Category Archives: angels

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Agatize

A long time ago, at least by a child’s time, he starts turning. He blocks things out. He locks his heart. He decides to be happy and do what he wants. His heart slowly turns to stone.

The blood roars through, pushed by each beat, how can a stone heart beat? Not normally, that is for sure. His brain controls it, cold, logical, no emotion, except happiness, that is what he says. He says it over and over, I am happy all the time, until he thinks he believes it. And then he believes it and his heart is stone.

But the blood flows and the body feels and emotions come anyhow. He refuse them, all but happiness, and blood lays down a wall of emotion inside his heart. Chalcedony, lining the chambers, coating the valves, coating the arteries that feed the heart. The heart doesn’t need the arteries open because it is not beating. It is stone. His brain is beating. Beating the emotions away, away, away, refusing the body and the heart.

The heart is hollow. Slowly it is lined with clear agate. At last his heart is full: no more chamber. Agatized, all the way through. When he is cracked open, far in the future, a chalcedony nodule will show the perfect interior of a stone heart.

And where does the blood go now? we wonder. Laying down the lining of agate, clear, colored lines of emotions rejected, all the colors of the rainbow, what he thinks of as impurities. That is how he thinks of his emotions: impurities, to be rejected.

What will be agatized next? His liver? His lungs? He says strokes are the end for his family. He calls it then, his brain is agatized. The part that controls the pumping, overriding his heart over and over, when that part turns to agate, he will be correct. A stroke. How long will it take, we wonder? One year, five years, ten? He says he won’t go past 80. That will be 13 years. How apropos.

Can nothing stop this? Chalcedony is hard, not hard as diamonds, but very very hard. Agates are common and we search for the clear ones, the lit ones on the beach. Almost nothing can wear them down: high pressure would kill him, high heat would kill him, what is left? Water. Water wears down rock.

Enter the sea. The sea of love, the sea of dreams, the sea of the unconscious. Seek help, before you turn yourself to full stone. Agatized and dead.

Maybe there are other treatments, I don’t know.

A stone shaped heart is rare, I hope. See how it catches the light. Beautiful and sad.

August 30, 2022

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mansion of the sky

My mansion is the outdoors. What could be more beautiful than the sky and the sea and the outdoors? Not only does my mansion have more rooms than I can ever explore, all over the world, but it has every mood imaginable too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: mansion.

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Sing from the sea

This is another poem where I did not know where it was going when I started it. I was thinking about the sea and sirens and singing. My poems go where my heart thinks I should go, but I don’t know where that is until the poem is done. And it’s clearly a song and next I need a tune. And chords. And more practice.

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful sea
tied to the mast, you won’t come to me

unplug your ears, unblock your heart
before it breaks and truly stops
listen to my lonely heart
we’ll make music and never part

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful sea
hear my voice, listen to me

our hearts melt together like stone
in the depths of my volcano home
you shut your heart down, run away
lava strings like glass, all the way

I sing from the deep, from the deep, from the beautiful deep
small child calling, she still weeps

volcano boiling from ocean floor
new island built as lava roars
small child with faith as adult caves to fear
small child holds your heart dear

I sing from the land, from the land, from the new born land
don’t be afraid, take my hand

hope has feathers, a poet said
in the darkest time, hope is not dead
I morph to dragon, to kite, to bird
your resistance is so absurd

I sing from the air, from the air, from the smoke filled air
vision dark, can’t see where

circle in flight, hope you too
listen to the small child hidden deep in you
a promise is a promise, you know it’s true
I do not give up on you

I sing in the wood, in the wood, in the beautiful wood
five elements sing as all things should

In the wood in the trees
on an island in the sea
in the heart of the volcano
my heart is free

I sing from the sea, from the sea, from the beautiful see
no matter what happens, my heart is free

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I took the photograph at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, a painting by Shinique Smith.

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flying dream

I dream I am Superman flying, but I am still me and female too. It is night and I fly over a beautiful bay, with a bridge at the opening of the bay. Cars are crossing. The people on the bridge call me down, calling β€œHelp!” I fly down. β€œThere are people in the water below the bridge! What are they going to do! Stop them!” I fly down to the water. β€œCome in,” say the people in the water. β€œThe water is warm!”

I join them in the water. It is warm and the bridge is beautiful. I say, β€œThe people on the bridge are scared of you.” The people in the water say, β€œWe just like the water. They are silly. They should join us. We won’t hurt them.” I thank them and fly back up.

I say, β€œThe people in the water just like the water. They say they won’t hurt you.” The people on the bridge say, β€œNo, no! They will hurt us. We don’t want them in the water! They might blow up the bridge!” I shrug. β€œWell, the water is fine. I am going back there.” I fly down and join the people in the water.

I wake up.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: cape.

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On meditation and breathing

In college at the University of Wisconsin, I dated a gentleman who was following the Zen Buddhist tradition.

He meditated daily, for forty minutes, facing a wall.

I was quite intrigued. I did not think I could do that. I am a fidgety person and can’t sit still. I promptly tried it.

Forty minutes is a long time facing a wall at age 19.

I would fall asleep. I would start tilting to one side or the other on my zafu and jerk back up. I knew I was not supposed to follow thoughts, but I couldn’t not think. It is more subtle than that: I slowly figured out that I can let the thoughts pop up from the toaster brain, but try not to follow them. Wave at the thought. Let it go.

One day there was a small hole in the wall when I faced it. A tiny spider came out and went back in. I was very happy about the spider.

The next day the spider came out and waved one leg at me. Then it went back in the hole. The end of the 40 minutes is signaled by a chime. I got suspicious afterwards and went back to the wall. Not only was there no spider, but there was no hole, either. I did not see any more holes or spiders.

I meditated regularly daily for two years. After that I would return to practice intermittently. Meditation trained my breathing: my breathing slows way down during meditation.

I use that breathing when I have pneumonia. In the worst episode, I was in the hospital and disbelieved. I slowed my breath way way down to calm myself and so that I could think. Eight counts in, eight counts out. Then ten, then twelve. I needed to focus and figure out what was causing sepsis symptoms. And I did figure it out. The provider sent me home that morning, septic and 6 liters behind on fluid, but I was able to survive.

Now the pain clinics are teaching slow breathing. Five seconds in and five seconds out. Start with a few minutes and work up to twenty minutes. “Almost everyone goes from high sympathetic nervous system fight or flight state to the parasympathetic relaxed nervous system state.” I think we need more of that, don’t you? This is being taught for anxiety, for chronic pain, for fear and depression. I asked a veteran to try it. His response: “I hate to admit it but it works.” Also, “I’m not used to being relaxed. It feels weird.” I laughed and said, “I think it might be good if you get used to it.” He reluctantly agreed and continued the practice.

Peace you, peace me.

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part time

I only dress like this part time.

#outfitsinappropriateforwork

A friend took this with my camera at my request. Thank you, friend!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt part time.

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Unexpected hero

When I first think about divorce, I call my sister.

I say, “I am thinking about a divorce.”

She replies, “YOU don’t want to be a single mom.”

I think, well, crap, that is true. Me: “I AM a single mom. It’s just that one of them is FIFTY.”

My sister proceeds to tell me how difficult it is to be a single mother.

I have to self examine my OWN prejudices against single mothers.

Then I wade in, to solo and couples counseling, for a year. My ex fires our couples counselor after a YEAR. He says the counselor is on my side. “We have been talking to him for a year!” I protest.

“I want a new one,” says my then husband.

I find a new one. I am filling out the paperwork. It asks, what is your goal?

That is the moment I decide: I write “Amicable divorce.”

The two years before that moment, I am not sure. I am trying very very hard to see if it can be fixed. But it takes two to tango and my then husband will not tango. Not one step.

We were each attracted to something specific in the other person. My then husband did not want to work at any sort of traditional job. His father would come home angry from work for years. I loved working, always.

I was a terribly serious child, growing up in an alcoholic family, and I have food insecurity. That is, at some deep level, I always worry about whether there will be food. When I meet my then husband he says that his goal is “To have fun every day.”

This slays me. Have fun? And he WAS fun. Biking, jitterbug dancing, he was a tennis and golf pro, he was smart, well read, divorced from a marriage of convenience to a lesbian to cover so she could be a small town librarian. Really? Yes, really. I demanded to see the divorce papers before we got married. My then husband thought I was very very funny and I thought he was too.

When we divorce, people tell me he will never pay child support. He won’t stay in contact with the kids. There are a lot of opinions.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. My ex returns to school, gets a “displaced homemaker scholarship” because he was a househusband (yeah, I said he was smart). He goes to nursing school and gets an RN. “You’ve yammered about medicine at me for fourteen years, I might as well.”

He gave me hell about us living in an “old person’s” town. Then in nursing school he calls. “Hey, I’m doing a rotation. Guess what it is.”

“Don’t know, what?”

“Nursing home.”

I laugh.

“I LOVE these OLD PEOPLE.” he says. And he DOES. He is wonderful with them. He works in a nursing home for years. He gives scholarships to the medical assistants when they leave for nursing school. He brings coffee to his medical assistants and the other staff. He drives by on his day off because one elderly woman will only take her medicine if he gives it to her. He gets pianos for the nursing homes. He does memory loss concerts, where he tries to engage memory loss folks. We store music as entire songs, or entire albums, so if someone starts a song, they can often go through the whole thing. He can sometimes get someone singing who no longer can string a sentence together. Families love it.

Early in covid he calls me. “I have covid.”

“Sh-t.” I say. “Are you ok?”

“Oh, yeah. Everyone at the facility has it. Two staff didn’t so we sent them home. We are working sick because there isn’t anyone else.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah, it’s a little depressing. My memory loss folks can look ok at the start of the shift and are dead by the end.”

A quarter of the patients die. This is before the vaccine. My ex sails through covid, says he doesn’t feel bad, for him it’s just a cold. He says, “I miss some of them.” Yeah, holy crap.

So another hero. And he paid the child support every single month and stayed in touch with his kids in his own odd way. “Mom, he tells me about his golf shots,” says my daughter. I laugh, “Yeah. Well, he loves you.” “I don’t care about golf.” she says. “I know, me either,” I say.

The photograph was taken with my camera by my friend Amelia in 2014, I think. It is me and my ex, seven years after the divorce was final.

I read this to my ex prior to posting. Posted with his approval.

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Defiance

Ok, this is a beautiful and romantic song, and yeah, George Strait is pretty.

And then there’s the Offspring. Singing Self Esteem. Guess which I like better.

The Offspring: defiance and singing about all sorts of things that we don’t talk about: “The more we suffer the more we really care!” Some of my patients needed to listen to this song. Often the mom, with a spouse and three children, who was taking care of all of them but not herself. “Who takes care of YOU?” I would ask. “No one,” some moms would say. “Look. There are FIVE people in your family. You are one of them. You deserve the same level of care that the rest of them are getting. I want you to include yourself in the people you take care of.” “BUT” “NO BUTS. If you don’t, then you are setting expectations for your children: the boys that a wife will take care of them and the girls to be walked on. Is that what you want?” “NO.” “Change it.” They often would, slowly but surely.

And The Offspring are further my heroes because of this song: Opioid Diaries. Ok, a punk band telling opioid overuse people to get help. MY HEROES! Thank you Offspring!!! It’s not easy to watch but wait until the ending and what if offers. I treated opioid overuse for the last 12 years in my small family practice clinic along with everything else: diabetes, hypertension, whatever. I never felt threatened or frightened, but some of that is because I grew up in an alcohol family. I recognize addiction. Reminding my of my parents is not a good sign. And I had to learn boundaries at home first. This is an uncomfortable video to watch but to me it is beautiful, because it offers hope.