White · Hiatus

I used to write often. Now not so much. I don't even recognize my own style.

I think that I am kind of a personified moth. I begin, spin my chrysalis of words, then sleep, later to emerge as something new. Not as glamorous as a butterfly and unbearably drawn to flames, doomed to front end collisions with the porch light until I cease to exist.

What ever you have read into my writings, this is the real me.

I want you to imagine the impossible. Not 'winning the lottery' impossible - because although the odds are sorely against it, statistically it IS possible to do. I mean the truly impossible. Like going back in time to visit someone you've lost or reliving a childhood memory or correcting a mistake that you have had to regret... that type of impossible.

Now imagine someone coming to you and telling you it COULD happen. I could happen without doing anything illegal or hurting anyone. It could happen without taking a second on the house. Not that it would be without consequence, but that this would be only to yourself and risks easily calculated. Like, for instance, you might have to take a pill and it could give you the worst acne you can imagine for about a year. Or perhaps you might feel very weak and tired for a few months... or worst case scenario you could die...

Would you do it? Would you dare the impossible?

What if you met someone with the worst acne imaginable and discovered that they HAD done the impossible. Would it change the way you saw them? Would you judge them differently to know that they had braved the unknown?

Or would the deed itself be the yardstick?

This is a natural phenomena called a sun dog. It occurs when ice crystals high in the sub zero atmosphere reflect the light of the sun causing reflections that themselves seem like independent stars.

This is my first blog in over a month; there is a fire in the sky, don't look away, if you must you may find an old card board box and poke a pin hole in it like we all did when we were kids and had a chance to see our first eclipse. I doubt this will be as thrilling but it promises to be one hell of an oration.

In previous blogs all of you have had an opportunity to slip momentarily into the unusual subset of experiences that have formed my less than interesting life. But to get to the core of it, to see the heart of the matter this is the one story that you must know...

My Grandmother died last week. It feels strange to type that, like there are parts of me that still have not absorbed it as reality. I was there though, I flew down to be with my family and to attend the funeral. At the visitation my nephew, Tanner, took my arm to walk with me to view the body that once housed my Grandmother's soul. There was a crowd of people and I thought a line, but it was really just a group of people chatting. When they cleared I was there, with my nephew beside me and Her before me. I almost fell down. I wasn't ready for it. At that point I am sure that no part of me had really accepted it as reality. I was near fainting when my nephew escorted me from the room. He said to me "yea, it is weird to see a dead body, huh?" and I realized that this, his great-grandmother was not really someone he knew or understood as a person. All I could say was: "that isn't a body, it is my Grandmother."

We walked together for some time, my nephew and I, talking about life and death and what happens when you die. And then together we looked at two large collections of photographs telling the story of my grandmother and grandfather's lives. I found myself explaining many of the photos as my young nephew did not really know the history of his family, until at last we came to a photo of someone he did not know, a story he had been hidden from, perhaps paramount in importance but deeply buried in the familial archives. But to understand the present we must look to the past and it was time for Tanner to know the truth. This was hard for me as it is a truth that I hide in, am lost in, and share only in quiet hours when my illusions die away and nothing is left but cold, hard, ME that is.

You see, long ago when I was younger than Tanner is now, my family... all of it... seven uncles, five aunts and gaggles of children... we all pretty happy. In fact you might have mistaken Christmas for a Courior and Ives painting, it was truly that picturesque. My memory then is one of myself and my sister, sitting duo on the top bunk peering out over a snowy landscape watching and waiting for Santa. I remember a phone ringing. Peaking out of the bedroom, certain there had been some problem at the North Pole, only to see my father reduced to tears. I had never even considered that he COULD cry. That was the moment I became an adult.

My father's youngest brother was murdered that night. The story is perhaps irrelevant except to say that the event has spun my family off in to an alternate time line from which we all cannot escape. My father pulled away from us, except in situations where he could save face my being a good dad. My grandfather receded into darkness, and passed away far too young. My grandmother became the Matriarch, holding the family together as best she could while herself slipping into the oblivion of Lewy Body Dementia. The aunts and uncles split into two opposing factions, concerned with money and familial status. In worst case scenarios they abused each other to the point of estrangement. The children lost touch with one another drawn into their parent's wars or simply taking safety in lives apart from the FAMILY TIES THAT BIND AND GAG. I chose to separate my life entirely, putting distance and experience between myself and my past and in many cases reporting my family, with a few exceptions, as dead.

But the truth, the real down, dirty, nasty, truth of it all is that since that snowy Christmas Eve no one has grieved. No one has healed and thus the pain lingers. It is baked into cookies and served on trays of cheese and crackers. It is tucked into blankets with the next generation of children, like Tanner, who don't know why something is wrong, only that something is... terribly.

And then here we all are again, standing before a casket, with my grandmother in a pink dress, too much make up and cheap jewelry. And over us all was a pervasive feeling that this might be the last time we found ourselves together. There was a moment when I found myself reduced to tears and one of the aunts chimed in as if tears were unnecessary, even wrong. And I thought to myself, though my reasoning was beyond what I could enunciate at the time, that I was mourning not only the loss of someone I loved dearly but also re-discovering my family only to witness it's final hour.

Flying home, my grief was unbearable; for most of this week I have been detached and living in a world as flat 'as the world before Columbus.' But then, on Thursday morning driving to work I saw on the horizon a glorious sun dog. And I found myself reflecting on how the sun in my family had gone out. And then with the sun's rising new sun dogs formed. And I saw generation after generation of the sky born and die and awaken to rebirth and I knew that I was here, now, nothing more than an ice crystal high above the Earth awaiting my brief moment to shine.

I am sticking needles in myself tonight. I feel like the world has betrayed me yet again, or - more correctly- I have betrayed myself. I may be a bit stream of consciousness tonight, my thinking is all jumbled and so we are damned to deal with my abject incoherence.

There is something though about being someone people see as capable. In charge, in control of it, whatever. For some reason people stop believing that things can be difficult for me. A foundation never needs support -or some thing...

So there I was, dressed in a business suit and summer shoes bent over the hood of my truck which is more than waist high to me even in heels, in the pouring rain soaking wet and covered in oil, stranded on the side of the freeway. In near hysterics I used my quickly dying cell phone to call for any kind of help or advise that might find me; a friendly voice, any kind of reassurance that I was not standing there all alone. No answer anywhere. So I used the only trick I knew and with some luck it worked enough for me to be able to start the engine and go in search of any shop I could find open that might be able to diagnose the truck at that hour and hopefully fix it as well.

Freezing, I wandered traffic filled streets or drivers irate at my obvious confusion as to where I was or where I was going. I kept choking back tears, telling myself 'you can handle this, you can handle this!'

And then the phone rang. I felt I might be saved. I didn't need someone to rescue me, just a friendly voice, someone to ask 'are you okay? do you need help?' A little ray of light through the clouds, an emotional shelter from the storm. It seemed so little to expect, and in the fashion usual of my life, I landed myself sorely disappointed. I got a "it could be this, call me when you know."

I hung up the phone. It rang again. Another friend who was busy and who would call back... then didn't. Still alone at sea. As usual the only shoulder to cry on was the shoulder of the road. It hurt. It really hurt.

I found a shop, I had them fix the alternator. I froze for several hours in my dirty, wet clothes. I came home alone. My home that has no food in it because I gave away my grocery money. I sat on the floor and I finally cried.

What is the price of reassurance? And who do you pay to get it?

I suppose the only thing worse than being raised in a closet is discovering that perhaps you built it yourself. The prospect of lesbianism was almost inconceivable to me, I had known only one homosexual in my life and though I had no sense of his sexuality as unnatural, I was not exactly ready to face the reality of it being part of my own skin. I decided, in my own Scarlet O'Hara way, that I would think about it tomorrow - and went about my life as if I could ignore the blatant possibility. But sometimes it would crawl into bed with me late at night like a mental closet monster set free. I would try to imagine myself with women I had seen that day and I would feel nothing but confusion: if the idea failed to excite me, which was often, I would wonder if I was making myself disinterested in order to deny who I was. If the idea excited me I would wonder if I was forcing the excitement to be what I thought I was supposed to be. Ultimately I was clueless.

Making situations more complex was the recent up-rooting to a suburban Chicago town. My first public school attendance as a senior in high school, my first class with actual boys, my first day of school without a uniform... there was trouble brewing around every city corner and I found the most of it in first period Calculus.

You see, there was a young woman in the class, not an interest, in fact she was so quiet and mousy it is nothing short of amazing that I knew she was alive. I am sure you have met this girl, she is almost an apparition fading into the pale green semi gloss paint of the walls with chalk dust still clinging to her skirt where she had faded into the chalkboard on her way to her chair at the back of the room. The human chameleon. The first character of this real life human drama spoken in whispers as any thing louder might cause her to disappear all together.

Add the second character, a young man, obviously compensating for smaller things by having an all too big mouth. Rough and tumble, this boy has surely grown into the inmate who wants you for his bitch or a rather fine politician. My role in this theater of horrors was to stay put and be a good girl, not get involved and somehow survive one semester then escape to college. I have never been good at listening to reason though, and one day it was fated that these two people, no matter how diametrically opposed to one another, would act their way into the chronicles of my life for you to read.

It was any day, an idle Tuesday, unremarkable in almost any way except perhaps that two other pubescent boys had decided to have a hall way rumble and the Calculus teacher was called away to play referee leaving the class room the quiet captives of the big mouthed red neck boy. At first opportunity he began his accosting of the mousy girl. No finesse. No precision. A tasteless assault that began with a bold accusation that our little girl had been seen kissing another girl outside of the gym.

As his attack progressed, becoming ever louder and meaner and less and less palatable to myself, our little female creature became fainter, tears filling her down cast eyes, her text clutched so closely to her chest that the type face inside was surely staining her pale skin. She never spoke a word to the boy. It was another voice that broke the evil diatribe...

Mine.

Having had enough of this creep I told him firmly to sit down and shut up and leave the girl alone. I have this memory burned to my brain: his brutish hands and dirty nails gripping the edge of my desk. His puggish nose almost pressed against mine. His rotten breath and his words directed to me, eye to eye : "IF YOU ARE DEFENDING HER YOU MUST BE A DYKE TOO."

I didn't look away, I didn't shrink from him, no. I found this place, this angry, frustrated, frightened place in my body that I had stuffed to the brink and ignored for too long and the lid had finally cracked and all the ugliness burst forth. I remember the burn in my hand, the sound of the metal legs of several desks scratching linoleum and the hallow wooden thud as they fell over. I remember the boys eyes finding mine again, this time full of fear as the blood rushed down his cheeks.

As I walked home later that afternoon, fearing the reality of my own rage, astonished at having broken some strange person's nose, I had to wonder if my words were there to protect that girl or if it was the content of the conversation, the use of the word DYKE, that caused this reaction.

But I made a decision right then: if I were to live in a closet it would have designer hangers. No matter what my destiny was to be, I would not live in shame. I would not hide in my emotions until they became dangerous. I would be. Just as I was. Whatever it was. And I would find a way to make the best of it.

I give myself a little pat on the back each time I recall certain memories: paying off divorce debt, school debt, buying my first car and always updating the sticker on time, getting my taxes into the mail well before the do-or-die date. Remembering to get cash before a night out (so I am not stuck going to the grocery store to pass a $25 over check while buying a pack of gum), remembering that Tuesday is trash day, going to the grocery store once a week, and recalling when I changed the furnace filter last. All these little triumphs that equate to the reality that, yes mom I am finally a grown up.

Now most grown ups (I suspect) read this and think, Good God, Woman you are hardly together if you must celebrate such minor inconveniences. But you see, as with all things in this life of mine, anxiety reigns supreme. There was a time in my life (embarrassingly not so long ago) when simple things like calling directory assistance could send me into a full bore panic attack. So today, of all days, I should be celebrating.

It was scarce 0900 when I entered the bank, a few carefully chosen documents in hand (and exactly twenty minutes after taking an ativan), dressed to the nines to await my time with the banker man. He had met me before when I purchased my truck, and handed me endless tissues while I cried my eyes out after discovering an identity theft that he graciously helped me repair. He had a lovely smile and was patient with my fits of uncertainty and unending questions, and though I had expected him to scream and claw his face at the mere sight of me, he grinned when I told him I was ready to buy a house.

And then the drone of numbers began. I watched them flow from his pen in an uneven scrawl spelling out my future and my life in merciless blue ink. I might have been pleased to see that I could afford so much just with my own glamorous nurse's salary. I might have been overjoyed that I was walking out of a bank with a mortgage application in hand. I might have been at very least proud that I made it though over an hour and a half of basic economics (MY economics) without crying, shaking, or falling into a ball of gelatinous goo.

But I was heart broken. The house I want, the perfect house, the place I have so often imagined spending my life was just a few numbers out of my reach. Now I stare at the legal sized envelope, I finger my way through a thousand unsigned affidavits. I review the tax law information and the blue scrawl from the Banker. I imagine talking with the seller of my perfect house and convincing him that he should drop the price for me. I get frustrated. I put the envelope away. But I know it is there, a phantom on the coffee table, calling me back over and over again to try and think my way into something out of my reach.

What is worst of all is that, like with all little set backs, it has me re-evaluating my life. Am I ready for this? What if I am making a mistake? What if I go through with this and I can't find a home? What if another Repugnant is elected and I am forced to move to Canada? What if... what it...

ANXIETY. My little prison cell made for one. Am I disappointed because of the house, or is it more that I am disappointed that I cannot be more than I am?

The Earth laughs in flowers; Perhaps it is why the past few weeks seem over come with joy. Each barely audible first breath of each tiny new leaf asks, each green sprig a miracle full of curiosity: will I be a wildflower or a weed?

I spent my Easter in a perfect place, surrounded by family and young children. I cannot remember the last time I colored Easter Eggs, but it all held true to tradition and form. The attempted use of the octagonal piece of bent wire provided by some multi-million dollar company to retrieve the egg from the dye at best, or at worst give every person over the age of 12 an exercise in futility. The never ending battle to be the one holding the clear wax crayon. The blue pellet inserted into the mouth of a little one, the quick retrieval and deposit of the remnant into an odorous coffee cup full of vinegar. Little eyes peering over the side to watch the fizzy bubbling, the fascinated glare followed by a smile full of still blue teeth. I am sure that I ate my full share of color pellets in my time, and to see another do the same... well it gives the Universe a sense of continuity, of solidarity between the present and the past.

Later, after running in a large, green yard in my Sunday shoes pulling one enraptured child after another in a red wagon down a hill and around the bushes (do it agian! This time I want to ride with my doll), and pushing same said children one after the other on a swing, and then collapsing into a giggling mass while they tried to capture bees and butterflies in their magic bubbles, I came to understand a great truth about spring: growing things have no cares about what they will become. They feel only the warmth of the sun the sweetness of the breeze, the tickle on their skin from dew drops and friends passing by. And what is a wild flower and what is a weed has no translation to that medium. It is a creation of minds too old to see that the miracle is GROWING- not becoming something. The miracle is BEING -not manifesting. The miracle is LOVING - not being loved. The miracle of spring is joy for it's own sake. It think there was a time when I new that, and I am so glad that Universal continuity refuses to let me forget.

So after you read this, do this storyteller a favor... go to a place with soft fresh grass, take off your shoes and wiggle your toes. Take a deep breath and remember that this IS life. Right now.

The years that followed "the Big Ben Occurrance" were actually... unremarkable. Many factors were responsible for this: my mother's illness, my scholastic focus, and though I hate to admit it, my own fears. These left me closed off to my own sexuality for some time. Although my appetites were healthy and exercised through regular masturbation, I rarely found myself drawn to another with the anticipation of physical intimacy. Although I have tried these years later to ascertain why, I seldom come up with any agreeable answer. Primarily I was overwhelmed with adult responsibilities and so, not only was I focused on those priorities I was unable to connect with anyone of my own age.

And so it came to pass that the summer between my junior and senior year in high school my family relocated to the Chicago area so that my mother could receive treatment at a better hospital. There is great emotion here. Fear for my mother's life, apprehension of departure from my Grandparents, the prospect of a public school full of strangers with a big city way of life I knew nothing about, sorrow at not graduating with my friends, all the pain of leaving the only home I knew and the only place that I truly felt safe.

On the eve of this relocation several of my friends threw a party in my honor. On a full summer's night we met beneath a blanket of stars on an out of the way vacant tobacco field to view the Perseid's. We tossed out our old sheets and picnic baskets and contra band beer and wine and vodka. We kicked off our shoes, chased fireflies, and sat enveloped by the vast, unending drone of cicadas; mesmerized by the glory of nature and the deep underlying sadness no one would mention. When all were gone but the last of us: myself and two of my closest girlfriends (we'll call them Iris and Calla), the topic turned to all the plans we had made for our lives. Plans of going to college, of shared weddings, of sitting on the porch watching the garden and our children grow. Of being who our parents were (only much cooler - of course), of dying on the same day. We reminisced about the blood pact we had made in the first grade... about all the experiences that made our friendships eternal and why they would survive even my displacement to this foreign land called CHICAGO. I did not speak to them my feelings that there would be no such future, that I had at that point lost all hope and abandoned all of my own dreams, seeing only the dismal reality of my life, such as it was.

I remember looking off into the night sky, not paying attention to the banter of these loved ones, lost in my own abyss as deep as the sprawl of those heavens, and wanting to disappear. It was Calla was drew me out of my thoughts, not with a word, but with a kiss. A deep passionate kiss that resonated through out my body. Iris soon joined her in the kissing, and before long the three of us lay twisted together, kissing and touching and exploring. Lovingly, as if this physical act were the only thing that stood between ourselves and the perfect bond of undying and never departing friendship.

Hours later as the sun released it's first rays over the horizon to reveal a beautiful, misty Kentucky morning, we lay still tangled together, exhausted and excited from the throws of our passion. Occasionally embarrassed, but continually intrigued by what had happened between us, what we had done, and how we would ever be able to bear the reality of a moving truck that was soon to arrive in my yard, collect up my little things and haul me away forever.

Later as I sat in the back of the car watching that same sun sink into the west, I wondered... could it be that I have never been with a boy because I am a lesbian?

"Oh, Shit."

Those were the first words of the enlightened season. We might as well have called it 'National Be Late Week." Almost everyone I know has a story about how Daylight Savings Time got one over on them this year. Look behind the wheel of any car to see it's zombie driver, and watch as the police cars go racing to and fro. Certainly some clever sociologist (or a clever thousand of them) has taken the time to study and record for all of human history how this little glitch in our clocks, internal and external, throws a monkey into our entire society for a least a good week. A monkey the size of King Kong. I can personally vouch for having been the ALMOST recipient of several good fender benders this afternoon, and my disposition was less than cheerful about it. And yet no one seems to have a respectable reason as to why we do this to ourselves.

After rolling over to hit the snooze button better than 12 times this morning at 4am (previously known as 3am) and racing out of my home in crumpled clothing and bad hair, I cursed the dreaded Daylight Saving Phenomena. I didn't care so much about the being late as I did about getting to my coffee and feeling like it was half way morning. When I arrived at work, the girl who usually makes my coffee also overslept and so there was not a warm pot of life giving bean juice waiting for my impatient paws. Nurses can be a cranky lot. I was a spoiled cranky lot tearing the coffee package open with my teeth and a snarl. The dish person hadn't washed my coffee mug, so I was damned to styrofoam. All in all, Monday was off to a banner start.

I had planned an in depth look at the history of DLST, from Ben Franklin to energy savings, but alas I am too tired. Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe, dear reader, you would care to elaborate.

(Coming soon, Fornication pt. VI)

For three days now I have been flat on my back with the flu. Misery mixed with feelings of bliss, pain and pleasure and dreams hot with fever and memory. Tonight I am feeling more like myself and cleaning my house I putting on my favorite AIR music to lighten my mood. In the midst of the music I fell upon a favorite song. Before long I was dancing and twirling and back to my carefree self. No more Flu! Hurray!