Poor Isaac.

I was anxious because of the formality he was trying to force, and so I blurted it out. "Okay, but I don't believe in God." My mouth is my worst enemy when I am embarassed. It is a mutinous bastard, completely liberated from any inhibition that would like it to just shut-up.

And he looked at me for a minute, processing. Looking for the right slot to file away the new information. He teased me about it, my face went as red and hot as a matador's cape, and after awhile he went back out. Left me alone with my thoughts, feeling insecure as ever about my doubts, about my weaknesses.

Later he came back, and I could tell he had been thinking about it and that part of him felt bad for the abuse I had suffered by his taunts. (Didn't stop him from twisting the screw just a little more though, but only at first.) He wanted to relate to me, wanted to understand, and so he tried by explaining the foundation of his beliefs to me. He said, "I just think about shit like waterfalls. There is no way that man could ever make something like a waterfall."

Mercifully the phone rang, and when I hung up the subject had changed.

But I can't get the vision out of my head. I can see him contemplating the holy beauty of nature while he's sitting in his pew Sunday mornings, arm around his wife, everything being right with the world. I can imagine him giving thanks for the mountain bike trails, the getaways to the ocean he takes every year, for his daughters and for a life that is honest, good, whole. The picture I have of it makes my joints weak it is so convulsively beautiful. I lock it away deep inside, in the hopes that some of his faith might leak into my bones, like some kind of divine osmosis.

But the doubter knows it won't. The doubter dwells on the story of Job and Abraham and wonders who the hell would want to believe in such a petty, insecure God. The doubter thinks about the paganism of a Catholic service and how it is a sin to not believe that the communion wafer is actually the honest-to-god flesh of christ. The doubter is too occupied with her skepticism to notice the small miracle that is a waterfall, that is the silence of a dense and lonely forest.

So she invests her faith with Marcus Aurelius and waits for some kind of sign, some kind of proof. She is almost completely convinced that it will never come.

Thank you, Owen Meany

He said,
"IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT,"
and I earmarked the page.

It is one of the most beautiful books I have picked up in a long, long time; I will be sad to lose the characters when it's over. And it has thrown my head into a tumultous fit. Anxiety. This is good for the soul, I keep saying to myself.

I suffer from a profound lack of faith. This has been true of me at least since confirmation class in the ninth grade, and was probably true of me before then, I just didn't have the vocabulary to realize it. In truth, my agnotisticism is unassailable. Perhaps doubt is a form of a priori wisdom, perhaps some of us are just born with it. I remember being very young --still sleeping in a crib-- and waking up early one morning wondering why I was born, "what was the point of it?" When I was older I prayed for boys to like me, and for us to win softball games. I never took it seriously.

But I imagine how comforting it must be, to have the ability to believe. To know that God exists, the way you know that the walls are full of electricity, even when the lights are off. How much of a sense of belonging there must be, to have a moral code completely spelled out for you, to even have a book to refer to when one's mind gets clouded with desire! And I'm not talking about your average "weekend christian" or "sunday catholic". I am talking about holding fast to a faith so deep and nourishing that it changes the entire shape of one's life, a faith along the lines of Alyosha Karamazov or Guy Fawkes.

But I just can't make the leap.

----------------------------------------

Maybe I am being too naive about it. But my fatalism knows no bounds. And my beliefs are not completely without christian influence.


One must approach life with an unfailing sense of virtue; in all things strength and honor.
You will encounter many ignorant people who would like to harm you with their words and actions--treat each occurence as a way to build up your humility and compassion.
Be wary of anyone who has a subjective sense of right and wrong.
The object of each day is to be truer to your sense of justice than you were the day before; a static morality is one that has atrophied.
Remember that your name is priceless, let it be devalued by no action.
Do not succumb to anxiety about the future; you will meet it with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

You are O-town's pride!

He said it on the show, and I know it's sappy and lame and for chrissakes it's a spoof anyway, but damn didn't it make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Didn't I want to be running down the street, gear over the shoulder, fighting the good fight. We were born under an obsessive star, possessed of the need to lay ones' self down at the feet of justice, to sacrifice everything for the moral and the good. We are happy just to give and give and give.

So we make our decisions accordingly. For the first time in my life I feel focused. My energy is channeled and I spend my time eating up road and iron and information as quickly as it can be metabolized.

I have this picture of us in my mind. We are knights, we are glorious, we are the knowledge of all of the men of the family who went before us, and we are fueled by the strength of all of the women who sought out a more daring fate than their peers. We are strong, we are smart, and we have a killer instinct. There is nothing that will stop us.

All I want in life is to be happy.

Before a trip, the one where we borrowed her car, she left the song cued in the cd player so that it would be the first thing we heard as we headed out onto the open road. The spot in my solar plexus that burns when I think about the Alf Christmas Special lit up and everything felt right with the world. Reminded me of mom and dad hiding notes and candy in our suitcases when we or they had to go away for any length of time. Reminded me of staying up late in to the night, drinking coffee and pontificating while our inebriated peers filled the bars and staggered home, hours later, us still awake, trying to spot Orion.

A few seconds later I was back in the car and he had turned off the song and was grumbling about it being too early for music. I finished my coffee and watched my breath put fog on the windows.

It's just not the kind of thing you can learn. This is what I'm figuring out. You either get it, or you don't. Ranger in Arizona either makes you die from the weight of all the beauty in the world, or you don't notice him at all.

Tonight I'm dealing wolf cards.

I am a real bastard sometimes, I can be selfish and cruel and horrible. I have this ability to smell out weakness and exploit it when I feel necessity dictating.

Sometimes I am not good. He is running scared, and I can see it inside of his eyes when I look into them deeply. There is a hesitation not in the word, but in the look. A small resistance when he looks back into mine, the fear of what might be there. That was the first drop of blood. And the silence, the reticence, the walls made out of stone to try and keep me out. Keep my bastard brain out.

It's always midnight and I've always got a pack of wolf cards in my pocket. Stalking, tracking, I fight for what I want, for what I think is my own like a wild animal. I am no longer kind, the coldness of night fuels me but it's wrecked a part of me. I am leaner, stronger, but now there's also a fierceness who wants no ally.

Sometimes I am just not good. But I stopped apologizing.

Take it if you want it.

Burning in the solar plexus, heat behind the eyes, last time I looked in the mirror the wrinkles were looking back, I looked so tired. Forty-five minutes ago, mid-morning.

There is an emptiness inside, I can feel the gravity like a black hole pulling in solar detritus from nearby galaxies. I haven't slept well for a week and the tiredness is dragging me down, exposing the emptiness to harsh elements.

So many thoughts pulsing through my weary head, it makes it hard to think. Perhaps at this point action is better than forethought anyway.

I know what I need to do. I can feel it, every time I think about it I know it's the right decision. But I'm scared. Or maybe intimidated. Afraid, unsure, weak. I wake up and look at those wrinkles and think of the daylight that all of this indecision is burning and I tell myself to give a hard tug on my bootstraps. Pull yourself, up, out. Jump in because you know you can swim. Hell, you even know how to fly.

In April, if you care for me, be sure that I am enrolled in the academy. Actually, check on me March. Tell me "1939" and I'll remember.

And in the sea there swims another thought, or maybe it's just an emotion, and it sucks me up into its salty swirl and occasionally I am absorbed by the undertow. Sometimes I don't surface for hours. And it's a face, with a name, and a look and so much potency. And its my mind that, when I do resurface, imprisons me with the agony of what if and how and what does it all mean. And all I want is to go back, go back, go back, if just for one more small piece. One more something to cling to while I'm back here in the present.

There is an epic battle going on inside. I hope I win.

The devil in blue.

Hard-faced glass reflects lines etched with makeup and dark circles under eyes. The light comes down from the ceiling in all directions and is a sickly blue-green. Makes white walls look yellow and skin appear jaundiced. The profile is more angular now than it's been, but certainly just as insecure. The flourescence casts deep shadows into so many scars left behind, never quite out of sight. And hair, like wheat, and as untame as its reflection's spirit.

She is a solid block of steel on the inside, encased in something soft and vulnerable. She still cries when it hurts but still bites her lips to fight it down. She is smart but afraid to show it, and keeps far too much inside the steel, away from daylight. She craves acknowledgement, acceptance, recognition, but thinks the need for it is her biggest weakness. She wants to function independently of the approval of others. She hasn't yet realized that she can't. Hopefully someday she will.

It would make things a lot easier for me, on the other side of the glass.

Open the vents.

You wake up at the butt crack of dawn, but not even because the sun won't be up for another two hours. You swill your coffee, go through your routine and go to work. It's a damn good job, too. Sure, a lot of the people that you work with are totally nuts and some of them should probably seek out counseling, but what you're doing is making a difference in a very tangible way and also, you really love it. It is regimented, it has protocols that you follow, each cause has its own effect. There is a very black and white meaning there. And it fits you. It feels familiar in a way that nothing really has before.

But the thing is that it's really draining. Especially now because you still don't know exactly what you're doing. Keeping all the dashes and dots together in your mind to form a coherent overall picture takes up a lot of your brain's CPU, which in turn takes up a lot of your energy. The day is long and you don't really get any breaks. Which is fine, it's great, it's kind of relieving to always be counted on, but it is tiring.

Eight hours are over and it's time to go home, except you're not, you're going to your second job. This one is a bit more frenetic. This one is like the opposite of the first one, there's no structure, your supervisor is a very loosely woven group of loosely put together people, and they've not given you a very good sense of what your responsibilities are. They seem to change every day, and as the paperwork that you were told wasn't yours to work on piles up, the stories change, job functions shift. It makes you crazy and you want to rip out your hair and throw things.

And by this point you have no brain capacity left anyway. You're tired, your face feels all oily and you are fucking hungry. Your eyes burn. You want to go home and watch tv or read or do abso-fucking-lutely nothing, but you can't. You will be here trying to connect invisible dots until after the sun goes back down. You don't even get to see your husband all that much, let alone do anything as novel as cooking.

And then you find yourself hoping that a permanent slot opens up in your first job, by hook or by crook, that you can fill. And you hold onto that hope like all those times you prayed to God that so-and-so would have a crush on you back in grade school. Even if it means that someone else would be fired. And you look at your shoes and you don't know what to think. Did something on the inside change?

People, I am burning at both ends right now.

touch down

Circling down over the city, the sky is a familiar grey and clings halfway up the horizon. I know that when we land the air will feel brisk and the wind will try to burrow its way into zippers and down coat collars. I know that it will smell like jet exhaust and oak leaves and I know the bittersweet taste of returning that will be thick on my tongue, in my throat.

We bank widely over the lake and swoop back over the subdivisons, neatly lined with trees now orange and yellow and red. In the distance you can make out dense pockets of land that have not yet been defeated by progress. And acre after acre of autumn-colored farmland. The sun sinks lower and everything is golden.

And in my heart I can feel it, between the pulses, coarsing through the veins. How I am woven and nourished and attached to this fifty-mile scrap of land just west of the old steel mills, just south of the lake. I can see the beater cars in winter, salt stains clinging to rust, I can see the endless grey of concrete and sky, I can see the roads covered with snow, the only sign of life being the tracks you make down lonely roads towards home. And I can feel the first sun of spring drenching my skin, smell the magnolia and lilac and honeysuckle. And the heavy humidity of summer and the languor that such unrelenting heat draws out. And fall with its musky evenings of decaying oak leaf and wood smoke.

I close my eyes and realize that more than anything I need the changes to keep me sane. That strength comes from winter and creativity from summer and passion, perhaps, from fall. We touch down and everything in the entire universe is again in its right place. There is a dinner waiting for me and I am, completely, comforted.

Already wiped.

It's funny. I am typing this from a vantage point that I was similarly inspired by during the lazy summers in between years of high school. I used to watch the bank ladies take their smoke breaks in the alley across the street. I would sketch their likeness in my notebook, write about the struggles of a tedious life, answer the phone occasionally when it would ring. This was before the internet, before blogs.

More than ten years later, here I am, again. Same office. Different job, but it is amusing that here I am, sometimes answering the phone, writing about life, still mostly about the struggles involved therein. And didn't I always know, somehow, that I'd be back?

So, yes, I did get the job that I interviewed for. I also found out that my dispatch training will start next week. So for the next month or so my life will be anything but tedious while I try to maintain my sanity while balancing a 60-or-so hour work week. It hasn't started yet but I am already tired.

And the bank ladies must have found a new place to smoke. Either that or they've given it up.

I stuttered

It's the largesse that we picked up along a dusty stretch of road in Colorado this June. The way we brightly festooned each naked spot to fill the emptiness, the nagging isolation. But you can't ever get enough. Or so I learned, later, down a different highway in Montana. Just like that snap your fingers it can all go away.

It was a slow fog that settled on the place, and perhaps is the off-gassing of the fresh paint or the humidity which clings even in the corners of the closets. It descends heavily after Patrick leaves for work and grants me a reprieve when he comes home again. It is at its thickest when I am left alone with my thoughts, nothing to distract me. Recently I have (for the third time) picked up MacIntyre in an effort to soak my mind in something else, but the book actually seems to make it worse. I light candles for myself, markers to navigate throughout the halls when the fog envelops everything, totally.

And I am always looking for the one box which didn't seem to make it to the apartment. Inside it contains my identity, and I think I've misplaced it. Of all the things I could have lost. Then again it could be on a chilly beach in California.

Come down, come down, come down.

In eight days I will be 27!

The fiery truck

The lonliest feeling. She told me it was a fatal car crash and I went down the checklist in my head. She was the only one I came up with who would be driving there at that moment and she was the one who told me about it, so everything was okay. Turned off the panic. Switched into the grief of placing myself in the driver's seat of that car, wondering what it was like, was it painful, how long did it last? Half seconds in and out of the fantasy, wondering if maybe there was something wrong with me for even wondering.

Thoughts of Nick. There are some journeys that we can't prepare ourselves for. They just come one day and you do your best.

When I got home I looked at the news and the car had been driving the wrong way on the highway for about a mile when it slammed head-on into a semi. Smoke and flame and violence but the driver of the car was the only one who didn't walk away. I caught my mind hoping that it was an old person who had settled his accounts and had lived a full life. And I stopped wondering if there was something wrong with me, of course there is.

It could have played out so differently. If she had left a few minutes early where would she have been on the highway? I hate how fucking tenuous our grasp on all of this is.

been awhile

I haven't posted for awhile because I haven't had access to the internet. I also haven't showered for a week. Life's been a little rustic lately. So, anyway, after Patrick and I left San Francisco we headed south to Santa Cruz and Monterey. Both were kind of horribly yuppie-ish and spendy places but they were on the ocean, which is always a plus. Deep down I'm just not a city person.

But we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium in, duh, Monterey, and it was amazing! Except for the hordes of people. California has WAY TOO MANY people. I managed to get some photos though, florescent jellyfish!


Patrick being completely mesmerized by their buoyancy:


Then we headed inland to Yosemite. We are slowly learning to not hit major tourist areas on the weekend. Fortunately we arrived at Yosemite on a Tuesday, and it was still totally crowded! Like I said, California = aggoraphobia. Too many people. But it was still beautiful in that angsty way it is when you have to keep dodging people who stop in the middle of the f**ing sidewalk to pick the underwear out of their ass. (I'm a little burnt out right now, need a shower and some fresh vegetables.) But seriously, the views were amazing, I would highly recommend going to Yosemite, just go any time other than summer.

The grand vista:


The falls:


And of course, the huge ass redwoods that are older than Jesus, seriously.




Then we decided to hike out into the back country and go camping for a few days out there. We ended up hiking about 18 miles, with a total elevation gain of 4500 feet! All that with a heavy pack on my back. (Every muscle is sore right now.) You can't go into the wilderness without a bear canister to store everything that smells like anything, which added a ton of weight and bulk to our packs. The views were great, it smelled wonderful out there (as long as you were upwind of me) but damn it was a lot of work!

Here's me resting along the way:


The waterfall we camped near the first night:


Our second campsite, see how our tent blends in with the rock!


We watched the sunset from our lonely cliff last night, it was beautiful:


We were both feeling pretty barnsour this morning, so we woke up at six and jetted down the trail back to the car and civilization. 9 miles only took us three hours, woot! Except I fell a couple times and once I fell off a tree I was trying to climb over and bloodied my legs pretty good. I'm all scraped up now and bruised. And I got all pissed at nature too, you know? Like every rock I fumbled over and that tree limb that broke, they were all put there on purpose to slow me down and mess me up. Yeah. Time to get to a hotel and unwind a bit. :)

So now we're in Redding, CA and the thermometer outside says 104 degrees Farenheit. The woman at the front desk told us that it was unusually cool for this time of year, last week it was 119. Man, and I was looking forward to soaking in the jacuzzi, too. Oh well. At least there's running water here.

Tomorrow we're heading to the coastal Redwoods, then up the coast through Oregon. More pictures later, now it's my turn in the shower.

=D

No one says "Frisco"

After leaving Pullman we made a bee-line for Northern California and camped at Mt. Shasta (we had to go through Weed, CA to get there). Apparently, to the hippies, Mt. Shasta is this huge energy mecca where healings and things of that nature take place. I didn't have any kind of miraculous experience there, but it was beautiful:


Then we headed towards the coast and San Francisco. Being in a city was some serious culture shock after camping and sticking to the back roads. Lots of homeless people, bad smells, bad moods and crass consumerism. But it was also full of culture and color and trees, flowers and ocean. This was our hotel room:


On Friday we braved the mass transit system and jumped on the side of a trolley car and rode all the way down the line to Fisherman's Wharf. Too bad this one's not still moving. ;)


At Fisherman's Wharf we caught a boat out to Alcatraz Island and took a tour of the prison, which is maintained by the National Park Service, strangely. Alcatraz from the boat:


Me in a jail cell, jesus they were small:


Can you see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background? We drove over it on the way into town.


So now we're outside of Monterey and are going to head to the aquarium tomorrow and find a campsite on the beach somewhere. We had breakfast with my friend in Berkeley (and her dog!) and drove down to Santa Cruz to hang out, which was sort of disappointing. Lots of yuppies and kids and over-priced shit to buy with your disposable income. Kind of depressing in the plastic way. I'm a little burnt on cities so the forests and beaches are calling. I'll post more pictures of Yosemite after I get a chance to take some.

Paradise Found

We spent last night at my mother-in-law's newly acquired land in Idaho. She has 20 acres on which exists two cabins and a pond and nearly a million pine trees. It was beautiful, and I hope that all of you can at some point come out here and stay there. There's no electricity so at night we lit candles and kerosene lamps and I remembered how beautiful candlelight makes everything. There is a propane stove so we had pancakes and tea for breakfast!

The cabin with me in the pond:


The little guest cabin where Patrick and I spent the night, it's big enough for a bed and a chair, but what else do you need?!


Here's another view of the main cabin.


And Patrick by the fire. Dry pine needles are amazingly effective tinder.


The moon, a few Ponderosa Pines and the smoke from our fire.

The desert is haunted.

So after the Rocky Mountain National Park we drove to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Awesome name. It's this huge gorge in an otherwise fairly flat stretch of Colorado. It's like a 2000 foot knife cut. Hard to capture digitally or otherwise. Anyway, here are a few photos:



We took a long hike up to the top of a mountain for a better vantage point, this is me halfway up.



After camping there for a night we drove to Utah and to Arches National Park. My favorite!! Could I have, I would have pitched my tent and stayed there forever. Sadly, the campsite was full so we only got a day to enjoy it. Seriously though, this place is magical. I will return here someday no doubt, want to come?!



and



and



Check out the signage in Utah:



Yikes!

postcards from the road

We woke up early Thursday morning and hit Trail Ridge Road through the Rocky Mountain National Park. I don't know if I've ever been on a more beautiful road. The highest elevation on the road is something like 12,000 feet but the Honda (I've named it Jack) climbed the hills like a champion! The mountains were hard to capture on film, you just can't get the sense of vastness.... anyway, here's what it looked like, sort of! (Patrick took these photos.)



The clouds hang low in the air (low being like 10,000 feet) and storms can blow in on a dime.


If you're in Colorado, never go anywhere without a good hat for shade and a camera!


This little bastard wouldn't have lived long if Zeke had been with us! We found him chilling out at a roadstop near the top of one of the mountains.


It's amazing the part elevation plays in temperature. I think I read somewhere that you lose 10 degrees with every 1000 feet you climb. Anyway it was COLD up here but so pretty. The rocks behind the snow are lava! Remnants of a violent volcanic eruption...


Is it a worm or is it me??


So now I'm in a hotel in Colorado because it's Sunday and Deadwood's on. Tomorrow we're hitting up Black Canyon of the Gunnison and then on to Moab, Utah and Arches National Park! More photos to follow, so check back, eh?

Garden of the Gods

Hiking through this amazing rocky park this morning, made me think I should move to Colorado. Everywhere you look there's a trail. Even in the towns.

Me and Patrick at the Siamese twins:


Our hiking companion:


Tomorrow it's Boulder and then the Rocky Mountain National Park. More pictures in a few days.... :)

beauty and lonliness

They bought a round for the sailor
and they heard his tale
of a world that was so far away,
and a song that we'd never heard
a song of a little bird
that fell in love with a whale.
He said: you cannot live in the ocean,
and she said to him: You never can live in the sky.
But the ocean is filled with tears
and the sea turns into a mirror
and there's a whale in the moon when it's clear
and a bird on the tide.
Please don't cry
Let me dry your eyes.
So tell me that you will wait for me,
hold me in your arms,
I promise we never will part.
I'll never sail back to the time
but I'll always pretend that you're mine,
though I know that we both must part
you can live in my heart.

Sun and fog

A week ago they offered him the job for another year, with a paid summer off. A week ago we forgot about the boxes on the floor, about the cats on the plane, about what we’d do when we got there. We hopped in the car, I behind the wheel, he filling the space next to me so nicely. A week ago tomorrow we were blessed over and over and over by a voice I’d like to somehow make my own.

And then on to New Orleans, just the four of us (plus one), and the call we all felt to bear witness. There is a stretch of road that goes on, mile after mile, with nothing but rubble and ruin. Poor lives caught up in the politics of tourism, souls smashed like the cheap clapboard siding of their houses. On one cement block foundation someone had spray-painted “Baghdad” in ugly handwriting. Joe, the driver of our limousine, told us that the GI’s he’d been bringing home said the lower ninth ward looked worse than Iraq.

And the Christians will tell you that we are our brother’s keeper. But if I know you, you won’t believe them.

The French Quarter smelled like old beer and mules and cayenne pepper. And we walked in the sun like we were Icarus. She has the cop eye, she looks into your soul. And so do I. And we will always have a home, as long as there exists the other. These shiny bright bits of glass help me to remember that I can never truly be alone. To remember that the sky is giving thanks to the sea every time that it rains.

And she is getting married, and when I think about it long and hard (as you know I do) I can’t think of a better match. He is a child, and so is she, and I mean that in the best of ways. In the way that it’s only children who would take the time to find the beauty in a blade of grass, to know what fireflies smell like. They will never stop questioning, changing, growing, and they will have that in common with each other.

Then I think that we are all growing old together, aren’t we? I have visions of grey hair, floral print dresses, tattoos and piercing poking out from underneath and it makes me grin. The skin may sag but the Jindra remains intact.

Also, everyone, listen, I had this idea. Since there’s this guy in town who does web design but he’s likely to go to prison, I should do web design. Send cards to all his clients and the like. I could do that part-time next year and sell my crafty stuff for the other part time. But I need help thinking up a name for a web design company. I thought of “Zen Design” but it’s taken. Something that conveys a very sleek, artistic, functional, technologically capable design company. Ideas please!

a crack in the sidewalk

There's this great tune that Johnny Cash sings, A Boy Named Sue. The crazy thing about the song is that Shel Silverstein wrote it. Yeah, the guy who wrote all those awesome kids' poems! Apparently he wrote a lot of songs, too. Here are the lyrics, I think they're great:

My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me "Sue."

Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through.
Some gal would giggle and I'd get red
And some guy'd laugh and I'd bust his head,
I tell ya, life ain't easy for a boy named "Sue."

Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name.

Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
There at a table, dealing stud,
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old,
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now your gonna die!!"

Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer.

I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.

And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you "Sue.'"

I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him
Bill or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!

Lucky kid.

A short post today because I can't get the words out of my head right. I tried earlier, it didn't work.

Inside my blood and guts and bones there resides a stone tablet, my own personal ten commandments. I don't have all ten yet, but when I hear a truth that I cannot deny and that will not leave my head I carve it there, with chisel and hammer.

One that I carved while still in high school reads, "the journey is what is important, not the destination".

At the top of the list I have just a word, in all capitals, "FAMILY".

This weekend I carved a new, and to me very important truth. It started as a joke, and there is no better way for a truth to reveal itself. With a laugh. "You will make it home if you remain true to who you are".

Remember, it is when you least suspect it that the universe will coalesce and hand you a lotus flower. I will write more later.

As for right now I'm learning a few Johnny Cash tunes and am actually managing to sing along to my strumming. Also feeling a little depressed but not minding. Feeling mean like the dog who guards the junkyard. Some days you just can't get out of bed on the right side to save your life.

This time from Nana

Had another dream last night. Nana died this time, I don't remember how or if I was even there to be a witness but she definitely died. And then I woke up this morning to the phone ringing. Seven-thirty. The caller id said "Lifeline" and I knew it really was about her, Nana.

She wasn't dead though. They told me she pressed her button because she was weak and couldn't get out of bed. My mom was there. She was calling the ambulance. I think I said thank-you before I hung up.

I called mom over at Nana's, asked for a task, something to do, a piece of the burden she was carrying. I was charged with picking my aunt up (no small task, she's crazier than any of us) and bringing her along with me to the hospital. An hour, two cups of coffee and some second-hand menthol basic smoke later I delivered myself and my crazy aunt to the hospital.

Nana had already ingested an oxycontin, two percocets, and the nurse was emptying a syringe full of morphine into her IV drip. She weighs eighty pounds if she's just eaten, but she was fully concious, lucid even, with all those drugs in her system.

My mom says she doesn't have blood, that it's venom coursing through her veins. She might be right.

For the next four or five hours I watched as Nana yelled at my aunt and mom, smacked their hands away when they tried to help, cursed them, sobbed, and drifted in and out of sleep. She would put her hands to her face and let out a ghostly cry, "it's not fair, it's cruel, it's so cruel".

She was like an 89 year old infant, unable to deal with any amount of stress, emotional or otherwise.

I sat with her for another hour or so after she was finally transferred from the ER to a bed in the hospital. I watched her yell at a nurse, smack my aunt, shit her bed, sob.

I finally left, feeling as though I had lived through two days of not sleeping. And I'm left with so many questions.

This has been going on for almost eight years. At this point, she will probably not ever return home and will finish out her life in a nursing home. She doesn't really have any friends left and she's alienated most of her family. "Quality of life" seems so far away from all of this.

We went out to dinner tonight to laugh about things, instead of isolating ourselves in our kitchens and crying. At one point mom said, "Aunt Fran used to always say that we're more humane with our animals than we are with other people." And it's true, maybe.

As I sit here typing this I realize that I wish my grandmother would decide to die. The amount of medication that she will need to manage the immense physical pain that she's in will incapacitate her. Quality of life. When she gets drugged she gets mean, vicious, the nasty underbelly of her personality is all that's left. Is what my mom and aunt have to try and nurse.

I hope that she goes quietly in her sleep and I hope that wishing that doesn't make me a bad person.

Message from my grandpa.

Had a dream last night that I was one of many underlings in corporate America, working in this four-storey renovated old grade school for some company whose product I didn’t know. I was one of only two disgruntled worker bees, out of maybe two-hundred. We met in the last five minutes of the dream, I had been dispatched by my supervisor, a mid-level manager, to the fourth floor to deliver an important message to the CEO. I took the steps two at a time to the top, and outside the CEO’s very important office doors, there he was, the other disgruntled. He was sitting at a desk in the hall, as if he was in the sixth grade and being punished. We made eye contact and recognized the rebellion lurking inside the other, and laughed. (The most appropriate thing in the world to do.)

I went into the CEO’s office, but left the door open so that my new ally could bear witness to the soul-crushing degradation that is working in corporate America. So that he’d know he wasn’t the only one doing some blood-letting. But I couldn’t remember the message. The CEO looked at me, questioned me with a crisp, “Yes?”, but it was gone. I could remember the ugly face of my mid-level manager, who looked so much like the Dean of Admissions. I could look into the future and see how upset she’d be that I hadn’t been successful on such an important task. But for the life of me I couldn’t remember her message.

Before the reprimand came I ran out of his office, grabbed my new friend by the hand and ran down the stairs with him. They were taking bodies in suits out on stretchers. People were dying and I had no idea why. The two of us threw open the front doors and ran outside together, into the pregnant spring. The corporate lilac bushes were in bloom, the daffodils, the grasses, the tulips, all growing together like a chaotic jungle, as if to make up for the lack of life just inside the building.

We two worker bees inhaled the fragrant air and then took off running down the sidewalk. I woke up thanking the stars that I don’t have a job to go to this morning.

And euc would always say, “Caged birds accept each other, but flight is what they long for.” And she’s right.

Woof.

I am so incredibly bored at work today. So, I've been cracking out on internet quizzes and the like. This was my favorite result, by far:




I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world, people.

I got screwed.

I should clarify; I got a nostril screw! That's what the professional body modification artists call it, in layman's terms it means that I got my nose pierced. I have for you, a picture (can you see the little flicker of steel?!?):

I cut my bangs and died them red, also. It's spring, it was time for change. SO, I haven't written for awhile. My computer crashed, this work thing is sucking my soul away, I've been busy designing tattoos to have inscribed on my flesh at some point in the future. The writing thing just hasn't been happening. I will try to jump back into the river soon, kiddies.

I did just discover podcasts though, and the fact that Democracy Now podcasts itself! (Can podcast be used as a verb?) Makes the morning cup of tea and mandatory mundanity of the data downloads that I am in charge of much more palatable.

HONK IF YOU'D RATHER BE HIKING!

cedar sketches

There is a part of us that seeks the suffering out. We look for sadness and anger and jealousy under rocks, in raindrops, out at sea. We need the reactivity to spice up the bland reality of the day to day. We sink our teeth into the rotten parts of our personalities; we don’t let go. We live a life on tenterhooks.

But only on our bad days.

Sometimes we let ourselves rise like valkyries to meet the sky. We can be noble and empathetic and beautiful. Some days all things enter us and recede again like so many waves on an immeasurable ocean. We are earthly gods fueled by all of the hope that ever existed.

What I would like is to walk the road that exists between the two extremes.

**************

We spent whole summers outside in the forest. We got to know the change in weather by the way the trees smelled, by the texture of their leaves. We would have huge adventures building fires, climbing rocks, fording a creek again and again and again. We imagined we were the last remaining soldiers of an egalitarian monarchy. We were noble.

When we got older we’d return to the forest after breaking out of our houses in the middle of the night. We would congregate underneath a huge pine tree and consume what we managed to steal from our parents’ liquor cabinets. We’d watch the stars drift, climb the trees, race each other up and down the trail. We’d play the night game and imagine we heard wild animals chasing us, or convince ourselves that we’d seen the eyes of a madman peering out from just behind the far bushes. We would run until the sharp night air seared our lungs.

Last winter I hiked back in on snowshoes after a snowstorm dumped more than two feet on us. Mine were the only tracks for most of the way, and it was so quiet that I cursed my heavy breath for breaking the silence. I labored for most of an hour to make the bridge, and needed to take rest by the time I reached it. I made a seat in the snow and my breath slowed, my eyes closed, my body relaxed. I sat there for several minutes and let the quiet sink into my bones. A noise to my right caused my gaze to shift and there on a snow-laden sycamore limb was a giant downy barn-owl. We regarded each other for a few long moments, then he turned, and flew away.

I clamped my snowshoes back on and made my way across the bridge and back towards home. The streets were nearly as empty as the forest, but the smell of pine was replaced with wood smoke and the windows of houses softly glowed with the contentment of having a day off from work and school. Everyone together drinking big mugs of tea in front of a fire, safely away from the storm outside.

And if there was a heaven, this is what I’d want it to be. A stone house in a small town filled with family, with a naïve happiness, where you can always hike out to a snow-filled forest to remind yourself that everything changes.

A sketch

We spend Sunday nights around the kitchen table, with the radio on, NPR playing Folk Alley. We make a pot of tea, turn the oven on and crack its door to heat our drafty room. You talk about our plans for the future and I listen. I rant about the world’s problems while you play with the cat, while you listen. We let the conversation wane and listen to some reeling Irish melody. We sip our tea. The windows fog up from the heat of our oven, from our voices.

You don’t look the way you did when I met you. The boyishness is fading and in its place is a steady masculinity. You work yourself up with the “could-be’s” and “what-if’s” and your eyes get that far away focus and your brow furrows. And I think that you are beautiful. And I wonder if it is possible to know someone completely and at the same time not know them at all. My perspective swings like a pendulum; one moment I am sitting across from a stranger and the next moment I am sitting across from myself.

And I forgot to tell you this, I love you.

Rub me wrong.

I feel really mixed about reading Mother Jones. There’s a side of me who wants to be as informed as possible so that I can be a responsible member of this society, and make decisions that will in some small way benefit the planet and the other humans who inhabit this little earth. I mean, let’s face it; we’re basically the most privileged people in the world, and that status has come at an inconceivable cost to our environment and other cultures. But there’s another side of me who wants to react like an ostrich, bury my head in the sand and pretend like all is good and holy. Ignorance doesn’t make the soul cringe, you know?

In the end I read it, from cover to cover, but it usually takes me a long time. I read a few pages and then leave it for awhile, to give myself some time to recover from the grim news it bears.

This month’s edition is chock-full of horrible truth about the environment, specifically the sea and global warming. I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet because it is AGONIZING. If even a small portion of what they’ve reported is true, then you and I are screwed. I think this month has affected me more than other months because I CAN’T TAKE IT when humans fuck with animals. If one human blows up another human, it sucks, it’s regrettable, it shouldn’t happen, but ultimately I get over it. But if we humans endanger the lives of animals it unseats me. I can’t let it go. It makes my heart break and fills me with the anger I’m trying to expunge from my body. (I don’t know why this disparity exists and maybe it makes me a bad person. Whatever, there it is.)

So, not knowing what else to do, I’ve written an angry letter to our president. Here it is for your enjoyment.

Hey, fuckwad!

Yeah, that’s right, I’m talking to YOU. If I told you that someone in a position of power elicited advice on global warming from a politically conservative fiction writer, would you think that person in power was 1) mentally unstable, or 2) you? I mean, seriously, asking Michael Crichton about whether or not global warming is actually happening? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Now America is not only evil, we’re also ridiculously stupid in the eyes of the world. So, thanks for that.

Also, I was just wondering, what do you have against animals? Seriously. It seems like you enjoy killing them. But it has to be slowly, right? Reduce the regulation of emissions from coal factories, let the mercury from those factories go unchecked, allow it to blow out to sea and get ingested by algae and krill and work its way (with amazing potency) up the food chain. In a few years the large fish (including dolphins, sharks and whales) will be so toxic that their children will be born with three eyes and not live past their second birthdays. It’s quite a plan, really. It must’ve taken forever to concoct. I’m wondering if you realized that the top of the food chain is, well, us. Have you registered that yet?

Of course, when you get bored waiting for this little scheme to come to fruition, you can always fall back on the pleasure that is found in hunting endangered Alaskan wolves with sniper rifles from helicopters. Now that’s a sport! It takes a real man to do that shit. What, with the danger of it and all. The helicopter could crash.

Speaking of global warming (wait, was I?) did you know that the glaciers in Antarctica are melting to the point that Polar Bears are beginning to drown because they can’t swim the long distances between chunks of ice? And when they do manage to make it to an ice patch and find a meal, the seals that they feast on are so full of mercury and other chemicals (I know you have a short attention span, re-read the second paragraph) that they poison the bears, not nourish them. (The same thing is happening to most Inuit cultures.)

I realize that this has probably been an arduous read for you, but there’s one last tidbit I’d like to leave you with. Ice reflects 80% of the sun’s UV rays, whereas water absorbs 80% of the sun’s UV rays. Can you do the math? Do you get the idea? The more ice that melts, the more biomass in the form of water we create, the faster global warming will happen... Do a google search for “exponential” and you may begin to get the idea.

So, please, stop asking Michael Crichton for advice about global warming (or anything for that matter) and find yourself a real scientist. Try one from Canada. Canadians are so much more polite than we Americans are.

Most Sincerely,

Porfiry the misanthrope

Quick and dirty freewrite.

There are some movies that don’t let you watch passively. There are some that reach into your guts, yank around on your heart, upset things deep inside. There are some movies whose turbulence remains with you for several days after the watching. I remember this after seeing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Something about the blue of Paul Newman’s eyes, the intensity behind them, they cut through the pixilated decades and bored straight into the part of my chest that feels heavy when I cry. The word mendacity stuck with me for almost a year after the first time I watched it.

We are so much more than just the sum of our parts.

Some music hits you the same way, too. The first time I heard Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# minor I cried, the image of everyone I ever knew who had died floating to the very top of my mind. I played it at least five times in a row. And Moby’s My Weakness, I remember they played it at the end of one of the last episodes of the X-Files I ever watched, and it infected me. I was obsessed with the sounds of it, and somehow (god knows how because this was before Al Gore thought to invent the internet) I figured out what song it was, and listened to it over and over until it had become a part of my flesh. [One time euc and my father and I were driving through some god-forsaken stretch of dirt road and forest in the Upper Peninsula, in the middle of the night, and we played that song over and over in a loop until dad made us turn it off because it was too ghostly for such a ghostly place.]

The distillation of perfection. I obsess over the arrows that penetrate my tough outer-shell because so few can. [They are reminders.]

Try again/Fail.

No challenge today, kiddies. Take a break and play outside.

Today has been crammed full of shit, suctioned shut, and filled with more shit. I feel like I am nine knives flying through the air, almost but not just yet hitting their target; was that apparent in the opening?

One thing; I hate it when people give you just enough information so that you can start a task, but just little enough so that you do a bad job of it. (Brace yourselves for some complaining.) I have a temp job. It is quietly beginning to suck the life from the very inside of my bones. The people I work with are nice, I like them as people, honest. However (you knew the however was coming) I posit that spending years in an office job which doesn't greatly challenge the critical thinking skills you developed whilst reading Neitsche in college is BAD in the long run. Okay. This is the thing. We humans, we like to know where we stand in the hierarchical scheme of things. We need to feel like we're better than the people around us so, like Wiley Coyote, we throw grease on the road every chance we get.

So this is what happens. (This is an imaginary scenario, but it plays out about once a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, in my office.) Somebody gives me a task involving contacting people/shuffling through paperwork and logging that contact or paperwork somehow into a database. This is stuff that I'm good at, because I was a monkey in a former life. SO. The task is explained to me and demonstrated. I begin the task, and cruise through the stack of paper on my desk. I take a break and eat a banana, because that's what we monkeys do. Later in the day the task is re-assessed and it's discovered that many of the steps I was supposed to have taken were left out during the explanation phase of the task so now I have to go back and complete all the forgotten steps. But this part of the task is done in a weird "it's kind of your fault because you didn't assume we forgot to explain part of the process" way. Okay, no big deal, I hate feeling like I've messed something up, and I try to throw those feelings off my shoulders because, obviously, I haven't. So I restart the task in earnest, with a new desire to hold myself to exacting grammatical and punctuational (probably not a word) standards, because I enjoy punishing myself for wrongs that I did not commit. Then, usually five minutes later, some other forgotten detail is remembered, and shared with me in the same weird, guilty way.

It is at this point that I lose all propriety and start taking mothafuckas down.

YAR$%@#GHGLYARGH@#$!!!!!!!!!!!

My frustration has been building, and today has been like the culmination of the shit-tasticness of this "interim" period in my work history. Now that I've ranted, I feel better.

Tomorrow I plan on taking out the sailboat I built in my imagination when I was a kid and circumnavigating the globe. There will be so many places to visit and amazing people to meet! Would anyone like to join me?

=/ I feel so very disaffected.

But of all things

truth beareth away the victory. (Engraved on Fairchild Chapel)

************

My father looks remarkably Irish in a suit, especially when he wears his black wool trench coat. The lilting step and mischievous glance stand out against the ridiculous formality of the suit, against the monochromatic backdrop of a frozen Ohio. Walking behind my father and mother, arm in arm, it hits me how important the image is, this silhouette, made stark in contrast with the icy wastes of our northern landscape. He is a study of duality (the man who wears Sponge Bob pajamas is the same man who carried a gun and badge for so many years), and like the long nose and red ears, the duality is one of the traits that he passed on to me and my sisters. I follow him, down the ice-slick road to its end, to the wake of a friend’s father, the impermanence of life sinking in with each carefully placed step.

Someday it will be my father’s wake that we’re lined up for. The thought enters my brain like a dose of poison; my body reacts and forces the image of it from my mind. That day is not this day.

Inside the house at the end of the road there is a huge gathering of people, noise, emotion, alcohol. The day was designed to be a celebration of the life of the father, and most surfaces are lined with years-old photos and memories piled up like so much bric-a-brac. As I look for my friend in the sprawling house I steal a few cursory glances into the pictures that capture him as a child, as the kid I still know, as the only person he will ever be to me. Thin, short and like a fire-cracker, it’s his presence that the film captures, his radiance, not his father’s. I sneak down an empty hall and can’t help but feel guilty for my lack of emotion at his father’s passing. I am not here for the dead, I’m here for the living.

When I find him it strikes me that he’s grown up now, a real man, thick and with a deep voice. When I hug him he fills my arms and squeezes, gently, back. I let go and wonder what it feels like to lose a father who was nothing like my father. I wonder how much the loss hurts him and where. I remember my friend crying behind our garage when Big Kitty died, I remember hugging him, and I wonder where he does his crying now, and whether it’s the girl with all the makeup and hair dye who hugs him. The emotion rises in me now, but it’s not for the father, it’s for my loss – the selfish loss of my place in the life of this friend.

I let myself fold back into the periphery, out of conversation and into the role of observer (which I covet perhaps too much). I scan the enormous room and let my eyes fall on my father, discussing something with a Scotsman, a man who I know he dislikes. There’s the glint in his eye which means he’s passing all kinds of unholy judgment, and there’s that mischievous smile that tells me he’ll give us his comic rendering of their conversation later. My eyes drift left and I see the rest of my family, congregated in front of one of the room’s floor to ceiling windows. Their profiles stand out darkly against the waning sun, lighting their backs with the brilliance of a million lit candles – an image now planted in the most fertile soil in my heart. They are a mountain, I am one of them.

And then the weight of my friend’s loss resounds in the hollow of my chest. Which is the more tragic fate: to lose a family member whom you love intensely, or to never have that love at all?

I pick up my now heavy feet and walk over to my father who looks more Irish than ever with his long ruddy cheeks and easy smile. When I approach, the Scotsman turns to another bystander to initiate stale conversation and my father and I drift back over to the rest of our family. Standing with them, in a room full of mourners, on a desolate winter evening I am home, I am safe, I am surrounded. A feeling crashes down on me which is like all of the hope in the entire world, radiating out of my solar plexus, pulsing, leaving, washing back over me again, transfixing me there in a moment of random perfection on the powder-blue shag rug that belongs to my friend’s mother, the widow. We will never be here again, my family, like this. There is so much convulsive beauty in the knowing of that.

Moments later I have sequestered myself next to the window, looking out on an expansive garden that borders a snowy wood. There is a stand of shaggy Hickory trees not far from the house, and perched upside down on one of them is a diminutive blue jay. Digging for a meal beneath the tough outer bark. The last thought that passes through my mind before we head back into the cold together is that this bleakness is not beautiful to everyone. But it is to me.

Who am I?

This is an ambiguous and, well, kind of lame question that I've been struggling with lately. (Lately being the last 15 or so years of my life.) Most recently the question has "cropped up" because of the vast and pending change for Patrick and myself. I feel as though I'll have to (soon) make a decision about what I want my future to look like, but I feel that before I can draw a picture of it, I have to be firmly aware of my foundation... of who I am. Because how can you know where you're heading if you don't know where you are?

So, basically, instead of doing anything proactive that could lead to making an informed decision about my life, I've been cracking out on craftster.org and reading people's blogs. I was perusing Ahniwa's blog today, when I found a link to a personality test. Perfect!

(Although I should mention that I think most personality tests are crap and they ask totally obvious questions like, '1. If you saw an old lady trying to cross a road would you, A. Help her along or B. Push her down' I mean, come on.) So I took the test and it actually seemed to be pretty good. In that it asked random questions and I had no idea what to expect with the outcome. So.....



It then went on to say all kinds of things that I felt were pretty accurate about me. Like, Idealists strive to discover who they are and how they can become their best possible self -- and they want to help others make the journey and also The idea of a spiritual dimension to life, the "not visible" or the "not yet" that can only be known through intuition or by a leap of faith, is far more important to Idealists than the world of material things and also Highly ethical in their actions, Idealists hold themselves to a strict standard of personal integrity. They must be true to themselves and to others, and they can be quite hard on themselves when they are dishonest, or when they are false or insincere.

This is me. I mean, as far as generalizations go, you know. I was quite surprised by how much of the four-paragraph description really suited me. It went on to say that Idealists make good healers, teachers, counselors, journalists. That the most important thing to them is that their work provides them the opportunity to help others, and to help guide others towards that elusive "not visibile" in the above description. Yes, exactly! That is the kind of job I'm looking for.

Like spiritual social work. Instead of handing out money to pay a gas bill, I'd like to hand out the inter-connectedness to all beings near and far. Anyone have any suggestions on where I could post my resume?!

But seriously, this has me re-thinking my whole plan. Not that it was much of a plan to begin with. I must not ever put money or security ahead of spiritual purpose. Remind yourself of this post in six months. (And thank you to Ahniwa for posting the survey. If y'all want to take it, go visit his blog.)

Wednesday's challenge!

I had a lot of reservations about posting this challenge. The topic I decided upon turned out to be hard for me to write about because I feel so uncomfortable with it. I never talk about it. I think that’s why I ultimately decided upon it, though. Sometimes shedding light on the dark places is enough to make them dissipate. So, here goes.

Blog Challenge Number Three:
Name the physical trait that you are most insecure about and explain why. To end with some positivity, describe something physical about yourself that you love.

My answer:
My complexion. I had great skin until I was about eleven, maybe twelve, then the acne started coming and things (mostly inside my head) became hellish. When I was in the ninth grade my face was red because I had so many pimples. It was horrible, embarrassing, confidence-debilitating, you get the idea. I don’t remember being teased or anything by other kids (I think my school was sort of amazing in that respect) but I mentally punished myself everyday for it. I would and still do obsess about it. For instance, I know that fluorescent lighting exaggerates bad skin, so if I’m under fluorescent light my insecurity sky-rockets. Also, a person’s complexion is usually the first thing that I notice.

I think I kind of always felt like I was doing something wrong, which was causing the acne. I associated so much guilt with having a bad complexion. Like I wasn’t clean enough, or I had done something bad to karmically induce the pimples. I still think this way sometimes! (When I was little, a member of my family who will remain nameless said, “it will be my fault if you ever have acne”… I believe that was the precise moment that the guilt started!)

Starting in seventh or eighth grade Euc and I had regular visits with dermatologists who prescribed all kinds of antibiotics and freakish sorts of ointments. None of it really worked (and I am afraid of how resistant to antibiotics my body must be now!!) After the ninth grade my skin chilled out, and I would go for periods without any pimples, but I would always have the occasional break-out, and by that time I had scars. And that’s what I hate the most – the scars. They’re like permanent fleshy reminders of so much guilt and self-consciousness and imperfection. I will never not have them. Some days, when I’m feeling especially down about myself, they are all that I see when I look in the mirror. I’m 26 now, and I still break-out sometimes. It can get very frustrating…

Wow, what a hard thing to write. I really don’t talk about this at all. I was inspired to write this after I read something that Rodney Yee wrote. I’ve been practicing yoga more and more lately, which has definitely helped me feel more comfortable in my body. I was perusing his website and he wrote something like, “we have to find a way to accept our bodies for what they are. We were not all destined to be super-models and that is perfectly okay.” I know, it’s obvious, but it’s worth repeating and remembering. In America, especially as women, we’re under near constant pressure to be thinner, to have longer more voluminous hair, to be more attractive, to wear tighter clothing, to not look like our normal selves at all. We have, for years, felt so self-conscious that insecurity has become second nature. It’s unhealthy, and frankly, I’m tired of having a horrible self-image. It’s stressful and takes too much of my energy. Time to try and heal, and it starts with this post.

Something I like about myself:
I love how strong I am. I was lucky to be born into a muscular frame! I have large biceps and triceps and can lift more than your average woman. I love knowing that I can lift/move/shove most anything by myself, and it’s nice to not feel hampered by things that might be heavy. I love to be at the gym, curling more than the guy next to me!

Okay, now it’s your turn. Believe me, if you get it out, you’ll feel better. If you respond on your blog, tell me that you did in a comment. Or, if you don’t have your own blog, just respond in the comments below.

Random scraps.

I have ingested far too much caffeine today. I feel, kinda, wiggy. Last night I slept like crap, I kept waking and tossing and turning and over-heating. Should not have had two cups of coffee during the game last night, but, I think I'm some kind of caffeinated super-hero, like the chemical doesn't affect me, like coffee is the deisel to my mack truck, like life doesn't taste as good if it's not covered with a caffeine-induced fog. Yeah, well, I'm wrong on all counts.

(But I kinda like to suffer for the over-indulgence.)

Okay, you guys, here's the deal. I'm going to post a challenge every Wednesday afternoon. It doesn't matter how long it takes you to respond to it, I figure anything to get our collective creative juices flowing is a good thing. (Although you better finish it at some point during the week, 'cause I keep a crowbar under my desk and I'm not afraid of smashing...!) Anyone is welcome to participate in the challenge, especially the three of you who read my blog. =D It's cool, and it'll keep us reading each other.

I have this quote that keeps running around in my head, Most people seek after what they do not possess and are thus enslaved by the very things they want to acquire. Here's my salient distillation of the above: If you want it, make it.


Final memory for the quickly diminishing day: When we were in second grade, Euc and I used to make a fort underneath the jungle gym at school, call to what few close friends we had, and power-up Thundercats' style. (Do you remember this ritual, Euc?) Then we'd branch out, and beat up whatever boys we could find. We'd yell, "Thunder-ho!" and "Sword of omens, give me sight beyond sight!" and I swear to god, those mantras gave my eight-year-old frame more power. I must try to reconnect to that inter-connectedness that I had.

Another challenge!

What if you were stuck in some bizarro commune and in order to be a participating member of said community, you had to pick a theme song that would express to everyone else living there who you are. It would be the only way for them to analyze and sort you in their plebeian brains (because I mean, c’mon, who would think up a system like that?) so it would have to be a POTENT song. Okay, pick one and explain. On your own blog, euc, howlie, and libs. Thank you.

*I have to preface my selection because, well, I’m a fan of circumlocution and my explanations need explanations. First of all, I would not live in such a community because, well, picking a theme song is fucking hard, okay? I mean, should one go with Jazz? Punk? New-wave? Something timeless? Lyrics or no? I almost had an emotional breakdown trying to decide. Really. Secondly, the fact that I am the one who came up with the idea for this post unnerves me. Maybe I secretly want to live in a community like this. Maybe I would make people wear necklaces that played their theme song. And if I didn’t like what they chose, maybe I would kick them out of the commune. This is, ultimately, why I believe in democracy. Because deep down, I’m a scary-ass motha-fucka.

**One more brief preface. I didn’t really think that hard about it. I picked the song I’ve listened to the most on my i-tunes today. If I lived in this commune, my theme song would probably change, like, every day.

My theme song: In A Sentimental Mood
Version: the one Duke Ellington & John Coltrane recorded together
Oh yeah, why?: This tune is usually syrupy and has been covered by a lot of corny acts. But the Duke/Coltrane version takes the song and turns it into something completely different. Duke plays this haunting three chord rhythm behind Coltrane’s melody, and the result is a very anxious sounding ballad. It’s the song that your mind plays when you have to say goodbye to someone you love bitterly, or when your heart fills with loving-kindness for someone/ something that you pass on the street, or any other type of situation where you’re likely to be filled with emotion so intense that it raises your awareness. You know what I’m talking about. I have been feeling very wacky lately, and the discordant feel to the song really reflects what it’s like in my body. And if those assholes at the commune don’t like it, well, you know what they can do.

Mushy brain like applesauce.

I haven't written. I've kept my distance. I've barely checked on you lately. It's not you, blogger, it's me. I have been so incredibly impotent in all facets of my life this past week. I feel like a peice of over-cooked spaghetti. I flop around a lot, fall down, the cats lick me, I need to sleep.

BUT, last night I made a skirt. Yesthatisright. I made it out of green courduroy fabric and I love it. Maybe I will post a picture later. Also, a week ago I made a bright orange origami fish. I was going to send it to Beth, because it looked like the clownfish that I saw and that she didn't. (Nyah nyah.) I took a shower. That was a mistake. When I came out of the shower, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water. My beautiful fish was in the cats' water bowl, soaked, halfway unfolded. Little sneak looked up at me asiftosay, "Look, I am so smart, I put that fishy in water!"

I wanted to smash his guts out. (I didn't.) It freaks me out though - a cat, putting a symbolic expression of 'fish' in a water bowl. Part of me thinks it was him trying to reveal his intelligence to me. I watch him out of the corner of my eye at all times now.

OoOoOo, I just had an idea for something creative to right. Read the next post and then follow the instructions accordingly.

O_o

A challenge!

Ten random things:

1. I am an occasional smoker.
2. The relative I most look up to was Anton, the anarchist.
3. I'm glad I have little breasts.
4. I'm glad I have huge hands.
5. Although sometimes my lack of femininity makes me feel insecure.
6. BUT, I have curvy hips.
7. Sneak and I cuddle when no one's around. I don't do it in public because I don't want to play into his "I am the cutest cat in the world" image.
8. I like to anthropomorphize animals.
9. I think that someday computers WILL become self aware.
10. I don't think it would be the worst thing in the world if humans went extinct because of global warming. I mean, we've made quite a mess of it. Maybe a different species would rise and be better at not destroying the world.

OKAY, I'm tagging three people to write ten random things about themselves: Euc, Howling Monkey, and Libby. Come on, Libby, it's high time we saw a new post on your blog.

If you don't comply your computer will blow up in ten days. I swear to god. 'Cause I'ma come over with my crowbar.

Free write.

When we were younger most Friday and Saturday nights had to do with Jazz somehow, either trying to fake it like we were college students at the cat in the cream, or listening to vinyls of the musicians our teachers admired or accompanying each other in what were occasionally some pretty dischordant improvisations. Sometimes we'd go to the Feve and order hot fries and tang and the memory of it always smells like it's just finished raining. And there's all this extra energy hanging around in the air. Once I remember going to The Mandarin just for two bowls of egg drop soup that set us back a dollar each. My memory replays it and we're constantly surrounded by this powerful magic, this smell in the air that assured us we had the entire world in store for us. Josh and Rudy used to play in the Java Zone for food which is a ridiculous idea now. We would stumble upon them and they always thought it was some kind of miracle that we were twins. The universal ice-breaker. And Farnell, I remember him doing a little student teaching in Mr. Arco's class and me being mortified when they discovered I was just a high schooler. The cover blown. The senior recital series of 1996 where Dave played Devotion and I've never again heard brushes on a snare drum like that. I gave a little piece of my insides as an offering to that night so that I'd never forget it. Dave was the best act, and that was a big surprise. And all those professors who sat in the back row on broken down couches who were too cool to even let on how proud they were of their almost graduated students. Then back to the Feve for a coffee or maybe just to a semi-obscure vantage point to smoke. When I remember it the nights lasted for 20 hours each and even that wasn't long enough.

I miss it.

Continued, not as good.

It was not long before Jane broke through the low clouds into the bright VFR airspace. The 150 climbed to 4500 feet and Jane guided its nose southeast. The sun was endless above the clouds, and the world seemed encouragingly far away. Time passes gently in the sky, and Jane let herself slip into the somnambulistic rhythm of flight. Her first stop was an easy three hours and the morning aloft was beautiful.

As she sailed through the azure, her thoughts drifted among the bric-a-brac she kept stored up in the dusty areas of her mind; they were made of memories she had tried to forget, adventures she planned but never lived, and emotions suppressed by her habit of hiding from others what she thought made herself look weak. Mostly they were about her father. For two hours of self-indulgent day dreaming she let her awareness wane. The remembrance of her father crashed down on her, washed her out to a vulnerable place, and left her, unguarded. He used to let me take the controls once we were up, as long as I promised to not tell mother. If it was cold, he would pour me hot chocolate while he drank coffee in the pilots’ lounge while we waited for the weather to clear up. Once the memories started coming Jane didn’t fight them. After my first solo he told everyone at the airport that I’d be a famous pilot someday. Just like her old man, he had boasted. The empty place inside her glowed for a moment and Jane unearthed her most sacred childhood yearning. Someday I will be flying and in an instant the steel and gas and circuitry will turn into flesh and bone and feather and there will be no more of life, no more of death, just an endless expanse of horizon.

A shudder and a bang snapped Jane violently back into the cockpit. The left magneto seemed to be misfiring and the engine responded by running rough and choking on too much fuel. Jane tried thinning out the mixture, then tried running the engine on full, then – with a silent prayer to gods of aviation – switched off the engine entirely. For a second before she turned the ignition back over, a thick silence filled her ears and she imagined stretching out her arms, freeing her body from the plane, gliding on the edge of the air currents, riding them down. She cranked the key and the 150 spirited back to life, but not without the turbulent misfiring. She felt trapped and upset and decided to land; there were always more options on the ground.

She had been in the air for a little over two hours and her charts showed that she was about 80 nautical miles from her intended first stop. There was no way she would risk life and limb to fulfill her flight plan, and she located an airstrip on a small island five miles to the east. She radioed her intention to land, entered downwind, and set the 150 down on a stretch of sand that overlooked a few stands of palm trees, two small buildings, and an expanse of turquoise ocean that was broken, in all directions, by the horizon. Dear god let them have a mechanic, Jane thought to herself as she climbed out of the cockpit.

*************************

To be continued.

Caffeinated ramble

The days are getting longer and it’s starting to feel like spring, although fleetingly – it is still only January, after all. The walk to work this morning was illuminated by a pink and gold and orange sky, the sun and clouds were showing off. I got to the square and, even though I told myself it was silly, I looked for the red-tail that watched me yesterday. He wasn’t there and I couldn’t blame him for his absence, the town was unusually noisy for that early in the morning. I missed him anyway.

When I was a kid I used to tell myself that I’d like to come back as a hawk.

Sometimes when I’m in the shower, eyes closed, rinsing my hair, I see a shadow move across the inside of my eyelids and feel the presence of someone else, with me. I open my eyes and he’s never there, but I’ve become almost convinced that it’s my grandfather. I close my eyes again and he whispers things that I can’t make out, information that is important I understand. I never do. It makes me feel guilty for all the time I haven’t spent with my grandmother. All the phone calls I’ve not picked up. Then again, I should never spend time with another person to ease my conscience. It would only make it worse.

The house is quiet, empty; I go for long stretches in silence and then realize it’s been hours since I used my voice. The past two nights I’ve been jarred awake by the death-calls of my two ferocious allies – the cats. The first night it was Sneak, defending the house from invaders, last night it was the two of them fighting each other. They go on their nocturnal prowls and then come back to melt into the fluffy down of my comforter. When I lay down the bed is our ship, and the three of us sail to different ports together. We fly a pirate flag, and anything could happen.

Last night I had a dream that my face swelled, well, no, actually it was just my nose. It started out in my left nostril, and then the whole left side of my nose filled to horrendous proportion. It looked like someone had taken a Twinkie and buried it under the skin. I was panicked, and yelled to Pat to find an antihistamine for me to take. I looked in the mirror and my brain started to swim, and I couldn’t make sense of the thoughts that were piling up, unprocessed by fried synapses. I woke up and it was only with great difficulty that I shook the dream from my mind. I am still slightly worried that it’s my body’s way of telling me I have a brain tumor.

Wherever you are, I hope you’re smiling.

A beginning.

Winter clouds hovered low to the ground and covered everything in an oppressive dampness -- the worst kind of weather for flying, Jane thought as she fumbled through the early morning darkness towards her 1960 Cessna 150. The cherry-red airplane was a college graduation gift from her father, and was Jane's last remaining proof of his existence. More of him was in the plane than all of the memories that she carried – he had worked in secret for a year to bring the 150 back to life, and then died two weeks after their first flight together. But that was more than ten years ago and the recollection won’t help me get this plane off the ground, Jane told herself as she tried to force his ghost from her mind. Her hands went to work on the pre-flight checklist and her mind let the memory of him slowly fade to nothing.

There had been no other pilots at the small airport when Jane arrived, and the garage was still dark, which meant that Deacon, the mechanic, had probably slept in. Jane could find no fault with him for that – if it hadn’t been for the flight plan already on file she would most likely have spent the day in her pajamas. She imagined herself still asleep in a warm bed, then inhaled a deep and intentional breath to fill her lungs with winter and ground her body to the tarmac. In nine hours she would be in an eighty-degree sun.

Jane taxied out to the end of the runway, radioed for clearance to depart and steeled herself for her least favorite part of flying – the takeoff. The moment that the 150’s wings overcame gravity and lifted itself free of the runway was glorious to her, but the long seconds before taking off, when she and the plane went 50 knots down a bumpy stretch of asphalt on rickety wheels, always made her nervous. She indulged herself another deep breath, then eased the throttle all the way open. The 150 traveled like a sparrow, and she had to hold steady pressure on the yoke to keep the plane from jumping into the sky. Halfway down the runway and the windsock looked like a deflated balloon. With a quick glance at the airspeed indicator, Jane eased up on the yoke and the world immediately fell away.

******************

To be continued.

Night Flight

I have occupied such a strange head-space these past two days. Sometimes I feel dizzy, sometimes disoriented, my perception is off and I've had a little trouble with spatial orientation. My theory is that I've had a small stroke (always the worst!) while Patrick maintains that I've caught his head cold, and that my internal gyroscope has been a bit affected. It's worst at night.

Last evening we had to pick up a co-worker of his from the airport and return an out-of-town video rental, so we made a triangular journey around a dark and windy northern Ohio. Part of the drive was on a rural two-lane highway, and every time a car came toward us from the other direction my mind convinced my body that it was going to come careening into us, that we were both moments away from death, that life was just one short moment away from changing completely. (Obviously nothing happened.) It made me consider how obscene all of it is, though, the impermanence of this life. It can end so quickly and unimportantly. Like a wave in the middle of the night it will recede back into the sea quietly, without anyone watching. Even if you have plans for tomorrow.

It's obvious, I know, but worth remembering.

The lights at night with my broken gyroscope were beautiful, though. The airport was a sea of color and flash which I'm not sure I've ever completely appreciated. And there was a man standing on a hill watching planes land. Their final descent started a few miles behind him, so when they got close he was shrouded in a runway's worth of backlight. He looked like Jesus, or Saskwatch, standing tall on the hill, a sillhouette in black, with light pouring out in all directions from his back.

A few things to carry us through winter.

We must not ever get comfortable!

Finney's bell

Like my dad said about my grandmother, my eyes feel like two piss holes in the snow. The computer has been emitting a high-pitched whirr sound all day and the air is thick with the smell of toner. Half an hour to go, my head is full of rocks.

Sometimes, when I am here, I feel like a pirate. I have sabotaged this office. The photos of children are not mine, the music files are strange, and the inspirational posters make me think of euc and I smile mischeviously each time I read them. I've bivouaced under a foreign desk, and it's a constant job to make sure the wind remains strong in my sails and that I steer myself into the waves. Lest one should broadside me. Lest the boat should rot away and sink all the way to the bottom.

I had this image of myself, standing tall and dark and proud in the middle of the night, outside the exit doors of a far-away airport. A black duffel in one hand, flanked by my companions, all of us making our way like gods into the foreign darkness. We will live like stray dogs on the beach, we will follow the milky way to its end.

Just don't let me lose my conviction.