Monthly Archives: July 2017

Finning, Press Secretary-style

22 Saturday Jul 2017

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I am awake and aware, moving steadily through my world. I was resting a little while ago. I do not need much rest. Now I saunter my body through seas in search of small, struggling things that fit in my mouth to satisfy the low ache inside. When it is satisfied, I glide and glide and glide, aimless. I have seen four turnings and the whales tell me all I need to do is glide and eat and sleep. They will tell me what to do when it is time. I believe them.

Something touches me, and I can no longer glide. I am rising though I did not choose to. I feel up though I feel it is too high, I should not be here for any reason.  I tumble into a place where I cannot breathe, a strange new world.  I’ve never felt this before, where is my water that pours into my gills that makes me everything?  I struggle, but not too much because I want to conserve my breathing.  And now I feel tugging things on my body here and there and there, and it feels like nothing I have ever felt, and I need a word for this feeling, and the whales tell me this is what it means to hurt.  I am hurt, falling, it seems. I am hurting.  I am. I want to breathe. And soon I do when I am reunited with my world. Water crosses my gills limply as I drift down.  I know my swimming tools are gone. I breathe in a stultifying way, but it is not my living way.

I am drifting down because my swimming tools are gone, and I ache. My back and my flanks and my far end hurt, dear, sweet parts of me I can no longer touch and will not reply no matter how much I reach out to them.  I am drifting down.  I suppose this is okay because we can’t all survive as the whales tell me.

As I drift down into the cold, dark water, colder and darker than where I should be, I recall everything the whales said to me. I paid them little mind, believing their antics were pretentious and showboating, but I heard some of what they needed to say. Once our world was near silent. All anyone could hear was the turnings of fisheries, the struggles of female sharks trying to get away from the males, happy breachings, puffers making nests to entice a mate, anarchist octopus thinking a little too loud. The whales told me the new noises came and they learned their ways, suffered slaughters of generations, but they also told me that they met gentle hands whose hearts beat true, hearts that held no lies.

As I drift down into the cold, dark water unable to swim because my swim tools are gone, I feel tired.  I am ready to rest because it’s been a long day, and that’s all right. I am glad I lived a little life, sultry and honest, loving the deepest blue, as I drift wondering who would hurt me so, but I’d still rather berth in the unknown than come before my people and lie and lie and lie to them. I hope the whales will remember me to you.

What Do You Intend To Do?

20 Thursday Jul 2017

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I told him I was going to the Jersey shore for the weekend. I think it was a surprise, but maybe not so much.  It was my intention to receive a modest spring sunburn, to get pounded by Atlantic waves, and take some time to sort the rocks and beans and ribbons, thank you notes, condemnations, confessions, hopes, dreams, sorrows, love and confusion that occupied my mind. It was my intention to get up before sunrise, run across the road, sit on a blanket and watch the sun come up. I lost my phone, I dreamed a dreadful dream, I awoke well before dawn and ran across the road terrified that I’d missed the moment. I sat on the sand in full dark watching layers of light build, relieved, so relieved I hadn’t missed the moment. Stars were still present. My mind was preoccupied with the loss of my phone and memories I had no way to shake. Layers of light built out there on the edge of water sky as I intentionally watched the sun rise and used my kindle to record the moments.

Living intentionally means I have a vision for what I want my life to look like, I have reminders that trail me in blogs, on scraps of paper, on the black board hanging on my frigerator. Living intentionally means I choose to get up early and watch the sun come up, or I prepare for meeting with the Sundowners so we can say goodbye to the day. Living intentionally means I think of what I want to eat and drink and wear and prepare for the day, best I can.  Living intentionally means I listen more than I speak. That I choose to say “yes” or “no” and not feel guilty either way.  It means I understand what healthy human rhythms look and feel like, and I choose healthy… or not.

Living intentionally means I am not a pinball. I don’t wake up when your flipper knocks me out of bed. I’m not your silver ball driven by flippers, springs, gravity, and luck (yeah, good luck wit dat) ringing up points that are exciting but cannot move my feet across the ground avoiding life’s unseen mines.  It means I cook a healthy breakfast instead of buying it at the drive-thru, I rent movies at the library instead of signing up for Amazon prime, I buy foods that will feed my body for the week and foods that will also satisfy cravings, because what is life if we only drink water and eat tree bark?  I intend to enjoy my food.  It means I am taking small steps to live the life I want and need to live, no matter what’s going on around me.

Intention means I’m not living at the whims of life, reacting or responding well or haphazardly. No matter what life I choose to life, the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, the moon will glare in my window so bright, so intrusive in winter, far fainter in summer.  I will hunger and thirst and struggle, and I carry it all with me to bedroom and bathroom and wee living room. Intention means I will write, edit, and send my work out every day because it’s all I’ve ever wanted, all the while fighting my greatest foes. Intention is valiant, sturdy, knowledgeable, while living day to day feels like being a pinball.

Any honest, reasonable person knows it’s hard to choose getting up in the dark to see a sunrise when in a couple of hours we have to shower, get dressed, feed the kids, drive to work, work, work, come home, endure the fallout of the day and hope there will be peace in the bed we sleep upon.  Happy are those who can sort their intentions and move on them as best they can.

Jaws, Cinematic and Beyond

07 Friday Jul 2017

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When we were young, sometimes mom and dad would let us watch TV in their bedroom. Perhaps there was a show on the TV in the living room that we were not allowed to see… or maybe it was some night the babysitter had the remote control so me and brother would invade mom and dad’s room and watch the tube.  One night I recall watching “Jaws” in their room and I was shocked by the things I saw. Sheltered, I’d never seen anything like that, and I’m sure Mom would never approve, but there it was in all its toothy, briny glory.  Funny, I never had shark nightmares then or now. Only Godzilla remains my subconscious nemesis.

I’ve watched Jaws so many times I can’t count over the years, either for the pleasure of dialogue or some background noise. Rarely do I watch the movie these days with eyes fully focused on the screen, surveying and drinking in the landscape.   Last night was a game changer.  The Virginia Aquarium and theater is 20 minutes away (as the GPS crow flies), and I left an hour before the movie. I mean, who needs an hour to get 20 miles? However, I forgot the daily congestion on the interstate. With some dodging and deep breaths I found a nice parking place, got my ticket and discovered the movie had only started 3 minutes ago instead of 15.  I was lucky.

The screen is enormous, the sound overpowering. I wished to have a seat center, rear, but I didn’t get there soon enough to have that choice. I wound up kind of center and a chair in the aisle.  It took me a while to get used to the enormity of sound and vision. I brought my knitted poncho because I knew I’d be so cold in there, and I used it to hide behind the flesh-rending scenes. (I’ve danced that dance before, and I don’t need to dance that scene anymore.)  Sometimes the sound was too loud, so I had to close off my ears.   The screen was bigger than our house. Chief Brody’s fingernail was the size of a soccer ball.

On this enormous screen I saw things I hadn’t before and felt grateful and blessed as a writer to see them. Why didn’t I notice the blood on Quint’s hands as he interrogated Hooper? I knew that Spielberg provided the voice of the Coast Guard at one point but never actually heard him, recognized him until last night.  Quint’s fisherman chair was beaten and worn in ways I never noticed.  Robert Shaw removed a tooth, put it in an envelope and never put it back.  The audience was quiet for this movie. No cellphones went off, no babies cried. I wonder if we were all here for the same, tense reason, wanting to fill the same need–nostalgia, bigger than life? I wonder how many came just to hear Mr. Shaw deliver his soliloquy, that soliloquy, equal only to Hamlet?

I heard some young people in the parking lot who said they’d never seen the movie before. I wanted to ask them all kinds of questions, but did not approach because I was afraid my enthusiasm and need for answers might make me look like a crazy person.  I wanted to know why they came, what did they think of it, do they believe great whites are vengeful, and so on. Instead, I drove home into a sky filled with a thrilling fight in my south, Thor smiting his foes in the clouds.  I headed “west” on the interstate towards home and the sky ahead was filled with high, building clouds and flashes of lightning that could make one believe the gods are at war, but there was no sound and no rain. As I drove with windows down, a fighter jet came low across the road as I fought to keep my hair out of my eyes with my left hand, maneuvering lane to lane with my right on a homeward trajectory.

As I drove, I secretly wrote the thing about this movie and a certain moment, wondering where it will lead and hoping it will go.  I won’t tell you here, because it’s still in progress.  I watched a movie, enormous in story and physicality. I drove home on dark roads watching a storm flash orange in blue clouds.  I am blessed, again.

A Tired Morning

06 Thursday Jul 2017

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Some nights, it feels like the dream will never end, and when I wake I am already tired.  Then I read emails and the 800-pound tired sits with me on the bed leaving me in stunned silence with a decision to make: flop back down to try and seek another hour’s rest in hot, strong sunlight or get up and get moving. Guess I chose to get up and work through the morning.

I’d known her for a long time. She was my friend, someone I used to work with. She was so very tall and big… a big girl (this is no lady) this girl with long, fair brown hair. (She reminds me of someone I knew in another life.)  She was in tank top and shorts, and she was leaving. And she left. All I remember right now is feeling heart-hurt for the loss, and that feeling seemed to go on for a long time.

The next part of the dream (or maybe a different one entirely, who knows it carried on so long) found me in a parking lot outside a very large industrial building. Looks like it’d been there awhile, the usual dents and creases, rust, and spots of paint paler where they scoured off some graffiti. I had one job to do. (Can you hear the meme? I sure could.)  I had one job, and it seemed like nothing and no one wanted to cooperate and help me get this 55-gallon blue poly drum on a pallet, into a truck, and shipped to its destination. One drum. What was in it? Where was it going? I have no idea, but the job was all-consuming to me.  I went inside the building to get a bill of lading to get this process going. The cavernous room was poorly lit. Girders and beams covered in dark masses of cobwebbed dust in the high ceiling. It was quiet inside.  Several really wide, long wooden tables were centered in the room covered in papers. Most of the papers had already been written on. Everything was a disorganized mess. All I needed was one blank bill of lading, and I couldn’t find one anywhere on or below the tables. Another co-worker, I’ll call her “Cindy” was there also flipping through papers, and now I can see a bunch of guys in tank tops, white towels hanging around their necks because they were hot, just standing around not doing a thing.

My cellphone (an old flip phone) goes off. It’s my dad. He wants to know if I shipped out those books yet. Apparently he told his co-workers he would arrange to have some books brought in so they could have something to read, like a small exchange. The books are piled high on a pallet in my building for some reason. I was supposed to know who’s book belonged to who, and ship them. The books are old, worn, faded jackets scuffed and torn on the edges, titles no one would recognize, books that you walk past at flea markets. Instead of me shipping the barrel in the back of my mind, now I’m opening book covers, looking for names and addresses and there’s nothing there. Another impossible task. I’m angry and verbally abusing my father (not yelling) but saying awful things to him about this problem he handed me. It’s his fault that I can’t get this task done, why is this my problem, on and on and on. And he just stayed on the line and took it.

I awoke feeling tired and terrible for yelling at my dad. I know it’s just a dream, one that means so very many things. Waking up feeling tired and terrible isn’t the worst thing I suppose. I would read far worse things soon enough, and deal with the day and this sadness hour by hour. Another hot, humid day where the sky is sweating on us. I’d like to go back and dream up some rain.

Sugar Effs, Breakfast of Champions*

02 Sunday Jul 2017

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There is moment in the movie Sound of Music where Dame Commander Julie Andrews sings, arms outstretched, twirling around in a gorgeous field of flowers surrounded by cold, impressive mountains.  The internet latched onto the scene and uses it to create memes (amusing item[s]…captioned picture or video or genre of items that is spread widely online especially through social media — Merriam Webster.)  I do not know if Dame Andrews has seen any of these memes, but something tells me that a woman married to Blake Edwards would find them amusing at the very least.

I had that meme, captioned in bold white letters that said, “Look at all the Effs I do not give” in mind when I wrote my previous post. It was appropriate at the moment, and I’m sure it will be again every now and then.  I didn’t include the meme hoping the words would get the message across.  Isn’t everyone tired of blunt internet tools banging on our weary brains? Well some of us are anyway.

I think about Dame Andrews and the life she’s had so far: her tough childhood, iconic roles, the loss of her soulmate Blake Edwards, and the needless, criminal loss of her singing voice. There’s a woman who could spend a lot of time cursing the darkness.  There was a pause in her creative life, but she never completely succumbed to all the effs she could not have given, a la the memes.  She continues to sing, act, and she’s written piles of books (32) on her own and with her daughter. She continues to be a woman, mother, grandmother, actress, writer, and everyone who meets her says the same: she is as positive and wonderful in person as she is onscreen.  Authentic through and through.

There is irony (and some humor) in using a happy woman singing a happy song in a meme that expresses displeasure at best, misanthrope worst. Neither of us knows what it feels like to be hanging on by a fingernail to life or sanity, but we’ve had our share of life things that we work through in equal and unequal measures, no matter where we are on the globe. She reminds me that the trick is knowing how to hold onto happiness, blessings, caring, giving — life — no matter how effed up things feel.  So I take a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, the stuff that reminds me it’s time to go back to giving a Royal Eff, to get focused and stay focused and not let the paltry shit get me down, to keep the pen moving and the love flowing no matter what the volcano is spewing. Isn’t that what winners, those persons who find happy moments and contentment in their lives no matter how small, wind up doing after all?

 

*Perspective, yo.