the first weekend…

This weekend has been tough. The first weekend since I was told that our marriage was over. The first weekend to face the absence of our normal weekend routines. No more weekend morning trips to Spielman’s for coffee and bagels. New routines will have to be found (they didn’t happen this weekend for sure). Instead I spent it packing up some of her remaining things and putting them in the garage until she moves them too. Church was really difficult this morning. With rare exception she had been by my side since I moved back to Portland. The Rector talked about prayer in her sermon. How it is central to everything. How it can be hard to do…but also how it can be hard to receive for some people (including herself). As hard as being there was this morning, I knew it was exactly where I was supposed to be. Surrounded by the prayers of the congregation whether they were for me and this situation or something completely different.

This is painful. It hurts. I’ve been shaken to my core. Like I mentioned in my last post…I didn’t see this storm coming until it was already surrounding me. One place I went for comfort today was a book from the Irish poet John O’Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us. I’ve used this book of blessings many times over the years. For weddings, for thanksgivings, and for prayer. The last section of the book is “Beyond Endings. He talks in the introduction to the section how endings seem to lie in wait. How we can feel ambushed by them because we are too focused on the present to see the approaching ending. He talks about the contrast between the innocence and joy of how beginnings initially unfold and the soreness and protrusion of endings. Endings can quietly and irreversibly build within something, strengthening its grip on finality during each stage. When I look back on these last two months…I can see these things in greater focus now. Today, I’ve been reflecting and sitting with this blessing:

For the Breakup of a Relationship

Now you endeavor
To gather yourself
And withdraw in slow
Animal woundedness
From love turned sour and ungentle.

When we love, the depth in us
Trusts itself forward until
The empty space between
Becomes gradually woven
Into an embrace where longing
Can close its weary eyes.

Love can seldom end clean;
For all the tissue is torn
And each lover turned stranger
Is dropped into a ruin of distance
Where emptiness is young and fierce.

Time becomes strange and slipshod;
it mixes memories that felt
The kiss of the eternal
With the blistering hurt of now.

Unknown to themselves,
Certain small things
Touch nerve-lines to the heart
And bring back with color and force
All that is utterly lost.

This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall
Until the bitter weather passes.

Try, as best you can, not to let
The wire brush of doubt
Scrape from your heart
All sense of yourself
And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,
Time will come good;
And you will find your feet
Again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind
And blushed with beginning.

This weekend has been tough. But I’ve got a community praying for me. I’ve got an army behind me. I’ve been given so much love and strength by friends, family, and strangers over the past few weeks. They’ve given me a place to cry, a place to vent, and a shoulder to hold on to. You are all there to help guide me through this storm and get me to the calm sea.

Thank you more than I could ever say.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/the-first-weekend/

Two months…

On March 12th, my wife told me the news that would take my then generally happy marriage to being over officially on May 4th. Of course there were things we could have used to work on before then, desires and needs we each wanted to improve (some of which actually overlapped). But the morning of March 12th, I did not see the storm coming that would build over the next 6-7 weeks and eventually drown our marriage.

In retrospect, I suppose there were signs that our marriage wasn’t as grounded as I thought it was. I won’t go into the details of what went wrong…or how things got to the breaking point. We both did things during those weeks that contributed to the breaking down of our union. I know I wish I could take back a lot of the things I said and ways I acted. I’m left to question if we had been able to get into couples counseling earlier if things could have worked out differently. Most likely they wouldn’t have though. One of the major reasons she gave me was that she didn’t believe we could change the way we communicated with each other enough to meet the needs she was discovering about herself.

Now I’m left with a sense of loss. The initial anger has passed. Sure there are still moments of it…but its mainly loss. I miss my partner of the last 8 years. I miss the life we had built together. I’m grieving the loss of our future dreams…the kids we had talked about having…the places we had planned to go…the life we had planned to live.

I will need to learn to love and be loved again. I will need to learn how to trust my heart to someone again. Its going to take time. I’ve not felt this kind of heartbreak before. My friends have been a great support though. Both my close friends and friends that I don’t know so well. People have done so much to help me through these trying days and I will forever be grateful.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/two-months/

There Will Be Time

In the cold light, I live to love and adore you

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/there-will-be-time/

cut flower

crossposted from one simple breath (a haiku community):

 

cutflower

Photo by Pathan Jomazo

beautiful flowers
grown with gentle care are cut
killed for our pleasure

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/cut-flower/

February 29

FEBRUARY 29

An extra day —

Like the painting’s fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day —

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day —

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much —
just one day’s worth, exactly.

An extra day —

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day —

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

From The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield (via Brain Pickings)

By date at least, I only have half birthdays once every 4 years. Today is my 10th half birthday. Weird. I know half birthdays are something for kids…but with mine being on the leap day…its kind of interesting to me in a way I can’t quite explain.

I’m not quite sure whether or not an extra day is a gift or a curse this year yet. That will be something to be determined later. I am still hopeful that 2016 will be a good year.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/february-29/

one simple breath: Winter

8233096058_ff40c025f1_z.jpg

Photo by: Daniel Parks License: CC by-nc

relentlessly it
rains depression. obscuring
moments of lightness.

a prompt from onesimplebreath.com


I’ve got a new web project going on. Its a haiku community where there will be semi-regular prompts to write haikus. Anyone is welcome to join and participate. Please check out the site at the links above.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2016/one-simple-breath-winter/

Books I’ve Read in 2015

Total Pages Read: 6,036
Shortest Book: 168 pages
Longest Book: 496 pages
Fiction: 13
Non-Fiction: 5
Cookbook: 1
Poetry: 0

Last Book Read:
19. Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Barcelona, Real Madrid, and the World’s Greatest Sports Rivalry by Sid Lowe. The history of the two biggest clubs in Spain, how they became rivals, and why you are either a fan of Barça or Madrid if you live in Spain. 480 pages. (Finished 17 Aug 15).

Past Lists:
2014 List
2013 List
2012 List
2011 List
2010 List
2009 List
2008 List
2007 List

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2015/books-ive-read-in-2015/

I got selfied…

So I went to Starbucks with my coworker and Timber Joey walks up and asks if he can take a picture with me. She asks me “are you famous or something? Does he know you?”

🙂

Respect the beard.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2014/i-got-selfied/

Books I’ve Read in 2014

Total Pages Read: 7,295
Shortest Book: 144 pages
Longest Book: 514 pages
Fiction: 16
Non-Fiction: 3
Cookbook: 4

Last Book Read:
23. The Son by Jo Nesbø. A young man is in prison for crimes he didn’t commit in exchange for a steady supply of heroin. When he learns some new details of his father’s death, he becomes the center of a web of corruption and vengeance. 386 pages. (Finished 25 Nov 14).

Past Lists:
2013 List
2012 List
2011 List
2010 List
2009 List
2008 List
2007 List

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2014/books-ive-read-in-2014/

Niia – Body (& a few more songs)

Her debut EP comes out Oct 28.

She also has done a bunch of Bond song covers:

Permanent link to this article: https://www.rhinoblues.com/thoughts/2014/niia-body-a-few-more-songs/