I feel like such a doormat.

[sea storm]

It seems so dangerous to bring up painful things from the past and I didn't want to. Sometimes this is a good thing.

After i wrote that out and risked sayings those things and didn't care if I was judged or not, I slept.  I had the most amazing dream about being with Edward in another better life and he just rowed away and in my dream I heard voices saying just let it go. More like a choir of angels. It was a very balancing dream and a real gift for me. My heart kind of rolled over like after a too long sleep and I woke up full of energy. I have been living in a featherbed of sorrow for too long.

One part of the dream involved a seagull stealing someones keyes. I dived in the water knowing exactly where they were but I couldn't find them. Like knowing edward so well but he is dead and gone. There were other very old treasures there but I left them, just happy they were there. I believe , now more than ever, that people give each other energy and it can be transferred through time and space. This surge of joy just came out of the blue and i have felt if for several days now.
I can open my heart now. To sound, and taste and singing and beauty. Really be alive with all senses. I am reading about the poets of Kyoto and their poems.  They lived very simply. I don't know why people didn't help them more. So impoverished but shining in spirit. Their is no house that is too humble if a virtuous person lives there. Such a good thought and nurturing.

I was so full of energy and mowed the lawn, visited my garden and tended it vigourously. My sister phoned and told me she had a healing dream too.  Hmmmmmmm pretty synchronous. She dreamt that she dived for something and she got it.  She felt healed by the dream too.  She thought it showed her that she is strong and competent and doesn't have to feel ashamed anymore.
What are the odds of that. Two sisters dreaming similar dreams?????? Pretty wonderful.
So releasing the past and telling my story is working.  It is not like texting a friend and saying "Having a great day" that is for sure.

There is some very deep sharing that goes on here.  Like telling a confessor the real rendition of life, the one that heals. Like talking to a kind taxi driver who is a deep listerner on a rainy night on a long cab ride.Like reading Edgar Allen Poe's  poem "Nevermore" and seeing Gustaf Dore's illustrations.  I saw the loss in those pictures and understood what he meant by nevermore. The person is still in the room and you can feel what it is like to have them pressed against your body but they are gone and your mind cant accept it. The creature that keeps saying Nevermore is like the harbinger of doom but it is true and you have to hear it over and over.

After i wrote about my mom I began to have insight inte her life. I could see her in the attic where she slept with her three sisters. I realized that they each had two hooks for their clothes.  One for a coat and one for a dress.  That was all. The attic was not insulated and it was small. you climbed up through a small closet in their parents bedroom I know because visited the house. The unmarried eldest brother  stayed in the house his whole life and didn't change it. His siblings treated him like a prince. He was a mean spirited 
man whose greatest strength was contempt. At least that is the way he presented himself.  The tradition of the oldest son being the golden child was really acted out in that family. My brother was the eldest son and he was much the same. Spoiled and nasty.
This brother treated my mother with such contempt but she said " Oh he doesn't mean it" . She said this her whole life. I wish she didn't let him do that to her but she seemed to be under a bizarre spell and would not hear the cruelty of his words. He woulld call her a dummy.....  So wicked to say that to her. She was not a dummy at all but she believed him.

I have to think about the impact of her being checked out and acting like a robot.  It didn't provide safety for me or love. But I feel sorry for her. She just got stopped before the starting gate.  i didn't and I thank her for that. She imparted resiliency to me and lots of people don't have that. I have enough.

[sea storm]

An Epigraph in Praise of My Humble Home
A mountain needn't be high;
It is famous so long as there is a deity on it.
A lake needn't be deep;
It has supernatural power so long as there is a dragon in it.
My home is humble,
But it enjoys the fame of virtue so long as I am living in it.
The moss creeping onto the doorsteps turns them green.
The color of the grass reflected through the bamboo curtains turns the room blue.
Erudite scholars come in good spirits to talk with me,
And among my guests there is no unlearned common man.
In this humble room, I can enjoy playing my plainly decorated qin, or read the Buddhist Scriptures quietly,
Without the disturbance of the noisy that jar on the ears, or the solemn burden of reading official documents.
My humble home is like the thatched hut of Zhuge Liang of Nanyang, or the Pavilion Ziyun of Xishu.
Confucius once said: "How could we call a room humble as long as there is a virtuous man in it?"

Written about three hundred years ago and translated from a  Chinese Scroll

[sea storm]

I was very lost in love. It was like jumping off a bridge and taking flight. Of course it didn't work. You can't do that with an alcoholic and a narcissist.  Lately, I think about him and cry about it quite a lot. Cleaning out the garage and seeing the shrimp net he put together himself, seeing the huge yellow cedar mast with the trolling poles and all the rigging just makes me so sad. The way of life is gone and the man is gone too.
I have to get rid of that stuff and it costs a lot to get rid of it. It seems strange and alien to toss it away. There are big bronze fittings that are works of art holding it together and I remember rough sees where my life depended on these fitting holding. The trolling poles went out when it was scarey rough out in order to stabilize the boat in the huge waves. They were aluminum and cost thousands. I tried to give them away but no one came though. The naitives have taken over the fishery and they aren[t allowed to use them..
I would just like to tell someone.
So a guy who collects scrap metal came and he didn't seem to want them either but in the end he took them after taking a chainsaw to the mast. I am glad i wasn't there when he did that. I mast 12 inches in diameter at the bottom and rising forty feet of clear cedar. Probably fifty years old. When I looked at the top of the mast and saw the mast light I could hardly believe my eyes. On the very top was an old mustard jar and it was screwed in and used as the top mast light. Every other light was top of the line bronze. I asked the guy to leave me the last ten feet of the mast as I couldn't part with it. Such endearing ingenuity. There would be a story there. I just don't know it. The guy who was taking the stuff had been a shrimp and cod fisherman and he said he understood why I was keeping it. I noticed he left me a ten foot piece of the mast  too. There is an anchor from herring fishing.

This guy said that he must have been crazy to take the risks he did when he was fishing. That is very true. I remember that too. There is a way of life that is going, just like the way of life of the buffalo. It won't come again and it is not replaced by something better. Inside the garage are halibut jigs that are huge and were used on off days. Halibut can be huge and it is good to keep a gun on board as they are mighty fish and sometimes it is ... I just heard the chainsaw and went out and he had sawn the mast all up and its gone. He did a thorough job. I am bawiling my eyes out.  Oh well.

[sea storm]

Pretty soon I am going to go to my new old house that is smaller and not on the river. I need to go. I need to have something good and new. Just a change from being the keeper of the past.
It is just that I cry a lot.

When I was on my own after the fishboat I got my own fishboat and did it. That was like this. Such a huge undertaking. I used to dream that the boat was not being pumped out and was sinking and I would wake up in a sweat feeling like vomiting. It was a 42 foot boat. In the dream I could not figure out all the mechanical things involved which was true most of the time. I  had to learn it the hard way. I am a very unlikely boat owner.

I quit my job. It was killing me.  It paid a lot but it was like I was in a Noh Play and wearing a chain around my waist and dragging all these sad and beaten children around. There was no hope for us except a miracle. Of course they don't happen a lot. I am very flexible and can act well so I could play the roll of a professional and say articulate and well informed things but the whole culture of the job was toxic and stupid. The school system. I can't get those years back but at least I left. In the end I could not change anything and it was devouring me.

God I am sad today.

It wasn't until now that I have had the courage to move from here. There were angels who helped along the way. I remember when I headed north for Prince Rupert and ultimately Alaska that a fisherman on the dock said
 " It is gong to take an angel to get you to Prince Rupert"  He was right. It was foolhardy. But I made it and did the job.  It was a frigging nighmare but also like a religious experience in dealing with fear and overcoming obstacles.

After a while I won't miss the things that are gone. The people that are gone, That part of me that is gone too. And a good thing too.

I know it has helped to write this.  Change stirs up the bottom like the prop on a big boat when it is leaving the dock at low tide. I always  liked that. Leaving the dock. The pure potential of leaving, the fresher air and the cutting ties.

Memories come to the surface with all this action. I need to watch them and not get hooked.

[Hopalong]

You are getting born into peace, Sea.
Peace can be very frightening after having to fight for survival.

The culture you loved has changed -- as it will continue to.
But the nature you love will continue to be its nature, absorbing
what it has to. It will always be.

You have had an amazing life. I think happiness is actually
still ahead for you. Simplicity is going to hurt less than you think.

You are such a good writer -- I wish you'd write a memoir.
I'd gladly buy it.

Thank you for telling your stories here, Sea.
I feel enriched and moved when I read you, and more than
when I read the paid writers I hunt down every day.

love (and count me a stop on that road trip!)
Hops

[sea storm]

Thanks for that Hops. I value your thoughts and intuition a lot.

Life really is like Beethoven's Fifth sometimes. Or like an opera. I know it is all poetry deep in my heart. Just like you do. I like your stories too and love the insight in them and the flow. Light and shadow. Painting is the same.

Thank you Thank you Thank you

Love
Sea storm

[sea storm]

Years later I read what I wrote and cringe at the title
"I feel like such a doormat"

I did feel like a doormat and a victim forever. Somewhere along the line I had to learn and admit that I played a part in my victimization. Where were the points of power that I failed to grab onto, and where was the situation and system so much bigger than I could possibly grapple with?
I could have left my abusive husband much sooner, I could have followed my dream, I could have moved to Italy, I could have been a writer or an artist. Definately my choice there. At times I was a screaming banshee and a shameless hussy and lots of other things that I thought were my entitlement because I was wounded. I just didn't know better.
Self pity is a bottomless pit that sucked me down way too far and too long. Real grief was mixed inextricably with it.
I will grieve for the child in me who was not loved. Now I realize my parents, husbands, did not have the ability to love. Somehow I have compassion for them and have taken back my power.
I have so much more peace and simplicity now. I just made a beautiful mushroom soup and picked fresh bay leaves from the garden. It was deliscious, fragrant, hot, satifying. Deeply.
I cried remembering it is the anniversary of my own personal atom bomb going off in 2007. It felt searing to cry like that but no no longer frightening. I have the strength and insight to know it will pass.

Life isn't about being happy all the time. Knowing that helps. I am writing now about the past. That was WAY too dangerous before and now it is hard to approach, exhilarating to do.

Speaking out to all these strangers, more than thirteen thousand, quiets my soul. At the same time the detachment from you all is sad. I am often lonely. Now I can concentrate enough to get out and get going. I can breathe and stay alone and dance around in my art and writing. It is enough. The storm is over.