Monthly Archives: August 2017

Rhetoric from a drowning heart

18 Friday Aug 2017

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…. and I think we should take down all the Confederate monuments and put them in museums or some type of memorialized area, out of public view.  This way the monuments will be safe and protected, people can still go visit them whenever they want, and they will still be an important part of our history.

Right? Just like we put Indians on reservations, safe and protected, and part of our history. It’s not like we only remember them when they’re protesting pipelines or whatever.

We are not a stupid people, and we will not rewrite or forget history.  Right?

I’m a yankee living in the south, a few hours south of the heart of the Confederacy. What I think and feel and believe about southern heritage means very little to people who have lived here all their lives. My neighbors and friends are heartbroken that Confederate monuments are being removed because they see value in its history. As an outsider why should I care about southern heritage? Well, for one because we all live here in these United States. I am forced to examine the words. What is southern heritage? How about northern heritage? Is there such a thing, and what does that look like? Money? Liberalism? Industry? Politics? The arts?  What is western heritage, and what does that look like? Do we have a tex-mex heritage, or a far-northwestern heritage, those folks in Seattle or Idaho? What does mid-western heritage look like, what kind of flag do they fly to represent their mid-western ways?   What does heritage mean by definition, and to me personally, and to each person in our country, and have we relinquished the word in favor of stereotype?  I don’t know.

My paternal family came from England and Ireland. My maternal family have English and Dutch backgrounds. I was so proud of my Irish “heritage,” something that I could only touch by way of poetry and song. I burnished that pride based on heroics of Cormac but didn’t trouble myself too much to understand the Troubles. I have a Heinz 57 bloodline, as do most of us, so I no longer fly anyone’s flag in pride. Right now, I’m just trying to figure out how to preserve history, to heal wounds, to discover what friendship and unity and taking care of each other means and what we have to do to get there.

What Does Your Flag Remember?

13 Sunday Aug 2017

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Quickly! Quickly Betsy, fast as ever you can, we need to see each other from a long way. Make the flag of canvas or cotton or linen, use everything you can, but we must carry our message into the field and beyond when we’ve taken out those lobsterbacks!

Quickly! Quickly, Constance, as fast as ever you can, we need to see each other from a long way. Make the flag of canvas or cotton, linen or silk, use whatever is at hand, but we must carry our standard into the field so the Yanks know we’ve forced their retreat, our message clear!

Ah. Ackh. This flag tastes like ghost pepper, my eyes and nose and mouth are thick and throbbing.  That’s all right. No biggie. Sliding this flag off this stick 1-2-3 and you’re mine now, pathetic, race-hating antifa motherfuckers!

Ah. Ackh. This flag tastes like ghost pepper, my eyes and nose and mouth are thick. That’s all right. No biggie. My friends will douse me down with water. We got some good Go-Pro footage of everybody hollering and jeering, until they decided it was time to come and get us. Now? My flag tastes like salt and blood and I dunno what. The flag isn’t really the thing, it’s more like, standing up for what’s right.

Maybe they’ll remember Heather’s name or maybe she’ll have some 15 minutes of fame in her deceased state, you know, walking along a street wanting to stand against bigotry and white nationalism. I don’t know whose face or what place to mark that she was here. Seems like we all have to make our mark, somehow, something that says we were here. We did something. It meant something. We want our times and times and times to remember what we stood for. The little girl of me wants to remember the best of us.

What does your time, your greasy fingered baby-back rib in the front of a cave mark, stand for? Was it peace? Did you stand for neutrality to escape getting your ribs cracked because you took a stand? Or did you lick your fingers clean?

(the women’s march on dc included very specific instructions that we were not allowed to carry signs, banners, or anything sharp or cudgel-like, and we followed that rule. we carried lots of 8 x 10 inch paper, cloth, pillowcases, hats, shirts, lots of people walking to and from the mall with one goal in mind, and that goal was not to stand behind a shield, and beat you with a stick or throw bottles filled with urine or cement. why was that rule not in place in charlottesville? i await the governors reply)

We smear meanings on the wall, things we want to remember, things we teach our young. Something happened here, and smear that moment on your face so you know you are part of it. Your cannon mates, your tent mates, the buttons on your tunic, that bit of cloth that tells us where to rally, or retreat, and did you understand what it all really meant?

Flags, unholy acrid, captured and desecrated. Flags damp in the dew of morning on the way to capturing you.  Flags rising up, defying a surrendered past, denying defeat and demanding glory, wanting to tell its silken story to a crowd that sits restless in chains or brings its thin pole down and down and down upon you, race-traitor.

We will remember you, in your place as we savor gobbets of meat from the fire.

Growing Up

09 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Interesting things happen when people put their confidence in you.  Suddenly you have to perform. I’ve heard Hollywood stars say, “Fake it ’till you make it,” and that resonates. I think most of us do the same daily, because our ancestor, that shadowy Prometheus, pushes us out of our comfort zones into the hallways we’ve wanted all our lives. We’ve got the fire, we stole it from on high and now we’re not sure what to do with it, but by god we’re not going to give it up.   Sometimes the hallways aren’t the dream we dreamed they would be, and that’s all right. We find ourselves in new lands, new challenges, successes and failures await.  Will we fight or will we succumb?

I must have asked my coworkers how to get to the building in Manhattan where the boss was sending me. I’m not sure he believed in me, but he assumed I was capable of finding my way in the garment district. I was happy that he thought I was capable, perhaps I’d esteemed myself at the front desk and I wanted to continue to perform and elevate myself in the company.  There was no internet for me to ask, like some kind of Magic 8 Ball or Medusan cauldron how to get around. I was still living at home but had my own car, and I had to figure out Manhattan on my own.  Best I can recall I told mom I’d call her when I got there at some point, as cellphones and Android were not available.  I got there somehow by the Beacon train and walked some blocks to their building, excited to be dressed fairly fashionably (for a country mouse, anyway), walking around like I knew what I was doing, smelling the smells, observing everything hungrily, and warily. In the office, I observed the goings-on, ate their delivered subs with relish, no pun intended and made small talk. They gave me very little to do. I got home somehow and the next day was interviewed by the boss.  He didn’t send me there to observe the office so I could become a fixture there, something I was hoping for. It appears that I was a spy, a weak one, nothing more, telling him what was going on while he was away. I told him what he wanted to know, then he put me back into my receptionist chair where I felt weak and ineffectual.  I wanted to climb higher, all that ambition without internet or cell phone. Well. I left his company eventually because I was tired of cleaning the bathroom, pitting dates, repackaging soaking, stinking apricots, and dealing with a zealous employee.

I drove to Omaha last July because I wanted to (and for many reasons.) I laugh now thinking about how we relied on his magic talking box to help us find a restaurant nearby.  God, the soaking Blue Ridge parkway in West Virginia, steaming after the rain….  I drove through Tennessee and Alabama so I could see what makes this world, my world. I am grateful for GPS to get me through the wrong turns I made. My spiral-bound road atlas is large and I’ve traced pink lines across the places I’ve been so far.  I drove those lines without calling momma for directions or my dad for anything.

I’m faking it until I make it as a person. A woman. A writer.  And I’m not ashamed to say it.

Things I Won’t Get Used To

06 Sunday Aug 2017

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Yesterday was a perfect beach day, well for me, anyway. I’m the Goldilocks of being outdoors unlike some of my neighbors who are beach pros. For me, I like it not too hot, not too cold, and no wasps in sight makes it all just right.  The wind was high yesterday coming out of the north, northeast, kicking up high waves and blowing the heat far off the sand. The high, curling rollers kept the lifeguard’s skilled eyes busy.

It was a good day to sit on Samantha’s towel beneath the umbrella her husband held firmly down in the sand mound to keep it from blowing away, watching their son, a new beach pro, fling the world’s best toy with a simple yellow shovel.  She unfolded what was going on in their lives and what the future holds for them. Big changes for everyone, everywhere, it seems.

Change. Water, mirror, child, grass, sand. All subjects I study for a piece that I’m working on that touches on proof of time, but the subject of me still can’t get over some of the things she sees. She slowly adapts to change.  Change means I’ve had to get used to seeing guns worn on belts in public, and dealing with how I feel about that.  I’ve always believed that once you come to the beach and sit down, listen and watch in silence, you will never want to check your watch or social media. Something about the sand, the waves and the breeze, where we come to sit together or miles apart, makes us one somehow. You cannot be the same once the ocean puts her finger on you, but here was a man who wandered the shingle with a revolver on his waist. I cannot understand why.

The first gun I saw in public other than law enforcement was at the laundromat. Just a dude doing his laundry, Glock on hip. Ho hum? It’s not like we live in the elder wild west where anything goes, no sheriff in sight to lay down the law. Norfolk has its hands full, but our neighborhood is kind and stable, and the beach is certainly well patrolled.  The dude washing his laundry was exercising his 2nd amendment right, and I’ve slowly gotten used to it.  But the dude on the beach left me speechless. I wondered if the lifeguards are trained to deal with gun things? I mean, who could feel so insecure and afraid they need to carry a revolver on their hip on the beach? You hate seagulls that much? Or hate people who tease you for wearing white socks and Adidas flops with shorts and a cut off t-shirt, or maybe it was your bandanna you needed to defend? Why in the world, in all the places of the world, did you hang a revolver off your brown leather belt that belonged around a pair of Lee jeans instead of board shorts? What was going through your mind as you prowled the wet sand, staring off into the water like you were looking for some shark we needed to be defended from? I dunno. Maybe it was a drug thing, and I dislike typing that more than you know.

With some conversation and reflection, it appears that many people here on my beach are carrying where I hadn’t had a clue. They’re good, gotta give them credit. But my question remains: Why are you carrying a weapon to the beach? A place where we are all here for the same reason, feeling that same feeling?  There are children on this beach, and I’m not worried about you but I am worried about what seeing a revolver on a hip might mean to them as they grow up. Well, I guess since you’re permitted to carry concealed it won’t bother anyone. Maybe you believe you need to be prepared 24/7 for a personal affront, or you need to be prepared 24/7 in case a neighbor or fellow beach-goer is in dire need of protection before the cops can come?  Is this the world I live in? No. No. And no.

I watched a little guy pushing teeth through his gums laugh while mom held him as the ocean waves pushed and lifted him from behind. I watched a little girl lie on the sand in her floral print dress waiting for the waves to lick her ankles and tickle her feet.  I watched seagulls swoop down on a camp in search of food while the humans were away laughing in pummeling, frothy water. I think of my neighbors who live a quarter mile up the way where there are no lifeguards, and we tend to know each other’s dogs names better than our own.  I don’t want to get used to knowing that we are carrying guns openly or concealed because it makes me feel like we are all too afraid. Afraid of each other, afraid of the unknown. Don’t tell me it’s all about being prepared. There are no cougars or lions or packs of wild dogs coming for us down here on the beach.  What y ou call preparedness is what I call fear.

I believed there could be no fear here on the beach, before our mistresses of water and wind. I am not ready to relinquish that belief, and I believe I will never need to.

Transition In The Key Of Me

05 Saturday Aug 2017

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The year many of our beach dogs died. The year humans reclaimed the beach from weather, tacking on 20 feet and taking away sandbars. The year of travel. Of making friends. Reclaiming silence, peace, writing, reading. Self.

September is coming. It begins my season of change. The world celebrates New Year’s as the new, like one big, happy, unbloody period, but September always felt like the real chapter for me. I feel September coming as I sort the ingredients of last year. So many sleepless nights. So many sunrise and sunsets. Countless wave sounds to catalog with mere words. Empty shells and sea glass have become homes for hermit crabs and the sea glass is rarer now. Great herds of seaweed would beach themselves and reek on the shore until they dried out to become part of the sand, but not now.  I know the wind now. I understand the lightning a little more. I am free with the truth because I have nothing to lose.  I write. I will always write. I have a vision to build a body of work so that I can publish something with some meat on the bones, something people will like at least, or remember, at most.

I think back on those times I left home to see Iron Maiden and friends for a few days. There was a plan for a meetup. A hotel. Sightseeing for a little while. A tavern for dinner, a hole in the wall for the tribute band to play the night before. Attending the concert which was a holy thing. Hugs and love and the return home. I always felt like I needed to straighten up the house before I left. I guess I felt like if I left things in disarray while I was out having a good time it would weigh on me.  And now, as I approach September, I see I’ve done it again: my home is in top shape. I gathered books, CDs, clothes for donating. I trashed things that I was holding on to that was time to let go. Hand-washed a pile of delicate blouses. Everything in its place, keeping only those things that matter, shedding all the rest because I have to prepare for the next chapter.

My neighbor is distraught that I am seeking employment. She appreciates my presence and likes that if she asks I will go with her to grab coffee or new lawn chairs or simply listen whenever she needs. I reassured her that I’ll still be around, but I felt the seismic shift in her when I said I’m going back to work. That’s all right. She will figure things out and get used to it, just like I’ll have to get used to wearing bras and socks and shoes again.

These next two days will be interesting. I wonder what I will do with my silence, my time. All I know is that my house smells like coconut, courtesy of the wax burner. Neighbors are chatting, coffee mugs in hand, fluffy white dogs in laps in the the newly-constructed bench in the courtyard. That wasn’t there last year, m’dear. I will contemplate a wasp sting, a child’s graduating, a man’s love, another man’s spirit, books that make me breathless and books that make me wonder how did this get published, sniffing out the trail of a new tattoo, and reorganizing my energy for a new path, the next path.