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Category Archives: Reality check?

Maybe it’s Spring

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Living, Raw Passion, Reality check?, Sunday loving

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change, contentment, happiness, life, peace, spring

There is an air of change about and its making me high and giddy and all kinds of thrilled about living. These are the ebbs and flows—this is the way of life.

Tonight, as I headed home from work, the sun, still hanging just there in the sky keeping the world light and hopeful, I smiled one of those giant, genuine smiles that say everything and I felt fucking good—no, great! It’s a funny thing, but when things are good—everything else is better—all in the world is beautiful and there isn’t much that you can’t laugh at or fall in love with. Its lucky that this feeling comes to us—that we can look out onto the sky or the plains or the mountains or whatever it may be and say to ourselves, “Fucking hell, could it possibly be any lovelier?” And no other words can really follow that because you feel so damn much that words just don’t give due credit. So you trot along in a loving haze—goofy and mesmerized by it all.

Which is what I am doing…trotting and thrilled. Finding myself writing love sonnets about a pink sunset and friends that call and cats that purr. A leaky exhaust on my neighbors car is music as there dinner on the oven wafts thru my open windows. How have I not chosen to feel like this always? Why must it come and go?

At any rate, it’s in the air now and deep within my lungs. And it feels how everything should feel and I am entirely happy.

Let Me Be Champagne Again

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Living, Raw Passion, Reality check?

≈ 1 Comment

How can I feel

(within such a minor moment)

That somehow the lights within me

Were shut off

And the music turned down?

 

We go at such loud paces

Stomping about madly

And singing with our heads thrown back

That when there is a space of quiet

We simply don’t know what to do

Or say

Or even how to breathe.

 

I can only think that I am homesick

And that my life isn’t lining up as I mapped

And that I must make dinner, but what?

 

I feel that somehow I must take my soul

And shine it like I need to shine my silverware

Polish it back to perfection

So it gleams in the lamplight.

And once again, I will pop like champagne.

Washington

10 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Dirt, Family & Friends, Living, Reality check?

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Ode to home

This green land that holds my heart so tightly

And tickles my ribcage with

Pine boughs

And makes me laugh

Like the wild beast

That I truly am.

 

Ode to this crisp air

That tastes like apples.

 

Ode to this family of mine

Giant with love

I hope that we always remember

How damn lucky we are

To have each other.

 

Ode to the mountains that hold us

And give us dreams of grandeur

That we will climb

And conquer.

 

There is nothing like

Coming home

And knowing with all certainty

That you are indeed,

Truly home.

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Peace

10 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Family & Friends, Living, Reality check?

≈ 1 Comment

There is a warm hum inside of these walls. I like it. Sometimes this box seems to confine me but tonight it holds me. Tonight, this apartment feels a bit like a home. I have a hot cup of coffee (brewed twice by Derek for me), I have this fat cat that I love purring wildly—and of course she is begging to be fed yet again—and I have the man that I adore sleeping a lions nap on the couch that I’ve packed along with me since childhood. I have peace. And lately, that’s been rare.

Los Angeles is dark already but there is basil in the air and I have some awesome music to sing over the ghetto birds (helicopters) on an epic manhunt.

I’ve been trying to crawl out of my apathetic mind set and I think that I’ve finally shook it off—thrown it out to sea to be swallowed by some hungry shark. And damn, if it doesn’t feel good.

I’ve packed up all of my old baggage. I’ve thrown out expectations that I gave myself years ago—expectations that others thoughtfully gave me wrapped up like gifts.  It’s not that they aren’t wonderful—it’s just that maybe they don’t fit me anymore—or just not yet.

Today, I set out into the hot, hot sun (can you believe that it is nearly 80 degrees here?!) and I traipsed around thru horse trails and hobo camps. I crossed creeks (down here they call them rivers) and scratched my legs on wild sage. I slipped on rounded river rocks and filled my pants with dirt. Oh and it felt amazing: the sun, the freedom of just being.

I feel so incredibly lucky.

I feel optimistic and wild with life! I have a new cousin to meet and what’s more; I have a niece or nephew that I will be able to hold and kiss and love like crazy (for I will love the little alien with all of me for it will be a bit of Alisha) in a month from now. I have all these ideas that are just waiting for the dots to connect. I have words to put onto paper and cookies to put into bellies of people that I love (or at least like). I have peace.  And it’s 2013 and fuck if it’s not the year for me!

When I was born, they knew what love felt like

23 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by Alice Salles in Reality check?, True story?

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian war, History

In the year I was born, Sarajevo had showed the world the power of unity.

In 1984, Yugoslavia’s industrial center held the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics and for as long as the event was carried on, the town and its people seemed vibrant and hopeful like the rosy-cheeked teens you would meet at random at her streets, attempting to shed the cold by running off into a restaurant or a café. During those days, all they had to run away from was the freezing winds of winter.

Yugoslavia was traditionally the most diverse country in Europe. That is a well-known fact. Colors flashed before the world’s eyes and tongues dared not to doubt its people’s acceptance of one another. Muslims, Catholics, Czechs, Jews, Germans living together, worshipping together, doing business with one another in a seemingly harmonious manner. It all looked far from perfect but tolerant enough. Maybe, just maybe, some would have said it then, WWII had taught its population lessons they would never forget.

Lessons dealing with intolerance and resentment one should never forget.

Or maybe the war didn’t teach anybody a thing.

Numbers are not enough to illustrate the kind of loss we’re talking about here. The Bosnian War exposed an open sore that is still fresh, like the wound in the flesh of a weak animal never seems to cicatrize. You can see through the decaying muscles and it smells like rotten meat.

I’m not Bosnian and I’m not a Serb. I’m not a Croatian, nor a Slovak. I’m not European. My father was Brazilian and so is my mother. My grandparents were mostly born in Portugal with the exception of one of my paternal grandparents who we believe may have been Dutch.  They all looked different from one another. My mother’s mother looked Jewish and her husband looked Gaul. My father’s mother looked Hungarian and her husband looked like a gipsy king.

I do not know of any family members who were originally from Eastern Europe. I have never asked my father about my grandfather’s true origins. I believe our history is grand and worth searching but I really do not mind. History itself is enough.

Mankind is enough for me and the history of one man’s defiance is also my own.

Modern times have seen the type of genocide only monsters were known for committing. Monsters like the vegetarian dictator of Germany, the genocidal warlord of Mongolia or the organized criminals who decided Tutsis should be extinguished from the face of earth. A type of killing spree that could be easily classified as ethnical cleansing. And it is.

Modern eyes have seen eyes thirsty for blood. Blindfolded to what history has proved not to be wrong or right but roundly bad. Modern history has known that history has not a damn thing to teach. “It is going to be a feast”, a general went on to claim. “There will be blood up to your knees”. The monster that allegedly used these words to declare to his battalion that the war was worth it is only now being tried before international justice. At this very moment, after long years of running, Ratko Mladic was finally caught and is now waiting to be judged before the world’s eyes but the world’s eyes no longer see: all I ask is,

Have they ever?

We haven’t learned a thing from the consequences of our ancestors’ actions and we shall continue doing so, ferociously. Eagerly. Like vultures, we cannot seem to link our loathsome appearance with the kind of prey we covet. We ask not what we can do to change it around and meet each other in the middle, we replicate.

We repeat. Like trained monkeys or lousy parrots, we repeat the actions without judging the consequences. We burn in the hell we engineer and we call it home.

Our words are nothing but certified copy and our presence shallow waters. Disease-filled mosquitoes hover about us. A murder of crows fly above us. Vultures sit and wait, a few feet away from us and we don’t get it.

“But we don’t hate. We still don’t hate”, a young Croatian woman who had lost everything had told a journalist amidst tears. Vulkovar in flames in the background. While I write this, an angered and terrifying-looking man screams from across the street: “shut up! Shut the fuck up!”.

From the third floor of my building, a group of Latin folks crying a prayer in unison. ~

Grumbling Under the Hood

22 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Hollywood, Living, Reality check?

≈ 2 Comments

I do not drive a derby car. I am not a member of a motorcycle gang. And yet, this morning after happily skipping to my Toyota 4runner, the sun already high and bouncing off the ol’girls black hood and freckling my skin, I turned the key in the ignition and was startled by the rumbling grumbling loud gurgling noise that spout out in force. It roared like a lion.  It chortled like some massive hyena.

In a panic, I shut my car off. My eyes wide. My nose twitching. My ears still reverberating from that great growl of my engine.  What the fuck was that?

In his gallant steed (his Rubicon), Derek arrived to save me; to conquer this beast that my sweet car had grown to be overnight.  He tossed me his keys (and a kiss) and sent me on my way. He would stay and fight this fight.

Hours later and on the other side of town, as I sat reading monster stories to two less furry monsters, I was told that he had diagnosed the problem: In the night, as I lay dreaming, some asshole took a sawzall to the underbelly of my Runner and hijacked the catalytic converter and two feet of my exhaust.

Five hundred dollars later, my car will be restored but my security isn’t quite such an easy fix. I’m scouring the neighborhood looking for other 4Runners that someone may be working on. Do I trust my car on the street? Or even in my driveway? But more than that, it has me questioning humanity. What kind of rat crawls thru this city, trying to eek out a living off of catalytic converters? What kind of city is this that there is nothing to be done but to put my money down on O’Reily’s countertop and keep my eyes peered for bottom feeders?

A bubble (reflecting you)

04 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by Alice Salles in Reality check?

≈ 1 Comment

You hope somebody will say the word so you don’t have to.

Admitting to it evokes shame, but

~ Why?

You want it so bad, to get it off your chest, let it be expelled through your pores like the sweat you sweat in days you wish were over before they even started. You pray, you beg, you fall into blind despair; you sleep with it and flirt with death. You sigh, cry and expect someone, something ~ anything out there ~ to hear you. Why can someone say it for me? for I cannot form words to express it.

I accept that this is the easiest way out and I am asking for it: I just want somebody to come and set me free.

~ Free from what?

The shame of wanting to say this, the shame from wanting this so much but being incapable of holding it against my prosecutors.

(but, the World is not a temple of doom, there’s nothing wrong with wanting what you want.)

But there is, you see, we were taught it’s wrong to want such splendorous things, such glories if all we wish them for is to make us feel better in our own skin.

~ Says who?

The World, society, gnomes, the United Nations, the birds for all I care.

(but it’s not true), I know. (Then, why shame?) Because what I feel is not guilt. (But why is it so hard to let go of this feeling of shame?) I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So I talk about it without touching the subject. I dance around it without keeping its pace. I flower it and create excuses, I survive around it wandering if life would have turned out any better if I had survived in it but never seem to get an answer… so I don’t question it and don’t entirely suppress it: it dwells in me but its voice is toneless.

And so I remain alive. Still waiting patiently for someone to set me free, just not too sure it will ever truly happen.

Security Circus

12 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Reality check?

≈ 1 Comment

On a recent summer sojourn to New York City, Edgar and I decided to tourist it up a bit, so we hopped on a ferry and chugged it out to the Statue of Liberty.  I had been there before, but Edgar hadn’t and though I do think it is something all Americans should see, his adventure was probably somewhat dampened by my continual moans of disappointment in the overly policed process the entire experience has become.  Somewhere along the way, it seems that our national landmarks have morphed into turn-style money makers instead of the revered physical locations of our collective history which they celebrate.

Simply seeing the Statue of Liberty from a vantage point slightly closer than the Battery Park bank, requires a good chuck of cash and a trip through a security circus more stringent than White House screening.  After standing for what seemed like eons in a snaking, winding line underneath dirty white tents, we arrive at the metal detectors only to have Edgar turned away due to his key ring pocket knife.  Upon further inspection, it turns out, he had also brought along another blade, considerably bigger, you know, “just in case”.  So we were given two options: surrender both “knifes” immediately to the NYPD never to be returned (even though one of them was small enough for a cockroach to use as a butter spreader) or go hide them somewhere in Battery Park.  So we chose the latter. Afterall, nothing screams NYC like a 6 inch bowie-knife hiding under a bush.

Finally on the ferry, we cruised through the bay before docking on Liberty Island where we were ushered through yet another security screening in an even dirtier tent.  We were instructed to gulp down any liquids we might have and judging by the torrent of water rushing down the ramp towards us, many people simply dumped their drinks out.  Couple this with the tower of water bottles heaped in the corner, the impression that America left on many of the foreign tourists was undoubtably one of filth.  When we were finally allowed access to the statue, our tickets took us up the winding stairs to the pedestal where we could gaze at the lucky few who were able to afford the crown tickets and had had the fortitude to buy them 5 months in advance.

They have signs around the island explaining that visiting the statue of liberty is actually free and that the ticket prices are simply to cover the ferry boat expenses and such.  However, I would argue that is not the case at all as was evidence by the hundreds of people whose tickets denied them even pedestal access.  So clearly, there is a class system being run at our national monuments, where more money gets you a better experience and exclusive access to something that is, by rights, for all of us.  Needless to say, as I watched hordes of Chinese tourists push past me with their special crown badges swinging about their necks, I took a bitter breath and we bee lined it down to the ferry dock, where the uncrowded and unhurried Ellis Island awaited us.  The rest of the afternoon went off without a hitch, with Edgar even patiently sleeping on a bench while I read every single display at Ellis Island, and when we returned, lo and behold, the knives were there and we went on our merry way, fully armed.

Todays Little Revelation

19 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Family & Friends, Living, Reality check?

≈ 2 Comments

On days like that these I dream myself home. I put myself in the yard—the air is warm in a soft, kiss your skin kind of way and it smells like fresh grass and sweet apple blossoms. I am out there barefoot, holding a bowl of blackberries—my hands sticky and my mouth purple. It’s quiet in a way that a city can never be quiet. I can hear my mother singing or my brother with his infinite clever comments. I can hear my sisters laughing.  I can hear the neighbor’s door shut down the hill.  I can hear my own thoughts give way to a happy nothing. In my dream, I close my eyes. I take a moment to feel the sun on my face and the soft blades of green between my toes. I suck the sweet air into my lungs and swish it around to taste its perfect flavor.

On days like these, it hits me—suddenly! Life may come in like a hurricane and knock all your most precious things down. They may shatter. You may come out battered and half broken. It’s true. These things can happen. It’s not an uncommon story. It hits me that I am not living as I should—that the life I need is just there—over those mountains—far but certainly not intangible.

I made myself a promise to always be happy; to shine; to believe in magic and everyday miracles. To fall in love with nothing more than the perfect blackberry or the way even a sprinkler can bring rainbows forth to dance. And above all to laugh my ass off all the way to the end.

A Call of Revolt

07 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Reality check?

≈ 2 Comments

A Call of Revolt

This is my cry! This is my Revolt (for the moment). This is me questioning you. This is me asking you to question me.  This is my stance against what we have become.

I am not typically a political person. I sit on the sidelines. I watch. I flutter around ideas that have beautiful borders—portraits of kindness. I vote because it is my duty. I am proud because it is in my blood. My ancestors lives are interwoven in the history of this nation—they were great people fulfilling great dreams in a land that could make even them look small.

It has come to my attention that we have dishonored them. I am guessing that we have dishonored your people—your history—as well. At what point did we become so complacent? When did we let the fight in each of us go? When did we say that it was okay to be herded—to let another mans thoughts fill our brains and dictate our lives?  That is not the American that I know or that I strive to be.

Our government was built to serve us (yes, us! We lowly people). It was constructed to protect us and to serve us. Hell, it even gave us the right to bare arms so that the common man was never less than anything a government can grow to be. Our nation that was founded on so many lofty ideas has grown weary—it is covered now in bureaucratic red tape. It is dirtied by greed and corruption. It has grown into a great beast that we must protect and serve. It has acquired an appetite for revenue that our small pockets can’t possibly fill.

It enables people to do less with their lives (I took a friends’ unemployment check to the bank to discover that the government pays him more weekly than my bi-monthly check I receive for working full time. Why work when unemployment will offer you greater wages? The common man is crushed by enormous economic woes—homes are foreclosed on—school programs are cut– small business’ fail as large corporations prosper (they have money to endorse politicians, you know?).

Our government has a ticket for everything. We need permits to do anything. And we are taxed again and again.  I am pretty sure that my ancestors left the land of King George for a reason. But somehow, his policies seemed to have followed them here. Just a few hundred years later we have become everything that we set out not to be.

Agree with me or don’t. But raise your own questions and do us all a favor and think for yourself.

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