The sun on fire in its crucible, clouds plume as it turns to molten gold, spitting liquid fragments upon the ground around it (zoom to see). The darkest cloud center above it is like a left hand with wrist, thumb, palm open down, and ends of fingers curling under – conjuring.
What we see in media seems to be mostly extroverts who love performing for audiences.
Where are the intelligent introverts – how do they/we gain impetus to be forthcoming?
It’s head is at top right lighr, with smoke from mouth exhaled ahead of it.
It looks like the moon is hurtling backward with its “hair” trailing behind it (zoom in to see light and shadow play).
Wherever I go, she follows me:
When unseen, she is tracking –
To show me how to love again.
After I saw him on TV, then reviewed how I had flexed and bent to conform to another society, I realized I must set myself free – and my heart found a new place to perch, willingly.
I had not realized how constrained I had been feeling, nor how capable I have been all along as time and again I’ve proven.
I released myself from confined obligations and embraced my soul’s winsome song.
In a time when people fall in and out of love too easily, it is difficult to orchestrate recovery from experiencing.
When you are dirt poor and need agency assistance, it is not enough that you have difficulty gathering information requested, figuring out exactly what to say so that you represent your situation clearly, or even that you have barriers to sending that information by lack of access to transportation, internet and/or printer access, and money to fax the data to them.
Once you have managed to overhaul and conscript all efforts to achieve these accomplishments, they want you to keep updating them in the same way, with likely the same difficulties, again and again and again.
I have given up filing for unemployment because of this. Should I focus on continuously regluing the red tape as a faulty system keeps tearing my data line to fragments – or should I divert these efforts toward ensuring that I never need its help, again?
We missed our appointment to peruse the private thrift store for items and clothing.
It just didn’t register, when I was focused on ensuring things went well for my first week of work, and I was currently wearing clothes on my body.
It is amazing how much time is “wasted” filling in holes that keep washing out from my foundation and repairing structure which is constantly collapsing.
I am hoping to gain a method to where maintenance no longer requires such huge and inefficient energetic expenditures.
Yes, you could say that any one person with a vision has their own personal bias.
But, when judging merit of what they see, would the outcome if followed be positively productive – or foster enmity?
Causing harm for “greater gain” is not a “righteous” way to be.
Unless forced to protect one’s self and family.
This is an essential truth, and is at the original basis of Islam.
Yes, they had their holy wars – but, why?
If we revisit history, these clans were about to be wiped out on all sides from invaders.
It is just that terrorist extremists now forget that Muhammad’s end goal was peace by cooperation and inclusiveness.
I have never been of it – and today’s statement ensures the door as closed.
I am looking for a partner who Believes.
I spent all this time and effort understanding everyone else’s perspective, while constantly turning the other cheek and still getting slapped around by their poor treatment and harsh circumstances.
I realized the other day that I now have the ability to take down any one person who has wronged me. Being empathically observant and subconsciously tracking patterns through years of enforced, isolated “incarceration” now reveals to me the keys.
What I want is to claim my freedom – and woe to any and all who now try to prevent me.
I had this foolish dream of reciprocation that after all those years of hardship and my ensuring our extended family stayed healthy and together – I thought that I would finish my Bachelor’s, we’d then have double, solid income, and my husband and U would pay off this debt together.
You know, The American Dream.
His timing for leaving was brilliant, actually. It ensured I stayed disempowered, and could not finish my degree until long after we were divorced.
Now, he and his family do not need to feel that they owe me anything, for clearly with ten years past, now, all of this responsibility belongs to me.
It is near ludicrous to think of investing in a house when I already owe over $100,000 in school loans (easily $90,000) and incidental bills fallen by the wayside while fighting to find and keep housing.
Thiings happen, like a husband becoming disabled and being unable towork for ten years while you scramble to care for children and raise them well against unsupportive and judgmental school systems.
It’s a symptom of desperation over the last 20+ years has graced us with while greed and fat-cattery has degraded American social and education systems.
It is frustrating that loan agencies only recognize taking 6 units per semester as the minimum requirement.
They are not taking into account single parents raising children, and/or battling against being homeless.
Add to this unchecked, compounded interest rates ever accumulating – even if qualified.
For three years, youngling and I have had it, and worked very hard to subvert it.
It is frightening to us both when we now accidentally escalate, because we have already made so much progress together.
An unfortunate aspect of true healing is that when you at last reach safety, old wounds burst open again so they can finally cleanse and mend.
No one tells you this will be painful and make you doubt your sanity, all over again.
They only set you up for unrealistic expectations that suddenly everything will be better without further effort.
Local Winter semester begins January 3rd, while online begins January 11th.
What was that I spoke of regarding resting?
Methinks “coasting” has ended.
Gaining employment at a university often has the added advantage of some enrollment fees being waved.
Investigate (for umpteeth time – but now that I am relocated here, could be different) degree options at local state college vs. finishing degree online.
Network with agencies to see if I qualify for any grants to help me finish, and which (if any) options are more time and cost efficient.
Make a plan for finishing on my own, regardless of taking more time and/or income limitations (if I complete three units per semester, for example, I could finish in two more years).
Pinging survival “go-go-go” finds itself being gently smothered with a trying-to-know-better “No” as I allow myself to catch up on sleep and go about doing simple tasks – rather than the past mad dash to aquire and ensure resources.
It is strange that I am allowing myself to coast in that momentum’s wake, seeing just how far it will take me before I am deposited (hopefully safely) where my success is reliant upon what I can personally achieve, rather than again dependent on agencies aiding.
I have been having this fantasy over the past couple of days that somehow I get the money to finish the last 12 units toward my Bachelor’s degree (plus a unit’s fee past due and some other fees) for Spring semester which begins January 11th. What would it be like to have my degree procured and its prolonged absence no longer haunting every step I attempt to make?
What would it be like to only work a couple of days during the week to keep income generating, but to get to fashion the rest of the time focused on attending put-off opportunities? And then, once complete, to begin fashioning a career focused indulgently on my own creative talents?
What I have shown here on my blog has been just a teaser to what’s still hidden inside, waiting for the chance and my own invitation to at last emerge and “put things right.”
What and who will I be? I know that ensuring my dreams taking flight is the best kind of investment – no matter what they try to sell me from the mainstream..
Add this to my personal “ambition.”
It’s ok that I get lost here, traveling in circular patterns along destinations. It isn’t the bad kind, but where I can just let go.
Like a wolf nosing the trap around its paw, I know that my shoulder injury needs releasing, but I need help to do it.
Returning to a racquetball court months after my last experience – being able to pick up from where I left off – reactivated my left shoulder and arm extensor muscles.
The jarring fall from puppy swerving in front of me, and then the bamboo root being slippery, during my time of heavy-lifting moving had resulted in muscles being stuck, adhesed to bone and each other for guarding.
I had not thought that asking the muscles to perform reaching for and directing the ball would help anything.
But, warming up and restimulating muscle memory gave spindle fibers something to strive for.
Visualize me zooming around the golf course.
It has become accepted to have a “bucket list:” things you want to do before you die.
I am going to make myself a list of all the things I wanted to do as a child, but was denied access to.
Right.
So now that we live where courses are, where can I purchase time to drive the golf cart around?
(chuckle)
You need to update my age-range category.
From first-hand experience, I can tell you that you do not know what you are talking about.
Turning 50 is an age marker of qualified life experience.
I have lived half of a century.
I will take that Merit badge, please.
Now is when I get to choose how to define me.
Try to keep up.
When society tries to tell a vital, still-maturing woman that her role in life is over, she can become a little pissy!
Zoom to see light beams.
For fun and curiosity, I typed in Tinder for my area to see what it was about.
Hm. About like I’ve heard it is.
However, then there was a section where you could sign up for 50+.
I thought, “maybe more maturity and seriousness.”
But – wait a minute!
As the site diverted me, it showed that category was “senior dating.”
Excuse me?!
Backtracking out that door – quickly.
I will not be so easily categorized, nor conscripted!
“Senior dating??”
Out-dated, under-qualified, TRIPE-ISM in action!
It is best to only be around and work with people who are supportive – instead of toxic – to one’s identity.
When youngling and I returned to the mountain for the last time, he found that the garden’s few, tiny carrots were peaking out of the dirt, so we harvested them and brought them home with us.
Upon sampling their delicate, aromatic crispness, he wondered if they would resprout, so we put their nibbled top remnants in water – and a week later, they’ve grown!
“If you have the confidence to laugh even while dealing with all of this past bullshit, then you’ve won.”
Hot chocolate in heavy cream with cinnamon steamed in, extra hot. Small put into medium cup for extra whipped cream and shaved dark chocolate on top. Oh, yeah…
I turned down the street where the masjid is located, happy to be near it, though I no longer visit.
I tell myself it is enough that I get to be close. God knows that I am grateful, and that I am dealing with my ghosts.
I had driven to the store near there with the hot chocolate raised reading room, but alas! the shop was closed, and I wandered around, wondering how my trip was worth it.
There was a book on a shelf called, “Awakening” – usually my type of paranormal rags-to-riches, adventurous (and unlikely) love story.
I put it back. No time for such fantasy.
Then, I went downstairs to peruse the store’s protein shake options, and as I turned down the isle, an Islamic mother and her college-aged daughter were in the way because a ladder had been left where they were, crowding the entry.
They went out of their way to move aside for me, and I thanked them politely with a quiet Shukran, not sure if it was the correct thing to say.
The mother seemed to speak in excitement to her daughter, as if asking if I had just said Shukran (“thank you”) in native Arabic. I turned to greet them, warmly.
It turned out the mother had also visited Egypt and wanted to invite me to dinner. Her daughter mentioned she also sometimes needs practice with speaking English more fluently. The mother’s name was that of the mother of my once fiance, which seemed rare to me.
I felt so blessed to have met them, and told them I wanted to learn Arabic. It turned out the mother taught Arabic and wanted to learn English, so I suggested perhaps we could trade teaching each other.
It seemed we were well met, indeed, and this made me feel happy that I might be able to grow my own community, despite absence of the man of my dreams.
******
“Amazing grace, how sweet it is
That saved a wretch like me…
I once was lost, but now am found –
Was blind, (still learning to) see.”
I had not realized, but when I was fired this year in March for protecting a mother and her baby from COVID, that was the 10 year anniversary of my husband abandoning me.
I was too busy this last winter trying to not let what was happening and my fiance of over three years also leaving to reflect then upon this.
It has not mattered – the greatness I have achieved, nor the goodness enacted to near perfection. Men have betrayed and discarded me. Even my fourth father had been taunting me to leave his lodging when I was in the worst circumstances.
Today, speaking with youngest, we realized we have now arrived to where back then to over ten years ago we have wanted to be.
We have a home with our animals in a place of a real, new beginning. We can stay and/or go anywhere from here.
It was hard-earned, with too many tears – yet, not enough to clear the fears.
I guess that’s what I will be doing for awhile.
Every thing bad that happened ten years ago and since has had its own blow to my psychology.
But, the reason I haven’t recovered is because how it happened ensured my Bachelor’s being denied to me.
Federal rules changed after my husband suddenly left, my loans fell out of their grace period when kids and I became homeless, and there has been no opportunity to regain lost leveraging.
The backlash from others’ offhand decisions still damns me every time I try to improve my life’s situation.
Injustice is a brand that inflames temperance.
Candid Corvid Productions 