Semi-Daily Scribbles

Safe Travels

Still raw from saying goodbye at the beginning of the month, but it's gotten a bit easier to breathe. Been receiving lovely messages from friends wanting us to know the many ways in which you helped them and provided countless good times that'll last as precious memories. I've been going through letters and photographs and that's been a good way to process all the jumbled emotions. Here are a few snapshots of the Summer of 2012 when you came to visit on your cross country drive to see Barb & Bernie. That was a solo trip you wanted to add to your list of I Did This! You did reach your destination and had a grand adventure with stories to share when the new school year started.

Speaking of road trips, I'm looking for the photos from our family vacations. I'm including this link because not only is it a beautiful story, but it's also about a place we visited to camp and fish. The Tuesday mentioned in the article made my breath catch in my throat.

I'll check in soon with more pictures and thoughts.

A Higher Degree of Love

It's been two days since you left this place to start a new journey. Odd thing, time. It holds no meaning, serves no particular purpose Right Now since I'm bouncing all over the place with all sorts of Memories & Thoughts. I'll be sharing snippets and photos for a while until I can write a proper thing to describe who you were and what that means to me. I've reached out to the Indio & PacNW crews and those good folks have told me how much they love/admire/appreciate you. They've all relayed similar messages about how you helped them become better people, both for themselves and their loved ones. That's a pretty cool thing for your pals to feel and pass along.

I'll keep this ramble short, but wanted to share that the date you took off for greener fields adds up to be The Number Nine:
Nine is often associated with completion and fulfillment. It represents the end of a cycle, suggesting that something has reached its full potential or purpose.

And yes...I'm still playing guitar...

Human Existence

HOMEWORK

What comprises generational trauma?
- Alcoholism
- Death by Suicide
- Denial
- Depression
- Drug Addiction
- Lack of Education
- Misogyny
- Poverty
- Racism
- Rape
- Schizophrenia
- Silence

Make a list of self-sabotaging behaviors.
Procrastination. Analysis Paralysis. FoMO. Poor Time Management. O.K. With Being Not Okay. Stare / Compare / Go Nowhere. Cheerleader for Everyone But Me.
Imposter Syndrome. Don't Always Speak Up Because People Comment On My Vocabulary? Inaction-Due-To-Distraction. Not Always Up For New Experiences.
Squirrel!

Survival, trials, experience are shades across the spectrum that make you/me not understand me/you. Common ground shifts with each step.

The sentiment meant something in the moment
And the moment's gone

Venting on NYE

For me, 2023 never really got out of the blocks. On a global level...?

Wars.
Environmental Disasters.
Mayhem of Every Design.

I'm nursing the sniffles and excited about a repair person coming over this afternoon to clean the dryer vent. What better way to ring in 2024? I'm catching a back to basics vibe for the new year. No declarations of losing weight, crossing off <fill in the blank> on Ye Olde Bucket List, changing careers. More like a literal and figurative cleaning of one's house. This past year has been one of accumulation, but not necessarily of objects and experiences that will propel me on my path. I need to get back to the work of creating rather than procuring. There's a lot of stuff cluttering my closets and noggin. So, over the next 12 months, I shall focus on the things that truly matter: Family, Friends & Cupcakes. This paired down list will keep the important stuff prominent in '24 and beyond.

Arrhythmia

So traumatized Chuck still works the mines.
A poet's soul with hardened arteries.
The company doesn't pay Chuck for his turn of phrase and artist's heart.
It's a tough task to write the perfect stanza when crafted in the arc of a headlamp.

From Camels to Humans

Thoughts are ordered in No Particular Order. It's .. they are like reading a book by landing on random pages "and just going with it." Timeline? A logical sequence of events? THEME! All are about as useless as peanut butter without bits of said legume embedded within. Or like ... please explain to me the narrative thru-line of your life, why don't you? No easy feat, that. Our brains flit from factoid to face to that tingling in one's feet to what's her name to ... what was the subject again? We slosh about in our thought soup daily and still we're able to hold down jobs and pack the kidlets off to school and pray to whichever Belief System we are the most comfortable believing in that one of these days we (the entire world's population, I'm thinking) don't just wake up one morning to the news that this novel-bugger-this-or-the-other carries with it a 40.3% case fatality rate.

Be the Star

Not a proper Year-In-Review this. Not even going to speculate on what's in store for 2019. Just a handful of things that happened:

* I rescued a withered Philodendron scandens tucked amongst boxes of Tampax stacked on a table of markdowns at Walmart. I christened the plant Luz.

* Learned to embrace the ludicrous and my worldview improved immensely.

* Wrote some pretty shitty poetry.

* Got to be a tourist in the city where I live when family came to visit.

* Colleagues were given the Fourth Quarter Boot Scoot at my place of employment. I'm still there.

Snapshots of a life lived as the planet does its slow dance around the sun. Time, too, continues to communicate in its ebb and flow way. And each one of us a star. No, really. We follow stars across the sky in our search for home. But as a star, the only place one can return is where you are.

The State of Becoming

O.k., Masters-in-Training: If the last 10 years have been easy for you, you must have done The Work over prior lifetimes. If yes/no: Has something happened to you in the past 30 to 45 days that slapped ya upside the head (didn't see it comin', didn't see it comin') and left ya lying in a goo pit of conflicting emotions? We are all presently tasked with looking at ourselves through the eyes of others. How well do those narratives criss and cross? Are you ready for a different version of your life to be projected against that big, blank canvass you are staring at? Make sure you've got a red pen handy.

a lesson earned

and for anyone who peeks at this screen, i got a little nugget o' to pass along ... just keep showing up. sounds simple but it's one of the hardest things to do consistently throughout one's lifetime(s). good things are coming my way, though, thanks to the routine to which i tenaciously cling; being in a place at specific times and dates and performing tasks that outside a particular four-walled structure MAKE NO SENSE AT ALL. i'm sure you participate in a similar activity wherever you reside in the multiverse. it is easy to get tripped up when one dances to the rhythm of the day-to-day. sometimes there's no end in sight and progression feels like an automobile stuck in reverse (even under the best of circumstances it's not easy to power through life's obstacle course.) but hey, did you make someone's day today? that's about the only way to gauge if you've done anything worth a damn. create something right now that didn't exist yesterday, and say Hello to the next person that enters your periphery. keep raisin' the vibration y'all, and then tell me you don't see a little light slipping through the cracks.

doctor's note

 

call out
call out
call out like you do

check your privilege at the door

saying you've got allergies
will not suffice anymore

i think the flu is here to stay
its symptoms are the key to
The Gateway

PSA:
this song has helped more people than any number of hours spent having one's noggin prodded.