I love: Sir Sampson.

A dog is one of the remaining reasons why some people can be persuaded to go for a walk.

a rebuttal, in part, to here.

Ode to Sir Sampson

WELL my black and white furry friend,
this is a far cry from the end -
Steel my heart for the day,
the dog police takes you away.

THEY'LL come pounding upon our door,
I’ll kneel before them, and implore -
“Let me keep my Sammy-head!
He loves me too! and takes most of the bed!”

You eat fine steaks, and old birthday cakes -
You love Bob Mac, and also the Jack -
You have an Aunt Halley, and for the grand finale -
Everyone loves you! (I’m almost through)

Who would I take on marathon walks?
Who would stay sit for one hour talks?
When I paint my nails, he gnaws on his bone -
And I never again have to feel alone.

So off with your bells, your whistles, your sirens –
Don’t I write sort of like Byron?
I am keeping my little Sir Sampson guru –
and with that, thank goodness, i'll say adieu!

-----

Ridiculous? Yes, definitely ridiculous. Mum made me write it for one of the award ceremonies.

rabbit, rabbit, rabbit!

This hasn’t been my happiest month, but project good deed has served me well. This blog has officially kept my mind off of ExBoyfriend and depressing thoughts. Most of the time. Very good indeed.

I have a skeletal idea of what I want to do next… but as I did last month, I’m opening it up to all of you!

Here are my thoughts:

Every day I add to the daunting sheaf of pages I call my “idea pad”. Last night I was flipping through it and I realized that most of the “ideas” aren’t my own, they are from other people – from the blogs I read, the comments I get, the people I talk to – etc.

So every post this month has been about me, and what I’m doing. I want every post in May to be about all of you!

I’m going to call this project, The Ones I Love.

More tomorrow. Tonight I am going to make lists....!

Final good deed: to volunteer at the L House once a month. It's a recovery home for homeless women. 10! 

29th kindness: almost done!

One the my fellow bloggers, a woman who writes words I love, recently commented on Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Read her post here:

Sizzle Says, Part of the Solution

Even as women, we act as girls.

Exhibit One: Popular songs titles.
Girls just want to have fun. Boys don’t cry.

Exhibit Two: Expressions.
You throw like a girl. Don’t be a girl about it. Man up.

I could go on, but I won't.

Even later in life, past the age of dolls and ponies, women are taught to be girls. If we don’t fall into specific roles – assigned early on – then we are … the b word, the c word, the w word, and the s word. We are met with ridicule, disapproval, scorn… even disgust.

Good girls are:
- polite

- smiling

- soft spoken

- cardigan and skirt wearing
- compliant

- trophy wives

- living in orange county

- relationship/ family oriented
- sugar and spice, and everything nice

When a guy pursues you with aggression he is "driven" – when a girl does, she’s a psycho stalker. I heard this at a very young age – never call a boy, never be easy, always play hard to get. And I listened!!

Case and point: current situation with my ex-boyfriend. He still has my keys, and my sneakers, and I need them back - so I have been trying to get a hold of him... and nothing!!! he won't answer my calls, if he responds to my texts it's with a measly one word answer "huh" and "no" and if i'm lucky, "call you in 5" - needless to say, he doesn't call in five. he doesn't call in ten. he doesn't call in f-ing 24, 36, 72 hours.

I feel like a crazy person!! I don't want to lose myself in this web of mind games. The funny part? Most likely he doesn't even realize it - I feel like I'm five again, talking to my imaginary friend.

I am shy about asking for what I need - my keys, my shoes, my sanity - because I feel aggressive and out of my element. I know how to get the boy - I flutter my eyelashes, laugh a lot, and never make the phone call or the "let's hang out" suggestion. My success with men, sad to say, is contingent on acting like a “girl”.

When I was in seventh grade my boyfriend called me an “Estella” – we were reading Great Expectations at the time. I think this is one of my most fitting insults. Once I bait them I throw them back. And if I do hold onto them, eventually a time comes when I get irritable-restless-discontent, in FEAR, and I push them away - by making their lives hell.

How much of this ability to “attract” stems from fear? From loneliness? Fear of rejection, or worse, fear of loving and not being loved in return?

It’s easier to just “be a girl”. You are taken care of, you are spoiled, you are “provided for”.

BUT. I don’t want to lead a limited life. Twenty years from now I don’t want to bored, sitting around the house in curlers, ironing my husband’s wool socks for the 6,000th time. If this is my fate, twenty one years from now I’ll wake up in the bottle.

So I shyly, and humbly, am embarking on a – hopefully – different life.

And f*ck, if I have to go on ONE MORE BAD DATE, I might become a lesbian.

Seriously.

I just want to be myself and say things like:

aaron: hi, robin?

me: hi!

aaron: hi.

me: hi.

bla bla bla

aaron: it's hot, isn't it? i think it was ninety something today

me: yeah i stuck my head in the freezer like ten times this weekend

aaron: what?

me: then i let sam have a go

aaron: oh

me: oh.

aaron: oh.

poor aaron. probably thinking, what a psycho that girl was...

good deed yesterday and today: helping a friend in need. and letting another friend use my car so she can make an early class.

Q

breaking up: oh so hard

We would have been dating for two years on March 14th. He relocated to Michigan, then California for me. When we moved into this apartment we had so much hope for ourselves. People told us it was too soon, but we didn’t listen. We were fools in love. Know it alls. Uniques.

And now here I sit, my seltzer one hand, typing with the other. Our dog, really my dog, running circles around my legs. ExBoy came today and picked up the rest of his “stuff” – most of which I bought him. The fancy bike I got him for his birthday, the scenester sweater I came home with “just because” – I think he even took the salt shaker I swiped from a table in Costa Rica. But he did leave my keys! And no note. Oh, and no sneakers.

This apartment is like a memory minefield – yesterday I opened a rarely used kitchen cabinet to find a miniature “love” card I left him – I hid ten or so around the house, and this one said – Knock Knock, I love you!.

Little reminders of how hard I tried, how deeply I loved him, and how willing I was to make it work. Little reminders of how I failed, how my efforts were in vain, and how I couldn't control the end result.

Too depressing a post? I apologize if it’s heavy, but my heart has been a little heavy today, and I needed to lighten the load. Talking about it and knowing I did the right thing by ending it helps me. Looking back, I realize that I had reached my limit, that limit we all know in our gut. Enough was enough.

On a more positive note! For my good deed today, I went down a meeting phone list/ email list (about 25 or so names) and gave each one a positive message from my morning meditation book. I got two "you kept me sober today"s and one "um, I'm not an alcoholic".
Maybe I can’t be happy every day, but I can try to make someone else happy every day!

Have a good night, everyone. And please, if you have any advice on the aforementioned topic, I could really use some different perspectives!

i'm a woman, hear me purr - kindness #27&28

i love: something I can't describe.

The opposite of fear is faith –

The word spirituality. What do I think of when I hear this word? BC (before change) spirituality conjured: the boogieman of our generation, the cult of corny, groovy new agers with long hair and balloon pants – dear god, should I say it? Fanney packs. Fanney packs and Enya.

And post-change (referred to as an “entire physic change” by a man many of you know), I view the word differently.

It’s a cliché saying, but it helped me when I first tried to understand why this small word would posesses a big place in my newly fashioned life:

Religion is for people who are scared of hell; spirituality is for people who have been there.

Zen Quote: “God is a thousand dawnings.”

Feel the love-bliss all around you, as my modern day mystic, Barry, would say. Everyone and everything is inextricably linked. The only thing that separates me and you and me and “God” is the ego.

The ego is: conscious or unconscious separation from.

From my spiritual mentor, Barry, I have some homework: write poetry and consider life's beautiful faces - the aha! dawnings.
Some old classics: the ocean, the sea, the rain. Or Sam’s puppy face staring up at me first thing every morning. My Mom’s laugh, my Dad’s chuckle. Jackie’s wry comments. Cassie's mushy moments when she turns to the sun like a flower. The way I feel after talking to an old friend, relaxed and inspired, shrouded in love bliss.

And on and on.

Just things to think about.

I love something I can’t name.

Have a great week, everyone!

franz wright

And the ocean smells like lilacs in late August–how
is that.

The light there muted (silver) as remembered light.

Do you have any children?

No, lucky for them.

Bad things happen when you get hands, dolphin.

Can you tell us a little bit about your upbringing?

There is no down or up in space or in the womb.

If they’d stabbed me to death on the day I was born, it
would have been an act of mercy.

Like the light the last room, the windowless room at the
end, must look out on. Gold-tinged, blue

vapor trail breaking up now like the white line you see,
after driving all day, when your eyes close;

vapor trail breaking up now between huge clouds resembling
a kind of Mt. Rushmore of your parents’ faces.

And these untraveled windy back roads here–cotton
leaves blowing past me, in the long blue
horizontal light–

if I am on an island, how is it they go on forever.

This sky like an infinite tenderness, I have caught
glimpses of that, often, so often, and never yet have
I described it, I can’t, somehow, I never will.

How is it that I didn’t spend my whole life being happy, loving
other human beings’ faces.

And wave after wave, the ocean smells like lilacs in
late August.

25th kindness & insanity

kindness and insanity

today was the first day in a long line of days (taken one at a time) that i wanted to drink. when driving home i passed a neon lit liquor store, and instantly tasted that thick beer (dark, ann arbor brew) in my mouth.

this is the world's way of reminding me that i am still young, and have so much to discover about myself, and so much more growing to do. i have a long way to go before i'm "comfortable" and "free," as Barry says.

but i feel fortunate... the experience of craving/ obsession is absolute hell, absolute pain, BUT every time i get through it, and the call of the wild passes, i once again realize that feelings are not facts, and we don't think our way to better action - but act our way to better thinking.

pain is the cornerstone of growth, they tell me, and i'm starting to believe them.

good deed: i put $30 bucks in the basket. 7th tradition support.

have a peaceful weekend, everyone :)

24th kindness: starbucks

good deed: tipping $10 at Starbucks. two of my old coworkers were at the register. 

wallace stevens once said that poetry is the "supreme fiction." he was the critic's poet- a class can spend hours analyzing his work. a business man with an ordinary, albeit successful, career, he insisted on turning to the "necessary arts" for a "freshening of life." 

i agree, mr. stevens. or should i say wallace? wally? 

this is one of my favorite poems - it's about youth, and possible rape, music and beauty. reminds me of my first journal-snippet from 1998. 

Peter Quince at the Clavier 

I

JUST as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music too.

Music is feeling then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel, 
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna:

Of a green evening, clear and warm, 
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their being throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna. 

II
In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found 
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed
For so much melody.

Upon the bank she stood
In the cool 
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass, 
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering. 

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned—
A cymbal crashed,
And roaring horns. 

III
Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side:

And as they whispered, the refrain 
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps’ uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.

And then the simpering Byzantines,
Fled, with a noise like tambourines. 

IV
Beauty is momentary in the mind—
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.

The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going, 
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of Winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden’s choral. 

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death’s ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory, 
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

my old journals

hi, ladies. you are probably wondering why i put you in the title - just wanted to remind you how quickly things change. love to you all.
***
I am: a person who saves a lot and writes down even more

I have kept a journal since I was nine years old.

I was born in 1985. 1985 to 1998 was a good time for me. Before 1998 there are dried flowers, rhyming poetry, dramatic gestures – and the occasional “guest” entry from my sister, Jackie.

But then, the real fun begins! (sarcasm: i need to define it for the californians). Here are some (tiny) excerpts from my past:
1998
His overpowering hands
I am nothing, left with a memory of a girl
And nice
Long ago

1999
I don’t know why I am not good enough for -----.
I feel horrible for ---- sometimes.
Sometimes I wish I could leave here forever. And never look back.
2000
I love myself.
I hate myself.

2001
Why am I so screwed up about boys?

2002
So it’s gone. They’re gone. The only familiar faces from my seventeen years have just left me, parted from me, blustering and red faced at a security checkpoint. I woke up to my new mother calling “Robine” into the room. They are young! I don’t know how to say anything. Or if I did know the language, I wouldn’t know what to ask! and wtf, why does Luis (loo-eeeeeze is how they say it) leave the toilet seat up? Last night I FELL IN!

2003
I love Spain. I love it, I love it, I love it – I never want to leave!

2003 – Summer
------ calls last night at five in the morning. Why? Booty call? Weed run? Or to talk? Fuck him. Every few nights I have a drug dream. Fuck me!
2004
Am I turning into Papa?
2005
Wasps breath alcohol – that's what ----- says. Am I a wasp? I’m British and Irish. Yes, I am probably a wasp.
Wait, I'm not protestant. Hell, I’m probably a hornet.

2006
I just met the ----- sister who was really into coke and sex. And then I met -----------. She has a pinched face.
How did I end up here?

2007
California light is gold. Am I ever going to return to Michigan? Jackie’s calling, gotta go.

2008
Now.
Funny how things turn out. I could pull different tidbits from my journals and present an entirely different past...
... but no worries, I'll leave you with this random assortment for now.
Happy Thursday!!

good deed today: cleaning the ernster's dirty dishes. 9 - it was a foul job.

22nd kindness: planting a tree

so i planted one of my house plants (a small tree) at the backbay today. probably broke some hyper-anal orange county law, but hey! it's earth day! had to do it. 

also... went on my first official "date" as a single girl. it was strange. realized i am not ready to date - especially go on a BLIND date, for the love of god, no. no, no, no. i am too critical, too cynical, and too closed at the moment to really give anyone a chance. i am deep in the missing my smart, funny, and kind ex-boyfriend mode... sigh. 

i want to be alone for awhile. it's what i need. and what i want - most of the time. 

more coherent thoughts and less rambling tomorrow, i promise, and for now a little fun in the sun from the desert. 

 

yeehaw! and 21st kindness

amigos 

desert flower 

another desert flower

hecho en mexico 

waiting for the meeting to start 

some pics for now... i'm off to snooze with my sampson-head. i've missed him. 

21st kindness: giving sampson a big bowl of peanut butter. warms my heart :)