What A Difference

.....a week makes....
Everything changes.
That has been a recurring theme - and, once again, I am here to announce and, yeah, celebrate change.  This time the change is reflected in three arenas: sunlight, sleep, and work free days.  I am in love with the sunshine.  I know it makes a huge difference in my attitude and life appears manageable when the sun is shining.  I literally live in a fog zone, a cloud zone,  and the faithful presence of the sun is not guaranteed.  I wish I could paint it into the morning sky every day and let its warm energy infect my life.  Not possible

A second pleasant change is the appearance of sleep in my life.  I have the chance now to get an adequate nightly rest with a sweet helping of an afternoon nap.  I know I feel a reduction in headaches and I can retain my sunny disposition when I am not fighting exhaustion.  I am not one to laze around in sleepy mode.  I go to bed at night, read for a few, slip off the light and slip away from my world within (literally) seconds.  I sleep hard and undisturbed.  I wake up minutes before the alarm on school days but on these days I wake up a comfortable seven or eight hours later and waste no time getting out of bed and getting on with my day.  I like that.  I love the early morning and I do not want to waste it drifting in and out of unawareness.  And I feel awake and alive and capable of dealing with whatever life has in store for me that day.

      And, why this gift of sleep?  School is out for the summer.  My professional life goes on hold for about two months.  I can breathe.  I am not running all the time.  My head is not spinning with the many daily issues that my work presents.  I have time to write, to read, to paint, to walk , to just be.  I know I need to look at this.  Living my life at a speed that exceeds the legal limit is not in my best interests.  For now, however, I simply want to take the moment and appreciate what is.

Interesting Flaws

"I like flaws. I think they make things interesting."
— Sarah Dessen

In theory, I like flaws too.  The perfect something can be boring.  The perfect something suggests complete order, and no surprises. When it comes to people, the flaws suggest vulnerability and humanity.  Flaws invite compassion and tenderness yet they can also inspire great anger, resentment and grief.  I am most attracted to people who are damaged.  I think I feel most comfortable in their presence.  Kids who are damaged allow me to be tender and understanding and to offer them acceptance and thoughtfulness.  Flawed adults - especially flawed adults who are painfully aware of their shortcomings - allow me to know that I am not alone in my imperfections.  I have the most difficult time with righteous and arrogant people.  I don't understand people who are above error, above flaws.  That righteousness builds walls that are strong and ugly.

Breathe. Again.

     Road trip north.  Travel solo and see the world.  I have done that trip six or eight times in my life and I don't get tired of it.  This time I am going alone.  Oskar and I  (Oskar being my bug car) will tool up the coast, stopping when we feel so inclined.  I will take lots of photos.  I will stop and read when I want to.  I will walk into restaurants and make friends with the waitstaff.  I will stay at a campground or three and walk around and talk to people.  I will sit in interesting places and watch the people.  And take photos.  And write about what I see.  And hear. I wish I could take my bike but I am traveling very lightly on this trip.  A sleeping bag, a little tent, a little ice chest, a small box with books and cd's, my camera and computer, warm clothes and running shoes.  Oh, and a credit card.  It will be an adventure.  A solo adventure.

No Good Thing Ever Dies

"Remember, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies."
— Stephen King

This spring seems to be fresh out of hope.  It has been a grey and dismal spring with few sunny days.  On top of the grey outside, there has been more than the usual grey inside..... changes at work, depressing national and international news,  hard times for recent college grads and job seekers, headaches and tension everywhere.  I stumbled on this line from something written by Stephen King and it set me to thinking:  Is hope gone for good?

Lately I have thought a great deal about what it means to be alive.  Stephen King appears to be suggesting that hope makes all the difference.  For me, to know I  am alive is the best thing.  To feel all my senses in play reminds me that I am breathing, taking chances,  attached to the world around me.  Perhaps tough to do if I have given up on hope.

Hope suggests that, despite the dismal skies and the prevalent grey mood, change is possible.  I will not always be so small.  I will not always be impatient and discouraged.  When I ride my bike at dawn on a clear May morning and blend into the roads of Sonoma County - eye candy galore, spring fragrances everywhere, and some awesome music in my ears, hope returns. What changes in that moment?  What brings that hope back into my life?

Don't know.  Maybe the absence of stress, the presence of solitude, the feeling that anything can still happen?  What I know is I glimpse that every so often these days and I want more.  More hope.

Surprises Are Not All About Fun

A while back I mourned the passing of surprises, saying that there were few anymore.  Perhaps still true but I am also learning to look in different places for surprises.  For example, all the tough times at work, though they shouldn't have been, are proving to be surprises.  I am surprised and disappointed at how much the notion of change (as in staff and grade configuration changes) is throwing me.  I've grown accustomed to working with these people, whether specific aged students or other staff people.  To think about a daily work life that does not include some of my adult friends and that adds a whole new dimension to the students for whom I am responsible, causes me to pause.  What's that about?  You, O'Neill, are the one who claims to embrace change.  So do it.  Yet it feels overwhelming and uncertain and , yes, sad.
Surprises are not necessarily fun.

Living is Messy

blood oozing and tracked across the world

tears blended with dust,  sadness, and frustration

dog drool dripped on dusty floors

with broken hearts only breaking masks 

and fragments of imagination in piles behind the door

the broken egg white mingling with bacon grease

fragrant with the empty nights  of the lonely

and death knocking at the back door

it is a messy life

not worthy of order

Breathe

It sounds so simple.  Breathe.  Just breathe.  Why is so hard to do?  Why is it so possible to forget to do that?  Yesterday, I went up to Bell Springs Road with Alex for the day.  There is something magical about that place - all you want to do is breathe.  Breathe in the expansiveness.  Breathe in the peacefulness, the colors, the feeling of being alive.  The families who live up there have created a warm community that thrives with their hard work and dedication.  It takes some doing to get there - the five miles of dirt road before arriving at the barn can be both beautiful and bothersome. But then you arrive to vistas that beg you to breathe in the silence and the tranquility.  Amen.

Love is an engraved invitation to grief.

"Love is an engraved invitation to grief." 
Interesting comment.  
When you take down the walls and let someone in, eventually there will be grief.  
Yikes!  Why would you ever invite someone in if you knew how much it was going to hurt later?

Do One Thing That Scares You Every Day

Yesterday the fire department came to school to introduce the kids to the ladder truck.   This is a huge fire truck with a ladder that  extends a  full 155 feet .  You'll never guess who climbed to the top of the extended ladder!  No clamp, no helmet -= just nerve - I actually wanted to do it because I am not comfortable with heights.... I wanted to do something that scared me.  I wanted to challenge myself in a new way.  Let me tell you, it was a challenge.  About one quarter of the way up I started to freak out.  This was particularly understandable since, before I started the ascent, the fireman was telling me about someone else who had done this who had frozen up - couldn't go up, couldn't go down - they had to "rescue" him!  I was doing fine until I got that little speech -- anyway, I started to freak out a bit but then I told myself:  breathe, don't look behind, don't look forward, just look straight ahead, and go one rung at a time.  Ignore the crowd. Listen to yourself.  I got into a rhythm and stayed focused on the climbing.  It worked!  Good advice for life, heh?  

Solitude

I'm thinking about going invisible.  Or, put it another way, I'm thinking about disappearing.  Not in a bad way but in a private, fuck the world sort of way.  Drop the Facebook page, drop the blog, stop following the news, go inside, avoid people except at work.   On the active side, read as an escape, ride the bike, take walks, write for myself and myself only, paint.  Sounds like what I need to do.

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