Martingale

Need to write this better:  But just thinking out loud.  for the sake of writing again:

 

It doesn’t matter how late I want to sleep, she wakes always before 6 but after five.  Every day.  Spring is slow in coming, but I stand and watch them make their hot footprints on the wet snow, wearing only a t-shirt, be the change you wish to see in the world, and a pair of completely different colored pajama pants.  The sun is hidden behind Central New York grey sky.

The house is chilly but comfortable, so hot before I climbed into bed that I was sweating, I will admit to a change in my body temperature though.  I know why older women wear cardigans, off and on and off and on, easier than a pullover, I always liked a good cardigan, until I was shamed out of them.  I am rarely deeply cold as I once was from October until May.

A year ago I scoffed at buying a larger size television, but now 22″ screen is not working for me, I cannot see to scroll through the movies, or read the subtitles.  I speak of this to someone else and am immediately scolded to just go out and buy a bigger tv.  Why do i react why do i react why do i react.

I practice silent hand signals with the dogs.  Meanwhile his only interaction is to holler, to scold.  They act worse when he is up, or in house, or around.

Good news comes, perhaps, perhaps, things will move along more quickly.  It will.  I am sure of it.

I am grateful.

Ready to be off leash.

Dreams of a Precipice

I am standing in the middle of this steam now, but no longer am I waiting for stepping stones to appear, the flood has receded and I am too far from the shore to take the step.  I am in a deep chasm, the water too far below me to fall safely into the water, even though I do not care if I might get wet.  A being hovers in the air nearby, and she offers to help, she pushes the slab so it teeters mostly off the high spire it rests upon, I take a step, a person on shore reaches for my hand and the rock tips and I am plunging.

I am standing in a terminal, waiting for a flight to South America, all I have to do is step somehow from one platform to another, the problem is between the two platforms there is a corner jutting out and it is too far to step.  There are people milling about on both platforms, clearly they have made this step.  But I cannot.  And I am asking myself, why do I even want to go there?  I don’t understand.

I want to fly across the distance, but my wings are clipped.  I am caged.  I want to get a new tattoo one of a condor at the zoo.  Clipped.  Caged.

The universe brutally smacks the back of my head.  I know he is here without having to search for it.  It just hits me hard, while I am looking for something utterly unrelated.  Thank you.  I say with my middle fingers raised both hands.  Thanks so much.  Can this be any more painful?  Really?  Stop teaching me, I need time to not be taught a blessed thing.

I wake to the cold.  Shivering.

I reluctantly go to work.  The light is right, the birds are singing the right song, but it drags so, this winter.  How it drags.  The car is covered with snow.  I brush it off.  I take one step after another.  I know how to make myself feel better, I dig in instead.  Settle into my haunches, waiting for it all to pass.

First Day of Spring

People make the mistake of thinking they will wake on this day and there will have been a magical transformation, the night elves will have been hard at work vacuuming up the snow, blow drying the mud, planting crisp and shiny snow drops and firm nubs of daffodils in the ground while we all peacefully slumber and dream of sugar plum fairies, and margaritas by Caribbean waters.  And when we rub the seeds of sleep from our drowsy eyes we will step up to a window and look outside, seeing first the reflection of our bed tousled hair and then this wondrous blanket of newness on the ground, and perhaps, if we look out of the corners of our eyes, the last elf putting his finishing touches of dew drops on a bright yellow crocus.

The reality is that it wakes slowly, it needs coffee to get it going, it needs you to be awake to notice its magic is not an overnight occurrence, it needs you to be aware enough to realize that it is not all snowdrops and elves and rainbows and pots of gold, spring is sometimes downright ugly, or more accurately muddy, and sloppy and it always takes longer than the single day to happen.

There is the angle of the sun, it is warmer some how, and even with the wind bringing tears to your eyes, you can smell some minute change in it.  A 35 degree day would elicit a wool sweater in autumn, but in March, in spring, it elicits a light cardigan but you will suffer through freezing in the spring in a way you won’t in the winter.  People say the birds are back, but the birds really never leave, it is just that they are now sitting on wires and bare branches soaking up the warm sun, and singing a little louder, and singing a song of hope, its coming, they say, its coming.  And yes, now we see robins, and flocks of geese and hear red winged blackbirds.  There is still snow on the ground, but it is no longer the crisp clean snow of winter, where it truly is a magic blanket that transforms overnight.  So pretty.  No, in March it has all gone to hell.  It is brown,  black, sooty and muddy and covered in dog shit people pretended not to see happening, not wanting to take off their gloves to clean it up.  The dogs come home now covered in a layer of salt, sand and slop, a towel at the door as essential as a water bowl.  A trip to the groomers, for a bath, on the to do list.   And if you listen, you will not only hear the bird song, you will hear the sound of the water melting under the snow, under the mud, a tiny trickle of life.  I imagine on these warm melty days, a Native American listening to the spring in the hard wood forest, and putting her ear to a maple tree, and wondering, what is that?  What is that trickle?, and discovering the sweet taste of the sap did she take some home and try to make soup with it?

You wake in spring, and feel too the blood in your own body melting.  The mega doses of vitamin D, maybe not so necessary any more, and when you get home from work, you feel spring in your feet, you are tired but instead of craving soup and homemade bread and a warm blanket and a doggy cuddle by the fire, you crave a long walk outside, where your ears burn and your cheeks sting and you are smiling by the end, because, you can hear the hope in your song, it is coming.  It is coming.

Eye of Iron

This long wait like this long winter, seems interminable, each day is spent watching, inside myself as though I am an egg with a cut glass shell, sitting upon the mantle.  Every moment, I reflect on my own strength, and my character, I reflect on how it must have felt for the ex as he drew his way out of our lives, and his absence of real character, his weakness.  I do not allow myself such indulgences.

I watch as the dog plays with happy abandon, I toss a ball he bought her down the hall it bounces to my room, to the kitchen, into the bathroom, back to me, she runs gets it and I throw it again; he rounds the kitchen and she comes to lay halfway between him and I and waits for him to close the door, and then she bounces up to me ready to go again, but wary because he is nearby.  What does it say that she who lays her body against mine in the darkest hours of the night, hides her light under a bushel basket when he nears?

I watch as he berates someone else for lost envelopes and extra work, someone else’s carelessness, someone else who sits back and allows such a tremendous disaster to have taken place.  I watch as he sits down and pulls the envelope from his own hiding place.  Was it me you laid waste to?

I wait for my new home to become available, I pack all the stupid things I brought with me to make this my own home.  I slowly put back his shitty mismatched dishes, I eye his huge collection of dusty steins, paperboard coasters, decades stained old lady linens, torn and tattered towels, and the room that is nearly unused on the main floor of the house, and think this is more important, than I am to him.

His mother wonders whether this can be saved, how can I be convinced to stay, though she had her foot on my ass the last time he was in the hospital, be nice to my little boy or leave.  Perhaps he should spend some time being nice to me I tell her.  Last time he came home he called me unlovable.  Do you realize that? Oh stop arguing, she tells me, he didn’t mean it.  Later, she tells her husband to shut up, calls him an idiot, and puts her shrinking powder on him.  I watch her.  She then tells me, perhaps you should go with my husband, when I defend him as a caretaker to his aging parents. I am not a whore, Frau.

I watch as he acts pouty and put out, packing his car to trudge about in the woods, the dog safely locked in her cage.   I prefer not to cage her, I prefer her to be free.  I prefer to feed her growth.  You could have joined me long ago.  How many times did you say no?  How many times have you refused affection?  How many times have you laid waste to my character?  How many times have you poked the hornet’s nest?  How many times have you shattered my ego?  How many times have you berated the innocent? How many times have you spit on the ground at my feet?  How many times have you tried to buy favor with dollar store presents?  Is it too late my friends ask me?  I do not know.  How do you find an opening in armor so viciously defended?  How do you love someone who is so comfortable in throwing shrinking powder on one he purports to love.

His aunt points out the dirtiness of my cast iron, he scrubs the coating off, ruining a patina of years worth of good home cooking, I dutifully bake it back on, seasoning it to a hard smooth coat in the hot oven.  Not out of the frying pan and into the fire, but tempered, and tempered again.

You are so strong, someone tells me, stronger than I.

No, this observation egg is not made of crystal, it is made of iron.  And I am a nebulous eye observing.