Category: family
Washing the sand with my ghostly tears
The Lion and the Cobra by Sinéad O’Conner is being played on my turntable right now. It seems fitting. My second copy, I wore one out the very year it came out. The year that my life imploded, well one of the times. I was young and painfully naive. It …
The Building’s identity
Does this shit ever end? Do we just keep crossing the identity bridge over and over-adjusting and readjusting, putting on and taking off all the hats?
Some of us think holding on
makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go. ~Herman Hesse It’s been, as they say, a journey. And I’m standing in the doorway, crossing from what was to what is becoming. Our daughter moved into her first apartment in September. It was a chaotic move, as these things can …
Everything has been figured out
except how to live–Sartre Loooong time no write. First a dead mother and a last ever visit with the sister. Then a pandemic. Then a burnout. Then a job change. Then catching a bad Covid. Then …we lost Bartleby at 18 to kidney disease, cancer and age. He was just …
Just when you thought it was safe
I admit to a sense of relief when Jackie died. Not immediately, of course. I was shocked and it was unreal until the time I felt my legs give way as I stood from taking communion for the first time in 20 years. After we got home to Eugene, and …
Voldemama
This nearly made me fall over. She was more than narcissistic, but I’d say this hits the hight points.
Stop, Time
There is a time in every parent’s life, when you can’t fix much  of anything anymore for your offspring. Not because they are difficult, or angry or even annoying. Only because it is time for them to do the fixing themselves. Couldn’t walk into a new school for her on …
Another last minute
“There is always time for another last minute†― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather It wasn’t the best news, but we aren’t giving up. And it never gets easier. Mr. Teatime was named for a character in the Pratchett book Hogfather. Mr. Teatime, when he was a kitten was a tiny little …
Just write
I know the way to be a writer is to write. I’ve told that to students. I used to write every day. Somewhere along the line, survival took over. I was working full time and going to school full time. I lived in a tiny apartment in a kinda bad …
BLESTe BE Ye MAN Yt SPARES THES STONES
I love graveyards. Cemeteries. Boneyards. Cities of the Dead. They are quiet. There is a story for every stone or monument. You can visit for a conversation or just to be. I don’t think I want my body to be buried–though that has always interested me. If I could have, …
Not this or that, somewhere in between
Every time I think I’m going to give up with this long long long standing blog, I come back. This is a long one, hold on. Will it click this time, again? I don’t know. The last year and a half has been, well, large. Â Purging a lot. A LOT. …
So the Darkness Shall Be the Light
The Winter Solstice is one of my most thoughtful times. I suppose because I spent so much time with darkness. That sounds terribly dramatic–and it was until I found a way to live with it.
Warming, as if in Spring
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
~R. D. Laing
A Gift from the Universe
I was given one today. As we try to/prepare to/hope to move to Oregon (when this house sells) I’ve had things on my mind that give me pause. I am estranged from my family. Â This has happened several times through out my life. I’m not sure this one will be …