24 Friday May 2019
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They nest every year in a pine tree the next house over.
Fearless. Curious.
One dusk I saw five of them on the branches, then they flew off, long legs trailing.
But one stood on the roof peak, tawny legs, tan roof, beak before the breeze. Its crest feathers and remiges flowing back, and I can’t decide if it looked like a dragon or a princess…
*yellow crowned night heron (Look it up, as my dad would say)
13 Monday Nov 2017
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The neighbors are less suspicious now as I drive down the narrow street and turn into the graveyard. They see my black Jeep a lot nowadays, and once I had to tell the cops I’m just here to see my dad. You know how it is with small town cops. I think they’ve gotten used to me now and I still don’t give a shit.
His grave is between the elementary school and the “middle” school. I can’t help reliving some of those days every time I drive past them to make the turn into the narrow street, or road because it’s small town. There’s a large, green lawn and a big playground down back. My 18-year-old friends liked to play back there in the middle of the night, big kids having fun with their girlfriends, except that one night when he jumped down off the monkey-bars and his boot knife drove into his ankle. That was kind of messed up. These are the woods I hid inside when I played hooky and maybe some other things. I relive those times every time I drive down this backstreet and turn onto a smaller street not meant for two cars passing, neighbors wondering who’s this kid in a tricked out Jeep hanging out in the graveyard?
I wouldn’t come back here for any reason except that you are here. I took my beatings in this neighborhood, not far from the cool place where the under-aged were served at the tavern. We don’t all need to be the king and queen of the prom, but it would’ve been nice not to get beaten because I was a minding-my-own-business Head and you were a Jock serving your term as eradicator of supposed filth. I wouldn’t come back here for any reason, but this was the best place I could find for you, and I know you’d be okay with it. I wouldn’t come back here for any reason except for you. The neighbors are less suspicious now when I pull in between the low and narrow chain link fence. I pull off the gravel road into the grass, my Jeep leans steeply but at least people can pass by if they need to, but they never do because no one comes here except me, day or night.
I’m not thrilled about the headstone the Army provided at no charge. I wish it could be more. I wish it gave me space to tell the world who you have been and who you are.
I come here when I want, no reason or rhyme. Sometimes I just sit and listen to Concrete Blonde and watch the night go by. Other times I get out of the Jeep and greet your stone. I stand beside the dimple in the ground and I just start talking. I tell you everything. I tell you things I didn’t know I needed to say, words I can’t believe I’m saying. Sometimes it’s just the most random bullshit. I can hear what you’d probably say. Or maybe you might surprise me, I don’t know, but this silent ground gives me a place to tell, instead of lifelong silence when I needed you most. Now I tell you all, a silent post.
Should I stay here so I can keep speaking with you, telling you my heart that I will never give another? If I drive my Jeep into desert discomfort, will you still be with me and hear me? I need to go, but I don’t know how to leave you, Dad. How will I find your listening or not listening anywhere else? I flick my cigarette out the window and drive on. Traffic is heavy like it never was before when we were kids. I light another cig and change the song on the machine. I’m looking for something to lift the ribs that crush my heart and help me breathe free.
*Thank you, Kevin, for letting me have this one.
13 Friday Oct 2017
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Color me alive.
Once upon a time if I could make everything mine it would all be colored black and silver, the colors of heavy metal, the color of swords and shields, strength and don’t fuck with me. Then again, if I could make everything mine it would be the black and the red. And yet, in between all those days, the little girl of me loved Victorian decor (or kitsch, if you are so inclined) pink dangling lampshade beads, floral prints, heavy dark wood, ridiculously ornate, god I was born late, how could this same girl love the Victorian and yet crave the black and the silver?
All I know is that I refuted brown. Brown was against everything I stood for. Brown was a curse word. Brown was a daily something I could not fight against. Brown. Sepia. Diarrhea. At least black had magic and silver had fight and red was blood and power, but brown felt useless and undignified. My father wore brown polyester slacks every day. I don’t know how many pairs he had, same with his socks. He wore brown velour shirts every day, too. I don’t know if he wore his brown armor under his coveralls working for the electric company, but every time I saw him at home it was brown. His eyes were brown like the color of our Volare station wagon and the color of my eyes, the color of coffee he let me sneak from a teaspoon. He once told me a joke when I was young: “Why are your eyes brown? Because you’re full of shit up to here,” and he pointed to his eyebrows. Har har har.
I’ve spent many a year shunning the color brown, the color of our carpets, the couch, Dad’s recliner, later the color of the roof, the floor, more carpet, and life itself. I sought color in a world of brown. There has to be more to life than the color of dead grass.
I have an opportunity to create my own world right now in an apartment two stones throw from the bay. The wind is high today; it creates suction and plays with my bathroom door, but I relish the fresh air and the leaves of my plants flapping. The walls are painted dead canary, or, to be more specific, pale urine. I wanted to make this space a nautical or maritime place, but piece by piece, my world is allowing earth tones to come in. And you know what earth tones are, don’t you? Brown. I hung valances today that are silky ivory, green, burgundy, so I bought a futon cover that matches, and guess what? The panels range from grey to cranberry to brown. I bought two chairs from a neighbor and their cushions are patterned in earth tones with brown. My apartment is changing from rebellious empty with a few pillows with anchors on them to a user-friendly earthy vibe. I guess it had to change because I learned that sweat and sandy feet and blood stand out on this ivory futon cushion covered in demure Victorian roses, and I am embarrassed to let anyone sit there. I am acquiescing to earth tones that include brown, and I struggle with the brown. And I smile sardonically. Life is too bloody for me to have ivory sheets, it seems, but I am learning that I am not made of shit up to here. Brown is not the enemy and never was.
Come change with me. It feels good.
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.
26 Friday May 2017
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And there it was, through the struggle of the night, another long Goldilocks night where I’m too hot, I’m too cold, but oh, please, bring me just right…. I awoke in the middle of the night and remembered that story I used to tell myself when I was little. Actually, I was telling my stuffed animals, for they were good listeners, but I am getting ahead of myself.
My brother and I went from cribs to bunk beds, nothing in between. Brother got the bottom bunk which means I got the top. It was so high up, though, and Mom was worried about me falling out of bed. Dad had every Craftsman tool known to man (or at least it seemed that way to a little girl who liked following him around, wanting to help spackle or anything else he thought I was capable of doing.) Dad brought home a ginormous piece of wood, longer than the bunk bed and thicker than a pizza box. He drew lines and sawed the ends into curves, sanded, then he varnished the shit out of that thing which stunk to high heaven and set off my asthma, naturally. When it was done, he fitted the smooth, dark wood piece over the edges of my bunk so that it would keep me from falling out during the night.
I accumulated stuffed animals over the years and I lined them up, just so, at the head of my bed. They were my cabinet, my aides du camp, the only thing helping me through Godzilla / tornado dreams — or worse. Mom used to read us bedtime stories like an orator on a stage, me high in the balcony. I used to make up stories as I lay in the laps of my dear stuffed animals, and they listened. And I remembered one of those stories last night. You know. It’s the one about the dragons.
My goal is to write the story today. I don’t know what I will do with it when it’s done. There are so many places I could hobble up to and beg they take my paltry thing and publish it. But it all starts here. In my bed. The place where I still sleep with dragons.
24 Monday Apr 2017
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I dreamed of my father. He was with me just now, as I remember him when I was a tweenager, back when I had a pageboy haircut and wore caramel-coloured velour shirts.
He was standing on the grass in the courtyard, much like this one only the buildings were taller and there were more trees. I knew almost everyone here.
He was standing still as I told him why I was sad. He listened to me and it felt kind.
When I awoke, my heart was pounding hard and I suddenly knew the reason for my sadness. (I brought it on myself.) He didn’t have to say a word.
Thanks, Dad.
(then, of course, my brother calls me just now to ask me a question about him.)
04 Tuesday Apr 2017
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Ostara has come and gone, quietly in this corner of the world.
Passover and Easter have yet to arrive, and they will, dates entwined.
Did they teach us that King James was not the tongue of Jesus?
Or did I just miss that part during a boring mass, too busy wiggling on a waxed bench seat hard on my ass?
Magic words and rituals.
Many years we prepared an Easter basket for my son, filled with some sugar treats, but also little cars and coloring books.
Grandfather faithfully brought him the softest, sweetest, snuggle bunnies because he loved him.
What would he say to me and my son if he were here today?
Do we use the shadow of the dead to keep us in line?
06 Monday Feb 2017
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30 Friday Dec 2016
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I’m glad the night is over. Better to rise in the dark to herd my thoughts, to write, to read, anything but try and lay still when it does me no good.
It was the dream that had no intention of ending, for no matter how many times I got up last night it returned. Makes me question my sanity–did I truly did get up many times last night? How can a dream pick up where I tried to leave it?
And it was my father, of course. Driving. I was a little girl. He was driving the car in the dark, and I was listening silently. He was lecturing me for using the wrong word in a sentence. He was so annoyed, displeased, unhappy with the fact that I could misuse the word “opaque.” Why is he still annoyed with me? Why does it still matter? Will I always be that little girl driven in the dark, destination unknown, by an aggravated male? Why is the father of Me annoyed with the little girl of Me for misusing a word (though I am not convinced that I did.) Aye, there’s the rub. Who is right, who is wrong, and does it really matter?
How does one heal a little dream that feels like a stinging cut in my palm? I refuse to make this dream more than it is, but I am curious about the word “opaque” and what it means to me right now, so I will explore that idea (along with “transformation”) today.
The wind blows southeasterly, and it will get stronger later this afternoon. The Eisenhower returns to port today, and I watched all the cars queue up in the dark waiting to see their loved ones gone all these months. In the bay, little wavelets lift up their white heads and say, “What? Oh no, no no no, that’s just too cold for me!” then duck their heads right back down into the cold, dark water, pushed along by the wind. As for all the rest, I’ll leave it opaque as can be.
18 Sunday Dec 2016
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It was a foggy morning that began so early with me knocking on the maintenance guy’s door because there was a fast and furious water leak down by the stairs. The fog came and went as did the foghorns, their distinct sound calling out from indistinct weather. It swelled my heart.
This evening’s beach walk brought more than I expected which should never surprise me, yet it does. I spent a long time out there for somebody who doesn’t like the cold, but the walking shoes and over sized hoodie with pockets did the job. I left the hood down for the most part because I wanted to feel the cold air on my neck, my ears, my cheeks, my nose. I wanted to”feel,” just as I wanted to hear and taste this ocean and see the cloud/fog being driven over me by the wind.
I hadn’t walked far when a gorgeous shell, intact, practically jumped up from the sand and bit my shin, a kind of whelk I’d not seen before, and I felt like… Who left this here? I looked around like Red in Shawshank Redemption, wondering if anybody saw me take it, and was it actually meant for me? I guessed it was, so I tucked it in my pocket and kept rubbing its smooth gut and bumpy exterior the whole way. It was a very low tide, and were it spring or summer I could have walked out to the breakwater and touched its rocks, slippery with growth, but I chose to keep my feet on the damp ridges of dune.
Black-headed ducks bobbed in the pool spotted with gulls, and I notice their voice sounds nothing like mallards. Cormorants worked so hard flying into the wind, and I asked them, “C’mon guys, what’re you doing?” but they kept on going their hard way. A red doberman played on the sand with her daddy. No dolphins today but that would’ve been asking too much because look at the whelk in my hand! I faced into the wind and smelled a burger on the grill which made me want one, and I wondered who’s out here grilling in this chilly, windy day? There were many small, white feathers in the sand, a portent of something wrong, and I found its body. My guess is a dog or a fox got this gull but somebody chased it away before it could feed. And here, seaweed I’d not seen before: I’m used to seeing long, purple hairs or the short, red stumpy ones that turn soft brown on a windowsill, but now there’s this brownish stuff swaying that looks like celluloid. Cool. Has it always been here and I just never noticed? Probably. While I walked I felt the pull of who I was missing, then heard that critics’ voice chiding me, but I put it back in place, decently, remembering that I get to decide who I miss and who I don’t, when, where, and why. It felt so good. And I cried.
The conclusion of my father’s estate sits in an envelope on my desk. I stood on the sandbar knowing this was sea level, tide sloping in, because it’s absolute. This is sea level, fullstop, not driving past a sign that says “you are 1000 feet above sea level” which means absolutely nothing to me. It doesn’t get any more absolute than sea level at your feet with a tide coming in, or a check that says this is all that’s left of your dad now, run along and try to make something of yourself. I cried and I missed him. I was glad the neighbors weren’t around. I cried and only the bobbing black-headed ducks might have noticed. I was glad they didn’t fly away when I walked past them, smoothing the whelk in my fingertips.
The wind makes the lamps in the courtyard sway tonight. I still have tears in my eyes as the new mother comes to share pictures of her little one on Santa’s lap for the first time. We talk about our babies cruising, nursing, coffee tables, mother-shaming. I think about my son and my family, my fate and fortune, and the ellipsis that we all are, feeling like it’s just gonna be all right…
Indigo Vales 