Sunday, November 30, 2008

The Little Guy is Irving, the other guy is Bernard


They sit on our television and watch us, judging our mind corroding TV choices.
' Hooooo... Girls Next Door WHooo? Really? You do realize that Animal Planet is hosting it's annual All About Owls Festival, and the History channel has a positively dynamic production
of Textiles in the Middle Ages?'
Irving blinks once, bored.
Bernard scoffs in disgust and settles into his feathers.
' Featherless fools', he mutters.

Friday, November 28, 2008

It's A Beautiful Stillness & Strange Love that Aches the Mystery Bone

Let me hold your heart like a flower
I will give you angel fire in return
We are strong. We are the good ones...we lie together all in green
They dance to the lute two at a time
They play mother-me-do all day

Hold me, my dear young one, hold me.



- all quotes from Anne Sexton's poem Rapunzel* Blog title my own

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving of Saved Souls

This year, I am going to focus on One Gratitude. The center of my heart began to thaw when my son Dakota Wolf was born, continued it's long melt in the arms of Ian Oliver and Lola Moon and is finally through the long winter by the side of my husband, Mr. Curry.

I am grateful that Mr. Curry and I stuck it out. Things were very, very bad for a while. It was a very hard two years. Two years that entailed moments of complete despair for both of us- financial, mental, emotional, and the tremendous, soul sickening guilt that you experience when you fail to offer the kind of life to your children that you desperately want for them.

I am grateful for the four years of therapy I had in my early twenties, helping me move forward backward step by forward skip- skid back, straighten shoulders, move forward. In this ridiculously frustrating manner I worked through the abuse of my childhood because I was determined to give my son a beautiful life. This therapy, prayer and a stint in AA (began at 17 and something I will always be grateful for, it was free therapy when I had nowhere to turn) taught me something essential: I am a survivor, I always look for a way up, and even when my own life feels like a tunnel of waste with no end, I can always help someone else. Being of use, even if just to the earth at your feet, is essential to spiritual health, in turn, mental and emotional. This foundation gave me the strength necessary when Mr. Curry became sick and left me and became a person I had never known.

At the time we did not know he was Bipolar. At the time I just thought the man I knew and loved was truly a person I had never known and did not love me anymore, and I had no money, no idea what I was going to do, a shattered heart and panic attacks. This could have gone so many ways.

The way it went is a long and hard earned story, but the piece I am focusing on here is what I am grateful for: Mr. Curry did not give up. Momentarily, in places, he did. This is human. He never gave up the novel, only long paragraphs he couldn't stand to read. Many people run from mental illness. I have known and lived with them my whole life. They spend their whole life running from it's stigma, it's sufferings, and most importantly it's healing. They refuse diagnosis, medication, therapy. Mr. Curry had many reasons to do so, which I won't go into here. He did not. He got help. He accepted help. He asked, eventually, for help. He took the medication, he made changes, and began to grow as a person.

Here is where the miracle occured. I am a person that has been around struggling people my whole life. Actually the only people I lived with and knew closely were people who profoundly struggled simply to survive daily life. Thriving was something I never saw. I knew it from literature and movies only. It was a concept I had to believe existed out of pure desperation, stubborness and hope. I grew up with alcoholics, drug addicts, abusers, anxiety ridden depressives, bipolar untreated, skitzophrenia, and all other kinds of sadness and despair.
I know all about it. How it works, how it looks, sounds, smells, feels...and what the end of the story is.

Mr. Curry went and defied the storyline. He got help, he did what was suggested, and he changed.

Read that line again.

I can count on one hand the people I know who have done this when confronted with serious personal struggle. I know there are families of people out there who live this way as a matter of course, but I have never been of them or around them. I thought, until Mr. Curry, that I would have to live out that particular story line on my own. Survivor turns to Thrive.

I am so grateful that while we worked, we set boundries. I am grateful that while we worked, we expressed love even under the most trying and painful circumstances. I am grateful that we now reap the benefits of that, have one of the best friendships I've ever seen ( the best I've ever known), a soulful connection- in addition to an entirely adult, exploratory and ellecit sex life that completely defies the fact that we are also the parents of three beautiful young children.

Mr. Curry has shown such humble willingness to change that it humbles ME. It makes me want to be better than I am. He has been courageous. That is not a word I use lightly. To meet your personal demons head on, in the broad light of day in front of the people you love and want to look strong and whole in front of= to do that and not. give. up. ? That is a miracle.
Like a man recovering from a coma, I have seen him every day become stronger, smarter, able to use his limbs and brain and spirit more readily and engagingly, trusting himself more and more to meet the challenges of life. To experience joy.

In Mr. Curry and my own family, we have a history of madness, alcholism, lost souls.

Yesterday, we took the kids to the canyon. It had been raining ferociously, and there were signs that said do not enter, no hiking during rain. We've gone to this canyon, both of us, since we were little kids, so we know it's still safe. We trudged through huge mud puddles and hiked anyway. Lola fell in a puddle and was soaked. I fell in the stream and was soaked. We all, eventually, got completely wet, muddy and disgusting, and Dakota picked up a crawfish that was pregnant. The shiny maggoty looking babies disgusted him, and he threw the crawfish back in the stream immediately. Trees towered over our heads, wet and green, slick and potent with smell- the air was incredible. We splashed and jumped and touched the grasses, the trees, the water.

This is the primal soup. Where we begin a new history, with new stories, new life forms making way from the water to the shore to the sky.

I love you Mr. Curry.

" Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it "
- Bible

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Published Poems

Three of my poems just came out in the Winter edition of the Potomac Journal, and you can read them Here.

Glamis, Cali: Dunes and Fire

Goodbye !

Mr. Curry takes me


" There was the heat of the sun, the slow climbing to the crests and the gentle going down into the hollows, over and over- and the lively, insistent pressure of his arm about her....they were not really moving at all, that the dune alone whose sharp rim they were now traveling was the same dune they had left behind much earlier... "


We are far away from anyone, anywhere, anything.

" ...each grain of sand sent out a fragment of the polar light shed from above...the ereg with it's
sea of motionless waves lay all about them. "


























- Quotes from Paul Bowles novel, The Sheltering Sky

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Saturday: Glamis, California


Mementos of the family desert trip. Hovering around 90%, no wind, beautiful clear skies and family in a large circle comprised of cars and motor homes, bikes and quads, children and adults.


Myself with my Father In Law, also Mr. Curry. One of the sweetest, hardest working family
men you will ever meet- a man who has never been anything but kind and welcoming to me, a man who makes it a little less painful not to have my own father.
Mr. Curry took me for a ride in the desert dunes in the dune buggy. We had one of the most romantic, sexy & escapist times of our marriage alone in the enormous rolling hills of gold sand.


Dakota and Ian survey their domain

Lola and cousin Sara were attached to each other for six hours by this bungee cord

Mr. Curry works with his Uncles and Dad to fix the bike
Did you know they sell ice cream in the desert? And you thought Santa wasn't real.



The sun was melting our skin. Smelting.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Magpie's Nest


Last night Mr Curry and I were the
happy attendees at the premiere opening of 101.5KGB's Dave Shelly and Chainsaw movie, No Brainer.

Mr. Curry won tickets online, and we
are long time listeners and huge fans of this morning talk show trio, going since 1990. This is Mr. Curry and I
with Dave, the lead on the talk show,
who is a sweetie, funny, smart and has a very sexy voice. Mr. Curry was unhappy to see that our picture was taken just as he gestured toward the man how large his penis was.

Or, he was showing him how to take the picture. ;)


Thursday, November 20, 2008

Le Chic, No Speak

Have you ever been speechless? I was last Saturday. Can you guess why?* answer at end :)

Auntie Vesna, Myself and Julie-Woolie. Jules has been my best friend since we met in kindergarten at 5 years old, in Clairemont. We roared through our teen years together with a ferocity unrivaled since Axl Rose hit Hollywood Boulevard, and made it out alive. She's now preggo with her second baby! Love you Julie!
My Dakota, his best friend Evan in the background, Myself and Jules, partaking. Because Mr. Curry was left to take the pictures, not everyone was included :) He tried! But men (at least my man) just don't think to say ' Now let's get all the children together for a picture! ' But I think my fabulous sister in law took plenty, so I'll scoop some of hers.:)
Myself, Mr. Curry, and Jules
Reef (the kids cousin), Grandpa Ed, Kristi and that's baby Jacob Yohan, having nursies
My Uncle Jack, with his famous cane, natty hat, natch

Happy Birthday to you, You look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!
Kristi, babe Jacob having tootsies again, Auntie Michelle (this is Mr. Curry's sweet ex-wife, Ian's mommy) Auntie Vesna, and in the background Uncle Pat (Mr. Curry works for his Uncle) and Antonio, family friend

* If you guessed ' Your amazing husband Mr. Curry threw a huge surprise party for you waaay after your birthday celebrations were over and you had forgotten and everyone totally tricked you even your children Ian Dakota and Lola, then you guessed RIGHT! Holy shit. That. Was. Awesome.

Fin

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

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