Forwarded from Divine Surrender
"In the 27 years of my woodworking business, I have never thrown away a knot. Many people see knots as a defect, but to me knots are the visual representation of a trees struggle to thrive. Not all little limbs become big branches, but their combined efforts on behalf of the tree as a whole should be celebrated. Just like human scars they tell a story of sacrifice and healing. Each of these "scars" has a unique personality and deserve the chance to be appreciated as art."
~ Keith Williams from Oddball
~ Keith Williams from Oddball
“Shrinking Women” by Lily Myers
Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass.
She says she doesn’t deprive herself,
but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork.
In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate.
I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it.
I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so.
Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional.
As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast.
She wanes while my father waxes.
His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit.”
It was the same with his parents;
as my grandmother became frail and angular
her husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking
making space for the entrance of men into their lives
not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.
I have been taught accommodation.
My brother never thinks before he speaks.
I have been taught to filter.
“How can anyone have a relationship to food?” He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.
I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas,
you have been taught to grow out
I have been taught to grow in
you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much
I learned to absorb
I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself
I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters
and I never meant to replicate her, but
spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits.
That’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades.
We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit
weaving silence in between the threads
which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house,
skin itching,
picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again,
Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.
Deciding how many bites is too many
How much space she deserves to occupy.
Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
And I don’t want to do either anymore
but the burden of this house has followed me across the country
I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry”.
I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza
a circular obsession I never wanted but
inheritance is accidental
still staring at me with wine-stained lips
from across the kitchen table.
Painting by Gina Litherland
Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass.
She says she doesn’t deprive herself,
but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork.
In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate.
I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it.
I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so.
Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional.
As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast.
She wanes while my father waxes.
His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit.”
It was the same with his parents;
as my grandmother became frail and angular
her husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking
making space for the entrance of men into their lives
not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.
I have been taught accommodation.
My brother never thinks before he speaks.
I have been taught to filter.
“How can anyone have a relationship to food?” He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.
I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas,
you have been taught to grow out
I have been taught to grow in
you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much
I learned to absorb
I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself
I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters
and I never meant to replicate her, but
spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits.
That’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades.
We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit
weaving silence in between the threads
which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house,
skin itching,
picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again,
Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.
Deciding how many bites is too many
How much space she deserves to occupy.
Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,
And I don’t want to do either anymore
but the burden of this house has followed me across the country
I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry”.
I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza
a circular obsession I never wanted but
inheritance is accidental
still staring at me with wine-stained lips
from across the kitchen table.
Painting by Gina Litherland
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Find more at: t.me/IntuitiveCommunity/1828, t.me/IntuitiveSocialCalendar/643, t.me/EsoExp/162, https://t.me/IntuitivePublicRadio/10386
Audio
CHAPTER 1 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online
5/4/21 by Sol Luckman
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/138644806
Episode: https://anchor.fm/s/596c4450/podcast/play/32809055/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fanchor-audio-tts-production%2Fproduction%2F2021-05-04%2Ftts.bd05e160-031f-48c3-bacd-16b54c86b018.mp3
CHAPTER 1 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand? This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual novel, SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING, winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for New Age Fiction.
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/555, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556
5/4/21 by Sol Luckman
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/138644806
Episode: https://anchor.fm/s/596c4450/podcast/play/32809055/https%3A%2F%2Fs3.amazonaws.com%2Fanchor-audio-tts-production%2Fproduction%2F2021-05-04%2Ftts.bd05e160-031f-48c3-bacd-16b54c86b018.mp3
CHAPTER 1 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand? This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual novel, SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING, winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for New Age Fiction.
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/555, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556
Written with young adult and young-at-heart readers in mind, SNOOZE further proved its literary merit by being selected as a 2016 Readers’ Favorite International Book Award Finalist in the Young Adult-Coming of Age category and receiving an Honorable Mention in the 2014 Beach Book Festival Prize competition in the General Fiction category.
Now for the first time ever, this epic visionary tale is being officially serialized—in both readable and audible formats.
You’re invited to join—either with eyes or ears—Max Diver, a.k.a. “Snooze,” along the razor’s edge of a quest to rescue his astronaut father from a fate stranger than death in the exotic, perilous Otherworld of sleep.
This episode is also available as a blog post:
http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/05/04/chapter-1-of-84-of-the-serialization-of-snooze-a-story-of-awakening-read-or-listen-to-this-award-winning-metaphysical-novel-free-online
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/555, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556
Now for the first time ever, this epic visionary tale is being officially serialized—in both readable and audible formats.
You’re invited to join—either with eyes or ears—Max Diver, a.k.a. “Snooze,” along the razor’s edge of a quest to rescue his astronaut father from a fate stranger than death in the exotic, perilous Otherworld of sleep.
This episode is also available as a blog post:
http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/05/04/chapter-1-of-84-of-the-serialization-of-snooze-a-story-of-awakening-read-or-listen-to-this-award-winning-metaphysical-novel-free-online
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/555, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556
Snooze 2 Awaken
CHAPTER 1 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel…
Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand? This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual …
Audio
CHAPTER 2 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online
5/6/21 by Sol Luckman
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/140352005
CHAPTER 2 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online Click here to start SNOOZE at the beginning. Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand? This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual novel, SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING, winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for New Age Fiction. This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/05/06/chapter-2-of-84-of-the-serialization-of-snooze-a-story-of-awakening-read-or-listen-to-this-award-winning-metaphysical-novel-free-online
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/557
5/6/21 by Sol Luckman
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/140352005
CHAPTER 2 (of 84) of the Serialization of SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING—Read or Listen to This Award-winning Metaphysical Novel FREE Online Click here to start SNOOZE at the beginning. Could it be there’s no such thing as the paranormal … only infinite varieties of normal we’ve yet to understand? This is an important and timely question explored in the highly acclaimed spiritual novel, SNOOZE: A STORY OF AWAKENING, winner of the 2015 National Indie Excellence Award for New Age Fiction. This episode is also available as a blog post: http://snooze2awaken.com/2021/05/06/chapter-2-of-84-of-the-serialization-of-snooze-a-story-of-awakening-read-or-listen-to-this-award-winning-metaphysical-novel-free-online
https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/556, https://t.me/IntuitiveStory/557
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We are in a war
And the government is making people crazy then scapegoating and abusing them
And the government is making people crazy then scapegoating and abusing them
People are being trafficked and experimented on
And we can change the world
With courage
Determination
Humor
And love
With courage
Determination
Humor
And love
And spaceships are neat and also dangerous
So let's be good at our jobs
And kinder to one another.