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

The other day, I was alone for eight hours at work, which brought me to a destination known as Nobreakville. I've been to Nobreakville before. Trying to staff and train a store from the ground-level means Nobreakville is a frequent destination. On days like that, I pack a nutritious lunch (baby carrots, fresh spinach, udon noodles, and a side of nuts is a favourite) and sneak it in when things aren't too busy. Although I had a long list to accomplish, I still got my lunch on. Many days I don't.

Luckily for me, my guests were wonderful. I don't mind if someone purchases one item and leaves, so long as they don't treat me badly. It's when the person is demanding and rude and only purchases a single item that I find my patience tested. I want to say, "Just leave" when they behave like that. I try not to take it too personally, but sometimes it does get to me. Most of the time, I know someone new is going to walk through the door, someone who maybe has never been to my store and knows nothing about my company. Or it could be one of my favourite pets, in which case, I'll get to enjoy myself a little. On Wednesday, one of my best guests came in.

He's a sixteen-year-old boy with an unnatural fascination for beauty products. He's also one of the most self-aware people I've ever known. He comes in, chats about life, designers, and world issues, and usually brings his grandma in. She's the cutest thing ever, and has quite passionate views about politics. She's so willing to share the experiences and wisdom that have brought her to where she is. When they come into the store, they usually stay for a half-hour or more, and they always listen to my suggestions. Mostly, we just talk and talking's good.

Most of what I'm doing at the store is good. I'm training a great staff, our numbers are better than they've ever been, our guests adore us, and the stockroom is on its way to being completely integrated and organised. However, I'm worn out. I need more than I am getting. The other day, my Rotten No Good Day, I got hit in the back of the head by a falling ladder (didn't see it coming, so it really nailed me). Then, in another incident, I got what Shaun thinks is a concussion. I hit the top of my head so hard it made me throw up. I barely remember driving home. Shaun reports that I was a little silly when I got home. I cannot recall much of what happened after hitting my head. I assumed it was exhaustion from reaching the end of a twelve-hour day.

Shaun examined my scalp in the shower and saw redness and abrasions. Later, we noticed lines of blood and bruise across the top of my skull. I still feel a little woozy. It'll get better, though. That's the nature of life. The sky crashes onto our heads to remind us to reach for the stars. I'm reaching, but I'm questioning what I am reaching for. There is a reckoning in store.

miss lumpy head

I wear a dress of tears, of women in mourning, of freedom fettered, of the wind turned friend, of the directions of the earth, of icy winter lake perils, of jokes and sins turned song, of rebellion and wildfire ferocity, of the deepest heart and belly of the desert where night wears its teeth and stars. I keep myself safe in this dress of many fabrics and uncurl the shifting bones of my feet to dance alone in my room. The dress does not prevent the tears.

At my second job last night, I ducked into a dressing room and cried. I've lived enough years that I don't get flustered as easily as once I did--a bane of the sensitive, empathic person. Last night, however, the combination of hot lights beating down on me, socialites leaving piles of unbuttoned clothes on the floors of my dressing room, and feeling as though I'd been fed to mountain lions culminated in a good, swift cry. The events leading up to it were more innocuous. I was assigned to the area of the building known as the Doge, which is a tiny, narrow gauntlet of three dressing rooms with three hooks outside each door. An alcove with a clothesrack a couple of feet long is the only place for processing the garments once people have tried them on. Closing the Doge is hellish because of how many people linger after the store has closed and also, how many articles of clothing remain in that little alcove to be processed. The place is slammed no matter what the time of day. It's one of the hardest positions to work. I have been put there every shift almost a month straight, and I cannot help but to wonder if I am secretly hated. No one else has to work as many shifts in the Doge as I do.

So I came into work a little early and did some clothing runs from the Doge. A clothing run consists of taking clothing from said alcove and redistributing it on the sales floor. The building is a good four stories high, so the possibilities for getting lost or confused are endless. Once I settled into the Doge, I was met with lines of angry people staring at me and telling me how ridiculous it was that we didn't have more dressing rooms on that floor. With the aid of a Walkie Talkie, I called the second floor dressing room (four rooms, a bigger rack for the processing) to see if there were open rooms. There weren't. The more people had to wait, the ruder they became. The ruder customers became, the more I plastered a smile to my face and tried to make the experience a positive one.

The way people in my store behaved made me wonder who raised these folks. My parents, although flawed in intricate ways, never allowed my brothers or I to be disrespectful to people or make messes in public or private. I would have been throttled for sassing a salesperson or leaving a mess of hangers and twisted fabric in a fitting room. None of the people in my store last night were raised the same way. No sooner had I taken a piece of clothing from one person to process than it was yanked from my hands by someone who wanted to try it on without even looking at the size. I saw half-naked older women in front of the three-way mirror, so impatient that they just started ripping their clothes off.

The clothes kept piling up and the lights burned. Using the Walkie, I asked for someone to come do runs and take some of the clothes off my hands. I didn't have room for new discards. I received very little of it. Then, the girls I worked with kept asking me to unlock the side door as the dressing room key also unlocks that door. There is an alarm attached to the door. See where I am going with this? The alarm went off when my line was ten-deep and I didn't know how to turn it off. Our store general manager happened to be on the site and snapped at me about how to disengage it. Heads turned; I felt mortified.

Then, the general manager watched me process some of the clothes and yelled at me in front of some of the customers about how to search the rooms after each customer to prevent shoplifters. My system has been to count the number of garments for each person and to count it when they finish. One girl perkily left the fitting room and the GM charged into her space. The GM insisted that the girl left a little too quickly. She picked up a pillow on one of the benches and there were four tags and a sensor underneath it. She ran after the girl, who hadn't stolen anything and seemed baffled. Then, she rushed to me in a blur of designer dress and expensive perfume. "NEVER let your guard down! They will steal anything if it isn't nailed down."

She informed me of an elaborate series of things I'd have to do when each person left each room. This of course, was prudent, however, it would anger the line of people at me even more than they already were. Most of them see you as the gatekeeper and treat you like you're purposely withholding a room. After being accosted so, I ducked into a fitting room I was cleaning and let a few tears slip. I felt unsupported by the people I'd asked to assist me and like I was treated like I was stupid. For so long, I've had to battle people treating me like I was not intelligent because I was born with blonde hair and easy laughter. It's a sticking point with me, so much that I'd rather be called smart than sexy. The GM assumed I didn't know anything and spoke to me like I was an idiot, not like I was an intelligent, educated human being who had more experience in retail than she, the GM did. It shouldn't have upset me, but it hurt.

Later, I had to fill out a report about the tags and sensors, after cleaning up the utter devastation that the customers had left. It bothered me a lot, as a part of my compass is performing well and excelling at my job. I felt like I'd failed. Walking on the city street after working more than fourteen hours on my feet at both jobs, I felt naked. My eyes bled every secret that had ever been told to me, and it was dangerous to look at anyone too long, so I kept my eyes on the shadows. Until I got home. There, told myself to absorb every kernel of this and write a book one day, write a dress of bird-feathers, of victory, of leaves unfurling and speaking a green language, of peace treaties and drum dancing.

Jewelynx

Frida Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, oil on canvas, 1938

"¿Pies, para que los necesito si tengo alas para volar?" --Frida Kahlo (translated as “Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?”)

My feet pass across many floors for many hours, standing, striding, climbing, and carrying me through this world I inhabit. Although they’ve no brain-matter to deliver thought from impulse, my feet know that something is wrong. They’d rather be dancing. My feet are bruised on the soles, so much that I try to hide it from Shaun and wear bulky socks, even when I’m sweating and kicking the covers off the bed. He senses the agony radiating from my feet in bomb-blast aftershocks and kisses each pad through the wool and sheepskin boots I’ve hidden them in this time. The calluses are thicker than they were when I ran every blessed day; the calluses of running offered the purpose of protection. These calluses do not protect me from the ache that persists whether I sit or stand.

My feet need to be spinning, teetering on the edge of the universe, and creating the kind of chaos that only girls can make when they know themselves well enough to move through life like every kiss is a challenge. Every pebble in your shoe is a talisman. My feet are longing for beaches to smooth away the rough spots, red roads to travel, and a day when I am not doing something for someone else and am instead, being petted and treated gently. It’s been ages since I’ve had a day off, but my feet hurt even on those stolen, secret days. Seventy or more hours a week, a 401K, health insurance, the bills of my past being paid: the price has been exacted.

I’m not used to wearing sharp shoes. At work, I skitter across the floor like a young deer avoiding headlights or an antelope trapped in someone’s yard. My type of creature doesn’t know how to jump the fence. Our vision is oriented on the horizon, rather than the simple up-and-down. Returning home, the first thing I do after putting down my handbag is cast aside my shoes and wiggle my toes, willing them to look like they once did.

This wearing shoes all the time is making my feet like a ballerina’s, ugly and misshapen, bloody and bruised. My bones are changing shape, crushing inward. When I remove my boots, my toes are folded shy and pale as flowers. Now I know how ponies feel when they are taken in from the grasslands and forced into the corral and the terrible iron shoes that hold them until they die. I’ve been shoed. But never fenced.

My feet won’t hurt like this forever. I wear these shoes in the now so that I can have wings and financial freedom in the future. I nourish myself on the knowledge and pray my feet hold out. This is a pain that burns, like starvation before muscles become food.

I am well-fed, though. My faith and hope are my food and shoes.

Chaos-dancer

Most days, I am all right with working so many hours and having so little time to myself. Sometimes, it gets to me and I want to cry, but I haven't cried about it. The tears are dried up. I shuffle my alibis and pray I deal the right hand. Driving to work bothers me, as I didn't have to drive to my last workplace. I walked about two hundred feet to a sunny little ceramics studio, populated with cats and tourists.

Another thing that bothers me is that some of the girls I work with are mean, and I have no choice but to interact with people who talk trash about everyone around them and seem very shallow. I avoid mean-spirited types as a rule. The negative energy and drama don't appeal to me. It's so uninteresting that I tend to tune it out when it occurs around me. It's not that I am vacant; it's just that I let my thoughts wander when forced to confront these sorts of people. Our minds operate in completely different fashions.

A few weeks ago, one of the girls told me there was a park right across the street from the store. I got very excited and asked her if she ever went over to have lunch in it. "Uh, no," she responded, giving me a you're-weird look, "I don't need to go over there. I can just open the window and see it." That right there shows the kind of separation I am feeling from some of the girls. A park near a workplace is a prime spot to catch some sunbeams, read a book, and unwind before returning to work. I'd love to do that with a new-found work-friend. Chances don't look so good for that.

The next day, another girl was in a rage. "Scarlett Johanssen is a fat and ugly bitch!" she cried. "I hate her!" Now, I am completely confused by people who bash actors or actresses as if they actually know the person. Actresses are commonly criticised for weight or appearance, as if either of these qualities has a bearing on the talent of the performer. In this particular store, many of the girls are young and terribly thin and don't seem pleased about the idea of curves or substance. Not all of the girls are like this (there are some who are mucho sweet and kind), but enough girls are this way that I have suddenly become self-conscious of the fact that my hips are wishboned and my thighs are solid with muscle. When my co-worker shouted about Scarlett, I felt even more self-conscious because many comparisons have been made between Scar-Jo's buxom body and my own as of late. I couldn't help but to wonder if it was intentional.

When I called to get my schedule a few weeks later (I live a ways from the store and cannot just drop in), someone really patronised me and told me I would have to come into the store to see whether or not I worked, that "We can't just cater to people's every little whim." I felt stupid and like I was going to be talked about in that crow-chattering way of mean girls. I shouldn't give a damn, but I do. I do give a damn. I just want to be liked in this new workplace.

I feel like I am back in high school again and no one likes me for my Bohemian clothes, knowing too many large words, strange life, and being too kind of heart. No one has really shown me the ropes, except two girls who make me feel like I'm not such a big weirdo. When I ask for help, I get treated like I'm an annoyance.

Girls really can make the world a little war-zone and what for? I want to always be nice to other people, even those who make my life less than amazing. It's better than slinging hurtful words and slitting your eyes with green jealousy and willing every girl to hate herself from being unique and liquid in her own skin.

I've been hundreds of girls in this body, this skin, but I've never been a mean girl. And I never will be either.

(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