Poem: The Orange by Wendy Cope

 At lunchtime I bought a huge orange –

The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave –
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Also her villanelle

Some Rules

Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e-mails when you’re drunk.

You fire off something fierce. You’re sunk.
It’s irretrievable. It’s signed.
You feel your spirits going “clunk.”

Don’t hide your face with too much gunk,
Especially if it’s old and lined.
Don’t answer e-mails when you’re drunk.

Don’t live with thirty years of junk—
Those precious things you’ll never find.
Stop, if the car is going “clunk.”

Don’t fall for an amusing hunk,
However rich, unless he’s kind.
Don’t answer e-mails when you’re drunk.

In this respect, I’m like a monk:
I need some rules to bear in mind.
Stop, if the car is going “clunk.”
Don’t answer e-mails when you’re drunk.

A Friend Calls with News of Their Glioblastoma

 

 “Even if optimism of outcome slides off the table of possibilities, optimism of experience can still be yours. “ – Comment by Jennie of NC in New York Times on October 3, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/03/books/what-does-it-feel-like-sophie-kinsella.html#commentsContainer

2024 Poem - When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver

 

When I am Among the Trees

Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

My Mother's Savage Daughter

 

Happy New Year 2021!

 Wow. 

What a year, huh?

Thrilled to have a new one. Wishing blessings and better times for Americans and the world. 

Pandemic?!

What an unexpected time. Living through history right now. Trying to be the kindest person I can be.

What's Normal Anyway?

I'm sorry.

I've been coping with a lot for a really long time. From the outside, my life always looks admirable and enviable.

And it has its great moments, that's for sure. If I couldn't live in the moments, I don't know how I would keep going.

From the inside, my life is often a tough place to be.

The last two decades have been a lot. Lots of challenge and some loss. Lots to adjust to.  The past five years have been particularly demanding, and I've had to put my attention into a lot of different places to keep things going for the people in my life.

Normally, I try to keep a fairly optimistic outlook. I find it helps to focus on the good, to build from what's positive. I've been blessed with a certain resilient optimism that comes to my aid time and time again.

Lately, however, I've been aware of the dark undercurrents as well. I've had to face the fact that I probably live with a subtype of bipolar disorder. A strong but fast moving variation that means I go up and down fast, and I never know when or for how long. It has colored my whole life.

So, yes, I look like a success because when I'm good, I get things done. I work, I interact, I nurture my friendships and family. For hours on most days, I'm able to function well. For other hours, not so much. That's when people don't hear from me and I vanish into the quiet of my efforts alone. But since it's not for weeks at a time, no one has ever noticed.

Except me. Except now. Except ... maybe everybody, or at least most people, have something going on deep inside. Some challenge, some trauma, some not-quite-neurotypical disorder that is pulling at their days. Maybe the excuses that any of us have for our behavior, our actions, our past, our moods are the excuses that many of us have.

I don't really know. I try not to think too much about stuff these days. I don't write much. I just do what I need to do. I don't talk to friends. I don't go out. I work and I get stuff done. And I live for those great moments.

Hey - Kites are pretty beautiful and we would miss them if they weren't there any more

I've been turning it over quite a bit. It's probably true that life moves you on along your side of the river.  But it's equally true that it's nice to have friends, someone to wave to across the rushing water. Knowing that there is activity and settlement on the other bank.

It's lonely without friends. It's lonely without any beautiful kites in the sky that you can at least look at when you need to let your spirit soar a bit. When you need to dip and glide like a bird and have a moment of freedom and just a moment when you imagine a life lived above the river where it isn't the formidable boundary that it is today.

So build a new kite. Put it up into the air. Let its bright colors, its shimmering vibrancy ascend. Make it special, make it yours, a kite that is about you, a kite that shows the best of you, the you of you. A kite that shows where you stand on the ground, and, as such, inspires those both near and far, reaches out to touch the hearts of friend and stranger, and even those in-between. And those on more than one path so that they have the guide of kindness, compassion, loyalty, affection and true intention to accompany them on their journey.

Rivers and Bridges, Part II

Therapy, and more therapy, has been a dominant theme of this summer. Sudden, traumatic events and then the long unfolding of coping and adjusting, coming to terms with self and others.

All of life is this constant negotiation, this silver stream of awareness and adjustment, a peering forward and a turning back to see the landscape one has travelled.

Event past, times long ago, lie like a beautiful village on the other side of a rushing river. The cottage is there, the place you once inhabited with its charming shutters and honeysuckle bowers, the periwinkle roses that grow near the door. A lovely place that cottage. And the people who lived there, you cared for, you thought of as friends. you think of as friends.

Those lovely people, bright, strong, handsome as they continue on about their own lives. On their side of the riverbank, near the cottage where you used to dwell, the place where you rested a while on your travels.

You can glimpse the people, that life. But it is gone to you now. The river is wide, and deep, and fast, and it carries you on to your life on this side. Is there any way to cross that river, to revisit that previous time? If the people are occupied in their daily tasks, and the river is a barrier, if life has moved forward and time has carried on, is there any hope, reason, purpose, good to come of building a bridge, of finding a boat, of sailing a kite to the other shore?

I have no answers for this. I suspect that the river once crossed is not meant to be recrossed. But these are the images that come to my mind today, as I think of the lives of those who have played a role in my life.

Rivers and Bridges, Part 1 - There's a Chair in My Room

Saw this on BTVS this week again. Ah, remember the 90s?

There's a chair in my room...

where I used to sit...

Took a pencil and I wrote

The following on it...

If You're Going Through...

Hell, keep going.*

It's been a long, tough summer. Too hot, too dry.

Too many emotions.

I feel older and tired.

Quick summary -

I've spent the last years writing less and working more. Caring for family members. Dealt with the horrors of Alzheimer's. Very many caregiving duties. Moved my parents out of their home of 40 years, and took another entire year to sell and clear out all of its excessive contents. Had to sell the house. Lost my Dad. Grieving. And pulling things together at all sorts of levels for Mom.

Watched my children grow into teens and adults. Watched them struggle in school. Watched school not help. Transitioned the oldest very successfully into a very good college that she loves. Missed her being in her childhood and our home.

Working my hardest to help the younger one do the same. She's a different person, so very different needs, currently involving much patience and therapy at exorbitant cost financially, emotionally, and chronologically.

Keeping it together. Enjoying the blessings. Still have a stable, loving family despite all of the stresses and stressors. Working more than ever and hoping to work even more when B leaves home.

Trying to remember or rediscover who I am, what I like, what I do, and how I help the world

The world needs help, and people need kindness. I try to live that in my days the best I can.

That's me. That's where my blog went. And where my time and energy went. And what I'm doing.
Maybe I'll come back here. Or come forward here and move ahead.

Try not to get swept away by excessive heat - either from climate changes or from world events or from personal struggles.

Stay cool.


**************************************
*Winston Churchill

After an absence of so many months

 

Hello, old friend, my writing

 

 

 

So much to

Say I can't

Unlock the words

Lenten Reflections - a Poem a day - The Present by W.S. Merwin

From Poetry Daily

 

 

The Present

As they were leaving the garden
one of the angels bent down to them and whispered

I am to give you this
as you are leaving the garden

I do not know what it is
or what it is for
what you will do with it

you will not be able to keep it
but you will not be able

to keep anything
yet they both reached at once

for the present
and when their hands met

they laughed


By W. S. Merwin

All Life is One, and All is Change - Oscar Wilde Poem

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See by Oscar Wilde Next

(Excerpted from "Panthea") We are resolved into the supreme air, We are made one with what we touch and see, With our heart’s blood each crimson sun is fair, With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth’s giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . . Not we alone hath passions hymeneal, The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth At daybreak know a pleasure not less real Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . . Is the light vanished from our golden sun, Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair, That we are nature’s heritors, and one With every pulse of life that beats the air? Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass. And we two lovers shall not sit afar, Critics of nature, but the joyous sea Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be Part of the mighty universal whole, And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul! We shall be notes in that great Symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live World’s throbbing heart shall be One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

Energy Drained

Boy, these last few months have not been easy ones. 2016 turned out to be so much work. Just nonstop responsibilities.

I am really struggling to keep up with my responsibilities as a parent and guide my children towards their own successful lives. My daughters' issues are really affecting me. I literally find that I do not have the physical or emotional space to have anything like my own life. I am constantly putting my own needs aside in favor of meeting the needs of others. It has been exhausting.

Friends would give the advice of not to do it. But it's not that simple. I cannot not do it or what needs to get done will not get done. Suffering will ensue.

I am very tired.

"Are You Okay?"

Sometimes we are so busy with our own lives that we don't take the time to stop and notice the others all around us. Or sometimes, we are so wrapped up with responsibilities that maybe we simply cannot pause to interact.

But, still, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't care. I continue to care about other people, even if I don't always make the time to be mindful of their lives, or even kind as they go through their days.

Still, I hope I can always remember that in my heart, I care deeply about the well being of all those in this world. I hope that others around me, both near and far, are having the best possible days. That sharing is possible. That caring is eternal.

Even when I do feel unable to smile, or to chit chat, or to ask, with true sincerity and warmth, "Are you okay today?"

A Writing Retreat? Now that Sounds like Heaven...

 This sounds just like heaven right now. A simple getaway. All about writing. Interesting, literary people and food, wine, and creativity in France. Hummmmm...

The next retreat is this autumn. I am sorely tempted!

 

 

For the record, after my last little burst of complaint, I continued to buckle down and I did indeed slog through. That proposal is done and submitted. Well on its way to bringing funding, I believe. And onward I go!

Sloggy

Sometimes writing is really a slog. Since most of life is a slog these days, writing feels extra –sloggy. Sort of soggy and waterlogged like tromping through a swamp with thick mud adhering to the shoes and sucking the feet down with each slow step forward. Sloggy, sloggy, boggy, muddy slog.

Gotta write something, and fast, because I’ve got other stuff to do. None of it fun either. None of it terrible but none of it fun. All about deadlines and worst cases and preparing to handle things even harder than now. When now is actually plenty hard enough, thank you.

The creativity in my brain feels like it has shrunk down into a little dried pea, rattling around in a pot emptied by worries and scoured black by cares. Just a little dried speck, trying to juice up and give me enough words to competently just describe a simple program. I’m mean, I’m not even looking for REAL creativity, I’m not even trying to write something fun and made up, where characters become people, people that other people actually care about for years or even decades after their creation, in the way that fans are still attending conventions to argue passionately about Buffy and her ilk almost two decades later. No, I’m just trying to straightforward, vanilla pudding describe something. Maybe persuade slightly. Something I should have mastered at age 15. And I am stuck, stuck, stu…

Life in Fragments

Feeling a bit fragmented lately.

I'm not sure that everything around me -- all this life I'm living -- is the life I'm meant to be living. I'm not sure that it is quite the life I intend.

Although I am content with the various aspects of my life, yet, I feel like I am missing something. Something I want to be doing. Something that I am putting off as I grapple each day with the many demands of each hour. Something that I should not put off indefinitely as time keeps passing and bringing with it increased age.

My life feels a bit off center because it is fragmented. My life is fragmented because my days are fragmented. Divided up, literally, into chunks of hours with certain responsibilities assigned to each. With not quite enough chunks right now for the things that I want to explore.

A big part of it is being forced into caretaking that I was not ready to take on. With my Dad so ill, and my Mom struggling so in caring for him, I have had to step forward and accept the role of helping them both. Even though I feel inadequate to do it, what I do accomplish still helps a great deal. We have made huge strides in coping and in improving their lives in the last year. It does feel like a burden of care though.

So... I'm back to writing a bit. Trying to find the center of my core.

That sort of thing.

Don't Let Yesterday Use Up Too Much of Today*

Ahh. A working lunch.

For the first time in ages. I'm in a pleasant outdoor café, enjoying the balmy weather and the words appearing before me.

Although when I think of it, it's not that I haven't worked in ages; it's that I never remember to make time to eat lunch in my busy days. So it is a nice, indulgent change of pace to be out in public, enjoying the venue, working my work, with a nice meal as well.

Ever since summer, I've been scrambling week after week to keep up with all of my grants/clients, my other job, and my family's needs. I always feel about two weeks behind. But, slowly but surely, I keep plugging away at it all. Now, I sit here, almost completely up to date. On the cusp of looking for MORE work even.

It really is groundbreaking.

I might even get around to making some New Year's resolutions, now that I have some energy to follow through with them. )

*credit - Will Rogers