So much for love

"Wedding Day"
by Rosie Thomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGSfHn0CxCk

So much for love
I guess I've been wronged
But it's all right cuz
I'm moving on
I've got my car all packed with cassette tapes and
Sweaters and loose change and cheap cigarettes and
I'm gonna drive through the hills
Put my hand out the window and
Sing till I run out of words
I'm gonna stop at every truck stop
Make small talk with waiters and truck drivin' men
I'm gonna fall asleep in the back seat
With no one around but me and my friends

It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be just like my wedding day

Yeah I've had enough of love
It feels good to give up
So good to be good to myself and
I'm gonna get on the highway with no destination
And plenty of vision in mind and
I'm gonna drive to the ocean
Go skinny dipping
Blow kisses to Venus and Mars
I'm gonna stop at every bar and
Flirt with the cowboys in front their girlfriends

It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be just like my wedding day

So much for love
I guess I've been wronged
But it's all right cuz I'm moving on
I'm gonna drive over hills
Over mountains and canyons
And boys that keep bringin' me down
I'm gonna drive under skyline and sunshine
Drink good wine in vineyards
And get asked to dance
I'm gonna be carefree and let nothing pass me by
Never ever again

It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be so grand
It's gonna be just like my wedding day

The Pleasure Trap

Is when it feels so good
the brain gets highjacked
McDonald's french fries
Coca-Cola
Gin & Tonic, Microbrew
heroin or crack
"it's all the same
fucking day man"
Janis Joplin knew
all about it

At Last

Our house in Shorewood, WI finally sold.  My only owned abode in 14 years of living in the Milwaukee area.  It is a huge relief and a beautiful loss.  I will never own anything that huge and insolvent again!

The Art of Losing

The Art of Losing

by Elizabeth Bishop

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! My last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

– Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

https://musingsfromthesofa.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/the-art-of-losing-elizabeth-bishop/

Infinite Change And How We Deal With It

This is what I have been memorizing for the past few months and maybe why I haven't written in my blog for forever!  Just trying to get my mind around these few simple concepts for how I could control my own mind, how I react to everything that happens to me and around me, as it all changes.

And how others could relate and benefit from this learning.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali

It's all in our mind - beautiful and ugly and out of control and always accessible for change:
Yoga Sutra # 2 - The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga.
Yoga Sutra #12 - These mental modifications are restrained by practice and non-attachment.
Yoga Sutra #13 - Of these two, effort toward steadiness of mind is practice.
Yoga Sutra #14 - Practice becomes firmly grounded when well-attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness.

The Practice, Practice, Practice of the Yoga Sutras is a daily exercise but not without its joy, and not without its moments of relief and breath and giving in.  Just try this in a yoga pose and you will know what I mean!

Everything changes.  Everything can change in an instant.

It's not how it changes, exactly, but how we deal with it.

Independence Day

I kept spelling out the word
Q-U-I-E-T
on the scrabble board
as we sat by the pool and

I won game after
game

We slurped frozen
tropical drinks
got ice-cream
headaches
and tried to
wait out the rain

He says he feels invisible
like nothing has changed
there's no room for him
in this relationship
I take up all the space

So whatever he kept
spelling out on the
scrabble board, I
can't remember

because I guess he's 

right, after all
I guess it's all the same

he must be right

never mind he's been my
home for 18 years

and I don't know anything
at all, about independence

I Remember College...and California

It was a wonderful 20 year college reunion.  I loved seeing so many people I care about, and haven't seen in person for so long!  It was all a bit overwhelming, seeing them and the campus, that place I lived for 4 formative years, so different now - all those new beautiful buildings!  Campus so much the same as 20 years ago but so different, at the same time. :)

I felt very grateful to be there.  But I also felt that David and I both baked in that very different heat, it was HOT last weekend (god was it just last weekend?!), and it felt like an oven compared to the sauna that we are used to in Florida...just a very different heat.  I have to say, that I don't think I could ever live in California now, but I do remember living there, and how I loved it.  At the edge of the continent...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8H0xopW3wk

"I Remember California"

I remember redwood trees, bumper cars and wolverines
The ocean's Trident submarines
Lemons, limes and tangerines
I remember this

I remember traffic jams
Motor boys and girls with tans
Nearly was and almost rans
I remember this

History is made
History is made to seem unfair

I recall that you were there
Golden smile and shining hair
I recall it wasn't fair
Recollect it wasn't fair
Remembering it wasn't fair outside

Low ebb, high tide
The lowest ebb and highest tide
A symbol wave I must confide
I guess we took us for a ride
I guess it's just a gesture

I remember this defense
Progress fails pacific sense
All those sweet conspiracies
I remember all these things

I remember traffic jams
Motor boys and girls with tans
Nearly was and almost rans
I remember this, this

Low ebb, high tide
The lowest ebb and highest tide
I guess we took us for a ride
I guess its just a gesture.

At the end of the continent
At the edge of the continent

Anywhere, I would've followed you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmErRm-vApI

 

Say something, I'm giving up on you
I'll be the one, if you want me to
Anywhere, I would've followed you
Say something, I'm giving up on you

And I am feeling so small
It was over my head
I know nothing at all

And I will stumble and fall
I'm still learning to love
Just starting to crawl

Say something, I'm giving up on you
I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you
Anywhere, I would've followed you
Say something, I'm giving up on you

And I will swallow my pride
You're the one that I love
And I'm saying goodbye

Say something, I'm giving up on you
And I'm sorry that I couldn't get to you
And anywhere, I would have followed you
Oh-oh-oh-oh say something, I'm giving up on you

Say something, I'm giving up on you
Say something 

So Much Depends Upon....Yoga Pants

As I approach my 20 year college reunion, I think about this...

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

by William Carlos Williams

I think that

so much depends
upon

yoga pants...
I didn't have them 20 years
ago, only grey drudgery
and sweat pants

and it seems to me now
that yoga pants
have made all the difference

how they allow you to feel
somehow trim & fit even
while still happy & fat
even while still technically
(BMI Range) imperfect

with that lower leg flare
turning out just so, and
how the soft material
hugs your lovely
thighs and ass

all imperfect, and yet
just perfect, somehow, just
for this one moment

when it doesn't matter
because nothing matters
but this breath
this yoga-pants-moment
of complete
Acceptance

~Namaste~ 

Providing

Old poem, just now resurrected for no particular reason, maybe just the rage...:)

Providing                                                                        
January 24, 1998
                                                                     
when she drives home from the grocery store
and is just beginning to live a life
she’s not sure of
on a saturday evening
and cut off from the party-going
around her
outside the car windows
she envisions her next few steps
up the stairs to their apartment
load after heavy load
carried calmly in her hands
car stopped for a moment
in an illegal but convenient
spot and lights continually blinking
“hazard!”       “hazard!”
*** **      *****     *****     *****     *****
putting the cheese and milk
away in the refridgerator
the produce in the “crisper”
the cereal on the shelves
she envisions what she’d like to do
next: stop and turn with perfect
clarity of movement
to throw the frozen orange juice can
out the closed unsuspecting window
shattering
new-found domestic
haven of her beautiful kitchen
angry at the on-sale orange juice
and the emptied paper-in-plastic
bags - good for garbage and
recycling - angry at that careful forethought
that never seems to be reciprocated
and the loving hands that do dishes
and fold laundry and take care
of their lives, the boring      daily
destruction
of peace and order
*****     *****     *****     *****     *****     *****
in the grocery store
the first time she took a large cart
instead of the usual small basket,
the kind with a small seat in front for a child
wanting Lucky Charms
and Twinkies and Coca-Cola,
the kind that screams “family!”
and big grocery budget
to feed all the expectant ones back home,
she felt dislocated,
off-balance, wheeling the squeaky cart
down aisles the loomed into her vision,
lost from who she was
or who she thought she wanted to be
would be someday
someday
feeling like her mother
inevitably
and like she was crossing
into some unspoken territory
of consumerism and womanhood
and the strange thing was: it feel so
very natural
*****     *****     *****     *****     *****
she remembers when her mother
would come home from grocery
shopping and would park the minivan in the alley
honking the horn for the kids
to come running to help carry
the bags in - she remembers how her mother
would get angry when they dawdled
over the TV watching, the reading or drawing
and resenting the interrruption
she wonders how her mother resisted
the temptation to take them and shake them
and yell “don’t you see that this is all for you?!”
spreading tired hands out to show
them the giving, the hours of coupon-clipping,
the organization of dozens of tiny
slips of paper in the small filebox
like the one for recipes
the time spent at stores
wheeling carts down aisle after aisle
after aisle
and thinking of others
who would never notice
any of this, as long as she was there
and simply providing