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."

Molasses and Moby, "Porcelain"

Moby, “Porcelain”

In my dreams I'm dying all the time
As I wake its kaleidoscopic mind
I never meant to hurt you
I never meant to lie
So this is goodbye
This is goodbye

Tell the truth you never wanted me
Tell me

In my dreams I'm jealous all the time
As I wake I'm going out of my mind
Going out of my mind

— `phfina commentary.

Why didn't Moby just name the song: "Me," that is: "Me," as in: "Melissa"?

Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm not what you think I am or what you think I can be, even as I try to say it. I'm not this prancing prowling panther who can be strong and powerful. I'm not well. I'm not happy. I'm not fine.

Look, all I am is a little China doll, all Porcelain ... I'm the hero in Unbreakable ... that is: Mr. Glass, as fragile as that. You look at me, you breathe at me, I turn into the dust and ash that I am, and float away, in a million pieces.

So, when you ask me to be strong, when you say, 'I don't believe you're fine like you say you are,' ...

Well, no duh!

And then, ... okay, then you guess the town I live in, and the exact fucking sbux I may or may not have worked in ...

And then, you say, 'oh, I'll just pop by for a visit and say hi ...'

Brenda popped by to say hi at the sbux I worked at ...

... once.

That's when I changed my name and changed where I worked.

After I almost ended back at the hospital.

And what did she do? Nothing! okay? Nothing. But you know, after what happens happened and ... well, she wanted more from me ... she wanted me to be more than I could be, what I can be ...

I can't be her dead husband from Desert Storm, or whatever, okay? I can't be this person that gives you all this strength. I can't be this person who was you so broken over whatever but who overcame her stuff and prevailed and look, `phfina made it, and wrote exactly what I went through, and if I could just talk with her, or not even that, but just order a coffee from her, and say, 'hi, I know who you are, and what you wrote touched me so much, and thank you!' and not be all fan-girly but just say that to her, and maybe touch her hand, and maybe ask was she's doing after she gets off work, and maybe just go out with her to an art gallery this weekend like she so bravely did instead of staying in her apartment, you know? Just go out with her, and hold her when she's got the shakes and pull her hair back when she's puking, and hold her through the night, telling her how much I love her, and how I would take care of her, and check in on her, and make sure she's everything she can be, everything I know she can be, because she's so timid and fragile, that she needs somebody like me to push her out of her shell and push her out into the world, where I'll publish her book and she'll be world-famous and rich, and millions of people will know her like I do so they all can ask for her autograph and her advice on their life and identify with her and scrutinize her every move and advise her what's wrong with everything she does: when she hides, she's withholding, when she talks with the paparazzi, she's stupid (you answer questions right off the cuff about 'your career' or 'the situation in Haiti' or 'politics in Washington D.C.' quote-correctly-unquote every time and perfectly!), when she goes out with a friend, they are going to get married (!?!?), when she goes to a charity thing, she's fake (!?!?!)

Fuck, how can Kristen Stewart or Stephenie Meyer do this?

And you're just one person, deeply touched by my words, caring for me, offering me your advice and your heart. You're just ten people. You're just one hundred people. You're just one thousand people. You're just ten thousand people.

Every month. More than ten thousand people visit my profile, reading my stories, whether I 'update soon' or not. And look, okay? I'm griping, ... AND I'm grateful!

Okay?

Look, Ten-fucking-thousand readers ... every month?!?!

How many ffn writers want that, besides every single one of them? I'm more popular than better writers than me. AND I don't write ExB AU/AH smut fics with a mention of Sartre to get the guaranteed 10K+ review-love. I write fucking Rosalie femslash guaranteed fail-fics.

Who wants to read about that bitch?

You do.

And thank you.

But.

I'm not ...

I'm not win. I'm fail, okay? I'm a fucking loser. And that means I'm not you, bc you're making it, somehow. Maybe you don't know how, and maybe I don't know how, but you're making it.

So ... me? Pinning your hopes on me?

Do you know what you're doing for me? Hoping me into something I'm not? That I'm so not? Wishing me well?

Listen, I'm not "a good example" for the next generation. I'm not somebody to look up to. I'm not a project. I'm not something you can fix or make better.

I'm a lost cause. And when you hope for me, it's so, so sweet of you, and this is my reaction ...

"This is goodbye."

And I look at getting on a plane — something I've never done — and not flying off to another country where I don't speak the language ... like Greece, no: I would get on a plane only with the guarantee that it runs out of fuel over the Atlantic, and everybody on board — especially me! — dies, you got that?

Look, I worked up the courage to wish a fb friend a happy birthday, and my reward for my courage? I got savaged! Okay? She was all like, I have one thousand friends, and "who are you," Miss Nobody? and "Whatever floats your boat." and "lol" and text-speak that I hope nobody in my generation really uses to speak, but there it is.

This is my reward for reaching out, for wishing somebody well?

And you say, "Oh, but it would be different with me."

No, it wouldn't. You so don't understand. You are not the problem, don't you get that?

I know exactly where the problem is. And I know what happens when kind, caring, loving people try to fix it.

I fuck them. I so fuck them up ... that .... that ...

Look. You can't fix what's broken, and you can't make yourself better by making me better, 'cause this is what happens. You get hurt when I pick on your so-visible sores, then you lash out from your hurt, and you get hurt when you see you hurting me.

And I get to say: "See?"

And I shut down.

And I kill you off.

And then you can't do this alone, you need me to be here, and I'm so gone. And you marry a person that is there for you.

Or you say 'fuck off and die, bitch!' and throw the trash out. And I leave, hurt, and you throw me out, furious.

And then you come to your senses, realizing what you did from your hurt, but I'm so long gone already, and have left no forwarding address, and you call my mom every fucking week to ask how I'm doing, hoping I'm doing well.

Hoping. Hoping, hoping, hoping I'm doing well, and maybe, if I'm town again, sometime, I could stop by and ...

Kate, anyone?

Look, you're not up to the job of asking me 'how are you?' or 'I miss you, write something!' or ' ...

Or whatever.

What are you up for? I have no fucking idea, bc if you ... if you dared to be you, and not this constrained, hopeful, helpful, timid person you are ...

Mountains would move out of your way.

But this? Me? This me?

Save your breath, save your effort, save yourself.

You have to be strong enough to be yourself, and be happy with that.

And, honey, most of you aren't, especially those of you who want to know how I'm doing, with the hope that it will make how you're doing better.

How I'm doing won't make you better. How you are doing is the thing. That's what I want to know, and that's what some of you get, sometimes, when you go out and get that gf, or save lives, or say, 'Hey, `phfina, how ya doing? Hey, guess what I just did! I just ...' and you tell me how you moved and changed the world.

Look, I can't save you. The only thing I can do is drag you down to hell with me, and ...

Ha. Hahaha.

The only thing I'm good at doing is writing about it in all its specific and gory details.

I can't save you. You can save you, though. And when you do, you save me. And when you don't, and you depend on me, or fix me, or hope for me, trying to save you by proxy ...

Well, that's all you're left with: a proxy. A proxy is not a rope to pull you out of the sh!t. A proxy is maya, and leaves you stuck down there.

That's all I am, okay? I'm illusion. I'm nothing. I'm chimera. I'm Lila.

And I, Lila, the dance, will dance with you, and it is a wild dance, but it is a dance of death and destruction, and the longer you are in this dance, the more wild it is, for I am quite the dervish, inexhaustible in my ever-enticing novel songs of woe, but the whirling only spins us further down the spiral that has a terminus in only one place.

Hint: you don't need to bring a toaster; it's rather warm down there.

Save yourself. Don't care about me. When I say, 'I'm fine,' don't pursue with inquiry, no: just disengage.

Otherwise ...

I will suck you in and destroy you.

I have proof. Lots of proof. And you may say you are strong, but the strong ones walked away, under their own power, remembering, or not remembering, that wild, sometimes fun, ride they had with that kitten-panther.

How am I doing?

Actually, this is one of my better days. The weather outside is nice and warm with a slight breeze. I think I'll go out for a walk in the park later that is right next to the sbux that I may or may not have or do work at.

Sh!t. Now somebody's going to look that up, figure out it's "Greensprings gardens" and show the fuck up, order a coffee and tell me they know who I am, and how am I doing?

I think I'll move to a State that starts with a "C" ... other than "Connecticut."

... too many dead bodies there, waiting, hoping, for me to come back there.

Or maybe I'll move to a State that starts with "M" ... other than "Maryland," which is too close to where I live now, so you still might find me by expanding your search area by a few miles.

Fuck. I feel sick to my stomach. All I want to do is hide, and there's nowhere to hide, and I can't breathe.

That's how I feel, thank you so much for asking, and why can't you just be fine with 'I'm fine'?

That not good enough an answer, then how about this one: "I never meant to hurt you / I never meant to lie / So this is goodbye / This is goodbye" and as I sing this, I see the glass, the porcelain, that is me shattering into dust and echos.

How's that for an answer?

You not happy with that answer? You not grateful that I'm being honest and open with you?

Guess where that unhappiness is coming from?

... and you're going to make me all better, coming from where that unhappiness is coming from?

It's been tried before. More than several times.

And I am a panther. The predator is lightning-fast in sensing weakness. I do eat my prey.

... In other news, ... I've thought of a new story. A retelling of a fairy tale. It's a 'one-shot.' A `phfina one-shot.

*sigh* ... that sigh means: 'maybe I'll get to it after I reply to all the reviews and PMs and finish all the other incomplete stories I've got dangling, entangling me, snaring me with their need to be finished.'

I think ... I think the only good thing I can do for myself and the world is finish one thing: me.

Yeah, it's a good day, as long as I don't think about myself and how I'm doing. Thanks for asking and caring. I wish I could measure up to a person who could answer your concern worthily.

You wanna know what set all this off? Besides "How are you, ... really?"

Molasses.

I mentioned molasses in my last recipe, and not one of you said one thing about that.

You know what I've made that mean? If I had molasses in my pantry up North, I would be savaged. I would be asked what the fucking hell was that fucking shit and what the fucking hell was it doing in my house?

That's how people up North talk: right in your face and with the eff word used as a verb, noun and adjective, but do you see how fucked up I am? I say molasses, and you didn't say a peep. That means to me that it's situation normal. I'm a sweet little Southern belle to you, aren't I? I don't have a home to go home to now, anymore, because I've acclimatized to my new environs. I can never go back to that cold, austere New England I grew up in, 'cause I would be a stranger in a strange land, looking for molasses. No, I've blended right into the background here, a little barista — littler than you; littler than me — handing you your drink and wishing you well on your day as you're out the door, not even seeing me as you take your cup, not even missing me when I off myself, 'cause somebody else, just like me, will be handing you your cup tomorrow. I'm just a Southern girl, using molasses in her recipes, writing her silly little smutfics, just like Louisa May Alcott, aka Jo March, wrote her smutfics for women's magazines to make a pretty penny turning on all those ladies in their petticoats, wetting their knickers, and I'm not even getting paid for this, what I'm pouring my heart out into and for what reason, for why am I doing this?

I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know anything anymore. All I know is: "As I wake I'm going out of my mind / Going out of my mind."

That's how I'm doing.

Happy?

I ... it's hard to swallow right now ... I don't know how much longer I can hold it together.

And, no, thank you. I don't want your help. One thing help does: it hurts you, irreversibly, and it hastens my leap over the edge of the precipice. My last suicide attempt was acted out when I was in therapy.

So don't come near me to comfort me. I'm terrified already, and I don't need to add to my burdens and yours, saying the things I see from my tunneled vision when I see you approach, talons extended.

I wonder. I wonder how many people are willing to accept an answer they aren't expecting when they ask "How are you?" I wonder how many people are willing to be fine with the answer given from the heart, and not say, 'no, you don't feel that, nobody could be that fucked up,' or 'no, you aren't that, nobody's not nothing, you're better than that, and you know it,' but can just accept where the person is coming from? Can just see the person where they are, and simply be with that? Just be a body and catch a body in the rye? 'Catch' ... or meet a body in the rye. Whatevs.

I know. I know. It's mirror time for me.

"I am beautiful. I am smart. I am loved. I am a writer. I am a writer like no other. I touch people's hearts. I bring happiness to people's lives, and comfort in their despair and loneliness."

Yes. I know. All that's true. I do. I am of service, and, serving, I do bring something to you, that would be missing, lost, if I didn't dare to step out.

And that is a comfort now, when I think on it.

And someday, maybe, I'll have a good, happy, Spring day, where I will walk in that unnamed (sort of) park, and smell the flowers, and look up at the sky, and be, and be happy, and write something sad, or happy, or smexy, or funny, or serious, and will save another person's life, and I will preen and prance, the proud panther that I am. Today is a nice, warm, grey cloudy, New Englandy day. Maybe that day will be today.

Can you be patient with me, when I am sad? So you can rejoice with me when I am glad?

A Nonsense Song by Stephen Vincent Benét

ROSEMARY, Rosemary, let down your hair!
The cow's in the hammock, the crow's in the chair!
I was making you songs out of sawdust and silk,
But they came in to call and they spilt them like milk.

The cat's in the coffee, the wind's in the east,
He screams like a peacock and whines like a priest
And the saw of his voice makes my blood turn to mice
So let down your long hair and shut off his advice!

Pluck out the thin hairpins and let the waves stream,
Brown-gold as brook-waters that dance through a dream,
Gentle-curié as young cloudlings, sweet-fragrant as bay
Till it takes all the fierceness of living away.

Oh, when you are with me, my heart is white steel.
But the bat's in the belfry, the mold's in the meal,
And I think I hear skeletons climbing the stair!
Rosemary, Rosemary, let down your bright hair!

— 'phfina's thoughts:

I remember hearing this when I was a little child, I think, or somehow this poem pulls to me in that way. I stumbled upon it last weekend? two weekends ago? and immediately when I read it, I started reciting it out loud in my sing-songy reciting voice:

"Rosemary, Rosemary let down your hair!"

... and I couldn't help but to smile as I sang this silly song.

But, really, this song isn't so silly: it's sweet, and it's, yes: sad. The world around us — around me — is this crazy world where "the cow's in the hammock, the crow's in the chair!" but what is the image called to us in this crazy-life? It's Rosemary, my beloved Rosemary [the poet's wife], combing her hair in the morning, and putting up in a severe bun, and Stephen cries out: "Rosemary, Rosemary, please let down your hair!"

This is so New England, and yes, Stephen's from Pennsylvania, so I'll change that to 'Colonial.' Yeah! Colonial. There's something so ... 13 colonies in this poem, how the Brits came over to the New World, and wrested it from the natives, and wrested it from the French, and wrested it from anything and everything, including itself, so the 'New' England took on a character of the 'Old' England that they fled, and it wasn't even the Old England, it was what they thought they fled from Old England: that cold, unwelcoming, desolate place that the Brits entirely aren't! (I've met a few, and it's hard to find more warm, welcoming, bright, friendly people that the Brits I've met.) But this is what the colonists fled, and this is what they brought with them.

Funny how the thing we are running away from is the thing that is waiting for us when we arrive at our haven.

And so these hardy colonists carved out the land from the land and made it this prosperous, grey, heartless place. And so we have this poetry, from Benét and Frost and Wallace Stevens and other New Englanders and Colonists, so precise, so pragmatic, and so filled with longing for love and affection and something they could so easily have if they'd just do the one thing they cannot: put down the plow of their toil and dare, just dare, to open their hearts.

So.

So there's me, a New Englander, in exile in the South (but in the safe northern part of the South) (but no place is safe, is it, 'phfina?), reading this poem. And thinking about it and the images it calls forth.

And, I, well, is my hair something for my spouse to cry out this line? Well, not really. It's not full-bodied like my sisters' ... and it's not ratty, not really, it's just this straight, jet black "thing" that's this mess in the morning, and after that I don't really think about it until I'm washing the coffee smell out of it after I work out.

I really don't think about hair, except when I'm admiring it or when I'm missing it. Like, one time when I was still in high school, I visited my sister in Vermont, and I was shocked when I saw her because she was all Sinéad, and then she told me she had donated her hair for women who had lost their hair through cancer, and my approbation (had she gone skin-head?) turned to admiration. And I thought: how brave! how giving! how selfless!

Funny that, 'cause now her mom's a blond. Yes, her mom has breast cancer, and the chemo took her hair, and now she's on radiation therapy.

I wonder if I could ever do that: just cut off all my hair. And I don't see myself as vain, but here I am thinking about this little nothing while people are dying, .. and I don't see myself as ... well, I grew up where compliments weren't given, even if they were earned. I did tell you I'm from New England, didn't I? I mean, everything I did to try to make some kind of impression on my parents, what I did at school, what I did at home? But everybody in my family's a Mensan, (really) published authors with national and international accolades, teachers, professors, philosophers, for God's sake, so that makes me an also-ran, I guess, you know?

So I would get, if I were lucky, just a nod from a parent, or a slight smile, but "I love you"? or "You look nice today"? or "Good job!"? Those things weren't said. No, it was more like: "..." No, I'm not going to write it; it's too painful, even now: my family is very, very smart, and very, very critical. And I know they want the best from me, and they tried to offer their constructive criticism gently, not bluntly, ... most of the time, but I never felt I was good enough, you know? So I never saw myself as pretty, or loved even, by my parents. I mean, I know they did, and, ... but growing up was rather austere — rather ... not cold, but cool, you know? very, very cool and distant — and, thinking back to my childhood, it was rather hard, and here I am now, and I won't do this thing that my sister did.

Even though I can't really see somebody quoting this poem to me.

So, singing this silly song to myself softly, I smile, but it's a wistful smile, as I see the lover call to the beloved, seeing her as beautiful, as perfect, and hearing the longing in the voice, and then my smile disappears and I have to wipe away my tears.

You know what I've been reading? Salinger and Sartre. And I wonder: what if they are right? What if they are right, and now is the only thing we have, and it's all vanity?

"Why is Violet crying? I just said to her to look how hard it's raining outside and she runs to the bathroom!"

Yes, it's raining hard outside, and I hear skeletons climbing the stairs...

... and now is all we have ...

So, Rosemary, Rosemary, let down your hair.

In the Arms of an Angel

Of course. You know, I'm weird. You know it, and I know it, too. I have these discussions with myself, and when I write my stories, with you as well, that I don't hear anybody else having.

I think about Angels occasionally. I mean, I really, really think about them.

You know, or maybe you don't, but angels do. From forever, Angels have known everything, so I mean, there they are, forever, knowing everything.

... and their looking down at us ... they are looking down at me.

And, you know how it is: when you so know something, and you so try to tell somebody, or you so try not to, knowing if they only listened to you, they would just avoid so much trouble and heartbreak. I know you struggle with this, because I've read your PMs to me.

So there this angel is, my profile pic, and she's weeping.

She's probably thinking about me.

And, the thing is, angels don't cry. I mean, they want the best for you, but that also includes ... what do you call it? free choice? No: free will, so I screw up, and I either learn from it, or I keep screwing up until I do learn or I die, and there the angels are, cheering me on, wanting the best for me ... loving me.

And that statement, right now, really hits me like a ton of bricks ... or a ton of feathers from angels' wings? Because ... well, I grew up how I grew up, but I've always felt alone and ... well, unloved, and when I do feel love it's like WHAMMO! and I just reel under that.

I'm probably not going to keep this pic up. It called to me. Maybe there's a story in there, called something like: "My Guardian Angel" and why she's weeping, or something like that, or not, but it called to me, and I shared it with you.

They say the sea is cold, but in it runs the hottest blood of all.

Angels, mermaids, vampires.

I am surrounded by super-natural things in my thoughts, and my thoughts take life and you read them in my writing.

I am surrounded by miracles, and maybe there's an Angel looking down from Heaven, weeping for me, and my silly, silly choices and struggles. Maybe she is weeping.

But I know she loves me. That's so hard for me to believe. I'm loved by something that knows everything about my nature, but still loves me.

And, sometimes, I wonder why I exist. Heh: 'sometimes.' Okay, a lot of the times (sometimes I don't, 'cause I'm happy or sad or writing or making an iced latte or ... whatever), but I heard once that women should cover their heads so the angels won't see them and be tempted away from Heaven (I so know the temptation ... often).

AND I also heard that why I'm here? And this is a shocker for me: why I'm here is to teach the angels.

The angels know everything, but they have never, ever experienced one single thing. Not one hug, nor laugh, nor cry, nor ... writing a story nor going to the bathroom nor eating gnocchi (God! poor things!) ... and the only way they can experience that: feeling hurt or love or hungry or happy, is through us ... through me.

Right this second, me crying at my keyboard, I'm teaching an Angel, my angel, something through my experience.

And that, right now? It gives me a little bit of hope, and a little bit of strength that I didn't know I had.

Thanks, there, Angel. Be seeing you around.

p.s. and oh, btw, this pic is of the Angel of Grief, also call the Weeping Angel. The original is in Rome, but this one is a replica found in a New England (of course, do you see the stark, barren, forlorn tree? So New England. I'll touch on New England later, as I have before).