Monthly Archives: March 2017

Blessing Stew

30 Thursday Mar 2017

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Hot orange sunrise peels back my eyes. Sweat soaked skin meets cool air when I pull the covers away.

I lumber from my cave, and what is this? A pile of bones heaped on the floor.  They are mine. A fine, greasy mess I left for the maid.

I cracked open my bones and let all the good stuff out, those seven deadly sins flittered about, and I tried to catch them but they slipped from my fingers.   I wanted to marinate them and make this refuse a stew.  What better way to heal an Angry wound but to sup the marrow from which it came?

Come back here, you rascals, I exclaim, putting my seven deadly sins back in their box. Naughty things, useless things, helpless things that only want a little recognition, struggling to get out, but I silence them.

Yesterday I cracked open my bones and watched the sins fly out. Last night I slept with them all.  Today I will observe, perhaps interrogate and see which goes into my pot first. When I am ready, I shall call it Blessing Stew, because you can’t have blessing without sin.

Starling Made Me Write It

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

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It is the time of saying “no.”  You may not visit my home.  I will not smile because you don’t know what else to say.  I will not give you $40 bucks because they took your house away.

(did you hear any apologies here?)

I will say that I am tired and need to go when I am ready. I will give you compassion, but I’m not feeling sorry for you. I will open my home, my ears, my heart, and purse strings when I want to.

I am not your mark anymore.

I’m chasing poems around with ink, talking to myself and writing secrets in the sand.  I write what I need, when I need, and I reserve the right to hoard my treasures.  This bud’s lips will part and speak when it’s damned good and ready, be it gardenia or stinking corpse lily.  Or maybe the roots will rot, the flower will drop and die like some thief on a rope before anyone hears the word.

Either way, I’m cleaning up the crime scene before you can figure out what hit you.

A year has begun

21 Tuesday Mar 2017

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There was a moment in The Empire Strikes Back where Luke prepared to go inside a dark place.  He asks what’s in there, and Yoda tells him it’s whatever you bring.  I am 49, and I have discovered this truth over and over again.   Whatever we walk into, we’re already carrying with us.  Scoff at me for taking a life lesson from some fictional muppet, but it’s been helpful to me over the years.   The dark is only awful if I take awful in there with me.

My apartment is small and furnished only with what I need.  There isn’t a corner of my life that makes me feel afraid. I can sleep naked and walk to my sink for a sip of water in the dark because I know I’ll not trip over anything. I can open all my windows and scroll back all my shades because I don’t care who goes by. You will be anonymous players in the poems I write, the stories I build.  This is my home, a shell on a hermits back, where I am free and happy. I sleep alone in an apartment that is so silent all I can hear is the raining down bells of tinnitus and very little more.

Last night in the house I made, I could not sleep because I felt something else was here with me. I made a wonderful dinner for myself, then tucked into bed at an appropriate time. I read a few pages of an old fantasy novel, then turned out the little light. I slept on my side because when I sleep otherwise the heartburn dragon sets off the fire alarm. I watched a planet rise in my windowpane. I counted the leaves growing on my sill. I slept eventually, but then a loud noise. I awoke, heart pounding, adrenaline. My mind worked overtime to identify the sound. At first I thought it was someone throwing a rock at my window, but I knew that was silly. Then I thought about the back brush I bought and hung from a hook, and what the brush might sound like if it slipped from the holder, dropping into the tub.  Yes. All right.  Adrenaline dissipated and I went back to sleep only to be stalked by a nightmare: It wanted me to get out of bed and walk into the bathroom but I was terrified, I was unable to move, I couldn’t call for help, I was paralyzed, just turning over and tucking under the covers was a threat to the thing that held me captive, I felt like I weighed a million pounds.   After the adrenaline left me, I reminded myself that I am in charge of this life, this room, this darkness, and I stared out the window trying to breathe peace.  Then I slept.  But then a crow called, a really loud sound of a crow cawing, right here in my bedroom, and I know it happened, how could it not have, because it woke me. I woke to the sound of a crow cawing in my bedroom.  And my heart worked out again swimming in adrenaline.  I was frustrated and annoyed that something was in my room that wanted me to not sleep, so I got up and went to the kitchen for water, and no ill fell upon me.  I piled the covers back on me and felt my body build up its heat, a heat that’s only begun recently, I assume menopausal.   I asked the world to please let the light come so I could sleep in the light instead of fear.

I spent the night tossing and turning, back hurting, heartburning, wondering if the crow would come back and caw in my room, wondering at the shapes on the ceiling, the bathrobe on my bathroom door that’s been there for a hundred years but scares me now. The phone that went off at four in the morning.  Everything an adrenaline rush of fear, and not knowing.   I know a crow was in my bedroom and cawed.  I know the brush fell off its stem and hit the bathtub and scared me. I know that my fear is what I bring with me.   So today, I hope to regroup.  To reclaim my space here. That there is no reason to fear the rooms where I walk. I slept eventually.  I examine my insomniac fears.  The sun has risen and the day has given me new challenges.

March 16 dreams

17 Friday Mar 2017

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Long walk through ravine
Deep in shushing dry leaves
Stegosaurus chalked on the walls
Whose hands made these?
*Calling the cops on a man who captured his wife
Put her in a collar and staked her to the ground
Call the cops but where am I?
What is the address? The address? The address?
Breathe.
But then she was gone, and I offered to clean up his mess
*Old sheds made of stone and dirt foundations
Sweeping dirt and leaves, broken glass
Because I wanted to help
Magazines piled and filed, labeled in boxes
But I wanted to help
Teaching my Littleson, crouched on the floor
What order means.
*Running outside in a light summer rain
Granite sky shifting,
Barefoot on driveway rocks running
Following the black bird but bird means small
Black creature too big to fly perched in a tree
I just wanted to see, but he is hid.
*His kiss was lipless and unpresent
No matter how hard I pressed
I put a condom on him that I pulled from my mattress
But he said
No
No
No
Like that Winehouse song,
so I left him and dressed and ran outside in the rain.
Barefoot in a dusty parking lot,
A mosquito riot, I can’t breathe.
A convenient store, they knew what I was there for.
I picked through magazines, listening to a mother not complain
About her baby who was trying not to die.

March 15 dream

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

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Daylight.  The accident happened, but I had no idea how, a complete blank.  I walked away from the scene and the only thing I could see was that I had apparently been driving Mike’s Oldsmobile 98, and it had some damage to the headlight and grill for which I felt bad about but nothing else.  I guess it was an SVA? I leaned on the car and took inventory of my own damages, much worse than the car, but how? I was covered in road rash, some deep, some superficial but all my nerves were screaming. Two broken back ribs. Pain. I looked over at the building across the way, building number 1111, but one of the red plastic numbers had fallen off. I felt I needed to remember the address for some reason.  No purse. No cellphone.  No people. Just a one-car accident on a side street close to an intersection.  I started walking but an ambulance rolled up, no lights or siren.  Two men put me on a gurney, covered me with a sheet and strapped me down with three black nylon straps. Then came the waiting. Watching the world go by as I lay in pain waiting for them to get me to a hospital. But then they were gone.

I lifted my body up best I could to look around and saw me and the gurney were in the middle of the street behind the Olds, no ambulance.  The straps weren’t very tight so I got out of them and kind of rocked the gurney down the hill and it landed in the parking lot of the building I saw earlier. Waiting. Nothing but pain. There was something between my knees, a large, rectangular black thing.  I opened it and it seemed like a sophisticated phone so I started punching buttons and numbers. A woman’s voice from far away, “What is your emergency?” I explained, haltingly, the accident, the gurney, then nobody. It seemed to take forever for her to understand. Finally she said, they’re on a side street now.  A toddler stuck in a ditch pipe, his grandfather was supposed to be watching him so everyone was mad at him now, and they’re trying to get the kid out.  I guess I was supposed to wait?

I lay there and thought about my thumb drive. Where was it? I had a project due for college. As I lay there I thought about all the research, the fat file of papers full of jumbled notes and clippings that became a perfect, finished product ready to hand in. Where was it?

###

Notes on the dream.  When I was around 17, I got into a really bad car accident. The officer was adamant that he take me to the hospital, but I refused. I was afraid for some reason of making my parents mad. He took me back to my boyfriend’s house on a dark road covered with three inches of greasy snow, making me promise that I’d get checked out in the morning. Somebody dropped me off at the hospital, and I went in alone to get my neck checked out. I’d never done the hospital thing before.  They put me on a gurney in the hall and told me to wait for radiology. Okay. I was a very sheltered 17-year-old who didn’t know squat about life, so I sat in that hall, no book, no phone, no nothing, feeling like a prisoner on gurney island listening to what sounded like a baby down the hall being murdered for hours, no exaggeration.  I didn’t know I could have gotten up off that gurney, walked away and asked to wait somewhere else. I know now that I don’t have to sit, stay, be quiet, or do anything else somebody tells me on command.  I can choose for myself. This morning as I lay in bed grabbing those details and putting them in my basket before they could evaporate, I thought about the predicament of my dreaming self vs what I can do today.

Adapting.

14 Tuesday Mar 2017

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“Dear Commandant Neller,

The United States Marine Corps gave me something very special when I was a teenager. The principles of honor, courage, and commitment. Valor. The fierce mantra of “improvise, adapt, and overcome–” to never let the enemy get the best of you, whatever that enemy might be. These ideals helped me adapt to all the BS, to improve my ways of thinking, as well as helping me become physically fit.

Time passes, and I got a better idea of what serving in the Corps means, and it wasn’t from a commemorative coffee table book or a Hollywood movie. You prepare our Marines to be fighting ready at moment’s notice, with bare hands or with hand me downs. You prepare them mentally and physically to be the devil dogs our country relies on. Civilians take for granted what serving the country and sacrifice really means, just as I did as a teenager. The public rarely sees the negative results that military culture has on men and women, bored men and women who are fighting fit and ready but demoralized daily just because their superiors “can.” You know very well what the battle ready are doing while they’re waiting to fight, and often it comes from a bottle, or worse. Bad behavior is discouraged, Commandant, but these people are primed and ready to behave badly, SAPR be damned. I know you know the statistics. Sexual harassment, intimidation, and assaults are hushed up, the victims are punished, and it’s just another day in the office.  The stain this leaves on an already small branch who are serving honorably is enormous.

Women volunteer to become Marines to serve their country.  Their training standards should be high, and they deserve respect just like their male counterparts. What will the USMC do to put an end to the rape/intimidation culture and earn back a woman’s trust, our country’s trust?  I know one can’t repair the culture overnight, this feast of boredom in a famine of fight, but what will it take to overcome this enemy?  Can you train a Marine to be battle ready in mind and body but still retain their soul? Is this an obstacle no one can overcome?

It’s hard to extinguish the fire that’s burned in my heart for the Corps all these years, but I cannot support or excuse a cause that can’t make sweeping, permanent change for the benefit of all.

Respectfully I Remain,”

###

Dousing a light that’s burned for so long was painful and sad. If I won’t stand for a filthy president, how can I stand for a Corps that refuses to put a stop to assault and harassment, both female and male? No more.  I look forward to hearing they get their shit together.  It’s all hands on deck for these issues and no excuses. Moving on.

March 12 dream, Let Me Show You

13 Monday Mar 2017

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I went to bed early last night. It was a tired time that said, “I’m done here. There’s nothing else useful left for me to do.”  I put my phone on do not disturb except for family, and stared out the window ready to watch the moons’ trajectory up and across my window. At some point this dream came:

I was sitting at a long table in a nondescript room. The table had a white cloth on it, covered with a few plates and a couple of large bowls.  I was the only woman at the table. The men were all white and all had long hair and small beards.  A man performed a simple magic trick and everyone responded in a sedated, murmuring way.   My dreaming self knows this is the table of apostles. I said something but I don’t know what, but it was akin to, “Wait. Here’s mine.”  There were two vessels on the table near me and I picked them both up. One was a tall, opaque plastic pitcher you get from the dollar store and the other was a fancy black glass pitcher, one my living self bought from that gift store all those years ago on clearance because I had to have that beautiful, understated, black glass pitcher.   I dumped the ice cubes out of the white plastic pitcher in a bowl in the center of the table with my left hand. I took the empty black glass pitcher in my right hand and put its mouth over the plastic one and waited. The room waited.  My dreaming self said, “I can do this,” and water began to drip drip drip from the empty glass pitcher into the white one. And then it was filled. I put them both down. The dream ended.

I went to bed early last night because I’d had enough.  Something loud and clanging like a ladder falling to a cement floor below woke me.  I don’t know what woke me, but when I did, my heart was pounding. Pounding. Pounding.  It was pounding not in the familiar fear of Godzilla coming, a death coming that I knew I could not escape and I would live the fear forever,  but the pounding of someone that I loved was coming, who I wanted to see and my words would be inadequate.   My heart pounded because I knew I could do this, I can do this, in the face of all scrutiny, in the fear of my falling, the adrenaline rush of “let me show you, I can do this” but everything ends in a silent room.  The dream ends.

And all I can tell you is that my heart was pounding, I was not afraid, but I wanted to know why, so I threw off my blankets and went to my kitchen to drink water, heart still pounding, not afraid, knowing what it feels like.

March 11 Dream

11 Saturday Mar 2017

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He is a nondescript man walking with a backpack, a day pack a college kid might use.  He is walking through desert terrain, my dream wants to call it Route 66, but there is no road here, just red earth. No mountains or trees, no creatures anywhere.  I can hear his feet trod the ground.

Then he comes to a place where some green grass is growing, it seems out of place.  He takes off his backpack and all his clothes, then puts on a dark blue suit and tie and shoes that he’d been carrying. When he is dressed a crowd of people come and take him by the arms and drag him away. They put him in a cage with bars, wide but not wide enough for him to squeeze through.  The people are just people, nondescript, but they are carrying large wooden poles and they begin to beat him through the bars.  They are beating him. He is on the ground, motionless, and they walk away carrying their poles.

The scene changes and I am in a brightly lit department store, standing between two rows of maybe the stationery aisle. I am looking for something, perhaps.  A man comes and puts a large, cobalt-blue journal down on a safe. I look at him and he looks at me and he seems to want to say (warn) don’t look in that book.  I know this book, I have one exactly like it, and I wonder what he wrote in his.  He walks away and I know I’m going to open his book while he goes off to look for a wall mirror for his wife.

Forecast

10 Friday Mar 2017

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The sky is tinnitus white

Branches, cracked tempera in the window frame

Prayer plant on the sill will sit high and wear garnet today

Her leaves will unfold and sigh in cloudy reprieve.

Some say snow is coming

But it matters little to my rhyme.

I have come to ignore forecasts

Because Virginia changes her weather clothes on a dime.

Another Look

09 Thursday Mar 2017

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Complicated mix of feelings about the use of International Women’s Day as a day to remove herself from society for a day; no work, no purchases, and wear red for solidarity.  I understand their mission statement and goals for A Day Without A Woman when I read it on a laptop screen, but I just couldn’t get completely behind it. I hate to tell you, ladies, but the world is gonna go on without us.  You know, tides, time clocks, hungry tummies, calves, earth’s rotation, traffic, the stock market, and the sun will still set all without us, red shirts, pink hats, outrage and all. What did we earn, what did we gain on this day?

I spent the day focused on women’s writing, on women who came before us who made so many things possible for us, things I take for granted. I focused on what being a whole woman looks like and feels like, where my deficiencies are, and what can I do to help the sun go down in kind, tangible ways for others.  Twasn’t easy, especially since I began the day in an irritated state, but the reading helped it abate.

This morning’s news held no surprises for me. I wasn’t expecting a wall-to-wall woman blackout, massive protests in the streets or even across the world.  International Women’s Day was celebrated yesterday, as it has since its inception in 1909, but in a muted kind of way. I do so hope that women across the globe took a moment to learn about its history. Fascinating it’s a national holiday in Russia. One only has to look at the reason why.

We are very lucky, perhaps the privileged few, who can step out on a job for a day. One wonders if the bodegas that closed in the cities on A Day Without Immigrants had a lot more to lose. A helluva lot more.  I hope this intersectional movement will stand for being much more than hard feelings towards a president.

I took to the internet to keep up with the news, then the usual social media outlets to keep up with the noise. This morning I came across something that rocked me back a little. An acquaintance posted her approval of a conservative news article that painted A Day Without A Woman in a bad light. The comments were a fascinating snapshot of conservatism. I read these articles and comments to keep myself grounded: I will lose if I stay in a silo. So more than 3,000 comments on this article, and they all basically said the same thing: They object to the disgusting, pink pussycat hats; the protesters are liberals, college age, still living with parents, no responsibilities; they are clueless snowflakes, delicate ornaments that can’t handle losing the election. More importantly, the commenters said, “I love and respect my wife. My husband loves and respects me. I’m raising my daughters/grandchildren better than these protesters. I’ve always worked hard for everything I have, I’ve always stood up for myself. I am a strong, happy woman, these protesters don’t speak for me.  They need to get jobs and stop whining.  Me and my husband work at the same hospital and we make the same, good wage.  My boss is a man and he respects me, how do I know, because he tells me so. I work on a ranch, I don’t get to take random days off, I am respected by my coworkers, I work hard, I am proud to be a woman, and I don’t know what these privileged girls are whining about.”  Three thousand people replied to this article, 9,000 shared it, and I spent more time than I probably should have reading them, but I needed to.

Three thousand people said they were never sexually harassed on the job, are getting equal pay, they are happy and proud to be women, and have very narrow, disgusted feelings towards protesters.  Hmm.   I wonder if I’m on the wrong side of the fence, here.  Did my little feelings get hurt when he said, “I moved on her like a bitch?” Should I just get over it, let it go for the locker room talk that it was, take the high road and be the best person I can be?  Did my little feelings get hurt when my boss, a woman, didn’t promote me to lead person because I didn’t suck up to her, buy her lunch, and worship Sara Palin?  Do I believe women are victims of their gender that are seeking a place to lay the blame?  What could we have done differently to get the job, the promotion, the next pay grade if gender wasn’t the issue–what did we do to hold ourselves back?  Are we spending too much time reading comments on alt-right web pages wringing our hands in fear that that’s us they’re talking about? We let our daddies down and we only have ourselves to blame?  Three thousand people seem to think so. Maybe that’s what they mean when they say, “Fuck your feelings.”

One of the commenting multitudes suggested that the real protesters should be white men because they’re getting the short end of the stick on everything. They’re the ones suffering.  I sharpen my pencil and get ready to write my sad, snowflake feelings on what will probably come to be known as White History Month.

Meanwhile… the new and improved healthcare act will cut funding for Planned Parenthood.