The excitements purge and the dust settles
Time, taking its measurements in re-runs
And the shows aren’t even worth showing
Extra loud repetitions blaring the soundtrack to life’s mediocrity
Its meaninglessness so shrill in pitch
And did you know boring yourself to death is a noisy endeavor?
The laundry’s staled. Mildewed, despite re-starting the cycle fifty-eight times over
Three days have gone by? Add soap push start and forget about it
Over and over and over
Was marriage designed to be this hard?
Does everybody do it? Do you know what I mean?
Matrimony, the eternal scream and it’s a lot like the laundry these days; a bunch of bullshit I’d rather not do
With its moldy stench of unfinished business, of apathy, of not giving a damn, of dying another pointless death every time I get out of bed
I want to see him feel empty for once, stop giving a fuck, shit or get off the pot, give the whole thing up
As masterfully as I have
In the earlier days (before the TV sets died in the permanent-seeming on position)
I was the same, yet a different person
Alive, electric
Before peace caved in and lost its spine
I was in motion
Bidding my life to the proof of my worth
(as I thought it’d need proven)
By “doing my part”
With a permanent grin
Walking in such an effortless spirit of perpetual excellence
Prune-shriveled fingers yet manicured hands
Ironic how (while feigning confused disappointment) he now likes to remind me of what a cool person I was then
Before I quit wiping his piss off the floor in my boy shorts, before I quit wearing those sexy bandanas in my hair, before I learned how to kill him with my eyes, before my imagination died and the horizon collapsed, taking me hostage by the brutalities of domesticity implicit in being the chauvinist’s wife
I was cool.
I was a prized fighting champion with manners and class on my knees and hands scrubbing my way through the American (or my imaginary) Dream
Life is divided in two, but no one ever tells you
that the middle can suck you into itself
a black hole; an anti-matter; a one way ticket to the realization that you grew up to become a nobody
There’s a red sheet whipping in the winds of change, gripped by the hands of resistance
You can’t be the bull and the ringleader too
And so I dance, I dance my midlife away
While the gringo masters the art of futility
His every breath a burning desire to see me tamed
Hopes should never be set so high; birds are not born for a cage
Though Life Be A Day 
Yeah… middle class life sucks. But it’s all a bit confused… “marriage” can be a bummer, especially when a spouse is a bummer (so why does it have to be “until death do you part”?)… too many people not knowing how to live, spend too much time telling others how they should live… children add to the stress, although they are a joy… and the whole thing is made miserable by this culture which indoctrinates us to want to be “middle class” (as in ‘consumer’)… it’s a lie.
But this part of life doesn’t last forever… one day you’ll be free again and your spirit will heal and be revived… not too long from now, really…
For now, it may be too difficult to break free… from the culture, the marriage, and the kids… but who would want to be free of the kids? If our society functioned better, kids would be a blessing 100%… if people (families, neighbors) actually cared about each other, helping each other (think indigenous peoples).
So we’re left on our own… as those who run things want us to be, for to be isolated is to be more easily controlled.
The only way I know of to counteract all this is to be aware… be aware of the killing machine… be aware of how this culture is destroying us… and don’t buy into it (or as little as possible). But this is difficult, especially when no one else is trying to see/live beyond the Matrix. So OK… you’re in it alone. But you’re not really… God is there… a friend or two may be there… but most importantly, everyone is actually there too… although subconsciously.
What am I trying to say? Not sure really. Maybe not trying to say anything… 🙂
Oh, one more thing… even when ‘free’ (as I am more so here in retirement), life is still routine… have to eat, cook, do dishes, laundry, pay bills… but to a lesser extent… and as I learn/recover/heal, the process becomes less routine and more spontaneous… thus it all becomes more enjoyable… less moldy.
Still, three days go by and I’m doing whatever… the difference now is that I am better able to *choose* to do it and by being in the ‘now’ I don’t really notice… it’s just me doing whatever in this moment… which does make it… whatever… you know…
I have to admit though, I think we’re in too deep in this system (it is all too prevalent or pervasive) and we’ll never really be able to live freely (happily) until the system collapses… or is changed appropriately when our Lord returns.
Anyway… you are a prize (keep shining), I love you, and that’s enough for now.
M
Beautiful. Your insight precedes you ❤
My initial (face value) knee-jerk reaction is to clarify one thing… By "middle," the term is used here to reference age, maturity, milestones (I hadn’t thought of it in terms of class or status, although I find that quite fitting so thank you for expounding) 😉
Life is "divided in two" in the way we are children for so short a time, and then suddenly "too old" to believe in anything (including our inner power); we (Americans) seem to transform —instantaneously, without warning– from innocence and ambition to regret and resignation… And for whatever reason, we then categorize our entire existence in terms of before and after. It’s not always an issue of age, either. Really, it’s a simple phenomenon:
Midlife crisis. The in-between suffocation of spirit. An “irreversible revelation” that we buy into, some sort of epiphany that our sense of wonder has died and we’re finally at the “what might have been” stage of our lives.
It too is bullshit, much like class associations (which are totally consumerism hypocrisies, you’re damn right and I’m happy to know you, grateful that somebody somewhere is breaking the mold… Hell, even if only in thought that would be a start, right? Although I know you don’t even own a TV & totally walk the talk)… 😉
AW DANGIT! I burnt the pancakes!! Sorry gotta go I’ll write more later, love you too!! Ha
One thought… the midlife crisis happens about every ten years and each is but one moment on our journey… into each we stroll or are pushed… and out of each we stroll or are pushed or are lifted… it’s all waves or frequencies… up and down… the irreversible revelation is not irreversible… very difficult perhaps, but not irreversible.
Love…
“If our society functioned better, kids would be a blessing 100%”
Amen to that, dear friend. Your reply is a blessing to me, as I find myself echoing much of Ms. Brandy’s pain.
I too have felt a similar pain… all I can offer is that it (as all things) will pass… this I *know* is true.
May your journey through the storm be short and may you and your loved ones be kept from harm…
M
Hey M! Check it! I haven’t had a chance to get on my email because a fire-breathing dragon has been breathing his fire down my neck, but I found something to share with you… It’s the bee’s knees!
Love ya!
Hey… that’s cool! Thanks…
maybe a fire hose would work on the dragon? Nah… I think they tried that in the middle ages & it was a disaster… just pissed the dragon off.
Oh well… great song… we *can* change things, but some changes take a long time.
Love you.
“The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather for the devil.” –C. S. Lewis
😉
Hey Brandy
Your post is giving me a nightmare flashback. A drowning in oil and mildew feeling.
Oh, I know whole week moldy laundry. And the way of the man who dishes burn like acid, and diapers terrify. Cooking is death to such, yet he must have it done or someone other than him is wrong.
A wierd conditioning so many of us woman all over the world put up with depressingly.
I played my try to be right by clean dishes and cooked meals, clean clothes and diapers.
What I needed was a book a a break and a practice. My observance would be, that his standards if he works all day for any work all day kind a woman would be fine. And such a woman would muddle through well enough.
Artist and you in particular are a murmaid and dishwater is not enough to soak your tail in.
Once I met a man on line. On an online adventure game. he was fun and nice and I liked him some and we got to know eachother a little by playing together and talking. He was ready to date again, cuz is wife had walked out two years ago and left him with his two little kids.
She had a close call, almost died, but she was fine. Then, she got stranger and stranger and just went to her grandmother’s and sits in the house there. She won’t even talk to me. She won’t take care of the kids.
Over the weeks he and I build stories. I told him how I felt like my husband had blocked off the tub so I couldne’t even soak my tail in there. And I felt like I was flopping in a puddle on the kitchen floor and coldn’t walk around to cheak laundry or wash dishes.
I imagin your wife is incubating her tail upstairs in her grandmother’s house.
Well I want someone who I can open doors for and bring flowers to.
That is what she wants too. The doors and flowers are symbols of what a man really does for a woman.
If you want the syren to sing for you and not drown you, and she doesn’t want to drown you, then make a place for her. You need a pool and a cave where you can be together. Her in water, you with air.
If you love a mermaid, you can’t keep her in the kitchen all the time.
She needs lots of time in the pool. If you don’t have a pool or a beach, build one before you try to lure her back.
It it’s small tell her that it’s what you can afford now, and work to make it better.
Mermaids need time beng mermaids. She didn’t know she was a mermaid before, so she did everything a human does. After that close encounter her life shifted.
I told him I was tha danagerous kind of siren. I’d lure him to his death. His wife seemed like the same kind. But he had to create a whole new world for her to entice her back.
He started to imagine a world where he could be lured to a love cave he built in a safe airy place for her and him in her waters. That is opening doors for her. Facilitating her being her own mermaid self. Bringing flowers is creating the waterscape she needs to nouish her soul. And allowing all the time she needs to do it. If she is not out there alone, she can’t sing to you and call you can she?
After a month of building fairy tails. He told them back to me, with new meaning. He was a man who commanded lightning somehow, but didn’t understand his magic.
I’m going to talk to her.
Not asking or expecting anything. Just to see who she is now. What she is becomeing.
She talked to him, and he listened.
I’m just inviting her to soak her tail in the big tub at home all she wants and we will enjoy her being here.
She, agreed to accompany him and the children home after a few weeks of him getting to know the real her, and his assurance that he knew he was asking a mermaid to share his life and he would share his mermaid style.
He got on the game a few times to extatically brifly thank me. He thanked me alot. It was those stories. He never played the game again after that. He had his mermaid at home and was figureing out how to aquire her a sea to soak her tail in.
That was an extreamly satisfieing though brief friendship. I learned alot about mermaids, about being one, and recognizing one when I see her.
Strong lucky men can keep one.
If words could go the distance here, if they were remotely capable of revealing my feelings in this moment –this intense, powerful moment in which your message sinks fully in– I promise you, I would write them with unmatched fervor and sincerity.
You cannot comprehend how much I needed what you just gave to me, the many things you just did for me…
You grabbed sanity by the balls and brought it back down to earth for me, like a helium filled air balloon that was carrying my soul away with it…
You took the time to give something precious to me. I’m too awed and grateful to respond right now but I will and I can’t wait. I just needed you to know how fully that reached me. Precision of so much truth, shined like a beacon into the most hidden spaces in my heart.
I can breathe.
: D
!!!
Julia Cameron’s The Artis’s Way and The Right to Write are marmaid manuals, if you are interested in the care and keeping of mermaids.
Oh, and you express the intensity of emotion that expands so big, and solid it can’t get express at all. For a while all words create silence and whirling intensity like a working magic spell or a frozen flash of lightning.
A familiar emotion provoked in me by you.
And there is nothing like being understood.
Hugs
God, I am thankful to know you.
A bigger “Yes” reaction than I have ever before experienced. Huge. Huge. Yes, sister.
Thank you.
Oh, wouldn’t it be so much easier, less painful, to be a one-dimensional, linear thinker! I’ve begged and wished to be so often lately. I wish the “whys” could be left to other people.
Much love to you, dear sis. And your boys.
Love received, love reciprocated. Big love. Thanks.
Oh. Wow. Brandy!! Indeed we are a polarity…and this is so damn gripping and heart wrenching. I often need to set aside the right space and time to come and read your words. Because they always make me feel – too much.
I totally get your cry here. I’ve lived it through the important women in my life…But me? I was never cool. Maybe I might grow into that in my midlife, who knows, but I think I’m only learning to live now. Probably because I haven’t had children. But what do I have to show for all the time I’ve had til now? I ask myself that question, a lot…
Feeling your light burn strong, Brandy. Even through the mildew 😉 xx
As I read, spoke, listened to each line born in words, the small image in the top left gave life to the narrative, a subtle way, to here the thoughts followed from both listening and imagery…
Tame not the wild, bury not in the weariness to shifting, sifting event horizons. Unbolt the cages, do not lay in wait with traps. Take in hand both in liberty, where the vast lands the sky greets, might one day there be no regrets. Here in silhouette, elevated before weather’s change. Perched upon the earth of her home, where the winds of her journey, catch tangle, caught flow free through her hair. Rolling in the waves her eyes deep in presence, they gently stare as the fade bends beyond the horizon. There as she sits beneath the weight of the air, do you hear her voice upon each exhale her words. Can you hear her breathe, as her heart beats with her rhythm to melody, each note evermore…..