Category: Life Lessons

Ten Years Ago When My Brain Melted…

Ten years ago, a health issue led to some questions, that led to some answers, that then led to the destruction of my imagined life and its imagined stability. And that led to what felt like my brain melting and my soul howling out into the void. 

If my life were a melatonin induced freaky dream, it would have found me climbing the rope in the gym back in grade school, slapping my hand on the rafter to signal my arrival and then looking down to see someone had lit the rope on fire and it was fast approaching the soles of my Keds.

I have always listened to the Universe as it has guided me on my way. It hasn’t been an easy sprint from point A to point B. In fact, it took me a few decades to figure out that my spiritual guides might be slightly sadistic bastards that thought leading me on wild goose chases was highly entertaining.  Case in point: at age 27 I was guided to pack my life in the desert and follow love to a northern city only to be met with a full stop, u-turn and a “Just kidding! Hang in there for seven months in this new location and your work will take you to your next stop which we aren’t going to tell you about until you’re seriously questioning all your life choices! It’ll be great! Trust us!” See? Sadistic. 

I sat still. Miserably. Heartbroken. But then the next stop did put me on a path that held a pretty clear route for three more decades. Until the brain melting happened. 

So, there I was ten years ago, at my kitchen table in East Lansing; charred bits of my old life flaking off me; writing like a mad woman on the wall I had painted into a giant chalkboard for big ideas. It was handy for menu planning, thought processing, doodling and list making. It’s too easy to lose the post-it notes or the 37th spiral notebook you write the big ideas in, but you’d have to be Criss Angel to lose a wall. So there you go. 

New Life Goals!

Uh… Happiness? Nah. Too vague. Success? At what? And really, isn’t “success” the achievement of a singular goal? Then you set up a new hurdle to jump. Screw that. This brain exfoliation went on for a while. 

Until I ran into a thought that stopped the brain leakage. “What the hell do I actually want now?” Staring at the doodles, finally, some strong words shouldered their way to the front of my burned brain.

Yahtzee!

The first word was COMMUNITY. 

I wanted a real community of friends and neighbors who I could interact with, create with, commiserate with on whatever shenanigans we would get up to. I had lived in that house in that college town for two decades and for reasons that no longer matter, I had only connected with a handful of people. Those were lonely years. And I was done with that. 

The second strong word was MOVE. Five years prior, I had set a deadline for a decision to be made for the years ahead and if the spouse hadn’t come up with a viable plan to relocate somewhere that I had a say in selecting, then I was going to make the choice and he could come along or not. Afterall, I had uprooted my life three times at this point, each time moving for his work that took me farther and farther away from a location where any of my eclectic skill sets were viable career choices. 

Ten years ago, it was clear that I needed to get out a metaphorical machete and start clearing a path to where I was supposed to be. It was a true winter of the soul where I had retreated, hibernating and trying to keep the delicate seeds of dreams alive while I let my listening stretch out again to those sadistic guide bastards to hear where I needed to move next. 

NORTH. That was the word.  I don’t think there are any coincidences because I know how those sneaky bastards work, but I had two simultaneous invitations to go north for visits from two women I’d known for years who both lived at the tops of two Michigan Peninsulas; one in the Keweenaw and the other in the Leelanau. They did not know each other so three guesses who set this up. 

Why the hell not? I packed my car and hit the road to Copper Harbor. I had a great visit with my friend and the miles on the road alone helped air out my head.  The morning of my departure from her house, I sat alone on the dock with my coffee and threw out to the Universe a request for a sign to let me know if our communication line was open so I could pick up the next bread crumb they tossed on my path. I did not see a bird fly over, but as I raised my cup towards my mouth, a feather dropped right into it with a satisfying plunk. Hilarious. Message received. As Ellie in the book Contact frantically reported to the control room team, “we are good to go!”.  

Next stop Northport. I had some very interesting days in this tiny town and I met a lot of people and already had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time I visited. Sitting at the donut shop before hitting the road, my friend asked what I saw myself doing next, and I said I wanted to create gatherings where people can celebrate and learn and interact with their community. She pointed across the street and said that building was for sale. We walked over and got a tour from the owners who were outside tending plants. The very second I stepped into the ballroom, everything that was twisted and broken in my soul straightened out and said “THIS”.  THIS is my future. 

It still took another three years to bring together all the wiggly bits and pieces to finally take over this building and another seven years to become one with this beautiful business in a lovely town with a real community of friends and neighbors, but it happened. Ten long freaking years.

So, the moral of this story is that when your life explodes and your brain melts, it’s a really good time to reopen your communication channels with Sadistic Bastards Are Us. I mean your spiritual guides. Let them lead you on a merry chase as they move you closer to your own next step. The golden part is just over that hill with the steep incline, razor wire, fire ants and random lightning strikes. Come on! It’ll be fun! And ten years from now you’ll look back and laugh. 

A word from the Patron Saint of Sadistic Bastards-

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward” Soren Kierkegaard

Can I just say that the Toon Me App is ridiculously fun? The self portrait image at the top of the article is from 2012, taken in my kitchen in East Lansing, next to my chalkboard wall. The other images are from Toon Me’s portal access to the Faerie Realm.

NaPoWriMo2020- Poem#7: Gravity

 

                                        NaPoWriMo2020 Poem 7 of 30

Haiku

Gravity

kisses inhale souls

one look and hearts catch fire

love’s strong gravity 

 

 

 

 

 

Halfway There

Ocean

Saying goodbye with only distant plans for reunion makes the empty new morning swallow you whole.

On rising we are required to remember our person is no longer in our daily world. Like the thousand times we reach for a phone to call parents with a question or to share news before it hits us that they have both been dead over a decade now. So much a part of who we are; a limb, a vital organ; stunned that we live on without them.

The letting go is like pushing off from shore and swimming into open-ocean towards a destination out of sight. Do we put some effort in and try to get there faster or pace ourselves in case it’s farther than imagined? The thing is, with every passing moment we know we’re getting closer. The starting place is behind us now; the day we said goodbye. And every day a little grief weight drops and bit by bit – lightness takes its place. Before we know it, we’re half way there. Closer by the day to being home than we were yesterday and that’s a good thing. A hopeful thing. And on the day we decide to make plans again clouds disappear and joy rises like crocus up from March snow.

We’re halfway there. See you soon.

Not Helping

Actual exchange this morning while out with my dog.

Other: “Wow. she’s really showing her age. How old is she?”

Me: “Uh…Seven.”

Other: “Yeah. That’s about as long as they live. Oh, well.”

Me:

cat mouth open

I say nothing..aloud. If I said what was going through my head at the moment I’m pretty certain that Other’s head would have exploded. Instead I patted my dog and turned back towards the house. In my head, aside from the tirade of profanity that was creeping up my collar, I was thinking, I hope like hell she never volunteers to be a grief counselor. So not helping.

I’ve known Other for a couple decades and there hasn’t been any signs of dementia or other disorder that might cause her to blurt out any unfiltered thought that pops into her head. That leaves one conclusion. Terminal rudeness.

Imagine this line of thinking if we adjust the scenario with one exchanged detail…

Me: “Wow, your mom’s really showing her age. How old is she now?”

Other: “Eighty nine.”

Me: Shaking my head on an exhale. “Yeah, that’s about as long as they live. Oh, well.”

You see the problem. Apparently, on her planet, ours was a normal exchange. I don’t want to live on her planet. I don’t even want to visit there.

I know my dog is getting older. I know Great Danes don’t have as long a life as smaller dogs. No shit, Sherlock. Just let me bathe in the bubble of *happy dog time* that I do have… And I swear to god, if you say one rude thing after she’s gone, I am egging your house on the hottest day of the year.

There. I feel better. Now, THAT helped.

 

Through the Muck

 violet

I have a big dog. A Great Dane in fact, and this morning I was out back collecting some spring flowers that only seem to thrive in the places where we’ve dumped her winter offerings collected from the snow covered yard. A 135 pound dog can create an impressive volume of offerings. It’s a ritual; following her after her daily constitutional with the blue metal scooper and carrying the mess to the side beds to toss it just over the ornamental rail where it decomposes beneath grapevine, clematis, day lilies, azalea and other sleeping things in the garden.

By May, after the mess has been incorporated into the soil and mulched, it’s a tiny jungle of green. As I crouch down to move the lush green leaves and collect the delicate violets and lily-of-the-valley that grow there, every brush of my hand against the petals will cause a cloud of heady fragrance to perfume the air. The amazing scent these tiny bell shaped flowers give off herald spring and all the little things that have returned after our punishing Michigan winters. They bloom and thrive for a few short weeks and then they’re gone. Waiting for next winter’s feeding to gather the steam to do it all again.

These beautiful, tiny wonders were fed from the mess that was once dog crap. Hey, it’s fertilizer. Whether it comes from cows or another creature, the nutrients and organisms make for rich ground.

Dog shit. Who knew that out of such an unpleasant situation, some of the most fragrant and lovely flowers could rise from the muck and thrill the lucky recipient of the bloom? It got me thinking about other things; people even, who started their lives in awful, challenging and difficult situations and somehow turned their time on Earth into a blazing wonder of creativity.

I have bought, and received, gorgeous hothouse flowers; roses and other things that look absolutely perfect from a distance. Moving closer I am always disappointed to find there is hardly a scent to them at all. Pressing my nose right into the blooms I find nothing; as if they were silk and a Made in China paper tag should be found stuck to the stem near the plastic thorns.

These flowers have been given the perfect setting, just enough water, nutrients, light and tending to produce perfect petals and uniform color. They bloom on time for the growers and are cut and delivered to market like obedient little children; having done their homework and gotten the proper eight hours of sleep each night. Everything…right. Everything…calculated and perfect. And they are that; perfect. Flawless. Soul-less. Lifeless and perfect.

These hot house flowers are like so many boarding-school, trust-fund children; their path from birth to death a safe and predictable journey. Bred and trained to maintain the family’s reputation and to protect the fortune amassed by relatives until the young reach an age when they can quietly whither in their private gardens observed by those who can afford the luxury of their physical beauty.

Call me crazy but I’ll take a handful of dog-shit-fed, knock-you-on-your-ass-with-their-heavenly-scent, drive way throw off, back-garden lily-of-the-valley any day over the surgical beauty of a hothouse rose.

I’ll take my friends and my heroes like that too. The people I know who started out fighting their way through the shit are the shining stars that make life fascinating. They took what they were fed and used it as fertilizer for books they’ve written, for art they have made, for inspiration to grow on through the mess. The ones who came from nothing; even the wealthy rebels who rejected the attempts to conform them to the family cookie cutter shape, they have brought a bouquet of fantastic memories to anyone lucky enough to meet them.

Here’s to starting life in a pile of crap and coming up smelling like heaven…

 

lily of the valley

 

 

 

I’m A Little Busy

Participant-2014-Facebook-Profile

What do you do when you’re about to begin a huge kitchen renovation project?

You also start writing a new book. Of course you do.

For the past several years I have been watching from the bleachers as writers got down there on the floor and dug in for the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge: 50,000 words in 30 days. Start day- November 1. End day- November 30. That’s not really a novel at 50G’s. More like a novella. But there’s no rule that you can’t write over 50,000. So I am. Writing over the amount that is.

It’s day thirteen of NaNoWriMo 2014, and I am currently 24,005 words into a brand new, adult paranormal romance novel. It’s happening, Writing in the early morning hours and late afternoons. Touching the Bones, is coming into focus and I am really having fun writing these characters.

It’s happening, in spite of my Olympic levels of distraction; ordering materials, fixtures, furniture and all it takes to transform a 1933 kitchen into something less; Katherine Hepburn stars in Little Women and more, well, me. Right now.

There have been three families before us living in this old house, and we’ve been here twenty two years. We’ve lived with the original pale yellow and black accent tile that looks like a diner Billie Holiday might have frequented for three in the morning breakfast’s with the band members.

A few years ago, an elderly woman and her friend were walking past the house while I was outside. She stopped to tell me that she had lived in our house when she was a child. I invited her in and found myself watching her face as she moved, room to room, lost in memories held in these walls for eighty years. She noted the tile in the kitchen being the same and most of the other features typical in an old Midwestern house; laundry shoots from the second floor, milk door that opens to outside to the drive way, small alcove in the front hall for the telephone-back when folks had only one.

As she stood in the doorway of the master bedroom, her hand flew to her heart and she whispered, “This was my parent’s room.”  My full laundry basket on the floor suddenly seemed to defile the now, sacred space. As she left, she touched the Brass door knocker on the front door. I had painted the old door gold on both sides; for golden opportunities every where you look.She asked if I knew about the knocker. I didn’t. She said that back in the day, door knockers let people know if there was a specific crafts person or professional person living there-like a business shingle. This knocker meant a doctor lived here; her father. I had no idea and I’ve seen that thing every day for two decades.

doctor door knocker

It makes me feel a little bad as we take crowbars and hammers to the pale yellow and black tile that’s stood guard all this time in that old kitchen. But not bad enough to stop whacking it into dust and getting excited about the brand new space that I will [finally} have where I can create my food wonders.

So, as I am writing, writing, writing… I  am also jumping at the loud sound of the doctor door knocker. UPS, delivering my new bronze pendant light.

My cat is hiding a lot. My dog is getting her cardio work in running to the door to greet/interrogate delivery and construction people; and I am falling into a schedule of trying to write before it all begins and after it ends…so… I’m a little busy. It’s a really good busy though.

And like all things that need to be born into the world or transformed, there is disruption. There is chaos. There is pain (hammer…thumb). There is exhaustion. There are tears. And then…there is something worth every minute and every stupid crappy thing it took to get there.

I’m smiling through the plaster dust and typing like a mad woman with band aides on my fingers.

Happy Fall.

Happy everything new.

On wings of words I fly into your heart…

on wings of words I fly into your heart

P.S.: If you want to see a snip of the new novel, go to the home page and on the top you’ll see the appetizer menu- a taste of Touching the Bones. You can read chapter one there.

or click here………   https://wordninjagirl.com/appetizer-menu-a-little-taste-of-touching-the-bones/

 

Poetry……I’m

Cathead Bay Michigan

I’m

I’m a Galleria Mall in a National Park,

a French film noir in a grocery store,

art school in the kitchen,

An erotica book on a Wednesday noon,

And a heated debate at 2 a.m.

I’m the cookie baker

trouble maker

heart breaker

claim staker-

I want everything to change

While the good parts stay the same.

I want the freedom of the road

while harvesting the flowers I’ve sowed.

I want a home that feels like love

and all the laughter it’s made of-

I want a soundtrack worth a movie

And then I want to leave behind

A mountain of creations

For my progeny to find.

That’s all.

What I’ve Seen…Reaching 60

Arteyes

Tomorrow is my birthday. It’s a big one. Sixty. At this auspicious moment I am wondering how the hell did this many years pass so ridiculously fast?

When my kids were young teens itching to do something they weren’t ready for yet, I would get out the construction tape measure. I would lay it out to 100 inches and chalk where their ages fell and how long their wait really was to participate in the activity that eluded them. Then I would point down the line to how many more times they could do that forbidden thing in the one hundred or so years they had to live their lives. It made the two inches from 14 to 16, when their driver’s license would come seem like the paltry eye blink that it was.

Looking back down my own line of numbers, already passed, I am embracing my million moments that drew together to make me. Gathered knowledge is just hoarding thoughts until you share it. For what it’s worth, these are some of the things I have seen.

Even if you grew up watching shows like Friends and assuming adulthood would be a constant coffee klatch with your across the hall neighbors, you will spend most of your time alone in this life. Unless you are conjoined, this is the way of the world. And if you can’t be at peace in your times of solitude, why in the hell would you think other people would be interested in spending time with you either? Learn shit. Get interested and then you will be interesting-to yourself and to others.

The greatest lesson for young teen abstinence should be the fact that the first person you get naked with will-in all likelihood-not be the last. With the exception of the four couples you will meet who are childhood sweethearts-you will swim into and out of tubs, ponds, raging rivers and oceans of love in all its forms until you find somewhere that becomes your place in the world. That’s where you will build your home- however early or late in life you find it and trying to pitch a tent anywhere else will give temporary shelter and nothing more.

When people close to you lash out it is usually because they want you to love them more than it appears you do. If you pay attention, people will tell you what they want-so listen.

Most people, even the most hardened among us, still have a soft, gooey center and if you are paying attention and listening you can figure out what they love. That is what made them gooey like that in the first place. If they showed you the gooey love, they shared the keys to their castle. Honor that.

There are seven billion people on this planet. When you are not famous, the statistical magic of finding one person who can see you for the blazing light you actually are is a gift rarer then the most expensive gemstone. Own that.

Real love never dies. It only changes shape to accommodate the way you live now.

The secret to happiness is this: figure out what you want and find a way to ask for it.

Love is your own personal experience. It sparks and blooms inside your own head-like a private revelation; a movie only you can see. Even if the object of your affection does not return your ardor with the same intensity or at all, never hold regret for having felt that feeling. To know what love feels like is like visiting the most beautiful place on Earth. Not everyone will go there in their lifetime but you have, and you can tell others what it feels like to stand in the center of all that beauty; what it is to see the blazing light of someone else and have it warm your soul even if it’s just for a moment. It will change you forever; no matter if life or death moves you far away from that other person, it will remain part of who you are now.

What I have seen while I have run, swam, played, danced, loved, fought, created, walked, crawled, bled, cried and laughed my way through the sixty years on planet Earth comes down to this: love. It always comes down to that. And on the last day I get in this life, it will still be about love; who I loved and who loved me.

That is where I have a cave of treasure like Aladdin. I remember all the love my heart has felt. It fills my pens, my brushes, my cooking pots and the large broken parts inside of me. It is my gold.

The Japanese have a practice called Kintsugi. It’s a ceramic pottery ritual where a beloved broken vessel is pieced back together with molten gold used like glue. It gathers the shattered parts together; making it whole again in a new and beautiful way.

Today, I will visualize all the love I’ve known as gold and let it fill the cracks and broken parts of me to make me whole like the day I was born only different…better. It will be my private gift to myself; the strengthening of my weak places. What I’ve seen in my sixty years has been a kaleidoscope of wonder and I am filled with anticipation as the curtain rises on the next act.
kintsugi bowl

Poetry Day: Cactus Flower

cactus flower art

Cactus Flower

Creamy cactus flower
bouquet out of reach
guarded earnestly
there will be no souvenirs
lucid dreaming carries me
off to somewhere else
til I’m half a step removed
a movie out of sync
as what I was and who I am
come close to touching hands
for just one golden moment
time slows in its dance
and then once again
I am standing in that desert
looking at a chance
that the world ahead
held a certain sign
your heart beating next to mine
for a breath or two
it was me and you
then time rushed ahead
regained its bruising pace
in this dreaming place
and I was looking at your face
the same yet different now
silvered round the brow
though eyes will never change
a lifetime passed between
what you meant to me
and who you are to someone else
but for just one golden moment
time slowed in its dance
until what I was and who I am
were almost touching hands –
they left a blossom on my palm
an offering from my past
a single creamy flower
plucked from a cactus tower
message clear and plain-
an exchange for all my rain