here today

 

dog joy

lu romping in the snow pure dog joy.  lu chasing her jolly ball that's what it's called a jolly ball.  the guy who sold it to me said no dog has ever taken the center out of a jolly ball and I bought it smiling but inside I was thinking You. Don't. Know. My. Dog. 

took her about seven minutes maybe eight.  So the center's gone from the Jolly Ball but the joy is still there especially when tossed about in the snow.  The Snow!  We played until i couldn't feel my toes lu still wild me ready for Stumptown coffee best coffee in the world I gotta say the northwest understands how to roast them.

meanwhile I'm working on a paper about Tabula Rasa do we enter this world a blank slate or what?  I tell you I like Plato's Myth of Er which sends us in whole but with a twist... we've chosen this life already.  And we have a soul-companion, a Daimon to maybe guide us or just hang out and whisper in our ears while we down our third Sazarec, my drink of choice this winter thanks to one of the best girls I know curls around her face telling the guy that he came close but it wasn't exactly right.

Ben & I are reading Jane Austin to each other and in another life I loved Jane Austin but in this one tonight I'm a little tired of all that dancing verbal dancing literal dancing. 

James Hillman thinks we are acorns each one of us - the image is the thing, he says.

Lu has that one down.  Prancing in the snow barking at me, the park, the jolly ball without a center. 

 

Posted by: 120pages at 19:52 | link | comments |

as luck would have it

trying to find the turning point is like trying to remember the best thing I've ever eaten. 

but I would say it was looking over at my plane and the pilots in it who would tell me yes I was going home to Ben or no too bad you missed last call and it would be a long night at the LAX united terminal holding my pizza box in which was definately not anything close to the best thing.  though I did eat it every bit of it once I got inside the plane the other passengers staring at my Wolfgang Puck pizza box all of them knowing that's why I held them all up kept them all sitting there but I didn't care because they let me on the plane.  maybe that was the turning point.

the best thing I've ever eaten might be indian food on st. lucia while listening to a guy sing johnny cash tunes rain pouring down outside so close we could taste the rain right in there with the food everyone singing along caribbean accents 110 degrees outside hotter inside.

the turning point might have been my 3 hour class on grief saturday night sitting with forty people gonna keep my grief to myself thank you very much but then biting down chewing off a big piece of life biting in deciding I'm not white-knuckling my way through anything anymore. 

if you want to take a self-study class on grief start by writing down 12 losses.  Not 5 or 6 or even eleven.  there is something magical about the number twelve so go all the way there until you're writing down Teddy to represent the family dog who got accidentally left in the doghouse the whole time we were at disney land I was five years old and my dad just took care of it and we weren't allowed to ask about Teddy because when we did it made Dad sad he was the one who didn't check the latch before we left.  Write down twelve losses and then pick one of them.  Pick one that isn't so close to you that it hurts all the way through to think about it.  Pick one that's at least ten years gone and then write about it for ten minutes straight without lifting up your pen.  You will start your writing with the words "I remember when I lost..."  Don't life up your pen until ten entire minutes have gone by just write until your hand is moving and words pour onto the page but you're not picking them carefully or even sure about what might be down there in ink ten minutes of words.  After ten minutes you and two people in this class on grief will break away into a corner and read out loud to each other the things you're not sure you wrote.  Read out loud to each other words that you normally hide from even yourself and by the end of this and is there ever an end to it? by the end of this you will feel grief. 

I chose susan.

I remember when I lost Susan my sister my idea of an older sister who would be my guide my confidente my way-shower who would have had all the same teachers I would face in my small tiny grade school in McMinnville Oregon and they would say to me oh you're Susan's little sister she told me you'd be coming.  I remember when I lost Susan my sister my idea of an older sister because I lost her so long before she was gone or I guess she lost herself but it felt the same she went she was gone the minute I was born but I remember it as my first book when I read my first book I was tiny and I wanted her to hear me but my reading was a signal that I was on my way into a world she never had she never found and that day I lost her.  Later I lost her to drugs to alcohol to Mike who tried to kill a guy with an axe who tries to kill someone with an axe? Later I lost her completely I haven't seen her in years I don't know where she is at some point we all started saying we were a family of four not of six oh yes we cut my brother out of the photos, too.  Susan.  gone as if she'd never geen gone to me lost and people ask me about my family it's only recently I've begun to talk about her again but as an idea not a real person who loved to laugh it was easy to make her laugh she had an IQ of a child and when I was a child we'd laugh together but I left her behind with that first book and later I left her again.  I remember when I lost Susan my sister my sister I don't even think I can call her that I don't even think i should call her that.

the best thing I've ever eaten might be the cinderella cake I got when I was seven or maybe eight.  Cinderella had a pink skirt it was 3-D.  all my friends were jealous so I gave them the best pieces.

the turning point might have been sunday when I did my listening session in front of my small group of thirteen people and when he cried I put my hand to my heart and I empathized which means that I am learning to be a therapist.  it was hard so hard not to put my arms around him in tears the two of us in tears but I held it in and just said "tell me more".  

this school this grad school is not a place where I can skip about keeping myself to myself.  this school is digging into the depths and they say you can't go anywhere with a client that you haven't explored yourself so here I go spelunking.

the best thing I've ever eaten might be waiting for me on the caribbean cruise for two that Ben won in a drawing at work.  ben's always winnging things our big TV for example and a pair of Mephistos which are $400 shoes made in the mountains of Italy and a steak dinner and I could go on but let's get back to that cruise.  Not a trip I'd pay for can you imagine me on a cruise ship land of the swans carved in ice and buffets bigger than my house.  Not a trip I'd pay for but we have our own private deck and February in Oregon means rain but February in Taihiti means Jimmy Buffet Valentine's parties so hey I will join in the silliness read my book while looking at the ocean, swim with the dolphins and try to sneak off the beaten path.

the turning point might have been the Gazelle's new job after fourteen months of driving a town car for tips now he's a VP of something or other and so happy.  the turning point might have been mermaid's new home all her own or maybe the magazine article featuring ben.

the best thing I've ever eaten might be my own words when I said life is sad and hard and I won't be writing in my blog anymore.  they taste good those words. 

as luck would have it.

 

 

 

Posted by: 120pages at 15:20 | link | comments (6) |