LaurieWrites

To sing my song.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

"The Laughing Heart" by Charles Bukowski

************************************************

I drove the old roads yesterday, as I rarely do anymore unless someone died, as someone had. Turning instinctively on numbered streets -- that party there, that unfortunate conversation on that street corner, I knew the sounds and the smells of the neighborhoods, felt the grit of the pavement and the echoes of so many voices up through the undercarriage of a car I never could have afforded then, can barely afford now. 

Road miles, they carry us, somehow.

Monday was PG County and a dead body in a Hawaiian shirt, unbearable grief and chicken joints and that school I went to once. I forgot about D's corner lot house, the irritation of the left turn. The shortcut through the 7-11 that I made still-instinctively after 20 years away made me want to smoke more than usual, an urge staved off mostly by the almost seven dollar price for a pack that made me smile big.

It's all so much the same, it's crazy how it stays that way when it seems like it ought not to, when you've been away and looking at so much other stuff. It's just so much more expensive in all ways now.

 ************************************************

you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.

 ***********************************************

I am afraid, I admit it. I said some horrible things a few days ago, things that came from the worst place, the most unpleasant, the most fearful and preemptively abandoned. I felt as worthless and pointless as I have in months, as incapable of...I don't know? Anything. It was bad, and it was at the same time, regardless of immediate outcome, immediately productive. Watersheds are few and far between in a life, really.

I had needed it for years and never saw it coming really. Idealism is a certain circle of hell, I'm here to tell. 

Yesterday on the highway Ramble On came up in the mix and I cried and smiled, Page and Plant's mix of hubris and brilliance (the darkest depths of Mordor. MORDOR.) what it needed to be as it always is bumped up against the simple, crucial declarative that defines the song. So much, so much, so much. I looked up at the roof upholstery at a red light, wiping my stupid weeping eyes, grateful for the familiarity, for the music, for the construct. I knew anew what I had to do, as I had when my feet hit the floor behind a heavy curtain in Tennessee two days prior. 

Now's the time. The time is now. 

 ************************************************

I will never be easy. I will always be difficult, sometimes the most in the times that I'm trying the hardest not to be. This is genetic, some of this, a design that I fight with every bit of good that I know I possess from competing genes and nurture and the sheer instruction of living kindly. I don't count on the same companions for the long haul so much anymore, because it's almost too much to ask in larger than small doses. I'm conversely coming upon the truth, however, that some greater consistency in this regard may be some of what I need for the longer run, and whether I think it's really possible or not, I will keep wrecking the prospect of ever having it if I don't fix me for real. 

I have been broken for a long time, in a variety of small and large ways, despite my progress, despite longstanding white-knuckled efforts to the contrary. I have the softest, brightest comprehension now though that I don't think I'm going to be for very long anymore, and regardless, I will no longer break you, not even a little if I can help it, no matter who you are. Unacceptable harsh words finished that story. The main answer -- surrender, no knuckles -- was long overdue. The time for so many (good and gentle, fun and interesting) things, the time for the real second half, is now. 

You win.

I have a few posts to write that I'm either in the middle of or avoiding, but I am taking a station break because damned if going through my Google search history (my scary, crazy laugh- and cringe-inducing joyride of a Google search history) today didn't unearth a video of my dog. 

I don't remember putting this video in Google videos. To my knowledge I have never consciously put a video into anything Googlefied on purpose, but such that Google's world domination ensures that they are probably cross-processing the chips and salsa I'm housing at the moment into some kind of electronic food-intake infograph of my 41st year, I'm not surprised at jack crap that Google does. 

I am going to embed that video here, because I watched it today and it made me cry, and it reminded me of the simple joy of playing with my dog, and how nothing that I do at this point really matches it, and that's kind of a problem. It reminded me of learning to raise a puppy and understanding that it was a really, really difficult thing to do, that pointed out several of my character flaws as well as the capacity to take several photographs of a two-pound animal so small he could stand in his own dinner plate. 

I'm in the middle of some big, huge, weird, life stuff, and sometimes it's nice to remember that I can maybe actually get past it and back to a time where I sit in a chair in my living room and bicker over a squeaky miniature football with a being that can't reason or speak. He was old in this clip, probably 12, and had just gotten through a round of seizures that I was convinced would kill him. He was missing teeth and he had so many physical flaws, but I didn't care. He was always a puppy to me, really.

I'll never get him back, which still breaks my bandaged heart to a noteable degree, but maybe, just maybe, another one. Maybe another place, with a lot of love and happiness, some time to sit on the couch without worrying that it's the wrong one. That would be nice. 

I like that I found him today. It bodes well for some hard things that I have on the agenda this week. I'm considering this a peculiar sort of prayer. 

February

I came home tonight, ended up in conversation with a friend, and told her that I felt like a loser because in spite of a fine invitation to go somewhere that would probably be spirit-lifting, I wanted to stay home and so I did. I told her that I felt more socially awkward than I had in years, that I felt like everything I said was odd. What I didn't say but what I meant was that if I'm looking for anything, which I'm pretty sure socially I'm not right now, I especially wasn't finding it when I pushed myself to do something that I felt I ought to do and wasn't, especially on Friday nights. Friday nights when I'm working traditional forty hour work weeks have always been rough, and these days they're next to impossible. 

And she said in her typical essential way that it was okay if I needed some time to myself, and, more powerfully, by way of explaining why it was okay that I couldn't always tolerate groups of people and social scenes, "I feel like you're birthing yourself out of some very old hurts." I had to concede that she was correct, and what more do you need to deal with than that, I guess? And more importantly, what more do you need than friends with hearts and insight like that, whether they live mostly in your computer or not? Not much, I'm saying. 

It's so strange to look around at my life right now and not recognize it so much, but to be pretty comfortable with it regardless. I should want to scream more, I guess, to elucidate and make clear, but whether through an understanding that that would be pointless or wasted on the unhearing or a basic disinterest in doing so, I don't. The same feelings are the same as they have always been in my physical life -- the essential feel of water on my skin in a hot tub, the soft sheets I've washed a hundred times, the need to commentate the day and hope someone will occasionally find it funny, the irritation of looking in the refrigerator and realizing one person with an erratic appetite can't keep up with vegetables that looked too pretty not to buy. 

I know who I fundamentally am, still, even as I change outside. I have unfortunately had to major in me for more than forty years. And although I think that I will have to eventually look to my beloved, beleagured sister to best help me reflect upon the timeline, in many ways, I can say that I'm more comfortable inside this spot than I've been in ever, even with the parts I can't explain. I see more clearly, more painfully, more resolutely. I am intimately acquainted anew with the bullshit, with the past twenty years, with the excuses and the necessary lies, with the fear-based life choices and the dream procrastination. I'm not even mad, at it or at anything. I feel like I'm looking at a rock collection or some old photo albums that I'm not even sure belong to me. I feel suspended, and aware. I see quite distinctly what we do to ourselves, and each other. I see my place in the constellation.

I am admittedly deeply, deeply tired, in body and in mind. I can't seem to sleep enough, I want to talk all of the time although I stop myself about how tired I am, and conversely, many nights, I don't sleep very much at all in terror of not getting enough hours in to  meet the construct of my employer, which is really crazy. I've stopped fighting, mostly, with anyone or anything, because I quite simply don't have the energy. I'm on no drugs besides the hypertension medicine. Whatever anyone sees any day now is genuine me, with apologies for hormone rise and fall. It is, as they say, kind of, what she is, what I am. 

I'm happy with this because I'm a fan of the baseline, as well as the bass line. I am naturally drawn to rhythm, and teamwork, be it of people or notes or neurons.  I like balance, always did, and before the adolescent insanity and descent into mood management began, I was basically a happy, much-loved child. That is who I was from birth and that is who I seek to be again for this remaining span of physical years, because I think that was a better bet. I'm still a bit partially obscured from her, yes, but mostly free, where it matters a lot.

 I have no idea what's going to happen in either the short or the longterm right now and you'd think I'd be scared to death, because for a long time that's kind of been my jam. But interestingly enough, I feel like I'm slipping into the right role, like someone finally got the casting right. And there is for sure that sense of normal and right anxiety as you make friends with the lines and the other people in the leading roles, but that never lasts for very long because eventually you have to put the damned show on the road. 

I knew and I said in the fall that this would happen and it's happening. I don't believe in that The Secret nonsense entirely but I do believe, in some ways, in premonition, and I've always supported a solid foreshadowing when the talent is there to back it up. 

I am going to be okay, I finally know for sure.

I am very interested in the spring. 

You are here.

"You have struggled in the past, and perhaps you are still struggling; but is it necessary? No. Struggle is useless. Stop struggling." -- Thich Nhat Han

Sometime between midnight Saturday night and when I hoped to leave the house yesterday, I lost my glasses.

Yes, in my house. Yes, it is one level, a larger condo but an apartment-type place all the same.

It's not like this is uncommon. I lay them down a lot, when I go to sleep, when I take a bath, when my eyes hit that millisecond at night where they give up the day, when the capillaries call it quits. There's generally a not-quite-five-minute span of looking if I lay them down absentmindedly, not in their appointed place by the sink or on the nightstand or coffee table.

But I always find them, and yesterday it became clearer after half an hour of poking around the magazines and general detritus of pens and hair ties and spare earrings on my desk that these glasses were hiding worse than usual. And no I don't have a backup pair, because that pair broke and my prescription expired. And no I haven't bought replacement contacts from the cheap online place since I got the new prescription last month and NO I am not paying the optical shop prices.

I'm like that cranky Maxine on the Hallmark cards, or a flailing toddler, most days, depending.

After almost an hour of looking, this place was looking remarkably cleaner but I was going crazy, Gaslight crazy, half-blind since the 5th grade and not getting unblinder. I had dinner to finish making and the Grammys to watch, work to finish that is not finishing because I have some sort of psychological block on this particular project. I wasn't sure how I was going to do all of that much less drive my car to work in the morning, because, again, so hard to see.

I can see okay way up close, so I threw some food on my plate, pushed the comfy chair right up close to the television, and tried not to freak out. Visually-impaired or not, I had no more energy to give to that particular struggle at the given time. I couldn't do it anymore. I had to sit down and start thinking about something else.

************************************************

I like to get in the trenches, especially when it comes to my brain. I like to duke it out, I think, or at least I always have. That's the habitual behavior. An old friend calls it "laying down on the train tracks," I call it things like inoculating myself, or being a decent (if unpaid) investigative reporter.

I don't trust ease, have not had much occasion to embrace it, quite honestly. I will pursue the harder path, if need be. I'm not afraid of it entirely.

But lately I think it's getting old, this slapboxing approach to life, something I've admittedly come to think with some unwanted help from my body and my brain. There were the headaches that wouldn't quit for months, the body that wouldn't motivate, the brain that felt fuzzy and tired more often than not. Then there was, finally, that day somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas when I found myself in an emergency room bed, my heart literally pumping so hard it made my head pound and my chest skip. A nurse who felt like my personal angel Clarence looked at me over a clipboard.

"Why are you here?"

"Because my blood pressure is really high."

"I know that. I see your numbers. I mean, you're...40? It's Saturday afternoon. Why are you here? And how are you not going to come back?"

She gave me a lot of morphine and some painkillers and sent me home, with a general recommendation to examine my life and, much like Mr. Bender in the Breakfast Club, encouraged me to examine whether or not I'd care to return next Saturday.

I didn't, not so much, but I am a slow learner, and so it was in the latter part of January that I found myself back at my regular doctor's office, lying on a table head pounding again, with a nurse saying "stroke numbers" and telling me to lie down and finally a note in my hand that said I had orders not to go into work for a little while.

************************************************

I'm trying to listen. I'm taking the medicine, the kind in the bottle and the words that I read (because I'm reading inspirational shit again, as well as listening to people who do not sweet talk me entirely, who would have me know that this fall was no joke.

I listen to a cardiologist say "thickened heart muscle" and "it was elevated for a year" and "you have to make these changes or it won't get better." I have new appreciation for my limits, particularly the physical ones that beat up against my valves and walls, the confluence of my tendency to worry and obsess with a body that is saying, after many years, "Please stop." I am learning to sit quieter with anxiety and paranoia, with a disbelief in deserving good things, with being worthy of love.

It turns out that most of the time I'm interested in preserving this fragile, sometimes solitary existence for its own sweet sake and for the people who sometimes tell me they would like me to do that. It turns out that I still think there may be good things ahead, even though my current spot is a little dicey. It turns out that I still may think I have something to say.

You can't say anything if you're not here.

************************************************

This morning I woke up and I still couldn't find my damned glasses. I called and admitted this to someone who may have been expecting me early. I sucked up my remaining, blurry pride and called my mother, and told her that I'd thought about squinting to drive up to LensCrafters (not in any way the hell sponsored. In fact, with what I pay for vision crap, I'd be sponsored if someone would let me, I admit it.) but I was concerned about killing other people or hallucinating rainbows through my confused pupils so could she please take me?

And she did. She took me and she told me it was okay that I'd lost my glasses in my house. She bought me some contacts, even, and lunch, and dropped me at work.

I went into the bathroom and put the holdover lenses in, and after a month of staring through scratched eyeglasses that were giving up I could see really, really well. I saw that when I get myself ready to leave the house at way less than 20/20 vision, the results are not typical, so I had to fix my hair.

At any rate, I was able to finish my day clearly, so that was a bonus.

************************************************

My mother drove me home tonight after some tacos and dinner talk of an old friend who is really sick, a man who is like my father's brother, who always, in spite of anything else, has been kind and loved us, who has been one of our very closest people, who is our extended family. She gave me a coat she bought at a consignment shop. She told me to follow up on my appointments.

It feels good, sometimes, not to work so hard. It feels okay to relax into advice. It feels like a ministry to ourselves to share memories of people we're losing at various clips, of the things we do to keep the rest of us together -- never often enough, never what it could maybe be, but just what it is.

Tomorrow I'm invited to go somewhere where there is moonshine, to throw things into a fire, whatever I want, on a day meant for love. I have some things that would definitely work for such an occasion, not near as many as I used to, but I'm sure I could scare up a talisman or two, a relic of a card or an old printed out email. As into ritual as I can be, I'm not sure it's the right use of my time now, though. I've got my mind on a trip, on moving forward, on being right with today and where I'd like to take it maybe, not so much looking back at stuff that mattered once but doesn't except for what it continues to teach me.

I'm not into the burning up completely now as much as stoking what I've got going on inside. I'm thinking alchemy over immolation, interested in the catching fire, in transformation, but not so much the breaking down.