day four: cassie and her running shoes ;)

The drunken poet
(a genius by daylight)
who places long-distance calls
at three A.M. and then lets you sit
holding the phone while he vomits
(he calls it "The Night of the Long Knives")
getting his kicks out of the death call,
would understand.

Anne Sexton

The last time I drank was in Colorado. I drank in Colorado, December 2006. An entire bottle of vodka (1.75 liters). I blacked out in the evening, woke up in the morning to a roaring hangover and my father, bleary eyed and somehow older looking, asking me to leave. Demanding that I leave. I screamed, kicked, fought; he persisted. So I left.

My sister, Cassie, drove me to the airport shuttle in the morning. I remember looking at her - gripping the steering wheel like a pilot in a plane - coasting between story high snowbanks, jerking to a stop at lights, trying hard not to judge me. I watched my breath sit in front of me like a fog.

"Don't worry about it. He'll calm down. Gosh, I didn't know you... well, get like that when you... drink."

"Yeah. Fuck Dad for kicking me out."

"He's just worried."

"Yeah."

We stopped in a parking lot. I told her about living in California. Then I made a (what now seems like) an outlandish request:

"Cassie, can I have your shoes?"

"What?"

"Your shoes. I have to go visit Pete's family and I only have this mismatched pair of Uggs."

"Come on, I run in these."

"Please?"

She slipped off her sneakers and handed them to me. Then she told me she loved me and kissed me goodbye.

So many things happened that day, and the night before, but the one thing I will always remember is Cassie giving me her shoes. My sister has a huge heart, the effects of which resonate in my life again and again. Her generosity and kindness never fails me.

ANYWAY, I took this photo while shopping tonight and it reminded me of her.



C, can't wait to see you this weekend! xoxo

day three: center

it's sounds silly, but i find it healing to reconfigure my physical space after big decisions. i think i get this from mama mac - remember mom's rabid cleaning purges? scary.

example: after Pete left I went OCD on my apartment, cleaned the entire place up down, right and left - then i pieced together a meditation section ... i feel better. a little better every day.

makes me grin

omar just showed me this photo from when we first met, one of our first adventures - i was a flapper, he was.. a tourist?.... and his stoner roommate on the right always looked like that - more or less.

oh, omy.

ok!

what's up to the three or four people who read my blog, hopefully including jackie and cassie (ahemmmm) - what do you think of this one?

One should count each day a separate life. -Seneca

strip clubs and lollipops

last night, after a meeting with Donna and Greggers, my friends took me to a strip club. Four girls, a man named Minnie, and plenty of fully nude ladies. Nasty, stanky strip club called Ecstasy. I avoided the eyes of six foot amazon women undulating, twirling around a greasy pole, rubbing their tattooed bodies across the acrylic stage.

linnie: i LOVE strip clubs!! i used to work in one. and f the bouncer.
hallie: i come here every week, anyone want to join me on Wednesday? get your piles up girls.
jennifer: oh my god, i went to high school with that girl. saw that coming.
robin: do you think her hair is fake? does anyone have another blowpop?

goodbye

that's it. it's over. he's gone. 

and i'm alone again. 

the last supper

coming home to packing, laundry, and chaos 

dinner at Gypsy Den, my treat 

Sonnet XVII 

Neruda

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

spring is:

Canada, Florida, Canada

my roots.

spring is here...

...and should be celebrated with Mom's favorite poem:



i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:
and of the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened

- e.e. cummings

feelings, ick.

I have a difficult time pinning down my emotions.

Yesterday I awoke at 6am, took my puppy out, meditated, ate wheaties standing up while reading a back issue of the New Yorker... nothing unusual happened. I kissed my boyfriend goodbye. Felt good. Didn't want to work. Warm weather. Liked it.

In the car and a half mile away from my house I begin to cry. Big, rolling tears tumbling down my cheeks.

WHAT THE HELL??

So currently I am waiting for the lightening bolt to strike, the big AHA! moment when I realize what the f I was feeling and why. Usually arrives in 2-5 business days. I'll be waiting.

The hardest thing about putting down alcohol is that the stuff that led me to drink in the first place is all still there. Social fears emerge, self doubt, inhibitions, rage and resentment, emptiness and longing, the past, the present, and the future. I perpetually wade through this emotional soup, blind and deaf, not knowing which way is up and which way is down.

And living in the moment.

And being mindful.

And not picking up.

I'm glad clarity comes in small doses, because if I knew all this at the beginning, no WAY would I have ever kept going.

oh yes, the point of that post!

http://www.wefeelfine.org/

so seductive

<3

"When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out."- Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973)