Memories walking in the snow. Cold flakes, piercing winds and little daggers making love to my face. Layers wrapped and wringing around my body, swaddled like a baby sleepwalking a cold dream. Warm thoughts tumble across my head, fold themselves around my hearth.
The trees are talking to me. Their old bones shiver and creak, roots creep slowly to homes they 're claiming for spring – strong, toughened travellers – their trunks twisting in a promise toward the distant summer light. On the wind: My lips feel the tips of their branches. Against the walls in my head, rough & tender bark pressed to warm skin. My legs trod along, steady and possessed.
A bridge, a road, the trees, rivers sweeping around the hollow turned ground, the world sways like ships at sea; the earthworms and rolly-pollies till 'round the earth, ingest it, give it back.... my mind slips toward melting spring. I feel hidden life just beyond my sister's skin, just below my mother's surface. heart beating faster. Smiles come over me. I am hearing weathered earth woman, death moving – the crone brushes past just out of eyesight. I feel the warmth of rotting corpses on her breath, cold leafpacked layers cover her skin. Does she kiss me?
...And then I break through –a PUSH. I am here. NOW. Sloughed free. I am happy. I am trodding heavy-footed through the snow. It falls on my face. And I am warm. My heart pounds faster, and my mouth feels full of the red beating heart of the world.
I break a stride. Green-ness is bending inside trees, baby sisters stretching out little muscles, reaching with their fingertips. Watercress in my teeth: lift my tongue to the plate and the old man is there – he sees me, I see him. Shots of fear, fear and love, beating bloody hearts & my gaping chest. Out of the trees in his old spot he materializes and is just as soon gone. My chest heaves and hums a prayer for him – What would he say if he could be here? – and my heart is beating faster still. A small crosscurrent kisses my lips, then he is gone and I am in the short stretch. I smell home.
Gingerbread, warm chicken broth, anise, cardamom, and marjoram. More swiftly as I float through the snow, my feet warmer than before. Cinnamon. I feel warm all over. Friend hands pull me closer like a hemp cord at my chest. Sage and burnt lemon. Birds are singing: I'm incredulous they're here so thick into winter. curious. wholly accepting . I round the corner to where the squirrel sat in the red berry bush – a good place to remember.
then I'm back. right here: my feet feel my feet that were here before. Little siblings greet me then go away, kiss my cheek, squeeze my arms. My eyes lift loose & light down the road – sun on water – further than I will go today; my tongue & jaw are heavy & loose. My tempted heart foolishly lashes a tie one way, arms drag me another, pelvic back and legs seem to stay behind AND press ahead. I am torn a million directions.
STOP.
For a moment I am the epicenter, a frozen world, small burst of wind pushing against the gust. And as my arms point and swing, pumping, the world resumes. I alight the stairs, grab the old handle, welcome the key, and slip in.
Hello again, Kiki.
How's tricks?
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Wrote this feeling warm & fuzzy one morning in bed not long after the fact with some help from the good cookies.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
on people
this is why I hole myself up for days at a time. Within 30 minutes of leaving the house, I hear a man shout "fuck you bitch!" to some unknown person (presumably female). God, I just fuckin' hate people: not the idea of them, but their actuality.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Childhood
I wrote this the other night, succinctly hitting the high & low points of my early fundamental influences. There's some more to add to this, but thought I'd post it as is for now.
------------------------------------------------------------
When I was a child, like most of my peers, I had a mom & dad & a sibling (a sister, older by 4.5 years). Like many of my peers, we had a cat, the occasional guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, bird, etc., and this whole menagerie all lived together in a house with a basement & a yard; on Sunday mornings, we (the humans that is) went to religious services of the Christian variety. Unlike almost any of my peers, we also went there Tuesdays, Thursdays, and probably Saturday mornings & twice on Wednesday (maybe a little on Sunday afternoon), and studied for these "meetings" (don't call it 'church'!) on the off & on days to prove over & over again to ourselves, and god, and the whole congregation, and the unsuspecting people in the neighborhoods of town that we were good Christians, ready to follow Jesus' directive in the good book @ Matthew 24:14 to "Go..and make disciples..." which they took [& I was taught to take] as a literal, imperative directive to hassle people in the peace of their homes (or bus, supermarket, at work, school, or whatever location you could corner as many people as possible) up until either god said that was enough or a real fire-&-sulfur armageddon rained down from heaven, whichever came first. So if you ever wonder why I go back & forth between hermetically shy & some sort of ballsy extroverted dictator, it's because one is a product of this aggressive version of public speaking training & the other is what's left of an original me colored by internal, suppressed responses to that training. Nothing makes for constant internal psychoanalysis like loss of self while learning study skills.
My sister left all this for the first time when I was 8 & she was 13. One morning, she just wasn't there. (A Saturday in spring, one of the few Saturday mornings we were getting a chance to sleep in & watch cartoons, it's worth mentioning.) & then, like the twisted happy ending to a surreal nightmare, she was back late that very evening - just waltzed in the door [while we were being consolled by a religious elder & otherwise generally dissociating or freaking out]. & then she was gone again, on & off, again & again & again. Eventually we went to visit her on weekends for a while at some group home in Newton or wherever, all her pictures started to disappear from the house, I learned (read: was taught) to distrust the social workers who came to the house [rightfully] distrustful of my parents parenting abilities (yet, somehow, not distrustful enough to remove ME from the house), and became - for all practical purposes - an only child. Years later, we tried family therapy (the final step in a long line of other failed therapy attempts, individual & group), and I even later tried to establish a real familial bond with my sister in lieu of little-to-no cultivated connection to long-distance extended family & otherwise absent parents (when I finally left their religion, began enjoying sex, stopped hating homosexuals/pagans/other social miscreants, and tried to figure out who I was & had once been). But a decade of childhood sisterly bonding can't just be made up, and it's harder to try when our individual actions & perspectives have been so largely colored by our wildly different experiences. She possesses me like an addition to her wardrobe or lifestyle, I judge her for over-indulgence, small-mindedness, & repeating dangerous familial patterns, and we resort to bonding over drinks, etc., but we're still trying. So when I say "sister" I'm either thinking of something drenched in double-entendre, pain, and the worst of family history, or else a romanticisized ideal presented a la Hollywood. There are other complications, but that's the basic version. Maybe it's not so unusual.
One fantastic thing about my childhood is that my parents met, grew up in, and loved New York State. We spent a few weeks every summer on the road from NE Kansas to the great Northeast, usually hitting Mom's family in & around Rome/Auburn, Dad's family in/around Rochester, some time in the big city 'cause it was there (& the religious headquarters was - & still is - there), and my dad's real love - The Adirondacks. There's a cabin on Long Lake I used to call home; no TV, pine needles covering the path down to the water, the fireplace, little birch canoes, real life canoes & canoe trips, floating docks filling in for actual swimming pools, local ice cream stands, old trapping & general stores, woods as dense & dark as night, memories of making awful brown sugar from white sugar & molasses, and one year we finally brought a radio that picked up, I think, 2 stations, sort of. My parents didn't always get along during these trips (especially the 48-hours-straight drive up packed into a station wagon with one or a couple kids), but there was enough beauty & solace & fun that I developed a deep core of naturophilia. When my life is hectic (& just when I want to prevent it from becoming that way), I still rely on an overabiding love for the great & amazing outdoors.
Just a small backtrack so we can wrap up some of the more important points of the childhood chapters. When I say "My parents didn't always get along" I mean they fought like Mike Tyson but uglier, more constantly, and more multi-dimensionally. Mom favored the verbal, Dad the physical - we've all got our weapons of choice, I suppose, when pushed. It's just too bad they didn't feel the one good weapon - divorce - was available to them. My opinion is that people don't really 'stay for the kids,' but instead their own warped needs/wants.
With all this going on in my life, I'll let your imagination fill in how well I did with my peers. There are many, many reasons I love books as much as I do.
------------------------------------------------------------
When I was a child, like most of my peers, I had a mom & dad & a sibling (a sister, older by 4.5 years). Like many of my peers, we had a cat, the occasional guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, bird, etc., and this whole menagerie all lived together in a house with a basement & a yard; on Sunday mornings, we (the humans that is) went to religious services of the Christian variety. Unlike almost any of my peers, we also went there Tuesdays, Thursdays, and probably Saturday mornings & twice on Wednesday (maybe a little on Sunday afternoon), and studied for these "meetings" (don't call it 'church'!) on the off & on days to prove over & over again to ourselves, and god, and the whole congregation, and the unsuspecting people in the neighborhoods of town that we were good Christians, ready to follow Jesus' directive in the good book @ Matthew 24:14 to "Go..and make disciples..." which they took [& I was taught to take] as a literal, imperative directive to hassle people in the peace of their homes (or bus, supermarket, at work, school, or whatever location you could corner as many people as possible) up until either god said that was enough or a real fire-&-sulfur armageddon rained down from heaven, whichever came first. So if you ever wonder why I go back & forth between hermetically shy & some sort of ballsy extroverted dictator, it's because one is a product of this aggressive version of public speaking training & the other is what's left of an original me colored by internal, suppressed responses to that training. Nothing makes for constant internal psychoanalysis like loss of self while learning study skills.
My sister left all this for the first time when I was 8 & she was 13. One morning, she just wasn't there. (A Saturday in spring, one of the few Saturday mornings we were getting a chance to sleep in & watch cartoons, it's worth mentioning.) & then, like the twisted happy ending to a surreal nightmare, she was back late that very evening - just waltzed in the door [while we were being consolled by a religious elder & otherwise generally dissociating or freaking out]. & then she was gone again, on & off, again & again & again. Eventually we went to visit her on weekends for a while at some group home in Newton or wherever, all her pictures started to disappear from the house, I learned (read: was taught) to distrust the social workers who came to the house [rightfully] distrustful of my parents parenting abilities (yet, somehow, not distrustful enough to remove ME from the house), and became - for all practical purposes - an only child. Years later, we tried family therapy (the final step in a long line of other failed therapy attempts, individual & group), and I even later tried to establish a real familial bond with my sister in lieu of little-to-no cultivated connection to long-distance extended family & otherwise absent parents (when I finally left their religion, began enjoying sex, stopped hating homosexuals/pagans/other social miscreants, and tried to figure out who I was & had once been). But a decade of childhood sisterly bonding can't just be made up, and it's harder to try when our individual actions & perspectives have been so largely colored by our wildly different experiences. She possesses me like an addition to her wardrobe or lifestyle, I judge her for over-indulgence, small-mindedness, & repeating dangerous familial patterns, and we resort to bonding over drinks, etc., but we're still trying. So when I say "sister" I'm either thinking of something drenched in double-entendre, pain, and the worst of family history, or else a romanticisized ideal presented a la Hollywood. There are other complications, but that's the basic version. Maybe it's not so unusual.
One fantastic thing about my childhood is that my parents met, grew up in, and loved New York State. We spent a few weeks every summer on the road from NE Kansas to the great Northeast, usually hitting Mom's family in & around Rome/Auburn, Dad's family in/around Rochester, some time in the big city 'cause it was there (& the religious headquarters was - & still is - there), and my dad's real love - The Adirondacks. There's a cabin on Long Lake I used to call home; no TV, pine needles covering the path down to the water, the fireplace, little birch canoes, real life canoes & canoe trips, floating docks filling in for actual swimming pools, local ice cream stands, old trapping & general stores, woods as dense & dark as night, memories of making awful brown sugar from white sugar & molasses, and one year we finally brought a radio that picked up, I think, 2 stations, sort of. My parents didn't always get along during these trips (especially the 48-hours-straight drive up packed into a station wagon with one or a couple kids), but there was enough beauty & solace & fun that I developed a deep core of naturophilia. When my life is hectic (& just when I want to prevent it from becoming that way), I still rely on an overabiding love for the great & amazing outdoors.
Just a small backtrack so we can wrap up some of the more important points of the childhood chapters. When I say "My parents didn't always get along" I mean they fought like Mike Tyson but uglier, more constantly, and more multi-dimensionally. Mom favored the verbal, Dad the physical - we've all got our weapons of choice, I suppose, when pushed. It's just too bad they didn't feel the one good weapon - divorce - was available to them. My opinion is that people don't really 'stay for the kids,' but instead their own warped needs/wants.
With all this going on in my life, I'll let your imagination fill in how well I did with my peers. There are many, many reasons I love books as much as I do.
Friday, June 13, 2008
coming off track?
This last semester wasn't the greatest, and a lot of things might have contributed to that. I'm mostly focusing on having a good summer and getting back on track this fall. That might involve going only 3/4 time, but we'll see. Need to schedule an appointment with my advisor sooner than later.
Anyway, I started seeing a few people about 3 months ago. A guy who I haven't seen nearly as often as I feel I should have (would like to?) and a girl who has nearly monopolized my time and, I feel, created an environment where I'm reverting to bad habits, or at least not growing like I want to.
I guess I just expect a relationship to be more helpful than destructive, at least now (not sure I've always had this conviction) - partners walking along together, supportive but not enabling. So, I'm on the verge of breaking up with her. But she feels a lot for me, the sex is great, and I can't help caring about her (I mean, seriously, she's been in my bed... & head), so it's difficult. I guess I've just never really broken up with anybody (there was that guy in high school, but it was too weird to count) and I can't help feeling like it's a mean, complete rejection of the person rather than a statement of need to grow (personal boundaries). & really, I don't want the great sex & cuddling to stop.
I could definitely do without the rest of the drama, though.
...and there's fear related to - will I ever find somebody else? There's less of that nowadays, though. Both in terms of "of course somebody else will come along" & "y'know, I think I'd rather be alone than under that kind of relationship pressure... & I'd be fine, even happy." Guess I've just got to negotiate the terms of this break-up. Thank goodness there's still Jack who, while maybe not everything I want, is better at respecting me as a separate individual.
Okay. that's really all right now.
Anyway, I started seeing a few people about 3 months ago. A guy who I haven't seen nearly as often as I feel I should have (would like to?) and a girl who has nearly monopolized my time and, I feel, created an environment where I'm reverting to bad habits, or at least not growing like I want to.
I guess I just expect a relationship to be more helpful than destructive, at least now (not sure I've always had this conviction) - partners walking along together, supportive but not enabling. So, I'm on the verge of breaking up with her. But she feels a lot for me, the sex is great, and I can't help caring about her (I mean, seriously, she's been in my bed... & head), so it's difficult. I guess I've just never really broken up with anybody (there was that guy in high school, but it was too weird to count) and I can't help feeling like it's a mean, complete rejection of the person rather than a statement of need to grow (personal boundaries). & really, I don't want the great sex & cuddling to stop.
I could definitely do without the rest of the drama, though.
...and there's fear related to - will I ever find somebody else? There's less of that nowadays, though. Both in terms of "of course somebody else will come along" & "y'know, I think I'd rather be alone than under that kind of relationship pressure... & I'd be fine, even happy." Guess I've just got to negotiate the terms of this break-up. Thank goodness there's still Jack who, while maybe not everything I want, is better at respecting me as a separate individual.
Okay. that's really all right now.
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