Living-Deliberately.com

When I left him, I didn’t use any labels: I told the story. Most of our friends and family had not seen any warning signs of domestic violence so the story always came as a shock. Over time, a few came to me after processing and a bit of hindsight, and memories started to seem like luminaria on a path. The story rang true. When I told my lawyer the story, he handed me a book, “The Battered Woman“. I hid it in my drawer for a good two months before I cracked it. That woman’s bruised face surely was NOT my story.

I remember the heavy feeling in my gut when I read the ad in the paper for the support group for survivors of domestic violence. That day was one of the first I felt the weight of the honesty of the label. I was in the group for a year and a half. Not a single woman there fit the stereotype I’d carried. We weren’t crack heads. We weren’t minorities. We weren’t low income. Our husbands weren’t drunks. And none of us had been punched in the face. Most of us didn’t have filed police reports. All of us had been battered.

Most of my year of private therapy dealt with moving on. Dealing with what was real, the new challenges, the legal fight, the single parenting, feeling safe again, and preventing it from ever happening again. Last spring, this time a year ago, I began feeling sure-footed and strong and stopped looking over my shoulder all the time.

But the last week and a half have been hard ones. You see, a few things happened in the world around me that triggered body memory I thought had been laid to rest.

My mom and I went shopping on the day my Tennessee legal case was signed into Florida jurisdiction. At a busy, 6 lane intersection surrounded by noisy car dealerships and no little shops or restaurants or sidewalks, we saw a woman get out of her car on the passenger side. Her face was red, her step an attempt to look determined but it was clear she didn’t know to where she was walking. My mom wondered with a chuckle what she was doing; I knew in half a heartbeat exactly why a woman leaves her car and walks into traffic. It was safer out than in and I didn’t need the glance up I gave it to know it was a man driving that car.

And then an old high school friend shot his whole family. His sweet wife and homebirthed babies and then finally himself. Behind closed doors, where no one knew the level of his depression or the demons that haunted him. Friends and neighbors said they saw no sign of previous violence but I wondered right away what their fights were like. I felt the urging pursuit at my back that night I  raced to gather my babies and enough laundry for a few days and threw them into the car at midnight before he came back. I knew if I was there when he got back he’d kill us in his insanity. I’ve heard he doesn’t remember that night. I’m certain I’ll never forget it.

And despite buoyantly hopeful, wonderful days that string together like crowded beads on a chain now, I had one day last week that picked scabs scraped open from scourging. I started crying around 10 am and couldn’t turn the water works off until about 10pm. The cummulative power of remembering bare feet worn sore from 5 miles of walking home pregnant after fleeing the car. The nervous anxiety of counting sharp objects and taking inventory while he was yelling so I’d know which way to move or stand so as not to draw his attention to their presence. The midwife visit canceled because I couldn’t let her see the stripe marks on my legs and the headache I blamed on hormones that was really from the door jam. The knowledge that these memories will not ever really go away completely and the tenuous apprehension of what effect they will have on my future. I think that day I tried to tell myself that it was all wanting answers for the days ahead that spurred the tears. I sat before a man with mature self-control and cried my heart out and felt something profound: my emotions didn’t anger him. They didn’t make him want to shake me. He didn’t begin to blame me. His inablity to fix my problem didn’t make him feel insecure in who he is. I poured it out until exhausted, a purging left in the river and walked away from rather than stuffed back inside.

One good thing that has come from the past two years has been a refusal to hide what is real. I won’t ever again carry a secret so heavy or prop up a life that can’t stand on its own. I let my intestines do more of the decision making than any part of me because my gut doesn’t lie like my reasoning, idealistic brain does. I choose to surround myself with people who love me for who I am, or who don’t and are honest about it.  There is comfort in a sacramental approach to a simple life: eat, pray, love, dance, grow, rest. I don’t think people make a whole lot of sense without the context of one another and life is not as hard as we sometimes insist on making it. We have one lifetime and it’s later than we think. If I spend the rest of my days doing those six things: eat, pray, love, dance, grow, rest, I think it will be enough.

One day I’ll find relief
I’ll be arrived
And I’ll be a friend to my friends
who know how to be friends
One day I’ll be at peace
I’ll be enlightened and I’ll be married
with children and maybe adopt
One day I will be healed
I will gather my wounds forge the end of tragic comedy

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture
this whole time of being forever incomplete

One day my mind will retreat
And I’ll know God
And I’ll be constantly one with her night dusk and day
One day I’ll be secure
Like the women I see on their thirtieth anniversaries

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture
this whole time of being forever incomplete

Ever unfolding
Ever expanding
Ever adventurous
And torturous
But never done

One day I will speak freely
I’ll be less afraid
And measured outside of my poems and lyrics and art
One day I will be faith-filled
I’ll be trusting and spacious
authentic and grounded and home

I have been running so sweaty my whole life
Urgent for a finish line
And I have been missing the rapture
this whole time of being forever incomplete

(p.s the youtube below opens with a little commentary from Alanis; good bonus explanation and admonition to savor our moments today)

Watch and Listen here

Still on a theme…heroes who are there to help pick up the pieces. Hear it here.

You could’ve bowed out gracefully
But you didn’t
You knew enough to know
To leave well enough alone
But you wouldn’t
I drive myself crazy
Tryin’ to stay out of my own way
The messes that I make
But my secrets are so safe
The only one who gets me
Yeah, you get me
It’s amazing to me

Every day you save my life

This was a post after a friend introduced me to Ben Harper in January 2006. He’s still a favorite…and now I’ve realized the dream of the guitar and actually play his music.

*******

Today I got a fantastic gift in the mail. My friend Kim, who to this point I’ve only known online but plan to meet soon for our piligrimage to Baton Rouge for a gathering of friends, sent me a mixed CD of her favorites. I’d been wanting to…well, for how long? Wanted to hear Ben Harper’s music for probably years. A discussion that mentioned him was the impetus for the idea since she’s been listening to him lately. In the midst of a move over the holidays she was going far and above anything I expected to not only sit down and mix this, but to actually get it in the mail!
The whole disc is great. Better than great…dance-in-the-kitchen music-with-a-goofy-grin kind of music. How often does one find a music kindred spirit? If you have taste like me, not often. When the discovery comes and the sound resonates, it’s a rare thing indeed.
The best thing about this mix: it’s quirky and different and yet fits me like a glove. Some of the artists I’ve never heard of..Billy Joe Shaver, Gillian Welch (she sounds alot like Mindy Smith with more raw edge), Southern Culture on the Skids…there’s also lots I do know and am happy to have a recording of: the weepy beauty of Dolly Parton and Emmy Rossum, “Come On Eilleen” by Dixie’s Midnight Runner, Jewel, Queen.

There’s a list of music that has had enough influence and pure time in my life to make it on “the soundtrack of my years”. Ben Harper’s music is going to make that list. Somehow with every review I’d read, every occassional pop into celebrity news that he made, I knew that his was music worth my investigation. This CD has two of his songs on it. “Steal My Kisses” is a FUN, sing-it-with-the-windows-down kind of beat that conjures up images of afternoon sunshowers, flowered dresses, and tossled hair. “Waiting on an Angel” is soft with a lazy edge, that reminds me of sleepy-sunshine, under a tree with the one who makes me feel beautiful, fingers barely touching and wine glasses empty.

I went looking for some info on Ben…turns out one of his favorite things is Coldplay. You can hear it in the understated truth of his lyrics. In a year when one of my bhags (big hairy audacious goals) was to learn to play the guitar, Ben’s sounds like the kind I want to play.

“So speak kind to a stranger, ’cause you’ll never know. It just might be an angel, knockin’ at your door. And I”m waiting for an angel and I know it won’t be long, to find myself in a resting place, in my angel’s arms.”

Really beautiful sentiment. I wish the video was of better quality but together with the lyrics, you’ll get the idea.

” What if we stopped having a ball
What if the paint chips from the wall
What if there’s always cups in the sink
What if I’m not what you think I am
What if I fall further than you
What if you dream of somebody new
What if I never let you win– chase you with a rolling pin– Well, what if I did?

Chorus:
Cause I am giving up on making
passes, and I am giving up on half empty glasses, and I am giving up on greener grasses. I am giving up.

What if our baby comes in after nine
What if your eyes close before mine

If you lose yourself sometimes, I’ll be the one to find you safe in my heart.”

My favorite (remember Nine Million Bicycles in Bejing?), Katie Melua, also did this song, Spider’s Web. Thought I’d share…the video is one half the song, the other half an interview…watch the guy do it in 3 languages at once!

It’s been a two year goal, recently restated in my 2008 Goal list.

I thought my only January progress was going to be that I asked two guitar-playing friends for buying advice. My budget for an instrument was pretty much non-existant. In December I’d bought a book on how to play that has sat on my nightstand; every day I whispered a little hope that I’d get to actually use it soon.

On Saturday a friend and I ventured into a “big box” guitar store. It was smoky and filled with rockin’ teens looking for amps and electronics. No one spoke to us. We walked through the acoustic section and I stood under all those wooden dreams over my head. I figured the fruition was still a very long way off.

But yesterday, that happy-happiest of days, where the joy around was almost tangible, I stumbled onto a little new/used/trade guitar store. Joel of Guitars United spoke to me right away and gave me about a half hour lesson on the different kinds of guitars, what to look for, what would fit into my budget, and what kind of sound I could expect. I was pleased as punch with that and almost over the moon when he said he had a used case that I could get for about fifteen bucks. Hey… a book and a case is a start, right?

But then he had a buddy, and remembered a set-up that would be “perfect” for me and he gave him a call. I held my breath, not getting my hopes up too soon. There’s been enough hope-dashing around these parts lately! But lo-and-behold his friend Pete at Music Depot called him back, with indeed the perfect deal. Like I said, everyone was super helpful, happy, exhuberant. I drove across town after my counseling appointment and picked up my little beauty. And yes, I actually jumped up and down for joy, right there in the store. Pete played Blackbird and I almost cried.

The “deal” took my breath away yet again. You know those times when you are happy with a rock and God gives you a diamond? That’s what my guitar is to me. It fits my body just right, it has a great sound, and the wood is gorgeous. It is exactly the instrument of my dreams and when I play it, though it isn’t more than little buzzy plunks and strums right now, it is the music of my soul, of my dreams for more days and nights than I could count.

My goal is to learn to play the guitar, which I haven’t done yet. Last night I held one for the first time. And now I’m more on my way to realizing the fulfillment of the aspiration than ever before. It never ceases to amaze me how the deliberate and intentional striving towards a goal, no matter how realistic it may or may not seem in the beginning, can actually bring that goal to pass.

Last week I heard a new version of Coldplay’s “Clocks”, which is an awesome song they questionionably mutiliated by re-recording it with a Cuban beat. Latin rhythm added to the right song  can be hot, but this is just……wonky.

I find about one new artist a year that I “fall in love with”, to the point where I will actually buy their CD’s, assimilate them into a “mood” choice, and make them part of the soundtrack of my days. Last year, it was Ben Harper; this year it’s Katie Melua.

I first found Katie’s song, “There are Nine Million Bicycles“…an eccentric, light song with a very, very catchy tune. The video is nuanced: she has an almost conflicted expression while she’s dragged across the terra firma of the planet, causing one to wonder if she’s entirely happy about the “undeniable fact” that she’ll love him till she dies. Nice and real, I was hooked.

Upon searching her further on youtube, I discovered happy serendipity! She is associated, post humously, with two other of my lifetime favorites: Eva Cassidy and Nina Simone, ultimately revealing a syncronicity in my choice. While she is current and modern, her music has traits of the classic musicians that came before her, which give her the very longevity and quality that attracted me in the first place. Smooth, emotional complexity, unique sound….

Check her out. Here are some more videos of hers:

Katie’s cover of Lilac Wine

I Cried For You , a tender song for anyone who has loved and lost someone who changed their life.

If You Were a Sailboat.

Green & Black has this out…and they flaunted the little tub of glory in a magazine I perused the other day. Alas, I’m not sure where to find it and even if I do, it won’t be in time for this rainy night. Autumn is hanging out over on the other side of the mountain and will blow in soon but it’s not here yet and the result is an environmental funk. The trees can’t seem to decide if there should be a breeze, the rain comes and goes, the crickets are half-hearted. I’m working late ‘else I’d be slicing fresh fries and crawling under my ancient blanket.

Madeleine L’Engle died last Thursday. This makes me want to reread the A Wrinkle in Time series and Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage (The Crosswicks Journal, Book 4) and all the others I have on the shelf that I haven’t delved into yet collected out of love for her. I imagine her walking in the fields of her farm in Conneticut though her last three years were spent in a nursing home. Over the past year I’d waited to hear this announcement of her passing, knowing it had to be close. She is a comfortable, intelligent, creative read; if you’ve never heard her read her books aloud, get a recording. It adds a new dimension to books that were already quite in another dimension.

This is a total gear shift but on one level, another “comfort” read of mine is People mag, so maybe within the realm of cozy-vegging it’s not such a shift: hot around the internet today was the building common head shaking over Britney Spears’s disasterous performance at the VMA’s. Say what you will about booty-shaking, half-dressed, sex-charged music, performing is Britney’s JOB. No one making her do it…presummably anyway; it would seem her “come back” is up to her. Who shows up on the job drunk and gets away with it? But that scene is scary. She’s glazed over and stoned looking, being steered around by dancers that were more in step than she was. I read somewhere that she looked nervous…I don’t think so. I think she looks disinterested and careless and lost and really, like a million red alarms over her health and well being should be screaming. It looked to me that rather than lip-syncing, “Gimme More”, she was saying, “Get me off this crazy thing….called life.”

The video, being posted all over the place, is also being pulled all over the place. Internet freedom is fading in whispers but that is a rant for another night.

While I’m posting tonight, let’s add a little “on topic” link love. A friend of mine had this delicious little clarifiying way to remember how to make the step from inaction towards action, from a Fortune Cookie of all sources! then Seth Godin had this post on the willingness to take little chances.

Maybe there’s some ice cream and Ancient Blanket Vegetation in my future after all; I’ll skip the fries and the mice who try to take over the world….this time.

Netflix has a new service that we love and use often: those who are already subscribers to the mail service can watch movies right on the site. The selection is limited but for those of us with no-TV, it’s an option that skirts the delay in snail mail and offers something to watch now and then when we need a wind-down at the end of a long day.

That has led to getting a few more choices crossed off our Queue. One such option was Maxed Out. Needing a jolt in your Total Money Makover? This will do it. Dave’s on it too…a few radio listeners share their stories of the vicious role collectors and credit companies have had on their lives…in many instances all the way to death. A hard look is taken at the preferential treatment the credit card companies and banks get from the government and the horrid advantage taken of naive college students and poor people who should never be allowed the credit they get…but do because it’s that kind of customer that the credit companies make their most profit from.

Having been there/done that, I felt a sickening wave of relief at having paid off our cards. Sound ironic? Relief is supposed to feel good. But the desperate and overwhelmed feeling that the crush of debt causes is not so far away just yet…perhaps it is a bit like being held prisoner and abused, then given a reprieve, and then hearing the footsteps of the abuser walking just outside the door, feeling unsure if they are approaching or leaving.

What the movie does not delve deeply enough into, but does indeed tease at, is the overindulgence, stuff-itis medication method, and American tendancy to maintain a fascade of wealth-via-plastic that leads to credit ensnarement in the first place. Certainly lots of people get there by charging groceries, bills, and doctor’s visits (how most of our own debt came into being), but lots of others get there with lattes, movies, new clothes, manicures, and the mall (we had plenty of that too).

What I’ve learned is that poverty is a monster that does not like to let go…and there are plenty of souls out there that are comfortable with you in your impoverished state and want to keep you there, either because they profit from it or they are just plain used to you in that role and don’t want to change their perceptions and ideas. It’s true of your credit card lender, the collector, and sometimes friends and family. Credit debt is slavery of another kind and freedom is possible but it’s a clawing, digging fight out of the pit and honey, your manicured nails aren’t going to hack the journey.

They say that addicts of drugs and alchohol achieve the greatest success in getting sober when they change their friends, their hang outs, their routines, and their scenery. I think it’s the same for the enslaved debtor…you’ll need a like-minded support group, new hang outs, new entertainment, a new lifestyle, new scenery. When you finally acheive freedom, it will still be a daily fight to keep from returning and falling back. The old crowd will still send embittered messages of discouragement that ultimately stems from envy at what they can not also acheive. If they profited from your enslavement, you may also encounter anger.

One of my favorite Nina Simone songs says, “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s new life for me.” Indeed. But as Coldplay sings, “no one said it was easy…no one ever said it would be so hard.” Maxed Out makes the point well.

Character Trait I possess that I hate the most: over-sensitivity. And when hormones get wonky, it’s at it’s worst; meaning, being a grown-up requires not trusting my perception and giving the benefit of the doubt. Still, while lawn-mowing today, I was muttering and crying over my hurt feelings. A song came to mind that I haven’t thought of in a long time; the line goes, “He did not keep himself away; He was no stranger to my pain, he walked a mile in my shoes.”

The primary lyric was an empathetic one but the rest of the song reminds us of the part we have played in His pain. It was a good reminder.

The song is “He Walked a Mile” by Clay Crosse. Listen at rhapsody.com, and below are the lyrics.

Before the threads of time began
Was pre-ordained a mighty plan
That I should walk with Him alone
The cords of trust unbroken

But fate foresaw my wandering eye
That none could yet restrain
To violate the friendship I
Would cause Him so much pain

Chorus:
And everytime I close my eyes
I see the nails, I hear the cries
He did not keep Himself away
He was no stranger to my pain
He walked a mile in my shoes
He walked a mile

Feet so dusty cracked with heat
But carried on by love’s heartbeat
A man of sorrows filled with grief
Forgiveness was His anthem

No feeble blow from tongue or pen
Could ever sway my love for Him
Across the echoed hills He trod
And reached into my world.

otherwise titled, “Thinking Outside the Box”.

otherwise titled, “Ron paul…does he really need the mainstream media?”

Last night, for the fourth night in a row, David and I were up until 1 am watching videos of Ron. While we’ve quietly slept and remained apolitical for years, grinning and bearing a government and system we had no hope of seeing change, there is now an awakening of anticipation….the Eminem song has a line that says, “You only get ONE shot, do not miss your chance…opportunity comes once in a lifetime.” And here it is! Someone has risen who has a REAL chance of taking this country in a different direction…what we’ve been doing for the past several decades is NOT working…. and if we are very brave and actually put our money where our mouth is, we have a chance at change, at regaining stolen freedom, to remove our froggy selves from the slow-boiling pot.

Jana Stanfield has a song on her website that has a line I’ve been pondering this week… “What would I do today if I were brave?” I’ve decided to deliberately ask myself that question every day.

One thing that was evident last night is the fact that there is an effort to squash Ron’s grassroots swelling support, to silence him down. His name is not included in the polls and the “none of the above” answer is instead rising. He was not invited to a major tax reform conference in Iowa, though his voice is the loudest, most radical, and most rational voice in congress on the topic. He also had raised more campaign money than four of the other speakers, so their straw-man of an explanation was shot down. Viacom pulled one of his highest ranking youtube videos, the interview with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, something I bet they don’t do to anyone else’s videos, so happy are they typically for the exposure.

And yet….that video can still be watched on his website. And that led to another revelation: WE STILL HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH. As long as the internet is not regulated at the federal level, or taxed (and may any congressman who seeks to see that happen lose their seat), we don’t NEED the mainstream media to get a candidate and their message in our face. We don’t NEED them to spin things, explain things, manipulate us…if we are interested, we can go listen for ourselves. Mainstream media, and I think I’m tempted to include the idea that one must have millions and millions of dollars for a campaign to be successful as well, is THE BOX. It is old…maybe only as old as the last presidential campaign, but in internet-land that is ancient history. Information and ideas move much, much faster than that. The support Ron has behind him can not be bought, it can not be manufactured. It will not be traded and handed to a different, more polished and greasy manicured competitor. Intelligent people believe in what they are hearing and they are backing who they want. Being a part of the revolution, one can feel the nervousness of the other candidates, the mainstream media, and the old guard as they realize that what they’re saying isn’t being bought, that change is happening that they can’t squelch, that the movement America has been ready to embrace is leaving them in the dust.

So..no media presence can dictate who our president will be. They can’t make us vote just because it’s our “duty” to pick who’ve they’ve promoted; we’ll vote for who we believe in or not at all if recent history is to be beleived. If the name is missing from the ballot because some policitcal organization deemed him unlikely to win, the nation can rise up and WRITE HIS NAME IN.

If our government at it’s essense is really supposed to be about what the people want, then the media will either tune into what we’re saying or be ignored by those who no longer need to buy what they’re selling.

If we are brave today, what will we do? Will we allow ourselves to feel hopeful and finally fight against taxation and the removal of liberty that we’ve known for years is wrong? Will we support a candidate who says, “let’s not spread our goodness with force” and who espouses a much more kind, loving, and moralistic message of “do unto others”? A candidate who doesn’t want our children to go to war, who wants our soldiers brought home before more blood is spilled, and who encourages kindness, trade, and communicaiton with the world? Someone who beleives that things need to be done but that the free market, full of good and well intentioned, intelligent people, can do it better than a messy, top heavy federal governement can?

Well, those are the questions I am asking, breaking out of little boxes that no longer fit the changing world. Bigger than the coming election is the personal question that will influence my deliberate choices for the rest of my life, “What Would I Do Today if I were BRAVE?”

Want more Ron?

If He Can Save Us From This….

Change Your Status So You Can Vote…

Sticking my toe back in…

want to read more about my journey to live more deliberately? Subscribe to my feed!

THIS is amazing. I think what gets me every time I’ve seen it is not just the utter beauty this man is releasing, but also that the pre-conceived notions and judgments were almost palpable and he melts them away in ways that penetrated the pompous expressions on the faces of those judging and watching.  It’s like a momentary assult on the world’s idea that the outer image is indictative of the worth inside. Beautiful.