A body in motion

Tag: life

  • Salt

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    I woke up yesterday in the middle of the San Francisco Bay, clutching a soggy sweater, waves slapping my face. 

    I gathered my energy and paddled with my arms and kicked with my legs until I came to a nearby cable twice as thick as my torso. I wrapped around half of it and my soggy shoes slid back into the water. 

    Someone in a scuba mask touched my shoulder, their lips curled around a black tube. Water streamed down their face mask, obscuring their eyes. I climbed higher and higher on a cable until I could see out over part of the bay. It may have been a mirage but I swear that I spotted a whale. 

    And now I lay here in an empty room. Machines buzz at my head and a chair sits empty in one corner. I would like to know what happened but, in the meantime, I quietly feel all of the parts of my body still working. I can’t remember who should be sitting in that chair but I am sure that it will come to me soon. 

    After a while the door opens and my mom steps in. Behind her is my five year old daughter. They both smile as they sit on my bed. My daughter is excited to tell me about the best lunch she has ever had just now at some place down the street. The calamari was so good and so salty, she says. This makes me smile and the giant love I have for her pounds in my chest.

    Later, when I am discharged, fully clothed, dry, and rested, my daughter and I settle back into our routine. I pack her lunch for kindergarten and stop at a coffee shop on my way to work, just as I did before. I drink coffee, work, come home and make us dinner. One day her dad calls to invite us to come see him. He lives in another city, in another state. We used to live there, too, but now we just visit sometimes. My daughter is excited to see him, he who she barely knows but loves dearly. I am excited, too. 

    On the plane my daughter wears sunglasses and carries an adult sized purse. An older man with white hair and money hands stares at us. He introduces himself and begins to ask a lot of questions while being sure to drop little hints about his successful wine business. I smile and nod while my daughter writes in her notebook. 

    While my daughter visits with her dad I spend time with old friends and revisit old habits. I meet a friend at a bar and I feel at home in the darkness. My friend steps out for a few minutes to buy some weed because he doesn’t really drink and would rather get high. I feel drops of water on my shoulder and turn around to see a man in a wetsuit standing behind me. He opens his mouth and out pours salt water in a stream. Another man, who has been sitting down the bar, gets up, shuts the man’s spewing mouth and puts him in the fish tank out back.

    My rescuer wipes the seat next to me dry with a bar towel and sits down. He has a sarcastic and dark sense of humor and a half smile that makes my breath draw in deeper than I knew possible. When my friend returns he leaves soon after as I am wrapped in the arms of new conversation and end up going home with this man. 

    When we return from our trip it is no longer home. Home is back to that other city, in that other state. Home is closer to him. I call him GW, short for Guitar Wizard. This is one of our inside jokes. I have a shirt made and sent to him with “GW” written on it so that he will remember me. Two weeks later I quit my job and give notice to my landlord. I am in love and we move back. 

    We move in with my daughter’s dad. As roomates. It is the same house that he went to in secret, back when we were together, to visit his girlfriend. It is the same home where I took my two year old daughter by stroller to throw the dried out wedding bouquet on the doorstep after discovering his secret. The pain of the past now replaced by new life and belly laugh at the turn of events.

    The house is a broken mess full of leftovers from former roommates, girlfriends, mold and a food cart truck parked out front with a painted medusa head on the side. I no longer walk but float about as my dreams come true in the arms of GW. 

    As with my other dreams, this one eventually ends. One day, in his apartment, my mouth opens and out comes  a judgmental comment about how he only has salt and pepper in his kitchen. I declare that an adult man should have more spices. This is the beginning of the end. I move on, righteous in my conviction that he should get it together and go spice shopping and come back to me only after he has a formidable selection. 

    It turns out that my heart is broken and I regret letting GW go. Time passes and one day we meet up. We end up drunk and have sex. He tells me as we lay together that he is in another relationship and cannot see me again. I am distraught and send him away in anger. A few weeks later I am pregnant. When I tell him he assures me that he will give me money for the abortion. To get the cash I meet him at a corner near his apartment. My daughter is with me as I drive by, roll down my window and quickly grab an envelope from his hand as he stands at the curb. We drive away and I never see him again. 

    At the clinic the technician squirts lube on my belly and asks me if I would like to see the fetus. I turn my head and say no. I shut my eyes and listen to the sound of the machine, pulsing like the radar of a submarine. I go home,  take the first pill and spend the day bleeding on my bathroom floor. It is my 35th birthday. The pipes in my old bathroom moan, echoing inside my empty gut. I recognize the sound as that  of a lonely, lost whale down way too deep.

    I think about my almost baby as I flush the toilet. The sun is out but I can only see deep red-black waves coming over me, crushing my flesh.

  • Liberty bell

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    I am in Philadelphia for the first time. I take a walk in an area full of founding fathers. There are shadow horses and ghost men in wigs with straight backs walking in lines between long rows of big box stores. The color of the bricks has not changed in 250 years but the land around is unrecognizable. I wonder if it  is the history of the place that I feel in my body or if it is jet lag. I visit the Liberty Bell and feel awe when I see that it is much smaller than I had imagined, and its crack so large. How can something forged of metal have such a gash? I read about how many people have touched it or been photographed with it over the years and about its symbolic uses. 

    The crowd pushes me to the side and I make my way through a metal detector that funnels me into a courtyard between old brick buildings. There is a lonely sign in the middle of the cobblestone that lets me know that there is a talk at this spot every 30 minutes. I look up at a brick tower and wonder if there is still a bell up there. Broken bells go down in history and unbroken ones remind us that it is time for lunch. 

    As my eyes leave the tower and travel back to the ground I see a man in a park ranger uniform standing by the sign. I associate his look with mountains and trees, two things that don’t exist in this vast expanse of pavement and brick.  

    The man talks to a small group of three as I linger behind. He is full of facts about the constitution and about the many dramas that unfolded inside the nearby buildings. As he speaks of the long and important history of men debating, I notice that he is very familiar. He mentions that he is from California and then I remember how I know him.  He is the Pink Floyd guy. He looks exactly the same, only older and with a small pony tail and a clean uniform in place of lop sided hair and a cigarette smelling once-white  t-shirt.

    He has the same crowded eyes. Like there is a whole town trying to look out of just one set. And his mouth is straight, unchanging no matter what words it forms. I dissect his features while going back into my mind to dig though old memories as he stands there, reciting facts and wearing a Smokey the Bear hat. Life comes into focus, now, like the moment a kaleidoscope’s pattern opens up before it closes again. 

    He would regularly visit the small town general store I cashiered at to buy cigarettes and 40-oz  of the cheapest beer. I was 17 and found him deeply interesting. I wanted to know what was going on inside this man with nicotine fingers and a walkman.  He was older than me by a handful of years. I could tell that he drank and smoked a lot but I didn’t yet understand what this meant. 

    One day, close to my high school graduation date, he waited for me after work. It was well past sunset as we drove west. I learned that his favorite band was Pink Floyd. I also learned that he believed that the world was about to end. He gave me the exact date. He was certain. He told me that there was a voice in his head that sounded like the Pink Floyd lead singer and this voice talked to him about important things.  We parked next to a cliff that overlooked the ocean. The waves crashed below, water spraying up against the rock face every few seconds. He turned to me and said that the end of the world was happening all because of him. His eyes watered and his bony body sat rigid.

    I listened and then drove him back to town and let him out on the side of a small road. He lit a cigarette and adjusted his headphones as he walked away. 

    Soon after, we met up again and drove out to a bluff overlooking the ocean. We walked through some scrubby grass in the dark and fumbled around for a few quick minutes, kissing and then laying down and then realizing whatever we were trying to do was not going to happen. I drove him back to my house. I let him out a few yards before the driveway and gave him instructions on where to hide out until I could retrieve him. 

    My parents were so worried about me that they had called the police. I’d never before seen them so upset at anyone other than each other. Eventually they went to bed and I went out to my room. It was in what had once been a storage room detached from the main house. I pulled him out of the darkness and through the sliding glass door. He lay stiff in my bed all night, not moving an inch. In the morning, he snuck out and hitchhiked down the rural roads to get back to wherever he lived. 

    My fascination with him broke after that night. I realized that his identity was the end of the world and mine was not. What he heard in Pink Floyd was not what I heard. His song was a broken bell and mine had not even been forged. A few months later I went off to college. The end of the world came and went and somehow he found his way across the country and into the national park service. 

    I think about lingering after his talk but the focus I felt a few minutes ago is now fading. I hear a bell ringing and realize that it is getting late. I walk away, wearing the sound between my ears, listening and feeling it speak to me until I fade away to join the other cobblestone shadows.

  • The vampire

    I had a secret relationship with a married man.  I am not proud but I am also no longer ashamed. The word regret is not big enough to describe how shocking it is to wake up from such a terrible dream. I regret the six wasted years of my life and am still working through the anger I have at him and also at myself. It was only too late that I realized that my situation was not unique. That the words, the stalking and the acts of service, were all identical to the behaviors of countless men living duplicitous lives.

    Instead of going into detail about why I let him come back so many times and why I couldn’t seem to see the obvious plays and tricks, here are some things I learned. If you are under the spell of someone, whether married or otherwise completely unavailable, you may want to sit with these:

    He likely tells you that you are special. He may say that you are his favorite person in all of the world, his best friend, or that you are the most important person. He may even say that he is in love with you. He may say this all of the time while asking for hugs or for sex and commenting on how you should wear your hair in a pony tail because he likes pony tails.  These are all just words. Dumb ones and not original. You are special and important, but not to him. 

    He may get deep and tell you that he feels guilty for lying to his wife. But when you push him to fess up he has countless excuses for why he can’t tell her and then promises that he would never lie to you. Don’t believe this. He is lying to you right now.

    He will go to great lengths to do favors for you and then you will soften even more towards him. This means you are more likely to let him have more access to you.  And once you give in and let him, you will feel used because that is exactly what you are. He will acknowledge that you are upset and remind you that you are special and his favorite person and that he would never do anything to hurt you. This is all part of the trap.

    He may ask for sex and you may say no. He may press you for it until you just let him do what he wants. He may even acknowledge later that it was “a little rapey”. You may feel ashamed about this and very confused. 

    He will be jealous if you go on a date with someone else. He will sulk and ask detailed questions. He may even crash your date because you have no boundaries and tell him things you should not tell him. You will remind him that he is the married one but it won’t matter. Your allegiance to him is strong and he knows it. 

    If he is married he will likely tell you that his wife is crazy and that she could not survive without him. He will describe himself as the family man keeping the dream together. He wants you to see him as the strong man that protects all helpless women, including you. 

    He may even remind you that he will not be able to have sex with you if you sleep with anyone else. You don’t realize it but you will sabotage all other interactions with men in order to keep open the possibility of connection with this person because you believe that he is the only one who will ever truly care about you. This is just not true.

    You may ask yourself how you got here. You may know that what is happening will not end well and that you are contributing to your destruction and likely hurting others. You may tell him all of this and he will say that he knows but what other choice is there with a love as important as this. You are ultimately responsible for ending things. I repeat, you are responsible for getting yourself out. The sooner the better. 

    You may ask him to come clean and tell the truth or to go to therapy but instead he keeps lying, even to his closest friends and therapist. When you tell him that he needs to go away he may act surprised and even accuse you of being cruel or crazy or mean. He may throw a fit and stomp around or cry. Don’t fall for this act. Walk away.

    You feel handcuffed by all of the lies and eventually these cuffs will become so tight that they will cut off your circulation. Seek out stories from others. You will find that they are all much the same. It may shock you to realize that every single line out of his mouth is recited from an old script. He is not original and neither are you. Come back to life.

  • The fun house

    I am four and my grandparents have an object in their yard that looks like a spaceship. It is made of wood and wire with a pointed roof and stilted legs. I often climb inside, shut the door, peer out the wire and wait for take off. My grandparents have confirmed with me that it is most certainly a spaceship but my parents think it’s a birdcage.

    I am a teenager. My grandparents sell their house and with it their mysterious ship. I don’t notice. I am occupied by thoughts of boys and grunge music and coffee shops. I am plagued by spirits and ghosts. I have so many frights in the day and in the night. When my chore is to shut in our chickens after sundown, I run and scream down the path through the woods to their cage, lock their door and run with breath held all the way back up. During the day I take walks though my parent’s property and surrounding areas. A dirt road and a creak run side by side through the yard. There are redwood trees and, under them, clover ground cover and thick cushions of redwood needles.

    I wonder about spirits in the woods and worry why I can never spot a four leaf clover. One day, while walking through the dry creekbed, I see something moving out of the corner of my eye. I am so startled that I let out a blood curdling scream into the culvert that carries water but mostly just my feet from one side of the road to the other. I turn around and around, surprised at my voice, but nothing is there.  

    My parents have not taught me any particular religion or spiritual belief or practice and so my fears do not have a particular shape, but they are still very real. I eventually leave home for college, where I learn the difference between the old and new testament, the allegory of the cave and zen buddhism. I am hollow and hungry and lost. My sense of self is as easy to find as a ghost hovering in another dimension. My mind searches around the classrooms, in the library and on public transportation, intent to find what is missing.

    I am a new college graduate and have decided that boys are the answer. I admire their minds, I tell myself.  It is so much easier to connect with them than with girls my age. I occupy my time, which turns into countless years, shaping myself into what I think they want me to be. To what they see in me. I center their intelligence, interests and passions over mine. I stuff down my passions when I realize that my talents are mediocre and dull in the shadow of their more important ones. I tell myself that I am progressive and smart because I am able to be friends with boys and then men and they want me because I am special. I believe that I have a special power over them that most women don’t.

    I am an adult now, there is no getting around it. I focus on every piece of evidence I can find to remind myself that men think that I am special and different and worthy of their company. I think that my mind is that of a man and not that of a woman. Women are uninteresting and just not relatable. Boring. I roll my eyes at the art of women and prefer male authors and song writers. My boyfriends always have very particular interests and are happy when I mirror them. I do a lot of listening and happily wear the lingerie and heels given to me for valentines day because nothing says love like a plastic thong and blood filled heels.

    I still believe that I am on course for a special place. I will know it when I arrive, I think. 

    I am no longer young and, now in midlife, catch myself in a window and see my mom. I jump head first into relationships with no idea why, resulting in years of being used, manipulated and lied to. Wait, wasn’t I supposed to be the one in control? I am  the one with the power over men and I have the upper hand, right? This illusion begins to crumble after the final and crushing end to a years-long secret and destructive relationship with an unavailable and manipulative man. I break open. All of my badges and trinkets and knowledge and tangled up wire and rusty nails come pouring out and are absorbed into the earth.  

    I am on long drive with my son. I begin to hear something. I ignore the sound but it returns a few minutes later. It sounds like a song. I pick up the phone and hear a sharp and low man’s voice introducing himself as a cop. His interrogation takes me all the way to a bank. I am holding my son’s hand and my daughter is behind us. The bank employees are all wearing ugly Christmas sweaters as they stand around an open vault.  I see this and everything around me through a fun house mirror. I think that this must be a nightmare. Again, I notice a sound. It’s that cop voice. It has me like a hook. How did this happen? 

    My daughter shoves her phone into my face and I read: THIS IS A SCAM. The illusion melts. I end the call. 

    The ship has crashed and the pieces are scattered across the universe, each of them alone on a planet or moon. A rattlesnake slithers across the thirsty ground until I grab it and hang it from one remaining rusty nail. 

    I walked past the open vault, holding my son’s hand while following my daughter, who guides us past the vault and into the day.

  • cinnamon rolls

    I wake up to the sound of my cat breathing loudly. How does she make that noise? Is that normal? No. No way is that a normal cat sound.  What a strange snorting bed hog, curled up contentedly and snuggling in the exact middle of the mattress. 

    I am craving a cinnamon roll. Ah, it was one of those nights. Once again I traveled the lit up highway of my brain to the smaller world that reflects inside my eyes.  I spend all night in the familiar place I visit while my body rests. This one is on the other side of my eyes and inside my cells. A smaller but equally cyclical world full of repetitive problems and sweet treats. 

    For some reason I have the belief  from others or movies or books that dreams are metaphors providing one with clues about what they should do next. As a child my mom had a dream book on the family bookshelf. It was like a mysterious dictionary where the words translated into ghost-like apparitions that pointed in a direction that seemed solid but then crumbled upon a good solid stare. In my memory many of the definitions insinuated that my dream had something to do with sex, which I did not understand. Are my nightly cinnamon rolls trying to tell me something?

    This dream book and countless friends and influences tell me that the mind is the all knowing wizard laying down artsy hints in the form of dreams for the dumb consciousness to follow. Or it’s like the super computer inside that is secretly optimized for happiness but is playing coy and holding back like an evil narrator. 

    At some point my mind started to serve me up a world complete with a sometimes haunted, sometimes perfect home and a city full of secret bakeries. It is as real of a place as this is and I have since spent countless nights on a break from my literal dream job looking for the most amazing underground bakery that my dream city has to offer. It is always the same, complete with a long line and a selection of yeasty treats waiting to be decided upon.