The Signs

He sat back watching her dismantle the parts of herself that made her beautiful to him and he wondered, with a pit in his stomach what she was hiding from. Stifling herself from the outside in.

Her smile she hid behind sweaty palms. Her curves she draped in loose fitted threads and her golden feathers she painted to match the night. All of the things that made her stand out she traded. As if she’d rather dwell in dark corners than light up a room.

As if she stood in front of a mirror squinting her eyes in and out of focus, picking herself apart. Willing herself unnoticeable.

Leaving

She’d been searching for pieces of herself that she might miss when she packed up everything she owned into a box truck for her first move across the country.  Would there be anything about this sedentary state that she would miss?  Certainly not the unremarkable ways the state blurs from one day to the next.  Sure the seasons change but the people never do.  Her stale weekly agenda of uneventful events had been suffocating her essence for years and she could hardly wait to leave it all behind.  Dust off her hemlines and sew a few new ones.

The only piece of herself that she had always been hesitant to leave behind was her family.  Of course, she wouldn’t really be leaving that piece of her behind, she carried them with her everywhere she went.  All these years something about them always kept her around, not for herself, she didn’t think, but for them.  Maybe a little for herself.  She always felt an innate need to hang around just in case she was needed in one way or another, although, no one ever seemed to really need her.  They didn’t agree with much of anything she chose to do, always wanting more from her instead of looking deeper and seeing the reasons behind her off-the-grid ways of being.

Her mother told her that she was born a thinker, an analyzer, a being always lost in thought or something like it.  She told her that as a baby she would sit in the bath and instead of playing with toys or splashing around like all of her siblings and the majority of babies alike would do, she would just sit and look around.  Quizzically scanning her mothers face searching for things she didn’t even know existed.  Unless she maybe really did.

She would miss her family, that she knew without needing to admit it.

Her mothers smell and the way her laugh sounded.  Her underlying tones of anxiety and unsureness that she hid between cracked chewing gum and fancy clothing.  Never knowing how beautiful she really was, inside and out.  Her back tall and strong but her long skinny legs still a bit wobbly from things she’d never speak out loud about.  Her love for every one of her children that pulsed out of every part of her energy with a certain uncertainty of where or how to place it.  She never knew quite how to deal with the love she felt so deeply, I assume it frightened her, feeling the lack of love as a child like she did.  Mom came from soiled stock.  Her mother, my beloved grandma, a beautifully quirky woman of her times.  A bright light with an optimistic heart and wounds of her own.  Her father, one I have never known and I suppose I never really wished to know, an abusive alcoholic with not a single shred of respect, so I’m told, for anyone other than himself- that being a stretch as well.  She would miss her mothers cooking, her boyfriend had pointed that out last week in a conversation they were having about their move.  Her cooking so divine in taste and presentation that nobody could beat it.  It wasn’t just “moms cooking”, it was Caea’s cooking that she would miss.  Every ounce of love she had she poured into the food she fed her family, exhausted and without an appetite by the time she was done.  She would miss her mom so very much.

Her father and his stoic but undeniable love.  He always frightened her in ways she couldn’t explain but it was more her love for a man who didn’t know how to love that frightened her.  She knew that he loved her but didn’t know how, why, where because he never knew how to show it.  His strong hands and honest eyes that did a terrible job of hiding the things he carried with him on his shoulders and locked inside of himself.  She wondered if with time her eyes would refuse to hide her secrets too.  He’d never did share any of it with anyone.  He seemed to prefer the solitude of not speaking and letting it all rest in between the parts of his mind that he never touched out loud.  She realized only while writing it all down how much she was like him.  Quiet, full of pain but strong and happy.  She hoped he was happy.  She would miss seeing those parts of him that she saw in herself as she grew up.  Maybe that’s why they were never close.  So much alike that no words she could speak or type would explain the ways they were, the whys or the hows.  She would miss him and his sound being.

Her youngest siblings and all of their unique unfolding ways she would miss terribly.  The two little boys, so innocent and full of life and wonder.  The ways their eyes still sparkled with their dreams still untouched or tried.  She would miss watching them grow and change and form into the people they were born to be.  So pure and sincere.  She knew they were in good hands though.

And her sister.  Her crazy beautiful sister.  Delayed in so many ways she was meant to be but just now learning about herself and what the real world is all about with all of it’s offerings up for her taking.  Stifled by her own doings but hopeful for her future with big eyes and a timid heart.  She loved her sister like a sister should although her heart ached for her in ways she never dared to share.  Her sister, complex in so many ways but ignorant and simple to the core.  Easily influenced and dangerously fierce.  She wanted to be loved so badly that she shared more of herself than any woman ever should.  Leaving pieces of herself in between bed sheets and cigarettes with everyone she came across.  An open book full of love, pain and chaos, compulsive and desperate, anxious and willing.  Her energy so strong but so completely unsure.  She protected her sister more than she should and grew angry in the mothering she couldn’t shake to waken her from the nightmares she inflicted upon herself.  Her love for her sister was strong and sincere.  She never knew where to put it and began to realize that she couldn’t go on trying to awaken her lost innocence, she had to find it within herself.  She would miss her sister as there were parts of her tangled up in everything she was.  A bond that needed no words.

She would miss her family but knew she owed it to herself to break out of the confines of unnecessary feelings of obligations to others who had no obligations to her.  Her love for them would never be tried by distance or circumstance, like I said, she carried pieces of each of them everywhere she went.  She had to pack her things and leave for herself.  She was overdue on her own search for meaning and reason and needed to follow her gut and leave this place behind.  This she was doing for herself and no one else.  She had no desire to commit to anything, let alone a lifestyle of day to day routine as she found it suffocating and shallow.  She didn’t want the perfect job, the large house, the money the superficial things that seemed to please everyone else on their own journeys.  She never knew what she intended to be when she grew up because she knew deep down that what she wanted out of life was deeper.  She just wanted to live.  She didn’t want to waste time trying to conform to the standards of society, time was precious, days were always numbered.  She didn’t want to be anything but herself and wanted nothing more than to enjoy the earth and be full of love, leaving beautiful pieces of herself behind in all the places and people she touched along the way.

Alive

Alive in layers.  In between lyrics, under bed sheets, behind the smiles, in front of tomorrow.  Dreams of singing duets, the freedom of the treetops and unplugged travels.  I hang on his every smile and balance myself with his moods and mine, forth and back, back and forth.  I count the stars through my window and wait for something I’m unsure of although I’m sure it’s within my grasp.  Shoe-lacing through the weeks as though it’s an easy thing to do.  All the love that is around us we follow and make plans.  Sheltering one another against the odds of this doomed world.  Always thinking, that could be good, that is real, this is good, this is real.  Wondering if those who made fools of us have made it like we have.  Rich in love, poor in money.  The wealth is there where true riches count.  Was it easy to see that we’d been crying?  Feeling the world too deeply?  The love for everything and everyone punctures holes and pierces out of my skin like beams of desperate light and bleeds off my canvas like drips of thick expensive maple syrup and I can never quite describe how much it actually hurts.  Everyone around me is so lost, believing that they’re not.  Dementia settles in the creases of their smiles and under their finger nails and all they seem to care about is all the superficial nothingness surrounding the energy and slowing the very pulse of the earth.  As if loosing touch with everything brings pleasantry. Perhaps it does in a false sense of hope or hopelessness.  I see it written all over peoples faces in all the places I go.  I could hold onto these gifts forever, slung across my back, sharing pieces of empathic qualities and leaving them behind everywhere I go.  Staying in touch, but out of touch with the rest, the bad dreams and the fears, the living and the dying, the lovers and the dreamers.  The very things that seem to quiet my worried mind, our laughter, dreams of mountains, ethereal notions, the fresh air, blades of grass under my bare feet, melodic tunes that speak to the cores of those who listen, my smiling-drooling beloved canines and the fresh soil I sift through my bare hands as I plant my bounty in the spring.  Tethered tears in my eyes I hold my head up and hang onto the lyrics, the smiles, the bed sheets and the tomorrows.

Acoustic Sundays

One of those Sundays…

the sounds of the guitar rousting incessant bouts of nostalgia pulsing through every energy source that can feel the vibrations caused by the hollow instrument which creates magic…

the sunrise casting the perfect light shadows through the off white sheer window treatments causing time lapses allowing all to breathe out only to be breathed in again…

the strings on the guitar tune in with the sunrise and beg for a drive to nowhere…windows down, disheveled hair and sore throats from souls singing so loudly the birds overhead follow the open sunroof and join in with their own harmony…

fingers dance on the dash and the guitar in my hands resting on my lap…

the 3-2-1’s that no one understands unless you understand…

and we are always full of this or that- foolproof ideas which don’t really exist, rumors lie that’s the truth and there are more words than not that brings tears to my eyes…leaving me wishing I could take a weeks worth of valium and just sleep…

I can’t be held responsible for him or her, he fell in love in the first place…I grew to love but not in love…you can tell everybody whatever you want, I don’t mind so I hope you don’t mind….

Grumpy Old Men

I now live in a small neighborhood on the east side of Saint Paul.  The home, built in 1890 and everything surrounding has an old air about it, the kind that wraps you in a quiet fog of unfamiliar comfort, welcomed, yes but it takes a week or so to settle in.  I am only two blocks from the library and I live surrounded by old war veterans with their peacock chests and tobacco filled pipes puffing away in their folding chairs on their lawns, sometimes mine, coffee always in hand.

I sat outside with three of them the other day while my dogs played in the yard…two of them pulled their beloved Cadillacs adorned with veteran stickers and honored license plates, into the yard to use my hose to wash their vehicles before coating the almost glittered paint jobs with a thorough layer of wax.   I found comfort in the company I held that afternoon…something familiar and warming.  Maybe it was the smell of the pipe tobacco triggering memories of my late Gramps maybe it was simply their honest energy and warm nature.

These old war veterans, 3 tours each, treat me as their own.  The dads and grandfathers I never really had.  They are all damaged beyond repair, twisted in their own ways, addicted to this or that to fight back the memories, quirky- absolutely and perhaps a tiny bit insane but instilled within them is something I’ve never had.  They are hard wired to protect and eager to help.  They collectively decided that they wanted to make sure that I am able to save enough money to make my move south after summer passes so they started a change jar for my funds.  It’s like I suddenly have these fathers, grandfathers, good men surrounding me, keeping a watchful eye and loving me genuinely and yearning for my company.  I could sit and talk with them for hours about their lives and tours but we don’t.  I wouldn’t bring up anything they wouldn’t and they would if they wanted to.  I can see the wear in the wrinkles on their faces and the scars carved into the callouses on their hands.  I see years of life lived in their eyes and a glimmer that refuses to fade but pain that’s impossible to hide.  Their backs may be crooked now, their minds not quite as sharp, hands shaky but still the presence they carry reminds the kids in the neighborhood to be respectful and they make me feel safe.

They’ve grown privy to my feeding of the neighborhood strays after noticing the litter box and food I hid under my deck and now bring cans of cat food to contribute.  This made me smile.

I brew fresh coffee every day when I get home from work not only for myself but in the common case that one of them swing by for this or that or just to check on me I know their ever firing nerves are instantly calmed by the simple smell of fresh coffee.  All is well and welcomed when coffee mugs are full.

We play games of cribbage in my living room or on my porch…I’m not very good at all but they are teaching me and everyone except Carl takes it easy on me, they are all so patient and kind.  Carl was strictly a black ops soldier, his mind is more tangled than the others yet he’s always smiling those bright white dentures..

I’m settling in and loving this new place.  The off white hyacinth bulb I bought myself as a move in gift thinking it would look wonderful in the kitchen on the window sill above the sink blooms absolutely in spite of the blizzard blowing past the panes behind it.  A good sign for sure.  I placed her next to the lucky bamboo plant Dorian, my veteran landlord, gave me when I moved in.

The front porch has old wooden floor boards painted a dirty hue of sky blue.  Historically, especially in the south, home owners would paint the ceilings of their porches a hue of sky blue in order to allow the spirits to pass out of the home freely leaving them no chance to get lost in transition from here to there.  I wonder if someone off their rocker once lived here…I must certainly repaint the floor and have already started painting a clean hue of sky blue to the ceiling boards.

I like it here for now.  I feel like I’m living on the set of grumpy old men and it feels like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.  Finding soul fathers where I never would have looked.  I feel loved.

Pretty, Honest, Chapters

Chapter 1

Pretty

They pulled up to the old carbon blue painted Tesero station on the corner of 10th and Helma to use the pay phone for twenty five cents and score a pack of discount cigarettes.  Habib, the store owner, always guaranteed the lowest price.  He ran in with his restless legs to make the call and chat with Habib at the counter, a friendly face to the few who frequented the desolate convenient store.  She stayed put in the drivers seat of their old grand marquis and pressed her hands up against the dusty vents blowing out the warm air, a welcome contrast from the negative temperatures blowing around outside.  Glancing in the windows of the Tesero she saw him laughing and knew he was invested in some meaningless conversation with the clerk.  His name should have been Babble.  She waited patiently as she had learned to do so after 8 years of getting to know every part of him and got lost in the night sky.  She found herself half mesmerized by the stars and the way the moon glowed boldly in contrast to the inky winter sky, refusing to go unseen.

“I saw a shooting star while you were in the Tesero.”  She said plainly as he hopped back in.

“Did you make a wish??  What’d you wish??”

She nodded and gave him her sideways smirk, “I’ll never tell.  Bad luck.”

“Lets move to Australia…I hear the people are pretty and the weather is nice.  Or is it that the people are nice and the weather is pretty?  I don’t remember.”  Mindlessly but intentionally she changed the topic.

“The people are pretty wherever you are, Pretty.”  He called her Pretty as if it were her given name.

He had a collection of endearing names he called her, never really ever using her given name, as if it didn’t really exist.  Maybe she didn’t want it to maybe he didn’t either.  It felt weird when he used it, foreign, too formal, uncomfortable.  Only in court rooms and on paperwork were given names meant to be used.  Not in the real world, their world…nothing was as it was given.  They were creating their own with new pet names that nobody else knew and matching dreams filled with new chapters waiting to be written but already bound with their heart strings.

They preferred the solitude and simplicity of being the only characters in their story, at least for the time being.  Their choice.  There really wasn’t any room for anyone else and that always seemed okay.  A preferred way of life by him and her, she and he, the two of them.  One another and their furry children.

Chapter 2

Honest Hours

Scrolling through other peoples lives laid out in photographs on facebook she mumbled to herself, “I’d pin that”, in reference to a photograph she saw and thought should be painted.  As if she knew that at least for now most of the things she “pinned” on her collage board were things she would never be able to afford.  She called it her dream board…things that made her heart pound a little faster.

She’s up with him and it’s 4am.  The honest hours of the day always rest at the beginning before the mind is fully awake and able to protect or think ahead.  It’s his insomnia that wakes her.  He’s watching her sleep and she stirs as he tucks her hair behind her left ear from behind.  Maybe he wakes her up because it’s too terrifying for him to be alone in his mind at this honest hour but he lies and tells her he wanted to see her eyes as they opened for the first time that day.  She knows the truth and thrusts herself out of bed, pulls on a sweater and they head out to grab coffee grounds because they always seem to be out.  Whenever she is up this early the sentences come to her like static sparks, so she carries her journal and jots down things that make sense in her head and sound interesting out loud.  Who knows when or where she could use them in one of her stories.

They drink their coffee, smoke a joint and snuggle with their dogs while falling into one of their personally self thought intellectual conversations.  One of those where she does most of the speaking and he does most of the listening.  Harmony exists in the honest hours between them and their sheets and their dialogue.  4am.

Superstitions

A medium with a gypsy soul and a superstitious right eye told me once that if you become stuck, write a letter.  She said to fold it in half and tuck it away under your pillow as you sleep…questions…thoughts…dreams…fantasies…Doing so, said the gypsy, “…will bring you answers…enlightenment…peace…doing so will help you become unglued…”.

I have yet to try this mystical method but as the file hidden in my memory scattered to my forethought I suppose I’ll test the old mediums words…I’m learning to listen when things ignite inside of my mind…when those receptors trigger there is reason…I’m listening to the universe and flowing with the current that carries me.  Call me superstitious, perhaps, maybe I am…that and curious…full of wonder for all the world has to offer to those of us with open minds.

I never did ask her for any kind of specific instructions, as many of these rituals carry…I wonder if the paper has to be lined…or if I can use red ink…

I still do keep a half full glass of water on my nightstand to capture any bad dreams, as I was once instructed to do so by an old wise native woman who owned a small store I used to buy my incense sticks at.  No nightmares since.

For You

I love the way you call my stray strands of hair that float around everywhere feathers…I love the way you hang your pants…I love the way that you know which light bulbs I prefer and that I like cinnamon in my americano…I love the way you say I smell like home and sandalwood when you kiss my neck…I love the way your hands beg to wander my body as I fall asleep…I love the way that two of your big fingers fit perfectly in my grasp, like an infant to a parent…I love the way you collect batteries for no apparent reason and half of the time they don’t even work…I love that you are a fork person and that I am a spoon person…I love our Sunday morning ritual cruise – time spent with coffee, joints and the best conversations that may or may not make any sense whatsoever to anyone who might catch a sentence…I love the way you casually stroll into Walgreens to buy me tampons when I’m lazy and how you bring me wildflowers just to see me smile…I love the way you call me muffin and kiss the top of my head when I’m stuck deep in a book…I love the ways that you love me…

I read a letter once that you had written to your mother…It must have been early on, during one of those long stretches of time when neither of you spoke…you were telling her about your life, primarily all about Me.  One sentence in the letter has stuck with me ever since.  I keep it in the forefront of the shelves in my mind, right in the middle.  You wrote, “Mom, to know her, I mean to really know her, is to love her.  To know her is to love her.”….

How could I not love you.

.

Dribbles

Lately I’ve felt at a loss for words to collectively put onto paper.  My journals are full of the dribble of chaotic thoughts and ideas and words spelled incorrectly…don’t get me wrong, there is never a lapse in the flow of thoughts and inspiration, ideas and stories wandering and weaving around my head heart and soul… I just haven’t been able to put them all together to make sense to anyone but my inner being.  You know the feeling…

Last night I’m lying in bed while he sits focused, pursing his lips together on the black leather bench which doubles as a storage chest (for my excessive collection of clothing)….the bench sits at the foot of the bed and he is sewing a hem that he lost on the bottom of his grey tweed pants…the ones that make his butt look amazing…I am comfortable with the silence and far more entertained than I should be… watching him push the needle and thread first out then back through the fabric of his pants…the fan is pushing the stale air around our bedroom as the winter sun beams through the old double pane windows…our bedroom is small and cozy, just how I like it…no room for privacy…a sanctuary for intimate moments and snuggle sessions…He asks me what’s wrong, clearly he is uneasy with my silent nature as this is truly a rarity…I never seem to lack some sort of dialogue whether it be pointless stoned rambles or deep, too deep thoughts that I dare to share aloud…I lie and tell him that I don’t feel very well…why I lie I do not know…nothing is wrong, but I do.  Everything is actually absolutely perfect.  I don’t mind this silence.  I don’t mind this rare moment of peace.  I’m still observing and collecting thoughts but the smirk that rests on my lips keeps my mouth quiet as I find myself content.  ….  I reach over and stretch out my foot in his direction…I tap him with my big toe on the back of his arm…for what reason I do not know but I like toying with him when he’s focused in on something…the hem is coming together and he still needs to shine my boots…He looks back at me over his shoulder and kisses my big toe…a hushed giggle comes out and he looks at me from underneath his cocked brow turns and continues sewing…

The Others

There isn’t a better more accurate or appropriate, unerring or precise way to describe it…we are The Others.  We are those who never really fit into a grain.  Popular and loved by many but unable to feel it, acknowledge it, accept it.  We see too much and feel too deeply.  Our minds are rarely, if ever anything but quiet.  We are those who always felt a bit off beat, out of step, outside of the mold, without a place or one designated position.  We are the thinkers, the dreamers, the poets, the writers the artists but mostly we are the worlds analyzers.  We were ultimately built differently, put together with specifically selected pieces, hand sewn.  We don’t follow trends, we sincerely make our own.  We are blessed but at the same time cursed.  We are challenged far more than most, have lived full lives three times over by the time we turn thirty but have to believe or know that this is because we were given extra gifts…gifts buried so deeply in the farthest corners of our conscious being that we must search restlessly for them in order to survive our tests.  We aren’t born with any such knowledge of our differences…it is our Experiences that we feel most deeply that uncover them. Erlebnis. Our never ending moments of perpetual self reflection.  We weren’t and aren’t built to look at those who have and still do hold silver spoons with jealous eyes and desirous minds, if anything we cradle them because we see that they are most fragile.  That they lack the extras to deal with the heavy.  This doesn’t mean to me that they are any less special, that their journeys lack the importance of ours… they just have a different path- theirs paved, ours gravel at best but more often than not tall grass that cuts our thick skin.  We are challenged in our earth bound bodies in more ways imaginable because we can handle it.  We can grow from it.  We can find meaning behind the pains, the lessons, we find ultimate growth.  We refuse to crumble because we hunt for the reasons, the whys, the hows or the just becauses.  We are The Others.  Wandering Misfits who fit perfectly.