The Clock Ran Backwards

Saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other night. A two hanky movie. Left me feeling reflective. Watching an elderly baby age backwards for three hours would do that to anyone. I have seldom seen a film where so many characters died. Where a couple can't find happiness together because one is aging while the other gets younger. Where a clock ran backwards. Where a young woman's break-up with her boyfriend is a causal factor in a car accident. An astonishing fable altogether. About aging and time. Since clocks can not run backwards, I resolve to make each moment count.

Only Better

"She's the kind of person you see in the movies, only better." (From a friend about a mutual friend)

Best Gift

My friend Susanne and I saw a concert film about Leonard Cohen today. When the credits rolled during one last amazing song, I got up and danced. Susanne was under a blanket on her couch. I said, "Dance with me." So she did. I, who rarely dance for a host of reasons, danced. Such a tough year. Fell two days ago into another black hole depression, this one briefer than the others. I'm anxious about finding work too much of the time. Even on a holiday. But when I was dancing, I felt saved for about five minutes, completely relaxed and unafraid. Not looking for larger lessons here. My best gift this season was dancing with my friend in the dark.

Comfort

"The mother of the world carries the pain of the world in her heart. Each of us is part of her heart and therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain." (From a Sufi saying in Who Dies? Stephen Levine)

Missing Her

Have failed in my vow to stop watching Hallmark Christmas specials. My mother and I used to watch them together. I imagine she is sitting next to me with that lit-up interested look she used to get about romance on TV.

Stump

- You awake?
- What time is it? she said.
- Still night.
- Ahh.
- I love you. Were you ever in love? Apart from Ambrose?
- Yeah.
He was put off by her casual admission.
- I fell in love with a guy named Stump Jones when I was sixteen.
- Stump!
- There was a problem with the name.

(From In The Skin of a Lion by Michael Andaatje)

The Buzz of Living

My friend Dee and I wait in the freezing dark at 10:30 PM for a #66 Downtown. My bus, not hers. She is wearing a long blue winter coat she purchased in 1964 that is designed for photographers so has a lot of inside pockets. "Ideal coat for shoplifting," she says wryly. I have my mittens over my ears because my stocking cap doesn't quite cover them. We have just spent the evening at her art-jumble house talking about films and writing. She read an exquisite essay written by a friend about being an art student in her twenties in the 30's in Cincinati. A free spirit, even sexually. "I thought all women were repressed then," I said. "Many of us weren't," Dee said. "Hundreds of us." I look at her face alight with the buzz of living and think there isn't anything better than having a friend in her eighties, who admittedly "has only a shred of maternal energy left" in her, but is willing to spend some of that shred on me.

Spell Casting with Potato

My mother transformed her kitchen every Christmas into a haven for Norwegian pastry magic. She baked krumkaka, yulekaka ("kaka" in our language means cake) and my favorite, leftse. Leftse is a pastry made from potatoes, rolled out so thin you could read a newspaper through it and baked on a giant round electric griddle. A delicate process. Any tear in the dough means an instant do over. But if you re-roll the dough too many times, it ends up tough and dry. I did not appreciate how skilled my mom was at this aspect to the art until I tasted bad leftsa. Thick as cardboard. Like eating stacked communion wafers. For my mom, making leftse was a kind of meditation. Mashing the potatoes and making the dough. Rolling out the circle of dough, moving it quickly and expertly onto the griddle with long flat sticks. On the griddle, which is dusted with flour, the leftse bakes for a minute until brown freckles appear and then it is flipped. Burning the lefse while rolling out the next piece is another hazard and requires acute attention, being present in the moment. Once finished, baked and cooled, my mother buttered the lefse. Sprinkled on cinnamon sugar. Rolled the leftse into a cigar-sized log. Then cut the log into delicious bite-size pieces. The night of the leftsa making was one of my mother's loved rituals, a spell-casting with potato.

The Hoop

"In this culture, we look at life as though it were a straight line. The longer the line the longer we imagine we have lived, the wholer we suppose ourselves to be, and the less horrendous we imagine the end point [...]. But in the American Indian culture one, is not seen linearly but rather as a circle which becomes complete at about puberty with the rites of passage. From that time one is seen as a wholeness that continues to expand outward. But once "the hoop" has formed, any time one dies, one dies in wholeness. As the American Indian sage Crazy Horse commented, "Today is a good day to die for all the things of my life are present." (From Who Dies by Stephen Levine)

All Boats

"When women are free to make the most of their skills and ideas, they create a rising tide that lifts all boats." (From Women Empowered, Inspiring Change in the Emerging World, a book of photographs by Phil Borges)

Like a Tent

I remember after my dad died on a Sunday morning crossing the sidewalk in front of the hospital, and people were laughing and talking, coming back from their lunch breaks. Everything had a sense of unreality. Like I was underwater and behind glass looking at the other humans. Today, when I walked out of the animal hospital after watching the quiet and unremarkable and yet remarkable death of the pet of a friend, I had a similar feeling. W.H. Auden was right. "About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters: how well they understood its human position; how it takes place while someone else is eating or just opening a window [...] While the four of us there took turns holding a tiny oxygen mask up to the pug's gray muzzle, cars were passing on the busy street outside probably filled with Christmas shoppers. While the vet made the two quick injections, one to numb and one to stop the heart, we could hear doors opening and closing in the clinic, the receptionist answer the phone. For some things, the only word is "sacred." This little being was one of my relations. I ran on beaches with her, down streets. I held her on my chest in the shade once and sang to her for an hour when I had locked both of us out of her mother's house. She was my companion for days in the seven months I lived with Deborah after my parents were killed. Everyone in the room had a relationship with her. And when she died, we threw our arms around each other and over her body like a tent.

Great Work

“The things that come with celebrity, whether it’s a magazine cover or adulation or money, do not tell me who I am. It didn’t help when I had to cook dinner or scrub floors or take care of my children. It didn’t make any difference when I lost my husband and my brother and had to start my life again. The gods of celebrity don’t care. And no amount of fame or prosperity can replace the value of great work.” (Patti Smith, Dec. 4, 2008, New York Times)

Blessing

I was honored to witness today the death of Kimsu, a pug, and beloved companion to Deborah for twelve years. Kimsu, may the grass be green where you are, the skies blue, the sprinklers far enough away, and may you have the abundant eyes and lungs and bones of a puppy. Bless you.

Gutter Ball

I have to stop watching Hallmark Christmas specials. They are killing me. I just spent two hours with the actor Steve Gutenberg as Santa's son (and heir) in search of a girlfriend and the next Mrs. Claus. He, infinitely adorable and bilingual; she, a buxom blonde who, in real life, is a country western singer. She believed him. She was fine with it. Didn't think he was hallucinating. Do I even believe in Santa? No. In Steve Gutenberg as Santa? No. I am irresistibly drawn to escapist treacle this time of year. Inside, I am so sad. My heart is a gutter ball.

Life's Menu

Don't sense that she's anywhere nearby. She could live on Pluto or in Toledo, run a bookstore, be one of those slightly drifty kind of people who light up when they talk about authors or their favorite sandwich or when they look at you. My friend Kath talked to me today about her husband and how when she needs an hour, he finds it to be with her, how's he's her best friend. Did I forget to mark that box on life's menu? Is is too late?

Absent

Perhaps we were absent from our third grade compassion class when they talked about taking ourselves into our heart. (Stephen Levine)

The Little Fictional People

If I'm not careful, antennae will grow out of my head. I was in bed most of the day with a cold, so channel surfed. But channel surfed much of yesterday too. And the night before. I am worrying about the my diminishing savings, hiring freezes at community health clinics, bad news about the economy seemingly at every turn. What I think the little fictional people in the box can offer me, I don't know.

Free Advice

Today's Tip for Fiction Writers:

To make your writing more vivid, insert a literary device.

Weak: Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the killer's room.

Strong: Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the killer's room, and a metaphor sliced off his head.

-Dave Barry

Straight Lines

Yesterday, a woman led a group of toddlers past my house. They were wearing rain slickers and brightly colored rubber boots and hanging on to a rope but straggling around the way toddlers do, noticing snails, poking each other, stomping in puddles. The woman said, "Why don't you all see if you can get in a straight line?" They looked at her like "are you kidding?"

Harvey Milk

"Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's; without hope the us's give up. I know that you can't live without it, life is not worth living."

Wings

"So those bars I see that restrain your wings, I guess you won't mind if I pry them open." (Rumi)

The Monsters

On Gray's Anatomy tonight, the narrator said that sometimes what we are afraid of at night, the monsters under the bed, are things like loneliness and regret. Brilliant.

Windows

I love opening windows. Just the physical act of opening every window in the house.

Row, Men, Row

Tonight, I spoke at a NAMI Family to Family group, support for people with a family member with a mental illness. I wandered through an elementary school near Sandpoint looking for my room. I saw dioramas in one hall and beautiful sketches of pens in another. A boy named Finn had this poem featured in a display:

Owls hooting
Weird monsters
Laughter in the windows
Superheroes

I also liked one by Lily B.

Dark
Awesome
Radical
Kindle the fireplace

I loved grade school, except for second grade when I had a teacher who didn't care much for children. Mrs. Satcher in third grade was marvelous, a kind face, alight with interest. Mr. Bartlett in Fifth was a bear-like man who at the end of the day used to rub his back luxuriously up and down on the door post of the door and lead us in a countdown as the seconds ticked by ... 10, 9, 8, 7... and then, at the bell, let us rush out pellmell. I finally found my group. Gave my talk, did a Q and A, and went home. Tried to go home. Missed three buses. Was challenged by my directional dyslexia. Couldn't figure out what side of the street to be on. Sang old spirituals and car songs to myself for an hour. Row, men, row to save this Jonah, row, men, row to save this Jonah... My parents, sisters, brother, foster brothers and I used to sing that song and others in the car all the time when I was in grade school. Got nostalgic about that. It's nice when I can hang out in the good of my childhood.

I Am a Hat

Tonight, celebrated a friend's birthday in Fremont and passed a window with knit hats for babies. One looked like a pink cupcake with a cherry on it. Another was cream with a brown stripe and a profusion of brown feathers sprouting from the top. That's me. Have been in mourning all day because my writing class is over. Need to write creatively. To have feathers.

Let It Be

"I'm back." My traditional greeting to myself returning from a depression of any degree. Except I never really leave. I'm always here, however altered. Wish I'd come back from a vacation, say, Canada. Victoria, where I once bought a cherry wood pipe. La Conner, where I once had dinner at The Black Swan with my first lover. Okay, now I could make myself blue again. I'm back. Just let it be that.

Ghost

Don't want to admit how bad it is. The hardest part is I become this other thing. Looking down in the shower just now, I saw my legs but they were somehow not my own.

A Proximal Tenderness

Not One Day at a Time or even One Hour but just this much, the space between the forefinger and the thumb. Just this much can hold a cup of coffee, a shower, another few lines on a resume, a call to a friend. The next task. I have friends who adore me, but now, a proximal tenderness needs to come from me. From inside. "Darling, dearheart, just this much.

Relief

My shrink called back. He always hesitates just a second before he says, hello. How I know it's him. Fifteen years of relief flooding my system when I hear that micro-hesitation.

His Name is Bill

The Valley of Elah, the title of a film, also refers to the valley in which David is said to have fought and killed Goliath. An apt metaphor for those of us who battle depression. Except we never get to kill the giant. Walk away as David might have done, with a bit of a swagger, the cheers of the crowd rising around him. We fight our battles often in solitary ways. I am dropping down again. Keep telling myself I'm wrong. That my sleeping in to 8:30 am, then 9:00, then 9:30 today means nothing. My struggle to focus. Nothing. I may not yet be in the Valley of Elah but I am close enough. I've called my shrink. An angel is winging towards me. His name is Bill.

She's Ordered Lobster

I've seen The Mystery Men twice because I love Henry Macy as the determined Shoveler. One line of his always makes me laugh. "We've got a blind date with destiny, and it looks like she's ordered lobster."

Shhhh

"Instead of [...] stress, Claudia thought now of hushed and quiet words: glide, fur, banana, peace." (E.L. Konigsburg, The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler)

Diving into the Current

The trees along the canal today were burnished gold and had left hundreds of their gold currency in the water. As I walked by, a motor boat plowed through the leaves leaving a wide, glistening path. I'm reading Paulo Coelho's marvelous book, The Alchemist, again. All about finding your path. "When someone makes a decision, [she] is really diving into a strong current that will carry [her] places [she] had never dreamed of when [she] made the decision." I decided last week I still want to work in mental health.

Possibility

I heard about a job opening today that is so me. I decided not to talk about it so I wouldn't jinx it. Then I told everybody.

I Want to Be An Umbrella

Last week, I pulled a muscle in my right hip in the iliotibial band which runs down to the knee. I like to say iliotibial band--sounds like burly men playing Irish music. By Thursday, my lower back, not to feel left out, decided to go into spasm. My life, right now, is largely focused on ice-packs, stretching, and Tylenol. I am great with emotional pain--can handle a lot of it. Physical pain, not so much. I want to be an umbrella. A closed umbrella. Would just like to stop moving altogether and be put in the quiet dark of someone's back pack.

My Saltwater Pond

The shoe spell didn't work. No, not true. Started the day with my memoir class, two hours of listening to words hot off the press, fresh from the labors of other writers. Loved it. An hour later, I'm sitting by the fountain in the Seattle Center, one of my favorite places in this known universe, and I'm crying. The spray from the fountain is hitting me in the face and glasses so I figure no one will notice. Crying intermittently all day. I listen to myself at one point and think, "I am breaking my own heart." Maybe I am crying about the heartbreaks of the past year? I keep crying. "What can you make with tears?" one of my early therapists asked. "Can you water your plants?" I begin to feel like Alice. I'm going to drown in my own salt water pond. I don't drown. Friends and family call. My sister asks me to lunch tomorrow. My other sister and brother sing Happy Birthday in Portuguese. (My family lived in Brazil when I was small.) My brother offers me job tips. A friend leaves astromelias in my room and her exquisite small painting of a mermaid. She also makes me dinner. Other friends give me chocolates, tiny peanut butter cups, the kind I like from Trader Joes. Yes, I am jobless and single. These things are true. And at least eight people called to say I love you. My friend Gregory to ask for birthday gift hints and then to give me a gift of gold. "We don't have many of you," he said.

Happy Feet

I love my Converse All Star high tops. They offer faith to my feet. I often feel happy just looking down and seeing them. Today is the day before my birthday, and I need a sense that this year will be easier than the last, will take me in directions I can not dream of now, good directions...direction, any direction. I am going to put my Converse All Star high tops by my bed tonight and pray that this sadness will be gone by morning. That when I put on my shoes, I will feel joy. Even for a minute. For every place I've been. Every place I'm going. Amen.

Drawing the Circle

In her memoir, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes beautifully and sparely about an essential ritual, drawing the circle. "I grew up in California, John and I had lived there for twenty-four years, in California we heated our houses by building fires. We built fires even on summer evenings, because the fog came in. Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we we were safe through the night."

Olly Olly in Come Free

Not a sterling week. I made some mistakes. Now, isn't that terrible? It's not so much what I do out there in the world sometimes that's so hard to bear but what I do to myself inside my head. Would any parent be so merciless? On Monday, I took prompt action when the man sitting on a chair next to me at Peets on Broadway nodded out. Yes, cigarette in hand. I walked quickly into the store and told the barrista to call an aid car. What I beat myself up about later was that I didn't know how to take the man's pulse. Turned out that the man had gone into a diabetic shock. I may not have saved the guy's life but I certainly did him a favor. I have decided my problem is not so much my high standards: it's my impossible standards. I am sister to Sisyphus perpetually rolling the boulder up the cliff in Greek myth. Imagine the poor guy. Every time thinking, "I've done it. I'm almost there. I'm almost enough." Creak. Then boom -- the boulder rolls back down the hill, likely rolling over Sisyphus as well. Someone asked me once what I would want God to say to me when I died, the very first words. I said, "Olly olly in come free." Those words, floating on the summer's twilight when I was young, signaled that the game, whatever it was, was over. I could come in and not get tagged out. I want God to make the same offer. Want to make the same offer to myself. "Olly olly in come free. Game over."

Usual Bits

"Suppose you tell me what you're about?" said the little hairy man as they sat on the ground and drank their tea. Tristran thought for some moments, and then he said, "I come from the village of Wall, where lives a young lady named Victoria Forestor, who is without peer among women, and it is to her, and to her alone, that I have given my heart. Her face is--" "Usual complement of bits?" asked the little creature. "Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?" (From the incomparable Stardust by Neil Gaimon)

Licorice

Had six months in Al-anon today. You'd think I'd spend the day feeling clear and celebratory. Instead, I lounged around feeling wistful about women and eating too much licorice. Didn't call anyone in the program. Lounged. Ate licorice. If I was a snake, there'd long skinny bulges all over my stomach.

Drunk with Beauty

Last night, my friends and I saw All Tharp, the piquant brilliance of Tharp's modern dance choreography to Bhrahms and even Sinatra show tunes. A scene where a woman with a fifteen foot white train walked spectrally through the dark. In the last set, glorious colors -- magenta, lavendar, red -- for the dresses of the women, and elegant black tuxes for the men. We were transported to another world. Where the moon was a disco ball that spun lights throughout the performance hall. When I came out of the hall into the rain, I felt drunk with beauty.

Mood Shift

Amazing. You can have a terrible night and wake up feeling like crap, with a toothache. And then a kind of alchemy of spirit happens. Perhaps powered by a heart-to-heart with a friend who understood your terrible night and has them too. Or hearkened by a cacophony of birds in your backyard and the advent of the sun. Then suddenly life feels possible again. Maybe for a few minutes or for an hour. Doesn't matter. Mood shift #2,987,645, and it's all yours. All mine. Right now.

The Shuttle of Sleep

Anxiety. About the election. A possible recession. About being unemployed during a possible recession. Last night, I woke at 5:30 a.m.. Tonight woke at midnight, up til 1:30, awake again at 2:30, read a book, had a snack, watched a movie. I'm not the only one who's subterraneanly worried. I see it in the faces of people on the bus: a thinking, worried quiet. I watched The Astronaut Farmer earlier. Reminded me of videos I recorded for teachers while working for NASA at the UW. Astronauts in zero gravity eating bouyant m-n-m's, the blackness of deep space outside their windows. Tonight, the hours seem timeless like that, expansive, floating. I wonder if others like me are doing the midnight EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity), orbiting the insular shuttle of sleep.

Seeds with Wings

In The Power of One, a novel by Bryce Courteney, an abused five-year-old named Peekay is befriended by a champion boxer on a train. "'Piece a' cake, Peekay. I already told you. You're a natural.' Hoppie's words were like seedpods with wings. They flew straight out of his mouth and into my head, where they germinated in the rich, fertile, receptive soil of my mind."

Right Angles

Discovered an Al-anon meeting at the church next door. Just four of us met at noon. Plenty of time to talk once or twice. After the closing Serenity Prayer, we stayed in the circle and talked. Something powerful about circles, about listening to honest, even gut-wrenching stories. As has happened in meetings many times before, I was at wrong angles to myself and my world when I came in and at right angles when I came out.

Room with a View

"The kind of self-care that accompanies recovery is [...] more loving, more freeing, and more focused on tending to our own responsiblities. It's a healing, rejuvenating, renewing kind of self-care, one with room for feelings, needs, wants, desires, goals, plans, and lives of our own--lives with meaning and purpose, ones that make sense." (From Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps, Melodie Beattie)

Miss Mermaid

Blue skies to accipere (take to one's self.) Sun dapples my desk. At 3 p.m., I will meet my 83-year-old friend, Dee, for a Fellini film. She will come rushing in, those long strides, that tilted almost pelican way she walks, looking fabulous, five minutes to show time. "Am I late?" Breathlessly describe the three buses she took to get there. Then we will settle in for the theatre of the fantastical and the strange. Actually, the film, I VITELLONI, was neither. Filmed in the early 1950s after the war, a tale of four slackers in a small Italian village by the ocean. Classic scene: a young woman crowned Miss Mermaid 1953. "And she almost didn't enter!" her kerchiefed mother cried. The boys hung out together, lovingly exchanging cigarettes and girls. The cad found redemption with Miss Mermaid. I had forgotten how much I love old black and white films, the crisp silhouettes, the way the camera lingers on people's faces. I brought Dee a rose to honor Fellini and wore a pink scarf that blew away from my neck as I walked. Wore John Lennon-like sunglasses which Dee thought "very Hollywood." Wonderful to see her. Wonderful afternoon.

Wedding Plans

The moments before sleep are when I feel the most alone. My bed cover is green with yellow swirls -- reminds me of the sea, and when I lay down, seems as vast as the sea, my body a branch floating in it. A friend said last night he had finally accepted that he might not partner again. I opened my mouth to say I felt that same and couldn't. I attended all three of my siblings' weddings, and others. Read countless romance novels as a teenager. The dream always there. Even through the not-so-bad, the really bad relationships. Several years ago, I told an old friend I had revised my plans for my wedding. She laughed. "Honey, you've been revising your wedding for twenty years." It's true. I don't want abandon those plans, live out the rest of my life alone, and I suppose I may. But it has occurred to me that I would rather have this. This standing taller in myself. This often wry self-affection. This sense that I'm here, not in "you," whoever you are, not becoming you. Here, in yes, the sometimes lonely acres of my bed.

To Take to Oneself

In December 1988, Floyd Skloot was stricken overnight by a virus that targeted his brain, permanently disabling key executive functions. The following excerpt is from his fine memoir, In the Shadow of Memory. "Over time, I began to recognize the possibilities for transformation. I saw another kind of acceptance as being viable, the kind espoused by Robert Frost when he said, 'Take what is given, and make it over your own way.' That is, after all, the root meaning of the verb, "to accept," which comes from the Latin accipere, or "take to oneself." It implies an embrace. Not a giving up but a welcoming. People encourage the sick to resist, to fight back [...] I began to realize that the most aggressive act I could perform on my own behalf was to stop struggling and discover what I could really do."

Worry Luggage

Murky evening, and me, murky in it. A channel surfing, ice-cream eating murk person. I talked in a meeting today about my worry luggage--about wanting to let the universe carry it. When I went to Orcas earlier this month, I packed a shoulder bag with four hard-back books, running shoes, clothes, and food for three days. I lurched onto the Anacortes ferry so tilted one of the ferry people said, "Good God, you packed the wrong bag. Didn't you have something with wheels?" I have spent the last two weeks shouldering fears about finances and finding work in much the same fashion. My favorite line in The Summer of 42 was, "Herme was a worrier and a sufferer, and it was beautiful." But, it's not.

I'm Back

Sometimes, I think I know the exact moment when I shift out of a depression. A flag, an occurrence, even wrenching in a small way, signals to me. I walk down 18th on Capitol Hill and see an exquisitely green caterpillar inching across the sidewalk. The quality of noticing is what I notice. I crouch down and watch. The bug is so green, undulating, intent on its next appointment. And then I know. I have been given back my sight. Again. I'm back.

Brown-out

Woke up in a brown-out, my name for depression. Didn't know right away. Was able to go to the gym. But when I came home, accomplished nothing. Sat on the floor of my bedroom, paralytic. All the leaves are brown, leaves are brown, and the sky is gray. Origin for the term. I think of people all over the world muscling through days like today and worse. Of course, didn't think about them earlier. Just about me. How I hate this. How easy now to forget the part of me that goes frothy about rollerblading. Just the night before, felt sanguine while skating around Lake Union. Have to remind myself that I tend to manage to right myself fairly quickly. But even when dropped into it suddenly, the nature of depression is a feeling of endlessness: there was never a time before it began, and will never be a time after it ends. All the leaves are brown.

A Fresh Start

Patty Smith was recently interviewed in The New York Times Magazine on the occasion of her 61st birthday.

Interviewer: You seem very sane for a punk rocker.

Smith: I had a very good role model. My mother had no end of tragedy in her life. She would make herself up and go out and do laundry. Hang up sheets. She told me that when she looked at laundry, the sheets floating in the wind, and the sun, it was like a fresh start.

I can just picture that: the woman's elegant courage. For years, and now still, after a bad night, for any reason, I get a sense of a fresh start from the ritual of washing my face and then brushing my hair. Tactile. Simple. Just those two things. I'd like to interview people and find out what their fresh start rituals are.

Enoughness

"Community rather than loneliness will define our lives. We will know that we belong, we are welcome, we have something to contribute—and that is enough." (from the Al-anon Promises.)

Heros

Went with a friend to The Power of One, a photo show at Bumbershoot showcasing the power of ordinary people to perform acts of bravery. The photos of Phil Borges celebrated women in developing countries. Nina Berman's series featured disabled Iraq veterans. I had to keep returning to Borges' photos to draw the strength to let the soldiers and their stories in.

The Seed Burglary

Deb and I watched a squirrel stealing sunflower seeds this morning. Agile as a gymnast, he perched on a twelve-foot plant, making a trail with his teeth across the broad surface of the blossom. The stem swayed under the slight movements of his body as he swung under the flower head, gripping it with both hands as he feasted. Deb captured him in various poses on camera from the balcony and then went down to get a closer shot. Lost in seed burglary, he didn't know he'd been busted until suddenly he saw Deb. A look universal to animal and human: oh shit.

The Flow

"We discover a life of our own and new ways of living that work. We discover the flow and choose a path for our lives. We begin to see the importance of that path. We learn to live life on a spiritual plane, a life that becomes reflected on the physical plane." (From Codependents' Guide to the Twelve Steps by Melody Beattie)

Under the Blossom

An afternoon of rare pleasures. First, a cherry snow cone while skating at Greenlake. Hot and thirsty. The first taste was divine, had to almost close my eyes. My new friend Gregory and I skated two times around the lake. After half an hour, I went into the kind of meditational silence I've experienced while ice-skating. Breathe in. Breathe out. The scent of water coming in my lungs. Scent of sunlight. Shadow. Felt my face drop its shield. Then raced past my friend, laughing. Watched him pass me. Endless time. We topped off the afternoon with a splendid performance of The Tempest by a youth theatre at The Bathhouse. In a cowslip's bell I lie [...] On the bat's back I do fly. After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily shall I live now. Under the blossom.

Without Thoughts

The other night when it was raining, I came out on one of our balconies. The rain was falling on a a street light and on the tree next to it, luminous, like diamonds. I stood there, getting rained on, and watched the light and the rain, the light in the rain. A long forgotten part of me lurched into some kind of quiet, fell forward into beauty. Without thoughts.

Hug Them

"The secret to your recovery is to learn to embrace your own history. Hug your demons or they will bite you in the ass." (From Facing Codependence by Pia Mellody)

Muscle and Bone

Yesterday was the last day of my job, and this morning I danced while making breakfast. Later, I laughed out loud at something I was reading, don't even remember what it was. I feel exhausted, stripped to muscle and bone. Not sure how to walk away from this or where to walk to. But am resolved. To keep dancing.

Chicken Salad

From an email from Recess Monkey, four Seattle grade school teachers, who rock out for kids and just went on their first national tour--about they coped with their road trip. "For instance, Drew [a band member] pledged to congratulate himself at least once every fifteen minutes for his various successes in life. At 7:38, when it seemed that all hope was lost, he interjected, apropos of nothing in particular, "I make really good chicken salad!"

Bless You, Prison

Alexander Solzenitzen died yesterday at eighty-nine. Sentenced in 1945 for making disparaging references to Josef Stalin, he served eight years. Of the experience, he wrote, "It was only when I lay on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Bless you, prison, for having been in my life."

A Best Friend

Went to the Blue Moon Cafe' for burgers tonight with Pat. He picked me up in front of the Uptown after I called him from the bus and told him I'd had another bad day at work. I felt my friend's sideway's glances. Was aware that the clay I had built over my face during an afterwork therapy session was beginning to crack. And here was this man, telling me I looked gorgeous, even though I knew I didn't, telling me how glad he was that I was okay, who came all the way from West Seattle so I could have comfort food. Not boyfriend, girlfriend, a best friend.

How I Find Heaven

Sometimes I get lost in a rush of words. My tone changes, becomes harsh, almost metallic. My language is a train relentlessly laying the tracks before itself. What I want most then is for someone to say, "Honey, take a breath. What are you feeling?" Most often it's fear. Fear is a skinny dude with big guns. I shouldn't personify by gender. Fear is like the dust in Phillip Pullman's marvelous fantasy triology. Like coal, settles in my lungs. Since I gave my notice at my job, have noticed more surges of speech. Breathing is the best thing. Since breathing deeply on my own is not my strong suit, swimming helps. I become amphibian. Last week, spent forty-five minutes by myself in a huge hotel pool in a Wenatchee, the water already warming. Lost myself not in words but water. How I find heaven.

Trying to Explain

Battle mind, words social workers use to describe the mental state of soldiers recently returned from Iraq. Boots to the ground, words the military uses for soldiers just deployed.

Too Many Stations

Tonight, I channel-surfed for over three hours to avoid feeling. Best I could do. I'm in a hotel room in another city. Presented today at a workshop and did well. Not the point. Since arriving yesterday, have been acutely aware that no one was waiting for me to call after I checked in. Now, similarly aware that, tomorrow, no one is waiting for me to get home. My housemates will be glad to see me. Not her, "that special someone," as some writers in the online ads say. Isn't there. Isn't here. Isn't in the television.

The Great Health

The great health. Valor. Rare humor. And resilience. (Nietzsche)

On the Sparrow

In my mother's Bible, she scrawled on a scrap of paper the words to the hymn made legend by Ethel Waters, "His Eye is on the Sparrow." Why should I feel discouraged and why should the shadows come [...] His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. Bumpy ride with a medication this week. The doc raised an antidepressant. I rose out of the first turn then dropped again. He raised the same med. I said to him on the phone, "I'm riding over the top." Was up for almost two days. With an extra med to help me sleep, finally slept last night. But woke up today with a med hangover - for want of a better word. I am out of rhythm and afraid from a well of what feels like centuries of experience I won't get back into rhythm again. Went to the circus the night I stopped sleeping, and one of the acts was a woman pretending to be a wind-up acrobat. She was flipped over and over by another, more burly acrobat. Front to back. Front to back. A finality to it, an inevitability. Familiar.

All By Itself

My mother would have have been eighty-six in October. She was smart and beautiful, though, I don't think she knew. Today, I wonder where she is and in what form. Is she in the tree outside my window? Has she created her own version of heaven on some corporeal plane? Or has she gone beyond all that? Is part of what my therapist calls, "The Great Love?" I want her essence to be separate, at least some of it. Her laugh. She laughed sometimes until tears ran down her face. Would literally pitch forward with the force of it. Nothing like watching a strong woman absolutely surrender. I want her laugh back. I want it to exist somewhere, not in a tree, all by itself.

Out There

Out there
you'll see it all.
The floating ends
will meet and mend,
and you will be yourself,
your fully-formed,
though always changing,
self of selves.
Every clumsy backward look
will pay for itself.
Every tear you've cried,
or wanted to cry,
will set your broken bones.
The rips in your heart
will no longer
need to be guarded
by steel girders,
banyan trees,
or even rice paper [...]

Deborah Mears

Fast Runner

I have been in the eye of a storm, and now I know what I need to do. Someone from a 12 step meeting once told me if you want to know God's will, just keep going until you hit a wall and then turn left. Saw a wonderful film Friday night called The Fast Runner. A man gets out of alignment with himself and then finds himself again. A hero's journey Joseph Campbell would have loved. The guy hit a wall and keeps turning intuitively in the right directions.

Sleep While I Drive

A verse from a Melissa Etheridge song has been playing over and over in my mind this week on the bus coming in to work. The idea of traveling out of town with someone is exponentially appealing. Would I be the driver, or the woman sleeping? Or am I both?

Come on baby. Let's get out of this town.
I got a full tank of gas with the top rolled down.
There's a chill in my bones.
I don't want to be left alone.
So, baby, you can sleep while I drive.
Ill pack my bag and load up my guitar [...]
I got some money I saved.
Enough to get underway,
And, baby, you can sleep while I drive.

Starlight, Starbright

Today marks the two year anniversary of the death of my friend, Paula. Wherever you are, I am remembering you.

Moving In

I have indelicate knees. the word I thought of when I was stretching the other day. A scar on the right knee represents a home run. I was a baseline hitter so having that rare home run recorded in my right knee is nice in an odd way. Slid across home base on my knees and sliced myself open on a fin-shaped rock. Sixteen stitches. I have other scars. Actually, scars on both knees tell stories from my tomboy youth I remember only in sketches. Indelicate. Today, at the gym, I was stretching again, and for some reason, I smelled one knee. Felt a sense of tenderness. Sweat. Smelled like sweat. My sweat. Unlike anyone else's. I have been camping out in this body for some time now, and, finally, I want to move in. Be in these knees.

Tying My Shoes

Tonight, watched The Triplets of Belleville with my housemates. Had an odd sensation my very skin cells were soaking up the art, color, and creativity, that my pores were starving. I am worried about myself. My work is flattening me. I can't remember the last time I really laughed. Just busted out laughing. Maybe, I'm the wrong kind of person for my work. I care too much. I'm terrible at all the computer aspects--oh, maybe not terrible, but challenged. And I know it. My co-workers know it. What I am I think is a teller of stories. Instead the stories I hear are taking over my stories. I was a good writer, professional writer. In my adult career, what I was best at, though, was as a demonstrator of toys. I intended to work in the Pike Place Market in a hands-on kite and toy store for the summer. I stayed for three years. All day long, playing, I watched people shed their adult skins and emerge as children. I made little money, had no benefits, and could hardly wait to get to work in the morning. In her book, Exuberance, Kay Redfield Jamison wrote about a scientist who hated to tie his shoes in the morning because tying his shoes slowed him down and he yearned to get to work. The work he loved. I want that, to feel that way about tying my shoes.

My Poet's Soul

I have not wanted to admit it. Work is kicking my butt. Too often I find myself facing down angry people in small rooms. "Get bigger," I tell myself. "Don't look afraid." But I am afraid. I am trembling inside my clothes. A co-worker told me tonight she was impressed at how professional I sound on the phone. "You sound so sure of yourself," she said. I am not sure of myself. I took a lot of acting in college. I am using it. Inside my head, I stutter, I falter, I pray. I pray The Serenity Prayer prayer a dozen times a day in the rest room on my breaks. I go in there because the phones aren't ringing, and I can recall at least for a moment, my poet's soul.

Our Dog

I was raised on five acres in Lake Stevens, a hobby farm. We had gardens, an orchard, a forest, a creek, a long lawn made for children, a barn, cows, goats, pigs, and chickens. A dog, a Samoyed, named Lisa, came one day in the back of a pick-up truck and stayed for eleven years. Her greatest delight was to love us, bound after us, a blur of white in the high field grass. I have a picture of me at age eight, barefoot, in a straw hat and green dress, arms wrapped fiercely around her. Of all the animals we had, she is the one I have never stopped missing. I would dearly love to have her right now, lying next to me.

A Sacrament

Tough day at the office. I stood in the kitchen of an old friend and asked for a hug. She was moving towards me the minute the words left my lips. When her arms closed around me, I sobbed once, twice, and started talking. Couldn't eat. Had to talk. She said, "You need to eat. You need to eat and talk. I know you have a hard time doing both at the same time but you have to eat."I've heard her say that a hundred times in the twenty-six years I've known her. Another kind of sacrament, a sacrament of friendship.

Almost Fifty

I want to roll back the clock. I was on my way to empty the garbage, and suddenly keenly aware I am almost fifty. I heard an interview with Dustin Hoffman; he said he felt more secure about his mortality when he could double his age. At age twenty, likely reach forty, at forty still possibly reach eighty. At fifty, he realized he would likely not reach a hundred: a rite of passage for him. I am yearning to be a decade younger, to buy back time I've lost to life events, to depression, especially. Stride up to a clerk on the ethereal plane, and say, firmly, "Yes, I'd like ten years. "Think quality of life," my friend, Deb, said recently, "not length of life." Just now, the swallows were darting through the trees in our garden. One flew so close to me, I almost felt the air rush back from its wings. I got to have that. Fifteen months to fifty.

Astral PJ's

Few things in this world are better than flannel pajamas, precisely, flannel worn to silk-thin softness, even frayed, scent of Tide, pink with silly cats. A fabric so devoted to my well being that, surely, if I died while sleeping, it would shuffle with me into the afterlife.

Wisdom

A friend of mine is a nanny to a 4-year-old. She asked him, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" He answered, "Myself."

Paradise

An email from Maggie, my Al-anon sponsor: "For many of us, recovery is being dragged kicking and screaming into paradise."

Where I Belong

My friend, Deb, says, your bedroom should give you a feeling that "at the end of the day, this is really where I belong." I'm decluttering and I'm going to go for that.

This Just In

SEEN: woman (me) on skates careening down road in Fremont before crashing into bush.

A Guest House

A bit melancholy. Not sure why. Feel like my skin is still holding other people's stories, stretched a little too tight. The girls in the dorm next door woke me up early chattering about a garage sale they were evidently endeavoring to put together which involved rattling carts. While admiring, and to be honest, somewhat loathing their youthful enthusiasm, I slept poorly after that. Rumi wrote that we can be a guest house for our feelings, to welcome each one in as it knocks. Not easy. Today, I am standing at the door of my inner house and offering tea to these blues, this stretchedness. Care for Earl Grey?

Hope

Went to a Al-anon meeting tonight on Capital Hill, and halfway through, I realized that the ache, the loneliness, that seems to camp out in my chest these days, was gone as if it had never existed. So far, the feeling hasn't come back. Gives me hope.

Dinner at our House

My housemates, Bill and Deb, had their weekly potluck tonight. Ten people gathered around our table for rousing and even ribald conversation. Yellow candles were lit. We ate bean soup, fresh greens, chips and avocado dip, apples and raisins, homemade bread. Bill told a funny story of hot tubbing at Doe Bay. Josh talked about preparing for his bar exam. Adam started a discussion about a book he had read. I wandered off to the front porch to watch Lucy put rocks in bottles. Time passed. Thomas Edison wrote in his journal, "Today was an Eden Day." This an Eden evening.

The Flip Side

Today at Folk Life, I saw four young male jugglers. One managed to get ten teenage boys to come up from the audience with no idea what they were volunteering for. Among the feats of daring they participated in was doing the can-can in front of fifty cheering strangers. I, too, laughed and shouted, clapped my hands. Having my true feelings can feel awkward, even excruciating, but can mean this too, unadulterated joy.

My Decent Life

Miserable day yesterday. Everybody seemed to be out of town, even God. My serenity prayer disintegrated into swearing. I said to my Al-anon sponsor, "I had a decent life; maybe, a weird, boundary-blurred life but I want to go back to it. "No, you don't," Maggie said. " I hate it when she's right.

Another Planet

When I go to that place, the place of the tired, there are no Sundays. No river runs through it. Instead, a falling that feels perilous, that I resist, before the naps I would take daily if I could. I drop down until I am flat on my back on the other side of the universe, another planet even. Today, at least, I'm not resisting; it's easier this way.

Finally

Just saw the last episode of this season of Grey's Anatomy. Redemption all around. Of course, in the final minutes of the show, most of the central players ended up kissing, including two women. Lovely. A friend once said I would watch all the badly produced lesbian films in the world just to watch two actresses kiss. Still true.

Worth Keeping

I wanted to know mornings, afternoons, and evenings with her, to see who she really was. I realize now, that's dating. What dating is for. I have so often jumped the gun and "married" the woman first and then spent the following months in a dizzying blur of hormones and melting boundaries. What would it be like to go slow? To let the relationship unfold like a poem, word by word, line by line--see if it really was a poem worth keeping.

God Has Orange Chalk

One morning last week I was feeling really alone and saw the words, "If you fall, I will catch you," written in orange chalk on the sidewalk in front of the First Free Methodist Church near my house. (Lyric from Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper)

To Soak Up the Sun

Half the world was at Golden Gardens today. We were all there for the same reason. To soak up the sun. I sensed a veiled sense of desperation that made me love Seattle. When the sun comes out, we do our best to act like we live in Florida. We drag out our bikinis and shorts, our frisbees, inner tubes, volleyballs, and barbecues and rush to the beach. And try to act casual about the weather.

Another First

The first soft serve ice cream cone of the summer.

Ineffable Grace

Tonight at the rink, I was so aware of the ineffable grace of the skaters around me. It was like getting to be on stage at the ballet with the dancers. I saw an elderly man go into a spin. He raised his eyes towards the ceiling almost as if praying as he spun his body into tighter turns. Beautiful. A teenager with her brown hair tied back practiced her leaps. A young man in jeans and a black turtleneck traced a perfect half-circle, the heels of both skates touching. A boy, not older than four, dashed by me, so swift and sure he could have been running. I was rounding a turn and suddenly was filled with a profound gratefulness. All I could think was: "Thank you." That's all I thought for a while.

Just Shop

In therapy yesterday, Karen said, "Well, you had a huge assignment handed out to you before you were born." I muttered, "Yeah, I wish I'd been in the restroom." Later, I had an image of all these ethereal beings with clipboards trying to find me. "Where is she? Have you seen her? It's almost time." And I'm in my spirit form, sitting in some john, feet up, arms around my knees, eyes darting. If they hadn't found me, I could have been Paris Hilton. Her assignment? Just shop.

Snacks

Brought cookies and milk to therapy today. Cold and raining outside: warm, inside. For the first few minutes, we munched as we talked. I am lucky to have a therapist so comfortable with whatever happens next.

Life in a Jar

WARSAW, Poland: Irena Sendler saved some 2,500 Jewish children from the Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some in baskets. She died Monday, her family said, at 98. "Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto [...] Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages. Records show that Sendler's team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943.[...] In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families — most of whom perished in the Nazis' death camps — Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home. When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. The Nazis took her to the notorious Pawiak prison, which few people left alive. Gestapo agents tortured her repeatedly, leaving Sendler with scars on her body — but she refused to betray her team." She was freed when an associate bribed prison guards, and she continued her work, under a different name. (The New York Times.)

Breadcrumbs

On remote today. Dialed up someone, didn't leave a message. Did a guided meditation from a dvd. That helped. Long nap. Three loads of laundry. Balanced my checkbook. Listened to The Beatles. Said The Serenity Prayer in my head numerous times without any real comfort. Fairy tales are full of people, children and adults, lost in the forest. Today, I couldn't quite seem to find that trail of breadcrumbs.

Dr. Oliver Sacks

"Of course, the last thing one would do would be to prescribe illness just for the experience. But if illness or misfortune happens, it forces one to think and to achieve a reconciliation of the deepest and most stable kind."

Popsicles

Just heard the first popsicle truck of the summer. The tinkling sound lifted off the breeze. For years now, noticing the first time I hear it is one of my rituals. Duly noted. Because it marks time. Lifts my heart.

This

"There's a cracking open when [something] dies." (Nancy Cobb).

Not Sure How This Goes

Since yesterday, have turned the light off on a number of well-lit fantasies. God, it's dark in here, inside me now. Realized in therapy last night, that this lonely, empty, hollow place has been in me all my cognitive life. Or even before that. Have tried to fill it with relationships, food, compulsive shopping, busyness, even alcohol. None of those worked. So now it's just me and this. Lovely email from my pal, David, today: It occurs to me that, like hunger, loneliness is the pain that drives us onward to connect with others. In that respect, it’s healthy, albeit, painful as hell.

Therapy

Sometimes the sacred is sitting in a room with someone who cares about you when the worst thing that could happen to you has happened and she is bringing you tea.

New Neighbors

New neighbors in the lilac tree by the mailbox. After dinner, Bill, Deb, Helen, and I went out to see a strangely alien construction, a sock-like nest woven from moss, lichen and spider webs, resting delicately on a branch. Miniature gray birds with the unfortunate name of Bushtit have decided to raise a family here. Their nest is so tiny, it's hard to believe it's a bird condo lined with plant down, fur and feathers. The Bushtits are easily frightened so for the next month we will tiptoe around their nest or they could scatter for good, find a new home elsewhere.

The Artful Dodge

I have a shadow side, the life I make up. The artful dodge. I'm good at it. Have been spinning fantasies since childhood--for essential reasons that don't exist now. But that doesn't stop me. Just now walking to my friend's car with my groceries, I imagine her, the last woman I pursued, walking next to me. In pretend, we are satisfied with our communion, our excellent communication. In real life, who knows? We could have been silent, rife with unresolved tension and an argument about to happen. Pretend is easier. Easier to miss someone, build an altar to the golden crumbs of remembrance than engage, be engaged in life, real life.

In Her Element

I am six feet from a blue heron. She extends her slender neck towards me, the water in diamonds all around her. I think, "You are an oracle. I will offer you a pearl and trouble you with a question." I say out loud, "Will I find love somehow?" But she looks away, not with disdain but with disinterest. She is a bird in her element, being a bird, not a mystery.

Photograph

The ageless simplicity of a black one-piece bathing suit.

Video

Just back from the Seattle Tilth Fair, Bill places a row of 10-inch seedlings on our kichen window sill. "From these little bitty plants will come a massive amount of tomatoes."

On the Ice

At the Highland Ice Rink, there is nothing but white: ice andwalls. Going into the white is what I love about skating. Into the cold of winter or any day of the year. In the center of the rink, the young girls in their spangle skirts practice spins and breathtaking leaps, landing on splindly legs, and none of them care because in their minds, they are beautiful. An old man, hands clasped behind his back, has his own beauty and takes his turns, crossing his skates, each in front of the other, with a stubborn confidence. A father and a daughter play tag. "You're it," he shouts, and she turns laughing, red-faced, loving him. All around me such enthusiasm, even from people who skate like toddlers, chopping headlong across the ice. Over there, a man is holding his girlfriend up as she tries this new way of walking. I skate among the skaters. Have only about ten minutes of wistfulness when I imagine a date skating with me. But can't stay wistful for long because of the spinning girls, the old man, the father and daughter, the couple, and everyone else who have decided to spend their Wednesday night. On the ice.

Mess It Up, Do It Wrong

The first thing our teacher taught us in Adult Beginning Ice-Skating tonight was how to fall. "It's best," she said, "not to tense up but to fall like a sack of potatoes, preferably on your butt." This week I met with Maggie, my Al-anon sponsor, for the first time, and after giving me an assignment, she said wryly, "Mess it up. Do it wrong." I fell at least five times while skating this evening, one time spectacularly. Without embarrassment. Didn't even care what other skaters thought. (Okay, that last fall, a little bit.) That's amazing for me.

Every Note

The Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra. A Samuel Barber violin concerto with a solo by a young man in a black suit that's a little too big. When he stops, he casually tucks his violin under his arm. Each time he plays again, I am like a pitcher. Filling up. Head back, mouth open, to catch every note.

In a Softer World

It was probably a step in the making of a cowhand when he learned that what would pass as heroics in a softer world was only chores here. Can't remember what Wallace Stegner novel that came from. It's the middle of the night and I can't sleep. Last Tuesday, I went to see my doc for my diabetus. He had asked to see all my medications so I brought a sackful. I guess I had never seen them in one place; some are usually in a drawer, others in cabinets. Including my herbal supplements, I had thirteen bottles, seven related to treating depression. The sight of all those bottles made me feel intolerably sad. Dear Lord, when did I turn into a walking pharmacy? The brutal truth is the meds, the maintaining of them, the exquisite monitoring of my moods which I do daily, the timely calls to my shrink when intervention is necessary, dealing with med changes and side effects -- all of it could pass as a heroics in a softer world. For all of us who do it.

A Sign

Each morning my bus passes the First Baptist Church on 11th and Harvard, and I glance at their reader board hoping for a sign. Today, someone at the church took pity on me. The message was: YOU KNOW THE WAY.

Blues

Sad now. Lonely. A familiar tune. A blues band setting up just to the left of the left ventricle.

Saturday Morning

Want to give myself the gift of myself.

His Black Slippers

Excerpt from my journal on April 11: "You are subdued," he said today. He had that watchful look he gets when he's concerned but trying not to show it. Went a half an hour over. I find the fact that he wears slippers in his office oddly comforting. Nothing changes here. The geodes on the shelf are, apparently, dusted but have never been moved. The radio by the wall. The elegant vaguely European art. The shelves full of files. My file, thick as War and Peace. A history of fifteen years of seeing him. Not all that time with his black slippers but all that time with his exquisite, meticulous care. My psychiatrist, Phil.

The Room of Herself

I'm in therapy and not liking my therapist. I wonder, "What am I doing here? Why am I doing this?" Hear myself complaining in a thin voice. Weary. "My life sucks. Sucks." I say it again for emphasis. "I don't want to be here." She's a therapist. She's heard that before. I think, "She's too cheerful. How could I have not noticed how cheerful she is?" She must realize she is being too cheerful because she stops interjecting comments and just looks at me. Attention: without rules, expectations or demands. I steady myself in the quietness and affection of her gaze. She has offered me the room of herself and plenty of chairs. I sit.

A Rush of Why I Love You

I am lying in bed with my boots on, having just called my therapist. You call. Announce we are going to dinner, that you will be here in half an hour. Then I am in your arms. And in the Blue Moon Cafe', where I eat, finally, ravenous. You rub my back and isten to me repeat her name, say stricken things that make no sense. I am cold on the way back to your car, and, in a heart beat, you wrap your leather coat around me. When, at my insistence, we stop at 7'11 to buy cigarettes, you interview the clerk as to which brand would be the least harmful. We smoke in your car. You do a Popeye the Sailor Man impression, then suck your cigarette halfway up your mouth. Suddenly, I am laughing in a way that hurts my chest. "I'm a shot pigeon," I mutter, flicking away the ash. "Shot pigeon?" Your expression with your cigarette makes me laugh again. How similar laughing is to crying, the same exhalations of breath. Now, you are trying to stub out the last embers of your cigarette on your rearview mirror. It won't go out. A rush of why I love you. You, more girl in a boy than I've ever known.