This little pressure in the back of my brain that makes me want to go out and smoke a cigarette even though my nasal passages are closed is the tiny inkling of a hope that if I apply myself 500% in the next small window of time, I will be able to effect the control of the universe.
And I can.
We all can and do.
But, I must listen to the eternal pacifier...Don't take myself too seriously.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Weird Dreams
I fell asleep with my contacts in last night, the thread that tied these 3 dreams together was waking up and imagining that my shriveled contacts were clinging like cats eyes to my eyelashes. (They weren't. They were still inside my eyes when I woke up.)
The First: My apartment was on fire. It was a solid brick building, and as I left the scene I saw the marks of the smoke, streaks of ash wisping out the window frames towards the sky.
I first noticed the building was on fire as I went up the weathered wooden staircase which was smouldering like embers or molten rock. I conducted an investigation and discovered that the building was on fire, kind of from the core, like Centralia, and my house mates and everyone else were packing up their stuff and gathering outside. We had time. It wasn't like my other reoccurring "packing dreams." I carefully selected all that I would need for my daily life (getting ready for work) and a few mementos that meant the most to me. I probably gathered them in a somewhat larger Old Navy Stuff sack or maybe that red bag I bought from Trader Joe's the other day for $2.99. In steps mom. And suddenly, she wants to stuff my sack with everything imaginable. Mementos, stuff I don't even need. She was even willing to fill the other bags I had in my room and carry them down the stairs.
"Let's FUCKING go!" I screamed at her as she hovered at the top of the stairs and I was already halfway down them. I remember screaming at her and swearing in a powerful voice, and I was surprised at my command of authority. But as I saw her up there I knew that if she didn't go fast enough I was going to go up and get her and carry her down the smouldering flights of stairs. I had my heels on. The too big ones I bought the other day at Kohls. And the reports from the other tenants was that the stairway at around the sixth floor was smouldering and starting to smoke. We were on the eighth floor. Small fires were breaking out in people's apartments. It was time to go. And if you spent more than a light-footed second on each stair you would burn yourself.
She made it down with miraculous speed and we met the others outside, in the sun, the safe sun and the friendly Brooklyn block.
In comes Dream two: I am somewhat back in high school. I am valedictorian or something. Some kind of weird honor for being a hippie. I am dressed in a loose-fitting, to-the-floor dress and a cardigan. I think my hair is died auburn (hear Jersey accent here) and permed, long and wavy. I feel like a tool, but Chartis has set it up that I will get on the makeshift pressboard runway and make a speech. One thing - they forgot the podium. There is a podium on the floor but I ask the audience if they will be able to see me and they yell uniformly "NO!" So I sweat up there awkwardly while the auditorium staff runs askew looking for a podium to put on the stage. The young whipper snapper with a-bit-too-long, combed-over, slicked hair, and a dark gray, too-large suit finishes his trying-to-be-charming introduction and I am left up there to kill time. LM comes up to the stage to help me, but it doesn't help. There is a nailclipper involved (?) (Visions of a nailclipper?) As I urgently try to make the crowd laugh. (I should have said a thank you, I thought when I woke up in the morning.)
And then there is my drunk mom. I got her drunk I think. Something happens that they cut my speech short just as I am starting, and I find myself surprisingly disappointed -after what seemed like infinity trying to kill time and make people laugh, the well-prepared, supposed-to-be-inspiring speech seems comforting. But I am whisked off into the hallway, and then come back to take my seat with my family. Some kind of done-before, boring, choreographed dance is going on onstage, like the Rockettes dressed in yellow, with the ringleader dressed up as a cat. Jen is drunk too and slouched in her seat, bored, and exhausted from trying to contain mommy. Mommy's copper colored hair has a previously unseen flair, it halos out from her crown in a heretofore unseen diameter. Her face is ludicrous, and she is so loud. She is insulting me, and the scene just becomes so ridiculous that I decide to enlist the cops who are patrolling the hallway and have her locked up, just for the night. She acquiesces, willingly.
When we wake up in the morning it is almost more disastrous than the night before. We had trapped her in the bathroom, I lead her there and as she was inside the cops, two of them, one nondescript, the other a lesbian, waited outside to trap her. But when she emerges from her cell in the morning she is unscathed, her confidence unwaned. I think she has dressed as a cop, halter and all, and her hair is back perfectly in place -her perfect. We hint at her about last night's fiasco, but she doesn't hear it, and struts confidently to the parking lot, ready to go. I want to get the cop's number, so when she eventually comes down and realizes what I did to her, and tries to kill me, I can call them for assistance. The lesbian cop is the one who takes the bait, and disappears into the labyrinth of her office to write down her number. I am waiting in the parking lot with mommy. She doesn't get it. Why do I have to wait to "thank" the cop? Isn't this all over and done with? She is going to the car. While she goes I run off into the office, hoping she doesn't catch me and follow me. When I get in there it is obvious the lesbian cop is stalling. Its not like she's hitting on me but she just doesn't get it, and if I am in here too long, people, my mom, will start to worry.
Dream three: I am called into the operating room. They have discovered a dead human, is it even a human? A used-to-be human that mummified herself to become a super-human. They have unwrapped what they could of the dressing -bits of grey stick to the cream, seafoam, and peach colored mummified skin. It is thick like Plaster of Paris, and cracked at the joints and other places. I am sick to my stomach but in awe of the fact that this person succeeded in mummifying themself. The doctor is picking off bits of the grey gauze with sterilized tweezers. "But wait...this is not it. This is not why I called you." the doctor says. (Not sure if male or female.) They pull me around to the bottom of the leg, where the foot would have been, only the foot is removed, revealing a golden latticed cross section of the ankle. The leg is hollow. The doctor takes the long-handled tweezer and reaches into the hollow calf. He pulls out a putrefied banana peel. I am revolted and bend over, clutching my stomach. "No, but that is not it," says the doctor. "This banana peel was not putrefied when it was inserted." As my mind wakes to make the realization, somehow said mummy rises and is now walking out the door. (Whether the body is still on the table and it is her soul, or whether she has risen all together is unclear.) She is wearing a hand-died Indian cloth over her head, like a burka, but it is almost a clear, cream colored gauze, emblazoned with beautiful twisted paisley flowers. The flower stems and leaves, almost like vines, are a dark green, almost black. And the flowers, a tiny fuchsia. Even a realistic - well, as realistic as can be on fabric weave - pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses has been printed where her eyes would be. She looks like a burka-ed terrorist. Everyone is commenting on her ridiculousness, and is scared of her. But she talks to me as Sarah Tyrell would, and I am confident in following her. Well, confident enough to make the first cautious step.
She had stored the bananas (as we walk out the door the doctor is holding up a less putrefied, unripe green plantain) in her leg as back-up fuel. She is truly a modernized human being. (Equipped for a nuclear winter?)
The First: My apartment was on fire. It was a solid brick building, and as I left the scene I saw the marks of the smoke, streaks of ash wisping out the window frames towards the sky.
I first noticed the building was on fire as I went up the weathered wooden staircase which was smouldering like embers or molten rock. I conducted an investigation and discovered that the building was on fire, kind of from the core, like Centralia, and my house mates and everyone else were packing up their stuff and gathering outside. We had time. It wasn't like my other reoccurring "packing dreams." I carefully selected all that I would need for my daily life (getting ready for work) and a few mementos that meant the most to me. I probably gathered them in a somewhat larger Old Navy Stuff sack or maybe that red bag I bought from Trader Joe's the other day for $2.99. In steps mom. And suddenly, she wants to stuff my sack with everything imaginable. Mementos, stuff I don't even need. She was even willing to fill the other bags I had in my room and carry them down the stairs.
"Let's FUCKING go!" I screamed at her as she hovered at the top of the stairs and I was already halfway down them. I remember screaming at her and swearing in a powerful voice, and I was surprised at my command of authority. But as I saw her up there I knew that if she didn't go fast enough I was going to go up and get her and carry her down the smouldering flights of stairs. I had my heels on. The too big ones I bought the other day at Kohls. And the reports from the other tenants was that the stairway at around the sixth floor was smouldering and starting to smoke. We were on the eighth floor. Small fires were breaking out in people's apartments. It was time to go. And if you spent more than a light-footed second on each stair you would burn yourself.
She made it down with miraculous speed and we met the others outside, in the sun, the safe sun and the friendly Brooklyn block.
In comes Dream two: I am somewhat back in high school. I am valedictorian or something. Some kind of weird honor for being a hippie. I am dressed in a loose-fitting, to-the-floor dress and a cardigan. I think my hair is died auburn (hear Jersey accent here) and permed, long and wavy. I feel like a tool, but Chartis has set it up that I will get on the makeshift pressboard runway and make a speech. One thing - they forgot the podium. There is a podium on the floor but I ask the audience if they will be able to see me and they yell uniformly "NO!" So I sweat up there awkwardly while the auditorium staff runs askew looking for a podium to put on the stage. The young whipper snapper with a-bit-too-long, combed-over, slicked hair, and a dark gray, too-large suit finishes his trying-to-be-charming introduction and I am left up there to kill time. LM comes up to the stage to help me, but it doesn't help. There is a nailclipper involved (?) (Visions of a nailclipper?) As I urgently try to make the crowd laugh. (I should have said a thank you, I thought when I woke up in the morning.)
And then there is my drunk mom. I got her drunk I think. Something happens that they cut my speech short just as I am starting, and I find myself surprisingly disappointed -after what seemed like infinity trying to kill time and make people laugh, the well-prepared, supposed-to-be-inspiring speech seems comforting. But I am whisked off into the hallway, and then come back to take my seat with my family. Some kind of done-before, boring, choreographed dance is going on onstage, like the Rockettes dressed in yellow, with the ringleader dressed up as a cat. Jen is drunk too and slouched in her seat, bored, and exhausted from trying to contain mommy. Mommy's copper colored hair has a previously unseen flair, it halos out from her crown in a heretofore unseen diameter. Her face is ludicrous, and she is so loud. She is insulting me, and the scene just becomes so ridiculous that I decide to enlist the cops who are patrolling the hallway and have her locked up, just for the night. She acquiesces, willingly.
When we wake up in the morning it is almost more disastrous than the night before. We had trapped her in the bathroom, I lead her there and as she was inside the cops, two of them, one nondescript, the other a lesbian, waited outside to trap her. But when she emerges from her cell in the morning she is unscathed, her confidence unwaned. I think she has dressed as a cop, halter and all, and her hair is back perfectly in place -her perfect. We hint at her about last night's fiasco, but she doesn't hear it, and struts confidently to the parking lot, ready to go. I want to get the cop's number, so when she eventually comes down and realizes what I did to her, and tries to kill me, I can call them for assistance. The lesbian cop is the one who takes the bait, and disappears into the labyrinth of her office to write down her number. I am waiting in the parking lot with mommy. She doesn't get it. Why do I have to wait to "thank" the cop? Isn't this all over and done with? She is going to the car. While she goes I run off into the office, hoping she doesn't catch me and follow me. When I get in there it is obvious the lesbian cop is stalling. Its not like she's hitting on me but she just doesn't get it, and if I am in here too long, people, my mom, will start to worry.
Dream three: I am called into the operating room. They have discovered a dead human, is it even a human? A used-to-be human that mummified herself to become a super-human. They have unwrapped what they could of the dressing -bits of grey stick to the cream, seafoam, and peach colored mummified skin. It is thick like Plaster of Paris, and cracked at the joints and other places. I am sick to my stomach but in awe of the fact that this person succeeded in mummifying themself. The doctor is picking off bits of the grey gauze with sterilized tweezers. "But wait...this is not it. This is not why I called you." the doctor says. (Not sure if male or female.) They pull me around to the bottom of the leg, where the foot would have been, only the foot is removed, revealing a golden latticed cross section of the ankle. The leg is hollow. The doctor takes the long-handled tweezer and reaches into the hollow calf. He pulls out a putrefied banana peel. I am revolted and bend over, clutching my stomach. "No, but that is not it," says the doctor. "This banana peel was not putrefied when it was inserted." As my mind wakes to make the realization, somehow said mummy rises and is now walking out the door. (Whether the body is still on the table and it is her soul, or whether she has risen all together is unclear.) She is wearing a hand-died Indian cloth over her head, like a burka, but it is almost a clear, cream colored gauze, emblazoned with beautiful twisted paisley flowers. The flower stems and leaves, almost like vines, are a dark green, almost black. And the flowers, a tiny fuchsia. Even a realistic - well, as realistic as can be on fabric weave - pair of gold-rimmed aviator glasses has been printed where her eyes would be. She looks like a burka-ed terrorist. Everyone is commenting on her ridiculousness, and is scared of her. But she talks to me as Sarah Tyrell would, and I am confident in following her. Well, confident enough to make the first cautious step.
She had stored the bananas (as we walk out the door the doctor is holding up a less putrefied, unripe green plantain) in her leg as back-up fuel. She is truly a modernized human being. (Equipped for a nuclear winter?)
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Prospect Park
I'm going to tell you right off that this post is probably something I should have written in my journal, but I'm not keeping one at the moment so this is the next best thing.
I also think, in addition to TMI and lack of guarding my personal space, this experience has a "human interest" underneath that I can't think of an easy google keyword for, so perhaps it is at least a tad of the domain of the not yet trampled upon -yet to form a defined crease in the human brain.
"I spend a lot of my time thinking about_____" is one of OkCupid's open-ended questions. I tried to think of something esoteric enough to compete with other entries, while at the same time not being pretentious enough to turn the likes of me off. I don't remember what I wrote.
But the other day, I finally achieved my nirvana -at least the one I have been attaining to for at least the last couple of months, if not years. A day to myself. A day where I could wake up, and let my mind play, and let my body follow. A day, in other words, where I was just a vessel, an almost unobstructed one, and the life energy could flow through me at will.
Of course I woke up late, ate cereal, and read the paper. Then I made coffee and didn't turn on my music so I could hear the birds in what I realized last night was our own personalized urban forest fortress. (All of the surrounding backyards are overgrown, and our cement-space is oddly lower than the rest, and so the surrounding fence looks monstrous.)
And then I resisted all bait by house mates and friends, tied on my sneakers, and headed out for what, I also realized when my house mate told me to call him when I got back so we could go pick up some food, is adequately termed a Day Run. One where I carry my metrocard, gunnysack, map, and follow the streets.
It was
THE PERFECT DAY. I left a little late, and so the midday sun was one my Senegalese host family would have balked and told me to avoid. People were out for the Cherry Blossom Festival, right down the street. I smelled, and saw every conceivable good memory I have ever had. As I ran through the neighborhoods, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Gowanus canal, the backwards streets where no one lives, Chirilagua, the countryside on the train in Japan...I smelled burning trash and pupusas and the incense Fary lit in the pot while I laid on her bed in a pool of sweat.
And then Prospect Park. I was honestly jittering with life. I was higher than 3 times as high as I've ever been. Every cell of my body was pressing against its walls and making as much surface contact with the green grass, the water fountain with the kid taking too long, the couples sleeping on each others laps. The mom speaking Spanish, and all I could get was she was dishing back her daughter's attitude. The games played, the giant fat families barbecuing, the chubby hipsters with greasy too-long goatees trying to skateboard. I could smile at each one.
And then I realized, "I spend a lot of time thinking about" bombs. Terrorist attacks. Honestly. Every moment, its on the back of my mind. It is a loop that is factored into all of my processing. What if a bomb went off right now? What would I do? Would I survive? How would this situation change? Who would live and who would die? How would we help each other? Who would be helping who? How long would we be trapped in here? I imagine the relationships that would develop between the smelly homeless man with all his bags of recycling, the crazy Wolof woman speaking and singing in tongues to everyone but me, the gangster playing his music so loud I am pissed off for him and how loud it must be in his ears. The woman whose toes I've stepped on five times trying not to lose my balance when I let go of the bar to change the page.
I think of it now, in Prospect Park. Park Therapy, I call it. Just take any disgruntled, disadvantaged single man and plant him in this park on this day and he would be cured. In fact, now I keep my mind out for it. And I see them, all over. Many immigrants. Men. Sitting on park benches alone. Yet here, I don't feel creeped out by them. I could almost go sit with them, but I'm running. And then there's post-park life. But in the park, I decide while waiting for the kid to slurp the giant water bubbles, its heaven. Honestly, if I die, let me carry this image with me on repeat for all eternity.
I get home. I water my flowers. I cook for myself and then have a few beers with Brad and his friend on the roof. And then I go to the garden. But before that, I go to the bathroom.
You might want to stop reading now.
Ok, I warned you. I got my period. For the first time. In over three years. Well, that's almost true. I've gotten some spotting. But all these spottings seemed random. This time, I can almost feel, I know I got it from the park. What does this mean? Am I wedded to the Universal Soul? Perhaps. Its all part of the same thing...my body only comes to life to produce life when its fully alive. I don't know why I have this...but my body is not going to let me produce unless I infuse the life I create with life. All of it.
I lost my period when I went to Peace Corps. Reasons unknown -diet, heat, stress. I think its because I fully relinquished myself -we even talked about it, Jenna and I, in one of the first few weeks, while we biked from Thies to Popenguine. The onion analogy - we peeled back each layer until there was nothing left, and saved the pieces to wrap ourselves back up when we went home. I went further than most others. I've literally been operating my body, even my mind, and my spirit, like a ventriloquist since that time.
But I am coming back. In a way, the powers that be have deemed it. They let me apply for school because they knew there would be no other way I would back off. But now I have been 'condemned' to live here in New York until I hear otherwise. I have been commanded to do nothing but lavish myself and fall in love.
And its working. That's the miracle of my period. I decided to write about it today because its not spotting. It went away the day after, and I was disappointed that, although the park brought on this spark of life, it was soon quelled by the Monday grind. But yesterday something was ruined. And today, I needed to go to Duane Reed. So this period is unlike any that I have had (naturally occurring, not on birth control) in over three years.
Its the miracle of life.
I also think, in addition to TMI and lack of guarding my personal space, this experience has a "human interest" underneath that I can't think of an easy google keyword for, so perhaps it is at least a tad of the domain of the not yet trampled upon -yet to form a defined crease in the human brain.
"I spend a lot of my time thinking about_____" is one of OkCupid's open-ended questions. I tried to think of something esoteric enough to compete with other entries, while at the same time not being pretentious enough to turn the likes of me off. I don't remember what I wrote.
But the other day, I finally achieved my nirvana -at least the one I have been attaining to for at least the last couple of months, if not years. A day to myself. A day where I could wake up, and let my mind play, and let my body follow. A day, in other words, where I was just a vessel, an almost unobstructed one, and the life energy could flow through me at will.
Of course I woke up late, ate cereal, and read the paper. Then I made coffee and didn't turn on my music so I could hear the birds in what I realized last night was our own personalized urban forest fortress. (All of the surrounding backyards are overgrown, and our cement-space is oddly lower than the rest, and so the surrounding fence looks monstrous.)
And then I resisted all bait by house mates and friends, tied on my sneakers, and headed out for what, I also realized when my house mate told me to call him when I got back so we could go pick up some food, is adequately termed a Day Run. One where I carry my metrocard, gunnysack, map, and follow the streets.
It was
THE PERFECT DAY. I left a little late, and so the midday sun was one my Senegalese host family would have balked and told me to avoid. People were out for the Cherry Blossom Festival, right down the street. I smelled, and saw every conceivable good memory I have ever had. As I ran through the neighborhoods, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Gowanus canal, the backwards streets where no one lives, Chirilagua, the countryside on the train in Japan...I smelled burning trash and pupusas and the incense Fary lit in the pot while I laid on her bed in a pool of sweat.
And then Prospect Park. I was honestly jittering with life. I was higher than 3 times as high as I've ever been. Every cell of my body was pressing against its walls and making as much surface contact with the green grass, the water fountain with the kid taking too long, the couples sleeping on each others laps. The mom speaking Spanish, and all I could get was she was dishing back her daughter's attitude. The games played, the giant fat families barbecuing, the chubby hipsters with greasy too-long goatees trying to skateboard. I could smile at each one.
And then I realized, "I spend a lot of time thinking about" bombs. Terrorist attacks. Honestly. Every moment, its on the back of my mind. It is a loop that is factored into all of my processing. What if a bomb went off right now? What would I do? Would I survive? How would this situation change? Who would live and who would die? How would we help each other? Who would be helping who? How long would we be trapped in here? I imagine the relationships that would develop between the smelly homeless man with all his bags of recycling, the crazy Wolof woman speaking and singing in tongues to everyone but me, the gangster playing his music so loud I am pissed off for him and how loud it must be in his ears. The woman whose toes I've stepped on five times trying not to lose my balance when I let go of the bar to change the page.
I think of it now, in Prospect Park. Park Therapy, I call it. Just take any disgruntled, disadvantaged single man and plant him in this park on this day and he would be cured. In fact, now I keep my mind out for it. And I see them, all over. Many immigrants. Men. Sitting on park benches alone. Yet here, I don't feel creeped out by them. I could almost go sit with them, but I'm running. And then there's post-park life. But in the park, I decide while waiting for the kid to slurp the giant water bubbles, its heaven. Honestly, if I die, let me carry this image with me on repeat for all eternity.
I get home. I water my flowers. I cook for myself and then have a few beers with Brad and his friend on the roof. And then I go to the garden. But before that, I go to the bathroom.
You might want to stop reading now.
Ok, I warned you. I got my period. For the first time. In over three years. Well, that's almost true. I've gotten some spotting. But all these spottings seemed random. This time, I can almost feel, I know I got it from the park. What does this mean? Am I wedded to the Universal Soul? Perhaps. Its all part of the same thing...my body only comes to life to produce life when its fully alive. I don't know why I have this...but my body is not going to let me produce unless I infuse the life I create with life. All of it.
I lost my period when I went to Peace Corps. Reasons unknown -diet, heat, stress. I think its because I fully relinquished myself -we even talked about it, Jenna and I, in one of the first few weeks, while we biked from Thies to Popenguine. The onion analogy - we peeled back each layer until there was nothing left, and saved the pieces to wrap ourselves back up when we went home. I went further than most others. I've literally been operating my body, even my mind, and my spirit, like a ventriloquist since that time.
But I am coming back. In a way, the powers that be have deemed it. They let me apply for school because they knew there would be no other way I would back off. But now I have been 'condemned' to live here in New York until I hear otherwise. I have been commanded to do nothing but lavish myself and fall in love.
And its working. That's the miracle of my period. I decided to write about it today because its not spotting. It went away the day after, and I was disappointed that, although the park brought on this spark of life, it was soon quelled by the Monday grind. But yesterday something was ruined. And today, I needed to go to Duane Reed. So this period is unlike any that I have had (naturally occurring, not on birth control) in over three years.
Its the miracle of life.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
People I met today
In one corner: Two gristly bearded old men, one with crooked legs and a cane.
In the other: The Lebanese version of Silent Bob, physically, Jay, verbally. (backwards hat, squawking on his cell phone), and his quiet, chizel-faced cashier counterpart.
Jay and Silent Bob pushed the beardeds out of the way -(aggressively)"Hey, can I like, get a little room in here?"
(corner C clueless yuppie...who's attention is drawn like it was to the almost-shoot out, she ran to the door, while others ducked)
Sans-crooked legs: "You better watch who you're talking to, you....apple..butt, you apple butt! Your butt looks just like an apple!"
Jay and Silent Bob: (snatches the cane violently from crooked-legs, setting him off balance) "Hey, let me borrow that!" (he takes the cane and pokes down a package of the cheapest toilet paper, high on the top shelf in the corner, for clueless yuppie)
Crooked-legs: Blinks
In the other: The Lebanese version of Silent Bob, physically, Jay, verbally. (backwards hat, squawking on his cell phone), and his quiet, chizel-faced cashier counterpart.
Jay and Silent Bob pushed the beardeds out of the way -(aggressively)"Hey, can I like, get a little room in here?"
(corner C clueless yuppie...who's attention is drawn like it was to the almost-shoot out, she ran to the door, while others ducked)
Sans-crooked legs: "You better watch who you're talking to, you....apple..butt, you apple butt! Your butt looks just like an apple!"
Jay and Silent Bob: (snatches the cane violently from crooked-legs, setting him off balance) "Hey, let me borrow that!" (he takes the cane and pokes down a package of the cheapest toilet paper, high on the top shelf in the corner, for clueless yuppie)
Crooked-legs: Blinks
***
I'm teepee-shaped, standing on the top rung of a sidewalk bench, which is slippery with drops of sunshower. My hands are on the cool, moldy stone wall of Prospect Park. Eye level is the deep brown of a wet dirt path, just the width of a single stride. I sniff it, just at my nostrils is the freedom of the cultivated outdoors.
"You can do it!" I turn just as I am stepping down, embarassed to perhaps be committing a crime, and see the iconical old couple, woman with a cane in one hand and the other arm linked around her besweatered husband.
"No I can't!"
"Yes you can, come on. Its a far walk otherwise." They stop to wait, and watch.
"You're not going to watch, are you?"
"Yes! And make sure you're ok." They are all smiles.
So I do it, pump my fist, "Bye, thank you!" and am off, into the forest.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Remember the water, the bowl-like silver mess cup. One good, one licked in thick black from using it over the gas stove. The well, where you had to everything but keep your eyes closed...the sun so bright, glinting off the well water, glinting off the water in the bag, glinting off the water as it splashed over crimson-black skin. How good it tasted, right after you hauled it up in your dusty rubber bag with the too-thick new rope. Luke warm, clean, sweet. But still a touch colder than the air. I never did get brave enough to bathe in front of all those women. Fatou. And her baby, Ibu.
Ramadan. Drowning in a pool of my own sweat on my modest bed. Seething in and out of lucidness. Having my soul spill out, into God, mingling with the people around me. Like the heat waves, creeping over and into everyone, and everything. And then those two full cups of water, at sundown, after sweet bread and coffee. How close to heaven they were. The best thing I've ever consumed.
And just the ordinary days, out for a long walk, talking myself dry, and coming into my cool shaded room, dipping the cup into the clay pot, and drinking with no thought. Water was plentiful, thanks to my ancienne at least.
Water is what I need now. Not coffee, not sugar, soda, bags of treats eaten in a day. My tounge, my throat, my lungs, belly, cells even, long for water. Long for those hot days where every cell in my body was exhausted. Now I drink from a Poland Spring disposable sippy bottle, and throw it in the trash. Perhaps the woman who cleans it out knows the ways of my former life.
I hate old people. And not the kind that are hard and gnarled but the kind that are soft and puckered. My Aunt Ida is 100 years old. Her fingers turn at 45 degree angles from their origins. She is knotted and grey. But she still cooks for herself every day. She doesn't take any pills. She goes to church, and foodshopping. She doesn't complain, even though, as we helped her into her chair, and took off her shoes, I noticed her toes too go at 45 degree angles. "They're bothering her," Aunt Lorraine said. But you would never know.
Or Mam Sagar. Gnarly old woman is she. Mouth like a spit fire, like a flaming dragon angry at every turn. She spurts it out to each kid who crosses her path. She breathes flames over the chores the older ones "make" her do. To the poor job the wives do on tasks she used to do a hundred years ago, in harsher conditions. Walking seven miles with a basin on her head, from when the sun hits the zenith until it sets. However many trips the better. She rubs her knees every night. Arthritis racks her whole body. All the old joints. Mam Maru was up every morning before anyone else. Walking buckets of water to her exquisite garden with her bare feet, stiff like planks. She told me, if she didn't move all day, well then she'd just be sitting in her chair, hurting.
But women here, fat Americans, who sit down at the first sign of aches and pains, and point their gnarled finger (the only thing) at the younger ones to get this, get that. Women who give up the only gift that God has gave them...a body through which to interact with the world. Lungs to sense if the cold air is moist or dry, and what pollutions in it. Hands to put lotion on, to play with hair, to work through grains. Legs to strain against the hill, to burn from repitition, to carry you until they're numb and you are just a walking cloud. A heart, to beat so fast that blood is rushing through your body and it dissolves you into a sea of oxygen. God gave us a soul, yes, but a soul is nothing without a body to act it out. A painter that holds the brush is not a painter at all.
Ramadan. Drowning in a pool of my own sweat on my modest bed. Seething in and out of lucidness. Having my soul spill out, into God, mingling with the people around me. Like the heat waves, creeping over and into everyone, and everything. And then those two full cups of water, at sundown, after sweet bread and coffee. How close to heaven they were. The best thing I've ever consumed.
And just the ordinary days, out for a long walk, talking myself dry, and coming into my cool shaded room, dipping the cup into the clay pot, and drinking with no thought. Water was plentiful, thanks to my ancienne at least.
Water is what I need now. Not coffee, not sugar, soda, bags of treats eaten in a day. My tounge, my throat, my lungs, belly, cells even, long for water. Long for those hot days where every cell in my body was exhausted. Now I drink from a Poland Spring disposable sippy bottle, and throw it in the trash. Perhaps the woman who cleans it out knows the ways of my former life.
I hate old people. And not the kind that are hard and gnarled but the kind that are soft and puckered. My Aunt Ida is 100 years old. Her fingers turn at 45 degree angles from their origins. She is knotted and grey. But she still cooks for herself every day. She doesn't take any pills. She goes to church, and foodshopping. She doesn't complain, even though, as we helped her into her chair, and took off her shoes, I noticed her toes too go at 45 degree angles. "They're bothering her," Aunt Lorraine said. But you would never know.
Or Mam Sagar. Gnarly old woman is she. Mouth like a spit fire, like a flaming dragon angry at every turn. She spurts it out to each kid who crosses her path. She breathes flames over the chores the older ones "make" her do. To the poor job the wives do on tasks she used to do a hundred years ago, in harsher conditions. Walking seven miles with a basin on her head, from when the sun hits the zenith until it sets. However many trips the better. She rubs her knees every night. Arthritis racks her whole body. All the old joints. Mam Maru was up every morning before anyone else. Walking buckets of water to her exquisite garden with her bare feet, stiff like planks. She told me, if she didn't move all day, well then she'd just be sitting in her chair, hurting.
But women here, fat Americans, who sit down at the first sign of aches and pains, and point their gnarled finger (the only thing) at the younger ones to get this, get that. Women who give up the only gift that God has gave them...a body through which to interact with the world. Lungs to sense if the cold air is moist or dry, and what pollutions in it. Hands to put lotion on, to play with hair, to work through grains. Legs to strain against the hill, to burn from repitition, to carry you until they're numb and you are just a walking cloud. A heart, to beat so fast that blood is rushing through your body and it dissolves you into a sea of oxygen. God gave us a soul, yes, but a soul is nothing without a body to act it out. A painter that holds the brush is not a painter at all.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Seed
I just want to note...
Today I discovered Time Magazine's 25 Best Blogs 2009. I've been searching and asking around to find good blogs to finally make the transition.
Well, this is one of perhaps 3 days at work where I haven't drank coffee, and I have a constant slight buzz that keeps you working at maximum capacity straight through 9-5 without thinking of food or spacing out...
I noted the difference: back from Senegal, (though that's no excuse, but has worked swimmingly to my convenience)...I feel drugged and claustrophobic by the onslaught of TV shows, podcasts, apps, blogs, indie movies and music, books, and witty magazines.
I already felt overwhelmed by books and movies, (the sense of awe and minutia of the days of Barnes and Noble is no more), but being set back a few years admist a digital explosion made me just want to twirl my hair and space out.
Today, thanks to Google reader, I feel like I have finally caught hold. But what I wanted to note, was, the moment of hesitation. The moment of wavering on the edge, before dropping into this brave new world of digital media.
Just thought this megapixel of reflection might be of worth to everyone else who made this progression more in the vain of stepping into the ocean....
Today I discovered Time Magazine's 25 Best Blogs 2009. I've been searching and asking around to find good blogs to finally make the transition.
Well, this is one of perhaps 3 days at work where I haven't drank coffee, and I have a constant slight buzz that keeps you working at maximum capacity straight through 9-5 without thinking of food or spacing out...
I noted the difference: back from Senegal, (though that's no excuse, but has worked swimmingly to my convenience)...I feel drugged and claustrophobic by the onslaught of TV shows, podcasts, apps, blogs, indie movies and music, books, and witty magazines.
I already felt overwhelmed by books and movies, (the sense of awe and minutia of the days of Barnes and Noble is no more), but being set back a few years admist a digital explosion made me just want to twirl my hair and space out.
Today, thanks to Google reader, I feel like I have finally caught hold. But what I wanted to note, was, the moment of hesitation. The moment of wavering on the edge, before dropping into this brave new world of digital media.
Just thought this megapixel of reflection might be of worth to everyone else who made this progression more in the vain of stepping into the ocean....
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