Six years ago, I found out the story of where I came from. It happened in an unexpected way, amidst a bunch of other chaos. I was twenty. I was living in North Carolina and going to college at UNCA when it all occurred. It was mid August when i received the birthday card from my Grandmother's close friend. It read, "I am worried about your grandmother, if you are too, please call me." Since I was, I did. What she had to say scared me beyond belief. My Grandmother had been displaced from her own home,the locks had been changed, and she was now not allowed to leave my mother's house except for church on Sunday mornings. I drove to my home town in the dark of that night, and rested at my Dad's house for 4 days until Sunday came. I clothed myself in the most authentic garb I could find, given my resources, to make myself blend in with the other old women in her Sunday school class; I snuck into an area that had been agreed upon between her friend and me. I waited. I saw her, and convinced her to leave with me.
We went to another friend's house. We waited 3 days. We found out that a private investigator was searching for us. I decided we had to leave under cover of darkness that same night. The journey began. We traveled to New Orleans that night, where we would be for the next month. This was the only other place she had ever lived in her whole life, and there was really no where else I could imagine that she'd feel comfortable. We watched the boats on the Mississippi every day, and ate gumbo very often. We talked. We spent so much time with only the company of one another. One day, we had a talk about my mother. She was adopted, that much I knew. I asked about where she may have come from. I suppose I thought knowing that information would make me feel more like I knew myself in a way. Only, I wasn't prepared for what I got. I had never been told the truth before, even when I had asked this same question. But this time, the bare honest truth was all I got. And she said, "your mother was born in prison, and her mother was a lady of the night."........................I sat silent for so long, crying, still. She comforted me. I knew something about myself now; something real, and something hard. I wished i didn't know. I knew something about my mother. I knew her better, and I was able to have compassion for her even. I ran 7 miles that day. I ran like I was actually going to escape the truth.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Willard
In my earliest memory, I am in a two-story farmhouse on a large piece of land overrun with blueberry bushes. The air is crisp. There is a lengthy dirt driveway which leads out onto a dirt road. Along the edge of the road, a small stream trickles by, running parallel to it for quite a ways. I am wandering from bush to bush eating the blueberries I can reach. The sun is shining on my face in a gentle morning sort of way. I described this to my Dad recently, and he looked shocked. He said the only time I had ever been there, I was 18 months old. His earliest memory was at age 4.
I'm not entirely sure, but I have often heard that for most people, the earliest memories they can recall occur no sooner than 4 years of age. Maybe those first couple years of life are so stressful for the brain, with all of the severing and also creating of new connections, that the cataloging of memory is not a priority. Maybe it is difficult for us to allow ourselves to remember being as helpless as a baby. Only once in my life have I met someone who claims to remember anything earlier than 18 months.
Willard was his nickname. He was a family friend, and he was around for a lot of my younger years. He and my mother took me to the beach together when I was little. They had grown up together. He was fascinating, very eccentric, and awfully intelligent. He was in and out of my life for as long as I could remember. He left for periods of years sometimes, but he would always come back. When I was 12 he gave me my first Skinny Puppy tape, and he recommended that I might like a group called Ministry. His life nearly revolved around music. He left again. I aged 3 years. One day he showed up at our house in a stolen car. He had escaped the psychiatric hospital. He had AIDS induced dymentia, and was experiencing something close to Alzheimer's: a regression of memory. He wasn't losing his ability to speak though, as is common with that ailment. Before anyone could locate him and take him back to the facility, he told me a story. He told me the story of his being born: of what it felt like to be born, of how it felt to breathe air for the first time, and of how it stung to be struck immediately upon entering the world. His account was different than I might have though it would feel. He said it felt like dying when you breathed in air for the first time. Here was a person who had somehow reached far enough back to remember the beginning of his life, even if was the result of a terminal illness. He knew something I didn't. He had know himself everyday of his life. He had tapped into something that had always been there, but just wasn't accessible before. He told me before they pulled him away that he wanted me to know that. That he thought it was important. That that was why he had stolen the car. So now, I wonder, was it important for me to know that he remembered being born, or was it important for me to know that I could remember being born. Based on the rest of our conversation, I think it was the latter. Why this comes to mind today, I don't know. What I do know is that I want to go that far back. No matter how helpless it feels, or how painful the memory may be, I want it.
I'm not entirely sure, but I have often heard that for most people, the earliest memories they can recall occur no sooner than 4 years of age. Maybe those first couple years of life are so stressful for the brain, with all of the severing and also creating of new connections, that the cataloging of memory is not a priority. Maybe it is difficult for us to allow ourselves to remember being as helpless as a baby. Only once in my life have I met someone who claims to remember anything earlier than 18 months.
Willard was his nickname. He was a family friend, and he was around for a lot of my younger years. He and my mother took me to the beach together when I was little. They had grown up together. He was fascinating, very eccentric, and awfully intelligent. He was in and out of my life for as long as I could remember. He left for periods of years sometimes, but he would always come back. When I was 12 he gave me my first Skinny Puppy tape, and he recommended that I might like a group called Ministry. His life nearly revolved around music. He left again. I aged 3 years. One day he showed up at our house in a stolen car. He had escaped the psychiatric hospital. He had AIDS induced dymentia, and was experiencing something close to Alzheimer's: a regression of memory. He wasn't losing his ability to speak though, as is common with that ailment. Before anyone could locate him and take him back to the facility, he told me a story. He told me the story of his being born: of what it felt like to be born, of how it felt to breathe air for the first time, and of how it stung to be struck immediately upon entering the world. His account was different than I might have though it would feel. He said it felt like dying when you breathed in air for the first time. Here was a person who had somehow reached far enough back to remember the beginning of his life, even if was the result of a terminal illness. He knew something I didn't. He had know himself everyday of his life. He had tapped into something that had always been there, but just wasn't accessible before. He told me before they pulled him away that he wanted me to know that. That he thought it was important. That that was why he had stolen the car. So now, I wonder, was it important for me to know that he remembered being born, or was it important for me to know that I could remember being born. Based on the rest of our conversation, I think it was the latter. Why this comes to mind today, I don't know. What I do know is that I want to go that far back. No matter how helpless it feels, or how painful the memory may be, I want it.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
themes
Sometimes it seems like a theme follows me around until I face it. Whatever it is will appear everywhere until I acknowledge its presence and consider its implications. This time the theme is "know thyself." And it is everywhere.
My best friend has it tattooed on her back in another language. My yoga classes, even with different instructors, have nearly all brought up this topic as the focus. Furthermore, I have heard snippets of conversations between other people as I walk by on the street, that are devoted to the same topic at exactly the moment I walk by. I think that if I am honest with myself, I have spent a lifetime avoiding this concept in a lot of ways. I have been afraid of my own nature: afraid not only to embrace it, but even to know it.
The truth is, and I realized this recently, that it actually takes me more work to actively avoid this knowledge, than it does to experience it. Like anyone, I have ideas about who I want to be, and they are not always congruous with who I am at the moment. They are goals. But I am so afraid of failure, that they become limitations. Sometimes I can't even admit my own shortcomings to myself; sometimes I can't even allow myself to know them. It seems easier to force myself to fit inside the parameters of a pre-defined mold than it is to explore the outer edges of my own. What if I am like my mother? What happens when I see things in myself that scare me? What if I experienced the depths of my consciousness at surface level. Is that what it means to "know thyself"? What if I loved myself completely? Not just the parts that I approve of, but the depths of my own heart and soul. Can I still love myself even if I don't like myself?
I am a work-in-progress. I am still a mystery to me. I have a lot to learn, even just to know myself.
My best friend has it tattooed on her back in another language. My yoga classes, even with different instructors, have nearly all brought up this topic as the focus. Furthermore, I have heard snippets of conversations between other people as I walk by on the street, that are devoted to the same topic at exactly the moment I walk by. I think that if I am honest with myself, I have spent a lifetime avoiding this concept in a lot of ways. I have been afraid of my own nature: afraid not only to embrace it, but even to know it.
The truth is, and I realized this recently, that it actually takes me more work to actively avoid this knowledge, than it does to experience it. Like anyone, I have ideas about who I want to be, and they are not always congruous with who I am at the moment. They are goals. But I am so afraid of failure, that they become limitations. Sometimes I can't even admit my own shortcomings to myself; sometimes I can't even allow myself to know them. It seems easier to force myself to fit inside the parameters of a pre-defined mold than it is to explore the outer edges of my own. What if I am like my mother? What happens when I see things in myself that scare me? What if I experienced the depths of my consciousness at surface level. Is that what it means to "know thyself"? What if I loved myself completely? Not just the parts that I approve of, but the depths of my own heart and soul. Can I still love myself even if I don't like myself?
I am a work-in-progress. I am still a mystery to me. I have a lot to learn, even just to know myself.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
my less-conscious life
Lastnight I had a dream. It seemed like another dream about death. It was the same feeling, but this one wasn't violent, nor was there any imagery to suggest death. It just felt like being set free, just like death feels in all of the other dreams.
In the dream, I am observing myself from a perspective of 3 feet away, and facing my other self. I take note of the fact that my other self is bald. Not the type of bald that results when you shave your head, but the kind where the follicles themselves are gone. My other self is old. Not wrinkled at all, just old. It's some nuance of the skin that tips me off about this fact: some textural or tonal quality. Then the left side of my head, the right side from my inverse viewing perspective, unfolds like beautiful origami into planes of pure light, and the planes drop down like the pages of a book.
This was the most peaceful dream I have had on the topic of death. I have dreams about it constantly. It blows me away sometimes, the things that I experience in my dreams. I have always been a vivid dreamer. Sometimes that's a good thing. I feel both pleasure and pain in all of their depth and dimension in my dreams. The fact that I suffer death repeatedly makes this sort of tough. Sometimes I wake up in the morning having died the night before. That's strange to say. It doesn't really help me feel rested.
Growing up, I always heard that if you die in your dreams, you're dead. If that's true, then I died the first time this happened, in 1998. I was a man walking down a dark alley of cobblestones in the early 20th century. It was late at night, and I was alone. I heard a noise. A man ran at me and stabbed me repeatedly in the abdomen. He mugged me. He left me on the puddle covered ground to bleed out. It took a while. The pain was unbelievable. I was face down. I felt something like the light delicate tickle of a feather in my breastplate. This feeling was exiting my body through layers of bone and muscle and skin. When the feeling reached the exterior threshhold of the physical space my body occupied in the world, it didn't hurt anymore, and I was suddenly in a different place.
It was black like black velvet. It was the most saturated black i have ever seen. There was no such thing as time anymore. In the very far distance a warm yellow light shone through the thick black. I was moving toward it. As I neared the light, I understood it better. It was not one light, but hundreds of thousands of individual lights swirling about in the same way that fish do when they are hunted. The lights had no physical matter. I went in. Sometimes I was on the outside, sometimes I was on the inside, or near the top or bottom. Then I had the wind knocked out of me, and was born into the body of a baby and through a vagina.
In another dream, I was a man in an ornate office with a huge mahogany desk. I had a gun sitting on the corner of my desk. I was writing a note, which I placed in the center of the desk when I was finished. I stood up, walked to the middle of the room, and almost in mid-step blew my brains out. I felt the bullet enter my head and, as if in slow-motion, I knew right where it was cutting through my brain. Then I fell forward and never hit the ground. I melted into water, and then breathed it in as efficiently as any aquatic creature.
I don't know what these dreams mean. I'm not sure if they are memories or if they are metaphors.I do know that at 13 years old, when I did heroin, the one and only time I ever did, I felt the same burning trajectory through my head. It was years before I had the dream. It fascinates me, the things that I experience when I am less conscious. And it feels like there's something important there for me. Now if I could just figure out what.
In the dream, I am observing myself from a perspective of 3 feet away, and facing my other self. I take note of the fact that my other self is bald. Not the type of bald that results when you shave your head, but the kind where the follicles themselves are gone. My other self is old. Not wrinkled at all, just old. It's some nuance of the skin that tips me off about this fact: some textural or tonal quality. Then the left side of my head, the right side from my inverse viewing perspective, unfolds like beautiful origami into planes of pure light, and the planes drop down like the pages of a book.
This was the most peaceful dream I have had on the topic of death. I have dreams about it constantly. It blows me away sometimes, the things that I experience in my dreams. I have always been a vivid dreamer. Sometimes that's a good thing. I feel both pleasure and pain in all of their depth and dimension in my dreams. The fact that I suffer death repeatedly makes this sort of tough. Sometimes I wake up in the morning having died the night before. That's strange to say. It doesn't really help me feel rested.
Growing up, I always heard that if you die in your dreams, you're dead. If that's true, then I died the first time this happened, in 1998. I was a man walking down a dark alley of cobblestones in the early 20th century. It was late at night, and I was alone. I heard a noise. A man ran at me and stabbed me repeatedly in the abdomen. He mugged me. He left me on the puddle covered ground to bleed out. It took a while. The pain was unbelievable. I was face down. I felt something like the light delicate tickle of a feather in my breastplate. This feeling was exiting my body through layers of bone and muscle and skin. When the feeling reached the exterior threshhold of the physical space my body occupied in the world, it didn't hurt anymore, and I was suddenly in a different place.
It was black like black velvet. It was the most saturated black i have ever seen. There was no such thing as time anymore. In the very far distance a warm yellow light shone through the thick black. I was moving toward it. As I neared the light, I understood it better. It was not one light, but hundreds of thousands of individual lights swirling about in the same way that fish do when they are hunted. The lights had no physical matter. I went in. Sometimes I was on the outside, sometimes I was on the inside, or near the top or bottom. Then I had the wind knocked out of me, and was born into the body of a baby and through a vagina.
In another dream, I was a man in an ornate office with a huge mahogany desk. I had a gun sitting on the corner of my desk. I was writing a note, which I placed in the center of the desk when I was finished. I stood up, walked to the middle of the room, and almost in mid-step blew my brains out. I felt the bullet enter my head and, as if in slow-motion, I knew right where it was cutting through my brain. Then I fell forward and never hit the ground. I melted into water, and then breathed it in as efficiently as any aquatic creature.
I don't know what these dreams mean. I'm not sure if they are memories or if they are metaphors.I do know that at 13 years old, when I did heroin, the one and only time I ever did, I felt the same burning trajectory through my head. It was years before I had the dream. It fascinates me, the things that I experience when I am less conscious. And it feels like there's something important there for me. Now if I could just figure out what.
Friday, June 11, 2010
it's unspeakable... let's talk about it
Some people just step in shit a lot. Some people are just plagued with it. I am one of those people. In many ways, I consider myself to be a fortunate person, however, that being said, if there's poop nearby, my foot will find it. It started so early in my life that I'm sure there are instances of it which I was too young to remember. I am told that this is the result of not watching where I walk, but I swear that i do, and I just never see them. One of my earliest memories in life is stepping in shit. Well, actually, it was more like stepping on a shit and slide. My parents were at odds. The house was feeling tense. I was 4. This was the year that my parents divorced, but a couple of months before it actually happened. My Mema pulled up in the yard in her car. She lived on the same 20 acres of land, but on the other side. I was overjoyed to see her after experiencing a lot of arguing in the house that day, so I ran out the door and jumped onto the grass in a fierce burst of speed. About 10 bounds in, my bare feet landed in something so greasy that they flew right out from under me and I came to a screeching halt with grass and dirt all in the backs of my shorts. I remember feeling confused for a split second before I saw that the greasy substance was brown, and thus deduced that it was, in fact, poo. My body went limp in the throes of personal defeat. It was the beginning of a lot of stepping in shit. I am not the only person that steps in it though. In fact, a high school friend of mine had one of the most theatrical shit-stepping experiences I have ever heard of. Abelo and Peterford, we will call them, were the best of friends. They hung out all the time, often at Peterford's house since it was less populated than Abelo's. Peterford and his mom had two large dogs. These lovely canines dropped grenades in the back yard usually, which also happened to be Abelo and Peterford's favorite smoking spot. One evening, these gentlemen went outside for a smoke as usual, but came back in smelling the foul stench of a doo grenade. Abelo suggested to Peterford that he should check his shoes. So he did. One at first, then the other. He was in the clear. Peterford suggested that Abelo do the same. The first looked good. But the second was a terrible scene. It must have been like when you step on an aluminum can to crush it for recycling, but it wraps around your shoe and holds on instead of just being crushed. The grenade was encrusted in sand and the entire pile had been wrapped around the shoe and carried inside in its entirety. The shoes spent the night outside.
Six months ago, when our chihuahua was potty training, he still had accidents sometimes. It seemed like he only liked to place the accidental turds on my side of the bed, right where my feel landed on the floor upon rising. One night, during a long week of repeatedly stepping in the dookies and tracking them about the house, I awoke to go to the bathroom. I was sleepy, and so I made quick work of the journey. When I awoke in the morning, i found a sad scene in my bed. I had stepped on top of the turd on my first step out of the bed. It had cushioned my journey to the bathroom, leaving small chocolate colored smudges all the way there and back. And I then went back to bed, with no clue that there was a whole turd on my foot. When I woke up and realized the extent to which my home had been compromised, I was in total disbelief. It was miraculous. Stepping in shit always is. I think that after all these years of it, I have finally decided to see it as a blessing rather than a curse. At least I have a lot to laugh about.
Six months ago, when our chihuahua was potty training, he still had accidents sometimes. It seemed like he only liked to place the accidental turds on my side of the bed, right where my feel landed on the floor upon rising. One night, during a long week of repeatedly stepping in the dookies and tracking them about the house, I awoke to go to the bathroom. I was sleepy, and so I made quick work of the journey. When I awoke in the morning, i found a sad scene in my bed. I had stepped on top of the turd on my first step out of the bed. It had cushioned my journey to the bathroom, leaving small chocolate colored smudges all the way there and back. And I then went back to bed, with no clue that there was a whole turd on my foot. When I woke up and realized the extent to which my home had been compromised, I was in total disbelief. It was miraculous. Stepping in shit always is. I think that after all these years of it, I have finally decided to see it as a blessing rather than a curse. At least I have a lot to laugh about.
electricity and Orothene
Twenty three years ago, when I was a teeny little girl who often sported a pair of pink Osh Kosh overalls, my Dad used to refer to me as Cletus. There was no reason for this other than the fact that it was fun to get me riled up. I had the good fortune of growing up in the environment of a small town family-owned hardware store. It was called Clyde Howard Paint and Hardware. My Grandfather was Clyde Howard. It was a magical place where I could devise and follow through with endless amounts of what I considered, at the ripe old age of 6, to be experiments. This was the sort of place that demanded to be explored and experienced. Once I was old enough to be in school, I spent every afternoon there after school let out. My Grandparents were there, and my Father, who was their son-in-law, worked for them for 19 years. Every day I formulated new projects to work on. I had notebooks of ideas about how to spend these afternoons. When I was 8, we were learning about electricity in school. We were attempting to discuss it scientifically. I was wide-eyed about the whole thing. I didn't really have any grasp of what electricity was or what it could do. I surely didn't respect its power. But I wanted to see it. I'm a very visual person. I needed to be able to see it to understand it. So I devised a plan, and waited until no one was nearby to enact it. My Mema always kept a kettle in the office. She used the hot water to make oatmeal throughout the day. Apple cinnamon was by far the best flavor. The plug and kettle rested atop what I considered to be my desk. I'm not sure how exactly I came by this idea, but looking back, I still cannot believe I did it. I took a piece of copper wire which we sold at the hardware store, and stuffed onto each sharp end a short 1/2 inch length of bungee cord. I plugged the kettle into the socket and then pulled it out half way. Here comes the good part; I then proceeded to drop the arced piece of copper with the bungee cord ends onto the exposed lengths of the male coffee pot plug. Wow! The electricity bounced around visibly like miniature blue lightning bolts everywhere! I let out something similar to the death cry of a rabbit, the only sound it ever makes in a lifetime. I watched helplessly as the power scorched the coffee pot and the lead-based paint. Adrenaline coursed through my veins, but I was paralyzed. Mema heard the wail I let out and came to rescue me. She knocked my contraption off of the bare electrical connection just before a fire would have been impending. I was in big trouble for a while.
The hardware store had a back room too. An industrial place designated for the storing and cutting of polyvinylchhoride and galvanized pipes. And the only bathroom in the store was located through the floor to ceiling double-jointed saloon style doors to this room. They were painted pure green. The color of grass. And had been pained over so many times that they showed it. The corners lacked definition now, and were softened away from their original 90 degree angular edges by the many coats of color. The backroom had an unpainted smooth concrete floor dimpled by the various damages of 40 years. There were metal shavings all over the floor which were the by-product of cutting the galvanized pipes into specified lengths. There was always a bar of Lava soap in the bathroom on the sink. We needed it. This was the sort of place where you'd really get dirty. We sold pesticides and insecticides, among other things. We sold a particular product called Orothene. It was an insecticide, the predecessor to the Ortho which is on the market these days. In 1988, Orothene was still sold in a glass bottle. This is an important fact, because Orothene smells exactly like shit in a bottle. It smells so unfathomably foul, that you will check your shoes for piles of shit if you walk past a drop of it. I know this because when my parents were in high school, they used to put it on the bottoms of their shoes and walk through the movie theater mid-film as entertainment instead of actually seeing a movie. The glass bottling of this product was a poorly thought out idea. Just imagine how awful it would be if you dropped a bottle...Those are pretty much exactly the words that had come out of my mouth about 30 seconds before I did just that. I caught the toe of my teeny shoe in one of the many dimples in the floor, and stumbled just enough to drop the glass bottle of liquid poo smell which I was carrying around, as if to tempt fate. It shattered on the floor and created something that I can only describe as a vomit-inducing shit storm. There was no escaping it. I had to be scrubbed. I ran from the smell and just dragged it all over the place. I had it all over me. The Lava soap could not save me, but I was scrubbed with it anyway. Eventually the smell of crap no longer permeated my pores, but the backroom was not so fortunate. The dimples in the floor had probably been the reason that the concrete was porous enough to absorb the Orothene so quickly. The back room, where the only bathroom was located, smelled like an impenetrable turd fortress literally for years. Within a year, Orothene was sold in plastic bottles.
The hardware store had a back room too. An industrial place designated for the storing and cutting of polyvinylchhoride and galvanized pipes. And the only bathroom in the store was located through the floor to ceiling double-jointed saloon style doors to this room. They were painted pure green. The color of grass. And had been pained over so many times that they showed it. The corners lacked definition now, and were softened away from their original 90 degree angular edges by the many coats of color. The backroom had an unpainted smooth concrete floor dimpled by the various damages of 40 years. There were metal shavings all over the floor which were the by-product of cutting the galvanized pipes into specified lengths. There was always a bar of Lava soap in the bathroom on the sink. We needed it. This was the sort of place where you'd really get dirty. We sold pesticides and insecticides, among other things. We sold a particular product called Orothene. It was an insecticide, the predecessor to the Ortho which is on the market these days. In 1988, Orothene was still sold in a glass bottle. This is an important fact, because Orothene smells exactly like shit in a bottle. It smells so unfathomably foul, that you will check your shoes for piles of shit if you walk past a drop of it. I know this because when my parents were in high school, they used to put it on the bottoms of their shoes and walk through the movie theater mid-film as entertainment instead of actually seeing a movie. The glass bottling of this product was a poorly thought out idea. Just imagine how awful it would be if you dropped a bottle...Those are pretty much exactly the words that had come out of my mouth about 30 seconds before I did just that. I caught the toe of my teeny shoe in one of the many dimples in the floor, and stumbled just enough to drop the glass bottle of liquid poo smell which I was carrying around, as if to tempt fate. It shattered on the floor and created something that I can only describe as a vomit-inducing shit storm. There was no escaping it. I had to be scrubbed. I ran from the smell and just dragged it all over the place. I had it all over me. The Lava soap could not save me, but I was scrubbed with it anyway. Eventually the smell of crap no longer permeated my pores, but the backroom was not so fortunate. The dimples in the floor had probably been the reason that the concrete was porous enough to absorb the Orothene so quickly. The back room, where the only bathroom was located, smelled like an impenetrable turd fortress literally for years. Within a year, Orothene was sold in plastic bottles.
yardsale
If it's old, and doesn't work, I love it. If it's old and about to crap out on me, I want it. After a recent inventory of my personal belongings resulting from a cross-country relocation, I finally had to admit these facts to myself. I own two awesome lamps from the 1940's and 50's which, earlier in their lives belonged to my Mema. I refuse to let them out of my life even though they haven't been functional for 3 years. They do not illuminate anything. They look like they mean business, but it's all talk. I have dragged them all over this country for so long. They need to be rewired. I own a suitcase made in 1940 which has locks that pop open intermittently while walking through airports so that all of my belongings can yardsale all over the filthy floor...especially if there are bathing suits or undergarments involved..those will hit the floor quicker than the peanut butter side of a dropped piece of bread. And yet, I carry said suitcase most often when I travel regardless of the knowledge that this will occur. I am stubborn beyond all reason. I am as stubborn as the inanimate objects that I continue to own despite their dysfunction. The Perfection 500 kerosene heater with the original glass globe and no kerosene reservoir is one of my favorite belongings. It has destroyed relationships. It should not be used indoors because it produces toxic carbon monoxide fumes. I love it! Most of my friends want to kick it to the curb, but I insist on its importance each time its worth is challenged. The cast iron table top fan from the 1920's with a cracked-in-half motor and snarled up rat tail of a cord is another favorite. I don't think this one can even be repaired. It serves me as a large paperweight now. I dug it out of the dirt floor basement of my house in North Carolina in 2002. I have made choices more than twice, more than 3 times, to get rid of all of my functional belongings before even considering the reevaluation of my dysfunctional goods. These items have often spent lengthy stretches vacationing in other peoples' garages but now they have been reunited. There are countless other pointless items which I do not need, which I may never have used, and which are broken too. The worst is the fact that I have owned 4 dysfunctional automobiles. I say it's the worst because I continue to attempt to drive these items around town. At least my other dysfunctional stuff can't break down on me in Orangeburg SC at 3 am. The vehicular portion of my non-functional items has consisted of two classic Corvettes of the C3 bodystyle, a 1973 Karmann Ghia, and a 1951 Chevy fastback. I managed to part with 3 of those after situations that could be most likened to interventions. Each one broke down on me more than once, and then became undriveable. But don't worry, I still have one. I have sworn my allegiance to the perpetual ownership of this nightmare suicide machine. I can't go back on my word. I own high heel shoes that have a biker's studded belt from the 70's nailed to the bottom pieces to form the straps that keep them on. That modification occurred when the "safe" version of this shoe became non-functioning. The last time I wore these, 4 years ago, the nails slipped out a bit after a lot of walking, and when i slid my feet past eachother mid-step, two nail heads went about 1/4 inch into my opposite ankle's meat. Oh, how it sucked. But...I still have them! I am not a materialist, I am just too stubborn to give up. I never have cared about material things. I don't care if it's new or trendy. I hope it isn't expensive, whatever it may be, just please let it be slightly used up.
tilted plaid patterns
The other day I found an old sock..the only surviving one of a pair which I purchased 10 years ago. This was no ordinary sock though. This particular one represents a long important era of my life. It does seem odd to attach such a statement to a sock, but I assure you, the sock has earned this level of value. At 16, I already had a healthy interest in patterns. I had been interested in plaid for various reasons for at least 3 years already. Something about the plaid pattern is irresistible to me. It could be the somewhat hard to swallow interjections of harshly contrasting colors, or the fact that it makes me think of sexy Irish men, whether that's politically and socially correct or not. Then strutted argyle into my life. Like a plaid that seemed, by it's 45 degree angle tilt, to be even more important, it began to infiltrate my wardrobe. I didn't have much money to work with. At the time, I had already started college, was working a full-time job, and lived on my own. But I could always find 5 or 6 dollars to drop for a flashy new pair of argyle socks. I wore them with hightop converse most often. I wore them with miniskirts. I even wore them with plaid low tops. My favorite pair were mostly black with maroon and fuschia and blue veins running through the fabric and the design. They were magnificent. I purchased them at 16, and they were my first pair of sexy argyle foot coverings. I moved around a bit during the next couple of years, and at some point, one of these precious socks was lost. I could not bear to look at the one lonely sock that was left. I wanted to continue wearing it, so I bought another pair of argyle socks which I didn't have such an attachment to and split them up so that my black one could still be worn. I couldn't find another pair in that same color scheme though. So, being the fashionably abhorrent person that I am, I settled for a pair of mismatched argyle socks. The other one was maroon, red, and purple. But it had what really mattered: it was the same height and elasticity as the black one. I sported these socks for years. I got dirty looks for it whenever they were visible, but I just didn't care. I wore them like that throughout the college years. I wore them like that through 3 longterm relationships. My friends and loved ones wore them like that too, and even seemed to covet the pair of mismatched socks, borrowing them at every opportunity. The socks consoled me through indescribably tumultuous times, and supported me while I journeyed through some of the most formative years of my life. When I saw the sock again, lurking about, once again without a mate, sticking to the inside ankle of a forgotten pair of pants, my heart skipped a beat. I remembered things I had sworn to forget. I felt present in my past and thought about the changes that had happened in me since the sock had first been worn. Then I nonchalantly folded the pants, sock still intact inside of ankle of pantleg, and I stuffed this valuable item into a plastic bag destined to be donated to the thrift store down the street. Those times were over.
skates and sunburns
The beach has a draw on me like no other place. It's claws are so deep into my skin that I constantly crave the feeling of its essence washing over me: the sounds of crashing and rolling waves, the smell of oceanic life, the way that laying on the sand feels like nothing else in the world. These things all attract me to the beach, but truly, it is the sun-worshipping which keeps me there for hours on end. Long past the point of sensible sun exposure, I lay on the sand. I use products which help me to smell like a hot coconut, and ensure that i will remember my time at the beach for a week to come while I nurse my sunburned knee pits. Yes, for me, the beach is true bliss. It makes me want to drink margaritas and rollerskate for miles. It makes me feel somehow whole inside in a way that a mountain or a desert never could. I have spent a lifetime romanticizing the beach, and yet, it never gets old. When I was a teeny little girl with pig tails and a voice pitched about like a chipmunk, my mother used to take me to the beach all the time. At that time, it was considered completely socially unacceptable to have a pale child in south Florida. Sunscreen was never used. It was a product that we did not purchase. I don't think I used the stuff until I was 12 or so actually. We would go to the beach for hours on end. I would swim and build sandcastles, and dig "swimming pools" for myself in the sand. Inevitably at the end of these sun-soaked experiences I would somehow have accumulated a quantity of sand inside of my bathing suit which could not be allowed to enter the car along with me. Therefore, I had to be publicly humiliated at the conclusion of each beach day by a full shower at the public outdoor shower just past the sand. Just how did that sand manage to infiltrate the suit? It is still a mystery. Even now, when I go swimming at the beach, I bring home enough sand to clog up my shower drain. But it has become an endearing experience. One which reaffirms my emotional involvement with the place. One which makes me feel complete. The same years of my youth revolved a great deal around rollerskating. When my mother was young, she had been on the "speed team" at the local small town skating rink. She devoted her afternoons to 400 laps most everyday. She had legs as big around as my waist now. She took me to the rink with her when I was 4, strapped wheels to me feet, and pushed me out into the middle of the floor: a place which was accepted as being the practice area. It was the first in a long line of sink-or-swim experiences that I can remember. I swam. I grew to love the feeling of smooth glide over the waxed floor of the rink. I picked up my foot and crossed over to turn corners with speed and accuracy while weaving through clusters of people who were struggling with the concept. I skated a lot. I shuffled and I skated backwards as quickly as others traveled forward. I found peace in it, a feeling very close to the meditative enjoyment I ascertained from my experiences at the beach. This was just a more active form of achieving the same end result. I haven't had skates on my feet in 5 years at least. And for a period of 5 years during college I lived nowhere near the beach. Yet lately, I feel the need to do these things again; to do them religiously; to combine them even.
movement of some type
Recently, I moved away from a place I love and people I care about. That's how this story begins, at least for now. Someone told me right before I left that I ought to keep a journal. I decided it was a good idea, and have, just for the moment, completely disregarded the fact that I am no writer.
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