Can you forget?

I went to my old place yesterday, to the place I needed most to be- needed from a place deeper and less conscious than my head, needed in a way that my heart led my body there.
I climbed out in the wind with a head full of thoughts growing ever clearer to the Manasquan fishing pier, a place that makes it easy to imagine myself freely aloft on the sea. I climbed out to the end and stood face to the wind while sea gulls flew past my head and spray dusted my face.
I climbed out with many thought and came back with - two:

Is it possible to be remembering who I am, like visiting with the spirit of someone I once knew, the ghost of a world gone by?

Is it possible to have lied to myself about or run for so long from it that I forgot who I am?

I should have known

I should have known it would happen.

I should not have doubted for a moment that I would come around to wanting to live with you. We had come so far avoiding these urges. I thought maybe this time I could best it.

But here it is. We are passing through the intersection now and the week between the weekends, the days I have to myself in my own place, are becoming less and less a bout of Karen time, and with each passing week more and more but the bridge, the dues paid, between the days I get to spend at your side.

You aren't the only one who needs and appreciates a bite of time alone after 48 hours glued together- 48 hours we are both always sorry to end; 48 hours we both enjoy: but once I have had some time alone, after a few hours left to my own devices, I am ready to go back home to you and curl up in your snuggle or join you in the next venture whatever that may be.

You know how you told me months ago that you simply enjoy my company? I still enjoy yours too.

patience is not my virtue

I've been told so many times through my life by loved ones: Be patient. You need time to heal.
And I never listen. I am patient to the furthest extents of Karen patience and then I leap once I feel healed.
To me, healed meant feeling capable of going on with daily life no longer feeling daily pain.

But it is more than that and after decades and multiple run of the mill surprise life changes I am starting to understand that the stages of healing runs the same conduit as the process of re-becoming.

the space between

Caught in the middle again, who I was coming back and who I will be around the corner not decided yet.

I lost my job last Tuesday, or not so much lost it as had it removed.
"Here, let me take that from you."
Indian givers.
(European American givers, really. "Here, you can keep your land. HA! Fooled ya'!)

Maybe I was given a gift just in time for my study load to double.
Maybe I'll be denied unemployment pay and won't be hired by anyone and my nursing license will expire and my debts swallow me whole.

Maybe this piece of the puzzle had to fall into place so that the next one will fit.

always a good time for Christmas

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Very Brady Christmas

For you, it's all about sharing times with family. Even if you all get a bit cheesy at times.

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

bird prints in the snow

Yesterday morning I sat halfway up in bed just after 7:30, peeked through my bedroom window's white and sky blue sheers, sat up higher in astonishment, and pulled the curtains apart to be sure. Snow! - on the ground and still falling. We actually finally yippee skippy got snow!!

Was I the only one whistling while sweeping eight beautiful inches of it off the car at 8:30 AM? Was I the only one smiling around my white knuckled steering wheel grip as I slipped through the unplowed slush?

It took me 45 minutes to make the 15 mile trek to my job interview- well, 40 counting the five minute stop at the Clarksburg post office where I made certain the Postal worker at the desk knew I was asking directions to a job interview and not simply driving to a summer day camp site at 9:30 AM in the middle of a snowstorm. (I don't want my very own jacket with the wrap-around sleeves quite yet, friends)-
- at the post office where I knew I could get away with smiling and waving at the tyke boot kicking snow near her mom but knew Mom might worry if I dove into the snow in my interview clothes to play with her child and make snowmen and snow angels like I really wanted to.

Ah- job interview. Yep, I was terminated on Tuesday. Terminated- that's a more accurate description than fired, but every time I say it I picture myself being blown into shrapnel sized bits by a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now that truly would have shaken up the office!

It is okay. It is okay right now because they must have been able to tell I wasn't so happy there any more, and because I won't starve or go homeless as long as my peeps are around (swear to the Great Lima Bean I just typoed 'my poopes'.)

It is okay because I firmly believe I will find another job, and because now I have some freedom to find something that will be more fulfilling: toward that goal I am trying to find work as a hospice or summer camp nurse.

In other news, spring is definitely coming! I know this because my long haired cat is leaving trails of fur all over the place and making hair balls the length of my hand.
Yep- just chased her around the apartment with her brush(in a studio apartment, cats have fewer places to hide from hair brushes ;-) and doled out the treats- two hairball and four tartar control for my teeny short haired kitty, and just the opposite for my sack of hair with feet.

cast iron dreams

The effect on me of my boyfriend asking my preference in engagement rings last week manifested itself in my desire to make him breakfast last Saturday morning. Suddenly I wished for bread worthy of French Toast (no Freedom Toast shall be made in this home!) and eggs... and a stove. (I do have a two burner counter top unit, and most of my pans rescued from storage, including the pull-my-shoulder-from-the-socket if I have to hold it for longer than 3 seconds cast-iron pan I nearly laid over my ex-fiance's head when he gave it to me on our third Christmas instead of the engagement he'd for 14 months lied about saving money for)

So why the Betty Crocker dreams? I have not in 16 months of courtship cooked for this man. Honestly with school on top of work since last October I have been too busy to cook for myself other than the occasional cheap whole chicken tossed into a pot of seasoned boiling water.

Growing up I aspired to be a horse trainer, or a published writer, or an editor or a farmer- these things would do. What I wanted most to be was a house wife, now labeled a ***SAHM***. I was reading Hints From Heloise and Erma Bombeck, Good Housekeeping and Parents magazine by age 12. I wanted to cook and clean and be pregnant, swear to God. It was all planned out- married by 23, four kids by 30.
(someone is bound to be offended- but see, I was an only child until age 6, and my mom was a SAHM until I was nearly 16)

Except I can't carry a baby, and here I am at 33 still single. And I still want to be a SAHM.

So what happens often is that I wander off to play with the little kids at family parties, and I want to wash your dishes when I come over, and when I am home very much or especially when I co-habitate, I want to clean and decorate, sew and run errands, make the sink faucets sparkle, garden and paint, cook a wholesome dinner every night and send my significant other off to work with natural peanut butter and jelly on whole grain bread.

And I am extraordinarily fascinated by and drawn to pregnant mammals.

*** No I don't think it is easy to be a SAHM, and as I seep deeper into thirties and watch my peers parent I wonder if I could do it all. Keeping an entire household running and being responsible, at the bare minimum, for raising a human being to reach his or her greatest potential? Now that's some serious stuff. ***

maybe my future

When I was 15 or 16, my mother told me that my great-grandmother never felt older than 16 in her heart; that she believed each of us has stays one age inside for all of our lives.

I can't say I have stayed one age, but several remain. Lying on my back in the cool over-grown grass early on June mornings I might be 6 and I might be 10. Falling in love anew, I am 13. Dreaming of my future with a beau, I am 15 or 16 all over again and filled with hope and promise.

I think we've all been hurt by loving- trusted too hard, gave too much, stayed too long. Somehow I was always glad the end hurt so much. No pain would have belittled everything we'd had.

Through Boyfriend's Rhapsody account, I am listening to "How Can We See That Far". It's so simple, and so ... simultaneously pinching and promising.

I've been engaged before. I was almost 31 when we got engaged, and almost 32 and nearly married when I left. I left, and no pain or guilt has ever been harsher. I left one morning in the middle of my third full anxiety attack of the month, and my father and I drove up to clean out the apartment- our apartment- five weeks later.
I cried and screamed- literally screamed and howled- for the first three hours driving home. I was glad to be alone with my pain for the first time, but it's hard to see and drive and have a melt-down barely breathing with legs going numb all at once.

I've learned from my mistakes and I think I know better what I'm doing this time. I'm excited and scared; but I am comfortable. It feels much different this time around. I want it for me. I want it for my parents. I want it for him. It's something we are able to talk about, something we are able to face.


How can we see that far? We can't. None of us can.

Loving makes us vulnerable but we take our future and place it in the hands of another, and accept his and promise to give our best and make it work no matter what.

Last night

I dreamed I stepped outside briefly into the comfortingly cool, sparsely lit, welcoming night leaving the front door open, but wandered off across the gray lawn distracted and came home again to find the door still open but my cats still tucked safely inside.

I dreamed of coming home from work to find a fully fringed towering green shrub had grown across my path in my absence. It was menacing; a malignant, peace eating tree of a shrub and section by section I dug my bare hands in pulling and tearing it out by the eight inch circumference roots. An allergan it turned out to be and I rushed in to suds up my arms and legs scrubbing away the threatening spores.

I dreamed of Boyfriend and I. I do not remember where we were going or why: I do recall us wandering by a door we had to enter and I was supposed to be carrying something necessary but had left it behind along our foot travels. Whatever it was, we found it again and were able to pass through the door.

one of the cool kids

While re-filling the tin in my purse with my secret stash this morning, I had an epiphany of sorts:

I have a private tin full of pills in my bag, like the 'underground' party kids did in high school, my very first box of fun -

humiliatingly age-baring that my idea of a box of fun pills is a tin full of antacids and Motrin :-)

fresh bunny

Maybe this makes me a sicko, but I love this commercial to pieces- so much so that I watch it over and over and over and searched for the longest version I could find and bookmarked it. So much so that I want everybody to see it.
It isn't stuffed animals having sex that endeared it to me. At least I hope not ;-)

They are freaking adorable! How can you not love the bunnies ears flopping up and down it time and their little fluffy bodies bouncing to the beat? How can you not adore a smiling bunny and teddy bear in love in the back seat?

It kills me :)

nothing

He asks what I have been doing all morning, likely wondering why I ask him to leave me alone and delay his arrival as long as possible.

He asks me what I have been doing so far this day,
and I say,
"Nothing," in a sigh,
which I know makes him nuts.


I am not willing to bare myself in words, to risk being seen as a flake, to tell him I am enjoying just being me, the air coming in the windows, the dry grass crunchy under my slippers padding way out back in my snowman pajama pants with the soft-cotton wear holes, and the headband on sleep hair, to replenish bird food hoping they'll be back despite me starving them all week long.

That I want to feel attractive to you, to feel like a woman, to love a man's body long and loudly and freely instead of feeling bashful for being so horny;
that I want to be alone all day and go for walks in the sun, make my muscles strong again, get skinny, daydream spring's gardening days.

That sometimes I feel my inner spark, the burst that is me, growing back.

That it's always been a challenge for me to grow into my partner, or with my partner, instead of independently and away. (only one person ever exalted my day dreaming side, the part i protect like a mother bear)
I don't know which direction to go in to try, but I am trying to go that way.

I can't stop it that sometimes I just want to fly away to simpler things, find my old dreaming self- the one who watched the sea and sweat poems.

another mutt

Through my boyfriend's Rhapsody account I am listening to Art Garfunkel's 'Songs From a Parent to a Child'. I love it!

He said I could log in with his password and listen to things as long as I saved nothing. He does not want his groove thang to 311 being broken by a burst of Bette Midler. Can't blame the guy.

I don't know at all what it feels like to love a child as a parent, but I imagine it is sweetly painful, something so strong it hurts and brings tears by pure intensity, something you could bite into with teeth.

I don't know if I have what it takes to handle the responsibility of effectively shaping and encouraging a growing mind every single day.

But I like this CD and imagining my friends or my cousin singing the songs to their respective babes, and to imagine singing them to a bundle in my arms.

The further along life my journey rolls, the more comforting sense James Taylor makes to me. Simple and honest and all the pieces and common aches and joys that are every day life.


I miss Maine. It's just a place, I know, but something goes soft and weepy in my middle when I drift back in my heart to the bluest sky ever spring, summer, or fall draping over my head and shoulders, tender sugar candy pine tree air, the spaces open for my feet to go. Something in me wants to cry and misses it so.
I left for so many reasons, and many of the reasons I left are here and near sleeping or raising small children or spending time on a Sunday night with friends and family, gearing up for a new week.
But I miss it, not strong enough yet to visit, fearing New Jersey would never get me back again. I am not strong enough yet to leave Maine behind again.

If you ever see me singing along to 'Carolina in My Mind' I'm saying Carolina, but thinking Maine all the way through.

It's a parade!

Having my own large collection of canvas and recycled-content shopping bags amassed over the years I like to bag my own things to pack to the top and avoid any wee plastic baggies for keeping the meat to itself. I pack them full and heavy and one of these days I will break myself carrying them (see: stubborn girl stumbling down the parking lot weaving under four max-packed carry-alls and a 10-lb satchel of corn cob kitty litter)but for now it's alright.

I need time at the conveyer belt to prepare and try to get behind someone; perhaps an older woman with a full cart or an older man with six items and a wallet full of grandchildren.

Last night, after leaving work at 4 and running errands, and seeing an apartment, and landing at the food store at 7, I got in line behind a couple with 15 things and a cart- it was the longest line going. Not enough time and not enough room on the belt. I tried to be patient and not breathe like a ball-strung bull at the starting gate. The man wandered off and the woman coughed into her tissue.

Then the woman turned and smiled and said, "My God! How much room does he have to take?Single file???"

And I laughed and let my impatience flow away as she condensed the 15 items her husband had indeed arranged single file, one after the other looking very well behaved, all the way down the belt before wandering off to the car.

and then

soft as dust falling it breaks my heart
a whisper in song
only a word and it all goes black
just whisper the name and i go back

And i know without peeking there's snow on the mountain tips and the air 1000 feet above the sea smells like the back of a freezer. I walked one night in the so so cold the snow flakes intact one atop another edges frost fuzzy ice pictures on my jacket in the lamp light.

laughing at funerals

Here I sit in my computer chair, laughing.

It is amazing how paralyzing it is when you slide one socked foot along the carpet to turn and stand...

and a sewing needle sinks itself 3/4 of an inch into the meaty part of your heel.

Now the throbbing.

And a little more laughter.

God dang that smarts.


Yes I pulled it out. Put down my bowl and sat in that slow motion way of "What the living hell is stuck in my foot?"

Incidentally, it took some serious pulling to yank it out.

Good thing I got that Tetanus update in September :)

once upon a stove top

I changed purses rapidly before leaving for class Wednesday night. Up on my toes I stretched my arms to lift down my busted at the seams firebox, willing the papers and newly replaced passport squeezed between the detached lid and nestled boxes of jewelry and old cat tags and Sylvia's very first collar not to slip free; balanced it teetering on the top of the floor bound TV and pre-accident reprimanded myself not to bump it over; needed the hook of a white plastic hanger to latch the strap and pull the bag down, catching it mid-air.

In spare time at a red light during my morning commute I fiddled into the front pockets of the purse I was sure I'd stripped bare last spring and dug out an old grocery list and a ticket- UMF (University of Maine-Farmington); Iolanthe (a Scottish troupe); Sat 09/25/2004.

I remember it was very cold that night and we crossed High Street from our apartment to the auditorium/business building with our breath in the air holding hands I bet unless my arms were folded for warth, and at intermission I walked fast back home and ran up the stairs on a cough drop mission because I was halfway into coming down with something nasty and trying hard to not cough on my row mates.

Two weeks ago I destroyed our collander. It's common sense is it not? If a burner has just been turned off, putting a plastic collander on top is going to melt that collander right to the stove.

I didn't tell Boyfriend about it because I'd have to explain why it happened. I'd have to tell him that I just got lost in the past for a little while; that one of those cozy little waves of yesteryear overtook me and I was back in our kitchen in Maine, making supper while my (ex-fiance) ran out to the store for blueberries or milk ; how I was at my future in-laws for Sunday dinner or maybe Christmas and wondering what my life would be like now had I gone through with the marriage; and how it doesn't truly matter because I love Boyfriend and he's my best friend but sometimes I just get caught up in a visit with the happies of yesterday.

Okay, so here is an idea- rather than government keep cigarette smokers in its palm like a money making pet why doesn't it make a move that would not simply line the its own pocket?

It's certainly well known how detrimental cigarette smoking is to the cardiovascular system but cigarettes are supposedly more addictive than heroin. Government knows this. Government also makes a lot of money off smokers. Does Government really want smokers to quit? I don't think so.

Illegalizing cigarettes would be ridiculous. Raising tobacco taxes sky high is awfully hypocritical don't you think? Get the people hooked on something quite addictive and harmful, keep producing it at the same toxin level even though you know its killing the people, then make the candy more and more difficult to get, but more and more lucrative for the suppliers.

Why can't the nicotine level in cigarettes by incrementally lowered all across the board? Is that chemically possible? Is this a completely unsound idea?

going about it

the dreams i dreamed in the days of olden
and time keeps passing
never come to be
and time keeps passing and the places i dreamed
changed without me
and i visit the places expecting the me
i left behind
expecting to find the me i used to be
and the you that dreamed too
the you that made the wind and tasted the salt and whistled my skin
the you that dreamed for me

and time keeps passing and the places they stay
while the dreams come and go
and the me passes by
with my baskets of people and harmonies
that used to be

reignition

For a long time I lost my fire and my passion. I forgot how to dive into life and lick it.

But it's coming back now. It's all coming back.


For a very long time I've done my best at being someone I wasn't ever supposed to be, and now might have the chance to practice being just who I've really been all along.