Acupuncture

last week, in the bitter cold wind I met with an acupuncturist to see if I might find some relief.  After I was tired, as I read my book my head grew so heavy I could no longer hold it up.  And I slept like the dead, not waking or tossing and turning.  I had some relief from pain for 2-3 days, and slept marvelously all week.

i was in pain this morning, breaking down and taking 2 naproxen it is cold and damp, and rained most of the afternoon, and the wind was blowing garbage into the streets.

I emerged into the late afternoon from the sanctuary of bed warmers and heat lamps, forgetting in my state of relaxation that it was so damp and gross.  I felt like a well fed hobbit,

driving home I realized my knee/leg did not hurt.  Nor really the rest of me.

i had this feeling as I lay in the bed, I was talking and then my voice slowed and slurred and I did not want to speak anymore.  And I felt chalky.  I don’t have the words but like I was coated with oily dust.  Not in a bad way.

as though my synapses were not in an electric storm, like I was made of clay, like, my frayed parts were soothed and coated , like my brittle dry parts were rich with emollient.

And now now I rest.  Goodnight.

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It is so cold outside, ten degrees Fahrenheit and March 24th.  The snow, what is left of it, is black and grey, the grass olive, the reeds in the swamps are beige, the sky is grey, the trees are grey.

I have not yet seen a robin, but the oobalee of red wing blackbirds, serenaded me this weekend.

I have made terrible choices when it comes to men.  I am frustrated with trying to explain it.  Why did I put up with this, why did I stay so long, and the question of putting me there in that place with this one, or that one, I cannot picture you tolerating that kind of treatment.

yep no shit

And then there is this thing where I knew what I was asking for, hoping for and dreaming of were not far off.  A man who comes home for dinner?  A man who cleans up after himself, and sometimes me?  A man who would not dream of sleeping while I shoveled a driveway or mowed a lawn?  A man who does not insult me, demean me, or feel embarrassed by my choice in clothes or shoes or hair style?  A man who does not call me a faker when I call in sick?  A man who says oh you want to take macro photos?  Here is my camera, use it.  Instead of yes I have six cameras but if you want to use one you have to pay me 400$ first.

I stand by the kitchen sink and cry.  As it hits me the years of abused endured, of neglect, of wanting what I did not have.  He comes to me and wraps his arms around me and kisses my neck.

Its over now.  I am not that person anymore.

I tell him everyday how lucky I am, how grateful I am, and what a good, good man he is.

Here is the thing, to history me, to any woman who is putting up with not being treated the way she thinks a marriage, a relationship, a boyfriend should treat her, DON’T.  Just don’t put up with it anymore.  Walk away.  Take care of yourself.  Be happy with yourself, and don’t accept anything less than you deserve, and if he tries to tell you its you, or he has other priorities, or that he will do it later in your shared life, or that he is just joking, or doesn’t mean it or that you DESERVE it somehow.  Show him your backside as you walk away, or at least put your foot on his ass as you kick him out the door.

Real men, don’t treat woman like that.

Questions

How do you return to one, if we are already one?  Return to one.  If everything is connected, and if we are all part of one living organism, how can we return to something we are already part of?

Also I have this question.  If Buddhism is about acceptance, and the Buddha is not a god, then why does one have to be mindful of such things as not wearing knee length shorts when meditating, or not stretching in front of the Buddha statue.  STATUE.

Also why if we are all one and all equals must one bow to the Osho, not turn your back to the Osho as though they are a high king?  Why do people serve the Osho, and why is the Osho kept apart from the others?

Can one be an enlightened bodhisattva and still be just an ordinary person.  Must one be ordained to be enlightened?

And why is discomfort and pain part of Zen meditative practice?  ie you sit in a painful position for seven days at a time, not scratching, moving or brushing off a mosquito, until your bones ache and your body screams in pain.  Is this what finding enlightenment is really about?  And how can you find enlightenment, if you are already exactly where you are supposed to be?

These are my questions.

Waves

The wind is blowing hard, and long arms of snow drifts stretch across the country roads, though the wind itself is not cold, it is a west wind, and with it the feeling of spring.  The sun is bright and the icicles sparkle like hippie crystals in the sun.  The black shadows of trees stretch across the white snow.  The shadows of icicles are like dragons teeth on the blinds.  I watch the deer from the truck  as we drive back from dropping off one of the young men for a date at the movies.  Deer cluster under the green boughs of pines, one paws at the snow as another lies beside her curled.  The dog and I walk slowly around the plowed yard and driveway, calm and quiet delighting in the chopping blades of the windmill and the cardinal birdsong that delights the windy air.

I have butterflies in my stomach as a friend tells me he knows I am happy because I am painting again, he who claims to have but one friend, but I know there are at least two.  He hugs me with genuine warmth and affection as he leaves.  Tom taps my hand in the truck and I put my tiny (so not tiny) hands into his fingers laced together, how such bruised and chapped and calloused and cracked hands can feel so soft and tender and safe makes the butterflies come again.

There is a moment in life when the waves come and knock you off your feet.  The sand slips out from underneath you as the undertow tries to drag you into the deep, a hand in regaining your footing is all that is needed.  You can stand in judgment and think a person weak when they cannot catch themselves up, or you can be the ready and steady that is there to catch someone up when they fall.  It is all about the choices we make.  It is all about the decision to stick it out, or to throw in the towel, and the person sitting on it.

We can choose too to swim in the deep, to take in the intense beauty and awful ugliness, and complete ordinariness that dwells within every being on this earth.  You can choose to embrace the deep, to love the deep or hate the deep.  To take a hand as you float upon the water, and kick your feet in tandem.  Are you floating on the water or is it the clouds, or is it both?

Or we can choose to live saturated in the depth of being.

Or is it all one thing?

There is this pounding surf like perfection though, just in being, just as it was meant to be.

Can you not feel it?

Are you not waiting for the next wave to come and rush your body back to the wet sand at the edge of the sea?  Or to draw you back into the deep.  Does it matter really in the end?

Above Freezing

I have decided that I will no longer shovel, or snowblow my driveway.

Meanwhile it has been below freezing, well below, since some time in January.  Until.  TODAY.

It is 34 degrees Fahrenheit.

As I drove along the slushy grey and black highway in the drizzle and muddy spray I noticed that the willows are golding up.  How they know when it is so cold, I do not know.

The birds have finally taken note of my birdfeeder.  I filled it last week, and have to fill it again.  Only the second time all year.

And spring cleaning has begun.  Perhaps I will be moving again in a few months.  If so, I want to move as little as possible.  With that in mind I threw out a ton of stuff from my studio last night.  I also made up a huge bag of goodies for work.

I decided I need to finish emptying my jewel cases into my CD folder and throw those out.  And go through my books again and donate them.  They mostly just collect dust anyway, since I only have read a few books more than once.  Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Lao Tzu, a couple sci fi books, Andre Norton, the one with Furtig in it.  (Cat something)….

With electronic books you just don’t have to take up all the space for a good read.  In the zombie apocalypse all will suffer for this.

I had a thought this morning.  That we should live like it is the zombie apocalypse, not wasting food or water, or gas; not wasting time on stuff that doesn’t matter like television and computer games.  Anyway.  As I sit here blogging, on a computer.  Wishing it were four o’clock.

Oh Let Spring Begin

I run barefoot onto the back porch, admonishing the dogs to hurry as my bare feet dance on the jute rug, quickly slipping the collar over Marley’s head, and rushing back to the relative warmth of the kilim on the floor by the door.

I feel light today.

Last night I tried to stretch in front of the television, I had to turn it off.  The peacefulness of my lazy yoga of cuddling Marley as I did frog pose in front of the fire.  My mat is dirty, and the floor is covered with ash and wood dust and bits of dog chewed kindling.

I forwent the muscle relaxer and went instead for the naproxen and A.’s sleep tincture.

My dreams were ethereal.

I was left behind as mystical creatures dove under a barge.  I saved a soul lit otter like creature from capture.  I was the concubine of an alien, who loved me, and I could see through all his subterfuge.

I woke thirsty, the universe swirling in my mind’s eye.  Psychedelic doodles painted before my eyes.

I drove through the salt parched roads, oil and grit blackened snow banks higher than my car.

I am alive today.

Yesterday I felt like a plug of slime.

I think the muscle relaxers are stealing my light.

In like a lion?

Sancho wakes me early, he needs to go out more, and is less inclined to hold either his bladder or his bowels.  I crawl back under the thick down comforter, Sancho on the dog bed beside me, Marley under the covers with me and Sadie purring joyfully in my arms.   I am so glad it is Sunday.

,

After some time of hoping to fall back asleep, I get up and opt for the percolator,  more coffee, rather than my two cup mini coffee maker, bills to be paid, taxes to be done, laundry and painting.  And coffee has replaced cigarettes from my most prolific period 25 years ago and more.  I am as proflific now as i was then.  At least six paintings still wet in my small studio.  And two canvases waiting for gesso.

This winter has been the cold and snowy kind, like the winters of my youth, snow up to my thighs in my man’s backyard.  Bitter cold day upon day.  Only the warmth of the sun, rising high and blasting down in the way that birds sing of spring.  The sky yesterday was bright blue and the sun warm enough to get me to take off my coat, despite the one degree Farenheit temperature, as we drove to the dump.

I start the fire.  My supply of logs quickly diminishing.  Although my heating and electric bill was only 86 dollars in the last month, something akin to miraculous in a frigid winter like this, I have been more liberal with the furnace.  I have a big bin of logs that need to be cut in half, too long to fit in my little stove.

I am anxious for the winter to end.  It wears, the cold, like a box of stones on your back.  My bones ache from it.