Friday, August 24, 2007

Music! (Hope!)

I'm all music-crazed lately, as those of you who read me a lot might have noticed. I think it's partly because of Vowels being here. She's all music crazy, and she makes me listen to stuff. And it's Question sending me those cds, so now I'm listening to those all the time. Every day, there's a new song that I have to listen to again and again and again. Today, it's "I Taught Myself How To Grow Old."

I don't know how everyone knows what I'm thinking. I'm almost feeling that way like I could write a poem. I'm scared to write poems, though, because it hurt so much when they got stolen. I'd like to write a poem. It might be a little bit hopeful. At first, I was picturing hope like a little, tiny sprout from a seed...that first little edge of it, poking out, just a little bit of green. But maybe it's more like a very small fire that I'm protecting against the wind...like the flame on a birthday candle. Like the flame on a birthday candle in a hurricane.

I've come to a little bit of a crossroads about expectations, which are dangerous, and hope, which is important to living. They grow from the same place, I guess...

Maybe the difference is that expectations have an ending, a pre-determined, definitive stopping place. Hope is open to whatever comes.

But that doesn't feel quite right, either. Being open to whatever comes is frightening, or at least it has been lately. Feeling like there are people who want to hurt me, like there were people who were trying to take my stuff, like there was no one to trust in my day-to-day life was a really awful place, and I wasn't finding much hope there.

Something has changed, though, and it's not me. I'm just doing the same mess I've been doing. It's him. He has reached a wall, and he's desperate to find a way out. He's had a rough couple of weeks, and it took a while for him to transform from "mad," that go-to male emotion, to vulnerable, scared, and willing to try anything. He's "excited" about the meeting tomorrow night. That's his word..."excited."

So I guess I can be hopeful that he will get something out of the meeting, that he will get the job, and that it will make him move in a healthier direction? But I shouldn't expect it?

This is a space I can occupy comfortably, though. I don't feel sick or unsafe. This feeling of insecurity, unpredictability--this is something I can do. I can do insecure. I can't do unsafe. And I need to remember this the next time I'm having that anguish I was having not too long ago...it always gets better.

And my life is good, in many ways. There are blessings: good friends, good food, fulfilling work, a place to write and people to read, a soft cat, a warm dog, a man I love more than anything, calling for me to come to bed.

5 comments:

Jen R. said...

No expectations, my friend. hang in there....

Glitter Goblin said...

Psst.

If you are just the teeny bit computer savvy, buy yourself a D.V.D writer for your computer.

Write and burn all your work to D.V.D's and hide them somewhere. Name them like, "Gay bi Jack Russel Terrier Bondage Porn," so if you get any hoodlims breaking into your house again and they ogle a D.V.D, they may make off with your comp, but I think it would take a very speshul person to make off with a D.V.D titled that.

Mary P Jones (MPJ) said...

I like that image of hope growing like a plant. I'm thinking off the top of my head that expectations are tied to specific things you want/"need" to happen. Hope is a more general feeling of "whether that thing happens or not, things are going to be better than they are now."

Mary P Jones (MPJ) said...

Oh, and on the music thing. It's Vowels, man, she has all of us on a music kick -- I was going to write a music post just for her this weekend.

Wayward Son said...

Ha! I recommend that you back up a second time all of your poems to g-Mail in a Word doc or something. If you get burglerized by a meth head a DVD titled Gay Bi Jack Russell Terrier Bondage Porn will be the one thing they might find of interest! Meth heads are kinda speshul that way! LOL

I wish G could attend the AA meeting here I go to called High Noon. It is held in this unbelievably beautiful little church, Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist
San Francisco, http://www.saintjohnsf.org/. I am one of about three people out of a hundred or so who does not have a tattoo.There are more recovered heroin addicts from ALL walks of life then you can shake a stick at. If you ever come to SF this will be a must see event for the speakers are amazing!

I don't work the steps... yet... but I am so excited too that g is going to a meeting. Knowing what I know now I think I would go even if I didn't have a problem with drugs.

One way I have wrapped my head around the "I am powerless/I give myself up to God" thing is that that is the shortcut (back door) to serenity. Otherwise I would have to trek through the stages of confusion, despair, anger and frustration to get there. In the speaker share yesterday, the guy told this story of how his mother reminded him that when he was young he loved to play D&D and make up his characters. She suggested that he make up a God of his understanding to surrender to. He went on to say that all of sudden he got it! His God would be first of all.... funny. Second of all his God would like sex and thirdly his God would be OK with all words, even profanity. Not that there would not be consequences for using profane language for there would be...(like the C word) but any word was OK with God if not another person. It is so amazing to hear other peoples stories, especially when they come from people who are as uniques as I see myself.

Just thought I would share that because you have mentioned before that g shares some of my trepidations about 12 stepping. I am still going to these meetings because they make me feel good. Fuck the rest of the dogma until I am ready.

WS