Jellyfish

A friend pointed out to me that avoidance of this blog is self-centered laziness.
Plain and simple.
She wasn't trying to say this to me.  She merely reminded me of my own principles.
One of which is this:

If I pray for myself only, I will spin in circles.
If I pray for the ability to be useful to those around me, I will receive more than I could ask for.
I will also be freed from the painful and fruitless obsession with my own self.
My prayer does not need to change.  I do.

Thank you for your email L.C.

So now I will tell you a story:

Standing at the kitchen sink trying to justify not eating today.
The warm water laces through my fingers long enough for a pause.
I smile.
I have forgotten once again.
Peace is not in the repression of appetite.
It is in the gentle handling of it.

Sophie at the Vegas meet - looking very much like her Dad.

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas with my 10 year-old daughter Sophie.
She competed in an enormous gymnastics meet.
The arena was a beehive of bouncing bodies in tight sequins and spandex.
Sophie's dad was there.
For years after our divorce, his face was impenetrable granite.
Now I sit next to him as she cascades the floor and tilts her chin up sharply as only gymnasts do.
We were there when she fell off the beam and cried afterwards.
We were there, not together, but side by side.

We sat at the same table when the team went to the Garden Buffet inside the casino.
I ate cocktail shrimp, sushi and olives.
I hugged my limbs up tightly at first, but then relaxed when I realized, I knew this place.
I watched him swallow jalepeno peppers and suck the heat back through his teeth.
His body bunched up and he put a fist to his lips.
He is a boxer about to throw a knock-out punch, but he knows he's not supposed to in public.
I throw my head back and laugh with eyes closed.
His mannerisms are familiar.
I have seen him do this 100 times, yet he is always shocked to find that jalepeno peppers are hot.
I still enjoy who he is.

The next day we took the girls to the aquarium.
I stood, fists in pockets, hypnotized by the jellyfish.
Their delicate peach ripples are indiscriminate of up and down.
They float and spin like slow-motion kites.
My eyes fill with tears.
I try to keep them in, but I let the sadness fill me.

I am never here.

I never get to parent Sophie with her Dad.
She is so much of him and so much of me.
I love them both.
She never gets to be surrounded by the two people who adore her the most.
She only gets one at a time.
I used to think this was my fault.  We all thought it was my fault.
On the other side of blame and anger and regret is a sadness.
Not a bad sadness, just a vast space where jellyfish would float.

I linger behind the group.
I pass Jeff in the dark.
I want to tell him all that I understand now.
Instead I sit on the bench in the aquarium tunnel and watch the sharks swim over my head.
I take slow steady breaths.
Don't wish this away, Sarah.  Feel this.  It is your grief.  You have earned it.
True grief is precious, and not easy to come by.  It is a beacon.
It shows me what is important.

Sophie and her Dad in our house the year before
our divorce - 2005 - this family is still important.

killer basketball

Just read that Lance Armstrong came clean to Oprah about blood doping.
He fiercely denied it for 10 years.
I hope he feels peace now.
In my head I can hear all the voices shreak,
"How dare he!  How could he lie to everyone like that!  How ought to be ashamed of himself!"
I'm sure he is ashamed.

I know exactly how he could do it.
I have wanted something so bad, that I warped my own reality to keep it.
It rolled and gained and grew bigger than me until the only thing left was to run - hope I didn't get crushed.
It seemed insane and pointless to stop, turn and face the dense mass I'd created.
I'm so small and it is so big.  I can't deal with this now.
I'd tell myself,
"Just today.  You just have to do this today.  Just drink a bit to take the edge off.  Just one more pill.  For the anxiety.  Just no food today.  Just coffee today.  Just one more time, and then tomorrow...."
Justify.

Funny how the same mantra which feeds addiction also kills it.

I remember when all of that stuff was in the news about him.
I didn't want to believe it.
They stripped him of his titles and it made me mad.
I couldn't understand why I felt defensive for a person I didn't know.

I still catch myself running.
But when I turn, the chasing mass is the size of a basketball.
It thuds at my feet when I stop to face it.
I pick it up.
Brush the dust, and discover it to be the same ol' basketball.
I smile at the game.  I don't have to play it.
I walk back to what I was doing before the basketball spooked me.
And as I walk, I look up to the sky and say thank you behind my forehead.
I say thank you in my chest, and thank you in my stomach.
Out and down my legs where I find my feet in their rhythm.  They play their one-note song.
It has been with me always, and when I hear it, I am home.  There is nowhere I must run to.

I found my image on this blog.  I was impressed with it.  and I agree.
http://www.thenakedmonk.com/2012/09/03/the-trouble-with-mindfulness

pink-footsie-jammies

No pringles for breakfast yet.
Just coffee thus far.
Beckam is running around the house naked, drooling onto his belly.
I am trying not to be too busy for him.
I stop washing dishes and squat down so he can fall into my chest.
His little fingers pat me on the shoulder.
He is telling me thank you.
His body is morphing from baby into tiny man.
Muscles show under his skin. 
His chest puffs out like a baby gorilla and propels him forward.
Legs follow his upper body momentum, and he is almost running.

Sophie is moping around in her pink footsie pajamas.
Her hair is matted.  It looks like she has been sleeping for days.  She has.
She is truly sick, which isn't nearly so fun as being kind of sick and staying home from school.
Last night she moaned, "I don't wanna stay home again tomorrow."

I'm kind of like this too.
When my body is well, and I am eating moderately, exercising....in flow......out flow....health.
I want to eat.
I want to make eye contact. 
I want to go to the grocery store. 
I want to step out into the cold and march up the hill to begin a run.
I want to listen to Sophie's prayer before bed.
I want to......

But when I get caught in the whirlpool of food obsession, it all seems like a chore.
I don't want to get dressed. 
I don't want to answer the phone. 
I don't want to wash my hair. 
I don't want to read Pepper a book. 
It all feels like pushing through plaster which is quickly heating up and hardening.

Susanna Coffey
 She captures what it feels like to be alone

This is me when I am sick.
It starts with eating too little and ends with eating too much.
Simple.
Then I am in the bog.

Right now I am coming out of the time when I eat too much.
Not a full blown binge.
Just a constant dribble of food making static in my consciousness.
I am like a mom who says,
"I just leave the t.v. on all the time, ya know, for background noise."

This has always seemed insane to me.
Why would you want to immerse a child in chaos?
Why not teach them to listen?

Susanna Coffey
This is why emptiness is scary

I know why.
Because emptiness is scary.
It doesn't have to be, but it is.
I try to fill it up. 
I want to learn to rest in it.
I am still learning how.
Maybe it would be easier if the emptiness were quiet.
Then it might feel like rest.
Instead it is surrounded by kid noise and domestic duty.
But it is still there.
And I don't want to be afraid of it.

Cinderella

Breakfast = 10 pringles and 3 cups of coffee.  Also 2 bites of kids' waffles.
Really awesome waffles which I made from scratch and refridgerated the batter for a week.
Sneaking food never works.
It always adds up.
In Geneen Roth's book Women Food and God, she talks about sneaking food.
She equates it to sneaking feelings.
If I am having a hard time knowing what to write, it is probably because I am being sneaky.
I can't find myself.
It is a chore - this honesty.
But it won't disintegrate if I look away. 

Like any other chore, it is never finished.
Making the bed,
Unloading the dishwasher,
Apologizing to the husband for being wrong.
Picking up Beckam when he cries....

I do this constantly.
I just growled at  him like a fed up Momma Bear.
He was hovering at my desk pushing buttons on the keyboard.
He looks up at me through orange strands of hair.
He needs a haircut.
He wimpers his "pick me up" sound.
I grasp his arm and lead him away.
This doesn't work either.
He just circles back like a yo-yo.
Denying him is like trying to deny my appetite.
Both ridiculous endeavors which I engage in daily.

I have always read books about transcendance.
My hunger for it is insatiable.
Ironic.

But right now my life is about chores.
It is the daily grind of caring for children.
I cannot expect to be in a state of ecstacy for longer than 5 minutes.
I do get those minutes though.
In the sweaty euphoria after a run when the sky opens up all her colors for the few of us who are watching.
I get it lying with Andrew at the end of the day in our warm cocoon of down comforter and a day lived well.
I feel it when I step back from painting and all the colors are right where they ought to be.
I get it when I stop everything, pick up Beckam and hold him cheek to cheek in the rocking chair.
I can't blame him for wanting that feeling.
I want it too.

When I accept the chores, the appetite, the child,  I can handle them gently.
My energy is not wasted.
Grace help me be like Cinderella today.
Help put on my apron with a song, and find light beneath the dust.

On the Road....still

I am kicking around the idea of ending this blog.
Flipping the idea over with my foot to see how it lies, to see if it is a good one.
My goal was 100 posts.  This will be post number 78.
I started writing February 29 of last year.
I thought to close it on the same day....funny thing is....February 29th won't exist again until 2016.
Is this a sign?
Do I need to keep going until then?
I've been reading back over my old posts.
I had so much to say then.  Now it seems I don't.
However, this is the nature of creativity, art, love...
There are times when it seems the initial juice is all dried up.
I look around, and the lake has become a dry, cracked bowl of elephant skin.
Is this the same illusion?
Probably.

I'll not decide now. 

It's just that I am realizing how many limitations this blogging business comes with.
I can't write everything.
I offend people.
I am afraid of my own stream of consciousness.  By nature, it has no filter.
I don't want the responsibility of consideration of others.
I want to say everything, and I can't.
I am a beligerent teenager.

Jack Kerouac

I am crouched in the corner, thick black eyeliner, with my headphones playing The Cure.

Andrew and I went on a date to the movies.
They played a preview.
It was Jack Kerouac's On The Road.
It made me miss the life of spontaneous drugs, sex and poetry.
I sat in my seat, salivating, missing the wild hair and whiskey-sick stomach.
Missing the road stretched in front of me, a cigarette billowing out the cracked window.
Back then I was separate, and nothing tethered me.

I know better.
My brain knows better.
But then I hear the line:

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”

― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

 

I used to be mad in that romantic way, in that beautiful destruction, and Jack Kerouac was my muse from 50 years away.

And I ache for that freedom.

The only one keeping me from it is myself.

I know this.

 

I know drugs and alcohol are a dead end.

I know starvation is a dead end.

I know reckless hitch-hiking looses it's romance and lands me still alone.

I know .... I know ... I know .... will never reveal magic.

The magic is not in the knowing.

It cannot be found by going backwards.

So on I write, perhaps until 2016.

I will try to know less.