Come Talk To Me
The jackal proud and tight
In search of you I feel my way
Through slowest heaving night
Whatever fear invents
I swear it makes no sense
I reach out through the border fence
Come down, come talk to me”
It’s comical only because I was thinking of what a big letdown it was to experience a gloomy Sunday after three most magic-filled days. I had front row tickets to a Bruce Hornsby show on Thursday, naturally, and then spent most of sunny Friday at the BigE with the toddlers and my mother-in-law, and then Saturday had a beautiful parade with BOTH kids marching (Scarlet with the high school marching band, and Des with the YoYo Club). After the parade, my other mother-in-law came over to see the kids and sleep over, and we wound up talking until very late hours of Sunday morning. Cassidy came home from a powerful and poignant trip on Sunday and I dealt with the gloomy rain. I was afraid of the gray after being more open and honest and vulnerable, and with the joys of connection and radiance that follow it. So that rain made me afraid that open doors and open windows and open hearts would clamp shut again. Firmly.
Living mindfully (for me) isn’t always about bliss or peace or thoughts about every bite or step you take. For me it’s about checking in with my triggers and reactions, and what they might mean, or how I can change their spiraling trajectories. With no plan in place, or history of a soft landing, things can spiral fast. A stomachache at the fair or a whining toddler? No big deal for some, but for others it’s swirls of colors and noises and smells and a rapidly beating heart. I find comfort and grounding where I can – a Scarlet smile or a deep breath. I’m bad-ass and can get through a lot, have gotten through a lot, and will get through a lot. It’s not enough, though, I’m finding. We have these little gifts and opportunities all day, every day (which is what I write to my clients a lot about my writing availability and maybe should insert that energy elsewhere).
Unuttered words hold fast
With reptile tongue, the lightning lashes
Towers built to last
Darkness creeps in like a thief
And offers no relief
Why are you shaking like a leaf?
Come on, come talk to me”
See, I started writing this at a different time, and in a different place. There are sure-to-be crash landing disasters that can get diverted into something more peaceful. It can be better, sure, but it can be a lot worse. Tiny victories, like the stuffed seahorse that Rider “won” at the big fair last night because the lady running the game was really nice. She decided that the ring he tossed that fell onto the neck of a turned over rubber ducky certainly counted as a ring around the neck! She let him have his win. It was a sort of win. A tiny victory. A baby step. It wasn’t a full ring around the neck, but it was what we did with what we had, to avert tantrum disaster and to set the course of the crash landing onto a better path. Not even a soft crash landing; but a landing. Clumsy and shaky, but perfectly executed for safety. Setting the path for better landings and better skies. Distractions can help and, boy, distractions can hurt. It’s actually amazing how we learn to play our games just right, and call our wins and also our losses what they actually are.
I’ve changed the way I talk to people and animals. Heck, even things. This has been my 2023 project. To the broody chickens blocking my path to clean eggs. To the three dogs, even when they bark incessantly at the UPS drivers. I noticed that Astro, and to some extent Athena, are nervous animals and at this point, we can’t change their pasts, their hard memories, their brain chemistries. We can change our tiny actions to make bigger waves. Especially when I’m wearing heavy boots, but even when I’m bare/light-footed, I am gentle and slow with my movements. I notice when I’m loudly doing housework, or tripping over toys on the floor, and they don’t flinch. It’s the tiny actions and movements. We start with the pets, work our way to the people (big to little) and I’ve even changed the way I speak to Robot Overlord, Alexa, who doesn’t have feelings. It’s just that she has a voice and she responds. It implies feelings in my heart. I act accordingly.
There are the big guns too; the harder and higher stakes. Like Connecticut traffic when you’re heading to a meet and greet with Toad the Wet Sprocket (epic), or the people you love the most and for the longest, and who you want to love for the rest of your life. I can flow like an angry or receding river sometimes. Angry or slow or peaceful or ravaging. I’m just glad when it’s flowing. I am afraid to start, for fear I’ll never be able to stop. I am afraid to stop, for fearing of ceasing to exist; drying out. Luckily, it gets more fluid as I do. It’s harder to stop the new paths and trails, and anyway, why would you want to do that? Let it flow to your heart and the moon and the sun. Take advantage of your open heart and mind. Use it to write a Friday post, maybe apply passionately to a job, fight for something you believe in, or make someone else’s day a whole lot better. Not a little better. When your heart and mind shuts down at all, know they’re not closed.
I was devastated this week to hear of a brain tumor diagnosis in someone I had had a significant heart-to-heart with a week or so ago. It reminded me, as most things do lately, to do and to be better. No waiting for a different day, a sunnier day, a brighter day, an open-hearted day. No distractions, no going to bed unresolved, just no, no, no. You have a chance every day, and in it, within every hour, minute, second. Holy hell, there is a choice. It’s the simplest one and the one you start at. It’s raining again, and closed doors and closed windows don’t mean closed hearts and minds. They follow one another, or they walk in tandem. Take a chance and open it all up.
If you’d just talk to me
Unblock this misery
If you’d only talk to me
Don’t you ever change your mind
Now your future’s so defined
And you act so deaf, so blind
Come on, come talk to me
Come talk to me
Come talk to me
I can imagine the moment
Breaking out through the silence
All the things that we both might say
And the heart, it will not be denied
‘Til we’re both on the same damn side
All the barriers blown away”
Your smiling and styling in these pics not only talk to us Tamara, they sing to us, and we see and hear you loud and clear! You have gifted us with your important reminder that we really do have chances, choices, opportunities, photo ops too Every Day, and with open hearts and minds, we can find many positive paths or just simply trailblaze our own paths toward anything and everything that can make our days better, and take our dreams higher. I would have loved to be in the audience that night to experience Peter and Paula’s magical performance.
I love that idea of being mindful about what tends to set us off in a negative direction. Someone close to me struggles a lot with OCD, and this is a big part of getting through it. Day by day, situation by situation. It can be so frustrating, as if your mind is being hijacked. However, we can carve new pathways of thought, and this can provide an alternative way to see and think about a tough situation!