April 11, 2018

Prosetry

On my poetry blog, I posted two poems I wrote last week.

Sometimes I have a difficult time labeling my pennings as "poems."
Is it a poem, a prose, or jabberwocky?

Jabberwocky brings to mind gibberish which brings to mind speaking in tongues.
Speaking in tongues brings to mind foreign languages.
Even if one doesn't understand the language, it is usually quite beautiful to listen to.
Every Way International believer speaks in tongues.
But not in the same style as in Pentecostal or Charismatic churches.

I think I probably pen more prose than poems.
Or perhaps I pen "prosetry" (long o & pronounced with three syllables, if you like).

Prosetry brings to mind trees and how they pose.
Which brings to mind a piece of miniature art painted on a miniature block that sits on my kitchen windowsill above the kitchen sink.
A spider has taken up residence outside the kitchen window, between it and the storm-window.
I see him daily.
Or maybe he is a her.
Spiders spin poetry, often between twigs and branches and limbs posing on tree trunks.

The Way was structured like a tree.
Root locales were the major Way properties where the research and dictates originated and were used as the main training grounds for The Way Corps.
Trunks were countries.
Limbs were states.
Branches were usually comprised of five to seven Twigs within a Limb.
Twigs were the individual home fellowships usually consisting of three to twenty believers.
Each believer was a Leaf.
And a healthy Twig always bore good fruit; if not, something was amiss.
The Way Tree was a poser, unlike the authentic pose of the authentic Trees of Earth.

This blog post might fall in a category of jabberwocky.



~tree woman on my window sill~


April 8, 2018

Help-map: March 5, 2018, thru May 15, 2018

I received my 20th epidural on March 5, 2018. The neurologist reduced the steroid dosage again. I haven't fared as well compared to my usual fare. It's been a tough five weeks.

Part of the tough row was due to vertigo that began on February 19 and continued until March 15. Part of the tough hoe has been due to work commitments with my pet-sitting business, even though I downsized again when the vertigo hit.

Today I finally got around to typing my "help-map," the new title I'm trying out for my every-twelve-week rally or goal sheets. Each twelve-week epidural round, I magnet my current "map" to the fridge to help encourage and get me to my next epidural.

This round my next epidural is in ten weeks, instead of twelve. In latter May, Hubby and I are going on a vacation to Florida. So my neurologist agreed to adapt my epidural schedule so I can have relief while on vacation.

I'm excited about our trip to Florida. We have an oceanfront room with a door we can prop open. We plan to rent bikes and ride them, which I'm most excited about. I'm pretty sure I've figured out our bike routes. They will include sections of the East Coast Greenway which stretches from the Florida Keys to Canada. It's far from a completed Greenway, but a bike route connects to Greenway sections all up and down the East Coast.

Typing my help-map today, helped me. It helped reduce my anxiety in regard to my current "can't-dos," but feeling I "should do." I magnetted it to the fridge.

I get my neck shots this Tuesday, 4/10.

Come on relief...

*~*

March 5, 2018, thru May 15, 2018
(Ten weeks due to upcoming FL vacation)

Like when I had to save my limbs,
now, I have to save my physiology.
Nothing else takes priority.

With self-care I am caring for others.
I am committed to self-care and emotional wellness.
I do not have to explain to anyone my lack of commitment to activities/tasks outside of self-care.
Even if I weren't sick, there is no need to explain.
I have done nothing wrong by being sick.
I do not need to apologize, though I'm sure I will.

Weather is always changing.
"It's wind man. It blows all over the place."

May I be present.
May I have ease of well being.
May I be peaceful.
May I embrace 10,000 sorrows and 10,000 joys.



To work toward as I'm able around Wee Walk & AIC & self-care:
Stretches: 2-1/2ish hours/week
Bike: 3 days/week
Nutrition: 7 days
Create home haven: 4 to 6 hours/week


Countdown:
Week 1: Completed M, 3/12/18
Week 2: Completed M, 3/19/18
Week 3: Completed M, 3/26/18
Week 4: Completed M, 4/02/18 (BONIVA on Sa, 4/07/18)

Week 5: Completed M, 4/09/18 (neck shots Tu, 4/10/18)
Week 6: Completed Tu, 4/17/18
Week 7: Completed Tu, 4/24/18
Week 8: Completed Tu, 5/01/18

Week 9: Completed Tu, 5/08/18 (BONIVA on Sa, 5/12/18)
Week 10: Completed Tu, 5/15/18 (Epidural #21)



Carol W, CEO ~cyclist. explorer. overcomer.




April 5, 2018

Cloak-and-dagger

3/26/18

As I ponder the harm Knapp inflicted upon my psyche, an image appears in my mind.

I stand on a man-made path of dirt and rock in a wide open tunnel on a ledge hewn out from the wall of a dark, mammoth, stone mountain.
I am alone.
The only light is from the burning torch which I carry in my left hand.

On my right, the mountain wall ascends until it disappears converging somewhere above me.
On my left, a stacked-rock wall reaches to my thigh.
Beyond the thigh-high wall, an abyss descends to a bottom I cannot see.

Suddenly the mental image changes to outside the mountain, where I am not.

The exterior is a huge, jagged rock.
There is no vegetation; no life.
Smoke ascends from the mountain-top.
The atmosphere is foreboding, like a storm that never manifests; it only threatens.
The sky is dismal with dark clouds, not quite night, but not twilight either.
The time of day never changes, nor the weather, except for occasional lightning.

It is a dark land.

It's Mordor, my thoughts respond.
I'm not a Tolkien aficionado; my knowledge of Middle Earth is limited.
But I recall that Mordor is a land of darkness.

And that is where I found myself - deep inside a gigantic, dark mountain in a dark land.
A dark land of self-doubt, of anti-trust.

Self-doubt was one of the main reasons I hired Knapp in 2008.
At the time, I felt I was listening to my inner GPS.
I thought I was following my intuition.

And that is one big reason I was so deeply wounded.
Had I misunderstood?
Or worse, Was my intuition, which I deeply felt I had followed, not to be trusted in any manner?

How can I ever trust my self again?
Has my soul betrayed me again like it did with The Way?


That was the most destructive wound from Knapp's daggers.
A piercing and bleeding out of an already-wounded soul.
A murder of trust in, what and who should be, my closest ally.

And then, as I pondered this recently, the possibility hit me.
What if I did hear my intuition correctly?
What if I hadn't hired Knapp?
Would someone else have reported him?
Would his attacks have devastated them to the point that they would have been silenced?
Would he have wounded more clients than just myself and at least one other that I know of?
Would I have learned more succinctly the nature of evil, that what appeared as goodness with the best of intentions was in reality, a cloak?
Would I have questioned as much as I have that possible nature?


Seems I would have learned that lesson about evil from my 28 years in The Way, before hiring Knapp.
And I did learn, among other things, about deception and the cloak.
But with Knapp, with Knapp, I experienced the dagger.
With Knapp I was led down a yellow brick road but instead of landing in an Emerald City and uncloaking a wizard behind a curtain that eventually led to home, I found myself alone - standing inside a huge tunnel hewn from the belly of a mammoth, fiery mountain - baffled and confused.

Ultimately, I was not lost in the dark tunnel in the mountain of doom.
I have found my way out.
I had a torch for light, a flicker of intuitive guidance.
The murder was not complete.

But if I believe that I fell in with Knapp because I would be the one to report him, would I not have to believe in some sore of divine providence?
That poses a problem for me.
I'll need to find another interpretation.


A friend, who also experienced therapist abuse, calls it sanctuary abuse.
An apt description.

The body is designed to heal itself and it does a damn good job when given the proper environment.
What about the soul?

~*~*

I saw a Mary Oliver quote this morning.
It rolled across my Twitter-feed after I wrote the above.