The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (Albert Einstein)

Just found this and don't feel like pulling out my commonbook to write it down. Tomorrow, tomorrow--and possibly an update on things somewhat new.

I appreciate home and train

Life is a whirlwind that incessantly howls, oh so lowly, in my ear. I exist during the quiet hours, sprawled in my bed (yes, I'm sleeping on a bed again). I trace the rolling quiet during cigarette breaks--now coloring breaks complete with crayons and underwater critters. But it's much too cold in Wisconsin to slip outside for a concentration on color. My bed is five hundred miles away, and no bed--or space reserved for sleeping--gives me peace like the one I am accustomed to. I get claustrophobic with too many people (or even just one) focused on me, and I need that rescue of clarity and solitude.

It's been a long time--well, since spring--since I've really blogged, and naturally a lot has happened since then. I wouldn't know where to start, and frankly don't have a mind to.  I've been so homesick since early summer. I fell in love with Leise--we were going to have babies together one day, we said--and the homesickness was dulled. But it did not fully disappear, and, when things ended between us, it snuck back around to nudge me at the most unexpected moments. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and, though nothing about its foundation makes me thankful, and so thankful to be sitting where I am.

A fire softly flickers to my left. My parents expanded their (new) house with a dining room made of cedar walls and ceiling, skylights bringing in the outdoors during sun-filled hours. The pool room has been finished, with a cement floor that heats the pool. My favorite part is the hot tub, looking out the many windows into the (near)neighborless expanse. That room has cedar walls and ceiling too. It looks like something out of a dream or magazine. And the kitchen with fridge full of food makes me itching to play.

It's not just the place though. The safety of the country--and with parents sleeping nearby--is folded over me like the warmest, lightest blanket. When I go to sleep, I don't worry if someone will try to break in. Not that those worries normally take up all my time, but when Terra isn't home when I climb in to bed--well, I pay attention to the noises outside our door till I remember how to fall asleep. Sometimes, I forget.

It's 11:11. Did you make a wish? I'm making wishes. Home is lovely, but I can't come live in this tiny town. Work beckons me back, and so do my last semseter of classes (for now. more about that later). It's tempting though, to shake it all and stay where the fridge is always bursting with organic fruit and vegetables. Where I am sought out. Where I have a history. A family. Close connections.

I have many random friends--lovely friends with lovely dreams--in Lincoln, but not many core connections. No real best friends. And I thrive with best friends. Or at least I feel like I'll thrive with the ability to meet new ones--new faces, stories, and ways of interacting. Lincoln feels more tiny and hollow as I get to know it, but I don't know understand how that can happen simultaneously. What I'm looking for--the community of people I'm looking for--I think will be found in other places. Or I need to go to other places to find more pieces of myself, really. Then maybe I'll discover those people have been, and always will be, all around me--in the every day life.

 I'm thinking of Madison after my lease ends in October. Or maybe finding a farm over the winter that I can wwoof on that provides a stipend (pesky student loans), then Madison in the spring when more places will be hiring and apartments opening up. I'd certainly like to live with roommates, but don't really know anyone in Madison anymore. Plus, we've all changed so much that even if they still lived there we'd be play the part of strangers. I actually love strangers--like the boy on the bus who studies art in Chicago and is leaving for Indonesia soon to help with a friend’s art school--but right now I'm yearning for the kind of strangers that see the world similarly to how I do. Or at least hold similar desires in how to interact with it. Symphony of Science's We Are All Connected and Matisayhu's One Day pretty much sums it up. And many Rebelution songs.

You know, all the corny "all you need is love" crap. Except it's not crap. It's legit, and seriously missing from society today. What ever happened to community? It's pretty much my new quest--to find, to build, understand, to reclaim.

So I'm starting with stolen moments to get my thoughts in order. It's only in the quiet that I can think, that I fully exist. And I want to learn to make my everyday filled with the peace and clarity of these moments. I want to be Present in my life, and not just get swept in the whirlwind (oh society, and all the evils that we have made you). I want to Live. And really, deep down, who isn't earning for the same?

rocky mountain dreams

You will NEVER be merely pretty.

When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother
“What will I be? Will I be pretty? ”
Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?
What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich
which is almost pretty depending on where you shop.

And the pretty question infects from conception passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill of fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?"
But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad:
teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose,
face donkey-long, and pox-marked where the hormones
went finger-painting my poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist.” “You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! ” “You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were six, otherwise your nose would have been fine! ”

Don’t worry; we will get it all fixed she would say,
grasping my face, twisting it this way and that as if it were a cabbage
she might buy.
But, this is not about her.
Not her fault she, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset
she could bestow upon her awkward little girl
was a marketable appearance.
By sixteen I was pickled by ointments, medications, peroxides.
Teeth corralled into steel prongs, laying in a hospital bed.
Face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on two pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia,
and every convulsive twist,
like my body screaming at me from the inside out
“What did you let them do to you? ”
All the while, this never ending chorus groaning on and on
like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood.
“Will I be pretty?”

Will I be pretty like my mother,
unwrapping the gift wrap to reveal
the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her?
Pretty? Pretty.

And now I have not seen my own face in ten years.
I have not seen my own face in ten years, but this is not about me!
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in.
About women who will prowl thirty stores in six malls
to find the right cocktail dress, but haven’t a clue
where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy,
wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, b
eneath those two pretty syllables.

This, this is about my own some-day daughter.
When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity,
begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?,”
I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer no.

The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be,
and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
You will be pretty intelligent,
pretty creative,
pretty amazing,
but you will never be merely “pretty.”

Scratch and Dent Dreams

Come on in, I’ve got a sale
on scratch and dent dreams,
whole cases of imperfect ambitions
stuff the idealists couldn't sell.
Yeah, I know none of its got price tags,
you decide how much its worth.
And none of its got glossy colored packaging
but it all works just fine.
I’ve got rainy day swing sets
good night kisses and stationary stars
still flying at the speed of light.
And over there out back
if you dig down through those
alabaster stoplights and those old 45’s
you’ll find a whole crate of second hand hope.
Yeah right there, that’s no chrome,
you just gotta work, polish it up a little bit.
Most folks give up too easy,
trade it in for some injection mold
and here and now.

And over there across the freeway,
you see that purple awning flappin’ in the breeze?
Well that’s Momma Genuine’s shop.
She’s older than all of us put together
but she still laughs like a house.
Now, she only sells tools but not like ya know,
she’s got saws that put back together,
drills that make whole. Mommas a cool legend to know,
and she sells duct tape too.

And down there at the end of the block
are two kids, crew cut and pig tailed
sittin’ behind abindle top table
selling peanut-butter ice-cream out of a galvanized pale,
and there’s no metaphor there its just good ice-cream.
So here’s what ya do, take a look around
pick out what reminds you of places you wanted to be
but gave up on going and jam it all in this big box called “now”.
Then go across the street to Momma Genuine’s,
ask her how she’s been , show her what I gave ya,
she’ll know exactly what you need
and then go back in the center of that freeway
and get to work making it all fit.
You wont have any directions or factory number tabs but don’t panic,
there’s a hundred ways to do it right
and none to do it wrong cause your startin’ out
with what’s already been given up upon,
you cant do any worse.
Use the tools momma gave ya,
hum a little while ya work.
Then you find yourself sproutin’ extra thumbs

Take a break.

Go around the block,
get yourself an ice cream.
Smile when they hand it to you,
tip em if you can
and when you get back it’s all gonna make sense.
You’ll see where it’s gonna fit perfect
and where the duct tape has to go.
And when you get finished,
take whatever spare parts you got at the bottom of “now”
and make yourself a little sign that says “tomorrow”,
and hang it on your masterpiece.
Then you go back down the block
to where those two kids are packing up
their peanut butter enterprise
cause somebody told them they’d fail
and I want you to hand them tomorrow.
Make sure they know how important it is.
After they’ve run off with it all elbows and smiles
y’all can come back here, we’ll do it all over again.

Now im not telling you this to make a profit,
that’s how so many good ideas go wrong.
I’m just tired of seeing every day people
screaming through these doors convinced
they’re gonna hock even their littlest hopes and dreams to fund their 401Ks.
I’m tired of seeing this whole world bet on going big
or giving up. Only handing out glory to newspaper headlines
and story book endings, ‘cause the truth is
I think we need those swing sets most on the rainy days.
I’m happy going to sleep after just a goodnight kiss,
and I believe that beauty can be as simple as two kids,
crew cut and pig tales, handing me a scoop of peanut butter ice cream
that’s so good, you’d think it was a dream.

I've fallen in love, happy as houses.

Home is Where the Heart Is
The Sounds

There was a place in my hometown where I use to wander
Above the trees I saw a big black cloud of thunder
Summer rain in my face like snowflakes falling from space
It was so beautiful, and then I passed the mountains
I went coast to coast, and from star to star
That's how you learn, just who you are

[Chorus]
Home is where your heart is
Find where you belong, start to take control, show a little soul
Then you feel who you are
Home is where your heart is
Find where you belong, start to take control, show a little soul
Then you feel who you are

There was a time I couldn't see myself growing older
But then I went for a walk when I came back I was so much taller
Maybe try to find something that I could be part of
But I decided to leave, and then I crossed the river
I went coast to coast, and from star to star
But that's how you learn, who you really are

[Chorus:]
But I leave you with a kiss, there's so much more than this
When you know who you are

Oh, what you know, stop to think
Start to feel, and then you'll heal
You got to rise to the occasion, you got to read between the lines
Then maybe you'll find, who you are inside
When I look into your eyes, I feel what you feel
Come take my hand, let's go for a swim

[Chorus:]
But I leave you with a kiss, there's so much more than this
When you know who you are

don't let me forget