Acceptance Poem

As I start new journal
in the wide-ruled notebook
I bought today I am...

Accepting that I write sloppy and BIG
Accepting that I stay up WAY
too late, drinking and smoking
and am exhausted all the time
because of it

Accepting this body, its
boredom, and longings, and bliss
and that it always stays
AT LEAST 10 lbs above
where it's supposed to be
healthy BMI Range, all that shit

Accepting how the body
regularly fails
to be perfect

Accepting the lines
on my face are
permanent and
not going away
my forehead like
my father's - all
those deep furrows -
and so I kind of love it

Accepting and loving
the lines because I have
EARNED every little
last one of them

Accepting that all women
even those of us who
call ourselves Feminists
will always want to look

younger than their Age

Accepting RAGE

Accepting that my
father has died
for so long - in July
it will be 18 years now

He always wanted me
to be a Feminist and
rule the world but how
he left us so suddenly

I will always be
the "apple of his eye"
and he will always be
53 years young to me

I will always be
struggling to learn
how to live and to
Accept

Quite a Valentine - Still the One (and we're still having fun)

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbH_sDyWZqo#aid=P8n36fwxF_g

We've been together since way back when
Sometimes I never want to see you again
But I want you to know, after all these years
You're still the one I want whisperin' in my ear

You're still the one I want to talk to in bed
Still the one that turns my head
We're still having fun, and you're still the one

I looked at your face every day
But I never saw it 'til I went away
When winter came, I just wanted to go
Deep in the desert, I longed for the snow

You're still the one that makes me laugh
Still the one that's my better half
We're still having fun, and you're still the one

You're still the one that makes me strong
Still the one I want to take along
We're still having fun, and you're still the one

Changing, our love is going gold
Even though we grow old, it grows new

You're still the one that I love to touch
Still the one and I can't get enough
We're still having fun, and you're still the one

You're still the one who can scratch my itch
Still the one and I wouldn't switch
We're still having fun, and you're still the one

You are still the one that makes me shout
Still the one that I dream about
We're still having fun, and you're still the one...

No GPS Required: Report From Our Fourth Visit to Panama

(With indirect reference to last blog post on Panama -  http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-break-your-gps-and-other-stories.html.)

So, we had a short trip to Panama planned for May, including a much-anticipated visit to Contadora Island one of the famous Pearl Islands (Las Perlas) of Panama.  We had everything all set up and it was perfect.  Then in April, as a result of my ongoing and somewhat lazy job hunt, I suddenly got a job offer.  A really good job offer: full-time and 20k more than I was currently making at Jackson Hewitt, back to straight-BA work (no more being a manager to the world's most dysfunctional team of testers!) and in the health care insurance industry (no more boring tax software!).

But there were 2 problems.  The job was in Tampa - at least an hour from our lovely little city of Sarasota - and the offer was contingent on my NOT taking this already-scheduled & paid-for vacation.  I was livid.  And seriously considered turning it down.  If they don't want me badly enough to deal with me missing a total of four measly work days then FUCK them! was my thinking. 

Well, my wonderful husband David - who said he was willing to eventually move to Tampa (and would find a job there, he'd been wanting to leave his current company/position for a while) - talked me off the ledge (as he often has to do).

Reader, I took it.

And in rescheduling the trip we were able to coordinate our visit with my dear friend Andrea who (along with the Panamanian man she married about 6 years ago) has been our connection and inspiration in regards to that country.  We had to give up Contadora Island (too complicated to meet up there around Christmas given an unreliable ferry schedule) but it was worth it.

So we had 3 days/nights in the mountain town of Boquete just me & David and five blissful days in a rented beach house in Portobello, on the Caribbean side of the country, with Andrea, her husband, and a bunch of his family members.  The second half of the trip included Christmas Eve and Christmas, which was perfect.  A few photos below:

Especially ironic how well the trip worked out, given that my sparkly new job for which we rescheduled totally didn't...by the time December rolled around I was well-gone from that crazy place and thank heavens!

My favorite part of the trip (aside from the spontaneous and awesome snorkeling we did the day after Christmas), was when I described the route I took to get us to Portobello which necessarily didn't follow our directions because we were coming from the regional, not the international, airport (which are sort of strangely no where near each other).  Alfonso (Andrea's husband) said "you drive better than many Panamanians!" and I felt proud.  I was a proud Panamanian-wannabe, with no need for a GPS. :)

Another Year

"Another Year" ~ K's Choice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iOAgDBPUr8
I wish you could adore
The way you did before
Now you're living through another year
Oh, the light you were
Will soon become a blur
As you're living through another year
Oh, what a waste of time it is
To indulge inside of bliss
Getting ready for another year like this
Another year to lie
Another year goes by
You're not sick, so you can't heal
But I wonder do you feel
The need to cry: 'I'm out of here'
Oh, your goal is safe
But is it all you crave
As you're living through another year
Oh, what a waste of time it is
To indulge inside of bliss
Getting ready for another year like this
Another year to lie
Another year goes by
Is it me who cannot see
The face of mediocrity
I try to smile you see
Your lightness darkens me
Filter all of your emotions.
Fake you're never low
Or face the one you fear
You're living through another year
Another year to lie
Another year goes by 

Thanksgiving Panhandle Roadtrip made us Ready for a Tropical Christmas

The loves to love the loves to love the loves to love...

MADAME GEORGE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrOgYjp20j0
Down on cyprus avenue
With a childlike vision leaping into view
Clicking, clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford & fitzroy, madame george
Marching with the soldier boy behind
Hes much older with hat on drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
The cool night air like shalimar
And outside theyre making all the stops
The kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops
Happy taken madame george
Thats when you fall
Whoa, thats when you fall
Yeah, thats when you fall
When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms and history books you glance
Into the eyes of madame george
And you think you found the bag
Youre getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only madame george
And then from outside the frosty window raps
She jumps up and says lord have mercy I think its the cops
And immediately drops everything she gots
Down into the street below
And you know you gotta go
On that train from dublin up to sandy row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow
Say goodbye to madame george
Dry your eye for madame george
Wonder why for madame george
And as you leave, the room is filled with music, laughing, music,
Dancing, music all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold
And as youre about to leave
She jumps up and says hey love, you forgot your gloves
And the gloves to love to love the gloves...
To say goodbye to madame george
Dry your eye for madame george
Wonder why for madame george
Dry your eyes for madame george
Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the back street
In the backstreet, in the back street
Say goodbye to madame george
In the backstreet, in the back street, in the back street
Down home, down home in the back street
Gotta go
Say goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
Dry your eye your eye your eye your eye your eye...
Say goodbye to madame george
And the loves to love to love the love
Say goodbye
Oooooo
Mmmmmmm
Say goodbye goodbye goodbye goodbye to madame george
Dry your eye for madame george
Wonder why for madame george
The loves to love the loves to love the loves to love...
Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train
Get on the train, the train, the train...
This is the train, this is the train...
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye....
Get on the train, get on the train...
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/v/van+morrison/madame+george_20143132.html

Much Better to Be The Leaver Than the Left

I had my last day today at HPS - HealthPlan Services - and I couldn't be happier to leave it.  On my own terms.  

They often say, you don't know what you have until it's gone.  And I have experienced that myself in the past (witness my feelings about NM, after I left!), and so I don't take leaving lightly.  But I don't think I'll feel that this time.  Not by a long shot!

Because more layoffs are coming, you can feel it like a tremor in the earth signifying earthquake...or aftershock.  Because the first schism happened a while ago with the first round of layoffs, and then the second, almost two months ago, and forgive me if I don't want to be around for the third.

I was mostly honest in my exit interview today but I don't think they want to hear it.  The current leadership takes that "flattened earth" approach and so they will devastate whatever they need to for the bottom line.  I think I'm lucky to get out with my skin alive!

Not to make it all sound so Armageddon, but you know, these things do feel dramatic sometimes.  And personal.  :)

And so, I quote Kurt Vonnegut and add my own little poetic twist:
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'It might have been.'”
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/98330-of-all-the-words-of-mice-and-men-the-saddest
If must-needs be
and can be deft
much better to be the Leaver
than the Left

"The Show" Must Go On

I've always loved the movie "Moulin Rouge."  It portrayed a certain adolescent drama and angst I guess I've always identified with - as silly as that may sound - and these sound-bites perfectly express it ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOCcuPcfTHc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12XiAOtjcg
    
It's been over 4 months now that I've had my new job in Tampa and I talked with such rose-colored glasses about how great it was.  How we were "going to the show."

Truth is that we've had this great 2 bedroom apartment for months and I haven't done Yoga in the extra room set aside for Yoga.  Not even once.

Truth is the company I thought was so great (we moved up here because of it, after all), has had TWO rounds of layoffs now and I don't know exactly why I have survived them but I know I could be next.  It might just be a matter of time.  And meanwhile I have survivor's guilt and that place is so chaotic I can barely believe it.

Perhaps it would be a relief to be let go?  Careful what you wish for, I know.

Soooooooooooooooo "the show must go on" - I must keep a happy face on and see if I can survive it - October 1st deadline, fucking Affordable Care Act and Obama's will to carry it out.

Or find another place I can call work home.

A Little Anne Lamott for You...

I recently randomly picked up this little book at my new local library.  New to me, but also a nice new building, complete with community/senior center, playground, park and running paths, it was a little bit surprising to find all this tucked behind the super-busy main street with its strip-malls of pawn shops, discount super-markets, smoke-shops etc. 

I was so excited that day to get my Hillsborough County library card and it was so easy!  :)  The below excerpt is from one of the first books I checked out, tellingly.

My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God.  If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said.  If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real - really real.  It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.

So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light.  It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold.  Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy little eyes, like the rest of us.

Light reveals  us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation.  But like sunflowers we turn toward light.  Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself.  And in this light, we can see beyond shadow and illusion to something beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside.

This is all hard to articulate, because it is so real, so huge, beyond mystery.  Rumi said that all words are fingers pointing to the moon, and we think the words are the moon.  But because of the light, the light of love, the energy and motion that have called us to prayer, bits of this deeper reality are perceivable, and little bits of it will have to do.

My three prayers are variations on Help, Thanks, Wow.  That's all I ever need, besides the silence, the pain, and the pause sufficient for me to stop, close my eyes, and turn inward.
~ Anne Lamott
Help, Thanks, Wow
pg. 6-8

Channeling Marilyn Monroe

This Vanity Fair article from 2010 resurfaced recently, for me:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/11/marilyn-monroe-201011

And it reminds me all over again how this fellow Gemini of mine, tortured soul, amazing person never got her full due while she was still on this planet.  And how she remains this mystery we sometimes wonder about.  And somehow iconic.

The VF article has wonderful photos, many of which show Marilyn reading: "If some photographers thought it was funny to pose the world's most famously voluptuous 'dumb blonde' with a book - James Joyce!  Heinrich Heine! - it wasn't a joke to her.  In these newly discovered diary entries and poems, Marilyn reveals a young woman for whom writing and poetry were lifelines, the ways and means to discover who she was and to sort through her often tumultuous emotional life.  And books were a refuge and a companion for Marilyn during her bouts of insomnia."

As someone who has struggled with sleep herself, I can understand how awful insomnia can be.

The article goes on to describe "She was having trouble sleeping, relying on barbiturates.  On Parkside House stationary, she wrote one night after Miller had gone to bed:
on the screen of pitch blackness
comes/reappears the shapes of monsters
my most steadfast companions...
and the world is sleeping
oh peace I need you - even a 
peaceful monster."

This wonderful, beautiful, and misunderstood woman once wrote this poem about her third (and final), husband Arthur Miller:
my love sleeps beside me -
in the faint light - I see his manly jaw
give way - and the mouth of his
boyhood returns
with a softness softer
its sensitiveness trembling
in stillness
his eyes must have look out
wonderously from the cave of the little
boy - when the things he did not
    understand -
he forgot

but will he look like this when he is dead
oh unbearable fact inevitable
yet sooner would I rather his love die
than/or him?~ Marilyn Monroe

I have a poem somewhat like this, or at least part of it.  I already posted it here, but in a much different context ~
http://www.yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/and-i-dont-think-war-is-noble-and-i.html

It echoes what she wrote, at least in the first paragraph or two, but then turns darker like she did too.
There are places in each other
that we can never touch.

Lying next to him
among the white sheets
and plump pillow cases
where we love,
I place one hand
on the white skin
where the shirt achingly
pulls up
and look at him, little-boy-like
deep in his afternoon of sleep
face flushed and comforted
some sweet peach vision
taking shape beneath his eyelids.

There are moments with each other
that it seems we can never overcome.

Standing next to him
among clenched fists
and crossed arms on the balcony
where we battle,
I forget the sweetness
and see only ages of combat
and strange back streets
where dark things slink
around corners,
when the gorgeous
enormous language
we use, becomes booted
and repulsive -
wiping mud on the sheets
where elegant lust
turns to a brutish club.

These particular nights
and early morning hours
when the blood runs
there's a swift blade to
separate us - it hangs
in the balance of our
angry words and we
are both just begging
to have it be done.

These two sad goats
butting heads
and bleating at the sun
are nothing like
our puppy love
our licking and sniffing
and protecting each other,
when we can lay down
at each others' feet
with a big sigh
after another long day's run.

Relocating our Lives to Tampa: Going to "The Show"

As I started my new job on April 29th I had a phrase in my head that I shared only with David.

It was based on the fact that we were looking to relocate our lives to Tampa, because my new job was so promising, and the prospect of me making that 1+ hour commute (the + depending on traffic patterns and the all-too-frequent accidents), every day was simply untenable.

Given that Tampa is a MUCH bigger city and has a lot more going on than sleepy little Sarasota, my phrase was "We're going to The Show."  As in Tampa is the Major Leagues, whereas Sarasota is - undeniably - just the Minors.  Shades of "Bull Durham" (a great movie), which is where I think I first heard the phrase ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va75XqWO6sY

We talked about down-sizing from 2 bedrooms to 1, but the lure of having a whole room I could make over as my own private yoga studio (D. still wants it as his office but we'll see), was too much.  So we have ourselves a great 2 BDR apartment just 3.8 miles (door-to-door) from my work.  I love it.

It's on a ridiculously busy street but set back from all the hecticness so that you can still feel like you are "home" and safe, can breathe.  Has a pool, like our last apartment, and much bigger nicer fitness room (which I hope to use someday).  And it's gated, which is new & strange, but we are getting used to that as well.

I seriously love my new job, and so the moving is worth it.  And, after MONTHS of job-hunting, David finally got something up here too.  He starts his new job on 7/29 and I can't wait - not only cuz he's about doubling his income and the increase will help with expense of having two apartments for almost two months + some expenses with house we still, regretfully, own "up north."

ALSO because he really needed to find something new, something that will challenge him in new ways.  My taking this job in Tampa spurred him on to find that next horizon and he can thank me later. :)

After all the horrible moving is done.  He says he'll really miss Sarasota, but I can't relate, because I so love Tampa.  I love everything about it, and even the traffic doesn't get me down, because I figure it's all part of the experience!  Check back with me in 6 months though.  

Moving is exhausting. But at least we were able to do it at a leisurely pace and without having to hire movers.  We took our final loads from our old to our new apartment tonight, and we are done!

Except for we have to figure out how to get the washer/dryer set I bought for $100 from a co-worker long ago (what a great deal that turned out to be!), out to the curb or otherwise disposed of, before our actual move-out date of 7/31.  When we will have to pay an "opt out" fee amounting to two months rent because of breaking our lease.  A LOT of money but still worth it!!!

Worth it, because "We're going to The Show" baby.