... and then....

my mother used to say.. "do what is right and you will feel right"... i.e. usually a response to overly-emotional me at a point where i was feeling down, tired, sad, adrift somewhere upon my very own melancholy sea - and her patience was, no doubt, arriving at its rather finite limits.
another favorite turn of phrase... "no one can make you feel bad, amy - unless you give them permission..." and here i find myself feeling, once again, bad, like i do in no other spot in the world but in my childhood home - all warm, cozy, comfortable and beautifully decorated. and i find, again and again, at the end of each return home, i am never more miserable than in this place. what does it to me, i wonder? old demons, once thought forgotten, now re-discovered, just dozing, waiting like savage kittens curled up on newly upholstered rugs, waiting to pounce - attack. i never feel so weighted down.. so completely futile & pent up...
it's true. this week is no ordinary visit. i have come down this weekend not for some forced familial merriment but rather to commemmorate the passing of my grandfather. he died a little over a week ago, a fact which i received by text. yesterday we gathered at his small church, sang hymns, shared stories and condolences and ate storebought cookies and speared bits of fruit on tiny paper plates. people, mostly those whom i have never met, shared wonderful stories and thought about my grampa - papa - and the life he led - the warmth, the gifts, the strength he shared - and it wasn't all so difficult really. my grandfather lived to be nearly 84 years old and had a full life. and i believe his spirit is free and at peace now - death, this, it seems, and the amorphous glow of eternity, these things, it seems, i can handle. it's the living - the day-to-day mundanities and sheer silliness - of myself and others - these are the things that get me.

it's so short - at 28, i am aware of the time i have already spent - & at times squandered. what's a life for??? how do you shape your time, your energies, your soul.... into something that, when it has all passed, you can look back upon and be proud of? thankful. for the time you've been granted. for the ways you've given back some small piece of the grace and beauty you've received.

i'm so annoyed!!! by everything, today. by television and new clothes and shopping and weight loss and hearing aids and politics and politeness at the expense of truthfulness and small talk and lipstick and bedspreads and the passing of time... the goddamn american dream.....

such a short time. and what does any of us have to show???? "do what is right and you will feel right..." these words again as i contemplate... for the umpteenth time again... always a whisper... a billowing prayer.... just how then... show me...how to LIVE....

...pillars of salt...

..this past week has found me flummoxed, and pissy. a last night text-conversation with my friend reads something like her offering to come over and cook dinner for me and me telling her to best keep her distance till the spell of the grumpy bee-atch has run its course. and why? i talk to people every day who have real problems so much greater than mine. if anything, my issues come down more to those of the mind than those of the body. i am blessed. so amazingly. and yet, sometimes, it's all i can do to remind myself to get up each day, start again, that life is bountiful and good, that there is a world of shimmering possibility blooming right there at my feet. step in.

something about seeing the forest for the trees, the mountains for the valleys, the flowers for the shit in the soil.... i guess it all just depends what you're looking at....

my parents spoonfed me on biblical lore and sometimes pieces of that mythic language will find their way back into my ever-looping conversation.. and i'm thinking of this one story... this woman & her family are being ferried away by angels .... their city behind them is going down in an avalanche of celestial schrapnel and the one thing they tell her is to "Don't Look Back!". as she's being carried to safety and freedom & life, her whole family and self intact, they tell her, don't look back on what you've left - on what is lost. And she does. and then right there, she is turned into a pillar of salt....

and this week I feel that. the tug of the old, snapdragon demons.. tugging at my sleeve, imploring me to give in - turn my back on the possibility that lays before me and plant my feet in the sludge of bygone memories & dreams.... and the message is clear.... that house of dreams - well, baby, it's on fire.. and you're running toward the haven of beyond... what is.... keep your feet on the path, and your head cocked forward..... and don't stop until you reach a place - a clearing in your mind - where you can bless it, release it..... and leave the past behind.

...listening...

my teacher once said you must approach the thing as if it already exists... as if you are approaching this large mound of clay, and the sculpture, your vision, already exists within this mound. your job is merely to be attentive, listening, responsive... so that you can tease that thing into being...

YOU MUST BE CONDUIT - a clear, fluid channel - bringing all your insights, gifts, grit, truth & abilities - & lay them at the feet of this thing.... that you may hear it sing...

so today.. i find myself... just... Listening.....

...the ever-ready drawing board...

well. the time has come. again. re-load. re-boot. re-do. with merely a scant five-and-a-half weeks left before i remount my new, god-only-hopes improved one-woman-show (quite a few little hyphens to this morning's post, eh???) - i am tempted to say it - i'm fucked. but no matter. the goal this week? nose to the grindestone. and hard. we wanna see gravel in those pores!!! 4 hours of writing a day, re-vamping, editing, revising, whatnot. and hopefully, what will emerge at the end of the week, will be a thing of power, precision, poetry!!! resist the urge to do that extra load of dishes that is taunting you from afar, check the e-mail, feed the dog....
do not pass go, do not collect one million dollars. just. write. like your life depends upon it. and then. do it some more. to all my friends and family, whom i have every intention of utterly abandoning this week.... wish me luck! hopefully what shall emerge shall be a slightly brighter me & a spot of color on my now-blank-canvas....

...amidst the quiet...

my friend has this theory that you find your brilliance at those moments when you feel you have nothing to say... those times of quietude, when you find yourself, amazingly, unpossessed of the need to rage, to cry, to sing... just simply & blessedly still. quiet. @ peace. i once saw this book (written by another amy - probably why i picked it up in the first place) where this woman merely chronicled the day-to-day goings-on of her ordinary life.. kids to school, baking cookies, that sort of thing...and i thought.. what is the f-ing point?! who cares?

but,on second thought, maybe that - is just it. the role of the artist is not so much to live a rarified & quixotic existence - occasionally touching down on terra firma to report upon their outrageous goings-on, but perhaps merely just to immerse themselves in the ordinary fabric of the day-to-day, and by virtue of their own attentive eye & heart & grit... and find for themselves, amongst this most quiet little landscape... the thread of the extraordinary...