We sit on different sides of the same table him and me and I forget it's because he writes fiction and I'm a poet but no that's not true, either--it's not that I forgot it's more that I never thought about it in those terms.
It is snowing, hard, when we walk down Goldsborough on our way to see Charlie Mars. He points this out, that he is not a poet and has never written poetry. There are still a few cars on the road downtown but for the most part the air is filled with wet white specs and everything is grey. The Coffee Cat, when we enter, is warm and my glasses mist over immediately with steam. They already had snow drops all over them.
Earlier, when he first got to my place, I was still in my frump clothes and only had time to brush baby powder through my hair and put on some musky oil. While he waited I showed him Carrot's Zine and so of course we immediately started talking Craft.
It's funny how he pisses me off--I defend stream of consciousness and first thought even as I'm thinking about me editing editing editing. Prose and poetry. The intersection between first thought, the consciousness it draws forth from there, and the sensibility to edit but still keep the Beautiful Vision in tact. I think about being pissed and realize there must be something new in this conversation for me to gain.
I think about other men who've pissed me off.
Charlie Mars is good. Really good. I fall in love a little. With him, his movement, his stories, his clear, kaleidoscope voice. I am glad he's not with his band. The poetry moves in me after a while, I want to call out and make him stop and make the snow outside stop coming down and make my skin stop tingling the way it does when the acid first kicks in. Remember that? A body trip we used to call it...but no, this is not acid it is the Duende, the Descention. When the song first hits and starts to ring through me. It makes me, sitting there, feel crazy a little like how it used to when I didn't know what it was.
It would be fun to hang out with Charlie Mars. I think he would be good at making out. Which is or isn't the same as hanging out. Depends on who you're with...Also, his songs are full with stories, like my Memoir, so by the time it is over all I want to do is write. Write until the snow goes away, write until it is night, and then the night is day.
Later, after Charlie Mars and after walking to the grocery store in the snow and no cars on the streets at all, he is sweet and makes a list of things he does when editing. An actual list. I smile a little and there's that inner eye-roll. Teacher Tom. I keep reminding myself to be open, to learn. To be teachable. We are both Aries only three days apart so that's a lot of fire.
Then today we are back at it again, He is very plan plan plan work work work and now I am decisive in putting my finger on his position and refuting it. I've got diPrima out, we've been reading poems to each other. Dinners and Nightmares. I point out who she was, who she is, I identify her myth. Nightmares: Her regular run-ins with violence in the name of authority and institution. I am redblooded and hot faced in defense of her alchemical free verse, impassioned, breathless about women in the fifties being locked in sanitariums and asylums if, for example, they didn't want to marry. Of course it's important to know the Cannon I am saying, I'm not refuting that at all, you need to know the rules in order so that your voice might break them as dictated and become strong and true on your own....
I open Pieces of a Song and run my finger over the bent pages. My eye stops on Poetics which I dont ever remember reading but I know this will be the one. I go there: If the New York School and the establishment were symbolic of the Patriarch then her voice, her Voice, was anti this. She was a scholar. She channeled Blake and Keats. She knew what she was doing. O'Hara and Ginsberg claimed the same things. But can you find a book of hers at Borders? Not often, most times no, no you can not.
I am defending my self. I know this. The white sun is reflecting the snow and my little living room is full of light. I plant my eyes on his, gain silence, and smile. Then read
Poetics (Diane diPrima)
I have deserted my post, I cldnt hold it
rearguard/to preserve the language/lucidity:
let the language fend for itself.
it turned over god knows enough carts in the city streets
its barricades are my nightmares
preserve the language!--there are
enough fascists &
enough socialists
on both sides
so that no one will lose this war
the language shall be my element, I plunge in
I suspect that I cannot drown
like a fat brat catfish, smug
a hoodlum fish
I move more & more gracefully
breathe it in,
success written on my mug till the fishpolice
corner me in the coral & I die
He leaves soon after, I walk him out and breathe deep the fresh air so sparkly it makes me feel like I have lung fulls of clean sharp sun. I go back inside and use all his suggestions, index cards, color-coding, all of it. All afternoon I work and come away with an organization plan for my memoir broken down by year: 1994 all the way through til now.
I am happy, satiated. I am passionate, yes. And learning to be wrong.
Or at least, still learning to learn.
January 31, 2010
January 29, 2010
Wild Women Ways: Imbolc Celebration
Tonight is Imbolc, or the festival of the Goddess Brigid, patron Goddess of the Hearth and Poetry. Celebrated traditionally on Feb 2, this ancient holiday is today recognized as Candlmas, Tu Bi-Shevat, even Chinese New Years. The point is, all traditions are moved by the same earthly rhythms, no matter what the society or culture defines it as. Now is the time of mid-winter; classified by the Aquarian Full Moon. It is the time of first light. Winter Solstice marks the longest night of the year and too the return of the sun with solar entry into Capricorn. Capricorn is an earth sign, its energy is initiating, which means ushering in of change, of a new tide. So at the peak of darkness, in comes new energy in earthly--or physical form. The alchemy of the darkest time--and all the darkness peaking, bursting forth with the initiatory energy of Capricorn births new levels of consciousness within us. Now, at Brigids Day, or Candlemas, or Imbolc--emblazoned by the peak energy of Aquarius with tonight's full moon, that energy is given full light. In our quiet time, now is a powerfull, powerfull time of intention setting, prophecy, and empowering our new ideas. Aquarius is an Air sign--a mental energy with ties to our etheric or spirit selves. It is Fixed, meaning what is energized now in our spirit or ether form will between now and the summer solstice come to full fruition.
Take the time to be conscious, whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, about this!
In honor of my own Intentions, and with perfect love trust and gratitude over the tides that have flowed me to just where I am at this time of year, here is a poem. It appears in this years We'Moon, and is reprinted with permission by author Pesha Joyce Gertler, recipient of Seattle's Populist Poet Award for 2005-2006. Ms. Gertler was so very, very kind in our emailing--thank you Wise Mama, thank you!! This was the poem opposite the page of my birthday this year!
The Limping Goddess:She-Who-Survives©1983
She limps into the room
bent with the cargo of rape, battering
single-parent mothering and bureaucratic neglect
if she is fat or gay or nonwhite or Jewish
the pains multiply;
she has carried them all.
Her lotus feet have trudged this planet
for aeons; torn tennis shoes tell
how far she’s traveled. She hunches
against the winter wind, her second-hand
coat like a blanket she wraps around
her golden body. Occasionally, she flies
over buildings, lands on tree tops,
is mistaken for a fat bird.
And occasionally, she falls,
intensifying her limp. But make no mistake;
that golden skin was mined in the black earth,
her feet, though limping and calloused,
are the lotus feet of She-Who-Survives.
A broken yet shining forgotten deity
returning, and there are millions
like her, multi-colored, limping
Goddesses returning to lay down our cargo
and reclaim our own.
Take the time to be conscious, whoever you are, whatever you celebrate, about this!
In honor of my own Intentions, and with perfect love trust and gratitude over the tides that have flowed me to just where I am at this time of year, here is a poem. It appears in this years We'Moon, and is reprinted with permission by author Pesha Joyce Gertler, recipient of Seattle's Populist Poet Award for 2005-2006. Ms. Gertler was so very, very kind in our emailing--thank you Wise Mama, thank you!! This was the poem opposite the page of my birthday this year!
The Limping Goddess:She-Who-Survives©1983
She limps into the room
bent with the cargo of rape, battering
single-parent mothering and bureaucratic neglect
if she is fat or gay or nonwhite or Jewish
the pains multiply;
she has carried them all.
Her lotus feet have trudged this planet
for aeons; torn tennis shoes tell
how far she’s traveled. She hunches
against the winter wind, her second-hand
coat like a blanket she wraps around
her golden body. Occasionally, she flies
over buildings, lands on tree tops,
is mistaken for a fat bird.
And occasionally, she falls,
intensifying her limp. But make no mistake;
that golden skin was mined in the black earth,
her feet, though limping and calloused,
are the lotus feet of She-Who-Survives.
A broken yet shining forgotten deity
returning, and there are millions
like her, multi-colored, limping
Goddesses returning to lay down our cargo
and reclaim our own.
January 26, 2010
Grrrlfriends: Thanks Cash!
"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." — Marilyn Monroe
Sometimes I just need a little reminder.
January 24, 2010
Zines, bloggers & INVESTMENTS in love that I WANT YOU TO MAKE
Two of the grl bloggers I read both wrote this week about love.
Specifically, about how they dont blog about their love lives bc that part is private and they want to show respect for their lovers.
I was sitting in bed yesterday morning with coffee and quiet, writing poetry and listening and capturing this song that runs and runs so deep. I wrote, and wrote more and more and in slow-mo saw a circle I've been edging and rounding and sort of I guess repressing come through. And soon as I saw it, felt it snap closed.
Laura Veirs played Life is Good Blues and without wanting them to the tears started to come, then came hard. Cuz that's what happens sometimes to me when a soul-circle for me closes. It is relief, and also maybe sadness, and bittersweet thankfulness, over the awarenss that it brings.
And in bed there I had a witnessing, yet again: the ailment of my own human imperfection. How deep and personal this equalizing, impersonal pain can run. It hurt hard and I thought about not only things you aren't aloud to say, but the things you dont get the chance to, or dont know how.
It is true, there are things that will never be witnessed here. It's amazing isn't it? I have a blog that imports to facebook, that gets a decent number of regular visitors and even more random hits, and seemingly it's all right out there...But wow. This last year and my struggles with love...
I have a green hill of burial in my soul and only sometimes, when I am not expecting it, I kneel down there but there are no words; and too, a book with a poem that is endless and a vision I often now am too afraid to own. Like a child I submit to this, to this place of burial and to this holy poetic epoch of ruin, my arms upraised in soft acquiencence to the sun. I lay myself down. It is this wordless hill & this endless poem inside me that each teach of such imperfection, that submit me finally to the real and human me once again.
Maybe one day I will paint a picture of it, that green hill. Maybe one day I will make a Zine about it, that endless poem.
But in the meantime, I want you to go here and buy Carrot Quinn's new zine hunger, love. She is such a rich writer I love to indulge in her ramblings, how her tender quaking outlooks on this hard-edged imperfect world make it all a little better and often make me sigh and remember, oh yes oh yes it all is so okay.
Specifically, about how they dont blog about their love lives bc that part is private and they want to show respect for their lovers.
I was sitting in bed yesterday morning with coffee and quiet, writing poetry and listening and capturing this song that runs and runs so deep. I wrote, and wrote more and more and in slow-mo saw a circle I've been edging and rounding and sort of I guess repressing come through. And soon as I saw it, felt it snap closed.
Laura Veirs played Life is Good Blues and without wanting them to the tears started to come, then came hard. Cuz that's what happens sometimes to me when a soul-circle for me closes. It is relief, and also maybe sadness, and bittersweet thankfulness, over the awarenss that it brings.
And in bed there I had a witnessing, yet again: the ailment of my own human imperfection. How deep and personal this equalizing, impersonal pain can run. It hurt hard and I thought about not only things you aren't aloud to say, but the things you dont get the chance to, or dont know how.
It is true, there are things that will never be witnessed here. It's amazing isn't it? I have a blog that imports to facebook, that gets a decent number of regular visitors and even more random hits, and seemingly it's all right out there...But wow. This last year and my struggles with love...
I have a green hill of burial in my soul and only sometimes, when I am not expecting it, I kneel down there but there are no words; and too, a book with a poem that is endless and a vision I often now am too afraid to own. Like a child I submit to this, to this place of burial and to this holy poetic epoch of ruin, my arms upraised in soft acquiencence to the sun. I lay myself down. It is this wordless hill & this endless poem inside me that each teach of such imperfection, that submit me finally to the real and human me once again.
Maybe one day I will paint a picture of it, that green hill. Maybe one day I will make a Zine about it, that endless poem.
But in the meantime, I want you to go here and buy Carrot Quinn's new zine hunger, love. She is such a rich writer I love to indulge in her ramblings, how her tender quaking outlooks on this hard-edged imperfect world make it all a little better and often make me sigh and remember, oh yes oh yes it all is so okay.
January 22, 2010
...I will tell about it...
Two days ago the doctor, in less time than it took me to turn off my car in the parking lot of the walk-in clinic and unbuckle my seatbelt, told me I had infected tonsils.
An infected tonsil looks pretty gross.
This morning when I woke up I felt like I'd been holding my breath, my whole body clung frantically to a rock, with gnarly whitecap tumblers breaking over top of me all night long. I couldn't tell: was it my tonsils or had I just slept wrong?
But by the time I was up and out of bed that certain headache that comes, the one that sucks my whole breath from me, was fast on its way. I only get those kind of headaches when I've been clenching my jaw in my sleep.
Then I remembered: I dreamt these funny, peaky-feeling dreams all night long. The half-pulled curtain in my consciousness was throwing fresh images: me, with bruised and bloodied, swollen faces--several, like a series of comic book characters, shots of me--all in varying different proportions of having been beat-up, and each with a doopy grin on my at times toothless face.
On Tuesday night at the funeral for sweet Meggie's father, my buddy Ronnie and I talked forever--Meggie tucked safe the whole time, near the casket, in the corner of our eyes. He told me tales and tales of his family, all based around the coal mines of West Virginia. Two nights before my friend Tom went on about where he's from and the lifestyle that influences society there: the coalmines of North Central PA. Driving home, or to my cousin's home, from South County where the funeral was, a song bittersweet like a sourpatch kid on the tongue caught my attention from the IPOD: Coalminer, by Mia and Jonah.
My grandpop. How'd he come to Baltimore? I dont know. I should know this. His dad, Orlando, came here from Ireland. Had 11 kids. Worked the coal mines in PA til he died.
I got up this morning with this binging headache trying to start. I drank lots of water, ate some cheerios then took some Advil. Then I put two hours of work in from home, and then cancelled all my other plans...
Infected tonsils, according to Louise Hay, indicates creativity stifled or repressed emotions.
Does it really mean that? What if it doesn't?
What if it does?
All I know for sure is that I believe, I believe with out question in the deep life, the deep inner world and those inner lights being made real, and shining my way day to day. After those dreams, and the connections about Pop, and my flightiness over some decisions I've got comping up, what I did for the rest of the day was take some much needed quiet time. I got gentle as I could with me and gave myself, in my sacred space, long uncharted time to just be with me, and listen.
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it...Our myths are our lives, as magical and myth-filled as we let them be, as we choose to make them, as we choose to believe...I choose to believe in the magic inside, and the signs without. In my We'Moon calendar the forecast for Aries for the year said to take the quiet time to seek the voices of my ancestors.
I am sitting down to write late in to the night on my Memoir.
I hear you, Pop!
An infected tonsil looks pretty gross.
This morning when I woke up I felt like I'd been holding my breath, my whole body clung frantically to a rock, with gnarly whitecap tumblers breaking over top of me all night long. I couldn't tell: was it my tonsils or had I just slept wrong?
But by the time I was up and out of bed that certain headache that comes, the one that sucks my whole breath from me, was fast on its way. I only get those kind of headaches when I've been clenching my jaw in my sleep.
Then I remembered: I dreamt these funny, peaky-feeling dreams all night long. The half-pulled curtain in my consciousness was throwing fresh images: me, with bruised and bloodied, swollen faces--several, like a series of comic book characters, shots of me--all in varying different proportions of having been beat-up, and each with a doopy grin on my at times toothless face.
On Tuesday night at the funeral for sweet Meggie's father, my buddy Ronnie and I talked forever--Meggie tucked safe the whole time, near the casket, in the corner of our eyes. He told me tales and tales of his family, all based around the coal mines of West Virginia. Two nights before my friend Tom went on about where he's from and the lifestyle that influences society there: the coalmines of North Central PA. Driving home, or to my cousin's home, from South County where the funeral was, a song bittersweet like a sourpatch kid on the tongue caught my attention from the IPOD: Coalminer, by Mia and Jonah.
My grandpop. How'd he come to Baltimore? I dont know. I should know this. His dad, Orlando, came here from Ireland. Had 11 kids. Worked the coal mines in PA til he died.
I got up this morning with this binging headache trying to start. I drank lots of water, ate some cheerios then took some Advil. Then I put two hours of work in from home, and then cancelled all my other plans...
Infected tonsils, according to Louise Hay, indicates creativity stifled or repressed emotions.
Does it really mean that? What if it doesn't?
What if it does?
All I know for sure is that I believe, I believe with out question in the deep life, the deep inner world and those inner lights being made real, and shining my way day to day. After those dreams, and the connections about Pop, and my flightiness over some decisions I've got comping up, what I did for the rest of the day was take some much needed quiet time. I got gentle as I could with me and gave myself, in my sacred space, long uncharted time to just be with me, and listen.
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it...Our myths are our lives, as magical and myth-filled as we let them be, as we choose to make them, as we choose to believe...I choose to believe in the magic inside, and the signs without. In my We'Moon calendar the forecast for Aries for the year said to take the quiet time to seek the voices of my ancestors.
I am sitting down to write late in to the night on my Memoir.
I hear you, Pop!
January 20, 2010
Picture Prayer, for Maryland
I never, ever knew how much I love you. 
Frozen water, old trees. City streets, winter light.
Bridges. So, many, bridges.
My first fiction story was set in Sharptown, on the Nanticoke River, in Wicomico County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. I had never actually been there and I lived in Annapolis when I wrote it. 
The second fiction story I ever wrote was set enroute on 50 eastbound from Annapolis to Ocean City.
It featured lots of bridges: Kent Island over the Narrows, Vienna over the Nanticoke, Cambridge over the Chop, Ocean City over Assawoman Bay.
They are all love stories, to you.
Who knew?
January 18, 2010
What would an angel do the devil wants to know?
I pull a chair out at a table in the corner and sit down quick then slunch over the menu and make myself non-assuming as possible. The waitress, in her black tee that says bike week 06 and tight curly black hair and lined eyes looks me over once and doesn't hide the smirk on her face and this is okay: I know I dont fit in.
I am the only other woman in the place and all the other customers, all of them, are in camouflage. It is lunch time in the sysco-Itallian joint with the daily special wipeboard out front near the Dollar Store and Bowling Alley in Easton, on the Eastern Shore. For a second I laugh at the irony, think of when I used to handle the whole room on my own for lunch shift waitressing in a sysco-pizza joint with daily specials on the chalk board, and my patented disgust look for people I didn't recognize when they first walked in. I'd make them wait while I took drinks to the regulars just to make sure the stranger knew everyone else comes in here all the time.
I cant sit still in this joint though. I barely notice all the tables of men. This dumb low-grade headache got me instead, the kind you get from holding your body real still to avoid feeling.
Fuck it I end up thinking and relax my posture and stop being self-conscious of the bright shades of pink and purpled ribbons threaded into my scarf and my dirty hair in a side pony and my hot pink vintagy shirt and knee-high boots. I lean back, relax all my muscles, close my eyes and breathe in and out real real slow.
I been thinking about life lately and how fucked up everything is. The basic simplicity of this fact, the purity of it. Lacking implication: the results are yours to do with what you will, but certainly there are things, some things, lots of things, little things, enormous things that are just fucked up for no other reason than that's just how they are. And what do we do with this?
I mean, unless we end it or the random axe chops down on our string, we keep breathing in out in out no matter what. So then what, after the no matter what. What next after that?
When I was a kid I was so, so sensitive. I used to have funerals for butterflies, cry when bugs got squashed. Cried when the big kids in the neighborhood made fun of the way the fat boy ran around the kickball diamond. Somewhere along the line I toughened up, maybe too much? Tom calls me Toughie like that's my name or something. I dont know about that. I doubt there is ever such a thing as our barrings getting balanced, or set completely straight. We just find the broken-edged beauty of things, the place where the light sears in and steams up that spiral wound of pain. The prisms that shine out of the cut where the glass went in, and so forth...
I called my girlfriend this morning because I got this sickening fucking text at 8 am that her dad died. She answered the phone and we both just cried.
I mean, sometimes what the fuck else do you do?
When I open my eyes in the diner the black-haired lady is standing there with my iced-tea and she nods at me and calls me hon. My heart tweaks, my eyes fill a teeny bit with tears, and she puts a push on the order for my manicoti.
What the fuck. I have money for greasy sysco food and also my super-powered high heeled boots. The death mama is dancing in the steam at the base of the mountains, on the heat melting the ice at the bottom of the trees, in the trashstink and dirty black snow pushed up against the curb. She is dancing and those are the bass bass bass steps and drums and rhythms banging, you just dance along even when you dont like or cant sing the song.
I am the only other woman in the place and all the other customers, all of them, are in camouflage. It is lunch time in the sysco-Itallian joint with the daily special wipeboard out front near the Dollar Store and Bowling Alley in Easton, on the Eastern Shore. For a second I laugh at the irony, think of when I used to handle the whole room on my own for lunch shift waitressing in a sysco-pizza joint with daily specials on the chalk board, and my patented disgust look for people I didn't recognize when they first walked in. I'd make them wait while I took drinks to the regulars just to make sure the stranger knew everyone else comes in here all the time.
I cant sit still in this joint though. I barely notice all the tables of men. This dumb low-grade headache got me instead, the kind you get from holding your body real still to avoid feeling.
Fuck it I end up thinking and relax my posture and stop being self-conscious of the bright shades of pink and purpled ribbons threaded into my scarf and my dirty hair in a side pony and my hot pink vintagy shirt and knee-high boots. I lean back, relax all my muscles, close my eyes and breathe in and out real real slow.
I been thinking about life lately and how fucked up everything is. The basic simplicity of this fact, the purity of it. Lacking implication: the results are yours to do with what you will, but certainly there are things, some things, lots of things, little things, enormous things that are just fucked up for no other reason than that's just how they are. And what do we do with this?
I mean, unless we end it or the random axe chops down on our string, we keep breathing in out in out no matter what. So then what, after the no matter what. What next after that?
When I was a kid I was so, so sensitive. I used to have funerals for butterflies, cry when bugs got squashed. Cried when the big kids in the neighborhood made fun of the way the fat boy ran around the kickball diamond. Somewhere along the line I toughened up, maybe too much? Tom calls me Toughie like that's my name or something. I dont know about that. I doubt there is ever such a thing as our barrings getting balanced, or set completely straight. We just find the broken-edged beauty of things, the place where the light sears in and steams up that spiral wound of pain. The prisms that shine out of the cut where the glass went in, and so forth...
I called my girlfriend this morning because I got this sickening fucking text at 8 am that her dad died. She answered the phone and we both just cried.
I mean, sometimes what the fuck else do you do?
When I open my eyes in the diner the black-haired lady is standing there with my iced-tea and she nods at me and calls me hon. My heart tweaks, my eyes fill a teeny bit with tears, and she puts a push on the order for my manicoti.
What the fuck. I have money for greasy sysco food and also my super-powered high heeled boots. The death mama is dancing in the steam at the base of the mountains, on the heat melting the ice at the bottom of the trees, in the trashstink and dirty black snow pushed up against the curb. She is dancing and those are the bass bass bass steps and drums and rhythms banging, you just dance along even when you dont like or cant sing the song.
January 17, 2010
My Little Family
Dad is in the back, in his room, there are piles everywhere and no furniture here other than the kitchen table, which wont stay, and the LazyBoy Sean and mom and I pitched in and bought him the winter Richard died and Chuck was so sick and about to die, too. Other than the table, and LazyBoy, it is just piles everywhere. Mostly paper piles, but a corner of the floor is all liquor, and another soda, and if bottles could be piled all that glass and plastic would be stacked on top the other, too. That is something I've learned about us, my little family. We make piles, and live on cheese and crackers and microwaved tea.
I am eager to see what will become of this place. I helped dad take down the tree today, the artificial plastic dark green bows with the white twinkle lights built in. The steel frame. We ducked taped the box all together to fit it up the attic stairs. The attic is crammed tight with boxes, also I am imagining of papers. And cots disassembled, which were Pop's, my dad's dad which I am guessing were saved because they are a visceral reminder of Pop's legacy: the Army. Also up there is a chest with all the McMullen heirlooms our family has claim to. What was left of Church Street, Grammy and Pop's place in Brooklyn, South Baltimore, after we sold it in 1997 in the fall the summer after Gram died. There are about three boxes up there that belong to me: one for the kitchen, two randoms but not full of papers. Just my bauble trinkety magyc stuff I couldn't bare to part with after I left the farm. I also have my first computer up there, and a chest I filled with 32 years of momentos, the stuff important enough to save. Dad bought me the chest from the Five and Dime on the corner of Broadway in Fells the spring I turned 18, when mom demanded he move home from California to make peace with me. She's always had that power over him.
Last night I took him out to dinner, my dad. It is MLK weekend which is always the weekend I come down here to work for my mom at this scrapbooking convention in OC. Mom goes away most of the month of January she saves all year for it it is what she does. And I come down and do foot therapy on these women and spend the weekend with my dad, under the guise that it is his birthday on the 22cnd. The first year, 07, I came down here with all these expectations, thinking we would spend time together and make up for so many lost years. He went golfing the whole weekend instead, and it took me a little bit to understand: it is not personal, it is just what he does. We did go out to eat that night tho, which is what we have in common dad and I, with his mom: our great, great love of food. And over dinner that night I told him: I dont know if my relationship with Brandon is going to work. I am having my doubts, I am so numb and unhappy, and I dont know what to do. It was January, 2007. He, my dad, away all those years to make money which he lost to credit debt and depression that broke him when his two best friends died at mid-life, was the first person I ever told. Today we undecorated the house, the piles on the floor all around. Last night I took him out for birthday dinner with the money I made working for mom. Then we went out and watched the miserable miserable home-team game. It is mellow, and happy, this time together, this place and time we now have to just call ours.
Beds, two chairs, and lots of piles. A TV. Papers, some momentos. Gram and Pop's memories of home. Plants, lots of plants. Out here in the living room Bagger Vance is on TV. Dad's fave. He is in his room, watching the same thing on his TV, sorting through piles and folding clothes, periodically calling out about the movie. My parents, married but only contractually. The modern day partnership: minus the romance but learning to be friends. The kitchen table is full of papers of my own. I had plans to get so much done today but instead I am so content to, on the LazyBoy we years ago bought for my hardassworking dad, just lay around.
I am eager to see what will become of this place. I helped dad take down the tree today, the artificial plastic dark green bows with the white twinkle lights built in. The steel frame. We ducked taped the box all together to fit it up the attic stairs. The attic is crammed tight with boxes, also I am imagining of papers. And cots disassembled, which were Pop's, my dad's dad which I am guessing were saved because they are a visceral reminder of Pop's legacy: the Army. Also up there is a chest with all the McMullen heirlooms our family has claim to. What was left of Church Street, Grammy and Pop's place in Brooklyn, South Baltimore, after we sold it in 1997 in the fall the summer after Gram died. There are about three boxes up there that belong to me: one for the kitchen, two randoms but not full of papers. Just my bauble trinkety magyc stuff I couldn't bare to part with after I left the farm. I also have my first computer up there, and a chest I filled with 32 years of momentos, the stuff important enough to save. Dad bought me the chest from the Five and Dime on the corner of Broadway in Fells the spring I turned 18, when mom demanded he move home from California to make peace with me. She's always had that power over him.
Last night I took him out to dinner, my dad. It is MLK weekend which is always the weekend I come down here to work for my mom at this scrapbooking convention in OC. Mom goes away most of the month of January she saves all year for it it is what she does. And I come down and do foot therapy on these women and spend the weekend with my dad, under the guise that it is his birthday on the 22cnd. The first year, 07, I came down here with all these expectations, thinking we would spend time together and make up for so many lost years. He went golfing the whole weekend instead, and it took me a little bit to understand: it is not personal, it is just what he does. We did go out to eat that night tho, which is what we have in common dad and I, with his mom: our great, great love of food. And over dinner that night I told him: I dont know if my relationship with Brandon is going to work. I am having my doubts, I am so numb and unhappy, and I dont know what to do. It was January, 2007. He, my dad, away all those years to make money which he lost to credit debt and depression that broke him when his two best friends died at mid-life, was the first person I ever told. Today we undecorated the house, the piles on the floor all around. Last night I took him out for birthday dinner with the money I made working for mom. Then we went out and watched the miserable miserable home-team game. It is mellow, and happy, this time together, this place and time we now have to just call ours.
Beds, two chairs, and lots of piles. A TV. Papers, some momentos. Gram and Pop's memories of home. Plants, lots of plants. Out here in the living room Bagger Vance is on TV. Dad's fave. He is in his room, watching the same thing on his TV, sorting through piles and folding clothes, periodically calling out about the movie. My parents, married but only contractually. The modern day partnership: minus the romance but learning to be friends. The kitchen table is full of papers of my own. I had plans to get so much done today but instead I am so content to, on the LazyBoy we years ago bought for my hardassworking dad, just lay around.
January 13, 2010
I stalk myself on Facebook & other dear dear musings
I dont know how long this will last.
Mars is in retrograde and of course mercury, too--which will end soon--tomorrow in fact, or maybe friday i dont remember and am more concerned, this cycle, with the new moon tomorrow/tonite anyhow bc it is january, time of super intuition for me so with this new moon it is that lovely suspended place of breathless truth that surfaces sure as air in a empty tin can.
When mars, which is my main ruling planet, retros if you're thrillseeking and dramamama and gogogo and ambitious and tempestuous and sexual and all those firey, extroverted things that a mars-full personality embodies then suddenly all that mellows, it reverses, turns its eye within. And anything no longer organically brimming with the fire of your nature dies. I mean, all of us, we're all in that kind of review right now quite naturally wandering away from old passions no longer quaking or meant to quake from inside. The planet responsible for war and fire and passion is holding still, its aspects in us are caught cradled in the spinning spindle ebb of in-this-moment time right now. Get it? All you have to do is look.
So yea, i dont know how long this will last--any of this, this blogging here, this living here, this job here, this sweet romance with the writer teacher astrology guy, this projection of all that i love in to you dear future. Cuz I want to I want to blog I want to write, I want to download about Kate and her fellow and DC and quite farms in Talbot County and 3D glasses and ESL departments and international writers and music and my crazy stupid friends. But I am as a narcissist in the depths of the inverted mirror right now so aware of the necessity of the un-necssity of self-obsession. i laugh at me. who knows what will come?? Dear dear future, dear time that i hold precious as i hold me near. Dear writing retreat by the sea. Dear one way ticket to the PNW that still has to be. Dear cousins, cousins cousins leaving, living on islands, getting married, having babies dear family so much family to get to love. Dear brother how i pray. texas? PA? I pray once that you will not then once more for peace wherever you will go. One way ticket anywhere, but so much family to show up for. My typewriter, dear typewriter you called at me all fall long and now your gone? All that, all that fucking poetry and what and where to do. Dear Baltimore, dear dear Baltimore, underground. Dear, dear home. Dear Memoirs. O holy dear Memoirs, at least those words i know. i know i know sure as the story keeps coming.
At night I dream of typing on you and wake up with the same feeling I used to get from Josh. It is chokey and fills me with delightful edge. My brother, who might be moving. Money, so much obligation to things. ESL programs and departments meant to grow. Careers. Whoever would've thought I'd make a fucking career? And Poetry, how i turned you the fuck off again but here, from my trail-side view i see your eyes and nose poking over the hump of that cabin over there, just up the hill. Dont watch me like that, haven't you at least learned by now i never buy the bullshit lie you're dead....
God help me in all the stillness O Holy War Crown of Mars Blessed Beeeeeeee Queen i will swallow blood by my own hand before I fall down dead of the dehydrated disease....
Mars is in retrograde and of course mercury, too--which will end soon--tomorrow in fact, or maybe friday i dont remember and am more concerned, this cycle, with the new moon tomorrow/tonite anyhow bc it is january, time of super intuition for me so with this new moon it is that lovely suspended place of breathless truth that surfaces sure as air in a empty tin can.
When mars, which is my main ruling planet, retros if you're thrillseeking and dramamama and gogogo and ambitious and tempestuous and sexual and all those firey, extroverted things that a mars-full personality embodies then suddenly all that mellows, it reverses, turns its eye within. And anything no longer organically brimming with the fire of your nature dies. I mean, all of us, we're all in that kind of review right now quite naturally wandering away from old passions no longer quaking or meant to quake from inside. The planet responsible for war and fire and passion is holding still, its aspects in us are caught cradled in the spinning spindle ebb of in-this-moment time right now. Get it? All you have to do is look.
So yea, i dont know how long this will last--any of this, this blogging here, this living here, this job here, this sweet romance with the writer teacher astrology guy, this projection of all that i love in to you dear future. Cuz I want to I want to blog I want to write, I want to download about Kate and her fellow and DC and quite farms in Talbot County and 3D glasses and ESL departments and international writers and music and my crazy stupid friends. But I am as a narcissist in the depths of the inverted mirror right now so aware of the necessity of the un-necssity of self-obsession. i laugh at me. who knows what will come?? Dear dear future, dear time that i hold precious as i hold me near. Dear writing retreat by the sea. Dear one way ticket to the PNW that still has to be. Dear cousins, cousins cousins leaving, living on islands, getting married, having babies dear family so much family to get to love. Dear brother how i pray. texas? PA? I pray once that you will not then once more for peace wherever you will go. One way ticket anywhere, but so much family to show up for. My typewriter, dear typewriter you called at me all fall long and now your gone? All that, all that fucking poetry and what and where to do. Dear Baltimore, dear dear Baltimore, underground. Dear, dear home. Dear Memoirs. O holy dear Memoirs, at least those words i know. i know i know sure as the story keeps coming.
At night I dream of typing on you and wake up with the same feeling I used to get from Josh. It is chokey and fills me with delightful edge. My brother, who might be moving. Money, so much obligation to things. ESL programs and departments meant to grow. Careers. Whoever would've thought I'd make a fucking career? And Poetry, how i turned you the fuck off again but here, from my trail-side view i see your eyes and nose poking over the hump of that cabin over there, just up the hill. Dont watch me like that, haven't you at least learned by now i never buy the bullshit lie you're dead....
God help me in all the stillness O Holy War Crown of Mars Blessed Beeeeeeee Queen i will swallow blood by my own hand before I fall down dead of the dehydrated disease....
January 5, 2010
At the Hard Bean
Is this Jack White I ask her and she says yes, and listens intently with a look on her face like to listen causes her a little strain. Then she says yes it is his second album, I am like his biggest fan. Is it mostly more lyric driven like this or does he rock out as much too I ask her and she says really it's a nice mix of both you should get it it's way better than Elephant. Better than self-titled I say and take my cookie from her which she just pulled out of the microwave and my mouth waters a little even though I am watching much as I can my sugar regimen since the holidays are over and there were many many days where I only ate chocolate chip cookies and drank coffee. Yes she says. Better than self-titled.
Then Modest Mouse comes on and I am happy I am here. They are St. Johnny's, both these kids: her with the red red lipstick and pale skin and sparkling ball in her labret. Him with his funny half-afro and terrible enourmous faux silver cross hanging on the chain link thick as the chain wallets we used to wear. As if to respond to my affection for Modest Mouse him with thescratchy broom switch switch switch on the old wood floors turns up the music in his earphones almost so I can hear it better than the stuff on the speakers.
After I sit down and the cold wears off I take off my jacket and think about the phone call I just had. About hearts and being nervous and how it is sometimes, when you're like me with great great doses of faith that are just inborn and live inside you there without any help just a gift. That to lose your asset; to lose your honesty if that's your gift or song if that's your gift well to lose your faith when that's who you naturally are how it makes it so you truly are the most hopeless person that you know. Inverse relationship of who we are and how we do. To be capable of great oppositte doses of exactly who we say we are and vice versa. How everything is true. Including the lie. Mercury is retro it's now that we have windows in especially to those funny little twists of self like that. What we think we take for granted about ourselves. O harkened shot of ego...Life is funny that's what it is, I know I know.
Erika will be here soon.
When I look up again the nerdy black guy with the half-grown afro is standing still as sand in the middle of the room reading his text. What could it say? I can practically hear him breathing. God all us humans. All us humans with all these hearts.
How do we possibly do it???
Then Modest Mouse comes on and I am happy I am here. They are St. Johnny's, both these kids: her with the red red lipstick and pale skin and sparkling ball in her labret. Him with his funny half-afro and terrible enourmous faux silver cross hanging on the chain link thick as the chain wallets we used to wear. As if to respond to my affection for Modest Mouse him with thescratchy broom switch switch switch on the old wood floors turns up the music in his earphones almost so I can hear it better than the stuff on the speakers.
After I sit down and the cold wears off I take off my jacket and think about the phone call I just had. About hearts and being nervous and how it is sometimes, when you're like me with great great doses of faith that are just inborn and live inside you there without any help just a gift. That to lose your asset; to lose your honesty if that's your gift or song if that's your gift well to lose your faith when that's who you naturally are how it makes it so you truly are the most hopeless person that you know. Inverse relationship of who we are and how we do. To be capable of great oppositte doses of exactly who we say we are and vice versa. How everything is true. Including the lie. Mercury is retro it's now that we have windows in especially to those funny little twists of self like that. What we think we take for granted about ourselves. O harkened shot of ego...Life is funny that's what it is, I know I know.
Erika will be here soon.
When I look up again the nerdy black guy with the half-grown afro is standing still as sand in the middle of the room reading his text. What could it say? I can practically hear him breathing. God all us humans. All us humans with all these hearts.
How do we possibly do it???
January 2, 2010
Gratuitous List: Holiday Blessings & Stream of Conscious Explanations
It is two weeks since i've been on here, or facebook, or email, and i am cleaned out in a whole way, unhinged and totally not who i was looking for which makes this crystalline little sparkle tent of me all the more pure and sweet. it wasn't planned to put the e-stuff on halt but god when i did make the spontaneous decision WHAT A HUGE RELIEF. i didn't realize how blogging and writing too is work. i took two full weeks OFF. the snow came the night of my last day of work and it came and came it just poured but of course snow doesn't pour it just twirly floats so softly silent in the air. and O, that Holy Halt that she the mama made us all take. the whole day all i did was stay in my pajamas drink hot chocolate take naps and a bath and watch movies and it was glorious, and decadent like in a way i dream of but dont remember because that kind of wishful sleep is just sooo soo deep.
And somewhere in the middle of all that i made it clear to me: done done done for the rest of the year. I AM DONE!!!!!!!! nothing left after the longessssst of long years, after all that passed and changed and fell away and all in me that was broken and maybe never will be fixed. NOTHING!!!but to celebrate the new ground that i worked so hard to break. and i am hear, and have done nothing but celebrate this new ground for the past two weeks.
O, remarkable blessings and celebrations, o Holiday Wish List i didn't even ask for cuz actually i already had it all along:
1. day after almost two feet of snow-fall and do i stay in my saggybutt longjohns and make coffee and sit up all day long and read? no that is my neighbor out there i hear shovelling i will go help her instead. we shoveled four hours in full her, me and the other lady all three of us single gals. helping the other out. we took each other out for lunchand celebration the same day bc the one gal's mom had four wheel drive. when we came home i helped another neighbor shovel out and also gave her daughter the makings for a snoman, which the little girl named after me: kelly the sno-grl. champion of neighborhood fellowship and gleaning cold cheer.
2. winter solstice walsh and sammy g and a new lovely easton friend nicole. we walked the streets of easton filled with snow. i prayed a long long while to a very old tree and to the cold, clear and starry air. later, before they went home, i made us all open our hearts where the energy buzz of ether transmutes. to open the high centers for harmonious in-walking flow. low stability of ego and security and regularly routed currents of emotional response shimmer shimmer shimmer just because it's dark means not that it exists separate from gold. ground your own currents low chakras our earth's response. i made us lift which embarrasses most people to be allowed to feel truly good. literally stretching our arms up and opening our chests in courage to the coming light. sky's the limit as the season of growing and dying and recycling and release goes on and goes and goes.
3. 35 years ago dad and his four brothers and two sisters and his dad and mom in south baltimore pulled their money and invited all their friends to bring liquor bottles and hotcrocks of food to the roland terrace democratic club for a mcmullen family and friends christmas party. in 1994 we had the last one bc the next year gram got real real sick with the sadness and what we didn't know yet was an inoperable brain tumor and the family was terribly beat down by this, her in the heart of our home in SoBa on church street where we grew up with so much love but so catatonic now with the depression and nothing we could do. so dad and mom had the party at mom's place in annapolis and that was the final year. so the following year 96 i invited all my friiends, and my brother sean his, and we started the next generation of party's and lemme tell you through that first christmas that i was clean which woulda been 2000, those parties were off the chain shitshows of sooo soo much fun. then after i got clean sean took them over and this year's party down in fells in baltimore was unreal fun to me particular to A)mandy and shannon my old homegrls coming out and all my grl cousins who mandy and shannon and i used to slumber party with when the cousins were little little girls; and B)wrighty and wally, my bro's two best friends of decades and the late night diner catching up and laughing forever and how, how much i love those guys and am so so blessed with family who are friends
4. next day christmas eve i got to grandma's for our family tradition of eating her sickening homemade enchilladas that make my mouth water whenever i even mention them and then laying around, like 12 or 15 of us, laughing a whole whole lot in their teeny little fifty's style living room. but before i could get to the food grandma pulled me in the back to her bedroom. and her eyes shined like i have never ever seen them and mom and i agreed later that this is because this year, for the first time in her life, grandma got to be the center of attention the weekend she turned 80. so with her shiny re-lit eyes and the most secret way of tenderest hummingbird winking stilled and smiling little motored wings, she showed me clothing she'd fished out that she wore and had saved all the way back from when she was my age. i had tears of salty disbelief for this woman's spirit it made me choke on happiness not grief. because she asked me to model them for her. and i did, we did: we surprised the rest of the family later that day with an impromptu fashion show. we all smiled and cried a lot because of how my grandma beamed. i was more honored than perhaps i've ever been.
5. the day after christmas when we celebrate with dad's family i woke up in ocean pines because us, me mom dad and sean were hosting this year. over 30 of the mc's. there was much drinking and fellowship and so, so much fun. the next day we woke up and i ran to the back to wake up my cousins by jumping on the bed which is what i've done for 25 years. then sean said, pancakes? and i got up and started to fry eggs and ham. it was the last morning we would all awake together in the same house: dad bought out uncle tim and aunt mary and so for the first time since 2002 my mom and my dad have a place to live. and they are living together. and sean and i and mom and dad for the first time in many many many many years are weirdly a family again. we all ate together, breakfast at the big table and then me and my cousins went to town, to the surf shop and then the beach because for many years together we have lived in our warm family cocoon and i think we needed to trust that it still we be the same, even if it changes.
6. that nite sushi and a movie with a very sweet guy. "a date."
7. the next nite, i, who have been budgeted to the dollar for months now took myself shopping. and it was fabulous. no. other. word. for. it. and then up til 5:45 packing. and being crazily surprised.
8. then! on to conneticut where my best friend from college katie lives and who i hadn't seen since the summer and i love her so much i had no clue how very much there was of me missing her inside one of the many little troves of treasure in my heart. and as always, after only a nite with her i was already whole and full again like myself, like i forget who and how i can be, just from being with her. then it snowed and it was new years eve and we drove forever to atlantic city to meet laura walsh and dress up and look like hot, hot grls like we truly are. and have so so much fun. then the next day new years day mandy called my best friend from forever and she was on her way to AC too, right after katie left on the train and walsh drove away. and the only thing i didn't get to do the night before was learn craps and when she got there next thing you knew we were at the table and i was learning from two DC lawyers how to play, one was sexy and one was not. and i love atlantic city for all the many many different types of people and all the lights and also for the sea. and me, and my girls, my fabulous fabulous every one of us single hot looking and truly diamond-full girls. i got home late late last nite and fell right to sleep.
And this morning i though of grandma and her two piece peach-colored knit suit and how proud her eyes were shined and how teary grateful my eyes were too and it's silly but i thought of 40 years from now, 2050, when i'll be 72. 72! And so i put the funny newyears crown and plastic light up cup that me and walsh and katie each had, purple of course cuz that's the womyn color of pwer and grace, in a scrap-box meant for memories, with hopes not of keeping it forever but of someday touching someone special to me not yet known by passing it on~~
And two weeks now of barefeet dancing in the dirt of my new ground, celebrating my hard hard fought for new life. And now I will lay down and rest and be covered under again by new dirt and snow. And moist and in sleep I will disintegrate again once more into the very land once decorated my feet. I as earth, as soil tilled by own hand, after long rest and silence of reflection, will grow. I will grow, I will grow and will grow I will grow grow grow again.
And somewhere in the middle of all that i made it clear to me: done done done for the rest of the year. I AM DONE!!!!!!!! nothing left after the longessssst of long years, after all that passed and changed and fell away and all in me that was broken and maybe never will be fixed. NOTHING!!!but to celebrate the new ground that i worked so hard to break. and i am hear, and have done nothing but celebrate this new ground for the past two weeks.
O, remarkable blessings and celebrations, o Holiday Wish List i didn't even ask for cuz actually i already had it all along:
1. day after almost two feet of snow-fall and do i stay in my saggybutt longjohns and make coffee and sit up all day long and read? no that is my neighbor out there i hear shovelling i will go help her instead. we shoveled four hours in full her, me and the other lady all three of us single gals. helping the other out. we took each other out for lunchand celebration the same day bc the one gal's mom had four wheel drive. when we came home i helped another neighbor shovel out and also gave her daughter the makings for a snoman, which the little girl named after me: kelly the sno-grl. champion of neighborhood fellowship and gleaning cold cheer.
2. winter solstice walsh and sammy g and a new lovely easton friend nicole. we walked the streets of easton filled with snow. i prayed a long long while to a very old tree and to the cold, clear and starry air. later, before they went home, i made us all open our hearts where the energy buzz of ether transmutes. to open the high centers for harmonious in-walking flow. low stability of ego and security and regularly routed currents of emotional response shimmer shimmer shimmer just because it's dark means not that it exists separate from gold. ground your own currents low chakras our earth's response. i made us lift which embarrasses most people to be allowed to feel truly good. literally stretching our arms up and opening our chests in courage to the coming light. sky's the limit as the season of growing and dying and recycling and release goes on and goes and goes.
3. 35 years ago dad and his four brothers and two sisters and his dad and mom in south baltimore pulled their money and invited all their friends to bring liquor bottles and hotcrocks of food to the roland terrace democratic club for a mcmullen family and friends christmas party. in 1994 we had the last one bc the next year gram got real real sick with the sadness and what we didn't know yet was an inoperable brain tumor and the family was terribly beat down by this, her in the heart of our home in SoBa on church street where we grew up with so much love but so catatonic now with the depression and nothing we could do. so dad and mom had the party at mom's place in annapolis and that was the final year. so the following year 96 i invited all my friiends, and my brother sean his, and we started the next generation of party's and lemme tell you through that first christmas that i was clean which woulda been 2000, those parties were off the chain shitshows of sooo soo much fun. then after i got clean sean took them over and this year's party down in fells in baltimore was unreal fun to me particular to A)mandy and shannon my old homegrls coming out and all my grl cousins who mandy and shannon and i used to slumber party with when the cousins were little little girls; and B)wrighty and wally, my bro's two best friends of decades and the late night diner catching up and laughing forever and how, how much i love those guys and am so so blessed with family who are friends
4. next day christmas eve i got to grandma's for our family tradition of eating her sickening homemade enchilladas that make my mouth water whenever i even mention them and then laying around, like 12 or 15 of us, laughing a whole whole lot in their teeny little fifty's style living room. but before i could get to the food grandma pulled me in the back to her bedroom. and her eyes shined like i have never ever seen them and mom and i agreed later that this is because this year, for the first time in her life, grandma got to be the center of attention the weekend she turned 80. so with her shiny re-lit eyes and the most secret way of tenderest hummingbird winking stilled and smiling little motored wings, she showed me clothing she'd fished out that she wore and had saved all the way back from when she was my age. i had tears of salty disbelief for this woman's spirit it made me choke on happiness not grief. because she asked me to model them for her. and i did, we did: we surprised the rest of the family later that day with an impromptu fashion show. we all smiled and cried a lot because of how my grandma beamed. i was more honored than perhaps i've ever been.
5. the day after christmas when we celebrate with dad's family i woke up in ocean pines because us, me mom dad and sean were hosting this year. over 30 of the mc's. there was much drinking and fellowship and so, so much fun. the next day we woke up and i ran to the back to wake up my cousins by jumping on the bed which is what i've done for 25 years. then sean said, pancakes? and i got up and started to fry eggs and ham. it was the last morning we would all awake together in the same house: dad bought out uncle tim and aunt mary and so for the first time since 2002 my mom and my dad have a place to live. and they are living together. and sean and i and mom and dad for the first time in many many many many years are weirdly a family again. we all ate together, breakfast at the big table and then me and my cousins went to town, to the surf shop and then the beach because for many years together we have lived in our warm family cocoon and i think we needed to trust that it still we be the same, even if it changes.
6. that nite sushi and a movie with a very sweet guy. "a date."
7. the next nite, i, who have been budgeted to the dollar for months now took myself shopping. and it was fabulous. no. other. word. for. it. and then up til 5:45 packing. and being crazily surprised.
8. then! on to conneticut where my best friend from college katie lives and who i hadn't seen since the summer and i love her so much i had no clue how very much there was of me missing her inside one of the many little troves of treasure in my heart. and as always, after only a nite with her i was already whole and full again like myself, like i forget who and how i can be, just from being with her. then it snowed and it was new years eve and we drove forever to atlantic city to meet laura walsh and dress up and look like hot, hot grls like we truly are. and have so so much fun. then the next day new years day mandy called my best friend from forever and she was on her way to AC too, right after katie left on the train and walsh drove away. and the only thing i didn't get to do the night before was learn craps and when she got there next thing you knew we were at the table and i was learning from two DC lawyers how to play, one was sexy and one was not. and i love atlantic city for all the many many different types of people and all the lights and also for the sea. and me, and my girls, my fabulous fabulous every one of us single hot looking and truly diamond-full girls. i got home late late last nite and fell right to sleep.
And this morning i though of grandma and her two piece peach-colored knit suit and how proud her eyes were shined and how teary grateful my eyes were too and it's silly but i thought of 40 years from now, 2050, when i'll be 72. 72! And so i put the funny newyears crown and plastic light up cup that me and walsh and katie each had, purple of course cuz that's the womyn color of pwer and grace, in a scrap-box meant for memories, with hopes not of keeping it forever but of someday touching someone special to me not yet known by passing it on~~
And two weeks now of barefeet dancing in the dirt of my new ground, celebrating my hard hard fought for new life. And now I will lay down and rest and be covered under again by new dirt and snow. And moist and in sleep I will disintegrate again once more into the very land once decorated my feet. I as earth, as soil tilled by own hand, after long rest and silence of reflection, will grow. I will grow, I will grow and will grow I will grow grow grow again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)