Put on Pants

3WW

Brutal; adjective: Savagely violent; punishingly hard or uncomfortable; direct and lacking any attempt to disguise unpleasantness.

Grope; verb: [No object] feel about or search blindly or uncertainly with the hands; [with object] (informal) feel or fondle (someone) for sexual pleasure, esp. against their will; noun: An act of fondling someone for sexual pleasure.

Transfer; verb: Move from one place to another; move to another group, occupation, or service; change to another place, route, or means of transportation during a journey; make over the possession of (property, a right, or a responsibility) to someone else; noun: An act of moving something or someone to another place. 

Put on Pants

My brother committed suicide a few years ago.  The details are emotionally brutal.  My sadness is evident.  I am surrounded by people who have not had the tragedy happen to them.  I wish sadness was easily transferred to the trash and discarded leaving only happiness, but it is not my reality.  My conversations with my mother used to include updates on my brother, if either of us had talked to him or wrote him in prison.  Our conversations are void of him now and we do not have much to talk about. 

My mother is a lively talker. We talk about the weather and shopping at Macy’s but it is the same jaw jacking  we would talk about to anyone else on the transit.  In my last phone conversation, my mom finally asked me a question I have never heard her ask me, “How are you?” She actually stopped talking and sounded concerned.  I told her I was good.  I rarely share details of my life with my mother, we are distant not only because she lives over twelve hours away, but also because we have never been intimate with our feelings.  I used to hate the distance, now it really does not matter.  Our emotions in conversations are like two people covered in oil, groping for a stronghold to keep from slipping away.  I know she would listen if I talked, but I no longer wanted to talk about the subject that used to join us.

I miss my brother.  We were close.  I was closer to him than anyone and most of my life he was in prison.  I think I might have set up his Facebook  page for him.  I am, of course, his only Facebook friend.  I do not know if he ever logged on.  I posted and tagged his pictures.   I login to Facebook  everyday not to catch up with friends, but to say hello to my brother.   It is weird, some days his face is the first one I see of the little box that previews my friends. Other days he is on chat.  When he is on chat, I send him messages.  Sometimes they are short, “hello.” Other times I spew out long paragraphs or news I think he might like to know.  My great- aunt died last week and I messaged my brother to look for her.  Silly, I know. 

One of my great aunt's fondest memories of him was when he was four or five and she visited us, we had very good manners, and she remembered he would knock on her bedroom door and yell out before turning the door knob, “Are you decent?”  When he was young he had a sweet voice.  My brother was always charming.  He was well liked.  I like to think my brother and great-aunt are having a laugh together as she tells him about  when I came to visit last year, and her sister called ahead of us arriving and made a joke to “be decent and put pants on,” because guest were coming over.  My father made sure to carry on the joke and ask in the door before we entered, “are you decent?”

I miss my brother’s voice and his laughter.  I know he is making my great aunt laugh.  I called my grandmother who is in snow today and told her to visit me this weekend.  I would take her to the beach were we share memories of her sister and my brother.  “Grandma, come to the beach with me, it will be 76 degrees out and we can put on bathing suits and no one will tell us to wear pants.”  We both laughed, and my eighty seven year old grandmother said, “Someone might!”  Laughter will get us through this time of grief, but I cannot guarantee I will always be wearing pants. 

ON THE ROAD

3WW

Heave; verb: [With object] lift or haul (a heavy thing) with great effort; [with object] produce (a sigh); [no object] rise and fall rhythmically or spasmodically; noun: An act of heaving, especially a strong pull.

Ponder; verb: Think about (something) carefully, esp. before making a decision or reaching a conclusion.

Valid; adjective: (Of an argument or point) having a sound basis in logic or fact; reasonable or cogent; legally binding due to having been executed in compliance with the law; legally or officially acceptable.

Note: I've been reading "Darkly Dreaming Dexter," by Jeff Lindsay   

and this is completly fiction.  

On the Road

As I drive home, I am pondering how people around me packaged life into how it should be.  There should be a white picket fence, a dog, etc.   Their illusion of “should be”. ..  is bull.  It never applied to me and it never will.  Every time I tried to fit into their idea of should be, it crumbled.  All the “should be’s” they told me over and over… hell, I wanted to believe them too.  It was like believing in fairy tales.  Believing there is a happily ever after.  I’m angry for the lies I was told and I’m angry that I even believed.  Life as it should be, never made me feel safe.  I am full of laughter for not believing; my memories are only funny to me.

One evening I stood across from a guy sitting in an overstuffed antique chair, wearing only his underwear, smoking a stinky cigar. He sat not saying anything until he finished his cigar. His fat fingers snuffed out the remaining fire on the tip of the cigar and it smoldered in the ashtray.  I must have been high from the smoke because I never looked away from the smoke when he began to talk. He had a thick Russian accent. He spoke and I heard words but I only understood the last few words, “You will do.”   I heard the door behind me opened, a woman in a tight dress and spike high heels passed me and gave me the once over with her eyes, then proceeded to spit at the man and walk into another room slamming the door behind her.  I felt his eyes evaluating my response.  He had no idea I was thinking I should have pulled out my gun and shot him and his girlfriend, and taken anything I wanted.  Maybe I was high, because I did not react. “Undress; Leave your clothes here and we will talk in the other room.”  The guy must have been a mind reader.  Later I learned he was not a mind reader at all, he was the devil.  Two hours later I walked out of the penthouse, fully dressed with what I came for and didn’t kill anyone.  I left them sleeping.  Should I have killed them?   No, I was not there for vengeance of sins, someone else would do it soon enough.  I was there to prove the sin.  It sucks knowing another person’s secrets, their dirty, messy, ugly secrets. 

I cannot tell you when it started.  I cannot pinpoint the first sin I ever witnessed.  I do know I was very young.  Maybe it was in the womb, where I drank my first bottle of vodka ingested by my mother.  Is drinking really a sin?  Was anything she did really a sin? No.  Nothing she did was a sin.  It just was not how life should be.  Someone else will validate her sins.  I decided when I was five, since I was none of her business; she was no concern to me either.  Sometimes now, when I see her, I still look at her with wonder, and cannot believe the person sitting in front of me was supposed to fit in some kind of package that was supposed to be a gift to me.  Nice gift.  She will return to the sender soon enough. 

I live life on the edge of things, a very thin edge.  My life is like a word that sits on the edge of your lips, but your mouth will not let you say the word and you cannot wrap your brain about it to make sense of it.  I know too much to get in deep.  The edge is fine with me.  I will not let the things I know consume me.  I guess that is why my life is in this, “should be” state.  I will never fit in as other people do and I know it.   My time alone is the only time I take to remember the past and know I am not other people’s ideal.  I am just like I should be. 

The last book I read was a cookbook.  I do not cook.  I throw things together in a pot that sound good to eat, put it in the oven for an hour and then there is food.  Cookbooks are entertaining.  I am drawn to the ones with stories inside, how the recipe was conceived and the holiday it is cooked, and how the food gives people roots; A place they come from.  I take the memories printed in the cookbooks and make them mine.  If I am out eating dinner, I have a pallet that allows me to separate spices and flavors.  Cookbooks are so descriptive, I take other people’s memories and say things like, “My grandmother once made this same pasta with the oregano and added cinnamon, which was a surprise once it hit your tongue, and woke up the dish a little more.”  I only saw my grandmothers when we vacationed and neither of them ever cooked for me, we always ate out. 

Now, you know my sin.  I am a liar.  I lie about everything.  No one is supposed to know the truth.  The truth is very upsetting.  Living on the edge makes the depth of me more than anyone else wants to know.  Like the Russian.  No one wants to know I stood naked in front of a man who bought and sold women into slavery.  No one wants to know about how a horse trainer in Florida strangles women and buries them with a backhoe on his land and tells everyone he had to put another horse down.  No one wants to know his callous hands once slipped around my throat, tightening slowly, as he stared into my eyes, while I struggled and heaved to inhale.  Some things are never forgotten.  I gave him a nice scar and once vengeance is delivered, the scar will testify that I was there.  I haunt him.  He never told anyone I escaped, neither did I. His mind will not let him believe I was still alive, knowing his secret.  Till his dying day he will wonder if I was a ghost that gave him a scar. He knows better than to leave his precious cemetery, if anyone else ever had to bury another dead thing, his victims would be discovered and he had too much invested to risk. If one bit of dirt is disturbed, his reputation of being one of the best horse trainers in the United States would change to murderer.  Trophies and ribbons, valid wins; not one bit of the room he strangled me in was not covered in photos of winning horses, trophies, and ribbons.  The plaques were strategically placed under track lighting so each illuminated his name and title. None of the trophies were for murder.  I notice the weirdest things when I am in stressful situations.

I live on the edge of death, not life.  Death follows me to collect what I leave behind.  No one knows that I am their last chance.  I enter.  I slice through other people’s lives like a knife in a chocolate cake, ruining perfection of the icing making it lovely and leave the dark inside exposed, making way for death to devour them, leaving nothing but the stale uneaten crumbs to rot.  The knife never comes out of a cake clean.  I suppose if the knife came out clean there would be nothing for death to eat, and we would move on to the next cake.  Like the knife, I remain unchanged.  Whatever I get into I come out the same.  Only I stay perfect. 

I feel tired.  I think I will stay in an expensive hotel and rest for awhile in a hot bubble bath.  Even knives need to be cleaned.  

Lists

3 WW

Dismal   

Luscious  

Waffle

Lists

No actual story today.  I’ve been spending the morning deleting several lists from my stack of lists. 

Guess what? 

I’m not making any lists other than directions to get me from lost to found, and list for the grocer- or the grocer personnel who always think I need assistance in the grocery store and come to my aid. 

(Really I have difficulty in the grocery store because I think about what I want to cook, and the ingredients and my trips to the grocery; at times, have been hours long)  I do need help.  A trip to the grocer is a whole other story. 

Back to the list dilemma.  Lists are dismal to me.  They are reminders of days gone by, or tasks not completed, and a total chore if you ask me.  I may be waffling a.k.a .procrastinating and a list is equal to what I won’t accomplish.

People who are devoted to list, find list writing  a luscious task that makes them jump to joy to find their favorite writing pen and lined paper to proceed to make “the list” official.  While handy, I am not that person.  I am more of a live in the moment and if I forgot it- it was meant to be forgotten.  My lack of composure or direction drives some people I know CRAZY to the point that they vocalize it on a daily basis.  I am not apparently affected by their agitation, or I would put at least a little effort in my list making for their benefit only.  List making is laborious and I am refusing to do it. 

So you will not see on this blog:

2013 resolutions

Calendar of events

Countdowns

My check ledger

Top ten anything

Oh crap!  I just made a list.

Not Stopping for Directions

3WW

Focused pair vacant

Not Stopping for Directions

The mist is beading up on the windshield. My thoughts are not interrupted on the timed swish, swish, swish of the wiper blades.  It is easy to get hypnotized when driving. I can’t be focused on the wipers.  The weather has been constantly changing between hot and cool temps and sunny to overcast.  It has been threatening rain all day, but only fog and drizzle so far.

When I started driving a month ago, I let go of everything.  There is me, this car and where ever I can drive. It’s odd to be this vacant.  I feel as if the person I was before, left and now there is this vastness I can’t get enough of.  This car isn’t my cocoon keeping me from the rest of the world, instead it is taking me deeper into this space that is gigantic and I want it to absorb me.  I have a real problem.  I want to obsess over something and I have nothing to obsess over. 

During the day, I listen to the radio as I drive.  It takes me back to my childhood, when we didn’t have a television and the radio was ever present.  I hope with all the technology that exists, radio won’t disappear.  Hours and days can pass without a word from my mouth to another human and it’s part of the experience.   Traveling without a destination is paired with exhilaration and fear.  I can’t explain what happened, all I know is that I surrendered.  I let go of everything I was in control of, got into my car and just kept driving.  The voices on the syndicated radio shows are the only thing constant in my life. 

I cannot decide if this is the last chance I have to live or the only choice I have.  

The Hour or the Second

 

3WW CCCX

Happy 2013. Today marks the 300th 3WW.

Idle 

 
Nagging

Pace   

The Hour or the Second

On the street I am lingering,  I need to be in motion, but instead of walking in a straight line, I am circling; pacing, in a short length of four steps and then returning to the place I started.  I need to be somewhere in fifteen minutes and I am thirty minutes away.  I am debating if I don't show, will it matter? 

Two weeks ago I got the invitation in the mail.  It was wrapped in a pale baby blue envelope and when I read the return address, I was startled.  The invitation is unexpected. 

When my girlfriend and I still played with dolls, I considered mine intelligent enough to love poetry, and my playmate would consider her doll a stunt dummy in training.  Childhood was more than twenty years ago.  Dolls have been long packed away and pretend parenting was traded with real life, when I turned twenty three. I had a beautiful daughter that challenged me as a person from the moment she took in her first breath and every exhale since.  She didn't turn out to be like my doll, she didn't love poetry, and every time I made a rhyme, she rolled her eyes and giggled.  Through her high school years, we would discuss her assigned school poetry readings and when stumped at the depth of the meaning of it all, she would question me, her mother, for guidance, to which I would reply a dramatic dissection of the piece, again eyes would roll and a giggle, before she decided I knew nothing about poetry and would give herself permission to interpret the piece herself.   I love her independence and encourage her to do the difficult things, but never exposed her to daredevil parenting antics that my adventurous playmate of my youth exposed me to. 

I opened the envelope and read the invitation.  It was a postcard invitation.  One side was pink and the other side was blue and a big question mark separated the two colors.  Immediately I grieved the invitation.  It would be difficult to select a shower gift. More than the unknown gender of the gift I hesitated when I saw the RSVP at the bottom.  I am horrible at meeting deadlines.  Each time I see a deadline, I make note of it, then don't uphold the deadline date. I have to make an elaborate "Sorry" story when I do RSVP.  I don't know the reason I do it, but I never fail to miss a deadline.  People have made it clear to me that I will be late to my own funeral. It doesn't matter how much nagging is sent to my ears; I remain idle until I am late. 

I did the deed.  I went to the baby superstore languished over what would make a good impression; I remembered the best baby shower gift given to me was a stepstool from my aunt and uncle. I decided if I loved the stepstool, it would still be a non gender gift that would be appreciated for the toddler years.  One stepstool and diapers later, I reviewed the invite again and I surprised myself when I was not late to RSVP, and did so immediately to a voice message. 

The day has come and I debate again if my gift is impressionable or not and I am pacing with a wrapped stepstool in one arm and a gigantic package of disposable diapers in the other.   To people watching my indecision, I must look as if I am awaiting labor of the child this very day.  I believed that the invitation was sent a bit early, for a birth, but knowing the personality of the expectant mother, there would be at least two showers a month until the arrival of this first born child.  I considered again, if I might wait to go to another shower in the future or even hold the gift until the birth. 

I don't have social anxiety.  I didn't expect the invitation, because at our last social engagement, the soon to be mother and I squabbled over the soon to be father and his intentions.  The mother and father of the unborn are not married.  I expected a wedding invitation before the baby shower invitation.  I really hate it when friendships are conflicted over boyfriends, but it never fails.  Despite this fact women have not learned to maneuver both relationships until compromise is agreed upon.  Never less, I love her.  I don't love him. 

My feet decide to go forward and I arrive at the party.  I deposit my gifts in the pile of others and mingle with the guests until I find the mother to be.  She looks not pregnant.  Eager to know the date of the baby's arrival, ask, " When are you due?"   She laughs and says, "My baby is already here, playing in the back yard, come have a look." She takes my hand and leads me to the backyard.  I don't see a child being passed from guest to guest.  I must look confused.  My friend bends over, and I think she must have a cramp, so I am immediately concerned.  She pops up, "Meet my baby, CiCi!" She squeals.  I gasp, and can't stop the oohs and awe’s spewing out of my mouth. Wide eyed, I see she is holding a fluffy white poodle.  This shower is for her new puppy!

My gift is ridiculous.