Writing for Me

Ophelia Blooming ~ my quiet spot, my little bubbling brook surrounded by shade trees and flowers. 

I don't write here often because I'm always over in Sacred Middle land trying to figure out all that and holding my megaphone trying to get people's attention and I get burned out sometimes.

Sometimes I just want to write for me, and I know you're reading this too, but this writing is different than the "big blog" writing. This is a whisper, a secret between us. This is us sitting in our favorite cafe, talking about our dreams, trying to figure out what the hell we're doing here on earth.

I quit my job over a year ago to freelance write. I enjoy writing about different things and want to dive a little deeper into guest posting and magazine articles. But then there's the big blog and me trying to create stuff and this whole other world I'm involved in and creating. I feel like I'm living two lives.

It's all kind of confusing and out of focus. And then there's the me who wants to write a book, but can't get disciplined enough to do it because I have all this other stuff I'm trying to do. 

I want to stay off the internet for awhile, clear my head. There are so many voices.

I pulled The Hermit card today and it said just that. Get quiet, get still, go into hiding. 

I don't know if that's entirely possible right now, but soon. 

Thank you for meeting me here, reading, listening. Always showing up even after I'm gone for awhile. It's just different here and I like that.

Dulangan Stories

There are goats on the side of the road, the occasional caribou grazing on grass, mangy dogs who don't get out of the way for nothing, chickens and their babies, and the roosters who crow all day. Not just when the sun comes up. I'm not sure they sleep.

I wake up around 7am, feed the puppy, bring him upstairs and watch him go wild with puppy excitement. 

I check my email, Facebook, all the regular stuff. Drink coffee, write, maybe exercise or think about exercising, but decide it's okay if I don't because I sweat a lot more in this humidity. 

I started a meditation practice - trying to reprogram my brain. But this place has reprogrammed me too. I'm still a first world-er, but I wear shirts with holes in them, don't wash my hair everyday, don't put on makeup to go into town, wear flip flops like it's the only shoe available (kinda is), eat more rice than I've ever eaten before, keep track of time less. I don't feel the need to buy clothes every time I turn around and the tiny hole in my shirt doesn't mean I throw it out. Nobody else cares about that crap. Why should I?

I live among Natives, poor fisherman, mountain people, families who bathe in the ocean. But also among people from all over the world. Rich people, poor people, poor people who used to be rich, old drunks, young Canadian kids who live on their own (the dad went back to Canada - story still being investigated), military vets, "criminals," hippies, high rollers, outcasts. The list goes on.

Lots of characters and wild stories people on the outside might not believe. It's kind of like a tropical commune of crazy...but in the best way. If nothing else, it gives me plenty to write about, and I want to write about it more because it would be a shame for all these stories to go to waste.  

Offerings

This morning I woke up before 6 a.m. and went out onto the balcony. The sun rose over the mountains and cast its light on the ocean, sparkling shades of blue, silver, orange.

Just now, enjoying hearty bowls of homemade vegetable soup: onion, big chunks of garlic, herbs and spices, green beans, ocra.

Listening to Dreamcatcher and The Enchanted Forest by Angels of Venice.

Wondering what it is that I need to create, to write. Wondering what people are craving. What do you want more of in your life? Poetry, love, confidence, dancing, writing, meditation, nature...

Let me know.

Letters to a Rock Star

I wrote this when I was a twentysomething with these songs on repeat: Hover by Trust Company and The Noose by A Perfect Circle. It won second place in the Writer's Digest Short Story Competition (literary fiction category).

I can hear you in my dreams, but I don’t know what you’re saying. You’re singing and your eyes are closed and there is so much passion in your face. I can almost see your spirit. I want to be so close to you. I want to feel your breath on my neck. I want to breathe in your soul. I hate what I’ve become. I hate ever seeing you. My body is hollow – a sky with no stars. I feel like a poem of sadness and loneliness. I take pictures and rip them apart. I break the strings on my guitar and my fingers burn. I wonder if it’s possible to love someone who doesn’t know you’re bleeding. Who doesn’t know you’ve lost your breath.

I’m looking at the ocean. My eyes swim beneath its blues and greens and all I want to do is drown when I see your image. The sky is hot and the stars are burning me. I see her there and she is beautiful and her ring is like a tiny star. I knew this all along, but my heart is writing poems of sorrow. I don’t want to say a word and I don’t want to move. I just want to stand here and feel nothing.

I go home and I listen to sad songs and I wonder why I feel the way I do. I wonder if I will always feel the way I do right now. I wonder if I will ever love the way I used to. If only, I say. I continue to dream and in my dreams I hear pianos and they are crying.

***

I finally saw you again and I walked up to you and I said that I really enjoyed the performance. The facial expression that I saw on you is the same one that everyone else sees and that hurts more than anything – to be an everyone. I can hear the pianos crying again and I can feel my soul dying.

***

When I see you leave, I feel like we’re in our home and you’ve just told me that you’re seeing someone else. But I have never been a person to you, only an everyone, so I don’t know why I feel this way.

I saw you smile and you said, “If it weren’t for my fans I’d be nothing.” It’s because of you that I am nothing. You are the reason I am always standing there wanting to feel nothing because I’ve felt so much and I can’t take anymore.

You walked away and hugged another girl and her friend took a picture. You smiled at the camera and I heard this song inside my head. A song that I want you to sing, to play on your guitar. I was sinking into a pool of pink hibiscus flowers and the song was making my head buzz.

“Maybe you are obsessed,” my friends say. “You don’t really love him. You’re only fifteen,” they say. “It’s just a crush.”

I wrote a poem once, called, “If Love was a Rock Star,” and I sent it to you in the mail. I covered the envelope in glitter and perfume.

I touched your hand and felt your screaming soul

Crimson, scarlet insanity

Music flowed

An explosion of butterflies

Midnight spinning into poetic bodies.

You opened my heart and felt my falling spirit

Angelic creatures dancing

Violet lips, velveteen kisses

Love making

Faery lights

Daisy bloom burst.

I kissed you

and the world was dynamite.

A response came to me about a month later. “Thanks for supporting the band,” it said. Thanks for supporting my depression, I thought.

Sometimes I reach for stars in my dreams. I pull at the sky, but it tugs at my heart. It tugs so hard that it rips my soul out and I cry and cry and swallow the stars to fill the emptiness inside of me. You are the sky ripping out my soul, making you bigger, stronger. Your fiancé loves you and you love her. She is a dragon in the clouds.

***

It has been a while since I’ve seen you. It’s almost summer time and my skin is turning rose-brown and my hair is winter-white. Your skin is always rose-brown. I go to the beach every day and write songs that I hear. I still want you to sing them, but somehow I believe that that would only break me. You would be singing them to everyone. I would be an everyone, just like always. When will you come again? I wonder. “Why does it matter?” my friends ask. “Why are you so weird about him?”

I just want to see the passion in your face. I just want her to erase herself. Never touch your hair or wash your dishes or play with the dog in your backyard. When will you come again?

I wrote a poem to you one time when I was sick in the hospital. The nurse said, “It will help you release your feelings.”

I wrote this poem and listened to you sing, “Fish in a Wave.” I felt like that fish. I was tumbling and the salt was stinging my eyes.

Love

Like yours

Wilted flowers

Faded glittering sky

Stars

Like yours

Spinning chaos

Nervous heart beats

Voice

Like yours

Shouting sweet serenity

Beckoning my love

You

Like love

I never sent the poem to you because the nurse said, “You should burn it and make the feelings go away.” The feelings did not go away. They grew stronger and when I saw you again I wanted to burn you to make the feelings go away. But I knew you would only become smoke and I would breathe you in and you would always remain inside of me.

***

Mother says that you aren’t important. She says, “You can find other boys that really deserve you.” She says I need someone my age.

I don’t like what she says and when she talks I shut her out and stare out the window and pretend that you are there. You are there and you’re beckoning me to come out and sing with you or play guitar. I smile at you, but Mother probably thinks I’m smiling at what she’s saying, which is fine with me.

Dad doesn’t really care what I do. He's always busy at the office helping his clients get money. When he does talk to me he asks, “How are you, Eliza?” And I tell him that I’m in love with you and you are in love with me and he just says, “That’s nice, Honey.”

I drew a picture of you in art class last year. The teacher said I was a good artist, but I said it was because of you. Because you are such a beautiful rock star. She showed you to the class and everyone liked the boots you were wearing. Those black ones with the buckles wrapping all around them. I said, “I’ve met him,” and everyone was jealous because they love your music.

You’ve only really said hello to me and you gave me a hug a couple of times. I have your autograph and a lot of pictures of you hanging on my wall. In some of them I am standing beside you and smiling. My arm is wrapped around your waist and your hand is touching my shoulder. Some nights I cry when I look at the pictures because I want you to be in the bed with me and not on the wall. When I dream about you touching my breasts and kissing me, I cry because you’re not really there. I can only have you in my dreams.

***

My therapist tells me that next time I see you I should tell you how I feel. I don’t think you would care. I think you would say, “I’m busy, kid.” Then I would come home and cry and hate you because you are human. But then I would forget that you are human and love you again. I talk about that with my therapist a lot. About how people become human. “People are always human,” she says. And I say yes, but sometimes I can’t see that they’re human. Like you. I don’t think you’re human. I think maybe you’re a god and you have no flaws. If I ever start to think that you’re human, I shut my eyes real tight and tell myself that you aren’t over and over again. I always want to love you.

I went to the beach yesterday and pretended that we were walking in the waves and building sand castles and making love behind the big rocks. Would you ever do that? Make love behind the rocks? You remind me of summer because your skin is slick and tastes of coconut. I can taste it in my mouth when you shake your head on stage. I like those small clubs because I can almost touch you and your sweat and spit touches my lips when I’m in the front row. I’m always in the front row.

***

I really hate being fifteen and feeling this way and not going to school dances because I hate the boys, they are human. They aren’t beautiful like you. “You’re so weird,” they say, but I pretend like I don’t hear them. They are ugly and immature.

You don’t hate feeling in love. I never want to see you and her together. She is beautiful and she sees a different smile from you. Not the one that everyone else sees. Not the one that I see. I wish I had never met you because you make my heart bleed. I can feel my heart bleeding inside my chest and it scares me so I give the blood a place to go. I have to drain it sometimes. My mother cries when she sees me. “You’ll be shredded ribbon before you know it,” she says. She says she doesn’t know how to help me anymore. If you disappeared that would help me. Or maybe if I disappeared, because if you were to disappear I would still think about you.

I hate the light outside. The heat suffocates me and I can’t think. Sometimes I feel like a big pile of meat. I just lie on the couch and feel heavy and hot and sick, like a pile of meat with flies flying around it. So I’ve stopped eating meat so I will feel light and cool. Maybe you could see the way I felt. Next time I see you, you might see me differently.

***

I don’t understand why I can’t have you. You smile at me every time I see you and say hey like you remember me and sometimes I think maybe you wish you were with me and not her. I know you’re like that to everyone, but why do you do that to me? Why do you ignore me after you smile and say hey. You let me get a picture with you and you sign my paper and then you move on. Why do you do that? Why can’t you just stay and talk with me a while and get to know me? Why can’t I go with you into the bus and talk to you about things? I know you would fall in love with me and forget about her and you would do anything for me, even stop singing because I hate that you’re gone so much.

It makes me so mad when I think about it. Why was it her fate to get you? I don’t understand. I hate you, hate you, hate you, and everything you are and I wish your heart would fall to pieces like mine.

***

I’m sorry that I said those things last time. I don’t really hate you like that. I hate you in that way that I hate myself. I guess I really hate myself and not you, but I hate you because I can’t have you. I tried telling this to the therapist, but she just said that I have to make myself get over you and find another boy. I don’t know what she’s talking about. How can you make yourself get over someone that you love so much? You can’t just play angry music and jump on the bed and scream, “I don’t love you!” over and over again until your heart stops loving. I think the therapist needs to find another job because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

I do admit that it makes me feel better when I write these letters to you. I pretend that you’re falling in love with me as you read them. You’re telling your fiancé that she’s not enough anymore and that you need someone like me. Someone that understands what it’s like to be in love. Truly in love. That makes me smile, but then I realize that it’s not real and I cry, but there’s still some kind of hope inside me. If I didn’t have hope I wouldn’t be writing to you. I’ve realized that a person must have hope to live. If we don’t have hope then we feel nothing and we go from day to day feeling nothing and looking forward to nothing. That’s a really horrible feeling. I know because I’ve felt that way. I don’t feel that way right now.

***

It is winter and my skin is white, white snow. I look like a ghost with pale skin and white hair. Your skin is probably still rose-brown.

You haven’t been here in a long time. I’m beginning to wonder if out of sight out of mind is true. I haven’t dreamt about you or dreamt about the sky pulling at my spirit in a couple of days. I still love you though and I know the pain will come back when I think about how beautiful you are and how I can’t hold you like she does.

I’m sitting beneath a tree that has Christmas lights strung around its branches. The lights look like little plastic pieces of candy and I want to eat them. I want to be in candy land where all the twinkling lights taste like strawberry and bubblegum and blueberry.

Mother says, “This Christmas is going to be wonderful, Eliza. We are going to be a family and do things together. That means you must eat Christmas dinner with us. No locking yourself inside your bedroom and eating cold Chinese food.”

I only did that because I was mad at them. They didn’t get me your new album. They said it was too rough for me. I asked, “Then why do you let me go to the concerts?” They just glared at me and walked away. Sometimes they are so stupid.

I don’t know whether to wish you a merry Christmas or to wish that your fiancé would break up with you. That would be wishing me a merry Christmas.

***

I don’t know if I am excited that you are coming here soon. I’m afraid that I can’t take the pain. I don’t know if I want to feel nothing as I stand and watch your passion. There is hope inside me though. There is hope that you might look at me in a way that you don’t look at everyone else. Maybe you’ve realized that I’m more like you and you need me.

I am going to be so beautiful for you in my black dress. You are going to glance at my legs and undress me with your eyes. Then maybe I will get to talk to you and we’ll make love in your bus and I’ll leave home to be with you forever. I’m going to dream of that tonight. I hope that you will too.

***

I am sitting in the bathtub and draining my heart, trying to make the pain and fear go away. I saw you for the first time in a long time and you smiled and said hey and walked right past me. I felt so suffocated in that small club; I was being pushed and I couldn’t grab your arm and make you look at me and make you see that I am falling apart because of you.

You got on stage and sang my favorite song. For a split second I saw you look me in the eye and I smiled and then you asked your fiancé to go on stage and you held her hand and told everyone that you loved her so much and that you wouldn’t be here today without her. You sang a song to her and told us that the wedding would be soon and you wanted lots of kids and everyone clapped. 

Except me. My heart bled and it’s still bleeding. I can’t make it stop bleeding. All my hope is gone. The therapist says, “Don’t beat yourself up over this, Eliza. You can’t do anything about it.” I’m so sick of what she has to say. I’m sick of everyone and being an everyone.

Mother says she might have to put me back in the hospital because I’m very sick and need more help. She says I’m too obsessed for my own good. So maybe I am, but I’m not going to that place and I’m not listening to what anyone has to say and I’m going to make things better all on my own. You’ve hurt me so much. Remember that time I thought it would be good if I disappeared so I wouldn’t have to see or think about you anymore? I still think that would be good, so I am going to disappear underneath my heart that swims around me. Maybe Mother will have enough sense to send you this. I will lay it on the floor for her.

The Lover I Abandon

I can't describe to you the insatiable desire I've had to write. To pull out the brown leather notebook sitting in the closet, the one with notes upon notes and prose and poetry in it, all dedicated to Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle, and just write the damn story. The story I've been meaning to write for six years now. I write here and there, but I've had this desire to hunker down and turn out page after page of whatever, nonsense maybe, as long as something gets written.

Because this story, the one about Ezra and Hilda, is becoming a thorn on the blooming rose of my heart. I don't know why it's so important - I knew many years ago - but things have changed and yet...the story remains important to me. 

I hear Ezra in the thunder, imagine him standing outside my door just waiting. Hilda is a ghost of a woman sitting beside me, whispering, write it now, write it now, write it now. And it's scary!

And so why don't I write it now? Because I have social obligations or blog posts to write or business ideas to think about or networking to do. Sure, I can believe all that, but what if it's because I'm afraid to show up at the page, wait for the story, but the story never comes.

All I know is I've had an ache in my bones this week. I can't think when I'm reading or writing other things. All I see is that leather notebook sitting in the closet, just waiting.

Living Poetry

Poetry is easy;

it lives in the cracks

and beams of sunlight -

just look at things

and transfer life to paper.

Write about the katydid

on the concrete wall

and how it’s missing legs,

but that its emerald body

washes over all the grey.

Or about the tiny spider

weaving a web between two clothespins

and the chimes that are silent

on a hazy tropical day.

And there are the palms hanging

like skeleton fingers

searching for something,

a piano perhaps,

to play that little jazz number

to the beat of breaking waves.

See how it all comes together so easily?

Little bits of life,

the ones begging to be looked at

and written into history.

bindweed

love,

(addiction)

like a morning glory

(bindweed)

blooms white with sun

in the soft heart,

telling you it’s okay,

(because it’s love)

come closer,

and strangles out

the good that had grown there