Smelt for Dinner

I am aware this is an uncommon delicacy. I can devour a mess O' smelt with the hunger of a starved woman. And that I did. The sensuous nature of preparation and anticipation for the taste of these small gems highlighted my Saturday night.

It's been a busy weekend and I can't seem to focus my mind. The ping pong ball nature of my thoughts is driving me nuts.

I need to get back to basics. Good friends, good books a really good moon and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

4 days til my next retreat from life. I'm hoping it will cure my current neurosis.

Ode' to Insomnia

I doubt it's a coincidence that the only lines I ever memorized were these from Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Much of life feels like that to me, so much so that sometimes I actually recite these lines in my head as I convince myself to put in just one more day, one more hour, one more minute, the battle against devastation done in increments. But there are days like today when it's good to rebel against ole' Robert.

Today was one of those days. It started out well - I learned that I triumphed over the dastardly forces of circumstance. That in itself was enough to put a smile on my face for the whole day. Then I spent much of my afternoon in the plastics arena. Had to squelch Maureen from a late night visit. It felt better to go through it alone tonight. The moon is almost full again which brings up horrid conversations with Phil regarding the moon - vs - water - vs - women. His subintellect is almost endearing.

And night decends. Two plates of dog cookies and to many minutes alone finds me on my knees on the kitchen rug hoping I am going to keep myself together one more night. I wrap my arms around me trying to feel life, I'm slipping again.

Details are of no meaning. I'm going have to dig deeper in order to get out of this hole I have fallen into.

Darn details...

Don't Save the Last Dance for Me

Walking the streets of my neighborhood this evening, I noticed the tranquility of the sprinklers whirring on the golf course with that swoosh noise. It's comfortingly familiar. All the houses are dark with their occupants safely sleeping inside. A lone coyote calls his mating melody in the still of the dark of the night somewhere hidden down the golf. I walked and walked as I passed the sleepy world that unfurled around me; one lonesome insomniac making her way through a life that is suddenly brand new. Paws is oblivious to my melancholy and exhaust as he is happy to have an evening walk.
I missed Phil deeply as I walked alone with my thoughts this evening. I wondered if we could have worked things out and stayed together. But I surrender.

Lazy Thursday Night

It’s Thursday night and I am curled up in my lazy boy listening to my Ipod, specifically the new Bon Jovi album, and I write in my paper journal. There is something so empyreal about putting pen to paper in a tangible and old fashioned way. This feels like giving the craft of writing the appreciation it deserves.

I stop to take a drink of wine as the phone rings. I don’t answer. I let my answering machine pick up. It's someone I met at the wine bar and gave my phone number to. I was uninterested then and I am now. Hell, I am not going to call you, I think. I have had enough of all that bullshit. The message ends as he hangs up. I continue writing.

Paw Paws walks into the living room and plops down in front of the fireplace next to my chair. I reach down and rub his head and scratch his back. He is in ecstasy.

I look for purpose in my night and tell myself lies about how well I am doing.

I am alone and have to face myself in this condition. I'm going to put an end to this evening. I walk around to lock up the house and Paws wanders off to go peek out the front window to check out the neighborhood dogs. He's apparently seen something of interest as he his barking insistently. I'm glad he is coming out of his depression. He hates telling his friends that he is from a broken home and has been withdrawn lately. The stigma of it all. I call him to come to bed and he ambles faithfully beside me down a long hallway. We settle in.

Everyday, I say I am going to quit blogging. Everyday, I keep on writing. It's my word addiction. Until I am published, I know someone reads me. And yes, I had publishing doubts last night, but I have to keep it burning in order to get there. So I say the "P" word again tonight.

I find it odd that I share things on this journal with people I will never meet. I share things that I would never share with people in my actual life. It must be a product of my introverted personality trying to get out.

Spangled with Stars

Tonight's sky

It is late afternoon. I am bored and have read my fill of the internet and completed my share of plastics. I wander to A.J's on the corner in the hot afternoon sun, hoping for dinner inspiration. The day has been brutal. It shows on the faces of strangers scurrying from air conditioned market to air conditioned car. There is a desperation for escape from the torrid temperatures that isolates people.

Summer Solstice is upon us. The longest day of the year. Rather apprapoe in my current life. I can take refuge in the fact that I have recently spent some long days and if this is the longest, it must start to get easier now. Something to look forward to.

My book is not really coming together. It has been years since I have been so consumed with writing something other than this blog. I lie awake in bed thinking about where I will take my characters next and how to describe their surroundings and experiences. It's such a welcome distraction. I don't know if I will ever get published, but still…the book will be a product of me and I have poured my heart and soul into it. Something to leave behind.

Late night just descended with a thud. These late hours are hardest on the insomnia addled soul. I sat for the longest time listening to Coast to Coast AM. The thing I notice the most as I wander around begging for sleep is that there is a clear sky spangled with thousands of stars. I inhaled and exhaled deeply enjoying the night air as a welcomed calmness and peace overcame me. I realized I was exactly where I needed to be in life.

Prologue

Beginnings are exciting, even when motivated by fear.

Fear not that which is new, embrace changes.

I changed my name, I changed my phone service provider. I changed my old life in for this scarey new journey that I am now traveling. I am getting a pretty good return for a change. Instead of laundry, I tie flies. Instead of cooking, I devoure words. Instead of cleaning this house, lying in the sun. Instead of content family life, I search for adventure wherever I can find it. And I am finding it on the corner in the wine bar, at some airport that I happen to find myself in, at the top of Squaw Peak mountain, in unimagined destinations that now fuel my imagination.

I'm moving this mountain one pebble at a time.

I've changed my mind

"As a Man Thinkith"

I am trying to be less morose and lighten up this poor depressed blog. The writers that I now hang out with all seem to have humor in their stories while I continue to whine about my meager existance. The piece that Mel wrote regarding me was a lesson in perspective!

Nikki and Emo (aka: Amara, his real name) arrived to work with me this morning. They began trickling in around 9 AM as I can't get my lazy ass out of bed before 7:30 anymore. Nikki was first to arrive. We began with an unmotivated spirit and procrastinated about plastics. Our diversion was to dig in to the closets and purge this house of final remainders of my marriage. We had a grand time sorting through it, as we always do when we pull out old memories. It wasn't long before work ethic was disgarded altogether and the living room was littered with boxes of boxes of memories. We spent the morning sorting it in to piles. The stuff she wanted, Phil's stuff and the stuff I am going to burn. The scheduled bonfire will be theraputic. It's a cleansing feeling to have rid this house of my disinigrated past.

Emo, being late as usual walked into our chaos as if it were the norm. Rather than question, he donned iPod and screwdriver and went to work. He spoke no more than 10 words during his entire shift. I sure hope he gets comfortable here this summer. I've done my best to make him feel welcome. I even cooked for him! But I think he was more of a victim than a guest as I have been desperate to cook (as Mel so eloquently writes about). Maybe I should cook for Mel!

I kicked everyone out by noon because I have had enough interaction with people today. I finished moving the piles of books and boxes to another wall so I don't trip over them in the dark when I have had my share of wine tonight. Pawpaws looks forlorn because it's to hot to be outside, so I have mercy on him and we went to the McDonald's drive through. This seems to have satisfied him. He now lays on the 3 X 3 square of tile in front of the fire place. The coolset spot in the house. I on the other hand, need to clean myself up and go to class. (GCC = my version of AA) I am in need of some serious learning.

Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

BMW MISONEISTIC

The demise of my marriage is obvious. It stems from my lack of shoes and a BMW.

The shoe problem I have conquered. They are new and expensive and walking all over this house. I think if I had paid as much attention to myself as I paid to Phil, I might have been a more interesting partner. He certainly had expensive shoes, but it didn't make him more interesting to me. Lesson learned, invest more in shoes and less in the man.

The BMW is another story. We are forced to spend days together on occasion. And though I can appreciate it's beauty, luxury and comfortable ride I hate it's arrogant attitude and mid-life crisis symbolism. It tends to attempt to make me feel inferior because of it's seemingly complex self, but in reality, it is a machine that is incredibly flawed. So similar to my ex-husband. Each pretending to be something better than they really are.

This phallic symbol of success is my nemesis.

But I try to get along.

That is until I am driving to the mall and cannot find the right button to do whatever I need done so I resort to voice recognition commands. Like my ex-husband, the car doesn't listen and it too, turns a deaf ear to me but offers it's own opinions. I ask for the satellite radio station to be changed and I get it's reasoning voice telling me he is changing to AM radio because he seems to think he knows best. I try not to get annoyed when I have to ask a second time. And it occurs to me I am being much to polite with the car because every time I say "please" he hears place and gives me some navigation bullshit. I learned not say thank you out loud because he gives me "altitude" information. Which brings up a whole new subject. When speaking to the robots in our lives, are we to be polite and ask please and thank them? Or do we just adopt a cold attitude and appreciate their servitude from afar?

In frustration yesterday I yelled "fuck you" at / to the car because I just wanted him to turn the radio down and all I got was climate control. I guess he was trying to cool me off.

Keeping my Soul Intact

Crisis at the keyboard continues. I know it is my job to write and the excuse of writer's block is just that. Executives and factory workers are not afforded the luxury of calling in with worker's block. The same principal must apply to me. Discipline lives in the fiery sadness of my soul. The truth of the situation is; if there are no tears in the writer, there will be no tears in the reader. Maybe I can harness this pain into a masterpiece and stop these craven moments that occupy my time.

My current peer group criticism's include the fact I am an adjective maniac (or adjectiveaholic) I already knew this. Yet I throw myself on the mercy of strangers to reitorate. So I am attempting to have a perspective party and put things in to perspective with tonight's blog wafer.

WHY DO WE ALWAYS WAIT?

I dug out the emotions and laid them on the carpet underneath my feet and attempt to tromple them in to some sort of order. No matter how hard I squash them, they keep rising to the surface. I don't want to feel what they have to offer. I don't want the gripping truth to speak aloud but would prefer to live in the fantasy of a miracle cure. I can no longer hold myself to the past and have to feel the future. The future feels like an enemy and speaks to me of the anger of having been a fool and the uncertainty of the tunnel I find myself crawling through with no light at the end that has always been promised.

I don't know who I am and I don't know why.

Tears just come and I am aggrivated at myself for them.

I am raw and have never in my life experienced this wealth of emotional turbulance that propels me every day.

I spent my whole life thinking one way, and am now forced to look in a completely different direction. I have hope mingled in the pain. I am a different person than I was

I feel alive. Why did I wait so long.

In the Margins

Without inspiration for the past 10 days I find myself struggling and scavenging for words. I have a mental cramp that I just can't shake. Even with the current wealth of encouragement and resources that surround me, I am still looking to the thesaurus for inspiration. But only find synonyms and antonyms that do not have a story to tell.

It seems that since I actually started writing, attending class and peer group meetings, my writing has come to a complete halt. Don't know if this is because I was such a closet writer in the past and am now finding myself fully exposed. I possess a sheepish attitude about admitting my need to write. Compare it to an alcoholics need to drink. We do it quietly and cover up the truth of our addiction. I have to publicly admit, I am addicted. I write journals and letters. I write on this blog daily and archived most of the entries. I write in the margins and on napkins. I carry around endless numbers of legal pads and notebooks. I would rather write than hold a conversation. Currently I have 20 plus writing projects underway and all of them going nowhere. The book project is screaming for my attention. My need is to find focus. But maybe the first step to my recovery is admission.

Hi, I am Julie and I am a writer.

The past week I have been traveling. The destination was not as memorable as the journey. I found myself out of my element going through airports, hailing taxis, riding trains and trams, talking to strangers and simply being on my own in the world. This exposure to life has proven to be exactly what was needed to reinvigorate my recently bruised soul. My plane home was cancelled leaving me stranded in the Las Vegas airport. The problem at the time, seemed insurmountable but the experience in the end became the catalyst for my healing. I recognized a fellow traveler, also now stranded and engaged her in conversation. We brainstormed the best escape route from this town. We had hours to kill and decided to have dinner together, along with a third stranger that we collected along the way. We three woman sat in a dark restaurant exchanging life stories. Jodi works for CNN and Kaye is an oil tycoon in Texas. Feeling inadequate in their company I didn't want to admit to just having a manufacturing line in my home. My insecurity overshadowed my personality. But as drinks and conversation flowed, I admitted to being a writer - yes out loud and in public, and this admission melted the conversations into books, current and recently read titles. This is a subject that I can hold my own with. I talked animatedly of my recent reads and thoughts on each of them. I spoke of Al Gore's first book, An Inconvenient Truth, and mused aloud about his new release. Of course Wayne Dyer was fondly mentioned as well as favorite authors, Marianne Williamson, Esther and Jerry Hicks and deeper literary giants such as the Course in Miracles. As my mind flowed free sharing the wealth of knowledge that books have offered me, I suddenly realized, people might find me interesting. I can hold my own with people of substance.

It was an eye opening moment. I am no longer someones wife or simply a mother to my kids. I am a woman with a big life and intend to live it!

Amuse My Blog

I had an urge for an upgrade. This will do.

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