Monthly Archives: June 2016

Harder

29 Wednesday Jun 2016

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We set our boundaries and we write our narratives.  If we are awake and aware, foster the desire to do so, that is.  Writing your own narrative means you know what the end of the story looks like so you sit down to write it, then everything happens, or nothing happens, and your story looks different from the one you set out to create when you arose, but when you slide your tired body beneath one thin sheet between concrete walls that keep out the heat, you are satisfied.  There’s another story coming in a dream and another that wakes up with you, that you take with you everywhere.

The narrative begins when you know there is no more energy left to give to fear, worry, anxiety, uncertainty. All your energy now belongs to the unknown, beyond your boundary walls, your fear markers. There’s no time left for fear because it’s never been kind to you.

And there’s no time left for an even keel, so if you thought you’ve gone fast, go faster.  Throttle up, feel the bow lift out of the water, there’s no seat belt to strap you in, so you fly along and you notice your knuckles aren’t white, they are folded in your lap like a prayer, and you ask for everything to happen and the awareness to take it all in and remember every second–remember every tattoo needle cherry breaking baby’s head crowning lug nut knuckle smashing first day of school sore throat screaming that was the world cup or a fight about the kids the last dollar is gone waking up alone boot camp mug shot sand in your shorts blood on your sheets first paycheck spent your name on the byline compound fracture falling out of a treehouse first deer kill first date first sext burning your fingers on a candle flame–what will you do to remember it all and treasure it all and everything yet to come?

If you ever thought you worked hard and worked up a good sore sweat or had a bad sunburn, if you think you wrote a great lyric, took too many shots of frostbite tequila, if you ever thought you slept hard, wept hard, gave at the office, if you believe you’ve moved the home run walls back, move them back farther because I’m betting everything is right where you left it, right there in the middle, somewhere in the center of our human experience.   Sometimes you gotta feel wrung out, your soul muscles aching so bad that you flop down on the bed too tired to breathe. Whatever you’re doing, do it harder because a nice even keel isn’t living, it isn’t writing.  It’s just waiting patiently for your name to be called.  The doctor will see you now and prescribe something for your pain.

 

Prepare The Table

22 Wednesday Jun 2016

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I spent some time writing this morning. It became a nice essay about the many things I have learned, from all of you, that made me the Work In Progress I am today, the work that will never be finished because it’s the journey.

I know what drove me down into the past, reaching back for cupfuls of mom and dad, brother, grandparents, teacher, lovers. I know why I sought to attach phrases to distant memories that surfaced as I showered, brewed my coffee, and prepared to face the blank page. There are unresolved wounds in my family that have yet to be healed, wounds that need facing today, so I looked into the past to see where I came from, trying to find resolution.  My writing is still quite firmly tethered to all of you.  It’s hard to type with splinters in my fingers. I acknowledge the holy ember inside me and shift focus.

What I resolve is the essay is nice but not fit to share because it tells us nothing new, special, useful, or entertaining and decide to put it away.  I resolve to write a letter to  my son with hopes that it will spark the right kind of conversation.  I resolve to climb over this wall, stand up on the breakwater where the wind is around 8 knots, temperature rising, and cast my net out there. I’m chasing cobia poems, manta stories, and horseshoe crab songs, so I can bring home a feast. Who wants to read left-overs, anyway?

 

Southbound

17 Friday Jun 2016

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It’s a tide every six hours, low water sand dunes and the basin fills up slowly into high,  but then sometimes you get a flood tide, more than you expected. Retreat to higher ground, or stay and feel its power, like now:   The sky is gray, the mist comes in slanted going south, beating the hell out of the northside breakers.   You can choose to stay inside, dry, or maybe peek outside and explore the wind, the mist, the waves.

But there’s always this life, the one you have to go back to, that is joy and sorrow and love and struggle, life that keeps us tethered to shore. Life that is not wrong.  So you got a little too close to the water and the waves took advantage of you in your jeans. Your bare feet were surprised the water was warmer than the wind and  you thought it might be fun to wade in, oh so far, but are you ready to swim in your jeans? Or will you wait for night and float away like Ophelia?  So now your jeans are full of sand and brine clinging to your ankles like little ones desperately desiring your gaze, your attention.

Who walks the beach in the rain when the barometer is falling and whitecaps are in charge, who will parse the sound of wave on rock vs wind in the pines, or tires on the interstate calling?

I’ll wear these jeans ankle damp because  I like how it feels, the nip and squall of little ones around the knees, turning our hair gray too soon, the ones we cannot excise, the ones we love and invite into our souls hoping they will find some solace and sleep there.   I accept the grit on my counter where I put my sandy thermos down. I don’t mind a little sand in my bed. There’s some in my hair, on my chest that blew in from 28 knots. It tells me I wasn’t afraid to go there. And the sound, the sound, is neverending.

16 Thursday Jun 2016

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time begins

when you wade into the water

turn your back to the water

fall back into the water, waterfall

and let the salt give you a new name

rise up and let little waves crash on you

crush on you, show you what tears are made of

time begins when your new skin is covered in sand

 

Anchors Aweigh

16 Thursday Jun 2016

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Something happened when I walked the beach with sunrise coming up behind me. I discovered I was walking along untethered. No cup to carry, no dog to walk. I left all guilt and judgement somewhere, I’m not even sure where, or the precise moment when, I just knew that I was walking in my own footsteps. I carried no memory or their burdens, and that’s a healing that’s been coming for a long time. I felt I might rise up and float into a gull, but not a pelican for they are too shy.

Untethered means my thoughts flow freely and I don’t care if all those envelopes I sent out are destined for the slush pile, it’s all just right.  They’re going where they need to go, and I am breathing who I need to be. Untethered means I get to choose what books to read, to set aside the ones that don’t hold me or devour the ones that take me away; I get to choose a long hot day inside the apartment herding words or go outside and chase breezes. It means I sit no longer on the sand than I want to, even if friends ask me to stay, because when it’s time, it’s time.

Someday I will learn to trust. I will untether myself from that final fear, and I will let you see the rest of me, the one the black dolphin takes down with him in retreating light.

I’m exploring cooled embers and slumbering coals that are getting ready to ignite. How far one can go, untethered. Look how far she’s come already.

Old Black Water*

15 Wednesday Jun 2016

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Steps up to microphone… “This is dedicated to the one I love…”

she smiles but does not sing.  She just takes a moment to look around at the half-empty hall dotted with leather n black t-shirts, longhairs, miniskirts denim lace and otherwise, smiling sweet faces who came to drink and have a good time with friends. They were eager for some kick-ass music in a place they felt safe waiting for their band to come and play the songs that were part of their bloodstreams.  A brotherhood, a sisterhood, a conclave where they can’t smoke inside, so the habit chases them outside in un-degree weather holy fuck their fingernails turned blue…

I wore my boots because I learned I will get trounced in the mosh pit. I left my purse at home, only carrying cash and my license so they could identify my body when it was all done I always said, jokingly.  I never ate there because it’s not that kind of place. I liked to stand behind the mixing board, explore the balcony upstairs and see what mischief was made but there never was any, just a bunch of empty seats in a tiny theatre that never forgot its stained-glass roots while down below waited a tiny black stage gouged to hell, walls and curtains bordello red,  radio station banners that could have been made by high-schoolers, that was until the headliner came on and the banners rose up into the heavens, up up and away, exposing three stage lights or maybe a fog machine.  The band came, the one we needed to see, even that night when I was in a fever sweat, nothing could keep me away. It’s heaven, it’s passion, strangers no more, we are one when the first chord leaps out of the amps and doesn’t let go for two hours.

and I was “dancin’ with myself oh oh oh oh..

If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I don’t know

I hate myself for loving you… ”

I broke the hand dryer in the lady’s room by accident. Guess I shouldn’t have activated it so hard, you know it sparked and shut down and my girlfriend said I was a beast and that’s not so easy to live down. (Oh, and never, ever, leave home without a few squares of TP in your pocket, there won’t be any in the bathroom by the time you get there no matter how early you arrive.) And don’t look in the men’s room as you walk through the narrow hall, the door is always open (why?) and it’s just not polite. Um… yeah, I did.

The bouncer knows me so he lets me prowl around backstage. I got to wrap some wires and help stow them in the truck when the set was done, sober, because the drinks were bottom shelf, full of ice, but I wasn’t there to get wasted, after all.

In another time and place the American Legion was open across the road from the venue because they knew us folks would want a sip of something cool before the doors opened so we queued up for overpriced water.  That’s all right, it’s a worthy cause.  I wandered their wood paneled establishment, beer in hand, studying black and white photos of the veterans, placards with names and dates, feeling grateful for their service and wondering why there weren’t more Iron Maiden t-shirts at the bar and in my world in general.

But then, it’s all about the music.  The vibe. The reason I show up with my camera stuffed in my pocket. I got your autograph. How about that time you were only five feet away from me, courtesy of a good friend who VIPd me up front. We prayed to the metal gods all those nights, together. I watched the creatures punching the night with their fists in the air, hugging their new friends in the parking lot, waiting for the band to come out and say hello to the stalwart few, sweaty hair freezing on their faces, waking up with that plastic band on their wrist that said they’d been somewhere and had the best night of their lives.

Somewhere. Somewhere that wasn’t the emergency room because somebody brought a gun and his misery and fear and pain and anger into the room.

This is dedicated to the one I love. I got you tucked in my tight jeans, inside my creaky leather jacket, you’re with me on the long drive home beside the river, shimmering with a rainbow of lights in black water, the moon nine days old, none of this a dream. “And no one can take it away.”

*old black water keep on rolling, Mississippi moon won’t you keep on shining on me… Thank you, Doobies.

 

Indigo Vales, redux

10 Friday Jun 2016

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7:15 has come and gone.  I stood up from the bed and stretched to touch the ceiling.  The sky is turquoise, the leaves are yellow-green. I missed sunrise but that’s okay. I hear rumors there will be another one tomorrow.

I bought myself flowers three days ago because I could not walk past them, leave them behind. I was astounded by their outlandish garb: Someone concocted a liquid for the flowers to drink that turned their petals deepest indigo, their tips neon as if lit from within.  I shared one flower with the new mother down the hall, and the rest are in a glass vase next to my wax plant, Zephyr.  Zephyr showed me what a living thing can do that has nothing to do with man. I’ve been watching the new shoot rise up and stretch and change direction hourly. Proof of life, proof that I don’t need to do a thing but watch it go and grow (with a little water and all the sunlight it could want) twisting like a seahorse anchored to its weed. Zephyr discovered the wand that opens and closes the blinds and twined himself about it, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to stop at the ceiling, he might want to burst through it, for all the energy he shows.  I am in love with indigo flowers and the wax plant on my windowsill.

There are books stacked on the floor, books I ain’t read yet. There is a beautiful linen file box with my important papers on the floor in the bedroom and a wicker box that holds all my printed writing in the living room.  When I first came here I swore myself to a spartan life, swore to disavow clutter and unnecessary things, but then the books arrived…and kept coming.  I bought a printer and it sits on the floor, ridiculous. Finally I bought bookshelves and a small table that need to be assembled.  The table is rough, unfinished, primitive, something a Viking might appreciate, and the horizontal bookshelves are teal.  Teal? Yes. Because shelves don’t have to be black or white or plastic or steel. Books are not clutter, but those receipts I hadn’t shredded for a week sure were. Where was my head?

Steve rescued a horseshoe crab we found yesterday morning.  Mike told me not to touch the puffer fish that expired on the beach last night, they are poisonous. Karen doesn’t photograph every sunset because they are not equal. I stepped outside a shadow and saw color, life, transition, death, and my hands just can’t stop writing.

Grown, Flown, Gone.

06 Monday Jun 2016

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My apartment complex is two squat rectangles, two floors a piece, painted pretty yellow and accented in teal, separated by two tall, beautiful pine trees in a courtyard.  When I first arrived I could see the beach if I put my head up against the bedroom window, or more easily if I walked out the front door. I like to check on the tide, see if there are whitecaps, is it foggy before I step outside for my morning walk.   The giant flagpole in the marina back there tells me which way the wind is going. When I first arrived it was cold and quiet. Mourning doves were in the trees, and I watched their behaviors, their cooings and comings and goings. I heard the wind when I first arrived, wind in the pines, there is no sound like it. Well.. maybe the sound of “I love you Mom” compares, but I’m not here to compare.

Over the last few days I’ve focused my gaze on the incessant squeaking cheeping chipping peeping chirping of the birds outside my west and east windows. (I keep the windows open constantly because the cross-breeze is required in this warmer clime, and I will not run the air conditioner until I melt, oh hell no.)   O god, for hours, the chirping doesn’t end, frantic chirping like their house is burning down or the world is ending.  They’ve usurped the gentle cooing of my doves.  Alongside this phenomena is the sound of a hydraulic nail gun, metal grinder, and wood sander, because the realtor decided to remove, vertical metal bar by vertical bar, the old handrail and replace it with fancy wooden lattice-looking things. They’re not even halfway done.  The birds begin chirping an hour before dawn, and the nail gun doesn’t stop until dinnertime. I am focusing on the wrong things.

On the east side of my apartment are two trees, trees that have filled out with leaves since winter, and I can no longer see the ocean. Back here is secluded and safe. How do I know this? Because it’s where the mourning doves used to come and land on the shed down below under tree cover, hunkering down and spread out their wings in the sun safe from the osprey who prowls the bay. I’d never seen any of this before.  Out my bedroom window I watched a robin with four of her juveniles conduct a peeping choir, teaching them to maneuver here and here and there in the trees. The male cardinal fascinates me most with his juvenile. He put a worm down in front of his offspring perched on the shed, and she had no idea what to do with it. She hunkered and shivered in front of him, peeping like the world was ending until he finally picked it up and put it in her beak. She hopped a few hops then hunkered down, still, like a fallen brown leaf and he flew away.

I wondered what that would be like, the moment the cardinal comes back with a grub and his juvenile is gone? She’d flown off on her own because there was a sight, a scent, a sound so fascinating she had to see it on her own.  He will fly down with a grub expecting to see his offspring but she will be gone.  And he will put it down and fly back to his nest.  I wish my Dad got to see my nest, this place that used to be quiet but now covered in wings and construction and incessant sunrises.  So this one’s for you Dad, wherever you are.  I’ll try and do my best not be a grumpy cow when the birds are noisy or when it’s bitter cold. I think of you coming out to see the lunar eclipse, as sick and tired as you were, we didn’t even ask, but you came, silent with your hood up. I will try to honor your stiff spine.