George

I always used to consider the friendships I formed online to be transient, shifting, intangible things, meant to last as long as my interest in the places where they were formed.

Then some things changed. I met one or two people who seemed to either share my thoughts exactly, or had the thoughts I hoped to have someday when I "grew up" and became a more mature version of myself. I met some people who, once befriended, refused to come unstuck, refused to spin away off into the ether of the internet.

I met some people who knew how to hold on, and they taught me that real friends are where you find them. They taught me that I was worth holding onto. They taught me that an online friendship was the purest and truest definition of the phrase "meeting of the minds."

Out here on the internet we don't have facial expressions unless we use pictures or the funny squiggles at the top of the keyboard, so we learn how to talk to one another truthfully, simply, honestly, and clearly. We share our thoughts as clearly as we can, and we meet one another out here mind to mind in a way that can't be matched out in the "real world," where hormones and facial expressions and distractions of the flesh can lead us astray.

And among all these meetings, the one I have treasured the most and for the longest, and have taken for granted so foolishly, is my friendship with George.

He has told me many times that I am like a little sister to him. He's known me when I was nice, and when I was not nice, and when I was downright cat shit mean. And through it all, he was there, just being my friend anyway.

George, I hope you somehow can know how much I care, how much I miss your words out here in the fragile air of the internet. I hope that somehow you can sense that I am just as much your friend as you have been a friend to me. And if you never get a chance to see these words, I just wanted them out there, trumpeting loud for the world to see, that this good man was, is and always will be...

...my friend.

Family Trait: Bop Bag Clownism

In my family, there's a definite tendency to roll with the punches. Life smacks you a good one? You go down and then come back up and knock the current obstacle on its ass with your forward momentum. That is a true fact about just about everyone in my family, on both sides. We are hardy, like weeds. We will come up swinging. We will bounce back up, a "fuck you" smile on our faces, and dare you to try that shit again.

like this scary bastard.

But sometimes? It can be tempting, after the latest in hundreds of smackdowns, to just... stay down. To stop bouncing back up. To lay down and give up and just quit. Fighting. Every. Single. Thing. Every. Single. Day.

Luckily, I'm just not wired that way. Luckily, there's a part of me that just flat-out refuses, refuses to stay down. It's an involuntary response, like blinking or the beat of my heart. It's beyond my control. With or without my input, the Standard Operating Procedure after any new life-punch is that upward spring, that teeth-clenched smile of sheer you're-not-bigger-than-me, that stupid-stubborn refusal to quit, that inability to admit when I'm beaten.

So I'm never beaten. I'm never down for long.

I will keep on practicing that upward bound. I will refuse to admit defeat. After all, I'm wired that way. I'm preset for refusal to give in. There's no quit in me.

There is, however, a healthy dislike of both clowns and dolls. Why the hell did I find that photo? Thanks for the nightmares, self.

I love you, Infinity

I was talking to my aunt on the phone this evening. She's had a rough time just lately; she's had to stand by and watch as several people she loved fought their battles, unable to lend anything but hope and sorrow as each won or lost their individual struggle.

So when she told me that she went to the beach to recharge her batteries, and that she felt more at peace and close to God there, I knew exactly what she meant and what the ocean had done for her, because it does the same for me, only in a different way.

When life is just too hard, when things have come to a place where I feel that the box full of emotions I keep locked tight inside me is about to burst its chains and spill forth on everyone around me, I make for the ocean. When I stand on the shore looking out to where the sky and the water become a place of mist and illusion, each echoing the other until they are an indistinct, twinned line, I feel as though my seemingly insoluble problems are a waste of infinite space and time.

When I watch the endless, repeating cycle of water lapping the shore, pulling away and overflowing back again forever and ever and ever, I think: How is it that I feel that my little problems are so large? On this scale, where these waters will come in and go away again until the Earth ceases to hold tight to the Moon, my worries are as fleeting as a breath.

When the wind blows the tingle of salt into every pore of my skin, chilling me and sealing out the babble of all of my more trivial thoughts, I am set free from old ideas and old fears. I am able to be alone inside my head, in some way more alone than at any other time. I am able to dispassionately view the things that have haunted and harried me and put them into perspective.

As an irreligious person, I don't feel the need to be close to a creator, but I do feel a great sense of wonder and awe that I am a part of such a beautiful, complex system as this shore, this world, this galaxy. My tiny little self is a part of something so immense, so wonderful, so amazingly complicated, I can't help but revel in that sense of delight, of oneness with all things. I can never forget that I am made of star-stuff:




Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' (ft... by wamane


So when my auntie tells me she feels better and closer to God after her visit to the ocean, I get it. Oh, I get it. She was reminded of her part in the great Infinite, and how beautiful it is to get to be alive as a part of it all.

Actually, that makes me want to get away to the ocean myself, and as soon as I can. I need to refresh my sense of my place in the infinite, as well.

Capitalist PEEG

I want so many things I can't afford.

I want to never have to think about paying the rent or an insurance bill or a phone bill or any bill ever again - bitch, take it out of my bottomless bill account and don't bug me. Seriously.

I want to travel to all those places I see on television: I want to watch the sun rise in the Virgin Islands. I want to walk in a soft Irish rain. I want to hike the Great Wall of China. I want a Sherpa to guide me through Nepalese mountains. I want to learn to surf in Honolulu.

I want a wall of amazing guitars and a recording studio in the basement of my airy, sunlit house - you know, the one on a couple of acres out in the boonies someplace? The one with a self-contained cottage a few feet away where my dad can live and be private but still get his meals carried to him by a doting grandgirl? The one with a huge kitchen garden and a chicken coop? Yeah, that one.

I want a Winnebago. Goofy, right? Well, I do. I want to load everyone up on a whim and travel to Yellowstone or Crater Lake or the coast.

I want to select one of my two or three great digital cameras and go take amazing pictures so that each memory I capture is as close to perfect as the moment itself.

HOWEVER, I am so thankful that I have the things I do have.

I am thankful that, with some exceptions, I can pay my bills at all.

I am thankful that in the little round of daily travel I do make I see things of beauty, like Mount Tabor and the cityscape across the Willamette River and the St. Johns Bridge.

I am thankful that I have a little apartment that is a home to my children - and one or two pretty cool guitars, as a matter of fact. I am thankful that, despite our sticky butts that are in love with our sofas, my dad can come see me or I can go see him and it's not a hardship to do so.

I try to remember every day all of the things I do have. I try to remember every second how lucky I am to have the people in my life that I do. I work at being at peace with the small round of small events that I experience every day. And most of the time I succeed, with varying levels of success.

But lord, lordy lord, I sure would appreciate winning the lottery. Oh, yes, this little capitalist is as piggy as they come, I guess.

But I can live with that, too.

March Second

I love and miss you, my mama.

Today is the anniversary of your death. I was watching a show just now and somebody said, "Someday you'll be standing over a rock with your momma's name on it and it will be too late," and I just sprang a leak, silent sorrow dripping down my cheeks and causing one of those I'm-not-crying-no-really pressure headaches.

And it's a weird place I'm in, Mom. I still love you so goddamn much. I still miss you, even though I think we'd have beaten each other senseless several times had you lived into my young adult years. I still wish I had you to talk to. I still think that when you died I lost my very first unswerving ally, a person who, right or wrong, would have had my back without fail, without ceasing, without a question or a qualm.

But I don't hurt as much as I thought I would for some reason this year. I don't hurt as much as I used to. I don't know what that means, if it means I've healed some more or if I'm so numbed and callous that I am a terrible daughter to you and should be ashamed of myself. I don't know.

I just didn't want this day to go by without remarking on the fact that you aren't here. You deserve to be remembered. You deserve to be missed. You were an amazing, talented, beautiful and loving woman. You made mistakes. You hurt me. You were special and funny and I adored you and fuck, you adored me right back and I wish you were still here. I wish you were still here. I really, really do.

So yeah. Disjointed, goofy, repetitive and all, here's my shout to the world that you were here, mama. You were here and now you are not and I wish that wasn't true. Since it is, I do my best to deserve your love and respect even though you can't actually bestow them on me anymore. I am living up to you every day. Maybe, since that is so, I don't need to miss you, since I carry you with me always.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                            i fear 

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-E.E. Cummings