Sixty-Five and Asking - Now What?

I started my cozy on the 14th and wrote 2-3 chapters and then I got sidetracked.  The following week lead up to my 65th birthday of February 23.  I found myself celebrating the whole week with various friends over long breakfasts, lunches, happy hours at favorite places all culminating with a great Sunday afternoon at my friends' Daniel Day Gallery-Dream Mecca Studio.  Daniel Day and Melody Musik truly are a Renaissance couple.

The Gallery is a unique venue of live music (blues); art; sculpture; photography; handcrafted jewelry, clothing, and accessories; vintage clothing; and more than I have space to tell.  Every Sunday afternoon from 2-6 there's a party that overflows in beautiful weather onto the large patio out back.  It's BYOB and a cover charge of $12 covers the food hot from the grill, and pays the band. This Sunday, the sun came out to shine on all of us and the Jeff Jensen Band from Memphis rocked the house.  Melody Musik who plays Clarinet in her band (yes, she's a musician, too) played a Happy Birthday solo just for me.

My week long celebration did include a lot of writing just not on my Cozy.  I've been journaling as if my life depended on it. My journal is the running memoir of my life, and good or bad there is always something to write at any given moment.  I remember reading Alice Koller's 1991 book An Unknown Woman, which is basically her journal during a period of self examination.

I feel I am at that place in my life now.  I've toyed with writing my own 'unknown woman' memoir tentatively titled A Not Yet Famous Woman - A Memoir, or considering the content maybe A Not Yet Infamous Woman - A Memoir.  

Being a Pisces, I am two fish.  One goes with the flow wherever it goes; one fights its way upstream.  I've no doubt that for some years now, I've taken the easy float with the current style of getting by.  But now, I see my mother in her 80's, and know I may have 20 or more years left to me.  It's not enough to go with the flow anymore.  In rereading my old journals and journaling anew I'm exploring that fish that knew when to fight the current - not every day, but when it mattered.

At 65 I'm saying out loud what I've always known. It's not enough to exist.  I've become a woman of a certain age, and I ask myself - Now What?

Seasons come and go

simple notebook pen
soliloquy on the page
journal diary

a day once removed
to march cadence on blue lines
fill each empty page

siphoning angst hurt
experience clears the mind
for new adventure

summer’s page turned
winter now takes center stage
spring waits in the wings

A Date with Death - she's my kind of rain

Glancing through old journals, I came across one entitled “The House call – a Date with Death”.  I wrote it on this date in 2003, not on the actual day it happened - January 9, 2003

Journal Entry 2/6/03 – Aerie:
I can put it into words now, It’s been a month since Sabrina passed.  My beautiful star-white angora cat was 23 years old.  She could barely walk and refused food and water toward the end, but life would not let her go.  She needed my help and one morning told me so in the only way she could.  She stood, looked me in the eye, wet her blanket and lay back down.  I picked her up, wrapped her in a fresh blanket and made the call.”

I still remember the kind young vet who made house calls, sitting with me on the couch with Sabrina between us on her favorite blanket.  He and I stroked her as the drugs had their way, and she breathed her last as the strains of Tim McGraw's ‘She's My Kind of Rain’ played on the radio.  I still get moist eyed every time I hear that song.

Twenty-three years was almost half my lifetime, so it took several months before I could rescue another cat.  I briefly considered another white cat, but thought better of it.  I would expect her to be another Sabrina and that wouldn’t be fair.

I have Jazmine now.  She is shiny obsidian black – Yin to Sabrina’s Yang.

Where Sabrina was star white (yang), Jazmine is black satin (yin).  Aptly so, their personalities are as diverse as yin and yang, and I’m grateful.  Another white cat would only disappoint, as I’d expect her to live up to my first and that would not be fair.

What is your journal to you?

My journal, my little 5x8 spiral notebook goes most everywhere with me.  From my nightstand, to the kitchen bar where I sip coffee, to breakfast whether home or at a restaurant, tucked near at hand in my purse throughout the day, and returned to the nightstand at day's end.  It is my friend, confidant, psychoanalyst.  I firmly believe I owe my sanity to committing my day good or bad to the page. 

Natalie Goldberg said, "Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the centre of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write."

I agree.  Last year with so much loss, it took my pain and grief.  These days when death stalks a sweet friend, and we can only watch and wait, it helps to put pen to page and voice the feelings there that cannot be voiced aloud. 

It also helps to end the day by listing at least 5 things I’m grateful for that day as well, whether that thing is as simple as birdsong, sunrise or a gentle rain.  Gratitude soothes the soul.  Yes, Natalie, I’ll keep taking out another notebook and I will write, write, just write.

© Perle Champion

Does your horoscope ever hit the nail on the head?

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Does your horoscope ever hit the nail the head? 
Mine did today.

Pisces: 1/2/12
 "You may grow tired with the thought of returning to the daily grind and want to retreat into your own private space instead. Even if you need to be around others now, you're still likely to feel a bit withdrawn. Fortunately, this isn't a problem because you can still do your job while letting your imagination wander. Just continue to do your work while keeping your personal thoughts to yourself. "

  
This one was written for me.  I've gotten accustomed to the rhythm of my life at home over the holidays.  I like the commute from the kitchen with coffee in hand to my sunny studio/office with the big sunny windows, Jazmine purring an arm's reach away on the corner of my desk, my music streaming in the background.