Zombie Fear

I have always been afraid of zombies. Terrified of them. Now, I don't believe they are real, but in movies, and such, they freak me out. Completely and totally. I start shivering. The first movie I ever walked out of was Return of the Living Dead-- I was ten. That's when I decided on cremation, because I would never want my body to be reanimated into a zombie.

I never quite understood why I was so afraid of Zombies. I generally think when a person is unreasonably afraid of something, there actually is a reason, a bad past with the thing, some sort of subconscious relation, maybe even a past life experience. But zombies?

Recently, I made a connection, though, about the zombie thing. It was a light bulb moment.

The zombie thing is frightening because I am afraid of losing control. Not of other people, but of myself. The idea of being a human one minute, and being an irrational, ravening monster the next, well that is a nightmare to me.

And that does not come out of nowhere. I watched my father go from being my hero, to an irrational, insane, ravening monster, eating everything around him, my easter candy, the biggest steak, our sense of security, his own potential, our futures.

I have always been afraid that I would turn into my father, that I would go crazy, too. It's the reason why I never did drugs, not even experimentally (except for a puff of a doobie every once in a while-- which it turns out, I don't like.) The fear of loss of control is also why I don't drink to excess. I rarely get drunk-- I hate the way it feels, not being able to be in control of my body and mind.

You might say that my zombie fear has been an effective one for me, keeping me off drugs and too much drink, even a good fear-- but it has it's down side. Yes, I can be straight about myself and what I do, I can be my creatively perfectionist self, but I have also kept myself out of the ravening zombie world-- the bigger world where I have no control over what comes at me.

This zombie fear keeps me in a very small world. I am afraid of being out of control, of the big whirl of life. It kept me out of relationships and in unrequited crushes for most of my youth and young adulthood. It keeps me out of showing my art and publishing my writing. I've got to keep things small so I can hold onto them and keep myself safe and understood. Once life gets big, once you add people and demands, once you put yourself out there, you just have to accept what comes back at you-- the love and respect, as well as the demands and expectations and judgments and criticisms.

Is the zombie world going to eat me????

When I look at it this way, it IS frightening. I could shrink back down and hide away in a little hole (which always seems the best way to avoid the zombies in the movies, as long as there is a nice healthy lock and door on that hole, along with ample provisions to survive.) My zombie fear will take over my life.

I don't want to be at the mercy of the zombie fear. So I've got to remember that I am the hero of my own story. I am the warrior, the zombie warrior. I'm not the chick in the movie who is stupid enough to get her brains eaten, I am the survivor. It's my story. I made it up, it doesn't have control over me, I have control over it.

There's even proof. Uh huh. Proof, because if I were still caught up in zombie fear, I never would have been able to find Sean. I never would have been able to let another person in. I never would have gotten out of that safe hole. Now I've got a son, and he grows, and gets older, and I lose more control over him with every new thing that he learns, every development he makes-- and that's a GOOD thing.

The 15 Minute Choo-Choo Train

I ran out of things to say. Hmmph. There's some funkiness with the dates on my site because one day after I posted, I got another idea, and rather than being cocky and thinking that idea would hang out just waiting for me to write it down, I sat down and drafted it. I figured I'd post it the next day, so I did, although it took me a while to figure out how to change the date signature. But then I had another idea, so I sat down and drafted that one too. But by the next day, I couldn't figure out how to change the date signature, and the baby started crying, so I just posted it as it was.

What does that go to show? That I am a tech idiot-- and that's the reason there are no pictures of Gabriel on this site-- and that if you sit down at the computer-- if you show up-- the ideas will show up too. As long as you try.

If you put them off, however, get distracted, do something else, those ideas often dry up, and then you have to start all over again. Which is where I am now. Doh. And here's the baby crying.

Gosh. I really have to learn to utilize those spare 15 minutes to the best of my ability. If you're on a roll, take advantage. Because it takes a lot longer than the next 15 minute window to get that choo choo train of inspiration going again.

I'm going to make a list of topics to write. That's what I used to do when I was teaching poetry. Okay, I didn't use topics, I used strong words, and I had a little pot where I collected all these juicy, strong words, The kids named it "The Witche's Brew of Words". Then the kids would pick a word and write their poems. Sometimes they would pick three or four, and see how they could link them up. It's actually a pretty good exercise, and lets your subconscious work.

I think it would be good to modify that exercise for me. Put ideas and words that have to do with where I am right now into a pot. My Mommy Cauldron. Then when I sit down to write, or draw, I can pull an idea and just riff on that. 15 minutes. No stopping. Write. Write. Write.

There ARE ways to do this, mamacita.

Mommy's coming, Gabriel!

If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride

That's what my mom always used to say. One of those quaint sayings that I supposed came out of her upbringing on a chicken farm. She also said, "You don't have the sense God gave little chickens." Now, remember, we were children raised as Buddhist in Morningside Heights, New York City. My mom was pretty exotic, among all the Blacks and Latinos, and so were her sayings.

When I was a kid, I never got the whole whishes and horses and beggars thing. I think I understand, now.

Wishes are all about what you don't have. They're all about what is lacking in your life, how it's just not good enough. You can wish and wish and wish all you want, but all wishing alone will bring you is dissatisfaction, which is far worse than nothing.

I'm working now on NOT wishing for things. Like wishing I could go out and drink and hang out and socialize like I used to or I had more time to just write and paint and reflect. Like wishing my apartment were cleaner or I was better at taking care of it. Like wishing Gabriel could be on a schedule so I could organize my life. Like wishing I had more money and could buy all the cool things out there. Like wishing I had taken action on my career earlier, so I had some publications under my belt before I had a baby.

None of those wishes are bad. They might all make my life better, easier, more enjoyable... oh, wait. That's the trap, right there. Thinking that means that my life is worse, harder and not fun. Any life has room for improvement, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it.

What I'm working on is actually CHOOSING the life that I have. This is my life, I don't want to prefer some other life, I want to be satisfied with this one. I want to choose having this life, simply because I choose it. Not because it's better or worse or imperfect or fun or whatever, simply because it's mine, and I choose to live fully in MY LIFE.

Sometimes all those wishes about how my life could be, should be, would be better if only... well, it's as if I am waiting for my life to get going, some day, when it gets all straightened out and I get those wonderful wishes and I fix all that is wrong with it. But I'm living in the future, in the not having, in the should be's- and not the IS of my life.

I guess this means I have to accept myself and my life the way I am. Accept my sloppy apartment, and sloppy tendencies. Accept that I do not have money to spare on luxuries. Accept that Sean works long hours and I am responsible for the baby and the home. Accept that the past is gone, and the only time I have now is RIGHT NOW.

It doesn't mean that I don't work on improving all these things. It doesn't mean I don't do things for my future. But it does mean I let go of not being perfect, or being enough. Life just is. It's mine, and it's what I have to work with. It's also what I have to face up to.

BUY! BUY! BUY!

Lately, I have been tempted by desires to purchase everything. Oh, such desires! I want cute shirts and shoes and jeans and skirts and coats, and little doodads that have no purpose. I want suits for Sean and fancy jeans that he would refuse to even wear. I want funky tshirts for Gabriel, and handmade jackets, imported jumpers. I want cameras and computers and furniture and cookware and linens. I want trips to Hawaii and weekends in the country. I want cars and flat screen, hi def televisions with tivo. I want new hair cuts and make up. I want baby carriers and baby booties and fancy strollers. I want things decorated with embroidery and crochet. I want flowering plants and potted herbs and strawberry pots. I want garden furniture and sun awnings. I want exotic fruit. I want filet mignon. I want organic produce. I want great wine. I want micro brewed beers. I want deep dark chocolate truffles. I want caviar. I've never wanted caviar, before.

I've spent a long time not spending. A really long time being very frugal. This is the cost of being a stay at home mom. I usually pride myself on my ability to spend very little, to do a lot with nothing. I am a repurposer, a creative thrifter, a sidewalk scavenger, a yard saler, and I am proud of this. But I've had to be so frugal I haven't even been able to thrift shop. I've repressed my shopping side so much, that she's starting to grow larger and sprout another much uglier, louder and more expensive head.

But I don't want to be this rabid consumer. (As if I had the money to be) I want to live lightly on the land. It'd be cool to hand knit sweaters and carve bedsteads and farm and grow things to feed my family. Trade services and goods the way people once did. This is a lot harder to do in the city than it is in the country. Although I did know someone who made cabbage soup out of ornamental cabbages he had poached from the side of some building.

In my heart, I am a country girl. It must be my grandparents' blood coming out. My grandpa who gave up his chicken farm and built his own boat that he sailed down the Mississippi to a new life in Florida. Or my grandma (the other side) who grew up in Puerto Rico in a palm frond hut, that would blow down at each hurricane. They would just put another one up when the weather calmed.

In reality, I am a city girl, with the attendant rent hikes and expensive tastes. I do like the Museums, and gourmet food, and I'm a fashion freak, although not a slave to it.

I like to keep a balance between the country girl and the city girl, and usually I manage. But lately, these unrequited urges to be fancy have-it-all are overwhelming me. I want all those useless frilly things! I want to be like the girls I read about! I want to buy all the baby supplies that I know we don't need! I want to climb the Empire State Building like King Kong and shout from the top of it:

"I WANT IT ALL!!!!"

HomePlay

Back in my last lifetime, when I was a High School teacher, my co-teacher Susan came up with the concept of "homeplay". The idea was that the assignments you took home from school were fun and enlightening, not necessarily "work" at all. And if you looked at them as play instead of work, they wouldn't seem so onerous, it would be more like a game than work.

So we called all of our homework assignments homeplay.

The kids weren't fooled, of course. They knew we were still asking for reading and writing and deadlines and all sorts of stuff, but maybe some of them realized that the things we were asking them to do at home were sometimes not as grim as your typical homework-- they might have been reflective pieces, or fun readings, or things on the media or on their own interests.

I bring this up because I have been so exhausted with all I have to do as a Stay at home mom, it just feels overwhelming. It's so much work, some of which I am not really cut out for. And it never stops. It is relentless and demanding, although it is generally not hard labor. The baby is just one part of it. There is also all the housework, and anyone who has been to my home will tell you, housework is not my forte.

But I used to dream of being able to stay home and raise kids. What a wonderful idea, raising children, cooking, making a beautiful home, creating, writing... Little did I know how I would respond to actually being in that situation. Now I know that I am still not getting a great amount of sleep, and sleep deprivation has a good deal to do with my inability to stay on top of all of this, but still, it ain't easy.

What would happen, though, if I stopped thinking of all this drudgery as work. Oh, see, that is not the appropriate attitude at all. It doesn't have to be drudgery. I could be making a beautiful home and filling it with life and beauty and color and music and laughter and art and poetry and song. And I could also stop thinking that I have done nothing on any partcular day-- raising a baby is a lot. I am feeding and cleaning and playing with, and teaching, and singing to and dancing with, and exercising and walking, and nursing and putting to sleep, and putting on puppet shows (well, Ernie shows, since he is our only puppet). Basically I've been doing a lot and it will help Gabriel as he grows. I have even managed to toss in a shower for myself here and there, or a cooking a meal, or washing and folding some laundry, sweeping, etc. Every once in a while I get to write in my blog or in my journal. Hmm. I refuse to say that I should be doing more. But I do want to say that I could be enjoying it more while I'm doing it.

This is the crux of the issue. I want to enjoy this time in my life, this opportunity to stay at home with the baby and just be. I don't know how long we will be able to manage me staying home. It's really only been that way out of default, since I don't have a job to go back to, but it is a chance that I don't want to louse up by being miserable and dissatisfied.

My aim is happiness, and so, from now on, I'm going to try to switch what I am doing from "housework" to "houseplay." Like playing house. Like a little girl might. Like having fun.

I'll try to keep you updated on how that is working for me.

Paradoxically...

I just came back from getting Gabriel his yogurt. While at the grocery store, I passed the Entenman's display. Usually, I have no trouble resisting Entenman's, but this time, they had my favorite, the raspberry danish, so I had to buy it.

Came home from the grocery store, Gabriel asleep in his stroller, and decided I had to have my slice of raspberry danish right away, with a cup of coffee and hot milk. So here I am, making my afternoon snack, heating up the milk in the pot on the stove, pouring it into the cup with coffee, and all of a sudden I get a wave of sense memory.

My grandma. That's who I remember, with her stovetop-made El Pilon coffee and scalded milk, lots of sugar, and her cheapdelicioius cake treats. We'd sit down at the old red porcelain topped table and drink coffee and eat sweets. I miss my grandma, and wish she could have had a chance to get to know Gabriel, or Sean, for that matter. She did get a chance to meet some of her great grandchildren before she died, but they were of the more distant cousins, the ones she didn't help raise, not her girls.

When we were little, my sister and I spent every weekend with our grandma, watching tv and getting snacks that were forbidden at home, candies and sugar cereal. We'd visit our cousins and Grandma would teach us to crochet or sew doll clothes. Our uncle would teach us Gin Rummy. Then when I was ten, my family moved in with Grandma.

That was the beginning of the end. My father was paranoid schizophrenic. We were dirt poor. There were too many people living in that apartment in the Bronx, and soon, there were too many cats. I became a teenager there, with the help of my mom and my grandma, and I suppose you could say, my dad, too, although it was more like inspite of him. It was miserable. I was miserable and yet....

Here's the paradoxical part... I think that was one of the happiest periods of my life. It's so wierd to look at it like that, because I just wanted to get out of there, but it wasn't about living there, or any of the things that were going on in my life. The happiness came from inside.

I was the happiest then because I was the most hopeful. I believed things would be good, would be better. I always looked at the bright side of things. I was an optimist, and that made me a generally happy person.

Later on, when I had more of what I wanted in life, when things weren't as difficult, when I was enroute to reaching my dreams, that is where the dissatisfaction set in. Depression. Pessimism. Perfectionism.

Paradox-- life sucked, and I was "happy." Life is working and on track, and I all I can see is what I don't have, what isn't working, what I haven't done.

Maybe it's a factor of how much more I know, now. When I was a teenager, I tried writing a novel, and thought it was GREAT. Then I learned what I SHOULD be doing as an author, what made a book really great, and I began to believe that everything I wrote wasn't good enough. And that goes the same for the rest of life.

Now that I know all of the possible roadblocks to the success I want in life, the roadblocks are all I can see. I don't see the road, I don't see the beautiful scenery at the distance, I don't see the wildflowers by the side of the road or the deer off in the trees, I don't think I even see the detours, or the roadsigns... just the roadblocks.

I want to see the world as a child sees. I want to go back to the uncorrupted world view that I once had. Okay, I know the world sucks, but I want to be okay with the world sucking. I want to believe that some parts of it don't. Some parts of the world are just as brilliant and pure as a sunset. I want to go back to the belief that the suckiness of the world does not taint the possibilities that are there.

And I do believe in that innocence, I do, I just have to remember to keep working on believing it.

On Time

This relativity stuff sure is relative lately.

All I know is that time used to go so slowly, and ever since having Gabriel, it has sped by like a zooming fire engine. I can barely keep track of the days and the weeks go like madness. I blink and it's already time to take the recycling to the curb again.

On one hand that's good-- it means that my mommy's group will come back around sooner rather than later. It means that Spring is almost here WOO HOO! On the other hand, another week has gone by where I haven't done anything with my writing, where I haven't called all the people I haven't called, where I haven't cleaned or cooked or organized or been who I want to be.

I remember when I was a child, time went so slowly. Christmas was a millenium away, three weeks without allowance was a terrible sentence, and Summer lasted forever, was my entire life, infact. And yet, the older I got, the more birthdays I had, the more Summers and Christmases. Each week got shorter, each day did. An hour was like a blink.

But with Gabriel, the whole thing has sped up so much more rapidly. He's already almost 8mos, which is almost 9months, which is not that far off from one year. Soon he'll be walking, talking, running, taking off into the air, going to school, growing a beard, getting married...goodness. I can't even manage to take a shower two days running.

And yet for him, each day must reach off into infinity. Each nap in his crib must stretch so long. For him, the hour I am playing with him on the couch, tossing him into the air, singing songs to him, tickling him and making him laugh, that must be a long golden tinged hour.

That's a sweet thought. For him, he has long stretches of mama, glorious, beautiful mama, who is the funniest person in the world, the softest and warmest. Then he goes to sleep, and it starts all over again, with new adventures everyday. Hmm, looked at it from that direction, life's not half bad at all.

BUT I AM THE WIZARD!!!

Funny how being a mom changes everything. Oh wait, they tell you that. But what I mean is that it feels as if everything that comes before was a different person, or a different life. It’s hard to connect to that stuff, that brainset. Something that was clear and simple before, is now just simply incomprehensible. I know it’s still there. I still have the knowledge. I still have the ability, but it is as if it is hiding behind a curtain. The baby is playing in front of the curtain, and that distracts me all to hell and I don’t even bother trying to open the curtain. Then, other times, all I want to do is open that curtain, and I’m staring at it filled with need, but the baby is crying, or nursing or needs lunch, or maybe I have to clean up after the baby or feed myself so I don’t collapse—and there is just no way I can get to the curtain to look behind and figure out who the wizard is.

BUT I AM THE WIZARD!!! Oh great and powerful. So easy to forget, so easy to lose focus, to lose confidence in my own wizarding powers-- pick your favorite wizard, Oz, Gandalf, Merlin, Harry Potter-- or I suppose “witchly” powers would be a better term, since wizards have a tendency to be men, and there’s something very important to my own powers about being a woman. So pick your favorite witch, Morgan Le Fay, The Wicked Witch of the West, Glinda, Hermione, the Witches of Eastwick, or of Salem, the girls from that movie, The Craft.

Do you notice that wizards are mostly wise and good, and witches have a tendency to be considered evil and dangerous??? Hmmm. I guess we’re fighting against the fear of women’s power. A woman who wields power like a man is a witch. This isn’t just my college feminism rearing it’s head, here. It’s something I have to deal with as a mother, as a (I can’t believe I refer to myself this way) house wife, a mate.

Here’s what I am fighting against: All my power, all my energy, all my creative and generative fire should be going into my child, home, partner. And this isn’t just from outside sources like society, or tv, or my fiancée, or my mom—no, this expectation is coming from me.

Such a muck my brain is in. I want to create, I want to be strong, I want to be THE WIZARD, but my urge is to be caretaker, to be passive and react to others’ actions (Sean, Gabriel, the washing machine, even the machine of my own body), to be THE MOM.

Truth is it’s scary to step into your own power, to be that selfish, to be that single minded, to put yourself out into the world and say I AM THE WIZARD. The fear stops me. The fear keeps me from making time for myself and my creativity. The overwhelm of all the new responsibilities stops me from taking the first steps to create. The exhaustion of taking care of baby and home allows me an easy way out of the struggle to make something of depth and meaning. The actuality of my day to day life, that speeds from baby nap to feed to baby nap, with me trying to fit all the stuff in, that stops me, too. I want to DO, I want to BE… but at the same time, it’s easier to just be the mom and take care of others instead of myself and my work. I want to, I don’t want. And there are so many convenient excuses.

O, the muck of the twisty brain.

one more thing

Did you catch my use of "Oh La!" How very Jane Austen of me.

All right, all right, I'm going to bed, now.

Ramblings from an Overtired Mom

Why am I still awake? Why am I up? It's 10:53 and my eyes are glazing over. Exhaustion, exhaustion. But, still, I'm here, messing around on line and watching the reunion episode of Project Runway. TV plays way too big a role in my life.

The baby will be up at 6:30 or 7am, and I've got to get up with him and start my day. It's just so much easier if I've had a decent night's sleep.

I also spend too much time on Urban Baby, a website for moms. Whenever I don't have the speed to get up and go, and shlump around and hit refresh on the UB message boards.

But things are getting better all the time. I am slowly figuring out what the heck I want to do with my life and how I'm gonna get there. Slowly, so don't ask me to tell you how. But I did make a list of all the projects that I am or could be involved with that would further my career and/or make me some money.

OH La!

I could go over the work that I've already done and try to get some of that published...

My dozens of poems
Ruby Jack, my kids story
My first, lonely and abandoned novel, Marguerite.

It seems like I should do stuff with that mess, seeing as I am already part of the way there. And publishing would help me get ahead with teaching and more publishing, don't cha think?

I'm also thinking of some new projects.

I'd like to write a book called Mom Creates-- a creativity book designed to help mothers and other strange creatures discover/rediscover their own artistic urges.
And I'd like to write a science fiction novel... I don't know what about exactly... but it is gestating.
I also was just invited by a friend to create a tarot card deck... she's doing the same, so it would kind of be a group project, or maybe a support group project.

Well, all the projects are writing except for the tarot deck... but that's not actually a new project for me, considering I started researching and collecting ideas something like ten years ago. I have actually decided that I am not going to start any new endeavors. By that, I mean things that I would have to learn an entirely new skill set for-- like jewelry making or creating stuffed animals out of home felted sweaters... let's just say I spend too much time on crafting boards, where I get silly inspired.

Yes. I am over tired. Yes. I am rambling. But the key to look at here is that the ideas are coming back, even some of the energy that allows me to explore the ideas... even if only for fifteen minutes at a time, ever. I mean, looky here. I'm actually writing in my blog, instead of hitting refresh one more time on the repetitive, snarky, sometimes informative and occassionally entertaining yet highly addictive Urban Baby Website.

I'm going to bed now.