Potential

i never dreaded parent teacher conferences when i was young, it was always the same; "your not working to your full potential" my mother would reply to my query about what the educators said concerning my education. truth be told, it was done deliberately, (my not working up to my potential)born out of boredom with the confines of the public education i received. i played into the stereotype of my "potential" brand and dropped out of high school when i came of age,i was in two AP classes. i gave into the inner bohemian, took lovers and consumed spirits and found a need to cure the restless boredom i once again faced. i was ready to be taught, to fulfill my potential as i understood it.

my mind undulated under the sheet of academia, i, for a time found my place, my voice and my true passion. there was the added anticipation of the end that made my experience feel often times like forbidden stolen kisses. i graduated and the kisses stopped. i did so with the belief that i would find the same satisfaction, and that i could, intellectually, connect myself to potential. i was seeking lifelong passion on a "professional level". clearly i must have been drinking.

every day i have a parent teacher conversation with myself, and it is a terrifying scenario; am i living up to my potential as a mother. i wonder about equal time and dialogue with atticus and circe, am i providing the proper nurturing and comfort, are they learning the correct processing of emotions, can i process their emotions (i can't even process mine all that well)? i console myself with the understanding that i will "mess them up" somehow and that our parents did the same to us. in them i see limitless potential while reflected back is my limited potential, another wall i have constructed. i don't like being limited, but for now this is my bed and here i will lay.

get to work

i have a spoon, you a mountain.
digging or pushing we are always left binding
the ever unraveling spool of sadness;
threading the needle that pierces our heart.

heave heave heave

there is light at the bottom,
i saw it once.

blinded by the night

night has stirred the conflict stew i seem to be dining upon. i love the quiet darkness interrupted by the hum our house has; often when i find sleep a luxury outside my pay grade, i take stock of the sounds and in those sounds find the solitude that i lack as a mother/wife. it is at night that i have no accountability, no pawing hands, no stream of consciousness list of what i am doing, what needs to be done, and what may happen to tip the scales of harmony out of my favor. i could be considered a junkie when it comes to isolation and solitude, i have survived the withdrawal and am now learning moderation.

i hate moderation. i love my children.

they interrupt the fix.

GREETINGS & SALUTATIONS

so here goes...what is a writer, a person who puts pen to paper and creates documentation of thoughts or an essence of being that even without the act of actually writing forms a sense of self? i think on some level i have always identified with the latter, but after giving birth to Atticus (my son) found myself cocooned by the former. once in three years i have dared to expose a weakness in the chrysalis and put pen to paper, only to retreat back to inaction. Circe (my daughter) arrived and screamed cracks in my safe of thoughts like an opera singer cracks crystal. i found my self flooded with fragments stored in the cranial filing system under "for future use"...certainly the future had not become the present, i did not feel ready.
i have said that the birth of Atticus was so chaotic but that his presence in the home brought a sense of order to my life that i have never known. Circe's birth however, was so calm and focused, yet she brought home chaos and a few other friends. while in the recesses of my own thoughts i pondered writing again, the desire to create was strong and yet i remained stagnant. i thought about order, its nature is contrary to any prior understanding of myself as a writer and person. chaos proved the catalyst into the dark place my fragments reside; under the most comfortable quilt slept Fear dreaming the fragments into a cohesive form.
i decided to do battle with that demon bitch Fear. two sleeping children, a bottle of wine and some paper, something is missing. two sleeping children, a bottle of wine, some paper and a husband who was working late...something is missing. I HAVE NO PEN
Fear stole my pen (actually it was probably Atticus drawing on the dining room table and i took it away and hid it...but for dramatic purposes...) after some frantic searches i found myself on the dining room floor drifting in and out of thoughts dripping with the answer of why i couldn't write. i had taken the proverbial block and built the great wall around my creative cortex, when a fragment is born i place in behind the wall (Gaea anyone?) because i an afraid of partnering it with others, because i am afraid of what it may end up saying, and what that says about me.

i smote Fear on the banks of the mighty Delaware.

if i do not do this i will go insane, who cares what i say, think or believe...i will be an exercise in contradictions.

welcome to my luminous interval