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hey, damn..whaddya
know. look at the date. I'm right on time. it's the
recognition du jour and I'm feeling the same thing
everybody else is talking about. I'm not as out of
touch with the real world as I feared.
Hey loaf. it's the same over here in venice with me
today. feeling bummed, down, alone, isolated, but I
know what i would have to pay to go back to that
fake company and I won't do it. Will not. If satan
were to offer me that contract again I'd rip
it--and his face, off--and burn them both.
don't anyone tell my psychiatrist this, but i
deliberatly went off my feelgood meds a week ago.
it happened naturally actually. i started falling
deep asleep without them, taking naps that left me
more restored than i have felt in years, and i just
forgot all about my being supposed to take them. as
a result, this strange feeling of unreality has
left me. the meds gave me a kind of 'take the edge
off' softening, which outwardly made me a nicer
person to be around, because i was just slightly
doped and couldn't marshall my brain to focus
sharply. I had been on the pills 2 years when i
started to fall asleep witht taking them.
i notice this week without them, I have been quick,
sharp, awake, conscious, demanding and much, much
clearer. my mind has gotten its awareness back. I
wake up at 7 am without an alarm and work all day.
I'm eating better. When i do tire, its right around
sundown and i eat dinner and fall into a deep,
spontaneous resting sleep afterward for about 2
hours. years of pretending to be nicey nice and
sugar coat all my real thoughts and acts, its all
disappearing. I catch myself struggling to be extra
perfect and i snap and irritably chuck the whole
act and say 'fuck it! i don't feel like that and
I'm through with that shit!'. and ya know what?
I feel me, coming back. I feel the me I shut up in
a closet 27 years ago, finding its way out into the
daylight again. wow, is it real.
and sadness. oh boy, sadness. tonight my23 year old
son looked out the window into a driving rain and
announced 'Mom, I'm going out. I never get to go
out, and I'm sick of being in the house.'
I got bummed. I had a tantrum. I made it real
evident how unhappy I was to be left utterly alone
on a rainy weekend night. I told him flat out that
i wasn't happy about it. I told him it was gonna
suck, waking up in a cold house alone by myself. He
promised to come home in the morning right after
tea with his female interest. I pouted. I sulked.
But I didn't make him stay home. I knew he had a
valid right to go, and that I needed to be with
myself and find out what this was that was rising
in me.
I have been rotten company all week. Thanksgiving,
I didn't go over to a friend's feast, conscious of
how moody and cranky I've been. They brougt me a
plate afterwards. My outbursts sound childish and
immature, even to me, but I'm letting them surface.
I would rather have them than perpetuate the
artificial do-gooder, ever patient, little miss
helpful, perfect example act I lived for decades,
thinking I could be a living example to potential
converts, to draw them to my gooroo by my amazingly
saintly behavior.
it's all gotta come down. It's all gotta crumble so
I can find out who i am without it, beneath the
facade, behind the wall, liberated from the
mask.
I try to tell my kid i have to do this.I
aplogize to him for how bitchy i am lately, and he
laughs and says it's ok, he likes weird people. he
says a lot of friends were grumbly, bad tempered
people.
i pause to think of my never-been a premie friend
Mark, the one who came to programs since 1991 with
me, who had darshan dreams and reached the light,
Music and nectar without ever gettng into a
Knowledge session--and Mark has a temper like a
storm. a storm in a small box. he roars and busts
things and cusses and lleaves a swath of
destruction. he usually weeps at the end of it.
we all forgive him. we all like him. he spurns the
very idea of conforming to 'nice' behavior. and it
hasnt cost him any friendships. he's the only guy i
know who has no declared enemies, in fact. he can
live like that, i have nothing to fear for
myself.
yeah, it sucks, that all those glowy, lovey,
little angel perfect scenarios we came together for
were all a bunch of shit. ally pally. kissimee.
miami. those doofy blue tunnels. our funny clothes.
our funny language. our funny food. we wanted the
whole world to come and join and be like us.
it was a fantasy.
now, i crave to be with creatures that can't
fake what they are.
my cats. my plants. the weather. building things
and painting fences and sewing things. i live in a
twn famous for its fakery and for its supposed
'reality'. los angeles. movies and gangstas. i
revile both illusions. i see right to their core
and go back to my hobbies. all the locals who are
trying so hard to be gorgeous and beautiful and hip
and sexy have about as much substance as a fake
movie prop window made of sugar water. and the
tough, cruel, violent,frightening ,swaggering
gangstas have it wrong too. theyre missing out.
whitey's dream isn't real but neither is their
counter response to it. it's another illusion.
another put on. another mask. another pretense.
and i know. i can see it. idon't believe the
hype. I am what i am and i didn't come here to be
anybody else's idea of how i should be.
i really dont care if the person next to me likes
me or not. is that shocking? maybe this is what the
pupa feels like when it gets too big for its shell
and bursts out. or the sprout or the old tree when
it cracks the concrete and pushes up into open air.
its too damn bad i broke it, but i just couldnt
stay in there any longer. the space was too smal
and i am growing too fast to fit in there anymore.
i couldnt live there any longer. I'm just too
big.
i guess you could say, my tears burst my damns.
but the barricades were artifical to begin with,
weren' they?
apocryphal story from today in real life:
a storm blew in today, hours earlier than
anticipated. down in the yard, my friend mark has
been living in a tent till he can find an apt to
rent. we put it up in summer, but as time went on
and he didnt find a place, he added walls to it
with tarps and string and clothespins to make it
more for the rainy winter.
it near;y blew down in the last storm we had, the
blasts tore open the sides and shook it, and he
raced around roaring at the sky as he battened it
down and fortified it and saved it.
but today he was not here. he was indoors, with
other buddies. the rains started gentle. but then
it pcked up and got nasty. the wind came on,
building. he had let another homeless friend have
the use of the place while he was away, and that
guy had spent all last night completely redoing the
place, nicer, cleaner, homier, safer and saner.
he too, was upstair s with us when the winds
rose.
he ran out to try to save his llittle place. my son
ran out to join him to help. i debated from my
upstairs window until crisis was upon them.
they were screaming that the poles were bending and
threatening to break. the wind was bending the tent
this way and that. the phone rang and it was mark,
wanting to know if his place was ok and if he
should come back. in the moments while he was
talking, it became clear that he better, if he
cared about his stuff. and i saw that i had to get
out there and help because the boys werent seeing
what i was seeing.
staying dry was a futile ploy. so i discarded the
raincoat and boots idea and went the other
way:stripped to my skin and put on a bathing suit
and grabbed my penknife and ran out there.
I'm fat, my lard will just keep me warm while i
work.
the boys were trying in vain to save everything in
the tent: TV, radio, lamp, papers, candles, while
the wind rocked the house.
I set about cutting loose the walls, which wer
acting like sails bellying out in the wind. these
were the same sails/tarps i myself had strung up
after the last storm. slashing the string and ropes
loose, I labored to free them so the wind would
have nothing to push against, undoing all my sturdy
careful work of a few weeks back. all the while i
was ruefully noting to myself how survival required
the exact opposite tactic that we tried the last
time. the wind seemed to be alive, gleefully
trmenting us looking for ways to get at us and take
away the tent if it could.wherever it attempted to
pick up the tent and strain it, I stepped to the
spot and cut the ties, denying it purchase and
force. i was screaming at the boys to reverse
strategy, to open it up and give it no resistance,
so it could blast through and find nothing to knock
over.
my son seemed to be sleepwalking. i had to get all
military on him and shout 'move it!
fastfastfastfast! nownownownownow!!! stay WITH me!
no! HERE! right NEXT to me!' and he
complaine'youre' so pushy!' I roared over the
storm'you wanna fight? you wanna get pushed? lets
do it. c'mon. push me! lets see what you got!' and
i was truly goading him to see if i could rile him,
knowing a jolt of adrenaline would definitely get
things moving faster.
we tied guy wires out the the trees. they ran loose
stuff across theyard into the other tent. i tore
away the tarps and opened out the sides till there
was nothing left for the wind to tear at.
mark arrived on a bike, soaked and adrenalized,
shouting something about 'horatio hornblower' to
the sky. i think it was a jibe at me, but i didnt
have time to find out. by then all that was left
was his bed and some bare tables. we stretched a
tarp over the bed and i screamed to tuck the thing
under like sheets, not leave anything out for the
wind to get under. i threw tables on top to weight
it down. and suddenly, we had robbed the storm of
its power. nothing it did made a difference.
instead of protecting and shielding everything,
trying to keep it hidden and to ourselves, we had
done the opposite: we laid it open till there was
nothing left to tear away. and at the same moment
without conference, mark and i both raised our
defiant voices to the storm and bellowed' is THAT
all you got???? whatsa matter??? can't find
anything to destroy????? let's see you do it!!!
come on!!! I'm right here!! give it to me, you
bastard!!!'
and the wind seemed to poke around us,
tenatively, like a dog, sniffing for some prey that
was no longer there, and gave up, to look elsewhere
for someone else to harass.
we cleaned up some odds and ends, looked about, and
went upstairs.
i reflected on the drastic measures that saved us,
while drawing a hot bath in my bathing suit.
i thought about the literal cutting of the ties,
that deprived the enemy of its greatest
weapons.
i thought about the contrast between trying to hold
onto things to save them, and opening them up wide
so there was nothing to hide. I thought about the
futility of trying to put on protective gear to
stay dry before going out, thus losing time and
doubtless getting wet anyway, versus my statement
as i stripped to the skin and put on my bathing
suit 'I'm waterproof. fuck it.'
the only thing that got cold, it turned out, was my
head. so next time, i'll know to put on a wool cap
or a bathing cap, to keep the top of my head hot.
my fat did indeed keep me warm.
i got all the cats into the house, warm, dry and
safe. put on the kettle, wrapped up in towels and
ordered everybody to take a hot bath, me first.
you live, you learn.
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