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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.