The Meat Of It All
I am beginning today's notation on whatever I will later call this period in my life with a picture of Anna, one of our Ameraucana chicks. I'm starting with her because she didn't almost die today. This is new life. It's a fitting sight on Mother's day. This dinosaur descendant is going to (hopefully) grow up to be a ruthless hunter of insects and chickweed. She is brand new. She will be one week old tomorrow. Like the other 6 chicks we have under the lamp in the garage.One more than we had yesterday. But that's a minor detail.
I worked this morning and didn't check on my baby birds early like I usually do. Philip checked on them at 11 am and came back with the news that one of our chicks was dead. I ran to the garage and Philip picked up Mohawk (who I will call Mo) to show me her limp lifeless body. She was deflated and sunken looking. We were discussing a mother's day burial when Philip almost jumped out of his skin saying he thought he actually felt her move, which seemed impossible in light of her completely dead appearance. It was true. She was barely breathing. And she silently opened her beak and closed it. Chicks aren't silent unless they're dead or dying. A healthy chick in peril or sickness that has spark or hope left will cheep frantically. Or at least cheep. The picture you see here is not of how we found her. This is much later. I didn't take a picture of her "dead" because it seems wrong to photograph dead or dying babies of any species. To me, anyway.
I'm not going to lie to you. It was just one more brick in my head. Just one more notch on the belt the universe is wearing right now to keep track of all the punches it's throwing at me. And to spend mother's day trying to revive a dead chick that I was responsible for killing isn't the kind of celebration most moms are enjoying today. On the other hand, there must be thousands of moms who've had to face much worse today than I did. There was no way I was going to put Mo down for more than a couple of minutes. I wanted her to die with someone caring for her. She won't probably know the difference, being a baby chicken, but it seems wrong that any baby of any species should have to die alone. Cruel world it is, but if I can send an avian spirit off with the feeling that it had a mama hen to fuss over her the last few minutes, I cannot turn away.
The thing is, she didn't expire. I will give details in a post on Stitch for which I will give tips on how not to cook your chicks with the heat lamp and how to attempt resuscitation should you almost kill one. For now let it suffice to say that she seemed thirsty and I called the farm store for advice and the girl actually didn't die today.
It took her two hours to open her eyes again. She couldn't walk for three hours. But the moment her cheeping began I knew she was fighting to hang on. Who knows if she heard me telling her she really needed to hang around because she already got a name and I wasn't going to let Philip name any more of them which would make her dying completely devastating. She agreed. Or just desperately wanted to get away from the humans. So we started off with a dying baby bird.
I got my computer back from the computer place and there was rejoicing until we discovered that almost nothing is working right with it. I bang my head against the universe's brick to save it the trouble. Philip borrowed our friend's lawn mower, because ours is broken, and he broke it.
Which made us both spiral towards the place we seem to spend a lot of time these days: THE BLACK HOLE OF RAGE.
But then he fixed it by replacing the blade.
If I was keeping score I'd be doing some serious mathematics.
Philip and I have been working through all this shit. This crappy-ass-shit-luck we've been experiencing pretty much non-stop for almost five years. (I keep saying four but he reminds me that it started before that with the great collapse of our fine and happy life. That was almost five years ago now. And weirdly, it began with a neighbor complaining about our chickens in Santa Rosa.)We've talked about what we might be doing to bring this on ourselves. We are responsible for making choices as we react to the various things we've experienced. Did we make some big mistake somewhere? Are we not good enough people? Is this all happening because we think rich people should have to pay higher taxes than poor people? Is this happening because talk of Jesus chafes our brains? Have we not been kind enough people? Have we not yet mastered how to appreciate the tiny sweet blooming volunteer violet pushing up through the ash of the house fire?
We don't know.
But we've talked. We're a team. We've agreed that we don't have to be trapped here. We can leave. We can go anywhere. We might lose a lot more by walking away, but maybe we'd find more kindness and mercy from the universe? We don't know. We're not going to make any rash decisions. I've got to say that knowing Philip is feeling the same way I am and told me he was inches from walking away from this house, this town, and just getting the hell out of this hope-trap made me feel calmer.
To do things well, to lose as little as possible, we are trapped. Because we can't afford to move, to have our house on the market. To do things well means we can't leave.
But to say "Fuck it!" and be nomads with two foreclosed homes under our belt and walk the road until we find some friendlier better place that wants us and isn't trying to knock us down two pegs for every single one we climb is freeing! Lose everything but our hope and our spirits? Surely having hope and a bouyant spirit is more important?
We don't have any answers and we know that no one can offer any to us. This is our own hell-puzzle. We both feel bruised from the incessant feeling of punishment. It feels like we're getting something big all wrong.
For Philip to say he's pretty much ready to walk out of this house and hit the road is saying a lot about what this place has done to us, or more specifically- him. He doesn't volunteer big change- ever. EVER.
We both love this house we're in. But a house is a house and there are a million houses out there we could love just as much.
I am free. We have decided not to be trapped by our situation. We can't leave honorably. We can't afford to sell our house and also we have learned that neither of us could sell a piece of gum for free if our lives depended on it. We've come to terms with that even if no one else has. You can only fight the proof of things for so long.
We both love this house we're in. But a house is a house and there are a million houses out there we could love just as much.
I am free. We have decided not to be trapped by our situation. We can't leave honorably. We can't afford to sell our house and also we have learned that neither of us could sell a piece of gum for free if our lives depended on it. We've come to terms with that even if no one else has. You can only fight the proof of things for so long.
Our plan is to wait a little longer. We will fix the car and explore other places. If not to move to, then to get fresh air and fresh perspective. We will keep our options open. Maybe we're people not meant to settle anywhere. Maybe we're not meant to belong anywhere. Maybe we're meant to experience a lot more places and not worry about seeing the fruit trees we always plant in every place we live actually mature.
We are both letting go of all expectation.
Naturally the minute Philip tells me I don't have to stay here, that he'll be happy to move to Portland, or Corvallis, or back to the Bay Area, or to Scotland, or wherever I want to go because he's so done with the crap that keeps hitting us in the face, naturally the need to leave is less urgent. Because now I'm not chained down.
This afternoon I got on my Scooter and rode for almost two hours into the hills around town. I tore down the roads at top speed with the wind taking my breath clean out of me and going through me like a cold fever. It felt good. I like to drive really fast. I was on a mission to find the real location for my fictional landscape. I took both my cameras (I got my fancy one to work again) and I took a lot of pictures. I had my eyes open for texture, light, and mood. There is a mud cabin in the woods in my book, and I needed to know where in the hills I was going to put it. I needed to know so I could go there in person and collect the details, the artifacts of my fiction.
I'm not sure I believe people who say that you have to visualize the things you want to happen or they won't happen. My mom used to talk to me all the time about "thought manifestation". I've had enough experience to tell me that the bulk of that ideology is bullshit, but there's a superstitious edge where that kind of stuff actually has power.
I know that if you put yourself down often enough and hard enough you will sink yourself. If you continually tell yourself you're a piece of crap you will believe it more and more and the more you believe it's true the more you will make decisions based on your low self esteem and this will support your beliefs and self accusations. Likewise, you can tell yourself you will do things that you almost certainly can't do but if you keep saying you can do them you will start to believe it more and the more you believe you are capable of doing unrealistic crazy great things you will start to make decisions that support your declaration that has started becoming belief and so you bring yourself much closer to achieving impossible things simply by saying you will do them.
There's a limit to the possibilities, of course.
Today while I was zooming past tall trees and thick canopies of maple and pine and blurring past dark dense acres of forest I decided that I am going to put McMinnville on the literary map and it's going to help put me on that same map.
I was thinking about how much it's worn me down and turned me inside out and- what for?
I know what for.
It took living here to find my way back to original and truest path in life that lit up my spirit when I was ten years old. It took living here and being stripped and punched raw and made angry and it took being hurt and hurt and hurt to bring my pen to the heart of fiction. I gave up on fiction when I was 28 years old. I decided I was shit even though everything in myself had always believed that I was going to write novels. I gave up.
I can't help but wonder if that's where things really started going wrong? It's useless to ask that. Makes no difference.
It took being lost here to find my way back to my original purpose, my original intention, to find my way back to who I am as a writer. Everything about this place has skinned me and yet it's since living here that my writing has become stronger, more polished, more focused, and now, at last, I seem to have come to the meat of it.
I stopped by the roadside to investigate the wild things growing in the ditches and in the total quiet I knew only one thing: I'm going to write this book of mine and it's going to be the best thing I've ever written and it's going to get published. It is going to live in a lot of other people's bodies too. It will get under their skin in the best possible way. It will dig into the mud of my little hell-town and open up into the light. Everyone who lives here will be in it, whether I have met them or not. They exist in this fictional universe without their choice or permission.
As much as intentions have power I stated mine today as though I'd just drawn my own blood and signed my name with it in a powerfully angry smear across High Heaven Road and then invited the crows and the hawks to feast. Lord knows I've drawn enough of my own blood in my life so that I have only to think of it and the rich iron tang is in my mouth and the air is thick with it. It would make me sick if I wasn't already completely inured to blood.
If intentions have any power at all then let mine take off like a beast of muscle and grace because I am not only going to write this book and get it published but it will be made into a television series as well because the time is right for it. It's already in everyone's conversations, their imaginations, their fears come to life in fiction. All the newest "what ifs" brought forward and lit with a raw moon.
As the air ripped through my shirt and my skin and the ragged irregular drops of rain broke free from the altitude and stung my face I knew only two things: I won't leave this town until I have written my book and I don't want to leave until I have my black belt in Kung Fu.
I don't know why it feels important, but I want that. I want it from the school I'm already going to. There is no other one like it. I have a love hate relationship with it like I do everything else around here. But what I know for sure is that I am getting from that school what I can't get anywhere else and I don't want to leave until I get my black belt. But I didn't know that until I was out there in the quiet, completely alone. Talking to horses and camas lillies.
Saying my intention out loud might not make anything true that wasn't going to be true (or not be true) anyway, but it felt like punching back.
God, it's going to be hard getting there. But see if I don't do it.
We are both letting go of all expectation.
Naturally the minute Philip tells me I don't have to stay here, that he'll be happy to move to Portland, or Corvallis, or back to the Bay Area, or to Scotland, or wherever I want to go because he's so done with the crap that keeps hitting us in the face, naturally the need to leave is less urgent. Because now I'm not chained down.
This afternoon I got on my Scooter and rode for almost two hours into the hills around town. I tore down the roads at top speed with the wind taking my breath clean out of me and going through me like a cold fever. It felt good. I like to drive really fast. I was on a mission to find the real location for my fictional landscape. I took both my cameras (I got my fancy one to work again) and I took a lot of pictures. I had my eyes open for texture, light, and mood. There is a mud cabin in the woods in my book, and I needed to know where in the hills I was going to put it. I needed to know so I could go there in person and collect the details, the artifacts of my fiction.
I'm not sure I believe people who say that you have to visualize the things you want to happen or they won't happen. My mom used to talk to me all the time about "thought manifestation". I've had enough experience to tell me that the bulk of that ideology is bullshit, but there's a superstitious edge where that kind of stuff actually has power.
I know that if you put yourself down often enough and hard enough you will sink yourself. If you continually tell yourself you're a piece of crap you will believe it more and more and the more you believe it's true the more you will make decisions based on your low self esteem and this will support your beliefs and self accusations. Likewise, you can tell yourself you will do things that you almost certainly can't do but if you keep saying you can do them you will start to believe it more and the more you believe you are capable of doing unrealistic crazy great things you will start to make decisions that support your declaration that has started becoming belief and so you bring yourself much closer to achieving impossible things simply by saying you will do them.
There's a limit to the possibilities, of course.
Today while I was zooming past tall trees and thick canopies of maple and pine and blurring past dark dense acres of forest I decided that I am going to put McMinnville on the literary map and it's going to help put me on that same map.
I was thinking about how much it's worn me down and turned me inside out and- what for?
I know what for.
It took living here to find my way back to original and truest path in life that lit up my spirit when I was ten years old. It took living here and being stripped and punched raw and made angry and it took being hurt and hurt and hurt to bring my pen to the heart of fiction. I gave up on fiction when I was 28 years old. I decided I was shit even though everything in myself had always believed that I was going to write novels. I gave up.
I can't help but wonder if that's where things really started going wrong? It's useless to ask that. Makes no difference.
It took being lost here to find my way back to my original purpose, my original intention, to find my way back to who I am as a writer. Everything about this place has skinned me and yet it's since living here that my writing has become stronger, more polished, more focused, and now, at last, I seem to have come to the meat of it.
I stopped by the roadside to investigate the wild things growing in the ditches and in the total quiet I knew only one thing: I'm going to write this book of mine and it's going to be the best thing I've ever written and it's going to get published. It is going to live in a lot of other people's bodies too. It will get under their skin in the best possible way. It will dig into the mud of my little hell-town and open up into the light. Everyone who lives here will be in it, whether I have met them or not. They exist in this fictional universe without their choice or permission.
As much as intentions have power I stated mine today as though I'd just drawn my own blood and signed my name with it in a powerfully angry smear across High Heaven Road and then invited the crows and the hawks to feast. Lord knows I've drawn enough of my own blood in my life so that I have only to think of it and the rich iron tang is in my mouth and the air is thick with it. It would make me sick if I wasn't already completely inured to blood.
If intentions have any power at all then let mine take off like a beast of muscle and grace because I am not only going to write this book and get it published but it will be made into a television series as well because the time is right for it. It's already in everyone's conversations, their imaginations, their fears come to life in fiction. All the newest "what ifs" brought forward and lit with a raw moon.
As the air ripped through my shirt and my skin and the ragged irregular drops of rain broke free from the altitude and stung my face I knew only two things: I won't leave this town until I have written my book and I don't want to leave until I have my black belt in Kung Fu.
I don't know why it feels important, but I want that. I want it from the school I'm already going to. There is no other one like it. I have a love hate relationship with it like I do everything else around here. But what I know for sure is that I am getting from that school what I can't get anywhere else and I don't want to leave until I get my black belt. But I didn't know that until I was out there in the quiet, completely alone. Talking to horses and camas lillies.
Saying my intention out loud might not make anything true that wasn't going to be true (or not be true) anyway, but it felt like punching back.
God, it's going to be hard getting there. But see if I don't do it.
Comments (5)
I heard this phrase the other day and found it to hold so much truth. It will be a sweet package of words I'll hold onto for life and look to when I am facing adversity. I hope it can be of some guidance for you as well my friend.
...."if the life you are living is so difficult then maybe you are living someone else's life"
Posted by Kathy | May 10, 2010 6:47 AM
Posted on May 10, 2010 06:47
It's like looking into a mirror when I read your blog. I never loved my house so much as now when I haven't paid the property tax and am a month behind in mortgage payments (3rd month in a row being late - after 15 years of on time payments)I am working so much for so little and when I'm not I'm eating too much or sleeping too much or wishing I could leave this life. If I didn't have a child and if she and my husband didn't spend every moment I'm not around fighting (and that's a lot since I am working so much)I would just take off and never look back. Life is shit and then it keeps getting worse.
Posted by Lucille Miles | May 10, 2010 8:22 AM
Posted on May 10, 2010 08:22
I am so glad you didn't lose Mo I was tearing up there for a second. The universe or whatever power or energy doesn't give you what you can't handle. Of course I often disagree with that but still...
Posted by amy | May 10, 2010 9:17 AM
Posted on May 10, 2010 09:17
Good work on the two of you giving yourselves a choice when you decided you didn't have one. Nothing takes the pressure off like knowing you have an option, even if the option isn't all that pretty.
Best wishes for your goals.
Kind Regards
Belinda
Posted by simply.belinda | May 10, 2010 10:31 PM
Posted on May 10, 2010 22:31
Perhaps I don't like unvarying cheerful people because I feel they don't acknowledge that life often deals really nasty hands to really nice people. I admire the desire some people have to put a smile on their faces and carry on. But don't let that smile turn into a mask. Don't pretend that children are always wonderful, husbands always loving, and that blessings rain down only on the just. Relationships are hard work. Life isn't always fair. We deal. We try to keep moving on.
How I appreciate you, Angelina. You get knocked down. You get back up. But you never, ever pretend that you haven't been knocked down. You never preach a sunny gospel to the effect that life would just be fine and dandy if I'd only try to look on the bright side.
We both know life is hard work.
I thought it might cheer you to know that the random malevolence of the universe sometimes does strike outside your radius. (Not that either of us wishes ill on others. It's just a relief to know the universe isn't picking specifically on us.)
PS. Tried to put in this link but it won't work. Maybe Google "Kiss My Disaster!" at hortmag.com
www.hortmag.com/article/KissMyDisaster/
Posted by mss @ Words Into Bytes | May 15, 2010 11:26 AM
Posted on May 15, 2010 11:26