I don’t think I have ever mentioned that Sara Teasdale is probably my favorite poet ever. Back in high school, I read her collected works, and there was this one poem I memorized. I didn’t own the book, so I had no copy of the poem. I wanted it though, and I searched for it again in every anthology I ever picked up. And, honeys, I picked up many of them over the intervening 25 years, hoping to find this one short poem, to make sure I had it right in my head. I also looked for it on the internet. Today, I literally stumbled across it. I was looking all this time for the wrong title. It’s not called The Kiss, like I thought. It is called The Look.

The Look

by Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.

And when I found it, I cried, partly from the joy of finally finding it, and partly because it still echoes my heart. And partly because I had been talking to Colin just this morning. So very powerful, poems, little darts bound up in innocent looking books.

You know, I just deleted a whole lot of writing here. You don’t need to know everything. Some secrets I’ll just keep to myself awhile yet.

I have had that word said to me twice in the past few days. I was asked “what’s wrong?” and I replied “nothing,why?” and got “You’re awful complacent” both times. I thought at first the speaker had selected the wrong word. Complacent has a negative connotation to me. And at the time, I was really struggling to come to grips with some things mentally and emotionally, and I was feeling anything but my definition of complacent. I was actively working to adjust some attitudes and accept some limitations and deal with this present reality of mine.

And so, I decided maybe I would look up complacent and now I am thinking that I misheard. The word he used wasn’t complacent, which generally means smug and self-satisfied and made no sense in context. It was complaisant, which means

inclined or disposed to please; obliging; agreeable or gracious; compliant; showing a desire to comply or oblige; polite

And maybe it also means ceasing to struggle to change what is not within your power to change, accepting a thing just as it is, letting go of a desire or perception for the benefit of another. Just maybe. And that can be some very hard mental and emotional work.

Kinda like The Serenity Prayer, you know? Not trying to get a Honda Rancher 350 from a Volkswagon.

So, not long ago, I posted a couple of lists of things I do not allow myself to do, and among them was to carry my camera around more. Like, uh, ever. And so today, I was reading chapter 8 of The Artist’s Way and I thought I was going one way and then, midway through the tasks at the end of the chapter, actually more like on the next to last question, and I realized I was talking about the WRONG THING. I was looking at the tangent and not the big picture. Haha, picture. Because, see, I was looking at the words portion of the picture and then I realized that the PICTURE part of the picture is equally important to me. The PICTURE is the trigger for the stories; it’s the thing that allows me to focus and hear the voice that knows all the stories so I can re-tell them to you.

And the funny thing is that for the past two years I have started the Project 365 and I have let real life come between me and the picture taking. I hung in longer this year than last year, but the point remains, I bailed on myself again this year. I told myself I was bailing on YOU GUYS, but the truth is, I bailed on ME. You guys may like to hear the stories, but I actually NEED to tell them. So.

Next year, I will start again on Project 365. And in the meantime, I am going to buy a little camera case that fits in my pocketbook so I can take my camera with me everywhere I go and I am going to allow myself to take pictures of anything. And everything. Without editing pre-shot, without deciding it’s too ridiculous to push the shutter button.

It is the picture that concretes the memory for me. And if I sit and think about that, I know it started with the first real picture I ever took, back in 7th grade in a photography class. It was a Polaroid of my teacher. Do you remember Polaroids? The teacher was named Ms. Seagraves, and she taught the gifted and talented program at my middle school and also the high school. She’d arranged for one of her high school students to come teach us the rudiments of photography, and my mom lent me her camera for the purpose. 10 shots per film box. I haven’t laid my eyes on that picture in years, but I can see it now just as clear as anything. She was sitting on a bench, wearing black pants and a wine colored shirt, smiling, with curly brown hair. She argued with me about letting me take a picture of her. But that woman, along with my chorus teacher were the ones who inspired me to dream and achieve. They were the ones who told me I could. And the criticism I got for the picture was fair: get in closer, Ms. Seagraves in important, but the bench is not. And I learned from that. Maybe those words lead to my passion for up-close photos. If I really want your picture, and not the things around you, I will fill the frame with your face. Or your hands. I will fill my frame with you.

I used that same camera to take pictures of my dad laid out in his funeral suit, he whose face I had not seen in years. I saw those not to long ago, poking around in my old childhood closet. I put them back in the box and left them there. I am not yet ready to explore that, no more ready than I am to try to build a hotrod from ordered Ferrari parts and duct tape. Maybe one day, but not this day.

Cause, people, it’s not like I’m not doing stuff. In fact, if I were self publishing a book of doings, I’d use up all the toner in half of the copiers Tidewater VA. I guess that’s part of the issue. I’ve been so busy doing that by the time I get done, I am ready to go to bed, and not sit up typing the stories. Well, that and my late night phone calls. Smile.

Hey, did you guys see this picture I posted on Facebook yesterday?

That, my friends, is a Deadsnake. It was a copperhead, though I didn’t know it at the time. And I have a story about it. It’s not just a snake, see. And it really doesn’t matter what kind of snake it was. That right there, people, is a picture of mousy me confronting fear head on.

Yesterday, I burned trash in my yard for the second day straight. I picked up the next to last piece, which happened to be a huge piece of old wooden siding and underneath was this snake, all coiled up on itself. Now, I had just put a big piece on the fire, and I couldn’t afford to turn my back on it for long, because the flames were almost my height there for a bit. So, I laid the board right back down on the snake and I tended that fire until it got down a good bit. Then I told my first born son to go get the phone and come here. He argued with me a bit, because I hadn’t told him why I needed the phone and he wanted to be in the house, but eventually he came out with the phone. I told him I wanted him to use the rake to lift that board because there was a snake under and I had to kill it. Uh, my son, he is afraid of the snakes. Just like his mama used to be. And there was no talking him into that. At all. So I told him, “Fine, I’ll do both, you just watch and if it bites me, call 911.”

So I moved the board with the rake, and I got the hoe and I took a whack. And the darn thing slithered off into the grass, right toward my children, who were playing in the back yard. So, I whacked where he’d had been, and I looked for him. And I eventually saw his tail, because for some reason he had turned back to me. I guess the children’s noise or something made him turn around. I didn’t even pause to realize that if I was seeing his TAIL right there, his HEAD must be about there. You know, next to my LEG. I just started swinging that hoe. And I swung it many times in quick succession and I killed that snake. And then I took a few pictures. And then I picked it up with the rake and I threw it in the fire and I burned it. That’s the story of yesterday’s snake.

But there’s another fairly important story behind that one. It’s about the last time I saw a snake. Actually, two snakes, one one day and one the next. That led to the “great lawn mowing of ’08″, which I blogged about. Here’s the thing I didn’t blog about then, unless I did, but if I did, I’m telling it again. I had called my then-husband home when I saw the first snake, which was also a copperhead, under the tree roots near the fence, near the kid’s swingset. It was gone before he got here, but he came. The next day, I saw a huge black snake under the shed. It was so big I thought it was a bicycle tire until I saw the scales on it. I almost vomited in fear. I called him again, and my voice was shaking I was so scared. And that man told me to “quit being a pansy” and hung up. So, being a fearless warrior of a woman, I hopped in the shower to think and also get the stench of adrenaline and fear off of me. And then I got the shovel and went after the snake. Of course, it was gone before I got there, and the very next day, I mowed my entire half acre yard, which hadn’t been mowed in a couple of months, the last bit beyond the fence in over a year, but I was NOT gonna let one of my kids be eaten up by some huge demon snake. Not on my watch, husband be damned. And now you know the story behind the caption “Call me a pansy again, you hapless mf’er.”

I told you things were changing for me. Yesterday, I killed a snake, and I didn’t start shaking until after he was burnt slap up.

I don’t think I have ever shown you guys the note board I have over my desk, but I figured maybe that would be a good thing to talk about today. It looks like this:

My dream list is posted to the left, and there are my to-do lists on the left side of the board, and a birthday card Diva made me on the right, along with a couple of other lists. Those other lists are a direct result of one of the chapters from The Artist’s Way, and those are the ones I want to talk about today. See, they are probably pretty important, because when the book said to post them where I could look at them, my immediate response was “heck no!”, and it took me a couple of days to go ahead and do it. The chapter was basically about the ways we punish ourselves and prevent ourselves from realizing our potentials and dreams. It was pretty eye opening to read, and even more eye opening to respond to. If you’ve worked through the book, I know you will know what I mean by that, because we trick and thwart ourselves so very easily, all in the name of being “good” to and for everyone else. So here are my lists, and the titles are as telling as the items on them.

FORBIDDEN JOYS These are, of course, the things I do not allow myself to do, for reasons mostly not understood even by me.

1. Carry my camera around for a week.
2. Sit in silence and write something besides Morning Pages.
3. Sit in silence and read.
4. Draw, because I can’t do it “right”.
5. Play with beads or puzzles when others are around.
6. Dance.
7. Take a long bath.
8. Drive, just drive.
9. Vacation alone.
10. Sew.

See, all of these are things I love to do, and want to do, but in order to do them, I am not available at the drop of a hat to whomever calls my name. I’m answering my own whims instead of everyone else’s. And that’s just WRONG, see. Because for some reason, I don’t deserve to make myself happy, only other people. That’s stinking thinking, you know? And I am discovering just how stinking that thinking really is on a daily basis, as I deal with one of my children. She’s having a hard time lately, and it’s frustrating all of us. She wants more, more, more, no matter how much she gets. More bending to her desires, more coddling, more princess. It’s reached the point where she has hurt the feelings of everyone who lives in this house with her, and I am spending a great deal more time doing damage control that I’d like. I’m trying to help her, and I am trying to help the others cope with the nasty things she says to them, and also trying to remind myself that she really doesn’t mean the horrible things she says to me.

The good news is, I have a little perspective these days. In truth, I know that she doesn’t really hate everyone in the house, but she can’t figure out exactly what it is she’s needing, so she can’t ask for it. Hmmm, btdt, and visit far too frequently still. Yeah, I feel her pain. We are a family, and when one of us struggles, we all suffer. It’s the nature of the beast. I’m somewhat happy that she feels safe enough to lash out at us all. I was never able to do that as a child/teen/young adult and look where I am now. Maybe she’ll have an easier time of it than I am having now. And, ah, how did this article come to be about my daughter when I meant to to be about me, me, me? Is it because I see so much of myself in her? Maybe.

So these are the ways I deny myself pleasure.

On to the next list, which is even more telling. These are the ways I actively sabotage myself.

Cass’s Rules for Meager Living

1. Do the needful first.
2. Don’t make alone time important enough to use (this means that even when I get it, I don’t use it effectively).
3. Don’t develop your pictures.
4. Don’t let the kids see you being crafty.
5. Don’t get the house clean.
6. Never act without everyone’s approval.
7. Don’t get alone.
8. Don’t pray.
9. Don’t eat right.
10. Let people yell around you.

Yeah, that last one is kinda odd, I guess. But to hear other people yell, even if they aren’t yelling at me, just really messes with me. My inner child just wants to hide.

So, anyway, I’ve been staring at those lists for a couple of weeks now, using them as impetus to treat myself a little better, to invest in my own fulfillment and happiness. And today, I added this little goodie, right over that board.

I believe I am worth it. And so, as Fall approaches and we start taking out the sweaters and hoodies, I’m also taking a fresh look at how best to meet my own needs. It’s a good thing. Hopefully by Spring, I will be living riotously instead of meagerly. While still meeting the needs of everyone around me, of course, because I am, after all, still Wonder Woman.

As soon as I hit publish on this post, I am updating my Life List. I’ve had so many adventures lately that I need to order new return address labels. They should say:

Midlife Cass
1234 Somewhere in the Woods
Outside, North Carolina
284who-the-heck-knows

Think they can fit all that on one of those itty-bitty stickers? I’m not sure either but I know that they can’t fit hiking-camping-rollercoaster-riding-driving-laughing-playing street on one! The truth is, I can’t even remember off the top of my head all the things I’ve done lately, and I am hoping that reading through the list jogs my memory!

So, it’s been three weeks, exactly, since I posted here. That’s a long quiet time, isn’t it? It is for me at any rate. But I have stories to tell now, and so I shall.

I posted a few minutes ago over on my knitting blog about some stuff that happened this past weekend. It got me thinking about where and how I live, and wondering if maybe a call to a Charleston realtor might not be in order. I’m thinking a more peaceful place might suit me better than my current place, and if I had the financial wherewithal to do it, I’d probably already be packing. It boiled down to this: I heard a hummingbird for the very first time this past weekend. HEARD it. For the FIRST time. It was a very profound experience for me. I sat there in amazement at the noise, and folks, it took me awhile to figure out where it was coming from, though the bird was only about three feet away from my face. And then I sat there in amazement that I had never heard it before. And then, I started listening to the other sounds around me and realizing that there is just an awful lot of stuff I have never seen and never done and never heard.

Do you know what else I heard recently? An alligator. And something else that I can’t remember what That One called. See, I have lived inside all my life. I actually thought nature was quiet until recently. I mean, whodda thunk an alligator actually made a noise to call her babies to her? Yeah.

So, pretending to insert a great segue here because there isn’t one, but it all flows together in my mind, I was talking to my friend Ang. this morning about The Artist’s Way and what a wonderful thing it has been for me, and my life is really changing at a phenomenal rate, but I am not actually creating anything, and she said something really profound. She said, “you are healing, Cass, you are making you.” And I thought about that thing for about 1.75 seconds and I realized she was right.

When I was growing up, I tried to be who my parents wanted me to be. And when I got married for the first time, I tried to be who my first husband wanted me to be. And then, when I got married again, I tried to be who he wanted me to be. And then I spent many years trying to be who my kids needed me to be. I’m single now, and while my kids still need me, they are growing up fast and don’t need me in quite the same ways anymore. So, here I am exploring the world and finding out what my own likes and dislikes are. And I am discovering that I am not necessarily who I thought I was. Or rather that I am interested in things I never thought would appeal to me and that the things I thought would keep me enthralled are just not as pleasing as I always figured they would be.

And I am learning to say yes to that weirdness and not make myself live in the box that doesn’t quite fit anymore. And if that means less “making” and more “doing”, so be it. That’s the one major thing I have learned from TAW, I guess: whatever my current passion is, follow it, explore it, see where it goes. If it leads to a short infatuation with waves and surfboards, or speed and heights, so be it. If it leads to a lifetime love of ground based outdoor leisure activities, then so be it. You know the Bible says God gives us the desires of our hearts. There are two ways to take that. One, God is a big ol’ SugarDaddy and whatever we dream of, He will hand it to us on a silver platter. Or two, He plants wants and desires in our hearts and then it is up to us to follow or ignore them. Right now, I’m choosing to follow. And if I am able to find God again, outside, where I never expected Him to be, so much the better. Lord knows, I am fed up with the fake people who profess to follow Him inside.

Ok, so, yeah. I’ve done stuff about school, and come January, whether I need snow boots or daisy dukes, I’ll be there. I went by the admissions office yesterday to turn in a bit of paperwork, and they are still waiting on my college transcripts, which I’ve ordered. They also need a high school transcript, which I still have to figure out how to get. I did it years ago so I could homeschool the children, but I don’t remember how I did it. A quick call to the high school ought to take care of that.

Let’s see what else? Oh yes, the living room. Whittling that down a box at a time. I did mention that I unloaded 1/4 of the shed into my living room, right? Umm, yeah, to make my studio. I’m still thoroughly enjoying that, btw, my little official work and play area. And it’s nice to not have the computer in my room.

Boy, I think the hardest part about now having time to blog regularly must be the forgetting what I’ve talked about and what I haven’t. I’ve built daily blogging time into my routine, but I don’t always get through the whole routine, and it’s near the end, so….yeah.

P.S. The high school transcript will be going out this afternoon. Why, yes, I am a multi-tasking queen!