National Poetry Day

Written 10/3/2012

Follow the Leader

The world is a silent mess
swarming 'round my head
cottoning my ears
ringing a bell unheard
and I just sit here lonely
stepping aside the crowd
huddled in masses yapping
chattering for a while
Silence is a blessing
opening the soul
calling forth the muses
to fill this empty void
They clip through the noise
the mess that silence made
they right my inner world
with the turning of a phrase
and I just sit here scribbling
thankful for the mercy steeped
upon this ravaged soul
who longs for dreaming sleep

What I learned in Physical Therapy

My neurologist sent me to physical therapy to try to help with my migraines.  I have found some relief (knock on wood).  I also learned a lot about myself while going through exercise routines and have the vertebrae in my neck manipulated.  These are a few of the things I've learned:

1.     I am tense even then I think I am relaxed. 

2.    I may have never been fully relaxed in my life. (People with PTSD have a hard time knowing how to relax and/or when they are not relaxed) 

3.    I suck at angles. (a request for a 45 degree angle position of my arm away from my body made me look like an idiot) 

4.   I want to please people and often get myself into trouble because of it.  (I hurt myself doing stuff I shouldn’t because I want to please someone by “getting the job done”) 

5.    For some reason I go through my exercises like I’m running a marathon (how many times did I hear, “you’re not running a race here, slow down”)

6.   I resist exercise sometimes out of fear of pain and/or exhaustion.

7.    I have a serious problem dealing with anger issues. (I get mad then I can’t seem to calm down – it’s like waiting for a storm to blow over)

 

8.   I still have a lot of issues and internal wounds to work through. 

9.   I need to set aside time daily not only to exercise (both physical therapy exercises and yoga/stretching) but to let myself relax/breathe/meditate. 

10.  I can be a happier, healthier, more productive person if I take those first steps towards taking care of myself.  More important, I don’t stop after the first steps. (A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and then another and another)  The alternative is that stress is going to continue to break down my health and eventually lead to my death.  I am not ready to die.

My therapist agreed that I should also add that my posture is problematic at best.  I'm working on it.

Celebrity Intervention

I have met only three celebrities in my life.  I was more than awkward at every meeting.  I embarass easily, with my face and neck turning splotchy shades of red whenever I speak publically, to figures of authority, and, of course, to celebrities.

Two of the celebrities are the writing team of Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson who have written two non-fiction books about The Body Farm at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and five mystery/detective books based around The Body Farm and the University of Tennessee.  I've actually met them a few times now at book signings at the University and at Borders (sadly defunct).  I think it was perhaps the fifth time I'd met them before I really spoke to them other than to ask for a photo.  I asked them advice about getting consent from the University to use it in their fiction books.  Jon Jefferson responded that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.  However, Bill Bass being a celebrity on campus I doubt that UT minded.

The other celebrity I've met was Kevin Max, then a member of dc Talk on their last tour together.  In the world of Christian rock (and to those who have a penchant for poetry), he is a super star.  I brought a copy of his first poetry book to the concert to get his autograph, which made me feel nervous enough, but I was also sent with a letter by a dear friend who asked me to hand deliever it.  I did not fair well.  The message my friend asked me to deliver turned out to be rather personal and set him off-balance from the start.  Then I studdered and stammered, feeling myself yearning for some poetic connection but leaving with an autograph and a photo of me with this person I greatly admired.  A photo I don't show to others often because of how horribly splotchy red I am in it.  (I cropped myself out of the photo to use it here.)


Aside from my shyness, nervousness, and crowd anxieties, why was I so nervous around these three celebrities?  Why are any of us?  They are just normal people who have done something we admire and/or perhaps wish to aspire to.  Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson write mystery/detective books with Bass' dry humor firmly ensconced in the details and dead bodies.  Kevin Max is an amazing poet, singer, and creative personality.  He is also extremely beautiful.  Beautiful people have made me nervous since the first grade (and my first serious rejection - Michael moved his nap mat away from mind).

So if they are pretty much like the rest of us then why all the nervousness or for some near insanity?  There is a perceived differentness that we feel sets them apart from us.  For some people this perception leads to a need to attach themselves or identify with a celebrity that goes beyond the ordinary.  These days the line between the celebrity and their fans are even more blurred by 24/7 access through news, websites, and especially Twitter which lends what feels like open access to those with fame.

I admit I am not immune to feeling overwhelmed by celebrity nearness.  I admit to having a giddy rush when my tweets are answered or retweeted by someone who has achieved more than me.  It shames me to admit that I felt like a silly giggling school girl who's just had the hot jock wink at her when Joe Hill answered my question about the necessity of napping.  It is incredibly shameful to admit that.

I find it a bit worrisome how much some people invest in following and/or pleasing their favorite celebrities.  Some people (and I admit here that I was guilty of this when I was younger) invest vast amounts of time, energy, emotions, and monies on celebrities whom they've fixated on.  I have a theory (mainly because I know it was my reason in my own youth) that it's a means of escape.  It's easier to follow the life of your favorite band members, singers, actors, writers, artists than it is sometimes to focus on your own life especially if there are a lot of problems in your own life that you can't solve or situation you can't find a way out of.

I get concerned for others, though, when  I see rants like I've seen in recent years on YouTube (which has offered another possible way to reach your fave) most recently the video that went viral after Kristen Stewart cheated on Robert Patterson.  It is very unhealthy to be that emotionally invested in anyone, let alone someone you don't personally know.  There also seems to be a rise in celebrity stalking cases which is even more disturbing.

I have admitted to several things here.  Now I'll admit to one more.  When I left my abusive childhood home and thought all of it was behind me, I developed a fixation on Axl Rose after the 1992 Rolling Stone article in which he detailed his own childhood abuse.  I connected with other fans via letters (this was before the internet exploded) and swapped articles, photos, merchandise, personal accounts with the band - anything and everything to get that next "fix".  I don't use that term lightly because you get that same rush you get when that high school hottie acknowledges your existence.  You feel happy for a while then you drop lower and wait for the next fix.

I decided to get help after one of my pen pals confided in a letter that she slit her wrists after Axl broke up with Stephanie Seymour then started dating someone else.  She felt she'd missed her chance with him.  I didn't want to feel that way about anyone let alone someone I might never meet.  I entered therapy which helped me overcome some of the issues from my childhood abuse.  I still have hang ups and weirdness (seriously, office supplies are so cool) but I feel healthier now.  Celebrities are just people.  If they do something that I find cool, I may follow them on Twitter or listen to news about them if it comes on while I'm already watching the tube, but I don't have the time, energy, money, or inclination to invest any part of myself on them.  I just wish I could get a monetary refund on my Guns N Roses obsession.

Restless

I'm stuck in a bit of a rut lately.  I get up, go to work, come home, and veg.  I'm trying to get out and walk more. Doctors always tell me that I should get out more and  maybe exercise.  That usually makes everything hurt worse so I have a tendency to avoid it.  However, I have gotten out lately.  Last night I walked around the mall just looking at things.

 
I found this supremely strange.  I'm not familiar with this game but all I could think was that it was a very savage pedobear.

I've also been taking walks around the campus at lunch when I have a chance. There is this one huge Sassafras tree that I thought I'd like to share.  It's so huge that it would take three people to wrap their arms around it! It's so gnarled and aged, just so incredibly beautiful.  I love that the university put up this plaque at it's base telling about it and how the native american's used it.  It's very neat.

Calming Gardens

I've been walking in gradens recently, feeling very out of sorts really.  I am going to physical therapy to try to help control the migraines.  The doctors and technicians all say that I need to exercise more and relieve stress more.  I am able to get more accomplished both at work and at home.  My attitude is improving somewhat.  I know that it's not that I need or can reduce the amount of stress in my life but that I need to change how I react to it.

That being said, last night I started a "Mind, Body Spirit - Total Health" class.  It was an eye opener. Too often I was asked, "And how does that make you feel?" I wanted to respond, "Well, it makes me feel really fucked up."  Instead, I simply answered that I often feel stressed.  I have 7 more sessions to go. This is going to hurt me more than physical therapy.  Mental/emotional pain always hurts deeper and longer than physical pain and this class is definitely starting to dig in deep. 

Basically, this isn't how I expected my life to turn out.  Honestly, when I was a child I truly thought that if you go through the horrors that I knew as a child that the universe would balance that out later in your life with overwhelming blessings.  I'm not sure how I got that stuck in my head.  Perhaps I thought that to help me get through those very painful days and nights of my youth.  Now I begrudge the idea.  I don't feel that life has balanced out and part of me feels deeply cheated.  Another part of me is furious at myself for ever having that thought, even if it was some survival tactic.

So I walk in gardens trying to find calm and peace and some way to forgive myself ... because I cannot forgive those who hurt me as a child.

 Poem from 8-16-2012

I am stumbled
and unholy
lost in dreams
I turn to folly
I am broken
beyond repair
bumbling blindly
through despair
I wish for hope
then dare not wish
cursed from birth
with a devil's kiss
I am drawn ill
weak and blundered
I wish for peace,
sympathy, and comfort

Paper Hoarding

I have a confession to make.  I am an office supply hoarder.  Nothing makes me happier than a new notebook of paper, or a different color or texture of pen, or a box of lovely crisp stationary.  It’s a problem as it is overflowing from my desk, work table, and cabinets.  I also hate to give any of it up.  I mourn when a pen that I’ve loved to write with because of the way it smoothly flows across the page while I write suddenly runs out of ink without a way to refill it. 

 

I’ve recently thought about why I have this problem.  It started before I worked in offices so it’s not a job-related hoarding issue.  After looking through a box of some of my older writings and journals I realized how this deep-seated hoarding issue began.  My obsession with keeping pen and paper at hand started with my writing.  Not just because I was expressing my creativity but what happened when, as an impressionable child, I shared my writing with my mother.

My sisters will tell you that I have always had an active imagination.  They are all much older than me and thus did not want to be made to play with a silly little kid.  This may be what led me to make up stories for my dolls and toys to act out.  As I got older these tales for the toys became more detailed and complicated.  When I was eleven, the idea hit me to try to write one of these stories down.  It was only one loose-leaf sheet of paper, basically hitting the high points of the story I was trying to convey.  I was alive with the excitement of having created something when I looked down at the paper with all my scrawling awkward letters that bled into words and sentences.  I made this.  It came from me.  This was mine.  All mine. And I had made it.

In my deep excitement I ran into the kitchen of our early 20^th century farm style house.  My mother had worked all day in a hot factory making boots.  After a 9 hour shift she came home and started making dinner for the family.  There she was at the stove hovering over a black iron skillet cooking while something else bubbled in the pot on one of the other stove eyes.  I pulled on her arm to get her attention and begged her to look at the paper in my other hand.  She stopped momentarily and read it.  If I’m being honest, she probably did it so that I’d leave her alone.  But then when she was finished, she smiled at me and told me it was pretty good as she handed it back to me.  What more could make a child’s soul sing with joy than the approval of a parent? 

Unfortunately, it was about that time that my step-father walked in the door, dirty and sweaty from working all day in a hot foundry where metal was poured to create different parts.  In my excitement I didn’t hear the heavy thunk of his steel-toed shoes coming across the threshold.  Too late I heard the screen door slam and was left without time to scurry off.  He had heard my mother telling me that what was on the paper was good.  He looked mad.  He had come in looking for trouble, looking for control of any little thing. 

“Is that homework?” he asked loudly as he walked through the living room stopping only to take off his safety hat. 

I cast my eyes down at my feet and quietly answered no. 

He snatched the paper from my hands and glanced over it.  I doubt that he really read any of it (after all he only had a 5^th grade education at best and was never really a "reader").  He crumpled it up then held iit n his fist as he shook it in my face and screamed, “You better look at me!”  I looked up while flinching back.  He moved so that his face was inches from mine.  “This paper is for your school work!”  He continued, spit flying with his words, “I better not catch you wasting it on this play shit again!  You hear me?”  I was nodding and flinch and starting to cry.  “I said, did you hear me?!” He screamed so loud so close to my ear.

“Yes, sir,” I managed to squeak out as he glared at me.  Then I watch as he threw the balled up piece of paper into the woodstove that heated our small house.  Tears flowed openly down my cheeks but I knew to keep quiet.

He shut the stove door and glared at me again.  “What are you still stand there for?!” he barked.  “Get your ass in there and finish your school work!  And if you don’t have any I can find something for you to be doing!”

I took my chance and scurried from the room.  I sat down on the bed and pulled out the book I had already finished the chapter assignment in.  I cried quietly to myself over this little death.  In the living room I heard him thump down on the couch after switching on the black and white tv to hear the news and begin unlacing his steel-toed shoes.

I don’t think I ever forgave him.  Not for this soul crushing scene nor the many other crimes he wrought in my childhood.  He grew up poor during the depression years.  To him if something didn’t lead to providing food on the table or making money, then it wasn’t worth the time, effort, or expense.  Even if that expense was a piece of paper and bit of ink. 

I guess somewhere within me there is still a small child wanting to scribble down my stories, my poems, my musings and there is a deeply imbedded fear that there won’t be paper for that kind of frivolousness.  An even deeper fear is that once scribbled, the words might be lost, forever destroyed, and never able to be repeated again. 

Quilting

When I have the chance I like to quilt.  There's something about piecing together different patterns and colors that is exciting and sparks my creativity.  It makes me happy and gives me a sense of satisfation when I complete one.  When I make a quilt it is usually as a gift.  The following quilts I made for two of my nephews.  It's my way of wrapping them in my love.

This last quilt is called "Card Trick" and it is the most recent quilt I created.  Each block has 24 triangles of different sizes.  It was difficult to create but very worth while.  My nephew who is 2 loved it and loves to search the materials for all the different animals.  Here's a close up of the block.

I hope that you enjoy this other form of my creativity.  I'll soon be back to writing.