Horizons

i sit above the world and
see
the life-pulse flow in blue and cotton

i feel the voices beneath me and
hear
all that connects me in rivers of speech

i sense around me glossy time and
touch
its ever-moving circle-turn

i rush downward and
taste
the copper lick of atmosphere

i gather all of it into me and
hold
it in my bones and skin

it feels too much and too little and i
long
for more and for less

i land, warm and golden, in proper place and
sleep
knowing i have no limits

I'm So Far Behind I Think I'm Ahead of Myself

As I kind of alluded to in my last post, it’s been a long couple of months at work. On Thursday, my poor little brain was so fried, I’d started to type phonetically. We have something called the “Bribe Offer” we send out to prospective customers who’ve requested a demonstration of our program. Frequently, we get people who miss the 48 hour window, and they write in asking if they could have it extended. In reply to one such email, I wrote, “We would be glad to extend the bribe off her to you.”

Luckily I caught it before it went out.

I usually catch my typos and grammatical errors before I hit the send button; occasionally, however, I don’t. Per that same question, the customer replied back with a thank-you email, and I saw that I’d written, “We would be glad to extend the bride offer to you.”

Apparently we dabble in the wedding industry as well.

I’m just glad I didn’t combine the two; separately the two typos are innocent. But saying that we’d be glad to “extend the bride off her” is something completely different.

Gives the term “extended family” a whole new meaning.

A few days earlier, a friend had sent me an email announcing an acoustic performance he and a bandmate had planned for Friday; I’d missed their last few shows (including an invite to a BBQ that my email didn’t see fit to deliver to me until the day after it had happened), and so I was thoroughly looking forward to going. I hadn’t been really out of my smooth little routine of work-gym-home-meditate-bed-work-gym-home-meditate-bed (though I’ve been slipping on the gym and meditate part off and on, as even those things have seemed too much, despite the fact I always feel better after I do them).

All day at work on Friday I kept thinking, “Gee, I'm really looking forward to going out. I really need this! Long couple of months. And hey -- better reason to celebrate. First time in two months I've had an empty email box! Yee haw!”

Well, okay. Maybe “yee haw” wasn’t really part of my thoughts, but it sums up the feeling of excitement I had quite nicely.

Happily, I went home, fixed myself some dinner, showered , and was quite pleased at how easily I found a parking place (the bar was located too far off the train line to make it feasible to ride downtown) -- even though I had to walk back and forth three times to get the direction right on the addresses. Apparently my brain was so tuckered out it couldn’t count. I was really looking forward to some good music, a drink or two, and some camaraderie with friends.

I got to the bar a few minutes past eight – their starting time – and my first thought was, “Huh. Sure is quiet here!” The stage seemed very sparse and dark for a soon-to-come performance. Acoustic usually means minimal, but the stage looked so minimal it was like the band wasn’t even performing that night.

“Well,” I thought in an effort to reassure myself, “these things never start on time.”

But something still plucked at my brain. “Excuse me,” I said to the bartender. “I’m looking for Kevin and Jason.”

She looked at me a moment, confused. “Who?”

“They’re performing tonight.”

“I wasn’t even aware we were having someone play tonight,” she said.

“Just an acoustic show,” I replied, and felt that something pushing through thoughts, as if it were fighting its way through a thick crowd of people to get to the front.

“This is the Tiger Bar, right?”

“Yes,” she said.

By then I could even swear I heard my thought yelling, “Yoo hoo!” at me to really get me to look at it – and still I brushed it back. For whatever reason, I couldn’t quite acknowledge it yet.

“Maybe tomorrow -- ?” she asked.

I felt the little thought step forward, and what it had been trying to tell me suddenly became as clear as if it were shaking a hand-held sign at me, tidily-lettered on a piece of white poster board.

I felt my shoulders crumple. “Oh, man,” I said – literally – reading the sign. “I got the date wrong.” But, still, even as the truth of the realization hit me, I was sure the email had said Friday.

I thanked her, and I turned to leave. “Want a drink before you go?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I think this is a sign I just need to go home.”

The few patrons there were rather amused, as was she. I half-considered her offer of the drink, but knew that declining and going home was the best course of action. I need sleep more.

I really wasn’t all that annoyed by the mistake in time; what annoyed me more was that I’d paid $3.00 to park for the night and I’d only been downtown ten minutes. So, not wanting to let it go to waste, I waited for another half an hour in the parking lot until another car pulled in to park and gave the people my stub. I just couldn’t bring myself to throw away the ticket.

In a way, though, it was kind of a relief. I was so tired, and felt somewhat like I had a cold tapping around in me, waiting for its chance to burst forth like a seed-laden dandelion, set free on by a child blowing on it.

So I came home, and immediately checked my email. Turns out I got the Friday part right; it's just that the show isn't until NEXT Friday, the 24th.

I changed into comfy clothes, popped a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s Kettle Corn (the most utterly divine popcorn on Earth, so sayeth my humble little self), watched the first half an hour of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 on Encore, and went to bed. I tried to get up and going at 8:30 this morning, but I felt blurry and like I had molasses for blood. I’d wanted to get an earlier start on the day, but clearly my body wanted more sleep. Back into bed I crawled, and I didn’t blink my eyes open until nearly 10:30.

I feel much better now – it was a beautiful sunny and warm morning and early afternoon – which helped me to feel much more rejuvenated. After planting a few new geraniums in the pots on my patio to fill in some holes (I have some brilliantly red ones that are now about two years old that are fantastic; they seem to like being tucked back in the corner, protected by my deck chairs during the winter), I had a nice lunch of a salad and a dessert of the last of the semi-sweet Nestle Morsels.

That’s actually been my favorite lunch lately – a big healthy salad with organic baby greens; red, green and yellow bell peppers; green onions; tomatoes and walnuts, topped with Paul Newman’s Balsamic Vinaigrette. I’ve been coming home for lunch the last few weeks because it’s cheaper, and it’s been nice to get out of the office completely (I only live about ten minutes away, and that’s in bad traffic). My lunch companion has been Perry Mason (one of my favorite shows). I get home not long after it’s started, and I can watch through to where he nabs the true culprit. It’s been even nicer, because I’ve been seeing ones I’ve never seen before (as a side note, KPTV has been showing Perry Mason every day at noon ever since it went off the air.) Usually it’s a treat I only get when I’m home sick, given they run two hours of it – it used to be followed by Matlock – but I think staying for the second show would be stretching my boss’s good graces.

Tomorrow is D-Day, of course, my nickname for Father’s Day. I’m taking my dad to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and then we’re heading back to the apartment to grill some steakes and corn and sip on some McMenamin’s beer (as anyone who reads Andrew’s blog -- www.technodevil.com), consuming their fare and beer is something our family – Dad and Andrew in particular – generally involves deep, wicked coersion. While I don’t collect the restaurants in the same manner that Andrew and Dad do, I can easily say it’s one of my favorite places as well, and I have to admit going to new ones is a lot of fun.

It’s been a nice day overall. I didn’t go into work, as I have the last few Saturdays (I promised myself that if I had the email boxes emptied by the time I left Friday night I wouldn’t go in), and it’s been quiet here as Andrew’s been off with Erika.

Oh! Fun news! My grandmother is going to be moving to Portland. She sold her house in Boise (very bittersweet for her, I’m sure) and will be living with my Dad in his house by early August. She’s really looking forward to that, as am I. When we went to her house for Thanksgiving last year, that was the first time in three years I’d seen her. I do call her frequently, but it’s not the same thing as actually being in the same room with her, chatting with her face-to-face.

But now, dear readers, it’s time for me to go de-frazzle myself a bit more at the gym.

Enjoy the poem below; it’s actually one I wrote around 2 am one morning a few years ago in, homage to someone; on a whim, I entered it at Poetry.com and it won a prize. It was even published in a book of theirs, first one you see when you open it up!

Solace

Solace

I’m at the end, say his eyes

I’ve been up and back

From the ground to the skies

I have the world in my pocket

And yet – can’t you see –

I can’t return it, for it’s what I need

Can’t you see it? Can’t you ask?

I’ve played all my talent

And used my songs as a mask

Around the pain in my heart

And yet – you won’t take them –

For you say I can’t fit the part

There’s no more here, say his eyes

For I’ve emptied my soul

Into the truth of your lies

Because it’s all that you give

And yet – though it’s not all I see –

It’s all I am able to live

I’m at the end, say his eyes

And I can’t turn around

For I’ve lost my disguise

In the words that I seek

And yet – I can hear them –

In the velvet-limned dark of my sleep

Can’t you see it? Can’t you ask?

I’m screaming right at you

But ignorance seems your only task

I’ve turned away and held my face to the sun

And yet – I couldn’t quite feel it –

For the frost in my spirit can’t be undone

There’s no more here, say his eyes

Though my friends stand around me

I’m deaf to their cries

For my head has been filled with only your voice

And yet – sometimes I wonder –

If I can be given some other choice

I’m at the end, say his eyes

I’ve been up and back

From the ground to the skies

I’ve had the world in my pocket

And yet – can’t you see –

I'll return it, for it's not what I need

Just When You Thought I'd Given Up....

No, not at all. Despite the fact my last post was on March 29.

I just haven't had the mental wherewithal to do any creative endeavors in the past couple of months. April became a time of things personal and mental (meaning things I had to concentrate on of a more emotional nature) that became the cumulation of a larger aspect of some of the things I've touched on in a couple of my blogs. It would take volumes of space for me to explain; some of you reading this know it all in greater detail (and volumes of space filled by instant messages and emails), and for all your ear-bending and help through it all, I thank you.

For a health update, I'm doing fine. My doctor took me off of coffee, wheat products and dairy as they can exacerbate gallbladder issues. It was really, really tough going off the coffee, even though I only drink a cup or two a day, but the dairy and wheat was easy (though I've had some bread and cheese in the last couple of weeks!), and it seems to be working. I feel a lot better, and the last bit of weight that was clinging to me is finally falling away.

Midway through April, my company finally was able to unleash the new Oracle database. I don't know if it was poor planning (well, overly-optimistic planning that went awry as it always does) or timing gnomes playing a joke on us (or both), but it landed smack in the middle of the best and most successful sale we've ever had. In a perfect world, this would be a good thing, and we were hopeful about it, despite our reservations of rolling out the red carpet before we were even certain there was a floor underneath.

A timesaver of a database, we kept telling ourselves. A big, robust database able to take in all the orders that would save us time.

Excuse me while I go sit in my closet and laugh myself into a coma.

It ground us to a screeching halt. While we were physically in the building during normal operating hours, we had to stop taking calls -- the main crux of the support staff of which I'm a part (though I mostly do the email aspect of it). Our answering service had to take hundreds and hundreds of messages and orders for us, then pass them along to us. We had piles the size of phone books (literally, not an exaggerated metaphor in this case) of the printed messages.

We'd spent a couple of weeks being trained on Oracle, but it was so different from the database we'd previously used, it was like trying to become fluent in Japanese in two weeks, when all we knew was Pigeon English. Then came the floodgate of going "live". By the end of April we were desperately behind on our work; the only thing we managed to stay on top of was email -- and that's only because I forwent learning how to use the database and became basically the sole email person so that the rest of the support team could learn the database, focus on call backs and get the orders placed.

Granted, I realize it sounds like it was just a learning curve.

But here's the thing.

You know at the supermarket when you take, say, a soda bottle from the display and another one slides into place?

That's what the programming knots and snafus were like. Not only was the interface convoluted for us, every time we tried to do something, it wouldn't work. Even things as simple as address changes. Did they work in all the testing phases and in the training database that was a veritable duplicate of the "real" one? Of course! But when we went "live", everything seemed to unravel. We'd get one problem fixed, and another would pop up in its place.

Now, please understand that Jon, the head of our IT department, and the Oracle developers did do their best under the circumstances. I know that, and I laud and salute Jon for not crumbling under the responsibility of it all. If you ever read this, Jon, I'm utterly amazed that we didn't find you curled up in a drawer someplace in the office, hiding from it all.

After struggling for almost three weeks, our solution was to finally hire three full-time temps to help with orders so that we could get back to our "normal" style of business. It hasn't happened quite yet, but we're getting there. The programming and error knots are unraveling, and the speed of the special is winding down.

In and around all that, I didn't have the mental capability to write anything beyond answers to support mail. One week in mid-May I did 500 emails; my normal number, even in busy times, was an average of quite a bit less than that. Where my normal day was maybe 30-50 emails (on a busy day!) it's now 60-80. I used to go home with an empty inbox, personally and for clients writing into our main address, nearly every night. Now I'm lucky to go home with less than 50, 40 on a good day for the main box; my personal email usually has about 5-10 waiting for an answer.

It sometimes gets to the point where I close my eyes and all I see is the screen of my email program at work. A few weeks ago I had a dream that I was on a date with a really good-looking guy. We were standing in line for a movie, and he kept asking me normal first-date questions. But all I could do was answer him in a format that was purely a recitation of articles we draw on to answer emails. So he'd ask me something like, "How long have you lived in Portland?" "What kind of food do you like to eat?" And I'd reply, "In order to meditate, it is not necessarily true that your mind must be perfectly still," or, "It does seem, based on your comments, that you're going through some upheaval and overwhelm."

(I suppose if I kept that kind of answer up, he eventually would be!)

He was patient and even amused, if not a bit irritated that he couldn't get a straight answer out of me.

Then, last night, I had a repeat of the dream. Except this time we were at a nice, outdoor bistro. He was sitting comfortably in a chair, affable and relaxed. I, on the other hand, had my work computer set up on the little wire table; every time he'd say something to me, I'd compose my reply to him in an email and send it to him. Somehow he "got" the answer, and while still quite patient and somewhat amused, it was clearly the strangest date he'd ever been on.

So not only have we been in one of the busiest times the company has ever seen, we've been in the midst of some pretty heavy growing pains.

Please know I'm not complaining. While I'm dead-dog tired each night, I come home knowing I've done my best. I just jam away to favorite music as I plough through the emails. It's actually kind of nice. I've been getting to listen to some things I haven't listened to in a long time.

It's been pretty stressful at work, but we're a bunch of fantastic, resilient, creative, supportive people. People pitched in helping with things that were far out of their job classifications, and to tell you the truth -- it feels like a much more tightly-knit family now. There's 22 of us (I'm including you, Susan!) (25 if you count the absolutely fantastic temps we hired, fondly known as "The Peeps") in the office, so even though it's been around for about 15 years there's still somewhat of a "startup company" feel to it. It's been a marvelous learning experience for time-management, stress, and laughter. Even when you don't feel like laughing.

So I've been lost in the muck and mire of all of that; it's clearing, and lately my thoughts began returning to my blog. And now I’m back, and you'll be hearing from me more often. I do enjoy writing these posts, as it's a nice change from emails at work -- which, while they do take a lot of finesse, timing and creativity, aren't the same as putting down my own thoughts.

I've posted below this entry something that came to me today as I drove to work. It was originally going to be a blog, but it fell out in the form of the poem. I began toying with the idea last month or so of putting poems in my blog -- ones I've written, and ones that I write in the future -- and it seems that's how tonight's post turned out. I like that.

More to come.

Merging

I sit, the blue of my car pressing back the wet
The flow of 8:30 am curves past me as I stay paused
Waiting for the shift of red to green
I sit above the vein of cars slipping East and West
A beautiful snake of steel and colors
Taken from a child’s watercolor paint set

Charcoal trees, a large-dark blotch against the pewtery morning,
Create a pause in the time of my thought and place
Though movement of wheels and people hiss past me
I am stilled –
And time-sense is wiped away with the brush of rubber
Against a sheet of glass
The dark gray block of oak and evergreen
Is a moment in my future
A half-mile or so away;
Something to become my present and my past
I’m not yet there,
But I see it as a marker of where I’m going –
A place to pass, and pass again on the direction home
And something I have passed before

I am the only one that knows this,
There in my little box of gears and doors and cushioned seats,
Even though it is something we all have

I think of you – as I often do as my day runs through me –
For you sit, always perched on the shelf of my thoughts,
Ready to slip down into my vision and senses
Your life is a separate parallel from mine
And yet –
It’s bending to connect
Like the trees, you’re something for me to reach,
But are also a moment of past and present

Red becomes green, an arrow to my left;
My moment has passed.
Time-sense returns with the brush of rubber
Against a sheet of glass

I slip down the seam of asphalt and paint,
Thinking of my forming day of email questions and answers
And the music I’ve collected in a bag on the passenger seat
To refresh the stack of CDs on my desk
Our life is a collection of melodies, yours and mine,
Something you create – and something I take
On a disk of plastic and silver to help me pass the time;
The mundane made velvet-fun

I am stopped again by red, to wait for green
That keeps the morning flow clean and easy;
With a shift of lever and a press of pedal,
I become a link in the snake of steel and colors
Taken from a child’s watercolor paint set
The smudge of trees shadows past me, forgotten --
Meaning lost in the frequencies of the busywork in my head,
And narrow choices on the radio

My day is now behind me as I write this;
But like the trees I’ll pass again tomorrow
Another forms on the clock

And, yet – I am still seated in that moment,
Suspended above the freeway moving East and West
I am a circle moving forward,
Like the pulled coils of a spring

You’ve slipped from your shelf again – I can’t quite see you
But I feel your footprints in my thoughts –
A hint of something coming
Of something present
And something past

But unlike the darkened trees against the sky
You I will not forget to see