wow. i’m so excited about the 96% humidity outside. it should feel like a good ol’ mississippi morning out there, though mississippi is 800 miles away. and at the risk of sounding rather bourgeois, i will admit that i will be golfing really badly in this humidity and sun later this afternoon. that would be cart golfing…because i am of the lazy bourgeoisie if i am of them at all.

i think the last time i golfed (badly) might have been that dreamy, foggy, magical day when i got engaged in the Pali mountains of Oahu. that means it’s been probably 7 years since i set my barely used spikes on the links. my shiny golf bag will need a dusting. i’ve golfed about a half dozen times in my life, but i liked it. so i will do it again and channel my inner tiger…that would be Tigger, not Tiger W. (hell, i’d take Tony the Tiger over a meeting with Mr. Woods any day…even a Tony mascot in a fur costume…and my friends all know how i feel about mascots <shudder>). i’m actually hoping i won’t be reminded of Tiger too much, or see any Schwarzeneggers meeting up for a tee time with any Edwardses…real or figurative. the likelihood that anyone from those families would end up at my local county 9-hole practice course i realize is quite absurd, but my brain is great at absurd…my heart might even be better…and fear takes the gold everytime.

so what the hell am i alluding to? i suppose i can’t be this vague and honest at the same time. i’m talking about golfing badly and taking back another little piece of my premarital life. i will claim it for my Self, as part of the true and outrageous life i have in front of me. i’ve read that blogs like mine should be intimate. i’ve read and been told by hemingway and dear friends to, “write hard about what hurts.” so in the interest of Being my most outrageous, honest Self, and maybe helping a few people Be theirs, i will share with you something hard that hurts.

i’m barely divorced. ug. that word. i’m not a “put my dirty laundry on the web” kind of person, but i’ve mentioned in several posts now references to my world falling apart, nay, even exploding…(though maybe imploding would be more appropriate given the amount of weight i felt…like a collapsing star, the crushing pressure in my chest…when all i thought i knew came crashing down on top of me one december saturday in 2009). the quick and dirty version is couched in paragraph two of this posting. i’m a trendsetter for sure, as evidenced by the recent strut down society’s catwalk, of marriages run aground by…hmmm…let’s call it virility + fertility. yes…my daughter has a half-sister out there, not much younger than she….most specifically not so much younger that she could have been conceived at any time other than when i was still quite swollen with my first and only pregnancy. so my ex did it first, before it was popular…though i know it is an age old tale…he then endured months of the non-stop, 24/7 News Cycle of Gossip while keeping his own secrets buried deep, only bubbling to the surface as nerves and some delusions about how this kind of situation might be resolved without (me) (ab)using golf clubs (clearly, not telling me was his best stab at a starting point).

i won’t delve too deeply into details, there are so many. but i will offer that he’s not an all-bad guy, that he’s working really hard to turn his life into something admirable and that he’s a great father (“good thing, ” i think sarcastically to myself…and to you, my gentle reader). so i’m here, writing my heart out, and turning my life back into something i admire and Love. part of Being outrageously me is acknowledging the fires that tempered my soul, steeled my heart, and stoked my passions only after almost burning the whole place down.

i have no grand vision of joining the LGPA one day (“good thing, ” i think sarcastically to myself…and to you, my gentle reader). i simply want to take my smiles and healing heart out in the sun to burn off some calories and sweat, and to re-up on some blood and tears lost in recent years past. i put all of this out here because i promised to make an example of myself on these pages, and my Self screams at me to let the world know how grand life can be, even after pain and grief unimaginable to those who’ve not walked through infidelity and the crushing financial implications of divorce and extracurricular child-rearing. i opted out of the latter obligation, but paid a lot for the trust i’d once given freely. still, i’m here, and not just here but ALIVE.  i carry some heaviness in my heart still, but it is illuminated by the light in my soul and by the Love of amazing people around me. heaviness, grief and disappointment are part of living, incalculable, unpredictable, inescapable. that’s what makes the Blues so blue and yet so satisfying…at least to me. i know…and feel…that sorrow is part of a bluesy, beautiful life…and today i happily accept the one i’m living.

Blues a healer, healer, all over the world…It healed me, it can heal you – John Lee Hooker