For Those Who Struggle...

Down and down we go

...myself included. Found this at Whiskey River a moment ago and it seems to define the battle (regardless of its nature) each of us has to face at one time or another.

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Three Js

Here are my reasons for not getting my housework done on my day off. What's yours?

Jimi, Jimi, and Jimi
Janis and Janis

Joe, my man Joe

Hot Jazz on a Cold Sunday Morning (Revised)

Cool cats

...with rain on my roof providing the counterpoint backdrop. I'm listening on YouTube with my loss-leader earphones, my body swaying and swinging to the sweet sounds of Django and Stephane. Sex without the sweat, cool cats! (Click on the link under the picture. Here's another one.)

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Go-o-od mo-o-r-rnin', Blogland!

9-28-09 Note: I was advised that an expression I used to indicate the kind of dancing I was doing (like Lauren Bacall did in To Have and Have Not, more of a strut, really) to the music, above, didn't mean what I thought it meant and was, in fact, politically incorrect, in addition to being just plain wrong. So, I edited my post to remove the offending expression, and to apologize for my ignorance.

Melancholia

Passing Through

There is an unsettling stillness to the house that has begun bedding down in my brain, in my heart, now that the confusion of moving Kareema and Donovan out has passed. Even though we get together each evening, the quiet of the rest of the day cancels out the noise and chatter left behind after their visits. I hadn’t anticipated this. Just another adjustment to be made.

I went to bed early last night, around 9:30; early for me, anyway. Despite feeling bone tired as I slowly climbed the stairs, I couldn’t get to sleep right away. Tossed and turned so much that I loosened the sheets and got up around 12:30am to remake the bed. Went downstairs to check that all the lights were out and I had locked the doors. Picked up a small flashlight to take up to my room, in case the power goes off, not that I had reason to believe it might.

As I lay in the dark, trying all the old go-to-sleep tricks my mother used to tell us to do, the house talked to me, creaking and groaning, as it has every night for the last 24 years that I’ve lived here. I still don’t know what it’s trying to tell me, though I listen hard and with an open heart.

Just as I began drifting off, the Canada geese squadrons flew overhead, honking to one another, the drill sergeants calling out sharply to the stragglers, the ones out of step…out of flap, I guess. Each fall, I would listen for them; try to catch sight of them in the night sky. I’ve been so preoccupied with divorce, financial woes, and taking care of daughter and grandson over the last three years that I hadn’t heard them. I opened the window near my bed to hear them better. For almost fifteen minutes, squadron after squadron of honkers passed overhead, going south. Don’t know if there were more after that, because I fell asleep to the soft honking. Such a wonderful sound.

Today has been rainy and dreary, which I usually don’t mind at all. I usually call these days “beautiful Seattle days,” but today I just feel melancholic. The house is growing cold, the temperature falling below 66F last I looked. I’m trying to resist turning on the furnace until the thermostat reads 64 or lower – trying to make the fuel oil go a little further.

The kids are coming for supper in awhile, so I’m headed to the grocery store. When I return, I think I’ll make a pot of delicious, malty Assam, do a load of dishes and prepare the fixings for homemade pizzas – always fun to make.

(c)2009 Martha McLemore

Haruki Murakami

Haruki

Before I have coffee or anything else in the morning, I log onto the computer and visit my favorite blogs. One of those favorites is Whiskey River, to read the quote of the day, which gives me something to think about while getting ready for work.

Somehow, over the last few days, I missed a quote, but found it this morning. It is from Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami, someone I've not heard of before (I lead such a shallow life, it seems), but I did research a bit this morning. The quote at WR made me laugh, which is why I'm including it here:

"What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things."

It's the jellyfish part that got to me. I used to imagine, when I was a kid, that the world beyond what I could see was squishy, not solid, and was probably like jello or ...jellyfish. The world, therefore, became solid - real - only when I walked toward the horizon, toward what I couldn't see. Kids are so self-centered, so ego-centric, to think they create the world by their being.

Anyway, after chuckling over the quote, I googled Murakami's name and discovered he is a fellow Baby-Boomer and (evidently) a well-known writer. Time for another trip to the local library...as soon as I can make the path there solid with my steps.

Good morning, Blogland.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

Odd Socks

Mismatched

This is not about socks, odd or otherwise. Not much on my mind today (how did that happen?!), but a couple or so observations, and things I found while wasting time cruising the Internet.

• Had to drive to the east side of York this morning for an appointment with my therapist, Beth. I've been seeing her, off and on, for a couple of years now, since shortly after I filed for divorce from Ex-Beloved. I was a basket-case then, but, as John Aston's character used to say, on Night Court, "I'm much better now!" Anyway, the sun hadn't risen very high when I left home so the heavy dew on the vegetation along my route sparkled like I imagine diamonds do. There was the beginning of a burning-off mist rising from the fields and off the trees, through which fingers of sunlight seemed to search for something they had lost. I was reminded of Lucy's photos taken in her garden earlier this year. Remembering her artistry brightened my mood measurably, and heightened my enjoyment of the sparkling landscapes before me.

• On the ride home afterwards, I recalled something I wrote in an email to a blogger friend, about my criteria for what makes a good father. I wrote, in a smart ass tone, that my expectations "are that he doesn't beat his children, that he doesn't denigrate them, verbally or emotionally abuse them, and that he provide for them as best he is able." The recollection made me think about my father, who, sadly, did all of those things above - usually when in a drunken rage - and was an unreliable source of support due to his alcoholism. As I was growing up, I used to think that his abuses were because I was a rotten kid, that I didn't deserve any better treatment. I carried that misperception (self-deception?) into both my marriages and other relationships for too many years, until I was shocked out of that notion when the truth of my second marriage became abundantly clear. The first sixty years of my life had been influenced negatively by what I believed about myself from my dysfunctional childhood. Yet it is also true that the changes I'm making in how I live (want to live) the next sixty years is being positively guided by that same childhood. I will never settle for that kind of life ever again. For all his shortcomings as a "good" father, I learned many valuable things from my father, and I dearly loved the man. Go figure.

• When I returned home, I sat my wide caboose down at the computer and went surfing. I went back to an earlier post, Listening, and played the links. While there, I stumbled onto another blog, Concrete Beat...way cool! It's about street musicians in the subways and on the street corners of New York. I didn't read through all the posts, but I'll be going back there soon.

• Also checked in at Whiskey River and read a quote from GBS (George Bernard Shaw), Irish playwright and intellectual. And NO, intellectual and Irish are NOT mutually exclusive terms, as one of my years-ago English professors said. But, what can you expect from a guy who looked like the comic book character, The Hulk?

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

The Troubadour

Ride Credit

Troubadour

The erstwhile dog-day troubadour
Beats upon his belly’s kettle drum,
His song a steady tuneless thrum -
A maddening, constant, screeching hum -
From dawn’s soft light through setting sun,
Courting death in his frantic search for amour:
This summer’s-end winged troubadour.

For three lustra and two circuits of the sun,
Our hero suckled on tree roots underground,
Until his way to the surface could be found,
Where females strained to hear his sound.
When, at last, he felt his wings unbound,
When Magicada’s imago cycle had begun,
He plumped – dried – his wings in July sun.

The assassin, too, listens for his song,
And, when it’s heard, she takes to wing;
Oblivious to her, he proceeds to sing.
He does not flinch upon her sting,
Though a squirming death it will bring.
Her egg inside him will hatch ere long,
After her venom stills his shrill song.

The valkryja glides her prize to her lair,
Where other Sæhrímnirs line the hall,
Providing grisly meat and mead for all
Her wriggling einherjar, still so small.
The troubadour’s carcass begins to fall
To dust in a chamber filled with dank air,
Inside the wasp’s subterranean lair.

The troubadour’s rêve de mort is brief,
Like his life; a fading, melancholy review
Of all the things he had hoped to do –
Songs to be sung, the pitching of ardent woo –
A simple life, really, not much for him to do.
His early demise brings Troubadour deep grief,
Abridging a life-span predestined to be brief.

Adieu, little dog-day troubadour.
You’ll beat your kettle drum no more.

© 2009 Martha McLemore

Sincerely

Thank you, everyone, for taking the time from your lives to respond to my last couple of postings. Writing to this blog has always seemed to me a little like tossing a message in a bottle onto the open seas: I want my message to be read (for reasons I’m still analyzing), yet I’m always somewhat surprised when it is, and the reader responds. That you respond with kindness and thoughtfulness to a stranger adds to the wonder of it all.

Tomorrow marks two weeks since daughter and grandson have moved out. We’ve had some rough patches, but we are hanging in there. Two days after they moved out, Donovan’s cat had to be put to sleep – feline leukemia. Donovan was broken-hearted, as you might expect, but seems to have moved forward. We have one cat left of the original three I found last year, and it has become Donovan’s new pet. At least, that’s Donovan’s point of view. The cat isn’t so sure.

Kareema, my daughter, has her ups and downs; seems scattered, emotionally. She admits to being scared, and cries easily at times. However, she is a strong person when she puts her mind and heart into it; one of the qualities that make her a very good employee, oddly enough. Kareema is an intelligent human being, a first-class problem-solver – when it isn’t her problem she’s having to solve. I do believe she has the ability to overcome this latest challenge. I’ve seen her do it before; differing circumstances, but with confidence and determination, she succeeded. She’s still in shock, I think. She hasn’t been this far down for quite awhile, and accepting her current situation is a hard blow to absorb.

We are getting through these rough first days of adjustment fairly well, I think. (Hope I’m not deluding myself, always a possibility.) Donovan helped me clean out the gutter along the sunroom roof on Saturday (I don’t do ladders very well anymore) and did some other odd jobs around the house, which made him feel useful and needed. He’s such a good kid.

We get together every day, at supper. Sharing our evening meal helps us stay connected, helps Karie and Donovan feel less alone (me, too), and lets me keep an eye on how they’re doing, emotionally.

I don’t want to turn this blog into a soap opera, so I’ll move on to other subjects. This post is to tell you all how much your kindness means to me, and to let you know we are going to be okay. Might be rough and scary in spots, but we are together and we have much love for one another, so we’ll do just fine.

Bit of a Long Post

I come from a long line of co-dependents and enablers, and the more I love someone, the more I act true to form, though I’m not as bad about it as I used to be. Left to my own devices, I probably would wallow in sadness until Hell became an ice-skating rink. But there is some little voice of common sense that always yells in my psyche’s ear, “ENOUGH! Move on, willya?!”

That voice of reason has jerked me up short and pointed out that my actions, conceived of love and compassion, have--in fact--enabled my daughter to continue her self-destructive behaviors. What complicates my response to her are my feelings for my grandson, who has no control over how his mother chooses to live.

I have evicted my daughter and her son from my home for the second time in his short life. The first time was when he was seven years old. They went to a shelter for the homeless. As I drove away after dropping them off, I made the mistake of looking in my rear-view mirror. Donovan was waving good-bye, his little face struggling not to cry. That was the first time my heart broke into a billion shards, and I cried for a week afterwards, was depressed for months. I vowed then that I would never do that again, leave him at a shelter.

My daughter said later that kicking them out was the best thing I could have done, because it made her wake up to how she was hurting herself and her son. She managed to take care of the two of them fairly well for three or four years after they moved from the second shelter they lived in. Then life overwhelmed her again, only she tried to hide how hard a time she was having. She struggled on for a couple more years, then had a breakdown last year and checked herself in to a crisis psychiatric center last August. Donovan came to live with me while his mother was away.

When she was released, she came to my home, as well, because she had lost their apartment, again. I set some ground rules for living here, to which she agreed to adhere.

Soon thereafter, Donovan was placed in a residential treatment facility that specializes in children with emotional and developmental-delay problems, such as Asperger’s Syndrome. This move, which I initially protested, turned out to be exactly what he needed, and served him well. (My protest was based on my recognition that my daughter didn’t want to deal with his problems. This is part of the reason she was adamant about having him admitted, but not all of it. In her depressed state of mind, she was trying to do what was best for her son, and she did, as it turns out.)

My daughter went back to work after a brief medical leave. For a couple of months, everything was working well, and I began to think this time would be different for her. The rules I established for her to live in my home again included placing her earnings and other monies she receives into a joint account and we both would have to sign any checks she wrote. She was to pay her bills, on time, rebuild her credit rating, and save money for a new apartment, which she was to find before school was out the following spring. She set up a reasonable time table for accomplishing her goals, which I thought she was working to achieve.

She began overdrawing the account, using her bank ATM card. I took my name off the account and told her she was on her own, that I could not allow my credit rating to be damaged by association. We had a long discussion about getting money management counseling, along with therapy, so that she could get a handle on her life. She did begin therapy.

I asked several times over the ensuing months how things were going for her, did she need any help with setting up a budget, so on. But I didn’t push. I wanted her to take control of her own life. I didn’t want to be her caretaker, or do the work for her. At almost 39-years-old, I figured she was old enough to take care of all aspects of her life, including money management. I butted out.

After the new year began, I started reminding her that she needed to think about where she wanted to move when Donovan was released. I suggested that she spend some time on the weekends checking out potential neighborhoods, and schools that would work well with Donovan’s needs. I reminded her of her stated goal to be in a home of their own by the time school ended in May this year.

In late March, we learned that Donovan would be released sooner than expected. I think that’s when my daughter’s life began overwhelming her again. She lost her job. Her money management problems grew worse. I learned that her account was chronically overdrawn, that she had no savings, nor had she been paying her bills.

That loud voice of reason started yelling again. I wasn’t helping her, I was enabling her. I provided food and shelter, and she had no reason to leave. I took from her some of the pressure and strain she feels having to deal with Donovan’s condition. I had become an intermediary in their squabbles, acting as a buffer for both of them.

I wasn’t doing any of us any good. The strain of being their go-between and the financial hardship of having two more people to provide for on my part-time income were wearing me down. I became anxious and depressed.

So the voice of reason bellowed at me that it was time for them to leave, again. It was time for ‘tough love’ again.

My daughter chose to move to a motel. Staying there takes almost every cent she has, and it isn’t the best place to live. This is her choice, and we all have to learn to live with it.

It isn’t a homeless shelter, but having them there broke my heart again, just the same. I hope this is the last time, for all three of us.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps...

...please go visit Mary, those of you who are interested in healthcare reform in the US.
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See you all soon, and thank you for your kind words.

Martha

On Leave

I'm going on hiatus from Blogland for a bit while I get through the rougher patches of a few domestic problems that I'm not handling all that well right now. See you farther down the road.

Listening

As if I weren't spending too much of my life at this keyboard already, I've been surfing the web for music I remember from my younger, hipper, hotter days; music that reminds me of New Orleans (for which I still mourn); music I've never heard before - I have got to get a life beyond this hard drive, monitor and keyboard, but not right this minute.

There is a piece of music by Duke Ellington, king of the suites, that I couldn't find on the 'net: from his New Orleans Suite (1970), "Portrait of Mahalia Jackson," that makes me weep every time I hear it. I found this other one, though, that I'd never heard before, titled "Newport Jazz Festival Suite." It's about 10 minutes long.

This next musician is totally unknown to me, but I like his work (the pieces I listened to, anyway). Maybe some of you know about him - Django Reinhardt, a jazz/swing guitarist.

These guys are legendary blues men, who influenced a whole lot of other artists, including the Beatles, the Stones, Clapton, you name a rock and roll group from the 60s on up: John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson.

Music from my teen years in New Orleans: Fats, Louis, Dr. John, Irma, among many others.

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New guys (to me, anyway) - Forro in the Dark, Brazilian musicians.

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Other favorites, from different decades in my life:

Springsteen

Otis

Neil Young

Etta

Edith (I didn't understand a word she was singing, but it did not matter - she had me hooked.)

Nina, Nina, Nina

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The list goes on and on, but I have to quit and get some sleep.

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Yes, those are the give-away earphones that came with the t-shirt.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

New Duds

(In the category of Small-things-please-small-minds, this post fits right in. As a matter of fact, this likely would be better done with Twitter, but I don't think you can twit pictures. Besides, I don't Twit. I might be one, but I don't have an account.)
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Kareema (daughter) took Donovan shopping for new clothes for school, an annual ritual repeated to some degree or another all over the world. While in the men's department, she found several t-shirts (uniform du jour with the high school set), some jeans and other stuff he needs. One t-shirt came with a set of earphones, a promotion to get you to buy the shirt. Donovan found one he liked and away they went to the registers to check out.

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A couple of days later, we were back in the store for another purchase forgotten earlier. We walked past the men's department, where my crow's eye and heart were snagged by the shirt, shown above. Crows love shiny objects and this old crow is no exception. That I gained a cool set of earphones for listening to music while online was a bonus, but I had to have that shirt. It has bling, peoples! Bling in the form of shiny platinum-color mylar, which will eventually be lost after so many washings.

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Now, the sad part is that I didn't have my reading glasses along, so I thought the motto across the chest said "ROCKSTAR." It doesn't. It reads ROCKSTER, as in rock-star-wanna-be, as in she's-too-old-for-this-shirt, as in "Oldster-trying-to-look-hip." However, considering the kind of music I listen to most - heavy-metal, rock-and-roll, acid-rock, et cetera - the motto fits me to a T...to a T-shirt, in fact. (Okay, so I don't make such good puns.)

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I dress for comfort nowadays: elastic-waist jeans, t-shirts or other knit pullovers, sneaks. I never was a fashion plate, and as I have gotten older - and rounder - I have difficulty finding dresses that fit and look nice, so I don't bother. I have a few pairs of dressier slacks and nice blouses I wear to work, one or two pair of good leather shoes, but that's it. Most of the time I look like hell (by my late mother's standards), but I'm comfy.

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This post was inspired, in part, by blog-friend BB's poem about clothing, but mostly, I wanted to show off my new shirt.

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Like I said, simple things for simple minds...

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore

For Joe Spado

Tagging along...

You will notice, if you click on the photo above, that I have doctored the image a bit. Crows don't have white eyes. Their eyes are blue when they're first hatched, but their eyes turn deep brown by the time of their first moult. Anyway, I chose this photo to symbolize my spirit's desire to be on the ride that Joe Spado and company are undertaking soon, if they haven't already gone. Someday...someday, I will hit the road; I will honor the wild child I was born to be. For now, I ride in spirit with folks like Joe, who really do head out on the highway, looking for adventure.

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Also, to honor Joe, I found a video made in Germany. In the background you hear Steppenwolf's iconic "Born to Be Wild." In the foreground, you hear...well, you'll see.

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Enjoy your ride, Joe. Ride hard, ride free, ride safe and sound. See you when you get back. Looking forward to reading all about your ride, friend.

(c)2009 Martha McLemore

September, At Last

Fresh

September is my favorite month of the year, and this one has arrived after weeks of hot, sultry, humid August breathing down my neck. Oh, I know we probably will have a week or two more of warm weather before the days are as cool as the nights again, but September has arrived and I am deliriously giddy about it. My spirits have picked up with the chilly mornings of the last several days - right after the storm, in fact.

The crickets now rival the birds and the last of the cicadas with their incessant song, which I also await every year. The tiny songsters invade my basement beginning around the 20th of August until the first hard frost in October. They are the Gryllus pennsylvanicus, field crickets, and they come in from the chill evenings for a bit of warmth, camaraderie and song before their little hearts give out and they die...or they become live food for the multitude of spiders which await their arrival almost as much as I do, but with sinister reasons.

I visited Whiskey River blog this afternoon and found a poem by American poet W. S. Merwin, a poet unknown to me. His poem is "To the Light of September," a love poem if ever there was one. In reading more about him, I found a video of him talking about poetry, which some of you might enjoy viewing.

Ever since I was a young girl, I have loved the painting, "September Morn," by French artist Paul Chabas. While reading Merwin's poem, I thought of the painting, which is why poem and painting are in this post. (Is that too much alliteration in one sentence?)

While there is still light out, I'm going to take a walk around the neighborhood, to enjoy the changed light and the delicious chill in the air. Maybe I'll get lucky and find another Viceroy butterfly on its way south.

(c) 2009 Martha McLemore