The Weary Kind

Oh my poor bloggy blog!  And readers, let me first fling open the door and sweep away the cobwebs before you come in ......

For reasons, some of them I understand and some of them I don't, I haven't blogged for over two weeks.  I liken it most to hibernation.  My soul is a bit battered I have to admit.  But frankly, who's soul isn't a bit battered?

And double-frankly, what would life be like if everything went smoothly and graced us with only happiness all of the time?  Ick.  Boring.  Vanilla.  Please pinch me and wake me up from this wonderful dream!

I tend to allude to it only occasionally, but really, the reason and focus of this blog is to help me find my way through this period of my life.  If we live long enough (like more than one minute) we are all faced with our changing lives and having to adapt to them.  But certain phases are particularly difficult.  And these days if you're so inclined, there is this opportunity to blog about it.  My sincere hope for anyone who chooses to read this blog is that you find a comaraderie and the occasional inspiration to help you through whatever phase in life you are facing, whether you are finding it particularly difficult or not. 

In other words this is not an online diary but hopefully a living, breathing dialogue that benefits me and you. 

That said, I'm sorry I've bailed on you for the past two weeks.  But honestly it will probably happen again now & then.  It is my way.  Sometimes I need to retreat.  Sometimes I need to hibernate.  I need to rest and lick my wounds.  I need to be alone and to be introspective and to be quiet.  I need to grow and to get stronger.  And I need to wait for my compass to realign and point the way.

*****

Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

I've seen Crazy Heart twice in so many days--the Jeff Bridges movie in which he's up for best actor tonight?  Ok so it's crazy good.  I will cry my eyeballs out if he doesn't win the Oscar.  Go see it in the theater if you can.  I don't want to spoil it by giving any of it away but let me say this .....I am the biggest fan of music but definitely not a big country music fan.  As a point of illustration I went out of my way a few weeks ago to track down the only non-country music bar in all of Nashville, which I now regret.  If you don't already know Crazy Heart is about a washed-up country-music man ....

(OMG and the literal thousands of parallels to ex-boyfriend musician Steve are literally hysterical starting with when he stumbles out of his beat-up thirty year-old Suburban after a long drive between gigs, with his pants and belt buckle undone .....and ending with when I ask him from my nice little suburban house in Virginia which hotel he's in while he's on the road and he answers he has no idea what f***ing hotel he's in, "Hell I don't even know what f***ing town I'm in!")

.....so after watching Crazy Heart, I realize I should have totally soaked up every bit of country music in Nashville while I had the opportunity.  Nothing like being country music serenaded while staring down hard times.  I should have totally been there.

Country music is perfect for this movie.  And this is a near perfect movie.  Go see it.

I want to leave you with the theme song from Crazy Heart which is also up for Best Original Song tonight and which also could be the theme song for today's post: The Weary Kind, Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

The Weary Kind

(Theme from Crazy Heart)

Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

Your Heart's on the loose

You rolled those sevens with

Nothin' to lose

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

You called all your shots

Shootin' eight balls at the corner

Truck stop

Somehow this don't feel like home

Anymore

This ain't no place

For the weary kind

This ain't no place

To lose your mind

This ain't no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give it one

More try

Your body aches

From playing your guitar and sweatin'

out the hate

The days and the nights all feel

The same

The whiskey has been

The thorn in your side that

Doesn't forgive

The highway that calls for your

Heart inside

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

This ain't no place to lose your mind

This ain't no place to fall behind

Pick up your crazy heart and give

It one more try

Your lover's warm kiss

Is too damn far from your fingertips

You are the man that ruined the world

Your heart's on the loose

You rolled them sevens with

Nothin' to lose

This ain't no place for

The weary kind

Crazy Heart Official Website

Poetry Girl Sunday--Dear God

Today for Poetry Girl Sunday, I am featuring one of my favorite bloggers jenx67.  You can find her in my Golden Blogroll--down, down--in the right sidebar.  Her blog is dedicated to celebrating & commenting on all things Generation X; the generation loosely defined as those people born between 1961-1981 (the generation on the heels of the Baby Boomers).  One of the things that distinctifies Generation X is that we are aging.  Much to our surprise.

(btw, I was born in May 1961 so I am barely a Generation X-er--well me and George Clooney who was born 18 days before me--charming company although he appears to like years-younger women not days-younger women .....sigh)

Aging.  Not a new human experience.  If life is a mountain, it is as if I have reached a clearing near the top.  I've stopped here for awhile and am resting.  I look all around me--I can see the path I have taken to get here.  I can see others behind me, on their way up.  I can see those ahead of me on the path making their way down the mountain. I can see the path in front of me leading into the future.  It is, at once, magnificent and daunting. It is empowering and heartbreaking. Frightening and exciting.  Mysterious and certain. Validating and invalidating.

Dear God, why must life be so impervious, relentless, and unforgiving?

Two concepts of aging have quietly introduced themselves to me in my mountaintop clearing that go beyond the expected aging concepts in which you become less attractive and more frail : 1) other people in my life are aging too!  Oh no!! and 2) I feel the same as I always have ...only perhaps ...(only slightly) wiser.

jenx's poem "leaving you just when i needed to most" will possibly leave you perplexed.  But please read it not worrying about what jenx meant ....think about what it might mean to you.  The best poets want to leave you with an insight into your own life, not theirs.  After I read "leaving you just when i needed to most" this past week, without consciously bidding it, her strong images of loss and grief kept coming back to me. 

Who wants that you might ask? 

But from my mountain-top perspective, I know you can't live long enough to reach the clearing without experiencing loss.  And I realize I need to reconcile my own feelings of loss before I can move on.  I can't head into the future without a sense of peace about ALL aspects of life including the impervious, relentless, unforgiving, and yes, grief-filled aspects.

Ironically (or not--connections are everywhere if you look for them), the same day I read jenx's poem, I opened my new Mark Knopfler (of Dire Straits) CD, Get Lucky.  The second track is called "Hard Shoulder".

Read jenx's poem and let the images speak to you.  Listen to Mark Knopfler's "Hard Shoulder" too.  For me, perhaps inexplicably, they call out to one another and they are both calling out to me.  Think about the feelings they invoke.  Feel at one with each because you've experienced loss and disappointment and failure too.  Feel unburdened by kindred spirits.  Feel a connection to another human being.  Feel, no matter where you are on the mountain, a sort of transcendence beyond your moment by moment, minute by minute life--dare to feel it all; dare to feel the very most alive.

*****

leaving you just when i needed to most

Let me just tell the world:
I left you today
And I’m certain when I did,
I chipped a tile
From the Mosaic
The fractured Bride of God.

It seems I had no choice
For 25 some-odd years I’ve watched
The same man
Silver hair and a gold horn
He played it like me
But, safer
And, you know,

I didn’t.

I fancied myself bombastic
Like James the Less
And, now here I am
No more casseroles to supplant our superficial conversations
You left
Just when you needed me most.

And, so this is what I choose for myself
This fractured daughter of God.

I stuff the change in my cold Armani pocket
And, I hold the door behind me
For you, a stranger
Four gallons of water looped around your fingers
They sway you in the Oklahoma wind
You smile with heartbroken
Ghastly yellow teeth
And, say with Broadway exuberance
My radiator is overheating and
I have to have all this water just to get home!

You twirl oddly in the wind
Talking to the sky
And, I leave you.
Just like everyone else
And I carry myself, all privilege gone
To a business appointment
Which I want to abandon
To sit with you in the Oklahoma wind
Cradle you on this prairie
And tell you

Why do we answer questions
No one is asking?
Did you think your sorrow would escape me?
It did not

Tonight, you’ll cook your crank in a bath tub
But, only after we find a new radiator
Together at a junkyard
Just like my dad had to do a dozen times.
And, I’ll hold you in a rusted automobile
And beat my chest and say
We are having church!

My God, we are having church
All you effing sonsofbitches.

But, I am dreaming.
I have missed another opportunity
And, I was missed a dozen times
1,500 lonely days
We beat crickets off us while we watched Kimmy eat a bug.
Survivors. It was so long ago.

The radiator hisses
like the last summer of childhood
Lizard juice and burned rubber
The wishes boiled and smoked
And, I was too proud.
I wanted everyone to read my mind.

But, I would not change it
I am halfway to the skeleton frame
Where I belong.

I am leaving you.
I know.
You were innocent like me.
Keeping appointments
God never intended you to make to begin with.
                                                  --jenx67


Mark Knopfler, Hard Shoulder

Hard Shoulder

I've got latches for windows, handles for doors
Grinders and scrapers and sanders for floors
Rake for the gravel, chains for the snow
Always got the shovel - you never know
I never thought you'd go

Man's broken down
Man's broken down on the slip road
Got a slipped load
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on

Hacksaws and hammers, brushes and mop
Then I've got the ladders up on the top
If something needs doing, I always say
You want it done the proper way
I need you to stay

Man's broken down
Man's broken down on the slip road
Got a slipped load
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on

Give me a minute we'll be going again
Sound as a pound, right as rain
- right as rain
And it's a hard shoulder to cry on
- to cry on
                                                  --Mark Knopfler


PS--be sure to check-out jenx67--are you there God? it's me generation X

Sometimes I Need A Caveman

I cast myself as the "modern, no nonsense, (invisibly) Z-snapping woman".  If I do say so myself.

I take no guff from no guy.  I tell him immediately, loudly if necessary, when I know he's behaving badly.  And at my medium-age (refuse to say middle-age--"medium-age" much better), I  know every  guy-trick in the book and may, possibly, be rather jaded.  All the boys and men in my life know not to cross me, but of course they do because they're guys, and when it happens they hear about it. 

Hmmph.  After re-reading, am now thinking of re-casting myself as the "b*tch"!

So it pained me greatly when like an uninvited guest, a certain epiphany, knocked on my door last week.  It was actually not a horrible week--I had one night when I couldn't sleep, but I've more than made that up.  So what, then?

#1 Scenario involving guy friend who I've known since we were both 14 years-old--I'm not too good when something not-good happens unexpectedly.

Most people probably aren't great at dealing with the unexpected but I'm pretty sure I'm worse than most.  And this not-good thing that happened wasn't even that bad!  But it hit me wrong for fifty reasons and I reacted quickly and I got pretty upset.  It all went down in a "texting-storm":

me:  I am REALLY not happy with you ....call me!

him: Can't talk now.  Why are you so upset?  You act like this was a life threatening event!

me: You could have at least told me about it!  It's worse than you're making it!  You promised me you would always tell me if something like this happened. I'm so far away ....(sniff)

him: Ugh! I'll try harder but you need to calm down        please.

"You need to calm down (space)(space)(space) please?"  "You'll try?"  I instantly did as I was told and calmed down!  All it took was that "space-space-space please" and I'm fine with you dragging me in my mini-leopard dress into the cave!!!!!!!

#2 Scenario involving boyfriend--I'm tired of fighting with adorable, annoying musician boyfriend who lives on the complete other side of the country.

We haven't seen each other since June which is just too long for a couple to be apart.  Of course long-distance relationships are far from ideal and this one is suffering under the circumstances.  So the other day we were bickering over something I don't even remember now, and he announces that:

"We are going to be ONLY NICE to each other for two weeks!  No resentments.  No annoying behavior.  And if either of us is resentful or annoying, the other one has to ignore it.  For two weeks!" 

Simple, huh?  Will it work?  Probably not.  But it might!  And man!  Boy.  Have I been nice ever since!!  And it's nice ......drag me into the cave and ravish me now, will you?

So what's the deal????  Why is a strong, clear-headed woman folding so easily and letting a (cave)man take charge?  I don't know.  But I know I'm tired of being in charge of everything, all the time.  And I know I'm not right about everything even though I believe I am, most of the time.  #1 scenario--you were right that I was overreacting and you told me politely.  And you didn't make it worse by getting mad  too.  Sensitive, respectful, & calm.  Thank-you.  #2 scenario--you were right that I have not been very nice for awhile and since you took charge and came up with a plan, I will genuinely give it a go.  Plus I love you.

Sigh. 

The epiphany: every now and then ....especially when I'm behaving badly ....I just need a caveman.

Poetry Girl Sunday #4

I have lost two dear family members this year.   I am 48.  Although it is not the sole domain of my age group--it is a fact of life that the older we get the more people who have mattered in our lives will die.

We humans have a hard time completely grasping death.  In my uncle's case, I hadn't seen him for years.  Yet his death affected me greatly.  I found myself wondering if he had any idea what he really meant to me?  He was an engineer who helped develop the tiles that kept the Apollo capsules from becoming fireballs as they reentered the Earth's atmosphere.  He was a curious-minded inventor.  He was a fun uncle.  He always got down on our level, literally.  There's a picture of my sister & I, we look like we're four & five at the time, on the floor with Omar.  He's showing us something--one of us is pointing excitedly.  We're all three enraptured by the excitment of it all. 

When my boys were approximately the same ages as Lisa & I had been, Mil & Omar came for a visit.  At one point I couldn't find anyone.  Finally I heard noises in the downstairs coat closet.  Omar had the boys in there showing them something you could see only in the dark.  Now, I ask you, if you heard a story about a woman's uncle who had her two little boys in the closet with him, what would you think?  But now that you know Omar, you know.  The piece of titanium alloy that he brought all the way from Los Angeles, just to show the boys, still sits in a place of honor on Thing One's dresser.

Omar was married to my mom's sister.  We all knew that Omar was the most brilliant member of the family--the family he married in to.  In a cruel twist, Omar spent the last ten years of his life losing his mind to something like Alzheimer's.  I never knew exactly what it was.  It didn't matter.  When he died in June on Father's Day, I hadn't seen him for nearly six years.  My every day existence was not going to miss him.  But did he know how much I loved him?  Why didn't I just tell him that, emphatically if necessary, before the end?

Death is so strange.  One second you're there like you've always been.  The next you're not. 

Speaking for myself, I'm not very good at remembering this as I'm caught up in the throes of regular day-to-day living.  I take for granted that you are always going to be a breathing, heart-beating influence in my life. Plus I tend to dwell, stew, on the things and the people and the things about the people that bother me--and often, I have no doubt, I am quite right to be bothered by them.  But when you're gone and it's all over, what is left has little to do with those things I spent so much time stewing on.

I'm going to leave you with two poems today that may seem a little disparate, but if you give them time to simmer together perhaps they will become good food for thought as we gather with our loved ones for Thanksgiving this week.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze.  No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
                                  --Robert Hayden


from To Lou Andreas-Salome

.....For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you.  I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation.  Longing leads out too often
into vagueness.  Why should I cast myself,
when, for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.
                                   Duino, late autumn 1911
                                   --Rainier Maria Rilke

My Mom Suit

It's a beautiful night, not a full moon, but it's getting there.  Bright and white.  It's one of those nights with clouds that are lit up from above.  It's the night before Halloween.  At the tail end of my walk, I round back into my neighborhood and I see that almost every house is poised to spring Halloween on any who dare trick-or-treat tomorrow night.  I think it's cute I realize--even the ghoulish lawns with plastic, bloody-stump severed limbs scattered on the grass and skeletons leaning up against tree trunks.  I'm always amazed at how Snoopy-dog-house-festive some people get (only drape Snoopy's house in Halloween, not Christmas).  I admire these Snoopy-decorators for their complete unselfconsciousness and pure verve.

I tend toward the self-conscious, shouldn't it be tasteful?  I grudgingly admit I'm a Martha Stewart wannabe even though I can't stand her smug mug and that "Dahh-ling, we simply mu-ssst get together in the Haahhh-mptons" accent.  Ok but the woman does everything beautifully.  Everything.  Beautifully.  So I admire her but she freaks me out and plus I hate snobs.  Where am I going? .............oh yeah, I'm a self-conscious decorator more or less.

But having kids loosened me up in the decorating department.  Over the years we've had giant, black, trash bag-newspaper stuffed spiders on the front lawn with red Solo Cup eyes & white cut-out fangs, and plastic things hanging from trees, and scary frankenstein sounds blaring from the front door.

This year Thing One is at college, and almost sixteen-Thing Two is spending the night with friends tonight and making Halloween plans with said friends tomorrow night.  Very normal scenario for an eighteen year-old and a fifteen year-old.  It's just, I know when I walk up my driveway tonight I'm not going to see a single visible Halloween decoration.  How did I let that happen??  I even wrestled today with whether or not I should go get a pumpkin and I didn't!

It occured to me that becoming a mom is to donn a mom-suit.  And at this phase in my life, I'm half in and half out of the mom-suit.  Certainly, I know that growing older doesn't mean you don't carve pumpkins or hang fake spiders on fake webs anymore!  But I'm in flux.  I'm not quite sure of the way.  I know I should march confidently ahead but I find myself looking back more than ever before.  I don't think I want to find myself scooping out seeds and making ghost marshmallows by myself this year.

I glance up at the sky one more time before I go inside.  As I open the door, I decide I'm going to settle down in my comfy leather chair with some herbal tea and watch "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".  I don't think even Snoopy decorated his place this Halloween .......