2023 and On

8/14/23

It’s been a while. Years. But I have, for whatever reason, decided to let it rip again a little bit. And do some current entries (or maybe just today, we shall see) of This Is Me Now. Yes, I still have the Sandbox and yes, I still write in it! It’s different though. As I suppose makes sense. We change, we all change, we are all changing.

I’ve come to love the huge parks I live near because their rate of change is so slow it allows me to have something around me that feels stable. I can go back to a trail I’ve not been on in ten years and there she is, the same contours, the same steepness, the same foliage and, my goodness, the same smell of bay leaves and dust.

For those here now, hello and if you’re coming back, hello again.

***

8/14/23

726AM

Authenticity

I woke with what I am now going to call The Five Thirties.

The Five Thirties are my one hour where all the dread and worry and terror in my life reins supreme. It is usually a blur of minor pain that becomes blown up—no not usually—always. My toe with a swollen callus will shortly, in my mind, need an amputation. The left shoulder blade strain that is mostly healed after four days actually isn’t healed. It’s actually getting worse. My spine is crumbling.

My low back pain which is now about 90% better than it has been the past few months isn’t low back pain, it’s a fractured sacrum undiagnosed and I’ve been walking and even trying to run here and there on a broken back.

I have osteoporosis. I have arthritis. I will need a hip replacement in the next few years. I will never be able to run. I will not be able to swim.

I’m in danger of a torn retina despite being told all is fine with my eyes.

I am getting dives in blood sugar and when my heart pounds I feel like dying. If I go off the Tumeric/Cucumin (which causes low blood sugar), however, I will be back in back pain. The only thing between me and a super stiff back is this herb. What do I do?

I am going nowhere with my clay. Nothing sells. No one loves me. I am so slow in my creativity these days.

Get the picture?

I get up an hour later, six thirty, note that my back is so much less sore than it has been. I get into my sneakers. I can bend over to do that without having to be so cautious. But I feel the pain that was there, the very small lingering, the reminder that maybe, The Five Thirties are right about all this.

I swipe it away, get out the dog, we begin our walk. The Five Thirties are there for the first few minutes. Then I keep moving, look up towards a sky that looks like someone used a sponge to paint its clouds this morning. It is windless, calm. May I even say, beautiful?

For a second or maybe two or three I am present with this beautiful morning, this day that has just begun. I watch Pickles sniff and stop and pee and then poop. I pick up her poop and note how my back is doing. Better. Not perfect. But better I guess.

I am three quarters through and Pickles approaches a woman leaving her house. She says hello, tells us it’s her first day back after a summer off. She’s a teacher. Dreading the beginning again of a new year.

But as we walk away I wish I were her even though I’m sure she doesn’t feel the same. I can feel her purpose, her commitment, and even though she may not have full choice in the matter—more like an obligation—there are guard rails to her life or dictates or something that shapes it.

Rounding the final corner to home I feel the shapelessness of my life. I have the privilege really of experiencing this, of being able to choose how I shape it into something. Making money isn’t pushing me in any way. There is plenty of that. I am not yearning for the perfect relationship because I love the person I’m with and want for nothing there.

I know, deep down, that I am in the kind of pain and questioning that is deeply important. The kind of examination that I can’t walk—or run—or swim—away from. Though it is no longer Five Thirty A.M. the thought of that hour doesn’t fully go away. I cannot dissociate anymore all that well. Which has its plusses and minuses.

Is the purest of joys the kind made from dissociative magic—where everything else is held back—where you are able to sit in the Joy Room and no other room and experience nirvana? Or is it the kind of joy that is the whole house, every room experienced and known, held and appreciated for what its worth?

Or is it both at times—one more pure, one more inclusive and whole?

***

9/2/23

717AM

Authenticity

This morning I woke wondering if this is it for me. If sixty two is enough. Truly. Between you and me, is it just enough.

Pickles seems to be improving. No sneezes midday when let out from crate. A change. This morning just one in the crate—early. And one right as we walked out the door. Pete thinks she’s swallowing it. It being some piece of a foxtail. A piece of grass.

Dunno.

This morning was a body scan, per usual. Low back is not bad. Shoulder blade not bad, an echo remains but very slight. Eyes, dry. Headache? Check. My left side, when I was swimming long course would fatigue/ache. It is happening now again as I get back to long course. But less so the second than the first time. Both elbows and right forearm a little tight. Long course plus paddles mixed in yesterday. My right eye has been so dry and so “off” when wearing my contact. Is it my eye? Or the contact? Or both? Dry, dry, dry. But I noticed last night, falling asleep on the couch, legs propped up on Pete’s lap (which felt like a long lost ritual and luxury) I have a bad fucking headache. Sinuses likely. The windless heat here now. Perhaps dried up due to age but also runs that I began doing in the park. Heat, dust. God do I sound like a whiner but why not give myself this space, this paragraph, to list all complaints, all niggles and notices, improvements too. Why not. I harm no one. Perhaps I help in leaving others out of it by leaving it in here.

Dunno.

My mantra.

Dunno.

I am loving words these days. Words for what they mean but how they look. Fonts too. What does a font communicate and why.

***

I told myself a few times this morning I was not going to apologize for telling Bob everything on his birthday. For one, he asked. For two, why should I be carrying the load all alone.

Of course I just sent this text…

Hey Bub—sorry to dump all that crap yesterday—on your bday of all days. “Happy Birthday Insert-Your-Name-Here your father won’t get out of bed!” It was a storm gathering over the weeks, the stuff with Dad and the untangling of Sylvia’s reactions around it and what to do or not do about it all. As we discussed, it has been a shift, a gear change, and a bit challenging to understand let alone process. Spoke to T yesterday as he called about tooth and some other stuff and filled him in. Again, my apologies on the timing of it.

It is only a moment and I know he wasn’t angry. Just sad. And he wants to help and doesn’t want me to carry this weight. Arnie is there as well. I can feel them both.

Z? I don’t understand it. Or him.

MLG

DUH x 10,000

Yeah?

MLG

Get stoned

Go away

Forget your troubles

Never pay

Goofball

MLG

Truthball

My parts speak truths. Truth is diamond-like. Except for math. Where truth is flat, no facets. Plain. Dimensionless.

Indeed.

Miss you, B. Want to be you, B.

You are me. All you need to do is…become.

I want to sit on the park bench with you. I want the view. I want the peace. I want to be able to sit like you do and to have made my peace, to lie under my fig tree. To. To. To.

I am…you. Follow…me. Follow…you.

I wake every morning the opposite of you. I wake wanting to not wake, wanting to not step into the day, questioning why oh why oh why.

I am the why. I am the peace you seek. I am you and you will find me. Seek out…me.

Love to you.

Love back. I am here. I am here. I am here.

***

9/3/23

745AM

Authenticity

This shit show this morning was the usual. I asked myself: if there was a tiny little pill available that I could easily swallow, tucked away in the medicine cabinet, that would instantly just take me out, would I take it?

It’s an interesting question. This get out of jail/life card available to you at any time.

I am glad, I suppose, it’s not available because I can see in one moment it making total sense. In another, a huge mistake.

The darkness that overcomes me though in these early morning moments is about the worst I’ve experienced in my life. There is just nothing to live for. No hope. My insides are just soaked in despair and negativity, in so much letting go. I keep letting go. Keep being unable to anything but let go.

Clay, the annual trip to Hawaii, running. My eyes are so dry. My back so sore.

Body scan on and off in this terrible darkness. Did I break my back a few months ago because I have osteoporosis? Do I have osteoporosis? Should I say once and for all goodbye to running? I walked around the block with a sore low back because I ran yesterday. By the end of the walk I was much better. But still, this question haunts me. Should I stop? Am I broken? If so how broken?

I see the guy who hobbles around the block. He doesn’t seem to care. He gets his hobbling in and probably goes home to a cup of coffee and a life that makes sense.

I am not “deciding” to let go. Letting go is happening whether I want it or not.

I watch decades of self out to sea. Me on the shore. On what feels like an empty beach. I feel unable to look at anything but this ocean of What Was. I can’t seem to turn toward land and find my way again.

Do I let go of the clay, all the bags of it. Let the kiln sit and rot?

I calculated all the hours I have worked for the studio. It has more than paid for that kiln and everything I have purchased. I have literally earned the right to do whatever I want.

Who am I? I seem to know who I was. But I really do not know who I am.

Do I let the novel go? I just don’t care anymore. Which honestly is one thing that feels good. I don’ care. Not caring helps. It’s a relief.

Clay.

I feel like I dug for ten years and I found myself and now what? What do I do with this voice? With this, let’s be real, gift? Because it is a gift. But I don’t know what to do with it, whom to give it to or sell it to.

I am so lost.

LOST

I am lost beyond lost beyond lost beyond lost.

MLG

Lost is the beginning of found.

A, I need HELP.

I am here. I am here. I am here.

Can you help me, calm me?

I can. I can tell you this is a season. A long one. A hard one. But it is, indeed, a season.

I want that little pill.

I know.

That’s it?

That’s it.

Can you give me hope? Can you help?

You will find your way. We will find our way. It is painful now. There is no way around it. It is scary because it is new. We have come to a point where it is no longer possible to look away. We have come to a point where we must find new pathways. New ways. Breaking trail is hard.

Heart breaking. I am so sad. I want to give up. Just like my parents. I want to lay in bed forever. If I could I would sleep as much as they do. I would give up. Just like them. But my body has energy. It knows when the sun is coming up. It tells me there is too much energy to stay in bed. That I am too healthy to lay around, to sleep all day.

And this is not something to be grateful for?

I get it, A. But I am so fucking sad. This whole thing, this whole “season” just fucking HURTS. Literally, figuratively. Everything. It started with the business. With closing it. Then the “incident” where I needed to learn about how abuse just can happen, randomly, and how I can walk away from it, knowing it had nothing to do with me. After learning that lesson, which was beautiful, then comes the pain, the bodily pain. The physical insecurity. The new days outside on the deck writing because I cannot otherwise calm myself.

Where have I gone?

I told myself this morning that I am not that far from who I was. That I have been able to somewhat get back to the workout schedule I used to have. That I am back to the long course pool. That I have taken a couple months off from clay but not that many.

But I feel a million miles away from me. Another planet. Another universe.

***

9/4/23

721AM

Authenticity

As I woke this morning, I told myself that I will do something different. I will take that energy I feel—that anxiety—and instead of fueling fear I will substitute compassion. Swap compassion for fear. If my head hurts, give myself compassion. If my eye is dry, let it be soothed by wearing glasses, by using drops. If my back is sore, give it a gentle walk and be grateful (and knowing) that a nice gentle walk can and does make it feel better. I told myself to remember how stiff I used to feel.

I told myself that it’s okay to feel a little sore in the morning. That likely most people, especially older, DO. I told myself that if having to walk versus run, having to bike versus run, is what is required than so be it. I can be happy with those movements. Just as happy.

I gave myself permission today to stop resisting and instead to allow with compassion.

Allow, allow, allow.

But I told myself all this without demanding, with TELLING, without being bossy. I just wanted to treat myself gently.

So yeah, I woke a little sore. And I was less sore—am less sore—for the walk. I am less freaked out. I am okay with being lost. Less resistance to it.

I slept well, too.

The last dream before waking was swimming. It was getting dark and by the time I got out it was night time, the pool was packed with people and I could not find any of my things.

I couldn’t tell if I’d lost everything important or if I’d just left it scattered in my bag. I couldn’t remember what I’d done before I went in, where I had put everything. I was looking for my glasses and found an old pair. I didn’t know how I got them or where I’d gotten them but I made do. I couldn’t find my phone—but then eventually found it or something like it. I had a lot of books in this bag of mine that I had to keep removing so I clear away and dig through. I was looking for my contacts but couldn’t find them. I was wondering if someone stole things out of my bag. But in finding some things along the way it was hard to come to any conclusion.

Then I woke. It was close to seven. Late for me. My whole head ached. I think I am waking with tension headaches. But it faded with the walk.

The dream feels somewhat clear: that I am losing things, trying to find them, some successfully, some partially, some not at all. Some things found are different. Others are lost for good. You can’t grasp if the things missing have been lost or stolen from you. The consideration, lost or stolen, waxes and wanes. It’s an interesting choice— if it is a choice. One prompts sadness and grief. The other, anger.

***

On this morning I am feeling differently than I have been for months. I feel a genuine sense of gratitude. In this morning and in this moment I feel gratitude for this—right here—now—for the words I am tapping out.

Thank you, language.

Thank you words, and sentences and paragraphs. Commas and question marks and exclamation marks too. Thank you for providing me a place to go when clay seems not just the right thing right now. Thank you for your lightness, your weightlessness. I can type you out with such ease, without having to mold you, without having to carry you from place to place, without having to worry about you cracking and breaking as you dry, without having to fire you—twice. I don’t have to glaze you nor do I have to worry about a place for you to be stored. I don’t feel obligated to sell you or give you away as a gift either. I can’t hold you in my hands exactly, but I can in my mind and heart. Words, you equal a tangible object’s beauty. Sometimes you exceed it. Language, you are as me as anything, perhaps more than. You are a road, a way in and out and through and up and over. You have been with me for as long as I can remember and here you remain.

Sandbox (for you are so many words!) thank you for containing me, for stretching and allowing…everything. You have been with me for:

MLG

Twenty four volumes, 11,736 pages, 3911 days, 10.7 years

***

9/5/23

720AM

Authenticity

The FiveThirties this morning were filled with thoughts…then the questioning of them…then the changing of them. I was thinking, reflexively, about these lives I see and that I follow on Instagram. I wake with them—with their impossibly perfect lives. And I then shift. Why? Why spend any time on anything so two dimensional—on what is not and never will be mine? I shifted to some painful stuff but felt it was real. My parents. How difficult. How sad. How gutting. Some childhood memories of the things I loved most, of snow, of my dad’s pancakes. I allowed for the difficulty, the sadness. It’s okay. Better to let it have some air than to bury it in my body where it smolders and becomes pain.

I’d read some Sarno last night and allowed for sadness versus physical focus. The body scan for pain, for the most part, did not occur.

The walk around the block had a tiny bit of pain but a lot less than it did a few days ago. It takes a few days to recover from a longer run. Or maybe, as I heal, it may take one versus two days. I am less inclined to break up with running right now. But I am open to the possibility if it means I am free of pain and that I am safer. TBD.

I still feel that I am leaning mostly towards language, words and letters, but as I woke this morning I thought of creating words out of clay. I love a typewriter font. So maybe I can make LOST in relatively small letters and grow it if it wants growth.

I like the pause button symbol too.

Perhaps I can make pause buttons.

I had a dream last night that I was stuck trying to find something to wear for a wedding. It was a big wedding, important, a close relative. I kept changing clothes, nothing at all close to fitting me nor appropriate. I then switched to some weird lacy top that I would never wear in real life and was looking for the matching skirt. All I could find was bubble wrap, the kind I use to wrap ceramics. My brother B jangled the car keys, said he was leaving, that he had to go, that he was already late and I begged, like you would beg for someone you love who is leaving you for good to stay. My heart ached and ached. I pleaded but he was resolute. I was left with my mother, dangling the plastic bubble wrap in one hand and a pair of scissors, insane, in the other. She is thinking we can figure something out.

This was the last dream I had, the only one I remember, and I found myself waking from it, from a deep sleep. It was disturbing and sad. My mother was crazy back then, is filled with dementia now. I love my brother B, one of the few very very solid rocks that I feel truly knows and cares about me. To lose him in any way would be gutting.

A lot of feelings this morning. Ones that I am allowing.

This is a season of, on the one hand, pausing, but on the other not. It is a season of difficult exploration. Perhaps some reckoning, some coming to difficult terms with life—with my life.

My goal is to soften a bit more with this. More compassion I am hoping will lead to less fear.

***

I decided I was too soft to last.

But then I decided to be even softer.

Andrea Gibson

***

9/7/23

709AM

Authenticity

This morning, as awful as it was to step into, as I walked I asked myself: what if you knew it was all going to work out?

What if you imagined that everything you are worried about will resolve? What if?

And then…

Believe it will. Just believe it will.

How does it feel to walk around with the belief?

Does the belief change the reality of the moment?

It’s like pain. If you have pain from a cut that you know will heal in a few days it’s basically not pain. It doesn’t become larger than life. It barely exists.

I asked myself as I walked, what kind of pain, truly, are you in? On a scale of 1-10 what truly was my physical pain level? And the answer was maybe a one. And I thought of all the people who must be walking around with fours and fives—hell with nines. And I realized that it’s less the physical sensations and more the terror I add to them, the doom and gloom. If these sensations I feel were like the cut I have on my hand, sensations that I knew how to handle, had confidence in their resolution, they would barely be sensations at all. They would not consume and become my life.

What if I were to believe—to know—that things will be okay. Will this help make my days less miserable. What if I were to say that I need some rest, some modification, and all will be good.

What if the plan were to simply…believe.

Believe, believe, believe.

Perhaps this is the season for believe.

To move from allow to believe?

Yes.

MLG

Yes!

You are getting it, S. Soon you will join me here in PBP and I will love to have you as company.

So relative to running I think I was doing alright but a long run on Saturday set me off again. A hike Sunday. Another five on Tuesday. Plus a shift.

The body says…no.

But the body may not be saying no for forever.

Natalie would say back off, re-approach when no longer sore.

Assume you really injured your back late May—like it was a bad strain. You have made it through say stage one and two of healing. You are no longer nearly as stiff and sore. But to make it back to running, you need more time, another few months. This iteration just needs to continue. Back off if sore, move forward if not. Red, yellow, green lights.

Believe, believe, believe.

Trust that this season won’t last. Embrace the season for what it is, some pain, some niggles, some adjustments.

In breaking news: I have a large order, a large goat order. I am a little excited, quite a bit scared. The client is the sweetest ever. It’s for a goat diner.

***

2/19/24

705AM

Authenticity

It was a strange weekend? Some pain. Some productivity. Lots of feeling lost in the woods. A conscious effort to step outside of myself and be curious about what I am experiencing.

In listing the property for rent in a few lesser known places I am gathering what it feels like to try and rent it. To be a landlord again with new people. To stretch myself in these ways. I feel discomfort in that I am face to face with a relatively expensive rental and all these people who would probably love it but can’t afford it. It makes me feel guilty. I am also talking to a second person who is a homeowner who is interested. The first wanted a short term rental why they are renovating their house for sale. This person I’m not sure of but will know more about later on today.

I would like a young couple, tech workers or solid jobs of some sort, super sweet, dying to live in the neighborhood. Not picky, basically.

When I woke this morning I thought about how uncomfortable I have gotten with new things. I noted this in a huge way when we went to Happy Goat. I was really scared and not well practiced around doing something very new and foreign. Same for this rental process.

I am trying Orange Theory today, a workout program, because I am curious and am bored. I am though, more than anything, fearful of my body—my back not liking it. I will try and be a combination of both game but also cautious and realistic. Go easy for starts if I can even start.

Interestingly, this morning I woke with the same anxiety I always wake with but I’d started a pair of goats (pink with white mask, white with purple mask) and have yet to dress them in their Angora. Instead of my mind going to my parents, to my body, to aging to loss, to chaos, to indecision. My mind looped on what colors to use. It wasn’t anxiety fueled. Nor was it super pleasurable. But it was my mind looking for answers. But this time it was around Angora versus what the fuck to do with my life or other unsolvable problems.

It made me consider pushing myself a bit more to get into the studio and use Studio Gallery and the inventory I promised as a project to push myself a bit more.

The other thing I did in making this pair of goats is that I did not listen to anything. No podcasts. I just let my mind do what it did. I seemed to have better focus on the work, actually.

The one thing that remains pleasurable to me over these many months of feeling especially vulnerable, is the writing. Here but also the tinkering of chapter one. The going back to Eileen and all the layers there. I work and re-work the sentences, this time not trying to move on but rather, quite differently, enjoying my stay. It’s a rainy night. I am going back—to Eileen, to therapy, in time. It is a lovely moment, one actually where I write at the end of the chapter, I wish I could freeze forever. All the time in front of me and none behind.

Perhaps it is the perfect moment, feeling safe and warm inside my car while it rains outside. Ready to go to see Eileen. No time spent. All of it available. It is before. Before. BEFORE. Before everything. Before Life happened.

3/26/24

752AM

Authenticity

My back is sore. It began yesterday morning as I was wiggling into my suit. An overuse I am sure—too many lunges with weights (100 to be exact with five pounds weight.) I feel better this morning. This, I hope, is minor and not ten months of recovery.

I iced yesterday and I should do that today. I have yet to cancel going into the studio. But I should. I will soon.

As I walked Pickles this morning I thought of today being my last day. This is how I felt. Very down. Stepping out from a series of dreams that told me there was something special about me, only to wake with a sore back and a dog that needed walking. In the dream, a queen-like figure was anointing me with specialness, telling me that I was “chosen” because what I communicate through my work is love, pure love. It was a message to keep going, that I must continue, that the work I do is important even though I cannot see it.

But, like I said, I wake to a sore (but not intensely so) back and a dog that wants a walk and a crisp cold morning and a brain filled with fog and depression. I wake to feeling the opposite of special, of feeling that my life, with more clarity than ever, is without meaning. That the space out there in my life is both endless and limited, the negative pressure of each filling me up. The days on the pages of the calendar hawk and scream and taunt, both to dare me to fill them up, but to depress me with their emptiness too.

When I get back there is an email, a request for some work. This sparks interest, moves me away from this heaviness. I begin to consider which clay bodies will work for this project. I begin to think about other things.

I am trying. I am trying to get involved with other things. Two different greyhound groups, one which sounds delightful. I am trying to figure out my life, somewhat but not completely different. One foot in front of the other but mostly it is this gloom. I cannot seem to see myself as trying and lord knows even making some progress.

I spoke to a friend yesterday about the clay—how it has slowed. How I have moved from the compulsion of digging and digging, desperately seeking to find something. To…now. Where I am mostly motivated by requests.

Is this healthy? Is this okay?

I don’t know. But I only know about what feels “right”—which is to not force something that is inauthentic. I do not feel like going down and making something because I feel I should. Or making something to try and capture the past—as if doing the same thing over and over will somehow keep time from moving forward.

My body, mind, spirit stops me. It says no.

So I listen. I try to listen.

I love getting orders, requests. This I know. So I respond to this.

Honestly I am scared of the changes in me, the changes in my life. My body. My back. My hair. All the losses I wrestle with in the minutes of the day that tick away. All the looming losses.

I struggle. I do.

I do. I do. I do.

For some reason this morning it just felt clearer than ever. How down on my knees I feel around whatever this transition is in my life. How I have been feeling for the last while. The changes with my parents, with my own life, with my art, with this working at the studio. It seemed harder, heavier, more real, more insistent.

The difficult clarity called out to me. It was asking how long I could go on this way without something giving.

***

3/30/24

733AM

Authenticity

I woke in the middle of the night, in this gut punch kind of panicked way. It was this stark emotional communication that my life feels meaningless and that I am panicked and scared to move into the next day of it. Honestly, not much has changed in the past while but for some reason this was a wake-up call, literally, around something. As I thought it through, it didn’t take long for me to tell myself, logically, that the shape of my life could be changed, that this isn’t forever, that I have agency. I had some kind of hazy vision that I can’t quite remember, dream-like, of being in some, maybe, huge set of hills and valleys, that I was just living amongst them, walking them, some up, some down, some hills, some valleys. An obvious metaphor, a dumb person’s metaphor as MLG would say.

I suppose though that this is a noticing. Not a new or profound noticing but still, nonetheless a noticing. And as I walked this morning I thought that maybe the next while I may not find meaning. And that maybe the meaning is in the stillness of not pursuing a damn thing.

This is kind of where I’ve been at. Devastated in a way that I lack feeling any real kind of purpose or meaning or focus. Like I am just on automatic. But there is an instinct, an energy or a lack of energy, to change it too. I know clay is in a holding pattern, for the most part for me, that it is not the huge focus (nor is it the huge reward) that it felt like before. And I can’t—or I feel I shouldn’t—push it. I don’t want to force myself down into the studio to make things that are not being driven from something deeper within.

I thought about various aspects of my life, if any of them felt like the right general direction, that felt “good.” The only one really that popped out clearly was writing. This, here, what I do. And also the tinkering the novel, the curiosity, the finding, the deep down knowing that someday the voice for the work will be found—and it will be profound for me. There is a deep down, come hell or high water, kind of feeling around it. I know the day will come—and there is a profound sense of hope in this.

I thought that maybe this is where I need to be? Inside the language and the world I have and continue to build internally? And I wondered if it is seeking or hiding or maybe a bit of both? This place inside language and a novel not yet really written, but one written a million times over with ten thousand plus pages to prove it?

Yesterday I dipped back into some older work, randomly. I guess it was about seeing if I was missing something—a part of my voice more poetic and yearning and less driven by narrative. I have struggled mightily with these in this work. Both are important. But which to lead with? Which to use? Can I use both and if so, how?

I lean into what I want which is I want to read a story about something. But can I do this using each/all sides of me?

It’s a writing exercise and an emotional and psychological exercise. Yesterday the emotional part took the forefront—I cried thinking about Eileen, how I genuinely felt she loved me and thought what I was doing was earth shattering. My goodness, the dream. The two of us in Sandbox City, in our little office in the center of town above the Main Street doing the work of the world. How that image and feeling is burned into me, the snow capped mountains surrounding and protecting us.

On the outskirts of town lives Blanket, in Park Bench Park, overlooking what remains of SBC. His view each morning is one of the devastation, as well, one of the memories of when things felt perfect, when life was filled with meaning and warmth, purpose and love.

All of it feels vailable to me in the language and in the world I have created inside of me. It is something I can access at will. It is fully mine. Yet it also remains, for the most part, unshared. This world is comforting but it is also isolating. The sweetest of secrets that at times can grow sour in the years of isolation that now make up over a decade.

If you share, people take from you.

And this, I believe, is a fear of mine. More so long ago than now. But to date I have chosen to stay inside my secret, to take the good with the bad. The good meaning a pretty glorious place of refuge. The bad meaning the isolation, the what-could-have-been.

If these days are the days of noticing, what can I say I am noticing? I feel like I notice quite a bit each day, that this morning practice sets the table every day to notice. Maybe I can highlight what I’ve just written and say these things, these are the things I have noticed so far today.

What pops into my head though is that the shapelessness and meaninglessness of my life that wake me in a panic are both huge concerns but also, changeable. My internal landscape is a network of hills and valleys. I am in a valley now. In a hill at some future date. But there is a view of the whole thing, my traveling up and down and up again. These hills and valleys are everywhere until the day I cease to be.

Entries-2017 and On

The Sandbox is an ongoing meditation and process around healing, living and art too. As I journey forward in making my work public, I am finding it important to show the daily life of the Sandbox. Like a painter who invites you into her studio, this feels to me like showing the world fresh paint on a canvas, the work that's still drying, the questions asked but not yet answered.

I also happen to work in clay hence the photo of what is called green ware (unfired clay and still wet)--it is to me a peak of the most recent work, of me today. It is my goal to post a relatively fresh photo of greenware in just the same way that I post fresh Sandbox transcripts,

As I journey in this mode of daylighting my process, including my present day entries, I see cut-off points in where I take a chunk of work and place it somewhere else. Because at some point, "This is me now" becomes..."This was me then."

The first time I did this, I packaged up entries from December 23, 2016 to February 19, 2017 in a section called: Winter to Spring. The second time, I packed up February 20, 2017 - March 25, 2017 in a section called: February to March. The third time I move April 8, 2017 to June 12, 2017, a period of time I call Should I File where I draft and then consider filing a complaint to the Board about my bad therapy. On June 12th, I finally do hit send.

After filing the complaint, I begin to open up to a deeper connection to loneliness I have felt in my present life and loneliness from long ago as well. These entries constitute a section called Mostly About Leaving which runs from June 16, 2017 to August 18, 2017.

Which brings me to my current "now" which I believe is about waking up to relationships in my world, what was, what is and a building towards what will be.

***

8/19/17

I am digging hard these days to try and figure out why so much sadness. Some of the digging I do here, with consciousness, and some of it just happens, comes out in unexpected ways.

Like last night. When we are having dinner with “close” friends whom I realize, as the dinner goes on and as I open my mouth to speak, maybe haven’t been that close.