I wrote this in October.

The pregnancy test. October 20th 2015

On Friday I can take the test. I’ve been waiting 2 weeks since the insemination's- eating well, trying to not allow the dicks on the bus and family issues stress me out- keeping my body and womb calm and ‘ready’ for a microscopic fetus to inhabit. Thrive with joy and radiating only goodness. My wife is in the mountains with our dog this week. The house is crazy quiet without them here, the neighbors next door just moved out as well, so it feels very empty on this corner. The sun sets pretty early now and staying up past 8:30pm is excruciatingly hard. I work from home so my days are amorphous, running across paper days like watercolors and sometimes like renegade india ink, a mess if I am not on top of it. But I never forget to take my meds. I’ve been on Lithium for almost 6 years, it makes me forget EVERYTHING. But somehow I always remember to take my meds. I drink gallons of water everyday out of giant mason jars- my body is like a white ice sculpture made of salt (lithium salt), no matter the amount of water I toss at the salt structure, it’s insatiable, I am constantly craving water. Physiologically, emotionally, craving. 

Needless to say, this fun hydrating fact has made the OPK testing difficult to say the least. Not to mention the Basal Thermometer recordings. I am up and down all night stumbling in the dark and over the dog to go pee, making it literally impossible to get an ‘accurate temperature’ recording. The deal is ridiculous, one must take a vaginal temperature first thing in the morning- without ANY movement, without even speaking, laying perfectly still in bed at the same time EVERY morning). Seriously. I’ll flop back down on my side of the bed at 5:54am coming back from my 6th time peeing throughout the night, my alarm goes off six minutes later at 6:00am to take my ‘Still Body Temperature’, geez. So this fertility tracking method is not the most helpful. 

I never considered the many ways to zero in on ones fertility… I never gave my fertility any thought with having 98% female partners, birth control was something my friends would talk about, like some college trip abroad to a county I new nothing about. I would listen, no idea what to think, no experience, blank. Hmmm, sounds interesting. 

Anyway, when it comes down to it the female reproductive system is a mysterious wonderland that cannot be snatched up and clearly analyzed. It is a moving target with emotional pieces changing it up, influencing, swaying, plus physical influences tipping and teetering the whole crazy combo of factors. Add in Lithium meds, sleeping in a room that's not pitch black, the moon, Welbutrin, depression, saunas, acupuncture cold swimming pools, caffeine, food, hours of sleep, stress, hydration, organic foods, white sugar, negative people and feelings, light cardio vs. jolting the body too much on the treadmill. Remembering to not take Alieve (recently allergic, hence the Giant Puffy Face reaction). What else have I been trying to remember, but not obsess over and get stressed out about? 

Let’s go back and re-cap the last at home insemination. The October try. We ordered the sperm 2x the day before we think I was going to ovulate and a day or two after we think I ovulated. It all feels truly confusing, like a crazy shot in the dark. We are trying, but when/ if that white stick says PREGNANT I will loose it (total shock). I don’t know if I’ll believe it- just the science of it all is overwhelming. A miricle. But, most things I do in life-

just keep at it

eventually I get somewhere, and later on down the road random people will ask me how I have found success with this or that, and I think, geez, I don’t know- I just kept doing it. 

But trying to get pregnant, to just keep doing it, well, it is a special process for us. 

Emails. Donor. Overnight Delivery. Fed Ex Live Specimen. PayPal. Time sensitive window. DIY injection. Praying to god those swimmers survived the ‘formula mixture’ and refrigerated trip across America. Praying they find the giant egg that hangs out for a mere 24 hours, before turning into a pumpkin… until next month. 

Next month the dates are ready and circled. Tiny window, do all the things. 

the candyhouse lure

My resolution was to write more. Write at all. The thing about stopping is that its terrible to begin again. An indistinguishable giant hurdle. Most humans feel that, or so they say that about habits- do it for seven days and it will stick. Seven days? Something like that. Here goes.

Feelings.

I've cried more in the last week or so than in a long time, since my wedding time. unfortunately for the storylines in my head- they have not been tears of joy. I am not super great about re-contextualizing my experience after intense feelings. It becomes a cemented shape, a sloppy smear in the freshly poured walkway. Not a cute paw print
 an embarrassing mistake that's stuck forever. Anyone could notice it, at any point in eternity.
A permanence.

This could be my root of shame central. The imprints of everything around me that I can't ever undoes.
What people say to me, don't say to me, how they behave and everything that lacks in my life. It feels so excruciatingly embarrassing and painful. And I know I can't do anything about it, and its not me, not my fault, its my perception, etc. etc. But this haunting feels so shockingly permanent on the skin of my existence. Its the landscape that runs up and into my pores and suffocates me, mudslides I am buried under- fossilized. Twenty years later still unsure where my human skin is and where it has transformed to clay, earth, mummified and stuffed with straw.
Logically I know. I'm no virgin to Al Anon. The fifty million books I've read on the subjects.







I know.




And I have no idea,
No idea how to feel better. Approaching this aspect of ones life over and over is indefinitely confusing. Desperate to get through and solve and heal and make the future better is a morbid addiction- suffering like this, I would truly do anything, and I have.

You come across it. Alone in the thick of the freezing forest, that same tree, the path you memorized, the huge boulder with the slant along the rugged side, pressed into the mountain.
I swear your seen it/ never seen it before. The longer you try to see the more unsure and totally bewildered you become.
Everything dissolves in the dusk, in the shivering.
Your unsure what your doing out at night and if you had a mission...
How did you out at this hour?
Could this have happened again?

Desperate.

All the smooth deep emerald black shapes slowly swooshing in the air
all around you feels familiar, and terrible. This is that nightmare.
Tricked and cheated, anger all over my face and boiling out of my frozen limbs. Not a single memory as to how I fell out of that warm cottage
I lived somewhere warm, then plunked down in this scene. Its a completely true nightmare.
I can't stop crying now.



If I could just find one gumdrop that would lead me to the winches house.

I would gladly devour the glowing tiles and siding, feel the stickiness and sparkle close to my face, feel artificial color and bounciness,
a job I can handle.

forget that joker of a crossroads I was paralyzed at

I'd end up inside that dungeon she concocted, but I swear to god it would feel like a home. Knowing I would in fact be eaten alive would feel particularly calming.
No more block ice thudding at my scull, no more horrific shame of continual circular migration paths in and out of desperation. Each time returning being met by no one.

Let me just eat this stupid house and then the house eats me.

Let the story end just as it did before- inside all the houses that imploded on the frenzied groping children
The blasted minds numb and ringing from all the searching and a wanting that pulls down so hard you literally can't feel gravity, and UP no longer has a meaning.
Just let the candy house stand empty, freeze over and become a testament to all the horrible places we tried to find to hide from this.


And there are none.

And the only thing left it to believe in is god. God is much bigger that gumdrops. God doesn't even know what gum drops are.
When I leave this cracked body I will forget what gum drops are too, god-like, I will let go of everything, because somehow
the suffering will seem little, but the forest will take on a new language.
 Anything green and swooshing around the earth will be decoded
 bigger, perfectly, orderly, divine.


While I'm still breathing
I'll keep trying

To harbor this vantage point

The dark night looks over, wanting.

what i used to love has been pushed way way over
softer things, disciplined behaviors
mint tea, hate it
no bread, just spinach
 no.
running the length of the city- from one body of water to the other
no.
perfect nails, hair dyed, body thin.
No.

I hate the way I had to run to calm down, but I had to.
when I was the sickest they always liked me more.
People think your happy, or they feel happy
when your thinner



it was always with me.
fast fast fast fast fast fast everything cranked up to the max max max
water, running, levitate above my bed, sleeping w/ one eye closed, the other still going
how cartoons see everything, around the corners even
I didn't need anything when it was like this
I didn't need.

I only needed out- get all the energy out
a racing body, a mind whipped into a tense, muscular trajectory: go.
no amount of activity, work, love, people, places could soothe the big and manic throbbing.



and then there is always this too.

the long and heavy drop
the sinking down
heavy meat dropping in a cold sea. under a starless sky
the red flesh becoming purple, then grey and finally gone.
a mass at the bottom, the sting, the sand slurping it down.
It becomes a settling that begins to look like decomposing.
The terrible part is
 I don't.
I stay there, wholly intact, conscious. Invisible in the darkness, without limbs, without a face.

It's impossible to feel that old spinning, the energy required to pull out of this plucked out like death.
everything is this limbless, drowned state, pulling down-
I want so bad to have back the mania, that insane urge to make make make,
it just went, the terrible bulldozer inside, involuntary
the shaking and levitating. set to ON.


NO.
is so absurd, how its too fast and the inability to hear, touch down
or this
buried, amoeba like, motionless, utter sadness under layers and layers of millions of pounds of sand
pressing down under millions of gallons of dark salt water
I want them to come find me here.
Under all the sand I am still here.

sounds and shapes

it hurts like a boulder is massive
a shape too big to hug, a weight too incomprehensible to budge
when will these landmarks shift
is this the correct map?
my inside landscape feels like a natural disasters leftover carnage
trying trying to re-root
trying trying to make life life-like again

i want myself out of myself
all this thudding is a bore
a tennis shoe in the dryer
ongoing forever annoying myself with my sadness
become something new
turn into a sandal
a thinner, less offensive version of the thud causer

i hold my breath all the time waiting for it
it whirls and whirls hot air and cloth movements then it
hits
a shocking thud

always surprising

forever thudding

a sore heart, burning eyes, aching chest
ravaged insides
trying trying
to be a life

same story

I like to use the technique of avoidance
when everything gets so close up again and the pores of the situation are visible
but the shape of the thing is not
I like to not
write anything down
not take pictures

I sometimes pick up my camera, the one a man gave me in Florida
but then I always put it down and run out the door w/ my purse flying saying in my head
I Don't Want To Remember This Part of My Life.
I keep waiting for it to change.
for that thought to pass. Its been almost three years and its still  hanging on

the shame.


the big sad body
of water



I'm afraid to write in my journal because I don't want to really see it
IN WRITING
these on going feelings
ivy growing like mad regardless of all the hacking
regardless of all the man hours, the fierce work, the calloused exhaustion
tearstearstears

perhaps I should move outdoors where everything is green and architecture doesn't disrupt the mad amounts of growing.
When everything is green with water inside and veins and soil fed
hard shapes we try and make can be a terrible juxtaposition.

 bark pants are fine

I'll write some lines about my feelings

How he wanted to kill her.
Kicked in the stomach fear.
A neglect that leaves one invisible
Without voice.
But now I get to be an adult.
And try to be happy.
It looks amazing over there...
everyday try not to throw yourself under the bus
now you get to practice everyday making a life not terrifying
now you get to be in charge and hopefully not destroy all the survival
you survived

our skeletal structure. our organs. our faces. Or trying not to hate myself in this family.

my body and heart are uncontrollable organs and piles of flesh running out of this room. Every cell is spinning shot full of adrenaline, desperate... the kind of breathing an face that happens when you are all snot and saliva and tears and vomit is just a moment away. The whole body is wreaked with the work of movement, of escape.

Sitting between my two parents is like that.

they are screaming and shaking. His face is red like the alcoholic painting in your mind, the grey white hair   surrounding the red center like a halo. A Christmas wreath on the doorknob screaming. A life you keep wanting to not live but continues to unravel and build in depth and strength. The roots are thick, they look cut as they have gown around human made objects like fences and side walks and pipes. The roots seem melted around them, like hot lava poured, then hardened.

it feel like it should cut, like how they look. But it's so expected at this point. it's just the numb terrible dull ache you always feel in that one spot where that thing happened that one time when you were that age.

There is not much use in wishing it away. I told my mom on mother day, today, at sushi lunch in the cement parking lot of a strip mall by the LA freeways that some children are killed by there parents. They literally don't make it out alive,
so I am thankful. They were not so much homicidal. So far we have all survived the suicide, that seems the closest culprit to our survivals theses days, in one way or another...
trying to keep ourselves alive
trying to get up and out of bed everyday
trying to take the pills and not drink the poison and look both ways and check for marks on her body, look for signs of abuse, try not to become a smoker again, see if she can get a ride cause you're too tired to go get her.


Walking into this house is like walking into a toxic waste dump. I need so much gear and right ow I cannot afford to check a bag. I show up with nothing.
Or I feel naked, with open wounds still
and the air is salt and lemon juice here.
Fifteen years of therapy inside my head and leaked down into my body is something, but this is serious, I need metal armor and giant swords and magical things I don't even know about because I don't read fantasy, don't watch Sci-Fi movies or any kind of violent things.....

I'm like tiny albino bunny that cant be in the sun or around loud noises or touched at all unless you wear special fluffy gloves. I am too traumatized for reality.

Monochromatic situations soothe me.

feed me from a dropper.

talk about my species and how we used to live before the humans came and made us almost extinct, and mutated and dependent.

tell me about my life before it was like this, tell me everything I don't remember and wish was true.

terrible: sleeping/waking/sleeping/waking

Being raped by the dream man on the dirty side of the motel land was less painful than seeing her.
I was getting used to picking around the crusty dilapidated surroundings, trying to find a safe place to stash my few possessions
Squatters wandering like Thai dogs, homeless wolves.
Unending despair, heavy like a sopping wet down comforter, speckled with mold, stained with human markings. All this was bearable.
It wasn't until She walked out of the space and over to the picnic table that I snapped.
my heart ripping aching thudding tearing uncontrollable achey longing sadness despair
She spoke to everyone but me 
my eyes were like a cat on a bird, pointing. She never once glanced my way
everything inside me wanted out of the skin case/ i wanted to hack off my limbs/ to decompose, to begin to feel nothing/ for once
to represent the hallow that I felt.
Mom tried to say she didn't matter and why
I defended her viciously
It had been years since I saw her and she was older now, and a transman, 52 years old with a 14 year old daughter.
None of that blunted the sharpness of how hard I wanted her to want me again. It's an indescribable ache, a thirst like maybe you'll die of dehydration.
I feel numb all over my waking body. I don't know how to be awake and my sleep is too often the situation above. My body wants to cry all day like the springtime rain.

be the same.
try to act like soil, then see.

I am inconsolable
I am perpetually heartbroken

we are here to make and tell stories

My mind wanted to to race about it:
The  familiar man sat down in a chair in the brightly lit room, his face etched in my brain... where does he work? Is he a chef? What does he know about me? Is he married to a colleague?
I tried to be honest, say real things
while fighting the racing questions, pounding like rain on a tin roof
what does it matter? who cares??
a face you cant shake

I am LISTLESS these days.

overflowing inspiration passes though me like a giant undertow
electricity that would send it into action is sizzled out by the dense water.

A balloon held underwater
a small fight

the cycle defeated. Inaction. a numb heart. clean hands are the worst.

I am home and can't get rid of myself.
His naked body breathes like a machine in the dark room- it is thick with sage stench and it reeks like locker room armpits and the hills of Ojai
soil and dust
the bushes white under the sun
at night glowing in your nose in the cool air, the sky would be powder sugar sprinkles on black velvet
MILLIONS of white stars spilled
delicious untouchable

his high blood pressure concerns me, i think about the pressure in the body, the temperature, the chakras spinning, all the lives and stories of the soul layered in there
sleeping

At night I close my eyes and instantly pictures appear and stories unfold
tonight wood carved zebras then screen prints then animations of them all black and white and stripey jumping through the pass into the next time or page. I get a rush of last nights dreams: Not yet packed to leave in the morning with everyone- still a twin bed made, stuff in the closet, on the shelves. Not enough bags or time or wherewith all  to complete any of the packing.

In Hollywood there is a bird store Poni took me to. They had a pair of birds in one cage with a handwritten tag that said INTER-SPECIES BONDED. A Parrot-let and a Parakeet. My heart a blaze.
It is impossible to describe how I love the inbetween. How I want to live my life inside the waterfall
Not in the cave behind it
not in the body of water in front of it
just inside holding both
without language without a shape of a cave or a body
shapeless
moving
unable to draw an outline or hold it

My heart was on fire
staring at the two birds knowing their love is real
I feel cut in several ways, slices stacked so heavy that being this person is pressurized

everything and nothing
 is the most accurate way to say it.

This soul has been places I am not interested in remembering
I feel woven into millions of human stories and I feel absolutely alone in the darkness with the sage smell cool in the air, alone in a body you don't want in a life that seems wrong.

How on earth did I end up here? With this story, in this conversation??
What I was after was being the sound of foam crackling white as the wave slowly pulls back in
What I understood was the stillness of rock, the layers of the earth under the crust, held with gravity in a silent ball, dark.

I know I am getting older and my body says make a baby, so I realize a soul wants a body to live in...
but after my experience and all my questions of accuracy, I am thrown

It seems life has the tendency to be a domestic abuse situation
thrown into a wall, a smashed cheek bone and busted lip
and then the Parrot-let and her lover...

I am not bored with my life
I am overwhelmed beyond reason
I am paralyzed in a human body
I am awake at night like this, about to leave to the places in dreams I can never describe
where "I" dissolves in the inbetween

the jogger

My sister said she was too tired to jog today
I said "yeah I know what you mean, for the past couple years now I have just been
too tired.
I used to know what the forest looked like, everyday
 what gate to avoid
I would run in the middle of the road trying to keep the PTSD at bay
jumping out of my skin with each barking dog, a panic attack lady jogger
a person desperate to find sanity in the woods

Yeah- perhaps a few years of sleep....
I think the jogging was a way to wear out the mania swirling inside me like a storm drain gushing, like a frenzied heart on speed
reeling

Today- I eat white pills tinted yellowish
white pills tinted peachish
pills with food and water, pills before bed, pills that make me sick and sleepy.

In bed I close my eyes and see the forest, the certain tree that I marked my run by, it's roots and a silent prayer. Always the same. you will be okay.
breathe.
 you are alive.
In bed I convalesce. My curtains are drawn, held under a stack of blankets. My skin and eyes want the darkness.  My birds are morphing into one another, becoming the same color, creating the same mannerisms and behavior.
I realize I am becoming more and more like my stuffed animals, jammed up against the wall, slipping into the crack of the bed. All day quiet, fluffy white in the dark room painted pink.

homeless house

This knife sits much smaller in my hand

after so many years, the weight of it has lessened, shifted

the curve and massiveness of the handle is dwarfed by my adult fingers

hand, forearm, eyeballs.

the knives, pickles in a jar, sturdy cans of SlimFast, 

his kitchen stuff makes me remember.

I haven't seen these butter knives or the sharp ones with the red trim in over fifteen years. It's unbelievable that these objects still exist- artifacts
 not carved out of some false memory of my childhood-
imagery burned into my cells
 embedded in my bone marrow by some fantasy transfusion

in fact true.

here. spreading butter, cutting bread and meat in his house.

Seeing them now I feel relived

I feel bewildered.

my same heart thumping still

only certain dishes can be used here, the squalor the wreckage is wearing a thick coat, 

privilege

the infection infects itself insular breathing it's own hot breath back in

a stale hot cycle.

                             our existence is too terrible 

our eyes 

I shower scrubbing off the turpentine workday. 

My skin is older

a stranger in the tragic tub shaving adult legs

hands and feet with black nail polish, a woman notices 

the water pressure- the architecture of the bathroom

it reminds her of being poor, being a child, having thick long ratty hair

wet and cold down the child back

put my head in a laundry bag and shake it

cover it in cotton ball fuzz

numb buzzing around my nose, inside my teeth. my ears hum.

I am wet in the water 

   I try to remember outside of this space

I say the word  

      
           human 

out loud.

I try to morph the piece of trash child into the shape of a human woman

I feel bewildered.

I feel homeless in this house.

sleep. just go to bed, leave the woman body here

I am in the bed at seven pm

being lucid in this place is the ultimate nightmare

So Many Years

a familiar suffocation

it is this that make 

Settling

 and 

    Survival 

run rampant.

I hear coyotes

I close my eyes and go to them

a guest at my fathers

horizontal again

like so many times before the terror takes over the blood, the organs, seeps in the bones
a stew of adrenaline.

fight or flight fight or flight fight or flight fightflightfitflgtflitigiftt

heart is pounding, breath is audible, it's cause I am under the covers and it's hotter here, take your head out
relax, let the sweat on your face dry, go to bed like a normal woman your age and forget this ever happened.

forget it.

Outside this window I can hear the air. In the darkness bright orange fruits, ruddy avocados hang heavy, they are cold at night, they sleep like human hearts, heavy, pulling, alive in the blackness.

Raccoons run across this roof. I hear their little feet above my head. I am hungry for dinner, but I will stay here, horizontal till sunrise.
It's the feeling of being skinless, chicken meat raw, without the skin, fleshy, wet and structureless
that's about as human as it gets here in this house. Pushed up against the unstable mountain side, with citrus and cacti and wildflowers. A house shell that holds one man, eight surf boards, one motorcycle, five automobiles and years, decades of sadness

the mud slid before, once killing three sleeping people here. Right here where I am laying
 horizontal now.

have you ever held a bird in your hands with it's wings flapping so violently
you think they'll just snap off?? It's scary and urgent and messy.
my heart is like that too:
a dead skinless blob of bird
and
a live desperate flapping of a bird

it's dark and i can hear everything outside the lightweight door.
fumbling, delusion, hopelessness

in the Hollywood Hills

my birthday.
a little gift to enjoy.
a dead phone in January.
one long silence

a sadness spreads over my heart
a pancake spreading out
up against the hot hot edge
a hard ending

a hot heart
edges and lines
smoking
in the morning, all day, at night
slow burning

a birthday gift- alone.
to be seen,
looked at looked at looked at


always alone in the end
you can learn to enjoy this
            length

 the day unending
punctuated by pills & water
a steady silence
coffee and crying
you can wait it out, a steady silence

holds a heart
 still smoking

the terribleness of wanting: 2 examples

I sleep till 1pm or later, it's pouring rain outside, the day has been happening in this wet action
loose change exploding from a pocket
the quickness outside

Pulling myself out of bed
a painful transfer from one world to another, but she comes with me, actually, they both do:

I was washing my favorite painted china as the rest were urging me to hurry up, the plane was leaving soon. We had days of travel ahead of us. I packed like a wild beast, there was no newspaper to wrap the delicate objects in, they all ended up together, messy and vulnerable.

Earlier I was fiending for her.
She could not tolorate human touch and hated the motion of kissing. All she was after was emotional intimacy. Too bad the only way I knew how to approach her was with a body...
I lured her into a tub with a wrap around curtain, she melted in like a mermaid back in water, sliding into the full bath with an invisible human body. Her flesh hard- like a plastic dolls, not so much breathing, with like,
pores.
She/He came because of the story and the poetry that was unraveling in the house dialogue. Everyone on that floor of the old rickety house with too many doors and too many kittens running around scratching, had something to say about this story. Once a roommate even showed me his cell phone with a picture of Manuela with her bright blond ponytail taken in the Swiss alps. He told me what she thought of the subject.
I said she looked beautiful up there. Glowing.
Also Gloria who moved to SF had ideas about it too. She was still dancing and had more information now, even in SF they all held her like a member of the home, her opinion counted.
They knew why I was there could feel the ache
the whoosh of housemates knew I was in love with him/her and knew that she/he wouldn't let me in. Just this conversation. This was where we could stay.

So I was shocked when they slinked into the tub,
I saw the barrier- that invisible confusing inanimate body- outside of androgyny and even humanness.
None of that even registered in that  dream moment.
            it was just the words between us

amazing feelings
to be so close
and their deep dark eyes and a head of thick hair,

listening

their skinny hands explaining a thing, like a skeleton finger dance.

achey


In the shower I was covered in flour and bits of dough were happening too with the water and steam and the love sickness grew and began to overflow, out of the old tub,
set in the center of the room
on the top floor of the old wood house
 it poured out like rising dough, pushing though the windows like a slow pastry tragedy.
 Expanding, unending.

In my waking life writing this I feel the word "asexual" was being experienced and understood,
unfortunate to my dream heart.

She/He wanted to wrap their words with mine, weave them in and out of the pages in my brain, see them layer and bend, create a new story,
love, true cognitive love.

My fleshy body baking project just reached for her/him, without knowing, without ability to stop. my nerves wanted to feel skin to skin, heat, a body alive.
Each time they recoiled and retreated. I was left with this mess of soggy paper, ink transferred to my naked body, pages stuck and peeled like vending machine tattoos.
So much more.
Crawlspaces that lead to the past and future that all the characters kept jumping in and out of. I tried to avoid the smaller spaces in the dream.

At one point they shot a music video , I was in the trailer behind, the doorway was lit up, the only source of light all around. I layed on the floor inside with my teal high heels in the air, they were like trees, architecture in the space, this pose seemed safest and the least obtrusive.
a fair amount of time in these dreams was spent trying to not get in the way,
cause damage, my bodies natural impulse's where so powerful,
 I had to put myself into spaces to try....

sit in the corner

think about what you have done
I was washing the china and Jenny came up behind me, out of nowhere, I didn't turn to look at her, she just whispered in my ear. She loves me, she still loves me.
with wet hands and without turning I said still I loved her too. At that point in the dream I was not crying.
That's a first in these JH dreams.

Regardless I woke up carrying both of them inside me, like a kangaroo pouch attached to my heart.
I am up now, feeling super handicapped, I have too much weight in one place, my body is off kilter and the whole system has to overcompensate for this deformity. I am top heavy and being vertical feels like such a struggle. I just want to crawl back into my cave bed.
Ask Gloria and Manuela what they would do...

 when everyone they love is impossibly absent, how to cut the chord, how to look-
and learn to see
and                        want        a different kind of human.

night storm

I wake up with a start- who is next to me?
exhale
No one,
I move the covers to check,        no one
strange. Who was I expecting?
No One.
The porch curtains are flapping wildly outside my window, it feels like someone is out there rustling around.
My skin on my face is raw from the scrubbing, dented from sleeping, my hair is plastered in an aqua net pillow mohawk, the NKOTB sleeping bag zipper is touching my skin, I hate that touch.

It's still dark out, as I creep along the house, dressing and washing.
Several times I peek out the windows to see if someone is there, thick fabric drenched with rain is lifted and snapping in the winter air, the spray paint cans are all rearranged, like a robber jostled the paint table on his way out.

The storm is thrashing around the old house, it sounds like a box of junk being kicked.
It feels violent, broken things.
I find socks, I zip my boots.
I am surprised at my concern, the noise of the rain and wind is unsettling and my heart just jumps into  pounding

It's not frozen ice mornings any longer,
but the noise is heavy and new
it reminds me of early morning earthquakes in California, being caught in a storm at sea
cops coming to the house, kicking a box of red and blue lights and sirens.

This type of weather
 I think provokes freak accidents and crime, as I ride fast over the melted ice puddles I do a little mantra in my head, I make a bubble of safety around me and my bike. I haven't felt this sort of fear since Baltimore.
Heart racing and eyes darting was an everyday day
pot holes big as bathtubs, forties, plastic bag trees, and hubcaps in the road, tin garbage cans knocked over by rats as big as purse dogs.


I am safe here.

melted puddles, clean wet black streets
I always look in the same windows- the red room traced with Christmas lights, the kitchen window seal old bottles all lined up. It's like getting tucked into bed, I see these every morning,
 and I am calmer. Safer.
I breath hard when I finally get to the top of the hill, I forgot my inhaler- in my show bag from last night- that always happens, it's right in the gold bag,  mixed with the glittery make up.


I drink and drink and drink coffee. I try to let my chest relax and open,
I don't move or talk, I listen, I pray,
I try and become stillness

I try to begin again.

New year newness

I woke up full of dreams.
After being fed and fed coffee and coffee and hot chocolate too
I am back to sleep
this time on the curvy love seat, a cat nap spot at the foot of the bed.

I dream hard.
I am with her, walking into Central Park holding hands. Its a fall day, I think we skip some, or there is wind and we are happy.
Soon there are koi ponds all around, pathways and ditches, bridges and smooth rocks
we both watch the koi swirl and swirl under the glassy surface. We bounce over the ponds wildly,  like luck moves in, like giggling.
At one pond she picks me up and walks into it, her tail coats floating behind her like fins. She is holding me sideways, I am curled, my hair dangling, my high heel boots jutting out like daggers. Dry and sharp.
A Huge ancient koi whips around below. We are both surprised at him, massive gills moving inside the tiny pools.
The older women lounging in the water laugh and tell us all about the secrets there. It's not warm but they are very old and happy, spread out as if the sun cooed them into spreading out pancakes on a griddle.
I love the women and love being there with Johanna. We hold hands like a key inside a lock. It is creaky and engraved  and precious and simple. A piece that fits like a smooth stone sinking. slow. clean. soft.

I run into Lindsay from MICA. She is beautiful and is still with the same man she was dating seven years ago, they are holding hands. I hug her in that sophisticated white coat, I tell her I am so happy to see her, that I am happy for her move to Baltimore, happy happy.

In my waking life I am bundled on the love seat. I feel hungover, achey, saddish.

Not all my dreams feel so free. In my waking body I need.
My waking self sees snow falling, wears impossibly high glitter heels, spends all day exhaling, trying to feel a feeling, hoping to make a life that feels like jumping, that feels like gasping at the giant fish swirling.

thaw

light the candles
focus on one thing

a light moving on the dresser.

washed hands
get into the bed again.

the fingernail polish is shiny still, glittering.
the birds are chittering in the other room, all day long they act happy.
large sweaters hold you, under the covers you hold three white
 stuffed kittens
a bed full of stuffed critters and a cage of birds
like bumper bowling, keeping me out of the gutter balls
the sucking down

the all aloneness of everyday

one long braid and dark eyes closed
i imagine my skin soil breathing
i become seeds and grow and feel air and water and am a season
outside a human body all day long is right now

color instead

I forget how much I love painting
until that moment when it's mixed just right, the canvas is already thick enough to handle it
so much has already been said then deleted
the shapes are clearer and the hand is smarter and less spastic
then the stroke comes, that defines the space that was floating.
one dot makes her face believable.


It's not a great painting, but it's good enough for now. It keeps me working and 
lets the sadness strain through me. 
The working opens up the pores of the creature basin- and sweat pours out, like running the mile,
drenched
the toxins turn 
to deep grey, 
light pink,
a bright yellow, 
her purple-ish flesh.


Days like this I am restless.
The same song on repeat all day.
The candle flickers manic-ley on the green dresser.


I think about being under water with my gills breathing, and the type of tough skin, 
shark skin- try cutting through that with a knife, it's dense 
salt water is like air to me.
Under here I prefer the darker places, schools of fish are passing like conversations in the city
Here I can be alone
non verbal
hair like this is harder to cut too, try ripping seaweed with your bare hands


Submerged.
Cover me with the weight of the sea today
salt like air
no language just the heavy echo
inside a huge full womb


schools pass by and I hear nothing, I see only color:
deep grey, light pink, bright yellow, her purple-ish flesh.


Days like this I'm better off just thinking in color.
Just focus on the light and shadow.
I have water creature hands, they touch my wet face
tears are all around me this far down.

"suck my left one"

I woke up and could still feel it.
A tugging.
Like a long thick braid down your back, the weight of a ponytail swinging.
The baby I was nursing on my left breast was just like that, a ponytail piece of me.
It was faceless, nameless, sexless- just a part of myself nursing.

It wasn't
"my baby" as much as it was me with me.
In waking life I thought it odd that I was not terrified of it, of accidentally killing it.
But in the dream it was natural,  a thing to do, getting my nails done,  unlocking the front door, nursing a baby.
I held it with one arm while other dream activities happened around my head outside of me,
it nursed and once I fixed it back on when its kitten like mouth face unhooked from my nipple, like a bike pump "pfffffft" -ing off the skinny tire


I was not terrified
I was just a human acting like a human in a dream

If I could in real live life be guaranteed to have a kitten baby I would do it in a second.
A pink fluffy kitten without dander or poison claws or fleas.
Curled up in a circle, on my circle belly, a sleeping circle
sleeping.

quiet shapes and colors I can manage.

I can still feel the sleeping circle attached, my left arm shaped like a "U", my breast loaded with milk, a ghost weight hanging there.

traveling, upstate New York late summer 2010

naps and terrible coffee

I have been cranked out as a Seattle-ite at last,
I notice it most when I travel
it always takes getting away to see where you are
I see myself all the time now
call times and show times and opening nights and radio shows and new acts are nice, important,
exhale
it's just the more I do this life, live this life
I know I want more
that there is so much more, and the stress I have carried like a grey cartoon scribble above my head is useless

breathing plane air, ordering terrible 10 dollar room service coffee, having a busted pedicure, loosing my laminate, not knowing what town or hotel room I am in, tucking myself into a new bed of strait-jacket sheets every night, daytime wake-up calls to get my drag on.


Pregnant ladies in summer sandals at the airport in the south.
A full airplane applauding for the soldiers on board just home from war.
Children wearing matching shirts, a religious summer camp logo.
Grandparents standing as close as they can, watching their grandchildren go through security, they keep waving, the babies just learning to wave, they stand there forever.

Looking for gay people, lots of places I travel to I feel very alone.
People stare at me, its the pink hair, the pink tattoos, everyone assumes I am about 18 years old.

When I was a kid waitresses always asked if I wanted a kids menu, a booster seat, like my 2 younger sisters, 5  & 7 years younger than me. I would be pissed, almost 13, almost 15 years old and given three waxey crayons and a paper menu.

I see families in the airports, on the New Jersey shore, dining in Casino Buffets and it feels so out of reach.
It's usually a ginormous turn off, copious amounts of consumerism, small town America deep fried in it's own sloth and ignorance, usually I shudder and pray for the arty ones, the little queer kids and hope they are safe and find community and a place to breathe.
Other times I am jealous, of families.
How I feel unable and cut off from that life: gays over here. straights over there.
outcasts alone forever in bars, online dating and pride parades,
and the main stream- they are down in the books with legit lives and legit laws, they make babies and have showers- with stupid games and get pastel crap, have weddings and toast with engraved champagne glasses. Buy homes, train for marathons, go to the cabin for holiday, keep a spare key in a frog by the door.

I know that no one ever "gets it"
you do it till you die

try try
try
harder

a million bright lights and faces staring at me
 watching me hit with stage lights, inside music and behind the third wall

sweat running down my back, lips stuck to my teeth in an open smile shape

making culture I tell myself

I have millions of ideas to give birth to, that's what I began saying as a teenager
too much work to do in this life

This morning in the other hotel I watched some reality thing about a girl who didn't know she was pregnant till she was giving birth and saw the babies head and ear.

I am 27 now, there is a bunch of this world I have not yet explored.
I tend to feel super alone when I travel, but perhaps this is the state that is most realistic for my generation, my culture, demographic.
The modern way.  

Sometimes I see strangers and I want to just love them, I want to crawl inside their lives
 I want to roll around in it, I want my hair to smell like them.
I feel like there are millions of people living inside me, sleeping still,
I could start over and create a new life, scrap this project

get a new sketch book

try again

become a baby
learning how to wave.

Houston, Texas

ACCOMMODATIONS: 

Our  hotel is smooth cool concrete carefully cut with expensive paint and light fixtures. Tall corridors of sleek, the smell of art.

Outside it is Texas, covered in concrete that is burning like a stove set on high, the cinnamon bun swirl blazing neon orange.

Step out the whooshing glass doors and it is thick hot air that holds you, gets into your bones and pulls the sweat out, beads pumped out- machine sweat.

Everyone says "yall"  here, which is so sweet and human sounding. 

My ears change as I travel and listen to so many voices, every accent slipping a little note under my door- surprising me, reminding me.

THE VENUE:  

It's a million degrees outside still, I walk into the huge fright elevator with my costume bag and Richard with his, it is a bit cooler. It's here that my eyes shoot open and narrow in, on to this elevator person who is taking us up... 

It happens to my whole body. 

Not Many People Have 

This Affect On Me. 

It's not a situation I have cognitive control over: The universe of chakras align, hormones buzz, mind jumps out the window.  Aura glows- spreads out like  pancake batter on the greased pan, expanding, creeping closer, solidifying.

Becoming.

This forming is serious, becomes tactile, it will need to be attended to- first watched, then carefully flipped. 

It now has a life of it's own. Wanting sets in like fire, give it oxygen and it's off. Whoosh, ablaze.

She is breathing and lives in and over me.  A cobra hood reaching around my human sized head, directing my motions. She makes me breathe hotter, she is the one that has this power, running inside my veins moving me closer. Sizzling my skin to the edge of the square pan. A new shape. A mission.

I am in the freight elevator, feet in heels standing on the industrial silver metal flooring. Huge doors open up and down like a monster mouth. In all this ridiculous make up and sprayed-put-fake and real hair, l feel like a popped off carnival head, dropped down the gutter, now bobbing inside the monster belly.

Where am I?  In Texas somewhere. Elevator. Hotel. Plane. Bus. Hotel. Green Room. Stage. Green Room. Hotel. Bus plane stage hotelbus stage greenroomplanebusstagebushotel... In this particular freight elevator everything stops for me.

THE ELEVATOR:

The cobra is booming and focused. My body is buzzing, my teeth, buzzing close to the ledge jumping brain. 

He is thin in the corner, huge glasses, leaning on the road case, eyes, deer eyes, staring at the mouth doors. 

He is ice cream sandwich beautiful, skinny, serious unicorn person. Seeing him is like that- you don't believe it's real

make-believe stubbornly before you, eyes blink blink.

No sound will leave your mouth, just a buzzing body.

There is a tiger staring at me on his bending and straightening elbow. Up and down on the elevator I see him, he is magic shaped as a human.

Over and over he moves big things and I stare, inside me every chakara is spinning wildly, I am levitating.

I remind myself to breathe, I am terribly aware of every corner of the room, the backstage area where my quick change is set up. 

The back of my head is watching, waiting for him to pass by. The room is all black and I am laying out my costumes, one piece at a time, black and blue fabric with little sparkles. I count all the pieces and keep my behind eyes open. 

Waiting,  like a hunter in the dark- He is Full Color. Glowing Sandwich. My mouth is salivating, rehab heart relapsing, clicking and clacking around in my heels. 

I am terrified to speak to him, I am mute as a clown, a bobble head with four eyes watching, floating.

Unable to speak to the elevator ice cream sandwich boy.

It was just an elevator, inside another blurry venue

but inside this one,  

was

this 

boy 

with an elbow 

and these deer eyes , huge bulky glasses, 

skinny sweaty tiny magic of a human with a hidden trap door  

I fell down it, the moment I stepped in that elevator

I got lost 

in him.