little words

"The important thing
is the obvious thing
nobody is saying" ~ William S. Burroughs (inscribed in my iced tea bottle lid)

It was one of those questions

the kind that makes you cry when everyone

is out of sight

because the answer is

all you have been sad about

but you only realize this

as you roll up to the stop sign

on Vaughn street

in the heat and humidity

that doesn't belong in Maine

and the world around you

has gone blurry

with tears

that rim your lower eyelids

until one exceeds

the laws of cohesive tension

jumps the dam

rolls down your cheek

around your nose

and falls off your top lip 

onto your freckled hand

gripping the steering wheel.

you see the trouble was my boat

i kept trying to cross the ocean

in a trireme

....

funny

someone taught me this lesson

years ago

but i forgot

i thought it was a game

i forgot

this is the game

every message

every lesson

every thing here

just another part of the game

...

hear all the bombs fade away

...

no wonder Kieran smiles so much

he gets the joke

I am done playing by rules that aren't mine

...

i don't need a boat anymore

The Big Mushroom...

...and "Interconnectedness"

I have often tried to see my life in metaphor. Sort of a mile high view thing that instead of taking an aerial perspective takes a perspective as though the viewer is a painter of broad strokes or a poet. Anyway, interconnectedness is the theme because it was prevalent in a big way today. I attended this class at my workplace...an institution of healing... (another metaphor, I assure you) where I work in the Center for Performance Improvement. The class was called "The Magic of Conflict", but it was really about energy or chi... something I just had a conversation with George about at lunch last week. It was about connecting rather than opposing and thus turning conflict into a gift. Could sound cheesy, but it isn't... The energy of conflict is a gift and I work for a dept. that is all about improvement. Then I watched Northern Exposure with Duncan. Dr. Fleischman (sp?) is AWOL in the tundra and he is explaining to Maggie how these honey mushrooms he picks are all a part of one big fungus that exists underground as a whole being but appear on the surface as separate. Then he trips along with a diatribe about how we are all one...

So here I am getting this message twice in one day and it is like preaching to the choir... but it was yet another moment when I could see the metaphor...

My life is not just getting up and going to work... it is broad brush strokes of learning. I used to work at another Center... "The Center on Philanthropy".... at an institution of higher learning. The brush strokes begin to show a pattern when you look at things from the metaphor perspective.

I have so much to learn... I am trying to see with a different lens. I went out to my car last night and there was a raven sitting on the soft-top roof. It looked at me and I looked at it. It didn't move, but crackled at me... I don't know how to characterize it differrently... it crackled and I laughed. I needed to run an errand and I tried thinking that and sending a message that way... it crackled again...finally, out loud, I said "I see you shapeshifter, trickster like coyote, sitting on my vehicle... I am trying to read your message... the vehicle is magick... I understand that. My car, this body... not real. An illusion." It crackled again, hopped onto the hood of my car and down onto the driveway, walked until it was in front of me and laughed. No other way to explain the sound.

This life is an illusion... so much is metaphor. Don't let the vehicle fool you.. don't let it

turned a metaphoric corner today

Lunch with George is always a redeeming moment in my week. I get to have the real conversations. Last week it was George's dream about being hunted by beings of questionable motive and how it turned out his wife Annie had been taking "Yam", some kind of love drug that required an annual fix. Today is was about kundalini and how I shut street lights off wherever I go.

I love that I can sit across a diner table from my brother and discuss "Doubting Thomas", our next foray into the world of short film as well as my reading about the Mental Body and thought forms and their inherent implications on our lives and the lives of those close to us.

To some this may sound like a version of the Twilight Zone gone bad, but in my book, it is the important stuff; the stuff that counts.

I was driving back to work after a discussion about my first meditation experience involving alignment of the chi and how it ran straight up my spine and out the crown of my skull and suddenly something shifted. Now I have been talking about existential crisis and phenomenological paradigm shifts for years, but I have not really been fully cognizant as one has occurred within my own lens... until today. To be honest, it was subtle, but the ramifications are showing already. I am not who I was before lunch, or more aptly, my lens is not who it was before lunch.

I came to the realization that somewhere along the way in this life, I made the mistake of feeling guilty for things that were beyond my control. This afternoon, Camus' myth of Sisyphus that I must have made the mistake of taking on became clearly ridiculous to me.

How lucky am I to have the opportunity to have conversations that shift the very nature of how I see my own life over a bowl of tomato soup with my brother...

Reflections on 41

Working backward...

"The Ego Tunnel" - written by a German in English, this treatise is forcing me to ask a lot of questions, all of them in english and each one is breaking down further my own notion of "self" as has been perceived until now

"Don't Be"... George, Joe, Robin and I set out to make a short film in 48 hours... we did it thanks to our amazing cast and crew

Road trip to Indiana to get Robin... accompanied by Kieran, I drove to Indiana and back in three days. There was great conversation, witness to O'Bama's reinvestment in America via all the road construction and rainbows... oh and a very brief coffee with Matthew whom I hope I will see again... and I cannot leave out, hospitality from Kate and Lydia that was above and beyond the call

A weekend traveling back roads and byways of VT with a friend I will always love was priceless

Visits with Katie and Melissa and Wil... now that they are only an hour away, we have lunch more routinely

Trip to the quarries with Will and Kieran and Duncan.... thanks to Wil's encouragment and my perseverance we found our old quarry and dug for gems

Camp, July 2004 - A time to recconect with the family amidst the new rainy amazonian season that northern NY and New England have been forced to embrace. The Name Game at Camp Frances was a highlight

Grace and her family visited before their reunion at Bates. I got to meet the children of my best friend in high school

June, the new rainy month, made me start to wonder about climate change in a way I am still concerned about

A Memorial Day where I undid a chair and discovered a new, old friend

Track meets that Kieran ran in had me traveling hither and yon across the state

Another May where I missed seeing Ead blow out her candles made me wish that transatlantic flight was free

I might have the timing wrong... but Duncan's first musical performance in "Once on This Island" ran for three days... awesome show

April 19th... The World Premeire of "I Was Jesus and Dracula" at the St. Lawrence made me so proud and grateful to be working with George and Annie on films

March was a quiet month when I learned yet again the meaning of meeting someone I had not known well from the past with chance to learn from the experience

February... work ate my life... it was good... I love my new boss

January was cold and dark... I struggled with how to fill the evenings alone... I shoveled my driveway a lot... I missed the idea of the family gathered around the woodstove

December 29th, 2008... Divorce final... FIN... whew

Christmas, 2008 in Whippleville. Dad cut a tree in Mt.View. We decorated it. Movies with Mom and Dad and Kieran and Duncan and present wrapping and Christmas music brought the magic of the season back for me... finding the "bad touch santa" stocking made me laugh and cry

Early December... we wrapped shooting IWJAD on George's birthday... the day before snow flew

November and I still had not met Rhiannon on her first birthday... sad

November and we were shooting IWJAD almost every other weekend... fun... great cast and crew

October... spent some time talking to a shaman

September was the month George and Annie got married... I got a great new sister-in-law, got to see Robin again, met Matthew finally (awesome), met George's crew.... watched my kids mingle with people they talk about all the time now

August 31, 2008 turned 41

It's been a year... a huge, full, happy, sad year that I would not trade for anything. I am so grateful to have lived what I did

Things I never would have guessed I would say

"Why isn't that dog wearing boots like he usually does; what was he thinking?!" 

"ants cannot climb onto plates..."

"Thomas, he knows about your balls! "

"dammit, now there are two cans of beets in my house."

"So, I was thinking that you could drive the newer car."

"Maybe I should forward this on to my attorney"

"If we are going to get sued, screw it, let's get sued by as many people as possible"

"I really don't watch TV..."

"What do you mean you were crawling through the halls of your school?"

"hey, turn up that Eminem song Duncan"

Online Dating Hell

So this is supposed to be my blog about the short film my brother and I and his wife just engineered, but today for lack of the energy required to create a new blog account... it may just become a blog about life from my perspective. Sorry George! I'll still write about IWJAD and our ongoing journey, but today my thoughts are in a slightly different place... here we go...

About a year ago, as a single person who has embraced the internets as my kids would say... hell I used to teach a class on the history of the internet, so it is hardly like I had to embrace it, but anyway... about a year ago, I signed onto an online dating site and created a profile....HA! Let me just say, my best dates have arisen from people I have met in person or on a social networking site, not from said online dating site.... I should have known this would be the case, but I persisted. This week, I am wondering why.

At the beginning of January I actually was divorced... had the settlement in hand and thusly, I changed my status online from "separated" to divorced. So begins Hell...

Dear tieuup101, you sent me an email. You have no pictures posted, which is always a bad sign,  but nevertheless there was little I could do to avoid your three emails. You say you are 45 and looking for a nice girl... gimme a break dude! You say you were lucky to graduate from high school and that you haven't read a book since then.... somehow this is supposed to be a selling point in your mind. I could give shit if your favorite color is blue or that you "could of been somebody". Tieuup101, let me tell you about me without possibly sounding arrogant. I may not have been valedictorian of my class, but I was in the top ten when I graduated. I read Shakespeare for fun and I write poetry when I am bored. I would not mind a bondage fetish so much if the guy could also talk to me about phenomenology and possibly relate when it came to varied perspectives on physics, but somehow I am doubting highly that you even understand that sentence. Not sure how to get across to you that you are so out of your realm you may be in another galaxy... 

Steveohhhh - You are 66. You are almost my dad's age. Can we just stop there? Five emails, signed "kiss - Steve" are not going to change the fact that I am 41 and would like to think I might be able to do better when it comes to finding a mate who is not going to die in five years. (harsh - I know, but dear god!)

mustluvdogggs - I love cats! that is the end of that!

Millionairrerockstarr - Since you clearly cannot spell Pink Floyd - I think we are done before even starting.

I give folks. I give. I am going to end my subscription and hope I meet someone in person. I get emails that make me physically ill. I get emails that make me laugh too, but they are not worth the damage this is doing to my psyche. I am a decently smart, interesting woman who has some good years ahead of her.

Please someone, introduce me to your single friend. Let me hang when you have a party. Online dating is hell when you are 41.... I would rather stay single for the rest of my life than deal with this anymore!