that's mrs. mediocrity to you

I sit here, needing something, but I am speechless.

I have spent another day running around in circles. Some of them were good circles, some of them were too constraining. Some of them weren’t circles at all, they were spirals. I have so much to do that I can’t concentrate on anything, and for some reason,  I am exhausted. I have a show this weekend, I have to work, have to make ready, have to do this, have to do that.

But I sit here. Hoping that if I get the words out, something will change. Hoping it is the words, all jumbled up inside, causing this inability to focus. Hoping.

I am outside, it is almost dusk, the air is still. My mind is not.
My mind is like these mosquitoes that are about to drive me inside. Pesky, buzzing, flittering, fluttering. Annoying.

If I sit here long enough, I wonder if my mind will become as calm as the air. I hear birds. Crickets. Peeping frogs. No grasshoppers just now, perhaps they are already asleep. The fading sunlight filters through the long row of bushes that hides me from my neighbors, my far-away neighbors that I still wish to be hidden from.

At the end of that row is the elderberry bush, bent low to the ground with the weight of its fruit, full and ripe. I feel like that too, just now. Heavy with my own potential.

I should get up and get my camera so I can take a picture of this abstract watercolor sky. But I feel too tired. I don’t have the energy. If I go inside to get my camera, I don’t think I’ll come back out.

Inside, the fans are still going. Outside, the air is perfectly still.

It has been like that since this morning.

I think I just need to sit here for a bit
and enjoy this breeze of silence.

:

p.s. I came back out.

flashing light, blinding flare, this glare that burns. migraine.

pounding, pounding, peck peck pecking away at my sanity.

pain that will not stop, does not cower, will not leave.

pain uninvited, not wanted, not welcome, yet here.

my head in a vice grip. won’t let go.

pain that leaves me wasted, limp, sore,

run over. paralyzed.

i lay on the couch, afraid to move.

i watch from a tiny pinhole of awareness.

i am still, so still, any movement excruciating.

quiet light burns holes in my retina.

tiny sounds detonate bombs in my brain.

i wait and i wait and i think and i think. and i wait.

there is nothing else to do.

it is minutiae, amplified, one million times.

it is crushing fever, knife pain, white hot.

it is brutality, unleashed in my skull.

and then it is gone.

an ugly memory.

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visit imperfect prose on thursdays, here

{august break no. 4}

they got their wires crossed.

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p.s.  do you know about Kim Klassen’s Inspiration Stay-cation?
If not you should go check it out…
I was so honored that she asked me to participate.
I have a little post about writing here.

Today it rains. It is hot and it is sunny, and then it is hot and it rains.  A cycle of weather I must live with.

It is has been so hot, for weeks now, that I stay inside. I want to be outside, I want to sweat and dig in my garden and pull the ten million weeds that call my name each time I open my back door. They mock me, these weeds. Point and nod as I walk by, I hear them: bad gardener, lazy girl, indifferent caretaker.

I give them the finger and go back inside.

The best time to weed is just after it rains, roots are easier to pull from soft, wet soil. I should go out there and do that right now.
But I won’t, it is late already, I need to make pizza for dinner, and tomorrow, I have an art show.

But if I could, I would go out there, right now, and start pulling. And when I finally finished, sometime next Tuesday, there would be a mountain of weeds, a foothill of dill, a backache, and a giant sense of accomplishment. Funny how something so simple can make you feel so good.

Next weekend, I am going to my friend’s house so she can teach me how to make pickles. She is 84 and has lived a life filled with extraordinary amounts of pain, both physical and emotional. And yet, she giggles. A lot. One of these days, on a different day, I will tell you her story. But she called me this week and she said, “The cucumbers are early this year, we have to get going on these pickles.” These pickles that I asked her to teach me how to make.

She is housebound, and most likely bored, and if I could, I would go and spend every day with her, so she could teach me all about 84 years worth of living, and how to make pickles and also how to crochet those amazing doilies. But for now, I had to tell her the pickles would have to wait, I have a show this weekend, I cannot go there until next week, when it is August.

I am going to learn to make pickles.

Sugar and spice,

salt and vinegar,

time and life.

in a car is all it takes to clear my mind. four hours of nothing to do but drive and drive down this endless asphalt ribbon. my hardest decision will be which music to listen to next. four hours of singing, loud, uninhibited singing, along with joni mitchell, bob dylan, cowboy junkies, counting crows, alison krauss. four hours of not caring what people passing me think as i belt out all my favorites, feet tapping, head bobbing, mouth wide.

four hours of trucks and cars and vans and jeeps and buses
and motorcycles, and one helicopter being pulled by a camper.
never saw that before. of watching for hawks and spotting two herons and counting crows as i sing a counting crows song and
then smiling to myself about that. of eating m&m’s and drinking
a coke, which I only ever do on long drives.

four hours not distracted by internet or television or telephones or anyone else’s voice. four hours of looking ahead, not behind, not up, not down, not at everything that needs to be done. four straight hours of straight hard thinking.

four hours of sky and horizon, trees and wire, whizzing by so fast you don’t see it. but it sits there, in your mind’s eye.

four hours of enjoying the ride.

four hours twice within 28.

eight hours in a car, with my thoughts and my music.

and none of those thoughts were of time.

My garden is singing the thirsty blues. My pruners have been sitting out on the picnic table for a week. It hasn’t rained, so that’s okay, but really I should go out there and put them away. And the hummingbird feeder is broken. I meant to look for the old one and put it out for them, but I haven’t, yet. Poor thirsty hummingbirds. Perhaps today.

I started one book that did not grab me. I am five pages into another. Each time I start to read I fall asleep. I will have to try another, I want one that I can’t stop reading, so I can stay up late and pretend I’m fifteen. Man, it’s hot. Not hot in here with the air conditioning running and running and running, but man, it’s hot.

I don’t even feel like eating. Well, maybe just ice cream. A dip top. But you could never eat a dip top in this heat, you’d have to run back to your air-conditioned car, and even then it would probably be too late, chocolate would be dripping all the way to your elbow.
I might go get one anyway, eat it right at the counter while I wait for my change, so fast an ice headache rips through my forehead.

And I really should do all this laundry that is piling up on me.
But it’s too hot to fold clothes from the dryer. All my cats do is sleep, and I had crazy wild dreams last night. I hate sleeping in air conditioning, I feel like I can’t breathe, even with a small fan blowing air directly onto my face. And I can breathe, but still,
I wake up in the night feeling like I can’t, sweating even though
the room is cool. Like my body knows how hot it is out there.

I would love to get up and go outside and listen to the crickets, sit in one chair with my feet up on another, and blanket myself with cool night air. But I don’t, the mosquitoes would carry me away, and no one would be able to find me in the morning. Which could be kind of funny, I wonder where they would drop me off? Maybe the neighbor’s around the corner, when I got too heavy.

In the mornings I drink hot tea. I don’t care if it is too hot to drink hot tea, I drink it anyway. Today it will be 93º and I think I am going to go running. I love to run in the heat, there is nothing in the world as good as that kind of sweating, feeling my body release the things it has been holding onto, stress, impatience, tension.

All of that will be gone when I am done, and I will stand there,
glistening, while life drips off of me onto the ground.

And then I’m going to go and get that dip top.

Some things a girl just can’t do without.

A moment of clarity so much clearer than I would have liked.

Seeing things that I could have done without seeing. Speaking words that make no sense to anyone but me. Laughing at bad jokes and hard comments and all this party banter. It makes my face hurt.

I would much rather be home, sitting in my garden, even if that means there are mosquitoes.

And then, later, I am home, in my garden, and there are mosquitoes, and black flies, and my funny little kitten who keeps rooting in my heart, growing deep into a place I did not know was there.

There is that risk, again. We take it, all of us, each time we love. Knowing what could happen.

It cannot be helped.

Like these damned mosquitoes. I just want to sit here. They just want to eat. But I am not in the mood for compromise.

There is another cat here, the neighbor’s. I’d like to adopt her, too.
I know she is hungry. I feed her, sometimes. But no more cats, no more. And she is theirs, not ours, although so was my Pepe, when he showed up here, half-dead. I didn’t feel like compromise then, either, although I sort of got permission before I brought him inside. At least I told them he was here. They did not ask for him back.

My mockingbird has learned duck. It is hysterical. Quack quack.
A big cosmic joke, the mockingbird. One of my favorites. Evolution is supposed to happen for a reason. But what is the reason for the mockingbird’s talent? And what about fireflies? What is the reason for the glow, is there one? Or are they just pretty?

Songs float through my mind these days. Lines I remember and don’t know why. Just now, “This is not my beautiful life.” Well, this can’t be anything but my life, I am the only one in it. This is my life. And it is beautiful.

The cats are playing: hide and seek, you can’t catch me, this is my house. Once survival is taken care of, something else kicks in: the need to be entertained.

I just want to sit here and listen. This mockingbird that has learned to quack. It makes me smile, I sit here by myself with a silly grin on my face. The air is oppressive. Humidity 100%. There is no breeze.

Nature doesn’t care what I think, or say or do or observe. She just marches on, in one direction. Nature never asks why.

But still, these cats.

They play.

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.

or, when life overwhelms, run away. And yes, I know these aren’t ducks, they are geese, but sometimes a girl gets to take a little poetic license, doesn’t she?

I seem to have depleted my batteries recently, and I just wasn’t running properly. I knew this, but couldn’t seem to break the cycle. So when my mother-in-law asked if I wanted to head up to the Thousand Islands with her and my sister-in-law and niece for a girls overnighter, of course my first thought was “I can’t do that, I don’t have time,” but then my second thought was, “Don’t be stupid.”

So I said yes and dropped everything, knowing it would all still be there, on the floor, when I got back. I never do things like that, but I knew that I really, really needed this one.

And off I went, and for the next day and a half I did only silly, relaxing, fun things. I giggled a little, I guffawed a lot. It helps when you have a silly eighteen-year-old with you and she does some really funny, crazy things. I also read a whole book. (Okay, I had started it the night before). It wasn’t even that great, but I lived within its covers for hours and hours anyway and that was its own little escape within my escape.

I never really used to believe in burnout, or at least I never believed it would happen to me, but lately I have begun to grasp the concept. Just in time, though, I am also starting to grasp the concept that no matter how much you have to do, every so often you need to simply stop everything and have some fun. Fun for the sake of fun.

They kept asking me what I wanted to do, and I kept saying, “I don’t care, I am just so happy to not HAVE to do anything.” But mostly I was thinking that I’d like to be sitting in a chair with my feet up, reading. We walked the little towns, we shopped, we ate, we went sightseeing. And then, finally, we sat in the hotel room and I read while they watched their shows  (there were a lot of them). Basically, I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do the whole trip.

Well, except pay $12 for a friendship bracelet that is essentially a piece of string with four beads strung on it. I almost refused, I thought it was ridiculously expensive, but we were all supposed to get one, together. So I bit my tongue and plunked down my cash, and now there it is on my wrist.

But it might just end up being the best twelve dollars I ever spent, because every time I look at it now, I think of how hard we all laughed at 11:30 that night when my niece went to take a shower and was scared by a tiny little spider and dropped her glasses in the toilet. And she was appalled and grossed out and there was some gagging and it was just so funny and we laughed until we snorted because she is the kind of girl who would rather throw her glasses away than fish them out of the toilet.

And then, of course, we were on a roll, and we laughed hysterically for the next hour and probably kept everyone in all the rooms near us awake, but we just couldn’t stop and we didn’t stop and we all fell asleep with smiles on our faces.

And during the night I dreamed silly dreams

while all those things I left scattered

at home on the floor

moved themselves back into place.

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.