Time Passages

Time Passages - Al Stewart






I feel nostalgic tonight.  I am not sure why the past is on my mind but it is.  Not a melancholy sort of thing, but a question really.  I find myself wondering tonight why I didn't notice important events.  Why when you live life do you miss the big, little moments?

My children are grown, not a part of my daily life for years. I wonder how did the last time I packed a diaper bag go un-noticed.  When did I last tie a shoe for them.  With our roles reversed this summer as they cared for me, I realized for the first time ever, I was not the leader.  It occurs to me that I let go of little pieces of my leadership role one piece at a time...yet I don't remember doing it.  When did I rock them each last?  In that moment that I didn't conceive .... did I appreciate what I was about to give up?  I mean was I connected or was I worried about dinner. 

So it makes me ask myself today...what might I regret not noticing in my life currently?  I am going to think about that!

Tell Me Why - Norah Jones

Tell Me Why

 

 

 

 

 

The first line in this song describes my life. "Sailing hardships through broken harbors out on the waves in the night"  I am still trying to make my way back from 5 weeks in ICU with a ventilator stent thrown in for good measure.  To be honest I have done well.  It has been a slow steady progression back to normal.  No real one step forward, half a step back sorta thing.  I am in my 4th month of healing and most things are working well...except my energy level sucks. 

 

This is starting to sound like a terrible post...but be patient.  You can't join the celebration if you don't know the climb. 

 

So my energy level sucks.  I am used to being able to pull anything out of my ass.  Little sleep, no big deal, I will sleep later.  House needs cleaning...I will sleep a couple of hours and get up at 2 am and do it.  Let me get up and go hike with my club 8-10 miles then go out with Superman for a late date.  Hey life is short live it.  Well that sounded good, always worked before.  Why change horses in mid-stream? 

 

Sometimes you change horses when you get knocked off the one that brung ya.  So that is where I found myself, dilapidated and with little horse power.  I still don't work full time.  My yard is a mess.  My house has always been kept better than it is now. God Forbid there is clean laundry in baskets in my house.  I have never done that. Gulp.  I just don't have the energy.  So I just growl at the various undone deeds and murmur to myself.  It has been all I can do to work part time and keep my house chores in the nose-above-water level.  ahhhh....but this is a good blog!

 

Today... I actually had a bit of energy to spare and I walked on my treadmill for 3 songs.  One of them 5 min in length.  So I figure I walked about 12 or 13 minutes.  That is a big fucking deal....I had some disposable energy today!.  It is like every day I start with so many energy units and when they are gone I power down PDQ.  I recently went out to dinner with some girlfriends and fell asleep at the table. BUT today, I worked and still had a bit of energy left over.  That is so crazy good.  I wish someone would get that.  I am all ready to do a high five dance, but got no body who could wrap their head around it in my vicinity.  So I will just woo-hoo solo.

 

 

You've Got to Hold On!

Alabama Shakes

I have had my own reasons to "hold on" of late.  Some days I hold on better than others.  My recent trial has been a health challenge that ended up with 5 weeks in ICU, a ventilator and the understanding I do not fear death.  But I am ahead of myself. 

I guess the point of this blog is to process the things I have come to know during this struggle.

I am a tough old bird.  I didn't die, I fought hard through some bad days, some hard pain, some lonely lost times...to live.  I still fight, I know, it, me, life is worth fighting for. I dream of Key West with Superman, it will be sweeter than I ever thought it might have been before all of this. It is so crazy good to plan this trip, knowing I will feel better by then.  I have hope, future, anticipation and adventure yet to come.  I KNOW I APPRECIATE my toughness.

I lived a good life.  I had no epiphany thoughts of how I was going to change the way I was living.  I was living a full and happy life.  I had good job, partner, friends, adventures, truth, peace and appreciation for my life.  I still want to live in Nicaragua, but that was and is in the works and this trial only reaffirms that life is short.  I knew that.  I really know that better than most.  I think it is part of my not fearing death...I fear not living while I am alive.  I have learned I am LIVING and have been  That is an awesome thing to know.

I am loved...OMG how they helped me hold on.  I have lost spaces, weeks, memories, strength, will, reality, and self, yet they held me.  Family and friends and special ones, and sons and ex-husbands and their fiancé, and a dog, all held me. One even stepped in as an illusion of my mother and turned me round in a fog that had consumed me.  Such love from so many places.  There have been pennies from heaven ...Thanks Moma and Daddy....gone so long, yet here one more time.  I have had abundance, grace, love and support.  I have so much to hold on to.

Yeah, I am ready for all this to be over, but only so I can get back to living the life I love.  All of this has helped me remember I just need to hold on...

"You got to hold on...
Bless my heart, bless yours too...

Amost Cut My Hair - My Conflict with a Loss of Freedoms

Almost Cut My Hair - CSN&Y circa 1970

I have conflict in my soul about the world around me and my response to it.  Recently we have had yet another horrific news event- The Boston Marathon Bombing.  I know these happenings are not one dimensional, they show us at our worst (who does this stuff ) and our best (who raised the beautiful sons and daughters that stopped to render aid without thinking of self).  These events pop up and unsettle my soul.  How vain of me to only see it in sense of self.  How telling my response. 

I have lots of feelings about what has happened.  I can't process them really.  So I focus on what I can.  I think about what I want.  I think about what I have had.  I mourn the loss of outrage on some level inside my quiet moments. I feel guilty that I want to not think about it.  I want to not fix it.  I feel hopeless, lost and sad. Then, in a moment I feel determined with strength to change what I can, accept what I cannot and to understand what falls in which category. Then I feel guilty for seeing a solution that only changes it for me.  Let me explain.

My current fixation on this whole mess is about how the men where caught.  Let me start by saying how glad I am that they were caught.  Let me follow that with how conflictual the method of their capture was to me.  Let's face it, it was surveillance cameras that were vital as well as observers using their phones.  It was brought up right away how government placed camera's (Big Brother) in Europe have swiftly answered questions of who did what when.  I get that more and more camera's are going to be installed.  I am not a radical zealot, I am a liberal.  I know, I am terrible.  I know people lost their lives, limbs, loved ones.  I can't fathom all of that yet.  Please don't judge me too harshly. What I can give thought to, what I can grieve for is the loss of the life I grew up with.


1970 looks like the Wild West from today's point of view.  In 1970 you could drop out, travel across the country.  You could get a hotel without ID.   Cell phones didn't track you.  You could do anything with cash.  You could get a job.  You could go off grid in the middle of New York City, if you chose.  You could lose yourself even further in Alaska.  You didn't walk down the street fearing an out of place backpack.  I can't, don't want to wrap my head around this new way of living.  I feel powerless to stop it, change it, understand it.   I want a more peaceful life.  I want to worry about what is right in front of my face.  I want to tend my own garden and be present in my own life.  I just can't keep slicing off pieces to care about the many ills of this world.  Then I am sad.

I am sad that I no longer feel the wisdom of fighting ... for what is right.  What is right?  Who decides?  It is my belief that I have one life, this one.  My point of view does not count on a "heaven"to make this life palatable.  I am not counting on a chance to double down at a later date.  I see the best in myself, one of self-acceptance.  A life where I do not feel responsible for all the wrongs of the world.  Ah, but that sword cuts back on me.  My worst being that I don't feel responsible in some way for these wrongs.  Aren't we all responsible?

Call me Chicken Little, but I want to move to Nicaragua (or somewhere a little less "civilized") and put my head in the sand before the sky falls.  I want to help in whatever way I can, while I live a little further from the fray.  I know I am just wanting to run from all of this.  Doesn't anyone else feel like they sometimes can't feel anymore?  Or am I just choosing not to feel?  As usual, I chase my tail.

How much time, thought, energy do we give to something we feel powerless to change?  Is it okay to say enough already and leave someone else to figure it out?  If this is my only time, does it make me a bad person to "retire"from living in conflict?  Is it a wise and mature self that accepts that a Zen life is the answer?    Is a Zen point of view the pinnacle to achieve or the arrival at the intersection of Sell-Out Lane and Apathy Drive? 

Like David Crosby sang....

"When I finally get myself together
Get down in some sunny southern weather
Find a place inside to laugh
Separate the wheat from the chaff
Cause I feel like I owe it to someone"











who makes people who know nothing spew the most vile hatred without a hint of compassion, just playing like a stuck record)

I Do Do Do - But I Won't

I Do Do Do - Colbie Caillat

When I heard this song this week, I thought it fit my life which was a surprise to me on many levels.  Since I divorced I haven't been interested in marriage.  As life twists as I have found it often does, I had to come to terms about marriage, being asked, and what do I think about what being asked made me feel.

 My Superman whispered so sexily "Will you marry me" into my ear last week.  It was like silk.  The words came slow, there was a slight purr in his tone.  He had me wrapped up in his arms. It was perfect and like never before my heart stood still for a second and I had never felt so loved .  Then I whispered NO and told him how much I loved him.  Well maybe I just thought that.  I will have to ask him.  This isn''t the first time he has asked me.  This is just the first time it felt real. 

We don't want to get married.  To us we already are by your standards.  We are committed.  We have promised to stand by each other through life's biggest battles.  He will take me home should I want to die in my own bed.  To me that is the ultimate promise.  We do bills and vacations together.  We attend family functions together.  We just don't want to be trapped in legal-ness and cohabitation; our view of marriage. We get that life will change and one might need the other on a daily basis in the future and we have begun to talk about what that will look like.    We believe we have learned from our mistakes and we value our separateness as much as our togetherness. I think we are considered part of a new movement, those living apart, together or LAT's.

We live apart.  We see each other on a schedule but allow for fluctuation in our separate lives.  We negotiate, communicate and seem to navigate this relationship coherently and consciously.  That doesn't sound so romantic and I think that is what caught my heart last week.  See my Superman knows I want to co-habitat/marry less than he does.  He often will ask me to marry him.  We have an agreement, he can ask me, but I am going to say no.  But this week was different.  He ask me with such perfectness that I knew that if he/we were wanting to marry, he would be asking me.  And he would ask me just like that. 

So this week I got to have the joy that every girl has when some one she loves asks her to marry them.  It is a moment when the words are said so lovingly that you melt; they catch in your breath.  I said no in a whispered voice and could feel his smile against my cheek at my response.   Superman and I choose to go a different way.  We are always excited to be together.  We have years together and it is like we are still in those first months of dating. Yet we have developed a very deep love for the other. One that bears the confidence, security and great respect of a long mature marriage.   Yes we have learned from our mistakes.  Not just our own, but each others.

So last week I felt like I had it all.  I had all the love of being loved and all the space to continue to love him and myself.  No matter if you are 18 or or 50 + 18 don't be afraid to define your own path.  Just be happy on the the path you're on.  I love the ease of this journey.  I love the surety of it.  I feel more held at this distance than I ever did up close, bound in a marriage. 

Superman, charcoal shirt, jeans, no shoes, beach ... ask me again.  I will give you the answer I always have ... "No but I will play honeymoon". We can play honeymoon in Key West.  I hope you know how much I love you. Thank you for asking like that...so I know how wonderful it all is, on our terms. I do do do .... But I won't.  :  )



Hallelujah - K.D. Lang

 

 

I have totally obsessed with this song for the last 2 -3 months.  I have listened to every artist I could find that recorded this song.  My favorite being the soulful and lulling rendition done by Guy Forsyth.  When that man does Gospel I feel connected to the spirit.  I couldn't find a Guy Video, so I offer up a close 2nd by K.D. Lang. 

 

This last year has been a slow evolution into my own HaIlelujah.  Hallelujah has many meanings, but the one I refer to here is a more modern version.  As defined on a Wikipedia page, "Hallelujah is an expression of happiness that a thing hoped or waited for has happened."  I have begun to notice I am achieving a personal transformation of thinking.  I have begun to understand that I have stopped what if-ing.  I quit (almost) being absent in my life.  I ceased thinking everything is my fault. 

 

More importantly I starting thinking, why not?  Why not me?  What might I do with this life of mine?  I have quit being overwhelmed by my life, my schedule, my duties.  I am a very busy engaged person.  Busy doesn't work, because I have a lot of down time being a single lady with grown children.  But my down time is engaging to me.  I don't have cable TV so my unscheduled time isn't usually empty time. I can lay low with the best of them.  But I  I have a lot of passions. 

 

When my job and home duties collide my old MO was to obsess while I was hurrying through a list of needs.  Now I just tell myself "well self you are busy doing X, Y, and Z and you are still nagging?".  Really how crazy is that?  So if I get it done faster, all the while hating the process, that is better?  Now I just think, I am going to wash these dishes and I am going to listen to some good music while I do it. When I finish something, I tell myself thank you in a sorta kinda way.  Every piece of life (just about) is a treasure with the right point of view.

 

I have begun to Appreciate my life.  I have had a lot of unexpected expenses these last 2 months.  I have put out almost $4000 dollars.  My savings are in dire straights.  I have put pen to paper and fingertips to calculator and have begun to address this depletion as well as other fiscal agendas.  I have stayed home a lot, bought little and been very happy.  I realize this constraining in one part of my life will open up the boundaries in other areas.  So, WOW, I have been broke and have enjoyed it to some extent. 

 

I have quit taking on the wrongs in every situation.  Wrongs that I believe now were mostly of my own perception.  This has been an amazing Grace I have given myself.  I have had several awards and recognitions at work.  They speak not to my formally educated skill set, but to my passion, my kindnesses, my compassion.  I have noticed I am more approachable.  I have more staff and clients greeting me when I pass.  I see more smiling faces when I look up.  I have been good at what I do, but not necessarily good at how I do it.  I have been too direct.  I have been too driven by task and not by need. I have learned, there is nothing perfect about perfection.  Understanding this has allowed for forgiveness.  True forgiveness.  I wonder how many people get to experience that.  I have ... Hallelujah!

 

 I just quit doing things that made me have bad feelings.  It wasn't like I thought it all through, I didn't.  I started a couple of years ago going over my day each (or most) evening(s).  I guess along the way, I did more of what felt good and less of those things I didn't like.  I look back now and think .... WOW what a big chasm I have crossed.   I never saw it formed as a plan or a direction. It seems to have happened without cognition.  I have journaled for years and always wished (literally) that I would have appreciation, that I would be present in my life and I would be more of the person I know I can be.  I find myself in this place I have hoped for, finally!

 

Hallelujah

 

Hallelujah 

 

Hallelujah

 

 

 

 

Home - Jorge & Alexa Narvaez

Home

My afternoon started out like a slow motion walk through a war zone.  I could see the incoming in the distance.  But I decided 30 minutes ago that if I want to live in Nicaragua I will have many hit the wall moments and no one is going to be there to pick me up.  I also had confessed to my Superman that I had the funk and proceeded to just whine my ass off. 

So when I have the funk I listen to music.  I will hit a playlist on some piece of technology and wait to be saved.  I have a friend with a blog where she says her words are the little life preserver's in her world; mine are songs.  So this song popped up and before it was done, I knew I was looking at things the wrong way.

When I was in Africa I had moments of great darkness.  I had a million times more moments of great joy.  I have some issues right now in life, but it is so silly to think it is the sum of my life.  So I guess if I am going to take off and live in a far off land, I better learn that I choose my own frame of reference.

And so... I hear this song and I know... In this moment no matter how draining of a day... no matter what demands are placed on me... We will laugh until we cry on a summer's night, nothing is sweeter that when I am with you.  Thanks SUPERMAN for reminding me of the important things today!

Magnolia - Monte Montgomery

This is a song my sister laid at my feet.  She said she had a song that reminded her of me...but I am ahead of myself.  My sister has always been there.  From the time I entered the world, my sister was a part of my life. We grew up in a brick ranch with parents that took a common sense approach to parenting.  We weren't tight, we weren't close while growing up.  She sat next to me at the dinner table.  We didn't fight.  We just didn't interact...which really seems odd.  I guess sometimes you just have to wait for the things that matter.

But we are both all grown up now.  Hell our children are all grown up.  Our parents are long gone, as is the distance between us.  Some where in our lives we each just turned to the other and it has been all good from there.  My sister is amazing.  Together we could do anything.  She and I compliment each other.  Our talents are varied, but well meshed.  When we cook a Thanksgiving meal we don't really talk about it. We might work the grocery list together, but once in the kitchen ...we work like a symphony.  We just fit.  We are in-sync.

I treasure her.  She is the voice of reason in my life.  She is calm and patient, where I am not.    I trust her immensely. That is a pretty simple statement; but really it is so complex.  I am pretty hard on myself.  I am working on it.  When you trust someone completely, like I do my sister, well you can take the biggest truth without question.  Here in lies the truth of my love for her.    My sister has said some of the most precious things to me.  She says them clearly and makes me hear them.  I would normally think nothing of these words from a different speaker.  Ahhhh but my sister has my complete trust.  When she tells me ... that I am rock in times of trouble, I can lay that truth on my heart.  When she says I can go to Africa and do this thing, I know I can.  When she tells me it is okay to wobble, every one does...I feel more centered.  I love my sister, I love myself better because of my sister.  I have more love to give because I have more love for myself because of my sister. My sister helps me face the dawn knowing that I can do, I can do what the day asks of me.

I don't look back and regret that we spent our childhood disconnected.  It must have been what was needed to bring us to this place. I don't just love her, I adore her.  I asked her recently what she thought of my plan to retire early (and poor) and take off to live in Nicaragua.  She told me I could do it. I love that she knows my heart even though I desire a very different life from hers. 

I guess she knew a long time ago that I would take off to parts of the world less traveled. I dreamed last night that I lived in what appeared to be Nicaragua and my name was Annie Grace.   Like Monte sings, I am an Island girl and I walk this world anywhere the wind will take me.