Amusing, perhaps.

It seems that we are fighting over the house. This is a situation that surprises me to no small extent. Our house is small, it is possessed of a rickety foundation which makes marbles race across the floor in uncertain directions. It is old, but not in that oh how charming are these architectural details sort of way. No, it is more along the lines of the plasterlock seems to be failing. The details of the house’s shortcomings have often been held up as evidence of a life lacking in certain standards of excellence. Standards possibly including a heterosexual wife, although that has not been said in so many words.

Nevermind.

Tonight as I write, the living room is bedroom to three boys, one on the couch and two on the floor. The bedroom I’m sharing with Boy is full of girls this evening, two of them snuggled on the queen sized bed. They are all so tired that there is not even a whisper as they lay there, and this is because we went to Disneyland today. We got there early, but even earlier than that we all piled up over at our friend’s house so that all the kids who wanted to could apply makeup… which I believe was rendered in a method called scene. Scene or emo, maybe. I can’t be sure.

We all watched Julie and Julia, which is why I’m writing like this. Julia Childs washes over me sometimes, and I turn crisp and a little saucy. I know it’s not really her, in fact, when I read Harry Potter to my kids Mrs. Mcgonagall sounds nearly the same as my inner Julia Childs. I love channeling Minerva Mcgonagall. She is severe and yet amused. She drives her students to take themselves seriously. She is kind but businesslike about it.

I am hoping to become a woman of stature, a woman who grows into my wrinkles and grey hair like they are scepter and crown. The mother of the kids asleep in my house tonight and I joke about growing a set of chia balls. But it really isn’t masculine power that attracts me. I want to be the woman that everyone takes seriously. The sort of woman who understands a little bit about the blood mysteries. This sort of woman does not get into fights over anything, much less her home.

My life has changed drastically. Dramatically. There are moments when I feel, inside myself, like the grand canyon, split in two. On the one cliff stands a pine tree getting whipped around by a strong and remorseless wind. On the other cliff, not that far away … oh, something else. Because even though they are beautiful, it’s not the cliffs that seize my attention, it is the gulf between them that seems to go on forever. I look down into it and my knees get weak, and I panic. It’s misty blue down there, and windy as all hell and exactly the opposite of land filling in between the two cliffs. I feel that and I remember all the things I loved about being Eduardo’s wife. I remember all the things I did in the hope of lifting him up so that he could see what I loved in him. I feel that and I remember what I felt the first time I realized that my body worked, when I realized that my grandfathers terrible lechery didn’t destroy my sexuality. I see that and remember how sweet it was breastfeeding my babies.

It is intense, brothers and sisters, the feelings are intense. I do not know how people live through feelings like these, but they do. Sometimes I have admired their writing, the ones who have lived through. That’s how I know they are out there.

What Eduardo is hoping is that I will agree to get a studio apartment and then I can spend the day with the kids over here at the house. I can feed them and spend time with them and love them and teach them. And then when he gets home from work I can leave and go live in my studio apartment until the next day.

That I cannot do. I have raised these kids, for better or worse I have raised them with my days and my nights. I read to them at bedtime, I get up before them in the mornings. These days feel more important to me than all the diapers I changed and all the times I put my breasts into their mouths to feed them. I am bossing them into themselves in the best rendition of Minerva Mcgonagall I can muster up. I am expecting them to do their chores and I am making them take notes on movies so as to practice note taking and discover that they are qualified for college. I am showing them what it looks like to start earning your own money. I am modeling growth and responsibility to them. I am jogging with them. It’s glory and it’s not a 9-5 position.

There is a part in my soul that is terrified that he could somehow prevail and I would never sleep in the same house as my kids. It makes no sense to me at all. I’m trying to prepare myself for them sleeping at his place, for the nights when they will be away. But to be a daylight mother? Is there a union for that job? Really, it feels like a nanny position to me. The suggestion of it feels disrespectful.

It isn’t the house I’m fighting over. It is having a place that has room for my kids. It is having a place with a yard that we can put a dog in. It is having a place that I can hope to afford that will fit us all. It is reading to them at bedtimes. It is true that my time as a wife has ended. My time as a mother has changed dramatically from the toddler years. But my job as a mother is far from over. It is not a job I will walk away from. They need me. I need them.

Over and over these days I stumble into coming of age movies and I recognize myself in that terrible struggle. I want to be brave enough to fight my dragon. Will I be? Yes, yes I will. But I’ll tell you that I’m terrified at the horrid details of it.

So the other day I emailed someone who was doing a radio show about date rape. I co-teach a women’s self defense class, and the topic is near to my heart. I wrote to tell him what I thought should be mentioned on the show, and he wrote back asking me if I was willing to be interviewed. Luckily that only happened yesterday and since the interview was this evening I only had a day and a half to fester. Because I said I would be a guest on the show. It took a lot of energy to stay grounded the last day or so. My ego wanted to tell me disaster scenarios. Then my ego wanted to helpfully tell me I could run away. Even 15 minutes before the interview, my ego was hanging around projecting an earnest air while telling me that I could bolt and avoid certain disaster.

I used to think ego was only the egotistical stuff. The oh look how great I am voice. Look at my fabulous accomplishments! Between you and me, I wish I heard that ego voice. My ego tells me what a pathetic loser I am.

I have a life coach I’m working with, and she kept busting me on my ego. I was shocked and then (I know this will come as a surprise) deeply irritated. Because I had done all this ego work, and it simply could not be my ego. In fact, if you give me a topic about myself I can justify my ego’s shitty opinion so skillfully that you won’t think its my ego either. You would just feel sorry for me because I’m such a hot mess. It took me four weeks to figure out that I’m driven by my ego. My ego tells me that I will fail, or that I shouldn’t even bother, or that I don’t want to. My ego keeps all my hopes and dreams safely away where they can’t be attained. It was a terrible blow, but here I am, just a few weeks later, taking all these little risks.

And okay, I didn’t sound like a polished radio veteran. I said “exactly” a few too many times. But I said a lot of useful information too. And I feel gloriously proud of myself for being brave enough to risk embarrassment and just get out there and use my voice. Seth Godin talks frequently about doing the work being more important than if it’s perfect, and today the imperfect work I did feels like a success.

When I was a kid I would sneak into my grandparent’s bathroom and make potions out of their medicines. I got into trouble for doing it, but it was compelling enough that I would do it anyway. Their bathroom was all white, and it smelled like old people. It had an enema bag hanging up in the corner, all nasty and red, though at the time I didn’t know what it was for. I asked my mother one time about it and a shadow passed over her face as she told me what it was. The bathroom door was right next to my grandparent’s bedroom doorway, and I can’t think of the bathroom now without thinking of that bedroom, about my grandfather standing in the doorway making me pull my pants down so he could look to see if red public hairs were growing in yet. Oh, some man was going to like those red pubic hairs someday he would tell me, like he was giving me useful knowledge instead of getting off on my naked mons.

I would mix together campho-phenique and foot powder and maybe put an aspirin in and anything else I could find that seemed mysterious. While I was doing it I would hold the intention that I could get far away from the terror and shame of my situation but somehow magically not have to leave the people involved. It was a childhood wish, made by a girl who was desperate beyond her years.

Later when we moved away from Missouri and I was safe in Minnesota (except for when the grandparents would visit) I would roam the bluffs for hours seeking magic. I loved everything, the granite peeking through the grass, the red earth that peaked out of the leaf litter when I scrambled up a forested hill, the thin trunks of the fiery red sumac bushes. I wanted to use them all, to combine them, to make them a composite that would change my vision, but I wasn’t an artist or anything else for that matter. No matter how much I wanted to be a witch I was just a sad, fat girl, too smart for my own good, too skilled at keeping secrets and no one would say a word in my defense.

Well, I’m at a point in my life where I want to welcome that sad, fat girl home. I can’t go on like this, with my soul shredded so many different ways, shredded not for the lofty insane goal of immortality in a magical story, but for survival of so many terrible moments. I feel like the grief is too much to face, but I want all of me to have a life.

Last night I picked California Poppies that I have been growing in the front yard. They were starting to get a little fungus so I picked off all the leaves that were frosted white and the few that were turning bronze and orange. I washed the roots and chopped them up, the roots and leaves and stems and flowers, marveling as I did that about how the buds pushed out the fiery orange petals as they were cut open. The flower petals felt like the softest thing imaginable, with no friction between my skin and the petal, and they tasted like the lightest green of spring. I scooped up the pieces and poured them into a large pickle jar, and packed it tight. Suddenly I was that girl who was compelled to mix medicines together, and I was so delighted to feel myself that I took pictures of the jar and the flowers and the knife and the cutting board. The pictures seemed to show me to myself, a woman finding myself in a simple kitchen procedure that finally feels like magic. Then I poured Everclear over the jar of flowers. But I didn’t have enough to cover the plants, and if you know anything about tincturing you will know that all the plant material needs to be covered or it will rot.

A few months ago, in a terrific rainstorm, I looked down into the gutter and saw something rocky but translucent. It was about three inches in diameter, and I thought it was an impossibly big hailstone. But it turned out to be a clear glass globe which had rolled in the gutter for long enough to be pitted and scratched. I showed it to everyone and told them the storm had given me a crystal ball. It fit perfectly in the pickle jar and held the poppies down exactly to the Everclear level.

I took the jar outside and left it sitting in the moonlight. In about six weeks all the constituents of the poppies will be imparted to the alcohol. I will decant the tincture and use it when I feel afraid. I will maybe give a few bottles away to people who like the idea.

The divorce is on. I’m scared to death at the thought of how I’m going to support myself, I’m deeply mourning at the thought of not having my kids with me all the time. I’m full of doubt and excitement at the thought that I could somehow make the life I want to live.

The first baby step is that I do not have to listen to tragic songs of doom any longer. Whether I’m right or not, I think they are passive aggressive attempts to make me pay for my bad behavior… behavior which I don’t see as bad. Further, I think they are bad for our kids to have to hear. Maybe I will find a shrink to weigh in on whether or not that is a legitimate concern.

Who am I to want to be successful? Who am I to want to have a hot sex life? Who am I to want to be taken seriously? Who am I to want to fit in with people I respect? Who am I to want to enjoy life on my terms? Who am I to think I have something useful to add to the conversation? Who am I to think I know what we should be doing politically in this country? Who am I to be so opinionated about empowerment and self defense and fighting antiquated ideas? Who am I fight for myself? Who am I to think I can grow and change and it’s that its okay to make waves and let my needs and decisions affect other people? Who am I to want friends that I respect? Who am I to want to live my own damned life?

Where did this fucking idea come from, that I’m supposed to live quietly and without make waves and without letting people see who I really am? I would really like to know the answer to that one, because I have internalized it to the point where I sometimes don’t even allow myself to see myself.

I’m questing for visibility in the next 40 days, even if that means I end up making myself look like an idiot who doesn’t know anything at all. Better an idiot than a shadow.

Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD from teamfresh on Vimeo.

Yesterday the kids and I were talking. Boy loves to ask relational questions like “who is your favorite god in Percy Jackson” and so we were discussing the most recent literary variations of the Greek Old Ones. At some point I started telling him that the gods had more depth than he realized and I mentioned that Dionysus is also the god of madness. But when I looked it up it seems that it is not of madness but of mystical ecstasy.

Watching this video of a deep zoom into a mandelbrot set which I got from Kottke, my brain (you know, that part of me that over thinks everything, that doesn’t feel safe or credible unless it knows EXACTLY what is happening, the part of me that gladly reduces every emotional experience into a set of sentences that are more comfortable to process) gave up. It happened about 8 minutes in, and I had already passed through boredom by that time. In fact, I was only encouraged to continue by the post that I read about the video.

I love it when my brain gives up. Over and over I’m drawn to the mystical ecstatic side of religions. I don’t even like religion, and yet I will discover the hidden tradition of Sufism or Kabbala or Gnosticism and be charmed by them. But my brain is really the only thing that has ever brought me attention. School was effortless for me. Except math, and that was because I never really knew why I knew the answers. They just came to me at the right time. I suppose I heard the material and without my conscious effort it just came back up when I needed it. Math on the other hand, was a struggle, a shameful reminder that I wasn’t really learning anything important, like the tools to learn or the discipline of acquiring knowledge.

Quite awhile ago now, I acquired a name for myself that highlighted these two different sides of myself. I got it in a vision, which is the language of the mystic. Basically, this name said to me that I was not one woman, but two, with each side opposed to the other so obviously that there was a clear dividing line. As they say in the field, the idea resonated with me. I had long been using the only tool I thought I had, which was my brain, to investigate the mystery.

One thing my current struggle has shown me is that my brain is not infallible. I know it sounds crazy and full of hubris, but I thought it was. I thought the trouble was that the rest of me could not follow all my my brain’s great ideas. My brain, I’m starting to realize, is my ego. And far from letting go of it, I have used it as my measuring stick.

I’m not sure how to go about letting go, and because insanity runs in my family, it’s scary to even consider it. But I’m so locked up that when I get really upset I have to take notes on what I say because I won’t remember it later. I’m so locked up that I didn’t understand my sexuality until I was nearly 40. I’m so locked up that I will calmly tell people that I’m a writer with a world class blockage that won’t allow me to actually write anything I want to write and just walk away from that statement as if it didn’t cause me terrible pain. I can’t live like this.

There are so many guides from all the mystical religions and they are crowded around me in encouragement. Menopause is a second change to grab your destiny. Like so often before, I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and looking down at certain death or madness. At least that is what my brain is telling me.

I find myself drawn to things I would have told you weren’t me, lately. Somehow this last few years has led to me feeling decidedly girly. This is odd to me since I’ve always had a romance with what I thought was macho energy. Growing up I hated all the girl stuff, but really I think I just didn’t fit in because I was gay and since I didn’t realize that for what it was, I hated a place holder. The place holders are falling away, and that is a good thing, but who I am still isn’t in focus. It’s kind of a lonely feeling, like cleaning out the closet and then not having anything in there.

Today is Superbowl Sunday. My kids and their father are at his father’s house today because he always throws a Superbowl bash. I respect that man more than any other person, living or dead that I have ever known about. I respect him more than my literary heroes. He’s getting old too, and I want to be there at the party with all the people in that family that I love. But my husband is going to be there, and he has been so terrible in his grief and loathing that I want nothing to do with him. He invited me to go. He said some crap about how everyone wants me there and how I’m welcome. But I don’t trust him enough to believe even that.

This is my chance in life to find out what I’m made of. I’ve paid everything I had for this chance, and even though I’m grieving, I’m not stupid enough to miss the value in it. One of the things that I get mad at my husband about is that heartbreak hurts, yes it does, but a heart broken open is also a gift. And living life being pissed at the opportunity available in each moment seems like a small and ungrateful choice.

Juno wrote something today that really slapped me in the face:

And so must, therefore, not do anything pleasurable and frivolous like knit, or cautiously approach the wild animal that is the sewing machine, or watch a movie. Or spin, or hang out with people or even sometimes go to yoga (I noticed about 6 months ago that if I screwed up or there was a problem at work, my first impulse was to cancel class even if staying at the office would change NOTHING. Which is pathological). Read. Write. Think. Whatever pleasure looked like that day.

Housework is OK with the very stern and Puritan ancestral spirit who makes these decisions, which makes housework unbearably punitive. TV and the internet are frivolous (fun!) but also wasteful (punitive!) and a bit bad for my brain - so I am passively punishing myself, which that little vicious force is OK with.

I know that spirit! It reminds me of another spirit I’ve tangled with too. I think they are related, but this one, this nasty punitive coldness seems older somehow. Having paid my price, I’m not likely to let this spirit control my path, but I’m really quite angry to even discover it lurking around.

Also, my kids are growing up. To see the fierce excitement Boy has for modding Nerf guns or the shining moment when Girl notices that taking on a responsibility feels good, feels like a surging river that overflows it’s banks and destroys all the little villages in it’s path. The power and joy of the water gathering force and cleaning the banks is the essence of life, and the villages were getting a little run down so they really need to be moved back anyway. Once you rebuild you can still walk to the shore, yes. But I’m sad anyway, because the years of breastfeeding them, of protecting them have ended. That time was my favorite part of my life.

I can’t put into words where I’m going, and I don’t know what it’s going to be like when I get there. I’m trying to find a way to shut up the bitter spirit who having no fun itself wants to suck all the fun away from everyone else. I think the best way to do that is to offer fun to it, with a generous heart. I think that is the best way to welcome my kids into this new phase of our lives too. The thing we know for sure is that it isn’t going to look anything like I planned.

That’s right, I’m tucking my tail between my legs and the children and I are taking off for northern California… or central anyway. We are driving up the 395 on Tuesday and camping somewhere around Bridgeport. Bridgeport is famous and if there had been blogs back then you would know why. Torn and I backpacked near there back in the day. It was a beautiful trip and also we nearly killed ourselves with our impressive greenhorn skillz. We will not be backpacking this trip because left to my own devices I would get us lost and eaten for sure. I really want to go back country hiking with the kids though. I’m not sure what to do about that. Perhaps I need to train Boy as a trail blazer. Probably better to train both kids really. I find that training my kids with the helpless female act works really well. I think I’ll buy a topo map and then flail around enough that it kicks in their innate disgust with me. From there it’s just a short trip to Proving That I’m an Idiot and presto, they are excellent navigators.

But I digress.

We will be exploring Bodie, California. The kids have seen it before, but they have no memory of it so it should be fun. I think I saw there are hot springs near there so we are going to do that too. Bodie is located in the Sierras so it’s really beautiful.

There is a memorial at Manzanar so we are going to check that out too. I’m slowly exposing the kids to human rights issues so it will be a good place to start a discussion. They actually have close friends whose grandparents were interred there so they have already heard of it.

Oh, and there are really old bristlecone pines up that way so we will probably hike amongst them for an afternoon. They are over 5000 years old. I’m pretty excited at the thought of hanging out with the old trees. We will have a talk about clonal vs oldest single living organisms too because I saw this site a bit ago and got all confused about what was the oldest thing.

Girl will soon be going to school (she really should have been going this semester, but I selfishly wanted to play with her) which will limit our roadtrip opportunities so we are going to do a lot of camping in the next few months. I’m hoping to take a separate trip to camp on the beach south of Santa Cruz.

I might blog a little, because I have my iPhone of Happiness, but I might not because we might be having Too Much Fun. Actually, if I do blog, I’ll make it a multi media and group blogging event so you might hear from the kids themselves.

Have big fun out there, and think gloating thoughts of us as you are cozy in your warm houses at night. I will be thinking gloating thought of you if we find the hot springs perched on the side of the Sierras.

*Cuz I try to be honest about such things.

What’s the one thing you should not do when you are having a panic attack?

Listen to all the terrible things you are telling yourself.