Kid Art

Photos never do Ramona's art justice, since her work is always so glitter-centric, but here is a nice one she did yesterday.

re-entry into life, rethinking the blog

As my crazy work schedule winds down, I find myself mired in the chaos of an unattended life. Not the good kind of chaos, the uncomfortable kind. The house in total disarray and me lacking the energy to do anything about it. The regret of missing the beginning of what seems to be the biggest social movement in my adult life. A feeling of estrangement from my daughter and fear of loosing our connection. A feeling of estrangement from society. The realization that in doing everything that I do, I can’t do anything well. Many things aren’t working, and as I reenter my life I see an opportunity to make some major decisions about it. I need to pair down.

I have started with the decision to forget working in public education. I can not meld into the professional world. I have spent too much time trying to fit into places that I don’t and I am done. And I hate the way that it has made me constantly want to correct people’s grammar (especially people’s tendency to use adjectives in place of adverbs). I loved the fluidity of the English language before it was netted in my standardization and Webster.


But outside education I am a writer, a videographer, and artist, a musician, a single parent, an activist, a “home educator,” an intellectual, a traveler and wanderer, a member of the working class, an urban homesteader…how do I manage? I want to spend time with people too!

I shall start with integration.

Video is a great tool. It is a job I feel comfortable doing. It is an outlet for creativity. It is something I can be paid for. It is a project I can do with my daughter, and help her learn. It is a way to document. Video is a tool for activism.

Writing is something I love. It keeps me sane. It is a form of activism for me. I recently stopped journaling after reading an article from someone I respect saying that in order to be a “famous “ writer, I should write for others, and not waste time journaling to myself. I took the advice and it had devastating effects. For me, writing is not only a mode of communication with the outside world, but a mode of communication with my inner self. I am an introvert and much of me is deeply buried. Writing is an exercise in digging. I am working on adding journaling back into my life. When I journaled regularly I liked my writing.

I am rethinking my blog. What is it here for? I liked it when more mothering was happening in my blogging. When my mothering looked like acts of rebellion. But really I guess it still is. I feel strong in my ideas about how to raise my daughter without regular schooling, at least for the short term. I have plans. I am determined to have a life that doesn’t revolve around my daughter as well. And integrated life is an act of rebellion.

I don’t feel like tackling the other stuff on my list right now…

We will see where all the sticks fall as I come out of super worker mode. 55 hour work weeks plus 6-7 hours of commute time is a lot, even for a hip mama. The cat is laying herself on my wrists as I type this.

change, music and ...

Changes;
More child-mom independence (including kid having sleep-overs so mom can party)
Our own home
Dating
Music
35th birthday
Kitten
Social life
Activist meeting
All these on top of a shit load of change last winter...


I feel sad when I don’t get to write a blog post every week or so. I guess I am settling into all the changes that have been going on around me; figuring out what I have to say about them still. I felt like I was living in a pressure cooker, then abruptly tossed out the window. The painful contortions of change transform into a new rhythm. Starting to feel comfortable in my new skin.

The advice I give to my depressed friends is to always remember that things will inevitably change.…rough spots are just that…spots. But I was starting to think that maybe I was full of it. I guess some “rough spots” are more like large salt-water lakes.
Moving is hard. Life as a single parent can be exhausting. Life as a non-single parent can be exhausting. Life as a middleclass nuclear family can be hell. But I am a little exhausted, trying to create a little balance to handle all these new changes, good changes, nonetheless somewhat uncomfortable changes. I am a very lucky girl, when compared with the world majority. It is such a horror that billions of people suffer so much that even the thought of having a creative outlet would scarcely touch the mind. People created horror.

Anyway, the advice I give IS good, but sometimes hard to remember when you have spent the last four score and umpteen days riddled with anxiety, valiantly fighting your depression with mind power and beer.

One change I have added to the mix recently is that I have dedicated myself to being a musician. This is where I am aiming. Playing music has been something I have always wanted to do. It has been a source of excitement, anxiety, frustration, elation, and very much…connection. I played with people about 10 years ago. In a band. Then I fell apart emotionally and socially. I didn’t even listen to music for a few years. I didn’t want to deal with the emotion that inevitable welled up and distracted me from “sanity” when I listened to music. But I kept all my instruments. I helped bring in the last full-moon in a drum circle. Now I have been playing bass. I play guitar, but I want to play bass in a band. So that is what I am going to do. I know that it will work wonders for my self-esteem. I always feel bad that I don’t play music when I am not playing music. I hear a drummer playing music in a nearby home. Maybe I should find where it is coming from and introduce myself. .

Home and Hearth

I must admit that I erased my last post about depression. Struggling with it, but seeing it in words makes me cringe. I don't want to make deleting a habit though...as I don't like so much of what I write it could make blogging a problem.

Moving on...we finally found a place to live. Its in a triplex, with two big bedrooms, a big living room for relaxation and music and yard to play in and grow food. It’s not perfect, but it will be a great place to live. There is a garage to store bikes, put a washer and dryer and make a workshop for my creative endeavors. I am looking forward to cracking open the life that lives in the garage in boxes...it seems I was punishing myself for not finding a place Ramona and I could fit and flourish...I have been deprived of most of my music, jewelry, art-making supplies, guitar amp and pedals for so long...

The best part about this move is that it means that my life gets to make one great leap forward. It means that I get to create my own space. For some reason this sounds so amazingly satisfying to me. I used to express myself creatively using my own body as a canvas, clothes, hair, make-up…but unfortunately I don’t want to be stared at (I didn’t then either). I stick out already in this subdued town, I don’t need to draw yet more attention to myself. There has been but one year in my entire life where I have had my own home. And even then I spent 3 of those 12 months in Mexico, away from my tiny home…I was also 5 months pregnant and in grad school when I moved in…not in position to be decorating. It took me a month to even get a bed in the tiny third floor apt. (I do remember one time though, when I was in love, that my shared space really was my space, when my love was part of my family and me. I loved our house then)

I am looking forward to hosting. I look forward to seeing how my home base will change things in my life.

I have been in this town for nearly four years now. That is a lot for me. My last house I was in for 3 and a half years. That is the longest I have ever lived anywhere. I think 2 years is the longest before that, and I am including my entire life, not just my adulthood. Creating a home base is peculiar, but I am embracing it. Something new. It seems that home is the next frontier after choosing a community in which to grow roots.

Everyone is always so interested in my travels, my experience flitting from one place to another. My fearlessness in the face of instability and change, my love for motion. But a being that I have mostly lived in instability I have a novel and eager fascination with scary stability. How will creating home affect me? Not that stillness will ever be my natural, comfortable state, but deepening my roots could definitely open up new opportunities to flourish. A place with furniture…before a few years ago I have always been able to fit everything I own in my car. Everyone thinks that is “awesome,” but at the same time, making hearth and home is also a wonderful thing. Having a soft place for a traveling friend to lay their head, space to create music in the company of friends, a yard full of living food, all that is just as great as being in motion. Home and hearth is such a resource; to myself, my child and my loved ones. How many times have friends given me a soft spot to sleep, company and a warm meal during my adventures. Now I can do the same. I also remember how hard it was as a child to live in constant motion and instability. It meant never cultivating strong relationships, always being new…I love the value that Ramona puts on here relationships and social rituals.

Sometimes, movement and change can be deceptive. When things get boring and tough, just take off to shake things up and get a new perspective. While I love it…while constantly shaking things up and changing the scenery is exciting and makes for great memories and mind-expanding experiences, there is a certain sort of shaking up and changing that only happens when the world around me is quiet. There is a sort of painful inner work that can only happen when I am not being over stimulated by the world around me. There is a certain kind of exquisite creative output that only happens from a place of groundedness.

Are We There Yet?

I can’t believe how the weather has finally turned so beautiful. It was bound to happen, but when it did it was still amazing, sweet success. Summer has begun, and likewise mine feels like it must be getting closer. My living situation has driven me to the brink of insanity; to bi polar psychosis. The gears are churning at such a painfully slow pace...it’s like in a dream, when you are trying to do something, run, get the attention of your lover as he/she is walking away, and it feels like you are trapped in sand or mud, your movements, even on step or gesture, so slow and labored.

As a person so familiar and infused with flow, movement, constant change, being stuck in limbo, stagnation, is so, so painful. For me it is usually the decision-making time that I slow down. I have made a decision, so what the hell is the problem, let’s get on with it!

I have to admit, I am a bit of an occultist and I consult Iching (How could Mom, Carl Jung and Pink Floyd all be wrong?), and it has helped me with my faith that a great place in which to create the home I need will show up, that I need not make any rash decisions and settle for something that won’t make a comfortable hearth. But the waiting is hard. Two thirds of my life is packed away in the garage, my daughter and I squished into a single room. We are artists, how can we create if we can hardly move? Where just putting something away is a chore because it goes in the box behind the other box in the closet.

As I have finally, for the first time found a great community in which I have chosen to lay down so roots, I now have this burning intense desire to create the home/hearth from which to thrive and conceive (no, I am not talking about children). But all has rolled to a stop. As I search for our home we exist in another’s home. I have for most of my life lived with roommates and in communal situations, but here is different, my roommates are very nuclear and the house is very normal. We work, create, learn, experiment, shake things up and live from our home. MY home is full of art, science, music, political commentary, books, dinner guests…not banal clutter, and all the regular furniture. This is not my home.

This town isn’t big enough to have 20 rentals to choose from. They trickle in and 2 property managers monopolize the market. It is hard to discuss section 8 vouchers with a corporation. They aren’t people and the middleman always makes all the rules.

So to escape all the pain of stagnation on the home front, I push my life forward in other areas. Picking up again my Zapatista, Latin America solidarity work. Picking up again my battles in the world of gender. And filling my life with others who say NO to school.

Spent the whole afternoon and early evening with unschoolers yesterday, on the Russian River. Already have three camping trips slated for the summer. Two with groups of unschoolers and another with some amazing, radical, super smart friends….one of which I realized I have a crush on. Though I would never tell her.

PS as I cut and posted this from Word to post up here, my roommate came home and told me she is moving...sooo I said go ahead and give 30 days...so now I have 30 days. Exciting and nerve wracking. Let the count down begin. 

Today I ran into this small poem online:

I work consciously to return to creativity. In that darkness of standing still I discover stagnation and creation are two parts of the whole, each always moving into the other.

yeah, remember that lady...it will save you a lot of headache.

That's it, I am posting a blog!

I am tired of starting writing little blogs and not finishing.  This morning I am writing a blog with no idea what I am going to say.  Really, what is going on is I am again stuck in this limbo.  New rain fallen, just a few drops gathering together, sliding down the hill, struggling to become a trickle, the trickle becomes a small stream, soon finding its way to the creek and the point of no return as it builds and builds into...whoops, ran into a dam!  The water level slowly rises against the dry cement wall.  That's where I am right now.  Again, the water will begin to crest. A few drops are beginning to breach the blockade splashing over the edge with the rhythm of the new body of water trapped behind it, then the point of no return again...or maybe some eco-activists or local villagers will smash the wall and set me free all together. 

Anyway, I am just hanging, looking at the computer, looking for a home, but not finding the right place.  Not wanting to settle for the wrong place.  So I just hang out in another’s house, dreaming of where I will be going.  Hoping my loud-ass roommates will quiet down so that my daughter can get all the sleep she needs.  This is my life, day after day.  I have all the faith that things will turn our great, but until then I sit here, gathering ideas, dreams, intentions and packing them away for later, like all the stuff in the garage.  Two-thirds of my life packed away in boxes waiting for the move, two-thirds of my ideas packed away in my mind waiting for some space to be realized.  It can get really annoying, but what I can and have been doing with this time of creative/life limbo, is connecting with people, strengthening relationships, building my community.  Don’t need space to do that.  And oh I am so excited for the summer.