Beautiful Things

When I was eight years old there was little that I desired more than a window seat. I had seen them at the big library in the city and something about them seemed so romantic; so wistful. I was a very wistful child in general, even if only for yesterday or last week.

In lieu of a window seat, after dark and if the sky was clear, I would remove the screens from my windows and perch on the sill, a folded blanket to cushion the awkward seat. Legs firmly pressed against the wall beneath the window for balance, I would lean out as far as I could. I would crank my head backward and up, satiating my ravenous eyes with as many stars as they could catch; as many as would fall in to the wide, rich pools of naivety that my pupils seemed to be. I’d look down and around, too, at the acres of pasture and woods soaked in dusk. The starlight did funny things to the tree line; if I squinted they could be mountains.
Even in the winter I’d sit there, layered in sweaters and blankets while my puppy lay at the foot of my bed, curled up tight against the cold. After replacing the screens I would wrap the little dog up in my discarded blankets to warm him up. He was very young then; I would lay next to him and whisper his name in his silky ear while he slept, to help him learn it.

I’d sing, too, to him or the cats or snakes or lizards or turtles or frogs or rats or fish or ferrets—to whatever pets I had at the time. I had one of my first pet snakes then—a fat, four-foot ball python named Lily. Knowing she couldn’t hear my voice, sometimes I’d gather her up in my arms and sing with her held close to my chest, hoping the mellow vibrations would have a sort of soothing, lullaby affect. I’d sing slow, sentimental songs that sometimes made me cry for no particular reason. Just because they were beautiful.

I have always marveled at the profound effects of music, and the power it gives to so many talented artists. Lyrics, compositions, harmonies; a single musician producing albums and albums of the enigmatic brilliance that is to twist or rouse a heart at will, song after song.

How can one person have so many beautiful things inside of them? It is God, pouring into and out of their souls, whether they know it or not.

I have some beautiful things inside me, too, but not so many as that. Not albums full like the musicians, or books full like the authors of great literature, or galleries full like real artists. I have made some beautiful things, just a few, and for them I worked so hard they were ground from my very bones. My bones are rather tired these days. Too tired to make any more beautiful things, at least for now.
I’ve heard that life is a series of rhythms, of ebbs and flows. I feel as if I am experiencing the former. Taking an unwilling sabbatical from production. Though I suspect that a large part of this current “ebb” comes from the paralyzing fear—or knowledge, even—that the things I try to make won’t turn out the way I’d envisioned. I think a “flow” will come again eventually, and until then I hope to absorb more of the beauty that already exists.

As a child in the window sill I was a black hole for all things beautiful, a vortex frantically sucking in more and more, stars and music and art, animals landscapes flowers and sparkly things, nature and glinting chandeliers, the sounds of violins and harmonies. I particularly liked the durable things, things that could keep their deepest beauty even in the rough. That was my favorite. Somehow I felt that the beauty wasn’t quite so genuine if it couldn’t survive a tumble or two; if it could be completely ruined by a bit of mud and mess.

I think maybe beauty shouldn’t be afraid to be ugly.

A Sampling of Dreams

Friday night’s dream is a girl in a tomb. She sits on the edge of the stone slab meant for her resting place, swinging her long legs. She is wrapped in a green silk cloth. When she sees me she jumps down from the slab and brushes her wispy blond hair back from her sallow face. She stops and stares at me with slow, intense deliberation. Her eyes are sunken, two round shadows in the cold paleness of her face, like two footprints in the fresh snowdrifts of her high cheekbones. Her mouth was red, a splash of blood in that snow; beautiful, and blind. I look into her snow-cave eyes and she gazes back at me-—through me-—with a sort of absent-minded hardness.

“Spirit cooking.” She says to me, her voice so dark and low it seems as if my ears are submerged in deep water.

“But we have no pots,” I say, feeling dazed and lightheaded. There is something in the air here.
~*~

On a Wednesday night it snows in my mind as I sleep. A stark snow of isolation and cold gasps; of brute survival and fear and you could scream scream scream your lungs out and your voice would fall dead on the ground, absorbed instantly by this fearful snow, and silence would rein again. Absolute silence, and tense; the silence that edges every hidden terror. Not a sound to be heard, but you know that at any moment something could be behind you. Look now, make sure, look the other way, find yourself spinning in circles till you fall in that sinister snow and lie there shivering. You stay because at least now your back is covered. Now watch the sky and wait. In my dream I waited for the twisted face and milky eyes, the waxy skin sporadically interrupted by shocks of course hair, the long spindled fingers like vices that crush my ankle as I am dragged, and uneven stumpy legs that somehow still moved swift and quietly through the thin woods. Bound and gagged in the warehouse I pray it won’t hurt when I am crucified.
~*~

On Thursday night, I dream I am a child. I am peering nervously out from underneath a clothing rack, lost amid the bright, cheap hues of Walmart. Mommy had left me and somehow I know she isn’t coming back. I cry; I wake up crying.
~*~

Another night, I dream that I am miraculously, inexplicably pregnant with a puppy. I am in a soft pink hospital suite, closely monitored considering the curiousness of my particular case. There is a treadmill in my room; the doctors want me to walk a little every day. A television mounted in an upper corner plays an old black-and-white movie. I am excited; I have never liked babies very much but I love puppies. Somewhere deep down I always wondered if I would really like my own baby very much, if I ever had one. But I have no doubt I will love a puppy. Sonogram pictures taped to the wall by my bed depict the fuzzy image of a tiny canine, curled and sleeping with eyes shut tight. As is typical with dreams, the gravity of the dream's absurdity does not occur to me until the morning.
~*~

A few nights ago, I dream of a serpent-like demon. She sparkles blue, so bright in my eyes, and possesses pretty little things; lovely little trinkets. Golden eggs, lipstick and feathers, pieces of glass, chandelier baubles and empty bottles of wine, polished stones and wind chimes. Things that catch the light; things I like to touch. I am drawn to the mysterious beauty of these things, like a moth into the deeper darkness behind a deadly flame. My gaze lingers for too long, and I reach my fingers slowly out to touch the shining surfaces. Through the sparkles my demon mistress pulls me into her world; her black labyrinth. I wander through black marble hallways, occasionally passing doors set deep into the walls. There are many doors, each leading into stark, foggy white rooms. One door leads to safety; somehow I know it. I know the search for this room is perilous, though; I know that behind one of the doors the demon waits, and she will pull me into the white to sit stiffly on a cold wrought-iron bench. She will float before me, three times my size. She speaks evil things to me in whispers that are soft yet sharp, filling my ears like razor blades hidden in folds of velvet. She curses my family and blasphemes my God; she asks me if I agree with this bile. I tell her no. She takes my shoulder in her mouth and crushes it with her white-hot teeth. She asks me again if I agree. Again I tell her no. Again she bites, my other shoulder this time. This happens four more times. Body and soul I am wracked with pain and terror and burning guilt for wanting oh so wanting to just give in and damn everything I love, just to escape; just for relief.
~*~

Last night I dreamed the world ended, so I came back to you.
In the aftermath you buttoned my jacket against the ash and cold, and helped me put things into the torn paper shopping bag that was all I’d held on to when the city went bang. Sparkles in the crumbled sidewalks winked up at us through grimy rubble as we wandered. No one in the streets, no one else anywhere. We were so isolated, you and I, walking together without a thought of whatever had separated us before. What did yesterday’s conflicts matter now that our only bed was a burnt-up limousine, half-smashed in the gutter? There was a certain peace in the lack of choice, in the way the apocalypse rendered every previous concern irrelevant. How we were forced together in pure survival because suddenly there was nothing, no one else alive on the bare smoldering planet. No one else to help me tie my shoes when my fingers were cold and numb.
Last night I dreamed the world ended,so I came back to you.


.

A Stream of Her Consciousness

She would read a book and be in the mood of it for days, the mood of whatever was happening in the story. Lovers’ quarrels were the worst, especially when the man was to blame, but she liked it when they made up again, tender and sweet. Only this does not always happen in books, especially the ones she reads. Most of them make her sad, and she knows that but reads them anyway, because she will settle for nothing less than the nit and grit and bittersweet and ugly, and shocking maybe, or illustrations of the dull, gray monotony of the everyday; the rock in every stomach and the dryness of every tongue and the enigmatic question undefined in every mind.

So she takes on the mood of what she read and often it is a sort of melancholy introspection. Sometimes she’ll read something more optimistic—about what she considers to be happiness of substance; the “comes-after-something-hard” appreciation for continued life in which the sun rises and sleep feels nice. The sun is pretty, and sleep is something you have to do anyway. So continued life with still some beauty in it, and guiltless rest when you are tired.

Her fuse is shorter in the summertime—or at least she’d like to believe so, quietly hoping she isn’t this way all year long; that it really is just this heat. This swelter, these temperatures so high she can hear the buzz and drone, sun so bright it beats her eyes blind. White noise always in her ears and white light always in her eyes and sweat trickling down, tickling her back and making her clothes stick to her and her hair flat.

It didn’t used to bother her so much, being out in the heat. She remembers the high temperatures picking apples in Weston as a child: small apples, apples of red and yellow, of dusty worm holes and red and tart and juicy still and so red next to the yellow, and it was fine because she never found a single worm in any of the apples. She consumed them under those old-lady cedars across the street from the orchard. Their trunks and branches that bent toward the ground in an arch above her, and when she sat in the tangle of its roots she would be pulled into a sweet nostalgia, reminding her of the lap of her grandmother. Grandmother used to curl around her like that, like the tree did, when she sat in her lap as a baby. She doesn’t actually remember that, but she has seen so many pictures and knows her grandmother’s scent so well that it is almost like remembering.

It is summer now, but damp these last few days and hummingbirds swarm like locusts around the feeders, stabbing manically at the sugar water inside. They never come to her favorite feeder—the expensive one, the pretty glass one with copper accents—instead flocking to the cheap red plastic flowers glued to a transparent cylinder that hangs from the roof of the porch by a rusty hook. She leaves the glass one out though, just in case. They are such delicate little creatures; certainly sooner or later they will realize they belong among the finer things.

She thinks quite frequently. She thinks of things more often than she does them, and when she does do things she thinks so much about the doing of them that she forgets to experience the things she does.

She has thoughts and she thinks them late at night, late at night when she can’t sleep. Round and round, the horses gallop, pounding, pulling carriages that bump roughly over every wrinkle in her brain. She’s rearranging her furniture hoping that it will make other changes easier; hoping it will fool her heart into thinking that the strange horizon is a fresh start rather than the ruins of what she painstakingly pieced together with her own two hands and blood, sweat, and tears. A model-future, the scaled-down structure of what she thought things might be. Hopeful ideas glued together with circumstantial facts, forming a skeleton that was the practical plan beneath the lovely Dream.
The Dream had been lovingly sculpted with tender—if shaky—hands, every bit of it. The airy hypostyle supported by a forest of twisting Solomonic columns with capitals carved to the very last ornate detail, the symbolic finials perfectly placed atop onion domes, the tracery artfully dispersed inside the arched and vaulted rooms, a custom-make of everything her own. She had even furnished it with the people and things she hoped would be included there if the model-future was ever realized.
It was perfect. Elaborate—even gaudy, perhaps—but hers. Specific enough for security and joyful anticipation, but left with enough unfinished parts to be exciting and mysterious.
But she knows the glue of facts pertains to the present and thus is subject to change. Years of planning and building and loving and laughing and crying and heartache and happiness and meticulous craftsmanship. She has almost forgotten that it is only a prototype, a rough draft; not necessarily a promise of how things may turn out to be. She dwelt there as if it were home and it has held up—-for the most part—-until now, when she begins to hear the creaking. It’s only settling, she is sure at first. But it is getting louder now, and she trips over cracks in the foundation. She knows the glue is beginning to break its hold, because circumstances are changing and if they continue she knows the glue will finally dissolve and it will fall apart—-all of it. She lingers by the doorway, reluctant to leave, but soon begins forcing herself a safe distance away.

She never played with dollhouses as a little girl, but as that Dream House crumbles and the little pretend-people jump from the windows, she realizes she’s been playing all this time.

It is a slow crumble and she watches it, scrutinizing as if that would make it easier; as if observing every gory detail would prepare her for the Dream’s complete destruction. As if that would make it easier to live without; would make easier the vast moor of nothing it will leave behind.

I will not be overwhelmed. Underwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Under, over; under, over… like the long shards of reflected light braiding themselves together on the floor beneath the window…

She keeps pretty glass bottles on the shelf by the window, where the sun glints off the many facets of so much ornate glass, and in so many colors. They are such elegant bottles, with many fine engravings weaving up their necks, one glass textured around a cut pattern of flowering vines spreading up from the bottom. The cut flowers and their stems curve through the frosted glass with such fluid grace they almost seem to be growing—ever so slowly—toward the sun. When the sun shines through the window, the rows of bottles—the light catching everything, their curves and facets and cut designs, the round rims and a chipped spot or two—light shatters on the floor.

So beautiful.

The bottles in the window…how often she had thought to break them.

These days it seems like every song she hears breaks her heart (You’ve got a fast car; is it fast enough that we can fly away?).
Especially if she knows them well enough to sing along, to release from her own mouth the words that bring back memories, (Some had crumbled you straight to your knees; did it cruel, did it tenderly) and the harmonies where the notes skate simultaneously over and under one another, making twists and figure-eights in her ears(I know that it is freezing, but I think we have to walk).

The ones that remind her of someone else (Now fighting’s a part of baby’s romance, I’m never gonna tell on you), the ones that remind her of herself (Tuesday night at the Bible study, we lift our hands and pray over your body, but nothing ever happens), of God (When you wear your clothes, I wear them too), of old friendships (Like stubborn boys with big green eyes, we’ll see everything); the ones she doesn’t want to hear (When your want from the day makes you to curse in your sleep at night), and the ones she wish would come true (Whatever differences our lives have been, we together make a limb). They squeezed her insides like a bad nurse with a blood pressure cuff—-not tight enough to bruise really, but enough for discomfort and a sore throbbing, throbbing; building and building with no place to go but you can’t complain because it is routine and it will be over soon anyway (Be brave, dear one; be changed or be undone). And indeed when the music fades out the cuff loosens, allowing the quiet rush of tired relief (Like grace from the earth when you’re all tuckered out and tame).

Another song plays, though, and another. She can’t stop listening no matter how they make her heart feel, fit to burst, in the same way you pick at a scab: as if you could just peel off the part that hurts (Shedding skin faster than skin could grow). Over and over, (We were sixteen, maybe less, maybe a little more), throbbing, throbbing, building pressure. They force her brow to draw together (Me I’m not a gamble, you can count on me to split), her eyes to close (It was something of an end to a lovely and a wild thing).

Because of this her heart breaks roughly eight times a day. In this inexplicable sadness she tells herself, “Don’t forget, this day is good.” And it is. They are only songs; they are only thoughts, or memories. Sticks and stones…
She turns the volume down, the songs murmuring hushed in her ears, and the sepia-toned whispers sing to sleep her wandering thoughts.

Surely if I Threw Myself to the Wind

I’ve heard it’s all happening at the zoo. The perfect day: sun, breeze, the warm and raw scent of creatures; the shrill cries of spoiled children with their sticky ice-cream faces. Cell phone strangely silent in my pocket, and before I leave, I buy a stuffed tiger. Now I have something new to hold when I get home.

I like to go to the zoo, or to my back yard, or right now even to the first-floor bathroom because there’s a wasp living there, in the ceiling above the vent. I like to watch the creatures that are alive, things that have a will of their own. Animals, because they just do things; they want to do something and they do it. They operate purely from instinct; run stay eat sleep fight, defend attack hide play. I’ve never seen an animal overanalyze, or stumble all over themselves trying to keep the entire world from collapsing, the way I tend to do. Dominos are falling everywhere and I’m tired of feeling like it’s my job to set them back up again. It’s not; they’re not my dominos, it’s not my floor, and I know it’s nice to do things for other people and that I should just do the work in front of me whether it’s my job or not, but then everything becomes my job and I can’t fix it all. I can’t fix you, the enigma like a letter never sent. I can’t even fix me and that really needs to be done, though sometimes I’m not sure if anyone remembers that I’m still broken. I am no architect of souls, or of dominoes. I just want to clean up my own messes. I just want to fold my life up nice and neat, then tuck myself into it right where I belong. I just want to organize myself, then relax for a little while.

So I’m making a few changes that might make that possible. It’s a little surreal--I’m doing it. I’m making a change. Me. I hate change. I hate change but I need it now cause life won’t stop and I don’t want to go the way I have been. I’ll keep moving, as life and time demand—just in a different direction. And with each step I’ll be moving farther and farther away from the gray, vague notion of “the future” that hung in my mind like a cloud of thick smoke. Farther and farther away from the predictable. Closer and closer to I don’t know what; closer to some world I knew existed but never thought I’d be a part of. And maybe I still won’t; we’ll see. But I’m going to try.
I’m going to try to branch out; I’m going to try to do different things and go different places, but stay pretty much the same myself cause God made me that way and it’s probably time I stop trying to be anything else.

I think I’ve figured out my personal paradise. The revelation both surprises me and doesn’t. I think I’ve figured out that I am happiest when my life is in motion. When I am going new places and doing new things; new and strange experiences and adventure and anything can happen. My paradise is nowhere in particular; it is everywhere, potentially. And anywhere mistakes are ok, because it’s just part of the adventure. I like not knowing what’s going to happen next, not knowing where I’ll be in a few months. I want to choose a life like this; a life that can take me anywhere at any time to do anything. And I want to live it boldly, not quite so careful. That will take practice though; I tread so lightly now. I don’t care for this careful behavior, and what harm would it do, really, if I didn’t try quite so hard to avoid disturbance? I feel like I have some room to relax, maybe. My secrets are small, relatively. In the grand scheme of things they don’t really matter. Some would be embarrassing or shameful or sad to discuss, but then, I am human. I’m not the best one, but I’m not the worst either. I want to just let myself go, go, go, like a runaway kite. I might get stuck in a tree—my clanging, colored pattern of polygon shapes wrestling weakly with pointed branches and soft, green leaves—but I will know it was the wind that put me there—God’s own wind, because He blows it and surely if I threw myself to the wind and trusted it completely, the Lord send it this way and that until it and I accomplished His purposes.

Sometimes I give myself this pep talk, about the life I want to try for and the seeming attainability of freedom from both past and future mistakes; the sovereign God and His wind and what that has to do with me. And then my place on the sofa seems so small. I curl up, usually, fitting entirely on about three-quarters of a cushion while dogs fill up the rest. I don’t like to take up much space; I don’t like to exist too largely. I must I must I must be as small as dust here on my little cushion in my little house in my little town; it’s as if no one could ever find me here. My laptop balanced on my feet, keeping them warm, or a book wedged somewhere in the tangle of my legs to hold it open while I read, or my sketchbook across my lap, or my journal on the armrest. With so many of my favorite things right there at my fingertips, the hermit in me compels me to stay. It’s so warm and comfy, and I don’t mind that it smells a little like cats.

But at a certain point, it isn’t enough. I’ve become a hermit; I’m not one naturally. So I think about my paradise—my real one, not the corner of the sofa that seems so safe—and I begin to look forward to getting out in the world. I am always so very nervous, about getting out and then feeling tired and sick while I’m away from what is familiar, but when I think enough about what I truly want out of life, it seems worth the pain and fatigue of fighting lupus. I hope—I pray—that it does end up being worth it; that I will be glad I worked so hard for things that come so easily to those blessed with good health. I hope too that I will achieve things that come easily to no one, and then maybe I’ll know that in spite of everything I did it, and then it’ll feel like it’s worth that much more. I hope.

I live a small life in a small town, and I am smaller still. Small like the girl who doesn’t know anyone’s names here, in this place where everyone knows everyone, and nobody knows hers.
Small like the itch you can’t scratch, a tiny little itch yet it might as well be screeching in your ears, “I’m here! I’m here! I’m here!”.

I’m here.

Small also is my hope for the future, and small is my belief that my efforts will come to fruition.
But sometimes at night, after everyone else has gone to bed and Ambien gently rocks my mind back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…And then I do think there’s a little hope for something. There’s hope that I may have the capacity to hope. If drained of all my dark cynicism, my brain might have room then, a little room for true hope and excitement. Late, late at night I think maybe all those paradise things might actually be, someday. Maybe inside me “survival” will be displaced by “life”, and maybe some part of me, long-asleep, will wake up again.
Late, late at night I dream of waking; I dream of shedding the hazy, befuddling cloak of hibernation, forcing myself out of comfortable shadows and into the sharp, exposing light that burns away all the grime, every gray thing that bred in me—multiplying in my soul until it’s entire vision was all but black and white—and then maybe finally, finally there is clarity.

Late, late at night…

Late, late at night I don’t care that I’m the last one up; I don’t care that I’m wide awake after midnight and I could go on a walk—or a run—if I wanted to; if dark things didn’t lurk outside when no one knows that I’m out there all alone. One little lamp in a dark house in a dark field in a dark town in a dark city in everywhere that is dark now, and there’s only my small lamp and I, and I feel so small to think of it. I’m so small the dark things can catch me, easy, so I stay inside and open my eyes wide against the dark shapes that cast shadows darker still. I watch the way the black pushes up against itself in the big empty spaces. There must be empty spaces inside me, in my lungs or stomach or other organs. The darkness must push itself around in there too, like when it’s all pitch black yet you can still see shapes slowly materialize and dissolve, meandering at the edge of your vision. This kind of darkness can seem almost a substance in itself. I imagine, if I were to be cut open, the darkness would seep like thick smoke from the empty spaces in me; would gather up and roll and tumble over the edge of the incision. Harsh light would displace it, pushing it out and it would brush the pale skin of my side as if flowed lightly out and down, finally reaching the cold ground and dissipating, no evidence, no evidence; no evidence that it had ever been.

Natural Course

If you are the tide
And I the shore,
I will let you slip near—
A natural flow,
Inevitable—
Then out again, if out too
Is the natural course.
There would be a little of you left,
Soaked in;
Some baubles left behind,
Slowly sinking
Deeper into me,
Beneath my ever-shifting sands.

But if you are a flood—
An equally natural phenomenon—
And take me by storm with your
Unyielding, stoic weather,
I will let you stay,
And forever change my terrain.
I will allow you to be
All-consuming,
Submerging me, forever
Beneath the soft liquid lapping
Of your new lake.
And if I were to look up,
Through the glassy surface,
Anything I see,
I would see only
Through that lens of you.

Tide or flood
Or streams converging,
Tumbling, merging,
Rushing to some unknown destination
Deemed appropriate by gravity
Where they might divide again,
Or where they may continue
Running in the single element
That once was two.

Whatever happens, this I know:
We were a natural course;
Inevitable.
Nothing else can be
Except what is,
And nothing else could have been
Except what was;
Nor can anything else be,
Except what is coming.

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.