Friday, May 22, 2015

Sorrow Is My Own Yard

I woke up this morning.
I suppose that is good.
The dreams last night were of the performance variety. Had a part in a play. No script. No memory of what my lines or cues were. No costume. No make-up. And I had to make food for a party. The clock counted down. Onstage in an hour.
Woke up in complete despair. Anxiety and depression washing over me like waves, caught in the riptide, caught in the undertoad.

It is beautiful here this morning and cooler. I feel paralyzed. I did take the trash. I did go to the post office. I let the chickens out.
I really do not know what's come over me. I had a good time with my Jessie and my Lily yesterday, shopping in the Costco. Then we went to the new buffet restaurant in the log cabin for our lunch.


The food was underwhelming. The old lady was there. She had on an apron and stayed near the kitchen. The place was packed.
The best things I ate were the corn and the yeast roll.
The unsweetened tea was good. There were stuffed foxes and squirrels and an armadillo perched up high on a rafter. It was odd.
Everything strikes me as absurd right now.

Mostly myself.

I am going to go get in my knees in the dirt and pray to the gods of soil and sun and green and water. I am going to say that this too, shall pass.

Elizabeth sent me this poem this morning. It is utterly chilling in how much it fits my soul today.
Thank god for all of you. Thank god I am not a widow.

Poem of the Day: The Widow's Lament in Springtime

BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before, but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirty-five years
I lived with my husband.
The plum tree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches
and color some bushes
yellow and some red,
but the grief in my heart
is stronger than they,
for though they were my joy
formerly, today I notice them
and turn away forgetting.
Today my son told me
that in the meadows,
at the edge of the heavy woods
in the distance, he saw
trees of white flowers.
I feel that I would like
to go there
and fall into those flowers
and sink into the marsh near them.

10 comments:

  1. If you ever feel up for Reiki, I could send you some. Yeah. Woo-woo, etc. I do remember your comment a while back about a friend (the ducks' mama?) who threw up in the wake of some Reiki. I dunno. It's what I got to offer, I guess. Along with the faith that this too, shall pass. I hope the chickens and Maurice and the boys and your totem (Keith) can all be of help.

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  2. Dreams....some take us onto lofty clouds of pleasure and others jolt us with lingering doubts of what our head is making up and why...oh why.

    The poems was lovely and haunting...

    Now go out in your yard, breath deep and dig...

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  3. Some days just feel more depressing than others to me, and I can see how that could be even more affecting to a person with underlying depression. The only thing I have ever found to help that feeling is to call someone I love to talk to them, or to bake something with a wonderful smell in a place with the lights on bright. Weird, I know. Hope your day improves.

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  4. There should be an antidote for dreams.

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  5. Happy, happy, happy anniversary!!

    Thanks for so many years of the joy I've found in sharing your wonderful world. You've made me happier, more aware, more tolerant and more alive. You've given so much Love to me and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

    My Love to You, Liv

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  6. It will of course pass. Watch it from afar, if you can. But I don't like the way the dreams are making you worse - what's the point of managing the anxiety in the day time if it all pours out of you at night :(

    I don't suppose taking the pill in the morning makes any difference? I find I clench my teeth so much if I take mine at night, I hurt myself. Maybe same for dreams.

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  7. Mwa, best things I ever found as antidote for bad dreams was hugs. Big, extended, squeezy hugs.

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  8. Sarah- Send me all the Reiki you want. No, that was not Kathleen- that was another friend long ago.

    Ellen- That was exactly what I did.

    jenny_o- On days like this, I really don't want to talk to anyone. Which is probably the wrong way to feel

    Mwa- I wish.

    liv- I haven't been able to even celebrate that. But thank you .So MUCH.

    Jo- I may try that. What have I got to lose?

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  9. Everything IS absurd. But that's OK. That's just the world, isn't it?

    Love the poem.

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  10. The poem is awesome. I am reminded of a field that I went to as a youngster. Waving hay and beautiful woods beyond. Now it is all patio homes. Ugly and torn up. I feel the despair at that and all that we are doing to destroy the beauty of the earth.

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