Jumbled.

Out of focus.

Lack of focus.

Scared.

Inward-silent-screaming.

Panic?

Doubt?

Should I…..?

Should I liquidate my assets and move somewhere like Thailand or an island off Greece ? Somewhere where the weather is good most of the year and no one cares about its mineral rights or geopolitical power?

I live in a cold place. Maine is about 20 degrees during the day right now, and we have had a snowy winter. It is beautiful here and very, very quiet. It is the end of the line, geographically speaking; we are about 2.5 hours from the Canadian Border. It isn’t far enough away; I feel the feelings encroaching, and the impacts are just barely far away. Yesterday I bought an $11 roll of aluminum foil. Being that aluminum is the 3rd most abundant element on earth, I found it troubling and I then bought it anyway. From now on I will be washing my aluminum foil so that it can be reused. You can’t catch me!

There are so many things I wish to be writing about, but instead I am working on quilts, and walking, and looking at snow, and looking at stars, listening to music, and trying to keep the loneliness and fear at bay. It is very hard. I am a highly emotional person. Sometimes I feel that my heart lives outside my body, and so it bumps into everything.

Right now I am off work for the most part, except when I go to caretake a house that is in my care. This means I get to sleep in everyday, and take my dog for walks, and make toast in the morning. I try to only read the news 2 or 3 times a day. I try to not listen to anything but my favorite podcasts. I try to find little things to appreciate, and I do, everyday. I make new recipes and call friends. I am worried that I am turning into a weird person who channels anger into making quilts. My connection to metalworking seems to be waning, and what does that mean?

I find myself wandering alot lately, as if I am in fog. I don’t understand this. I have so many skills and so many ideas, so many topics to write about and make things about, and yet, I don’t seem to do it. I work at night, sewing tiny pieces of fabric together. I am making a quilt about anger and about seeing. When I start making a block I am mad as hell, and by the end, the anger has dissipated, so I think it is working. The block I am making is called the Eye of God, and the eye is definitely aimed at my poor dead dad, the one who abandoned two twin boys back in 1968 and impacted the lives of many people afterward; his grief became a wrecking ball that just never gave out.

There are other wrecking balls around, swung by other men who are, no doubt, lying about something very big, so sad and empty that all they can do is destroy and hurt. It is an old story, but I am tired of it all. Tired of the actions of men, chimpanzees swinging their dicks around, holding automatic weapons, not thinking about everyone behind them that has to pick up the pieces. My current interpretation of the patriarchy is that is tired and cranky (hangry maybe? hangry for actual human connection and permission to be…..) and, like a tired and cranky child, it is striking out at any hand that comes near. Our Vice President says to Germany and other partners in Europe to be cooler to the Alt-Right parties who negate how bad those Nazis were, our President lets an unelected person have access to critical data systems that hold information like the fact that I moved here from England sometime in the 1980s on the coattails of a man who was running away from his poor decisions, his anger, his family, everyone who could have comforted him and forgiven him. He ran to New York City and we took a helicopter around the Statue of Liberty and we never went back. Smash.

It is no secret that I did not vote for our current president, nor will I ever support a man who I knew best from his episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous“, a show I loved as a kid. I cannot support this person and I don’t understand how anyone can, but I am clearly wrong as the majority of voters did indeed support him. I wonder, though….will they in a few months?

I keep thinking about a marble running down a hillside or a dune. The marble starts at the top, shiny and beautiful, and starts wending its way down a hillside. As it moves, it carves a shallow trench in its wake, perhaps it hits other tiny pebbles, runs over grass or shells. When it reaches the bottom, no matter its small stature in an of itself, its actions have permanently (or impermanently, as after all, everything is impermanent) changed the surface of the Earth. People who think that the actions of the president will only impact the 2 million or so people he wants to fire in the federal government and will not hurt them are delusional. The marble that is mass layoffs in our government will pick up, roll over, carve out, and forever alter so many unpredictable aspects of our life in the United States. Only time will tell.

I am going to work on forcing myself to write here, to document. I have so many things to say and stories to write down. I want to write about meeting my half-brothers and how wonderful they are and how excited I am to meet them. I want to write more about Mary Ann and taking care of Cody’s grandma, Maw Maw. I want to write about my volunteering for the local hospice group and trying to find my way again after losing my confidence over the last three years. It is a long and great journey, so much to say! I cannot let the fear of the present moment erase these experiences and these stories.

Wish me luck, thanks for reading, and stay tuned.