life: acoustic & amplified

catch the colors & feels of the day

I hate Mozart. Hate him with that healthy
pleasure one feels when exasperation has

crescendoed, when lungs, heart, throat,
and voice explode at once: I hate that! —

there’s bliss in this, rapture. My shrink
tried to disabuse me, convinced I use Amadeus

as a prop: Think further; your father perhaps?
I won’t go back, think of the shrink

with a powdered wig, pinched lips, mole:
a transference, he’d say, a relapse: so be it.

I hate broccoli, chain saws, patchouli, bra-
clasps that draw dents in your back, roadblocks,

men in black kneesocks, sandals and shorts —
I love hating that. Loathe stickers on tomatoes,

jerky, deconstruction, nazis, doilies. I delight
in detesting. And love loving so much after that.

❤
The Pleasures of Hating by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Especially on long drives through the country,
you like to tell that story about your old girlfriend
whose parrot was killed one afternoon
by a raccoon who stole in through the pet door.
It was horrible, you say. Feathers everywhere.
Are you laughing? Stop laughing.
She really loved that bird.
❤
Laura McKee Exotic Treats

We didn’t say fireflies
but lightning bugs.
We didn’t say carousel
but merry-go-round.
Not seesaw,
teeter-totter
not lollipop,
sucker.
We didn’t say pasta, but
spaghetti, macaroni, noodles:
the three kinds.
We didn’t get angry:
we got mad.
And we never felt depressed
dismayed, disappointed
disheartened, discouraged
disillusioned or anything,
even unhappy:
just sad.

❤

Where I Come From by Sally Fisher

I hear the complexity in your head

all the music playing

on all the different channels

the way it creates your life

the way it complicates your life

the way it defines things

I understand it

I see the landscape of beauty within you

reflected in knowing the colors of my own beauty

the depth of who you are

the vast oceans of who I am

who we are together and alone

fills me like an ocean at high tide

revealing the hidden life living

just below the surface of the great blue waters

you are not ever going to be easy

I am not easy

You are not ever going to be boring

I am not boring

underlying it all, I have finally realized a hard truth –

you might not ever realize you are so much

or that I am

you might never know,

as I already know,

we are enough,

yes, you, and I, are so much more than enough

❤

Amy Lloyd

 

It feels good to imagine that the entire dysfunctional family will heal. It feels good to imagine that everyone will overcome the traumas and find their way to an awakened life. I held out for that vision of possibility for many years, largely because of the unhealthily enmeshed nature of trauma. We suffered together, we would rise together, that sort of thing. But it seldom happens this way, both because of the complex nature of ancestral trauma, and because it takes so much energy and imagination to craft a healthier way of being. Most people who have been trapped beneath the rubble of family madness, don’t have the energy, or the faith to get out from under it. It has become who they are.

If you are one who got out, you have to stay out. You have to keep going. You have to give yourself permission to shed the paradigm, even if its lonely, even if you feel the temptation to go back and wait on the others. Because the world changes when one gets out. Because you are our best hope for a healthier tomorrow. I know its difficult to get out alone, but you are never truly alone. You are raising the bar for all of us.

💞

– Jeff Brown

Awesome Crab Photos by Fisherman Dan @ Branford, CT (via Branford Point in Branford, CT/Facebook)

memes via pinterest/al513