State of Grace

I've said before that blogging, for me, is a little like praying.  In fact the word,"cyberspace"  conjures an image much like my childhood image of heaven.  My friend D. called me this afternoon as I sat at my mother's kitchen table.  She'd read my blog and correctly perceived I was in a rough patch.  The bottle of Xanax was still calling my name and I was wondering if I'd seen my aunt for the last time and worrying about what my mom's surgeon might propose on Monday. 

D. and I talked for a while about a lot of stuff and presto--I felt better. 

My sister-in-law, M., called the night I got to my mom's and that was a good phone call, too. She almost always checks up on me when I travel to see if I've arrived safely.  

Other friends have left comments and sent me emails and these are all answered prayers as far as I'm concerned.

During my many years of Catholic school, I was taught that "a state of Grace" was the absence of sin and that was the state one hoped to find oneself in at the moment of death so as to go promptly to heaven.  But nowadays, I'm feeling that the state of Grace is the place that friends and family can bring me to when I am weary with worry and bitterness.

My Life Right Now

My mother has lung cancer. Her twin (my bonus mother) is in the hospital, impossibly frail. I feel nauseated from too many mussels in butter and garlic and too much cheap red wine. I want to pillage my mother's "drug box" and pocket a few xanax. I don't know if I should register for this semester of my MFA program or not. Mr. Ex owes me an email as we try to finish up the division of community property and the bitter taste of betrayal is not a distant enough memory and I wonder when if ever I will look fondly on the years we spent together. The man who loves me now says I will. But I think he is a far kinder and more forgiving person than I will ever be.

Baby Shower Invades Ex-Wife's Turf

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world she walks into mine."

Ilsa Lund broke Rick's heart, but things were holding steady until she walked into Rick's place.

Do you think Mr. Ex's new squeeze might have chosen to have the baby shower in the charming hillside city I bequeathed to them along with the house where he and I raised our daughters? Do you think she might have chosen somewhere other than a trendy little bistro a half-mile from my townhouse in my new town?  Somewhere I don't frequent myself?

Yes, I thought so, too.  

Writing Workshop in Greece

One of the reasons I think I am able to write so readily these days is that a lot of ideas shook loose during my trip to Greece.  I've always used walking (showering, too--but that's another post for another day) to work out writing problems and get ideas when I'm stuck.  My trip was a hiking +writing trip with Meredith Hall

http://meredithhall.org/ 

in charge of the writing, and 

Thordis Simonsen

http://www.astragreece.com/write_frameset.html

in charge of the hiking.

Imagine a sea so clean and blue you can see the bottom.  A trail that winds along the edge of a cliff to a chapel carved into the  rock.  An ancient abandoned temple poised  to slip into the sea.

Goat bells in the distance.  A conversation with an octopus fisherman. A petrified palm forest. The remains of a Byzantine fortress.  A restaurant in a mountain village where the waiter fills the water pitcher from a spring.  Then imagine pulling out your notebook and writing.