Difficult Questions are Not Always Cryptic

          I’m afraid I live a series of difficult questions. Challenging really. Predictably socially unpopular and possibly downright incriminating.

          It’s almost a year now that I’ve been fighting the good fight. Every skill in my repertoire has been employed. The eradication of not only my questions but all related thoughts and feelings has been attempted. I have to admit that these efforts have been made not only by me but sometimes at me by members of my family of origin.
          So. My blog has no recent entries. My movie script waits for its third draft to begin. My evocatively crafted fifty page article - the meat and heart of my book proposal - hides under a neatly folded pile of laundry on my bureau. ( This is no small feat. It took careful time and attention to match each corner of the fitted sheet perfectly.) My eight hundred and fifty page prose-poem memoir (perfect standard book length for this form) hides up on the shelf behind my lifelong collection of stuffed Eeyores. The memoir deconstructed and reconstructed in traditional prose form hangs, section by section, in a vertical, galvanized metal magazine rack. The entire body of work, re-crafted as a complete, mixed-genre theatrical performance with both musical and dance scores, nearly radiates in its special high gloss plastic envelope folder that fastens with a particularly nice string detail. The exquisite illustrations I commissioned for this work hang framed in my kitchen, their only adornment an occasional over-dusting of non-gluten flour from my pink KitchenAid mixer. The film documentation of the first performances, still unedited and without form, wait in their mailing envelope. The artist who performed my written words out in Washington state has yet to send me her words and images.
          As you can see, I’ve put the brakes on all projects. I’ve stopped anything that could force these difficult explorations out of me and into the public arena. I’ve tried overwork and under work. I’ve tried distraction, denial and food explorations. I’ve even tried dating. Never one for the easy road, I’ve also taken on new interests, learned new skills, engaged in conversation and begun a spiritual practice of sorts. I’ve built a small building, laid a complicated brick patio, stacked three cords of firewood.
          And through it all, the drumbeat of my questions has continued. They bang at my heart, moment by moment.
          So. I give up.
          Into the public arena I come, questions splayed.
          Because if my words simply refuse to go to nowhere then they have to be somewhere.

          Of course, you dear reader, cannot possibly know this but it’s been days since I wrote the above words. I simply got so frightened that I hid this draft on my desktop and under the deliberately closed cover of my computer.
          Well, now that I’ve completed my tax preparation, Face-Book-ed myself until there is no unknown detail about any of my virtual ‘friends’, cleaned and cared for my birds scrupulously, the only other possible avoidance I can reasonably employ would be shoveling the snow that truly is melting on its own in the rain.

          Here then, is a first stab at articulating some of the disputes railroad-ing through me.

          Ah, the enigma of the mind. What an extraordinary journey it is to be a person. Each time I get close to enunciating - never mind writing - and then God forbid posting, I find another important diversion. For example, because words matter to me - so much - I want to choose each one with care. When it came time to use the word ‘questions’ again, the Language Arts teacher I carry in my head from childhood wagged her finger. So back to my favorite book - the Thesaurus - I go. There’s a lot to say about the word ‘questions’. Many different ways to look at it. The antonym appears to be (in a nutshell): denial. This is good. Engaging with denial has been a driving force in my life and a true source of angst which informs my work.

          And thankfully, this brings me full circle to the questions at hand.


#1           There. I’ve labeled it (this yet to be written) number one. A musing of sorts. With hopes that my words will turn out to be a catalyst for engagement and conversation. So. Again:

#1           Is it ever deeply true that people ‘can’t’ grow in their consciousness and communication? Or is it, as I believe, always a choice? Perhaps a choice that is not readily accessible. Perhaps a choice that feels (or is believed to be) difficult, uncomfortable or downright formidable, but still - when all is said and done - a choice.

#2.          Here we have the bathroom break moment. Now. I’m ready to try again.

#2.           If the life story of a writer/artist dictates a palate (the raw inner truth-material from which to draw) that includes three (yes 3!) violent rapes, and it feels inexorably important to put the work into the world - to craft something beautiful and useful and important - is it possible to do this in a manner that pushes through all the (unwarranted) shame, familial / cultural denial, and incredible fear, and make the work magnificent?


#3.          If, out of incredible trauma, the writer (me) has spent her life both living a vicious form of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) as well as treating people with PTSD for twenty four years, and if, during this time, she (Yup. Me.) has come to understand that the environment into which one is received after trauma is the single most important factor in determining the formation, duration and severity of said PTSD, and if the writer is willing to write her own life story as a gift for others, and finally, if doing so will potentially hurt the feelings of her family of origin (particularly her mother) and also could possibly facilitate a moving through of the systemic, multi-generational denial that has ruled the family, should she deny her own integrity and not do it? Or should she (as I vehemently believe) do the work that her (my) moral compass dictates?

          Okay. I’m getting there now. A couple more statements of questions and maybe this heart-pounding, palm-sweating, PTSD enhanced fear will subside.

#4.          If the relatively easy screenplay to write is one where the main character is violently raped three times and then sets out to prove that “There’s No Such Thing As A Wrecked Life” but the true story is that the main character - by being born into, witnessing and being profoundly wounded by her mother’s denial - sets out (from childhood on) to prove that how humans experience and make meaning of their lives is a CHOICE, and from this, she embarks on a quest to prove that any life can be magnificently lived, and in the process she is violently raped on three very different occasions, and she continues on to prove that people can choose not to be ‘haters’, can choose to live examined and conscious lives, can choose to live in love and sometimes joy (though these choices are difficult), should she (as I now believe) write the more difficult / more true / more beautiful / much less ‘black and white’ / teeming with fallibility and humanness script? Or not?

          Whew. It’s an incredible challenge to get these non-linear questions into linear form.

#5.           Is it true - as our culture and many families exact - that when a person has tried with everything inside her, to communicate her truth (yup. this is me), and she has been systematically denied by her mother, that caring for this mother through the last stage of her life and on to death, is the morally right thing to do?

#6.           Do we, through our trying, earn our relationships and everything that follows (and if we don’t try, then reap whatever this non-trying sows) or do we get to choose denial and unconsciousness through our life and then as we age, expect / demand / extoll the care we think we deserve anyway?

#7.           And in my fear I have to add this number seven. Is it possible - while sounding callus and downright selfish and unwilling - that one’s own integrity dictates what we want and are willing to do?

          Which leads me to number eight.

#8.           Why do we enfranchise the entitlement and dishonesty of the: “I can’t do it.” with a response of understanding?

          And contrariwise, why do we disenfranchise the honesty of the: “I will not do this because I believe it is wrong.” with a response of rage?

          Even if the “I can’t do it” is a convenient lie and the “I don’t want to do this” is a truth ripped right from the guts of a wound - whether an acknowledged wound or not (Here’s a chapter title from my as yet unpublished book: 'A Boo-Boo Is Still A Boo-Boo') - , somehow the articulation of a desire or the lack thereof seems to elicit a battalion of responses while the disowning of desire elicits an overt complicity.

          So now I’ve done it. Put the morass into words.


cryp⋅tic  [krip-tik]

–adjective Also, cryp⋅ti⋅cal.
1. mysterious in meaning; puzzling; ambiguous: a cryptic message.
2. abrupt; terse; short: a cryptic note.
3. secret; occult: a cryptic writing.
4. involving or using cipher, code, etc.
5. Zoology. fitted for concealing; serving to camouflage

e⋅rad⋅i⋅cate  [i-rad-i-keyt]
–verb (used with object), -cat⋅ed, -cat⋅ing.
1. to remove or destroy utterly; extirpate: to eradicate smallpox throughout the world.
2. to erase by rubbing or by means of a chemical solvent: to eradicate a spot.
3. to pull up by the roots: to eradicate weeds.
Synonyms:

1. obliterate, uproot, exterminate, annihilate.

Integrity: noun

1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2. the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
3. a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship's hull.

From Awe to Hierarchy?

Shoveling snow for six hours one day and three and a half the next. And Yes. I counted. Every shovelful. Counted and thought about a friend who used to bemoan his fate by fake-complaining about his ‘aching begonias’ while he pranced around on lumber piles and sucked on cigarettes when we were still so cool. And we were almost twenty and I could hoist eighty pound bundles of roof shingles and skedaddle up a ladder while I was flirting and sparring simultaneously with the guys on the job. It’s way more fun to remember how strong I was then than it is to mentally stay here in current time because now, today, this very minute, my real ‘begonias’ are aching. And it stinks. The hours and the shovelfuls and the sore muscles and damn it, the aging of it all, certainly set the stage for feeling small, insignificant (dare I say weak, needy, and unbelievably weepy) and all probably because I’d been behaving like some mad cave woman as the snow fairly leapt off my shovel and landed perfectly on an enormous towering ice bank. Unfortunately, it’s some hours later now and I’ve devolved into that groveling woman who’s not twenty anymore.

It does, however, give rise to a philosophical rant that leads me right to the same flaws in our world I was exploring from the peak of my physical prowess almost thirty-five years ago. What is it about our species that makes us want to be on top? And from this exultant place, instead of wanting to share it, why do we place others way down at the bottom? I mean, if you think about it, it’s pretty whacked that any of us would have the idea that we somehow belong over and above everyone and everything else.

Just walk in the woods or shovel snow for multiple hours and the relative size of us is enough to inspire. And I somehow doubt that when prehistoric mammals -- our ancestors -- experienced awe, they had any intention of locking their descendants into a destructive relational construct (i.e.: set of beliefs) simply by lifting their heads. It’s just too hard to believe that the uncomplicated act of looking up, arching the neck, tipping the scalp, feeling a ponytail brush a shoulder blade (perhaps during an early morning foray with a young one who just couldn’t ‘hold it’ until dawn) could take our species from the knee-buckling, breath-taking gasp at a perfect moon in a still black sky (perhaps enhanced by the cold’s condensation of an exhale) to a hierarchy that informs everything we’ve become.

At some point, somebody (come on. It had to have been a white male.) probably thought that because they had the biggest club, they were that much closer to the moon. As far as I can see, all other humans, animals, and even the planet we live on, have been relegated to somewhere down below. Why couldn’t we have all just stayed where our feet are?

Hierarchy, as a core structure for our social world (our parenting, our written form, our educational systems, our government, etc.) precludes equality. By implication, when one thing is seen as above another, the lower in the construct is seen as less. What if people could foster, nurture and rejoice in alternate shapes and forms?

When my big brother was about five he had a fascination with a rock. He loved to throw it straight up in the air and watch it turn and tumble as it fell. He did this over and over, even when a certain percentage of the time, the rock hit him square on his face.

Does admiring something above our heads have to lead to a desire for power? What might our lives be like if simple awe, was just simply, awe?

Social Networking

I’m not so sure about this technological social networking foray of mine.

I watched from the sidelines for a long time. Everyone seemed to be singing praises for virtual land. The benefits were flouted while I watched people’s fingers peg away in some asymmetric tapping rhythm that’s not familiar to me. I’d find myself drifting off with the beat of it. People were talking to me, and to whoever was on the other end of what they were sending. All at the same time! I consider myself a pro at doing chores while I’m on the phone but it’s not the same. Dancing a newly washed floor dry with rags rubber-banded to slippers doesn’t use the same part of my brain as talking. But multiple conversations? It’s so … well I’m trying to figure out what it is. Sometimes I think it is the rhythm of fingers on keys that calls to me. It’s a sheer audio of movement you can barely hear and yet it evokes the feet of Gumby and Pokey which somehow softens the insides of my ear drums. I suppose it could be nostalgia but I actually think that hearing in the perfect register makes my world hum better.

Embarking has been amazing though. Lets face it. The web is the perfect locale for someone who’s compelled to go forward while simultaneously obsessed with deconstructing every nuance of every angle that could possibly be connected to every miniscule detail about where it is they’re going. And again, I’m not trying to narrow things down. I’m just attempting to craft a voice, find a cadence, sing out like a ‘Polly Anna’ scamper, and ultimately have a conversation with the world.

It’s a challenge though. You see, I’m a woman that has a routine. There. I’ve said it. I do. I like to follow some set of something. At least when I first wake up in the morning. And this itself is a phenomenal fact, given that I’m super independent. But I do. Like to follow something. I used to wish I had a hero. When I was younger I wanted to be like all kinds of different people. I planned to be a Florence Nightingale to the sad. A Dr. Albert Schweitzer to the ignored. Some kind of Heidi of the heart. A lover of goats. The artist who’d bring beauty to blind people. A sculptor of any material. I used to lay on my bed and plan how I’d be the one who’d take a mountain of bird-poop and bring such magnificence to its’ description that the sheer irrepressible beauty of it would be indisputable. Now though, I’ve simplified. Age does that to a woman. I just need to make sure I take my shower before I start my day. That’s the extent of my routine.

But I’m blowing it. Since I’ve started this reaching out to the Netherlands of virtual-ity, with only my fingers on this twelve-inch keyboard, I find myself sitting here, grabbing and typing my thoughts before I’ve even washed the sleep grit out of my eyes.

It’s just that there are so many questions. So many things to ponder. So I’ve decided to jump right in and do something about it. As soon as I figure this out, I’ll go take my shower and be right back on track.

I’ve typed and deleted, deleted and typed. I could take up drumming with all this non-melodic practice but instead, I’ve decided to start a column. A ‘Dear Abby’ of sorts. I’m excited. I’ve had lots of years to develop a repertoire of voices, a veritable chorus of perspectives. A column seems a great use for it all. A written give-and-take will allow all-of-you to ask all-of-me, any of the myriad questions that seem important. And nothing will be lost. Because they’ll be a multitude of you. And this techno-writing medium allows for the full extent of me. I’ll listen to my fingers as they make music on the keys.

I just realized that I’ll need a pen name. Any good columnist knows this. A ‘Ms. Something’ that evokes an omnipotent Mommy.

So here’s my plan. First I'll choose the name. Then I’ll take my shower. This way, by the time I come back, the questions will be waiting. Here. Right on my screen. And then the many me’s will type their answers. This could be a rest-of-my life kind of routine. If I can answer all the inquiries, maybe the Don Quixote wannabe of me will finally be satisfied. I do want real questions. But if interactions are low, I can long for conversation enough to do it on my own.

I need a name though. All suggestions welcome. I’ve tried on ‘Dear Andrea’ but it’s just too singularly impaired. That’s the problem with the ‘Dear Abby’s’ or ‘Miss Manners’ of the advice world. I read those columns and I can’t help but wonder whether they’re freshly showered before they respond. It’s true you know. Without some sort of routine, things can fall apart. And then there’s the fact that people’s perspectives are enhanced by all sorts of odd variables. Did you ever wonder just who ‘Dear Abby’ is? And what about ‘Dr. Ruth’? Even Dr. Phil has to be a real man sometimes. I don’t begrudge advisors their humanity. I realize it’s important. I just want to be sure there’s a place of reflection going on, before their words become my guiding light. So if my column is going to fly, the name people write to needs to sound reliable, many dimensioned and at least occasionally wise. Anyone could do it. I think you just have to sort of bounce around inside, until you find the part of self that holds an answer or perspective on whatever’s the issue of the moment. We all have this. Parts of self. It’s something about our species. A way of being fallible in our conscious mortality while being wise in our limitless potential. So the name has got to be encompassing. Not too egotistical. And certainly not unduly biased. Rigidity would guarantee a lack of readership and wishy-washy would disappoint. I need a name that’ll cover all the bases, without presuming anything that could be construed as offensive. I feel like I’m fighting the cosmos here. I want something elegant. I wish for something sale-able. Denying this aspect would be like hocking a loogie out a pickup truck window on a high wind day. They just blow right back in behind your head and land on the rear facing window where they slowly, in full view, ooze their way down. I hope I find something on Google. I’ll look up ‘multitude’, ‘many faceted’, ‘conglomerate’, and maybe ‘conundrum’. The thing is, to feel confident in the replies, people have to like whom they’re addressing and each of these names has flaws.

I’ve got some ideas. Right now ‘Ms. Possibility’ sounds good to me. And ‘Ms. Multi-Genre’ has sort of a nice ring. I like ‘Ms. Everything-Counts’, even though it’s kind of long. It’s a challenge to find something that says it all and still holds a syncopated cadence. The truth counts here too. I can’t have a name that implies anything dishonest because lying begets a kind of denial that’ll make me want to quit this job and I don’t want to stop before I’ve all-the-way started. How about ‘Ms. Borscht’? I like soups. Stews are my specialty, particularly when they make exquisite flavor out of an odd mix of apparently disparate ingredients. ‘Ms. Mambo’ keeps flashing in my brain. Mambo. Hmmm. It brings to mind all sorts of places and foods that carry a multitude of perspectives. This could be good. Mambo reminds me of the ‘Jambo’ (hello in Kenya) from when I spoke at a U.N. conference in 1981. The goat stew I choked down to be polite in St. Kitts in 1978, the dance I dance when I’m belonging, and the generally large, swaying body size I feel when I’ve overeaten. I’ve just looked it up and it seems right:

☆ mambo (mäm′bō) noun pl. mambos -·bos
a rhythmic musical form, of Caribbean origin, in 4/4 syncopated time and with a heavy accent on the second and fourth beats

1. musicians' slang term equivalent to “riff” (emphasis mine)
2. intransitive verb to dance the mambo

Riff sounds good. Almost like a jam of thoughts. Drawing on every possible frame of reference I possess. Because when I start getting letters, ruminations, questions, and musings of many sorts, I plan to reach into the abyss of every possible identity I’ve ever touched and bring that to the page.

Relationship Manifesto

I have this inexorable urge to try again to explain myself. And to explain perhaps, the core - the volcano if you will - of conviction and drive that fuel my questions and my life.

There are all kinds of reasons to live what I call an ‘un-examined life’. Our culture is full of the resultant damage. It is - without question - easier, socially acceptable and generally ‘what’s done’. Many of us choose to live without questioning the underbelly, the meaning, or the point of origination that fuels our actions.

I do not choose this life.

[choose meaning to pick out
or select from a number of alternatives]

When the choice is made to not look - not see, not ask hard questions, not have difficult conversations – it seems to me a life posture that moves one inevitably towards the experience of having been ‘done to’ rather than ‘doing’. It places us safely in the seatbelt on the passenger side. Here, even if the scenery is lovely, the driver gets to choose the left turns. Riding through life like this allows us to pretend we hold exactly zero culpability for anything. And like the ‘litterbug’ we used to sing about in grade school, it portends an utter lack of responsibility to future generations.

I am beginning to think, though, that what I’ve always thought might not actually be correct. I’ve just assumed that all people are able to engage in introspection and conversation regarding life’s questions. I’ve held tightly to the notion that when people don’t, it’s simply because they do not want to. I call this a ‘won’t’. I’m thinking now though that it’s possible that some people simply cannot. If this is true then the not-engaging is a ‘can’t’. And if not questioning and not interacting is a ‘can’t’ then it would mean that these peoples’ ability to see, to understand, to meet me where I am and exchange ideas and talk, just plain isn’t there. It would mean that it isn’t teachable, coax-able or possible to bring about by pleading, anger or even the most succinct trying.

If it’s truly ‘can’t’ and not ‘won’t’, it seems a loving act for both people to recognize the disappointing fact of it. And if being seen, met, and understood in this way is truly, life sustaining-ly important, then it seems an act of generosity to name it for what it is and let it go.

Maybe this all has to do with where we dwell inside ourselves. Some people need to be able to recognize a familiarity of soul in order to walk a lifetime with a partner. And maybe for these people, living an examined life alone, is less lonely, feels more true, than living an un-examined life together.

I do not want to have to beg for understanding. I do not want to have to beg for someone to ask me questions. And I do not want to have to beg for interactive communication.

I want a person who has their own set of hopes for a relationship. A person that is willing to search for and communicate and define what it is they want, in all the ways that wants can change through the course of a life story.

It could be that the scars we build in response to our life-story wounds actually form a crust of scar tissue that strangles the heart, unless, in adulthood, we question and explore their efficacy. How we accept and make meaning out of the people we’ve become, in response to our life stories, sets the stage for a future.

I want a relationship to be what I’ve hoped a relationship can be:

One where the person I love is driven to self exploration – to looking at the full 50% that is theirs in any interaction – to be looking to struggle and engage with the hidden guts of a matter, regardless of how hard this may be in the moment.

I want the person I love to be a person who cares deeply about words, about stories – to want to dissect and discuss ideas, hopes, books, thoughts about life, mortality and ways of living.

I want the person I love to be a person who wants to communicate.

I want the person I love to be a person who loves having conversations and asking questions so that two people can journey in their heads and hearts, farther and past where either of them might have gone on their own.

I want the person I love to be a person who is interested in thinking things that feel like they’ve never been thought of before.

I want the person I love to be a person who wants to have conversations where each person’s perspective is considered and sometimes alters the way things continue to be thought of, instead of the original conceptions being the only things that stick.

I want the person I love to be a person who is driven to create, and who honors my drive as a ‘maker’, and to have it all deeply matter to both of us.

I want the person I love to be a person who wants to learn and/or who intuitively understands the creative process. I want to spend my time with someone who understands what it means and feels like to live it. And to in fact, love that creative process with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies.

I want a rest-of-my-life relationship with someone who shares a similar sensibility about the world and about one’s individual life. I want someone who doesn’t feel like life just happens to them. One who tries - wherever and however it is possible - to put their mark and their carefully examined choices onto the paths they walk.

I want to love someone who thinks to the positive first. One who, despite the stories life may have netted, tenaciously treasures being a person who trusts and believes in the good of people.

In summary, this relationship manifesto states that I want to dwell in, communicate from and share the moist fertile loam of the non-material.

Laura's Crush (2005)

I asked my mother if they’d shoot
the white horse
that reared up on Thursday.
No. She said
they don’t do that anymore.
She almost laughed.
Rueful I guess is what we call it
when my mother’s mouth
is half up towards something silly
and part way tucked in
to accommodate the wound.
I didn’t intend to mourn
the white horse.
That’s not why I asked.
I don’t even know it’s name
or if it has a gender.
But what am I supposed to want
for the animal
that reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my little sister?

(CONT.) CLICK:

Slippers, Racism and Charm School

It’s a good thing I love my slippers. Granted they do poke past the back of my foot quite a bit but that’s because they’re one size too big. I like this though because they still work with enormous baggy socks and when my feet are swollen. My slippers also satisfy my personal aesthetic. They, just by the nature of their size, force me to be what I’ve always wanted. It’s indisputable that this makes for a good relationship, being the best you can be, brought on by the other. See I’ve always had a fascination for women who shuffle in their scruffy slippers but whenever I’ve tried to walk that way I hear my mother in my head. She used to say: "…walk like a lady. Lift up your feet.” I went to ‘Charm School’ when I was eleven. They taught us how to balance a book and fold socks so the top of one didn’t get disfigured by stretching around the other. My mother’s prescription for me was: “You walk like an elephant.” She told the teacher this in a very loud voice the first day when she took me. I know the other girls were glad they weren’t me but look at me now. I’m aging but I made it to here, ethics intact. It’s still a little hard to scuff in my slippers though, because of guilt. I don’t want the ‘Charm School’ fees to have been a waste but when I sneak outside and it’s so early that my breath catches in the peeking light, I just scuff away.

The problem started this morning when I hit the grounded snow avalanche from the neighbor’s roof. The path I so carefully made two shovel-widths wide is now a mess of lumps and craters, frozen solid. I love the crunch though. I went up there to retrieve my errant garbage pails. The pickup was a day late because I put them out without remembering that even though racism has been covertly dominant in Boston, garbage pickup was one day delayed all week because of Martin Luther King day. The wind blowing and my aging forgetting made for a mash-up of trash receptacles, deep inside a neighboring yard. I just walked right in there, hoping the two pounds I think I lost (it could have been where I set the zero on the scale) would keep me afloat through the center-of-their-yard snow-drifts. Nothing doing. My slipper sank and left me. I was one on, sock on ice, with a fist-grip on the pail. It’s okay though. The temperature is low enough that my sock didn’t saturate and thank goodness it’s not as though my slipper fell through a pond. I like to find gratitude wherever I can. Particularly now when everything in our Country is looking up and people are so hopeful and things seem worse than ever before in the history of humankind. Thank God I didn’t have to lay on my belly and poke my slipper up and out with a stick. What if someone had come by and heard my slipper yelling “help” while my sock announced my lack of darning skills and I covered my eyes in hopes that our cultural belief: “…if I can’t see it, it isn’t happening…” would once, just this once, be true so I wouldn’t have to embarrass myself and disappoint my mother.

I got it though. And my slipper is drying happily with its mate, comfortably quiet near the woodstove after I shuffled all the way back down the path. It was a little cold for the toe that pokes through the hole in my sock but other than that, I’m happy to report that all went well.

Revisionist History

I’ve turned the lights off
to sit in the dark while everyone celebrates.
I’m so afraid of revisionist history.
I try to remind myself
that Native Americans and Slavery and even the Holocaust
are now studied in school.
But the proof that my story ever happened
has so often been denied,
even when it was current.

I sometimes think
that if the stories would just conveniently disappear,
it could so much more comfortably be
as if they (I) had not ever happened at all.

As it is though,
I am a receptacle for traumas
that have already happened.
While some will forge ahead
into hope and change,
some of us will bring up the rear,
composting the landscape
with the stories required
for an honest growth.

When 9/11 blasted through our denial
and the glass and bodies fell down,
I thought our world would finally know
that individual terror
really counts.

I want to party with the patriotic,
worship with the religious,
grade test scores with the educators,
read x-rays with the doctors,
design energy efficient units with the architects,
and be able to afford the new car smell of a hybrid.

I wish I didn’t know
that arbitrary divisions of land masses means
fighting over resources,
that organized religions
promote ‘us’ and ‘them’,
that test scores
indicate nothing useful when it comes to compassionate living,
that medical symptoms generally aren’t the issue,
that form needs to follow function,
and that affluence begets access to energy efficient products.

Because then
I could turn my lights on
and dance the ‘HBO, free for all tonight’, television mambo.

The problem is
history happened.
Things don’t disappear
when they already are.
And we can’t let go
of truths we’ve never let ourselves have.

Shameless Begging

I want. I want. I want. And I’m too old to be cute in the raw, undiluted land of desire.

Lest you jump too quickly from my ‘wants’ to the mental island of sexuality, let’s first look at what happens if you leap there. You could say this leap is an arch, a powerful motion, a catapult that shoots brain synapses from one state to another, an elevator up the ladder of inference, a rocket-ship of assumption. Any way you phrase it, it’s a high speed motion from a simple word to an assumed understanding that may or may not be what was intended.

Lets assume you make the bound across. You read or hear or think ‘want’ and arrive at sexuality. The path is fraught with landmarks. Suppose I say that the propensity to jump from my simple expression of a feeling: ‘I want’, to the mind state of sex, comes from the wired cluster of linear connections that ultimately keep us all relatively immobile. It starts with our thoughts. Thoughts lead to words, and words to interaction, and interaction to assumption, and assumption to belief, and this huge galloping mouthful of word connections leads to sex. I know it doesn’t feel immobile when the endorphins are fairly abuzz with possibility but think about locale: against a wall, over the kitchen table, draping the couch, horizontal in bed. Sure looks static to me.

But what makes something true? If everyone thinks that the word ‘want’ refers to sex, does it? This takes me back to a 1970’s feminist group process issue: ‘Consensus Agreement’. A phraseology capable of subverting an entire culture. ‘Consensus Decision making’ is a group process, not unlike ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’, except that by implication, everyone has to agree to agree in order for anything to happen.

So, back to the question. From a consensus perspective, everyone agreeing should make something true. But what if what many people think originates from information that indicates faulty thinking? Doesn’t this mean that the popular opinion could be wrong? There are lots of ‘wants’ that are not based in sex.

Okay. I admit it. A feminist origin is hard to leave behind – even if I wanted to – which I don’t. I do think it’s sad that ‘wants’ and desires are so often marginalized into the sexual arena when, in fact, we can find so many other places to go with it all. But no need to worry -- these other places can still evoke plenty of shame.

Wanting. I’ve never met a person that doesn’t. And yet, we’re taught it’s something we’re supposed to outgrow. And certainly by the time we’re old enough to be a parent, dye our hair, or eat out alone, wanting is supposed to have evaporated in direct proportion to the massive amounts of chemicals in our non-organic food. That is, unless the wants are in a sexual arena, where the natural ebbing and flowing of desire is supposed to increase when you’re wanted and decrease when you’re not.

But. I do. Want that is. In fact I want often. I want a lot. And it is not about sex.

What I want right now is to figure out how to solicit HUGE numbers of people to read and interact with my blog. And this brings me right back to the place I started. Is there such a thing as ‘shameless begging’? Is this an oxymoron? Is it what I am doing right now? What if it is ‘shame-filled’ but I’m doing it anyway? Maybe I disagree with the tenet that it’s shameful to beg. Maybe I think that shame is based on faulty thinking.

I want. I want you. I want readers to interact with my work. Please.

Truth & The Penis (1997)

Click to read long performance text
Note: Contains adult language

Aging

I nearly got caught because I’ve waited too long and now it’s rained on top of the snow. I was busy vacillating in front of the mirror and the temperature dropped so my slippers have no traction. It’ll be okay because I’ve mastered the old lady ice shuffle. No worries though. I look too young to really need to walk this way, so if anyone’s watching they’ll think I’m just goofing around. My double sized order of placenta eye cream is hidden inside my jacket (I got a two month supply for only $19.99, free shipping). I threw out the box with the label right after it came in the mail and since I’ve been using two at a time there’s probably only 35 or 40 in my pocket. That company promised healthy tissue – soft and pliable as a baby’s butt – but the bags under my eyes still look like raccoon cheeks and I’m tired of pawing through my sock drawer to unearth the little tubes every time I have a moment of absolute privacy. I think I’ll still keep trying with the teeth whitening gel. Even if it doesn’t work, it comes with a really fabulous brush. I’ve hidden it inside my one pair of super elasticized, leg-swell reducing knee socks. I’m sneaking up to the outside garbage can because the picture in the advertisement was a lie. They probably used the face of a twelve year old. I hate to admit it but I really thought the placenta ingredient would do the trick.

The problem is I didn’t zip my pocket. It’s unnerving how far placenta tubes can scatter when the person trying to discreetly dispose of them falls down. One slipper’s out of reach and I’m afraid I’m crying, right here on the path in front of my house. I just never thought I’d get this old and I don’t want the evidence of my denial to surface next spring. It’s not like I don’t know about aging. I’ve been supporting my clients through life transitions for over twenty years. It’s just that I get this shock every time I look in the mirror. The me that feels like me doesn’t recognize my reflection. And why doesn’t anybody talk about it outside of therapy? I hope the garbage men don’t check inside the pails. After creeping back up the path in my wet slippers, this time with a shovel, I think I’ve got every single one of those worthless tubes in there.

The timing of it all somehow doesn’t fit the way I thought it was supposed to. Actually, none of this growing up business does. My daughter has an eight-month-old baby but it’s just recently that I’ve given up on the notion that someday I’ll really be a ‘grownup’ and my tastes will magically change. The fact that my cherished-baggy-black-pants are with me for the long haul is a relatively new insight. It’s not as though I don’t like what I like, or even that I don’t like what I am. It’s more that I still love to like what I like so much. And it seems to me that before I became the previous generation, things should have become a little more sedate. Aren’t mature women supposed to be a little less enthusiastic? I always thought grandmothers were supposed to be finished.

Actually, it’s not just baggy clothes. To be honest, words that roar unedited in my mental bullhorn are almost always adorned with colorful expletives and I have finches that fly loose in my house. I sweep snow with a broom and I love the sound of anything that resembles the ‘Beater and Block’ from my elementary school music class.

My daughter’s son was born right here in my living room. I think my wet slippers are drying now, right about where she squatted. Her partner held her up and I crouched underneath. She wailed that baby right into my arms. By the time the after-birth was out, I knew my aging in a whole new way (okay, so I fixed my eyeliner for the pictures but that was my only vanity). Through the weeping and the blood and the overwhelming awe of new life, I never once thought of actually using the placenta for my wrinkles.

Before the birth, when she asked me what I wanted to be called, I said “Anything but Grandma.” I intend no offense here. Many people love the term. It’s just that I realized – in the fraction of a second between my daughter’s question and the auditory waves hitting my heart – that I had some adjusting to do.

Now it all starts to make some sort of sense: a name that’s a crystal clear generic with all sorts of preconceptions isn’t going to look right on the shipping label of the next anti-aging product I purchase.

So. You can call me Babaka.

My Words Were The ‘issue’.

When I was married it was my words that were the ‘issue’.

It wasn’t specifically the words I’d choose or let loose, spit out, spill, dump, let fly or even the ones that would slip out between the cracks in my teeth. It was more how I’d string them together. A flowing brook, stream, river, avalanche, cascading rock-slide of thoughts would roar out of me and hit a brick wall of misunderstanding, readily explained away by the fact of my delivery. So it wasn’t what I’d say but how I’d say it. Naturally it followed then, that with this basic premise in place, his rationalizing when things ran amuck was effortless.

Of course for me, entering the high speed thought chase of talk – a reciprocal, exponentially catapulting, feedback loop of thinking, lip flapping, listening, feeling, and ultimately seeing, and then tumbling, falling, galloping into the next level of interacting with all of it – was intoxicating. But that wasn’t the point. The point, at least the point my then-husband insisted was the essential, earth stopping reason for whatever might be going south in the moment, was that I talked wrong. It was my kind of speaking he said. As if there was a kind of thinking, expressing, being, that was just essentially too … well, too something. So starting right down at the foundation where all connection begins (I’d personally call it the basement, the cold cellar, the long term storage of human interaction), he thought I’d open my mouth and skew things up. It’s not the basic ingredients he’d assure me, the words themselves were fine. It was the total me that encompassed them - the core from which they flew - that created the space between us.

If our argument had been a Russian Borsht, the onions, beets, carrots and beef would have been perfectly adequate, possibly even organic. It was the soup base itself he must have thought flawed – the essence in the liquid one slurps first from the spoon – as if the stock came from some alien, foreign refrigerator. Picking out words one by one, he’d pause like one who savors only the carrots, while surreptitiously feeding the rest to the dog under the table as if nobody could see. And in fact, I couldn’t. I thought I must have been doing something wrong. I was utterly convinced if I could just talk yet faster – be more inclusive, reach farther, probe deeper – that somewhere in the mental melee I’d find a combination of words that would rebuild the bridge between us. Maybe he didn’t like Borsht. I could try Potato Cheese or Mushroom Leek. But the bad taste seemed to have something to do with my pace. As if the roiling connections, the references to various sources, and the odd bits of history added too much spice for his palate. Whatever it was, I certainly didn’t win the Betty Crocker cooking award at the County Fair of talking, at least not during the years he was the only judge.

He called it ANDREASPEAK and eventually refused to participate.