The Movement of a Hand

As the constant heat of summer blurs the line between day and night, old memories drift up on the heat waves from the sidewalk.

When I was a child, maybe seven or eight, I watched a documentary on the string theory. I was utterly enthralled. I didn’t understand about eighty percent of what the voice-over was saying but on the screen there were these beautiful, hair-thin strands of color, weaving themselves into circles that seemed to glow against the dimmed background. They floated around, rippling so lightly, like heat waves or magic, or the edges of some little light-ghost. I reached out and touched the screen, my fingers brushing one of the colorful circles. I wanted one for a pet. I thought the concept was amazing. I was fascinated because I thought that all those scientists in their nice white coats meant that there might be other dimensions, see, right here around us, which I took to mean that those beautiful, shimmering little rings were floating everywhere, all around me; I just couldn’t see them. I waved my hand slowly through the air in front of me, wondering how many of the glowing coils I may have unknowingly touched. How many I must touch whenever I move anywhere at all. For days I imagined them everywhere, trying to catch them, as if they were the ghosts of all the butterflies that winter had killed. By the obvious misinterpretation of a science documentary, I was happily lost in a new little magic world. You know, the little worlds, the brief obsessions where you’re so excited about it but you’re back in time for dinner, and the little world is left to rust and mold like a bicycle forgotten in the yard. Back to the real world.

And, the real world can be a horrible, evil, disgusting place. Not the world itself I suppose, but what is in it. Who is in it. Some beautiful sick magnificent vile fallen angel who puts it in people’s heads to rape and murder and molest children and lie and manipulate and destroy. This seems beyond human nature; beyond rebellion and lost sheep. It is beyond illness, natural disaster, loss, death by natural causes. There are bad things; there are tragic things. And then there are evil things; cruel things. Something with extra-special foulness; something that was poisoned, not just “gone bad”. It bubbles up, fumes oozing from the ground and we breathe it in; we smell it, taste it, see it when it’s thick enough. And it is so confusing, because there’s beauty too, but it gets all tainted by the smog. I have such a headache, trying to see through it to what is real; to the organic, original things designed by God. To the way things should be. Maybe if I held my breath, or wore a gas mask out into the world I wouldn’t be choked by it. Retching gasping suffocating, vomiting up everything in me that might have been light; that might have been joy or innocence. The stench has made me throw it all up again—violently; acidic and projectile—and I am empty, empty for a reason. Just one good reason for this, and something—anything—untainted.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic, but tonight even my dog seems touched by the evil smog, as though even he is burdened and forced to labor by this toxin. Maybe I left the window open, let it in somehow. He’s tired, he lays with his head between his paws, his shoulders hunched around him and his eyes subtly keeping track of any nearby motion. Lying down, but awake, weary and brooding. His fur is all scruffy and spiked; he’s just come in from the rain. It this pose he looks hard—-cold and bittered by time. My tired, stoic wolfdog. We curl up in bed together, two cynical creatures. Or so I'd like to fancy.

Sometimes I want to ask him if he loves me, though I know that isn’t a question that commonly needs to be asked of dogs. They show it so plainly, even pitifully, in their faces and tails; in their liquid-pool eyes and warm pink tongues. They show such blind and unconditional love that I can’t help but think that they must not be very smart. I tell them, “I don’t deserve to be loved that way, you know. I’ve done bad things.” But they just keep grinning, their entire bodies swaying from the force of their enthusiastic tail. In this mood, though, I think perhaps Caspian may form a more accurate opinion. He groans as I lean on his shoulder and stretches out his back legs, kicking me. That’s more like it, I think, but then his tail thumps softly on the mattress and I know he didn’t mean it. He still thinks I’m better than I am; thinks the world is a better place than it is.
He doesn’t see the quivering state of things; of just a thing or two that could cause a landslide. He doesn’t see that elaborate spiral of dominos, the first one teetering on its edge and how, with just the movement of a hand, we could see it all collapse.

The other night I dreamed that it was dark. Dark as if my room had no windows; dark so that open-closed-open-closed-open-closed my eyes could see no difference. I waved my hand in front of my face. I thought my eyes, my silly eyes might be playing tricks. I felt the stir of the air on my face, but saw nothing. No tricks; just dark. It didn’t make any difference.

The Oracle said Wander

Lately I feel rubbed raw. Like a nerve exposed: naked against the burning friction of words and silence, of aches and pains, of knowledge and doubt. So raw, the slightest pressure causes recoil.

I found a toad just the other day, an adorable warty little friend, the kind I used to kiss as a little girl though Mother tried to stop me. Such a long month; it had been such a long, long month. I was nearly at the end of my rope, and slightly manic; tired beyond sanity. I do so love animals—all animals—but I was irrationally happy to be holding that toad in my hands, his big round eyes and the way he curled into himself up to protect his vulnerable throat, which was pulsing rapidly in and out. My smile stretched wide and my voice cooed DontbeafraidIwonthurtyoulittleguy as the tips of my fingers gently stroked his cobbled back. I brought him closer to me, to touch my nose to his. But he leapt from my palm and fell to the ground, in that pitiful way toads do when they’re dropped. I heard the soft thump, and saw him there lying on his back. And I began to cry. Even as I watched him hop safely away I cried. I don’t know why, but his fall—his thump—had made my heart so heavy and I thought of how frightening it must have been for the creature, and how much the impact hurt, and how sore is he now and is there any internal bleeding? As irrationally happy as I was to find my toad, my tearful reaction to his plight was less rational still. And rather embarrassing.

Because sometimes I feel that humans should be mindful drones. Knowing everything, while quietly, mechanically working to achieve practical, beneficial goals. Reacting only in a practical way to all situations. Being socially acceptable. This is only in practice, however. In theory I burst with desire to experience an expansive range of lifestyles. I would love to be a part of some bohemian underground, or live some months in a hippie commune or go to Burning Man. I’d like to be a beat poet, maybe. I’d like to live in a rainforest. I’ve always wanted to participate in a large-scale protest of some kind, too, though I suppose that that in itself is a horrible reason to do it. I want to paint controversial art pieces that will make some people hate me and some love me. I want to make them think thoughts they don’t want to think. And to introduce them to beauty they didn’t know existed. I would like to be the person who in her very existence inexplicably defies every law of someone else’s universe; who turns it upside down and shakes it till quarters and dimes are clinking on the floor at my feet. My point is, I have always loved the idea of un-convention. So how did I end up so relatively rigid in my own social expectations? How is there such a great divide in how I am, or how I expect others to be, “in theory” and “in practice”? Because practice has to be practical. And practical means secure; high benefits—socially respected benefits, of course—and favorable odds. When costs and benefits are weighed—because, how else do you make a decision?—it isn’t practical for me to chase after the things I’ve always believed I want for my future, or the kinds of experiences I’ve always wanted to have.

How do people do it, achieve their wildest dreams? How do they even find out how to achieve them? How do they find ways to be so much more than average? How do they lead lives full of unique adventure or astounding accomplishment? I’m sure it involves knowing exactly how and when to step out of a social norm or take a high-risk gamble. Some people do it. Some people win, and end up being National Geographic photographers or gallery artists or renowned writers or Shamu trainers or Steve Irwin or William Faulkner or Banksy. Why can’t I be one of those people? The weight of circumstance; my own defective body and its limitations; my lack of perseverance and ingenuity, perhaps? When a process seems so daunting and complicated—so unknown—that just the thought makes me tired, and I settle back into what is most practical. The highest benefit for the lowest cost; the safest bet. I could be great, though, couldn’t I? I mean, even still? I just want to boldly go. I just want to be able to take on anything.

There was a time when I thought I could; I miss that.
Of course, put a couple of years between me and any time of my life and I’ll find a way to miss it. I don’t try to; it just happens. Sometimes I think I miss more things from the past than I love at the present moment. And I have to remember that these moments will pass; these moments like purgatory or a balancing act, just trying to get from one place to the next. The Between moments. I have to remember that, someday, I’ll miss this day. Or yesterday or tomorrow; some day in present time that I never anticipated missing. In a year or three, I will miss it. Either I’ll miss it, or I’ll wish I’d done things differently. I don’t know what I’d be doing differently right now, but I’m sure when I look back years from now there are things I’d change. I go crazy trying to figure it out; trying to make sure I don’t have a single regret. I regret my momentary decisions all the time. Like when I’m cleaning my room and in a fit of longing for clear spaces I shove little things into random drawers where I know I’ll never remember leaving them, in complete disregard for any later need I might have of the items. I can’t help but worry that I may be doing something similar in the broad spectrum of my present life. Every night at 11:11 I pray for clarity, but I don’t think God is answering.

You’ve given me some clarity, yes. But not for what I am trying to see right now. Today You gave me answers I asked for years ago, and indeed I’m grateful to see. But I learned to live with those questions. They were beggar’s lice in the back of my mind; itchy but easy enough to ignore most of the time. Not like these questions I have now—these locust thorns wrapping around and squeezing my heart. I can’t wait years for these answers now. I have choices to make, soon, very soon and I just can’t be as patient as it appears You want me to be. Maybe it’s because You know my heart doesn’t really want to know the answer yet. Which gives me a bad feeling about what the answer may turn out to be. But then, maybe there’s hope and I know that hope would take time to see. Which is it? Now I’ve come full circle, as I do in every prayer.

Clarity. Maybe I need a new prescription for the lens through which I see my own little world.

Maybe if it was all in the sun, or morning in a house with big windows. Maybe out of these small rooms it wouldn’t seem so dark; so trapped and inevitable and maybe I could see. Maybe after the city has had a chance to seep out of my pours and dissipate into the country air—maybe then the fog will clear.

I imagine I’ll keep on stumbling, though; it seems like the most realistic scenario.

Because I don’t usually imagine what I want; I imagine what I actually think I’ll really end up with in life. And with that thought, I realize something that frankly doesn’t surprise me: I’ve stopped dreaming. For the future, I mean. I don’t have a “dream house” or “dream job” or any fantasy that I expect to play a role in my actual life. When I imagine myself in the future, I see a small studio apartment that needs a paint job, somewhere in some suffocated corner of the mid-west. I see laundry on the floor and a disability check on the table with the mail. Furniture that doesn’t quite match, and a very used Toyota in the driveway. I’m a part-time social worker, maybe, or a secretary. I imagine all of that, not because any of it is what I want, but because it seems like the most the most realistic end to the most practical course of events. And, for the past six years, I have been forced to function nearly exclusively in practicalities.

A very wise person once told me that I should go somewhere. Go somewhere rather far; somewhere unfamiliar, somewhere random, just for a day. She said to go there and just meditate. Then the next day she said to go somewhere completely different, and do the same thing. She told me to repeat the process as many times as I need to, to feel more free and clear and present. The Oracle said wander, and lately I’ve been wondering if maybe that’s my dream for now. My temporary fantasy, one that I may really, truly try to carry out. To be somewhere different—to be many different places—and then come back home and maybe home will feel a little different too, for a while. But hopefully not forever, because I do like having a point of origin; one location from which all my journeys branch, like the center of a spider’s web or the hub of a wheel and it’s spokes. Like when we were children and we played all around the neighborhood, but we always knew our house was “that way”. We always made sure we knew, so that we could run safely there should we get hungry, or should the monsters or the ghosts or the bad men come. I know that we would both run; run back to our houses as the dusk crept on faster than we anticipated and we’d close the door just in time—just before the gnarly hand could snatch us back out into the night.

Something in us has always been that way. Childlike, I mean. Something about us is different. I feel a vague sense of naivety wherever we go, followed by wide-eyed confusion as we ask whywhywhy when we just don’t understand. Help us understand. They don’t. Then we realize that we really had understood all along, but the backs of our minds had been whispering, “No, it couldn’t be.” They whispered at fist but then they screamed it, ringing in our ears the maddening clamor of denial as it bludgeons unyielding logic; bloodcurdling screams tantrums and loud, desperate refusal to admit defeat. Now we have headaches and such tragic truths, too, and we cried but afterwards we watched a cartoon; ate peanut butter from the jar. We know the common expectation is for us to grow into the world; to growgrowgrow as high up as we can and fill the spaces we were meant to. But something about us is different. Something about us is childlike.

Rarity

Have you ever gone to bed
And it’s felt like years
Since you last slept?
And you realize so poignantly
That what cradles you now
Is, these days, such a rarity
In it’s comforting support.

Stable Girl

Stable-girl saddles up,
Quietly assuming
Her delicate balance.
No room remains
On this green horse
For these drab preoccupations
As her mind is filled
With stirrups and bridle
And reins and bit,
Buck and canter,
Jumps,
And posting-trot:
All demand total focus,
Or fall.
Active body, busy brain:
For her they sweetly mean
A forgetful heart;
Maybe this is why
She loves to ride.

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Our Crossedwords

I predict our conversation
May turn out to be
Somewhat like a game
Of Scrabble:
No basis of it’s own,
Only building on itself,
And who knows what words
Will have been laid out
By the time
We’ve finished our turns?
Add up the scrambled pieces
Leftover at the end,
And we will find that
Someone lost,
And someone had to win.
Unproductive,
Just like always,
Next week we’ll play again.

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The Development and Birth of an Unwanted Thought

If I had a contraceptive

To protect against

Unborn ideas in my mind,

Or some abortive option

For the third-term thoughts

And feelings

Fertilized by your words,

Those are pills I would add

To my daily regimen.

But short of lobotomy

Or cardio-biopsy,

Unfortunately no options

Remain, and I

Am forced to nurture

To full gestation, then tear

And bleed to deliver

This bitter brainchild.


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I recorded another song. Listen here.

JUST THE FACTS, SIMPLY STATED

I've been forgetting to pray
Lately I guess there's not much left to say.
I'm not feeling so well,
Though no one seems to be able to tell.

Oh my God, I can't pretend anymore
That I'm ok with this
I used to live
But these days I just survive.

Not all the symptoms are plain,
Just like the scars don't measure up to the pain.
These aren't very nice dreams
I can't find relief, awake or asleep.

I'll paint a sign: I need a rough and low voice
To sing to me
A lullaby,
Slightly off-key, and tired.

They say I'm too good at this game,
Like telling the truth would change anything.
Besides, I'm too tired to explain,
And I'm afraid of what my voice might betray.

Don't touch that dial; leave the radio on
So I don't feel
So alone,
Just let me hear one more song.

Most days the cost is too high,
And leaving my room is just not worth the price.
I'm losing my concept of time,
Though it's been so long, I think I'm almost resigned.

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