We need some new love stories

I went running yesterday in the soup of inverted air corroding Salt Lake Valley, and the sun was glorious.
I decided the two cancel each other out.  For a brief moment, I imagined myself wearing one of those surgeon's masks and trying to suck enough air through a coffee filter membrane.  They are masks worn by people who believe they can defeat their environment with a flimsy paper film, and I filled my chest even deeper.   If this is life today, then I will take it all in, even the smog.

Yesterday I also bought music.  I rarely do this, but I wanted to remember.  Isn't that why Art is so precious?  It houses pieces of my life like a jewelry box, and to hear a song is like taking it out and holding it in my palm again.

I bolted straight into the sun with the lyrics swelling in my chest,
"Never knew I could feel like this...
It's like I've never seen the sky before."

This is how it felt with Andrew, in the beginning.  I'd listen to this music.  I'd drive in my car and let it saturate me.  I was 26 years old.  My hair was long.  I was newly sober.  I was an art student.  I was a single mother.  I was terrified of the stretch of life that came next.  I lived in my Dad's basement.  I went for long walks and talked to Andrew on the phone at twilight.  I'd sit on the hill overlooking the valley and smoke and listen to stories about his grandpa.  Every night I'd pray and say thank you to Grace for letting me feel this again.  I would cry and get into bed alone.  I'd curl up around the possibility that I may get another chance at having a partner, and that it may be Andrew.

Some nights, a dark voice would find me.  Lydia, I called her.  She is sleeping now, and I hope she never wakes up.  She would hiss up from my sheets,
"How dare you hope for this!  What do you think will happen?  That he will love you like this forever?  That you won't grow to hate him?  And that he won't see you in action?  Have you ever been with someone whose heart you did not crush?  If you love him, you should leave now. You are not fit for this.  This cannot last.  It is impossible, and you know it."

Then a different song would resonate in my stomach.  It would make me sick.

"The saddest part...of a broken heart...isn't the ending....so much as the start."

"I want to be a good woman, and I want for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving.  And this is why I can't see you no more.

I will miss your heart so tender.  And I will love this love forever.
This is why I am lying, when I say, I don't love you no more."

But I decided to trust.  I trusted myself, that I was not crazy and broken. I trusted him.  I trusted him when he said, "I am here, and I want you.  I know that. Now the choice is yours."
I trusted that I could choose.
I trusted in the force which pulsed between us, the energy neither of us created, and that was clearly more powerful than our prudence.

It is easy to fall in the beginning.  All the big love stories blast us with this power of new bliss.  Romeo and Juliette, what did they ever have to prove?  There is less than one week between when they meet and the time they die.
Cleopatra and Mark Antony.  Same ending.
Rose and Jack on the Titanic.  Not a long story there either.
Casablanca.  She gets on the plane at the end of the movie.

We need some new stories.
It has been almost 8 years now, since those twilight phone calls.
I have been asked to live up to my choice over a thousand times.  I have embraced all of him, all of me.
Each time, I have been able to remember.

the longest shower

I was in the shower for at least 20 minutes.
My hair is barely dry, and already I want to crawl back into the warmth of it.
I was trying to wash off my dream.
It was too real, and I was the girl in it.  Not the woman I am in my life today.
I was the girl of 15 years ago who was raped by 2 football players.
I was the girl who walked home with her underwear wadded up in her pocket.
I walked home with vodka still rotting in my mouth.
I sat in my apartment with hands jammed into pockets of my winter coat.
I didn't move for a long time.  I just sat on the couch.
I inhaled slowly, so as not to disrupt the pieces of myself.
I wanted my roommates to wake up, but when they did, I couldn't speak to them.
"When did you get home?"
"This morning"
"Oh."
They went about the kitchen making coffee, recovering from their own hangover.
This is just college, right?
We all have bad nights....

I tell myself, I tell other people, I don't have any secrets.
But this isn't true.
This is a secret.  This girl is a secret.  But she is still with me, and today she cried in the shower.
And she is crying now, because she knows she is not supposed to feel ashamed, but she does.
She knows she is not disgusting, but she's hiding in old sweats and could barely meet her husband's eyes.
She clutched the down comforter against her body and couldn't let him touch her.
Once again, she couldn't speak.  Her soul was wadded up in her throat.

People tell me, "You're so brave to write this blog about your eating disorder."
And I suppose that's true.
When I began, I was very afraid.  But I'm not ashamed about it anymore.
But this...I am ashamed of this.  I am scared for my Dad to read this.  I am scared for my grandma to read it.
I am scared to be tarnished.
But just like the eating disorder, most women can relate, and I write for them.
I write so I can come out of hiding, so we can come out of hiding.
More than 25% percent of college women report being sexually assaulted.
Many more never report it.  I never reported it.
I am not a minority.  I am the norm.
If it is so common, then why am I so ashamed?

Andrew just called to ask if I am okay.
"Not really.  But I got Sophie to school,"  I am curled up in a ball and crying.
"I'm sorry you had that dream.  I'm sorry you have to feel this way," he says.
I know he means it.  I know he cares.  Neither of us know what to say beyond this.
We sit in silence, hoping the other will fill it.
"I don't know what to say," I tell him.
"You don't have to say anything.  I just wanted to check on you."
This is why I trust him.  He knows some things cannot be fixed by words.
And he's not mad that I'm not fixed yet.

Rape is nothing like I imagined as a kid.
I remember the first time I learned the word.
I was shocked, terrified that such a thing actually happened to people.
It seemed the worst act ever to be committed or endured.
But it's not, and it takes a long time to catch up, to become real.
It is not sharp or acute. It is in slow motion, blurry, like trying to see under water.
I want to say, 'It's not so bad, Dad.  Don't worry.  I'm okay.'
The bad part is not the experience, it is the aftermath.
It is the girl who feels like a lie.  The one who is stuck between two worlds.
The world where she stands tall and has nothing to hide.
Versus the world where everyone can see through her clothing and knows she is not so tough after all.
It is the hollow dropping in my stomach now, as I write.  The contrition that will not subside.
"I should have been better.  I never should have let this happen.  If I had been more careful...maybe.
Maybe I deserve this."

This is the crux.  The placing of blame.  Because it is true.  I did put myself in danger.
I was drunk.  Really drunk.  If I don't care about my body, why should anyone else?
Did I not send the message that I am disposable?
Yes, I did.  I wanted to be.  I wanted to be trivial, evanescent.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Therein lies the lie.
The lie is, "I don't matter.  I am not soft.  I am impervious if I choose to be."
If I acknowledge the lie, then I have to admit that it hurt.
It did.  It does, hurt.

Tell all

I've found myself waking up lost.  As if my voice has been silenced or I've forgotten how to walk.


I stopped writing chrysalisbreak about 2-3 months ago.
I did it because I wanted a rest.  I didn't want this thing which started out so life-affirming to be one more chore on the list of things I must do to maintain functional-adult-status.
But now I am missing it.  I miss my fingers dancing on keyboard like a seasoned pianist.
I miss the tiny clicking into place when I tell myself the truth by accident.
I miss the deep sighs I breath only when I am alone here with my coffee.  It is the air which goes to my core and lets me know everything is going to be alright, in spite of everything I've just admitted to.

Also, I've had things going on at home that I cannot share with the world.
So it seemed I couldn't write.  Because the truth I had to tell was too delicate, too fresh.
It is not only my story I tell here.  It is the story of my family.
I wish I could bare all.  I wish I could walk naked and let whatever jiggles be exposed.
However, I'm learning that sometimes love requires discretion.  I hate this. I hate that we are so fragile.
I wish we didn't need to hide behind identities constructed out of words and paper cut-out clothes.
But that is only upon initial response.
It is this sensitive nature which makes it all worth it.  I need the parts that make no sense, that ache for no reason other than I want to be heard, understood.  I want my face to be caressed when I cry, and I offer the same to those in my care.
I do not want my husband to be his calloused hands.  Sometimes I wonder how he can feel my skin through all that work.  But he does.  He kisses the top of my forehead as we fall asleep together, curled into the formation we've perfected over 7 years.
I want to honor that.  I want to preserve a space for us to be soft.  This means respecting his trust.  This means I do not tell all.

soft spot

flying buttress

I am the hole in the donut...

Insides shriveling under this hulking blanket of mundane and khaki pants.
Is no one suffering?

flying buttress on Notre Dame Cathedral

Screaming in love anymore?
Have we all been sedated by quinoa salad and gym memberships at 4x's per week?
Has our passion been stripped monthly in $100 increments on automatic bill pay?
What will be left of me?
No more alcoholism.
No more gritty sex in tiny sedans under musty blankets and Mazzy's Star.
No more starvation and guts sinking in and around powerful ribs like a cathedral's flying buttress.
No more purging all food, all love, all failure and all bile to digest. to care.

No more free fall into shimmering pool of love to drown all worlds.

a 700 foot sink hole for which we dangle roots for miles to only taste.
No more breaking dishes when the fever can find no outlet.
No more whiskey burning and knowing it'll all be over soon
no more singing, wailing like dead cats deep into the night
...songs to say what we can no longer annunciate.
no more.

You may rage no more. wings are clipped.  food rationed.
all you have is
poetry.
and paint.
and fingers to climb and feel fear from 100 feet upon granite with the tiny swift birds, gliding.
the occassional sex that is only a misting of lips...my roots skimming.
but knowing we could go so much deeper if we didn't have to get back to it.

only me.
worrying.
flattened.
mourning.

Painting the deck where the paint has rubbed off.  listening to Red House Painters on my ipod.
ironic.
and crying...the inaudible cries of a housewife before her kids wake up.
                                   
a deep inhale brings the scent of cigarette smoke on hair from another time.
hair stuffed against a pillow I don't remember lying down upon.
and the wet spots where tears laid with me all night.
It brings the stomach lurch
the realization - I have to wait an entire day with all her hideous sunlight.

It was not better.
    It was not better.
        It was not........better.

thinking of Ginsberg and painting

For my friend, Misty Brown Sunflower Sutra I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry. Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery. The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily. Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust-- --I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past-- and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye-- corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb, leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then! The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives, all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial-- modern--all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown-- and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos--all these entangled in your mummied roots--and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze! How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul? Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive? You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower! And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not! So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter, and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul too, and anyone who'll listen, --We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed by our own seed & golden hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision. Allen Ginsberg Berkeley, 1955

life fresh from the dryer

the moment after Pepper was born

I just pulled Pepper's baby blanket out of the dryer, bundled it around my nose, enhaled deep and exhaled
tears.  The smell was of a newborn sweetness, milk, and new life.  I huddled around this memory. I was shocked by it's potency.  I slid to the floor against the washing machine's humming.  Like the last hug of a lover, I held on. It started slipping the moment it came to me.
This will never be mine again.
My time for fresh life is past.  Now I have obnoxious sacks of angst bouncing against each other.  They are chaos and raw potential, and I have to figure out how to organize them. There are many paths, and we stumble together, holding hands, trying to find the right one.
My sister is next.  Her baby is coming in November.
And it's ok that I won't have another newborn baby.
In a way, I am more able to relish this baby than she is.
As my Mom was with mine.

having a conversation on the Train at Lagonn

I never understood why my mom was content to hold my crying babies.
I just wanted to get the hell away from them.
But she would always take the bundle.  She'd lay it down gently and re-wrap it slowly.
Then she'd just rock and coo with a gentleness that seemed unending.

I think I could do that now.

Pepper is the best for taking naps with, just as her Aunt Nennie.

God is not

I miss him.
I miss knowing we are doing the same thing, together.

I miss taking our kids to the pool and realizing they will be grown too soon.
I miss knowing he loves the sun on his back just as much as I do.
I miss hearing him dream, seeing him reach long fingers with fire in his eyes.

Once again, someone I love has gone to a place I cannot follow, and I hate to watch him walk away.
It seems this is my lesson.
My whole life - I have been watching people walk away.
I thought I'd be better at it by now.
It hurts every time.  It is a shock every time.
I know I have friends who will die.
Who are dying...
I should get ready, right?
I should prepare for the call.

I am afraid he will commit suicide.
I am afraid he will put himself so deep in a hole that he cannot come out.
I am afraid because I have to set boundaries, and I am left to watch from behind my baracade.
I am sick of watching.
I am sick of watching people self-destruct.
However I am torn, because I know it is part of the path.
I am afraid because I know this is the only way to freeom.
But, not everyone makes it all the way through.
They die in their suffering.
I cannot make this add up.
It is senseless from where I stand.
Our most desperate attempts to live are swamped by chaos, like the tiny turtles on the nature channel.
They are killed before they make it to the ocean.
With all their gusto for life, they flap straight into death's open mouth.

I am afraid he will die right in front of me, but still breath.
Still wearing the appearance of someone I once knew, he will not let me grieve.
I am afraid I will watch my friend's ghost struggle for an exit.
Perhaps this is the origin of ghost stories about people stuck between two worlds.

And all of this I must do from behind my wall.
I hate the wall and it's necessity.
It is a privilege to be able to say, No.  The dignity of choice, right?
The gift and the burden of eyes wide open has placed me here.
I don't know.  Maybe I just hate that I am not God.

Or that God is not...helping everyone.

My only consolation is what I do not know.

I have faith that so much more is happening then I can see.

So, in the end, Grace is not what I know, but what I do not.