Sitting in front of a waning fire, too cold, tired, and sore to bother with tending it. We spent the weekend preparing for the Super Bowl, watching the Super Bowl, and recovering from the Super Bowl.
I made a simple but hearty lasagna soup that was a runaway hit with our guests. I found the recipe earlier in the Fall and immediately fell in love with how easy it is to prep, how quickly it gets to the table, and how warming and filling it is.
Lately I’ve been having vivid and strange anxiety dreams. Last night I dreamt a mother with a highly successful and important career, living in an overly large house with her children. Overwhelmed and strung out she hired me to help her manage. Yet everything I tried, failed. There seemed to be no stopping the momentum of karmic repercussion, though it all seemed rather muddy what she could be being punished for. The lights – all the fixtures and bulbs – kept busting in odd ways, throwing room after room into darkness, and I couldn’t keep up with caring for the children and fixing the busted lights.
I’m sure there are several websites where I could look up the meaning of this dream (and someday I’ll tell you my story about dream interpretation adventures with a schoolbus driving, Richard Simmons look-alike), but I’ve learned that the meaning of dreams make themselves pretty clear if you pay attention. I don’t see how there can be universal meanings when the unconscious is so personal. If there are archetypes, surely they are of the cultural consciousness.
Either way, your word this week, should you choose to accept the 100 word challenge, is:
Busted
My dear word-nerdlings, here we are. Another week, another challenge! Some of you may have noticed I was working my way through a funk these last few weeks (though I wonder if y’all read these posts and don’t just skip on down to the prompt ;D). I don’t want to jinx anything, but the weekend was good, and today was good.
By “good”, I mean some of the challenges backed off, and others were worked through.
Our book club wrapped up our last book, and since we haven’t nailed down what we’re reading next I’m plowing through a small stack of business books. Just starting The Leader’s Way, by The Dalai Lama and Laurens Van Den Muyzenberg. You wouldn’t have guessed it, but the word my finger landed on from this book is:
Crisis
This is almost too easy to work into a vignette, but don’t let yourself off the hook. Push your creative edge, show don’t tell, and strive for elegance!
Yep, still worn the eff out, and there’s no end in sight for me. Yet somehow I’m gaining something in all this grind. I’m not sure what to call it yet…strength? resilience? I’ll let you know when I figure it out.
Still, I’m feeling a little frustrated because I’ve had little time in the last few weeks for the extra things in life that I love. I have photos on my camera I haven’t had a second to download, I’m horribly behind on keeping in touch with the people I love, haven’t sent a birthday gift to my brother, this blog, keeping up with y’all on Facebook or Twitter…oh this list of first world problems is endless.
BLARGH!
Somehow, even with all my neurons fried by the end of every day, I’m still really enjoying reading Margaret Atwood’s, The Handmaid’s Tale. Good thing because I’d like to have something intelligent to say when I meet with my alum sisters to discuss the book this week. But I’m not picky at this point…so long as I can avoid drooling into my wine glass and manage more than an occasional grunt I’ll consider the evening a success.
But now for your word. No special paragraph this week, just the tried and trusted closed eyes, finger pointed, random word choice. The word is:
Soundless
Go forth word-nerds. WRITE!
Week 314 of the 100 word challenge? Well, something like that. I’m mired in some challenging times over here word-nerds, and can’t put enough firing neurons together to write a title so I’ve resorted to numbering, but since I only know the rough start date of VV, that week number is estimated.
Wasn’t that interesting? (queue eyeroll)
And guess what else? I’m late AND I still can’t summon up the brain power to write a proper post. Instead, a few paragraphs from my current book club book, The Handmaid’s Tale, because I’m not so brain dead yet, apparently, that I can’t recognize beautiful writing:
I sink down into my body as into a swamp, fenland, where only I know the footing. Treacherous ground, my own territory. I become the earth I set my ear against, for rumors of the future. Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will. I could use it to run, push buttons of one sort or another, make things happen. There were limits, but my body was nevertheless lithe, single, solid, one with me.
Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping. Inside it is a space, huge as the sky at night and dark and curved like that, though black-red rather than black. Pinpoints of light swell, sparkle, burst and shrivel within it, countless as stars. Every month there is a moon, gigantic, round, heavy, an omen. It transits, pauses, continues on and passes out of sight, and I see despair coming towards me like famine. To feel that empty, again, again. I listen to my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.
Freaking Margaret Atwood. So go forth word-nerdlings, dig your fingers into your own soil, and write 100 words on:
Sparkle
P.S. This week’s challenge is open until Sunday to give y’all an extra day on account of the lateness of this post.
I’m feeling like I should have a good cry. I add “should” because I don’t do crying. Not out of pride or some false pretense of being strong. I tend to get stuck in anxiousness, stress, or anger before I get to the cry.
The new job is wringing me dry. Not in bad ways, just, “I’m givin ‘er all I got cap’n” kind of ways. I get home, my brain feeling like jumbled shards of glass, and the two people I live with still haven’t fully adjusted to my needing more than I can give when I get home. They’re not trying to be selfish, but you know, blood from a stone kind of thing. I don’t help matters by having been born with an overactive guilt gene. Like, what? You’re a grown adult and you’re hungry? Must be my fault! You’re stressed? How dare I relax?
The kind of things therapy was invented for. Probably.
Pile on big money stress (I’m not getting paid enough yet – it’s a start-up). Oh, and choosing a college for my daughter. And someone beloved by our family, especially my mother, having just been given six months to live. Aaaaand that we’re temporarily housing a family member who’s fallen on his own hard times. Who likes…no, NEEEEDS to drum to relieve his own stress.
Which? Fine, cool, groovy. When you’re in the mood. Or you’re full of verve and plump with energy. Not so much when you’ve come home, brain and soul dried up, just sunk down into a hot bath, closed your eyes, hoping water and bubbles will work their restorative magic, and the drumming starts.
What should have been restored, relaxed, and rested, ends up being naked, wet, and stabby. This is the exact point I should cry.
Instead I coil up, collapse inward, turn to dust.
Dust is not the matter one wants to be in a turbulent wind.
Still. Life goes on, and it’s actually damn precious. Maybe the bubble bath was a wash (aren’t I puntastic?), but there’s always Downton Abbey and cookies and milk and warm blankets and blissful sleep and hearing someone giggle and a tiny little cat with a purr in her throat. And this:
Enough, I hope, to get me through tomorrow with a little bit of grace. Have you guessed the word yet?
Dust
