Riding the Light –

Blog

  • My Sister Died On Her Birthday

    My Sister Died On Her Birthday

    Which I thought preternaturally tidy. She always was a tidy woman. I wonder what will happen to her things, to those remainders of life left in drawers & desks, to shoes unworn at the end since she zipped about in a “mobility chair.” Another oxymoron.

    My daughter was ready to go out to Arizona from Virginia when she heard Aunt Teri was in hospice care. But when she called with flight arrangements, my brother-in-law said, “She passed last night.” And we have heard nothing since.

    For all her computer skills, either Teri left no plan, no will, no scrap of “here’s who you contact if” paper. But I’m not one to talk about it since I’ve nothing either except conversations with friends none of whom would know how to contact my kid. Guess I’d best get something in writing.

    Hell, I’ve barely enough to live on, let alone save for term insurance. I keep telling people “just toss the body down some abandoned elevator shaft.” And I’ve moved into an apartment built over a former Jiffy Lube with my unit atop the pit – a simplification if I’ve ever heard one. I don’t want to be a burden, I don’t want to cost anyone anything, I don’t want to have my face on a jar next to the restaurant registers with “Help bury this woman!” crayoned atop it. Yet this may still come to pass.

    Take this month for example – rent increase, insurance due, deferred car payment impossible tho the bank said I could do that in February. I wonder how people do it…same as me, on a fixed income but a floating tsunami of a bill lurking on the horizon. Yeh, sure, I’ve got $500 somewhere, let me check the sock drawer. I’m counting on Valentine’s Day business to float me up n over like some innertube on the vast swells of a cashiered life.

    I’m running for office here in town. The other candidates have 4-5 4 x 8′ signs all over the street corners – vote for me!! I have a $20/week ad I’m running, cleverly changing the lines. I was gifted $166 for my campaign. No epic Trump battles of the wallet bulge here.

    So, whatever. I move along, steady as a plough horse crossing the field to the barn. I have food to eat & enough to pay the regular bills. I’ll put the insurance on one of the credit cards, grit my teeth & make payments. Maybe I could send the other card to my daughter & say, just charge it, honey.

    Hope St. Peter doesn’t run credit checks. Gives new meaning to that old song, “I owe my soul to the comp’ny sto…”

  • Sick

    Sick

    I’m coming to the end of so many things: activities, ideas, belongings…One by one these fall away; relationships, favorite sweatshirts subjected to too many adventures with dryers, foods that once hit the spot.

    So much has already ended: there is so much more to go. Relationships fall away; others come forward to fit into place. Clothes just wear out or my body assumes a shape where they cannot be worn anymore. Shoes I wore on sidewalks in Delaware don’t work on the gravel out here. Ya know? Just when I thought I had it all set to smooth, it turns out to be set to stun. I appreciate all the change as growth. Often it’s in response to a vague prayer made more powerful far in background of origin.

    Last Friday I had pork. Now I have enjoyed the occasional porkchop. I’ve read over & over pork is not the healthiest meat but hey, I’m not sure any meat is healthy today what with hormones & additives & all that jazz. (Sadly, I can’t even be sure of my vegetables anymore. T or C is at the last stop of the food trucks, whatever color things are when they get here, they remain until consumed.)

    This single chop followed a week of lazing out on processed food – a Salisbury steak, frozen pizza, finishing a bag of pepperoni I’d bought for Christmas fare…& the excellent, transcendent bacon Mario serves at the Grapevine twice in this same week. My body called a complete, total, utter halt to all of it. My body complained vigorously & copiously to the upstairs john about tolerance levels, helpings, preservatives & much more than I thought I had in me,  which is always the way when one begins the process of reverse peristalsis. I cannot remember the last time I was sick, let alone so enthusiastically. Was it time for a purge? I couldn’t just get a regular cold & go through a couple Kleenex boxes?

    I was knocked out the next day, I laid on the couch & snoozed. I held the cat & napped. I went to bed in my sweats since I was too chilled to change to pj’s. I remained semi-conscious & other than feeding Fitz, did not go into the kitchen except for water. Oh, and sugary juice that claimed to be natural. But a little sugar in these circumstances is not forbidden & the pretend-tartness provided flavor to my thirsty palate.

    Very unusually, I had an event that Friday night. The only drink available was coffee & I had a cup of “Black Knight.” Shoulda known better, as they say. Something named for a dark star & my thunderous stomach made no good mix together.

    After a bout like this, such physical upheaval (excuse the term), I know to watch for Change – capital letter “C”. Yes. I am “off” coffee. Made a cup this morning, had a sip, poured it out for lemon ginger tea. (I can hear my non-java friends cheering.) At another time in my life, my mind would’ve convinced body that I need coffee. Would have pushed me into the kitchen to make another cup. Where will I be without coffee? Don’t we need at least one addiction to function happily in this life? And last night, I went to bed hungry after a half-bowl of my own chili eaten in good company with a friend. As first meal was a scrambled egg Sunday morning, it went down easily. I don’t favor going to bed hungry. There were too many lifetimes when I starved to death. I wear extra pounds to accommodate any ideas of starvation. The first thing that happens when you’re sick is you lose weight, so I keep a bit extra on the skinsuit.

    I think that’s over with now.

    If I can tolerate hunger, it is time to be hungry.

    I wonder if all of this is connected somehow to my running for office here in T or C as City Commissioner.  I have declared & the comments are coming my way: “Hey, saw your name in the paper; Hey, did I see your name on the list? Hey, Carol, good for you!”

    Is this all indication of letting go of one way of thinking for another? I say I live to serve, but of course I am more accustomed to serving myself. I volunteer, but I think everyone should stand in where they can help move things along. I have a great service ethic, like a great work ethic. Once I start with a project, I don’t let go – I may delay – but I don’t let it go. Except recently for a cause I deemed hopelessly entrenched in its own process of Ourobouros. Where will this take me? It is a completely new idea. In fact, I almost swore I’d never…

    Ah! “never say never” echoes in the back of my brainpan.

    Wish me well on this new idea to pursue. Wish me to be the best service person you ever knew. Wish me strength to represent those who are so locked down with work & responsibility they have no time to help in any other areas of activity. My friend tells me be prepared for slings & arrows & mud & all sorts of stuff to be dug up & tossed at me. I don’t know how deep they intend to go, but there isn’t much I’ve done that’s out of line. I didn’t come into this life to be Butch Cassidy OR the Sundance Kid. It’s a snore if they start investigating me.

    I pulled a credit report yesterday – $16 & less than a minute of computer time. I needed it to find out where I’ve lived recently – because I’ve lived so many places just seeing the addresses is a surprise of memory. Anyone who has my name in their address book has learned not to write it in ink. My daughter asks my address whenever a card-sending time comes up. But I don’t see myself going anywhere anytime soon.

    Ah life. Ah death. Ah taxes. And then there comes one more way to serve in a way that makes me forget all three others. I have the health, the intelligence, the ethic & the time – most of all, the time – to help care for others. I have a tendency to stick through to the end unless I perceive real cupidity doing so.

    It still hurts to cough. I have no idea what I’ll eat except I took something out of the freezer which will be identifiable in about an hour or so. Maybe I’ll go for a salad today. I’ve lost a day & am out of time with usual rhythms.

    I put my desk calendar outside to dry after spilling a glass of water on it. I think it blew away. What’s that say?

  • Of Sable Wings & Ivory

    Of Sable Wings & Ivory

    On a day I felt as if I’d swallowed a wasp

    My soul, beset by angers all about

    Found a maze of love to wander

    And at its center, bowed in two, before a Holy Light.

    All fear fell from me like dry scales

    I began to luminesce

    I took up the warrior’s wield:

    The shield & buckler

    An axe of war-torn dreams–

    A sword grew from my hands.

    Two wings flared from my back

    I groaned at their heady weight

    I flexed then to the ends of the world

    And screamed to fly again.

    The chocolate night unfolded

    I passed between great heavens

    Of chilblained division

    Which sealed behind me, becoming warm glass

    Developing a face half-weeping, it called my name

    A blast of sound I rode forward into infinity

    There would be an arrival: a choosing:

    A serious battle

    “You will bleed,” it shrieked

    I gave no heed, flew on

    Touching wingtips to the Poles.

    I will not say it a dream

    Or an impossibility:

    A flight through fire

    Singeing me well

    My feathers seared to black, to gray

    Ash drifted down to float the river.

    When bared to bone

    I folded them in whiteness

    Lifting weapons instead.

    I fought to brilliance

    The morning’s gold renewed me

    I breathed hoarse sweat

    Rank & beaded in blood

    I took my measure & pressed the Battle

    Fierce we were, uncomprehending

    To win war is to lose

    Each of us the other.

    We were brave, skirling the mountaintops

    Like thunder, our faces mist

    We bashed & clashed

    Till, fought to a standstill, we

    Balanced atop each other’s feet

    Staring, down to knives & nails

    We bled each other’s blood

    As morning paled to day

    The humans watched, stunned, all disbelieving

    We were thunder made solid,

    Caught in the storm of our own making,

    My soul mirrored his

    Till black & white emerged as doorway

    Where all might enter

    Searching Peace.

    Carol Borsello

    New Year’s Eve 2019

  • Time Capsules

    Time Capsules

    I want to start off 2020 with a challenge. Well, I can choose one from any number: my most long-running one would be weight loss – but that’s a ho-hum these days. I’m not my Aunt Vi (whom we described as 5×5) but I’ll no longer strive to shine in hip huggers with a croptop either. I need something more real & perhaps more achievable. My body likes the weight…it’s my brain that scrabbles to a halt mumbling “Wait! Do I really look like that?” But I’m healthy. I walk comfortably. I can bend & move & lift & carry. So if it’s only for the image, perhaps it’s time to just let weight loss go so it really can. Because when I focus on it too much, it overtakes me.

    I had a thought this morning of asking what would I place in a time capsule? But will this exercise be a time capsule I’d want to reopen later? Maybe it’s not a time capsule but a time dump of that which no longer serves. What is it about this year I would want to re-address? Friendships, funny events, successes like starting Open Mic & doing stand-up comedy; walking almost every day for seven months; catching moonrise over the notch in the mountains outside; helping host Black Cat Poets on second Sundays… I’d love re-addressing being able to earn my way well, to help others in little/big ways, to find what I need exactly when I need it.

    It’s easier to list – and a longer list as well – what I am letting go of. Former friendships which soured for their own unreasons; unsustainable relationships; most of the stupid things I didn’t think were such at the moment. I want to release any feelings of being “picked on” or targeted. I wish I could release judgments about my behaviors when I was wrong which I still find myself twisting crazily to be right about.

    If I found a Time Capsule from my future self, what would it contain? Success after success, understanding, more knowledge, less judgment, tones of love & affection, a powerfully grounded belief in my own lovableness, many fewer second thoughts or doubts. Strength of mind, heart, body to continue in a world where there’s so much to disagree upon. (Every generation wants the world to move more slowly & resume some quality it had before. I don’t wish Hershey Bars were still a nickel, but I wish the upcoming generations were not so estranged from what I perceive to be basic & essential points of reality.) But then, I was brought up in the paradigm that “boys will be boys,” etc.

    But I also grew up in a time when there were fewer rules, much less assumption of guilt before innocence can be proven, simplicity over that which seems complex but still can be dismantled into essential parts. Since I didn’t have many relatives in the viewfinder, I didn’t hear “when I grew up we…” stories. I kept inside the boundaries set for me just because it didn’t really occur to me that I could escape them with any success. I grew up with a single parent possessing “eyes in the back of her head,” I breathed carefully in the Surveillance State Of Mom before this existed politically out loud. I didn’t worry about Big Brother, but I sure did about what Mom might catch on her radar.

    I will think on what is worth saving/continuing. I want to help more, understand my life better, re-establish & deepen my relationship to God, my Hero. I want to love what I write & continue touching others with words. I want to rethink how I live & make a smaller, more loving place in which to dwell in my mind & heart. From that concentration I can once more grow up in the discovery of that which is of true importance: establishing ideals to achieve, deepening my prayer practice, renewing relationships while developing more. I will enjoy filtering out what is not needed, keep from acquiring excess baggage, moving forward in light, tracking time better & believing in & understanding myself more. I like to think I can stand up in “do no harm” in my life & bring about nurturing change.

    There is always more room for less fear.

    2020: clear vision to us all!

    Love,

    Carol

  • Zebras

    Zebras

    Holidays / Holydays

    Like herringbone, the concepts fit into a deepening pattern. Whether we wear it outside depends on the size of the bars, perhaps.

    What I read is so different from what I hear in the marketplaces. I understand the concept of Agora now – going among the people to gather their thoughts & reality.

    Of course, much of what is spoken is politics today. Once upon a time, I’m sure it was religion. Overall, it might be so much more amenable just to discuss recipes.

    I still feel I’d like to solve everyone’s problems, resolve the discussions with “my” enlightenment & encourage polite discourse. My single venture at this resulted in total denial by listeners. “That’s got to be photoshopped.” “He never said that.” Not even a sliver of possibility was allowed. Everyone now follows the media’s aversion to research, I suppose. Yet I’m wiser to opt for speaking to like thinkers – while I can’t help but think how much benefit there would be even in basic courtesy among the rest.

    Some while back I read that if the Founding Fathers had to debate the points in the Constitution now, we would have no such document.

    Could Jefferson have conceived of WIFI? Washington, computers? I secretly smile when I read Trump “writes letters” to Kim Jong Un & Putin recommends his staffers use typewriters for important information.

    What price technology? Does it make truth more reliable? Ah, there’s the age-old rub: What is Truth?

    Disillusionment has ever lined the outer limits of speaking beliefs which will not seem to manifest. But now it occupies Center Stage.

    If it’s more satisfying to identify as a zebra, well, we live in a time when you can simply do that.

    Which leads us back to herringbone.

  • Shaving Off Sorrow

    Shaving Off Sorrow

    Take your hands off my philosophy

    What do you care if I cannot fall in love with myself anymore?

    What can it be to you how alone a human stands when her life transits to Mars? 

    When all turns red as a tomato on the shelf where it freezes, where the skin thins to tissue

    As the center hardens to rock?

    What did I care that your life has turned into a radio

    Broadcasting 24/7, unheard in a tin room?

    I may never have been what you think I was

    That good little Catholic kid from New York Avenue

    Growing up in a town as far from New York as geography can take you

    What about that skinny kid

    A macaroni child with a lazy eye

    Uncomfortable with focus, never knowing where to look?

    Wearing Buster Browns with corded laces

    A blue serge uniform covering bony knees

    Chapped lips, always in reach of a book about horses?

    Listening to life like a mouse for a cat’s paw

    Watching for light not of rods and cones shifting

    But divinity descending.

    —

    I can take my heart & bang it on a table now. No harm. No foul.

    No burning houses with smoking windows to toss it through

    It wouldn’t blaze anymore, having become ironwood & char

    Unfeeling, unemotional, squeezed out with a rasp.

    No matter. I was likely never who I thought I was, yeh?

    I brought the best of me to the altar for sacrifice

    After the light in the room changed

    I found all was turned inside out

    And there was nothing inside to pull from

    No strength, no love, no shy violet water.

    So I can toss it around, a medicine heart

    Too heavy to play, too common to breathe

    Too full to give away

    Too empty to love.

    Let’s find something else to do, okay?

    Let’s find an afternoon we don’t have to pay for with blood

    With dis-chord, let’s paint this Room of the

    Unknown Soulmate some other color.

    I’m so tired of empty.

    —

    Pray me into life: let the sunset squire me to beauty

    Unbeknownst to others

    Visited by my jaded eyes

    Blurred with reading-tears

    Coffee cup of empty

    Guilt & sorrow my two most constant companions

    A new lightbulb in a house afraid of an electric bill

    I am naked as an undressed manikin

    Featureless as unformed clay

    Full of metaphor & simile, meta-for & similar

    In the land of the unique.

    Yesterday at this time, I was laughing.

    —

    Back when I felt important in the world

    When I felt like someone wanted me to smile

    Like it would be a devastation should I not

    Back before the world chained the angel in me

    To words I decorate with a pen

    Too much cliché does a body no good

    I know this is an unoriginal thought

    But must voice it, nonetheless.

    There was never anyone who loved me but God

    And God has to love everybody, just because.

    Just sayin’

    —

    Listen to me! The broad devourer of having no past

    Of never believing much while convinced of it all!

    I can wear my shoes on the couch now

    No one corrects me.

    I can avow a sunset for its beauty

    While whispering of dawn to come.

    What would I give to not be lonely

    To be out of this moment where all feels “emptified”?

    Where would I walk were I following my heart?

    The dream a wish created vanishes with the color from a sky

    I have closed my blinds against.

    It is so much safer in the dark.

    —

    These words run out ahead, a parallel track

    I huffnpuff along, steam rising from my head

    Looking down for pennies on the track.

    I would not see the angel until I walked into his robes

    Nor feel him until the wings wrapt ‘round

    Not know of my sorrow til he gave me a handkerchief

    I want no direction without holding that leading hand

    A little cold from flying…a little coarse from picking off sins

    But landed in time to unfold me from my fear,

    Scraping with a pearl fingernail at these old scars

    Bleeding into tomorrow, staining the day.

    The wound clears &, clean, I find a ring of bright new hope

    To dance within.

    —

    So this is my talent: to wring words from rocks sun-dry & dusty

    This world I strive to escape by pulling on a cloak of poetry

    Hand-woven, soft & muted of dove-grey

    Swirling around the rainsoft boots

    I have kicked my life down the road

    Now I need to go looking for it again.

    —

  • One Among Many

    One Among Many

    To be alone is to care for my own needs on all levels. I am spoiled by this self-relationship, not needing to put up with the permutations of others.

    Without the reassurance of others in which to reflect, my life can grow in any direction at all. Or not.

    This is quite the realization to discover: I’ve been alone now far more years than not. Each relationship seemed to last such a long time, right? Yet they were all bunched up in the beginning of my “grown-up” years. I understand that this is the time during which I had the energy to attempt to raise a child, to move countlessly, to sustain all that went into a turn-of-the-times wife-hood. I was one caught on the horns of being the woman who did all the housework plus being the worker who earned the other half paying for the house.

    So much energy was spent & replacing it was not easy as my efforts were absorbed with less than equal return simply because the scales at that time were unbalanced.

    I see now I should have saved one of these relationships for this later time in life. I have so much more to give, already knowing how to do the prep work, how to love in the now with a surety sadly lacking earlier. I don’t permit the gaps to occur which were once inevitable…or if they do, I’m no longer thrown.

    Now’s the time for laid-back love, when holding a hand is a meditation & a kiss can last an afternoon.

    There are mirrors for reflection if I need this. There are rewards for health & earning my own way, which I thoroughly enjoy.

    To have another would be simply doubling up the good.

  • October Souls

    October Souls

    Dearest

    I cannot write you into my life again

    It seems two month’s passing does not erase

    A year of your  hands

    ‘pon the hills & valleys,

    The intimate creases of me

    Yet I’ve faith in forgetfulness

    That time creates

    I have hope in the creation of new

    Replacing old

    With clarity for us both.

    It won’t ever set straight

    The doglegged path we shared

    Nor lose (loose?) us ‘pon that way

    You are a song below the waterfall of my being

    Where branches & elbows of trees

    Are washed clean, where wet leaves gather,

    A snag & rustle of underbrush

    Where I hoped to pass silently unobserved.

    Where I cannot swim nor linger in sunlight.

    =======

    I miss you, LoveMan,

    My body misses the bits of you I encompassed

    My mind straddles you as my legs could not…

    My heart encompasses what hands could not hold.

    I opened to you in intimacy,

    Gentle & giving

    Until it turned opposite

    To awakening & remembrance

    I opted for the lessons of in-between

    Where you are not:

    The days when lonely is a four-letter word.

    I finger these memories to frayed silk

    Tying them with blessing

    To toss upon the waters.

    I walk once more bottled & contain’d

    No longer the beauty of your addled regard

    But the scour of my holy self,

    The pale scourge of longing

    In substitute for fulsome remedy,

    That wholeness of your temporary regard

    I wish you love

    With all the power of a woman

    I miss you like midnight with a moon upon its chest

    As the wakefulness of longing closes my eyes

    =====

    Come love again!

    Come fitting the seas of our bodies together

    The mingling guilt

    Glistening on beaches of touch

    Come the opening of limbs!

    Over lives & all betweens

    Come that special smile of love’s regard

    That faint warmth kindling to full-throat heat

    That words burn into moan

    The dragons of desire heavy-limbed on waking.

    =====

    You do not understand:

    I cannot continue

    Sex on Mondays only

    Nary a hand-hold beyond

    Not enough days of too many miles

    Unable to speak, or gaze, or kiss,

    An open blade I handled, careless

    It might cut both ways.

    =====

    You are a desert I crossed in hope of moisture

    An oasis turned mirage

    Where only imagination grows.

    We were lucky of our time together

    But guilty of the clocks meting it

    I stand over an open grave

    Pondering resurrection.

    =====

    This was not my life: to

    Have a faithful, capable love

    Wherein I stood encircled, & safe

    I fingered the horizon with car keys in hand

    Not matched, not meshed

    People like me cannot hold a static pattern.

    =====

    Unbalanced as I am in my headlong rush at life

    Caught up in the love of many

    Over intimacy of one

    Were you to ask if I could have it any other way

    I’d be forced to the honesty of looking away.

    =====

    An uncertain future must compensate

    The flickering present

    I am no gift to glory:

    A rusty hinge on a gate to a weedy garden

    Wherein one blossom of penetrating color –

    A forget-me-not you will always twirl

    In the hesitations of your mind.

    I so miss being beautiful for you!

    =====

    And if I write enough of words

    A landslide or an eruption of language

    Will you (can you) forgive me?

    I am the constancy of change

    Of color, a fragrance caught downwind

    A vibrance passing by

    I am made for Make Believe as sure as

    Any other theatre of life

    Where fantastic is commonplace.

    I play an endgame where laughter is the only closure.

    A vast riparian slash

    Where water runs swift & sure

    Displacing earth to deepen itself.

    =====

    Almost afraid of love, now, though ginger with desire

    I dare not live in the unreality that I am whole

    Or human.

    I have my little habits, my great disparity of beliefs

    Around which gather & garner tiny stalks:

    I believe I can be loved

    The way I love the sky being blue

    Remote & beautiful

    Filling with blazing stars at dusk.

    =====

    I am an apprehension of the unreserved

    In the realm of the unredeemed

    Gatherer of words of smoke.

    Didn’t I warn you enough, my love?

    Didn’t I chafe your limbs to life

    Filling your sight a spell?

    Will you always see me in the

    Gingham of old desire?

    Could we best entwine

    As man & woman?

    Could I satisfy you to stay

    And live with me

    For a time when all is beautiful?

    I am no slim willow bending in winds from your passage

    I captured you for a bit, with only a wish in my hand.

    =====

    You fold your arms, holding yourself in

    Keeping me out of your heart.

    I understand protection – this you can believe!

    I get it good.

    I yearn to tap the power held in seal (in soul)

    To have you open, enfolding me instead.

    =====

    Was I cruel to wish to see you?

    Did I whet a dry drive

    With conversation yet unsaid?

    Have you any words for me at all?

    You leave me to my imagination:

                   That you feel…

    I know you to be cautious of my exuberance

    I like to think that had we met in moister times…

    Just when I think I can do this –

    Limit myself to love on Mondays

    A nova lights within & I understand I am timeless,

    A flicker of answer in a time of steady questions.

    I cannot love you except in the surprise of your loving-back.

    I am one to choose firelight over the sun.

    Were we free to race the fields

    And laugh out loud

    To share the path, to dart among the trees

    Seeking new realms to bed within

    I might could love you more than mem’ry alone

    I might could make a prayer

    We say in churches, a name for the unborn,

    I might could –

    =====

    I had to see you once more

    To seek out common language

    To hope for love in your regard.

    I’m so weak when I’m not strong, it’s comical!

    The house I built of straw in heavy winds…

    A conscience free of sin

    Has little left but itself..

    That still, small voice

    Hush, hush.

    There, there.

    When I cry for that open vista of passion

    The taste of your breath

    Your eyes closed in kiss

    The tumble after the climb

    And all the butterflies between.

  • Blinded by Power & Force

    There’s a Ren & Stimpy birthday card where they harmonize about having so many candles on the cake, keep the firemen standing by. If I had a cake for my birthday today, it would be a sheet cake & I’d need an actuary to place the bets on getting all the candles lit … or blown out. Happy birthday, me!

    Indeed, happy birthday from my island, this timespace bubble wherein live my cells & thoughts – my Be Here Now.

    I was recently told I’m “blinded by power & force.” Funny, this is a fresh, recognizable insight which drew an initial shocked breath & then an appreciative smile. Yup, I do think I’m ready to have the world turn My Way! I’ve described myself as “imperious” many times. My own mother called me Queenie as a toddler. Yet, I’m far removed from the notion of nobility. I am an American woman of Italian descent: I love laughter, being held, good conversation, an unexpected joke…I love spiraling pasta from the sauce & delicious travel.

    I’ve arrived at 71 with limbs intact, a cheerful demeanor & a plethora of skin tags. If anyone were to connect the dots on my body, either I would ascend or they’d have the secrets of the universe. As if!

    I know the P&F thing to be true. My best friend calls me “Zinger” for a no-holds-barred manner of speaking. In this town of complaint & repetition, I am indeed the Last Brain Standing. I am forever the cuckoo in a nest of robins, my big fat egg sucking up all the energy in the room. I am the most bristly child of Fortune!

    My “accuser” stands to one side, in his own bubble of understanding. Do his words sum up all assessment on my 71 years on-planet? And tho accurate, he does himself disservice in his projection of this opinion. I’ve declared him too strange for me to take in & after three attempts to reconcile a bare knuckle friendship, I no longer do so. I have found myself in a fishwife stew, screaming aloud at a man who is not even my husband! No mas!

    So, what’s the problem with Power & Force?

    Shall I give in to the black pearl of life alone & despairing? (There are times when this is terribly attractive.) Shall I stop offering to help or sharing the graces I also possess? Nope. Not happening.

    And if my lifestyle of personal success, blessing & laughter doesn’t bear your stamp of approval, so be it. I’ve gained two comfortable descriptors that fit like softened hand-me-downs. It’s good to be in my own cult. It’s good to have a brand name. I’ve dared the fields where angels feared to tread to choose my path. I am appreciated by students & clients, beloved by [some] friends. I don’t have time for the rest right now.

    Last night I met a Siamese named Percy who carefully arranged himself across my lap & nipped me when I stroked him. I hesitated & reached again. He projected, “If you wish to touch my silken grandeur, I will tolerate it.”

    I nip at times, too. I push people around. The days of “sweet, silly me” are well & long gone.

    I do Tinkerbell as a nuke.

    I’m a Real Woman, imperfect in sight & bearing. I accomplish what I perceive as mine to do. I didn’t get here by rolling off the surfboard when the tsunami appeared. I’ll stuff these two words in my Super Powers Backpack from Dollar General.

    So, wish me a Happy Birthday, a level stretch in the road, some cash for the sock. Laugh at my chutzpah, mock my Jersey accent. I have New Mexico as my sky… And what I have, I share. In the time when a heart might be heartily scored, I can slam a shield of words in place. One day I may lay them down…or explode behind them. I take my chances.

    I am both happier & sadder than anyone else I know. But mostly, I am grateful that I do not succumb to robin-hood, & if it took power & force to get me here, I also have more love in the abstract than most I know.

    Come, my kingdom, my mismatched blessings; come my liars & Lovers, settle here with me. I don’t mind being nipped. Should it be required, I will put myself between you & an oncoming train. I will heal you from the heart out.

    I will rock your world.

  • Surviving Life

    Surviving Life

    The beginning is farther away than ever, what with another birthday lining up. I don’t remember the beginning anymore, so much in between is gone as well. How many doorways have I passed through in this life? How many lives have lived me inside out to get me to move? How many put spurs into my sides if they thought I’d best go right then. They never told me about how to keep up with the pinball game: or how loud the pings could ring. Spirit has me on sonar, radar, “lov-ar” & much else. Spirit has turned my stumbles into discovery & my haltings into handwritten considerations of note.  

    I keep on telling you I’m the ‘point n click’ gal.

    My memory serves in a nonspecific way – tho at times things line up. But these are more holistically geosynchronous –  being in the right place at the right time. Little is contrived anymore. Who’s ready for Truth, really? My truth may not even be in the game, but I’m all for Truth. I like designating my memory to my phone cuz if the phones fail someday, I won’t need the numbers.

    I am a Cassandra: a Gift so few hear lightly. I cherish those who do. Truth is the original Playdoh®. I keep my eye on the prize, but I have visions to account for.

    One night on a dark drive down a two-lane paved road in Tennessee, my ex & I almost drove into a large body of water. The downhill was making me nervous, I slowed & our headlights caught the black lake in tree-edged shadows. Events like this make me mindful.

    I got this far & gray to prove it, yet I’d be hard-put to tell you what I learned. Oh, not specifics. I store details clinically, For many specifics, my mind works more like Hogwarts’ Pensieve, There’s much rich detail for the taking, (Somehow today will turn up in that bowl if I need it.)

    I know less about getting from here to there than you’d think. It’s all on record somewhere & I can tap into what I need in good time.

    Once upon a time I thought I came here to pray us through the changes or pray me through mine. Early in life, elementary school (about which there was nothing experientially elementary) saw me tagging after nuns, appreciating all that white around their faces that lit them up. Much as I looked, though, I could not find a reflection of me. I was a sponge soaking up approval vastly lacked at all other encounters; even, perhaps, with myself in mirrors.  

    I thought of prayer as a pathway again while at Unity where the message cloaked me in raw feathers – uncleaned & sharp-like, bearing bodily evidence of life. I earned every feather I found on the sidewalk & patched together into these wings. Their message of self-divinity was a huge chord wrung from one-note me. So much came together about who I was wanting to be & how to get there.

    But prayer was not my path for very long. It DID help me get organized, though.

    (While in young adulthood, I listened to classical music by preference. It seems to have adjusted my mind along organized routes. But music is not a talent I have time to master right now – enough going on with the words, yeh?)

    At so many crossroads, I paused while a neon sign appeared, “Here,” it said. Well, ‘here’ starts with ‘her” & if you fill in the circumference of the last ‘e’, you have ‘hero’. Heros are avatars: how far up am I aiming? If no sign appeared, I pulled out the scribing pad & began de-scribing it for when you take words apart, energy flames up & out.

    Exposure is the B side of honesty.

    I’ve been refining all those early shavings I gathered of my life to bring along. They are sparse, flensed of emotion (except when not). There’s a bit of my soul rubbed off & on each. They emerge from the pouch in a rush but some resurface periodically. That’s when I know I’m at crossroads & waiting for the sign.

    I’ve been here awhile now & time seems to stretch out like some Silly String Theory. I follow an elusive Avatar: my own Joy.

    And she has left some rubbings off on me.

    It doesn’t matter how many mountains appear in front of you; the idea is the scale the one you’re on right now.

    Thanks –

    Carol