Meditating on a few words

Writing poetry can sometimes be a form of release, and other times it can simply be a practice of meditation. I say meditation because so many people have suggested that I learn and when I work on my writing I notice that my thoughts are in the center of my mind, exactly where they are supposed to be while meditating. When I write, the world loses its grasp on me and I temporarily move into the ether—finding my path as it is laid before me by the Muses. As I begin to write, the words before me create emotions that I did not always know were there, and when true metamorphosis occurs, they become full sentiments carrying with them the ability to speak to people without ever needing to know who I am. I wish that I had the skills to create such full metamorphoses and watch, as Pygmalion did, my art and love come to life and be my partner for future creations. For this reason, I have begun to set aside time to practice meditation, as suggested, and to write on a more regular basis. Only with practice will my skill grow, and only with humble mastery will I ever achieve the quality of writing that is able to live and breath on its own.

Here is poem that I wrote a little over a year ago, and have just now come back to it. I wrote it late in the night, alone, and trying to find a place of solitude and comfort in my head. I struggle with the title, and perhaps a few lines, but more or less, I feel very strongly about this one.


Without

I am writing in third person
because I have forgotten myself.

She walks along the shoreline,
the moon in full orb,
swelling her body into a natural pool.

Sometimes I cannot remember
what was a dream and what was real.

Alone on the beach
she watches the night Jasmine bloom,
the fragrance reminds her
of a perfume she once wore.

I lie awake at night dreaming;
my reality lost, my body numb,
senseless and aware of the whole room,
naked and cold.

Through Khaos comes Eris

Last week Isaiah I and had the pleasure of getting our bedroom painted. We picked out the color several weeks ago, a brilliant slate blue called “greyhound”. With the prospect of a freshly painted room, and no longer having to live with walls painted a 25 year old pink, we embarked on the journey of disassembling our entire bedroom and implanting into our living room. Thus the war of the roses began. As our apartment grew more and more chaotic our sense of sanity began to wane until we couldn’t look at each other without exchanging battle-ready glares. Even our cat, Ogden, was expressing his unease by crying all day and attacking our feet. Two nights into the mess, and two nights before Valentine’s Day, I thought for sure that we were done for. The pressure of life was breaking us and we could not recognize how deeply our outer stimuli were affecting our moods and our affections for one another. When Valentine’s Day came around, and I had already put in two 10 hour days of hard-rocking retail work, I just wanted to run my car into a very firm building so that I could take a vacation from everything in a room where no body could talk to me. When I left my house, I was in tears, I couldn’t stand looking at my boyfriend, my cat had become a man-eating tiger, my apartment still looked like a high-class dumpster, and I loathed the idea of going to work. When I can home, though, Isaiah had spent the entire day putting the furniture back together and had a beautiful spread of take-out Thai food waiting for me on the coffee table; my favorite place to eat dinner. At that point we began talking—not yelling—and we realized how much a well groomed home could affect our demeanors, even the cat’s. Life since then has been back to normal. Our relationship is better because of the hardship of the weekend, and our room is more beautiful than I had hoped. I continue to desire more renovations of the old place, but my apartment is really becoming a home. It’s amazing how, with worldly order, strife subsides and inner peace blossoms, and my cat goes back to a toe-free diet.

It's a Chronic Life

The most unusual side effect of chronic pain is that, after having it for long enough, you no longer notice that it’s there. That is until you have a temporary period of release. But even then, when it comes back, you think for just one moment “this is a normal feeling”. I have had chronic wrist pain for 10 years now, which is amazing because I am only 24. Eight years ago I had surgery, which helped more than I could have hoped for, but I still have pain almost everyday. Some days it’s just a little pain, perhaps a 0.5 on a scale of 1-10. But other days, like today, it will go up to an 8. Rarely since the surgery it will be at a 10. Over the years I have willed myself to accept the pain, just as I accept the fact that I have asthma. Neither health issue should get in the way of me living my life. They do, however, create setbacks. I run slower than other people, I cannot travel as far, and I cannot always hold my pen with grace or knit a row with even tension. It is said that the first step of recovery is acknowledging that you have a problem. Well, I may never be rid of my wrist pain, but coming to terms with it has helped me to learn how to live with it. Life with chronic pain can feel like it’s long, but it’s really too short to make it your focal point.

When I consider how my light was spent, I want to know that I did it myself.

Over the past year I have spent copious hours learning how to make things myself, completely homemade. Though I have not yet successfully dyed my own yarn (or spun it for that matter) I have advanced my knitting abilities dramatically. I have learned many techniques, including how to alter patterns to my fit own preferences. Recently, I just learned how to make my own dried onion/garlic powder, how to churn my own butter, and how to infuse vodka with my favorite flavors. While reflecting upon my new found skills, I wonder why these skills require spending hours on Google. Don’t get me wrong, I am wonderfully happy that Google exists to aid me in my new discoveries, but it is a shame that simple recipes, such as making homemade butter, has turned purely into a lesson of how to get the best package deal at the grocery store. Since I live in an apartment, I am unable to grow my own herbs, so I have to get my raw goods from an outside source anyway, but whenever I give someone a gift that I knit or offer them dinner with my own homemade foods, they are more grateful than I could ever imagine. And that is worth taking the extra step in making things just a little more homemade.

It's been a while...but I've been productive!

Double Moss Cable knit scarf

I created this scarf as a project for practicing the cable stithc (and to use up some old yarn that I had). This scarf is with worked with a 4-row pattern double moss stitch, cabling every other time you being a knitted row.

Abbreviations:
cn: cable needle




Cast on 44 stitches

Row 1: K1, P1, K1 P1, *k6, K1, P1, K1, P1 *repeat 3 times
Row 2: Repeat row 1
Row 3: P1, K1, P1, K1, * K6, P1, K1, P1, K1 *Repeat 3 times
Row 4: Repeat row 3
Rows 5 and 6: Repeat row 1
Rows 7 and 8: Repeat row 3
Row 9: K1, P1, K1, P1, * slip three stitches on cn and hold in front, k3, k3 from cn, K1,P1, K1, P1 *Repeat 3 times

Repeat rows until your scarf is the desired length. If using worsted weight yarn with size 8 needles, there should be approximately one inch between each cable. For more pictures go to my page on Ravelry.com, my oneline name is purplerozes. Happy knitting!

A simple Question

why is it that humans feel the need to dress, or camouflage, themselves to mirror the seasons. As soon as the trees start to change color, we immediately start wearing deeper shades of yellow and orange and red, imitating the trees. All winter clothes seem to have snowflakes on them. Is this a cry to be closer to nature? or merely some fashion designer's joke? The saying goes that one should not wear white after Labor Day, but is it only so that we don't clash with the snow, or is it because of the more practical reason, you might get lost in it?

Still sleepless in Essex

The funny thing is that the night after I wrote the first draft of this poem, i had a horrible nightmare about dieing. I dreamt that the grim reaper was chasing me. Spooky enough, but then I awoke, stumbling around me room to find him in my doorway. As he caught hold of me I was able to wake up for real. This is the first time I ever had a wake-up-in-my-sleep dream. It was the scariest dream experience I had ever had. Amazingly, my dream room was exactly the same as me real room, right down to the pile of clothes that needs mending. My sleep has gotten better ever since I read a passage from Doctor Zhivago on consciousness and sleep. Apparently all I needed was to be talked into letting myself just fall asleep and not trying to talk myself into falling asleep. Here's a second draft of the poem:

Finding Sleep (A.K.A Battling Insomnia)

When my heart is broken
and you are not there,
where can I find my solace?

Left alone, I am sleepless
with restless dreams and a tiredness
that will not subside.

I think of my world
and the golden strings
wondering what will become of them next.

Three sisters, sharing one sight,
three minds with the same conclusion.
They have no sleep, for there is work to be done.

They work while I await my rest.