Every day should begin and end with a mother’s kiss. Should. These days when they are not here, my mother self is starved, floating outside of me, the hours empty of them. I fit no place but nowhere that’s how it feels. So on those days when I can only give them a good morning and goodnight prayer, I hope they feel it. I know I feel it. So many years ago there was a garbage dump, in Ecuador and when we pulled up out came droves of kids from the garbage heaps for bread. We gave what we had until it was gone and it wasn’t enough. A child should greet each day with a mother’s kiss and then have her kiss at night. A warm safe place, so much bread, at least one home. Mine have two. They come to me and we hammer away all senses go full throttle all […]
Maybe meditation is best done in longer periods of time than 1-2 minutes, but honestly, it’s all I’ve got. And usually, it’s more like 30 seconds or less. Deep breaths. Deep breaths followed by a moment or two of reminding myself to not focus on negative things, like having bats that don’t want to hibernate but would rather fly around my living room. And then I suppose reminding myself to not focus on these things is actually a way to focus on these things. heh. What is this thing I MUST do, in the telling? I HAVE BATS, I can’t stop saying it. Like telling enough people will POOF, make them go away. I suppose this is part of why we repeat all of our hard things. Underneath, maybe it feels like it will take them away…I don’t know. Habits are hard to break. How are you? Oh, fine. My car wouldn’t start. […]
This was the kind of snow that sticks to your shovel and your boots and all around the bottom of your jeans. And you can stomp stomp stomp but it’s not going anywhere. It’s just packing itself on thicker. I would slide the shovel, scrape and scoop and then lift, my arms hurting. And then I’d try to throw the snow. Most of it stayed on the shovel, so stuck. Yeah, yeah, this was a metaphor to me, but what isn’t, really? Metaphor: The Over-Thinky Person’s Crutch. I can’t help it, the heaviness of the snow is just too easy of a metaphor target, so there I was, letting it hit me like a good metaphor should. I got mad at it, you know? Like most people do, at snow and wind combined. The way they refuse to stop blowing into the very place you’ve just cleaned. And getting mad and shoveling harder […]
Everyone had the look of sleep-deprivation. Dark circles and an accidental or on-purpose perma-frown. We all have eyes that glisten with the soft glow of just waking up, even if we’ve been up for hours. We got to set our clocks back. Our bodies are confused about this. I ran into a friend at Goodwill and she said she normally wakes up at six, like clock work, pun intended. And now she wakes up at five. Or that is what the clock says anyway, and so the day is just so long. It’s darker and longer. Winter’s slow and then fast arrival feels foreboding, and I told another friend that it settles in on me, and I have no choice but to keep thinking of spring. Sara Groves says “hope stands in defiance” and I like that because I like to think of hope standing there with hands on hips, and maybe I’m […]
