I want to be this good

I am totally in love with all the great photos over at Ree's site. IN LOVE. Maybe I just have a thing for livestock, but these are some of the most gorgeous images I've seen. This is how good I want to be when I grow up.

I'm thinking of starting him on caffeine

The Autumn Sessions

I guess I won't be expecting a heart attack any time soon.

I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation.
~ Raymond Carver

why the laundry is piling up

I don't think I've ever been in darkness this thick. It's soft, like wading through some sort of velvet fog, but blacker than anything I've ever experienced.

It also weighs about a million pounds.

REPOST

Dammit, just because I want to and the bottle agreed. And because it's so darn gooooooooood.

And I can take or leave it if I please.

Through early morning fog I see
The visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

Beauty, Ugly.

This was the view from my driveway yesterday afternoon. I wish I could have better captured the quality of the light; it was if the whole neighborhood was enveloped in a great orange parachute. It was very cool.



Have you ever seen that show Intervention on Bravo? It's about addicts and their issues and their recovery, and from time to time there's a short excerpt from someone who was once one of the addicts but has since recovered, and in almost all of these little interviews, the person says that "actually viewing themselves" and how awful they looked and behaved during their addiction made them that much stronger during their recovery. With that in mind, I snapped a self-portrait on what may have been one of the very worst, most pitiful, most self-absorbed days I have ever spent as an adult. I hope I can keep going back to it so that I will NEVER act like that again.

no not one

Done so many evil things in the name of love, it’s a crying shame
I never did see no fire that could put out a flame.

Pull your hat down, baby, pull the wool down over your eyes,
Keep a-talking, baby, ‘til you run right out of alibis.
Someday you’ll account for all the deeds that you done.
Well, there ain’t no man righteous, no not one.

– Bob Dylan, “Ain’t No Man Righteous (no not one)”

um, help?

What does one do when one's therapist is on vacation?

The tequila is already gone.

Layer Cake

And She Waited…

You Missed the Parade

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So now won't make it today
You're on the highway taking the long way home
Slowly but surely you're on your way now
You're on your way down to your town
Won't make it today won't say you're sorry
Won't even call to say you're late
You missed the parade you missed your birthday
Missed every single holiday
Forgot your way home it's been too long now
Too much has changed now it's been too many yesterdays...
But she waited by the front gate with a smile on her face
And she waited and she waited
Never made it again today
It's never okay another delay another disappointing day
I hope you're lonely and empty handed
I hope you're stranded
You took the wrong way to her heart
And she waited and she waited as her smile fades away

Next Time, Maybe…

I've clearly failed to stick with the NaBloPoMo gig. I'm too, I don't know, something. Wordless? Clueless? I used to notice a pattern where I tended to post much more frequently when I was sad or depressed or angry, and less when things were going my way. Well, lately, each day has been a combination of all of those things, so maybe I should just be honest and say that I haven't really had anything interesting to say. I have, however, been taking lots and lots of photos. Maybe I'll just let them speak for me for a bit.

A Haiku for My Brain

I think I really love you
…not enough to stay.
Dubious logic.

The Backwards 4 Indicates Where I'm Going

Portrait of the Artist at Forty.

Send wrinkle cream and tequila.

For Straddling the Misery/Happiness Fence

I can't decide today, so I'm letting Nina sing the upbeat blues.

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So is Gabriel García Márquez.

"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."

I'm clearly involved in some sort of search for literary companionship in heartache. Perhaps J. Alfred and Pip are next on the list.

Fred Exley is reading my mind.

"[I]…have lain afternoons imagining how tonight, this very night, I will find the strength to turn and walk on about my business. But then evening comes, and sleep, and then the dream, and then that shuttering of heavy blackness."

I'd like to find a way to not wake up for a while.

I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks…

I’m acting out, a bit. Not necessarily in a destructive way; nor, however, can it be called constructive. Jung called the moment when we start the ongoing process by which we become ourselves individuation. Buddhists call it enlightenment. One of my friends likens it to ‘fessing up, conceding our negative behaviors. I turn forty this week, and I’m starting to panic a bit about who the hell I actually am. So much has changed in the past year or so, and while there are some constants that I feel good about; my ability as a mother, my loyalty as a friend, my (insert something I haven’t thought of here), I’m concerned that my ongoing need to put on my game face is starting to backfire. Sometimes inner fortitude is the last thing I feel.

The new venture is going well. There is an honest, very real happiness that comes from the work of shooting photos, working with clients, having happy results. I am loving it, and am recognizing it as more than just a distraction from my troubles, but a good way to move away from them. But with that new perspective comes a worry that some of this is just false bravado. Is that what I’m showing? I still get pissed/anxious/sad/worried about the same things, despite the distraction. The knots in my stomach are still there. Still tight. Still desperate.

The acting out part comes in to play with certain people in my life. I’ve been trying to do the right thing by Matt, trying to glide through the final stages of this divorce with as few histrionic outbursts as possible. The obvious roadblock to that is that dismantling a 10-year old marriage is layered with emotional complexity. I’m over him as my husband, but not over the experience. My anger over it is yielding to attacks of self-blame and remorse. What does his leaving say about me? Not a new question, but one I find myself asking again and again as the other important relationships in my life evolve, or in some cases, devolve. People I love yell at me. People I respect tell me that I’m slipping, that I need to get my head out of the clouds and back in the game. Vivian Gornick said “it was marriage that taught me that anxiety looks like devotion.” I don’t think it’s marriage, necessarily. I think it might just be love.

I’m tired of being at war with my desires.

Stormy

Not much of a beach day. We didn't lose power, though, and for that I am grateful.

And brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain…

I've been working on some thoughts, and had a nice chunky post in the works for today (NaBloPoMo!), but we are in the middle of a fairly significant northeaster here, and the lights have been flickering, so I am shutting down the works and going out to watch the ocean.

The storm suits my mood, anyway.

Much more cooperative than a 4-year-old

Happiness = Reality ÷ Expectation

From Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult:

"Why hadn't he realized this before? Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you inverted the equation — expectation divided by reality — you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.
Pure logic: Assuming reality was constant, expectation had to be greater than reality to create optimism. On the other hand, a pessimist was someone with expectations lower than reality, a fraction of diminishing returns. The human condition meant that this number approached zero without reaching it — you never really gave up hope; it might come flooding back at any provocation."

I seem to have a problem with the flooding back part. Evidently, I need to become a little more pessimistic.

Or maybe not. This may be a bit too much like math for me.