yum.

radiohead, as loud as it can go, at eight o'clock on a tuesday morning. (the bends, in case you were wondering.) heat on because the windows are down because I have to feel the wind and let the music out the windows. new haven, on days like this, I'm yours.

as I trace the breeze with the palm of my hand it comes to me that I am lighter still from yesterday's rantings. and I know, I've been taught, that talking about what rattles around in my mind sets it free and then clears up the space for new things. it's not that I forget that, it's just... maybe some days it happens in a bigger way than others. point being, there was a lot more space this morning than there was yesterday. it's working, so I'll keep going.

there's a shifting, as I pace around in the coccoon I talked about yesterday. (am I spelling that right?) I'm being forced, through sheer consequence, to deal with the god stuff I've been presented with for the last five years in meetings. like, what you've figured out worked until now - now you've got to take it to another level, not because we're telling you to, but because in your own way, you're telling us you need to. they are not fucking kidding about this stuff - it's got to be more a part of me than stopping the lady that just dropped a wad of fifties and giving it back to her. it's so, so much more than that.

so that's happening, I gained a few pounds this winter and it sucks. it's taking up space in my mind (and my pants), so I've tried to turn it over and have been presented with fellow trudgers and books and the like. I'm having a tough time with my mom being sick, that will just have to take it's course. my sister is insane, but then so am I. and of late, I am feeling financially insecure, and yet I sit here writing (that's not writing, that's typing) because if I don't, then I'll be not working with all of this rolling around in my head. at least if it's out, I have a shot of doing something vaguely related to work. or maybe work is slow right now because I need the time and space to sort out these things.

so let's see if this works like yesterday did. I swear, this morning, it was like - well, I can equate it best to an amends I made. so I leave to go cross country in 1995 and my grandmother is basically dying in the hospital. my aunt had told her that I was a raging junkie or something, so the last time I see her is in the hospital bed and she's crying, in her broken lithuanian accent, please, don't-a do the drugs, please. I'm crying too and I tell her I love her and we leave a little while after that.

I call my mom from somewhere in illinois, some rest station, and she tells me my grandmother has died. and I don't go back for the funeral or anything, and I hold onto the payphone, I hang from it, weeping, wanting to crumble on the floor but the cord won't reach. as many things, it only goes so far.

so fast forward to me making amends in early sobriety. I write letters to both my grandmother and grandfather, and go to the pier where their ashes were spread. which, strangely, is the same naval base where my parents met. or maybe not strangely. so I read these letters and I throw them into the ocean, and it's windy so one doesn't even make it to the water, the wind just holds it to the piling just above the sea, and it doesn't feel any different. I walk back to my car and go to a meeting or whatever I did that night.

days later, it crossed my mind, what I had done, as it often did. how I didn't show up, how I left her crying - and the feeling had changed. it had been the same for years and years, and it changed. that amends, those moments that were just going through the motions because I was told to - it changed. it freed up the space.

and that long, long winded story of how my mind is untangling is how I felt this morning after what I wrote yesterday. so let's see what sticks.

and back to now, I'll leave you on a high note - I have never, ever heard myself described better than a post in my guestbook from grainne, on my "get the fuck out of the front row" comments:

you're a bit crazy in a stable kind of way, arent ya Victoria??

yes indeed. off for the day, as eve's plane flies overhead and she reads my card and looks out the window and wonders.

~vvb