The Road : Part One

This road is a long one
Longer than I had foreseen.
It's a lonely road;
a desert road
where the silence echoes -
rebounding along the shadowing cliffs
that hunch like imprecise omens
clustered together; brewing malice.

In other places, the silence streaks across the endless expanse
of nothing less
than nothing else:

empty land;
empty sky;
empty road;
empty hand;
empty heart.

It may be a large circle
or for all I know a meandering path -
a crooked trail of dust and tears -
but I've long lost sight of the beginning
and I fear I'm losing hope
of finding the end.

I should have - long ago -
dropped to my knees
refused to go on.
lain down and surrendered
to dirt and dust and time.

Because it's not direction I'm losing.
It's hope.
The clear, clean, beautiful thing
that is hope
shimmers in the distance
and vanishes into nothingness.

And once again,
the silence echoes.

The Desert Time

I realized that it's been a long time since I wrote anything here. And at once felt guilty. And then felt completely annoyed at myself for feeling guilty. Things have been a little rough and it's not as though I've been traipsing around doing nothing - or doing lots of things other than writing. But I haven't been writing enough.

Then the other day, I started - what I hope will become some sort of series - of writings that are parts of what I'm just calling, "The Road." Because that's what this whole journey through being at a job that finally became untenable (to the point that it was affecting my physical health), to leaving that job, to being unemployed, to being on unemployment, to suddenly for the first time in my life not being able to get another job again (this has never really been a problem in the past). And now sitting here looking at our situation - that from any perspective looks pretty dire - and wondering, "how did we get here?" With our resumes, our education, our experience, our work ethic? How did we get here? How did we become the people about the fall off the edge of the cliff; the people falling through the cracks in the system that's supposed to help; the people that we never imagined that we'd be.

But The Road has been about far more than that. It has become the biggest spiritual journey of my life - and significant in the fact that it's the biggest spiritual journey that my husband and I have been on together. And the changes that are happening in our individual lives and our collective lives are the things that are so important. We've been through, what I would call some pretty significant struggles and challenges so far in our eighteen years together. We've had parent issues. Money issues. Custody issues. Health issues that became near death issues. But somehow, this one is different. And I don't want it to be "just another thing" I go through, or we go through. It's too important to be just something we survive.

So all of this is an out-of-the-blue preface to me deciding to add the pieces of The Road here. And maybe deciding to flesh it all out at some point and make a coherent story out of it.

ash wednesday - before service

let me lay down my sword
(must everything be a fight for me?)
and surrender wholly to your lenten season.
surrender my order and control -
chaos in actuality -
for your peace and plan.
let my release be my salvation
as i turn once again to you.

741

freely
tears fall
down

i have no more
words
which were never enough to begin with.

i said
once that
words matter

and now
the echo of their passing
is madness.

shattered
i am held
in place

by small strips
of glassine
with razored edges.

you wouldn't know
for all my tattered charm
remains

intact and unwilling
to validate the outcome
of injustice.

bleeding hope
seeking restoration
solace leaks

through unfiltered frames
b roll
fragments unrelated.

quiet now
thoughts gather
waver softly

whispers follow with
daunting regularity
not clarity.

bound and rightly so
i am given to
fits and starts

more to come
there always is
in the end.


it may be a bit difficult, I'll admit, but it's a snapshot of one day. that's all. 

Overheard in the office ….

Oh, yeah … Hook. That’s the one with Robin Williams in it, right? Peter Pan? At Christmas? Well, whatever, it’s snowing, right? Hang on [clicking of keyboard keys – presumably looking up the movie on IMDB]. Oh. Wait. No … I don’t know if I saw that one in the theatre. It came out in 1991. I was five.

Oh snap. And that’s the first time in my whole life I’ve ever felt old at the office. I’m not going to tell you what I was doing in 1991, but I was definitely seeing movies in the theatre. All by myself. Possibly even on a date.

Truth

Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by.

¾Madeleine L’Engle

Life Without Cable

It's been a summer without cable television. I'm making that distinction because even without the 24/7 feed from your local provider, your television can still function (hello DVD player). So maybe it's been a summer without television that has commercials. Whatever. You get my point. There's part of me that would like to claim that we've taken this road for idealistic, moral reasons that involve health, wellness, and a departure from commercialism. And I suppose that might comprise a teeny tiny part of our choice. But really, in the end, it was about cutting costs. Either way - no TV.

I think I can honestly say that my family missed it more than I did (in the beginning). Did I miss it at all? Well, sure. I'm a huge foodie and can spend hours going back and forth between programming on The Food Network and Bravo watching chefs, wannabe chefs, and cheftestants doing their thing. I also like to occasionally visit the twenty-four hour news cycle - just to catch up. And yes, I've succumbed to the thralls of some reality programming over the past decade. Survivor - of course. Bethenny Frankel's shows - whatever - you know you've watched at least one. And (gulp) the Real Housewives franchise. Okay, that one? I don't miss so much. I have enough drama from real housewives in my real life without getting caught up in the lunacy of the various housewives-of-another-city and their ridiculousness. No. I don't miss that one at all.

So what does one do when there's no TV to be had in the house? If you're my husband, you immediately decide to re-watch several years worth of your favorite series (Buffy the Vampire Slayer - which was then bumped by Battle Star Gallactica). If you're my daughter, you immediately jump on to streaming Netflix to watch every episode of Penguins of Madagascar and Scooby Doo. If you're me, you immediately turn on the jazz station and run around the house yelling at everyone to turn off the damn TVs. So, maybe not quite like that, but it was a transition for us all.

Yes, my husband made it through to about season five of Buffy (I watched occasionally - love that show), and finished Battle Star (I watched that one a lot - it's amazing). My daughter did get our money's worth out of Netflix streaming videos. Which is good since we're not paying those jacked up prices for full service anymore. But as a whole, I think we did move away from "screen time" even more than I anticipated and in better ways that I might have guessed.

We have read so much more this summer. And not just for book club. Although I can tell you that without the distraction of the Real Housewives, I actually completed our August book - A Confederacy of Dunces. Side note: I think I feel the same way about the characters in that book as I do about the cast of Real Housewives of New Jersey: appalling, loathsome, annoying, and not one redeemable character in the lot. We've rediscovered Michael Connelly and are reading through all his books. I read almost every book in two libraries on canning and knitting and have been quite productive with both endeavors this summer. We've taken more family outings (to the library and other places), we biked, we went to the farmer's market, and I've had a once-a-week date with a good friend that has grown that friendship tremendously. All of this because of no TV? It's possible - and probable - that we would have done many of these things anyway - even with TV chattering in the background. But I like to think that the lack of constant "empty programming" and the lack of advertizing bombardment has made a real impact on us. My daughter no longer quotes commercials, much to my delight, and I think we're more deliberate about what we do decide to spend time watching.

Either way, being without cable TV is not the end of modern living, or the end of entertainment, or the end of anything, really. Except maybe the end of empty, constant noise in the background of our lives. I think it's worth trying - even if you don't need to save the money. You might discover something absolutely delightful about life without it.