Word, Song, Quote

The word for the year has been really hard. I'm not really feeling inspired. Funny, since my art is wordcraft.

I was drawn to the word thrive. I kept returning to it over and over again. Still not quite right. I'm not ready to thrive yet. I am still caught up in a spiral that I need to mend. Mending? No, still not right.

Then an idea came to me. I am thinking of inspirational words. Maybe that's not what I need today, this year.

Ten. Ten minutes a day for meditation. Ten tasks towards my writing goals. Ten letters to write. Eat ten different items of food each day. Run or yoga for 10 minutes every day.

Count to ten before I react. Forgive myself for ten things. Ten?

Nope still not right.

Then, as I am picking at the threads of my sweater....unravel. Yes. Unravel.
It isn't the first time I have used a negative word for my motivation. Remember sabotage? That one was a miracle worker.

This year I have a lot to untangle and unravel. Who I am, who I was. What I want, what I need. Get his voice out of my head, telling me things I am and can't be. Untangle my own voice from that narrative. Try out new things. Help my children make sense of it too. Admit how wounded I was, still am in many ways.

So my word for 2016 is unravel.
My quote for the year, my battle cry, is a revisit to a past year.
“There are no lungs like the ones that breathe poetry.”
― D. Antoinette Foy

Breathe. Poetry. Live. Poetry. Walk, eat, dream, be in the words. Every damn day. Make this life worth it. Make raking the chicken pen turn into verse, shovelling cow manure on to vegetable plots, a villainelle. Couplet cutting garden salad greens and free verse falling in love with the night sky and the moonrise can be a sonnet, maybe just maybe fourteen lines would be enough this time. Maybe.

My song for the year? Renegades X Ambassadors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u-niluB8HI





I love this song for many reasons, but mostly the sound of it. Go forth and have no fear.

I will never be ready

I will never be ready. This life, what is spinning around right now, is more chaos than I can handle. I can deal with escaped livestock. I can take care of swarming bees. I can change a poopy diaper, calm a tantrum, sooth a hurt feeling, cook dinner, and make business calls at nearly the same time with grace and finese. What I can't seem to do is face the coming storm, this unknown, this future without financial and familial security.

On one hand, I know I am capable and resourceful. I am employable. On the other hand? Everything I once knew or thought about my life was built on half truths. How can I trust anything anymore?

New Beginnings

Goals for 2016:

Professional Goals:
Write at least an hour each day.
Read as much as I can get my hands on.
Revise and send out work.
Meet IRL the local poets here in Georgia.
Take more photographs.
Send that work out too.
Research MFA programs.
Send out chapbooks and whole book.
Set up Etsy store for framed art.

Personal Goals:
Find a church. Go.
Write handwritten letters to people I love.
Keep in touch.
Find time 3x a week to do something physical.
Run.***
Breathe.
Find a counsellor. Go.
Find a massage therapist. Go.
Find a nice way to turn down dating invitations. *Keep to it.

Garden Goals:
Make an illustrated map for RJ of her property.
Grow enough food that we have to dry the extra.
Find a local farmer to buy beef and chickens from.

Travel goals:
Begin the Pink Project.
Maybe Prague. Probably Prague.**
If Prague, then Venice and Rome and Austria.
Los Angeles, CA
Tennessee and Florida

*I have made it pretty clear that I need a year of getting my kids settled and quiet solitude. That doesn't stop the inquirers. I get it, I do! I'm a freaking fantastic catch: I'm hilarious as hell, smart as a serial killer, pretty enough, strong, financially independent, a genius in the kitchen, and can handle a hammer fair enough.  When I'm ready, I'll make some one really, really happy. Until then, please no inquiries. I'm not going to sugar coat it. My reason is- I'm not ready. I'm not ready to trust my own judgement. 20 years of betrayal was a lot, is a lot to work through. My kids need me. They need to be my priority. They are my priority. Bringing a new person into their lives (not me) has already devastated them emotionally and the girls asked me quietly and sincerely to please not to also do that to them. They come first. I will make my choices with them in mind.

Someday, I hope, I'll fall madly in love with someone out of the blue and probably get my heart broken into a million pieces. It will be glorious and history worthy. Other poets write about the passion and greatness and the beautiful art that comes from a love like that. That is what I want.

But for now, I need this time and space. I need to breathe. There is time enough for love.

But thank you to all those who have already inquired and invited. I feel hopeful and appreciated. Check back in with me, say, in 2017 or so. Late 2017. Maybe 2018. (Mom, this means you too, no trying to secretly fix me up either now, okay?) I don't mean  to burn bridges, but y'all seriously need to wait. It will be no fun listening to me emotionally vomit all the time about my horrible ex and whine about all the shit I have to deal with. Ha! I mean, I'll tell it in an entertaining way and laughter is a guarantee, but there will also be tears and frustration. So it is in everyone who is interested's best interest to wait, okay? Okay. Just ask Jen and Holly and Breann- right now they get the burden of my spew. Which reminds me, I need to thank them again.

**Prague. I was invited back this summer under the same funded program. I don't have custody in the summer months, so that's taken care of. I will probably have the funds I need for the plane ticket and food. I enjoy the travel and company there. My only concern right now, why it is a maybe, is the unreliability of life. I need to get the kids settled and then see what settles out in Iowa and make sure they are cared for and safe when they are there and not be 5,000 miles and an international flight away if they are not. It would be great to go back though. Better yet if I can get Esme to come with......better yet if Jen too.

*** Running. I never thought I would love it, but there you go. I do. I need better shoes or to go to the beach before daylight and run barefoot. A trail would be good. Or a track. I'll figure it out.

Facing it.

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the Light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen

Ringing in the New Year, y'all. 

I started 2015 knowing something wasn't right. I felt it in my bones. I asked for space and was met with resentment. I stated my needs and held my ground. I could feel my life breaking, cracking, crumbling into grist. I started thinking it was me and how much I hated myself. I friend posted something about how mother photographers are always behind the camera and their children don't have a record of their own mother. I started taking selfies.

What I didn't know was that this project, a selfie a day, would become a record of my grief. My husband of 17 years asked for a divorce in April, or rather informed me that it was what I wanted. I wanted, begged for counselling instead.

In the wake of that world shattering, gifts started showing up at my metaphorical doorstep. An invitation to AWP, a fellowship in Prague, a job offer in Savannah, an offer to buy my antiques, a good lawyer, publication offers, friends holding space for me, another fellowship. As I was wading through the grief and rebuilding my own life, these things brought me small joys and more importantly something to keep me busy and getting up out of bed in the morning.

My sorrows compounded because of other people's choices that were out of my control.  It was like driving through a torrential rainstorm with traffic all around. Do I pull off the shoulder? Do I trust that others are in control of their 1000+ lbs of steel? Do I crash? Will there be a flash flood? Panic. Hold on. Cry a little or a lot.

And then the rain stops. All that's left is wet road and darkness, the stead thumping of the road beneath tires and a warm engine. Maybe there is even a rainbow. Maybe you are in Nashville now.

And finally, on Christmas Day, under the full moon in South Carolina, I held my sorrows in my hand and blew them with a kiss into the Atlantic Ocean. This mermaid is no longer landlocked. This is my offering. My grief.