Lost

I still miss you. It will stop someday. Someday, with any luck, I will wake up and won’t remember that I miss you. Maybe. Someday.

Even more than you, I miss the person I was when I was with you, the person who was so confident and sure of who I was and what I wanted. I saw life laid out before me, waiting to be explored, to fill me with awe and wonder, each turn leading to something new and fantastic. I can’t seem to find that woman anywhere. The worst part is that I think I know where she is.

I’m just not welcome there anymore.

So I’ll keep wandering. All the way to Mexico if I need. And maybe someday, with any luck, I will wake up and won’t remember to miss me.

Can't Take Direction, and My Socks Are Never Clean

I should have left sooner. I always should leave sooner. I’m never very good at goodbye. At the very least we could have salvaged our friendship, but I’m not so great at that sometimes either. We needed to take care of ourselves. I saw it just as much as you did, but I was afraid. Afraid that if I left, you would take it as a sign that we were never meant to be, that we were better off apart than together. And you did. Anyway. We really just needed time. We just needed to heal. We each had to figure out for ourselves why the truck had missed us and killed her, and we weren’t strong enough to do it together. But that was all it meant.

I hope you’ve found it. The reason.

That there is no reason. It just happened. It is just the way the universe works, and we have no control over such things. It’s taken me a long time to get here. Probably too long. I’ve destroyed a lot in the meantime. Love. Relationships. Myself. And all I’ve figured out is exactly what I knew all along – there is no reason. I control nothing other than myself. It’s a hard, clobbering fact that I have spent my life trying to teach myself. Sometimes, I am a horrible student. Sometimes, I refuse to give the right answer just because I don’t like the way it’s been taught to me.

Sometimes, I fail. On purpose. Just so I can be right in the end.

Maybe the Wizard Can Help

I need to go home. I have responsibilities to other people. Obligations. They are depending on me. Always depending on me. I am not ready to go.

I’m not writing.

I have not been able to write for some time now. I mean, I’ve filled up steno pads and the pages of various journals with the ramblings of a crazy woman. Even thrown a few of those up here. But to write, to sit down at the computer and put my thoughts on the screen and be able to do nothing else for hours, let alone days at a time . . .

It’s been years.

I can hardly take it anymore. I am carrying the weight of too many words unsaid. I feel numbed by their force, pressing me down, keeping me down.

I could always write with you. I could always write better, more honestly. But I’m not writing. Not even now. Here. With you.

I am not ready to go home.

I am not ready to go home because I know my home, but I just can’t find my way back.

Hey, I'm Not Trying to Be Nobody

I’m in Texas. Have come to see my dearest friend. I’m wearing a cowboy hat that makes me feel only slightly self-conscious and that I only tried on ironically because I am, after all, in the great country of Texas, but my friend told me it looked great on me (which was not the reaction I expected to get from a woman who has only to raise an eyebrow to portray her disgust at how wrong I look in something I think makes me look fabulous). She insisted I buy it. Was adamant about it, and I had to get it. So I am now sitting on the bed, writing, and looking fabulous in a cowboy hat in Texas and only feeling self-conscious about the fact that I am not wearing it ironically.

Practicing My Purpose Once Again

I stand outside, smoking a cigarette. I’m sure I reek of paint and pot and sweat, and I lean back against the brick wall, exhausted, and blow smoke into the night air. One foot against the wall, I think to myself I must look pretty cool. Like a James Dean poster. Or a Marlboro ad. I hope my friend comes out and sees me. Standing here. Relaxing against the brick wall and smoking a cigarette. She should come outside and see me right now. Take a picture of me, standing here, as if I don’t notice she’s there, taking a picture of me. The kind of picture that would end up being on the jacket of my memoir and would make people want to buy my book simply because I look like the kind of badass bitch who could write a really awesome story. The kind of bitch who has lived a really awesome story.

Yeah, she should come outside and see how cool I am.

Occupation

Michael is one of the men camping at College Green Park with me. He lost his brother in the Afghanistan war just over two weeks ago. Michael, who just passed the bar, lives across the street, in one of the homes bordering College Green, and while he could go home any time, he says he's not leaving the park until things start to change. Across from him sits a teacher whose name I did not catch. He is bald and has the slightly sunken features of a chemotherapy recipient. He teaches social studies to middle school students, and tells us he is here because he believes health and the ability to live a life free from illness is a basic human right as opposed to being a business. In other words, health is not a good to be bought and sold and traded.

During a discussion by a gentleman from Veterans for Peace, a young man stands and identifies himself by name and rank as a Marine and veteran of the war. He tells the group of his time in Afghanistan, how they bombed a house on bad intelligence and instead of killing combatants, the Marines mistakenly killed two young children. In response, the people of the village waged an attack on the Marines, who were then ordered to take the village. The young corporal's job was to lead a squad on house-to-house searches, "But I could see how this was just going to keep going," he tells us. "We made a mistake. These people were just protecting themselves and their families from us." He and his squad sat down and had tea with one of the homeowners instead.

Stronger

I needed this today. Love Kelly Clarkson.

Just the Way I'm Supposed to Be . . .

Have been in tears three times already this morning, which you know, might sound like a bad thing, and I do have to admit that it’s been a little unpleasant and caused my ocd symptoms to flare (I’ve already had five cigarettes, and I’ve not been awake long enough to breathe in that much non-smoke-filled air), but the melancholy was just my brain working through whatever it needed to work through so I could reach this point.

I get to write now.

Lesson #3

We're all assholes.

Some of us just have a hard time admitting it and moving the fuck on.

Foremost Expert in My Field of Study

The personal is political. It’s true. Correct. Logical. Whatever.

But the reverse is also true (Read post-structuralists). The political is personal. Just like business is personal. Just like every mother fucking thing that happens in this world both is and is not personal. It isn’t personal because it is just the way the universe works. People die. People get fired. People make laws that have nothing to do with us personally. But it affects us, everything that happens in the universe, maybe to different degrees under different circumstances in different settings, but that is exactly what makes it ‘personal.’

Everything. Every single thing we encounter is processed through our own ‘personal’ point of understanding.

There’s just no way around that.

So when I talk about my own story, talk about my own reactions, reflect on my own understandings, I am not being any more self-indulgent than the rest of you, nor am I filled with an inordinate amount of self-conceit. I am just choosing to converse about the only thing in which I am truly an expert. When we are finally conscious enough, we understand it’s the only expertise any of us really possess. It’s all personal.

Having said all of that, I've been using this blog as a personal sounding board, an open studio of sorts. It's a bit of a departure from where I started when I wrote years ago, but it's working for me. And I intend to continue being self-indulgent and exploring my own thoughts and whims in the hope that I will be able to use my specialized knowledge of the subject to make sense of the rest of the world around me.

Because the rest of the world is fucked up.

Time Wasted

I’m not successful. Which means I must be a failure. That’s the opposite of success, right? I am not successful because I do not have money. Because I could not afford to pay for my own place and a car and insurance to drive that car. I am not successful. I am a failure. Because I don’t have money.

I wasted my life getting an education and raising a child and caring about things and loving people and writing stupid little stories I will never publish, when all this time, in order not to be a failure, I should have made more money. That would have made me successful.

Not happy. But at least not a failure.

Never on Time

Listen, I really want to come down and I am not stalling or just blowing smoke or anything. I’m just doing what you said and taking care of myself. I’m finally starting to feel a bit stable and just trying to tie up some loose ends so I don’t feel any undue anxiety while I’m there. 

We both know how I get when I start to question myself and feel bad about myself, how I try to take care of you to the point of excess and then you get irritated with me for thinking you need to be taken care of which is not actually what I’m thinking because I know better which is actually why I love you so much because you’re so damned independent and don’t need my help, but I just start to feel so worthless and doing good for you makes me feel worthwhile, so when I’m feeling good about myself too and love myself too, then I can offer you what you do need – my friendship and my love – without smothering you with my fear.

See, I’ve been trying to learn.

Growing. Even if it is a year or even ten years too late.

. . . As Crazy Does

So I’m thinking about trying an open mic night. Standup. Yikes! Even thinking about it. But maybe I could do it. Try it at least. Not that I’ve been incredibly funny as of late, at least not on the ol’ blog where I’ve been sorting out thoughts that are okay to have on the page (well, marginally) but when said aloud in polite company get me medicated or hospitalized or at the very least stared at with great suspicion and/or derision. Back to standup – I think I’m actually feeling crazy enough to try it. At least give it a shot.

So now I have to start writing.

It always comes back to the damned writing.

Obsessed

Not a good morning. No phone. Out of contact with most everyone I care about. Feeling annoyed. A little sad. And irritated. And lonely.

Doubtful.

Feeling doubtful this morning. I could deal with the other things, flip them, use them to write or get out of the house and wander the neighborhood, but doubt . . .

Having to convince myself that the choices I’m making are the right ones, even though I’ve already convinced myself over and over again. And then one more time for good measure.

But I have this problem. Empathy and education, the ability to understand the validity of the other arguments – other than what I am arguing, other than the choices I am making, other than the life I am living – these things make me question myself. Constantly. Like I am on some mad dash to eradicate ignorance from my life. A race I know I will never finish because there will always be more to know.  

Always. 

And I will always need to know it. At least that's what my mind keeps telling me. Over and over again. And once more for good measure. 

Flying Chihuahuas

An owl tried to steal Manny’s dog last night. Wicket. The dog’s name is Wicket and he’s had an eventful week, including having his head pried from the jaws of a much larger dog while camping this weekend. And last night right after little Wicket, a cockapoo, had finished his business, he started to wander toward the back of the yard into the shadows when Manny and I both caught sight of something that seemed much too large to be swooping in out of the sky, but did indeed swoop in out of the sky toward the tiny white cockapoo in the shadows, then upon seeing us, swoop back toward the sky and take perch in the neighbor’s tree.

Manny immediately put his dog back in the house and we finished our cigarettes and watched the owl watching us. I’m pretty sure it’s the same owl from our campsite this weekend that stayed in the tree over my tent and called out all night, as if to tell Wicket he was coming for him.

I told Manny this would be a perfect time for the neighbors to let out their dogs, three yipping Chihuahuas. We’d know the owl got one when we started to hear the barking get further away.

“Why does it sound like that dog is in the tree?” he mocked and we laughed at the thought, but our consciences got the better of us and Manny went to inform the neighbors of our new predatory tenant. We’re not always assholes.

What I Really Want to Say I Can't Define

House is quiet. Morning. Not making the mistake of turning on the television again today. Maybe later. Maybe not.

Let’s see how this goes. I need to write. Write write write write write fuck it just write and I am having trouble with the typing today although autocorrect has taken care of almost all of it for me and that is lovely too much automation maybe maybe not.

Been talking to Manny’s friend Adam a lot lately because I hang out with Manny all the time and he hangs out with Adam, and anyway we’ve been having the same conversation it seems in different ways. Maybe that’s just the linguist in me: maybe Adam sees them as very separate and distinct conversations, but to me they have all been about the same thing and that is the search for meaning and whether or not searching for meaning is the same thing as searching for god. It’s a difficult conversation for the two of us to have because we disagree on two fundamental levels – first of all, Adam tells me that my trying to make meaning of the world is strictly a spiritual (he uses the word ‘religious’) enterprise. 

I tell him that business is his religion.

He doesn’t like the statement and I can tell he doesn’t like the statement so I start to back off a bit. Then I remember that I taught students like him new ways of thinking in my comp classes. Even the ones who thought I was an idiot.

I got this.

I am the authority in my subject; Adam is a dabbler. I wouldn’t try to lecture him on economic theory. Okay, I would. But only insomuch as most economic theory is only a piecing together of sociological, or political or psychological theory and is therefore nothing more than the study of humanity for economic gain. I think he’d tell me that’s a reductionist argument, and I would agree, but again – diametrically opposite levels – I wouldn’t view that as an inherently bad thing. Mostly, I think, because I am willing and able to understand both the complexities and simplicities of a thought. That makes not a bit of sense.

I lost track of the thought.

So clearly, the statement was false or at the very least incomplete as if to say I can understand the thoughts, I just don’t have the language to express them, which is an argument many linguists and philosophers discuss often – are we able to have a thought if we do not have the language to express it. It’s the other thing I think Adam and I disagree on, whether or not meaning is made or found, or both. It’s a discussion of a priori knowledge. In other words, do we find meaning first or language first? If we find meaning first, is our expression of it limited by the language available to us and if so, is the knowledge consequently corrupted? And if it is the reverse, if we can find no meaning without the language to understand it, is our knowledge constricted by the language we already possess?

These are questions that keep me up at night. Keep me thinking. All the time processing the world around me – from the inane television commercial that suddenly raised the room’s volume by fifteen decibals to the squirrel that peeks out at me from behind the big oak each morning when I walk. These are important questions to me. To a lot of people, I think. More people than realize it. More people than will ever even consider the questions. But I have. And I can contribute to the conversation. And I think I have a lot to share.

So why should I be spending my thinking time trying to solve problems other people are perfectly capable of and content in figuring out?

I know how that sounds and I really don’t care anymore. It feels good. I used to not care and I don’t know exactly how I let all that doubt creep back in again, but I’m seeing more of it each day and remembering the intelligent, articulate, educated woman who doesn’t understand why the uninformed, inarticulate, uneducated people about me believe I am the one who is wrong, just because we don’t think alike.

Back to the Question

Just got off the phone with you.  I was washing the last of the dishes from camping this weekend and thinking about the questions I’ve asked you over the years that you haven’t answered.

It still amazes me how you can always get me to be so honest with myself, but you brush my questions aside as though I hadn't asked. And I always let you. Even though you are the one who taught me not to avoid them, how to find the answers, to get the damned thing over with so I could stop wasting years living a dishonest life. Even if it hurt. You taught me how it was going to hurt anyway – that’s just how life works.

But the joy is greater when you are honest, when your subconscious mind is clear to sleep at night. It saved my life, that advice. More than once. Rather than have the obsessive thoughts stuck on repeat in my brain like  a cassette stuck in the player of your old fiero, it’s easier to answer the questions and move on. Move on. That’s what you taught me. 

You can’t move on until you answer the questions at hand. Well, you can, but then you keep having to come back to them anyway, so you might as well just answer them and then go forward. That’s what you taught me. Sometimes, it is my undoing, but overall it keeps my life simple. Even though my mother would argue otherwise. Maybe a few other people too, but I think their lives are complicated, so . . .

Unshaped

I sit on a lawn chair that straddles the firewood strewn about the ground. My friend sits next to me on an old van seat, beside the bearded dude, the one who it turns out knows my friend’s brother in the farming town somewhere around here. Where the rest of this group lives. My friend’s friend is at one of the picnic tables with the mother of the toddler and a couple who look like they may have been awake since their teen years. The toddler hovers near the campfire. Mostly. Sometimes he meanders to the woods’ edge, and a few times past the parked cars and into the gravel road. The child’s mother lifts her head off the table once or twice to ask after him, but otherwise leaves him to his adventures.

Across from where I sit is another picnic table and another group of twenty-somethings, all with the same high, broad forehead. Similar narrow jawlines, thin lips. The man and woman at the side closest me sit with their backs to the table and to the two men on the other side. All of the men wear baseball caps and the same long, unshaped hair, two of them towheaded. Aside from the bearded dude on the van seat beside my friend, the pig-tailed chick at the second table is the only one interacting with us at all. The rest of them, including the sleeping dog on the other van seat pay little mind to anything outside their own group and the blunt being passed around.

Wow, this is so dry. Trying to write about this all day and it’s just been so slow going so carefully choosing my words, each word, all day today. It must be time to edit. To make things sound amazing and brilliant. Confidence. Keep the confidence. I started to waver and was going to write something qualifying about that, like as brilliant as I can be or at least like I want things to sound. I needed to let the sentence stand. Not just let it stand but stand behind it. I have talent. I have been telling myself otherwise or at the very least letting my failure and lack be proof that I have no talent but I know that isn’t true. I have the talent. 

There will be no failure. No more lack.

Defying Gravity

In the mood for showtunes today. In need of this one:

Writing, Rambling, and Roaming

I’m watching an old episode of will and grace which got me thinking about my mom somehow. Hmm. No idea. I want to free write and was going to lament how I couldn’t but quickly backed away from that bullshit I need to just do it I have nothing else going on and I need to say something maybe the freewriting isn’t helping because I spend all of it telling myself what it is I need to do instead of just doing it but then I am just doing the same shit in my head if I’m not writing it down so I guess at least I am writing it maybe maybe that is okay maybe I am just making excuses for myself I definitely can’t type I want to drive again.

 I need to pay off the last of my fines and get a car and drive again. I miss it so much.

 I need a drive out in the country. An aimless drive to the bounds of my familiarity and comfort. Wandering. Without worry for time or responsibility or obligation. And when I find my destination, I will know it. I will pull over and get out and lean against the front of my truck and look out over everything and just be at peace again, having found the purpose of my drive, and knowing I am free to ramble down the road whenever I want to, and even to roam completely off the path.

Buildup

I'm hating the pills.

I despise this medication. Imposed medication. Just medication. Whatever. Unimportant. Which is exactly why I hate this medication.

Only now I have forgotten that reason. I sit, stare at the blinking cursor, trying for my next thought, willing the words to pop into being, like a tiny universe being born. But as it has been lately, it is all gaseous buildup and no explosion - just a whole bunch of excited molecules with no place to go . . .

and i even lost track of that mother-fucking thought . . .

Get Back On It

Off today. Off-kilter. Off-center. Off my game. Just off. See? I’m not even sure where to take this from there. Stuck on one word. Writ of one- to three-word phrases that if you read them aloud the way I hear them in my head would sound poetic and not so much self-defeating. 

Soul

Listening to some music. House itself is quiet since I have my headphones on. I’m sure the chair I’m dancing in is making some squeaking noises and I may or may not be singing along at various points where I know the lyrics. Funky. Not the music. Well, the music too. But I’m feeling funky. Been so lost these last few days. Weeks. Years. I lost it. lost touch with whatever it is that causes a writer to write. Well besides the draw of money or fame, and not that I wouldn’t enjoy both of those immensely, but writing solely for either of those reasons or even both of them is great and contributes to the broader artistic spectrum and blah, blah, blah but it lacks soul.

Come on, I’m not being a snob here but you can tell the difference. The difference between “According to Jim” and “Modern Family.” I should probably talk about something more literary but I’m not a snob about television at all and am in fact addicted to this medium so I will as I have always done on this blog and elsewhere continue to talk about it frequently. But back to my point, and I hope you are following this because I am sure having a tough time keeping up, the difference between the two shows isn’t in the humor or acting (okay, maybe a little), but in the poignancy, in the way each episode makes you think and reflect and feel.

Watch Belushi bluster about and be a cartoonish version of the stereotypical football watching suburban dad and it’s funny because you’ve seen that guy and maybe hung out with that guy and probably paid that guy ten bucks to jump off of something when you were all drinking once, but it doesn’t make you think about too much else. Watch the episode of Modern Family where Mitchell surprises Cameron with his participation in a flash mob, after they’ve spent the entire episode bickering about how Mitchell isn’t nearly spontaneous enough and needs to just let go more often.

You laugh when Cameron tries to dance along on the side, feeling self-conscious, maybe a little dejected. You laugh because you know that is his character, maybe a little stereotypical (but played with so much more depth), and how much he loves to cut loose. Instead he is relegated to the sidelines. And it makes you think about times when you realize someone’s just done something great for you, given so much of themselves to you, and you somehow wish it was more, or different, or from someone else entirely.

Poignancy.

Does it make you think? And not think about unimportant shit, but does it make you motherfucking think? Do you understand yourself a little bit better because it made you think? Because it made you feel. Because it made you remember that we are all only human and we are all to be pitied and laughed at just as much as we are to be rejoiced and reviled.

That's the difference between art with soul and art without soul. And since I have a soul, I have no choice but to be an artist with soul. It will be my downfall either way.

Congratulations, Patty!

 

How Love Turns Out

This morning I was going to send you an email wishing you a great day because it was so beautiful outside and I'd had fun last night and let go a little bit for the first time since getting back here and Manny had called me on my shit about being hard on myself and making up even harsher things I think other people are thinking of me and he was so right man and I saw it and we all laughed about it. I have to change. I've been trying to change that all my fucking life. But it was beautiful out this morning and I thought of telling you I hoped you had time to get outside and enjoy it maybe take your dogs for a walk because it would be so good for your soul but before i logged on this morning I went for cigarettes. I walked through this historic district that turns abruptly and without notice into the crack district where I bought smokes and toilet paper because I am still not organized enough to remember such things when i should and I'm sorry I let you feel like you needed to take care of me and my shit because the truth is I hate that more than ANYTHING yet I somehow find myself with people who do that and then resent it and I resent the resentment as well as my very existence and it all goes downhill from there.

Before I could send your email I had one from you. Move on. That's what you said. As if I am a dog who stayed too long in your yard. I have been waiting for it. Known it was coming.

Thank you for finally doing it.

Even more than that, thank you for finally being the one to break me of that bad habit I had of trying to be the better person. I have needed it done for years. No one else will hurt me. Not ever again. Thank you for teaching me the very thing I have needed to learn most.

Ruthlessness.

Indiscrete

I hope you are happy. 

Not stress-free, but happy. There's a difference.

Like between 'discretion' and 'dishonesty.' 

        Acceptance and

    

     acquiescence.

Monday

Music is awesome.

Compulsive

I turn my head to blow smoke through the iron bars of a fence where we stand talking about language and politics and life's bullshit tragedies. Some bicyclist whizzes by too close on the sidewalk. Would have served him right if I had blown smoke in his face. He’s supposed to ride that shit on the road. Whatever. Pretty sure I’m supposed to be smoking at home in my closet where I don’t bother another soul with my vile habit, yet I take another drag. Another day I might’ve exhaled toward the whizzer on purpose, maybe even stepped into his path accidentally just to be an ass and remind him why he shouldn’t ride so close to the edge.

I also tell Manny’s friend about everything that came after. About finding out I can only take care of me. About finding out how much I had forgotten and how much I have yet to learn. About being me.

In These Lines From Time to Time

I do remember the story you sent me.

In fact, this story has become part of my own. The story of me and how I've grown to be me and continue to try to be a better me even though I fall flat on my face most of the time by tripping over my own shoelaces I refused to tie just because someone else suggested I lace them up. The memory of you sitting in Anderson House while we workshopped this story and I was already forming a kinship with you in my head, just as an artist, as a fellow traveler who'd visited some of the same strange and dangerous lands, that's one of the memories that sticks with me and plays in my mind whenever I call for it.

I shared it with her once. Not so much the details of your story or your poem with the same title, but the recognition of a sister, a soul mate, and how once you found one in this world, she would always be a part of you.

I Will Not Pretend

I want to talk to you but I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know what to say. I get nervous and uncertain about where we stand as friends, where we stand in our recoveries, and I always end up saying something stupid. Kicking myself. And then I try to fix it. I am like the awkward heroine in some sitcom who is always getting herself into her own trouble. Maybe the heroine’s buddy who gets into her own trouble. Regardless. I miss you. Talking like we once used to, speaking to you more honestly than I even speak to myself sometimes.

Thank you for always challenging me to be true.

Neurotic

We stand in the grass beside an iron fence as I light a cigarette.  I blow smoke between the prison-like bars to avoid hitting a bicyclist in the face. I’m not always an ass. Adam and I talk about accidents. About how life has this tendency to suddenly and inexplicably hit you with an inordinately large pile of steaming hot shit. Out of nowhwere. Right in the damned face. And you have no choice but to stand there and pretend you’re not wearing shit. We talk about other stuff too. But mostly I tell him what happened to us.

Manuel sits on my suitcase. It’s a vintage 1978 American Tourister with western braiding that I bought at the thrift store on my way over to visit him, and I am not certain it’s strong enough to support him. We keep talking, but I start checking over my shoulder.  Manny’s going to crush my fucking suitcase. I’m certain of it.

Adam quotes Chomsky through a nicotine haze. 

I Met a Young Girl

This song came up in my sister's ipod rotation last night or the night before and we both had to stop and sing along. My nephew had no idea what the song was, but as usual, implored me to stop butchering it. I did not acquiesce. Music is for singing. Joyfully. Let others make the noise joyful.

I really can't sing.

I also really don't care.

Anyway, 7-Second Rule coming soon . . . umm, this song came on and it just made us both stop. This was my introduction to Edie Brickell and my adult introduction to Dylan and folk music and the poetic beauty of those protest songs.

When the movie starring that guy from Top Gun came out, I was in the second month of my delayed enlistment into the Air National Guard. I was a senior in high school, set to enter basic training a month after graduation. The Berlin Wall had fallen. That other big meanie was about to fall; there was no reason not be in the military. We had no threat. Sure, my cousin was always getting involved in some third-world skirmish, but he was some special security detail. I was going to fix airplanes. At worst, I would be stuck on a highly guarded air base in some friendly third-world country. And in exchange there would be college money.

7 seconds . . .

I love this song. I knew this version first, so it will always hold a special place with me.

Godspeed to the men and women serving around the world. Thank you for your courage and sacrifice.

And I Tell Myself

Tonight I stand under pine trees much older than the decaying-before-their-time condos where my sister lives and stars dimmed by the industrial haze and excessive heat in the air. Melancholy. It is how I feel. But it isn’t such a bad thing tonight. It is not pain, but ache. Pain alloyed with pleasure. Like the way my soul aches for yours and will never again be satisfied. That kind of ache is nourishment for the soul of a writer. Anguish will slow you down. Anguish is a bitch. But ache. Ache is what gets monuments built.

Badass

We stand in the grass beside an iron fence as we blow smoke into the air. I’m pretty sure I saw signs somewhere saying we can’t smoke outside, but I can’t remember,  and Adam and Manny are smoking so it clearly is okay. If not, I will just get a ticket and have one more item of proof for future historians that we now live in a police state. I’ve been feeling more reassured these days. Sure of myself. I guess. Smoking in public and not caring about rules made up by the same people who profit off the taxes and revenue we generate. Not to mention the civil fines.

Fuck them.

And that’s pretty much my general attitude as I stand beside the iron fence and blow smoke between the bars this time in order to avoid hitting a bicyclist in the face.  

Looping

I am not shitting you I was in the middle of this sentence - the last sentence of this today when my sister called to say she’d just passed our mother on her way here for a surprise inspection or as she merely calls it "a visit" and after entertaining her for an hour and a half during which she sat in my chair and played some sort of dice game with my nephew for which they used the Yahtzee box lid, and the rules for which I couldn't get but seemed to me like something I'd seen played in a back alley in Japan, I am just now, eight and some partial hours later, getting back to this particular freewrite. I had a point. Then. When I was writing it. But now after an entire day of polite conversation and preschool conversation and the narration in my head, I do not know where I was going when I began.

I spend too much time on the internet reading the news which only serves to depress and/or anger me if not both at once which is what it usually is because as I told you before, I am dichotomous.  I have to make sure to stop every so often to write something down. If I read too many articles back to back to back, follow too many links deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, then I find it very difficult to get back. And I’m kind of tired of the return trip.

All about the mixed metaphor today.

Okay. Every day.

Anyway, I’m kind of, you know, an angry radical feminist.  Sometimes when I’m trying to get along and not cause trouble, I pretend not to be so angry or so radical or such a damned feminist, but it does no good. The yellow wallpaper eventually closes in.

My lesson to myself today is what it has been all my life but the thought of all my life is overwhelming and filled with uncertainty of detail

I have no idea what today’s lesson was. Bastards.  I was trying to think about how to maintain, you know, about how to not let myself go too far and to always step back. I have to step back. I’m supposed to write all this shit down. I’m a historian. My job as writer. As artist.

So maybe I’m just a recordkeeper. Or the lady who keeps minutes at church meetings.

You Can Work on That Anytime (or No Time at All)

Did Hemingway have to deal with this?

Or Carver?

While Jefferson was writing the Declaration did his sister arrive midsentence to distract him from his thought? Was there a sequel he never got to because someone always seemed to need dinner made or the laundry carried in or their ass wiped, and he was, after all, “just writing?”

Lesson #2

When you've accepted that you're an asshole sometimes, you can start to forgive yourself for those times.

Nurture

Several persons whom I love dearly are at the moment dealing with issues of great weight – physically, emotionally and spiritually. I want to be for them what they have been for me, yet I feel I never measure up. I never know what to say. I do not provide the right kind of support. I am not a nurturer. I got stuck in a room listening to a radio sermon yesterday in which the preacher was talking about just this thing and about how the most important thing was just to be there. Just be there. It made sense, because that is what is most important to me about the ones I love. Just being with them. There’s reassurance and warmth and hope and just all kinds of gooeyness. Unless you are me and you make it awkward by trying way too hard (and if you are me, you will make it awkward).

The thing is, I am broke. My own deadbeat fault of course. No work = no money. Who knew? But I had my own shit to get through or I was just going to get stuck in that place of barely functionable for even longer. I have to take care of me before I can take care of anyone else. And I hadn’t been taking care of me. And I’m pissed at myself for it, but there’s no point kicking me anymore or I’ll never be able to get anything accomplished, I’d just lie there on the floor, crumpled from the blows to the abdomen.

And really, what’s the point in that?

Back to the original point of this ramble, which I have now forgotten because of something my little hippie friend Emily has named the “7-Second Rule” which has something to do with the amount of time you can pause after a tangent before the point of the original discussion is lost forever, but alas I have remembered:

To those I love and who love me- Please know that I am here. Always here. Maybe a little crazy and disorganized, but I am here. And in every way but physically, I am there.

Lies From the Tablecloth

Have this cranked on the headphones and thought I would share with you fine people.

Guess I'll Take it Day by Day

Had a great time last week. Reminded me of grad school days. Ahh grad school. Went into college town and sat on the porch of this amazing old house on the national register. The porch was fantastic – maybe forty feet long and fifteen wide – covered by a twenty foot high ceiling and pillars. Part of the Gaslight Village. Went to RAGBRAI festivities and saw .38 Special. Drank my share of alcohol. Did my fair share of smoking too. Saw live music and street performers and life. And I wrote. Wrote. My friend Manny and I started working on a fantasy series he’s been wanting to write. I had incredible conversations with his boy-band-pretty friends. Healing conversations from unlikely sources. And from the likely ones. Feeling like an artist again. Feeling comfortable in my own skin. I like myself and don’t even feel the need to say fuck you to the people who don’t care for me. Let them. They don’t matter. I won’t give them that power. Not today. For today I am an artist. I am me. I am bliss.

Oh, and here's a little Southern rock for your foot-tapping pleasure:

Thanks, Manny.

I Loved the Way You Pounced

You brought out this part of me, this part I thought had died or I had killed or he had killed so long ago. And it brought out the lion in me the same way my education did, the same way my awakening did. And then I went and fucked it up you know. Like I do all things that are good for me. Because I think I don’t deserve them. Which is such bullshit. I stopped taking care of myself like I was at first because I am a total selfish bitch even though I am also one of the most selfless. I’m a dichotomy. I’m dichotomous? Whatever. But I figured why should I you know because you didn’t care even though I knew it wasn’t true and even though I knew that I was only contributing to the problem by becoming this horrid person and starting to doubt myself. Another stupid cycle, circling a drain. This is the kind I am best at creating. Which sounds kind of hopeless, you know, like I am crazy therefore I will never not be crazy. But I don’t believe it. I have to not believe it. Because each time I learn. Not just how to stop it all from going down the drain, but how to keep the whirlpool from starting in the first damned place. The most important part is to never lose confidence in what I already know. To never stop trusting myself. I may find out I was wrong later, but if I do what I think is right and best right now, then I have no need for guilt. The key ingredient I was missing, the thing I have been lacking most of my life and I finally really understood for the first time, I found when I met you. I have no problem with the knowledge and trust and confidence – only in action. And my inaction is what causes my guilt. I did not make you stop and turn around. I could have saved you all this pain, every last bit of it, if only I had acted on what I knew and trusted and was confident about and made us turn around. So I am working on the lion thing. Pouncing when I need to pounce. Not feeling sorry for the antelope or even the tourist who wanders into my cage. Because I am only doing what is in my nature to do.  And I am finding out why I can’t let the guilt over that go. 

Disposable Old Ladies

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies." 

- William Faulkner

Support Your Local Artist

In Cedar Rapids at my friend's place. Last night we went with some of his friends to see these guys and I must say, they were brilliant. I have SO missed live music. There is just no substitute for live music - it seeps inside your soul like nothing else can.

Mistakes We Know As We Make Them

Some time last fall

I miss touching your soul. I miss the strength it gives me. I miss the way it warms and fills the air around me, the air I breathe in. I miss you. I need to bond with you. To emotionally and spiritually bond with you. I feel like the time we’ve been spending together has been a different kind of time, which is good, so good that I get to spend my time with you, that I get to spend forever with you. But we haven’t been spending that kind of time together like we should that kind of time where I don’t know I’m freewriting this and Supergirl is sitting in the chair, her eyes fixed on Hannah Montana which we have been watching for hours now, quietly, chuckling to ourselves every so often, talking a little, bonding. But I want to bond with you. I feel like I have been trying so hard, while at the same time, trying not to pressure you , doing my own thing, but we have been missing that kind of time, that kind of time like we spent talking and listening to that band on my birthday, or the time we spent on our date nights just talking and being together, or you reading our cards at a friend’s house, or walking through the East Village and a group of people breaking into song, or driving through the Ledges, through the countryside, learning about you, experiencing you and the world with you and I don’t think that probably makes sense but I hope you understand what I am clumsily trying to say because I can’t seem to get things out right and feel like an idiot most of the time but then I’ve always felt like an idiot most of the time so don’t think it’s you I love you and I cannot think I cannot think because I am an idiot see how this works so I am freewriting to you and sitting in the living room with your daughter  while you sleep and I miss you and I need you because I need inspiration I need fulfillment I need what you can give me what I can give you – that bond – the two flames connected because I need the rush of the flame pushing higher, I need to bask in our love, in our connection, in the melding of our souls. I need to reach that moment of sublime and I am so not talking about sex here, I am talking about everything but sex, about feeling so close to you that I cannot tell where your hand begins and mine ends, so close I can feel the pulse of the universe thumping against my eardrums, so close I think I cannot bear another moment of the ecstasy and I am still not talking anything physical here, it is just that divinity, that moment of motherfucking sublime when the world is so beautiful you want to cry, and you put me there, Rebel Girl, you take me there and for some reason or another we haven’t been willing to go and I want us to go, I need us to go, you need us to go, so let’s just go, okay, let’s just let go of all this other crap that clutters our time and let’s do it, just go 

What I Do in the Middle of the Night Instead of Sleeping

My sister calls my nephew “Nicholas Pickle-less” which rhymes out loud if not so much on the page, so it would be perfect for a children’s book. A book about Nicholas and how he liked his sandwiches pickle-less, mayonnaise and cheese were fine but those little green pickles just crossed the line. Wow cheesy. Okay but keep going keep going where does this story go so his mother called him Nicholas Pickle-Less but he called himself Captain Nick. He wore a red cape with yellow dots on a green circle. He only took it off to sleep, even though he thought he should be able to wear it in case there was an emergency in the middle of the night. He didn’t want to be slowed down having to take it off the bedpost and asking his mom for help putting it on. Superheroes such as Captain Nick should not have to put up with such nonsense. Which voice which voice I don’t know keep going with it whatever you have you are sitting here in the dark in the middle of the night writing. There is nothing else to worry about. Nothing outside to worry about.

                                                           All worry converges here.

Releases. Dissipates back into the universe as molecules of something all bullshit all of this is Shiite as my friend  would say not Shiite but shite and that time it didn’t correct it typing blind again thinking about too much too too much today. Starting to love myself again. No matter what others think do say whatever. I know who I am. I better love this bitch too. Nobody else is going to do it for me, and yes I do realize how that sounds now that I’ve typed it out but I am typing blind and I guess my filter is off and or not working or something I can’t type. I get ahead of myself. Maybe I am typing faster with one hand or something I am not sure. I have written about nothing real in so long. Only about writing.  Journal upon journal of writing about writing. That will do me no good unless I publish a whole bunch of real stuff and then the journals will only be interesting to people studying me or studying writing or worse yet, they will be interesting to no one. No one whatsoever. And my story will not matter.

And it will be as if I was never here.

Want Vs. Need

I can’t seem to ever say what I need to on the phone because I never have been very good at regular conversation. I’m a much better writer.  I love you. I miss you when I’m not here because I like to hang out and talk with you and do stuff with you. You are funny and smart and I look up to you so much. And I guess you’re right: sometimes I do choose the things that make me happy and not always the things I need to do. 

I guess I watched you for so many years do what you needed to do, most of the time much more than your fair share, and you never seemed to get the rewards you deserved. And it pissed me off.  It has always pissed me off. It’s why I have such a chip on my shoulder about people who don’t appreciate their comfortable, cushy lives. It might also have to do with that tiny chip on the other shoulder having to do with jackass men, but that’s for another day.

 I know you don’t understand my friendships or my relationships with women, just know that I find strength in those bonds. Encouragement, love, support, comfort. I have missed you guys and I’m sorry for the times I’m absent, but I know that you don’t always understand my choices and my beliefs and lifestyle and sometimes I lose the balance between maintaining who I am and trying to be who others think I should. And I haven’t figured out any way to maintain that balance except when I am completely alone. Alone with my thoughts and time to put them down on paper. 

And when I have that, when I’ve had it first and foremost, I’ve thrived. I have been the most successful and happiest I ever was. And the best part is, I contribute these stories to our culture and to our history. I know I’m not currently making money at it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing.

 Maybe what I’m not supposed to be doing is spending my entire life freaking out about money, fighting about money, losing the love of my life over money. Maybe the problem isn’t about me doing what makes me happy and therefore productive and sane and a contributing member of society. Maybe the problem is other people deciding what I need to do. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the terrifying thought that I can just choose not to follow the rules and still be okay. I followed the rules, Mom. I followed unreasonable rules, contradicting rules, rules I didn’t know about until after I’d been hit for breaking them, rules that applied only to girls, or to poor people, or just to me.

 I’m almost forty now. How much longer do I have to continue in these games where the rules and deck are stacked against me? And in the long run, Mom, that is all it is. A game. Someone thinking they need to have power over someone else. Thinking they need to win and make sure everyone else loses.  When the truth is, all of that’s just stuff. And it won’t make one bit of difference in the end. Only the experiences we’ve had, the love we’ve shared, and the mysteries of our own existence we’ve been able to understand. We take nothing else.  I know what my power is, where my strength lies.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve tried negotiating with the world, meeting people on their terms and institutions in their construction, but I have found them mostly to be unreasonable and irrational and willing to let me give away my soul without even a second thought. So now they will all have to negotiate with me. As I see fit. And no I’m not nuts (okay, maybe a little) and yes I’ve been taking my meds. I just need to go for awhile. To spend time with my friends, people who don't think I'm a raving lunatic because I talk about things like constructs and rule-breaking. And who get it when I need to spend time by myself.

I love you and I hope you understand.

Like Never Before

The Fleetwood Mac version of this song is from my childhood. I discovered Eva Cassidy in grad school. This rendition haunts me. Even more now, RG.

An Argument for the Differently-Thinking

I prefer to spend my time imagining possibilities (daydreaming), watching and sharing in my nephew’s growth and development (playing with children), indulging my need for culture (goofing off), discussing possibilities and growth and culture with others (goofing off), and then writing about all of it at the end of the day (goofing off), when other minds are sleeping off the number-crunching and customer-pleasing and profit-mongering of theirs (using various substances to keep them hard asleep so they don’t have those freaky dreams that keep them awake and make them think about the decisions they’ve made all day and whether or not they make any real difference).

Apparently, this makes me one of two things: Batshit crazy or “High as a kite.”

Those are the choices offered. I have finally been feeling like myself again. More like myself than I have felt in a long time. And the best part is, I’m feeling like an even better self each damn day. I kinda like it. It makes me want to do stuff. Gives me confidence that I can do stuff and do it without screwing it up. And it makes me want to write. And I write. And I keep writing. And I don’t think I would ever stop writing if I could ever figure out how to stop letting them get to me, but I do and I start to give in just a little bit and feel guilty (GUILTY! Ha!) about spending time “writing my little stories” when I should be out there earning money and making the lives of everyone around me more comfortable.

Then I start to resent having to pretend being one of you and I slowly give up on the writing and turn my attentions toward giving you everything you think you want even though I can see how it’s going to end for you, for both of us, for all of us, because I know in the end that you wouldn’t listen to me if I told you the truth anyway and it’s just easier to get along by not disturbing the pack.

It never works.

I end up back here each time.

Maybe, just fucking maybe, the reason we are lagging in development and design is because we’ve medicated away all the creativity. Differently thinking. I am not mentally ill. Fuck you. Fuck you all. I just think differently. And guess what, you assholes, you bloody motherfucking assholes, I know and trust what I think is right and I have sifted the monuments and remains of thousands of years of thinking before mine to back me up. But even more importantly, I have sifted the remains of thirty some years of my own thinking and am working hard to shed the ways that keep me back. 

I am not part of your pack. Stop trying to make me run along and hunt with you. I'm not even a damned predator.

The Rambler

Let’s face it. I have nothing important to say. That’s why I insist on the freewrite each morning. That’s why I start here because I know and even worse I know that you know that I am nothing more than a rambler when I think I’m a storyteller.

Heat index was somewhere in the oh-my-fuck-my-lungs-have-melted range yesterday and a few days before and still a few more to come. This is the part of summer like the coldest part of winter in Iowa. Only the brave and the poor go outside.

This is what I wanted to say to you. I think it’s what I’ve been trying to figure out how to say all along. No, I know it is. I’ve just been putting all the words together and it’s taken a long time. Such a very, very long time.

You trusted me. Way more than anyone ever trusted me. And I loved that. I trusted you that way too. I still do. I just saw that, well, you were putting faith into me and what I had to say like I was some sort of guru (which let’s face it, I am), and not just parsing through my rants for stuff you needed and trusting yourself instead. You started immersing yourself completely in my life and I needed you to fly on your own. You needed you to fly. And I did not know how to help you do that anymore. So I guess some part of me knew we both needed you to stop trusting me so much so you could stand completely back up on your own, but I also didn’t want you to stop believing in the good things, the positive things, the lessons we were sharing about life and what is really important. Somewhere in between, I lost my footing and ended up in a chasm. 

And you lost faith in both of us.

Thank You, CPC Plumber

I went outside to have a smoke (still in the quitting process) and some guy just holla'd at me while hanging from the passenger side of his boss's ride.

Scrubs.

Once Upon a Time

This morning you were getting ready for work and I was standing on the deck having a cigarette which seemed ridiculous when you were only yards away and about to leave and I could be spending that time talking to you. I assumed you would be dressed. I don’t know why I assumed it, but was happy to be wrong. I just sat down at the edge of the bed. I could think of no place nor time I’d rather be. Nowhere more beautiful than this moment. I wasn’t there long before you noticed me and sighed.

I was thinking about last night when we were talking about learning from each other. I was so excited about how my nerdy obsessions and love of art had finally fulfilled the promise of such pursuits - that the world could be unlocked someday, if only I learned enough. I just always thought I would be alone for the turning of the key. I never hoped to have someone beside me when it happened I sometimes dreamed I would leave the gates open behind me maybe, lead others to the doors with my words and my voice. But I never thought there would be someone there to share it with me, someone who needed through that gate even more than I did, but still kinda dug that I was along for the trip.

I have so much to learn from you. I could listen to you forever. Until we had no words left to share. Until all we could do is sit in each other’s company and you would still be teaching me, showing me what I have spent decades trying to learn – how to be so comfortable in your own body. Even as your own muscles fight against you.

A Bunch of Words Together Saying Nothing

Free again free free free sometimes I tire of the freedom. Sometimes I long for the comfort of the familiar. But when I am comfortable, I convince myself I am trapped. I leave behind limbs when trapped. 


I just wasn’t this time.

Only in my mind.

Which is now free to wander as it will.

Alone and such. And not a leg to stand on.

It'll Come Back

You asked me not to take blame. I've already been working on that. I'm always working on that. And it's okay, because at least I know my weakness. I have to face it head on. Always. Every single time without fail or I end up in a tailspin. But that's about me. And I already know about me, that I have a lot to learn about me, but I'm okay with that too. Again, about me.

I just want you to know that I also can't take credit. I won't take credit. I recognized you and saw who you were to become and I only wanted to be in your presence for the journey. I had no clue you would fall so hard for me.

ME? Come on?!

You were already headed toward your own enlightenment when I met you. I take that back, you were an enlightened soul working toward whatever the heaven or hell or karmic retribution it is we work toward once we recognize our own consciousness. I may have offered you companionship and support on your journey, but I never meant to keep either of us back nor do I take credit for you already being a determined, fierce, and talented woman.You have so much love to give. Just give it. It will come back to you. 

We both kicked ourselves for not encouraging each other enough, when what we both really needed was to just do it for ourselves. Encourage ourselves. I know who I am. I am working hard to preserve that person. I miss having that someone who knows it too.

Vitamin P and Other Such Crutches

This is when I start to listen to them, boys mostly who always seem to think they know what’s best because they’re all so in touch with their own motives and triggers and emotions, and I start to think that maybe I don’t need these pills after all. Maybe they are a crutch. Maybe it is all a crutch. Somehow I seem unable to stand without a crutch. I can either accept that and use the crutch to still outrun my naysayers, or I can pretend I don’t need the help, like they pretend, and keep hopping along on one leg, without balance.

Or I can crumple up in a ball and roll around on the floor with the rest of them.

My Space

I have a desk. My sister and I picked it up for free at a yardsale and tossed it in the back of the minivan. It sat there for a week while it rained whenever my sister was home with the van before I got to bring the thing in the apartment.  It was painted over in white by the people who gave it up so I consider that a sign to use it as a canvas and have been randomly doodling on it. since no one uses the kitchen table to actually dine at, my sister let me take one of the chairs, one that sat in my grandparents’ breakfast nook.  

The setup is squeezed into a corner of the apartment, but I have enough space to have slowly migrated my books and journals and scrap writings out here and now it is a proper writer’s desk. Well, it’s my desk, but you get the drift.  I have needed to do this for myself for some time now and have refused to help a sister out. I mean, I’ve helped others, but for some reason I have not carved out the space for myself that I need.

I am always to blame for my own downfall.

I wanted my life to be a fucking comedy, bitches!

I don’t know if there could be any possible relationship but since putting the desk and my computer here, I have been writing, getting myself back into a routine. I sit down here in the morning.  I freewrite. I read. I work. As a writer. Albeit one without pay for now.

The thing is, there’s a chair right next to my desk. A big comfy blue chair and if you are sitting in it, it’s really awkward and crowded to have someone at the desk.  It’s also usually where I end up when my shoulders start to tighten from leaning forward over the laptop. The thing about this particular chair I guess is that I’ve realized it’s sort of my spot. And I feel totally like Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory about it.

And every motherfucker who comes in my sister’s apartment seems to sit in that chair.

Despite the fact that I have my computer open and sitting on the desk, which itself is always just disorganized enough to indicate that someone is WORKING there, and despite the fact that my drink is usually there and  there’s a book of poetry or my journal in it which they have to move in order to sit down after I’ve gotten up to let them in and let my sister know she has guest, they snake my spot. They always take my spot. Even though there are three other seats in the room, all of which offer a much better view of the tv.

I Still Haven't Figured Out Why Any of You Are Still Reading This

Instead of sitting here meditating and so lost in my own fucking bullshit thoughts I should be writing. You know, writing them down for posterity’s sake. My own fucking bullshit thoughts. The ones I come up with while meditating. While sitting here with my eyes closed and enjoying the effects of the medication and the way it feels to type blind the keys rising to meet my fingertips and I am freewriting again lost in it eyes closed muse writing and I have lost my ability to type or to think or to anything because I cannot go another stop on my travels thinking I know my destination. I will never know my destination. And that is the best thing of it. That is the part I once taught myself to no longer fear. I am learning again. And I am learning it better this time. But I’ve been a long time in the villages  that makes no sense absolutely no sense I don’t know where I was going with that I am tired but I think I will type myself into unconsciousness of course it will be hard to decipher just to say that it is time. Time to leave this particular village because I’ve learned all I can and that’s a metaphorical village and not a metaphor for a village, if you know what I mean.

Beer and Tomato Juice

Having a red beer at the moment. Friday night with my sister and her kids, and it's hotter than balls as my son would say, so i am sipping on a little tradition. The past two days have been, to also quote my son, insane. By contrast, my sanity seems to be returning at an alarming rate. Alarming because it is overwhelming to be sane in an insane world. Just as overwhelming as it is to be insane in a sane world. The key is to find the balance either way. Then to keep it. Or maybe not freak out so much when it goes.

I once had it. The Ying-Yang. And then I had it with someone else.

With red horns tattoed on her hand. Devil's horns the color of my beer.

Woo-Hoo

I have been writing for a few days now. Actual writing. Complete thoughts followed by more (related and compelling) thoughts. Best of all, I have been able to write them down.

I have been able to sit down amid all the chaos and tune it all out. Only me and the words. My words.

Enough to Drive You Crazy If You Let It

I stand across the room from my sister, rocking from foot to foot as she vents about her day. It was extra humid today and her store was extra busy and extra understaffed. Besides, her uniform is all black and she has to wear a smock over it, so she is demonstrably upset as she vulgarizes the English language in an attempt to express to me the frustration of her nine hour shift. My mind begins to wander.

I am currently on what might be considered a sabbatical if I were working in my field of study or a leave of absence if I had some big swank office somewhere, but since I am a waitress at some corporate joint is called ‘medical leave’ and entails nothing more than getting to keep my service years uninterrupted. In short, I am taking on each day as it comes. Mostly I keep my nephew while my sister’s at work and in exchange get to eat and sleep and do whatever else I want in her apartment.

Sometimes while she’s at work, I rearrange the furniture.  Whole rooms.

So I’m not working. I’ve been home all day writing. Talking on the phone. Definitely not putting up with cranky and possibly dehydrated customers.  My sister is herself cranky as she retells the most poignant moments of her shift: having to call in the assistant manager for backup help, running out of bags, customers bitching about no bags, my sister bitching about all of it.

I could care less about any of it. But I smile and nod and try to remember some of the swear words for later use. I want to tell her to chill, then I think about what an ass I was coming home from work this last year, venting, worse than venting, forcing the anger out like fire from a pot-bellied stove when all I needed was to let the heat and smoke roll away in their own time. I want to tell her to stop caring, these minor stupid details don't really matter, not at all, in any scheme of anything. But they have this way of getting you to care.  

My sister waves her hands a lot when she swears, I think to myself. 

Writing free

Freewriting this morning as every morning as in every morning that I actually write which isn’t really that many mornings which is to say not as many mornings as I’d like. To freewrite. As well as write. Now I am stopping to correct punctuation and also spelling although you won't see the corrections being made so it is no longer freewriting just me rambling onto the page as if I were drunk dialing into your voicemail or something and you were listening to it the next afternoon as I sat coolly across the table from you in some swanky beeratorium. I don’t know what a beeratorium is or why it would be swanky, but trust me, this is the kind of place I would hang out and sit coolly across a table from you while you listened to me make an ass of myself into your voicemail and tried to stifle a giggle while I sit (coolly) and take your smiles and laughter as a sign that you are really into me when let’s face it I am nothing but a rambling goof. 

Going Where the Weather Suits my Clothes

Trying to figure out where that is at the moment. Trying to hear my own voice amid all the others who just seem to be talking at me.

I'm still hearing the words they're saying and not trusting my own.

I used to listen to this while riding the bus home late at night in Richmond. It seemed to fit into the soundtrack of my life too as I stared past my own reflection on the glass and into the dark beauty of the old city. You know, right behind the homeless dudes fighting on the corner.

Looking for Roots

  My little hippie friend and I went down to the East Village which is really just about six square blocks of revitalized buildings renamed as the East Village though we’re preteding that’s what the area surrounding the capitol has been called all along. When I was a young child those streets held small merchants and businesses such as my grandfather’s paper company and the post office on the corner. In my teens, they replaced the quaint brick buildings with newer brighter better brick buildings. By the time I hit my twenties, it wasn’t really a good place to be after dark.

Now it’s filled with trendy little shops and art galleries and thrift stores benefiting the women’s league and other white collar causes. It is clean and well-lit. My little hippie friend and I make our way through a flea mart type building. It was a used furniture shop when I was young; now it contains relics of my own youth, a youth my young hippie friend was not even around for. Much of what I see in the booths as a matter of fact, I once saw in operation. At an old country store where they hadn’t upgraded yet or my great Aunt Mathilda who had no need at her farm for the modern conveniences.

Going through the shops today I wished I had a little cash for a thing here or there, but I have no use for it really. I have nothing left. No possessions really. Not to speak of. It makes me feel amazingly free and incredibly pressed for time at once. Like I have no legacy to pass on, and I need to create one.

I wasn’t worried about it. I had writing. The stories would be my legacy. So I didn’t mind giving the other stuff up a little at a time. Here and there. I come from a line of hoarders after all. 

By age twenty-one I already had a full storage unit of randomness. I watched my grandmother fill her home with margarine dishes and extra boxes of Kleenex. By the time I was ready to move cross country for grad school, I had to pare down quite a bit. By the third apartment in Richmond, I had shed even more superfluous stuff. What I had left would be stolen, apprehended or otherwise unattainable to me for the next several years. My son and I moved back from Virginia in one ten foot truck. And I am now in possession of almost none of even that.

But like I said, the writing, the stories, are supposed to be my collection. My legacy. Proof of me and mine.

All You Need

Hyperbolic aerodynamics

“What the hell are you doing here?” my cousin says to me. She is twice my age. Looks like Janis Joplin, if she’d survived. And kept on partying the same way. And had three kids and a biker husband they had to special order a casket for.  And they kept on putting pieces of her back together and sedated with enough morphine to not do her any more damage. This woman has always been a secret idol of mine, though the corners of my father’s mouth always took an extra sharp plunge upon finding out that this particular cousin and her brood were present at this or that family member’s home.

I smile. Broad smile. In retrospect I should have hugged her, but we were in the bathroom at the park and I was waiting to leave.

“I heard something about some Sleeths getting together. Maybe a few Hayes.”

“Oh, this is where the family reunion is?” she manages to look confused. 

Beside her is my aunt. My uncle’s wife. Maybe ex-wife reconciled now. No blood relation. Tiny, feisty woman. Married to my brute of an uncle. Well, the brutiest of them. Brutest? I was terrified of her growing up, but I loved her. I just knew she would tear me in two if necessary because life had once torn her in two. Her daughters were the same ages as my younger sisters and the group of them was always finding something to do, leaving me to entertain myself quietly. Mostly, I sat and did what I always did when I found myself alone – I listened.

I was compulsively shy as a child. Obsessed with what others thought of me. Horrified at the thought of partner-projects in school because I would be stuck in my chair, waiting for all the other kids to pair up and I was left with the kid who wet himself or has special snacks, or worse yet, I would have to be the teacher’s partner. This left the rest of the class with the impression that I was teacher’s pet or k-i-s-s-i-n-g the special-snacker, when in reality I was just afraid that if I opened my mouth and spoke the first word to another person or stood out in any way, the world would somehow stop spinning on its axis.

That is not hyperbole.

So I learned to blend in. To not be me, to not be seen or stand out in any way so others wouldn’t be upset with or critical of me. I already knew I couldn’t play their rules and didn’t like their games anyway, so I tried hiding. How can you find fault with someone who isn’t there?

I tried to control it after that. The next stage in my growth. To represent myself and market myself like a tennis shoe or a lip gloss. Confident. Hard-working. Better aerodynamics.

This morning as we were leaving for the reunion I looked down last minute at my brightly painted toenails and slightly too snug tank top. A cigarette dangled from my mouth and as we pulled out from the lot, I flipped up the visor mirror.

“Dude,” (I call her 'Dude') I smiled into the mirror and told her, “I am pretty white trash today.”

She shook her head at me.

"Today we are Sleeths.”

 Then she cranked up the radio and some hip-hop song bounced the minivan as we rolled through an industrial area. The kind of place our grandfather and our uncles would have worked. On my mother’s side. The Sleeth side. The kind of place my dad’s family might have slummed as plant supervisor but never would have set place otherwise. At least not long enough for any dust to settle on.

My parents’ families lived across the street from one another at one point. It was the first home in which my mother remembers having running water. To some people in my father’s family, especially after the divorce, my mom and the Sleeths became a joke, the name synonymous with poor white trash.  And they often made those jokes in front of me. I don’t know if that’s where things started to turn south for me: I really no longer care.

   

On the way to the reunion, bouncing over the train tracks, I thought about the weekends spent at our grandparents as kids. I loved going down to play with all the cousins, but hated nighttime.  I used to lie awake, terrified of the dark, and listen to the lonesome sound of the train whistles. Proof of life, awake, out there somewhere in the night, while in the house all I could hear was grandpa snoring and maybe a cricket we let in during the day or a bull frog outside the window. Mostly though it was the train whistle that let me sleep. That reassured me. To me, this little girl lost in the dark, that whistle was reassurance that even if I fell asleep, the world would still go on and another whistle would wake me in the morning.

A few weeks ago one of my cousins lost his six year old son in an accident at their home.  In another lifetime when we were blonde and summer-tanned and Kool-aid lipped, we used to cross the highway to the cemetery and go into the old abandoned buildings we were supposed to stay away from in the ghost town my grandparents settled in.  None of us, I’m sure imagined such a thing. I was amazed at the church watching my now grown cousin and his wife go through the process of burying their son. I was amazed at their strength. Amazed at the way they did not curl up into a ball and stop going.

There’s a short story I love and I can remember neither the title nor the author, but it was about the narrator’s dirt-poor family and the rabble of cousins and how when one died in some tragic accident around the family farm, barely anyone seemed to notice. Life went on. As it always had. As it always will. I don’t think facing down our fate that many of us could move forward.  

My aunt and rock star cousin and giggle a bit at whatever one of them said last. The sound of a toilet flushes out their words, but I laugh a little anyway as I wait to use the sink in this tiny cinder block latrine. I think to myself how they look as they did twenty years ago, the two of them huddling together in secret laughter.  It is good to see some institutions, some relationships, some friendships withstand. It’s good to see that the earth stays on its axis, no matter what I predict.

“What the hell?” my aunt shouts, even though we are a foot apart. She is referring to the open stall behind her for which there is no door.

Considering our white trash credentials, I find it apropos.

Beauty School Dropout

I was supposed to dye my mother's hair today. She called early this

morning, then never answered the phone when I called back. I guess

it's gotten pretty sad when even my own mother stands me up.

More Randomness from Deadbeatville

I am not really going to be a deadbeat.

For those of you concerned. Or even still reading this mess.  I’m not a deadbeat, but I play one in real life. That’s just how others would refer to me, I think. I am not actively exchanging my time for money; therefore, I am stealing the time of others in order to get by. This reductionist argument rests on a premise of a limited quantity of time . . .

Ahem.

I’ve been writing.

Not writing, but writing. Thinking critically without the recording-of-it part.  I haven’t been able to get the recording-of-it part down lately. I guess it is what they would call writer’s block. Staring at the blank page. But the page is no longer blank. And it blinks at me. Buzzes with this weird blue light in the darkness of my room. Tabs and windows and portals to other worlds. Other lives. Other personas. Temptation for checking.

Petroleum for an obsessive-compulsive.