Friday, February 15, 2013

spring fever

I cut hearts out of paper, and string them together for the children. Parenting is nothing like I thought it would be. Demanding and challenging and alienating and enlightening and lovely. My neighbor asked me if I am sick of staying home yet. I ponder it, spin it around in my head, look at it on all sides. Am I sick of it? It's a valid question, though I'm not. I feel blessed, honored to watch these little babies become adults, and make connections and learn about love. I love hearing their philosophy and their ideas about the way things are. But I have waves of feeling lost in a sea of kid. A lifesaver shaped like NPR floats by and I listen to stories about the Dead Sea Scrolls, or something else VERY MATURE and ARCANE and BORING, though I don't find it any of those things, because I am very mature, arcane, and boring too. I seek pockets of adultness in my day. Away from stickers and play haircuts and baby meditations. A place where I am a woman-artist, a sorceress, a goddess, an anonymous lady listening to music on my iPod and sipping a latte not watching if anyone is about to bump their head. Or a space with another adult where I can talk and walk and drop the f-bomb and laugh.

My body is deflated--breasts without milk, a belly of too much skin from repeatedly being stretched past its maximum capacity, and a soul that feels sexless and unattractive. I wear this motherhood on every inch of me. I greet people at meetings, hug those who have been touched in years, the stinky and unloved, as well as those ones who reap rewards of a life well-examined. It is all I can give of these breasts, arms, belly. A maternal embrace that tells someone they are home now. 

Do not be afraid, I whisper. This is a safe place.

I'll tell you a secret. I worry about being lured from my absolute comfort of everything being okay and fine and really quite contented by someone who makes me feel womanly, beautiful, seductive, sexy, not motherly. A quick glance at my cleavage reminds me of who I once was--sex and youth, abandon and strength. Maybe I am still that person. I keep vigilant, and distanced, but part of me wants to fall in love with love. The crocus that pop up in my front yard much too early. I find them just delightful.

Why, hello, sailor, why don't you come over here?

I am not young enough or old enough to get away with that kind of talk to flowers. I have been on a creative tear, painting and arting and letting the house go to shit. No cleaning, mister. There is art to be done. I buy an album on I-Tunes, an artist I've heard only snippets of. It's jazz and raucous and noise, but something about that feels so much like the Angie before kids and mortgages and daughter-death that I want to bury it deep in my iPod to pull out when I need to feel like me. 

Laundry has been taken down to the machines five days ago, and slowly, I am eeking through dirty leggings and scrubs. But the painting and meditating and laughing and listening to new music has been good for my soul. It trumps the chores. Fuck the market. The sun up early, lasting longer, reminds me of other things that used to happen in the morning light. I sit and watch the backyard change from snowy to greenish. I walked last night in the crisp air, home from class. It felt like a Spring night. The moon hung in the west, a crescent of orange. I found myself enchanted all over again with this life, this night, this world. Something like love opening my anahata, or perhaps more like the randy swadhisthana, or sacral chakra. 

It's just an old case of Spring Fever, I suppose. But God, this world is hunky.

What afflictions are you embracing right now?

11 comments:

  1. God, I love this. I'm embracing the heat of repressed longing. Totally swadhisthana, darling! x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes,I love this. Trying to reconcile all the different Lindsays from my past present nd future. Which one is the real me?

    ReplyDelete
  3. More aversion than embrace for me. What is the word for a general sense of discontentment? Of complaining too much about every little thing, knowing well that I shouldn't be complaining, that there are so many reasons why I shouldn't complain, but that heaviness just above my brain that keeps me from seeing the bright side of anything. February? The daffodils have not started to open yet. I love the idea of a hunky world. A sexy, sexy planet <3

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lack of sleep....although I can not really say embracing...I am glad you are throwing yourself into your art work...it ounds therapeutic...the laundry pile sounds daunting...I know how quickly it piles up. I wish I had a better sense of self...I flounder with that since Camilles's death. You and NPR is how I feel sometimes listening to "This American Life" :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Angie - no spring in sight over here, I'm afraid, but I have the longing inside too. Also feeling very unsexy these days (perhaps it's because I haven't shaved my legs all winter and I'm carrying extra weight) but I've vowed to smarten up and eat right and exercise. And shave my legs.

    You should check on NQ Arbuckle - he's good and Canadian. Your paragraph about the moon reminded me of one of his songs "I Can See the Moon".

    Here's to longer days ahead. xo

    ReplyDelete
  6. I was driving back from the drs a few days ago and actually turned the radio on! I fell in love with a song which i have since heard a couple more times,I told my son mommy's getting her mojo back.I need that part of me ,to feel like myself.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I can relate to this entirely. Every year at this time, I find myself doing everything and nothing imagining I'm in fake Paris. All nostalgia and longing for something that doesn't exist. Everything is gray stone, mist, red lipstick. I want to do something loud just once in fake Paris and go dancing badly just one night and for that to surprise my imaginary friends. (I guess I forget how surprised my real friends would be.) But I want to wake up the next morning still in Paris, with nowhere to be, but an only half smoked pack of cigarettes and a balcony, and maybe with a lover somewhere who wants me just more than I want to be wanted. I'm always watching corners to see what sly, gray magic is around them. What little bit of red or green.

    But, I spent the morning reading, and in a coffee shop in an old mill town. In warm, thick socks and boots. I found my red lipstick. And my kids are with their aunt. And my husband and I laughed a lot and fake argued.

    I'd like to walk and talk and drop the f-bomb and laugh with you. Want to go to fake Paris with me?

    ReplyDelete
  8. The appearance of Style247 on the screen is nothing less than a breath of fresh air in the fashion industry. Here you can have your desired wonderful handbags at reasonable prices. As ladies are fond of collecting different styles and sizes of handbags, so Style247 is the right place for you, where you can easily go through all the available styles and designs of handbags online and can grab your favorite one with just a single click.

    ReplyDelete

What do you think?