Coup

 So.  

In 2020 I left a job I'd been in for 30 years to live my dream.  Not the dream of running.  The dream of puzzling. In 2020 my child became a man, to some extent.  We have been in quarantine, on a global scale.  We have been in the streets, on a global scale.  The divides are unfathomable when I look into them.  I'm not always looking.

When I'm 54

Because I write down my dreams, I've become aware that I'm running in my dreams these days.  Running for joy, speed, strength and freedom.  Running to use my muscles and my lungs.  Running in a limited but unobstructed space, either roundabout through interconnecting hallways or back and forth across a bordered field.  

I will be at the end of an obligation, when I realize I'm "alone" in the sense of having no further obligations and nowhere to be, and in that second I'll see where I am and think "now I can run!"  There are people here and there and everywhere, but I'm unobserved and solitary, apart, owing them nothing.  I get to really, finally, fully feel my body and just run.

In this morning's birthday dream, I'm at the end of an obligation and I think "now I can run!  But... let's see if I can run as well as I run in my dreams..." (insert some self-doubt here)

It takes a little extra concentration, because I don't believe I'm dreaming, so it's got to be harder in the real life I'm dreaming I'm in.  But I find that by doubling down on my focus and determination, I'm able to do what I do in my dreams, and it's liberating.

So that's where I'm at at 54.  I'm gonna run with it.

 

Poverty

I gave $20 to someone holding a homeless veteran sign in the frigid temperatures, because she was a woman and I decided to believe her, even if there's some chance her sign is a lie or a half-truth.  Also, I had just spontaneously invoked the "cash back" option when buying groceries, without really knowing why I would need $20 (lottery tickets? snacks? a latte or four?), so its purpose seemed to be presenting itself to me in an instantaneous, looming fashion from the karma bank.  

I do navigate by synchronicity, and enjoy really taking that ride with fate and free will.

The bundled-up woman told me to have a blessed day, kindly and soberly.  Not a "bless-ed" day as in "Bless-ed are the meek," but "blessed" as a rhyme for rest, which is a welcome rhyme in my mind.  She had the demeanor and vocal tone of a friendly shopkeeper, rather than conveying the persona of a down-and-out soul who has run out of options.  I didn't need her to be sad and convincingly wretched, though.  It felt benevolent: not my gift, but her perky blessing in return.  

When my son needed cash later that day, I didn't have any for him.  In fact, we're not going to be able to pay for his college, let alone this movie date with Emily.  There is no fund, no plan, but also no fear, because of the way I have always lived.  

As a child I learned to ride any wave and take my luck wherever I found it, trusting that things would just work out somehow.  I was acquisitive.  Yes, I was even a disingenuous little thief at times. But mostly I was just taking what was available or given.  I was appreciative of hand-me-downs, willing to work (babysitting), and I hitchhiked when I had to or wanted to.  I ate what was served wherever I went.  I loved sleepovers with friends who had interesting toys to play with, like marionettes and horseshoes and kaleidoscopes and jacks, and it was really their exotica I loved, more than it was their hot running water for the tub, the way that every room in the house was warm, and the lack of fleas. 

There was some built-in privilege underpinning my luck that I wasn't aware of then, which allowed my mother to make good choices about where we lived and where we went to school, choices that made my childhood safe and stimulating despite our poverty.  

I'm not sure how to end this essay.  I like middles and I like inconclusive statements and I like ambiguities. 












 

gratitude

It's not easy to 
write a clue for inward (try)
but it's easier

than birthing a child
for twenty plus four hours
redefining love

I would not emerge
until a child emerging
broke my containment

I found my new voice
a worshipful profane growl
for the child in me

she's fiercer than I
could ever have imagined
her silence darker

while the child, fifteen
devotes this hour to Snapchat
a bored miracle


 














 
 

The Struggle is Real

What is the struggle these days?  

I struggle with my own reactions to raging ego, the ineffective and humiliating mechanisms I go through to dampen the intensity or consequences of a rager's self-centered explosiveness.  Typically I just play along with the false premise that the source of the outrage is a big deal, just to quiet a mother fucker down. 

The mother fucker is an entity who stalks me, wearing different masks, not always a man's mask, in fact just as often a woman's.  Don't assume I'm talking about my husband, my boss, my employee, my mother, my father, or my best friend.  It could be one, all, or none of those entities on any given day over the last 50 years or so.

To be clear, though, it's never been my son.  He's consistently kind and forgiving, like me, god bless him.  We two shall inherit whatever's left of the earth.

It is not and never will be, by any objective measure, a big deal, this editor's disagreement with your correction, the fact that someone drives too slow in the left lane, the fifth telemarketer not honoring the no-call list, the dishes piling up in the sink, the car not starting, the cat shitting outside of the box. 

Here's the thing.

IT'S NOT PERSONAL.  NOBODY IS TRYING TO MAKE YOU FEEL DISRESPECTED. 

Can we be mildly annoyed?  Rational?  Solution-oriented?  Generous?  

An inauthentic self arises in me when I pretend that the thing you're raging about is as important as a nuclear disaster.  It's like I'm acting in a play, and I'm somehow getting paid for it, but I haven't figured out my motivation so I'm just delivering lines I've rehearsed and am relieved when the scene ends.  I learned as a child that you just agree with a rager and things calm down sooner.  I'm learning as an adult that there's no end to it, just no fucking end to it, unless I learn to do something different.

I just don't know yet what that something different is.



 

Dream noir

John Lithgow died somewhere in my house, in his sleep, while visiting us.  Maybe in the basement?  It's not my fault.  But it is my problem.  The longer I wait to alert the authorities, the worse it's looking, the more complicit and criminal and indefensible my inaction will seem to be.  When a bad thing like that happens, you don't just wait three days until it's convenient to call the authorities, but that's what I've done.  There's just a lot of other shit going on right now.  

For example, there's a party happening, and I'm the hostess, preventing sleepy-seeming teenage boys from stumbling toward the guest bed in the curtained-off cellar corner.  

I can see a huge, inert human shape under blankets on that bed, in the dim cellar light.  I've not actually examined or confirmed that it's the larger-than-life famous actor.  I'm trusting what I've come to believe, but you couldn't pay me to go lift that blanket.  I just keep hoping the shape will be gone the next time I look over there, like he wasn't really dead after all, and got up and left on his own.  

I'm aware that perhaps people are even now beginning to look for John Lithgow at the hotel he was supposed to check out of several days ago.  They'll be asking the taxi driver where he got dropped off.  So, like, it will not look good if I haven't made the call before that search party arrives at my door.  

What am I going to say about this thing though?  What lie sounds more defensible than the truth, that I just didn't want to deal with it and hoped it would go away?

And yes, I am also sad about the loss of this fine man to the world.  I do feel that.  But it's not the dominant anguish.  I'm seething, because this should not be my job right now.  I should not be held accountable for hiding an unwieldy dead body, nor should I be punished for delaying its necessary revelation.  I didn't invite this burdensome man into my home, and I am not the one who killed him.  

He just died, and I'm probably gonna hang for it, because I'm sure a woman must pay the price for John Lithgow dying in her house.




  

Oppression

A late September dream that should probably come with a trigger warning not fully conveyed by the title.
__________________

He's barely conscious, and he's taking up all the space on our king-sized bed, crushing me.  Maybe he's dreaming, maybe he's drunk, maybe he's dense.  But I can't get him to wake up and be aware.  He persists in crushing me, and when roused he's like an angry bull about it.  I'm so sensitized to gently managing his inert self-interest that I can extricate myself unobtrusively, moving over to his side of the bed when he rolls over me to occupy mine, at which point he falls half off the bed.  He can't even stay on the bed he's so unwieldy and restless and out of it.  I can't ever get out from under.  Every time I free myself, he rolls to where I am.  When I try to help him get back on the bed, and I get out of the space he's trying to occupy, he begins to wake and becomes enraged.  The light is dim, but I can see once he's got me pinned again that he's silent-rage-screaming an inch from my face.  I become absolutely still.  I can't fight back.  All I can do is hope he doesn't kill me.  He's much larger than any human, though his face is much like one I used to love.

 

 

Logo

I'll be changing my logo.

First, I need the old logo.  
Make it recognizable, but no longer right.
Betty Boop's face, or a ladybug.

We need a new logo that says:   
Magnificent In Her Reckoning

and an old logo that says:   
cute! no trouble (-:
  
I'm changing my logo.

Not to the "om" symbol, though I like the design.  
I can't scream it.

Not the equation for the speed of light, though I like the calculation. 
I can't scream it.

I'll become crow by night,
screaming.
I'll become crow in swan's clothing by day,
dreaming.



 

 






 

  




 

 

 

 



 

Detonated Diary

"Detonated Diary" is the title I gave that piece I wrote when I was 25 for a "Vietnam and the Artist" class in college, which I re-read a month ago when I was 53 (before letting my dad have a copy), and in which I re-encountered forgotten material about the lover who died obscenely young of cancer after telling me we'd be friends for life but also admitting that I'd never be plan A for him.  (Plan A was a married woman named Tricia.  That part's not forgotten.)  While looking for that piece, I also rummaged through old diaries and saw a sketch I made from memory of that same guy, because I had no photograph of him and liked him that much, not because he was not long for this world, which I didn't know yet when I made the sketch.  I also wrote down his birthday, December 26, 1959.  

And on my knees in the basement unearthing all this I muttered under my breath... "fucking Capricorn"

He was good though, a good friend, and I sometimes still sense his infuriatingly platonic presence and love for me, like he'll meet me on the bridge, he'll be there when it's my time, all smiles and teddy bear warmth, with those brown eyes and those biceps.

(but I'm still not plan A, I get it...)

Maine-bound

driving into storms
"wimple-shipers" slapping time
(the child in her sings)

she grew in this place
of grim pilgrim settlements
quaint villages now

white-steepled churches
in wild terrain or in towns
blueberries and god

rosehips and seaweed
pidgen-speaking lobstermen
ancient new english

we breathe salt, eat fish
admire authors, work hard
and keep to ourselves

we were bound for Maine
and to it, and then away
too restless to stay



 

 


 
 




 

Totality

I was born three weeks late on a full moon.  I mean, it was full if you looked at the sky.  But it wasn't quite full.  It was 10 degrees shy.  

Shy, but luminous, imminently full without attaining the real deal, existing in that state of anticipation just before you step onto a stage, when your heart is in your throat, and time stands still.  I don't have to perform yet.  I don't have to abandon a secret joy or cope with a disillusionment when everything's suspended like this, in suspense, pending.

I like it best when the gift is in my lap and I haven't yet pulled the ribbon.  I like it best when the roller coaster is about to crest. "There's more to this story" is music to my ears.  Ambiguity is at the heart of all my favorite poems.

Shy is the neutral ground between performing and self-destructing.  Anonymity is the refuge, until I see that I haven't ever been seen, that I'm disappearing (without a trace). 

At 15 I wore the cigarette and the flannel shirt with unlaced boots of the girls who weren't good, but I was good.  I hated Aerosmith and pretended to like them.  I knew every Joni Mitchell song by heart and feigned indifference.  I was ambivalent, and I could become anything, for anyone.  I loved a guy madly, secretly, but I was eclipsed. 

Monday I will celebrate turning 53 during a solar eclipse.  I like how this is a new moon, and maybe I'm coming full circle with this one.  Maybe I can imagine being full finally, and holding onto that fullness.  Until then, I will make shadows here.






 

different

He might be all of 18, my slave.

You think this is another dream.
It's something different.

He has something to say, something to sign.
My arms are full but I happen to be empty. 
So I'm already listening before he speaks.
Today for no reason this stranger is different.

You seem so different he says. 
By different, he means kind. 
Kind is different (though they're antonyms).
I'm kind of different, for my kind.

Write your number down right here he says
pointing to a line on his petition.
if you want me to be your slave.
?? (smile)
Oh I know you ain't like that.

This kid.

He doesn't know that I am like that.






 

The Ex

Spent an hour with the ex (and others) this week.  Remembered everything, what I love about him, why it wasn't sustainable.

He's so very bright.  He's so very embittered.  He's so very funny.  He takes up space.

But yeah, I keep seeking that out anyway, in new contexts, new faces, and making sparks with it.  That's some kind of sustainable after all.  I'm better at filling my own space now.
 

Driven

I'm in what should be the driver's seat, but I have no steering wheel. He's in what should be passenger's seat, driving confidently, as if we're in England and always have been in England.  I think we're like besties on this road trip, ever so close, and getting ever closer, with me just kicking back enjoying the scenery, him being charming and driving well, but in the next scene he says a thing that makes me completely doubt my understanding of things. 

We're at the destination, a bed and breakfast, settling in, affectionately I think.  He's moving clothes from his suitcase into a dresser like the orderly, organized, ready-to-be-present-where-he-is guy (whereas I always just keep my suitcase packed and voila! I'm also ready... to escape at a moment's notice).  I notice there's only a single bed in this room.  Yay, I guess we'll be cozy?   

"It's clear from that drive that there's no 'we'," he declares calmly.  Even kindly, like a teacher.  "But at least we're connecting."  

Whoa.

The implication is that I should not have been so passively content with being driven by him.  I'm challenged to also drive-choose-speak-steer-dare-risk and in the end *unpack* if I want him and me to be "we". 



 

omg

oh for this embrace
my listening heart dilates
god breaks me open

oh in love's caught breath
my speaking heart cursing "you"
god leaves me broken





 
 

 

Summer

I saw my father in the summertime only, between age 6 and age 12.  Those Grand Rapids summers felt like a separate timeline, as if the airplane were really a time machine.  My big sister and I would get put into the time machine just after school ended, and two hours later we would find ourselves in a different family with a different mother and little sisters who speak Latvian, in a hot, rudely racist city instead of the politely racist, lily-white boondocks of our schooldays in rural Maine.  I'd pick up right where I left off, as if I'd never left these alternate best friends nine months before: sweet, clever Beverly across Sutton SW with her geeky, curly-haired big brother and her kind, boozy single mom in the stereotypical house dress, and nasty talking Janet on my side of the street with her buzz-cut hooligan brothers and her terrifying (dare I say menacing) evangelical parents.

It was always steamy and sizzling back then, unlike now.  Are summers milder?  Or is it just that back then we cooled ourselves in front of fans, most of us, while talking into the spinning blades in that way that fragments sound, just to amuse ourselves and pass the time.  Janet's family did have a huge air conditioning unit in their living room, the only one in the neighborhood.  But their blinds were always drawn, and neighbor children were rarely allowed to enter the house.  I remember enduring a dim, chilly bible-reading in that cool, dark room one time, the price of admission.  It felt like a funeral parlor, like you could almost see a coffin, and I never went back.  Usually we all met outside, on porches and in the street, where summer is meant to be lived, and I still prefer a living demon humidity to a dead god chill because of my memory of that room.  I still don't like AC. 

Also during those Michigan summers, my sister and I attended the local pool for Red Cross swimming lessons and free pool time after.  Either the water was kept icy, or I was just very susceptible to cold.  Ever the free-range child, I rarely remembered to bring a towel or a change of clothes to the pool.  I would get blue-lips shivering with cold, being what even my friends called a "shrimp," and leave the pool from time to time craving warmth and finding no towel.  So I'd crawl to the nearest dry patch of concrete, immediately plaster my face and body against it, splayed out, cheek and chest and wrist warming to the radiant substance beneath me.  I loved that sensation no end.  I'd close my eyes, soak up the heat, and breathe in that distinct smell of chlorinated water, summer skin and baking concrete.

The poolside warming ritual came back to me in a rush the other day when I smelled that smell.  And I missed her yet again, that girl I was when summers were alternate yet endless.
   
 



 

It's all written down in the book

The caretaker is a warm, nurturing guy who safeguards my interior spaces while I'm gone and warns me away from certain dark subterranean areas when I'm exploring.  Or he might direct me to a certain locker or shelf to retrieve something I need for my travels.  There is always the understanding that he'll water my plants and care for my orphans (a pet or a child) if I'm gone a while, or even if I never return, which is always possible.  He appeared weekly in my dreams last year, less often these days.

The shopkeeper is a very helpful business woman who keeps accurate records of things: she knows the provenance of every item in her shop, and what its value is.  She is young, brunette, buxom and bright, at ease in her role, and literally in charge of gifts.  Her shop is always a gift shop filled with ornate novelties and tiny treasures.  She has helpers, but also many customers.  If things go wrong I can go to her for help, but I'll have to wait my turn like everybody else.
 
I do a lot of sorting in my dreams.  In this morning's dream I'm absent-mindedly sorting unredeemed, highly valuable gift certificates someone gave me for safe-keeping into a carousel of unpurchased gift certificates at the gift shop.  I'm distraught when I realize my fault, and unable to retrieve most of the certificates from the carousel, as other customers have picked them out.  They're gone.  Mother says disappointedly, "How could you not know this was a priority?"  Husband gives the familiar eyeroll of contemptuous judgment about my lack of focus on what's most important.  Father is silently oh so sad I squandered these precious gifts.  

But my shopkeeper, God bless her.  She recognizes my distress and appears by my side.  "These certificates are just pieces of paper" she says warmly.  "They can't be redeemed by anyone but the intended recipient.  If they're lost, just come up to the counter.  It's all written down in the book."  

I burst into tears of grief and relief.  My shopkeeper, she patiently smiles like Glinda telling Dorothy that she's always had the power to return to Kansas.  

Good dream.

 

 





 

Iron

it's industrial
it's in the blood
my deficiency shows

iron woman's the iron maiden
to my eye
my open eye

(yes, like Margaret's fish hook)

it's the stuff of ships and shackles
of pregnancies fortified
red meat, dark greens
stew pots and frying pans

she's tough as nails
hobnails and thumbnails
she's driven, like nine-inch nails into teak
she's driving with muscular thumbs

she's all thumbs and nails really
(I like to think)

my deficiency shows

I'll sleep.
when I'm done.
spitting nails.
 


 

 



 

 




 
 

WYSIWYG

I'm never expecting the crone I see in the selfie mode of my phone camera.  The sagging flesh, the wrinkles, the pouches, the stray eyebrow hairs, the blotches, the frizzy wild hair.  The mirror in my deliberately under-lit bathroom usually compromises while I gaze.  Make me 32.  No, but I'll make you 42, how's that.  

I don't work that hard, mind you.  I'm not applying makeup.

I did the thing where you try different angles with the phone to see if I could see something other than the dreaded crone.

I found a much younger version of myself by putting the camera over my head and aiming down, thereby reducing the visibility of my under-eye pouches while including a view that encompassed my tank top and jeans stretched out in an alluring, 32-year-old manner. 

Then I decided to linger on the ugliest views of my face too, while changing filters.  I spent maybe ten minutes doing this, ending with the crone, in chrome.  

I am what I am.  

Childlike, girlish, nubile, womanly, matronly, wizened, wise.  

Hideous, ugly, unremarkable, cute, beautiful.  



 

Free

Today I'm going to skip through puddles like way back when. 

With this hip, I won't straddle-climb door jambs barefooted to the top. But I'll remember when I was all skinny legs and buck teeth 
making that climb.  
I was every bit that girl, until I wasn't.

Today I'm going to sing about simple gifts, 
puff the magic dragon and the cat came back.  
Her songs.
  
I'll hold this aching close, as ever, but not in the song I sing.
Anyway not today.

I might even make a wish about the woman I'll be, long from now.
After the braces come off.

Now that woman can sing.