I spend a great deal of time piddling & dinking around on the internet and in the doing so, I stumble upon all manner of fascinating things. A few things that have recently caught my eye/piqued my interest/whipped my grey matter into a maelstrom…
How to know if you are reading a gothic novel – in pictures Are there tyrants with scary eyes? Virgins swooning piously? Spooky castles and probable monsters? You are most likely reading a gothic novel
Mothography by Warren Krupsaw These wee things sat on the photographer’s finger!
The Botanica Reliquaire series, by Fran Liscio, Beautiful and hearbreaking still life arrangements with found birds and flowers,
And new music from favorite artists! See below for new videos from First Aid Kit, Jolie Holland, and Julianna Barwick.
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I don’t know why I would say such I thing, but I honestly never thought I would live to see the age of thirty-eight. I suppose that is a funny thing to admit, isn’t it? I’ve never had a death wish or engaged in dangerous behavior…it’s not as if I wanted to shuffle off this mortal coil at an early age. And I’d be doing my imagination a great disservice if I claimed that I just couldn’t imagine myself at this age (because I’ve got a pretty crazy imagination). I don’t know what it is. But here we are, at this place I never quite expected to be.
I am now two years older than my mother was when she started fibbing about her age. We were pretty dumb kids, I think. We thought our mother was 36 well into her 50s.
A natal day mini read presents the eight of pentacles. Creativity, intent, immersion and focus. Practice, practice, practice. Patience and hard work and continually acquiring knowledge, leading to expertise. Perfection may never come, but achieving a greater understanding of a process and learning new skills along the way is immensely valuable in it’s own right. I love the spider in The Wild Unknown’s deck. Spinning away busily, the same web over and over. Winds blow it away, hands swat and tear it.
A focused, detail-oriented little thing, the spider spins it’s web again and again creating a beautiful and immensely functional, and ultimately nourishing piece of work. I am making most of this up, of course. But there’s got to be something truthful and useful and good in all of that, and perhaps this year I shall figure it out.
My fella’s lovely mama stopped in today and brought me some birthday posies. On a day when I was missing my own mother’s voice (and hot on the heels of a rather melancholy mother’s day), there were not enough words for how much I appreciated the gesture.
I don’t know that we were particularly demonstrative toward each other, my mother and I, but she would, without fail, call me up every year on this day. Even if it was just a voice mail, she always said to me “happy birthday, baby”. I didn’t expect to miss hearing that so much.
It was a rather quiet day, as most birthdays are now. Anti-climatic. Once you have passed your tenth year aren’t all birthdays like that? I had done all of my birthday shopping & shows last week and had a stack of reading and nice smelling things which are already summarily being ignored. So what does a thirty eight year old woman do with herself, on the anniversary of her entrance into this world? Nothing that she doesn’t want to do, of course. This includes knitting, binging on favourite teevee programs, and the hunting down and devouring of childhood treats. Not a bad way to spend the first day of 38 – whether or not I anticipated being around for it.
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My mother, who passed last December, is – technically speaking – very much with us. In fact, she resides at the top of the closet of the guest room closet, at my sister’s house.
The sad truth of it is that my sisters and I have not come to a decision on what to do with her ashes, and as she left no will or final wishes, we are at a loss.
I loved my mother. But she was a difficult woman. A difficult human, rather – I am not sure it actually had anything to do with her being a woman. She was a recovering alcoholic and though being manipulative and selfish are part of an addict’s personality, I think she might have been that way even without the chemical addiction. She was irresponsible, careless with her money, thoughtless. She didn’t drive. She was an animal hoarder.
And yet.
I loved her, I truly did. I loved to talk about books and perfume and music with her. I loved to listen to her curse and laugh, I loved to watch her eat a fish sandwich (she always wanted to eat the same thing, no matter which restaurant we dined in). I could be so incredibly angry with her but then we would just fall into our easy pattern of chatter and it would be forgotten.
My breath catches in my throat now, even as I am writing this, to think that I will never do any of these things with her again. At least, not in this life. Not as who we are to each other now.
However, in death she was nearly just as difficult as when she was living. None of her affairs were in order. She had appointed none of us power of attorney or executor – something we should have pushed for, I realize – and she made no will and expressed no final wishes, except for one. Being that we take in her two Himalayan cats (again, without regard to whether our living situations were amenable to an extra two animals).
Between the three of us, my sisters and I paid for her crematory costs (around $1700), we contacted the proper channels who might need to know of her passing, we cleaned up her rental home, and we divided amongst us some items that we wanted to keep to remember her. She did not have much of value, but she certainly had a lot of stuff.
Now we are left with a cardboard box three quarters full of her earthly remains. Human ashes are much heavier than you would expect them to be. I remember my sister cradling the box as we walked somberly from the funeral home to our car in the parking lot.
“These are the arms that held me”, she wept softly, looking down at the box.
And so the box of our mother still sits, heavy with ashes and memories, at the top shelf of a guest room closet. Maybe five months is not long enough to sort out all of our feelings about her. I suppose we have all the time we need, though. She’s not going anywhere.
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For most of my adult life I have dreamed of this house. No matter where I am or how long I have been living there, it is always this particular place where my dreams begin and end. For good or ill, this is the spot that my subconscious must believe is home.
From the ages of eight through eighteen I lived in this house. Ten years. I don’t remember very well the home I lived in before this one, and all the places after have become a blur on my timeline, but this house, this time in my life is the foundation upon which my dreams build.
I can’t say it was much better looking than in this photo from a few day ago, but I’d like to think it was, just a little.
My sister, on her way to visit me last weekend, convinced her husband to drive through our old neighborhood. As they slowed to pass our childhood home, it became clear to them that the house had been neglected for quite some time now, and once they stopped the car and walked up for a closer look they could see that it was indeed in foreclosure. My sister skirted the side of the house, peeking in windows, running her fingers along splintered doorframes.
The sliding glass door in back was ajar and without a second thought, she slipped inside.
I don’t know if I could have done that. My childhood, though incarnations of it show up in dreams on a regular basis, is something I’d like to leave behind. I don’t know that I could have faced whatever ghosts lingered in those halls. Worse, then, to feel nothing looking at the handprint stained walls, the kitchen from which I stole snacks while I read Harriet the Spy? I don’t know and I don’t think I could bear to find out.
My sister is very brave, but I would rather hear the tale secondhand, and continue to dream of a place that used to exist, rather than see it for a faded and broken and beaten thing that no one wants anymore, never to appear in another little girl’s dreams.
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Here we are again. This started out as a very different sort of blog, but as circumstances changed, so too must the content of this blog. This will no longer be a home for Death Cafe Orlando; though I have archived the previous posts should you wish to peruse them, for all new updates and items of relevance please find your way over >> h e r e<<
Well, and so – what to do? In changing direction for this blog it has become clear to me that I’ve come full circle. It’s been quite a while since I have maintained a personal blog – for projects, stories, etc. – and I am realizing that I miss it very much. For the past few years it’s been important to me that I branch out and embrace new and different people, places and things…but in the doing so I have yearned for the simple familiarity of some former pursuits – such as the keeping of a daily (or semi-daily, or let’s face it, weekly or monthly) accounting of the things going on in my life.
In blithely tripping along the trail of the novel and exciting, I have somehow, without quite realizing it, arrived back at the start of the same well-worn, much loved path. And you know, that is a fine place to be.
“If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.”
-Fernando Pesso
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Greetings! Please join us at Orlando’s first Death Cafe for an open group discussion on all things death related. While death is inevitable, discussions about it are often taboo in American culture. We intend to open up the conversation on death in an an respectful and friendly atmosphere where people can express their views about death & dying and share engaging, thought provoking and life affirming conversation. Bring your questions and stories, your curiosity and experiences, but most of all – an open mind …and an appetite for cake and delicious treats!
Date: Saturday, May 17th, 2014
Times: 2PM-4PM EST
Location: To be held at a private location (residential, Winter Park FL)
This first meeting will be a small group, 10-12 people, and RSVP only. Please contact us to reserve your spot!
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[editor’s note: originally posted on my personal blog; also re-posted on Nourishing Death. My mother’s death in late December, 2013 was the catalyst, I believe, for my interest in hosting a local Death Cafe, and I think this is an appropriate place for these thoughts]
My coffee is the same as it is every morning. A packet of stevia, a dollop of almond milk. A dark roast from a noted coffee company, the beans ground just minutes ago, steeped in the french press that we keep breaking, because we are too rough when we try to clean it.
I’m not drinking it, and it is growing cool. I can’t help but to think how my mother got out of bed to make a pot of coffee on Monday morning, probably Folgers in a bulk-size cannister, and never got to drink her first cup of the day. She would have taken it with a scoop of Coffee Mate.
I had just spoken with her on Sunday night. She informed me that she was officially in remission and that she wanted to come to Christmas dinner at my grandparents. My mother has not been to a holiday dinner in years – mostly because as a nurse who worked 14 hour shifts, she was frequently exhausted – and so I was surprised, but promised to prepare the prime rib that she requested and to let the grandparents know to expect her.
The next day, when my sister called to tell me that our mother was dead, the first thing I said was “you’re kidding”. Who would joke about that? Why would I say such a thing? But that is what I said.
Two days later I still think someone is kidding with me.
I am trying to drink my coffee now but it is cold and awful. That is how everything tastes to me: cold.
The police were still in her home when I arrived, and several neighbors were milling around. A toothless Greek man took my hand and sat me down on my mother’s chintz sofa. I have no idea who he was. An officer asked me several questions and I answered without thinking or truly registering who was asking and why. I could see my mother’s bedroom door cracked open, the corner of her bed visible. Her foot was pale.
I walked through the door and sat next to her. Her face was upturned, her expression rapt, as if she had seen something that drew all of her attention in those last few moments. Whether it was something miraculous, or a dangling spider, or even the faces that appear when you stare too hard into the whorls and swirls of humid Florida plaster ceilings – I guess I will never know. Her hands were slightly curled inward, as if she had been gripping something tightly and then suddenly let go. With both of my hands I held one of hers, and it was so very very cold.
My brother in law was the one who pointed out to me that in my mother’s tiny kitchen, a full pot of coffee had been brewed and sat untouched. Grown cold.
I dump my coffee into the sink.
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