Laughing Through the Flames Together

Parenting is a lot of things. It’s an honor, it’s a blessing, it’s a privilege and it’s also a job. Parenthood can either be the most joyous time of your life or a living hell from which there is no escape. Honestly, even though we are encouraged and expected to “cherish every moment” the hard truth is that parenting is often both. Parenthood is the hardest job anyone will ever have...except for maybe that guy that gets his heart ripped out by Mola Ram and is lowered down into the firey pit on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. They aren’t without their similarities, anyway: High pressure. Sacrifice. Rip your heart out. In a cage descending into fire. Very hot. It burns!  

Okay, it’s not all that bad but it helps at times to keep things as light as possible and to not take it too seriously...even though you need to because you are single-handedly making choices that are in part forming your beloved children’s personalities that they will then be at the mercy of forever...and even though they will go forth with these personalities into the world either to make it or break it. Kiiind of totally a huge deal. But don’t worry. No pressure. “Kali maa shakti de!!” 

What could be harder than parenting? Single-parenting, obviously, would take about a thousand cakes on that one. But actually sometimes, albeit to a much lesser degree, it can also be co-parenting. Parenting is hard in general to wrap your will around but meeting another person on the same page who has their own preconceived notions of what parenting is or should be and staying on the same page when it comes to your beliefs on raising children and consistently standing by said beliefs in the face of distraction and frustration…two different heads of the same snarling beast and they both chew your face off. My husband and I can agree that this is often really shitty. Call a spade a spade. We both can also agree, however, that it is the best thing to ever happen to us so where do we meet in the middle of this? That’s the million dollar question. That’s also where the continual relationship work resides. It’s no laughing matter...except for when it is. 

This past weekend my husband and I were jokingly talking about our day, and he had an errand to run. I had the baby on the boob and the other two were being their loud and annoying selves because yes, kids are often loud and annoying no matter how many times you post their pictures on social media decreeing them your angels and your everything. I said, “You guys should go with your father,” giving him an eye and a Cheshire Cat beam. We knew I was mostly joking. His face visibly sunk in an exaggeration of protest because everyone knows it takes twice as long to do any errand with kids in tow, and he said, in a wailing womanly voice: “You haate me!” We laughed. Humor is often your saving grace. It’s also wonderful when our daughter chalks up everything that goes over her head to “adult comedy” as she calls it. We’re not entirely proud but this is where we find ourselves. Parents make jokes because you either laugh or you’ll cry. 

Later that day, after earlier having discussed how his truck has gotten him over 100,000 miles, he said how he had to go out to work on it for awhile. I teasingly accuse him: 

“You know, you’re truck hasn’t needed anything big but you SURE do work on it a lot? What are you sabotaging shit just to get out there and get away from us? ‘OOoh NOOOOoOOO my BRAKE line broke, I better get out there and FIX that today for sure!!’ Is that how it is? ...’Cause that’s what I’d be doing.”

Again, we laughed. Humor through parenthood is like saying that the knife wound in your side kinda looks like a face. It’s simultaneously both denial and complete and total acceptance. We started doing impressions of him taking out his brake lines and other truck parts because they really did go out recently and it does seem he is perpetually working on his truck during his brief time at home. It’s seemingly never ending; duties and projects drag on into a balmy eternity. Everything moves like chilled molasses because there is never enough time in a weekend. It’s funny because the poor guy is actually out there as I write this working on it again. This weekend it’s universal joints. Lucky bastard. It’s funny because it’s not funny. At least we have humor. 

I think if you can laugh together you have a lot to work with. If you can’t make each other laugh, then it’s going to be a hard road for you because it can get a tad rocky and you’re going to feel every bump and stone. If you’re laughing you kinda just roll over the top of some of them and it doesn’t seem like such a bumpy ride even if your shocks are shot. Who you have as a co-pilot traveling with you as your partner in crime on the road of parenthood matters a lot. It helps if you get along with your celly. Your partner ultimately helps to determine how bumpy the ride will be and even when you have a good one the struggle is still real. Parenthood is where relationships go to train for the UFC; it will either make your marriage stronger or take it down blow by blow. 

That poor bastard in the basket on Indiana Jones didn't survive the destructive flames in the pit. He evaporated. Kali needed her sacrifice. It all seems so gruesome. We can just say he represents your egoic parts that need to surrender to the sacrifice. In Hinduism, Kali is the goddess of death and destruction. In her earlier depictions she is often a crone with red eyes, holding weapons and severed heads, with black skin and protruding tongue, a real bad bitch. Westerners generally view her as evil because of her form and requirements of destruction and human sacrifice. But in her complexity, she is a dualistic goddess, in her later Kali Ma form she is also a symbol of Mother Nature, nurturing and benevolent. Kali is like the transformative power of tough love, your darkness transmuted. When we are breaking apart from circumstance and heading into darkness that is Kali, but when we are fitting the pieces back together and finding our light, that is also Mother Kali. From my understanding, that is. Maybe you can see where I’m heading with this metaphor. 

Dealing with the stresses of parenthood together exposes you to each other’s deepest wounds. If there is anything ugly in your core kids will pull that dark shit right out of you and cover it in glitter and boogers before shoving it directly and repeatedly into your frame of view. “Look! LOOK! Do you see this?!” Kids are Mola Ram invoking the power of Kali to tear into your chest and hold your still-beating heart in front of your face before sacrificing your ego in a pit of flames. In short: kids’ll fuck you up. You need a strong resolve to survive the destruction of the goddess Kali. It requires a tight connection, a sturdy bond to hold your relationship together in the fire as the flesh of your old selves is seared away in sacrifice. Parenthood is some serious shit. It burns a good bit but as with much of life, it helps to laugh. 

The Heart of the Matter

Happy Valentine's Day!  I believe people put entirely too much pressure on this day for romance, but it is a nice holiday...mostly if you aren't single.  I'm all for the Jehova's Witness way of viewing every day the same in this case.  Just like church on Sunday won't redeem you from a week of sin, you can't disrespect your lover all year and bank on a really sweet bouquet, a clever poem, or heart shaped box to win it.  In that aspect, I do detest the potential fraudulent nature of the day.  Everyday should be devoted to love, right?  I would much rather receive flowers on a normal day "just because" than demand to have them on Valentine's Day.  HOWEVER, no one can deny it is lovely to receive remembrances from your Beloved.  It makes you feel good, right?  To give and to receive.  Plus, it's mostly symbolic, as with most holidays, anyway...and highly commercialized.

As for me, nothing says I Love You like a new fedora and wrist supports!!  Yes...wrist supports.  Hey, it's what I wanted!!  Well, I also got Melissa Etheridge's album, "The Road Less Traveled" and ate some Chinese buffet with my husband without our child!  Walmart and Chinese food, such romance.  "I love the way you woo me!"  What it comes down to is that it doesn't matter WHAT you do, unless you're an asshole about it. Time is really the best gift you can give someone.

It's the THOUGHT that counts.  What's on your mind?  The idea in your heart...the mental occupancy.  I've eaten at the truck stop for Valentine's Day...I've also done nothing, and that was fine.  Flowers and chocolates are nice, but I'd much rather be on your mind.  Although, not losing the feeling in my hands and scoring a new fedora is pretty sexy in my book too!  Happy overrated commercialized chocolate flower card day!

The Sacrifice of Joan of Arc: Burning for Change

"We set the night on fire!!" 
Well, not so much the night, but last night.  And not so much the night, but a tree.  Last night, we set the tree on fire; we burned a dead piece of pine in an attempt to symbolically release things we no longer want or need.  (You know me and symbolism.)  I think that there is much symbolism in the purification aspect of fire.  I wrote and learned about this earlier in the year as I burnt remnants of a cluttered past.  I decided that at the traditional yearly "Turkey Party" that my husband and I host we should burn our Christmas tree in a metaphorical sacrifice and we each could adorn it with our own symbolic ornament to send off into the ether, transmuting its energy for a new designated use.  Letting go of the old to make way for the new.

Earlier this year my husband and I watched St. Joan, a 1957 British-American film about Joan of Arc listening to the voices in her head and following a calling she had inside of her. The movie was haunting.  I was moved by the idea of her heart not burning.  I was moved to tears during the burning scene and consumed with trying to envision what it was actually like for her to burn on that stake for what she believed in as her flesh was boiled off into the ether.  Death is the ultimate form of transmutation, changing the form of our life force, sending our energy out and into the cosmos.  I believe in the power of transmutation and the power of personal symbolism.  Once fire eats something, be it pine or be it flesh, it is gone.

This year, for me, has been one of healing.  A year of therapy, a year of medication, but one of letting go of old patterns and behaviors.  At the very least the year birthed the recognition of my need to change and it conceived a damn good attempt at getting myself moving forward.  The recognition that chronic depression, anxiety, and self doubt were holding me back from reaching my full potential in every single aspect of my life was a fire in itself that took off and slowly began to consume and transform the negative qualities of my psyche.  Learning to trust in and stop doubting my own voices, instincts, and feelings is becoming easier after receiving professional validation for such things.  To quote the Beatles, "I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time..."

So, last night at Turkey Party after games and festivities the remainder of guests and us watched our woes burn away with our Christmas tree.  I cut out orange and red slips of construction paper and got out a trusted black Sharpie and we each wrote on the slips of paper what we wanted to surrender to the power of fire's purification and/or release.  Some had symbolic photos, some chose qualities or habits to write down.  I took an orange and a red strip of paper and assigned one to my Self Doubt.  On the other, in honor of my year of healing and the recognitions I have made, I surrendered "victim mentality/poor me/and all other sad ass excuses that keep me from reaching my full potential".  I think that about sums it up.  All of the energy we put into harboring negative thoughts and behaviors eats away at the precious time of our lives like a cancer.  If we transmuted that energy and used it for a better purpose we could transform our lives phenomenally.
So we all gathered together in new tradition and watched as this year's Toast Master lit this years Christmas tree, decorated with our ornaments of transmutation, on fire.  It turns out negative energy burns like pine, fast and hot.  For a few momentous minutes, before us stood a pillar of fire as our woes and words burned off into the sparks that flew out toward the darkness of night sky.  The heat was intense, and I blinked away the tears.  It was magnificent.  The intensity was only momentary.  I thought about Joan of Arc dying this way, in pain as her flesh melted away.  Dying this way so we would remember that life is precious and no matter the consequences we should listen to our inner voice(s) and follow our calling.  Obstacles be damned; life is short.  All earthly things are transitory. Tradition is an important tribute to the constant in the chaos, almost as important as the symbolism we use.  The pillar of fire quickly turned into a tower of sparks and soon, from all of our worries, all that was left were the skeletal remains of our sacrificial tree.  I could still make out her silhouette by the hot glowing embers on the charred wooden lumbar of her spine.  We all stood in silence for a few glorious seconds lost in our own hopes, thoughts, and dreams until she finally fell over.  We had released the energies of 2013.  Would the symbolic burning of these things really be a catalyst for the changes that we crave?  This new year shall see.  Bring on 2014!!

Cunnilingus Sonnet

Between my legs he finds himself at home,
I run my fingers through his golden locks.
For, in these thoughts I know I'm not alone.
He knocks me out of my white cotton socks.

His velvet tongue against my open door;
No need to knock so I just show him in.
His mouth is hot and I'm aching for more. 
The space between our lips is paper thin.

A roller coaster ride, I'm at the top;
Rhythmic Kashmir waves urge me ahead.
It's harvest time and I'm the only crop.
I reap what he has sewn inside my bed. 

As energies increase, I hold my breath,
For this is what they call "the little death".

12-15-13

Tannenbaum Sonnet

Evergreen, how long will she be standing?
I sit here staring, basking in her light.
Within her limbs survives understanding.
Somehow she brings the day into the night.

She holds a song written before her birth;
Inside her voice is housed a solemn tune.
You'd never break her value or self worth.
She'll take your breath away under the moon.

Adorned with silver 'cicles and a star,
Her earrings sparkle as bright as her crown.
Her ornaments highlight her hidden charms;
The gifts below her skirt can break you down.

Mother Nature gives a lovely show.
Her needles stick you when you hold her, though.  

Kunes' Farm Apples and The Rainbow Connection

Today we followed a rainbow.  It ended up taking us to Kunes' Farm in Keewaydin.  It was beautiful.  It's amazing how you could really see the colors in order, because sometimes you can only make out a few.  This one had the whole Roy G. Biv going on.  This picture doesn't capture it's full essence.  Usually the "iv" isn't there or is very faint and hard to make out.  A lot of the time it is just "Roy".  (I believe the spectrum actually continues on endlessly, as I understand?)  Regardless, anytime I see a rainbow it reminds me of those nuances in life and how it really is magical if you look at it at the right time, from the right angle and in the right light.

While we were at Kunes' Farm we bought two pecks of delicious apples.  I remember my dad bringing me there when I was a kid and getting apples and especially apple cider.  They were bigger then and made their own cider at the time.  They actually make their own Hard Cider now, which is rather tasty, although they ironically outsource their apple cider now.  It's a great little place tucked away in the Pennsylvania hills.  The Keewaydin Cemetery down the road, I think, has one of the most extraordinary views across the West Branch river valley; for a dead person that's pretty splendid.  Tomb with a view!!

Rainbows, it turns out, are pretty intricate.  Refraction and bending light and arcs and reflections and what not...beautiful mystery.  Divine mystery.  But, it's not really a mystery, is it?  Stop explaining it, Scientist, and just LOOK at it.  SEE it for what it is, the true color of our dreams.  I'll be damned...you mean it's there ALL the time, but we can't see it?  We see it in a different light.  Two things, rain and sunlight, naturally occurring, taken for granted on a daily basis but when they combine there is real magic revealed.  Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts?  In this case it is of the lesser and greater.  What?  Define greater...or even lesser?  Semantics.  Is a rainbow greater than the sun?  Is the sun greater than the rain?  Which is more powerful, the spectrum or the rainbow?  The rainbow IS the spectrum.  The rainbow is revealing.  The rainbow is everywhere; there is a rainbow in all of us.  Rainbows are all around us!  (Remember the mist from the garden hose in the sunlight, as a kid, revealing the spectrum...or, hell, yesterday!?)  It's like a romantic glimpse behind Life's curtain of colors.  A rainbow says, "Something magnificent is happening here...even if we aren't exactly sure what it is." 

Do You Trust Your Brakes?

I was cleaning old text messages off of my phone this evening and I came to a thread between my sister and I when she was home from Korea in July.  I read through it before deleting it and was reminded of a silly scenario that we made into a metaphor one night when we popped into a friend's barn for an impromptu visit on the way to Weis market.  I almost forgot about it, accept she mentioned it in one of her last messages to me before she boarded her plane to return to Korea.  She asked me, "Do you trust your brakes?"

We were standing around bullshitting about this and that and then as the guys began to talk politics our right brain geared minds grew bored and started playing with thoughts and objects laying about. Luckily there were some matchbox cars sitting on something nearby.  My sister immediately started to drive them around and make noises.  It is this childlike side of her presence that I miss the most, the one that makes me laugh and jokes me out of sadness.  I miss that side of her that gets that side of me going until we are suddenly playing with matchbox cars like children while adults discuss the government around us.  Oblivious.  We've honed our skill well; my sister and I can block out the world with our childhood coping mechanisms anytime.  This isn't always the most polite of things to do and I am sure we can seem rude, but we sometimes have little control over where the moment takes us. 

This moment took us to high speeds in a pretend car, jumping over ramps and heading straight for a wall.  One of us did the fake squeaky brake noise as the car stopped suddenly.  I remember posing the question, "Yes, but do you trust your brakes?"  Heading at a wall at high speeds how can you be sure that your brakes are indeed going to work when the moment comes?  How do you know that they will stop you?  You need to have a certain amount of faith in your brakes, to trust them in a huge sense.  But should you have to trust them so much when so many variables are influenced by you?  Speed, for one, is always a factor and it can be controlled.

If you head straight into anything  balls to the wall, you risk coming to a sudden lethal stop if you don't control your speed or use your brakes.  Most of the time though, people take for granted that their brakes are there.  They take off out of the gate pedal to the floor, burnin' tire, hootin' and a hollerin', speeding into the world...and trust that this system will later be in place to stop them before they get into any danger.  On a dime, even.  This isn't always the case, though, is it?  Should we be so bold as to let the future of our lives up to a precaution we don't have COMPLETE control over? Some people underestimate their speed and forget that they are in control of the brakes.  They are essentially only a steering passenger, but their judgement is needed, they are still commanding the vehicle.  The timing is their decision...their choice.  Whenever and however your vehicle comes to a stop is [in most cases and figuratively] up to you.  You are the matchbox car.  You control the brakes. 

So, do you trust your brakes?  Do you trust that you will stop when the time comes, when it matters most?  When you want to?  When you need to?  Or will you hit that wall?  There's a chance that you could even survive hitting a wall, there's a smaller chance you could crash right on through it.  Your brakes may be immaculate and you may have steel strong willpower.  So then, if you trust your brakes, do you trust yourself to use them?  Now, that...is a metaphor.

The Purification of the Physical

Fire is an interesting object, thing, concept, illusion, tool. What the hell is it anyway?  Energy.  It's also somewhat of a mystery.  It can be a deadly force, a source of warmth, light, destruction...fusion.  Some traditions state great gods are created in pure fire.  Souls are said to be birthed there in the beginning of their existence.  It very well could be a beginning...but it also most assuredly can be the end.  Things burn away, but where is away?  Where do things go when they burn?  Back into the ether...changing form...converted back to pure energy. 

The phoenix is born again from its own ashes.  It is transformed and strengthened by the flames that consumed it.  Rebirth.  Renewal.  Fire IS transformation...in real time...before your eyes.  Watch something slowly licked away by fire's devouring tongues.  It's magical.  There are so many possible emotions.  If it's your house or something else you are attached to, it can be heart wrenching.  Misery.  Turmoil.  Distress.  Fire can also help you to realize your true feelings.  It purifies.  It releases.

When faced with nonexistence, we panic.  When watching things burn, especially things we have created, enjoyed or loved...we are really faced with emotional symbolism.  It can be a great way to 'let things go' because after it's gone, there's no going back.  It's gone...dissipated into the ethos, burned away down to its basic meaning.  Sometimes...it's nothing.  Sometimes...it's everything.  

Symbolism is very meaningful to me as it is, but on the road to recovery it can be a very powerful tool.  Fire releases us from the physical; it purifies.  It represents death, healing, love, birth, destruction, creation.  Being pure energy, what can it not symbolize?  I have been working on purging myself of unwanted and unneeded objects, concepts, habits, and feelings.  It can be frightening, but is also immensely empowering.

We made a giant fire from items I wanted rid of;  I went from room to room, gathering and selecting.  This can be hard if you have hoarder tendencies and trouble with attachment.  I have much to let go.  I only have so much space in my home and brain...it's time to burn the dead in favor of life.  Creation and destruction, in front of my eyes.  Used energy transformed into new energy.  It's time to let the old give way to the new.  New thinking...new ideas...new attachments....new energy....will be created by the symbolic destruction of old trappings.  Burn, baby, burn.