Biking to the afterlife

Biking to the afterlife

Shiny expensive black car with suspicious tinted windows and sleek chrome accents is pulled up next to the curb. The body is mirror clean in this season when most vehicles still have a salt film on them. Driver standing near it keeps an alert watch because someone important expects a ride. It's just not yet their time.

People walk around dressed in green and, already at 4 pm, putting down pints of beer while singing jolly songs out of tune. Vestiges of green dye linger in the river. A brass band can be heard echoing through the canyon of down town Chicago.

It's sixty degrees and I've caught a chill wind. I'm cold, frozen from the inside out with bad news. A great woman, a patient woman, is gone from this world. I keep moving while this knowledge sinks its insidious fingers into my bones. I'm on the prowl, looking for a coat or some blanket of numbness that might pretend to protect me. Half a dozen cupcakes piled high with frosting? Playing with strangers in a dark bar? There's always the Vosges store. I can still use chocolate, right?

But no, I have no effective shield. Only now and now and now stretches in all directions. And now I answer phone calls and make arrangements. Now I head to the next appointment. Now I contain myself at work with a sober face. Now I look down at the happy color of my purple dress that felt right at 6 am but suddenly seems so incongruous with the day.

Reverend Erica was the most patient person I have ever met. I've sat in meetings watching her continually exhibit grace and gentleness to people who, by my estimation, seriously deserved a slap upside the head. I sat there stuck in self pity (that's the word I use for it now) while she patiently brought the many sides of confusion back to an understanding of next steps and solutions. I see why she did that. She truly believed in the presence of Christ in each and every person. Some folks had it buried pretty deep - so deep that not even they themselves knew of its existence. But she saw it and she always spoke to that as the reality within each person. Sooner or later she would tease it out.

Unless she didn't. I'm sure there were days. But pretty few people ever saw them. I never saw it, that's for sure. But she had doubts. And what explanation to you give your church when cancer cells invade the body? You could say it was the revenge of many years of gummy bears, junk food and take out. But something was welcoming that non-nutritious stuff into her being. Some part that was ready to complete its mission and was quite unwilling to age. Sure, it feels too soon to me. It feels to me like I've been deprived of that vitality, humor and grace far far too prematurely. But make no mistake about it. No one, NO ONE, leaves before the perfect time.

Still, I'm pissed.

It's about 24 hours after I first got the news when I feel the ice crack. It's a sharp snap in the center of my chest. A painful tear in the frozen river lets loose the dangerous flow from underneath. I'm sitting at my desk. I'm working. I can't stop sobbing. There's no stopping it. It won't respond to logic. Here comes the water, washing off eye makeup and professional composure. Reaching deep into my gut it wipes all the images of her smiling face across my insides, scrubbing all the fond, unspoken expectations loose. I'd have wanted her there on my important days yet to come. I would have wanted to share successes and happiness with her. I would have wanted to be closer. Did she know I loved her? Like a bystander some part of my mind stands at the riverbank pointing at the scene in awe. "Wow, look at that! That must be grief! Fascinating!"

I've been about as functional as I can be for one day. Two wheels and I'm out of here in a blaze of bike grease. Absent of a steel cage on me vehicle, I don't miss the chirping of birds as they attempt to wake the trees up. The scent of thawing earth fills the air like heady perfume. Here and there tiny green fingers poke through mud. The first bulb flowers rising. It almost seems indecent, so much life waking up, on today of all days which would seem, on the outside, to be about decay.

But of course. Why would you choose anything but to drink in the life of the day? Who should tell the birds to be silent because you're sad? Why would you waste the sight of a blue sky on thinking about bills? Why would one ignore the view, the terrain, to prefer some irritating mental conversation with someone who isn't there? Look at that jogger in her dayglo leggings and hot pink striped jacket - why - she's the miraculous product of billions of years of evolution. Why would you waste time hating that person when this life, this smell, these colors, are so sweet and we have just a moment to drink them before we're gone? Why would you not drink the chocolate milk? Why would you waste a moment thinking about your thighs when there is a genuine spirit in each person to be touched? Why would you wait by the phone for HIM to call when there is a world full of stories to be heard? Why would you not paint the painting? Why would you not show the love?

I screech to a halt. Busses sail past. Cars wait with blinkers on. Pedestrians step guardedly into the crosswalk. Look at us. Look at us now.

That's a pretty big baby...

Maybe 7? 8? 9? I'm not sure any more. I wasn't in middle school yet but I was definitely bigger, at least starting to top 70 lbs, when I finally got out of the crib and into a normal bed. I had forgotten and it came up as an aside in therapy today. Not even sure how I got to that point in the conversation. Talking about clothes... I didn't pick out my own clothes for school because I got ready in the living room because I shared a bedroom with my brother...and while I was in that room I still slept in a crib.

A crib?

A crib.

How did it end up like that? I'm sure there were plans for some other arrangement for all of these bodies of children. For a long time I heard plans of the two oldest moving into the basement, me moving into the pink room with the other sister, and my brother having his own room ('cause he was a boy). But the good idea and its implementation stretched further and further apart. Through Kindergarden, first grade, second...? I heard it so long that it took on the quality of fantasy, like the vacation we never took. Inertia creeps up on you. The next thing you know you're repairing a crib meant to hold up to 30 lbs of baby because the mattress supports break regularly. 70+ lbs of child drop with alarm to the floor under the bed in the middle of the night. She cries with alarm. Hilarity ensues.

Hence flew the meanest arrow in brother's arsenal. Available for humiliation at any moment's notice. In the middle of being tormented by children on the school bus he would come out with "she still sleeps in a crib". Bringing his friends over to play, a show of my crib was a humorous aside. It made him cool.

Who even cares any more which dust speck started the storm cloud, which was the first hair in the ball or which flake inspired the rolling set of poor ideas and bad decisions. Does it matter what little thing inspired the years of self negation? Did the crib make me into an alcoholic or was it the carelessness of the parents who, night after night, put me in there, to squeeze myself in, curl up into smallness and pretend not to be a growing person? At 12 i was throwing a party of one before the glass cabinet where all the liquor was kept.

I've never come close to crying in therapy until today. Because there it was, written in the shock of a doctor's face, that leaving a growing child to sleep in a crib has an unmistakable strangeness about it. That's all I see, for now.

Sitting at home with a plate full of healthy dinner and the feeling. Negation. Here, finally, is that mysterious essence of "what's wrong with you" that has so violently isolated me from all of those other people I see living lives with a sense of purpose. It's called "not a person" and its raw. It tastes like cheap girl scout cookies coming back up your throat. It feels like an ill fitted polyester dress on a hot day. It looks like the one kid in the group photo who is most likely to have a sad look on her face. Why can't I wear jeans like the other girls? Why can't I be treated like a normal person? Why isn't anyone listening to me? We can keep that self-pity helmet encased around our head, lost to the thoughts of the past for days...years. Or not. It's on me whether I want to finish the job they started...or not.

It was a crib in the one bedroom with only 1 exterior wall. The warmest place in the house. It's love, dear, but not as we know it.

We're back

Restricted self, fat self, now self.

What do you have to say to me?

Fat self: I'm afraid of change. I'm afraid of having the things I like ripped out of my hands. I'm afraid that there will never be enough. I'm sick of good things leaving. I don't like surprises, conflict or upset. I cling to what was and it clings to my body.

Restricted self: I'm sick of not being good enough. I'm sick of people being able to hurt me and finding a way to do that. I'm sick of never finding the way of being impervious to their bullets. I demand to be bullet proof. I demand to be good enough for once. No one will ever find a reason to reject me or hurt me again.

Dear fat self: No changes have ever come into our lives that weren't ultimately for the better. We can believe now that God is in the center of our being and that all things that come to us are for our highest good. Change only hurts when we fight it. And look, last year when we had that crash... big change. But there were angels and midwives all along the way. Nothing can hurt the real essence of us.

Dear restricted self: We have no power over what other people think. The more we try to take that power the further away it gets. This is something you should have heard a long time ago, like when you were being bullied by girl scouts on the bus. People are going to say and think whatever is in THEM to say and think. It has very little to do with the real you or even reality. You can listen to them and let them push you around, or you can make the choice to know Who You Really Are and live from there and not listen to them. Because the more you listen to them the more you will create a world in which you are wrong and must conform and pinch yourself. Other people will take our lead on how to treat us & who we are. If you don't listen to them. Well, you're free.

Freedom is a choice, ladies. Sanity is a choice. Health is a choice. Beauty is a choice.

I think we need to choose again. We have wasted too much time living for dying and make no mistake about it this is a time and a place where we will not survive if we permit those sorts of attitudes. We will be eliminated from the Earth equation. We have wasted too much time not living in the health, the power, the creativity, the beauty, the amazingness of the the truth of Who We Really Are. The time and energy wasted running from that truth, being afraid of that truth and staying stuck in the habits that kill us are too much of a drain. I, for one, am done!

I would like to make a decision to live in our real Self, our real power. To step into our true, goddess given role. I would like to make the decision to LIVE. Once and for ALL.

But, I cannot do this without the cooperation of both of you. We have to be in this together. I cannot leave you behind because you are the truth of me, too. I love you, I need you with me as I move ahead to be my warning harpies of when things could be dangerous or out of balance. Are you with me?

Here we go.

Hungry Lake

I'm flying, but I'm just a sparrow under the vast sky. I'm tall on my new self powered machine but yet so small. The lake, starting just there, 4 feet to my right, marches off into the darkness all the way to the horizon. The black unmeasureableness of it mesmerizes me. In the morning, with that line of horizon punctuated by a round sun, I can easily quantify my presence and size against its glimmer. But after dark the sea monster emerges. Her big, black mouth, whose throat stretches thousands of miles away to the cold North Atlantic, might swallow me up so easily. In just one tiny bight of the those toothy windswept waves, I could be gone. Lost forever in that inky dream.

Hungry Lake Michigan reminds me every day that I am small; that it is hungry; of how hard I must work to maneuver just 9 miles of her shore. Lest I think that the zenith of power lies in the pumping engines of those cars on the highway to my left, her dark water rolls in the breeze, splashing over a barrier to make a reach for me. What is power when one embodies force?

dark

It's that dark time. Time to pull the black air out of one's eyes. Along rain glistened streets feet shuffle like a marching shadow. We are reduced by winter to silhouettes. Shapes chasing desires into the night. From sleep to sleep.

fog

I got funny looks heading out this morning. Rain poured down, the sky glowered a deep grey, and there I was, wheeling my bike out for my commute. Turning on the lights and heading the hissing wheels out under thick, boiling skies, I wouldn't miss this for the world. Shreds of some low clouds finger the skyline, tasting each building. How sweet is sweet home, Chicago?

A cold wind brushes in from the lake - maybe a interloper from Canada- and soon I'm not just alone out here but awash in a chill cloud. The normal vista breaks down into the chunks which reveal themselves in the orb of each light. Here a lonely trail, here an empty beach, here water still as bathwater. The air is full of this cold water - a mystery.

Love and death - two of the biggest how-to mysteries known to humanity. I'd like to think that, having failed at one, I might well avoid the other. But as the roots in my hair grow I see the dots of silver growing from my head. "Who knows", I tell the mirror, "who knows... You might just fall in love yet."

Why I like Monday

In the silence of Monday morning I move through an abandoned world accompanied by just a few other hard-working ghost people. The lake shore is open and empty while the sand itself seems to heave sighs of relief. Evidence of two hot days of abuse - piles of broken bottles, soda cups, napkins and food wrappings, bags of junk left from cookouts - make mountains at her edges. The cyan light of morning opens its eye over Chicago to illuminate an exhausted relief. Thank god, the people are gone!

In the empty locker room I open a makeup case and my chosen weapons make clattering plastic sounds across the counter. In this antiseptic and air-conditioned world I erase the evidence of a weekend. Cover-up liquid will conceal dark circles under the eyes and some zits which grew from sweating out in the hot sun while working in the dirt. The little pot labeled "paint" will do the trick to hide the tiny purple dots which appeared all around my face when, disgusted with my own eating, I decided to purge up Saturday's dinner. The blood vessels that burst in my right eye during that process still leak brilliant red. It can't be fixed, so I change the part in my hair, snap the hairdryer out of the wall holster and re-style the coif. Now long bangs fall in front of the right side of my face and conceal the bloody evidence. I tell people I threw up because of heat exhaustion. I hide any traces leading to a different truth. I don't really care if there's anything wrong - any thing wrong with me or any injury. I only care that there be no appearance of my having slipped.

I open my blush compact carefully. The cake inside is shattered and sits in jagged, cracked piles that threaten to dump out of the container and make a mess at any second. It looks as broken up as I feel. I gently poke some color out with my brush and snap the little compact shut to hide the evidence within a smooth, black case.

I slip on the dress I toted along. It's a light, linen thing bought during a trip to Finland. That's the place to shop, for sure. For me, I have to go where all the women are built like linebackers to find clothing that won't yell "her shoulders are too big! Her legs are too stocky!" The more I bike to work the lighter the clothes I wear are becoming. Linen dress makes a neat line and as there's less on my hips to hold it up, it floats down below the knees. I review the evidence of yesterday's fast in the mirror. It made a good start in fighting back this disgusting mass of self. I step back to review the results of my efforts.

The weekend, with its terrifying stretches of unstructured time, is over. Back to Monday, I wake up extra early to the comfort of a schedule, times to work and times to eat, clear times to exercise and times to rest. Wrapped in paint and cloth, I'm ready.