Tuesday, May 7, 2013
What to do when the Universe gives you an F
"I want to be healed of being an asshole." I told Francis the Healer the first time I met him.
And then I laughed, and he did too, saying- "Okay."
Even though I drove out to his tiny office in the middle of nowhere because I have an autoimmune disease of the thyroid, even though I am sick and his waiting room is filled with people in wheelchairs, I blurted that out- and then realized that on my list of afflictions-being a jerk is the one I want to remove first.
Have you ever met someone that makes you feel like they just get it? This guy is like that.
They light up the room. You almost feel like they are transmitting an electrical charge to you when they look at you. When I was younger I called this phenomenon the "Jesus eyes." Something in their demeanor just pierces you.
Having met a few people who had "Jesus eyes" that turned out to be closer to David Koresh than Mother Teresa- I have always been wary of self appointed spiritual leaders.
But lately I've decided to be open minded-and as long as no one asks me to give away everything I own, put on an orange robe and join their cult-what can it hurt?
I'm beginning to think there might be a whole lot I don't know.
"Can you do that?" I asked him.
"No." He smiled, motioning for me to sit down. "I can't. But God can do anything."
He sat down in a chair behind me and placed one hand on my shoulder, telling me to breathe.
"Were you born like this? All happy and loving and shit?" I asked him, feeling his hand grow very warm on my back and staring straight ahead at a picture of an Indian guru named Sai Baba on the wall underneath a giant cross. The entire room was filled with symbols from different faiths -a statue of St. Francis sat next to a giant crystal, underneath a beautiful, rainbow colored illustration of Krishna cuddling a white bull- like an all you can eat religious buffet.
He laughed.
"Oh no! I used to get into fist fights all the time-I was a scrapper!" His hand continued to heat up on my back, I was sure he was searing the imprint of his fingers into my skin like a sunburn. "I had almost a hundred jobs. Then one day an angel came to me and said I was going to be a healer."
"Was that when you stopped being an asshole?"
"Well, sort of." He replied. "But it's a process. It took a long time. I had a woman come in here last week who was really mad about something-she was yelling-really upset. Ten years ago I would have given it right back to her, you know? Gotten caught up in it. But now I'm just like-I know, I know-" I can hear the smile in his voice and feel him nod behind me. "I told her-'Why don't you just sit down and get your healing, love?"
"Did she?" I asked.
"Yup."
"I want to help people." I said. "And I want to be kind."
"If you pray for that-you will receive it."
Then we were quiet. I didn't feel anything unusual-except for his spooky-hot hand on my back, and then I went home.
When I left, the volunteers that run the office told me to drink a lot of hot water for the rest of the day-which I ignored because I don't like following directions- and that the angels would come in my sleep and finish the work that Francis had started.
I thought maybe I'd have some cool angel dream-but the only one I remembered when I woke up the next morning had something to do with getting a job as a long distance truck driver hauling a semi full of housecats that had to be delivered by noon in Mexico City.
Once I felt dizzy afterwards, but that could have been low blood sugar. It feels peaceful sitting in the office of Francis the Healer-but nothing unusual or overwhelming ever happens.
I wonder if it's because I don't drink the hot water.
Maybe the act of driving 45 minutes and sitting in silence with a stranger to ask for patience and kindness and compassion is sending signals to my subconscious brain to rewire itself that way. (Did you know we can do that? Seriously-look it up.)
Or maybe prayer works because our synapses are connected to an energy field that simultaneously manifests both fate and free will in a pattern of such beautiful intricacy that we can only see glimpses of it when we are paying close attention.
Maybe science and religion are the same- rudimentary stories we tell ourselves-using words and symbols to point in the direction of what is ultimately unknowable as we try to satisfy the curiosity we feel as we stare into a night sky full of stars.
God, I love being right. Is there anything more satisfying than the moment the six year old inside you can thumb their nose at whoever is giving you a hard time and say, "See? I told you so!"
Human beings generally have an intense dislike for ambiguity. Certainty is safety-"I know that the tribe on the south side of the valley sucks because they came over here last week and took some of our cattle."
Forgetting that last year you did the same thing to those assholes north of the river.
But that was different-you had a really good reason.
Have you ever noticed that when someone you like tells you a story of being wronged by someone or something- it's easy to take their side?
"What a bitch!" We say. "I can't believe she did that to you!"
But when the bitch tells her side to people who like her- the story is completely different. Who's right?
It doesn't matter.
We carry our justifications around and they weigh us down like a dead body-preventing us from really knowing ourselves and each other- because when you can acknowledge your own flaws with love it opens your heart to understanding the mistakes that other people make too.
It's much easier to judge and categorize than feel compassion for someone who has hurt you. It's much easier to be angry and self righteous than allow yourself to feel sad, or rejected or screwed over or misunderstood. Our minds work hard to remember details of past fuckups on the part of the person who injured us, to establish a pattern and then describe it to others-so that maybe if everyone around us agrees "What a bitch! You're right!"
then maybe it won't hurt so much.
"I never liked her anyway." We can say.
Vindication is intoxicating, and having to admit you are wrong can feel like a price you have to pay. Some of us refuse to do it at all costs-as if it threatens the very existence of our identity.
I used to be like that. It sucked.
Then I grew up a little and made it a point to apologize-but grudgingly and only when I had to, or if the other person did it too. Each time this happened it felt like shaky ground, as though it cost me something dear, as though I was the only person in the world who had ever been wrong, as though I was giving away power and leaving myself diminished in some way.
The less I worry about being right and concentrate on dealing with the person in front of me with as much love as I can the happier I find myself.
No matter how many mistakes you make- no one gets a failing grade.
Life is not a test.
You don't have to be right all the time to graduate.
Who said we all have to be perfect to be awesome?
Frankly, I am tired of perfect people.
If that's all you want to bring to the party, just send me your LinkedIn profile instead. Then I don't have to change out of my sweatpants.
1. Most of the time there is no absolute "right" and "wrong"
2. When there is-and you find yourself in the latter category- so what?
What if you're wrong every day? Can you laugh at your silly self and keep on being a kickass person?
Yes, you can.
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Caterpillars and Terrorists
I’ve been driving to a shitty little office complex in Round
Rock once a week to visit a man who calls himself “Francis the Healer.” Many other people
make the same drive, taking off their shoes at the door they are ushered back
to a waiting room full of chairs. We sit in silence, praying, until a volunteer
calls out your name. You follow them back to another room where Francis, an
ordinary looking, middle aged Irishman, shakes your hand.
He asks you what it is you want him to heal, you tell him,
and then you sit down. He tells you to breathe deeply, then places his hands on
your back and prays.
This is exactly the kind of thing I used to call bullshit on
before I had a spiritual experience of my own. I looked at people who believed
in God with a patronizing envy. If only I could be simple minded enough to
have faith in something, I thought.
For fifteen years I read books, went to church, meditated- looking for the answers. Why are we here? Is there something beyond what science can prove? What happens to us after we die? I glimpsed it during a sweat lodge, every time I took mushrooms, and for a few seconds while I was helping a young woman die-but these epiphanies always faded, the moments of what I can only call "Knowing" never fully explained what is at the root of a universal longing of mankind to find meaning in our existence-and I sank back into malaise and doubt again each time. I spent years feeling completely certain that there was no meaning to our existence beyond what science could prove.
It's easy to do. For one thing- these experiences are difficult to talk about and incorporate into daily life. There are no words to accurately describe them, and the ones we do have have been co-opted by all the goofy sounding hippies who wrote books about their "spiritual journeys" in the seventies, so you find yourself struggling to describe what can only be sort of circled around and hinted at- and you receive one of two reactions-
The people who pat your hand with sympathetic eyes- "I think that's so special that you had a spiritual experience, sweetie." (Thinking- Poor thing-she's lost her mind.)
And those who listen and nod with their eyes shining, who brim with enthusiasm as you struggle to express yourself, responding finally with- "I know."
When this happens-there is a moment when you look into each others eyes-a connection happens.
It could be described as-
"We are One."
Its a recognition of the observer inside of you that has been with us since birth silently recording, noticing and simply being behind the maelstrom of incessant, conscious thought that we drives us like whitewater rapids from one moment to the next-
it's what the Bag Vad Gita calls "the language beyond the mind."
It is the part of you that knows that there is no such thing as time,
the empty space that is both nothing and the essence of you,
the part of you that is immortal, with no beginning and no end.
The part of you that is God.
( Right now-half of you are smiling because you get it. Half of you think I have gone off the deep end.)
The difference lies in experience-if you haven't had it yet the words are meaningless, the concepts are intellectual constructs that exist as ideas separate from you.
If you have- you already know what I'm talking about-and you see the expression of it everywhere. You live and breathe this knowing.
It is you, and you are it.
The world that we live in is incredibly, well, worldy. We are preoccupied with wanting and buying and having to a level that borders on psychosis. We lull our conscious minds to sleep with television and technology and manufacture dramas and problems and crises to distract us from waking up. We are so afraid-of being judged, of being unloved, of being unworthy, of failure, of loss, of growing old, of dying, of being ugly, alone, overweight, embarrassed, proven wrong, of being diminished in some way-
and we spend so much time and energy trying to avoid these things that we lose sight of the true nature of who we are and what we came here to do. I know- I have done this my entire life- and I would have continued to slumber and react and hide if something wonderful hadn't happened to me.
First- I was given the gift of illness.
As my father slowly deteriorated into the madness and pain of liver failure, I developed a difficult to diagnose thyroid problem. I was so sick I thought I was dying too. I responded with panic- I threw money at it, going to specialists until my savings was exhausted. I got angry at everyone around me. I went crazy too-because I was faced with circumstances I desperately didn't want and couldn't control. In fact- the more I tried to escape my pain the more intense it became until finally, kicking and screaming, I surrendered to it.
2. I was given the gift of poverty.
If you have never been poor-you probably think it's something to be avoided at all costs- and I'm not contradicting that. There is nothing glorious or noble about not having enough. Poverty is terrifying. Money represents power, safety and status.
But- even though all of the fictional sit com families you see on TV are upper middle class or wealthy-most of the world lives on a knifes edge. The difference is that in this country we all walk around pretending to be successful. There is a shame to having financial trouble- which starts to become funny when you wake up and realize that money isn't real.
Let me say that again- money isn't real.
It's a concept we came up with to represent energy. Now you don't have to bring your goat to the mall to trade for your new tank top at Forever 21- we use this idea we invented as a stand in. It used to be coins, then paper, now it's a little card that records numbers in a computer. Same shit.
It's not you.
If you have a high number of fictional units to measure human energy-that's awesome.
If you have none-you're still you.
And that "you" is the same being of light, love and potential that you were yesterday before the stock market crashed.
I'm not saying we don't all need to work or that you shouldn't bother to ask for a raise. I'm telling you that it doesn't define your worth or value as a human being.
Losing everything is a gift because you can no longer use external constructs to define who you are.
"Having" is not "being," folks.
3. I was given the gift of being wrong.
In every Hollywood movie something predictable happens. The bad guys lose. Some terrible punishment happens to them-they fall off a cliff into an abyss, they are proven wrong before their community and slink off in humiliation while the "good" guys are vindicated, everyone rallying around them in celebration. This is justice, we are told.
So when you fail-especially if it's in some spectacular, public way- does that mean you're "bad"?
It can very much feel that way.
"This is happening to me because I'm a bad person" I used to think, lying alone in my FEMA trailer in the dark.
After my dad died I saw that we are all, each one of us, so loved. I realized that all of the things that seemed so deadly serious to me were actually silly and light and inconsequential.
I was given this-in a split second- and it irrevocably changed my life-
We are all One.
There is power, energy, a force-whatever you call it-that makes up the substance of every spinning particle in the universe and its very substance by definition is this thing we call 'love.' We are cherished and known completely by this consciousness-every being on the earth-because it is us.
We are never alone.
There are no mistakes.
There are only opportunities to learn about ourselves and speed up the process of waking up to the beauty and power of what we really are.
Despite the pain of being alive, even though the world is still full of horror and suffering, it is happening at an exponential rate. Human beings are beginning to realize their inherent unity-and the need to separate experiences into "good" or "bad" will fade out.
"But what about consequences, punishment, the Boston Marathon bombers?" you're thinking.
Yes, in the grand scheme of things- even though their actions are horrific and wrong and we have to protect our children from maniacs-even tragedy is part of a vast, intricate pattern of meaning that we are too small to understand, and even terrorists are loved by God.
Whether you call it -the Universe, Energy, Allah, Yahweh, Jesus, the Divine Mother-
that's how absolute this is.
No matter how fucked up you are, no matter what you do-God loves you.
When you really start to get that-how can you not respond by loving everyone else?
The question becomes one presented to us again and again by visionaries throughout history-
"Who am I to judge?"
Let me ask you a question.
If someone in your office leaves the paste out-do you eat it?
No? You haven't done that since kindergarten?
Why?
Is it because you are afraid of being punished? Is there a law against it?
No.
It's because- Why the fuck would you? You outgrew that.
And as we wake up, the human race is beginning to see that hurting others is the same as hurting ourselves.
We are waking up to our true nature-
the very substance of which is love.
But here is the thing that no one tells you about waking up-
it's a long, messy process riddled with doubt and confusion.
Even if you are lucky enough to be leveled by loss and tragedy-
even if you are actually presented with a burning bush or a spectacular message from the beyond-
sooner or later you will fall on your face.
You will still get angry
you may still snap at your kids or flip some asshole the bird on the Interstate
you may still struggle with low self esteem
you may even still dip into a misery so dark and deep you wish you were dead-
it's a process.
I still lose hope.
But each time this happens I find it comes back to me like a boomerang if I simply ask it to.
The dips become shallower, the holes I once fell into are easier to climb out of every time.
I think that this process of transformation will continue until I die.
I will wake up-
stay in that conscious space for a while
fall down
feel lost
doubt that it's real for a while
and then pick the thread back up again.
Each time it gets easier
because once the process has begun you can never go back.
The caterpillar doesn't know it's becoming a butterfly when it sleeps in the chrysalis- it only knows it's changing in a fundamental way that feels inevitable.
That doesn't mean it isn't real.
So I try to write about it-even thought I know it makes me sound crazy, and I seek out people like Francis the Healer-because what I see when I look into his eyes resonates with the butterfly taking shape in some mysterious place that exists inside of me and everyone else.
When my heart-which was broken open by suffering and loss and shame-begins to close in judgement of someone I gently remind myself to love.
Love everyone.
Forgive everyone.
Forgive yourself.
But most of all-
just love.
Saturday, March 16, 2013
Waves of Awesome
Apparently there is a lot more to publishing a book than me typing in the last word, throwing up my hands and yelling, "I'm done, yall! Hooray!"
That's annoying. Because I want everything that is good that is ever going to occur in my life to happen RIGHT NOW and then continue to emit waves of awesomeness I can just keep riding on forever. Sometimes I wonder if that is already happening and I am spoiled and ungrateful ( "Oh my God!" says the woman from the Sudan. "You have running water? Bitch -what are you complaining about?)
Other times I feel like Job, wandering around by myself in the desert wondering why God is such a big, fat jerk but then I remember that Job didn't have Cheetos or friends with unlimited cable and then I stop whining about it and get back to working on making life better.
Each time I lose the thread I panic and think I will never find it again.
And then I do.
I'm working on remembering that.
It's been Spring Break for two weeks now-which has been wonderful because Ruby and I like doing the same things-watching She-Ra, sewing, and eating mint chocolate chip ice cream-
and harrowing because I have the child who runs over and sticks her foot into the hole when I say "Stay away from that hole over there!"
This morning I was sitting on the porch drinking my coffee when she opened the trailer door waving two empty cigarette packs that she'd taken out of the trash and drew faces on with a Sharpie.
"I'm Mrs. Smokes!" She made one cigarette pack-doll say.
"I'm Dr. Cola!" Replied the pack who had a large, curly mustache. Then Dr. Cola started to make out with Mrs. Smokes and I got all uncomfortable, even though Ruby told me-
"It's okay they're married now" as she smushed the two cellophaned boxes together-
because I am so far away from who I was the day I found out I was pregnant-
"I'm going to hand carve all of her toys out of organic wood and teach her to weave and play the harp instead of watch TV-
so I told her to quit playing with the cigarette pack people and check on her circus mice.
One of them had ten babies last week. I let that happen deliberately- figuring that once they are big enough to discern their sex I will take all of the boy mice up to Petco in my pocket and sneak them back into the "Boy" cage-like shoplifting in reverse. It isn't a crime. I checked.
So she comes back out with 10 squirming baby mice in her hands and dumps them into my tank top before I can say anything because I'm still not awake yet and no one ever expects to have that happen- not really.
And I'm not wearing a bra so the mice are just crawling around in there. And I realize just how much I need a break from Spring Break when I think this thought-
"I just don't want to get up."
I just want to keep drinking my coffee, sitting on the porch outside my FEMA trailer in the morning sun-waving Hello to Jimmy the dwarf and the guy who walks around the park playing the accordion and the Raccoon Man and the punk rock girl and Johnny Cat -
"Hey God! You're a big, fat jerk!" I think as the tiny rodents crawl around in my boobs and my six year old dances around the trailer park forcing two cigarette packs to do unspeakable things to each other-
"How come it's taking so long for me to get my book published, damn it?"
and then I smile-
"This is awesome."
That's annoying. Because I want everything that is good that is ever going to occur in my life to happen RIGHT NOW and then continue to emit waves of awesomeness I can just keep riding on forever. Sometimes I wonder if that is already happening and I am spoiled and ungrateful ( "Oh my God!" says the woman from the Sudan. "You have running water? Bitch -what are you complaining about?)
Other times I feel like Job, wandering around by myself in the desert wondering why God is such a big, fat jerk but then I remember that Job didn't have Cheetos or friends with unlimited cable and then I stop whining about it and get back to working on making life better.
Each time I lose the thread I panic and think I will never find it again.
And then I do.
I'm working on remembering that.
It's been Spring Break for two weeks now-which has been wonderful because Ruby and I like doing the same things-watching She-Ra, sewing, and eating mint chocolate chip ice cream-
and harrowing because I have the child who runs over and sticks her foot into the hole when I say "Stay away from that hole over there!"
This morning I was sitting on the porch drinking my coffee when she opened the trailer door waving two empty cigarette packs that she'd taken out of the trash and drew faces on with a Sharpie.
"I'm Mrs. Smokes!" She made one cigarette pack-doll say.
"I'm Dr. Cola!" Replied the pack who had a large, curly mustache. Then Dr. Cola started to make out with Mrs. Smokes and I got all uncomfortable, even though Ruby told me-
"It's okay they're married now" as she smushed the two cellophaned boxes together-
because I am so far away from who I was the day I found out I was pregnant-
"I'm going to hand carve all of her toys out of organic wood and teach her to weave and play the harp instead of watch TV-
so I told her to quit playing with the cigarette pack people and check on her circus mice.
One of them had ten babies last week. I let that happen deliberately- figuring that once they are big enough to discern their sex I will take all of the boy mice up to Petco in my pocket and sneak them back into the "Boy" cage-like shoplifting in reverse. It isn't a crime. I checked.
So she comes back out with 10 squirming baby mice in her hands and dumps them into my tank top before I can say anything because I'm still not awake yet and no one ever expects to have that happen- not really.
And I'm not wearing a bra so the mice are just crawling around in there. And I realize just how much I need a break from Spring Break when I think this thought-
"I just don't want to get up."
I just want to keep drinking my coffee, sitting on the porch outside my FEMA trailer in the morning sun-waving Hello to Jimmy the dwarf and the guy who walks around the park playing the accordion and the Raccoon Man and the punk rock girl and Johnny Cat -
"Hey God! You're a big, fat jerk!" I think as the tiny rodents crawl around in my boobs and my six year old dances around the trailer park forcing two cigarette packs to do unspeakable things to each other-
"How come it's taking so long for me to get my book published, damn it?"
and then I smile-
"This is awesome."
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Beauty Tips for the Bereaved
This week I sort of broke my own heart so that I can finish my book.
"I'm almost done!" I have been saying this for months, but now I'm really about to be finished and it's terrifying.
I think there is a part of us that is forever standing awkwardly in front of our high school locker hoping that we don't make a fool of ourselves in public. We are so afraid that someone is going to make fun of us that it keeps us from striving for greatness.
"Stuck up" was the worst thing another girl could call you in seventh grade. "Who does she think she is?" So to protect yourself you get smaller and stop taking risks with what you wear or what you say. I have learned to do this, unlearned it and had to find it again many times in my life.
"What if I try this thing and I think what I'm doing is so great but really it's not and everyone is embarrassed for me except for that girl who hated me in junior high who is thrilled because now she can make fun of me for failing?"
A lot of times the people in our lives who criticize us don't even have to say anything-we do it for them. I can hear my ex-husband's voice in my head making jokes about me to his friends. "You think your ex is crazy let me tell you about mine..." He says, and they all laugh.
But of course-that's fiction. Maybe he has better things to talk about. Either way-
I shrink.
But-
not anymore.
This is what despair feels like-
now here is how I dragged myself out of it.
In order to tell that story I had to stop protecting myself from the voice of my ex or that mean girl in junior high and be honest about everything I have always kept hidden.
I'm publishing all of my secrets online-in a form that will be easy to download by every potential employer or Match.com date I will ever meet.
"What would happen if you stopped pretending and let the world see who you really are?" My Dad wrote to me in the last letter he sent to me before he died.
Everything in my life stopped to write this book. Every relationship I have has been ground in it's teeth-no matter how cold my feet are at this moment I have to publish it. There's no other choice now.
Also-a couple of months ago my dead father's ghost reminded me not to take myself so fucking seriously.
I think it's going to be like skydiving-the anticipation is horrible but once you jump you are free from fear.
This is the part of the story where I publish the first chapter of the most awesome book you have ever read and once you get to the end of this excerpt you will be in a state of panic, wandering around your living room wondering when I am going to publish the rest of it already because doing anything other than finishing that girl's book seems so boring and stupid now- you're welcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beauty Tips for the Bereaved
Part One
Pearline
It could have been any day. I chose a Tuesday. I had forgotten my lunch and the cafeteria was serving Sheppard's pie. I downed a bottle of Advil instead, just to see what would happen. After experiencing no ill effects, I decided to go for a walk. I left the high school grounds, searching for peace, something that would make the pain that was rising in me recede. Not finding it, I continued to walk, across town, through yards, over fences, across railroad tracks. I never felt tired, I never felt whole. By the time I walked through the front door I knew what I had to do. My mother was so angry she couldn’t speak for a minute.
"What is wrong with you?"
I shrugged. "I wish I knew."
“Go to your room.”
Once the door was shut I pulled out a Ziploc bag full of stolen codeine, a half empty bottle of stolen Jack Daniel's and a handful of Tylenol just to be thorough.
As I lifted the handful of pills to my mouth and swallowed them with burning gulps of whiskey an overwhelming sense of peace settled over me. I picked up an X-acto knife from my craft table and drew slow hot circles into my wrists, deeper each way around, watching the red blood bead and stream. It was so pretty; I wished that I could replicate that color in oil paint.
I felt a moment of deep sadness for my Granny Pearl, then let it go.
"See you soon" I had said the last time I hugged her goodbye.
Now I am alone.
The decision to commit suicide doesn't arise solely from a place of madness. It's deliberate. It's calculated. Perhaps you begin to notice that each second ticking by feels like a slow weight, your heartbeat sending signals of agony to your brain. It isn't just that you decide the future won't be any better, it's that the present has become so unbearable you cannot stand another second of it. You see no avenue of deliverance but death, so you take what is available to you.
People who have never experienced clinical depression are blind to this logic.
"If you are so depressed, why not run away? Why not hitchhike to Borneo and help some orphans or hop a greyhound and start a new life? Why choose to die?"
The explanation is simple. You can't escape your own chemical stew. You can't just walk away from your own mind, which is so very sad and sick. Sometimes the only way to stop the pain is the sleep of an overdose, a flying jump from a building, releasing your blood to fall into a puddle on the floor.
"You have to tell yourself a new story" My father had said on the phone a few days before. "This is your movie, kid. You decide if it's going to be a comedy or a tragedy."
"I guess I'm not a very strong person," I thought. "I'm sorry, Dad."
I stood up, clicked out the lamp and crawled into bed. I wasn't used to drinking so much so quickly and it filled me with euphoria.
"I should have written a note," I thought. "Something clever Dr. Tyler could have read aloud at the assembly."
I couldn't think of anything. I could barely keep my eyes open. My arms and legs were rubber. At the last minute I grabbed an orange felt tip pen and wrote-
"I should never have switched from scotch to martinis" and dropped both pen and note to the floor.
"There," I thought."It's not original, but Erica will get it."
I closed my eyes then, slipping one last time into my earliest memory. It had always come to me as a dream that dissipated, shy as smoke, with the smell of bacon and coffee coming under the crack in the door each morning.
I stand between my mother and father in an endless, moving field of West Texas grass, stretching my arms up to grasp their hands. I am little. As the sun sets in front of us it grows larger and brighter as it nears the horizon until it fills the whole sky. Suddenly it drops and lands in front of us with a heavy thud that I can feel in my teeth. With growing wonder, all three of us run toward it. It is unbearably bright. I shut my eyes but I can still see its orange light through my eyelids.
“It’s a dying star.” My father whispers to me as he holds me on one side and my mother on the other, shielding us from the light. Somehow I knew then that if I opened my eyes they would both disappear with the light, leaving me small and alone, the wind moving through grass as grey and empty as the sea.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I killed my first rattlesnake when I was six years old. I was playing in our front yard when I heard the sound. In West Texas, even very small children know that sound, like seed husks in a dry bag. Venomous reptiles lie beneath rocks, curled up in old flowerpots, behind rusty sheet metal. They seek cool wet places to wait out the sun. Living creatures scatter into holes and crevices during the day to escape it, and you learn from the time you start walking not to venture into small, dark places. Sticking your hand underneath a pile of boards could mean a quick encounter with a nest of black widow spiders or a sleeping rattler. People and animals move slowly, the air so hot and bright it’s painful just to breathe it.
I had been sitting in the dry grass in front of the house braiding my dolls hair and waiting to hear the sound of my mother's tires crunching up the gravel road.
"Mommy is baking Teddy Bear Bread when she gets back," I whispered to my doll, who didn't respond. The cicadas buzzed at a chainsaw pitch, falling silent then catching their song again as they would all day from spring to fall. One of the dogs began to bark and soon all of them were jumping against the fence behind me and growling.
"That squirrel must be back," I thought.
Then suddenly the animal and insect symphonies cycled into a moment of perfect silence. I heard a rattle shaking somewhere near my left foot. I resisted the urge to jump up and run, took a deep breath and scanned the grass around me.
“You hear that sound you stop,” I remembered my father's voice. “Find out where it’s coming from and back away. If you can’t get away then look for a stick or a rake to use against it.”
In my Dad's opinion the best education you could give a child was Wilderness Survival Training. I could build three different types of shelter and peel a cactus for drinking water before I could read.
Scanning the high grass I saw it curled up around a water spigot that stuck straight out of the concrete foundation of the house. I could feel the snake looking at me, tense, its rattle moving too fast for me to see. I backed away slowly as I'd been told to do, my legs made of fear, and ran to tell my Dad.
I found him splitting firewood behind the still. As soon as he saw my face he began to move with the deliberate calm of authority in the presence of danger. I ran straight into him, struggling to get the words out through my sobs. He held my shoulders tight.
"Breathe," he said, staring into my eyes. "Be still and breathe."
After a few seconds passed I told him about the snake. He nodded once and stood up, pulling his long brown hair back into a ponytail. I watched him walk over to the shed and back with the garden hoe.
I shook my head as he handed me the long-handled rake.
"You're going to take care of this one." he said.
I backed up, preparing to run into the neighbors cornfield that stretched to my right across the dirt road. He caught my shoulders and kneeled in front of me, holding me in place. He continued to focus his eyes straight into mine.
"Listen to me," he said firmly. "You feel afraid."
I nodded. He let go of my shoulders so I could wipe a line of snot on each sleeve. We were still for a long minute in the sun, kneeling man in front of a small child; one of my braids had come loose and blew every which way in the wind. I could see a hawk draw a slow circle in the flat, cloudless sky.
"You're right to be afraid." he said again. "That snake is real. You have to be a warrior. I don't mean you always have to fight, but you have to conquer your fear. Move through it with open hands but hold your strength inside you like a fist."
I understood. I always did, even when everyone else raised their eyebrows. My dad always talked this way. I made a tight fist with my left hand as he had shown me to do when I was afraid, closing my eyes and gathering strength as I raised it in the air.
"Good Girl. Are you ready?"
I nodded "yes" grasped his hand and walked back to the water spigot.
The snake was still there. As it heard our approach the rattle began it's furious stacatto warning again. I froze.
"It's just a baby, kiddo!" he laughed, his eyes still serious."You can take of it. No problem."
He handed me the flat-bladed hoe and moved to stand directly behind me, his fingers curled around the handle above mine. I held my weapon tight, took a deep breath and raised it high in the sun, bringing it down hard as close to the snake as I could. At the last second I closed my eyes.
I felt blade click into spine and heard the bell of its contact with the stones underneath. When I opened my eyes I saw a baby rattlesnake leaking a thin stream of blood. Its belly was pale and soft and twisted up in a curlicue. It smelled like rotten garbage. Dizziness buzzed through my limbs like lightning. I began to laugh, my body on fire with adrenaline as I jumped up and down with my father.
"You did it!" he yelled, grinning as he caught me up in his arms and spun me in circles. "Don't tell your mother" he said as he put me down.
I stole another glance at the dead snake. All of a sudden I felt sorry for it.
“Let’s bury it” We dug a hole in that same garden where I had pressed seeds into the damp earth and watched them grow into flowers and sweet peas and mint that wafted through my window at night. I had planted gumdrops and Reese’s Pieces and spit slivers of my own fingernails into the earth hoping to see a tall vine bearing hard little crescents to chew on. I wondered if the snake would grow baby snake plants. In my mind’s eye I could see tiny rattles hanging like mustang grapes at the end of a long vine.
-----------------------------------------------
I woke up to the sound of my father singing in the kitchen. With my feet I searched the floor beside the bed for my bunny slippers and padded silently down the hall in the dark to find out what was going on. As I neared the yellow light of the kitchen I saw my father waving a knife and moving his lips to the Grateful Dead coming from the tape deck on the windowsill. His friend Rick stood over a body wrapped in garbage bags on the long kitchen table. I squinted, but couldn't make out who it was. Clenching a cigarette in his teeth, Rick gripped and pulled at the weight of a shoulder as my Dad sliced open the belly, lifting a handful of slick guts into the smoky air. The head turned towards me, eyed me briefly and lolled back into a shoulder. Blood filled up the sink and piles of glistening parts lay on the dirty linoleum. I started to cry.
“Hey kid, come over here! I'll teach you how to skin a deer” He waved me closer with his knife. I shook my head and backed out of the kitchen towards the porch, where I knew my mother would be smoking a Virginia Slim in the dark. Instead, through the screens I saw her standing in the cornfield looking up at the sky. I walked out and through the rows to stand next to her, breathing in the apple scent of her waist length hair.
" I wish he would just do that in the barn" she said and sat down on her knees next to me, cupping both of her hands around one of mine. "It's going to take me a whole day to get the kitchen clean again."
"Soon the corn will be higher than you and we will have to find another place to watch the moon." she brushed a curl of my hair behind my ear with her index finger.
When a periodic breeze rippled through the field its rustle drowned out the sing-song mating call of the toads that lived in the creek behind our house. It felt like hearing the landscape breathing in and out.
"My grandmother used to tell me a Cherokee story about a Rabbit who became so angry at his mother-in-law that he threw her up to the Moon and she stuck there. Can you see the Rabbit in the Moon?”
I stared up at the full moon, searching for the rabbit. My mother squeezed my hand absently, I knew that she was a thousand miles away. It had always been that way. Even when she smiled the sadness played out in her eyes, I felt it in my mother from the crib, even before I could speak.
"I see it," I lied.
I studied them, cataloguing every detail I could pick up from stray conversations, mapping the landscape of their history. I observed the inner workings of my parents with the same intense hyper focused attention I used to apart the clocks and toasters that my Dad brought home from his scavenging trips at the local dump. If there was something that didn't make sense I couldn't stop turning it around in my mind until I figured out the answer.
"What if I got eaten by a bear?" I wondered, rearranging my pillow and unable to sleep."How would my soul get out of its stomach to go to Heaven?"
and
"What, exactly, is gravy?"
and
"Do my parents love each other?"
They met in the cafeteria of the Tarrant County Junior College. My mother noticed a young man sitting at a round table passing out brochures to recruit volunteers to work at Our House, the drug treatment center he ran down the street.
"He had that long brown hair and beard- he looked just like Jesus," my mother told me later.
"I was doing dry runs on impregnating the whole world back then," my Dad said.
The man who would be my father handed her a pen, and she signed up.
Half of Fort Worth filled up the churches every Sunday morning, while the other side slept off another bender. My mother's people sinned, my father's lived and breathed the Word of God. Although her tiny body was stunted from polio, his mother beat him regularly from her wheelchair with her cane and promised a much worse punishment from the Devil if he didn’t behave. His father, who would die of rheumatoid arthritis when my Dad was a teenager, let his wife run the show as long as she turned a blind eye to his Saturday afternoon cockfights and the little flask he kept in his trouser pocket. As my dad rubbed liniment into the legs of his handicapped parents, his mother read from the Bible and spoke in tongues. Physically she suffered, trapped in her strange, twisted body. Spiritually she soared as she awaited the rapture.
"Be prepared at all times for the End of Days," she had told me the previous Christmas."It's coming, I tell you what. The Lord is going to judge us all."
When he turned sixteen my dad began to rebel against his mother and her oppressive religion. He skipped prayer meetings to smoke reefer with his friend Rick. The longer his hair grew, the lower his grades dropped and the more belligerent he became. He was already beyond her control, she just didn't know it yet.
"High school is a drag. I hated it." He told me on the last Christmas Eve I would spend with him for seven years "I don't know how you stand it."
When his school participated in a series of nationwide intelligence tests administered by the Navy, my dad filled out the answers to hundreds of questions every fall without ever being told what the tests were for. One day in the spring of his senior year the meanest teacher in school called him out of class.
“ His name was Odie Adar, if you can imagine. He had been a Marine. He was famous for sneaking up behind the boys with the longest hair and pulling it. He was a real bastard.”
Odie Adar told my dad to follow him to the parking lot. They got in his car. Odie drove him to a barber and forced him to get a crew cut. Back in his office, my dad sat fuming in his chair.
“ Why did you do that to me?”
“ You are wasting yourself.” The teacher said.
“ What you mean, man?”
"The results from all of those Navy tests finally came in. You scored in the 98th percentile. You're one of the smartest kids in this country."
My dad was embarrassed. He looked at the floor.
"What the Hell is wrong with you boy?" Odie Adar stood up and leaned across the desk towards my Dad
“ Keep your hair short and you can do anything you want. Anything.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite the pleas of Odie Adar, my dad grew his hair long again, and moved out. He drifted awhile, but when he pulled his VW van into downtown Austin and saw a naked man directing traffic in the middle of a four-way intersection he knew he was home.
He got a job as a park ranger at the Mount Bonnell nature preserve by the lake. One afternoon he picked up a book he saw laying face down in the mud and began to read. It was 1984 by George Orwell.
The story kicked off rockets of paranoia somewhere deep in his brain, it’s circuits already wired long ago for such a revelation. Everything clicked into place, and he went home and packed warm clothes, a little food, a sleeping bag and a map. His plan to survive the end of the world was to walk to Mexico.
"You don't speak Spanish" I will tell him years later as I hold his hand and wait for the Hospice nurse to arrive with his pain pills. He will cough, struggle for a long time to clear his throat and then continue.
"I thought it would be safer there, less infrastructure. I'd just finished reading 1984. Seemed like it would take Mexico a little longer to get organized enough to pull off a fascist police state"
He traveled for three days, avoiding the highway for country roads and following dry creek beds. On the third night it froze. His feet began to crunch on frosty grass; he could see his breath clouding in front of him as he walked. His pack was heavy and he was tired. He made his way to the interstate, intending to hitch a ride.
When a car pulled up he ran to it, dismayed to discover that it was a cop.
“ Shit,” he thought.” I’m going to jail.”
The policeman told him to get in so he did. They drove for a few miles in silence, finally pulling into an elementary school parking lot. It was the middle of the night. No one was around.
“ Come with me.”
My dad followed the cop; dread growing stronger with every step. He was led to the boy’s bathroom. The cop pulled the door open.
“Get in there.”
He did as he was told. He walked in, dropped his pack and turned around to face the policeman.
“Look,” the cop said,” This ain’t much, but it’s awful cold out there. You could die. Block the door and get some sleep.”
“ Thank you.” My dad bleated, eyes blinking back tears.
“ It’s nothing. I’ll drive by every hour or so. You won’t hear me, but you’ll know I’m here if you need me. Try to get out before the kids come in the morning.”
“ I will.” He slept curled up on the cement tiles, blocking the door with his body.
His enthusiasm was waning for walking to Mexico when he woke up in the morning so he decided to let fate decide.
“ I will get in the next car that stops,” he thought as he walked” If it’s heading North, I will go home to Fort Worth. If it’s South, I’ll keep heading to Mexico.”
An hour later, a car stopped for his outstretched thumb. It was going north.
Back in Fort Worth my dad sweet-talked his way into a job running a drug crisis center called Our House. Anyone in trouble could knock on the door of the rambling two story house and be taken in, no questions asked.
“ We never wrote down anyone’s name. The police were always hassling us about our records, but we wouldn’t do it. In three years, not once.” Try to stay off the grid if you can.
Everyone who came in had to deposit their drugs into a stolen mailbox that was bolted to the floor of the big front room. The police came once a month to take its contents, baggies of multi-colored pills and vials-always noting that somehow there was never any marijuana inside the mailbox.
“ People came by, they wanted to blow their brains out, they needed to hide from the cops, whatever. We listened to them, played music, made it safe for them. Then they went on their way.”
If my father had followed the advice of his guidance counselor and kept his hair short, I believe I would never have been born. My mother had just converted the entire Diamond Hill football team to the Church of Christ. They held prayer meetings before each game and she was on fire to save some more souls. A treatment center would be full of people who were spiritually lost, and they might be more receptive to hearing the Lord's message if they were coming down from a bad trip. She signed up to volunteer to save a few souls, but she followed my Dad back to Our House for stir fry because of his waist length honey brown hair.
My Dad had a way with the ladies.
“ I was always trying to make it with her but nothing ever happened.” He will tell me one day, reaching his shaking hand out to hold mine. I will be sitting on the edge of a hospital bed trying to memorize him, capture as much of him as I can to carry with me. ”I remember her sitting across from me one night by a campfire, she looked like Joan Baez-waist length black hair, those cheekbones she got from the Cherokee side-you got those." He will gesture, as if to touch them, but he is too weak.
"I think it's the only trait I got from her" I will tell him, as I place my hand on top of his thin grey hair "That and the writing."
"That's because you are both excellent liars" he will smile, then begin to cough again.
When she found out she was pregnant, despite my fathers objection to involving the Man in his love life, they got married and moved to a one room cottage in the country. Tired of struggling with the police and weary of fixing people only to see them come back broken, he would work a vegetable garden instead. His uncle owned the land and agreed to let them live there for a while as long as he didn't have to pay for any repairs.
My Dad was sitting on the front porch on his last day at Our House watching the sun go down when a woman jumped in front of a bus across the street from him. It swerved and missed her. She continued to stand there, waiting for the next one.
“ Oh Shit.” he thought and called out casually “Ma’m? I just made a big pot of coffee in here and it’s too much for me. I wonder if you’d come over here and help me drink it.”
She turned slowly and focused on him saying nothing.
“ Do you take cream and sugar?” He yelled.
She nodded, made her way onto the porch and sat down. When she reached for the coffee cup he saw the blood running down her fingertips, pooling into the cracks of the wood.
When I think about my dad trying to exorcise such terrible despair from the strangers who blew into his life, I wonder if it prepared him for what would come. When his daughter would begin an education in madness and he would begin his in grief. And nothing he could think up to say would make any difference at all.
-----------------------------------------------------
"I'm almost done!" I have been saying this for months, but now I'm really about to be finished and it's terrifying.
I think there is a part of us that is forever standing awkwardly in front of our high school locker hoping that we don't make a fool of ourselves in public. We are so afraid that someone is going to make fun of us that it keeps us from striving for greatness.
"Stuck up" was the worst thing another girl could call you in seventh grade. "Who does she think she is?" So to protect yourself you get smaller and stop taking risks with what you wear or what you say. I have learned to do this, unlearned it and had to find it again many times in my life.
"What if I try this thing and I think what I'm doing is so great but really it's not and everyone is embarrassed for me except for that girl who hated me in junior high who is thrilled because now she can make fun of me for failing?"
A lot of times the people in our lives who criticize us don't even have to say anything-we do it for them. I can hear my ex-husband's voice in my head making jokes about me to his friends. "You think your ex is crazy let me tell you about mine..." He says, and they all laugh.
But of course-that's fiction. Maybe he has better things to talk about. Either way-
I shrink.
But-
not anymore.
This is what despair feels like-
now here is how I dragged myself out of it.
In order to tell that story I had to stop protecting myself from the voice of my ex or that mean girl in junior high and be honest about everything I have always kept hidden.
I'm publishing all of my secrets online-in a form that will be easy to download by every potential employer or Match.com date I will ever meet.
"What would happen if you stopped pretending and let the world see who you really are?" My Dad wrote to me in the last letter he sent to me before he died.
Everything in my life stopped to write this book. Every relationship I have has been ground in it's teeth-no matter how cold my feet are at this moment I have to publish it. There's no other choice now.
Also-a couple of months ago my dead father's ghost reminded me not to take myself so fucking seriously.
I think it's going to be like skydiving-the anticipation is horrible but once you jump you are free from fear.
This is the part of the story where I publish the first chapter of the most awesome book you have ever read and once you get to the end of this excerpt you will be in a state of panic, wandering around your living room wondering when I am going to publish the rest of it already because doing anything other than finishing that girl's book seems so boring and stupid now- you're welcome.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beauty Tips for the Bereaved
Part One
Pearline
It could have been any day. I chose a Tuesday. I had forgotten my lunch and the cafeteria was serving Sheppard's pie. I downed a bottle of Advil instead, just to see what would happen. After experiencing no ill effects, I decided to go for a walk. I left the high school grounds, searching for peace, something that would make the pain that was rising in me recede. Not finding it, I continued to walk, across town, through yards, over fences, across railroad tracks. I never felt tired, I never felt whole. By the time I walked through the front door I knew what I had to do. My mother was so angry she couldn’t speak for a minute.
"What is wrong with you?"
I shrugged. "I wish I knew."
“Go to your room.”
Once the door was shut I pulled out a Ziploc bag full of stolen codeine, a half empty bottle of stolen Jack Daniel's and a handful of Tylenol just to be thorough.
As I lifted the handful of pills to my mouth and swallowed them with burning gulps of whiskey an overwhelming sense of peace settled over me. I picked up an X-acto knife from my craft table and drew slow hot circles into my wrists, deeper each way around, watching the red blood bead and stream. It was so pretty; I wished that I could replicate that color in oil paint.
I felt a moment of deep sadness for my Granny Pearl, then let it go.
"See you soon" I had said the last time I hugged her goodbye.
Now I am alone.
The decision to commit suicide doesn't arise solely from a place of madness. It's deliberate. It's calculated. Perhaps you begin to notice that each second ticking by feels like a slow weight, your heartbeat sending signals of agony to your brain. It isn't just that you decide the future won't be any better, it's that the present has become so unbearable you cannot stand another second of it. You see no avenue of deliverance but death, so you take what is available to you.
People who have never experienced clinical depression are blind to this logic.
"If you are so depressed, why not run away? Why not hitchhike to Borneo and help some orphans or hop a greyhound and start a new life? Why choose to die?"
The explanation is simple. You can't escape your own chemical stew. You can't just walk away from your own mind, which is so very sad and sick. Sometimes the only way to stop the pain is the sleep of an overdose, a flying jump from a building, releasing your blood to fall into a puddle on the floor.
"You have to tell yourself a new story" My father had said on the phone a few days before. "This is your movie, kid. You decide if it's going to be a comedy or a tragedy."
"I guess I'm not a very strong person," I thought. "I'm sorry, Dad."
I stood up, clicked out the lamp and crawled into bed. I wasn't used to drinking so much so quickly and it filled me with euphoria.
"I should have written a note," I thought. "Something clever Dr. Tyler could have read aloud at the assembly."
I couldn't think of anything. I could barely keep my eyes open. My arms and legs were rubber. At the last minute I grabbed an orange felt tip pen and wrote-
"I should never have switched from scotch to martinis" and dropped both pen and note to the floor.
"There," I thought."It's not original, but Erica will get it."
I closed my eyes then, slipping one last time into my earliest memory. It had always come to me as a dream that dissipated, shy as smoke, with the smell of bacon and coffee coming under the crack in the door each morning.
I stand between my mother and father in an endless, moving field of West Texas grass, stretching my arms up to grasp their hands. I am little. As the sun sets in front of us it grows larger and brighter as it nears the horizon until it fills the whole sky. Suddenly it drops and lands in front of us with a heavy thud that I can feel in my teeth. With growing wonder, all three of us run toward it. It is unbearably bright. I shut my eyes but I can still see its orange light through my eyelids.
“It’s a dying star.” My father whispers to me as he holds me on one side and my mother on the other, shielding us from the light. Somehow I knew then that if I opened my eyes they would both disappear with the light, leaving me small and alone, the wind moving through grass as grey and empty as the sea.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I killed my first rattlesnake when I was six years old. I was playing in our front yard when I heard the sound. In West Texas, even very small children know that sound, like seed husks in a dry bag. Venomous reptiles lie beneath rocks, curled up in old flowerpots, behind rusty sheet metal. They seek cool wet places to wait out the sun. Living creatures scatter into holes and crevices during the day to escape it, and you learn from the time you start walking not to venture into small, dark places. Sticking your hand underneath a pile of boards could mean a quick encounter with a nest of black widow spiders or a sleeping rattler. People and animals move slowly, the air so hot and bright it’s painful just to breathe it.
I had been sitting in the dry grass in front of the house braiding my dolls hair and waiting to hear the sound of my mother's tires crunching up the gravel road.
"Mommy is baking Teddy Bear Bread when she gets back," I whispered to my doll, who didn't respond. The cicadas buzzed at a chainsaw pitch, falling silent then catching their song again as they would all day from spring to fall. One of the dogs began to bark and soon all of them were jumping against the fence behind me and growling.
"That squirrel must be back," I thought.
Then suddenly the animal and insect symphonies cycled into a moment of perfect silence. I heard a rattle shaking somewhere near my left foot. I resisted the urge to jump up and run, took a deep breath and scanned the grass around me.
“You hear that sound you stop,” I remembered my father's voice. “Find out where it’s coming from and back away. If you can’t get away then look for a stick or a rake to use against it.”
In my Dad's opinion the best education you could give a child was Wilderness Survival Training. I could build three different types of shelter and peel a cactus for drinking water before I could read.
Scanning the high grass I saw it curled up around a water spigot that stuck straight out of the concrete foundation of the house. I could feel the snake looking at me, tense, its rattle moving too fast for me to see. I backed away slowly as I'd been told to do, my legs made of fear, and ran to tell my Dad.
I found him splitting firewood behind the still. As soon as he saw my face he began to move with the deliberate calm of authority in the presence of danger. I ran straight into him, struggling to get the words out through my sobs. He held my shoulders tight.
"Breathe," he said, staring into my eyes. "Be still and breathe."
After a few seconds passed I told him about the snake. He nodded once and stood up, pulling his long brown hair back into a ponytail. I watched him walk over to the shed and back with the garden hoe.
I shook my head as he handed me the long-handled rake.
"You're going to take care of this one." he said.
I backed up, preparing to run into the neighbors cornfield that stretched to my right across the dirt road. He caught my shoulders and kneeled in front of me, holding me in place. He continued to focus his eyes straight into mine.
"Listen to me," he said firmly. "You feel afraid."
I nodded. He let go of my shoulders so I could wipe a line of snot on each sleeve. We were still for a long minute in the sun, kneeling man in front of a small child; one of my braids had come loose and blew every which way in the wind. I could see a hawk draw a slow circle in the flat, cloudless sky.
"You're right to be afraid." he said again. "That snake is real. You have to be a warrior. I don't mean you always have to fight, but you have to conquer your fear. Move through it with open hands but hold your strength inside you like a fist."
I understood. I always did, even when everyone else raised their eyebrows. My dad always talked this way. I made a tight fist with my left hand as he had shown me to do when I was afraid, closing my eyes and gathering strength as I raised it in the air.
"Good Girl. Are you ready?"
I nodded "yes" grasped his hand and walked back to the water spigot.
The snake was still there. As it heard our approach the rattle began it's furious stacatto warning again. I froze.
"It's just a baby, kiddo!" he laughed, his eyes still serious."You can take of it. No problem."
He handed me the flat-bladed hoe and moved to stand directly behind me, his fingers curled around the handle above mine. I held my weapon tight, took a deep breath and raised it high in the sun, bringing it down hard as close to the snake as I could. At the last second I closed my eyes.
I felt blade click into spine and heard the bell of its contact with the stones underneath. When I opened my eyes I saw a baby rattlesnake leaking a thin stream of blood. Its belly was pale and soft and twisted up in a curlicue. It smelled like rotten garbage. Dizziness buzzed through my limbs like lightning. I began to laugh, my body on fire with adrenaline as I jumped up and down with my father.
"You did it!" he yelled, grinning as he caught me up in his arms and spun me in circles. "Don't tell your mother" he said as he put me down.
I stole another glance at the dead snake. All of a sudden I felt sorry for it.
“Let’s bury it” We dug a hole in that same garden where I had pressed seeds into the damp earth and watched them grow into flowers and sweet peas and mint that wafted through my window at night. I had planted gumdrops and Reese’s Pieces and spit slivers of my own fingernails into the earth hoping to see a tall vine bearing hard little crescents to chew on. I wondered if the snake would grow baby snake plants. In my mind’s eye I could see tiny rattles hanging like mustang grapes at the end of a long vine.
-----------------------------------------------
I woke up to the sound of my father singing in the kitchen. With my feet I searched the floor beside the bed for my bunny slippers and padded silently down the hall in the dark to find out what was going on. As I neared the yellow light of the kitchen I saw my father waving a knife and moving his lips to the Grateful Dead coming from the tape deck on the windowsill. His friend Rick stood over a body wrapped in garbage bags on the long kitchen table. I squinted, but couldn't make out who it was. Clenching a cigarette in his teeth, Rick gripped and pulled at the weight of a shoulder as my Dad sliced open the belly, lifting a handful of slick guts into the smoky air. The head turned towards me, eyed me briefly and lolled back into a shoulder. Blood filled up the sink and piles of glistening parts lay on the dirty linoleum. I started to cry.
“Hey kid, come over here! I'll teach you how to skin a deer” He waved me closer with his knife. I shook my head and backed out of the kitchen towards the porch, where I knew my mother would be smoking a Virginia Slim in the dark. Instead, through the screens I saw her standing in the cornfield looking up at the sky. I walked out and through the rows to stand next to her, breathing in the apple scent of her waist length hair.
" I wish he would just do that in the barn" she said and sat down on her knees next to me, cupping both of her hands around one of mine. "It's going to take me a whole day to get the kitchen clean again."
"Soon the corn will be higher than you and we will have to find another place to watch the moon." she brushed a curl of my hair behind my ear with her index finger.
When a periodic breeze rippled through the field its rustle drowned out the sing-song mating call of the toads that lived in the creek behind our house. It felt like hearing the landscape breathing in and out.
"My grandmother used to tell me a Cherokee story about a Rabbit who became so angry at his mother-in-law that he threw her up to the Moon and she stuck there. Can you see the Rabbit in the Moon?”
I stared up at the full moon, searching for the rabbit. My mother squeezed my hand absently, I knew that she was a thousand miles away. It had always been that way. Even when she smiled the sadness played out in her eyes, I felt it in my mother from the crib, even before I could speak.
"I see it," I lied.
I studied them, cataloguing every detail I could pick up from stray conversations, mapping the landscape of their history. I observed the inner workings of my parents with the same intense hyper focused attention I used to apart the clocks and toasters that my Dad brought home from his scavenging trips at the local dump. If there was something that didn't make sense I couldn't stop turning it around in my mind until I figured out the answer.
"What if I got eaten by a bear?" I wondered, rearranging my pillow and unable to sleep."How would my soul get out of its stomach to go to Heaven?"
and
"What, exactly, is gravy?"
and
"Do my parents love each other?"
They met in the cafeteria of the Tarrant County Junior College. My mother noticed a young man sitting at a round table passing out brochures to recruit volunteers to work at Our House, the drug treatment center he ran down the street.
"He had that long brown hair and beard- he looked just like Jesus," my mother told me later.
"I was doing dry runs on impregnating the whole world back then," my Dad said.
The man who would be my father handed her a pen, and she signed up.
Half of Fort Worth filled up the churches every Sunday morning, while the other side slept off another bender. My mother's people sinned, my father's lived and breathed the Word of God. Although her tiny body was stunted from polio, his mother beat him regularly from her wheelchair with her cane and promised a much worse punishment from the Devil if he didn’t behave. His father, who would die of rheumatoid arthritis when my Dad was a teenager, let his wife run the show as long as she turned a blind eye to his Saturday afternoon cockfights and the little flask he kept in his trouser pocket. As my dad rubbed liniment into the legs of his handicapped parents, his mother read from the Bible and spoke in tongues. Physically she suffered, trapped in her strange, twisted body. Spiritually she soared as she awaited the rapture.
"Be prepared at all times for the End of Days," she had told me the previous Christmas."It's coming, I tell you what. The Lord is going to judge us all."
When he turned sixteen my dad began to rebel against his mother and her oppressive religion. He skipped prayer meetings to smoke reefer with his friend Rick. The longer his hair grew, the lower his grades dropped and the more belligerent he became. He was already beyond her control, she just didn't know it yet.
"High school is a drag. I hated it." He told me on the last Christmas Eve I would spend with him for seven years "I don't know how you stand it."
When his school participated in a series of nationwide intelligence tests administered by the Navy, my dad filled out the answers to hundreds of questions every fall without ever being told what the tests were for. One day in the spring of his senior year the meanest teacher in school called him out of class.
“ His name was Odie Adar, if you can imagine. He had been a Marine. He was famous for sneaking up behind the boys with the longest hair and pulling it. He was a real bastard.”
Odie Adar told my dad to follow him to the parking lot. They got in his car. Odie drove him to a barber and forced him to get a crew cut. Back in his office, my dad sat fuming in his chair.
“ Why did you do that to me?”
“ You are wasting yourself.” The teacher said.
“ What you mean, man?”
"The results from all of those Navy tests finally came in. You scored in the 98th percentile. You're one of the smartest kids in this country."
My dad was embarrassed. He looked at the floor.
"What the Hell is wrong with you boy?" Odie Adar stood up and leaned across the desk towards my Dad
“ Keep your hair short and you can do anything you want. Anything.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Despite the pleas of Odie Adar, my dad grew his hair long again, and moved out. He drifted awhile, but when he pulled his VW van into downtown Austin and saw a naked man directing traffic in the middle of a four-way intersection he knew he was home.
He got a job as a park ranger at the Mount Bonnell nature preserve by the lake. One afternoon he picked up a book he saw laying face down in the mud and began to read. It was 1984 by George Orwell.
The story kicked off rockets of paranoia somewhere deep in his brain, it’s circuits already wired long ago for such a revelation. Everything clicked into place, and he went home and packed warm clothes, a little food, a sleeping bag and a map. His plan to survive the end of the world was to walk to Mexico.
"You don't speak Spanish" I will tell him years later as I hold his hand and wait for the Hospice nurse to arrive with his pain pills. He will cough, struggle for a long time to clear his throat and then continue.
"I thought it would be safer there, less infrastructure. I'd just finished reading 1984. Seemed like it would take Mexico a little longer to get organized enough to pull off a fascist police state"
He traveled for three days, avoiding the highway for country roads and following dry creek beds. On the third night it froze. His feet began to crunch on frosty grass; he could see his breath clouding in front of him as he walked. His pack was heavy and he was tired. He made his way to the interstate, intending to hitch a ride.
When a car pulled up he ran to it, dismayed to discover that it was a cop.
“ Shit,” he thought.” I’m going to jail.”
The policeman told him to get in so he did. They drove for a few miles in silence, finally pulling into an elementary school parking lot. It was the middle of the night. No one was around.
“ Come with me.”
My dad followed the cop; dread growing stronger with every step. He was led to the boy’s bathroom. The cop pulled the door open.
“Get in there.”
He did as he was told. He walked in, dropped his pack and turned around to face the policeman.
“Look,” the cop said,” This ain’t much, but it’s awful cold out there. You could die. Block the door and get some sleep.”
“ Thank you.” My dad bleated, eyes blinking back tears.
“ It’s nothing. I’ll drive by every hour or so. You won’t hear me, but you’ll know I’m here if you need me. Try to get out before the kids come in the morning.”
“ I will.” He slept curled up on the cement tiles, blocking the door with his body.
His enthusiasm was waning for walking to Mexico when he woke up in the morning so he decided to let fate decide.
“ I will get in the next car that stops,” he thought as he walked” If it’s heading North, I will go home to Fort Worth. If it’s South, I’ll keep heading to Mexico.”
An hour later, a car stopped for his outstretched thumb. It was going north.
Back in Fort Worth my dad sweet-talked his way into a job running a drug crisis center called Our House. Anyone in trouble could knock on the door of the rambling two story house and be taken in, no questions asked.
“ We never wrote down anyone’s name. The police were always hassling us about our records, but we wouldn’t do it. In three years, not once.” Try to stay off the grid if you can.
Everyone who came in had to deposit their drugs into a stolen mailbox that was bolted to the floor of the big front room. The police came once a month to take its contents, baggies of multi-colored pills and vials-always noting that somehow there was never any marijuana inside the mailbox.
“ People came by, they wanted to blow their brains out, they needed to hide from the cops, whatever. We listened to them, played music, made it safe for them. Then they went on their way.”
If my father had followed the advice of his guidance counselor and kept his hair short, I believe I would never have been born. My mother had just converted the entire Diamond Hill football team to the Church of Christ. They held prayer meetings before each game and she was on fire to save some more souls. A treatment center would be full of people who were spiritually lost, and they might be more receptive to hearing the Lord's message if they were coming down from a bad trip. She signed up to volunteer to save a few souls, but she followed my Dad back to Our House for stir fry because of his waist length honey brown hair.
My Dad had a way with the ladies.
“ I was always trying to make it with her but nothing ever happened.” He will tell me one day, reaching his shaking hand out to hold mine. I will be sitting on the edge of a hospital bed trying to memorize him, capture as much of him as I can to carry with me. ”I remember her sitting across from me one night by a campfire, she looked like Joan Baez-waist length black hair, those cheekbones she got from the Cherokee side-you got those." He will gesture, as if to touch them, but he is too weak.
"I think it's the only trait I got from her" I will tell him, as I place my hand on top of his thin grey hair "That and the writing."
"That's because you are both excellent liars" he will smile, then begin to cough again.
When she found out she was pregnant, despite my fathers objection to involving the Man in his love life, they got married and moved to a one room cottage in the country. Tired of struggling with the police and weary of fixing people only to see them come back broken, he would work a vegetable garden instead. His uncle owned the land and agreed to let them live there for a while as long as he didn't have to pay for any repairs.
My Dad was sitting on the front porch on his last day at Our House watching the sun go down when a woman jumped in front of a bus across the street from him. It swerved and missed her. She continued to stand there, waiting for the next one.
“ Oh Shit.” he thought and called out casually “Ma’m? I just made a big pot of coffee in here and it’s too much for me. I wonder if you’d come over here and help me drink it.”
She turned slowly and focused on him saying nothing.
“ Do you take cream and sugar?” He yelled.
She nodded, made her way onto the porch and sat down. When she reached for the coffee cup he saw the blood running down her fingertips, pooling into the cracks of the wood.
When I think about my dad trying to exorcise such terrible despair from the strangers who blew into his life, I wonder if it prepared him for what would come. When his daughter would begin an education in madness and he would begin his in grief. And nothing he could think up to say would make any difference at all.
-----------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
The Mating Habits of the Southwestern Middle Aged North American Divorced Male
Due to drastic changes in habitat, diet, tribal customs and migratory habits; the mating rituals of the Western Middle-aged, Upper-Middle Class Divorced Male have changed dramatically in recent decades.
Quick to adapt to abrupt shifts in their environment, the American male has been challenged by a sudden, confusing epidemic of role reversal among its sexually mature breeding population. When the female mysteriously decided to begin making trips out into the world to bring home grubs of her own, she also began to expect him to spend an equal amount of time in the nest taking care of their young
"Since when did this become my job?" he thinks, as he listens to the incessant, high pitched chirping day and night day and night, knowing his father would have been down at the pub watching the game after a long day of digging for worms.
Instead of waiting meekly at home for the male to return, the female demands to be an equal partner, pecking him with merciless violence until he agrees to stay in the nest every Friday night so she can go to her Book Club. She is fearless now, she can fly off at any moment and still survive. It terrifies him.
Still, behind its tough, emotionless exterior-the American male is one of the most sensitive, loyal, and idealistic of Mother Natures creatures. He cheerfully adapts to whatever circumstances his environment throws at him. When he is laid off from from the anthill due to cutbacks in larvae production, he swallows his pride and stays home with the young while the female goes out to happy hour with her boss.
The male accepts his new, diminished role; allowing the female to direct how the nest is built, his manner of dress, his schedule, and the correct way to fold all of the tiny, useless matching purple towels in the guest bathroom. In exchange-he receives sporadic sexual access and experiences a deeper bond with his offspring, since he is now required to spend more time and resources ensuring their survival than before. Therefore, when the female comes home, announces she is leaving him for her boss, kicks him out of the nest and limits his access to the kids-he is just that more bitter when he has to bring half of the worms he scavenged to the nest every two weeks and give them to his former mate.
"Oh hey Roger" he says awkwardly. "Is Joanna here?" and waits at the door as his wifes old boss turns around to look for her in the back of the nest. She hops out wrapped in a little towel and cocks her head at him, feathers still wet from her bath.
"For God's sake Joanna" he chirps in a low tone of voice "The kids are right over there watching that chrysalis open. Put some clothes on."
And she raises all of her feathers and screeches and flaps her wings in his face so he takes off, You get to deal with that now, he mentally tells Roger. Good Luck, buddy!
And when he finally gets back to his tiny, barely furnished nest on the edge of the forest-the only place he can afford to live now-he thinks "I am never making that mistake again. From now on I'm a free bird."
Which is why we are now seeing an explosion in population numbers of Permanently Single Upper Middle Class, Middle Aged North American Males- which has led to an equally large number of Cynical, Lonely Middle-Aged North American Females. The balance has been disrupted, the old rules don't apply anymore and the creatures have become confused-unsure of what they want and afraid-sending pictures of their genitals to the opposite sex via text message.
Presented with an ever increasing number of options for mates online, both male and female become highly critical and easily dissatisfied. They pair bond within weeks and lose interest in each other just as quickly. Their selection of available partners is suddenly not constrained by proximity. There is no scarcity of females to compete over. Without even leaving their nests they can carry on three different virtual courtship rituals at once via text while the chicks watch The Butterfly Channel in the other room.
Courtship feeding, a universal behavior observed in populations in every habitat since the divorced male was discovered by Joanna Kramer in 1979, have also been disrupted by the change in habitat. Instead of currying favor with his potential mate by presenting her with offerings of food, sweets or long pieces of glittering string to feather her nest-he will sit passively when she reaches into her purse at the end of the meal-a universal gesture the female developed to communicate that she is capable of obtaining her own delicious meal of insects and grubs. Instead of pushing her credit card away and insisting that she accept his gesture -"Here, let me take care of this. I am capable of providing you with extra nourishment during the winter- if you will allow me to fertilize your egg later after a few glasses wine."-he allows her to split the bill- which confuses her.
"What is this all about?" she wonders "These motherfuckers used to swoop in from all over the forest and fight over which one got to hand me a cutworm. What happened?"
The male, reluctant to invest any resources into a female again, is emboldened by the sudden realization that-even though they are still capable of producing offspring-the North American female enjoys less power than her younger counterparts after she has already hatched a few chicks from a previous mate. It requires just a fraction of the effort he was required to spend before to get invited back to her nest.
He doesn't even have to go out to the telephone wire every night and risk being rejected. He doesn't have to work at receiving his prize at all, in fact.
Although it's not readily apparent to the untrained observer, the male is also suffering from the sudden disruption of the rules. Mating without challenge, initiating contact without risk and receiving sexual access without exerting any effort further atrophies his already diminished masculinity. What we obtain through risk and struggle is valued ten times over that which is handed to us casually.
Because there is no scarcity of mates, they all begin to seem alike. They are easy to meet and easier to discard in search for the next one- a process that becomes more similar to commerce than romance as both males and females sip tiny glasses of wine while they check their phones surreptitiously at dinner, always looking for a better deal.
Monday, November 19, 2012
White Woman seeks Stock Car Driver for a Ride out of the Apocalypse
I can hear a Bob Wills song as we pull into the wide gravel parking lot.
"Get it off of me!" I try to pull it off me but its claws are stuck like burrs in my dress "It's doing that creepy kneading/nursing thing. It makes me uncomfortable."
"Here Mabel" she croons, and deposits it into the backseat.
"Why is the cat in the car again?" I have just now thought to ask.
"Long story" she says. I've found it's best not to ask too many questions so I just nod and we go inside. The band is good but no one is dancing. We get our drinks and sit down.
"Can I ask you a question?" Coco pops a cherry into her mouth and points a tiny hot pink sword at me. I nod to the beat of the music. My sunglasses are still on. So what?
"When did you stop dancing?"
I frown. "I don't know. What the fuck happened to me man?"
"Go ask one of those cowboys over there" she nudges me.
I want to-
They will say no and you will feel stupid, no one wants to dance with you
"Fuck this. I used to be the who jumped out and danced by myself until everyone else joined in" I grab a cowboy, he does not say No.
I am twirled around until I am spinning, breathless, laughing, beautiful by the time the song ends. Then I ask another, and another-borrowing the old men from their wives and sweet talking the young ones into giving it a try.
As the bar closes we walk past two guys with dreadlocks sitting in plastic lawn chairs by the fence. One of them nods towards us in greeting and passes a joint to his buddy.
As we put on our seatbelts I hear him through the open window -
"Look. She got a cat in the car."
"No, man" his friend says "It is not possible."
"Yah tis! Look!" he stands a little pointing.
"White women" he slaps his knee "They crazy, man!"
-----------------------------------------------------
I just found out that this Nascar race for rich people called Formula One is being held just outside of Austin this week. Apparently people have been talking about this since the track was built for it, which was a while ago, but since I don't watch TV and I only dimly pay attention to your Facebook posts I didn't know about it until 100,000 people with vaguely European accents and sporty leather jackets arrived in town.
Question- "Why is it taking me an hour to travel three blocks down Lamar street?
Answer- "A whole bunch of people from Monaco need to pick up one of the many products carried by Whole Foods Market that contain acai berries for their hangovers."
Oh.
Okay.
Coco called to warn me on Wednesday. I was sick in bed, passing in and out of a feverish delirium.
"You better get over here" she warned. "I've stocked up on food and water. They say the city is going to run out."
"I'm sick." I told her "I can't move."
"I have cable"
That was all she had to say.
I don't watch TV anymore because I have other stuff I like to do but when I am sick it becomes addictive, like sucking on a crack rock made out of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aire.
The next day during the Terminator marathon she kept looking at her phone.
"Everyone is posting on Facebook that it's like a war zone out there!" she says.
I am going to OWN these people when the Apocalypse comes, I think.
"OMG traffic sucks, yall! It's a war zone!" posts Tiffany Rasberry in her status update bar as she "checks in" at 6th and Lamar.
I will be like a God to you, Tiffany. I realize suddenly. When it is a real war zone out there I will show you how to make a Molotov cocktail and lead all 57 of our mutual Facebook friends out of a ruined city like La Femme Nikita. In return your family will pay tribute to me as your leader for several generations to come.
The only thing I know about Nascar is that they wear a lot
of vests that zip up the front and all of my relatives, who are also fond of vests, seem to
really enjoy it. The only thing I know about Formula One is that a fleet of
dilettantes follow it around like the
white people with dreadlocks do with that band Phish and someone said the
engines are made like fighter jets with shark fins. Which makes me imagine them as
the Jetsons, zipping around the globe in
their personal aviation devices to watch cars drive around a track fast enough
to break the sound barrier, and I decide that I would go to that party if I was
invited.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I have been writing since 9 this morning. It's two thirty
in the morning now. I am finishing my book.
I'm 37 years old. I am a single mother who lives in a trailer. I don't
know where the rent is going to come from, but I am finishing my book.
I may, or may not, have gone crazy; either way I am
finishing my book.
Because I know something.
At midnight I go down Congress to the Continental Club and
get a tequila shot. A swing band is playing so I make all the cowboys dance
with me for an hour before I go back home to write. A young man with a cheerful
smile and jaunty newsboy cap named Dash tells me as we dance that he is one of those guys that run out to the car and change out the tires real quick during the Formula One races.
"That's your whole job?" I ask "And you fly around the world all year doing it?"
He nods.
How do these people get all these cool jobs?
Later he stands outside with me for a smoke.
"Tell me some crazy story about going around the world
with a circus like that" I command.
"Nah, I got a crazy story for you" he says,
grinning at me.
( Leprachaun I always think, then feel bad. Is that racism? Can I say the thing about 'Me Lucky Charms?' Or is that ethnocentric? I don't know)
"Tell me Lucky!" I cheer.
"When I was twenty two I got into an accident doing
wheelies on me motorbike and broke me back. The doctors said I wouldn't walk
again and look a' me now!" He twirls a little, like an adorable
chimneysweep.
"Wow" I say, and we catch each others eyes. "You knew from the minute they told you that
they were wrong? You knew you would recover."
"I never doubted it for a second" he says in
recognition.
"Now you're country dancing with a pretty girl in
Austin, Texas" I tell him, and he laughs.
"I just knew it. I knew I would walk again." he repeats.
"Yes" I smile as I leave him to go home and write
"I know what you mean."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
