With the Light on
Published on Jul 16 2010 | Filed under: Embraced by Darkness
Oklahoma was a hot bloody work out. I tore the cartilage between three of my ribs up under my left boob. Four weeks now and no reprieve. A sneeze or a cough leaves me almost in tears. I had the thought last night of, “What if I get a cold?” And it left me chilled and nearly terrified. I literally could not imagine anything worse physically than needing to cough right now.
Hard Core Pain.
I have not been posting as much as I should. It’s natural, us folks from Minnesota, for our work schedules (or our life schedules would be a better way of putting it) to be astronomically packed in the summer. I have to leave in two weeks to return to Oklahoma for another two weeks. I know I said in my last post that we would be finishing up the last time I was there. It didn’t quite happen. We are so close it’s almost worth getting teary over. Two weeks will be enough time to truly be done with it all. Greatly sad and wonderful in every way. Like everything else in my life right now.
Get it all in Before Winter!
Minnesotan’s would probably believe my schedule for the next fourteen days but I don’t think anyone would from anywhere else in the country. I am packed from dawn until dusk and, torn cartilage and all, I am running hard to catch up.
Too Long.
I wasn’t there long enough and too long. For the last five years of my life I feel like I’ve been on a highway jumping back and forth between two cars. One: my life there (so different), the other: (so comfortable) my life here. Always I jump out of the Oklahoma car and race desperately to catch the Minnesota car, I can never run fast enough. Sure, I get there and get in, but I always missed something. I can never truly catch up. I’ve learned what it’s like to be holding out my hand-cuffed wrists to friends and family saying, “I can’t make it to your wedding, I’m sorry, I simply can’t.” I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I look forward to choices again, where I’d have to lie about where I was if I didn’t make the wedding, or actually get to go. But I can’t deny the truth of it: This hand-cuffed life style fits me very well, I like being not all that available (whether it’s by choice or not), I like having an excuse. I do not like being at anyone’s beck and call, which is why I never want to be a mother and why I am in no way the marrying type.
The Blank Canvas Gallery
I have received a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the Blank Canvas Gallery in downtown Park Rapids, Minnesota. I’ve had the chance to become a member by doing their website (which I will say came out gorgeous! Go look at it!) in exchange for membership dues. My prints are not up yet because of serious financial hardship (isn’t that all of us right now?) I simply couldn’t afford them. Then I stupidly held out in the hope of a grant and let half the summer disappear on me when I should have just bit the damn bullet and got a loan from the bank five months ago. Well, better late than never. The bank gave me what I needed and I got the prints ordered this morning with some money left over to ease my stress a little. 
Joseph and I
I will keep this memory for the rest of my life. We had just finished gutting the den we had been living in for the last five years, our home. Ripped out the dirt brown carpet, tore down the paneling. Put in new lighting. Hung sheetrock, taped and bedded, matched the texture and had painted everything. It was incredible. It smelled and looked so good. Our black, dirty cave became a sun room. Joseph brought in a big roll of extra carpet we had left over from the rest of the house. I was upstairs, couldn’t find him and finally went down to the den to find him on that soft, new carpet, laying on his back in the entry, just smiling up at those new lights, recessed into the newly painted ceiling.
I joined him, laid down beside him with our bodies touching in a hundred different places. We talked about the den, our place, our home for so long. The place we inevitably had grown to hate. I can still hear him and me, talking about that weird brick wall, those horrific blinds, that linoleum that had become something else entirely with age. So many different things, so much time to tear it all out. So much time living in it, laughing in it, making love in it. We remembered and we both laughed until we cried. I will never let that moment go, it was ours and we were still, somehow, us.
No matter how he and I turn out after all of this, nothing will be the same. The us that we were with that place will remain with it. When it sells, that us will be our memory. I hope I never forget. Being us with him, in that place, were the best times of my life.
The Book
Yes, my book is still beside me, as it always has been. God knows, it’s been my best friend long before anyone else besides my mom. Like all things, getting it edited has taken about fifty times more time than I expected it to. I’m not naive with my time-lines, I’m just hopeful, right? But, as we speak, I am about to hand my printed book to my editor and, hopefully, she’ll start soon. She’s going to go through it one part at a time. So, while she’s going through Part One, I’m going through Part Two etc. I have no hopes on time-line’s anymore (how could I still after that god damned house?) whenever it gets done, it gets done. I can just hardly wait.
