it’s just that the head is not always popping off.  you know?

and so i’m abandoning yet another blog, yet another name, yet another label, and now, i’m just… me.

i’m still messing with it, adding a contact form, more photos to the portfolio, moving things around.  but messy has never really concerned me, anyway.

so change your bookmarks and feeds and all, and i’ll meet you there.  and while you’re at it, let me know that you’ve arrived.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

but here, have yourself one last rumi until the alakazaam.

THE GUEST HOUSE

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

(Rumi)

pixie also led me to this poem.  and so i’m paying it forward.

The Invitation by Oriah
It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon…
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

god, do i hope this is rock bottom.  have you noticed?  i mean, obviously.  i might as well admit it.  yeah.  i’m kind of going through a thing, worst ever.   and no, actually, i’m not ok.  not at all.  thanks for asking. 

i tend to get these “signs” of comfort or of direction when i am low or confused.  i get to a place (and it is predictable, but i always forget) where i am so lost and/or incapable of functioning that i reach out, beg really, for some sign that will tell me what to do.  these signs have been abundant, and mind-boggling, as they always are when i am in touch with my truth.  but where they have led me has pissed me off, in an ignorance is bliss (though bliss is definitely not the word.  more a flat affect stupor) sort of way.  so on a recent bike ride, i had a conversation with myself.  or, Myself, or whoever it is that gives me these signs.  i said something like so what’s that about then?  the fucking signs?  could you just stop with the fucking signs?  or could you just stop pretending that you’re seeing signs? (that’s another self-talk voice.  apparently there are many.)  ooh!  ooh!  i know!  i know!  i need a sign about signs!  a sign to tell me that i am actually seeing signs!  and that they matter!  and then i went crazy.  absolutely lost it.  i was angry at myself for being such an idiot, for having such outrageous self-talk discussions, for actually asking for such a thing.  a sign about SIGNS?!?!  my eyes were blurred with tears, so i had to steer my bike off of the road (and almost collided with a truck in the process).  i stopped at an abandoned house and threw my bike onto the overgrown grass and wildflowers.  i saw a shed, and thought it would be a lovely place to have a breakdown.

when i stood in front of the open shed, this is what i saw:

i’ll give you a sign about signs.  how about a fucking shed full.

and i cracked up.  out loud.  i mean, not that that is any less confusing.  but it does validate the whole . . . sign . . . thing.  i retrieved my bike, wanting to go home for my camera, and there was another very specific sign in front of my face.  but i won’t tell you about that one.  maybe eventually.

also, when i returned with my camera, i considered breaking into the house.  this was on the door, after all.  but i didn’t.  next time?

I’ve just rolled down the windows so I can turn off the ignition (and the air conditioning). The flag pole is clanging and dogs are barking and people stand on their front lawns and talk about the pointless things that interest them. Comma? I’m supposed to be writing. I want to be writing, this story that has come to me, this culmination of stories. I even have the title.  But this is what I’m writing instead. Just a big rambling whine. I don’t ever finish anything, anyway. It doesn’t matter whether I start a new story or not.

How do I get out of here? I have to get out of here. Not this parking lot, not this sadness, but this place. This place where sidewalks matter; this place where baby tree trunks, all uniformly planted, are protected by corrugated plastic tubes; this place where someone will cut all the queen anne’s lace down with a weed-wacker. This place where somebody actually named something “weed-wacker.” How the hell do I get out of here? Why can I not find the exit? There must be one. There’s got to be one.

I feel like the only one awake at a slumber party at 2:26 AM. I feel like the only one not possessed by zombies in a horror flick. I feel like the designated driver that’s just dropped her keys down the gutter. The buzz kill, the scapegoat, the bastard heir, the mad hatter, selectively unforgiven and unheard and misunderstood and lonely and insane but insisting that I’m NOT! to a sea of blank stares.

This would be a good thing, I think, if I could identify with a blaspheming Jesus, or a stuttering Moses, or some other legendary hero down on his luck before the grand triumphant finale, destined to make some grand contribution to the world. But shit. Though I have descended to the underworld, I’ve returned without a talisman. I’ve spun my cocoon, slept in it, but emerged prematurely, my wings yet unformed. I’ve gained insight, but I don’t know how to implement it here. I’ve touched enlightenment beside the river, but upon returning to the village, I’ve forgotten it all. Or, not necessarily forgotten, but what was once this roaring fire of intuition, seems only like a faint glimmer in the darkness of this nonsensical weed-wacking reality. When I open my mouth to share, I stand there drooling and mute in the spotlight. My hands begin to shake, and heavy tears threaten the back of my wide, crazed eyes.

It’s all gibberish, anyway, isn’t it? I know there is something, something in it all—it’s like when I dig in my disastrous purse for the keys I can hear jangling, I know they’re in there, I swear. . . . But I just can’t find them. Maybe it’s only lost change. Maybe it’s a figment of my imagination.

I want to quote the “wrong” Alice (I just watched the movie the other night, while the grown-ups played Trivial Pursuit) and say, “Lost my muchness, have I?” and then proceed to kill the dragon while a cheering everyone bears witness to said muchness. But, lost my muchness? I don’t know. Maybe I have.

dimples, holga, tri-x, kettle moraine

someone once said that the definition of insanity is taking four children on a cross-country road trip.  i think maybe that someone was me, precisely one year ago, when we did such a thing.  but then i forgot, because now we are doing it again.  this one will be shorter than last year’s trip, only 22 hours of driving each way.  last year i spent the entire time in the passenger seat puting newborn dreadlocks into my hair.  this year, i plan to spend the entire time tweeting.  so, follow me through the thrills of iowa and nebraska, through the joys of altitude sickness in colorado.  it’ll be fun.  i promise.  if i can figure it out, i’ll upload an occasional shot of my journals (watercolor, ink, writing, i’m feeling ambitious).  we leave tomorrow morning.  i wonder if i should consider packing?

this is the blog where i just sort of stand here and scream loud and long because i have too many thoughts and too may words and too many feelings and too much wisdom and too much fear and all these things are running into one another and causing explosions everywhere like fireworks and like thunder and like expanding alveoli and like the dead sunburned skin that floated from my back when i changed my shirt this morning and a field of wildflowers ignited by the sun and then there are bad metaphors and unshed tears and everythingnothingeverythingnothing and as soon as i can i will punctuate and capitalize and organize into complete thoughts and spellcheck i will do so and this is not an apology

shortcake, holga, tri-x 400 film in t-max dev

An unintended theme in my life lately has been a loss of control.  (Maybe “unintended” is a given, since intention is a form of control?)  Or, more specifically, the theme is a fucking obliteration of any semblance of control.  Control is dying a painful and twitching death here, and I’ve taken the job of holding the pillow over its face.  I’m tired of sharing its air.  I can’t really give you any insight here, because there is not any hindsight to speak of. 

But it has me feeling kindred with the ol’ holga.  I’ve got no control with the holga, which sort of kills a woman whose religion is the Church of the Light Meter.  The aperture and shutter speed simply are what they are, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  Even those settings are relatively uncertain.  All I can do is open the plastic shutter and let the light in, to fall on the film as it will.  The focus will be off, some frames will be overexposed, and some will be underexposed.  There are unintended shadows everywhere and places where the sun burns the negative completely black.  But a couple of the frames are, with ironic consistency (or is it pure statistics?), absolutely gorgeous.  Alternatively, I could leave camera at home; or worse, I could let a computer set the controls for me. 

But I think the illusion of control can be deceiving.  The only constant  is this beautiful inconsistency.  I think.  I’m not sure.  I’ll get back to you.  (But don’t count on it.)

tri-x in mamiya c330 tlr

today, i sever the connection to my inner Wisdom with my own hands. 
the Places She leads me, i cannot go because i am weak. 
the Light She shows me, i cannot embody, because i am weak.
the River She floods, i cannot swim, because i am weak.
the Truth She sings, i cannot hear, because i am weak.
the Fruit She offers me, i cannot taste, because i am weak.

this threshold of Knowing is crossed, and so perhaps when i return, the door will be propped open.
but i know i will not return.  i will search my whole life for that elusive gateway, and will not find it.
today i gather scraps of shed skin, and paste them to my face, because i am stupid.
because i am weak.

today i think of Orpheus, and plant seeds in my garden—let them be the Brave ones,
now that the frost has passed.
(but even Orpheus looked back.)

today i recognize that a bird in my backyard has called out,
(as i write this, shortcake says, “look, mama!  a bird!”)
like a reminder of Morning,
and that i chose sleep, as did you, because we are weak.
(did you?)

this is not Bravery.  this is not receptive Stillness.  this is not bold Foolishness.
this is not silent Power.
this is smallness.  because i am weak.
(does anyone have any chocolate?)

i’ll add a few inspiring, though not “pretty” links now, to completely contradict everything i just said:

a poem about dancing.  yeow

i’ve always wanted to photograph people in the shower.  check out this series.  yeow.

in case you missed this on my facebook, yeeeow again:

shortcake + black marker lipstick. (i don't even wear lipstick. where did this compulsion come from?) digital (d200).