Wish I could write but my day is too busy,
Keeping thoughts from the “paper” is making me dizzy.
Meditation Tango
•May 20, 2012 • Leave a CommentI take a deep breath, connect, and sink into it. Shoulders down. Hold my frame just enough to be stable, but not so much that I am pulling one way or the other. Look down, eyes at a 45 degree angle, but feel the connection. Keep my core strong, my back straight, and find my center of balance. Begin the dance. Stay with each moment. Open up and let go. Try not to close in on myself. Breathe. Trust my teacher. Trust that I have absorbed some of each lesson. Trust in my own style. Know that there is a balance point between strict adherence to practice and letting my own variation show itself. Feel the change of tempo, sometimes fast and aggressive, sometimes slow and intimate. There are moments of linear balance and moments of twists and turns. Do not hold my breath. Thinking happens, but don’t get caught up in it. Keep my senses open. Use my ears and eyes…but not too much, just enough to be aware. Always go back to the breath. Be in THIS moment. When it is done, let it go. No matter how it went. Remind myself that I do it just to do it. It is in the very act of being in my own skin that I will find the purpose. Let go of expectations. And then go about the rest of my life. 
Passing
•May 19, 2012 • 3 CommentsA moment while driving
I noticed a squirrel
His figure black and outline crisp
As the afternoon sun shone behind him
His back against a tree
Equally dark and haloed
Details blacked out like an eclipse
Except clearly his busy ears and hands
Feeding himself some morsel from the earth
I felt witness to something alive
I sighed deeply grateful for the beauty of the moment
While driving back an hour later
Near the same storied spot
I saw a freshly smeared squirrel in the road
In the light and full of detail
That perhaps I wouldn’t have asked to see
Same squirrel?
It seemed a lesson.
And the beauty was not dimmed because of it
Birthing Word-Blood
•May 18, 2012 • Leave a Comment
What if I am
A solitary spirit
Only
Comfortable when despairing
Clawing at reality
Drawing blood that pulses
With life
Can I feel Life
If I am not
Bleeding
What if I need
The dirt and grit
Of the real
And what if
Living requires
The blood of others
Do I remorse
For them
Or Rejoice
For myself
Covered in the blood of my experience…
Which one? Hmmm……
•May 18, 2012 • Leave a CommentOverloaded
A cube of stainless steel and plastic
Enough wiring to spin and give notice
Made only to be filled and emptied
Filled with heat and stink that rises
Needed insides are useless now
Still caked with what was discarded
Our fault
We didn’t pay attention
Or perhaps we forced it anyway
Overloaded too
My morning cereal has been poured
The milk as well
Uh oh!
The silverware drawer has no spoons
Quickly check the washer
My breakfast is getting soggy
I can hear it crackling
Pull open the door
Wow!
It looks clean but still stinks
I can’t tell which are spoons or forks
Found a spoon
CRAP!
What is that still caked on it
Gummy and sticky and on my fingers
Stuffed full was a bad idea
Grab another and shut it
Whew!
Sigh…
I carry my soggy cereal and my clean spoon out of the kitchen.
About (What am I doing?)
•May 17, 2012 • Leave a CommentWelcome…
…to my world of essays, poetry, and ramblings…
So many things about my previous “welcome” have been bothering me. How grandiose and arrogant it sounded. Rather than present this as an invitation that assumes what YOU might be interested in. I think perhaps it is better to state what it is that I am interested in. I am interested in my own human experience. I am tired of normal niceties at the expense of my own honesty. I want a place where I can be real and honest about my daily vacillations. I want a place to explore what it means for me to be human, and struggling, and changing. I also want a place that I can be free to write and think and basically just be myself…and not have to really give a shit about judgment. I am creating a place for myself to experiment and explore, with the hopes of letting go of expectations. All of this hopefully to serve really learning to enjoy being human with its joys and its messes. I am tired of being told to embrace the joy and ignore the messes. I want to really learn to live with all of it, really live! I would love it if compassion could naturally arise out of these things, but I don’t want to give up my passion at the same time. Living, changing, struggling, passion, compassion…That is what I am interested in. If you are interested…then “welcome.”
(Previous B.S. –Where honest observations and a common human experience are the rule rather than the exception. Are you tired of normal niceties? Are you even slightly interested in radical honesty? Do you wish there was a place to be real, a place where you can see your own daily struggles without judgment, a place where humanity trumps trying to make everyone comfortable, and because of that we all feel a little more connected and a little more compassion? A tall order indeed, but well worth a try.)
Continue to 
Enter at your own risk…
The Peanut in my Brain
•May 17, 2012 • 2 Comments
Rattles in its shell a lone marble in a Ball jar
Even in stillness it continues its circular track
Crisp whirring that winds itself down
It might come to rest if my skull is long enough still
But the laws of physics argue against that equilibrium
Each languishing toss of my head searching for comfort
Sets that peanut in motion through the labyrinth of my tissue
Oh that it would grow roots and be still
I would pull it from my soft wormy earth
And grind it down to smear on my morning toast…and be done with it.
–April Resnick
Mommy Guilt
•May 16, 2012 • Leave a CommentGuilt
Sometimes life hands you two left shoes
More likely it’s your friends and family
Either way the next step can be how you choose
Walk circles or just use your own bare feet.
–April Resnick
For my husband today who experienced “mommy guilt” when he sent our daughter to school with two left shoes.
Us
•May 16, 2012 • Leave a CommentThis week I attempted to embrace failure
Some moments she showed up as a whisper in my ear
Her lips so close to my brain that her words caused a humming in my skull
Sometimes she grew into an animal in my gut
Who hotly clawed her way up through my chest and into my throat
Her growlings leaving no choice but for me to spit them out
Sometimes she seemed as if maybe she would not show up at all
Perhaps she was quieted, left sleeping in a corner of my heart
Until even her dreaming produced indecipherable prodding just the same
So I hummed
And I spit
And I was prodded
She rarely left me alone in all my waking world
But I looked at her and did not look away
We held each other’s gaze, and because of it we softened
Her voice, her nature, her fancies
Even when reflected back to me by others
Seemed my own…and I was contently sovereign for it
–April Resnick
Two Women by Eunice Pinney
Ego
•May 16, 2012 • 2 Comments
Does it hover around everything we do? I am reminded this morning, by my daughter, that perhaps even when we feel a deep connection with others our ego is still involved. I must admit that I feel the deepest love towards my daughter when she displays a similar personality to my own. Is that because I understand her in that moment, or is it because some biological drive to reproduce myself is being briefly satiated? Does that even matter?
I feel a tiny bit like Pheobe and her football phone (those of you who watched Friends will know what I am referring to.) Is there ever a truly selfless act? If not, does that necessarily have to be a moral judgment. Maybe it is perfectly fine to be aware that with every compassionate interaction, we too are getting something out of it. And maybe that is what propels altruism forward.
Something meditation has done for me is make me much more aware of the inner workings of my mind, like it or not. It is a bit of a “Pandora’s box.” Then the question becomes, “How much of it do I want or need to change?” I think that perhaps being aware is a huge thing, maybe even bigger than the changing. I like the idea that I can work much better with what I’ve got, if I know what’s there to begin with. Believe it or not, this compassion for my own human nature starts to extend toward other people. I can look people in the eye, wherever they are and feel like I can relate to their human struggle. If I can relate, then perhaps I can connect. And, there I am circled back to my original question. Why do we long for connection? Is it for others, or for ourselves? And in the end…does that really matter?
sometimesihatemycat 