that's mrs. mediocrity to you

I try not to worry, really I do. It seems like a colossal waste of time.

But sometimes, it all comes creeping in on me…the little niggling fears, the stress, the doubts, the thunder.

And then I am there, in the Land of Worry, and just like Oz, I can’t find my way out. The what-ifs become strong possibilities, the might-nevers become probabilities. It keeps me up at night, if I let it. And I try not to let it, but there are moments of weakness, we all have them, and then I am there, eyes open, wondering, pondering, wasting good sleep.

I worry about my health and money and my husband and my kids and my parents and my future and my past and what I ate for dinner (potato chips, so?) and my knees and my garden and that thing I said to so and so for which they will never forgive me…

I never meant to be a worry wart. And most of the time, I’m not.
I look on the bright side, I strive to be happy, to let things go, to know, in my heart, that the only person whose behavior I can really control is my own.

And yet, here I am. Both my sons smoke cigarettes. I worry. My parents are getting older, I worry. Things are slow with my graphics business. I worry. I’m feeling nauseous a lot lately. I worry. My husband seems distant. I worry. My basements floods. I worry. What if I’m really just wasting my time? I worry. You probably
don’t want to hear about this. I worry.

Each worry works its way into my mind and takes up residence, even though I have made it perfectly clear that no invitation was extended. I ask them to leave, and they smile, saying, “Yes, perhaps tomorrow.” I beg, I plead, “I need sleep,” I say, and they pat me on the head, “There, there.”

And don’t even get me started on the big things, the things that you can worry yourself sick about, the government, the environment, health care, retirement, natural disasters, Lindsay Lohan. (Okay, just kidding about that one.) I can’t even go there, to the big worry room, because I just know I will never get out.

Oh hello, Mr. Worry. Won’t you come and sit on my lap for a bit?
I’m going to give you a little hug and maybe even a kiss.

And then I’m going to squash you like a bug.

Oops, sorry. That was downright mean.

I’ll have to worry about that, later.

Forty-seven is a strange age, not exactly old, but not really young, either. And of course, that is why it’s called middle age.

But with this age, this middleness, come revelations, realizations, determination.

Life speeds up as you get older, but your body slows down.

I want to run more and more and more, but am able to do so less and less and less. I want to stay up very late to finish a book, but my eyes start to droop around midnight. I want to spring clean my house all in one day and have energy left over for dinner. I want to stay outside playing until it grows dark and someone calls me in.
I want more. More time.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I just want a newer bicycle. One without any rust or scars or missing spokes. One that lets you pedal backwards when you want to, in case you missed something. I want to understand life before it’s too late, while I still have time to enjoy it. I want to appreciate, while I still have the strength to pedal.

I have wobbled and wiggled for 47 years, trying to maintain my balance. Now I think I am ready to pare things down, remove that extra set of wheels, pick up speed. I want to fly down a hill with the wind in my hair, or coast past my house with my hands waving high in the sky.

I want to let go. Of things, emotions, barriers, clutter. All that clumsy baggage that keeps me from gliding along, bumps and potholes that make for a very rough ride. I want the life that I have and the life that I want to become the very same thing. I want to ride into the sunset, keep going all night, and circle the sun at dawn. I want to race time with one eye on the prize.

I have no illusions, I know I will fall. Plenty of times.

But that’s okay, I plan to get right back up.

Unless, of course, I break a hip.

And then I’m going to cry like a baby.

You can’t write about silence because it doesn’t exist. It pretends to exist, we talk about it, we yearn for it, we aspire to it, but life is never truly silent. There is always something making sound, your heart beating, your lungs breathing, there is always a whisper of life, somewhere.

My mind is never quiet. I have never been able to meditate, to completely clear my thoughts, there is always some phrase or idea that raises its hand and waves for my attention. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, although sometimes I do wish that they would all just sit down and read for a while. Or take a little nap.

But mostly I like that my mind moves in circles, thoughts flowing in and out and around, and then back again, sometimes when I least expect them. I like that a line for a poem can just appear, on a page that my brain has already printed. I like that words are perpetual, always there, my constant companions.

Yes, peace and quiet sound really nice, I wish for both fairly often, but in truth I would probably get bored.

I like to stay up, alone, when everyone else is sleeping, I like the way the house sounds when my husband and son are here and asleep, it is a different sound than when I am home by myself. Even though I can’t really hear anything, I can sense their presence within the quiet. Perhaps it is the peace of their sleep that I feel, palpable evidence of their dreams.

Sound travels further at night, and our dreams entwine themselves around what we hear and tell us the story of that noise, this whisper. They (the proverbial they) say that dreams don’t really play out as stories, that they are just flashes in our brains, synapses, individual thoughts or images that our mind strings together later, and then adds meaning. I’m not sure I believe that.

I think dreams are stories that need to be told.

Poems are emotions that struggle to exist.

Words and images are the conduits.

Silence can exist, in a vacuum. But I am not there.

is that my cup is full, it is overflowing, and I keep pouring new things in. Life is short but the days are long, sometimes too long, and I find myself wishing them away, wishing for this one, or that one, to be over.

My days are consumed with holes and surprises, moments of passion, fits of anger, tears of joy, and a whole lot of busywork in between. Life is filled with life and I live it to the hilt, not wanting to miss a single thing and why should I, why would I, when there is so much to experience?

It makes me think of that Emperor, Joseph II who supposedly told Mozart his music had “too many notes.” Of course, he was so very wrong, Mozart used exactly the right amount of notes, his music comes as close to perfection as is possible, but this life, my life, seems filled with too many notes, too many choices, there is always something else and something else and something else.

I’m not saying it’s all bad, in many ways choices are good, way better than not having enough. These days we can work where we choose, marry or not as we choose, and pick from the entire pond of fish if we want to. We can eat any fruit or vegetable we want at any time of year because it is always available, we can buy anything we want at any hour of the day because the internet makes it possible, we can exchange thoughts and ideas with people on the other side of the globe, at any time, if we so desire. It makes my mind spin.

But are we frozen in place by all these choices? Have you ever been behind someone who couldn’t decide on a flavor of ice cream and stood there forever and ever? Do you ever find yourself buying much more than you need because you can’t decide between this one or that one? Do you ever have a day when you have so much to do, but get nothing accomplished because you walk in circles?

Are we getting out of tune with our own survival, with the rhythm of life that our bodies want to follow even if technology makes it unnecessary? We exercise at scheduled hours if we exercise at all, we buy more things than we have room for in our homes, we eat food that is bad for us because it is there, everywhere we look.

We keep expanding our own tiny universe, one item, one idea, at a time, until we can no longer see the big picture. All these smaller things, these superfluous notes, block our vision. All we see are these choices, the ones we pick, as well as the ones we do not.

I keep trying to find balance, but I flounder in the chaos, one day thinking I thrive on it, discovering the next I most assuredly do not.

I want my life to be a symphony filled with exactly the right number of notes. Not one too few or one too many. I look past all the choices, filter the detritus of technology and convenience and materialism that fills my line of sight, trying to find my perfect pitch. I want to be a melody, not a cacophony.

But the long and the short of it

is that I’m having a really hard time

coming up with the bridge.

There are simply too many notes.

Lately I have been feeling completely overwhelmed by overwhelm. I cannot get caught up, I will never be caught up, my to-do list gets longer but it never gets shorter, I hear it yelling at me even when I’m not looking. There is always more and more and more.

I know this, and I keep saying yes. I keep trying to fit it all in, to do all the things that I want to do in addition to the things that I have to do, and then I keep changing the rules. It feels like a cycle I can’t break out of, a circle I am enclosed in, a cage I can only sing complaints from.

If I know why the caged bird sings, why can’t I just let her out?

I want to open the door with my own two hands, I want to sing the tune that I wrote myself, I want to be the one who built the cage.

Oh wait, I am. I did.

This is my life, I made it step by step and minute by minute, all those choices, all those detours, all those maps that weren’t maps, they were mazes that took me someplace else, this place that is jungle and desert and sometimes, ocean, and I say that because I can’t swim.

I built my life, I am responsible. I know that. Sometimes I want to run away, start from scratch, do it right, take the correct path instead of the one I thought was better, the one that was less traveled, because now I know why it was less traveled, don’t I?

I am whining, I am sorry, I know, I should not, I should look for the silver lining. And I will, tomorrow. Or maybe even in five minutes, these clouds will clear and I will see, I will remember that life isn’t all that bad, this is, after all, just overwhelm. It could be under, under anything and that would be worse because over is always better, right? Too much is better than not enough.

No, wait, less is more. I forgot that, too, more or less.

Okay I am done with my rant, with my rave, with my long-winded empirical whine.

I’m going to go eat some chocolate.

And by the way, when it comes to chocolate,

I don’t care what anyone says,

less is never more.

Shadows that move, across the floor, up a wall, out the door. Creeping silently through life when they think no one is looking. Patterns that whisper, songs that recall, lines that pop in your head from a poem you learned at eleven.

I am stuck in a pattern of rinse and repeat. I walk in circles, accomplish nothing, bite my nails, pull my hair, open my mouth in a silent scream.

There is nothing there.

Of course, there is something there. But it is not what I want, not what I need, or not what I think it should be. No matter what it is,
it is none of these things. Nothing can assuage me. I look to the shadows, deeper, trying to discern what lies there, beneath the surface, this unrest, this revelation that refuses to reveal.

There is nothing there.

I run through a forest at night in my sleep and wish for someplace sunny. When the sun rises, I hide beneath the covers, wanting only the comfort of darkness. I am cold. I am hot. I am never just right. Not comfortable, not complacent, not appeased.

There is always something missing. The key is misplaced, stuck in a jar in the back of some cupboard long ago, owner gone but not forgotten, no longer here, no longer able to open this memory, that possibility. Perspective. A door that stays closed, sealed shut, forgotten in the shadows.

I think of a dream I had, years ago, now. After a friend ended his life. A dream I have never forgotten. He stood there, in this dream, at the top of the hill near the house I grew up in, the house my parents live in, still. His hair was long, wild, his clothes, dirty.
He smiled.

I am okay, he said. Just that.

I am okay.

It was a gift, that dream, a moment when the shadows receded to let a light shine through, a light that no one, no one was watching for.

When he did it, took that gun and said goodbye, we were shocked. Shocked, but not surprised. Of course, we said, he was not fit for this world. No, we said, this world was not fit for him. There was no place for him, here. No sanctuary. It made sense in the way that things that can never make sense, will.

I think of him, sometimes. When I see a shadow on a wall that lets the light shine through. A light that no one, no one is watching for.

And yes.

I am okay.

though it would be
if i could offer
you, accept

but instead

it sits here, in my lap
licking wounds
no one asked for

and you,
you turn away
muttering, a whisper

crazy half grin

i never hear
what you say
never ask twice

if i do

there is no answer
just silence that hangs
the air between us

ripe

the way change
rips through your face
just a thought

unspoken

she is trapped inside a month of gray…

a quote from a song that is singing my tune, in these days when the world is filled with color, and these nights when the world is filled with life, and you would think that some of it, a tiny little bit even, would rub off on me, turn me at least a slightly pastel shade of something, but no, there is only gray.

and i’m not saying that gray is bad, it’s not, i like gray, it’s just that it’s not black and it’s not white and the variations are endless and the possibilities are overwhelming, and somewhere in the exact middle of all that gray is the epicenter of the universe or at least the average, the mean, the median, of all the other days, and what does that signify, exactly?

something is shifting in the universe, every second of every minute, and most of the time you can’t tell, you don’t even notice, but every once in a while you feel that shift, that tiny alteration, in your flesh, in your bones, like the tiniest of breezes ruffling over the valleys of your face.

and what i mean is not profound, or out of reach, but life, daily life, that brings with it the endless possibilities, distracting us from the moments we are in, running fingers through our hair just long enough to make us wonder.

and if we wonder long enough, wander long enough, we always get there, the place we are supposed to be, even if we don’t know what it’s called, or how we got there, or where we will be headed next. it might be called tomorrow. or next month. or the future.

but it’s never called yesterday.

Yesterday morning I woke up and went to the kitchen to make my first cup of tea, and noticed something in my dog’s water bowl. At first I thought I was imagining things, but after close inspection, it turned out to be an earthworm. Now I have to just stop right here and tell you that worms are my thing: the thing I am most terrified of in life, on a phobic level. I know it makes no sense, I know they are harmless, but phobias don’t make sense, that’s why they are phobias and not just regular fears.

And so, there I was, standing in my kitchen with a worm floating in my dog’s bowl. At first I thought it was dead, and that was gross, and bad enough, but I figured I could wait for my son to come home and take it outside for me.

But then. It started to move. No, it started to writhe in that creepy way a worm submerged in water will do, and then I felt sick to my stomach. (And before you laugh, just picture whatever you are most terrified of, sitting in a bowl in your kitchen when you wake up tomorrow. A snake? A tarantula?) And then I couldn’t do anything at all because, well, what if it crawled out of the bowl?

So I stood there, frozen, in my kitchen, wanting to scream, but no one was there to hear me anyway, and what good would it do, and it was, after all, just a worm. So I stood there and tried not to look, but I just had to keep looking because, really, how could there be a worm in this dish in my kitchen?

My back door seals nicely, there are rugs inside and outside the entrance, then three steps up, then another door with a rug in front of it. There is all of that between the outdoors, where worms live, and this dog dish. And somehow an earthworm traversed it all, looking for a drink of water?

Did my dog bring it in with him, on him, somehow? That might be even worse, because sometimes my husband lets him out in the morning, and then the dog comes right back in and jumps into bed with me. And if worms have the potential to be part of that package, then I need to start sleeping someplace much higher above sea level.

Did it come in on one of our shoes? One of mine? A worm was that close to my foot? I can’t even think about it.

Most likely, it simply dropped out of the sky, and if I go and look out the window right now, I will also see pigs flying by.

You can see how upset this made me, and this was before 7:00 a.m.

And I didn’t take a picture to put here, with this story, because I can’t even look at pictures of worms. So I chose a completely unrelated picture to distract myself.

I have learned to deal with this phobia over the years, when I first start gardening, as soon as I saw a worm I was done for the day, had to go inside. I know how good they are for my garden, so I have conditioned myself to live with them. I don’t pick them up or anything, but I have learned to work around them, ignore their presence, coexist. As long as they stay outside, where they belong.

And yes, I should get over it, I know that having a worm in a dish in your kitchen isn’t all that terrible. I know this. I do. But still, it made me nauseous. Thanks goodness my son came home shortly thereafter and rescued me.

And that wasn’t even close to being the worst thing that happened yesterday. The worst thing happened not to me, but to my parents, and it made us all cry. And that, what happened to them, wasn’t even the worst thing that could happen to anybody, there are many other, far worse things that can happen.

But when you wake up and there’s a worm in a dish in your kitchen, you have to assume it’s not going to be your best day.

And last night, all night, I had nightmares about worms.

I’m just saying.

But it is late, too late and it is just me, here, with the moon and all these cats, who are usually enough but tonight, another night in a rough week, a tough week, a week of too much work, and too much conflict, and too much not enough quiet, these cats and this moon are not quite enough to soothe me.

Most of the time during a week like this, which seems like more weeks than not, lately, all I want is to be by myself, alone, to unwind, decompress, listen to silence.

But every once in a while, on a warm, windows open kind of night like tonight, a night that would be a porch night if I had a porch, I find myself wishing I had a girlfriend, a neighbor maybe, who would stop by, late and unannounced, and sit across from me at the kitchen table and drink tea, no, whiskey and lemonade because it is too warm for tea, and talk me through it, around it, over it.

And we would complain about the heat, and laugh about silly things like dresses and movies and bad hair days and old boyfriends and sappy poetry and endless hours of folding laundry. And then move on to deeper subjects, life and living, love and heartache, tragedy and mystery. We would solve all the problems of the world. And suddenly, it would be 3:00 a.m. and we would say, both at once, “I haven’t stayed up this late in years.”

But now the moment has passed and it’s no big deal, and I wasn’t really in a poor me kind of mood, it was just a little late night reminiscence brought on by this warmth, already a little too warm, reminding me of summers when I was a young girl. My mom always had girlfriends like that, although she never drank anything stronger than coffee. It was one of those moments, a possibility of perhaps… something I might be doing if I had that life.

But in reality, my reality, most of the time I like to be alone, or at least the kind of alone that is my husband sleeping in the next room. And I barely have time for the friends I have now. And tomorrow, it will be fine, I will call one of those friends, and we will laugh.

Anyway, it was just a thought, and it is late

and there’s just me, here.

Besides, I have all these cats,

and the moon, she knows my name.