tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69775389089167097572024-03-05T17:01:48.150-08:00Small SoulBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-92231715756646253142016-01-18T18:24:00.000-08:002016-01-18T18:24:30.049-08:00I Don't Like That Word. How is it possible that I've only written two blog posts in the last year? A few things come to mind, involving a degree, a job, and a wedding. When I first started this blog, I was in the throws of a break-up, the emotions of which lent themselves to a great deal of writing, which was immensely healing, and led me to believe quite fully in something my high school art teacher used to say: "You can only create in crisis." That break-up was then (four years ago) and this is now, and while I've been feeling the urge to return to this creative space, I'm acutely aware that currently, there's no real 'crisis' in my life. So, can I create?<br />
<br />
I don't like the word 'creativity'; it fills me with a low-grade fever of annoyance and panic. There's a lot of pressure to be 'creative' these days; self-help gurus (not to mention MBAs, social-workers, famous authors, and fast-track entrepreneurs) are screaming it from the rooftops, it seems to me: To be happy in this life, you must access your own personal well of <i>creativity</i>. You must spend a significant amount of time engaged in <i>play</i>. You must fight, fight, fight against the daily grind that can catch and squeeze you tight. What's in danger if we don't do this? Our stress hormones, our connection to spirit, our very soul. <br />
<br />
If you're anything like me, you find this call to creativity more than a little frightening; not because you don't agree (you do - I do; we're creative people, at bottom), but because an immense about of PRESSURE accompanies this call. I don't even have children yet, and still I'm conscious of how swiftly each day's hours slip by, full to bursting with work to do, errands to run, rooms to clean, dogs to walk, food to be made, love to be offered. <br />
<br />
Here's the difference between the blog-writing Beth of 2012, and the blog-writing Beth of 2016:<br />
<br />
<b><i>2012</i></b>. Then, I was single, and working a job that, when you really got honest about it, only took up about 20-30 hours of the work-week. I had quite a bit of time when I could live the self-important life of a twenty-something-year-old: walk and think. Go to coffee shop and write. Stay up till midnight (often later) because no six-o'clock alarm would ring. I had a tiny, drafty apartment that was my own, a teaching gig that kept me living a student's life, and plenty of time to dwell deep in 'crisis', when it came (or when I created it out of thin air).<br />
<br />
<i><b>2016</b></i>. Now, I've got a real, live, full-time teaching gig. Like, I've got to be ON at eight o'clock every weekday morning, come rain or shine, come bad hair or lack of sleep. I no longer have those indeterminate hours for designing my own schedule; my alarm DOES ring at six a.m. Every. Single. Day. I've also got a husband to love and support, more bills to pay, and (knock wood) not a whole lot of crisis from which I'm supposed to bloom. <br />
<br />
Here's what I don't like about this comparison: The 2016 blog-writing Beth comes off as a little bit...boring. At least, that's how I feel when I stack her up against the looming expectations of <i>CREATIVITY</i>. But I don't think her life is boring. It requires more energy, yes; it demands greater doses of reality and responsibility, but it's also quite beautifully peaceful, sturdy, and full of promise. Full, when you begin to redefine the word, of very creative living. Consider the following:<br />
<ul>
<li>You are creating something when you pour cream into your cup of coffee (<i>this is the way you like it</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you help your children dress for school (<i>this will keep you warm today; that color brings out your eyes</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you kiss your beloved good morning (<i>Love. Love is what you're creating</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you answer that first e-mail or talk to your colleagues (<i>communion, or kinship, or a link in the chain</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you take the dog for a walk (<i>look at the sky, dog; listen to the birds who are singing for us</i>)</li>
<li>You are creating something when you make dinner (<i>I don't care if it's boxed mac & cheese. Nourishment is pure creativity</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you wash your face before bed and look in the mirror (<i>hello, you. I know your unadorned face</i>). </li>
<li>You are creating something when you turn off the light, and close your eyes, and fall asleep (<i>a body ready for another day of living</i>). </li>
</ul>
One of my goals for 2016 is to practice being 'creative' more regularly, and sure, for me that means producing more writing, my medium of choice. But it's also going to mean giving thanks for the chance to create (to bring forth more good life; let's call it that) in all the seemingly 'boring' moments of every single day. In that way, I've no doubt, I'll feed my small soul. <br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
-BethBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-59908291180212974122015-04-09T17:53:00.000-07:002015-04-09T17:53:22.984-07:00"With No Divided Heart" (For Ivan Doig) Let me admit to something: It has always silently bothered me when celebrities are publicly mourned. I don't want to sound harsh, but that kind of grief -- the grief felt by fans for an actor or a singer or an activist they loved -- has always felt somehow...affected. Inauthentic. Tinged with self-interest. <i>If you didn't know her</i>, I want to ask, <i>why do you think you care so much</i>? I see the sadness at the loss of art, or philanthropy; I certainly see the sadness in the loss of a single human soul. Yet I still wonder: where does this public grief really belong? And is it true?<br />
<br />
Ivan Doig died today. His death has made me confront my own irritation at this kind of grief -- that stranger grief, it might be called. I didn't know Ivan Doig. I haven't even read all of his books. As a matter of course, there are more deeply devoted fans who deserve a moment, or longer, to really share their sadness. The west, the world, lost a good artist today. A writer of certain grace. And I am struck by my own hypocrisy, and a shadow of self-interest, when I say: his loss has deeply saddened me.<br />
<br />
My mother, an avid Doig fan, first introduced me to Doig's novel <i>Dancing at the Rascal Fair</i> when I was eighteen years old. You know those books (I know you know) that you remember almost viscerally? Like, you can close your eyes (or even keep them open you remember it that well) and remember the <i>feeling </i>of reading that book? The way the kitchen was silent around you as you stood at the counter eating with one hand and holding the book with the other because you <i>just, couldn't, stop, reading</i>. The way your legs went numb beneath you on the bed because you'd read so long they'd fallen asleep. The quickly diminishing pages until the end, and the harrowing truth of finishing, of no longer inhabiting that world you'd welcomed as your own. You were a part of that book. You were very nearly one of its characters (or you daydreamed you were, as you went about your real-life days. You daydream it still, when something calls the story back to mind. The sheered sheep in the fields along your running route; the old farmer who you know has lived beneath steep mountains all his life).<br />
<br />
<i>Dancing at the Rascal Fair</i> was that kind of book for me. Even today, after years of reading other books, it remains on a short list of life-changers. There have been a select few writers who made me see how I really wanted to write, and Doig is one of them. So it stands to reason, I see, that I should feel a sense of shock and sorrow at his passing. I didn't know him, but still, he changed me.<br />
<br />
I suppose this is an apology of sorts, to all those who I once judged for their public grief. You deserved that moment. I understand you now. Here, too, is an attempt at an answer to my own question: The grief we feel for strangers is undoubtedly true. For at the end of the day, in the still rooms of our hearts, the places even our dearest loves do not visit, we are not grieving strangers -- we are grieving faithful friends. The artist, the writer, the activist, they created for us what we could not create for ourselves. They said what we could not say. They don't know it, but often they are the <i>only</i> other people we let into those still rooms. <br />
<br />
Strange as it might sound, I will think about Ivan Doig on my wedding day. I will think about him in the months leading up to the day, as I prepare myself for a new country of life, as I've thought of him in the crossing over to so many new countries, new seasons, of life. I will think about this passage from the early pages of <i>Dancing at the Rascal Fair</i>:<br />
<br />
"Do not emigrate in a fever, but consider the question in each and every aspect. The mother country must be left behind, the family ties, all old associations, broken. Be sure that you look at the dark side of the picture: the broad Atlantic, the dusty ride to the great West of America, the scorching sun, the cold winter, and the hard work of the homestead. But if you finally, with your eyes open, decide to emigrate, do it nobly. Do it with no divided heart."<br />
<br />
It strikes me that I have been trying to live according to these words for the past twelve years of my life. They have taken up residence within me, and I hear them ringing when I am called to make choices, to forgive, to let go. They are not easy words to live by, but they are clear, and they are steadfast within me. <br />
<br />
Let me admit to something: I am saddened at the loss of Ivan Doig. I did not know him, but he knew me. He knew something of the silent corners of my heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth. <br />
<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-50032056955151723432015-04-03T19:01:00.000-07:002015-04-03T19:15:38.654-07:00This is Just an Update. Hello. It's been a good long while since I've written anything here. How to begin? This is the question that has stopped me every single time I've thought about writing. Here's how I'll begin: by just beginning. I'll catch you up:<br />
<br />
Since I last wrote, a few significant things have happened (such is life. Much can happen in a single year, in a few brief months. Pay attention to this -- you are doing a LOT, even if you feel like you're not.).<br />
<br />
1. I got engaged. I got engaged on a day late in August, on a dock on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake. I got engaged to a good, kind soul. I don't need to say any more than that. This soul is the most unexpected blessing of my thirty-one years. I am better because of him. <br />
<br />
2. I went through a semester of student teaching at the high school that sits kitty-corner from my second-story apartment. The school where my good, kind soul of a future husband teaches. It was just as scary as I thought it would be. And a thousand times more life-changing. I cried regularly, like once a week. I also looked forward to walking into that bright classroom every single day. I've carried that feeling with me ever since I left. I will let this feeling carry me into more classrooms, and my single hope is that I will be sustained by this feeling in my career for a good thirty years or more. (Who knew, when this life began, that purest joy would be such a messy mix of vulnerability and sacrifice and humor and connection and success and failure? I didn't know. I thought joy meant only happiness and ease. I know better now, and I'm grateful.) <br />
<br />
3. I started to plan a wedding. As a self-declared 'non-girly girl', I am surprised to find that I fall easily into the wedding planning trap. So many dresses! So many choices! So many things to do! But my daily goal, when I write my goals, is simple: to plan a wedding that feels true. I will wear a cardigan when I get married, both because I like cardigans and because I'm getting married on the first day of winter. Light on the darkest of days. <br />
<br />
4. I got a job. Not a teaching job -- not yet. But a very good and very challenging job at a place dear to my heart. I get to help people and create things and I am supported every day. For this, too, I am grateful. <br />
<br />
5. Like you, I've lived a lot of everyday days. Woken to the alarm, walked and fed the dog, made coffee and washed the sleep from my face. Gone to school, to work, to the grocery store, and home. Cooked dinner, washed the dishes, swept the floor. Answered e-mails, made phone calls, paid bills. All of it in the name of everyday living, and it has occurred to me that everyday living gets a bad reputation. The bed was soft, wasn't it? The dog was happy to wake with you. The coffee was hot. The money bought the first asparagus of spring. I'm not preaching; I'm guilty too. Here's a pledge for us two to take: make the everyday holy. <br />
<br />
This is just an update. I'm still here, still thinking about writing, and I promise to write again. Until then, here's to the big things that can happen, to the everyday living, and to what comes next.<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading,<br />
<br />
BethBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-90277842289191164842014-07-07T14:28:00.001-07:002014-07-07T14:28:35.065-07:00PrecipiceI am a lucky fish. My family belongs to a parcel of land on the eastern shore of a large mountain lake. (We belong to it; it belongs to us--the distinction here is often blurry. Land owning in a place that wants to be wild is tough business; there are grasses to cut, critters to herd away, silt and sand to be filtered clean. But this is not a post about land owning; that's a post for another day. This is a post about precipices.) I have been going to this lake every summer and long weekend in between since I was just a bean in my mother's womb, and before that even, since I was just an idea, an unknown life. I have been going to this place, and letting it heal me in minute or momentous ways for a very long time. Each time I go, summer fall winter spring, I have a deep desire to let the lake water do its healing work; <i>heal me heal me heal me </i>I whisper, keening. <i>Help me help me help me</i>. Help me get done what needs to get done. Forgive him. Forgive her. Forgive me. Help me to be a better daughter, sister, friend, human being. I assume that because I am where I am, praying where I'm praying, that my simple requests carry more weight, and will be somewhat heard, somehow. The earth and the water are purer in this place, so my thoughts seem purer. At the hour of every departure, we each make one final visit to the water, together or in turn, and send out our final requests: take care of this place. Take care of us. Take care of those we love. Give us strength, and courage, and heart. I have a habit of closing my eyes and listening as hard as I can listen, trying to memorize the sound of the waves against the rocks. <i>If I can carry this sound with me</i>, I think, <i>then I will be safe</i>. <br />
<br />
I was at this lake just a few days ago. I was standing waist deep in its clear water. At this time of year, that water is still cold, but warm enough for swimming. Our place is a simple place; we don't have a boat with a motor or a dock that stretches out far enough for diving. When we get in the water to swim, we do so gingerly and with devotion, feeling our way across the clean rocks and letting ourselves get deeper, deeper, until we're ready to make the final plunge and duck under. It takes a bit of bravery, this ducking under, even on the hottest of days. The water takes us in slowly, and as much as we say how nice it would be to simply take a running jump and just get it over with, I think we take a silent pleasure in the way we do things, in our slow immersion. The slowness is a kind of respect--for the lake, for the division between our bodies. As we walk slowly in, we are asking the lake to accept us. <i>Take me in</i>, we ask. And it does, time and again. And when we are waist deep, on the precipice of the plunge, it asks something of us. <i>Come in</i>, it says silently. This is the tough part. This is the part that demands bravery; a gulp of air, an expansion of chest and lungs and heart, a letting go of all thought except this: <i>I'm going under</i>. <br />
<br />
Under you go. There is the startling cold of the water and tingling skin and the rushing sound of your own body getting swallowed up. Nothing else matters, but this. And then up, up, up towards the light (you can see it through the fine delicate skin of your eyelids, through the fine delicate skin of the water) and you breath in again, you are alive again, you are in a new place. You've crossed the precipice.<br />
<br />
When I left the lake this time, I began a new tradition. I didn't close my eyes and listen as I've always done. Instead, I tried to memorize the feeling of going under. I would want to remember this feeling on other days, during dark moments when I can quite literally see beyond my own darkness, but am too afraid or caught or stupidly devoted to cross the precipice in front of me. I would want to remember that there is no easy way to go under, or over, the divide between what is and what can be; there is no easy way, there's only going. Gulp of air, expansion of chest and lungs and heart, a letting go of all thought. Except this: I'm going.<br />
<br />
Go out slowly into the water, into the life, you want. There is nothing wrong with timidity, with tenderness. But when you reach the precipice, when your wanting fills you, go under. Do not be afraid. There is so much to be found on the other side. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth<br />
<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-61662832799300015862014-06-04T14:23:00.000-07:002014-06-04T14:23:51.920-07:00T is for ThirtyMe: Hi twenties.<br />
Twenties: Hey.<br />
Me: I'm going to be thirty this week.<br />
Twenties: Don't I know it.<br />
Me: I'm actually kind of glad, Twenties. I feel pretty steady.<br />
Twenties: But thirty means that you're getting old. I'm young. Stay young. <br />
Me: I do feel a little old.<br />
Twenties: Exactly.<br />
Me: But saying that thirty feels old is a little insulting to people who are older than that. Thirty is young, twenties. We've still got a lot of life in us yet.<br />
Twenties: Let's talk about this 'life' of ours. Don't you want to come back to my side and do things a bit better?<br />
Me: Such as?<br />
Twenties: Love. Work. Money. You know, the big stuff.<br />
Me: Money? Maybe. But we've got a nice home, and food in the fridge, and a crap-load of education. Work? We did good work, twenties. Remember how alive we felt so often? We feel that alive now, too. I'll fight to do the work that makes us feel alive, I promise. Love? Whatever I did wrong, it brought me to this love. <br />
Twenties: You're not married.<br />
Me: I have time.<br />
Twenties: You don't have a kid.<br />
Me: I have time.<br />
Twenties: You haven't published the book.<br />
Me: I have time.<br />
Twenties: You won't always have time. Come back to my side; we'll have all the time in the world.<br />
Me: Sorry, Twenties. It ain't gonna happen. You're not gonna win this argument. Let's talk about the things we love about each other? I'll go first: I love you for letting me figure myself out.<br />
Twenties: I love you for figuring yourself out.<br />
Me: I love you for letting me do stupid things sometimes. I needed that.<br />
Twenties: I love you for knowing how to recover from the stupid things. Solitude. Apology. Truth-telling. You got better at those things every time. <br />
Me: It took me awhile though.<br />
Twenties: It's okay. That's what I was for.<br />
Me: I'm sorry that it took me so long to say 'This is who I am'.<br />
Twenties: But you said it.<br />
Me: It made me lose people and places. It made me hurt people.<br />
Twenties: But that's one of the things I taught you, remember? You're going to hurt people. If you want to be who you are in this world. If you want to tell the truth. <i>When you walk away, brush the dust from your feet. </i><br />
Me: And just send back love.<br />
Twenties: Exactly. <br />
Me: My birthday is on Saturday, Twenties.<br />
Twenties: I'll be there.<br />
Me: I'll have to walk away from you.<br />
Twenties: Brush the dust from your feet.<br />
Me: I'll send you back love.<br />
Twenties: Only love.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth <br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-46643480119640590382014-01-31T09:11:00.000-08:002014-01-31T09:14:19.118-08:00Sometimes, I'll Write. <style>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On my desk is a book by Julia Cameron called <i>The Right to Write</i>. I don’t open it very
often, but I keep it here, where I can see it, because I’m a writer. I’m a
writer who doesn’t write enough, by my own (often too strict) standards. I keep
the book where I can see it in the hopes that I’ll get into the habit of
writing every day (<i>just thirty minutes</i>,
I tell myself. <i>Just one page</i>). You
wouldn’t think it was so tough, and while I could give you a long, detailed
list of reasons of why <i>it is indeed</i>
that tough, I think I’ll condense it down to one simple life fact: there is a
lot of other stuff to do. (I know you know what I mean.) More than that,
there’s a lot of other stuff I’d rather be doing. Maybe this means that I
shouldn’t be a writer; maybe it means I should give up the ghost. But I’m not
going to. I’m going to continue limping along as a
would-be-sometimes-eager-maybe-good writer. (<i>A note</i>: sometimes limping is a good thing; it denotes devotion, and
it often makes you look your courage straight in the face.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As a writer of this ilk, there’s another reason I like to
keep Cameron’s particular book in front of me; it’s full of short writing
exercises, and it presupposes that any act of writing—from love note to
novel—is genuine. It counts. It makes you a writer in the most basic,
unpretentious sense. I like Cameron’s book because it lets me off my own hook;
just because I didn’t finish editing the tenth draft of the novel today and
secure a publishing deal doesn’t mean I’m not a ‘real writer’. It means that today
I was a writer who chose to also be a runner and a student and a dog owner and
a human being who needed to catch up on some sleep. So be it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But today, in and around running and dog-owning and waking
up when my body said, <i>you feel better now</i>,
I also thought I’d get around to a little bit of writing, because it makes me
feel good. The truth underneath all of it—the self-inflicted
‘not-enough-of-a-writer’ thing—is that writing shouldn’t really be a label;
when we label ourselves certain ways, we’re unknowingly committing ourselves,
and that leads us to the dangerous territory of expectation. <i>If I’m going to be a ‘writer’ (or runner, or
teacher, or artist—</i>fill in the blank<i>),
then I expect myself to act in specific ways.</i> I’ve grown tired of this
train of thought. I’d like to make it simple: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes, I’ll run, because it makes me feel alive. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes, I’ll sleep until I wake, because I want my body
to know I still love it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes, I’ll put in ten hours on the job, because I like
feeling useful. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes, I’ll write, because it makes me feel like I’m in
communion with my soul. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When I opened Cameron’s book today, the task at hand was to
write a list of fifty-one things that made me happy. That was my original goal
when I began this post—to try and do the ‘writerly’ thing and construct a list
so vivid and humble it would move you. It would make you like me. (I do hope
you like me.) Instead I’m going to sign off, and take a hot shower, and walk
the dog through the new snow that has fallen. I’ll write the list of fifty-one
happy things at some point, and no doubt ‘writing’ will be on it, but so will
hot showers, and my little orange dog, and the days spent limping forward,
courage in hand. I’ll write about the days spent bounding forth with bright
abandon, and the days when I let myself off the hook, and simply rest. </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thanks for reading. </span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Beth </span></span></div>
Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-72224777080330070622014-01-25T14:45:00.002-08:002014-01-25T14:45:36.945-08:00The Truest Stuff of YouLate January marks Small Soul's second birthday. She came about in the dark winter weeks before what would become, in my short and lucky life, the deepest hurt I've yet known. I'm sad to know that greater heartbreaks will eclipse that trauma; now, far past the grip of its crushing fingers, I see how small it truly was, in the scope of a life. How small but also how meaningful; on a bleak day in early February my life turned a very definite corner, and sometimes I feel as though I have spent every day since hanging on that curve, turning and turning, letting the momentum of loss push me forward into new and beautiful territory.<br />
<br />
It is new territory, and it is beautiful--surprisingly so; still, I know I didn't get here without some rather wrenching (often slowly realized) lessons. So, on this anniversary month, I thought I might consider some of the things I've come to know these past two years--many of which were solidified in me through this writing, in this very public space (thank you for reading). <br />
<br />
1. That which we lose will become a stranger to us, one day. <br />
<br />
Let me just say: I didn't lose much. A man. Some hopes for the future that hung on me heavy. I didn't really want what I thought I wanted, but damn if I was going to look like a failure. I don't say these things to be unkind, but if I've learned anything in these two years, it's that some things--the people and places we believe are dear--can become utterly insignificant if we spend enough time apart from them. The time apart tells us: they weren't that dear at all. (The lesson here is to pay attention to those things that no time nor distance can cleave from you; the lesson is to notice that which you yearn for, long after its loss. Then we might see--<i>here is the truest stuff of me</i>.)<br />
<br />
2. The truest stuff is often the most quiet.<br />
<br />
From this vantage, it's pretty clear to me now how bad I was at simply listening to myself. There were the louder voices--comparison, loneliness, fear, embarrassment. But beneath them there was another voice, small but insistent: <i>this is not enough</i>. <i>There is more. There is better.</i> It got louder, and one day I simply wasn't afraid of it anymore. Regret may tell me--<i>if only I could have heard it sooner, the pain I could have avoided</i> (for myself and for others); but it came when it came, that willingness to listen, that sudden association with the inside voice that was always inside me, waiting. <br />
<br />
3. Quick fixes don't fix. Do them anyway. <br />
<br />
You are a creative genius! All these emotions, all these things you're learning--you've never been so prolific, so...non-fiction! So write about them late into the night, put them on the web (your bravery is new and thrilling). A new haircut can make you a new person, and the next day it is just a new haircut. Late nights with wine and gossip lift you up, make you laugh, carry you further away and away from the day. But you go home alone, and in the morning you have blog-post hangover--<i>what will they think of me?</i>--and you still have the yearning inside of you to return to yourself, because you have lost something of yourself, this is true.<br />
<br />
Still, the haircut makes you see the lines of your own face more clearly, and your face is familiar to you. And the writing is steadying, and sometimes even good. And your friends listen to you, and they are blessed in their devotion to the you that they know. <br />
<br />
4. When you find yourself again, you are sometimes a stranger to yourself.<br />
<br />
Perhaps this was inevitable, considering the rhythm of this place--how everything, but everything, moves in cycles. Birth, life, death. Birth, life, death. Over and over again. So you are new to the world and the world you know is new. It is best not to fight this, but to accept the strangeness of it, and the fear. (Fear is just afraid of the light, and there's so much lovely light in this world; so many new strains to consider.) <br />
<br />
5. Forgiveness can just be about forgetting.<br />
<br />
No more, no less. This is okay. <br />
<br />
6. Hurting others is inevitable.<br />
<br />
This is perhaps the toughest beast to handle; why must this be true? And yet it is. If we're to listen to that quiet voice, we will hear that it tells us to say goodbye to certain things. Not because these things are bad, only because there are other things coming--and these things fit us better, our particular shape. We've got to make room. I console myself: by forcing myself to stick around in the old life I was taking up the space that belonged to something else. I console myself: I've gone away so you can have better things than me. There are better things for you, for me, for we. <br />
<br />
7. Expect the unexpected. <br />
<br />
The life you've been looking for, it may come at you big and fast and not at all how you'd expected it to come, and you'll probably break out a lot for the stress and the glory of it all, and wonder what the fuck you've gotten yourself into, but it feels good (because it feels true), and you want to just. keep. going. To see where it all gets you.<br />
<br />
So you keep going. And you leave people and places behind, and you miss certain things (the old house at full summer's bloom; the promise of getting all dressed up and going out, not knowing what you'll find; the riverbank where you knelt to rest on every single run; the apartment where you wept and loved and grew and slept and woke, alone), and you're sometimes afraid of what you now stand to lose, but you also feel a kind of deep and solid comfort, and this is new, and this makes it all worth it.<br />
<br />
The loss. The guilt. The fear. The quick fixes that don't fix.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is worth it, to let the momentum of change fling you forward,<br />
to crash land,<br />
to get up,<br />
to listen.<br />
To do the work it takes to get closer to the truest stuff of you,<br />
to spend your life doing this.<br />
To get as close as you possibly can.<br />
<br />
<br />
Thank you, always, for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-83767936480010760052013-12-02T12:34:00.001-08:002013-12-02T12:34:35.578-08:00If My Knee Gives OutI am a fearful runner. By this I mean, I do not like to explore very much when I go out running my five or seven or ten miles. I find a route that keeps to quiet territory (no intersections please; no waiting for lights) and I keep to it, quietly, though I like to imagine that my routine appearance makes me familiar to the houses I pass, the excitable dogs left home for the day and the flocks of geese who know their place as surely as I know mine.<br />
<br />
These days, my route takes me past mountains that surprise me, they are that big and that incredibly close. I came to this new place on a long-forged whim. A whim that had been gestating for years, when I really get to thinking about it. (Once I sat in a booth at a coffee shop, across from me was a handsome boy, and I talked about my weekly commutes to the mountain town. <i>It takes me up in its palm</i>, I said. I was really talking about rescue; I needing a palm to scoop me up then.) Now, I am here, in the palm of the place, and I go out running below mountains blue and white and startlingly close. Even though I've arrived at this expected place, I am still fearful. There is no pretty way to talk about fear; it just sits inside of you, waiting to be waited upon.<br />
<br />
To be certain, there are a great many things to fear in this life. You don't need me to list them all here; you've racked them up yourself in your midnight hours and grey morning lights. They have a lot to do with loss, I am sure. Of belonging, of credibility, of security. Of love.<br />
<br />
I am afraid my knee will give out and I'll have to give up running.<br />
I am afraid I will always be bored.<br />
I am afraid I will always stay small.<br />
I am afraid that the past will always tug at me, greedy child.<br />
I am afraid that I have hurt people.<br />
I am afraid that I won't be enough for him.<br />
<br />
That was my list this morning. This morning I ran over wet roads, my knee only going weak once, as I leaped into the grass in the ditch to move out of a truck's path. But I climbed out of the ditch; I kept running. And, as is usually the way, I found a bit of clarity while I was out in the world. I was reminded of a trick my mother taught me, when the fear gets ahold of you:<br />
<br />
Give it all up. To God. To the Universe. To the thing that is here with us that is bigger than us. Truly. Just do it. You can even look up when you do it. Or down at the earth beneath your feet, if that's where you find the big thing. Send it out of you. There is something that wants to take the fear from you. Because it's pointless. It gets us nowhere, friend.<br />
<br />
My knees will continue to grow weak, but I know myself; I'll keep on running as long as they allow.<br />
The boredom, the smallness, the past--they're mine to own; mine to turn away from, too. <br />
<br />
I have hurt people. I am sorry.<br />
<br />
I am not a savior; only a woman. His. That's enough.<br />
<br />
Keep to your territory, quietly, if that's what you need now. Let your legs carry you there. Do not be afraid. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
BethBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-78919181774841008942013-09-06T16:48:00.001-07:002013-09-06T16:48:17.536-07:00How I Live Now1. Run six miles down a road that passes green fields, the sun rising to my left in the east. Run past elms like old giants breathing slow above my dark head. There is a Rose Lane and a Dove Lane and a lane called Blood; down one of these a woman sells 'Fur Hats' and handmade doll clothes. There are mobile courts where women have planted purple and pink flowers in rusted wash tins.<br />
<br />
2. Small town mindset as I see it now: There are two kinds of people for whom I pour coffee. Those who seek my story, who humble me with their welcome. Those who need me first to prove something--how long I shall stay; how ragged is my possible judgement; what is it I'm wanting here. Is it to take something for my own? Stranger, I do not know. For those who welcome: Thank you for your humanity. To those who doubt: We have lonely hearts, both of us. <br />
<br />
3. The school is to the east. From these new, white, double-paned windows that will keep us from the cold come winter, I sometimes watch you walking to work the way I watched you walk away from me before I knew you. These days, you'll come walking back. To me. <br />
<br />
4. I am remembering that I know how to play the piano. <i>Scenes from Childhood</i>. Kinderscenen. I'll take out my cello one day and tune it up, pluck the forgotten strings, admire the polished wood, the curves like a lady, like a lady.<br />
<br />
5. Three things, you say, are needed <br />
<br />
Someone to love <br />
Work to do<br />
Something to look forward to<br />
<br />
6. Certain things are still difficult; this is my proof that we're not dreaming. Still tired days, still low days, still moments of unraveling shame. When we were first beginning, and fear was following me around like a hungry cat, I'd count them up: Bad haircut. Empty bank account. No place to live. Sick dog. Distance. Doubt. All anchors to the ground. There had simply been too much too good to be true. Now I'm wearing a different coat: Collect gratitude in my pockets like smooth stones.<br />
<br />
for Friday afternoons<br />
for red curtains pulled against the sun<br />
for your sleeping shoulder<br />
for my hand on your back<br />
for chocolate cake and milk in a wine glass<br />
for the dog who stumbles along and along and along<br />
for whiskey and ginger and nighttime walks<br />
for all I have known<br />
even the bad stuff<br />
thank you<br />
it got me here<br />
and what I mean to say is that Here<br />
is what I'd always wanted<br />
but had never known<br />
could be. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
BethBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-59251353717399286002013-08-15T14:28:00.001-07:002013-08-15T14:28:02.478-07:00Deaf Like the DogI have a dog named Ernie. I've probably written of him before--he's also called 'the little orange dog'. Right now, as I write this, he's stirring up commotion in the woods that run down to the shoreline of the lake. All the little chipmunks and squirrels think he's a threat, one giant squirrel perhaps, and they want him gone. They shriek their dissent. Ernie, he's deaf as a doornail. He's placid in his exploration. He doesn't hear the ruckus he's created.<br />
<br />
Two nights ago thunder cracked the sky above this lakeside home; split it clean open and then wept--rain on lake water--for an hour or more. We all woke in our beds throughout the house, startled into consciousness; all of us listening; one of us wondering if the automatic sprinkler in the orchard ought to be turned off; one huddling in the bathroom with the old big dog who fears the thunder the most. Ernie sprawled belly-up at the foot of our bed as if the night were silent as a tomb; the next morning we joked that he slept the best of us all.<br />
<br />
Dog-deafness to deeper meaning, I'm heading there (I promise), but it's been awhile since I've been here and the muscle that's needed for this is a bit shaky, forgetful of capacity. Here's what I want to say: I haven't written in a few months because I've been frightened to write. Things have been changing--have changed--in some very large and elemental ways, and at the risk of jinxing what I fear every day will be jinxed, I'll just say it: I am deeply content. 'Happy' is too bubbly a word, perhaps, too prescriptive. Too expectant. I won't say that. But I'll say this: This new contentment, this sense of having arrived at some place in myself and in the world that feels centered and long-wanted and good has got me wishing I were a bit blind, a bit deaf, a bit dumb.<br />
<br />
I wish I were blind to the things I stand to lose.<br />
<br />
I wish I couldn't hear the voices, inside and out, that tell me I might be making a mistake.<br />
<br />
I wish I were a fool, content to bask in beauty--as heartbreaking as it can be--wherever I can find it.<br />
<br />
My little orange dog, he's happy--blissful--as long as he's got a bowl of clean drinking water. As long as he's fed some scraps morning and night. As long as he's got a few feet of bed to curl up on. As long as I scratch his soft, deaf ears. As long as I am happy to see him. My little orange dog, he's got no idea that his kidneys are failing him, that his heart is growing weak, that he can't hear the sound of my voice calling him. There is no fear of what may come, there is just this moment, and it's enough.<br />
<br />
I want to be like Ernie, like my little orange dog. I don't want to be afraid to tell you that I have made some choices that have taken me to a new place and that in that new place I feel like I am finally home. I don't want to be afraid to love as big and silly and openly as I can. I don't want to be afraid to take my work seriously. I don't want to be afraid to be<i> happy</i>. I just want to work to be worthy of my life, and of these good things. It might not work out. I might lose a hell of a lot. I might be just a fool. <br />
<br />
So be it.<br />
<br />
Ernie doesn't care. Stop writing, he says. Come with me down the stone steps to the lake. Give me the rest of that piece of toast; it was good. He's done stirring up the squirrels. He's at my feet. He'll follow wherever I go, and love me right on through it.<br />
<br />
Smart dog. Good dog.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-25012834239146917692013-05-01T10:55:00.001-07:002013-05-01T10:55:19.304-07:00For May Day: Small Things. My sister went to a farm and held a baby goat in her arms.<br />
She told me that holding it felt like 'joy welling up within her'.<br />
<br />
My mother came to town for a work-week visit and gave me the level-best moment of my whole entire day: a long embrace in late April morning sunshine. <br />
<br />
At the house in the remote woods of northern Montana, where the river swells most springs into the fields, where my sister once wrangled the old row boat to float over sodden wheat fields, where at dawn (or any other hour), you can lace on your runners and cross the border into Canada, swift as four miles passing under your determined feet, at this house my father tends to the past, herds away the wild things that live fervently.<br />
<br />
My little sister is baby-skinned and blue-eyed and blooming with shy, earnest, comforting love. To my stories she listens.<br />
<br />
My old dog is dying, more quickly now, but he still turns over for a belly rub, still sleeps beside me, little curved sweet-potato body. I will grieve this assurance, for pure assurance of unconditional love it is.<br />
<br />
The puppy at the park is but six days old, is nothing but soft and steady and eager life.<br />
<br />
And small things--watch for them: sunshine on the kitchen floor.<br />
<br />
The random act of grace.<br />
The woman who stops you and asks where you got your shoes--linked humanity, just like that. <br />
The coffee beans are new and shiny with oil.<br />
The job can be done if only you begin.<br />
There will be hot water for washing, cool water for drinking, there will be people happy to see you.<br />
There will be more light in the sky for longer.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
<br />
Beth <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-32929605337379464022013-04-26T10:01:00.000-07:002013-04-26T10:07:35.686-07:00Haircut. I had a pixie haircut when I was eight years old. My school picture from that year shows a small, shy, dark-skinned girl smiling without showing her teeth (a familiar image--often what I look like in pictures from my twenties, only a couple feet taller and a bit more time-tested). In the picture I wear a white, round-collared dress, a pink bow at my neck. And my hair is very, very short. In fact, were it not for the dress and the bow, I would most certainly be mistaken for an eight-year old boy. I don't remember asking my mother for this haircut, but I'm sure that I did, and my mother--being my mother--patiently granted my request.<br />
<br />
I am envious of this little girl. I've recently chopped my hair again, and while there are days when I look in the mirror and like the exposed lines of my face and neck, more days I go out into the world a little afraid; it's one thing to be mistaken for a boy when you're eight, it's quite another to be mistaken for one when you're nearing thirty. So far, this hasn't happened. So far, when I've ventured out, people say kind things, or say nothing at all, or don't pay me any attention. I know, I know: it's just a haircut, you're thinking. <i>Hair grows, girl</i>. Bigger shit is going down. And you'd be right. But for just a moment, I want to say a few things about beauty, and vanity, and humility, because it seems like these are the things that either help or harm us when it comes to embracing the bigger stuff, the truths--minute and enormous--that bring us to our knees.<br />
<br />
The haircut wasn't the thing that brought me to my knees; truth is, I was already kneeling when I sat down in the twirling chair and felt the scissors come close to my scalp. The haircut was the reaction; from my knees I was seeking outward motion, some sea change to shake me out of the larger forces that had me down on the ground, struggling to keep going with the new life I'd put into motion, the one that was pissing a lot of people off and painting, for me, a future utterly unknown.<br />
<br />
The haircut did the trick. To push the metaphor, I'll just say this: the rest of me--body, mind, soul--was kneeling: in the face of certain truth. I was deep in the down-in-the-mud middle of figuring some big shit out. About myself, the world I was creating, the people I was hurting, the path that was asking to be forged. On my knees, I was humbled, because I wasn't pretending anymore. I was getting (painfully) honest for what felt like the first time in my life. So be it. But the hair wasn't following suit. The girl people saw on the outside--she was still trying to be someone she thought others wanted to see. She was still seeking goddamn approval. So she went to the salon.<br />
<br />
Beauty: what the world sees on the outside.<br />
Beauty: how we feel on the inside.<br />
<br />
I'm working to embrace the latter. But sure thing, it's hard: the truth that I've begun broadcasting from the inside has suddenly been stripped bare and revealed on the outside. In a haircut.<br />
<br />
Now there's new work to do--a big struggle with vanity. A big search for humility. But I'm glad. These lessons I've been meant to learn. And I'm hopeful for the learning: it's easier to learn truly when we learn from a true place. We forget that true place, it seems, as we grow. Our eight year old selves knew it without question: <i>this is what I want because it makes me feel like the person I am</i>. <br />
<br />
<br />
This is what I want because it makes me feel like the person I am. Some days I look gamine and graceful; some days I look like an eight year old boy who needs a good night's sleep. This is what I <i>see</i>. What I <i>feel</i>? Mostly beautiful. Mostly humble. Mostly true.<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
<br />
Beth<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-7769199752452814842013-04-06T18:01:00.001-07:002013-04-06T18:02:52.127-07:00I'm Sorry. <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That the dogs are dying. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That there are miles, two thousand of them or more, between here and there. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't get the joke, or like it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I let the garden die. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I said too much. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I said too little. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't try and that I tried too hard. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That my hair was never long for you. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I am so cold all the time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I was mean. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I was kind. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I was patient and impatient, both. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I wrote instead of calling. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I called instead of writing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That there are so many ways of talking. Just talk. Just listen. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I don't like clams. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't go to shear the sheep that day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I pretended when I should have been real. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I was real when I should have pretended. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I was late. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I canceled. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I said no. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I said yes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I disappear. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I act rash. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I take my time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I know absolutely. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I don't know. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't ask. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I even ask at all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I mouthed the three words instead of giving them sound, every night. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I cared too little and too much. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't read the books. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I am sometimes weak to the bone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I am sometimes so tough I push you over.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I can't always help you up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I drank that much beer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I can't drink that much beer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I don't want to wake up yet (let me sleep). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't wake up and see, and live. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I woke up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I listened. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't listen. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I didn't say I'm sorry. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That I said it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That there is so much and so little and that we've got it all to carry. Your yoke, mine; I'd take them up both, were I able. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Never for its beginning, nor its good and harsh and honest life. Never for that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thanks for reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
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Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-6999009029219027992013-02-06T19:00:00.005-08:002013-02-07T08:00:18.339-08:00The Machine<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You often feel like you are not enough. You are a person who sometimes makes plans and then cancels them. You have a hard time saying 'no'. You say 'yes' to things you don't really want to do. You want to be able to do everything. You want to be able to be everywhere, at once. You don't want to miss out, or lose your place, or be talked about, or judged. You judge others, sometimes, and this makes you feel like a hypocrite. Is it possible to release all judgment? Perhaps. But it takes practice and time and most of all humility, and it takes these things in harmony over and over again--there's probably no way to perfect it. The human brain--which is something you've got--has a wire in it, that may appear essential, called judgment. Take the wire out and you've got an entirely different machine that might be difficult to drive. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Try driving it anyway. There are different gears; one that is important is called acceptance, and that's the first gear, the lowest one with the most power. It gets you going. When you learn to drive the machine you first go out with a friend who has some practice with it; she's known you a long time and she is gentle because she sees that you are scared; there are other machines out there and they've got a plan, they're on a path that is their own, they might not be patient if you get in their way. Don't worry; keep driving. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm not sure what the other gears are yet. They might have something to do with love and virtue and that idea of sameness--you know, we're all 'one'. Maybe that's the highest gear, that knowledge. When you get to it, let me know how you did it. I'm still working on gear one and it often gets stuck in the sticky stuff of guilt, and self-doubt, and a tremendous, tremendous fear. But it's like a machine, see? You are a person of common sense, who knows that when a machine isn't getting going, there's something wrong with it. You've got to coax it back to health. The hammer trick doesn't work--you can't beat something into motion, it's got to <i>want</i> to move, it's got to feel <i>propelled</i>, it's got to have <i>energy.</i> It can't feel judged, the animal part of it; and everything's got an animal in it, if we're willing to look and see. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Judgment makes the animal retreat; it's got a shell for hiding. I bet that shell is pretty damned comfortable, too; I bet there are books in there, and a wood stove that is full of fire, and probably some food the animal likes. Why would it want to come out? Inside, the world is its known world--every floor creak and night noise has become friend, and no one says 'not enough'. In fact, no one says much of anything (except those inside voices, which we've all got--nice ones and mean ones, come on, admit it). In the shell, it's easy to find comfort and rest; it's also easy to get a little bored, a little wan, a little lonely. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So face it: you've got to go outside. Where you often feel like you're not enough. Where you say 'yes' but then say 'no' and worry about losing out. Where you make a shit ton of really unimportant and truly important mistakes, over and over again. Where you judge and are judged in return. Where you begin to wonder if there's another way, if your machine could be re-calibrated. Only this time it's just a tiny bit easier, because you've been out here before. You find that in the swiftest instant your judgment about the neighbor (who <i>does</i> that?) can be replaced by a kind of frank and elemental forgiveness when you see that the man is limping, that the woman carries a broken briefcase, that the son is so shy he can hardly walk from doorway to car, that the dog is just dying, that the daughter is in love for the first time, that they have--every single one of them--been enough and also not enough at the very same time. That they're all machines. All animals with shells and the living hope that one day they'll come out and find something a bit better. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thanks for reading. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth</span><br />
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<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-59493674457813314532013-01-22T11:28:00.001-08:002013-01-24T10:38:46.374-08:00The Worth of Difficult YearsDear You,<br />
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">I've been meaning to write, but I've been on break from work and school, and while it was my highest goal to spend that time writing, writing, writing, other impulses took hold, and boredom set in. There has been a lot of bread baking (good stuff!) and dancing about the kitchen to the old Springsteen songs. I'm poor as a pauper but I'm paid in time. And this life, while I'm still young, is a good, young life. </span></span><br />
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<i><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">(Note to Us on the refrigerator door: "Work is good for the soul. Remember this. Every morning when I wake up, I'll try to remember it too, and spend the time with coffee at the corner desk where the story is shaping up, where the novel is slowly unfolding itself before me, page by page.")</span></span></i><br />
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Here is something that my dear friend Lauren said about her plan for the new year:<br />
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<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">"More
than anything else, I want this year to be full of doing the right
things: when they're easy or when they're hard, when others understand
or when they don't, whatever level of courage or gumption or honesty or
work or love they require. However joyful or sad they might be." </span></span><br />
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I thought you might like this, because I liked it, and generally we like the same things, though we don't always tell each other that. The things we both like--what this man said, that quote I pasted to the bathroom mirror, this joke--we discover them like secrets accidentally revealed. You quote the quote from the mirror one month later and I'm stunned to know what you remember, because I remember it too. Our shared life living below the surface. <br />
<br />
But I digress. What I have not much revealed but what I guess you may know is: this last year was often a very damn hard and difficult year. I was elated at the turn of the clock to midnight (or hopped up on sugar from the cookies and the pink wine I shared with my mother and my youngest sister, sliding about the wood floor of the kitchen in our winter socks and pajamas, clanging pots and pans in the frozen air over the dog's bark, calling for the darkness to awaken).<br />
<br />
The clock turned. And later, searching for sleep, I could hear my father's voice down the hallway in the house where I grew. He was talking to my mother. Then he began to sing an old cowboy song. <i>Third boxcar, midnight train. Destination, Bangor, Maine.</i> My mother laughs her laugh, and I realize what it is that I've been wanting to say: <br />
<br />
The difficult years are also often the most worthwhile ones, in the end.<br />
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Think of everything you've born. It was actual weight; it had gravity and it was heavy on your heart. It made a carving of your soul, so much so that when you greet the day the greeting is entirely new because the world is somehow new. Without the difficult years, it's easy to remain the same. Before, I thought that staying the same was what I wanted--it was safe, after all. Now, I tell you: I want to be carved. <br />
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For it strikes me that the carving makes space for what is most important: pink wine and winter socks and my mother's face. My father singing his beloved a cowboy song, thirty-one years after they first found one another. It's true: nothing else matters but this. Sometimes it takes a beating to make us see. <br />
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I'll sign off now, and promise to write you again soon. There's much to do: boxes to unpack in the new house that is mine, a dog to walk up a snowy mountain, plans to be made for the work to be done that is good for the soul, a new year to begin.<br />
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Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
Beth <br />
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<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-36082783774727521722012-12-22T23:41:00.002-08:002012-12-22T23:41:33.663-08:00Letters<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Today there were a few letters to write. It was a good thing; long I'd put off--no, simply forgotten--to write the letters, but today there was suddenly and blissfully time and mental space for them. Going visiting will do that to you; visiting the house where you were once a child, an angst-filled teen, will do that to you. The place is your own so you're free to do as you'd please, and comfortably--make the strongest coffee upon waking, forget to clean the scattered grounds from the kitchen sink, start your wash and give your old dog free reign. Blessed places, these childhood homes; there's always someone else to do the business of keeping them up, and since you've been gone you're only a welcome, beloved, longed-for presence. You're allowed to sit at the table and write your letters while someone else vacuums the living room. (A promise to any possible future offspring of mine: I'll do the same for you. I'll provide you with such a space.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There were a few good lines in the letters. One came after three-quarters of an Old Fashioned, a lit Christmas tree and a fire place, a dog curled at my hip. The other was the product of a late morning run through snow, the only act I've ever known in my short life to clear my mind and my soul as purely as they may possibly be cleared; though I've traveled little, I do keep a short list of places I have run, among them a stretch of desert highway at blood-red sunrise just outside Canyon de Chelly, and a spine-curve hilltop of road that drops unabashedly towards the Atlantic ocean. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One letter I sent away that way, ocean-wards. Towards a tiny, salty town whose loneliness I've known, whose loneliness I've both longed for and felt it once in my power to cure. To this person, I should have perhaps written that I wished to cure his loneliness, but it's taken me until my twenty-ninth year if my count is correct to know that none can cure another's loneliness, no matter how desperate the desire. For the moment at the mailbox, for the two hundred and forty seconds it may take to read the letter, for the card with the picture of the country houses swathed in winter's weight pinned to the board above the desk where dreaming and despair alike are undertaken--for these things I've sent the letter, whatever good it might do in reaching out into the world, this wide and difficult place. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the second letter I wrote about Christmas. It's almost always the shameful case that I've very little money for gifts for the people I love most in this world, and to whom I'd love to give all my money. This is always a result of my own poor choices and an inconvenient romanticism about life's work. And yet time and again when I go about Christmas shopping with my few dollars, I am amazed to see that in the crowded aisle and on the street dirty with mid-December snow there remains that thing which may be called cliche but which is also aptly called good-will. This year, it was in the man in the wheelchair at the photo shop who offered to take me for a ride, and told me that I had a sense of humor. At first I avoided his gaze, feeling myself the brunt of a rude joke, but then felt suddenly that I didn't need any money, none at all. I would have liked to be a different person then; someone who wasn't quite so careful. Someone who might have stood longer with the man and told a dirty joke or two. Such a person I am not. It is a perfectly acceptable and regrettable thing to be the person I am. I often know that God might like me to be better. I often know that he thinks I am doing just fine. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This was the main topic of the final letter, this life as a good-enough but never-good-enough living being. Let me just say that there's perhaps not enough ink or paper to tell all the tales about the mistakes made, the drunken arguments, the words that go right to the quick and you say them knowing they're going there, the broken temper and the practical impossibility of pure remorse. There's not enough paper to tell it all. It seems to me that it's the regrettable self that gets all the ink, all the words. The woman I want to be, when I am her, is happy with a blank page and only a few simple things to say, only a few questions to ask. I'll do my best to be her more often, this woman. I'll put some money aside, and learn a few rude jokes, and wash my coffee grounds down the sink. I'll offer to vacuum the living room for my mother. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Thanks for reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth</span>Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-9426418280837683172012-11-29T23:03:00.001-08:002012-11-29T23:06:49.567-08:00Might I Suggest. <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Might I suggest...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1.) Toasting yourself when you drink a glass of wine at the end of the day, even if you're already in your pajamas, at 7:30, and the only company you've got is the dog. Make a toast to yourself, and the pajamas, and the dog. He's listening, and he agrees. Cheers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2.) Thinking about buying the first season of <i>Bewitched</i> at Target. Ten bucks, why not? Samantha's kind of a strong lady, what with that nose twitching thing and all, and black and white love is simple love, not much can go wrong there. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">3.) Saving your ten dollars for something else. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">4.) Having french toast for dinner. Or waffles. You can have a salad, too. Green equals good. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">5.) Being okay with not knowing how to say what you feel, or how to ask for what you want, or why it makes you afraid. For that matter, being okay with not knowing how you feel. Or what you want. Or being afraid. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">6.) That you don't say 'I'm sorry', quite so much. It's okay that you dropped your change at the cash register. It's okay if you need a minute more to decide. It's okay if you want a little more, or a little less, or something a little different. In fact, most of it is okay. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">7.) Loving your possessions like they have life: thank your car for getting you there. Thank your computer for starting up each morning. Thank your radio for keeping you company. Your bed for cushioning your body. Your home for letting you inside, out of the cold, into its safe space. Thank the heat for coming on, the water for running, the fridge for keeping the milk cold. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">8.) Talking to the woman next to you at the laundromat. She's already seen your underwear. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">9.) Re-reading the books you loved when you were ten, or thirteen, or a senior in high school. Judy Blume knows her shit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">10.) Saying what you feel. Asking for what you want. Being afraid and doing it anyway. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Thanks for reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth</span>Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-12874307734518092492012-11-08T11:15:00.004-08:002012-11-08T11:15:51.648-08:00Some Days<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some mornings, far between, your legs take on a life of their own, and say, "we've got to rest". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">On those days, get gentle if you can. Listen, and say, "Okay. Tomorrow." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some days, your ribs take on a life of their own, and say, "there's not enough air in here". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">On these days, open the door and find the air. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Certain hours, your heart is nothing but a floating house, inside of you. It has no doors and the windows are dark. It's a mystery house, and you sneak around its edges, curious and cautious. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In these hours, sit and wait. A curtain flutters. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some midnights, you wake and can't shake the dream that held you breathless. What have you done? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's a dead body, and a highway, and an envy that wraps you like tightening wire. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These midnights, feel the warmth of the bed, reach across the space, find the other being who sleeps beside you. Spread your palm across his back, which is solid ground, which shakes you free. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some summer evenings, you go swimming in a lake so calm you are guilty over breaking it, pushing outwards into its heavy depth. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">On these evenings, give up your guilt to the water, and know that it takes it all from you willingly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It washes you clean of the midnights, the things you've done, the breathless body, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the house that is your heart that is sometimes unknown to you. </span><br />
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<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-90488866246461780182012-10-22T15:41:00.001-07:002012-10-22T15:41:26.310-07:00Wild Willa<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have a wild kitty named Willa. Wild Willa. She's small and a little skittish and she's got a major attitude on her, has had since she was a tiny kitten. I am her preferred person, and I'm majorly flattered by that. In the little apartment where I live, when the weather is warm, I leave open a window for her, and she comes and goes as she pleases, sometimes bringing me 'gifts' in the form of dead mice or (the greatest sorrow) half-live song birds. I can't get mad at her, though I am mad; she thinks she's showing me her affection, her appreciation, her little black kitty love. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This has been a shadowed month, because the little black kitty who prefers me has gone missing. She's plum run away, gone adrift, disappeared into the growing cold and falling leaves of Autumn. It's been about a month now, since I saw her last. I'm not quite sure how to react to this kind of loss; I've done some of the necessary things--walked the neighborhood calling until I'm hoarse; sent pictures and warnings to the animal shelters; prayed a good deal--to God, to the gods, to the universe, to the animal kingdom (whoever or whatever controls the impulses of wild things, of tame things). There is more I could do, I know, and I'll do it. I'll cover all ground. But there's something I've got to admit: I'm not sure how much good any of it will do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm not a callous person (though my callousness has certainly grown a bit, this year, for a variety of reasons). I watch the weather getting colder, I hear reports of snow, I pass Willa's waiting food dish and little blue blanket tucked in the corner of my bedroom a hundred times every day, and there is an ache in the deepest part of me. What's ironic is that that deep part--the place where the sorrow lives--is also where the toughness that carries me through resides. I have, in this single part of my soul, the capacity to disintegrate into a thousand pieces and the capacity to staunchly hold myself upright, to power through and continue on. Two forces. Totally different yet equally powerful. Contained in one corner of my being. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm of the opinion that this is true for many of us. That the things we feel most earnestly--our grief, our determination--often dwell in the same part of us. Just as purely, as urgently as we can feel our despair, we can feel our doggedness, and the fortitude that is an absolute necessity in this world. It's a nice thing to think, really: our light living right alongside our dark. It can also be a damned confusing thing; a guilt-inducing struggle for power--who'll win out? The sadness that honors the loss? The toughness that moves beyond it? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A few people know about this missing cat. Not many. All who do are truly kind. Yet many more might hear the news and be practical about it, sorry, but pragmatic. <i>It's just a cat</i>. Cats run away all the time. They also come back all the time. They have second families, other food sources. They find holes where they curl up to heal. They have holes where they curl up to die. They're a fickle animal, of independent mind. All of this is true. I've accepted all of it. I can go entire days not thinking about Willa. I will be honest: she was such a wild thing, sometimes I hardly notice her absence. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But I am not a callous person. I'm just living out, right now, from those twin forces that take up the same corner: I go about my work and I enjoy it. I do the things that need to be done. I do things that make me laugh, things that make me happy. I do generous things, and selfish things. Most of the time, I am cheerful, and why not? I have a beautiful life. A blessed one. And then I pass the waiting food dish, and the blue blanket in the corner, and I'm full of the knowledge of the small, wild thing I've lost.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We can never control the lives of the creatures we tame, not truly; they're given to their own secret impulses, their own half-feral ways. And this is okay. We can love them fiercely, with a kind of toughness, because we must. Because they will undoubtedly leave us before we leave them. And this is okay. We can forget about their leave taking, and move on to new things; this is okay. And then we can remember them in a swift instant as we unlock the door at the end of the day, or latch the window at the first cold wind, or walk down the street where we live, watchful for familiar movement, for the sudden return--all dark days forgotten--of the wild things we've loved. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thanks for reading. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth</span><br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-45160157915141632432012-10-10T21:43:00.001-07:002012-10-10T21:43:55.704-07:00Rest When Needed. <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Here's a heady mantra: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>let go</b>. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's solid advice. <i>Don't cling to your past</i>. Release what no longer serves you up the good stuff. Cut that cord and you'll find yourself flung forward, all open air and open vistas greeting you. I'm down with this plan. I've been working damn hard to do it. For a very long time, I thought it was the only solution, really, to a heavy heart. I learned well how to avoid people, places, things that brought up those deep snatches of memory, those currents of time tucked away. I've been getting good at letting go for a good long while now. Then I had a visitor come visiting. I didn't want to see him, at first. (Fear.) I'd gotten good at avoiding this reunion, and I justified the fleeing by saying, <i> </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>listen here, I'm letting go.</b></span> <br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Ultimately, the visitor won out. And we drove through clear country and met on a street corner. Here's what I found: someone I knew by heart who I didn't know at all. And for the first time in a long time, I began to doubt this whole letting go thing. At least, the way I've been trying to do it. <b> </b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Could be: Letting go isn't about running or hiding. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Could be that it's not about erasing. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Quite possibly, it's not about clearing away the rubble. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've been writing this little blog for almost a year now, and when I started it, it was because my heart was heavy. I had to write because to write meant to release, to let go. And it's true that I was holding on to a heady mess. (You've no doubt seen some of it, so bless you.) Funny how we get used to playing certain parts, certain roles. For a long time I let myself be heavy, because I was. I let myself do the 'broken' thing, because I was a broken thing. I did this for a long, long time (though never too long--<i>no measuring healing in life; the time it takes is the time it takes</i>). I played the part for so long that I started to worry when I began feeling light again (for surely, the lightness was a trick. Surely any steady step would only prove my overeager heart). Then I drove through clear country, and met someone on a street corner. And my heart was no longer heavy. But truth be told, it hadn't been that way for awhile; I just hadn't been ready to give up the role I'd perfected, the lines I'd long memorized. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There is no great epiphany. There is not one single revelation. Not that I can see, anyway. There's only the even progression into new territory, so steady and slow and wide that it's impossible not to look back and take stock of what you've left behind. Look back and it's all always there, as you've left it, as you've known it. <b> </b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>You don't have to let it go. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>In fact, please don't. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Just keep moving forward. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Rest when needed. </b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Maybe letting go should be about finding a way to love the rubble of our wreckage, to accept every shard stuck beneath our skin. Skin scars over, eventually. And people like to ask questions about scars; think of everything you can turn and look back at, even from a distance. Think of all the stories you can tell. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thanks for reading. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beth </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-48253760951200955492012-10-05T10:30:00.003-07:002012-10-05T10:32:54.120-07:00Some of the Things. <div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's getting cold in the night. Need to put the garden to bed. Need to put bulbs in the ground--tulip. Garlic. Need to write new blog post. Need to take dog for walk. Need to eat less ice cream. More green stuff. Need to put yoga mat on the floor more mornings. Get on mat. Stop staring into space. Need to grow hair. Get up earlier. Go to bed earlier. Need to drink less. Need to go through excess: clothes, food, books. Give up what's no longer necessary. Need to go shopping at thrift stores to find the new necessary. Need to balance the budget, spend less money. Need to buy things: blender for the green stuff to get healthier and skinnier and happier in body and mind and the in-between. Need to learn how to love more the stuff I have. Long legs. Skin tone. Full mouth. Got to stop boasting. Got to stop thinking boastful thoughts. Got to free up the thinking, no one can hear. Got to stop wondering if others can hear because then, they can. A window: access granted. Got to stop granting access, yo. Got to stop saying 'yo'. Got to grow up. Got to keep young. Got to stay steady. Keep steady; have fun. But don't drink so much. And don't spend so much money. And don't share so much.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Determine: circle of inner knowledge. A selective few. Avoid park path and supermarket and late night blunders, confessions and stories regretted because really, why do they need to know? Above all: <i>do not feign affection</i>. Don't need everyone to like you. You don't need to like everyone. But like everyone. Forgive and forget and let go. But hold tight. Hold <i>close to your bones, to the soft animal of your body</i>. Hold tight. And know that the holding won't go on forever. One day, muscles will loosen, fingers will unfurl. Know this. Know that in the morning, they will still be gone from you. Know that this is a shame. A damn too bad. A cutting, quick, and brutal thing. Know that there is no other way around it. Know what is around you. Know what is front of you as well as behind. Know that you know all of it well. By heart. By touch, by taste, by sight, by sound. Know that no one knows it like you know it. No one. Know that most people don't really care. Know that a lot of people truly care. Know that many people will listen, and will love you for letting them listen. Let them listen. Give them this right. Talk about tulips in the ground. Garlic cloves smooth and tough. Talk about burrowing. Talk about getting out of the burrow. Talk about the winter that weighs us over but carries us through. Talk about the winter, how you long for it to show itself because that's the way it's done back home. Talk about your home, how you miss it. Miss it. Go there. Come back again. Talk of your journey. Think of it in your mind, at night, when no one is around to see you doing nothing but being absolutely still. Absolutely still and thinking. Think. Don't hide from your thoughts. Own them. Keep them. Or set them loose, off on a course all their own. To God. To the dear and dark void. And then sleep. Remember that you do need to sleep. Remember that nearly every sorrow was once assuaged, healed, even a fraction of an inch, by sleep. Sleep. Wake up. Know your feet on the ground. And do some of the things that need to be done. </span></div>
Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-14857734375864404642012-09-10T08:00:00.000-07:002012-09-10T08:00:22.622-07:00Things I Might Know About Corner Turning. <br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">1. There isn't only one. The 'one' corner that will deliver us does deliver, but into territory that seeks new deliverance, other changes, other compulsions overcome. It's okay, no work lost. Keep turning. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">2. We turn them when we least expect it; four a.m. and sleepless, wandering the household rooms. We turn them when we're not looking. They come upon us at ordinary moments. Do the dishes. Weed the garden. Chop onions. I think, perhaps, the corner wants to take us by surprise, it's own little game. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">3. The new life? The new stuff after the turning? It might come rushing, a tumbling and earnest collision, been waiting for entrance and knocking. Or it's the slow leak that's finally run dry, no more to let out. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">4. I am still sad after turning. I'm still apt to get jealous and desperate and cut to the quick with sorrow, but it looks different over here. <i>It looks different over here</i>. There's the hardened self, the thicker skin. The suffering of fewer foolish things. Quicker recovery. Better love.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">5. No sorrow in growing that skin. The hardened self, she just knows better what the real shit might look like. She just lives out, and gives out, from a place more certain. </span><br />
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<br />
<br />Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-48009798166503828102012-09-03T11:54:00.001-07:002012-09-03T11:54:38.765-07:00Lake. I've been missing lately. Out in the world. Up on a lake. Safe in a cabin, holding my breath under clear water, at a stained picnic table beneath a Buckeye tree with green Buckeye shells--they prick you to protect themselves, but when they fall we collect them and proclaim them treasures.<br />
<br />
In this place: there is a hard hat in a shed with a spare key. My two keys are the best keys on my chain; I treasure them; they grant me access, allowance, to this place. Lucky soul. Lucky fish. <br />
<br />
A few times it has frozen over, the whole body of water, but not in my remembered lifetime. (The sound a freezing lake makes, do I know it? Like <i>ping ping ping</i>. Out and out. All directions. Sheets of crystals wedded, married, holding on tight, relentless.)<br />
<br />
The care given is relentless because: us, too. We're married to the place. We've given it our solemn promise. Much as it makes us snipe and gossip. Much as it makes us work. We'll work for it. <i>I'll work for you. </i>Promise, promise. Mow your orchard grasses, grown tall. Pluck your fruits with stained fingers and bless you, thank you, for what you offer. Sweep your floors, wipe your counters clean, move away your old growth, burn it up and tend the fire until my lashes are singed and my cheeks hold your heat. For you, this I will do. I promise.<br />
<br />
In a good winter you let us in. Waters wild and moving. No freezing. Just churning cold. When I am with you, I am a girl alive. Every single limb alive. Every single cell getting deliberate about living.<br />
<br />
We walked your road, slick with ice, dusty with summer. Then, our footsteps matched. We wanted them to match, then. Now I walk the road alone, but beside me there are other people, there are all the people I've ever walked beside. They're talking still and they don't see me, but I see them. They walk your road. They'll be walking there forever.<br />
<br />
You couldn't have told us what was coming. You couldn't have said: <i>careful</i>. You could only have said: <i>keep walking</i>. And that's enough. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Thanks for reading.<br />
<br />
<br />
BethBethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-42094134150160059012012-08-14T20:35:00.001-07:002012-08-14T20:39:23.962-07:00The Susa Stories #3: The Children<style>
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#3 The Children</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>The
children are three: Polly, Adelaide, and Lawrence, called Laurie. They are
getting older now: Adelaide has gone away into her adult life. Laurie and Polly are
still at home—Laurie going to the college, Polly a senior at the high school.
They come home to claim their mail and their meals and to sleep, most nights,
in their same narrow, childhood beds though Polly’s gang have countless study
nights and slumber parties, and Laurie has his fraternity and sometimes, too, a
mystery girl. Susa has stepped back from this situation; she has, more or less,
laid down her weapons in her battle to keep her children. When they were small,
they would gather around her on the bed in the master bedroom, clamoring for
the next chapter in the chosen book, begging Susa to read the parts in funny,
high-pitched or stuttering voices. They wore soft pajamas and clean socks;
their cheeks were rosy from the bath. This is how Susa recalls it. She fails to
remember their exhausting energy, their fighting words, her own weariness and
fantasy of escape. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>Now they
come and go as they please, leaving beds unmade, dishes unwashed, their pajamas
(no longer soft, rarely cleaned, faintly sexual) strewn on bedroom floors. They
read beauty magazines or thin volumes of poetry and fashionable philosophy;
they assume Susa has no understanding. Only Laurie will still sometimes read
with his mother—now he is the reader, she the listener. He reads to her from his perch
on the kitchen stool; she listens while stirring pepper into sauce, while
grating cheese onto the casserole for their dinner. She half listens to her
son, half marvels at his presence; he seems too large to have emerged from her.
Here he is before her: Laurie, in his worn Dockers and plaid shirt, his skin
finally clear, his face a handsome, slightly sorrowful face. He reads to her
from his history and political science books; Susa half listens, half struggles
with every single moment from her life as a mother, each memory crowding in,
interrupting until she is here, until the memories combine to create this: her
twenty-two year old son with unshaven face and baritone voice explaining the
complexities of the Bolshevik Revolution to his mother. This is Laurie. </div>
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This is
Polly: seventeen, uncaring, a few pounds overweight, loving in random snatches
and rushes of affection. Polly is her father’s champion. Once, in the aftermath
of the worst fight, Polly found Susa on the back porch, cigarette in hand,
attempting to talk herself back into function. Polly sat beside her mother. “Daddy doesn’t like you smoking,” she
reminded in her little girl voice. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Susa
watched the cigarette in her fingers. “I know,” she said, bringing it to her
lips. Polly sidled closer and tucked her hand in the crook of Susa’s elbow. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I won’t
tell,” she said. She laid her cheek, still cushioned with baby fat, against
Susa’s shoulder. “You said you were going to leave,” she said. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I was
fighting,” Susa said. “I was angry at Daddy.” </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I love
Daddy.”<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know.” </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But if you
leave,” Polly said, “I won’t love you anymore.” </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Susa
studied the top of her child’s head. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She studies
it still, when Polly isn’t looking, when she’s fallen asleep in front of the
television, or when she’s bent over her school books at the dining room table.
She thinks, no matter how long she tries, that she won’t be able to get to
what’s inside this head. She will always feel a slight alienation from her
youngest child. She will always watch her a bit more closely than she watches
the others, prepared for what, she cannot know, but prepared nevertheless,
cautious. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> </div>
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And Adelaide.
Adelaide was the first born, and the first to leave home. She went 100 miles
away when she went, to live in a city, in a downtown studio apartment with her lover. This was
Adelaide’s word, not Susa’s. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lover. </i>It
was the modern word; no one dated or went steady anymore. So they lived,
Adelaide and the lover, in a fifth floor walk up on a cobblestone street,
walking distance from the university they both attended with other children
and their lovers. At least, Susa comforted herself, there was that—there was
learning along with the loving (or the sex, which was what the situation was
mostly defined by. And later of course, the lover would change his mind and one day walk away for good, and this would be part of Adelaide’s learning, along with the
lessons about grocery shopping, housekeeping, modern art and medieval females writers). </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> </div>
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To her oldest daughter, Susa could
offer nothing but checks sent through the mail and a sympathetic ear, pressed against the
phone, when a crisis occurred. They happened often; the lover would leave in a
fury only to reappear again with a paper bag of rose petals or Indian takeout.
Their love was always in doubt, yet it seemed to always reappear, given enough
time apart. There were grand plans made with the lover: a year in London, a
jaunt to Mexico, a plan to cut all wheat and dairy from their diets. Money or
ease of execution was rarely considered, and the plans rarely came to fruition.
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> </div>
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They lived
in a one room flat, Susa’s daughter and this man; they slept together on a
mattress on the floor. <i>How often did Adelaide change the sheets?</i> Susa wondered.
<i>Did the man wear pajamas when he slept? Or did they fall to sleep naked, the
both of them, after bouts of love making?</i> Susa imagined the man to be
dark-skinned, with long, slender limbs and a full mouth. She could imagine his
body amongst the clean or unclean sheets, but she could not imagine Adelaide’s
body there beside his. This child she had birthed and bathed and comforted—she
could not place her in bed beside a man. </div>
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Adelaide was tall; she had knobby
knees and a strong jaw line. When she was at home she hummed show tunes while
she did chores around the house. She was a gentle soul, and the lover, Susa
feared, would slowly wear away this tenderness. </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> </div>
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One day in
a springtime Adelaide called Susa up around the cocktail hour. Susa was in the
middle of fixing supper. “I’m done with this city,” Adelaide declared. “I’m done with him and all his moods.” </div>
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Susa imagined a long-limbed, dark man combing the streets, a bag of Indian takeout in hand, inexplicably moody. <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>“Well,”
she said, grating cheese, “your father and I would love to have you home.” </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh
mother,” said Adelaide, sighing, “the world is wide.” </div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Susa nodded
and listened, though she was unsure as to what this statement might mean. For Susa, the world then was a three-bedroom house and dinner to be served at seven; it was a husband watching golf in the den; it was a sullen daughter studying Algebra in the dining room; it was a stolen cigarette on the back porch, after the kitchen had been put away for the night. Susa was stirring cheese into sauce for scalloped potatoes. This was her world. But while she stirred, she listened, and she let her daughter teach her this lesson. </div>
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Thanks for reading. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Beth </div>
Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6977538908916709757.post-41444387638922263422012-07-26T11:04:00.001-07:002012-07-26T11:05:01.656-07:00The Susa Stories #2: Shrapnel.<style>
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#2: Shrapnel. </div>
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For one season, a springtime, Susa lived by herself. This was
before she married H. She lived in a small studio apartment on the ground floor
of an old house. She got a patch of yard, a
front stoop even. And every single morning she was alone. There was both beauty
and danger in this independence. She sometimes wondered: <i>what if she would
never feel as happy with someone else as she felt with herself?</i> This was the
threat, the lurking worry that she pushed away but felt like a piece of
shrapnel buried deep in her skin. </div>
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Susa’s father was a veteran, an old, silent
man; he contained more pieces of shrapnel beneath the skin
of his chest than he could count, although as a child Susa had sometimes asked
him to try, and he’d begin, touching his chest through his t-shirt as he stood
half-shaven before the bathroom mirror, Susa standing on a stool next to him.
He’d try to count the way one tries to count the stars; you’re lost before
you’ve begun. He felt the pain of the metal shards still; they were almost like
living things when he became overheated with work or worry, suddenly taking it
upon themselves to find a way out. Her father called the shrapnel ‘prisoners’
in his joking moments, his own prisoners of war from his time served.
The pieces didn’t want to be in him, his native body; they hated being in him as much as he’d hated
being in their homeland, too. As a child, Susa couldn’t understand, and would live most of
her early life envisioning rebel armies of human-sized bits of shrapnel (for
she’d seen some of the pieces up close—those that did manage to work loose and
be pried free, sharp and thin as shards of mica) until her high school history
book set her right.</div>
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Like shrapnel, she
envisioned her own secrets: loving being alone more than being with other
people; a distrust of powerful women
and Europeans; a daydream of becoming a famous singer; the threat that one day a nerve ending would snap and she'd lose all composure, wiping a restaurant table clean with a single angry sweep of her arm. The secrets tried to surface
now and again, and she’d feel their attempt at freedom, and again stifle
them until they were hidden safely within her. </div>
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Living alone, Susa never got
lonely; there was no one around to forget about her, so there was no
attention to long for or feel insecure about. Living alone, she felt that she
became a powerful woman herself, and out on the street she walked a bit
differently; she felt less guilty about answering <i>no</i>. Living alone, she could
sometimes drink too much wine and sing in the bathtub, pretending a concert. Her waking moments were colored by a feeling of greatest luck. She painted the small bathroom in her apartment a
sunrise orange, brought home a small spotted cat, bought herself seeds and
flower pots for the windowsill where the slowly strengthening spring sun came
through. She cut poems from the papers she read and pasted them to the cupboards in her kitchen. She played
records loud or soft, went out when she felt like it, came home to sleep
heavily, sprawled across her bed, to wake to boil water for coffee, take in the
morning news, ready herself for the day, taking as long in the bathroom as she
pleased, and all of it alone, alone, alone. Nothing, she felt, could equal
freedom more than this, and when Susa thought the word ‘freedom’ she thought
war, and with war came her father, and with her father, shrapnel, caught and
fighting beneath the surface. </div>
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Her father wanted that shrapnel free; he would sometimes cry, during a bad spell, though he tried to keep this hidden. Some pieces did get free, slowly, and as a child Susa envisioned them
traveling back to their homeland, pulled there by some magnetic force. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Freedom</i>, she wanted to write in a letter
to her father in that season of living alone, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">freedom
is what everything wants</i>. Her mother would have sighed and asked her if she’d
met any single men, but her father would have understood. He would have sat
beside her on the front stoop of her apartment on a dark night, looking up and
trying to count the stars. </div>
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<br /></div>Bethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03457189428722469253noreply@blogger.com3