Posted on 2007 12, 09 by Elizavetta
For some time, I’ve been wanting to sit down and write one of those list thingies. But I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. "I like this, I like that" just didn’t cut it for me. Recently, I was inspired to write instead a sort of poetic curriculum vitae; my very own litany of years, so to speak.
I realize this is a really long piece to put in a post format, so if you’re planning on diving into it, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If you’re still game, here it is, all in one post, in all its wordy glory:
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Birth First, and Then Love
I am born at night, inside the quiet snows, to a half-dead mother and a father who smiles too much and always insincerely. I am born choking, gasping at life, amazed at what a strange perilous thing is air.
My parent’s cold apartment is infested with jazz vampires who speak in bottomless saxophone voices. The cigarette and perfume air is stirred with evaporations of vodka mixed with the sharp metal stink of radiator water. And even though there are fashionable tits spilling out of fashionable dresses everywhere, I find only a strange nipple with unnatural milk. I suck it anyway, if only to stop the choking.
There is love, too, though it comes softly, later, from a place once removed. Someday, I will come to understand that, in spite of my parent’s trendy self-absorption, it was the very unfashionable devotion of my grandparents that ensured not only my physical survival but my eventual ability to allow love to conquer all that is not-love in my life.
The Year of the Great Displacement
I am no longer an only child on whom my grandparents dote. Oh, the stupendous horror of being pushed aside for the first time (other than birth itself). I hate my sister when she arrives, of course, as I must. But later, she becomes the only one I trust with my beer, my secrets, and my husband(s). Other sisters and brothers will arrive in years to come. But, each time, the displacing push will not be as great. Neither will the eventual trust.
The Moment of the Saving Kiss
I have my first kiss. So innocent and precious. Behind the garage, by the pool, under the pines. That kiss awakens me to a past life, or maybe it just initiates me into this one. His name is one that means sacrifice, and he and his name will haunt me the rest of my days. Later, as an adult, he becomes a saver of people. But, later, as an adult, when the time comes, he does not save me. The echo of that one kiss, however, does.
The Beginning of My Dreams of Flight
I stand at the front door of my parent’s house, twirling my hair, looking out on the blooming magnolia in the yard. People come and go - strangers and neighbors, grandma and grandpa, musicians and artists, mailmen and milkmen… But I am still here, behind this door, trapped inside this new little thing called a nuclear family that is really nothing at all like a family, but every bit true to the laws of fission that made it. And so begins my wish to be a bird, my dreams of flight, of landing somewhere else, anywhere else.
The Winter of Questioning
I stand shivering, snow to my thighs, wool mittens soaked through. All the other children have drifted away to warm kitchens and meat-filled suppers and suddenly I am alone in the darkening Wintry wilderness of my back yard. I blow my breath into the blue blue twilight and gaze up into the lowering sky. I wonder what would happen if my mother never called me in for supper? Will she call me in? What if I simply melt into the cold air? What would I become? Another, different girl? A piece of wind? A crystaline snowflake? Free? For the rest of my living life, I will never find the answers to these important Winter Questions.
The Summer of Love
The older girls around me are cool. They talk of "doing it," and how groovy it all is. I am too young to go to San Francisco. But I listen to Joan Baez and The Mama and the Papas and wear love beads all the same. I crochet funky hippie hats and shawls which my Busha says look like they’re from the Old Country.
My future husband is born in this year, my future love. Of course, I do not know this. But had I known that he was being born somewhere, I would have gone to my little lavender room, composed myself in my little corner, and waited with him in sympathy as he made the arduous journey from the great unbounded mystery into the small room of his own life.
The Year of Lust and War
The Vietnam War is winding down and the shameful American cost is about to descend on my little town. There is not yet the invasion of CNN and the internet into my head, so I am largely unaware of "the world out there," except for a vague uneasiness in my parents conversations and in the faces of the couple next door whose only son will never come home. Besides, I am 15, and this is the momentous year I first fall into lust, which takes precedence even over war.
He is beautiful. He smells fresh and ready, poised as he is in his radiant almost-manhood. But his name is that which means nothing special, or fearing of the special. Though he is beautiful, he is unworthy of me. But I do not understand this for at least another 20 years. Later, he will become a salesman of useless things. He will become a terrified man and insist that his wife wear only dowdy, god-fearing skirts and his children eat god-fearing oatmeal (without sugar) every morning.
Good thing it was only lust.
The Year of Discovering The O of god… and the Eros of Me
I snag a copy of The Story of O with the help of a wanton friend. For days on end, all summer, I am breathless… and wet. One day while sitting in the sun dreaming of owl masks and collars and what it might feel like to have a man’s cock in my mouth, I have an epiphany: I understand, not in my mind but deeply in my body, that god is within me. I am immediately outraged at having been lied to all my life and vow never to set foot in a church again. And also to find as much privacy as I can in order to close my eyes and dream of Rene and O, of being them, each of them in turn, violating and being violated.
For a whole year, I keep a diary of these secret thoughts. Poems and scenes and confessions. I destroy it when the last page is filled. What I could not know then is that the ghosts of those words would survive. Within the fortressed places inside me, they would lie dormant for years, like seeds waiting for the fire that would later burst them open into great beings once gain.
One quiet Autumn day, I find my father’s stash of art books. Immediately, I begin drawing nudes, and sometimes in sexual situations or at least what I imagine to be sexual situations. I see every person I meet as a collection of lines and shadow. Shortly thereafter, my mother finds my sketch book and tears it up while screaming about how she’ll be damned if she’s going to raise a godless whore. Years later, I will laugh loudly whenever I remember the many-layered irony of this moment.
I begin wearing mini-skirts and hot pants, but only when I visit my O Friend’s house (I stuff the clothes into my big hippie bag before I leave my house so my mother won’t see, then change when I get to my O Friend’s house). My O Friend and I, sharing the secret of the Sisterhood of O, wear velvet ribbons around our throats. Though it is somewhat in fashion to do so, we don’t wear them for fashion, but to feel the constant erotic pressure around our throats. And I wear mine, secretly even from her, to remind me of the god in me.
The Year of Evil Drama
My mother and father separate. The drama is overwhelming. But even so, I breath a sigh of relief. I cut my waist length hair. I shoplift some new make-up. I enlist the services of a non-nondescript boyfriend to whom I divulge nothing of my obsession with imagined O-like sexual acts. Though he never enters me, he kisses me well and his hands are kind and wise. I am happy in my body.
My father crashes his car into our garage door after my mother has gotten a restraining order against him. I hustle my younger siblings into the basement while he proceeds to break in and beat my mother all through the house. I lock the basement door. I float away as I sing to the little ones. I cast a spell of invisibility upon my mother. I say the words to bring my father a violent death. Unfortunately, he will continue living… a long wasteful time. And so will she, invisibly.
Later in the Year of Evil Drama, I break up with my boyfriend because he brings me too much happiness. I contemplate the end of my life for the first time, and I half-heartedly act on it. But the razors are dull. Plus, the other half of my heart (the far-seeing half) knows that truly, there is too much joy yet for me in this world to bet it all against the next so soon. Besides, my O Friend and I are going to become supermodels, so I have to stick around for that. So, I go to school wearing long sleeves for a week and I sing in the choir every morning with my eyes squeezed shut until my voice floats to the ceiling to join all the other pleading angels (some of which, I’m sure, have bitterly regretted never taking the supermodel route).
My mother invites an Evil Spirit to dinner (there are so many in the world!). He wrecks havoc as evil spirits are wont to do. The world becomes even more unsafe that it was previously. Supernaturally unsafe. Telepathically unsafe. Seven levels of hell unsafe. I do an exorcism in the basement. But to my horror, I realize that my mother is an unwitting carrier of unsafe spirits, her crotch is a swinging door for them.
And if that’s true, what does that make me?
The Year of Marrying Safety
I have sex (on a dare) for the first time with a nice respectable man, and immediately fall into a deep soft nest of safety. I mistake sex for safety, and then safety for love. Hence, I agree to marry my Safety Husband. It is my first "I do." I will go through a time of regretting this original reactionary "I do," and then I will come to understand that it was a prerequisite for all the rest of the do’s and don’ts the I of me will eventually have to commit. Too bad I couldn’t have known that at the time. It would have made things easier. Or maybe just less safe, and therefore, maybe a bit more fun.
The Beginning of The Hatred of Nice
I write a poem to my Safety Husband in an effort to communicate with him on something other than money, garbage pick-up schedules, or what color to paint the house. He reads it. He says: "it’s nice." And then he picks up the newspaper and begins to read… something nice, probably.
Nice. I vow to hate this word for the rest of my life.
My Safety Husband and I take a trip with an agenda up its sleeve, though not my sleeve. While there, he tells me I should take a day at a spa as his gift to me. I’m touched by this uncharacteristic show of notice-ment. But, while I’m getting my nails done, he is visiting the woman he was fucking prior to meeting me. We arrive home from our trip. He goes back to work. I go back to poetry (which I will never share with him again).
A few months later, in the most round of roundabout ways, I find out about the secret visit. I am still very young, so it only now begins to dawn on me that Safety is perhaps not all it’s cracked up to be. And perhaps it’s wise to beware of previously neglectful husbands who suddenly, and for no apparent reason, take you on a trip and buy you a nice day at the spa.
The Years of Erotic Births and Births of The Erotic
I discover Anais Nin, Delta of Venus. Finally, I have access to a mirror which is not painted black! Through her words, I fall in lust for the second time, with my own erotic self.
I commit the most unsafe of acts and give birth to my children. Unlike my half-dead mother, I am not only alive at each birth, but orgasmic. My body is gloriously ruined. My body is made eternal. My breasts drip real milk; real, never-ending, magical life-giving milk. For a time, my babies grow from nothing other than the bounty of my body. I am a goddess. And as each child grows, moment by moment, into imperfect perfection, I am initiated again and again into the never-ending erotic abundance of Love.
I discover visual erotica through the vision of a Jan Saudek photograph. I am overcome with a strange joy - a visual joy, a joy wrapped in light. I subscribe to Yellow Silk magazine in which Saudek’s photos appear along with many many erotic poems and stories. I sometimes read these magazines while I’m breastfeeding my babies and the Summer sun is shining through breeze-blown white gauze curtains. This is a kind of heaven on earth.
I come to terms with the fact that I did not continue my piano lessons. I begin to understand that there are other ways to art, to mastery, to beauty: the eye, the lens, language, the human body… anything I (anyone) might choose. I finally understand what it is to eat art and sex, to feast on the fat of it, to be made full by the heat and light of the risk of it all. I feel nourished, alive. Born.
The Seasons of Poverty’s Treasure
I springboard out of my false security, tear through the tattered net of my Safety Husband, and crash straight into the world of sharp edges underneath. I am singular and afraid. Though I work two and sometimes three jobs I and my children live below the poverty level. My children eat bad pasta with butter (when butter was cheap) 4 nights a week. I scrounge enough money together to buy them one pair of shoes each… for the year. When I look in the mirror I see in my own eyes shadows of my mother’s fall from grace; I see warnings of her renouncement of life.
These hauntings push me beyond the wall of the mirror and into dark realm of self-examination. And in that brutal place, I come to understand many things about the world, about the unrelenting strength of my survival instinct, about the appalling beauty of my children…. and the mother they traveled through to get here. And then suddenly, I become unafraid in a terrifying way.
I am Woman, dammit, hear me roar: "Fuck You! Fuck you ALL."
The Years of Fucking Myself Back to Life
And, indeed, I do proceed to fuck everything that walks. And sometimes two or more at a time. I fuck in a stadium. I fuck in a boardroom. I fuck in a parking lot. I fuck in a sequined dress soaked in champagne. I fuck a transvestite, a CEO, an underage athlete. I fuck my boss. I fuck a woman or two (though I don’t think of that as fucking, exactly). I fuck a coke addict. I fuck a pantyhose addict. I fuck your brother. I fuck your cousin. I fuck yo’ momma. I fuck to live.
The Years I Sold to The Fucking Devil
In the still dark hours of New Year’s Day, I meet The Fucking Devil. He is attracted to my will to live. He asks me to dance… with him, for him, on him. I do. I become a whore. And it is holy. And wholly without the One True God (for which I thank every god). I live unapologetically in the depths and the most high places of my body. I live completely in my body, the pain and pleasure and power buried there. And I live in those places, laughingly for a time, rent-free.
For the next few years, The Fucking Devil teaches me the arts of devilish fuckery. I am his star pupil, and so he rewards me with the coveted elixir of homeopathic danger. I suck it all up a little at time, to become accustomed to the poison. And when I have become that which will not kill me, I spit The Fucking Devil out.
My Years of Holy Audience With the Petitioners During Which…
I meet a Playful Spirit who wants to wear a gorilla suit while he fucks me. I laugh my ass off every time (every Thursday at 1:00 PM) which makes him lose his erection, so I have to suck him off through the fake fur (which I actually find to be kind of a turn on). But that’s not even the best part. When we’re done, he wants me to unzip the suit really fast (he likes the sound of the zipper), and spray his hot sticky body with vinegar from a spray bottle. Because he makes me laugh, we become friends and I become his sort-of-mistress. To this day, the smell of vinegar makes me giggle.
I meet a Man On A Mission; a missionary of sorts. He likes to roll around on the floor - not during sex, but before. He wants me to watch him roll around naked for what seems like hours (though I’m sure it’s only a few minutes). I don’t get it, but I indulge him. He is on a mission to save me, he says. What, with all that rolling? He is the rolling savior, I suppose. Still I don’t get it. He finds another whore.
I meet a Gentle Boy-God who wants to worship my feet. Again, I don’t get it, but I allow it. He is forever in my debt. And always ever after, I will have the shoes to prove it.
I meet a Lost Soul who wants to undo me, take me down with him. But I lash him to the rafters instead. I make him cry. I make him say please. He disappears, undone.
I meet a Crooked Little Man with a crooked little cock, a maker of laws who’s money smells like rancid olive oil. My bank however, having no sense of smell, takes it just the same.
I meet a terminally Nervous Man who wants me to suck his wife’s tits while he fucks her. Yawn…
I meet a Leaping Elf who sends me bad Polaroid photos of himself in stockings; jumping up and down in his bare feet in his gloriously expensive stockings. He has very nice legs. I learn everything there is to know about stockings. And the shaving of man legs.
I meet an Exhausted Angel who petitions me to initiate him into what he calls the Cult of Female Dominance. He wants to be made clean of his dirty manhood so that he may serve the true (re: female) wisdom. He wants to rest in the will of a woman greater than himself (he’s had it with God). I buy a whip. And all manner of enema apparatus. He calls me Madame Clean and performs, again and again, the ritual of the thousand thank you’s.
One late night, out of the blue (or black, as it were), the Fucking Devil knocks on my door. The teacher has become the penitent. I turn off the porch light. He goes away, but not before slamming the word cunt , along with his fist, into my closed and locked door. Later, I hear he has overdosed. Indeed. Devil, poison thyself.
The Year Off
My best friend gets married for the second time. A delightful Winter wedding. She is deliriously and falsely happy. She is disgusted by me because I fuck to live. She feels sorry for me. She wishes I would get married instead, and be happy, like her. I purposely wear an ugly dress to the wedding.
The next day, I get tested for HIV. Two weeks later, the test is negative. I am on the cusp of reconsidering my life in this new world of AIDS. And my friend is on the cusp of discovering the new world of her marriage. Her new husband has just put the first of a lifetime of fists to her face, and bought the first of a lifetime’s supply of "I’m sorry" bouquets. A lifetime later, I will remain HIV free and, unlike her, not sorry.
By Summer, I become lukewarm when it comes to fucking… I feel like a tide is turning; something else is coming. I feel like I need to step back to assess things. So, I become totally enamored with lying on the beach alone with a jug of ice cold vodka. The spirit I said I’d never drink. I soon find out that being visited by handsome devils wearing expensive cologne is one thing, enduring the attentions of freezing vodka demons under a devouring sun are quite another. I switch to gin and staying at home in air conditioned splendor.
As the leaves are falling and everyone is busy being in love with the turquoise blue of the Autumn sky, Death breaks in though the back door and steals two place settings from my family table. My fuck-fest is over, holy as it was. I turn off my phone. I stock up on gin. And my Playful King Kong moves on to other Fay Wrays.
I am drunk from Christmas to New Year’s day. I have become my Father’s Daughter. I want my Fucking Devil, I want my Safety Husband. I want a Mommy I never had. I get none of these. I get nothing for Christmas. My children’s gifts are barely wrapped under a pitiful tree. I kiss no one on New Year’s Eve. I do, however, get a large dose of what I will be passing on to my children if I do not make the Herculean effort to crawl out of this abyss.
The Days of the Kitchen Ceiling Cat and the Linoleum Abyss
I contemplate the end of my life for the second time. But this time I am not seduced into acting, only contemplative about the seduction. In corpse pose on the cool linoleum, the kitchen ceiling takes on a new importance, a double meaning. Way up there, hanging over me like that, it becomes not just a way to keep out the rain, but an emblem of all my plastered over choices. Suddenly, I hear the chattering voices of my children in the next room once again. Though the linoleum abyss is still there, the dangerous undertow moment of it is over. By choice.
I get up off the floor. I buy a cat. Then I rescue another one. The second one I don’t like but keep anyway. She is old, mean, a cast off. She dies within the year. I think she dies for me, in place of me. I paint a likeness of her on the kitchen ceiling the day before the moving truck comes. The landlord takes the damage out of my security deposit. The landlord would die before the year was out. I hope he used that $30.00 to buy booze instead of ceiling paint. But probably not.
The Years of The Other Me
At the moment of the Winter Solstice heralding the last decade of the millennium, I meet The Other Me. He is me, I am him. We don’t understand why or how, or what kind of container to put this in. So we dance instead. One day, it becomes clear to me that I am dancing with the god in me, all the gods in me. To which I say clearly and forever: Yes.
We make each other up. We draw on each other’s skin. We trade masks and clothing and sorrows. We iterate and re-iterate each other’s forms. We dance every combination of steps we can think of and in the dancing I become a divination of myself, in his image, a god of ephemeral lights. Our days are a collection of sparkling showers of light. Our film is constantly overexposed, every proof a white-blue blur. And in the end, even the child we planted does not grow. How could she? We burned up all her light.
Later, when I have become cinders, The Other Me leaves me to pursue the woman who will eventually make him into cinders; the Dragon Goddess he could not quite say yes to in me.
For years after, too many years, we will all be Cinderellas: The Other Me, The Dragon Lady, and I… all step-children of each other, sweeping up the burnt offerings, sitting at our dressing tables, in front of our mirrors, waiting for the made-up happy endings that will never come.
The Season of the Crooked Road
After The Other Me dances away toward his immolation, I take a vow of anger. I renounce men, and women, too. I travel a twisty road. I call spiraling forces into my living room. I make a hole in the wall; I draw a crooked line for them to follow. I lose my friends. I become a Queen. I crawl like a slave. I do rituals without names. I drink the sangre y blanca. I suckle on ghosts. I lose my religions. All of them.
The Time of the Living Ghost
He is a piano man with watery eyes who cannot sing, though he always tries his best. He always tries his best. He always tries his best. Except when he doesn’t. Except when he slams me against a wall and holds me by the throat to make me understand how hard he tries to try. Except when he tries to make me understand that it’s not rape if he knows me… if I’ve invited him in… if I’m dressed like that… if I act like a whore…
One day, after I’ve changed my locks, The Living Ghost gives up and drives away in his lopsided truck with his cigarettes and his pills and his off-key voice. When his truck has turned the corner and he is out of my sight, I cast my eyes down his future road and cast words of curse upon his every living breath.
Not long after, The Living Ghost will die of lung cancer. A horrible suffocating death. After hearing the cause of his death, I will sit for hours staring at the wall he pushed me up against, watching how the light of the setting sun moves in an arc across it; cause and effect. I will consider the power of words for one very long night. But ultimately I will decide, bruja or no, that I will send no message of condolence to his family, I will spend not a penny on flowers.
Instead, on a beautiful Summer’s evening long after his body has begun its rot, I will call forth the remembrance of his hands around my throat. I will light a candle and light up a Winston. I will smoke it to down to the bitter filter (even though I have never smoked) and then gleefully grind the butt into the concrete of my front porch step until my fingers bleed. And then I will lick my fingers clean.
The Winter of Angels
I travel to an island to get some sun, some open space. I see the phosphorescence of the ocean for the first time. I have sweet sex with a man who smells of honey and laughs when he comes. I am sated, happy. Too happy. So happy that I almost drown while swimming alone 50 yards away from shore, alone among the undulating corral fingers, alone with all those cold, glittery angel fish who watch and wait below.
The rest of the trip turns to rain. I wear sunglasses and a sweater every day. I stay out of the ocean. I think of my children. I think of home. I light candles and intone endless prayers of gratitude and count the days until my vacation (from what?) is over. My plane touches down at home on a cold snowy day and the first thing I do is order a cup of hot hot cafe au chocolat and call my kids. Then…
I call on my Angels of Beginning Over. And they answer. I get a real job. I put money in the bank. I begin a master’s degree program. I buy my children new winter boots. I buy a sturdy car. I put real snow tires on it. I learn that beginnings and endings aren’t two different things.
Long after the holidays have passed, and all of Winter put away, my Christmas tree-top angel lingers. This year, instead of lying in her tissue paper-wrapped basement silence until next Christmas, she perches atop the refrigerator, among the hustle and bustle of our after-Winter lives. For the first year in all her years, she has a good Spring view of the garden where she can see the trees beginning to bud, the flowers coming to life.
The Late Spring of Second Births
My daughter dives deep into the dark. She struggles and rummages under the years, to find her father, any father. She struggles under the eves of a falling-down house, under the weight of a too-blue sky, under the storm surge of hormones. I understand. I tear my hair. I call her back, as she once called me. She comes back, as I once returned to her. We are both estranged, made strange, and then strangely made again. And one late Spring morning, we wake to find poetry on our doorstep… great heaping truckloads of it, whole new houses of it, old restored rose gardens full of the bloom and fragrance of it.
I discover and devour Anais Nin’s diaries. Again, I receive another un-blackened mirror. This one I share with my daughter.
The Year Love Brought
My Summer of Love Husband appears even though he has really been there all along, undercover, disguised as someone else. He asks me out for coffee and a kiss. The coffee is bad. The kiss is a binding seal. We resolve to buy only the best coffee from that day forward, and brew it in a French press pot and pour organic cream into every cup. Every morning we do this, and then we kiss each other into the good day. And so begins a new dance to which I don’t know all the steps. But he teaches me. And that is Love… Love, which draws a circle around both danger and safety, and therefore makes them both into something other than just themselves.
The Times of Tribe and Truth
We are a family - my Summer of Love Husband, my children, and I. We are a tribe. We dance well and play well together. We do not run with scissors, or steal each other’s watercolors. We feed each other good food and tell each other true stories, or at least what we wish were true. This is all love, too. The very best kind. Plus, we all drink good coffee. Even the kids.
The Rainy Spring of Poetry With Fangs
I win a poetry contest. I win $1500.00. I speak at a famous gathering. At the cocktail party afterwards, other more well-known poets and writers eye me with their fangs barely concealed as I laugh and drink with their agents. I think I’m cool. But really, I’m just another poet. With fangs.
The Christmas of Detonated Smiles
While Christmas shopping, I run into The Other Me at the make-up counter at the mall. He is alone, buying make-up for himself. I am alone, buying make-up for myself. He has less hair. I have more wisdom.
"So, how are you?"
"Fine."
"And how are you?"
"Oh, fine, fine. I’m good."
There is various awkward fiddling with lipstick samples and glances at the perplexed make-up counter girl. I watch his hands, his fingers… I let my mind go back for just a minute…
"Well, have a nice Christmas."
"Yes, you, too."
Smile.
Smile.
We move safely out of range of each other, he in his direction, me in mine. Later at home, after children and Summer of Love Husband are asleep, I drink gin by the Christmas tree, unwrap my make-up, and detonate my smile. I can only imagine how The Other Me spent his evening, though I do believe I felt the shock waves on my side of town… as he must have on his.
The Year of The Gift
I hate my job. I quit. I feel guilty. And free. And unworthy of the time I now have, the time and freedom that has been gifted to me by my Summer of Love Husband’s willingness to take on the monster named Earning A Living For A Whole Family. Again, this is love. Love that for a long time, I will believe I have to earn. It will be some time before I realize that gifts cannot be earned. Silly me.
A Year Most Strange
We move to the mountains. Immediately, strange things begin to happen there. A darkness comes. But it is not of us or about us; it does not reside in us. We - my tribe and I - live through it. I think it does not like us. I think it is an ancient land spirit come to move us from where we don’t belong. In recognition of a power much greater than us, we leave. We bow, and we leave. It will never have a name, though I will eventually come to refer to it as "The Great Interesting."
Later that year, September 11 comes and goes. I start my period in gushing nauseous waves while watching the gluttonous TV coverage.
The Year of Pain’s Due
Pain. Unrelenting physical pain. My world has become very very small, bounded by the dimensions of my bed. When I look at the ceiling, I see the afterimage of my old cat there. Not yet, I say, not yet. My body is a tight shell trying to hold me inside this life. My muscles have become both enemies and saviors. Where once was vitality is now a feeling of doom, of death around the corner. I become afraid of pain, of death, of any movement that may lead to pain or death. My life becomes pain, my thoughts become pain, every word and gesture becomes pain. I am in a state of constant emergence-y.
All of my demons enter the room slowly, one by one, a red-carpet procession of demons. This is the time of paying the dues of pain, they say. They sit with me, pray with me, sing to me, feed me nothing but pain… and revisitings of pain. Layers and layers of smoke-stained pain, yellowing pain, pain painted over for too long. I imagine I hear the sound of constant scraping along the walls of my room, the thudding of moldy scraps. The sound and fury of peeling becomes unbearable.
During the days, I think it will never end. And it never does. When I sleep, the pain simply moves over to make room for endless dreams of worms, grubs, crawling gnawing ravenous things. Things which I suspect are also dreaming of me.
The Dreamtime of the Blue Serpent
Struggle. And more struggle through pain. More dreams of worms and things that flip and flap in mud. But one day, I dream of a monstrously large iridescent blue serpent with human eyes which rises out of the river to show itself to me. It towers over me, curling over me like a great ancient question mark. It sways from side to side, it purrs and hisses: "look at me, look at me, the time has come!"
The coiled serpent arises wet and fresh from the mud. The lotus also begins to open. My pain begins to subside. I begin to takes short cautious walks downtown, along the river, along the shops. I pick up my mail, I browse the bookstore. I get a cup of coffee. Life is gloriously, beautifully mundane.
The Year of Departures and Arrivals
Three Deaths come fast in a row, clawing, grasping at my left hand. And then, immediately after, one birth lays its new little hand in my right. The bleeding… the drowning…. the child who must return to the mystery, that other one who will not become my grandchild… and then, ah… here comes the beautiful brave one who did! She squalls into the world, roots immediately for her mother’s breast and so many many many things are forgiven, forgotten, laid to rest inside that rainy morning suckling sound.
For the rest of my life, I will refuse to drink wine born in this year. But I will never forget the taste of the harvest.
The Year of Constant Vigilance
I reverse my inner clock. Or perhaps my inner clock reverses me. For many months, I stay awake all night and sleep all day. I am on the Night Watch. I think I stay awake all night in order to watch for Death - there must be constant vigilance. My dreams are strange, they tell me I cannot go back, they tell me I have passed an important bend in my psychic road. The blue serpent appears to me again. I did not die. Others died around me. Instead of me. And I stepped over their graves to find myself here is this new place called… aging.
Late Summer is glorious. I realize that I now see colors differently. I realize that I have always wanted to live. I realize that fear is also, like so many things, a choice. I reset my clock. I realize that there will always be pain, but I ask for my joy back anyway. And get it.
The Time of Naming Anew
I am alive. I take many living names. I fragment into many colors, light through a prism. I am becoming exquisitely detailed as the world of the past around me becomes more beautifully gray. I am fashioning of myself a home for the gods in me, a many-halled temple for The Beloved. I explore the thousand things, and all the colors of each one. Many lenses seek to look through my eye. And in return, I learn to see in many different lights… and absences of light.
I create a home; an evening place, a quiet place. I name it Vespertine. It is a leap of faith, an exploration, a refuge, a seeking of redemption, a Way, and also… just another damn blog.
The Year of Never Going Back
In a fit of nostalgia, or perhaps something else, I step back into fuckery, though not in the way I did it before. I find that it bores me. I bore it. The charge is gone. The karma done. So, I chop wood. I carry water. I clean out my closets, throw out what’s old, give away what’s still usable. I plant flowers. I make more poetry. I think about where one’s life goes when its done. I wonder on what shore do all those waves of pain and power eventually come to rest; where the worn out clothes of the dead end up.
I discover a creative alliance with the photography of China Hamilton, and a kindly correspondence with the man himself. He generously asks me to include some of my poetry in his new book. I am honored. My poetry is honored.
This year’s meditation: Once across the river, the raft becomes a burden.
An Afternoon of Writing
I sit down to write about myself for my website. I am at a loss because though I want to do one of those "100 Things About" lists, I can’t think of anything to write. "I like lots of things, I don’t like lots of things" - that would be my list, entitled: Two Things About Elizavetta. Then, in an odd coincidence, I happen across this. I come full circle and meet the light of Jan Saudek again! And again, I am inspired. I decide that respectful imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, so with a nod of gratitude to Mr. Saudek, I sit down to write.
To be continued…
