I was in a sammich shop, getting a sammich, when this oatmeal and barley guy (definitely granola) starts strummin' away on his guitar the following song:
She's a good girl: loves her mama
Loves Jesus and America too
She's a good girl, crazy 'bout Elvis
Loves Horses and her boyfriend too.
This doesn't describe me at all. I'd have to be a good girl, now, wouldn't I, for this song to be about me. But then he sang this:
Now I'm free, free fallin'
I wanna glide down over Mulholland
I wanna write her name in the sky
I wanna free fall out into nothin'
Gonna leave this world for awhile.
And I'm free, I'm free fallin'
Free fallin' now I'm free fallin' Free fallin' now I'm free fallin'
"Free Fallin'" by Tom Petty
— `phfina analysis:
You really do want to know, so I'll tell you. Why you want to know, I have no IDEA! But you do, so you can tell me how fucked up I am, and so I put in all this effort to tell you, really and truly, what's going on in here in this nothing that is me, and what do I get for it? I get punished for trying, so why even try?
Why. even. try.
When I heard that song, the unchewed food in my mouth turned to ash, and I had to go. There are anvil clouds overhead and a good, cold stiff breeze, and I should be happy, as I am the wind and I am the water, and I am in my elements.
So why are there tears falling down my face. 'I am water,' I say, and all I do is cry, but I haven't cried in weeks, and now it's hitting me. Hard. 'I am air,' I say, so all I do is talk-talk-talk, that's all I do, that's all I am, wind and water, tears and air. Nothing.
I saw it, a vision so hard, in that sammich shop that I had to leave my unfinished meal, I had to get out of there away from people.
I was ...
Remember "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? At the very end, that little waif of a girl at the temple carved into the cliff's edge, looks out into the air, whispers
"Goodbye"
and jumps.
I am on the edge of the cliff, looking over, looking forward, looking down into the abyss. I don't have to look back. I am not that girl who had a devoted lover calling out for her to stay, willing to help, to be there for her. I have nobody behind me.
And then I raise my arms and I ...
It's a chemical imbalance. I tell myself. I'm chemically imbalanced, and the silence has worn me down so I listen to that not so little voice in my head telling me exactly what I am and exactly what I have to look forward to, and those two things are the same thing.
And I know who to blame for keeping myself an arm's length from any and everybody trying ... or not trying ... to reach out to me, to tell me that I am lovable and loved. I won't let anybody that close to me. I tried looking into a friend's eyes today from group, as she was teasing me about ... about what? my sammich, my silly tiny little mushroom sammich for silly tiny little mushroom me.
Yeah, I'm a mushroom. I can't go out into the sunlight, just like a morlock, and I eat girls, but the girls I eat do scream and moan, but it's not 'cause they're complainin' nosirree, bob!
Hm, the medication is starting to work. Starting, `phfina?
But I couldn't look into her eyes.
I couldn't.
I couldn't look into her teasing eyes, I couldn't look at me in them. I couldn't.
And I had to go, leaving everybody because some stupid song was playing by some stupid granola guy, ...
... and I never say stupid.
And I had to leave them.
And here is where I complete ch 2 of Sirens, and I go to that cliff's edge, and I ...
and I go home.
I return to the dust. Oblivion awaits.
You know: I have this post all prepared. It's here, right in my back pocket. It's a one-liner. It's entitled "The Sublime Art of Suicide" and the body of the post is just one word: "goodbye."
No note. No 'explanation.' No nothing.
'Goodbye' ... 'God be with you' because He won't be with me anymore.
Not where I'm going.
So when you see that post, you'll know what happened.
So I was supposed to finish here with 'Goodbye,' and fuck the special title.
But I took a walk, and okay, I have a chemical imbalance? I'll self-medicate. I saw Thor. I (now) know what a boilermaker is. I'll rebalance, and then rebalance again, then rebalance again, until I lose my balance.
A can of guinness with that cute little fizzy ball inside is a full meal, and only costs two dollars at the supermarket. AND happy hour is in full swing now.
Warm up exercises, you know.
And then after I rebalance (after which I will have obviously hit the hay and have that ashen taste of dehydration in my mouth when), I'll wake up tomorrow, and we will see from there.
We will see.
This isn't a cry for help. So don't bother. I don't want your help. You have to be something to want something, and I don't want anything.
Or maybe I have it backward, and I'm so full of ... something, that I've filled the space that is me, that is: I'm not a clearing, I'm just this big huge blockage, so I have no room left to want for anything.
Do I want anything? No, unless 'wanting nothing' is something. No, unless oblivion is a desirous state.
It isn't. Oblivion is the abyss; it isn't a state, it's a ... dis ... what is it? A disintegration, a rending, a destruction. It's not a state, it's an end.
Shiva. Kali. Lila.
Me.
----
οἰκτροτάτην δ᾽ ἤκουσα ὄπα Πριάμοιο θυγατρός,
Κασσάνδρης, τὴν κτεῖνε Κλυταιμνήστρη δολόμητις
ἀμφ᾽ ἐμοί, αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ ποτὶ γαίῃ χεῖρας ἀείρων
βάλλον ἀποθνήσκων περὶ φασγάνῳ: ἡ δὲ κυνῶπις
νοσφίσατ᾽, οὐδέ μοι ἔτλη ἰόντι περ εἰς Ἀίδαο
χερσὶ κατ᾽ ὀφθαλμοὺς ἑλέειν σύν τε στόμ᾽ ἐρεῖσαι.
Homer, Odyssey, Book XI, ~400-430
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Just one more
... or I could go on ... 'forever'? 'Forever' is such a very long time (actually, it isn't, as eternity is beyond time), so how about 'for as long as I live'?
Yes, for as long as I live.
There are so many things to say about every single woman in the world, about every single one of you, that I will never finish, nor ever plumb the depths. It's not that there isn't no end to the women in the world (there isn't), because that's just superficial ... 'oh, I could go on forever just naming names.'
Do you know somebody, just by hearing their name? And go no farther than that?
It's that there's no end to the depth, of even just and only one person. I will never 'complete' with a person: knowing them.
When that happens, they are dead to me. I hope I die before I kill anybody off like that.
I have died a thousand deaths. At least.
So I keep bringing stuff up. The same stuff? I don't think so. I think different stuff, or the same stuff, but I hope I'm carried forward, even just a little bit, in bringing up my shit, and hers, and saying, okay, what happened here? What did I do? Who was I being here?
And do I succeed? Well, the funny thing about life is ... that it is a game, and I can keep playing the same game until I win, that is learn from it to play a bigger game with me in my life, or I can keep playing this one. Life doesn't care. Life is life. What's left is my choices, and how I choose to be while choosing them.
So.
So Saga asks me: "What are you going to be writing about me when you leave me?"
Saga's smart, dummy that she is, and she knows me better than I know me.
Because ... because in all my relationships, I was the one who left.
I was the one who left, all of them. They all recognized in me something that they needed, something that they saw in me that they had never seen before in anybody else in their lives, and they clung to me, all of them, so desperately, trying to keep me, even as I was in their arms in bed, they clung so desperately, the desperate women I've left and left and left.
Because I've loved them, but I am not strong, as I try to pretend to be, and I feel ... what? Them pulling me down, or ...
Let's get on with this.
There are the relationships that we parted mutually. We both went into the relationship looking for something, and we both left, satisfied. I'm not talking about those, because ... well, really: those weren't relationships, those were both me and her satisfying our own needs and moving along, even if those needs were for intimacy, or good conversation and companionship, or ... or a good, hard fuck. Or two. Or three. Or more. And tender holdings afterwards, so maybe that's what I was looking for really, and the animal, the panther in me needed to be satiated first, fully tamed, before I would allow myself to hold and to be held?
I don't know. I look in the mirror every day, but I still shy away from most everything I see in my eyes.
And there was one relationship ... well.
Well, Julia left me. Julia was strong enough to get away from me before I dragged her down to my level.
Heh. 'My level.' How low is 'down'? Every time I hit the bottom, the bottom drops out.
So Julia left me, and found happiness. Julia is smart, smart enough to see where her happiness lay ... and where it didn't.
Saga isn't that smart, or doesn't care. And I'm so grateful for that, and so sad for her, clinging to me, cleaving to me, really, even though she sees me better than I do, and, okay is so blind as to see the good in me and ...
Okay, getting carried away here.
So Saga's not going to leave me, and she does see the trail of skeletons in my wake, and has read my stuff, and she is clairvoyant in that she can connect the dots and can look, clearly and with a level head, into the future.
And still hope for today.
So this is what I write, Saga, about my exes. This is what I write about you.
I am a writer: I write what I write. I see what I see.
And what I see is this: human beings, flawed, striving human beings, so desperate, so hopeful. So loving, so spiteful.
So, you've seen me love a person you've all hated: Traci. Now, what do I have to say about ... Brenda, now.
Brenda.
You know what? Brenda so desperately wanted me, all the time, in our relationship. I don't know what I was to her. I don't know if she does, or even if she asked herself the question. Was I to be her husband that died in the Gulf? Was I to be her daughter that she never had? Both? How did her son feel about this? And she wooed me, and played with me, and touched me and kissed me and held me and held onto me as a woman does: desperately, but despairingly, knowing that she'd have to let me go, someday, when I left her, so she held all the more tightly.
And she taught me the art of spooning, and the strap on. Do you think Julia and I made that discovery in ultra-Puritanical Connecticut? No, it was the college position for us, and I sometimes, now, wonder if the sex wasn't ... fulfilling for her and that's why she left me?
But of course, that really wasn't the issue at all. The issue with Julia was that I was there, but I wasn't there, I was in an intense relationship with myself and my precision and perfection and my failings that instead of reaching out to her for help, I shut her down (by shutting down) and shut her out.
So when Brenda, sweet, motherly Brenda, attached the straps to me ("This is weird," I thought) and eased me into the bed with her and put me behind her and slid the dildo I was wearing into her, I was like, what is going on here?
I felt dislocated, confused. Was I supposed to be a man? Was I ... I don't know but then she wrapped my arms around her and she put my hand over her tummy, pressing her hand into mine into her, and she asked, "Do you feel that?"
And I did.
And she said, "That's you, filling me."
And suddenly, it wasn't a belt with a foreign object attached, it was me. It was me, and I was in her. And I started thrusting, much harder, and she moaned, and cried out and begged me to fuck her, her pressing her hand into mine into her, and she came rather quickly after that, and I ...
And I became possessed, needing to fill her, needing to pleasure her, and I took her, and then I came, o, God, did I cum when I was pounding on top of her now, her legs locking me into her as I thrust with my strength, wanting to, no: being in her.
And afterwards, she held me, and caressed me, and cooed over me, as I panted, a girl-child-man, on top of her, and she rolled me off to her side, and said, "Sleep now, sweetheart; I will hold you." And she held me, me still in her, and I could even feel her squeezing me? Is that possible? I felt it.
And I didn't have the courage to ask if I could suckle at her breast. I didn't have the courage to ask myself that I could ask her. I was so lost from my loss of Julia, and so lost in what I was to Brenda, I didn't have ...
I didn't have the strength to know who or what I was, even just for myself, or to be okay that I could be Brenda's baby, suckling at her breast, and let her love me, with motherly love, and hold me to her breast, and hold the whole world at bay as she held me, her baby.
How could I be her baby daughter, when I was just now her 'husband'?
And you know what, `phfina?
No, ... what, `pfhina?
Maybe that was exactly what she wanted, and she was too shy to offer herself to me that way, too? But maybe if I had asked, maybe she would have gladly surrendered, offering herself that way, and held me to her, and maybe she would have cum again, so hard, with my lips latched onto her breast and my fingers playing, probing, plunging into her pussy that she might have screamed instead of moaning and whispering, "Oh, God!" as I pounded into her with the strap-on?
Or maybe not. Maybe she would have said, "Melissa! That's too weird! What would my best friend, your mother, say if she found out I was nursing you!"
As if me fucking her with a strap-on was ... okay?
I don't know.
I do know this. All that. And all I have written.
And.
And she took me in. She took heart-broken me, and yes, she took something for herself and her needs from all this, yes, she doggedly and determinedly seduced (very not unwilling) me, but she did take me in, and loved me, and cared for me, when ...
When nobody else did. And she cooked me meals, and she took me to a JazzFest, and she waited for me over a cooling supper and then when I walked in, two hours late, she wasn't (too) angry, but when finding my car ran out of gas miles away, got her gas can, drove me to my car, and we drove back to her place, and she took me in her arms. And she held me, as long as I let her hold me, for days and weeks, and when I left her, she let me go, and ... wrote, and looked for me, and that freaked me out, so I ran hard, changing names and States, and her last note was a sad, 'I hope you are happy and in a loving relationship' delivered right to the sbux where I was working, under a pseudonym. She could have walked right in, I suppose, but she didn't.
Brenda wanted to love, and be loved in return.
When she found this little girl, this broken little girl, she loved me, with all her might and all her strength and all her heart, and she held me, so tenderly, just reveling in it, savoring each moment we were together: me in her arms, and in her, her, holding me, feeling my weight press down on her, my sweat mingling with hers, my breath lifting her arm up and down, like a ship riding the waves on the ocean.
Brenda was too much for me. Brenda was too good for me. She gave me all of her, she took what she could from me, what I could give, and was happy with that and the moments we had together.
Saga, what will I write about you, when I've left you?
I'm not as clearsighted as you? Nor as ... practical about life? Or the present? Or me? I can't see that future.
So, let's pretend. Let's pretend this is that future.
Saga, I love you. I treasure the moments we had together. I savor them. I remember them. I remember you and how good you were to me, and I wish I could have been a person that was good enough to make the world and its concerns not matter and never matter, but I'm not good enough for that, or for me to be worthy enough to be good enough for you.
Saga, I'm sorry I was not ... Saga, I'm sorry. I love you and I want you to be happy.
Do you see how irrelevant the future is? Do you see the now is all we have in what I say to you in that pretend future, of what I say to you now?
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
e.e. cummings
&mdash `phfina commentary:
I put the analysis before the poem. I hope you don't mind.
Yes, for as long as I live.
There are so many things to say about every single woman in the world, about every single one of you, that I will never finish, nor ever plumb the depths. It's not that there isn't no end to the women in the world (there isn't), because that's just superficial ... 'oh, I could go on forever just naming names.'
Do you know somebody, just by hearing their name? And go no farther than that?
It's that there's no end to the depth, of even just and only one person. I will never 'complete' with a person: knowing them.
When that happens, they are dead to me. I hope I die before I kill anybody off like that.
I have died a thousand deaths. At least.
So I keep bringing stuff up. The same stuff? I don't think so. I think different stuff, or the same stuff, but I hope I'm carried forward, even just a little bit, in bringing up my shit, and hers, and saying, okay, what happened here? What did I do? Who was I being here?
And do I succeed? Well, the funny thing about life is ... that it is a game, and I can keep playing the same game until I win, that is learn from it to play a bigger game with me in my life, or I can keep playing this one. Life doesn't care. Life is life. What's left is my choices, and how I choose to be while choosing them.
So.
So Saga asks me: "What are you going to be writing about me when you leave me?"
Saga's smart, dummy that she is, and she knows me better than I know me.
Because ... because in all my relationships, I was the one who left.
I was the one who left, all of them. They all recognized in me something that they needed, something that they saw in me that they had never seen before in anybody else in their lives, and they clung to me, all of them, so desperately, trying to keep me, even as I was in their arms in bed, they clung so desperately, the desperate women I've left and left and left.
Because I've loved them, but I am not strong, as I try to pretend to be, and I feel ... what? Them pulling me down, or ...
Let's get on with this.
There are the relationships that we parted mutually. We both went into the relationship looking for something, and we both left, satisfied. I'm not talking about those, because ... well, really: those weren't relationships, those were both me and her satisfying our own needs and moving along, even if those needs were for intimacy, or good conversation and companionship, or ... or a good, hard fuck. Or two. Or three. Or more. And tender holdings afterwards, so maybe that's what I was looking for really, and the animal, the panther in me needed to be satiated first, fully tamed, before I would allow myself to hold and to be held?
I don't know. I look in the mirror every day, but I still shy away from most everything I see in my eyes.
And there was one relationship ... well.
Well, Julia left me. Julia was strong enough to get away from me before I dragged her down to my level.
Heh. 'My level.' How low is 'down'? Every time I hit the bottom, the bottom drops out.
So Julia left me, and found happiness. Julia is smart, smart enough to see where her happiness lay ... and where it didn't.
Saga isn't that smart, or doesn't care. And I'm so grateful for that, and so sad for her, clinging to me, cleaving to me, really, even though she sees me better than I do, and, okay is so blind as to see the good in me and ...
Okay, getting carried away here.
So Saga's not going to leave me, and she does see the trail of skeletons in my wake, and has read my stuff, and she is clairvoyant in that she can connect the dots and can look, clearly and with a level head, into the future.
And still hope for today.
So this is what I write, Saga, about my exes. This is what I write about you.
I am a writer: I write what I write. I see what I see.
And what I see is this: human beings, flawed, striving human beings, so desperate, so hopeful. So loving, so spiteful.
So, you've seen me love a person you've all hated: Traci. Now, what do I have to say about ... Brenda, now.
Brenda.
You know what? Brenda so desperately wanted me, all the time, in our relationship. I don't know what I was to her. I don't know if she does, or even if she asked herself the question. Was I to be her husband that died in the Gulf? Was I to be her daughter that she never had? Both? How did her son feel about this? And she wooed me, and played with me, and touched me and kissed me and held me and held onto me as a woman does: desperately, but despairingly, knowing that she'd have to let me go, someday, when I left her, so she held all the more tightly.
And she taught me the art of spooning, and the strap on. Do you think Julia and I made that discovery in ultra-Puritanical Connecticut? No, it was the college position for us, and I sometimes, now, wonder if the sex wasn't ... fulfilling for her and that's why she left me?
But of course, that really wasn't the issue at all. The issue with Julia was that I was there, but I wasn't there, I was in an intense relationship with myself and my precision and perfection and my failings that instead of reaching out to her for help, I shut her down (by shutting down) and shut her out.
So when Brenda, sweet, motherly Brenda, attached the straps to me ("This is weird," I thought) and eased me into the bed with her and put me behind her and slid the dildo I was wearing into her, I was like, what is going on here?
I felt dislocated, confused. Was I supposed to be a man? Was I ... I don't know but then she wrapped my arms around her and she put my hand over her tummy, pressing her hand into mine into her, and she asked, "Do you feel that?"
And I did.
And she said, "That's you, filling me."
And suddenly, it wasn't a belt with a foreign object attached, it was me. It was me, and I was in her. And I started thrusting, much harder, and she moaned, and cried out and begged me to fuck her, her pressing her hand into mine into her, and she came rather quickly after that, and I ...
And I became possessed, needing to fill her, needing to pleasure her, and I took her, and then I came, o, God, did I cum when I was pounding on top of her now, her legs locking me into her as I thrust with my strength, wanting to, no: being in her.
And afterwards, she held me, and caressed me, and cooed over me, as I panted, a girl-child-man, on top of her, and she rolled me off to her side, and said, "Sleep now, sweetheart; I will hold you." And she held me, me still in her, and I could even feel her squeezing me? Is that possible? I felt it.
And I didn't have the courage to ask if I could suckle at her breast. I didn't have the courage to ask myself that I could ask her. I was so lost from my loss of Julia, and so lost in what I was to Brenda, I didn't have ...
I didn't have the strength to know who or what I was, even just for myself, or to be okay that I could be Brenda's baby, suckling at her breast, and let her love me, with motherly love, and hold me to her breast, and hold the whole world at bay as she held me, her baby.
How could I be her baby daughter, when I was just now her 'husband'?
And you know what, `phfina?
No, ... what, `pfhina?
Maybe that was exactly what she wanted, and she was too shy to offer herself to me that way, too? But maybe if I had asked, maybe she would have gladly surrendered, offering herself that way, and held me to her, and maybe she would have cum again, so hard, with my lips latched onto her breast and my fingers playing, probing, plunging into her pussy that she might have screamed instead of moaning and whispering, "Oh, God!" as I pounded into her with the strap-on?
Or maybe not. Maybe she would have said, "Melissa! That's too weird! What would my best friend, your mother, say if she found out I was nursing you!"
As if me fucking her with a strap-on was ... okay?
I don't know.
I do know this. All that. And all I have written.
And.
And she took me in. She took heart-broken me, and yes, she took something for herself and her needs from all this, yes, she doggedly and determinedly seduced (very not unwilling) me, but she did take me in, and loved me, and cared for me, when ...
When nobody else did. And she cooked me meals, and she took me to a JazzFest, and she waited for me over a cooling supper and then when I walked in, two hours late, she wasn't (too) angry, but when finding my car ran out of gas miles away, got her gas can, drove me to my car, and we drove back to her place, and she took me in her arms. And she held me, as long as I let her hold me, for days and weeks, and when I left her, she let me go, and ... wrote, and looked for me, and that freaked me out, so I ran hard, changing names and States, and her last note was a sad, 'I hope you are happy and in a loving relationship' delivered right to the sbux where I was working, under a pseudonym. She could have walked right in, I suppose, but she didn't.
Brenda wanted to love, and be loved in return.
When she found this little girl, this broken little girl, she loved me, with all her might and all her strength and all her heart, and she held me, so tenderly, just reveling in it, savoring each moment we were together: me in her arms, and in her, her, holding me, feeling my weight press down on her, my sweat mingling with hers, my breath lifting her arm up and down, like a ship riding the waves on the ocean.
Brenda was too much for me. Brenda was too good for me. She gave me all of her, she took what she could from me, what I could give, and was happy with that and the moments we had together.
Saga, what will I write about you, when I've left you?
I'm not as clearsighted as you? Nor as ... practical about life? Or the present? Or me? I can't see that future.
So, let's pretend. Let's pretend this is that future.
Saga, I love you. I treasure the moments we had together. I savor them. I remember them. I remember you and how good you were to me, and I wish I could have been a person that was good enough to make the world and its concerns not matter and never matter, but I'm not good enough for that, or for me to be worthy enough to be good enough for you.
Saga, I'm sorry I was not ... Saga, I'm sorry. I love you and I want you to be happy.
Do you see how irrelevant the future is? Do you see the now is all we have in what I say to you in that pretend future, of what I say to you now?
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
e.e. cummings
&mdash `phfina commentary:
I put the analysis before the poem. I hope you don't mind.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
A couple more
There were a couple of women I missed:
Mrs. A_
She and I don't particularly share tea and crumpets with her being concerned over the way I live my life, or ... who I am, I guess, but you know what? I've been coughing this whole month and I mentioned that I had been buying the Naked Mango Madness drinks at sbux and they were rather expensive, right?
So one day I get a surprise visit from bb's wife: she had swung by Costco and she gave me 6 containers, each of which were a whole quart of Mango Madness.
And I was like, oh, my God, that's so thoughtful of you, and how much to I ...
And before I could even finish she was like, oh, this is for you, and she was like, gone before I could even look for money to pay for it.
I'm ... I'm crying, thinking of her thoughtfulness.
You know, 'the kindness of strangers'? What does that say about anything or anybody? It says that a stranger was kind to you, and it says something nice about them, that they extended themselves for you, a stranger, totally out of the blue. It costs them nothing and it gives them something to feel good about, and you remember it fondly, too.
But the kindness of family? You know, the ones who know you? The ones who have to put up with you and your bitching and your imposition and who have to bail you out of whatever hot water you keep putting yourself into? For them to be kind to you? For 'no' reason? When they have every reason not to? And so, against all that, they do an act of kindness for you, it like ...
Okay. I have to stop now. Or else I won't stop crying.
Lilith
I've seen Lilith three times now, in the Giant plaza. She works as a check-out girl at the Giant where I bought some ... what was I buying that day? I forget, because I looked up, saw her name tag: 'Lilit' and saw her long, flowing obsidian hair and her two pools of dark water that were her eyes.
Yeah: 'Lilit' ... but she doesn't fool me. I got out of that Giant right quick.
And then, another day, I just so happened to be passing by the sbux near the Giant, and there she was, surrounded by at least four suitors, all of them looking at her adoringly. I could just see the headlines in the newspapers the next day: "Four Men Die in Anti-Terror Hate Crimes!" and the article goes on to describe how four young Arabic men had their throats 'slit' with odd puncture wounds and how the chief of police said that he would not tolerate hate crimes nor vigilanteism and that the young men were promising members of their community and had had no previous criminal records.
But I would know what had really happened. Lilith, or Lilit, as she goes by now, and who am I to cross her? Had her fill that last night. Well, I hope those men died happily, you know? Like how Bella takes her victims in Bloodbuzz. I wonder if I should have intervened that night, and offered myself in their place, you know: "Lilit, don't take them; spare them, these promising young men, and take me instead!"
But she may have looked me up and down, scrawny little thing that I am, and not be too enticed with the meager offerings.
And then the Arabic men may have taken offense that I was moving into their territory, mistaking my (not too involuntary) sacrificial offering. And Muslims don't look too kindly on alternative lifestyles or nonmainstream sexual identity. A lot of them don't ... or so I'm told.
I wonder if Lilith knows that I know. She probably does. She had probably heard my heart rate go through the roof each time I've seen her, so the cat is out of that bag on that one.
Rosalie may not be the only visitor through my bedroom window at night.
And Lilith, being the world's oldest woman, well ... she might be able to teach me some things, ... you know?
Hm, hm, hm.
blush
On that note: off to Mass!
Mrs. A_
She and I don't particularly share tea and crumpets with her being concerned over the way I live my life, or ... who I am, I guess, but you know what? I've been coughing this whole month and I mentioned that I had been buying the Naked Mango Madness drinks at sbux and they were rather expensive, right?
So one day I get a surprise visit from bb's wife: she had swung by Costco and she gave me 6 containers, each of which were a whole quart of Mango Madness.
And I was like, oh, my God, that's so thoughtful of you, and how much to I ...
And before I could even finish she was like, oh, this is for you, and she was like, gone before I could even look for money to pay for it.
I'm ... I'm crying, thinking of her thoughtfulness.
You know, 'the kindness of strangers'? What does that say about anything or anybody? It says that a stranger was kind to you, and it says something nice about them, that they extended themselves for you, a stranger, totally out of the blue. It costs them nothing and it gives them something to feel good about, and you remember it fondly, too.
But the kindness of family? You know, the ones who know you? The ones who have to put up with you and your bitching and your imposition and who have to bail you out of whatever hot water you keep putting yourself into? For them to be kind to you? For 'no' reason? When they have every reason not to? And so, against all that, they do an act of kindness for you, it like ...
Okay. I have to stop now. Or else I won't stop crying.
Lilith
I've seen Lilith three times now, in the Giant plaza. She works as a check-out girl at the Giant where I bought some ... what was I buying that day? I forget, because I looked up, saw her name tag: 'Lilit' and saw her long, flowing obsidian hair and her two pools of dark water that were her eyes.
Yeah: 'Lilit' ... but she doesn't fool me. I got out of that Giant right quick.
And then, another day, I just so happened to be passing by the sbux near the Giant, and there she was, surrounded by at least four suitors, all of them looking at her adoringly. I could just see the headlines in the newspapers the next day: "Four Men Die in Anti-Terror Hate Crimes!" and the article goes on to describe how four young Arabic men had their throats 'slit' with odd puncture wounds and how the chief of police said that he would not tolerate hate crimes nor vigilanteism and that the young men were promising members of their community and had had no previous criminal records.
But I would know what had really happened. Lilith, or Lilit, as she goes by now, and who am I to cross her? Had her fill that last night. Well, I hope those men died happily, you know? Like how Bella takes her victims in Bloodbuzz. I wonder if I should have intervened that night, and offered myself in their place, you know: "Lilit, don't take them; spare them, these promising young men, and take me instead!"
But she may have looked me up and down, scrawny little thing that I am, and not be too enticed with the meager offerings.
And then the Arabic men may have taken offense that I was moving into their territory, mistaking my (not too involuntary) sacrificial offering. And Muslims don't look too kindly on alternative lifestyles or nonmainstream sexual identity. A lot of them don't ... or so I'm told.
I wonder if Lilith knows that I know. She probably does. She had probably heard my heart rate go through the roof each time I've seen her, so the cat is out of that bag on that one.
Rosalie may not be the only visitor through my bedroom window at night.
And Lilith, being the world's oldest woman, well ... she might be able to teach me some things, ... you know?
Hm, hm, hm.
blush
On that note: off to Mass!
Friday, June 3, 2011
Women
The subject of this post may not surprise you, but its contents may.
Or maybe nothing I do surprises. I'm a human being, after all, so I'm predicable, and predictably so.
Maybe.
So: women. God, I love women. I love to bitch about them, I love to cuddle with them, I love to check them out, I love to check them ... in (over and over and over again), I love to ...
`phfina: mind the PG rating of your entries!
Yes'm.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be unpredictable, right? Not predicable, you horn-doggie!
Yes'm.
Anyway. A while back I wrote about toxic psycho bitches, remember? How could you forget ... unless you thought that post wasn't about you, that is, and then you instantly forgot about it and went on with your life full of giving and charitable good works.
You know, I was being sarcastic, just then, but I actually do know people like that. And I actually have real examples of women who lives are foils to the toxic psycho bitch archetype.
And that's what's this post is about.
It's about women, the many and various ones I know and the many and various ones that I don't. And the ones you know, too. Stop and think about them with me.
Clothes interlude
Okay, but seriously: why do people wear clothes?
Have you ever thought that thought? No, you haven't. You get up every morning, and I'm willing to lay bad money on the table that you do not think: oh, should I wear clothes today?
No, you don't think that thought, ever! What you think is, "What should I wear today?" "I don't have a thing to wear!" you lament as you look into your overstuffed-to-the-gills closet. And then you choose jeans (C'mon, cut me some slack, maybe some of you are like me and Bella Swan!) or you choose a skirt, knee length? just covering the knees? just above the knees? a leather micro-mini? A demin ankle-length one? And then your blouse over your undergarments (don't make me go there, the list and variety is too long, and then it turns my thoughts prurient as I envision what I will do to those undergarments ... to get to what is under those garments ... and then I'll have to excuse myself and this post will never get finished ... so, yeah).
So you never even think: "Should I wear clothes today?" No, you just wear them, and your thoughts are along the lines of what to wear; what statement you are making with them. And you know why you never think that thought?
Because you were born on the planet Earth.
I thought that thought. Two days ago, it was blisteringly hot, and everybody was just so beautiful, wearing their clothes, and I was like: why?
And then I realized what I was doing. I realized, I'm thinking a thought nobody else in the world would think.
And I know why I do that. I've been told. I'm not of this world. I don't belong in it nor do I belong to it. I am a selkie.
And I felt so alone then, again.
Alice
You know Alice visited me, when I was working at the sbux. I had to clean the little girls' room, and she came in and ...
... well, that was after Rosalie had just cum in ... me.
Yeah.
It gets really crowded wherever I am.
Well, anyway, Alice had come in and helped me clean up the splatter poo that some little girl had left and some mommy was perhaps a bit too squeamish to clean up after, but do people ever think 'the help' might be a bit turned off, cleaning up their explosive poo? No.
Anyway, Alice got to talking to me, you know: a voice of reason and reasonableness ...
... not that I need it; I'm just fine thanks. And as we were talking, I realized some things about her; about Alice.
She's not of this world, either. She always has to keep away from the crowd and the throng, but unlike me, that's exactly where she wants to be, right in the middle of the party and excitement, but she can't go there: she's just too alien, and would draw attention, yes, but the wrong kind of attention that leads to fear, to panic, and to the mob.
So fun-loving Alice has to stay aloof. And at home? With staid Jasper? Sneering Edward? (let's face it:) Bitch-queen Rosalie?
The Cullen family: they are a fun-loving party-hardy group, aren't they?
So that's Alice's world. She revels in the excitement, but all she can do is stand off and observe it from a distance.
Rebecca
There's this woman in group; her name's Rebecca. When she walks into a room, she owns it. Full-length red dress, conservative, tasteful heels, purse worth more than my ... well, name anything of mine, a crown of golden flowing blond hair, commanding, flashing blue eyes, patrician features. Rosalie? No, not at all. Company CEO? You bet. In fact, she goes into companies and cleans house. With a broom.
And she's in group.
So we were talking one day about her family, her hippy husband and her lay-about kids and just how frustrating it is that she has to be the one all the time to make sure everything's right and if it's not who gets blamed for not bringing the kids' swimming goggles?
Is she type A, you wonder? You needn't.
So in our conversation about this ... (we have 'conversations' in group) she realized something:
"I'm being a bitch to my family, aren't I?"
I said not just a bitch.
"I'm being a fucking bitch?"
I smiled at that.
And then she broke into this huge smile and said, "Wow!"
And she saw herself in her family and what impact she had on them.
I don't know anybody who could say 'I'm being a fucking bitch' and get so empowered by that statement that their whole life changes in that one moment ... that is, until I was sitting across from Rebecca, being there with her.
Beki
Then there's my sister Beki ...
there's actually every woman in my family.
You see, the men in the family are just so powerful creatures that everything around them is just blown away, and the women?
The men are strong, but the women are strength. Every one of them, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins. Maybe it's a New England thing, but there's this unshakable strength in them, this sense of purpose that is, ... well, for me, frankly terrifying.
Beki was sitting with my niece Elena, and Elena was recounting one of her art projects where she had 'spilled paint all over the floor.' Beki queried this, 'all over the floor? so the entire floor was blue?' and Elena said, 'Well, ...' and was backed into a corner of admitting that she just spilled a drop or two which she cleaned.
But I watched this, watched my sister crush my niece, and hers, with her precision and ...
And I just wanted to go up to my sister and scream in her face. She was crushing the will and joy of a child, and for what purpose? to be right? to be correct?
Why?
And all I have to do is look into the mirror, and see what I do to everybody around me, and for what purpose? to be right?
I remember watching a movie where a palm reader was at a party and she told the hostess, so frustrated that everything at the party was not going according to plan or by the schedule and the seer said, 'well, you can either be right or be happy ...'
The woman didn't hear a word, of course, ... the soufflé had to come out of the oven just then, you see.
As the party came to a close, the hostess asked for her fortune be told to her, too.
The seer said: 'Oh, I thought I already gave you your fortune,' and left with a cryptic smile.
Beki, me, Lynda, Aunt Ronalee, Aunt Rolene, Aunt Roberta, Mom, Nana ... we can either be right, or we can be happy.
But ... well, we do have it hard. So hard. Pepe killed himself, and my uncles, two of them dying before Nana ... Nana watching her children die in front of her, and that killed her. And, well, the men are hard men, having to be right, no matter the cost, having to be happy, no matter the cost to the people around them; wanting both, getting neither.
And so Beki ... me ... we have to be so, so strong, her by being right, me, too, and me by running from anything and everyone that I ran away from my family, even ... putting hundreds of miles between them and me.
But you can't leave home; home is always there, waiting, and is always here in your heart. Even if you don't want it there.
We cling to something: strength, or rightness, just to be able to hold on, and it comes out on you or on a little girl telling a story, or our spouses or girl friends.
Toxic psycho bitches? I don't have to look far to find one.
And that's why a connection to you is such a life line, because you reach out, even when you are sick or tired or sick and tired, and you send me a note to ask me how I am doing.
And everybody is capable of charity, sometimes you have to look to see it, though.
Like, for example:
Traci
Boy, did I get some hate mail when I wrote why I left sbux and it was all directed toward Traci and what you were going to do to her if the two of you ever met.
I don't feel that way. I mean, let's look at what she did dispassionately. And maybe you're angry because you recognize yourself in her?
After all: you find out something so incredible about somebody you know, don't you just run to your confidants and blab?
"Hey, you know that thin sickly looking girl who works at the sbux? She's like this really sicko lezzy writer or something, omg! Check out her blog, isn't she like totally the psycho?"
No, you say, you would never do that?
Oh, really? You want to see your PMs to me where you blab about everybody around you, your coworkers, your patients, your girl friends, your siblings and parents, I mean anybody in your life you dump every vicious feeling you have about them not even thinking for one second what life must be like for them.
So let's take one second and think what life actually is for Traci in that moment.
What did she actually do?
I got shit-faced drunk, for which she treated me, and she took the keys from my hand, and drove me home, and put me into bed and didn't take advantage of me, even though I was, like actively, desperately, soliciting she do just that.
Would you have done that for me, a date that snapped? Or would you have excused yourself to the bathroom to make a quick and clean getaway? And let the chips fall where they may, that is: have the police pick me up and charge me and have me cool off in the tank and require me to post bail?
On the other hand, would you have said, 'She's so drunk, she's won't know tomorrow what I'm going to be doing with her tonight ... besides, she's begging, practically forcing herself on me, so I may as well ...'
What did Traci do that was reprehensible? She saw something, found out about it, just like Bella Swan did, then confronted me with it, and, okay, I freaked, but how could she expect that from me when you couldn't get a 'boo' out of me for ... how long we've been working together? Months? More than a year?
I argue that hero of that story actually is Traci. Oh, ... everybody hated Rosalie in the Twilight books, until somebody (bb) asked: 'What did she actually do? Is what she's saying accurate? prudent?' And then everybody's like, 'oh, yeah, everything she said was right, and nobody listened to her.' Traci is no Rosalie, because she's Traci, but I don't think she rates the death sentence for driving an out-of-it girl home and putting her to bed.
Emily
Dickinson, that is.
Here's what she wrote:
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
She wrote that for her little brother, who wasn't little any more, but imagine if she wrote that for you ... for me, the little honey bee, flitting about her garden, suckling the nectar from her rose bushes.
Um ... I have to ... um, take care of something.
Did Emily have beaux? She was a 'recluse' whose poetry is now carved into stones in parks, and whose house is enshrined. She built high walls and if a visitor came, she would literally run and hide somewhere.
Sounds familiar, `phfina?
But her poetry shaped the literature of a nascent nation that the Old World viewed as a savage land populated by a barbarous race.
(Go ahead, it's okay to admit to yourself that you view that statement as accurate now)
Emily Dickinson ... have you seen a photograph of her? I have. I almost fainted when I saw my scared, timid eyes looking back at me.
And out of the flighty hands came words that every school child must read, and because why? because she's a school marm?
No. Go back and read her poetry ... because she dared to look into herself and write and expose her heart to the whole world.
But I am not Emily Dickinson.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Daphne
Why do you follow me?—
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.
Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.
Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;—to heel, Apollo!
Vincent ... she, okay, she lived her life like she was some Norse Goddess and life was the horn holding that elixir of sweet nectar.
And then ...
Well, and she wrote poetry, and she didn't just write poetry, she wrote poetry that earned her the Pulitzer prize: the first one ever awarded to a woman. She wrote poetry so honest, so unvarnished, so bald, so bold that she made the equivalent of $300,000 each year of her life off of it.
Um, what?
For that kind of money, ... well, maybe I could ...
Nah ... you know what my poetry looks like, but if I were to follow form, all I could come up with always starts with:
"There once as a girl from Nantucket ..."
And then the next line, I always get stuck ('stuck-it'?) on one word the rhymes, but do you write poems with that word in it? No. And then I never get to the dénoument, either ...
That's me, stuck-it, fuck-it `phfina.
Some poetess I would make.
Besides which, I read Vincent's ("Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"? Please! How could I write something like that?) and 'Uncle Emily' and Sappho and ... okay, no. Just no.
Well, Vincent's life took a turn for the worse, she lived her life to its fullest and then she was used, spent. She died, soon after her husband had, drunk, despairing, falling down some steps.
I look at steps, looking at them, as they eye me, hungrily, and wonder if their teeth will be gentle as they chew me up (or actually: down), and I wonder if I will taste sweet to them.
Jo March/Louisa May Alcott
So Jo wrote not stories about vampires and fairies and monsters.
No: she wrote p.r.0.n. for women's magazines. And then her professor husband asked, 'Ist das zhe best dat you gott?'
And it wasn't. Little Women was. So she said she would try.
So she tried.
Is this the best that I've got?
I'm no Jo March. I'm no Vincent, nor Uncle Emily, nor Rebecca, nor Beki, nor Traci, nor you.
Nor anybody.
I'm just me.
I don't even belong to this world. I don't even belong in it.
And I wonder sometimes, ... what if that was the best that I got? What if my best came and went, and all you can do is read what I've written, because when you ask: "Is that all you got?" so fiercely, daring me to step up my game, and deliver that next chapter you know, you hope will impress you this time, or again, ...
... and all I can answer is, weakly: 'Yes, that was all I had.'
"There once was a girl from Nantucket,
Who looked at her writing; said: 'fuck it!'
She flew down some stairs
With the wind in her hair
Her end: bloody bits in a bucket."
Or maybe nothing I do surprises. I'm a human being, after all, so I'm predicable, and predictably so.
Maybe.
So: women. God, I love women. I love to bitch about them, I love to cuddle with them, I love to check them out, I love to check them ... in (over and over and over again), I love to ...
`phfina: mind the PG rating of your entries!
Yes'm.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be unpredictable, right? Not predicable, you horn-doggie!
Yes'm.
Anyway. A while back I wrote about toxic psycho bitches, remember? How could you forget ... unless you thought that post wasn't about you, that is, and then you instantly forgot about it and went on with your life full of giving and charitable good works.
You know, I was being sarcastic, just then, but I actually do know people like that. And I actually have real examples of women who lives are foils to the toxic psycho bitch archetype.
And that's what's this post is about.
It's about women, the many and various ones I know and the many and various ones that I don't. And the ones you know, too. Stop and think about them with me.
Clothes interlude
Okay, but seriously: why do people wear clothes?
Have you ever thought that thought? No, you haven't. You get up every morning, and I'm willing to lay bad money on the table that you do not think: oh, should I wear clothes today?
No, you don't think that thought, ever! What you think is, "What should I wear today?" "I don't have a thing to wear!" you lament as you look into your overstuffed-to-the-gills closet. And then you choose jeans (C'mon, cut me some slack, maybe some of you are like me and Bella Swan!) or you choose a skirt, knee length? just covering the knees? just above the knees? a leather micro-mini? A demin ankle-length one? And then your blouse over your undergarments (don't make me go there, the list and variety is too long, and then it turns my thoughts prurient as I envision what I will do to those undergarments ... to get to what is under those garments ... and then I'll have to excuse myself and this post will never get finished ... so, yeah).
So you never even think: "Should I wear clothes today?" No, you just wear them, and your thoughts are along the lines of what to wear; what statement you are making with them. And you know why you never think that thought?
Because you were born on the planet Earth.
I thought that thought. Two days ago, it was blisteringly hot, and everybody was just so beautiful, wearing their clothes, and I was like: why?
And then I realized what I was doing. I realized, I'm thinking a thought nobody else in the world would think.
And I know why I do that. I've been told. I'm not of this world. I don't belong in it nor do I belong to it. I am a selkie.
And I felt so alone then, again.
Alice
You know Alice visited me, when I was working at the sbux. I had to clean the little girls' room, and she came in and ...
... well, that was after Rosalie had just cum in ... me.
Yeah.
It gets really crowded wherever I am.
Well, anyway, Alice had come in and helped me clean up the splatter poo that some little girl had left and some mommy was perhaps a bit too squeamish to clean up after, but do people ever think 'the help' might be a bit turned off, cleaning up their explosive poo? No.
Anyway, Alice got to talking to me, you know: a voice of reason and reasonableness ...
... not that I need it; I'm just fine thanks. And as we were talking, I realized some things about her; about Alice.
She's not of this world, either. She always has to keep away from the crowd and the throng, but unlike me, that's exactly where she wants to be, right in the middle of the party and excitement, but she can't go there: she's just too alien, and would draw attention, yes, but the wrong kind of attention that leads to fear, to panic, and to the mob.
So fun-loving Alice has to stay aloof. And at home? With staid Jasper? Sneering Edward? (let's face it:) Bitch-queen Rosalie?
The Cullen family: they are a fun-loving party-hardy group, aren't they?
So that's Alice's world. She revels in the excitement, but all she can do is stand off and observe it from a distance.
Rebecca
There's this woman in group; her name's Rebecca. When she walks into a room, she owns it. Full-length red dress, conservative, tasteful heels, purse worth more than my ... well, name anything of mine, a crown of golden flowing blond hair, commanding, flashing blue eyes, patrician features. Rosalie? No, not at all. Company CEO? You bet. In fact, she goes into companies and cleans house. With a broom.
And she's in group.
So we were talking one day about her family, her hippy husband and her lay-about kids and just how frustrating it is that she has to be the one all the time to make sure everything's right and if it's not who gets blamed for not bringing the kids' swimming goggles?
Is she type A, you wonder? You needn't.
So in our conversation about this ... (we have 'conversations' in group) she realized something:
"I'm being a bitch to my family, aren't I?"
I said not just a bitch.
"I'm being a fucking bitch?"
I smiled at that.
And then she broke into this huge smile and said, "Wow!"
And she saw herself in her family and what impact she had on them.
I don't know anybody who could say 'I'm being a fucking bitch' and get so empowered by that statement that their whole life changes in that one moment ... that is, until I was sitting across from Rebecca, being there with her.
Beki
Then there's my sister Beki ...
there's actually every woman in my family.
You see, the men in the family are just so powerful creatures that everything around them is just blown away, and the women?
The men are strong, but the women are strength. Every one of them, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins. Maybe it's a New England thing, but there's this unshakable strength in them, this sense of purpose that is, ... well, for me, frankly terrifying.
Beki was sitting with my niece Elena, and Elena was recounting one of her art projects where she had 'spilled paint all over the floor.' Beki queried this, 'all over the floor? so the entire floor was blue?' and Elena said, 'Well, ...' and was backed into a corner of admitting that she just spilled a drop or two which she cleaned.
But I watched this, watched my sister crush my niece, and hers, with her precision and ...
And I just wanted to go up to my sister and scream in her face. She was crushing the will and joy of a child, and for what purpose? to be right? to be correct?
Why?
And all I have to do is look into the mirror, and see what I do to everybody around me, and for what purpose? to be right?
I remember watching a movie where a palm reader was at a party and she told the hostess, so frustrated that everything at the party was not going according to plan or by the schedule and the seer said, 'well, you can either be right or be happy ...'
The woman didn't hear a word, of course, ... the soufflé had to come out of the oven just then, you see.
As the party came to a close, the hostess asked for her fortune be told to her, too.
The seer said: 'Oh, I thought I already gave you your fortune,' and left with a cryptic smile.
Beki, me, Lynda, Aunt Ronalee, Aunt Rolene, Aunt Roberta, Mom, Nana ... we can either be right, or we can be happy.
But ... well, we do have it hard. So hard. Pepe killed himself, and my uncles, two of them dying before Nana ... Nana watching her children die in front of her, and that killed her. And, well, the men are hard men, having to be right, no matter the cost, having to be happy, no matter the cost to the people around them; wanting both, getting neither.
And so Beki ... me ... we have to be so, so strong, her by being right, me, too, and me by running from anything and everyone that I ran away from my family, even ... putting hundreds of miles between them and me.
But you can't leave home; home is always there, waiting, and is always here in your heart. Even if you don't want it there.
We cling to something: strength, or rightness, just to be able to hold on, and it comes out on you or on a little girl telling a story, or our spouses or girl friends.
Toxic psycho bitches? I don't have to look far to find one.
And that's why a connection to you is such a life line, because you reach out, even when you are sick or tired or sick and tired, and you send me a note to ask me how I am doing.
And everybody is capable of charity, sometimes you have to look to see it, though.
Like, for example:
Traci
Boy, did I get some hate mail when I wrote why I left sbux and it was all directed toward Traci and what you were going to do to her if the two of you ever met.
I don't feel that way. I mean, let's look at what she did dispassionately. And maybe you're angry because you recognize yourself in her?
After all: you find out something so incredible about somebody you know, don't you just run to your confidants and blab?
"Hey, you know that thin sickly looking girl who works at the sbux? She's like this really sicko lezzy writer or something, omg! Check out her blog, isn't she like totally the psycho?"
No, you say, you would never do that?
Oh, really? You want to see your PMs to me where you blab about everybody around you, your coworkers, your patients, your girl friends, your siblings and parents, I mean anybody in your life you dump every vicious feeling you have about them not even thinking for one second what life must be like for them.
So let's take one second and think what life actually is for Traci in that moment.
What did she actually do?
I got shit-faced drunk, for which she treated me, and she took the keys from my hand, and drove me home, and put me into bed and didn't take advantage of me, even though I was, like actively, desperately, soliciting she do just that.
Would you have done that for me, a date that snapped? Or would you have excused yourself to the bathroom to make a quick and clean getaway? And let the chips fall where they may, that is: have the police pick me up and charge me and have me cool off in the tank and require me to post bail?
On the other hand, would you have said, 'She's so drunk, she's won't know tomorrow what I'm going to be doing with her tonight ... besides, she's begging, practically forcing herself on me, so I may as well ...'
What did Traci do that was reprehensible? She saw something, found out about it, just like Bella Swan did, then confronted me with it, and, okay, I freaked, but how could she expect that from me when you couldn't get a 'boo' out of me for ... how long we've been working together? Months? More than a year?
I argue that hero of that story actually is Traci. Oh, ... everybody hated Rosalie in the Twilight books, until somebody (bb) asked: 'What did she actually do? Is what she's saying accurate? prudent?' And then everybody's like, 'oh, yeah, everything she said was right, and nobody listened to her.' Traci is no Rosalie, because she's Traci, but I don't think she rates the death sentence for driving an out-of-it girl home and putting her to bed.
Emily
Dickinson, that is.
Here's what she wrote:
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
She wrote that for her little brother, who wasn't little any more, but imagine if she wrote that for you ... for me, the little honey bee, flitting about her garden, suckling the nectar from her rose bushes.
Um ... I have to ... um, take care of something.
Did Emily have beaux? She was a 'recluse' whose poetry is now carved into stones in parks, and whose house is enshrined. She built high walls and if a visitor came, she would literally run and hide somewhere.
Sounds familiar, `phfina?
But her poetry shaped the literature of a nascent nation that the Old World viewed as a savage land populated by a barbarous race.
(Go ahead, it's okay to admit to yourself that you view that statement as accurate now)
Emily Dickinson ... have you seen a photograph of her? I have. I almost fainted when I saw my scared, timid eyes looking back at me.
And out of the flighty hands came words that every school child must read, and because why? because she's a school marm?
No. Go back and read her poetry ... because she dared to look into herself and write and expose her heart to the whole world.
But I am not Emily Dickinson.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Daphne
Why do you follow me?—
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel-tree.
Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.
Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off;—to heel, Apollo!
Vincent ... she, okay, she lived her life like she was some Norse Goddess and life was the horn holding that elixir of sweet nectar.
And then ...
Well, and she wrote poetry, and she didn't just write poetry, she wrote poetry that earned her the Pulitzer prize: the first one ever awarded to a woman. She wrote poetry so honest, so unvarnished, so bald, so bold that she made the equivalent of $300,000 each year of her life off of it.
Um, what?
For that kind of money, ... well, maybe I could ...
Nah ... you know what my poetry looks like, but if I were to follow form, all I could come up with always starts with:
"There once as a girl from Nantucket ..."
And then the next line, I always get stuck ('stuck-it'?) on one word the rhymes, but do you write poems with that word in it? No. And then I never get to the dénoument, either ...
That's me, stuck-it, fuck-it `phfina.
Some poetess I would make.
Besides which, I read Vincent's ("Ballad of the Harp-Weaver"? Please! How could I write something like that?) and 'Uncle Emily' and Sappho and ... okay, no. Just no.
Well, Vincent's life took a turn for the worse, she lived her life to its fullest and then she was used, spent. She died, soon after her husband had, drunk, despairing, falling down some steps.
I look at steps, looking at them, as they eye me, hungrily, and wonder if their teeth will be gentle as they chew me up (or actually: down), and I wonder if I will taste sweet to them.
Jo March/Louisa May Alcott
So Jo wrote not stories about vampires and fairies and monsters.
No: she wrote p.r.0.n. for women's magazines. And then her professor husband asked, 'Ist das zhe best dat you gott?'
And it wasn't. Little Women was. So she said she would try.
So she tried.
Is this the best that I've got?
I'm no Jo March. I'm no Vincent, nor Uncle Emily, nor Rebecca, nor Beki, nor Traci, nor you.
Nor anybody.
I'm just me.
I don't even belong to this world. I don't even belong in it.
And I wonder sometimes, ... what if that was the best that I got? What if my best came and went, and all you can do is read what I've written, because when you ask: "Is that all you got?" so fiercely, daring me to step up my game, and deliver that next chapter you know, you hope will impress you this time, or again, ...
... and all I can answer is, weakly: 'Yes, that was all I had.'
"There once was a girl from Nantucket,
Who looked at her writing; said: 'fuck it!'
She flew down some stairs
With the wind in her hair
Her end: bloody bits in a bucket."
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