There's something about Fall...

I walked out yesterday morning to start packing the car for market, and the Fall was there. I know it's not officially Fall yet, but it was visiting to prepare us for it's arrival. The air was cool, and misty, and the sun was rising into the sky, and I said, "oo," and breathed a very deep sigh...

There's something about the Fall. Maybe it's just memories, that harken my heart back to times of comfort and love: apple picking with friends, bonfires at the beach, huddling with hot cider and warm jackets at the soccer games in school...pumpkin picking and hay rides with my grandparents....ahh...Fall is a time of relief. Relief from the summer heat and the busy freedom of the summer. It's a settling time that returns us to the roots of who we are. I sigh again, and thank goodness for Fall. :)

It's also a lonely time for me because in all those memories there are friends and family and oftentimes a significant other. I miss having someone there in the morning, miss having someone to lean up against and cuddle with as the days get colder. Miss the certainty that comes with a return to school, and the excitement of all the new yet familiar things, and the coming of the holidays. Halloween is pagan new year. It is the end of the old year before the descent into darkeness and renewel which is the birth of the next. I haven't had a group or even a person to honor this time with in a long while. I do what I can on my own, but I get lazy when it's just for me, and I miss that too. Maybe I can make this year different...maybe that can be my recall to an old familiar feeling, yet renewed with the wisdom of loss and age. Maybe this loneliness, which I feel has taken root in my soul now and reached a deeper level than it has before, maybe it can reach deeper parts of myself now too, and nourish my soul from within.

A girl can hope.
A girl will always hope.

...as a flower or a stone...

The Solitary by Sara Teasdale

Let them think I love them more than I do,
Let them think I care, though I go alone,
If it lifts their pride, what is it to me
Who am self-complete as a flower or a stone?

It is one to me that they come or go
If I have myself and the drive of my will,
And strength to climb on a summer night
And watch the stars swarm over the hill.

My heart has grown rich with the passing of years,
I have less need now than when I was young
To share myself with every comer,
Or shape my thoughts into words with my tongue.

When I was young, I identified with the first part of this poem. I felt complete in myself, and felt no need for others. I loved my friends and family, but was also content in my solitude. Things changed. I remember a decisive moment, and think back...I often wonder if I cursed myself in this moment, doomed my existance forever after to be searching and yearning for love. I loved a boy who loved me, but in that love wanted me to need him, but I did not. I loved him so, though, that I hurt because he hurt, and prayed one night to love like he did, prayed to love him the way he wanted me to. And then I did. We ended up apart in the end anyway, but never again did I have the independence I did in my innocence. I wonder on that a lot. I think about Circe, or the woman from Bell, Book, and Candle...how they lost their powers when they fell in love.

I have been desperate to find love lately. Desperate to find my true love, to start a family. Maybe it's just biological.

If you could go back in time, to change things...would you?

I think most people do not want to go back to a time and place with their ignorance still in tact, to relive moments as they were. Usually we wish to relive only with what we have learned guiding our choices, expecting that we would choose better, and those choices, in turn, would bring us to a happier now. If only we could go back and teach our younger selves! Thus saving heartache and hardship. But we cannot. Perhaps that is one of our strongest motivators to reproduce, so we can teach another what we have learned. Maybe, if somehow we can learn from our future selves that need for children would be sated.

And then the other day I pined for that independence I knew...and wondered if I have created this "need" in me. Maybe it is only an illusion, maybe I am self-complete as a flower as a stone. If I start believing and living that way, maybe I can conquer the loneliness.

Huron "Beltane" Fire Dance

I'm stressed. This is nothing new. I seem *always* to be stressed. There are just too many things that I want to do, and I want to do them all. Now. I've gotten WAAYY better, believe me. Right now the house is still in disarray from post-party mess, and it just adds to the general mess that always seems to be present. I feel like I'm going to have a breakdown, cuz there is NEVER enough time. Through it all though, I keep trying to remind myself to keep calm, keep my perspective, be thankful. I am soo blessed and so lucky and so loved. No, I still haven't found the "love of my life." I am still very lonely in that regard, but so are millions of people, so I try not to dwell. Even when my heart cries out, even when I have imaginary conversations teaching my unborn daughter about life and love. I acknowledge the pain and ask it to move on. I am doing my best. For maybe the first time in my life, I am doing my absolute best, giving everything I have to my life and my goals, and I have nothing more. It doesn't seem to be enough, which kinda sucks, but there is comfort in knowing I'm doing all I can.

Music is so important to me, and the irony is that it was never a part of my life growing up. Not in the sense that I was ever around musicians or anything. My family were always big dancers at weddings and stuff, but not a single person in my family plays an instrument...so where did this deeply seated need in my soul for music come from? I guess that's the answer right there, my soul. Even my friends, some of them played in band or sang in chorus, but none had this need for it like I did. It's frustrating to me because I can't seem to find a group to share that with. Unfortunately many of the people I have found that share the love for music also share a love of drugs and crazy party lifestyles.

So anyway..when I start to feel desperate I have found a new salvation...Pandora radio. Ha ha!! Now I sound like an adverstisement. But seriously...I have this station started with Loreena McKennit (the one who does Huron "Beltane" Fire Dance) and similar artists to her. In the midst of my breakdown just now, I put the station on, and that song was the first to come on. This has got to be one of my most favorite songs ever. It speaks directly to my soul. I hear it and it brings me home..if only in memory or imagination...I am brought back to the time my best friends and I danced on a summer night at the cliffs on the beach, with the song playing on our little radio, dancing and twirling under the starlight....and I am brought forward to a time that I fear will only ever be in my head, where I am dancing with friends again, feeling that same sense of belonging...

Anyhow...this song came on and I fell to my knees in tears...I fight my heart so often because what it wants must wait..always must wait. But I don't feel sorry for myself. I keep fighting, keep trying, keep working on this tough road that I hope will one day lead to a happy dream come true place. I can't feel sorry for myself because I know how lucky I am, and this is good. But in the back of my mind, in the deep dark depths of my heart I wonder...am I even on the right road? Will I forever live this confused struggle and never quite get it right? These thoughts are fleeting, because the struggle takes precendence soon again...but this question, this fear, this hope remains...and it haunts me.

Fire of Transformation

So...I've wanted to blog lately. I've wanted to blog on the pot luck herbs site so people have something interesting to read and come back and want to be a part of the farm and maybe buy some stuff and ultimately lead to the dream. BUT. I still have a lot of work to do, on me. A lot of times what I want to write about, what I need to write about, I don't neccesarily want to post on the farm's blog cuz it seems too dark, or too "emo" or whatever label. Too less-than-together. Truth is though, these thoughts and emotions are in me, and they need out. Or..I want them out. There's lots of awesome women whose blogs I've been reading and I'm going to link them all. I read them and I hurt because part of me undertands and wants to reach out and connect, and another part of me knows the reality: these women have lives of their own and don't need me coming to them for validation. I acknowledge the squonk* in the latter, but still. Anyhow..so I've decided to pick up, 4 years later, where this blog left off. Cuz I do need a place where I can just express. Write my message out and send it off in blog-bottle into the sea of cyberspace....and hope it finds a soul that can relate and hope it helps.


*a friend of mine use this creature as a euphomism when we're feeling sorry for ourselves or self-defeatest :)