Monthly Archives: August 2012

The Invisible Line

30 Thursday Aug 2012

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A threshold I fought so long to keep at bay and the turning point I was so vigilantly avoiding, suddenly seemed inconsequential & unnecessary.  The line I had built in the sand had eroded and I crossed it so shockingly easily, it felt as if it hadn’t ever really existed.

And having set foot on the other side, the world remains the same yet unbridled.  For now there is no invisible line defining me, no future goals pushing me down, no facades of childhood holding me back. There is only the present, the very real now, which pulsates inside me and lures me onto an unknown journey from which, at last, there is no going back~

Love story ~

15 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Living, True story?

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Legend has it that when the Sioux were ambushed and they were suddenly taken by the necessity of fleeting or fighting, a man could take whatever pony he could get his hands on. Common sense, however, advised warriors to keep in mind that everything they snatched from their invader’s possessions would later belong to the man who owned the pony they rode, or his immediate family.

Legend also has it that the only reason any ‘hostile’ Indian ever accepted to go to war and fight the white man was to respond to the very contemptuous way Americans treated them while exterminating their peers: an entire Nation of perfectly flawed human beings.

Four years after Abraham Lincoln decided to authorize the mass execution of over thirty Indians because they reacted to the brutality of Colorado settlers, Johnson decided to go ahead and veto the deceased’s Civil Rights Bill but congress stepped in and overruled his disregard for their fellow Americans. In 1866, The United States government finally gave equal rights to all individuals, black, white, green or blue who were born in the United States, except for those who were natives of the land: the red skins.

Much is discussed, little is known but one of the greatest histories of genocide of all times is that of the Indigenous peoples of all Americas.

Running after game, singing for peace, dancing for rain.

While I learn about them, all I can think is that it must have been terrifying, for the white man, to see how the Indian man lived off his land. When a blizzard blinded his ride or a heat wave knocked his bravest men down, the Indian knew better. When a whirlwind blew his tepee away or the buffalo barely came into view, the Indian knew better.

How awfully uncomfortable it must have been to the white man to know that these people knew how to heal the land, plant seeds and grow corn. How extraordinary it seemed that such people sang songs to their dead, treated their awkward-looking guests in a decorous and praiseworthy manner and found no reason to fear being out, under the only roof they knew: the wide skies that covered their lands.

How dramatic it is to learn of someone so infinitely comfortable with the world you’ve fought so hard to stay away from, how arresting the sight of this people must have been to the people of Europe.

I know, every story has two sides, coins fall facing different directions every time and every single man finds a good reason to act the way he acts, thus, I too believe were I to be there at the same place and time they were, I would also feel just as overwhelmed by the natives’ beauty and confidence as they felt; I too would feel compelled to look at them in awe.

What I wish they had remembered when the violent wave of intolerance kicked in is what I always knew to be the truth: the colors that tint the contents of their sharp edged eyes are exactly the same colors that tint my own. ~picture: Aaron Huey; source: Honor The Treaties.

Summer in Southern California

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Hollywood, Living

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This is Southern California. This is summer. This is summer in Southern California. And it’s fucking brutal.

It crept up slowly. In fact, I was beginning to believe that we might get lucky—that we may get to enjoy a mild season under the sun.  Afternoons were warm during our hikes to Eaton Canyon (where we took glorious refuge in splashing our feet around in the populated water under the falls there) but it felt nice. And it felt even better as the sun began to sink and a cool breeze descended upon Los Angeles and its neighbors.

But then, the breeze went away and the heat grew stronger. It beat down on our house—baking the walls, sucking the life from our tomatoes & strawberries & herbs. Sucking the life right out of us.

We lay around like sunburnt slugs, dripping. We flop between couches and the floor—growing angry and despondent; occasionally throwing the middle finger and a few FUCK!’s in the sun’s general direction.  What else is there to do?

I’ve taken to filling the bathtub with the coldest water the old pipes in our building can muster and I crawl in and splash around. I close my eyes and dive my face into the water and create little air bubbles.  I’ve also grown quite close with our freezer—stuffing my face inside and pulling the door closed. The ice-cube trays and I have gotten a lot of face time lately.

We’ve thrown a mattress on the floor in hopes of getting nearer to the window (and coincidently, nearer to the fan). I think that it gets us closer to a good nights sleep. We eat ice cream for every meal and drink water faster than our Brita can filter it.

It’s hard.  I think that it may be harder owning to the fact that I am a super pale skinned (some say fair & porcelain—others liken me to Casper) girl from the mountains of Washington State.

But this is summer in Southern California and despite what they might tell you, the beaches are far & palm trees only look good in pictures. And it’s fucking brutal.

Jaded

10 Friday Aug 2012

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A few years ago, while I was living smack in the middle of Hollywood, I came home from work for a brief bite of something before rushing off again.  I probably changed my clothes, since working with coffee all day tends to permeate everything with its blackened aroma and I know I watched a little TV.  During the limited time, that brief half hour lapse, someone or something was shanked, stabbed or seriously maimed right underneath my living room window.  I did not realize this however, till I went to leave and found a rather large pool of fresh, sticky blood soaking into the sidewalk.  I didn’t hear a scuffle, a yell, a shriek, or even a murmur.  Nothing.

And as shocking as it was to emerge from my idyllic apartment and stumble into a potential crime scene, having already been properly jaded by city life, I tiptoed my way around the blood stained sidewalk & wearily peered into the bushes for a corpse. I made to my car and drove off.  I called my sister to warn her about the biohazard at the foot of our stairs and that was it.

I did wonder how someone could lose that much blood so quietly and vanish into the summer night even more stealthily.  Yet it wasn’t until months later, when the great blood stain was brought up during a conversation with our downstairs neighbor, that I realized that maybe I should get out of the city for a bit.  Apparently, he had recently been regaling his sister back in Wisconsin with hard-edged LA stories and had mentioned the giant puddle of blood.  “What did the police say?” she had shrieked and I looked at my neighbor knowingly.  Cause he knew what I knew and that was, that neither of us had bothered to call the police.  In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to us. For we were city dwellers, in one of the biggest centers of urbanity on the planet and well, people bled everyday down here.

We like to chisel what does not break

04 Saturday Aug 2012

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If I were to write a story and use me as a character, I would.

To be honest, I never truly thought I would say this but, now, I know for a fact that I see myself as me. The way one struggles to see oneself throughout their existence: I am what I am and what the hell can I do to change? When I ask this question and answer it plainly, I do not attach any negative overtone to the query’s essence, all I’m really implying is that nature is a thing of being not shaping and shaping is human’s unnaturally acquired response to everything that scares him (or her, feminists).

Sculpting oneself is quite a task but sometimes hands are only hands, and they are meant only to sculpt what nature freely offers us while we repeatedly repudiate its organic challenge.

We seek what is not inclined to gain from us through a symbiotic relationship nor give us anything in any dependable manner because we like to bend what cannot bow and we like to chisel what does not break.

I can break, bend and kneel. I can melt, cry and dance. I can live, survive and even die. I can fly high and dive deep into the most wonderful adventures and I never forget where I came from. I know now, it’s not me who needs shaping; it’s what nature so thoughtlessly furnishes me with by not picking and choosing how green my luck is going to be like.

Oh man, if I knew that ten years ago… ~

Just a List on This First Day of August

01 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Family & Friends, Living

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I want to be great.

I want to make you smile. Yes, you.  And him. And her.

I want to make you feel.

I want to shoot thru your body like that first kiss; like an earthquake.

I want to make sure that I feel—everything. I want to be rattled by this earth.

I want life in me like lightening.

I want fresh berries for breakfast every day. I want to eat so many that I am stained purple or pink or red.

I want to take the time to pick out the miracle of colors.

I want to take the time to find the beauty in your heart.

I want to understand.

I want to make you smile.

I want to close my eyes and smell grass. Pine. Sage. Sun. Wind…Life.

I want to lay on that hill and listen.

I want warm coffee with cream slushing around in my belly.

I want laughter to always escape my mouth—my eyes—my heart—at a run; eager.

I want the same for you.

I want too many good books to read.

Too many pivotal lines to write down.

I want dandelion after dandelion to make wishes upon.

I want the music loud.

I want us dancing and dancing and dancing. And smiling.

I want my fingers to fall to the keys—white and black—and grab my heart there.

Grab your heart—show you just what Bach meant.

I want to be great for me.

And for you.

I want to mean something—to have it matter that I am here.

I want to smile while I am sleeping.

I want to slip into your dreams and gift you sweet ones. I will lay little fairy kisses on your nose.  I will give you happiness there.

I want to be a Queen of Adventure—to taste the flavors of the air & of the land.

I want my toes to step on so many rocks.

The sun to warm me; the rain to cool me.

I want to look at all of this—this wild world—and smile.

I want to breathe it in and smile.