Don't Read if You Want to Feel Happy.

I was just getting ready to post the following on Facebook:

"All I want is a week without a fail.  Just one week.  Just One!"

Then I paused, took a breath, and thought- I can get a little more out of this.  My self abasement has recently picked up again- fast tracking me back into a self-loathing which fast tracks me into the following statement:

I disgust myself.  I Disgust Myself.  Even myself and especially myself.  Because I don't know how to be.  I do not know how to be... myself, something, anything... I watched and lurked around a potluck last night and could not find it in myself to act like a normal human-creature instead of the ill-willed diseased wraith that I am.  I seem to be unable to interact in a happily social fashion with people because I suppose I don't feel like a person.

Where is the cosmic/karmic reset button when I need it?  It does not seem to be in my soul or spirit.  Ant it's certainly not in the mirror.  Nor in the tears that I shed for myself an every other suffering scared little girl out there.

Anyway.  There are always the mountains.  I may never have a week without a fail- but I can still see the mountains.  And I can still take a breath.  I suppose- because supposition has become my good friend of late- I suppose I will survive for that.  Until next time.

A Little about A Lot

I was asked today if I considered myself a writer.

I really don't know how to answer that question.  I consider myself a person who writes.  I write often, though not often particularly well; I write with candor and passion, but that candor and passion leads frequently to utterly incoherent passages; I write with love.

I love writing.

So there's that.  And here is this-

The same person who asked if I considered myself a writer also offered me the following opportunities throughout this most lovely of days:  I saw three bald eagles.  I found a mountain range who has become the newest of my dearest loves.  I turned my face to the Alaskan summer sun and basked it in.  I sat back to back with a man whose intellect and experience I am growing very much to respect.

The Range is either Sunrise Mountain or Hope Point.. or potentially that ridge which runs between the two.  Regardless- she is an old soul and hers connected with mine in an inexplicably profound way.  If all mountains have personalities, and they do, hers is the gentle friend.

And to all my other gentle friends-

Until next time.

And Then- There Was Snow

For whatever reason, the warmth of the world has abandoned me.  

Maybe I made it mad.

Regardless, I found myself delighting in Snow in North Carolina in... I think it must have been late February or early March.  Beautiful, special, quieting snow.  It was a treat from Mother Nature for me to see that carpet of white spread out over the front lawn, laying gently over the big holly trees in the front yard.

Then I moved to Alaska.  Which, granted, was my own choice and so this time, really, it's my own fault.

Because it is May 17th.  And it is snowing in Anchorage.  And the heat does not work in my room.  And I am woefully under-packed for this.

If you never read from me again, Dearests, it's because I have literally frozen to death.

:)

Maiden, Mother, Crone.

Right now, I am sitting at a kitchen table in Anchorage considering the idea of Motherhood.

I am wrapped in the sweater my mother gave me.


It is the eve of Mother's Day.

I miss my Mom.

I love the world in which I live- and I love it because of my Mom.  She makes it the best of all worlds.  With her humor, her wit, her LOVE, her KINDNESS, her INTELLECT.  Her perfect PERFECT beauty- INSIDE AND OUT.  My mother makes this world one in which it is worth living.  She is the most alive, lovely, LOVING person I know.  She is something else entirely.  She is my touchstone, my totem, my hero.

I am nearly 30 years old and my mother still stands between me and the hoards of people who would have my head on a stick.

She is my best.... everything.

Happy Mother's Day, My Momma.

A Room With A View

This morning I did yoga with the blinds open, the early morning sun illuminating my practice and room.  As I began Surya Namaskara (the sun salutation), I looked out the window, staring at Pine trees.  And beyond the Pines, dwarfing everything around them, glacial, snow-capped mountains.  Enormous ones.  A chain of them.

This is my view for the next four months.  Pines and Mountains.  Oh... and rooftops, of course.

I just thought I should let you all know that I'm still alive.  Day two- no bears; no moose; but Pines and Mountains.

Much love from AK.

Spare Paper Bags

Once again, I find myself venturing into a crapshoot. 

Damned if you Alaska, Damned if you don't.  

On Wednesday I will fly to Anchorage for four months, moving a house and a home and a life all in the space of a suitcase.  Well... technically two suitcases and a carry-on.  I will pack, unpack, and eventually repack my belongings, attempting all the while to remind myself of the glamour, freedom, and delight in a suitcase life.  Ultimately I will be happy, but for now I am just utterly exhausted,  I do this to myself all the time- lay the groundwork for solidity and normalcy and throw it all into the wind the second the traveller comes calling.  Or the Federal Government.  

I begin this summer season with an overwhelming sense of trepidation- go figure.  Those paper bags I mentioned in the title?  They are to combat the constant and breath-taking panic attacks that currently strike me.  If you are unfamiliar with such an affliction, a lung-centric panic attack involves the feeling of having a wide sturdy metal vise squeezing tighter and tighter, dictating the flow of air into and out of the body.  Eventually the breath becomes so shallow, so labored... 

So the mantra becomes something along the lines of... Deep Breath, Breathe Deep- Use a Flippin' Paper Bag! If there is, indeed, a deep breath to be had, it is apparently not meant for me.  Not for the time being.  

That is not to say that I am in any way weak enough or timid enough to let the paper bags mentality (affliction) win.  Not even close!  If anything, I will push against the panic to the point that I will recklessly and conspicuously throw myself into this new (life) position with such gusto that I will, more than likely, crash and burn with equal gusto.   

This is, in essence, how I roll.  

The point is- for all of the breath-holding; for all of the uphill battling; for all of the plateauing, struggling, sinking, swimming, drowning; of the past two years... The point is that I will move to Anchorage in a day and half.  

And I will live there.  

So much love, So very much love...

Beltane the Bravery

I find it quite funny that the conservative contingent in this nation would have me crucified as a new-agey neurotic when I proclaim my practice of witchcraft- and yet, here we are on May Day.  First day of May.  While I may be the one dancing around the May-Pole or burning the bonfires, gratefully breathing in the sweet scent of Lilacs and smoke, you are still marking your calendars.*

Traditionally celebrated as Beltane- or the beginning of Summer- May Day marks the midpoint between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice.  It is a day of blossoming, blooming, and blue blue lusty, heady feelings.  It begins the season of plenty- and is often considered a time for flash-bang romance or romantic moments.  

So live it up, Babies!  Get your Beltane hustle and bustle on and make the move.  Whatever move that is- make it.  Beltane should read as bravery.  Not just in the relationship department but in LIFE.  Take the chance and be defiantly proud of it; burn down the introspection of winter and breathe in the boldness of the warm months.

So, that is that.

Much love and boldness until the next time.


*Yes, I did intend to iterate a rather petulant, accusatory tone.  I love what I am, so I sometimes get childishly defensive of it-  this beautiful practice, so old and so wise and so rooted in the endless power of Nature.

A Three Item Obsessions- for My Friend, P.

Dancing (poorly but with childish delight) around the kitchen, singing at the top of my lungs... makes me smile, hopefully it makes you smile, too.

It is finally springtime in North Carolina- this season belongs to this state.  Nothing is as breathtaking as the eruption of green and life that happens nearly overnight.  P., if you can get through the vomitous stench of Bradford Pears in bloom, your reward comes in the form of a state who's Spring is like life in the Garden of Eden.

And once the weather warms and the nights become mild... well.  I have always loved Patty Griffin- but this version of this song is perfect on those nights.  You will probably get it more than anyone else, P.

When you break down, I will drive out an find you.

Until next time.

The Other-

Today I am missing a person whom I should not miss at all- a person I have not missed in a long, long time.

And it's not the person I am missing, not in particular.  It is the comfort of 'the other' that I miss.  The reassurance of a warm hand to hold; a skinny shoulder on which to rest my weary and troubled head.  I am missing discussion- and help.  I am missing the comfort of having another- the other- decision maker.  The person who bore part of a shared burden.

Because right now, the burden is all mine.

And i am missing that other who was my partner- childishly longing for his advice, his support, his presence.

But.  The other is not here, not presence.  The other is gone.  So it is me and my own brain, heart, and soul ploughing the way through this new adventure.

Until next time.

Ready, Set, Go... Or- Fearlessness that Borders on Stupidity.

We all make choices; we build lives out of decisions; we create worlds from the forks in the road.  We keep going until the next moment arises and then we continue into and away from that.

It is the way things work.

I just happen to make choices, build my life out of decisions and create my world from some oddly extreme forks in a most.... unusual manner.

To begin with, I try to not think about the decision I have made until the consequences of it are staring me in the face (landing in China and being able to understand exactly NOTHING; watching the sunrise over the beach in Australia; waking up to horses on my birthday in New Hampshire).  Then, and only then, do I deal with it.  For the most part once I have chosen a path (or flight for that matter) I hop on it and do what I have to do to travel it.

Which is why I am now looking at moving to Anchorage in exactly one month.  I don't think... not too much, anyway... Instead I accept the job; say yes to the Federal Government; and plow forward.  As most of you have probably figured out, I don't function the way most others do.  Which is how I find myself in situations like the aforementioned move to Anchorage.  I am without transportation, a place to live; and have very few contacts there.  Am I going to do it?  Yes.  Am I going to excel at it? Duh, of course.  Am I going to lose my cool at least, AT LEAST, 57 times between now and stepping onto the first in a series of flights which will take me to Alaska?  Most definitely.

I am not necessarily the wisest of people, not by a long shot or even a poor definition of wisdom, but I am by no means dumb or brick-wall-brained.  And I am certainly not fearful- hence that title.  I make the decisions that feel right- not the decisions that feel easy or good.  This move is me getting back to my roots- me getting back to the wandering, traveling, twisted and long long long roots that never seem to really grow anywhere but seem to plant me everywhere.

This is how I live- this is how I thrive.

Until next time... Anchorage Babies!