There are several signs of spring. The warming air, the first hints of flora, annual fauna, and springing forward into Daylight Saving Time. I’m waiting for the natural aspects of spring to appear, and on Sunday, I will begrudgingly lose an hour to gain more sun. In the interim, I have become cognizant of another personal marker of spring:
My social calendar.
For obvious reasons, my public out decrease along with the temperatures between November and February. Oh, I still go out. I’ve been to movies, caught a couple of shows, dinners with friends – uh, hello, I’m Raivenne, I don’t hibernate, but I do slow down.
I’ve looked at the past few years, and the pattern is the same. March may come in like a lion and leave like a lamb weather-wise, but for my social calendar, it is the exact opposite, and I love it.
Today is just the 6th, yet in the span of the past three days, I went from only having three outings this month to eight. And that’s just March. I have at least three outings for each month from now until January. Mind you, this does not include the larger events, such as a convention I’m attending in Atlanta in April, Las Vegas in November, and my annual birthday getaway in September
So it’s March, the event horses have begun lining up at the gate– .
— and the Le Raivenne [a.k.a. the Social Butterfly turned Mothra] is off!
I got up this morning go through my usual routine while not-so-silently kvetching about the snowy-rain mix coming down, only grateful it was not full-out snow. Do I wear my boots or tough it out in my sneakers? What if it is not raining that hard? I don’t want to be standing around all day in boots, yada, yada, yada… I make a decision and head out. It’s dank and just miserable looking outside.
The path from my home to the train station leads past several tenement buildings and projects. A part of City life in my current neighborhood is the occasional appearance of memorials for the recently departed. I’m ashamed to say, they are so much a part of the scenery that while I see them, I really don’t.
At least, until this afternoon.
This afternoon, as I returned home, I noticed one such memorial. This was somehow different, and as I looked closer, I understood why. It was a large portrait was that of a baby. This life could not have been more than a few months if I am gauging this infant correctly. Someone lost a baby. Do we even want to go into all the reasons why the younger a life is when it departs from us, the more tragic it seems? No. It just is.
And suddenly, today’s highly annoying rain/snow crap was considerably less so.
.
So, a guy emails me through an online dating site:
“I am going to assume that my profile is too casual/risqué for you, but I thought I’d shoot you a line anyway. (You have a fetching smile.)”
Of course I check out his profile. He states he wants a FWB, not looking for serious dating and is desirous of a woman with intelligence.
Got it – he wants a fuck, just not a dumb one.
My response?
“Hello,
My orthodontist and I thank you.
“Check you out!” as the kids say, throwing down the gauntlet on the opening play.
If I respond in the negative I come off as looking prudish, yet a positive one is indicative that I am open to only being someone ‘beneficial’. If I am open to such with you, who else have I been beneficial to? Providing I am someone simpatico to your intelligence and views to be worthy of said fornication.
Damned if I do and damned if I do. Fiddley-dee, whatever is a woman to do?
Oh, I can pick up that gauntlet and cyber strike you across your grizzled jowl for your cheekiness. (Insert emoji with tongue sticking out here.) [– Yes, I actually wrote out the emoji as such.]
How dare you!
Rai”
This is not to say I would or would not go for a roll –or a few- in the hay with him. He is attractive and arrogant and just the sort of ego balloon I like to stick my pins in and pop.
Regardless, one has to prove worthiness of my wrapping these thick juicy thighs around, and that ain’t the way, Bub.
“Doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness”
I hope most have noticed that this is the tagline of this blog. But sometimes it seems like I’ve been so busy chasing the funds to have the former that there’s rarely any time left over to engage in the latter.
And I know I’m not the only one.
We spend so much time getting ready to be happy and not enough actually being happy.
The poor are so busy trying to get money to be rich, because then they will be happy. The working poor, formerly known as the middle class, are so busy trying to keep what money they have while also seeking more to be happy. The rich are so busy trying to prove themselves worthy of having said money to be happy.
Yet how many of them truly are?
Someone once asked the Dalai Lama, what surprised him most about humanity, he answered:
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
The Dalai Lama is very astute in his statement. In the bombardment of information, society, culture and idealism, I sometimes feel we’re slowly become something so homogeneous by silent consensus that we tend to lose that spirit which makes the individual so special. We mute the individual spirit that dares to pursue anything than what the masses have decreed should make us happy, when the masses themselves continually change the definitions.
Another favorite quote of mine: All are born originals: most die as copies.
Too many of us see ourselves through the eyes of others. And those eyes are most likely only viewing what they have been told to look at. When everyone is looking at the same things, is anyone really seeing anything?
Years ago, Android had a series of commercials with the closing tagline: be together, not the same. I think that also works in finding your own sustained happiness.
Life can be this amazing place full of light, happiness and serenity. Or it can be a dark place, full of drama and fear. It’s life, it holds all of these possibilities, but it’s up to you to choose what’s possible for yourself. And you must choose this for yourself everyday, sometimes several times a day.
When it comes down to the basics, we all want a happy future, but life can be a beautiful thing right here, right now, in the present; we just have to take a moment to keep reminding ourselves.
It’s Tuesday, let’s see how others are slicing it it, this Day 2 of the challenge:
This first week of March has held odd scores for me these past years —
This past winter has been one of the coldest and snowiest in a while. Except for the staunchest of my winter-loving friends, most of us in the Northeastern US, in particular, have all reached our saturation point and want it all gone already. Seeing a string of temperatures above 40 degrees forecast for the next week and the hope of Spring finally arriving lightens my mood. Even though there is snow on the ground and a chance of sprinkles soon, the worst of it seems to be over. The thought of not having to shovel again and soon being able to put my down coat away for the season warms me immensely.
It also helps that there is a celebration of my firstborn’s birth in a couple of days. Like all mamas of adult children, I can still see the wide-eyed sparkle of those newborn eyes brought home oh so many years ago in the very same eyes that will now roll over two score later, yet again, in some annoyance that I’ve inflicted upon them -probably happily inflicted knowing me. I’m Mommie – it’s in the unwritten job description that can’t be retired from.
But this year marks a score I saw coming, yet it snuck up on me regardless: a score, as in I became a widow twenty years ago today.
When he passed, he had been pretty much half my life – literally and figuratively. Now, I have spent as much time without him in my adult life as I had with him, and roughly a third of my life overall. It’s an odd dichotomy.
I remember once telling someone, “One day at a time?” Right now, I’m just trying to get through one minute at a time.” And now twenty years’ worth of minutes are in the rear-view. That’s exactly where it is, and where it should be – in the rear-view.
As I posted on Facebook earlier:
A Score of Time Flying The heart doesn’t break anymore. The heart doesn’t love any less.
I still see and feel that presence; it will always be there, but I’m still going forward.
Still warming up, still celebrating, and a score later, still marching on…
For this week’s Quadrille, Kim (Writing in North Norfolk) is prompting a revolution for a quadrille, a poem of exactly 44 words not including the title, but must include some form of the word “revolution”.
Here I give gentle nods to Gil Scott Heron (The Revolution Will Not Be Televised) and Marvin Gaye (Inner City Blues)
Today is the finish line for the 15th Year Slice of Life Story. It’s been a great run. I have not missed a day, and while I have definitely pants it close a couple of times this month, this is the first year I was never in danger of missing a post for 2022. I must say, that’s a pretty good feeling. Alas, another 31 days and flavors is in the books. Off to the next big thing, right. Hmmmm, not exactly.
Usually I go straight from the Slice of Life Writing Challenge straight into National Poetry Writing Month as I have done for the past several years.
However, there are 18 items sitting in draft mode here on WordPress alone. Some are partially done poems needing tweaking, some essay ideas to be fleshed out, three are nothing more than a couple of lines of an idea I want to work with at some point. There’s a book I’ve been working with off and on for a couple of years. There’s my fanfiction. And let’s not talk about the literal pages of ever multiplying plot bunnies clamoring to be fleshed out into something more. Thus, I know it is not because I do not have anything to say. Because in spite of Muses best efforts to get as much out of me and onto paper, canvas and pixels, it’s all bottle-necked. I don’t like that for all my output, the things I want out the most are not getting out there. And I don’t know why.
I don’t like not knowing.
I do consider myself a decent story-teller, and yes, it pleases me that some want to hear/read what I have to say whether in poem, prose, essay, blog or my Verbal Diarrhea Diaries, but I also feel something of a responsibility to that which will remain behind in these pixels long after I am gone. Because one edict I did have is this: if I felt strongly enough about something to put it out there, even if I must apologize later [and as a Virgo who abhors being -gasp- wrong, believe me, I avoid being in that situation like it’s plague], I may edit or tone it down, but I do not take it back.
Noticed that did in there?
It is that responsibility, where I have increasingly found myself thinking of better ways to express a thought coherently only after I hit ‘publish’, which has me galled to no end. Between the bottleneck mentioned above, and this lexical lethargy has become increasingly worrisome and hit its head earlier this week. La Impostrata, a personification of the Imposter Syndrome coined by fellow blogger and real life friend GirlGriot, struck big time and for the first time ever I trashed something I wrote. No, I did not return it to draft mode to be pondered over and reworked for another time – I trashed it. And then trashed the trash can in my perturbment. I can all but hear writer friends of mine gasp in the horror at this cardinal writing sin. I know, I KNOW! I sincerely apologize to you for that horrid lapse in judgement. But mostly I apologize to myself because as a person who has files with snippets of discarded writings in the belief it will be used elsewhere later, I damn sure know better. I am ashamed of myself. Something has to give.
So rather than submit myself to another month of more writing pressure, I’m choosing to press pause on challenges for now. I’m going to step back and sit out this year’s National Poetry Writing Month.
Oh, I will still write and post poems in April, fret not (not that those who know me were). There is no way Calliope, Erato or Melpomene are easing up on me. It just won’t be for the next thirty days straight. Naturally, I’ll be here on Tuesdays for our weekly slices.
I want to feel comfortable in what I write, whether it is poems, blogs, short stories, flash and fan fiction. That the something I say that makes sense. Sometimes I need to write because I feel confident that what I say that will inform or entertain others and sometimes I need to read so that I can be better informed and entertained myself. What I will always need regardless, are times when no matter what is going on in my life I pick up my pen.
I’m simply allowing myself the grace to ease up on the writing pressures I put on myself.
We made it! Day 31 of 31 – Let’s see how others are slicing it out this final day of the challenge.
I sometimes use my phone to compose posts on WordPress. It’s convenient when I’m not in front om my computer to write my posts. For example, when I’m on the subway and an idea comes to me for a poem. As it’s one Ill have to link to via this blog it made perfect sense to start it here. One less step to do. Yeah, not quite.
Convenient as it is, it comes with with a few problems. I am not the world’s best speller to begin with, I’m prone to grammar typos and don’t forget my adoration of dangling participles. Most of which I don’t catch until after my post has been published. And oh, let’s not talk about the autocuumber – I mean autocorrect. That charming little helper that constantly insists I have no ducks left to give, yet will occasionally decide in a food post that I had fuck a l’orange for dinner. Oopsie!
Add in that my fifteen words per minute typing cannot possibly keep up with my fifteen hundred thoughts per minute mind. I drop words mid sentence. I know I thought them, but the fingers do not reach my keyboard in time before other thoughts and words crowd them out. And le pièce de résistance: big fingers – little keyboard. I’m constantly hitting the c, v, b, n, or m key when all I want is amspace. (<– like what just happened there – oopsie!). Using my phone for drafts is convenient, but a recipe for disaster.
Especially the times when I was not done composing posts, and did not want to lose the work done thus far. At some point I accidentally managed to hit “Publish” because that button is too dang close to the dropdown menu where “save as draft” is hidden. I know the app designers emphasize posting, but it’s bedeviling as all get out when drafting. Because naturally, once I have realized that it’s live, I don’t want to trash it, so now I am scrambling to edit my accidentally published post, only to have hit “update” instead of “save as draft” in the process – yet another oopsie(!). This especially galls me for I constantly tell my students, “If it’s a mess in draft, it will be a mess live. Submitting it will not magically fix anything FUBAR.” Goodness knows this mess of a blog is proof of that. It’s bad enough when working from my PC. It’s especially true for me when composing on a mobile device.
All that to say, so, if you happened to see my first, second, twenty-second, failed attempts of what probably looked like an incomplete or an incomprehensible posts for the few moments it was up before I could fix it, I apologize.
Day 18 of 31 – Come see how the rest of us are slicing it up this Friday!
I have semi-personally been trying to find the joy in life again, in peope. Oh, I’m doing an okay job of faking it until I make it, but right now? In this exact moment I am simply burnt the fuck out.
And I’m torn…
– in my sorrow for the shit that’s happening in Ukraine. The sanitized politics that’s being parsed out as news over here versus the sensationalized what’s supposed to be coming directly from there on top of what I hear from my colleagues. All of which means everything and nothing as I try not to fret and fear over the fact that I have not heard from someone I personally know there in over a month. An erstwhile colleague, he went home when his mother became ill not long before the world shut down because of Covid. We remained in spotty contact mostly via email. He lives in the Holosiivskyi raion (a district in Kyiv) and would be among the men now in uniform fighting for his country. I fully understand, I am far from a priority now. I don’t know and won’t know until he can find a moment to reach out.
– in my exasperation over Prince William who tells the world with a straight fucking face that only Asian and African countries wage war. That Europeans just don’t do these things and he’s surprised by the situation in Ukraine. Are you fucking kidding me?! England has a track record of poaching and taking by any means necessary, under the sweet term of ‘colonizing’ a mile wide and an ocean deep. I find this particularly galling as England recently celebrated Commonwealth Day the partnership of 54 nations, mostly made up of countries that were previously part of Britain’s Empire because I’m so absolutely sure not a single one of those 54 nations ever had a British gun fired upon them. Yes, Prince William is a grown man, but still, boy if you don’t go sit your selectively blind arse down!!
– in resignation along with these allegedly warmongering Asian and African countries, as well as Black Twitter, who are all sitting back, looking around with “you SEE this bullshit?” expressions. They are understandably side-eyeing a world at large that is seemingly losing its shit over Ukraine while also wondering where the fuck was all this concern for them when it was people/countries of color being invaded?
– in enmity with the state of Florida and their “Don’t say Gay” bill which would ban “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” for primary school children in the state. What that fuck is this reverse “Field of Dreams” bullshit? If you don’t say it to the kiddies then LGBTQ won’t exist. Yeah, good luck with that. And how long before someone amends the ban to include middle school, or high school?
– annoyance and semi fear of my own city, in fact – most of this world, with its relaxing of Covid restrictions. Every one is so much of a rush to behave as though everything is back to “normal”. Yes, I am so sick of having to wear a mask 12-16 hours a day when I step out my house to go to work, and/or try to have something of a social life again. But I much rather be sick of a mask, than be sick from Covid. Vaccination does NOT equal immunization. Less likely to become so sick from Covid that one might die, does not mean one won’t get sick. It most certainly does not mean one won’t be a carrier regardless and transmit it to someone else regardless. We [the world at large] are not anywhere near ready for what we once knew as “normal”. Especially for those at risk who genuinely cannot take the vaccine. Do they get relegated to become some form of agoraphobes to better protect their health from a world that demasked too soon? I’m waiting for the Covid numbers to once again start rising as more masks get lowered.
– in a form of self-induce ambivalence where I get through my days in a state of “I’m fine”. In the Venn diagram of me for the most part I really am fine in my little bubble of the world. But in another part of me there is this powder keg of utter helplessness within that feels like it is going to explode any fucking second and it’s slowly expanding over space. And the thing is even I am not sure if that explosion will be in egregious rage, in sinking depression or in an apathy that is borderline socio in self protection. Because I know what happens to me when I try to be everything to everyone. I’ve gone the self-martyr route and it was a bitch digging myself out of that emotional quagmire to allow myself to be happy. I cannot do that to myself again. I’m justifying to myself why an upcoming pleasure trip to Atlanta in a couple of weeks is sorely needed. Yet, I’m also chastising myself because I feel like a whiny little brat when I know I don’t have it any where near as bad some of my locals who are truly shouldering some heavy burdens in which I can do nothing for them but be emotional support – it’s enough for them – I know it is, and yet it’s not.
I’m trying to give myself perspective to keep all my petty shit together and get through the daily, but it has been so fucking hard. I’m just so burnt with outside forces playing havoc with my inner equilibrium right now.
From Monday morning my mind has been on GO! It’s been pulling teeth while herding cats in the midst of putting out fires on the professional work front. Meanwhile my personal Inbox of work overfloweth. It’s the reason some of my slices have been posting really late this week. It’s been a string of “I’ll get to it in a moment as soon as I *fill in the blankety-blank-blank*”. Only I get distracted by this, then remember that and and dammit I forgot about whatever… Next thing I know it’s after 9pm-10pm and I’m pantsing my slices. <– That somehow sounds wrong, but I don’t wanna think about it.
Bonus points to those who know where this is from…
I’ve been mentally flying by the seat of my pants all week and I know those planes of thought -because trains of thought are too slow for my needs right now- are about to crash and burn. Sunday starts daylight saving time for most of the U.S. and I’m so tired the thought of losing that hour on Sunday has me worn out. I don’t wanna…
While the above gif is a THISCLOSE second place, this scene below is the most relatable thing to my brain’s processing capacity right now because I don’t…
At least it’s Friday, I think…right? Right.
Day 10 of 31 – Let’s see how others are slicing it out today…
Raivenne-lations 
