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(at work)
The toilet flushes when I haven’t touched it; frothy, smelly stuff (known as self-dispensing soap) misses my hands at the sink. I cannot even pull a paper towel down for myself. A sensor watches me. When I’m close enough, more paper than I’d ever use comes out. I am scared. “Convenience” wastes energy and turns us all babies in a world that still allows women to be imprisoned for being raped, stoning, and men to kill their wives in “self-defense.” This world is eating us raw, and we can’t flush the goddamn toilet. Soon, technology will give us a new way to wipe our asses, so we won’t remember the fragrant shit of being apes.
***
(at protecting)
Shaun and I go for a run at dusk. We run and pause, hold hands, and almost get passed by a little old lady with the face of a leprechaun. Cemetery gates are still open, so we wander through the plots, respectful and intent not to bring anything home with us. Stories play hide-and-seek, waiting for someone to find the tongues to tell them. One of the graves is from 1767; another commemorates a woman seized by British troops. This stands in an obelisk that has been rounded at the top by the elements, yet the words are etched sharply. I make a promise to myself to return and do some grave-rubbings to keep the names alive and to find out more of this place.
On the way home, we stop for a treat. A man with dreadlocks and latte skin plays smiles with me, and gives me what I want. I carry a brown paper bag with blueberry and banana-chocolate chip coffeecakes and hum because I am always happy when I have a bag of treats. Large dogs bound past us, and we move cautiously. Shaun thinks they are someone’s dogs, but I sense danger. I know these dogs might be someone’s, but they are in aggressive pack-formation. Up ahead, we see a young woman with her smaller dog. The dogs do, too, and run up to it.
Shaun decides they want to play, but my muscles go stiff. I sense something else is going to happen. Suddenly, these huge dogs (150 pounds, maybe?) are attacking the other dog. Yelps and snarls fill the night. I jump into the mess and separate attacking dogs with my bare hands. My brain isn’t thinking anything but that I need to save this other dog. Miraculously, I do not drop my treat-bag. The woman’s dog is confused when I pull it away on the leash and enter a gate in someone else’s yard to keep the big dogs away. They lope off, teeth white in the moonlight.
Shaun and I walk the woman halfway home, meeting two people on the street. “Youse guys didn’t know her?” the man asks, when we get the dog-woman to her block. “No,” I say, ducking my head. My heart is racing with adrenaline and fear. I could have gotten seriously injured, but I knew that I would not be. I just knew it, like I knew the big dogs were going to go violent. The situation shows me something important about myself and about Shaun; I raced towards the danger, and he observed, hoping for the best.
I’ve yet to be attacked by an animal, even those that snarl.
***
(at mind)
Days crouch over the nights with skirts hiked up. Midnight yanks my hair back, exposing my throat. These are the times of concrete and monster machine-growls, of wild city-lilies pushing through the cracks, of piss and steel. My old-lady brain and prophetess-eyes are too wise for this Philadelphia. I pass strangers and divine the skeletons in their cupboards with a too-long, too-intimate glance like the press of a hand on the inside of a stranger’s thigh or how you can fuck with pedophiles at the grocery store by staring at them when they gaze longingly at their younger cousins. Everyone else pretends not to notice, but I sharpen my stare on their naughty-bones and repulsiveness and communicate that I know exactly what their dirty, secret heart’s wishes are. I am a survivor of such wishes, so I have the second-sight to know who is a predator and who is not. This sight is my curse, and never a gift, because I wouldn’t give it to anyone. I stare because I want them to know that I know.
These are the ancient hours, the ones where I feel like I hold the planet’s history in my hands, and my hands are crone-long and (imaginary) wrinkled with wars and attempts at peace. I’ve never seen an ugly tree before this city. The sight of these trees, butchered for power lines and better views of musty waterways angers and saddens me, and adds twenty years to my shoulders. I am old and young and alive and dead.
Then, after a day of watching money funneled through business people’s fingers, racing around and being told one thing and then, demanded to do another, I fold into myself, bent in two, where chest presses to knees and knees to the ladder of the ankles, and I feel a child. My heart has never really known greed or filth or how to use others, and it rents my soul. I don’t know how to deal with it, and so, I sob into hiccups, hiccup into gasps, and gasp into unconsciousness, finding rest an uneasy lover. I sleep with a stuffed dog for the first time in twenty years and say baby-prayers on the wings of my dragon fly Tiffany lamp. I wish for dogs and ponies, faery-friends and for the first time in my life, unicorns. When I was a kid, unicorns bothered me, mostly because of classmates who wore them on pastel sweatshirts or carried them on those strangely sexual Lisa Frank notebooks and stickers. Now, I understand how important believing in unicorns is. Clap if you believe in them! I beat my hands bloody clapping for unicorns. I am weak with wishes.
I am two women in battle and in lust, in innocence and in light, rock-salt tears and fists clenched, crab apple-hard. My father is also a product of extremes, the pilot who can solve complex mathematical equations in his head, yet insists on surrounding himself with interesting things and traveling to the literal ends of the earth to see new sights. He tells a story of how he once had to make an emergency landing during flight school in a field of horses. Horses danced, dappled gold and brown in the fading light. Most people would have waited for assistance. My father decided he wanted to ride the horses—bareback. He dared his instructor to ride one; the instructor broke both of his arms and gained a source of teasing and legends. Dad climbed onto one of the young horses and rode just as it started to rain, a man of land and air, in motion, in sound.
Anyone who’s met him knows how I came to be and why I am two precious extremes. The world around me notices the dichotomy, also. I’ve never felt so divided, like one could cleave me in two and find completely different beings on either side of the cut. Babas in colourful wraps at the grocery store, true judges of character, pat me and call me “baby-girl.” Strangers often say, “You are such a good girl!” At the bus-stop, a Jamaican gangster talks to me about Obama and Hillary, while his homies snicker. “Safe, not safe,” the pendulum swings. He thinks me safe, so we talk about presidents and bitches and hope. Yet, most of my friends insist that I am the one they’d want on their side if a fray ever broke out. Those who meet me often comment on my ass-kickingness and the wildness lurking just below the surface, even when I am quiet and turning my knees inward and combing the tangles in my hair out.
Reconciling these two creatures is a part of growing up. Grow up is so painful, almost like the time you go to school and a kid in your class spoils Santa Claus by telling you it’s not real. You still believe a little while longer, but something cries when you think of presents under the tree and how much you believe in this jolly old guy who just wants children to smile. Getting this new job has taught me more in the way of that than I ever expected. What I’ve seen is that you should do what is your passion or you will soon be unfulfilled and unhappy, no matter what amount of money you are making. What this also means is that I can no longer function in this job; I took it to gain money and experiences, without ever thinking what it would do to my soul.
For this reason, I am soon going to be working with two companies that I’ve long admired and whose products I support. I’ll be managing a store for one and serving as a key holder for the other: Aveda and Anthropologie. I get a salary, awesome benefits, and a crazy discount (74% off on products and 50% off on the services at their salons) with Aveda, as well as neat things like they’ll pay for fifty counseling sessions a year; provide for any type of education I want to get, whether it furthers me in the company or not; and offer me great opportunities for training and bettering the world around me. This is a company that uses wind power, develops programs to help indigenous peoples, cleans up waterways, uses post consumer waste almost exclusively in its packaging, and believes in its people. They’ve let me know how much they want me there, and are supporting projects I’ve got brewing, like going to battered women's shelters and giving the women make-overs (not because they need to be changed, but because being beaten, you feel so ugly and sometimes, having someone care for you, cut your hair, and make your skin look better does a lot in the way of healing) and teaching those who need it job skills; organising a neighbourhood clean-up; and taking spoken word to ghetto youth. I already shop the hell out of Aveda and respect its focus on sustainability and organics. Why not manage one of their joints?
At Anthropologie, I also get a sick discount (also, at Free People and Urban Outfitters, which it also owns), work in a creative environment, and have awesome co-workers. My pals already think I am a walking advertisement for them, so why not? Why the hell not? Some of the most amazing experiences I’ve had have come from asking why the hell not? Perhaps this direction isn’t what others would have seen for me or what some people would approve of, but I’ll be making a great living wage, will be emotionally and creatively rewarded, and will be working for companies I believe in. I spent so much of my earlier life and this recent job search doing what I thought would make others proud of me. I need to believe in me, too. You are what you do. I want to do great things.
As if all of this isn’t enough, I’m also freelancing with a British publication, writing profiles for German companies that will be printed in a guide. The research is intense, but interesting. I find the more profiles I do, the easier they become. I’m grateful for this, and all of the other opportunities that have come to me. Even when I despair, I recognise that I am a very blessed woman and that many people think I lead a charmed life. I don’t lead a charmed life, but I do live. I live rebelliously and gently: a hundred girls with a hundred histories in this one, tall body.
I am how I live, which is fierce and true. I know things’ll work out if I remember that.
Jewel-mouth, still taking risks because it’s not worth doing if you don’t do it with all of your soul
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muse's journal
Mark Rothko, Center Tryptich for Rothko Chapel, 1966, Houston