Flashback:
I'm sixteen and it's night and I stand under a starry sky, next to boys in an Explorer who are going to a party. I like these boys. They stand next to me, hand me the bottle of 151 and grab me when I'm about to fall on my head, into a pothole that I've imagined into existence. Erika smiles from her driveway. I throw my head back in a disbelieving laugh, mouth wide in an open grin. Is life this fun? Can it always be this fun?
It is 2007. I am standing in a cramped stall in the bathroom of a scuzzy nightclub in the Castro with a drug-dealing man who, minutes previously, was planning the threesome his boyfriend and he would have with me. This, needless to say, never came to fruition. The only light is a single red bulb hanging from the ceiling, casting that perfect rosy, whorehouse glow over everything and as he reaches into his white snakeskin jacket pocket, my stomach turns over. I am scared. I am sixteen again, doing something illicit and fun and new. He takes out his knife, switchblade, and holds it out for me on the tip. I look him in the eyes. The sheer ludicrousness of this moment, its unbelievable desperation and stupidity and innocence all swirl together in the pit of my stomach and I explode with laughter. I throw my head back, unbelieving, mouth wide in an open grin.
I am twenty three. I have just spent my day lifting, feeding, changing, bathing, and dressing an immobile, quadriplegic twelve year old suffering from severe cerebral palsy. I read to her and make her laugh. I hug her and hold her close to my body so when I hum different notes, she can feel the vibrations through my chest and lift her head, and delight in the magic of sound and feeling. I massage her tense muscles and stretch her limbs. I go home exhausted, unappreciated and underpaid. I feel like singing.
I am eighteen. It is my first election and I have cast my ballot for the first time. But it wasn't enough. I kidnap Nick and a can of black spray paint. I manage to acquire a roll of butcher paper. I make an enormous sign that says "This Isn't A Democracy, It's An Auction. Vote!" and we run, scurrying through the three-o'clock, school's-out traffic. In front of twenty stopped cars we dash onto the overpass and throw our banner, unfurling like wind in clean sails, over the freeway overpass and duct tape in in place. Cal-trans waits three minutes before tearing it down. Not before all of my neighbors and my parent's personal trainer saw it and laughed.
I am twenty. I am planning my future home. I have my book on castles open and I am looking at the varying designs of medieval arrow loops, contemplating their possible uses in a 21st century dwelling. I have begun to form an understanding of the basic Welsh pronunciation. It rolls around in my mouth, like marbles. I love it. I have begun to manifest my impossible dream.
I am twenty three. I am at Pioneer Park. It's a September night. I am swinging with Natalie. The grass smells the same, as those dark ghosts appear before me and dance their memories through my brain. My stomach drops on the up swings, hair breezing out of my face into the incense-air.
I am twenty one. My heart has just been broken. I lose my sense of reality and become the Greek Goddess Artemis, or a Nordic warrior, or spell-casting flame-throwing Viking. I wear suede fringe on my ankles, bones in my hair. I consider painting my face, streaky with red lines of blood-- warpaint. I am internal and dark and desperate. I erupt with creativity, poems, songs, art. I am a myth. A fabled legend. This is the first time in my life I begin to flirt with true insanity.
It's 2005. I stand at La Coca falls in Puerto Rico, my arms outstretched, my head back. I've just stepped from a mountain stream, in the middle of this perfect rain forest. I found petrified rock, and electric blue butterflies. I pretend I am my Taino grandmother, with my hair to my knees, wild and untamed. I am wild and untamed. I am untamed. Untamed...
And here I am on this insignificant night, writing in a blog I haven't used in months, and hadn't months before that. And all because it was suggested that I might be...jaded? Somehow different then...whoever I might have been in a distant past? And I wonder, is it really a picture or a silly refrain that makes a person who they are or are we always who we are, regardless? From 15, to 21, to 11, to 5, to today, I am who I am. And even though I know I don't NEED do defend my present self to people who continue to hold the image of my past self as the pinnacle of liberated thought...
I suppose it feels good to once again, (like I do every. Single. Time. I. Write.) evaluate my spirit. I come to the same conclusion every time. And if Kristen hasn't left me yet, nothing at all has changed.
Or did you want it to, just so you could let it all go with a good riddance?
My heart has always been intact. My soul has always been impassioned. My head has always been full of dreams. My conscious self has always done extreme, ridiculous and wonderfully, painfully naive things. And if that ever changes, may my immortal beloved (Kristen) please put me out of my blissful ignorance. Because normal isn't miserable, to any truly normal person. I wouldn't know the difference in that vegetative state.
Best wishes to anyone looking for their true selves. It's not as hard as it seems. Really, it never has been. Love you.
V
It always feels better lying next to you, letting your body warm my bed.
Remember when I was that girl? And people thought so many things and never had the right answers?
To be consumed by something greater than yourself; is lust an addiction? Or is love? And what is the difference?
Webster wasn't a twinkle in his daddy's eye when I defined them:
Living
Openly
Vicariously through
Everyone
Let yourself
Understand
Sexual
Truths
V
So, yes, it was a stroke of insanity to quit my job while wallowing in the festering bog that is our current economic state. I am worried a little about my finances. But here's the great thing-- where I'm moving rent is cheap and I take my skills, experience and certificates with me. I need a change of scenery and I need to be near my boyfriend whom I've been away from since August. I'm losing a steady paycheck for the opportunity to start my own business at almost no financial loss (another story entirely, and for a different entry), a beautiful home in a beautiful part of California, the safety and joy of having my family near (literally) and a fantastic roommate-to-be. I'm totally scared. I'm going to miss all the food in San Francisco so much, I think I might just die. But I'm so excited. I never thought I'd be moving back to Nevada County but now that it's happening I couldn't be more pleased. Ah, the strange twists and turns life will throw at you.
I don't understand why my life is so blessed. I honestly remind myself everyday that I must surely be the luckiest person alive. I can't explain it, but I think it might be that I keep my mind open (more or less) to possibility. I try to manifest my desires. I go to church, exercise and eat three square meals a day...ok, most of that is a lie. I have no idea why I'm so fortunate but I hope with all my heart that I can live to deserve it.
Which I guess brings me to my New Year's Thoughts post. I didn't intend for this to be it, actually, but here I am. I don't have any resolutions as yet. I recently underwent a very upsetting and, frankly, totally shitty screening for cancer and tumors (also another post) which fortunately checked out well (I don't have cancer! Yay!) but my strange health issues are still going strong and the feats of Western medicine have reached their limits...a mystery with as yet, no conclusion. So, in light of that I do think I need to eat better. Oh ye who read my yearly New Year's blog and know that I vow to change my eating habits EVERY FRIGGIN' YEAR and then don't...shut up.
I think I need to really bring more spirituality into my life too. I have some New Year's Eve rituals planned and as I will be spending the Eve at the hot springs, it'll hopefully be a relaxing, cleansing and healing night. Usually I hate New Year's Eve. It always makes me so depressed. Like, when everyone is kissing and singing at midnight I'm totally bummed that another year of my life has passed by that didn't involved Wales, a castle, winning the lottery or doing something useful and philanthropic. I decided to head my depression off at the pass...Donner Pass to be exact. I don't even want to be around celebrations when 2008 gallantly bows out (to which I can only say thank God and good riddance) and "ring in" the new with a Watsu treatment, soak in a hot tub and a buffalo burger.
Really, what else do you need in life?
So, no point in this post really. Nothing exciting or poetic. Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and that you may all continue to live and be blessed in the new year.
God, when did I become such a hippie? Peace all.
V
- Mood:
hopeful
I needed perfume. Such a spoiled brat, but there you go. The thing is, I haven't had a new smell since I was sixteen. There was the Victoria's Secret body, that reminded me of Nathaniel and Oren and drinking vodka under the bridge. There was the Candie's that reminded me of Garrett and skate shoes and drinking Jack Daniel's and pretending to be spies with Elicia. There was the White Moss, that reminded me of Erika, and horses and Adam and going to NU Tech and listening to all the wrong music and being in love with Nick. Smell. So important to our memories. It is the catalyst for so many things we do. It is the reason I've done things, the reason I hold on to things. The reason I keep cheap perfume on my shelf-- chemically scents that I'll never wear again but keep just so I can relive those memories. They gather dust and take up space but if I threw them away I know I'd be loosing a part of my life that I worked so hard to hold on to...and that I'd miss so dearly.
So, in the middle of a recession and the worst political campaign of all time, in the middle of all the horrendous things taking place in this God-forsaken world I went to Nordstrom. A perfect, beautiful and flamboyantly gay man greeted me at the perfume counter. Can I help you? Yes. I need me. I need something that smells like me.
He gave me two choices. The first was Narcisco Rodriguez. I'd asked for masculine, told him I didn't care if it was actually a men's cologne, that scent didn't have gender or sex or identity. He pulled its black bottle from the tray without blinking-- spicy, dark, masculine...
Yes. It was. It was a girl in a nightclub. It was lipstick smeared on a martini glass. It was snorting cocaine in the bathroom, but maybe just once and with regret. Narcisco Rodrigez was a girl with dark eyeshadow, the one that writes poems to her lovers at night. She was the girl they all wanted to kiss but never got the chance to, and the one you know you'd have fun with if you just broke her glass exterior and insisted she hang out with you instead of going home to her boyfriend. She's the girl you'd weep over when she announces her engagement, the girl you fantasize over when you spend the night alone. On the surface she's seductive and convincing-- yeah, "that" type of girl, and yet...
when you get her alone she'll quote Shakespeare and tell you the story about the time she got her heart broken and you'll have to spend six months untangling yourself from her heartstrings. You can feel all her bruises and she'll let you caress all her strong spots-- triceps, quads, right atrium.
The second perfume was altogether different. I swooned when I brought the flimsy paper scrap to my nose. It was full of jasmine and licorice. It took me away into a fairy-tale land that I've had the opportunity to live, but rejected several times and always wondered (especially in the light of this past year) if it was something that might be a good fate for me, in the end...
It was a rich lady. It was a lady that sends her clothes out for dry cleaning. That's married to man she met in a restaurant, who makes 3.4 million dollars a year and spends his summers on the Italian riviera. She plays tennis in a short white skirt, sweater looped comfortably around her neck. Her closet is full of Jimmy Choo's and Manolo Blahnik's.
This woman isn't young or even particularly ambitious. This woman was in the right place at the right time. She's an opportunist. She likes her husband, but doesn't know him very well. They go to dinner sometimes. Ad Hoc. French Laundry. He flies her to Monaco. She agreed to have sex with him, even though he's thirty years older. Hermes is permanently wrapped around her neck, wrist, shoulders. She's not always happy in her palace. White marble and gold filigree. Little yapping dogs and lusting over the pool boy. She has affairs with exciting young men. She's a flower wasted on the aged wealthy man, who's friends drool over her at expensive cocktail parties and foundation fundraisers. Sex is dispassionate and robotic. It's a chore, like having her children. But she has money in the bank and any time he get's her down (like the time he kissed her on the forehead and left to play golf with the good 'ole boys an hour after giving birth to his first child) she knows she can whip out his Visa and feel better.
She knows there's always a cure. And if not, there's always torrid affairs and lazy days at her Petite Trianon. Her Monaco. Her Italian Riviera.
I chose the Narcisco Rodriguez.
I made sure the salesman made me a sample bottle of the Bulagari. 100% fresh flowers, with no synthetics, he said. I know. But $140 for 1.5 ounces really doesn't cut it...even for all it's Hermes scarves and Lamborghinis.
I doused myself in Bulgari, today, and strutted to work in my fading leather boots, my frilly dress, my dark eyeshadow.
It was dark and I was tired when I finally unwrapped the square, black bottle. I can't stop holding it to my nose. I don't have any memories tied to it yet, but I will. It's my dangerous girl. My alone time girl. The girl I'm in love with and always want to be.
Rye goes down easy, with sweet limoncello. I can't get him out of my head. I can't get him out of my head.
No Reservations is a travel show, with an emphasis on the food of the cultures he documents in his hour-long documentaries. He travels to both well-known and off-the-map places in search of good company, good times and good food. Usually the show opens with a montage of the fast-paced, beautiful images shot by cameraman Todd Liebler, set to a happy rock-n-roll tune that makes the viewer sit back with their bucket of chicken or bowl of popcorn and say something like, "Gosh, I wonder what country he's doing today!"
Today I was met with none of those things, as I randomly clicked to an episode I'd not yet seen. "Beirut...this should be interesting," I thought. How right I was, but not at all the in the way I'd expected. This show was different.
Unbelievably, this show began filming a mere one day before the Israeli army began to mobilize it's troops crossing the border into Lebanon and beginning an air-strike that would continue until after the crew of No Reservations hellish nine days were over. The ironic, sad and beautiful elements this strange, unexpected show documented are unbelievable and thought-provoking. I watched as Anthony dined that first day at a cafe with his guide, who spent most of that day discussing Beiruti's response to constant bombing during the civil war.
It wasn't cool to go into the bomb shelters back then, he said. Talk on the street was that all the nightclubs had their own generators. During the boming, Beirut, in stubborn defiance, continued to party. Beirut is now a center of culture and religions that have all come together to co-exist and is healing nicely...or so it was at the time. Later that afternoon, came the first sounds of automatic gunfire and parades of cars with men and boys (some of them no older than six or seven) waving Hezbollah flags and V-for-Victory signs. Though they didn't explain it in the show, my understanding was this was their response to Hezbollah rocketing Israel and consequently the Beirut that Anthony had spent hours filming-- the Beirut that housed nightclubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, fantastic looking shwarma, hummus, arak and amazingly hospitable people-- was crumbling into chaos.
They awoke in their hotel the following morning to the sight of the airport, the one they had used to fly in, as nothing more than a raging inferno. What proceeded were seven days of chaos, attempting to get some news, some information on how they were to escape and sitting in a hotel in the north of the city nervously playing poker, sitting by the pool...just waiting. Waiting. Waiting. A clip of President Bush stuffing his face with a buttered roll while Tony Blair attempted to secure his attention crushed their spirits. Is there anyone coming? Does the American president care about anything other than himself and his oil cronies? Pretty much, no.
To make a longish and harrowing story short, they were able to evacuate onto a U.S. Marine Corps boat and make it to safety. I doubt their network will ever send them back. The thing that amazed me most though, amid the plight of the Berutis and the heartbreaking spectacle of families being torn apart trying to evacuate from their home, was what Anthony eventually had to say about the Marines.
As anyone who knows me understands, I am firmly against militarism of any kind. I do not support war, fighting or the antagonizing of smaller countries with the militia. I've voted to eliminate the Junior R.O.T.C. in high schools, and to ban the military from recruiting on college campuses. I've cried and pleaded with headstrong friends wanting to join up (for whatever reason) and I've never, ever been enthralled by patriotic displays of military splendor, the fourth of july or even (call me a traitor?) the American flag. I am, as a citizen, horrified at the Bush Administration's ability to wage a preemptive war for oil, blame it on an event that was known to be the work of another country entirely, and over the course of eight years effectively cripple the American economy, robbing its very own citizens of housing, food, health care, and so many other things. I'm disgusted at the level of crime that is tolerated in this country (observing Oakland as the wild-west town it's been allowed to become) and at the level of illiteracy and ignorance that is tolerated here. I am furious at the extremist religious agenda of our current regime, and that it is not only tolerated by millions of unthinking citizens but that its harm is ignored and supported by hypocrisy and hubris. I plan to move as soon as I am able. So all in all, I was a little biased against whatever positive things Anthony might have to say about our military in the first place.
He spoke of being amazed at the care, kindness and respect he and his friends were shown at the hands of the Marines upon rescue. They film the men comforting people, offering food, making phone calls for people, entertaining them and sharing stories of home with them. The moment they stepped onto that boat, they were safe. And it got me to thinking, how many cynical liberal San Franciscans out there like me think that every single man or women who joins up is going to be a killer? Is going to help ruin the lives of thousands, perhaps millions of people guilty of nothing more than being born in a country that has oil reserves? Or lives next door to another bully like us? That is smaller and weaker and worships God in a different way? How many times in my life have I looked at a man in uniform and thought, "Thanks for backing Bush and his cronies. Thanks for letting yourself be pawn in the game for those pointless intangables- "freedom" and "justice" and things that no American really knows anything about. Thanks for not realizing that you are selfishly going to leave being your wife and kids in vain...because your death will make no difference at all. Natural selection, I guess."
I've thought that a million times. But I'm rich and I live in a peaceful country. I don't have to worry about escaping from my home, my beloved California, and leaving behind my friends and family and loved ones. I will probably never fear for my life at the hands of an invading army from a country I know nothing about. But if, dear friends, I ever experience those horrible things, those things that millions and maybe billions of people experience every day, I can assure you with every inch of my fickle heart that I would welcome the smiling face of a U.S. Marine coming to my rescue as if it was the face of God himself.
And I think that might be what allows this other extreme-- the liberal (and understandable) hatred of the military and its supporters. The fact that we do not live with it. We only see them recruiting, persuading, marching, celebrating, rah-rah-ing America. And it's hideous and repugnant to thinking people who get their information from outlets other than the news on t.v. It makes sense. But we are unable to see them really doing what they claim-- rescuing and (God, I sound corny) saving lives. They saved my beloved travel host and for that I'm quite thankful. But to see the footage of them smiling and comforting women with hijabs pulled tightly around their beautiful faces, children crying and acting...like men with manners who respect other peope...that was utterly novel and new to me. That was amazing and confusing. That rattled my perception of who takes part in the game of war. Which then opens a new can of squirming worms-- why would anyone good play such a deadly evil game?
I'm making huge generalizations. I have beloved friends who serve in the military who are more than decent, perfect gentlemen. I know that things are never simple, but complicated, painful and confusing at best of times. I know this tiny and insignificant piece of film will never make me want to wave a flag or sing my national anthem with pride. It might, however, make me think a little before joining in with the Berkley crowd, chanting about careless and unthinking drones in the military (which exist undoubtedly). It's the realization of one more stereotype that, who knows? Could make me a more loving and accepting person. Go figure. I'll take all the help I can get.
They made it home alright, and continued their shows. Today, I know nothing of Lebanon. By tonight I will. By tonight I will be more educated, more aware and more open-hearted. By tomorrow I will be a fractionally better person than I am today. Let's hope. Let's hope...
I want to thank everyone who has actively worked to promote peace in the Middle East, be it by non-violent protest, prayer or military action helping people to find safe havens in the midst of turmoil. Please continue to work towards peace and non-violence. It is the strongest and highest form of self, to work for peace and understanding. This war will end. This world will turn, and with it will turn and turn the shadows of all the men and women who've worked to make it a better place...
and the shadow of a cedar tree among all the other flags.
And so my days have taken on this holding-pattern state. Full of buzzing, garbled static and no more rabbit ears to adjust, to attempt to pick up a proper signal. The world sounds to me like the way they depict the world sounding to deaf people in the movies...a constant heartbeat, the dense fuzzy noise like ears stuffed with cotton balls and the far-away sounds coming out in slow-motion of people trying to make you hear, see, understand. I feel my face practically crack into pieces when I smile. It's because I remember to so rarely these days that when I do, it feels strange.
And it's not that I'm not good at things, that I'm irresponsible, that I'm lazy or that I'm stupid. It's not that I'm slow or bad at what I do or inattentive. It's that I can't turn a 60 into a 40. It's that I am full of billowing clouds of butterflies and moths that always want up and as much as I try to trap them and pin them neatly on cards, crucified for the sake of scientific study or less anxious employers...
I don't kill the things that bother me. I open my mouth and they pour out.
And when I go home at night, even when I know I forgot important things and even when I feel dreadful because I know people are frustrated with me all. the. time.
Even then, I sleep a little better at night. I'm no actress. I'm just me.
And the moths will find a summer home, eventually, even if I don't.
I can't hear much through the buzzing, but I know two things are true.
I want to be good at what I do.
I want to do what I'm good at.
I love you.
Yesterday was a normal day. I was driving to work and I was ten minutes late. A very normal day for me. It was hot, eighty degrees in my usually foggy neighborhood. My windows were down. My radio was on. I was cruising down Sunset when I came to a stoplight. The cop on the motorcycle zoomed out into the intersection, holding his hand up, whistle in his lips. Oh brother, I thought. A funeral procession. Around the corner came the hearse, first as always, long and black and somber. Then came a black limo. I didn't pay attention. I frowned at the orange "FUNERAL" signs hanging from rear view mirrors. How selfish, I thought, to take up everyone's time like this. I have places to go. I shouldn't have to be late to work because Uncle Paulie croaked.
I waited and waited. Rolling my eyes, I looked down the street in exasperation. My jaw dropped. Really, I didn't think people's jaws dropped in real life, but mine did. Down Vicente, as far as I could see were cars with little orange tags in the windows. One after another, after another they kept coming. The policeman held his ground. People next to me revved their engines in impatience, but the cars kept coming. Chryslers and Buicks, giant Tahoes and clunky pickups. A pristine Harley-Davidson rolled by, it's chrome polished to mirrors, it's driver in a dark pressed suit, one hand touching his face. The lights flashed from green to yellow to red three times and they still came.
All these people for one person. All these people organized themselves and drove their cars behind one person, one person they must have loved. I wanted to know, who died? I wanted to roll down my window and call out to the Harley. What would he have said? "A great person! My grandmother! A good friend! A mafia don!" I have no idea. I wanted to know, if there is someway to live my life so that when I die, people won't question assembling a line of cars 60-long to follow my lifeless corpse to the cemetery to dig my grave and toss me in...well, I want to know the secret.
They caused a traffic jam. The policeman kept driving before they were all through. I managed to pass, but there was honking and confusion. I drove past each one again, speeding up to see them...hoping I could somehow absorb the story of this great person, who might have been loving, who might have been powerful, who might have been good to have all these people care.
Past the Tahoe with the sniffing couple. Past the stoic Harley. Past the black limo with it's guests crammed like mourning sardines, arms wrapped around each other's shoulders. Past the lone sleek hearse, car 1.
I shivered in the eighty-degree sunlight. I understand now. I don't know why it came, but it did. It's observance. It's tradition. It's respect, more than anything else...to line up and drive, like marching in procession. I wanted to wait until the end of the never ending line of mourning cars and sneak in behind them, follow them to wherever they were headed, cover my face with sunglasses and pretend I knew him too. I wanted to know, why why why. I turned away from the sad caravan and onto the freeway.
I made it to work on time.
There are 1,100 federal laws that are triggered by marriage. None of them have anything to do with the intangibles-- the way my heart knows to its core that this is the right thing for us, the logical and practical arguments for its being a good idea, my ache to move on and my unflinching knowledge that we can get through anything (because, naive I may be but stupid I am not).
Nevada City was warm and the nights were cool. I drove to Pioneer Park at midnight. The swings squeaked their familiar tune, back and forth, back and forth.
This was where I brought all my loves. This is where I brought Garrett, Zach, Nick and Mike. That summer smell intoxicated me, the smell of dry grass, dirt and fresh water. The smell of a thousand summers, jumping up out of their dusty graves and dancing before us with all their Technicolor memories intact. That smell of befores and would-haves and wish-I-dones.
I said goodbye to everyone I loved in this cool summer air, on these summer-squeak swings. I played like a child in the night, laughing as my stomach rushed to the top of my throat on the down swings, and inhaling the incense-night on the up-swings. I clenched my eyes, remembering. I even said goodbye to Kristen, on these swings. I even said goodbye to Kriss...
And I know that no one who knows us would encourage or be happy. I know they would worry and frown. And I know that people change, but who doesn't? And that I'm a romantic who feels more than she knows.
But I'm smart and I'm capable. I'm a ruthless thinker. I put love aside when I need to. I don't fear logic anymore, not since that winter adventure with Jon. That winter adventure that taught me so much in just a few hours. I don't fear logic and reason anymore, and I know when to say when, even if I'm still Vanessa Jade.
But our arguments take the magic out, and I know from your voice that it's too early. You have to think.
So as much as my heart droops in my chest, and as much as I wish it could be some other way, I know (perhaps even better than you, my dear) that you need to think it out and not say "Right now, but wait...Now, but let me think..."
It's summer, love. I don't need to fly south yet. I have time to wait in the sandy, crackle-grass evenings. I have time to wait for my 1,100 benefits. How long does it take to count to 1,100?
As long as it takes me to say
"Yes"
with every inch of my heart.
V
The dawn came and I stumbled into a crumbling marketplace. A small gathering of people had formed around a preacher man who was Terrence Howard. I closed my eyes and took a breath before looking around and falling, in supplication, to my knees. Like the Titanic sinking, taking its last gulp of air before going under, our little group was being torn apart. They were upon us, ripping and eating flesh off bone. Like a virus taking hold one by one, as quick as anything they fell, writhing, people who had been fine and whole moments before, people who’d been staring intently into Terrence Howard’s eyes and grasping his cloak, they were spewing blood from every orifice now, screaming in horrible inhuman shrieks, and there were ten of us…eight of us…five…four…
Closing in, I told myself it was over. This is the end of days. How interesting that I am one of the last people alive to see it. How interesting that I might be here on my knees before a preacher as the ice-water Atlantic pools up around my neck. I was sad for an instant, and I heard Terrence say, “The good will inherit the Earth.” This was the end of days, and the last of us was pulled under.
I swear, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.
I’ve been dreaming a lot these days. I guess you could say I’ve been bringing it on myself, reading ancient livejournal entries. Dear Diary, today Nick and Nathaniel and I laughed until we cried the way we do every day. Then I got drunk with Oren and Chris and Bryan and Kelly and we all fell in love with each other and woke up with hangovers.
Something to that effect. My sister is dating the little brother of the former-best-friend of the boy I first ever fell in desperation with. It was love and lust. It was desperation. He said he saw her and for some reason, thinking about all that has happened to me in this past rocky and strange year, all that I’ve said and done and regretted…
And then juxtaposing it with the simple memories about days when I would hold Nick’s hand and laugh until tears rolled down our cheeks, when I would pinkie-swear boys that I would marry them someday, when I loved a skinhead, when I was a free spirit…
I fell to pieces all over again.
Nathaniel wonders why I can still be sad over things that happened 5, 6, 7 years ago. I don’t know. I never will. It is the part of my heart that can cry for four days over a dead pet fish. It is the part of my heart that remembers the way we were.
The thing is, we’re all grown up now. We have jobs, degrees, directions, hopes, ambitions. But are we happier? Are we better off? Are we happier now than we were when we were drinking under bridges in winter? Than when we were jumping over fences and going to the river? Shrooming and kissing strangers in the hot summer twilight? Watching Almost Famous and refusing to date, and going to shows and getting in fights and pretending to be angry and going to Target and Relay for Life and living like rockstars and children at the same time? Are we happier now?
Nick used to hold me. I remember when we used to laugh. I remember when we used to cry too…I almost wish I had that, at least, to hang on to. Nathaniel was my unicorn. Garrett was my love. Kristen was my me. Cat was my partner in crime. All the others were my friends. Courtney, my muse…Oren, my devil…Jarrod, my question mark…Ian, my gentleman…
The list goes on for eternity. I was lucky, I had a lot of friends, I guess. I miss my friends. I never expected to be living the straight life after living like the crazed artist, hippie, rockstar child I was…but here I am with a good job that I love and I’m done with school and now…
Is the magic gone for good? Or did we just forget, for the moment?
V
On the other upside, I got a new medicine for my broken tummy that I just started taking today which is AMAZING and made me feel like a normal human being that can actually eat real food without getting sick, for once. As much as I hate taking drugs, I really think sometimes it's just for the best. It treats the symptoms but as long as I'm still working on finding out the cause of the problem, I think taking a pill once in a while to get through the day is a good thing. Woot for evil Western medicine.
It's time for me to go take a hot bath, and then prepare for what will probably be a devastating math final tomorrow. QUESTION ALL MATH PEOPLE! If I have a 76% in my class, and I need a final grade of at least 70% to pass, and the final is worth 30% of our total grade...how do I figure out what percent I need to get on the final to pass the class? Help! I really want to know!
Ok, this is like, the most normal post I've ever posted I think. Love you all. Hope all your tummies are well and happy. Hope finals are going wonderfully. Oh and thanks to all for my b-day presents and hanging out and all that good stuff. I love you all dearly.
Peace.
V
- Mood:
exhausted
I have the memories, stored like photographs, neatly in my brain. I know what it looked like to break up with him. I know what clothes we were wearing, I remember the day perfectly. I remember everything I ate that week. I remember the aftermath, too, in perfect Technicolor. But it's become a silent film. Somewhere along the line the sound became garbled, and so I watch my recollections spinning by like waltzing Atlanta belles, splendorous and horrible and totally missing that one thing that gave them any validity-- feeling.
Which, I do declare, is lovely. I walked this path of companionship many times, and I know now where to look for the gnarled roots that stick up in the middle, the rocks hidden around bends. I won't be tripped up so easily this time, and if there's a landslide or a "road closed for repairs" I won't have a cardiac arrest. I'll follow my map to greener pastures.
I could tell myself to keep my hair short and my bags packed...but I think, regardless of the state of the road or the accuracy of my map, I might settle in for another long while.
In other news, work is going well (on my end of it, anyway). I hope to have enough saved to travel before the year is out but I've been saying that for the past several years so don't anybody hold your breath. I've been sewing a lot for someone that doesn't really know how. I finished my Renaissance chemise, now I'm piecing together a skirt to go with it. For Halloween my dad is taking my sister and me to see the original silent-film version of "Phantom Of The Opera" at Davies Symphony Hall. They're going to accompany it with their GIANT organ. I'm quite excited and am collecting patterns to make our costumes a la Victoriana. All of them are hopelessly complicated. I'm unbelievably thankful that I live with a master seamstress. Considering that I eventually want to make all of my clothes, this I suppose will be good practice.
I can't wait 'til summer so I can lay at the river and worship the sun. The cozy charm of winter and the seductive haze of summer always seem to pass so quickly. Nine weeks and they're gone. It's the dull gray chill of spring and fall that last for eternity that give summer and winter their meaning, I suppose. I want to tattoo my body with henna-red stains. I want to brown, golden like bread on hot rocks. I want the Yuba dust and the Sierra cicadas, I want Nick's beautiful self venturing into the heat with me. I want all those hidden, unspoken secrets summer hides in its green leaves and humid air.
I want the sunsets at nine p.m.
I want a feast with friends that never ends.
Love all.
V
you can sometimes see a person feeling
the stars igniting in the back of their retinas
when they look at you
they are the starfish clinging
they are the urchin fused to the rock
living like cockles and barnacles they do
because they love me
and I, like the trembling crashing waves, washed over them with
indifference
loud and abrasive
you need strong glue to fuse in the wake of my tempest
you need to be strong, as I wildly crash in all directions
if I was the rock, and you were the person crashing
deep and salty
dangerous
wet
I would say
put out the stars and quench the sun
I cannot live with all this noise
I'd wait for low tide
and hope the sailors said their prayers
just beyond the feathers that line your
grass green iris'
and just beyond those my dear
I see it in you,
is love a sadness?
or a wanting?
it's the pain of loosing me
and the joy of gaining you
what is the reason we want to shed our tears?
what is the reason we so often cry?
it is the urchins
it is the dusky barnacles
it is the clinging to the rock until you die.
When I was 15, I read books on revolutionaries for fun. I handed out fliers educating readers about Fidel Castro and the U.S. involvement with Cuba. I read books, nine hundred pages thick, on the life of Che Guevara, and absorbed documentaries on Julia Butterfly Hill and the Pacific Lumber Company after my ballet classes. When I was 15, I knew I’d be famous by my 21st birthday. By then I’d have completed a grueling tree-sit on Pacific Lumber grounds, single-handedly saving all the redwoods in California. By my 21st, I would have led marches on Washington, given radical speeches to the masses about revolution and reform. I would have traveled to third world countries, bringing food, clothing and medical treatment to the destitute. I read A Communist Manifesto and thought I knew what it meant. I was silent on the “Support Gays With Silence Day” at school. When we held walkouts, I was always the first to leave.
When the airplanes hit the Twin Towers on September 11th, I, like everyone else, submitted to a state of shock. At first I didn’t believe it, I even joked about it. Then I watched the footage, over and over. This doesn’t happen, I thought. Oh but it does. I thought of my grandmother, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. She’s recounted it for me so many times. During that war, they covered their windows with blackout curtains. In the evenings the city’s air-raid sirens would unexpectedly start blaring and she and her sisters would shut the curtains quickly so as not to be seen from the sky. If the sirens began while walking home at night, they’d scramble into doorways in the pitch darkness to wait out the raid. Then came the dark droning of the planes. My grandmother told me they never knew if the planes were Americans leaving or enemies attacking. They lived with that fear, that real tangible sting of war, here in San Francisco. They grew their Victory Gardens and recycled foil wrappers for the war effort. They knew what it was like to be at war.
I sat in my father’s lap for the first time in years that night. I cried into his shoulder, and let him pet me, telling me it would be alright. By the time we declared war in spring 2003, I was prepared. I wanted so badly to join the hundreds of thousands who poured onto Market Street here in San Francisco. I wanted to jump into my friends cars and join the throngs, raising my teenage voice, sitting on shoulders to hold my sign higher, even getting arrested, a martyr for my cause. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, roughly 2,150 protestors were arrested the first three days of the war. Tens of thousands flooded in, using civil disobedience and the power of many to protest this disgusting and unnecessary preemptive attack. Things changed. I wallpapered my bedroom with newspaper clippings and photographs of the marches I was missing out on. The articles began to change. Instead of hippies with face paint, they became angry mobs with Molotov cocktails. Pictures of City Hall’s smashed windows replaced theatrical snapshots of costumed protesters. The city tired of its opposition, and the very real, very strong and very alive Peace Movement that was sparked by this War on Terror flickered and died right here in San Francisco. People began uniting in Patriotism. I tore down every American flag I could find. I wept a lot, as a draft was rumored. I remember those days, four years ago when there was hope and then when it finally died. When the greediest country on the planet Earth re-elected President Bush, I sat in my room and I cried.
In the past five years, we’ve lost hundreds of brave men and women overseas. We’ve watched, transfixed, as our televisions spew the latest coverage from the frontlines like a ball game. We’ve seen footage of the people we’re actively harming, bombing, torturing and displacing in a last bid to drain the Middle East of its oil reserves. We’ve seen our beloved country’s deficit grow, like the gut of some gluttonous monster, getting bigger all the time. Because of this, we’ve watched as our dollar plummets, today at all time low. In the past five years, our food banks have been frequented to beyond their limits, mostly by low-income and increasingly by middle-class working people who can no longer afford food. We are starting to hunker down to ride out this recession, a recession that will get darker before it gets lighter. The American economy is on its knees.
Let me repeat that. The economy of America, you know, the “land of the free and the home of brave“, is on its knees. I guess the “land of the people who can’t manage their money” and “home of the warmongers” didn’t have quite the same ring. We were so powerful, and like the Titanic our fairy-tale is drawing to a close.
Yet with all this, with things as bad as they’ve been economically and socially since the Great Depression people aren’t gathering to demand better. They aren’t protesting by the tens of thousands. They stand in line, ten deep at the Saint Vincent de Paul Society hoping for a bed and a hot meal. They fill their gas tanks on credit and hope their kids will be able to pay it off one day. They are riding out the bankruptcies and foreclosures with crossed fingers and (perhaps out fear?) won’t gather they way humans have gathered in civil protest since time immemorial. Why aren’t we gathering? Why aren’t we marching and demanding change?
It’s because even with all this, even when times are at their worst, Americans still don’t realize we are at war. They flick past the coverage between cooking shows and Monday night football. We are no longer required to live as though our economy is under stress…that would be too difficult! My god! Rationing? Victory gardens? During World War II, it was considered the height of social disgrace to over purchase anything. People received ration coupons, allowing them only small amounts of luxuries like butter and sugar, sending the rest overseas to the front. People grew their own food in their backyard “Victory Gardens” to take the edge off larger farms providing food for the war effort and, of course, to save precious pennies. Every scrap of metal, foil, tin was collected by school children and donated to melt for bullets and other weapons. Every person, rich or poor actively felt the sting of war in their everyday lives. Every person actively contributed. Can you imagine what Americans would do today if the government instituted a rationing system? “You mean we can only buy FOUR packages of Handi-Instant-Gooey-Choco-Cookies instead of TEN?! We have to GROW OUR OWN VEGETABLES?!” It would be pandemonium. What’s funny is, that is the sort of drastic measure that might turn our economy around. If we were all suddenly socially required to donate every scrap of metal to fund our military campaign, we would suddenly have millions in leftover taxes to use for something useful. If we instituted a rationing system, not only would America finally begin to deflate around the middle but we’d save billions of dollars that are, frankly, being totally wasted. And the ultimate irony is, that type of drastic change is what would spark real, dramatic protesting. That is what would make the masses rise from their couches in the Mid-West to march on Washington. You can take away our civil liberties with the Patriot Act. You can whittle down the dollar until we’re all essentially penniless. You can foreclose our houses, raise gas prices, cut education funding to nearly zero, deny us any hope of a useful healthcare system, stand by while millions of middle-class, working families flood food banks and homeless shelters, and continue to hemorrhage trillions into a war no thinking American wanted in the first place…but, goddamnit, you cannot take away our right to buy twelve pounds of butter in one shopping trip if we want to! We REFUSE to save money by watering veggie gardens instead of lawns! And if we want to toss glass bottles and aluminum cans into the landfill, why we’ll do it, because this is the land of the free!
And don’t for a second think they don’t know this. Ultimately, whether as an individual or a community, people stand up for what they value. What Americans value is food, entertainment and convenience. We are happily are still clinging to these, even if the price we pay for them is painfully and impossibly high. No health-care? We can deal. House in foreclosure? We’ll take out a sliding-scale loan with 35% interest on credit, please. We can deal with the bills later. Gas prices high? That’s the way it goes. Public transportation, walking and bicycling are inconvenient. Even the First Amendment we can live without. But touch our cable, raise the bar for personal responsibility (i.e. “greening” our lifestyles though much needed self-denial) or threaten what we can and can’t do with our pocket money and we’ve really touched a nerve. Suddenly, our way of life has been altered. The fat, lazy cat that is standard American living just got poked in the eye, offended. It’s offensive because it requires a measure of effort on an individual level, and this Baby Boomer-led generation isn’t used to doing anything on their own. Children of the 1950s were the children of World War II survivors, spoiled and entitled. Their parents, my grandparents, didn’t want them to have to suffer through blackout curtains and ration stamps. They wanted them to have everything they didn’t have. Cars, toys, three meals a day with meat on every plate, and the knowledge that no matter what they wanted, no matter the cost, no matter the struggle, no price is too high for getting your way.
I’m being slightly superfluous. Slightly. There are radical movements taking place at this moment hoping to address this sick lifestyle of excess America has been living for the last forty years. We are mopping up the mess that it’s created. The “Green” movement here in the Bay Area is a fantastic example of change that is occurring on both individual levels and higher governmental levels. As of last summer, plastic grocery bags have been banned from most major shopping outlets in the city. People use paper and are increasingly bringing their own bags from home. Around the same time legislation was passed making it illegal for restaurants and other food service providers to use non-compostable or non-fully recyclable to-go containers. That means no more Styrofoam. And of course, more and more houses are being built with solar panels, more and more people are investing in bicycles (and hybrids) and more people are patronizing organic, family owned farms. This is undeniably powerful. Just weeks ago, the largest beef recall in U.S. history brought a California factory-farm located on I-5 to bankruptcy and closure. Their unlawful and cruel practices were fully covered on Channel 4 news. Something about that amazes me, when it is so openly known that the Republican Party controls such huge media outlets as Fox News. Five years ago, factory-farm practices would never have made it to the airwaves. Awareness is spreading and I, perhaps naively, feel glimmers of hope at this obvious change.
The Bay Area is usually decades ahead of its time though, politically speaking. It’s going to take a long time for change and awareness to spread, and many places in America will be impervious to it, fighting it with “patriotic” vim and vigor to the bitter end. The thing is, the “war effort” is profiting from sluggish compliance to the “way things are.” In continuing to keep the peace, in continuing to (literally with dollars) buy into the way of life we’ve helped create, Big Oil can continue to send out troops to bring home the black gold. And we’ll eat it up. And we’ll keep shopping at chain supermarkets, buying five dollar loaves of bread, three dollar avocadoes from Chile and all the Pringles we can snack on when we return home to watch the game. We’ll keep eating tainted beef. We’ll continue the cycle of dependency and helplessness as our economy crumbles around our toes.
“We“, I keep saying “we.” I’m wrong. Not “we,” because I won’t be doing this and the people I know who are responsible and intelligent won’t be doing it either. I was a dreamer at 15. I thought all revolution took place on the streets, theatrically yelling and cheering and pulling down the walls. I thought it came and went like lightening in the storm. I didn’t realize that a revolutionary spirit is like Sisyphus, eternally rolling the boulder of change up the hill slowly and always having to, daily, do it again and again and again. Revolution is a process, a dedicated (though sometimes surprisingly simple) way of life. It is the change we want to see in the world. It is us reusing our paper grocery bags instead of always getting new ones, or carrying the items we buy. It is us acknowledging that a late-night drive to Safeway for the pint of ice cream we are craving isn’t worth the gas it takes to get there. It’s remembering someone died for that gas. Melodramatic, I know. But isn’t that where it begins? There is a book that I’ve never read, (that I plan to read) whose mere title I caught a glimpse of in the health food store months ago changed my life. It’s a book called Food, Not Lawns, and that tiny phrase made me begin to think about the money we can save and the things we can do with just pots of herbs and vegetables in our backyards. We don’t need to start our own organic farms. Every little bit helps. I’m growing lettuce and artichokes in the Bay Area fog. I have pots of basil and parsley on my windowsill. A few weeks ago, I didn’t actually believe that if I put seeds in potting soil and misted them with water they’d actually grow. But they did! Their shoots came up tiny and fragile and I don’t even worry about killing them (like so many houseplants) because I love them so much, and want them to grow so badly, my own tiny Victory Garden, encouraging victory over war.
It’s been five years, and now I’m 21. I didn’t plan on wasting this much time with school, work and relationships. I expected to be famous or dead by now, but thankfully my dreamer expectations were wrong. I am just beginning my revolution, as are we all who care about the corrupted democracy we are now experiencing. How funny democracy is, needing such a perfect balance of honest and committed people to make it function properly. How frightening that a handful of greedy people, and many more complacent and disinterested people, could throw the system off so easily in five years. In five years. Because this isn’t ruling by the people, for the people. This isn’t what we wanted. I’m going to make sure I let them know that. My dollars might not be worth much anymore, but I make sure I spend them in the right places. I’ll spend them on seeds and soil to grow things. I’ll spend them on local family-owned farmed produce. Maybe I won’t spend them at all. I hope everyone with a true desire to change the course of this deplorable situation realizes that we can, so easily, with a little conscious effort. I refuse to see the 6th, 7th, or 8th anniversary or this despicable war. It’s time to start living for the peace effort now.
He calmed the storm. He drained the Aegean from his bedroom. He wrapped his arms around me and after everything, after the long silences and the misdeeds, the squabbles and the struggles...he forgave me. I slept wrapped in him, that mortal boy who loves me and understands. I am not divine enough to deserve his love. I am not divine enough to even be near him, but...
It gets lonely on Olympus. I want to be the mortal again.
Natalie and I went to thrift stores. She bought three old suitcases for an art project. We found two mismatched badminton rackets for 98 cents at the Salvation Army. Find of a lifetime. I kicked her ass in our backyard with no net in the sunshine, wondering how I ever used to wear those damn boots, heavy as bricks, every day. No wonder I used to be so skinny. Or perhaps I was stronger because I used to dance. We drove to more stores. I bought a night table and a set of chairs that looked like they came straight from a saloon in the old west. I bought paint and varnish from the hardware store. I'm painting them. I need art in my life. I need projects to distract me.
I'm watching Girl, Interrupted. I remember when I used to watch this movie as a teenager, feeling so connected to Suzanna, the main character. Feeling like I knew Lisa, because I did. Her name was Carissa. She was the reason I bought my boots.
I made books of poems and drawings. I wrote essays and made collages. I connected with people. I kissed a lot. I was a free bird.
I came home and stripped the varnish off my night table. I sprayed it with Kilz. I inhaled acetone and got my hands dirty. I brainstormed. I felt my brain working in a way it hasn't worked in...years? I felt creativity in my bones again. I felt inspired.
My mom made coconut cupcakes and purple Indian cauliflower. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and it will have been a week since...one whole week since...and tomorrow I'll be happy.
I am becoming myself again.
Today was a good day.
- Mood: calm
I totally liked 2007 when it started. I was strong and confidant and a vegetarian. I took care of myself, and my beloved Nathaniel and everything was great. Great classes, I had a 4.0 last spring. Then something happened. It began over the summer. First I got a really horrible haircut, which is a totally silly way of having the rest of the year crumble into stupidity but there it is. Then I had to take these terrible classes over the summer, all the while panicking over not having an internship which I wouldn't get until a month into the fall semester. That just about killed my confidence and strength. I was scared that I wasn't good enough. Scared of making mistakes. Scared of failing...which I was so obviously doing because I worried every minute of every day that I would loose this wonderful internship with these wonderful amazing people. For the first, at least five weeks I worried that I wasn't good enough. But then came a light amid a semester of dry horrible classes...I began to realize that everyone at LRE didn't think of me the way I thought of myself. It sounds so silly, but the one major lighthouse in my life last year was them. They let me do things. They taught me things. They never once acted like I might not be able to do something they asked of me...which is what I was constantly thinking of myself. I began to feel better. I began to feel like I was capable and valuable. I am so thankful for that. Then Thanksgiving, the demise of my relationship...the final catastrophic event. I watched it go like the last helicopter pulling out of Saigon, leaving me to survive the napalm and agent orange of life alone. I took Serax. I lost fourteen pounds.
Then, towards the end, I stabilized. All of a sudden, out of some dark night of the soul, I found inner peace and strength. Granted, it falters if I'm around the wrong people at the wrong time, and sometimes when I'm alone thinking about the past. But for the most part, I feel stronger and more stable and at peace than I have ever. I love feeling like this. I have sadness and anxiety, but I have much happiness and freedom also. I told 2007 to go to hell about a thousand times in the past month, but I recognize that it was filled with silver linings and that this next year will probably see those linings come to fruition. I'm staying at LRE. I am single and strong and happy (mostly). This is a good place to be.
I have no concrete New Year's Resolutions. Actually I have one, that is to stop eating pointless, crappy junk food. I need to start nurturing my body. My body really hates me right now. I need it to love me again. I need to travel this year. Somewhere, anywhere. I've wanted to get on an airplane and fly away to some far off land since Thanksgiving. I want to run away and hide (or perhaps seek) in the amazing world. It's calling my soul, and my soul is answering "Ok, I'm coming! Just wait a little longer!"
I hope everyone has a wonderful year. I hope we can all work through our obstacles and become more powerful and happy. I have many hopes for 2008. Let's hope it doesn't fail me.
Peace.
V
- Mood:
awake
He looked at me and inhaled, adopted a look of utter shock and said, "I, well, oh my god. I have no idea. I'd have to think about it. Wow."
Look at that, how typical of real life. What's that quote, "I fear not those who argue but those who dodge"? Perfect. We kept walking, he took my arm like a victorian lady and suddenly there was a baby carriage, but it was empty and we were walking past our friends. Past all our friends inside this over-large goldfish bowl. And for a moment I actually felt like he cared about me.
Then he was gone, to remain in the background, and the aquarium turned into a mansion, a palace, a Versailles. There was a gathering taking place, and I knew instinctively what it was. It was a gathering of gods. Like a game almost, like clockwork, they gather from their two tribes? clans? to fight a war that's lasted a thousand years. But like a game, they arrange a date and time to battle. They dress up like going to a party. They shake hands after a winner is declared and then go home. That's why the war has lasted a thousand years! When you're an immortal god, you don't have much to look forward to. So there we all were. There were giant demon-like immortals, small Pans and lovely golden Aphrodites. There were Thors on horseback and Zeus' and Odens in dark cloaks with ravens and Viking armies brandishing tribal spears. And I, Artemis, had never experienced this before. And what was funny is there were mortals there too. He was there, dressed in black, looking dashing and I wondered how this spectacle would treat those, those others. Then battle. Violent loud, bombastic in this palace of perfection. Spear throwing, furniture crushing, ear-splitting battle. I saw no blood, but believe me, when you defeat a god, you know it. I threw balls of crystal and never missed my target. Mortals ran in terror, or else watched amused from the sidelines. Then it was over. I was sitting at the feet of...damn, I forgot to get her name. She was golden, and clean. She said she hasn't touched Earthly dirt and grime in nearly a thousand years. I laughed, I touch Earthly grime everyday. She wanted to know what kind of goddess I was, what I valued and what I reined over. We discussed sex, actually, how it's hard continuing to have a sex life as a goddess because mortals are intimidated/don't believe you're a goddess/disinterested. Much easier being a mortal. She summoned her golden brother and said I could have sex with him. How nice. You see, I believe sex is the highest form of worship. Does this make me narcissistic? I left the party before taking the Golden Goddess's brother up on the offer. We all trailed out, I don't remember who won, us or them. I think They did. I was leaving, walking down the drive and there he was, he caught up with me and started laughing and joking and generally acting like himself. My heart skipped a beat. Skipped a beat for this mortal boy who doesn't know who or what I am. A holy woman. And I woke to a grey day, not knowing how to repair the situation but feeling powerful all the same.
"It's human. We all have the jungle inside of us. We all have wants, needs, desires, strange as they may seem. If you stop to think about it, we're all pretty creative, cooking up all these fantasies. It's kind of like poetry."
~Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
It's interesting, in regards to Artemis that my interpretation of her would have a sexual theme. The Olympian Artemis was a virgin, a huge theme in her mythology. I read somewhere recently that the Olympian Artemis was adapted from a more "pagan" goddess, the original wasn't a virgin at all. They say the Artemis we know today was created that way by a misogynistic Homerian society that wanted to strip the goddess of her divine feminine power. Perhaps that's what I identify with.
Interpretations welcome.
Love, Peace and Divine Power to all,
V
- Mood: peaceful
Take two.
I've had a very enlightening week. I've done a few things I've been wanting very badly to do for a long time and they all of them showed me sides to myself I didn't know I loved.
If you believe you are something, if you see that you are, and act like you are, and feel like you are, and want to be...does that make you that something? We really are who we make ourselves to be. We really do create our own realities. So if I know my brother and I were born on a Greek island, does that make it so? And does it really matter if it isn't?
I feel small and strong. This is different from a few weeks ago, when I felt big and powerless. I feel stronger and more self-aware than I have ever been. I have no regrets. Not a one. You see, to have regrets you have to make mistakes...
This is totally silly and makes no sense. I'll write when I'm more put together. For now, just know that I love you, whoever you are reading this. Hope your holiday was good and I hope that everyone can someday have the experience of having their entire reality ripped away and replaced with a Greek myth, a Lewis Carol fantasy, a Stephen Hawking lesson in physics, a trip back to the womb with a sibling you didn't know you had, and that you might enjoy and learn about yourselves in every moment. Love and peace to all.
V
- Mood: quixotic
I made a very painful and somewhat sorrowful executive decision about my life yesterday and I need to come to terms with it. It's always sad when you plan and plan and then the plans get changed. I've decided...*breath* (dare I say it) that there will be no Wales this year for me. I am currently too strapped for money and have not a soul to travel with. Not that I consider this a problem, quite the contrary, I relish the notion of traveling alone. I don't mind the possible dangers of being a single woman in unfamiliar territory, I find it adventurous and welcome it with open arms. It's just that this trip to Wales is more than a vacation to me, it's a pilgrimage to the holy land. It's the place where my soul was born, it's the resting place of all the figures I hold dear in my heart, from the Welsh language to the Cader Idris, I have nothing but utter aching adoration for Wales. It's the place I am moving to, building my castle and raising my family in. I feel like I can't properly honor that this year. I can't do something like that alone...I need Natalie to be there while I laugh uncontrolably, or weep, or sit quietly on a green moor staring that the crumbling castles...the places I dream about. The places that call me back.
I feel tender and fragile. Something in me is telling me to "go home, go home, go home..." but where is that? The idea entered my brain without any forethought at all. It was so clear to me, all of a sudden, what I am supposed to do. It depends on my grades and if I *actually* graduate without having to retake any classes next semester. But if I pull through, this is my new and revised plan. In March I will hop on a plane and fly to the only other country I feel is a home to my soul, the only other place I've truly felt nurtured and whole. I will go to Puerto Rico for a month, to stay in the apartment over my Aunt Ida's and teach myself how to cook all my Abuelita's recipes. I will smoke Cuban cigars on breezy verandas in Old San Juan, alone without anyone to think about or care for. I'll eat amarillos, sopa de frijoles negros, pasteles and at night I'll drink coconut moonshine while I listen to the coquis. This is the only place that can nourish me right now. It makes me sad because I've been planning and counting on Wales, and I know that I'd make enough money to go by May...but it needs to be honored and I don't feel like I can do that any time soon.
I need to go to a hidden place, a mangrove, a rain forest, to nestle in the humid darkness, back to the womb-like place of my island home. I will rent a cottage hut like Tia Dolma. I will nurture myself again.
It is very disconcerting to be alone. Every time I get sad or scared I instinctively move towards the very person I need to separate from. It's hard losing a lover and best friend at once...I've never felt this alone before. I feel isolated and frightened. I feel like I'm in a surreal dream that I can't waken from. If I hold tight, maybe it will come to an end and I'll feel better. Hold fast. I saw that tattooed on a sailor once, in a movie. Master and Commander. I love movies about ships with sails. Across the old man's fists were those words, "Hold Fast." I figure if I ever get a rockstar tattoo, it would be that. Short of shaving my head and getting a dragon on my skull, which I've considered more than you know.
Situations like these also really bring the true and false friends out the murky darkeness and into the light. People I always considered quite true and caring have proven clam-like and uncaring for whatever reason. People I always knew were good, but didn't expect anything from have come to my aid over and over with phone calls and advice, hugs, kind thoughts and "just checking"s. They nurture me through this, because I haven't had the energy to care for myself. The first week, I didn't even eat. But it's coming along, I'm back to eating like a horse and I'm off Valium. I'm gaining my 10 meager pounds back. I'm thinking more clearly. It's funny, when we fall down like this, how helpless we truly are. How at the mercy of others we can be. I would have done anything for someone to tell me they cared and loved me last week. Now I'm more careful. Now I don't need it as much. But my, what people reveal about themselves in the words they don't say, and the things they don't do when their friends are down.
Thank you to everyone who has cared for me recently. I needed it, and I appreciate your efforts. They have made my life easier and more endurable. There is nothing in this world I cannot cope with, there is nothing that can beat me, but I am most pathetic when I need help and it's nice to know you care.
I am holding fast until these firestorms end. Until the surface of the sun cools and calms itself, hold fast. It's nearly over.
Love and peace and many thank yous.
V
- Mood:
accomplished
he whispered to me, in my ear
in the dark
escaping in long gasps, it spilled
while I listened to his quiet words, formed with a forked tongue
the predator in waiting.
a snake in the grass to my fragile rabbit
a hunter to my tethered faun
he spoke to me
quick, lightning-strike
I dart through the trees
he pulled the trigger expertly
he always was a master, after all
but I was dead before the blow connected.
the forest silenced by the shot
not a rustle
I was the virgin defiled
I was the unicorn, ensnared
he waited til the last rattling gasp to touch me
my limp form.
to reach out snaking tendrils, that forked tongue,
to my body
my neck
my hip
my back
my thigh
it's impossible to run when you are down.
and the last garbled memory I recall from that rain filled night,
the image affixed to my
cerebral cortex
hippocampus
cerebellum?
is that hunter
and what a shame it is
that unicorns are only caught by
killing.
Luna '08
- Mood: sad
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