I’ve been battling an unusually stubborn bout of kidney stones as of late, and thus have spent a lot of time not blogging, or writing, or doing much, really.  It’s at times like these that I come at least a bit closer to understanding Dickinson’s famous line: “After great pain a formal feeling comes –”.  There’s a kind of focus that comes with the kind of stillness that comes with pain.  Lately, I’ve turned that focus to the small beauties of the world, the tiny pleasures, the things that may seem commonplace but when viewed through another lens can take your breath away.  A picture post, then, seemed necessary.

I start with a photo from a trip I took to Mammoth Cave around this time last year.  I start with this photo now not only because of its general awesomeosity, but also because, apparently, this is why I’m having such a time with kidney stones — the karst geology which makes giant caves possible also gives the water here an extremely high concentration of calcium and phosphorous — and thus, my kidneys stones.  I’m infinitely fascinated by this and will probably blather on about it way too much at some point soon.

The entrance to Mammoth Cave

The top of the purple people bridge -- or, rather, the Newport Southbank Bridge, which connects Newport, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio.

This is proof that I walked all the way across the bridge. And back. With no cane. At normal speed. Hooray!

Aw, shucks. Golly.

"I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy... "

This pile of books will eventually, hopefully, be assembled into a course packet by magical elves with magical elven shoes.

An illustration from the back of a student's mid-term. Awesome.

Another mid-term illustration. Another awesome.

Ah, the jelly bean. Specifically, the Jelly Belly. How delicious are you?

The back of the Carnegie Center, which is probably my favorite place in Lexington (well, that doesn't sell shoes or wind-up toys).

There are these gorgeous trees on campus that leave gorgeous red leaves all over.

Alice B. Toklas slows her wrathful destruction of the world long enough to make this impossibly cute face.

I’m going to retire to Cockermouth, in Cumbria, England.

No shit.

Yes Please?

it’s beautiful.

xx

(my google skills astound me)

Butt of a joke.

But…(insert scary news here).

In trying to get my thoughts together, I was posed a question by dh after I told him that something had to give, and that if I didn’t find that SOMETHING soon, it was going to be me. He asked me why it was our relationship or me. And for a long time, I didn’t have an answer.

But today, while I was running, it dawned on me that he can still push alcoholic buttons for me. A couple words from his mouth and I feel completely and totally insane, desperate, sometimes suicidal…like I just drank again. In our last argument, after I didn’t complete my run, I stood in the shower and thought about cracking the bottle of gin above our refrigerator and drinking it down as a representation of my own, personal white flag. My own, “I! GIVE! UP!” That is a dark and scary place for me. A place I don’t want to live in, visit, or even think about any more.

The company I keep today cannot push those buttons, because they didn’t know me when I was HER. The other me. They only know what I am now. WHO I am now. Those friends who DO know me from the glory days (hahahahahahah) do not push those buttons for me. They have been unconventionally kind and forgiving.

I have to be clear and say that I don’t think dh pushes my buttons on purpose. I don’t even think that he knows that he is doing it. I think it is instinctual, from ex-y. HIS survival mode. Given my past history with men, verbal altercation is probably the area in which I am least equipped. And most vulnerable. My bright pink underbelly. Exposed.

Now that he is not drinking as well, his barbed comments are sharper. The drunk, ” You’re boring. You’re sucking the life out of me,” hurt far less then what has been thrown at me as of late. He knows this, he said. At times I feel like it is too little too late. I ask him where he was a year ago? When I would’ve done anything to save us.

I told him it was not whether or not I loved him or not, because I do.

But it is about whether I can live through it or not.

We were 14 and 13 the last time I held your hand. Frozen in time and Washington D.C.’s wintery crispness, the green of your bomber jacket and the pink of my cheeks stand sharp against the pale sky. Fragmented by the knobby gnarled trees and their lingering fingers, shivering as they wait for spring. Your hand was warm, grasping mine firmly – fingers interlocked – the smell of tobacco gently seeping from your skin to mine.

We were the best ages in those days. You, too young for machismo and sarcasm; me, yet unfettered by insecurities and ugly words. Both of us raging against innocence before our 8:00 curfews.

For a second I wish I had access to the exact details from those days. The look on your face, the smell of your skin, the sound of your laugh. The slow smooth way your Spanish wrapped around me and nestled in my heart. I never told you those things. We were eons apart.

I remember the days we would make a run for it. The calls to your school secretary (it never failed to amaze me that they took my word that I was your mother) stating that you were sick.  I remember the giddy way we’d hold our breath as I dialed and spoke – shh! shh! SHHH!!!ing each other as I tersely parted with as few words as possible into the receiver as you crouched beside me. I remember the way we’d flop onto the couch with relief, separated only for a second until you grabbed my hand and we ran, laughing, to the metro.

We spent those days wandering around the mall, in and out of the museums, as many as I could get you into. There was something about standing next to you in the darkness, gaping in awe at the sheer size of the blue whale in the Museum of Natural History that sticks to me. When I think about those moments now, it’s almost as if I could reach out in to the dark and touch you, stuck there in the past.

That winter was really our last moment together. I came back that next summer and became entangled with your brother. Briefly. For which I am pretty sure you never forgave me. He was never the same to me as you. Older, yes. Which makes me feel more shallow than you will ever know or I will ever get a chance to confess to you. I will never forget all the moments that I tried to look behind the swoop of your black hair into your eyes for forgiveness, but that sweep, it hid you well. Hid you from me, heart, hands, and soul.

And what was there between us after that, really?

Time.

Distance.

The frantic pangs of adolescence that blurred all those days and days and days until you found yourself standing on a porch with your girlfriend and your unborn child and her infuriated ex-boyfriend, a gun pointed at you.

And I? A world away on some dot in the Pacific feeling the news of your death freeze me to the clammy tile floor, breathless. Regretting that I put myself in your brother’s hands instead of yours. What I would give to find myself tearing down the sidewalk outside the Smithsonian with you again, laughing ourselves into hysterics as we wove in and out of the hotdog vendors, inebriated with the freedom and possibilities of just one day.

One day I’ll meet you there. Bring your bomber jacket.

Today I bow my head. Seattle Police Officer Timothy Brenton was laid to rest today. Their is a lot that can be said about this but all I want to do is bow my head, and say a prayer for officer Brenton’s family. I do not write well enough to convey my thoughts and so I will leave it with a moment of silence and a lifetime of remeberance.

Schon

It’s really amazing how gripping and powerful anxiety is. It manifests itself in so many ways: higher blood pressure, dreams, changes in sleep patterns, changes in mood, lack of productivity. It’s just amazing. It’s an emotion, a rapid succession of specific nerves firing in specific directions to produce specific hormones that alter your body’s functioning. That’s all it is. Seems controllable when broken down into its smaller components and yet…sometimes we’re grappeled by it, consumed by it, completely at its mercy.

I’m supposed to be working on my new project right now. And this anxiety is keeping me from doing anything productive. I’ve been sitting at my computer for 1 hour staring at a word document with 1 paragraph that was written 1 week ago. And I’ve added nothing to it. Nothing. When I think about what to add, my mind goes in different directions: all the other documents I have to finish…or even start! This project, that I’ve started because of my gut feeling that it will flouris, has stalled.

When I shared these anxieties with a good friend recently, she reframed my anxiety. I’m not a person who’s in too deep and can’t get out. I’m a person with a dream that has a lot of potential, a dream that I care about so deeply that I want to reach my goals and surpass them and be as successful as I can. When she said that, I realized that somehow this passion has been turned around, turned against me, and is now functioning to perpetuate the anxiety about maybe never reaching my goals. Self-fulfilling prophecy I guess, because look at me writing here and spending less time on my project still.

Sometimes it seems so silly, like if I know what I’m doing when I do it, then why can’t I just stop? And sometimes I feel it to be very serious, something I can’t control and that maybe my fears do have some realistic merit. Let’s hope the silly-side kicks in and wins out. I really need this to work.

p-nut was still nutty at 3:30 pm

sorry, i don’t have much to say, and i’ve really just been taking my crap pictures while i’m bored. fall is so pretty though. so they’re not ugly, they’re just not good.

:’D

i’ve eaten four apples today.
this was number one.

death has never looked so good.

This morning, I came across this article. Now, I realized the inner feminist in me would have strong reactions to this article, so I took my time with it, read it twice and decided to let myself react after I had sat with the contents for a few hours. So here we go….

What the heck?! Ok let’s get the first issue out of the way: the end. If that man needs his wife to give him tea that he’s perfectly capable of getting himself just to boost his gender identity and self-esteem, there is something very wrong with him. Aside from any societal gender roles and expectations or any feminist-ish beliefs I have, that much emphasis on just one aspect of life to determine how good you feel is never, ever healthy. That guy has problems.

Moving on.

I think this article really clearly highlights the issues that most women struggle with day in and day out. The guilt and inner pressure that because she’s not working she should make up for it in other ways, having the house neat, tidy and organized so he has a comfortable place to come home to, that nagging feeling like she “owes” him something even if he never in any way indicates this are all nothing new to women. So it baffles me when men who stay at home are suddenly struck with this thought that they think is inspirational and completely unique to their experience. That feeling of not really knowing your role and how you belong in the relationship, the family and the community is constant, in your face and once again, not specific to men being in that role.

Mulhern, the First Gentleman of Michigan, says that he’s having a hard time figuring out his role, that he never wanted to be “first lady”. How is that any different than if the roles had been reversed? Do women actually want to be second string? Many women I’ve spoken with, including those from my mom’s generation, say no. Maybe from prior generations women might answer yes. But you have to wonder, why would they say that? Is it because they’re raised to believe that it’s correct and that if they weren’t the supportive side-kick that something would be “wrong”? Well isn’t that what’s happening to these men here? Men are conditioned so strongly to believe that they have to bring in more money that when they don’t, something feels “wrong”. Women feel that same “wrongness” every day that they have to give up their career for family too.

It does also make me wonder how much of this is also evolutionary and biological. Technically, we’re on this earth to spread our genes and make sure they survive. That’s it. Because of our developed brains, we’re able to do more with our lives than just reproduce and make sure our kids don’t die. Well most of us are able to. But with the original set up, the females took care of the kids and the men went to get the meat. Biologically, that’s how it works out. So is there something genetically ingrained in males to feel like they need to bring something into the family instead of just doing things within the family? Perhaps, with the way the women’s movement is going, we’re hogging up all of the roles. If we have the children and we bring in more money than the men, aren’t we really making men obsolete? And is that what they’re responding to when they become confused, feel “wronged” and unsure?

If the issue really is more genetic than societal, then we’re really screwing with the natural order of life by pushing the women’s movement. What we should do instead, is change what we value in our lives. I’m sure a housewife (or a domestic engineer, as my mom so brilliantly calls herself) would feel much happier, satisfied and like things are “right” if raising chidren, tidying the house and cooking were highly valued jobs. And not just valued by her male partner, but by society in general. Real easy, I know.

I’m sure I’m missing something and maybe I need to sit with it longer than a few hours to see what else there is. But honestly, I’m not impressed with the new perspective. I don’t have any more respect for men staying at home than women staying at home. It’s the same very difficult, highly respect-worthy but very undervalued job, regardless of gender. Instead of complaining about their “unique” plight, these men should appreciate all the work and struggles their mothers, grandmothers, sisters and aunts have gone through all without asking their husbands to take out the trash only so they can feel more feminine.

p-nut was still nutty at 5:11pm

I seemed to have lost

All the words I’ve ever known.

Nothing comes to mind,

When I want to say it all.

Words fail me on moral hazard and creativity just now–in fact, words fail me on about every topic today, so I just put some letters of the alphabet into the image and called it a day.

This series can be read about HERE.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHY CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION