My Empire of Dirt

When words and blood are not enough to expunge the torment, there’s a place I go where so much pain feels normal. I found there today a man who had outlived all of his children and his wife. He died over 100 years before I was born, but I cried for him. To have lived forty years after so much that you loved had gone. . . and now to have only this, a forgotten, weather-beaten stone as a testament to the kind of life that must have been.

Suddenly I didn’t feel the normalcy I had come in search of. How much greater must his pain have been when he stood in that exact spot in 1845 and buried his one-year-old daughter? Then two years later, his five-year-old son? Or his wife? Or the son who was struck by lightning just a few years later? Then what must he have felt when he stood in front of that stone as I was doing now, loving people so far beyond his reach? Lost to so much meaninglessness, struggling to overcome it.

I kept him with me as I searched for greater sadness and instead found quite the opposite. A woman’s dying words, expertly carved underneath her name: “If this is death, how sweet it is! It is such a joy to die at peace with this world.”

Stone. That’s all that we can hope to become.

There is no greater sadness than that. But I think maybe that’s the greatest struggle we have to overcome: to give it meaning. To build something greater than a cracked, ignored monument. Stone. Does that last forever?

Terrestrial peace. That’s all that we can hope to achieve.

The video above ran through my head for the rest of the day. There he is, surrounded by so much of everything a man could want, so much beauty, so many riches. And none of it matters to him. All that matters is the life he can’t live over, the hurt he can’t undo, and the regrets he can never rectify.

Nothing matters if you’re living a joyless life. Because you can struggle, and cry, and fight, and rationalize, and justify, and “just wait and see” for the rest of your life, and when the rest of your life is over, all that will exist of that life is a stone, overgrown and nondescript, tucked away in a corner of the world and forgotten by all who would have sought to know you. When staring death in the face, no one has ever regretted not having more misery in his life. Reality is as subjective as truth; both are what we make them. Don’t keep living the life you have – live the life you want. The first step is to decide what that is.

The Days Go Marching One by One

I have very few memories of childhood, especially before age nine, but the ones I have are vivid as daylight. My mother kept the sugar in the largest of five porcelain graduated canisters shaped like mushrooms. The second largest held flour. The middle one held old necklace chains, reading glasses, and other miscellaneous items that needed repairing. The second smallest was always stuffed with the bright pink packets of the artificial sweetener that my mother dumped into her coffee in pounds, back before saccharine caused cancer. The smallest was perpetually empty.

In the largest, the sugar mushroom, there lived a small bluish-green plastic teacup from the tea set that my mother played with as a small girl. I remember it whole and complete, but when I found the cup recently, now safely ensconced in the large Tupperware canister full of flour in the fridge, it was torn down the side, soft and pliable and irrevocably discolored. I felt myself frown at the state of disrepair in which I discovered this relic of my youth while a thousand fragmented memories tornadoed through my mind with startling clarity as I slid a finger along the tiny broken handle.

When I was a little girl, very few things delighted me more than feeding the colony of ants that lived underneath my grandmother’s flower box on our front porch. I remember doing this well into my teens but my mother says that I began around five or six. As she narrated, an image flooded my mind’s eye: a five year old version of myself, with lighter, platinum hair, the same chunky thighs and endless curiosity. She would have carefully maneuvered a brown steel chair away from the kitchen table and leveraged her entire body weight to shove it over to the counter that remains, to this day, covered with bright orange Formica. She would have awkwardly climbed onto the chair to bring herself to enough height to lean across the counter to reach for the largest mushroom canister and life the lid. Knowing better than to plunge a tiny, germy hand into the whole of the sugar, she would have artfully scooped up a heap of the stuff and poured the entire contents directly into her hand, most of it simply overflowing and landing back in the canister, germs and all. Then, she would drop the blue/green teacup and clench her chubby fingers around her prize as she jumped from the chair with more confidence than she should have and ran, trailing sugar from her eager fist, all the way out the door and to the flower box on the front porch.

From there, I filled in the images with real memories from the later years that I can recall. I would deposit the loot in a small pile near the bottom of the flower box and then lie on my stomach, prop my chin up on my hands, and wait. On the best days, the sun would drizzle down as a warm, buttery glow that would cast a cool shade over me as it set behind the house. The bobwhites would coo and I would think about my grandmother, who simultaneously taught me to braid my hair and imitate the bobwhite in one afternoon. The mild summers were clean and comfortable, leaving the air so weightless that nothing stirred. Soon, the ants would discover the unbidden abundance and the fascinating ritual would soon follow. I would watch them for hours on end, each one carrying one single grain of sugar back to his colony. Often I would fall asleep there on the cool concrete and in the still air and wake up when my mother would call my name at that magical moment just before day becomes darkness. And all the sugar would have gone.

Those were good days.

As a sad smile played on my lips, I scooped and measured two cups of flour for the recipe in progress. Before I put away the canister, I turned the teacup over in my hands a couple of times. I looked at my mother and considered the gray that would fleck her hair if she didn’t fastidiously combat it with color and the lines that grace her face and the resigned mixture of sadness and wisdom in her eyes. I wondered what she remembered when she touched this cup.

Along with the cup, I put away thoughts of woebegone memories and rooted myself back in the present. In this life, a million miles away from the girl whose greatest happiness was feeding the ants, and in this world where people don’t live on curiosity alone. Glancing at my flour-covered hands, I started toward the sink to wash them. Then stopped. And dusted them off on my new jeans instead.

There are still good days to come.

Self-Imposed Six-Word Sentence Soiree (with optional alliteration)

I’ve always liked the rain better. I open shades during the rain. I close them against the sun. Sunny days are way too common. Beautiful, but they get boring fast. Especially in the hot, sticky summers. We forget that there’s a balance. Rain makes sunny days more beautiful. It takes sun to make rain. But we see clouds differently now. Adults see thunderstorms in ominous clouds. Children still see shapes in them. The smell, though, is most beautiful. The sweet, metallic smell of rain. The cleansing absolution that they bring. And the comforting humidity they hold. I feel the rain completes me. What is without now reflects within. A puzzle piece locking into place.

When sad, the sound comforts me. When I’m happy, it caresses me. The drops pound windows and walls. A rhythmic cadence, calming and pure. I listen, wrapped in a blanket. Soon, I’m lost in it, euphoric. Reality fades away, replaced by simplicity. Tears no longer seem the enemy. But they don’t hurt, they heal. As cleansing as the rain outside. With every drop, sleep approaches fast. Cradled in nature’s music, I succumb. The soothing thunder sporadically envelops me. Aware, but drifting and blessedly numb. Hours pass, thunder fades, rain subsides. In the morning, I am reborn. Refreshed, resolved, and languid with satisfaction. Smiling contentedly, I close the shades. I step outside into the sun.

It’s always nicest after a storm.

Six Word Memoirs

Stumbled across this site tonight and thought about it for a minute. Could I write my life’s story in six words? I didn’t want to register on the site, so I’m posting my attempts here. If you’re up for the challenge, I’m very interested to read your attempts as well. Of course, every time I call for audience participation on this blog, no one ever jumps in. Oh well.

“It’s always something. Better than nothing.”

“The parking garage makes me smile.”

“My ass belongs in the Bluegrass.” (Admittedly, not mine, but still applicable.)

“Nothing extraordinary, but always something extra.”

“My best investment was my tattoo.”

“Still looking. Not sure what for.”

That’s all for tonight, kids. I’m off to watch the heap of snow atop my car climb higher and higher.

This Life

There is a pervading certainty that is always with me which I can neither explain nor hope to resolve. I feel it with the clarity one feels when something lost is found, or when a long-lingering question has been answered. It brings with it a waiting calm and quiet comfort that I have yet to find replicated in the world. It keeps me company, as it manifests in the ghosts that never stray too far from me. In a crowded room, they keep me alone; in an empty room they nearly suffocate me.

Yet from this certainty spring questions I have yet to courage myself to ask. The “how”s and “why”s and “when”s, the factors on which I do not stand as resolute and convinced as the knowledge itself. The questions that surface when my conviction fails me, that make the waiting seem unbearable and all the more permanent. They turn into questions I want to ask of you, but in doing so would surrender to the utter hypocrisy that I fear ultimately rules me.

There is a sense of change in the air these days, and it leaves me restless and finds me most days contemplating a nearby window. Ignorant observers would attribute my vacant expression to seasonal depression or youthful contemplation of the world outside. In truth, a battle rages in my head as I obliquely worry my lip in defiance of the smile that the affronting images bring. I relent as that comfortable certainty sets in again, letting the devious and divine play about my mouth. And with the onslaught of memories and sounds and senses I fight the overwhelming urge to find you and say all that I’ve said to myself in the hopes of absolution. Instead I fling a up a prayer on a lark, that He will know my heart, and allow you to look into it, and that you’ll find there what I, myself, have yet to conquer.

But – for now – I will concede to torture and torment, to the sweet abomination and agony of the unrequiteable that keeps me wandering through this life. Because the only thing worse than living with this is the thought of living without it.

Flipping a Switch

Funny things, switches. In one instant, not only does something cease to be, it becomes something else entirely. Darkness ends and light begins.

Love becomes apathy.

Pathetic becomes prideful.

Hope becomes denial.

And in the instant it took me to throw that switch and realize this, I left you and me behind.

Nothing is Mundane

How strange, she thought, that the sky is blue.

She lived for moments like this, few and far between, when she found herself surprised by the seemingly mundane. Her work forgotten, the spaghetti Bolognese growing cold on her desk, she sat, turned defiantly toward the tall window and considered the view from the third floor. An ugly, crumbling brick building with a rusted fire escape stood in stark comparison to the flawlessly cerulean winter sky.

Often, she marveled at the surplus of hatred, evil, and ugliness in the world. She belabored the injustice that permeated her life and the lives of everyone she loved. She looked upon those more fortunate than herself with contempt and those less fortunate with a confusing concoction of pity and disdain. Even as she was compelled to help those she could with what little she had, she found herself often expecting much in return despite her altruistic intentions.

Yet, on occasion she found herself in moments similar to this, rediscovering a part of life constantly overlooked and taken for granted. When it happened, she found that a calm comfort settled over her. The monsters and pressures that surrounded her, threatening suffocation with their deafening demands, faded away and she observed the world in all its staggering clarity.

How strange, indeed, that the sky should wind up blue. Of all the hues in all the world, blue. Intellectually, she knew that the combination of myriad atmospheric conditions and gases were responsible for the brilliance before her. Yet, she understood, inherently, that it is right; the sky could never have inspired so much love and poetry in green or orange. It had to be blue, from the very beginning. It was the same innate sense of place and precision that still dumbfounded her, that the world seemed to know that she needed to be reminded of another fact: that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. Everywhere. Even when she had forgotten, or simply couldn’t see.

Solitude

For the first time in a long while, she looks at a bridge and thinks about jumping. Her eyes move from it to the small but distinct 
city skyline, rendered the likes of impressionism now through the rain-soaked windshield. In the dark, the river is barely discernable from where she sits, represented only by a vast swath of nothingness between her and the lights on the opposite bank.

She almost did it once. Came so close that the fear of it sent her reeling back to reality, that she fell into tears on the side of the road instead.

She won’t do it now. It’s not that bad this time. A bad day at work doing things that outwardly seem important but lack any meaning or value; just one gear in a system of 22,000 that keep a great machine running day after day. Helping build and fulfill someone else’s dream. Pile on top of that a million and one things hitting her on the personal side, topped off by a not-so-pleasant encounter in the evening and she finds herself here. Anywhere but home. Somewhere that no one would think to find her. Contemplating.

There was a time when bleeding would have made this better. But scars raise questions. There was a time when a frantic tumble in a random bed would have made this better. But she’s barely interested in pleasures of the flesh as of late.

So instead she sits in her car, writes, and listens to the syncopated rain drops hollow on the roof. Suddenly, they taper, slow, and die altogether, rendering the similar tap-tick-tap of the keyboard deafeningly prevalent in this small space. Even the rain has gone now. Now, as ever, she is completely alone.

How I Love Being a Girl!

I can take an old skirt and an old sweater and pair them together with some sexy heels and give each piece a breath of new life and look fabulous. If pressed for time, I can apply only mascara or lipgloss and feel done up and sexy. I can strategically place vases and flowery things about my abode. I can leave my bed unmade and pretend it is mussed due to a frantic tumble with a handsome stranger with golden eyes. I can have piles of clothes on the floor and know which ones are clean. I can smile at men when I’m feel temptuous, women when I’m feeling generous, and babies when I’m hormonal. I can justify spending twenty dollars on groceries but $175 on a pair of shoes. I can spend an hour in a department store and leave empty-handed. I can twist my hair up and secure it with nothing but a pencil. I know that the only good tan is a fake tan. I can use a different perfume every day and use shampoo that smells like cinnamon rolls. I can eat spicy garlic chicken wings in a chiffon blouse. I allow myself a small moment of panic in front of the women’s room full-length mirror when I realize one can see through my white skirt to the pink underwear underneath, and I can artfully rectify that by tucking in my shirt to cover. I love Gone with the Wind just as much as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. I can spend one minute or one hour fixing my hair, depending on the occasion. I can do everything men can do, only better.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It’s in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
‘Cause I’m a woman.
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman
That’s me.

Maya Angelou

Deluge

Let it first be said that I love the rain.

I love the dancing sound of the drops as they slam here-and-there on the roof of my car or the walls of my apartment. I love the slap-tap-flop of thousands of drops falling onto thousands of leaves that then shake-swish-whirl outside my open windows. I love the metallic smell of rain on hot asphalt, the refreshing feel of a cool autumn rain on my face as I stand motionless, face turned to the sky in a stoic act of defiance, the hypnotic sight of sheets of water floating ghost-like across the street, and the taste of the air after a torrential downpour, still humid and sweet with the cleansing waters as I prance around barefoot and young in the puddles collected ankle-deep in the yard.

Ah, the simplistic beauty of the five senses and the endless power we have to experience the mundane.

Now let it be known that I love the sun, warm and buttery as it filters through the clouds and swims over my skin on a day at the park. I would be apt to say I love the sun slightly less than the rain, but I get to experience the rain much less, and that makes it a much more valuable commodity.

The other day, at the end of the three days of torrential downpour, just as I was about to start building the ark, I was driving to work (late) across the Sherman-Minton bridge. There in the sky, heavy with dark clouds that leant a misty musk to the air that sprayed my windshield with a quick-drying mist, was a break in the clouds. A relatively small “hole” in the massive ceiling of darkness that hung over New Albany. Through that hole, I saw a marked contrast of brilliant blue against the black clouds, and the closer I got, the more I could see the sun shining through it like a. . .well, like a beam of light. Right on the bridge.

I guess it struck me then, because a line popped into my head that I hadn’t thought of in a long time. Longfellow.

Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.

Ah, he’s one of my favorites. From “The Rainy Day.” I had read that poem and that line thousands of times, can recite it if need be, and I knew academically what he meant in that line. Understood the symbolism, knew the meaning, been there, done that, wrote the paper.

Yet during the time in my life when I most needed that line, that poem, I had forgotten it. How much would it have helped to remember that line during the cloudiest days of my life? Perhaps none at all. But maybe it would have saved me a scar or two.

Funny how the simplest things are the most impactful, and the ones we most often miss out on. That tiny, simple experience changed my whole perception of the rain that day. I stopped looking at it as a burden, a hurdle, an obstacle, and started looking at it from the eyes of my youth again. Cleansing. Baptismal.

The world (at least as I know it) washed clean. Starting all over. Healing. Soothing. Purified.

Until next time.

Grease on Denim

Last winter, as a Christmas present to myself, I splurged and bought a $90 pair of jeans that I had been lusting after for months. I kept waiting for them to go on sale, but they never did. So I bought them. Since then, I have lived in them pretty much every day. I wear them everywhere, and though I’ve lost just a teensy bit of weight since then and they don’t fit quite exactly right anymore, I will wear them forever.

Last weekend, I wore them while I was helping Dad put brakes on my car. Subsequently, they became very very very dirty. There are now grease stains on them. However, this doesn’t upset me. I’m kind of proud of those stains. Not only do they add to the charm and personality of my favorite jeans, they remind me of one of the characteristics which I value most about myself – that I’m not afraid of hard work, and I’m not afraid to get dirty.

When I took my jeans out of the dryer today and saw that those stains hadn’t come out, I wasn’t upset. I smiled. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to think of anything that I liked about myself. That thought seemed to domino into other thoughts about things I like about myself. As I was fixing my hair, I realized that I really like it long, regardless of what SOME people say. And I love being blonde. And I like my hips (and my jeans look great on them!). The fat rolls hanging off my back have to go, but the hips can stay. All in all, I’m okay.

Off to start the day. Lots of stains to make.