Dress Sizes

Celestial Heavens
Mt Sinai
New York City (Upper and Lower Manhattan, including the Subway)
India
Magic Fairy Land
All unnamed stars in the galaxy (and islands in the Bahamas not yet purchased by Jimmy Buffet and other celebrities)

Dear Collective World Forces and Keeper of Destinies,

(Includes: Gods < all varieties>, Buddha, Genesah, Cupid, the Tooth Fairy, Fairy God Mother, Glenda, the good witch of the North, The Charmed Ones, and my Karma Fairies)

Subject:  Me

Today was low, a new low for even me.  I know I don’t pray or make offerings, go to buildings of worship or drop money into baskets, rub died fake rabbit’s feet or look for money under my pillow.  I tried that one time back in February of ‘94 that night I was standing on the other side of the twelve M16s separated by non-bullet proof glass, but after that I resumed my disbelief in all things ethereal–by the way, thanks for getting me out that situation in Singapore—because I really don’t know any of you all that well.   I wanted to believe, but all my life I’ve watched the collective touch other’s lives in magical ways that frankly befuddled and perplexed.  Your practices for disbursement and random miracles rarely made sense to me.

This brings me to the subject, me.  I read Buddha’s teachings (the abridged version), and I’ve bought into the whole Yin and yang theory of life.  At first, I thought this was paraphrasing the sentiment of the Rolling Stones, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, but after twenty-seven-hundred knocks from life and as many turns of fate, I saw the pattern.  I got it almost down to the last period.  I see that it’s practical magic, and that I only have to wait to see the good card after a bad card is flipped over. I do see it, in my life anyway.

Over the years, I’ve cursed the concept because it didn’t seem to apply to everyone evenly, rather it seemed favors were played or cashed in depending on who was dialing the heavens.   I’ve bitched about this to a few of you over the years but since the only response I ever got back for broadcasting my problems out to the heavens was more strife, which was meant to push me harder, I suspended my faith permanently.  Oh goodie I’d respond, another test to validate myself-worth, strength and overall commitment to my good self.  Often it felt that I was pushed harder than others because of my stance on all things ethereal, as I’ve endured and proved over and over again that I am all that, and have waited and waited, and got nothing for the sweat and tears.

I know there isn’t anything coming to me that I am not responsible for – cause and effect, yin and yang, and destiny is mine to write, rewrite, and even then, I might choose to change it, and faith in celestial beings is my choice should I choose to make it, or need a crutch to help me along the way.  OK, so you all know that I know that I have the key to me and hold the energy and power to alter my destiny.    I get it.

The thing is today’s triple whammy hit me hard.  Three rejections before noon, love, job, and Editor, come on that’s too much, even for me.  I’ve paid my dues times ten to the power of ten, plus infinity.  Stop testing me.  It’s a lot to ask of you since we’re not on a first name basis and I only tend to write to you when I on my knees.  Since you all have the power to flick the tides of fate,  go on, just do it – send me some positive aura kisses, give me a break.

Waiting on the bridge,

I don’t want to write about you, and how I don’t feel right inside when the gap between us is so wide or when we spar, everything inside of me wells up and there is no fresh air getting through – I don’t wear anger well, or the time you are away. I dislike how I feel primitive with my expressions.  Your vanilla and I am not, you rationalize, and I cannot.  You accept and I fight.  You’re inside the lines and I like it when I cross against the lights.   But when you wrap your arms, around me, there is only passion, and it swallows me completely and in that moment, I re-bloom.  With passion comes conflict and it’s not easy.  I think you prefer cerebral conflicts to the heat of a passionate heart.
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There are a great many posts of late by women saying they have the blues and are feeling like their own skin is a size too small.  There is something in the air women are saying, maybe a funk has settled in, worse than the cold, harsher than the flu, debilitating like pneumonia, and that nothing is moving forward.  We’re taking steps forward, but the wind is pushing-pushing, pushing us around and damn-it, it’s taking our spirit too.  Those damn Karma fairies are holding back on the good news, a winning lottery ticket, come-hither stares from a lanky stranger, they’re holding back on all those little intangible perks in life we inhale greedily and take for granted when we’re not under that grey cloud of the blues.
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I dislike making lists.  I pride myself on my memory, and ability to unfold the recent events that might make up the numbered items on the twice-folded piece of paper shoved into the right pocket of a pair of blue jeans and referred to as needed.   It goes against my grain, and if I was to peel back the layers, I’m sure I’d find that the act of scribing notes to myself is associated  with mental weakness.  It’s not, of course, it’s a pride thing. I have amazing short-term recall, but it’s the older memories that blur between fact and fiction.
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**Breathe, one, two, three, wait before jumping over the edge.**
Mine is a cursed heart and was the moment I told the tall, lanky man that I wanted to kiss him.  Who knew he’d kiss me back, or that kiss would send me spiraling out of control?  Since that moment, I took to writing love letters.  I write letters of love, of anger, or loss, of ache, or pain, and from almost the same instance, we started our love affair, I wrote ‘love me no more’ letters, and please ‘ release me letters’.  I beg him to be strong and not contact me—since I am the weaker one—but apparently he is weaker than I since he has never truly let me get too far away or go too long without pulling me back in.  He goes silent for a while, which hurts at first but I gradually resume normal breathing until he pops up in my instant message window, and we tango, spare, and begin again.

Some people blog to tell a story, to confess, to become famous, and then there are those of us who come out of the closet with their heartache with the wild notion of self-curing.  I don’t know if that will happen here or not, but there isn’t anything to be lost.

Over the edge, and damn the rules….
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The sound of love,

the rrrrr, trill consonants

rolling r’s,

brrrlak,

a language

understood only by lovers

falling

over the edge,

plummeting downwards

into the arms of the lover.

They touch ground

heel-toe-heel-toe

they circle ’round

faster and faster

the dust whipping

in a frenzy at their heels

their arms weaving

overhead until

finger tips graze,

lovers ignited by

the rush

of the touch.

A dance once

started, too late

to stop, hips gyrating

slowly- in four-four time

steady at first,

a frenzied flurry

of tempo follows

the lovers in

their whirl around

the space between

their clothed bodies

dancing faster

faster

until there is only

the space

of

a

breath

rrrrr, the thrill

found in rush of a

silent touch.

I the first time I heard the song Brrlak,I thought this is what love sounds like when it’s nipping are your heels.  Thanks ZM, for the insight and the inspiration.

bg

I dislike making lists.  I pride myself on my memory, and ability to unfold the recent events that might make up the numbered items on the twice-folded piece of paper shoved into the right pocket of a pair of blue jeans and referred to as needed.   It goes against my grain, and if I was to peel back the layers, I’m sure I’d find that the act of scribing notes to myself is associated with mental weakness.  It’s not, of course, it’s a pride thing. I have amazing short-term recall, but it’s the older memories that blur between fact and fiction.

When Billy started having his minute memory losses, ultimately diagnosed as a malignant brain tumor, I started writing, a way of making lists I think.  I didn’t want to remember his march to death, but to remember how I got there, which eventually lead to the unthinkable, ‘where do I want to go’ question.  His journey, a fight to his right at life, wasn’t so different from mine, only I didn’t have doctors poisoning my body with chemicals, and cutting me with knives, rather I did that myself with introspection.  I clearly had the better end of the deal, and now that Billy is gone having lost his fight, and I am still here, fighting a different battle—acceptance for those things I cannot change.

I didn’t take if lying down because it felt too much like a shrug of the shoulders, and oh well that is life, what could I do about the cards I was dealt sort of feeling.  I don’t know if my life is predetermined, and regardless of what I do differently now if it will change the events ahead of me, or if I do alter my course now if I’ll end up at the same place regardless, who knows for sure.  Acceptance of loss didn’t mean that I had to surrender or find a rocking chair for the front porch, and wait around for my spirit to leave me.  It simply meant I had a choice.
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I enjoy the overstuffed Laura Ashley chinch cushions scattered carelessly around my cerebral office, like a cup of Joe on the go, so is my office. An anywhere room to retreat to, make notes in, to take comfort in, to sip Coppla’s Claret from cut crystal wine glasses, as needed.  I purposely decorated the virtual Room of my Own to resemble the real one—it reduced my bank balance by eighty thousand dollars and the single biggest purchase in my vast, and color-tainted life—because the physical room is the gateway to me.  It’s where my girl and boy collect.   ‘Mommy, can I?  Where are my…? Do you know..?  I need twenty dollars.  Do you have a book called Wuthering Heights?’  I wonder if the eighty thousand was wasted.

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Dear Lover~

I read an article tonight in the Arts and Entertainment section on the Wall Street Journal’s website. The article was about the loss of artist’s—poets and all others—muses. The writer mentioned Zelda, Gala, Yoko, Gonne, Georgia, and Suzanne (Fitzgerald, Dali, Lennon, Yeats, Stieglitz, and Balanchine’s respectively). There were other famous muses that I remember reading about over the years, it also mentioned others that I had no knowledge of, my incomplete education, I assumed.

The journalist only mentioned male writers, and their female muses! Appalling reporting I thought, what about us women, and our muses. I have to think all women artists have their own muses, but I couldn’t think of any except for Lillian’s Dash. According to the WSJ writer, the muse-world has thinned out, and while the male artist might still have a muse, the infamous relationship between the muse and the artist is no longer. My heart ached for the romance of the past.
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My family tree is sparse.  What I know about previous generations I learned by hiding behind the sofa when I was supposed to be in bed while the adults sat around the kitchen table reminiscing. I have more Intel from my mom’s side of the family because she and her sister’s were storytellers without knowing it. I wonder sometimes if this influence has something to do with my love of writing, and making up stories.

My Latin family had secrets, exotic and mysterious ones, and the only way to learn them was to resort to tactile maneuvers while the girls—my mom and her sisters–poured sweet wine into their tumblers while listening to an eclectic selection of albums, the combo set the tone for the story hours.  Telling stories preceded dancing, which meant the LP’s dropping down on the Magnavox were the mellow sounds of my dad’s collection.  It was probably Eddie Fisher, Patsy Cline, The Four Tops, and Dean Martin, anything pleasant that didn’t get the foot taping or change their mood.  A ritual went along with our annual family reunion dinners, rowdy drinking music during dinner preparation, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw during dinner, and then after, background music during their memory weaving.  Much later, there would be more wine, and dancing music.
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