Eloquent as Fuck - Eloquent as Fuck

Quitting Well

2/17/2019

I have heard it said that you cannot find anything outside of you that does not already reside within. I believe that to be true, and I think that is why I have learned, by way of spectacular failure, how to end things before everything is broken, including hearts, minds and souls.

I grew up in an environment where people broke upon horribly violent endings, where things; relationships, jobs, events, would be prolonged until everyone involved was good and sick of each other and the places they were tied to. My family was full of resentment for people and places that had been a part of ending badly, and I grew up thinking this was the norm.

As an adult, I walked in anger and breathed destruction. You wouldn't know it now, but I was quite fearsome, and I never hesitated to bring someone down if it seemed justified. I could quite easily rise to any occasion to fight or confront any type of (mis) perceived injustice, and had no problem telling off any person, large or small, if properly provoked. Being properly provoked often did not take much effort.

I left jobs and relationships in approximately the same way, with a big "F you" as I was rushing out the door, possessions in hand. One place I quit actually had me walked off the premises. Though frankly, I am still quite proud of that achievement.

But things have been different and I have changed. The last job I quit was a first for me. I quit still loving the place. I quit still loving many of the people. I decided that instead of hating the place that I had let ground me to dust, I would leave before that happened. I had had a long and beneficial history with the place before I worked there (it was a community grocery store), and I didn't want to give that up, long term. So, when I realized what was happening, that my problems at work were beginning to effect the rest of my life, when I tried to solve these problems in straight-forward ethical ways and could not, I left. Happily. Without resentment. Without bitterness. There are times I even miss it there, but I don't regret my decision because I left while there was still love in my heart.

This strategy, I can soundly and justly say, is why I have been so brokenhearted with this last break up. I broke up before I had been smashed to dust. I left him before I could utterly stamp out the flame he carried for me. We are both profoundly hurt at the loss of this relationship, but we still love each other. We still respect each other. I have never had that in any other break up. I think back on all my boyfriends, and I have had many, and I can only think of one, maybe two that I could stomach seeing again, maybe even getting a beer with.

So while I am profoundly sad over the loss of this love of my life, I am also proud of myself for not staying until everything and everyone was burned to ashes. Just yesterday, in fact, I cried for a good hour or two over the loss of the relationship (Sundays are especially hard), but even in my sorrow, I felt quite lucky that I am so sad because I still love him. I want the best for him. I want him to be happy, no matter what that might entail.

I am so proud that I have found outside myself what I have, over years and with great effort, cultivated within; love, peace, integrity. I know that I am different with those outside of myself because I am different within myself. With this realization comes great relief, because for so many years I made my life much harder than it had to be. I sometimes made other people's lives quite challenging as well.

My dad once told me that if you protect yourself from great pain, you also end up protecting yourself from great love, because a fence is a fence, and it keeps out everything, good or bad. He warned me of building such protections because of the joy I would miss out on by protecting myself from the sadness.

Even though I am in great pain right now, I don't regret it, In fact I celebrate it, because it means I have found a way to let life in. It means that I will have more of everything in my life, good and bad, to experience. It means that with all I have experienced in my life, I have still found a way to love. Because this love that I seek is also within me.

Thanks for reading! I hope you like it. If you do, hit the FB like button or Tweet it out. Also, look at the side bar! Things have changed a bit. I am making more art, selling it on Etsy, and writing on Medium as well. I am also within a week of moving in to my tiny house, so I MIGHT miss the next deadline for this blog. We will see. Thanks again for reading.

On Motherhood

2/11/2019

I knew from an early age that I would not be a mother. I knew this because I decided that I would only become a mother if I had met and loved a man who could rise to the monumental challenge of being a good father. I never thought I would meet that man, and I never did.

It is not to say that I have not known many decent fellows. I have. I just think that being a good father, just like being a good mother, takes a certain level of commitment which many men simply never learn.

My own mother loved me very much. This I never doubted. Unfortunately, her own pain and fear got in the way of her being good for my brother and I. I have accomplished a great deal and have become a solid individual as a result of the obstacles I have had to overcome due to a challenging childhood. But it doesn't mean I was nurtured or cared for in a way that would have produced a confident, well-adjusted woman. My mother had far more on her plate, emotionally, than I have had to contend with, so I have, with the passage of time, come to see my upbringing as a gift of sorts.

Quite a few of my friends are excellent mothers. When I say they are excellent, I mean they are mothers who make me pause in awe at their selflessness and ability to love and nurture their children no matter what type of pain they are carrying. I have been relying on these women for their support in the recent painfully arduous weeks, and I know for certain that I would not have healed as well as I have if it weren't for them.

The loss and heartbreak I have been dealing with in the past month has prompted me to feel all of the loss, all of the grief, all of the anger and pain I have felt with every departure of an important person in my life. My mother died when I was 36, but I realize that I lost her long before the death of her body. I lost her when I was about six years old. That was the first time I hugged her and I could not feel the pain draining from my body. It was the first time I felt my mother reject the hurt I needed to release. I am not sure if it was conscious or not, but it was definitely a shift and one I noted. I lost her healing energy at a young age and I never felt it again.

It is a giant, courageous task to choose to raise a human, even without all the bullshit that goes on in this world to crush people into dust. I never had the nerve, never wanted to find out if I would resent my children the way my mother resented me. But I have had the good fortune to watch certain of my friends show me how to raise a person, how to lift up the spirits in their children so they feel brave in this frighteningly dangerous world. It brings hope to my weary eyes and an optimism to my soul. It is yet another gift good mothers give the world, for theirs is the task of providing hope where there is none, showing new humans how to look for ways to shine, and in doing so, showing even the most cynical and unlovable among us that we too, are worthy of love.

In with Both Feet

2/3/2019

This is the only way I know out of heartbreak. I am not trying to avoid the pain, the feeling of emptiness that pervades every moment of my day, On the contrary, my creative work is a way for me to harness this pain and move into it, so that I can move through it.

I wake every morning and reach for my journal. I write whatever has occurred to me in the quick moments after waking. I am always surprised by how much I fit into those first breaths of awareness. How much I feel through into my being in the early hours of the day. I meditate, eat, breathe, then walk over to my studio. I have several things I can do, but there is nothing that gets me into my body like the throwing of a pot. The rhythm of clay is much slower than the rhythm of human energy, you see.

Clay is alive. It goes through many phases on its way to becoming, and on its way there, the potter must pay attention, pay respect, and in the end, collaborate in a way that celebrates a letting go of control.

When I sit down at my wheel, I must slow myself down. Clay is soft, slow, consistent. If I listen to it, feel into it, it can slow me down as well. Each moment I am at my wheel I am appreciating. I am not just happy that I have the ability to throw, I can see that my particular form of throwing expresses my inner life. When I am angry, I inevitably throw off-kilter. I ruin pots more often than not because my heart is in my anger, and anger is a hungry beast that steals effort from any external endeavor. My sad pots are thick-rimmed and sometimes wonky. My happy pots are loose, lovely, rhythmic. In order to work with clay, I create a relationship with it which requires listening to feedback in the form of behavior. No matter what, my pots will tell me a story if I am present.

This is how I have been working through the grief of the loss of the love of my life. I have been examining how I have been able to get out of the way when I needed to, and how I failed to get out of the way when it would have been helpful. Through my art making practice, I have been getting constant feedback from my materials and my creative wanderings that have bolstered my confidence and reminded me of who I am and what I am capable of.

It's not that I think that throwing pots or even making art is the solution to everyone's emotional challenges. I am not suggesting that everyone take up a hobby. The value for me is putting my whole heart into something so soon after it has been smashed into thousands of pieces. I am taking risks with my heart after I have been crushed, and it has reminded me of my courage. It has reminded me of my magic.

I have never been more satisfied than I was in this relationship to which I gave my all. I am so proud of myself for having faced my fears and loved anyway. It is the same with my art. The more I can engage whole-heartedly, the better the result. This is not to say that the art I make is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, it means that the process I undertake with which to make a piece is one which reflects back to me all that I need to know in each moment that I am engaged.

For now, that is enough. I will work through my heartbreak whenever I make anything I put my heart into, and maybe someday, when I sit down at the wheel, I will have the opportunity to work through something else.

Love is Anarchy

1/27/2019

The clean sheets call my bones to rest but I cannot. I am feeling the energy return to my body as my mind moves over the events of my life with the swift touch of loving familiarity.

I have been feeling more and more that my time in this human vessel has not been linear, but radiating out from the hub of a central experience. An organizing event, pivotal and one from which every other experience has sprung, occurred half-way through my life. I cannot explain it, though I embrace it. Even as it perplexes me, I see my marriage and divorce as that from which all other love relationships have grown.

My first love, my mother and father, my sexual abuse, even the relationship I have with my twin brother has been informed by this, and not the other way around, but how could this be? I have no answer except to say that this past heartbreak feels closer to a primal loss, closer to the grief I felt earlier in my life. I look back on my divorce and believe this centrally located phenomenon was known to me as a child.

I do, after all, understand love differently. Love for me now is an healing energy that I can use to know myself, my friends, my lovers, love is a way of being. And love has re-organized my understanding of how things happen. It is dimensional. It is anarchy.

For so long, I have traded my efforts for love, my time and energy for the return of being loved. Minutes and hours of care and consideration in exchange for expectation unfulfilled. I have done this in every relationship I have had, including this last one, but now I see how and why I ended this generous relationship in a decidedly loving manner. I have begun to understand that I need not reach for love because I am in fact swimming in it.

Now that I know this, I feel through situations in which I have been distracted from this fact, times when I have been diverted from the awareness of the love that flows around me. This doesn't mean I'm happier or in a better place, in fact, I would say my confusion over spacetime is profound, like I just opened a door on something I cannot keep from pouring out. I'm a two year old who has just had a lesson in trigonometry, lost in it, but dazzled. My mind feels wide and deep and my lungs, anxious for breath, swim in the spiral of knowing. It is the hardest thing to be still. As loss and grief swirl around me, I float in the pain of it, the sadness flows through my sinew to my fingertips and keeps me from reaching again.

I must take this space in order to understand myself before I reach out for anything because I might just reach for something that in the end, I will not want. I will familiarize myself with the topography of this expansion, and while I hope for borders, I also secretly wish that I might not find any.

I hope there is no end to this.

Love and Hate in the Same Lesson.

1/20/2019

The world is shivering with pain, it seems, and I shiver within it. I am beside myself with grief and illness and an ache that seems to know no bottom, and I don't believe that I am alone. It doesn't help me when I am crying on the shoulder of my roommate, or friend, or stranger on the street. We are all of us in pain. This is our unifying trait.

Not long ago, I planned a "project of hate" which I believed would take me all over the world. I have observed, no matter where I have lived, that the community around me shares a hatred for some other group. Oftentimes it is purely geographic, but without exception, there is some form of distrust or loathing on the part of the commonwealth for some other outside group. I believed I could go around the world following the "thread of hate" from one group to the next. I never did it because I decided to do A Love Rebellion instead.

This is what makes our present unpleasantness so challenging. No matter which victim is pointing the finger, no matter how much good they have done in the world, they too are guilty of this act. There has been too much violent, exploitative history between people for too many centuries for this not to be the case.

It is the one thing we have learned over the course of human existence, how to hate when we feel threatened. The key is to learn how not to feel the threat, or, at the very least, not to act on this fear as it reads in our newspapers, plays on our televisions and in our movies, and runs through the veins of our politicians. Even the people who call themselves "healers" belittle other groups in order to prove that they are somehow above this all-too-human condition.

So I go about breaking myself open, again and again, to learn how to heal, how to love, how to be there for myself without judgment, because that is my practice. I walk in this pain as the soles of my feet pulse with the sadness of the earth. I breathe in the chaotic air that whips through the trees, encouraging the birds to flight. I cry as often as I can, and let the toxic lessons I have learned throughout all the painful episodes of my life run down my cheeks.

I am endlessly becoming a different human than I was, and this endeavor has brought so much richness and life to my experience, but it has also brought loss, ache, and great sacrifice. I learned hate from the same people from who I learned love. This is the underlying conflict for all that I feel. I have come to understand that I both love and hate who I am. My hate is based in lack, disappointment, regret, and resentment. My love lies in comfort, success, and engagement. Both live within me, and always will.

Presently I resonate more with the pain and the loss of the people around me, but I know there is an end to this time. It is my hope that someday all humans will find that the thread that is easiest to follow is one of love, and that I might make a project out of that commonality.

I think about living in a place where the people all share a love for another group so fiercely, that that loved group is inspired to kindle its own flame for another group entirely. It sounds crazy even as I write it, but I am forced to hope that it is possible. I am forced to believe that one day we can stop seeing each other as competition for scarce resources and start seeing each other as potent collaborators.

There is so much wasted creative genius in the race of humans. Wasted in wars, in planned incarcerations, in exploitation of the weak and less fortunate. I know this as I know my own bones. As I know my own waste. As I know my own creative genius. I am no different than anyone else.

That is why I still have hope.

The Ease of Hate

1/13/2019

I knew the moon would bring me pain. Staring up at it each night, knowing that you were also looking, this agony I predicted. I predicted the longing I would feel for you each time I heard a familiar bird call. I knew that when I went to our favorite coffee shop, my gut would drop with each sip I had the courage to take.

This was all easy predict because I still love you, and our split was the hardest thing I have ever had to do simply because there is still love between us.

But I could not go on hurting you, and I could not go on being hurt. It was too much to bear to know that I was tormenting my favorite person. I walked around in misery most of the time, missing you and fearing you simultaneously, anxious that I might open my mouth and again cause you pain. I was having a hard time living with myself. This was why I knew it was time. Not because I hated you, but because I was beginning to hate me. And I cannot allow that.

It would be easier to shift the blame to you, to fool myself into believing that it was your fault, but I know better than that. I mean, I know it is not all on me, but I cannot account for your part of it, as it is no longer my business. But it would be easier. It would be easier to hate you.

Today I felt this most acutely when something really great happened for me. For a moment, I was jubilant. Buoyancy filled my lungs and with my first joyful breath I could feel the old tingle of bliss in my fingertips. But in the next moment, it was gone, snatched from me as I had the impulse to share it with my favorite person, because he was always so proud of me when I did good. It was in these happy moments, when I shared my good news, that I felt most loved, most cherished. And in that moment I wanted to hate you. I wished I could.

But I cannot. I can't bring myself to do the easy thing simply because I love you so much.

So I will sit with this, knowing I have chosen this challenging path, living with the pain of loss and the fear of anything wonderful happening because the person I would want to share it with is no longer my person. He is his own and I am my own and while I want to hate him, I cannot.

You might not have signed up for this type of blog writing, but this is where I am right now, and I will be writing like this until I don't need to anymore. Just giving you a heads up now. Thanks for reading, and if you have any encouraging comments, I would love it if you could leave them below.

The Courage of Stars

12/28/2018

The courage of the stars is stunning. Last night I was shocked to see them up there, it felt like forever since I had last looked up, and I almost felt guilty, taking them for granted.

But they were there for me, as they always are, lighting the dark cloak of the night sky, reflecting back what I hope for in each upward glance.

This consistency inspires me, for I have been anything but. Today, when I told my therapist of the false pretense in my relationship, I expected surprise. I got none.

Evidently, a lot of women get into relationships and then do anything they can, including giving up parts of themselves, so that they can be loved. I admitted this to my partner, that I had been ignoring a large part of myself, working diligently on his house, taking care of his family in times of need, because I believe that I need to earn his love. I believe that I need to prove my worth. This is not his fault, though it would be easy to blame him. Easy because then I would not have to focus on what lies beneath my pretense.

It is all me. He never asked for any of it. Furthermore, he has told me repeatedly that I didn't need to do it. I tried to believe him. I pulled back on working on his house, taking care of his relatives, doing extra things for him. But that left me in a panic. I started having anxiety attacks. I saw threat in behavior I had formerly seen as loving. I do not know how to just allow the love to come to me. It seems impossible.

As time passed, I did less, and for that, I struggled with my fear, I pushed him away with insulting behavior, accusing questions, and coldness. I just wouldn't believe that he could love me without my labor, or my sacrifice, or the denial of needs I had so expertly pulled off for years. I would not believe him.

I sit afterwards in the ache of knowing that I have hurt him, ruminating in my deception. I have seriously undercut our ability to move forward into the next year as we have been. I can no longer do this. I want more. I have wanted more all along and until this point, have not been brave enough to ask for it. But I am not foolish enough to blame him for it.

And last night I looked up at the stars. And their courage gave me hope.

I woke this morning still in my ache but also something else. I didn't know what until I looked up this evening and saw only clouds. I remembered the courage of the stars. And I thought that maybe someday, I would do that too.

No Place Like Home

10/17/2018

The smell of old wood and cigarettes lingers in the air of my memories of home. The knot in my gut and buzz in my skin are the feelings of my first family.

I left that place many times in different manners, first geographically, then emotionally, then psychologically, then philosophically.

But I also carry it with me. I have cleansed my soul of that place many times over, but no matter how clean I ever believe myself to be, I can always smell it. I can smell the indifference in the cigarettes. I can feel the burning in my skin that longs to be touched.

I always worried about being taken care of. Would I get any attention? Would I be remembered? I felt, after a time, that I could disappear pretty easily and no one would notice. So I chose to work hard, to earn the love and attention. I chose to throw myself in to a life I thought I could fill.

Now it is not so much about disappearing as how to exist. It is not a sadness or an emptiness I feel, but a confusion. I work at many different things all day long, things I care about, things that feel heavy and meaningful and filled with purpose. I do things that excite me. I do things that keep me awake.

But in the middle of it, I can feel it. Cold indifference is always there. Most of the time, I can handle it. I can go through the meaty days of my life with this feeling. But I slow down and it catches me. I slow down and it seeps in and transfixes my movement into the world.

My first home. There is no place like it, but somehow, I keep seeing it that way. I recreate the shit that tortures me.

I understand addiction from that point, and it scares me. I can see soaking myself in alcohol to dull that ache, I can feel that fear, that pain softens in to silence with each bottle, or smoke, or bite of cake or shot of heroine. I completely understand that reaction.

At this point, I should be able to leave it. It's been over forty years. I still live it, and in comparison to what others face, it is nothing. It is thin and flimsy and should not have this hold on me. But it does.

There really is no place like home.

Counting Time

8/15/2018

The clocks tick, tock, tick, tock, tick. I sit in the counting and feel the distance between the present moment and long ago and much further east where I last felt this consistent pulse.

My father was an antique dealer and loved old clocks. He had many of them in his house, and each night, he would walk around on old, creaky floors winding them, commenting on their beauty and tone, and reveled in the chimes at every quarter hour.

Contemporary tocks are hollow. They come from plastic cases run with batteries, and like so many new things, are a pale and and thin experience compared to what came before. This is a lesson I imbibed wholeheartedly; the value of good work, of items crafted with the user in mind, not just their money, but their lives, for if something is to count down the seconds, minutes and hours of your life, it is best if it is something that counts with style, grace, and some type of solid authority. I want a reverence in the clock that marks the moments in my life.

This thing that I have about well-made objects is one way I know myself. I don't want throw-away culture because there is nothing in it for me. To bathe in the history of a thing or a place is to better understand what I love and why. To understand that an item was loved by a person who is now dead is to live with a lovely echo that is not your own, but human nonetheless.

I make things. I write. I hope to bring a little bit of joy to people by giving them my art, or, maybe if I am lucky, selling it to them. I make the things I make because I love the process I must use to bring them about. I have spent a good portion of my life figuring out how to put my heart into the things I make while simultaneously cultivating the ability to let go of the end product.

Detachment is a dreamy state where I feel so in love with a moment I must forget in the next and the next and the next. So much is missed on the surface of things that to move through the world too quickly is a cheat. I am appalled by the idea that you must "hack" experiences in life, or fit your work week into only four hours, do less to get more in less time. What is a life made of if not the tasks you do to make a living? To live a life?

Like the old clocks that counted time in my father's house, I like to feel the seconds seeping. I like to know that there is some meaning to passing my time, other than avoiding engaging with it. I won't be trying to avoid wrinkles, or getting rid of any of the marks that show my age because I am proud of the time I have spent taking the world in to my body and illuminating the moments that have mattered to me.

Like my father reveling in the passing of every quarter hour, I too will celebrate the moments that I have fully engaged with the world around me. I will bathe in the knowledge that I took the opportunity to feel and love as much as I could while I had the time.

As Ferris Bueller once famously said, "life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around every once in a while, you might miss it."

The Bee Buzzes and I Humm

8/10/2018

The bee buzzes around my face and ears and finally lands on my shoulder. I have no idea what the draw is. I'm painting a small house with a thick, purple substance that smells like ammonia, but for some reason the bees still want to sleep on me. It makes me feel special, chosen, as if there is such a thing, that the bees like to rest on my arms while I work. I have to be careful not to mush or prod any of them too much lest they freak out with their stinger and fall to their doom.

I think about this a lot as I move carefully throughout my days in the woods. What if humans dropped dead if we overreacted to possible threats? What if, when we hurt someone, we immediately felt that pain and suffered some irreversible consequence, like losing a limb? Or a digit?

We are further away from each other as time passes, and further away from the pain we cause, yet closer and closer to being hurt. I have been told that my very presence is a threat. This is a pain that most do not escape, this fear of the other, this treatment of the leper. We have been taught to fear and loathe each other., and we teach this lesson we learn, mindlessly.

This is why I go back to bees. They do so much good, each sweet buzzy thing, they keep the whole world alive with their work, minding the flowers, carrying pollen wherever they travel.

I am not so lucky. I don't remember the last time I inadvertently saved anything or anyone. I have never accidentally carried life on my limbs, save the bees, and that is more of a combination of extreme awareness and dumb luck than anything else.

The world is calling for my presence, awareness, compassion, and love. It calls me to myself, to inhabit my skin again, though I have been trained out of it for so long, it might be a tough sell to persuade me back in, the me that is in constant need of weight management, of hair or wrinkle removal, or breast enhancement, or nose reduction. Everything I have been taught educates me toward self criticism. It is a distraction in itself, this false desire to amend what has been given.

This is the sadness I carry with me and the lie I believe in, that if I change my appearance my life will be better. If I look more like everyone else, if I fit in, I will finally be happy. But there is no happiness found in conformity to the mediocre. There is no joy in stifling the freak that runs through the blood of our species. And who am I to do so? My people, all people depend on me to break this, smash it utterly and shine the light on this lie.

It takes so much to stand for ourselves. So much to stand for each other, but I must do this now. I have to wake up from this lie that we are separate, that we are a threat to each other. That allowing others in will only cause pain. We have to stop killing each other out of fear. We are not mindless creatures but beings capable of great and lovely things.

I cannot bear the thought of dying, knowing that our greatest inventions have led to the deaths of millions. I cannot sit with the knowledge that our great minds work to bring us products of destruction, and that the sale of these items makes the world spin. Finally, I cannot die having been just like everyone else, knowing that what I strived for was to be average, regular, normal. I do not want to look back on my life knowing that in the end, I didn't even have the courage to pull out my stinger.

Bees might sting when they are threatened, but theirs is a culture of life, while ours is a culture of death. We must be brave enough to change this. We must find the life in our culture and propagate. Our great minds can create life, joy, and opportunity for everyone. We do not have to create, teach and sew the seeds of death.

I will suffer the consequences of this mindless sleep of consumption daily until I can wake up and save myself. I will not do this inadvertently. I am not as lucky as the bees. The life I must carry must be intentional. I must forcefully pull the kindness, the love out of my hearts and bring it in to this world. I cannot cling to the false safety of conformity any longer.

I am more than willing to use my stinger. I am more than willing to use everything I have to fight for life.

I know it is scary, hard, even uncomfortable to stand up for love, peace, and kindness. It is terrifying just to be yourself in a world that demands conformity. But WE must. People are killed every day as a direct result of this lie. We have to have the courage to change it. Our species is dying of the slow suicide of self-hate.