Still Fighting, Maybe

Last night John asked me if I was thinking of giving up. I told him I was pretty sure I had already given up. He pointed out that I still made soap, and was still trying to launch my incense. I explained that the alternative is for me to crawl inside my head and live there. I have a vivid imagination, so that's a lot more doable than it might sound. He insists that until I do actually crawl inside my head for good, I'm still fighting. So okay. I'm still fighting. Doesn't sound much like fighting to me. Sounds kind of wimpy. 

I'm perfectly fine as long as I don't actually think about my life. Usually I'm a lot better at doing that than I have been lately. 

You Were Once Wild

‎You were once wild. Don't let them tame you!  -- Isadora Duncan 


Over and over again in my life, change comes sneaking up on me. Sometimes I welcome it with open arms. Most times I do not. Rather than face an uncertain future, I let my fear lead me around and around in an ever tightening circle of misery and doubt and free-floating angst. You'd think that after 54 years, I'd have figured out that the future is always uncertain, and that avoidance only postpones the inevitable, and postpones it painfully. You'd think I'd learn that the harder I fight, the more brutal the change. But no. Every time, the same paralysis, indecision, and self-inflicted agony. I'm amazed, sometimes, that I've had any kind of life at all, and done any of the things I've done. I've done them by letting my dreams and aspirations germinate just beneath the surface of my consciousness until they're coiled to spring at the first opportunity, propelling me forward too fast for the fear to kick in.  
Change is knocking at my life again. And knocking. And knocking. And it must be a doozy this time because it's been knocking louder and louder for years, and my fear is so big, it's drowning everything else out. I think it's going to hurt this time. I think it's going to hurt a lot.

Poem #12

At some point in my twenties, I began numbering my shorter poems. I was probably being artsy fartsy. I wrote this after a long hard no good awful winter in eastern Washington, in an eighty year old house without insulation or much in the way of heating.

#12

Upside down
the world looks very green
and wide   The moon
is full
of empty promises
as you swing sideways
into my horizon.  Too early
still
for certainty   Winter
took so long
leaving
but upside
down
a corner of your shoulder
is prophecy of spring.