vertical gardening

i’m no photographer, and i wouldn’t even try to play one on TV, because if i did i’d likely trip and fall and pull down the umbrella we were using to block the natural (too bright) light and shadow, to get things “just right.” and then, when i ran from the setup shot, in SHAME, i’d probably trip over the 100-billion watt lamps we had set up to mimic “natural light” and burn the whole sha-bang down… only.just.sayin’.

and just goes to show… i’m constantly learning in this life, that there are no “just rights.” i’ve also been playing around a lot with Jung and shadows, my own and those that fall on me in the bright sunshine, JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT, and worse yet, the shadows that fall on me in the dark, making things darker, JUST WHEN I THOUGHT I HAD IT ALL FIGURED OUT!

i’ve cried a lot this week, even though in re-opening the door to my blog the other wee-hour'd morning, and writing the first entry, i was so held upside, by my own personal guns, that i wouldn’t allow myself to shed one tear. there are still no words (might make some up though!!!) for the sounds i was making those wee hours. it was a learned moment for me on JUST HOW HARD I CAN BE ON MYSELF AT VERY TELLING MOMENTS.

sheesh! it's okay to tell... and it's okay to FEEL in the telling; it's okay to verbalize an emotion instead of just telling a story. there's a difference between what you think, and what you REFUSE TO SAY YOU FEEL.

there's a difference between what you think & what YOU REFUSE TO SAY YOU FEEL.
there's a difference between what you think & what YOU REFUSE TO SAY YOU FEEL.
there's a difference between what you think & what YOU REFUSE TO SAY YOU FEEL...

(yeah, so "thousand times on a blackboard" work for later)

i’ve also LAUGHED A LOT THIS WEEK, to myself, with others, over the phone too (so hard sometimes there was only wheezing on both ends, which would sometimes would break the cell connection or make the two of us talking both go "are you still there?!?!?" knowing we both were/that strongly connected), out loud, in public, in texts, using emoticons, etc. … and at myself!!!! (important NOTE TO SELF: laughing at SELF is way better than SHAME/BLAME/GUILT or any of those other post-traumatical f’d up feelings that make the laughter harder to come by when forced to look at SELF and still seeing the PTSD/SHAME/BLAME/GUILT crap!)

(more "thousand times on the blackboard, OLD LADY, let's get this right!!!! kinda stuff!)

i have felt renewed and incredible LOSS this week. and even though i own this really great book by Judith Viorst called Necessary Losses and even though i’ve read it/lived it/loved it/her writing since i was a child because she is so spot-on, and own her other book as well, Imperfect Control—AND, even though i have since replaced my worn paperback copies with HUGE Amazon re-order hard-cover versions, which i balance precariously from high places so that they can smash down on my head whenever i need her healthy reminders, i’m suddenly and continually lost and (REALLY, REALLY HARD ON MYSELF ABOUT IT) for not being able to control my grief (losses) right now.

there are many times, where i’m caught up in asking myself, “where the FUCK is that little girl who used to lie (HIDE) in the grass, with the Redbook magazines (where i first discovered Viorst), and whatever other healing WORDS she could steal from the house, off the bookshelves … where is that little girl?!?!?!?! the one that knew, if you just made it through, you… you what?!?!?!?!

that little girl used to be soooooooooooo fucking empowered by loss (or was she just fucked up?!??!?). she ate losing and imperfect control for breakfast, and sometimes had trouble slamming the thickness of it down, past the lump that was already in her dry throat. to her, it was all "winner, winner, chicken dinner," even if she was sent away from the table, because alone in her room there were fairy tale books about other chicken dinners, or she could tell herself a story about a better chicken dinner, or cut pictures from the Sears catalog and build a room with an EVEN BETTER, MORE WINNING FAMILY CHICKEN DINNER WHERE SHE WAS SO PERFECTLY STILL, AND STILL AT THE TABLE!!!!!

for that little girl, life went on, because the alternative was … ?!?!?! and the idea of “whining about it,” uhm, yeah, not such a good idea.

until now, until this particular mean season, things were going along pretty good, with and without good reasons, but suddenly (or not so suddenly since we all know that river D-E-N-I-A-L) that little girl still, who thinks she has to be perfect, and get it figured out, now she thinks she has to do it all by her 50th birthday (which by the way—she’s looking forward to this monumental event in her life, but maybe trying to move forward too fast?!?!) --and of course she has all kinds of other mini-deadlines prior to this like finish this first, and be sure you heal this over to and get started on that, and ... (yeah so--make sure you pull the giant stick out of your rumpus too, why don't you??!?!?!? in fact, how did they manage no miss that stick on your colonoscopy?!?!!?!?)

i love milestones, and until this year, i used to understand the beauty and the history and ongoing nature of a headstone … and therein lies my personal rub in so many wrong directions right now [therapist type jumps in and asks, “anne, why did you call your “personal rub” a “wrong direction.” why do you still perceive anything about you as “wrong?” … but therapists aren’t ALLOWED IN MY BLOG RIGHT NOW… scurry off, you!]

[therapist exits stage left/anne goes to front door and finds package]

[hey wait! i thought there were no therapists in this blog?]

[who is writing inside these brackets, anyway?!?!?!?!]

okay… since the freak inside the brackets mentioned, and since this blog needs to end soon because i have some “real work” to do today, yes, there was this fantastic, itty-bitty package sitting outside the front door of my little cottage this morning.

it was something i ordered a few weeks back, so it’s not like it was a “total surprise,” but one musn’t look a untotal gifted surprise of any kind in the face right now, especially during a time when bracketed conversations show up in their blog (seemingly from nowhere), you know?!?!?!? tall horse-y girls with clutzy emotions have to be careful about these things!

when i saw the return label on the box, that was less than a foot sqaured, i giggled, OUT LOUD, for about the i’ve-lost-track-how-many-times this week/compared to the times I’ve also cried. –and the sun and snow-light was bright, i could have cried!!!!

so yeah, life, every morning, it's a SURPRISE i don’t get pulled out the door by the dogs and bust my ass and trip over a package, but this morning EXTRA.SPECIAL!

it was my Thumbelina-sized gardening tote/tools, for my plans for “re-growth” this spring and summer. yes, me Ms. Winter, i’m all about the regrowth, always have been, which is why I LOVE WINTER, it’s the necessary season beforehand.

prior to bed last night, i had shoved work, writing, therapy workbook and much other aside and instead was reading about a “vertical gardening project” i want to attempt this spring/summer, since my property is small/there’s only going up—so the timing and arrival of the tools i will need versus the bigger tools i already own at my supposed “other house,” did i say timely??!?!?

did i say timely, even though i’m the one who believes there is no such thing as that silly thing, time—only change.

and did i say timely, during a change-ling period when i have LOST A VERY LOT, and i have learning again we have control over nothing, and oh, what a beautiful thing that can be, if.we.let.it.

and just BE.


“Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.”
― Ken Kesey

--and if i'm wrong about ALL OF THIS, most of these garden tools could also be used for eating things like ice-cream or clipping/hacking off giant hunks of cheese from a block, or pawing at salads & salmon but there isn't a single tool in this kit bag that could be used for self-mutilation, NOT EVEN BY A TALL CLUTZY GAL with her contacts in the wrong eyes!

Walking [Nightmare] Tall, Wearing Purple

"You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.

Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all of your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And then for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.

And then the nightmares will begin.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

...when i opened the [Pan]door[a's box] to come back here to check on my blog and "to try to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow," well ... err, uhm, i realized it had been a helluva lot longer than September since i'd been here.

reading back through the last six or seven of my entries was, in a word D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T! i was surprised by the intense emotional and physical reactions i had reading my own words (the bitter ironies), and a few of the noises i made trying to keep the tears back, were in a word … well, actually i can’t find words for the noises right now, so i’m stumped on that one, just like i’m stumped lately as to why I feel this intense need to FIGHT SO HARD to keep tears at bay, because in doing so tonight, yeah, pretty sure i broke my clavicle, fractured my liver, and it's no living wonder why i can’t breathe half the time because i actually don’t breathe half the time when i make these noises i can’t find words for!!! on top of this mess, i double crossed my legs and that was 3-1/2 hours ago (still not sure how uncrossing them is going to go), and yeah chewed threw my lower lip.

but i digress…

as i said, i reopened the door, and while there was some freak-ass creaking, and my heart did some shredding and shrieking, i’m actually excited to play this role on TV again--the one where i have a blog, but in real life i’m a walking f'd up nightmare.

i have an art/fart/etsy blog as well where once upon a wrinkle in my old time's sake, i had intended to move my artwork and focus more on my etsy shop, so i’ll be building a door or window to that blog soonly. this will include a large (altered/collage/mixed media) project featuring, Ms. Ladykins below, ongoing, and then updates on additions to my etsy shop as well as whatever other arty fart bombs i drop.

Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow.

Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.

The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight.

The camera obscura.

Not the same image, but everything reversed or upside down. -Chuck Palahniuk

There now, that wasn't so hard now, was it?!?!?! --this restarting, jump-starting, let's get this blog shock therapy party and my heart started!

"I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” ―Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters