but my honesty has apparently backfired on me, and i don't have a clear solution or many choices in trying to correct the error.
i have been going to see sue fuller for a number of months, and i think for the first time in my life, i am actually making progress towards living my life with a little less baggage. the confrontation that i had with my mother this summer was quite the freeing experience. not that i haven't gone back to some old habits with her, but i am surely a little less afraid and apprehensive about dealing with her. she doesn't have the power over me that she once had. i have forgiven her for doing what she did. i have never believed that the sources of her anger towards me were intentional, just like my sins and mistakes with austin were not intentional. but it makes for a terrible pattern of behavior in terms of how i look at the people i care for and what i expect from them in the form of proving that they really do care about me.
always, always, always i have sought approval and validation from my mother that i was lovable and a good person. she is incapable of doing that in the manner that i deemed to be normal...hugs, attention towards you that isn't negative. an awful pattern it has been. i have expanded the horizon for validation to include all of the people who are close to me, if anyone is.
what i have realized is that there is never enough to convince me that someone really cares about me. i have put up a wall and even if someone does do things for me out of kindness or caring, i don't fully accept the acts as legitimate. i don't feel that i am worthy of caring for. and i am suspicious of any gestures, as they could be found to be merely gestures and baseless in their sincerity.
i poured a lifetime of love into austin, and now i am standing quite alone, haven driven him away i guess by my poverty of spirit. i know that he hates my imperfections, especially my health issues. he feels guilty and he feels heavy with the burden of being the one person i now look to for validation of love. on the outside, the scenario is pretty bleak. one on one time with him is awkward and i don't know how to talk to him or even approach him. his attitude now is one of picking, again, as he did last spring, trying to use anger as a way to distance himself from me. sue seems to think that his automatic response to me is one of guilt and then anger. he doesn't want to have to see me like i am, nor does he want to help me when i need help. he knows, because i have told him so, that i don't have anyone else in my life. i never thought that caring for someone would be a burden and that you would eventually learn to hate seeing them because they remind you of what you don't want to do or be.
obviously, my first response to understanding this was to talk to him. but about what? why don't you like being around me? well, now i know. so what to do?
i have to continue with life as i have been living it since he went to college, which is being wholly independent of him and his demands and learn to function without his emotional input. independence now means doing things by myself, including the hard physical things that i have needed him to help me with. it is confusing and saddening when i have to beg for help and he is mean about it. it seems by all logic that if someone you care about needs help, you help them because you love them. in the perfect world, i guess this would count. but i dont' live in that neighborhood anymore, and i haven't for a long time. austin has changed his address in a lot of ways, and this is one of them. this isn't home to him anymore and he is more comfortable at his dad's house. there are no emotional demands from his there i guess. what i ask him to do is hard for me, but just annoying for him. there doesn't seem to be any common ground anymore between the two of us, even baseball. i understand where he is. but that doesn't make me any less sad.
sue says that i have to learn to believe that he really does love me, which will require me to reexamine the parameters of how a person shows this to me in a way that i would believe. right now, trying to do nice things for him or be pleasant isn't enough. he just rejects it and it just makes me mad and more rejected. so i have to learn to make myself happy and not think about how he hurts me.
certainly i need to find pleasure in my own day to day life and explore the possibilities of how to make myself feel whole and valid, and not just by the things that others do or give to me. christmas has always been one of the few times when i look for the validation (other being birthday) and i have most often been devalued if it is based on effort towards doing something especially for me. every christmas holiday presents its own issues and problems. this year's is my gearing up for rejection for a month from austin. what i have to do is concentrate on making the time happy for me, and the hopefully, happy for him. he is going to do whatever he wants to do, and i know i am a postscript with the mind set he has now.
i have freed him from the two christmas obligations that we had, which are trimming the tree and putting up the outside lights. these are things that i enjoy, even without him, so i will do them in the spirit of happiness...for me.
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