Posts tagged ‘fear’

I’m ready. It’s been an odd year in Thornesworld. Probably the single biggest change was Tammy moving out back in November of 2010. It was a long and painful decision, not without risk, but it was the right one for both of us; each as individuals and as a couple as well. We weathered the changes to find our love as strong as it ever was and the journey of rediscovering the many things we liked about each other has been a trip I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

We look forward to seeing each other and missing each other is a delicious sort of foreplay that makes smiles brighter and kisses all the sweeter. We sing and dance again, flirt and play. We talk and relish the time we spend together rather than take it for granted or let it slip by unnoticed.

The second biggest change for me was having outside employment for the better part of the last year. I got the chance to learn a bit more about Terese and to grow a little. I still hated working for someone besides me, but managed to make the best of it and remain reasonably happy, if not fulfilled. The job ended last month under less than satisfactory circumstances beyond my control and although it put me back into no small amount of financial insecurity it was also an immense relief and a gift.

Cetandi & Bear

I have housemates here at the ranch for the first time in long and long and am finding it pleasant and helpful after my 8 months of solitude here. They actually live in a small trailer out back with “house privileges” so I still have enough private time and personal space to be content.

The sweat lodge is built and we’ve been using it since January. Being able to sweat and pray has been good for my soul.

And I’m both writing and crafting again. These things are incredibly good for my spirit, and I hope they will prove again to be good for my physical life as well. With Tammy’s support (and while I’m yet working part time outside of my home), I’ve decided to get back to the business of making my living with my art. I am 107K words into my novel and hoping that another 50K or so will bring my story to a close. I began writing a bit on it agin in late September to prep for the insane 50K word rush of November and am committed to finishing and submitting it for publication.

Assemblage Bird Shrine

I did some serious soul searching around whatever blockage keeps me from completing and submitting at least one of my 3 novels in process and learned a few things. The first may be broken. I’m not sure if I still need to tell that story, I’ve lost the tale, I’m afraid. The second, entitled “The Space Between” that I wrote in the immediate wake of the death of our Lil Pharaoh, has been too painful to revisit even to edit until recently, but will be my next task after completing the novel I began in 2008, (working title “The Coming”). This is the story I want to tell. It’s a good story. I think I’m a good and engaging writer. So why haven’t I finished and submitted? In October I came down to only two possibilities and they are both a little embarrassing, but what the hell, “tell the truth and shame the devil” as my Grama would say. What it boils down to is one of these two things, either:

What a bunch of happy horseshit. Whichever it is, I’m done with it. I’m going to finish this novel. I’m going to work on it until it’s done. Then I’m going to revise and edit it enough for submission. Then I’m going to send it off and brave rejection while praying for acceptance.

In the meantime, I’m going to craft and tattoo and find my way back to art from those things. Here I come, 2012.

Yep. ‘Nuff said!

Title: I’ll Give You My Skin
Performers: Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe
Album: Rarities

Peace. So hard to even imagine, sometimes. So much pain, so much anger, loss, fear. We citizens of america have undoubtedly had it pretty damned good compared to much of the world for quite some time.
I remember, as I watched the towers fall that cataclysmic morning, sitting awestruck, in shock; unable to believe what I was seeing on the Television. Tears silently coursing down my face while watching people jump and fall, bloody bodies, tearful survivors, mothers looking for children, dirty firemen searching; working tirelessly.
Then began the reports of terrorism, people even in thier grief and fear and shock began expressing outrage and horror and anger at this attack on american soil. The anger was palpable.
And my thoughts? Horror at what the families were suffering. My usual empathy with those suffering. Amidst those feelings a creeping treason in my heart. A treason which began whispering “Now we’re upset, angry? Now that terrorism has struck us, here, we’re outraged? What about the devastating terrorisms in other countries? Where was our horror, our outrage when Dublin was a war zone? Where was our outrage when our enlightened government was supplying weapons and training to our choice of terrorists?”
Sometime in the following days and weeks as I watched our president sit for 7 minutes , his face slack and emotionless, without movement or action, as I listened to the poisonous rhetoric of the war mongers begin their tirades, as I saw the little plastic window flags (made in China) begin to flutter from every car I passed on the streets my treason grew in me. It festered into outrage at us.
Americans.
Complacent, superior, ignorant fools we; who somehow thought we were safe in our righteousness, who were content to allow our so-called leaders to meddle in the world’s business without consequence and worse, without dissent of it’s citizens.
Finally the ultimate treason of my heart.
“It serves us right.”
And what of these thoughts; these feelings?? Old stuff, now. Now that we have so much more information and disinformation and many of us distrust the stories of our government even more. And as at least small sections of america begin to wake up from our dreams of living in a democratic republic to the realities of our government’s machinations, lies and treasons against we american citizens… now, finally, our true outrage begins to build.
And while we cry for peace, our anger consumes us. The sheep are still sheep, trusting our so called leaders and submitting to the fear of terror; never realizing that it is their very leaders, the big business that is american government that has been and is the biggest terrorist cell of all.
And we who think we have some small glimmers of the truth? We are so consumed with anger, nay with rage, that peace is an empty concept. Oh, we wish for it, we try to imagine what it would feel like-look like-smell and taste like, but for many of us the anger that fills our hearts buries our imaginings in the offal of our anger.
Oh, we talk a good line, we write a good line when we’re writing for or about peace, but the rest of the time our words convey our inner truth:
There is no Peace.
Why? Because the lies we’ve lived with for so long, the peace we imagined, the america we believed in– was all an illusion. And our hearts are broken. And we are pissed. We are angry to the core of our beings and we are filled with outrage and it spews out in every direction. Even those of us who believe we’re standing up for our beliefs, our causes; even those of us who know that peace is imperative, fight among ourselves over our differing visions of our peace. We can’t even agree on what peace would look like, let alone how to achieve it.

I think sometimes we find our anger, our outrage and contempt- comforting. It is a place that we can feel righteous and empowered-powerful. It is a thin bandage covering the wound of our true fear; the fear that we are powerless. That we are swept up in events which are truly beyond our control. That anger and outrage feel like action.

My mantra for today:
Anger is not action.
I am part of a greater whole and only by my personal peace can I affect the whole.
My actions must reflect this.
Peace begins with me.

Title: I’ll Give You My Skin
Performers: Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe
Album: Rarities

Well you
You can sit in your highchairs
Highchairs are for children
You can sit in your highchairs and laugh
I’ll give you my best face
I’ll give you my freedom
I’ll give you my feet and my hands

I’m keeping my eyes
Open open open to the field
Hold your dances there
Take the crop
Share the yield

You can join us together
Break us apart
A wound in the skin is a break in the heart
You can coast on your laughter
High shelf your heart
But laughter’s for healing
Not tearing apart

I’m keeping my eyes
Open to the fields
You can hold your dances there
Take the crop
Share the yield

Not a soul is lost
But collapse in the walls
You can dance in the dust
You can walk it off walk walk it off

If you’re falling you’re falling
Come calling to me
Falling falling
I’ll give you my skin
I will give you my skin
I’ll Give You My Skin
Indigo Girls with Michael Stipe
Rarities

I’m keeping my eyes
Open to the field
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
You can hold your dances here
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
Take the crop, share the yield
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
I’m keeping my eyes
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
Open to the field
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
Hold your dances there
(if you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me)
Take the crop share the yield
If you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me
If you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me
If you’re falling you’re falling come calling to me
I will give you my skin