Juxtapositioning

Longing

I long to travel where my body cannot go;

through doors and walls and windows

to unseen worlds of dizzying possibility.

I lie awake, willing a single silver cord

to emerge from my body like an astral umbilicus.

At the mirror I chant I AM

and wait for the reflected worlds behind me to unfold

like petals after a spring rain,

worlds that will swallow me into nothingness.

One day I will scream for an hour so shards of my

shattered heart will break my brain into halves

and I will disappear between them.

Float away, Self, I whisper in my dreams

that follow me like twisted shadows.

Float away and unwind the becoming,

banners at rest and respectfully waiting,

all time suspended.

Vancouver redux

Late last year (snort. I crack myself up) I went to The Land Up Over, also known as Canada. The Great White Something-or-other. (NOTE: There was no snow. None. Also no polar bears or igloos. Damn.) I hadn’t been there in FIVE MONTHS, which is odd considering its ridiculous proximity to me, something like 30 minutes. From my house. To the border station, where I get (politely, because this is Canada, after all) invited inside to discuss my “situation.”

This time, I was helped by a 5-foot tall guy with a French accent, who shrugged Gallically at me when I said I might be staying there 10 days or so. Ten days? What is zees ten days? You not like our charming contree? No? Okay, zhen I stamp zhis. Be on your way. And he stamped my paper and I handed it to the guys outside watching a drug dog sniff the inside of a car’s engine and was on my way. Of course, this was Christmas Eve, but it was a far cry from the last time when my car was searched THREE FREAKING TIMES and my papers were copied and I was yelled at by a woman in a strawberry blonde ponytail wearing a bulletproof vest.

I was really really really looking forward to the won ton. There’s a place on Broadway just east of Main that has the best won ton IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. I am not kidding. It has scratched white Formica tables and exactly zero ambience. Decorations do not exist here. Two surly Chinese women truculently wait tables of serious lunchtime eaters. They set big bowls of broth down on the tables, each bowl containing exactly five of the most delectable won ton ever to exist, filled with fat prawns and tasting like what I always knew perfect won ton taste like. I was so looking forward to going there once, or even twice, in those ten days.

The place BURNED DOWN.

The roof was charred across the entire building that housed a pizza joint and who knows what else (I only had eyes for won ton), and a chain link fence kept passers by from getting too close. A tiny woman walked past us as we stood in the street, staring unbelievingly at the charred remains of won ton perfection. She turned to me. Her black eyes were tiny, like buttons. “Monday last,” she said in an eastern European accent. “In the morning.”

“I hope no one was hurt,” I thought to say. That was beyond her language capabilities. Hurt. She shrugged. “Monday. In the morning.

Last year at Christmastime it snowed buckets, feet upon feet of whiteness. We threw snow and each other, shaking it off branches into the backs of one another’s coats, melting snow dripping down our backs. Someone made a real live igloo (SEE???) at the park down the street and we crawled inside it, grinning.

This year, no snow. Christmas Day was relatively warm and unsesonably sunny, so we hiked up and down some back trails at Lighthouse Park. A tree had cracked in the middle, leaving shards standing sharply upward from what was left of the trunk. Someone had come with a chain saw to move the tree off the trail, and had made a little bench from one end of the fallen log. Nearer the lighthouse, and on huge rocks jutting into the northern part of the harbor, the rest of Vancouver gathered, a chaotic chorus of languages, no one bothering to speak in the hushed tones that such a place of beauty cries out for.

It turns out that I am sensitive to noise. I have said before that I can hear a cat’s soft footfalls on carpet from several rooms away, so the plumbing sounds overhead at all hours of the night kept me from sleeping. Year before last, when the place was my home for awhile, I would get up in the night and read downstairs, away from the gurgling and clicking and toilet lid dropping.

I forgot to go to Lush and restock my dwindled supply of Karma soap.

I now have a huge handful of Canadian change, because I keep forgetting that the big ones are worth $2 and the other big ones are worth $1 and you can use this for money. To buy things with. So now I have like $20 worth of change.

We won’t talk about the price of gas. But it’s in liters, which is a trick of some sort.

I have still not been to a Tim Horton’s. I know, I know, hard to believe.

I do, however, now own a toque*. And I really like it.

*There appears to be some debate, even among Canadians, about the proper way to spell the word pronounced “tewk”, which is actually a hat. But I’m sticking with “toque”. And at last I understand what Bob and Doug McKenzie were singing. Five golden TOQUES.

Oh.

Eh.

2009 in the rear-view mirror

A year ago I had just moved from a country that didn’t want me to a bare echoey white place hidden under a stifling canopy of tall dark trees. I adore trees, and loved lying in bed looking at green branches, but the bare echoey place had an inner emptiness that rang loudly in my ears.

Plus it had weird carpet.

In the spring I discovered forested trails and alternate universes. I sat, motionless, sometimes for hours, staring out through a skylight and eventually emerging into a giddy, childlike state, a person who thought lakes were oceans and wondered whether she should be driving real cars.

A year ago I had a job, a sort of a job, a full time gig for part time pay, plus a promise of a someday full time pay for the time I was putting in, so I wrote and I wrote and I edited and I wrote my little heart out. In February that world exploded and it limped along through May, and then I was done. No job, no pay.

I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and found my way through a maze of fears. Later, a motorcycle fell on me.

In June I moved to a smaller place near the water and near the trails and across the street from a banyan tree and in a community. The Magic Bus drives up from time to time and takes people places. I look out my tiny window and see a slice of ocean. The place isn’t hidden, is sometimes a fishbowl with the world looking in, but it fits me better. I have an easel and paints, and I write. The sun shone on this place and now the rain falls gently on my sari-clad zen room and my bicycles smile through their gears.

In July my intentions caught up with the world.

In August I brought my heart-pieces closer and together we walked my world, now theirs. We ate 18 pounds of blueberries. We laughed. We parted with new paths woven between us.

I discovered a box.

Summer tumbled into autumn and soon the bright crunchy leaves became dank and moldering and slick underfoot. Outward turned inward. Not being a joiner — ever — I joined and joyed. I sang. I found a home, at least for now.

Now, inward, I sing. I joy. I raise silent lips in inner song, singing my heart into wholeness. I breathe and become one with my heartbeat, and with yours. I walk and feel aliveness in the dirt under my soles, in each sparkling raindrop on my face, in each leaf and sound and sigh. I touch hearts and they touch mine.

What do I wish for 2010? More. More of what comes next.

I can smell you

I was born with superpowers. My birth was heralded by the trumpets of a thousand blowing noses. A thousand throats cried, “Ah!”

I can smell you.

As you approach and before you even walk past me, I have already decided what you smell like based on your appearance. Dryer sheets in the grocery store, sweat on the hiking trails. I know this with the inner sense we all share. We lift eyes and greet one another kindly, or nonchalantly, or not at all. We continue our separate directions, you one way and me another. After you pass I am bathed by a wafting of your being, an air current bearing with it a tide of your essence. My superpowers engage. Try as I might, I cannot help what comes next.

I inhale. Deeply. I can smell you.

Here is where I am proved wrong. Dryer sheets on the hiking trails. Cinnamon and vanilla — or is that coffee? — in the grocery stores. I had it wrong.

Dryer sheets are an evil surpassed only by cigar smoke. They asphyxiate. If you use them in your house and you happen to be running your dryer as I cycle past, my throat burns. I cough. Petroleum, get thee from my lungs!

If we happen to get close enough for a hug, I will know your shampoo, your soap, your secrets. I inhale you deeply. You fill my cells with your essence. We become one for that moment. I can smell you.

This superpower has other uses. I know when things are burning that shouldn’t be. I can tell when cakes, cookies, and toast are done to perfection. I appreciate a new book, its pages crisp and ink fresh. I remember the scent of newborn babies.

Scent memories run fresh. I once had a yellow blanket, one corner browned from being pressed nightly to the underside of my nose in comfort. When Blankie was washed it took days to get it right again. I remember places by their smell. Paris is perfume and the Metro, and tiny quiches and baguettes wrapped in colored paper. The paper wrappings all smell the same. Ireland is damp green, warm with conviviality. Germany smells of steel and rain and sausages. Finland smells of ice, clear and crystal cold, tinged with warm cedar.

I can smell you. Walk by me now, dare me to lose myself for a moment in the swirling cells that surround you.

People with big heads freak me out

I’ve often wondered why human head size isn’t more standardized. After all, we can be pretty sure that head size isn’t related to brain power, so what other reason would there be not to base natural selection on head size? Getting your head stuck in the neck of your sweater is a serious and life-threatening condition.

Smaller heads use fewer resources and are more environmentally sustainable. Big heads need big hats. How many sheep does it take to make the wool in just one big-headed hat? I can imagine that three or four sheep devote themselves full-time to the making of just one hat. This is tricky because sheep are not easy to convince to do the knitting. Also, unless naturally bald, people with big heads have more hair and therefore use more hair care products, take more time for a hair cut, and use more wattage in blow-dryer time than do people with small heads. If they shave their heads, big-headed people require more razor blades per year. Large heads weigh more and therefore will wear out a pillow much faster than a lighter, more streamlined small head. Having a big head just isn’t environmentally conscious.

We need fewer choices, not more. How many times have you been flummoxed in the cereal aisle at the grocery store? There are now at least 1,100 different types of boxed dry cereal. None of them contain actual food. It’s the same with heads. Do we really need size XXXXXL hats? For that one person whose head is the size of the Concorde?

It’s not the heads as much as it is the faces. I met a guy with an enormous head the other day. His face was like a dinner plate with eyes and I kept imagining trying to stick my cheese and crackers and barbequed chicken wings onto his face and of course they kept falling right off. Kissing such a person must be terrifying. I myself went home and had nightmares about being licked by a huge dinner plate that turned into a Saint Bernard. If it had been the type of Saint Bernard that carries the little jug of brandy under his chin it would have been all right, but this wasn’t that type of Saint Bernard.

Stoning is a viable option. Big targets are easy to hit. You want to prevent global warming, don’t you?

*No sheep or Saint Bernards were harmed in the making of this post.

Transition

A hospital bed stood in the center of the room, once a living room. Now it was a dying room, its walls covered with loved ones’ artifacts and memories. The man in the bed was tiny, shrunken, his body barely visible beneath the sheet that covered him. Only his feet and one hand created small hills in the otherwise nearly-flat landscape. His face was turned to one side and his eyes never left mine. Hold me, they said, I know everything. Hold me.

The skin of the man’s face was surprisingly smooth, as if all the cells of his body had ceased their normal work and instead concentrated on making his skin look like a teenager’s again. His eyes looked out from inside deep dark recesses that were two small caves in his face. His eyes spoke. I know everything. I remember when I was a tiny jumble of cells, a zygote. I remember the feel of the wind on my skin, of the sight of birds flying overhead. Once I wanted to fly with them. Now I have become part of this sheet, this bed, this room. I feel myself getting bigger and smaller at the same time. Hold me.

I held him. Softly I sang, surrounding him with song, and the notes became bigger and joined with his spirit, his life essence, that stood just behind him. Together we kept expanding, my clear high notes and his eternal life presence, becoming as large as All That Is, spinning into the heavens. The memories in the room applauded. This is what they had come for.

Gently I placed a hand over his that lay beneath the sheet. His body-shell trembled. His shrunken chest rose up and down, guiltily, tiredly. I felt the nearly-constant tremor in his hand soften. The notes rose and fell in rhythm with his chest. Sleep, his eyes said. Sleep.

Soon, promised the notes. The memories in the room swelled with appreciation. Soon. The body-shell sighed. The mouth spoke but the words that fell out were from another time. The notes receded. Cells quivered. Soon.

Yo, an interview

The Evil Queen is hot. The princesses are SOOOOO overrated at Disney. I’m a villain stalker when I go down to Orlando, and they aren’t easy to find, either, dammit.

I have slipped a poison apple or two over the last 15 years I’ve been a professional writer- of course, I prefer the poison PEN version. I try to keep my poison-pen-posts to a minimum (because I just end up sounding whiny and emo) but once in awhile, I serve up the green bubbly apple dippers. Because being a villain is cool like that.

Believe it or not, I go camping with the Schmoneys every year- if they invite me back after that little crapping in their woods incident. I love camping (with Jack Daniels and Slim Jims)- and plan to invest in a warm weather sleeping bag for future frozen run-ins with Mother Nature, who I totally forgive for trying to kill me.

My 1881 Victorian is totally haunted. I haven’t been able to choose my own ghosts so hmmmm, cool question. Let’s see. I would want Frank Sinatra to haunt me, so he could sing “The Lady is a Tramp” and then make out with me. Also, I would want Michael Jackson to haunt me so we could do the “Thriller” dance together at my Halloween party, with the added bonus of my making tons of coin on Access Hollywood and Youtube because Michael Jackson is haunting my house.

Both! Any kind! But, if I’m at the bakery choosing one of each, it would be blueberry pie with red velvet cake for dessert.

It’s always ‘down the shore,’ baby! We still go to the Jersey beaches- Cape May every year! Was born in Jersey so love me some Jersey every summer, because everyone reminds me of my grandmother and I can get a decent cheesesteak.

ooommmggg Twitter. Faster, more fun, better conversations, no Mafia or farming apps, plus my mom’s not on Twitter! I am a total Twitter addict- follow me @marymac- I always follow back, unless there is a chick giving head in your avatar.

Wait I thought we learned in #1 it’s the Evil Queen!

We did. My bad.

Or did you mean a non-fictional character this time? Right. Ok, well I’d say definitely Erma Bombeck- she INVENTED finding the humor in the oft-mundane everyday life of a mom- I read her columns and books growing up. I want to be like her when (er, if) I grow up!

This is going to sound dorky, but I sort of have my ideal posse. My JavaJammers (the cool readers who come hang out on my blog PajamasandCoffee.com) are so much fun- I laugh out loud at their comments, love hanging out with them on Twitter- or in some cases- in real life! I appreciate them reading so I can write. If I could add anyone to the posse it would be Jon Stewart because I worship him on the Daily Show and I want to lick him.

That writing about licking people is slutty.

No, wait, let’s see. Um, I hope I’ve been a fun mom to my 4 kids- I am definitely not THE BEST mom (my blog slogan ‘Where Mediocrity Kicks Perfection’s Ass’ applies to parenthood as well) but I love my four kids more than life itself and being a mom is my best life achievement.

I wrote for print (newspapers and magazines) for nearly a decade before I found blogging. I prefer blogging because I have NO EDITOR! No offense to editors- I’ve been one, but they want things in their voices, while blogging is all about your voice. My advice would be stick with it, it takes time to find your readers (or is that just me? um..). Don’t get overly preoccupied with statistics and making money- those will come with time (I hope..). Just write well, don’t worry so much about ‘blogging with integrity’ (whatever the hell that means) and instead blog with honesty. My last piece of advice would be to read Pajamas and Coffee every day and tell all your friends to as well! Heh.

Ordinary

Yesterday we went for a walk. It was raining a little and I put my hood up to cover my hair, missing my favorite black beret that disappeared last week into The Land of Misfit Hats when the mighty wind blew and trees toppled. We wove our way through art galleries. I admired some pieces and took away new inspiration. There was nothing that needed to be bought, not even the beautifully-colored large glass octopus that called to me from its waterless perch. I turned my eyes quickly  away from a young woman’s impossibly large nose, even though she is probably accustomed to nasal scrutiny. A plate of untouched and drying  fruit stood near the counter.

We walked through a boatyard. Two signs: “Empty” and “Full,” with no other explanation, were posted on the side of the building. Instant art. We went around to the bayside after standing and studying the hundred-years old dog-drowning pool where Padden Creek meets the bay. No dogs now. We crossed the tracks and step-crunched mussel shells on the empty beach, singing improvised Irish drinking songs. I flipped the mitten-ends of my fingerless gloves over my fingertips against the cold coming off the water. An empty cruise ship stood in the bay.

Neighbors stoked the fire in the coffee house across the street when we came in bringing the cold of the bay with us. We watched the flames flare up and then die back down again while we talked in a sine wave of unremarkable connection.

Inhale, exhale.

we take an ass that doesn’t hurt for granted

I fell the other night. Out of bed, apparently. I remember yelling — screaming maybe — something profound like, “Ow!”  And feeling like my body had been glued to the floor. And now, practically every movement I make with my ass (these are surprisingly numerous) hurts.

I can’t help but think that it’s part of the Universe’s plan for me. Tilting on its axis suddenly and causing me to fall out of bed and break my ass. That’s it, isn’t it?

I could also blame alcohol. Why not? My ass hurts when I breathe and I have to point the finger at somebody. And after all, coming home at night to find that my motorcycle had been kicked over for a 4th time had its effect on me. I called the police (”maybe it was the wind?”) and accepted the glass of passion fruit vodka that Matthew handed me. We watched an episode of House — always a good choice when you’re feeling vaguely misanthropic — and clinked sticky passion fruity glasses.

Hmm, misanthropy has its uses. Right now I am feeling untrusting. The rug has been pulled out from under me and I am pissed off. Out of the frying pan only to find out I never left it after all.

This post sounded a lot better in the shower 4 hours ago.

I am afraid and feel alone and there is no one who can help me. Even my ass is on vacation.

Note to Future Self: Do not get divorced from someone who subsequently will go to law school. Just don’t.

Note to Future Self Part Two: Stop being so damned idealistic. You know it gets you into trouble.

Note to Future Self Part Three: I have no other suggestions. You’re on your own from here on out.

What do you do when you just want to die?

Right now, in this moment, I want to die.

While this isn’t purely hypothetical, please don’t freak out. Don’t refer me to a suicide hotline. Don’t tell me I need counseling. Because baby, I can guarantee you 100 percent that I am not the only person in the Universe who feels this way — at least sometimes. Momentarily. But I am one of a handful who is willing to talk about it.

It wasn’t long ago that I first began really embracing this feeling when it comes up. Emotions, to me, are waves. They come, they go, they move through and around and beyond me. Ripples in a pond. Yeah, I’m an emotional person. I would be the first to offer that. And that glorious aspect of me made people around me uncomfortable as a child, so I learned to push it away. Was I successful? Not so much.

Feeling of helplessness, anger, and hopelessness have always been oddly connected for me. I know it has much to do with a panoply of things like that initial childhood dynamic and other perceptual choices I made. I sort of love the irony in that my work, my love, is about helping other people through similar spaces. Healer, heal thyself, right?

So I offer this.

I don’t think of death as something to fear. Yeah, people would miss me. Yeah, there’d be things I wouldn’t do, lives I wouldn’t touch, if my body was no longer infused with my essence. Do I feel a sense of responsibility about that? Not really. I’m all about letting go of responsibilities that aren’t mine. You over there — you have your own life to live irrespective of mine. Even though I love you unabashedly the way I do.

Death would be a respite. In the space I’m in right now, which is ALL ABOUT hopelessness, letting go of that sounds fantastic. Brilliant. The best idea ever.

So this is what I do when I feel like this.

Nothing.

Nothing special, anyway. I don’t try to get over it, past it, or beyond it. I make a pot of congee. I take a shower. I hunt for new apps for my iPhone. I Twitter and Facebook, feeling the interwoven tapestries of all to whom I am connected. I listen to my love laughing upstairs. I write about whatever comes to mind. I breathe, not in any special way. Just in and out.

That’s it. Nothing changes, not for now, but everything changes. Annica.