The Full Moon, Fat with Possibilities

Oh, where to start?

I have pictures I want to post from our day trip to the creek a couple of Saturdays ago.

I want to tell the world about the wonderful growth and transformation my son is making in his new school program.

Congratulations are in order to a college friend who just had the most amazing birth experience earlier today.

Another friend just signed a lease on her new living space that bursts with possibility, and another friend in Colorado signed the lease for her new business venture, her very own medical practice.

I have so many stories to tell. So many stories.

But, today, my story is that I was offered an evaluation-to-hire, full-time position through a staffing agency in just a matter of hours. After months of independent searching, months of wrangling back and forth with the first staffing agency, months of unanswered calls and emails, and a mound of rejection letters that would heat a house in the winter, I was offered this position in a matter of hours. It was like a gift or a sign. I could not say “No.” I could not say “Please, can I have until Monday?” I start first thing tomorrow.

What my boyfriend and I were not prepared for, however, was the sheer disappointment of it.

For the last six months, we have done a lot of work. We have spent numerous hours in conversation. We have worked hard on our relationship. We have been inseparable. And we have been poor. Very poor. But it’s almost as if we grew together these past few months, like a tree will grow around a spike or wire and make that spike or wire a part of its core. And, now, it feels impossible to pull apart from one another. We both know it is necessary. We both know it is a bit of a blessing and good fortune. We both know it is a tremendous opportunity. But we both know it is a major adjustment as I have been a permanent fixture in this house for the last six months. We both are sad, stomping around and pouting like two children who have had their lollipops confiscated. We both are overjoyed.

The complexities of the human condition, of our human conditions as they are unique to each of us, are like little mysteries that we get to solve each and every day. And they are beautiful; they are difficult; they are sure as the fat, yellow moon that rose above the horizon this evening, with its hazy-soft halo hung low in the humidity.

It will lead us tonight into a bright new day.

In peace and love…

Why Blog, or I Know This; I Know You

For weeks now, I have been pondering this blog, asking myself questions like, “Why blog? Why is it important? Is it even important? Isn’t it a little narcissistic or self-important? Why put such personal bits of your life right out there in the open for anyone to see? And who would care, anyway? Everyone has a life he or she is living right now at the very same moment you are. And everyone has a past. And these lives have the potential to be far more interesting and exciting than anything you have to offer. Why not just put it all down in one of your many hand-written journals?” The questions could march on, fall down, and continue to roll along the slippery slope.

I measure the growth of my life by the number of its fractures. There have been many, and each fracture seems to have been a starting-over. Like a new life, but not a new life, exactly. And in the manner of fractures, I like to believe that each one heals over as a broken bone heals and is stronger along the fault line than before. But the truth is: I carry these bone-bits. They are gathered in a black velvet bag the shape of my heart, and it has a silver drawstring to keep them all safe inside. I wish I could open that bag, shake the bones between the palms of my hands, and release them onto the table top. I wish I could read those bones and have them tell me a fractured story that reveals the whole truth and the truth about what comes next.

I own my loneliness, and lonely is a difficult text, at best. One could be physically surrounded by some of the greatest people in the world and still be lonely. I suppose I am looking to share my loneliness with the world and hold hope that others will find solace and a kindred spirit in me and in the words and experiences about which I write. I want to share with others what is, what has been, and what will be difficult, then show them that it is possible for light to be born of so much darkness.

It’s not that I’m fishing for “followers.” Or playing a popularity game. Or fretting over the number of hits and visits to my page. Or obsessing about whether or not a reader left a comment. But the comments are a nice surprise, like flowers on your doorstep when you least expect them. Because those comments aren’t just unexpected flowers; those comments are other individuals who just stopped by, knocked on the virtual doorframe just to say, “I know this; I know you.”

And with that, the loneliness eases—if only for a little bit.

In peace and love…

A Room of My Own

I must be repaying some kind of cosmic debt to which I am completely unaware, and I must admit: it’s bringing me down. And even though I felt like crawling back into the bed this morning and staying there beneath the constant hug of the down comforter, I resisted. Instead, I did a little paper cleansing.

I am a borderline hoarder, especially when it comes to keeping my paper records: paid bills, insurance EOBs, bank statements, paycheck stubs, receipts from when I bought gas during Christmas 2008. I stack them up in neat little piles on my desk, and after a while, the piles grow a little unruly. So, today, I gave it up to the shredder. My desk is still a mess, but the unnecessary paper has been eliminated.

Doing this, however, only reinforced how badly the boyfriend and I need to get on with renovating that spare room into my office. But such a big task takes a little bit of money, and money is the one thing I’m presently living without.

I am a sentimental person, and I like to keep things that are of sentimental value to me. I often wish I were the type of person who could just toss things out, set them next to the curb for collection, and just let it go. But I’ve moved so many times and have lived without the people I love for so long that these trinkets hold memories and have become replacements for the people I don’t get to see very often, if at all. My stuff deserves its own room or as the boyfriend calls it, “my own space.” And I couldn’t agree with him more.

In the spirit of Virginia Woolf, I need a “room of one’s own.” There, I could write without disturbance, whether it is a poem or a blog update. I would set up a makeshift worktable where I could hand-bind art books until my fingertips bleed and my heart’s content. I could handcraft notecards that incorporate my original photographs, quirky designs, and found art.

Yes. A room of my own is just what I need.

Daylight Savings…

I admit that I am sensitive: to words, to actions, to energies. I am a Cancer. We are, by nature, sensitive to all things almost to a fault, and shifts in time, at least for me, are not excluded. Last night, most clocks “sprung” forward an hour, just one hour. And in the grander scheme of things, what is an hour, really? Right? But that loss of an hour to my circadian rhythm is the equivalent of a day. Perhaps, even, more like a week.

I woke up this morning with this inner nagging that I was missing something. And it seemed like I was missing so much more than an hour. That hour could have been spent with a chapter or two of a good book, a cup of spearmint tea too hot to drink, in the arms of my lover as we contemplate all the promises of spring: grass growing greener day by day, buds emerging on the lilac bushes, sprouts on the sugar maple despite its dying from the inside out.

I must make a concerted effort not to squander so much of my time.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite poems ever written…

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Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

by James Wright

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

The Shadows Outweigh Their Light Source

I haven’t updated this blog like I would really like to this past week. It’s not that I haven’t done anything special—because I have. I went to a poetry reading/open mic night last Tuesday. I read three poems for open mic, and I was a shaky, sweaty, nervous mess, but I loved it! It was my first time at the Poetry Lounge, which takes place at Studio Roanoke, a wonderfully intimate theater that I wished more people would support. But, then again, I try not to expect too much of Roanoke anymore. And I’m awfully disappointed in the Commonwealth of Virginia here lately, as well, what with our fine elected officials (not by me) trying to deny gay students rights against discrimination AND cutting funding for the already-emaciated Arts and Education.

I just haven’t been feeling well. I’m not talking about a case of the sniffles or hayfever or a general end-of-winter malaise. There’s this disquiet inside of me, and it grows from the center. It’s got spiritual arms, emotional legs, intellectual fingers and toes, and black, empty eyes. It is hungry, and I don’t quite know how to feed it. What I do know is that this growing thing inside needs a job and health insurance, and, believe me, I’ve been diligently searching, applying, waiting, calling, revising, applying, waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and calling, and testing, and waiting, waiting, waiting. There has been little forward movement. But I can say, with 100% certainty, that I can type 55 wpm with 100% accuracy; I am 100% efficient in my data entry skills; I am 90% customer service ready, and I possess advanced skills with Microsoft Word and Excel. Who doesn’t want a temp with two college degrees who is willing to work for minimum wage? Sounds like a damn good deal to me.

Feeling put-out like this always intensifies the physical pain, too. On a good day, it’s not easy to have a non-specific, yet-to-be-identified, auto-immune dysfunction that causes inflammation in the blood vessels of your retinas and sets all your connective tissue on fire, whether those connections are in your knees, the balls of your feet, your shoulders, or your spine. Vasculitis, they say, but they don’t know why. “A curious case, indeed!” the Big Doctor at UVa proclaims. But, on a bad day like Saturday, this dis-ease will leave you flat in the bed, especially if it aggravates the neck injury you sustained in a car accident a few years ago. Silent tears will fall down your face and into your ears like you’ve rolled sideways in the swimming pool, and they are silent because you simply can’t bear the physicality of sobbing.

Right now, the shadows outweigh their light source, and I abide, patiently, patiently.