{my topography}

Heat dumb

So my sister has shamed me into blogging, telling me I suck at updating and that I’m basically a miserable failure in the regular posting department. Yeah. Well. Not much to update about due to the fact that I’m MELTING. It’s suddenly summer here. The grass is knee high and I seem to have allergies. It is 90 degrees and humid and my brain feels too large for my skull.

See aren’t you glad I’m updating?

At night when Bean invariably crawls into bed he very much resembles a cross between a hot water bottle and a colt: all legs and heat. Typically I take a knee or a foot to the eye at least once a night. He seems to think sleeping perpendicular to me is fun.

Other than heat and sleep deprivation, I’m limping my way through my last full week of school. We’re doing everything we can to keep cool, but thanks to 1970s inspired public school architecture, my classroom is south facing and flat roofed. By mid-afternoon the classroom thermomiter read 92 degrees. Yeah. So. Where was I? Melting brain? How can anyone possibly expect anyone to accomplish anything in such conditions? Much less seven year olds who are hankering to be outdoors. They look at me with hot cheeks and sweat on their upper lips, and I can tell that all the words I’m saying about place value are just floating somewhere between us in litte clouds of moisture and heat. They nod, but they don’t hear me.

I’m still crossing my fingers; trying to remember that everything is good right now. Spain in a week. A gorgeous dress. Pretty shoes. Friends I haven’t seen in so long. INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL. Then graduate school. Life is good. But still, I can’t help wanting what I don’t have. More on that when I’m feeling like being less mysterious. And less melty-brain like.

Oh, and does anyone have any recommendations for making sleep more tolorable in the heat? We have a fan, but being all prissy and noise sensitive, it basically is sound torture all night long for me to listen to it whirr back and forth. I try sleeping with a pillow over my head, but then the heat, well. You get the idea. Anyone know some really good earplugs?

Enough. Hope everyone is happy and well and lovely and possibly less heat-stupored than I.

glimmer

In the cool dark of the bedroom, afternoon, after work, after many hours awake and fragmented by the needs of the day, push-pull, ache in the throat, thirsty for quiet, and now I’m face down among the bedclothes and the cat comes up and brushes against my foot. Just this. Fur on skin. I take a breath.

Weekend snapshots

(Bean took this one.)

The world has turned green. Less than a month left of school. The morning sun is waking me up, and I’ve been heading out to run more. Still not feeling totally in harmony with myself yet: still too much on my plate. But more days and more moments where the the orbit of things aligns with my own twirling self.

(Btw: The Cure was a wild, loud adventure that included getting lost when leaving Montreal–4o miles east, before we realized we were supposed to be going south. Oy. And the next day was a blur of tiredness.)

I am hoping to update here every day this week. I have a thing with perfection. I don’t like writing here unless I have long moments to spend, delving into the deeper fabric of my thoughts. But I miss the daily practice. The flawed jotting of notes, of small moments, of daily life. When I first wrote here, I wrote all the time… but somehow I seem to have upped the standard on myself, and now I’m dragging my feet, feeling like if I can’t post a brilliant post, I should’nt post anything at all. What is with that?

Where the edges became frayed

I’ve been shy here, lately. Perhaps dodging myself a bit. Not really sure how to pick up where I’ve left off—I’ve been so sporadic with posting lately—yet I really am missing the regularity of sharing moments and comments. I’ve been fragile this winter.

For the first time since November I felt like I could breathe in again this past week without anxiety fraying the weft of my heart. Miraculously (maybe) or intentionally (with great effort) I’ve stopped feeling like if the world will clatter to a halt around me: a mess of splintered parts if I stop doing everything I do for a split second.

Depression, however fleeting, put me right up against the edges of things: the tattered cuff, the broken branch, mud-spattered snowmelt at the edge of the road. It stained my heart ashy, the color a clouded sky turns after dark.

Not something I was used to, wide awake at night, each day starting out with tight breath and tears close.

I think it had something to do with the fierce longing that I have so often voiced, that eats away at me like a smoldering fire if I’m not careful. A longing to be both here and somewhere else: making a homestead, doing the exact opposite of that (whatever that may be.)

It also had to do with the fact that I was feeling imbalanced at work: I was giving too much, yet not willing to give it. Lately I’ve been feeling less depleted there: allowing myself to focus thinking critically about learning, and children; somehow honing this as a craft.

Perhaps this was what was hardest for me: reconciling the fact that I am still a teacher even as I long with my whole being to be able to write full time. I let myself start hating my work simply because it was the thing that was stopping me from doing the work I was yearning to do. It almost felt like a betrayal to dedicate myself to my work at school, not that that rationally makes any sense.

I realize now that really I was making myself bitterly unhappy because everything in my life was skewed. I resented my work, and myself for doing the work, and this resentment had a corrosive quality like salt and lemon juice. Everything felt scoured and sour. I felt inadequate as a writer, without enough hours in a day, and that inadequacy burned a hole in the very center of my creativity.

Recently, gradually, I’ve been letting myself sink back into the small fragments of my life, not yet whole the way I wish it could be, but certainly a mosaic as it is. I started doing some running again, down our mud slicked road with grooves down the center six inches deep. I started painting. And I got word that I’ll be teaching second graders next year which excites me. I like teaching older kids. I love watching them become thinkers, with writer’s notebooks and organized work spaces, and I like them more than I like the younger ones who need so much reminding about things like nose blowing.

In the end I keep saying it was the winter, and I keep feeling like since the arrival of the first mellow (if not warm) days, my mood has evened out and I’ve become more peaceful. But I cannot say for sure. What is it really that ever makes us sad? I don’t think it can ever be defined entirely by the narrow perimeter of the weather, or for that matter a job or another human being. Somehow, achingly, each arrow of sadness is drawn from the sheaf of our own unquiet soul.

Hieroglyphs of a turbulent heart

Every guy I have ever dated has been the same in one way: they have all been inclined to read my journals. Fools, all of them, for flipping through the blurry pages of my inconsistent heart.

One day I’m only able to see the sun. Everything is bright: my future, the mangos split into perfect segments on the table, the way my son laughs, the way words fall readily into place. Other days my heart plays wild gypsy music. I howl at the moon, lust after long gone loves, linger in the blue light of my laptop screen parsing stilted fragments and run-ons into barely sentences.

In college I remember a boyfriend flipping through the pages of a journal that I’d left tucked into a bag in his room. His jealously about the way I’d described my ex was palpable, his eyes were sparks, he couldn’t take the fact that I would write about anyone other than him with shards of longing, or affection, or anything other than contempt. He was actor. The kind of man who would turn anything into a passionate fight followed by passionate reconciliatory love making.

The fight about the journal was the most bitter. I wouldn’t back down, or say it wasn’t true, or do anything to soothe his wounded ego. And all I could say was, idiot. Why’d you read? My heart is ambiguous, turbulent, and true. Every day the world is a different hue.

This is the way I write here. Each post is a splattered blueprint of my everyday heart on the page, and you’ll get a wildly irregular and possibly skewed perspective. I want to sink into the moment, that’s why I write. I want to remember the way today a warm wind woke us up in the morning, and how it rained all day—leaving the rivers choked with snowmelt, slipping over their banks into the brown meadows of trampled grass. I want to remember the way I feel when we fight, or when I am abundant with joy, or when I am occupying the fragile thin edge of loneliness and longing that circles my life, that makes me hungry.

Today I am trying to get myself motivated to go for a run. Exercise is one of the keys, often missing, that makes my life feel whole. Yesterday I lay in the sun outdoors for hours, under the trees on the newly drying grass, just inches away from melting snow. My skin was singing with sun. I felt a smile blooming somewhere deep inside my solar plexus. Everyday is different.

Thirst

The ache feels like frostbite, slowly traveling from the peripheries towards the very center of my chest. It’s the kind of ache that you can’t put a finger on and say “here, take this, do this, it will feel better.” Instead it’s pervasive, a wash of heartache, the color a cloud-torn sky after sunset, muted, when indigo starts to unfurl across the heavens and shadows are black.

I’ve never felt this way before: followed by this unnamed dread, this sorrow, and I keep turning to look behind for the hungry dog of my distresses that hides in the bushes, waiting. I never do. I don’t know where she lurks like a bitch in heat, howling in the middle of the night, scratching at the door of my contentment. In the morning there are splinter’s everywhere and my head’s a mess of fragments. It’s still winter. I keep saying this is the problem. I keep blaming the shivery sliver of mercury hovering below freezing. Ice makes the puddles filmy, and bubbles rise when I poke my booted toe in.

But maybe it’s more. Maybe even with longer days and supple heat and petals this thing will gnaw at me. Some days it feels like I’ve swallowed the missing shard from a pot glued back together, the porcelain pieces pressed so close the adhesive running between them looks like transparent veins.

Maybe it’s this: I dream about breaking clocks. About scattering the numbers and the minute and hour hands across the snow; about leaping from the clock tower and having my fall take forever, weightless, because finally there is enough time.

I wake up and throw myself at the day. I know this isn’t graceful, but animals aren’t when there is a terror or a wound to lick. It’s like I’m always at the edge of the forest with the scent of smoke curling at my nostrils. The days are too short, and at the end of each I am still thirsty.

Free will astrology

I picked up the local free paper this morning, after twirling around the house putting what appears to be an endless collection of toys and cups and socks back into their places, and found this (by Bob Brezsny):

AQUARIUS: The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage,” writes Thomas powers, quoted in the book Sunbeams. “Afyter it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinis came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passach was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, ‘I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.” Keep this story close to your heart in the coming week, Aquarius. It will give you the proper perspective as you, too, go about the work of doing the best you can at a task that is virtually impossible to perfect.

See? The universe has my back. Apparently all I need to do is listen.

***

It has been sunny all weekend (Happy Easter!) and being out in the sun almost feels like being drunk. The intoxication of brightness. The way the angles of light outline new buds: the silent beginnings of another growing season. I’m still lurching about, trying to find a blanance: trying to be outdoors every single second of the day, and still trying to get everything else done (writing, laundry, vacuuming, minutia.) So far I don’t seem to be succeeding all that well. But then I read the above and try hard to just be.

Attempting

I make lunch the night before; do yoga first thing; then come home from work and play with my boys. The three of us take a long walk down the melting muddied road. It is pock marked with potholes: perfect circles of mud and splashy water, just right for jumping, which Bean does in his black and yellow rain boots. I love the way he pauses before each jump, placing his feet together, crouching down, getting the most out of his small muscled legs. The water goes everywhere in satisfying droplets. I love too the way he pauses to fish around in the muddy, icy cold water, then stands up triumphant: “I found a beautiful rock!” he yells.

I make lunch the night before, circling the counter unaccustomed to thinking about food at 9:38p.m. Especially not a chicken & arugula wrap, fresh berries and yogurt, walnuts and raisins. In the morning I slip from my bed and turn the shower on before thinking. I stand bleary, rubbing my eyes, my feet on the looped lavender bath mat. Then I turn the water off, circle the house, find my yoga mat and breathe. After the fourth or fifth sun salute I realize that the entire right side of my body aches: my ear, throat, hamstrings, ankle bones. I apologize to my body for just living in it so often, without thinking. I take my vitamins. I turn the shower on again. I exfoliate. I let hot water pound on my back until I know it’s made my skin lobster red. I linger. Then I plunge towards the day.

I am trying to live this month as intentionally as I can. Taking care of myself. Making the whirling chaos of my day to day life less chaotic. It’s all about the small things, that I’ve given too little thought to. The things that ultimately bear the Morse code of self discipline. Food. Exercise. Laundry. Dishes. Creativity.

I loved reading your lists about the things you’d do if living “perfectly” for a month. Now I’m wondering: what stops you from doing them? What stops us all, really?

Here again

Outside, in the quiet winter cold, a dog barks again and again and again. A series of three staccato yaps, then a pause, snowflakes swirling in the silence before it barks again; left somewhere outdoors, hot breath making the fur wet around his mouth, icicles gathering in shaggy snarls.

In the sky, the moon, rinsed in the shadow of a recent eclipse, climbs higher up the edge of the dark.

Inside, I almost hold my breath. Heartache coiled in my chest again. I’m restless.

It is still winter here, and I’m home after a week away, where I was submerged in desert sunlight and words. The yearning to be at the next place in my life is fiercer than ever now; to be doing this writing thing, full tilt, without anything else. To be writing every day, without a day job that leaves me feeling like one of those tabs of fish food you throw in the tank for the fish to nibble relentlessly while the owner leaves for a vacation.

It is still winter and stumbling about the internet I find a classmate from my year in college who has published her first collection of essays, and also has the job I wish I had, in the thick of the Manhattan literary world, among tall buildings and subways and martinis. I bite my lip seeing her book jacket, her shiny hair.

I hate the color of this thing that creeps up in my solar plexus. I hate the way jealousy makes me feel small and suffocated, and the way it makes me ask a hundred stupid what-ifs, as if time weren’t irreversible, as if I weren’t here in the thick of this winter snowstorm with a three year old tucked into flannel sheets upstairs and a husband suffering through another bout of depression.

Maybe this is the thing I hate the most. How he won’t admit that his entire way of inhabiting the world hinges on finances; on what he makes or looses for the week in the market, the charts and numbers blipping by him faster than a heartbeat. He won’t say that his life is empty of things that make his heart tremble with passion; he won’t say that he keeps putting these things on hold to maintain our status quo, to keep afloat, to put in a home gym and a flat screen TV, to do whatever comes next in the acquisition process that never ends but never makes him really happy either. He doesn’t see it this way. But I feel his emptiness like a dry heat licking at my skin, making my knuckles crack, my lips grow chapped.

Winter. It seems to always find us here, under sweaters in different rooms with hardly anything to say. It’s been three weeks of tight jaw muscles, and shorter conversations. We hug each other by the kitchen island over Saturday morning pancakes with maple syrup and bacon and hot coffee, but there is always something that makes one or the other of us pull away abruptly, as though magnetism, like heat, is scarce on these cold days and longer nights.

The only time I really see his face bloom into an unguarded smile is when he is with Bean. Then it spreads across his cheeks like the unexpected tiny rainbows from the prism hanging by a ribbon in the window, and a small sharp sliver worms its way into the very center of my chest. I can’t help but wish his smile would bloom like this for me.

But we’re like hungry dogs, circling, ready to snap at the slightest provocation. It is as though we’re both looking for a reason, for some release of tension—both of us craving the pulpy mess that exposes our hearts and leaves us pressed close together with heat between us. Maybe this makes no sense. Of course it makes no sense. But why else do we do this at-once push and pull?

When he’s around, it’s all about pull-your-hair-out-crazy mood swings, and this week has been his worst week ever in the stock market. Everything tipped in the wrong direction, keel up, toppled like dominos. And at the end of a day I can’t help it, I turn away, heart pounding. I’ve already given nearly every shred of patience away to six year olds who play modern warfare games and miss their mothers living in other states. It’s almost like a reflex: the way I avoide directness, intimacy, while feeling like everything between us is flayed: muscles, tendons, hearts, tears always at the back of our eyes.

But then when he’s gone all I can do is watch the clock, the minute hand dogging the hour hand until he’s back, craving him like homesickness.

Weasel

A weasel found it’s way into the coop, the way only weasels can. Murderous and thrilling at the kill, it went after every hen, the sick rooster (who was getting better!) first, taking their heads, leaving blood splattered across the glass panes on the door. When I came home DH was in the coop gathering up the decapitated bodies, already frozen. We’re not sure when it came, how long it stayed, how it got in even. Flatlanders, the two of us. We should have known the signs broadcast all over last night: the scent of musk; the skipity tracks in the snow, not a squirrels, and too small for a drowsy skunk or hibernating raccoon.

Two hens, that’s all that’s left, of six, total, including the ailing rooster. It’s what happens, here, anywhere, the food chain and so forth, but it still sucks. I pulled on rubber boots (new ones, pretty with black and red and white flowers) and old fleece gloves and raked out loads of blood flecked hay and scat. We almost had it cornered (I keep wanting to call it a him, but who knows? And it gives me the shivers to think how naturally I assume the gender of a killer, even animal, and small with a mink black coat and a rust colored underbelly.) Both of us feeling fierce enough to kill it, and I grazed it with my boot, but it made a get-away out the door, and when we followed it’s tracks, we found it’s likely living under the shed on the other side. Vermin.

I knew it could happen, even when we got the half-dozen of them, itty-bitty and peeping, just a day old in the mail. We picked them up at the post office, and I kept saying maybe we should get more, in case. Now there are two, and while I cleaned the coop they sat on the roost above my head, the one shoving it’s head into the soft feathered underbelly of the other, twittering in that low, purring way hens do.

This is what we picked, choosing rural life. The likelihood of weasels, tracks zig-zagging the snow. Now that the January cold has set in, this is the season of hunger for small warm blooded things that do not sleep in the ground or in nests or burrows until spring. We wanted to feel closer to the land, and I keep an animal tracking guide on my desk. But I’ve grown lazy and fat and distracted in the warmth of my house, writing heaps of paragraphs furiously (for a deadline: this Saturday) and eating pineapple upside down cake (for my birthday.) I grew up on the stories of Sterling North, and when I am outdoors, the land sings and I feel it in my bones. I love the barren maples and the way the ice is dark and slick over the places where water and mud used to bisect the trail.

So even as I’m feeling like punching the wall and I’m googling weasel traps, I’m already planning for more: hens, chicks, beehives, lamas, a garden. Maybe not all this spring, or even this year, but over the course of the years here. Because even when I’m dizzy and distracted, as I am right now: balancing on the very tiniest rung of the tall ladder reaching up towards the sickle moon of my dreams, these things pull me back. Nothing like chicken manure and a mess of bloodied feathers to pull you back into the right-here-now of life.

These things are my Polaris, giving the twirling compass of my heart a north to true towards in the dark winter days when I’m crazy with words and to-do lists and hectic schedules and friends I haven’t kept in touch with; or in summer when the evening sun hangs in the sky until almost ten and I’m drowsy and sun drunk and undirected. Still. I’m sad tonight.