Today's uploads

It's been almost 2 years since I've posted any writing here. Says a lot about my life or the lack there of lately. All the writing uploaded today was written in 2009 and typed today. I had just never gotten around to typing it up. It all lives here, good and bad as my archive. Peruse at your own risk. I hope to continue to pull from my hand written work over the past 7 years and gather the drafts and final versions to date here over the coming weeks.
Blessings ~

Body Cry

She lays on the table face up

Covered only by a thick towel

Skin oiled limb by limb

Legs longer now, hips rotated

Ankles stretched, toes pulled

Breathing deeply through tension

Breathing quietly, peacefully, finally relaxed

Arms and fingers kneaded, wrung

Then the lung points held at the corners

The first and second ribs

Between the shoulder and collar bone

Gently just held there

And the tears come gently rolling

The breath catches

The choice point of opening to it

or closing it down presents itself

keep breathing

open the throat

loosen the jaw

noticing the crying sound

breathing with the crying breath

then the diaphragm compresses

the belly pulls hard then pushes

out old deep tears

the tears of years and years

of hurt beyond words

beyond knowing why or what

the belly pushes out the deep crying sound

the throat closes around it tuning it to keening

and each breath brings it like this for awhile

tears flowing, neck and hair wet behind the ears

points still gently held 

by hands listening to shifting

depths, pulses, receptivity,

refilling of the point

reregulation of qi

after a while keening quieter

breathing smoother, full

exhaling through mouth

then breathing very quietly

tears have stopped

then a palm rests gently

on sternum over heart

and a palm on forehead

dipping down through

into dreaming body time

as magic happens and all shifts

to peace, acceptance, self-empathy

then hands go to feet

then light brushing head to toe

energy clearing

“we’re done for now, take all

the time you need before getting up”

alone now

there is a big stretch

a hug to self

all the time you need

is not here in this room

or in this lifetime

but it’s a nice thought

and it means

no rushing out of this moment

no rushing

just respect and moving forward,

moving on

  

5/26/09

Late

Late arriving, late leaving

Late waking, late sleeping,

late monthly reports, late evaluations

Late for dinner, late for meetings

Late growing up but precocious

Late driving, driving everyone off the road

Late is how adrenaline

Pulls fuzzy into focus

Autopilot stimulation

Neocortex riding a little higher

Hedonic tone more in tune

Thanks to a little late urgency

The check is in the mail – late

Late because I hesitate?

No late because there is too much

life to live In too little time

late because I underestimate

Always underestimate

How long it takes to do anything

Not just of late but all of my life

How long to brush teeth

To make toast and coffee

To go to the store and the bank

More than I thought

More than I can imagine

More than I know

I don’t live in your time

My moments expand

but the ticking time holds firm

Body chasing, world turning

Late or not

  

5/26/09

Early For Once

Mid-May in the late day

Sun still a little too cool

Waiting in the car

Listening to tunes

Windows open

Unitarians coming and going

For fellow writers to arrive

And unlock the door

That opens the channel

To the void from which

We draw our breath

And fashion words

Weave memory shards

Into stories and revisited

Uncertainties prompted

Ceremoniously

5/12/09

Only Love, No Magic

Insomnia resolves

Crying in my sleep

Don’t know why

Thoughts coming by

Visiting my heart

Sleeping limbo mind

Begs forgiveness

For the unforgivable

Which is the position

Of strength?

To love does mean

To pursue

and maintain connection

At times, one shares

A bunker

With the previous enemy

To survive

A mutual threat

Are we kidding ourselves?

We détente in times of death

Fear of dying alone

And the lesser arcana

Being motherless

Fatherless, childless

There is no magic man

Who will save you from

 This life – he says

No husband

No Buddha

No Jesus

The waters are still troubled

Stormy misconceptions

Assumptions

Craving

Love and forgiveness

4/11/09

Now I Lay Me

It’s very late

And I can’t wait

To quiet my head

In my cozy bed

And stop thinking

And start sinking

Into Akashic dreams

Where life stories

Stream strange

but true

4/6/09

Taxed

Taxed tired

Traded time

Told tall tales

Tackled troubles

Tough teams

Triumphed today

I am behind

By a full day

And have to stretch

For the good

Unexpected company

The taped assessment

The monthly note

The signed billing

The dual diagnosis course

And writing the presentation

Will all just have to wait

Yes, it is late

And I am taxed and tired

4/5/09

Night Travelers

Night driving blinded

Spring snow showers

Lights too bright

Road too dark

Disappearing

in blackening wetness

especially when oncoming

lights approach

pray there are no

baby raccoon siblings

making their first

crossing tonight

pray if they are

we’ll see them

in time

pray they will

for some reason

wait till the safety

of darkness returns

to go from here

to the next great beyond

4/4/09

Buck up. You just gotta.

Mind numb with fatigue

Starts the weekend

Of taxes, monthly report

A three-hour assessment

Taped then written

And I hate it

so I’m whining

it should be MY TIME

now – yet years ago

I read – guess what?

It is all your time

There is no my time

Your time

No it is the only time

you will ever have

it’s this one life

and THIS is how

you’re living it

spending days, weeks,

months doing

things that are dry

boring, deadly and

necessary.

Oh dear

The hippie in me

Wants to drop

In and out

Resist the madness

But you gotta

get out of debt first

sell your soul just a little longer

so nourish your soul now

and be a little stronger

4/3/09

Birthday Love

Son says sky dive

Feel alive and free

With me    Mom

Let’s take it on

You and me

Punch the walls out

On fear

Too much to ask?

Maybe so

But what I really want

For my 26^th birthday

Is not a bunch of presents

I want a great shared experience

With you

If not skydiving

Then maybe a tattoo

Something big and special

That we share

That we dare

That we care

That we are

4/1/09

What You Take With You

We arrive early and are milling around someone’s life holdings, viewing the offerings collected since the 1930’s, that three generations held from the old country till now, to be sold at auction. It’ll all be over in a few hours. Reduced to cash as prized collections and sets are broken up, sold to different people, driving away in trucks, vans and Volvos. The family photo albums, scrap books and sometimes journals and handed down recipe collections usually left behind with the old Reader’s Digest books.

When it’s time to start, we sit in lawn chairs a little over heated under a tent on a perfect Vermont summer day, bees landing on the sausage and pepper sandwich that is irresistible after smelling it waft from the food truck for an hour. We are in an altered state here, frozen in suspension as the auctioneer’s hypnotic patter keeps us reeled in, the auction field pulling us all en masse to want and need things we’d otherwise never bother with at a yard sale. We are fascinated by the bidding styles everyone has: always start at half of whatever the auctioneer throws out and go from there. Offer a dollar when no hands are up to make friends with the Auctioneer. Poker faces and animated bidding wars, applause at the really big sales, everyone attentive even for the weird little collectable spoons they don’t care about but are keen to see what they sell for. For what it is worth, today. It could be worth a lot less at your shop tomorrow or way more than you paid.  

It starts an hour earlier, while wandering the house, an 1800’s stone beauty with stone floors and remarkably high ceilings. The rooms a circular flow, so around we go, examining fine and mismatched china, exquisite gold, silver, gems and costume jewelry, old and newer books, the collection of Indian prints and tchotchkes, straight worn old oak furniture, new pressed board storage warped by gravity, dark crawl spaces under eaves where it all goes till somebody needs it someday but no one ever does. Broken frames, old newspapers, sometimes history has a value and sometimes not. The first floor is laid out staging the best. The second floor will be sold as is on a walk through at the end of the auction. The beds, bathroom cabinets, the mundane dressers and closets of clothes, along with the tools, battery chargers, lawn mowers, snow blowers and hoses in the garage, the old paint and workshop jars of nuts and bolts, specialty tools and old rusty saws in the damp basement. The pickers get in each other’s way looking for hidden deals in the minutiae of the mundane. Barely making a living at this, they power through the dusty, detritus, trading glory stories of the few times they made a real killing, like the time they found fifty dollar bills between the pages of all the black books in a room after the picker who bought it was done with it and offered the dusty remains to them for free.

It’s all in the timing, variation of what is up next, a fifteen dollar floor lamp, a forty dollar yellow ware bowl, a twenty dollar train set, a bidding war for a twelve hundred dollar Chippendale chair, a thirty-five dollar set of chipped flow blue plates, a ninety dollar cardboard box of mildewed vintage linens, the three hundred-forty dollar lot of handcrafted silver and turquoise jewelry from the 40’s, the ten dollar microwave, the one hundred-fifteen dollar Georgia Balch painting I bought, the twenty dollar box of cranberry glass, the two hundred fifty dollar leather jingle bell horse harness, the five dollar giant box of Christmas decorations and the forty dollar box of a dozen vintage glass ornaments. And on it goes like this for three or four hours.

You wait all day for that one thing you secretly really want but would never tell, hoping everyone else will be asleep when the time comes or that no one would care or want that prized thing, that slender little mirror with the Indian on horseback meeting the sun or the four matching chairs that are not antiques but would work for Mom’s kitchen and the few commodes that fit anywhere including your little car on the way home. You end up with maybe one thing you had intended to win and a car full of random things that were too good to pass up. All of which will require you to honor that deal that you made with yourself about acquiring more stuff. Anything you buy from now on has to replace something you sell or give away. It has to be something you like better than what you have or will trade something for because you have downsized your life and are no longer acquiring. Sometimes, you know you can sell it, so that’s ok too. 

It was a time out of normal time. If you go often enough, you get to know all the dealers, collectors, pickers, and Ebay sellers in your area. A little community exists there. You learn over and over that when you die, your family and friends will have to wonder about the worth of your life’s collections, will have to decide, what is sentimental and what is just clutter and junk, will have to sort through the detritus that you couldn’t sort through and bravely part with yourself, will have to figure out how to move it out. They’ll have to fight the guilt of getting rid of what isn’t meaningful to them but that you kept as yours all these years. They may have coveted a few favorite things and know just where it will go and for all the maybe’s and shoulds they keep, will have to figure out where to put and how to integrate it in their already full lives.  Their home to will become and alter of things that will remind them of you or their grandmother, grandfather or great grandmother. After many surrenders and yard sales, they too will whittle it down to those most essential things because they have a preference for their own lives and their own things, as it should be because to them, you were never really what you had. You were how well you loved them or failed to.

5/24/09,  revised 2/28/16