Today’s rain in the Catskills is very much welcome, not only because we collectively need it – our hay and corn fields and every other living thing – but because I personally need a slow day wherein my compulsivity doesn’t kick in, putting me out there (over)doing thangs when my muscles are already complaining, and rightly so.
And so, while I allow for a little recovery, a few choice quotes shared below to start a day of rest, plenty of deep breaths, no noticing of what all needs a good clean hereabouts (a lot) as that can wait for another day this week, or next! A rainy day in spring is a gift, a gift allowing time for focusing on writing, writing, and more writing.
Gloria Steinem, 1970, testifying before congress re: the ERA, which we still ain’t got, daggnabbit, “The truth is that all our problems stem from the same sex-based myths. We may appear before you as white radicals or the middle-aged middle class or black soul sisters, but we are all sisters in fighting against these outdated myths. Like racial myths, they have been reflected in our laws.”
Carl Jung: “Life really does begin at forty, until then you are just doing research. And if an attractive woman is single, it’s because she’s smarter than everyone else thought.” (no comment other than LOLOLOL)
Tennessee Williams: “All the qualities of magic reside in women. This is why the fearful suppress them. This is why the wise follow them.”
Annie Ernaux: “The general belief is that one cannot go anywhere that is not familiar; people feel genuine admiration for those who aren’t afraid of going places.”
Vaclav Havel: “I am not an optimist, because I am not sure that everything ends well. Nor am I a pessimist, because I am not sure everything ends badly. Instead, I am a realist who carries hope, and hope is the belief that freedom and justice have meaning—and that liberty is worth the trouble.”
M. Scott Peck: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult-once we truly understand and accept it-then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Herman Hesse: “We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome… We are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for in our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
Charlotte Brontë: “I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
Jim Ralston: “The highest meaning of the social group is to foster the development of individual potential, for the community’s own well-being depends on it. When the goal of the group ceases to be the individual, that group goes into decline. The very best citizens have also been the most evolved individuals. Groups, nations, classes, clans, and families tend toward narrowness, meanness toward other groups, nations, etc. It has always been the individual who calls the group to a larger vision, who insists on compassion and fair play. It is always the community that is ready to stone the witch.”
Sylvia Ashton-Warner: “You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are.”
Agnes Hobbs: “You can close the windows and darken your room, and you can open the windows and let light in . . .It is a matter of choice. Your mind is your room. Do you darken it or do you fill it with light?”
Thich Nhat Hanh: “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.”
T.S. Eliot: “I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: so the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
Roman Payne: The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, ‘I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God.’”
Sandra Cisneros: “I do want to create art beyond rage. Rage is a place to begin, but not end. I do want to devour my demons—despair, grief, shame, fear—and use them to nourish my art. Otherwise they’ll devour me.”
Have a great day, y’all. I hope you found inspiration, as I have, in the above quotes from all sorts of peeps, and thanks for visiting.
*not a horror film duckies, just normal, annual clean-up craziness for April in the Catskills.
Today I will be working outside with my branch lopper, and my chainsaw, both of which are run by battery, which batteries are charging ‘as we speak’, and omg, if you’ve never used a chainsaw, it’s so so so much fun, and I highly recommend it ~ especially if you’re in a lousy, I want to break shit mood. And, of course, safety comes first. If you’re right-handed, keep that left arm stiff while operating the saw, vicey-versy if you’re left-handed you need to keep the right arm stiff as a board, wear protective goggles, do NOT bite off more than you can chew (egos in check, always, when operating any shit that can cut your fingers and other extremities off, keeping in mind that it takes only 2 – 5 minutesto bleed out a.k.a. die, corpse up, kick the bucket if an artery is hit), wear glovies, and avoid pants that have a lot of fabric like bell-bottoms or extree doo-dads hanging off that could get caught in the chain, and long sleeved shirts are best too, also worn tight to the body as again no extree fabric to get caught up. A hat is good too – the number of branches I’ve lopped off at the proper angle to drop just so over thattaway that have instead landed thissaway and on my noggin is more than a few (ouch).
I am doing April clean-up outside; it’s the spring month when it’s not too hot for me to be doing tree work that is hard, exhausting, and deeply rewarding as well as long overdue on a property that’s been in my family for over a century, but which has been in my hands – after six decades as a rental – for just four years. Once the house where lived, in my grandparent’s day, the hired hands for the family farm, the inside needed so much work, 98% done, I didn’t get a lot accomplished outside until last year, but now my full attention has turned to the property surrounding the house. I do what I can (not a whole lot, TBH, but some) with dead or struggling saplings, and with the removal of dead branches, and the numerous stinky whatever bush/trees no one seems to know the name of; these suckers flower but are the main head bashing criminals, growing up like a twisted rope of a mess that challenges me to my stubborn core, and yes, they stink when cut. They are mainly on the edges of the property, along stone walls I have begun to restore, proliferating during an age of neglect in what once was a corn or hay field depending on the year.
Everything hurts. Including my eyelashes.
A slight exaggeration. But, chainsawing saplings, and dragging them along with dead or live tree branches – even just the medium and small ones – is a lot and, it really is so much fun, it makes me smile just typing it out. I write this instead of finishing a piece on gender and sexuality because that subject is so broad, so deep, and so in need of concentration, I worry I’m too exhausted to do it justice even in this short form. I practically can’t move, and ~ I’m heading back out there shortly once the batteries are all charged up, because despite the fact that a dear friend of mine is horrified/thrilled I use a chainsaw at all, I know like I know like I know that, girl, it’s fun. And, if I do an hour or two or three a day, every April day, it’ll get done. Vroom, vroom!!
My dad is home and now instead of wanting to live, period, he wants to live “on his terms”, which statement I took to mean (since he removed his oxygen the moment after my sister, the nurse, left his house) that he wants to live unencumbered and free of both oxygen and a need to give up smoking. Whatever. I am exhausted and feeling blue because this is the beginning of what could be the end of the release and relief I felt after my mom’s death: release from being the decision-maker and caregiver who filled out paperwork and went to the status meetings with the staff at the nursing home, relief because care-giving my parents was, as of her death in ’07, an already eight-year-long process.
The hardest part is negotiating boundaries. What will my father allow me to do for him and to require of him, if he expects me to do so much, as in get him to the doctors and the specialists and make sure his oxygen equipment is kept clean, although it was my nurse sister who called to give me those instructions, thank you very much. Every three days some part has to be thoroughly cleaned – don’t ask me which one – I was at work and quite frankly I wasn’t in the mood to take instructions from afar regarding my dad’s care from someone who has, for years now, had minimal contact with my parents. Don’t. Get. Me. Started. I love my dad and this will all be worked out I am sure but if he chooses to begin smoking again, I may just lose it. I won’t take care of someone who won’t do that one thing for himself. I know it’s not a small thing, but rather a g.d. addiction, but Jesus H. Christ come on. I have three siblings he can call for help and there are services he can make use of, services for people like himself who are functional but need some extra looking after. I am much too tired to be making decisions and even thinking about all of this, yet I am unable to think of much else. Tonight, I will take a long hot bath, watch Project Runway (ah, escapist TV, how I love ya!) and contemplate how best to do nothing at all except love my self. I did my work-out this a.m. which I skipped yesterday due to running around to get pop back home. Oh oh oh – it’s a gorgeous sunny day and all I can think of is how much I long to be asleep in my wee bed. Only 11 more hours of awake to go……
February 9, 2010 A Drama Queen
Yes. I am a drama queen, especially when tired and stressed, both of which I have been of late. Last night I slept well and long and as a result life looks much better this morning. I have had my long walk, started a fire in the wood stove and set-up a time for lunch with a good friend I have not seen in several months; all of which are life affirming actions. And, I have taken innumerable deep breaths in the process. I was also better able to sleep because I had a talk last night with my father about some of the issues I have with my being his primary caregiver, the one who does for him because I want to, but also because I can, and because it’s the right thing to do and I just want you to know, daddy, that sometimes doing the right thing SUCKS. And he acknowledged me and all that I’ve been doing and have done this morning (admittedly in his very understated way but still…), an acknowledgement that went a long way toward making it a lot better. And yesterday afternoon I wrote. I worked on a creative writing project I have had on my desk for about a year – a project I have neglected far too often. I had dropped it in the midst of the crisis, and as I had not sat down to write for two whole days it was eating at me, adding to my sense of anger at my poor old pop, who is certainly not responsible for my lack of discipline when it comes to my writing. Hard to write when I’m a wreck, and all I really want to do is watch mind-numbing TV, but it can be done. Another deep breath. I equate writing, especially on the bigger projects, with diving in, immersing myself in another, imagined world. It takes some time and space and a lot of commitment to go there. And writing is lonely. Suck it up, drama queen, and get down to it. I shall, once I am done here, promise. My dad keeps taking his O2 off and has a follow-up appointment with his doc next week. We’ll see how his blood oxygen levels are. Maybe, drama queen, he won’t need it for ever and ever, especially if he can stay away from cigarettes. Anyway, I am not responsible for his choices, but as I reminded him last eve I do tend to get most of the picking up of the pieces when both he and I pay for the bad ones he makes. Still and all, it’s all good. I slept. I dreamt I was in love with The Office actor Jon Krasinski and we were planning a fun day and night to celebrate his birthday. Hilarious. I also told my dad that I love him. Always a good thing to know and say, drama queen.
I am one of those young women who, at the age of sixteen, began to feel that virginity was a burden that needed to be shed. I was tired of reading about sex in all those great paperbacks of the seventies while simultaneously diddling around with my boyfriend while he diddled with me. When were we going to DO IT?
Honestly, I think I was pretty happy with all that deep kissing and sweet caressing. It did go on for hours, after all, and I never remember feeling all that deprived. But all that changed pretty quickly after my boyfriend left mid-winter to do a three-month service project, and I was left alone with that pulsing libido.
But leave me he did, however well-intended we were on reuniting in the late spring, and meanwhile, a new fella slipped onstage. Literally. He was my co-star on the big stage of our high school musical, my Dolly Levi’s Horace Vandergelder. How terribly convenient. A real Broadway cliché.
This guy knew I had a serious boyfriend of nearly two years, but he moved in anyway. And he was cool – ran with a group of seniors (I was a junior) that smoked a lot of pot and had deep philosophical discussions that I could barely grab onto. There was Andy and his girlfriend Shelly, and Leslie, who had the longest hair I’d ever seen and was the daughter of the assistant headmaster (this was a New Jersey private school, after all), and a handful of other hippie intellectuals, mostly males. They were definitely the freaks and not the geeks (which the school had plenty of). Lots of talk about the band “Little Feat” and weird movies that I’d never watched. And after a month plus of absence, my boyfriend still hadn’t written to me. At all. I was pissed and horny. So, when this guy started to pursue me in earnest, I figured, why not? And he was cute, with his long hair that was cut to his shoulders with precision.
We’d lie on the couch making out, and I remember him whispering in my ear, “We really should sleep together.” His words didn’t so much excite me as challenge me: could I? Should I? Would I? And I knew what he meant by “sleep”! At least that didn’t confuse me.
He let this question worm its way through my head for a few weeks, repeating it maybe twice. Meanwhile, the idea was forming. Why not? Why the heck not? (I was and still am a pretty good Presbyterian.)
So, I thought about it. For a little while, though not too long. The opportunity soon presented itself. My seducer actually lived within walking distance to the school, and this was long before things like security guards and other forces that keep students within the walls of school if they don’t want to be there, so all I had to do was skip (!) over to his house during my study hall. How long would it take, for real? It was time! I was done with this virginity thing! LET’S DO THIS!
So we did. He knew I was a virgin, and he used a condom. He wasn’t unkind, but it was mostly underwhelming, as I believe it is for a lot of young women basically brought up on the idea that sex was going to be the most sky-rocketing, mind-blowing, transformative thing you could do in this lifetime. Meh. Of course, it was my first time, so I imagined I had a lot of road ahead, and who knows what I might learn along the way, right? So, bottom line: did it, done, and moving on! I now had my teenage “lover” and I was interested in where all this might lead. More sex? Better sex? Maybe even, love??
This was not a boy who “gave love to get sex,” but I was probably a girl who believed I could give sex to get love.” It just didn’t actually work out like that.
After that fateful afternoon, we carried on, only we didn’t have any more sex. I didn’t know why, and I was too awkward to know how to ask. What happened? We still hung out together, mostly with his friends, but sometimes just the two of us (I think?). Nothing had really changed, but something was off, something was different. Did I do something? Did he not like me anymore? Maybe my greatest fear: Was I that bad “a lay”??
I remember his bedroom was in the basement, and one day about a month or so after my “deflowering,” I was down there looking around. I was alone for the moment, and I don’t remember where he was, but I had a moment when I looked over at this large wall calendar he had hung on the back of his door. I noticed he had made some notes on the calendar, some markers of specific dates, so I thought to check out the date we had “done it.” And there it was! Marked on his calendar with my initials. Ah, how sweet! And next to my initials was a symbol: it was a small circle with a perfect X/Y axis through the middle. Basically, the same thing you see when you look through a scope to set aim on your target. A crosshair. Well, I had a pretty good idea what THAT meant, didn’t I?
Then I zoomed out of that particular date and swept my eyes over the days, weeks, and months both before and after that occasion. And I saw that symbol again, only this time there were different initials. I knew pretty quickly who they stood for: it was Shelly, and it was Leslie. And it was more than once, way more than once, for both of them.
But wait a minute! Shelly had a boyfriend! Andrew! And Leslie was just a friend, not his girlfriend! What the fuck (now I’m getting upset) is going on? Did I really need it spelled out to me? Shelly was actually a friend of mine by now, or so I thought. So I called her (not him, of course) and asked if we could meet so we could talk.
To her credit, she didn’t even try to lie. Yes, they were sleeping together. It was just for fun, it didn’t mean anything, and Andrew didn’t know or care, I can’t remember which. And Leslie was just a “free spirit” and they did it when they were bored. It was all very “The Group” or “Peyton Place” – all very enlightened and free and no hang-ups, ya know? No baggage, no expectations, just plain old fun between the sheets. I didn’t need to be upset about it, after all.
But of course I was. I was devastated. But not just because he had been sleeping with other girls. The part that hurt me the most was that he’d slept with them multiple times, but only done it with me that one time. I took this as an obvious indicator of my bed-worthiness. Clearly, I was subpar, not only not as cool as the other cool girls, but also – clearly – not as sexy. It was a rejection that cut deep.
It took me a while to finally confront him with what I knew. He wasn’t very apologetic. It was one of those “I’m sorry you are upset” kind of things. Like “it’s no big deal.” But I couldn’t get over it. What was I supposed to think? And what about the crosshairs? But we stopped seeing each other, pretty much by mutual agreement, I guess.
Later that summer, we actually went on a school trip together, something we’d planned earlier in the spring, but by the time the trip actually happened, he wasn’t speaking to me anymore. In fact, he avoided me completely the entire time. It was the most miserable two weeks in Europe you could imagine. I remember I just ate bags of candy and stared out the window of the tour bus, wondering what in the world it all meant. I’m still not sure I know.
But I think about those crosshairs. Maybe it was just a mark, not really significant beyond its use as a code for intercourse, but still – I did feel like I had been a target. That he had decided to bed me, and even though I thought I made that decision free and clear, did I really? And how did this experience inform me of what sex meant, or intimacy, or – even – love? Or was I just an idiot?
