Rebecca Cook

I have begun a meditation practice. I'm reluctant to call it a “ practice”  because I don't want to jinx myself. I want this pattern to continue.  I've been trying to begin a meditation practice for quite a while, years actually, but these last few days I have found myself actually doing the “daily calm” on the Calm app.   It's interesting because in a way  I think of this particular meditation as a kind of daily “devotion” with a lot of…

I have been hankering for a change, some sort of fundamental change maybe, something life-altering like moving away from here to a place that is so different that the corner stores are unrecognizable. Moving away somewhere where no one knows us and we have to start all over. Or running away by myself to live in Europe all by myself where no one knows me. I suppose this is a kind of escapism, or an attempt at  escapism. There has been…

The things we discover about ourselves. I will be 60 November 15th, but it is at this late point in my long long therapy journey that I am beginning to accept.. to realize yes.. but to also accept the fact that I am so hard on myself. All of the time. I drive myself just as relentlessly as if my mother were still in the house with me as if she were still living and could call me on the phone…

If I had known how difficult it would be to live as a bipolar person, to keep myself grounded, to keep myself inside the white lines going down the road that I'm living on, I would not have had children. When my keel is even and I am able to interact with people pleasantly, it's not so bad. But this morning I found myself practically yelling at my poor son, my autistic adult child, who had just awakened. I started ragging…

i drove us backroads-all-the-way down to the farm. such lovely places spaces views what an enormous and glorious country. what a pleasant time with my father. and my brother who i was not expecting. i rewrote/updated an old essay for my father and i read it aloud to him. he did not know that this is what i do. he did not remember that my brother and i played the hell out of the old piano Patches had given us. he…

I fear the future. Not afraid exactly, but very aware that things are shifting. I am 59. My mother died at 59, a little less than 2 months before her 60th birthday. I am well, other than all my ailments which seem to increase and then to ebb just a bit before increasing again. I want to change my health, if I can. I want to make the most of.....or is this true? Do I want to "make the most of…

this brain is full of glitches matted trees doorstops inside my wrists this brain gallops the length of this body corridors open windows massive doorknobs this giant yellow house these pink roller skates my mother’s twister boards this brain goes for a swim in the pool in the chest the brilliant clean blue god is there it thunders this pool becomes an ocean this god becomes a kitchen mouse a pocket watch my grandfather’s hairy hands lift it up my brain…

look! the stars were here. their black holes, their empty watering places. the memory of light. they swam these dark channels, they gathered up the coals and cast them down to god. their dragon breath, their dragon heads bowed everything burning everything turning redder as each flower of morning pulls the night over its head.

There was a church under the church under the stones under my granddaddy's pew there was a dark mouth a narrow stairwell a hungry maw. The was a church situated exactly on top of the church I could look up during the prayer and see it hovering a chicken-wire parade float outfitted with Angel wings. There was a church inside the church inside the hearts of the congregation the baptized heads the earnest-in- prayer claspings of hands I wriggled inside this…

In my most recent inventory I found that I cannot wear the new boots, the beautiful things are useless to me. I cannot wear the new blazer, the sleeves are a disaster, the bickering ladies have ruined my flowy black pants the pockets having shrunk up suitable only for finger babies. Here is the blue cardy and here is the pink cardy and here are the eight-thousand eight hundred and twenty-two babies, babies large and babies small enough for match boxes…

I am ensconced I am cottoned-up I am a smooth blue rock. I am hiding in some places where monsters can't see me. It's raining. Perhaps I should clarify perhaps I have come to the world’s end a long valley with nothing in it I am safe, I am beyond God’s reach. Perhaps I should tell you that I am no criminal I am no snitch I am loyal to a fault but I cannot sleep at night I cannot hold…

"Please, little one, take the first pat of butter and the first spoon of jam. Take the finest pair of slippers and the very largest clot of cream. Take up the choicest grasses and the clearest water to keep for yourself. And the dandelions. And the runt of every litter. Take down the farthest star and pop it into your mouth every night. When morning comes, I will fly into your room and place a living coal on your tongue and…

The poems are not writing themselves they are writing me some deep river in me an electric cord a space heater too close to the tub they are tightening the spring in me the jack in the box held under the pasture pond its hideous face growing slack no more sick surprise no more finder's keepers one potato two potato there were never enough closets to hide in the old shack behind the barn is missing the old piano is breaking…

I should have been writing these last long weeks, but I have not. I found myself exhausted and quite to the point of stopping on the side of the road and just sitting down with my luggage like a worn out refugee fleeing the wars. So much has been going on, for instance--two weeks ago I had a torn retina that had to be repaired which was a surreal adventure to say the least. And also I got James' labs back…

"how much energy do you have? how many spoons?" I have joined the Y yet again. I've never been able to make a membership with the Y stick the way I want it to, but as I have been contemplating my own death I thought about what I would regret. Other than the obvious not taking care of my body, not listening to my body, becoming pretty much disabled at this point, I did think that I would miss having not…

So I am an HSP. A Highly Sensitive Person. I have heard this term over the past few months and I thought that it was just another fad,  another way to explain the obvious, but I see now that it is actually a recognized (since the 1990s) personality trait, or rather a set of personality traits that signifies behavior patterns in a person. This should probably not be surprising to me or anyone else who knows me, and when my husband…

It's time to talk about my frustrations. When I'm frustrated my automatic response is anger. Rage. Fury. These emotions are outsized and out of proportion, super-sized and overwhelming. Frustration #1. My son, my adult child, my autistic sweet giving loving in-his-own-way first born formally tow-headed little boy James needs physical reconditioning for his heart, for his well-being. I am neither inclined nor qualified to do this for him. It might be different if he were interested. It might be different if…

I really, really want my planner to get here. So I can start planning in detail. And yes, I know I must remind myself that this planning notion is to simplify my life, not over-complicate it. But planning can and, I think, ought to be fun--I can decorate the pages if I wish. It comes with stickers and inserts. I am eager to get started. And I need to take care of my calendar situation. I bought an Audrey Hepburn calendar…

Trying to focus. Having a hard go of it. Still. Yesterday I tested Covid-free for the second day in a row so that is behind me, behind all of this household. But when I went out yesterday I had to deal first thing with the perennially incompetent CVS and it just ruined my morning. I HATE dealing with that store so much that I must stop writing about it right now. The good thing about yesterday is that Dale and I…

I ordered my planner yesterday after watching this chick Amanda on You Tube who evidently does nothing on there but review planners and planning methods. She was extraordinarily helpful and I highly recommend. It was between Laurel Denise and Erin Condren. I considered getting a large landscape style, like one of those huge old checkbooks, but in the end I chose this from Erin Condren: These are customizable planners and I chose a vertical orientation instead of a horizontal. There is…

When you have an endless layover at the airport, or you’re sitting in a hospital bedside someone who is sick, the feeling of the doing of it, that misplacement, that crouching down in suspended time may thrust you into a different place of consciousness. It is exhausting this habitation of a false space, a reality that is not fully your own. But then, at some point, you pass from feeling misplaced to a sort of pervasive numbness as though you have…

Tomorrow will be a week. I am so zoned out on dextromethorphan that I think I should just take it on the regular. I have, for me, endless patience and understanding. I'm taking everything in stride. Why would I ever, why did I ever bark at spoons and dishtowels? Life has become a slow journey on a swiftly flying horse. I cough. My throat hurts. I wonder at tiny things, little gnats that seem gathered at the lights, at the windows,…

If I had a garret, a drafty, unheated, freezing upper-room sort of garret, I would be writing this there. The sickness is settling in in new ways--I feel I may be coughing by morning. I am too tired. But have done useful things. In spite of it. Not many, but a few. Tomorrow may be a day of nothing. Null and void as though God has turned his face away from the waters of my garret-tomb. Or I may be smiled…

Actually, in spite of this relentless neausea nausea I am feeling an upswing in mood. I went down at noon to open gifts, then I dragged myself back upstairs. I don't particuallry particularly want to be alone up here, but I'm bad company, and I also feel cocooned up here, snugged in, just not as vulnerable. And as I write this I realize that my feeling of "Robo-Tripping" is very real. Either it's the Max-DM, or the Steriods, Steroids or the…

Xmas is canceled postponed. Dale has COVID. He is marooned upstairs. I keep thinking of the Anne Frank house. I listen to his footsteps upstairs. Pound. Pound. Pound. An occasional crashing sound that is actually nothing, maybe a shoebox slipping absently into the floor. I hear his coughing, coughing, coughing traveling down the stairs. I hear all his small and large movements existing entirely apart from me. This is what it must sound like for him when things are ordinary, me…