I've Looked At Moss From Both Sides Now

Didn't go to yoga this morning. Couldn't deal. Long story.

I won't go into it here. I feel lately as if all I do is piss people off. I wish I was more like Sarcastic Bastard who just says what she wants to say, lets it rip, tears it off and throws it out to the universe.

And you know what? It's fine for me and with me too, to piss off people I don't care about. In fact, I think I take a secret delight in it. But when I start pissing off people I love and people whose respect I would strive for, it makes me feel weird and odd in the pit of my stomach. And that's when I start wondering what the hell I'm doing here in blog world. WHAT IS BLOG WORLD? Is it really a world at all? Is it just a loving sharing or is it a soap box or is it a confessional or is it a bully pulpit or is it a hey y'all! look at this! or is it a grandma photo album (or a mama photo album) or is it an exercise in complete and utter self-absorption or is it a heart flung out to the universe or is it a compulsion which cannot be denied?

Fuck if I know but I think, yes. It is all of those things. And more.

I was talking to someone the other day who told me that he's been keeping a journal regularly since 1985 and one day he's either going to burn it all up or else publish it all. He's compelled to write. I'm compelled to write too but writing in a journal for me always felt way too much like praying- a one-sided conversation at best. Now God may be there and he may not but I know that the words I wrote in my journal laid there like dead little soldiers, like spent love juices. And although it was somewhat satisfying to get the words OUT and I had to do it, I knew that for me, there needed to be at least the illusion that someone might be listening.

Then I started blogging and by golly for some bizarre and unknown reason, people were listening and they started writing back and then I wrote back to the writing back and voila! a dialogue was formed and it has become such a huge part of my life I can't even begin to fathom it and think frequently that maybe I need help in overcoming the compulsion.

Which brings me back to where I started which is that I have pissed people off and hey- I'm human. That bothers me.

But bottom line, this is like my house. If someone doesn't like what I say they can so very easily not come in the door. Period. The end. And it's spring and the light is falling through the new green so beautifully that it's just a real shame for me to waste any time pondering what I may or may not have done, what I should or should not do in regards to this or that.

Look- yes- it is spring and the air is literally perfumed with the blossoms and it's so damn beautiful it makes me want to just lay down and do nothing but worship it but spring also makes me remember all the new beginnings I've made which have not worked out, the holy promise of some which have brought me pain or discomfort or which I have just given up on. It reminds me of my failures as well as the things I have accomplished which have brought me so much joy and satisfaction. And sometimes, the failures loom larger in the mind and bring more weight to them than the joys do. It's like dull lead versus gossamer silk. You know?

Well. Such is the human mind.

Time to put on the big girl panties, time to cowgirl-up, Cupcake, time to put on some bug spray and hope to avoid the biting insects. Time to realize that you can't please everyone, you can't spend all your time looking at things from this side and that. Well, you can. But you miss a lot that way. Better I think to just notice and register, look and learn, move and get on with it and fling your heart out to the universe in the one and only way you yourself can do it.
Your own unique heart, your own unique flinging.

One day recipes, one day pictures of my grandson, one day bitching about Sarah Palin, one day shouting about the glory of the day, one day whining about the darkness of the night.

Or, that could be all ONE day, the way I over-blog but that, too, is my own way.

Bless my heart and bless my soul and bless my imperfect attempts to hand you my heart and soul.

I'll bless yours too. Let's keep looking up.

Amen.

How's The Weather?

This weather is enough to drive you insane. A few days of sweet, dry, cool air and then it's back to mug and heat and you wake up and step out of the air conditioning and feel like you're walking through molasses, you check yourself for gills.

But that's why we have these trees, these ten thousand shades of green where we live. So who can complain? It's been a quiet, quiet hurricane season (thanks, El Nino!) although the past few mornings, when I've gotten up, the sky has had that look, the air has had that feeling of hurricane season. Of a storm hundreds of miles off, but THERE, somewhere, waiting and driving us crazy trying to figure out where it is going, who is going to receive the torment of its winds and rains. I even dreamed last night there was a storm and in one scene of the dream, I was on a street corner and the wind and water came up so high that I thought to myself, "Well, this is it then. Death."
But I didn't die. And there are no storms lurking in the Gulf as far as I know. It is the Pacific's turn to receive that terrible storms this year and it was a tsunami I dreamed of, I think, my dream informed by the news, by the knowledge that somewhere else on the planet, others have the dread and terror of weather unleashed, too powerful to do anything but flee, but pray, but watch with anxious eyes. We may consider ourselves living in a modern world but believe me- there are still plenty of things that can knock us back to clinging to life white-knuckled, trembling and fearful.

I don't live where there are tsunamis and even with video to show me what they can do, I don't really know what seeing the water rise so fast you can't run from it is like. But I know the hurricanes and so I can imagine.

I've been thinking a lot about my words here. Because I have gotten to "know" some of the people who come here and read these words and because I read what they write, too, I realize that many of us have vast differences in beliefs and we live very different lives. And there is part of me that worries that what I write will offend someone whom I really do have a deep affection for. It is a mystery to me how we form these affections with people whom we may never meet, but whom we know in some deep way through their words, their stories, their pictures.
But you know what? If I start writing in such a way as not to offend, I won't be writing my own story. I won't be telling about this place I am with its hot, muggy heat in October, its wet air, its joy and anxiety (my joy and anxiety), its dreams (my dreams), its prejudices and its redemptions.

Look- my life is not all biscuits with honey, not all sweetness and light. Some days I am cast in the deepest despair and I need to write about that as well as I need to write about the days the light shines like gold spun so thin it can cover everything, everything, every thing.
And I have to write what I need to write. Some days I am just so grateful for it all that I need to write about that and some days I am so PISSED about something that I need to write about that. Gay rights, religion, hypocrisy, racial prejudice, sexual abuse, whatever.
And I have to write it the way it is in my mind. There are things I will not write about because they are the stories of others who might be hurt by what I write or whose privacy I might intrude on by what I write. I don't know exactly what my guidelines are for these things, but I have them internally and I go by them. I set myself inside these guidelines and I don't budge from them.

But if it's MY opinion and what I see from MY corner of the world, I will damn well write about it.

And that's all I have to say today. I do not feel heated up about much. I did watch Outrage the other night and I am fairly sure that our Governor, Charlie Crist, is going to hell on a boat made of hypocrisy and political ambition and whatever use and respect for him I may have had at one time is completely gone. But I don't feel the need to blast him. If he is, indeed, living such a huge lie it will come back to him. Besides, he has to live with himself, not me.

And I have so much to do today to get ready to go to Gatorbone. I'm behind already, having sat down to write this. I have fed my chickens and tonight the lady is coming to get Helen and Lucille and I feel better about her. She told me she'd spent sixty hours up with a calf who finally had to be put down and she said it made her so sick she'd had diarrhea. I don't think she's going to boil my roosters. I think she's going to set them down in the midst of lots and lots of nice plump hens to fuck. Really. I do.

And I have to get everything I need to get done in town before she comes out take my birds to paradise and I have to spend enough time with Owen that I don't go into complete shock being away from him for a few days. I have to make up three batches of angel biscuit dough. I have to go do data entry for Mr. Moon. I have to decide what to pack for Gator Bone and at this point, all I know I'm taking is an apron and I'm so damn crazy that packing for three days is the normal human's equivalent to packing for a round-the-world voyage.

And here are some pictures taken this morning.
The Confederate Rose still blooming, the lady spider still spinning, the porch still waiting for another cool evening and a frosty martini with Mr. Moon.




This is where I live. This is where I think about god and God and gardens and insanity and chickens and politics and culture and books and love and its joys and its pitfalls, its satisfactions and its difficulties and write about it all from my own perspective. Because it is the only perspective I have, although perspectives change, like the weather does.

Hearts can burst open with new love unimagined. New dreams can make you set different goals which change your life. You can hear something on NPR that makes you realize how small your world is, how big it could be. You can simply read something that makes you see a subject from a different angle- a book, a news article, a blog.

And this is my blog. Sometimes I write about the weather here, sometimes I write about the man at the dump who uses the word n****r unashamedly. Sometimes I write about how Christians try to save my soul. Sometimes I write about how chickens save my soul.
I doubt I'm changing any lives but my life is changing, as is every one's.

Let's not be afraid to write about the weather from our own front porches, our own back porches.
The weather is what it is. Different for you than for me.
Tell me about your weather.
I'll tell you about mine.

I can learn from you. The window to my life gets bigger and clearer. I can see your weather from here that way.

Can you see mine?

Because We Love That Monkey On Our Back, Or Sometimes On Our Nose

It's coming up on a year now that I started this blog thing and I have to say that I've taken to it like a baby monkey takes to a human nose, so to speak, and it's become a major part of my life.
Not sure exactly why but I'm sure it has a lot to do with my natural passion for words, my opinionated soul, and the fact that it appears that some people do read my wordy opinions and even take the time to comment on them!
Wowzer!
I feel like I'm late to the party with this blog thing. It's been going on for quite a while (in internet years, anyway, which are like regular years only on meth, cocaine, and espresso all at the same time) but here I am now and here I'll stay unless my magic box (aka The MacBook) dies and my husband refuses to waste any more money buying me a new one. I'm the sort of frustrated writer that would write no matter what- readers, no readers, whatever. I'm like Deacon Fuller, a musician I used to love to go dance to in St. Pete who once ended a show saying, "Thanks for coming out and supporting live music because if you hadn't, we'd all be sitting around our living room, playing for ourselves."
You gotta do what you gotta do.
But I've been trying to analyze what this compulsion to blog means. Not just for me, but for others and there's been a lot of news about it in the media. The mother of all bloggers (in my opinion, anyway), Heather Armstrong, has recently appeared in the Wall Street Journal, on the Today Show, and on Nightline. It would appear that the woman is bringing in ad revenues of up to $40,000 a month which is a lot of jingle in the pocket which has allowed her and her husband (who helps with the technical stuff and has a more visual-content blog himself) to stay at home with their daughter and basically live the American dream which is to figure out a way to make the money to support the family doing something you love.
The media is calling her one of the "mommy-bloggers" and yes, she is, but she writes about a lot more than her child. And she's one of those writers who can write about anything and make it funny or heartrending or poignant and that's all there is to it. She's a talented woman and I am in awe of her.
She gets an awful lot of hate mail and most of it boils down to something in the various categories of, "You don't deserve to make money writing about your stupid kid and your stupid dogs," "You're ugly," and "You're profane."
Well, she's not ugly and she is profane and anyone who gets four million hits a month on their blog obviously does deserve to make money with it.
And dammit! I wish that when I'd been a young mama I'd had the blogging outlet. Being a mother is a hard, hard job and anyone who doesn't admit that has either
(A) Never had a kid, or
(B) Is a big fat liar.
And Heather's blog covers the mothering-ground from the moments of such pure-white-blissed-out-wonder at the way she loves her child to the moments of wanting to grab the car keys and hit the nearest interstate and not stop driving until the pavement runs out.
She's honest. And people can't stand that for some reason. Especially if that honesty combined with a terrific talent for writing combines to bring in a healthy income.
Mothering is a strange thing. We talk a big talk about what a hard job it is, how important a job it is, and even how sacred a job it is, but we offer the women who do it absolutely no money, no social status and no health insurance, which makes it mighty difficult for anyone to actually DO it.
It's isolating, it's frustrating, it's constant and it never ends from the moment of conception. Not when the children go to school, not when they leave home for college, not when they get married and not until we die, at which time we can almost positively say we're going to get a good rest.
Until then- don't count on it.
So anyone who's really out there doing it, whether it's the lady who lives in a single-wide on an acre of land in the middle of nowhere, to Angelina Jolie, is doing the hard work. Even women who are doing it who have a lot of money and get to be in movies or on television are still having to get up in the middle of the night and deal with sudden high fevers and vomited-on sheets and the constant worrying that accompanies motherhood. Sure, it has its moments of transcendental joy but there's a lot more poop involved than there is glory, no matter how much money you have.
If you're really doing it right, anyway.
And I admire these mommy-bloggers who have discovered and created their own little world in the blogosphere. They've created a community, a way to be creative, and in some cases, a decent living. And I don't think they're necessarily "using" their kids, either. You get any two mothers together and they're going to start a discussion about their families and their lives and they may end up crying and they probably will end up laughing, but either way, they will go away feeling better because they know they're not alone in how they feel about this monumental task they're doing.
And blogging seems to me to just be a natural extension of that.
So here's what I say to all the people bitching and moaning about Ms. Armstrong and her blog- first off, don't read it. Secondly, admit it- you're fucking jealous.
Start your own blog. If you can figure out how to comment on someone else's, you can certainly figure out how to create one of your own. And if you're a fantastic writer and you have something to say that people want to hear, you might even make some money at it.
Or, like me, you might just find that you love the entire process of it so much that you can't remember what life was like before you started.
Sort of like having children. Without the poop. And very little glory.
But the sort of reward you just can't really explain.
Blog on.