Ho, Earthling!
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My Beautiful Broken Brain
There is a documentary out called My Beautiful Broken Brain, about a woman learning to communicate again after her brain injury. I keep meaning to watch it. But I just realized I don’t need to watch it — I am living it. It turns out that I am not as invincible as I once thought. Repairable, yes. Invincible, no. I have permanent brain injury. Brain damage. My brain got jostled about during its two surgeries, and it was even shifted over to one side for a few months, which I am now told is a Bad Thing. Some people don’t recover well from it. I’ve beat worse odds than this…
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Belongingness
On weekends, she wandered across late-80’s on-trend gray-carpeted floors, regarding the mauve sectional they bought after hours of agonizing over seating choices. She walked right through the living room to the front door and peered listlessly out into the blinding-bright Phoenix sun. Then back again, this time through the kitchen with its white tile and whitewashed-mauve cabinets, over to the family room that the house’s one visitor said needed personal touches (tchotchkes, she thought — yuck) and then it would feel like a home. She wandered because there was nothing else. No long streams of adding-machine tape to pore over, looking for the one mis-entry that kept everything from adding…
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Moonlight Serenade
Twenty years ago, a little more, I walked. Nighttime solo walks. Walks under the light of the moon. Walks to breathe cool air and smell the damp on cut grass and hear distant dogs singing to the sky. Almost every night, in all weather, but especially after a snow. It doesn’t snow where I live now. I don’t miss it, but I remember how I loved the sounds of snow shovels patiently scraping driveways, and I especially remember how quiet the world is underneath a white soft blanket. Those walks, those twenty-years-ago-walks, were my sanity and salvation, my private world-wide Quiet Thinking Space. I do some of my best thinking…
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The Circle Game
And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We’re captive on the carousel of time We can’t return we can only look Behind from where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game — Joni Mitchell This is what reading my archives does to me. Inspires me, that’s what. Thoughts that go through my head: 1. She’s a damn good writer. Why doesn’t she write more? Where’s that fucking book she promised? (oh hey, I did write this one) 2. Seriously, where is the damn book? The other book? 3. Aha! A Category titled Rants. I shall…
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Phoenix
Life beckons. It's what you do with your moments that counts.
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100 And Counting…
There are so many ways to die. She knew this. Daily she plotted her death. Little ways. A sheaf of papers could grow edges and slice knifelike across her white soft throat. The cord of his headset, sprawled oh so innocently across her bed, could stretch and wrap itself like a hungry boa around her neck. The closet door could slam so satisfyingly, crushing her skull into the jamb. Kitchen knives could grow wings. Heavy pots with heavy lids could crash like cymbals into the grapefruit of her head. Cars could swerve and leap over sidewalks. So many ways. There’s no point to being here if Here just means pain.…
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Why I Have Cancer
I figured it out. It should have been a no-brainer. Why I never suspected that years of self loathing would lead to cancer, I don’t know. But it clearly did. I hate myself. I tried to wipe me away by changing my name two years ago, but like a bad penny and a lost puppy, I came back. And all I can do now is imagine I’m jabbing an ice pick into the side of my now-irradiated head because the pain of being me is unforgivable. Please make it go away. The pain. I would do anything not to feel this anymore. I shouldn’t be here. I can’t be here…
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I’m A Bitch, I’m A Lover
Something has turned me into a total raving bitch. Does cancer do that? Although I would like to blame [everything] it on cancer, sadly, I believe this is my doing. Last week one of the people I love most in the world came to visit. And that was right about the time that TB (Total Bitch) showed up. All her fears and anxieties and need to control came out while this awesome person was visiting. I hate that. I hate that my son, this amazing young man, saw me being a bitch, saw me in my fears, saw me struggling to walk across the room because my body is so…
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Broken
For a few weeks I’ve been toying with the idea that I am broken. At first I felt resistance to the idea. Who would want someone who was broken? We throw away the broken things. They are unwanted, unloved, undeserving. I decided to take my resistance as an invitation. Go deeper, it whispered. Okay, broken. What is broken about me? Every step for the past seven months has brought pain. Literal steps bringing literal pain. The cartilage in my hip joints is not what it once was. I am a young woman for this to be happening, but it is. I suspect there is little cartilage left. Hip degeneration is in…
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This
A beautiful wild dream erupted in pink-glowed majesty this morning. Rough white-tipped waves greenblueing between me and the leafy redyelloworange panoply that lay at the feet of Spirit Father as he rose through the mist into a magical glowing golden sky. This O my father guardian of this watery green and low bluegray on weary feet. O my father this, this blink this gasp this wonder. This is why we come and sing our dreams into the graycloud skies.