Monthly Archives: March 2020

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Of a sudden…

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

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As I rummage and ruminate,  
categorize and discard,
too many items,
and thoughts,
long of little utility, 
to you or I,
though stubbornly occupying space,
in my physical and internal environments,

I am thunderstruck!

…with that which we pay lip-service to;
as a matter of course,
in our excessive,
daily rabblings and babblings;
but rarely to never,
truly abide by… .

And of a sudden,
nothing matters!

Nothing;
…with the exception,
of how we choose to utilize,
This Moment.

And of a sudden,
in this temporarily,
to the outside world obligation-less life,

I find freedom. 
________________________________________________________ 
With boundless love,
~Marcela: choosing to live well, in the midst of my own, 
and our collective, uncertainty.  
March 24, 2020.

					


		

			
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Open Letter to My Child: Gifts and an Advanced Directive – March 22, 2020
					

			22
			Sunday
			Mar 2020
		

	
			

	


			

				
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Dearest Young’en (it’s a new one, aren’t you excited?):


But I digress, how odd…


Dear Thomas George Raphael Turjančík (see, I remember your real name!): this day, at 13:29 Central European Standard Time, in the year 1991 (I did not have to look at the tattoo on my left forearm to remember), I met you.


You were as calm about it as you often are today, outwardly anyway, though we both know it’s different on the inside, I and your father on the other hand, wore our stuff, loudly on our sleeves.


We were happy, so very very happy, and excited beyond measure, and not a bit frightened, a great many bits frightened, each for our own reasons. The inner demons we had yet to quell, respectively and as a couple, had not yet been fully outed, never mind sorted.


But this event, your homecoming, changed us, at least for a short while, for the better, so much better. For you took us out of ourselves and into a frontier that your father had traveled to previously with your brothers, but one that I, had not yet ventured into; a world in which someone else is 100% reliant upon my reliability; a universe in which by default, I became the center of your universe. I was not ready for that, and I had so much to learn.


We know that there was a time I failed you, failed us, and we have jumped and tripped over many hurdles, vaulted over seemingly unreachable bars, and spent time in a deep, dark, abyss, individually and together; but we have both made it here. And you, the perfectly-imperfect child you have been, continue to be for me, have found to yourself, in a way that inspires awe in everyone you meet, and inspires awe in me, every.single.day.


And while I like to believe that my particular brand of parenting, what I stand for, has had a positive influence on who you are, how beautifully you function in the astonishingly complex world we occupy, that is; with a critically thinking intelligence, with grace, insight, with compassion, and kindness, all of this and more, is yours, yours alone, to own and take credit for.


It is the fruit of your labour, Thomas, of the hard, often painful personal work I have watched you wrestle with these past few years, supported when asked, but viewed from a distance that was often excruciating for me to keep. Know, as I believe you do, that I was (am) always ready and waiting with a life-ring when needed.


I cannot ask for a better gift on this day, the day I met you 29 years ago, than knowing, trusting, that when life offers up her lifey-life bitch-slaps, or we walk willingly, stupidly into them with eyes wide shut, for to believe that we do not, is to lie to self first and foremost, you will eventually find your way back out, and with a newly forged, temporarily, until next time, sense of self.


It is a gift for me to believe that you understand the importance of introspection, and personal revision, the critical role of, and need for personal evaluation and re-evaluation, the imperative of personal evolution as a constant, not as an event, and I thank my F.U.Gs that I can believe you are aware of this, central tidbit: every response or reaction you choose, to anything or anyone else, that while fueled by those outward influences, is a thing generated internally, by self, and self-alone, it is a choice.


This is important, for to believe otherwise cloaks us in a coat of personal powerlessness, a coat I could not bear to watch you wear, the coat of blame and perpetual victim-hood. I have worn it; it is an outdated, heavy, ugly garment, best recycled into something more useful, like a pair of really great shoes, or better yet, an I-love-me/you-jacket.


And so this, my child, the child I would have chosen had I been given a choice of who I want you to be, is my Advanced Directive: do not wait for lifey-life to get back to ‘normal,’ ever. Live it as best you can, in the moment, right-the-fuck-now, under the current circumstance, and/or restriction. Live it with purpose, and accomplish, take a single step toward something you yearn, burn to do, every.single.day.


Take my advice, for I was not using it. I have wasted too many of my days on irrelevant (to me) endeavors, in the name of others, their beliefs, their needs, their power, their ill or well intentions toward me… bla bla fucking bla…. Do NOT, I beseech you, under any circumstances, follow my ill-fated lead in this regard.


I love you more than any word will ever do justice to, and I thank my F.U.Gs for you, every.single.day, for 10,593 days, and counting.


All my love,


~Mama.




March 22, 2020


 

					


		

			
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The Bright Red Freighter  
					

			16
			Monday
			Mar 2020
		

	
			

	


			

				
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There have been others since I came to live here, but you commanded and kept my attention, from the first time ever, that I saw your extraordinarily bright, red paint.


And since that moment, when you dwarfed everything around you and obligated me to see you, I have wanted to get closer, wanted to get a better view, and always wanted, always yearned, to see you again.


I needed to experience your power, relentlessly, and with great fervor. And for weeks now, I have been captivated by you, visually, psychologically, emotionally, and with irrevocable commitment.


And I have compulsively sought you out, with the diligence and precision of a skilled stalker, from every vantage point, in this hilly town.


For weeks now, each and every morning, I have clambered groggily up to the step-stool view in my sleeping chamber, because knowing you were there allowed me to face another day, and I have been awed by the turmoil you create, deep, so deep inside me.


For weeks now, each and every evening, no matter how fatigued, I bid you good night, because you give me some measure of consolation, succour, in my solace-less world.


You have represented all that is true about me, the contradictions, and I am as contentiously conflicted about you, as I am about most things.


Your intensity screamed to my own; and like the others in the bay, like me, you are a political and personal hot-potato, and I love you-I hate you, come here-go away, fuck-off, no! fuck-on!


And you present me with a familiar quandary: what is right for the world around me versus what I get, what I need, from you, from the world around me.


And so by direct extension, you have been a secret, conflicted indulgence, analogous for me, to beautiful footwear, but made in China by slaves and their enslaved children.


And I have viewed you with my naked eyes, and through binoculars, and I have captured you with my camera over and over again, from my step-stool view, from the highway coming home, from my excursions on the hilly trails, and from my perambulations about the town.


And this morning, when I opened the curtain to greet you, you knocked the breath right out of me, for the light had you glowing in shades of gold and pewter, and I was mesmerized, shaken to the core, by the beauty of you, and the light, the indescribable, iridescent light, and the way you played together, with, and in the sea.


And I remembered Barrett-Browning, and knew I will do well to concern myself with, fly toward the light, despite additional bruising of my oh-so broken wings.[1]


And my despair collided head-on inside me with the memory of who I am, the shine and vibrancy used to describe me for decades by others, now hoarded away far too long, by me, recently, because: pain.


And I wonder; if like me, despite meticulous maintenance of mechanical parts and attention to aesthetic details, you may meet an undignified, rusted out, abandoned, demise?


But your light rouses me from the melancholy of this early morning reverie and while you are neither Sunflower[2] nor Water Lily[3] on a A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte[4], van Gogh, Monet, Seurat alike[5], would have been as awestruck by that light show, by your radiance, as I.


So it is little wonder that this evening, upon reaching the place on the highway, the place where I always spy you first, returning from my hated-reality, hot tears burned my cheeks with a vengeance that took me by surprise, but at the same time, not at all.


For I realized that you had left me, as I knew you would; suspected this very morning, that today might be that day, the day I find you gone.


And all that, in a painful morning stupor, while bedazzled, so very smitten, by your glow, your nod to me, to heed Browning’s wise words, to keep fluttering my wings, toward the light, toward my light.


And I am so very grateful, to me, for all the times I hunted you down, from yet another place and angle. I am richer for having enjoyed you, and you fueled, no, you ignited, new fantasies of leaving, to live my art, whenever my eyes, my heart, the core of me, met your steel girth, your vibrant and vivacious red coat.


And I never coveted you more than this morning, never appreciated you more, than in those parting moments, when you willfully, boastfully even, occupied that space, your space in the vast vast sea, wearing the gold,


of the Queen you are.


~Marcela: one skin, 58.7 years, life/version 19.9, and counting.


March 04, 2020


[1] https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/03/05/elizabeth-barrett-browning-happiness/


[2] https://www.vincentvangogh.org/sunflowers.jsp


[3] https://www.claude-monet.com/waterlilies.jsp


[4] https://mymodernmet.com/georges-seurat-a-sunday-afternoon-on-the-island-of-la-grande-jatte/


[5] https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/impressionism-and-post-impressionism/impressionism-and-postimpressionism

					


		

			
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