Stealing Peace

I sit in the dirt, watching the water. Bass flicker in the murkiness there; he points them out here and there, softly tossing a pebble to trick them nearer so I can see. What else is there to do when you’ve lost your mind? The fish don’t know, they keep doing what they do and don’t have a thought for me and my mind. They only avoid sudden movement, of which I am careful.
An ancient backpacker’s mat appears from the truck and I’m given a place to sit there. I have to make an appearance later and shouldn’t look like I’ve lain in the mud. I don’t care if I do.
I go searching for a cigarette and when I return there is a pillow on the mat. A pillow with a wildlife motif. A man’s pillow, placed exactly where my head will lay.
I close my eyes there and wonder, wonder at the small things that I will survive on today. The drive with hot tears behind my sunglasses and the hand that tucks my hair behind my ear; the friend, the water, the pillow. The quiet parade of objects that emerge from the truck to ponder. A small Norweigan flag, mine now. An English flask, beautifully engraved, run over and smashed completely flat; useless but for it’s loveliness and curious state.
A gravy boat. It perches on my belly for a while until it confuses me. Why am I lying in a road by a lake with a gravy boat? And then I remember, it’s something I would do; it should be funny.
A small bottle of lotion.
A magic bag of tricks.
Found treasures and remedies for dry and untended skin. Skin that doesn’t feel like mine, that doesn’t fit.

We’d eaten chile rellenos, seated high over the street where the people walked; people with places to go and money to spend, lives happening. The sun was shining, maybe birds were singing. It’s how I see the picture, but I don’t remember and wouldn’t hear. I ate and was surprised that I could. It feels so wrong to eat, like eating on somebody’s grave, which is ridiculous. Who’s grave? Mine?
Nobody died. I have to eat.
I am ravenous, and I eat over the grave, the one no one but me knows I am sitting on or in. His long legs brush mine, a comfort, safe. His blue green eyes look at me, never deeper than what I can stand. The most they do is turn dark once.
We look like any couple, maybe slightly more interesting, better looking than some. People that don’t quite know think we are, because they know there’s something, just what they can’t figure.
He is beautiful, but he is not mine, and I am not his. He is the impossible friend, who couldn’t know the broken girl I am, who’s never seen my world, who doesn’t know darkness, who needs nothing from me. He is the impossible friend who I would love if the universe was different. But he is just a friend. The friend who brought me to the water this day so I could think, or not think.

I turn the music up. It seems so trite, lyrics that meant something a lifetime ago, now just a feeling that doesn’t make sense, nothing more. I am nothing but feeling and confusion; it seems fitting, none of the words making sense. And then the Norah Jones I’d given him gives me a lullaby and finally something feels right. I sleep the half trance of temporary peace. This moment, it’s all I have.
I ask him to drop me off and I don’t bother to retrieve my own vehicle. I know I will have to walk for blocks later, and it will be night, but I don’t care. I have borrowed time and now there isn’t anymore. I’ll worry about it later. For right now, I can’t give back one stolen moment of peace.
There’s nothing to be said when I leave, only his eyes dark once more, and my quiet thank you, and then I’m gone, carrying my stolen peace in a bag with a Norweigan flag to say it’s so.
I hang it over the calender in my office and sit in the dark, watching people through the window again. The calender says May. I don’t know when this started, what day my self slipped under the door and ran away. I don’t mark things on calenders and I’d rather forget. But I look there all the same, trying to figure it out. Which day did this happen? Which day did I realize I couldn’t get away from it? Which day did someone tell me “You have got to get your mind together”? When did I stop being able to get my mind together anyway? Have I gotten it back together at all?
I play with things on my desk. The tiny pewter tray with the viking ship. The pocketknife I forget to leave in my pocket and always need then. A rubber band, so useful. Nothing looks familiar, does the trick of making me make sense to me. It’s just stuff.
I go back to my closed eyes and see ripples on the water, see a pebble falling into depth, see a small fish making it’s way. I only know this, this moment of stolen peace.

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A Song For You

But now I’m so much better
And if my words don’t come together
Listen to the melody
Cause my love’s in there hiding, someplace

[Special thanks Al]

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Life Without You

For You…
Gone, but not forgotten.
Love You, forvever.

For Anyone…
Missing Someone gone.
The Love is forever.

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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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Green Eyes

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Fancy

“We’re not fancy people.” she said. Opened the door wide to me while following my gaze to the yard.

The “yard” was dirt, mud proper. Chickens pecked and scratched, played their chicken dramas out with one another. Somewhere I could hear a goat in the mix, and that seemed fitting.

“Looks like home.” I replied with a smile.

“Come on in and sit down a while. I’ve got the coffee on.” And she looked me in the eye, plain faced and spoken. I knew already that I liked her.

 

We must have talked for an hour before I got down to looking at the things I came there for. Red glass she wanted to part with. I saw no need, but pulled each piece from its box anyhow, barely checking. I knew it was all as she’d said—perfect. I’d already paid her and wouldn’t have changed my mind. After all, she’d provided high quality pictures and had described each piece in detail.

She’d left the price to me. That was a new concept and one I did not wish to abuse. She’d contacted me and I wanted to play this right. I’d paid her a fair price, even told her she could get more if she chose to sell them herself, piece by piece.

 

It had been a long drive. I gratefully took the cup of steaming brew and cradled my hands around it, almost burning them. My bones were cold. It was one of those damp to the soul, chilly Northwest days, gray and close. Her home was a little haven on the muddy lane.

There were birds in cages that sang a storm when she spoke to them, pictures of family everywhere, and two very happy small dogs that fell in love with me at first sight. My guess was they did so with everyone, but I chose to take it personally. For the moment, I was the best and most exciting thing they had ever seen.

 

The coffee was not the deep and dark strain I live on, but a poorer woman’s coffee, a store brand that came in a can. I took another sip and thought she’d maybe put some magic in it, because it hit the spot so well—just what I needed. The chill left me and we communed over the simple drink, ten years between us and we worlds apart, yet strangely akin.

As I touched the red glass my eye wandered throughout the kitchen where we sat at a plain wood table. There in a glass front cabinet I saw her treasures, mostly worth far less than the pieces I inspected. And I knew she didn’t care, that these were the stories of her life and of her children’s. Mementos and gifts, each somehow connected to a special time or person. The red glass would have been beautiful displayed in the cabinet—the only place available for “fancy” things. But it was useless to her there. She already had everyday dishes to eat from, and she kept that display only for her most loved things. Red glass was better suited for cash to buy gas, gas that would go to the septic truck they worked with. They were struggling like everybody, and times were tough. Work comes first.

Still, I don’t think it bothered her at all to sell the glass. It was just “things”.

 

I learned a lot about Mary while I was there. She had a husband who seemed a good man, whose first thoughts were to carry my boxes and load them for me. She had a young daughter who minded her Mama, at least in front of company. And another, grown daughter who couldn’t meet me that day due to a flare of her illness. I learned that the illness had taken the daughters father, two uncles and a grandfather, and that it caused organ failure and stroke. Daughter was thirty years old and had suffered two strokes already. She was in bed today.

I listened to this information, seeing there was no self pity, no drama in the telling, but a matter of fact accounting of why the otherwise unthinkable was occurring—an offspring of hers not greeting company.

I learned that my new friend had been married for years to another man, an alcoholic who hit her often, until she summoned the courage and conviction to leave.

I saw that she was happy, but humble, and found myself admiring of her gentle spirit, her absolute lack of bitterness.

 

Her mother arrived with mail in hand, a daily tradition they kept regardless of all else. “Mother brings the mail everyday, and then we have dinner.”

Mother was on oxygen, but moved and observed like a bird, her quick movements belying her age and condition. She engaged me in a story of yet more glass, glass she’d collected one piece at a time, lifetimes ago, by filling up her gas tank. One free piece per fill up. She still had it all. I knew she was eager to show it to me, and she lived on the same lot as Mary, but I resisted the impulse to ask to see it.

It was time to go and I knew I shouldn’t draw it out any longer. Dark was coming, and these people needed dinner. So did I and so did the animals back home.

 

Mary stood and she told me, “I’m a hugging person. I hope you don’t mind.” and she put her soft arms around me. She was silent, feeling, holding the part of me that saw her and knew who she was. She did not let go, but stood this way for a time. I knew she smiled, though I couldn’t see her face. When I finally could, she said, “I hope to see you again.” Looked me in the eye, plain faced and spoken.

 

I went on then, drove through the wet and the falling night, drove to my own humble home. When I finally got there, I saw the smoke rising from the flue, the golden light of the window. I heard the dogs barking, then saw the biggest one wagging furiously on the porch like I’d been gone a week. For another moment, I am the best and most exciting thing ever seen.

 

I am wearing my favorite coat, the one that makes me look like a rock star and never fails to bring comments, even strangers touches. I hang the coat  in the closet and pull off my favorite vintage boots. One arm into my old Carhartt, I see my thundering, bumbling four legged children heading my way, mud and slobber flying, and I pull on the beat up boots I live in before they can get to me. They are not respecters of go to town clothes.

I clap my hands and call my big girl Bubba, because it’s funny, and the boy I tell a little rhyme to with his name in every line. He always seems to get a real kick out of this. They fawn and lean and wap their tails on my legs ‘til it hurts too much and I have to send them away. They leave their spit on my pants, but it’s time to change anyway.

 

There is a smile in this house, and food that is hot on my favorite plate. Here are my own treasures, my most loved things, and the ones who know me. Here are my stories, my secrets, my promises, and here are the things I won’t part with. Here are my flannel pajamas, the cookie jar I won’t sell for seven hundred dollars, the chipped china bowl on the shelf with a story no one knows but me. Here is the man who believes in me, even while not understanding me, and here is the land he’s fought to keep for us, covered in dips and puddles and mud. Here are the oversized dogs who love us, protect us and drool on us, and their oversized beds, cluttering up the floor. And here is the deal—the red glass is not for me either, but a means to an end. My treasures.

 

I see the mud on my boots, and I know if I ever build a house, there will be no carpets. Just nice wood floors, the kind you can clean. Grinning, I see muddy paws and rawhide bones, happy dogs.

We’re not fancy people.

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Jess

Jess?

 

I found some pictures. Pictures of you.

Not the you I once knew. Gone now, the mass of black curls. Gone, the sharp cheekbones women whispered about, the slanted green eyes that pierced so much they frightened people. Gone now the tiny frame of muscle that had lifted me high and twirled with such frenzy as to become blur. Not there, I looked for it; the small, silent cat who walked on padded paws, claws pulled in.

 

Jess, I remember. Lithe and compact, deceptively strong, the kind they say you should watch out for. He could land on his feet and turn on you faster than you could regroup. That was evidenced to me more than once. It wasn’t rare to see some big dumb oaf try to take him on. Usually it was because of the eyes, and his size, but also because of me. Just because he was with me and some big guy thought it should’ve been him.

Big-guy could have never kept up with me. In fact, I would have left him wondering what had just happened to him. We both knew that.

Now that I think of it, I guess since then I probably gave that guy a try or two. You can probably guess the outcome.

 

I’m sorry, I was talking about you like you weren’t in the room. But in a way, I guess maybe you’re not, are you? I’m still having a time putting it all together. You are the same guy, after all. And then, you aren’t.

I am not the one you knew either.

It’s been a long time.

 

I think maybe what’s happened is this simple: You grew up. That makes sense. I guess I did too. Certainly, I’ve come at least as far as you.

It’s not that I myself look much different. No, I really don’t think I do. I might look better, even though I have laugh lines now. But I’ve replaced myself.

I didn’t do it all at once, and it was never intentional. Just eventually, enough of that old me died, and someone new settled in. I never knew it would be that way.

I tried to hang on to who I was and who we were and what we said. What we did. And one day, I just couldn’t find you anymore. I never really knew what happened, or couldn’t remember. More and more, a glass and a needle had made the shape of us into something I couldn’t see. But something I couldn’t leave either.

Finally, I let someone else do it for me, for us. He slid in like a snake, slithering into the space you left. He struck with something you couldn’t fight, a venom with no antidote. He helped me turn on you, away from you. It didn’t take long for me to see what I had done. What he had done. There was no undoing it, but I had to tell you. And I still don’t think the end came there.

 

I would’ve died. Without you, I would’ve died. You saved me but you couldn’t stop the seizures.

Before it happened, I remember us being inside. I’m standing in the barred doorway smoking, and someone’s yelling at me to get away from the door. “Don’t get too close to the bars.” Hands are reaching in to grab my lit cigarette. And voices are passing and lingering, calling to me with proposals and curses, insane whispers rustling and fading on, smells, Mota. In the pitch black, a sudden awareness of a body and a pair of eyes so close I can feel heat, see blinking. This time a hand reaching in, offering smoke.

I take another hit of cognac from the singer’s bottle, for courage. I’ll be outside soon. It’s cold. We finally head out together.

 

At first, it’s just like pins and needles. It starts in my feet and moves upwards, and I stand still looking at myself, trying to see something. You’re hissing at me now to walk, reminding me where we are, but my feet don’t do what I tell them. I look at your face but the picture is in pieces. Triangles and slivers, broken glass.

I know my head explodes. I hear a loud “pop”, when the pins and needles get that far up. When I hear it, the kaleidoscope vision I’ve had just before, vanishes. With that “pop”. And then there’s dark.

I hear screaming, a wailing, that builds and rises. A horrible sound and one I hope I never hear again. Absolute terror and agony in it, a person being skinned alive. I hear it from far away, and I strain to tell it’s source, and I can’t see a thing but blackness.

I’m trying so hard to fight my way out of the black. I can still hear everything, and you’re screaming my name. All my will is given to it, but I can’t help it. Just black. The blackest black I’ve ever known. Where do you think I am? I’m serious, do you know? Because I don’t. I’m gone, but trapped, still here. I am blind and I am dead, but still aware of me. Still hearing you scream at me. Still registering the impact when you start slapping me, but too dead to feel. In truth, it’s a worse pain that any other pain I’ve ever felt—that much I register. Dead, but alive. Afterwards, I will dream for years that I am dead. Dead, but aware. That’s where I am, I can’t come back, I can’t help you. I can’t do anything.

The people that see me when you bring me in think I’m out of it. And I am. By this time I’m not even twitching; I am silent, unresponsive, unfeeling, “unconscious”. I hear them say it. But I hear every word they say, every word you say. All these years later, I will still feel Erin’s hands on my face, over and over stroking, her voice the only peace like a song “It’s going to be all right—It’s going to be all right.” She says my name, over and again, tells me she is right here, right here, right here. The only one who seems to understand—I can still HEAR.

How does she know where I am? She knows. No one else does.

But you save me. You get me to her. You yell my name so many times I don’t fly off with those screams I hear, those screams that are really mine.

Erin knows about this place. She must hear the voices in my head that tell me not to listen, not to listen to her, that try to keep me with them. She never stops saying my name, never stops touching me, never gives up. I know it, know she is holding on, showing me a light I can’t see or really feel, but she keeps the tether of it wrapped around my soul.

 

God. Erin. I wish she knew. She was the one who saved us both that night.

 

I can’t tell the rest of the story now. I thought I could. But it turns out I’m not brave enough after all. You have your story, and I have mine, but you don’t know the rest of mine. If I could get through it without crying, without looking for the scar…

Maybe it’s better if I leave it that way. I know I can always fast forward. That’s easier.

 

I see you in pictures. One, I keep only in my head. No one else can see it.

You’re sitting on a kitchen chair out my back door playing slide on an old Les Paul. Tipping the chair back, rocking it. You’ve just had a haircut—the only one I ever saw you with. Your wild curls look tame. Like they might even stay that way.

We’ve never said a word before, least not that I can remember. But I hear what you’re playing and I can’t help it and I give you that look. And too much passes between us then and I can’t take it back. And you just say “How eloquent you are.” And you are playing slide again. But now it’s only for me.

 

I had another one; I kept it for years ‘til someone made me throw it away. It was you, again with the Les Paul, but it had nothing to do with me. I just liked the picture. My friends liked it; they thought you were someone I didn’t recognize; a rock star, maybe. They’d always ask who you were, and I’d just shrug. I liked it because I could see blue on you.

 

There’s more. The last place I knew about without me in it. A box, and my shaking hand on the cover and lifting, before I can say not to. And there it is, all of it. And I know you’re serious, because this is not the outfit of a dabbler. And I know you know I know. And I watch you walk like a ghost out the door for your appointment. I know what we’ve lost is never coming back.

 

There are several missing pages. I don’t know where those shots went, but I never have seen them anyway. I just leave them blank. The one I find next is someone else again.

And I ask him, “Are you happy?”

Then “Do you love her?” And you are silent for too long.

“ I never want to have again what I had with you. The kind of love that makes you DO what you would never do, under any other circumstances.”

And I know just what you mean.

You are comfortable, you tell me so. And it’s all right if we just sit holding each other all night, and if we cry for who we were because it’s all we’ll ever have of it now.

 

And then I found these others. Not mine at all, they’re just out there and I saw them.

They really do have not a thing to do with me, just like that other picture. Someone I don’t know; yet I’d know you anywhere.

Age has found us all, if we’ve survived. And you wear the weight of your soul in your eyes, in your flesh. Just as I do. It’s shocking, really, to see the scars. No, they’re not ugly. I know about them, anyway. Like you know about mine. All the same, we forget.

 

And I ask, “Are you happy?” and I can’t hear an answer. But you look comfortable, and so I tell you so. You reply by holding your guitar, the same as always.

And I ask, “Do you regret anything?” And you are silent again, but I think I see you smile.

 

Jess?

 

 It’s good to see you.

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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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The Why

There is no understanding “Why”.

Trying to comprehend, with a compassionate heart, the incomprehensible; the compassionless. It will make you crazy. 

All that needs understood is more stark and brutal than I like to be, but it is the truth still; there are people in the world who cannot be filled or satisfied. Ever. The closest they come is momentary, and it comes from control, which makes them important, makes them matter.

They don’t care who they hurt or whether it’s wrong to do the things they do. It’s all about them; there is no real concience inside. Only the rules and tools they have learned to get them what they need and want. This emptiness, combined with a lack of remorse, compassion, concience, makes for a very hungry and potentially vicious creature. Some are more talented in feeding themselves than others, and not all who lack a concience become criminal. It all depends on what they want, what gives them that momentary, fleeting sense of satisfaction, but it will always be about what they want over anything else that should matter. Especially you. Especially if you have something they want. And they often do want what they cannot have.

Many wear their emptiness , their discontent, as some badge of honor, their persona one of being so rich, creative, intelligent, and individual that the mundane and real life challenges and joys of other people do not apply to them, do not touch them. They are not sheep and have no need to deceive themselves with the banal like those asleep people.

Many also become adept at displaying the traits of actually having compassion, for they study others and learn that it’s a great cover for not giving a shit about anybody at all. They also learn it get’s them alot of ground with the most vulnerable of marks.

For the truly discontented, the misunderstood, the vulnerable, this blend of learned tactics in the concienceless can cause us to volunteer, or at least repeatedly abide destructive and selfish behavior, even as our instincts scream at us  to RUN AWAY. Because, it seems, someone finally understands us. It’s even worse if you have ever been a “runner”, for now you want to, for once, just stay. And they want you to stay, return, let them in, because you are their source of food. Emotional, spiritual, literal, whatever. You are a source, nothing more. Yes, that’s brutal, and always true to the sociopath.

I say “us”, because I have been this one; one who was dragged into a pit so deep and wide I could not see the sky; all because I believed I could apply understanding to another who is motivated by twisting people into mental and spiritual pretzels. My worst mistake; trying to put myself in their shoes, when it can’t be done. It’s like believing a snake is not a snake, but a human that slithers. A snake is a snake and does snake things. My interpretation of the snake has nothing to do with it’s snake-ness, and never did.

Here’s how I healed myself, took back my life: I stopped believing the story, the excuses, the tragedy of it all, all those reasons the person hurt others, all the reasons it wasn’t their fault they did what they do, all those reasons they are “wounded”, confused, torn, jaded, and self destructive. I stopped believing in the allure, the glamor of their darkness and failures. I ignored their “potential” [which was a convenient way of covering alot of "nevers"] It is all a convenient and learned application to blur and cover their selfish destruction of everything they cannot attain, yet cannot accept responsibility for not having, because they believe they should have whatever they want. Simple. At whatever cost to you. At no real cost to themselves, besides playing the game well.

I stopped believing they are victims of their own crappy lives. Many have had crappy lives and have used what they’ve learned to create so much good. And sociopaths have no problem using every tool to their advantage when they are securing a victim to use, in fact, they can become very persistant. They are not inert, powerless, helpless. Just selfish. Just lacking in character. Just not motivated by anything but greed. Those lacks cannot be taught to one who does not want to learn them. There may be something missing in them, but there is also choice, and they’re not crazy. They do know what they’re doing.

This is not bitterness speaking, for I am long past the brush of bitterness beginning in me. I have survived the chasm of coldness, aloneness, self doubt and anguish the sociopath left me to dig out of. I grew through the pains of learning to love and trust after seeing the truth of what one like this can do. It took me a long time, but I made it; I got better, I got stronger. And I love, feel, and care as fiercely as I can. The sociopath stole from me, I won’t let him rip me off in my ability to love too. I’m alive. My heart is alive. My spirit is intact. I won’t become like he; dead inside.

Know this: they are not like us, and trying to understand will be the consumption of all efforts to understand anything, which would be better applied elsewhere. There isn’t understanding, just identifying, just seperation. Just moving on,  and becoming you again. I believe in you.

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Rest in Peace

Rest in peace, David Carradine.

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