Is everything falling apart?

Ok, so things are kind of a mess right now in the economy, let's face it but what can you do? Just have to keep moving forward, doing what I can. What else is there? I am a survivor on many different levels so I know one way or another, I will get through this.

Up at Big Sur

We were almost broke in Santa Cruz
so we booked on up the coast
to Monterey.
We stumble along a steep trail
14 miles to the sulphur springs,
the smell of rotten eggs
hangs thick in the air.

I drink too much
from the tainted canteen
and slowly change into a lizard,
slither down the rocky bank
into the cool, rushing river
and climb up on a rock
in the middle.

Billy Rainbow beckons for me
to come get warm
at the campfire.
I refuse to budge,
“the river might stop!”
I sit swinging my feet
in the cool water
neon colors streaking by
as Indian figures peer
from behind Redwood trees
on the other side, knowing.


© Molly McHaney Krava

Falling in holes

For as long as I can remember, I have these periods of time where I sort of feel like I have stepped into a hole of some sort, like a hole of negativity hole, a black hole, as it were. Right now I am supposed to be looking into why these damn pages on one of my IBM page isn't working. That's pretty much what I do anymore is damage control, same with my life. Maybe my job reflects my life in a wierd kind of way? I have been in a bit of a funk, partly hormonal I think after I weaned Mirabel, things kind of went to hell in a handbasket. Anyway, I don't have time to write much more, here is a poem that describes it:





If the world is round


If the world is round,
I am rounder

If the world is a sad place,
I am touched

If the river runs through it,
I am underwater

Don’t let the wind blow me away-
let the light turn me to dust
and swallow me up

Let me bask in the loveliness
of your first glimpse of me
and mine of you, forever

So I can feel the emptiness
rush away in a surge
of forgiveness

I want to watch you grow older
as I become old as sin
and the dark things that sometimes linger
from long ago - drift more distantly from my mind,
like fog rolling over the rocks
of ancient history..


© Molly McHaney Krava

So flipping tired!

I should probably go to bed early, but instead I am messing around on Facebook. I am actually dizzy from being tired..I wanted to try and get a few words in, but its like when I sit down to write, nothing comes out.even though I think of stuff all day long I could write about. It did occur to me earlier how writing is just so I don't know...not comfortable exactly, though I have this compulsion to write.making.the glass seems to calm my spirits, the writing seems to agitate them. Ok, for lack of anything I feel like writing, here is a previously written poem:

Driving Across Country With Eight Deadheads and Not Much Else


It wasn’t so bad
living in the lime green Chevy
with three on the tree
traveling around forgetting
where I’d been the night before
moving across the country
like a fast, curvy line
drawn on a map
in an old movie.
We roamed from Maine to California,
cramped by then since there were eight
of us, I always had shot-gun
if I wasn’t driving or asleep;
Bongo Mike and Cricket
fought over me then
and Chaz couldn’t drive
because he saw the windshield melting,
so I drove a lot. Utah
was the most beautiful
with it’s rock formations
shaped like sad Native faces
and large feet, and I remember
being in a time warp
listening to Dylan
“Like a Rolling Stone”
and the quiet out there
in the desert
was peacefully
overwhelming.

© Molly McHaney Krava

What goes down must go up..

Ok..so I am in a much better space today then I have been, not for any real reason, just lightened up maybe? Not sure..It occurred to me that its not the dark spaces that are important, its the finding oneself back into the light..right? I don't know..And yes I may have to take another job, and no I don't have the money to secure my spot in a lot of festivals this spring, and no I don't have a lot of money in general..but my kids are healthy..and happy and life is grooving along, so I can't believe. I still have some ???? but waiting and seeing..more later.

A quiet, dark place

I am disheartened, I am longing for something better, I am sad to admit my hopelessness right now, because on top of feeling bad, I also feel bad about feeling the way I do, which of course only makes it worse. I mean, of course I know there are many people who are way worse off then I am, that doesn't really make me feel better, it just causes me to feel guilty. Because it doesn't really do any good to compare myself to others, because I have no perspective on what other people are going through. I have empathy, sometimes I think too much, but that is something else entirely.

I don't know..I wish I could just write my silly essays and make glass art and even teach other people to make glass art, but I made the decision to buy this big ass house with K and to have two kids and all that, so I understand that I am not a victim here. Who could have predicted the economy would fall apart again, it seemed to happen pretty fast so I don't know..I mean I knew what I was getting into with all this responsibility, well I did and I didn't. I guess I did hope for the best, but I am not feeling the best coming to me right now. Maybe I am just impatient, but I don't know.

Just like my biological clock started ticking at 33 and there was this sense of impending urgency to have a baby, now that I am in my 39th year, I feel this sense of urgency to do something important with my life, something meaningful, something that makes me happy, because I also definitely know how life can be taken away at the drop of a hat, and I think to myself, I don't want to die and have not much to show for it except some wrinkly pages of poetry and some funky pieces of glass. Of course, lest I forget my two beautiful children, I guess they are my true legacy.
How many times have I been back to this place, where I am so frustrated as a creative person who is also trying to make a living and support a family. It does seem to always come back to this question. How do I resolve to make a living and help support my family and also be true to my creative side, my free spirit side? There is such a big part of me that balks at the corporate world all together, and feels like it is such a waste of energy to work for someone else to put big money into their own deep pockets, while I am scraping by and in debt. Where's my financial bail out man?

And even some of these big arts festivals, where I could probably make some bank selling glass, I am supposed to come up with hundreds of dollars in booth fees to get in. I am an artist here people, with small children and a mortgage and bills...not a trust fund baby with an artistic habit.

I don't know..sometimes it seems it would be easier and not so heartbreaking to give up on my dreams, but I can't do that. Listen, I know I am feeling a bit sorry for myself, but sometimes I need to go ahead and dwell in my own mud for a little while so I can just feel it all and get it over with and move on. This is all part of the path I have chosen I suppose, but right now, I honestly can't see the forest and trees.

When I used to get down or blue at the old house in Decatur, it was really wierd, but whenever I was having a really shitty time, I swear to god, the Jehovah's Witnesses would come to call. I am definitely not saying I am thinking of joining them by any means, but I always thought it was funny, like some sort of cosmic joke. Sometimes here at the new house I feel so lonely, people don't wander the streets like they do in town. I miss Decatur. I miss a lot of things. I am longing for something, I am not even sure what it is. Maybe its just the January blues. We shall see..

Faries in the woods

So its true, one time many years ago I was in these woods over off Ponce de leon with this dude who called himself a warlock and there were two fairies coming toward us in the woods. And much later years later, I ran into that same guy in Santa Cruz when I was hanging out with a bunch of people on the mall. Oh wow, and that reminds me how we all somehow managed to scrape some money together, much of which we borrowed from Dave the Baker, to rent this beautiful house in Walnut Creek.

I am sure the neighbors were thrilled when they saw a bunch of dirty hippies coming up that hill. The house was quite beautiful, it had a lot of windows, and it had a big deck. It was big house as I recall, 4 bedrooms and we are all supposed to get jobs, but then ofcourse, none of us could find jobs, because we were dirty hippies, with no alarm clocks, and no clean clothes, and no money to clean clothes. I think the idea behind the house was to get a job we needed a house..but to keep the house we needed jobs, its a viscious cycle, it was then and it is now. But I digress. I remember that guy Jeff had a puppy also that he had acquired and the puppy was always spilling our drinks and trying to drink our rum.

Then, after a while, Jeff starting flipping out and saying there was a ghost in the house, and maybe there was because doors were always closing and wierd stuff like that as I recall. Or maybe he was making that up so he didn't have to sleep all alone in his room downstairs, when all the chicks were upstairs, me, Cheryl and Cindy. Anyway, not sure what made think about that. Reconnecting with old friends on Facebook made me think of it.

Well today there was a big discussion about people from the old HS crew, and this girl who died. A lot of people died, its a wonder I made it really. If it wasn't for a wierd dude named Billy Rainbow, I probably would be dead right now, but he was the one guy for some reason, who was able to keep me from doing something really stupid. So I did a lot of other stupid things, but not enough to kill me, not yet anyway!