Most Beautiful Burden

2011-10-11T02:30:00.002-04:00

10/11/11

Among other things that we talked about, i listened to her describe how she’d been assaulted,

And my first thought was to simply acknowledge how awful that was,

It took me another few moments to acknowledge that it had happened to me

And so many other women i know

In so many different contexts,

Where the result was always the same, like she said,

It had ruined a part of her.

We were talking about sexuality,

About how these bodies, while temporary,

Are not simply disposable.

and i think women struggle with their sexuality

because of the remnants of double standards

that say that a woman who is interested in exploring her sexuality

is simply easy.

And we find ourselves in situations that we later feel responsible for

Even though, many times, we did have the sense to say

No.

And that’s why it is more difficult

When there is someone we have said yes to—

Why sex does complicate everything.

Even in the presence of mutual desire,

There is no guarantee that it is truly mutual,

No way to tell what one person wants,

Because despite what one person says

There is always more at work.

The few times that i’ve allowed that hunger to take over

To guide my actions;

When i’ve wanted nothing more than to simply feel

That penetration,

It’s strange how i am simultaneously so numb

But there is a part of me that has shut down,

That has given up,

That has hidden,

That has compromised in order for my appetite to

Pursue what it thinks will satiate it.

I don’t want to follow patterns that do not satisfy enough of my being.

And lately i have felt scared that i will never be able to love someone,

Because i don’t know if enough of me will ever be capable.

I know that i am becoming stronger,

With every experience,

With every connection that i make

Or recognize.

I need to believe that i am evolving.

I don’t want to allow myself to feel nothing.

And i don’t want to feel too much either,

But i want to feel like i am allowed to feel more.

the illusion of adulthood

2011-09-29T00:54:00.000-04:00

when i was younger, i used to imagine what it would be like to be older, but i never imagined life beyond my early twenties. so when i hit thirty last year, it was all sorts of surreal. but so far my third decade has offered me proof that the universe is working in conjunction with my whimsical sense of curiosity and need for continuous growth. some evidence of that growth manifests within the relationships i have with other people. but it also shows itself through my ability to let more and more roll off my back. my self-esteem, which adolescence shot to hell, has made a steady upward climb for over a decade, and is in better shape than i think it has been since i was a toddler. my confidence in myself and my sense of what i want is more clear to me now, and though i'm still prone to stress myself out, i have an easier time getting back to the center where i recognize my strength, wisdom, and sense of contentment lie. this thing called adulthood is misleading. there isn't a magic age at which suddenly i will feel as if i've got it all figured out. perhaps some people reach a point at which they feel they've "established themselves." yet i refuse to adopt any labels that have to be set in stone. i know that my life is somewhat unconventional, but only because my ways of thinking are as well. my principles, my beliefs, my philosophies are all reflected in the things i do and the ways i choose to live. if i remain true to myself, that's something that will not change. i consider how terrifying it must have been for my parents, who in their late twenties became parents and accepted the challenges and responsibilities that came with raising a family. i'll admit i'm too selfish to commit to something so noble. however, i think it's smart to recognize, not only my lack of desire to pursue that path, but that i can still live a full life without traditional goals. the frustrating thing about this age is that so many questions remain. what will i be doing in another five years? when will i be able to buy a house? where will i decide to live? despite the unnerving uncertainties, i enjoy the fact that life is still full of surprises. just when i think things are becoming too monotonous or predictable, the universe throws something at me that i wasn't expecting to spice things up a bit. every time my pseudo-routine becomes a little too comfortable, i'm forced again to reconsider, reevaluate, and make sure i'm still pursuing those avenues that will add to my sense of happiness. and happiness is a dynamic thing. i have a spiritual level, an intellectual level, a physical level, an emotional level--all of which require different ingredients to remain balanced.

when i was younger i also knew that with each new year added to my age, i would only acquire more and more responsibility. i dreaded growing older for that reason. i remember people saying that it wasn't all that bad--that things would get better, that i would enjoy being older. for the most part i do. i am not one of those people who would wish to return to an earlier point in my life. i don't glorify my own past. i appreciate what i have been through, because my collective experiences have brought me to this point here, but i would never want to go back. that would be regression. i need the inertia inherent in forward motion to help me feel as if i am truly traveling. not toward some destiny, but toward a stronger, more content, more confident version of myself.

the students i have who are younger have a sense of entitlement that i do not understand. i remember being lazy. i'm still a bit of a slacker. but i never believed that the world would simply give me what i wanted or needed. i understood that everything required some work. that is still the case. while sometimes i do worry that i'll work my life away, i also know that it's not in my nature to sacrifice my sense of wellness for a paycheck. i'll struggle; i'll give up the opportunity to make more money if it means i get to spend more time with friends, family, or alone. i'll give up shifts to enjoy my life. it may seem irresponsible. unmotivated. unambitious. but i learned a long time ago that there is much more to life than a higher income. as long as i'm not a burden to anyone else, i see nothing wrong with prioritizing my sense of happiness over a socially imposed sense of duty to a career.

besides--what is a career? a job. a job that someone keeps for a very long time. on one hand people do this for a sense of security. but job security, like so many other things, seems to be an illusion, or at least a distraction that allows us to shift our worry to something else more pressing. i admire people who've found a career that satisfies them in more than a fiscal sense. personally, i have yet to find a job that fulfills my desires--that combines the need for intellect with a sense of doing something good for the world. it seems that most of the jobs that would satisfy that desire wouldn't earn me much more money than what i'm making now, so i don't think my lack of ambition has to do with a lack of motivation, but with the understanding that the most rewarding work is rarely the highest paid.

most of the new chapters in my life have not developed out of planning. the time for change came. opportunities presented themselves, and i picked a direction like a card from a deck of possibilities. this has worked. it hasn't offered me much stability. it hasn't offered me much in the way of saving money. it hasn't offered me a retirement plan. but it's given me endless moments with people and with myself that i would not trade for the world. i wouldn't have gotten to this point had it not been for my unwavering sense of duty to myself. so adulthood for me only represents the degree of positivity that i allow to influence my life. the older i get, the more i let go of the negativity i harbored for so long. it was inhibiting; it stunted my ability to advance. if the older i get, the less there will be within me holding me back, then i do look forward to gaining more years, more experience. i look forward to enjoying life beneath the surface and beyond the boundaries of what i might expect or imagine will happen.

inventory

2011-09-26T01:00:00.001-04:00

well, it's about that time again. no--actually, it isn't. but i keep reflecting upon things because i have had at least three people whom i love contact me in crisis, and when i'm sharing the love to help others through rough spots, it always makes me take a look at my own life as well, just to check and make sure i shouldn't be having a nervous breakdown again.

usually, when i think i feel like whining about something, all i have to do is think about the people starving/dying/struggling somewhere else in the world, and i remember that i have little to complain about. the most constant struggle for me is the daily threat of conformity--the voice that tells me, over and over, how much easier things would be if i were just to settle down and behave as if the american dream were mine as well. go for the husband. the house. the car. the stable job. go back to school for a degree in business or marketing. get pregnant and settle down with a man who loves me as long as i don't gain more weight. buy a hybrid so my status symbol is still eco-friendly. yeah...no fucking thank you.

here's where i am: i am 30, living at home, suffering from a netflix addiction, single (with only one semi-serious relationship within the past six years), an adjunct faculty at a community college with no possibility of full-time work in sight, a part-time cashier at a gas station for a healthcare plan that wouldn't do much good if something really went wrong, overweight (which doesn't bother me as much as it used to because i know i can change it if i want to), and i have no clue as to what the next five years will be like. i've got little ambition other than doing what it takes to be happy, and that is about the only thing motivating my personal evolution. but here's the thing--i am totally okay with all this. i like that i'm rebellious against what i perceive society expects of me at this point in my life. i like that i'm still out there, meeting new people, making friends, collecting stories and experiences, staying up too late, missing out on sleep, playing with the fifty-thousand little ideas that tango through my consciousness daily, and occasionally do something that does make me feel like i have a purpose outside of just living my own little life.

i might be being a little modest. i am an educator, though there is about one student per semester whom i really feel i've done something amazing for. i am a singer, though few people have gotten goosebumps from my voice in the past year. i am a damn good friend, though my time with the people i love is spread thin.

point is, i'm my own worst critic (i haven't put myself down here as well as i usually do). but when i look at what i have accomplished, how i have progressed over the past couple years, i cannot deny that there has been growth and chance--the only essential ingredient that, combined with self-awareness, is necessary for steady movement toward contentment. because, let's face it, i'm never going to have my dream house. i'll probably never get that record deal. shit, i probably won't even ever be able to drive a prius. but i will always have family (well, until the older ones die off and i take their place--but then i'll have nieces and nephews too). i will always have amazing friends who, in a heartbeat, would be by my side if i developed cancer and had a week to live. i will always have these words to look back on and remind me of the life i have LIVED. fuck goals--i'm doing a good job of living in the moments as they rush by. and despite all of the silly things that have a way of making me feel like i'm a loser, or like i will never reach my potential, or like i've wasted my time and talents, i know that i've carved out a life for myself through the connections i've made, both internally and externally. and i'm pretty sure that even though we don't get to take anything with us when we leave this world, the experiences that have enriched and aged my soul will remain and help me through the next life.

so to all you people out there who feel lost, or who feel ashamed because you aren't where you thought you would be by the time you reached whatever age you are--remember that you are only supposed to BE. and whether it's life or fate or karma or chaos that has aided you in reaching the position where you are now, it's pretty fucking amazing that you are here at all, and that you've managed to absorb what you have of this life and the things around you. think of that and think of the people's lives you've touched, and how much nicer the world is with you in it. that's what gets me through. well...that, and the occasional piece of dark chocolate.

In a related note, but on a personal level...(from 3/12/11)

2011-06-17T01:30:00.000-04:00

The relationship between motivation and desire.

When we are motivated to do something, we are determined to see a task completed. When we desire something, we are also motivated to do what it takes to accomplish it.

I’ve always felt like ambition was a dirty word. I have watched my mother work so hard to provide for her family, and here at a point in her life when her body needs to slow down, she is unable to stop. She has become a workaholic out of necessity, and that survival mechanism has made it difficult to have what she still believes she actually wants. Few people I know live a life comfortably—free of debts or tragedies befalling their sense of stability. We work to earn money so that we don’t worry about money. But with more money, there is always more consumption. Something that needs to be repaired. Something that needs to be replaced. Something missing from the fridge. Something to wash clothes with. “The things we own end up owning us” (Fight Club).

There is this materialism that it seems we’ve come to believe is innate. But I don’t believe that excessive want is anything more than the manifestation of the ways which we feel incomplete. How much we do that reveals our sense of inadequacy, discontent, or anger. I don’t take consumption lightly. And for every plastic bag I’ve used and failed to recycle, I feel a remorse as real as if I had taken someone’s life. For every stitch of clothing I’ve purchased at a discount price, whose tag says “made in Mexico,” I’ve felt sinful. And I keep doing these things. Because there is always something more I want, because my ambition can never truly be satisfied when it is the result of industrial conditioning.

Obesity—such an interesting issue. On one hand, it symbolizes our gluttony, our love of excess to the point of disease and ruin. It also represents how unhealthy we are—and that’s the aspect of the issue that is more significant to me. Not because for decades we’ve been fooled into thinking the way and things we eat are healthy, but because our concept of health hasn’t caught up with the increased pace of our “busy” lives. In an agrarian society, families worked on farms, growing crops in fields, moving throughout the day completing manual labor—sweating under the sun. Before the advent of modern farm equipment—the result of industrialization of food—a farmer worked within the limitations of his physical abilities, and succeeded based on natural circumstances. Natural—a good farmer followed the cycles of the earth, kept the soil healthy, and did what was necessary to produce a healthy crop—one which would feed a family and the community. It was natural. It was local. It didn’t require the implementation of any machine to increase a yield. And people weren’t unhealthily overweight to the degree they are now because they were working throughout the day.

This is an oversimplification of a time period that I know little about. There are still plenty of farmers out there, but few who do things the old way. Few who don’t rely on a profit so huge as to outweigh a subsidy that they are living comfortably. Our traditions of multiplying and going forth have ultimately led to overpopulation, urbanization, the depletion of natural resources and wildlife, unforgettable violence in warfare, and ultimately this sense of discontentment that forces us to find ways, methods, things to fill the holes in our psyches.

I was so struck by what Marin said, because I felt that way too, and she was the first person I’d heard say it just as I had felt it: She had no ambition, no long-term career goal. She was content working in a flower shop, providing emotional and financial support toward couplehood, toward her boyfriend opening his own place.

It was like a relief heavier than an ocean wave had rushed through me. But I said little more than that I agreed with her. She couldn’t have realized how profound a moment it was for me. But the more I thought about it, the more it made me resent the fact that I was single—because I had to find the same way to earn what income the two of them pulled in together, just to have what they had—which wasn’t fancy or bourgeois (blech), but was sensible and attractive. Comfortable. So it felt like she had the luxury of not needing to pursue a “career” that provided a higher income because she had a man who earned a decent wage to keep them both afloat. That bothers me, but I can’t deny how appealing it is.

It isn’t that I don’t want to work. I just don’t want work to dictate my life. I don’t want to have to wait years and years to earn a high enough income to take care of my debts, having acquired more debts by the time I am making more. I don’t want to have to commit to a career. I don’t want to compete within a struggling workforce. I don’t want to sit at a desk all day turning food into fat. I don’t want to rely on coffee to wake up in the mornings. I don’t want to turn to my computer five nights out of the week for some sense of connection.

I don’t know what happened this break. My sister got strep and spent the week home, except Friday. My mom’s car got repossessed. I’ve had to clean up smeared, dried dog shit and piss from the kitchen floor a few times. I’ve had to confront the fact that I probably won’t be able to move out when I want to. I tried to clean and then realized how constantly I’d have to clean like I did to keep the house truly in order. I keep reevaluating, and reevaluating, and I can’t figure out what it is I’m supposed to be doing. I always say that I don’t need much to be happy, and that’s true. But the happiness I rely on on a daily basis to get me through the day has a hard time staying near the surface. There are things that I must do. To earn money. One is noble and required a degree. One is not noble, but provides me with a degree of help should something go wrong with my health. The society that has helped to make me unhealthy is the same one that can’t offer me help to correct what it causes.

Sure, some people might say, “Well, if you want to farm, then farm.” But I don’t. I wouldn’t want to work in that post-industrialized version of an originally sustainable system. And I don’t have the time or motivation to even work on a small plot. In some strange way, I feel like I was meant to do what I’m doing for now. I just worry that its novelty will soon give way to the point where I have to decide what will be the next step. Do I remain where I am, unsure of how I will pay bills in a few months? Do I move onto another institution? Do I go back to school to get a doctorate so I can work at a four-year institution (accruing more of that debt I spoke of, and competing within the politics of academia—which I am disgusted by)?

What do I want?

I want to earn a paycheck that is consistent throughout the year. I want to earn enough to cover my bills, allow me some fun, have a buffer for emergencies, and still have some saved for long-term travel.

When I teach four classes, I earn enough money to pay my bills and play. Not to save much, and not to pay rent. I need twice what I earn when I’m teaching four classes, twelve months of the year. Enough to move out. Enough to buy healthy foods. But not so much that I’ve sacrificed all of my time to a job that will wear away at my soul and sense of joy.

I’ve written myself into a headache, but the original point of this was ambition, and how I felt like I had none. It isn’t that I don’t want to better myself, or to reach a state of more frequent contentment, but sometimes I get so stressed out that I feel immobilized by my fatalistic/cynical/realist outlook. I never want to give up, but, as I have said I don’t know how many times in the past, though usually during my dark times, I am already tired. I am tired of the game. Tired of the system.

Free would be disappointed. He didn’t understand what was to stop me from accomplishing what I wanted. I felt spoiled complaining to him about the difficulties of my life. But the problem was desire. The things motivating me usually have nothing to do with what truly makes me happy, and more to do with what I am forced to accomplish in order not to be a waste of space and resources.

I am going to stop now because this headache is only getting stronger, and I am working myself into a dizzying brain frenzy.

Utopian Idealism from August 19, 2010

2011-06-17T01:08:00.000-04:00

Academia is all about name dropping. Acknowledging someone who managed to get published, who eloquently explained something. Giving credit where credit’s due. Though it’s quite possible for different people, in different places, from different times and backgrounds to reach many of the same conclusions given their specific realm of symbolic communication (words, numbers, hieroglyphs).

Scripture has come to mean to me anything that has been documented as divine wisdom. And by divine, I simply mean that it is revered as if coming from a “power” greater than any single human mind.

Through all the cycles, births, falls of civilizations, there are parts of their cultures that have been documented, that stand as examples of how to live the proper life in harmony with the rules that govern the universe. The gods, goddesses, origins might change (only slightly in many cases)—but the lessons remain the same.

I was reading somewhere, probably in a student’s paper, that religion feeds off of common knowledge—pieces of logic and understanding that even the most daft human can grasp (whether or not he/she follows the “way” is another issue). The argument was trying to get an anarchy along the premise that people do not need written laws to govern themselves. But I couldn’t help but feel like the kid was giving too much credit to the human race. Sure there are those individuals who stand out, who have left their mark within the realm of study, of schooling, of the educational system that controls the conscious paradigms. But the average person, the average C student, the average joe or jane, is not necessarily one who has taken any scripture into account, beyond perhaps a story that somehow ultimately only tries to maintain “faith,” when it is really just a story that we assign meaning and significance to.

Theoretically, it could have been any religion that took hold like Christianity did. And part of this is because people became easy to convince, to scare, to persuade into believing. Which leads me to believe that we are not capable of self-rule.

I think about tribal communities. Small communities that strive to maintain their independent way of living without interfering or infringing upon their neighbors. How common is tribal war? We have “representatives” that are sent out into the realm of politics to make decisions on our behalves, but they don’t know what we want. How can they? In tribes, if officials were elected to hold certain powers, they would be selected by the small group of people who made up that tribe. They would be living among their peers, working, playing, living with them. No class difference. No problems too big to solve.

But there is population to consider in the tribal model. Coupling leads to procreating, which leads to growth. There would have to be rules for how many children a family could have. But there would have to be enough blood difference for the families to continue reproduce without the threat of deformities or deficiencies.

But what if there happened to be the right kinds of people in these small communities. Suppose there were some people who didn’t want to have children. Suppose there were a single mother or father here and an unplanned pregnancy there. Suppose there were some scholars here and an artist there who did not seek to procreate, but shared their knowledge and talent with the community nonetheless. Suppose it was really the entire village that raised each child. Suppose marriage wasn’t necessary for two people to be together. Suppose acts of violence were rare and severely punished. Suppose they went back to herbal remedies and treatments based on an extensive understanding of Eastern and Western medicinal practices. Suppose they all gathered to do yoga in the mornings. Suppose they grew their own food. Suppose they made their own clothes, and art, and stories, and songs, and dance, and music, and games, and rituals. Suppose they relied on one another because they understood their connection to one another, and they acted out of kindness not because they feared how they might be judged after they died, but because they felt compassion for one another, because they were all divine incarnations set here to live, among a complex, terrifying, and beautiful world. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But instead we all seem to be seeking some kind of independence that separates us from one another by filtering us into categories that represent the popular vote of the time. We want to flaunt the fact that we are unique, yet we manage to look like clusters of sheep, filing into the same jobs, personalities, accessories, and tastes.

Work is absurd to me because of its relationship to the necessity/luxury issue. Back in the day, the only way to eat was to know something about growing food. New jobs began to develop depending upon the technologies of the time. In a town that used horses, there had to be a metalsmith. In a town that has automobiles, there has to be a mechanic. And so forth. But the necessity of production is the issue. We need food. We only need automobiles because of the way our civilization has advanced (and here I use the word “advanced” only to describe movement through time, from past to present—not in terms of real improvement).

There are many aspects of our collective knowledge that have not changed. Real wisdom is timeless, and the world has had its share of sages. One of the only things that has really advanced (improved) over time is our scientific understanding. It is not news that technology changes faster than our ethics can evaluate it. It is worth noting that science takes much longer, as well, to reach the mainstream. The concept of gravity took a long time to stick and synthesize into the general public’s understanding. As science explores the subatomic realm, as quantum physics provides answers to the unseen, the general public is having a hard enough time passing geometry. The problem becomes more of one when we consider that only certain people even have the benefit of a formal education, let alone a higher one. And since our educational system is so defective, students become mostly honed to one specific set of skills and knowledge and cannot participate with a real community outside of their jobs or neighborhoods. (This wouldn’t be an issue within a tribe).

Who was it…Nietzche—who said that “choice is chaos.” I think within a smaller community, it’s easier to find your niche. To fulfill a role that fulfills a need—not a luxury, but something that fits our basic human needs.

Without being so far from a particular service, without the middleman, without shopping malls, without mail order, there wouldn’t be a need for money. Capitalism would be no more because jobs would be done, production would be done, food would be grown, schools built, services rendered and shared by the members of that community. It would be bartering and trading at most, but many jobs and services would be performed simply because it was a person’s (or people’s) responsibility to do so. For the sake of the community.

Teachers would still exist in these communities. Doctors. Counselers. Cooks. Artists. Treasurers. Builders. Farmers. There are plenty of jobs that we need. There’s nothing wrong with a person having knowledge in more than one of these areas, but there is also nothing wrong with having people who are particular talented in these positions. People who are chosen or voted to carry out certain work because of the traits, affinities they display.

The only time a person would leave a community would be if they did not find a niche within one, and so traveled elsewhere to see if they could find purpose and contentment. Some communities would banish people who displayed characteristics of violence or malevolence. Others would simply execute those people. But criminals would be few and far between because each person’s needs would be met. Each person would be loved and accepted and appreciated and respected, heard. No racism. No homophobia. No single person in control. No manipulation. No corruption.

But, says the cynic, we cannot be rid of greed. Greed is the evil that contaminates the harmony of an equal society. How do we contain and eliminate this greed? Is it truly a part of our humanity? How is that possible when there are so many who do not display this tendency? I’m baffled by greed.

Thou shalt not want. Period. If only it were that simple.

from summer 2009

2011-03-25T02:27:00.000-04:00

...........

7/24/09

.. ..

I let the door close behind me

As a resounding click indicated it was shut

I stepped nimbly onto the gravel

Almost tiptoeing to my car as if I had to be careful

Not to wake the people already in their beds

Sleeping for tomorrow.

.. ..

Sang along with Adele on the way home

Trying my throat after another day of coughing

The sound is supposed to come from my diaphragm

So the state of my throat shouldn’t affect my ability.

But I’m glad I only had three cigarettes today

And I hope eventually I have less.

.. ..

Both cats were waiting patiently as I pulled into the driveway.

They scurry over toward the car, as if they know that because

I am in it, it will not hurt them

(I’d like to believe they can differentiate between my car

And a stranger’s car, zooming toward them on the street).

They follow me inside because they know I feed them

But I appreciate their companionship so much

That I expect it to remain a part of my life

For many many years.

.. ..

I know it is okay to feel lost.

I’ve accepted that I have limited control.

I just wish I were more certain of where

To direct my energies.

.. ..

This feels good. Right.

.. ..

Write.

.. ..

We walked into the bar expecting there to be celebration

But everyone was huddled around a table,

Subdued,

Perhaps tired; it had been a long day for all of us.

I’d only had three hours of sleep myself

And there I was wanting to keep things moving.

So later I asked the bartendress permission to bring in a CD

So that we could dance. I explained that the bride really liked it

(which was true)

And Travis went out to the car to find it, couldn’t.

I went out to find it, did (just inside the door, next to the seat)

And minutes later my burned CD brought people to the dance floor

A square of wood separated by railings from the rest of the bar.

Only big enough for a small crowd, or a medium crowd dancing closely together.

I was so glad to have Travis there with me

And thought about the absurdity of the evening, the day, so far.

A friend gets married, walks determinedly into a commitment

That is nearly impossible for me to fathom.

I read a love poem for their ceremony, claim some sort of

Insight into a relationship of their stature,

My date is a close friend with whom jokes are made about a marriage of convenience

A man who will only ever romantically be interested in men.

The other single men at the bar assume I am with him—

(I’m flattered. He’s very handsome and carries himself well).

I just dance. I ignore how I assume I look

Or what other smaller dramas might be happening

Between bridesmaids and groomsmen.

I ignore how difficult it is to be in the presence of

Two people who have just joyously taken the first

Conventional steps toward a life together.

.. ..

I saw that my own parents’ marriage was not healthy.

I wanted them to be happy

And it seemed that was more plausible once they were separated.

.. ..

I felt my mother’s remarriage was abrupt. Irresponsible.

But she is my mother, and she seemed happy.

Now my stepfather lives in a different state

I live with my mother

Her mother lives with us

And so does my mother's fifteen year old daughter

(my baby sister, who will be fine, but will have a whole different set of

Issues with regard to marriage and relationships).

.. ..

I know it will all be fine.

But I know it will also all be a mess.

.. ..

My social experiments continue.

I keep reaching out to people I don’t know

Searching for common ground

Searching for connections.

Not romantic, mind you,

Because I know that’s…not pragmatic.

But open, of course,

I'm open to the possibility.

.. ..

I feel more like a collector

And I feel wrong for having fucked the kid

From a few towns over

In the back seat of my car

Even though I wanted it at the time.

I only wanted it at the time.

.. ..

It’s as if I want someone to need

And need me.

And yet I can’t let go of

(what is it—pride?)

Cynicism.

Believing it will end before it’s begun.

Because that supports the idea that I have to

Be able to do it on my own.

.. ..

We sat there in the dark

Me and another relative stranger.

We had just woken from a nap

And in the cool, humid room

He asked me to turn and face him

So that he could see my eyes in the

Light of the blue digital numbers

Of his alarm clock.

I remember thinking he was going to make

Some sort of admission.

But he spoke about the other women

He’d met through the dating service.

And how he’d been disappointed.

And I felt guilty for not being attracted to him

For not being able to offer him anything more

Than a loose friendship.

Am I stringing people along?

Should I just let them go?

How do I do that?

.. ..

I found myself fantasizing again about a boy from high school.

Nothing sexual. Just seeing him,

Getting together for coffee and catching up.

I did that once, you know.

Got together with a kid from high school

That I used to be nuts about.

He was completely different and it shocked me

How much he had changed.

Perhaps because I felt like I had not

But moreso because he had abandoned parts of himself

In the past. Parts of him were completely dead and forgotten.

And there I was able to recall so vividly how I felt,

And what I wanted.

I wanted him. I wanted someone else. I wanted to not be sad

And feel so alone.

.. ..

But loneliness is comforting.

Maybe only because I know I am not

Always alone

The times when I feel threatened by loneliness

Are empowering because I can reach into myself

And lift my soul up

And breathe gratitude

And peace.

.. ..

Another of my internet friends

Whom I don’t really speak to anymore since he

Kept asking me to help him get off

He was deeply saddened

By the fact that life had not turned out how he had expected.

And I felt fortunate.

Because I was never so certain about how things would be

That I could be disappointed.

Most things have honestly been a surprise.

And while that may seem directionless

Uninspired, ambiguous, aimless, careless

To a lot of people,

That’s just because they have grown toward

Other ways.

I enjoy making my own,

Regardless of how frequently my direction might have changed

Because

As I’ve said

There are so many parts of myself.

There is no reason to accept a monotonous path

Stability is only necessary for certain levels of life.

And I reject several traditions. So far they do not seem compatible

With who I am.

.. ..

I think about my thesis advisor

And how awful I felt about quitting my thesis work.

But I had no idea what I wanted to say. Where I wanted to go.

I reasoned that in a few years I might have a better idea.

The truth is I really do believe I could take any little piece of my life

And show how beautiful it is. Leave plenty of ways for people

To interpret and create meaning of their own.

I could craft the story any way I saw fit.

.. ..

I do not want to go back to that job. But I have to for now.

I just worry too much. It’s crippling.

I need a day to get back to feeling beautiful

So that my strength returns

I need to get rid of this cough

So my body feels whole again.

I need a dream that has enough impact

To recharge my mind

So that it can not only push

But progress through another day.

Anotherday.

after all this time this is what little comes out

2011-02-05T03:18:00.000-05:00

There’s a time in the season when it’s time to switch from my sweater boots to what i call my duck boots. They’re more water resistant, and as the earth struggles to remain a frozen winter, the sigh of spring breathes ever so slightly in the vapid February air.

This week has been one of adventures, which is really all i ever have to deal with. Adventures among the mundane ritual of everyday responsibility. Quirky trespasses amidst a routine that has become distastefully familiar.

The roads had collected ice. A sheet of it at least an inch thick. We were out cruising, because neither of us had our own place. He, a 20 year old trying to put his life into some order, and me, a 30 year old, still essentially doing the same thing, only having avoided certain obstacles in place of others. He was enjoying my company, and i fed off of the fact that he only wished to extend the night a little longer. Talk a little more. I don’t know, maybe from the start he was just looking to feel new lips, new skin, but it felt genuine. Yeah—there was an element of sincerity in his voice and in his actions.

We were waiting on the side of the road, stuck on an icy hill where gravity and balding tires worked against our progress. I had resigned to waiting, hoping, for some ice trucks to go by. What do you do when you’re stuck on the side of a road, in an ice storm, with an attractive person who’s presented nothing but pleasantness? You eventually give in, move over to his lap to snuggle, to keep warm, and though he claims to be a gentleman, you hope he’s only slightly not. And two hours after you’ve been sitting there, talking, sharing stories, you finally give in and curl up against him, despite the weight of your body and your hesitation, and after breathing for minutes upon minutes against his neck, brown and smooth in the blur of moonlight coming through the foggied windshield, he kisses you. And falling into it is the best feeling you’ve felt in a while. He asks you how long? Six months. It’s almost cruel, I say, not that I’ve done much about it.

My Kinsey scale tips back toward men. I missed this feeling. Of feeling safe. Even though he was more worried about crashing or being crashed into than I was. Of feeling those man arms wrapping tightly around me. Those giant hands grazing so sweetly against the small of my hip. It was difficult not to completely let go, and had another woman been in that situation, she very well might have. He was that tempting. But I held on as well as I could, and just when I didn’t know if I could restrain myself any longer, i realized the salt trucks had been by, and the ice had probably melted to a more rough frozen slush. Rocking out of the small hole I’d created on the side of the road, I crawled slowly and surely up, over the crest of the hill. Found our way to the main road, crept quietly to his bed.

And that’s where the story stops. Because beyond that, the tone totally changes. It becomes something more adolescent. Something unexpected and awkward. Something inexperienced and unsure. After some fantastic initiation into a new friendship, there is a halting noise that will forever alter the tone of the original flavor.

I suppose some would say it was the kick in the ass necessary to confront the reality of the situation. But all i could think was how much better the night could have gone after its most magical moment if i had my own place.

I ran out of money. I expected a paycheck at the end of January, and found out too late that i was not due for a check until the end of February. How nice that the people who have less money coming in get paid less frequently—because that makes sense. And my friend rescued me with his financial aid refund. Had it not been for his pursuit of a higher degree, I would have been screwed. And he is probably the last person I will know who is in that position—a giving position. A “i’ve got more than two thousand dollars in my account that i don’t need right now” state. It would be sweet to earn four grand a month. I could live completely comfortably on that. It’s got to be a matter of supplemental income.

And I contacted Blue and he was married to a woman

Though he was gay ten years ago when i thought i knew him.

And I contacted Christine because I couldn’t believe it.

And she didn’t write back but she’s been under the weather, at least

I hope that’s why.

And I thought about the boy with the rose for a name.

And the way his back glistened in the light of the fire

Burning next to the creek where a group of old and new friends skinny dipped.

Toward the end of a summer i managed the skinny dip three times at different locations on different occasions, all of them blissfully happy and fun and safe.

I sent a message to the boy who sat with me in my car

On a hill on a night when the streets froze over with ice

And behind layers of winter fog, blurring the lights of the town

I let my guard down.

I just don’t want to regret. I am not ashamed of being who i am,

But don’t appreciate me in one moment, and then

Ignore what transpired.

Be in it or step away from it. Don’t let bravery be part of a rare moment.

I canceled class on Tuesday because the winter storm warning in effect made me feel like i needed to just stay home, just stay home and clean up the pile of clothes growing in the corner, just stay home and think about some of the thoughts i hadn’t given my mind time to ponder. To reflect on the happenings of the past however long since i’d last reflected.

It’s superbowl weekend. Which doesn’t mean much to me except a lot of my friends are happy to have an excuse to hang out together and drink and be merry.

It’s strange knowing that the body is a temple, and deciding who’s worth to share it with on those terms. Because the animalistic part of me just wants to tear our clothes off and feel him inside me, but the rational side of me recognizes that there are steps toward that that the proper disciple should take.

Why is the recycling truck coming by this night? Because typically the pick up night is Sunday, and this Sunday is the Superbowl. And those of us who don’t think in those terms miss recycling until the next pick up. So the bottles and dishes and cups and lids will accumulate until the next date. Until they roll by again on their regularly scheduled Sunday night. Wtf?

I’m wearing my polka dot pajama pants, an old t-shirt my mother gave me that has a disclaimer about ruining one’s education because of a DUI. It’s worn with tiny holes, the fabric worn thin enough to almost be see-through, but its elasticity still strong enough to hug the curves of my torso, breasts, love handles and all. Tonight I dug through a suit case that held sweaters i’d not yet brought out of hibernation. I put on one that i bought in a target in Fredericksburg when i went to visit madie, an old roommate and friend, who’d moved to a new place to continue the same unexpected adventures into different parts of herself.

Sometimes it is very hard for me to understand inebriation. Only because there is no part of me that isn’t me that comes out. I never feel any remorse for my behavior, only a little embarrassment over the fact that i wanted to be lubricated for the expression of what was already in there.

Tomorrow my little sister is taking her driving test. When I dropped her off at school today, I waited to make sure she got into the building. And as I sat there, looking at her little figure, waiting patiently at the door to be let in, I thought of how much she’s grown from such a small thing into this completely new person. This completely conscious being that was starting to really filter what happened to fill her surroundings, her past, her future, her dreams, her perception. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, part of the reason i don’t’ feel the need to be a parent is because i’m already privy to the miracle of watching an innocent child develop into a beautiful young adult. I’m a witness. I don’t want to responsible for that. Not because i don’t think i could handle the responsibility, but because i feel like providing enough support to the people in my life already will take up a healthy amount of my energy. I can’t imagine giving more, from the start, to a whole new life. That i am primarily responsible. I like being part of the village that helps to raise the child.

midnight winter ramble

2010-12-07T01:52:00.001-05:00

you wanna hear that hot shit
don't wanna make your thoughts flip
gonna feel your heart skip
need to get a better grip
try to better handle it.
wanna see the world stripped
but stop it 'fore it all rips
riding on a sinking ship.

you can't hide forever. you can't keep your eyes closed
you didn't have a choice; you were still exposed
and now you're angry, you're a little pissed at fate
but you've got the chance to do something instead of wait

no one is going to rescue you; no one's gonna make it okay
no one needs to honor you with your own holiday parade
that doesn't mean you're free from the duty toward better
and it takes perseverance against the negatively clever.

your images are lackluster, is that all the best you can muster? i can't trust her, that kind with a manipulative mind, trying to find a trick to make everyone have it her way, trying to take as much as she can today without any regard for tomorrow. my sorrow isn't enough to keep her from consuming, like her hormones got stuck in the early phases of blooming and now she has subscribed to a life of everything having a price. so she earns but she yearns for a better connection, misplaces her want, thrusts against a capital erection and spends her time and energies in the wrong directions.

too much time is given to trivial things. interaction has become a commodity, a treasure, a pleasure that is reduced to goal-oriented transaction, and beneath the exchanges there is the bitterness of dissatisfaction. we waltz with dionysis, inhale, drink, and drown--it's simpler than letting every real thing get us down. what happened to every person who tried to get us into the now? not just the moment, warm with transcendence, but with this breathing network, this obvious interdependence. we can't just spend this time giving in to the sin of sensation, of repetition of mistakes, we can't dispose the awareness of a future component. because thought there's nothing wrong with living in the moment, there's something drastically sad about denying change, something depressing about how things stay the same.

he makes me so violent, that i think about trying it, just to make him that started it stop, knowing that will only add to the same cycle, feeling helpless when determination is vital, not just for survival but to encourage evolution, giving up too easily as if there were only one singular solution. he clings to these words, these expressions of a time long before mine, and i am trying to write my own declarations rather than rely on proclamations that have lost their literal sense. and in tradition's defense, he says that is how we were built, that is how we have made it this far, with the beliefs that thrived despite all the scars they left. to reach justice we relied on the unjust, now you explain to me in which god i should trust.

because they've all been used to promote hypocrasy. they've all been blamed for new forms of atrocity. but the gods get a bad name from the way people use them. in the veins of our bodies, bolder than the myths that came from once upon a time, is a link, a code, that shows we're all from the same line. we wandered out, we multiplied, we conquered with fear, we watched as more of what we knew disappeared. we adapted, we assimilated, we demanded certain standards. we got past a lot, but not all our prayers have been answered.

because we can't rely on a power outside of ourselves.

sometime i don't know anymore who i am speaking to, these fragmented truths, no matter how carefully i make the words stick, it's too thick out there to penetrate, too fogged with disillusionment and hate, too tired, to bored, too preoccupied, to busy, too lazy, too angry, too focused to take a deeper look within me--

and see.
what it means
that it's all connected.

it takes discipline to initiate the kind ripples that lead to the bigger waves, and for every piece of humanity saved, there will always be a disaster making its way, trying to interrupt, trying to corrupt, trying to tempt us toward bankrupt.

so to tame all these thoughts when they run amuck, i get back to that center where the lightning once struck, where there is an ache, and a flame, and a stone that's tender, where there is a hope that still tries to remember

what it means
that it is all connected.

excerpt from a letter to a friend i've yet to meet

2010-09-30T02:40:00.000-04:00

i know that i'm not quite due for another message, but i've had an interesting couple of weeks, and i'm feeling introspective. so once again, you get to feel the brunt of the latest batch of considerations and ponderings.

today, in and of itself, was nothing out of the ordinary in the way of days and routine. i went to work, held two classes, met a friend for my one meal of the day, went to a second-run movie theater to see a comedy, came home, sat with my family while they ate dinner, had half of a half glass of wine (heartburn makes it difficult to consume much wine these days--it's truly depressing), played on the computer for about twenty minutes, then went to visit one of my good friends who lives down the street, where i talked, listened and got to watch part of a documentary about africa. i drank some delicious tea while visiting my friend and i think it had enough caffeine to make it difficult to sleep, easy to think a little more and type, so here we are.

just going through that list, though, and considering the significance of each part of my day, makes for a considerable amount of...analysis? which is why i'm interested in developing a creative nonfiction novella based on an average day. it's kind of like the ecotrip series that takes a closer look at something we consider common, to investigate its origin and consequence, its cause and effect, so to speak, on our reality(ies).

anyway--here's my breakdown, my interpretation, if you will, of this day.

my two classes:
i am responsible for teaching freshmen at a community college how to write. for you and i this is no task. the concept of a sentence, the building of a paragraph, and of multiple paragraphs that express trains of thought is second-nature. for these students, it is a feat to create a ten-sentence paragraph that is coherent, unified, and grammatically sound. we are at a point in the semester when the students are supposed to focus on the different kinds of development for paragraph construction: exemplification, compare and contrast, cause and effect, division-classification, argument, description, narration, and argument. each method is similar in that they all require a thesis or topic statement, a body that provides support for a central point, and some sort of conclusion that summarizes, reminding the reader of the original point. again--no great challenge for a person who has always been able to manipulate language. i give the kids time in class to complete certain parts of the writing process that they are taught. prewriting. drafting. proofreading and revision. so today students sat in a computer lab, using prompts from the textbook to begin working on the latest assignment, using one of three methods of development that we've recently discussed. although on a rational level, it made sense to keep lecture short and provide the class with time to compose, it felt cheap simply telling them to write. to use the period to type up their ideas, when so many of them are playing on facebook and using the time to procrastinate anyway. i get these papers that contain simple errors, and papers that contain little thought, but that demonstrate, on some level, that they are trying to follow the model prescribed. it's both daunting and frustrating to be responsible for something as simple as teaching people how to make a proper sentence. because aside from the conventional mechanics and rules that they're supposed to follow, which i see as superficial, i want them to become better thinkers. i want them to not be sheep merely training themselves to enter the workforce. i spend the first class overseeing their progress, grading papers while they type, ocassionally answering a questions or looking over someone's paper fresh from the printer in the corner of the room. the second class is more involved simply because it is small. tiny even, with only three of the six students in attendence. they too are working on the next assignment, due friday, and spend over an hour simply trying to put their ideas into paragraph form, after selecting one of six assignment options that i've only slightly modified from the text. that class soon ends as well, and i'm left with the rest of the day to do what i will.

after class, i'm starving. i took my thyroid medicine too late in the morning to have time to eat before class (because i have to wait a half hour before eating once i take it, and that half hour was just how long it took to get to work), and now that 3:15 has arrived, i'm cranky from hunger. my friend, fae, and i drive down the road to a small sandwich shop that mimics deli-style, mostly italian influenced, sandwiches. i order an eggplant parm sandwich with a side of coleslaw, and my friend gets mozzerella with tomatoes, roasted red peppers, basil, and olive oil, with a side of fries and a whole pickle. we sit at the only table in the shop and enjoy a fraction of the food before we're full. the woman who runs the place has pictures of her family, as well as sweet little notes from her kids, tacked to the wall near an open broiler. she is a nice lady, with bleached hair and tan skin, who is always kind and asks about my mom and sister, but who also has a couple t-shirts hanging in a corner that make a joke about how obama is going to ruin the country. as i leave, the woman asks me if my friend is gay, and i am half afraid to answer her, half insulted that she is asking. i say yes, and she proceeds to talk about the gay man that works next door at the hair salon, whom she adores. her apparent ability to avoid homophobia while embracing conservatism (in some form) intrigues me. she earns back points that i deducted upon seeing the shirt.

fae and i have visited the cheap movie theater a lot lately, so it seems natural to suggest we see a second-run movie. especially since i owe him money from the last flick we saw. so we go to see dinner for schmucks, which is nothing brilliant, but entertains nonetheless. while i'm laughing at the movie's dialogue and plot, i'm still secretly picking it apart. the comedic lead roles, the hyper-attractive french accented love interest of the main character, the portrayal of an artist character whose art is nothing more than a narcissistic exploration of his animalistic sexuality (intended to be ridiculous--is it making fun of art or simply the artist type?), the corporate characters who represent the american dream with expensive suits, fancy cars, and elaborate dinner parties held just for the sake of making fun of "morons" they meet. it was all very surreal, really, but with glimpses of the types of things that have infected and sickened our society to the point of stifling its true potential for progress. and there i was, buying into it, albeit at a discounted rate.

i see that this inspection is taking even longer than i've anticipated. and it's probably become quite boring. this is a shame, because i haven't even gotten to the conversation i had with my neighbor, parker, whom i've known for years, who is a father of two small children now, married, living in a cute house down the street from my mom's house. we started off talking about music, then racism, then technology, then globalization, then monopolization, and documentaries, and really spent a lot of time talking about our dependency on the things we've created, that not so long ago were not things we "needed" (like cell phones), and how much of what we have created has these terrible side-effects that we are only minutely aware of (because the companies profiting from them don't want us to stop needing them)...and it was all very fatalistic, but necessary. then we watched two excerpts from a series that this music producer did for the BBC about africa. i was immediately drawn to it because the subtitle was "the illuminated continent." i appreciated the reference to its historical opposite title "the dark continent" and all the implications of that name being imposed by an white, colonial presence. i've already learned so much from the two episodes i watched that i can't wait to watch the rest, and it is another one of those educational types of programs that i wish were just standard in classrooms across the country. i wish i had some way of fitting it into my own curriculum...because not enough people know.

and that is the challenge of education--taking the most recent of our understanding and sharing it with the masses. it takes so long for those paradigm shifts. knowledge, discovery, is initially so limited, so esoteric. and knowledge should not be like that. it should spread easily. it should be accessible. with the advent of the internet, there is so much more information that is more accessible. but porn is more popular than educational sites. at least i assume so. youtube, with its vast array of informative videos, has more hits for the funny stuff, for the fails, and the two girls with a cup, than for the video on understanding the tenth dimension.

so my thought of the day, the theme that seems to come of this analysis, is the same question i often ask myself, in all sorts of contexts: what is being communicated? considering the capacity we have for mass-communication, for broadcasting ourselves, our lives, our thoughts--what is it that we spend more time sending out to viewers and readers? what is it we share more than anything else? what is it we're texting and blogging and posting and airing? what is it we're watching and reading? i have answers to these questions, but they don't seem optimistic. they are tinged with cynicism, with realism, with facts and speculation based on patterns i see carried out in the actions of people everyday.

but i'm not pessimistic. because i wouldn't have come home and felt the need to write this had i denied the existence of possibility. and it is through the connections that i've created, or welcomed, with people like the friends i spent time with today, and with you, that keep me going. that remind me that there are people who are not sheep. who have surpassed the ignorance that would've restricted their ambitions and spirit alike.

and on that note, i hope this finds you well. i hope to hear from you soon, even if it is a fraction of this ridiculously long message.

peace.

when you have a poor mattress

2010-02-17T02:24:00.000-05:00

7/6/09

when you have a poor mattress that will inevitably cause back pain (middle of my back, not lower, not my neck), then you develop an aversion to climbing into bed although your body wants nothing more than to sleep. or maybe i'm just a bit insomniatic lately.

for three days i was having tactile hallucinations. it felt like there was something biting or stinging parts of my skin. not many things at once, just one spot and when i touched the spot, it went away. but i really thought i was going crazy.

my thesis (which i have yet to finish, but am still indirectly working on) had to do with the language of touch. well--that was the idea my advisor came up with to give it a thread. i had a collection of stories about friends and lovers and described the ways i interacted and learned from them. obviously the lover bits were a little juicier, but i was always trying to get to a point.

it's interesting to me how much sex complicates relationships. i suppose it doesn't have to. but i know myself well enough to realize that i can't usually have a superficial bond with someone. but it's also interesting to me how many of my guy friends have at some point (or originally--it being the reason i got to know them!) been a crush.

you spend years trying to figure out relationships as an observer, you form theories that you can't wait to try out. but the type of relationship you think you want never actually manifests. and what you do encounter is just as complex and ridiculous and beneficial. but i've come to the conclusion that it is a good idea to get involved with someone after you've become friends. that whole "we knew each other for along time before we realized there was an attraction." for me, that has never happened. in the time i've spent getting to know people i either lose the sexual attraction that might have orignially been there, or i have to learn to get over my attraction because the person does not and will not ever reciprocate.

i've learned a lot about my own ego through the relationships i've had. and i've learned that most of my hurt has been a result of my ego--not true heartbreak. this was a liberating revelation. and i still believe that a strong relationship has to develop as a strong friendship.

i remember a friend of mine describing a relationship he had with another friend of mine. he didn't see it developing further because he felt she was only able to attempt intimacy through sex. as in--the only way she knew how to be closer to him was to initiate sex. i've known a few guys that have dated girls that they couldn't talk to--couldn't truly communicate with. looking back it's so obvious it was just attraction pulling them together. but what was it that made it end? whose ego was hurt? whose heart?

i was never at an age where i imagined the person i had a crush on being the one. sure i've placed other people's last names after my first, but i never imagined the future with someone. growing old with someone. i never believed in relationships lasting. and sometimes i have to wonder if i'm not the one who won't allow them to last. but most of the time i'm confident that i haven't met many men who've attracted me on a level necessary to want to invest time and emotion.

and really, when you don't grow up believing in the "grow up, find mate, get married, career, kids" tradition, then what model are you left with? most of the people around me have eventually followed this model. and sometimes, moreso now that i'm older, i feel some sort of unspoken pressure to conform to this model. but i don't want to. i don't want to need to. it doesn't feel right.

call it selfish, but i ike being able to explore who i am without getting caught up in any partnership that would break me if it were lost. call it pride, but i'd like to know that i can do it on my own.

and my mother informed me a week ago that she's not going to hold back from encouraging me to get married. great. good to know i have my mother's support.

sure it would be great to learn with someone. sure it would be great to share myself, my time, my living space. but perhaps i'm more of a window shopper than a comittment gal. and i'm alright with that. and i wish there were more examples of people thriving without romance hallmarking their already absurd, fulfilling, crazy lives. i mean--does everybody believe they are ultimately supposed to end up with one person? many people are with me through chapters of my life. those that manage to stay longer (and it isn't many) remain friends. but my passion must be my own, and i have yet to meet someone who compliments it without eventually distracting it.

Spiders

2010-02-17T02:21:00.000-05:00

9/18/07

I’ve always felt a sort of reverence toward spiders. Arachnids. Those eight-legged bugs who weave beautiful webs and catch other bugs, those silent roommates who reside in the corners of doorways or on the edges of cobwebs I haven’t the concern to clean.

Part of my fascination comes from my understanding of the Spider Woman, the storyteller who breathes life into being through the words she weaves to catch people’s attention.

In my cabin there are seldom formidable spiders—the kinds that dart across my toes and trigger a scream before I have time to realize that it is more scared of me than I of it. Most of the spiders here live quietly in some spot along the ceiling, often where the ceiling and the wall meet. They have a speck for a body and thread-like, almost translucent legs have black dots at the joints. And I see many a fly or gnat or moth tangled in their silk, so I appreciate their company. The worst distraction to my sleep is a restless fly buzzing about a dark room, growing louder near my ear and fading as it whizzes off another direction, perhaps trying to locate an escape. The moths aren’t so bad; they are quiet. And they gather near the lamps and then find a piece of wall where they rest, folded, during the day until the day darkens again, bringing rise to localized light from various watts bulbs.

There used to be two spiders, the spindly, unobtrusive kind, that lived in opposite corners of the shower stall. While I scrubbed my scalp it was often entertaining to see them, like trapeze artists, working their way across the top of the stall, through steam, to another part of the air, where they were held-fast by the delicate strands dust and their own silk had provided. Of course it was a double risk—that one should fall, plummeting down into water where his legs could not find a way to stand, and for me the risk of attempting to remove fallen spider from amidst shower drops or wet and soapy hair without getting jumpy.

So many times have I been up late, writing, thinking. And where I happen to be staring, there floats down a spider on his single, lookout strand. Out of all the spots in the room where I could be looking, there, in the small space framed by my forward sight, dangles a creature so easily unseen, so small against the proportion of human things.

They’ve put spiders in zero gravity and the spiders have woven their webs just the same. They’ve found out fabrics derived from spiders’ silk have amazing strength and resistance. Spiders lurk in those Halloween places where the unknown, the imagined tends to frighten. These octaped vampires exist in thousands of varieties, adapted to the environments, prepared for the predators and prey that will inevitably coexist with them. And in myths they are linked to the art of creation and the power of words.

I’d like a tattoo dedicated to the spider, or the Spider Woman, to represent my love of words, but I feel like there is more significance to the spider, and what it means for me, that I have yet to understand.

lontal frobotomy

2010-02-17T02:17:00.000-05:00

2/28/07

Perhaps we have simply become used to response (conditioned) instead of creating.
—What the Bleep do We Know?

When I confront my lack of control over the world, then I find ways to eliminate that sense of helplessness. I find ways to exert my power. Sometimes I cannot sleep and I stay up all night rearranging my living room furniture. Sometimes I write a letter to someone. Sometimes I listen to music. Sometimes I just lie there and think but my thoughts try to take me to places where there is no light and no point.
I have become a night person because that happens to be the time of day when there is not some obligation to which I am forced to exert my energy. My creativity, especially for writing, seems to be nocturnal.

Stepping outside, I am stepping away from myself. So in order to feel at home, I seek relationships that allow me to feel the same sense of comfort, of self-awareness, that I can achieve from within the four walls of my little cabin.

Frontal lobe decisions. Choice.
Socially constructed concepts of right and wrong.
The ratio of our frontal lobe to the rest of the brain is what sets people apart from other beings.

“Most people already have a lobotomy” --What the Bleep

anniversary.

2010-01-13T02:55:00.000-05:00

I noticed a strange red bump at the joint where my elbow is.

I noticed how his girlfriend is obnoxious, though loving, when she is drunk.

I noticed the vase that we used for the fourth of July picnic,
knocked over,
leaning
on a watering pail,
both left out on the patio table.
The vase’s water brown,
the flowers dried and bent,
just abandoned
even after their scent and color has faded.
Died.

A new visiting nurse came to check on my grandmother today. My grandma had trouble recalling what it was that had caused her back injury. I wondered if the nurse imagined that we were not taking good care of our grandmother. When the truth is that she had given up long ago, resigned to a life of stillness, similar to death but still breathing, still observing, like a ghost who hovers over the lives still growing and aches to be able to participate. Only she can. Or maybe she can’t. Maybe her body is spent and all there is is rest until the final rest.

It saddens me. No one can argue that living with someone so close to death is depressing.

She is a person whom I have come to know in the winter of her life. She is the woman who gave birth to my mother, who is responsible for partially shaping who my mother is today.

It is not surprising that my mother developed so much ambition. To escape.

Funny that I am mostly comfortable.
I’m not, totally, but
mostly.

There is this desire to be free. But what would I do? I would struggle more than I do now and probably create some level of drama for myself just to feel entertained.

When living here I am entertained by the drama of three generations of women, still all trying to figure out how to exist. How to coexist.

Isn’t it funny that we expect world peace when the common family unit requires so much repair? How many people can actually say that they have a good relationship with their parents? I wonder.

I’ve always thought that a person I could be seriously involved with would have to have a good relationship with his mother and father. Or at least one parent. It’s like a sign of how well someone can accept someone loving them unconditionally even though they are faulted. Human. Capable of making mistakes and always requiring some sense of growth to be…fulfilled.

Boy you don’t even know.
That’s why I’ll keep my distance.
I could love you so easily.
But I doubt that you are capable of
giving the love I need.
And I’ll forgive you for making it
hard to ignore,
How I like it despite how my mental jaw drops
to the floor
each time you enter
the room
Baby I try not to swoon
you make it hard to keep it together.
You got some strength
of mind
and a body to match
.

I can’t even try to type about him right now. It’s so silly.

I just hate how I even noticed him. How I paid attention to what he was wearing because I thought he looked so good in it. How his words were so well put together. That’s hot. And then he stays after class to talk to me about my trip to Florida? To find how old I was? He was clearly flirting. Clearly. And it can’t be because he’s trying to bribe a good grade out of me. Because he clearly has the brain and ambition to get his shit done right. But that just makes it harder not to think about…anything.

I get mad sometimes.
At myself, for behaving the way that I did
because of my emotional hope
rearing its desirous head.

In high school I was so boy crazy. Not at first. Not until I began to realize that I was not what boys seemed to want. It wasn’t about putting out—it was something else. And for years I believed that it was because I was overweight. But then I did realize that I hid my body anyway. That had I carried myself with more confidence, it would have been easier to attract the opposite sex. And the moment I began to feel better in my body I saw that people, not just men, but people reacted. Positively.

That’s why it’s difficult for me when some girl is standing if front of me reassuring me how amazing I am. Does she think that I don’t know that? Does she think that I need reaffirmation from a complete stranger? Granted, it is nice when someone who barely knows you feels confidently that you are an amazing person. But—I don’t know. It’s a little degrading, I think.

Maybe not. Maybe I’m being more judgmental of a drunk girl than I need to be.

I hated how he reached around me as I was hugging his girlfriend. How he grabbed my hand as I walked by. Reaching out now, after all this time. Groping for my acceptance. And me reciprocating.

I hate that he still has any power over my ability to just enjoy the evening. And I know that I let him. But it’s like a secret that I have to hold onto. That even though outwardly it is over, it is resolved, I have this little piece of me that wants to cling to him kissing me and holding me and admitting how much I mean to him. That’s a sweet part of our abstract history that I cherish.

Why does sex change things? Because then, on a whole different level, someone wants to find a way to make you happy. It’s like their egos recognize that they can’t truly make you happy happy. So then they want to be the one to be the source and the fulfillment of corporeal desire. Since they can give you nothing else in the way of spiritual appeasement, they seek to worship and appease the temple that is your body. At least he should.

And that’s the thing. If I can’t be with someone, I can’t be with him. If my body doesn’t feel right under his hands, then that’s it. And there are few hands out there that have really made it feel right. Fun, yes. Entertaining, sure. But deeply satisfying, rarely.

I get mad that I shared my body with him—only because he was probably too fucked up to register what it was that I was sharing with him. This vessel. This one-of-a-kind all mine shape. I let him inside me. I kissed him with real kisses. And all I got was civility the next day. A shallow disregard of what had happened. Part of the haze that was being drunk.

The vase tipped over, just about to fall, to clang against the metal of the patio table.
Caught on the arm of a watering can. Collecting drops of the rainwater that drips from the sky and through the wooden slats of the second-floor deck.

The cold water.
Coming
down.

I think poetry must be an auditory experience.
I am not much of a reader of poetry. Unless I am so moved to read it aloud. Words on page can be lovely, pretty, well-shaped and pieced together,
but their sounds are meant to be made. Their consonants pronounced,
their weight added to by the cadence of an individuals voice.

I miss singing with a band. I want it so badly to be a part of my life. And it is just done. Gone. And I have to start again.

I know it isn’t as if that were the first person I made music with. But it is so difficult to find a guitarist with whom I have a true musical chemistry. Someone whose soul can groove the same ways mine wants to.

Damn.

Process

2009-10-16T03:35:00.002-04:00

When I went to Italy with a Shakespeare class from my university, I intrigued a younger man.

He was, in short, exactly the type of guy your mother would love for you to bring home. He was polite, good-looking, with curly blonde hair and anxious blue eyes that were as lovely as they were calm. I knew from seeing him interact that he was in love with knowledge, that he craved more and appreciated every little bit that graced his perspective. But I also knew that he was young. And though I was only 26, I felt a lot older than he.

We started talking one night when I decided I wanted to hang out with the younger kids on the trip—the ones who had just or not quite turned 21. They were all about staying up late in the apartment and drinking wine. It’s easy to bond with drunk happy people when you’re an open person, willing to share in the fun.

Throughout the night more of the roommates went to bed until a few of us were seated at the living room table. He took a seat adjacent to me and we began talking. Somehow we got onto the topic of mushrooms, which he had just tried for the first time, and we shared stories of our experiences with mind-altering drugs. It didn’t take long for me to realize, again, that outside of our apartment were the streets of Florence, covered in night and dozens of smells and sounds that I had never met before. So I suggested we go for a walk and he agreed a walk was a good idea.

We roamed aimlessly, allowing our conversation to turn as many corners as we did, somehow always circling back to something familiar. I was thrilled to have such an interested listener. He kept posing questions. Some of them stock (if you had three wishes…), some of them more unique. Most of them requiring a thoughtful answer—the kinds I like. I enjoyed his conversation, enjoyed hearing some of the conclusions or discoveries he had come to at that stage in his life. Our conversation roamed with our feet and I was simply pleased to be out on a promenade in the streets of Florence, discussing the things that really mattered in life.

The next night I decided to visit the kids again. They had purchased a few bottles of wine during the day and were all too happy to share. We played games and laughed and enjoyed being in a new place with so many new, fun people. I had a considerable amount of wine, but ran out of Camels. I found myself leading a group of us through the streets of Florence, scouting out a place where we could buy cigarettes, picking up another bottle of wine along the way, asking in very poor Italian where we could find cigarettes. Even in my inebriation, I was embarrassed to be the drunken tourist skipping through the streets with only the need for cigarettes and more cheap Italian wine. Not to mention the fact that I was leading a group of young drunk Americans behind me, encouraging them to let loose, disregard the stereotype we may have been perpetuating.

The wonderful thing about Florence was that it was not asleep yet. During the time when my mind had only begun to feel more alive, there were people out walking. Walking home, walking to a friend’s, or just walking. I was so infatuated with the streets of Florence. Their age, and therefore wisdom, seemed to seep through the soles of my shoes with every step and every glance. Sure, Italians are people like us, and they take their environment for granted like us, but to live in a place that had its golden era and had settled into something more calm. Sure everywhere you walked you could not avoid capitalism. But here had been the birth of the Renaissance. The rebirth of culture out of the Dark Ages. But I digress.

When I finally found a cigarette it was from another American wandering back to his own apartment after a night at the bars. He asked where we were staying, I answered vaguely lest he try to follow some of the naïve blonde girls with me. I thanked him for the cigarette and kept the group moving.

At the door of the apartment, I still had half of a cigarette to finish. Most of the group decided it was too brisk to stand outside, so they went in. He said he would stay with me while I finished the cigarette. We sat on the stoop and continued our conversation from the night before. Opening up a little more, sharing a little more. Becoming a little more comfortable with each other. People were walking by, I paid little attention to them. But I do remember looking up at the awnings and second floor balconies of the buildings lining the street. The street itself, with huge worn stones that more shoes than tires had passed over. The glow from the lights reflecting off the moisture on the street, making discreet halos in the darkness. A darkness that was not malicious or mysterious, but romantic and warm, despite the chill in the air.

He eventually talked to me about his girl trouble. He had a crush on one of the girls in our group. They had fooled around. He wanted to be close to her again. But she, along with a couple other girls, had repeatedly blown him off or excluded him somehow during other parts of our trip. I didn’t dislike the girl he had a crush on—in fact she and I had had a lot of fun drinking together. But, I told him that she was obviously not into him. Or that if she was, she was manipulative and not someone he should waste his time with. I said, “So you should just kiss me instead.” He nodded, I laughed, and we leaned our heads closer until we were kissing, there on the doorstep of an apartment, in Florence, at three in the morning. We hummed Beatles songs and chattered long after my second cigarette had burned out.

He had other friends on the trip, so I did not expect him to spend all of his time with me. I did not hang out with the kids during the day—I preferred to spend time sightseeing with the older students (a nontraditional woman who turned out to be a good friend and who, a year later, moved to Florence permanently and a grad student, like me, who was nearly engaged). But when I did run into him, and if the girls had abandoned him, he would tag along with me and my group.

Once we were on our way to a famous book shop where they made the covers for and bound the books. We watched as the craftsman poured paint into a vat, traced designs in the thick paint and glue, and carefully laid a piece of plain paper over the top to absorb the surface design. I was with the older students and a couple professors. After the demonstration, we split up, but one of the professors walked him and me back to the apartment. He was staying in a room with the only male professor on the trip (the one who walked us back) and a few other boys. I went back to his room with him since no one else had yet returned from their outings. We decided to take a nap, and so I curled up against him in a twin bed, in the heat of the day. I remember hearing the professor return and come up to the loft where the beds were to retrieve or put away something. I knew he was trying not to look at two of his students lying in bed together. I wondered what he thought of me (robbing the cradle?) lying there with this boy I had just met. I remember wondering why I cared.

We walked together again in the narrow and wide passages of Venice. I walked until my feet hurt and then walked some more because there was always some other part of the city that I hadn’t seen, or that I wanted to see more closely. We ended up in a square with a restaurant and some locals. We sat on a bench where three friends, one with a guitar, came to sit and sing songs. They played a couple English songs, a beautiful Spanish lullaby and some other Italian songs that I wished I’d understood better. I sang along with the English songs I knew. He encouraged me to sing louder, but I didn’t want to steal the show (and be that American again). We were hungry so we went into the restaurant, which was busy, but had wonderful (we were in Italy!) food. We talked over dinner about relationships and I reassured him that I was not looking for a one. And that there was no need for him to feel obligated once we got back from our trip. He said that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend either. He seemed relieved that I brought it up. Seemed to have even more respect.

We sat on a corner, near a tiny dock and stared out over the Grand Canal where the lights of the city glowed in ripples and into the watery air. Mid sentence he leaned over to kiss me. It was one of the nicest moments of my life. What I was saying, I don’t remember, but I knew he did not lean over because he was trying to get into my pants, but because he saw something in me that he adored and wanted to be closer to.

He later confessed that he had fallen in love, essentially, with my mind. But not so much with the rest of me. Of course my ego did not take this well, but, as he had reminded me mid-first-kiss in Florence, I was seven years older. There was too much distance between where we were in our lives for it to feel like anything more than teacher and student. I was foolish to hope that we could spend more time together romantically, but I was willing to try. And eventually he admitted he could only be friends, then I gradually lost touch with him.

I’ve run into him a couple times. Once when my band was performing at an arts festival for the university. Once at a bar in town shortly after he had turned 21. He was sweet, polite, sincere. It was nice to see him. I even felt a little boost knowing how good he looked, how intelligent he was, and how I had managed to intrigue him. To capture his interest within towns whose surrounding had much more time and wisdom to them. I’m glad he ended up walking with me, kissing me, instead of a girl who would not have appreciated the experience to the degree that I did.

One night, as we sat in front of the Duomo in Florence, down the street from our apartment with a very cheap bottle of wine, I said that I was in a state of disbelief. The place felt surreal. Too beautiful to be real. The time with him felt dreamlike—too perfect to last. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen,” I said.

“Neither was I,” he replied. “But I’m glad it did.”

That can be said about my entire life.

Process.

Where to stretch it out. Where to add more detail. What details matter? I would have to go back into my writing from the trip to try and regain a more detailed sense of what I felt. I would have to look at the pictures, the notes, the postcards from the trip to sharpen the memory and include more sights, sounds, smells, tastes.

I cried in front of The Birth of Venus and spent nearly as much time in front of Springtime. I had never thought that I would look directly at a Botticelli. Or Michelangelo. Or any of the other artists I had learned about in Art History. And we were there because of William. Some gifted Brit who created and rewrote plays that took place in the birthplace of the Rennaissance. Who used the setting, already so rich, as the background to for his ideas to form and express. It was all so romantic. So lovely. And I was broke, and felt underdressed and had just broken up with my boyfriend (my decision, at nearly a year I just didn’t feel the same inclination to continue being with him). And my father had died four months before. And I had just started playing in a band. It was really the happy climax to a very tumultuous time in my life. I was also in my last semester of grad school, trying to work on a thesis that had no thesis, just so eager to soak up whatever experience came my way because I was acutely aware of how precious every centimeter of space and time was. And how much of it flooded my awareness. And he was someone who understood that inherently. Who appreciated life and was so optimistic because he had not yet been devastated and repeatedly disappointed. He was privileged, but understood his fortune and planned to go in every direction that his passion led him. I was still cradling that idealism though it was encased by years of negativity and self-limiting thoughts and behaviors.

At the core of me, there is a strength that no one can tamper with. But on the surface is a very vulnerable, very impressionable person. Amid the layers that protect this strength are aspects of a being unique to the times and places it has moved through. I am privileged. I recognize my good fortune. I know pain and it has not driven me to the point of hopelessness though it has tempted my patience for this body. It was so nice to feel recognized, to feel adored and appreciated. To feel interesting but not interrupted. To have space and to receive closeness. If I could find a person like that in every place I visited, who lasted as long as the trip, I would feel content. Because the person, like the place, is not home, but offers some level of familiarity that makes it easy to feel welcome, cozy.

Busy Body

2009-09-28T02:09:00.000-04:00

My mother set out chairs and tables
As I scrubbed shit off the bathroom floor, and off the wall,
and the lid of the garbage can beside the toilet.
I pushed a mop across the tiles
and used an old sponge to clean the sink and toilet seat
while sweat dripped from the tip of my nose,
from my temples, down my neck and down the center of my chest,
to form dark spots on my camisole,
hidden by a thin gray shirt layered over top.
There was no window in the room. I was dripping
with sweat,
inhaling waste and cleaning products,
working diligently in preparation for the arrival of the guests—
the high school students who were attending the summer arts academy,
fifty or so of them. I volunteered my house as a meeting place since the coffee shop where we typically take them
had closed.
I vacuumed the hallway to pick up bits of urine-soaked,
dried toilet paper that fall out of my grandmother’s underwear.
She shoves the paper there when she runs out of pads.
Or the paper comes from a pad that is so full
it begins to fall apart. The pieces fall out of the bottom of her pants
as she shuffles down the hall and back.
To her chair,
to the kitchen,
to the chair,
to the bathroom where she seldom showers,
to her bedroom cramped by misarranged furniture
and piles of clothes, papers, and packages
that haven’t been opened or returned.

I am skeptical of being able to grow old gracefully.
It terrifies me how my body is already so different
from how it was ten years ago.
My mother is still beautiful, still graceful
(even with one and a half fake knees, blonde-white hair and ivory skin),
but I haven’t many of my mother’s body genes.

Outside,
after the food has been set out, the chairs arranged, the atmosphere is nearly set
save the dead mouse, courtesy of my smallest cat,
rotting near the table by the stairs, where people must walk to reach the patio.
I choose a small stick from the wood pile and go to the mouse,
its gray fur stained on the sidewalk,
its little mouth open,
tail curved stiffly up like an apostrophe.
I use the stick to flick the mouse from the walk,
onto the dirt next to the table,
onto the dirt under the stairs
past the table where it is hidden
from people who won’t be looking.
A worm falls out of its body.
The flies scatter from it and find it again where it has been relocated.
The decomposers follow the sweet rotting scent to help the little rodent flesh break down until it is unrecognizable and then gone.

The guests arrive.
They find chairs and many go to sit on the fabric my friend has laid across the grass farther down in the yard.
I am busy, busy, busy
helping people get situated,
showing kids to the bathroom,
setting up the coffee pots, getting napkins for the girl with a nosebleed,
getting paper towels for the girl who stepped in dog shit,
getting Benadryl for the girl with allergies,
getting plastic spoons and knives and Tylenol for the boy with a headache,
turning on patio lights, running up to the bathroom, running to my room for books of poetry to read when there is a lull with the kids who haven’t filled up the sign-up sheet to read their own work.

Coming back downstairs, I notice my cat following me (the older one).
He’s been cooped up upstairs all day so I reach down to pick him up
and carry him outside and he cries as if…
he reaches out to swat me as if he’s hurt
and I set him down outside and I see blood
pooling around a wound near his hip.
I look down at my shirt and pants where a spray of blood and puss has made streaks, darkening my already dark denim pants.
I don’t have too much time for concern—
I run inside to change and wash my hands and arm where blood is smeared.
My cat hides on the other side of the house,
no doubt running his rough tongue over and over and over the wound
that looks like a hole where a fang has pierced his skin.
I haven’t the money for a vet.
I pray his special cat saliva will do the trick. I pray.

My mother tells me my grandmother, her mother, is sick again,
and so grandma has changed her mind again, and won’t be going with my mother and sister to Oklahoma.
But they’ll only be gone a couple of weeks, not a month.
Still.
This means I will not get a break.
I will not get a break.

Summer camp will end
and I will attend my friend’s wedding where I will be forced to confront the fact that I am single (is it my body? My body that doesn’t look but feels so different than it did ten years ago?)
and then there are other obligations
and there is grandma who barely ever does
anything besides sit in her plush recliner and watch Fox News.
And it’s back to work for minimum wage
while the collectors keep calling, keep asking, and I keep telling—
I have no money. I have none. Yes, I’m employed but not full-time,
not yet, but I’m busy, busy, busy like it is full-time
and then it’s back to teaching—
teaching for more money
but still while working minimum wage
for the benefits in case this body needs another organ removed or a cavity filled or a virus killed or a wound healed (my saliva isn’t special, unfortunately).

And then the year will be over, just like that.
And I’ll be working and paying and doing and
cleaning up shit and
trying
to help my mother
and looking forward to sleep in a bed that makes my back ache
so badly I never sleep for more than a few comfortable hours. (But it’s still difficult to get out of that bed).
Still.

I make time for friends.
I talk to my mother about how difficult it is—
all of it. (She admits to me that her own mother has her feeling suicidal.)

And I need to quit smoking.
Lately I’ve developed a cough.
Something gets caught
in my throat, in my lungs, and I cough,
choking for a smooth breath of air.
All I worry about is losing my singing voice.
Because other than that, anything else would mean a break.
A vacation.
An invitation to the decomposers
to find me and
return this tired body to the earth
where there are no obligations or loneliness or debt or anger or pain
just miles and miles of quiescent dirt and rock
and freedom.

It pours...

2009-09-26T02:43:00.000-04:00

So ready just to get out; it’s time to clean my head out

remember how it is my own

don’t wanna live like Frankenstein, feelin like this brain ain’t mine

it’s frightening how many people go down.

They give away everything that makes them theirs

they sacrifice ideals for a mediocre share

of the pie that someone never baked, it’s just another figment in the game

working just to reach death with a sense of pride, a crying shame.

So i’ll shake my head at the customers who buy into the scheme

it’s gonna take a lot more than your marketing trickery

I see past all that shimmer

i see past all that noise

there’s nothing there but a heart soaked in need.

***~~~***

So many kids came in tonight to buy condoms. Guys. And on one hand I was really glad that they were using protection. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder how many were doing without, since Kwik Fill is the only gas station in town that sells condoms. That’s ridiculous. Either a whole hell of a lot of people better be going to the free clinic for free condoms, or…I don’ t know what. That just bothers me. One kid was so cute. He asked if I knew a place that would sell latex-free condoms. Nothing in town, I said. And then he started to explain how sometimes she has a reaction and sometimes she doesn’t. Part of me was taken back at how willing this kid was to talk to a stranger about his girlfriend’s profelactic needs, but the other part of me felt glad that he wasn’t ashamed to talk about it. Again—it’s reassuring how many kids—mostly men—are buying condoms.

I just had the urge to know how many condoms get disposed of a year. How many people who clean hotel rooms have to tie up tiny clear bags filled with someone else’s reproductive fluids. How many condoms litter landfills, like little dull deflated balloons, cradling what was once a potential life—and thank god it isn’t or maybe there should have been some that made it through.

I don’t understand how any organization can be against contraceptives. How can a God that wants us all to live good lives possibly agree with a world that overpopulates itself in the name of survival and legacy? Too many people and not enough food. What kind of God wouldn’t want people to use a little More restraint when it came to procreation?

I meet people who still talk about having children like it was something that they couldn’t control—like having kids is just something that we’re all eventually supposed to do. Where are all the people who don’t assume this? It’s amazing to me how many people I encounter who assume that I will eventually be a mom. Like some day I’m going to wake up and think, “Yes. Even though I’ve never had any desire to be a mom, even though my goals lie nowhere near ‘having my own family’, i just need to be pregnant.” And I realize there are mistakes. And that people, women can’t bring themselves to snuffing out that life before it begins, but really?

Anything has potential. Anything. But you’ve got to take its environment into account. And it’s a collection of sentient moments that add up to make a person a person who participates in the world.

Really, how is an unborn, undeveloped fetus any different than the roadkill you passed the other day? Did you mourn for that chipmunk? You didn’t know it. You didn’t have a connection to it. Yet people freak out over an unborn child. Because it was a divine creation. No one cries for the trees we kill or the yellow jackets they have to poison or the deer splattered across the road. These were all living creatures, with brains and nervous systems. These were all God’s creations. So until people become a little more Buddhist and truly learn to revere life in all its forms, then I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about how abortion is wrong.

I don’t know where that came from.

And on the other hand…

He sent me a text message a day or two after i’d seen him and asked me if i was on birth control. I explained to him that i don’t want to take a pill that regulates my natural functions when i don’t have to for my health. i explained that i’d never had an issue with it in the past—meaning i’m responsible—and that he needn’t worry. “word” he responded. and then he said something about how he just hoped that if something happened i would “take care of it.” and my first response was what a dick he was for acting like it was something that i, alone, should have to bear the burden of. i wasn’t even thinking about the emotional aspect—i was thinking financially. i can’t afford to pay for that shit on my own. and he was damn sure part of the reason…and it just pissed me off. first that he even had to question whether or not i was responsible enough, then to say that he hoped i’d take care of it. sure, i’d kill your unborn child without you knowing if i could afford it. is that what i was supposed to say? i have no issue with getting an abortion, if the need arises, but i’m sure as hell going to do what i can to prevent it from even being an issue.

and he wasn’t even that good in bed. fuck him.

what does he think is going to come of this? why is he a part of my life? that’s a serious question to be asking ourselves at this point in the game. we’ve only known each other for two months. but let’s consider the logistics of the situation. he has no job, no car, no source of income. he’s miserable more than half the time because of where he is and there is no indication, whether from his attitude or his efforts, that things are going to change. three quarters of the time when he talks to me, i feel like i have to reassure him that things will be okay, but i also remind him that nothing will change if he doesn’t will it. he’s so negative. and then, one-sixteenth of the time, he just talks about sex. about fucking (like it would make everything better? like he has no control over his hormonal desires?) and the rest of the time i just feel like i’m friends with someone young. with someone who doesn’t have his shit together and sees strength in me and just wants me in his life so that he feels connected to something that make sense. or he just wants a life that doesn’t require him to worry about any little thing. he wants comfort and to be spoiled and to be preoccupied so that he doesn’t have to define for himself what his life is supposed to be. he has no real interest in caring about me—his lack of effort and his being jaded by girls took care of that. he just wants and wants and wants and can’t give worth a damn. so why did i? or did i? was i just interested in fucking? perhaps. and perhaps that’s why this is getting old fast. because if the sex isn’t worth it…then none of it might be worth it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

my thumb is so swollen. these pustules are pushing up from by my nail, which i have trimmed short, and the whole thumb is a third bigger than my left thumb. my hands are covered in patches of dry skin and these tiny blisters. and i find myself wanting to pop them. and i can’t keep my hands moisturized because i have to wash them so many times a day.

apparently, without this little blue light that goes with the water filtration system, our water is not clean. there are traces of fecal matter (from other people’s septic systems, my mother assures me—as if that makes it better) and if we have to ingest any water, we should boil it.

we live in a house that we pay so much money for and in and we don’t have potable water? what the fuck? maybe i can’t live here much longer. but where would i go that it would be any better? any healthier? amidst pollution, how is it possible to find a place that hasn’t been contaminated? and if too many of us find places like that, aren’t they only bound to become contaminated? isn’t the curse of urban sprawl that there will be no place left to live and breathe? i used to think that’s what the jetsons were—a farcical look into a future where we have so damaged the earth that we have to live above it, high in the clouds, where the air is cleaner and where we aren’t surrounded by our own waste. i admire people who truly make an effort to reduce the size of their carbon footprints. i really, really want to live around people who are aware like that. i still live in a place where not everyone recycles. where recycling pick up is a lie and they send the things to the same landfill with other unusable garbage.

when i think of the trash heaps like pock marks on the face of the earth, it makes me feel nauseous. it disgusts me. it makes me embarrassed to be a human being. how infantile to think that we can just throw things away and they disappear with no repercussion. how utterly naïve and selfish.

i’m apparently in a very angry mood. but it wasn’t hard to get here. and i’m not really letting it affect me to the point where i’m going to be up all night fuming about it. i’m just thinking. and it makes me think of what i need to do to get to where i want to be. i want to earn a living to support myself and have the ability to leave less of a mark on this world than the average consumer. i want to live healthier, breathe better, eat better, and be around people who do not judge, who do not agree with capitalism or any sort of system that enables prejudice and greed to thrive. i want to be around people who think as well as they party. and have the conversations to prove it.

finis.

sounds out and in

2009-07-27T03:34:00.001-04:00

8/4/07

the crickets maintain a resonant high-pitch
to compliment the clicking of acorns and leaves
falling against branches and the soft earth.
a veil of clouds drips with tiny beads of rain,
syncopated movements tempted by gravity
spread delicate by an invisible air,
pushing pockets of water across a thin layer
between earth and sky.
a rhythm forms, pulled by the strength of a core
suspended in an immaterial expanse.
i know that i am not alone.
yet the channels through which this reality are linked
to the universe within me are unique
to the senses that persuade me to remain fluid.
so small against the width of infinity.
so much feeling beyond the scope of words and expression.
and my ephemeral heart beats despite a corporeal sadness.
patience.
things will not get better.
they will not get worse.
they will continue as they have always been
and it is through my perceptions
that what i truly feel
is distracted and led down meloncholy and dead-end avenues.
it is the way i am facing
when the light strikes my eyes
that determines what i see.
(i used to hate the sun. but now i simply recognize that it is a wiser heat than i. but it is also impossible to wither in its presence. only to be transformed.)
people believe that fire releases the soul to the heavens. and it is a fact that, with those rising flames, so too travel the altered molecules of what was once flesh, up into a sky that carries it off into space. into the space that surrounds us.
but one doesn't require a pyre to join the stars.
to meet the ancestors built from the dust of what came and went before.
before now.
there is no name.
there is no way to bring it into being.
because there is no beginning.
there is no end. only change.
only recognition and recollection.
revolution is the moment more becomes self-aware. conscious. creative.
and destruction will come at the hands of all parts of the whole.
the darkness and the light will waltz while
the illusions of beginning and end manifest among the stars and the earth.
constellations will contain and explode,
shifting with the exhale and the inhale
and the music between the night and day.
and my ephemeral heart beats despite a corporeal sadness.

arrogant animals

2009-07-27T03:28:00.000-04:00

7/8/07

alright. so my friend and i were talking tonight...

before i begin my rant, let me offer a disclaimer of some kind. i do not really believe that anything i say has any bearing on what people believe. as far as i'm concerned, people who think for themselves are not simply going to agree with what someone else argues, regardless of how intelligent the argument is. but, i can't help seeing connections where many of the most common arguments fail to see them...as with most of my rants, this is mostly me just trying to organize some thoughts, in this case, based on a discussion...

so.

i have plenty of friends who at some point in our relationship have asked me why i chose to be vegetarian. i provide them a summary of my reasons/beliefs knowing full well that they probably don't agree with me on some key points--which is fine--and i often say that i'm not some crazed animal rights activist. i'm not going to stand outside of sax and spraypaint the fur coats that come out the door. there seem more immediate capitalistic issues to protest against...

but my friend and i were talking about the ethics of hunting. i know plenty of people who, although they hunt, do revere nature and follow practices based on the sacredness of nature and all her creatures. those who do not waste any part of the animal they take. those who do not believe in hunting as sport. etc. but so many of the points i have heard in support of hunting involve the idea of populations control. when there are too many deer, for example, deer starve because the food in an area is less than sufficient for a large population. if the population is not controlled, deer will appear even more frequently in human territories, threatening the tranquility of highways and backyards alike.

my response to this, usually only in my head, is that the only reason the environment cannot sustain a large population, of anything, is because people have restricted and depleated the parts of the ecosystem that would provide for the animals relying on it for sustenance. who invaded whose territory anyway? i don't know enough about this. and even if i did, the other (silent) issue seems to be that people are superior to animals, and therefore deserve first dibs on all that an environment has to offer.

i know i sound like some buddhist, tree-hugging, idealist. but there are many philosophies that entail an equal amount of respect for all nature's animals. the belief that humans are superior relates to both empirical and religious ideals. the empirical being that humans are "more intelligent;" the religious being that god gave adam (and therefore mankind) dominion over the animals (he named all the animals in the garden of eden, etc).

in response to the idea that people are more intelligent beings, i am forced to question (again, usually in my head) how human superiority is gauged. other mammals, reptiles, birds, arachnids, whatever--other animals--do not cause the grand-scale destruction that humans do. they do not engage in wars; they do not destroy environments (and when they do, you can almost bet on human interference--humans who have imposed an order unlike the...uh...natural one); they do not interfere with the ability for other species (of their OWN) to thrive.

and if people are so much more intelligent than other animals, how can we justify the mating rituals that influence so much of our behavior. we wear flashy clothing to attract a mate, reproduce, repeat. we go to clubs to meet potential mates (i'm sayin'--not all sex leads to procreation but the quest for sex, the mission to copulate is still strong among us). we carefully craft our own little nests. we form communities, cliques, groups that compete with other groups. our society takes survival of the fittest to the extreme on many levels; it's a dog eat dog world.

so if population control is one argument in support of hunting. then why fret over murder rates and death tolls and plagues? aren't they forms of population control in a world that is already struggling to support the population?

just what is the "natural balance?"

there are too many...internal contradictions in the arguments i've heard regarding the ethics of hunting. most do not approach the issue from the standpoint of taking life. immediately people turn to population--to statistics--to numbers that objectify the living, breathing things to which they are referring. the same way that statistics simplify, dehumanize the devastation of so many deaths.

and as i continue to consider my own beliefs regarding the value of life i have to wonder how many spiders, houseflies, mosquitos, raccoons, slugs, whatever i've killed (out of annoyance or fear !). and then, some people would point out, that plants too are living things that breathe and eat and grow like people do--so are they equally sacred forms of life?

native american belief systems (not all of them--i don't want to overgeneralize) follow the idea that nature provides what each form of life needs to survive, to thrive. indians did not over-hunt. they did not wipe out the buffalo. they were not responsible for endangering species. but they weren't vegetarian.

and it isn't as simple as saying that vegetarianism would solve any imbalance. the issue has too many levels, with centuries of socio-historical factors.

so usually, when people ask me about why i'm a vegetarian i bring up a few key points:

i don't enjoy the taste of most meats. the ones i do miss, i have found substitutes for that do not require the death of any animal and usually help out some soy farmer somewhere.

much of the meat produced by larger companies is not healthy for consumption.

the conditions in which many animals raised to be killed are terrible. how can people distinguish between the quality of life most cats and dogs enjoy (at least in our country) and the quality of life for so many chickens and calves.

the process of turning cattle into beef is inefficient; we could feed the world with the grains that are used to feed cows who only provide a fraction of the food for a fraction of the population.

and ultimately, just because i can drive a car, put sentences together and be much more selective about with whom and why i fornicate, doesn't mean that i am superior to othe animals who also have their own forms of communication, their own social orders (which they have maintained for how long?) and create their own small empires, as discreet as the networks of insects beneath the places we tread.

so.

live the life you want. but please don't try to convince me to eat a burger. i have my reasons and after thirteen years of being a vegetarian (i'll explain why not vegan another time), understand that my beliefs are the result of years of asking myself repeatedly WHY i have chosen to live this way, and finding more and more reasons (statistics, facts, etc) to support the choice i made and far outweigh the evidence that opposes it.

this is why i need conversation

2009-07-27T03:22:00.001-04:00

8/6/07

because when words go firing through my delicate mind, they are looking for a proper outlet. sometimes it's satisfying enough to flood the page, or the screen. but those vehicles have no response. no critique. no opposing or parallel idea.

until then it's mental masturbation.

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

coconut skin sprawled across a bed that makes my body feel small

arms outstretched appear weak against the size of the room

the carpet is far away

and suddenly i am insignificant despite the comfort of this flesh.

no goosebumps or sunburn or orgasm

could make this body more real,

and yet it is easy to slip out of the moment

to lose concentration

to falter among thoughts prone to thorns.

i've been fighting my way back

to greener pastures in the landscape of my identity,

it is a common effort--to return to myself--

one so often necessary because i am so often

thrown.

shoved to the terrain just beyond my control;

forced to create paths that lead into myself

without using the shortcuts of denial, distraction or deceipt.

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

i've been thinking about people needing other people. regardless of how alone each of us feels during certain parts of our life (and in certain moments of intense emotion), i do not believe that we are ever alone. okay, maybe there are people out there with no one to talk to. but more than likely, there are people out there who lack the motivation to reach out to someone; there can't be that many hermits in the age of hotlines and the internet.

i've needed people for a whole list of reasons. and when i say need, i really mean that without these people, i doubt i would have made it thus far into my life. it hasn't been easy. it hasn't been ten shades of hell, but it hasn't been a breeze. and i, like so many others, find myself questioning the scope of it all from time to time. so the reason i need people, is generally to maintain my sanity. writing helps, but through writing i am only trying to connect--to link some part of my experience to the world. and, as i began talking about earlier, this is why conversation is so satisfying.

now. i cannot bring myself to believe that i need someone for a more specific reason than this. a more specific, personal, romantic reason than this. and at this point in my life, i can't think of why anyone would want to put up with me. someone asked me the other day, if i did not believe in marriage, what did i want out of life? did he think that marriage was all life really had to offer? this kid was young(er than me), and i assumed he still had plenty of faith in the whole "there's someone out there just for me" ideal. it's funny that i've lost that idealism, but managed to maintain so much else. i'm not a total cynic. but i'm not as optimistic as i was ten years ago.

i would like to say that i am a nonconformist. but to be a total nonconformist i would have to rebel against more than i do. and there are certain social practices i participate in with as much enthusiasm and curiosity as the rest of the herd.

i would like to say that i'm a unorthodox. but again, i'm presuming to know what is normal. and nowadays, i hope, the term "normal" is just about useless.

i know who i am not, what i am not. i may still be working on who and what i am--which is fine. if i had already explored every aspect of myself, i'd be a fairly shallow person. and i don't know how much time i have left. but that shouldn't matter anyway.

i used to always say that if i can go to bed feeling full, feeling content. if i can die before i wake without having a sense of regret or want, then i've lived that day well. this forces me to live in the moment. but i'm realizing, the older i get, that it isn't even about finding what's special about the moment. it's grasping that the moment is perfect. that it is what it is. that the consistency of change is the only constant, and everything in the wake of experience unfolds with utter beauty.

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

i've got to break a habit of worrying, but it's more addictive than cigarettes.

i've got to find an embrace that doesn't release me too soon or hold me too long.

i've got to find a niche that doesn't crowd me.

i've got to find more reasons to keep moving.

it's never enough and it's always too much.

connection failed

2009-07-27T03:17:00.000-04:00

i am reaching out into the electric pool.

where shadows play within the safety of

distance.

i am tired of being a fantasy.

tired of the images superimposed over

the complex and definitive fabric that cradles

these cosmic thoughts.

intangible personalities entertained

by reflections and fragments.

so distracted by choreography

that they cannot recognize what is real

when it breathes next to them,

so satisfied by the bits that surface onto the screen

that when it speaks

clearly

from someplace immediate

they run away punching the air and fighting off the past.

this restless arm spins, scanning the plane of my own perspective,

brushing over the blips that enter my field of vision

trying desperately to interpret each random

or patterned light

blinking quickly on,

in and

out and

gone.

but my memory cannot record,

cannot make sense of every interference.

and i wonder what i am missing.

and why i am so tired.

Skin (part one)

2009-07-27T03:13:00.000-04:00

September 26, 2007

I look at where I live and realize that I have no reason to complain.

But true to the capitalist tradition, I realize

I want more.

Am I a victim of a system that will not let me be satisfied?

That makes it difficult to feel content

amidst a barrage of responsibilities?

Responsibility. An ideology we learn to respect. But

to whom or to what do I truly have a responsibility?

I am responsible for myself, but what does that entail?

Eating well, bathing regularly, taking good care of myself?

Then I ask the question: why? If I am responsible for myself

I infer that this responsibility complies with a social order.

Funny that we need laws

like we need sex

like we need entertainment

like we need jobs.

It is difficult to exercise restraint

when so much experience registers through the nervous system.

Perception.

If every view of the world is potentially different,

then no view of the world is absolute.

If no view of the world is absolute,

then there is no reference for right or wrong.

There goes responsibility.

But to live life according to standards—a code—

that one has written according to her own level of respect

and reverence for other life—

I think that is one responsibility to take seriously.

I'm responsible for loving, for promoting

life.

Yet I find so much of the social structure makes it inevitable that

death

maintains the population.

In my utopia suicide is appreciated and

individuals realize that the most

unobtrusive, inconsequential death

is their own

made selfless

by their own hands.

I'm not saying we should all jump off a cliff,

but there's something to be said about our lack of effort

in maintaining a standard of life:

Pro-choice, pro-life, vegan, omnivore, gun control, bearing arms, humane death sentences, legal narcotics, prescribed vacations, television, pornography, enterainment, art, slave trade, slave wage, atomic war, political and religious freedom, prejudice, racism, slash and burn, divide and conquer,

excusable hubris in the name of select symbols select minds agree upon.

What the fuck?

And when it comes down to it

I'm only burdening my mind

during a time when I'm supposed to be sleeping.

I can't live my life believing that

because I can sleep when I'm die it makes

sense to kill myself while I'm breathing.

And I'm at the point, more so every day,

where death becomes more threatening and yet less terrifying.

Bring it.

In the meantime, what doesn't kill me

only makes me that much more pissed off.

Ignorance is bliss. Hence the state of our global welfare.

Nothing is ever enough

and that is why I am tired.

And will not rest until I am done with this skin.

Nothing is ever enough

and that is why death,

and its weightlessness,

seems a heaven unto itself.

My father, grandfather and others to follow

are free, released from the gravity

of this plane of existence.

They have left stories. Words.

Because not even the shell decomposing

beneath engraved shining stone

can claim more than the words left to

remind.

Memory reconstructs a life

and depends on other modes of oral tradition

to pass along the tale,

to keep it real,

to keep it significant.

These fucking words.

Proof of our folly and glory

traceable in the symbols we have

painted, chiseled, drawn, typed onto the face of a day—a

moment—

proclaiming Life! Here! Now!

I was here.

Out of the random collision of bits

smaller than eyes can see

came me in this rough and vulnerable (easily influenced

and greatly inherited) form.

Behold individualism!

Behold divinity!

Behold a miracle of evolution!

This is Me.

Now take my curiosity

and stain it with your audacious

creations

added to the mix for no higher purpose than

self-gain, self-righteous,

survival?

If we are organisms competing against other organisms

I forfeit the game.

If to thrive I must abandon all that I deeply feel,

then, thank you,

I am better suited as a tree

following cycles of life and death with more grace and persistence

than any animal on earth has shown.

But I am here, stuck in this skin,

attached to the people and things that

are attached to me.

Not dependent, you see, just

emotionally invested.

And I'm back to responsibility

and duty.

Fuck.

How does one live for oneself as well as

for everyone else?

Through love?

But what is that but severe involvement? Attachment to a temporal realm?

What is love but another ideal to worship, covet, desire, strive for;

I can only avoid it to a degree (I am only human)

And I know it's mostly absurd,

mostly coincidental, rarely transcendental. Still I'm grateful.

Because of all the pain in the world.

If I had been born to no one, and raised by no one,

how would I respond to being loved? If I knew how to survive unloved,

isolated from the senseless complexities of human society?

Would I be peaceful? Automatically Zen?

Or violent and anxious?

Even beasts comply with a social order.

Nothing exists in isolation—at least not for very long.

The presence of life depends on interaction

between two parties in motion

waltzing, however haphazardly, through a space

defined relative to infinity.

What? Stop.

My head hurts.

Something

2009-07-27T03:12:00.000-04:00

6/24/09

Vivid, intense dreams lately
No more and no less stimulating than episodes of well-written
Television shows
Provide me with prompts for self-reflection.

How are we composed?

There are moments, sometimes, and not frequently, that I have trouble believing that I exist. Because something slips from the moment and it is almost as if I am a visitor within my own body, observing life through eyes that are not truly mine. And it takes effort to fall back into place, into now, into that unquestioning state of consciousness that I do, in fact, exist.

Another door has opened. Just as I knew it would.
And I am happy to walk through, happy to move forward.
Time moves so quickly and yet
It is easier to pay attention to the parts of each day that strike me,
That wake me from the routine of function
With forms suddenly curious, momentarily strange and lovely
Like a word repeated over and over until it sounds senseless.

How do we assign meaning?

There is so much that I want to know. And so much more of myself that I want to explore.
And my fear, one of the few I have, is that I will stifle myself. As if remnants of adolescent angst will tinge the freshness of change with acrid hints of a sadness that was once my constant companion. I said long ago that I believed that that sadness would always be a part of me. And now I say that it is difficult not to be sad. I separate my old depression from the new, as if the separation between the world inside my head that I could not escape from was so different from the world around me that I also cannot escape from. But I do not want to escape from either. I simply would like to blur the line that separates them further. I would like to pull in the pieces of the world around me that upset me and show it how it affects me, how it affects many, how much I want to heal it. And I would like to take the pieces of myself and force them out, into art, into words, into sound so that both worlds can confront one another and recognize the lie that categorizes them and accept their scars without the habit to reopening them.

How much is private?

There is a boy who comes into the store regularly for cigarettes. He is beautiful. Tall and thin, with pale skin, dark eyes and hair. He is obviously creative—the way he carries himself says “artist.” He has a girlfriend, so somehow that gives me reason not to attempt conversation. I like looking at him. As if he were a subject to be studied (like so many of the characters I encounter and never really come to know, except through the stories I create around their appearance in my head). These old feelings of inadequacy surface when I see him; I am intimidated because of how attractive I believe he is, and how different our bodies are (silly girl). I am drawn to him. And it is a reminiscent magnetism from a time when I was less sure of myself. I know that it is better for him to remain a fantasy. I’ve felt the frustration of forcing impressions to develop into clearer understandings of who someone is, and I would prefer for him to remain unknown.

How do we know one another?

By touch?
Through conversation?
And laughter?
Through tears and grief?

Every time someone leaves my life—whether by death or disassociation—
I grieve the loss.
Grieving over the living is strange because the person is still out there somewhere,
Carrying on, developing, and I will always only know them for the short time that they were a part of my life, frozen like a photograph taken from one place and one time.
Grieving for the dead is strange because they are also only remembered;
Their impact on our lives is also limited to the moments we had with them. But they are no longer a phonecall away. There was no gradual or official moment when they became unfixed from our lives. So they linger in memory and it is comforting to acknowledge how their energy has seeped into the life that still surrounds us.
When I was younger I had more trouble letting go of the living than of the dead. Though death was not as frequent as friends who faded, it was there. Ugly and unwanted and inconvenient.

How do we help?

Balance.

I thought today that perhaps the reason I fancy the idea of living with a man is simply because I am a woman and a libra. Not everyone puts much stock in astrology. But I find the duality of life both infuriating and reassuring. It seems…complete, living with a man. To have two bodies of the opposite sex present within the walls of a home. Not for the sake of anything other than promoting a physical dynamic. I loved living with a woman, but there was something more empowering about living with a man—wonder why.

The sky was clear tonight. I say tonight although it’s nearly six in the morning because I have not slept yet, so it is still tonight. I stepped out onto Travis’s balcony for a smoke and looked up at the stars. Dots sparkling quietly, specks blinking against the canopy of blackness above the deep green night around me. As I drove home I noticed the morning star, its light glimmering ever so slightly more than the fading spots around it. The hint of the glowing sun just beginning to show against the horizon, shifting the color of night back into the pale blue of morning, drowning out the lights of the departing night.

And once again part of me is reluctant to sleep. Because there is something in this night that I do not want to leave. And so it is with a little sadness that I retire and hope that I can take enough of this moment, the way it has registered, the way it has inspired, the way it has triggered these feelings, with me into tomorrow.

Angry Lava

2009-07-27T03:09:00.001-04:00

12/21/06

Finally home after the morning and afternoon are spent
At work.
Got hopped up on caffeine to make it through a
draining day at the gas station.
The place
naturally
sucks the life out of me,
regardless of my efforts
to maintain a positive and congenial attitude.
By the end of a nine hour shift
standing behind a counter that divides employee from patron
beneath fluorescent light that turns my complexion sickly
forcing smiles and basic math functions
performing a role to complete transactions
something is always denying a real sense of satisfaction.
These actions,
Devoid of purpose, doomed to routine
And efficiency,
The requisites capital and currency.

There is something about interaction that has become more important to me over the years—dialogue. Real conversation in which people listen to one another and only offer their own thoughts once they have digested what else is being said. Silence has become more significant to me; I understand the value of listening—not just to people speaking, but to the language of the world, from the dialect of the deciduous trees to the inarticulate hum of the bees to the roaring waves of the sea and every silly syllable in between. But in the quiet there is a riot of sensations that can never be replicated during any human conversation. That’s where dance comes in, that’s where music comes in, that’s where things begin to feel instead of think, to savor instead of blink.

Everyone can be an artist because everyone creates, but we’ve lost inspiration, created shallow ways to relate. And every new label that we delineate only complicates our ability to communicate.

Because I am I and I am you
And you are he and he is she
And
we
can’t
move
on
until we know
how we belong.

Not to one group or one root;
Its all part of a bigger design

Along every path
We eventually find
An explanation for
What it means to be content.
And I’d rather it be
Time
with within the moments with what and whom I love
than just money
that I’ve spent.

But I have to do these things. I have to devote so much of my time to what is expected of me rather than to what I expect of myself.

And what do I expect from myself?
Just enough words to capture a significant range of emotions and experiences.
It is an endless pursuit that I never grow weary for.

I am so exhausted. My body and mind are crashing and I haven’t the inclination to sleep. And people depend on this legal dark brewed speed; nowonder everyone is so stressed out.
Stretched out and
Spread thin.
Too tired to show their families
Or their own thoughts
Affection.

This doesn’t make sense, dad. And you don’t have to deal with it anymore—you lucky soul, you. I know I’ll be alright. I know this. But it’s so utterly frustrating. To the point where by determination gives and my cynicism takes over. I can’t even enjoy Christmas. I get like this and I can’t enjoy the moments. Until…

Right now I’m sitting next to a little gas heater, mounted on the wall of my little living-room. The orange ceramic tiles send waves of hot that heat the right side of my face and the sleeve of my duster gets so warm I have to move my arm now and again. Hobbes is grooming himself, as usual, but has settled for the couch instead of his favorite chair where I sit to work at my desk.

I am tired. But I feel like sleeping will be unproductive, a waste of time. And so what little energy and focus I have are ebbing through my fingertips, onto these plastic, clicking keys, and springing up like elegant footprints across this screen.

This screen that you helped give purpose to again. Thanks for the birthday present. I’d rather have your presence now.

There I go again, crying.

I can say I’m fed up with the world, but I know that nothing is permanent, so I’ve just got to be a little patient and I’ll be able to feel good again. What frightens me is that my life will reach a point where that feeling is merely a disguise, protection from the absurd fruitlessness of it all. What terrifies me is settling for a perspective that allows me to function without questioning.

If we are as ephemeral as the breath that a god exhales
Then why make everything so painful, so difficult?
Why the systems? Why the violence? Why the need for control?
When are we going to stop looking beyond death for guidance to life?
It isn’t about heaven. Or hell. Both of those places exist in the here and now.
And I’m so tired of both of them. The parabolic nature of life in its inconstancy has slowly but surely stripped me of my ability to create purpose.

And what’s worse, is these words. They feel so inadequate. So useless. I can only put the power of myself into them and then they are as void as theories without application, hypotheses without proof by observation. They are thoughts. And though I need to release them, they only do so much for me. They feel so unfulfilled unless they make it into another person’s awareness. And how many times must I repeat myself before I am understood? How many different ways must I translate the same basic ideas in order for enough people to get it?

I suppose in the same way that I cannot rely on anyone else for my own happiness, so my ideas too must rely on my own initiative to be fulfilled. My own movement.

But I am not alone. I am hardly ever alone. I know, people say you die alone; you meet your maker alone. But how is that possible? How is it possible for any molecule, any atom or particle or quark or vibration to exist in isolation? A vibration is a ripple, its movement only possible, only defined through a type of cooperative motion that perpetuates a wave. A wave. A wave. The parabolic tone of life.

And damn-it, I didn’t sit down with intention, but here out comes my foolish principle. Out comes purpose. Out comes a message as uselessly universal as the image of God.

Vibration—2. Physics. (esp. rapid) motion to and fro, esp. of the parts of a fluid or an elastic solid whose equilibrium has been disturbed or of an electromagnetic wave.

So what causes electromagnetism? What is electricity? The wordfinder is no help. Just gives me strings of signifiers that defer meaning again and again and again so that the words end up leading back to the same words I was seeking to understand.

A form of energy resulting from the existence of charged particles (electrons, protons, etc.).

What charges them? Where does that energy come from? It doesn’t matter. It has manifested and it gives us this and we can do with this what we WILL. By our sheer will.
Sheer will.
Thin and translucent.
What are you trying to do?

“Why don’t you rebel?”—Lauryn Hill

And so what if one day there is a young woman who sings at the local microbrewery? And they prefer for her to sing the same songs that they are used to hearing while they consume. While they drown their sorrows and exaggerate their volumes and find a method to cope within a glass half full or half empty of fermented substance. And she cannot tolerate censorship; her reasons for singing have to do with wanting to be heard, with wanting to express things that people tend to ignore for the sake of comfort. But she is not comfortable. She is not content pretending, entertaining, performing according to the rules of convention. So she sings her protest songs, her woeful ballads, her unheard of covers, avoiding as many clichés as possible and the patrons begin to listen more. And drink less. Or drink more and listen less. Either way, she loses. Either way the spotlight is the wrong kind of bright and her tone is more suited for the person alone in the calm part of their day, in the isolation of their living room where speakers project her voice and its messages into the ears of a person attempting to disconnect from the stress they’ve collected throughout their routinized day.

It is in the times we are surprised that our senses are really tested. How receptive are we to what life offers? How much of it becomes automatic, expected, ritualized, categorized and filed into a stock of experiences that are essentially disposable because they offer nothing in the way of evolution. And if change is the only constant and we still repeat the same mistakes, recreate the same sorry state of affairs, then we are not changing; we have submitted to the illusion of conformity because we are too lazy to make anew.

Like angry lava.

Man is Mortal

2009-07-27T03:00:00.000-04:00

Man is mortal. And he struggles to find a way to become immortal, trying to avoid an end to his physical existence and the materials with which he associates his success.

I use man, him, he with reason here.

I am glad to be the sex historically not regarded for violent capabilities.

I read recently that masculine is related to action.

So perhaps the feminine relates to the theoretical—the theories like wombs in which ideas develop and mature and it is through the cooperation between the feminine and the masculine that the ideas materialize—transform into the realm of words, to the realm of the physical.

But back to man’s struggle to overcome death.

Think of how much technology and technological research relates to the prolonging of life.

Empiricism.

Suddenly the route to truth came by the physical, observable and testable world. Amazing that as many different ways as there are to be in the world, objects fall the same way by the same forces.

With our understanding of the rules that exist, the natural laws, of-course we had to manipulate them, break them. The threat to our survival became our own ability to destroy using our understanding of science. There is little respect for nature and too much hubris that allows for our experimentation.

Incestual rape—how we hurt the mother earth that makes possible this life.

I remember learning how Einstein had advised the people working on the atom bomb to stop. Their meddling with forces revealed how immature their understanding was, how their motives were fueled by greed and a desire for power, control.

You need men and women to create. Maybe it’s only logical that since women give birth, men are responsible so often for destruction.

When did monotheism come along? When did the patriarchy overturn a mythology that gave credit to the feminine forces of creation? There used to be a moonth—a period of twenty-eight days, the same number as a woman’s fertility cycle and of the moon—and thirteen moonths made up a year. When the patriarchy took over, leaders got rid of the thirteenth moonth and this is why the number thirteen is considered unlucky. At the end of the thirteen moonth year, a king was sacrificed to the gods in order that the people would have a good harvest. So essentially the patriarchy got rid of the moonth so that they wouldn’t have to keep sacrificing men, though it was an honor to die for the greater good.

When did the separation between that which is divine and that which exists occur? One is the whole. Each part of the whole is still whole.

Science. Chemistry.

The physical we have known is proven to all come from the same stuff. And when we’ve gotten down into it—beyond the skin, the surface, past the veins and rivers, past the bones and rock, behind the warmth and within the core, the atoms, the molecules, tiny things colliding—it’s all energy.

E=mc²

Quantum physics has shown that our perception is the manifestation of one of an infinite number of possibilities. One environment within which we play an active role.

The storytellers know that speech, that stories are creation. They recognize how a system of symbols comes to represent the way we exist and perceive this reality.

But business men are not men of words; they are men of money. Of a currency that has come to represent an action so far removed that we have no appreciation for the labor involved with most of our creations. Capitalism, like empiricism, has moved us further from ourselves and deeper into the illusion of separation. Interconnection is real. The world is chaotic, but we are all connected, we are all part of the same essence, the same energy, the same god. But we fuck and make more babies and pull them into a world where it is easiest to secure a small and isolated and seemingly safe piece. We limit our dreams and actions to systems that function regardless of the principles, the thoughts, that formed their potential.

Kinetic energy.

It is important to be aware of our thoughts. Freud brought the idea to our attention that there is a realm of our very perception of which we are not immediately aware—the subconscious. It is important to discover the aspects of ourselves that shape who we are that we do not consider because they are hidden, buried, repressed beyond conscious reach.

There are dreams I do not remember. What parts of my existence do I fail to realize?

I am fascinated by the relationship between thought and action. The role of choice. The decision in translating an idea into a movement. Ethics exist between thought and action. You might call it reason, or justification, or logic, but there exists a choice.

The decisions one makes are based on desire—yes. What I think desire may ultimately relate to is either creation or destruction, positive or negative, progress or an arrest.

Gandhi promoted nonviolence. The hippies wanted love not war. There are examples from both the East and West that disprove the idea that all humans are prone to destruction and disharmony. To greed. To the exertion of power over rather than power with.

Action without representation.

My country is responsible for actions that I do not support. Actions that, when processed by my own sense of reason and awareness, do not seem sensible or beneficial to the greater good, or creative. And yet I play no role in the choice to carry them through. My own country, then, has provided an atmosphere in which it is easy to conclude that I am powerless.

Just as each moment is the manifestation of one combination of possibilities, the actions of a government and a people tend to represent one of many—one of many perspectives, decisions, options, alternatives.

It is important for us to recognize that we are not powerless though our actions may not lead directly to a shift in social norms, behaviors, systems. Growth must occur on an individual level, in each part, to yield a more wholistic growth. Change must begin with the individual seeking to become more aware and therefore more conscious of the ways in which they contribute to the construction of a global reality.

Ripples.

From the specific to the general.

From the general to the specific.

Once we understand, once we have ascertained a wholistic principle, then it requires work, persistence, discipline and awareness to transfer that understanding into each little part of our lives. It is a challenge. A battle with statistics, history, illusion, delusion, and opposition.

Who is it that coined the term world-historical-individuals? The few names that have gained notoriety outside the countries and man-drawn borders in which they lived?

In Waking Life a man discusses how uncommon is the saint, the philosopher, the artist, the prophet. He says there is more similarity between the average person and a chimpanzee than the average person and Nietzche or Plato or Ikeda, or even Hitler.

But the potential exists within each person to accomplish what those men did. We are back to ideas and action. And we have added the matter of ethics, making a conscious choice.

Words are powerful. Knowledge is the greatest weapon.

And when we consider the distribution of power we begin to realize that systems, societies, function according to the rules that the majority accepts to dictate their behavior. It is easier to follow than to challenge. It is easier not to fight, not to risk our sense of safety. Most subscribe to ideals set forth by people with totally different perspectives, archaic when we consider how long ago they developed.

Our culture has continued without assessment. When paradigms emerge they take too long to reach only a scattered group of individuals; the most important ones never take hold of enough people. It may not be definitive, our culture, but there are characteristics that deserve our attention. It seems we have become wrapped up in the material, the physical, the tangible symbols of ideals so much that it stifles the innate curiosities responsible for the very technologies that add to the array of man’s ability to manipulate and control.

I know I need more specifics.

Bodies of Text

2009-07-27T02:30:00.000-04:00

3/23/02

I get lost sometimes, a little out of touch with myself. I forget and then remember again who I am and who I am not.

A tree is not a tree because we call it a tree.

Words are arbitrary because they have no direct significance to meaning—the idea which they represent. So they are symbols.

Ideas—the way we think—is done with a system of symbols. The intangible is made tacit through symbols.

Symbols are metaphors: a metaphor is an analogy between two different things which share a certain likeness.

In general, symbols represent something beyond words. If we comprehend with words, then something beyond words can be said to be incomprehensible—beyond comprehension.

If words represent ideas then a tree is an idea. Is the tree a physical manifestation of a metaphor? Does the actual thing, just like its name, represent something beyond words? What if we call what we cannot comprehend ‘god?’

We give many names to the same concept.

Human expression only imitates an experience, an emotion, a phenomenon that occurs outside the realm of words. But if behind every idea there is something more that we cannot describe…doesn’t that make it all the same? One. Continuous and perfect. Life as the manifestation of an idea that no one person alone can fathom?

Maybe I’m crazy, but it all comes from a source I can locate within and around me that words fail to explain time and time again. I am not looking for answers, only trying to prove to myself that there is no question.

Snowstorm

2009-07-27T02:10:00.001-04:00

All around me I see examples of paths that individuals have chosen, no two lives are alike. While I engage with the environment, I often still feel like an observer who is not fully participating because there is so much filtering through her mind. Overstimulated. Distracted by the trains of thought that take one avenue for a couple blocks then suddenly change direction, change cars, change tracks. I find ways that things are connected; it isn’t difficult. I am observing, observing.

I have seen so many people. Had the fortune and misfortune of getting to know some of them, these characters. I welcome one into my life, and another, and another (and there are never too many), and many allow me through the doors of their hearts. Some fade into memories I may never recall. I’m more aware now. Not only of the world, but of myself, and in a way that becomes less and less self-conscious and more and more conscious. Comfortable. Frustrated, perhaps, since knowledge is not bliss, but more confident and free.

There is always possibility. And I have not tried to secure parts of my life into routines. Have not discovered where all of my passions gravitate. It is nice to know that I have not discovered all parts of myself, and that the parts of myself that are familiar are not fully explored or have been dismissed upon realizing that they do not lend or have inhibited my growth.

I am collecting stories. And I’m not sure yet which ones are worth being retold, but I am trying to record enough samples to weave spectacular stories together. To take strands from this part of life and that and create patterns that people have not yet created. Stories that do not push a moral or point. Stories that are not conventional or linear, but simple and profound in their own right. Because they reveal something not only of what I have seen, but of what has happened, what has, in some moment, unfolded just so.

The snow covered the town today. We woke and there were piles and piles of white and the air was so thick with flakes that it was not easy to see the horizon as I drove into town. I thought the gas station would be dead because people do not enjoy driving in unplowed streets that are only going to get worse as the day gets colder. But the station thrived for a few hours as people scrambled to secure enough of the basics to save them from going out again tomorrow, Sunday, to covered, frozen cars and white streets and cold fingers and toes.

My coworker couldn’t get out of his driveway, let alone up the hill that led out of the small community where he lived. I arranged for him to get a ride into town because I sure as hell wasn’t going to stay at the station for the entirety of the day. As I resolved finding a four-wheel drive ride for my coworker, I realized where some of my anger was directed. I realized I was mad at someone and felt accomplished having realized that this person had done things—that I was justifiably pissed off. I knew I would get over it, that I wouldn’t be angry or unforgiving, but that I was pissed nonetheless. For once my anger had a name, a face, a point of origin that didn’t have to do with just how the world was. I mean, people are in the world, but people are in control of their own actions, and this person had some pretty shitty actions that were directed toward me. I’m being vague because the actions themselves are inconsequential at this point. I did nothing about them at the time, it serves no purpose describing them now. All that matters is that shit happened and I let it slide and I shouldn’t have and now I’m letting myself feel angry about what did happen even though there’s nothing to do about it now. A confrontation may be in order, but I am not the type to confront while anger is guiding me. So once this settles into something more passive, more objective, more I’m not still in it, I’ll be able to address it further.

Just when I’ve reached a comfortable cushion within this post-fact anger, the source of that anger waltzes through the door, asks for two packs of cigarettes as he pulls a Gatorade from the cooler, and I have to test my control yet again. I have to keep my face from getting red, I have to keep my tone inconspicuous, curt but polite, just like any other stranger who comes to buy cigarettes and a drink. And he comes to the counter and I’m having trouble scanning his damn drink and all I want is for him not to be there. Not to disrupt my moment of zen anger. Not to see his eyes or hear his voice and the way it sounds so convincingly happy because he might be into someone who’s into him.

And he leaves. And it’s back to making coffee and reading a romance novel and pushing buttons and smiling at familiar and unfamiliar faces that come for drinks and cigarettes and fuel.

After work I’ve agreed to take home the coworker who I arranged a ride into town for so the last thing I want to do is go home and settle into my blankets when I will just be leaving them again, so I decide to visit a friend who lives down the street from the station. He has lots of movies and he offers me a weak pain-killer which helps to put the anger into a safe part of my mind. I vent for a little while and he makes me laugh and pop a couple of his zits and then he naps while I watch movies. He offers me peirogies which I prepare (they’ve been there for a year, but they’re frozen, so they’re fine) and I watch Predator which I have actually never seen before.

He is a comfortable friend. He has issues (and understands mine) and there is no sexual tension and I don’t judge him and we are comfortable (he asks me to pop his zits after all, and offers me foot rubs). He’s been jaded by love and I love him for not having faith in women even though I hope someday he regains it. He listens to me. He is sweet to me. And I have no desire for anything more than friendship with him and he says that is all he wants and I know he is telling me the truth. We lie on his memory foam bed and I am always the big spoon. He prefers my arm to drape around him and I move it when it falls asleep or when I want to look at the television from a different angle. He makes me feel, rather than just think, that I am totally loveable even though there are few who have been the big or little spoon with me.

Later it is time to take my coworker home. An old lover, who is friends with the coworker and whom I speak to every once in a while when he randomly calls me, calls to say that he was planning on stopping over to said coworker’s house and invites me to visit. Since there is no desire between me and said ex-lover, and since I would like to get my mind right before going home, I agree to stop into my coworker’s house. He warns me emphatically that his house is a bachelor pad, with the bachelor stereotype of a mess. I laugh and explain that I don’t care. And I don’t. We go inside and ex-lover is sitting on a chair in front of a computer and the television is on the History channel. The house is a mess, but not so bad that it is repulsive, and I sit on a chair and hang out with the two men who are at least ten years older than me, fun to talk to, and who each have stories that I enjoy hearing.

Ex-lover explains that the History channel is military controlled and therefore mostly propaganda. I agree that it tries to invoke fear and perhaps nationalism. There is a program on about the seven signs of the apocalypse and what has happened and what could happen that indicates the coming of the apocalypse. I laugh because I have no real fear of death. Death is not an end. I do not believe the end is near, but I don’t care either way. This is a comforting. Zen apathy.

I once told the object of my affection-turned-anger (though I am also angry at myself and not only said object and I still feel a form of affection toward him) that if I can sleep each night knowing that I may not wake and feel confident that I spent my day as best I could, that I could die content. That I would not feel the need to haunt, I would not have unfinished business. Sure, there is always more to see and hear and touch and taste and smell. But I’m so aware of my senses, of myself, of my environment, that so many beautiful details have filtered through my perspective, checked and noted. Recognized.

I cannot deny the appeal of sharing my life with someone. But I have yet to meet someone who I want to do that with who wants to do that with me. I’m looking for someone with just the right amount of adventure, nonconformity, creativity, intelligence and love to make the effort to share my life with. In the meantime, and it must be so even if I meet said someone, I am gathering stories. I am enjoying being alone (though I am rarely). Experiencing. Observing. Registering life in as many parts of my mind and body as I can. Filling myself up to the brim. Straining it through, releasing and taking it all in again.

Blessed are we who attach significance to an otherwise instinctual world. The burden of a life is the most lovely weight of all.