proteanme

Wow – sunshine! It’s all promise and hope right now. All warm air on my skin and blue sky every where. It’s lyrical stuff. Speaking of which, I keep meaning to post William Matthews short summary of all the subjects of lyric poetry. I love reading this when I’m feeling too serious about being serious.

• I went out into the woods today and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious
• We’re not getting any younger.
• It sure is cold and lonely (a)  without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
• Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent on we know not what.

Broken Promises by Paula Rego

Originally uploaded by proteanme

Just discovered Paula Rego this morning. Her work reminds me of Lucian Freud and John Currin.

The suicide bomber in today’s news was no more than thirteen years old. That’s what I read in the news. Thirteen fucking years old! It’s beyond tragic. Tragedy doesn’t get at it. It’s just horror, man. I keep trying to imagine the kind of madness that led up to a child at a wedding wearing a vest of explosives and pulling the pin on a grenade, and I flail around, numb. I can’t get my brain or heart around it.

I think of the Joseph Campbell quote, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy,” and I wonder was he thinking of something as horribly fucked up as this. How does one participate in this? Protest the war? Write letters to congress? Give to a peace group? I don’t know how to do this.

Ned linked to this great piece on writing by Barry Sanders.

I do believe that as you write more and age, the arrogance and most of the vanity go. It is a vanity met with vast gratitude: that you were hit by something as you stood in the way of it, that anybody is listening. When you are ashamed and revising your comments to old girlfriends of thirty years ago, you might be shocked to find out you really have nothing much better now than what you said in the first place.

A while back I was dating this femme, who I’ll call C, and around the time of one of our first dates she happened to be dog sitting for a friend. C told me that she was convinced that this dog was her spirit animal. I asked C some questions about how she knew that and then told her I didn’t think I had a spirit animal and really I wasn’t sure if I even believed in spirit animals for myself. C told me that maybe my spirit animal was something that was separated from me by such a great distance, like a manatee out in the Caribbean, that I just couldn’t feel the connection. I loved that answer. It was funny and smart and creative and she wasn’t buying into my cynical front.

The other thing that was implied in that exchange is that it was ok for us to have different experiences and we didn’t have to validate them for each other in order for the experience to be real to us. It’s like I don’t believe in ghosts but my mom swears she’s been visited by the spirit of her grandmother, and who am I to say she wasn’t? It’s not like I can claim to have knowledge of the whole crazy range of human experience to say that it’s not true. I know I could extrapolate out from this position in an unhelpful way, but what I’m trying to get out is how we open up our experience of the world to include another person’s experience, especially when it doesn’t fit in with how we see things or do things. I’m pretty sure that’s where connection happens, that’s where you get this great opportunity to develop compassion and empathy. But if you’re like me you need some help. You need someone who doesn’t buy into your knee jerk contrariness or someone who doesn’t take your cynicism too seriously, which is a tall order for anyone and I can get en-fucking-trenched for sure. But I’m trying harder and harder to have better sense of humor about my own prickly nature and to stop myself, when I can, from putting my foot in my mouth and more quickly make a repair when I do.

I don’t know what exactly has got me fired up on this topic. As I re-read what I’ve written I’m not sure I’ve even really gotten around to whatever point I wanted to make. I’ve been thinking a lot about where I fit it and where I don’t and how hard it can be to really connect with someone. I meet someone new and I start telling them my stories and they start telling me theirs and sometimes that seems like all it is – an exchange of stories. But sometimes something different happens and I realize we’re not just swapping stories, we’re trying to figure out if we can cultivate some shared experience, which can be super challenging when confined to just a conversation.

Hmm. . . I’m posting this more to practice being a little exposed. I don’t I think I’m on to anything profound, but maybe in a couple days I’ll come back and figure out if there’s something else I’m trying to say.

Sunshine lights the kitchen

Originally uploaded by proteanme

Our house faces west and we have these two giant windows in the front. The sun fills up the house like you wouldn’t believe.

It’s the day after my birthday and the sun has come out for a little bit. It’s like a belated wish, which I like because it extends the celebration a touch longer. Plus every bit of sun feels so dreamy right now and I’ve missed that dreamy feeling. I wondered sometimes last year, especially when I was feeling the weight of my grief, if I would ever get that dreamy feeling back. Or more accurately, if I’d ever want to get that dreamy feeling back. I’ve been struggling so much with wanting to want anything. Even now that hardest part of grief seems to have lifted, something about putting myself out there and wanting something – it feels a bit like climbing Mount Everest. But the sun pushes the dreaminess on me before I can figure out how to resist it. It’s a great a trick. Must be the warmth and the light and the color of the sky – how it’s not some cerebral experience – especially from the saddle of my bike. I think that’s part of why I’ve been struggling so much to deal with this record breaking rain. I need the sunshine to open up the things I can’t open on my own.

One thing I accomplished this year was teaching myself to cut my own hair, a little longer on top and shaved down on the sides and back. Sometimes I cut it better than others, but just doing it is one of my secret pleasures.

I’ve hardly taken any photos this year, except when I went to Palm Springs and then there’s my ongoing obsession with how the sky looks from my front window, but I just uploaded a few to flirckr. I love the one I posted of RU on the boat. She didn’t know I was taking it and she’s hard to get a good photo of. Plus it captured the joy of being on this little boat in the SF bay, heading toward the Golden Gate as the sun was just starting to begin it’s drop.

The rain came back with a vengeance, but friends and family countered with an out pouring of well wishes and good times. Thanks to everyone who celebrated my birthday with me today. You all really made the day. Seriously. I’m feeling kinda sentimental about it. I had some of the best dang food, shared some terrific company and heard from a whole slew of people I really like but don’t get to see nearly as often I wish I could. Good fortune. That’s what I call that. Thanks everyone for making that happen. You all rock.

Sunshine finally came to Portland and the blues skies and long shadows have wiped out the bitterness about the rain, just like that. No lingering bad feelings. If you sent me sunny wishes, thank you. If you’re sweaty and sitting in front of a fan, I still envy you a little. Portland’s pretty sexy in the sunshine. It’s like finally noticing the bookish girl who sat behind you in English class is actually a fox and then you can’t stop thinking about her. RU and I went for an epic walk to savor all that foxiness. Spectacular stuff – the foxiness of sunshine.