A moment that changed everything

Yellowed pages stained by cigarette smoke, broken spine from laying open face down, curled corners and smudged fingerprints throughout, the book settled into my hand for reading just as I settled in most nights; alone, in bed, curled up to wait for sleep to come.

Reading along, the book made no sense.  It wasn't poetry, it wasn't a story; just a few paragraphs per thought, I suppose, and none seemed connected. I supposed that this, what I was reading, was what was called "prose," though I couldn't be sure. Seventeen or 18 pages in, I turned the page:

"Fuck it."

The opposing page was blank. I turned the page to find another blank page, and on the opposing page was:

"Fuck it."

In that moment, reading those few pages, everything changed.  Everything.  The world changed, life changed, I changed.  I wasn't confused, frightened, afraid, happy or sad; I was just changed. The veil was dropped, my eyes opened, and from that moment, that profoundly blank moment, I began. I began to live.

It was a moment of waking up, of discovery, of discovering that there was truth and discovering that truth had to be discovered. And that was beautiful.  And beauty was everywhere.  Beauty was everything. All you needed to do was blow the dust off, dig it out and open your eyes to see it.  Beauty was everywhere and everything.  Without beauty, there is only

Fuck it.

(Das Energi, by Paul Williams)

From Terror to Life

It is amazing the hoops your mind can put you through. I was terrified of the July surgery, scared shitless to be in such a dependent position again. And, that is the key to the whole thing.  Last year's in-patient hospital experience was horrible, and I wasn't able to get beyond that.  But, this time, there were a lot of people that stepped up to the plate and showed me just how wonderful people actually are.

As I wait, terror sets in

Countdown: 6 days until surgery, and I am scared shitless.

What's behind this feeling of terror is one of those things I can't really do anything about; or at least not more than I've already done.  What "thing" is that?  The time-worn, good-'ol worry about money.  God, I hate money.  Obviously, it hates me too.

I'm concerned about Tim and what he'll have to carry while I am completely down and out again.  Me, I'll be in La La Land for most of it, so that's no big deal.   But, he'll have to drive back and forth to Little Rock from Searcy, he'll have to grab food on the go, sleep when he can and basically dive into a not-so-healthy way of life for awhile. I worry that after taking care of so much for over a year now that this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.  If he runs out of money, he just might break.

I've planned as much as I can, put things in place to help as much as I can, like tkomorphoto.  I was thrilled, amazed, honored and flummoxed when it seemed to take off right out of the chute.  But then, it came to a screeching halt.  I have to learn and hone some marketing skills, get the word out somehow.  I am so afraid Tim won't have enough money to make it through my hospitalization that this has to happen.  Somehow.

But, what good can I be if I can't even bat down the anxiety over what to pack to bring to the hospital? Sad, but true. The more I can't figure out the simple things, the more I feel like that river is going to start spinning a vortex to suck me right down.  It's a terrifying feeling.

So, 6 days left to wait... and worry. 

An end and a beginning: Announcing tkomorphoto

Hiccup, belch, hiccup.

Time to eat. But, I don't want to.  To eat means to bring on, within minutes, the stabbing, debilitating pain in my guts that comes from attempting to nourish this ol' body.  I time eating with taking a pain pill in hopes to minimize the discomfort; but it takes an hour for the pain pills to kick in.

The beginning of an end?  I hope so.

After my last post about my gut issues, I felt that things had maybe stabilized a bit and I was feeling better. I regained some strength and was able to get up and about and start living again.  I had to be careful of some things, like being sure I was within a close vicinity of a bathroom at all times and I had to eat when my body demanded it, but things were looking up.  Almost.  I kept losing weight, and a lot of it.

Teaching an old dog new tricks and all that

Patience is man's best virtue.  Yeah? Well, thank God I'm a woman. I'm not a very patient woman either. It irks me that things just aren't coming to me as quickly as I want them to.

What am I talking about?  This new camera, of course. I've taken a few really nice photos with it, by my average of good photos to bad photos is ...not so good.  It's an uphill battle on a bumpy path. 

It's the little things...

I'm not a giggly, girly, flowery type person. Not by any means.  I'm more comfortable in the barn, getting dirty from head to toe.  But, give me a good camera and my eye sees things I never knew existed before. The camera freezes and captures a moment that later gives the eye something far more beautiful and existential than can be noticed walking by.  See more wondrous shots at Out in the Back Yard.