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padlocked [06 Feb 2011|09:15am] There are rooms in me that remain untouched, undarkened, and uncluttered. These rooms are not for consumption, surely not by judgmental, narcissistic souls bound to their own sense of blinding truth. Truth is subjective. It changes according to the tongues speaking it; there is no universal. I keep these rooms pure for those who've always known the weight of my character and who've always been unconditional, not those who--when I make a positive post about a family member who did a kind thing--make their own snarky commentary and accuse the gentle gesture of being a pandering act. Be real. We've all seen my rebellion long enough to know it exists in its own time. I do not rise from the ashes and take those with me who abandoned me when I needed guidance the most. People teach us exactly who they are in those uncomfortable moments. When they show us the first time, we should truly remember. A rage that could shatter concrete could and would one day be turned on me. One lesson for me has been eliminating all addictive personalities from my existence and concentrating my energies on my own healing and health. There is much work to be accomplished. Addicts are their own category; it's interesting that I've crossed paths with many in my time and bear a vein of it in my family history and those are the very souls I used to attempt saving. Obviously, I've learned that one cannot save anyone else. We can offer encouragement and friendly words to our fellow travelers, even share a loaf of bread and a story for the night. We must not carry anyone else, whether jealous mate, codependent friend, or spiraling family member. We must be compassionate. I remember receiving the news that my former lover, Travis, had committed suicide last winter. I was devastated; we all were. It is a pain that one never fully erases. The comfort is knowing that I had many good talks with him in the years before it happened, and our peace was made. I never said anything to him when he was in a vulnerable state that would have worsened his pain. One never knows how close the barrel is to the lips or how many pills are in the palms. I'm not comfortable with guessing. I am reminded to be as gentle and good as possible in my dealings, and that I shouldn't mistake my own right to my honesty for my words being just. Too much honesty can be detrimental, and one must wonder: to what ends? I'm dismantling and rebuilding a whole world. Knowing that I only keep those close that have earned the right to be in proximity is sound. I do it (not to protect myself) because everyone shouldn't have that privilege. It must be earned. There is nothing bitter or negative in that, merely crystal realisation. However, it does seem I've outgrown this area for communication. I'll be moving elsewhere. If you've any desire to know where, you could always write me a letter. I love those. I've been writing more--to those who matter--than I've ever written. I'm open in a way I've never been and yet, closed in a way I've never been. It was always difficult for me to completely shut people out if I'd once cared about them, but I'm finding doing just that has been one of the healthiest moves I've made in a long time. I don't need to tend to other people's madnesses, only my own. That's all any of us may do. Jewel 8 comments|post comment

blind are the cavefish [16 Sep 2010|11:40am] Attempting at humour, I’ve said that living in Philadelphia is like Sesame Street directed by Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee. Having interviewed Spike in the past, I think he’d be down with a violent little brownstone where people learn real lessons of a cruel world. What I really mean is that living here is like knowing there is no moon and not caring about it, like letting the decay and malevolence of the night draw you down into the silt, like walking zombi death. The people are angry and unawakened, which is a queer combination. Usually anger stems from too much awareness: the inability to shut off what horrifies one, much like helplessness having grown teeth. My greatest battle is contending with that complacency, that thing that makes one want nothing great. If you lose your hunger, you abandon your greatest talents, much like certain cave fish no longer utilise sight. They are happily blind because they’ve been living in the dark so long that their eyes no longer require vision. The eyes go blind when they only see dark. It’s a love letter to passivity. 3 comments|post comment

seduction--sans the sexual implications [08 Sep 2010|08:42pm] From the paper-written journal: My ability to know how and who to seduce might be my undoing. Babies, old men on trains, girlfriended young men who look at me for seconds bitten by minutes, seemingly heterosexual women and gay men who don't understand what the attraction is: I know them all. I've a talent for hopelessly mucking up situations--all because I'm greedy for experiences, for that human spark of ignition that sends me home and away and free. A child with candy vices and empty hands, I want it all. I want it all as if my belly were an endless pit for that siren-cry of MORE. It's glorious and terrifying. As loyal as a wildcat, I love fiercely and with distraction, and then, when I get my heart's wishes, I find another thing to covet. I want not to be so restless. Dan says this is what makes me such a powerful artist. Power is not what I seek. I gravitate towards wholeness, a sense of infusing everything I do with integrity, my rawness. I want to fill the world with my adventures and stories. I want to inspire, comfort, and arouse everyone. I roar and howl and make love. I don't want to be the people from my high school, static, mathematical, bland, and sucked by same-faced children: paper cut-outs of what a life might have been. That thought haunted me when I was fifteen; it gnaws at me now. I don't want to be boring. I DO NOT WANT TO BE MUNDANE OR ORDINARY! I DON'T WANT TO BE FORGETTABLE! I'm a tiny bird on the telephone line to others; inside, I am a supernova, my organs made of constellations. My lungs are full of stars. I breathe the softest little mythology, but no one knows it but me. 3 comments|post comment

Filthadelphia [07 Sep 2010|11:53am] ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) 10 comments|post comment

whereupon the author has her period so she thinks she understands female subjugation [31 Aug 2010|11:36am] To make a man bleed, one must cut the flesh. For a woman to bleed, she has only to wait for the moon. The jealous ones call us witches when we’re too powerful to be defined by or limited to their labels. Instead, they try to collect us like porcelain dolls or gather a fire beneath us at the stake. In death, they want to teach us about fire, thinking the fire will destroy our notions of independence. They forget that we are fire and our wombs are doorways to history. When I think about history, as told by the writers of it, I am angry. It wasn’t until I’d long discarded the mantle of girl that I saw what liars could do to women. They hoarded my Anne Boleyn and Marie Antoinette, Cleopatra and the de Medicis. They made trifles of Madame de Pompadour and Diane de Poitiers. They made me believe these monster myths of women with third nipples or extra fingers (Boleyn), women who drank crushed pearls and ruined Caesars with their seductions (Cleopatra). A woman had to be a whore or fueled by the Devil, after all, to sway a powerful man. She couldn’t have done it by being smart. Finding out the truth, I knew they’d robbed me of the lessons that my ancient sisters and mothers could have taught me. Most of written history is a lie. We are slop-swillers, gobbling it down, and growing fat with complacency, rather than acknowledging the grave injustice of it all. Instead of beating our voices against that indignity, we sit in our reality television comas. Reality television makes us feel a little better about our lives because, merde, at least we don’t do that for a national audience. We have our hands out for freebies, clip coupons, don’t know anything about the products we buy, and never think twice about snapping at the humble waitresses, shopgirls, and customer service representatives we see. We should be marching in protest and burning our damn uncomfortable maxi pads. We should be sharpening our minds for the job market, instead of picking out China patterns and diamonds for the marriage one. We should be seizing up our cornets and playing a rag dirty-sweet enough to keep Bolden from insanity. We should, we should, we should. The thought that sometimes wraps a silken noose around my throat is this: what will I do to fight back and take my place amongst my heroines and teachers? What will I do to let shine my strange, female power? I sing, I sing, I sing. And then, I plot. 13 comments|post comment

this used to be my home [29 Aug 2010|11:25pm] I've been strangely silent--not only here, but in my walking, breathing life. This journal used to be a safe haven for me, a place for me to speak of anything and everything and to not worry about editing or being viewed in the wrong way by those who couldn't translate me even if they possessed the Rosetta stone. I've a tendency--much like certain aging pets that will disappear under a dark porch to die alone--to hide myself away when I'm in a particularly deep patch of pain. I'd never wish to inflict myself on someone when I'm in that place, even as I quietly yearn for simple human contact. Part of why this no longer feels safe has been the years of stalkers, accusations, and misunderstandings that have stemmed from some of my more honest moments and also, all the embarrassing ones. The strangers never bothered me much; it's been those that I opened my mind and life to, who should have known me better, who should have had a dialogue with me. Goodness knows that I've done enough to make others disagree with me; when one possesses strong will and the ability to make decisions too-quickly, it happens. It's perfectly acceptable for me to sometimes disagree with what I see around me and express confusion at all the intricacies of life. If someone can't have a conversation with me about this, armed with the benefit of the doubt, there's no need to continue any sort of association. I began this journal under the premise of no longer being voiceless and faceless after enduring decades of abuse. Everyone has a different reason for personal expression in this electronic medium. Mine was catharsis. I'd always wondered why people, all of us, hid behind the protective facade, rather than talking about those difficult topics and experiences that lend wisdom to our mortal years. This lead to some messier details revealed and the soft underbelly flashed--for seconds and uncomfortably long moments that could unravel into days. I never regretted any of it; however, I am finding lately that I only wish to be understood, nothing more, nothing less. As much as I seek to understand, it's time for me to also be understood. I've never demanded too much in that way. I wonder, as I stare at the blinking cursor, if it's time that I begin. All I know is this: this journal was my haven. It was sprayed with graffiti and tabloid lies in my absence. I'm taking it back. If this doesn't suit you, I never needed you to read anyway. If it does, hello again. Was the journey ever simple? It doesn't prove to be now; I've learned a lot more lessons and I'm less afraid of how I feel and who I am than ever. At the same time, my heart has been opened by force, welded shut, and torn into the shape of a door once again. My capacity for compassion and thirst for justice is stronger than ever. I'm not the same, and yet, I am always the same. talullah jewel 43 comments|post comment

day off mix-tape [02 Mar 2010|05:44pm] Although I don't use cassette tapes any longer, I like to call it a mix-tape. I've mixed a monster of music to accompany the day. Today, I'm home cleaning the house and getting things in order--all those little touches that make for a civilised life. These rituals remind us that we are human and attached to material objects in a way that no other creature is. There is a great deal of time spent maintaining the things we own--laundry, dusting, scrubbing, ironing, folding. We bend our bodies in half, meeting the demands of being grown-up. It's funny that I ignored those things when I was poorer; I was too busy attending make-your-own instrument parties, taking spur-of-the-moment trips to the Joshua Tree National Park, or writing novels while sitting in the roots of the cottonwood trees that lined the Agua Fria riverbed. Now that I make more money, I seem to be enslaved by chores. I'd rather get groceries by dumpster diving and going to what my roommates and I used to call the Dented Can Store. The Dented Can Store was where you could score a box of organic, unbleached cotton tampons for a buck or bring home Wolfgang Puck's hoity-toity soups for fifty cents apiece. Basically, grocery stores sold dented cans to the store, and the store would sell them on the cheap. When I lived at Arcosanti, we had a weekly caravan of residents who'd go to "town"--"town" being Prescott (pronounced Preskit). The Dented Can Store was a frequent stop, as were the dumpsters behind Safeway and the Saturday Morning Farmer's Market. We had the dumpster diving down to a science; the sturdy, dirty ones would don rubber gloves and sort through the bags while the wily ones would serve as look-outs. Many of our best meals came from a combination of the Dented Can Store and dumpster-diving: heirloom pumpkin soup with cinnamon and sour creme, baby white asparagus steamed with tarragon and garlic, and the many mystery stews and smoothies that kept our crockpot and juicer going in the winter months. I can't remember a time when my roomates and I didn't have a soundtrack to our adventures. I heard a whole manner of musical styles and liked every one. Scott played soul like Little Willie John and Wilson Pickett for Sunday morning brunch. Eleanor had an ongoing crush on Mason Jennings. Inevitably we reached for him, in between frivolous moments of putting on "It's Gonna Be Me" by N SYNC. One roommate loved Frank Zappa and Brian Eno. I still love the simplicity of Frank saying "You are what you is. You is what you am. A cow don't make ham." Manju and Selvam listened to traditional Indian ragas and Bollywood dance music. Tony always had the latest and strangest music; I felt secretly intimidated that my music collection wouldn't be as cool as his. Melissa and Lisa listened to earthy music by earthy women, which suited the months of not shaving my arm-pits, just to see what it was like and discovering that my underarm hair was soft and kind of pretty. Haley, Mirelle, Siobhan, and I had mad dance parties at a moment's notice. Often, I'd come home from boxing and the dance party would already be started with people swirling like leaves in the water and dancing, drinking, and smoking the night away. Sometime, I don't know when, the soundtrack stopped, but it happened so gradually that I didn't even notice it or know to miss it. In the last two months or so, the soundtrack has been returning. I've been rooting through old CDs and burning them to my computer, making mix-tapes like a fiend, and discovering new music aplenty. This small thing has brought great joy. With all the grey skies and bitterness of Philadelphia winter, joy is necessary. Today's mix-tape goes like so: - "My Moon My Man" by Feist - "Caring Is Creepy" by the Shins - "Silver Lining" by Rilo Kiley - "The Sound of Settling" by Death Cab for Cutie - "Anyone Else But You" by the Moldy Peaches - "Great DJ" by the Ting Tings - "1901" by Phoenix - "The Way We Get By" by Spoon - "Mushaboom" by Feist - "Girl" by Beck - "Piazza, New York Catcher" by Belle and Sebastian - "Wigwam" by Bob Dylan - "Neighbourhood #2 [Laika]" by the Arcade Fire - "Karma Police" by Radiohead - "Let Go" by Frou Frou - "Flow" by Transister - "When You're Drifting" by the Mojave 3 - "Don't Panic" by Coldplay - "A Lack of Colour" by Death Cab for Cutie - "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear - "Cannonball" by Damien Rice - "Smile Like You Mean It" by the Killers - "Tahiti" by Bat for Lashes - "Tres Avisos" by Calexico I like having a soundtrack back. It lends form and substance to what could otherwise feel hollow. 10 comments|post comment

all i thought i knew [12 Oct 2009|10:29pm] The more that I see it in this city of mine, this city of smudged windows and crumpled paper dreams, the more I feel it. If Philadelphia has taught me anything it's that everything solid I thought I knew of myself before is completely malleable. I've onion-layers that I haven't even come close to peeling; I view the world behind the translucent walls of the layers I am discovering. Women wander the city covered in thick black garments. They do not look me in the eye; they will not look for anyone's eyes but the eyes of their God in the East. Sometimes, they walk with their daughters. Their daughters, too, are hidden behind polyester veils--girls of six already covered. Although I respect all religions, I am starting to feel that making a woman dress in such a way constitutes a hate crime. Show me a man who wears such covering, and I might change my mind. The more I am confronted with this sight, the more I want to tear the veils away. My old, wild impulse is to claw at an institution that would say a woman being viewed whole is evil. Instead, I feel like I am a child once again and perhaps I know nothing. Maybe I never did. 8 comments|post comment

the you i wish i was [04 Aug 2009|01:13pm] Sometimes, people see the you that you wish you were. They watch you moving through life and stepping on the earth as it spins beneath you, and notice some special magic that you didn't know you possessed. They see a lilt in the lip or the volcanic lava-light in your ideas, and mark you as something more than what you feel like you are. I never know how to handle compliments or the positive attention of others, even though I secretly crave approval. I've been known to shrink away from people who want to celebrate me. Fawn all over me, and I'll flee the scene. I can't bear the thought of someone thinking me beautiful and then, later, when my flaws emerge, being thought of as a disappointment. Yet, it's good to have reminders of what others see in you. Today, on a day off from a job that's slowly stealing my soul, I was cleaning my room. I came across something my friend Genevieve wrote about me, a few years ago when I still lived in Arizona. I wish I were the person she describes. She wrote: "Three weeks before my first Jewel spotting, I heard thirdhand rumors of her existence through eavesdropping on eager young men. They told legend of an other tall girl in Arizona who wore large sunset beads and hats generations of mothers would approve of. Before I met her, I thought women like Jewel only existed in short stories passed along by dark haired skateboarding boys. Now I just talk to her online." Accepting such words takes a strong self and sense of balance. I want to learn. I am trying to learn because I cannot just celebrate others. My feet must not move me away from what could heal me. I must face it all and understand that I am everything I ever wished to be and am everything I ever wished I weren't. 6 comments|post comment

five card tarot spread where i am always the empress [26 Jul 2009|12:24pm] I live in houses that hardship built, eating dirt and my own tears. I walk through the holiest of temples, a lotus flower blooming in an open palm and saffron robes on my shoulders. Yet, I love this life the most. Late at night, in this life, this time, I sit cross-legged on the floor of my room, turning over the well-worn cards, trying to learn the signs that I miss. Certain cards always appear, forming my face on the painted cards that purr when I shuffle. The Empress. Strength. The Lovers. The Queen of Wands. Nine of Swords reversed. Paint me as the Empress on the deck of cards. I keep a crescent moon from a thrift store in one hand. My gown takes its colour from menstrual blood on silk. I am wise and gentle, fierce and serene. Like the moon, my grin grows and controls the tides. The ocean knows my body. Salty children bury their heads on my breasts. They suckle, nurture, draw the milk from me, and I swim again. Sometimes, I sleep in a neon cathedral. The scenes on the glass depict fear and despair. A priest dips his hands in ashes, sweat, and bone-dust to bless me. I awaken to nine blue swords hanging over my bed. The altar is my bed. They flash like a bug zapper, luring insect bodies to death mid-air. I weep and dream of blades reflected in the mirror of a friend's eyes. The swords and discs watch over me. Infinity hovers over the crown of my head. I tame a lion with my bare hands. I can afford to be brave because I have the physical strength to handle any situation. I carry a golden compass in my heart that leads me forward with integrity. I will not injure others for fear of swallowing my pride. Letting my hair go natural and curl, I will have the sun on my tongue and a wild beast in my hand. The Talking Heads play softly in the other room, and I have seen the future. 2 comments|post comment

being twelve [25 Jul 2009|09:08am] She was a girl who grew to monstrous heights. Sheets danced in limbo around her at night. She pushed against her swelling ankles and wrists, the hips and elbows, saying baby-prayers to the things that mattered most to her: animals at the zoo, the colour indigo-blue, her grandmother, new bicycle wheels, ponies with their velvety noses, comic books, cereal box writing, and world peace. Her bones were pressing against their wrappings. She was their fragile wrapping, all bony, skinned knees and the liquid, wounded stare of a trapped animal. She'd read about how the epiphyseal plates expanded to allow the bone to go from infant to adult. She was in that in-between stage, wearing strings with bicycle keys around her neck and wilted dandelions in the eagle's nest of her hair. "Growing pains," said her mother, mixing up bowls of steaming oats to feed the girl. No medicine dulled the pain. Her parents didn't believe in such luxuries, so she applied pressure to the sore places and sweated and cried the ache away. She didn't want to grow up. She liked being small and compact, able to crawl into secret places and move away from the hands that reached for her. If she got too big, everyone would be able to claim a piece of her. This was the conundrum of every child who faced the physical limitations of growing up. She fought it harder and longer than the others, and in the end, she grew to greater heights than the rest. A monster-queen was what she became, as she loomed over her classmates and the ones who used to be her friends, but didn't want to be seen with someone who towered and drew confused stares. The metal flowers peeled back smiles of rust and decay in the world outside the girl's room. The girl with the bullet-coloured eyes prayed she wouldn't grow anymore, that the blood flowers would stop blooming in her panties. The city panted and twitched away flies. It was four o'clock and all was still. The girl continued to grow. 7 comments|post comment

by the carving of the face, i will know that i have lived [23 Jul 2009|09:47am] In the mornings, I eat cereal out of a bowl made by my gentle soul-friend David, wash my mouth with shower-water, pray on stacks of books, and paint my eyes by barely-cresting light. My face and body are changing once again; I like returning to the gym once more. I wouldn't know what to do if I weren't continually changing. I wonder if it will ever stop, this wanderlust thirst in me, this quest for the wildest night and biggest sin in me. Yet, as I change, I forget my age. I look in the mirror and see the same face of twenty. When I am carded, bartenders will note my year of birth and say, "Good for you" with a smile. This has happened at least three times in the last month, so much that it's almost a stock phrase when I'm asked for identification to show proof of legal drinking age. Women approach me during the day, wanting cures for wrinkles, magic potions to erase what years of worrying over children and husbands and lives can do. They are willing to spend great sums of money to keep aging at bay, and I am baffled. "What's your secret?" they want to know. Secret? There are never any secrets in this house of golden cups and swords. Drink water more than any other fluid. Hold someone at least seven times a day. Find excuses to laugh. Eat like a queen for breakfast, like a princess for lunch, and like a pauper for dinner. Move the body at least thirty minutes daily. Don't eat too much of what's white, and eat everything that's green or purple. Nurture something else--whether it's a pet, a plant, or a project. Grow and keep green things aplenty. See art and architecture, science and progress as often as possible. Write your family. Love without expectations. I am not afraid of wrinkles; part of me is excited about the prospect of gaining them as I continue to move with time. Let me grow upon my face great canyons of laughter, murders of crow's feet by the thousands, and whole valleys of expressions from loves both had and lost. Let me have these things when other women would sound the death knell for youth and fertility. Let me have all these, for it will mean that I have lived and laughed more than I have died and frowned. That, for me, is the meat of life. I want more. Jewel 5 comments|post comment

sleep does not find me [23 Jun 2009|12:44am] [ mood | beatific ] Sleep is taking longer to come this evening. Usually, it's Shaun who prowls the house with lights low. Tonight, it's me, and I've a business to run tomorrow and an early-morning run to take with my love. In years past, I tossed and turned, gnashed my teeth and greeted the dawn with a naked face, scrubbed free of sleep. Since Shaun, since this huge love that looms over me larger than anything else before it, I sleep soundly. Quietly. My fingers form sentences of calm on the sheets; toes curl comma-like into other phrases. My mind's been occupied, not in a bad way, with possibility. Last week, I was in a strangely sunny Seattle, and Shaun called to say that he'd gotten more grades back from law school. Multiple As and he's only got another year left. Then, we gather up ourselves and our possessions and head westward, where I will write and finalise the plans that have been hatching since I arrived here. Being patient is difficult; I've never been known for being particularly patient. Less than a year at this point, beautiful beginnings and a culmination. Earlier, I read through these journals and the handwritten ones and saw the growth, the truth. I wonder if I could write the things now that I did then. I was so brave. I think that I could still unfold those petals now. The desire remains. It was good to see those journals. The awkwardness, the pain bared willingly and openly, my wild gypsy life both before and post-Arco. All of it exposed. My freedom to express myself and display vulnerability. The many lives I've lived in this one, long body. The many more hiding at my heels. So tonight, I make a cradle of my hands and invite the stars to take a seat. I comb the mermaid-tangles from my hair and rinse the sea from my mouth. Every little dream is becoming a reality, and I am a softer shade of sweet than I've ever been before. Don't mistake this for being content. I am simply ready for what comes next. I am ready and unconcerned as to how it will impact anyone else. awake awake awake 2 comments|post comment

my moon-time [11 Jun 2009|09:56am] I bleed between my legs today and ruin my clothes. I worry that when I sleep, the blood will cover my sheets and leave a child's scribble of a stain on my mattress. Every woman I know has placed this mark on mattresses, sheets, panties, and favourite pairs of pants. We fear moving, lest someone see what comes from our bodies. I remember sitting in gym-class, huddled and hiding, hoping no one would see what had happened. I remember waiting in math class in white pants, feeling blood pooling, and knowing that once I stood, everyone would see and I'd don the Scarlet Letter of shame. Someone long ago made the bleeding shameful, and we drank this bitter milk and pasted another label of self-hate for what it is to be a girl onto ourselves. I carry an ancient pain in my womb. My mother carried it before me, and her mother, too. My father's mother bore it to bear him. The blood is an endless chain linking every woman--yea, every person--to a mother. Men are arrows, shooting forward into the future, while women are keepers of the past and holders of histories. We spread these flowers of blood onto the places we rest, love, and heal. We pray that someone will find our wild, hungry mood swings and premenstrual tears lovely. We're afraid that we're too much to love with our heads full of smarts and dreams and our hearts lonely and ravenous in our chests. We're brave and hopeful as we plant patches of pumpkins, hoping one will grow into a coach and grand us all our wishes, our secret desires. We dangle healing crystals from our earlobes and throats, dance in tattered denim and lace, and arch our swollen bellies to the moon. Gravity clings to our wombs to make us mothers and nurturers; the moon controls the water in our bodies, like the tides. Our wombs will always cry free to the moon. To be a woman is to be of the sky and land, to be an animal and child, all at once. We are not arrows. We are the keepers of the quivers that shoot the arrows. We bleed sometimes because the hunt can never happen without the bloodletting. Our songs are the tales of our lives and of the love of those we've birthed unto this dirty, beautiful world. And I, with my crooked smile and hands worn smooth from work and fighting, have found someone to hold me long and fast as I bleed, to bring me soothing balms and words, and to love me all the more for being the woman that I am. Jewel 7 comments|post comment

betrayal served in a china dish [02 Jun 2009|02:27pm] It isn't that I've never known cruelty. Goodness knows that I used to think my body was some wicked playground for other people's perversions. I've been passed from one set of abusing hands to the next and failed by the System besides. I've had more than a few fists slam me, quite literally, in the face and through to the guts. Some might even say that Jewel Blackfeather has been down in the dirt a time or two before. I learned, through patience and a will to survive, how to keep myself safe, how not to injure others, and to be grateful for every moment. Yet, I keep myself open. I make this choice every day, when the world would have me vicious and hard as a crab apple. It isn't that I am naive. My ability to read people, both thoroughly and easily has been known to intimidate and spook others. Strangers tell me their secrets, knowing instinctually that I am a safe haven for those dark deeds or deep wounds from the past. They marvel that I already seem to know their pain before they've even told me it. I've been known to finish other people's sentences or tell them parts of conversation they've had earlier in the day, without understanding what I'm doing. Learning others isn't hard if one does it with eyes pure and a compassionate intent. Figuring people out when they masquerade as nice people is more difficult. I want to believe the best of others, I do. I'd rather make the mistake of thinking the best and giving someone an extra chance than to judge someone who might have deserved a second chance. One of the biggest obstacles here is that there are an awful lot of predators who pretend to be decent people. The rest are just plain rude, nasal, whiny-voiced, thinking the world owes them something. I just don't get that at all, which is probably the reason I feel like I will never fit into Philadelphia life. For one, I have a basic respect for people who are jerks and are upfront about it. I might not want to have tea with that person, but I respect the emotional honesty of defining boundaries. I once lived near a grizzled old sea captain turned bronze-pourer. "I hate everyone," he announced to me one day, and I found that to be mostly true. Still, we'd have pretty interesting conversations, so I learned not to mind his crassness and came to appreciate his integrity. If he got particularly negative, I'd avoid him for a while, realising that the baggage was his and not mine. When he left Arco, he anonymously gifted me with a Monkey King statue from Thailand. No "I'm going to miss you," just one day I walked into the ceramics studio and the Monkey King trickster-god snarl-smiled in the shadows at me. The Monkey traveled with me to Philadelphia and occupies a dignified windowsill space with ancient silt-cast bells and a Buddha head that a Buddhist monk made me, a petrified rose hidden inside it. What I do not respect is when people smile and use you, pretending to like you and presenting the image of themselves that they want you to see, while whispering and plotting behind your back. I discovered that the reason I am exhausted all the time, other than my working long hours and battling a number of personal demons, is that I am tired of looking over my shoulder to see who is going to knife me this week. I'm a firm believer that you get what you put out into the Universe, for the most part, so this doesn't feel right to me. I offer love and complete respect to those around me, so I should be getting dividends from this emotional bank account, right? Wrong if you live in Philly where people pretend to be so nice, so impressed with you, and will do the meanest things without batting an eye. They might even try to make it your fault, if you don't know better than to stand up for yourself. I defend myself, bruised and battered as my fists have become. I will not stop because I already learned the lesson of staying true to one's self and maintaining one's beliefs. Those Philadelphia citizens who aren't wolves in sheep's clothing are just entitled and spoilt. Life doesn't owe any of us anything, not even a pair of shoes or a place to sleep. If we come by these things, we are blessed. I know that I am blessed when I look at where I am now and where I was at a year ago. I have organic food in my kitchen, car insurance, reliable transportation, health insurance, and a regular job. Many people don't have these things. I am grateful, but being grateful doesn't mean that I don't always strive for more. Next year this time, I want my lot in life to be even more improved. I want to have finished my prison sentence in this city that has done much to wound and little to heal me. If not for my angelic and beloved Shaun, I'd have left this city long before. So, come to me in your own skin, not furs fashioned from any other beasts, and I will respect you, call you comrade, and stand beside you. Come to me disguised, and I will sharpen the knife on the hanks of my hair and sing the killing song. My gentleness is certainly no sign of weakness. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. I've swam through bloody rivers and climbed mountains of bones before. I just didn't think I'd have to any longer. I hate that I am feeling that fight-or-flight survival instinct, and that I have so little respect for wolves who choose to masquerade as sheep rather than howling at the moon. Talullah Jewel 10 comments|post comment

brushfire [30 May 2009|11:51pm] [ mood | pensive ] My eyes burn and water the way they did during Arizona wildfire season. Those were the times of wondering if the power would go out due to the fires that started from cigarettes thrown from car windows or simply heat on dry brush as the desert landscape became that of the sun. We climbed onto the roof with cameras and binoculars, recording and plotting, hoping the sky wouldn't swallow the horizon. During the day we could not see the flames. Pieces of ash and charred bone drifted on the wind. At night, the flame returned, transforming the mountains into lava. The coyotes did not sing in the washes, nor did the mule deer dance on the mesas by hoof-tip. Starving, burned animals started appearing. A mountain lion was spotted in the daytime, at an hour that it should not have been awake. A depressed, renegade bear wandered in to steal honey from our hives. A cat without an eye showed up. Someone found a crayfish sitting in a solitary puddle in the middle of miles of desert. A giant bull broke through the fence and frightened us. We all held our breaths and waited. The air smelled of chaparral and time passing. The fire continued to burn. I learned a fresh shade of betrayal from a lover. Today feels a step away from the fires of then. 7 comments|post comment

nocturne [02 Apr 2009|01:19pm] [ mood | sick ] Yesterday, I took the train to Centre City, far too early to be stirring. Yet, there were other stirrers on the train. We sat in the quiet car. In the quiet car, you get in trouble if you talk or make noise, although I still don't understand what they could possibly do to you. Blow a whistle at you and embarass you or throw you off the train? Shaun brought a newspaper, and I leaned on his shoulder, half-asleep, but alert enough to do crossword puzzles with him. He walked me to my destination, he with his hair going curly from the humidity and rain, a huge grey sweatshirt swallowing him, and a law student's backpack on his shoulders. I looked like I didn't belong to him with my long tailored coat and adult shoes. We held hands, and no one cared much because no one in this city looks long at love. Several hours later, the train took me close to home. I was in the quiet car again, by some divine mistake because I can't even get a pen out of my bag without making noise. The ride was short. I ran underneath the tracks, through the graffiti tunnel, and shivered at the cold April air and the steel wheel dragon-breath of the train as it started to go again. Five cemeteries are within a mile radius of my house. I passed each of them, and paused next to the chain link fence of the closest one. This cemetery had baby-graves, short and awkward. The baby-graves have little marble beds and "Asleep" or "Resting" carved at the feet. I started crying for no reason because I've felt asleep here, but I'm not in the ground, feeding the roots of peach trees and greedy daffodil bulbs. Sometimes, I wish that I were food for the flowers because so much of me is asleep. "Love is only sleeping," he says, he tells me, as he tucks me in at night. I don't know how to sleep, only that I know I need too much of it lately. 5 comments|post comment

to love what is imperfect [27 Mar 2009|07:40am] Loving something beautiful is easy. The desert is sheer physical beauty and a spiritual gorgeousness that winds through the arroyos and canyons. Maybe my big lesson in coming to Philadelphia is learning to love what is imperfect, and then, turning that unconditional love upon myself. Perhaps it's no mere gypsy's chance that has landed me in a place with the word Delphi as part of it. The Oracle at Delphi was a seer who saw tragedy and whispered the fortunes of future generations. Philadelphia is like my baptism by concrete and dust, angry attitudes and outright decay. So my lesson is learning to love the piss in the alleyways, the smoky cigar bars, the gangster men with their swagger and talk, the clotted highways, and twisted little trees on city avenues. My mother held me by the ankles and dipped me into Philadelphia* to make me strong, to give me a ferocity that was more than words or a willingness to fight. My tendon shows where her hand has been; it'll be the softest, desert part of me that remains. Until I am free. Until I am home again. I will learn every lesson and face every ugliness and endeavour, simply, to love. I will love when it is not easy. I will love. I will love. jewel * This is a reference to Achilles; he was dipped in a tar-like mixture to make him invincible. He was, except for the tendon so named for him. Eventually, an arrow pierced that place, and he died. I don't plan to die here. 3 comments|post comment

om padme hum [25 Mar 2009|11:53am] Prayers are wishes sent to the universe. People have different tongues for their prayers and different ways of doing it--kneeling at the foot of the bed with hands steepled or on a rug faced to the sun--but they do it. It doesn't have to do with religion or belief in a higher being. I know atheists who pray--not to a great creator, but to whatever it is that grants wishes and makes everything all right in the world. Prayers are hopes given a human language. We pray every time we tell a hidden truth or when we reveal our secret wicked heart's wishes. Writing or creating is the closest that I get to prayer--most of the time. Yet, I pray every day for the world, for myself, for everything I see that hurts me somewhere deep. Now, I pray for trees. I live on a narrow street, where the houses lean like crooked teeth and there's just enough space for cars to pass. Nothing larger can safely navigate my street. Because my neighbourhood is close to a major freeway, trucks sometimes barrel through the Main Street area. Main Street can take it. My little street cannot. A few weeks ago, a semi took out half of the two trees in front of my house. These trees are my friends. In the living room, I often read my books in a window box overlooking the street. From there, I watch squirrels leaping from branch to gutter and back again like little aerialists. The birds feather their nests in the spring to make room for the open mouths and pleading cries of bald, pink infant birds, so ugly they're adorable. The branches grow heavy and lazy with blossoms and honeybees in May. I like these trees. In Philadelphia, nothing seems natural or sprung from the earth. This has been one of the biggest adjustments for me in moving here. In Arizona, the natural world was my world, singing a song from my blood to my bones. So, a semi-driver took out half of the trees by making a shortcut on our narrow street. I returned home to find branches clutching the air like hands on the sidewalk. The truck driver laughed about it. Anger clenched my fists. The landlord filled out a police report. Shaun and I worried that the trees--our trees--would not survive because so much had been taken from them and so much now lay wasted. Then, a second driver hit our trees. This driver did not stop, but we ran after his truck to get his information and file a complaint. We were certain that if the trees didn't die the first time, they would this time. Our landlord chain-smoked on the steps of our building, upset about the trees dying. I was glad that I had a landlord who'd be upset about trees. For weeks, I've been watching both trees. At night, when I return from work, I go out to them, put my hands on the rough bark, and say, "Grow. Grow. Grow. Live. Live. Live." Shaun isn't as weepy over them, but he will pat their trunks and say, "Keep hanging in there, guys." I've turned the hand-carved tree spirit figurine my father made towards the trees. Yesterday, I noticed the trees were trying to grow bark over the bare places, making safe what was injured. The branches are starting to bud. I think that the trees will live. Every night, I pray to whatever protects them that they'll continue to survive. We're all like trees in this world, terrified that someone will tear us apart, but reaching towards the sky still the same. Reaching, spreading our fingers out to hold doves and prayers and sunlight. We face spiritual and physical evisceration, and yet, we are stronger than we know. We have skin thicker than history and lies. So we pray and we grow. talullah jewel 6 comments|post comment

tonight, i breathe. [09 Mar 2009|08:30pm] Tonight, I feel gorgeous and serene, and it's a little stolen secret. I never feel gorgeous or serene. I'm a mess of emotions and mad genius impulses masked in fluid movements. I'm the shiver of a hand against glass, fingers curling like leaves. Spring is so close that everyone is learning forward to see her first. I've assembled a family of plants on every windowsill. The sills without plants house pieces of Depression Era glass, gnome statues, and a hand-carved tree spirit that gazes out at the two sad trees on our block. The next two days will be intense, but I thrive in this type of atmosphere. I'm waiting to bloom, gorgeous and serene. I'm waiting, waiting. My smile hangs a crooked halo on my face. My smile waits, too. jewelynx fearless 6 comments|post comment

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