Another Lifetime

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Good morning everyone! It's been too long since we've really talked. I've been busy pushing poems your way, sorry about that! As you can tell it's something I've been focusing on quite a bit lately, and I've kind of burrowed myself into my blog in a way that doesn't encourage much interaction with you all. Then there's work. I won't go into it. Just know that I miss you guys!

In some important ways I've been doing quite well. It's tiring, but I've been shaving away some of these layers (ok, defenses). I feel supported. Interactions with my husband are hilarious, playful, and warm right now. I am happy.

I still flounder when it comes to figuring out what I need, want, or even like.
For example, should I go to the Newport Folk Festival this weekend? I can't seem to put my finger on any kind of preference. I would enjoy a day at the beach, only it's gray, showers are expected, and I'd have to make small talk with the entire extended family on my Dad's side. You have just experienced an authentic stream of Sheila's consciousness that invites boredom and loneliness into a perfectly good summer's morning. This is how precious weekend moments slip away my friends!:)

I'm off to seize the day. What are you up to? I hope you are well. Happy Saturday to you!

Cheers,
Sheila

2 comments:

Cindy said...: i love your poems! i think it's your blog and you should express yourself as you want to. i'm glad you're feeling well and happy.; August 3, 2009 at 3:44 PM
kendalee said...: Hi! Good to hear from you Sheila, and sorry it's taken me a day or two to join the conversation. I love your poems and have been enjoying them, but I love to hear your normal chatty voice too and it's great when it says that you're happy. All that hard work on shaving away layers is worth it if that's the outcome! How did you decide to spend your weekend? Did you go to the festival?

I'm struggling a bit with "figuring out what I need, want or even like" too right now. Work is going through the worst kind of hamster wheel phase (quite exhausting and soul-destroying when it continues for too long) and there's lots of inner head and heart roiling going on (some related to work, most not) but not enough time to really sit with it and just reflect, so that answers can float up out of the turbulence. Your Peruvian gent's question, "Are you happy?" has been tumbling around in my head... I don't think I am. But am I unhappy? I'm not sure I am. So what does this mean for me? Haven't a clue. I need to write it out to process it but I haven't found the energy to do that yet. So that's what I'm up to... running, roiling and not really writing. You did ask :)

Happy Tuesday to you!; August 4, 2009 at 1:51 PM

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What I'm Reading

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson

The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb

The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
"Esme stares at the spiked rocks. She stares and stares until they begin to lose their third dimension, until they begin to look unfamiliar, insubstantial. Like the way words said over and over become just a slurry of a sound. She says the word 'word' over and over in her head until she hears only 'dwur-dwur-dwur'. She is aware of those numbers, the two and the eight, trying to find a place to slip back in. They have been lurking at the edges where she pushed them and they are mounting an assault, a break-in. She won't have it. She will not."

The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
"But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, -so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,- that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart."

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
"She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things"

The Life You Can Save: Acting now to end world poverty, Peter Singer
"In the United States, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air conditioning. All have access to health care. I am not quoting these figures to deny that the poor in the United States face genuine difficulties. Nevertheless, for most, these difficulties are of a different order than those of the world's poorest people."

Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My search for love and art, Gene Wilder

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
"I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glimpse of myself in a security mirror's reflection. In that moment my brain did an odd thing-it fired off this split second message: 'Hey! You know her! That's a friend of yours!' And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar......Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend"

The Kindness of Strangers, Katrina Kittle

The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho, translated by Alan Clarke
"'Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,' his heart said. 'We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them- the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place. So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.'"

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
"For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves;"

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
"The room hovered around me with great gentleness, as if the chairs and the tables and the walls were witholding their weight out of sympathy for my sudden frailty"

Another Lifetime

Saturday, August 1, 2009

2 comments:

What I'm Reading

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