The cleaning kit finally arrived and, finding myself with a pocket of time, I plunged Dad's coronet into hot bath water. We used to get into all sorts of trouble for playing these things when we found them in the basement. Now, it's MINE! I pull apart the one valve and yank out the tuning slide. Snaking the cleaner through pipes I watched as dark green clouds of old filth billow out. The valve is still missing a spring so it won't work to shift the key. This instrument is caked with slide grease and valve oil that have gone sticky and picked up basement gunk. The surface is dull and just looks like neglect. Soap. never had to soap a horn before but this needs it.
Then, it's time to put it together. At first I wonder if the horn is still dirty inside as it's tough to get air through. Then, I realize it might be my lungs that are out of shape. I figure out its intervals and briefly contemplate waking my party animal neighbors with a reveille at 5 am after their next late night fete.
As I take a cloth and polish the sediment off its surface a lovely silvery horn emerges. Like loosing the genie from the lamp I know I'm not alone in the room. Dad smiles over my shoulder. The brighter the horn shines the more clearly I can see his face. I put the new mouthpiece in and make sounds, experimenting with the few bugle calls I remember, and he plugs his ethereal ears.
After a few shots, my breathing comes back, my mouth remembers its "oo" arbrasure and the sound gets clear. "Next time you go home," he whispers "find my trumpet."
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
the spring merit badge
I look down at my arms and notice the scratches around wrist and elbows have turned red. By tomorrow these lines will fade down to small scabs looking like they were drawn with a ruler. But I know what they are. These are my merit badge that spring has started.
Crouched close to the dirt, clipping away at dead grass and pulling out leaves, I listen to the sound of a plane going overhead and the children playing at the adjoining park. Basketball, screams, games of interpersonal chance float in percussive syllables over the soft spring air. The smell of melted dirt fills my nostrils. For a split second it clicks back into place. This is the garden. Five months of snow and persistent cold have kept me away, but here it is again.
I see the garden as it was last season. The day lilies which towered and bloomed persistently until October are now just a few dried leaves and husks on the ground. The marigolds which insisted on growing into bushes make ecru skeletons clutching the dirt. The rose bushes, ah my precious wild roses, are a mange and chaos that cannot be ignored. The discipline of my clippers is met with thorny protest. The beauty I've wrestled with has left me looking mauled as though by a beast. Last season was indeed lovely. But it's done. Spent bushes and plants left to seed must be removed. Dead leaves applied for winter warmth must be raked away. Dead grasses clipped. It was beautiful. And now it's just time to start again.
Each year I start this process hoping to head off any weedy chaos at the pass. But tending this patch is nothing like cleaning a kitchen counter. It would seem the same rules apply, to set up a system of organization, to create clean surfaces, but it doesn't. There's too much letting go and waiting in the process for it to be anything like neat and easy. I know what I'm doing - setting myself up for more work! I spend 4 hours clipping and raking and hauling. And I know as I do this that there is no guarantee in this act of preventing work later on. I'll be here, playing catch-up with nature, every week, all season. I already know what I have to do when I come back next week.
Gathering clouds part for a bit and I see the flower bed, now flat and bare save for the first few patches of plants coming up. There's the daffodils, ringed by day lily, some bearded iris, the poppies, the dianthus, the holly hocks, and the roses. Other surprises await. Will the marigolds and zinnias I let go to seed come back? In a month so much more life will have exploded from the dirt you'd be hard pressed to say its the same place. In two months the day lily will start blooming and the roses will be out. Sounds a bit like I know what will happen. But I don't. The blooming is like a christmas present I get to open over and over. I can barely wait.
Crouched close to the dirt, clipping away at dead grass and pulling out leaves, I listen to the sound of a plane going overhead and the children playing at the adjoining park. Basketball, screams, games of interpersonal chance float in percussive syllables over the soft spring air. The smell of melted dirt fills my nostrils. For a split second it clicks back into place. This is the garden. Five months of snow and persistent cold have kept me away, but here it is again.
I see the garden as it was last season. The day lilies which towered and bloomed persistently until October are now just a few dried leaves and husks on the ground. The marigolds which insisted on growing into bushes make ecru skeletons clutching the dirt. The rose bushes, ah my precious wild roses, are a mange and chaos that cannot be ignored. The discipline of my clippers is met with thorny protest. The beauty I've wrestled with has left me looking mauled as though by a beast. Last season was indeed lovely. But it's done. Spent bushes and plants left to seed must be removed. Dead leaves applied for winter warmth must be raked away. Dead grasses clipped. It was beautiful. And now it's just time to start again.
Each year I start this process hoping to head off any weedy chaos at the pass. But tending this patch is nothing like cleaning a kitchen counter. It would seem the same rules apply, to set up a system of organization, to create clean surfaces, but it doesn't. There's too much letting go and waiting in the process for it to be anything like neat and easy. I know what I'm doing - setting myself up for more work! I spend 4 hours clipping and raking and hauling. And I know as I do this that there is no guarantee in this act of preventing work later on. I'll be here, playing catch-up with nature, every week, all season. I already know what I have to do when I come back next week.
Gathering clouds part for a bit and I see the flower bed, now flat and bare save for the first few patches of plants coming up. There's the daffodils, ringed by day lily, some bearded iris, the poppies, the dianthus, the holly hocks, and the roses. Other surprises await. Will the marigolds and zinnias I let go to seed come back? In a month so much more life will have exploded from the dirt you'd be hard pressed to say its the same place. In two months the day lily will start blooming and the roses will be out. Sounds a bit like I know what will happen. But I don't. The blooming is like a christmas present I get to open over and over. I can barely wait.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Water normal
In the wind whipping off the lake this morning, the water works itself into foamy waves that march toward the the shore like rows of shark teeth. You'd think the land didn't stand a chance. But, at the last second each icy peak shatters and sprays into a million pieces like angels falling to earth.
The taste of water in my mouth. Neutral, wet, even and unthreatening, like a constant to come back and visit after so many visits to countries sweet and acidic. The water pretends to offer no answers and has no agenda of results. It just is for the consuming for anyone wanting to come home. Much like love.
We've talked for hours on the phone. We finally met f2f and while on one hand I enjoyed myself, I couldn't help but suppose afterward that I'd screwed everything up. Signals, men want signals. What does a signal look like? Where is the instruction manual for all of these feminine wiles I'm supposed to wield? Is that what all of those men who decided I wasn't for them wanted?
What did they want? Why didn't they stay? Or was it me? How many times did I hop off the rolling train when it passed through a tunnel? Was I supposed to want something? get something? Marry someone? The tide of self doubt comes in again, nibbling at my shore. I always come back here, to gnawing doubt and a subtle but pervasive unworthiness. The waves roll back to reveal what detritus lives under every life tide: suicidal depression.
Self pity comes easy. Just because that derelict of mental crashes remains in the deep sand doesn't mean I need to go excavating. I could. But today I keep it at a distance. I keep at a distance the way he asks so many questions and how many long pauses fill the conversation. I keep at a distance that line I've heard so many times "I'm not ready for a relationship." I won't dive in there, today, but keep running.
People wonder why I spend so much time alone. It's just that it's like water - a formless sense of normal that seeps in and where I don't feel expected to be anything. I just can't help but drink.
The taste of water in my mouth. Neutral, wet, even and unthreatening, like a constant to come back and visit after so many visits to countries sweet and acidic. The water pretends to offer no answers and has no agenda of results. It just is for the consuming for anyone wanting to come home. Much like love.
We've talked for hours on the phone. We finally met f2f and while on one hand I enjoyed myself, I couldn't help but suppose afterward that I'd screwed everything up. Signals, men want signals. What does a signal look like? Where is the instruction manual for all of these feminine wiles I'm supposed to wield? Is that what all of those men who decided I wasn't for them wanted?
What did they want? Why didn't they stay? Or was it me? How many times did I hop off the rolling train when it passed through a tunnel? Was I supposed to want something? get something? Marry someone? The tide of self doubt comes in again, nibbling at my shore. I always come back here, to gnawing doubt and a subtle but pervasive unworthiness. The waves roll back to reveal what detritus lives under every life tide: suicidal depression.
Self pity comes easy. Just because that derelict of mental crashes remains in the deep sand doesn't mean I need to go excavating. I could. But today I keep it at a distance. I keep at a distance the way he asks so many questions and how many long pauses fill the conversation. I keep at a distance that line I've heard so many times "I'm not ready for a relationship." I won't dive in there, today, but keep running.
People wonder why I spend so much time alone. It's just that it's like water - a formless sense of normal that seeps in and where I don't feel expected to be anything. I just can't help but drink.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Winter relapse
I can't tell if it's about to happen or if I've already missed it. I stare into the yellow glow on the horizon, trying to pick out the round form this morning's haze might conceal. Just as I turn to keep running the sun sneaks over the horizon in a blaze. The yellow ball burning through clouds is the same color as amber LED's on the front of a bus. Here she is, driving over the horizon on a west bound route, the #1 vehicle upon which we all hitch a ride through space.
On a whim I asked how she's doing and got back a flooding response. In the middle of a divorce, anyone who asks such a thing is a welcome chance to unload. Anyone who asks better be willing to show up for the whole story. You don't ask a soldier how they are and expect to run off. And she is a veteran of the heart wars. So this is what marriage and children can look like. It doesn't have to, but this is the picture I bolster myself with when too many popular voices upbraid me for staying single. You may say I'm selfish, but I'm quite happy.
Patches of snow remaining from winter's relapse remain like frozen sundials on the east side of trees and hills. The sun didn't come out yesterday until after leaving its zenith. All through the pounding wind, sleet and snow I was amazed at the sounds of birdsong, as if they were trying to keep the trees awake and reassure them that spring was not a joke. Would that they could wake us all up.
Meeting him today. After how long? A month? 3 weeks? of nothing but phone calls. "No pressure no pressure" became "dammit when are we going to meet?" Somebody got frisky, maybe. This should be interesting. Will it be a lecture on TM or a conversation about sex? I could use a nap. "Don't kid yourself" I say. exchanging words isn't knowing. Don't try too hard. Look good enough to feel happy about yourself but not too..sexy.
Feet don't want to move as fast today. Darn it. Must need more sleep. Push through. Seagull screeches leak through the audio fill of new ipod. Hop over melt off rivers. I thought we were done with seeing these weeks ago. Spring is back at step one, trying it again.
Metallic carnage that sustains our life starts to clang and thump to life. Arterial highways carry corpuscules of steel and rubber into the city. Is this really life? Are we really living if our actions enslave? We could be seeing the decline of human dominance. Soon we will negotiate our treaties not with cultures of other countries but of other species. Dolphins will tell us where we can go in the ocean and birds will discipline us in the forest. Will we be left to the cities or will our cities cease? What if there were fewer of us?
Coming through the door at home I see the full buds on branches, days, maybe minutes, from exploding. Hey birdies, it worked.
On a whim I asked how she's doing and got back a flooding response. In the middle of a divorce, anyone who asks such a thing is a welcome chance to unload. Anyone who asks better be willing to show up for the whole story. You don't ask a soldier how they are and expect to run off. And she is a veteran of the heart wars. So this is what marriage and children can look like. It doesn't have to, but this is the picture I bolster myself with when too many popular voices upbraid me for staying single. You may say I'm selfish, but I'm quite happy.
Patches of snow remaining from winter's relapse remain like frozen sundials on the east side of trees and hills. The sun didn't come out yesterday until after leaving its zenith. All through the pounding wind, sleet and snow I was amazed at the sounds of birdsong, as if they were trying to keep the trees awake and reassure them that spring was not a joke. Would that they could wake us all up.
Meeting him today. After how long? A month? 3 weeks? of nothing but phone calls. "No pressure no pressure" became "dammit when are we going to meet?" Somebody got frisky, maybe. This should be interesting. Will it be a lecture on TM or a conversation about sex? I could use a nap. "Don't kid yourself" I say. exchanging words isn't knowing. Don't try too hard. Look good enough to feel happy about yourself but not too..sexy.
Feet don't want to move as fast today. Darn it. Must need more sleep. Push through. Seagull screeches leak through the audio fill of new ipod. Hop over melt off rivers. I thought we were done with seeing these weeks ago. Spring is back at step one, trying it again.
Metallic carnage that sustains our life starts to clang and thump to life. Arterial highways carry corpuscules of steel and rubber into the city. Is this really life? Are we really living if our actions enslave? We could be seeing the decline of human dominance. Soon we will negotiate our treaties not with cultures of other countries but of other species. Dolphins will tell us where we can go in the ocean and birds will discipline us in the forest. Will we be left to the cities or will our cities cease? What if there were fewer of us?
Coming through the door at home I see the full buds on branches, days, maybe minutes, from exploding. Hey birdies, it worked.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Social Nigger
"Alcoholic"
It's like social speak for 'nigger'. Some folks will understand, maybe even accept you. Some will be astonished by the quality of your personality and intelligence despite the obvious flaw. But among the normies, among those that ain't your own, you're sitting on the back of the friendship bus. You're giving up your seat as mate or girlfriend when a 'normal' person presents similar (maybe even a few less) strategic qualifications.
So we stick to our own, make more of our own, get together and share our tribal stories and have our rituals. We have our private picknics with burgers and watermelon in the summer where we laugh at pain and tell stories in a lingo nobody but us understands. But, quite without pointing fingers we can see lots of niggers in hiding amongst the legions of 'normal' folks. I see my same disease festering just below the surface of a culture crazed by entitlement and the pressure of 'more'. I see it boiling over into stress and spiritual crisis now that consumptive wings have been collectively clipped by the tumbling tower of lies. Just as humanity all came from Africa if you dig back far enough, we all proceed in our various incarnations from a sacred wound which bids us to re-member Who We Really Are through as many paths as, well, humanly possible.
Can't you see past my disease? It is NOT a "lifestyle choice"! I didn't ask for this. But it has been my curriculum to God. Love doesn't have a color and certainly doesn't show up with a menu of demands.
I'll show you. I'll show you I'm as good as and someday your children, the children you didn't want to have with me because of these two scarlet letters - "AA" - will look at you in shock and disappointment that you would put a person of my caliber to the back of your bus. "How could you expect a perfectly capable human being to settle for such treatment?"
When they ask that, I want you to tell those children quite plainly that I DIDN'T.
It's like social speak for 'nigger'. Some folks will understand, maybe even accept you. Some will be astonished by the quality of your personality and intelligence despite the obvious flaw. But among the normies, among those that ain't your own, you're sitting on the back of the friendship bus. You're giving up your seat as mate or girlfriend when a 'normal' person presents similar (maybe even a few less) strategic qualifications.
So we stick to our own, make more of our own, get together and share our tribal stories and have our rituals. We have our private picknics with burgers and watermelon in the summer where we laugh at pain and tell stories in a lingo nobody but us understands. But, quite without pointing fingers we can see lots of niggers in hiding amongst the legions of 'normal' folks. I see my same disease festering just below the surface of a culture crazed by entitlement and the pressure of 'more'. I see it boiling over into stress and spiritual crisis now that consumptive wings have been collectively clipped by the tumbling tower of lies. Just as humanity all came from Africa if you dig back far enough, we all proceed in our various incarnations from a sacred wound which bids us to re-member Who We Really Are through as many paths as, well, humanly possible.
Can't you see past my disease? It is NOT a "lifestyle choice"! I didn't ask for this. But it has been my curriculum to God. Love doesn't have a color and certainly doesn't show up with a menu of demands.
I'll show you. I'll show you I'm as good as and someday your children, the children you didn't want to have with me because of these two scarlet letters - "AA" - will look at you in shock and disappointment that you would put a person of my caliber to the back of your bus. "How could you expect a perfectly capable human being to settle for such treatment?"
When they ask that, I want you to tell those children quite plainly that I DIDN'T.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Ciao bella
Clouds dry brush the sky with steel and indigo. The approaching sun peeks through in pastel drawn lines of pink and red. It's not like last week's clear, perfect sunrises. But somehow it's even better, as if the clouds, the steel sky and blue shadows make something even more clear. Push through the wall that's coming to meet me after just two miles.
My earphones aren't interfacing properly with my auditory canal. Something about the vacuum it forms lets no sound in from the left. Instead, the morning leaks in, the echo of no traffic & bird song.
Here it comes; the glycogen wall. I will my legs to keep up the pace.
So I told him. I told him about my past as an addict and decade plus of sobriety. He wished me well, puzzled, and then said "It's ok for friends, I respect this was your lifestyle choice, but for a mate - someone I might even have children with - is unacceptable...Why are you telling me now?"
"I thought, based on what you said during that conversation we had while driving to Home Depot, that you wouldn't talk to me anymore. I finally just decided that I couldn't hide it anymore. Being a sober person is a big part of my life and I decided that if you don't want me around because of that well, you should be able to make that decision. I was afraid. There have been times I've told people and they said it was cool, but they disappeared. No returned phone calls, gone."
"No no, I don't disappear. I'm attached to you. Not going away." But again, I don't trust it. Attached... check your dictionary again. In subsequent days since this conversation? Silence. Better to know the truth, I guess. So I guess that's it. Done. Over and out. Ciao bella.
Right now, as birds scream around me, I want to yell at him. I want to shake him until his brains rattle and ask "Since when is having a disease a 'lifestyle choice'? It's a sickness! A pre-existing condition like any cancer. So fuck you! Every day for 10 + years I've had to dig down & tap a greater source just to stay alive! If you want to have a negative judgement about that it's your problem! My journey has been a blessing! You want to walk away? Fine. FINE!! You're selfish and I hate the way you make humor by putting me down, anyhow! Ciao!"
The flock of seagulls mingles, squaks and swarms, conversing with jets flying low. Our birds eat McDonals and our waterlife takes unwilling doses of ridalin & antidepressants. It seems like too much, for a minute.
I feel the volume of my heart, pumping away in my chest. Pushing through I get that power and it carries me all the way home.
My earphones aren't interfacing properly with my auditory canal. Something about the vacuum it forms lets no sound in from the left. Instead, the morning leaks in, the echo of no traffic & bird song.
Here it comes; the glycogen wall. I will my legs to keep up the pace.
So I told him. I told him about my past as an addict and decade plus of sobriety. He wished me well, puzzled, and then said "It's ok for friends, I respect this was your lifestyle choice, but for a mate - someone I might even have children with - is unacceptable...Why are you telling me now?"
"I thought, based on what you said during that conversation we had while driving to Home Depot, that you wouldn't talk to me anymore. I finally just decided that I couldn't hide it anymore. Being a sober person is a big part of my life and I decided that if you don't want me around because of that well, you should be able to make that decision. I was afraid. There have been times I've told people and they said it was cool, but they disappeared. No returned phone calls, gone."
"No no, I don't disappear. I'm attached to you. Not going away." But again, I don't trust it. Attached... check your dictionary again. In subsequent days since this conversation? Silence. Better to know the truth, I guess. So I guess that's it. Done. Over and out. Ciao bella.
Right now, as birds scream around me, I want to yell at him. I want to shake him until his brains rattle and ask "Since when is having a disease a 'lifestyle choice'? It's a sickness! A pre-existing condition like any cancer. So fuck you! Every day for 10 + years I've had to dig down & tap a greater source just to stay alive! If you want to have a negative judgement about that it's your problem! My journey has been a blessing! You want to walk away? Fine. FINE!! You're selfish and I hate the way you make humor by putting me down, anyhow! Ciao!"
The flock of seagulls mingles, squaks and swarms, conversing with jets flying low. Our birds eat McDonals and our waterlife takes unwilling doses of ridalin & antidepressants. It seems like too much, for a minute.
I feel the volume of my heart, pumping away in my chest. Pushing through I get that power and it carries me all the way home.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
A drift
"How long are you going to hang out on that glacier? How many more years to cling to that frozen landscape you've called a heart?"
I'm floating, again, in the sapphire sea, adrift on my rock of ice. It's a comfort, this cold stillness that I can cling to, like the cool side of the pillow on a hot night. I come back here for solace, for knowing, despite knowing that there is no truth on this glacier.
It's melting. I've given it permission to melt. I've asked for it to be warmer, here, in this environment I call a soul. But as I watch large chunks calve into the blue void and leave me, I can't help but to be filled with grief. Less and less space is left for me to act out the old play. Old roles and actors leave gaps in the mental drama after they've gone. And as I watch another piece float away part of me accepts the departure, part of me screams with grief.
Yet another addictive facet of me instantly it melts into the warm, understanding sea like an ice cube in bath water. There it goes. I pretzel my self, twist stories and bend truths just to look good enough to get that measure that means approval. I just want to be in this whatever we're calling it today (friendship? relationship?) so that I can take the satisfaction I want. I'll exert whatever verbal calisthenics are necessary to come out looking justified and right. And now all 'needing to feel good about myself by what you tell me about me' all of the 'I'm nothing unless I can take what I want from you' chunks off with a base thud and a quake - gone. With it go the fairy tales of what life should bring to ME. Me me me wants someone to say "I love you" just once, wants someone to think about her before they go to sleep, wants to be right, just wants.
Want has drifted off. I'm left on an even tinier island of my ice. What will be left of me, now. What do I become now if I've hit the point of truly realizing that I need nothing from another person - neither sex nor approval nor cash - to be Who I Really Am. I was born to give, not to take. I knew this... KNOW it in my head. But now, taking it into being and behavior and saying yes to that truth feels like dying.
"Maybe that's ok. Consider that something has to die for something wonderful to be born. Without the disintegration of fall and death of winter no new seeds could be born into fresh growth."
For now I ride in the bluest ocean, clutching what remains. What remains? I don't even know yet what sediments lie under the surface of what's left. I shudder to think of what life will look like without these few old things to cling to. My shrinking glacier is a cold, hard and barren turf. It is a lie of a landscape. But, it's what I know. And when its gone I will be left in this big, empty ocean drowning in the sea of feelings. I will die. I will absolutely die.
"No. You will not die because you cannot be killed. Let go of the ice and you may find that you've known how to float all along."
I'm floating, again, in the sapphire sea, adrift on my rock of ice. It's a comfort, this cold stillness that I can cling to, like the cool side of the pillow on a hot night. I come back here for solace, for knowing, despite knowing that there is no truth on this glacier.
It's melting. I've given it permission to melt. I've asked for it to be warmer, here, in this environment I call a soul. But as I watch large chunks calve into the blue void and leave me, I can't help but to be filled with grief. Less and less space is left for me to act out the old play. Old roles and actors leave gaps in the mental drama after they've gone. And as I watch another piece float away part of me accepts the departure, part of me screams with grief.
Yet another addictive facet of me instantly it melts into the warm, understanding sea like an ice cube in bath water. There it goes. I pretzel my self, twist stories and bend truths just to look good enough to get that measure that means approval. I just want to be in this whatever we're calling it today (friendship? relationship?) so that I can take the satisfaction I want. I'll exert whatever verbal calisthenics are necessary to come out looking justified and right. And now all 'needing to feel good about myself by what you tell me about me' all of the 'I'm nothing unless I can take what I want from you' chunks off with a base thud and a quake - gone. With it go the fairy tales of what life should bring to ME. Me me me wants someone to say "I love you" just once, wants someone to think about her before they go to sleep, wants to be right, just wants.
Want has drifted off. I'm left on an even tinier island of my ice. What will be left of me, now. What do I become now if I've hit the point of truly realizing that I need nothing from another person - neither sex nor approval nor cash - to be Who I Really Am. I was born to give, not to take. I knew this... KNOW it in my head. But now, taking it into being and behavior and saying yes to that truth feels like dying.
"Maybe that's ok. Consider that something has to die for something wonderful to be born. Without the disintegration of fall and death of winter no new seeds could be born into fresh growth."
For now I ride in the bluest ocean, clutching what remains. What remains? I don't even know yet what sediments lie under the surface of what's left. I shudder to think of what life will look like without these few old things to cling to. My shrinking glacier is a cold, hard and barren turf. It is a lie of a landscape. But, it's what I know. And when its gone I will be left in this big, empty ocean drowning in the sea of feelings. I will die. I will absolutely die.
"No. You will not die because you cannot be killed. Let go of the ice and you may find that you've known how to float all along."
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