This Mortifying Life...

Oh lord.

I just spent all of Christmas day watching a marathon of the entire second season of Dexter -- what grisly bliss!

And then this morning I picked up a tiny sketchbook from years and years (and years) ago and found to my horror a lengthy, overwrought travelogue of a visit to my then-boyfriend in Idaho where he was working for the forest service. Which is also where he had originally gone to get away from people  -
I met him during a short, flukey moment back in the south when he'd decided to finally finish a philosophy degree started several years prior... After my visit he decided we were broken up but never bothered to actually tell me.

God. Why do we commit things to paper?

Earlier today I woke thinking of someone I had dated for about a minute a less-long time ago whose name I shouldn't even remember -- I don't even think we kissed! But one of his two small daughters asked if I was going to be their new mom....man, that was some squirrely shit! He faded out of my life and married a woman he met online, at the dawn of internet dating. These days they run a knick-knack shop in St. Pete Florida.

So, this is me, praying I don't do anything too mortifying here.

Good luck with that, Kate.

so this is Christmas...

...and what have we done?

This kept running through my mind yesterday,

esp. the part about "let's hope it's a good one,

without any fear." I don't know what Lennon was referring to

when he wrote the line -

but it feels like the right song to be humming

while this Rome of ours cracks in half.

I feel a quiet peace this year; so different than the last.

There's a weird duality to my daily life, a membrane between

the now and the ghosts of what was.

I do a lot of internal "la-la-la-la"-ing to keep

my head and heart from going places I'm not ready to go just yet...

as if there were protective

forces (Jedi knights), in my head telling me:

"this is not the thought you're looking for."

I'm grateful for this instinct to protect myself, to dissemble;

to buy time ahead of the inevitable.

Some days I can look Robert's death in the eye,

and others I just can't.

I'm getting a slow handle on it.

I'm hopeful that some other Romans will figure out the rest,

and I hope they get it right.

Inaugural Post

This is the last thing I have time for today, but I felt the urge.