Taking Myself Out

After having days and nights of feeling deathly depressed, I pushed myself out into a nice day, and despite the sunshine, as usual I found myself irritated by pissy people.  Where do they find me?  So once again I am the ever patient and understanding Val, but when I got home I promised myself to cut loose. I had put off seeing EVIL DEAD long enough. I could not talk my brother into seeing it with me. It was a brother-sister tradition of our’s since grade school staying up late to watch EVIL DEAD, and there was no other person in the world I could think of I wanted to watch the reboot version with, but he was Mr. Major Disappointment.  Determined not to let him ruin my evening, I went on a mission to hunt down friends — whomever was available last-minute, sweetening the deal because it was all my treat (snacks included) — yet it was too late and nobody was free.

Then I did what I NEVER DO; I started to just ASK ANYONE who crossed my path if they wanted to come with me to see the movie. Perhaps I was too bold. Perhaps it was the choice of film. Perhaps I seemed very desperate, or my offer too much. Yet it was just as well. EVIL DEAD is the kind of movie I didn’t want to see alone, not because I was anticipating I’d be scared, but because I wanted to share the experience.

It has been years since I last saw a movie with a group of friends. I miss that shared experience.  I’m not asking for a romantic ”date”, I’m most pleased with the kind of companionship I once had with the kind of friend(s) who enjoy the same tastes and see the world a little like I do.  I fear I won’t ever have this companionship again and it floods me with tears.  I love my friends for all their diversity all about me, but I’m such a weird lady, I’m afraid not very many of my people are out there. It’s why I’m not writing as often as I used to online.  Out there… they are gone.  Some of the magic drains out of me. I’m missing not just a limb, but several limbs.

I’ve been dis-membered!!!

I’m healthy and strong enough to accept being alone, however, especially when it unexpectedly becomes magical.

After no one took my offer, I put on a smile for the manager and cashier at Campus Cinema, paid my ticket, then looked around, got my popcorn, and was a little creeped out when I noticed that NO ONE BUT ME was in that theater! What kind of Friday night was this? Sure, I live in a small city, yet someone other than me’s gotta be here!  I expected someone to be playing a practical joke on me. During the feature, I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone’d play a William Castle maneuver on me. Alas, not so.

My initial creepy feeling grew into absolute pleasure. To have an entire cinema to myself? After awhile a girl feels like a queen!  I could really stretch out.  I could talk to myself and not disturb anyone.  It felt like I was accompanied by ghosts.  Maybe I was.  Being there not surrounded by a crowd, I it was like I was the only woman left alive in the world, and I could pretend for the duration of the film that I was sucked into the fantasy, that, indeed, at the ending credits I’d really walk out into the end of the world and have to find my own chainsaw (or fashion my own dismemberment device) in order to go back home in one piece!

*happy dance*

To up the creep factor sever-all (get it? sever all, heh) oh, so not right points, it was positively pouring rain outside when I dared step out into the lobby.  No employees were seen.  No cars left in the parking lot.  Yet businesses across the street were open as usual.  Normalcy hit me like the rain as I ran over to the nearest video store to talk to the only other soul behind a counter as I waited for a cab ride home.

It’s not unusual for me to come home to complete darkness.  I live next to the woods after all, my place little more than a cabin paradise of an apartment building anyway, and when I turn off the lights it is so pitch black, it’s soothing, my kind of soothing, like huddling into the hollow of a tree in an uninhabited-by-humans forest.

I had no nightmares.

Love with an Expiration Date?

I cannot wrap my head, or heart, around it, and so perhaps that is why it stings my consciousness — how can anyone stand the pain of a love not meant to last, or dare go into a relationship only meant to last for a short while? Some say ‘better to have loved or not at all’ and all the better for the loss of it, because at least there was a love to it, eh? But isn’t that all bullshit when there really is no reason for the loss to begin with?!

Why plan to put an expiration date on love at all when there is no reason for forcing an end, especially right as love is going well, especially when love is already leading to so many other shared experiences between lovers who are still alive, young, happy, and so well off together? No death is wedging an eternal distance between them. Nor illness severing their bodies apart. There no need to cease sexual concourse for lack of interest and energy. The blessings of the Gods be upon those whom togetherness has been bestowed, for there are those of us who suffer day upon night for years in the Kingdom of Severance. What know They — the ones who cheer frequent one night lays — of true romance, the kind that brings comfort to the heart and soul after the long day’s hurt spent in heaviest loneliness? Who more deserves love — the rake on the move seeking a woman in every town, or the woman lost in the woods seeking family and home?

The answer: They All.

And there shall not be an expiration date on any love. No excuses.

I do not care for men with their petty excuses for romance when offered to women they seem to respect for a short while, or for only as long as they give of their bodies. Friendship with those men only seems to last as long as the sexual interest, too. The moment ends when love’s erection is nothing but that — the erection — and the expiration date on that is only as good as a woman’s looks, worth as much as she gives, and revived as often as she can please him. Am I bitter? No, angry. Because men lie. Some tell you they love you only as long as you keep giving them blow jobs (only for one example), and then they stop when you want friendship in return, turning any once joyful sexual encounter into ‘turning you into their whore encounter’ and that writes a coupon for ten times the disrespect for one ounce of love.  And before you can say “why did you go there in the first place if you didn’t want to be considered a ‘ho?” I’ll tell you I was promised quite often in many a relationship a much more respectful relationship (not to mention reciprocation).  Not all men commit such crimes, and many more who do try to make up for their sins against women, and yet foul up when it comes to friendship when they suspect we love them, not for who they want us to think they are, but for when we care about them despite their flaws and know them for who they really are.

Suddenly, the closeness ends. A guy friend turns me away.  Oh, no, she no longer worships me… or, no, she does worship me!  Don’t love me!  No one love me!  Only *do* me!  Don’t discover the man behind the penis!  Runaway or I’ll run you through!  Or at least that’s what I’d imagine him screaming as he does flee.  It has happened several times in my friendships with men, especially ones who like to keep their friends at a distance and their ex-girlfriends closest.  Why do I get the break-up the ex-girlfriends should get, not the other way around?  I suppose there is no room for other kinds of love in one man’s life.  Cop outs like there’s not enough time really mean he’s not interested because I’m not fuckable.  I’m not stupid.  Men lie in many different ways, especially the ones who vow the hardest not to.  And if this lady doth protest, cry, panic, and get depressed?  His other women pals protect him and call me enemy, but all of us come to the same delusion, all of us fall at the edge of the hero’s blade, the one we blindly believed in and still wish I could.

With a clean cut the man deems quick enough to deal a healthy blow sure to end my love that will end his suffering — the death-dealing blow to sever his heart from mine on the date he has written with the tip of his sword — the expiration date only he knew, and never was I prepared for, each time the 27th of every month comes, I bleed again, and it never yet kills,  even when he’s the one who walks, wins, lives…?

He was my hero.  But what they don’t tell you in the epic stories is that heroes are certain death for those who love them and stay true.  Eventually they will be as short-lived as their love, yet who’s to stay that is the way it is meant to be?  Who are you or I to write the rules?  It feels a whole lot unfair.

Heroes are Terrorists.  Idealists with bombs that go off in whispers and kisses.  Don’t believe in Them.

Don’t trust Those whose love comes with expiration dates.

Am I bumming you out?  Think I’m too harsh?  You bet I am.  But you know what?  The fire of it heals.  It’s like Kali.  It has me picking up my own sword.  Got me cutting the air, cutting off what hurts, dancing with swords.  Feeling like my own woman again.  Proving to myself my love matters.  That no man will ever again try to destroy me like this, oh, no, not without a fight.

My love has no expiration.  I’ll duel you for it.  And win.

Storm Serpent Dream Therapy: A Poem for a Sleepless Spring Night

one step, two steps, threes…

under blankets, I stirs and twitches from dreams

the seeds of me is not yet green and yet I feel the grow

I am pillows in the earth, dark, damp, deeps below

barely alive, buried like dead, humming in snores

I turns, twists, breathes… whispers my glows

I talk in shadows, only almost gone, naked like the branches

wind above me thunders wet and my toes slither slick

icicles in my heart breaking, bark cracks sap, tornado quick

I am crawling, coiled, uncoiling, heart thrashing, for you a swoon

draped with the white, the earth seems like the moon

my tail breaks ice surface, I stir the snows, roots out of wight

my long nights not yet over, my rivers still speak in rapture freezes

three feets of blankets to the winds whispers white in drifts

the serpent almosts wakes, pretends to wake, begins to dream agains-s-s

light candles and pray, keep the fires burning, beloved dears

I am keeping storms approaching, blackening, ripping powers

I am the secret lightning quickening, blizzard queen keeping you home

stay inside, hide in bed, bury yourself warm, let silents still

The She be all that out til dawn and dances tonight

all along the roads moon serpents rise and constrict, scrape

banshee songs sing my serenades over every landscape

this white lace curtain my bridal gown twinkling

the seeds of me glistens, I glitters, delights

beyond heavens, I rain crystals bright

dragon’s cloud bitter colds and awesome sight!

(from my original draft: fragile beginning 2-2-2011)

Postcard #51: Please, Tell Me the Sidewalks are Clear Up Ahead

The snow days since I’ve been last seen, have been heavy.  Like usual, when I walked into the snow, it seemed soft enough, the kind of white like sweet cake cut into slices by the shovels and plows, pretty enough to eat.  You know.  The kind of cake-snow that is so fresh and clean before it gets all ravished by automobiles and rubbish and mud and puddles when the melting begins.  But that has yet to start.  The ice is still sword-length, hard, catching the sun, and we are not getting a lot of sun.  Tomorrow’s forecast calls for more white stuff.  I can already feel the clouds condense.

The last day I danced with the snow, embracing the storms that followed each other like parades keeping cars at a stand still, keeping people home, and me thinking it’d be an adventure to walk a few miles around town in, the flakes were large, wet petals slapping my cheeks into a blush.  All the roads and sidewalks were mine!  My happiness kept me warm and daring, undaunted by the slippery parts this way and that, my heels were like roller-skates, and I hopped from bank to bank.  I barely felt the soreness in my ankles as I braced myself to keep upright whenever the ice took me.  Somehow my balance was there, like I had a second set of arms to hold me, like the times I had a friend to steady me, and I them…  Now those were days to celebrate!

And so, as the wind pushed, and I pulled myself each time my bottom nearly slapped the ground, I thought of the thousand times the thousands of best friends this adult child has played with in the snow.  The echo of my own giggling was nearly like the sound of them answering my giggle…

The wind grabbed my scarf.  My hair whipped away from my eyes.  I wasn’t wearing a hat.  Wet blasts of snow caught me up with that sad reality as my old bones finally reached their limit.  I looked ahead.  I had several miles of walking to do before reaching my doctor’s office.  The road was not clear.  Cars were faring worse than I was.  The sidewalk was a tundra with no trees to break the wind.  The usual fifteen minute walk it would take me to get to my doctor was taking me much, much longer.  I looked behind me.

The wind changed direction and, again, I got another slap in the face.  It was no use wrapping my scarf back around my neck properly.  Everything was too wet.  My boot prints behind me were disappearing.  I had enough of walking along the road.  Despite the deep snow, I took my favorite short cut through the woods.

My short cut became a funeral march.  My favorite apple trees, the ones that grew wild after the original owner abandoned them, now lay in one large heap of kindling.  These were the trees I spent a lot of time with in the warm months each year.  They were perfectly short trees for a short person like me to rest my back against.  Together we soaked in the sun.  With them I meditated, read, wrote, sang to them, was generally their “hugger” ever since I discovered them and the juicy little green apples they produced.  I loved to sink my face into their blossoms every spring, crowned by their sweet branches like a fairy queen, and looked forward to my apple tree afternoons!

I sank in the snow in front of the pile of their remains.  I had no breath for sobbing.  I just laid down in the snow.  I was aware of the cold as suddenly as my discovery of their death.  Aware of their death as suddenly as I was the absence of a departed friend I never got to see or talk to…  One.  Last.  Time.

One thing no one was aware of:  I loved these trees.

A house once stood next to the trees, torn down 2005, the little orchard stood through many storms.  The vacant land is owned by the city.  What will it ever be used for?  The apple trees, as far as I knew, were not sick or full of parasites, but they were very old.  Could I contact the city and ask to plant trees there?  There is hope in the tears behind my eyes.

Soon encumbered with snow, the time grew long.  It took me a full hour to get to my doctor.  The sidewalk was dangerous place and my boots were of no use.  Carefully, down-heartedly, I stepped, silent and frozen, slipping every five seconds, that wind against me at every turn.  Even though I was 45 minutes late, I did not miss my appointment because other patients canceled, and it was a good thing I was there for counseling.  After talking my heart out to someone I have to pay to hear me out, I finally did fall, slamming my ass down a slope and landing boots first into the front fender of a parked car.  My hips and ankles screamed at me.  The car?  Just fine.

I grumble, spit fire, don’t even bother dusting snow off, and hobble away to a bus stop, but as I do so, I look up to the darkening sky and pray:

Please, dear Gods, tell me the sidewalks are clear up ahead!

Postcard #50: A Walk in the Snowstorm

Snow-soaked.  Snow-washed.  Snow-bath. At every turn, within seconds, in each direction, no escape from the wild blast, yet so soft, gentle-wet, beautiful it lasted.  My journey out from bed — out from lonely thoughts that keep me down in nothing done — one look out the window and all the mesmerizing white sat me up and into motion as if a lost friend came knocking at my door.  ”Come out!  Come out to play!”  The wind ushered me.  My heart leaped.  I needed out.  The snow called.

I dressed as if for a date, or a performance more like.  No, a little of both.  As I quickly layered on my make-up, skirts, dress, gathered up my patch-work cloak, and topped-on my headdress of coins and feathers, slid on my boots and almost tripped over my own toes, I made-believe — almost-believed I was going out to meet a lover out in the spiraling wild white snow.  I can never know yet who he could be, a woman must always put on lipstick at the very least, just to be sure, but he’d better be warm and carry me over the ice… and we shall dance ourselves into snow banks and laugh into tomorrows.

I hurried to get out the door.  Mine was a — who am I kidding? — mine is always a late start!  January days are dark in the north woods, and I tend to sleep like a black bear curled up in a cave, yes, caving in to the winter and wanting nothing to do but dream of better days.  Sometimes I do not come out at all.  I forget the days and nights.  Time means nothing but a series of whites, grey, and blacks.  In the dark, it’s not so bad, but this winter the seasonal sadness I tend to feel is so sharp and keen, I lie here, wounded in my dreaming, waiting for the pain to end.  But last Sunday, the wind was smooth and loud, a heavy whisper-kiss it was, and I was anxious for a snow bath.

A whole crowd of other people were out that day to enjoy the weather as if it were the height of summer. They gathered over the frozen lake all appropriately dressed in the layers one’s supposed to wear to outlast the cold. As for I? Um, not as wise. I glided through the snow in my patchy homemade cloak, dressed more for dream-play and dance. The storm soon soaked into me, weighing me down as I walked. Yet this did nothing to force me to turn back home and cut my time out short. I lifted my face up into the snow and sighed, letting the first gentle pelting breathe over me soon grow into the soaking-wet-sopping sensation that I can best describe as like getting a winter bath with your clothes on.

Along with the wash, comes the work out. Walking through the ankle-deep-soon-growing-into-calf-deep snow went from like walking into cake batter to trying to navigate through wet concrete. Each step I took meant shoveling a trail with my feet, and my heels are not light either. Each boot is heavy out of the snow, as if made to weigh me down during winter storms so I don’t blow away! My hour’s walk into the snow was a delightful torture. I pushed my little brick-hard black leather steel-like tiny feet as far as I could wish them.

It was not exhaustion that stopped me in my tracks for a break. The breath-taking-God’s-honest-truth-be-told reason for me getting out my door any day is beauty.  Overwhelmed by everything around me. I let myself sink into the snow. I love every sound, every bit of silence, every scene taking place all around me, I go into a numb smile and stare like a baby. I tilted my head onto a big comfy rock near a birch and would have napped there under a canopy of pine if it weren’t for my inability to close my eyes. I waved as smiling faces of folks slid by in snow-shoes and skis. Not a full yard away from me, a buck had been hiding. He gave a snotty-sneeze-like grunt when he attempted to gingerly walk through the mucky-muck of the snow on the trail and disturbed by a jogger in hefty hiking boots. Neither one of us had heard or would have noticed the other had it not been for the hiker and his sloppy-slappy boots trudging through the snow.

The swift thunder of the buck’s hooves as he seemed to fly through to the other side of the road made me think of all kinds of mythical creatures, wondering without much wonder how people have thought up such tall tales. When you see an animal do something amazing, like go from nearly standing still to suddenly springing into what seems like a supernatural action, it has a magic all its own, yet it inspires more magic out of one’s own head… The snowstorm’s roar created a kind of white noise that muffled the noise of the cars beyond the borders of the nature reserve. The wind even hid me in this pocket of whirling snow. I could not even hear the branches swaying all around me, yet I could see the trees dancing.

I did not meet any hot-blooded lover, however there were a lot of men on the trail, and all of them smiled at me, perhaps because I dressed like a silly person (but, hey, I’d rather make an interesting impression than a boring one). And, after taking some photographs for souvenirs, consequently sacrificing my camera to the storm, I came back home swooning like I just had a wild make-out session in the woods. I certainly looked like I did. As beautifully as I made myself up on my way out, once indoors, as I took my gear off, I had a good laugh at myself in the mirror! My headdress was half-off, my wet and roughed-up hair barely distinguishable from the feathers trailing from it, my eye shadow ran, and my lipstick was so smeared it looked as if a four-year-old slapped it on me.

Snow-soaked. Snow-washed. Snow-bath. The storm had its way with me. I stripped off my layers, gracefully exhausted now, I was free to swoon back down to bed, yet this time with smiling dreams again.

Postcard #49: Getting Lost is Part of Discovering Nothing is Lost

I am wondering and wandering, dreaming of places and people, my mind resetting itself, my moods resettling, hope is resurfacing. I still wish. It’s not a sin to wish. And it’s the wish that pushes me through the woods, out the back door, floats me to the top, the strength that sets me standing on my hands, holds me in the boat, cradles me in sleep, and guides me out of my dreams into a waking that is doing. I do not mind getting lost. It is a loss of time and space that takes me away from all the heaviness of the world — a loss I never mourn — I take time, I take space, I move at my will, have all of the wild at my pleasure, loosen the ribbons, slip off this gown of iron burden, and tramp along the shore to the destinations of all my imaginings. I want to lose being found. Go missing. Be kidnapped by goblins. Fall into rabbit hole. Seduced by faeries. Side-step into a mist, and yet, not be forgotten…

I stumble back into place. I do not want to lose myself. All the dizzy delight of getting lost can only go so far. The winter silence sends me wishing as it always does when there is not enough doing to be done. All there is is white stinging my eyes in the morning, and the afternoon snow is gray-slate-matte-boring.

Getting lost leads to wondering alone into being alone, lost alone, yet everyone’s alone in wandering alone lost. Is being lost mean having something to find? What if there is nothing to seek? I lose myself when I chase after what is missing, only to find myself waiting for me when I discover what was lost was always there inside, waiting, taking a reach into my own heart to pull out all the losing, loser gear I carried around with every sigh I thought I let out.

I don’t let the stranger me be strange anymore. She’s the spirit in flight with a base to land on. I am earth-bound and freedom-soaring, like Hawk-on-the-Wind that is my family name, my people’s crest, both my parents’ totem bird, a thing thought lost I did not know was there, only a thing of whisper, a meaning no one told me. Every time I asked for meaning, I was given questions. Irritating! Why were they forcing me to go on a journey? I don’t want to go anywhere! Give me the answer, NOW. But the meaning would not have the meaning it has now until I stepped away, ignored the path, rejected my purpose, and chased after someone else’s dream…

I am in love with my wishes now. Yet I have a new wish. Just one simple wish: don’t lose me when you decide to get lost.

I’m Your New Year’s Baby

I sit here not knowing yet what to write, feeling obligated to put down words before the end of year 2012.  All around my body is a crushed black velvet robe; a birthday present I gave myself yesterday, and one I’m treasuring.  I’m treating myself the way I want to be spoiled.

I long imagined myself as a grand dame dressed in silks and this black velvet robe with heavenly slippers as shiny as silver, roaming the house with my trusty black cat, sometimes sitting at my desk — which once was a vanity dresser with a lit-up mirror like the ones showgirls use but converted into part writer’s desk, part artist’s drawing board, with a little Pagan altar facing northeast on the corner where a basil and citron candle softly burns — and peacefully meditating, taking in the silence as if my will alone has made all the world gone still.  I wonder…  why my desire for luxury and my penchant for setting a stage like this, making myself seem to play the part of a past life character (an actress, perhaps?) drives my happiness.  Of course I do not believe I am this character.  I believe in making believe, but not in believing in the realities I create.

I like dressing up.

New Year’s Eve has formality to it — when I go out, even if to only sip some bubbly and receive a hug (instead of that foreverly hoped-for kiss… someday it’ll happen, maybe next year, this year?) — I dress up, get my nails done, make my hair look and smell good enough to eat, bathe in perfume, and walk in high heels.  If you can’t get a kiss on New Year’s Eve (a kiss from a stranger is good luck for both you and the stranger), wear something new and shiny, preferably a hat or headband, anything to decorate your crown.  I do not know if it is an “official” tradition from any one culture, but I remember being told by my elders that showing off your crown was a sign of prosperity on New Year’s Eve.

Dress for the occasion and Fortune will reward you with many blessings in the year to come!

We meet the New Year in our finest clothes, be it to show off our wealth or to attend the funeral of the passing year.  But, better yet, could it be a custom, like I suspect, like a spell to welcome luxury?

I was born the day before the last day of the year.  Every time I get one year older, it almost happens unnoticed.  Celebrating my birthday is often postponed until days later after all the New Year’s hoopla.  Yet sometimes New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day feel like an extension of my birthday.  So, as I sit here in my butter-cream-soft black velvet, enjoying every silky-fuzzy warm sensation of wearing a prize to the point where I feel I am ‘the prize!’, I feel like the whole world is partying with me.  I love it.

I hope you’re having a good one.  Why don’t you come up and see me sometime, hmmm?