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March 25, 2006
With apologies to K.
I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your innovations
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
NATASHA BEDINGFIELD
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2006
the only thing worse than not knowing, is you thinking that I don't know
I'm trying to remember the last time I felt completely relaxed. I think it was a couple of weeks ago when I was in Austin. I'm trying to bring that feeling back but I'm not having any luck.
What is wrong with me? Why am I so convinced that nothing will turn out well? If there's not a worm in the apple I'm eating, I'll plant one. Do you ever think about the term "morbid curiosity"? I've got it, in spades. I hate that about myself.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2006
things to come
It will be eighty degrees here today. The trees are in bud, the birds start singing at four-thirty in the morning, it's light when Moo heads out the door to the schoolbus. Bob comes into my bedroom and stands on his hind legs and looks out the window, which is at branch level. Later he and Spike sit on the upstairs deck railing, crouched in on themselves, observing the wildlife, but the wildlife generally ignores them, preferring to get ready for spring and everything spring means. It's a busy season.
This weekend I raked the yard, cleaned it up and got rid of the leaves, and exposed it as the dustbowl it is. We need rain, and in fact the air smells like rain, but so far only a scant few drops have fallen. The sky is blue and calm. It will be cold again by the end of the week, if the forecast can be believed.
Moo is playing lacrosse this year on the junior varsity team, and on Saturday evening he and I and his girlfriend and Herself went to the "face-off banquet." It was in the highschool cafeteria, there was a lot of food, and we listened to the coaches talk and took pictures and applauded for the boys in their new team uniforms, all gangly limbs and shaggy hair and so-so complexions and secret handshakes and embarrassed to be standing up in front of The Parents. It is still slightly unreal to think that Moo is my child. "Just think, Mom," he said to me, "somebody who came out of your uterus is going to be going to college in a few years!"
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2006
isn't it messed up how I'm just dying to be here
I write all day, in my head. Trying out different subjects, sentences, turns of phrase. Yet I cannot seem to get myself into this chair, onto this site, get myself to let it all out and out of my head. I talk to myself all day long and all those words go nowhere. For a long time I felt incomplete unless I wrote every day. Maybe I had a lot to say, maybe I had nothing to say but it felt like a lot; what's the difference, anyway?
Maybe I was angrier and I didn't need to be specific about where the anger came from. Now I'd like to be more specific but I can't be. I am held back by discretion, and you all know I am not exactly the poster child for The Benefits of Holding Your Tongue. I want to say more but I am so constrained to saying less that I say nothing, nothing at all.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
March 01, 2006
ashes to ashes
When I was a kid, I'd give up desserts for Lent. This included candy, naturally, and by the time Easter came around I would be practically swooning at the thought of the malted milk eggs in my basket.
When I was a teenager, I'd go on a diet for Lent. I'd have Cheerios for breakfast and horrible yogurt for lunch and eat notebook paper if I got too hungry. One year I lost fifteen pounds.
I haven't been a practicing Catholic for almost my entire adult life, but a couple of years ago I observed Lent. I gave up biting my fingernails and swearing. "Wow, Mom," said Moo appreciatively, "that's going to be hard for you." He meant giving up swearing, and it was hard. In solidarity, Moo gave up soda.
The year after that, I gave up desserts,* the result being that without sugar at the end of a meal, I never quite knew when I was finished eating and so didn't know when to stop. It was unsettling. And since I wasn't eating dessert I'd usually end up having an extra glass of wine to compensate, which somehow seemed to defeat the purpose of my Lenten effort.
Last year I didn't give up anything, since I didn't enjoy anything enough to care if it wasn't there any more. The best I could do was vow not to sneak up north in the middle of the night and slash the thousand-dollar tires on Spooky Girlfriend's car.
Today is Ash Wednesday, and for a few days I'd been thinking about Jesus in the desert turning down the devil, and about the next forty days and what I would do without for the duration. But this year I decided--or maybe this is just a belated, obvious realization--that Lent isn't about giving up, it's about taking on. Taking on duty, taking on responsibility, taking on love. Taking on life and everything it offers and everything it wrests away from you, and taking it on even though you can see the end of your life in front of you shimmering like a mirage, or like the idea of a mirage, but you know it's really there and waiting.
I don't know why I never thought, until now, about how when Jesus said No to Satan and the power he was offering, he was saying No to despair, No to hopelessness, No to the idea of nothing, and Yes to everything else. I try to imagine myself saying Yes to everything else and I realize that it's going to be the hardest thing I've ever done.
Posted by JudyLa at 11:30 PM | Comments (0)