Month: October 2015

Eye Chart

There was already one perfect boy, and one perfect girl, when I was born with a crossed eye. Branded as lazy by surgeons and specialists, I focused on ways to prove myself industrious, productive, hard working; but my sister had vacuumed before I woke up, and my brother had read all the books.

Still, being the youngest with an eye patch was hard to look away from, and I did okay until another perfect boy and another perfect girl came along with adorable, unstoppable energy. From there and forever more, my eye and I wandered aimlessly through the middle of the perfect family.

This is the story I told myself, and this is the story that stuck. And now if I’m not diligent, this is the story that shows up at book clubs and parties, bound between two immovable forces: My fierce need to elbow my way to the center of things, or my jealous heart, which stands by the carrot table muttering “marsha, marsha, marsha!”

And here I am at 56; I write every morning then run to the world’s refrigerator to post myself. It may be that it’s a safe way to ask to be seen without making eye contact. It may be that I’m hoarding tiny blue thumbs to make up for my one green eye. But it’s also a way to rewrite the story; to see things more clearly; beginning with a one-of-a-kind little girl, who was born squinting into the sun.

funhouse

I didn’t know I was expecting him but when he arrived I knew him all along, and invited him in without hesitation. This was the visitor I’d wished for all my life. This was love. And then, eventually, it wasn’t love at all – it was simply a distorted reflection of all my own broken bits, and I couldn’t stand looking, and so I left.

After all this, and several times all this, I’d still like to fall in love again before I die. Because when it comes!!!! Oh, when it comes? It arrives in a rush of pale pink lava-sparks, your brain-bones are replaced with wavy poet-bones, you hear cellos again, you love so much you even love thy god-awful neighbor. You leap out of bed in the morning as if propelled by pink fizz, and run into heroic pink arms.

Falling in love is such a high that some relationship spent their entire lives chasing that first perfect burst of pink flavor. That time when you laughed so hard you cried, that time at the cabin, that time driving to the mountains. That time you accidentally fell into hot lava and fused yourself to a tilt-a-whirl.

That time, and that other time, and the next time. But what a disappointment to sit in THIS time; watching him chew across the table, jaw making that wretched clicking sound, just the smacking sounds of disappointment and his skin tags to keep you company.

I believe in love, but I’m wary of too much pink; I’m made dizzy by its fun-house lies. It seems to me that falling in love always falls away. It disintegrates like cotton candy in the rain, and if you aren’t careful, when it pulls away it leaves behind a freak show. And you are the freaking star.

Is there anything more painful than to stare into your own reflection and see an endless stretch of disappointment; a squat and shrunken heart; a round bloat of expectation; a huge headed rage? After all the pink, you stand before a funhouse mirror and don’t recognize yourself. You don’t recognize him. He doesn’t recognize you. What the hell happened to the carnival lights? To the bubbleyummy flip? To that tilt-a-whirl of love?

I’m not sure, but I think if it visits me again I’ll be brave enough to let go of the safety bar and step off the ride. I’ll be strong enough to make eye contact with his skin tags. I’ll be wise enough to know what I’m really wishing for. Maybe next time I fall in love, when all the lights have pulled away and the night gets quiet, I’ll be left standing in an empty field under a sky of god, hand in hand with flesh and bone, where love can come to stay.

Ordinary

They say mental illness runs in families, but I think, more accurately, it sneaks up behind the back of the ordinary. For instance, ordinarily we have no problem with illness, but anything mental belongs shuffling through hallways in another part of town.

Except mental illness doesn’t show up in a hospital gown. It shows up everywhere, and is very good at concealing itself. It hides in the deep pockets of political power and is often wrapped and shoved under the family tree.

But I think it’s far more prevalent than we want to believe, it’s simply obscured by what passes as sane: a preoccupation with how many steps we’ve walked, our cholesterol numbers, our organic consumption. And it’s not always where you think it should be. It might pass the time in the home improvement aisle, in the sale rack, in the crowds on black Friday. It hangs out in color-coded walk-in closets and in the clutter and crush of the homeless. It shows up at parties and it eats alone. It runs endless errands, pops Ambien, travels the world and never leaves the house. It uses needles, people, an iPhone, wine; anything it can to hide.

Sometimes mental illness just can’t help itself so it goes Nurse Ratched on us; it lines things up, it washes its hands over and over and over, it has panic attacks, it hunches under covers avoiding eye contact and being awake. It breaks down, slams a cupboard, or posts a nasty Facebook comment. It buys a gun.

But mostly it hides in the ordinary. Its secrets are kept by Google searches and medicine cabinets; by small talk and the suffocating weight of shame. If it’s very lucky, it finds cellos, poets, and birds to keep it company. But usually it’s hiding in a silent crouch, waiting for an extraordinary act of love.

Rerun

I think anxiety is summoned when we refuse to move on. When we are caught in the middle of an I Dream of Jeannie blink; in that tiny moment after she closes her eyes and before she nods her head. When we are trapped in the pause between this land and the next, in a fixed moment in time, in yet another predictable episode, and oh god, is this outfit inappropriate?

I’m not sure any of us wear anxiety well, but pink crop tops look especially unflattering on those of a certain age. And rose-colored veils are just sad. Surely by now, you see things as they are? Surely you know that no one is coming to free you – and that you don’t have to stay where you are?

But anxiety forgets. It’s conjured in the wee hours of the night, like an unrelenting theme song, pushing out all other possibilities. It fixates on a tired tune because at least it’s familiar. At least it can hum along.

Anxiety is desperate for syndication, refusing to accept that life goes on. It’s stuck in an old wish for rescue, trying to change its given time slot, and re-enacting the same impossible, ridiculous scenarios. It will give anything to be saved; saved from the unknown, saved from the next step, saved like time in a bottle, (Jim Croce, meet Barbara Eden). And even though it’s bored with its self, even though it’s the most painful thing in the world to watch, it definitely prefers reruns. Because at least it knows the ending, and the ending is that life never really has to begin.

And so it continues, with excellent staying power, to pace in small circles, muttering to a master it doesn’t really need. It tries to escape, only to return again and again to the same tightly-coiled space. With each reentry the world gets smaller, the air gets harder to breathe, and all the light that ever was gets corked and dusty on a shelf.

Anxiety happens when we fixate on a moment. Don’t forget that time keeps moving. That in the blink of an eye the scenery shifts, and new endings are written. This time you might actually escape in a weightless billow of blue. This time, life might actually go on.

Spent

I craved a day of silence, without even the nails on the feet of my dog;
A day of sky and grass without cliff or bluff;
A day without the grind of joint, without the astonishing burden of body;
I craved a stretch, a float, a field.
And then it came and have I squandered it all on a staring spree?
How pine needles fall in tiny threes, like the footprints of tall birds?
Did I fill my empty field with lichen branch,
with end stage leaf,
and dying light?

Is my time not well spent kneeling at the base of a tree?
At the end of all entirety;
What of this debris?

 

 

Shiva

During all the bluster and the blue, while the geese and the squirrels distracted me, the leaves covered all the mirrors. They went around to each; to the pond, to the stream, to the smallest pool and puddle; and fell in honor of the light. They were the ones who were first to arrive, and they were the first to die. And they were the ones to gently ask that I go elsewhere for my reflection.

So I stand before the unfamiliar. The tangled hedge I know to be true is gone, the cornfield is blank, and there’s too much space between things. The woods are made of bones and breath; the birds have nowhere to hide.

But here at the edge of something new, I can see what I’d forgotten: that branches grow in scribbles and loops, that shadows start and end, and all the leaves that fell before, lead through woods and out.

 

 

Optimism Takes Guts

Optimism is not for the faint of heart. It may look like life dressed in tulle, one grand plié across your grandmother’s guestroom; it may seem all pink and fizzy and innocent; but more often than not it’s a girl at a barre with a shot glass full of blisters.

Skepticism is easy. Apathy is easy. Road rage is easy. Waking up and hating your job, that pile of bills, CNN, Fox, bullies, the IRS, homophobes, racists, rich people, Nickleback – all of that is easy. But coming face to face with a world that smells like Kardashian-ass and still believing? That takes guts.

Optimism takes guts. Hardcore, feel-the-bern, guts. It takes guts to stand up for the truly marginalized in this world: possibility, hope, change and the next generation. And because we haven’t found an adequate shared language for it, it’s not easy to speak on behalf of the glass-half-full without sounding like you have a brain-half-empty. But in fact, optimism is not naïve. It’s hard won.

Optimism moves against the tide of darkness — but the reason it can, I think, is because it was born there. It is born from a backstage story and has to feel its way to light, to arrive front and center just where it’s needed most; in a voting booth, in poverty, in prayer; in the collective conscious of an apathetic audience.

And while it doesn’t always look tough, optimism fights hard. So yeah — you may find it wandering around Mr. Roger’s neighborhood wearing a sweater. But it puts its sneakers on every, single, day. It shows up, it goes out in the world, it says good morning. And if that’s not fighting, I don’t know what the hell is. Just because you don’t hear about it on the nightly news, make no mistake. It’s not trapped on the Oprah channel wearing pink tights. Optimism is out there carrying a pitchfork and torch long after all the other villagers have gone home to watch the Sound of Music.

Optimism shows up, with or without an audience. Day after day with its blisters and barres, it shows up and stays on pointe. It’s where activism lives, where hope comes for lessons, where change comes true. And while others swan dive toward despair, optimism fights for balance, stands on tippy toes, reaches, and arches across a darkened stage to remind us why we live.

Black Dog

It’s nearly dark, and the only sounds are the whisper and scrape of leaves. It’s so quiet out here I feel like I’m in church. I haven’t seen a soul, so maybe I am. Anyway, I have a sudden urge to light a candle and call a priest. It’s spooky. The leaves skitter around my legs. My bones are cold. A streetlight comes on.

Out at the edge of the dying light – way across the shadowy night – I can make out some dark figures standing in the field. I’m startled. Where did they come from? What are they doing? Wait … are they getting closer?

And now I see the black shapes are chasing a tiny black speck. And the speck is running right for me. (Run speck run!). And I can see the tiny people running too, waving tiny hands and crying shouts of alarm but I can’t make sense of their frantic distant sounds; are they saying “he’s friendly!” or “whatever you do don’t move!?”

I hold my breath as the speck becomes a spot. But this spot is not Jane’s friend. This spot is made of fear and foam. It’s the huge black dog of nightmares, of graveyards, of hell. It’s less of a dog, really, than an Omen.

I freeze in the lamplight. I have a dog. I know dogs. Just relax. Be alpha-zen. But I remember, in this split second before the hound of hell arrives to rip this soul from its mortal coil, that dogs smell fear (or is that horses?) but either way I know for a fact that I will surely die, as I am drenched in the smell of Linda Blair. I am wearing terror under my fleece. He will smell it, alright. And he will eat it alive.

And now the Grim is upon me, his giant skull, his stretch of teeth, his wagging tail. Oh the speck and spot of fear! When you see it coming toward you, laugh and welcome it. His name could be Boo, and his foam could be friend.