August 27: The day that does not exist

Drinking seven chakra tea. Hoping to press flesh into earth, wrap arms around ugly. Smell of horse shit and dandelions. I lock my mouth to dirt, bite a chunk. Move my hand between stomach and ground feeling rhythmic pulsations, while try to spit mud through the small space in front teeth. In the past month I have been called both an Empath and a Wordsmith. They are not mutually exclusive but indicative of one another.
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Two years ago a bug infested couch by ashen fire pit, tears soaking chrysanthemums bright red. Dust drizzles spiked peaks, floating softly above purpling night.

Screaming at that bitch who tells me Obama is going to let Russians invade. Her hands, my hands, my grandmother's hands are a blur. Held it tight. "It's ok to leave grandma. We'll be fine." "I love you grandma." "Fuck you!" "Get away from me!" Ran up the street to my house. "Just don't leave me. Do not leave me. Ever." "Ok," she said. We sat and talked about dust forever that night. How I can see it. How I talk to animals, birds and dogs mostly. I wanted her hands inked on my body, never found the right spot. Sat for hours while she held me, into cold that turns hot with exhale.

One year ago to the day. His toxic-waste dump of a body slumped over in the bed. "He went to keep your grandmother company." "She was telling him to come to her." Daydreams of adults who need to hear childlike fantasies in order to feel better. I talked with her the night before asked her to keep him safe so he wouldn't be scared. He didn't want to die. Wasn't ready for the mess he left. The basement shakes with my mother's sobs. What the fuck are we gonna do now? Funerals, eulogies, to honor a memory. Someone loved. Someone despised. Doesn't matter now. We just honor.

A year later and the money is gone. Not a penny left. Another failed investment. Spent every last penny of the IRA, throwing it at a wing joint. Maybe the building was cursed, or maybe the slumlord was a 75 year-old lady, who refused to fix the broken sewer line. Now they had a beautifully remodeled building they didn’t own, and a backed up grease trap, from raw sewage left to rot pipes. He had left them a mess.
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Some reflections that I may have written before but feel necessary to repost again.


My great grandmother and step-father died the same day a year apart exactly. August 27. I pretend this day does not exist, cross it off calendars with black permanent pen. I was asked to both write and deliver eulogies at both funerals, the last pieces of significance for me. I didn’t want to unveil anything else, afraid of being haunted by memories. It is recommended I create an alter, acquire a marigold skull, light candles, burn incense, work through loss. I wonder what doing all of this in combination with writing could reveal. A divinatory moment about profound loss I suppose.

I have been thinking a lot about witnessing the death of the other and not witnessing one’s
own death. Laying in bed, encouraging last breaths, holding bruised hands, it is hard to separate myself from the isolation of death. Death of language. I witness the demise of the other, am forced into writing and performing it in various ways, simultaneously feeling as though I am staging my mortality. In writing life I always feel I am writing death, writing without witnessing the ultimate mystery.

“What kind of seer do you want to be?” The kind who sees ugliness and beauty, who sees both the expected and unexpected, desiring to bridge them on a page and a stage. I have been perplexed by the interaction with “the leaf” and the “photo of the leaf.” It comes down to hermeneutics, the brain as part of the body still interprets even if faced with “the physical leaf.” As we see a “physical leaf,” as language users L-E-A-F enters the mind as a representative. This is mediated also. Skin wraps muscles, blood, and tissue still implicated, interpretation still exercised. Differently, with no less validity. They provide different experiences, but no less authentic. My writing has become a process of seeing and interpreting in varying ways, but never able to leave my body behind.

I have been told to put anger and emotion into writing. When trauma occurs writing ceases. Maybe that is my greatest weakness. I have not been able to write when distressed. Retreating, I do not write, not even my blog, let alone something critical or creative. I need ways to exist with ghosts and scars. I am not sure how to do this yet?
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Postlude

I have been trying to write my emotion. This is just a taste. I wish I had something more significant than an attempt. But for now it is what I have. I will continue to struggle and process ways of dealing with the deaths of two people I loved very very much. I think writing at all is my attempt to be closer to where they are. To deal with death, instead of run from it. For now I have chakra tea, beads, and a stone. I pray that tomorrow comes and goes and that all I need is Shiraz and roses to survive.

Summer of Books: Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Ah the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo this summer's Harry Potter, but with "dark subject matter." I think I am quoting the evening news on this. I wasn't going to read it simply because it is popular, and I have an aversion to most popular things at first. But after seeing the book on the news I decided maybe I should read it.

I am not going to write what the book is about too much, it is an International Best-Seller. Read the NYT review for goodness sake. But for people who were wondering, I thought that for a mystery novel, it was pretty good. A more intense, articulate, social commentary, type of mystery, crime novel. It is well thought-out, although, admittedly I guessed the ending. Well, not all of it. It is well-written and at almost six hundred pages, there's a lot of pretty good writing to read. It isn't a fast-mover, but it gets page-turnery as it moves along.

My favorite this is that the main anti/protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, well, she kicks ass. And she sleeps with women. At least she slept with one woman briefly in the first book, but does not consider herself bi-sexual as media outlets have portrayed her.

If you are not a big thriller, mystery, best-sellery, type person, then this will probably not be your cup of tea.

I did not find it too horrifying or graphic? Not really. But I watch Dexter, and Bones, and Law and Order, and have read a bunch of pretty cheesy mystery novels, with content that is more haunting. I hear that the series gets darker, and I have purchased the second book, and having read the preface/first chapter from the end of GWtDT it appears a bit creepier. But as a friend told me, "Kathryn, you are de-sensitized." So don't take my word on the creepy/dark factor.