bosom enemies

I've been reading Little Women and it's made me tear up maybe three times and I'm only on page 70 or so.

I can relate a lot to Jo. In the chapter where she's talking about how angry she gets. Her mom, Marmee, teaches her not to pay such attention to her Apollyon, her "bosom enemies", described as “those special, little (well, some might not call them so little) faults that are uniquely our own and shape who we are.” That if she does, it will ruin her day and possibly her life.

After Amy burned Joe's book of fairy tales she’d written and spent years perfecting, Jo turns her anger into somewhat of a murderous weapon against Amy. Louisa May Alcott mentions that Jo’s anger makes her a little bit happy but mostly miserable simultaneously as she gets a twisted satisfaction from making Amy feel sorry and “pay for it”. The way Alcott puts it, makes me think of the ancient Buddha quote: "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

It made me tear up when Jo lets Amy fall through the ice while ice-skating, afterward imagining Amy had died and what burden would be carried. Sometimes my actions and words can be poisonous to those around me and to myself. This used to immobilize me. I couldn't think about anything else other than the one thought I did not want to think about. I don't hate myself as much anymore as I used to. Having three kids, I don't really have time for self-deprecation and shaming the whole Will Rucker when I catch myself yelling at my kids and feeling small ~ I pretty quickly have to ask for forgiveness, be sweet again, and move on without dwelling on any reasons for what happened and why.

Kids are quick to forgive. They don't hold grudges like adults do, for they often don't see the layers to anger like adults do, picking things apart and focusing on the faults, the things that weren't right.

bob’s son

I'm enjoying this new R.A.P. Ferreira album, "bob's son." Rory Ferreira had an uncommon idea with the roll-out. Some artist created a virtual reality cafe that is password-protected and you have to figure out how to get into the cafe through Reddit and Twitter. Once the code is cracked, you enter the cafe and feel your way around, perusing artwork on the walls and learning (as much as you can by way of vague visuals) about the poet Bob Kaufman, who the album is inspired by, and whom I had never heard of, I don't think. Rory mirrors his writing process and lifestyle with that of Kaufman’s, pulling his isms and quotables onto a blank canvas and expanding upon them with his own thoughts.

Hearing each song from various nooks in the cafe was momentous.  A smell was in the air, weed or coffee or incense, reminding me of my middle school friend, Tony Beuerlein’s, Nag Champa ~ an incense he would often burn on the floor of his Suburban.  Some smells plant themselves in your amygdala, and at least for me, come up often when associating one thing with another.

I imagine Rory being in a similar cafe to the one in the virtual reality one I find myself in, and I presume he's smoking a blunt? After all, there is a container of sativa cannabis called "Lamb’s Breath 8th" sitting on a table next to a chess board. If you click on it, you're taken to an online shop where you can order some.

Rory has a way with words, bending a word and turning it in on itself and over itself and almost making it mean something else entirely. He repeats a line if he really likes it, and the line becomes more meaningful and jumps out of the song at you as it's repeated. I appreciate this; when a good line becomes somewhat of a mantra.

I struggle so much with this thought ~ what is my voice? I'm trying to get over that. Currently, I'm trying to just simply keep talking and writing, and maybe I won't be self-aware about it in such an obnoxious way. To not be so critical. Why criticize my own way of thinking? It isn't healthy. I'm trying to not think whether or not it's a good thought or a bad thought, but that it's a thought and I think that counts for something.

red sky

This morning, as Holden had just woken, we sat on the couch in our living room to watch Sunny Bunnies on the iPad. I skimmed music articles on my phone, feeling groggy. I opened up our shutter, as I could see the roaring sky bleed through the cracks and it made me feel life was entering in to pick us up.

A few minutes later, Darcy walked in and I said to her, “Look at that sky, so purple and pink.”

A moment passed and the color turned to blue and much brighter. “Now the sky is blue,” I said for both kids to hear.

Donning a goofy grin, Holden added, “Later, it'll be red.”

This excited him. I knew he was talking about the sunset that evening and he felt clever he’d thought of something far in the future.

here’s to a year of writing more

I would like to consistently write more this year. My idea is to go on long runs and use my voice memo recorder and just talk out my thoughts while running, going back later to transcribe it, removing the intensifier words like "incredibly", "really", "so", "very". I'm hoping my talking will work in the way my running works, in that I tend to start out not really loving it, and not really wanting to be doing it, and then once I get into mile two I feel loose, in a rhythm, and actually enjoying myself. I'm hoping with my thoughts the same thing might happen ~ I'll start out not knowing what to say but then finding myself getting to a point where my words are just kind of flowing out of me as I start to remember what I’d been pondering that morning.