SAINT INTERFERENCE—how they march when the stars fall from the sky and the moon turns red with blood and the sun refuses to shine, the saints go marching in, so the song goes! You know where I learned the most about saints—at the thrift store. I met Saint Theresa, patron saint of flowers, there. I also met Saint Dymphna, patron saint of mental illness, via billboard transference on a highway in Indiana. And wouldn’t you know that today, May 15, is her feast day. There must be some reason why I’m thinking of her today.
SPONTANEOUS REBELLION—of mind and spirit and it comes swift, this sudden awareness to pivot, this turning of directions, a subtle yet firm shift in regard, a reckoning, a way back, a forceful no, a distinct demarcation of borders and boundaries otherwise lacking until the moment you discover the road you thought would go on forever ends. To rebel quells doubt. To rebel fells fatigue. To rebel smells like springtime with the saints—a turning inward for the first time or the last is a secret you share with the sky.
VIVID CONVICTION—where indecision once stalked me I could now walk with the clarity in each step toward the grand doors and down the generous hallways that would lead to an ease in my posture and stance toward the future. The message to keep moving comes from the bird with a worm in its mouth this morning on my windowsill. I told the bird the memo has been received by me, the perceiver of all things taking shape in the world right in the center of my mind’s eye! Good morning, bird, I see you.
BAD ATTENTION—comes from wanting to avoid rejection and so therefore walking straight into the garbage heap, we think we’ll find nuggets of gold there but it’s dipped in disease and when I say I wanted to stay up all night with the man who wrapped his long dreads around my neck like a scarf I mean it but the arrangement didn’t come with eyes or kindness, it came with a long night on a mattress on the floor, the night before. And in the morning, I pushed him out the door and said please don’t come back because I won’t live here anymore, come tomorrow.
RECKLESS REDIRECT—when friends who texted daily cease their pings and friends who sent you invitations for a home-cooked meal quietly disappear from the window of a shared view, and lovers who pulled you from the deck of tarot cards tried to find meaning in your body as a symbol, and lovers who carried you to the clinic to check on your queasy stomach and solar plexus spasms and then left you there, there’s a kind of reckless redirect in their kind regards and the terms have changed but the contract still drips with drops from an earlier ink.
PITY SPIRAL—I try not to go there these days but when I feel it coming on I get down low on the ground and press my forehead to the wooly carpet and marvel at the stitching and wish I knew a thing or two about a heritage craft I could carry with me to the end of my days. I can’t do the high-highs or the low-lows anymore but my panic attacks have taught me that no amount of stress could take me down the road of self-loathing at this point. Once I realized that stress made me sick, I learned to escape the labyrinths we get dropped into with despairing dynamics and at this point, the only time I encounter a pity spiral is when I’m reading about a woman in her early twenties trying to find love.
(note to self: when I find, after reading several books this morning, two-words phrases that feel like doors I need to push open and see what’s in there, I get to sit with thoughts like this, and let them go).
SPONTANEOUS REBELLION—of mind and spirit and it comes swift, this sudden awareness to pivot, this turning of directions, a subtle yet firm shift in regard, a reckoning, a way back, a forceful no, a distinct demarcation of borders and boundaries otherwise lacking until the moment you discover the road you thought would go on forever ends. To rebel quells doubt. To rebel fells fatigue. To rebel smells like springtime with the saints—a turning inward for the first time or the last is a secret you share with the sky.
VIVID CONVICTION—where indecision once stalked me I could now walk with the clarity in each step toward the grand doors and down the generous hallways that would lead to an ease in my posture and stance toward the future. The message to keep moving comes from the bird with a worm in its mouth this morning on my windowsill. I told the bird the memo has been received by me, the perceiver of all things taking shape in the world right in the center of my mind’s eye! Good morning, bird, I see you.
BAD ATTENTION—comes from wanting to avoid rejection and so therefore walking straight into the garbage heap, we think we’ll find nuggets of gold there but it’s dipped in disease and when I say I wanted to stay up all night with the man who wrapped his long dreads around my neck like a scarf I mean it but the arrangement didn’t come with eyes or kindness, it came with a long night on a mattress on the floor, the night before. And in the morning, I pushed him out the door and said please don’t come back because I won’t live here anymore, come tomorrow.
RECKLESS REDIRECT—when friends who texted daily cease their pings and friends who sent you invitations for a home-cooked meal quietly disappear from the window of a shared view, and lovers who pulled you from the deck of tarot cards tried to find meaning in your body as a symbol, and lovers who carried you to the clinic to check on your queasy stomach and solar plexus spasms and then left you there, there’s a kind of reckless redirect in their kind regards and the terms have changed but the contract still drips with drops from an earlier ink.
PITY SPIRAL—I try not to go there these days but when I feel it coming on I get down low on the ground and press my forehead to the wooly carpet and marvel at the stitching and wish I knew a thing or two about a heritage craft I could carry with me to the end of my days. I can’t do the high-highs or the low-lows anymore but my panic attacks have taught me that no amount of stress could take me down the road of self-loathing at this point. Once I realized that stress made me sick, I learned to escape the labyrinths we get dropped into with despairing dynamics and at this point, the only time I encounter a pity spiral is when I’m reading about a woman in her early twenties trying to find love.
(note to self: when I find, after reading several books this morning, two-words phrases that feel like doors I need to push open and see what’s in there, I get to sit with thoughts like this, and let them go).
