• The Dawn Of A New Literature

the word of 3

~ omne trium perfectum

the word of 3

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Beginning

13 Saturday Dec 2014

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment


10689926_10100484989998343_8921128706315324931_n10155096_10100503328926983_4984782017965837736_n And time is just sliding by in that quiet humming way that it does. Summer subtly dropped into fall and already winter is upon us. We light fires at night to warm the house and boil water for tea. The sun tucks away early so we hole up inside and read and watch movies and curl our bodies around one and another. Zelda walks around lazily, purring, stretching, thoroughly enjoying what winter has brought her…us, indoors, couch potatoes.

We’ve been in Washington for eight months now. Eight months. We shut the door on our wild youthful lives in Los Angeles and traded it in for a different kind of wild. We’ve grown closer to the animals that we are. We work very hard; in the sun, in the rain, and now in the snow. We laugh and dream wild dreams at night. We have battled forest fires and mice. We have moved from couch to a three bedroom, to a tent in the woods and then into a leaky, mousy camper and finally into an old and beautiful log hewn cabin. It has been a journey.

We’ve battled each other. We’ve missed our old life. We’ve wanted sushi at 11pm. We’ve wanted our friends. We’ve wanted our old rituals.

We’ve fallen in love all over again as we surprise each other with our strength. We’ve fallen in love with our new life—with the mountains and the green scent in the air. We’ve made new traditions.

Neighbors bring us firewood and squash. We are given home canned jams and salsas. My family surrounds us and they stop by to have dinner or help out with one of our many moves. They make us smile. They give me a hard time—and they hug me tight. We have been shown so much love.

We eat from gardens and the rivers that finger thru these mountains. We warm ourselves from trees. We’ve gotten to swim in the lake and eat snow from the sky.

This is what I wanted all along. This is what we needed.

We’ve built this new life for ourselves. With our hands. With our hearts.

It’s been eight months and it’s really just the beginning….

Grateful

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

A few days ago, I forced myself to do something which I rather dislike. Not because the task was unpleasant, which it was in the sense that all things associated with death are, but because I was terrified of that look I would see in my father’s eyes. That look of mortality, of fleeting time, of disbelief, of instant heartache. For a friend of my dad’s had passed away quite unexpectedly and being the good daughter that I am, I bought a bottle of whiskey and drove over the mountain pass to commemorate at his house.

Once I arrived there however, my solidarity faltered as I remembered that summer day not too many years ago, when I had spontaneously driven over that same mountain pass and up my Dad’s gravel driveway and into a memory of sadness and shame. As I pulled up to a stop & jumped careless out of my car as only a young girl can do, my Dad lurched forward out of his office and onto the porch in a way which immediately told me something was wrong. At first I thought he was in the throws of a heart attack but as he choked out the words as I rushed towards him, I understood that it was my Uncle Brian he was talking about, not himself. And in that moment I experienced my first sense of shame, because I was grateful it wasn’t him. Whether it was right or wrong, that emotion was the first thing I remember about my Uncle Brian’s death. And as a world wholly new and painfully sharp sprang up around us that day, that day of sudden and young death, my first thoughts were still, at least it wasn’t you Dad. Thank God it wasn’t you.

And that is why it took me a few hours after arriving to finally go see him and to bring him his bottle of whiskey to be washed down with my few paltry words of condolences. I knew that same look was coming and I also knew that I once again would feel that guilty sense of gratitude that it wasn’t him. For the thought of a world without my Dad breaks my heart, it’s something that I fear I simply could not bear. So when I look my Father in the eyes, his grief makes me sad, sad because his friend was a good man and the world is a little less bright without him, sad because his own mortality is something I cannot stop. Yet he is still here, we still have time, and for that, yes I am unshamefully grateful.

Northern Migration

27 Friday Jun 2014

Posted by Aubrey Anne Dickinson in Brother, Family & Friends, Hollywood, Living, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment



moving photogoodbye la

When we loaded the trailers sky high in a modern day version of the grapes of wrath and drove north in our mass exodus from wild, smoggy, youthful and vicious L.A., we knew life was changing. Of course we did, we were moving after all. But really we had no idea. Even Zelda (the cat) was destined for change.

The move was a battle from the beginning to end…one of those things that later you look upon and say, “If it wasn’t hard, it wouldn’t be worth it.” And of course it would be worth it if it had been easy—we just may have had a bit more fun and money in the end. Alas!

We packed in a wild mess and left piles of shit in the alley outside our apartment—most of which was squirreled across the drive to the neighbors compound. I doled out plants and made my friends promise to care for them in all their greenness. The neighbors across the hall snagged a couch. And still we were overloaded. To the max. Heaps and heaps of belongings that would be carted from LA thru Vegas and eventually home to Lake Wenatchee, WA.

My mom and brother Drew were there like cursing angels—spackling walls and hauling boxes. Bringing humor (as always) and the help that we so desperately needed.

And finally we fit all we could and said goodbye to LA on a Saturday night. It’d been seven and a half long years. It had been the city where I grew up and where Derek and I fell in love. It had been a lot of things to me. And now it was time for me to move on.

We contended with flat tires, flat spare tires, burnt wheel bearings, broken axels, skeezy motels, desolate roads, and hot, hot sun. We wrestled shorted wiring, hail falling from a grey sky and an angry cat pissing in the car. We threw all our money at the problems and crossed our fingers that we would make it home.

But we also laughed and soaked up family. We kept our dreams close.

We are here now. And we are tough and ready and eager. We planted some flowers the other day and I can’t wait to see them bloom. Zelda’s even killing mice. So it turns out, we all three seem to be settling in to country life fairly well.

A Tangled Nest

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

I’ve long held the belief that everybody has at least one physical trait that others find beautiful.  It could be the eyes, a finely turned ankle or a dazzlingly white smile, but there is always something.  For me, it seems to be my hair.  Long, thicker than a horse’s tail, and honey colored; I’ve always been a bit partial towards it.  It’s embarrassingly easy to maintain and I suspect that my husband even married me because of it’s golden hue~after all, what true-blooded Latino could ever resist a blond?  All in all, I have been truly blessed by the hair gods.  However I realize now that it really was never created for my benefit  but rather for my son London’s; for my hair has become his nest, chew toy, blanket, teething ring and worry doll.  Not a day or night goes by when he doesn’t burrow himself down in it, entangled in it’s golden tresses, and sooth himself to sleep.  This process however, is not as gentle as it sounds, and my scalp as well as any loose strands are ripped and pulled in a most unpleasant way.  In the dark of the night, when a violent tug has awoken me from a deep sleep, I often wish I could find a silky haired, lactating doll which I could easy switch places with.  

Yet as my baby sister so graciously reminded me, this time is fleeting and it won’t be long before he’s 18 years old and I would give anything to have him small again, wrapped up in my arms, contentedly chomping on my split ends.  So I’ll endure the nesting, the aching head and frazzled morning hair for now because I know that she is right.  Image

The Foundation

09 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Last sunday, we took London for his 1st winter hike.  It was cold & misty which is to be expected in the Cascade foothills of Washington but the sun wavered just so, peeking sporadically through the clouds, that it promised to be a beautiful day.  I packed London’s snacks, extra diapers, a camera or two since inevitably one of them will loose power the moment I attempt to take a photo; and hoped that he would stay awake long enough to see the waterfall.  

He did and as we scrambled down the trail, towards its base and felt the spray from the cascading water on our faces, I realized that that was London’s first waterfall.  It was the first time in his nine months of life that he had witnessed one of nature’s pristine moments, that he wouldn’t get another first waterfall, and that I had picked well, for it was beautiful.

I know that he will never remember that day, that all the memories we are making together right now, at this moment, will be lost  somewhere in his subconscious by the time he is ten.  Yet I suppose the memories really are for me anyway.  What we are doing, is what all good parents do, what my parents did with me, and that is building a foundation upon which his memories will grow; turning into something which both he and I will remember.  

My Irish Twin

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

brothers

IMG_1041  My brother Drew has always been my opposite.  He’s loud, boisterous and at times, truly wild.  I am quiet & calm and my wildness comes in measured spurts, few and far between.  Born the day before I turned one, he drained my parents bank account and usurped my babyhood in one fell swoop.  He was breech and no amount of conjoling or pushing on the doctor’s part could turn him around, so Caesarean he was.  He was stubborn from the beginning I suppose, a fact which I think he is secretly proud of to this day.  As kids, we were a devilish pair of Aries wild ones~from scissor stabbings to kitchen floor cookouts, we challenged both our parents & our natural survival.  We grew and grew apart, as boys & girls will do, and his shy, timid nature was glossed over by his new class clown persona and my first born bravado was tucked away admist books and worldly dreams.

Now though, I see that we really have not changed, not permanently anyway.  Underneath his party boy swagger he is still the timid little brother that I first knew, my partner in crime, my built in playmate, my Irish twin.  And though he is now bigger than me and has been in his fair share of manly fights, I worry that he does not demand enough for himself, that he does not grab, by the fistfuls, that which he so richly deserves.  I often want to shake him for the choices he makes and chastize him for those that he doesn’t.  I see the romantic in him fall in love over & over again with all the wrong women and my heart aches for him in his loneliness.

Yet, he is an unbridled dreamer with an epic imagination, never ceasing to amaze me in his constant barrage of inventions and ideas.  He can make friends in an instant, a skill which I have long envied, and there isn’t much in this world he wouldn’t try just once.  He’s far more capable than most men I know and there’s not a lazy bone in his body.  And yet he settles far more than he should.

So maybe we must go back to the beginning of things, where he and I began, and pretend that I am once again his fearless leader and that he is my willing accomplice.  I will lead him out to the other side, through the ugly breakup and over the bump of self esteem, because I have been there and I know those waters well.  And then, I will  show him that yes, there is something better, there is something more, and that he should run towards it with all that he is.

480789_10200972106046323_825245050_n

Dust on the Screen

26 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

  I read that he had been cremated and that the toxicology reports were damning.  His death was so definite, so absolute on paper.

   Yet here he was, singing & dancing across my TV screen.  He was so alive, so effervescent & tangible that I found it hard to believe he no longer existed.  This life force in front of me had been condensed down into a box of ashes-to be scattered in the winds or set somewhere cool and quiet, I didn’t know.  And though the part of him I knew was artificial, sent thru the wires in a collection of pixilated images, I felt the sadness of his loss nonetheless.  I can watch him over & over, thru rewind and fast forward, yet the nostalgia slowly drifts in, like dust on the screen.  For now I know that his face  is a testament to something and someone which no longer exists and never will again.

To penetrate pig-thick skin

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by Alice Salles in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

rant

1764d72e8d25df443cb86e2a056cd0987aafe322-1368916351

Why is it that having a hobby is healthy and being mildly obsessed with a band, a movie star or a literature character harmful?

Humans have a funny way to categorize everything and make sure that, whatever it is that is placed above or beneath previously traced lines, is crushed back to exist within limits or expelled forcefully through the use of real-world politics.
Yes, I used the word politics.
Because politics is exactly what one may find meticulously defined in the contents of a dictionary: power struggle, machinations, maneuvering and finally opportunism. Part of the reason why I hate politics so much is how aware I am of its influence and how incredibly sensible I am about its effect on people.
Politics push everybody to think like everybody and I have no patience regarding those individuals who won’t let me be an individual. To constantly feel pressure to make a good impression because, believe it or not, I might offend Joe and Jack over there when they finally find out my radical and poetic visions regarding my own self and my own preferences when it comes to whatever do not match theirs.
‘Whatever’ is too much of an issue to deal with because taboo is a much easier thing to fight over than, I don’t know, anything that is truly important. Because the idea of fighting, after all, is overrated and blown out of proportions, which leaves nothing to the imagination and everything to the shallow. To fight over something is a luxury item that is truly available for all.
The one thing we have in common: the capacity to argue over nothing.
When one argues my “opinion” (note how I placed opinion between quotation marks) offends them or outrages them or makes me less of the human I obviously am, I puke a little inside my mouth but before feeling sick, I feel fine.
I, in the end, know better while the pig that spits on my face knows only how to be… a pig. That’s true politics, to point the finger at somebody for having some ludicrous idea and mock him or her for expressing thoughts in a very inoffensive manner. To create the idea in others that a harmless someone is not worth any attention and to do so forcefully, through the use of a detrimental and abusive approach… now that is politics.
Wow. A post that started as a rebellious way of telling the world I do not like to hide what I feel that finished with a rant about real-world politics… We haven’t changed much since Columbus ‘came across’ the Americas and I guess evolution is nothing but a faint notion of idealized humanity that mankind is simply not able to wrap its collective mind around… and never will.

Siblings

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Our siblings make us who we are.  They mold us & shape us and ultimately, help to create the person we become.  Being the oldest of six for instance, I suppose it was inevitable that I become the responsible one, the leader, the example.  Whereas my brother, number two in the lineup, diverged wildly from me, running in nearly the opposite direction seeking adventure impulsively & spiritedly through bad girls and fast cars.  Each successive one of us  has fallen somewhere between these two pillars of character definition, settling into the role that we, as siblings, had carved out for each other.

I don’t know for sure who I am or what I represent to each of my brothers & sisters, but I do know that who they are to me, individually and collectively, are five people who know me better then most on this earth.  Armed with that knowledge, there are things they have come to expect from me, from a lifetime of playing my role within our family drama.

Often I wish I could break away from their expectations of me; to not be the straight & narrow one, to do something uncharacteristic, something outside of what they have defined for me.  Yet then I realize, it is me & my self image that needs redefining.  Just because I’ve grown accustomed to the role I’ve played should not mean that it doesn’t need or deserve revisions.  I am the oldest, the leader after all, and who better to change the course of my own play than me?

The next Generation

13 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Alisha Dickinson in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

More whole & perfectly put together than I ever could have imagined, you are no more an abstract thought, a face yet unseen, a shadow of us.  You are here, you exist and there we stand in awe.

Like an echo sent off into the distance, made with familiar sounds & textures, I recognize parts of us in you.  Yet like an echo, which in the journeying back to one’s ears evolves and becomes its own sound, you are entirely you.

In the one short month I’ve been blessed to look upon your darling face I’ve seen expressions cross it that remind me of Edgar and others that make me laugh out loud in their simplicity and newness.  You create a constant cacophony of sounds similar to my brother Drew and your thick, dark hair is inherited from my Mother.   The genetic echo expands even wider, right down to your long, Norwegian toes, compliments of my paternal great-grandfather Clayton.

And as you grow & grow & grow, already so much in four quick weeks, the person you are & who you will be is taking shape before our eyes and we can only imagine the places you will go.  For you are our echo into the future.  Parts of each of us, Edgar & I and those around us & before us, will continue on through you, in one way or another, reverberating around this world long after we are gone.

← Older posts

  • Alice Salles
  • Aubrey Anne Dickinson
  • Alisha Dickinson
  • Aubrey, Alice & Alisha.

Recent Posts

  • You See, My Mom Is Special
  • The Beginning
  • Grateful
  • Jeannette Rankin: The First U.S. Congresswoman Was Also Antiwar – Updated
  • Northern Migration

TheWordof3

TheWordof3

Archives

  • May 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • June 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011

Categories

  • Beat
  • Brother
  • Dirt
  • Dying
  • Family & Friends
  • Film
  • Hollywood
  • Living
  • Ocean
  • Raw Passion
  • Reality check?
  • Sunday loving
  • True story?
  • Uncategorized
  • Whatever

Blogroll

  • The DHarma Bum
  • They Fight For (Your Right To Party)
  • We Love Diners
  • We Will Wander

Advertising

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy