The Dirty Glass

I've been reading not one but two memoirs about heavy drinking/alcoholism: Lit and Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. Both are really good reads; the former contains some of the most amazing writing I've ever encountered.

As I mentioned in a previous post, since I'm both the child of an alcoholic and a former binge drinker myself, it's not surprising that reading these books would bring up some unpleasant feelings and memories for me. It feels healthy though, to be allowing these memories to come rather than putting my hands over my eyes and ears and saying "la la la la la la" as loudly as I can (which I mighta done for the first 30 or so years of my life).

This song (about drinking, of course!) from the Dropkick Murphys is courtesy of the New Englander during that first year of email exchanges that often included music:

Murphy, Murphy, darling dear
I long for you now night and day
Your pain was my pleasure, your sorrow my joy
I feel now I've lost you to health and good cheer

Darcy, when I met you I was five years too young
A boy beyond his age, or so I'd tell someone
Anyone who'd listen and a few who couldn't care
Still I welcomed you with open arms, my love I did share

Darcy, Darcy darling dear,
You left me dying, crying there
In whiskey, gin, and pints of beer
I fell for you my darling dear

You shut me off and you showed me the door
But you always came crawling back begging me for more
I showed you kindness, a stool, and a tab
Then you poured me my pain in a dirty glass
(Yeah, you left him bloody, battered, penniless, and poor)
You know, I often stopped and wondered how you made it through my door
With my brother's new non-duplicate registry ID
Well you bit off more than you could chew the first day you met me.

You weren't the first to court me mister you won't be the last
Oh, I'm sure I wasn't honey, I know all about your past
Listen to the big shot with his pager on call
You spent most of those nights in my bathroom stall
(Yeah, you got him high, but you left him low)
Mind your own business, boy, how was I to know
That he was just a fiend and a no-good cheat
Well it's all in the past bitch 'cause now I've got it beat.

My dear, my dear
Darcy, Darcy my darling dear.

I'm really grateful to have dodged both the bullet of alcoholism and the bullet of paying some kind of high price in terms of my life or limb or someone else's.

I'm also grateful for the many meeting rooms I've sat in crying, talking, listening and learning about this awful disease and its many, many ill effects. Not to mention productive ways to recover from either the disease or growing up in an alcoholic home as I did...

Love is a Rose

I think we might've picked the rose. Sorry Neil!

Ok so going through old emails, sometimes romantic, sometimes sexy, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant emails, from an ex-boyfriend is a tricky business, however productive it may be in terms of book writing.

Especially when I come across snippets like this one from the New Englander from October of 2010:

"The quality of our dialogue gives me a lot of faith in us in every respect. I have so much respect for your ability to see yourself clearly and to tackle your challenges and to be willing to remain open even when there's potential for getting hurt."

Whatevs buddy. The quality of our dialogue, and it is some damn fine quality dialogue, got us nowhere in the end.

Maybe we forgot to pay attention to Neil's advice -- this song was one of many that we emailed to each other during that first year spent together but apart:

Love is a rose
but you better not pick it
It only grows when it's on the vine.
A handful of thorns and
you'll know you've missed it
You lose your love
when you say the word "mine".

I wanna see what's never been seen,
I wanna live that age old dream.
Come on, lads, we can go together
Let's take the best right now,
Take the best right now.

I wanna go to an old hoe-down
Long ago in a western town.
Pick me up cause my feet are draggin'
Give me a lift and I'll hay your wagon.

Love is a rose
but you better not pick it
It only grows when it's on the vine.
A handful of thorns and
you'll know you've missed it
You lose your love
when you say the word "mine".
Mine, mine.

Yeah, we mighta said mine one too many times. Guess we just didn't really understand that:

Love is a rose, love is a rose.
Love is a rose, love is a rose.

It must be some kind of cruel irony that it wasn't that long after we were geographically together that we started to grow apart emotionally, making me nostalgic for the version of together and apart that we had going in the first place...

Under Pressure

Everything feels a little subdued today, especially for the 40 and 50 something folks out there, with the loss of one of the most original artists of all time.

Bowie had so many looks and so many songs over the years, but it was this one that came to me today. Maybe because I am indeed feeling under pressure, what with my career path uncertain:

Pressure pushing down on me
Pressing down on you, no man ask for
Under pressure that burns a building down
Splits a family in two
Puts people on streets

It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher
Pressure on people - people on streets

Chippin' around, kick my brains 'round the floor
These are the days - it never rains but it pours
People on streets - people on streets

It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming, "Let me out!"
Tomorrow gets me higher, higher, higher...
Pressure on people - people on streets

Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love but it's so slashed and torn
Why, why, why?

Love

Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?..

'Cause love's such an old-fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure

Lucky for me, I got to visit my therapist last week, and she helped me name what I was feeling and see the possibilities before me.

Bowie did exactly that for so many people -- may he rest in peace while the rest of us work to make something of the legacy he left behind...

Breakdown

I'm sure I've mentioned before that I am working on a book. I've started numerous times before, but this time I feel like I'm really getting somewhere. I mean I'm sure it's just a shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott calls them, but if I could manage to get a whole book written I'd be pumped no matter how much editing it required.

A big part of this book is about the love story of Archie and The New Englander -- that relationship taught me more about myself, about love, about life -- than any that has come before or since. And for a while I think it was too painful to revisit our old emails and letters, but now I feel up for it. Now I feel sort of honored to see the story of us unravel on the page.

Heard this song today and felt it in some respects captured the gist of who we were and who we became:

I saw you
You saw me
That's when I needed you
You needed me
I kissed you
You kissed me
And thought forever yeah
We'd always be
Well I like you
You like me
Seems that we fit so perfectly
You make me feel worthy
And I've let you take care of me

Ohhh
We're alright now,
Gonna break down the breakdown
Move from where we stand
See what we don't want to see

I love you
You love me
Oh but lately
Somethings wearing on me
I've been growing
I've been changing
And seems like you're barely moving

There is nothing we can do to get past this
Nothing you could say
Baby please don't fret
Our time has moved passed us
I love you
You love me
Is it possible we love differently
You need me but I need to
Feel strong baby without you

It's more than possible we love differently -- it's a fact. It's also a fact, as readers of the book will one day fully come to understand -- that the way we loved each other may have been flawed, but it was also really beautiful...

The Best of My Love

Most of the time I'm psyched when my inner jukebox starts to play from somewhere in my subconscious mind, revealing what's brewing inside me.

This morning, at 4:30 am, maybe not so much. Especially when I woke up hearing this song, succeeded in going back to sleep, and then was woken up with the same song all over again half an hour later:

Every night I'm lyin' in bed
Holdin' you close in my dreams
Thinkin' about all the things that we said
And comin' apart at the seams
We try to talk it over
But the words come out too rough
I know you were tryin'
to give me the best of your love

That I do, New Englander, that I do. And every night, when I'm lyin' in bed now, I kiss myself good night, say I love you to myself, curl up with my heat sources, and go to sleep. Most of the time, I feel pretty content to go to sleep on my own, but sometimes I can't help but miss the best sleeping (and not sleeping) partner I've ever had:

Beautiful faces and loud, empty places
Look at the way that we live
Wastin' our time on cheap talk and wine
Left us so little to give
That same old crowd
Was like a cold dark cloud
That we could never rise above
But here in my heart I give you the best of my love
Oh sweet darlin' you get the best of my love, oh
Sweet darlin', you get the best of my love

That you did, New Englander, that you did...

I'm goin' back in time
And it's a sweet dream
It was a quiet night
And I would be all right
If i could go on sleepin'
But every mornin'
I wake up and worry
What's gonna happen today
You see it your way
And I see it mine
But we both see it slippin' away

I think it's safe to use the past tense here, sports fans: Slipped away.

You know we always had each other baby
I guess that wasn't enough

Nope, it wasn't. Hard as that is to understand, at least at that juncture in our respective lives, it wasn't. I talked to a woman a few weeks ago who helped me realize that, as she put it, I co-created our breakup:

"There was a part of you who would have been content to stay with him forever, yes?"
"Yes."
"But there was another part of you with the wisdom to know you weren't getting what you wanted/needed from him, yes?"
"Yes, but he also, he left me."
"Yes," she said, "But you co-created that breakup."

Which makes a ton of sense to me now that I no longer need that whole abandonment story to be mine. I did need it though, when he left, in order to grieve my old childhood abandonment wounds, because there was a lot of abandonment in my childhood: my parents, my sister, myself. I understand now that we were all doing the best we could under the circumstances, including me. I had to abandon myself to survive, but now I've returned, and now that I'm an adult, I'm never going to abandon myself again.

I wonder if this song is here (and refusing to go away) this morning to remind me that I need to give me the best of my love right now, so I can continue to feel more whole, and come to love from that place:

Oh, but here in my heart
I give you the best of my love
Oh, sweet darlin'
You get the best of my love
Oh, sweet darlin'
You get the best of my love
Every night and day,
You get the best of my love
Oh, sweet darlin' you get the best of my love
Oh, sweet darlin' you get the best of my love..

Freebird

One of my favorite pics of some freebirds!

After yoga class last night with my favorite Reiki master (who just happens to bear a resemblance to my first love, which I try not to dwell on but can't help but notice), I scrapped my plan to go the grocery store and came home and went to bed instead. I set my alarm for 6:45 am, fully intending to get up, as I normally do, for my Ashtanga practice.

Didn't happen that way, though. After a 4 am wake up that included cleaning up four days worth of dishes (I needed a rest in the kitchen after cooking up a storm while my kids were here), I went back to sleep around 5:30 am and then promptly hit snooze when my alarm went off. Again. And again. And again. Finally at 7:30 am, I turned it off and laid back down again, thinking I'd just rest for another minute or so before getting up. The next thing I knew, it was 9:47 am! Oh well. Rest and healing are the name of the game over here right now I guess -- who am I to fight it?

Once I managed to rouse myself, I decided a little winter biking was in order today, which is always such an amazing feeling.  En route to the Capitol square to teach yoga, my ride was enhanced when this classic began to play on the internal jukebox:

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.

But if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change, oh, oh, oh, oh.
And this bird you can not change.
And this bird you can not change.
Lord knows I can't change.

Looking at the lyrics, it's a wonder that this wasn't an anthem I sang after the New Englander spread his wings and fled the Midwest. Maybe the reason I didn't is that for so long, I wanted to believe that I could change that bird, or that he could change, or that somehow, someway, it would make sense for him to fly on back to me.

I think now, finally, that I can be at peace with his message:

Bye, bye, baby, it's been a sweet love, yeah,
Though this feeling I can't change.
But please don't take it so badly,
'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame.

But if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you'll never change, oh, oh, oh, oh.
And this bird you cannot change.
And this bird you cannot change.
Lord knows, I can't change.
Lord, help me, I can't change.

Lord, I can't change.
Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah?

Yes, after a couple of years spent grieving, I do believe I'm ready to fly high again. Today one of my yoga students commented on how much more open I am now -- my heart, my shoulders -- which it felt awesome to have someone outside of my healer peeps recognize.

Why yes I am a much freer bird these days, I felt like saying. Thanks for noticing!

Money Maker

Yesterday my friend and I went to see the movie The Big Short. Neither of us really knew what it was about going in, only that it was good. The movie didn't disappoint; it was about the financial crisis but it somehow managed to be clever and funny and poignant.

One of the songs in the soundtrack was this sexy song:

Shake your money maker
Like somebody about to pay you
I see you on my radar
Don't you act like you afraid of
Shh...
You know I got it
If you want it, come get it
Stand next to this money
Like - ey ey ey
Shake your money maker
Like somebody boutta pay you
Don't worry about them haters
Keep your nose up in the air
You know I got it
If you want it, come get it
Stand next to this money
Like - ey ey ey

Shake shake shake your money maker
Like you were shaking it for some paper
Took your mama 9 months to make you
Might as well shake what you mama gave you

Might as well! In the new year I'm focusing on trying to be in my body as much as I can, as well as opening the flow of giving and receiving, when it comes to money and my money maker...

Urge For Going

I'm on round two of the Whole 30 right now, this time with my son, and one of the many awesome things about being on this diet is the quality of sleep I get. Night before last I slept nearly 8 hours without waking up once, which is pretty much unheard of for me, and last night I slept even longer with just one brief wake up. So good.

This morning my friend and I were supposed to go to hot yoga together, but she decided to bail because unlike me, she wasn't tucked into bed with a book at 9pm. (So good. Love that I'm feeling settled enough right now to read -- I often find that I can't -- this is probably also partly a result of being on the Whole 30.) But I decided to go anyway, and saw a couple of people I knew there. Mostly though, as you do at hot yoga, I saw myself. In the mirror. And I heard the teacher's message about incremental change. About not forcing anything. About being where you can breathe.

I decided this would be the year that I stopped worrying about when my hip is going to open up so I can get lotus on the other side. This year I will just show up and practice, knowing all the time that the incremental change is happening. Or as the founder of Ashtanga says, "Practice and all is coming." Yeah it is.

At the end of class, this particular teacher always sings to us in savasana, and today, this is the song he sang:

I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row

I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down and winter is closing in

Last night at my son's soccer game I was talking to a woman about her desire to travel and be adventurous, to live by the ocean, and her husband's desire to be a homebody and work in the same lab he's worked in for 20 plus years. She said she didn't know what would happen when the kids leave home.

I told her I too had gotten the urge for going, many times, but haven't gone yet because my babies are here. I also told her about the man I had, who also got the urge for going, and so he went:

I had me a man in summertime
He had summer-colored skin
And not another girl in town
My darling's heart could win
But when the leaves fell on the ground
Bully winds came around
Pushed them face down in the snow

He got the urge for going
And I had to let him go
He got the urge for going
When the meadow grass was turning brown
Summertime was falling down and winter was closing in

Yes I did, have to let him go, that is. After talking with this woman, I was reflecting on how the things I thought I wanted/needed when I was with the New Englander, marriage, another child, are not things I really want or need anymore. She said: "You scared him away!" Maybe I did, but if I did, it was for a reason. Some part of me must have known that the only way to communicate the kind of commitment I wanted/needed from him was to insist on those things. They seemed SO important to me then -- to be able to have a child with this man I loved so dearly, to be able to marry him -- but now neither one seems important, with him or with any other man. I simply want love, companionship, presence, adventure, laughter, passion, comfort and ease. For now, I'm doing my best to offer all of those things to myself, my friends, and those that are appropriate to offer to my children, offer to them.

Somewhere along the way, I have faith that I'll get the urge for going, and I'll be able to go wherever it is my heart desires:

But she's got the urge for going
So I guess she'll have to go
She gets the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
All her empire's falling down
And winter's closing in.
And I get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
And summertime is falling down...

Unforgettable

While hard at work on my consulting project today, I saw that Natalie Cole died yesterday, and this song immediately began to play on my internal sound system:

Unforgettable
That's what you are,
Unforgettable
Tho' near or far.

Like a song of love that clings to me,
How the thought of you does things to me.
Never before
Has someone been more...

Unforgettable
In every way,
And forever more
That's how you'll stay.

That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am
Unforgettable, too.

This song fits this day for more reason than one: I am reading a book (in the car) called Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget. I am really enjoying it, as I do a good memoir, and it's good for me to read memoirs right now since I'm trying to write one of my own.

It's also a particularly fascinating read for me, the child of an alcoholic and a once problem drinker myself. Although blackouts weren't an ordinary part of my drinking M.O., they definitely happened, and it scares the crap out of me to think of the compromising situations I put myself in that I can't even fully recall. Many of these escapades were in Australia, but some were right here in Wisco.

It makes me shudder to think of the possibility of my children drinking the way I did, or God forbid the way my Dad or Uncle did, especially since I know how little influence parents have over children's drinking, particularly after they leave home. I guess all I can do is model a healthy relationship with alcohol and leave the door open for my kids to communicate with me about it, neither of which my parents did...

Like I'm Gonna Lose You

My kids and I had a lovely, mellow evening at home last night. I felt so grateful to feel such contentment and wholeness within our little family of three.

Unfortunately my poor daughter started feeling sick just before the stroke of midnight, which left me wondering whether I should go to the special two-hour, new year's yoga class I had planned to attend. I woke up early, and then went back to sleep and dreamt about the class. I dreamt I was wearing these super hippie flowy pants (that I would never wear). I dreamt about trees. And I dreamt that I was trying to get one of the teachers to go running with me (?).

I felt like the dream was a sign that I should go, and so I did. It was a little uncanny -- there was a woman there wearing the super hippie yoga pants I'd dreamt about, and there was a spiral on the floor of one of the studios made out of evergreen boughs (the trees I'd dreamt about). I didn't go running with one of the teachers, but I did get to take class with him and soak up his energy, which is always a pleasure.

The spiral was cool -- it was a place to let go of anything we wanted to let go of from the past -- and to light a candle for our intention, or san culpa, for the year ahead.

My san culpa is this: To show up to love in wholeness, and receive love in wholeness.

Yep, that little beauty came to me during the meditative/yoga nidra section of the class today, and I'm gonna carry it with me all year long.

Speaking of what I'm gonna do, this song has been in my head for days now, and although the message isn't perfectly spot on for my san culpa, it's about loving fully right now, so it's close enough:

I found myself dreaming
In silver and gold
Like a scene from a movie
That every broken heart knows we were walking on moonlight
And you pulled me close
Split second and you disappeared and then I was all alone

I woke up in tears
With you by my side
A breath of relief
And I realized
No, we're not promised tomorrow

So I'm gonna love you
Like I'm gonna lose you
I'm gonna hold you
Like I'm saying goodbye wherever we're standing
I won't take you for granted 'cause we'll never know when
When we'll run out of time so I'm gonna love you
Like I'm gonna lose you
I'm gonna love you like I'm gonna lose you

In the blink of an eye
Just a whisper of smoke
You could lose everything
The truth is you never know

So I'll kiss you longer baby (Super excited to kiss someone again this year!)
Any chance that I get
I'll make the most of the minutes and love with no regrets

Let's take our time
To say what we want
Use what we got
Before it's all gone
'Cause no, we're not promised tomorrow

So I'm gonna love you
Like I'm gonna lose you
I'm gonna hold you
Like I'm saying goodbye wherever we're standing
I won't take you for granted 'cause we'll never know when
When we'll run out of time so I'm gonna love you
Like I'm gonna lose you
I'm gonna love you like I'm gonna lose you

Speaking of loving, I was lucky enough to share the beautiful experience at the studio this morning with a dear friend and fellow Rumi lover, who posted this on Facebook afterward:

Without a net, I catch a falcon
and release it to the sky,
hunting God.
This wine I drink today
was never held in a clay jar.
I love this world,
even as I hear the great wind
rising,
for there is a grainy taste I prefer
to every idea of heaven:
human friendship.

Amen to that. So grateful for human friendship. And you can bet your ass I'm gonna show up for love in wholeness and receive love in wholeness in the coming year, when it comes to myself, my children, my friends, and my new man...