poetTESS's Open Salon Blog

Breath by breath

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 09:11:08 -0500

9:30pm Sunday, August 15

I listened to Kacy talk about home schooling. She is really excited and upbeat about it. I expressed my doubts, but she is determined and excited and committed. And it is her truth, her's and JS and their son's. I don't have the authority in their lives to make that judgement and I am glad. I've made enough decisions determining other people's lives.

It's raining like crazy. The wind is blowing hard. I am upstairs lying on the futon thinking of what I have to do tomorrow. Take Rose to school, make CC a smoothie, feed the goats, get a functioning scanner, pick up MP photos from the print shop.

Slim wants me to go to Willingham U with him tomorrow. I need to pick up his meds. He is going to let me administer them to him. I hope he will let me administer his money too.

Tonight my two knots about the water articles and Slim are muted, but not absent. I remind myself to be present, to think my own thoughts, but mainly to listen and quit thinking so much. Listen to the rain on the tin roof, the clock ticking, CC breathing. Stay out of my monkey mind. Find a place where I am not plagued by fear, doubt and imaginary scenarios. Stay out of the words in my head.

Tuesday I will find out if I made enemies at city hall, if people would rather I just shut up and went home. I can do that - shut up and go home. No, I will go and listen. Ask questions and listen for the answers.

Breath by breath.

Doesn't the universe work like this?

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:10:30 -0400

August 14

It's been a low energy day. JT (eldest son) asked if I wrote all the bad stuff that goes on with Slim. "No," I told him, "I hold back, the material too dangerous and volatile. I don't want to say or use words which will hurt the people I love." Then I found myself wondering how many millions of transgressions have I already written. Well never mind.

I have done the best I could do, in some respects. It seems like it could have been better sometimes, but it is past - reliving it, second guessing, judging - I am tired of it. I have lived my way through my choices. I did not run away when things got hard and none of it has been easy. I'm still here, but I want to stop being the absolute center of so many people's lives. I don't want to be so essential. Thirty years of care taking has earned me the right to peace and quiet. Doesn't the universe work like this?

I have two knots of fear.

Slim is highly unstable. For the last couple of days he has aggravatied his issues with bad choices. He and his caregivers are slung from fear and pain to sorrow and anger - in an endless cycle of suffering. This is the question when I close my eyes to sleep: how self destructive will he be tonight?

The second knot of fear is the Timberlake Water Story. Did I lose the public good will with this one? I am afraid of overstepping my bounderies and making enemies. Maybe I have no business in journalism.

This is the first silence and solitude I have had all day. I contemplate taking an adivan to sleep long and hard - dissolve the knots with chemicals. For now , I'll drink chamomille tea. The star vigil from last night has stayed in my head. I am comforted.

I am in love with the stars

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:10:48 -0400

August 13, Friday.

Edwin died this morning. My daughter/granddaughter (d/g) went to her first day of seventh grade and I went to Indian Springs and got 11 gallons of Water. Went to my mama's and dropped off Slim's meds and talked to her for awhile.

E. called and we hammered out the Timberlake Ministries story and the Towaligia River story. Then we published the Timberlake story. I twittered and E. facebooked it.

I went downstairs because my d/g's mother came over for first day of school celebrations. I went back upstairs to get my phone and saw I had I missed a phone call from the city councilman in charge of utilities accusing me of having the story all wrong. I freaked out. Called E. She told me to call him back.

My story was not all wrong, but the header was misleading. Mr.D couldn't stand seeing his project exposed to the light of day. Everything was factual. He'll really be ballastic when he sees the Towaliga River story. This is scary. I don't want to hurt this man, but if his plan goes unchallenged then the destruction of the Towaliga River Watershed is a foregone conclusion. The loss of habitat and life is staggering.

Last night while Slim's suicide threats were ringing fresh in my ears; I knew it wasn't going to be a good night for sleeping. I went outside to watch the meotor showers. I lay on the bed of my pickup truck with a sleeping pad and a blanket, watching the stars fall out of the sky. It was a prayer, a being in the moment - staying present. The sky created a space where my mind did not have a place to get stuck in its own fears.

Thoughts I recorded whenever I saw a shooting star: His choices, not mine. I am afraid to know. What is best for the city and the county? Look at all the triangles the stars make! I open my heart to the earth and the sky. Why would the city put money in such a small watershed when the Ocmulgee lies only 13 miles to the east? I gotta a lot of stuff keeping me awake. Where is the dipper?

My heart does not have much more to say. Edwin is no longer among us in the living, but he will always be part of this house. White Light to you Edwin. GodSpeed.

I am in love with the stars.

The day I got my Goatz Journal

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 09:09:05 -0400

Months past, my marriage survived, my leg healed, our child/grandchild stayed the summer with her daddy, my son. I became the goat herder after my husband had hand surgery.

Excerpts from my goatz journals:

Aug 10

The day I lost my temper at CC as he demanded to know what I was cooking for supper. The day I asked him what the law was that a woman had to cook supper every night. And the day my son, John, said "Why don't you take that outside because my daughters have to do their homework and it is more important than who cooks dinner." The day I apologized to CC later for losing my temper.

The day I took Slim and Christine to the lake to kayak and all four of my grandchildren to swim. The day CC pulled through and cooked chicken drumsticks, macaroni and cheese, and sweet potatoes, feeding eleven of us.

The day I bought this new notebook which looks nothing like the notebooks I write the county news in, so I don't accidently take my journal into public and lose it. A new journal, a container to pour my too large self into. The Goatz Journal.

It is quiet and in the silence I can almost hear the world all around and my inner voice, the one that connects me, grounds me and heals me.

Aug 11

I began this newspaper with my partner because I wanted to do graphic design. I soon found there was no money to be had, but I was doing what I love doing. Information design. Then business planning. Then going to city and county meetings and reporting. But today I want to back out, back down.

I am scared. There are no monetary rewards yet, I am making myself a target by witnessing and speaking out. I live in a glass house. I am not sure I have the courage to do this.

My need for silence has grown like a hungry animal since I married my first husband thirty years ago. My Goddess. Thirty years ago, maybe to the day - I conceived my first son in a magical swirl of unreality and glibly changed my destiny. I conceived consciously, feeling like I was led by some sense of inevitability. Destiny.

There. I've said it twice. Destiny. This became the shape of my life that I have lived every day since.

My first son adamantly told me today - you need to take your newspaper to print. He has the nobility of my father's spirit inhabiting him and what he says seems so impossible. Tilting at windmills, a symbol of my father, Don Quixote sword brandished - going to print...

Going to print, holding my family together, holding all the discordancies in cupped hands - I can't continue this. I must let go.

Aug 12

Before getting out of bed, I find a tick on my privates. I get a handful of ants with my tea and I sat on the toilet and got stung on the butt by a yellow jacket that CC had thrown in there earlier. Thus my day began.

My dog rolled in my own shit. I had the goats out behind the garage and they were munching down. I discovered I needed to poop so I walked a little ways away and dropped my drawers and pooped. Next I know, GD is rolling in it and then he ate it. He smelled really bad.

My youngest son told me he smoked meth last night and took 10 xanexs. That he slept all day. Then he wanted money for food. I gave him food and told him I couldn't continue to subsidize his bad choices. He told me wouldn't be so fucked up if didn't have fucked up parents. He said I'd be lucky if he didn't kill himself tonight. I told him he was making his choices, I didn't make them for him.

So tonight I will sit under the stars with a spray bottle of vinegar to ward off my dog who rolled in my own shit. I will watch for meteor showers and I will cry and pray and wait. Wait for Slim to live or die, the choice only he can make. My heart is encased in steel and crumbling inside.

Today I told John in no uncertain terms I want him to have custody of his oldest daughter whom I've raised since birth. I went to a city committee meeting and found I am helping to change city politics with my reporting.

Shooting stars, the Goddess, the earth and sky. Prayer. Miracles. That is what I need tonight. Divine intervention. Help. Grace. Comfort. Because who is there to turn to besides God, the Goddess, earth and stars. If there is grace, I open myself to it. I will get under the stars of creation. I will sweat, cry, pray and grieve. I will give up hope, pick it back up and put it down again. I will live into another day. What will its gifts be? Its stings and pestilence?

My Life with Goats

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:09:37 -0400

Getting them nearly killed me. We traveled up two states to bring home two baby goats in the back of my husband's perfect forester subaru. He wanted the goats. I didn't. He'd spent years whipping our child up into a frenzy wanting them. He and she had to have them and they finally found a place to get them.

On the day we left, I had a tick bite, a swollen knot of a thing. I decided to grate a clove of garlic on a bandage and put this germ fighting poultice on my leg. It burned - pretty badly. I kept thinking as we went down the road, "this hurts," but I just kept driving. I couldn't drive far or fast enough to leave my husband's ugly, mean talk somewhere down the road.

It was a harsh trip. When I got where I was going... there it was, what I had done to myself. A big heart shaped blister, popped and burned many layers down. Oh, it really was hurting. Everywhere. Every part of my life felt like this blister, raw, oozing, caused by a powerful concoction of earth medicine and my own stupidity. I had done it to myself.

As I walked up to our goaty destination, looking to my right, I saw a solid white peacock fully spread - like liquid light in the most beautiful form. Then I saw the fields, fences, goats and their keeper. This place was magic and I felt like I had met the goat goddess and her land. I felt the peace of thousands of years of shepherding animals in my blood.

McGoat Goddess showed us her fields, my granddaughter and I. We saw billy goats, nanny goats and milking goats, lots of chickens, dogs and even a great big snake in the pitch black night. I milked a goat and experienced the clear joy of a mother's milk coursing in my hands.

After camping out on McGoat's hillside, we got our two baby goats in a little wire cage stuffed with straw and took off back down the road. It got ugly in that car for the next 10 or so hours. And smelly. My leg hurt like it had caught almighty fire and my marriage was crumbling into nasty, goat pissed on straw flying down the highway.

It was the worst trip ever. Really it was. And my marriage was over.

We got the goats in the yard right before dark, but we didn't trust the dogs in the fence with them. One left, obedient as usual - GD is his name. He was named for the entire reason we had taken this disastrous trip - Goat Dog!

His brother, a dog of a different color, was slinking around and not coming out. I didn't trust him one bit and I went looking for him. He's probably between 60 to 80 pounds. I found him and we were going towards the gate when he turned around and began running fullspeed back the other way. Right into my left leg, he ran; his head battering my shin. I crumbled on the ground, clutching the leg. It is dark by now and I was in too much pain to get up. I laid there, reikiing my leg and crying.

My left leg, the same leg my heart had blistered its tattoo onto just a couple of days before was throbbing in the rhythm of my sobs and the earth. I laid there convulsed in pain - soul, mind and body; before I finally somehow got myself in the house.

To his credit, my husband was kind. He helped me with ice, medicated me and left me to our bed where I continued to wail and cry for approximately two hours. Maybe more. I felt a hemotoma type swelling that melted into a bone fractured lump of calcium.

Welcome to my goatz journals, fellow travelers.