art source: Ted X
Time passes
I can’t find my glasses
I should take more classes
Watch more brothers Duplass’
This apathy scares
I struggle to care
While I take the dare
To repel evil stares
Too much down time
Too much red wine
Too many tangled vines
Too little feeling fine
Truth reaches out
Screams & shouts
What it’s about?
How love lives throughout.
Tricia Schwaba, June 2020
Eleanor Roosevelt
Art Source: Anon
“I don’t know how long I can do this, he said. I think the universe has different plans for me & we sat there in silence & I thought to myself that this is the thing that we all come to & this is the thing we all fight & if we are lucky enough to lose, our lives become beautiful with mystery again & I sat there silent because that is not something that can be said.”"
art source: anon
The brush of his whiskers scratched abrasively at the red skin I had worked so hard to cover up with my foundation as I prepped for this party. It had looked like a red angry demon the size of a dime before make up. It disappeared as the cool smooth stroke of the cosmetic brush made it’s way across and around the inflammation making it barely a blip. I struggled with redness and general inflammation all my life, most likely a derivative of my growing anger at feeling I have to cover up my flaws rather than wear them like badges of honor for all the trials and tribulations I had conquered. But alas, vanity wins and I practice the art of camouflage. A longtime friend and I have been reluctantly amused by, and telling stories of, this man for years now. He and another friend of a friend, a woman, that we see periodically at parties of certain tangential connections, are what we call the dive bombers, where the kiss comes in so hard and fast you have no time to turn, or duck or do the “No you are not going to hammer my mouth because I’m onto you and this time I’m gonna turn my cheek just in the nick of time successfully evading your attack!” routine. I never win. You’d think that I’d have learned after these many years, but somehow it always comes so unexpectedly or so fast, it’s as if they both sit at home planning their strategies, with a chart of the party layout, and a laser pointer preparing their entry level positioning. I imagine them doing a visualization where they survey the room and its occupants, finding cover behind a beam or on the other side of the kitchen swinging door stiffening up their mouth weapons just waiting for me, their skittish prey.
At this current gathering I’m desperately rubber-necking to check out my look in the mirror, hoping my make up is still adequately doing what I enlisted it to do, when in a wave of confusion I am approached by one of the enemies. It is the larger and bulkier male. My brain attempts to fire quickly but his strategy proves challenging. I attempt to divert his missile of a smooch, hoping it will clear my mouth and land on the skin of my cheek, best case scenario avoiding the kiss altogether, turning it into a mere hug, worst case scenario it’s a kiss on the center of my cheek, but nope. He landed awkwardly part lips, part cheek, part demon red spot and with an uncomfortable amount of moisture. Eww and ouch. Shit I hoped my make up was still in tact but I didn’t hold out much hope as I felt a tingling, almost abrasive sensation. “Damn he out-strategized me again!” He pulls away and as I turn my head back to neutral I catch a whiff of the culprit’s surprisingly pleasant citrusy aftershave and think, “Well that’s a plus.” He has a big smile on his face and he is genuinely happy to see me, and I him. Truth be told I love this guy. He’s witty and joyous and I’ll hang out with him all night after that initial incendiary device detonates.
I feel the throb of my demon facial inflammation and scan the room in a paranoid fashion for his kindred hard-kissing soul, the other of the dive bombers in my battalion, the smaller framed female who somehow manages a more forceful smack of the two. And she smokes cigarettes. Blessedly I don’t see her. There’s no reason she would also be in attendance with this particular group, but it has happened before and I have the battle scars to prove it. Despite that logic my paranoia spikes as I make my way to the bathroom to see what damage has been done and whether the repercussions of this battle will require me to go AWOL.
Poetry, Tricia Schwaba
Artwork, Elliott Aaron
art source, Joan Armatrading album Lovers Speak
Please don’t spend another ounce of energy holding back that which must be said. If you do not say it now it will only lie in wait taking up crucial space as more and more ideas and feelings come up that need release and before you know it there will be a queue of things that need to be said within you and that back up could be trouble for your mental and physical health and worse, you may not have time to say them all.
art source: anon
The turtles are crashing in to one another, demanding my attention as the winds gust and the gray clouds over the bay threaten to move in and drench the Earth. The 5 wooden turtles are the hanging ornaments on a wind chime that dances in my front yard. They hang from a thin log on varying lengths of jute cord, their constant, intended collisions offering up pleasantly hollow percussive beats. It was purchased, and hung, in honor of my mom who had an unexplained love & fascination of turtles.
I look up Turtle in my Animal Spirit Guide book and see the following excerpts and possible connections — “seek self reliance, slow down and pace yourself, you may have an increased sensitivity to the earth’s vibrations, shield yourself from distractions”. I contemplate the shamanic characteristics of my mom’s favorite creature. They make sense, my mom having bore eight children, subsequently becoming a grandmother to 17 and great grandmother to 18+. She was not left too much time to answer her dominating creative callings. Pacing herself was near impossible, and distractions were constant. Her sensitivity to the earth’s vibration were apparent, reflected in her demand to be in the woods and on the lake every summer. Our ritual of traveling north to escape the city every summer mingled with her need to be closer to God.
Upon random sightings I often consult my Animal Spirit Guide book to see what revelations might lie on the page. While some people find them BS, I don’t and, in fact, I seek out connective meanings in the characteristics of the animal sighted, or dreamt about, and the proposed mystical meaning the animal has historically represented to the seers and the shamans that sought spiritual guidance from nature’s bounty, specifically in animal encounters. I would not say the passages are concretely prophetic, but most of the time they shine a light on an avenue of insight I would not have considered, revealing a strong, sometimes remarkably prescient, bolt of coincidence surrounding my immediate emotional and/or physical circumstances.
My mom didn’t need to know what the meaning of the turtle was to a distant shaman. She was a clairvoyant herself though not many knew this. She trusted she was guided. She loved watching turtles in both, the fresh water north woods lakes of her summer home, and in the waves of the Atlantic ocean that she, for a while at least, dove into yearly around the time of Spring’s arrival. She connected to them on a spirit level and her ability to flow through any body of water with a grace unparalleled made a possible past life camaraderie come alive in my mind.
I have inherited my mom’s draw towards mysticism. I strive to define this life in non-physical terms, seeking spiritual meaning, often futilely, in everyday occurrences. My mom knew when I was conceived, then born, that we were spiritual peers. Because I was a “late” baby I grew up in a different way from my 7 siblings, if only defined by the time I spent with her one on one. Many evenings we sat at the table overlooking the lake, just the 2 of us, sharing a meal discussing how it feels to be a soul in a human body. We covered heaven and what might happen when we leave the physical body. She revealed her frustration with the patriarchal hierarchy of the Catholic church that had formed, then dominated, her God connection soaking her in notions of shame, guilt and projections of what evil may arrive should she not follow their teachings. I knew it was the time of my conception that shifted her. Another baby, but this one would be the symbol of her crumbling religiosity and of her own true spiritual birth. Her connection to God would no longer be defined by another human. It was now all hers.
Some might interpret these conversations too heavy for a young person, but I understood. It was a sharing that I knew was a freeing up for her, a stating aloud that which had before been trapped and festering. I felt the release. For me it was permission to think outside the confines of an organization and create my own distinct connection to the divine. When the number of people in our the house would swell I would sit on the giant boulder that sat adjacent to our house in the trees, hidden from all eyes and I would find calm by watching the lake lap at the shore and my imagination would soar. My appreciation and respect for the random animals that would trot through our yard grew as I began to see them not as things to fear or dominate, but as beings to share the Earth with. I read about the callings of the original Americans, the indigenous peoples of this land and their perspective that animals lead us towards the deeper parts of ourselves, the non-tangible part, the part that has, since the time I landed on the Earth, been my north star.
I consider the wind chime turtles demanding my attention this morning a sign that my mom is with me. She is in the turtles, in the wind, in the rippled waters, the gray clouds hovering and the blue sky beyond. She is calling me to that place deep within, as she has done ever since I can remember,
“C’mon in Trish, swim like the turtles, the water is beautiful”
Tricia Schwaba May 17, 2020
art source: anon
I aspire to be the woman wearing gold
Flaunting my jewels they’re a sight to behold
I need you to see that my house it sparkles
I need you to know my neighbors, they marvel
For mine is a life that I believe to express
The desired glistening to all who have less
I’m a skilled performer, my humility seems true
Those petty insecurities, they never show through.
I take the classes, I purchase the goods
I navigate the waters of “want to” & “should”
My desire is power to control and define
And to slide through life untouched by the grime
Inside I am a child, running from my past
The messy house, the cheap looking-glass
That image that now stares back at me
Has amassed her fortress and it has just one key.
I stare down my bloodline, it will not triumph
My kids they will soar in their jets, yes they’ll fly off
To exotic locales drenched in fashion and taste
Keeping struggle at bay ‘til facades fade away.
If only this worked, this creative avoidance
If only I knew that I lived in accordance
With Divinity’s creed and the blessings so pure
Until then, this charade, I will have to endure.
Tricia Schwaba, May 2020
art source: Shiloh Sophia McCloud
There is often a tendency to fog the mind
Worse yet, feigning clarity the entire time
The moment comes when the fog it lifts
And lost time evaporates like Avalon mist.
The beauty in that, is when the insight hits you
Your cares diminish and you wear what fits you
No longer worried about what has been done
The focus becomes the Earth you stand upon.
Preference, proclivities, interests and love
Become actualities, not dreams stored above
Your skin holds you present, you understand fate
Can knock on your door on any given day.
With time less available possibilities seem clear
Not hindered by delays, or a doubter’s glare
The wrinkles diminish, the fabric’s laid out
Your mural is woven with life-affirming vows.
The threads, some are thicker and others don’t hold
Those with resilience are the ones to behold
The friends, fertility, the sustenance, the rations
Those textures you’ve offered in a life you’ve imagined.
Whether here for the duration or just one more day
The fog can be lifted in a myriad of ways
I’m guessing that most involve love in some fashion
And probably uncovering some long hidden passion.
Time is the question, creativity the solution
What inspires bliss and sidesteps retribution?
I shift my perspective as my time here wanes
And hope when breath fades that beauty remains.
From the archives, Tricia Schwaba, 2014
keep yourself connected to earth
while at once lifting to the heavens
sink into humanity
rise to the expansive mind
nurture the pathway they traverse
love travels this route
make it your your own
it is vitality
Tricia Schwaba, May 9 2020
“Nothing but uncertainty is certain. Circumstances come together only to fall apart moments or months later. And then in a flash we rise up and regain our footing. In the rear view mirror I now see clearly what escaped me then. It’s not that the ground underneath me was suddenly shifting, it’s that it’s never still. That’s part of the work of my journey — getting comfortable with life’s groundlessness.” Alicia Keys
Isn’t it interesting that when we talk about aging it’s really all about what happens to the physical body after 50? Guess what, we start aging the moment we are born. And a lot of it is really good stuff, what with the talking and the walking and the discovery and the joy. Inevitably mixed in are the pesky disappointment, heartbreak, adolescence and fucked up relationships, but hey there’s a lot more positives than we give credit for. I understand we all have it differently and I grew up in the luxury of privilege with the skin color that would pretty much keep me safe throughout my life (with the exception of that night when I was 17 but that’s a different essay).
My point is — collectively the aging process is based on what goes wrong with us, not with what goes right. Hell, if we are going to focus on what goes right, what would all the advertising executives do? How would those poor guys make a buck? How on Earth would they convince us all that we are actually sub-par and in need of the latest cream (It only costs $125 per ounce!) or worse yet, in need of an injection or a face fix via the knife (where the end result might make us look good, but just so we know may make us look freakish, or possibly like a swollen post-surgery patient for the rest of our days, but thank God it’s available because that is so much better than a few hard earned lines).
59 is the day for me today. So I have survived 59 years of aging. As you can see in the pictures above, my face has changed quite a bit. In all honesty I could have posted an “I woke up this morning, have no makeup on and have placed the camera in the worst possible light to capture all my lines and flaws” shot, but I’m not quite that mature yet. You get the idea. This was my face, and is my face and as it goes I’m okay with both. It seems one of the main things you can take from these photos is that my hairline has filled in and I no longer dress like a Mormon.
So as I venture out into my day, one that is blessedly filled with sunshine and warm temperatures, I am grateful for all 21,535 days I have opened my eyes, stretched my arms and legs and wondered “What the hell is going to happen today?”
Tricia Schwaba May 2, 2020
The sun is shining through strongly this evening. It comes from behind our house and shines onto the bay in front highlighting the trees on the opposite side of the lake making them appear nearly fluorescent. The easy wind picks up occasionally and the glass-like water gives way to a cluster of ripples, a choreography of facets and hues. Then glass again. “Our” deer family, all females, have returned looking now, not for the corn we bestowed upon them in the depths of the icy winter, but for the natural resources beginning to sprout from our front yard, a yard of soft mosses and still undetermined shoots, life sustaining to these graceful, skittish, creatures. They are hyper aware, like me, searching for predators, hearing the softest sounds, with pairs of tall ears twitching, quick independent directional movements each on their own wavelength. They see my slight movement from behind the picture window some 20 yards away. The alpha stops, staring me down looking right through me, then relaxing her jaw shifts right and left breaking down the good fortune of the nourishment she has found. Empathically I still myself. I too am sensitive to predators on the move in this particular humanity. I watch in wonder, sending out the gratitude I feel every time they visit. She goes back to foraging. I breathe deeply. Her long legs are thin, belying her power, one that can catapult her over an obstacle 4 feet high with graceful confidence. I hear a loud noise from the south. All 4 deer heads rise in unison from the ground they were inspecting, and turn towards the sound. I stretch to see if I can see anything and my movement causes the 8 huge doe eyes to take one last look my way, then bolt in a line, towards the western woods, 4 white tails waving goodbye.
This is my ongoing project, watching the ice melt, the creatures forage and anticipate the coming of spring, that in some years past, I was certain would never return. And yet here it is, a lifeline. This beautiful, sunny warmth I can feel in my heart is much appreciated and ignites my hope that humanity can indeed heal.
Tricia Schwaba April 26, 2020
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Tricia Schwaba
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tricia@triciaschwaba.com
brightbluesage@gmail.com