Anticipation

Maybe when I took the political out of this blog it lost its path. I know the central thing that preoccupies me right now, at my core anyways, is the election. I care deeply about my work, both personal and professional, but the most devastating occurrence for me would be to lose the upcoming election. Tonight I thought of that and imagined myself going outside and wailing, just wailing endlessly. That will not happen, I am confident of as much. I am afraid of my confidence, but I have it nonetheless, otherwise I would start wailing now. Tomorrow is a very big day. I will speak and attempt to persuade, and for whatever reason I have 3 minutes and I still feel a huge weight of responsibility. I am certain it is imagined. I am confident they have already completed the task without me. Nevertheless I am nervous. That's good I suppose. I can't imagine what it is like to be a candidate as election day nears. I have felt a surreal acceleration of time since the beginning of October, as if everything is cruising to one excruciating climax. Will we ever get there? I want that now, and I also never want it to come. The uncertainty is both plaguing and pleasurable, the synthesis of experience's dichotomy.

To Do Today:

Earth Healing Ceremony at the Idaho Botanical Garden When: Sunday, October 26th, 2008 Time: 2-5 pm Where: Idaho Botanical Garden, 2355 E. Old Penitentiary Rd Cost: Free and Open to the Public This Sunday, October 26th the Idaho Botanical Garden will host Native American Peace Keeper, Blue Thunder for a unique Earth Healing ceremony. Blue Thunder travels nation-wide, holding ceremonies that heal the environment and create a space for people to connect to the earth. Sunday’s event will include drumming, dancing and a talk by Blue Thunder. The Idaho Botanical Garden is one of Boise’s most treasured outdoor spaces. Nestled in the Boise Foothills, the garden used to be a Native American settlement and more recently was part of the Idaho State Penitentiary. This site was chosen because of that history. Blue Thunders acute awareness of our world’s current environmental condition offers participants a unique opportunity to take their fears and worries about the health of the planet and come together with their community to heal the earth and themselves. Participants will enjoy three hours of drumming, chanting , dancing and contemplating in the Botanical Gardens.

I would rather live in the Sectch again

Sometimes, it occurs to me that I am using this blog inappropriately. I found the most amazing blog via a friends blog by a girl who just totally rocks and she has this cartoon about how one should be contemplative before publishing a blog. I totally agree. But I refuse to do it...why? Maybe it is just where I am at right now. For whatever part is my doing or not, I have not had the most mellow last 5 years. I got to gradschool and found out I was pregnant and it has all just gotten a little crazy since then. A year ago I scoffed at blogs. Now I have 2--well 3 but I only write on 2. I am now scoffing at social networking, although I started a facebook page and am slightly addicted...and hating it at the same time. Really, hating it. I feel like voyeurism is so appealing and I feel like until you reach a certain level voyeurism is what is enabled by social networking and I feel like after you reach a certain level what is achieved is relation via electronic medium....and I feel like that is dangerous...because for me anyways, boundaries are not always clear via electronics. impressions are created in nanoseconds hearts are won or lost....folks who look good are superfaced, and well....I like hanging out with real people. A long time ago we lived in what we called THE SECTCH. There were 8 of us, plus Danica. We shared rooms and beds and many tears and lots of laughter and too many dirty dishes and a lot of we-- well, you know and also Carlo Rossi and the Dead and Merl and Phish and of course Bob and Toots and homework and we loved each other. Then. We left. And Japhy died and...those are still my favorite people in the world. If I could "facebook" with just them, or follow them on twitter...I would. I haven't been able to find Japhy there though. (I did find T and C and D and J). I don't mean to say that people who do get into that stuff are shallow, or stupid, or out of touch with the world or anything. Actually, they are likely none of those things (one could argue they are more "in touch")...I do mean to say that I find it a perversion...a perversion based on an attempt at a solution to a problem that cannot be solved electronically. Alienation. From intimacy and warmth and trust and commitment and depth. What i want right now is a cabin in the woods. There is a crick running through and tall pines. It is just me, and a journal and good books and a fire. That would make me feel human again...the rest of this bullsh-t makes me feel like a cyborg. I didn't have a cell phone until River was born and C and I decided that we needed it for emergencies. Before that I kept asking..."If you didn't have that thing imagine how spontaneous your interactions could be. What does it do to "fate" "chance" "destiny" to be iming and twittering and calling and texting...all-the-time? Who do you miss passing you by because you are networking with your head in your phone as you walk? What other phenomena in your environment do you miss cause you want to twitter about the one you just saw. Really. We will never know, it is too late and destiny has likely been changed for good.

Train Hopping

I figured it out. I have been scratching my head trying to figure out how to describe the feeling I have right now, because it is the first time I have felt this way in this way. I think I may have felt this way many times before, but not been in touch enough with my feelings to know that I had them. And to be quite honest, I think I preferred not knowing the feelings to knowing them and feeling them so much. I have not train hopped--my friends have--but I haven't. But I have read Dharma Bums a hundred times, so I think I know what it must be like to train hop. I feel like I switched trains in an invigorating in motion leap. I feel like I headed a new direction, towards a different destiny. And now I feel like I jumped off the train at full-speed and hit the ground hard. I am bruised, disoriented, scared and lost. And I also feel like I keep trying to jump back on the first train and as I leap, I keep losing my grip and falling under the tracks. And I feel like I like being under the tracks better than riding on either train for now. And somehow I know I will probably end up walking, the long way, and maybe never reaching any destination. In grad school, Mary Hawkesworth talked about Heigel's interpretation of Geist--the notion that spirit moves you forward to your next evolution through a sense of dissatisfaction with your present context. She explained that is why we had applied to grad school--something told us to "be more." I feel that now. I just am afraid of what I will, or maybe more so, what I won't become.

Comforter

The truth is that I dig moments like this. Laying down under a comforter, in the middle of the bed, typing away. I like the silence and the solitude. It is cold but not too terribly so. Today, we ran in the Harrison Classic. Canyon slept in the Chariot and River cramped, but it was nostalgic and season orienting and so on. Tomorrow I will take the day off, but am not sure what to do with it. I know I need the break so that will be good. I can become so easy to please when I just lower my threshold to the place where any sense of affection matters. Too much looking for being seen.Sometimes, even if I feel sad, when I look in the mirror and see myself, I am grateful I am here. It is enough to look into my own eyes and be seen.

Walls Will Fall

Its like reaching forward into endlessness. Before there were walls around me. I could feel their materiality when I reached my finger tips forward. Walls, stabilizing me as I move and don't move, orient my practice for all they block the light and weaken my inner-strength by the excess of their own. Their is a moment of disequillibrium, as I stand here unsurrounded. I am crying inside, "give them back, for the wind blows too hard and too cold. It chills me. And I am scared." Dreams are like holes that you can crawl into, deep in the dark taking a ladder down, grasping to the handholds as you descend. For all I would like to, I cannot seem to find the hole right now, for all I would like to play there, I am kept hear by a merciless panic, tempered only by the remembrance of my own ability to inhale and exhale. Sometimes I laugh at it all. Really, This life is just one and there are others and perhaps next lifetime I will ... And then that too seems absurd--to project dissatisfaction into an unknown abstractness of another chance. For what? Not losing the reins of a family put together of young love,entwining passion, solace, healing and pain. No, that is too specific, the loss is more general than that. I suppose I will rebuild these walls, of a new material and different architecture only essential in the coldest of winds.

Shoot, swoosh, ahhhhhhh....

"Got to face the day, no matter the consequence" Days like today are ones I should hide in long-hand, deep inside a spiral notebook. But that is sitting next to the bed with the sleeping child and so here I am. It all started with a trip to the dump. I mean, it all started the night before when I found myself overwrought and sleepless. I did sleep for a bit of hard pressed rest and when I woke I drove across town, desperately searching for... but I had to come home, my sleeplesseness could not disrupt theirs. What I found was that pile of things to delay or discard. I piled them high into the van and also rolled out the old mattress--the one I slept on and then River and now it is wet and soggy in the van. I cleared out a lot of the driveway. I moved the trash cans, organized the wood, put other things into the garage. Suddenly. I looked up, and there was the hoop. The basketball hoop I think I had not played on before, or if I had it was right when we moved in. I grab the old, flat ball and shoot, miss, shoot, miss, shoot, miss, aim, shoot, swoosh. Ahhhh.... Then, a trip to the dump. Way out there, up, up, up, I didn't realize this was the dump--another thing I had not done, usually sending the gendered prescription of dump goer in my mind. I liked the dump. Quickly all things to discard are empty and I placed them and pulled them myself. The drive is clear the stuff is here. I return home, but not before stopping to buy three sizes of basketballs. Home, I rip into the package and pull out the adult size ball. Shoot, miss, shoot, miss, dribble-dribble shoot, miss. Stop, dribble, aim, shoot, swoosh. Ahhhhhhhh..... The walk is invigorating, I hit the hills unexpectedly, breathing, pushing up, and above. I love this little spot with rosehips, willow, pine, yarrow, sunflower. I love these plants. Lightning begins to crack. I keep thinking I want to go home and shoot baskets. I let myself run, which I haven't done for a while. It feels good. and now I am almost home. To the ball shoot, miss, shoot, swoosh, dribble-dribble, shoot, miss, dribble right-left-right-left, shoot, swoosh.Ahhhhhhhhhh....