Sometimes life throws a curve ball. Our path may take a detour we didn’t see coming. Sometimes unexpected circumstances are a big deal, with a lot of upheaval or moments of adversity and tears. Sometimes it’s just a rainy morning that makes an early walk less feasible (or at least less pleasant).
Waiting for a break in the rain.
I woke early and tried to slip away without waking my Traveling Partner. It wasn’t raining when I left the house, but it clearly had been. By the time I got to the trailhead and parked the car, it was raining pretty steadily. I sat contentedly listening to the rain fall, spattering the car, meditating and watching the dawn become day.
I managed to get a half mile in, between rain showers, then another after warming up in the car. It’s somehow very satisfying and I find myself thinking “nice morning for it”, in spite of the rain and the autumn chill. What a lovely weekend.
I think of a distant and very dear friend who is ill, and wonder if I should make the drive down to see her again, very soon? I worry. She’s going through a rough time and has COVID on top of that. 😦
The sky continues to lighten. I watch the few soggy leaves still clinging to branches flutter in the breeze. Now and then a gust of wind rocks the car. I wait for another break in the rain and think about love.
It’s a new day. A Saturday. I woke from peculiarly surreal and also vaguely sexual dreams with a sense of being “interrupted” and also having slept in quite a bit (which is a pleasant luxury, for me). I dressed and quietly let myself out of the house to watch the sun rise from a local trail. It was a lovely morning for it.
Daybreak on a favorite trail.
…I walk on…
Later, as the morning develops along the way.
I followed that with routine errands, arriving home sufficiently early to enjoy my morning coffee with my Traveling Partner while he enjoyed his. We spoke of 3D printers and projects, and things of that sort, until we’d both finished our coffee and it was time to move on with the day.
…My dream(s) still linger in my thoughts, which is a bit unusual these days. I dreamt of kissing a dark-eyed youth in a collegiate stage of early adulthood, who captivated me with his quiet confidence and led me by the hand to some less-than-ideally private place to take things further, only, that turned out to be a local business (?!) that opened quite unexpectedly, filling with customers – young women dressed only in towels, giggling as they passed us. We left, and attempted to find a happy haven “at my place” – only it wasn’t my place at all, it was… the first floor of some bizarre high-rise condo, where the current owners politely explained that they had purchased my abode, and upon breaking through the ceiling discovered 3 further floors above, lavish, luxuriously appointed, and clearly out of my price-range. They were courteously apologetic about how obviously I did not belong there. We sat at their vast kitchen counter in an expansive kitchen that was never mine, sipping deliciously well-crafted espresso (even in my dreams, there is coffee). My dream ended in contemplation of “where to go next”, when I realized I was alone where I stood. No dark-eyed youth. No giggling young women. No urbane well-spoken householders. Just me, standing on a rainy street in the twilight of my dreams. I woke, ready for a new day, simultaneously amused and puzzled by my strange dream(s). I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. Thankfully, few nightmares, just strange surreal dreams.
I’m in enough pain today to feel quite distracted and disinclined to do much, but there is much to do, and I feel creatively inspired… I may spend some portion of the day in the studio, painting, if I solve some of the puzzles involved in the two pieces I am presently working on. Individual paintings take longer these days. They are… more “involved”, and have greater depth of meaning. I think this has been an outcome of going through menopause, strangely enough. My thoughts and my emotions seem to take longer to process fully, but I get more out of them when I “get there”. Emotions have more breadth and depth – and more recognizable significance, with less chaos. Thoughts travel along more tangents and down more rabbit holes, but once every thread is pulled, and every depth explored, I find I have a greater understanding of where I was headed in the first place, and what to do with my thoughts when I get there.
…I sip my coffee and think about how useful all that would have been when I was much younger, stronger, and faster. LOL Life is weird.
My Traveling Partner interrupts my writing to ask me what I’m doing (which I guess I should expect, since I chose to be writing in the living room; a space we routinely share). I answer. Then I manage to interrupt him when he shares a thought, and he sternly tells me he’ll “try not to be annoyed” by that. I manage to refrain from pointing out the interruption to my writing that started the conversation in the first place, which for me is no doubt similarly annoying. I chuckle to myself; we both find a flow state difficult to find or maintain if the other is in the same shared space. It is evident we enjoy each other’s company greatly. I do struggle to set boundaries when I am reading or writing, though, and he rarely seems to recognize that both those activities (for me) require my full attention and focus to enjoy properly, or understand that I sometimes want the full measure of my own attention for myself. I don’t bother to say anything about it (again). Then I wonder if that’s a mistake…
I sip my coffee and move on. Letting small things stay small has real value in life and love, and I’m not inclined to “start shit” on such a lovely Saturday.
I continue to fuss about a particular “how to” challenge with a painting I keep coming back to – it is a self-portrait, so perhaps I am “too close to the subject” in some way. I find myself stalled because it really wants a different technical approach than I typically prefer, and the requirement to slow down, take my time, and work on the practical details with consideration and discipline vexes me. There are no suitable shortcuts! Shit. This one is going to be “do it right, or don’t do it at all”, and this confounds me. There’s something to learn here, and I sip my coffee grateful for the lesson. I don’t suppose learning will slow the inevitable result of being mortal, but I hear it may keep me young(er)… sounds worthwhile.
I sigh outloud and sip my coffee. Age, aging, human life, human mortality… so much more obvious as concerns these days than they were in my 20s. I look at my pillbox… double-checking that I’ve taken everything up to this point in the day that I’m expected (required to). “Fuck aging” I mutter to myself, nonetheless grateful for medical care, and the prescriptions that help me maintain my health acceptably well.
I resign myself to being distracted from my writing; if I want to write utterly without distractions, I definitely need to be alone, and in an unshared space. That’s just real. I chose this location – and I did so because I want to enjoy my partner’s company, and also write. Not sure how I thought that would work. LOL
Well, shit. There are paintings to paint, and dishes to do… I suppose it’s time to begin again.
We’re more divided than ever. More diverse in the specificity of our intersecting identities. More willing than ever to set boundaries and make it a fight. We do more out grouping, in spite of being more aware that out grouping is a thing – and that it causes harm. We’re very inefficient creatures as far as making social progress that benefits us all, are we not?
So… What do you really stand for? Whose side are you really on? In life? In love? When you “take a side”, are your eyes on a shared win for humanity – or are you hoping to “win an argument”, based on individual values, special interests, or some particular selected weird bit of dogma that you’ve become fixated on, or perhaps adopted when you were so young you mistake it for “natural law”? I mean, we’re all human, our biases are very real, and our cognition has legitimate limitations and… quirks. We aren’t even all reliably decent people (still people, though). It’s not just about global conflict – it gets right down to individual relationships. We’re human.
…What do human beings mean when we say “equal”, or “fair”, or “morally right”? How do we define the value of a human life – and what does it take for any one of us to turn on another human being and decide that their life lacks value? I don’t have answers to any of these questions, aside from my own answers that I trust with a certain amount of skepticism (being wholly aware how human I am, and how prone to error). I do think these are questions we should be asking, and discussing in an honest and vulnerable way, open to changing our thinking for the betterment of human kind. For the betterment of the planet, and of life itself. Yeah, and as individuals, too.
I was reading an article recently, about healthy relationships (I have to work at mine, in spite of our deep love for each other; love doesn’t come naturally to me, I think). The article identifies some things that I hadn’t thought about in quite the way they suggest – I won’t break it all down, because you’ll no doubt have your own thoughts, but these things seem worth considering necessary in a healthy relationship – and I suspect this applies to how we relate to “people” more broadly, too:
You’re actively interested in each other’s lives.
You’re aware of your “attachment style” – and what other attachment styles exist, and how those function – and you’re working to develop a healthier attachment style, yourself.
You don’t avoid conflict, but you don’t “fight” – you work as a team to solve problems, and achieve suitable compromise when necessary.
When you address conflict, you’re open to discussing, facing, and resolving big fears and issues, not just small ones.
You support each other without scorekeeping.
You have your own identity and understand that other’s do, too.
You create emotional safe space for each other and hold space for growth and change over time.
Incomplete work-in-progress. “Toxicity”, 11″x14″ acrylic mixed-media on canvas
Hmm. I sit with my afternoon tea and a half-finished painting in progress (a mixed-media trauma portrait), long overdue to be completed. It’s been holding me back now for… almost 8 years. Has it been so long? Wow. Too long to let pain fester. She smirks back me as I work, but her gaze is less commanding as I work out my hurt, my anger, my aggression, my doubt, my sorrow… a brush stroke here, a small bit of story-telling debris inserted into gel medium over there, another touch of glow… I smile to myself. This feels good. I don’t have words for this – but I have paint and canvas, and time to begin again.
I sip my tea and reflect. I watch the paint dry and consider the next step – like spell-casting or prayer, this is heart-felt work, and my heart feels it. I feel heard. I feel inspired.
…I’m out of small canvases. LOL
I think about my most important relationships over the years, and how I fit into those. Where I got something right. Where I clearly got it wrong. Where my nature and my character put things right… where they contributed to how wrong things were. Where wanting things to be “easy” made it so much harder to build a healthy relationship. Where my chaos and damage broke things down. Where it wasn’t that at all, but I still got it so very wrong. It’s a lot to take in, but… isn’t love worth the work?
I don’t need to take sides, I’m not arguing. I sip my tea, breathe, and begin again.
I woke early. It’s a Sunday. I had hoped to sleep in, but it’s not that day, not that experience.
I somehow managed to “psychically wake up” my Traveling Partner although I was sleeping in another room. (I honestly just don’t know how I woke him, but he turned up to tell me that I had done so within seconds of me sitting up to acknowledge a new day. “Psychically” covers it as well as anything else for now.) I dress and head out for a walk, hoping he can get some more rest. I choose a favorite trail that’s a bit of a drive to get to; it prolongs my time out of the house.
… It’s a lovely misty morning for a quiet marshside walk. I get back to the car too early to head straight home; if my partner is sleeping, I want to be sure he gets more than an hour of napping! Good time to jot down a few words.
An Autumn Sunday
My plan is to return home, make coffee, and spend the day creatively (and doing laundry, and tackling some outside chores that should not take long). I’m specifically so very hungry to be painting, and shit just keeps getting in the way. Some days it just feels like “everyone wants a piece of me” and there’s nothing left for me at the end of the day… Or week. Routine chores and practical shit that just has to get done uses up most of my time and attention, leaving me too tired physically to then also paint. Time taken in the studio often feels like time taken away from my partner. I could do better. I need to do better. Painting is, for me, both a form of communication and a form of self-care and I am failing myself on this pretty seriously.
I sit with my thoughts and half an eye on the clock.
What an emotionally difficult weekend this has been. I meant to spend most of it painting and loving my partner. I managed to fail on both of those intentions pretty notably. Tears well up when I acknowledge that for myself, but they don’t fall. I take a deep breath and exhale. Another chance to begin again. G’damn we said some pretty awful things to each other. That saddens me. I know I can do better.
So, it’s another day, another chance to be the woman I most want to be, another opportunity to choose my adventure and walk my own path. Adulting is hard, but I know what I want out of my day, even if I am not entirely sure which verbs are most likely to get that result.
I am sipping my first coffee. It’s quite late in the morning on a Sunday. Feels like a lazy day, but I’m in the studio, after a lovely walk on a misty morning. The marsh trail is closed for the season. The all-year trail is still open, and quite lovely. The trees are wearing Autumn colors, and the migrating flocks of birds entertained me with their murmurations as the dawn became day.
Walking Autumn trails.
My Traveling Partner is in his creative space, printing parts, re-assembling a 3D printer, and doing his thing. I’m in my studio, in a similarly creative mental space. This morning my head is filled with art and meaning, connections and inspiration. I am thinking about the past – and the future. I am listening to music that connects those elements of my life in an entertaining way; Cyberpunk. This Billy Idol album came out in 1993 – well-before I had a computer on my desk, myself. I had read my share of William Gibson, of course, but pc’s were not yet commonplace and “smartphone” wasn’t even a word yet. I had yet to form the future friendships that would come to rely on internet connectivity to sustain them over time. Listening to Cyberpunk now, it has a lot of peculiarly prescient elements that now seem almost mundane and just a little “so what?” I find that quite interesting. It remains one of my “forever favorite” albums. My favorite track? Probably Adam in Chains… I think back on “that time”, and find myself wondering how I didn’t “pick up on” the value of mindfulness and a serious meditation practice then…? How did it take me so long to get here? I remember listening to Adam in Chains with my headphones on, or alone at home with the stereo cranked up, stressed to a breaking point, drifting deeper into a meditative state following the flow of the music…finding temporary peace. It wasn’t a practice, just a moment.
…Listening now, it lifts me and lifts me, and I feel a wholeness and contentment and joy, although the lyrics and music are not of a happy place or time…
I could have come farther, faster, sooner if I had made the connection, perhaps… It’s a complicated journey. I took some detours and some dead-end paths. I’m not even sure I regret those, knowing what I know now; it’s been a life well-lived. There’s no knowing which small detail, changed, would change all the rest. Would I give up even one friendship formed later to have healed sooner? I don’t think that’s a choice I’d want to make. If finding mental health, wellness, and emotional stability would have come sooner, but at the cost of never making the acquaintance of my Traveling Partner…? Would I have chosen sanity over love? I don’t know that I would, given a chance to make an informed choice. Love is pretty splendid.
Art inspired by life, new work in progress waiting for attention.
I tinker while I sip coffee and write. I pause the music when my Traveling Partner pops in to show me newly printed parts from the new 3D printer – pretty amazing stuff, and I delight in both the quality of the results and his obvious satisfaction. I re-connect the Bluetooth antenna to my desktop computer in order to pair the Cricut; it’s a pain in the ass to balance my laptop on my knees in the studio, when I could be using my desktop computer for the design work so much more conveniently, and it’s been holding me back a bit. The beat pounds in my ears as I type. My coffee is still warm, and well-prepared. It’s a good day for art and play and love – I feel inspired.
Evening Light 