My Blog

For A Veteran, For “KISS”, For Yellow Funereal Ribbons

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Reblogging for Labrys

Labrys's avatarSub-Rosa

2014-12-03 Day 46 Flame and Shadows2As I said on my more (ever slightly) active blogs at Herlander Walking and Steel Kachinas….I have a grim week ahead. I am even being forced into flying for the first time in over a decade.

A veteran as dear to me as my sons, Lincoln Marston, is dying at Duke University Medical School. Just after New Year’s he suffered the rupture of an aneurysm in his brain and almost a dozen catastrophic strokes. His wife, Amy, also an Air Force veteran who served with him in Afghanistan has no income whatsoever at this time.  They have two young children who are just becoming terrified they will have to say farewell to their father.

It is time to support the troops, any of you who call me friend!  There is a site to help raise money….for everything from medical bills to funeral costs.  I take flight this weekend, with my…

View original post 49 more words

It’s funny what a nap does

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)4 Comments

I was having a pretty stellar end to my day yesterday. I finished up a charcoal drawing and was very stoked with how it came out. I had readied for shipping a new oil blend.

Then I caught up in places on Facebook after I said I wouldn’t. I know me well enough to know better. I really do. And yet …. so I put some movie on Netflix and settled in, determined to coast into someone else’s plot for a bit. I drifted to sleep about a half hour to 45 minutes in, awoke 30 minutes later and had missed a bunch of important things in the plot.

Bugger that. My mind drifted back to why I’d put the movie on in the first place. I noticed that once again a nap had cleared and focused a truth for me. None of this stuff matters. Who cares what I think? Who cares what anyone thinks? I realized, about 30 years late, that I don’t idolize celebrities. Or, whatever word belongs in here that causes people to feel really badly when an actor or musician, or other super famous person dies.

I have zero understanding of deep mourning for a famous person you didn’t know intimately in the flesh. I do not have a frame of reference for the sorrow for another that one has known only through their marketed self and products of their career.

I get a brief pang of sadness, a swig of sympathy for their beloveds, and a bit of wistfulness. Then I move on. And I mean move on to the next subject and have nearly forgotten already the death.

For my personal beloveds I mourn deeply. For famous folks, nope.

No intense mourning for: Elvis, Princess Diana, Robin Williams, Joe Cocker, Geta Garbo, Leonard Bernstein….. I could go on, but it would require more Googling because after the first three I was done. Stab of sadness, moved on – for all of them.

I also realized that whatever it is that makes this so, also makes me an outsider in my hometown sports network. Back when I was still following the local football team I would cheer and avidly watch the games, but if we lost I was over it when the game was over. I moved on. I stared oddly at those around me who stayed in a funk over a loss. “Why?”, I would ask. “They blew their job, but it is not *our* job”, I would say. People looked back at me just as oddly.

This disconnect with the public mourning means I have a grand lack of connection to other humans. It also means I should stay far away from tribute and mourning conversations, probably entirely, going forward. With the way this year is starting, I’m going to be spending little time reading Facebook. This is likely a good thing.

I have decided that in the grand scheme of my life, what matters is that I make more art and I make more oils.

There’s only a statute of limitations for the perp

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)4 Comments
I’m severely limiting my Facebook time until the shiny idol is buried. I hope it is soon. All humans are flawed, but celebrities get the tarnish polished off over and over again by their fans.

“Things were different 40 years ago” (when rape was not rape, I guess). My 14 y/o body was raped 40 years ago by a 28 y/o neighbour, but hey – things were different in the 70’s! Statute of limitations is UP!

He wasn’t *all bad*, so what he did doesn’t count. Not “is balanced against the good”, but cannot be spoken of.  Once you’re dead the tarnish is unfair. (Ignore that when alive it didn’t count, either, because money and power and patriarchy kept the silence.) 40 years, man, just let it go. He matured. He learned better. Men will be men …. what were you wearing? Did you look older? Are *you* perfect?

(I can assure you I am not perfect. I can also assure you I have never committed sexual assault.)

Either all humans are nuanced, or they are not. Insisting we applaud the shiny while denying the tarnish serves only the perpetrators in this society. But you can’t fight the deity of celebrity. The similar deities of time and memory serve those with power, too. Serving those who historically have had and will continue to hold the power, until we dismantle the patriarchal system.

When someone’s gifts only flourished because we buried their flaws under the bodies of young women, is that balanced? Is that our willing trade off? Apparently our answer is “yes”.

There is no  statute of limitations on being victim shamed and blamed. Thank gods we’re post rape culture. I can feel the difference from 40 years ago ….

And Now We Begin!

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

The world returns to routine today, the Monday after the holiday. Even if you work retail or health care where the places never close, energy moves underneath on the first workday back. Even for me, stretching through retirement.

I have PLANS for this year! I have repurposed a journal, I have committed to a thing, and an other thing. I have a loose list of more other things (because tight makes me procrastinate). Already, in day four, I feel the lightness in my body of returning to Joy.

I’m not going to write all of my plans. I’m keeping ego in check and not seeking outside affirmation, therefore I am not listing All The Things in one public post. Because when I listened to the impulse to do so, it was all about ego and not about accountability. Other folks will hold themselves accountable by public proclamations – my history suggests it doesn’t work that way for me. Heh.

Depending on where we are connected, you will see evidence of the things. If we’re deeply connected, you will know of all of the things. If we’re not deeply connected I am guessing it is safe to say you don’t give a hoot about all of my things and that is a-ok and as it should be.

Next topic:

Winter came today. I am not a fan. I get cold easily. Even with the hot flashes – irony to the 10th power, as bodies are weird and live on a scale of “1 to neener-neener” – I get very chilled. And yet!! When I saw the snow lying on the ground and felt the snap of cold air as I let the dog out this morning, something in me shifted and sighed “at last”. Having lived my life thus far in a place with 4 very distinct seasons, my soul has arranged itself to know things according these seasonal shifts.

I arose 1-2 hours earlier than I have for the last month. This is good. This is how I want it to be. I want my days to stretch with possibilities. I desire length to linger in them.

Hail winter! Welcome back.

 

Sometimes I just need poetry.

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Excellent morning Reblog. ❤

beanalreasa's avatarbloodteethandflame

As I have had company these last four days, I have not been able to post this lovely poem from The Daily Good, as sometimes I just need poetry.

(If you click in the link below, you can listen to the poet, John O’Donohue, read this poem aloud, along with some rather lovely imagery.)

Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year

–by John O’Donohue, Jan 01, 2016

For Josie

On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.

And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the…

View original post 83 more words

2015 – stitched through with sorrows

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

I cannot see the last year clearly. It is blurred by tears of sorrow. I wept more this past year than in many years recently passed. Sorrows pulled and punched at my soul, stretching its edges and pummeling new shapes into my life, my community, and my family. It etched old-new patterns into the world.

I am accustomed to change, mostly. I embrace change, mostly. Each change set a new road before me, pristine and waiting, leaving all not taken strewn like litter behind. Broken promises and never-to-be-fulfilled dreams fell and shattered on the fading landscape. My eyes cracked open and poured.

Regret and “wasn’t worth it” mantras are useless things hiding behind corners, reaching for my throat as I pass by. I won’t allow their clutching to find hold. To move forward without forever tendrils of remorse required honouring the almost-was, allowing the grief to be. I wept as I released the old stories.

Pockmarked with deep sorrows, 2015 broke, recovered, and broke again. It kept me off-balance in ways I am unaccustomed to. By the end of December I was stretched so thin I felt see-through.

Now I do the very human thing and look to the calendar hanging on the door to shed 2015, renewing hope with the turn of a paper page. I know it is a meaningless act. I know it is a sacred act. Turn the page and step out of sorrow.

I’m claiming 2016 as the year of joy, preemptively. And as I will …

Sometimes a Wild God

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

I was thinking about this poem again this morning, Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hiron.

Tom Hirons's avatarCoyopa : words by Tom Hirons

I’m delighted to say that this poem is now available to buy in book form, with amazing illustrations by Rima Staines. There’s another of the illustrations at the bottom of this post. It’s printed on 100% recycled paper in the UK by a worker’s co-op. Do take a look – it’s a beautiful, pocket-size book and only costs £7.50 + p&p!

You can buy it direct from us at the Hedgespoken Press website:

buy-wild-god-now-2

View original post 706 more words

On Being Unstoppable

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

Oooooo, so much love for this. REBLOG:

“Life should be able to stop us. If not for beauty, then for heartbreak. If not for the joy of seeing a tree’s stark branches waving against a gray winter sky, then for the horror of seeing people starving to death in our own rich cities or drowning to death on the shores of Europe. If not for the pleasure of a beloved piece of music, then for the despair of another mass shooting. If not for the happiness on the face of a dear friend or family member, then for the agony present when they suffer or when we let them down. Let life be present to us. Let it stop us.”

Emotional wisps, treacherous illusions

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

My equilibrium is very uncertain during trying emotional times. As I slip I will try to grasp at a feeling, begging it to be the branch protruding from the cliffside that halts my descent. It disappears in my grip like wisps of smoke would. I see my hands convulsing – open, close, open, close.

As I fall toward the abyss, I wait for the cushion of darkness to numb my thoughts and hide my hands from my sight, so at last I may rest.

What about you? How do you “find your emotional feet”?

Childhood

Published on by Boneweaver (aka pjvj)Leave a comment

REBLOG – I agree with this.

Amoret's avatara m o r e t

I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents lately, and wondering:

What if we all have to recover from childhood?

To be clear: I am not discussing abuse situations in this post. I am curious about the experience of being a child – small, without agency, growing and changing and learning at a fast rate – it is a very vulnerable state.

What if, regardless of parenting style, each person emerges from childhood wounded in some way? What if a reasonable, ‘normal’ childhood is an essentially wounding experience?

What if it is perfectly normal, perhaps even essential, to be wounded?

View original post