Elizabeth Dutton's Blog, page 8

I have tried, in my way, to be free

Things about me (as of today at 11:54 p.m. EDT):

I love sleep.

I am attracted to and mystified by creativity, intelligence, kindness.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the ideas I have competing for space in my head.

My novel, DRIFTWOOD, comes out in September 2014 and this makes me ecstatic…and a little scared.

I just want a fella to call me by a charming term of endearment and mean it.

I wish total extinction on all the world’s mosquitoes.

I love moths and butterflies, but especially moths.

I feel like I want to live in Europe again.

Or at least visit for a longer period of time.

With few exceptions, I am totally uninterested in looking at pictures of people’s kids.

I would be a very stylish skinny person.

I am not a good citizen of the world, as I have been avoiding much international (and national) news of late because it is too distressing.

I often feel like a fraud.

I wish I employed a hair and makeup team every day to get me decent.

I am surprisingly (physically) strong.

While I am still pretty messed up, I have come a long way in the past couple of years in terms of getting my shit together.

I don’t get as upset seeing my reflection in a mirror or passing window as I used to.

I have terrifyingly accurate intuition.

I own too many notebooks.

I really love good Mexican food.

Convention and pretension disgust me.

I want everyone, every single person, to get what they long for. Even the shitheads of the world. It would do them some good.

It’s a shame we can’t rewind and do-over in life.

I wish I didn’t care about grammar and syntax.

Waiting for Guffman is still the best film ever.

meh

 

Another poem. Not my favorite, but it has its merits. This is what happens when dreams, the oily runoff of a mind processing a day’s worth of overloads, follow one into the next day, the next bombardment of information, images, memories, data. There is no junk. Junk is just what we haven’t figured out how to put to a purpose yet.

 

I Keep My Visions to Myself

dreamt last night

he was a young Bob Dylan

 

woke up with a broken heart

his dead lips softer than I remembered

my love more real

though it turned out just the same

 

if I believed he’d haunt me

if his spirit wouldn’t leave me alone

this is exactly how he’d do it

 

this is all I know for sure

 

xo

here’s the thing: balance

I do not think I have it within my facilities to properly address the current socio/political clusterfuck we find developing in our fair country (“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem,”  wrote Walt Whitman and oh, how I want to believe it right now, but I fail to see the art in any of this). But the whole thing has me thinking of balance.

Each of us is looking for balance, or should be. But we often want the high end of the see-saw and to hell with the husky kid who has to keep us up there, dusty legs in the dirt and cursing nature’s inequity.

Lately I have been feeling at the top of the see-saw and feeling guilty for it. I attribute this to Irish Catholic guilt administered early and often from birth through formative years (it is still directed my way, but I choose now to be like Siddhartha when confronted with Mara’s seemingly unending taunts and challenges – I touch the earth and it promises to love me and speak for me. With a side of quinoa, please).

Things are going my way, and it feels awkward. I got a book deal. I adore where I live. I adore to infinity my family and friends. I laugh a lot. I fucking love my job. (Now here’s where an interesting bit comes in. Some of my colleagues, of whom I am in perpetual awe because of their serious brilliance and clear thoughts and graciousness, are not as content. And I get it. I’ve been there. Been there times ten. There’s a weird part of me that feels like I shouldn’t flove my job like I do out of some sick solidarity — Irish Catholic guilt + strong upbringing in the labor movement — but I can’t resist. I love it. It’s perfect for me. But is there a rather inconceivable larger person at the bottom of the see-saw allowing me to enjoy these heights?

Sometimes I have to fight to remind myself to see my past in balance. Not everyone was a saint nor a sinner. No one person destroyed me or made me amazing. I can’t place blame and I can’t give all credit. For example, I can’t say that the last man who broke my heart made me feel bad about my body because I already did. He just added to it — a lot. That’s balance, right?

What about societal balance? No one can argue that things are not right in our society. And when I start to think about this imbalance, I want to rise up and break some shit. I want to light the fire. I want to tear it all down. But that is the initial impulse. You gotta ride that out a bit and regroup.

Texas wants to effectively eliminate abortions (and, as an added bonus, consistent and equal access to women’s health providers) in that state. Nothing after 20 weeks they cry, which happens to be the time when parents find out whether their potential child may have life threatening/altering/damaging defects or simply not be viable and possibly a threat to the life of the mother. (I know, I said I wasn’t going to get into socio/political stuff, but I cannae help it. It’s in my blood). Much is proclaimed about the sanctity of life. I don’t want to get into understandings of when life begins, but if life is so sacred, why does Texas seem to put people to death faster than you can say “This salsa’s made in New York City!”? Often, those put to death possess only the cognitive abilities of a child. Life is sacred. Food stamps and programs for children get slashed or eliminated. Life is sacred. Man murders kid after being told to leave him alone and walks free. Life is sacred. The overwhelming majority of Americans want some sort of gun control or background checks to prevent or at least reduce public bloodbaths, but those with pockets lined by the non-grassroots gun lobby called the NRA deny their own constituents and reject measures to save lives. Life is sacred. We don’t want to live in fear, but we live in ignorance of the number of civilian lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Life is sacred.

You know what else is sacred? Balance. And balance is life.

For every negative thought that enters your gorgeous head (whether the thought is directed at another or yourself), counter it with a loving one. For every complaint, counter with gratitude. For every injustice, work to create equity in your own small, essential way. Make something right for someone. For every soul-crushing act you witness or read about or hear about, respond with an act of unconditional kindness and compassion of your own. It is our job to set the balance.

This is some serious hippy shit, but these times call for it.

those damned heavy binoculars

This commercial kills me.

dandelions turn into wishes whenever they die

awesome:

driving to the river to watch it rise

THIS

eccentric family nicknames (I think I shall finally embrace mine)

the very notion of dreaming

chicken salad (shout out to Patchy)

old quilts

super intense summer storms

non-awesome:

“rich kids of instagram” (but that’s just new money, I suppose)

feeling restless

being clumsy

unfulfilled desire for international travel

GIFs

molto bene

awesome:

my novel, Driftwood, coming out next year

evening espresso

tomatoes that grow in an unchecked and aggressive manner

hugging on dogs

teaching poetry

the unending kindness and love of friends

non-awesome:

the distress of others

keep your eyes peeled

2014

looking at the cracks in the sidewalk, thinking about your friends

Do you ever go down a residential street and feel a strange heartache? Not from feeling a dark pity for those who live there or a menacing jealousy. This is a heartache brought on by wonder of what else could have been. Not in a sense of missed opportunities or the ethically-troubling “there for the grace of God…,” but just a longing to know or understand the infinite other lives we could be leading right now. No? Just me? Whatevs.

When I feel this way, I wonder what other people’s lives are like in these homes. What is the day-to-day? Is there something they know, something they’ve unlocked that I haven’t and may never do? What have they seen or known, good/bad/indifferent, that I may never experience?

I thought about this often as I walked home to my flat in Glasgow some 7 years ago now. I’d look into the ground floor sitting rooms of lovely places and crummy places and everything in between and have that heartache for the lives I’d never know.

(As an aside, it should be noted that heartache is a comfortable state for me and not something I see as wholly negative. It is often satisfying. My mother claims this is because I was born into and spent my early years surrounded by family loss, tragedy, and heartache. This makes her feel guilty and I do not like that one bit.)

I thought it again recently as I drove through a coastal suburban street filled with bungalows and tidy yards and frosted bathroom windows. It is foreign to me and I felt an ache about it all that I couldn’t quite place or reconcile.

I love my life. I love my home. And I am also filled with an ever-present wanderlust. I want to try everything. I want to try being other people and living other places. But I am at peak comfort right now in both my location and self. Hot damn, I’ve made great strides of late in really loving who I am. This is a big deal for me. I’ve learned to not argue with compliments received. That’s a very big deal. It’s another phase or evolution/reinvention. Still, though, I have an itch for more. I just don’t know what that more is, nor do I believe I have the strength or interest to find out.

Anyway, I think that heartache is actually longing for access to unlimited alternate planes of existence where I could test out places and personalities and passions and careers and interests and selves. All somehow without any ramifications.

Let’s get on that, science. There’s just too much out there to miss out on.

no yes no

awesome:

windswept beaches in the off season

shells (both intact and fragments of larger, more mysterious creatures)

free pens

unexpected silliness from others (my silliness is passé, I fear)

strange conversations

odd facts about odd topics (i.e. the world’s largest tire or the youngest girls to give birth)

perfume oils

comfort in one’s own skin (an elusive thing I close in on moment by moment)

non-awesome:

insomnia

coughing fits

traffic (once a daily staple, now a foreign concept for me)

the heartbreak of watching someone’s insecurity create painful behavior

the lack of teletransportation

chapped lips

springtime beckons

Things are pretty blasted wonderful right now. Today, despite run-ins with what could have become stressful or bad moments, I was repeatedly overcome with the brilliance of humanity, the loveliness of the natural world around us, and the inherent goodness, kindness, and joy inside every person.

Each moment today was a gift (and that included fighting a cold, going home sick, uncooperative windshield wipers, and erroneous tax liens in the mail). I realized today how far I’ve come and the factors that have contributed to this.

Many people and things have saved me (often literally) over the past few difficult years. Now’s as good a time as any to acknowledge them. Here’s a partial list in no particular order. If you are having a tough go of it, it can’t hurt to try one or some or all of these (where applicable).

modern and contemporary poetry

mom, brother, uncle

Buddhism

Jennifer McCartney at Skyhorse Publishing

train travel

Laura Villaseñor

Led Zeppelin, Elliott Smith, The Kinks, Feist, The Grateful Dead, Arcade Fire, Alexander Ebert/Edward Sharpe, Spinnerette, The Smiths, Puccini, Audra Mae, Band of Horses, Elvis Costello, Jane’s Addiction, Neutral Milk Hotel, Okkervil River, Neko Case, Goldfrapp, + countless others

trivia night

teaching

my dogs

Bruce Bowman

changing seasons

medicine

Arnold Palmers made with unsweetened tea

stretching

my garden

being generous

being open

meditation

meadows

letting go (that means not listing the people or things that made things so shitty for a while there)

trees

artwork

ENERGY

an honest understanding of loving kindness to myself and others

and more medicine

thank you to all

xo