Saturday, December 21, 2013

Christmas Un-Caroling?

Sometimes I am rudely and abruptly reminded that no matter how much time may pass, the reality of a violent childhood will be with me forever.

John Michael Montgomery's hit song "The Little Girl" was released in August of 2000. I turned fifteen that December. I was still a little girl myself, and it would be several more months before I would look at my mother through a scrim of tears and blood and tell her not to come back to my room again unless she wanted me to kill her. Most of the little girl in me was gone or hidden away by then under the iron will I'd need to survive the rest of my time in Hell, but when TLG started climbing the charts, I was still a baby who thought Jesus was going to come whisk me away from my suffering.

Every time I heard that song, it broke off a piece of me. It broke me because it made me hope, and hope was a dangerous thing then. Hope meant disappointment. In the final stretch of years and months between the first time I heard that song and my one bid for freedom that didn't have my death drawn into the plans -- because so many of them did; there are so many ways to end a life, and I thought of them all -- I would learn that the only way to keep going was to turn hope off, to accept that every day was going to continue to be the same as the day before, and that I had to put my shoulder into the work of surviving and keep pushing forward till I dropped in place. But before that lesson made itself known, hope twisted and squirmed and gnashed inside me, and it hurt. Hope hurt in a way I cannot describe, like a feast set for a starving child who has no mouth with which to eat. I needed what I could not have. I was set in a race against time, violence, and the limits of the human spirit, and I was steadily losing ground. "The Little Girl" reminded me of that. It made me know, deep down, that I knew I was dying: there comes a point at which a person's will can no longer serve to keep her fully human, and an intrinsic part of a person will perish when pushed to that point. If I didn't die at the hands of my mother or at the hands of myself, or escape, and soon, I'd become a walking ghost, lose all desire to, or concept of, how to relate to others beyond the necessities of self-preservation.

It might sound drastic, and it is, but it's real. It's even recognized by the medical and mental health spheres as a type of attachment disorder. Of course, I didn't know that then. I just knew, could sense, that if I didn't get out I'd die, one way or another. That in some important way, even if I was still physically present, I would cease to be. 

There are fates worse than death.

I managed to escape the harshest of these, but I carry scars with me wherever I go. It's not a ploy for pity, saying that: it's a fact. We all carry scars, some deeper than others, some deep enough to affect everything that we are and everything that we do. I said earlier that sometimes I am rudely and unexpectedly reminded of this, but actually I need no reminders: I carry my past with me in the present, as a current of thoughts and memories and emotions that are right on the edge of my conscious mind every second of every day. If it sounds exhausting, that's because it is. It's exhausting and limiting; it throws up roadblocks you don't expect. I fell head over heels in love once, and I was so scared of it I pushed it away and watched it burn. I don't date anymore, because I'm too afraid of it happening again. I'm 29.

The past in the present can bring about good things, too, like my unquenchable passion for social justice and my entrenched belief that people are entitled to be loved and cared for because of the same reason that they're entitled to breathe: they exist, and therefore they matter. They are human, and they live and breathe and feel; they are real and they matter. Because of my own suffering, I am uniquely attuned to the suffering of others. I am a person who will drop everything and run to help alleviate it, and I probably wouldn't be that person if I hadn't suffered.

There are times, though, when I wish I didn't have to be reminded of the length and breadth of my own particular suffering. When I don't expect to be. I went to the coffee shop tonight to hear Christmas carols, and instead I heard a song that was probably only put into the set because it had Jesus in it, and 'tis the season for Christians everywhere to make sure everything has Jesus in it. (Did that sound bitter? It did, didn't it? Oh well. Truth is truth.) As soon as the artist announced it, I knew I couldn't listen. I will endure a lot in the name of awareness -- for instance, if the same song had been played at a vigil for child abuse awareness/prevention, I'd have stayed in the building if not in my seat. But given the season, and the memories it brings up anyhow, and the pain associated with that particular song -- plus the fact that I was a little pissed off because I thought I was supposed to be listening to carols, and not country songs about Daddy drinking and Mommy shooting up in the bathroom -- I followed my instincts, preserved myself, and got the hell out of the coffee shop just in time: right before the part that would have either made me crumple into tears or scream like I was being boiled alive in a kettle of hot oil, which is kind of how that song feels to me.

... and how do you wrap up a post like this one? I suppose by saying I needed to write this, to get it out of my head, and now that I have I feel better. Usually I keep writings like this to myself, but I'm putting this out there because people need to know that the consequences of childhood violence are real, and that they are ugly, in the hopes that maybe some tiny something about that knowledge will help another child, or at least another survivor.

Calling all angels: walk me through this one; don't leave me alone.

Also, I hope to God I NEVER HEAR THAT SONG AGAIN. Next time, I WILL scream.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

This is Anxiety

And it wasn't meant to be a poem. I just gave it line breaks so the un-panicked brain could follow it. This really is anxiety.

Things weigh on me. They press and press and press until I'm flat.
 It's anxiety like carving the heart out of a pumpkin and then cutting it a smile.

The room is too big, the walls soar away when I reach for them;
I get dizzy and my hands hum.
Or the room is too small and it can't hold me,
 my pacing, my flapping fingers flicking the nervous off like soapsuds.
My throat clogs up. I want to claw at my chest;
there's a space that hurts and I want to clutch it, a child's hand clapped over a bee sting.
 It's a cannonball, it's I would gnaw away my fingers if I thought it would help,
it's how many blue pills do I have left and I swallow them dry and sit motionless till they work,
because oh god, oh god, if I move I will die.
It's I wish I still smoked because nicotine would save me,
 it's I'll down the whiskey and the wine and the one bottle of beer in the crisper -- why is it in the crisper; for god's sake it isn't lettuce-- all at once just to blunt the edge of this hell;
 help me, someone help me, I think I'm drowning on dry land.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep

I, Tiffany Allen-Bernard, have come to a horrific realization: I have prejudices.

Yes, yes, everyone does. They taught me this in Social Work school. They even taught me how to pick up on a few of my own, maybe things that were flying by under the radar screen of my conscious mind. But it would take someone deaf, dumb and blind with no nose and no hands, someone completely insensate, to miss my latest mass judgement: I don't like Christians.

I suppose it would be more apt to say that I don't like Christianity, but Christians practice Christianity, and since I don't care for the religion, its adherents and all its trappings have seriously started to get on my nerves.

Perhaps it would be prudent to stop here and attempt to evaluate, in writing, precisely why I don't like Christianity, and precisely when I stopped calling myself a Christian. Answer: I don't really know. I know that my upbringing has a lot to do with it -- I'd rather gnaw off my own hand than ever set foot in the church I grew up in ever again, and that is NOT an exaggeration. Give me a choice between one of my hands and South Liberty Church of Christ, and I'll start chewing right now.

But my upbringing can't have everything to do with it, because I've been to some wonderful Christian churches with some wonderful Christian people in the ensuing years: New Bethel, Saint Paul's, Common Place. And without the people in these places, I'd probably be homeless and naked and sleeping in a box -- so why do I bite the hand that has, quite literally, fed me? I've come up with a few reasons:

1.) I am an abuse survivor, and I'm still pissed. 

Aside from the fact that when I was a child God was a weapon and Hell was an ever-present threat, God never saved me. I begged and begged; I pleaded and wept. I used to lie in bed and pray to be given wings so that I could fly away. Then I prayed to be allowed to die. Then I prayed for my mother to die. But you know what? Nobody came to my rescue. I suffered. I bled. I lost every shred of humanity I'd ever had along about the time I had to eat spilled food off the floor like a dog. Jesus loves the little children, my ass. That's what my anger says, and I've never been able to cool it. To be completely honest, if I were sitting on the front porch having tea with God, I'd throw it in his face and demand an explanation! Over the years I have tried to rake the ashes over those coals with rationalization after rationalization: God cries when I cry; I went through what I went through so I could help other survivors, blah, blah, blah. None of it stands up under scrutiny. If God cried when I cry, God would still be crying. The nightmares and the constant threat of debilitating depression and the old abuse injuries -- the loose jaw, the crushed knee -- would be giving him a lot of trouble, too. And as for helping other survivors? If you ask me, if God was as merciful as they say, there wouldn't be any other survivors, because a merciful God would never allow children to be subjected to the never-ending horror of abuse in the first place.

So that's reason number one: I'm angry at God, and try as I might, I cannot let go of that anger. I'm like the Hulk: I want to SMASH. Everything.

2.) I'm too smart for my own good.

It's true. I've often maintained that my life would be a whole lot easier if I were as stupid with everything else as I am with math. But I seem to have made up for the fact that simple addition challenges me by being a whiz kid at pretty much anything else. I think in overtime. I analyze, compare, deduce, intuit, learn, re-learn, and think, think, think. Sometimes I even think about the nature of thinking! And then I worry about thinking too much, and I think about the worrying about the thinking! I can't make it stop. I'm driven by some sort of insatiable internal appetite to learn everything. I used to read the encyclopedia for fun. Right now I'm committing the Germanic Pantheon to memory because I want to. And you know what all this thinking does? It makes me critical of people who don't do as much thinking. In spite of all my thinking, I appear to have equated Christian with probably dumb. And here's the deal: I KNOW THAT'S UNFAIR. I know so many Christians who are so smart they'd put me to shame, but I've lumped all Christians together as a bunch of mindless sheep who don't know or care to know the origins of their faith, so long as they can palm it off on other people. 

3. I'm jealous.

There's that jealousy again. If it showed on the outside, I'd be as green as Elphaba. In spite of the fact that I'm blazing mad at God, in spite of the fact that I'm critical of Christian evangelists to the nth degree, I've always secretly desired the kind of faith I see in the Christians around me. It makes them happy; I can see it on their faces. It reassures them. But I can't obtain that kind of faith, and my attempts have only frightened me and made me miserable. Every time I set foot in a Christian church, I want to turn heel and run away sobbing. I feel fundamentally different, fundamentally deficient in a way I can't name. Like God doesn't want me. Like I am the chaff dirtying up the wheat.

So I guess it isn't about Christians or Christianity, really. It's about me. I am doing what I despise in others: judging something I don't understand.

It's like this: lately I've been delving into witchcraft again. Being a learned individual, I know the origins of witchcraft; I know what it is and what it isn't. I know that witches ("wise ones," as it translates) don't go around possessing people and worshiping Satan and eating babies as a midnight snack. I know that magick is simply a more elaborate, more intentional form of prayer: prayer with a ritual attached to help focus the energy, the intention, the need. Are there "bad" witches, people who use the Craft to twist and manipulate and cause harm to others? Yes. But there are Christians and Hindus and Muslims and atheists who use their beliefs for the same reasons. And just as it would be unfair for someone to judge me and run away screaming in terror or threaten to burn me alive if I said to them, "I'm a witch," it's unfair of me to curl my lip at someone who says, "I'm a Christian."

And so, having realized that I harbor an extreme prejudice against Christianity, I am trying to change it. I haven't gotten very far yet, considering that this stomach-flopping epiphany just occurred to me this evening. Evaluating it, I have realized that I've been judging Christians for being Christians even while trying to be one myself. How much sense does that make?!

Good grief, I'm tired now. I guess too much revelation in one night can wear a woman out. I do want to say this before I sign off, though:

To my Christian friends: I'm still your friend if you're still mine. I'm sorry that I've most likely lumped you into an unfavorable category based solely on your faith, and I will try my hardest to do better. Judgement is not for me to mete out. Walk with me, and let's be a community of people who hold each other up!  

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Crazy Cat Lady

I once dated a woman I met on the psych ward. (In hindsight, this was a bad idea.) Then I dated her again. (Don't look at me like that.) There followed, after breakup number two, a period of dry years. (In more sense than one.) 
Then I fell swimmingly, dizzyingly, head-over-heels-over-head-over-heels in capital-L Love with this amazing girl, only to have it set off a host of abandonment issues that not only broke us up, but created a rift between us so wide we can't scream across it and won't ever try.

2 years after that, I crawled into bed with someone I never should have slept with, ever in a million years. And that has been the extent of my love life, save the boyfriend I had for about 3 months during my senior year of high school and a date sprinkled here and there like stray confetti.

Why am I telling you this? Because.

I'm at "that age" -- you know, the one where 99.9% of the women around me are pregnant and I'm buying more toys for the cat. Before that, I was at the age where 99.9% of the women around me were getting married, and I was sharing powdered donuts with my pet ferret. But I didn't mind the marrying as much as I mind the babies.

And I mind the babies because I'm jealous.

It's true. It's horribly, awfully true. It's also true that I never wanted children before I hit, oh, about 25, and that I never believed in such a thing as childbearing as a biological imperative up to that point. And maybe for some women it isn't. Good for them. Because all I really know is that my brain has been screaming for a baby for the past three years, and I can't shut it up.

It sounds vaguely ridiculous: me, a mother? Me? Forfeiting sleep and changing diapers and bandaging ouchies and chasing a little person everywhere? Ha! Saying the words, "I want a baby" out loud makes me feel kind of stupid, really. 

The first thing my folks say is, "Oh, but you're so young!" but even they're adopting again -- an infant this time, not a teenager who shows up at the door hungry, like a stray cat. They're getting a baby. My little sister has babies. My little cousins have babies. My friends have babies. I have a cat.

Also, I have no prospects for babies. Not even some nice girl to consider settling down and adopting with. Not even a fourth of the financial security I'd need to go it on my own, sans welfare. Also, I have a lease that prohibits the adopting of more cats! I CAN'T EVEN GET ANOTHER CAT!

I'm going insane. Wacky. Cuckoo. Fruit crackers. I've just begun to come to grips with the reality that perhaps I was meant to be single -- damn those abandonment issues -- and now I'm looking down the barrel at coming to grips with not having the opportunity to be a parent. Not even a single parent, because I am eternally impoverished.

I know, I know: I'm so young. Chronologically. My body is much, much older than 28. I can't shake the feeling that I don't have as long to do these kinds of major life things as other people do. Maybe that's just trauma speaking -- I know by now that survivors of chronic childhood abuse such as myself often exhibit a foreshortened sense of the future. Somehow we expect to die young. (And given the lasting toll of chronic stress on the body and brain, maybe we're onto something.) But then I have this disability too, and … sigh. I don't know. I just know that I feel like I have to hurry. Which doesn't help the general sense I've had lately that life is passing me by and I can't do anything but watch it go.  Which is where half of my stress comes from in the first place: hurry up; fit it in; there it goes. It's a vicious cycle.

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Always the auntie, never the mother.

(How do I be happy with now? How do I find the patience? Some serenity, some 'Que sera, sera?' Someone? Anyone? I know I need to slow down, stop taking life in huge gulps of anxiety. I just don't know how.)

Sigh.

I could use my mommy right about now.


So. Many. Frustrations.

Older childless friends? Older childless gay friends? Older, childless, gay, disabled friends? Um ... halp? 

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Penned

Lately I've been suffering from a sense of pervasive, um, ick: I just don't feel like doing anything. I wake up. I eat. I go back to sleep. Repeat ad nauseam. It's like ever since I came home from Bradford Woods, and from seeing my sister and niece and nephew, everything is so boring. I have a renewed sense of being trapped. Caged. Stifled. Curtailed. Penned up and pent up.

BW didn't fit for me for a lot of reasons -- chief among them hunger, exhaustion, and being surrounded by people about 10 years younger than I am: I discovered, at BW, that there is a huge difference in outlook and maturity between 19 and 28 -- but I did do a lot of new things. A lot of different things. I slept on a beach. I relived my adolescence by invading Stake n' Shake at midnight on a Saturday to inhale French fries smothered in cheese sauce. I learned about Down Syndrome via the total-immersion method. I heard a member of an American Indian tribe give a prayer in a language I never even knew existed.

At my sister's place, I watched a Monty Python movie adapted into an opera and performed live at the London Philharmonic. I tried kung-pao for the first time. My 3 year old niece told me she loved me and melted my heart into a puddle. For 3 weeks, there was something new, something different, every day, and I ate it up: even before I left I'd been feeling caged in a town that's not big enough to hold me anymore, with no job and no money to move to where I might more easily get one: someplace with more lights, more people, and (dear holy God) a bus system. Think of the novelty: me, going where I want when I want instead of practically begging to be taken to Wal-Mart so I can get out of Lock Haven for 10 minutes every 3 or so months. And it's not that I don't love this town; it's that I can't readily leave it. I'm plunked down in this one valley between the mountains and the Susquehanna, and I know I can't go anywhere else unless someone takes me. It's maddening. It drives me to apathy: Why get up when there's nothing new to do? What's the point?

I've had to start being strict with myself again. Anti-blob rules: 1. You must go outside for at least 30 minutes every day, even if it's raining or hailing or cold enough to freeze your tits or hot enough to melt your face off. 2. You must engage in at least one meaningful exchange with another human being. 3. You cannot wear the same thing 3 days in a row. Do the damn laundry .... and other things along the same vein. Otherwise I'm afraid I'll let my chronic depression slip in through a crack in my defenses and lay me out flat.

So I've been out photo roaming with my new camera. I forced myself to go to a free concert on the riverfront and found that once I was there, I actually enjoyed myself (DO NOT ISOLATE; DO NOT ISOLATE!) Day after tomorrow, I have a coffee-and-books date with a friend. I've joined a group of lovely fellow gamer geeks who are going to start meeting at LHU to play Dungeons and Dragons. I've started foraging, with the intent of learning to make my own herbal remedies and sachets and soaps. (You should see the amount of stuff I canned in olive oil, steeped in whiskey, bundled, froze, pressed and/or tied up to dry today alone, and today was the first day!) I'm devouring books at roughly a thousand pages per millisecond, on all kinds of subjects I know nothing about, just because I get a thrill from learning: the human genome, Nature vs. Nurture (and why it's a false dichotomy), how the brain creates the mind,  early Christianity, early, early, early Christianity, Gnosticism, Jewish and Christian mysticism, saints, deities, pantheons, and on and on and on. (For instance, I'm reading my way through Plato's, The Trial and Death of Socrates, and have come to the conclusion that good old Socrates was quite full of himself.)

I'm trying to be happy. I'm wrestling with my inner naysayer to find inner peace. I keep asking myself why I'm such a malcontent, why I always need more! new! different! to be truly in my element, but I haven't figured it out yet. I remind myself of my great-aunt Carolyn, who was such a wanderer that she built a new house and moved roughly every 2 years just to have something different to look at(!) Here? Same 4 walls, every single day.

You know, sometimes I think I'll never really settle. I can see myself walking around with my feathers ruffled thinking peevish, penned-up thoughts till I'm old and gray. I really don't want that to be who I am ... but what if it is?

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

A Sorry Little Tale

Once upon a time, there was a mother and daughter who hadn't spoken two words to each other in several years, on account of several heinous and often bloody injustices perpetrated on the mother's part and a state of grief, anger and confusion on the daughter's part -- which, it bears saying, came to a head after she came out of the closet and received from the mother an extensive list of Christian scripture purportedly outlining why persons of the homosexual persuasion are doomed to an eternity in Hell. And so, to preserve what was left of her sanity, the daughter cut ties with the mother and went on with her life.

She was reasonably pleased with this arrangement until word got out that the mother had cancer. When she received this news, the daughter felt horribly guilty and wrong and bad. She cried for weeks. Finally, unable to bear the uncertainty any longer, she called the mother and asked after her health. All of her questions were met with noncommittal "ums" or changes of subject. Thinking that the mother was uncomfortable facing her own mortality, the daughter made do with these clueless clues to her mothers well-being. Mother and daughter set up a semi-regular communication of emails, and the daughter only asked after the cancer when her mother hinted at surgeries and procedures. "Did they get it all?" she'd ask, but the mother would ignore the question.

Having come to realize that she still loved her mother in spite of all the nasty, evil, rotten things that had been done to her, the daughter worried and fretted. She cried a lot. She suffered debilitating anxiety attacks that left her shaking and unable to catch her breath. She sent her mother a gift of loose leaf green tea and a special pot to brew it in, with a nice card that had a letter inside saying she hoped the tea would bring the mother comfort. When she went close to where her mother lived to have a visit with some other members of her family, she called and set up a lunch date with the mother. The two of them sat across from each other at a small booth for over an hour, and the daughter listened to her mother detail how much she loved small children without vomiting into her french fries or clawing out the mother's tongue, though she's always been 10,000 kinds of pissed off that her mother could find it in her heart to love other peoples' little girls, but not her own.

The daughter debated asking after the mother's health -- because how can you wriggle out of a question like, "So how's your cancer?" when you're face to face? -- but decided against it on the grounds of not tearing down the shaky bridge of peace they seemed to have built between them. But she needed answers, so the next day the daughter went to visit her grandmother and asked her about it.

And that's when she learned her mother had never actually had cancer.

What she had was a serious vehicle accident, and the ensuing MRIs showed a series of tumors that proved to be benign and were ultimately removed with zero fuss, and not even so much as a round of cautionary chemotherapy. (She also has a rod in her spine from the accident, but as far as the daughter is concerned at this point, it serves her damn right and she ought to have a few more rods, and maybe some missing limbs, and a caved-in face and a plate in her skull.)

The daughter is not as angry as she knows she should be. She can manage occasional anger -- see above -- but it's mostly for show. She wears the anger when she needs to hide the fact that she doesn't feel anything else in regards to this situation, except maybe a fatalistic sense of resignation. Her mother is evil, always has been, and always will be. Such is life. What makes the daughter most angry isn't that her mother lied by omission and failed to tell her the cancer scare was false, or even that she got her hopes up again and thought maybe the two of them could forge some kind of relationship out of the vast pile of shit between them. What makes the daughter most angry is that now SHE looks bad. SHE looks like a fool for all the guilt and the tears and the times her friends had to comfort her, and she has to tell them her mother is a filthy liar who's happiest when she's making other people look like filthy liars. And for this, the daughter is sorry. She's sorry her mother is a conniving, controlling bitch who hurts other people by proxy as often as she can, and she's sorry she inadvertently told a huge lie when she damn well should have known better, and she's sorry she loves a sociopath because she's too weak to help it.

She's sorry.

END

Sunday, June 9, 2013

33 Things I've Learned in 3 Weeks

1. If you go five minutes without hearing a peep from your 17 month old nephew, chances are good that his sister has locked him in the bathroom.

2. Ketchup and blood look terrifyingly similar when matted in a small child's hair. Also, even after you wash the child's hair, the child will still smell like ketchup for a period of several hours.

3. You can apparently feel guilty enough to pull over for a cop who wasn't even coming after you.

4. THE BOOK OF MORMON ON BROADWAY SOUNDTRACK.

5. "Let us protect your asse(t)s."

6. Some people were just born mean. Sad, but true.

7. Don't feel bad if you don't recognize your cousin after 10 years. Your cousin doesn't recognize you, either.

8. Amish people might get smashing drunk and pass out driving their buggies. Their horses will then get tired and pull into the nearest garage.

9. I like rhubarb pie.

10. There's nothing in the world like hearing a 3 year old tell you she loves you for the first time -- even if you're suffering through "Yo Gabba Gabba" when she says it.

11. It is possible to be so tired that you ask where your own crutch is, even as you're leaning on it.

12. Conversations like this may take place as you are leaving a room:
              
              "How does she do the stairs?"
               "Not very good, but better than you."

13. If you are accustomed to sleeping on a twin bed, you will sleep on a twin bed even if you're actually sleeping on a queen-sized bed.

14. I can walk more than I thought. A lot more. It isn't pleasant or preferable, but it can be done.

15. 2 toilets in the same building will overflow on the same night if at all possible, most likely at 3 a.m. when you're hungry and functioning on 10 minutes of sleep.

16. It is possible to function on 10 minutes of sleep for an extended period of time, provided you aren't asked to remember your own name.

17. Spiders are amazing, because spiders eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes are an Old Testament plague God forgot to mention and/or get rid of.

18. Down Syndrome has a spectrum, just like autism.

19. If you have a camper that is cognitively around 3 years of age AND struggles with social appropriateness, you may receive a full frontal boob grab within the first 5 minutes of meeting her. This same camper might also enjoy grabbing your butt, and holding you in a headlock while patting you and crooning, "Baby … soft …." You will be able to tolerate a surprising amount of this, after the initial shock wears off.

20. I can tolerate 2 roommates in a 9x9 space for approximately 2 weeks before I start frothing at the mouth. This is much, much longer than I expected.

21. I can wipe someone's butt without gagging. I can also give someone else Preparation H, because, well, someone has to do it.

22. Generally speaking, there are 2 speeds associated with Down Syndrome: running, and not moving at all. Very little exists between these extremes.

23. It can take a camper a solid hour to eat one small container of yogurt, even with coaxing and constant cheerleading. This can be surprisingly tiring for the cheerleader.

24. CARD PARTY! (I had a camper who thought 52 Pick Up was the greatest game in the world. We called it Card Party.)

25. Cognitive delay can mean your 15 year old camper still likes to eat crayons and color on people with markers. She may even have a color preference, which can mean that after 2 days there will be no purple crayons in the entire cabin, and several other campers may be mysteriously speckled with unnaturally orange freckles. It is also possible for an entire crayon to be consumed in the 5 seconds it takes you to urge someone else to eat her yogurt.

26. It is almost impossible not to laugh when 2 campers get in a fight over which one is going to marry Justin Bieiber, and the loser ends up crying facedown on the floor in the middle of Music Time. And yet you can still get down on the floor beside your camper with a straight face and treat the entire matter as seriously as a heart transplant.   

27. It may appear that your camper is having a seizure, but she might just be indulging a habit of staring directly at the sun. You will learn to tell the difference fairly quickly -- after about the first 2 panic attacks.

28. The ASL signs for "stop," "more," "hungry," "thirsty," "angry," and "please".

29. Pick your battles. If your camper really wants to wear her panties backwards, fine. At least they're on.

30. The difference between Scottish and Irish accents, and the proper pronunciation of Sorcha. (SIR-ka.)

31. PJ Fashion Shows!

32. The beautiful sound of a Chinese instrument called the zither in the hands of a skilled musician.

33. It is possible to love a place and its people, and still be sad and exhausted. Knowing your limits does not mean you are weak, or that you love the place and its people any less.



Tuesday, April 30, 2013

30in30, DAY 30!!!!! "In the Time of the Zoloft, my Spirits Were Wired"


In the Time of the Zoloft, My Spirits Were Wired.

My plan for the summer is to land a helicopter on the lawn every morning at 7,

to flatten a crop circle into the grass I'll never mow and cause a nationwide conspiracy.

The experts from all over will congregate on the porch,

and I'll sneak out the back door with my pet ferret in a pouch on my chest

and buy us those little packs of powdered donuts to share,

and I won't care a wit about government involvement in the politics of my grass,

except maybe to laugh while licking sugar from my fingers.

T.A.B. 4-30-13

Monday, April 29, 2013

30in30, Day 29: "Local Color"


Local Color

There's a certain intimacy in the backsides of knees
No one notices, save for me and others like me
-- or am I like them? Who is who, and where, and when
Did it happen to you? And what was it, anyway?
Go ahead, friend, and have more coffee.
The bathroom here's a palace.

The sidewalks on Main
are made of brick;
fair warning.
You'll jar your kidneys
Up through your nose.

Some people have pretty ankles.
It's a thing you'll see come summer,
and everyone in sandals --
and there's something personal about
That, too. Like, thinking, I can almost see
Why long skirts are considered modest.
Care to share a cookie?
They'll carry it to us.

Oh, I meant to tell you about the library elevator --
hope you don't have any
Claustrophobic tendencies;
the things a moving cubbyhole.
Sometimes it makes this noise
but never mind.
Just pull your feet back.
You'll be fine.

Have someone push you
Up on the dike sometime --
There's this slope down to the city beach;
it's fabulous.
Watch your stopping at the bottom, though.
Too far to the left
Means a face full of sand.

The bike shop will replace your tires,
if you take the new ones in.
You need air in the tubes,
there's a garage on the avenue
That'll fill 'em.
Just stick your head in the door and holler.

I think we see more violets than other people.
We are closer to the ground.
Today I counted 1,000 in 2 blocks,
and tulips, too. Yellow.

T.A.B. 4-29-13

Sunday, April 28, 2013

30in30, Day 28: Mind's Eye


I will bathe in coconut
milk in the halfhearted
glow of a rainy
day through the skylight.
There will be the petals of a dozen orange
lilies f  l   o  a   t  i   n  g    in the water.
My legs will appear

long
and
finely
toned.
My hair will float around me.
I will feel queenly.
Just lonely enough to savor the minutes ticking
slowly by on the clock in the hallway,
which I will traverse while still dRiPPiNg tiny
afterthoughts of white on the gleaming wood,
orange petals still stuck to my thighs.
And then I will dress in a purple caftan,
BILLow      ing like the wind against curtains,
and go and stand in the
garden under the trellis with the white roses.
I will pick one to tuck behind my ear.
I will untangle my wet hair with my
fingers while the rain blows a fine mist across my face.

Think of the picture it will make. 

T.A.B. 4-28-13

Saturday, April 27, 2013

30in30, Day 27: Emotion Eats


 And temptation is everywhere.
 I could afford 3 of it with the Abe in my pocket right now.
Golden arches, red pigtails,
or powdery confections from the pink-and-orange?
(I could get 4 of those.)

What do you do with hunger,
after it slips its leash and doubles back to bite your heels?
It's not my body that's hungry, anymore.
It's the complicated circuitry that is my brain,
running on memories and a kind of sadness that circles with its hackles up,
looking for a break in the wiring.

(If my mouth is full of hamburger,
there's no room for the ashes I'll become when it finds one.)

T.A.B 4-27-13

Friday, April 26, 2013

30in30, Day 26: "Hugging the Beech"


She palms salt, licking the sea from her hand.
The day spreads out golden over the hills,
but her head aches and she pulls the blinds against it.
The curtain billows in the April wind.
She lies on the floor,
breathing the scent of trees turning green.
She brings her arms up and hugs one to her body;
inhale to open, exhale to close the embrace.
The man in white taught her this.
She imagines the smooth bole of a beech alive beneath her fingers.
Soon she'll return to the woods,
and press her face against such a one,
and greet it as an old friend.
It was there when she was but ten,
her first night in the cabin bearing its name,
in sea green shorts and a braid that would swing when she walked,
the end just brushing her waistband.
She read Ben Hur to a blind girl in the next bunk. 
Then Sam with the red hair like fire loaned her a book by Roald Dahl.
She learned a little ditty 'bout Jack and Diane,
and that Noah built the ark but forgot the unicorn.
She learned the world from the back of a horse,
and the wet delight of making a piñata like a giant sun,
only to burst it later with a big stick and pounce on the candy raining down.
She ate chunks of cool, sweet watermelon by the pool,
her feet in the water and bleach in her hair,
the air scented with chlorine.
Giggling, she learned to kiss with borrowed lipstick and a piece of paper.
She let a counselor teach her the Catholic rosary,
holding it up in the orange glow of the overhead light so she could see Mary etched on the center bead. They played a game of wolf packs,
and she threw her head back and howled in delighted undulations.

The memories make her wild with joy.
She hugs the big tree and laughs into its trunk.

T.A.B. 4-26-13

Thursday, April 25, 2013

30in30, Day 25: "Recall"


Recall

Mint gum mothballs motor oil Mop n Glo,
Vanilla Fields. Pine sap.
Body shops? Salted wounds,
hollow gut. Wood smoke?
Slightly sick.

Car horns cracking whips wind chimes,
wire hangers clanging. Old trucks idling,
particularly in wintertime.
Sun on snow? Blind with fear,
but early set? Sadness, tears.

Closets hide secrets;
darkness veils danger.
Do not turn on the box fan,
it steals away my ears.
Cover the clock;
the red numbers count up in blood.

Oh, oh God, absentee father,
come pay a visit, give me a present;
a one way ticket straight out of my mind. 

T.A.B. 4/25/13

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

30in30, Day 24: "Run"


Run

She has legs like 2 pylons, legs like marble sculptures,
mus-cu-la-ture rolling along finely tuned under her skin,
legs that should act as pistons, propelling her on-
ward and upward, all sprinting and dancing,
and jumping and plies, all climbing and conquering.

But.

This woman wasn't made to strut.
Or skate. No leaping, no racing,
no finish line in sight with her bear-
ing down the home stretch,
triumphant.

Spastic,
they call it.

Diplegic. Hypertonic.

What looks strong is actually weak,
and what looks weak …

well …

This woman was made merely to watch soccer,
admire from a distance how it looks like a dance.
This woman was made to sit outside the rink,
taking pictures of the skaters.
This woman was made to feel like an addendum,
a useless limb, an inconvenience to her friends,
who all sit at high tables and strand her with the grandfathers,
closer to the floor.

Silently, she chants:
Remain in the present.
Do not resent others.
Stop pitying yourself.

This woman was made to read a lot,
in lieu of other, more active pursuits.
This woman can quote Jamaica Kincaid,
Thomas Milton, Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde,
Walt Whitman; this woman knows verse,
from Chaucer to Angelou, and back again;
she can debate about the na-
ture of original sin,
and discuss the inevitable death of the Sun --

But really,
all this woman wants to do?
is run.

T.A.B. 4-24-13


Tuesday, April 23, 2013

30in30, Day 23: "Passing the Murder Garden"


Passing the Murder Garden

All those wands of delphinium

Waving red in the wind,

Those poppies like bloodied kisses,

Tulips an army of girls

All dressed in red blouses;

Those pansies angry, eyeing me,

The Queen of Heart's roses

Gone wild on the vine,

Crocus in beds of flame

Eating up the ground;

Asia lilies sparking hot --

This garden's a raging inferno,

I thought.

So violent.

And then I saw the violets

Down among the coleus,

Cooling the edges of its leaves to green;

The bluebells curling daintily over,

And the bonnets in their shades of blue scattered through

Like rain that fell to tame the fire;

And there was beauty in it,

And then I stopped to savor.

T.A.B. 4-23-13


Monday, April 22, 2013

30in30, Day 22: "Stalker"


Stalker

One pearl on a strand
I hold between my teeth.
One charm on a bracelet.
One single facet of a diamond,
blinding me with light.
And these mere trinkets.
Paste-jewels in comparison
to the glittering,
glimmering mountain of my
feeling for you.

Were you to die,
I would unwind my
own veins and wire them,
blue and pulsing,
into your arms.
Call me mad scientist, my love,
call me Dr. Frankenstein;
it matters not, so long as there is hot
blood in you,
living viscosity sweet as vin rouge
vicariously tasted;
Waste not, want not; I've enough
love for both of us and I will gladly share,
so long as you stay near me and free of any other.
Though should you wander, I've  a plan --
for even given that I'd rush
to save you from the burning
sands of a thousand deserts and snatch you
from the mouths of dragons,
I'll not bear another's hand upon your full-moon skin.

If I can't have you,
no one can.

T.A.B. 4-22-13

Sunday, April 21, 2013

30in30, Day 21: "Unexpected Irises"


Unexpected Irises

Unexpected irises
BURST!
out of the gray earth,
so blue they hurt,
so bright my eyes narrow;
but oh! When I spot them,
I stop.

What bird dropped them there,
in the lee of the streetlamp?
I stare, arrested by the
POP!
of lavender tongues tasting the air,
which smells of thunder,
lichen, river,
mushrooms, moss,
and Spring.

T.A.B. 4-21-13

Saturday, April 20, 2013

30in30, Day 20: "Company"


Company

I wonder if they sense danger in an April breeze,
these others. If they distrust the way the sun
flings out its light as it sets behind the high hills
like mountains all around,
and pull their shades against it.

If the sound of a wind chime fractures
their peace -- what little they've scrounged up,
that is -- and sets their teeth on edge.

Does passing a garage, with its odor of old oil
and dust and grease, punch them in the chest
the way it does me? Does a dove, cooing
from the oleander, provoke a primal urge to curl,
crying, under the smothering hand of the sky?

How many lie awake at night with all the lights on,
baking their brains in their heads like bread, and call
themselves devils?  I know we stoke our own fires.
It's less terrifying, somehow, holding the poker
ourselves, pumping the bellows and blowing
on the tinder, chanting hope as it catches.
Better than letting some other demon
tease the flames, control the height of the sparks
and the heat of the burn. 

We know the darkness; we children
familiar with what happens under its cover.
There is a corner of night in us all,
no moon.
No stars.
We spend a lot of time in ours,
extinguishing the torches as quickly
as we light them.

T.A.B. 4-20-13

Friday, April 19, 2013

30in30, Day 19: "Behind The Desk, Late Morning"


Another headache under the bright white light.
Your eyes are grit. Throat gravel.
Nausea sits in your gut, churning the contents with a stick,
making you think of porcelain and tile floors.
Your knees ache at the joints; your elbows;
your wrists and fingers throb. You ignore it.
You make the pencil scritch, scratch across the page;
It's a nice sound.

You are watching for patrons.
One eye on the elevator.
One on the stairs.
Write a line and scan again for
May I help you?
How many?
Payment up-front, please.

Down comes a tall man, bald head shining,
taking the stairs two at a time;
It's their way, all the people with 2 good legs,
always bounding around and frowning about it:
ability's an imposition.

He sees your chair, shining red.
He says, "Wish I had one of those! My life would be so much easier!"
It's expected; that's also their way;
they long for batteries and throttles;
you want their 2 good legs, and to go bounding down the stairs.

You would smile.

T.A.B. 4-19-13

Thursday, April 18, 2013

30in30, Day 18: "Ferryman"


The driver            of the hearse      smokes a cigarette
and looks out the window at the empty street.
He doesn't           give a shit            anymore.

It's hard to sustain caring,
when you make                your living           from dying
in a town of 8000.
Too few degrees              of separation.

He thinks how he'd have asked off work,
if he cared
'coz        he knows the guy             or knew him.
And same last week.

He could              he supposes        sit in the church
and hear the Mass,
but the priest has a lisp                  and it makes him laugh
and the families                look sideways at him.

And so does everyone else,
because he's the guy       with the bodies in back.

Everyone pays the ferryman,
but         no one                 cares for him.

T.A.B. 4-18-13

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

30in30, Day17: "Single Bi Female"


If you like

Red flowers,

yellow shoes,

or blue dresses,

1000-watt smiles and eyes
That crinkle at the edges.

If you'll abandon the dishes
In favor of a rain dance, and jump in all the puddles.

If you don't mind a girlfriend who falls asleep at the drive-in
And never shares a funnel cake.
(Not even one bite);

who has certain fondness for tunnels,
--particularly
Of the secret sort--

But a peculiar fear of the dark.

If you can handle solitude,
and being apart awhile
Without getting too needy,

Here's my cell. Call me.

T.A.B. 4-17-13

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

30in30, Day 16: "In the Secret"


I would like to bed this tiny kernel of solitude
curled in my soul comfortable
as an embryo in the womb,
slowly discovering itself.
I would like to carry it off
by moonlight and snuggle with it under the covers,
my chin notched below its shoulder and no sound
but the cat's soft breath and the cars
slicking by in the rain just there,
beneath the window.
I would like to get to know it better:
how it settles, how it sighs,
if it murmurs in its sleep or reaches for a lover.
I would like to invite it to seep
through my skin and kiss my muscles into submission,
open the door to my deepest thoughts and shush them with a touch.

I would like to take this quiet place and draw out its circumference,
a series of circles each wider than itself,
crawl into the largest ripple, and make myself a home.

T.A.B. 4-16-13

Monday, April 15, 2013

30in30, Day 15: "Boston"


Creation's an addiction
Heaven can't tame:

Rain
  To floods,
wind
  To hurricanes,
sparks
  To fire,
Clay
  To man.

Man to dominion,
destruction,
and death.

The leaven is gone
From all the bread,
which lies cold
Beneath ashes.

Our sackcloth's just another act
In a tragicomedy that will not consent to

End.

T.A.B. 4-15-13

Sunday, April 14, 2013

30in30, Day 14: "Your Bio Makes You Sound Like an Ass"

This little ditty makes me sound like a bitch, but the other one I wrote today made me sound like a clinically depressed fat kid (wait ... never mind ...) so it was a toss-up.


Like those actors at the Grammys,
thanking God for their success.

Oh poet, the first thing you did when your ship
came in was fill the hold with beer.
We all know it. We were in the line behind you,
eyeing up the wine.

(Last time I was published, I drank mine from the bottle and toasted
my genius as if it were alive and celebrating with me. Then I put on a ball cap
and sang made-up adagios in the shower. Published is power. Power can be dizzying.)

Poet, get with it! Don't be so pretentious.
If you must plan obeisance, do it in private,
someplace where there's less chance you'll irritate the rest of us. 

T.A.B. 4-14-13

Saturday, April 13, 2013

30in30, Day 13: "You Have to Write This Poem"

It isn't going to fall on your head like confetti,

letter
       by
glittering
        letter
vowels catching in your hair,

t
u
m
b
l
i
n
g

to the floor, consonants dusting your shoulders like glitter.

It won't simply
APPEAR
in your lap, ooey-gooey cooing and sucking its thumb.
or walk up to you standing on the corner and bum a cigarette,
or come in the door and hang up its hat --

(Poems don't just happen like that.)

It won't take the red-eye and show up in your bed,
or show up like a miracle, right there in your head.

--Yes, I know your excuses, you've said--
but it does no good to fight it:

This poem ain't gonna write itself. You're gonna hafta write it.

T.A.B 4-13-13

For Anybody Who Read "The Dark Side"

I find it important to emphasize that I'm not actually a potential psycho killer. I was more exploring the idea that everyone has a dark side, and that coming to terms with that is important.

Just to clear things up.

Friday, April 12, 2013

30in30, Day 12: "Mount Olympus Girls"


Here, all the soldiers wear flowered jumpers and have their hair in braids.

They are armed only with squirt guns and Stretch Armstrong souls that can bend
1000 ways and never come apart – they can be permanently distorted, maybe;
stretched beyond recognition, yes – but they never break.

You can set the world on their shoulders like a boulder,
and they will not shrug.

When you knock them over, they simply shift the load
and begin to climb again. 

T.A.B. 4-12-13

Thursday, April 11, 2013

30in30, Day 11: Asleep on the Job


Asleep on the Job (Or, Misadventures in Pain Management)

My bones have begun to fissure, and someone has taken a hammer to my knees.

My eyes are heavy in their sockets. Even my socks ache, where they smother my feet.

The atmospheric pressure is slowly crushing me to the floor;

Several inches have been subtracted from my height, with more to follow.

I need a nap now.

I'll just put my head on the desk for a moment that'll become half an hour.

It's the medication.

I ration it, but sometimes my fortitude fails me;

the little yellow pill siphons my energy away and fills my head with gravel.

This is preferable, considering the alternatives:

A sack of cement in my gut, for instance.

A dagger to the collarbone, maybe.

Or would you rather I fill the office with the lovely scent of vomit?

Perhaps I should've stayed home today.

Perhaps I should stay home tomorrow, and the day after that


And the day after that.

T.A.B 4-11-13

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

30in30, Day 10: "Pickup"


Pickup

The road before us was a gray umbilicus
Connecting us to Mother Earth.
My lips were stained
The color of Hester's shame,
but it was only juice --
cherry, and strawberry fruit pie,
in the bed of a red truck
With one green door,
like Christmas in July.

And the sun spilled orange
Into our eyes,
and cornfields stretched out
On each side,
reverie after daydream
Painted in viridian and jade.

We licked sugar from our fingers
And let our hair blow wild as sin
In the Indiana wind.

T.A.B. 4-10-13

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

30in30, Day 9: "Drive"


Hard labor these days is doing the dishes up.
What approximates standing on these palsied pegs
is not kind to the spine, low down,
between the uneven cradle of these hips.
These hips that will likely never serve their purpose,
parting to let slick life slide
screaming into being.
And yet this body continues the motions
of potential motherhood, ripening, shedding,
each month preparing itself for two cells
to make four,
to make toes and fingers and eyes
and legs kicking and finally breath,

at last, at last

I have watched others wax full
one by one,
like harvest moons.
I have prodded tiny feet
through the walls of wombs,
have cradled child after child
in my arms, their limbs drawn up reflexively,
perfect sculptures in miniature,

alive, alive.

I say I am a liberated woman,
modern, not too incredibly
desirous of children.
This was the truth,
once upon a time.
Would that it still were;
this longing is ruthless.
I cannot box it up
and send it back to the factory.
It is programmed in me,
a drive in a car with no brakes or mirrors.
I see the cliff coming at me,
and even given the danger,
I keep my hands on the wheel

 and consider, consider.

Monday, April 8, 2013

30in30, Day 8: "The Dark Side"


The Dark Side

I became a revolutionary because I missed the bus
the anarchists were on,
and I've always been rebellious.

If I could, I'd break windows and steal.
I'd set fires and start fights.
Maybe I'd  kill,
just for the thrill of pulling the trigger.

But you can't commit crimes of that caliber
if you're too crippled to run,
too conspicuous to hide.
How many fugitives have permanent limps,
this particular set of disfigurements?

That's why I gather I'm stuck like this:
to contain my forays to the dark side.
To muzzle the man eater.

If God were wiser, we'd all be hobbled.

T.A.B. 4-8-13

Sunday, April 7, 2013

"Psycopathia Sexualis" Inspired by "Riven Rock", a Novel by T.C. Boyle.)


Psycopathia Sexualis (Inspired by T.C. Boyle's Riven Rock)

I couldn't make you love me

But

I saw you bleeding on the floor
after you thought I'd gone
Want leeching from your pores,
eyes,
lips,
nose.

A garden of rust roses

And scarlet delphiniums
spreading their blossoms at your feet.

Sweet

Baby Lord,
I wanted to lick you up
like spilled milk.

I wanted to inhale you,
skin white as blow,
veins a pencil sketch.

One day I'll have you.
One day I'll

S t r e t c h

You out
in your garden of blood
and gnaw the marrow from your bones.

Replace your eyes with shining mirrors
and watch as I kiss you.

T.A.B. 4-7-13

Saturday, April 6, 2013

30in30, Day 6: Trigger


Trigger

My gut is two-thirds bile and the rest penicillin and wine.
Outside, a truck backfires. I don't jump this time.
This was not my best idea; I'll give you that,
but it could've been worse.

I could be my father,
with a taste for rotgut beer
and a temper,
and a gun.

Lock, stock, and barrel.
About this time of year, I guess.
Daddy crawled out the bottle,
and then crawled all over with fevers and bugs.

Took out a rifle.
Put it in my hands.

About this time of year,
I crawl into my own bottle.
I lie at the bottom and wonder:

What if I had pulled the trigger?

T.A.B. 4-6-13

Friday, April 5, 2013

30in30, Day 5: "Wanderer"


I could leave here.
The thought expands in my chest like a bubble;
it rumbles in my mind. 4 tires on gravel.
Highway unspooling behind me;
a filling station at 2 in the morning,
bad coffee and white like epiphanies blinding me.

I have a certain affinity for leaving things behind,
see.
I have left pieces of myself in churches in Kentucky,
just laying around for anyone to find.
Bus stations, train depots:
Indianapolis, Minneapolis,
Chicago.
Airports in Atlanta, Philadelphia,
Detroit.
Spare rooms. Even a S'barro once,
in a plate of cold spaghetti.

There is not enough map to contain me.
I am not so much a woman as a restless creature,
sleeping with one eye open.

One night I'll eat the zookeeper,
and break apart the cage.

--T.A.B. 4-5-13

Thursday, April 4, 2013

30in30, Day 4: "Nebulous"


I am merely nebulous.

Unformed, and floating

Around and around my own head like particles of dust.

I used to see myself at night.

I fell over my body

Softly,

confetti,

snow.

My soul was glitter in the air;

it floated away from me

When I tried to catch it.

--T. A. B. 4-4-13

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

30in30, Day 3: "I Have A Bad Case Of Missing You"


I Have A Bad Case of Missing You

And that pink blouse you bought me;
I have that too.
It no longer fits. There's a hole.
Pink's not my color.

I don't care.

I don't wear it.
I just hold it sometimes,
like a bandage for the bruise
of not having you here.

Sometimes I see someone with your hair.
She tilts her head to one side;
She's a bird, like you were!

But when she opens up and sings,
I never know the song.

T.A.B. 4-3-13

30in30: Day 2. "Song of the Midsummer Sprite"

I slaved over this piece for going on 2 hours last night. It doesn't have the epic sweep I was going for, but at least I finally hammered out the rhyme scheme. (I don't usually do heavily structured pieces; it was a challenge.)


A At 7 of an 'even, when the sky is yet light
B And the sun sinks low in the west;
A As the owl in his hollow prepares for flight
B And the otter and deer welcome rest;

A As the poplar and birch whisper songs of the night
B And the shadows begin to grow deep;
A Then comes she forth, Midsummer's sprite
B On silent and capable feet.

A She wears a cloak of gloaming hue
B And hood cut from the same;
A From 'neath it looks an eye of blue
B And one as gray as rain.

A She turns her head this way and that
B And looks, and then she goes;
A She leaps as graceful as a cat
B And lands upon her toes.

A Through the trees she makes her way
B Over root and stone;
A Where she's to, no one can say
B And always she's alone.

A Do not try to train your eye
B To trace her 'long the trail;
A You'll join the throng, with maddened cry
B Of others who have failed.

A Midsummer's sprite  is rare to see
B And seems a matchless jewel;
A But he who tries to Squire be
Is just a witless fool.

A He who follows in her tread
B Won't catch her by surprise;
A She hears thoughts before they're said
B And sees through ev'ry guise.

A
There's Magick in that mismatched gaze
A One eye watchet, one eye haze;
B And he who takes its measure in
B Will never see the sun again. 


I had some serious fun with this. The challenge was great -- it's been a long time since I've marked the beat of a piece by snapping my fingers! And I learned a new word, watchet, synonymous to blue.

30in30: 30 Poems in 30 Days for National Poetry Month. DAY 1.


After Watching Neil Marcus Dance "Water Burns Sun"

Only the cripple can tell you why he dances. Watch closely once, twice: see the way his wrists curve in, fingers pointed toward his palms? Who is to say the small, unusual birds he makes are not beautiful? A thousand folded cranes are art, and so is this.

He redefines fluidity. He is no gentle stream, no tame flow of water from a spout: this man is Kegon-no-taki, hurtling deliriously through space, sending up spray for miles as he dives down to meet himself; he is Urami Falls, hiding and then crashing out to meet you. He can do all this without leaving the floor.

Every twist of his body is a line God painted without lifting the brush, every blemish a hidden psalm, every knot a perfect imperfection. Only the cripple can tell you why he dances: because his every vein contains a river, and Water Burns Sun.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Una Vox Absentis

I miss my friend today. Mary Lou. Actually I never stopped missing her, but I feel the loss more acutely today than usual, because today is Easter, and this is the first Easter I have lent my voice to the St. Paul's choir since she died. (It would seem I can't even write as smoothly as usual today.)

I started going back to St. Paul's for choir last month sometime. I just missed singing with other people. And it was odd, walking in and not seeing her there. My gaze kept drawing to the place they put the urn during her funeral, under all that white linen. I had to shake my head to clear it. And every week since then, even though I know she's gone, I've opened the door to that beautiful church and felt my heart sink because part of me always expects her to be standing beside the piano, and she never is.

I'm not the only one who misses her. My friend Lynn confided to me today that she still leaves space for Mary Lou at the end of the choir stall, just like she always did. There's room to scoot down now, but she can't bring herself to do it. And I found myself standing in the robing room this morning staring at her name on a garment bag and blinking away tears. It was the same when I found her signature inked elegantly in blue on the inside cover of a hymnal, when I saw the notes she had written in the margin of a piece of sheet music.

The Episcopal church is very ritual-based. We follow a liturgical calendar, and it includes sections for prayers, hymns, homilies -- pretty much anything you need to structure a service. The things in each section are slightly different in terms of wording, melody, etc., and often you can pick which one you want to use during a particular week or season, but there are only so many choices. Things get recycled. You end up with a copy of, "Alleluia, Christ is Risen!" that your deceased friend used seven years ago, or you pull from the back of a pew the same Book of Common Prayer she used every Sunday, marked with tiny pieces of paper containing reminders for the Altar Guild. And these tiny things are the most bittersweet wine a person can drink. They are so painful. They twist right into your heart like little daggers. But they're sacred, and special, and too precious to get rid of.

Easter. There is a post-communion hymn we sing every Easter: "Alleluia, Alleluia, Give Thanks to the Risen Lord." It has a beautiful descant that Mary Lou used to sing in her beautiful, rich, echoing tenor, sending the notes soaring out of her throat and into the congregation and up, up, up to twist among the rafters. She had a voice that could stop you dead in your tracks, it was so stunning and powerful -- the kind of voice that could almost make you cry when you heard it, because it was full of so much intensity, so much emotion. Oh, I miss that voice. I miss that voice so much it hurts.



There was no Mary Lou to sing that descant today, so Lynn and I sang it together. Lynn is quite the exceptional singer in her own right, but even our two voices combined could not do justice to Mary Lou's memory. And we didn't sing the Surrexit after procession today either, which made me incredibly sad: we always did it when Mary Lou was alive. Joyously, boisterously, our voices lifting and falling and chasing one another in the round ... It wasn't the same without it today. It wasn't the same without her. This is grief, then: the awful, sinking knowledge that someone has changed your life for the better, but "better" will never be the same again.

In case you're interested, you must listen through the 3rd verse to hear the descant. And no, this is not St. Paul's LH.

P.S. -- I got the title of this post from Google Translate, so forgive my fake Latin if it's horrible.

Friday, February 22, 2013

Insomniaaaaaaaaaaa ...

Alright, so I'm reluctant to sleep. Aside from my persistent fear of darkness, which I'm sure you all know about by now, I've been having dreams like The Matrix on crack. They're insane. Things morph into other things, people die and come alive and then die again, corpses reanimate as cats ... I even had this dream where I had an argument with the 911 operator over whether the dead woman in my living room was dead or not.

"How do you know she's dead?"
"Her entire blood volume is splashed all over the walls!"
"Did you check for a pulse?"
"I don't need to! She's dead! It's obvious!"

(It sounds amusing now, but trust me -- it wasn't at the time. Especially not when I leaned over the corpse and discovered that the person in my living room wasn't just any old person that just happened to have been murdered in my living room like, la di da, no big deal, but was in fact my mother. And what did they do with her? Well, they wrapped her up in a bunch of winding sheets and put her to bed, and the next thing I know she's a tabby cat, and very much alive. Talk about freaky.)

I do not want to dream. I simply want to sleep.

And then there's this cough. I've had it on and off for weeks now, this barking seal cough that sounds suspiciously like someone's trying to crush my trachea. Now it has moved further down into my chest, and I have a sneaking suspicion it has become bronchitis. I already have an inhaler, one I rarely use but keep filled anyway just in case I should happen to need it, and in the past 24 hours that thing has seen more action than it usually sees in 6 months. (Yes, I checked the date. No, it's not expired.)

I tried tea, and that barely touched it, so then I went down to the state store, bought some Johnnie Walker, and made a hot toddy. The toddy helped some, but the cough isn't gone -- and now there's all kinds of gross stuff coming up with it, too. I've really been trying to steer away from over-the-counter medications as much as I can and make my own remedies from what I have in the kitchen, but I'm wary of another toddy: alcohol tends to have adverse and cruelly delayed reactions on my digestive system. It's looking like the only way I'm going to get a reprieve is to stuff myself full of Mucinex, for which I have to wait till morning. Joy.

And then there's the air in here. It's so dry, I wake up every morning feeling like a wanderer in the Mojave: my mouth is dry, my eyes are dry, my nose is so dry it hurts to breathe, and there's lovely crud in my eyes that feels like sand. Waking up in here is decidedly unpleasant; ergo, going to sleep is only a little bit better. Sleeping generally leads to waking -- for which, at 28, I really am grateful. I'd just like not to wake up so ... reptilian.

So now that I've whined about all the reasons I can't sleep, I'm tired enough to try. Go figure.

Monday, January 28, 2013

A Nip O' Nyctophobia

Ah, the night. I have never been friends with it. Not once in my life have I ever said, "It's dark, and that's okay." I used to say my fear was of the dark, period. Now I've realized that my fear isn't darkness itself, but rather what the darkness might be hiding.

My father used to say, "There's nothing in the dark that's not in the daylight," as if that's supposed to comfort me. It doesn't I know that already. The problem is, there are horrible things in the daylight. I have seen some of them. I have had some of them happen to me. And while we're on the subject, no, I don't ever feel completely at ease during the day either. PTSD isn't at ease anywhere. I'm always a little more nervous and jumpy than I'd like, no matter what time it is. Sometimes I'm downright paranoid. But I'm one of those people who believes in being able to see what's coming at me so I can be prepared for the shit storm, if you will. If I can see it, I can fight it. That's why I'm not on good terms with the night: because it hides things from view. Because who knows what could happen when the lights go out and I start to fall asleep and I'm off guard, just not ready?

I've tried telling myself that my apartment is as close to impenetrable as it's going to get. All doors leading to the outside of the building lock automatically at 4 pm every day. I have a knob lock and a chain lock on the door to my unit, and I live on the top floor: the only way someone's getting in without me knowing about it is if Spiderman climbs up the side of the building  and sneaks in through the window, and I really don't think Spiderman gives that much of a damn about me. And yet I can't shake the conviction that darkness is a cloaking device for every imaginable evil.

I've been trying a new coping skill to help me come to terms with nighttime: imagery. Lou-Dad likes to remind me that the night will hide me as well as it'll hide anything else, so I lie down and imagine myself as a giant panther, black as pitch, roaming the night as a shadow and owning the darkness, a predator who is in control and will not be startled by any scuttling in the leaves ... and it works until one of my neighbors shouts or breaks a dish, and then I'm back in my own body and seizing up with fear in the way only the cerebrally   palsied can do: my entire body lifts up from the couch in one hugely exaggerated startle response, every joint straightening with a simultaneous snap, every muscle tensed to its limit and shaking. Needless to say, this imagery thing needs more work. But how? How do I dial down the adrenaline, the natural caution? I feel like I've tried everything to conquer this fear, from the aversion principle all the way down to magick: mounting a dozen tiny mirrors on the wall on either side of the doorway to the bedroom to prevent evil from entering.

I guess I am improving, bit by tiny bit: last night I slept with only the light under the stove hood on and the glow from the TV, and I listened to nature music instead of some show -- I usually need voices, not music. But then there will come a period of weeks or even months when every light in this tiny place has to be on before I can even entertain the idea of shutting my eyes, and I can't tell what causes the difference. Some subconscious thing, I guess. I can count the number of times in the past ten years that I've actually gone to sleep with no lights on and no TV going on one hand. I long for the ability to lie down in the darkness and feel safe, but it never comes. It's embarrassing, when I'm staying over somewhere: hoping the spare room has a TV so I can leave it on, or a small lamp somewhere, or even a streetlight shining through the window, because otherwise I'm faced with the choice of lying awake all night or owning up to being scared of the dark. Le sigh. I guess I just have to keep trying.