Bye bye 2019 and the 2010s...I am ready for the Roaring Twenties.

I wanted to write a year summary and felt daunted, then realized it should be a decade summary and was more daunted. This decade has been a rollercoaster from start to finish.

A thumbnail (the details are all here in this blog, at least from 2011 onward, with reference to 2010).

At the end of 2009, things were looking up. I had finally finished my PhD and was dragging myself out of the worst of the grief over my miscarriage in 2007, a day after my wedding.

But at the very end of the year, my 19 year old cat died while I was in the US (at the time I lived in London) and then on that day I had what turned out to be the last phone conversation with my father on his birthday (same day my beloved cat died). A few days later, at the beginning of 2010, he was rushed to ICU, and I flew out to Sacramento to see him before he died. I have written about that prior, but that floored me...but also clearing out his storage area I found photos of my grandparents when they were young. So while I was in a grief fog clusterfuck, I also found a seed of what would become my life for most of the decade, writing about my grandmothers. But first, months of grief fog for a father I barely knew, who I lost twice, once in life and then again in death.

This decade has been like that. Oh joy, then death, then in the death grief fog a seed...and something grows...then joy, then death, then...rinse repeat.

My second marriage, begun with such hope and joy that was cruelly crushed the first day of our honeymoon (the miscarriage), was disintegrating in slow motion by 2010 and by 2011 had ended. That along with wanting to work on this book about my grandmothers—which desire also had contributed to my closing up my London based theater company, Apocryphal—led me to make a leap with no safety net back to the states. I say no safety net because when made decision no job or place to live, but I was rich in friends, one of which let me stay at her place to make that decision.

In the summer, I spent time with my cousin Darcy, celebrating her remission from cancer, and  researching our shared grandmother, my mother's mother, in Minneapolis. Earlier that summer I met the lost part of my grandfather's family, lost because he had had to change his name during the Red Scare to save his job. I found clues to his real identity in all the stuff in my father's chaotic storage unit in January 2010. Again with the seeds.

Then, poof, back in NYC...where I discovered Inwood at the top tip of Manhattan when trying to find someplace I could afford, and moved here. That was a great find. The parks, the green, and then in October, the beginning of autumn in Inwood Hill Park was a revelation. This was October 2011. I had found a job at Bronx Community College and then later at Hunter.

Ugo the IWW (Inwood Writing Workshop) cat

A month later, I adopt Ugo the cat, who I found online at WaHi Cat Colony. He was an adult cat, so harder to place and still available. When I saw him, I knew he was mine.

I then am shortlisted for a full-time teaching post back in UK in May 2012 and fly back to interview and audition for it. They choose someone else. My ego is bruised, but I am so grateful for the ability to come back to NYC that this is the feeling that takes over.

My stepfather Tom sends me a lovely affirmative note about this.

A week later, Tom is in the ICU. He dies a few days after my birthday, Bloomsday (during which I read him Ulysses) and Father's Day. I am holding his feet when he dies and feel giant waves of love that almost knock me over. I am devastated and moved. I have a dream of a net and a diamond. Indra's Diamond my mother says. She is more bereft than me. Who wouldn't be?

I end up finding my own apartment on the top floor of a five-story walk-up in Inwood. Tom left all his kids including me (his step-daughter) a small amount of money, which was enough to furnish a new place (with Ikea and Housing Works and Freecycle). I got it all ready for me to live in, including my own study. I began to work more in earnest on my book. And decide to take some extra time to sort out my life.

Then comes Hurricane Sandy. Happily, my apartment survived and Inwood had electricity, so was able to host people up here who were stranded downtown. Sadly, we lost some huge trees in Inwood Hill Park. The beginning of understanding how vulnerable NYC is to climate change sinks in.

A couple months later, a friend who I had met at a meditation retreat where we were accidental roommates talks me into online dating, and I meet my future husband almost immediately.

Didn't see that coming. I was just trying to get a date before I turned 50.

John and me in Montreal at Botanical Gardens Valentine's Day 2013

Much happiness ensues of course, because it's super fun to be in love. Then of course all the issues rear their head about money and citizenship, since he is Canadian. Very long story short, we do everything by the book and he ends up down here, but there was a bunch of stuff he had to deal with in Canada and that all was way more complicated than he would have wished. We survived it all, but it was challenging, as in years of being challenging, in an apartment I had chosen for me alone, not two people.

On the happy side, I kept working on my book, got support from a crowd-funding campaign (all this is in blog circa 2014) and other votes of encouragement. John helped me with all of this and has been a relentless (in a good way) cheerleader of my work. I was given fellowships to residencies, and that helped, too. I directed a staged reading of ''whatever God is..." and Ian W. Hill directed My First Autograce Homeography (1973-74) at The Brick, all in 2014. My first short story publication as an adult also happened in 2014 with The God Thing, which has since been nominated or been a finalist in some awards, which is gratifying.

There have been many highways and byways with the book, The Amazing True Imaginary Autobiography of Dick and Jani, and with luck it will get published fairly soon. That is a long story that I cannot give details about, because much is in process. But it had been a steep learning curve for a theater chick to figure out publishing, and wow, it's different, but OK.

However, I was beginning to figure stuff out and making some headway when I came back from a lovely yoga retreat at Kripalu in December 2016 to a phone call from my mother that David Berry, my ex-stepfather, the playwright, had died suddenly of a heart attack, boom. I have written about that a lot too. But his sudden death floored me. It was two months after the DTs struck the US, and I was convinced that is what killed him, a gay Vietnam Vet artist. What greater insult than a homophobic insane person who had 'bone spurs' that he used to weasel out of service in Vietnam.

I lurched through another series of months in a grief fog, but also managed to finish another book I had begun in September. However, I was adjunct professoring, and it was killing me. I was exhausted all the time, and the pay, in case you don't know, in terms of hours work, is basically minimum wage.

I realized it was killing me right around the time I read a book that is the most iconic book of the decade for me: The Body Keeps the Score. I mark the time I read that book (early 2017) as the moment when I realized I was not a broken toy. But instead had a normal response to severe traumatic events. I cannot overstate how important this moment was. How healing, and how much my life has changed since.

From then on (Feb-March 2017), I mark as an existential shift in my understanding of myself and the world. I quit being an adjunct and decided to go full-time freelance, which has worked better than I could have dreamed. I decided to go to Westray, one of the Orkney Isles in Scotland in June, where I had not been since 2010. I had written my PhD there, and fallen in love with Orkney in 2003. It has always felt like a spiritual home, and some part of me feels severed from my soul until I get back there. I had postponed this trip a number of times because of my relationship with John and trying to work out schedules and time, etc. But I knew this time I could postpone it no more. My mother and John were going to go with me, but then could not for separate reasons.

Two stones from Ring of Brodgar in Orkney

Dear reader, I went anyway. And that made all the difference.

I stayed on in the olde Manse overlooking where the North Sea and Atlantic meet and revised my second book, Girls Meeting God, to get it in shape for submission, and taught my first ever private writing workshop, on this small Orkney Island, which was a  success and a revelation.

John meanwhile was able to sort out his Canadian albatross, and so when I returned, we were in much better shape on many levels.

Thus began the life I have now: writing, teaching writing workshops, coaching writers, reviewing manuscripts, editing, and sometimes back to theater.

Speaking of which, when the #metoo movement began in 2017 that allowed me to write my stage text On the edge of/a cure. Working with MoveOn and their text team to help elect Doug Jones in December 2017 allowed me to have a reading of this play. I did not realize until seeing this political work effect a positive change how paralyzed I had been...ever since watching DT stalk around behind Hillary Clinton on the debate stage. I could not move during the debate. Literally. But did not realize how totally paralyzed I was in terms of a certain kind of voice until I wasn't.

On the edge of allowed me to speak about things in a way I never have done before. It was also possible because of reading The Body Keeps the Score and Leigh Gilmore's Limits of Autobiography. In 2018, another play I had written in response to another trauma response I was having because of various terrorist incidents, Shit, was produced by IATI as part of their play development program. I got to see another director work with my texts and that was lovely.

Other reading that inspired me along this journey include Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Quartet, Joan Didion's everything, Jennifer Egan's writing, and the ongoing ever present influence of Doris Lessing. With some key assists from James Baldwin and David Foster Wallace. Yeah, it's weird, I know that. If you know me, you understand the breadth, depth, and gaping holes in my weirdly selective knowledge of Whatever.

2018 saw the expansion of the freelance work, up to and including starting a retreat for other writers in Westray, an experiment that succeeded enough to repeat it in 2019, twice, and yes, going again in 2020. I also tried again in the spring of 2018 to heal from the traumatic miscarriage in 2007. I went to a workshop at Kripalu hosted by outside teachers that was so wrong it was almost hilarious. But  when I went to the Kripalu yoga classes I felt at home. I made a decision: I would become if at all possible a Kripalu yoga teacher so could be part of carrying on this important lineage, which is the opposite of spiritual bypass faux positivity crap that makes my skin crawl.

Back track to the shit storm of 2016, to remember that was the year also that my beloved cousin Darcy's asshole cancer returned. So the drumbeat underneath all my activity was: how long does she have left and how could I help? The answer was: all I could do was make phone calls and send crystals and gifts when possible, and she would die in September of 2018. My biggest fear in leading the retreat in 2018 was that she would die before I got home. Instead I just got a severe case of frozen shoulder. And the news Girls Meeting God was a semi-finalist for a book prize. The gods are fucking weird. In 2018 John was able to travel to Westray with me, and we had a week together as a 5-year-delayed honeymoon, so that was cool, too, but again all was overcast with the reality of Darcy's illness, the shoulder, and starting a writing retreat. Someday, we will have a proper honeymoon.

I was able to get to St. Paul at the end of August to see Darcy before she died. I wrote about that, too, and someday maybe that will get published. It took me well over a year to write about it even as a short essay. She was the closest I ever had to a sister so the word 'cousin' doesn't cut it as a term to describe her meaning to me. Suffice to say her dying plummeted me into a grief fog that was so complete, I have almost no memory of autumn 2018. I do remember trying to revise my book and sending it in, leading a workshop somehow, going to her memorial in November and then my memory does not return until December 2018 when I went to a very good healing workshop run by Aruni, who is a Kripalu veteran teacher, on grief, loss and renewal. Without that series of days and sharing with a few other people who were equally poleaxed by grief, I am not sure I would be functional.

The one thing I was able to do consistently throughout 2018 was text with MoveOn and that helped the Dems flip the House anyway. Did thousands of texts a day, like clockwork. I am proud of the work I did and the many, many others who did so, too.

Then in 2019 I focused on healing. I had intended to do yoga teacher training in October 2018 but my shoulder ixnayed that. (The body Does keep the score.) I began studying Qi Gong with Alicia Fox, which was transformative. I decided not to try to write because I was exhausted. I taught two workshops, though.

Artistic discoveries of this year that were revelatory include Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim in January and April, her paintings gave me life. The fact she knew a hundred years ago her work was not legible until the future was amazing, and now they quiver with meaning. In October, I discovered Betye Saar at the new MoMA. She is in her 90s, and only now being discovered. If you are a female artist, you best live long to see your work recognized in your own lifetime.

Graduating on Summer Solstice at Kripalu

I also directed a staged reading of On the edge of/a cure. That was both incredibly healing and challenging work that took place between February and May 2019. By the time I was done with that, I was ready to finally do the Kripalu yoga teacher training in June, which shifted me irrevocably. It was the capstone I intuited it might be that drew all the parts together, all the fragments somehow settling into one person. I have written a lot about that, too, but mentioning it here again because key to so much. Getting underneath fixed, linear story has been a cornerstone of my artistic project and lo and behold it's the cornerstone of yoga, too. Fancy that. But to embody this rather than just have an intellectual or artistic framework is a whole other level of living it.

At the 2018 retreat I worked on a novella and short story. The short story White shoe lady won the Nomadic Press chapbook contest in May and was published in December, and the novella I am about to begin revising. In the 2019 retreats, I began writing about my nonlinear journey through yoga. I am writing a lot now. If I had not allowed myself the long down time, though, I don't think I would have the reserves I do now.

During 2019 my workshops and retreats doubled and I now have numerous coach clients, and my own work is beginning to find a home. I am now teaching yoga, which may not seem like a big deal, but me it is huge, because to teach the way I do means embodying radical self-acceptance and compassion, so it keeps me honest.

the shelves that John built! So much more space & writing can breathe (me too!)

And equally, I spent the last week before Christmas organizing my office and the last few days doing the same thanks to John building me new shelves. John is doing well, too, in school and full time work, thriving in a city he moved to in his fifties, not a small thing.

In other words, instead of rushing off somewhere Else to heal or whatever, I am here, in my own space, in my own skin, in my own life. I am 56. It has taken this long. Oh, and I finally created a website, which relates to all this, because I brought together all my various moving parts. The Unadapted Ones. Check it out. Most likely my next blog post will be there, the one that greets the New year and new decade. This is the one that sums up the decade this blog covers. Maybe I am more settled now. I fear saying that, however, less it calls upon a real or psychic earthquake... I began this blog in lieu of a website in 2011. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up...

For 2020, I am present and accounted for, accepting reality as it is rather than as I would hope or fear it to be (as much as possible, understanding no one human ever totally can do that). If I keep staying sober one day at a time in February, I will be 33 years clean and sober. I should add without that rock solid ground, None of this is possible. And without the companionship and counsel of many other people who also stay clean and sober one day at a time, I would be bereft.

So...Happy New Year. Happy New Decade.

Find what brings you joy and go towards that more. Accept what is weighing you down is in fact weighting you down, and if possible, slough it off. And if you have any trauma in your background, and you have not read it yet, for the love of all that is holy read The Body Keeps the Score.

Let's help carry each other to shore.

path to Maes Sand outside of West Manse in Westray

the water the shore the distance the light the shadow...Westray

le puffins at Castle O'Burrian, Westray

on unconditional love and grief

It is a year since my beloved cousin Darcy died. I wrote a letter to her for her sons, at the behest of her husband. He had asked those of us close to Darcy to write memories down while they were fresh and she was still alive. I wrote and sent mine to him a couple days before Darcy died, which was a few days after I had visited them in St. Paul. Because my sadness today puts me at a loss for words, but I want to honor this anniversary, below are excerpts (with some adaptations for public context) from that letter. And below that are a couple photos.

***

Dear Darcy,

My first memory of you is Jani telling me about how you and she picked strawberries. She clearly adored you, and I was so envious. You were the granddaughter in Milwaukee, the one of whom she was so proud. 

We first met when I flew to Milwaukee for Jani's memorial service. You were (almost?) 12. I was 16. You told me years later Jani had told you all these wonderful things about me and you were intimidated, but there was no need. I was just a scared, freaked out teenager. But we got along as I recall, though to be honest my memory of that time is hazy, other than a very strong felt-sense, that I think most likely emanated from you and your mother, which was of warmth. I was attending a boarding school in New England on scholarship. Warmth was in short supply. 

Because of so many reasons, great and small...we were not in touch again until we were much older. We met again at my parents' dining room table in Maine, and I remember feeling: we are related. I remember also feeling: I don't feel related to anyone else. Because I had never had that feeling until meeting you again then. It felt strong. I finally understood the phrase: blood is thicker than water. As an only child with a fairly random-chance childhood, I had never felt this.

Was it the tilt of your eyebrows? Your sense of humor? The mix of deep warmth and deep skepticism? A certain depth of soul that I find rare, maybe not because depth of soul is rare, but perhaps it is not always easy to recognize in those to whom we do not feel kinship. We were both Jani's granddaughters. That was clear.

The time we got to spend in Maine in 2004 was a gift. S was 4 and L was a baby. J had to pick me up at the Portland bus station because I had made the mistake (never to be repeated) of taking a cheap bus line to Boston that literally burst into flames on the highway. All were safe but sat at the side of the road for ages. I barely new J but as will come as no surprise to you or anyone else, he was gracious about this late night guest washed up hours away, and we had a nice chat back to Damariscotta.

You and I had time to talk, but this visit was about your mother, Carol. She was dying of breast cancer then. You were so worried about her and doing everything you could to make her comfortable. Meanwhile, you asked me about my own life and affairs of the heart. Again, the warmth. 

And from Carol, too, who was insistent we go on the whale watch come hell or high water. Sound familiar? It should. And that was a lovely day. Carol was happy. I think it was hardest on you, though, because you could see her pain. You are always so aware of your surroundings, and especially the cares and concerns of those who are lucky enough to bask in your love, which I think is infinite. I know you would scoff at that and tell me I'm exaggerating, because that's what you do, and like me, you find every reason on earth to be on your own case, but I wish at least for this moment, you could stop and see yourself how I see you: loving, kind, crazy smart, funny, wise, and yes sometimes sad and angry, because why wouldn't you be? But always present. Always. Present.

Another lovely memory I hold in my heart is the time I visited you all in St. Paul in 2011. I think James picked me up and my first memory of your house is L marching me up the stairs (he was 8) to meet his plastic figurines. One looked like a Dr. Who character, which led to watching Dr. Who (with parental agreement of course). L loving it, S being afraid of the monsters, and asking me about them, walking down in his PJs with James to make sure they weren't real, asking for a hug. I was stunned that an 11 year old could speak so articulately about his feelings, but then again he had you and J as parents, so why should it be a surprise?

Once again, unplanned, I was an emotional wreck because of my second marriage ending (I took on this aspect of the Jani personality apparently). And you wanted to help, and I wasn't having it, and you - in your warm way - basically told me I was being an asshole. Which I was. You were right. I have always been grateful for that conversation. You probably don't remember it that way, but it was done with such kindness, it didn't hurt, because you said it from love.

Other times during that trip included lovely moments like sitting on beanbags (I think they were?) in Walker Art Center watching a slideshow of Nan Goldin's photos of children, so beautiful and So unsentimental. Her aesthetic suited us both right down to the ground. We also went to a yoga class together that I loved instantly, gentle and wise was your yoga teacher. Afterwards, we discussed without going too far the senses we got there. The intimations of things not seen. Larger than us.

This is where I feel the most connected to you in the end.  I know you are agnostic, whereas I believe deeply in something I cannot explain but has saved me one too many times to be easily dismissed. But I think deep down you have had this experience, too. 

I remember too and will never forget our brief - all too brief - goodbye conversation on the sofa when you told me about dragonflies, that they are ancient but live such short lives, and in their short lives they are so busy - mating, making more dragonflies… but how you loved it when one would alight on your arm when you were younger. You were somehow wanting to link to this to the fact that it was OK we were saying goodbye. You could not remember what you wanted to say, but I think you said it:

Ancient but brief. Something about life. About our connection perhaps? It is how I feel it anyway. S walked in the door soon after that, your brother had driven him from Grinnell. The mood changed, and then I did have to leave, it was so late. I don't remember the actual moment we said goodbye, perhaps because we said it a number of times that night. You told me you didn't think you were dying "right" and I feel like I didn't say goodbye "right" - which for both of us was precisely: typical.

These are snapshots. There is so much to be said. There is nothing more to be said. You are my heart. As are your sons, and I hope they know that. If they ever want deep background, I can give them the book that is half about Jani, who is an influence like no other. I am here for you always, and them, too.

You wrote once you loved me to infinity. And I wrote back I love you to infinity and back.

And I do.

I love you to infinity and back.

Julia xoxoxo……

Darcy on left with brother Jonathan, sitting on legendary Jani's lap

Darcy and me in Maine in 2004, her young son's head visible

Call the Midwife, memorial, grief, old photos, and the unadapted

I have not blogged since my cousin died, except to say she had died. Her memorial was on November 11, and I was in St. Paul until November 14. Much has occurred in these past two months, but I was in a limbo that accords with the silence, though I was working, too, on various writing projects - editing a book and starting up a new one, sending out shorter pieces and such, also teaching my writing workshop.

But mostly in a haze of grief. The memorial was wonderful, and helped to say goodbye, and in some sense feel released because of it, that and going through all her photos, helping to sort through them, and finding in the midst - photos of me and my family as well as hers. Felt like some kind of deep ritual going through all those photos.

Also in the midst of this was texting for the midterms, something I did for myself and also in honor of Darcy who was political, engaged and would have cared deeply about the outcome of the elections, and been thrilled to see the gains, especially in her childhood home of Milwaukee.

I have also discovered the show Call the Midwife, which of course started a number of years ago, but I did not watch it until now, but can thanks to Netflix. This show is a quietly subversive piece of genius, and also gives an insight into the world in which I was born. Has not yet reached 1963 but am close in Season 5, and while also not born on East End of London, instead in Providence, RI, the world and the pressures, especially on women, were very similar. And affected my mother and therefore me a great deal. If you want a good view into what it looks like when abortion is illegal and single women can't keep their children, this is a good way to see the human cost, even with way more social support than women had here in the US in the same time period.

Something else brought up in the show is the use of thalidomide, which made me think about how I think about being born when I was, what makes people born in a fairly narrow fulcrum time (neither Boomers nor X-ers) unique, and I realized in part we are also the thalidomide generation - the babies born on the cusp of what was considered the victory of modern medicine, that turned out to be not as all-encompassing as thought, and in fact began the realization that what could be considered a wonder drug can then turn out to cause great harm, in this case to the babies born of mothers who took the drug under instructions from their doctor. While this ended before I was born, because the effects became known by 1961, this feels like part of the world in which we arrived. One that began to question itself again after the post war "boom" of supposed optimism, etc.

In any case these are the things I am thinking about and seeing lots of photos from the 1960s and 70s increases this awareness of how different the world was that I was born into and grew up in, which is of course what everyone says as they get older, but the shifts are jarring nonetheless.

As is incredibly obvious right now, our lives - those born in the early 1960s - have not been a victory march. Yes, there are have been jolts here and there of progress, sometimes great leaps, but right now here we are in a precarious place, with hopefully a tide turning but we still have to see if that is real. Which again feels very familiar.

I am thinking about all this because of having been to Darcy's memorial and seeing all these photos, including of her father and mother, and my grandmother, Jani, and the history of political activism and social engagement in my family all the way back as far as the eye can see. So when I speak of these things it's not "just politics" but also engages with the deepest strains in my family. Not all of it pure of course, and some of it downright awful, but this engagement and desire always to create a better, more just world the beating heart of the family legacy...with an equal and opposite shadow side, which is pretty much par for any course I've seen so far in my 55 years on this earth, such as it is, such as I have had the privilege to see. Not everything—some have seen and done far more than me—but I have seen and done quite a bit, and so far: no utopias in sight.

No pure dystopias either, I should add. Every place having its own weird mix of shadows and light, and underneath it all the contingencies of individual lives always falling off the charts, never going according to plan, messing up the works and all the perfect theories, stratagems and predictions.

This is what I cling to most in fact, this understanding, that beneath whatever obvious surface there is a lot more going on—in social bodies, individual bodies, cultural bodies, national bodies, ecological bodies....things happening that are not visible, perhaps not even to the person or people involved, the key to unlock the prison gate, always being created at the same time as the prison is being built.

So, where are we now? Damned if I know.

But I am here now, writing this, glad of that, sad beyond measure I cannot talk of these things with my beloved cousin Darcy, closest to a sister I will ever have, but so grateful I was able to have seen her before she died and be there for her memorial, to know that I showed up for all of it, and not only that, I wanted to show up for all of it. This was not some virtue thing, but a deep desire to honor her. I have to believe this impulse is what the best of human is about. When we can grieve our beloveds, and tell them how much they are beloved before they pass from our grasp.

I have so many other things I am thinking about these days, but this feels like what is important to say now.

Tides are..tidal, so anything I say is inherently impermanent, contingent, just for now. I'd love to come up with something timeless, but not sure that is a real thing.

As William James so brilliantly pointed out in The Varieties of Religious Experience:

"...There are in reality infinitely more things "unadapted" to each other in this world than there are things "adapted"; infinitely more things with irregular relations than with regular relations between them. But we look for the regular kind of thing exclusively, and ingeniously discover and preserve it in our memory. It accumulates with other regular kinds, until the collection of them fills our encyclopaedias. Yet all the while between and around them lies an infinite anonymous chaos of objects that no one ever thought of together, of relations that never yet attracted our attention."

Guess what I'm interested in?

Yes, of course. You already know. The unadapted. Those relations which have "never yet attracted our attention."

I think maybe if I had to guess, this is why I've been plunked here on this planet. To learn to pay close attention, and attempt to play, write, draw, paint, create what I notice...and help others to do the same.

or not...

Alas. have to heal my super frozen shoulder that includes calcification - anywhere from 3-7 months to heal.

So...no yoga teacher training after all. Which is heartbreaking. I can of course do it again sometime. I hope. Depends on many things, including resources and time.

But there is a profound lesson here about letting go of plans and slowing the fuck down. Which I have not done in a really, really long time. So, there can be a healing journey - just not the poetic October in Kripalu one. Instead something less big but perhaps more durable? We shall see.

There is also anticipatory grief right now for someone who is dying, and one fear I had was that the teacher training would be too much with that happening as well. So, there will be space.

I can't type much without possibly aggravating everything so am going to keep this brief.

But here's to the kind of healing that is perhaps less visible but perhaps no less profound for that.

31 years of not killing myself one day at a time....

I have not been blogging much because I've been working on some new writing, something that may in fact never see the light of day but seems to be important for my psychic survival.

Somehow this relates to being 31 years sober as of yesterday. Because while I do talk about this process periodically, it's mostly something I do in private.

I can say this about that however: it requires a continual excavation of the self and a commitment to helping others do the same, to find a way to walk through each day without a drink or a drug to dull the pain. Or whatever else one might want dulled.

I am exhausted and not sure why I am writing this now, but today was a gift, was able to share some of what I have learned with a dear friend, go to yoga and feel my heart and how tight it is right now, how my shoulders are protecting it, how they probably always have been, how painful that is and how compassionate I need to be with myself even so. There is good reason for that protection. It is tempting to be disappointed in myself that I still hide out, still fear people, still fear a lot of things. But that is as ridiculous as being disappointed in anyone else for being afraid, which I rarely am, not if they are aware of the fear anyway.

Sobriety is a paradox of both having to become aware of my darkest and most vulnerable parts, but also somehow give them space, not reject them, because that causes denial or dissociation. It seems to be for me these days about holding space for infinite complexity including massive contradictions and conflicts within myself. I am committed to not exiling parts of myself because they are not convenient or are embarrassing or whatever. This can be challenging and sometimes a pain in the ass to be honest.

However, as I walk through this journey day by day, both internally and in some cases within my writing, I feel I land more firmly on the earth, touch down even to the ocean floor of my own psyche, that vast silence filled with strange creatures and detritus thrown from the surface that just kind of landed there.

I have some deep frustrations with some external situations over which I have limited control, some shame over certain career achievements not having been reached. So much shame I don't really want to say that out loud, fearing judgment. But since this is all about being transparent with myself, it seems absurd not to say it.

But the larger fact is for all this, I don't want to drink or take any substances today, and I'm not acting out in other ways to ease the pain or confusion. Sometimes that seems like a ridiculous thing to say out loud after 31 years, but since I am aware of people who have gone out drinking after 10-20-30 years sober, and some who have died as a consequence, it's not a small thing.

Long term sobriety is not glamorous, it's life experienced - everything all the time - with the volume turned to 11. As I have said before - life without shock absorbers...and no windshield.

However, there are moments like today when I can talk to a dear friend such that my experience of this walking can give relief, maybe shed light, or other times I can talk to someone who is new to this life and help them stay sober another day. Then all the muddling through and the seemingly at times absurd lengths I go to be honest with myself and others that frankly at times seems to verge on self-destructive, has meaning.

I wish I could say which way to go forward with my life was crystal clear. It's not. I have lived one day at a time for so long now I don't think I know any other way. Each day is about being more or less in tune with a sort of internal divining rod that I let guide me.

I do meditate every day. I try to do some yoga and walk. I write most every day. I try to be a decent human being. This year I'm also doing a fair bit of political work for obvious reasons, like - you know - survival, but am grateful for having found a way to do that that is both relatively simple and incredibly effective.

I hold space for others who are going through tricky changes and who are discovering their voices - in life and art. I spend a lot of time - that I love - working with other writers - as a teacher, coach, editor and friend.

I wonder what has happened to my theater work as a director, I seem to only be writing now for the most part. I kind of miss the rehearsal room but my internal divining rod has led me away from that for the lasy while. Will it lead me back? I don't know.

So much I don't know.

But I am sober. I have walked through a lot of life this way, more years than I was alive when I hit my bottom at 23 - a horrifying sense of not even existing in some way - not to mention not being able to even get drunk anymore. I wish I could tell you it's all been a glittering triumph or that I was a paragon of mental health, but that would be a lie. It's been a journey, one that still continues. A bumpy ride at times, other times exhilarating and seemingly effortless, some years full of grief and low level depression, and some moments even now, 31 years later, when it feels like there is a trap door that has opened up beneath me that I tumble down wondering when I will hit a bottom, seemingly lost and thinking: wait, what? I'm 54, shouldn't I be you know More Together Than This?

I try not to take these moments of confusion, which at times are painful, out on anyone, but sometimes I do, mostly the people closest to me of course. One of the things I am examining so closely now is how I navigate such things and why. Imprints from a chaotic childhood as an only child amongst multiple caretakers most of whom had wildly different value systems from one another and most of whom were not really meant to have kids but there I was - the proverbial inconvenient truth. Sometimes consequently, I feel safest when alone, because only then do I have to account to no one. That is an illusion of course, because it's not like all those people and experiences just vanish when I'm by myself.

Alcoholism amongst other things is a disease of isolation, it wants you alone in a room and dead. So, this is one of my primary conflicts, both desiring being alone and knowing at times I need to resist that urge. To allow others to see me in more vulnerable states, which I find so shameful, especially fear.

I was told when I began recovery: you need never be alone again. I did not understand it then. But I do now. I might feel lonely. I meet be alone, but I am not alone. I am connected to so many people and to whatever powers this internal divining rod and a sense - astonishingly enough and more and more - of a place amidst the cosmos. Hard to explain that and won't even try at close to 4am, but it's a great piece of knowledge - not as in facts but as in something far deeper.

Finally, also, a sense of happiness seeing people younger than me agitating for a new and better world. I remember so vividly being that age and agitating my heart out, but it was the Reagan era and no one listened. What a joy it is to see these young people be heard. It gives me great joy. My friend Spencer once said he felt that those of us who don't have our own children have a certain love to offer the world and young people specifically that those with children have to reserve for their own kids, and I feel that now more than ever. I feel an optimism for the future that I have never felt before. I don't know if I'll be alive to see it in full flower, because when I mean future - I mean Future as in 30-50 years from now, but there is hope.

I mean to do my best to help keep the world alive for this new generation to take over. I used to joke with my theater work I felt like those medieval monks who hand copied the Greek and Latin texts in monasteries to keep them alive until those ideas finally fueled the Renaissance. And I see now it's not just the theater, it's my whole life that is this, living and creating, in hope for this new world that now seems possible - a tiny glimmer on a horizon - one that I will make whatever is left of my life's work to not see extinguished.

What does this have to do with sobriety? A lot actually, because in staying sober and helping others do the same, it's the same kind of thing. Passing on what I have been given, keeping alive something that is only kept alive by free action of people who are never paid, except in the gift of our own sobriety, our own lives.

But now I have rambled enough for the time being. Thank you for reading, for bearing witness, for holding space.

Memorial Day: this time for David.

David Adams Berry (1943-2016)

Fuck.

I don't know how to write this. I am looking at this photo and all I want to do is cry. This is David as I will always remember him, the David that I knew when I was a girl and teen. The David that was my stepfather. The one who came back from Vietnam a wreck, not only because of Vietnam but also because he came back early because his mother had died, and he needed to take care of his younger brother and sister.

The David wearing his army hat, the one with the three bullets in it, one for each of his friends that died from 'friendly fire' in Vietnam, the friends that haunted him and propelled him to write G.R. Point, his brilliant play about Vietnam, set in Vietnam and put on Broadway in 1977, too soon for people to be able to appreciate the complexity of his experience there, anyone's experience there.

David was always haunted by Vietnam, and having been born into WWII, that war also haunted him. The family cottage in Maine with the hooks for the submarine nets and him dreaming of U-boats coming into Casco Bay and how he would save everyone miraculously from them - a hero from a comic book no doubt. He wasn't stupid in 1968 when he graduated from university. He knew Vietnam wasn't WWII, but he also knew he had to go or someone would have to go in his place, so he enlisted. He came back the way I remember him: the person who saved me from a very scary situation when that was necessary, and also the person who was pushed into a dark place - what we now call PTSD but then was simply ignored and misunderstood - after seeing where I had been trapped. He always said to me the room he found me in reminded him of Vietnam. That was in 1974. Watergate was happening. Vietnam was 'lost.' We were lost. He was a young man working at a theater company. I was 10. All the other kids at my school had fathers working at Electric Boat making nuclear submarines.

This all happened. Life in the 1970s is impossible to describe to those who were not there, how lost everyone was, how feral we kids were, because all the adults were so so so lost and the world was just coming unglued in every way.

It's easy now to be nostalgic for that time, since the unglued seems to now be superglued into some kind of late-capitalist spectacle wherein we are trapped in a dystopian Disneyland where most people have to live underground to prop up the illusion above and penalties are imposed for taking off your costume. And if you think David would take issue with this description or think I was getting 'too political' in this moment, you would be woefully wrong.

After 9/11, David and I met at a cafe. We both lived in NYC, him in Brooklyn, me in Yorkville. We met somewhere downtown, maybe Cafe Orlin, I don't know. And we both just looked at each other and laughed and cried and knew that we were seeing the same thing, the fake innocence having been pierced by the reality we both knew had been lurking all along thanks to our multiple interventions for oil. The rage at the manipulation machinery being unleashed, wherein any tears of ours for the real wounds of our own city would be used to start another stupid war. Yeah, we knew that, a week after 9/11 in NYC, and yes that is what we talked about.

This is why it is incomprehensible to have to live this life - especially now - without him here. And why I regret bitterly how little time we spent together in the past few years - that laziness that comes from living in the same city but not close by - we'd always see each other 'soon' or another time or whatever. And we didn't and then he died of a heart attack. Just like that. Just like 9/11 except personal. One moment life is one way and the next moment it's another. Just like the friendly fire attack that killed his friends in Vietnam. Just like the moment his mother died in his sister's arms while he was in Vietnam. One moment the world is one way and then just as suddenly, and without warning, it changes.

Grief is not convenient. Grief doesn't give a fuck how you feel or what you want to accomplish. Sudden death is the same, whether it's a heart attack, a bomb, alcoholism or an embolism or people flying planes into buildings, or a miscarriage, there is loss and you are reeling, and there is no sense to be made. And yet you scramble to make sense or others try to make sense for you and most concern is simply people's desire for order being imposed on you - please, they say, as they ask how you are, please don't tear the fabric, please don't make me doubt my reason for going on, please don't be inconsolable. And then there are the other people, the angels in disguise, who don't do that, who demand nothing, who can hold space for all your feelings, but even they - I am sure - get tired, because there is no way to allow in for real the swooshing void that real grief is and demands. There is no way to do that and remain wholly sane, as in functional in this world as it is, this world we have created at least in this country that does not allow for grief, that demands relentlessly productivity and some kind of facsimile of optimism and what the fuck is that but again the stupid Disney dystopia gussied up as 'concern.'

And this for me is my messy Memorial Day, because David was first and foremost a Vet, a Vietnam Vet. A war so crazy we still can't wrap our minds around it, and I imagine Iraq and Afghanistan is the same, but we don't know as much about that because that information is so tightly controlled and we have sent out a force of men and women that are separated so much from the general population, though I teach many of them and I can tell you each and every one of the recent vets suffer PTSD (this is self-reported - I am not exaggerating). And I am so sad about David because I know part of what killed him so out of the blue is the insane political situation in which people who have no military experience at all and have never had to risk even a thumb scratch send young men and women to kill and die mostly to enhance their own profits and say it's for our security, which is manifestly insane, given the fact now we have violence everywhere and these same politicians won't lift a finger to get guns off our streets, which are killing more people than any so-called terrorist (meaning of color of course). And David also was gay, something he wasn't allowed to be in the 1960s in Vietnam, but was and held as a secret, held until the 1970s when he couldn't hide anymore and neither could anyone else and yes it's better for gay people today, but let's face it, it's still no picnic and all the violence unleashed against anyone different, he felt that.

And so many people looked to him to protect them and he didn't have anyone to go to protect him, he who had both his fathers die when he was young, trying to be the big man, the protector from so young, and knowing he was gay in the 1950s and 1960s - just try to imagine this. Try to imagine. All that, all that he brought to his writing and to his friends, so many friends he had, he had a talent for friendship, people loved him fiercely, his students loved him fiercely and he loved them the same way and we are all, all, all so lucky to have had him in our lives.

I think my mother in some ways was his protector, and that is why they were married as long as they were past when it was feasible for obvious reasons. He protected her, too. And it was only when he died that I realized - too late, too late, too late - that as bizarre and Absolutely Fabulous our strange family was - it was a family, my family, the family I grew up in - the one that formed me, and even though my mother remarried an absolutely lovely, humane, intelligent, generous, beautiful human being when I was in college, my life, my childhood, my whole personality was developed during the tumultuous late 1960s-1970s with my mother and David and all the people drifting in and out and all the danger and the joy and the stupidity and of course the end of it all, namely AIDS, which devastated most everyone around us except - shockingly - David.

And here I am and it is Memorial Day and I am writing this and there is salsa playing loudly outside on the street in the summer breeze - competing salsa I should add - and dominoes being plunked down onto tables and young women taking selfies and kids throwing balls and me in my room typing and typing and typing as if it matters, as if it's even possible to talk about grief, as if there is anything but loss.

30 years is a long time

Honestly, these days since January 20, which was the memorial for my stepfather and the beginning of our Brave New World in the US simultaneously, has rendered me for the most part speechless. I have responded to issues piecemeal on Facebook and such, but here, I cannot find anything to say.

I have had a lot of thoughts and feelings about everything, but because I am afraid that everyone is being so reactive and that is not helping, I don't want to just add to the cacophony.

However, yesterday I celebrated the 30th anniversary of my sobriety and feel I should mark this kind of astonishing milestone somehow. When I last had a drink or drug, Reagan was President, there was a Soviet Union and a Wall in Berlin, most people including me still wrote on typewriters and even if some did have personal computers, there was no public internet; we had no cell phones and used landlines with receivers that were connected to the phone by a cord, and I had a cheap rent in the Haight in San Francisco. I was 23 years old.

The journey from there to here has been a bumpy one - I don't think anyone can live thirty years without bumps. The thing is if you are sober for a long time the best description I've ever heard of that experience is: no windshield. Alcoholics are born without shock-absorbers. There is biochemistry to support this, but that is the effect. Add to that traumatic experiences in childhood on, and you kind of have an addict and/or alcoholic-in-waiting. Some people avoid this fate, but many don't.

I didn't.

However, my drinking story is not that interesting, nor is anyone else's drinking story that interesting - at least not to me anymore. What interests me is finding ways to live sober, without the windshield and without taking it out on everyone else.

This is what preoccupies me, and what I have succeeded at in the technical sense for 30 years (aka no alcohol or drugs) but in terms of living a serene life or whatever, not so much. I mean I have to some degree, and I have meditated for over 20 years, practiced yoga for 16 years, done years of therapy, etc., not to mention going to meetings with people who are struggling to do the same kind of thing. All of this helps. And without all of this I doubt I would still be sober or possess whatever shred of sanity that I do.

However, loss still tears me apart. Another reason I haven't written is the grief over losing David, and then compounded by losing my step-grandmother recently, plus the country arguably, or at least whatever I thought democracy was meant to be. I feel exposed in the rawest way. Sometimes I can cope and sometimes - usually when in yoga class - I can feel deep vital parts of me shifting. I am being shorn of any pretense of pride or whatever, of any sense of "knowing" things. Does this make you wise or just insecure? We will see.

I do feel underneath all of this something is emerging, and I am being forced to surrender to forces larger than me on a daily, sometimes minute by minute basis to move through. Sometimes this can even feel good. A lot of times I feel edgy, sometimes raw, sometimes like everything kind of just itches - not literally - but just - it's uncomfortable.

Sometimes I write about it, but recently I haven't been writing that much either. That field seems to need to lay fallow. It feels almost abusive to try to write now. I have been writing at an almost machine-like pace for years now, and I've hit the end of that line. The good news is I seem to want to be out in the world a bit more.

My fractured foot also has played a large part in my awkwardness this past year. I was unable to move for months without pain and now can move but still can't walk the endless way I used to walk, which was and is my favorite exercise. I feel I became almost agoraphobic, and am now peeking outside of that.

Meanwhile, through all of this, I am sober, and that is a miracle, because all of what I am describing would have been reason enough to drink - a lot. Though to be honest, breathing was enough of a reason to drink a lot most days I drank, so there's that. But the fact I can move through all this massive discomfort that feels like it's probably growth and who really wants that at 53 I ask you? Not me, I assure you, but I seem to have no choice. In fact this endless 'growing' bit appears to be the wages of sobriety. Apparently, if your tendency to mute the effect of all that wind hitting you in the face because of having no windshield is to drink and you stop drinking, or doing whatever else you used to get you through the night, then you are doomed to constant 'growth.'

Growth.

Sounds so lovely, so healthy, so fabulous, right?

Hahahahahahaha.

Think about it. Look at toddlers falling over when they try to walk. It's cool, because they are little and people are encouraging them all the time. But imagine doing this - on an emotional level - at 53. You kind of feel - well - stupid. My experience of long-term sobriety is like being a toddler over and over and over and over again - or like a snake shedding its skin, except when the old one goes there isn't a new one underneath right away. That kinda thing.

I'm not complaining - though goddess knows this sounds like complaining - just kind of trying to give you the felt sense of it. Because if you know any clean and sober people, you probably think they are batshit crazy, and you are probably right. Just remember, if we were drinking, game over. We may even on the surface have seemed a little more normal when we were drinking - until a certain point, but then...disaster, not only for ourselves but anyone around us.

For the vast majority of you lucky enough to not be alcoholics or addicts, just remember when dealing with your sober friends that we are wandering around with literally thin skins and everything is hitting us at 11. In my case that includes sounds, smells, visuals, emotions, tastes. It's like living in a hyper-reality.

There are some benefits to this of course, especially if you happen to write, make theater or art or music of any kind. You can be available on levels that are amplified. On the other hand, it can be hard - if not impossible - to turn down this level of sensitivity. I imagine therefore most of us seem hopelessly self-absorbed, and sometimes, yeah, we are. but sometimes, we just Can't Turn Down the Volume on life while it's hitting us like a motherfucker.

At those moments, I tend to retreat. But then can feel isolated and want to come out, but then feel agoraphobic because have retreated, etc. Weird cycles like that.

But I am also exquisitely attuned to the people to whom I am listening, whether in meetings or classes or with friends. I have learned tools over the years that I think makes me a good friend, especially not giving out advice unsolicited and even being cautious when it's solicited. I find most people - including me - don't want to be fixed, but rather want a sympathetic ear.

I do my best to help others who are trying to live without drugs or alcohol. I also do my best to put voices and work out into the world that might not be heard or seen otherwise.

I am not mentioning politics, because honestly, what's the point? Everyone is talking about it all the time, and I have nothing great to add. I only hope we keep trying to listen to one another and don't block off avenues of communication. The rest is too scary for me to even attempt to write about right now. All I know to do is what I have done with the seemingly impossible foe of addiction: surrender to what I am powerless to change and to work my ass off to change the things I can. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but the surrender has to come first, because if I'm putting energy into trying to change what I can't, I have zero energy to change what I can.

Right now, I am glad I live a life based on the concept of living one day at a time, because I could not cope with any of this otherwise without recourse to better living through chemistry.

I miss David so much it hurts. I miss in some ways my youth and ability to believe my own bullshit or was that confidence? In any case, right now I am tired. It is 4:12am. I don't know what else to say, and not sure anything I have said is worth a damn, but here it is. March 4, 2017. 30 years sober and with a car alarm whining outside my window as cars drive by. The car alarm has finally stopped, and so shall I.

Oops, no, forgot the most important part of all: gratitude. Grateful for all the folks who have helped me along the way. Those in and outside of meetings, who have listened when I was freaking and when I was celebrating, when I was angry and sad, when I was triumphant and when I fell on my face, who attended my weddings - yes that's plural - and helped me through divorces (also plural) - who have been there for me no matter what. Whether for a brief time or a long time. Without all of you and all your love, I would be sunk. Also to my higher power that I choose to call whatever - it changes all the time - and sounds so ridiculous in words and yet is there for me whenever I ask and no I can't explain it and yes it sounds absurd, but there it is and part of it is all of you. So, thank you. You all know who you are.

Spring happens

Hello after a long pause.  I am still not entirely sure what to say right now, but have some photos of early spring in Inwood and that seems of note.

I have an ambivalent relationship with spring because it leads inexorably to anniversary of April 14, my wedding day followed by April 15, miscarriage day.  While this was five years ago, I still have no children and that's a wrap, and now I am separated from my husband, mostly likely for good.  This is my first year facing these days without him.  Because of the miscarriage, our anniversary was never just an easy day, but I had been looking forward to the time when that would change.  But now, that won't happen.  On the other hand, because we are not together, I don't have to pretend to be happy on April 14, so I guess that's a grace note.

This is the general tone right now, hence the reason I have not written in close to a week.  I don't want to just be a purveyor of sadness or violin background music.  On the other hand, I can't pretend I'm not grieving.

I have spent this past week meditating and making up teaching work left undone because of a month of being sick.  So part of it is simply tiredness.  And let's face it, I'm also depressed.  And no, I don't want to take fucking drugs for that, so please don't suggest it.  I'm not suicidal, I'm just really sad.

At random, I picked a PJ Harvey CD from my collection To Bring You My Love and am listening to it now.  I have not been able to bear listening to this album for years, because it reminded me of a time when I was way more open with myself and with B (our first year together - somehow we seemed to be falling away from each other for all the subsequent years even though we tried the getting married thing - didn't help - not really...I have some suspicions of why this is so but will not recount them here).  I spent the rest of the years trying to pretend this part of me that Harvey's music touches didn't exist.  I didn't do that consciously.  But I did it.  I knew there was a loss.  I probably blamed it on B, on the UK, whatever.  But the fact is: I was the one faking myself out, not anyone else.  No one forced me to stay in an untenable situation.  That was all me.

Dear God, I never want to do that again.  I feel like it's Groundhog Day as I write that.  Said it after my first marriage, too, for slightly different reasons, but not That different.  So, how do I trust myself ever again in relationship world?  Not sure I do.

But this I am doing differently: I am not even looking to be involved with anyone else right now.  Not even looking.  Seriously.  I know this and only this much: I am damaged, I need to heal.  I don't mean damaged by B to be clear.  I just mean damaged by the whole experience much of which was by my own hands, though of course we were both there.  Not to mention all the childhood stuff, etc.

After my first marriage while I didn't go flying out to find someone, I ended up in various romantic-ish intrigues fairly soon - some of which were real, some of which were loosely based on fact (like a hack job bio).  When B and I first separated, I felt like I should go find someone new right away, even though that wasn't 'healthy' mostly because I was sick to death with always trying to be 'healthy' which seemed to have produced nothing but yet another failed marriage, a kind of endless grieving process over a miscarriage, my father's death and a sense of chronic dislocation...etc., etc...Years of therapy and various recovery processes and where was I?  Sobbing in my bed at 2am.  Fab.

Quickly, however, cooler heads (mine) prevailed and I realized: You Are So Not Ready to Be With Anyone.  And so here I am - still alone.  No prospects.  I'm assuming B is with someone by now, but don't know for sure.  But then again, I always assume stuff like that.

This album, the one I have on now, I sent to him after our first 10 fall-in-love-like-in-a-movie days together in NYC, for Valentine's Day.  Up to that moment, we seemed to be on the same page - open and absurdly in love.  Then his response to this CD was somewhat muted and I was - secretly - crushed.  I didn't say anything of course, but I felt what I continued to feel for 10 years: I'm too much for him.  I have to back off.  I'm too intense.  I'm too....fill in the blank... Be careful.

10 years.  Be careful.  I'm too much.

See?

Who would do that for 10 years?  Whose fault is that?  B's?  Nope.  Mine.

Until I can honestly say to myself that I will never sell myself down the river like that again, it's me and my cat and a cup of tea.

I can't tell myself that honestly until I know in my bones that I am worthy of taking up space on this planet.  I would like to tell you after my 5 million years of recovery/therapy etc. that I can do that, but honestly, I'm not sure.  Sometimes I fear I am irrevocably damaged and real love is just a bridge too far for me in this lifetime.  Maybe that's true.  I don't know.

I do know I feel real love for a few close friends.  I have acted in moments out of unconditional love for a handful of people.  Those moments and the relationships that include those moments are the most precious things to me in the world.  Unlike all other transitory happiness, the memory of those times and what has resulted from that never dies.  There's a saying where I hang out a lot: you've got to give it away to keep it.  Yes.

I don't know if I will ever write something that I feel is what I could do if only....If only what?  Not sure...Had enough time, wisdom, real ability with words...was better, more observant, richer so I had that sensibility...more something.  Too much of that, not enough of this...etc.

But for all that, spring happens....not only in nature.  In me.

I love this PJ Harvey album tonight.  I am Not afraid of this part of myself tonight, the part with passion, love, need and that can cry it out loud.  I am reclaiming her.  Thank God/dess.

It's tentative like the buds on the trees in photos below.  But she will grow back, re-emerge.  She's not dead.  Because I have the opportunity to start over again - even if it feels a bit old at 48, here I am.  Again.  New again.  Spring again.

Yeah, there's grief.  Yeah it fucking sucks.  And yeah there's spring.  Spring tears my fucking heart out.  I want to cry all the time, but I will walk around in the woods.  I will breath in the new plants.  I will love the shit out of it even if it rips my guts out.

I don't want to ever feel like too much of anything ever again.

The beauty of NYC remains: it is impossible to feel too much of anything for this place.  That includes my friends here and everything I've been doing so far - teaching, friendships, readings, writing...etc.  If anything, I feel I have to get bigger, learn to take up space again.  I spent too many years trying to get smaller.  As my cousin Darcy's mother said to her once about trying to make yourself 'fit' in a relationship: "You can never be small enough."  She was right.

So I will leave you with some very early spring photos on this Daylight Savings Time night in the US.  The one good thing Bush did as president was move this day earlier in the year.  More sun.  Good thing.

Here's to never being too much....and to PJ Harvey.  An excellent British export.

no matter what...spring happens

relentless buds...

grass returns pushing away dead leaves

profligate yellow defying the brown (a lesson...?)

Ugo chillin'

ducks chillin'