Pivotal, Poignant. 2009. December 30, 2009

I wanted to recap, with annotations and footnotes, photos, bells and whistles, my entire 2009 experience.   I hoped to carefully draft this and present it to you proudly, but I lack the emotional viability and preparatory ability.  The truth is, I am as utterly confused as ever and the inevitable sundown of Dec 31 and the sunrise of Jan 1 is simply a date in passing, no matter how much I’d like to believe that there is something magical about the bridge into a new year. 

A few minutes ago I read a message sent to me on Facebook from my friend Laura.  I believe a lot of the people I have become acquainted with or with whom I have become close to, more than we were in past years, in 2009 have perhaps been very…. carefully placed?  Meaningful?  Purposeful?  I can’t even explain, to further bewilder my reader.  Just odd how ‘characters’ have drifted accross my stage this year… and properly cast. 

Laura, offering her biblical wisdom, tells me that “the heart is deceitful above all things…”  Well, DAMN.  No doubt.   Isn’t that the truth?  I’ve heard this before but am really turning it over, just now.   At Easter, My dad reminded us at dinner that “We pursue that which retreats from us”.   Yes, yes.  My mom points out that there is a giver and a taker in our relationships.  My therapist- a chaser and the chased.   I have now been both at the very same time, and I can tell you that neither position is very comfortable.   Chasing takes every last bit of soul from you and reduces you to desperation. Being chased is tiresome as well and challenges your patience and civility.   It all hurts. 

What have I done with my year?  My life?  (Isn’t this what I’m supposed to go through TEN years, FIFTEEN years from now?) I feel like I’m in a transitory place- as if this was the year that life would test me to see my worth- to evalute what I’ve done or not done- to object to a quiet humming and pacing that I’ve fallen complacent to on my life’s path… and violent shake me, free the cobwebs and undergrowth… What is meant for me?  What is it I want?  At what point is selfishness acceptable?  Is it ever?  Do you stay true to yourself?  Do you deny yourself always for the sake of others?  I’m struggling here.  Have I failed completely?  Which way is the road to happiness?  Is happiness important or obtainable? 

I can’t seem to regain balance.  Does anyone feel the way I do?  If yes, throw me a line-  a life preserver- a pistol!  (Or better yet- submit answers to all the above questions to angiepatricellikern@gmail.com- thanks in advance).

I ran three marathons in 6 months this year and finally hit low 22′s for my 5K time-  So I know I must seriously be disturbed; runners have issues, so I’ve heard.

And that wretched heart- that lying deceitful thing that lies to me every day- how do I trust it when it made such a mess of 2009.  How do I know when it’s telling the truth?  Again: answers, someone?  (“I listened to the bray my heart- I am I am Iam”- Sylvia Plath- listened, then …she killed it.

I’ve made friends this year with several incredible people….and destroyed (obliterated is better word) friendship.

I’ve lost a lot of weight and got in shape (yay for tank tops and skinny clothes!) but gained about 8 pounds since September (yay for mindless stress eating)

I dumped my Jetta for a NON-LOWERED VW!  gasp!

Oh, forget it- I can’t sum this amazing year into a cliff note.  I’ve grown- I’ve never felt more adult.  Eh.  And is it me or does everyone suddenly have a child under the age of nine?  I feel miles away from 2000, when I was 24 years old and I wouldn’t want to go back (actually, was just as confused but at least i didn’t feel the spiny fingers of time at my back)….  Time… time, time, time

SO will I surprise myself in 2010 or will 2010 surprise me?  There’s no regrets, honestly.  Good-bye, 2009.  Take your Silversun Pickups CD and Interpol CD with you- I wish to never hear them again.  Take your heavy, crushing, sad in the heart, hollowed out chest feeling that comes and goes.  Your maniacal sobbing moments on Ohio highways- yep- they’re yours- take ‘em.  The lying and yelling?   Sucked.  You may keep those for your history book.  Sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and alarm clock?  Obsessive cell phone useage?   Adios. 

Leave behind the honesty, please, as it has been used so sparingly.   Any love I have given or received has been graciously accepted and humbly and tremendously given away and I thank you, 2009, for that- leave it for me to return to in my mind… the poetry- however painful and written through tears of anger and hopelessness, it is all mine and I desire to keep it.  So much has happened that I actually couldn’t have desired to have happened more.   Release those, 2009.  

Bipolarity of 2009, goodnight.   Good morning, new decade.  Bring me endless miles.

If you are reading this, you are most likely a friend of mine.  In that case- I love you and hope you are well and wish you all of the best in the New Year.  If it has been too long, I miss you.  Let’s talk.  If you are a stranger, welcome.  And Happy New Year.

Transient Friday November 13, 2009

I’ve come to realize that my most enjoyable days are the ones in which I live for that moment.  Carpe diem and all that crap.  It’s undoubtedly difficult, if not sometimes entirely impossible,  to let go and free your thoughts of the past or future, but I’m working on it.  I am. I am. I am (Sylvia Plath ) To recognize that everything is temporary, everything that surrounds us is earthly here and now at it’s best…. So much is meaningless!  But…. so meaningful.  LOL.  Yeah, I’m contemplating everything.  My solo walk through downtown to pick up lunch felt somewhat otherworldly to me today.  I felt like a bystander in a lonely, but somehow exhilarating way… people absorbed in their goings-on, hurried… I walked slow in the streaming sun observing- it was all so….fleeting, momentary; chaos could have ensued- catastrophe could have striked, and yet I think it would have remained overwhelmingly beautiful.  It felt good to be aware- I’d like to spend more time in that frozen frame.

I can’t change anyone- not their mind, not their causes, not their pain or passion or hurt or desires.  I can’t make MYSELF feel anything different from what I feel and I can barely change my OWN mind.  I’m just enjoying the breathing walk-on parts.

If you can’t spit it out before the driveway, just keep it to yourself. Forever. November 9, 2009

“three minutes left
if there’s anything you
want to say… you’ve got
three minutes… nothing? oKay
then.” the last exit.  the turn left.
torrents of smoke dance and shimmy like
ghosts above each chimney. two hands
on the wheel.  emergency brake
(symbolic?) divides us. we
are on sides. just three
minutes to decide. to
speak. to speak.
to speak.

there’s trees.
and leaves. and lies.
I plea on behalf of bodies 
and bark, headlights and dark.
i’m sinking further into the wet
ground- mouths melt hot and I’m falling
like Alice… drink me. trip on
roots. trip on the moon. put
my fingers into my mouth-
baby spoons dig, unearth
this girl who speaks
who speaks who
speaks too many words.

After a snowy early morning run at the end of 2008.  I actually remember this morning very, very well.  I’ve taken a pain pill for the horrible way my body feels this evening- I need sleep.  My spine feels wrung out.  I think it’s making me a little sleepy and sad- crazy and imaginative.  My bed is a pirate ship; we sail out at daybreak and ride through the painted sky on swollen clouds.  Night night.

Before this Fall October 28, 2009

I’m wary of trees

The leaves- when lush

with languid August rush- they

lie and lull

Make me stupid

beneath midnight canopy

beneath summer Cygnus, Lyra-

These fill and brim your silvered eyes

Flit the skies and play across

lips pressed like hands in prayer

What can I trust

when morning is on your tongue?

(like summer, you run-

-I remember)

shooting and stabbing,

sharp, so sweet

Make me stupid

until September

 

Eh, something I’m working on.  See, if I’m ‘working on it’, it means- do not criticize.  It also means I’ll shove it into my daily planner amid fifteen other short and long pieces that I’ll never get back to, and lately I feel vulnerable putting up long finished pieces.  Like running a race, you have to have an excuse afterwards for your performance, even if it’s a good one.  

Got a long way to go and a short time to get there.

The Halloween parade is tonight- I love Uniontown parades!

Rest Stops and Parking Lots October 18, 2009

I have a favorite place to fall apart and dismantle: odd mile markers and rest areas…always the car. 

I drove halfway through Ohio, collected my Columbus Marathon Bib number, packet, spent fifteen on parking and turned my coat collar up to block the stinging cold wind.  I walked countless back-and-forth miles up and down N. High Street.  All alone I visited the (rather sparsely exhibited) Museum of Art.  The sculptural collection of Dale Chihuly (Chihuly, Illuminated) emited a soft, heated flourescent buzz.  I drove around for awhile.  I chased my aunt down.  I sat in another parking lot.  I sat in the Hyatt Regency lobby watching cut-out people with stand-up strollers and put tab-A-through-slot-B Coach Bags and Coach toddlers.  Finally, after many hours, I decided to drive home and not race; so at 7:00pm I pointed the Jetta eastward on Route 70 and cried until I couldn’t anymore.  That’s the honestly sad truth.  My lips were numb and my eyes were twitching so I pulled over once in the “Stop only for Emergency” Lane and once at a rest area twenty miles west of Zanesville.  I cried until my eyes couldn’t offer any more.  It was pathetic and never had I been so comforted by the Pennsylvania welcome sign.  Ugh.   Horrible. 

Don’t sit in your car for too long, in solitude, on a dismal day with your head already swirling with jumbledyjumble staring at treetops and stratocumulous clouds. Take it from me.

(above, perched- Pallas)

Friday’s Fog October 9, 2009

I’m torn down the middle like tissue paper… no defined edges- just soft and only slightly concealing- yielding and giving way to unwrapping and ripping.  I’m defensive with nothing to defend.   I’m a fast swirling ball of unfettered words that change and shift before they flow from my throat and turn into ribbons of unjustfiable jargon.  I see it happening. 

Not a good day, by my own doings, failings and omissions.  There’s a point where apologies don’t “cut it”… or sound or feel genuine and you know it.  There’s a point where you eat your words with nothing to wash them down.  Today was that day.   There’s a point you get to where hurt is unavoidable; where pain is an accepted outcome- reality and due process.  Today marks that day.  But there are tomorrows and I keep that in mind.

Bleed it Out September 29, 2009

A week and two days.  Nine days.  That’s how long it took me to get back on my feet and dragging the pavement again since the Marathon.  Considering my life in that span, I honestly haven’t had the slightest urge even though running has kept me focused, centered and conscious any other time- it’s just getting back.   It’s doing.   It’s believing.

I thundered up Fayette at a beautiful race pace because it just felt that beautiful.  She’s back.  Digging in around Union Street I realized that I smile at dogs.   All of them.  Funny; how do you do today, friend?  About six dogs smiled back at me on that street.  Back around Morgantown, two of my Uniontown policemen friends waved me on through the intersection in their patrol cars.  My shuffle swooshed, “you’re here, you’re here, you’re here” .  But I’m just a fragmented version of Ang.  Fragment?  Okay, shards.  A fragile, complicated box of sharp shards.  Sigh.  I suppose routine gives birth to a false sense of normalcy.  Maybe that’s how I revert to complacency in the first place (I’ve been dodging talking to Dale and avoiding confrontation because I like to go about my day in constant denial- it feels safe.   And routine).  I know it’s sounding hokey, because if you really wanted to, you could draw parallels from any one thing to another, but running in particular always tends to open those doors…. Lori, for instance, does an inspiring job of uniting her life in Christ with her everyday “work” be it running or mothering.  Today, during this 5 miler, it was as cold as a blustery November evening, spitting fine rain, and dark.  I knew Dale was out on his run, too.  I knew he was somewhere on the same city streets, unseen.  And although I know I am considerable faster than he, I still couldn’t “find” him- we were on completely opposite routes, wind hitting our faces in conversing directions.  It was a strange realization.  I don’t know.

Warden, with no warning, announced his sudden retirement at this morning’s meeting.  I’m the “newest” employee with only two years of service, but I shamelessly got emotional about it.   All day I was fighting tears - UGH!  What a crier!  He is the the most compassionate, wonderful, fair boss I’ve ever had- he will be missed when he goes.  Well, enough.  Tonight would be a most excellent chili night.

And thank you for the kind comments on the blog, friends

Goodmorning, heartache- you’re like an old friend September 29, 2009

Colby and I concluded yesterday’s evening discussing our current rotation of bizarre apocalpyptic dreams.  It started when he confided to me that the reason he has been sleeping with the air conditioning on, although our nights have been becoming quite cold, is due to the fantastic nightmares he seems to have when his body is struggling to keep warm is, well, enjoyable to him.  Wow, you like having nightmares AND being cold?  Right on, son   When he described his most current dream though, my hair stood on end- it was an end of times sort of dreams with sky  black and filled with a constant curtain of stars falling past the Earth.  There’s no where to hide in these dreams.  I’ve been having that dream for a long time.  It was a cool conversation and we even read portions of Revelations.  Anyway, there’s no point here- I am just wondering is, when I wake him up in a few minutes for school, if he actually slept well after that.

I did not have  a great night of sleep.  I slept soundly a little after one o’clock but had cried sometime beforehand and now, despite a frozen rice and vegetables compress I held on my face, my eyes and lips are obviously puffy; ugh, I hate that!   I could cry for three seconds and you’d be able to tell three days later!  I’m not even sure what to make of the conversation Dale and I had.

I’ve got to get moving; I’m determined to have a decent day- cross country meet this afternoon and a drug raid at work to keep me busy.   It’s all going to start momentarily with some french toast and loud music

You’re What the Autumn Knew Would Happen… September 28, 2009

In true Angie-form, I’m perched at the countertop strewn with (late) bills, stirring dinner and, naturally, eating something rather vile…like…say…a humongous, primitavely hacked-off chunk of sharp cheddar cheese.  Oh, I do not disappoint, friends, I always give you the hardcore truth.  My dress pants are unbuttoned, too and my makeup is smeared…how ya like that?   I’m a domesticated Courtney Love.  I’ve not run since the marathon fiasco a week and two days ago.   And so here we go- another self-depricating blog about food, running, poetry, kids, nostalgia, and chaos in my life.  Come in, and don’t bother to take your shoes off because it’s been awhile since I’ve mopped!

It’s practically dark and it’s 7 o’clock.  WTH. 

Well, Laura urged me into finding a new venue for what started in 2006 as a (I’m embarrassed to use the word…) MYSPACE blog that I thought no one would read, but apparently I had a few followers who enjoyed my quiet desperation, random poems and penchant for poking fun at my soft belly.  I suppose, as I’ve been told, it even inspired a few people to start running and a couple of them even took it further by running some races- that’s awesome!  I hope I inspired a few to eat cheesecake, cereal and ice cream as well (the four food groups…minus Taco Bell)

I won’t overwhelm you with any melancholia at the moment or anything too deep- it’s just the first post, afterall- c’mon. 

You may be a mutual “facebook friend” of my husband’s and decided to check out my blog, hoping in guilty fascination to make sense of the wild, dispairing and ambiguous lyrics and updates he has been leaving.  I know a few of you even know what’s up because you messaged him.  Gossip getting set straight- yes,  my marriage is currently at the point of discontinuity.  I won’t go into detail but in this lovely no-secrets blog that I write more for my self-therapy than your amusement, I gotta put it on the dissecting table.  And likewise, leave comments publicly, please.  

Have to wrap this first one up….

~ My kids are doing great- thought Colby had MRSA (or as Violet calls is, Mrs. A) and spent the last couple of hours at MedExpress.  Colby at the home game last Friday with his Baritone… doesn’t he look excited?!  I know!

~ Colby is running 21′s in Cross County! Here’s Violet on Sat…

~ My next marathon is in 3 weeks and I am considering not running it or maybe running the half because I am exhausted in every way.   I ran a 4:2X  (not sure) last week at the Air Force Marathon.

~ Sometimes stress damages the appetite- not now- I am voracious.  Someone stop me- if it’s in my way, I eat it. 

~ Dale has lost a ton of weight and ran thirty miles last week as well as spends a lot of time at the Y- this is great but he has us worried.

Lastly, I’ve got to sort through my notebooks and post up some new poetry rambling I’ve created, but in the meantime, enjoy November 1968 by Adrienne Rich- I’m really digging this one right now (hence the post title)…  I LOVE IT

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/november-1968/