Open Arms

Continuing to process the tough feelings brought up by watching Eat Pray Love yesterday, I decided to try a little home remedy with the same prescription.

Eat: I made myself a delicious Italian dinner complete with a really yummy glass of red wine. I can totally see how eating like this can help heal...

Pray: I did the forgiveness meditation with Jack Kornfield. It has three parts -- forgiveness from others for harms I have caused, forgiveness for myself, and forgiveness for others who have harmed me. The movie (and of course the book on which it is based) deals most prominently with the need to forgive oneself. And it is huge. It also has two components -- the need to forgive yourself for harming, betraying or abandoning others, and the need to forgive yourself for harming, betraying or abandoning yourself. I think it was the latter that brought up the most sadness for me last night.

Love: With my current love interest so far away, I had to turn to music to feel the love as I crawled into bed last night. And it was this song that really spoke to me. The version that is on my ipod is a cover by Low, but I couldn't find that version on you tube. Which is just fine, because the original by Journey is amazing:

So now I come to you, with open arms
Nothing to hide, believe what I say
So here I am with open arms
Hoping you'll see what your love means to me
Open arms

Living without you, living alone
This empty house seems so cold
Wanting to hold you, wanting you near
How much I wanted you home

But now that you've come back
Turned night into day
I need you to stay...

I also stumbled on this little gem on youtube -- could Zack be any cuter, expressing his love Journey-style? I don't think so!

Borderline

Having written 65 posts to date, I have to say I'm surprised that this is the first appearance of the material girl. She was a huge formative influence on me, but when I heard this tune today, I heard something different than what I heard when my cousin and I used to sing Madonna songs and write her lyrics in the sand.

This time around, what I heard was an insightful take on being pushed to the edge by love, on continuing to give even when we don't get what we need in return. This, I think, is the true tragedy of a failed marriage: both parties feel pushed to that same edge, both want to shout:

Just try to understand
I've given all I can
'Cause you got the best of me.

Borderline
Feels like I'm going to lose my mind.
You just keep on pushing my love over the borderline...

Check out this classic video of Madonna -- totally makes me miss the 80s!

I also saw the movie Eat Pray Love this afternoon -- an excellent watch for anyone who is themselves dealing with the monumental losses sustained both within a lonely marriage and once outside it. I think my favorite takeaway from the movie is the suggestion that it is ok to continue to love and continue to miss those we are no longer with -- but if we can do that by sending the person love and light and then dropping it, rather than attaching to the pain or the longing, we can leave both parties free to engage in something that holds more promise for happiness.

Shadowboxer

Having once again waded into the morass that is my conflicted feelings about my family, I can feel the harsher part of me return and I can feel the temptation for my heart to close. I am feeling it and letting it pass through me rather than allowing it to take hold, but it occurs to me that if ever music was a marker about how I feel, the distance from the "Something Good" self to the "Shadowboxer" self is pretty great:

Once my lover, now my friend
What a cruel thing to pretend
What a cunning way to condescend
Once my lover, and now my friend

Oh, you creep up like the clouds
And you set my soul at ease
Then you let your love abound
And you bring me to my knees

Oh, it's evil babe
The way you let your grace enrapture me
When well you know I'd be insane
To ever let that dirty game recapture me

You made me a shadowboxer, baby
I wanna be ready for what you do
I been swinging around 'cause
I don't know when you're gonna make your move...

Then again, it isn't really far at all. They're both a part of me -- the shadowboxer and the bright-eyed singing governess. And I trust the governess will be singing a more hopeful tune again very soon.

Bittersweet

Today I took my kids to my Uncle's farm to see their cousins. It was a beautiful day, if a little on the cool side for my liking, and in many ways it felt nice to be there. One of my favorite moments was driving the Quad Runner through the woods with my daughter and my niece holding tightly to my back. As they told me which way to go on the paths around the cornfields, sighting the farm from a distance, they shouted to each other: "Is that our farm? That's our farm!" So sweet.

And then there was the bitter. I hadn't been back to the farm since we had the memorial for Mary, who is buried at a cemetery near the farm. I went with my sister and my cousin (her husband) to the graveyard to see the bench that now serves as her headstone. Unable to talk with him about the incredible loss he'd sustained, I laid down on the bench, and let the tears come.

Running back from the cemetery to the farm, I could hear Big Head Todd singing:

It's bittersweet, both and sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet
It's a bitter sweet, surrender
It's bitter sweet, both sweet and bitter
Bitter and sweet, It's a bitter sweet, surrender...

Mary always loved that song.

These Boots are Made For Walking

Fall's here today, the way it always arrives in Wisconsin, much too suddenly for me.

Lots of other people were really psyched about the cooler weather, and I found a couple of reasons to celebrate it myself. When my son asked me to play soccer with him, as he does every day that he's with me, I had at least twice as much energy as I've had on the hot, humid days just passed.

And then there's the real reason I'm willing to tolerate a drop in temperature: boot season! As I pulled on my honey-colored cowboy boots this morning, my feet were happier than they've been in months, with the exception of my pesky slow-to-heal pinky toe that I broke back in May.

Yesiree, Nancy Sinatra had the soundtrack for my day today -- and what a hottie she is in this video:

Are you ready boots?
Start walking!

9 Crimes

Up late talking on the phone tonight, I put the ipod on shuffle before going to sleep. I found this number by Damien Rice to be a hauntingly beautiful melody. This is the first time I've heard it, and I'm going to have to give it a few more listens, but here are some of his powerful words:

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I'd do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It's the wrong time
For somebody new
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse

Is that alright?
Give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright?
If you don't shoot it how am I supposed to hold it
Is that alright?
Give my gun away when it's loaded
Is that alright
With you?

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I'd do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be cheating on you
It's the wrong time
She's pulling me through
It's a small crime
And I've got no excuse

As I drifted off to sleep, I felt grateful for my freedom to explore something new, and compassion for those who are in the position he's singing about here...

Something Good

This morning one of my favorite work buddies busted me listening to this song when he walked into my office. When I turned around he said: "Oh my god! You're glowing! You had sex!" And then I had to explain to him that actually I haven't, recently, but I do feel like I have, and I don't mean the empty one-night-stand wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am variety either. I mean the languorous, lingering variety. I can't fully explain it, except to say that I have the sense that all of what I've wanted in a man, in a relationship, in a marriage, in a family, is coming my way.

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked miserable past
I must have had a moment of truth...

The Sound of Music is one of my favorite movies of all time, but youtube let me down a bit in terms of having a clip of Maria & the Captain singing this song to each other. So we'll just have to make do with this one of Julie Andrews -- and I had to turn the volume all the way up to hear it:

For here you are
Standing there
Loving me
Whether or not you should

So somewhere in my youth
Or childhood
I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Sometimes the comments on youtube make up for the crappy sound or the lack of the version you want -- and you have to love this comment on the page from this song:

"Julie Andrews is more than a legend. She's a UNICORN."