I’m back up on Mamalode today with a piece that seems to resonate differently with different people. Definitely a challenging piece to write, even more so to submit. But I’ve been asking myself, “What would I do if I weren’t afraid?” And then doing it. Within reason.
Heads up, I wrote it in second-person. That’s not everyone’s cuppa.
Please check it out: It’s All in the Belly
• Be punctual with holiday-related blog posts. I have already started to draft my post “Nine Arbor Day Crafts & Recipes You Can Say You’re Doing While You’re Really Just Hiding From Your Family to Get Some Peace and Quiet”
• As consistency is key, continue with 2-part exercise program that I have followed for a several years decade:
Part 1: Watch 70s and 80s workout videos while eating gelato, which is healthier than ice cream because it’s a foreign word.
Part 2: While standing in front of fridge, closets, doors, drawers, shelves, or people while trying to remember why I’m there – do squats
• Find lotion that works for zits and wrinkles. Alternatively, hide husband’s glasses.
• Open windows before going to any room by myself so when I yell at the kids to leave me alone, my neighbors will hear me and applaud my boundary setting. Do same pre-coffee.
• Listen to Hamilton more often. There is no accompanying joke, I just love this music and this show and everyone involved in this show ever.
• Since “I thought the sweeping cinematography in the opening scene ” only works once, stay awake for movies we watch at home long enough to fake a conversation.
• Speak faster so that I can get more information out before inevitably being interrupted by one of my children needing a juice box, snack, hug, argument referee, Band-Aid, bicycle tire inflation, or to relay every Minecraft fact.
• Accept that I look the same no matter which mascara I wear, except for the one that smudges. Stop purchasing the one that smudges
• I have to leave the house to be an activist so:
• Stop Random Capitalization as though you are writing the next Winnie the Pooh novel or other Good thing.
• Accept my Bill Murray ambivalence.
• Know that no one else will be ok with my Bill Murray ambivalence.
• Understand people will expend a lot of energy and gesticulate a lot and possibly spit a little in an effort to change my mind about Bill Murray
• Eat the chocolates.
• Use all the cookbooks in my office rather than rotate the same four meals and just call them different foreign names. Alternatively, learn to say “Leftovers” in more languages.
• Husband and children are just going to use the voice search on the remote control as a source of entertainment. Since searching for “Monkey Pants” will always be funny to them, move on with my life.
• Play ukulele when I have the time, be that at the pickup line or before and after parent-teacher conferences.
• KidzBop is a compromise.
• Maybe don’t compromise so much.
• Stop wearing the maternity underwear already.
• Only say “That’s ok” when “that” is actually “ok.”
I think I would have been a beat poet
Or a protest singer
Soul rubbed raw by reality scraping against idealism and truth.
Sharing in verse hope and pain. Not just mine —
Others may need a beat poet or a protest singer
To use the pen or the pick as a mirror and balm.And we would sing or read or rap or march or plan or reaffirm,
Upsetting status quo gently or roughly by the shoulders with Art Revolution.
Meeting, laughing, growling
Gathering new friends or the merely curious
in coffee shops or untidy close apartments or even someone’s unironically beautiful beach home.
We would mark these times with great output and remember them decades later looking at black and white photos of ourselves that no one remembers being taken while we sang and spoke of change.But I am not a beat poet
Or a protest singer.
Are there such things anymore, or are we post-beat?
Too beat?
I sit in coffee shops, though, and beautiful homes, calling out an occasional verse
hoping to hear the response of another raw soul.
Jackie Pick 