abundance

Rabbit Mother, Tiger Daughter. [Journal entry 6.9.14]

/ Dar Dawson / 2 Comments

I am not going to fight.

I am going to vastly improve my argument (and it’s pretty damned good already).

I am not going to point out the obvious (at least not obviously), and I am not going to name-call.

What I AM going to do is be there. Be present, and supportive, and listen and focus on what is important: She is. My daughter, my child, the pine cone to my fir.

I am a Rabbit raising a Tiger. It is not always easy.
I am a Scale raising a Ram; she butts her head, hard, into every.single.thing.

She will learn tact and compassion, and how humor is our lifeboat during difficult times, and how it is my primary way of coping *any* time – to see the humor in every situation.

She teaches me what it is like to be enraged, fully, and to express myself – as she does – with no filter, with passion and heat and language and every venomous bit of vocabulary when provoked or frustrated (or tired). Her anger is pure and without apology or shame; mine is always “polite”.

She teaches me how to let go quickly and move on, and that there are, in fact, people who just do not deserve to know you. This is a new concept for me, for I have given myself away in pieces my entire life. You wanna piece? Here.

She teaches me that to love someone is to also be in love with how you feel about yourself when you are together. This is new to me, too; I thought loving someone was always about exhausting yourself just to make the other person feel they were loved without any doubt; it never really mattered I received less than I gave.

So many lessons we share, together.

DJDawson 2014

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Once, When the Tide Was Low. [Personal essay.]

/ Dar Dawson / Leave a comment

Full disclosure:
I’ve been there.
on the serrated edge of the coin
one side stay
the other, go.

Several of you have,
too.

Whatever Divinity changed our course
steadied us to remain,
I am, now, grateful for it
(though was angry and frustrated, then.)

On the bathroom floor (it’s almost always there, isn’t it? Those personal tar black come-to-Jesus low-points on tile or shag pale sky throw rug, in the dark regardless of time of day)
pills and booze
or
booze and more booze
(“recreational” my ass)
hollow hopelessness in
unimaginable quantities
unfamous uncelebrity (who’d miss me? who cared) unsure unspecial
unexcused unnoticeable unneeded unnecessary unattached un-everything
un-craptogether.

Until the Divine or fear of angering my Mother(s) or what if or _________ whatever reason people decide not to go…I cannot remember anything other than not being as fearless as when I came into the bathroom. In my 20s before marriage before child before God and everyone, it was just misery and me and something else that needed to come through.

I’m glad it did.

My decision to share this odd prosery is not for comment nor criticism nor praise. But if sharing my imperfections and humanity, my vulnerability, with someone who thinks we think they have their shit together (when they think they actually don’t), and that person needs someone to talk to or just somebody to sit next to. I’d like to be that lighthouse for them.

You’re not alone even when you believe with every cell that you are.

STAY.
Thank you.

DJD 08 June 1018

Date Damsel. (Prosery)

/ Dar Dawson / Leave a comment

January,
the transitional girlfriend of the calendar.

Not like the other months. Her personality a mix of closing a door and lighting a bonfire; bittersweet memory and new imaginings. You meet her and instantly you’re comfortable–she’s a bit of extended December.

She is the palate cleanser, the slate-cleaner
she looks the other way and has regard for but no connection to your past. January only looks forward with you.

Halfway through you’re cozy, in love, comfortable hibernating from the rest of the year. You picture yourself being together another 11 and a half months.

When the birds start singing their wake-up call outside the window in those last few days, you realize it’s not forever. You need more. More than January can offer, and you miss the predictable familiarity of other months.

Like any bridge relationship, she helps us out of the used, the stale,
the old and into the full-of-potential, bold new year.

As much as you are grateful for her constancy and loyalty
you leave her
for another,
more turbulent, less kind and
marginally forgiving time. A time you already know.

February waits

with open arms

to welcome you back to the calendar.

Eventually, January will do what she does best: begin anew.

DJD 2015

Instruction Manual. [14 Dec., 2012]

/ Dar Dawson / Leave a comment

I believe in signs.
The kind you ask for when you’re lost.
The kind of signs that often appear from praying aloud (or begging), “Could you please send me a sign?”
And they do appear – on their own schedule when you least expect to see them.

Yesterday, after work, I came home to a house with no heat ( plenty of oil but the line had clogged with air. 48F degrees in the living room), no cat food (angry cats), an ornery teen for whom I can do no right, an affection-starved dog, a wrong number on the answering machine, and a puddle: two inches of standing water where the first floor shower is suddenly leaking into the basement. I turned around and went to rehearsal.

Talked to myself the whole 30-minute ride there, and, three hours later, the dark ride home.

Before leaving rehearsal, we – director, his wife, all the six actors – all stood in the picketed yard and watched Geminids shoot across the heavens. I saw three bright shooting stars and decided I had three wishes to ask. So, alone in my car, talking aloud to whomever listens to that sort of thing, I asked for three things. One of them, a sign.

This morning, I taught myself how to bleed the boiler, prime the burner and restart the contraption. It’s heating as you read. And, for the first time since we moved here, there are deer in our wood. Two, very small – almost tiny – whitetail. Tenderly looking for delicacies in the deadwood.

Already this is a better day.

DJD