Years ago I read Virginia Woolf. As an introvert, I related to her literal statement that a woman needs a "room of her own." As i progressed through my life, in grand "Woolf" style, I always made sure that i had a little hideaway where i could read, write, think. Yet, the larger and larger my homes got, and the more "rooms of my own" I could play in, I felt much less of an individual, more subsumed by family duties, and the only time i found myself "alone" was when i hid in the "ship" under the stairs (a little cozy playroom), for a mid-afternoon nap. The craftroom right next door remained untouched for three years. It still retained it's new house smell much like a new car smell. I somehow resisted that room at all costs. The built in ironing board, the wrapping paper sheets lined up on neat little poles. It all screamed to me, "i am a resigned, empty-headed housewife, here for scrapbooking and reminiscing on the life I've lived and have no longer." Until a few weeks ago. Emma wanted to buy some beads and wire to make bead rings.

So, we went to JoAnn's. Nope, they didn't have the rings. So, I bought her some supplies to make the silk-flower clips she wears in her hair for dance. Suddenly, our craft room became a kaleidescope of activity. My daughter and i became charged up with color and creativity. And one thing led to another and a genesis of a business was born. No plans. No thoughts. Just pure unadulterated joy! Lots of shopping ensued, designing, and planning and decision making. And voila. We are on our way. I feel more alive than I have felt in many, many years.

I am so excited about life. I am looking forward to the future-- full of surprises and activity. I enjoy this whole process. All of it. Color. Bling. Flowers. Cozy fabrics. Fashion. Creativity. Business. Computer. Research. The whole enchilada.

I love the feeling of creating something out of nothing-- sort of like making and raising babies.

But, most of all, I love the notion that for once in my life, I have the possibility of paving my own way creatively and financially.

I can't help but reflect on the irony. So, in this ginormous house of mine-- I've finally found "a room of my very own!" I never would have believed a soul if they would have told me it would be the craft room. It is ironic that a classic  feminist feminist read has taken on such a new meaning for me. I think it is not so much a space that you occupy, but that you occupy your own space.

All, along, I have needed something to call my own.

As I taught my daughter to sew yesterday, passing down skills I learned from my own mother, I felt connected to women. To the women in my family. Artistic, creative, strong-minded and independent.

I hope that I pass down to my daughter this sense of occupying one's own space. And to be a femeinist is not so much to refute feminine roles or tasks, but to claim your own space in the life that is indeed your very own.

The room of your own-- is indeed within the confines of your own talents and abilities and the courage to use them in a way that satisfies your soul.

 I just got back from an incredibly sad movie called "My Sister's Keeper."  I wish I didn't sit through it, but Emma wanted to go. It was all about the relationship of a family facing their daughter's imminent death. But, what hit me most profoundly was not the dysfunctional family. We all have one of those. It was the "first love" between two teenage cancer patients. He held her hair as she threw up. And gave her gum. He loved her bald headed. Her face lit up like the New Year's ball in his presence. His love was stronger than any medication. She flourished in his arms.

I have never really felt that in my life for any length of time. I thought I felt that safety for a moment. But, the moment passed. I got my butt kicked. But, in retrospect, I am glad that I loved. I know what it is like to light up in someone's presence like a darned Christmas tree. I know what it is like to feel like one flesh. I know what it feels like to wonder where his flesh ends and mine begins. I have loved, and so I have not lived in vain. I had hoped it would last. I wanted to please him so much, because he gave me so much pleasure. I went against the core of my own soul's wishes-- I agreed to marry him, because I didn't want to lose him. But, I just wasn't ready. And so I pushed him away.

Tonight I saw two rainbows-- a double rainbow, one bright and handsome, the other pale and fair. I have never seen that before in my life. They were so beautiful-- parallel, together, regal, colorful. I decided to chase the four ends to search for pots of gold. It was so fun! One seemed as if it ended over Home Depot-- not exactly what i had in mind. Another over the canyon behind my home, and the other went right over the temple into the canyon. It made me think. What if "the pot of gold" we are all searching for is at home?

I believe, for me, my "gold" is my vast capacity for love. I don't need to look for it. It is in me.

I will never forget chasing around my tiny town with my daughter photographing rainbows and searching for gold-- when all along my "gold" was sitting right there in my car next to me. How, I love her so.

Little things can really mean a lot. When I was younger, I tended to go for the grand gesture. I wanted to make an impression, be impressed.

I suppose. I felt that effort connoted love. And now I feel differently. Love is who we are. Love is all around us. It is an endless embrace as easy as the wind. Hardly seen, yet often felt. Even better when you are still and quiet.

I have chased after things, worked toward things, set goals, planned and accomplished. But, what feels the best costs the least in money or effort. And it is often small and inconsequential~~

I am amazed at the people who love me. Who have loved me endlessly in the small details of my life. And the things I treasure keep popping up all around me. A hug. A kiss. A look. A quiet affirmation. A little text. A pixflix flower. A heartfelt apology. A little love note.

Mother Theresa said that she is a pencil in the hand of God writing a love letter to the world. How noble to be a pencil. No endeavor more gratifying than a love note.

She is my heroine, and I hope to love in some small way like she did. No lip gloss, no high heels, no boyfriends-- she didn't need any of it to find love all around her. Just an open heart and a pencil.

I got my eyebrows done! The best thing I ever did :) Why didn't I do this a long time ago????? Permanent make-up rocks. Now i can go swimming and still have eyebrows!!!  Who knew? lol

Yea, and maybe I am feeling happy, because of the Vicodin I took to survive the ordeal! haha

Soooooooooo my personal trainer sent me to an endocrinologist when I was forty, because he was convinced i was insulin resistant and had diabetes based on my VO2 testing. I went. The endo said i was in Perfect shape! Of course i was! I had been on a liquid diet for three months and was exercising like crazy. The only problem is that you can't do that forever. So after reverting back to human food and having back surgery a few years later i was on the future "highway to hell." I gained thirty pounds, got high blood pressure, started swelling up like crazy. Went to about five different doctors, and not one tested me for diabetes. Just kept giving me pills to address the symptoms. Only seven years later, when i convinced my doctor that i was ALLERGIC to carbohydrates, did he finally test me for diabetes. And guess what folks? High insulin levels in your blood make you retain salt-- hence the crazy fluid retention and need for daily diuretics. And, yep, the crazy fluid retention gives you, yes, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE.  Now, i've got the BP meds being handed out. And i gained a ton of weight, because when you have high blood sugars, you don't properly burn sugars and fats. It all gets stored. So, now, seven years later, i am finally getting treated. Gee. I am no longer needing all of the diuretics. I avoid sugar. Don't eat too many carbs. Don't retain salt and fluid. And i am beginning to feel like a normal human being.


So, why did my trainer know in five minutes what it took my doctors seven years to figure out? Why are doctors so dumb?????

Mom: Integrity isn't so much about being good or bad as it is about being a whole, complete person where your actions fit with your beliefs.

Emma: Oh, Mom, I am already there.

Mom: Yea, well it takes some of us a little bit longer than others!

Note to self-- (Bratty teenager)

I have no children for five days and no plans. I am thinking after I get this house cleaned up, i better go find some FUN :)

The diabetes medicine is making me barf.

shallow graves for eyes

with bereft hearts

 

tapping fingertip regrets

like letters of the alphabet

 

words like qwert look like words

which have no meaning

 

(like poems without lungs)

no longer sing but look like poems

 

words are corpses

and metaphors are bones:

 

refuse to settle into dust

refuse to settle into dust

Memory, like bliss, seems to have its own address.

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

DEVOTIONS UPON EMERGENT OCCASIONS

by John Donne

XVII. NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.

Now, this bell tolling softly far another, says to me: Thou must die.

Meditation.

PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

I spent an inordinant amount of money at Costco today. Sheesh!

I love poets. They are fragile people. Sometimes too fragile for this world. Such is the case with my beautiful lj friend Terry. Unbeleivably, he took his life. And this world is so much poorer without him. Some of you may have known him through my journal as Goodfoot08 here as he often commented on my poetry when I was writing before.

He wasn't on much in the past few years, and I missed him. When i first moved to Utah, I heard from him around December, and was so thrilled to hear his words-- that I wrote this poem. It is one of my favorites. I wish I had had the courage to tell him that I wrote this about him. Here is the poem. Terry, I am sending this on angels wings to you in heaven. I hope you know how much you inspired me. How much i had hoped to one day meet you. And that you were my secret lj crush for many years. I wish I told you so many things. I wish your life didn't hurt so badly.



For Terry, who was too beautiful for this world, all I have for you are my words...


petals

your words are like
the scent of beach
in seashells far removed
from the sand (you are worlds away)

your simplest uterrance is a petal
a newborn in my palm
you are the beginnings of flowers
your words falling petals


This was the comment he left on my journal after reading it:

Nice Emily. It is clean and direct. I vote for not using "fragant". Its imprecision gets in the way for me of the simpler "your words are/like the scent of the beach".
And boy, does that evoke right now. Where's the nearest beach?

I just got back from the doctor. I have a sinus infection, an ear infection and my blood pressure is over 100 from the infections. Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd I have to leave tomorrow morning at 8 am for Denver for Emma's ballet competition. No fair. I say.

to stir up trouble! Consider yourself forewarned ;)

As I turn my face toward a New Year, I always seem to pick a theme for the year. I am thinking that this year it will be opening. I have thought and thought about why I enjoy being around children sooooooo much. And why sometimes i have a really difficult time with some adults. Not all. And the adults whom i simply adore have this same childlike quality: being open. It seems that through life's buffetings, it is easy to close down to new experiences, to vulnerability, to wonder, to chance, to opportunity, to risk, to failure. We wear familiar tracks into our soul space and steady our self on them, often closing ourselves to other avenues. It is ever so evident as people grow old and eat the same food, go to the same store, drive the same car, mail the same bill, stay at the same hotel, carry the same grudge, repeat the same prayer that they have closed themselves to what it really means to be human. To grow and learn and change.

So, opening speaks to me. Remaining open. Even when it feels frightening or uncomfortable. It is odd to me that i am 47 and yet feel so incredibly childlike in some of my feelings. In ways, I was old before my time at a very young age. Choosing always safety, stability, the known. I was fearful. I was closed to new experience.

This year, I decided living that way wasn't really living. I through off what wasn't working in a lot of arenas in my life. Old choices that closed me from my truest self.

Now, I am open. Opening. Letting life in. Letting light in. Letting love in. Letting possiblity and new ways of looking at myself, my family, others in.

In opening, everyday feels scary, risky. I take chances. I make myself vulnerable. I let go of pain. I reconnect. The neat thing is-- I feel full with less. I like the sensation. And i am going to keep opening to it in 2009.

The earth is still and quiet. The trees on my block are lifeless, but still green on the inside. The roads are icy. The air is frigid. I hate winter, and I need it. To pause, to breathe. A reminder to go slowly. Tread lightly. Last night we missed ballet. A car was overturned on the side of the road. It was jarring to see headlights glaring in my eyes vertical. Not horizontal. In moments, life becomes slippery. We lose traction. Busyness becomes meaningless. In winter, I will hold still. Watch closely. Wait for light. Horizontal light.