Over the Rainbow

Somewhere….

Dreams can come true.

[PS-I love you Leon!]

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Tightrope

Know what I’m sayin?

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Dreams

That was no dream. You were there. I saw you, felt you there with me, held your face in my hands.
The tears that swept my face, the taste of them was the same, awake. Asleep. The same. One flowed between the dreamtime, the daytime, and it was the same tear. And you, the same, awake. Asleep. Alive. Gone forever. Here forever.
Do you stop being you when you leave the daytime, when you leave the world? Do you? Does your love stop when you die? Is it not the most real, when there’s only love?
There was no dream. Or it’s all a dream. All the same.

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All the Things We Know

Yeah, I can see it coming
Though I’d ask you if it’s true
Everything about us now
Is all the things I knew

Yeah, I can see it coming
Though you didn’t have a clue
Everything you say is black
I tell you, it’s all blue

And when you never saw me
Did I ever fade away?
And when you couldn’t find me
Did I ever lose my way?
When you didn’t hear a word I said
Did my words fall at your feet?
And when you said it wasn’t so
Did you finally see?

Yeah, I know it’s coming
And you’ll say that I won’t go
Everything about this now
Is all the things we know

I can see it coming
Though you didn’t have a clue
You say that it’s all white and black
I tell you, it’s all blue

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Living the Dream

I wake with a jolt, full tilt panic before daylight. Mouth bone dry and my heart hammering, I feel the familiar squeeze in my chest-FUCK! I can’t do this again! I am not ready. I am not ready at all. Oh my GOD, what have I done?

I try again. Just go back to sleep, I tell myself; you’ll be meat by noon. Today’s another twelve hour day. Maybe more. But the squeeze is there and I can’t. Can’t sleep. And if I don’t at least rest, I’ll lose my mind. So I lay there until I can’t anymore and I get up.

I’ve always known what hard work is. I’ve worked much harder, in shorter bursts. I’ve worked long hours at times. I’ve had responsibility, and worn many hats. I’ve worked in a hard hat, a cowboy hat, ball cap, a bandana, and a helmet. I’ve worn the employee hat, the manager hat and the free agent hat. But I have never worn all the hats at once.

I am so tired.

I am on a runaway horse, flying by the seat of my pants.

No, really, I am on two horses at once. One is a runaway, and the other I have resorted to kicking the shit out of to keep it moving, and I am trying not to do the splits, which I never learned to do. I feel torn in two, every day, or torn in four or eight or however many different directions I am flying in at once at any given time and I swear I am riding as fast as I can.

I am barely hanging on.

My day ends and I feel like I’ve been to war. Warmth, food, kindness, all like seeing rainbows after being underground; miracles. I have maybe an hour, two. There is not much time for those little miracles, because there is only time for things that are barely getting done, and just have to be. And then I sleep, and wake with the squeeze in my chest, the hammering heart, the bone dry mouth, the fear I will just not make it no matter how hard I try.

There is no time now to ponder, muse, reflect. There are no days I just follow my words to my heart.

Words flow from me all day and every day. Words that get me where I need to be to survive. I think on my feet and I use my words and people listen to me so I try to choose them well. I am sincere and creative in my approach.

But I can barely write an email now. I am so tired of the talking and all the words, I cannot even write. I cannot join two thoughts together for that. Maybe not even two sentences. All I can write is this.

It would seem to me easier to stop having a struggle and just say I can’t. I can’t write. Maybe simpler to quit, to stop torturing myself with my imagined need to write. I chose my life as it is right now, and for a good reason. One cannot always do all things. There is a season for everything. Perhaps it is not the season for writing, for me, for now. Maybe what I am doing really will take everything I have, and more, and there is just not room for anything else. Sacrifices must be made. If it were easy to do what I am doing, more people would do it. It’s not.

And yet, here I am. I don’t want to quit. I can’t quit. Neither can I quit what I spend all my time doing. Because I do have a dream, and dreams are what I live on.

 

Everything is a matter of perspective. Do I sound unhappy? Well, some days I really am. Some days I want to close the doors. Go ahead, fine me for breaking the rules. I just don’t care, because I am exhausted beyond all reason. It’s too much. Too much for one person. I want to quit it all, give it back; turn the headache over to someone else.

I don’t have the time, resources, finances to do what I am doing in any of the prescribed ways for doing such a thing and I’m just worn out by my own creative ways of making up for that.

And then a magic thing happens. A person comes with a story, and I know they are coming to me by no accident. They bring something that I’ve never seen before, and the something has a story too, and of course I have to know the story. I fall in love with the thing, the story, and the person. I wouldn’t miss this for the world. I have to hang around to see what happens next.

Someone else finds this thing, falls in love with it too, wants to know the story, and then has to have the thing. I am now part of the story, and this is how I make my living, one story at a time.

I don’t always tell the whole story, nor do I usually really know the whole story at all. Sometimes I have no vital information at all, but that creates a mystery which I am happy to segue to another story. After all, possibilities are just my game.

I’m never dishonest, but hey, I was a waitress in another life, and I can read your mind before you know yourself which dessert you really do want after all. This is an art, trust me. How good would I be if I didn’t try at all to anticipate what you might fall in love with, and help you along so you might realize what you must do? Like I said, I’m always honest; I’m just helping people be happy. I’m kind of like a matchmaker.

I’m enjoying, just a bit, the way I’m beginning to be the “go to girl” for some folks’ favorite things. What a hoot. Do I know where to find it? Do I even know what it is? Not necessarily, but I might find it anyway. I often do. Even if I can’t profit, it’s the possibility that draws me, and the mystery; the magic of finding just the thing asked for that makes me feel like I’ve won something.

I’m living the dream. I am a business owner. I wear the Boss hat now and I don’t punch a time clock or ask other people what they want me to do. I can’t be fired and I can make up rules and write my own contracts and have a cigarette whenever I please, if I can ever find the time. I eat, sleep, breathe this business and I worry all the time how I will pay the next mind-numbing power bill or even buy the next boat-load of light bulbs and tubes I will shortly need yet again. I borrow from this, cover from that, float what I have to. I have no idea how this will ever work, but I am the mistress of my own destiny. I have bought myself a job. If I might fail from working my ass off and receiving no pay-off, let it at least be for myself. I have possibilities!

Every day I meet someone who thought they had a “future”, who went to work every working day for a decade or two, until one day they went to work and were told their job had been eliminated. And most everyone else I know has lost their ability to work for themselves as well. They have lost homes, assets, credit, bonding, licenses, equipment, and sometimes self respect; they chase work and leave town to find it. They take what they can find and put up with conditions they would not have before. Most of them just cannot find work, or only the most sporadic kind. Everyone is insecure. Things have become simple, basic, and the survivors get creative.

I am a survivor. No, I don’t know what I’m doing. Yes, I would like to go back to an easier time, when I could work as I needed to and have a “life”. Yes, I am in over my head. No, I don’t enjoy this every day. Yeah, you will get really sick if you work all the time, don’t eat or sleep enough and get really stressed out. Whatever, that was the way it went down, that’s what it took. If I knew what I was doing, I’d have not done it.

But News Flash: there is no Play It Safe way left. There is no “I want to have a life” anymore. This IS my life. There are no avenues that do not include big risks. There is nothing to be gained by not trying, and if you’re going to try then try with all your might, and don’t be a quitter. Against some of my own limits, I’m making new ones, and I haven’t quit.

I do realize that most do not understand if I say sometimes it’s just too hard, that I’m overwhelmed, that I don’t know if I have what it takes. They are visibly distressed to hear me say I don’t have the means to do this and would like to walk away every other day. They think “business owner” and assume solvency, competence, and consistent income. They don’t understand even if I tell them, that I’m not in a position of any glory and I’m not “getting all the money.” They don’t know that “success” for me today might be staying open another month. I realize that all I do is scare some people when I tell them how close to the bone this is, and that some other people may only judge me stupid for taking such a risk with so little means or know-how.

I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. They don’t need to know, and only those closest to me know the truth.

So there it is. This is all I have; running on empty with no resources and little experience and a bit of nerve. Not as much as people think. And every day is a ride I wonder if I will live through. There’s no time to regroup, and most of the suggestions people have given me for improving my business are things I struggle to not snort at. They have no clue that it’s simply not possible, that anyone would dare to do this without the means to replace, repair, hire, buy, and borrow from a bank. They have good ideas, and I file them away for future reference.

Am I crazy? A fool? Some days I think so. On sleepless nights I definitely think so. And then I go back and do it again the next day.

I want to write. I can’t find my magic place, the place I used to write from. There’s nothing in me right now but this runaway horse, and the one I keep kicking along. Maybe I will have to write about the ride, even if I write it badly.  And if  I am willing to do that, I can always write about the Dream. I’m living it.

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What About Us

What about me

Was I what you thought at all

Did I live up to your fantasy

Did I step up to the call

 

What about you

Are you done with me at last

Have I used up your imagining

Your dream of what is past

 

What about us

Have you really seen me yet

Aren’t I someone after all

You never really met

 

What about us

What about us

What about us

 

What about me

Are you ready to let go

Can I wear my true colors now

Can I let my feelings show

 

What about you

Is this all that you have left

Editing realities

That brought us to this edge

 

What about this

Can I just be me again

Can you let me have my happiness

Can you just let us end

 

And what about us

What about us

What about us

 

What about me

Am I more than what you say

Can I tell my own story

Can I write it my own way

 

And what about you

You have your book of dreams

Are you rewriting this chapter

To make it fit the scene

 

What about it

Can I just be me again

Can you let me have my happiness

Can you just let it end

 

What about it

What about us

What about us

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Mess of Dreams

I stumbled onto you

A picture, no less

In fact there were three

 

Grinning in one

Head thrown back

Softness apparent

New to me

 

Black shades the next

Guitar aimed

Like an arrow

At her heart

 

But the last

The soul heavy tired eyes

I remember these

Even now

 

So old

For so young

A man

 

The one thing I never got

When I wrote this

The lines etch now

Just like yours

And I wonder why

I never thought it

The one thing I never wanted

Those lines sketched

Just like my own

 

I took them with me, you know

When I left

Maps to my life

A mess of dreams

Songs we laid down

You gave to me

We rolled them in our sleeves

Maybe I stole them

If you say so

I’ll believe it

 

What kind of heart would be mine

If I covered all the soft spots now

With a stronger love

Built of more serviceable

Materials

And I could guarantee

It would no longer fail

Or leak

Or bleed

 

I tumbled into her

A picture, no less

More than three

 

I grinned in one

My head thrown back

Softness apparent

New even to me

 

Black shades the next

A needle aimed

Like an arrow

At my heart

 

But the last

The soul heavy tired eyes

You resemble these

Even now

 

So old then

For so young

A woman

A man

So young were we

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Just a Kid

When you’re a teenager, you think you know everything. You also think you are indestructible.

I look at kids that age, and I see children. But once in a while, I see one who also reminds me of me. A certain squint in one eye, a stance, a way of breathing. Not willing to wait, be held back; accept what she is told; that it’s for her own good, that she doesn’t know what’s good for her, that really, she knows nothing yet at all. Something about them, these individuals, these upstarts, calls me and makes me want to look away even while I am looking in, into them, into myself.

Who speaks to them? Do they have a net? Someone who will remind them of what’s important, of what must be held onto, even while they let them fall? A someone who plants a seed of meaning that might grow when there is solid ground once again?

Or is there a someone who rages at their impudence, their rush to taste all that waves at them from life? Who tells them always that they are out of step, that there will be Hell to pay; that they disappoint and embarrass with their refusal to just be children when they are already miles across the line from any “just”?

You can’t hold back the tide. Everybody knows that. Yet still, we have all tried to, somewhere.

When that damn breaks, it breaks. It just will. Go. Where it will.

I like the idea of a breakwater, maybe. A way left still for the water to go around. A buffer, not a bubble. Bubbles break. Then, they are no help at all.

 

Most people believe that if they are not controlling their children, they are doing them a disservice, being irresponsible. They think that whenever a child goes astray, the parents must not have controlled them very well, but often, the opposite is true. It is in that controlling that one such as I was ceases to hear anything at all that might be useful. She begins to know only that everything she wants is wrong, bad, and forbidden. At this point, who is she willing to be? If she is a strong willed one, she tries to put her will to conforming. Of course she fails. She never was a conformist, and it is not the trait that made her “good”. That was simply her own natural desire to please.

Now there is rebellion. Rejection. The only restoring of herself she knows so far—the move away from all restraints.

This child believes that she will die if confined. The only real strengths she has so far wither under the bindings of familial care, so it is with a kind of survival instinct that she separates herself.

 

I think of individuals, who in their quest for explanation, blame, or exemption, have made the statement that I chose everything I encountered.

At the risk of splitting hairs, I must qualify this. Ultimately, perhaps we even choose who we come into this world as. Some say we do. But it’s like telling a person they have chosen to have Cancer—another thing some actually believe.

What’s the point? All that matters is whatever choices come before us everyday. I was given new choices. I took them. Some lose their choices, along the way.

 

What else matters to me now is this—in trying so hard to keep something the same, in protecting those we love from all their own choices, instead of protecting in ways we really can, we do them a disservice, and ourselves as well.

We forget to honor in them their ability to discern, or even allow that ability to ever develop. Soon, choices are so much less about what is wanted or needed, but about just having a choice at all.

I myself clung to that; just having any ability to choose anything. Even if my choice was what my poison would be, even if my choice was who or what would control me, it seemed better than obedience to something I didn’t believe in at all. If I had to be untrue to myself, let me be the one who chose how.

Was this a mistake? Surely I paid an awful price for my choices. I had no idea, at the time, how long term the effects would be on me. Long after this chapter was far, far away, I would know the dents on my soul that I could never push out. My form is forever shaped by the things I’ve seen and known, and I have wished them undone so many times. I have wished for my innocence back, and grieved the losses that came from allying myself with powers that nearly destroyed me.

 

So I’ve had to ask myself, who would I be, had I chosen differently? Would I have found an easier way to move through society? Would I have come from my youth unscathed and unscarred by things most people are sheltered from in their young years? Would I have grown up not missing parts of my heart and soul?

Would I have learned to become the conformist I fought so hard against being? Perhaps life would have been easier, softer, and years later I would have paid with a simple and boring mid-life crisis instead of posttraumatic stress disorder. Perhaps when age caught up to me I would have been happy to have played safe.

I really don’t know. Regret is rather useless at this point. As one friend is fond of saying, “It is what it is.” Or, as my mother puts it, “You can’t unscramble the egg.” Well put.

 

When I see her now with that squint in one eye, I know there’s not much I can say about this. If there is, I’ve never figured out what it is. But my reaction is always the same; I’m drawn to her like I am to my own reflection the first time I see part of my life newly reflected in my face. You know, those feelings and events that take up residence there but sometimes take years or decades to move in. It has indeed taken decades for me to realize I am looking at me when I see her, that one with the defiant stance, the stare, the breath raging just beneath the calm of the skin.

What can I tell her? What would she listen to, remember, when the walls tumble down and she only needs to choose something herself, by herself, for herself?

 

I admire the delicate artistry of her new tattoo, chosen for great personal meaning and beauty, a symbol of her individuality and feminine strength. This is no peer pressure tattoo, but completely original, a collaboration between tattoo artist and herself, one of a kind.

The placement of the tattoo is significant, and affords concealment. Like carrying a secret talisman for life; one she can choose to share or not, but does not wear to the world. I can appreciate her choice to express herself with something so beautiful, yet so personal.

 

I make her tell me all her makeup tips, for I can see already that she has a talent for doing things her own way; ways that work better than the ways “they” say to do things.

I ask her, as I do each time, if she’s written anything lately.

I don’t encourage her to run off, like she is wont to do. I just ask her what she hopes to find. I talk about what it’s like to come home, what it really means to any person, “coming home”.

I ask her about her dreams; ask her what she would ultimately like to be doing, down to the last detail. I ask her about time; what time is it in her life? What would she like to have happen in the next year or two or three to give her the choices she craves? I know that for her, right now, it’s all about the right to choose for herself.

Mostly, I just listen, because I can. She is not my daughter. She is not my blood. I’m not compelled by duty to make her “shape up”.

She is just one of those kids I look at and I know, she’s not “just” a kid.

She is like water, unstoppable, flowing where she will. I don’t want to dam her up. I can’t. I don’t want to fill her up with fear, daring her to fail. And of course, I am afraid she will. We all have to fall down.

I want to be there when she scabs both knees. Girls like us always scab them both, because we run way too fast. For the sheer fun of it, for the chase, for the escape, for the momentum we can’t stop sometimes. I want to be there to tell her the scars will soften.

I tell her I like that she is herself, and not like everyone else. I don’t want to see her spirit broken, all though I can see where it might break one day; she will not settle for safety either. She will go places she ought to stay away from, just to know she went, just to taste her freedom.

I want to be there when she comes home, wherever she finds that home to be. When she does find it, she’ll know it, for herself and by herself, and she won’t wonder if someone else has made it up.

After a while she’ll lose her squint, but one eye will always seem to be a bit more open than the other, and she will have a crooked smile.

She will look and see and talk and smile with the side that is herself, and the side the world wants, so it can see her, hear her. And she will smile a lot. And when I see her, we will share our crooked smiles and say, “Hey, it’s good you’re home”.

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Be True

Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.–Janis Joplin

 

Don’t listen to those who say, “It’s not done that way.” Maybe it’s not, but maybe you will. Don’t listen to those who say, “You’re taking too big a chance.” Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would surely be rubbed out by today. Most importantly, don’t listen when the little voice of fear inside of you rears its ugly head and says, “They’re all smarter than you out there. They’re more talented, they’re taller, blonder, prettier, luckier and have connections…” I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria by which you live, the chances are you’ll be a person worthy of your own respect.–Neil Simon

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Sparrow

“I don’t believe in dream catchers.” she said. I looked at the small hoop that hung in the window, the only thing left behind. I paused, several beats, at a loss. Finally I ventured, “What do you mean when you say you don’t believe?” I didn’t want to offend or challenge, having nothing at stake myself. But I often wonder what exactly people mean when they say, “I don’t believe”?

She explained that they are “some kind of native American thing”, part of a spiritual belief, and that the dream catcher is “supposed to catch your bad dreams.”

I pondered, ended up saying nothing. For the rest of the day I pondered my own penchant for symbolism. A rainbow, like a special message in the sky in the exact moment I am willing to have hope renewed. A Jay’s feather like a gift in my garden, on a day blue might delight. A hollow rock shaped much like a heart, later found anew with a crack in it’s left side, telling a chapter in my story.

Treasures, small emblems of the walk I’m on.

Yes, these are of nature; no human had his hand in their being. Still, if the universe can put them in my path to speak to me, cannot the same be with anything? People themselves are put in our path to give us messages.

 

Two days ago a sparrow lay caught in a roll of chicken wire I keep for the garden. She looked dead, exhausted no doubt. She was caught by one claw. One claw is all it takes to trap us and cause us to struggle to the point of utter depletion. And who would not struggle in the face of no escape? I can’t imagine why she entered such an uninviting mess as a roll of wire, but once inside, only death, it seemed, would release her. It took several minutes to clip away the snarls of knotted wire to reverse her fate. Carefully, patiently, I delicately snipped, not wanting to injure her further, finally extracting her one toe from the last twist of metal. Away she flew, where she had been immobile a second before.

“fly”, I said.

 

Yesterday the pasture across the road was still. Suddenly the handful of cows there ran like the wind, causing me wonder and amusement. They love nothing better than standing still, chewing, and they looked awkward in flight. I thought it might be a game they played together.

They headed towards a wall of the barn, and I knew even the prospect of feeding would never cause them to run so fast.

Further away, horses huddled near their own barn, looking vigilant, looking ready for something.

On my way down the road 10 minutes later, my truck window was hit with a rock. A sizeable one. Then another. Suddenly the skies opened, raining down millions of stones. Actually ice. Hail, the size of stones. I drove back as fast as I could to get the dog in the open bed to shelter and to cover the new trucks with quilts, sleeping bags, scraps of blanket, anything.

Where scary-sized hail seems here to dissipate as quickly as I can ever take action, this hail never stopped, but came down with more and more velocity.

We ran through the stones, rescuing the works I’d spent so much time on and getting them under cover. It had been clear and over 100 deg for weeks and I never expected to have to shelter them. They are living works of art, full of plant life, and surely would take to these hailstones only slightly better than my tomatoes.

As the stones pelted my arms and back, I cried out, but ran into them anyway with plywood to cover the tomatoes. One of us wore a hardhat, one of us a cowboy hat. The hardhat was better. Where I had laughed at it first, I wished for it instead of my straw hat. Later I counted the bruises on my right arm.

There was nothing left to do, finally, but watch. I’d never seen a thing like it.

 

Well, had I not been given information? The horses, the cows, said “Something’s coming.” I would not register the meaning because it would not match up to what I thought I saw. But I took note, enough to feel foolish later.

This is not magic, not a mystical sign, not encoded at all. But it does speak of my own sometimes ignored inner knowing. Instinct, intellect, intuition, observation, not separates at all in my mind. It all works together, yet still I forget.

 

The hail stopped at last, as did the torrential rain that followed, and I considered trying again with my former plans. I wandered the garden, impressed with the slashes in the wide squash leaves; shredded. The tomatoes were torn up where there was no cover.

 I wondered what was next in the day; the birds were silent. I remembered that earlier in the day, while watering, I’d found a dead bird under the bench. She had a twisted foot.

 

A sparrow sat on the bench, right on the seat, as though waiting for a date. Clearly the hail had stunned her; perhaps she was hit in the eye as I was. She made no attempt to flee when approached, but accepted a finger to ride on. She blinked, the only sign of awareness. Complying with deposit on a safe limb high up the Smoke Tree, she sat blinking and observed us. I am not so touched or pleased by seeming trust from wild animals, for it says something is wrong with them. Survival reigns over passivity for them except when truly exhausted, or when trying to fool you into missing how injured or sick they are. And I’ve learned to leave small birds alone, for rarely have I helped them at all. But predators abound for a sparrow on a bench.

I imagined what story she might tell if she could, and then I wondered if she knew what had happened to her at all. First the sky caved in, then a giant creature picked her up and put her in a tree. I backed up, a respectful distance, and wondered what she thought for several minutes. She seemed to be waiting for something, still.

“fly” I said. And then she did.

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