what i have done this year:

• regained full use of my right hand
• written 28 poems in 28 days
• put out a chap book (now for sale at mac's backs books, cleveland heights, ohio)
• learned to knit better
• taught jon to knit
• followed a knitting pattern
• read at a poetry reading
• started an unschooling blog and maintained it okay
• overcome drug addiction
• gained back 6 of the pounds i'd lost
• maintained my style
• started starting a business
• raised my consciousness
• became a board member at the co-op
• published 8 newsletters for the co-op
• completed 11 pieces of art for an art show, which were largely praised
• had 2 poems accepted by mothering
• been published in 2 books with my six-word memoir
• was randomly asked to be a magician's assistant
• got the living room & dining room painted
• threw a kick-ass, detail-obsessed harry potter halloween party
• made some new friends
• volunteered for b.o.l.d. ohio and cleveland birth network in 2 b.o.l.d. events
• kept the money situation within reasonable bounds
• knit a bunch of stuff
• breastfed a two-year-old
• done lots of crafts with the kids
• kept the house pretty clean
• done better at saying the right things to honor my kids' emotions and autonomy
• with jon, started composting and gardening
• read some good books, largely fiction
• healed my body
• gave thoughtful gifts to people i love or admire
• managed to get the kids out of the house with some regularity
• stayed connected to old friends
• helped my friends through some especially rough times
• mailed the holiday cards the day after thanksgiving
• reduced our impact even more
• read harry potter book 7 withing 26.5 hours, despite driving 4 hours for a double funeral in the middle
• designed postcards for my new business
• figured out lots of crap about starting a business
• managed to work on the quilt a bit
• sold 2 monster totes i'd sewn
• sold postcards of a photo i made
• made the domestic goddess picture
• largely got off internet forums
• threw a kick-ass blessingway (with help from my friends)
• kept my kids alive & healthy
• attended a world music festival in canada
• got hit on by a french rocker
• wrote an article for mothering's website
• made tons of flyers for the food co-op
• filled a journal
• maintained my marriage, even making some strides in communication
• saw jupiter
• joined heavy metal science club
  

there is time, here, at the end of this year, for reflection, for taking stock of what the year endowed, what i have done. time for sitting still and thinking slowly on what it is that is going on right now and how i need to look forward. i need desperately at the moment to consider the future and all its promises. i need to create what it should be in the eye of my mind and fill my heart with the hope of all the steps from here to there. unfortunately, i know not how i feel. i am weighed down by the evidence of my distress without the key to unraveling it from its center. there is so much to be done, so much for me to do. a million tiny ideas bury themselves in my head and i must write them down lest i forget. but can i even do half the things i wish to do in the time allotted to me? is there space on this earth and in my life, in all my future to accomplish everything or simply enough?

i cannot keep these thoughts straight. i want to hope for my future. i want to plan, to envision it. i want to list it out for the new year and know where i am going. i want to do better than i am doing, than i have done. mostly, though, that is all part of the procedure for accomplishing feeling better. the lists of things to do, the generating of ideas, the picture of the future, of my path - it's all part of the plan to make me sense in myself that who i am and what i do is okay. if i can muster hope, then i can reduce the stress levels in my daily life through the action plan and integrated understanding of my life as a journey and each measured step as movement toward the larger goals. if i can just muster hope! then i will feel better and feeling better will lead to doing better and doing better will lead to feeling better!

this entire autumn has been a build-up of stress and pent-up frustration, seething out as anger. i hate it. i want better for myself and for my family. i want to do the things i want to do, to not worry so much and focus on the things i'm missing. i want to transform the worry and the obsession and the sadness into more productive ways of thinking - into hope and compassion and space for improvement. i want to shift my own perspective and i want to feel supported in doing so. i want to share it. i want not to live this life of treading water. i want to move. i want not to feel trapped by mud, by bad habits and pessimistic ways of thinking. i want to improve on everything. i want to accentuate all the things i've done in recent months and use that as fuel for being, not to dwell on my misfortunes or my failings, but to use my failings as evidence for knowing better, as experiences for learning.

i wonder if i set my sights too high, if i have somehow dissected it all incorrectly and made a wrong blueprint for which to go by. even still, these desires are but abstractions. they exist in the feeling world of my head and heart and are so difficult to quantify, to consider in a tangible manner, to articulate for consideration or for plan of action. so the plan is simple, yet there are no rules and there are no landmarks for recognizing where choices exist. it is a feeling thing, a walking blind, an imagining the unseen and simultaneously creating it. it is walking down paths of smoke, drifting left and right, sideways and rightways, forward and back, riding the way like water. there is no knowing it by logic and reasoning. it is a wisdom of unplottable intuition.

now i will make lists.

thinking about identity. wondered last night why these questions come in waves like this and determined that the seasons make it so. the perception of summer, for instance, is a time of leisure, of infinite time to do all the things to be done. this is because in summer, the days are long. there is lots of time to do and lots of time for doing nothing. during the fall, the days get cooler and shorter and the focus turns towards lots of creative projects. this is partly because it is a busy time - there is the harvest that must happen in traditional agricultural society, which created the pattern of our very lives, school begins in the fall, vacations end. the weather is cool enough for moving about at a speedier pace, our brains unfog from all the heat, the days are shorter, necessitating hurry.

in the fall, we begin to consider what must be done and who must do it. i have again the urge to determine who i am and what it is i do. the vacation of summer is over - the holidays will approach faster than expected and there are all the necessary preparations to be done for them. there's also the matter of considering schooling, what we as an unschooling family should be doing precisely to further enrich our children's lives. it is the rising and falling of the sun and the orbit of the planet that makes me do and think these things.

and yet - identity. i am always thinking of who i am, what i do, outside the context of my life and culture, as though who i am were somehow independent of everything else that exists; that i alone am truly an island. but i am not. the paths i have chosen have not been chosen for me, but the influence of a life lived amongst others creates the choices as they are. to not seize opportunities as they present themselves would be asinine. there is no controlling it all. there is hardly any controlling anything. there is merely choice, will. who i am and what i do certainly affect the choices that become presented to me, but the culture, the context, even the choices themselves also direct the path from one thing to another. there is only an infinity of deciding, which is beautifully simple and agonizingly complex. it gives the illusion of destiny where there is only direction. to affect is not the effect. to affect is merely the relative truth of existence. each thing that is relies on everything else that exists in an infinite pattern of interconnection. it is not predeterminance. it is simply interdependence.

where we seek to psychologically define and avoid co-dependence and exalt independence, we fail to recognize that neither really exists. there is only the interplay between people, between objects, between varying dimensions of being. you can decide to never choose, to rely solely on the aid and decisions of others - this is co-dependence - but it does not ever strip you of your will and you are always having an affect on the one that chooses - there is no vacuum! co-dependence only exists n a vague way where a person either illudes themselves or illudes another into believing it. everything is interdependent, whether chosen or not. everything not only relies on everything else, everything is everything. and yet it is not destiny - it is symphony! it is subtlety! it is infinance and elegance and the embodied god - the universe is the divine. no creation was necessary. there is no god before god because god is only a word we give to everything that exists. what people fail so often to recognize is that we are all god. we are all not simply elements of the divine, but the divine itself.

there is no transcending this realm because this realm is interwoven into every other. there is no escape but imagination. everything you think and dream is, if only thought and dream. the unseen is no less real than the seen. it all has its place and play in the universe, in our lives. it is all a giant web, as delicate as the strands of a spiderweb, yet infinite in number and connection. each movement made anywhere in the web moves across the whole by infinite degrees of subtlety. there is no divorcing myself from the context and no divorcing the context from myself.

in this sense, the world is not dependent on me, nor am i dependent on the world. i can define myself and change only so far as the universe allows it, which is to say by infinite degrees, yet moving through must come in a million tiny choices that are unseen. it is, however, at least emotionally difficult, if not physically so, to extract myself from out my situation and circumstance to try to create great changes in my understanding of myself in the world around me. to make dramatic change, i must relocate down the web, in some regard.

to discuss identity is to discuss placement within the world, a set of circumstances, my situation. to define myself, then - i can use words to describe it, but what i lack or perceive as a lacking is not mathematical - there is no remainder. growth is amorphous, it is organic. it is only precise and angular or crystalline on the smallest levels, those generally unperceived. i am - a writer, an artist, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister. i work at the home, my children, on newsletters, crafts, websites, blogs, journals, the co-op board, friendships, all the million tiny things i do everyday. what i want, what i perceive as lacking, is the societal validation of paid work, independence.

i view my relationship in its economic sense, as undesirable based only on the cultural assumption that independence requires planning for the future, which must entail retirement savings, college funds, and avoid social welfare (only as it does not sufficiently exist). i suspect/hope/fear that as this current global climate is changing, by the time i am expected to be old and infirm, the systems which currently oppress people into working only for the future will not exist, through they do not currently really exist for anyone anyway. the system i have grown up in and live in still makes me believe that i must hoard wealth in order to survive with the same level of comfort i exist with now. it is an economic picture that reveals no truth about the nature of the universe. i think it would be better to have nothing but the support of my family rather than age always in fear of the future.

and yet, i cannot myself seem to embrace that. i certainly live with very little now, but i view it as only temporary. i know that one day, in the next few years, my husband will make actual money. i depend on it. what i fear is him not being there to depend on, however. i fear that either through divorce, disease, or death, i will have nothing left to depend on but myself. i fear this because the world tells me i must. a.g. edwards tells me, social security, medicaid, your money or your life, reality television, the evening news, michael moore, commercials, government, feminism - everything in this culture says that the ideal thing to do is prepare for the worst by declaring economic independence. it is not about digging out of the worst - it is about anticipating it, circumnavigating it entirely by becoming independently wealthy.

this all certainly prays or my fears as someone who has chronic anxiety due to Bad Shit happening. but there is no sense to it - it is the fantasy - the reason i fear it so readily is because i witness the dichotomy of it all in the media - on the one hand, i see the powerless, the oppressed, and the poor all victims of loss, hardship, economic despair. on the other hand, i witness the fantasy of wealth in movies and television shows where no one is poor, everyone has everything they need and more. everyone has clothing, health care, whether they have spouses or not, despite where they come from or what they do for a living, not necessarily because of it. this is the fantasy of the glossy magazines, of sitcoms, of celebrity gossip and decorating shows - this vision of luxury for all that does not exist without the oppression of whose who create the goods of it. the poor make the objects and props that the rich flaunt and sell.

the disparity is felt in my middle class life because i am torn between the two - while recognizing the truth of both and still knowing not what to do about it. the issue of identity is exacerbated by falling in-between. i know not what to do and the consequence of any variety of choices seems dramatic. what i want what everyone wants is to do something i am passionate about that is fun and profitable. this is the salve of disparity and being in-between. it is the only solution i really seek. there is also the fantasy of systemic collapse invalidating the need to decide. under the freedom of ruin, i can be who i am without the question - i can be what needs to be, do what needs to be done without the question of significance, validity, or passion.

as a mother, what i do is deeply necessary but not societally/economically valid or important AT ALL. people are always encouraging me to do more than just mother - take in babysitting, pick up outside work in at-home opportunities or part-time jobs. as an artist, i am not talented or prolific enough to be valid or important economically or socially. as a writer, i am not prolific/dedicated enough to be valid or important economically or socially. i write blogs, journal entries, and poems. i do not participate artistically in methods of production that are economically viable: fine art, usable or desirable crafts, journalism, long-format writing (books), et cetera. the question of identity is truly one of belonging and of Being Seen. i, as part of my cultural context, wish to be fully an accepted, even celebrated, part of it. i wish to be normal, even while intellectually understanding the intricacies of that desire and where it comes from. i wish to be seen by my culture in order, ultimately, not to prove my worth, but to prove within the context of my life, that i am real.

Day 1: 1,940 words.

to be noveling. i am feeling obligated to begin and finish nanowrimo this year. the obligation stems from many things - one, to prove that i have a real novel in me thus making me a "real" writer (yet again), despite the recent publications of my "work" (one, two, and yet to come), and two, because i nearly sliced off the whole of my hand last year and didn't finish. my ideas for what i'm writing keep changing. i think to write about my proneness for the dramatic and the accidental and create a whole silly world of that centering around some girl. it could be some great, epic tale the likes of nightwatch and daywatch and whatever the 3rd is to follow - noonwatch? ah, no, thank you imdb, it is twilight watch. it is indeed, an excellent idea, but not the one i've been rolling around with the last ten months. what to do? i have but nine-and-a-half hours to finalize my decision. i was working forever on the planning, however vaguely it is my inclination to plan, for the novel i've been thinking of, but there is no spark there and i've no idea what i'll actually write.

additionally, i need to be working on so many other things, particularly the non-fiction book i plan to write one day that i have not yet written, as well as the ten pieces of art for the itty bitty shitty art show my friend patricia is organizing. i am at 9, currently, which leaves me a whole month to finish the last. there is also the matter of the business endeavor i am beginning and need to get off the ground. there is also fast-approaching christmas, which requires a holiday card to be designed and assorted washcloths and hotpads to be knit.

i want to write a novel if only to say i've written a novel. it was my dream, indeed, for so long to be a writer and now i shirk from it. i am terrified. i am afraid that nothing i ever do is good enough or interesting. i am entirely lame. i do things, but not well enough. i do not commit to things properly and with the energy required to be passionate and love well enough the things i do. i half-ass everything and there are many many things i do that are to be half-assed. i cannot seem to finish anything i start and it is the thing that propels me most after the idiotic and constant striving for perfection, which will never be grasped, never summited, never reached, never claimed. i look to the things that others do with such adoration and such melancholic longing, such self-depreciation. my husband is writing a dissertation and i cannot write but a word, it would seem. i tumble over and over myself, fighting myself for the energy to move forward and the syntax with which to do it. i go nowhere. do nothing. i cannot properly keep the house, raise the children, start the business, or finish the novel. i blame and scapegoat trauma and drug addiction and the inevitable stress of a spouse in a phd program and the constant itching of half-naked children run round making messes. is it merely that i am incapable, or do i invoke this self-paralysis out of fear, out of hunger? what is it to clear the hurdle? what must be done in order to do? and should i even try?

i am busy. overwhelmed. stressed out. all my life is all the things to be done, all the things that i am doing, and there is hardly time for thought, hardly time for the close call, or for sickness or for drama. my body better, i press on, harder than i should, for surely the weather has changed, is changing, and i will find myself under the spell of some cough i've encountered unknowingly. so i wash my hands just in case. i am the germiphobe. i am the obsessive compulsive. i am compelled by my ideas to invent things not necessarily uninvented (for this in the internet age we can encounter most ideas already idealed readily and apparently by means of a google search), yet things necessarily new to me and perhaps to my immediate surroundings. i seek to create the art, write the novel, and invent the harry potter halloween party like i was completely insane. but harry potter does something for me that little else does. it is a melancholic escape into fantasy wherein magic and elves exist and where, were i a witch, i might be able to make dinner with the flash of a stick of wood in my fingers. it is excessively silly, perhaps, but it distracts me from my usual brooding on ecological destruction - at least temporarily. and as for art - i am compelled by my usual boredom with my own domesticity to be something greater and more important (though i think, in my head, that nothing is more important) than mothering my exceedingly wild and usually naked children. i am the perpetrator of lists at this juncture: writing down and crossing off. i seek for the moment to be able to cross something off the list to feel capable and forward-moving. it makes me feel powerful, accomplished. and perhaps it is a sad statement about being a mother that makes crossing things off lists feel full of power and accomplishment. i never finished college, so i can only assume that i am intelligent based on my own knowing and whatever resources in front of me. i cannot feel the power of societal position, for i have none of that. i am only me, toiling daily, as i am apt to do. it is my position in life and the role of my choosing, to be sure. i struggle with the choices facing me in regards to my children - their upbringing and whether or not they should be permitted to play video games all day or not and the varying philosophical perspectives that each choice comes with, of which there are many, which may surprise those not embedded in this type of life and all the minutiae that it encompasses. i so want only to be me, though. to be myself, free of the expectations of the world and especially of my children and their incessant whining and needing of things to be got and done for them. it is harder than it seems and more intellectually challenging than i could ever have anticipated. in fact, there is nothing else to call it, but utterly and completely insane. my life is the running rapidly out of control and back again to some semblance of half-reality only to be destroyed and rebuilt perpetually. it is the couch and the toys and the feeding and the cleaning and so much more. and all the while, there is me, in the midst, trying desperately to feel around for myself and to determine what that is and what that requires in the moment and in the long term. is it merely the environmental ethic that we live by? that thing most weird to so many that in my head is simply the effect of doing better by knowing better? or is there something else here? is there more to me and can i ever hope to honor it while taking care of so many others, by doing so very, very much? i do not know. i do not know. it may be, in fact, the very question i have been asking all this time.

overcome with melancholy- it is inexplicable. it is sudden and draining. the feeling arises from books and from movies and from the fantasy failed. fantasy is the thing - an imagined world springs up in my head and the moment of return to reality, i find myself at a loss, with a hole in my heart carved from what i'd hoped and dreamed. the body better, i descend into my head. i try to create the world i want, envision the things i want to be doing. the melancholy rises in my throat and cuts off the inertia needed for forward motion. the things i deign to do seem uninviting, less interesting. my feet do not place one in front the other. my heart does not leap with action and joy and momentum built. i want only joy. i want joy embedded in my veins, pumping and coursing through my heart and brain. i want a life of leisure, of learning, of intense happiness. i want "my whole life [to] look like a picture of a sunny day." that's really all. does it seem too much to ask? can i just be at peace and think on things, move about my world doing, dreaming. the illness overcome me, sadness drowns me, and all the joy is drained out my life. with illness overcome me, to do even normal, mundane activities becomes a fantasy, and one so far from grasping. i see the world and wonder how people are able to move about their lives, doing things without aching limbs and aching bellies. how does the world become done with so much to inhibit it? how does the world even work with such illness and such destruction? i live in fear of aging now. i feel brittle, frail, elderly. i feel not full life, not plumped with the ability of momentum, of doing. i want merely to do and to feel at ease, to rest at times and at times to conquer. i want my brain to function properly and the words to come. i want so badly for the words to come, for not the words to fail me. i want and want and lack and fail. and so saying does not help in lifting the veil that inhibits me.

there is pain now in my tooth, in my hand, in my womb, in my legs, and in my spine. i ache. my meds have left me and in their place is the aching shin, inexplicable in its aggravation. the bones feel brittle, the muscles tense. i imagine the caffeine from breakfast coffee having leached out all the calcium. i do yoga and try to remember to take cal-mag. i shiver in the new cold, the fall air rushed in to chill me and tense these muscles tighter. i fear this as age itself, the decaying of this body. i feel weak, helpless.

what pills churned my stomach kept the pain from out my legs, though they were intended for the hand. my wrist just lies buzzing, tight like band-aids wrapped round the knuckles. it is fine and i suspect the pills are no longer needed, which is one of many reasons to leave them behind. yet these legs - they ache so! my spine cringes too. i feel a huddled mass, sick with flu, but i am not. i am but cold and tense with no reason. i feel as though i stayed too long in some ill-planned position and my legs stuck and my muscles kept the memory of it. i stretch and nothing eases. i take baths and nothing is soothed. i rub them and nothing. i sit and cry.

i imagine the bone cells dividing cancerous - huge ugly blotches discoloring the tibia like watermarks left behind mineral deposits; like the spots of spilled bathtubs or leaking roofs on ceilings. i picture me walking with cane, unable to chase my sons outside. i imagine every day ever after met with pain. my throat swells and tears come with the idea of never feeling normal again. i want nothing more than to wake without pain, with the ability to meet my day and do the things that i must do.

six years ago, i didn't have any children. this may seem like an obvious fact, but it underlines the changes in my life in such a short period. the years have gone so quickly and though the fabric of my life has changed and even my brain and my beliefs have grown and focused, i feel in so many ways like the same person, lost as ever. i feel the same questions i always had rattling around in my head and the same pangs in my heart in my memories and in my hopes. this is the same body. this is the same face, the same hands and eyes. yet so much that i see has changed. the differences in my life may in fact far outstrip the similarities, but at my core, i feel like me. i am the same emotional being i have always been.

and on the eve of september 11, i am forced to consider the changes in those six years. nothing can stop that i am reminded by the date itself and by the world around me of where i was and what i was doing six years ago tomorrow. i must then consider who i was then - what i thought and felt and how that has been transformed by years of perspective and learning.

as much as i confront the idea that so much has stayed the same, i am struck by how much is different. each is the inverse of the other - me then as me now, and me now as nothing like me then. they are two sides of the same mirror - staring into each other - the me's confronting that which remains true and that which has drastically altered. as i realize the differences, i am struck by the similarities, and as i confront the similarities, i am struck by the differences. conceptualizing this exercise into a spatial form would be like those escher drawings and the inevitable impossibilities of simultaneous being.

it is the way of the universe - while one truth is created, others are destroyed, but at the same time in parallel dimensions, the others live while the choice then not-made dies. it is the meaning of the word "is." to be is to imply the possibility of not being. what is true will always, elsewhere, be false. what towers that were destroyed, elsewhere still stand, and still elsewhere, never existed at all. those who died were never born, those that lived decayed. where this war rages, somewhere there is peace. and we hold in our hearts, all possibilities. peace remains or flourishes and the truth of who i was is the truth of who i will be. it is all there, doing its somersaults amidst my unmarked neural pathways and amidst those marked as well - this sense of being small and helpless and confused, and yet strong and confident and able. i am this and all things and this and all things, i am not. it is how i can be happy with where i'm at and who i am - i remain ever the ghost of myself and all possibilities are forever open to me.

lists make me and unmake me
build and unbuild me

my arms and legs
brought together,
taken apart,
folded
unfolded
wrapped about
and cast aside.

my eyes gazed skyward
and drooped with tears.
swollen shut
and snapped open.

forth and back
my mind wanders
and is lost.

i look for you there -
to find me.
i seek me out
unriddling the answers,
the unsaid truth of the thing.

but it is no bother to be,
the empty palms
fill only with questions.
and my heart
is left to break
and unbreak itself.

is there time to do the things i want to do? is there time before the world changes to see my children grow to men? will there be time for joy? time for peace? i exist under the weight of uncertainty and anxiety. i fear the pressing in of global change, of the world reduced from this mess to nearly nothing. i hear the reports - that the eleventh hour is upon us, yet see no decisive action really taken. i stand with many in my dissent, but many more are silent. there are moments in my day when excitement and ideas reach me, when i think of things that i might do. then trouble clenches tight my heart, and i grow silent and still, melancholic inaction taken its hold around me. all happiness is strangled out. my throat tightens in mid-sentence, the ideas stalled by dread. is there time yet to put into action what good i want to do? is it useless to sit troubling over whether i am good enough or not, when the world i seek to create for may soon not exist? my hands do not write, do not paint, do not stitch. my hopes that i have, the visions of my future and the future of my sons and family seem so improbable. what use is it to try? i am weighed down by my own negativity. i cannot escape the crushing fear that before me is nothing.

last night jon and i went to see death at a funeral on our date. i was at cedar/lee on thursday for becoming jane, but missed the previews. last night, we saw the previews. i was bawling at the 11th hour preview, despite the constant leo dicaprio narrative. i just can't take it. even before the previews, jon was telling me all about the book i bought him, the world without us, and what i've always worried about, the chapter, "polymers are forever," as it turns out, is the least of it. the depleted uranium situation is much, much worse because the half-life is as long as it will take for the sun to expand and engulf the earth. can you even imagine? and here i've been freaked about the damn ocean full of plastics, which is apparently just passive toxicity in comparison. this is my lead-up to the dark comedy - my husband detailing all the horrible things i dare not even dream, if i can help it, followed by a thirty-second montage of every horrible thing i can ever imagine.

and the war - the war! i grew up with that word that all the grown-ups i knew used with so many deeper connotations, "vietnam," and here are my children and this war and my heart breaks and breaks and breaks every day just worried about it. how i can even live this life, with such struggle and daily worry over clean clothes and credit card bills, when the ap changes the photo of each different poor family as it is ripped apart each moment, half a world away? How can i sit in movie theaters sobbing? how can i continue to attempt joy for these children that mean everything to me? so many problems, mounted so, so high. these trillions spent are our future as well as the past. these trillions are no health care, no safety-net, no clean air, no electric car, no social security, overcrowded classrooms, more wal-marts, less ingenuity, less pay, less food, less earth free of plastic, free for walking, for breathing and sensing what it means to stand in a meadow at dusk...

somehow, aleks and i started talking about the war in iraq this morning. i'm not sure how it happened. first we were saying the new bird-feeder needs to be filled up and put out, but in a different place than the homemade bird-feeders that the birds aren't eating out of. then he started asking about the dead cardinal we saw at aullwood farm in dayton this past may and insisted that i brainstorm ways that the bird might have died. he decided that it was a cat that stuck its claw into the bird, even though i figured the cat might have tried to eat it and there would have been less bird for us to see. then somehow, in all that talk about death, he started talking about army men and how they die and i said that they tend to kill one another in the war. all the while, there's this new poster in our kitchen glaring down at me:



so i tell him about the war in iraq - vaguely - and how the soldiers are there fighting, but that the army men aren't the ones dying the most, though they certainly are dying and it's all very sad. it goes on and on and he tells me how he hates army men, which i try to insist is not the way to go about it because they're just doing what they're told, but it would be nice if it would all just stop. he starts talking again about hating army men - says that he hates all army men in dayton. i tell him his babysitter, nick, in dayton, was an army man and was in iraq for a year and it made him really sad and he'll never be the same again.

then he mentions that 6 army men died today. i think back to the top headline on the ap - 7 dead in a bomb explosion, dozens wounded, but not soldiers, just people. i tell him there was a bomb, but that i didn't think they were army men - which is worse to say because i'm haunted by the image on the ap of what looks like a kid all bandaged and bleeding, hand outstretched and i feel sorry for myself about my stupid hand! - though some of them might have been and there were maybe other army men killed today because that seems to happen every day too. he says that they were killed in friendly fire and suddenly i remember when we were listening to npr in the car yesterday and that yes indeed, some british soldiers were killed in a friendly fire incident and then i have to try to explain what that means, and the best i can come up with is that they killed their friends, which sucks to have to say. i go back to making toast in the other room.

he comes in with is teddy bear, todd, and says that todd hates army men. i ask why and he says because army men kill people. i try to reiterate that we shouldn't hate them, but it would be good if they would stop killing people and come home. he leaves, comes back with his giant evil lego robot with one arm that's a gun and the other that's a spinning wheel of death or something and says that his robot, slammy, killed lots of army men. i ask why, get out of him that he kills them because they kill people, which i try to show the hypocrisy and convince him to just capture them. so slammy is going 'round the world spreading peace by using his special laser that puts army men in jail. sigh. eat your toast.

the final countdown is upon us. i am nearly through the summer. jon finishes his job in three days time, at which point the boys and i will flee to my mother's home for two weeks to allow him to write the first chapter of his dissertation. we are nearing the end of this long schooling process, even. and yet we are not near enough.

the boys just now are sick, both sleeping with fevers in this awful heat. i am fearful of contracting my own version of the illness, lest i feel unable to function more than i already feel unable, or unwilling, to do so.

the relationship issues have been looking up. we began to talk to someone else, which has greatly aided our emotional miscommunication that has followed us about, slowly torturing me, the last nine years. that, at least, is getting better.

i began my work serving on the board of directors of the cleveland food co-op, in addition to my duties as editor and writer of the monthly newsletter, which i've been doing since january. we shall see where that takes me. it feels good to have something to be truly responsible to outside the home, and i like that i have finally taken on the activist mantle of my family, at least now in a legitimized sense.

i also joined a consciousness raising group, which is proving wonderful, so far, and which will hopefully really serve those needs in me to feel a part of something larger than myself, as well as help to process the issues surrounding all that i am active in. i would like to spend more time thinking on things. more time, once again, spent exploring the conceptual in relation to the real, rather than simply utilizing my mental capabilities to create new modes of efficiency on the domestic front, that very, unnervingly real aspect of myself. though, at times, the domestic front seems indeed the only real thing in a world full of bullshit, of rationalizations of duty to the varying modes of capitalistic endeavor. it seems the only real doing thing left in this world. everything else is reduced to institution and limited by its legitimacy.

in some ways, my domesticity leaves me free to be who i am, accountable to no one but the society that raised me, echoing in my head. any guilt gained from my occupation is cultural conditioning, filtered through my familial upbringing, speaking in the sound of my own voice to me. this is still clearly entrenched in institution, but less so than everyone with a paying job who is actually held accountable to those systems in an overwhelmingly daily manner.

i am an artist who sells no art, a writer that hardly ever writes, and a mother, isolated by my culture, as well as from it. society will only ask me to report should a helpful citizen decide i have stepped too far outside cultural norms and notify children's services. i hardly exist outside of statistics, used so often as fodder from both leftist and rightist talking heads making points about what it is that we americans do or need and why.

i am only referred to, never engaged beyond the survey. in this way, i remain an outlaw, just beyond the reach of the hum of order, civilization, progress. in no way is it acknowledged that this work - this unending, arduous, deeply fulfilling, biologically impertinent work - which i do for free, is in fact the basis, the foundation, on which western civilization - nay, all civilization - rests. and i, as a middle-class white woman, am even less depended upon in this sense than the poor and mothers (and mother-figures) of color, because i am a member of a market, the only thing more "legitimate" in this capitalist state than being a worker-slave integrated into an institution body, mind, and soul. the fact that the economy rests on the bone-cruishingly unpaid work of women is thus ignored and the work itself relegated to the lofty fields of pricelessness and personal sacrifice. why not martyrdom as well, while we're at it?

i feel so void of happiness. all feels bleak and pointless. my head pounds. my heart is emptied. i cannot continue with these long days. it is too much. the hard days are too hard. there is no respite. the children gnaw at my side. my brain unfolds the ideal and tosses it aside, clinging frantically to the terrible, rushing emotion, that urge to say horrible things, to spit and flail, gnashing teeth and screaming. my patience escapes me, hides away in corners, unseen. i have so much to do and no energy. i rush and move about from thing to thing, but the moment i sit down, i'm lost. i grow tired. i languish. i have no desire to see anyone, yet feel the desperate call from out my chest that reaches for the phone, tries to think of someone to come save me from out myself. there is no one. there is nothing. the laughter of my children lifts me for but a second, and only slightly. the smile crept across my face turns with the source of the joke: half an inch of water spilled 'cross the bathroom floor, the crumbs of dismantled muffins scattered 'cross the sofa and living room, the objects knocked from off the table with loud crashes. their giggles turn into a hateful reminder of disaster and destruction and the million tasks ever before me. and there is no one here. i am all alone. the things i have to fulfill me do not. i am not moved by a need to create. i am not satisfied by my activities. i do not even long for others. a break is too short and offers but brief distraction, such a minor, childish act of avoidance. i cannot even muster tears.

a personal history of terrible things (not for the feint of heart).

last night, my husband came home later than i expected, shortly after i'd begun to worry. i spoke to my upstairs neighbor, trying to figure what to do. i called the police to ask about accidents. when he walked through the door as i was talking to the woman from upstairs, i excused my worry, apologized, and explained that we, or rather i, am prone to tragic accidents, and i thus have it in my head that bad things might seep in. these days i have been very lonely. jon has been working every day until 10 pm, leaving me alone to care for the children, exhausted by the heat, by their incessant complaint, the whining, the need to drive all over acquiring things, keeping them busy. i feel out of touch. i feel the absence of someone to speak to, to confess my life and process all my thoughts. i feel alone in my house, its empty rooms echoing when the children play quietly or nap. and this morning upon consideration of my fear of the accidental, i went down the list again, felt the weight of all the terrible things i have witnessed, and as usual simultaneously dismissed and invalidated the terror as nothing compared to the lives of others. it has been my friends who have dealt with terrible things lately, the people closest to me feeling the fear. my best friend suddenly lost her mother, which breaks a small part of my own heart. another friend sustained a loss i dare not even speak about. the terror is all around me. i feel it closing in amidst the silence and the echo of wood; the summer heat and humidity. i walk around with the sense that even more horrible things are in store for me, as if it were already written. i anticipate the loss of my husband like it were bound to happen. and when i do, i clutch my chest and sob whole-heartedly.

i decided to compile the actual events that have left me immovably stunned and terrified, for what reason i know not. i suppose it is to sit with it. it is a meditation. it is to consider my grief once more.

my son's first surgery, when he couldn't breathe afterward and was retracting very badly and the nurses tortured him by trying to suck blood out of his nose, which proved entirely unnecessary. eventually, they stuck a nipple in his mouth with the tip clipped off so he could breathe:
my son's second surgery when he became dehydrated and they poked him 5 times trying to find a vein, eventually landing his iv in his head:

the truck accident when i was 5 months pregnant with son #2, wherein a semi fell out of the sky and landed on my car:

the incident with the casserole dish, where i sliced through 4 tendons and severed a nerve in my wrist, trying to wash the dishes:
not pictured: jon failing the oral portion of his comprehensive exams for his phd.

it is nice to be appreciated, when it comes. it takes me off guard these days. i used to have such ego about my writing. i still understand that i write well, but feel so inadequate in terms of my rate of production that i hardly feel like a real or decent writer. i can make all the promises to myself that i want about writing more or writing everyday, but it still doesn't come. i have to take the small steps, make tiny goals in order to achieve anything at all.

my days are already so chock full of so much to do. i am running around in circles, trying desperately to do everything to be done, searching up and down, paying bills, running errands, zoning out in front of the computer. it takes such time to move. especially with small children - my own personal two-bodied demolition crew. i move frantically trying to get them out of the house, trying to post at my local board, trying to eat and do laundry. i plan things and go to meetings.

i am at this moment on the brink of joining the food co-op board, which will require that i meet once a month with the others to plan and discuss. as though i really needed more to do. i clean my house, knit, drink beer in the late nights when everyone is asleep.

my whole life these days is doing. what will happen to me when it is all done? i am trying to find a future in the cracks between activities in order to ensure that i am not lonely and languishing years from now when my eggs have fled the nest. i am attempting to plan out a memoir and a novel, finish a chap book of my february poems, write each monthly co-op newsletter, volunteer my time in the hopes that one day what i do can define me in a career. i create cards and bags, plan to finish the quilt one day, hope that i might sell something at some point, enough to furnish the rent should i need to. it is not likely to happen, but i have big dreams nonetheless. or perhaps they're small dreams.

i have always been excessively good at poo-pooing my ambitions, noting their improbability. it makes me so proud of my sisters and my husband to see them doing what they dream. i have far too many interests in too many directions to do much of anything at all. i become paralyzed by possibility. it is quite the lousy lot. i should, in fact, know better. but i don't really know what i want. i want too much. i want everything. i want nothing more than what i've got. i am where i planned to be. or so it would seem. perhaps this was the path of least resistance and it simply fit me well. i don't know. it is what it is. i do what i do.

i attempt to feign knowledge of the future, but really i'm just attempting to put anything in a place where a career might land that i may have something to put on a resume. at the same time, i have no interest in forming a career. i can rationalize all this crazy talk with this idea that what i do is explore my world and try things out, making me a more balanced, well-rounded, experienced person in the long run, making life my major and participating in communal systems my career.

and then tonight i was asked to come to a literary group after some folks liked my poems. it has been so long since i'd been to a poetry reading. this one was quite nice, filled with older people with quiet, non-slam poetry filled with meaning and beautiful imagery and exquisite language. i felt at home with my writing, like i belonged, like i was on par. and then the compliment. i hadn't the heart to tell her that there is no way i can participate in one more thing these days, my plate is already so so full. already there is hardly time to sit and think or to put those thoughts in the blog.

i had always intended this to be more interesting in terms of the writing than a regular blog, but i think i've fucked it up this go round and the incessant paragraph is probably more than overwhelming. perhaps it is time to break it up. there. i've done it, though i'm terrible at paragraphs.

long ago, i had a point. i had wanted to talk about all my confusion these days, how i feel this gap between my husband and i, how i almost think i'm making it up. but i forgot and didn't know how to get there anyway. i am too busy doing to think too much. i am too busy doing to understand the meaning in my life or to feel connected. i am out the door.

it is the thing driving me in circles and filling up my brain, weighing on my shoulders. it is the flow out of pockets, and deep in the crevices of my bank account. i account for it with the pangs in my heart, but fears creep in and uncertainty rises to the surface. i am waiting for things to be better, for the world to look brighter, the days to be warmer. i am sick to death of snow. i am entirely too full of chocolate and it no longer comforts me. the wet winter and all this darkness is wearing on me. the children are tired and have been cooped up for too long now. they go crazy, scream and whine all day. they need freedom too. i want nothing more than to be comfortable and free from worry. i have done the necessary time, i am convinced of it. this has been enough and i am done with wringing my hands attempting to determine the appropriate course of action when so many may do, but none will be the entire solution. i attempt to visualize great rivers of money flowing at me, fleshing out my cheeks, rounding me and fulfilling the needs of the family. i imagine us free from worry - i see me smiling and contentedly going about my life, my general struggle with the atrocities of circumstance that i've unwillingly been a part of. i envision me walking down the street pulling the boys in the wagon. is it only warm air that i long for? is it simply summer that will fulfill my fantasies? every year, it seems, this happens. there is the long freak out and the creeping discontent with the way things are. i am a full bud, waiting. i am in need of the overspill, the pouring into spring, into sandal wearing and sleeveless dresses. i am chilled and my hands ache from all my fretting. it is high time i abandon the blankets, no longer need the layers to keep me calm and comfortable. i need ease and lightness. i wish only for freedom from anxiety. i want to stop this soulful weeping. this has gone on long enough.

in need of something new, i long for babies when i see babies, long for puppies when i hear talk of puppies, randomly pick up an application to run for the co-op board. the moment i think logically, however, i remember why i have no interest in puppies, why i have my fill of children, and why my time is all spent up and there's none left to be on a board. there is something churning in my belly though, flipping my eyes from here to there looking for something to long for. what is it that i need? what is it that i want? what is it that i can actually do? i don't even know how to approach the questions - clearly - let alone find the answers. what do i want? what do i want? i pick at the pretzels, imagine myself doodling the words, scrolling pen marks all about a page, searching in spirals and flowers and doodled stars and images of dna that i always draw for an answer, for the mystical revelation. where is it? in my skin? in this world, this life, this neighborhood and city? is there something to be done? some direction to be pointed in? should i plan out my whole life or merely change the colors of the walls? i was listening to the npr station today and this woman was giving a press conference, it seemed, about women and sports and all her volunteering and the things she's involved in - ending poverty and whatnot - and i thought how nice it might be to become really so involved in everything that i believe in so as to be on boards and make real change and go to africa to see the things that others do not see, to not just sob at news stories and choke up every time i read a fucking magazine. i thought how good it might be to dedicate a life to fighting poverty, to have the energy and the resources to actually do something like that. but i don't know how that works. clearly, this woman, and george clooney, who i spent the time in the fluido in occupational therapy reading about, have the sort of resources to be on the elton john aids board or to work the un security counsel about its approach to saving darfur. last week i thought that maybe instead of having a baby we could bring a sudanese refugee into our home just like in i heart huckabees, only without the bullshit christian crap and all the nonsense spewed down his/her throat about how great sprawl and capitalism are, but merely a job and a place to live and food to eat and friendship and honesty. or maybe that's a ridiculous idea because look at us - we have no money, no means to bring a refugee into our home. we have only photoshop and questions and endless student loan debt. i think all the ridiculous things, spark crazed notions while driving in the car, search the bottom of my glass of water for clarity in my personal life. what is it? what is this? is it spring? turning twenty-eight? the silence of my partner, the screaming of my children, the snot poured down their faces? is this a searching out of myself from desperation or boredom? is it anxiety about the summer, the endless months looming ahead with no income, the barren lands of debt and worry? is it a searching to escape the weight of all this worry, a way to immerse myself in something as means of distraction? why is it that i must ask the questions of myself? why is it that i cannot look into my head and see plainly where my fears and worries and desires come from? i was reading cunt and thinking of cuntfear and how women fight one another needlessly and realizing truthfully that every woman i judge has something that i fear in myself - naiveté, arrogance, denial, laziness, annoying hyperactivity. i can face myself and know this - why can i not peer into the pool of other thoughts and know their source? what is it that i am missing? what am i attempting to avoid in finding the answers? is this simply fraught with complexity? is there nothing there beyond an urge, a feeling? what is this? why the anxiety? why can i not overcome this by way of information and exploration? i cannot learn my way out of my emotional confusion. i imagine myself writing, whittling down and down to a solution, of sorts; to a plan at the very least. perhaps all that is in order is making a list. or maybe having a long conversation with my husband, seeing if he can shed any light at all on what is happening here. he did seem opposed to the child, puppy, and co-op board ideas, so i suppose those are out. painting the house is going to happen anyway. i've been purging in hopes to free myself of all the weight of my household, getting ready for spring and the task of the treasure map (the setting out of all desires for myself for the year in collage form). i am digging through my life in search for what i want. and i just do not know at all what it is.

doing, doing, all day long. the self-challenge to write twenty-eight poems in february morphed into the self-challenge to sew and knit lots and lots in march. the week-long break at my mother's house resulted in the initiative to do everything on the to-do list (current and long-forgotten, present and long-term) in order to live come the spring. come spring and summer i pledge to write, to knit, to walk, to visit many places, explore the heights of rocky river again with newly-hiking two-year-old, witness the bulbs sprung open, the muddy puddles ready for jumping, the sandbox full of broken, winter-rotted toys, vacationing, visiting with friends, painting, stroll the street fair thursdays in coventry, prepare the midnight wizard meeting, brainstorm ideas for fall, brainstorm thoughts on a health collective, brainstorm and invent the method out of mommy-madness, and finish the creative projects long on the table. i am emptying closets, on the phone to lawyers and chiropractors, writing articles for magazines, creating chapbooks and newsletters, stitching diaper bags, knitting blue-on-blue checkerboarded dishcloths, checking off lists, storming theoretical castles. i am in the midst, in a swirl of activity, buzzed with accomplishments and extra-strong ethiopian coffee. i am not nice, per se, but most truly me. i advise that carpet is in fact toxic and thus suitable for hatred. i purchase things beyond my reach, but balance well the bank account. i watch movies and do not sleep enough. the thunder is pounding, the basement is wet, i seek to sleep, but move to type, to sate the hunger of dear, unknown, comment-less readers. the ice cream is empty. i've done well to begin to meet the resolutions i set forth for myself. my hand is much better; much better than expected. my thoughts for nanowrimo two-thousand-seven are brewing and beginning. my weight creeps upward. today i raised my heartbeat for a good twenty minutes and made my children happy to boot. i celebrate the successes and mourn the facts of my deficit health, my fears of the future, but do not dwell. i move onward. i go.