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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: ocean

I Lose More Therapists This Way*

06 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brave, camping, change, Elisa, evolving, exaggeration, fear, friendship, hope, jellyfish, ocean, power, reality, spheksophobia, swimming, therapy, woman

I enter her comfy, cozy office, sink into the comfy, cozy couch and we get all the small talk out of the way. She knows I don’t want to talk about anything, I’d much rather babble on about current events or the weather, so she tries to get me to relax so I can share how I’m really feeling so I can feel better. She asked me to close my eyes. Yeah right, that only took five minutes for me to stay in, and then she asked me to imagine

…..sitting in the deep woods, woods filled with pine trees the breath of the breeze filling the boughs that made them sway, the scent of pine taking me away… I opened my eyes and said, “Yeahno. Nope. There’s bears. There’s bears and there’s yellowjack nests in the bottom of that tree. You know I have spheksophobia, I can’t go there, no bears, no hornets, no.”

May be an image of nature and tree
photo by Elisa Torres

I’m stiff on the couch again and she asks me to imagine the green hillside where Julie Andrews sings “The Hills Are Alive” amidst mountains and a beautiful blue sky, a scene she knows I love and helps me get to sleep. She asks me to sit down on a blanket and watch the moment. But the hills are alive with flowers and things that want flowers like bugs and bees and oh my god it’s all covered in bees and Nope. No. No thank you. I’m stiff again on her couch really wanting to talk about the ballots being audited in Arizona by Cyber Ninjas. She slowly brings me back to where I can see my sneakers on the Berber carpet, and I want an iced coffee in the worst way.

My therapist takes a sip from her coffee mug and returns it silently to the coaster on the side table. She says, “I want you to close your eyes again,” which takes another five minutes and she says “Imagine yourself floating. You are floating in the jade green waters of the Chesapeake, the place you love. The sun is warm but not too warm, the breeze is present but not assailing, you are floating, floating free and safe…” And I cut her off. “Nope. No. There’s jellyfish. Jellyfish. They’re all over. And things that touch my calf and and I don’t know what the hell that is because I can’t see it. I mean, if I can’t see it, then what is even the point of being here? No thanks.”

My therapist sighs and smiles, adjusting tactics and says, “Well ok, that’s fine. Close your eyes again please. And now you’re floating in your bathtub at home. Your apartment where the only sound is the air conditioner. Day in and day out, the world is quiet, as you like it, your most sacred safe place. You are floating in your bathtub, relaxed, thinking about the day, and …” I interrupt her. “Nope. No. I just washed the tub. I mean, I think I got all the cleaner out, but I’m not sure. I rinsed the tub out really good, I probably used more water than I should have, I mean, I really try to conserve water, but I’m not sure all the cleaner is out, so if I try to soak in the tub with that stuff still in there my labia might swell up and my vagina will follow suit and my uterus will *eject* because who the hell knows what’s really in those chemicals, so how about if I try again tomorrow after I rinse the tub out with scalding hot water for like 24 hours, it should be okay then, right? …. Right?


There’s bears in them woods and jellyfish in that water and it’s okay. My friend wrote about her time away and my current being had hackles up, red flags, fear which I throttled back slowly as I imagined myself there faced with a bear in the ferns, or maybe it was a deer, or nothing at all. After putting out my fear fires I felt amused because I can be a dork who can look at my real inside self and hear, “Well there you go. You got some shit to work on.” So thanks, Elisa for your allowing me to live vicariously through ya, and there was probably no bears. I doubt I will ever get over the yellowjack thing, but I’ll hit the water and the woods with you anytime.

*This essay was filled with exaggeration, but….

fog morning.

06 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Catskills, childhood, fog, memory, morning, ocean, poem?, Senses, silence

the kind of morning i wish would stand still
see what i see.
let me take in the silence
the scent
the gray
the cool soaking wet
let me hold you still
before it all becomes the day.

i remember waking and rising before everyone
and sneaking outside to sit on the concrete steps
shocked i could rise so early
that i could be so quiet mousy
elated that there’s no one to tell me
No
or
Don’t
a long green and white trailer nestled in the catskills
courtesy of grandma and grandpa
land of loud crickets, soft orange lights
strangers in pubs who are friends
a pool that’s off limits
and a basketball court where my dad actually bounced a ball.
so many tiny white spider tents in the grass
should i walk, yes i should walk and soak my socks
i’ll take them off
my tracks look like skis in the wet grass
the world was still and mostly silent
accompanied by tiring crickets
soon grandma will rise with her little slippered feet
and pastel house dress to make us toast with too much butter
that is life
and no one around to say
No
or
Don’t

sun please hold before you burn this fog away
fluttering flock of mourning doves say otherwise
the guy downstairs comes out for a smoke
the chemicals chase the ocean scent away
still, everyone is reverent this morning,
keeping quiet.
so far.

May For Me

01 Friday May 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Catholic, Incomprehensible, Mary, May, mystery, ocean, Sea, snow, spring, Star of the Sea, winter

Today is the first of May. A familiar time for someone who grew up in New York disliking winter with its 10-foot piles of snow, the dirty frozen kind you fall on as you’re walking to school and cut your knees on. Come spring, save us from stiff fingers and toes while we’re locked out of the house and snow angels are for people who can breathe and laugh and run in this dry scene, not the rest of us gasping for air.

Welcome, May, a doorway to peace, winter not so far behind, a time for skin to relax and receive heat without fear. I grew up in echoey castles devoted to candles and hymns and discipline. I wanted so much to taste the beef broth that was simmering in the halls when we walked from here to there. In May we went outside and crowned a plaster statue with living flowers and prayed to her, that was somehow supposed to relieve me of the passion and suffering, the bleeding torture and death of the christ we experienced year after year?

My kindest memory of May was a prayer when someone said Mary was the Star of the Sea. I do not know why this went down into me and kept me and held me. Mostly I felt strange to honor a plaster thing in white and blue robes or nearly naked on a bloody cross. All my young being asked what exactly am I doing here and why does this feel so strange honoring a thing with things when what we are feeling is incomprehensible?

Today I recall hearing the prayer that mentions Mary Star of the Sea. I appreciate and approve that devotion though I have never been. The sea is incomprehensible, a dangerous mystery to me, and perhaps I will never comprehend. I feel closer to the mystery outside of me because moonlight and sunrise. The End.

Bonfire for E.

14 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, fire, mother, ocean, poem, woman

welcome enter
how did we find each other
doesn’t matter
our candles burn the same

i am crone in the cave naming
sea life remains
one long tide at a time.

the mother of me sees the mother of you
i have balm for that.
you are still spring and fight
where I am retreat and ruminate

the world is blind at night,
but for a little moon
we are unsafe on the waters
and deepest african shores
still we prowl, seeking danger

we are eating and drinking and laughing
when we should be
writing
writing
writing

when next you see me, darling
bring your book and your pen
refuse all distraction
enter the cave hungry and wet
and longing

bring basil and pepper and vinegar
ghost pepper
empty cask
bring your longing and prepare to
dash it on the rocks
fearless woman, rise up
stain your fingers with woe
and love and find liberty.

Holy Morning

03 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, awake, brother, Crystal Ship, headphones, James Douglas Morrison, morning, ocean, Ray Manzarek, son, sorting, sunrise, the Doors

Abruptly awakened
(charley horse and other reasons I rose before I was ready,
remembering a dream of sorting legos with my son and baby brother)
I dress in the dark and remember that I have headphones
and it’s the first time in weeks I can motor

down to the beach in cold flip flops armored in Carhart, otherwise
I crest the dune and come down into the beach and see a gull, torn.
Omen she is, she tells me ‘Ware, what you seek you will find here”
I take up the dare and keep walking, wiggling cold grains from my soles
giving up once I arrive at The Place.

I turn east and study the horizon with “The Crystal Ship”
absorbing me–that piano–one hand, now two
never heard anything so beautiful
god why can’t I do that
he croons effortlessly and the water has not come to hear him
It’s only for me and a wish of you, I suppose…
The orb rises behind thick clouds
I’ve seen the water mirror but not this morn
Small waves rise up and comb the shore though I cannot hear them
drowned out by Jim and Dionysus
(another flashing chance at bliss another kiss, a nother kiss)
Should I read what I wrote so long ago?

The trance is broken by dog-walkers, neighbors, sweet and kind.
Sweaty headphones off now for momma raised me right,
thou shalt not be rude to thy neighbors

I don’t need a reason why.
I am awake and alive
purple ink on my wrist
candle burning
it is morning
I am writing.
(rejoice. delicate.)

Upon Seeing The Word “Waves”

12 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

impossible, Mermaids, ocean, poem, Polaris, power, waves

Sentient explorers
rogue shoulders
wild breathing
last gasp upon the shore, hammerhand, quartz-carver
cloak of invisibility
keeper of secrets
Mistress
impossible blues
Polaris gleams upon her black spine, hope for men aloft on Poseidon’s foaming mares
and dreams for little girls wanting to be mermaids.

December Fog

15 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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December, fog, foghorn, insomnia, ocean, sound, weather

I heard rain was coming this week.  I was so excited. I love rain when it comes here, particularly the pounding rain on the roof I can barely hear because the building is built well and my ears don’t hear so well, but there’s just this something that tells me it’s rain and I run outside 20 times a day to see it hurling down and dripping from long, green pine needles.   

I waited up stayed up wanting to hear the rain and all we got was less than what I wanted, a fuzzy drifting wet, tiny things you couldn’t even call drops, more like midges circling the lamp post jostling for the best mate, only a little damper.  That was no rain.  

But fog did come.  When I finally caved in to the tired I stripped and rolled in and watched the orange sky (the one that tells me we’ve got weather, otherwise the sky is mediocre blue) but heard no beating rain. The trees beyond the window didn’t gleam with wet, but the one significant sound was white fog and one calling horn.  The foghorns did not sound all day, it was more like off and on, and mostly the horns are loud from the back bay, not the ones in the channel who tag team “horn” and “horn,” the lowing that I love.  

I slept eventually and the sun rose and moved but you wouldn’t believe it because the sky was white, mother of pearl white, drifting from north, damp, feigning rain, cloaking the sun but the horn keeps calling from the back bay. 

I am in love.  But the persons who pilot ships would not speak so honorifically of the white gray mother of pearl steel fog I uplift here, watching drift. They have reason to care.

Universe, Fingerpaints.

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aliens, border, cars, children, dream, fingerpaints, fishing, Hoya, justice, life, music, ocean, peace, potted plant, questions, rain, son, sunrise, Universe, writing

I wake up at 0400, I don’t know why.

My Hoya plant climbs and changes direction all day, pushing out leaves that start out maroon then turn green, looking for something cling to, I guess, but I don’t know how. They don’t care why.

Somebody’s gorgeous, imperfect black Mercedes 350 D sits in the parking lot, and I don’t know who it belongs to. Should I do penance for coveting?

I had a dream and you were in it and I was awful to you. Should I apologize?

My son shivers under a pile of covers every few weeks and nobody knows how to fix him. When will we find the answer?

Who will tend our nerves and muscle, spine and hips, and tell them stand down, the money has come, go and get well, healthcare has come?

What does an unaching body feel like?

Where does music come from?

Why are those finger-sized fishes jumping out of the bay into the air?

Where did my pouch of flash drives go?

What will my next best writing look like, and who will tell me “Yes, we want this.”

Are you the one tapping on my window at night when it rains, sounding like somebody is dropping berries onto my windowsill from the roof in the middle of the night?

Who’s going to put all this stuff away, and wash laundry, and take the garbage out, and pay bills, and wash the car?

Does anyone else hate the fact that Greenie’s is gone and wonder what will replace that beach bar that the mayor said yeah that was nice but it’s time to move on?

How many children are still without their parents at the border and will they ever see them again?

Peace in our time?

Are aliens shunning us?

Who made the first fishing net?

I dunno.   It’s all just Universe painting, I guess.  Meanwhile….who can think with all this going on…  20180926_070410

I Want

21 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

give, memorial, ocean, pepperoni pizza, rain, want, wave

I want to stop dreaming about that place where I used to work. I don’t want to remember that place, their faces, and the stress I brought home.

I want to look inside every apartment here and see where their cats and dogs live, what books do they keep, what furniture they’ve arranged in this small space where they live in between here and shipping out.

I want a week of rain, overcast, gray, dripping. I want a week of rain all the time. Nobody else wants this.

I want pepperoni pizza, but it has to look and taste like the kind we had in Flushing, small pepperonis, cupping the grease, crammed atop the cheese, a flavor and texture found nowhere else. My brother knows what this means.

I want the job I applied for so I can see many faces and rise to the challenge of helping with a smile and you go away feeling like nobody else mattered but you.

I want to write about the National Memorial For Peace & Justice in a way that has nothing to do with me, but I can’t figure out a way. Yet.

I want to find my pouch of flash drives and SanDisks that I lost somewhere so I can recover memories, my crappy writing, my happiness, my sanity, my everything, but I know that’s not to be.

I want my friend back, and my Dad back, but only if they’re not angry anymore.

I want to write about those ladies and their kids playing in the ocean who clearly had other ideas about staying dry, but I haven’t figured out the right words yet.

My windows are open tonight, a/c off and fan still.  The air is cool, finally.  This writing thing is coming back to me, finally. The plan is to heat up a sweet potato and broccoli and some rice, NYPD Blue in the background.  The plan is to stay wide open to everything that comes to me, and to approach my bed tired, a prayer, and deep breathing, hoping to be empty so sleep will be full and lengthy.

I have a thing about people who are all about “I want I want I want.” I get aggravated by their “me me me.” But then, everybody wants.  It’s not wrong to feel a need and a want.  My wants and your wants may never meet, but I want to know and understand.  That’s where give comes along and lights a candle and puts “give” into motion.

If you are prepared to stand in the knock you over ocean, naked, then you are prepared for “I want, but let me give you what you need.”

Give someone what they need, and enjoy the wants you receive when it comes.

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, beach, dragon, egg, fear, Jim Morrison, ocean, pain, poetry, prompt, the Doors, weather

I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

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