clear

There is a massive clean-out going on here today, completely unplanned. I mean, I've meant to for a long time now, but it wasn't in my plan for today. Not really news-worthy. Just - matt would be psyched. He would also wonder why I'm holding even the small bits I am. He would hold up something, I imagine now, and ask "why are we taking this across the country?" or "is this something you think you'll use?"

Huh. I realize I just typed "taking this across the country." There are indeed changes happening, though not right now. Preparations being made, thoughts moved, if not the household yet. Making the load lighter, picking tasks apart. Making all of myself lighter. I read somewhere the other day, someone leaving a place they have loved, that they would not miss the magic of the place because they will take everything magical with them. I will miss this place, this evidence of our life. And I will take our life inside me. I will take it everywhere I am.

I have lived here longer than anywhere I have lived since childhood. In the Before, we'd starting packing for our move. I was so happy to leave here. So happy to leave it behind, with all its flaws and annoyances. It would be something I thought of fondly, and fleetingly. To leave here Now will be hard, even with the irritations piling up.

If I think too much of erasing even your old fingerprints, left in grease stains on the cabinets, I feel my edges start to cling. Like years ago, when my mother would go through bags of things I'd destined for Goodwill, pulling out each thing I'd bagged, saying "are you sure you want to get rid of this? But it looks so nice. You should keep it." This is different, of course, this evidence of our life is not a dress that's nice but I never wear. It isn't a candle-holder that has never been my style. It's where I look and see you, standing there. It is also the place that housed me while I screamed and cried and stared. It is the place that has held my hardest and my most beautiful. But I suppose that is in me. It goes wherever I go.


If I sit too long, I will lose momentum, and all this stuff in bags will now sit here on the living room floor instead of being hidden in closets and in drawers. Keep going. Keep going. A purge of what really never should have come in the door. Lightening the load.

.....



The car is packed, the house is clean. In the things I sorted through, I found a file from an old writing teacher of mine. I knew her husband had been killed by a drunk driver. I even tried to contact her once, early in this After. But I have no recollection of seeing this writing from her, these hand-outs, though clearly I did way back when: my underlining and notes are all over them. Sitting outside, I find this, in this paperwork from her, a quote from Theodore Roethke:



I learned not to fear infinity,

the far field, the windy cliffs of forever.

What we love is near, at hand,

Always, in the earth and air.

What we love is here,

and what is here is home.

.

by date

sometimes
as we read the paper
you would point out obituaries
of elderly couples who had died
within tight orbit of each other.
I would nod my head
and say - makes sense to me.
of course they do.


We will not be one of those couples
neither elderly, nor dead within close range.


I was not one of those people who wondered
if I would survive
I knew
with resentful certainty
that I would live.
though I kept waiting


Buying half and half for my tea
I would glance at the expiration date on the carton
saying half out-loud
"I will be dead by then."
Every time
Every time
Every week, buying again,
saying I will be dead by then.



Sometime over the last several months, I have stopped saying this
Have stopped thinking it.
I reach into the stacks
see the date
and think -
pretty unlikely I'll be dead by then.
It is not a relief,
just acknowledgment.


Now, how I can be fine, in the hours before the last calendar date
Fine, even relieved,
until it sneaks up behind me
clobbering
smashing parts of this body, this me,
veins opened I have not seen or felt
flashing scenes of the soon after
slamming me back to the day
bruised and screaming
that I do not want to do this anymore


the place of retching will pass, I know
it does
The day itself was beautiful, this week
intense
and beautiful
but this is not that day.

the kettle is boiling
tea needs to be made
the date on the cream
just is.


.

by day

three years have passed
on this day
At the time,
I will be at church
without you
not bursting into flames
as you often joked I would.

I will always have this day to myself
No one else knows to count the weeks
like this

Like this,
I will have you to myself

I will have that day,
the way it was
Just the two of us, and Bo.

On the date,
everyone else can remember.
Everyone else can rush and claim their part of you,
claim their part of me.
On the date,
they can send their text messages,
or find they have forgotten to.

But on the day
on the day today, my love,
it will be you and me
as it was.
As it was on that day
three years ago today.

I miss you my love.
So so much
I miss you.
I hope you are alright.


.

contract-expand

It's a grand round of posting, apparently.

There's a lot I need to say, I need to talk about, and I can't. Not here, not with really anyone. That's not an awful thing, I just need to acknowledge that I am holding a lot, on a lot of different fronts.

This is how this process will go - whichever process I'm in:
            Excitement, alarm, refusal, assurance, clarity, calm.
            Rinse. Repeat. For everything.

The thing that I take from this, these large grand movements going on in so many different realms, is that I trust me. I trust me to know what I want, what I need. I trust me to say what I see, to state what I know, with kindness and clarity. I may not feel it as I write, but I see it afterwards. No matter how chaotic, I have abiding deep trust in myself. As I always have.

What is fascinating is that I can write - "as I always have." That the core of me has not changed, though it was lost for quite some time.

I began reading a book this morning - Wild, by Cheryl Strayed.* I'd been searching for words, a way to describe what is me these days, what is happening, what it is - see I can't do it even now. But I open this book, and I read these words:

It was a world I'd never been to and yet had known was there all along,

one I'd staggered to in sorrow and confusion and fear and hope.

A world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew

I could become and turn me back into the girl I'd once been.

And that is it exactly. I can't even tell you why, and I don't need to. Doing the things I am doing now, the possibilities and openings, it is a way both back and forward, a way to leave the life that has been and come closer to it, all at the same time, and by the same way. I trust me, and that hasn't changed.

.

*reading the author notes today, I find... where does she live? I see. Of course she does. 

.

an update on goodness

.


Side by side, all these things run. I think that's the way it will be, nailed to the floor with some things while awed and lifted by others, over and over again.

The project is going well - I know that's vague, folks. Sorry. Hey my testers - thank you. You are both awesome and helpful.

The raspberries are ripe in the bee yard. This means they are ahead of the crop of 2009. I know this because matt and I checked both the bees and the berries on July 11th that year, and they weren't quite ready, either of them. I don't know why the ripeness of berries lifts me, but it does.

And, in the random that probably isn't, a friend posted photos of her trip to the northwest today. A wee background - I was thinking South for the next move, but various things make that not a great idea for the next few years. I still may not move anywhere (godd knows I keep trying to get out of here; almost 3 years ago exactly, matt and I had just made plans with realtors and started packing...). The photos from my friend struck something in me, and I started investigating. As it turns out, the place she's visiting is home to everything on my geographic wish-list: fresh and salt water, botanical gardens, a zoo, a science museum, and other good things. You can have both chickens and goats in the city, if you so choose. And, it has three places/traditions I consider my spiritual home. And, in the too precise to be random realm, (well, there are a few here), one of my favorite current teachers was in my dreams last night. Where does said teacher live? Yup. I hadn't known that 'til I just looked it up.

So - just a field update. Side by side.


Ooh - and another update: have learned that my friend who posted said photos was not simply on a trip. She was on a recon mission. She and her family are thinking of moving up there. If I moved there, I would already have People. For a place that was not on my map of possibilities, it has certainly made its presence known.


.

another

...

Another person drowned. Not in my life, no. But the news got me anyway. Another woman watched her love die, thinking he was fine. Another woman was doing something they had done a million times before, not giving it a second thought. It all seemed normal, except that he was dying and she didn't know. I didn't know. Neither of us had any reason to even think it. It is inconceivable that someone so experienced would be in any danger at all.


And it smashes me so hard, brings it all slamming back to me. Maybe even more because I have been there not realizing what was happening, been there looking for help when it is too late. I have been there. And it's my reaction I can tell here; her story isn't mine to share. I'm both surprised and not surprised by how it knocks the wind out of me. I know I am helpless in the face of it, both for her and for me. All I can do is send love, to her now, to me then. And even that hurts a f-load to do.

Man.


...

some good words

.


http://gillianb-journeying.blogspot.com/2012/07/circles.html


and


"Help each of us prepare our hearts for these days away. I know we need to pack our bravery...it is needed...and courage....to go and be present to the sorrow and grief." (here)

.