A Reprise

Often as the day grows older I get a great sense of anxiety, like I need to do something. Often when I have this feeling I will go late into the night shopping on eBay or doing something mindless to block that overwhelming feeling. It seems like such a thing in my life that I don't think I can be the only person that feels this way. The day is over, I am dissatisfied. I want to let of this ambition. It steals the moments on the porch, the long, long days that last forever in which I manage to do nothing  and everything. I want to know that if I let go of this tension, that everything will be okay as time goes on, that I don't need to jump tracks or produce a magnum opus. I don't want to produce a great work to have the kind of happiness I want to have. I want to let go of those ambitions. It seems behind each one is an insecurity. I want to have the mind I had before college, when I had no driving need, no ambition, no expectation. In order to ...

I love to go out when the light is fading. I love it when we go to Burleson in the evening. There is a small old house that we pass, that seems to sag, and inside an amber light is always lit. The scalloped orange shade is always glowing and it gives me a sense I can't describe. I have a feeling the light has been lit in that way every evening for longer than I can imagine, and I feel such a deep curiosity about that sagging home and its inhabitants. The closest I can get is to say that I want to be beyond time in that way someday.

It is consoling me immensely this morning to read Charlotte Bronte, of the fair lady's suffering at the hands of the withered hag and the well-bred but villainous and deficient man. Other than that there is little consolation other than that time passes and in hours I will say farewell to this institution for a while.

I feel myself now in a curious in-between. I am trying to be myself, because I find to express any of my various personas simply doesn't fit. I feel uncertain. I like it when I make the decision to do something. I am filled with this spirit of confidence. Right now I wish I could enter into that hyper attitude, that I have entered into so often in the past few months, and often written in this blog in that attitude, but I have to be honest about where I am now. I am uncertain. I have a couple of things to talk about, so perhaps it will not be inauthentic to mention them now, even though I'm not flying headlong into the wind. I have continued my studies in the three aspects of the Goddess. This weekend I read an article which made me feel sort of afraid about the future. To be a Maiden is involuntary. To be a Crone is involuntary. Yet to be a Mother is voluntary. The Mother is the height, the summer, the conflagration of life. However I don't embody the aspects of the Mo...

I had this conversation 2X last week. "What are you doing this weekend?" "Well, we're having this sort of family reunion." "Where?" "It's in New Hope. Kind of near Jewett. uh, Mexia.? Halfway between here and Houston." They know where that is. "In a park or pavilion?" "No, actually it's in the cemetery!" "In the. what? Whoa." Yeah, I used to think everybody did something like this. This week I learned doing this is kind of different. Cool!   My dad and stepmother and husband. I'm not sure about this blouse. It's a vintage. I need to accessorize it a little better. Some chunky jewelry.   This is where it all started. Napoleon Bonaparte Story and his wife Elizabeth. We always, always go to their graves when we visit. They're at the very back of the cemetery.   Afterward we had pecan pie at Aunt Verlon's. It was so awesome. I just took it all in.

  I am anticipating summer and making plans. Summer is the most important time of my life. The starey sun makes my brain come alive. I love it when the weather's hot. It can never get too hot for me. I create and do things. I have visions and characters come to me. I read, I revel, and I sort of stop being work-a-day Amanda. Basically I still work, I just don't give a damn about work anymore, I am only thinking about the summer and snow cones and writing by the pond. I go outside every day and read and write. This summer I am going to re-read some older romances that were key to me in high school. I also have a great stash of new poetry and prose to read, Victorians all, mmm. I have already started on the summer story "Madelyn." I haven't decided how long it will be, don't really care. It is the summer story because sometimes stories are born out of sunlight and weeds and highway, and this is one of them. It's about one of my weedy, reedy maidens. (See ...

How is it possible that I worked so hard all day long. I mean, worked it. I actually sweated. listened to techno music and drank black tea all day, hardly ate anything. worked and worked and took one little break. Now I'm at Borders and I am so freaking hyper and excited I don't know what to do. Unfortunately I know what is coming. A sugar low. My friend at Starbucks suggested fewer pumps in my raspberry white chocolate mocha last week. And she told me about the sugar low, which I think I experience sometimes. Well, it is what it is. I have had had two people I really like give me special attention today. I am such a child, I know. But I love it when the different people respond to me. It's like they see the unicorn horn. Ha ha. The people in my line of work, though, they never saw a unicorn. And I am wearing my jaunty black sailor dress. I wasn't sure today was the day for me to wear this. The sleeves are unusually puffy, and I felt like I needed to be in a perky mo...

Last time we went to Jefferson there was a poor old nag parked outside of our hotel every day. Her skin sagged over her bones. She literally looked like she was going to die. I was upset by the sight of this poor old horse and eventually connected her with the sight of an old-fashioned moustached man sitting in our hotel lobby. Apparently, these were Liza Jane and Mr. Tom, respectively. When we were in the coffee shop I mentioned last post there was this little stone commemorating them. The reason it was important was because I was incensed by the sight of that pathetic horse. I thought she might be mistreated, but Nathan managed to persuade me that the 110 F temperatures were causing the Clydesdale some misery. I had already begun planning my campaign, http:// www.savelizajane.com , but I agreed reluctantly.     Well, while we were waiting for our ghost tour to begin, Nathan alerted me to the presence of a certain carriage in our vicinity, and I took this photograph of ...

We went canoeing for three hours on Caddo Lake near Jefferson. It was something we had not done since college, and it raised for me sweet feelings from the past. Canoeing was the only KINE I could take with any success. Now that I understand myself a little better, it makes perfect sense. Rather than disrupting or challenging, you are using your energy to transport yourself, quietly. Canoeing is useful and good. Things with balls or instruments that hit balls are bad.       It also reminded me of my oft-canoeing partner, who happened to be rowing with me, who is my husband, and I felt a deep sense of connection to my past with him.      This old boat was branded a Chrysler and looked like it was from the '70's. We liked that. I thought this house was interesting. It looks like a double wide and a single somehow connected together.   Welcome to eternity. Tonight my heart is sorrowing. I am thinking about marriage. I am thinking about ...

The dim shadows of happiness, the little bits and pieces of idea, the little flickers and flares. I was going to put them together. I was going to re-craft Cambriel. I was going to sew some more and stitch the industrial patterns I found this weekend of granaries and windmills. I love those things. Life has a way of making you deal with it. I thought if I crafted myself coldly this morning somehow I would survive, but while there are no serious exterior conflicts, inwardly I am crumbling. I need the grass and sun. I need someone or something to tell me it will all be okay. This morning my talismans of bravery are cold black business attire and t.a.t.u. It's not enough, but it has to be, and so it is, and what glues it all together and makes it work is this insidious pain at my heart, the sacrifice to make this everyday day just normal.