Plunge

Archive for the Category »plunge «

May

when we gather around the campfire

wholly jeanne

i am a passionate woman

who doesn’t lie,

but is finding it hard to tell The Truth. . .

My Truth.

i’ve been a nice girl for so long

that burning my membership card

is only an initiation, not a transformation.

it’s like learning to talk again,

like visiting italy with a ragged dictionary.

sometimes i mention the wart on your chin

when all i really meant to do was ask for directions to the restroom.

sometimes i squeal and shriek like a 3-year old,

when what i really want to tell you is that i wish this moment

this very moment

would last forever.

maybe i look like a grown woman

who should know better,

but please

bear with me.

be patient.

help me learn to talk.

when i allow my flat lines to go curvy with

fury or glee or deep-seated, bottled-up feeling,

don’t tell me to calm down.

when i disagree with you,

don’t push the air between us with your palms

and tell me to wait just a minute.

when i appear agitated and my words trip and stumble on their way out,

when i look down instead of making eye contact,

when i’m obviously upset,

and you can’t believe

or don’t understand

what you’re hearing,

set aside your admonition to take a deep breath,

and instead of

asking what on earth has gotten into me . . .

just ask me what’s going on right here right now.

ask me what it is i really want to say,

then

uncross your arms,

lean a bit forward in your chair,

and maybe, if you’re feeling especially patient and caring and willing,

give me a hint of an encouraging smile

or at least bring the frown up to a non-judgmental, non-commital flat line,

and listen.

just listen.

Category: be, essential, gathering around the campfire, grow, here, plunge, ruminations, seeing, togetherness, tools View Comments

Apr

the graveyard shift

wholly jeanne

yesterday
lindsey took herself to a cemetery
and pondered life in its beginnings and endings,
and
that got me
thinking and remembering.
cemeteries,
you see,
are my all-time favorite place to go.

whenever i get lost,
foggy,
or otherwise
kerflunky,
i take myself to a cemetery
and not once,
not a single time,
have i failed to find remedy.

in cemeteries,
i can pull off
my masks and armor,
and lay them down
alongside all the selves
i am not.
there is such relief in
just being me.
nobody to impress,
cajole,
entertain,
feed,
persuade.
in cemeteries,
i can ask questions
and surprise myself
by coming up with
the answers.

cemeteries
were affordable places to take young chiclets
to learn about multiple-digit math functions,
spelling,
history,
art, and
various and sundry other important things.
with no more research
than the information readily available on tombstones,
we’d generously, willingly resurrect
and grant second lives on the spot
through character sketches and
other products of our
imagination.

a few weeks ago,
i attended a grave marker dedication
conducted in a cemetery i played in as a child.
it was an impressive ceremony
to mark the grave of
an american revolutionary patriot.
men dressed in revolutionary garb,
women wore hats and gloves,
and we all showed respect
with our words,
our salutes and curtsies,
our presence.

one woman completely
forgot her upbringing
and stepped right on a grave.
when it surprised us all by caving in,
she found herself acting out the phrase
“one foot in the grave”.

years ago when my great aunt rene died,
my husband and i
found ourselves in the cemetery
at midnight
in the rain
pulling weeds
in the family plot
to prevent public humiliation
at the upcoming graveside ceremony.

carefully avoiding the
waiting hole in the ground,
we set to work on aunt lucy’s grave,
(she was aunt rene’s sister.)
(aunt rene got all the fun and nice.)
anyway,
bless goodness
if the lucy didn’t
behave in death
just as she did in life:
she held on to her weeds
with,
well,
a death grip.

because it was
tombstone-deep in snow
the january i graduated
from graduate school
in vermont,
i took my mother,
daughter,
and teenage nephew
back one summer
to visit
hope cemetery.

i discovered it one semester
when caryn mirriam-goldberg,
my faculty advisor-turned-friend,
(also the current poet laureate of kansas,
i’ll have you know)
took a small group of us there
to write.

shoot, i don’t find cemeteries
sad,
morose
places
at all.

quite the contrary.

yes, i highly recommend cemeteries
when you want
or when you need to
reflect
or write
or ruminate
or remember
or even howl.

with laughter, silly:

Category: fine lines, here, planet jeanne, plunge, postcards, ruminations View Comments

Mar

coming to term with our grips, 2

wholly jeanne

“The blueprint isn’t the building.”

Mary Pipher

“actions speak louder than words.” shoot, if i had a nickel for every time i’ve heard my mother say that, we’d be having this conversation in person, and i’d be picking up the tab. laboring, trusting, noticing, speaking, writing, yearning, connecting, pondering, desiring, building, standing, dancing, surviving. these are all actions that julie mentioned in her post. her post reads to me as a segue, a bridge from talking to doing.

caring is an action. so is caregiving, tending, pondering, deciding, preparing, singing, trying, loving, wiping, cooking, nurturing, hugging, listening, crying, seeking, writing, bearing witness. see, actions don’t have to be global to be valid or worthwhile.

many women who are career caregivers and family hearth keepers eventually find themselves stepping over the threshold of their front door, and all too often, it’s like leaving a darkened theatre and stepping right smackdab into the sunny parking lot. there’s an acclimation that must take place. many of these are women can tell you in the blink of a gnat’s eye what everybody around them thinks and feels, but ask them what their opinion is on something, ask them what gets their blood churning, and they draw a blank.

Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.

~Virginia Woolf

knowing our own thoughts and passions takes a little longer. discovering, defining, and clarifying personal voice are actions. so is supporting ourselves and others as we move through this stage.

we talk, write, listen. we poke around, visiting blogs to see what resonates with us – all actions – and while there are books and plays i want to write, i’m itching to do something that involves moving more than my fingers. i’m ready to live into my word of the year, ready to do something JustBecause.

some women go spend time at the ocean. other women get a job doing something they’re interested in. others collect, paint, draw, yarden, train for marathons.

but me? right now – as of last week – my action involves finding an old piano and deconstructing it down to the keyboard. all i want is the keyboard. a full keyboard. 88 keys. and once i have the keyboard, i want to hang it on the wall in my studio. it’s a desire, and desire is an action.

when this crazy idea came to light, i smiled (a good sign) and said to myself, “okay. so where do i find a piano?” i have a piano, mind you – music is in our blood – but i don’t want to take it apart, so i did what i always do: i asked my friends. within 4 hours of posting a note on facebook, a woman i seldom see even though i’ve known her for decades, commented that she had a piano i could have. the plan is to look at it tomorrow, then find a way to get it from there to here, find some tools, and let the deconstruction begin.

will harvesting the keyboard of an old piano save the world? shoot, no. will it cure cancer or restore order to haiti or stop domestic violence and rape? don’t i wish. no, i expect this is nothing more than one woman who’s itching to do something, doing something. nothing more, nothing less.

and i’m doing it with the help of friends. some i haven’t seen in years. others i’ve never seen (in person) at all. helping, listening, giving, picking up . . . those are all actions. and every action leads somewhere.

even the teensy little action of clicking on the name of a woman who left a comment on julie daley’s blog. there’s one more piece to this post, but i’m about to be late to a very important writing date with a friend i met when she came to audition for a show our theatre company produced last summer, so till soon . . .

~~~~~
my great aunt rene (and i mean “great” in terms of lineage and as an adjective) was a career caregiver. she never had children, but she took care of us, her brother, her two sisters, and countless others. in her younger years, she took such good care of a sick, elderly man that when his father died, the son deeded the house to her in appreciation. she then build a small house on the back of the lot and created an apartment on one side of the house, and the rental income fed and clothed her when her youngish husband died. laughing, playing canasta, yardening, and flirting were some of aunt rene’s more noteworthy actions. she took care of people and plants, and she tended them – us – well. the azaleas in the photo are in her yard.

Category: be, essential, grow, leap, now, outreach, plunge, ruminations, seeing, togetherness View Comments

Mar

coming to terms with our grips

wholly jeanne

“I’m not sure where this post is going to go, but I trust it will take us somewhere” wrote my darling julie daley. she stepped out on the digital page that day, not knowing where her fingers would take her, and oh what a journey she set in motion. earlier in the week, she wrote about voice – about finding hers, me finding mine, others finding theirs. two days later she found herself writing about connections. connecting. the digital currency of the internet, she calls it.

“As we tell each other who we really are,
we find the people with whom we really belong.”

Christina Baldwin via @creatingwings on twitter

the comments after julie’s post are filled with women tracing their digital lineage, paying tribute to women they’ve met online, women who have been and who have found breadcrumbs leading to a forest (or desert) of women ready and willing to bear witness, encourage, cajole, dance.

in our journey to voice, we gather around the digital well of blogs and comments and tweets, telling our stories and speaking our truths (perhaps tentatively at first and at times), and an entrainment takes place. we find women with whom we resonate. women who inspire us, tickle us, enkindle and excite us. we gather around the digital well, knowing that encouraging, supporting, cheering on other women does not diminish us in any way because this is a well of abundance.

as i scrolled down to leave my comment at julie’s place, i came across a comment left by a name i’d never seen before. debra notes that women finding their voice is an “old, old” theme, one that’s been “grappled with” for centuries – which is true. she goes on to point out that actions speak louder than words, and, on the topic of voice, asks the good question “how will you use yours?”

feeling a quickening, i click over to her blog, eager for a chance to learn more about her, to have a conversation. I find that she’s written a post elaborating on her comment, but alas, there is no place on her blog for comments. though i take exception to her use of the word “soppy” because it reads judgmental, i do see how if it’s your first visit to some of the blogs i call our digital well, they could be received as soppy. sometimes when i write a particular post, it feels soppy. necessary, but soppy nevertheless.

i’ve only been on twitter three months, and the first time i called someone “sugar”, it was scary. i knew there was a chance folks would recoil and unfollow me in droves, but i did it anyway because it felt right. i am fluent in english and southern – it is who i am. now several of us have sweet pet names for each other, and it works. for us, it works. for a while, my son (who’s knows his way around the digital social scene) would read the comments on my blog and call on his way to the office, offering feedback. “mom,” he said more than once, “when you tell people you love them, when you call them ‘sugar’, when you use ‘xo’, and compliment them profusely, you sound needy. cut it out.” he read a few more weeks, then one day i got a call saying, “mom, about the way you reply to people in the comment section of your blog . . . that’s not neediness, that’s caring, and they’re two different things. i see that now, and it works for you because it’s who you are. you care. you really care.”

i do care. and the way i see it, caring is action.

it’s where action starts.

it’s the ember, the kindling for action.

to be continued tomorrow . . .

Category: be, essential, grow, here, plunge, ruminations, togetherness View Comments

Feb

but you can call me “Her Highest Petticoat Potentate”

wholly jeanne

or (and you might want to take a deep breath first) “ArchSupremest Of The Very Supreme And Sovereign pFemale Pharaoh Till The Cows Fly Home” for short.* the “Arch” is a nod to religion. the “Supremest” and “Supreme” – well, what’s a good title without accessories? and “Pharaoh” because everybody knows that’s a ruler with a bite. (among other things.)

i might make it “ArchSupremest Of The Supreme And Sovereign pFemale Pharaoh, TTCFH”. i haven’t decided yet. i mean, it’d make sense from a power position because it looks like a degree that was painful and took forever to obtain.**

this started out to be a post on something really important, but damned if i can remember what it was now. whatever it was, though, it was important, i know that much. something i felt i felt so strongly about i knew i needed a little title to give me credibility and power and to get some seriously serious attention. so i started poking around google, and, well, here we are.

i asked for suggestions on facebook***, and i got “queen” and “beloved leader”, and while i know you’re not supposed to torpedo ideas right out of the gate*^x4, honestly, i don’t think i could make the “beloved” part stick after people heard what i was planning on proposing. (and still will once i remember it) (i’ll probably remember once i get this little title thing worked out).

“queen” comes with way too much baggage, and besides i checked, and out of all my pocketbooks, i don’t have a single one that looks all that queenly. no patent leathers. don’t have one without a shoulder strap, for that matter, and i ask you: how queenly would it look for a short gal like me to be dragging her pocketbook around on the ground behind her. (yes, i thought about kicking it out in front of me as i go but that’s not all that becoming to an all-powerful monarch either.) (and honestly, i haven’t been doing yoga nearly long enough to trust myself standing on one foot while the other one moves.)

pfunny that nobody suggested “president”. not that i’d even audition that one, anyway.

i played phoebe reece in the “farndale avenue housing estate’s townswomen’s guild’s dramatic society’s production of a christmas carol” not once but twice, and let me tell you, there’s a woman with p.o.w.e.r. but i plan to cower over more than the 7 people who saw me on stage, so how would everybody (besides those 7*^{x 5}, of course) know to quake appropriately? it could be embarrassing and quite honestly, deadly.

then there’s my dog, named phoebe because the kids gave her to us as a christmas present during my first farndale gig.*^{x 6} and while it’s true that pfour-legged phoebe has the power-like-none-other to pull me out of the coveted writing zone to go fetch her and the tagalong cats a treat, i’m still just not convinced “phoebe” would be instantly recognizable as power to the untrained eye.

not too long ago, i was called to the amphitheater stage on the night “oliver!” closed on account of the cast wanted to give me The Most Beautiful Roses Ever. and when nancy admitted she didn’t know what to call me, fagin chirped in with “goddess” which i have to admit has a pretty nice ring to it, especially over the loud speakers and in front of all those people. but it sounds like i’d have to behave and look on the beautiful side of things, so maybe not.

now “mama” is a title that can pack a punch, but football just represents one segment of my intended subjects.

i want a kickass title. something that’ll size me up at a Woman To Be Reckoned With And Listened To Right Off The Bat. a title that’ll have people standing in line ~~hours~~ months ahead to purchase one of the pens i’ll use to sign my orders into, well, orders.*^{x 7} (and yes, i know the trick about using a different pen for each letter. i’m all over that cause “ka ching, ka ching” is sure to be one of my ~~silent~~ mottos.)

the blogess has already taken “czar” (i’d give her credit, but i don’t know how to reference a tweet*^{x 8 & 9}) (even a funny one). and speaking of the bloggess, do y’all think she’d mind very much if i just copied her post and pasted it in over here at my place? i think i can photoshop out her face from under that cat (which i’m thinking would make a flattering informal crown when i’m out working in the royal yard or bagging up the royal trash or walking to the royal mailbox) and insert mine easy enough. i’ll keep her shoulders and the towel, of course. only seems fair.

plus i’d like to prove that i can be benevolent.

on occasion.

well, loyal subjects-in-the-making, since i’m not yet fully staffed, i am not only writing this little ole’ post all by my little ole’ self (Sovereign though i may be), i must go tend to some Very Important And Sometimes Onerous Things That Petticoat Potentates Must Do Whether They Want To Or Not.

so carry on.

and write if you get work.

* you know i’m such a sucker (a sovereign one, it goes without saying) for alliteration, i almost put a “p” in front of every word, but then i figured all those people who got hooked on phonics would sue me in hopes of paying for their rehab.

** the way i figure it, once i’m launched, at least one institute of higher learning (probably more) is gonna’ bestow some honorary letters after my name free of charge. might even throw me a little party with free food and open bar afterwards, too.

*** for now, i’m “injeanneious” there. or “jeanne hewell-chambers”. just in case you’re interested.

*^{x 4} even though i can, you know.

*^{x 5} okay, make that 6 because i forgot to mention the stay awake requirement when i paid my mother to come.

*^{x 6} don’t get used to so much personal information cause i’m gonna’ have to start keeping the monarchey lid on things for the protection of my peeps. not that my edicts and decrees will be unpopular, mind you, it’s just that i’ll be so wildly, fantastically popular, everybody will want a piece of me.

*^{x 7} for those of you who like to plan ahead, kissing up is not only allowed, it’s downright encouraged.

*^{x 8 & 9} which reminds me: one of the first things i’ll have to do it give myself more twitterwidth because my title alone eats up more than 140 characters and what with retweets and all. note to Sovereign Supremest Of The Supreme Self: slap a crown on that fail whale (but first: it’s not a killer whale, is it?). and the little birdies, too, while you’re at it. and for all you inquiring minds out there, @whollyjeanne is my twitter name. for now, anyway.

p.s. and for the record, no, i have not had a royaltini.

yet.

Category: be, essential, fantasy friday, fine lines, no, i have not had a royaltini. yet., planet jeanne, plunge, postcards, ruminations View Comments

Feb

diving in, at last

wholly jeanne

my thesis semester found me managing my daughter’s campaign for state legislature. she was one of 4 candidates, and she wound up in a runoff with the older male career politician, an election she lost by the barest of margins. and by the time the last runoff votes were counted, i had 10 days to write my thesis. because it felt right, i worked from the table located in the center of our home – the chrome and glass table that was the first piece of furniture we bought as a married couple. every morning i’d light a candle, push everything and everyone else aside, and get to work. i had no time for angst or indecision. no time to argue with myself or let anything come between me and those notecards.

it was wonderful. you know what i’m talking about – being in that place that defies description where time and doubt don’t exist. that place i never wanted to leave.

but all too soon the thesis was turned in . . . and the first draft approved with only a note from faculty saying they were staying out of my way, leaving it up to me to massage if and as desired.

i wish that’s how i worked all the time – and lord knows, i wish i could get there without all the stress of having to fit it in, but alas. though i come up with more ideas than i can say grace over, and though questions are my native language (next to southern, of course), i have this annoying tendency to think them right out of existence before ever letting them fully hatch. or to run right over them with a ridiculously overloaded to do list.

that’s probably why i collect these stories about people who plunge right into something, making it up and deciphering it as they go. (there are at least 2 more right now begging me to give them some post time.) it’s how i want to be – just follow an interest without having to define, justify, or explain why it’s a good idea, why it will not be a waste of my time. i long to be a story in my own collection.

for more years than i care to count, i’ve carried around ideas for several books and plays, working on them and entertaining myself . . . but only on the inside. now let me be real clear here: nobody’s telling me i shouldn’t be working on these projects. nobody is telling me my ideas are ridiculous or that i’m wasting my time or who do i think i am. i am my biggest wall.

this morning, though, i leapt.

i wasn’t sure which project i’d work on when i got to the studio, i was only sure that it’s time. and without slowing down enough to even begin a thought, i started transcribing newspaper articles about the bank robbery. my maternal granddaddy was the county sheriff, you see, and my paternal granddaddy was the town’s banker, (yep, i couldn’t do a damn thing.) when my daddy was 5 years old, armed bandits came to town. because the vault couldn’t be opened on their schedule, the highwaymen (as the newspapers called them) brought out the whiskey, kept out the guns, and held my daddy and his family prisoners in their own home for more than 10 hours. it’s something that doesn’t happen to just every family, and yet it’s a story that was told surprisingly little around our dinner table. i don’t know that i’ll uncover reasons for the reluctance to talk about it, but i already know that it’s time to tell this story.

and i can’t – i won’t – wait.

p.s. that picture? it’s my granddaddy’s banker’s chair – in its original green leather – and it will be my constant companion as i discover this story.