Wow!
I couldn't get into my blog for the longest time. I'd switched in and out of new emails, changed passwords, and forgotten under which email account I originally signed into this blog. Sad, sad.
Now I'm in. I've noted my username/password somewhere I can remember it, and I'm off!
I'll endeavor to catch up on news, arts, friends, family, etc.... over the rest of this week.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Moving ahead Artistically...
I'm reading from my manuscript "Fire on a Circle" this coming Saturday. I've put this manuscript together with the thought of submitting it as a whole to some of the book-printing contests. I think it's almost there, but reading in front of folks always makes a person hear the clunker lines and feel the surety of the good poems.
Feel free to join me! I'll feed you and ask your opinion afteward!
Kim
Feel free to join me! I'll feed you and ask your opinion afteward!
Kim
Monday, January 11, 2010
New Year, New Me
It's been a wild ride through 2009. I am stepping into a new skin, learning to relax into the 'now' and working at refocusing my life on my passions. Terri, Writing, Theater, Friends, Family, Cats.
Henry here is a cat that belongs to my friend Susan Baker. This picture was taking in Texas. I haven't seen her in a dogs age (no offense Henry) and neither have I seen my friends Daniel and Sarah (who are in Austin, TX) or Tim and Jean (who are now in North Carolina).
Time to take a trip I think. Perhaps Terri and I need to do a year of travel in 2010. Perhaps I really need to stick to home and 'don't change anything for 6 months after someone close dies' or perhaps life is to short to follow that advice. We'll see.
How as the new year you ask? Trial-by-fire, hold-on-to-the-seat-of-your-pants wicked. I know this will sound like whining, but here is how the last week or so have gone:
Henry here is a cat that belongs to my friend Susan Baker. This picture was taking in Texas. I haven't seen her in a dogs age (no offense Henry) and neither have I seen my friends Daniel and Sarah (who are in Austin, TX) or Tim and Jean (who are now in North Carolina).
Time to take a trip I think. Perhaps Terri and I need to do a year of travel in 2010. Perhaps I really need to stick to home and 'don't change anything for 6 months after someone close dies' or perhaps life is to short to follow that advice. We'll see.
How as the new year you ask? Trial-by-fire, hold-on-to-the-seat-of-your-pants wicked. I know this will sound like whining, but here is how the last week or so have gone:
- 12/30/09: I got the flu & it lasted three + days
- 01/02/10: some 89 year old guy driving his car on bald summer tires slammed into us on route 15 demolishing my new Honda CRV, which we hadn't even paid our first payment on, bumping and bruising me, my sister, my nephews Ben & Chris and breaking Chris's thumb.
- 01/06/10: Terri went for surgery. They found a cyst on her overy and her CA125 (something that can be used to judge risk of cancer in your blood) was up into the 300s. They had to give her not only an oopherectomy but a full hysterectomy and we'll not know until this Thursday whether there is anything cancerous.
- 01/06/10: I started to feel a cold coming on
- 01/07/10: it really started to hit.
- 01/08/10: still feeling crappy, but got to work OK
- 01/09/10: Rest! Ah... Saturdays are good for something!
- 01/10/10: afternoon: Went to ER with Terri to be sure everything was good as she had a low-grade fever Evening: lounged awake on the couch gasping for breath through my nose as I was too stuffy to lay down and sleep...
- 01/11/09: WOW is it Monday already?
- Well, you get the point...
I just started a class this week which I am loving, though. It's called "living on purpose." it's sponsored by the ToDo Institute. Check it out of interested here: www.todoinstitute.org
I've just calculated my remaining 30,000 days (a rough guess of how long most people in developed countries can expect to live). I've got about 14,055 days to go, folks. Now the interestin part, to list what I would do if I had only 100 days to live and knew it...
- Publish my poetry
- Produce my plays
- Write a musical
- Teach kindness
- Volunteer with a family planning group
- Help a stranger
- Help a friend
- Help an opponent
- Paint a landscape
- create, storyboard, draw and write a comic book
- Spend as much time as possible with friends & family
- Go to Australia & New Zealand
- Return to London
- Walk in the woods
- Lay out in the sun
- Watch the snow fall
- Sip a cup of Tea
- rescue a child
- rescue a puppy
- start a band
- tour that band...
I think I get the idea. I think the list needs refinement. The question is, what's important? What would you do...?
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sickly Talented 23 year old!
Lately I've been working more on my drawing and painting. Just found this fantastic site for this sickly talented 23 year old. Check it out! http://mbetteker.blogspot.com Perhaps I'll post some of my own work in the next few weeks. Who knows!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Time Flies
I've been moving away from the Internet lately and closer to my writing. Seems unbelievable, but true. Twitter has helped. I could do 148 characters for a while. Still, eventually even that seemed like too much cognitive function. Better to just read twitters by others...
I've also been on this long and dark journey called cancer with my Mom. (Well, she's in the dark water, I'm just on the shore helplessly looking on.) A friend of mine from college wrote diligently every day when his wife was struggling with cancer, to the point where if I hadn't begun to read his blog before she passed, I wouldn't have known when/where her funeral was. He's currently working through a memoir about her/their experience. I can see how his writing kept him sane and strong during the process.
For me, it has been the opposite. Me, the girl who started to read in the womb, the girl who was writing and binding her own books when she was eleven, the girl who said in 5th grade, "I'm going to become a writer when I grow up, Mom."
It's as if words are a molten stone on my tongue. They sear the moment out of my mind if I try to capture them, wipe away the deep swirl of emotion, the fast ticking of the clock inside my mother's body. Sometime during the last four months, my mind drifted from words until - for once in my life - that noisy voice in my head fell silent. Perhaps that is my own form of therapy. I've been saying for years I'm going to learn to meditate, to keep my anxious mind in line. Now it's been forced on me. For several weeks, I've only been able to read poetry, and then only sporadically. Anything longer could not hold my attention. Nature holds my attention now. I sit on my porch at midnight and watch the full moon whisper through the tree branches and past my besom (Witch's broom). I drive to Burlington and watch clouds caress the mountains - clouds shaped like angels and doves sometimes, or dark fingered spectres. The hills are so green it burns my eyes, the sunset so orange I can feel the heat of the sun in my chest.
The worst time I've had was the last three days before we admitted my mother to the Fletcher Allen because I could no longer take care of her. The crushing moment of having to let her care go into someone else's hands, coupled with the moment of realizing something was wrong with her cognitive abilities as she tried to speak to us that day, finding only a slur of words and a distant stare, told me that this was the last bend in the river. She was heading into the last leg of her journey. An hour after I had her admitted, because she couldn't use her right leg, and I could no longer carry her from bed to chair, she had a seizure. It was the most frightening moment in my life, mostly because it was so frightening for her. She is all about control in her life. Her strength and ability to be in control helped her raise three children alone, after all.
Tomorrow, she goes to the Williston Respite House, where she will have her own room, be a resident and not a patient, and be able to get some strength back for this final leg of the journey. My one wish for her is that she can just 'go home and feel normal again and play with Daniel' (her youngest grandchild) at some point over the next few weeks. It's not much to ask is it? A night in her own bed, an afternoon with the grandchildren?
Life used to seem so difficult. This journey has given me the blessing of so much quality time with my mother, and some not so quality time. It's allowed me to see how deep the roots of strength grow inside of me. Now, as I release my burden, and move into a time where I can simply visit with her, the words are blossoming again. Again, a gift from my mother. Always, she is giving to me, even during her own struggles.
I've also been on this long and dark journey called cancer with my Mom. (Well, she's in the dark water, I'm just on the shore helplessly looking on.) A friend of mine from college wrote diligently every day when his wife was struggling with cancer, to the point where if I hadn't begun to read his blog before she passed, I wouldn't have known when/where her funeral was. He's currently working through a memoir about her/their experience. I can see how his writing kept him sane and strong during the process.
For me, it has been the opposite. Me, the girl who started to read in the womb, the girl who was writing and binding her own books when she was eleven, the girl who said in 5th grade, "I'm going to become a writer when I grow up, Mom."
It's as if words are a molten stone on my tongue. They sear the moment out of my mind if I try to capture them, wipe away the deep swirl of emotion, the fast ticking of the clock inside my mother's body. Sometime during the last four months, my mind drifted from words until - for once in my life - that noisy voice in my head fell silent. Perhaps that is my own form of therapy. I've been saying for years I'm going to learn to meditate, to keep my anxious mind in line. Now it's been forced on me. For several weeks, I've only been able to read poetry, and then only sporadically. Anything longer could not hold my attention. Nature holds my attention now. I sit on my porch at midnight and watch the full moon whisper through the tree branches and past my besom (Witch's broom). I drive to Burlington and watch clouds caress the mountains - clouds shaped like angels and doves sometimes, or dark fingered spectres. The hills are so green it burns my eyes, the sunset so orange I can feel the heat of the sun in my chest.
The worst time I've had was the last three days before we admitted my mother to the Fletcher Allen because I could no longer take care of her. The crushing moment of having to let her care go into someone else's hands, coupled with the moment of realizing something was wrong with her cognitive abilities as she tried to speak to us that day, finding only a slur of words and a distant stare, told me that this was the last bend in the river. She was heading into the last leg of her journey. An hour after I had her admitted, because she couldn't use her right leg, and I could no longer carry her from bed to chair, she had a seizure. It was the most frightening moment in my life, mostly because it was so frightening for her. She is all about control in her life. Her strength and ability to be in control helped her raise three children alone, after all.
Tomorrow, she goes to the Williston Respite House, where she will have her own room, be a resident and not a patient, and be able to get some strength back for this final leg of the journey. My one wish for her is that she can just 'go home and feel normal again and play with Daniel' (her youngest grandchild) at some point over the next few weeks. It's not much to ask is it? A night in her own bed, an afternoon with the grandchildren?
Life used to seem so difficult. This journey has given me the blessing of so much quality time with my mother, and some not so quality time. It's allowed me to see how deep the roots of strength grow inside of me. Now, as I release my burden, and move into a time where I can simply visit with her, the words are blossoming again. Again, a gift from my mother. Always, she is giving to me, even during her own struggles.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Spring at last, Spring at last!
So wow. So much for updating more regularly. Some of you may have noticed I'm now hooked into twitter.com. You can follow me there! Of course I 've got like, the best record for having NO ONE following me! A couple of retailers have tagged my butt for following, but I have brushed them off my list. I am, of course, following The Nature Conservancy, Ten Downing Street (the office of the English Prime Minister), and David Hewlett (@dhewlett) as he is one of my favorite actors. I'm also following his sister, Kate Hewlett, which sounds like a great stalker line, doesn't it? But following other performing artists makes me feel more connected to the 'biz.'
My mom got her first catscan this week after about 9 weeks of chemotherapy. The tumor is shrinking! Whoo! Of course, it becomes a double edged sword. I couldn't get her on the phone last night as I'm sure she was talking to many folks, but I can't help but think she was probably like "GREAT!... uh... great, more chemo..." But I'm happy to hear this news and I'm sure she is too.
Spring is here. I can't wait to actually see the little buds begin to sprout and that fabulous light green, new-leaf color on the trees! But for now I am content to have the sunshine. I feel like a person thrown down a dark hole for six years right now. I am sure I was a cat in a former life, as I spend all of my free time basking in the sun, in windows at the library, in the pizza parlor, and on the street against the brick walls. (No, I swear I am not a prostitute, sir, just leaning here to get the sun!)
Here's to spring... May it reign for many more weeks.
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