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

I am now the owner of possibly the worst haircut I've ever had in my lifetime, including when I shaved my head and even further into the annals of my history, when I cut my own hair with safety scissors at the tender age of five. The hairdresser royally screwed me up and charged me way too much to make me look this bad. Some would think my new pixieish locks are hipster, the kind of hair that you'd wake up and run a hand through and be able to seize the day or leap closed convenience stores in a single bound. This hair takes far more work than my old rumpled strands ever did. I'm discovering how difficult it is not to have my hair to hide behind, and more, how little I like my hair. Even when I thought I hated it before, I could still work with it. This hair is too short to work. Perhaps this is a belated mourning for the desert spring I missed. Maybe the locks are symbolically sheared because of that. Maybe. Every time I hear of someone visiting the Southwest, I feel a territorial dog's jealousy, a jealousy that says that I've finally discovered my home. And now, I am away from my home, in a place where I have truly awful hair.

I cried over it when it happened and cringe when I see it now. This hair is not me. It's just hair and it grows back, but this hair is not a manifestation of my inner being.

* * *

I can't believe I've even seen it. It's scary how we wrap ourselves in familiarity and ignore our surroundings when we're sure of ourselves. For instance, today, I went into a Barnes and Noble bathroom, intent on relieving my demanding bladder. If I'd been walking near a trash-strewn alleyway or on the wrong side of the tracks, I would have expected it; but this was Barnes and Noble. I was jarred by the sight of the drugged-out woman with her homemade ink-pen tattoos and gnarls of over-dyed and damaged hair, her shaking hands barely upping water as she leaned over the sink. She'd drawn blue eyeshadow and black liner wings around her eyes so that it took me a moment to see that her haunted owl's stare was really her make-up. She stared at me with her eyes shut.

Then, she passed out, water still running, still standing up. Her pants gaped the freckled, half-moon stare of her ass. I knew she was alone when I saw her. When she passed out, I really knew it. It was hard to know what to do. The mother with the baby in a stroller, Coach purse and a latte in one hand gave an angry letter-to-the-editor housewife's scowl. I wanted to take care of the lady, but she scared me. Seeing her so broken down was like staring at the lions and tigers in circus cages or the brown bears in giant leather collars who box, teeth and claws removed. There is sill danger in trying to help those beasts. They're broken enough to still be feral.

I exited and two girls said, "Did you see that chick in the bathroom? Unbelievable."

"Yeah," I replied, "why do you think I look so freaked out?" I made a few other jokes about the woman. I immediately felt bad for joking about the Bathroom Woman, for trying to make new friends in this Philly at the expense of someone else. Mostly, I felt bad about not knowing how to handle the Bathroom Woman. (Discussing it with Shaun later, he was insightful. "It's not like you to make fun of people, baby," he said. "You don't even do it in jest. You were probably trying to relieve your tension and stress." He was right. I do that when I am overwhelmed.)

I went and found a manager. "There's a woman in the bathroom," I began. "I think something really bad is going to happen to her. She needs help." Everyone seemed to find the Bathroom Woman hilarious. Employees mimed the screw-turning "crazy" as the managers escorted the Bathroom Woman out. "You don't belong here, and don't come back," the store manager muttered. I trailed behind, needing to do something more than stand there and stare.

Once the Bathroom Woman was out front on the sidewalk, squinting at the rude sun, the conjecture began. She was a crackhead, a whore, a drunk, a rocker from the '70s who'd forgotten her era. All I could think was that she had once been someone's daughter, birthed from a woman's vagina or gently removed from the oven of the uterus--same as every person in the world. She was a sister to me in the way that every woman was, and I'd made a joke about her because I didn't know what to do. I wanted to say sorry to her or help, but I couldn't. I watched her wobble away and wondered where she'd been and where she was going.

Making friends is hard in Philadelphia. Finding people who aren't broken is even harder. It won't always be so.

* * *

I still felt sorry for myself about my hair later. I am a wicked, wild creature.

talullah jewel

I’m feeling so ill inside, so heartsick and strange in my skin. It’s ironic because I’ve so many things that fill my life with joy. Yet, I am hiding in my room with this vomit-feeling, a feeling that clenches a fist around my throat and holds me tightly until breath and sound are a hallucination. I don’t want anyone to see me like this. More than that, I don’t want to see anyone. I’m exhausted from witnessing the darker aspects of the human psyche. I’m clawing at the walls over the continual sexual comments and the lack of courtesy or respect that accompanies my regular workday. Yesterday, my supervisor made a huge mess all over my workspace, making a crack about, “I came in just to give you more stuff to clean up." He cutely laughed before he left for the day. This was about two sentences after the joke about giving one of the tour guides a blowjob. Maybe my sensibilities are too fragile, I don’t like workplace innuendo. Maybe that makes me weird. Usually, I can hang with the rowdies, but even this is too much for me. Friday, I shoveled some two tons of clay with a couple of other people, while said supervisor watched our asses from down below, never lifting a shovel to help. My co-worker whispered that I should not turn my back, as my ass was being keenly studied. Fab-u-less.

This morning, the physical pain was so bad that I blacked out. I think I was disappointed when the cobwebs had cleared and the Guatemalan cleaning lady was leaning over me, saying my name over and over and over, making my name sound like some exotic flower meant to bloom in a hotter, wetter place than the one I occupied. Numbness was better than this state of heartsick and soul-hurt. I’m still working on my leave-Arco plan, but am terrified that I’ll be broken before I leave, so that I won’t be of use to anyone or anything when I finally mange to be free. “Your wings are so much wider than your cage,” logan said on the phone the night before last. It feels like all my other bird-friends are so far away, and I’m in this cage, panting blood and sweat, waiting for something to change.

And it never does.

While talking to Shaun a few times past, I said, “I don’t understand why I am so angry at the management of this place right now. Wisely, told me, “Because they killed your dream, baby, and that’s what good people do when people kill their dreams.” I think he is right and my sadness is a realisation that the things I envisoned and the things that existed were in grievous conflict with one another. I know that I am lucky to speak to Shaun of these things, but feel a profound sadness that he’s very far away and that I might not get to him as soon as I had imagined. When he left in June, we thought it’d be a little while. Now, I don’t even have a timeline. I’m still selling my stuff, but having a hard time coming up with a way to get out sooner rather than later, before this breaks me but good.

talullah jewel