I should probably post more – like the three essays that are still sitting in my journal – yep, getting on that…. thanks for the love and support 🙂
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 50 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
original found here
Equipment you will need:
A peeler that fits into your hand snugly
so you have complete control
as you enter the time-consuming task
of peeling away all the outer layers
of the fruit he left behind. Nevermind
it’s been sitting there among the gnat traps.
It will be perfect without the bruises.
Preferably a dedicated saucepot. You
cannot work well with a coating that sticks
or something you cannot handle
well. It must have a good,
strong handle. As must you.
A strainer that fits your vessel.
Nothing is more frustrating
than trying to fit two pieces
together and making a mess
because they never went together
in the first place. Tea is watery
and runs quickly in all directions.
No one likes cleaning it up, and there’s
almost always some of it left behind.
You don’t want to be soaking
on your hands and knees due to
an incompatible strainer/cup relationship.
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons fresh ginger.
Preferably chopped up and mashed
yourself. You can use that stone statue he gave you
that’s always stayed intact no matter how many
times you’ve “accidentally” dropped it on another
surface just as hard.
2 cloves.
Depends on their freshness. Also
depends on the time you are willing to put into
raising them. The children,
not the cloves.
1 cinnamon stick.
Very important, but it depends
on the size. Use the largest stick
you can find. There’s no such thing as too much
cinnamon, and it will help you
stay warm with all that spice.
1-2 peppercorns.
Some people like adding these for an extra bite.
But if you’ve been through enough pain
already, feel free to omit.
2 cups milk.
You could have made this yourself five
years ago if he hadn’t been so jealous.
What a waste! You may find you need more of this later,
so save a reserve. You may need it to ease
the strength or lower the temperature,
as you were expecting lukewarm.
2 cups water.
Perfect ingredient, and you can find it anywhere. Cooling
and cleansing; it’s just what you need.
But do not use bath water; residue
always remains.
Sweetner:
Don’t be crazy! This is the best part. Honey
works well, but I always hated it when he called me sweetie.
Honey takes time. Sugar is my favorite, but it’s unhealthy.
Never accept anything artificial. Your own wits will do.
Method:
You must boil first to remove impurities.
Think of it as a ritual. And as the steam rises,
breathe in the moment of one thing changing
into another.
Add a few other things, but keep boiling. You
have everything you need, so the order doesn’t
matter anymore. Just make sure
you never turn up the heat. You certainly
want to avoid open flames and the irreparable
damage they can cause.
Stew.
Just long enough for things to saturate.
With your compatible cup and strainer, separate the tea
from the shit that’s accumulated at the bottom.
It looks good, and it smells wonderful,
but don’t be fooled. It can
only be used once.
Finally, serve it up the way it deserves.
With lots of froth in an artistic ceramic mug,
Nothing with your college logo or anything with a chip in it.
Avoid anything you acquired while on vacation.
Avoid anything given to you by someone whose
identity is starting to fade away.
The tea deserves a better vessel in which
to reside before it is sure to
be enjoyed by your unconditional fulfillment.
Dear gentle reader,
I would like to remind you that you don’t have to read this blog. If you find it slanderous, upsetting, irritating, embarrassing, if you are disgusted by it, or experience any other unpleasant sensation while reading “this shit I write”. Â I urge you to stop reading, and move onto things that you find more pleasant.
Perhaps these videos would be less distressing?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2H5YVfZVFw
Best,
Emma and Toad
“There goes my hero, … Foo Fighters
“The mind of an addict is cunning enough to convince the body that it is not dying” – Michael Lee
The mind of the addict.
Sometimes I miss him so much it is physically painful. It comes when I am thinking of other things, and then it hits, and I can’t imagine how I could ever not be thinking about him. Like tonight when I was shopping at Walgreen’s and I remember the time I took him shopping for basics while he was living at the homeless shelter. I wrote about that here.
He is on Step 4. Three and a half years into this hell, and he made it to Step 4. I talked to him last week and I actually heard my son, not the addict, not the mental illness, but my son, my beautiful, funny, loving boy, I talked to him. He is working so hard, so very hard. He is clean and he is sober (four months now), but the psychosis is hanging on with a tenacity that has not let up, not even for a moment. Until now he could not cope with it without drugs.Without finding someway to escape the voices in his head, voices caused by biochemical imbalances in his brain. He is coping with the chemical imbalances in his brain chemistry clean and sober, that alone is heroic. But it is not enough yet.
If the biochemical imbalances manifested themselves as cancer, or organ malfunction in his body this would be an entirely different story I’d be writing. People would see the battles he’s faced. As heartbreaking as Robin William’s death was, it put a real face to how deadly mental illness can be, and he (Robin Williams) did everything he was suppose to, he was clean and sober, he took his medication, he saw a psychiatrist, and it still killed him. People don’t want to believe that mental illness is as debilitating as physical illness. It’s so much easier to stigmatize someone with a mental illness, so much safer, so you can find reasons why it could never happen to you, or people you love. Â In a Mental Health First Aid class I recently took I learned that severe depression is as debilitating as quadriplegia – as quadriplegia. No one told Christopher Reeves to suck it up, and just get over being paralysed. He was seen as a hero for coping with such an overwhelming disability with grace and courage. Â Robin Williams was no less a hero. People who overcome addictions and other mental illnesses are as deserving of the praise, love and support we give to cancer survivors. People in recovery need as much love and support as those undergoing major medical treatments. All are heros.
When we talked I told him how proud I was of him, and encouraged him to keep moving forward. He still has so much to overcome, so much work to do, and there are no guarantees that he will ever be well.
A friend of mine sent me this article. I am that quiet mom who doesn’t say much when people brag about the accomplishments of their teenage and young adult children. My son is never going to Princeton, he will not go to graduate school, he is likely not going to do most of the things I hear other parents bragging about, he may never be able to live independently. But he IS clean, and he IS sober, and he is working as hard as any honour roll student, as hard has any top athlete, and I am just as proud as other parents whose kids are in Princeton, on Varsity teams, whose kids are doing wonderful, exciting and accomplished things. I just don’t talk to many people about it.
He is using the support network he has to deal with the terrifying psychotic episodes directly. He is taking his meds. He is doing everything he is suppose to do. He is trying so hard, and it still holds him by the throat. He is on his umptenth medication combination to help his mind become more balanced, and stable enough so he can continue to recover. It may not be enough. He had to leave the wonderful place he had been staying in for the last 2 months and  in to go back into a “higher level of care” to get his medications and episodes stabilized.  I haven’t heard from him, or anyone since the transfer last week.
I look at the sky, and try to decide if this is colour it turns in the moments before it falls. (modified from Shane Koyczan’s To This Day Poem).
I don’t know how this turns out. I don’t know if he will get well. I don’t know if I will ever see my beautiful boy again, or if this disease will take him from me completely.
So sometimes when I am doing other things all this comes rushing back to me. The last few years that when I look back on them, I cannot imagine how we lived through them.
Michael Lee is a performance poet and a recovering addict and alcoholic. I listen to this poem a lot.
I miss my son. I pray that this is not the colour the sky turns in the moments before it falls.
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a love sickness.” -Robert Frost
I wrote this a while ago, and in honour of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’m reposting it here, it’s also published here.
I’ve been busy lately. We’re all busy, I realize. As much as I can, I try to put on my oxygen mask first, I really do, but something always falls through the cracks. Something like a mammogram.
Mammograms, with ultrasounds that I’m supposed to get every six months, mammograms that my gynecologist sends me sternly worded letters via registered mail to go and do – NOW. Reminders that kept getting bumped by my more immediate needs, and the endless needs of family. I had good intentions, I was going to book the tests, I was, as soon as I had some time. I need to go for the extra squeezy scans, and 30-minute ultrasounds, and I just could never find the block of time. That is, until last Friday night.
It had already been an emotional evening, and was past midnight when I was going to bed for the fifth time, and that’s when I found it – the lump in my right breast, cozied up near the lymph nodes. One of the advantages of having already been going through a stressful time is that there was, at first, little energy left for panic about a lump I didn’t think was there…last week? Last month? When was the last time I had done a Breast Self-Exam? I looked up at my bedroom ceiling and said, “REALLY?” to no one in particular.
I went to bed, too exhausted to obsess. Before I opened my eyes the next morning my first thought was, “I have a lump in my breast.” I checked, yes, it was still there. I spent ten minutes staring at the beige ceiling, wishing I’d painted it so I could have a colour to stare at. I thought about pretending I didn’t find anything, that it was just another cyst, that I shouldn’t waste anyone’s time. Then I sat up and called my doctor. I told them I found a lump. They said:  “Come in this afternoon.”
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and thought, “This is how someone with a lump in her breast looks.” I imagined myself without breasts, scars running across my chest, like some of my friends. I imagined myself without my hair, a mane that is generally so unintentionally big it could use its own zip code.
“I have a lump.” The thought permeated everything I did that day, now accompanied by jolts of panic. I asked one of my kids to unload the dishwasher and added, in my head, “and I have a lump.” My brain shouted it to each person I saw, “Dry cappuccino, please – did you know I have a lump?!” I was fascinated by how everyone was acting like it was a perfectly ordinary day. I thought about the months I’d let slip by without getting that mammogram. I told myself I had been too busy, but that was only half true. I was tired of being poked at, I just wanted to go for a spell where I didn’t have to wear a damn hospital gown, where I wasn’t a specimen. Then I thought, “I won’t live to see my kids get any older than adolescence.” Suddenly, I hated myself.
Soon enough I was in my doctor’s waiting room, then after being weighed and measured I was lying down in a paper gown that opens in the front, being examined by my doctor. He is the first doctor I’ve had who is younger than I am; perhaps this will be the trend from now on – younger and younger doctors examining my aging body. He’s a nice guy, and we joke around a lot. He’s seen me through a major car accident, liver failure, pneumonia, hip surgery…and we always manage to find some bit of humour to break things up a bit. So I thought he was joking – I actually started laughing – when he said, “You need to see a surgeon right away.” Then I saw his face.
I finally got that mammogram I’d been putting off – STAT. All eight views, with stickers attached, and the lump clearly marked. I had the ultrasound to map the lump’s exact location and size. I spent two hours in freezing rooms wearing a paper gown while technicians spoke encouragingly to me. I think, “They are always nicest to people who have cancer.” Then I wait. And I think about my body, my breasts. I remember the touch of a lover’s hand and wonder if I will ever feel that again. I remember the years of nursing my children. I think about what makes me beautiful, what makes me a woman.
I wait, my thoughts cycling for two days, before I see the equally friendly surgeon. I bring a friend, a breast cancer survivor, who brings a notepad and pen. More examinations, more discussions of test results, another front-opening gown, and I don’t have cancer.
I don’t have cancer.
I almost feel guilty. Everyone has been so kind, so supportive, and I don’t even have cancer. My friend is thrilled, and now I really do feel guilty, as if I’d made up the whole thing for attention.
Shortly thereafter, I acknowledged my tendency to make myself crazy with very little encouragement; I can take a small bit of information and just know that I’m sick, I’m being cut up, my hair’s falling out, and not too much later my children are motherless. But there is so much genuine fear in finding a lump in your breast, or anywhere else.
What took longer to sink in was how much love and support there was for me. This drama took less than a week, and in that time I had several friends and many health care professionals surrounding me with love, even as I spun my tragic stories faster and faster. In the end, that’s what I take from this experience:  Even when I am terrified, I am surrounded with love and compassion.
I have a future of frequent and intense breast examinations to monitor all my lumps (I have many, as it turns out), and I’m okay with that. Bad things can and will happen, and what’s important is that we love and support each other. What’s important is that we women allow ourselves to be loved and care for, because we’re all we’ve got.
Pablo Neruda’s poem, “Body of a Woman,” has become a touchstone for me, especially when situations like “the lump” arise and my sense of what is good and what is beautiful about myself become blurred. He writes of his love not only for a woman’s body, but also her spirit, grace, strength, heart and soul. It is a profound description of beauty and love that does not relate to size, cellulite, or scars, but of enraptured awe. This type of love and regard would endure regardless of surgery or disfigurement, as it encompasses thewhole woman, not simply superficial slices of her. It is an earthy, sensuous love that knows nothing of models, magazine covers, or western society’s ridiculous expectations. Neruda conveys his passion, appreciation and love for the beauty and awe of a realwoman’s body.
by Pablo Neruda
Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant’s body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!
Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
Corpo de Mujer
Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.
Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava
y hace saltar el hijo del fondo de la tierra.
Fui solo como un tĂşnel. De mĂ huĂan los pájaros
y en mĂ la noche entraba su invasiĂłn poderosa.
Para sobrevivirme te forjé como un arma,
como una flecha en mi arco, como una piedra en mi honda.
Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y te amo.
Cuerpo de piel, de musgo, de leche ávida y firme.
Ah los vasos del pecho! Ah los ojos de ausencia!
Ah las rosas del pubis! Ah tu voz lenta y triste!
Cuerpo de mujer mĂa, persistirĂ© en tu gracia.
Mi sed, mi ansia sin lĂmite, mi camino indeciso!
Oscuros cauces donde la sed eterna sigue,
y la fatiga sigue, y el dolor infinito.
Vente poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada – Pablo Neruda, 1924
I’m working a lot and not writing as much as I would like, I do, however, still take many pictures.
Recently I’ve received thinly veiled threats about this blog, about one post in particular.
I repeat, if you don’t like what I write, don’t read my blog. Threatening and offensive comments will not be published, and I will not apologize for, or remove anything I’ve written as a response to such comments.
Right, now on to Shane Koyczan.
I love this man’s poetry – and this really is for all the trolls who’s only purpose is to cause pain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670if6Etx0o
Things have been difficult lately.
I’ve received some criticism today, about me personally, and about my writing, specifically about this blog “are disgusted by it” and “just who reads that shit you write?” were the exact words. That’s okay, not everyone is going to like me or like what I write. So today I was reading poetry, which generally helps, and certainly never hurts, and then this song came on.
Thanks Johnny Cash, I think I’ll do just that.
and here’s some of the poetry that went through my head today
Canto LXXXI, excerptÂ
Ezra Pound
“What thou lovest well remains,
the rest is dross
What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
or is it of none?
First came the seen, then thus the palpable
Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage”
… the rest is dross
The Waking
-Theodore Roethke
dear john,
today I wanted to carve the words
carve them into my skin, so
all could see
what I am
when we spoke, had you asked, I might have told of the holes – I carve – inside, maybe you could have seen the ardent slice ripped out, to quietly lay at your deeply restless feet. but all it touched was your breath, passing backwards in your constant cool drifting words.
had you understood my voice –
could you have heard?
known my songs are all written for you?
before I left
did I tell you
of bloodstained views on wood grain hall floors – knee in my back, fists gripping long hair, of the stripes of our walls getting closer just before they turned black.
or was it you who told me
of the view from mum’s hand standing in doorways –
watching,
blocking escape.
dear john,
should I have warned you? of trusting too young, and of pain, and fear, and of blood, sometimes first – and of tears locked in rooms, could this have saved you?
I would have saved you – you know, taken your blows, swallowed your bitter bruises, your raw pain, and sent you away whole – if only I’d found you.
dear john,
even now that you’re here,
I’ve lost parts of you.
and no longer can I wrap you in blankets.
I can’t find your song or your bruises. so I keep carving these slices off me to make us both whole, but your restless feet walk by them with your words always drifting backward at me.
dear john,
today I wanted to carve the words
into my skin
so all could see
what I am.
Emma and Toad 