Cycles...

A little tipsy and a little tired, but the moment must be marked somehow. We have reached the four year mark (on the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year by the way) and it has been an interesting few years to say the least. We gave ourselves a year and then decided that extended separations in the form of military service might just be a good idea. Which, of course, they certainly were not. The whole first year of training was basically a giant crisis followed by another year of crisis as I dealt with the fact that there was still no way out of the hell I had signed up for. There have been times when the easiest way was most certainly to part ways and make the best of differences created and differences found. But, the best by far would have been lost. The times when I realize that no one in the world travels the same channel quite so well as him. Or the times daily that we finish each other's sentences. The fact that we both consider the grotesque and the risque completely useful devices in conversation, and that our humors are pulled from the same muse. Crazy though she is. Until lately, we have even had our downswings and upswings in just such a way that one of us can pull the other one up from whatever mire they have stumbled upon. Recently has been harder than perhaps even the year virtually apart what with the feeling of forever with the army and the addition of prescribed nonsense for Tom. But we have made it. We have made it through the horrors of mothers that should have been...but weren't. We have made it through the dismay of family and friends. In fact, we have more than made it. We have discovered what it means to be of one flesh and one mind. We have become a fused person, and we are infinitely weaker apart. I have seen over and over what unconditional love means and what it costs to offer it and to receive. I have cried and laughed and felt like dying and received the same enough to know that neither one of us will ever ever leave by choice. There is the pattern of eternity budding in our graft now and only death will show what waits for us beyond the life that we will so gladly spend on each other.

fate

Things do not carry on as they are supposed to. Plans are derailed and lives are lost and regained at alarming rates. I was to be a devout the rest of my life. To music; to God. I sit on the brink of paganism and complete burnout with one quavering thread holding me to any sense of reality. My poor love. My only love. Monogamy is not supposed to mean the only relationship of any kind. It means you don't sleep with other people. But such is the lot dealt to us in this meagre period of our lives. Old friends are changing their faces so quickly I find myself casting about for what was just there. For the old comforts and reassurances. It is all empty though, and we can only pray that it will be filled again. Only to be lost? There is no faith left in me, although there is grand reverence being born continually. I meet God in the animals thronging this place and the grasses for miles and miles. This is supposed to be idolatry, but who can care when it is breath to starved lungs? God has left the halls of churches and the minds of his son's followers. And these bastard children of such a thoughtless legacy are confused and bitter. We want the old rhythms and the comfortable liturgies. We want to know that our deaths are sealed with the stamp of His Blood. We want to despise this earth and our bodies with the rest of the believers who know that this is passing like the grass of the fields. But then, we look around and realize that this is all we have. And that it is beautiful. And that God has been waiting for so long to look us in the face with grandeur beyond imagination.

The longer lenten season

The cycles of my life continue to refuse the specificities of strict calendar time and wander into more of a timeless frenzy. I can see at last the conclusion of this rather nasty and painful cycle of my life, and, as with all others, it brings to mind where I have been and where in god's name I might be going. The ever provocative idea of "community" remains aloof as I find myself once again either estranged or out of touch with past friends and not imagining much long term contact with the aquaintances I've made in the past few years. Dan is so much gone that I don't get responses to e-mails, and Mary is my last hopeful beacon...although I talk to her less than some of the people I despise at work. I guess I always was a beast of convenience. As far as plans go, I feel about the same now as I did when I was sixteen: clueless, anxious for the stage of today to be done and over with, and ready to do the most extreme and probably foolish things possible. I seem hell bent on throwing my life into one demanding institution after another and then chafing under the promises I more than willingly made. So what's up next? Well, I am looking towards possibly being homeless and jobless and penniless just to make sure that I don't make the same mistake again. To hell with accolades and accomplishment. Give me freedom and ambiguity. And I am mostly serious. Except for the nagging tick in my brain that keeps pulling me back to the ideas of making something useful out of myself. Maybe I don't believe in benefiting humanity any longer, but that doesn't change the nature of being part of humanity and not knowing what else to do really. True freedom does not after all exist. It could be that this realization is quite simply all that can be found in the essence of community. We're all in this mess together, and maybe some among us can find a few candles to light up the muck.

Eternity...

Is it too much to ask for? I wonder many times. It hinges on a succession of "ifs" that can have no answer, but it is the summation of whatever I could call my aspirations. To experience every moment and every aspect of existence on this planet from the inception to the firey end. To be honest, I would be happy to have the experience of the universe, but I can only hope that some limitation might increase the possibilities in my favor. Doubtful, but it is undoubtedly the one question I would ask of the God I still believe in: what has all this been? For everyone and everything. I would want to be the animals and the grass and the stones. The water and the sky and the stars. I would want to be the first cells that split and the first creatures that chose land. Where humans came from, of course, but also the even yet undiscovered worlds of the sea and of space. I want to see the world from every creature's eyes. It certainly is not that I want the omniscience of God. I ask only for the small corner of this one planet. Granted, we have many stories about the troubles that deities have taken over our little rock, but it is still a minute part of a theoretically infinite universe. So is it really so much to ask to know absolutely everything about our small existence? To have the sentience granted me bathed in every moment and every particle. To know if the magic I feel in the unutterable beauty around me is felt by all. To know if it is even greater than I could imagine. I suppose I can guess at the substance behind all that I feel; but I ache to know. To feel it through something beyond myself. To have hope that when my body withers away so quickly and so soon that there is something I long for after my infinitesimal part. I want to see the birth of the planet in its violent chaos or its sudden completion. I want to feel the drama of odds choosing this or that species and this or that combination of elements. It is a story that no one has the pages to and it is the one story I crave. Not alone I am sure. But maybe if I am specific with the deity of power, I might have some chance once my single heart stops beating to find resurrection in the small history of our planet. If there is an after. If there is a God. And if He listens to the inconsequential yearnings of His creation. This is my request.

Exponentials...

It is hard not to feel invaded. To find privacy stripped away and respectful distance a mirage of the past. Two girls raised under entirely different auspices shoved into our laps. Not unwelcome, but difficult. And a mother who needed harboring but remembers too well her dream of always being the harbourer. Never ceasing crises nip at each other's tails with Tom and I caught in the vortex. Domestic trifles are the summation of days and hours of conversation. And my thoughts are turned to concrete matters of moving boxes and diet regimens (ignored by children raised on hot dogs and macaroni and cheese). We are all scattered haphazardly on different paths struggling to stumble along together.

Family: what is it good for

I have had more opportunities than I would have liked to ask for these past couple weeks to observe my newer family's dynamics. A family that comes together to lavish approval on the unwed mother, pretending they have not damned her behind her back. A family that brings the behind doors aggression into the light of day at seemingly random occasions. Throwing around accusations of attempted murder because of hurt pride, and telling the firstborn his life is over without the military. No matter that he's the only one that has even tried for something like a dream. Fuck dreams, something even remotely like stability. This is what the patriarch of the family claims to hold above all else, and yet he disowns one at the slightest provocation and then turns around with beaming face to the name of "grandpa". Ah well, it is a story too old and too overtold to dwell on for long here.

Because there is the matter of how this all began. How a man like Tom's father has not just one accidental child, but keeps having them and pawning them off on women made permanent babysitters. I watched him last weekend looking around with so much pride with the obvious thought in his head, "well, it all worked out in the end didn't it?" Now let me say, being happily married to one of his products, it is hard for me not to agree with him on many fronts. I am incredibly grateful that he was so incredibly dumb and selfish. Not only a great partner for me, but two unbelievable women for mothers in law. Not too bad. That said, I have also been watching the three sons in our house this past week and I wonder how great it all did work out. He has left deep gashes on these psyches that have distorted and contorted the personalities of these three in very different, yet very heartbreaking ways. Dalton is the simplest example, bearing nearly perfect imprints of his father's personality. Exploding almost randomly and assuming that what feels like embarrassment is actually just righteous rage. He demeans those around him (I am currently exempt, though I have no doubt my time will run out one of these days) one moment, and then is the most likeable kid the next. Jordan, on the other hand, has a bizarre mixture of spoiled laziness and remnants of harsh mistreatment. He is both neglected and abused while somehow given so many of the objects he wants that he gets the worst of all worlds. I have yet to see him finding balance within himself. He doesn't have the heart to finish a task or get himself out of his various pits for reasons that have both to do with his ridiculous father and for the lack of a strong mentor and guide. He is alone and he is too stimulated by the video games and cartoons that are left to raise him for him to even notice. Tom is almost crippled by incessant self-questioning ("am I my father", "have I fucked my life up", "am I worth it..." etc.). He was raised to be the ultimate progeny but was also made to feel utterly worthless wherever he deviated. He has internalized the faults of his father and the screams of his father. The bruises of his childhood are still visible on his inscape that is beautified despite the ravaging. Almost because of the scars.

But who can separate these complexities? Who can say what these children would be without their father? All I can say for sure is whatever there is to be proud of in these three (and there is so much), their father cannot attribute to himself. The look of pride I saw on his face was devastation to me. How dare such a fool allow himself to take claim of what these children have made of themselves. The fact that they have escaped utter self-destruction (some better than others) has only to do with their ability to take the ash of mistaken parentage and form for themselves what they could to survive. May they continue and may he wipe the smug satisfaction from his undeserving face.

babies...

Having just ruined my husband's day off with a nice little hormonal spew, I thought it might be a good idea to coalesce the rumblings in my distraught brain with the comfort of words. I can only hope that this is slightly less naive than the pro/con lists I used to make as a young girl (okay, I was making them all the way through college), but what really could be more naive than thinking that getting pregnant on a whim to be a good idea? Tom and I are looking at about a year apart regardless, and I'm sitting here thinking a baby makes sense? Sure, I find myself getting jealous (sometimes insanely so) of Megan and her love child. Okay, let's take a moment with that one shall we, in the security of this never being read. So, I find myself in a relationship that is both secure and loving. We work. I am jealous of our years ahead and want only to keep living with him and learning from him and loving him. And we are so careful about planning when and where a child should fit into this; not wanting to wait too long, but trying to make sure we are ready (if that is even possible). Now add the damned biological clock to this mix, then watch me watching Megan fuck some fling (her vows that she was in love with him are slightly tarnished by the fact that she was pregnant within a couple weeks...wouldn't you claim love in such a situation) without protection and act surprised when she comes up pregnant. Surprised but oh so happy. With this "love of her life" who she's going to grow old with and her family ready to go. It doesn't matter that they have no career options, are going to have to move in with her mother, are so young...nothing. The deed is done, so she is allowed, even encouraged to feel happy about the situation. While I sit spiteful and jealous as hell in my barren corner. Relatively we have money enough and a wonderful relationship to share with a child, but we wait. And we probably should. Look at me, I can't even give real remorse for hating my sister-in-law because she has what I want. If that is not the definition of immaturity, I'm not sure what is. I even gave my excuses and reasoning for hating her before I offered this lame apology.