Little Girl Blue

It Waxes Wet

2010-05-15T14:46:00.000-07:00

It's raining today, for the first time in memory it seems (when did it last rain on a weekend?) and rainy days, when I can be inside my room with a few dim lamps to cast a warm glow, make me contemplative. I'm so contemplative now, peacefully so—thoughts keep meandering in and out of my head, some sad, but not painfully so. Plaintive are my thoughts today.
I don't know where I'm going. Or who I am. But I don't want to wrestle with these questions, especially not now. I thought, I need to get out of my own head. So I volunteered, briefly, at the Hospice of Leesville. I was assigned to three women, two of them dying in the Alzheimer's Ward. It's so depressing going there that I haven't been in nearly a month. That makes me feel selfish. Getting out of my own head put me back there with a vengeance.
I want to be useful to someone. I watch my sister with her baby and think—I want someone to need me that way. I want to me a mother. I taste the word mother in my mouth and it's foreign but somehow it feels like it could be right. A squeeze into a shoe too small, but once you've worn it around for a while, it becomes your favorite pair. I love wacky metaphor.
But how to become one? Of course I want love, romantic love. I want it in and of itself, not as a means or an end to a baby. I want my wish for a baby to be a mirror of the love I have for this phantom-father. A person I love so much that to have his child would be the greatest thing I could think to do for him. Something like that. Do I romanticize things too much? I think I do. I think I'll read this a day from now and roll my eyes at myself.
I'm so longing. Every cell in my being is longing, pulling outwards for something else than just me. It's like I'm magnetic and being pulled towards another magnet but I can't see it or know what direction it is. And I think this feeling is pulling me towards love, but maybe it isn't.
It's a waxing crescent tonight and I want someone to gaze at the barely-visible moon with me. Someone I like, not just anybody. Hardly anyone would please me. (Though I would never let on, feigning temperance and sweetness as I do.)
I'll stomp my foot and be done with this tantrum. Listen to the Icelandic lullaby and my pretty room and my dog, who loves me, and who I love, and be happy.

I Know Not Where I Go

2010-05-15T14:45:00.000-07:00

I Know Not Where I Go

I'm lonesome for I know not what —
The North Star told me so;
though south I travel every day,
due north at night I go.

The sun arcs high from east to west,
its backdrops rearrange—
and during day the south is warm,
the north is gray and strange.

As dusk begins to blush such hues
as only fall leaves know,
the North Star gleams, it shines its eye—
it knows I do not know.

That bright star points my way back home
where those who love me best
are deep entranced in this and that
and leave me to my rest.

I'm lonesome for I know not what
the sun climbs towards the west—
according to our deeds, we live;
at night the robins nest.

But I can't help but wander to
and even further fro;
the North Star disappears in day—
I know not where I go.

A Visit to the Alzheimer's Ward

2010-04-25T18:15:00.000-07:00

The old woman in the Alzheimer's ward wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, affixed to her head by a tie that wrapped around her mottled chin. Her hair was thin but long. She wore a pair of khaki capris and a lavender knit sweater that was missing all but one button.

"I'm going to go home soon and get more buttons to sew on my sweater," she said.

"But home's so far away."

"How far away is home?" I asked.

"Five miles," she said.

"That's not too far," I said.

"It is if you're in a wheelchair."

Then she said, "Daddy bought me this hat. So I don't get sunburned in the fields."

"It's a beautiful hat," I said.

"He bought me these shoes too," she said. "Daddy loves red. He has a pair too."

She sported a pair of red tennis shoes, and lifted her leg, her calves purple from poor circulation, to show me.

We sat in silence for a few minutes. She reached for my hand and I took it. I rubbed it gently but didn't say anything. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Then she said, again, "Home's so far away."

Her eyes glazed a little, but then she focused on me; she spoke of her brothers; she said they were too young for school.

"How old are they?" I asked.

"Two and four," she said.

"That is too young," I said. "Who else is in your family?"

"I have two grandmothers. Elizabeth's the name of one of them, but I can't remember my other grandmother's name. They're nice to me but they don't visit much."

A few more minutes of silence, then, for a few moments back in the present, she said, "They're both dead now."

I kept hold of her hand. "They're still with you, though."

She didn't seem to comprehend me. She only repeated, "My daddy bought me this hat. I won't get sunburned in it."

"I know you won't. Your skin is so fair you wouldn't want to take that chance."

She laughed and I laughed with her.

I sati with her for a few more minutes, then hugged her and said I had to go.

"Do you really have to leave?" she asked.

"No, I can stay a little longer."

We sat in silence; she noticed lights reflecting from the windows. She sat and gazed at me.

I asked her what she was thinking and she said, "My daddy bought me this hat."

"Your father's a good man. He must care a lot about you to buy you such pretty things," I said.

"He is," she said. "I think he'll come visit soon."

"Well, until he does, you have the hat to remind you of him," i said.

Finally, I released her hand, gently, and got up to leave.

"I'll come back tomorrow or the next day and we can talk some more," I said. "If you wouldn't mind talking to me."

"Just come find me," she said, and leaned in as if to hug me. I embraced her, then kissed her gently on the cheek.

"it was good to see you. I'll see you again soon," I said, then walked away from her.

Love is not love which alters

2010-03-29T19:31:00.001-07:00

"These violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph die like fire and powder, which as they kiss, consume."

I love Shakespeare. Why don't I read more of him? Right at this very moment, at 9:34 central standard time on March 29, 2010 I'd gladly admit to Shakespeare being my favorite poet/playwright/author/muse of all time.

"It is the cause, it is the cause my soul." Okay. Enough hackneyed quotation. I ought to break open my Shakespeare anthology and do some reading, but it's so time intensive; I like to study the character list at the beginning for a while, so I have a gist for who is who before the play begins. And that's an hour. Then the play, which is not hard reading, once you get into the Elizabethan language, but Shakespeare's one of those authors you can't skim. Well, you can, but you're just a pontificating ignoramus if you do it. So don't. Savor the lines. Iambic or blank.

Sunset

2010-02-06T18:06:00.000-08:00

Who was the first person on earth to describe a sunrise or sunset as fiery? What a revelation it must have seemed at the time. to be the first to compare the dancing orange of flame to the sky at dusk and dawn.
The comparison is so trite now, but is it any less true? Can we still sing the same song over and over and over again and take pleasure in the hearing, in the performance, in the song? Or does the ecstasy we find in the music depend not in the times we hear it but in quality of the melody?

Clocked Out

2009-12-14T15:54:00.001-08:00

and writing now, though still at work. I've had such great ideas lately—last lines, or phrases, or titles—everything just bubbling in my head and I think "this is such a good idea, I know I'll remember it" and I don't. I'm thinking of all the little poems-that-never-were out there, in the land of smoke and honey, that won't be written because of my procrastination.
I've read a handful of poems, too, by other people that I think are so much like ones I've written, only of course they are better, being in the New Yorker and all. I grow poem-paranoid, think "hmmm I wonder if they somehow read my poem X to get their poem Y." Which is, I know, the fatal flaw of hubris. Though this is less like true hubris, I think, than just plain crazy thinking. But it's nice to have these kindred-spirit moments, to read something and know that maybe someone thought the same way or felt the way I did, if only for a second.
I'd ask how you are doing, but you aren't telling, are you?
Memorizing a good deal, too. I'm determined to build myself a mental library filled with Dickinson. She's very easy to memorize, but her lines yield new fruit with each repetition.
I wish I could get all my ducks in a row without feeling that one was a bit crooked, then going over to check, tripping over three other ducks on the way over so that, in the end, my row has disappeared and is just random ducks.

Monday Night Blues

2009-12-07T15:19:00.000-08:00

I wish I had a shiny mouth harp
'cause I'd sing me some Monday night blues.

dfja; coffee?

2009-12-07T05:44:00.000-08:00

I was smack in the middle of a hallmark-inspired dream when Cleo so rudely pawed my door. I was laying in fields of clover with Wilson and House, talking about poetry. Together, they make the perfect man. I loved House but would die before I told him because he'd just mock me. Then I found out that my sister's baby (I feel superstitiously like jinxing this if I type it out) was going to be stillborn and I was sobbing but went about my work (I worked at the hospital, I guess—I had a white jacket but I knew I was no doctor). I go to see her, and House is there. He's operating on the baby—he's removed it from the womb. He says "it's a boy" and I'm crying insanely, repeat "It's a boy, it's a boy." He's somehow got the baby's heart beating, and I feel then as though I've witnessed a miracle, because it was not alive a few minutes ago. An orderly says the police are coming, that they are coming for House for doing this, and yet again I'm crying because it just seems like the supreme act of love for him to have done this. He looks at me and tells me to put the finger in the baby's mouth, quickly, to get the baby to begin sucking. I do, and the baby turns from blue to pink. The police disappear, and I am amazed and worshipping.

parakeet

2009-12-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

why should anyone feel grief for a dying parakeet? why should anyone drive home, talking to a sister for 45 minutes who knows about the dying bird, but not a word, and me talking about tomato juice and poetry.
then I drive up to the house, after a day of snow, thinking to ask if Cleo's been out in it yet, wondering about her reaction and whether or not she romped. and i walk into the garage and my mom is sitting there and she says "Rachel" in that tone I know—that tone that says "I have something really, really bad to tell you so prepare yourself," and I said "what?", panicked, and she said "Lady Fig got out of her cage today and I think she's dying."
i couldn't go in the house. i couldn't see that little bird crushed and struggling to breathe. my excitement at what the dog thought of the snow turned in an instant into total grief, and blame, because I saw a few days ago that the latch on the bird cage door was loose and thought I'll mention it to dad, and he'll fix it, and forgot.
and the worst feeling is, after walking in—after telling my dad to put the cage and the bird somewhere outside of the house--anywhere, just not in the house, and I don't know why I felt that way--but after walking in, Cleo was so happy I was home. She ran to my bedroom door with her big teddy bear and I slammed the door in her face--I caught her in the door and she cried. And I felt so awful, so guilty for hurting this dog, who killed my parakeet. She did what dogs do. Dogs like birds, and not as friends. So I opened my door and Cleo jumped on my bed and began suckling on her teddy bear and now she's lying on her back, her legs akimbo and she doesn't know that she killed a living thing I loved, and it is impossible to blame her for it.

I dreamed of a mocha frappuccino

2009-11-15T12:47:00.000-08:00

My heart hurts. I just found out someone I was once infatuated with (someone explain the difference between infatuation and love) is married and has a child. It's strange, feeling at all hurt by this. The wound had healed--it was just a tiny scar. If only he had been nice to me; I would have gotten to know him, really known him, and become quickly indifferent.
My forehead's hot. I think I have a fever. My face feels sunburned. It's silly to put silly people on pedestals. It's silly to put anyone on a pedestal. I won't do it anymore!
Yes I will. I am doing it. But they're all better people than that married man. I'm improving, slowly.
I hate wedding rings. I see a ring on a finger and some nerve ending in my brain begins to fire. I see "unattainable" written all over a man, and suddenly I think he's wonderful.
Who are the attainable men? Who could I actually deign to love who would ever really love me back?

Tea for Two

2009-11-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

I see you.
I’ve always seen you.
I’ve seen you walking past a woman
with red hair; often you have smiled
as you passed but never raised your eyes.
I’ve seen you sit alone
at dinner, or for tea,
my solitary darling, nibbling
your biscotti and careful of crumbs.
I see you now.
You scratch your nose. You tap
your foot to the rhythm of some internal song
(something in ¾ time, I think).
You do not know you do these things,
but, of course, you do.
I imagine walking through the door, or wall,
which separates you and me.
What conversations we would have!
I think we’d be content to gaze at one another
in congenial silence. You might take
my hand. You wouldn’t be You anymore,
nor I, I.

The Mourning Doves

2009-11-07T15:30:00.000-08:00

I dreamed of mourning doves yesterday. There was a pair of them--in my dream, it was important to know they are monogamous, so this particular set had paired off for life. The male dove was ill--he could no longer fly well, and rather than leave him, the female dove flew nervously around him, pushing him gently with her beak, trying to get him up and flying. It was no use. He was in distress, flapping and dying, and she stayed with him, though he had perched on a picnic table and was easy prey for my dog, who I was walking as I observed them.

The female became listless. It seemed to me that she was willing herself to die because she knew her life-mate--the bird she'd chosen to nest with for her life--was dying. She no longer cared. If she did not get eaten by a dog or a cat, she'd just lie down there and starve.

I saw this and was horrified by it--and at the same time, was powerless. I don't know why. I had no way to help the male, who was beyond human care, and I knew no matter what I did, the female would grieve over him.

Two pigeons flew over to the mourning doves, and began tussling the female, trying to get her to fly away, to save herself. She wouldn't. She let them peck at her. So the pigeons took the male dove, who had died, in their beaks and flew away with him. They knew the female would follow her dead mate, that perhaps they could get her up higher and give her a fighting chance.

I woke after that--I don't know what happened to the female mourning dove--and though I was just an observer, I could feel her grief--this horrible, deep, overwhelming grief that your life is ending because someone else's has.

Master -

2009-10-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

I've thought of you this morning - though coffee has spilled -

the dog woke me in the dark.

It's late morning - there - and must be beautiful -

though the flowers there - neglected -
to tell you -

Perhaps the light is thin?

What are you doing, sir? Please to tell your heart -

the keeper -

as she pleases -

won't you tell me how you do?

Self Portrait of Girl in Dream

2009-10-27T17:50:00.001-07:00

Self Portrait of Girl in Dream

The banana trees were in bloom,

their broad leaves just beginning

to split and curl.

Dozens of tropical birds

the size of condors

with bright blue plumage

and hooked bills

perched together in a leafless tree.

Then you appeared, in a nightgown

too sheer for modesty.

The morning light penetrated

cotton, kissed your pale flesh,

and you spread seed

for the strange birds.

A cavatina of Mozart’s played—

first from your stereo, then from the sky itself—

(the girl in the song sings

I have lost it! Where is it?)

and the birds began to swoop.

They were molting, and you stopped throwing

seed and picked up a long blue contour feather.

Blood soaked the quill like ink.

This frightened you, and you ran into the house.

Oh, where is it? Where is it?

You looked out the windows to see a rush

of blue and red. The birds blocked sky,

beat their wings against the door for entrance.

You thought only of your dog,

and tucked her, murmuring endearments,

into the linen closet.

The cerulean sky calmed.

You, charming girl in white, opened the door

and peeked—the birds had flown away, or disappeared.

Laughing, you ran into the grass,

noticing only then there was no green:

carpeting the ground instead were finches,

sparrows, thrushes, their bodies

twisted, broken, with their blood,

still warm, and feathers, on your feet.

More Dreams

2009-10-17T06:16:00.000-07:00

More vivid dreams. I'm sitting here, trying to reimagine them to type out, and they're already fading away. Though disjointed, I'll tell the dream in the order I remember it.

I sat in a paneled room with my father. I was dressed in mourning black--a dress from the 1850s, like Emily Dickinson wore in her deguerrotype, with a cinched waist, full skirt, and those bell-shaped oversleeves that cut off mid-arm--beneath them was a white linen sleeve.

Anyhow, I sat demurely in this place--a restaurant--and noticed a woman dressed much like me. She asked me if I had read the obituary of her child. I said no. She told me her baby girl had just died suddenly, that the only thing they could figure was a sudden brain fever, because one day she was fine and the next day she was dead. I felt sorry for her.

Through memory, I know without there being a story line that I'm in mourning for this woman's son. We'd been engaged, but he has died at war (civil war, I guess). Months after his death, I begin clearing away the things I had of his, and found a box I hadn't opened, with a letter inside. It was from HIS brother, declaring his love for me.

I remember his name--Robert Browning--though I'm not clear whether he was THE poet or just a poet. He was handsome and young. Though I didn't feel I could tell him I welcomed his affection without betraying the memory of his brother, I wanted to, so much.

Unfortunately, his father had pressed him into marriage for money, and because he believed I had ignored his letter, he had married this girl. Seeing no honest future for our love, I accepted the suit of one Rhett Butler. He was vital and handsome--I grew to love him more than Robert, but couldn't see it.

The war came--there were explosions, flashes of light--and we knew we had to evacuate. A doctor who had a grudge against Robert had pressed pills on me filled with poison, told me it was a quick death. I thought about giving all of us these pills--escaping the world. We drove together--Robert and his wife in the back seat, Rhett and me in the front. Before we drove, a soldier from the enemy poured vodka on the car-carpet and said he was going to blow us up. I gave my best Southern smile and pleaded with him. I asked Rhett if we were going to die. He said no, and gave me a shotglass filled with vodka. I drank a few of them, then positioned myself to drive. I remember being in that same black dress, and how heavy my skirts were. I had these buttoned boots on and it took a lot of effort to get my legs where I wanted them to be.

We stopped for a break and Robert offers us drinks. I seem him break open a pill--the same kind I have, the poison--and realize he's betraying us. Rhett sees it too. He throws Robert out of the car--I beg him not to hurt him--and I take the pill and see that inside is not poison, but rubies. He's smuggling rubies out--deceitful, but no betrayal. Still, I through their things out and toss the rubies into the driveway. "Search for them," I said.

Rhett comforts me--he knows how I loved Robert--as I sob and reverse and drive off. Rhett and I stay away for years--I think Mexico--when I come back, I hear the story of how Robert's wife had gone mad after we'd gone, and how he became a hermit. Then, not myself anymore but watching the story, I hear how my story ends--how I lose two children after childbirth and die after losing the second is too much to bear.

Dreams

2009-10-15T05:21:00.001-07:00

I had the most vivid dreams last night, and they were so sweet. I'd forgotten how full of verisimilitude (word of the day) dreams can be--how they can echo real emotion so that when you wake you forget for a minute that you have another life--your real life--and the dream was the lie. And the thing you'd learned to cherish in your dream wasn't yours, or didn't exist. And you're heartbroken for a second, then get up and brush your teeth.
I dreamed I wanted to have a baby and had decided on a timeline to procure one (the natural way). I loved someone I've loved before and he loved me. He visited me and I knew he loved me--but he had another life he could not abandon. So I cried, then cried some more. He cried too.
Another man enters--I agree to ex-patriate for him. My new skyline is beautiful--a city surrounded by mountains and green. I run across a skyscraper rooftop and bound into his arms. He gives me an emerald hatpin and kisses me.
And then there was the baby. Just flashes of a face, of a feeling before he comes. It was sweet. It was hard to lose even the dream of him. Of them both.

Can it really be six-thirty?

2009-10-08T04:37:00.000-07:00

You would think that a person would eventually fall asleep while lying in the dark, nice and incubated from the cold (snuggling under a blanket neither too thick nor too thin). But it hasn't happened for me, not since I woke up two hours ago. Blasted dog who is now lying outside of my bedroom door, waiting patiently for me to open the door and let her in. In about fifteen minutes, she'll lose her patience and begin pawing. Though her paws are more like punches.
I'm dreaming of scrambled eggs right now. With butter in them. And toast. Glorious breakfast food. She who is about to die salutes you.
(Note: I'm about to die only in the sense that I am mortal and thus am dying. But I won't think about that deeply right now, here in the dark, before the sun has made any headway.)
The birds still sing--they'll go on singing--and that's a comfort.
I can't make many of my dreams reality--I have no money for a MacBook--but I can make scrambled eggs. Which I shall presently do.
Ah, my cue. Cleo is knocking.

Rachel Reischling for president!

2009-07-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Or better yet, let's abolish democracy and set up an absolute monarchy. I would rule fairly, unless someone made me mad, and then they'd pay.
Or better than better yet, I'll become an karaoke singer of Fiona Apple's cover of "Across the Universe." I'll appear in cities across the country and become famous for my sultry yet innocent voice. I'll never want for anything again.
I do want--I want for everything. And I don't want to have to work for it. I want to be handed things, sparkly things, and to be agreed with and smiled at, but by no means condescended to. And though it may not be pretty, it's perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition.
I don't think I want to be a writer anymore. I don't think I ever was a writer. I think it was all a silly affectation that was carried on for too long. When I type that out it sounds harsh and my feelings are hurt, which is crazy since I said it to myself.
I see the same face in the mirror that I always have. It hasn't changed a great deal yet. It makes me feel exempt from adult responsibility. And somebody in this room who isn't me has smelly shoes.

Insomnia

2009-06-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

I can't sleep. At 9 pm, this isn't such a tragedy. I have energy. I do work. Youtube is appealing and the night is young. At 1 am, my eyes are bleary, the television is on mute, the bird has her head tucked in her wing, and I am terrifyingly awake.

I begin strange quests this late at night. I'm a northwest airlines skymile Don Quixote. Thirty minutes in, this loses its luster. I move to finding restaurant deals in or near Columbus. Not many. Should I move on now to that online sweepstakes site or the site with free samples? This late at night, I realize I should be taking a vitamin D supplement. I make a vow to start doing that tomorrow.

Conversations with Greg

2009-04-01T17:44:00.001-07:00

The beginnings of a novella, I think. My magnum opus. To be posted when technical difficulties are resolved...

Time Flies When You're Not Having Fun

2009-02-25T17:52:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been seven months since I've written anything here. My life of note ran out of pages there for a while.

Rachel: Greg, I'm bored.

Greg: I'm sorry to hear that. Want me to put this show back on?

Rachel: Why do you only want to pacify me?

Greg: Well, you're bored. I thought you could do with some entertainment.

Rachel: That's all you have to say for yourself? Entertain me.

Greg: I'm reading.

Rachel: You're mean.

Greg: I'm not mean.

Rachel: Talk to me.

Greg: What about? My parents are leaving Sunday for Florida. Isn't that exciting.

Rachel: No.

Greg: Perhaps not. More exciting for me really.

*silence. Greg reads.*

Rachel: Greg?

Greg: Huh?

Rachel: I'm bored.

Greg: I know. What are you going to do about that?

Rachel: What do you want me to do? (suggestively)

Greg: Get un-bored.

Rachel: Wow! What a great idea.

*Greg nods. Greg goes back to his Dungeons and Dragons-themed book*

This is my life. This is really my life. Enjoy!

what is this thing called love?

2008-07-25T09:54:00.000-07:00

this funny thing called love
just who can solve its mystery?
why should it make a fool of me?
I saw you there one wonderful day
you took my heart and threw it away.

"You gave me days of gladness; you gave me nights of cheer. You made my life an enchanted dream, until somebody else came near."

This song's been in my head for weeks now. Love is lovely transformation. I pretend I know nothing of pedestals, of putting people on them. I pretend my love is tangible. I pretend I'm free right now to go away, run away and be that girl (that woman) he thinks I am. Give up the sham I live for one day of reality with him--and then another part of me wants to dress up like Little Bo Peep (like I did one day in second grade) and herd imaginary sheep back into their pens forever. In other words, I don't want to grow up. I don't want to be looked at as a woman. There are too many connotations involved in being perceived that way. On the other hand, I want to be kind and sweet and grown-up in my cares and worries--to care and worry more about the person I love than I do about myself. I wonder if that selflessness is enough to carry one through a relationship. Are people that selfless, a whole life through? Is it wrong to want to be adored without worrying about adoring? I mean--for me, adoring, loving someone means not being myself. Being what they want me to be, out of love.

I don't think I know what I'm saying. Type it out, forget it. Louisiana's a wasteland.

mRRR!

2008-07-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

I hardly know what to type here. I'm not sure what the point to having this thing is, except that it's easier than a diary and just as secure! (I like exclaimation points). I like spelling words in the British way. Honour is better than honor. I like the paper size in Britain better than in America. I like the history better. Second best is Canada (not the history, just the country). I might just defect; move away to Prince Edward Island forever and ever so I have a good view of the sea. I want to wrangle some Canadian cows in Saskatchewan and keep my eyes on the horizon until a good 10:30 pm.
I'm in love with a new actor this month, one Frank Converse by name. My, but he plays a good Doc Gibbs in "Old Town." The 30s was a perfect time in which to be born--no world war, and a bit old for Vietnam. Pity the men of the 50s. They're too young for me.
Honour my directives.
Lover's quarrels sound boring to me. The life of the nun is something on which I have great authority. Cloistered is my favorite word.

summertime

2008-06-30T15:39:00.000-07:00

The living's not easy but the cotton is high. So much in these last few months--no use mentioning them here, semi-publically, but how it diminishes a person! And how free I am now!

Marriage in six weeks. A pretty dress being altered. How lucky I am to be a Maid of Honor. How strange it is to watch my younger sister being married! Katie Kapotsy now and nothing I can do about it. She shouldn't know about such things. I was so happy when I was her age. I'm too old now.

I'm so happy since May. Happy to be who I am where I am instead of someone else. That sounds silly and no one will know what I mean. I don't care.

Mr. Bush, ex-lawyer man, I've wondered about you. Are you reading this? If you ever want to call me, you might! I really dislike instant messenging. 614.327.1076 Be brave sometime!

spring quarter short story #2

2008-05-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

Some women marry houses

And that’s how it was for Mary Lark, who had always wanted some place all her own. Not that she hadn’t owned things, or been a part of something nice and good—she had. She had grown up with her momma, who got them into a double-wide when Mary was twelve. That had been the best day of Mary’s life, up until the day she got married. There was so much more room, an actual kitchen with an oven and wooden cabinets, and her own room with a tiny canopied bed her momma’d got a deal on.
And then there was the day Mary got her hamster—her own pet, something smaller than a dog to prove to momma that she was responsible and would do good, though momma always said dogs do nothing but whine and shit so Mary doubted whether her hamster-raising skills would earn her a dog. But the hamster was beautiful; furry and fat and made fun for itself on that squeaky hamster wheel that kept Mary up sometimes late into the night. Mary wished she could make her own fun, but she couldn’t. She sat sometimes on the couch, or on her bed, and said to herself “come on, fun, let’s go,” but that’s when she was young and didn’t know any better.
So, yeah, she’d had stuff and life had been good, sometimes holy, because for two years Mary believed she was Jesus’ momma, because that’s what momma said—how she was named Mary and Mary was in the Bible and had a baby though she hadn’t done the bad thing with any boys. Mary was seven then, and knew what the bad thing was—she’d looked at Micah’s down-there once and momma had spanked her raw. So she knew not to look and knew her name was Mary and knew Jesus loved her and that was enough for her to believe.

Sweet, sweet Jesus, she was married now, eighteen and married, and had already got all her stuffed animals, school ribbons, and such and moved them to her new house, not just her husband’ house anymore, but hers too, because man and wife were one, the preacher had said. Her new house was brick, with a big bedroom and a hallway, and there was brown carpet that tickled her feet, and this man with wet lips who said he loved her. And Mary was eighteen and love came easy, so she loved him too, though she had met him only two months ago, at Mack’s, the only bar in Brockton, Tennessee with one dollar shots on ladies’ night. He’d said the most beautiful thing to her, how it must have hurt when she’d fallen down from heaven and then he bought her three shots of schnapps but then closed his tab because he said “a lady never goes past three.”
The day she got married, her momma told her she couldn’t be at the courthouse—she’d already just got time off from K-mart for visiting her cousin in Hattiesburg, so the morning of the wedding, she handed Mary a twenty dollar bill and patted her on the back.
“You’re not gonna be no Virgin Mary anymore, sweetheart,” she said, winking. “You think you’ll be alright? You know what’s coming to you?”
“Sure, momma. They made us watch that video in class last year, and Mookie Spitzer said the bad thing isn’t bad…I think I’ll be fine. And Louis, he’s a gentleman. He says first base is as far as two unmarried folks should go…”
“That’s enough, Mary,” momma interrupted. “I sure don’t need to know about no first base. Look, I have to be going now, so you be good, and I’ll call you soon to see how you’re settling in. Love you,” and momma was out the door and gone.
So Mary took a taxi with that twenty to the courthouse, signed a paper, and was suddenly not Mary Lark anymore but Mary Heimlich, wife to Louis, aged 28, reporter for the local paper, the Brockton Good News. After they signed their names, Louis ahem-ed and asked the justice of the peace, “Can I, sir, if you don’t mind, recite a devotional to my new and mighty pretty bride?” (Louis composed the daily devotional for the Brockton Good News, and took special pride in doing so). The justice shrugged, so Louis began, “It was blessed Paul who said ‘tis better to marry than to burn.’ Bless his Holy Name. Amen!” and he opened his mouth and planted it squarely on Mary’s.

Gray birds obsess my heart

Driving away with Louis, Mary wondered how long it would take them to get to their honeymoon location. Louis had asked Mary if Nashville was a good place to “start honeying that moon,” and she’d hardly been anywhere outside of Brockton so she said sure. Louis planned that they should take a gander at the Grand Ol’ Opry, see Graceland, but mainly they’d want to be alone, he thought, so he didn’t make too many plans. He also understood, vaguely, that women liked to plan trips, to go places they saw on the way, to visit gift shops and buy t-shirts and key chains. He’d saved up for that very thing.
As they drove towards Nashville, Mary studied Louis’ profile, his face, his features: he had dirt-brown hair, his nose leaned a little to the right, his lips were a little too big for his face, and he had a small hair line above his upper lip that never seemed to want to grow into a full-fledged moustache. He was a good man, Mary decided. She’d known that ever since Wednesday night Bible group, where she met up with him a few days after their date at Mack’s. She was rocking back and forth, lost in the psalms. She hadn’t noticed that she’d started to bleed. She stood up to pass the basket, when Louis got close behind her.
“Honey, you’ve bled straight through your pretty white skirt. You need some help,” and he took his jacket off and tied it around her waist. “That should tide you over till you get home.” And he’d done it quickly and kissed her on the cheek so that everyone thought they were sweet and young and no one knew she’d made a mess of herself except Louis.

Mary must have nodded off because she woke up lying in a bed, and it was dark and she was frightened. “Momma!” she called. Then she remembered who she was now, and called again, “Louis?”
A covered form moved beside her and rubbed her shoulder. “You were out like a light, Marybaby, so I got us this hotel room, figured we might take the driving slow, get some good rest.”
“Sleep’s nice. Thanks, Louis. Thank you for being so good to me.”
Everything was quiet and dark again. Mary began to breathe slowly so that Louis would think she was sleeping. Then he might fall asleep quickly—they’d never slept together in the same bed. She was proud of herself for being so stoic, so thoughtful, when she felt her shirt being lifted slowly, felt his hand nestling upwards towards her right breast; he cupped it, softly, and it was almost too much to ask of herself to relax, to keep pretending to sleep. But then he rearranged her shirt, made sure she was covered up, and a few minutes later, began to snore.
The next day they got an early start, after fueling up on a few of the hotel’s free muffins, juices and coffee. The day was gloomy. The sky threatened rain, and Mary was on edge. When she was eleven, she’d gone on a trip to Alabama with her momma, and they’d gotten caught in a big rainstorm while they were driving down the Interstate. Momma couldn’t see anything and the radio was saying there was a tornado warning for the county and Mary kept asking “momma, are we gonna die? Are we gonna die?” until her momma really believed they probably would die. That’s until Jesus (momma was sure it had to be Jesus—she couldn’t see a thing for all the rain that night) shone a light on a blue “lodgings” sign that directed them to a Motel 6 right off the exit. Ever since, driving in rain was something Mary never did if she could help it, and it was worse for her now, being in a strange town in a strange place, because she might as well be out of Tennessee, seeing as she knew so little about geography in general. The air was different here—she breathed it in deeply and smelled exhaust, early morning chill, and something indefinably foreign.
But that was foolishness. It was a gloomy day, that was all; the air here was the same as the air in Brockton. So Mary climbed into the car and turned the radio on, determined not to be bothered by anything today. She smiled at Louis, who had been kind of quiet all morning, but he smiled back, and took her hand in his for a minute.
“I sure am glad we decided to do this, Mary,” he said. “I don’t think I realized how lonely I was until I met you and started wanting you with me all the time. It really hits you, just like they all say it will, though you don’t ever believe it. I think it first hit me that one night in Bible study. What about you? When’d you feel it?”
Mary considered. “Shoot, Louis, that’s a tough one.” She looked out the window, at the blurred trees—always the same ones—passing. She started to feel like it was the earth, the trees, the hills, all moving seventy miles an hour, and not them. Maybe they were just sitting there and the trees were doing the passing. The thought made her nauseous. “I guess I felt it that night too. You were awfully nice to me that night.”
“Meant to be. That’s what it was, I expect. If we knew it at the same time—I guess it fits like it’s supposed to, Lord willing.”
Mary said nothing. She kept looking at the trees, testing how long it would take her head to begin to spin, then she’d close her eyes and do it again. It was something to do, until she got thirsty and asked if they could stop at the next gas station for a couple of Pepsis. So Louis slowed and began to exit when suddenly they heard a metallic noise, something between a thump and a pop towards the hood of the car. “Wouldn’t it be something if my car decided to give out now!” Louis said as he pulled into a parking spot.
But it hadn’t. “Mary, come over here and look at this!”
She walk to the hood and looked.
“I wanted a new hood ornament, but this wasn’t what I had in mind,” he said, and laughed. “I’ll run in and get you that Pepsi, sweetpea. Then I’ll take care of this.”
He went into the station but she stood still, unable to look away from Louis’ “hood ornament”: a robin, flown straight into the grill of the car, its head crushed, tucked somewhere inside the grill, and its body and feet stuck straight out, its gray feathers wind-beaten and broken. She was surprised there wasn’t any blood.
Louis seemed to skip out of the store with two bottles of soda in his hand, and he whistled as he scraped the bird off the grill. Mary retreated to the car, cringing every time the car shook with the force of his strange labor. She sipped her soda and looked vacantly out of her window even after Louis was done and begun to drive away. “You okay, honey?” Louis looked concerned. “I forgot how ladies get about stuff like that.”
“I’m fine. Thanks, though.” Mary smiled to reassure him, then turned back to her window. She looked out but no longer saw the moving tree line. Now all she could see were birds, beautiful and many, swooping in circles, flying happily before turning their heads towards the ground and diving to their deaths. The funny thing was, they were singing full-throated all the way down.

That white rush, the strange heart beating

The Nashville skyline popped up in the horizon around ten, and Mary got excited then, because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a real city, buildings taller than trees. “Are we going to actually drive into the city?” she asked.
“Just passing it, but we’ll get pretty close. Let’s head to Graceland; our check-in time isn’t until four.”
So they drove for three more hours to tour Graceland, and Louis was in awe and like a child, wanting to see this and touch that, but Mary had never been an Elvis fan, so she didn’t understand, but she tried to be sweet. They held hands. He hummed tunes. Before they left, he asked her if she wanted to visit the gift shop. She said no.
“Do you mind if we run in for a minute? Maybe get some postcards and a keychain or something?”
“Why, sure, Louis. You ought to get to the gift shop before we go.”

When they finally got to the hotel, it was almost ten, and they were tired and sweaty. They checked in, and went up to their room. Mary turned the air conditioner on the highest setting, and for the first time, they stood facing each other, without knowing what to say.
Finally, Louis spoke up. “Why don’t you grab the shower first? And use all the towels you want, sweetpea. I don’t mind using yours when you’re through.”
So Mary took a shower, scrubbed her body clean as thoroughly and quickly as she could, so Louis could have his shower hot too. She came out with her long brown hair wrapped in a towel, and her nightgown on. “I wasn’t sure if we were going back out or not, so I thought I should be comfortable while we’re resting,” she said.
“Sure. Sounds right to me. Let me get clean and I’ll come out and join you,” and Louis disappeared into the bathroom.
Mary heard him turn on the faucet, heard him step into the tub and begin whistling a song she didn’t know. She sat down on the bed and began combing her hair. Her heart began to pound. She knew what was coming, knew what Louis would want when he was fresh and clean. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want it too, or hadn’t wanted it in the past. They’d kissed before, long kisses, French kisses, though she didn’t know what was particularly French about a tongue kiss. She’d enjoyed the kissing well enough, sometimes.
She sat and waited, and told herself not to think, though for some reason, pictures of that dead bird kept appearing in her head, and she didn’t know why she felt like she’d throw up now if she heard You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog; or why she felt so much love for Louis right now though she’d die before she said it to him. She didn’t know why she unbuttoned the first few buttons of her nightgown, or why she sprayed a little perfume on her neck.
And then he was out of the shower, and he walked out with just some boxer shorts on, and came to her and cupped her face with both hands. “May I kiss you, Mary?” he asked, and he had that tone in his voice, that gravelly tone he’d gotten a few times before when they’d been kissing and he’d suddenly pushed her away.
She leaned into his kiss and it was nice, and he must’ve liked the perfume because he growled softly and nuzzled her neck. He pulled her down on his lap and she could feel how hard he’d gotten and there was something wrong about this—something too fast. She was too high up and he wanted her to fall.
“No.” She’d said it? No. “Not now. Later.” She’d be tired later. He was probably so confused. Poor Louis.
But he didn’t look poor. His eyes were still a little glazed, and he nuzzled her neck again and said “now, you’re better now,” and pushed her down on the bed. Then, she thought of that last thing her momma had said to her before she’d gone to the courthouse, you’re not gonna be no Virgin Mary any more and she thought of what she’d learned in Bible class about the Annunciation, how Mary had been bewildered but then grateful. He had his finger in her and she thought of that robin, feathering and padding its nest, then flying out for a few more twigs and being caught up then dead, and how these things must happen every day, and his mouth was hard and on her neck and she felt like she was floating up, lifted and caressed by feathers. Mary, Mary…. how contrary she had been. Maybe one day she’d have a garden too, but oh first she had to kneel, and sweat, and plant the little seeds.

Tis better to marry than to burn

2008-05-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Should I marry? I wear this ring on the fourth finger of my left hand and it feels so heavy. A little circlet of gold to symbolize what, exactly? To remind me of what? He doesn't need beg remembrance of me. Love has already done that. I can't forget him though he may be very far away.

My name is my own. I will never take another's. Another may take mine. I agree only to the love, and will, only under threat of diamonds, submit to the circlet of gold.

beware the ides

2008-03-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was on the American shore once, in Virginia. It was an overcast day. Not beachy or mediterranean. I walked out into the sea up to my waist, and was carried by the riptide hundreds of feet away from where my mother and sister sat on shore. I could barely swim out of it. Once I did, I didn't go back in.

The next time I was on a beach, I was facing east once again, but not out into the Atlantic, but out onto the sea beyond Irish shores. The beach was rocky--no sand here. It was more beautiful, more stirring to my puritan American senses. I was at the seaside in Brighton later--saw the Pavilion and sat in the sand and saw a tiny boat on the horizon.

When I was little, I nearly drowned in a local spillway. At least, I thought I nearly died. I swam past my height, and couldn't keep myself afloat. Two Army men rescued me and thus began my long love affair with decisive and powerful men. Men with strong arms. Men who can save me.

while the sun doth shine

2008-03-10T20:44:00.000-07:00

otherwise entitled "Acceptance." or "Publication." Finally. I've been taken. Ravished by a literary magazine who wants two of my poems, three for the radio, read out loud by a real live person out of Springfield, Illinois, birthplace of my mother (not Springfield, just IL) and happiest place in the world.

I wish I had been Abigail Adams. But she's dead and I'm alive and if one person likes my poetry, another might, and then another and another until I have a group of people who say "my, but she's a lovely writer, and shouldn't she have a book, or three?" And I'll happily acquiesce, sail a sea (balmy and ceylon blue), quoting lines not my own and singing Barbara Allen.

Would it have been better to have been loved by old John? Or David? Or Thomas? Or to live in single blessedness a lifetime through, lonely as anything, with no assurances of anything but more of the same? Can you live on hope alone?

Penny philosopher. Lover of sensational novels. Salutations Wilkie Collins and highnesses everywhere--cockleshells and ladies in white and paint-chipped chairs in the middle of sun-lit rooms.

In other words, good night, good night, ladies, goodnight.

To My Father

2008-03-06T13:04:00.000-08:00

I wrote this for a fifteen minute writing activity. I like it. So here it is, typed out all pretty-like.

I'm sitting in my dad's red 4x4 Ford: we're fifteen miles from the middle of anywhere, deep in the central Louisiana woods. Surrounding me are hundreds of cars in various stages of metallic decay: Mustangs with no wheels or windows, unidentifiable parts my dad is out there bargaining for.
We're at Mark's Place, a junkyard outside of the village of Pitkin. There is, of course, the stereotypical spotted dog, and though Mark the Proprietor assures me "he won't bite," I am not convinced. My father is taking is time, though I specifically told him not to leave me in the car long in this Deliverance-esque patch of wilderness. Mark's got his own water tower, which runs into his doublewide trailor. When I go inside at his continued bidding, he tells me not to mind the roaches.
It's close on Christmas, and my father comes home with a present for me, from Mark. Elephant figurines. I like elephants. How did Mark know this? I'm severely freaked out and picture Mark dressed as the Marquis de Sade. I don't quite throw up.
Junkyards like Mark's pepper the abandoned old pine woods, appear out of hte dust of winding dir roads. If you need a used car part in Vernon Parish, you're going to happen upon it, and it will be sold by a man in torn jeans, unbuttoned shirt, chewing tobacco and eyeing any woman under fifty with interest.
But this is my father's world, the dirt-poor world he grew up in, the world he feels most comfortable in now. He tells stories of starving in rural Missouri in the mid 50s, of hunting squirrel for dinner. On days when squirrel was scarce, his mother might cut up a few potatoes, fry them in hot grease--if they were very lucky they ate them with beans.
These are the foods he loves still. On special occasions, he brings out the crock pot and the skillet. He cooks pinto beans over night, soaked with a giant hamhock, and the next day he fries potatoes, and he and I eat what he has made, and like it.
This is my father's world--a world of spark plugs, carburators and machinery--all of which means nothing to me. I love him. I love him--but our worlds will never in a million years colide. I do have his nose, his eyes, his humor, and so I ride with him to the junkyard because he wants my company.
How can I ever despise these junkyards, the poverty, the stretches of land where cars go to die and dogs are called "Dog." To despise this is to hate a part of my father. My father--a man who grew up in an atmosphere of racial segregation and intolerance toward anyone different--this man I love doesn't have a hating bone in his body. He names the nameless dogs.
Perhaps he pities the junkyard owner, or perhaps he wishes he had his own barren stretch of land where he might tinker and repair and pull apart until he gives out as his brothers have before him. I'm not sure which he would choose.

Rejection

2007-12-31T02:16:00.000-08:00

For the past year, I've been beginning to send out poetry manuscripts to literary magazines large and small. Being in an MFA program has been the start of this. It seems (though hyperbolic) that everyone around me is getting published. I teeter between sincerely not worrying when it will happen (only that it will happen if and when it was meant to happen) and tearing my hair out wondering if I am ridiculous for getting a professional writing degree when only a select few ever make their livings by their pens. Before I began teaching--honestly teaching a classroom of college students--I never particularly wanted to teach. Now I think: yes, I could.

I must have sent out poems to dozens of magazines, and have gotten nothing but rejections. But oh, the rejections! Some of them have been so complimentary that I can't imagine being much more pleased if they were acceptances. The latest non-form rejection notice is handwritten from the poetry editor of the Iowa Review. (He said he especially enjoyed "Little Boy Blue," a poem I've gotten much teasing about!) The rejection before that was a printed notice with an added handwritten note from the editor of the Atlanta Review. They want to see more of my work.

My work. My work! For the first time, I begin to think that I can seriously write, that people who write can see me as a writer. I never took up writing for this reason. I wrote because it came naturally to me. I liked doing it. I liked reading my things aloud to an audience. I never thought of myself as a storyteller. It's not so much a story I'm telling, as a textual image I try to paint. I once described poetry to a friend as "a fine way of wiping dirt from the window." I still think that's a good description. Or, as Dr. Havird said, (at least, this is how I remember it) poetry is a way of gardening one's way back to Eden.

I'd rather keep biting at the apple, keep straying among the weeds and bracken. The exhiliration of that first bite, the wild grass, the mixture of fear (I might get lost) and wonder (even nature red in tooth and claw is beautiful) is a fairer prospect than cultured, biblical paradise.

self censorship

2007-12-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I retreat into a childhood state, say things I regret. I've learned that "I'm sorry" doesn't fix things. Once you've said something hurtful to someone, you can't take it back. Once you've done something cruel to someone, "tomorrow is another day" is not the right philosophy. I care about the people I know; I wouldn't like to think that I could willingly hurt anyone, but I think I can. Why am I so cruel? How can I be so biting? Why is it I can say something so mean to someone, only to regret it intensely the next minute? I have this tempestuous nature that I have trouble controlling. My impulses often get the better of me. And I can't figure out how to begin a new paragraph here so I'm going on and on in one long block. New year's resolutions: control my impulses; learn to give my love freely with no thought of recompense; care more for myself, because I'm on a road to self-destruction that right now I don't have the will to turn away from. Yes, I do have the will (tempestuous me). I'm really strong, though I cry a lot when someone hurts me, and I whine and complain. I wish I had known Walt Whitman; I think we'd have gotten along.

Kissing Hitler

2007-12-23T14:13:00.000-08:00

This is an essay I wrote for a nonfiction class last year. I like it, so I thought I'd post it here.

Kissing Hitler

I’ve dreamed, more than once, that I am deeply in love with Saddam Hussein. Sometimes, he drives up to my house in an armored Hummer, honks the horn, and yells in broken English for me to hurry my ass up. He can be rude like that, but it doesn’t mean anything.
Sometimes he’s my executioner. He’s come to kill me, but he can’t put a bullet in my brain so he slides a diamond ring on my finger. He knows I must die, but he can’t do it himself—he orders it done, and I love him for it.
Every once in a while, he’s both Saddam Hussein and Satan—these are my favorite times with him. His legions of demons do menial work for me, sing Mozart when I ask them, and paint, paint, paint (because Hell was so drab before I lived there). I can’t understand a word that SS (Sadam Satan) says, but his moustache twitches so bewitchingly that I smile, nod, and kiss his ringed hands.
I wake forlorn and aching from these dreams. In those first few waking seconds, I miss him—his combat boots laced tightly, his neatly ironed Middle Eastern military uniform,
his Byronic eyes. Then I remember that my dream lover is a mass-murdering deposed dictator and wonder what that says about me.

I took a course titled “Representations of the Holocaust in Art, Film, and Media” my junior year of college. The professor warned us beforehand, saying, “If you have any mental issues, or feel that you are or have the potential to be mentally unstable, drop this class now.” I didn’t drop the class, though I was taking antidepressants and felt emotionally
detached from life. Representations of the Holocaust had little to do with the actual Holocaust, and I thought it was slightly obscene that we should be studying genocide from the comfort of the Turner Arts Center, air conditioned, cushioned, dimly lighted. I felt I was beyond the immediacy of horror that comes with the first recognition of evil. Hitler was long-dead, his images all in black and white; Poland was over four thousand miles away. Birches and rowan and wildflowers now grow from the remains of the invisible six million.
I wasn’t beyond it. Many nights during that semester, I woke up terrified and sweating. I dreamed I was a Jew being sent to a concentration camp. Nazis tore me from my mother’s arms and threw me into the back of a truck with other screaming young women. I remember kneeling by my own newly dug grave, waiting for a shot to fire. At the time, I couldn’t separate reality from the dream—for a few seconds, I forgot that I couldn’t possibly be dead, or dying, or under Nazi control. I smelled something sharp and sulfurous; I turned my head and saw a teenager kneeling next to me, eyes clenched shut and calling for her mother.

Schutzstaffel: SS, runic lightning zigzags on black lapels, red swastika-ed armbands. Hugo Boss designed those uniforms in 1932, and you can buy reproductions of them online.
The world’s sexiest men have donned the SS uniform: Harrison Ford sported one in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; David Duchovny wore one in an episode of The X Files titled “The Triangle.” Blurring the line between real and imagined, neither actor portrayed a Nazi officer; both men did, however, beat up Nazi officers to steal the uniforms they wear. They must disguise themselves for the greater good; this knowledge allows us to separate the negative symbolism of the uniform from the primal reaction we have when we see them; for good or bad, these men look hot in SS black and gray.

My grandmother was born in 1938, the year of Kristallnacht. She grew up in Chicago, watched her cadet father, Thomas Parsche, drink, and her homemaker mother Catherine bear the drinking with resignation. Her grandfather was a renowned physician, and though he might have been disappointed by Tom’s failure to follow in his footsteps, the pride of his West Point graduation and subsequent invitation to play the trumpet at Herbert Hoover’s inauguration made his son’s choice seem more credible.
They were good German stock, echt deutsch, the Parsches, descended from Schmidts and Schellenbergs, and until the end of World War II, made much of their Bavarian roots. They denounced Tom’s marriage to a second-generation Swede named Catherine Jacobsen. Who was this poor Scandinavian immigrant to marry their son, they wondered, so they shunned her, pretended the marriage had never occurred.
My grandmother, whose mother called her Mare, had no idea of the grandeur of her father’s old life; she saw him only as a handsome, frightening man who drank his salary away, who complained that he might have been a doctor, if he’d listened to his father. He yelled, taunted, criticized, whipped, but never touched her with his hands. She hated him. She wished he would die.
When she was seven years old, in 1945, he did.

By the time she was forty-five, my grandmother had married and divorced twice, lost her home and most of her personal belongings, and endured a series of electroshock treatments that dimmed her hallucinations but left her sick and weak. Having nowhere else to go, she came to stay with us in Fort Lewis, Washington, in 1985. I was three; my sister’s birth was four months away. My mother, her eldest daughter, was alone: my Army father had been stationed in Korea, leaving her with a hyperactive stepson, a daughter with a penchant for putting peanut butter in the VCR, and a bipolar mother.
When Dad returned, I didn’t know him—any man in a camouflage uniform resembled Daddy. My mother had to point him out, and as I performed cartwheels for him, my parents kissed and mom said, “Frankie’s testicles haven’t dropped.”
“He’ll have to have surgery.”
“I love you. I’m so glad you’re home.”
More kissing, more tears, then:
“My mother thinks you’re Satan.”
No one remembers how my father responded. No one knows why or how Grandma got this idea into her head. One night she came home, certain that a second Star of Bethlehem was shining above our house. My sister, newly born, and I were angels, and my mustached father in his BDUs was the Devil, there to suck the souls from our little bodies before crunching on our bones. She had to save us.
We never found out what this salvation might have entailed. My mother grew alarmed at her mother’s hallucinations, worried that one day she’d come home to find her children drowned, but saved.
One afternoon (I remember the fluorescent kitchen lights—they were unbearably bright) grandma made gingersnaps that would prove to be as hard as stone. Someone knocked at the door. My mother opened it. Two men in white coats stood at the step. Though I’m sure they said many official things, I remember nothing but silence as they each took a bony elbow and dragged—gingerly—my struggling grandmother backwards towards their van. That was the last time I saw her.
In 1996, my grandmother lived with her sister in Arizona. They had argued, and she huffed out to wander the Tucson streets. Sometime during that chilly November night in which the stars shined so brightly, she grew tired, lay down in an abandoned parking lot, and died. It didn’t take them long to find her there, her back curved, her head bowed, her arms and legs curled in a fetal position.

When I was four years old, I used to watch my father dress in the morning for physical training. At 4:30 a.m. he put on his fatigues, his Army-issued green T-shirt and his daily-polished combat boots. He laced them so carefully; I was impressed because I didn’t know how to tie my shoes yet. He stood so tall above me; he wore his fatigues with martial authority—he exuded authority. When I was six, he boarded the school bus to “have a talk” with the bus driver, who had tapped me on the rear for singing “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round.” I scuttled to the back of the bus as my father said, “If you ever touch my daughter again, I’ll kill you,”—he was omnipotent, my dark-haired father with his groomed mustache and wire-rimmed glasses. He might as well have been God.
Dad is a recovered alcoholic. The past couple of months I’ve had nightmares in which he starts drinking again, though he hasn’t touched a drop since I was nine months old. (It was then that the divorce from his first wife Sheila was finalized and he was able to make an honest woman out of my mother). He’s always been the best of fathers, the best of men. Often when he was a first sergeant, he brought home young soldiers who had no family or friends, so they wouldn’t be so lonely; when I was in college, he drove all the way to Waco, Texas to pick me up when my car broke down on the way back from a Rufus Wainwright concert; he sold an old car he coveted so that he could give me the five hundred dollars I needed to correct my negative bank account. When I think of reasons why I have those nightmares about him drinking, I remember the few nights I’ve ever seen my father act violently towards somebody he loved.
One night, when I was nine years old, my father, frustrated, anxious, pondering military retirement, beginning a new life doing something else, had enough of my mother’s “bitching.” I was in my room, reading in bed, when I heard her scream. I ran out into the living room—my dad had her by the throat, was pinning her with his grip against the wall. A teenager my dad had rescued from the streets was staying with us that month; he had watched his own mother being beaten to death by his father, and he called 911. The police came, but by then my father had calmed down.
One summer my half-brother Frankie brought home a bullet casing he found on the street. My father, furious at Frankie’s carelessness, told him to go to his room. Told him he’d be there in a minute to punish him, using a method he called “the nutcracker.” I listened as my dad closed the door; I listened as I heard Frankie scream, heard thuds against the wall, heard slams and crashes. Part of me thought that Dad must be fabricating these noises, to fool us into believing he was punishing Frankie, so he wouldn’t lose face. But he wasn’t. He was beating Frankie. I made myself believe Frankie deserved everything he got, because my father never laid a hand, except in love, on my sister or me.

Later that year, he acquired a white ’45 Chevrolet. The paint was peeling and the engine sputtered when it ran, but he was proud that he had restored it to working order, and invited me for a drive. While he negotiated sharp turns and fiddled with the radio, I became certain that he was going to kill me. He wore a white wife-beater; his arms were so muscular, so red from years of too much sun. I was afraid of them. Afraid of him. I knew what he was about to do, knew he would pull over into the pine trees, put those hands against my throat and strangle me. I wanted to go home. He sang “King of the Road” as he drove. He offered me a Butterfinger. I wanted out of the car. I wanted my mother.

These dangerous, powerful, mustached men I would have control me, order me, love me—why? When my father shaved off his moustache, I sobbed. I laughed when Saddam Hussein proposed to me—how ludicrous to be a fourth wife!
I fear the night I dream of Nazis again, with their guns, their streamlined uniforms and Totenkopf trimmed hats. I dread the night I dream I love the SS officer who puts a gun to my head and pulls the trigger. I know that dream will come.

Then I will be Unity Mitford, a blonde English teenager who spends her “year abroad” befriending Hitler; I’ll be Magda Goebbels reading books on reincarnation; I’ll be Eva Braun on her wedding day, on her death day, dancing with dozens of uniformed men before I entomb myself with Hitler and bite down on the cyanide capsule. I’ll wear a black silk dress; put my arms around him; ask him to call me Frau Hitler, and then hide my head on his chest so the world becomes a blur of red and black.

Seduction

2007-12-21T15:36:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking of being on that bus with Jessica, Dr. Kelley, and dozens of others. Coming back from hearing a choir of boys in a chapel near the place the queen of Scots was beheaded. Twilight there was 10:30 pm and Jessica and I sat next to each other, happy that we were sitting behind Dr. K. I sang "Hey Jude," tried teaching J. the lyrics.

Hey Jude
Don't make it bad
you were made to
go out and get her
Remember to let her into your heart
then you can start to make it better

I hoped he was listening to us, but I soon forgot any self-consciousness, just enjoying whispering the song with Jessica, the darkness, the peace from feeling. Back then, when I was young and carefree (five years later seems an eternity) I felt things so much more--everything was enflamed by virtue of my sensitivity & innocence. I had all these dreams that I was certain would happen--my neck had been cupped by gentle hands, I'd been called a swan--all men were interesting to me, but especially Dr. Kelley.

Just before I left, the day the picture of he and I was snapped, he told me that many things had happened that summer, but the one moment he would never forget was sitting in front of me, listening to me sing Hey Jude on that bus.

I didn't know he was listening, that he'd remembered that. At the moment he said it, I thought it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. I left England heartsick. I had found the one I wanted, but he was married and time passes on.

A year later, I was killing myself trying to find myself. Love was lost. I gave Professor X. a lapdance, kissed him and unbuttoned his pants. I was still in his class. I led him to a dorm room. I fondled him. I wanted to have sex with him, to finally let my virginity go. I was desperate for power, and I felt I held the power of seduction over him, over many men. This feeling led me to some bad behavior. Manipulation, lies.

And all the while, the person I really wanted played dumb. I still want him. It's infuriating, this powerlessness. I don't know that I believe in love like I used to, at least not for me. I have an almost bottomless capacity for love, and I'm not sure that anyone can handle this. People are afraid of love. It obligates them. It traps them. This man I want is stuck in his world. I'm stuck in mine. If I ever had the nerve to tell him how much I care about him, as I did once before to someone else who threw my love away, wouldn't he do the same thing?

Are you reading this? Don't you know who you are?

leiceister and raleigh and essex oh my

2007-12-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

Segmenting an Orange

Push your thumb inside.
smell tin and vinegar,
balmy Bombay days
(don’t look directly
at the Maharaja),
cinnamon and salt.

Peel back the zest,
pluck away the pith,
finger cratered grooves,
pry apart that dripping flesh:
it comes apart so easily.

Trickling;
sticky; tongue-stripped,
gone—

O subtropical fruit, you’re not the only one!

Do you love me now mommy? Sing a song of solomon to me. How clear is my complexion. And where is my Dudley, my diadem, my great consecration?

Bleak house is this. My face is scratched, a thin red line on my left cheek, a bloody line on my right eyelid. A thing of threads and patches is a girl who associates with the Clee. Said puppy is obsessed with me, and obsession is unhealthy.

what, you expect a title here?

2007-12-11T15:08:00.000-08:00

I was really hyped, ready to do some blogging, but it took me so long to figure out how to sign in that now I've lost the will. Totally lost it. And yet, I type on.

little boy blue's done bled my bone
red dog's at the gallows
won't never come home

where's gone all the blood?
my electric own kind
he fed me he bled me
it's a laugh who went blind

My turn to love him.
Bone-bleed him.
Let him be.
When I’ve gone far enough
he’ll be after me.

*

I used to be really into showtunes. Out of the blue today, I started singing "I Don't Know How to Love Him." I love the lines "yet if he said he loved me / I'd be lost, I'd be frightened."

I used to be really into stairs, when I was little. I used to love visiting my "rich" grandparents so that I could climb up, climb down, climb up their carpeted stairs. My step-grandmother had potpourri in little jars all around her Blue Ridge mountain home. I loved the fragrance so, but didn't want to ask her what it was (she intimidated me) so I collected a little bit from each jar, until I had enough to bring home and put in my own jar.

I used to be really into imagining myself in romantic situations. I lived in a dreamworld almost all the time. I was a lost princess; a somebody who was just lost. I used to feel that someone was actively searching for me, for this lost person who had something powerful, some amulet of goodness, hidden inside of me, and many people could see bits of it shining through, but they didn't care enough, or didn't know what to do with me.

Now I don't know what to do with myself. I've stopped imagining. I never daydream. I can't put myself any longer into romantic situations. I can't play romantic games. I want reality now, something real. I am lost, lost as can be. I'm in some deep forest and all these vultures are pecking at my arms. I'm trying to get out, I can see the road, but there is a mirage there that attracts me and makes me forget my plan to flee.

There's someone I knew once. I acted dishonorably towards him. I was cruel. I thought he was a mirage because he insisted that he was not.
I can't keep hating myself for things I've done in the past. I think that leads me to keep self-destructing, to keep feeling totally unworthy.

The soul selects her own society, then shuts sthe door.

Happy times!

2007-11-28T19:19:00.000-08:00

Dr. Kelley's in the background--Jessica and I were determined to get a picture with him, even if only by stealth. At the end of the summer, he willingly posed with me. O joy!

2007-11-28T19:06:00.000-08:00

Nativity

2007-11-28T18:44:00.000-08:00

This is for me, this blog. It's cathartic, writing whatever I want, in a sort of perpetual email to myself.
I need a rebirth, a change of scenery, something new and wonderful. You get out of life what you put into it--I know it, but so far I've concerned myself with filler.
Whatever will be will be, sang Doris Day. Am I fatalistic? No. I know there's a fork, and the only way to tell which way to turn is by following my inner compass.
I wish for:
genuine connection
mental windex (clarity)
love of all kinds (I have the most unique blessing/curse of sometimes being unable to separate or distinguish types of love--romantic love, the deepest friendship--love is love and when I look into someone's eye's and feel no need to talk, do the size and blood flow of sexual organs matter? Not at all.
It's self-pitying to think "I don't possibly deserve more," and lazy to think I can't earn that "more" for myself.

The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.

Aubade

2007-11-18T04:10:00.001-08:00

The woman in the alabaster jar
woke up lily white and comely
though cramped all night
in Savior X’s arms.

He felt free to touch
her—ankle, brow, and breast—
bless her with long fingers;
baptize her, cross her heaving

concavity. Such a little sin—
Weeping peccatrix!
Maudlin penitent!—
to bless him in return,

to sneak into that wooden cabinet,
where once she herself had
housed in the Dry and Cracked
Heel and Lip Department.

In her milky satin spar
she spoke with Steve the Sexton
who kept the keys to Section B
(aforesaid Cracked)

where was kept that precious oil.
Raggle-taggle, soft
as gypsum, she rubbed
the spiced emulsion in,

kneaded, braided, rolled,
blessed and loved what was wasting away,
ignored what quivered and shone.
She might then have glided to the back

of the jar, up and out
to what was free (no penitence,
no eternal Whore!)—to seek a place
in poetry or cutlery.

The alabaster jar is dark, like night;
He will not wake, so there she’ll stay,
There she’ll weep and bless and love,
Until he’s crucified and she’s free.

Body Market

2007-11-18T04:08:00.000-08:00

Body Market

I heard my body cry:
Won’t you come by?
Come buy—
my imperfect desire:
I must have you,
grasp my succulent fruit—

bletted quinces,
spotted peaches,
come buy, come buy
my pretty goblins tell me,
my carnal carrions cry.

No transgression here.
Peel away my skin.
O guiltless release!
Taste me and try.

I sucked and licked the more
then threw the tasteless rind away.
The poisoned pomegranate
I did pluck,
did chastely suck
then swallowed bitter poppy broth.

Tongue it, bite it.
Tuck the seeds beneath my skeins
of tussled spider-silk.
Ignore the blood-red cherry stain,
like the new grave
we never, we wanted, to crave.

The dead live naked
just as we ought,
barren, fruitless,
safe from all harm.

While we’re alive,
we’re under a charm.
We’ll revel in that goblin fruit,
though you lie shaking in my arms.
Oh, that we’d never tasted the fruit.
My body wanes.
You’re now my gibbous,
my seedless Almost.

entymology

2007-11-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

I've been up for a while, so blame any stupidity upon that. I had to post again to wonder about the word blog. I know I've heard the history of the word before and am just sluggish in remembering it. But why do I blush as I type it out?

Why does the word blog sound so obscene? While we're on the subject of four letter words, why are curse words so taboo? Sometimes nothing will do in a situation but an Anglo-Saxon four letter word, and accompanying gestures.

I go home in three days for Thanksgiving break. I miss my babies, the three Furry Ones. My mother says that Cleo, largest of them all, being a standard schnauzer, has been sweeter and more affectionate since I was home for Veteran's Day weekend. When I'm there, she's my world, truly my infant. I've taught her so many little tricks. She sits, shakes, lays, rolls over, and stays. She can catch a ball if you say "catch" and count to three before you throw it. She performs her tricks really quickly, really perfunctorily, as though she realizes how ridiculous what I'm asking her to do is, but she'll do it anyway for the doggy treat. Most of my life plays out in the same manner. I perform ridiculous and mindless tricks because I really want that end-road treat.

An excerpt from an essay I'm turning in on Tuesday:

I. What do you think has become of the young and old men?

Mayfly: a winged insect, of the order Ephemeroptera, white in body with dark eyes and two long cerci, or antennae-like tails. Vestigial tails that weave together as the insects mate in an art-nouveau chain of S’s and U’s. They swarm near bodies of water and live out night-long lives by the light of our silvery patio spotlight. They live as nymphs, young mayflies on the water, sometimes for years before moulting and seeking their mates. They beat themselves to death against our front door windows, our sliding door. The next day, hundreds of their bodies, now crisp and old, completely blanket our “Welcome to our Home” mat. A few are stuck to the glass door, perfectly preserved, like specimens between two slides, but these things were just alive, and now are dead.

Blogging at last

2007-11-18T03:47:00.001-08:00

Finally I've been sucked into the world of the Blog. I intended to do this at the beginning of the quarter (we go by the quarter system here) as a sort of literary journal, to turn in to Kathy Fagan at the end of the quarter as part of a written assignment. Procrastinator that I am, I did not do this, so when it can do me no good, I've finally decided to do it.

I'm confused by html, have no idea what I'm doing here. It's an experiment. I must learn to enjoy experimentation, to avoid easy frustration. Frustration takes more time up than if I just calm down, get to some hunkering and rolling up of sleeves, and just go!