Happy VD!

February 14, 2018 //
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Well… Happy Valentine’s Day, at any rate. Try to avoid getting VD (venereal disease) – it would be sure to detract from any potential holiday joy. 😀

“Lovers” 8″ x 10″ watercolor on paper 1992

I have a lot of thoughts about Valentine’s Day, few of them are G-rated. My personal take on Valentine’s Day, as a holiday, is that it is the one holiday on the calendar specifically devoted to sexual love. Romance. Not “family life”, not little kids giving paper cards, not “hearts and flowers” in any casual sense (“I sent my Mom flowers for Valentine’s Day” is definitely not in the spirit of the holiday as I understand it, myself). Valentine’s Day is a holiday to celebrate sensual pleasure, sexual pleasure, physical connections and bonds, the delights of romance of all sorts, and not some watered-down Hallmark holiday at all.

Is love a journey or a destination? Or… is love a verb?

Having said all that… I’m alone this Valentine’s Day, and lacking co-celebrants of any sort in any near-at-hand physical sense. LOL 😀 Somehow, I manage not to be bitter about Valentine’s Day. Some years I’ve been partnered. Some years I’ve been solo. Some years being partnered hasn’t resulted in sex on Valentine’s Day… which is like the worst way to celebrate this holiday. LOL At least have some smooches and snuggles, y’all. 😀

Be love. It’s a choice. Love is a verb.

Somewhere a long the way, people seem to have gotten the idea that “inclusion” and “inclusivity” means everyone can, and must always have access to be able to, celebrate and/or enjoy everything available to be celebrated and/or enjoyed by anyone at all. I don’t think life really works quite that way. This is a really good example. I see Valentine’s Day as a specifically quite carnal sexual celebration of love… I also don’t have a partner at hand with whom to celebrate this holiday, on this day, in this year. Those are all true things. Does this, then, mean I am entitled to celebrate nonetheless and all such celebrations must now be tailored to enable and accommodate my participation? And what if the pre-requisite for such requires that I be fundamentally other than I am? What must change? Just something I turn over in my head now and then. I’m a huge fan of inclusion – sorting out what precisely that actually means is tougher. I mean, I will nonetheless “celebrate” the holiday – by noting that it exists, and quite probably enjoying a lovely meal later, and maybe a very tasty glass of sherry or port – but it is a pale comparison to my preferred ways of celebrating sexual love. LOL 😀

Love matters most.

Valentine’s Day-wise, Love gets to lead a lot of the conversation. Love has a lot to say. I don’t know what it says about love – or folks who read my blog – but this post on Valentine’s Day, from 2013, is my most popular post ever of always to date. So, this year, remember – even if you can’t “get lucky” this Valentine’s Day, how lucky you are simply to be, and to be you; you matter. Celebrate with the person in the mirror (<groan> lol, sorry, I could not resist, but sure, if you’ve got the time and inclination, do you. LMAO). Enjoy you. Lavish yourself with your own affection this year – why not? You may begin the best relationship of your life, by beginning a better one with the person in the mirror.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

The Ringing In My Ears

February 13, 2018 //
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Tonight the “silence” sounds reminiscent of a hot summer evening, sweltering temperatures, and the night air filled with the sounds of insects. Crickets. Mosquitoes. All of the many kinds of buzzing and crawling and flying things… and maybe a street light buzzing along with all of them. Dense. “Shimmer-y”. My tinnitus has been with me a long while. I don’t have a clear recollection of not having it. It differs left and right.

Why mention it at all? No reason really. I’m sitting here listening to it, which gets me to contemplating it with greater care. Sometimes I might start to panic, thinking I can’t hear anything else now, and have to pause to very willfully listen to other sounds to coax the tinnitus to recede into the background of my awareness once more.

Why on earth am I sitting here listening to my tinnitus? I didn’t mean to be, actually. I sat down to exchange courtesies with my Traveling Partner, check in with some friends, and catch up my personal email for the day before moving on with the evening. I put on headphones with the intention of listening to music. lol I never got that far. Something distracted me, and I’ve been sitting here listening to the sound of my poor judgement. (I don’t actually know for sure what causes all of my tinnitus sounds. I do feel pretty certain it would not be this bad if I had been a committed fan of hearing protection in my 20s and 30s.)

Funny what can catch my attention for a moment. I smile to myself, hit “play”, and begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, The Art of Being

More Rest, More Beginnings

February 12, 2018 //
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I have managed to get genuinely rested over the past couple weeks, a bit at a time. Good sleep hygiene restored after a carefree disregard for it through the holidays that required another 3 weeks or so of recovery time. We’ve all got to pay for our thrills. lol

It’s an ordinary Monday following a chill, modestly productive, imperfect, still adequately restful weekend. I miss my Traveling Partner on this whole other level that nags at me in the background. I remind myself that the upcoming weekend will see me heading down the highway for another visit. 🙂

The week will end on yet another visit with yet another doctor. I honestly have too much other shit to do, but with these being health-related concerns, getting them seen to is sort of non-negotiable. So. Doctor’s appointments it is.

I look around, coffee in hand, and notice a few things I’d prefer not to return home to, and lacking a full-time domestic in residence (a level of luxury I don’t aspire to), I decide to give up a bit of leisure morning to finish up some housekeeping left from the weekend list of things to do. This is a “me thing”; I find that my thinking is more orderly when my environment is also orderly. I finish my coffee. Finish this lackluster bit of writing. I look my Monday in the face with a smile and begin again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships

Begin Again

February 11, 2018 //
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Life is a pretty dynamic thing. We live this one moment – “now” – again and again. I’m not just playing word games with you, this is our experience. Now. These now moments add up to “the future” as each subtly affects the as yet unexperienced outcome to come. Once lived, they are our immediate experience of “the past”, although we quickly edit our recollections to more comfortably fit our chosen internal narrative.

I wrote awhile. The toxic seed around which that pearl was wrapped colored the result in a subtly unpleasant way, far more suited to self-reflection and growth than to publication. The draft sits unnamed in a list of similar never-published-probably-better-that-way drafts, balled up digital paper tossed toward a digital waste basket, and left carelessly where they fell. The music in the background changed. I began again.

It’s still “now”.

I smile, listening to the music. Feeling relieved that my headache has finally eased somewhat. Feeling content with what I’ve gotten done over the weekend, although it wasn’t everything I noticed needs to be done. I’m okay with that. There’s still time left in the day to be a good friend, to be a better person than I was yesterday, to treat someone well, to help someone out, and to be the woman I most want to be. 🙂

There’s still time to begin yet again.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Cognitive Rest

February 10, 2018 //
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My mind rarely really rests. When I sleep I often dream vividly, rich in detail, color, emotion, and confusingly real-seeming. When I am awake, driving, shopping, handling some task or another, I am often also “writing” poetry or blog posts – that rarely see publication, having inconveniently become more than my limited memory buffer can store. It’s a continuous internal lecture or conversation with myself. Pause a human being in front of me, chances are I will, at some point, begin to do something rather like attempting to make conversation, but with such high risk of becoming a monologue that eventually, I am likely just chattering away without purpose or focus, or worthy content, even if I actually wanted to sit and read quietly, or work. Not talking when I don’t want to talk requires practice.

I like living alone for something besides the “solitude” (which can, I admit, occasionally become lonely); I like it for the “cognitive stillness” and emotional ease. I like it for the cognitive rest I am now able to get, at least now and then, with so much less work to reach that quiet place.

I have a pretty firm, well-established meditation practice. Meditation has helped me build emotional resilience, a calm “center” I can return to with relative ease, and a certain chill something or other which has made life considerably more pleasant, less volatile, less chaotic, and enduringly characterized by contentment. I don’t know that I would call myself “happy”; it’s not a word I’m so prone to using, at all, these days. It’s a mental magic trick that makes more people unhappy than happy to be focused on the pursuit of that elusive beast as a goal, so I stopped doing that. I don’t “pursue” contentment either; I build it. I build it sustainably on healthier choices, and healthier practices. I have been regularly surprised by how much of the forward progress has been entirely dependent on my own decision making, and my own actions.

Meditation did not “cure” my PTSD, or “fix” my injured brain. Meditation is, however, a reliably good practice for improving my day-to-day experience of my life, and that’s enough heavy lifting for one practice, surely. 🙂

It’s a busy brain, broken or not. I wrote 3, maybe 4, really fantastic blog posts in the past 24 hours – in my head. Catchy titles, engaging and amusing openers, fanciful plays on words with layered meaning… gone at the next annoying intersection, or distracting other moment. lol I woke with a completed utterly beautiful bit of poetry in my head at 3 am, got up to pee, forgot what I was thinking on my way back to bed. This morning, upon waking for the day, I have only the recollection that it ever existed at all still remaining. I play “Tribute” in tribute, and giggle over my coffee; these moments of creativity, lost, forgotten, omitted, or overwritten, litter my life experience. I can’t take them personally after so long. lol

A new day begins. So do I. Another day to write, to love, to feel, to practice – to live.

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, loneliness, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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