her teeth flash fear

last week

2009-11-09T02:29:48Z

There are times, awkwardly fumbling, that we offend or hurt others. The mirror is our eyes. There are other times, when other people, also awkwardly fumbling, hurt us. This is a part of being brave enough to feel and express emotions. Some would say that it's connected to what makes us truly human. Humanity carries with it all the weight of individuality and the freedom of expression. Seizing that honesty comes with the price of potential pain. If I know anything of myself, it's that I do not operate with the intent to harm or otherwise injure other people. I try not to assume others mean harm when they hurt me.

I've learned so much in living in this city. My view of the world has both gotten wider and also, shrunk. Living in one of the most racially divided and physically violent cities in the United States has enabled me to think and rethink many of my views. I can understand why stereotypes exist, and am also grateful for the people who press beyond those. There's so much that's truly ugly here, so much of the darker side of humankind--from cop-shootings to a high murder rate to the forced sex-trafficking of illegals in Chinatown. Sometimes, I ride the bus and am the only person offering her seat to an elderly person or a pregnant woman. A few weeks ago, I saw a motorist hit a bicyclist and speed away; last week, someone critically injured eight-year-old twins, same situation. I'm seeing more than I might have ever seen before, even as I feel oppressed and small and insignificant.

Maybe it was good for me to escape the naive bubble I lived in at Arcosanti. I'm starting to feel that the world is not a place of good intentions, which breaks my heart. If you meet someone who possesses true honour, cling to that person and shine forth the beacon of your own light upon him or her. It's really rarer than one thinks. It's not that I've grown cynical, it's just that I've seen and experienced more that's truly hurt my heart and soul here. I never wanted to view the world this way, and I know that I cannot and will not go back. I must press forward and tend to my own light. I must recognise the light in others, and be brave enough to stand tall even when I feel defeated and tired. I came to Philadelphia for love, and while this city is not filled with the brotherly love it purports, it taught me how to love truer and gentler than I ever have.

The last two weeks have been so fucking rough. Last Monday, a man entered the store wanting cash back without a receipt. When my associate gently told him our policy, he became verbally abusive, even using curse words and threats. I asked him to leave and he proceeded to verbally batter me. I repeated my demand that he leave and called security. He left only to return a half-hour later with his hand in his coat. "I'm back, bitch," he announced and proceeded to lay into me with a security guard standing there idly. The man claimed we were racially profiling him. When I emphatically told him that we weren't and that the policy would remain no matter his skin colour, age, or gender, he became more furious. He pretended to shoot me and kept staring me down and yelling "Bang bang." With his hand in his coat and his associates wearing street tattoos, I thought he might. I had that flash that one gets before something dangerous happens. He smashed things around. People cleared the store in a panic. Finally, the security guard requested he leave--after I told him to do so. As the man was leaving, he pointed the faux guns of his fingers at me and yelled, "Now, I'm gonna fuck up your life. I'm going to call your company every day about you." We called the police, our company, and the head of security.

Then, we had to call the police again because he and his friends were calling the store repeatedly, asking when we closed and when we were leaving. Friday, I got word that he'd called the consumer complaint line to report a grievance. He claimed I called him racial names like mixed, which is ironic because that's how I identify, and the man had beautiful dark skin and didn't appear racially mixed in any way. Besides, who cares if he was? I certainly didn't. The company backed my associate and me. He didn't like it, and called the store on Tuesday to say, "Bitch. It ain't over yet. I'm comin' for you!" and other charming things. Wednesday, he showed up, and security chased him out. Each time, we keep calling the police to add this to the report. We have two different names for him and a phone number, but nothing. When he told me he was after me, I could see in his eyes it was not an idle threat. I'm very good at knowing what is and is not a true threat.

I am told to keep calling the police and that they can't do anything unless they see him near me. Friday, his two friends--who were present during all of this--came in ostensibly to shop. I think they were taking the temperature of the store. Security swarmed the store, and the friends called the suspect, laughing, and taking camera-phone pictures. I don't feel safe. I feel completely threatened, and for the first time I'm being threatened by a total stranger, and I don't understand why. Those of you who know my past know that it's been a good ten years since I almost lost my life due to an abusive partner. I know this stuff already; I don't need reminders that this System is inherently flawed and further victimises victims with the hoops we have to jump through to get someone arrested. I'm fucking angry that I'm a victim in this because I never thought I'd be one again, yet I'm having panic attacks, looking over my shoulder, and thinking that this might not be a good city for me.

All I know is it's hurting me and causing me to look at the world in an even different way, and I'm not sure that it's a good thing. There are times, too, that others hurt us, and all we can do is make ourselves safe and trust that it'll all be okay. I don't know that it will be, though. I just know that I feel very scared and very alone and it hasn't faded for me. Shaun has been amazing and supportive, but just because he is those things doesn't mean he should have to be those things. I've got to get it together before I fall apart. I've overcome too much to be feeling this way. I just can't stop myself from feeling this scared or shake the feeling that this man is going to seriously injure or kill me.

all i thought i knew

2009-10-13T02:38:20Z

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.

the you i wish i was

2009-08-04T17:15:20Z

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.

five card tarot spread where i am always the empress

2009-07-26T16:45:57Z

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.

being twelve

2009-07-25T13:32:25Z

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.

by the carving of the face, i will know that i have lived

2009-07-23T14:03:13Z

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

sleep does not find me

2009-06-23T04:56:45Z

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

my moon-time

2009-06-11T14:07:07Z

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

betrayal served in a china dish

2009-06-02T19:05:13Z

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

brushfire

2009-05-31T03:59:13Z

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.

nocturne

2009-04-02T17:19:21Z

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.

to love what is imperfect

2009-03-27T11:50:31Z

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.

om padme hum

2009-03-25T16:07:10Z

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

tonight, i breathe.

2009-03-10T00:35:23Z

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

it's been a while

2009-03-05T13:56:54Z

Days are a blur of trying to stay away from the greedy hands of debt and working long hours. While the majority of my staff are great people, they take me for granted in glaring ways. After a fashion, I've tried to be the type of boss to my employees that I always wanted. I work with people's schedules, tests, and other frivolities. No one's birthday goes unnoticed (there's usually a treat of some sort, a card, and a little handmade gift). People who practice certain religions get their religious holidays off without ever having to ask. I create educational guides and manuals to help, have endless pep-talks and coaching sessions, and touchbases. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am trying to draw blood from a stone. How is it that intelligent and reasonably rational people can forget the simplest of details? I'm being driven mad by employees who keep testing boundaries and limits, all the while proclaiming how much they respect me. This completely boggles my mind. Respect is shown, not said. I could give a damn about the words of people, especially if the words don't match the deeds. In all of it, being present makes a difference.

There are days when I don't even want to get out of bed to face my commute, but I remain present at all times. My mind calculates how to fill the gaps and accomplish the day's goals. Workhorse that I am, I am not satisfied unless I have done my job outstandingly. I do not accept mediocrity in myself or in the people I know. I'll allow anyone a little silliness or accept any manner of personal quirk, but please don't come to me without ambition or content with being the lowest common denominator. Square or cube me, and I'll surprise you even more. Tear me down to mathematics and geometry, and feed me to the dogs of intellect and reason. I'll grow a new liver and rise from these ashes. I'll make wings of dirty shingles and weave city weeds into my hair. The landscape has shifted, but my ability to accept less has never changed.

I must thrive in absorbing my surroundings because I've started wearing Victorian cuffs and fabric flowers on everything, while the turquoise and silver remains sacred in the bedroom jewelry armoir. The ghosts that haunt this city are not ancient; they are young ones, like lost children, searching for parents. The ghosts of the desert are the spirits of the land that rise at dusk and turn the cacti into dancers and the barren rivers into gushing silver streams. I'm uncertain of how to survive with so much resting on my shoulders and my creature comforts so far away, but I must. I must.

Choice was never a part of this equation, and hope attempts to leave every night, but I tie her to the bed. I need her here with me now. We'll live here a little while longer yet. Shaun has a little over a year to finish his law school task. We tumble into bed at night, exhausted, clutching hands like children, while I whisper secrets and songs and stories into his ears. He takes everything I give him, unconditionally. He gives me everything and also, a great, puppy joy.

city city city jewel

just try to give me an F in ikea.

2009-01-28T03:18:47Z

Sometimes, I am very grateful that anyone has ever wanted to live with me at all. I once wreaked complete havoc on an International Dolls of the World set that an aunt had given me. Me, a bee-bee gun, and one of my brothers throwing the dolls out the window while I waited on the ground with my gun held aloft, yelling, "Pull!" just like it was clay pigeons. Doll parts littered our yard ever-after. I was known to rule my brothers with an iron fist, although I never dressed anyone up in female clothes. I was known as an enforcer of sorts. I was never an instigator, and instead was always the one that pounded you five times harder because you'd dared to pound me once.

My first roommate was a gay man (who insisted he be called Harry the Gay, King of all Gays because "That asshole Richard stole the title 'the Lionhearted'). HtG invited drag queens into our living room. Frequently, I'd come home to real-life enactments of Mommie Dearest. Often, the queens used me as a dress-up doll of sorts. It was here that I learned the art of glamour and gained a love for feathers that remains to this very day.

That was fun until said gay ruler of the free world became a coke addict and started listening to all this tweaker music and inviting slum-dogs into our cozy little pad at all hours of the day and night. I've lived with a number of folks--from a good friend who regularly enjoyed five or six beers while taking a shower to the performance artist who liked to stage gory scenes with catsup and Big Wheels (picture a faux accident scene on the side of the road with a child's thrift store shoe and you get the idea). Somehow, I've managed to out-weird and out-silly everyone. How, I don't know because living at Arcosanti, I lived with some odd motherfuckers. I've always sort of worried that maybe I am too difficult to live with because I am eccentric and have the largest and heaviest collection of books and artifacts outside of a museum or library.

Yet, I am in love with the sweetest, most compassionate man, and he seems to rather like living with me. I've known this man long enough to have actually seen his transition from college student to young man. He tolerates the songs of questionable merit I sing and the fact that I thought Gertrude Hawk was the name of the little old lady at the candy story and had no idea it was a chain chocolatier. "Do you think that the waiter at Bob Evans is named Bob Evans, too?" my love howled. I hammer all manner of shit to our walls, and he smiles and continues reading his law books, telling me how much he adores me. The newest addition is a miniature plaster deer head. The deer has a wreath of (also plaster) flowers around its neck. It'll go next to my linocut of a skeleton bride.

Now that I'm sending roots and tendrils into the soil here, I've discovered Ikea. The other night, I proudly hammered and cursed together a night-stand. The next night, after celebrating my success a little too heartily with lemon-drop martinis, I pinned the instructions for the Malm drawers to the 'fridge. I wrote "A+++! Good job! WOW!" in red Sharpie all over the instructions. Shaun noted this development with an arch of brow and a good-natured smile. "You are fun to live with," he said and tucked me into bed.

My Ikea report card remains on our 'fridge. Just wait until I put together the bureau of drawers tomorrow night. I've got gold stars and Swedish meatballs. I went to Ikea tonight so I could buy meatballs and have dinner. I don't know how anyone can live with me.

jalullah tewel

bowling for friends

2009-01-20T15:34:14Z

I want to talk about the Inauguration and Obama, I do. I like him, but don't think he's the Second Coming; I have insider information from my time in Illinois politics that shows just how human and flawed he is. Just because he is better than Bush doesn't mean he's going to completely revolutionise this country, either. So like I said, I want to talk about him, but right now isn't the time. I want to talk about making friends and how fucking hard it's been for me, a first in my life since like high school when no one wanted to talk to me because I was too different and too bright to be easily categorised. Most of you know that my coming to Philadelphia has brought a new set of circumstances and sacrifices. Adjusting to the East Coast with its suspicous attitudes and closed mindsets has been a challenge. I try to accept people for who they are, rather than what I want them to be. I'm learning lessons in patience here.

Since meeting and making new friends has been so difficult, I have been finding friends my own damn way. I'm paying into my community garden come spring. I posted a little ad in the platonic section of Craigslist and became subsequently horrified at how many Americans lack the understanding of what the word platonic means. I even joined up a bunch of groups on Meetup.com. You can find a club or group for any dang interest under the sun, and it's pretty neat. Some of the groups are very exclusionary, like the book club that I joined that somehow has all its meetings filled minutes after it posts a new meeting and where no one tells anyone new hello and everyone has their own insider conversations happening. Trying to join any of that club's activities is like being a puppy and seeing "No dogs allowed" everywhere you go. I want to play, too, guys! (wiggle wiggle)

The friendliest group so far is the queer group. They have a whole host of gatherings, and not just your typical theatre stuff. Everyone has been very kind and warm. So the gist of this post?

I'm going bowling with a bunch of gays in a few weeks, and I am very excited. Jazz hands optional. Now if only I could find a local gay boyfriend, I'd be set.

on-her-way-to-work jewel

P.S. For the newcomers, I am a member of the queer community. In the past, I've had romantic relationships with both men and women (not at the same time, mind you; I am not polyamorous). I consider my sexuality to be open, and know I was born this way. I recall having crushes on girls (and boys, too) in my class when I was five. Those seeds weren't planted by anyone. This is just how I was made. Lest anyone think I am making fun of gay people, know that I poke fun at myself and stereotypes. It's part of what makes being a button-pusher grand. Pay it no real mind.

i want what?!

2009-01-19T17:33:57Z

I realise one shouldn't look for depth in a Backstreet Boys song. I've long gotten over my annoying crushes on boy bands, although you'll have to pry 'N SYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me" out of my cold, dead hands. My cold dead hands. Believe. What always made my boy band crushes so fun was that being charmed by the subjects of pop culture was so beyond the scope of my usual cerebral approach to the world. I was being subversive as a little alterna-punk girl who sometimes switched the Blonde Redhead album with a good booty-shaking jam by a boy band. Ah, welcome to Jewel--as one of my many Daves says--repository of endless dichotomy. At least I won't front about what I like. I like some outright ridiculous things--say Britney Spears' "Stronger" or Gwen Stefani's "What You Waitin' For" when I am on the elliptical machine at the gym. I promise I like things that give me indie cred, too--before you ever heard of it. Check out my new corset-style spats to wear with a new Nanette Lepore Little Black Dress and stilettos. The kid's all right.

But what can I say? I sometimes listen to pop the way that I read comic books. Pop is like candy that clears my palate of all the heavier tastes. Boy bands are a guilty pleasure, but I really have never gotten down with the Backstreet Boys--beyond that "Ever-eh-bahhh-dehhh, rock yo' body now" jam that's fun to pretend to be Frankenstein to. I've always been all right with a song that'll beg the question of "Am I sexual?" so frankly. Hey, we all wonder if we're sexual, right? At least the little blonde dude in the Backstreet Boys was brave enough to ask. Okay, so what if he was sixteen at the time. Anyway . . .

I've learned to ignore the presence of the Backstreet Boys the rare times that I stroll through a mall or in those awful theme restaurants that feature slabs of barbecued fat for US $14.99. Since the Boys are too old to be called boys, but choose to keep the moniker (much like New Kids on the [ed. note: suck the cock] Block), I feel unnerved by them. The other day, I heard that song "I Want It That Way" and found myself completely confused. What way exactly do the Backstreet Boys want it? I had to find answers, so I consulted Google. Google just gave me a bunch of fan and lyrics pages, but didn't answer, "What way do you want it, unnamed square-jawed singer?" Damn, there sure are a lot of BSB fans that love them some glitter stars and neon graphics.

Wikipedia didn't tell me jack either. Apparently a whole lot of people parodied "I Want It That Way" on the Internet. The fact that I didn't know this before Wiki shows just how savvy and with it I am. I consulted my younger, hipper co-workers and asked, "What do they mean?" The answers are too foul to be published. Unsatisfied with my search, I called my mom, an open Backstreet Boys fan. (She's admitted she likes "the one with the nice eyes," although I'll be damned if I know who that is because they all seem kind of squinty-eyed. I've a feeling she means the one with the prematurely receding hairline because he reminds her of everyone her age.)

Since I couldn't get any illumination, I'll just think that "I Want It That Way" is connected somehow to Meatloaf's even-worse "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." I've always wondered what the hell Meat meant in his song, too. Like "I would do anything for love, but I won't have anal sex!" Or "I would do anything for love, but I am not going to have a threesome with your ex-boyfriend." So maybe the Backstreet Boys are saying they want some scandalous form of sex, but they think they're cool enough not to have to say what it is. It's kind of like how I used to call having sex going to the candy store.

Or maybe they want something else that I'm too uncool to know. I have to be uncool, right? I'm analysing the Backstreet Boys.

Princess Jewella, Queen of Dorks

the keeper of the lists

2009-01-11T17:34:08Z

A random assemblage of lists lurks in almost every notebook or journal I have. I lack the memory to remember what each of them means, although I sometimes snatch the thread of thought that lead me there. There's a fear inside of forgetting certain thoughts that have tamed the wild beast of my brain. This fear is almost as great as my urgency to do my Life's Work. Each year, I feel a little more restless and more on edge as I face another twelve months of labouring on projects that do build a foundation, but don't take me to the skies in the ways that writing and creating do.

My latest journal features hand-drawn pomegranates with scientific names on its cover, something that no one else has, at least not this way. Although I've spilled water on it and taken it with me everywhere, the pages are relatively empty. Already, there's a list. The list reads:

black birds on power lines
art nouveau
art deco
Cleopatra VII
flappers
dripping jet beads
feathered fascinators
Portobello in England
fleur de lis
Van Cleef and Arpels' clover
steampunk
Victoriana
headdresses
hand-carved cameos
Azteca
Mexicali embroidery
Marie Antoinette
mermaids
Anne Boleyn
tiered wedding cake dresses
bruised lace
Haitian café au lait skin
Creole curses
voodoo
cemetery angels
Margot Tenenbaum
antique lip balm tins
Depression Era glass
flaming hearts and dusty Catholicism
my antelope husband
guitars and amps
trees that look like bones

A few pages later, I see I've written, "They call us witches when we're too powerful to be defined or limited by 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 those notions. They forget that we are the fire and that our wombs are doorways to history." I wrote it after being called a bitch by someone, simply because I called a spade a spade. When I was younger, I held my tongue, being so afraid of the bitch/witch/slut moniker. Now, I invite it. I welcome it. Being called one of those names means someone is scared enough of me to resort to cliché, and I can never be clichéd in my reaction.

Being thirty-something means I can do little old lady things like keep lists and instigate others with my truth. I rather like it.

Artemis of the Avenues

a hammer and a nail.

2009-01-08T03:05:14Z

Someone needs to take my hammer and nails away from me. It feels like I am turning my apartment into a modern temple of everything that inspires me. On Thanksgiving weekend, I moved the living room around. Now, the couch rests in a little alcove that leans over the street. A patchwork bedspread from India covers the back of the couch, and white lights trace fireflies above it. In the keyhole archway over the couch, I've erected a shrine to Santa Frida, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and Dia de los Muertos.

This is where the hammering is a problem. The narrow, but efficient wall in said keyhole archway is covered with punched tin milagros, painted nichos, and odd little trinkets (like the spiked ornament with a Chinese water deer on it). Every time I leave my house, I'm returning with items to nail to my walls. Over the television is an oil painting of Coatlicue, one of my heroines. With her wicked, slitted stare and a beating heart in hand, she reminds me of Kali of Hindu lore. A weather goddess with a skirt of ravens (one of my pieces) lifts above a skeleton linocut representation of the element Holmium. Masks from trips to Aruba, Guatemala, and Bali stare and smile near the coat closet. A homemade shadowbox culled from many desert wanderings and lovingly put together with my hands is over the desk.

This is just the living room. I cannot be trusted with a hammer. Sometimes, when I'm lying on the couch, listening to the grunt of the cars and buses below, I look at the walls and feel like a nesting bird. Everything has a place. However, if a stranger stepped into my house, she might think that nothing matched or that everything matched in the strangest of ways. She might wonder about a mind that thinks Picasso's "Old Man with Guitar" and its melancholy blues belong feet away from vivid tapestry pillows from Indonesia and a coffee table that's really an exotic painted trunk. I also have over a thousand pounds of books. Really.

My Everlast boxing gloves dangle inches from a Hopi handmade basket, a few feet from the eagle feathers tied in a bundle and the Chinese leather director's chair. Buddha statues curl their fingers into the lotus position, next to fertility statues from Kenya and bones from my desert walks. An ancient tear-bottle from Jerusalem (over 2,000 years old) is perfectly at home near a paper lion and hand-wicked candles of cardamom and orange. I hammer more nails into the wall, playing zydeco and Mexican mariachi music, indie rock and y'alternative, Baroque and punk from the late '70s.

The walls are covered, but I'm still missing pieces of my collection. I have a few more nails, an old hammer, and the eye of a museum curator. One of the reason I love Shaun--and there are many--is that he tolerates my hammering and never says anything negative about my need to feather my nest and surround myself with creature comforts. He accepts and smiles, and causes me to be much more accepting of myself than I ever have been before.

jewel-bird

the aftermath

2009-01-02T17:00:51Z

Since my accident, I've been doctoring myself with a combination of acupuncture, a chiropractor, unsulphured pineapple rings from Trader Joe's, making out in the middle of the day, gallons of water, a kinder view of myself, buying vintage underwear with satin tummy panels and leopard-print insets, and the antidepressants I'd been stashing in the bottom of My Worst Handbag in the back of the closet. I'm also following a strictly prescribed (by Dr. Me) diet of Mucha and Art Deco coffee table books, indie music on the telly instead of the insipid shows I'd taken to watching (I know, I know, me, television, the world is ending), Nin and more Nin, and A Coney Island of the Mind by Ferlighetti.

There's also the half-dead plants I've been bringing home in my reusable shopping bags. The plants are the equivalent of the ugly dogs in the pet store, the ones that no one wants because they lack pedigree or are too far from their puppy-years. They sit in rows at the front of the grocery store, almost begging me to notice them. Although my place is modest in size, I cannot resist a wilting plant and a challenge. I rescue the plants, put them on a windowsill, and proceed to nurture them into blooming, unfurling, and growing greener and thicker. Growing something is very therapeutic. The symbolism is obvious.

So far all of the experiments have been successful, except for the one mistake I made. After all of these plants without blooms, I wanted something pretty. The little pots in the front of Trader Joe's showed a picture of a lush purple flower. Sold! I snatched it up, and deposited it on a windowsill with the others. When I read the attached guide, I understood why the thing had been $1.99. Apparently, to get the purple flower, one has to put the bulb in the freezer for THREE MONTHS. Well, I'm an immediate gratification type of creature sometimes, so I put it on the coldest windowsill--the one where the window sometimes leaks winter air. I knew I'd forget about it in the freezer. And what do you know? Something green is starting to poke out of the soil. Take that, awful instructions with a twelve-week plan of freezer-burn!

Today, I am going to the gardening center, a place frequented by a good many grandpas, and purchasing the ingredients for my own little cactus terrarium. I've been missing my little desert Valhalla so fiercely that I thought why not bring it here? I'll need cactus soil, plants, a small bag of rocks, horticultural charcoal, and a glass container with a large opening. Since I've been so handy with these other plants, I am eager to see what happens with my own terrarium.

Other therapeutic things have been planning a trip to Seattle to visit my baby brother in May (he lives there now), Shaun inviting me to New Orleans for Spring Break, a return to my dedication and focus with eating and the gym (gingerly because I just do not want to mess my back up even more), focusing on the things that matter, taking care of my new betta fish, and joining Meetup.com. If Philadelphia is not going to bring friends to me, I am going to find my own damn friends. It's been harder than Chicago or Arizona, where pals fell into my lap as easy as anything. Philadelphia keeps to itself, as if people are afraid to trust each other or look anyone in the eye for too long. It reminds me of how dogs don't like direct eye contact and take it as a sign of threat.

Another new discovery is that my thirties have spelled more fun and whimsy with fashion than I ever knew before. I gather pieces of wearable art the way art collectors find paintings for their collections. I am having a blast defining my own sense of style, which is eclectic. For the first time, I'm all right with that, and think in another life, I'd have made a bad-ass stylist. My recent obsession has been this whole neo-Bohemian, Victorian revival. During the holidays, I found or was gifted with huge, ghostly corsages of diponi silk; handmade bath-bombs; stained glass switchplate covers; capelets of French lace and boiled wool; cuffs fashioned from Civil War era dresses and worn by actual rockstars; Mexicali embroidered dresses in hot pink and black; distressed harness boots; and hand-painted pictures of little girls with antlers for hair and sharp teeth. I haven't lost my vintage rocker tees and monstrous collection of Zuni/Hopi/Navajo jewelry, nor my skinny jeans with battered harness boots and the weird items I thrown in like fringed jackets or couture handbags and scarves. I'm just refining things. Perhaps it's because my work attire is so restrained that I am rebelling; I've a tendency to resist the things that seem to fetter me. I'm a whirlwind when it comes to resisting convention and the growth that happens when I do.

My sights are on health, happiness, and healing for the coming weeks. Knowing the work I've ahead of me makes facing it easier. I won't lie and say that I'm in a better place, but I am trying to trick myself into being more positive because this rock-bottom stuff is the pits. From the accident, my back's pretty messed up and my heart is fairly bruised. However, I'm not in Philadelphia forever--just another year or so until Shaun finishes law school, passes the bar, and we face a new chapter in our life together. We are West-ward bound after, back in the arms of our friends and loved ones. I need to make this the best experience that I can, until I am free. Once I am free, there won't be any stopping me.

Jewel

almost dead but still alive

2008-12-22T20:59:22Z

I almost died at seven o'clock in the morning yesterday on an icy road. Seven o'clock, and my car was doing full spins and a cement wall seemed to leap forward at the car and me, and I'm thinking, "It's not supposed to be like this." I've been in perilous situations before, but I've never felt my mortality rise up and arch towards the sky like this. It was like my life was hovering over my head for a moment and then, an angel snatched it back into my body and said, "Breathe, baby-girl, breathe," and I did just as I hit the wall. Seven o'clock, I was hysterical on an icy road, sitting on the shoulder, and a motorist saw me and tried to comfort me. "See, your gas lid popped open, but it's okay. You banged your car up a bit, but it looked like it could have been a lot worse. I don't know how it happened. You're lucky to be alive."

"Are you okay?" he wondered, and I, not wanting to be perceived as a weak woman, bit back tears and said, "I'm okay." "I am shaken up," I kept telling him, before I closed my car door and rested my head on the steering wheel and just screamed and sobbed and let the animal in my throat loose. I have never felt so alone or so afraid, which seems silly saying now because I am alive and have faced worse. It's just that I felt so disconnected from my life and who I was meant to be.

I had to pull it together so I could open the store in time for shoppers that abused me all day long. One of my co-workers came early to help; however, I had no one with a key to help me until almost nine hours later. So I spent the day, when I should have been nursing wounds, taking care of obstinate, angry people--massaging their hands, scalps, shoulders, and spines. If I hadn't gone into the store, I couldn't have processed payroll early and no one would have gotten their holiday checks. There's too much of me being Atlas and not enough of me being truly taken care of by the world around me. I wanted to hide and curl up in a dark place, the same impulse, I imagine, that dogs and cats have when they want to die away from their human companions.

I almost died and truly, a part of me would have welcomed it because it's been a rough year for me here in Philadelphia. It isn't that I am unloved; it's just that I am working too much and not having anything left over for myself. I told myself that coming here would involve some sacrifices in the short-term so that my long-term, wholly realised spiritual and physical self could be discovered. All I know is that I wasn't made for snow, ice, or the rude motorists that honked and screamed at me as I tried to turn my car around and get back on the icy road that had almost taken my life from me.

I wasn't made to be this alone beneath such a wide, unforgiving sky. Most of the friends I have are so far away, and sometimes, I feel that they don't care because I stretch out my hands to reach them and find silence. The saddest part of this is that it feels like my very best friends, my true comrades and family, are happier without me in their lives. I feel so wounded and bruised and scared and like I never want to get in my car again.

My heart and body hurt, and even in this, I'm currently resisting the urge to erase these words, make them private, because it won't do any good to make some nice person's day a little cloudy or reveal this much of my inner turmoil. What I am saying is I was alone and I almost died and the sickening cry of my heart was that it might not matter this year as much as it might have mattered a year or two ago.

I am more alone now than ever, and that's just how it is. I won't even try to find the lesson in it. The hurt's still too fresh.

talullah jewel

i must be . . .

2008-12-09T03:30:39Z

When I consider the course of my life, I have been relatively lucky in having few burnt bridges. The ones in shambles are the ones I meant to be destroyed, for the most part. One pattern that I see repeating itself--and I am a fervent believer in patterns and finding the lessons in them--is that I have spent a good part of my life trying to dim my own light and talents so that others are not threatened by me. I make myself the harmless genius, rather than a force of reckoning--all because I am afraid that someone won't like me or will think I am too bright to keep whole and that I'll be torn apart by the people I love and respect. In my younger years, I even used to stand with my legs wide apart so as to appear on eye-level with my shorter companions.

Those days are passed. I survey the world in my hoof-heel shoes, standing with feet firmly planted, even if I do sometimes topple crown-of-head over toes. Yet, I still find this pattern emerging of jealousy being the glint in someone else's eyes as she regards me. I really am tired of it at this point, being a grown-ass lady and all. There is no hubris in admitting the truth, only bewilderment. Maybe the button-pusher in me is amused, a little. I'm amused by those who make up weird things instead of facing their mistakes.

Lately, I've dealt with slings and arrows aplenty and have to think that I must be some kind of phenomenal badass for other people to spend so much time with my name in their mouths and my life a focus of their lies and machinations. Truly. When someone despises you enough to say your name more than she says the names of her loved ones, you possess an inhuman power. You possess the power of life eternal when someone hates you with such conviction. Even more if that someone decides to spew lie after lie about you, rather than letting your true deeds and character tell the story of who you are. I am coming to the realisation that I must be a formiddable foe for someone to wage war on me without me ever lifting a finger or caring enough to loft my sword.

This is me, standing tall and telling no untruths. It's kind of neat to be here, even though I am a good deal tired and have wept a little over some of the lessons I've recently learned. I just know that every time someone else tries to steal my light, I only shine brighter and grow stronger. It's as one of my old pieces says: go ahead and underestimate me. You make me stronger that way. I'll sharpen my teeth on your bones and shred your soul with my laughter.

No regrets. No regrets. No regrets. I live forever and win again.

Athenalynx Jewel-unicorn

P.S. I love Shaun and how he has my back no matter what and a great lot of you who do, too. It's good to have friends who fight with you back-to-back, but trust you enough to let you send the hounds into battle yourself--not that I need any hounds. Everyone is his or her own undoing. Our actions define us, but do not limit us.

the tapestry jacket

2008-12-03T01:39:11Z

For my thirteenth birthday, my aunt got me a tapestry jacket that looked like a really cool Victorian couch. Wearing it felt like kissing powdered flowers and sneaking through thrift stores to find Molly Ringwald's entire Pretty in Pink wardrobe. I had punk rock Cleopatra bangs that I'd gotten straight by using tape and manicure scissors, an eating disease, and halting, stuttering movements. The tapestry jacket was one of my first forays into practiced couture. Owning the tapestry jacket with the roses and the shadowy leaves was like being one of Mucha's muses come to life, like being the heavy-lidded lashes and sex-sad stare of Marilyn Monroe without the solitary suicide on a bathroom floor.

I wasn't sure how to wear it at first--sleeves rolled up around my elbows or shoved down to my wrists?--and didn't know how to wear it until after I'd lost my consensual virginity (the one that counted, the true physical one, had happened years before with my head turned to the side, tears streaming down my cheeks as I thought, i'mnotherei'mnothere). But this isn't about that. This is about the tapestry jacket with the straight shoulders and how brave it made me feel when I faced down locker-room leopards. I wore the jacket to family functions and theatre auditions. At one try-out, the director said, "That girl wasn't a baby, even when she was a baby." A tear smeared salt on my lower lashes. The tapestry jacket made me strong.

Not a baby even when she was a baby. An almost-adult girl in a grown-up jacket.

Years later, I'd lose the jacket the way we abandon the ancient items of clothing that become our touchstones. I don't remember why I stopped wearing it or where it went, just that I miss it now as if I'd worn it every day from the time I was thirteen until today. Although I adore fashion and play with my appearance, I don't have pieces of my wardrobe that I wear with such loyalty.

The tapestry jacket is gone.

suddenly mexico

2008-11-30T23:13:08Z

Jillian said, "Let's get away for a while," said, "let's get away." We packed the old Volvo with marijuana cigarettes, unthreaded beads made blue by the piss of old Native women, organic bananas, cold buckwheat pancakes smeared with Nutella, tiny hand-drums, books and books and books, bikinis fashioned from bandannas and vintage bathhouse umbrellas, and Mexican magazines with weeping women and men with broomstick mustaches on the covers. And a guitar because no one should travel without six strings and a guitar painted with Dia de los Muertos skeleton roses and an angel with a James Dean rebel-face.

She said, "Let's get away," and I told my job that I'd be back in a few days, the job that I hated and adored because it allowed me to be creative, but caged me in that same creativity because I created masterpieces for another artist and stamped his name where mine should have been. I never worried about getting fired or losing money. I always had ways to keep from getting fired and finding more money. I didn't give a damn about sunscreen or burying my heart in a little Alaskan grave-house so that no one could pull it from the frozen earth. There was a list miles long of the things I considered beneath worry. Some of them were:

- kissing strangers (I once kissed a cop who pulled me over, even though I hate authority and have a strange, delinquent's hatred of the police)
- eating spoiled food (I dived in dumpsters for supper, taking turns with my conspirators as look-out, lest we get caught)
- going strange places (I hitchhiked all over and needed nothing more than five dollars and an open road to fill me with puppy joy)
- taking my pleasure as I saw fit, rather than basing my sexual experiences on whether my partner had an orgasm, which is often the case with heterosexual loving (and I did what I wanted with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted--safe, safe of course)
- gossip (I wanted people to be talking about me, rather than ignoring me and was the type of person who'd blast you to your face, rather than tell everyone else how I felt about you)

When I consider this list, I think I'm still the same except that I do not allow my pain to prostrate me for days, nor allow how others feel about me to become the way I feel about myself. I worship every girl-goddess-mother-sister I see.

So Jillian said, she said, "Let's get away for a while," and I went to Mexico, went with my fierce faery's heart knocking in my chest, singing, "Rum, rum sugar." The men chased me everywhere, calling out, "Bonita, bonita," and I wanted to hide my blonde hair because having corn-silk, white-baby blonde hair in Mexico was like being a unicorn. I was a unicorn dancer with my sharp hoof-heels and a fringe of hair that swung out as I shook my head and laughed and laughed and laughed. I was in Mexico, suddenly.

We tossed back shots of tequila, scooped flan out of orange pottery bowls with our fingertips, danced on cobblestone streets, and broke shot glasses on the floor of a cantina. I stomped on the shards of glass and the mariachi band played harder, strumming fingertips and strong brown hands, and my smile as wide as the moon. My mermaid beauty was more fragile than the Valkyrie beauty I possess now, the Valhalla hall of warriors tilt of chin and stare of glacier's tears eyes. I hadn't yet learned to possess my beauty, so I became confused when others found me attractive. I curved my shoulders and tried to stand smaller than I was. I was afraid to shine too much light around me, so I made my home in the shadows that other people cast.

One night, one night in Mexico, I kissed and loved and laughed and kissed, so many hands on my waist and exploring the shape of my hips. I bled on the only clothing I'd brought, a white Spanish lace dress. A menstrual moon-wash on my thighs, on other hands, and a boy saying, "You bled on me" as if it were a venial sin. I cried a little, cried, shaking my shoulders in tiny sob-hiccups. Jillian braided my hair while we smoked pot on the sand, getting stoned and drunk and loving each other. "You are my unicorn," I told her. She let me put shells into her dreadlocks and a piece of bamboo I'd cut with a machete.

The moon dipped her face into the ocean as I waded into the waves and washed the blood out of the dress and my panties. The next day, I hung the dress on drift wood, and let the salt and sun cleanse the red away, skimmed my feet in the foam and waves, like Aphrodite being born in reverse. I cried a little bit, and walked the shore naked, waiting for the dress to dry and for the blood to go away.

"Let's go away," she said, she said. I listened, and we went away.