Who Wants Music on Mondays?

Things In My Head In the Wee Hours

We can't help who we love, nor the intensity of the loving.  We can't help that bone-deep aching that can come with the need-love, nor the breathless exhilaration of the want-love.

We can't help feeling driven to the edge and tipped over, dropped over, launched over into the grand unknown.

We can't help out flight through turbulent winds, blazing glorious shards of light and dark, sun and moon and stars setting our prismatic feathers alight as we flutter futilely seeking to control our wildly wandering path through a maelstrom of stillness.

We can't help out motley-clad hearts dancing with ungainly, mocking steps, jingling merrily discordant bells with every stomp and whirl.

We can't help our madness, whatever direction the wind be blowing.

All we can hope for is to retain our core and live on, live on, live on, as if we are not, each moment, being entirely remade by our own conflagration.

What We Share

The sun that shines on me, shines on you
The wind that touches me, touches you
The earth that holds my feet, holds your feet, too
The rain that falls on me, falls on you
We are connected by these sacred things no matter where you are
Location and distance are just geography
The sun that shines on me, shines on you.

Five Being the Number and the Number Being Five

Fifth time I'm posting this, but why mess with perfection, eh? Yeah, yeah, I'm a lazy blogger.  You still love me, right?  Right???  Why do I hear crickets...?
~~~~~
 I cooked corned beef and cabbage on Monday, much to my family's delight - a double lot of the beef will ensure we all have a surfeit and hash the next day. I'll try to remember to take some up to Mum next time I see her...if there's any left... Bird opted out entirely, causing me to question whether he's really mine. I get not liking cabbage, but potatoes? Something's not right with the child. Someone will happily scarf the lot when he can come over, because he's a good Irish lad.

I'm planning on baking soda bread, too, because we like it and any leftovers can be used to make a nice doorstop or stone axe.

Seeing as I'm Pagan, you wouldn't think I'd celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Better than most, I know what St. Patrick did to get famous and earn his sainthood. However, I'm also part Irish, and I happen to love corned beef and cabbage. Also, I consider it a reclaiming of the day for Pagans, or some junk.

A bit of slightly bent history (that has, I'll grant you, been mangled in my head over the years and is rather truncated because I'm not writing a book, here)(I'm writing a book somewhere else). When I was a child, we were told that St. Patrick's day was to celebrate his chasing all the snakes out of Ireland. It is an historically serpent-free bit of earth, and the church attributed this to Paddy and his efforts...kind of overlooking that there weren't any of the slithery things on the island to begin with, if you ask me. Which they didn't, because I was a kid and most grown-ups weren't prepared for my staggering logic and keen grasp of history but rather appalling lack of respect for theology.

 Many years later, people were saying St. Patrick's Day was a celebration of all things Irish, like green beer (wait, isn't beer German??) and green clothes, and green hair, and green mashed potatoes (which I won't eat on a dare because, really...green potatoes???), and rivers dyed green (I'm sure the fish are all so very thankful to be included...like Fridays and Lent weren't enough for them!)(that might only be funny if you're Catholic)(or not) and exclusionary parades, and funny little men waving their shillelaghs about (look it up you pervs!!) and that sort of thing.

 In none of the many different explanations for this seemingly random holiday did anyone mention pagans. A most curious oversight of you know what St. Patrick, who was just Patrick at the time (not really, I have no idea what his real name was. For all I know, it was Fred), was actually doing on the Emerald Isle.

He was born and lived sometime between 490 and 461 AD, give or take. Around age sixteen, he was either sent or stolen and taken to Ireland where he spent some time hanging out with sheep and being lonely. He talked to God a lot. You may notice that lots of shepherds do that. You would too if all you had for company all day was a bunch of mutton-heads. I'm sure the Pope understands...

Christianity was rolling along like a snowball in those days, spreading out all over the dang place. Good grief, it was getting so that a simple Pagan/Heathen (there's a difference between the two, not that the church cared much) couldn't get any peace any more. Everywhere they turned, there was a church being built where a sacred grove used to be, from the trees that used to be the sacred grove, or a church going up on a sacred hill, or someone bathing their dirty feet in a sacred stream. To be fair, there was a lot of real estate lumped under that "sacred" heading in the pagan world. We're like that - we just love our planet so. Plus, you know, all those gods needed housing, and they don't do the roommate thing very well. So the pagans were running out of places to have sex on the ground, in the woods, up a tree - they were big on the sex, those little devils - and to read entrails in their spare time.

I digressed. Sorry.

So there was this lonely kid, Patrick Whatsisname, hanging out with sheep and pondering life, the Universe, and everything. He got the idea, somewhere along the way, that maybe other folks should share his God. He got out of his contract (OK, probably slavery) and went around telling folks how terrific his God was, and how he reckoned they should convert. It seems that polite conversation wasn't doing it for the pagans, who tended to stare at him, or point and laugh. Rude beggars, huh? Now young Patrick (or middle aged Patrick, or old Patrick, I have no idea) decided he needed to be a bit more...persuasive. He had noticed something common among the pagan big-wigs. The guys at the top of the food-chain, magic/spirituality wise speaking tended to have a symbol on them somewhere...usually around their wrist. On the wrist that indicated their "hand of power", or the hand which they believed their "magic" flowed from. If it wasn't a tattoo, it was a torque. Guess what the tattoo/torque was? A critter called the oroborus. For them as what doesn't ken what that critter is, it's a snake eating its tail, and often represents eternity.
Pat realized that if he took away this "power", he took away their mystique and leadership ability. So he removed the snakes - often with something edged and unpleasant. Yes, he whacked off their hands. Or branded their skin. Or took their trinkets. Converting Heathens is such messy work!! It was for their own good, of course.

Some pagans today go on "snake crawls", a sort of pub crawl where they wear snakes and proclaim their paganism. I'm not quite that...er...proactive. I also don't necessarily think old Pat went around mauling everyone he met in an effort to build church membership and win a nifty prize. But it's the bloody aspect of what he did that earned his name in Christendom and for which his holiday is celebrated.

So again, why would I celebrate the day? Well, I'm all for a day when families get together and discuss history, theology, spirituality, and the like. Traditions are important - they give us a foundation on which to build our lives. People should discuss their history so they don't repeat it - whatever side of the issue they're on. Also, as I mentioned, I am part Irish. I can celebrate that heritage even as I acknowledge its imperfection. And I am Pagan - and I am celebrating the fact that I can be pagan today without (much) fear of having my (largely not visible when I'm clothed) tattoos painfully removed and other unpleasantness (except for the odd zealot who thinks I'm fair game, but I'm used to that. I live in the Bible belt, after all). Precisely because we didn't get wiped out, I celebrate. And have you ever had a really nice corned beef and cabbage dinner? I mean, yum! Oh, but I won't be wearing green. I wear blue. Don't even think about pinching me.

It IS A Kind of Madness

When I was a kid (shut up - I was TOO a kid once, and it was even AFTER the dinosaurs walked the earth!), I was vehemently anti-drug of any kind.  I was taught to be so by people who were taught to be so, without thought, simply because that was the established rule.

I grew the hell up and learned to think for myself, something that now seems to be the exception rather than the rule.  I see that there are drugs, and there are drugs.  Some things are destructive, horrifying - meth - and some things are beneficial and a threat to chemical pharma - marijuana - and they are all lumped together into a great big "NO!!!" because that's easier than looking, listening, considering, and acting on a case-by-case basis.

Well, too bad.  It's time to quit being lazy, quit accepting the word of greedy, lying, manipulating politicians and start looking at what's going on all around us.  People are suffering, and why?  Laws made to keep black folk from intermingling with white folk (it was believed that jazz musicians would use the evil marijuana to seduce white women, and I swear I am NOT making this up) and to protect ONE man's tree harvesting interests (because hemp, lumped in with MJ, is a superior crop for paper, among other things).

If you think the prohibition on a plant is righteous, respectfully and with love I say you are ignorant.

If you think pot is worse than meth (pot is a schedule 1 drug, meth schedule 2.  Think about THAT!) then I say this with love - you drank the Kool Aid.

I'm tired of seeing people live in fear because of their medication.  I'm tired of seeing people live in fear because of their recreation.  I'm tired of seeing people live in fear because of their avocation.

Stop the madness.

Ooooh...New Music Crush!

To What Purpose?

Hope is not terribly welcome in my life just now.  Every time I have some tiny shred of it, I am disappointed.  I think I see some cause...but then...failure to thrive.  It withers and dies, turns to dust and blows away, and I am tired of it.

For a little while, anyway, I am not permitting hope to cross the threshold.  It can sit outside, lost and forlorn and learn how it feels to be shut out.

I don't have any faith in what people say, today, either.  Words, words, lots of words, but they don't mean anything, do they?  Just words, flowing forth like a river of shit, words claiming one thing when actions show another, and I'm tired of being let down so words, too, can wait for a little while, keeping hope company wherever unwelcome liars bide their time until I am foolish enough to think they are genuine again.

Bitter?

A little.

But also tired of the whole experience.  I long for a time when I could believe like a child believes, that people are good, that things work out, that we are not helpless or useless, that words have power and meaning, that promises are kept by everyone and not just the odd few, that the world is not full of poison and monsters and a blankie and a kiss are all that's needed to fend off the shadows.

But I don't believe.

And I wonder if I will again.

Thoughtfetti

Found out that Someone's great aunt passed away last weekend.  I hope she has a peaceful journey to the next life, whatever it may be.  I should call Nanny and give her my condolences, but I just can't, right now.  My hear's too heavy, and crying on the phone is counter-productive.
~~~~~
Sprout got some helium filled balloons on her birthday. One of them is still floating up to the ceiling.  She likes to pull on the ribbon and watch if float back up.  I can't believe it's still going!
~~~~~
Nothing smells like breakfast like potatoes and onions cooking.
~~~~~
I don't much care to eat, these days, but I do.  I am trying to make things that are especially appetizing, but it isn't helping very much.  My stomach is just in knots all the time.  Unfortunately for my mid-section and arse, ice cream and chocolates seem to go down just fine.
~~~~~
I am once again reminded by the world at large that I have no real value to society.  I am worth nothing because I don't make money and must rely on others.  I am, in fact, a negative...I don't contribute but I consume.  It is unpleasant to know that I am what so many people openly revile as a social parasite.
~~~~~
I am making bacon in the oven.  I'm not sure how I feel about it...on the one hand, it sure is easier AND faster than using my trusty bacon-frying-pan-o-wonder, but on the other, it's just...not...the same...
~~~~~
I'm in a very bad frame of mind.  Once more, February has proven it is horrid.  There are bright spots in this darkness, but they are swallowed up, they can't cut the shadows, and I am tired enough to wish they would extinguish themselves rather than offer false hope that there is anything good for me in this world.  This is not self-pity.  It is simply how I feel.
~~~~~
Am I the on;y one who puts cream cheese in their scrambled eggs?  Y'all don't know what you're missing.
~~~~~
I am going to plant peas in the garden today.
~~~~~
What're you up to?

Mike Rowe's Integrity

I have been somewhat preoccupied, lately, with matters deeply personal.  Also, I don't have regular television, so I miss such trifles such as State of the Union addresses, the latest political scandals, and the unveiling of new ad campaigns (via The Super Bowl or otherwise).

I have not, however, managed to miss Mike Rowe's newest foray into the tangled web of the advertising world.

Below, please find a letter I composed entirely in my head, because really?  It's the only way I can pretend he would read it!
~~~~~

Dear Mike,

I hope I may be so familiar as to call you Mike.  I have been a fan since just after the beginning of forever.  I have admitted in public that I have a ridiculous fan-girl crush on you and, when asked what famous person I would like to have with me if I was trapped on a deserted island, I didn't have to think twice before speaking your name.  Call me selfish, but if I must spend time as a castaway, I would prefer it be with an intelligent, witty, and talented person.

I have claimed that I would listen to you read the phone book or The President's memoir.  Of the two, I would prefer the phone book.  I abhor politics and politicians, but if you ran for public office I would vote for you in a heartbeat.

I've had the good fortune to hear a few brief snatches of your singing.  There is a quality to your voice that triggers a response deep in my brain and soothes me, makes me smile.  I'd consider myself well and truly blessed to sing with you, and die a happy woman having done so.  I often laugh at the astonishment of people who don't know that you can actually carry a tune in a bucket when they first hear you singing.

I was an avid viewer of Dirty Jobs until I lost my connection to the televised world, and even after that sad day I still watched what I could on the Internet and on others' televisions.  I will listen to advertisements just to hear your voice and experience that delicious little shiver that inevitably comes with hearing you speak.

Which brings me to the meat of the matter.

You recently unveiled a new advertising campaign for WalMart.

Good for you.

Wait, what?  You were expecting another in a long line of chastisements or outright attacks?

No, sir, not from me.

You see, you have integrity.

Integrity - adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

I don't much care for Wal Mart.  I don't like their corporate ethic, the way they treat their employees, their hugely negative environmental impact.  I don't like that they bully local governments into giving them huge tax breaks and incentives to build by threatening to build elsewhere and destroy the local economy anyway.  I don't like that they actively seek to close small businesses and encourage their representatives to wager as to how long it will take before small town business areas are as devoid of life as a politician's conscience.

I have had occasion to opine that Wal Mart is a prime example of greed and corruption run rampant and is an incarnation of evil in its current state, second only to Congress.  In fact, I rarely refer to it by name, preferring to call it The Evil Empire.

I found it deeply saddening that they strayed so far from Sam Walton's ethic.

So why congratulate you for working with them?

Mike, you are about jobs.  Specifically blue collar type jobs.  You have been a staunch advocate for the working class, a voice in the wilderness concerning the folly of enforcing the idea that college is the only way.  You have not been shy about speaking of the need for blue collar workers, skilled labor, the underpinnings of our society.

The ad for Wal Mart isn't about Wal Mart.  It is about awakening the slumbering giant of our once proud manufacturing system.  Opening factories.  Creating jobs.

I don't see an ad for the Evil Empire.  I see a man well within his integrity helping to push the button that will once more start the great machine.

If Wal Mart keeps their word, follows through, freshens our economy and employs our workforce, then more power to them.  I have my doubts as to their integrity, but that's not a reflection on you, Mike.

Thank you for being so bold as to act according to your values despite risk of disapprobation from others.  I find it refreshing.

Shade and Sweetwater,
K
~~~~~
In case anyone hasn't seen it and is wondering:

Nanoseconds

In between the ticking and the tocking, down deep in between the twitching of the thinnest sweeping clock hand, there is a hesitation when the time has come to leap between the seconds and everything stops and braces for the airborne moment.

There in those depths of time so small we barely see them, note their passing, nod as they go by, there in the brief stillness, I fly to pieces and pull myself together.

All day.  Every day.  As long as I am conscious.  Fly apart, come together.

My days are composed of waiting, and in the waiting I try to be patient but I burn.  My gut burns, my throat burns, my eyes burn.  Eat?  What is eat?  Drink?  What is drink?  When soaring explosively through the endless little deaths that occupy the betweens, one does not consume, one is consumed.

Every.  Minute.  Is.  Torture.

It doesn't end with sleep.  Sleep is simply a way for the mind to transform what is experienced during the day.  Sleep twists it, turns it, knots it up and hurls it into the psyche where it drops with leaden precision onto the most fertile ground, sends down shoots and roots and thorny runners, blooming restlessness and misery in its brambles.

There is no respite.  There is only the waiting for the leap, not of faith but simply of momentum forward into whatever waits in the continuing darkness.

Lost

The thing is, it's so easy to feel lost.  There are so many things, so many events, that can cause one to turn in a direction they never expected, walk a path they have never considered and know nothing about.

It's so easy to feel lost and alone and wonder how to get to the other side of this mess without losing as well as being lost.

It's so easy to feel lost and alone and as if one is dangling above some great and bottomless pit of darkness and despair.  It is, of course, an illusion, that pit, but when you are experiencing something, it feels very real.

Hope is such a slender thread to hold onto when dangling above that pit.  Tenuous, stretched to the snapping point, one gossamer line leading back to solid ground.

Sometimes, though, hope is all there is in the midst of seeming hopelessness.

And so, I hope...

And On, and On, and On

There is an emptiness where an ache once dwelt.

Before the ache, it was joy.

I had hoped that the joy would linger, perhaps even root and grow into something steady and sure, but it faltered and failed and became a sort of shame and sorrow that became the ache that is now an emptiness.

I had hoped that perhaps there could be a healing, a restoration, even as the ache grew and grew, before it became the emptiness where the ache once dwelt.

Now it is just a sort of an echo-y place which reverberates with a dull and throbbing pain when poked too hard while being searched for the remnants of what was joy before it became sorrow and shame that morphed into the ache that segued into the emptiness.

I wish I could fill the emptiness with some good thing, some brightness, but I think it it more likely that I will have a scarred-over callous where the emptiness took the place of the ache that was once joy.

Life goes on.

Some Kind of Record

It is February fifth and I am not mired in the Deep Beiges.

Yes, you read that right.

Don't get me wrong, I still have a case of the blahs - the same case that dogs me constantly - and every now and then it dips down into the Beiges, and even the Deep Beiges, but I am not neck deep in it like I would usually be this time of year.

They usually start creeping up on me in December, hover around mid-level through January, and whomp me upside the head at the Beginning of February.  With luck, they abate in mid-March but have been known to linger well into May.

I have every reason to be sunk in the swamp right now.  Self worth?  Zip.  Self confidence?  Zero.  Self image?  Nada.  Self loathing?  In spades!  I live with (well...kinda...live near, mostly, and sometimes with in an I'm-just-visiting kind of way), and love, an abusive addict who is sliding down the slippery slope into paranoia and self hatred as if the path was greased.  I can't manage to keep any part of Casa de Crazy clean for more than a few minutes.  Some parts, in fact, haven't been clean in years.  I am constantly cleaning up vomit, feces, or urine.  No kidding.  Several times a day, one of the denizens will deposit something somewhere - kids, cats, adults, everyone is playing the game of What Noxious Effluvia Can I Leave Where?, and I'm the one who gets to find it.  Sometime I don't find it until a day or two later, because I don't always hear the event in question.  I sometimes wonder if I am in training for my next life, when surely I will come back as a dung beetle.

I caught myself reflecting on what I've been feeling lately, which is less a deep and abiding depression and more a sort of general blues with the occasional foray into Holy Crap I'm Frelling Miserable!  Funny how something as simple as brain chemistry can rock one's world.  I have been up at the cabin, house sitting for Mum.  The kids are with me, which makes it difficult to find a moment for quiet introspection, but luckily I am a master of multi-tasking, so I can examine my navel AND yell at the fractious children.

I realize that my patience is not at a minimum.  It is worn slap out.  My anger is somewhere between a slow simmer and a conflagration, and I just never know from one moment to the next what it's going to be - as much as the people around me, I am along for the ride.  Yes, I have many coping mechanisms for depression and anger and all the other things on my variety plate, but right now those coping mechanisms are not terribly effective.  As in, non-starters.

Maybe the anger is burning some of the depression off?

The next few weeks will be unpleasant on the inside.  I can feel the pause that come just before the drop, like being in the front car on the roller-coaster just as it hesitates at the apex of the highest hill.  There is something of the same sort of dreadful anticipation, too.  I know I'll live through it, and with any luck I'll be able to rush through it and charge up the next hill without lingering at the lowest point.

Meanwhile, there is cleaning to do, and possibly some quilting, and if I can't cure me, I can at least distract me.

Imbolc

Somewhere, Crocus are beginning to poke their way up through frozen dirt, slush, snow, desperate to fling themselves wide to the sun.  Somewhere, birds are finding their voices again, calling out glad tidings of light and warmth renewing.

Life is stirring.

The Goddess, worn from grieving in late Autumn and birthing at Winter's beginning, is wakening once more. She is growing stronger.

It's a time of fire, this holiday - lighting candles to welcome the sun's brightness, candles of orange, red, yellow, His colors.

Fire brings blessings, healing, and change.

Make and bless candles today for use during the year.

If the day dawns bright and clear, there will be a second (or longer) winter.

Weave Brigit's crosses from straw or wheat to hang about the house, invoking protection for the household.

The candle on our altar is burning, the light that us find our way in the darkness...may it ever burn...

Happy Imbolc.
Oh, and? Happy birthday, K2, sister of my heart!!!!!

Der Schnee, Der Schnee!!

Here in Redneck Central (somewhere south of Blogopolis in the Blue Nowhere), we don't get a lot of what you might call Winter Weather.  Sometimes it gets chilly, and on rare occasions I will put socks on.  I don't actually own a winter jacket any more, although I have a shawl and a trench coat looking thing that will do in a pinch.

What usually happens is, the days get shorter, the nights get longer, and once in a while it rains, sleets, dips below 30, and people go inside and build roaring fires to warm themselves by.

I grew up in New England, in a state where snow sometimes started in October, got serious by the end of November, and didn't think about thawing until March or April some time, if then.  I am comfortable going barefoot in the stuff, providing there's a stove or fireplace on hand for later defrosting if needed.  Or at least a nice pair of socks.  I am familiar with how to heat with and cook over fire, and how to use the great outdoors as a fridge if the power goes out and the indoor icebox can't keep its cool.

When I first moved to Redneck Central, I didn't know about the Winter Panic that set in at the merest hint that a snowflake could possibly consider thinking about flying over the state on its way to somewhere else.

The Winter Panic includes but is not limited to:  filling the vehicle's fuel tank, buying gallons and gallons of water and milk, purchasing bread and eggs as if they may never be available again, and paying usurious rates for a few sticks of wood bundled in plastic webbing and sold outside convenience stores.  People will get violent if they see someone else get the last jug of milk or the last half dozen eggs (cracked and pre-scrambled for your convenience)!

No one around here wants to drive anywhere, and if a single. solitary. snowflake. should fall, they will huddle inside their homes until the weather guru declares the all clear.

Sometimes people die because they lose power and freeze to death, or asphyxiate on fumes from their propane or kerosene heaters.  I am always saddened by these deaths...most especially the children, because children don't know better than to burn heating fuel in an improperly ventilated place...the adults should, though.

I am often unaware of what the weather is supposed to be doing...if I really need to know, I look outside or open the door, so it was news to me that we're expecting Snowpocalypse tomorrow.  We could get as much as two whole inches of snow!  And it could last (gasp) as long as Wednesday morning!  When it will melt!!  And cause...umm...moistening!!!!!

I do understand feeling concern about winter weather when it's rare.  I don't blame people for trying to be certain their families are cared for and safe.  I understand wanting to be prepared.  What I don't get is why the panic?  If you're afraid of ice on the roads, stay home unless you have no choice but to drive,  and then?  Keep to the right and don't slam on your brakes every few feet because a snowflake twitched at you.  Don't take it upon yourself to be the traffic warden and slow everyone else down by pulling into the left lane and crawling along - not everyone is unable or unwilling to drive in foul weather, and that kind of behavior causes accidents that can be fatal.  Your smug does not trump my need to continue living.  Bread, eggs, and milk do you no good if you can't keep them stored properly or cook because there's no power.  Think about what you CAN do if the electricity goes out - do you have gas heat and oven?  A fireplace?  A wood stove?  No alternate heat, but a camp stove or one-burner?  Nothing but electricity?  Do you have blankets and warm clothing?  Batteries and flashlights?  Can you safely store refrigerated foods outside or in an unused, unheated room or porch?  Do you have candles and matches, or Coleman lanterns and proper ventilation?  If you have no way to keep warm and no way to store or prepare food, can you shelter elsewhere?

The best way to avoid panic is to have a plan and be ready to implement it...and be flexible.

Remember, it's winter - there may actually be winter weather.  I know!  It's crazy!  but it's true - there could be snow every few years!

It's okay, though, because together, we will survive...and when it's over (in twenty minutes or so) and we dig out of the inches of snow, we'll smile, nod at neighbors, and have stories to tell for generations to come.

Fiddle-de-dee, Sprout Is Three!

My baby girl isn't such a baby.

She talks like she's always known how, even if sometimes I'm the only one who understands her.  She walks and runs like gravity is for mere mortals, even if occasionally she gets tangled up in her own feet.  She sleeps through the night like an old pro, even if sometimes she wakes up and want rocking again, or to crawl into bed and budge up against me with a soft sigh that fades into a sweet little snore.

She argues, bites, pinches, throws toys, hits,loves, hugs, kisses, pats, and cuddles.

I call her "Little Heart" and her brother is "Big Heart".

Her laugh comes from somewhere deep within her and bubbles up like an auditory artesian spring, and it is marvelous.

She wants to help, or do for herself, fiercely independent and angry when she can't.  She can count to two, sometimes as much as five.  She knows she does not like fresh pears, and apples with peanut butter are coveted.

She loathes the shoulder straps on her car seat and wriggles free of them whenever she can, until I catch her and sternly admonish "Put your arms back in!", which she does reluctantly, protesting.  No matter how tight I make them, how secure I make the chest buckle, she can get free.

Sometimes she like to spend hours just mashed up against me, snuggled as close as she can get.  "Will you sit on the lounge with me?" she asks, and when I do she sits, lies, sprawls on me, one hand absently holding mine or patting me, staring at the television or out the window or at nothing at all.  Maybe there is a book, or two, or a dozen.  Maybe there is conversation.  Maybe there is just us on the lounge, warm and content, covered in cats and a sheet or blanket, still for a time.

She knows how to scream.  She has lungs and volume like me.  She can scare the crap out of her father and I when she cuts loose out of the blue.  She likes to sing.  Sometimes she sings all day long, and sometimes just a little here and there, mostly songs she makes up on the spot.  There is no rhyme or reason, but it is a happy noise.  Occasionally she dances, too.  She may entice one of us to join her.

My little wild, sweet, strong, smart little girl is three.

How glad I am for having her.

Isn't, Is (SO Series)

He isn't a pedophile.

He is a sex offender, caught by a pretty girl's lies about her age, caught by her Father's anger and denial of his daughter's serial behavior with men.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is terrified of touching or being touched by children.  He is afraid that even a hug will be misconstrued by people who don't care about anything but labels.  He is careful not to hug, pick up, pat, or come in contact with children who aren't his.  He doesn't even want to push them on a swing or pick them up and offer comfort if they fall or get a boo-boo.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is concerned about changing his daughter's diaper, even at home, concerned about cleaning her bottom or her vulva too carefully, the way they should be cleaned, because he worries that people will think the worst of him.  He worries about giving his daughter a bath or letting her shower with her Papa.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is a graduate of his home state's prison system, and a product of his experience there.  He is angry, lost, hurt, resentful, bitter, confused, and damaged, and he doesn't know how to find his way to a healthier self so he is mired in it all, feeling isolated, abandoned, unwanted.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is angered by the very idea that anyone would attempt sexual activity with a child, disgusted, horrified.  He does not find children of any sex attractive in that way.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is afraid to go to the park, the Y, the indoor play places with his family, afraid it will give people the wrong idea, that he will go back to prison just for climbing on the play structure with his daughter.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is hemmed in, hampered by the laws surrounding his crime, laws that do not differentiate between his foolish mistake and the man who raped a little girl, the laws that say all SOs are the same and get the same treatment and are SOs forever.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is on the receiving end of bitterness, assumption, the consequences of his own actions and the anger of others.  He is struggling with his identity, not quite sure of his place in this world, of who or what he is.

He isn't a pedophile.

He is the man I love, the father of my daughter, the person I see disintegrating even as he is trying to rebuild himself, so much more than the indelible label that he's been given.

He is a lot of things, but he isn't a pedophile.

Watermelon in Winter

I am eating watermelon.  It's January, and I am eating watermelon.

It occurs to me that my children may experience the loss of this forever-season of fresh fruit and vegetables.  They may see an end to the grocery stores we take for granted, now.  They may lose the variety of foods we have now.

My grandchildren may never know what it's like to have fresh fruit in winter.  They may never know what a lemon or lime tastes like, an orange, certain types of grapes and apples, bananas.

Bananas.

There's a threat to the banana.  Some kind of blight.  The banana our great-grandparents ate is not the same one we eat - theirs died out.  If this blight spreads, there will be no more.  No more banana bread, banana muffins, banana pops, banana smoothies...all that will remain is artificial flavoring, fake banana that doesn't taste right, but when the real thing is gone, who will know?

GMO plant life is contaminating heirloom varieties, and the companies that manufacture the GMOs are suing and winning over this contamination, forcing farmers to destroy their seed stock, pay fines, even shut down their family farms because wind and pollen don't recognize field boundaries.

People treat this planet like a giant rubbish bin, tossing their trash wherever they stand without even a twinge of conscience.  They treat our Earth like Gurgi's bag of endless crunchings and munchings, like there will never be an end to our finite resources, and if there is, who cares as long as it isn't during THEIR lifetime?

Fresh water is a joke.  What fresh water?  It is ALL polluted, ALL full of the medication our neighbors upstream peed out, ALL full of crap to one degree or another.  What passes for fresh has been treated with chemicals and additives, made "safe", but its still full of what's put there and what gets int it as it rushes through plastic pipes to our homes.

The oceans are so polluted, so over fished, they can't sustain life.  Will my children, my grand children, know what wild salmon tastes like?  Cod?  Tuna?  Crab?  Lobster?  Farm raised just isn't the same, and besides, we NEED life in the ocean.  Imagine all that vast expanse, dead.

Red meat is a nightmare.  So many diseases, now, and contaminants, drugs and chemicals.  It's not meat, it's a chemistry experiment.  What is it doing to us?  Chicken, too.  Wonder why your 7 year old is developing breasts?  McNuggets.  All that chicken.  All those hormones.

Our government has all but declared war on raw foods, local sourcing, untreated, unpasteurized, untainted meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, products.

A great deal of what is called "food" isn't - it's chemicals, fillers, artificial this and FD&C that.  It's processed and treated, pulverized into paste, rolled out, and reshaped to be a more perfect version of itself.

Here I sit, eating watermelon in winter.  I paid a few bucks for a small container of ready-to-eat chunks.  I wonder what the real price is?

Sing Along, If You Like

Feeling the tunes today...

Peace in Pieces

I am wondering how it is I can feel both immensely heavy and entirely empty at the same time.  Every movement is leaden - I feel as though I am striving against some sort of invisible force, an insignificant little bug fighting its way through a sea of resin even as it hardens into amber.

Only I find the results less lovely than amber, which I always want to lick or suck on as if it were some sort of candy.  

At the same time, I am poking around inside myself and find...nothing.  Well, perhaps not nothing.  There are the children, a suffusion of love drenching every part of my psyche.  My mother.  My friends.  If not nothing, then certainly there's a great deal more emptiness than fullness, and there is a veil both ephemeral and impenetrable between me and what/who I love.

If I could be still and quiet for a bit, a statue of myself stowed in some dark corner, disregarded, I feel I could perhaps reach within and twist things around a bit, remove or bore through the veil and energize my limbs so that I am human again, not shambling stone.

There is no peace.  I am, for all intents and purpose, a single mother with two children who don't know or understand the value of a few minutes of peace or silence, who both feel the need, are driven, in fact, to speak every thought that goes through their heads whether the listened wants to hear them, and both insist not only on pouring out their nattering thoughts in a ceaseless tumble of words, they require interaction and response to even the most inane things.

They do not respect meditation, reading, conversation with others, or even sleep.

This adds to the heaviness, to the emptiness, because I feel I should want to hear them, want to interact, should feel delighted and honored to have two articulate, creative, imaginative children.

There's a thumping refrain in my head...like the bass thudding relentlessly from some trendy club, spilling out into the streets and causing nervous twitching in passersby.  Peace.  Peace, peace, peace...

In bits and pieces, moments, minutes, I just want a little peace, and then a bigger peace, and then a surfeit.

Perhaps then I will find what I need to set aside this dense nothingness, this heavy lightness of being.