melancholie d'automne
Riding the bus down to the library today, I sat behind a woman with lovely straight grey hair & a silken shawl protecting her head from the soupcon of chill to which we must all react in these weeks leading up to Hallowe'en, or Samhain, or toussaints, however you wish to call a time so invested w/ melancholy as to have convinced our superstitious ancestors that the veil between living & dead thins appreciably, giving us an opportunity to communicate with those who've shuffled off this mortal coil.
What's a coil in this context, anyway?
Across our life-giving lake the Adirondacks are marbled w/ swathes of orange and the occasional eclat de rouge (these latter found mostly low to the ground & close to the shore, counterintuitively). At least I presume this still to be true; couldn't see a fucking thing today. Yesterday was the first day of freedom from the grey mist that has enshrouded our usually fair valley for the better part of two weeks. I'll bet they're harveting grapes in Shelburne, lest the wet soil dilute the flavour qualities of our late-hanging northern varietals, but I haven't even had time to call & ask what labour is available in the vineyard, as my other lifeworks, travel & batterer intervention, are too rich & time-consuming to allow for this pursuit. Maybe next spring.
Travel season is coming to an end & I've been hichhking as if it had yet to go out of style: Syracuse chez manny_script & son fils last weekend (the weather there was preferable to here, which never happens), humbled by pavlovitch's capacity to let go despite my knowledge that he has in the past been at least as much a sucker for the fair sex as I've been. Whenever I would get into my anger at the ex-, he would point out, with the ruthless justice I seem to seek out in friends, "But you have no control over that."
I would like to have control over the anger, though. Right now the best I've got is commitment to subverting it & humble recognition of the slowness of said process.
All right, that's the second reference to humility on this post. It's not as if I'm blessed with a surfeit of it, I'm just recognising a need to temper my native arrogance w/ a little of the patience w/ myself which would seem to be humility's richest fruit.
Not that I haven't been inspired to it, mind you. A mutual friend posted a questionnaire that was answered by the partner of polly, my former lifemate. Polly was contributing to said response, which ended up so infused with her spirit that I felt momentarily close to her again, and insanely grateful. When I imagine her calling, my responses are full of understanding and appropriate, undramatic remorse, typified by the statement, "I can understaqnd why you wouldn't trust me, and I don't expect you to do all at once." Whereas my imagination of similar entretients w/ the more recent ex- are full of recriminations & witty hurtful quips.
Two women, both former lifemates, neither of whom will speak to me, and I am grateful to one, expect nothing of her, and the other I resent with a fervour that is almost certainly an invitation to cancer.
Why am I writing about any of this?
What to say about work? It requires that I be on my game. After couple of weeks of doing only two groups per week due to cancellations, and giving myself ample time to prepare, both curriculum & my own heart, I had it last night, asking all the right questions, getting men unaccustomed to critical thinking to see connections, joggling the veterans out of their complacency. It is not like this every night. I think I need to limit my facilitation to no more than three groups in a given week. After I finish covering the current spate of groups I've agreed to cover for colleagues.
I'm home this weekend, though fracophil & I may go up to Montreal for a Liz Phair show. Time to regroup, climb a mountain if the fucking weather will hold, spend time w/ neglected intimates close to home.
What's a coil in this context, anyway?
Across our life-giving lake the Adirondacks are marbled w/ swathes of orange and the occasional eclat de rouge (these latter found mostly low to the ground & close to the shore, counterintuitively). At least I presume this still to be true; couldn't see a fucking thing today. Yesterday was the first day of freedom from the grey mist that has enshrouded our usually fair valley for the better part of two weeks. I'll bet they're harveting grapes in Shelburne, lest the wet soil dilute the flavour qualities of our late-hanging northern varietals, but I haven't even had time to call & ask what labour is available in the vineyard, as my other lifeworks, travel & batterer intervention, are too rich & time-consuming to allow for this pursuit. Maybe next spring.
Travel season is coming to an end & I've been hichhking as if it had yet to go out of style: Syracuse chez manny_script & son fils last weekend (the weather there was preferable to here, which never happens), humbled by pavlovitch's capacity to let go despite my knowledge that he has in the past been at least as much a sucker for the fair sex as I've been. Whenever I would get into my anger at the ex-, he would point out, with the ruthless justice I seem to seek out in friends, "But you have no control over that."
I would like to have control over the anger, though. Right now the best I've got is commitment to subverting it & humble recognition of the slowness of said process.
All right, that's the second reference to humility on this post. It's not as if I'm blessed with a surfeit of it, I'm just recognising a need to temper my native arrogance w/ a little of the patience w/ myself which would seem to be humility's richest fruit.
Not that I haven't been inspired to it, mind you. A mutual friend posted a questionnaire that was answered by the partner of polly, my former lifemate. Polly was contributing to said response, which ended up so infused with her spirit that I felt momentarily close to her again, and insanely grateful. When I imagine her calling, my responses are full of understanding and appropriate, undramatic remorse, typified by the statement, "I can understaqnd why you wouldn't trust me, and I don't expect you to do all at once." Whereas my imagination of similar entretients w/ the more recent ex- are full of recriminations & witty hurtful quips.
Two women, both former lifemates, neither of whom will speak to me, and I am grateful to one, expect nothing of her, and the other I resent with a fervour that is almost certainly an invitation to cancer.
Why am I writing about any of this?
What to say about work? It requires that I be on my game. After couple of weeks of doing only two groups per week due to cancellations, and giving myself ample time to prepare, both curriculum & my own heart, I had it last night, asking all the right questions, getting men unaccustomed to critical thinking to see connections, joggling the veterans out of their complacency. It is not like this every night. I think I need to limit my facilitation to no more than three groups in a given week. After I finish covering the current spate of groups I've agreed to cover for colleagues.
I'm home this weekend, though fracophil & I may go up to Montreal for a Liz Phair show. Time to regroup, climb a mountain if the fucking weather will hold, spend time w/ neglected intimates close to home.