movingforwardslowly

A couple years ago a woman came to work at the school where I work. We were around the same age, and seemed to be from similar backgrounds. On second thought, I think she was several years younger than me. She had been a stay at home mother like I had been for ten years. This was her first year back to work, and she had all the enthusiasm of an idealist. She kind of reminded me of how I was many years ago when I reentered the work force. Time and age has a tendency to tame this, and by year’s end, I could see that some of her enthusiasm had been tamed. The work can be hard when your heart is so entrenched.

One day we happened to be having lunch in the same small break room.She made the comment that every time she hears our school called HMS, which are its initials, she thinks of the words: “Her Majesty’s Ship.”

I think she was referring to ships that sail the seas under the protection of a monarchy. However, I visualized being on a star-ship. This made me smile. I like the idea of being protected by a royal female entity.

My imagination had hooked onto her imagination, and then went in its own direction. For the rest of the day, I imagined sailing through the skies undercover on a royal mission to improve all of humankind. Looking back at this makes me laugh. An active imagination helped me to soar that day. Every day I can summon its power it fills my heart with hope.

This is an idea I hope to instill in all the students I encounter.

 

(I’m on holiday break right now. In my attempts to clean up the clutter in my sitting room, I can’t ignore the notebooks full of frantic writing. I started filling notebooks around the summer of 2013 when my life and mind were shattered. I haven’t yet decided what I’m going to do with them, though, I was inspired to write this poem today to give you a flavor of their contents.)

Barely There

Chasing other’s expectations, running out of breath, never questioning the route, never stopping to explore the hidden motives, I had lost my essence, my passion, my true value. 

I was barely there.

When everything began to break apart I was nothing but liquid smoke clinging to my hollow frame. My mind went haywire, bouncing off everyone else’s thoughts and dreams.

I desperately needed to recollect my scattered mind. Their tentacles had reached into my brain trying to unnerve me. They found my weakness, my taboo thoughts that had been locked away. Though it was I who had unwittingly opened the door. I dared to play this mind game that nearly claimed my soul.

The dark woods beckoned, and my weakness followed. My mind quivered with anticipation. My body was drawn into the quicksand of my dreams. Space and time were frozen where I had dared to go.

I was barely there.

I’ve finally found my way back home. I’m still learning to contain and control my errant thoughts. I’ll eventually decide what I’m going to do with all my scattered frantic notes. For now they can sit and fill the space of an old antique chair.

 

The past few days have been peaceful, almost too peaceful. It felt like I was drifting on a sea of endless platitudes.

I was living in a slow-motion film until my mind began to nudge me in another direction.

One small step was simple at first until I began to feel a sudden shift in momentum.

I fell backward onto a wavelength I thought I had left behind.

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been tumbling through a Lina Wertmuller film: Swept Away.

I had moved into a virtual realm where Romeo resides. This mind shift my dream had taken filled me with ambivalence.

On one hand, I felt I had succumbed to sin. On the other hand, a dream is harmless. It hurts no one.

The electrical current running through my dream awakened me.

The truth is there is no satisfaction in lifeless platitudes.

My father died June twenty-second (6/22). This was the first weekend of my summer break. My father’s wife was well prepared to handle the details of death.

I was not looking forward to summer. My mother was 83 years old and getting ready to undergo chemotherapy for a second series. She had been in remission for several months after her first series. It came back with a vengeance.

Even though my parents lived about forty minutes apart, they had been strangers for years. My mother had not been a witness to my father’s decline. She had not seen his slow march to death. She didn’t have to watch the vacant look and emaciation take over my father’s face.

That summer I was forced to watch that same look of death close in and begin to consume my mother. My mother’s husband was less prepared than my father’s wife to handle the details of death.

Time began to warp for me that summer. When I look back and try to order the events that began to happen to me, I can’t be certain of their sequential order. It all gets fuzzy in my mind and memory. I can remember fragments, some of them very vividly. However, the time stamps were missing. It was as if time had stopped for me, and I was living in a vacuum of jumbled events.

I had a dream that summer which in my mind was the initiating event that made me begin to question reality, and specifically my reality.

It was a summer day, and I had laid down for a nap. Maybe it was mid-morning. I was dressed for the day.

It’s difficult to describe what happened because it doesn’t compare to any dream that I’d ever had before this time. I’m not even sure if it was a dream. I’m calling it this because I don’t know what else to call it.

I had a vague awareness that I was lying on my stomach on my bed and my eyes were closed.Something ethereal was within me and within my mind. I remember trying to reach out and touch it. I remember trying to hold its hand to my heart. I remember it reaching back and touching me on my lower back. I had a vague sense it was placing something within me, possibly in my lower spine. Strangely I was not frightened. I kept trying to touch it and have the sensation of feeling flesh. Finally in the last seconds of this dream, I felt its fingertip and saw a flash of light. I heard or sensed it saying “thank-you”.

The last image I saw before my eyes opened to my bedroom floor was the image of a floor somewhere else. I remember seeing the bottom of file cabinets for a fraction of a second. I have no file cabinets in my bedroom.

I have no idea why this ethereal entity was thanking me. After awhile I began to speculate whether my unconscious brain had made some sort of deal. I began to remember fragments of conversation where I thought I was agreeing to something. However, I never could really understand or fully remember what all these conversations entailed. I had to face the possibility that it was all in my imagination.

After awhile I began to think that this entity had seen my future, and was somehow preparing me for it, and ensuring my survival. After this strange dream my reality began to feel as if it was shifting in front of my eyes. There were times I felt like I was in a trance or a waking dream.

During this same time frame my mother had encouraged me to open a financial fund. When I met with the financial adviser I felt like I was in a trance state. At the end of our meeting he handed me a yellow strip of paper where he had written my account number, and then we shook hands. At the moment of our handshake I had an odd flashback to touching the finger of light in my previous dream.

This yellow strip of numbers became attached to an unexplained mission that I felt I needed to explore. I could not shake this foolishness. I fell or was pushed down a rabbit hole of a number obsession. It has taken me years to climb out of it.

My mother died on November tenth (11/10) after a hard and grueling summer and early fall. After this my obsession shifted into high gear.

I have had to face all of this knowing that I’ll never really know what happened to me. I’ll never really know whether there were external forces acting upon me or whether this was all an elaborate creation of my mind alone.

 

 

 

 

You pull out a thin white strip of paper from the cracked cookie shell.

The words, type written with ink, relay a message.

It can be advice or a warning, sometimes it sounds like a prophecy.

The back-side of this strip holds a set of lucky numbers.

The randomness of fortune cookies appeals to my whimsical nature.

Though, I’ve come to feel that it might not be as random as we think.

There was a period of time when I took it all so seriously.

I felt the presence of a guiding overlord. He was my personal genie.

In the end, I never could determine whether his origin was external or internal.

He has gone away now for the most part. Occasionally I sense remnants of his lessons.

Part of his heart and mind remains with me in my memory.

From this point forward, I’ll need to be my own soothsayer and navigator.

*Note: We ordered Chinese food last night. At the end of our meal I was disappointed to find that our fortune cookies were missing from our bag.

 

I woke up this morning feeling out of sorts. I had a dream where I was in a class,

And the teacher handed me my grade on a piece of paper. I saw a red F.

I felt confused and upset for we had taken no tests nor handed in any work.

I’d been working on a big project, and the due date had never been announced.

I approached the teacher, she shrugged, and said the grade could change.

There was no resolution at the end of my dream.

These days every letter has a number. I pondered the number six (6).

To me the number 6 represents the beast of mankind/womankind.

Though, I often thought men and women should have different numbers.

It was then that I realized that the number five (5), also known as E, was missing

From our standard grading system. A ‘D’ means you need improvement, and an ‘F’

Means failure. The E ( or 5) had escaped somewhere between the D and F.

It was not a recognized grade. I decided I wanted to be an E, and

Escape from this dream class. I laughed at this thought and was cheered.

I shook the dream off and labeled it not real.

My number obsession had me creating elaborate stories. The numbers needed stories

In order to have meaning for me. However, over time my stories changed, and certain

Numbers fell in and out of favor with me. The only certainty was change, and

The constant cycling, and switched associations.

My current favorite is 5. Now it symbolically means I can escape the judgement of a grade.

Possibly I could be a 516 or 111 or AAA.

As a teenager, my first paying job was working for Triple A (AAA).

I made trip-tiks for travelers.

 

This morning as I looked out my window, without my glasses, I could see a figure struggling in the treetop.

Its leafy head and arms were flailing and thrashing. Its fighting comrade was the wind.

I could almost hear it shouting: “I want my freedom.” It was bound together by all the other branches, connected in such a way to make it one.

It still struggled, but its voice became muted with a silent resignation.

It knew that its freedom would tear the tree asunder.

As I put these words together in my head, I began to hear the birds sing.

It felt as if they heard my words.

When I stepped out into the garden the gentle breeze stirred around me.

The cloak of moisture had been blown away. Even the biting bugs were hiding.

They were holding on in shelters, not wanting to travel with the wind.

I stepped back inside to put these words onto paper.

Now, I can clear my head and proceed with my day.

 

Asymmetry surrounds me in my garden, in my home, and before me in my face and body.

Simultaneously there appears to be an underlying level that multiplies it all.

A natural flow that can defy logic is more pleasing to my eye than a predictable pattern that endlessly repeats.

An  unfaltering, unaltered pattern can draw you in and hook you in a loop. Mesmerizing. Hypnotizing.

Native Americans often put a purposeful mistake into their art. I’ve read this is to let the spirit of God in. I’m not sure if this is true.

Mistakes can be entry points to all sorts of things. In education, they are learning opportunities.

As a middle-aged woman my face and body is full of asymmetries. Compared to doll-like perfection, I’m sadly lacking.

Yet, my new perspective fills me with pride in my imperfections. They are my badges of living in the real world. They are the price of life.

Those that strive for perfect beauty begin to cross the line. In my mind, they look uncanny.

Some days I feel like the thread attached to someone else’s needle.

I’m a light-weight thread that periodically slips through the eye.

God’s hand keeps redirecting me back through the center.

My work is not done.

I can’t see what he’s making. I’m not quite sure why I keep blindly following.

I feel compelled, and there is something inside of me that is spurring me on.

I’m deeply embedded now. At times I wish I could unravel. However, it is too late.

The only way out is forward.

The past two days I’ve had some haunting dreams, and I awake knowing I must take action to move myself out of danger’s way.

The panic has been replaced with resignation – an acceptance of what I must do.

I’ve seen signs several times indicating that I do make it out. I’m not sure if this is true or merely false encouragement.

All I know is that I must hold tightly to my intuition, and keep blocking the signals meant to distract and mislead me.

And, by the way, my sanity is fine. These intermissions come and go.

I’m very proud of my flower pond.

My husband and I put in hard labor to make it happen.

There used to be a silver maple in the spot where it now sits.

I wanted more sun in my garden, so the silver maple was sacrificed.

It was standing on prime real estate – the middle of our backyard.

Digging a pond where a tree once stood is a fool’s idea.

Worth it in the end, after the memory of the pain and sweat fades.

My husband dug the hole with the help of heavy equipment.

Everything else was done by me.

I personally placed every single pink granite block. The pink is only pink when compared with other granite. A very slight cast only evident when wet.

Our yard isn’t level. It slopes here and there. From some vantage points the pond looks slightly tilted.From other points it looks level. From overhead it probably makes no difference. We did use a level and strings when putting it in.

It fits in with everything else, and I’m the only one it needs to please. My husband doesn’t care. His contributions were to make me happy.

Many things have thrived within the pond, from water lilies to dragonflies.

Even with the years of neglect these things thrived. The only thing that suffered was the overall aesthetics. Algae was the problem.

Today the algae is all gone and the water is clear, even with many repotted plants.

Yesterday I had five stunning water lilies blooming: four pink and one small yellow.

Sometimes I feel a sadness that the lifespan of these blooms is so short. They open in the mid-morning sun, and close in late afternoon to early evening, as the sun starts to descend.

One bloom lives for about two days, sometimes three.

Still the mother plant keeps sending up her children to live a short life in the sun.

They are all connected in a way, so I guess they all live through one another, and life goes on.