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Tag Archives: Godzilla

Harbor Wave

23 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Godzilla, ocean, prepare, tsunami

My ringtone sounds like a rotary phone when an incoming call arrives. It used to be “The Final Countdown” by Europe, but you know?  You have to change things up after a while.  Tonight my phone went off and it was Mike who seemed to want a voice to keep him company on the last leg of a drive home.  We talked and I paced from room to room (my apartment is two rooms)  as per my habit, which probably didn’t make my downstairs neighbor too happy, but oh well.

After a while I stepped outside and deemed the air nice enough for a walk.  I slipped my rainboots on over bare feet and walked down to the ocean, talking all the way.  My calf high boots are heavy plastic, the color of Welch’s grape juice with dark purple leopard spots.  When Mike got to where he was going, we rang off.  I tucked the phone into my back pocket and decided to stay.  Alone on the beach in the dark is my favorite place. It’s just heaven.  No wind tonight, not too cold. A good night to keep going.  I ambled east towards my favorite place, that spot where the water has a voice and character unlike any other I’ve heard around here.  The water was transitioning from low to high tide. At this moment the water was low, almost still, not interested in the toes of my boots.

I stood on the shore at the edge of the sandbar, windless, standing in puddle water when I noticed that the water started to run backward, fast,  little foam crests running back and away from the shore.  Riptide? I thought that only happened in big waves, in summer daylight, which was me just having a laugh with myself.   From a year of being here I know that boat wake happens about 10 minutes after a large vessel has gone by, but there was no vessel to be found in any direction.  Back went the water, pulling back more and more.  Okay.  I kept watching.   Then the water started to come back in, low and normal as a breath, but then a crest out of nowhere, the water raised up high from nowhere, surging up and over my rain boots, cold water washing over the tops and I stood there in disbelief that water so calm and demure one moment could rise up and paint me for a fool, breaching my boots, soaking my calves and bare feet.   This was a tidal tsunami, just a little one, and no one will believe me unless they saw it with their own eyes.  I stood in disbelief because I wanted to see if it would happen again, and it did, a few times.  Then the water calmed, no more crested waves; it had gone back to its puddling self, a bay shifting from low to high tide.

I’ve heard it said that we should never turn our back on the ocean. I’ve seen it too many times to say that’s just an old wives’ tale. She is an immortal being, and I am in awe of her. It’s good to be reminded of just how small and insignificant I am, and not waste a precious moment.

The Senses

09 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

brother, childhood, faith, father, Godzilla, mother, racism, Senses, truth

I can remember what the plastic-coated railing of my crib tasted like: flat, cool, and sometimes it pinched my tongue and made it bleed a little.   I can remember what breakfast tasted like, little bowls of Apple Jacks or Cheerios, maybe milk toast awesome with butter and a dash of pepper.  Sick bed days were spent on the couch in front of the tube watching Godzilla with grilled cheese and tomato soup, no guilt required.

I can remember what mornings sounded like. The awful squawk of the alarm clock that launched me from my bunk bed, headed me off to the bathroom to wash my teeth but skip my hair because I already had a bath last night, and it didn’t matter that my hair greased geometrically overnight and everyone made fun of me. Slurping down breakfast while listening to the news on the green radio Mom kept on the table.  I can still smell Dad’s Old Spice and wondering where those long, thick scars on his back came from, but I knew better than to ask.

I can remember what nighttime sounded like when our bedroom lights were out but the one in my head stayed on.  I heard their music playing on the stereo:  The Surfaris, Sinatra, Andy Williams, Cher, Simon & Garfunkel, Johnny Cash… a soundtrack for a life still in infancy. Once I heard the crinkle of gift wrap on Christmas Eve, but I knew better than to ask.

I can remember dinners that alternated between Daddy’s home and Daddy’s not home, and it’s unfair and cruel to say which was the best, but when Daddy wasn’t home we took his special quarters and bought pizza from Regina’s and ate like there would never be anything this heavenly again in all our lives–a perfect mozzarella pizza with tiny pepperoni that perfectly cupped the oil.  I can remember mom pouring oil into the electric fry pan and overcooking just about everything, things that were not meant to be soaked in hot oil.  I learned to hate eggplant in that fry pan.  She warmed up peas from a can, and I sat in front of them and the desiccated liver and onion thing, determined to starve and die because it was so awful, and I never gave in, a good ship Resolute.

I can remember Mom playing songs on the organ in our bedroom from a blue denim book. Many were happy and fun like “Camptown Races,” patriotic like “The Marines Hymn,” and some were “spirituals” or work songs.  Mom had no idea these were offensive or hurtful because she grew up believing these were just songs. One of my Catholic school teachers taught us a slave song, and even then it felt wrong to me: “Oh lordie, pick a bale o cotton, o lordie pick a bale a day…”  No.  Just, no.

I can remember Mom putting black pepper in my mouth for saying something horrible about my brother. I can remember Dad making me hold a heavy box with my arms outstretched until they shook because I was a very bad girl at the store. I just closed my eyes and focused on the lamp that rained oil in the stationery store, the one I wanted so badly.

I remember pussy willow buds, so soft and silver-white that bloomed every year in the courtyard, the courtyard that Godzilla never managed to destroy in my dreams.  I remember that clover tasted bitter, grass even worse, and dandelions leave the most wonderful yellow on fingertips. I remember popping open sticky maple seeds and putting them on my nose so I could be a rhinoceros or any other kind of mythical beast. I remember the prickle of sweet gum seeds that felt like porcupines underfoot.

I remember the constant sound of jets taking off or coming back to LaGuardia.  One long, hot day at summer camp I got to see the Concorde flying over the tennis courts as I lay in the grass waiting to play. The sonic boom, the awesomeness of that tiny white delta shape in a perfect blue sky in a place that I hated.  It was a spaceship of amazing, a spirit unbelievable.  God I’ll never forget that Concorde, the mysteries and marvel of its wing.

I remember the heady fragrance of incense, but I don’t remember which resin was burning on that holy day.  I can remember the swish of the priests robes and the clink of the decanter chain, whispers instead of songs.  I remember the bland taste of the Eucharist and that it did not cancel out my doubts, fears, or wonders I’ve had about this life.  The body of Christ tastes like something you must decipher for yourself, and for heaven’s sake don’t chew on it!

I remember growing up in a neighborhood with friends who were of different faiths. The old lady on the park bench, the fixture, always spoke to us nicely and nobody told me she was Jewish until later, and I didn’t know it mattered. The kids I went to camp with were of various faiths and nobody cared, except for that one girl who tried to own the rest of us in her braids and perfect red swimsuit, that horrible bully.   Unfortunately, I lived in a neighborhood where black and brown people were looked on as dangerous or at the very least suspicious, but it was so hard for me to process that because all the kids I went to school with were different colors–a bunch of them were Vietnamese.  I learned to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in Vietnamese,  and maybe that put me on the road to becoming a bleeding heart. At least I know what inclusion means and how it feels. That it looks like my son’s Vietnamese best friend who lived just across the yard, whose family invited us, including my Dad who served in Vietnam, to celebrate their sons birthdays.  We came to their table and ate traditional foods flavored with chopped peanuts and fish sauce, or wrapped in rice paper. How can this happen, and how can I be so lucky? Was my whole life just one big serendip waiting to happen?

Oh god/goddess keep our senses wide open, to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch the world and love it to the fullest.

Losfer Words (big ‘orra)

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

dream, Godzilla, Iron Maiden

Not sure why I am writing this today.  Perhaps when we are in the most turmoil, our moment of hair-thin breaking weakness, we need to speak the most?  Or bury it.  Either way…  When I look back on this post I say, oh boo hoo, poor baby, did we have a wittle bad dweam?  Think about how others are suffering, their hearts and homes broken, and all you’ve got is this?  Well, yes. I try to keep the whining in perspective, and as far as I know, this is my page to rant or whine, rage, suppose, imply, and wonder at will, never forgetting those who have gone before us in these days.

So I can’t breathe lately.  I think it’s because of the cat I was sitting for a week and all the things that come along with her like fur, dander, and her dusty litter box.  There was a lot of extra hand-washing this week because not handling her would have been cruel: it’s the reason her mom asked me to watch her in my apartment, because she’s so needy for love and company.  Of COURSE I petted her while I was on the toilet, she wouldn’t have it any other way!   I have limits to how much my feline affection will go, especially if you try to scale my bookcase and knock over some super-precious figurines.  But she’s home now, and all that’s left is cramped lungs and sleepless nights trying to breathe.

I woke on the cusp of dawn in terror.  I did not recognize where I was. I was propped up by many pillows on my pretty twin bed, the room looked sterilized white, I did not recognize the doorways, I thought I was in my father’s room the day he took his last breath.  I was the one in that bed. This is my final resting place.  Then I remembered the dream, the dream that never stopped.  Godzilla was coming for me, and I don’t know why. (I never know why.) I offended him somehow, and there was no chance to repay him but in death.  And I remembered seeing myself get out of this bed, go through that doorway, seeing male twins sitting at my card table, oblivious to the destruction going on outside the window.  I opened the door and watched the crowd in the dark street, their faces and bodies reacting to the horror happening in the window upstairs from me.  I was holding a large knife, like a bowie knife, only made of crystal, and apparently I wasn’t supposed to have it, but I refused to give it up.  I ran and ran and hid, climbed, crouched, did everything I could to keep myself and the knife away from the monster, but it never ever failed to find me.  I awoke in my bedroom disoriented, I didn’t recognize where I was and my heart raced, adrenaline rushed, I was so scared because I lost all my bearings.  I studied the door frames trying to make sense of it all, wondering why I was in the hospice room soon to die.  The room became lit with pale orange and I coughed a lot and realized it was a dream, and it was time to stand up.  I haven’t been that afraid since I don’t know when.  I write here today to try and understand it all.

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