tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-332575912024-03-13T23:19:00.474-07:00Way Down UnderWorking in Antarctica, travel, and the rest of it.petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.comBlogger154125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-15474183096329690892024-03-13T06:21:00.000-07:002024-03-13T06:21:45.117-07:00I'm a known coward in a coward's skin...<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: left;">Written on 06/05/18 and never posted...just read and it seems really good!</div></div></blockquote><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAoADCSpD-8">Heavenly Father</a></div>
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Since returning from Taos I have continued my tradition of making drama out of nothing...the giddy few days after the return, the loss of something yummy/nervewracking, the emergence of something new and different and the obsession with this Bon Iver song that I can't stop listening to. </div>
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I am sitting here in my bedroom right now just sick over something that has or hasn't happened at work. I'm in this tedious and boring warehouse that I am able to make fun by seeing it as a way to get a workout every day. Two of us (the 56 year olds) work all day steadily and get heaps of work done. The two 27 year olds go on two hour lunches and giggle and laugh all day about inappropriate videos and crap they are watching on Facebook, while I am hurting myself wrapping pallets, panting, busy as F8ck. I can't blame this scenario on anyone as I have seen me do this many times: be a martyr at work while others are laughing and having fun. There is usually a breaking point where I blow up at the boss and shout at them for not making the others work...and while they agree that I am doing the bulk of the work, they are so rankled by my outbursts that I get a lower review than the slow moving and barely working ones with the lighthearted personalities. Boy what would that be like: to be lighthearted! I have no fracking idea! I take everything so seriously and treat the job like it is the most valuable thing in the world to me (sometimes it is the only really compelling thing I have going on in my life). Mixed in with this weird dynamic is some ear shattering classic rock that blares all day and a two-hour talk show in the morning that makes me very uncomfortable. I'm usually not overly PC about guy talk in warehouses but something is different here and I can't quite put my finger on it. So four weeks into trying everything I can not to hear this radio show that is insulting to women, I go to work prepared to give notice and find that the speaker has blown out and the sound is only from the computer and I think hallelujah! Later in the morning I feeling home free when the two young guys come over near me and are laughing about a video they are watching on their phone and turn the volume up really loud and I just lose it - but only internally, because this type of discomfort, of the toxic work environment variety is brand new to me and for some reason I am too afraid to say anything to the boss, who is very cool and a good person. I go outside at lunch, heart pounding and strident and call the person in HR who placed me at this assignment and just let loose...I tell him I need a different job and what were they thinking putting a woman in here. He tells me to finish out the day and he'll deal with it. Over the lunch hour I start to feel like a big ninny, like a puss, like I can't deal with my own shit, so I call him back and tell him I'll say something and he doesn't need to do anything unless I get back with him. I got back to work and find the afternoon going by easily and don't feel the need to say anything but all of of a sudden the guys look kicked down. The mood changes and everyone is silent and the warehouse is silent. Did they get a call and ass chewing from HR? They must have because everyone's acting very cowed and shamed. And of course, I feel even worse - I feel terrible that they feel terrible. But isn't that how women are programmed and taught to feel? I know I was. I was told that in no way can the man in the house be bothered at all and you must adjust every aspect of your personality to fit into what could be possibly acceptable to him. And guess what it was never acceptable...no matter how polite and sweet and obedient I was it was never going to be good enough. So I drag this miserable programmed self with me into every work environment I've ever been in...either the bullied or the bullyer...never having known how to be a team player, never having learned how to be on a team. God that's hard to write and it really sucks. It's not always black and white like that as there are many times when I'm just the happy superstar at work or just so content that I'm not really worried about anyone else. But sometimes this old sad self shows up and I don't know how to deal with her. I can quit. I can move. I can go on a trip. All these things help but they don't cure. I have spent 24 hours feeling really horrible about how I handled this. Why didn't I have the courage just to talk to the boss. Why did I go over his head so that they had to be reprimanded and are now walking on eggshells around me. When am I going to give myself permission to exit this incredibly old and painful story; and more key: what am I getting out of it. What am I trying to prove and to whom? I'm just filled with very uncomfortable shame about at the whole thing, where I should feel no shame. I did the right thing. It is okay for them to be uncomfortable and not just me. I don't need this job at all...I'm just doing it for "fun" and things got completely out of hand with my psychically. After the perfectly respectful and loving mother-womb bliss I feel in Taos to come back and be slammed into a work environment filled with loud toxic rantings that are based in degrading women. To be around people who make themselves feel better by making fun of others. I need to give myself more time to be put back together after Taos. </div>
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All of these feelings of shame and unworthiness and isolation that come up around this stuff are really hard for me to deal with. The good news is I didn't drink over it. In my 20's I would have gone straight to a bar and gotten blotto drunk and gone to work hungover the next day so that the shame would have been deserved. In twelve days I will have 25 years of sobriety. There is not enough blogosphere to describe what all I've been through in this quarter of a decade, but for the best of it start at the beginning of this blog, where my cup runneth over with the kind of goodies I had been waiting for. It is so easy for me to see why people relapse. To have to try and ride out some of the stuff programmed into us is almost unbearable - and so much of it takes a lifetime to undo. This so insignificant little temp job at this dopey little warehouse had to power to tap into my blackest little spot, and fortunately, I have the tools to be able to deal with it. I always hoped that all this stuff would just go away but it seems to cycle around every once in a while. I only like feeling on top of the world and bursting with badass-ery, so when I'm knocked off that high horse I crumple like an abandoned child - the blackest of the black, the dark dark hole of self loathing that 10 years of Hindu meditation did not ameliorate.</div>
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But I did the right thing. It was on the same day as the metoo hashtag, and I was just sick remembering the awful harrassment that I gagged myself over because "he is almost retired" and "it would kill his wife.." that hillbilly horseshit that I listened to and let guide my decision to not report my attacker. Fuck that guy. I wish I would have punched him. But I'm a "freezer" - and cannot bite back. I can feel uncomfortable for a few days if it means these guys have been read the riot act...and maybe it's good that they feel a little shame too. I did it for the sisterhood.</div>
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The worst part of all of that is that I feel very alone in it - like I don't have anyone who has my back or is on my side. That is an ancient story too, and if I question it and examine it more closely I see that is actually isn't that true. I talked to so many people, so many women, and now bonding with the ultimate comforter - words flowing from fingers. It got me by when I was 8 years old and has not let me down in going on 50 years.</div>
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To be able to see that the shame is from not feeling like I did it perfectly...that I don't have to always be brave, and that sometimes brave was just a bravado face hanging flimsily on a foetal terror. So dramatic. Not on purpose. Just the way I am.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-31697664035620184552024-02-16T20:18:00.000-08:002024-02-16T20:18:42.273-08:00<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3disym5s6bgEdCeKWGAky5EnJIIdWqyNLQ3wk4AfT3gNFAMngHB-RBJ48_G8vWIS_kyGgE8Ue6Q5PU2jZSYn0Nq9NPtz2HxKBUjFIXC3kURM-5gMmLHQkZPSq0znQio7JJF3ARbTnYFrFjLaW9YihAjixwnVBuXer4WR3tTAaPp_IdSpQDhP4lg/s1050/_dsf4722.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="1050" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3disym5s6bgEdCeKWGAky5EnJIIdWqyNLQ3wk4AfT3gNFAMngHB-RBJ48_G8vWIS_kyGgE8Ue6Q5PU2jZSYn0Nq9NPtz2HxKBUjFIXC3kURM-5gMmLHQkZPSq0znQio7JJF3ARbTnYFrFjLaW9YihAjixwnVBuXer4WR3tTAaPp_IdSpQDhP4lg/s320/_dsf4722.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo by Bret Bradford for Frontera Fest 24</td></tr></tbody></table></p><p><br /></p>It's been over 6 months since I've blogged and it feels like a lot has happened - a lot of it good and a lot of it that I will refer to cryptically as I have not completely processed it yet. My tiny house sold yesterday, almost after a year sitting empty for sale. I was surprised at the grief feelings that came up...but then it was a little home that I was very excited about and had totally fallen in love with when I saw it. <p></p><p>I had been visiting the tiny house village for about 4 years off and on before finally buying this beautiful, sweet little house...I almost immediately regretted it, and had a two month overlap with my apt. I'd lived in for 6 years and was going back and forth like some super tortuous relationship between two lovers. It almost felt like the same kind of drama; and since I've been single for over a decade I can't really remember what all that drama felt like (except it would be intolerable to me now), but the pining and regret and remorse was very stressful to me. There were so many things to love about the tiny house! It looked so good and shiny and new and was adorable. Ugly things started to emerge: my neighbor let his dogs poop on the side of house every time they went outside...the management company was awful and unreachable and horrific. The little house was fragile and it wasn't a true lock and leave like this treehouse room I have now in Hyde Park. </p><p>And then there was the community...it either had to be a perfect fit or it just didn't feel right at all. There was an initial 10 homes of people that really bonded, and new comers were treated warmly but perhaps not part of the "in crowd" - and the in crowd was not my crowd and it felt like the complete opposite of the way I felt when I went to the Ice I felt like I was at HOME - this tiny home community felt like a place that was scratching at my soul all the time telling me that I didn't belong so I tried to force myself to love the place and bond there but it was just crushing my spirit to be there. I did't feel like I was in Austin anymore - I felt like I had to choose: either my old fun Austin life, or Tiny House Village. It was only 15 minutes away by car...but that 10 miles went from city to unfamiliar country very quickly. Last February I went on a South America/Antarctica trip where I looked at Austin rentals every single day and had already visited the apartment I now live in before the trip, but it was still available when I got back and I started moving into it 2 days after I got back from a huge one month trip.</p><p>There are people there that I love and miss, but I need to be in the center of town...center of the action! I will get paid for the house soon and will have enough money to buy a condo or I can just keep renting. I feel I need a big change...or maybe not a big one. I go to lots of rock & roll shows, have lots of friends I love seeing out at shows, and have a work tribe I have bonded with for 7 years now. I often think I need a boyfriend, but I don't really meet anyone who feels like a good match for me...I get crushes and flirt a lot and have some male friends I go do fun things with, but it has all been platonic. That is probably a good thing for me ultimately. I certainly got my fill of that kind of fun for about 40 years - I had more than my share for sure.</p><p>I am really enjoying being older and not having the concerns I did when I was younger...I am so blessed financially that I never take it for granted. I go on roughly 6-8 fabulous trips a year, my two NYC ones being a continual joy. A city that ripped me open upon first site in 1979 and continues to thrill me in 2024. I'll be there in a few weeks, and as always, it will be fabulous. I have Taos, which is always magical and soulful, and there will have to be some sort of respite from the summer...I was lucky enough to be in Copenhagen & the British Isles for two glorious weeks last August. I think it is one of the best trips I've ever done. I went many places in Scotland, Isle of Man, Liverpool, Dublin..it was so great...just everything!</p><p>I just looked up at my photo and forgot to talk about Frontera Fest. I had made this 9 minute film last summer that was okay but some people seemed to really go gaga about it. A friend of mine signed me up for this play festival and I thought it might be fun until I saw that I had to do all the technical stuff myself, spend a lot of $ renting a projector, figuring out how it worked, how I was going to turn it into a performance. Sweetly, about 20 of my friends paid 25 bucks to come see my do my 10 minute thing - and most of them left after mine and there were 4 more plays left to see...it was a month ago today that I did the show, and I am So. Glad. It's. Over!!!</p><p>I keep saying I want something BIG like Antarctica again. Actually, I just want Antarctica again. I don't think there is anything else like it. I keep thinking the next big thing is around the corner & I'm willing to settle for second best...but there is no second best. There is what I experienced working there, and there is everything else. There is See God Now & Purpose and Meaning and Deep Joy Everyday, and there is this small little world on top of that place that is just a world of people driving around and shopping and eating in restaurants. And I am one of them and it's okay but it is not The Ice. </p><p>Here I am going on about the Ice again after a period of really thinking it was behind me and not thinking of it every single day. I have had some ecstatic experiences lately: Shane MacGowan tribute night, Alejandro's cavalcade of stars with a kiss from David Ramirez that I nabbed as he was walking off stage. Just this past week I got a big tattoo, had a fun lunch with a new girlfriend, and had two boys sandwich me at a screening of Wings of Desire - one of the most beautiful films ever made. One of them made hand dipped chocolate strawberries and I felt like I'd had a bit of romance on VD for the first time in 12 years (my last major boyfriend was über romantic)...all chaste of course, and filled with super juicy talk about the film and ultra woke politics afterwards!</p><p>So it seems like I have a pretty good life but I'm always wanting more...wanting that searing, blinding hot romantic connection that used to come all the time and now comes unexpectedly and SHATTERS me for 6 months. I never wanted anything more than I wanted Antarctica, but this past summer, I did want something that badly. I went through something I'd never been through before, and I'm just gonna leave it at that...but as long as I have trips to look forward to, I'm happy. That is my real home: doing all the planning and excitement about the trip, getting no sleep on the trip and feeling exhausted, and getting to have ecstatic conversations with people all over the world...</p><p>Damn I've written my way into seeing how great my life is...what a joy to have the gift of automatic writing bring all the things you need to you.</p><p><br /> </p>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-22058784760306667612023-06-04T09:32:00.000-07:002023-06-04T09:32:54.018-07:00Back Home<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ9eqXqrLUeuoTysSS0T8MYVRQzXIRkqvCATcvSznxM565blPDxjr7O5U2Z8XimzhRzY4nbFnf8l-8HW5SbtvtOCcGpHqyAMUIjJcZLBX6lNtgdYNHaUP9l3NSTbTVWH6BTwC0s0lC5FLkCKXttE2_l2c3Y69JcoBmCYqrb11age45P4P75zs/s4022/399B5FD7-DE2C-42C8-9B40-43D1A7BA9B33.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2469" data-original-width="4022" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ9eqXqrLUeuoTysSS0T8MYVRQzXIRkqvCATcvSznxM565blPDxjr7O5U2Z8XimzhRzY4nbFnf8l-8HW5SbtvtOCcGpHqyAMUIjJcZLBX6lNtgdYNHaUP9l3NSTbTVWH6BTwC0s0lC5FLkCKXttE2_l2c3Y69JcoBmCYqrb11age45P4P75zs/s320/399B5FD7-DE2C-42C8-9B40-43D1A7BA9B33.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Antarctica</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFvep95CY0NeI24cJVWfrCmIehRHwoD6amRurTlEBXAgA2_HOhD_uCw4qeXyudqsX3KVXezGiu5YZpnb6dOMCfzEvtpa8iOMtt9m88zRZKGtOEmePI9ZYWXm-1uLn6t6hAjTpm1-5-QKYIDX0V4AP6ko-sWwIVpMR5VEf0ci-7-aVl9t4DyY/s4032/6AF2639E-7D3D-4B4C-8DD1-40EF57E4E427.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFvep95CY0NeI24cJVWfrCmIehRHwoD6amRurTlEBXAgA2_HOhD_uCw4qeXyudqsX3KVXezGiu5YZpnb6dOMCfzEvtpa8iOMtt9m88zRZKGtOEmePI9ZYWXm-1uLn6t6hAjTpm1-5-QKYIDX0V4AP6ko-sWwIVpMR5VEf0ci-7-aVl9t4DyY/s320/6AF2639E-7D3D-4B4C-8DD1-40EF57E4E427.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">back in Hyde Park</div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEistkFiylAecH0CuNPi25zCJlGIBRHE6LErgsnhHHm7FG0lVe1M_JM0JlOYCShdFLQBhXXK9Iy0xKSI5scUJFJaIiNANELZQPm8q6w0ctNfUFxEj32UoLFXfq6M0FFVjb8OwghlnI1O1X5KO_wSUdacilWkiwejwF3CeBlDRcumEWqlAfye4PY/s2663/2217CF44-FFD0-4E7A-9BA9-022E36DBB4D9.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2663" data-original-width="2131" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEistkFiylAecH0CuNPi25zCJlGIBRHE6LErgsnhHHm7FG0lVe1M_JM0JlOYCShdFLQBhXXK9Iy0xKSI5scUJFJaIiNANELZQPm8q6w0ctNfUFxEj32UoLFXfq6M0FFVjb8OwghlnI1O1X5KO_wSUdacilWkiwejwF3CeBlDRcumEWqlAfye4PY/s320/2217CF44-FFD0-4E7A-9BA9-022E36DBB4D9.jpeg" width="256" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Easter with my friends grandson</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I have moved again. I know, dear reader, that that the previous post had me in acceptance mode around my new home situation, but my Self could not abide by the many confusing and frustrating elements of tiny house village life. Like a bad relationship one knows one should leave, you keep justifying why it's still okay to stay...saying things like: well the drive isn't that bad, I can stay another year and see how it goes (a classic!), maybe I'll fall in love with it again. But from the MOMENT I moved into the house it just felt wrong all around. It wasn't a slightly off kilter feeling or a small thing bugging me deep down that I couldn't identify, it was pure flight mode limbic war in my nervous system that was a giant flashing neon sign that said STOP! TRY AGAIN! WRONG! And that is okay. Because I am so good at moving and have a low tolerance for shit that doesn't work - I gave myself full permission to move out as soon as I found something in town I wanted to move into. I started looking for apartment near my old apartment probably within 3 days of moving into the tiny house. So why did I buy it? I thought it was what I wanted. I was taking a chance on something. I knew I could afford the gamble.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I moved into Tiny last Sept and was very busy with Election work until Christmas. I went on my annual birthday trip to NYC and then visited my folks in Houston. January was going to be when I looked for a new place to live. But I got a wild hair the day after New Year's and was flush with cash so signed up for a South America-Antarctica trip for the whole month of February. When I have the time and $ to travel I can't not do it. And why shouldn't I? I hate to miss any part of winter in Texas, but I knew I'd eventually go on this trip and have to face the Antarctic as an outsider. I'm glad I went on the trip. It wasn't near as fun as last year's Viking passage (my favorite: Iceland, Greenland, all of Eastern Canada) but I needed to confront the morass of feelings, bust open the pining bubble, face the loss. I wasn't crazy about Argentina, and the Antarctic part I wrote about on my secret blog (and may do a separate post here), but Ushuaia, Patagonia and Chile were all magnificent. I had been to Punta Arenas before when I deployed to Palmer Station, but seeing it 14 years later was so wonderful. I could handle the intense feeling of sitting on the dock where the vessels were that only us few prized and special workers got to sail to the station on. I looked for the Palmer or LMGould (rusty research vessels) but didn't see them. I saw the USAP logo everywhere and felt a little sting of rejection, as I have been trying to get back every year, but when I made the decision to be grateful for the 8 seasons instead of being bitter, my attitude changed. It had to. I have a friend I worked with down there who can write one text if she wants to go back and is immediately handed a contract. Myself, and a lot of others I know are just not wanted down there anymore and I have to accept it. I am a fantastic, superstar worker, but I am also difficult to work with. I have been told that enough to know it is true, and accept it. There are places were my style fits. I'll go into the incredible PIA I was on the trip in another piece, so this will focus more on my move back to the center of town.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">When I got back from S. America I dropped my bags in my house (no sleep for two days)...laid down for a minute, then drove into town for the Parlor show and a film at AFS. My routine was to leave the tiny house after morning coffee and writing time and spend all day in town staying busy doing fun stuff and coming back by nightfall. It was really hard sometimes as I had a couple of hours to kill between events and didn't want to drive out there and back. Sometimes I would drive out there just to be in my home and relax, but then I wouldn't come back out to town, as the drive back in the dark could be very hairy. It's only about 10 miles from where I sit now, but it's out in the dark countryside, with lots of traffic and no freaking lights on the roads. I had seen this adorable apartment (where I now live) in January, and told myself if it were still for rent when I got back (from my month's long trip) I would move into it. The big plusses for me were that it is a tiny complex owned by a couple that I can talk to and who take meticulous care of it. It feels well loved, and the unit I am in was specially remodeled for their daughter. My big top floor bedroom is a large square room with a giant queen bed where I can see tree tops and beautiful old Hyde Park homes. I am in the heart of Hyde Park - I can walk to two grocery stores, walk to my favorite weekend pizza joint that has daytime live music, and have a gentle bus ride to downtown if I want to see bands. It is beyond perfect. It is expensive, but everything is here now.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I realized that the first address I had in this neighborhood was 40 years ago, 1983, the year I graduated from UT. I have had 4 or 5 other apartments in this neighborhood, and it has been an interesting adjustment to move back to what was previously a student and punk rocker filled neighborhood. The homes here cost over a million dollars, and my tiny, bare bones complex is filled with working professionals instead of students. I have spent my last 7 years in Austin forming a lifestyle here that is pretty fabulous after the 6 years in a mountaintop cabin in Oregon. It was the right decision to move back into the center of town.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I thought I was going somewhere epiphanal with this post. I certainly woke up with that on the brain. Just remembered - I usually travel a lot when I have time off, but have signed up for two different classes that meet 3, sometimes 4 night a week. I am feeling trapped and unfree (ancient, trauma-track response), but I have been telling myself for YEARS that I need to take advantage of the riches around me for learning new stuff. I used to be a prolific painter who had my stuff hanging all over town. From the late 80's until 2003 or so I just drove my art from one location to the next - I sold a TON of it - and have a couple of "collectors" who have several of my pieces. I never took my painting that seriously, it is easy for me to do and I insist on finishing a painting in one sitting. Ironically (because I don't consider myself a serious painter) I use oils so I can keep going back and touching up and working on things. I do tap into that incredible creative place when the painting starts to reveal itself. I dont draw or do sketches, just throw paint directly onto the canvas and see what happens. But unlike a lot of my painter friends, I do not crave painting or do it at home when I'm alone. It's only exciting when I'm doing it surrounded by other painters. So I signed up for this no instruction studio class where we just paint together and the teacher engages with us if we want to. The first class was a joy...that creative person in me just dying to get out...and not just with the process of painting but the interaction with the other artists. These other folks are serious painters. They had chops, and photos, and giant landscapes, while I'm doing my fat dragon babies that I hope look edgy but end up looking like cartoons. Oh well! No matter how much I have tried to quash and hide the soft and cute and whimsical side of me, she always shows up. Yes I drove big farm tractors in Antarctica with the men and was known as the resident badass city girl (the other women had grown up on working farms) who took to operating a front end loader like I was born in one. But the side I am always trying to hide shows up on the canvas - I will do a painting and think it is really dark, Eraserhead-ish (which is what I am ALWAYS going for) and then have some nice West Lake Hills lady buy it (and several others) for her toddler's room. The brush doesn't lie!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Unlike painting, I think my real voice comes through in writing. This is purer, easier to do (yet harder to start), and puts me into the same delicious zone. Writing is like sitting down with my wizened old self (or like a pencil in the hand of God as Mother Teresa said), and painting is more like being tossed into the unknown and working my way through to the other side. I always start panting when the painting starts to come together...as if my soul is trying to get my heart and mind to catch up with it. So, the painting studio is one evening a week, and I signed up for a filmmaking intensive for 6 weeks that will take up a lot of time. The classes will be in the same building where I got my filmmaking degree in 1983. It's stirring up a lot, as making films was really hard. Not the creative part or the story telling, but the technology (and mostly, the working with others). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">My apartment is directly behind a little backyard house that I lived in with my mom and sister in the mid '60s when my mom was single, between husbands. I have very few memories of that time, but they are seem somewhat sweet - I see that little house everyday when I walk down the alley, and wonder why, me of all people, who wants to be as far away from everything she knows for as long as possible, has moved back the spot where she was born: a few blocks from the actual birthing hospital, and a rock toss from the shack home. It seems like I am always searching for a home...in October of 2004 when the C-17 touched down on the Ice Runway I felt more at home than I ever had. I am the type of traveller that feels most at home in a city I've never been to before. I am never at home. I am always at home.</div><br /> <p></p>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-66869392517363776562022-11-02T20:30:00.000-07:002022-11-02T20:30:58.180-07:00Tiny House and Thirty<p> <img alt="" src="https://photos.zillowstatic.com/fp/9cbefb798cba45be5f239583fe3aab18-cc_ft_384.jpg" /></p><p>I just bought this tiny house - about 6 weeks ago. In that 6 weeks I have gone through a huge gamut of emotions and some serious buyer's remorse...over the past year I have curated this very interesting life: lots of rock and roll shows, lots of juicy contact with new friends that I see when I go out, good movies at the film society and epic, epic travel! I went on a 24 day cruise that circumnavigated Iceland and traipsed through Greenland, Newfoundland and Labrador also. It was just incredible - very fun all of the time. I got back from that trip end of August after a brutal Texas summer...I was so miserable and was so happy to be somewhere cool.</p><p>When I got back from that trip I had my September Taos painting workshop looming on the horizon but I didn't feel like going. I hadn't had that much fun in May, but I had had a deep process in the painting. I thought about it for a few days and then decided to save the money and not go...so I was looking at two weeks before my job started and I came out to look at the tiny homes here at the tiny house village that I had been looking at for several years. I looked at a few for re-sale, then I came and toured ALL of the brand new homes for sale on the Farm side and was seriously thinking about a couple of them. I went home and mulled over all the info...and just felt like I wasn't ready...none of them seemed perfect enough. But I had seen this one house that had a for sale by owner sign and no one was talking about it - so I was sitting around my apt trying to figure out what to do when I saw that I had taken a photo of the sign and called the number and a guy who the owner hired to help out (not a realtor) told the price and I gasped - it was 30-40K less that than the brand new ones, and had some add ons that are pricey and I really loved. When he sent me the photos I was like I Want to See it Right Away! Short story long: I saw the house on Saturday a half hour before the open house was to start, and on Monday I was at my bank wire transferring the $ to the owner's bank account. We both had a week off of were getting everything buttoned up FAST so it was mine...by the next day it was my house. She handed me the keys and a giant binder with all the manuals and I had met some neighbors...for a solid week before work I moved carload after carload of stuff over there...bought a bed and a little couch and made it live in ready. It was adorable, but something didn't feel right...</p><p>By the friday after I bought it I spent my first night there...I was uncomfortable and didn't sleep well, was cranky in the a.m because I had no coffee. I raced back to my apt and felt like I was coming back to my HOME...my sweet, giant quiet apt I had live-in for 6 years....the longest I had ever rented an apt. I had never had a lease for more than one year..then I owned a house for 9 years, a condo for 4, rented in Oregon for a couple of years, and bought the mountain cabin and lived in it for 3.5 years and sold it a few years later. </p><p>I came back Saturday to stay here and there was a loud party at the Mexican neighborhood attached to this one and I freaked out...I packed up my stuff and RACED back to my apt. For the next few weeks I would stay at the house for a few days, just JONESIN to go back to my apt. In my mind and heart that apt. was EVERYTHING to me...it was my new Antarctica! This special, deeply soulful home for me that I needed to get pack...I went on a whirlwind of activity based in fear: going back and forth with apt. management on leaving or staying (they management sucks bad so that is why I was going to leave anyway)...looking at apts. near my old apt. so I could have my super convenient place to live. I pined for that apt. and my big bed and private upstairs like a homesick child. I have never actually been very homesick...but I was homesick BAD for that apt. In the midst of working hard, looking at apts., having a realtor on standby to sell the house before I even moved in, I had lunch with a friend who said "you never have to spend another night there" and that made my body relax so much that I just stayed in my apt. a few days...what happened after I got that huge dose of permission is that I became curious about the house: I thought about it's brand new cuteness...the over the top beauty of the design, the sparkling new washer and dryer and icemaker, the no shared walls, my own little parking spot right outside my door...close to town, but also sort of in the country. I am sitting here now and I love it..but my heart and soul went though one of the saddest and toughest times ever with this change.</p><p>I was so afraid I was going to have to change my personality, give up my rock and roll lifestyle, sit out her and be fat and hang out with boring people...it felt so far away...but it isn't...I am right in town..just a few miles out east...</p><p>The second issue is the front door, back door! The front porch is gorgeous and all the neighbors walk around and visit each other and gossip and they are not my people...I had been making myself go out front and hang with them and bond with them and I felt like I was supposed to be doing that. But when I come in and just hang out in my bedroom like I did when I was in my apt. I do much better and feel more true to myself. I have done somethings to try and fit in and they have made me miserable. I have to really listen to my guy and stay inside if I don't feel like interacting with them. Not all the houses have a back entrance...mine is my saving grace - I even have a full, private back porch. I open the blinds in the morning and sit in bed, drink coffee and look out the window at people walking by...I am getting more used to it. I can stay in town after work and go to a show, movie or meeting.</p><p>The first thing that made me go in shock about this place was that a few days after I bought it a FIREPIT was installed directly in front of my house. Everyone but me loves this...all I can think of is noisy people - it looks like a KOA campground out there - fucking hell! It might be okay...it might get used in the winter and people might be quiet at it, but if they are loud, I am not going to like it.</p><p>When I decided to stay out here and no go back and forth to the apartment, things got better for me..I accepted that this is my home...this is where I live...when my job is over I will decide if I want to stay here or move back into town...or move OUT of town. I have fun trips planned next year! Taos in May, British isles in August, and I'll throw in a couple of New York and Alpine trips to boot. May fly to Pittsburgh to go check it out - but Austin has been really good to me these past 6 years...just lots of epic fun and lot of super busy going out and having a blast. I love my life.</p><p>And yesterday, I had 30 years continuous sobriety. Hell Yeah.</p>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-26064600355329198772021-11-27T20:00:00.001-08:002021-11-27T20:00:21.255-08:00Hard 29<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Y4-Hhis9Kg/YaLwnV_pnTI/AAAAAAAADDg/-khXhPAeXykCD7MlpCjDMYs3dUDdEcEvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_8183.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Y4-Hhis9Kg/YaLwnV_pnTI/AAAAAAAADDg/-khXhPAeXykCD7MlpCjDMYs3dUDdEcEvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8183.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9lqegxkEFg/YaLwq09SIhI/AAAAAAAADDo/ByirAabwAxc9ZRLOFdT15E1rmA_3h2uxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_8213.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1638" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--9lqegxkEFg/YaLwq09SIhI/AAAAAAAADDo/ByirAabwAxc9ZRLOFdT15E1rmA_3h2uxQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8213.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UIUJU6cRBKQ/YaLwpusI_EI/AAAAAAAADDk/0H6yU3nz_lkl1II-KMqJ9efLrgWmqJSugCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_8409.JPG" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UIUJU6cRBKQ/YaLwpusI_EI/AAAAAAAADDk/0H6yU3nz_lkl1II-KMqJ9efLrgWmqJSugCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_8409.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
Since my last post a lot has happened! Not a lot that I will write specifically about (I bet I do...wait for it!) but something happened on August 21st and I'm coming out the other side of the 3 month emotional bender feeling pretty confident and unscathed. I was in this princess play that was amazingly fun and rewarding to do. It made me realize how much I love being on stage. Originally I signed up just to be an extra or a stagehand but ended up with a spotlight solo as apparantly I am a very good performer, and better yet, a good song interpreter on the fly. <div><br /></div><div>We had our first performance in July and our second one on August 21st. I had just gotten back from a super fun road trip to NM and wasn't really looking forward to the second performance but put on a ton of make-up and fancy clothes and dragged myself to this place really far down south and had a really great time. Afterwards I felt engergized by the performance and decided to go see a band of old freinds that was at a club that I'd never been too as it's so far south. That is where the Big Event happened.
Six weeks of delerious and tortuous passion. Twelve pounds lost. Many cigarettes smoked. Emotional sobriety challenged and then tipped over into obsession. I had prayed for this. Be careful what you ask for! </div><div><br /></div><div>Something split inside of me and the protective steel wall was down and I let love in...let it in too raw and unguarded but I dove in head first as I hadn't pressed up against anything like this in many, many years. I was sunk. I was hooked. He might as well have been a tall gorgeous crackpipe.
The good news is I've been single and serene (relatively) for so long that I can only handle emotional upset for a very short time before I take action. The action was a full withdrawel, a boatload of unexected grieving and tears, and a stretching of my emotional landscape.
So many good things happened: I learned that I am still sexy and desirable and when I wear bright red lipstick I might as well take a giant dogcather for all the boys that come after me. It was thrilling and fun. Plus I got back into the live music groove and saw lots of incredible bands and met lots of really cool people. I was around a lot of drinking, a lot of drunks, but my sobriety was never compromised. My sanity was shaken, but I'm back almost 100% I think. </div><div><br /></div><div>Somewhere in there I got a 29 year sobriety coin. November 1st, 1992 is my sobriety date and I'm starting to see that that is not a small thing. My Spo keeps telling me I have a lot to offer and to say so I went to a giant packed auditorium last night and was the first person to talk and I had the group in stitches...man when I heard that first laugh I was off to the races with the joking..the next 50 people that shared were heartfelt and choked up. I felt strange and separate - why do I never tear up in meetings? Well I did it and then second guessed myself for the next 2 hours whether I was a real memeber or not. C'est la vie... </div><div><br /></div><div>I had also gone to Taos for my painting workshop and because it was shortly after a particularly fabulous hang with Aug. 21st man I was obsessed the whole trip and somewhat miserable. I wasn't laughing...had no buddy until I met this awesome 25 year old kid who became my bud and we went to the local bar and had a blast the last night in Taos and I FLEW back to Austin (in my car) to hope to run into le person. County work started back up so I had full days of laughs and companions to talk about this ridiculously OTT crush with. They put up with me. They laughed and joshed around with me. And by mid Nov they were letting my bawl on their shoulders. Man I have a huge support network here that never ceases to amaze me. I love my work and my co-workers, I love my handful of freinds, and I love my live music scene. Covid made me appreciate this stuff even more as I wasn't able to travel for two years. I've been to NYC now 3 times since covid begain and always always love it. </div><div><br /></div><div>I saw Hamilton on my 61st birthday...I am still swooning after the play and have a ticket for the show here in a few weeks. During the grieving I was doing over This Thing I Really Wanted That Didn't Happen, I had some beautiful moments: really listening to songs I never listen to and hearing the lyrics on a level I never listened to music to before. I would hear a song about heartbreak and sob and feel that this person had to have gone through the exact same thing to be able to write this song. I listened to stuff in a whole new way. I had a hard time reading as nothing I would read was as interesting as what I was going through. And I was terrified of going back to my old life. </div><div><br /></div><div>I was terrfied to go back to the spinster biddyhood of knitting and binge watching in sweatpants. The crush showed me that. I'm still out there, in the game, willing get my heart bruised, willing to risk being a fool. I have 5 planets in Scorpio: it's how I'm made. I love risk and drama and dreams and destruction and anything that makes a good story. And this is a story that I think I should have many chapters of in my story bank but something was different about this one and I haven't quite put my finger on what it was. The depth of feeling and the richness of the emotional intimacy was brand fucking new. I cannot ever remember having a connection like this with a person. Ever. And that is a good thing. To know that I can still feel this way about a person.
So what I am going to take with me is some new things to do - go out more, stay home less. Drag myself out even when I dont want to go - because how many more years am I going to be able to go out and dance like a fool much less get in the "pit" like I did last week! </div><div><br /></div><div>I will get beyond this. I bounce back faster than the average bear. Resilient as hell an old friend used to tell me about how quickly I moved on. And I atill have myself, my dignity intact - I didn't give away the one thing that used to be the first thing I would give away. I was honest, I showed up but didn't chase, I kept my cool and when he appeared to bail, I bailed. I fell in love with the fantasy of a life I wanted that seemed beautiful and romantic and better than the one I was living. The one I am living feels okay right now...I have some new dreams...and they are very exciting to ponder!</div>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-37366380623046390462021-08-15T19:52:00.000-07:002021-08-15T19:52:23.864-07:00West Texas (I also went to Santa Fe)<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y8GbTynv8rg/YRnLeMuws_I/AAAAAAAAC98/FIF80M5oVj0wGiNNqnNF7WcgEgeLvSC_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7444.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y8GbTynv8rg/YRnLeMuws_I/AAAAAAAAC98/FIF80M5oVj0wGiNNqnNF7WcgEgeLvSC_gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7444.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">art installation in the desert</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hZqYqfvx7Oc/YRnLjjzvu_I/AAAAAAAAC-I/ugAq3btIho49B4Nqsx-ACUlORHqBI7zyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7453.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hZqYqfvx7Oc/YRnLjjzvu_I/AAAAAAAAC-I/ugAq3btIho49B4Nqsx-ACUlORHqBI7zyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7453.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">my beloved Antelope Lodge</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tv6x4-eubeU/YRnLZQk4QLI/AAAAAAAAC94/HnAIhPpnfm09W40jvh6QUhRr9w9vCJUVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7458.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tv6x4-eubeU/YRnLZQk4QLI/AAAAAAAAC94/HnAIhPpnfm09W40jvh6QUhRr9w9vCJUVQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7458.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">rainbow</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-REGn5Urn90Q/YRnLhohZLbI/AAAAAAAAC-A/6hg_dEOxSpsvtL7bAGrHSOcFt1b2XmkSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7484.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-REGn5Urn90Q/YRnLhohZLbI/AAAAAAAAC-A/6hg_dEOxSpsvtL7bAGrHSOcFt1b2XmkSgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7484.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Marfa, TX</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ILRXlyLFcS0/YRnLjNyEC8I/AAAAAAAAC-E/4ygl6KiuZYAUPr-f9W0jYgakv0XLpD1kQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_7489.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1996" data-original-width="2048" height="312" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ILRXlyLFcS0/YRnLjNyEC8I/AAAAAAAAC-E/4ygl6KiuZYAUPr-f9W0jYgakv0XLpD1kQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_7489.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">the coolest store ever!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Haven't been our here in around 15 years and it has been a terrific couple of days</div></td></tr></tbody></table> - that old West Texas spell has been woven into my bones again...pre-Antarctica, this was the place I fantasized about moving to the most...and lots of Austin ex-pats have moved here. I could easily afford a house out here. And it feels different coming out here with more amenities and stuff to do, and with more money being poured into the area by rich folks coming in with fancy shops and re-habbing old buildings.</p><p>I went to Santa Fe first but that deserves it's own posting...or maybe not...I was with friends there so had a very different experience than when I'm on my own like I usually am when I'm out here. This is my first solo trip without Fergus...I spent more time out doing stuff than I would if he were in the car...but not that much more stuff...it would have been difficult as it's not cool enough to have the windows up and it rained so much I couldn't have left the car windows open. </p><p>What feels really different this time is that there is no urgency to moving out here...I know that when the times comes (if it does)...then I can relaxedly move out here and do my artwork and watch beautiful sunsets. But will I like that? What I've loved most on the trip is the driving...getting from point A to point B in a luxury car and really enjoying the drives...I like the intensity of these road trips...it really suits me. I notice that I like to be interacting with people a lot in shops and during transactions...I probably over-visited with 4 shopkeepers today, but I did buy something in every shop so I guess they were okay with it. There is just so much to talk about as I've been coming here so long and watch the changes.</p><p>And on this trip I've been dreaming a lot...sleeping deeply and dreaming a lot..a certain kind of dream that I haven't been having before...dreams with the same theme: of really wanting to connect deeply with someone in an intimate way...since things have opened up and we were maskless for a a few months my life was really ramping up in the going out and meeting men area. I was having a lot of really good intimate connections with people and feeling like something could happen. There was one particularly good night where the flirtations was strong and intense, but he said he wasn't "really single" so no numbers were exchanged but I ran into him a few other times at shows and meh. Then I met this tall tattooed German guy who was striking and intense, and we really bonded over some deep intimate talk of what it's like to be OLD and single. I dunno - I don't know what I want..or maybe I just haven't imagined it yet...maybe I just haven't opened myself up to the possibility that there is someone out there who wants me exactly like I am...someone easy and fun and laid back and loves to laugh. Someone Texan and goofy but hip and darling too...and most of all, someone who treats me like the one he's been waiting for all his life. The beloved. Now I read a lot of Rumi and Hafiz and do all the spiritual practices that tell me that the one I am waiting for and the beloved are MYSELF, and sometimes I really feel that. Sometimes when I'm "on the beam" I really feel at one with the universe. I feel on the beam on this road trip. I get to perform again this weekend. I get to do fun stuff and travel. I get to love the people I love. I get to drive to Alpine (via Lubbock, Santa Fe, Cloudcroft NM) and it's an easy trip...very very easy. And I relaxedly get to decide if I'd like to buy a home here. It could be really nice! But 3 hours to the airport! Oh well, that would be another road trip!</p><p> </p>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-65921583489970749102020-12-08T21:03:00.000-08:002020-12-08T21:03:15.030-08:00Sixty<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FxKl2teCWqY/X9BPkuKNuYI/AAAAAAAACok/wW8U_UMyI70ItSSWhH3dbbd8N2XzsmwfQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_6614.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FxKl2teCWqY/X9BPkuKNuYI/AAAAAAAACok/wW8U_UMyI70ItSSWhH3dbbd8N2XzsmwfQCLcBGAsYHQ/w240-h320/IMG_6614.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">first mad dash</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yGs9xjAhJek/X9BP1AoKsPI/AAAAAAAACo0/EdJLZ6lp_jUroE1WtvosJ3Ip5XRmkQglACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_6636.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1141" data-original-width="2048" height="178" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yGs9xjAhJek/X9BP1AoKsPI/AAAAAAAACo0/EdJLZ6lp_jUroE1WtvosJ3Ip5XRmkQglACLcBGAsYHQ/w320-h178/IMG_6636.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">first MoMA visit in 30 years</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ejipb9jpbwM/X9BQnqd6vBI/AAAAAAAACo8/jXRK-zG5eKk4o2pshle993LdRJT3jV23QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1065/IMG_0012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1065" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ejipb9jpbwM/X9BQnqd6vBI/AAAAAAAACo8/jXRK-zG5eKk4o2pshle993LdRJT3jV23QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_0012.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Happy Birthday to Me!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">It was a difficult decision, to decide whether to go to NYC for my birthday. I have been going the last 6 years or so and it had become a tradition that I treasured. I was really worried about traveling during covid, not worried about getting it or doing anything I wouldn't usually do, but worried about being checked up on and forced to quarantine in my hotel. I went on a huge driving trip during the big summer surge and was met with nothing but smiles and open arms everywhere...across many states. I decided at the last minute to take a chance and go...when I made the decision I was ecstatic! I was not going to have a sad 60th birthday in Austin where I can't have a gathering...I was going to do what I always do (minus seeing a play) and was going to do all the things the ny website asked me to do (except stay in my hotel room for 4 days). I took a test before I boarded the airplane and was ecstatic to be doing the airport thing again. I LOVE airports and just going anywhere really on a plane. The airport was empty, the planes were empty, and LaGuardia was pretty much empty too...I was whisked to my hotel quickly and dropped my bad and did my usual mad dash around the Murray Hill neighborhood that has started to feel like my vacation spot. I grabbed a veggie slice and then hoofed it around Grand Central, Bryant Park, Times Square and then through Rockefeller Center on the way back to my hotel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was different, but still wonderful. Some things were so much better: no lines at the museums or bagel shops. I had a blissful day at the MoMa where it was dotted with visitors but not the usual giant lines I see every time I walk by it. Bryant Park was bustling with skaters and open air shops and restaurants so I would sit there in the evenings and have a hot chocolate and watch the skaters (i.e.: resting my dogs). I grabbed food to go mostly except for the day Kate came into the city, where we dined at several outdoor venues...our favorite bars were closed (where she has a cocktail and I have a fizzy water and just enjoy the ambiance). We stayed on the lower east side and it was abuzz with young rowdy folks. I had gone to the Strand one evening and had a delightful time there, but when Kate and I decided to go there on a Saturday evening there was a line around the block. There was a line to get into Uniqlo when it opened, but for some reason I have no desire to shop for clothes anymore. But I was looking for something special for my birthday, as I usually buy a play ticket or something nice for myself.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On my last day my flight wasn't until 5:00pm so I had plenty of time to do stuff. I walked up to 5th avenue and took a right and thought about going to the Park (which I never go to) as I was just trying to vary my routine. I walked in front of Trump Tower and always glance over at the heavily armed guards..and then saw some men in bright blue scarves standing in front of some construction scaffolding letting people know that the Tiffany's store was open even though it had some construction going on around it. (For the past several years it seems like every other building has scaffolding and construction going on around it). I have never gone into that store as I feel I look too scruffy for them but I saw this touristy couple go in and I just followed them in. I was gleefully escorted to the floor of items that I said I could afford (just the silver please!) and these lovely ladies fluttered around me as I looked at all the nicely made and reasonably priced pieces. I had a hard time picking something but decided to go small and got a charm that was inexpensive and small but is in their traditional design with a modern twist to it. I hung it on the charm holder necklace I was wearing and after paying they asked if I wanted a box but I said I would take a bag. The blue bag! I skipped out of the store with the bag on my arm and felt that I had given myself the best 60th birthday present I could have ever had...and not just the bauble from Tiffany's.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a time when I couldn't imagine that I would ever be able to afford to fly to NYC and stay in a decent hotel and just do what I want for 5 days. I mostly just walk around, but if I want to spend money and eat out every day and see play I do it. If I want to buy myself treats I do that as well...but these short trips to ny are a symbol of something big for me in my life: they are a symbol of my having agency over my own life, of me doing exactly what I want to do and psychically and psychologically freeing myself from the scarcity and stinginess that is in my lineage. Why is it any better to have money sitting in a bank rather than to spend it on small things that improve the quality of my life SO MUCH and make my mental health and self esteem plumper.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When I lived in ny I would often look at all the apartments and wonder how someone was able to afford to live there...wonder if there was something wrong with me - and I found out there wasn't. I just had to work hard for a really long time and make this a priority in my life. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This is 60 for me- this is better than I thought it would be...</div></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><br /> <p></p><br /><p></p>petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-39677126231947677972020-08-19T20:59:00.001-07:002020-08-19T21:04:15.682-07:005009 Miles<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I prepared for a few days after worrying for a week or so wether I should go on this trip at all...was concerned about covid, people's reactions to me traveling, how safe it was out there, etc...but I knew I would not be able to keep myself from blazing across the country to Oregon once I gave myself the go ahead...I needed to be with these sweet mountain people who loved me dearly...</div>
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I got up at 6:00am on July 29th and drove to Amarillo and spent the night...drove out to the Cadillac Ranch and took some photos...the next day was a long drive to Flagstaff and after checking into my hotel did a quick jaunt down town to walk around...wasn't much going on so pretty much stayed in hotel room and ate noodle bowls I brought with me...knew I'd be getting up early and the next day's drive to Atascadero was super long and stressful, but I had a friend there that I've know for over 20 years and it was so great to see her and have a nice meal outdoors on a cool patio with her and her husband. I decided to stay an extra day there and not drive...so we had a super fun day driving around the central coast and visiting all the little towns. And I stayed in this lovely downtown boutique hotel and just loved every minute of being away from Austin. The next day I drove to Rocklin (outside Sacramento) and stayed with my friend Steve and had a wonderful day where I felt just so taken care of and such a warm sensation of being with someone that I've known and loved for a really long time (I always tell people he was my best boyfriend ever). Steve has a big heart and presence and takes care of those around him well. I hung out at his wonderful comfortable home with his dog and sweet 4 year old son Jasper. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to handle staying at someone's house, especially on a couch in the living room, but as soon as that warm family glow spread all over me I knew I would stay at Steve's. I slept like a baby and awoke to his sweet doggie sleeping with me and drove to Bend, OR to break up the drive. I could have driven straight to Welches but didn't want to arrive at my hosts house too early and had heard great things about Bend. It was a mistake to stay there - Bend is a shithole and my cheap hotel's wifi went out around 7:00pm and I had kind of a meltdown which turned into a grieving session that lasted in me bawling for hours. At first it was just frustration about not having internet and really being sucked into Hell on Wheels again, but then I was forced to confront those juicy old deeply crusted over wounds/desires that seem to only emerge with a 5 day 80mph road trip. It's happened to me on every road trip: I spend most the day in euphoria/raptor like focus on the road...followed by a gradual falling apart and vulnerable period where I feel sad and weepy. All ancient grievances are re-hashed, and only when I park and get into the hotel am I relieved and hunker down for deep sleep. What happened in Bend was some familiar stuff I've been dealing with for a few years with therapists in Austin; also a love jones that had me spinning in Austin and took 5000 miles to forget about. But then something very familiar happens at the end when I think all of my unhappiness is a particular person's fault: I unconsciously open my computer and look at the McMurdo webcams and go into a zone of what it is I am really grieving - missing the place that gave me everything...gave my life 24/7 badass meaning and purpose and joy every day. Before McMurdo I dated big tattooed guys/bikers to feel badass...then I got to become that badass I tried to get on the outside...she lived in me and just needed a place to manifest...this is hard, this time of year as people start to deploy, as I see pics of people in Christchurch getting ready for that C-17 ride to the Ice runway...something I got to do 7 times (1 time was by boat)...a situation that still rips my heart out every time I think about it because I miss it so much. I have a job now that almost gives me that much satisfaction, but it barely rates in comparison. It's a familiar patten when I start to feel sad: let the feelings overtake and dive deep into grieving, cry long enough to realize I miss my home. I still apply every year for positions, but have fallen out of the loop and much younger people deploy...and I keep trying to make my life here feel like the one I had there...and I have a very good life here, but it is hard for me to accept that the best is behind me...I can't even imagine there could be something that could be that fulfilling to my being, but maybe I should start trying to believe that there is.</div>
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But wait, I was writing about my road trip, which was one of the best trips I have every taken...so I get to Welches at about 10:00am and my host is playing golf and his wife is gardening. I have a lovely little room in their beautiful home on the river. I am euphoric driving over to the RV park I lived in and just traveling that familiar little road in the beautiful forest...I was so unhappy there most of the time but I love going back...what I didn't realize when I moved there was that I would form this community of people that I love - that I feel so close to - that can't wait to see me and welcome me like a beloved relative. I spent 10 days at my host's home and it was delightful...I saw so many friends and went to Portland and then when I left I had another exciting road trip with some wonderful discoveries: Helper Utah and Canon City, CO...two fantastic little towns that need to be visited again. The joy of the trip has evaporated with some realities of being back in Austin. I am happy to be in my apartment and be free for a few weeks, and then back to work for this insane presidential election.</div>
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I was so happy for the 3 weeks I did this trip. It could not have been better...next time I just need to make it longer...I had been planning to do this ever since I got the gently used Lexus as a gift. She performed beautifully. I had a mission, a goal, a destination, and all of it was wonderful...I just feel so loved by that mountain. I just can't live there full time.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-70699130172963611052020-05-13T20:47:00.001-07:002020-05-13T20:47:46.415-07:00Nineteen Eighty Four - Rego Park, Queens<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It's fall of 1984 and I'm living in a basement apartment in Rego Park Queens. I found it by looking in a newspaper, finding an agent and giving my parameter of $500/month rent max. I still remember this unusual guy and he said "I have a PALACE for you..it's an enormous PALACE! He drove me to this kind of ugly 3 story newish building in the heart of Archie Bunker style Queens houses. He took me to the basement, and it was indeed, enormous - enormous and fully furnished with a vintage 50's stereo cabinet. There was a little window over the bed that let in light from the backyard and he sold me on the value per square foot. Also it was close enough to a subway stop to get me to my job at 61st/Madison so I signed a years lease. Without going in the stürm and drang of my first few months in the city, here's the cliff notes: I moved to NYC upon graduation from UT in late summer of 1983. I stayed on the Upper East Side with G for a few months and decided I needed to live on my own. I had mailed out tons of resumes to film companies and got a few letters back, and some calls (pre cell phone and internet days kiddies!). I ended up getting a job with a high end watch wholesaler who had been handed my resume because it said I spoke French, and the company was based in Paris. My boss was a chain smoking, smolderingly handsome Portuguese man named Carlos. This was my first non fast food, first big girl job, AND it was in NYC and I was excited/nervous. I wanted to be perfect and was terrified of authority and of making mistakes. A condition that would haunt my work life for many years.<br />
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For six months I went to work 9-5 every day in stomach clinching fear, mostly hungover, and not knowing how to do my job very well (and not knowing that I needed help or how to ask for it). I had only an electric typewriter, and my boss would yell at me constantly and was always on the phone schmoozing to people in French or Portuguese, wrapped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He was trying to get his watches in all the high end retailers in the city and I was writing the letters to the head buyers. He said they looked like crap and made me redo them. I sensed that he liked me and was trying to have a jokey and fun time with me but I couldn't go there. I was a highly boundaried (not in a good way) employee who felt I was so below a boss, and deathly afraid of making mistakes. I can't even really remember why I was so scared but I think I had to do a lot of accounting stuff with an adding machine (10 key by touch!)...and I am not confident with my math abilities so when I didn't know what to do instead of asking a question I would just get scared and hide what I had done. Carlos would eventually find a mistake and blow up at a me. After he blew up he'd be over it and ready to joke and laugh...whereas I would be completely traumatized and would not be able to recover until I plunged into the Irish bar across the street from my office every evening. (The antics at this bar I could write a book about - I had to stop going because of how much trouble I got in).<br />
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It was unfortunate that it took a very long time (my last boss I was terrified of was from 2000-2003), but I no longer cower with bosses. I have several male bosses now and I get up in their faces and bare fangs if they overstep. I say NO a lot. And it works. They respect me. O the suffering I could have avoided if I'd learned this lesson as a wee one. Punch back at the bully. But to continue...<br />
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I hated going to the office and just got sicker and sicker fantasizing on how I could escape or quit. It never occurred to me that I could just quit - I was so obedient and conditioned to focus on a powerful and scary person's needs and to squash my own that that was how I was at work. Outside of work I had boyfriends, lovers, friends come stay with me from out of town, wild debauched early 80's new yorky stuff (white) all around me and had what I thought was fun at the time, but looking back I think I was pretty lost and just didn't know it because I was so busy feeling like a trapped animal by day and going wild at night. I recently told a friend who knew me at this time (he was in grad school at NYU) what I was doing on my weekends and his mouth was hanging open in shock. He got serious about his studies after we hung out my first few months and I was off onto the dark after hours underbelly at night.<br />
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I am finally getting to point of this long (yet endlessly interesting to me) and rambling post: one Sunday about six or seven months into this job I decided I was going to call in sick on Monday. I had never called in sick to work (and now, 36 years later, can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I have called in sick, and most of those times I was not actually "sick"). Something in me just said fuck it I need a break from this relentless cycle of hell of this confusing job world. I was nervous all day planning how I was going to do it and what I was going to say, and early Monday morning I left a message on the office answering machine that I was feeling ill and wouldn't be in. Then I unplugged my phone.<br />
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I had noticed one of those old art deco single screen movie theaters in my neighborhood and that was where I was going to spend my day. I decided I would go to the afternoon feature no matter what the film was. I was a terrible film snob at the time and did not see current Hollywood fare but told myself I was gonna go no matter what was showing. I walked to the theater and bought a ticket for "Footloose". I remember how cheesy and goofy the film was and how silly the music but I didn't care. I had decided I gave no fucks for Carlos and his stupid watches and this Monday was my own and he didn't own me. I wish I could remember more about the day but what I do remember is going back to my basement apt. and seeing the red light on my answering machine blinking a bunch. I had about 14-30 messages from Carlos. He had been compulsively calling me all day, utterly dependent on me and my cheap labor (I had looked at the file of applicants when I applied for the job and they had all asked for twice to three times as much money as I had). His calls were ridiculous and creepy...acting like he wanted me to call and talk about what I was doing (so weird to me), but he was scared I wasn't coming back. He needed me. And I had flipped him off by being not contactable.<br />
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I did not call back, and don't remember exactly what happened when I went back but shortly thereafter I got the euphoric news that the company was being sued and they were high tailing it to LA in 6 weeks. I had an out! Carlos begged me to move to LA and offered to buy me a car and partly subsidize an apt. I said no, but that I would go out to set up the office for two weeks. It was a hideous/hilarious two weeks of me staying with some friend of his (and her kids) in Beverly Hills, walking to work dressed in all black, having to hide in the home as there was some ex driving by threatening to shoot everyone in the house. I hated LA and knew that I would. My last day of working for Carlos ended with me treating my hostess to dinner, and while at this fancy restaurant she was telling me a story about a recent date she'd had (I had just drained a giant smoothie from a glass-this is important), she was describing his physical appearance saying he had a "lump" and I said where was the lump? And she said no, what is the word for it (English was not her first language) and she stood up and pantomimed a person with a bum leg. And I said do you mean a "limp?" And she said YES, A "LIMP!" We started laughing so hard that I started gagging...I still had smoothie in my throat when I started laughing and the gagging turned into I was going to throw up...she looked at me in alarm and held the empty smoothie glass under my mouth for me to hurl into. I filled up the glass to the brim. Goodbye LA! Never heard from Carlos again.<br />
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Yesterday when I was thinking about this memory before my writing class I started googling stuff in Rego Park, and I think I found the little theater I went to. Just like before I moved where I am right now, I have getting very very sentimental about a place I have lived before...looking at the house I lived in on google maps and seeing my subway stop. I don't know why this memory is so compelling to me but this is the 3rd time I have written it out in several weeks...it feels like time again to jettison the cobwebbed Austin life of the known and move across country again. And why not? I never lose anything when I do this -. I just seem to gain, and I must be wired so differently than most people as they say they cannot imagine "uprooting" and moving somewhere and leaving all their friends. This is my soul's magic place...gleefulling getting rid of my stuff, packing my car and moving across county. If I have ONE friend there I am good - I will start forming a tribe or life pretty quickly...the clan I left behind in Oregon are some of the dearest people to me on earth. Six years in Oregon - only fond memories (though my diaries from that time show a screeching internal hellscape).<br />
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As a solo movie goer for my entire adult life, and as a daughter of a mother weaned and raised by solo theater outings (she has told me she went to the movies every day after school) it was (and still is) a solo act that has seems to have a high feminist and self care component - it's an act of courage for people who say they could never go by themself, and in these times especially, a few hours that one is utterly unavailable.<br />
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Postscript:<br />
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Some other things that happened at that first NYC job: I was sent on missions to interesting places all over the city for various errands. I slinked around inside what felt like the walls of Grand Central Station to find this ancient darling man in an ancient dusty office repairing and tinkering with old timepieces. I was sent to Hell's Kitchen (early 80's, scary) with a suede briefcase filled with expensive watches handcuffed to my wrist up a rickety walk up next to an abandoned building to meet "some guy" who wanted to buy "some watches." I was sent to luxurious high rise offices with views of the city that made me swoon. Carlos' famous finance (main model on the Price is Right!) came to the office and Carlos called to tell me to hide his condoms and cigarettes in his desk. Janice glided in and threw her mink into my arms. These are the things that stick with me...it was all good - the horrible and the beautiful. I almost miss being that naive and young and being so besotted with a place that I would put up with anything to be there.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-88599833655854512402019-11-07T19:17:00.000-08:002020-05-13T20:48:19.431-07:00Twenty Seven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is kind of a goofy picture of my face but I couldn't really see the screen very well on my phone as it was leaning on a tire outside my improv studio. I get excited about Halloween and cold weather and autumn (and going to NYC next week!) that I decided to get dressed and do my annual birthday photo. I'm fatter this year, but don't really care, as why the hell should I? I went to my 40 year high school reunion and saw my demographic: I look pretty good for the mileage.<br />
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I got gut punched pretty hard seeing people deploying to McMurdo but sucked it up. My cabin has sold, I have exciting travel on the horizon (though I've been everywhere I want to go so am revisiting some favorites), have loads of work and some super fun creative outlets. I want a dog so bad it hurts - but the intoxicating freedom I am experiencing not having one overrides that desire.<br />
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I feel kind of self conscious writing this as I know someone is actually reading it now...when I go back and read some of these postings I cannot believe I wrote them as I don't remember writing them and they seem better written than I remember. I have been going to this writing class at a Zen Center that is in a part of Austin that I lived in while in college and I can feel the ghosts of that time when I walk around this area. I am having such a nostalgic trip here in Austin and it has been 3 years now that I've been back. The writing we do is prompt style, where we go in cold, get a prompt, and write for 30 minutes, then sit in a circle and read it to each other. I write so fast and furiously that I can barely get everything out that I want to say...then there is a lull around the 20 minute time...then a burst of blissful coming together of the piece. The best part is when we get to read aloud. It's exactly the same stuff I write on here but I am reading it to strangers. Something happens when I read this stuff to people who don't know me (and one person there knows me fairly well)...I notice that what I've written takes on a life of it's own and changes as my voice rounds out the words...sometimes I edit as I'm reading, and my voice gets much more powerful (and doesn't quite sound like "mine" anymore) as I get to the end. When I'm done reading I feel like I've climbed a mountain...and I see the faces of my peers and everything is different. What I have written has changed in the reading of it, and more importantly, in the landing of it upon the ears of the others. I can see, or rather sense in a rather strong way that what I have written has had an effect; it has had impact. And the impact seems more ephemeral or dare I say, "spiritual" than some sort of concrete impact. I'm not explaining it well, but when I start to read what I've written aloud I feel some sort of cosmic shift in some sort of internal/collective universe. The meaning, the loadedness, the shock value, the trauma and tragedy of what I've written recedes into the background and there is a stillness that I guess can only be said to be the present moment. What I've written is no longer me or mine, or necessarily a true document of a past event, but more like a smoke signal sent up into the air to intermingle with the millions of other words people are writing down everyday...I feel a peacefulness and relief that I am not unique and my stories are not hard facts...they are just a part of the big cosmic swirl.<br />
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I just finished driving a giant cargo van for 3 weeks during early voting and Election day, and am now pulling out the sites. I went through a major meltdown about having to drive the van in Austin traffic but I did it and felt a huge surge of pride each day that I parked at the county and successfully rocked my shift and unloaded my van. I spend a lot of time doing very unusual and unique things in this job - like going into tons of elementary and middle schools and churches all over the county and smelling the smells of an old school and feeling a warmth for the young children. Today I barged into a church and people were huddled together fretfully praying and in another room people were making lunches for meals on wheels and me and my co-worker were strapping down tables onto a giant metal box and making a lot of noise. Knowing that this job will have lots of work for 2020 would be the main reason that I would stay in Austin another year...this job is almost over for a couple of months, the weather is gorgeous (40's and rainy), my improv class is really fun, and recently a man told me with the utmost sincerity that I was an "incredibly beautiful woman." I immediately made a face like "gross no I'm not" and then caught myself and really let myself take it in that it might be true. I was feeling close to him and then I pushed him away. I feel the lyrics of the song "Desperado" imprinting on my soul and my heart seems to be incased in a block of ice : you better let somebody love you before it's too late. I used to so easily be able to melt into the arms of another person, and now it feels like something I need to go to college to learn how to do again (and is it even possible for me to do again, and more important: is it something I actually even want to do again.) I've been single so long that I've gotten really good at it...like I could teach a masterclass in it. What would it be called...How to Date Yourself...How to Do Everything Yourself...How to Travel the World by Yourself and not feel utterly awkward at tables full of couples...blah blah blah.. the list goes on...onward!</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-14165274070447705622019-07-20T08:19:00.003-07:002019-07-20T08:26:36.353-07:00Thirty Five Years Love Affair<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just finished an 11 day journey around Ireland with a small group tour company and it was incredible! I was the only solo traveller and by the end we all felt like one big happy family who'd gone through this amazing experience together. I live alone and spend a lot of time alone so spending 16 hours a day with people I had just met was something I feared might be too much for me, but it ended up really being great. Just jam packed, on and off the bus all the time and super luxe accommodations.</div>
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This was my fifth trip to Ireland. My first was in 1984, then '92, 2000, 2009 and 2019. I will be back. I love this country. I actually fell in love with it before I ever came here - was just infatuated with it for some reason and don't remember what started it - but it started around college time. I talked my two girlfriends into coming here when we flew to London in '84, when we were all 23 years old. We were backpacking and had very little money, but traveling was pretty cheap back then. We had no plans, no reservations, and spent our first night (after taking the sea ferry from Holyhead to Dublin) in Dublin at a very grotty hostel downtown (when Temple Bar was still a slum!). We got up the next morning and asked some locals where we should go and without even having to think of it they said "The Dingle Peninsula". So we went to the train station and took the train to Tralee, and rode the bus to Dingle, til we walked around and found a B&B we could afford. We hit the pubs and drank Guinness with locals for weeks...there weren't too many Americans around at that time and Dingle was still only slightly touristed (now it almost feels like Disneyland). Me and one of my friends immediately fell in love with two Irish boys and spent a week with them before we tore ourselves away to tour the rest of the country. I stayed in the Republic while my two girlfriends with North with a plan to meet at the train station on a certain date. I hitchhiked around by myself and had some boring and weird experiences, and finally went to the train station where my friend did not show up (today, we could have just texted!). When she didn't show up I felt despair and decided to hitchhike back to Dublin and go home early. I was hitching to Dublin and a guy picked me up and I ended up in Galway after riding around for a couple of days with him. He dropped me off in a park and said he'd pick me back up at 5:00pm to take me to Dublin and he never showed up. Just writing this makes me feel sort of sad for my 23 year old self - that I was so gullible and did not take agency over my own life - but how could I have known any better? I think of how utterly different I am now, 35 years later, where I can afford to travel exactly how I wish and don't cut corners and deeply, deeply take care of myself. Just writing that makes me see how far I've come. Being sober is a huge part of that. Anyway, back to the story (that I was not intending to write!), I made another Dublin sign and spent all day hitching and no one showed. I went to a phone booth and called the restaurant in Dingle where the boy I had fallen for worked and he begged me to come back. I did not know he felt that way so I got back to Dingle somehow and we reunited in romantic bliss for the next few weeks. We even blew off our plane tickets (my girlfriend had come back to be with her man also), and I think I remember us crying together on the ferry back to London as we said goodbye to this country that we had fallen in love with and in. I flew back to NYC where I was living (rather dreadfully to tell the truth) and she flew back to Houston. We talked on the phone every day from our jobs and obsessed over going back to Ireland. I moved back to Austin in January of 85 and she moved back to Nebraska (her home). My Dingle boy came to the US (I have a stack of a year's worth of beautiful love letters) and we met up the next summer of '85 in NYC and had a nice reunion, but my feelings had changed, and when a few months later (after working in NY for a bit) he wanted to come to Texas to see me and I said I was involved with someone else. That was the LAST time I spoke to him before two weeks ago. I had spent the last 35 years hoping for some sort of reunion or meeting of some kind, and to apologize if I'd hurt him in any way (and to be honest, hoping that there might still be a spark). On my second day in Dublin, which was a Monday, I knew that was my chance to go find him. He had not responded to my Facebook messages and I thought maybe he wanted nothing to do with me or was just too busy to be bothered with some 58 year old lady who is enraptured with sentimentality about this time in her life (talking about myself in third person now: interesting). I had looked up where his doctor's office was (surprisingly close to my hotel) and made a plan to just drop by at some point that day. I got up early and rode the hop on/hop off bus around Dublin (those always sound like fun but usually suck; this one was particularly bad) and got off around Temple Bar area and nervously made my way the two miles or so to his office. I stopped off for a bite to eat and then used a hotel bathroom to freshen up and make sure there was no food in my teeth, and then marched to the Georgian townhouse where he performs surgeries. I got there and balked. I paced around and walked up and down the street thinking this was a really bad idea...but then I just sucked it up and said to myself What is the worst that can happen? fully knowing that no matter how horrible the outcome could be that I would KICK myself for not being brave enough to do this. I walked up and rang the doorbell. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking. I am never that nervous so shaking hands is a very surprising thing for me to have. I tall man answered the door and I said real fast that I was an old friend of the doctors and could I just leave a message I don't want to bother him. And the man said I'll see if he's available! And I go sit in the waiting room and I hear this familiar voice say "Marsha Kendall!" and bounding down the stairs is that tall & handsome man I met 35 years ago. He was delighted to see me. We went and had a lunch around the corner and tried as much as possible to catch up on our lives. He had somewhere to be so we only had about an hour together. I walked back to my hotel and don't know if I even tried to process it...I had to get up early the next day to go on my tour so I don't think I wrote much about it - maybe to my NYC friend who gets my TOMES(!!!). All I know is that when the trip started I felt a bleakness that was raw and hollowed out and I off. I was tired, I wanted to go home, and I'd only been in Ireland for 72 hours with THREE WEEKS to go! I think a part of me felt like I'd done what I came here to do...fast forward to today, where I only have one week left and am on my break in Dublin between tours. The trip was wonderful beyond words (the bleak feeling dissipated quickly) and there were such beautiful, tender moments of connection with the country and it's citizens. We all really bonded on the bus and everyone was kind and gracious. I surrendered to the tour and had a great time. </div>
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The two days in Dingle were a deep dive in the layers of limbic memories where this 1984 love story still lived. I felt like I inhabited my body in a way that I hardly do anymore: younger, sexual, full of future possibilities...in short: being a young woman. A girl. There is nothing like entering the crone period of one's life to truly, truly appreciate what it was like to be young and to not have realized at all what you had. I just thought of myself as an edgy party girl, and that guys liked me because I was funny. But they liked me because I was cute. Cute...and Young. And now my deep limbic love feelings get stirred when I interact with babies or children. I could not be more delighted that this has happened. I spent the shorter of my overseas flights next to a boisterous baby who I played peek-a-boo with for two hours and his mom was so happy that I helped keep her baby entertained. I say what I always say...that this was an absolute treat for me as I don't get to be around babies very much. But back to Dingle, my body was obsessed with tracking the route from my Hotel past the B&B we first stayed in, down to O'Flaherty's Pub, up past Dick Mack's and back to Benner's. It was my own Ulysses. I walked it over and over again in the two days...my eyes hungrily taking in every molecule of those streets, as if somehow I could relive those days once again by just following this crazy circle. I made myself hang out in both pubs, as awkward as that can be as a non-drinker. I ordered my sparkling water everywhere so I'd have a glass with something in it, but it never felt the same. It was ancient, it was over...my mind could tell me that buy my bones and my soul ACHED to feel that sense of freedom again. Yet I have even more freedom now, so memory is an interesting character.</div>
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Wow. What a rambling, all over the map post this has become! I was going to write about this tour but ended up writing mostly about the 1984 trip and ended up with how much I love having the grandma gene. I suppose what is really interesting to me is how aging changes what one loves, or what one thinks is the source of what will bring one love...for most of my life I thought only romantic love could save/cure/rescue me. I had felt so love starved in my youth that that hunger drove me for decades...it has only subsided in the last 7 years (with lots of help and work), and what a blessing that has been...all the other forms of juicy love that are available have rolled gently into my sphere the fill the space vacated by romantic yearning. Interacting with babies and toddlers everywhere when I catch their eyes, giving food to homeless men at a shelter and feeling the oneness with them...getting to inhabit my own body and feel all my edges and practice the incredibly hard job of actually trying to love myself, and the riches that that has brought. When I think about how many hours a week I spent focussing my attention on romantic drama it amazes me that I figured out how to break free of it (or that I needed to). I was stuck in a pattern that I did not create and did not even know what it was until very recently. Without going into the amazing insights I now have about that part of my life, I am making a new map into an unknown place that I am traveling as I am overhauling it. It is truly a journey into the unknown and filled with lots of sharp points that I have to stop and bandage. I am making new neural pathways in my nervous system...ones that flourishes on safety, security, and kindness...(I just looked at that last sentence and cannot believe it came from my fingers), and not on drama, lack, and chronic abandonment reenactment.</div>
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I won't write about the details of my lunch with the Dublin doc I met in Dingle, but something about it felt like we had just been hanging out the day before. It was so comfortable and fun...and the details of his life were surprising enough to me to realize that no, I hadn't sabotaged love for myself, I had created something so beautiful and wonderful as to have it's own life and beauty and to be the inspiration for this blog's inception. I hadn't sabotaged love, I had held out for the greatest love of all: the carving out of my own beautiful life, of which romantic love is a really sweet piece, but just a piece...not the whole pie. My relationship with this country and the romance with the Irish boy now has an ending. And it was a really, really great story that I got to tell everyone on my tour van!</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-77346724866257091812019-01-12T08:08:00.000-08:002019-01-12T08:08:03.884-08:00Forty Years Love Affair<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just got back from 5 days in NYC and my legs still want to walk non-stop every minute of the day except for about an hour of sitting for meals. It's not just that I love the city and the energy and the bolt of joy I feel every morning when I exit my hotel in the uber excitement of mid-town, it's that something happens there that is beyond and bigger than just joy or happiness or excitement. My reptilian brain, my deep limbic system that attaches me to the collective unconscious feels electrified and online...like a broken refrigerator that gets a shiny new plug and then is plugged into the wall and hums and glows and all is right with that refrigerator. It's not doing anything special or doing a dance or trying to stand out from all the other refrigerators...it just comes alive and starts functioning perfectly. That is what is going on underneath my excitement and joy and happiness when I am there. And I'm not really doing a whole lot of different stuff when I'm in the city...I'm basically just walking. Walking and walking and walking. Averaging about 10 miles a day. I usually don't do any sort of New Yorky stuff (except this time I did go to two broadway plays) because all I want to do is walk around. I do midtown for the first day...then I take the train down to NYU area and walk that part, and this time I went to my friend's house in Clinton Hill in Brooklyn and we waked from there to Chinatown over the Manhattan bridge (where I got that beautiful bottom photo). I've said this many times since I've been staying in a hotel in the city the last few years: "I have to move back here." And I will. Probably not this year as I just signed a lease, but I will start planning for it during the year, and hopefully my cabin in Oregon will sell this summer and I can forget about that. A part of me thinks it's crazy to move to NY in the same year I turn 60, but I seem to still have that restless spirit that gets bored living in the same place too long. I have been in Austin two years and it has been good to me. I have a pretty good social life, have worked almost the whole time I've been here, and belong to a lively film society so life is good...I just feel like I need to give NY another shot and live there when I'm mature and sober. The one thing I know that I have proved to myself for 40 years is that I can always come back to Austin.</div>
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As soon as I got back from NY I did two days of serious adulting. I went to my investment guy and we did a big plan to convert all my funds into a safer, more annuity type product planning for my full retirement at age 65 (only 7 years away!). I have been investing for almost 20 years, have my UT pension that will kick in when I retire, and hopefully a tiny little social security check (which kind of burns me how small it is after working 42 years in a row). So I left his office feeling very clear and clean about my financial life, and loving the fact that I can still work as much or as little as I want and take time off to do trips as well.</div>
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The second adulting thing I did was go visit a doctor with my new ACA health insurance. When I worked at UT I had health insurance and used it maybe once a year for my lady parts check up. When I started going to the Ice I had to have a comprehensive physical every year that was paid for so I felt really taken care of then. I have never gone to a doctor at any other time except for birth control reasons (I've always paid for my therapists and bodyworkers out of pocket) so health insurance is not something I really ever thought about. Now that I'm older I was getting concerned about having catastrophic insurance. I could always go to the cheap clinic here and just pay cash if I really needed to, but I wanted some sort of security in case of a major medical expense. I have such a negative attitude about health care in this country that I just decided I'd ignore it until I went on Medicare, but then this free organization here in Austin that helps people get on ACA insurance helped me get a really cheap plan. I was thrilled to be paying a low monthly fee that what seemed like a really good plan. I thought it would be super lame but called a phone number and got an appt. the next day with a gyno and after one hour had done all my bloodwork, had my full lady parts exam, had my IUD yanked (that had been floating around up there for 20 years) and have 5 more appts. for all that stuff one is suppose do now that I'm old. And I LOVED my doctor. She was awesome and sweet and I felt so taken care of. Now I felt like I was on an assembly line as the doctors and nurses were talking so fast and the doc was typing into a screen the whole time she was talking to me and hadn't really looked at me. She asked "are you periods nice and regular with good flow" and I realized she had not even looked at the form I filled out that had my age on it and I said "lady, I haven't had one of those in 8 years" and she paused and looked around the screen, and saw how old I was. I guess I could be flattered that she thought I looked younger. But all in all it was a great experience and I can't wait to go back to all my other appts.</div>
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In the midst of all this order a bit of chaos happened. I am still feeling conflicted and angry/hurt/sad about it but have already starting to see that it is really no big deal in the grand scheme of things. I called UT, where I have been temping for two years, to get in the pool to get another assignment. My temp contact who knows me pretty well called me and told me I'd been terminated from UT. After two years and many assignments with glowing reviews I had one dud review from the last assignment and I was fired permanently for being "uncooperative" and "not giving notice". I went into full injustice warrior mode and made phone calls and dashed off e-mails and researched who to write for grievance stuff and called a lot of people and then found myself driving to the store to buy a deep red lipstick and went to a fantastic movie and and hung out with a good friend at the film society and people watched. His notion is why the hell would I want to work at this chump-y place when I don't have to! I told him that I had had associations with UT for 40 years now (entering as a college student in 1979) and that the University was part of my DNA (my father was a student there as I was coming down the birth canal), and that is just seemed so unfair to fire me to be canned after one bad review. I could understand if this was my first assignment but I have had so many "excellent" reviews and many of my supervisors call the temp office asking for me specifically because I am such a superstar worker. It seems to me that my whole temp performance could be weighed in with this awful, terrible, suckola job that I hated so much that I left giving one day notice. It was a temp job so I thought that was not so terrible a way to exit. I feel I'm being punished as if I did something truly terrible (stealing, inappropriate behavior.) Anyway, I've spent almost 72 hours throwing a lot of energy into this and I'm done. I'm ready to move into a bigger and better space around work, life, moving to NYC, world travel, and laughing and having fun for the next 30 years.</div>
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I don't take for granted for one moment how lucky I am to be able to live the life I have right now. It is magnificent. I am truly, truly grateful.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-52630382841022947192018-12-09T08:57:00.001-08:002018-12-09T09:08:06.214-08:00Fifty Eight, subtitled: Dog Over Ice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Here we are at the end of another year which seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye. I usually don't read my previous posts because I dash them off and feel they are not well written - but I just went back and read my last one and I was surprised at how good it seemed! I know I have at least one reader who reads this blog to see how I'm doing in my life and I am here to report that things are going really really well! I am euphorically happy once it gets cold out and it has been nice and chilly here lately. I have a really fun job working with elections where I'm really busy and getting lots of socializing in with lots of young people as we drive around in vans all day visiting polling sites and troubleshooting issues they may have. It has been truly rewarding and I have been shown that it is possible to have a rewarding job outside of the Ice. The bottom picture is of me and some girlfriends at a Thanksgiving feast that I've been going to off and on for over 25 years here in Austin. It was a joyous day with hanging out with old friends and feasting on massive amounts of foods. Then I went to my old friend Ellen's sister's house and had fellowship with her family and in the evening went over to my high school friend's house and had a nice meal with him and his husband, followed by riding around on those little crazy scooters. The top photo is one I took of downtown Austin. Our downtown is now a glittering metropolis of high rises, and with 200 people a day still moving here the non-stop high rise and luxury apt building continues at a furied pace.</div>
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I spent about a week fretting about whether to renew my apt lease for another year or not. In the end I decided to do it as it felt like the most comfortable option. I still haven't sold my cabin in Oregon so that weighs heavily on me as it's costing me $600/month to sit empty. It will sell eventually, but probably not until springtime as the winter is a slow time on Mt. Hood. I do miss it sometimes, but I have so much more of a life here and unlimited activities per day of fun and enriching stuff to do. I knit and watch movies a lot while not at work, and go out to eat with friends a lot. I have a short trip planned to NYC in January so am thrilled about that. No big trips planned for next year, but I'm sure some stuff will come up as I will need to escape the heat of summer.</div>
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Probably the most exciting news is non-news and probably not too interesting to anyone but me, but it is around a topic that has the power to affect my whole psychological being; a subject that inspired the creation of this blog, and the thing, the place, the continent that is the love of my life. I seemed to have gotten to a place where I have accepted that I may or may not go back to the Ice and I am okay with for now not being there. This is huge, because I have been upset about it pretty much every season that I haven't deployed and I want to be bigger than that. I made a decision that I am not going to focus on where I am not but to really mine this place where I am for all of it's goodies. I have two amazing therapists/bodyworkers who I see who work mainly on the central nervous system and trauma, and the work I have done with them has made me so comfortable in my body and my skin, and happier with my life as it is unfolding day to day. For the first time in eights years (since I stopped going to the Ice for Fergus) I seemed to have let go of this big story I created that I cannot be happy if I am not on the Ice. Now for a while that was true. And I continued to go as long as I could until I made the choice of dog over Ice. And for four years I cried every fall (most of the rest of the year as well) that I didn't go and then I went in the fifth year and now I have missed three more deployments but have matured my relationship with myself enough that I don't let myself go down the rathole of pining and FOMO and that my joy is down there and I have to suffer here. I changed the story, and my nervous system went online with the new story - and the new story is I love and miss the Ice with all my heart and soul. I diligently apply for jobs every year and if I don't get a job I allow myself to feel the disappointment and then I immediately turn my thoughts to the life I am currently living and dive into all the good stuff about that. I have to mentally do gratitude lists and I write about all the good things in my paper diary (even though I rarely post here I do write for an hour or two almost every day in an old school diary). The whole process was sort of like a psychological and spiritual exercise on acceptance and letting go - two things which are not easy for me at all, as I feel that everything I've gotten in my life is through dogged determination and a rabid single-minded focus on the goal. I am glad that I have this part of my personality but around the Ice I've had to let it go and I may use it to pursue other goals. The two years I have spent in Austin have helped me fine tune and mature some aspects of my personality...it's happened through a lot of hard work on my part. </div>
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Thankfully, I love hard work.</div>
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I thought "dog over ice" sounded cool as I saw I had written it above so went ahead and stuck in into the title. I have been thinking about getting another dog lately. I spend a lot of time alone and don't date and don't get any physical touch in my life. A dog supplies a lot of love and oxytocin. But when I think back ( and read back) and how terribly upset I was during the four years I chose to stay with Fergus and not deploy, I'm still not sure it was the right choice. Sure I loved that little guy to death and was very happy to be there with him when his little heart stopped beating, but the tradeoff seemed too high at times (this sounds like literally word for world something I have written here before). Yes I could have given him to a any of the several people who offered to care for him during that period, but I felt committed to sticking it out with him. I never want to be in that position again, so I will wait until I am sure the Ice is a part of my past...but if there is any possibility that I could go back, I would drop everything today and go. I would drop everything and go.</div>
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So excited to go out and spend all day running around Austin on this 45F degree day to do fun things!</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-25746060396218787992018-09-01T07:41:00.000-07:002018-09-02T05:45:44.100-07:00Baltics & Beyond<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This is my first real post of 2018...the previous two posts were dashed off quickly and not posted when they were written months ago as I felt they were so rough and unedited, but I have felt so self conscious about this writing lately that I haven't been writing at all and it has affected my soul...this little semi-dead blog calls out to me and wants my attention and I have been ignoring it...seeming to go through a period of embarrassment about exposing myself in this way, which never bothered me in the past. I'm just going to try and work this out as I write it now...which is a technique that has been serving me since the late 60's...writing has always connected me to the most solid part of myself.<br />
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I've been in Austin almost two years now and the quality of my life is better and I think I am happier in a surfacy way, but I still really miss the intense work/lifestyle/meaning provider of working on the Ice. I have pretty much always been able to count on travel as getting me back to my center of joy but I've had a few experiences this year that have upended that theory. I just got back from a Baltic cruise where I went to all the Scandinavian capitals and Russia and I was not able to contact that giddy fun part of me that is euphorically happy on trips without fail. It just didn't happen this time. And it did not happen in Taos in May, which was really disappointing. I'm lying when I say it was disappointing because what it was was scary. To have had a miserable experience in Taos and then a grin and bear it trip to the most beautiful place in the world has upended my sense of who I think I am and what I was counting on to get me through the next 30 years....maybe I'm being too dramatic, and probably am, but it was really chilling to spend six grand and not really have that great a time, and really couldn't wait to come back home - which has NEVER happened to me. Is this little crumbling apt in central Austin really my "home?" There are other things that have happened this year that I cannot talk about here, but they may have contributed to this change in my psyche and it may be that my priorities are changing and that that is actually a good thing. I did notice that I was having a hard time letting myself have a good time, and that is an old way of being for me that I thought was gone forever. I feel like I am going backwards in confidence and bravery instead of forwards. There's a small sense of feeling defeated, that I might be trying to recreate something that doesn't exist anymore, and I can only guess that that comes from not deploying the last few years. It could be as simple as a low level long grieving of not having something in my life anymore that I loved beyond imagining. I still think about it everyday. I still apply for jobs and pursue leads there on a frequent basis.<br />
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As the words tumble out I am feeling better...since I learned how to write words on paper they have always set me straight. I don't know who reads this anymore and I'm assuming nobody does and that gives me a certain amount of freedom to just be as gutted as possible. I have been doing a couple of types of body therapies that have gotten me so sensitive that that might have contributed to this self consciousness. I have been working a lot in Austin and that has been good, and one of the little bright spots is serving at the homeless shelter, which may be having a bigger alchemical affect on my being than I may realize. As I was on this cruise being swathed in luxury and indulged by the gracious staff, there was a nagging feeling of boredom and play acting on my part...like this scenario had been working for me for about 10 years but it's not really working anymore and some aspects of my travel life need to really be revamped and fine tuned. I may need my travel to include service from now on, but since I don't like going to hot places that is really limiting me a lot..and every place is hot now! Moscow was sweltering! I almost got heat stroke in Helsinki! WTF northern Germany heat wave!<br />
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Something new and awesome in my life is the IDW...a big new world of intellectualism that I was starved for and have at least one friend to talk about it with. I am going to Taos in 12 days and it is going to be better than in May when I was going through something really really painful that I cannot talk about here - mainly because I'm not sure what it was really about. It is good to go back though and have this constant in my life for 20 years...it is probably childish to think that every trip overseas and every painting workshop will be deliriously happy. My big fear is that aging is making me more bitter, which is something I am going to have to fight off like a Mel Gibson in Braveheart - just pull it out by the roots.<br />
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I heard Jordan Peterson talk about how there are no primal, powerful myths with women as the hero. That women being independent is a brand new thing. As we are designed to take care of children and be crippled by pregnancy we were not free to go on journeys and fight dragons and come back evolved and whole people like the great mythological stories that are always centered around men. This comforted me as it gave me a glimpse into why I feel so alone at times: I am a single woman who supports herself and travels around the world by herself and takes care of all her own needs, and is wrestling with internal dragons on a frequent basis (external as well, in the form of ill treatment by a society so threatened by the childfree middle aged woman who is not just a sweet old spinster biddy), and I have to take a deep breath every single day and drum up courage - courage to take on the world and say I am here, and still valuable as an employee and friend. Sometimes I feel like such an outlier that I will behave or dress more how I feel society will accept me as an older woman, but then I instantly rebel and kick out in my all back and skull booties. This is starting to ramble but it was really good to do...I feel more myself now and yes I could have just kept it in my paper diary and not posted it for the entire universe to read but what the hell - ever onward, pushing forward.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-36672273925479783832018-09-01T06:34:00.003-07:002018-09-01T06:34:33.012-07:00Home For Sale<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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This beautiful scene is just steps from my beautiful cabin in the Mt Hood National forest. Or should I say former cabin. It is currently for sale, after a year and a half of living a busy life in Austin, a place I never thought I'd return to, but always seem to return to. I had frequently thought of selling the cabin and went back and forth over it in my mind every time I would visit, or go on a trip, or be in it for an extended time and realize how nutty I felt in a rural area. Now that I've been away from it I look back fondly on the 3.5 years I lived in it full time and my whole 6 years in Oregon. I've just returned from emptying the cabin and it sits for sale...my heart felt utterly broken as I was leaving it, piling up Fergus' toys and bedding and carting them off to goodwill...selling bits of furniture and snow tires, having a blast with my friends on the mountain. I felt like I was ripping my heart out, like I was participating in a pattern I seem to have to reenact every few years by having something I love taken from me..always in the past by a man, this time by tearing myself away from something beautiful and safe and wonderful that I created: a beautiful little home, and and a warm and loving community that held me lovingly in it's arms. Why would I do this to myself? Do I not believe that deserve to have comfortable and lovely things? Is safety and security so alien and terrifying to me that I have to run from it every time if presents itself? Is my idea and safety and security utterly different from everyone elses? Some or all of that might be slightly true, but it is not the whole story. I could have kept it and just visited it now and then, but it was costing my a lot of money and I was not allowed to rent it out via park rules. I was underemployed the whole time I lived on there, was over an hour's drive to an airport, and drove 50 miles every day round trip to do yoga - which I sort of turned into a job. In Austin I have been working almost the entire time I've been here. I have a new bestie who I look forward to hanging out with on the weekends and seeing great films with and having lots of laughs. I am around smart people and belong to a film society and have several fun volunteer gigs. I have a quick 20 minute uber ride to the airport, and have lots of friends to have meals with. Life is good here. I have always been very restless and easily bored, and there is always something to do here that is a short walk or very short drive to go to. Everything I yearned for on the mountain I have here in abundance. I have been single a long time and don't date anymore, so have literally no drama at all in my life. There are some very dark and horrible things in my psyche that still will wreak havoc in my life in the form of hellish all nighters verging into psychosis and colored by feelings of hopelessness and utter abandonment. It doesn't happen very often anymore, but at least I can say that it is not buried. Wow! That sounds so fucked up! And listing these things I do sounds really simplistic and shallow...okay I get it, I do lots of stuff, but it sometimes feels like it's just entertainment til it's time for my dirt nap.</div>
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Since I am writing this story I can write it however I want and I choose to spin it more to my advantage. I'm tired of seeing myself as a victim of my own self-sabatoge - but I know I tend to get rid of things quickly that are beautiful, that I love, or that bring me comfort and joy...there is such a dark mistrust of these things that I have not overcome yet. But at the same time I have no worries or hardships in my life..I work around my travel schedule. I look really good for my age. I LOVE getting older...what an incredible journey aging is...all the things I get to shed that don't serve me anymore. And travel, my biggest childhood dream, is mine whenever I want it.</div>
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The thing on the mountain that brought me the most joy I still have: my little tight knit community of friends there. There are always so happy to see me and love me so much. They will do anything for me - they are the loving family that I always wanted. And I can go visit them any time I want. And then there is the name I haven't spoken...the name of the greatest love of my life...the place, the faraway place where my life had more meaning and purpose and joy than I could have imagine existed. If I could wick up that girl again...the one who had everything in front of her, and who was already 43 when the big magic happened. I'm only 57 and not ready for the surprises to be over...I need a third act and I want to be as unconventional as I feel it needs to be.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-70926058890478671522018-09-01T06:29:00.000-07:002018-09-01T07:51:30.046-07:00Fifty Seven<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
here goes the logorrhea, the diatribe, the long detailed pining, the yearning for things (things not within reach or things not appreciated when I had them and cast aside), the intense FOMO, the luxury problems, the obsessing over which European vacations to take to avoid the wrong people, the shock and awe of my undeserved good fortune, the nasty little trip into the black yawning maw of insecurity that takes several days to climb out of, the self absorption, the occasional stepping outside of myself, the repeated and repeated over again tale of the Ice and how my life began when I went there and seemed intolerably painful when I was not there. The infantile dependence on places as my source as places cannot abandon me...the surprising ability to be lifted into joy by the exiting of an airport security line into the gate. The flight. The buildings. The city. The Ice. The white. The gritty tumble-down buildings. The two great loves. The two places - one full of outrageous tall buildings the other a frozen patch on bottom.<br />
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here goes the fears and insecurity that seem to attack from nowhere, the steel wall ripped off the heart by a surprisingly small gesture, the cluelessness of what is happening with another person, the utter and complete inability to go with the flow and just relax, the hardened steel like composure and coping skills that are needed to survive this shit, the days of feeling untethered and unloved and unsure if there is any place to land if one falls, who do I call if I can't get out of bed, oh yeah I belong to this amazing program full of helpful people. But first I have to beat myself mercilessly with my own mind before I will let my self calm down and relax. Sometimes the peace and serenity and the joy of small things of daily life can intrude, unwanted, as I want my joy big and hard won and expensive.<br />
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here goes the euphoria of the getting to the hotel or lodge or ship on the first day of a trip and the instantaneous forgetting of the addled state that preceded the trip. This is what trips are for I have found out - to allow me to be in a perpetual limbo that feels utterly soothing. Feeling alive and with so much purpose and meaning that doesn't make sense to me of how that could be purpose and meaning of what? Feeling so alive I could burst and don't even have the container for so much joy, but it is happening, and holy moly I hope there is no price to pay but if there is one it is not sleeping. When I am entering an airport I feel like I have won some sort of personal lottery. I am leaving. I am going away. I am free.<br />
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here goes me getting tired of writing this way as it seems to have petered out...I'm in the "rest of it" part of the blog title - no Ice, no travel (though I've been on 6 trips this year)...wanting the next big thing...wanting it badly. And this writing feels whiny, and self-indulgent borne of narcissism or the gentler sounding navel gazing. Paul Shrader said "write it so you don't have to live it..."<br />
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[This was written a long time ago and was just sitting in my drafts folder - I will write something in a fevered frenzy and re-read in in horror thinking I can never post that, and a year later I'm so grateful to have all these posts, already written, that I can just toss out here. Grateful for my shamelessness at times.]</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-53375832472650032402017-10-18T19:53:00.000-07:002017-10-18T19:53:06.231-07:00These are a few of my favorite things...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-32460352078370579482017-10-18T17:37:00.000-07:002017-10-18T17:37:18.269-07:00Previously Unposted - Good Enough for Now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taos Pueblo<br />
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Here I am forcing myself to write again when it used to come so naturally. I looked how few postings I've done in the past few years compared with when I started this blog - and actually just read a random post from 2012 that was so good I couldn't believe I had written it...the meaning borne or heartache is so rich! Also I assume no one is reading this blog so I am free to be as sloppy and bereft of meaning as I feel - but that is not me; I only feel like writing if I have some deep vein of truth I've discovered and am titillated about or am agog at some big dream coming true that I hadn't even dreamed in the first place...that was just life handing me presents and me wondering why the hell I was getting them.<br />
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I just got back from my umpteenth painting workshop in Taos. I am part of the old guard there - the class clown with a suitcase full of uber expensive knitted goods to sell. All the workshops feel a little different and some are more fun and richer than others but this one was probably one of the best ever. I always go into hypomania talking non-stop, running around so much I burn off the luxury meals I'm eating, hanging out with ladies I've known forever - being bad, going to bars at night and dancing like fools. This time I made a friend connection that sucked me out of the vortex of the workshop. It was that kind of connection you get once or twice in a lifetime maybe. I swirled and danced around northern New Mexico with this person and felt a joy I have only felt (well, felt it a lot actually) when the beginning of an Ice stint was happening, and by beginning I mean getting the contract in my e-mail box going to hundreds of dr. appts, getting ticketed, buying workboots and best:boarding the flight from LAX-CHC and then the glorious euphoric days in Cheech and then the 3:00am hang at CDC in full ECW awaiting the cargo jet flight to the Ice. My eyes are welling up as I type that...knowing that two years ago today I was landing in McMurdo, setting up my little dorm room, walking over to the galley for chow...it still feels like a dream...but in Taos my cup runneth over with a limbic connection with another human that seemed to blur the edges of where I started and this other person began. It wasn't physical or romantic or sexual - it was straight up this is one of my soul mates. And for a day or two I didn't think about Antarctica.</div>
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So I'm feeling skinless after the trip and everything is going in unfiltered. Shields are down, open for business (and by business I mean meaningful connection). That seems to be the only thing that will tether me to sanity - that and great art, and I get a lot of that living in this town. Saw a film that gutted me recently, and started a busy warehouse job that keeps me grounded. And for some reason the line between art and life has softened quite a bit and I feel that surge of awe after a great film whenever I drive to my warehouse job - the locations seems custom designed for my aesthetic: gutted, ugly old buldgs, rusted farm equipment, neglect, decay and to top it off: a train rumbling by steps from the loading dock. Even though I find his films unwatchable, Harmony Korine said something that could have come from my own lips "there is nothing as beautiful as an old couch next to a dumpster in a glass strewn parking lot." That is not a direct quote but you get the aesthetic. The campus feels like it is in central Kentucky instead of just around the the yuppie hellscape called The Domain. (Which, I actually like).</div>
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I wish I could squeeze some beautiful juicy words into rapturous meaning like I saw had happened in some previous posts! I can't look at Facebook when people are deploying...it's just too painful to not be with them. I can't even wrap my head around how much meaning and purpose and joy that place provided for me. I cannot communicate to anyone the insane high after 12 hours of unloading shipping containers in a loud ancient M4K and what it feels like to become one with your rig..to go sleep 5 hours and get back in that noisy green 12K pound monster and crack open another can. I just keep saying no it wasn't lonely, no it wasn't isolating, no it wasn't desolate - it was a big burning man in the frozen dessert - and now what to do with the 30 or so years I have left on this planet. I can't live small...and I have to have everything or I'm restless. And by everything I mean that thing I choose has to have all the boxes checked, no reservations and no ambivalence.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-75305147876336121602017-06-19T18:33:00.002-07:002017-06-19T18:35:22.095-07:00Straight Life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I had to wait until I was in psychic PAIN from not writing to finally sit down and write. I actually have many drafts that I never post because they seem so badly written or worse, not brimming with fresh ideas but then I re-read them and they seem okay to me...okay enough to post! And the thrill of seeing so much writing just sitting there that hasn't been posted yet - fun! Just posted on my Menopause Helmet blog, where I usually post more personal stuff...but here goes...I will just make this up as I go along and see if anything comes of it. I've decided to post it anyway, no matter how rusty, or how unoriginal in topic.<br />
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I've been in Austin 7 months and it is the dreaded summertime here. I am handling it well as I decided not to complain about it. I spend most of my time in air conditioning so that is my coping strategy. For some reason living in Austin feels completely different than the time I lived here for 30 years. I don't know if it is because I lived in Oregon for 6 years or because I'm mid 50's trying to do stuff all the time like I'm young, or just a combination of myself and the city having changed so much. When I lived here before, there was the great amorphous yearning and pining for something big that I really wanted and didn't know what it was or if I could have it. Then I got to have it, and have it and have more of it, and it was so good that the first several years of this blog are only about that. Falling in love with that place has informed everything that has happened since the first deployment and continues to affect my life now...I just got an e-mail from a department boss saying they couldn't use me this season ( a department I havent worked for in a while) and I felt a little hard hurtful slice of rejection in my gully. But I was at my fun Austin job, which I have loved from day one because of this rich connection with my co-workers, and the rag tag little crew that we are. We huck books in libraries all over the massive university complex and laugh and bitch and feel like one person with 6 arms at times. It has been a really fun job temping at UT this year and is about it end. I'll go to Oregon in July and spend some time in the cabin deciding if I want to sell it or not, and then come back to Austin to finish out the year in my apt. I have no big plans for my life.<br />
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What? Maybe that is why I've been kind of low lately. I thrive on big plans...if I wasn't going to the Ice I was planning very exciting trips and basically traveling all the time. Now that I'm in city with lots of friends and stuff to do I'm having what I call a "straight life." It is not as exciting and mostly just feels like I'm entertaining myself most of the time. My job feels like entertainment - and I do really safe, non risky stuff like go to movies a lot, knit, read books, binge watch. My attitude has been really off - I seem to feel like I've lived more of a big life than anyone around me, and sometimes find myself not really wanting to listen to someone talk about things because they haven't done anything really exciting with their life (but that is very arrogant of me, because everyone has done something deeply meaningful with their lives, especially if they've raised children.) I feel like I fulfilled a huge intention given to me by my self or the universe or my daimon and it took every moment of my 43 years to get to the place where everything finally lined up and I got to go and do it. It is hard doing straight life after driving a farm tractor across Western Antarctica. I have nothing to contend with here; everything is so easy...my life feels like its on easy autopilot: get up and go to work, go to grocery store, look for fun stuff to do on weekends, knit scarves to sell in Taos, paint beautiful paintings that make people freak out, go to yoga and go on some big trip once or twice a year. Doesn't that sound awesome? It's okay but it's not awesome. It is a fine, quiet little life where I'm just tending to my own business and trying not to offend people...but, the thing that is ever present in my psyche is the desire to grab everyone by the shoulders and get all up in their face and insistently ask them what it is that they really want to do?! Are they living their hearts' desire? Are they settling for a straight life? I am currently doing a straight life but I am going to choose to see it as an incubation period for the next big thing. Ohmigod several people have said things like "it's time to retire and settle down and just tow the rope" and "you've already gotten to have fun." Like there is some time limit on fun...like I can't be 60 and take off with a knapsack and roam around the world til I croak...that sounds kind of awesome actually...I have a friend whose 57 who just sold everything and took off...I told him it was about time.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-15258579404015586642017-06-19T17:53:00.000-07:002017-06-19T17:53:51.774-07:00Rinse...Repeat...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul in a gallery in downtown Austin</td></tr>
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It's been a long time since my last post. I am out of the habit of writing and I've really missed it. And it is interesting because usually I don't write when nothing has been going on in my life much, but since my last post a lot has changed - I've moved back to Austin and am comfortabley set up in a sweet old rambling apartment close to campus and downtown, and am busy doing all the things that an urban lifestyle affords. I go to plays, see live music, walk miles and miles every day and still do yoga too. I've had two little jobs and am on the temp list for UT..everything is just so easy living in a city that I know so well. I am seeing Austin through utterly new eyes. I am just besotted with the things that I took for granted before I moved away: hundreds of familiar people and deep old friendships...ease of getting to shops and work and the airport. I can walk to dozens of restaurants, coffee shops, a giant goodwill store, and hop on an express bus and be downtown in 10 minutes. I am doing everything that I wanted to do by moving to a city...and originally I wasn't going to choose Austin, but something in my aging bones was craving home..and this is my home.<br />
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Before I moved here I was in my cabin in Oregon really waiting for the inspiration for what to do next. I knew I wanted to be in a city. I was seriously considering New York or someplace like Madison or Ann Arbor, a smaller city with a lot of culture with a big University. But the last two times I had visited Austin I had just been deliriously happy with the city and seeing my friends and the ease of going out and doing things. I couldn't believe what was happening on the short visit in May and November: I would just walk down a street in a neighborhood I had lived in like Hyde Park or West Campus and every fiber of my being would just be pulsing with joy with the memory of the life I had here. I had not felt this for Austin ever really. When I had moved away in April of 2011 I was bitter about the growth and all the yuppies and the disappearance of the funky, sleepy medium sized town that I fit so well in. But I couldn't get enough of the nostalgia and euphoria I would experience when I walked on campus or the drag or down W 22nd Street where I used to live...and I would just beam and talk to everyone I saw and just revel in my wonderful city that was wooing me and becoming me to come back to it. I just felt so in love...that is the only way to describe it...I was having the same intense connection with this city that I used to feel only when I thought about McMurdo...I was surprised and delighted to experience this around Austin, because this was something I could do, move back here. McMurdo didn't hire me back this season, so I had to have a plan B, and staying in my cabin wasn't an option. I did take wise counsel from friends: they said not to sell the cabin so I didn't. And they said don't think that moving back here is going to be blissful every second and they were right. I have been just as sad and lonely here as I was on the mountain, but I am able so much more quickly to ameliorate it by just walking out my front door and visiting with neighbors, or have meals with friends. I can feel connected just walking down a street with other humans or sitting around them in a coffee shop. Everything I was missing on the mountain I have here in spades, and my life is good. Not great...but good.<br />
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I had to adjust my expectations of life when I moved back here. I am a 56 year old woman who lives in city full of young hip people (who apparently have tons of money) and I kept wondering why I was ignored in shops or not having any luck meeting people to date...and then I had to look at the cold hard truth of aging. That thing they say about older women being invisible - well it is Literally True! I would joke around about being "old" and a "battle-ax" and have a running self mocking schtick I would do about being old and undesirable, but what I realized when I was going through a hard time after I moved back here was that I hadn't really accepted the reality of my postmenopausal self and that I hadn't really said goodbye to my younger self. There was some pain with this, but beyond the pain is immense freedom. I had an insight recently that menopause has given me everything that I was trying to get through years of therapy, 12 step meetings, workshops, and all those spiritual workshops - menopause has made me very comfortable in my body, very relaxed and content to be doing something that pleases me without it having to look exciting to the world. My life is pretty simple...even when I have a lot going on...my life is filled with ease and peace of mind. I kept thinking that I would find the TRICK to keeping myself sane (the right therapy, meditation, workshop, trip, church, boyfriend, city to move to, etc.), but all I had to do was Grow Older! With the vanishing of estrogen came a loyal fierceness to my true self, and a centeredness that is worth its weight in gold.<br />
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Oh god the freedom of not needing a boyfriend anymore! I still go on an online date once in a while, and even though these men are always nice and okay seeming...I am just so bored after the first 20 minutes of chit chat and can't WAIT to get back to my apartment and my knitting project. Being single for five years deserves it's own blogpost. What I have gained from that is pure gold. I have developed a super juicy relationship with myself...I have time to really be present with my friends and whatever I am doing...and if I every start to feel sorry for myself for being "alone" or "single" I can remind myself about how freakin' lucky I am to have the thing I wanted more than anything else for as long as I can remember: freedom. I am so free...and so independent. I don't have to answer to anyone or ask anyone's permission to do anything. So many times I catch myself in a dark place seeing my situation as bleak, but I'm immediately reminded by anyone around me how damned lucky I am.<br />
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I've been doing this long enough to know that when one chooses a particular life that there will be some grieving or wistfulness for the life not chosen. I never wanted a family or children, but every once in a while will feel a sharp pang during a holiday when I am alone knitting and seeing photos of big family gatherings. I have never been domestic and love living alone, but can sometimes get gut punched by seeing a couple intimatley cooking together in a tidy home. And then sometimes my whole story just falls apart and I think I'm full of shit that my life is great and that I was just too afraid to commit to a life that involved deep commitments. But...I can spin that too...I have been Deeply Committed to my dreams and goals and the things I deeply wanted. I was married to McMurdo. I am agog with joy when making travel plans. Sitting on my bed knitting and binge watching provides the deepest contact with bliss that I have ever known...ah bliss! I've experience so much bliss once I knew I was moving back to Austin. And it was so damned fun and easy to pack up my car and drive down here. I am so damed competent at stuff like that. I was so damned easy and fun.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-5841086042870676062016-08-03T09:31:00.001-07:002016-08-03T09:31:31.133-07:00Viking Passage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Just some random images from The Netherlands, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland. The last two pics are from St. Johns, Newfoundland where I had a lively time downtown connecting with people hanging out on the streets.<br />
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Iceland and Greenland were the last big places on my bucket list and they were so amazing. Greenland was surreal as the two towns we visited felt so intimate and soulful - an interesting edginess borne from the hardened Inuit population dressed in modern Danish clothing. Iceland had the barren feel of the Scottish highlands mixed with an almost lunar landscape. I feel so lucky to have gotten to go to these places, this having been my second month long journey this year. I'm feeling oversaturated and spoiled with travel, which I had not thought could happen or was prepared for. I am so rusty at writing and it shows!<br />
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World travel was the thing I have always wanted the most and now that I've done a lot of it I'm not sure what to aim for next. 55 seems like an odd age to reinvent oneself but it looks like that is where I am at again. I don't have an Ice contract so I am looking at the options available: staying in my cabin (incredibly cheap rent) and looking for work around here, or moving to a city with more jobs and stuff to do. It is curious to me why I have not sold my cabin as this is what I thought was holding me back. I guess I crave a home base more than I realized. It is hard cycling down from a trip, and even though I was really happy to be done traveling...it is also hard being back on this mountain and having to drive 100 miles a day to do yoga and/or go to the grocery store. But the hardest thing is trying to feel my way into something that could be as exciting as going to the Ice has been. Twelve years ago at this time I was getting ready for my first deployment, and that's all my life has been about ever since, even the four years I took off. I guess it will take a while to integrate this as something in my past - and it doesn't even feel like something in my past, but something in my bones that will be with me forever. I just don't want to miss it and pine for it like I did. I want to be able to move forward and find something to get excited about again, move forward with anticipation instead of resignation. My body wants to relax, wants to be semi-retired. My brain still thinks it is 19 and that I have to reinvent myself every year...finding that middle ground will be the challenge, especially for someone like me who loves extremes.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-5487852352102540942016-05-29T10:37:00.006-07:002016-08-03T08:35:02.949-07:00Asia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A month after I returned from the Ice I flew to Hong Kong and started a three week journey through China, Korea and Japan. I loved these countries much more than I thought I would - especially China. I had heard negative reports from my friends' travels there so I expected to be dazzled by Japan but not China. Now Tokyo was amazing as I got to spend 4 whole days there, but China affected my soul more deeply. Shanghai was so vibrant and shockingly wonderful I wonder why I had not known about this fabulous city. We walked around with our mouths gaping for two days in Shanghai, feeling intimate and connected despite the 27 million population. And this was one of the smaller cities on the trip. Beijing was like Hong Kong on steroids, and the scale of the apartment buildings was transcendent. Hong Kong was like Manhattan on steroids, and even though interesting enough, was the one place I don't feel I need to go back to. Every place else deserves a deeper look.</div>
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I don't know if I've travelled so much that I'm spoiled or that I hadn't quite rebuilt myself after the deflating experience at McMurdo, but I found myself out of sorts and addled on this trip quite a bit. I'm also thinking that living in the cabin in the mountains is making me more sensitive to the violence of in your face destinations and a shockingly fast pace of ingesting new cultures with little time to digest them before moving on to the next. But I could travel differently and take more time in each place, but at this point in my life I want to see more with less money, so I go on boats and pay a fraction of what it would cost on land. And I don't have to do it all on my own, which appealed to me when I was younger but not currently.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-3914418591555722492016-02-25T11:02:00.001-08:002016-02-25T11:02:22.778-08:00On Penguins, Flat White and Fata Morgana (Not)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I'm so rusty at writing so I hope my dear reader(s) forgive me for the logorrhea that follows. As you all know I pined for 4 years to go back to the Ice & I got to go back. Now I am nesting in my darling chilly cabin on the mountain in Oregon. It happened so fast and I settled in here so immediately that I feel like this whole season passed in the blink of an eye. I mean I am sitting here in my bed with my laptop like I was never gone! Which is strange because the season was so complicated and intense in ways that I am not going to go into detail on this public blog, but there was so much gutting of my psyche and such surprising leveling of my pride that I could barely feel my badass self at all.<br />
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Photos can be so deceiving: look how much fun I am having; look at my amazing life; look how adventurous and mold-breaking I am for a 55 year old woman! Yes there are moments where I really felt the bliss of being in Antarctica all over again. But they were overshadowed by a twin stream of difficult situations that I had to contend with all season and put me through an emotional wringer. One of the situations I <i>had</i> to deal with and the the other I didn't have to deal with at all, I just must have really loved the feeling of torturing myself. How, I asked myself, after a zillion hours with therapists, healers, spiritual helpers, writing and meditating, could I end up feeling as lost and insecure as I did as an eight year old kid. How could I let myself be traumatized by the perceived rejection of just a handful of humans. How, after 23.5 years in a program that teaches me not to rely on people as the source of my good feelings about myself, did I let someone's attention/lack of attention on me control my self worth? And most startling: despite the most physically and mentally demanding job I have had on station that I gave my all to and with very little free time, that I could be as self-absorbed as I was when I was unemployed and had so much free time that navel gazing was second nature. But I didn't have anything pressing on me off Ice. There I had to deal with personalities on top of me 9 hours a day. I don't know if I've changed or if I just had too high an expectation for what this continent could do for me, but man I sat through some keeningly sharp emotional times there. The good news is I behaved well through it. I sucked it up and plowed through and always had my day off to look forward to. I got through it. And it has made me curious about how I can grow myself into the person who does not fall apart over simple (perceived or real) rejection.<br />
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So there was the hard parts but there was also the part that I thrive on: the rigid structure of the work-camp lifestyle, the galley ritual, the wild dancing parties on Saturday nights. The holiday parties and two day weekends were so much fun that they <i>almost</i> made up for the difficult stuff. I came back looking younger and 15 pounds lighter and feel more content than I've felt in years. I had a goal and I achieved it. Yes there were searing moments (days) of a black hole feeling in my chest cavity that made it hard to breathe, but the happy times were really, really fun. Reconnecting with so many people I know from previous seasons and all that attention from men was like manna from heaven to me. Unfortunately, the one I chose to fixate on all season had me like a fish on a hook, flopping around never knowing when the green light was on or whether the gut-socked pain of the cold shoulder was what I was in for. Was every season like this and I just forgot? Was being so much older than my co-workers a factor? Questions to explore for sure. The most surprising thing to me was how raw and skinless I could feel down there. Usually I have a protective shell I can put on when needed but I couldn't find it this time. Maybe I haven't needed it for so long that it fell away. My coping skills seemed to work and are fairly healthy, and I was lucky enough to have a roommate situation where I basically lived alone. I had knitting and movies and reading as my solace.<br />
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I feel bad for those who want to read an Antarctic blog to hear about penguins and wildlife and stumbled upon this one - I think there are many out there! The one thing I know after 8 seasons is that whatever hidden aspects of myself that are a dull ache (or I'm not even aware of) stateside, those become dark side gremlins that demand full attention on Ice. I <i>have</i> to deal with them there. Antarctica has always been the big personality-defect revealer for me and this season was a doozy for exposing old and ineffective aspects of my character. I got to see where I am still a crumbling mess, but thankfully I am so much more capable of dealing with it now - and the crumbling mess is pinkie sized now instead of what used to feel like my whole being. Yes, I am spinning this all into a positive - I went, I suffered, I had joy, I survived, and I had me some fun. I didn't let the bad stuff drive me off station as I saw it do several of my friends.<br />
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There were many bright spots! I got to go to the South Pole for 5 days and it was really incredible. I had connections with people that were deeply satisfying. I got in the best physical shape of my life just from my job. I got so many loving cards and gifts from people stateside.<br />
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I must remember to be grateful for how fortunate I am. I get to carve out my own life, and no one ever said that going after something you really want does not come with a cartload of pain and heartache. I used to hate my weaknesses and vulnerabilities and tried to drown them with alcohol. Now I just get to see that they are not going away so I have to accept them and possibly even make friends with them. This is what going to the Ice does to me. I did no hiking! I went on no boondoggles! I only felt the searing intensity of my relationship with this continent.<br />
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Forward and onward through this mucky life.</div>
petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-34174810719085151042015-11-28T11:06:00.002-08:002015-11-28T11:06:33.322-08:00This is Happening...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33257591.post-54504473568495784642015-08-30T22:47:00.002-07:002015-08-30T22:47:24.201-07:00Talk about a dream, try and make it real...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fymQPBzCl5Y/VePYoXjYKdI/AAAAAAAABLM/CRx2HoOhT0Y/s1600/3_fanfuckintastic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fymQPBzCl5Y/VePYoXjYKdI/AAAAAAAABLM/CRx2HoOhT0Y/s320/3_fanfuckintastic.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wayne White - one of my favorite artists</td></tr>
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I have missed writing very much. I also miss art, and being creative, and being around creative people. When my dog died I thought I would blaze out off of this mountain and out of the cabin so fast I'd be just a grease stain on the driveway - but here I sit, more attached to a home base than I thought I would be. When I really thought deeply about moving I just couldn't figure out where to go. I really feel Austin is no longer an option, so I thought about exploring Alaska or Detroit or someplace that gets real winter. My heart wants to move back to NYC, but I'm just too cheap to spend that much on rent. And then there is the thing I haven't mentioned that I always mention:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYydxNtW6pc/VePaJKKZcCI/AAAAAAAABLY/LFt66h6V7EA/s1600/antarctica.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZYydxNtW6pc/VePaJKKZcCI/AAAAAAAABLY/LFt66h6V7EA/s1600/antarctica.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">just moving one town over was never gonna cut it for me</td></tr>
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the place that I have romanticized and idealized to the point where nothing else really mattered. I have just thinly participated in my life since I've not been on a deployment cycle. Sure I have had moments of sheer connection and bliss, mostly while on trips, but the last four and a half years have been what I can almost call a complete bust as far as creating a life off Ice. I mean, I really tried, but my heart wasn't into it. I was holding out. Holding out until I could go back. And I had a feeling it wouldn't be easy to get back - and it wasn't. Calls and e-mails to everyone I could find in my e-mail folder. Persistent without being desperate & then I got a nibble: South Pole alternate winter-over something or other. So I said YES YES YES and have pq'd for that. And then I started thinking how frustrating it was to have just an alt contract and how I knew myself and that I would wait around and put my life on hold again waiting for the call, and felt the familiar old frustration. Oh well, it was something, and I was plugged in to the system again so I was grateful.</div>
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I was walking around the forest behind my cabin pondering if I'd done everything I could to get back. A hunch drove me back to my computer where I made a phone call that ended up snagging me a McMurdo summer contract this main body. So, I am going back to the Ice :-). Possibly for a whole year!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pco4VCJfTqI/VePeEfjlNGI/AAAAAAAABL0/EHnUuqo1-I4/s1600/pluto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Pco4VCJfTqI/VePeEfjlNGI/AAAAAAAABL0/EHnUuqo1-I4/s320/pluto.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pluto</td></tr>
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People keep asking me if I'm excited. And I say "yes" but they seem to not believe me...and now I realize that I am more <i>relieved</i> than excited. <i>Relieved</i> that the waiting for 5 years was not for nothing..that I really can trust that the thing I talk about all the time IS the thing that I really want. Some people seem confused that I really want this, like I'm fooling myself, and they look at me like this is some childish desire and why the heck would I want to go someplace like that. I just tell myself thank gawd they feel that way or the competition for jobs would be even stiffer. There have been some fantastic things borne from my stateside stint: a Bikram yoga practice that is an unexpected source of camaraderie, a knitting hobby that is as delightful and delicious as I can ever remember anything being, and the point of it all - that I got to hold my cheek on my little dog's chest to feel his tiny heart stop beating. I'm starting to think that Fergus is why I haven't sold the cabin yet, because this is the the last house we shared together and he spent his last two years here. I wouldn't have bought it if it were just me. I am sure I will start reminiscing about this cabin, this mountain, this State as soon as I get to LAX. I am enjoying living here knowing that I don't have to be here full time. Springsteen wrote so many songs about the long dark road stretched out in front of you that made your heart quicken and the desire to run away and to find a new place, and as soon as that felt stale to keep moving onward into the unknown and to just keep that spark alive, and trust that it would lead you to your own freedom. I see that it was good to have stricture and confinement - it taught me to be patient and to be satisfied with simple things. I think I could be satisfied with yoga and knitting and working seasonally at the ski resort, but life has thrown me another great big adventure and I must go.</div>
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petoonyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09503253361037145306noreply@blogger.com0