a very friendly kraken

That’s all.

Resolutions are bullshit.

Okay, maybe they work for you, but they only half- work for me. Every year, my Resolution Number One is “Don’t Die” and so far I am acing that. But when it comes to going to the gym four times a week, swearing less, taking underwater ballistic ballroom basket- weaving lessons at the local community center, etc, I have always started out with the best of intentions and have forgotten I’d even started by mid- March.

I don’t need to start any new year feeling like I’ve already failed: I’m neurotic enough by nature. I’ve given up resolutions. At the beginning of each year I set very specific goals for myself, and I give myself one Word Of The Year. I’ll get to the Word Of The Year in a minute. Let’s talk about resolutions first.

Goals of any kind work when they’re clearly worded and achievable. “Resolving” to do anything is about what we “should” do- all the awful, guilt- laden “ought-to” actions that bring us no joy. It’s vague and wishy- washy; resolutions are the things folks don’t even really want to do in the first place. They’re obligations that we secretly, resentfully don’t even feel fully obliged to do. We like drinking whiskey and watching Breaking Bad until 3 am on Wednesday nights. We like smoking Black & Milds when we play poker. We don’t want to give that up. Or at least, I don’t want to give those things up yet.

If each new year is a symbolic moment- this fresh shining moment in which we can turn over a new leaf, in which we can improve our lot and ourselves, why are focusing on taking things away? I don’t want to give things up.

But there are things I want. 

Think it over, seriously. Don’t waste your time or energy on something you think you kinda- of, sort- of, really- should- be spending your time on, like losing 10 silly pounds or watching how many times you say a bad word. You only get so many days; what do you want?

For the sake of an example: I couldn’t care less about losing any weight or eating less carbs, but I have my heart set on running a half- marathon this year.

When I was living in England, I worked with this man, Jamie, who ran marathons. He didn’t run them in that showy, asshole way: “LOOK AT ME, I AM TRES SPORTIF!” No, Jamie just quietly ran marathons. That’s it. It was something he did, on the occasional weekend.

He knocked me out, Jamie did. 26.2 miles, man. 26.2 miles, all casual- like. If you asked him about it, he’d talk about it, and even then, he was so quiet about the thing. He did it because he liked to. It made him feel calm, quiet, happy, strong.

I’d like some of that, please.

Rather than set a resolution (“I will run a half- marathon in 2012! Hooray! Sometime in 2012!!”) I will make a very specific commitment: “I will run a 10k in July,” as a step to that goal, then I find a 10k in July, because otherwise, I’ll forget, fail to train, throw myself into a 10k at the last minute, and find myself puking on the side of a trail in the Maryland summer. Then, I say, “I will run half- marathon in late 2012,” and I pick out the half- marathon, too. 

So now I have a set goal with clear- cut dates and expectations- I can do that! There are steps and a deadline. I’ve decided I will do this thing and I know exactly how I’ll get there. Hooray for a plan! I’ve gone from this strange, amorphous, and awfully vague thing hanging over my head to something I can easily accomplish. This pre- emptively destroys my Procrastination Monster. (Remind me some time to draw the Procrastination Monster for you. It is awful.)

More important to me than my Commitments, though is my Word Of The Year.

Despite being a yoga and meditation teacher, I’m not a very New Age-y “woo” person. I can’t even say the word “woo” without doing this terribly dismissive hand gesture: half jazz- hands, but up next to the temples, plus eye- rolling. I’m generally uncomfortable talking about this sort of thing, but having a central point of intention for your year changes everything for me.

Last year, I sat down with myself and thought about what I wanted my next twelve months to look like: what did I want? Did I want quiet, or was I looking for new things? Did I want to study, or did I want to explore? The idea of planning an overall theme for twelve months was intimidating as hell, but by looking at what had been good and what had been missing from the year before I was able to pick out the pieces I wanted most.  After a day or two of thinking, I realized what I was looking for at that point in my life was growth & adventure- new experiences, new friends, knowledge. I decided that the Word Of The Year for 2011 would be “expand”.

I applied that word any time I had a decision to make. I didn’t get crazy, but I let “expand” be the theme of how I lived in 2011. I leased a studio for my business, moving it out of my home. I became a yoga instructor and started teaching yoga and meditation part- time. My business partner and I made the painful decision to break an alignment that was riddled with logistical problems that were sucking the joy out of our work; hard, but the healthiest decision I’ve made in a long time, and it resulted in a business that is mine, free and clear. I’ve begun writing again, for myself and for publication, and I have a book contract. Okay, I sort of let it get crazy. It didn’t matter. It was the right decision.

My Word Of The Year for 2012 will be “focus”. After a year of expansion, I have all these things happening now and I need to pay attention to them, cultivate them, try not to drop any of them. This is the vague part, the part where I’m allowed to have some flexibility: my Word becomes the theme by which I’ll live 2012. If that doesn’t sound very New- Age “woo”, I don’t know what does, but you know, it works for me.

What works for me doesn’t have to work for you. What are your resolutions, your commitments, your Words Of The Year?

merry christmas, all.

A borrowed image, but this may as well have been me, 13 December 1993.

Today is my own personal Independence Day.

Today I celebrate the fact that I am still alive despite an abusive ex’s hands, and despite my mother’s willful and deliberate blindness. Today I celebrate the rebirth I took from that abuse; the way it propelled me into motion. Today I celebrate how it gave me an anger that turned me into an activist which moved me into new arenas, moved me into the world. Today I celebrate living without fear.

I would never have come into this life without 13 December 1993. I would never have felt compelled to go to Afghanistan to try to repair the world if I hadn’t known what it felt like to watch the world fade away. That moment was horrible and amazing and changed me forever. It made me afraid at first, and later, it made me brave.

I would never fully thank that sad, unrealized fraud of a man for bringing me to where I am now- I got myself here- but his moment of violence was a part of this, and I am grateful for the role he played. It was awful, and it never should have happened, but 18 years later I can say that it was the pivot that changed everything. My life now, here, this—it is amazing, and that moment- that one brutal gutting grunting almost- dying moment 18 years ago today- it was the moment that changed everything. It brought me here.

What I am stumbling around saying is: I would never have left if he hadn’t tried to kill me. I know that now, and so I am grateful that he tried to kill me, because it led me to the life I have now.

This day is important to me: sad, sordid, awful, but so significant. I mark it each year, like a second birthday, or a death date, or maybe both. The girl I might have been died that day; I lost everything when I left the house and ran away to find the police, to find shelter, to find help and eventually to find a new life. My family, my future, everything I owned: gone.

And yet- it also set me free. It’s a birthday; the girl I am was born that day. I try to envision that birth as free of attachments and possessions. I try, but even now I struggle: I lost so, so much. Instead, I breathe and release. I can still do that, and that is enough, because it needs to be.

I breathe, I release, and look I at the abundance in my life. This is enough. This is more than enough. This is more than I could ever have asked for.

————————————-

Every year on this day I lace my fingers around my neck, a small thing, a narrow span of soft flesh; I make a collar of my fingers, I squeeze gently and hold my breath and I remember, and I am grateful. 18 years ago today I was brave for the very first time: I took the first steps towards this, towards today, and towards tomorrow.

This is the most important day of my life.

Today, I am grateful, and happy, and full of joy; today I am lucky, and well aware of it.

in the dyepots

I am so damn tired.

If you ask me how things are, trust that half of whatever answer I give you is a lie. I have no idea how I’m doing. There is no room in my life for me to figure it out: there is no space, no time, no quiet. There isn’t any area of my life that isn’t in chaos right now: I have no safe space, no place I can go to, no refuge.

I’m not sleeping and I’m not eating. I’m not drinking myself silly, though, so hey, at least I’m not dysfunctional! WINNING. I know that statement is inaccurate, but given my family history, I still feel pretty pleased about this.

I’m not sure my “Am I doing okay?” test should be, “I’m not purchasing white zinfandel by the thumb- hole gallon- jug, so I must be doing okay,” … but hey, you know, in case you are wondering, I’m not. By these highly scientific methods, despite my a having a chronic illness, dissolving one business while establishing another, writing a book, working a second job, trying to pick up more writing work, dealing with the holidays, and dealing with the fire- I am still in a better psychological place than my mother.

I don’t want to give myself too much time to think about that statement.

I’m getting things done. I tell myself this means everything is okay, but even as I say it, I know I’m lying. I’m exhausted. Not that it means anything: I can’t change anything about it. I don’t have any time to be exhausted. Work, all work. All this weekend- yarn work tomorrow, yoga work on Sunday, back to daily work on Monday. When I’m not working, I’m working on things to do with the house, or the insurance. There is no time for me. There is no room for me in my life right now.

I am doing what I can to be honest with myself. I am trying to be gentle with the people around me. I can’t seem to extend the real, true, genuine parts of myself out to meet others, but I do everything I can to be kind and gentle and that’s all I can do right now, I think. I try to take the time and analyze my motives. I can’t seem to find the part of me that really connects with people, but I go through the motions, because I know it comforts the people around me, and most of the time they don’t seem to be able to tell the difference.

I find comfort in that, because I like to know that the people around me are comfortable.

I also find that idea so painful, because it seems to say that parts of me that were real- that were really me- were always invisible, but that’s reading into things and that is never a good idea. I’m too sleep deprived to address that set of thoughts logically.

I’ll wake up soon. I’ll snap out of this. I know I will. I’ll keep meditating, and writing, and working, and I will break through this. It will happen any day now.

Any fucking day.

I’m coming around.

This has been hard. Harder on me than I’d expected, honestly. I expected to bounce back relatively quickly: I enjoy hotels, and after all the travel I’ve done I’m very comfortable in them. I’ve also been homeless (although not in many, many years), and I’ve traveled a great deal, so I’ve learned not to get too connected to my things. So why, I kept wondering, was I so upset over this? Why did every trip back into our house send me into a funk of hopelessness? I am not the kind of girl to surrender in a crisis.

It has taken me some time to clarify this.

I was looking over what I’d been able to take with me and trying to figure out if I needed anything else- conditioner, socks, or shirts, things like that. We all ended up needing to buy some things just to get by, and I was doing my inventory. I shouldn’t need much, I thought. I know how to get by on a very limited amount of belongings. Of course I do, because when I lived in Afghanistan I could only have what I could fit into a 10×10 plywood room.

And that’s when it hit me.

This house was really just a house until I went to Afghanistan- nothing more than an investment up to that point. Once I got to Afghanistan the house and everything surrounding it started to become a symbol of anything that wasn’t the negativity of Afghanistan. Being in Afghanistan was not a wholly negative experience, but there was so much there that was awful, and I spent so much of my time holding on to the memory of home, which over time became an increasingly abstract concept.

My house- which my family was restoring- and even Baltimore itself became symbols of any place that wasn’t being rocketed, that wasn’t a detainee internment facility, which wasn’t full of bullshit swaggering Blackwater ops who tried to impress anyone with a pair of tits by telling them about This one time, see, we were chasing a coupla hajis outside of Maidan Wardak- you know where that is, sugar? Hey, I said- what? Okay, anyway, whatever, you listening to me? So I lean outta my truck and I fire a coupla shots over this towelhead just to get his attention and hey, where the fuck are you going? I’m talking to you, bitch. Come back over here, I’m not done yet.

I would sleep in my 10×10 plywood hut with a stick next to my bunk and a map of Baltimore tacked next to my head, with pins marking all the places that mattered most: Kiddo’s school, Spinster Yarn & Fibers, my tiny old house. When A10s woke me in the night, I’d snake an arm out of the covers and up the wall to trail my fingers across the pins before I went back to sleep. When some colonel tried to bully me or my crew into something unethical, I’d calculate the time difference and imagine what the sky looked like from my bedroom window at that moment before I planted by heels and hoped for the best.

This isn’t about the house itself, or about the things inside the house. I only care deeply about roughly a suitcase- worth of objects in the house; everything else is just a matter of inconvenience. This is about the house as a symbol of safety and safe harbor. It’s about all the emotional baggage I laid on and into the house before I came home.

This about how every moment in my home since I came back has been like a prayer of gratitude.

Looking at the damage, I can see that this is something that can be fixed. The ceilings and floors of the ground level will need to be replaced, the ground floor windows will need to be replaced, the bathroom will be gutted, we will probably lose the last of the original plaster, but the house will still stand. More, the house will be improved in some ways: new paint throughout, wall repair in the kitchen. Those cracked tiles I’d been meaning to pop out in the bathroom floor? Not so much of a problem anymore.

But me- I’m stuck. There is this web of very complicated emotions that I built during a very stressful time that now only works to hold me firmly in place. There was a time when that web was all that kept me from picking up and leaving Afghanistan, from abandoning friends and my team and just giving up on this enormous thing I’d decided I needed to do: it was all that kept me together in some of the worst moments I’ve had. This thing that saved me years ago keeps me in an emotional stasis point and I’ve been numb, distant, incomplete, since the fire.

(The house is also the symbol of my shame, that I had the option to do that, to pack up and leave. The people who lived in Afghanistan, the detainees, and the military there didn’t have that choice, and that helped keep me rooted, too. There is a shame to having privilege and using it. That’s a different story, and I’ll probably never write it.)

The things that I’m holding on to are ideas that are without meaning here, that have so little application to my life here, in Baltimore, in 2011. Like so much that comes to me from that time, these feelings have no real application in my current life but they are so integral to the animal that I am now. I have idea where to put them, no easy space for them in my life, in my heart or in my head: where do they fit?

In the end, I do what I can with this one piece of it all: I release this thing. I let this go, all the built- up pressure I’ve placed on an object: no one structure could ever hold all the weight I’ve laid on my house. These things are lost, and I let them go. The work we put into restoring our home is gone. Learning to detach false emotional constructs from that work- all this baggage, all these symbols and just… just crap. It’s all too much. I had no concept how firmly I’d rooted to this idea of our home. The dreams I’ve had since the fire- reminders of my time in Afghanistan, all reminders of how I’d seen this house as an inviolable refuge- affirm my need to release this.

So this fire: awfully timed, damned inconvenient, deeply unsettling, and in the end, possibly good for me. I’m trying to look at this as one long, three- to- four month lesson in non- attachment. Perhaps I’m learning to be a girl who is good at surrender.

First, someone broke into our back hut, but we didn’t think much of it. There wasn’t anything to steal. Well, some Wollmeise, a screenprinting machine, some beautiful silk roving, that sort of thing- but the thieves didn’t know well enough, so they left it all alone. We popped the screen back in the window and chalked it up to living in the city.

Then we went to court to testify against the man who assaulted his girlfriend in the street this September, then assaulted both of us when we tried to stop him. There we learned that his girlfriend wasn’t dropping the charges, exactly, but was definitely downplaying the violence. That was disheartening. Also, he had been in prison previously for burglary, trespassing, and assault. We learned that he had been in our neighborhood because his parents lived two doors up from us. Did I mention that when we interrupted the assault, we started by leaving our porch? He knows where we live, because this happened right in front of where we live.

AWESOME. YES. THIS IS GREAT.

He asked for a jury trial, because he was looking at a hypothetical 30 years in jail, which translates into a probable 8- 12 years in the real world. We testify against him on Monday. We were granted a protective order, but I’ve done enough work in victims’ services to know that doesn’t mean much. It’s a nice gesture, though. Like a love letter from the city of Baltimore: it’s actually very difficult to get a protective order in many cities, so I did appreciate just having been handed one like this.

Several days later, the window to our car was smashed out while it was parked in our driveway. Someone tried to take the stereo, but  couldn’t manage it, so they just tore out most of the dash and console, then partially destroyed the stereo itself.

Here’s something funny: we’d just had our stereo replaced, because it had been on the fritz. It was under warranty but it was also weirdly hard to find the part, so the replacement had taken a frustratingly long seven weeks. We had the new, functional stereo roughly 27 hours before we noticed the smashed- out window. The stereo wasn’t anything fancy, by the way. It was just the stereo that came with the car.

We have good insurance. We are driving an ugly but highly functional, comfortable rental which is covered by our insurance. The people currently working on our car  can’t seem to find a new stereo, either. We are suspended between bemused and wall- punching. I’m aiming to lean towards bemused but really, I’m swinging towards wall- punching today.

Then there was the fire. I don’t want to talk about the fire right now, because Sam just came back from meeting with some of the fire people at the house and the news wasn’t great, but it also wasn’t definitive, so I’ve really nothing to say except VAGUE AND MEANINGLESS PANICKING which will get me nowhere except more upset. I am upset today.

And then last night someone broke into the hut. Again. They didn’t take anything. There was nothing for thieves to take, really: craft supplies, a mini- fridge without even any beer in it, because we emptied it the last time we had a poker night. Still, someone took a screwdriver and their boot to our door and helped themselves to our space. To MY space, my space which is all messed up and awful but by the way, that’s the only clean space I have right now. It is separate from the house so completely unburnt, un- soot-ified,  but someone has broken in twice this week. Nothing is safe or clean. I have nothing of my own.

With a yard that is too big to properly fence, an empty house to one side of us, an alley behind us and neighbors to the other side with a large yard, we’re an easy target- especially now that we aren’t living there. Not, I suppose, that anyone would want anything in our actual home right now. I’d like them not to take anything, as we’ll need it to be there so we can make our insurance claims, but if they took it, it wouldn’t do them much good.

I want to move. That’s probably impossible, with “FIRE DAMAGE” on our house’s record now, right? Even though after all this is finished our house should hypothetically be cleaner than it’s ever been, with a brand new coat of paint on every damn room? “FIRE DAMAGE” on our house’s record probably means we are destined to DIE IN THIS HOUSE, with neighbors who hate us and have a criminal son who will probably NOT go to prison again but likes to hit us and hey, maybe breaks into our house a lot now, but who can prove it? NOT US.

I want my damn dogs, some spiked hot cocoa and my Twilight Zone DVD box set. I am over November today. I am over Right Now. November is fired, everyone, and as a matter of fact, I would like to resign from 2011, and get directly to Whenever The Hell This Is Over.

Shit, 2012 is ON NOTICE as of RIGHT NOW, because if things don’t turn around soon, I am going to do SOMETHING. I have no idea what it is right now, but I can feel it building inside me, and IT. IS NOT. GOOD.

I know there’s a stronger version of me that is much more capable of dealing with this in a rational way, but at this moment, I’m having a hard time finding her. She’s in here somewhere, right? I’d better start finding her, soon. I know I can do better than this.

This photo was taken in color, with flash, and it's how most of the first floor of our home looks right now. Those aren't cobwebs, those are 'smoke webs'- congealed soot. The horror.

Yesterday afternoon we came home to discover that an unused oven in our utility room somehow began a fire. Luckily no one was hurt, but it’s been upsetting. Everything we own is covered in soot and ash. If we needed anything, we needed to take something that looked very clean, probably from the second floor, before the soot settled from the air and onto it. The soot gets into everything- inside closed drawers, cabinets, and closets- so if it appeared clean and we wanted it, we grabbed it and dusted it off as best we could on our way to the hotel.

The pets were all okay. Also- just in case you were wondering- it is exceedingly unpleasant to bathe an adult cat.

So: outside of pets & vital documents, what would I carry out with me in case of an emergency? I couldn’t bring my spinning wheel, because it was on the first floor- it’s covered in soot and filth, hopefully otherwise fine- but obviously, if it were an option, it would have been on the list. Other than that, here’s the list.

Item the first:

Outside, there is a cephalopod. Inside, there is a damn fine scotch. Yes. Yes. YES.

Item the second:

My Loop! yarn. I was really, really happy that this was okay. It smells funny from the fire, but only a little funny, and I think it will wash out. It doesn't matter. It's so pretty, I don't care if it smells funny forever.

Item the third:

Addi Click interchangeable knitting needles. VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. Luckily, they were buried in a bag at the opposite end of the house from where the fire started. They also smell funny, but they are metal and they will get over it.

Item the fourth:

This is my writing bag. All of the resources and materials for my book are in here. I'm so glad this is okay because if that had burned up, I WOULD CRY FOREVER.

Item the fifth, and final:

Pie. Not just any pie: DANGEROUSLY DELICIOUS PIE. Two of them, actually: an apple and a pumpkin. Nom nom nom nom PIES.

The pies weren’t actually at the house, thank goodness; Sam and Kiddo had just picked them up from Dangerously Delicious, so they weren’t contaminated by the fire. I’m glad, because that was our saving grace the night of the fire. You have no idea how much a good pie can save a really, really shitty day. Actually, neither did I, until last night. PIES ARE MAGIC.

So, to recap my priorities in an emergency: obviously, my laptop, but that came with me to work, so does that even count? Probably. I would have grabbed it if it hadn’t been with me, so I’d say it counts. So—  laptop first. Then we have booze, knitting, writing, and food- mainly pie. And a sense of humor, obviously, too. That’s really all we have in any crap situation- our ability to look at it from the side and smile.

102% funded, everyone! That's amazing!

And so: as promised, Sam and I sat down with a camera and we had the raffle for the four skeins of Gaia Fingering in Little Round Top. We brought in a little help, too.

He was a very, very little help at times, actually

At first, Hugo was more interested in the cats than in helping us pick names from the funny hat. He came around, though.

inspecting the slips

First he inspected all the slips, to make sure they were all in order.

inspecting the hat

Then Hugo inspected the silly hat. (Remember, we specifically said the names had to be drawn from a silly hat! This was the silliest we had on hand.)

I feel like a steampunk version of Blossom.

Then I inspected the hat. It seemed to be mostly in order.

I think we're ready to do this thing.

Then we were ready to start drawing names!

I think Hugo's trying to read the card in this photo.

Our first lucky winner is Lilie W.- thank you so much, and congratulations!

Winner #2!

Our second winner was Tan S.! Thank you for the support, and congratulations!

Winner #3!

The third winner is Emily W.! Thank you, Emily, and congratulations!

Winner #4!

The fourth and final winner is Barbara H.- thank you so much!

After that, things got a little silly…

Originally, I tried to put the goggles on Hugo, but he was having none of that.

… but eventually, Hugo got the treat he’d earned.

He can stand like this forEVER. It's creepy, especially when he's wearing a sweater.

As it turns out, I have a mailing address for everyone except Emily- so Emily, I’ll be emailing you tonight to ask for a mailing address, and everyone else, I’ll be shipping out your skeins on Monday!

Thank you again, everyone!

My talented brother- in- law- to- be, Garrett Sendlewski, works as an animator & is working on a short film called Beyond The Light. He’s asking for pledges for funding in exchange for production credits, film props, etc.

Gaia Fingering Yarn in Little Big Top

Rather than ask everyone here to run on over and pledge to Garrett’s film, I dove into my stash and came up with this: four skeins of long- discontinued Gaia Fingering in Little Round Top. (Little Round Top is the Starry Night Cracker equivalent.) I’ll be raffling off these skeins to help raise money for Garrett’s film. THIS YARN IS COMPLETELY DISCONTINUED, FOLKS. You can’t get it anywhere- it just plan doesn’t exist anymore!

And so: if you want to make a pledge to Garrett’s film, you can do so by clicking right here!

If you make a pledge for any amount at all: THANK YOU!

If you pledge $25 or more, forward a copy of your receipt to me at onmytiptoes@gmail.com, and every $25 you pledge gets you an entry in the raffle for one these skeins of Gaia Fingering. There are FOUR skeins here, so there are four chances to win, everyone!

I’ll be running the raffle until either Garrett hits full funding (as of right now, he’s at about 1/3 of the way there) or 11:00 pm EDT on November 15th. All entries will be drawn via the extremely scientific method of paper slips being drawn from a hat. It’s just like science, except nothing like science at all! How exciting! How thrilling! How absolutely worth $25 to watch!

I also promise that if Garrett gets full funding, I will photograph the entire paper- slips- in- a- hat- process, with me in the photographs, and post the photos. PICTURES OF ME ON THE INTERNET, people. We all know how much I hate that. This is how much I’d like to see Garrett’s movie made.

So, if you have a moment, take a look. I know times are tough, so don’t feel pressured, but if you have a few dollars to spare, help my friend and brother- in- law- to- be— that makes him the man who makes my baby sister happy, making him a Very Important Guy in my world— help him make his film. It would be nice, and it would make him happy, and maybe you might win some lovely, pretty rare yarn out of it, too.

Thanks, everyone.