Hunger

My acquaintance with an insatiable hunger is tugging as if at war with wisdom. My appetite for understanding becomes a connection fostering self discovery with components of reproach.  Deflections in my path create tribunals while I cannot overlook what my heart whispers: Be still, lodge where care finds pattern. Perception only happens backwards and whatever aches endures; this has to be for a greater healing than any diagnosis surfacing. My muse becomes stories created for closure when my malady is vague. How do I keep my life simple when whatever I have exists in my objective opinion? Am I really remarkable? Is this just my longing to value what has no price, constructing a reality for convenience?  My art form, a game I play with poetry and verse. Inscriptions unravel what my mind cannot, while searching for an intention.  Must I once again linger in this exercise of verbal stroking; looking for the reward which exists only in the implementation of reverie? My trance has become a tango with a partner who I cannot greet? Predictions completed my comprehension while prose exists in my engagement with imagination. My breath exhales waiting for language not found; I inhale and wait for the union. Is this my dance with an unknown future’s wave? Can questions propose an opportunity existing in humility and affirmed in happiness? This may be the reason my heart persuades deliberate word worship. I don’t presume to really know for sure.

 Question of the day. Do I perpetuate feelings and thoughts instead of taking action because staying in my head is safer?

The Choreographer

 

Experience lingers in resistance going forward…

Pushing future gains out of sight, only seeing a directness of words.

 Vocabularies, I’m unaccustomed to own.

The lines are straight converging with shapes forming my frame.

A form of reference I’ll recognize the fit.

 I am swept into the dance, the dance I have practiced well.

The stage before me isn’t as I thought.

It is exactly as it would be for I am not the choreographer.

Shining faces learning to listen and see potential worlds.

Contrasting colors will they become life’s custom?  

Ever learning to react or respond.

Where are the fragments of time now?

Who am I within the structure of today?

I am grateful for the experience in my education of self.

Tender, Gentle, Thoughtful Beauty

 

Tender, Gentle, Thoughtful Beauty

Walking with pain and burning ignitions 

 A bridge that is not of our making.

We are learning who we are together and separate.

Crossing and moving forward on a stretch to cross the river.

 The desire to live open and free.

What has happened glows in our minds

What will our next walk bring us?

Is it the passage of knowledge?

 Our courage and strength to be passed on.

 Are we part of a plan that shows us our way?

Can knowledge of what our heart must feel come true?

 To thoughts and poems, to words we love. 

People’s love shows us who we are.

A dance we want to be, coming together in desire.

Tender, gentle, thoughtful beauty. 

Continued Education meets Marriage

A few friends who are still in my life for some 45 years reminded me of my being quite the gal. I used to actually get asked for autographs. Why autographs? Well I had been on television, modeled, had a full page newspaper article written about my creative wedding and modeling. I had coverage of my work in other newspapers and a National magazine. Being in backstage with rock stars and doing lip sinks on television, which were popular at the time.  I sat with the press at concerts and over drinks with rock stars and coffee with movie stars, a back rub from a soft and gentle folk singer, who had become quite famous. There are also the movie stars I could be flattered by and those stories I would want to hide. I might have wondered why I had a certain heir of a wild child but it was the 70’s, however untamed they became.  Nothing stopped me, until this part of my life. I have a very primal nature with a resilient spirit that just keeps going forward even within my confusion and lack of direction. 

Now I am carving out how to forgive my shame I took so lightly to not feel and think.  Hiding myself wrapped  it in a cloak of excitement and drama.  I met my Tim when I came home from England. He was a student renting the house across the street from my mothers. I no longer wanted to hide my past. Yet my not having any formal structure except coberal, I was all over the place exploring. I would come home from work and he and his roommates were sitting on the roof and they invited me over. Cheering when I came home walking down the street. I took the bus to work.  At that time I worked for an interior designer in a Department store downtown once again. I began having fun with the college student. Tim was so sweet and funny and he would take me out to his College and he would show me around. He was a math/chemistry major and had a minor in Ceramics. Imagine. I didn’t have a clue the importance of math and chemistry in formulating glazes for pottery.

Tim and I were to get married. He became my second husband and finally I consummated my sexuality's, I knew something was wrong. We chose Niagara Falls for our Honeymoon. How trite and even if it were the Honeymoon capital of the US our first try ended in me in the corner shaking. It was as if every trauma that led to that moment came to take over my body. This was the beginning of my second marriage. Once again I knew how to please him. I was enamored  with a brilliant college student from Minnesota. He had gone to a prestigious boys school in Maine. Tim was a Hippie and I was a flamboyant Freak. Kind of the Sharks and Jets of the 60’s. That sounds so awful but it was fun till Marriage.  I had no real education apart from High School which was a failure. I lacked two classes and I wasn’t going to get High School done for me in England. Hull, Yorkshire to be exact. How is it that I could go to College or Art School in England and they didn’t care about American High School, only my artistic talent.  I wanted my schooling, I was driven to become educated after my failures. Tim was the perfect companion or so I thought.

Football Eyes

Faces and reflections

Looking in eyes that express something

I don't understand

Grappling for words I find expressions lost in semantics

Words expressed and only understood when challenged

Face faces are smooth or rugged.

I want to touch them all. I do!

Football eyes speak to passion

 Expressed in their stare

Light begins and ends in the score!

 Faces and reflections of who I am and who they might be.

Looking in eyes that express something I don't understand

Grappling for words I find expressions lost in semantics

Words expressed and only understood when challenged

Faces taught or relaxed, smooth or rugged. 

I want to touch them all. I do!

Football eyes speak to passion expressed in their stare

Light begins and ends in the score!

Wellness

                  The colors of clouds on a sunny day surround me    

They float before me to wrap me in words.

I’m floating across the sky in tender forms

Talking softly I am held up by memory

Does remembrance offer wellness

 My fire dance becomes a tattoo  

                                         Each touch becomes a love letter

                                                  I’m seized by life's song

The colors of clouds on a sunny day excite me

 Embracing me with visions of arms that support and comfort

I am once again well!

Unanswered

Questions that can never be answered

 

How is it that anyone can stay knowledgeable

When there are so many lives entrusted before his care.

Does he have to stay at a distance

Can life ever be engaging

Must the depths of knowledge be reached

With Drink, Drug or Lust

I’ve been hit with my fortunes longing

Stopped as if slapped

I Struggle with care and trust.

I don’t want to be closed off

                                 Realizing I have no assurances.

The wonder’s in waiting for my truth

I have finally realized I’ve passed.

I’ve died to my truth

I am living too many adult days

Are we retreating

Is this my only prayer

For Questions that can’t be answered

Expression

I have sometimes pushed and shoved to acquire what I want. Sitting on the sofa at my therapist today I realized as I worked at wrapping my mind around my life and crush on a man 12 years younger, when I am married for 37 years, I was not knowing exactly how to my process was and what happened to me. This man is my doctor. I see him every six weeks. My sister-in-law said as I talked of about him that I had a relationship with him of sorts. She did not mean it in the way I see it I certainly had never thought of it as a relationship, however I do now. I just went and he afforded me to be who I am on any given day with what I perceived as warmth and welcoming... Now I have been told by another Doctor that doctors love when their patients love them and that it was alright for them but not in my case because of my wild history before my marriage. The mix of how I came to this man is laced with an abundance of feelings. While I came with a great deal of what I thought was sophistication and what might have only been pretense. At some level I knew I was in trouble as he slipped my boot off to examine my ankles. I had never had a man do that let alone a doctor. Doctor or not he was still very attractive. While I lived for years and worked at my life with a husband, my husband is a which I thought was very smart on my part when I got married to help me figure out who I was and have a respectable life when my history had been anything but respectable, just wild, and showy and all about getting as much attention as I could till I decided I need to go to college after my second marriage failed and the next live in relationship I wanted different and my husband was at the college. He was a college professor. He was actually my college professor even though we are the same age. As I question the rest of my life and want to be successful in my aging process. I have realized how men have been a huge part of myself development.

Confided

Longing for what was and what will never be

Talk to me of your walking the halls

as our days fade away, we speak

Tender truth and unexpressed holdings of self

I see you and as you look back you see me

Walking from door to door in the the gift never found 

Caring in the name of health, are you confined or am I

I’m getting restless  in my years, forgive me

I have held too many memories

It’s time to surrender to them all.

Grandiosity

Somewhere after I became a woman, reached in the world of a late pubescence I started forming a path of all things which have passed before that event. By no means was I a woman. Understanding the meaning of what that meant was a logging of a hardwired part of the years before. I was tenacious and alive, so alive. Working in the department store gave me an interest I could talk about. We had no immediate family with events to practice living in. The family we had had a war of their own and I had been to battle as I grew to not make waves of any kind. I felt like an unwelcome pest. That transferred into how I did high school. As a class complainer I now know I was trying to anchor myself in their lives. They had families and I felt too insecure to do anything but see what they thought. Off handed ways to get compliments. In my magical thinking I slayed home to live a life of TV and hang with girls that went to private schools. Catholic girls schools. I lived in a primarily Catholic neighborhood. We were not and just another reason to feel different. They had boyfriends in the suburbs and I pretended to have one too. Meanwhile this would isolate me from the boys at my High School.

This was much like my dancing on the Dick Clark Bandstand and my imaginary fathers in Father Knows Best and the energetic music and show of Maurice Chevalier. He sang and so did I.  My French Father, none of whom could satisfy my real need. The theme continued in my view of the grandiosity I had constructed. I was going to be famous and rich and know what being loved meant.  I could sing and I even got asked to take voice lessons at Eastman School of Music. None of which my mother could afford.

Coach Surfers

I thought further into the law of attraction and my first response was the tangible my job and how I could make things work in a flash without previous experience in the particular whatever it was. I just told myself I have to I can. I didn't over think it! The creative process. As I thought more about what the LA meant further I think it became more puzzling in how it worked for me. The words seemed inadequate for the feeling of being able to attract. I especially was able to attract safety in New York when I lived there. Today I attracted a yoga class that became a reward beyond anything in awhile. I was too late to get to any of the classes that my original intentions had wanted. I was close to being on time to the 11:30 at Shakti and then my mind boobed out and off I spun and there I was at Grant and Niagara. Now I was too late to feel comfortable. I made my way to what I thought was Wegmans to get fish for dinner. Then just past Colonial Circle I saw a group of young people doing yoga. Right where they have the Bidwell park part. I pulled up and watched for a while and it felt right. Only a few minutes and I got my mat and off I went. I asked if I could join them and as a young man said later when I thanked them:" have you ever met a yogi who in a militant?" Then they asked me if I was hungry and they invited me back to a house for Brunch. This was a spread I haven't seen in a while except at a wedding. There were people there from all over the world. They belonged to a group call "Coach Surfer" They find hosts to stay at that are part of the group. There was a man who was my age who came to stay. He was from Rochester. I didn't talk much, the younger people were just so exciting and interesting. So full of youth and excitement. There was one young man when I said something to a table waiting for the food to come out. I asked if I could join the table and said I was the senior member and a  yoga interloper. He said in his dark eyed dark eyed self Oh what are you 40? I so laughed and asked him where he was from? He said Brazil and I said oh that explains the Latin charm. Later I when he stood up I had another question, I forgot his name in the excitement of course. I called him Mr. Brazil. His room mates young women his charm and said you should here him at home. The young women were from Denmark, two young girls who had been in the yoga class. Well he and I talked about his 6'3' self and being a Soccer player. I told him that my son played Division One and said he was 33 I said he just joined a league in NY City and was a goalie. He was astounded and said he still plays at 33. This young man was just 30 and said he would exchange his apartment in Brazil for a house Or whatever. His name was Andre I will remember him and another young man probably in his mid 30s hard to tell. They had ridden form London Ontario on bikes and the girls from Denmark got there for their first time. So there is and attraction for today and there's more but I am tired. So the fun and life of it. I remembered you had told me about the man in PA I just forgot so I hope you had a wonderful time. I got a little sunburn on the back of my neck and added a few freckles I'm sure. So here's something to look at Coach Surfers, they do get beds too. So in my life as it is and shall attract the life and energy I love and stay safe and strong and well. 

Bear Mountain

I had taken my son back to college in the fall and was staying in a B&B just outside the NYCity. There were no GPS at the time that was a regular part of our lives. It was about 1999. So I got the map out and looked for a shorter route. Our son had driven to his college in the Bronx. I'm not much for expressway driving, I rather enjoy the sites and stop when I want. I love going at my pace, not the traffic. I was going home by way of Bear Mountain. Well being who I am, I wouldn't put together the mountain part. Damn I was driving around a mountain. I just saw a shorter distance on the map! There is even a song. As I approached Bear mountain I saw a very mountainous drive with no seeing around corners, very slow and cautious driving, barely two lanes. Suddenly when I was just wanting to yell at myself for being stupid, I turned the corner hugging the wall close to the mountain that's top I couldn't see and the song Gravity of Love from Enigma came on. The beginning of the song was the spectacular beginning to a beautiful view. The sun was amazing and the valley below showed me a breathtaking vision of grace and beauty. While I would never want to drive Bear Mountain again, I relive the moment every time I hear the beginning of the song. It brought me hope for my long journey ahead, just as it does now. Yes I am a romantic

The Football Doc!

Hello Again: Wow.. While the anxious response of what happened yesterday has left me very quiet and tired, I wanted to write you. Given the emotion of my last e-mail I really had to look at myself. Because I am in Alanon and telling our secrets is important in sharing and recovering ourselves. I've heard it said that we are only as sick as our secrets. So thank you for allowing me what you do. The healing occurred because I felt a combination of pressure from my husband getting Viagra and the story of losing my virginity... on and on. I'm not sure what happens when I see you, if my brain just does its thing or whatever or you being the kind of man whose appearance frightens me. I am just grateful I got past my feelings of shame and violation. While I really do know what happens to me when a man gives me any undivided attention, I am convinced that the universe, God whatever it is: the "Blink' of what I bring to the office. My years and experiences is that we are all taken care of, somehow and someway. While it may never be in the ways we could ever imagined and makes no sense at first, getting to a positives place is what is important. Now another unleashing has happened, I'm still shaking my head at my pulling off my shirt, and is that a growth and a gesture of trust or a moment of uncontrollable me. I just knew I wanted simplify and no struggle. When I say I knew I didn't want struggle. It was just another momentary reaction to an uncomfortable need. Like hitting you! Oh I so can laugh at myself. I've always said I am one of Gods jesters. What is God preparing me for? I would imagine that the final letting go requires to unleash ourselves from our struggles. Ah too much.

The Beginnings

My hand is gripping tightly and being squeezed in my mother’s as I walk into an office building on State Street, in Rochester, New York. Could I find this building today? I'm not sure, I was not yet five years old? I usually came to this space with my father’s hands grasp, as I remember he had a different force about his grip, I want to believe it was less fearful and more loving. Is this the truth, it is the vision I have. What I can remember is the largeness of the freight elevator we stepped into. The spaces in the wooden slats were what constituted walls as we rode up to the floor where my father had a rifle range.  I stepped over a crack between the elevator and the floor we landed on, the jolt of the stop left me with the feeling of being drawn into the eye of a hurricane. Years later I still had the feeling; if any elevator break in the floor was too large I felt a sinking breath that left me troubled with emotions of being in a vortex of what I labeled my loss. 

Writing is much more focused and I would rather be talking and telling you this. When writing I have to capture my reader with choices of language that will have them wanting to read more.  I opt for talking; I can see the person’s response and change my words or stop. This is my expressive drama creating itself in a self centered conversation. The visions I create in my psyche continue to my senses especially with captive audiences. This is what I once found at my father’s rifle range, I’m sure of this.  I now am much more secure and entertaining as I go chatting and laughing when possible.

In my family of origin sharing truths seemed to have a boring effect, almost frightening without immediate feedback.  Personal lives were to be private. I really learned a lot about the need for secrets from my mother. If the truth was boring a lie was better. My secrets have taken a different form. The web of my life wants to tell one of my more shocking narratives. Beginning with the ones that gave me a sense of being a star  as a toddler running around the rifle range. At this point in my aging life, I can acknowledge my quirky nature in entirety. My continual self dialogue in my honesty is to be given the right person to listen to me and I have to feel open. My aging life is  honest but a new truth seems to be surfacing, giving me continual surprises.

My Shift with Doctors

A Paradigm resting in my heart with a major shift in my spirit. I don’t need to tell my stories to only a select few. Each Doctor I left because of my illness and walking with a truth I had no idea I had. I keep  having to deal with the fact that I am not good enough to have a voice. This is a lie I  have created for myself out of fear and muscle memory, not speaking up with ease. I believed they knew better than I about my body. Little by little as my pain could tolerate their treatment I began knowing with greater strength. The Doctor who told me he thought I must  drive my husband crazy and didn’t believe me that I even tried his medication, suddenly at the last moment I would go to his office and he said he learned in med school that even crazy people needed Doctors. I asked do you think I need a shrink? He said “no”.

I was trying to be his friend when things calmed down and I thought I needed to have fun. I hugged him and he was stiff as a board. I knew that was last time I would go to see him. Still I wrote him a nice letter and blamed myself and gave him the gifts I never had given. I love to share. I blame myself and now I am in the fight of my life as I accept I am not needing any toxic situations. Then while Doctors are supposed to be our friend they are not our friend to hang out with. How I would love to in some cases and he was that kind of doctor at first a big at first. When My potential disease was undefinable all things changed. I heard he and his wife were potentially breaking up and the attractive, fun Dona in my playful self comes to entertain as a patient. Then the Dentist who didn’t do my dentistry to meet my standard. I have so much Dentistry and I worked for a dentist as a receptionist. What learning that was and I proceed to drop names. I had lost my 57 year old Dentist of 30 years to his retirement. How could he, I liked him and for a while I had a crush on him. Just for a while. The office would tease him about his girlfriend. I loved the attention once again. He did all my work and I had to have a tooth extracted in the front of my teeth. This was a saga that I won’t get into. How I learned. He was friends with my PCP and his daughter had died of an overdose. He told me intimate details of her death. It was his grieving I am sure. 

He only partially fixed my tooth but the color was wrong. The heavily filled tooth underneath the crown was gray and it showed. I had the gift of my close friend's boyfriend who worked for a company that sold the material which made crowns. I knew I had to have him do it over. Once again I learned of his very loose manner being in an error I had to make him redo. This is another lesson in taking care of myself. I held on tight to my chest as he redid it. He talked and had given me a check to take to my PCP foundation for his daughter. Just not professional, he was to give me a check and I already knew more about PCP. Then I wanted to. Why is that because he is or was a doctor who enjoyed shooting the breeze and was more friendly than I am. He even told me I would never meet another “Doctor like him”.

Now I will go tomorrow to see him and I will carry this shift of loving the man who is being friendly,  however I will carve out a new truth. Hopefully! To trust him doing his job without me being the entertainer. Oh maybe just a bit.

Dancing Words

Dancing Words excited in conscious shaking souls quake

This old familiar friend, a love treasured and known

My mouth is burning to say what hasn’t been said

Steeped with knowledge hidden deeply within my heart

I request an audience with with my passion

A poem unleashed in a truth hidden in reverence 

Wake me to the glory of now, wrapping me in love

Living a mindful existence while I waken  

Waiting to be told what to do

All in the name of being alive

I am alive to the glory of Summer.

Words Exhausted

How is it that anyone can stay knowledgeable, when there are so many lives entrusted in care. Does he have to stay at a distance? Can life ever be this engaging? Must the depths of knowledge be reached, with Drink, Drug or Lust wrapped in secrets.  I’ve been hit with my fortunes of longing, stopped as if slapped, struggling with care and trust. I don’t want to be closed off from questions that don’t belong, realizing I have no assurances. The wonder’s in waiting for my truth, waiting to evolve. I have finally realized I’ve passed, dying to my truth. I am living too many adult days, without retreating? Is this my only prayer? I’m old perhaps in years only.  Listening with new ears and fresh eyes looking within.

 I rip open my heart to be seen. It’s only timing which escapes hands holding on too long, hands clasping and pulling as I reach to be touched. The telling of one more secret lodged within the space I call home. Looking at what you tell me. Do I know who you really are, in touch to every corner, as if your power directs my walk. How has this happened in the walls of your studio?

                            I speak of an evening without words

Birds without wings

Trees without leaves

Washed on a shore of half broken shells

Listening for sounds only I can hear

Watching my feet and toes

Covered by sand and washed

With wave after wave

Each flows across with a gentle massage

The wind and sea caresses

I give rested to the wicked

I am at peace because I played

 With words prolonging the unbreakable.

Short and sweet prayer

Designing Dona is in conflict with Dynamic Dona and not listening to Discerning Dona. Life is so pushing and pulling at this aging body. My spirit says one thing and my body says another. This is what happens when my spirit overrides my willful child. I proceeded to myself a vision of a dismounted position that gymnast's use as they finish their routine on the horse. Never being a gymnast it was an amazing sight to behold how I proceed. Is it that my insides are unable to match my outsides?  I think so.

Oprah once said “First God whispers, then he speaks loudly and then he gets to yell." I don't want to get to the yelling part. May this be a prayer of a different kind? Dona of many D's

PS, Now I have to get out of the chair and move slowly and serenely. May I applaud myself and it may take some work.

Fracture Faith

What would it mean if I got exactly what I want, how could I ever know, I couldn’t. I play with life and all that comes before me until I am calm. Now in these aging moments I want to choose more carefully as the bubble existing within me spills over and loss hangs as if a hook has been placed in the center of my soul. How can I want what I want at the depth of my being; I do. I see the play in my game has changed and no longer wants just amusement; I want reality. This must be a conscious choice with intention.

Is it arrogance or faith? I knew a year ago I had to stop my game and the rules gave way to watching another game continue. Was it a practice for the world you live in or just you doing you? What is you and who are you really?  My story finds trust in how I am with you; perhaps only amusement for me. This has led me to a safe world where you do just as you want and allow me the same.  Words and thought practices have brought me comfort.

What do you want from me? What do you want for me. I know what I want. Is this pushing an envelope I should never open? My longing is stealing my breath rather than giving breath. I want to understand just a portion of what I have become and see if I can be opened, healed. I want to tell you all my stories and entertain you as I want you to entertain me and give me remedial life where I have only fracture narrative wrapped in question marks emphasizing wonder. Do I wait or have I waited too long living in the moment because I had no intention only play. I need what is scratching inside to be given a band aid or a cure.

A different kind of illness

My last words as I prepared to leave; “I can't look at you”, as we embraced, out my words popped: “Someday I want a man like you.” I was accustomed to hugging him. In actuality I thought about it and I wanted him, not a man like him. He probably knew that, in observing my continual apprehensive self and wild women progressively being unleashed, he had to know, after all, everything about my relationship and the patient, Doctor Interaction was without a lot of boundaries.

The soul sickness I had brought to him, has found a new place in my life wanting to grab at releasing what has been relegated to self imprisonment. My drunken moments with him are becoming painful as of late in the depth of the growth he felicitates. God did for me what I could not do for myself; I am like a moth to his flame for the spark of light I get.  I have evolved into what for me has become more and more frustrating and confusing. The stress of my private life has been an evolution for recalling the many effects of men on my life; men having a lingering effect on my long term marriage; which I brought from as far back as being a toddler.

 

Who supported me in the Domestic Goddess tradition while he built his career after many changes in our home while moving? I was very used to looking for some ideal that was also a fantasy propagated by watching Donna Reed and Father Knows Best.

My growth has taken many forms over the years with men. I wish for God to express to me in clarity what I should do with my frustrations besides watching and waiting with Faith…

My soul sickness was part of a  trauma coming from my past as life found itself, manifested what I never faced before and now life seems to be forcing itself to be looked at in all I have never wanted to feel and not just run from.

I know that I can't force solutions to make my life something which fits my own picture or try to fix what is out of my power to fix and redo the past, however, I can face what is and see how I can work with what is in place.