Is Your Love Strong Enough?

For Estelle ~

David Gilmour and Bryan Ferry- Is your Love Strong Enough?
(Music video for Legend, a Ridley Scott film) 1986

Tx to rlehlinger

Just one step at a time
And closer to destiny
I knew at a glance
There’d always be a chance for me
With someone I could live for
Nowhere I would rather be

Is your love strong enough
Like a rock in the sea
Am I asking too much
Is your love strong enough?

Just one beat of your heart
And stranger than fantasy
I knew from the start
It had to be the place for me
Someone that I would die for
There’s no way I could ever leave

Is your love strong enough
Like a rock in the sea
Am I asking too much
Is your love strong enough?

Is your love strong enough?
Is your love strong enough?
Is your love strong enough?

The Daffodils

The Daffodils
William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
The thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In sich a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
The flash upon that inward wye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Last call for alcohol

Once you cross a certain threshold, everything changes.  You don’t always see it coming, although you can sense it, as I have done for weeks now.  My personal “no more” threshold presented itself this morning, when I went downstairs to find drying cat piss all over the kitchen floor, along with a sinkful of chili dip floating above the clogged drain.  Sights and smells guaranteed to put you off your morning coffee.

A burning resentment wells up in you, so hot you can barely contain it.  Stupidly, because that’s what rational people do, you still try to reason it out.  Either she was too drunk to wash the bowl, or she forgot.  Forgot to put down fresh paper towels for the mostly incontinent calico, now fourteen years old.  Forgot to give the kitten fresh water or scoop his litter so he didn’t have to stand in his own poop.  Forgot?  There is no reason, no rationale, no excuse left for Estelle.  She has hit Bottom.

It’s last call for alcohol in this house.

Watching a friend or loved one become a drunk is painful.  At first, you close your eyes to their behavior, then you make excuses for it, perhaps lie or cover up for them.  Eventually, you realize that the path of destruction they walk upon has become your path, too.  By then, whatever affection you still feel sours, turning rapidly to hatred.  You cannot stop someone else from drinking.  You can only walk away from them.  There’s a healthy, happy life waiting for you away from the disease of alcoholism.  To find it, you must first pass the point of ”no more”.

I’ve been at this threshold before.  My mother carried me over it last time, when I was twelve, after she called the cops to take Dad away because he was hallucinating so bad from the DT’s.  Years later, and too late to save my ruined childhood, my father stopped drinking.  We speak rarely these days, although he has health problems. I have never forgiven him because he never asked me to.  Those pesky AA steps 8 & 9?  He skipped them. In his mind, the act of quitting was enough. Saying he was sorry? Not gonna happen. That would mean admitting he had been a monster to his own children.

Like most alcoholics, my father is a coward.  He only stopped drinking because the doctors told him he would die if he didn’t quit. He certainly did not stop so he could take care of his family. Even though he reinvented and revised his past, he is the same person, sans liquor.  So pardon me if I don’t have a lot of hope for this woman I share space with but feel I don’t really know.  Or maybe it’s that I know her too well.

Here I am, reliving a lesson I thought I’d already learned.  When you are an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, however, you don’t always learn those childhood lessons well enough to keep yourself safe.  You never knew what normal behavior was and have a hard time recognizing it.  You’ve spent most of your life trying to figure out why people do the things they do, unsure of yourself, unable to trust (because of so many lies), afraid of commitment, and afraid to take risks (because life is too risky already).  In the end, you’re afraid of nearly everything: a paralyzed, passive, tender prey.

Fear renders you vulnerable to all manner of emotional manipulation. Your deepest insecurities are rooted in the quest for love, safety, and security in your life.  When someone offers any of the above, you grab for it, so blinded by the inner child’s joy that you fail to notice all the blood-red strings attached.  When it all goes wrong, you find yourself right back where you started.  Just a little more bruised up.

It’s way past time for Last Call.

Links, fyi: ACOA

True Confession #56

Could it be the weather?

Like much of the country, CT is in a heat emergency. We have a medium sized a/c unit downstairs but it can’t keep up with this level of heat and humidity. The cats are suffering. We’ve had to keep them wrapped in cool towels. The kitten passed out twice on Sunday, and we had trouble rousing him, so he’s been a huge concern. Estelle’s dad was so worried, he came over yesterday to install our bedroom a/c’s. Even so, with dew points in the 70s, I’m out of it from lack of sleep. It’s cooler in the middle of the night, so I stay up too late and rise too early, before the sun heats the air into a blast furnace.

Dawg days in early June. Damn.

It couldn’t be more personal:

I’ve been self-indulgently absorbed, listening to the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album. The blog is starting to take off and lately I’ve been scouring the web for Nick Cave eye candy to post over there. Found some good photos, from back in the day, and some erotic fan fiction that surprised me by its very existence. Hey, we all get our kicks somehow. I have always been adventurously hedonistic. When two people light a spark together, they generally want to go up in flames. To wit…

The other night, Estelle and I tarted ourselves up like two lipstick lesbians. We were drinking (of course), and that particular evening, my beverage of choice was the mohito. We decided to taste each other’s lipstick: hers was blood-red and mine a love-bomb pink. I had no idea kissing your roommate could be so much fun.  Honestly, we were kind of embarrassed and broke the clinch fairly quickly. That said, something stirred in that kettle. Ooops. She said just one thing, a little too breathlessly: you kiss really well.  Sssssssssst.

Today’s lesson: beware the power of the mighty mohito and the consequences of drinking after reading slash fiction about Nick and Blixa, an outrageously erotic fantasy pairing that has proved endlessly fascinating to so many.

It’s a Boy! Introducing ‘Tristan Brando’:

Estelle got a new kitten just over a month ago. I was against it, of course. Things are too precarious right now. In my housemate’s headstrong, bi-polar mind, constant chaos is the only way to survive the boredom of everyday life. She wears me down with her persistence on most things. In this case, I’m glad she did. We went to the animal shelter on one of her manic days, in late April. He was the first kitten she saw. When the attendant told her he was ‘wild’, she said, I’ll take him. All this while I waited outside, in the car, unable to look at or listen to the caged animals. At least one was rescued that day. One who makes each day unique and precious.

At 16 weeks old, boy kitty ‘Tristan Brando’ is a gorgeous red tabby with closely-set amber eyes and a small, thoughtful face that comes to a point, rather like a baby fox. This cat’s eyes are extremely expressive, very deep and soulful. When he looks at you, at close range, he stops your heart. When you speak to him, mostly about ‘no-no’ stuff, he cocks his head, canine-like, and listens. You can see him working out, in his kitty mind, what you’re saying, and what you want him to do. He is also no doubt considering how to find a way around your ‘no-no’ rules, which often involve climbing. His impossibly long spidery legs grow stronger every day, from hours spent in creative gymnastic playtimes with my office chair, and endless clambering up the patio’s sliding (and now deeply pocked) screen door.  It’s a boy, alright.

Bittersweet

Lately, Tristan has been sleeping in Shelby’s wicker cradle, the one thing that Estelle refused to get rid of after Shelby died last December. Her absence is easier to bear now that he’s here. Estelle thinks Shelby sent him to us.

What a wondrous thing this small new creature is, a mischievous angel who seems to grow an inch a day, whose spirit is so strong, so pure, so incandescent, that I believe he may be heaven-sent. He has brought love to me, to Estelle, and to this wreck of a house. Like balm, his little meows, deep purrs, and kitty nuzzles have greatly softened the scarred trenches crisscrossing my heart. Yes, I love him. He is my ‘Kuntah Kitteh’, my ‘Poopie’, and I will miss him once I move out. It will be like leaving a child.

In this house, we live day by day, waiting to see if Estelle can find a way to afford her share of the condo rent after August. Time grows shorter as the days grow longer. But the Solstice is approaching, irrevocably. With it, the next chapter in my book of fate is written. So I keep my heart on alert to survive yet another change in circumstances.

One guiding belief I hold is that whatever happens is what is supposed to happen. Not that I think one’s destiny is carved in stone. Rather, destiny is fluid — it is a river. The rushing current of a lifetime of choices eventually carries you along all by itself.

That’s my news from nowhere.

Morgan Wolf
June 10, 2008

Related story: Living With Estelle, Pt. I  (October 1, 2006)

(’True Confession #56′ was revised on June 13, 2008)

Short hiatus

Greetings -  Wolfmoon Lady Howls is on a short hiatus.  Back soon.

Blessings.

Beltane enchantment

In honor of Beltane, and the Fairies, here is an ArtMagick reproduction:

The Enchanted Forest by John Anster Fitzgerald (British, 1823 - 1906)

Happy 1st of May and Merry Beltane!

Please visit …

… my Morgan’s Musings blog, where I just published ‘Wrong-Eyed’ faith, sad songs, nostalgia (by Morgan Wolf, 4-25-08).

Best wishes,
Wolfmoon Lady

Spring, oh!

This week, I am taking a bit of time to rest and relax. In Connecticut, where I live, we’re enjoying late May temps in the middle of April. Consequently, I’m hopelessly drunk on sunshine and the smell of blooming trees and flowers. I will be back to post soon. Meanwhile, enjoy the following verse.

A spring-feverish, Wolfmoon Lady

The Enkindled Spring

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930). Amores. 1916

THIS spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.

And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.

Spring and sacred gardening

Greetings! Presently, I’m writing offline but I’ll soon return with a new post.

To honor the arrival of spring , I thought it appropriate to put up something related to fertility and the awakening earth. Here is something I found from Matrifocus Magazine (Imbolc 2008), on the garden in symbol and metaphor.

The Sacred Garden - A Sensual Place of Rebirth, by Harita Meenee

Enjoy - see you soon.

Wolfmoon Lady

Irish music videos

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Please stop by Morgan’s Musings for videos of The High Kings and Clancy Brothers.

Thanks to Lily Arts for the cute graphic!

One hand, one heart, for one day

Lately, all I have spoken about is being overwhelmed by the challenges I’ve been given.  The burdens I must bear.  Woe is me, hand to forehead for maximum dramatic effect.

Often, I feel sorry for what I think I’m missing while I’m caring for someone not a family member, not a significant other, not related to me at all.  Except that we are related - by the unique and precious bond of friendship.

Some days, I am given a gift.  I am able to see how much my help makes a difference.  How much it means to throw a lifeline to someone in need and allow them to hold on to it as they struggle to navigate the fright-filled path of mental illness.  I am grateful for such revelations.

Sometimes, all you can do is hold a friend’s hand when they’re afraid and open your heart when they need its warmth.  Or give of your time, on some random and sunny March day, when the only necessary thing is making a friend happy.

One hand.  One heart.  For one day.

Stormy Weather Meditations

September 5, 2004

Inspired by Hurricane Frances, I’ve been thinking about storms and storminess. About what happens to people when elemental forces of uncontrolled chaos threaten our stability. How we collectively enact the primal urges that drive us deeper inside of our caves and to one another. Perhaps storms are one of Mother Nature’s blessings.

Storms are usually exciting events. We watch their progression on television as other people’s homes and property are destroyed. We shake our heads in wonder, sending silent prayers in thought-forms to those hunkered down in shelters and wondering what they will find outside when the winds and floods subside. We watch so closely because we know it could just as easily be happening to us.

How to Defy Gravity

defy c.1300, from O.Fr. defier, from V.L. disfidare“renounce one’s faith,” from L. dis- “away” + fidus “faithful.” Meaning shifted 14c. from “be disloyal” to “challenge.”
– Online Etymology Dictionary

Sometimes, I dream I am under a dark blue sky jumping on a large, glossy black trampoline. As I fall, the atmosphere rushes at my body, like boys at a teen dance.  To stay aloft, I kick out, flip over backwards, and plummet yet again toward the earth. I never feel the impact.

I hear the alarm clock as it buzzes me, like a human doorbell.  My first sensation is the tremendous weight of my earthbound body and the consequent disappointment.  I wake up coming down.