In Pennsylvania, where my life began (this time around), there is a great lake, whose sandy beaches are shallow with only the gentelest slope, that you wander far from the shore, yet only knee deep. Far is relative, though, for here on the coast of la pacifica, one could go several times over the same distance and be only knee deep, if not for the constant crashing and physical manifestation of the effect that the moon has on our seas. Distance is relative, too, as space and time. When I was six, it seemed a very long way from the blankets and suntan lotion, and coolers with soda and snacks. Now, now it is not so very far, but farther by a goodly distance than one finds in any of the lakes in the Pacific Northwest. Lakes here drop steeply to deeper depths. One doesn't casually enter most bodies of water here, taking their time, toes squishing in sand, sun warm, a leisurely stroll to wet. No, here, one foot can often be the difference between stepping off and being soaked to the top of your noggin, and standing on practically dry land. If one is going to swim, one simply jumps in and swims! 'Tis my practice anyway, in life, and in the dog days of summer. (Though perhaps I am growing to better appreciate the beauty of a gracefully smooth entrance.)

There are jelly and juice grapes owned by the Welches which grow everywhere, and after harvest, they rot in the sun in great piles; the scent of rotting grape carcass is pungent and inescapable, as it ferments into what will never become wine. There is a penninsula I used to visit, where the deer congregate in unreasonable numbers, and it has always been one of my favorite spots on earth. When standing with your feet in the water, you can look out over the water and see Canada. Huge ships carry cargos and toot their horns, and the deer eat berries from the bushes behind.

There are cornfields there, for miles and miles. My great grandfather owned the first farmstead ever established in what is now Pittsburgh. It was also the last standing farm in Pittsburgh, as my family was last to sell to the onslaught of city development. They took up residence on a new farm he had purchased, near Penn State Univeristy. I never met my great grandfather, because he died before I was born. In fact, he died before my mother was born, even. It was an accident in which he was crushed by a piece of farm equipment, an event that would forever alter the course of his current, and future offsprings' lives. My great Uncle Bob and Murray (whom I call Uncle Moo) carried a bit of guilt about them over their father's death, and they never did leave that farm, not even after their mother passed on, and in fact, they live there to this day. Uncle Moo had many agricultural papers published in his time, and developed, utilized, and introduced no-till farming.

When I was younger, I remember hay rides, and pig pens, and the cows milk, still warm. My great grandmother had a sweet tooth always, and so there was honey (on this she was firm, no one had the authority to limit my honey consumption) to go with my breakfast. Oatmeal and honey (as much as I wanted!) and real milk were a heavenly treat, fit more for dessert than breakfast, to me.

Once my great grandmother was quoted in the newspaper regarding her one hundred and first quilt as having said, "I prefer quilting to eating." I own one of her quilts, though I dare not get it out with all the animals about. I've made several quilts, none of which I feel are any better than mediocre. I will have to do a lot more quilting in my lifetime. It is a talent I wish to more firmly possess. My great grandmother lived to be 98. Perhaps I will have time to make 101 quilts in my lifetime, too, though on days like today I wonder where I will ever manage to find the time. My grandmother lived to be 89, but I think it was the loss of my grandfather that ended her sooner, more than failing health. When he left, she left...and neither came back, though she was still there, just a shell of the person she had been. 

My grandmother had become a nurse when my grandfather went off to the war. She was quite possibly the kindest and most patient  woman this world has ever harbored, and in twenty years I never saw her angry, not once. My grandfather was a chemist. When he came home from the war, he sold agricultural chemical products. He was successful. They had two children eight years apart. I spent a lot of time at their house, in spurts, until I was in my 20's. None of the other 3 grandchildren ever did.

My grandparents were very influencial in my life, and it is sad to me that theirs ended just as I was growing old enough to form adult relationships with them, understand them and appreciate them. Such is the way with the cycles of life. Not really fair, that we've so little time to learn from those who are the makings of us. I've always believed that we are more our ancestors than we have any idea of--if you are a rebel, chances are it's come right down the line to you, and in their own ways, your ancestors were rebels in their own days. Family ties are important to me, and are my deepest obligation. Family reunions are still held at the farm.

It was on this farm, where my mother was living and going to school, that she met my father. And it was deep in the not tilled cornfields on a late spring eve, in a house-sized stone building with arched paneless windows, that I was conceived. But that is the story of my beginning, not of me, not that they are separated all that easily, just another piece of my identity...

Some days, I play with fire. Hot, angry, flames, dancing the lines between toasty and burnt. Some days I drive too fast on the ice, feeling the adrenaline coarse through my veins... But not yesterday. Yesterday was a needle day...

Razor sharp sleeves of silvery cold metal breaking into the fiber of me, permanently etching dark vines across me, piercing me, decorating me, poking me, pinching me, coloring me, prodding me, sticking in me, and leaving me--as always--aching for more.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in... and there, baby, there. (Oh yessssss, there!)

Gushing, hot and sticky and coalescing erotic exotica... And You, and that space where I'm neither here nor there. Needles. Ink. Blood play for the new millenia; the adventurous, the trusting, permanent adornment for marking the torn... I am melted, a rose with no thorn, drifting, a flower with no root, merely a petal on the wind, a hinted at secret carried in poetic motion on the rise. A whisper loud enough for the whole world to feel the vibration, singing my giving of self unto you...m'lord, singing of being yours and yours alone.

So it begins again, and so shall it be. I would not undo what could need to have been. Do what you will with my mind and my flesh. Push me and mark me, poke me and watch me bleed, touch me and stroke me and guide me too deep--hold me close, don't let me go, nooooo, pull me back to your reality, I'm grasping and searching and kind of dizzy. The prick of a needle the buzz of a gun, I so easily see, this is merely the begining of a continued journey. Every inch of broken skin is the song you leave on me, the marks of your tribe, you imprint upon me, and while part of me wonders what I'm thinking, the rest of me falls into step, and knows precisely the path to follow, because your hand is there for me, if I will but grasp it and believe. This time I don't intend to let go. Does it show?

(I never really did, you know...)

 

 

It's been a long week. Everyone else seems happier about me getting my new job than I am. I just can't get excited about it. I've been forced into a system that I hate and disagree with. I don't think it's good for me. I know I make my choices to do it, because the pressure from not doing it is too much to bear. So... I will do another good job of doing my best at another not-so-good job in a long series of not-so-good jobs, and try not to bitch about it too much, until finally I can't take it and the pendulum will swing and I'll quit it and then get faced with more pressure to find another new job. Wonder why I'm not thrilled... Not that the job is bad, it isn't. I'm constantly busy; the only pressure I really feel is from my own self.

 

 

Wise people keep telling me to settle down and ride with the flow of life, stop trying to swim against the currents of the universe. I can't seem to relent to the current, yet it does indeed pull me along as it wishes, heedless of mine. I guess that's the point. I'm drowning in the struggle of it, and yet, I'm sailing in its highs. Perhaps I am right where I am suppose to be, I'm simply supposed to be ...lost...

 

The phone rang and when caller id told me it was you, my heart leapt. I was glad to hear from you, did you hear it in my hello? How many days has it been? But your voice didn't come close to matching my enthusiasm, did it? Did you call me out of some sort of obligation? You sounded like you were doing a duty, a chore. Almost as if I was somehow not who you intended to speak with. Or maybe it was more as if you had something you held back from saying? I think that's it, but I heard you saying it anyhow.

Perhaps you wanted some other me to answer in my stead... Often that's how I feel lately. That you wish I were someone I used to be, or someone you had imagined me to be, the girl you had envisioned me to be, or any other me, or any other someone else, than that which I really am inside of me. The me I am doesn't seem to be the me you want; you want the unreachable, the impossible, the swallowed and gone, the never born. For so long all I've wanted is you to simply want me.

Fanciful dreams layered on childish hopes of insubstancial cobweby maybies.

The let down in your voice when I remind you that I am just me is enough to make me ache so deeply. I cry for us, I mourn for the discarded us, the lost along the way of us. The lump in my throat burns for the breaking of us. You said to take care of myself, and so I will. Maybe not the way you would have had me do so, but in the best way I know how. Triumph, perserverance, and mostly with mind to only having this one time around through my life, and making the most of it any way that I can, any way that I have to.

So hey, you take care of yourself too, eh? I loved you the best way I knew how, if that's of any comfort, just now. I will always be tangled up in your blue, but, I see you walking away, and all I have left in me is a wave of my fingertips, while I bite back my tears (as well as my fears). We may drift apart, till we no longer overlap, but pieces of you will always live inside my heart. Perhaps we'll meet again someday on the avenue. Till then, fare well, you.

inside, my center is adrift, gently swaying through warm and sticky vertigo, and i feel as though i am about to fall, my heart fluttering

i know this place, i've been here before, challenged it, and lost.. there are old debts to be settled here, but no one keeps score, no one at all.

i am too dizzy as i catch a breath of starkly cold air, shocking me into awake

something opposite, sinking, floating, drowining? deep and shallow, hot, reminding me of catching a breath of your air, moist and warm, breathed into me and sucked back away; twilight's summit waiting for another day

my back arches, and i grip tighter, fingernails biting into the flesh of my palm, my jaw clenched tight, my eyes open but unseeing, or squeezed tightly shut: dreams dancing inside my lids?

Lifting, surging, bouncing, and every muscle tightens; is it dark, or too bright to see?   

water flows over me, roaring, i can't hear through it, i can't think through it, can't feel through it, can't breath through it, can only be one with it, as i am one with you, verbrating through me and i can think of nothing at all

i'm flying, soaring, sailing; the slightest shift declaring profound alterations in course, heart pounding, sliding, forcing the way through; cutting, slicing, tearing every ounce of me into free (or into you?)

frigid atmosphere, isolating and singular, forces dependence or competency? drives me on hard, faster, searching for the lighted path, racing the mountainside, regardless of winter's wrath

then there is you, warmly enclosing me, one with me, seeing for me, breathing for me, touching me and feeling for me, guiding me, part of me

swirls of snoflakes dance the skies with me, encompassing me, chilling me from my nose to my toes, stirring me into awake, into aware

and then you are there, fire, flame, heat, mine for a moment, i almost won this round, hazy visions of victory... were you really ever there, 

or was it just me?