The rippled soles of my L.L. Bean boots suction themselves to the puddling, speckled floor of McKay. My fingers trace the spines of neon non-fiction. I near the shelf. My ear lingers for the coo of an inspirational memoir. Father, it has been forty-eight months since my last confession. I have not written since my Icelandic love moved north of the Mason/Dixon. I am still mourning this with half-lesbians in bars on Tuesday nights because it is the last remarkable thing that has happened to me. I numb the pain with Vodka, bubble baths and inspirational memoirs (all which commemorate remarkable things).
When I was in high school we used to take a moment of silence every morning for those who passed in the Twin Tower tragedy on September 11th. I sometimes wonder why, prior to this disaster, we did not stand every morning and grieve the "general" dead. Were they less important? I should take a moment every morning and stand for the withering away of myself and my muse. My faucet of breath is constricting by the moment. We are all slowly losing grip.
That was around the time I started holding my breath. My gorgeous, rose-covered, chiropractor Rita would rub my gaping lung-space and tilt her head with concern. "You are tight," she'd say, "you hold your breath even when you are sleeping!" The grand majority of my life has been composed of anticipating an either incredible or incredibly grave circumstance. At times, I have encountered both. Both are trauma to the brain. My bald ex-boyfriend once confusedly furrowed his brow at this. "Trauma can be both good and bad?" He posed. I chuckled at life's irony as I stared back across the table at my tangible example.
That was around the time I started holding my breath. My gorgeous, rose-covered, chiropractor Rita would rub my gaping lung-space and tilt her head with concern. "You are tight," she'd say, "you hold your breath even when you are sleeping!" The grand majority of my life has been composed of anticipating an either incredible or incredibly grave circumstance. At times, I have encountered both. Both are trauma to the brain. My bald ex-boyfriend once confusedly furrowed his brow at this. "Trauma can be both good and bad?" He posed. I chuckled at life's irony as I stared back across the table at my tangible example.
"You cannot write what you have not been through," Misty said between puffs on her Tabak in a conversation about Vonnegut.
Vonnegut was a car salesman.
This is our life, I suppose.
Writers are all about the buying and selling of things.
My generation favors prostitution. With every status, we spread our legs and and allow strangers to have their way with us. Pseudo friends with "fish eyes," (apathetic eyes glazed over in a transparent, glossy, glue) study our profile pictures and the way the adobe-altered sunlight contours our breasts. This is our legacy. We are a million cyber moments forgotten. This is what I have been through.
Vonnegut was a car salesman.
This is our life, I suppose.
Writers are all about the buying and selling of things.
My generation favors prostitution. With every status, we spread our legs and and allow strangers to have their way with us. Pseudo friends with "fish eyes," (apathetic eyes glazed over in a transparent, glossy, glue) study our profile pictures and the way the adobe-altered sunlight contours our breasts. This is our legacy. We are a million cyber moments forgotten. This is what I have been through.
I am not Elizabeth Gilbert. I wish I could write about my adventures. But, I have only been East of Tennessee once due to my irrational fear of alligators and voodoo. I wish I was as afraid of southern hospitality, radical christianity, and habitual liars (not that these are mutually exclusive). Most of what I have endured has taken place in the soft brain matter of my own mind.
Aren't we complex? We are all wirings, and firings, neurons, plurons, eurons, morons...science words. My lobes are broken. I used to take miracle juice for them when Randy was my therapist. Randy believed in Prozac more than he believed in me. So it goes.
I still have a matte picture of his mistletoe tree in my medicine cabinet where I keep a small amount of leftover brain seeds in the event that I ever become sick-sad again. Perhaps, if I had finished the pills there would be some balance. I am going to ask my current councilor what it means to be nostalgic about disease. However, I suppose all poets thematically mourn the atrocious affliction that is Time. And we're all falling into atrophy beneath the monotony of the machine.
Aren't we complex? We are all wirings, and firings, neurons, plurons, eurons, morons...science words. My lobes are broken. I used to take miracle juice for them when Randy was my therapist. Randy believed in Prozac more than he believed in me. So it goes.
I still have a matte picture of his mistletoe tree in my medicine cabinet where I keep a small amount of leftover brain seeds in the event that I ever become sick-sad again. Perhaps, if I had finished the pills there would be some balance. I am going to ask my current councilor what it means to be nostalgic about disease. However, I suppose all poets thematically mourn the atrocious affliction that is Time. And we're all falling into atrophy beneath the monotony of the machine.
*Moment of silence
The last time I wrote honestly about my life, I did not tell the absolute truth. I wish I had. I was semi-honest about Thanksgiving, and The Man I Loved, and The Poet with his eloquent social graces leaving me to burn awake. However, I literally burnt awake.
When my brain began to slow on berry wine and whatever The Poet was drinking, we started talking about my spirit animal: The American Buffalo. The Poet told me it was his spirit animal as well. In a dizzy haze, I followed him out on the porch to have a smoke, desperate for the living water inside him. I wanted to pretend I was not connecting to him more than the sum of my naked parts had ever connected to The Man I Loved. But, curled up in the bed of my boyfriend that night, I could not help but think of all the words filling up between my back on his mattress and the bed of the poet in the room below.
"Will this be rest of my life?
If I stay with this man, who starves me of communication, will I be hungry forever?
Is it worth it?"
If I stay with this man, who starves me of communication, will I be hungry forever?
Is it worth it?"
I rubbed the fleshy back of the Man I Loved as I thought these thoughts.
If for no other reason than childish dreaming,
I wish I had met The Poet first.
I wish I had loved The Poet.
The rippled soles of my L.L. Bean boots suction themselves to the puddling, speckled floor of McKay. My fingers trace the spines of neon non-fiction. I near the shelf, my ear lingers for the coo of an inspirational memoir. Father, it has been forty-eight months since my last confession.
Write now,
The only
Memoir
Worth
Righting
Is my own.
I wish I had loved The Poet.
The rippled soles of my L.L. Bean boots suction themselves to the puddling, speckled floor of McKay. My fingers trace the spines of neon non-fiction. I near the shelf, my ear lingers for the coo of an inspirational memoir. Father, it has been forty-eight months since my last confession.
Write now,
The only
Memoir
Worth
Righting
Is my own.
