Desolation Angel

1. 

I came across a picture of you the other day. The look in your eyes was soft, even tender. As always, my heart warms for an instant before the shock of cold truth freezes me through. A cruel trick of the mind. I never get used to it. 

2.

11:00  a.m. Concrete silence. That phrase sounds pretentious, but it's the only one I have. Lines of sun and shadow are creeping across the square, a slow and pointless chase that the shadow always wins. The severe geometry of this place suggests something, but what it is remains unclear. A vague memory of the afterlife, perhaps. 

My insignificance chafes at me. Not insignificance in and of itself, not in the Great Scheme of Things, but my inability to hold space in the mind of another. Do I really need to be seen in order to exist? Do I really need to matter this way? 

I curse myself for failing to fit the template, any template - if not desirability, then respectability - but this is a habit. Doesn't this free me from the risk of being an object, an empty stage upon which to act the same worn-out play? 

But I remember making this same argument, day in and day out, year after year. It sounds nice, but do I really think that one day my pure inner light will break through this grim façade and show me for what I really am? 

And what if - god forbid - what if your inner light had broken through and been found wanting? 

What then?

Then nothing, of course. Nothing. What is there to do? 

I might as well try to stop the sun moving across the sky.

I already told you. 

The shadow always wins.

In Memory Of Some Other Sunday

The Hawthorn And Jasmine Epiphany

It was the 12th of April, and I was weaving vines beneath  the afternoon sun. The day was strangely empty. I felt very alone. 

I paused for a moment, watching the finches and moths darting through the winter-scorched hawthorn. What would I do if I were so free? But no sooner had I thought it than I felt an invisible restraint tighten around me  A lifetime of training, my experience in a world of No. 

Ego-identity, woven tight as a corset. Woven by others, mostly, their projections and expectations, and now, I realized suddenly, I was confined by an identity that wasn't even mine.

It's not that what I wanted was wrong - I only wanted to follow the butterflies and be...I don't know...something that wasn't this collection of assumptions and do something. But there are things you learn out of habit, and always there had been someone to put up a hand to stop me. Always a reason why I couldn't, or failing that, an explanation of why I was somehow less than others who had done the same. For the first time, I think, I truly understood the reason why the freedom of my body depended on the freedom of my mind. 

I stretched out among the vines feeling so tired, enlightened but tired, and the same sun shone down upon us all, the moths and the finches and even something as small and pathetic as someone like me.

Pyromancy

I'd used the candle more than a few times; just a white candle, given to me by a friend. Nothing special about it, outside of the handmade label. 

As it happened though, night before last, I'd decided to do a candle spell - just a small one, in hopes of a little boost. I didn't add anything, just a petition paper to place underneath. 

The candle burst into roaring flames, spiraling so high and fast I thought the glass would break. It spooked me. Something wasn't right. But before I put it out, I set it some distance away on the patio, grabbed my camera and said "show me what's causing this to happen" Then I took this picture.

Can you see her? 

Your Ghost

For several months, a few plaintive notes have been haunting me, the briefest fragment of song curling up from my unconscious like a thin wisp of smoke. 

It was a cold night in October the first time it happened, at the curve of the walkway in the autumn wind. The melody was too brief and the lyrics were too fuzzy in memory to make out, yet enough to catch a distinctive, twanging ache. It was something I'd known very well once, but no amount of thinking would bring it back. 

It would come to me again and again at unguarded moments - under the garden archway or at the kitchen door at night. Shoot you down, were those the words I was hearing? Such an odd lyric, you'd think I'd remember. But maybe I had it wrong. There was no way to find out. 

I gave up trying to place it and instead let it draw me to where it seemed to want to go - the reflection that everything at last becomes a memory, even the most ordinary moments take on added meaning in retrospect. 

Last night, without warning, it came flooding back. The 3 seconds from 2:00 - 2:03 in Damien Rice's version  of Your Ghost. "Let him shoot me down" goes the lyric, and I saw how it had taken so long to retrieve. In the original, more familiar version, Kristen Hersch delivers the line with a slightly challenging air and doesn't linger. Lisa Hannigan's vocal, however, has no challenge in it, only mournful acceptance. It may be the saddest line in the whole song. 

It's not lost on me that my fuzzy recollection had changed the wording from the first to second person, becoming not so much a dare but a piece of melancholy advice. There are no accidents in matters of the psyche, nor in cosmic timing. I understand now why the line came to me the way it did, and why the source comes back to me now. 

It's our fate that we must co-exist with our ghosts. 

Things Left Unsaid

 

Pretending Not To Be

Psychedelicize Me

A little color for the new season.

Oops

Did I say something about blogging more often? 

As it happens, this is a time of deep thoughts, dreaming, magic-making, but not words - I've been thinking in images, it seems. 

Perhaps soon I will come back to the surface, but not quite yet. There are things to be done. 

Through A Dusty Glass, Darkly

It's the last day of February, and as this is traditionally my most productive blogging month, I thought I'd throw in one last post to even things out. Perhaps shed some light on what has been a relentlessly dark mood.

Why so dark, you may ask. Well, it's been a very dark season in a year that has been, excuse my  language, grim as fuck. Not that it has been without joy, don't get me wrong, but a year that has insistently demanded clarification and distillation of what is necessary, what we value, and a sometimes brutal cutting away of what we love.

Even for a somewhat pessimistic introvert - content to safely hide away and watch the system crumble because she always knew it would - what could it do to me? Just blow up my marriage, upend my spiritual beliefs and turn me into a mass of exposed emotional wounds, that's all. 

Not that the paring down has stopped. Not by a long shot. I must be refined - if not by fire, then ice, if recent events are anything to go by - until there is nothing left but the truth of me. 

Simple enough, eh? I'll just be over here, sorting through the remnants of my life, wondering what was ever really mine.

Perhaps, dear reader, it is the same for you.

But, in less than a month Spring will come again, and maybe hope, and a chance to clear the dust away from what is left of the rest of us.

Moon Lantern

You mustn't think I don't know.

No one will ever watch longingly as I walk into the dark with my moon lantern.

It troubles me that you think I don't know. 

Last Night I Dreamed...

2-24-21
Last night I dreamed you covered me in sackcloth and ashes. You didn't understand why I wasn't grateful for the privilege.

 

2-25-21
Last night I dreamed I was burning words off a page. I wondered how much I would have to destroy before I was left with the truth of myself. 

In The Woods/Black Wings

 The woods are what they are, and there's nothing more to say.

The Ace Of Snow

Ordinarily, I would have made a Valentine's Day post referring to the unfailingly crappy weather and how it reflects the interior of my wretched heart (seriously, it's like clockwork) but this year, I missed it because the weather outdid itself and knocked me offline. 

Really, that's just showing off. 

As for the interior of my wretched heart, I can only wish it were this cold. 

Reverberations

"Buck up, my girl, " I tell myself, as if I would actually listen. "Where is your spirit?" 

The empty hallway only echoes in reply. 

Winter is difficult for me, the second of February particularly so. It always goes wrong somehow. I prod myself forward with false joviality. That groundhog with its long and ominous shadow.

"Put the past behind you" I say, as I fall into a time hole and relive my life at warp speed. This isn't science fiction, it's just me trying to get dressed in the morning. 

There was a time when hours and weeks and years and minutes seemed to move about in an orderly fashion, but that was a while ago, I don't quite remember when. Just when I think I've got them stuck down they slide out from under me. 

The only thing to do is ride the wave. 

It's just the way we live now. 

...

On the way down the memory spiral, I try to hang on to the good parts. Swathes of dark green grass. An agave like a fountain. Hula hoops. The summer scent of flagstones in the rain. My yellow bicycle - no, scratch that, I don't like that one at all.

A frigid wind sweeps through a flea market on the edge of town. I push it away.

There are fireflies in the dusk that isn't just any kind of dusk, but the kind we had when I was small. Richard Linklater faked it so well in Dazed and Confused that I realize that it must still be this way, I've just forgotten to notice. 

Sometimes I remember things that reasonably should have been forgotten. Night noises in old apartments. The slant of light through certain window panes. They stand out like symbols in a story whose author has lost the plot. Representing nothing.

So the thread continues to unspool: the kachina that Nancy called the god of nightmares. The smell of incense. Paul and I sharing the ginger soy sauce at that little restaurant downtown. Mai Lee, Lawrence, Sariah laughing. The hum in the humid air. 

It's sad, but none of it means anything to anyone but me. 

...

Angela said "but think of what it's like to be the one who remembers."

She was referring to herself, of course, but I felt it keenly. We'd been talking to Candace, who bemoaned running into her old school friend in town. "She's really sweet, and I mean it when I promise to call, but I always forget about her." 

That's when Angela made her comment, and we gave each other a look. We both knew which side we were on. There's a certain blithe power in those who forget; not only can they casually erase your presence from their minds, but those of us who remember must live with knowing that we were so causally erased.

For those who remember, there is no choice. The reverberations of the past remain

...

I don't know why the current time confusion (of which I'm hardly the only sufferer) takes me this way. Why the rabbit hole of memory is so fathomlessly deep and relentless as it pulls me down. 

One day we will finally orient ourselves, this chromesthesia will end and we'll remember which day of the week it is again. But even as I'm writing this, the synchronicities are piling up. It makes me feel a bit unreal, as if these are the musings of some future self, some deja vu refugee 

I can't help but wonder which version will eventually turn out to be me. 

You Know Before You Know

It's strange, the things that persist in your mind. 

It was a terrible day. Not that there was any reason for it to be, besides the cold wind and lowering sky. I'd gone out to look for somewhere to try my new camera, but really I'd gone out to get my mind off something, or rather to think about it somewhere else. 

The landscape seemed empty, lifeless. An expanse of blank asphalt and withered grass. No matter how much I wanted to find something hopeful in it, there was nothing there at all. 

Sometimes the end of a journey can be foretold by its beginning, or in this case, the beginning of its end.  

The wind rattled the old tin building I'd come to investigate. It had been a warehouse once, and despite signs of activity outside, it was clear it had been out of use for a long, long time. The windows were tightly boarded, forbidding even the smallest glimpse inside. 

I'd chosen this place because I'd remembered coming here as a child once with my girl scout troop, maybe after a visit to the park. We'd sat on the loading dock and chattered and sang songs and I suppose whatever else girl scouts do while we waited for our rides. I remembered those times fondly, but now looking around for any piece of my past, I saw that nothing was at all familiar and any warm feelings were gone.

Turning away, I decided to investigate the nearby bridge. I'd been over it countless times, but never underneath. I stumbled down the bleached grey hill through the bleached grey grass, down to the patch of compact dirt under the archway. It seemed as though it might have sheltered people now and again, maybe for just a little while, but there was no sign of them now. Except maybe in the feeling of the place - a particularly hopeless strain of despair.

There was a little stream, though, and still looking for answers in something I could not name, I followed it. What I found, with its archways of catclaw and bramble and straw like vines, resembled a dead fairyland. Even the movement of water hardly made it seem more alive.

I sat next to it for a while, deep in thought, all the while hoping for an answer that never came. 

Now, a year later, I can see what I didn't want to see.

I'd already had my answer then, at the beginning of the end.

A Spell For The Dissolution Of Sorrow

Let the lines dissolve your sorrow, cast it harmlessly into the void. 

The Trouble With Muses...

I want to think you'll miss my kind and lovely soul, but I already know you won't. 

Violet

On the corner of a village street, on top of the hill where the wind whirls and moans,  I feel memory twining around me like a nerve. It doesn't hurt to the touch, not really, just a little chill and a shiver, the presence of what is not-quite-forever-gone.

Taryn and me, coltish girls dancing around on the road above the canyon. Lip gloss, ruffles, Ralph Lauren plaid. The sky is violet, the full moon is cold. 

The memory is glossy and slick like hard candy. Watermelon, cherry, green apple scent. 

In my mind, we run home, laughing. From my perch, I can see Taryn through the window of her shop.  We are old now. And yet, and yet. 

Somewhere across the distant ocean, a clock chimes midnight. 

Time never really dies, does it? 

The Last of December

It's been a long and strange and difficult year, so I made art out of the things that hurt. 

Conjunction

Solstice night, 2020. Along with many other amateur astronomers, I was peering into the western sky, waiting for the planets to appear.

Like the solstice itself and many other things, the conjunction proper had happened earlier that day, out of sight, but not out of mind. In the distance, I felt the last 20 years slip away. The cycle begins again, a little lighter this time. 

I breathe easier, without the weight. I don't know what changes the future holds, only that it holds something I can feel out there ahead of me. 

In the meantime I will watch the patterns, the planets, the stars in the sky, and hope against hope for  happy alignments and the blessings of fate

(And maybe - if I'm lucky - the peace of mind to do a little more blogging next year.)

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

Ten years ago today, I woke from an uneasy sleep. A dream-voice rang with alarming certainty through my mind: "your baby will be born dead."

I shuddered and pushed back the intrusive thought. Nonsense. I just wasn't feeling well. The baby was coming along fine, despite it being a surprise pregnancy - such a surprise, in fact, that I hadn't even realized I was expecting until I felt kicking in my tummy. Now I was about 30 weeks along, as near as the clinic could figure. The only problem was anemia, but I'd been given tablets for that. I had an appointment for my checkup in 2 days anyway. It was fine.

Intrusive thoughts begone.

The weather was chilly and becoming chillier as I went about my work. The house was all wood inside and there was a lot of polishing to be done. I had a nagging pain in my side, which made things a bit of a struggle. My husband was an editor on the night desk then, and had to leave for work at 2. He was concerned though, and said he'd call to check up on me later. Luckily my 9 year old was staying with his friend for the weekend, and my 12 year old was no trouble at all. I said I was sure I'd be okay and I'd see him at midnight. The dog would look after me.

I only remember two other things from that afternoon  - listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass and taking that blurry picture of the unusually pink sunset at the top of the post. The first should have been a warning. The two times I'd miscarried I'd listened to that album, too, but my urge to hear these melancholy songs just seemed like the result of a bout of winter sadness, not a response to anything happening inside my body.

Later that evening, I settled down on the living room couch to watch television. This wasn't something I did very often, but a movie called Keeping The Faith had captured my attention. I was quite happy there, curled up by the Christmas tree and the dog, despite my physical discomfort.

About 10:30, I hear a loud crash outside. From the sound, I thought there might have been a traffic  accident at the intersection around the corner. I began to worry. Perhaps my husband had got away from work early and was on his way home? I went to the back fence to see if I could make anything out through the pickets, but no luck. It had gotten quite cold by then, so I put on Nick's heavy wool coat and walked with some difficulty around the corner to look. There seemed to be nothing to see, though. I patted my baby bump comfortingly and made my way home, breathing clouds of vapor into the air

I remember this all so well because this would be the last walk I'd take with this baby inside of me, or any baby, for that matter, the last time I'd experience that unique dream-like feeling of not being alone in my own body. I had no idea that by this time, we were both already in grave danger.

I settled back down to watch the film, Jenna Elfman was having quite the affair with Ben Stiller, and Ed Norton was pining away. The story was starting to gather speed when I noticed I was leaking. Leaking? Just a bit, maybe. Perhaps it was my imagination. I sat up and heard a pop as my water broke. How could that be? I hadn't had any contractions. I was only 6 months along. I stood up as liquid poured out of me. Then I saw it wasn't amniotic fluid, it was blood.

It was sometime between 11 and 11:30. My husband would be off work soon, but he would likely go to pick up some things from the grocery store before coming home. I called his office. His co-worker answered and said he had just left, but he might still be in the building. Someone ran to get him while I watched the blood pooling on the Turkish carpet. They caught him at the door and brought him to the phone, where he said that he would rush home right away. These details might seem unimportant, but for me they are everything, because had he continued on to run errands as he planned, neither my baby nor I would have survived.

As it was, by the time he got there minutes later, I was already out of it, crouched in the bathtub, bleeding out. Having seen the state of the house and me, he realized there we were beyond driving to the hospital and called an ambulance.

I can only remember leaning against the railing as we waited on the porch, faint and afraid. Disturbingly warm blood poured out of me with any movement. I listened to the sound approaching siren, clinging to it, urging it closer. Fear was going through me in waves, but had I known what had happened, I would have been more afraid still. The fact is that I didn't know the signs of a complete placental abruption, but I did know the result of one.

While I was taken to the hospital by ambulance, my husband followed along in the car with our older son. He later said that while he had been telling himself that it was really all right, it just looked like a lot of blood. he finally became afraid when he saw how fast we were traveling.

I don't remember anything about the surgery, not really. Only a vague memory of trying to cling onto my physical body and thinking that I couldn't bear to leave without seeing my baby's face. When I came out of the anesthesia, the nurse told me I had a boy, "the prettiest little boy, He looks just like you, with the prettiest poufiest lips,"

It would be days before I could see him, though. In the meantime, they warned me that I was rather a mess. I had suffered a circulatory collapse due to blood loss, they said, and had to receive a transfusion through the jugular vein. Not only was I in a great deal of pain, but I was bruised black and blue as well. Still, I was alive. Two more minutes, the doctor said, and it would have been too late for both of us. Had my husband tried to drive us, we would have died in the car.

What they didn't tell me, and told my husband not to tell me until some time had passed, was that our baby had been born unresponsive and they had worked on resuscitating him for 20 minutes. But they did resuscitate him, and while they couldn't promise there would be no problems, modern methods made it far more unlikely than it used to be. What's more he seemed to be rallying quickly.

The nurses brought polaroids of him so I could see what he looked like, and his dad and brother had been spending time with him and reported back. Our younger son had been brought back from his friend's house and already met his new brother, too. I was glad for this. Still, I felt sad and alone. This was nothing like the other boys' births, which had held so much joy.

Finally, after some days, I was well enough to go to the NICU. to see him.  It's a very strange feeling, to be the last person in your family to meet your own baby, but there we are. He was no bigger than a plucked chicken, but remarkably healthy despite being 10 weeks premature. Finally I was able to hold and feed him, and my sorrow began to lift. 

He had come along before I'd been able to have a sonogram, so his gender had been a mystery. We'd settled on the name Alenka for a girl, but hadn't chosen a boys name yet. My husband bought a book of baby names and we sat looking at him while running down the list. Luckily we didn't have to go too far before finding something suitable. We decided he looked like an Andrew, and that's what he became. 

Within days we were able to come home, to carry on with our lives, Andrew with his new one and me with the rest of mine. Miraculously, outside of a stern warning from my obstetrician not to have any more babies or risk a repeat, we were free from any ill effects. 10 years later, Andrew is a sturdy, bright, healthy child (knock on wood) and his dramatic beginnings seem as alien to him as any old story from my past. 

Me, though, I remember. How I'd pushed aside the warning from my dream. How I'd ignored my symptoms, How little I knew about the symptoms in the first place. I think about what would have happened if my husband's co-worker hadn't caught him on the way out the door. If Dr. Suarez hadn't been on duty that night. If they hadn't been able to perform the transfusion. So many what if's, such a slender thread of possibility that had allowed us our lives. It's not something I'm willing to forget.

Information about placental abruption:

Placental abruption - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic

Worth knowing because the US maternal mortality rate is not good.

The Last Person You’d Expect to Die in Childbirth — ProPublica

The Witch Of November

Stormy weather of the heart. Admittedly, maybe not as fierce as the winds that blow across the Great Lakes, but fierce enough, making me wistful for the stillness of heartaches past.

 

I'm only fooling myself, of course. It only seems still because it's long ago. Safe. That sharp blade of longing now dull. 

Still, I remember. There are certain nights when the intensity of hidden emotion etches a map onto your bones. I slide into the groove of discomforting comfort. It's all that I have left of those old feelings now. Parking lots. Stairwells. Memories of a scent caught unexpectedly around a corner.

Soon, my bones will carry a new map. Even as I lurch toward old age, the graver of desire is still fiercely sharp.  Maps of dreams and unforgotten hopes, maps of places you will never know.

The Edge Of The Mirror

A solitary figure waits at the edge of the mirror, unaware that she is on the verge of vanishing. 

*It's just me awaiting my flu shot, but there was something so forlorn about the image.

Sorrow, Part 2; or, The Map Of Lost Time

You don't have to cry, you tell yourself. It's nothing you haven't suspected for years. There was always a nagging feeling that those interminable nights spent heartsick, defensive, arguing about your own motivations were a waste. But suspecting something is different from having it confirmed. Knowing finally that no amount of your best behavior could have saved you the pain.

All that time spent as your confidence drained away. You'll never get it back. Not the confidence. Not the time. That's why you're crying.

So many years. Being sweet. Being helpful. Supportive through thick and thin (and thinner, as your mother-in-law quipped.) Being an accompaniment. Being less. 

It's a hard thing to swallow, this new reality. So what do you do but retrace your steps, remembering the times when you were only you, not belonging to anyone. Wandering, but not entirely lost.

Perhaps you left something yourself among those bleak and broken streets. Perhaps if you look long enough, you might find it again.