I hope you...

I hope you find what you are looking for, she says.
a polite dismissal, or a sincere intention, perhaps.
A perfectly socially acceptable thing to say in parting.
But I want to roar back at her, bearing my teeth and yellow eyes.

We both know this is not what life is about
How dare you dilute me this way
How convenient...
a consolation prize for the half-assed house wife
Now she can sit in her "Chair" and watch her "Shows"

If you know me at all...you know,
I hope to never arrive in The Land of What I was Looking For
I hope to run the desert in bare feet until it burns my toes and I ache for an oasis
I hope my hair is dirty and my skin is golden
I hope I jump into unexpected pools of water regardless of what I am wearing...or not wearing.

I hope that one song makes me cry every time I hear it.
I hope I can still smile at teenagers skipping class cuz their souls are on fire
and all they can do is smoke cigarettes behind trees in public parks

I hope I round the corner of my pen and reveal frightening things. embarrassing things.
things most people would skip over and not write down at all,
things I didn't want to see, and needed to see
things that force my breath to intake sharply and tears to fall when I read them out loud
I hope my voice grows thicker and becomes that of a woman I have never known
I hope she lets pools of her own blood fall behind her without apologizing for the mess.

I hope I make the doctors angry and the nurses smirk when I won't listen

I hope I don't know my husband yet, or my children yet, or you...
and that we all surprise each other

I hope I accidentally cut myself while slicing carrots for dinner.

So while I appreciate your good intention, friend
You can have it
I hope you smile when I hand back it to you
and walk away empty handed, roar still echoing.
I hope you know me better
than to wish me a mundane life

For you I wish the unexpected and the glorious...

Chrysalis break...still

We grip kettle bells side by side.  My friend and trainer says to me as we lunge and step, 

"You know what I've noticed about you?  I never see you eat."

"Yeah...I get that a lot," I wince and feel exposed like a nerve through a tooth.

I move through the feeling with my whole body.  I do not need to feel shame or hide.

I let it absorb into my belly, into the strong place where I carried my babies.

"Is that like, on purpose?" he asks.

"No, not exactly...but it's probably not an accident.  I still struggle.  I know you've read my blog..."

"Yeah.  It's brilliant," he says.

"Thanks...yes it is my longest standing daemon.  I have good days and bad days."

This morning I read my books.

The books change.  The practice of reading and sitting does not.

Facebook threatens to take this practice from me.  I have reclaimed it a hundred times.

This morning I read:

The only tranquility I knew was to anesthetize myself with food, an indulgence for which I paid dearly the rest of the time.  Nothing could save me from the mental and emotional anguish and confusion of being fat, feeling guilty and hating myself for lack of control. 

~For Today

I have been seeking forgiveness of myself for this.  For my compulsive eating and alcoholism.

It is not an intellectual decision.  It is a slow and tedious breaking out from chrysalis.  To me it has felt long, yet when I consider how long people choose to sleep in their shells, some an entire lifetime, it is not so long.  Perhaps they don't choose.  Perhaps an outside light never comes to alert them - there is a whole world out here. 

This blog started as an amends to myself.  The question:

What would happen if I just told the truth about this struggle, about what my head says?

What if I shared it?

In my other book I read:

"...we don't believe love will ever just come to us on its own.  We believe instead that we have to do something to make ourselves acceptable.  So to push ourselves to try to be good, to whip ourselves into shape, we hire an in-house critic to keep tabs on how we're doing."

In the margin I wrote:   I still believe this.

But I believe it far less...and I can see it is not a requirement for my love of others.  Perhaps, just as my allowance for others has turned in to an allowance for myself, this could become true as well.  I am still afraid of it.  I am still breaking out.

from the courtroom bench

From my seat on the courtroom bench I calmly, and frantically notice you.
For two people hell-bent on self destruction, we are so tame now.

Ten years ago, when we were still in our 20's and we still believed in fairytales, you would say to me,
"Tell our story.  You've gotta tell it.  Promise me you'll write it."
With equal desperation I would promise you, of course I will.  How can I let this fade, evaporate like a dream on the shores of consciousness.  Let's just stay unconscious.  Please.  Can we do that please?
Without making a deal, we made a deal.  We agreed to run it out as long as we could and suck up every last bit of one another's juice.  We savored it in the form of gin and intellectual rants and drunken fights with broken glass.  Like Mary Poppins' chalk pavement pictures, we superimposed ourselves onto movies starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannson and got lost.  We listened to Ryan Adams and Pj Harvey until our bodies melted.  Poetry, we lived it and ate it and exhaled it's smoky tendrils.

I just flipped through an on-line album of pictures from Kurt Cobain's suicide.  They were lame images of a pair of sunglasses lying next to a cigar box of heroin rigs.  I saw his note written in tiny penmanship with a red pen stabbed through the middle and stuck into an empty planter box.  I saw the corner of his black Converse all-star shoe, and the driveway to his house up to the garage.  Then there were pictures of cops lazily standing around in pot belly suits, with limp hands and unimpressed faces.
Those of us who rage hard die so small.
Regardless of our internal experience, how massive and crushing and desperate it feels, we are confined to this one body.  It isn't much.  When we go, few people are impressed by our theatrics.

Now I am sitting in a court room holding the hand of my friend.  It is shaking.  Perhaps mine would be too, but I am here for her.  Her fear trumps mine.  Her husband was just convicted.  He is walking away in hand cuffs and a pin striped suit.  As he is escorted by the bailiff, he looks over to flip her a weak smile.  I am in the eye of the hurricane.  In your suit and tie you walk back and forth, doing your lawyer job.  I won't let myself make eye contact.  We do each other this courtesy of not seeing one another at the same time.  When you are not looking I notice that you have aged.  Your hair is going grey, and your curls have relaxed.  I also note that you still stand perfectly erect as a statue, as one who will not be swayed.  I wonder if you are still you, or if you have given it all away.  But your posture tells me that you have not.

I still want to tell the story, but it is not the one I promised to you.   I doubt you would want that one anyway.  Our story only counts because we didn't die.  Otherwise it would be a very short and predictable tragedy.   But I only know my half of it.
Just as I won't trivialize you by waving a dopey hello from the courtroom bench, I won't let our story be another Romeo and Juliette love jaunt to burn hot and die fast.  You were my friend and my guardian and my soul's gateway. You knew me before I knew me.  I lived and died with you. Your arms are the bars of a phoenix cage.

The Trifecta

Ever since we went to the concert, one line loops and sings to me,

"You can only dance in a hurricane, 
            if you're standing in the eye."

I had never known Brandi Carlisle, except for this one song Dad put on my ipod.
It's about stories, and how they don't really matter without someone to tell them to.
Then I think about my Dad, and how he has chosen to be a lone Maverick in his own desert.
I'm glad I've listened to his stories when he returns from a long stretch on the trail.
There was a time when I couldn't listen, because all his stories were at me and all of the dark things about to happen.  They were about God, or my fallen mother, about the world's crumbling morality and mine.  Now I write my own stories with a fluid hand, one that makes no apologies and tells no lies. He isn't scared anymore.
My tether to him transcends words, yes it is love, but love itself is inadequate.  When I hear this song I become him.  I am the aging man who hears it.  I am the man who has raised 6 children, whose whithering wife left when the youngest was only 4 years old.  I am a genius who never went to college, but instead found God.  As it turns out, God doesn't care much for genius.  I see the whole world all at once and it is too much, but I am up for the challenge.  I listen to the Les Miserables soundtrack turned all-the-way-up in my dark living room alone, but I do not feel lonely. I feel empowered.  I am a man of routine who buys only one type of sock and six of the same t-shirt because the cut is good and the material is hearty.  I always eat whole grains.  I deny myself pleasure because it gets in the way.  I can live in my truck on Mount Olympus water and Triscuits.  I know because I have done it.  I miss my kids desperately.  I know my dreams will sustain me when everything else is gone and I will die without apology.  I will go hard and fast down roads too scary for most people.  I raised a daughter.  Her name is Sarah.  I am very proud of her.  She is me but she is also her, she is finally feminine.  Her hair is long and red.  She has never stopped writing.  She will write a book for both of us one day.
When I hear this song I quiver but I don't allow myself to mourn.  I keep walking.  I let the dust settle on my shoulders with the heat.  My breath stays steady and propels me forward like a steam locomotive.  I have too much momentum to quit now.

I went to this concert with Katrina.  It was her birthday gift to me.  I turned 36 years old.  I wore a white and green striped dress with red Vans tennis shoes.  My hair spilled down and trickled gently along the hot summer current like water from the sides of a boat.  Her dress was the color of cantaloupe and so were her earrings. She is very good at that, matching her earrings to her dress. We walked in sync together up the gravel path to the mountain venue, our flat shoes crunching. I knew the sun would set later, and it would be beautiful.  Especially with all the smoke in the air from the California fires.  Funny how fire can make the sun turn pink like hibiscus.

We sit together on our blanket in the grass with bare knees like junior high girls.  We talk soft and easy with heads leaning into one another.  We watch the people, all somewhat wealthy, or at least comfortable enough to afford these tickets.  There is something silly to me about people with money.  I wonder if she notices this too, but I say nothing.  I am happy to be here in this simple space with her.

As we walk to the bathroom she whispers,
"I wish I hadn't worn these panties, they're so uncomfortable."

"Mine are too.  I was just thinking the same thing!" I exclaim.  "Let's take 'em off in the bathroom."

"But what if something...happens?"

"It doesn't matter.  Even if people see up our dresses...it doesn't even matter, right?  Why does it matter?  We don't know any of these people."  I flash her a Cheshire grin and she can tell I really mean it.

"Alright...I must really trust you, Sarah,"  She sighs.  But I can tell she feels better and so do I.
We sneak out, both grinning now, with panties balled up in our fists.

After the opening band, best friend number three arrives.  Her name is Butt-Nutt.   I don't know how this came to be...it is just her name.  She is the most wild.  If we were that workout show from the 80's, you know the one with the three circle tiers of intenisty?  She would be high, I would be medium, and Katrina would be low.  Yet we have all sought to destroy ourselves at some point, with equally piercing intent.  The trifecta is in order.

1. • ri·fect·a
     trīˈfektə/
     noun
     NORTH AMERICANAUSTRALIAN/NEW ZEALAND
     noun: trifecta; plural noun: trifectas
     1.            a bet in which the person betting forecasts the first three finishers in a race in the correct order.
     ·                                       a run of three wins or grand events.
     
     

And this is the hard part...it is the most important part of the night, but I can't tell it to you.  I can only tell you what happened on the outside.
I was the first to cry.  The sun had barely set.  The sky flashed it's elusive color of turquoise.  The color I have wished upon after a long day and tired feet.  Brandi Carlisle was letting her whole soul escape through her throaty voice and chest up to the stars.  My head leaned in to my Butt-Nutt whom I had been certain would die of a drug overdose on the street, or worse.  My friend who got sober and lost her son anyway.  My friend who was at my wedding in a silver dress with movie star curls. The one who my baby's placenta and exclaimed it to be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen!  My friend onto whose immaculate white comforter I sobbed my deepest grief when I got divorced and broke all hearts into more pieces than I thought could ever be mended.  My friend who wailed the Pretenders with me into the night while driving fast down State street and promised to be there forever.  But I was 26 and she was 19, how could we know?
Now, ten years later, we know.  At least we kind of know the truth...life hurts so much more than we were prepared for.
Then my head leans the other way and is met by Katrina.  My quiet friend who scales mountains with me.  Who followed me up a massive sand stone cliff in Lake Powell only to rappel over 200 feet of unknown and gorgeous blazing rock.  That was our first adventure, and we just kept going for long swims through the lake with arms that know the water as automatically as Mom fold clothes. We scramble up with bare feet shivering and tight to lie on hot rocks like lizards. We are perfectly balanced like a good sushi roll.  When she asks me how I am doing, I answer her more honestly than anyone else on the planet because I know she will listen and understand me even when I can barely articulate.  Sometimes she can see around my next corner but she doesn't tell me what's coming.  She trusts that I will deal with it just fine.

We have been the cast of each other's stories, switching costumes, alternately playing the mother, the mentor, the traitor, the clown and the accomplice.  There are lines of worry etched between Katrina's eyes which belong to me.  Up under my ribs is a scar where I cut my heart out and gave it to her as a apology.  Horizontal across my forehead is the crease made by Butt-Nutt's heartbreak. On her, you will rarely see it.  Butt-Nutt's real name is Georgia.  Georgia is a place spread wide and buried deep.  Do not let her jig fool you.  She may hop like a grasshopper on stilts which seem to always bounce back, but those legs are made of lead sometimes.  She has good reason to be firmly planted.  Katrina's shoes are always dainty and she walks softly on the ground, a trait I will never acquire.  She knows how to pace herself so she will never have to quit.  She will not complain about her bunion.  She will keep walking until you are ready to turn around and go home.

On our little blanket, time collapsed around us that night.  All of the stories so concentrated into our small space were more than we could contain, and we found ourselves sweetly and surprisingly crying.  I spilled over onto Butt-Nutt first, and it became contagious.  But how could we not cry, really?

"Anyone who says the arts should not be taught in schools is an idiot," I mutter.

All of these lines across my face 
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to

I climbed across the mountain tops 
Swam all across the ocean blue
I crossed all the lines and I broke all the rules
But baby I broke them all for you
Because even when I was flat broke
You made me feel like a million bucks
You do and I was made for you

You see the smile that's on my mouth
It's hiding the words that don't come out
And all of my friends who think that I'm blessed
They don't know my head is a mess
No, they don't know who I really am
And they don't know what I've been through like you do

~Brandi Carlisle

At the Edge of Light and Water

This morning I have "baby kitty eyes."  Because last night I walked the neighborhood in squeaky flip-flops, sobbing into my hair curtain.
Note to self:  It is very hard to be convincingly angry while wearing flip-flops.
Suddenly I was 17 years old hiding behind my swath of dramatic red hair.  I felt comforted by it's camouflage. Beneath it I could cry as much as I needed to.l
The tears came for no reason, at least not one big enough to justify this teenage outburst in a 35 year old woman.
We had just been on a date to see the new Mad Max movie.  In the dark I kicked my bare feet onto his lap.  He held them like kittens in his wide hands.  The sun was setting to pink when we left the theater.
Then we got into it over who was going to be late to work so they could return the carpet cleaner to the rental place.  The car grew tight as we yelled over each other, both hot with self-righteousness. Andrew pulled in to the garage and pushed the little button to close it. I scurried under the metal door before it could clang shut and trap me in domestic prison.  I was Indiana Jones barely escaping with my whip and hat, only for me it was my purse and cell phone.
I shouldn't be complaining.  He just shampooed the carpets.  I have it better than many wives, and mothers of 3 children.  I can still escape to the mountains and go rock climbing with my friends.  I sweat and feel more animal than civilized person.  I get dirty like a kid in summer.
I paint canvases in the living room under bright sunlight.  I attend creative writing workshops, use the word fuck when it suits me, and write stories that make good girls blush.  I go for sunrise runs on well seasoned legs.  I'm a member of a gym with people who make me laugh and push me beyond my physical limits.
My soul should be fed.  These are the kinda things they tell you to do in Health magazines right?

excerpt from my most recent sketch book 2015

So why is my chest shrieking:  RUN!

I haven't done this in a while.  I haven't been consumed by a silent roar and tried to outrun it since we moved to this house 2 years ago.  But right now I am frantic going full steam ahead in one direction.  I just want to keep going until all ties fall away and I am a single entity.  I want to streak into the setting light behind the mountains and let my soul catch fire.

A young family rides slowly past me on their bikes.  The dad has a toddler on one of those plastic seats mounted to the back of his frame.  They are so tame, like lions at the zoo.  I know Dad could ride hard and fast without his family in tow.  Does it drive him mad sometimes to be so subdued?   Does he ever ache to drink whiskey instead of milk?


I do now.  For the first time in years, I wanna head straight for the bar.  I know something will awaken there.  It is the girl who will not be tethered.  She takes everything she wants, every shot.
She feels no guilt.  The alcohol swirls little Jiminy Cricket until he cannot chirp the annoying truth at her.

sketch book 2015

But no matter how fast I walk, I cannot un-know the truth:
That is not freedom.
I would be tethered to something far heavier than a family.  I would not move fast at all.  I would only sink.
The truth and the reason I am crying these hot tears is because there is nowhere to run.  No matter how fast the whiskey.   No sex, no distance covered in miles, no size 3 dress, no man, no woman, not even a child can ease this for me.

I am meant to feel this.  It is my deafening, limited and human self.  It is the price I must pay to keep my heart open to the only sustainable source of light I crave.  The light I chase in the sunrise before anyone else is awake, and I can cry in a way that is not lost or frustrated or heavy with longing.  My longing is quiet because I am right where I need to be.  On those mornings, I cry because I feel peace.
All of my questions are answered, even the ones I can't articulate.  I float the ocean's horizon line suspended between two worlds.  I often draw this line in my sketch book.  I feel most quiet here where both things are true.  They negate each other and I am weightless along this edge.  The only thing to remind me that I am human is the breath drifting easily from this body.   This beautiful whale that is one throbbing muscle of propulsion, too heavy, yet necessary.  I know whales rejoice too when they jump from the water to hit the sun.  Our only way out is to rejoice.

Back on the sidewalk, fireworks explode all around me in every direction.  It is the day after the 24th of July, and I am on a military base of pyromaniacs.  I'm also on the phone with my friend, Misty.  I've been walking for nearly an hour now.  The rage has cooled to smoke and tendrils of laughter.  From the dark behind me a man runs up and slaps my ass.  It's Andrew.  He is breathing hard from running to catch me.  The street grows a little brighter.  I feel myself shrink next to his 6 foot body.  I also feel more tears, but not angry ones.

"What are you doing here?  ... Misty...I'll have to call you back."

"I used the "Find my iPhone" app to track you.  I love you and I was starting to get worried.  You were gone for a long time."

We stop walking.  I cry into his soft black t-shirt.  I press my nose into his chest muscle and take a long drag.  I have been filleted.  He can do this to me like no one else.  He will not buy my complex package of artistry.  He will only do one thing over and over and that is love me without question.  We walk home together.  He carries my silly flip-flops.  My feet are bare and he waits for me to tip-toe around the rocks.  He reminds me to wash my feet before I go inside.  He just shampooed the carpets.

sketch book 2015

Lead Feather

Post Run Poetry.   Walking past manicured Sandy city lawns.

Lead Feather

the weight of a hearty soul

like a lead feather

this paradox assigned to me

I did not choose

each time I am deceived by my form

I appear to be a feather

but when I lift fine hairs to the breeze 

they do not carry me

instead the wind laughs

making ripples of static along my spine

I know I was there once

but I am irrevocably here.  Now.

weighted by this hearty soul

I Went for a Walk at Sunrise

This morning I went for a walk at sunrise.  I wore my thin, lime green sweats and no bra.  My lion's mane was still roaring from last night's dreams.   I exhaled a vapor like mist over water.  It was that quiet.
I tried to take a picture of it, but the sunrise was never for you. It was always for me. I wanted to fold her up and give her to you. So she could ease your black grief with her colors.

For you, my friend, who has lost her only baby.  Just yesterday it happened.
I held my vigil behind you in the court room.  I could only see your neck and the twist of golden haired bun perched there at the nape.  They were choking you with recounts of the last year.  I knew you could barely breath, but you stayed for your Bon-boy.  You held fast to your spot, and would not let anyone take it from you.  If this is where his mother sits, it is your spot.  His father did not show up.  But you were there, holding space for your son laying tribute to his childhood with your tears.
The judge talked for over an hour.  He could at least offer you an explanation.  But later you told me you wished he'd just shut up and get it over with.
I tried to hold my body perfectly still, as a soldier would.  I mirrored the sterile walls, the right angles of perfectly aligned squares, their red mahogany wood and limp American flag.  All spoke of an authority greater than ours, more powerful than the agony of birth's push.  I was with you then too.  I held your hand as you clenched your entire muscle body in one effort.  The only time you had ever worked so hard in harmony with your own heart.  Afraid, yes.  Afraid to let him come and yet throbbing to meet him, and I whispered into your neck,
"Let him come..."

Our foreheads pressed together in knowing. I can see the white in your knuckles squeezing.  I can hear the milk of my voice trying to ease your heat, the acid of life burning.
You got him here.  You held him.  You nursed him.  You cooed into his face.  You were his first love.
I still have the hospital bracelet in my jewelry box.  The one they give to the Dads.  They gave it to me.  I am sorry he is gone.  Because I remember how we felt when he was new.
http://chrysalisbreak.blogspot.com/2014/08/andrews-snooze-button.html

It is a possibility for every alcoholic mother, to loose our children.
I was very close to losing mine.  The reason is fair.  We know this.
The juxtaposition we are faced with:
"If this is me, they deserve better. This child would be better off without me." versus the thin hope,
"Can I become more? Can I give this child what he needs?
After everything I've done...all of my negligence, my black-outs, can I get off this runaway train?
Can my glazed and absent eyes be replaced with a warmth worthy of this child?
I exhaled booze into his button nose making memories of queezy uncertainty...and worse...so much worse.
How can this be mended?  How can I ask this of him?  He is so innocent."

But this I have learned, my friend.  No matter what, we are their mothers.
Whether we stay, or leave, if we are absent or present, we will affect our children.
This affect will last for our lifetime and theirs.

So now begins the nebulous and tedious task of forgiving mother.
Both the one you have been and the one you came from.
Every mother who's best was not enough...which turns out to be every single one of us.
Somehow.  No matter how much we love, we will fall short.

That is why our children are born in to a world of music, of sunsets, of sleep and hot chocolate.
They are born into a place so vast that it makes up for a mother's singular human self.
Our babies will seek and find comfort outside of us.
They will find it in the warm sun, in a prayer, a hot bath tub, and a long talk with their best friend.
They may also find it where we did, in alcohol, in drugs, in running.
They may know the screaming of their own soul as it races away from life down the highway to adventure, to romance to poetry straight into the guts of their own story.
How can we deny them this?  How can I tell them not to take risks, not to challenge the status quo, not to be what I was?   I ripped my own heart out.  I needed to.  I examined it thoroughly.
Now I have delicately placed it back inside this body, this soul which is finally at peace.
For all of the possibilities of what our children will need, we must forgive ourselves.
We must put our heart back, so we will be ready.

I hope your baby will know you someday.
I know he can be better for it.  Your life is rich with heart ache.  The soil is good.
All the intentions you gave birth to on that day I held your white knuckles are not a waste.
He will need you someday, somehow.

I pray that when he comes looking, your heart is thick and juicy and thrust deep into the ground.