We have each other this morning

I'm accepting slimy blueberries from her snotty, sticky fingers. They taste extra sweet.

In the Dark

I was miserable when I arrived. Beyond tired. Nerves frayed. Cracking up. Not sure I could face this city or anyone in it. But there is something so reassuring about the grime and anonymity. Being here conforms the fact that everything I said I did I actually lived. Which seems more like fiction lately. But I have walked here. Being back is more comforting than I would have thought.

Malcolm, once again, pointed out that I am always unhappy after the first year of being somewhere new. And I was trying so hard to be normal, happy, etc. I still can't figure out why I can't figure anything out. Shouldn't I have a business idea or a novel bursting forth? What is the matter with me?

I'm in the dark in our weird hotel room. Violet is sleeping, white noise blasting. This is the most I've been alone and quiet in so long. I tried to bank solitude. I knew it wouldn't be easy. Except in some ways it is. Being with her, being her mom, is the most unforced thing I've ever done. Watching her delight in the while world - and the whole world delights back - is the very best feeling.

I do want to excel for her, to be confident, high functioning, and most of all, what I wished most of all for her, happy. I keep thinking that maybe I'm closer. But I suffer from terrible setbacks and crises of faith. I vow to make a more concerted effort to make myself into the person I should be. I want to live a lovely life. It won't begin when I'm ready. Here we are. This is it. Fight!

A Very Nice Day Indeed

Yesterday I slept late. And when I awoke I jumped out of be and ran downstairs to find Violet and Malcolm curled up together on the couch. The living room was in shambles.Toys strewn everywhere. A lovely mess. We decided to go to Portland. I walked the dog in the strangely warm sunshine. Sorry, Earth. We drove to the mall and shopped, blithely. And ate crappy Chinese food. We poked in and out of stores and bought things we only sort of needed. No Christmas presents for anyone but us. Even though I really like getting gifts for others. Then, Target in all its splendor. In all, a much-needed self-indulgent and vacuous Wednesday. It was a very nice day indeed.

Sunday

We're all asleep in our own respective room, at noon in early gray December. Planning, dreaming, snoring, scheming. So quiet I can hear the refrigerator hum, the neighbor's chain saw, fingers strum over the sticking keyboard. My head is thick with clouded, quickening thoughts, my throat is closing, lips dry. Are we chasing change or dying?

Thankful

Sweeping my kitchen on Wednesday, I realized how much I have and how lucky I am to have this life.

Life Today, Without Comment

In the background, through the speakers, Jack White at his rhythmic, Zeppelin-y loudest, in front of me, on the TV, some terrible daytime doctor program for lobotomized ladies and shut-ins. I'm neither really watching or listening. The baby has strewn toys to every corner of the living room. There are pears in her hair and I think the dog has fleas. Correction, the dog definitely has fleas. The dog is outside, alone, which she hates. I wish I didn't wish we never had her. Violet scooted around the floor, downstairs, then upstairs while I made the beds, from 8-11, collecting dust bunnies on her clothes and eating some old food she found behind her highchair. Malcolm has a sore throat. I have to work again at the restaurant tonight. I have to be on top of things. I have to take the garbage to the dump and scrub the egg yolk from the counter. There are twelve yellow leaves like vellum clinging to the tree outside my window.

This year

I turned thirty-three last week. It seems significant. I had been waiting for thirty-three. I thought something great would happen that year. And it did. Violet happened and happiness happened. The pursuit of happiness. Deserving it and going after it. Moving forward. Accepting that everything happened. And being here with it. And being imperfect but not broken or in need of salvation. Shirking that self-pity and destruction from within. Being done with self-loathing and sabotage. Because it is boring and so last decade. Feeling traction with the mass of my own existence. Being held on to and holding on but also a cipher. Being steady but also warmed with the wind that blows through us all. This isn't turning out, it's not what I meant to say. I haven't had time to write them down. All these thoughts. Nothing but looking and thinking this week. This year, that is the foundation for action. I'm finally here, where I am supposed to be. And it has never been more clear that I am responsible for my fate and that it will be over in a flash, and that there's no use lamenting the passing or trying to slip out of consciousness. Make yourself a match for time with acts of greatness. Practice to get bigger and faster. Move with grace that meets the gods. Learn compassion and be in love.

Love and Death

We love our mothers almost pathologically no matter what they do. They bring us here to earth, give us to the light and life, from eternity to birth, which leads eventually to death.

The Inevitability of Autumn

It happens every year but we never know exactly when it will begin, or how. Nature's shifting patterns of color transformation - something to do with chlorophyll, I'm sure. We possess both volition and free will. But we will be acted upon nonetheless. We can be prepared. We can stand relaxed, alert and waiting, grounded by roots and reaching toward the sun. The next season is always coming. We remain the same while a wash of change works us over.

Dream Diary

I was chasing a much-younger guy but he was into Maggie's friend Emily and sort of loathed me. The interesting part is that we swam out past the sandbar to watch/participate in a surf contest. We were treading in deep water and I kept experiencing flashes of anxiety but also excitement, pride, and wonder. My subconscious is not so mysterious.

The House of The Happy Fisherman

On Masonic Street in Rockland, there is a gloomy blue-gray house with lots of drafty-looking windows. Typical. It sits perched on the edge of a small square lot of lawn and seems like it once was a sad place. But by the turquoise painted steps I saw a sign of change from within. I've seen in just four months the myriad desperate and depressed lives that are being conducted all over this working town. People who are poor, sick and hopeless. People who make their lives worse than the need to be, but who am I to say? I feel so sorry for myself for having to have my first job outside the house in almost seven years I screamed and cried and hurled epithets at no one in my car alone late at night. I was lonely and missing my daughter. And simultaneously missing my solitary old self. Today we were walking the dog and went past this house again.
A house that belongs on a northern island whipped by the wind. Where clothes hung out catch the scent of ancient pines.Inside, after a day that starts before dawn a family reconvenes. Is this nothing more than romantic fantasy a la Millet's noble peasants? Maybe it's nothing but bath salts and child abuse.

Reality

On Monday were were walking home from the grocery store when gray clouds invaded the sky and almost without warning we were caught in the rain. I was on the phone with Angela in San Francisco, in the midst of crisis. So I ran. I ran in my boots past high school kids unfazed by the weather. I ran along Broadway and up Beech, and meanwhile Malcolm was calling in and he was waiting in the window for us, a beacon.

I knew that Violet had shit her pants at the library. I didn't have a diaper and didn't feel like going back. So I was not surprised when I peeled off the diaper to discover yellow brown poo all the way up her back which got on her feet, face, and my sweater; it was my fault. I called Angela back, cradling the phone between shoulder and ear, swabbing Violet from shoulder to bum. Then I brought her into the bath.

Angela is crying in California, "confused but convinced" and Violet is crying in the tub. I am dabbing poop from her cheek with a cloth and trying to keep my tiny daughter from standing up on her wet and wobbly legs. I want to offer my best friend my undivided attention. But my attention is no longer my own to give. I have to stop writing now because Violet is somewhere in the dining room or kitchen and it's my job to stop her from pulling down the silver and Clorox.

A Lesson from my Subconscious

in my dream last night I was making a horror film but I was frightened, the line was blurred between being witness and actor. It's all a game, play it but with awareness. don't be daunted by illusion. and wake up!

Lately

Lately I've been doing nothing but living. And mostly, when I am in the present I am content. It's only when I worry about what I have not yet accomplished (why/what/when/how) or concern myself with future devastating nostalgia that I feel unsettled and sad. My quotidian life comprised of moments is full of sweet baby giggles, long walks, meeting shopkeepers and neighbors, noticing changed over slow time in the world around us, soaking up the sights, sounds, scents, and textures of everyday here in Rockland, Maine. We laugh and read and eat and drink and picnic and breathe and enjoy our family all the time thoroughly. So why can't this be enough? Or should I use this lucky in love time as a jumping off point to start something, to create, to work, to articulate a goal and set off toward it? I'll just keep thinking thank you, and wait a little longer. Happiness is all that matters?

Atomzahl

Violet, I composed this when I was holding you;
you are six months old.

The weight of us -
our composition,
a combined atomic number
of our elements
which were one once and always will be enjoined
must be the mass of compassion

I say a Mass of Compassion
whenever I hold you
I become greater than the sum of my parts
entwined in a mystical union
with you, because of you,
transcending

Confession, contrition, prayers, gratitude
Being your mother has made me

In love,
jillian

Today's Quotation

"Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, as to taste, as to what ought to be said, write for the pleasure of it..." William Carlos Williams

Bower

1.a leafy shelter or recess; arbor.

2.a rustic dwelling; cottage.

3.a lady's boudoir in a medieval castle.

Vampires and Wu Tang

A common response to imperialism is invoking the supernatural, i.e., Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Boxer Rebellion, and The Ghost Dance of Native Americans.

Old World, Far East, New World. African example?

Imperialism, like industrialism is a human machine, propelled by the twin evils of hubris and capital, that cannot be stopped or impeded. Our only recourse in the face of such terrific oppression is drawing from the pool of immortal resources. Maybe this is the unlikely instrument of transformation of the collective consciousness. The evolution of man?

Time Passes

"It will never be this day again" she thought, as she opened the shutters. Glorious.

Such a fleet river will carry us all downstream. I thought I might watch from the bank for a while. So I sat down among the pebbles and did so. Ten years passed. If not longer. Unchanged, I dipped a toe in the water. It is cold and muddy. Quick fish nip at your flesh. My arms float but I am not buoyant. It requires some effort.There was a boat and I got in. Now we're moving swiftly, now we're not. Then, before present, every which way looks lost. I sit in back to power, I sit up front to steer. The navigator, himself not with us in our boat but on a bridge just ahead reminds me of someone I've seen. In my sleep? He knows the waters but not the way. Shiva dreams reality while Brahma sings existence. This is the swimming portion. I'm looking for fins I can't find. Do you use fins in a stream like this? I have questions. There is no response. I am weighted. I am wading. It's not so deep as I thought but if I don't use my strength to cut through the current I won't get to the end in time. I wished for companions. I yearned for an audience. I'm alone but not frightened. I guess because it's busy not lonely. And there's so much to look at, which I've seen. Doing now, doing this. Deep breath.

She considered calling this piece "Of Consciousness" but thought better of it. The baby cries so she stops typing and goes upstairs.

Like Shards

Every step hurts like hell when you're broken and barefoot, just trying to make it home before it rains.

In the New House

Here we are, safe and sound, in Rockland, USA. It's what I always dreamed life would be. You shouldn't say these things out loud. You shouldn't say these things out loud. You should shout out gratitude and whisper your fears. Moving forward, finally, after all these years. A sweet place for peace and prosperity?

I once again feel a deep connection with a distant past. My adolescence is two decades overdue to end. Everything reminds me of everything. Canopies of fully realized summer leaves shelter us on our walks to town. We live up on the hill, set back from the fray, just a few short block from an ocean I know almost nothing about.

I love this little house; it felt like home immediately. Familiar birds sing to Violet in the morning from outside.

Well

Well, that was shitty.
But I think I'm coming out of it.

First Sentence

I was born in the waning days of the century of unrestraint.

Symmetry

For fifteen years I lived in one house that never faltered from its fixed foundation
but then, with a death, it fell.

Since I left there I keep leaving, every year. As soon as I know where all my belongings go
I've already gone to the next - 

I'm so tired of moving and packing, arriving with all my broken possessions. On the day before the last I look around and wonder why I own all this garbage and what is the point of it all...

I am about to be longer in the adult world than I was a child and still I am aimless and scared. The thunder rolls in and my baby cries and I can't type fast enough or enough enough to make myself make sense of it here.

I wasn't promised balance, but I invoke it often on the precipice. Either that, or the courage to jump.

Self-Pity

It's not that I consider myself a motherless child anymore, so much as someone entirely bereft of family or maternal guidance. The truth is, they were never what I wanted. I should stop lamenting their failures and move beyond their genetic catastrophe. As soon as the Zoloft starts working, I'm sure I will not fear success.

In Search of Identity

"I listen to my words but
They fall far below."

Cat Stevens, The Wind

Being Peace

When you're holding the baby, hold the baby.

So Much Depends on Tuesday

We walked the perimeter of our yard and smelled the warm air and noticed every detail of this landscape we inhabit. We sat beside the chicken coop and in small fields of dandelions. I tossed you up in the air under the apple tree. We sat in the glider where the peach tree resists its blossom. We looked at each other in the shade. We looked at each other in the sun. I took your picture by the rhubarb patch. I saw you seeing bees and leaves and pine needles. The goats tried to get out attention. The barn stood near to us, a stripped, stained red. We walked the perimeter of the yard and came back into our house.

Green Tara

Every leaf and nubile shoot
is imbued with the spirit of Her,
eternally youthful and ever-renewing.
I look up and up and inward with my child eyes
and ask Her grace upon my every gesture.
She is the aspect I appeal to in spring;
I recognize Her gentle blessing in the breezes
that regularly circulate on the wheel of my life and breath.

a poem written spontaneously in three minutes while listening to the Green Tara Mantra

All The Artists of My Youth

The artists of my youth are falling
like glass bottles in a carny's unfair game,
stacked precariously in a cluster pyramid,
being taken down one by one by a fast pitch ball
thrown by an unseen hand

If they're falling or ascending
depends on where you're seated
Where they are going nobody knows
...
Perhaps they'll meet
in that far-off and infinitely close land
Where the wild things are
and you don't have to fight for your right to party.

RIP MCA and Maurice Sendak

Rainy

I really want to drink a splash of whiskey in the bathtub and read Parabola and be soothed by the sound of the wind and the rain.

Shooting Down Roots or Traveling On

if we stay in one place
we could plant a garden, fix up a chicken coop and raise a small group of hens for eggs, paint the walls and build more permanent structures, and take down walls and install a wood burning stove, know exactly where the Christmas tree will go and make traditions more permanent, have a place for everything, and everything in its place, not have to pack it all up again, put up a fence so we can open up the door in the morning and Olivia can run like hell, make friends and neighbors, find our place in the community, raise V in one house she'll always remember, be home.

if we continue to be an itinerant family
we get to decorate and settle in to a new house and explore a different town with all its shops, stops and peoples. know that we may leave to go anywhere, anytime. teach Violet that we are the home and traditions and meaning, not the place we're in. have to change our address on everything, again. feel that there are new possibilities, and horizons and opportunities. we feel free. But what is it we find so frightening that we need our freedom from?

Heeding the Call

I've dreamed of flying and finding for a week. instead of seeking
and falling.
what am I supposed to do?

Easter Thoughts

Why do I find Easter so depressing? I have since I was very young.

It snowed.

When I was in college I decided that Jesus was just another Mesopotamian shepherd god who was put to death to ensure the renewal of the crops. But there's more to it. Because Christ's sacrifice goes deeper. Historically, this marks the beginning of a new age, the end of the primitive consciousness. Psychologically, death and subsequent resurrection is imperative for every individual. How do we enact this? And

All The Things That Didn't

Why is it so hard to fully experience the relief of it all?

Instead of grief and anxiety I have beauty and joy. I didn't vomit. I didn't swell up. I didn't pass out. I didn't panic. I didn't reject her. I didn't drop her. I didn't fall. I didn't convulse. I didn't have shaking hands the first time I drove with her. I didn't feel nothing. I didn't cry until they had to take me and put me away and bind my arms and inject me with thorazine. (Is this what I really thought might happen? yes.)

There's grace in this and I feel daily gratitude. But not with the knife of trepidation.

All the things that didn't happen as I feared should be buried like a fairy tale villain - the jealous stepmother or black bearded husband with a raping intent - whose slain blood and body regenerate the earth for the heroine. Compost for the rallying soul. I survived. I can feel the ground again as I stretch my arms, holding this baby in strong arms, and reach toward the light.

Three Fourteen

There is no one
to save you in the small hours,
with your husband
breathing whiskey breath on one side,
and your infant daughter on the other,
grunting like a fat kid on the knotted gym class rope

in between I am silently

conjuring all the spells and prayers and incantations that I know of,
summoning the magic that binds us together,
wondering if love is enough.

7 weeks and 3 days of Violet

our children cause us to confront our own beauty, as well as our flaws.

Comparisons

the theory of another:

a reading of TMBG's Build a little birdhouse in your soul as a love ballad and likens the object of the song to this poem by E Dickinson:

   Hope is the thing with feathers
  That perches in the soul,
  And sings the tune without the words,
  And never stops at all,

 And sweetest in the gale is heard;
  And sore must be the storm
  That could abash the little bird
  That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
  And on the strangest sea;
  Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.


People can be so great.

One Month on Earth

Dear Violet Maeve,

Your face is so familiar to me, as if I've known you all my life. I guess I was waiting for you here. As much as I feel certain I know every inch of you, I equally and utterly am in thrall of your total self-possession. You are so intent, so intelligent, so bright-eyed and aware - when you are not sleeping or screaming - that I wonder where you really came from and what you truly are. A wonder, a Buddha, a beautiful, wise, serene happy baby. That is what I want for you most of all - happiness. And fearlessness. Fearless Violet, you are going to move mountains. I would like for you to be curious and good, healthy and compassionate and sweet. I feel so lucky to be your mother. I can't believe what we've already become in just a few short/long weeks. Happy one month birthday, darling. Can't wait to find out what happens next. p.s. please sleep again like you did last night: up only once, brilliant girl!

Knowing When You Are In The Thick Of It

Knowing when you are in the thick of it is the only way possible to hold onto your sanity. If you can remove yourself one half step from whatever swallowing hole is sucking you down long enough to say, "this is what it looks like, this is what it feels like, to be frightened, to be slogging through", then you can survive and find your way out. And it isn't always this way - in fact, there are many possibilities, past and future. It's been quite another way during different periods of my life and those will come back around. If it is raining, I will see sunshine again. Even if it's been raining forty days, or another Biblical amount of time. The deluge does pass, eventually. Madness, I think, is not remembering the other. Other places, other Selfs that comprise ALL of one's reality. I remember everything. I know that this shall pass. And that I might even miss it, might even think back on it fondly, when I reach the farther side.

Violet Is Born

Everything I've done, and read and seen, everywhere I've been and everyone I know is contributing to her existence. She is the product of total experience, and at the same time, whole unto herself, innocence personified. Violet is therefore a paradox. She is beautiful.

When I first heard her sound I was lying supine on the table. Overhead, swarming figures in blue, under a glaring metallic light had cut me open and pulled her into the world. Her cry was a relief in the brightness, everything that had existed before her suddenly seemed dim.