Lonesome

Sleepy. should be my middle name. I am sleepy.

My baby kk is in Sweden with her aunt (it was supposed to be her 30th birthday present from her aunt but life-or trying to make a new life-and death-the death of k's uncle) got in the way, and so it took 4 and a half years past her 30th birthday for it to happen.

I am in the upper peninsula of michigan in a comfort inn after giving 4 workshops in 3 different prisons up here. We have 5 more workshops to go and 3 other prisons to hit over the next 2 days. Did I forget to mention that prisons are one of the major forms of employment up here in the Yoop?

So I have lonesomeness imprinting itself on the fabric of my moods these last few days. I am lonesome for my kk; I am lonesome for my house and my gardens; I feel lonesome for the men I am seeing in these prisons who have been removed from their communities and brought to a land that is so white and so foreign and so hard for so many of them.

Every time I leave a prison a little bit of emptiness hollows out a corner for itself in the soft, fleshy parts of my heart. Being behind those caged fences and thick doored walls brings up all kinds of feelings for me about our nasty american history and the ways in which we hurt one another and fail so miserably at taking care of one another.

However, I did see two sandhill cranes on the way to the prison and their strong brown necks brought me a moment of treasured contentment.

All of this lonesomeness, makes me yearn to create even more community and to really think about what i want to do with the rest of my life. I want to grow things and build my household. i want to work for justice by making the world around me more livable and healthy and compassionate. i'm not sure i can stare the raw suffering of so many people in the face for much longer.

with that said, i am looking forward to going home and visiting with my new bees. yes, i have a hive. my neighborhood friend gave me one. it is full up with live, humming, little pollinators. i think that bees are probably never really all that lonely.

I AM THUNDER. I AM SIRENS.

If only I could bellow like the thunder roaring and the the sirens shrieking outside my old cat scratched screens.

If only I could shout to the heavens and ask them for relief from the dark cloud hanging on the rusty hinges of my heart.

If only...

So, really things have not been all that bad. Zoloft has given me a lift and I have become chatty cathy queen. Oh, yes, dear readers, I have been popping a pharmaceutical. I take it daily and I think it makes my tits hurt and it makes me pee a lot and I was hazy for the first three weeks and I wanted to scream that I had caved to what I had called the lies of western medicine.

But after losing the pregnancy--oh yes I was fucking pregnant which sometimes sounds so weird as it rolls off my tongue or saunters over the soft gray matter of my thoughts--all the chemistry in my brain went back to the high-anxiety state of precoming out of the closet. All late winter and spring I had panic attacks and sleeplessness and even night sweats.

Finally, more than six weeks ago, my therapist was like, "you need something to break the chemical cycle that you cannot control." And so I started the drug. Well, I got the script and then it took me two weeks to start it but I did it. And now I am kind of "normal" again. Kind of.

But work is slowly giving me the kind of anxiety that feels like 3000 bricks piled high on my chest, and I just want to say-SHUT UP WORK. I AM THUNDER. I AM SIRENS. I AM SCREAMING AT ALL THE BULLSHIT.

I love my work--the actual work--the working with people in prison and their loved ones and trying with all of our might, together, to make us all look at crime and suffering and victimization and mental illness and hurt differently. And exposing through the direct stories and testimonies of the people living behind the caged walls what prison really is like--guess what folks it hurts people and communities more than any of us will ever realize.

But, without going into too much detail--my organization is having financial trouble right now and I am tired, tired, tired of the fall out of years of dysfunction--the dysfunction before the financial dysfunction that is exacerbated by the financial woes--cascading mountains of ash all around me.

So, lovely, nearly mid June Michigan thunderstorm, I am bellowing with your voice; I am calling out to the winds to bring more rain to cover the ash of the dysfunction and the wounds within our own hearts and histories.

Stopping the melodramatic writing: I really am just screaming and hollering like crazy, loud in my head and waiting with more and more anticipation for my sabbatical which will arrive soon and very soon (more on all that later).

four wisdom teeth extracted and six movies watched

Today, I have four less teeth than I had last week. I had my wisdom teeth yanked out on thursday afternoon. I did it with only the local numbing. I have this terrible fear of being put under, so I resigned myself to being awake for the pliering, levering, drilling experience that oral surgery really is.

The pain has not been all that bad, but the tiredness that has crept up on me, because of the procedure, is something else. I have been sleeping like crazy--10 to 14 hours in a 24 hour day. My dentist had been bugging me to get them pulled for years and then I got pregnant and I got this little nagging infection like thing in my one wisdom tooth and she said, "I don't mean to say I told you so, but I told you to get them out." And then I became no longer pregnant and then k went to the dentist (the same dentist I go to) and the two of them set up my oral surgery consult and appointment and then let me know they had done so. It is all good cause in the next few months the organization I work for will be taking away our dental coverage, so I had to get them out...

I've been living on liquidy things and have been mystified at the constipating powers of codeine (I stopped taking it early saturday morning but that shit blocks up a person's intestines like you would not believe--the regular flow is almost back in order--for those of you who care).

K took me up north on Friday--she went to plant flowers and I went to heal--and I lazed around the cabin watching movies on my macbook and trying to heal and get through the haze of codeine (I am not a pill popper; I like the realm of sober very, very much). I watched 6 movies in four nights.

The movie list in best to worst order with super brief one sentence reviews:
The Wrestler (excellent; Mickey Rourke was fucking phenomenal--I think it is the best movie I've seen in a long time and the main character was real and deeply developed)
Slumdog Millionaire (visually amazing and I dug the soundtrack a hell of a lot)
Twilight (I liked it; what can I say it was fun fodder for the evening)
The Secret Life of Bees (cheesy but moving at parts and Dakota Fanning is a good little actor)
Tied for worst below
Some horrible lesbian movie that I cannot remember the real name of Running on Empty
Dreams or something like that (absolutely the worst lesbian movie I have ever seen which does not say that much about it cause you all know how bad the girl on girl movies are; I fast forwarded it through much of the shit to the girl kissing girl parts)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (I thought is was a fucking sappy, horrible, mess of a movie. a movie that shallowly depicted the deep and complex human experience of aging, dying, and living; it was bad; real bad. The wrestler captured way more realistically and creatively the human experience of growing old and living into death.)

blue, food, badminton

Yesterday, on a walk with k and my mama in the arb in ann arbor, we saw an indigo bunting and my breath was taken by the brilliant blue of this darling bird. It glisten like a sapphire on a thin green reed at the foot of the hemlock edged woods on the cusp of the prairie.

Seeing this small little life of feather and bones and blue was one of the highlights of this long weekend. I also enjoyed spending the day with k and my ma, and talking a lot and eating good food.

And then today k and I worked the earth long and hard. We put in the rest of the vegetables--my colder weather plants/seeds have been in for a couple of weeks (lettuce, beets, turnips, carrots, sweet peas, kale). Today, in went cayenne, anchos, jalapenos, tomatoes, basil, russian tarragon, beans, acorn squash, cucumbers, cilantro, zinnias, lavender, some more bergamot, mint, beetberries, zuchs, more chamomile, cosmos, marigolds. We prepped a bed for some corn and sunflowers and still need to prep another bed for more corn. We mulched and mowed and tidied and weeded and transplanted and worked our asses off.

When we finished after almost 8 hours of outside work, t and r came over and we ate dinner together; a yummy salad of roasted asparagus and carrots and radishes and spinach and arugala from t and r's garden; mini fake sloppy joes, chick pea feta rice salad; cheddar sun ships; yummy cheese (a goat cheddar and a swiss) and strawberries; and ultra delicious brownies.

Then we played badminton at dusk and had fun laughing and trying to see the nearly invisible birdie. K and I got beat by t and r. It was close, but we went down.

So it was a full and lovely weekend of work and people I love. It feels so good and right to have my hands back in the soil and the sun searing my neck and the wind whipping my energy right from under me. Even in the midst of all of the loss of the last couple of months, things are starting to feel a bit more right--a bit more in order and bit more like me and like us. All in all, this me and us is sans kids. Probably, eternally so... we will see. In the meantime, I will stare at the blue stain of the sweet bird who I was blessed to gaze upon this weekend and revel in all that is growing in the earth outside my door and chuckle at the memories of four of us volleying crazily in barely any light on an almost summer night.

fuzzy

Lately, my brain has been a little fuzzy and incapable of writing much.
But, on the daily:
1. lots of riding bicycle
2. lots of working in the garden and yard
3. lots of working at work
4. lots of unknowns at work
5. lots of stress being covered by the numbing effects of a drug i decided to take after much delay and apprehension for anxiety and depression which also zaps me of energy and causes me to become fuzzy and nearly incapable of writing or creating concise and well crafted sentences and or images
6. lots of glory unfolding in the spring all around me
7. lots of unknowns everyday all around forever and always

my exposed ass cheek

A few weeks ago I was having what I thought was a semi normal day and then I came home and sat down on the kitchen chair and felt the cold wooden surface on my raw ass cheek. I realized in that chilly moment that my pants were seriously torn.

I had been to the chiropractor just before coming home from work, and I think that dr. dan may have slammed me a bit too hard and torn my jeans. I think maybe he saw my ass (he is not my normal chiropractor and it was my first time with him and he really tossed me around vigorously). After consulting with my colleague, I was informed that she did not see my ass at work, so hopefully it really only did happen at the chiro and dr.dan was the only one who saw my skin, skin. But whenever it happened, it sure caused me and k to have a good solid laugh. I almost went out into public again to see if any of the people I saw at the brewery told me my pants were torn and my cheek was exposed, but I thought better of it and changed my pants.


and here it is for you all...

more on rivers

I’ve got veins all over me and through me. I see river veins running near to me and their sometimes murky, sometimes glass-like surfaces pierce through my heart like a million sharp stone arrows leaving me breathless, leaving me satisfied with a painful depth of joy that raises tender scar bumps on my skin.

Yesterday, riding fast along the river that I love, the fog of a chilly but warming morning hung in misty ribbons over the trembling water. The birds went about their business building nests and tending to their little ones and beckoning the coming of rain with their varied voices—calling tangy toned notes, shrill and lovely.

I spotted the first orioles I have seen this spring—startled and gladdened by their bright orange under bellies, I stopped to pay closer attention to their proud black heads—slick and serious in the gray morning light.

I pedaled on and watched all the living things moving in some kind of perfect unison around me and wanted just to be there for always and not to emerge up the cemented hill from the river valley through the neighborhood where wealthy people live in too big of houses.

Everyday it is like this. I am tempted by a river to stay low and fast to its banks—to hover lightly on the edges of that in between place. That place where I do not have to think about suffering and violence and the ever-growing emergence of more and more injustice.

On some days, I wish I had become an ornithologist or a botanist or something not so connected to the intricacies of the human ability to think (or not think) and hurt (or not hurt) and love (or not love) or spread meanness (or not spread meanness). I wish for the lazy river to cover me constantly and make it all better. It does—in those hazy morning moments when I am captured in the river valley apart from the mayhem on the hill.