Words

I am still writing these days - most of it is in notebooks, and none of it is clean or presentable, but it's writing nonetheless. I finally committed to following the Complete Artist's Way for a twelve week cycle, so writing has been a large part of the past several months. It was a hard start, forcing myself to put words on paper every day. Not just words, but pages of words, and being the overachiever that I am I decided to use the time as a soul-search. I've been out of sorts with myself for ages, and since no one has shown up on my doorstep to tell me who I am and what my problem is it seemed time to take some initiative.

After a full three months following the book prompts and writing (nearly) every morning, I'd managed to at least clear some of the cobwebs and get rusty synapses firing. A lot of what was pouring out was ugly - pain and disappointment and fear, over and over and over. Forcing myself to write, and by writing to think, was like tearing off a long-kept bandage and releasing years worth of festering depression, kept in place by a combination of stubborn will and busy-ness. "I'm too busy now. I'll think about it later."  "I'm exhausted today - it can wait until next week when my deadline is past." I'd spent so much time pushing off thinking that I'd practically forgotten how to do it. Most of my days have been spent reacting, no thinking required, and when I look down at the calendar years have passed.

I've gone through several computers since I began this blog - from my first little brick of a laptop in college, to a refurbed desktop, a series of increasingly large and unwieldy things that purported to be laptops, and now my current desktop beast. In each transition files have been lost, adjustments made, but I've never loved any of them the way I did my original lappy. I spent ages on it typing papers, musing on life, haunting the Web for cat photos, all the while feeling totally at home. With each new machine I've become less comfortable, less familiar. My new desktop has an enormous hard drive, great processing power - and zero personality. It's not covered in stickers; I haven't even bothered to customize the desktop. Writing about things that are intimate and personal on this machine feels, well, wrong. I find myself turning more and more to paper and pen, filling notebook after notebook and tucking them away in my desk drawer, unread.

Home.

It's amazing how much your dreams for the future can change in a year, five years, ten years.... I distinctly recall in high school wanting to live in a giant Victorian monster of a house filled with antique furniture and secret passages. Shortly after Alaina was born the dream morphed into a country farmhouse with a huge backyard and a small barn for chickens and goats. Not so long ago I watched the "tiny house" movement spread across the country and salivated over the clean lines, wood interiors and lack of clutter.

I've been in three houses in my life that I could easily have just melted into and stayed forever - one was a country farmhouse, one was a lofted log cabin on a river, and the third was an artist's hideaway surrounded by trees and chock full of fascinating bits and pieces both natural and handmade. The architecture of each was interesting in its own way, but it was the sense of presence that the owners put into it that made them so intensely homey. From the moment you stepped across the threshold in each place you could feel that these spaces were occupied by people who were fully living, centered and content in a way I can only hope to achieve. The building and decorations weren't there to be flashy or make a statement - they were a naturally occurring extension of these folks' inner selves. (Funny thing...I didn't notice it before, but they were all artists and musicians. Coincidence?)

We're now ensconced in (to my mind) a delightful old fixer-upper: a 100+ year old Craftsman with room and to spare for our little family. It's a work in progress, certainly, but I hope to be here long enough to find some contentment in the idea of "home".  Over the life of this blog (has it really been kicking around this many years?) I've lived in at least 10 different spots, so an average of maybe a year and change in any residence. Not enough time to settle in and put out roots, certainly. There's nothing wrong with wandering, if that is where your heart happens to lie, but I'm finally at a point where I'd like to stop running and actually connect with a place. I'd like my girls and their friends to dash in and out the door, feel comfortable popping into the kitchen for snacks and drinks, have the perfect spot in their rooms for looking out the window and dreaming. I want people to feel as welcome and comfortable when they walk in our door as I did when I visited my musician friends; as though they had been here forever and are welcome to come and go as they please, because it feels like home.

I know that the "home" feeling has very little to do with whether I've finished painting the walls or if there's just the right curtains in the window. It's really about whether, deep down, I've finally given myself permission to fall in love with a spot; to let go of the fear that something is going to jump up and take it away, and then proceed to just be. I want to go ahead and hang ridiculous pictures above my desk because I like them, and not worry about what other people think or whether or not they 'go with the room'. I want to fill the place with the smells of baking bread and incense and clean laundry, and wave at the neighbors when they pass by outside instead of ducking out of sight and worrying that they'll find me odd for using the antique reel mower instead of the perfectly serviceable gas one. (It's good exercise, and a lower carbon footprint!) I want to be excited when people drop in unexpectedly, and drop everything to have tea and scones and conversation, instead of panicking because there are toys on the floor and the vacuum hasn't been run.

I think, for a little while, I'd like to let go of all the expectations I've taken on from others, and just. be. me. In my home. 

Breathing.

Life resembles a roller coaster more and more these days - huge ups and downs, screaming past at speeds that whip your hair back and press you into your seat, unable to move. I catch myself checking and double-checking the calendar, unable to believe that another month has slipped by. Deadlines loom, days slide into weeks, and if things are accomplished it feels as if it's only by chance. Each morning when I log on to the computer for work I brace myself mentally for the onslaught that comes with opening social media - more extremes, more attacks, the middle ground trampled and resembling a muddy, rutted no man's land. The weather replicates the roller coaster pattern. In a week we went from 30 degrees to 70 to 30; mounds of snow giving way to green, muddy pathways, which are even now being dusted with a fresh layer of white. The extremes are enough to snatch your breath away. 

Breathing. One of the first lessons I had when I got to music school was all about breathing (and how I wasn't doing it properly). Something so intrinsic to life, and by adulthood most of us have lost the ability to really, effectively breathe. Taking air in through your nose, keeping your shoulders down and relaxed, letting it fill your lungs from the bottom up, like water filling a barrel. Allowing your chest to expand, taking up space, and then releasing it, controlled, smooth - out, in again, out. Time slows down when I practice breathing. Everything seems quieter, less pressing; all the focus is on the air. In...out. Feeling the oxygen working its way to starved cells, the odd feeling of having control of my body back, even for just a moment, before my overactive mind gets in the way again. In...out. 

I don't sing much anymore. It was something I did almost daily for such a long time, and now it's a rare thing if I even do a snatch of a tune for my children. Breathing, really breathing, has gone the way of singing as well. I go weeks, months at a time, barreling along through life, trying to meet all the demands of work/home/family, and I forget to breathe. It catches me by surprise when things slow down and I take a deep breath. It's almost as if just the act of breathing takes away the heavy blanket of dread weighing on my mind, and the small spark of life hidden in the corner, smothered by worry, catches the air and bursts up into flame. 

I decided to take advantage of our youngest's naptime and the unseasonable weather today and took a walk. The air was nippy, but the sun felt warm, and the chance to stretch my legs was a pleasure after long days spent behind a desk. I had the streets mostly to myself, since the weather had cooled enough to drive most walkers back indoors, and I tried to cover as much ground as possible before the storm clouds lingering overhead decided to let loose. I was well down the tree-lined path to the local cemetery when the wind kicked up, gusting through the evergreens and pushing against me with enough force that I had to stop and lean into it to avoid being shoved sideways. It caught me by surprise, and the force of it made me inhale. Fresh, cold, pure air, rippling in and around me, forcing me to breathe, and breathe again. The wind died down and I continued on, but at a much slower pace this time, and I made sure to really, deeply breathe as I went. 

The world's problems will not be solved overnight. Many of us continue to struggle. We feel alone, or ill-used, trampled by opinion or policy or just plain bad luck. All of us, though, are still able to breathe. Please - take that moment, take a breath, and know that there's another flawed human being out there who is breathing with you, feeling the earth slow down just for a moment, and wishing you all the best things. 

Quiet.

It's a rare moment of quiet, now - or as quiet as it gets in our piece of the world. The baby is down for a much needed nap, trying to fight off a cold; big sister is off at school, her trumpet case on the floor by her bed, waiting to be taken up for practice as soon as she breezes in.

Quiet is such an important thing for me - the cessation of noise, a break from the constant intrusion of the world. We lost power for an hour or so the other night during a massive September storm, and once the girls were tucked in bed by candlelight and I settled in myself it hit me just how quiet it was. No hum from appliances, no radio, no chatting - unadulterated quiet. I could feel my body unclench, muscles I didn't realize were tense relaxed, and I sighed as I just luxuriated in the absence of sounds.

I vaguely recall seeing an article online the other day that suggested that blocks of quiet time were essential for the brain to reset itself and process all the stimuli it receives throughout the day. I can absolutely attest to the validity of this. The small person is still sharing space in the bedroom while we remodel her new room upstairs, and part of her nighttime routine is having the radio set to the local NPR affiliate, which plays classical and jazz most of the night. I didn't think much of it until I read the article, but it hit me that there is almost no time during the day where I get to really enjoy quiet, even while sleeping. Last night I made it a point to shut off the radio around midnight, and I slept better than I had in some months. I think the baby did, too, if her waking at 6:30 instead of 5 was any indication.

Breathing. Enjoying the quiet. Getting to just be.

Another meme to break the tedium

If I was a month, I'd be October

If I was a day of the week, I'd be Wednesday

If I was a time of day, I'd be 11PM

If I was a sea animal, I'd be an Otter

If I was a direction, I'd be North

If I was a piece of furniture, I'd be a Craftsman dresser

If I was a liquid, I'd be raindrops

If I was a gemstone, I'd be an amethyst

If I was a tree, I'd be a mountain ash

If I was a tool, I'd be a trowel

If I was a flower, I'd be a chrysanthemum

If I was a kind of weather, I'd be cool and crisp

If I was a musical instrument, I'd be a harp

If I was a color, I'd be gold

If I was an emotion, I'd be contentment

If I was a fruit, I'd be an apple

If I was a sound, I'd be leaves rustling

If I was an element, I'd be fire

If I was a mammal, I'd be a horse

If I was a phase of the moon, I'd be waxing

If I was berry, I'd be black raspberry

If I was a bird, I'd be a heron

If I was a book, I'd be a comfortable novel

If I was story, I'd be anne of green gables 

Soul-searching

I had a very rude awakening several nights ago.  Hubby and I were having a "discussion", trying to iron out expectations and finances and what direction to take in the days ahead. I was struggling with how to get a point across (which just so happened to be the complete opposite of the point I had in mind three days prior), and I wanted so much for him to understand where I was coming from, but it was all I could do to maintain a train of thought. He's said before that my mind runs too fast for him to keep up with on occasion, but this time I felt like I was leaping in and out of a honeycomb of boxes, each one a thought that could connect to any number of other thoughts depending on which way you turned.  I started to get panicky as I realized that I was completely derailing from any rational sequence of ideas to random grasping at any idea that came to mind, secure only in the knowledge that "I'll make it work!".

When it finally hit me that I was acting completely unhinged and apologized because I couldn't seem to order my mind, he suggested that I sounded as though I were having an anxiety attack and that we could certainly shelve the discussion until I felt better. At just that moment a light appeared at the end of the dark tunnel I've been living in for months on end. Could it possibly be anxiety, and not that I've lost my mind completely?  I've had fear nagging at the edges of my mind that I may have inherited the family tendency towards depression, and with several long, bleak months of winter behind us and not much in the way of spring yet to be seen it certainly felt as though it were a prolonged funk that I might not ever be able to shake.

One day at a time.

Elections are tomorrow. I was worn out on the media hype, attack ads, and pithy Facebook posts back in March, so I sincerely hope that all the people who have an opinion one way or the other go out tomorrow, do their civic duty, and then graciously accept the final decision and look forward as a country, and not hate-filled, polarized individuals intent on striking out at anyone who disagrees with them.

*sigh* Now that I have that off my chest I'll get on with the events of the day.

A few weeks ago we RSVP'd for an open house night at the local university's planetarium. They've done some heavy renovating over the past year, and this was a "teaser" evening to allow the public in before they have the official grand opening in February. We weren't 100% sure what the program would be, but we thought it would make for an interesting diversion, and perhaps Small might enjoy seeing the ceiling full of stars. It turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable hour- the head of the department gave a brief overview of the night sky and pointed out the constellations currently visible in our hemisphere, and then they had a slide show discussion regarding Curiosity and some of the photos coming back from Mars. Small was suitably impressed with the star-gazing aspect and piped up several times when Dr. Hurd asked the assembled group questions (which had most of the college students laughing).  There were perhaps two dozen people in attendance all told, and the department had a small reception with star cookies and punch for afterwards, which Small thought was the absolute bees' knees... Dr. Hurd even dished her out a cup of punch and thanked us for coming personally. Earlier in the evening I wasn't feeling well and had considered blowing it off, but in hindsight I'm really glad we went. We had an enjoyable family outing for just the price of gas, there was a positive educational aspect, and now we have plans to go back for the grand opening to see what it will be like when everything is fully up and running (which should also be a nice distraction from the typical gloom of February).

In the few university towns where I've lived there appears to be a large demarcation between the university population and that of the townsfolk, as though the university is some sort of strange parasite that the town is forced to live with. Would that attitude change if more people took advantage of events like the one we attended tonight? Or would people continue to gripe because they are forced to deal with college students in their midst and pay taxes to support the institution, whether they want to or not? The Sunday paper regularly has "free to the public" events hosted by the various area colleges, ranging from concerts to lectures to gallery openings, and half a dozen other things besides. If the offer is there, why not take advantage of it?