the habit of being

This vertigo consumes me, sucks my essence away, your mouth on my breast, yes I was dizzy then too. Too much to eat, too little, farther nourishment, farther inside. It’s all circling around in my head. Oh why can’t I vomit? I want to throw away all these impurities that keep me from seeing my thoughts as they float by. I feel sick now and it brings on ghosts of pleasure. The past. Why commit it all to the past so it fades faster and I begin to forget all intensity? It was all intensity, an unending circuit from you to me back to you back to me till it was impossible to tell where in its orbit the impulse situated itself. Impulse, circuit, it was electric, so electric. Touching hands like touching wires and I could have vomited then too from the jolt. Some strange flip of muscle - like when slowly tracing one nail down my torso I can’t help but spasm as the string meets that strange spot near the hip. Or is there some magnetic field around you - I enter and every cell wants to dance, twirl, around and around till the room spins and I can’t see your face for my eyelids are called down to calm me. Black icebergs, no, what do I see? A line that stretches before me, on and on?

I want to be smothered in the weight of you, my body blotted out my yours, come over, come over to my side, protect me from the air. Press me down against all that is mine and oh how I’d love you for the pressure. How I wanted something that spoke more of hunger. I was starving myself and I’d forget I had hands at all. These hands could be used for pulling but laid flat limp by my sides, not remembered in the haste to tell you so much in so little time, or lost in you hair from time to time. I told you you were a beautiful thing. It was the best I could do at the time.

Now it’s me alone wrapped up in the big blue towel, after a ten minute soak in the tub, just enough to get me immersed in thought, just enough to make me want to write. Just enough to ward off the thoughts of your being wanted by someone else. Could she give you more? No, she couldn’t. I’m the pearl, you said so.

My father told me today that he once dreamt of a pearl, some floating diamond-stars, a storm closing in from all sides. The pearl represented a woman and he had to protect her. Then he couldn’t get the image out of his head for years, YEARS. So he draws the simple illustration in his Christ-poetry manuscript. Says “I bet you didn’t know I could draw”, kneels on the floor to show me, says don’t read anything. Stupid poems, ten years, he can’t remember when his mother died. He looks wired, a quick quick shaking. Oh how he shook at her funeral. That made me cry so much more than her death itself. And I remember when he called my mother and told her, how she slid down the wall till seated in a doorway, crying. Oh Joe. I caressed her hair and went back to sleep. The next morning he came to tell me. No more Ginny. How? She shot herself. Why? He shook then too, oh how he shook. He didn’t know. I took the glass elephants down from the shelf in my room and turned them over in my hands. Clasp them hard, this is what the grieving granddaughter should do.

Your hands shook too. The first night? It terrified me so. Why? Did I ask why? Did you tell me? I wanted to clasp those hands to my chest till they were still, still like me. I am still through all the shock of it, though I feel as if the world is being tossed against a wall, everything I know streaming out into you. All that you feel I breathe in, till high from it, floating. I touch my hand to my face repeatedly, a pattern a pattern, to make sure I’m still there, I can still move my limbs. Never so calm, not in my entire existence had that happened so fully, and it was you, it was you. My skin on fire, yet I felt nothing. Could you tell I was a gypsy then? Is that what you mistook for enlightenment?

Me and Philip Glass. In my room, today, TODAY, not then. Alone. Koyaanisqatsi put me in a trance, they say I didn’t move an inch even after the credits were through rolling. And that was over a year ago now. Time always seems like something from long ago. That place is still clear t me, so it doesn’t seem right that time should have past at all. I see those people speeding through corridors in fast motion still, and the contrast of dunes, rocks. We all work together like clockwork, each a dot in ASCII artwork that stretches for miles. You told me sand dunes were sexy. I know it.

. . .

Green Jane’s on the bed with me, and an empty bag that once held dill pickle potato chips. There’s a pink ponytail holder in my hair, but it’s still falling in my face. I will not pose today. I will not bear witness to a camera. Bad skill. I haven’t painted in such a terribly long time. I haven’t even played my flute. Creativity atrophies, does it? Wind ensemble and two periods of art next year, I hope. Make me, make me, make me. Going to pick up my schedule on Monday between 9 and 11. I’ve been getting up in the afternoon lately, but today was different. I was anticipating something, I’m not sure what. Looked through some vintage Sarasvati, found things I’d vaguely forgotten. Somewhat like Jennifer with her old writing hidden under odd filenames to discover some other time. I used to do that very thing, but now I write nothing for myself and it is ever so disgusting.

. . .

something older (tell not show):

part 1. the mother

If she’d owned a clock, it would read 4:25 AM. It’s Tuesday morning and the mother’s eyelids flitter a bit; she’s sinking back into the present timespace - automatic, from months, years, and eternity of repetition. One eye (hazel) slits open, then its mate. The room takes s a second to come into focus. It’s pitch black, to the teeth, for miles. The wash of the waves massaging the shore pulls on her spine. She anticipates the day when the tide will come bursting through her door; the water damage would be a problem.

Half thoughts dart around her head as electrics. By now, she is aware that these are of the most important sort. Still, she throws back the single sheet and emerges from her cocoon, shaking off the sheath of restfulness and nightdreams. Elongating every muscle, the stretches each limb slowly, with calculated motion. It helps the circulation.

Fully in tune, she heads directly to the door - not a pause for to change into a day dress, not a sip of hot tea, she does not even bother to turn on the lights.

Out she runs into the salty wind and she is filled. An abrupt stop and she takes a breath, deep and heavy, that will reach each hidden spot. The sea splash is her heroin.

As she raises her arms in salute to Neptune or greater kings, her head tilts back and she gives her silent thank yous for the waves, the baby turtles, the hermit crabs that snap at her feet. She runs down to the water’s edge, spinning and spinning when the mood strikes her.

Until six, she can be seen walking along shore, white gown flapping behind, making origami with the wind. Our graceful old hippie, dharma queen of the beach, she contemplates seagulls and mutters. For years she’s molested her spirit, but doesn’t worry about enlightenment anymore. She worries for her daughter, far away and angry. She worries that she’s lost the piece of coral given to her by a prince she found hiding in a shell. Her list of causes is tucked away in her underwear drawer, and she simply does what she always has.

The mother has run a seashell shop on the Island for so long she’s seriously contemplating changing her name to Susie, she’s so damned tired of that rhyme (as if making Susie Sells Seashells by the Sea Shore real will make it go away.) It’s little annoyances like that one that all the meditation and yoga and astral travel and Zenification in the world can’t seem to cure in her. She may be able to see auras, survive on nothing but seaweed and imported coconut milk, to spot the good in nearly anyone, but she can’t seem to keep from grimacing when some tourist come in with a big grin on his face and asks is her name just happens to be Sue or Susie or Susan, depending on the flavor of his particular place of origin.

Everyone, mystical beach bums included, has a black ribbon tied somewhere, I suppose.