Brockton Fair

 The Carnie hauled the tender children awkwardly into the swings. He grabbed them at the knee or the shoulder, careful not to touch their crotch. It looked bad, but it was safe. “I know my job.”

 

I know you do. Blood shot eyes, missing teeth, paunch, old beyond your years. I winced when my meek friend asked him to buckle in her tiny child. I could see another trough in the roller coaster ride of addiction heading his way.  I’d bet money that there would be extra rounds of whatever that night. Hours after we were safely asleep, miles a way in a different kind of city, self-hatred would dig an even deeper hole and hedge it with a mountain of anger, “that fuckin’ bitch thinks I don’t know how to take care of a kid….” Life is a carnival of constant crisis; risks, gambles, imagined or real dire events that require risking all lest the boat of life capsize again.  Before, after, and in between the alcohol and drugs there’s sugar and fat. In the fun house there are two truths, two worlds, maybe more. He knows the secret of the game but he plays anyway. All day long he tells lies. Does everyone’s home confirm their inner landscape? Is an addict’s life away from the carnival easier, without the hawkers and twirly-whirlie to confirm the dizzy truth?

 The fragile, beautiful creatures whose safety is always paramount in our minds race around a hysterical kaleidoscope of pretend dangers. Was it a drunk that checked the wires? Who checked on the drunk? An adult bends down and tells a child it’s all pretend, they’re safe, everything is ok. My eyes widen until my brow hurts. I tell my self “Don’t exaggerate. Take a deep breath. Buy a balloon. Relax. It’s all going to be ok.”

The Gleaner

7/6/09
Heinken green, Stolzt white, rare blue, common brown and thousands of different kinds of plastic: the jumble bumble skirt around the island read like a garbled testament to the power of desire. To own part of the dreck created by a wanting as strong as the heaving of the ocean was our singular goal and the day’s big mission.

An efficiency fiend, I combined my search for sea glass with garbage collection. Naturally my care would be rewarded when I found the best glass under piles of refuse. We searched until we were almost too tired to paddle back to Hull.

I struggled; fatigue brought home the ocean’s ability to bring anything to a polished end. My sunglasses became a victim of my failure to follow directions. In our tame harbor, beauty, garbage and the search for meaning were all very blurry. Anyone could tell me what to do but there is definitely no guarantee that if I did it my reward would be a pretty something or an easy ride home. I did it anyway. Such was life the day I heard M.’s cancer had returned.

Penny Rolls Away

A Walkabout

----refers to a rite of passage where male Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months. In this practice they would trace the paths, or "songlines", that their people's ceremonial ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.---Wikipedia

Feb 09

In the winter of my 48 year I began having visions. They usually appeared at an intersection I passed through on the way home from work. It’s a three way, but from the spot that triggered the phantasm you can only go forward; not right into Franklin Park, not left down the one way street. I’d stop and look up the incline and see myself standing on the side of the road with my thumb stuck out, going to California to make a new start just like I did when I was 23.

One of the good things that came out of the tail end of my mid-life crisis was the realization that I really am very different from most people. And so when the vision starting appearing with a “list of things to do before leaving” attached to it I started to worry. I knew that I might actually do it. I might pull up stakes, leave everything I’d started and hitchhike to California. Or North Dakota. Even now the thought makes my mouth water.

Beyond that, I felt like breaking things. All my life I had longed for stability and predictability, but the day I realized that I intuitively knew exactly the amount of groceries I needed for the coming month it felt like a prison sentence. If I was going to get violent best to do it away from home.

Even by my own standards, I was behaving erratically. For instance, right before leaving I posted on craigslist for an atypical romantic relationship. It was as if all the birthdays of the past 13 years all happened on the same day. One day I was 32, the next I was 45. I woke up one day and realized that the things in my life that I was working on, that I wanted to change, that were going to change any day now had been the same for decades. What could I do that I hadn’t tried already--except run away and make a new start?

The irony is that all this happened at a time when I felt like I was learning all sorts of new things about myself. The concurrent realization that it just didn’t matter; nothing had changed and in all likelihood, nothing would change was like being slammed up against a pair of steel walls, first the left and then the right, then the left, then the right, ad infinitum. It’s all good and it’s all bad: very, very bad. So I decided to do it. I’m running away from home. Roots in place, head in the wind. I’ve sublet my apartment and am going as far a field as a tank of angst will take me.

July 09

Today, in the middle of my walkabout, I can appreciate the fruits of my age. I’ve become so good at squeezing Lincolns that on the surface my life looks almost normal. I have more time than Bill Gates and I don’t worry about money. I don’t have a life partner: I have a small flock of ex’s that keep things interesting and I’ve finally learned enough about men to get from a sexy someone enough of what I need to remember love. It’s not the white picket fence. It’s not a house/pension/lawn in the suburbs. It’s not family. But it is what I’ve got and had for a long time now. And it’s not so bad.

The time has come to say, like hundreds of thousands of my ilk, “It is what it is.” Love it or else go to bed mad w/sadness night after night. Burst into tears in the convenience store because a mother and child hug. Or wake up and realize this is my path and I’ve been living it for decades. It’s different from other peoples, very, very, different. If there was a divergence, a moment when I could have hit the road for a life lived happily yoked to a loving husband it was obscured by god. I made a good faith effort and now I’ve realized it’s not a problem I can solve. The answer must be that I’ve been asking the wrong question. And so I have refashioned my self into who I am; into what many people see me as: loner, artist, iconoclast. More wolf than woman, I am so self-directed, so single-mindedly focused on self-realization that a warm hearth has no appeal whatsoever. I cast it off like I cast off my apartment. I will run along exotic tundra and through the concrete jungle, with nothing but a clean pair of underpants to secure my future and like us all,  completely alone. Malzoltof


“Dandelion” by Anje Duvekot

I'll never dance in Swan Lake, I'll never play the cello
I am the Northern Lights, I am invisible
I am a dandelion, I am forever wild

I am the Fourth of July
I'm throwing you a fire in the sky
You could go blind in my light
But you were looking for an orchid
And I will always be

You were looking for a tea light
And I will always be a forest fire

A dandelion...

Ax Murderer

Response Found on Craig's List

Re: cl ad‏
From: Mr. Incognito (bb1in1out@gmail.com)
Sent: Sun 11/30/08 2:17 AM

You may not know this sender. Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe

To: Someday Everyday

afternoons spent in a perpetual dreamlike coma, nights wandering the small wooded areas adjacent to the two-story hell hole I rattle around in...casually awaiting the knock at the door that will lead to my incarceration, or overdue death.

the razors in my bathroom, the knives in my lavender kitchen...

they have seen a great deal of my, and an even greater deal of other people's, blood.
doors closing much too slowly, window shutters that flap in a breeze less, humid morning.

the people walking so confidently around me, over me...do not realize just how close they venture near someone unafraid of how complicated disposing of a body really is (especially now-a-days)

I consistently run out of ice...as I am currently enraptured by the act of numbing indiscriminate parts of my body

** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY --- AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
** More Info: http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html

This message was remailed to you via: pers-817779559@craigslist.org

Six of Ten Realms of Hell

In a realm we see the world not as it is, but as we are…..

While the essential character of each of the each of the Buddhist Ten Realms of existence is defined similarly by different sects, there is considerable difference of opinion in what each sect believes about inhabiting and leaving particular realm. Some sects believe that one is born into a particular realm and that the only way to enter another realm is through rebirth in the next life. What realm you enter next, whether that happens in this life or the next, is a consequence of your actions right now, in other words: your karma. The four higher realms: Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddha, are characterized by the belief that humans need to make an effort to self-actualize and were described in an earlier edition of this Penny. The six lower realms; Animal, Hell, Hungry Ghost, Titan, God and Human are what happens when you fall short of the mark.

1. Animal Realm; concerned with territory, danger and the desire to settle into a comfortable lazy stupor.
2. Hell Realm; concerned with righteousness, anger originating from a sense of victimization, and impatience with the unpredictable nature of the world.
3. Hungry Ghost Realm; concerned with what is lacking or insufficient and with comparisons to an idealized past and idealized others.
4. Titan Realm; concerned with envy for what others have, with a sense of frustrated entitlement and with constant struggle.
5. God Realm; concerned with self-infatuation, pride, intoxication of fabricated experience and indifference to others.
6. Human Realm; concerned with efforts to possess experience, to find certainty in meaning, and to control the future through understanding and planning.

Hermits Like Me

The entire sequence of Tarot cards describes the Hero’s journey towards psychic wholeness and maturity. According to Carl Jung, this process falls naturally into two halves. The first half of life is outward turning, active, expansive; the second half of life is introspective and meditative. The first half of life is concerned with the individual’s relationship to the world outside himself. It is directed towards the development of the conscious mind and the stabilization of the ego. The second half of life reverses this process and confronts the ego with the depths of its own psyche, seeking to establish links with the inner self.

The Tarot card that represents the beginning of the second half of the Hero’s journey is the Hermit. The Hermit is seeking answers. But the way is ahead is dark and he has only the light of is own intuition to help him find the right path. All the wealth and wisdom of the outer world cannot assist him now. To essay such an adventure takes courage, for by abandoning conventional values in favor of the dictates of his inner self he is setting himself apart from the comforts and authority of society. The Hermit illustrates a crisis of will which must be overcome by anyone who would advance beyond the common pale.

The awareness of conscience in the Hermit is the first glimpse of the Inward Light; the first intimation of the brilliance of the mystic Centre which lies at the end of the quest. The positive manifestation of the Hermit is the being that illuminates the primeval darkness with the light of higher consciousness. The negative aspect of the Hermit is he whose mind is locked fast in stubborn dogmatisms and is unable to change.

The divinatory meaning of the Hermit card indicates the need to withdraw from activities in order to think and plan. As well as the need to consult someone older and wiser, or one’s own inner light.

All of this sheds some light on patterns that, as a young woman, I found very confusing. Why do people move to the suburbs? Why do my coupled/older friends not want to go out? Is it true that their partner gives them everything they need? When I turn xx yrs old, will the city suddenly become expensive, violent, dirty and uninteresting? Parties a bore? Maybe some of those friends entered the second half of the Hero’s journey, where life is about nurturing what you have (pet projects, creative aspirations, children, a lawn) and less about running gathering new experiences. Their egos are stable and while they love their friends, they don’t need them anymore.

And some of them have calcified, given up on the personal growth game, settled into a traditional, comfortable middle age, become happily co-dependent. I once told an aspiring writer that to be a real artist you have to be able to be alone. Shortly thereafter she quit writing and got married. And so it goes.

(Notes on the Tarot adapted from “The Tarot”, Alfred Douglas)

Chasing A Bigger Fish

Usually I don’t mind working Saturdays---because it’s not every Saturday that I want to sleep in---but this Saturday was one of them. And I really wanted it. I wanted it bad. So when my client didn’t show up at 8:30 am I blew a fuse. Two more people than was really necessary heard what I had to say about people with more money than is good for them. “Isn’t being where you’re supposed to be, when you say you’re going to be there the substrata of civilized life?” “Don’t wealthy people have to be nice?”

What my kvetching got me was an earful of positive visualization, “The Secret” and quantum reality shaping. My landlady was right on all counts: since I charged the rich fool for his sleep, I just got a pocketful of free money. So I shouldn’t complain or think bad thoughts. On my own I realized that some part of me had wanted it that way. After all, I could have called him to confirm.

The day was young and I was ready to roll down a hundred paths to financial security and a few others as well. I emailed the woman about the fish; took a yoga class; and the first steps towards making a dream a reality---one that would make money--spoke to a homeopath about the winter itchies and picked up what he recommended. At 2:30 pm I met with my second client and consulted with a walk-in. Then I jumped in my car and proceeded toward the fish.

Google maps said that the fish’s owner lived off of Modo Rd, near the only house I had ever lived in with my mother. In the intervening years I had only been by the house a handful of times and it always gave me a start. Now it’s painted yellow, my own personal color of death and remembrance. When I was six it was grey.

Seeing it this time was unusual because I remembered something my mother had told me all those years ago. She told me that a man we knew lived in an apartment building on the corner of our street. I must have asked why he lived in such a strange place (or something like that) because she said that he lived there because he wasn’t married. And from that I assumed that he was different from us. Something about the way she talked about the man’s home scared me. We were a family and lived in a house; a house down the road from where 40 years later I would go to look at fish and aquarium.

I knew right away I didn’t want the fish. It was way too big for the 10 gallon tank. And when the woman described how funny it was that the fish spent all night shoveling away the rocks they pushed into a pile after dinner, I thought the fish was probably going crazy from being stuck in too small a tank. It was sad that it was alone and ate any other fish you put in with it, or at least fish of other species. When the woman offered me the tank without the fish I said, “That doesn’t sound very good for the fish”. She said, “It’s a fish.” But I just couldn’t do it and it wasn’t only that I couldn’t bear to look at the poor neurotic fish all alone in its tank: I was feeling kind of tight on cash. The fish was not in the budget and it wasn’t the right fish for me. So that was that. I took off, took another couple looks at 68 Modo Road and continued hustling.

With the help of most of the people in India, I finished a computer project that had I had been hammering away at for months. I left a long phone message for a far away friend about the fish and the house where I lived when I was six. I asked the lucky penny if I should buy the fish and it said “no”. I cooked and dressed for the party I would attend that night, re-ordered my to-do list and opened a letter that contained a check for $600.

I was stunned.

Someone had paid me for work that I did months ago. When I did the work I had assumed that my labor was part of the price of doing business. I guess they call that a loss or a write-off or something. I hadn’t expected to be paid and had forgotten that they had said that I might get paid. You might not have caught this, but I’m a small business woman (Yes, they call me Thumbalina) and not what one would call a financial power house. And being 46years old, I guess I should not do things like that, work without getting paid, but I do. Or at least I should remember when someone says that I might get paid. But I just don’t think like that. I think about my friends, my clients, the house where I lived when I was six, my next great next great, how much I want be married and not itchy etc. And I think about the fish.

Why do people who have money have it? Is it because they sleep in and miss appointments they’ve already paid for? Is it because they’re married? Or is it because they don’t buy fish that are wrong for them just because they happen to have the money? If the check had arrived a day earlier, I might have bought that neurotic wrong-for-me fish. But I didn’t.

The fish is still all alone in its too small world. I’m alone in my apartment and for all I know the guy who lived in that apartment building 40 years ago is still alone there. I have a check for $600 and everything is the same.

This HOPE I ain't got

Shepard Fairy's HOPE poster 

is so popular that the artist

has stopped printing them.

Even on the web,

they're hard to find.