Category Archives: Uncategorized

Today is July 21, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I dreamt I was with Guy. He reached for me like he would a damp towel. He told me that he made a big mistake–I was the love of his life. In this dream, I wore an electric blue hat. One that had a wide rim which allowed me to bend it into fashion. The shade of the hat kept him from seeing my gaze. I told him I missed our hands locking together. Our hands were hungry for each other. We held hands everywhere, walking down the street, in movie theaters, at dinner, walking the dogs, and sitting sided by side on the couch. Countless places. He knew in this dream, I was not going to rush into his arms. My heart was heavy; I could feel it in my chest. I didn’t reach out to touch him. I didn’t want him to feel me, a brush of finger along his jaw. There will be no more of that.

The dream ends with me being picked up by an Amish man in a buggy. He is dressed the simple way the Amish dress. My electric blue hat brings color to the scene, although I know the Amish are not interested in such things. Before the buggy moves, Guy offers the horse carrots. Anything to keep me in sight awhile longer. The horse knows how to chew and saunter at the same time. Guy becomes a distant memory in the dream, like the memory of my loose tooth being knocked out by the elbow of the fourth grader standing in the line in front of me.

Today, Guy is not a distant memory. He is as visible a presence to me as the cloud puffed up, pregnant with rain outside my window. It has been a year and four months since he left me for Florida and another woman. I still continue to love him. 14 years is a pretty piece of time. It is sitting in a hot car in Arizona, flicking the air conditioner on. The air conditioner works well. We do not sweat it. In the 14 years, we sweat nothing other than finances.

I continue to wish him the best, and he me. There is no reason for us to ever see each other again. I will remain in the buggy with the Amish man. Things are simpler that way.

Today is July 18, 2015. I am alive and well.

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You know when you’re sitting on the toilet in a stall in the ladies room how you can see the feet of the person in the adjoining stall? Yesterday, I saw the feet and they were dangling. Adult size feet, in glittery sandals with frosted toes; an adult dangling.

I’ve been six feet tall ever since the age of thirteen. I don’t remember my feet ever dangling, although they must have when I was five. How does one feel grounded while using the restroom if their feet are swinging free? A restroom can be a very private place. Sacred even. The hand washing at the end seals the experience.

My daily life is filled with sacred moments. I simply need to pay attention. I need to have the desire to know the sacred. The air conditioning shuts off. It is silent in my home. This is sacred. My cats sleep butt up against me. Sacred. Water springs from the tap. Sacred. I have no wants today. Sacred.

Armed with a keyboard, I can say anything I want. There must be something sacred about this. Certainly, the keyboard can be used to abuse. I could be one to write hate. To write vile. To write evil. I am capable of presenting those things. I choose not too. My spirit trumps my shadow.

How do I go from dangling feet to spirit and shadow? I have no real idea. This is the magic of writing; seeing what pops up or doesn’t. And this fact has been stated over and over again. I am one of many. I like thinking of the company I keep. I appear isolated in my endeavor. This is false. Millions of people around the world are writing right now. I tap into that energy and soar. It has been good to sit in this chair of mine. I am kept from my chair because of procrastination and fear. What bad things can happen? I write something boring or over write my welcome. Small price to pay for effort.

Looking out the window, the bushes are still. No wind today. I am vulnerable because of no drapes. This I don’t mind. I am vulnerable in my writing. This I don’t mind either.

Today is July 9, 2015. I am alive and well.

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One of my male friends said I give too much information about myself on my blog. I want to be the dog that growls before he bites. I want to be the dog, tail wagging, tongue out, asking to be petted. My blog is a place that I can totally create my honest self. My authentic self. I want to be translucent.

I use the word create not to mean I’m making things up, but instead to signal that I don’t know all about myself that there is to know. I am learning through writing, thus creating with one truth after another.

It fascinates me to sit down to write and not immediately know where I’m going. If I write about traveling in a car, I know I’m on the street, address in hand. If I dive into a pool, there are steps leading out. If I’m climbing a mountain, there’s always a peak. What if I start to walk in the desert, off trail, no destination in mind? First, I have to pay great attention to my surroundings so I know how I’ll get back. It’s like reaching for my unconscious mind in a blacked out room, nothing to focus on, hoping my conscious mind will let go, allowing for magic, allowing for truth, allowing for God.

Letting go of my conscious mind sends warmth through my body. I imagine my blood circulating. I imagine little people in my body working in sync to keep my six foot frame in good health. I have imagined these little people ever since I was six-years-old. It’s fun to think of these people taking up residence. Not only is my outward appearance alive–things move, hands, legs, eyes, etc.–but my inside glows with their little lantern.

I am awake. I move with grace. I try to make my connection with people meaningful. A smile carries a lot of pull. Being able to have real conversation amazes me. I was not always able to do this. Life continues and I with it. I will continue to put all of me out there. What is sacred in regard to personhood? I will learn this as I go.

Today is July 4, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I look out the window and see wind. The green bushes shake with it. I believe it sounds like a young boy trying to whistle.

My twin bed, upon which I recline, is settled across from my bedroom window. The foot of my bed is three feet away from this window. The window blind retired months ago when it broke loose from its socket. It rests unused on the floor. The cats occasionally jump on it causing it to emit a crinkling sound.

My room is no longer private. Anyone can look in and see me or my furniture. Outside my window are many windows of many residents–six stories of windows. I am on the first floor. There is a sidewalk twenty feet away. At night is when I’m most vulnerable. Light on, my bedroom glows like the sunset radiating in the split y of two branches. People can see in and I can barely see out.

I can’t change in my bedroom into anything but socks and shoes. I carry a T-shirt, jeans with sparkles on the back pockets, indigo blue underwear, and a padded bra into the bathroom. My breasts are tiny as those of a sixth grader. The padded bra is deceitful. I like it anyway.

Eventually, I want to get plantation shutters. I am waiting to collect money like my grandfather did pennies dated before 1920.

It is peaceful this morning. My hair is tied in a pony tail on top of my head. Grams climbs my pillow, then bats at my pony tail with her paw. I wonder if cats know when a person smiles. I smile.

Writing from bed is better than trying on new blouses, better then buying caramel apples. My bed is no longer my prison. I’m no longer driven by depression and psychosis, unable to put my feet on the floor, wishing for death.

I have a lunch date. My friend likes to talk about books, writing, and recovery. I am able to have conversations on all these subjects. I dine with grace. The red velvet cheesecake is amazing.

Today is June 23, 2015. I am alive and well.

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So I need to respond to my own blog from the 22nd. When I said Grams pesters me I also needed to say that I love that she does. I love giving her my full attention and how it feels when she lays on  me. Pester away, I think!

I am including a poem. My poetry hardly ever goes over big, but I keep trying.

The Mercedes Parked at the Curb

Write a line with today in it–today I woke late. Still, the morning didn’t run away in leopard slippers. I was able to bend my body in prayer and ask God to relieve me from self. Self keeps my mind  tethered. In order to truly know God, I have to be out of my mind.

Outside, the leaves catch cool air after they sneeze, then land on the ground leaving me to carry them inside.

Bottom of my shoe, bottom of my soul, a messy expanse of leaves laden with dirty veins. They travel into 900 square feet of wood and tile, couches that lounge lazily, lights that have yet to wake, a kitchen counter read for slaughter—I lost the cutting board months ago.

I take the ready to go broom. I see another fall through.

God has been with me since day one. Infants cry, infants smile, their first shoes are bronzed to live eternally.

How many people have I embraced since Fall? How many have I left above the rug to point North, to sit with cornflakes and 2% milk.

God understands me. Sometimes, words are really not what they’re hyped up to be. To be.

Today I wrote of yesterday. Mother died some yesteryear.

Today is June 22, 2015. I am alive and well.

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I am an alcoholic. My natural state is one of drunkenness, yet I’m sober 21 years. I have schizophrenia. My natural state is one of psychosis, yet I’ve been hospital free for eight years. How do these miracles happen? I allow a spiritual God in my life and take right action.

God is everywhere outside and in our personhood. I can know myself deeply and get beyond self. Self is connected to all. Self is connected to God. The more aware I am, the stronger my source of instinct and intuition. Think of the notes of a symphony. Think of trees and leaves.

God will not do for me what I can do for myself, but God will do for me what I can’t. God lifted me from my natural states of being. Today I live a joyous life.

I’ve heard it said that I need not apologize for my God. I hope that you who follow my blog aren’t put off by my faith and belief in divine intervention. The artist William Blake called what he believed in as cosmic imagination. I like this. I am free to contemplate a life filled with cosmic imagination. With this contemplation comes a belief that I call shall not want. Eventually, I get to this point.

I want a house with a fenced in yard and doggie door complete with dogs. I wish I could follow my ex and spend time with his grandchildren. They call me Auntie Kristina. I hope they don’t forget me.

My desire for things may not pass, but I will acknowledge today that I want for nothing. I have everything I need today to have a joyous life filled with purpose and meaning.

Grams and Annie, my cats, sleep on me as I write this from my bed. When I brought them home from the Humane Society, I thought they were feral. I thought they would have nothing to do with me. How wrong I was. Grams, the neediest, often pesters me for pets and needs my full attention. She bats at my hand when I hold the phone, a book, or a pen.

Cats are of God. I actually believe they are psychic. They know when dead family members and friends enter the room. I take comfort in this like I do while eating a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked ice cream.

Today is June 15, 2015. I am alive and well.

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So, yesterday I came across a book at the library for children titled Combat Handbook. Although it is a gaming book, I was appalled by the title. How did I come across this book? I work at the library as a page and it was mine to check in.

Where do we draw the line at what we give children to read? Is it a kind of censorship if we restrict topics we find inappropriate  for children? These aren’t new questions. But are they ever answered? Some writers’ priority is to sell books. The title Combat Handbook will sell books.

Something else I find disturbing at the library is that we now subscribe to The National Enquirer. Why? Because there is an audience for it. Man has double heads, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson’s ghosts haunt Hollywood stages, the martian will be landing soon, or is alien the new word for martian. These things are not even close to the most outrageous of things found in The National Enquirer. Maybe The National Enquirer fills a hole in people that need to feed on imaginative tales.

Other media that appalled me was the show on television called 100 Ways to Die. What is that? For a person such as myself, who has attempted suicide at least eleven times in my 51-year-old life, this is not a show for me to watch. When darkness drops over me, I don’t need to know ways to die that are fool proof. Today, I know I am terrible at dying. Today, I am far from wanting to die. This is amazing to me; I haven’t felt haunted for a good seven years.

I don’t have children. I don’t play electronic games. Maybe if I had children and did play electronic games, I would feel much different about a book called Combat Handbook for children. It seems to me that the generation of children now will have very different experiences to draw from once they reach adulthood. I am all for change. I believe it is the responsibility of adults to impart as much knowledge as possible to young people and encourage them to surpass what we do in this life of ours. May the next generation be smarter, kinder, and healthier than we are.

Today is June 13, 2015. I am alive and well.

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Excerpt from my second book—–

I want to have a party with fake alcohol and see how many people act like they’re wasted; rum, not rum, roars through the thin man who pinches the breasts of the host. She giggles, then slaps him after coming to her senses–the slap smells of beef, a fingerprint left on his cheek.

I want to repay all the kindnesses my friends have shown me all their lives. A sunflower bends at the neck in welcome. I hand out handkerchiefs, love wrapped in knots of stripes and polka dots–it is simple.

I want to travel the world bagging people’s groceries. A stick of butter rubs skin with a potato in London. The jolly man in Brazil grins with green jello the color of palm leaves. Canned beets are slippery in Seattle, a banana rots at the foot of an onion in Germany. Radishes remain the dirty spice that they are everywhere I go.

I want to say meow durning a speech. All the dogs will riot when they learn the bill won’t pass the Senate; it’s a matter of people fighting while wearing helmets in the ring. The blood loss would be cut in half with the ear out of the way.

I want to believe in God. God has come to me in the form of a twisted branch in a tree three stories high. Leaves rejoice!

I want to have a story worth telling. I wake to the woman mowing the grass outside my open bedroom window, smell the grass, chamomile with a touch of honey. Paint a purple mustache on my niece’s doll. Ask her where Ken’s head is.

I want to take a cute girl to the moon. She smiles as I strap her into the card board box. The stereo explodes with the sound of flame. I tell her “close your eyes and imagine cheese.” In no time, we hear mail being dropped through the door’s slot and know we are still grounded. The moon was another dream, like cows pirouetting to Greenday’s Awesome as Fuck.

I want to go to a city where nobody knows me and act like a completely different person. My name will be Charlie, an easy name, one I will recognize on a stranger’s tongue. I will wear boots and smoke cigarettes and smile only in the grocery store from where I buy slices of cake. My downfall is butter cream, I like it on toast in  this new life of mine.

Today is June 8, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The feather of my finger drags across the dusty entertainment center. It’s time. I use a cloth to wipe the dust off the furniture. I let it get so bad so as to see a definite difference between dirty and clean. I do this with the tile floors, also. I am a down on my knees kind of woman, using my hands, sponge attached, to mop the floor minus the mop.

There’s always something other to do the clean the house. There’s always something to do then go to coffee with friends. I covet time alone, wishing there were more hours in the day, wishing that my nighttime medication wouldn’t make it so hard to wake up. I try to sleep ten hours. Even this is hard. Left with no place to go, I would sleep sixteen hours. My pillow is always wet in the morning because my meds make me drool. I can’t believe I just told you I drool. Sometimes, I wake briefly and think I am drowning in my own saliva. I am a corpse who dreams through the night. Still. Silent. The bedroom places her hands on me. I am safe.

I make a mental note to schedule coffee with friends. Once at the coffee house, I am ecstatic to see them. They are an arm to reality for me. They help me to actively love. Love becomes a word of action. Love is not static.

I sat to type this with no idea in mind. Might as well begin with a dirty house that I pressured into becoming clean. Do I think blankets have life? Are they glad when I shake them out? Does the toilet breath a sigh of relief? These things are fun to think about. This type of thinking allows me to appreciate and respect  the things I have. My bedroom does breath, this I believe. My sanctuary is complete with cats, books, a dresser, a bed, and a desk.

Th

Today is June 6, 2015. I am alive and well.

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The following is an excerpt from my second book. I still have yet to come up with a title. The danger of posting from my book is that I could do a repeat post because I don’t keep very good track of things. Hopefully, this is not the case. Annie, one of my cats, is tiptoeing around the key board. This always makes me nervous. Both Grams and Annie always seem to want my attention when I’m working on the computer. It does make me happy, though, that they want my attention. They are not very aloof and like to give me kisses.

Excerpt–

Being alone is not lonely. I actually don’t have enough time by myself. Things pop up like that pop up game at the carnival where the point is to hit the pop up quickly before another pop up makes itself known.

I want to sit here writing this, but must leave for the grocery store soon. I am hungry and in need of food. And then there is toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry detergent to buy. I hate having to buy these things. i romanticize mom being here to buy these things for me. Back in the day. Ha.

Being responsible for myself has been like shining my black boots before they crack. It is a desire to take my medications properly. I am amazed that my brain has been following my wishes and that I even have the wish to stay sane. Hospitals comforted me at times. The stress of daily life was not a part of the psychiatric unit.

In considering the stress of daily life, I find myself immune to it most days. I am a willow, God resting in my limbs. I know my anatomical body can no longer grow. Height is not something I covet physically, but is something I covet spiritually.

I have a great deal to learn about God, or maybe I have nothing left to learn about God. The thing I know best is God is.

I still have times where I quiver with anxiety. A bad pitch can cause a home run. A lesson learned can elevate my spirit. A swimmer lagging 10 yards behind can suddenly be given a burst of every, out touching her competitors. To quiver with anxiety feels impossible to control. I feel blinded from light, but am able to peacefully center myself in darkness like a four-year-old watching a three-D movie who later leaves the dark theater with her glasses on because she believes her eyes are expensive and the glasses help protect them. Sight can be costly. Sight is always followed by bliss. This I have learned.