thinking about the body

i've never seen such beautiful bodies than at the beach in Florida this June.

not the rippling-muscled, well-toned, firm bodies of [insert any vapid beach movie/TV show here] - i mean the diversity of people with every shape, contour, and size of body. every body.

all of us lacking all self-consciousness as we enjoyed the sea and sand.

the very old Middle Eastern men collecting shells, the charming Russian family and their bright beach umbrella, the disheveled couples chasing joyful young children, the svelte and stylish teenagers making out in the surf, the pale, round Midwestern tourists loping along the shore in tennis shoes ... in this company, my body, spreading out here and there on my beach chair, was just another of so many shapes, and perfect exactly as it is - mom belly, lopsided breasts, flabby arms and all!

comforts of home

i like putting the baby to bed and taking a hard cider to the basement for late-night laundry.
i like the cardinals and bluejays who visit the backyard every morning.
i like showering by candlelight just before bed.
i like putting clean dishes away in orderly stacks.
i like the golden glow of my white oak floors in morning sunlight.
i like the patterns of shadow from the Japanese honeysuckle on the shades in the nursery at M's naptime.
i like our humming refrigerator's constant rhthym.
i like dusting lamps and picture frames.
i like giving drinks to cheery green houseplants.
i like the eager forsythia that i trimmed incorrectly.
i like to lounge in the Adirondack chairs out back in the sunshine on warm days.
i like snuggling down in bed with a warm husband, and a cat to keep my feet toasty.
i like my furniture.
i like the colors of the walls in every light and every season.
i like home. it's where i feel most safe and tranquil.

i will miss this house someday.

small view

when my day turns out just so and i am given the gift of a peaceful hour in the kitchen after dinner, i wash dishes and meditate with the warmth of the water and the scrubbing of the plates and bowls and cups. i stare out the window, which is situated over the sink, overlooking the expanse of our remarkably secluded city backyard, through the tall trees of the neighborhood, toward the west.

as the sun sets in every season, i have enjoyed elaborate compositions of cloud and color, watched winged things - both bats and birds - take to the open air, and seen squirrels scurry across utility lines, tree branches to garage roofs and back. these sights are constants, though in every season, a different early evening landscape appears - winter's icy grey crispness against shimmering silver and pink clouds; the visible dewy softness of new green grass under glassy skies in spring; the thick indigo blanket of summer's humid dusk, full with cricket song; and fall's rough textures and ochre hues under elaborate branches of bare trees.

i lived in a townhouse for some time with a view over the kitchen sink of only the wall's fake brick veneer, painted white and peeling. to get any green at all i would have to crane my neck, when washing dishes, to look through the back screen door to the private, shaded courtyard beyond. a large maple stood sentry just outside my back porch, and despite being downtown, raccoons and possums came to visit there more often than i expected. the courtyard was my island of nature among a sea of city asphalt, and my upstairs office overlooked it as well - a treehouse view, up in the maple boughs, which i loved and appreciated daily. but not over that kitchen sink! ... i might have hung a landscape painting if the walls had not been stubborn concrete and prone to crumbling.

my parent's kitchen window overlooks a wild quince bush, and beyond it a gratuitous strip of grass between houses, then a large old magnolia tree near a main road. even now, my mother gives me the weekly activity report from this narrow corridor - the bush seemed alive with one hundred tiny birds today; a rabbit came to nibble on the peonies and stayed quite awhile; the magnolia is blossoming and its heavy blooms are weighing the branches down. i have a lot of memories of my parents washing dishes together - one of their very, very few cooperative efforts - and, in each, i see in my mind's eye one or the other of them staring out that window as they talk, mom washing, dad drying, taking what peace they could from that small view.

demotivated

i finished my master's degree.
now i have some time on my hands.
what to do, what to do?

my creative ideas know no bounds.

my physical motivation, however, knows many.

i like the saying above - 'my future will be happy and productive' - because i feel it encompasses the kind of waiting i always do when it comes to that which i want to either have or accomplish. waiting for the right day, the right feeling, the right idea, the right circumstance, the right economy, the right accomplice, the right guidance, the right moon phase.

it's an elaborate form of procrastination, i've concluded - meant to take the control (and thus the blame for total inaction) out of my hands. the waiting has become so much a part of my life that i now feel fairly certain i'll be waiting for the most favorable this-or-that until the day i die!

worse, i realize i have legitimately 'inherited' this propensity (and slothfulness, honestly) from my parents, both of whom had great potential and zero confidence, zero motivation, and zero will. two bright people who barely flickered in the dark of their small worlds. i'm their daughter! i'm barely flickering ...

i had hoped this realization and knowledge of the root of my enduring demotivation would somehow spur me to ... action. something!!! no. i'm just as wayward as i ever was. maybe worse, actually, now that i'm so sold on non-obligation. what's the kind of thing that gets a person like me going again?

obligation

possibly the most untenable of all emotional conditions for me is the crush of obligation.

in some cases, i make my own bed, as it were: i invite and seek obligation, in return for some spiritual, intellectual, or monetary reward for the work. we all do this regularly, as fair exchange for our state as social beings. it's the sticky part of cooperative enterprise. that's cool.

but other times, i am writhing beneath obligation that came on like a whip crack, a hard, painful snap against my otherwise laconic reality. i hate obligation. i hate being reminded of it. i hate the expectation. the recompense. the horrible, angry, buzzing have-to - of all kinds of things and relationships and efforts.

tonight's been a bad reminder of that prison. and i still don't like his friends.

february

what is it about winter?

that makes my motivation go
sad and frigid, against the landscape
of snow and branches
broken by the weight of ice -
the precious price of January.

i can't summon the work needed
to start and do the work i need to do.
i'm down. i'm tired, and you may notice
i can' t hold my end of the conversation.
i'm worthless in this bitter cold.

it could be the frozen shelf of ground
that isn't melting,
that should be melting.
it's a glacier all around - slick and shiny
enough to see the sky.

it could be the wind that swings
the gate open and shut, whistling,
like a lost traveler, an adventurer inured
to cold and ice and and snow.
i don't know. i may never know.

but i hope to think more on this
from Gulfside soon.

being and void

i've been feeling a little odd lately. i'm in what can only be called an existentialist funk, replete with a touch of nihilism. there are many cumulative reasons, starting with the day in my own childhood that i realized death was my fate - i still recall sobbing to my mother 'why? i didn't choose this!' she was horrified. understandably.

i was probably 9.

looking back, i suppose that's the sort of thing you'd never, ever, ever want to hear your child say - and in some ways, the guilt of bringing a child into the world, essentially condemning them to death, gave me great pause (like, for decades) whenever i even vaguely considered having children. which is why i didn't consider it much.

in truth, i now spend a lot of nap pre-sleep wondering how i'll explain this whole unfortunate existential mess to M when the time comes. i hope she is more accepting than i was and am. the whole death thing - still gets to me.

but with the help of ernst breisach, i've recently been working through the various iterations of existentialist thought - the friend who loaned me the book thinks i'm nuts for believing (and/or trying to truly understand) a word of it, my own husband thinks it's laughable and sort of representative of some imbalance of my psyche, and i've been frankly too embarrassed to discuss it with anyone else for fear of how they'd respond.

but it's been good for me, in that i have some clear avenues of thought to now obsess over, instead of the random thoughts about existence that have plagued me since age 9 - many are thoughts i've long held inherently but had never really seen developed as well as this book does [Introduction to Modern Existentialism]. (note: didn't i take philosophy in college? a lot? they taught the wrong things. no college professor i had - except Carson - ever felt like discussing being and void. so i feel like i'm just catching up! ... just in time for my 36th birthday ... )

along with trying hard to wrap my head around these ideas and interpretations of my existence and its possible meaning, i'm hard at work on my resolutions/goals for 2009. it's an interesting context in which to plan for improvement and growth. because to even articulate any resolution means i have hope, which means i am not as nihilistic as i fear. so that's good? sure it is.