Isolation

Me. Day 46.

Height: 5' 6"
Weight: 105 lbs.
chest:: 34"
waist: 24"
hips: 34"
Wrist: 5"
Shoe size: 6 (US)
Hair: 24"
Age: indeterminate, possibly ancient

From here on my patch of ground, I measure things. The length of the grass. My body. Time. It all changes gradually, like cloud shapes on a still afternoon. It's not that I mind the isolation, I don't. It's an opportunity for quiet reflection. Sometimes, however, there's a risk of equating this with helplessness, and so I measure things, assuring myself of some gradual progress, like the sun across the sky.

I try not to think about stilted dreams and unfulfilled longings. No, that's a lie. I think about them all the time. I think them quietly to myself, where I don't have to defang them with humor, or make them pretty for public consumption.

 I think about jealousy, and envy, and how I sometimes suffer them myself even while trying to deflect them from others, even though I know all this competition is a social construct that's been ingrained in us, and lacks much inherent value of its own.

I think about philosophy, and psychology, and the strictures that come with studying the mind when it doesn't account for the soul. I think about the soul, too (do they think and feel, can they be quantumly entangled like diamonds?) all the while knowing that all of our best answers are guesses.

And then there is reality itself, and the perception of such, and whether reality changes or only our perception does. ("Reality" according to Nabokov, being one of those words that mean nothing without quotation marks.)

I think about these things during chores and in between lessons, and while I'm conditioning my hair and polishing my skin (because expectations of beauty are still high even in a quarantine) and hoping that I will understand more by the time this is over, but knowing that I may not ever understand anything at all.

At the very least I will keep on with my measuring.

Spirit Of The Water

When it's been raining for a while, the sides of the road fill with water, like little flood-meadows.One morning after a particularly wet few days, I dreamt that I went to look at one of these puddles, and saw a golden koi rise to the surface.

I didn't know what it meant, but it felt lucky somehow. After all, what else could a golden koi mean?

The next day, I happened to be next to a murky pond. I didn't imagine there was any living thing there, but suddenly a golden koi rose to the surface, much like the dream.

It's not clear if that week was any luckier than usual, but I felt an uncommon peace surround me.

I suppose luck is in the eye of the beholder.

The Girl With Hearts On Her Pockets

Last night's dream was an unsettling one. Not a nightmare really, but unnerving somehow. I am still unsure what it means.

A winter storm was coming, a blizzard the likes of which we'd never seen. It hadn't arrived yet, but everyone was warned to be prepared. I was at home, alone. Where everyone else had gone I've no idea - it didn't seem to matter. You know how it is in dreams.

I looked around - the house was dark, and not warm, but the walls were sturdy and I figured I'd be all right if I chose to stay. At the same time, I'd had an offer - who knows how it came - from a group pf hippies who had set up a tent site on the edge of town. They were nice tents - more like yurts, really, specially insulated and heated - in which to ride out the storm.  There were 200 tents, the hippies said, and they had one for me if I wanted it.

I was doubtful at first. I didn't even know these people, and maybe it was best to keep to myself, but the hippies convinced me it was better not to be alone, especially in a storm like this.

The tents were set up in a field below mission hill, all of them bright white. All the people were dressed in white as well, although there was no obvious reason for this. It occurred to me that when the snow came we'd all be camouflaged, invisible to any predatory eye, though whether this was intentional or not, there is no way to know.

I was shown to my tent, which was indeed very nice, and put on my warm white clothes. I then went out to wander among the people in the field. All of them were strangers, and as usual I was feeling shy. Starting conversations has never been my strong point.

After making a few nodding acquaintances, I was surprised to be introduced to someone I already knew, a woman named Lori.

Stop. Wait a moment. You'll have to bear with me because here I must digress. It's not enough to just say Lori. There is a whole tale behind Lori. Well, for me, there is a tale behind Lori. For her, I do not figure into her story much, if at all.

It's the curse of being the one who remembers.

I met Lori in second grade. Probably I don't even have to describe her, because there is a Lori in every school, every class, most likely. Think back to your own schoolroom, or your children's schoolroom, and you'll see.

These days they call such girls "natural leaders" or somesuch, but to me at age 7, it was an ineffable power, a mysterious ability to control the social order simply by existing. Well, being the prettiest girl with the best grades and the nicest clothes helped, but even if I could see some of the mechanism, I couldn't see all of it. Whatever quality it was she had, I didn't have it, and I knew it.

This fascinated me.

I don't recall envying her so fiercely at first, but soon it was gnawing at my very soul. The searing pain of comparing oneself to others and coming up short.

Our characters were very different, Lori and I, but being a child I tended to see this in simple material terms. The school took a dim view of classism, but not so my family. 'Her parents are rich," my brother said, bluntly. "You can never be like her."

The type of things Lori owned that I could never have - her snoopy watch, satin jacket, spotless Keds and ribbon barrettes among them - took on even greater significance after that. And then there was the thing that I envied most of all, the point around which all my envy had begun to coalesce...her Luv It jeans.

Luv Its were the skinny, straight-legged jeans worn by the popular girls in school. Usually they had puffy satin appliques on the pockets, in all sorts of designs: hearts, stars, peaches, lipstick, ice cream sundaes like the ad above. Sometimes the less popular girls would wear cheap knock-offs but you could always tell. That little Luv It tag (with the red heart with a bite out of it) conferred great social capital in that time and place.

Having spent spent many hours sitting at my desk behind Lori's, staring at the row of satin hearts on her pocket, it was clear to me that I needed whatever power those jeans could manifest. If there was no way to swap myself out and live another person's life, it seemed the jeans might be the next best thing.

My mother nearly did a spit-take when I told her how much they cost. "24 dollars!" she shouted, appalled. "you must be crazy." It was the same conversation many unpopular girls were having that year.

I did eventually get a pair of Luv Its, though I'd have to wait until the Christmas I was 9. They had 4 stars on each pocket, like so:

I adored them, don't get me wrong, but the moment I put them on, I understood that I would only ever be an impostor. The jeans did not confer Lori-ness. I was still just a nobody wearing Lori's jeans.

...

After changing schools, I didn't see Lori again until we took driver's ed together the year we were 15. By then, Lori was busy doing the sort of things that upper-middle class girls do to prepare for the future. Rainbow Girls, Junior League, twirling lessons - you know the drill. By that time, I was modelling for a punk rock hair salon, so it was obvious to anyone with eyes that we were on different life paths. Lori would chair committees and be president of the PTA, and I would be...god only knew.

But still. I remember standing outside the temp trailer, listening to her talk about Days Of Our Lives when a sort of shudder went through me. All that potential, all of that golden light, channeled into being perfectly, sensibly and competently dull.

Perhaps that's too harsh. I'm sure people who do such things get something out of it, that there must be some worthy achievement there. It's just that I've never understood it. Garden clubs, museum boards and the like always seem to be filled with well-dressed ladies with manicured, venomous claws. But then, since that elementary school experience, social maneuvering has always left me cold.

Anyway, it does seem Lori's life has turned out just as she planned. I haven't seen her in years, but one hears things, you know. Married with 2.5 children and dog. A lovely home in a tony suburb. President of the parish council and indeed, the PTA.

So you can imagine she was the last person I'd expect to turn up among a bunch of hippies in my dream. Dream? Oh, yes, that dream I was telling you about....

I shook the now grown-up Lori's hand and said "I don't know if you remember me." She said, "oh, of course I do" and I replied "well, we have known each other since the age of 7."

Just then, though, my hand began to bleed, ghastly red dripping all over our clean white clothes. I apologized, although I couldn't quite explain it. "It's no problem" Lori was saying, but by then I had noticed that the blood had run into the lines of my palm - the left palm, the lines that mark the potential with which you were born.

That's when I woke up.

...

I still don't know what it means, though the blood in my fate lines is a probably a clue. But it seems awfully late in the day to mourn something that I never was. I've long ago given up the poisonous  envy that marred my childhood, if that was the point.Then again, perhaps I'd suddenly become stigmatic, which would mean something else entirely. And just what was Lori doing there, anyway? Unless the dream was saying that the storm we were waiting for would come for us all, junior leaguers and hippies alike.

It remains to be seen. I'm keeping my eyes open.

*It would be disingenuous to say I never had any of the things in the link above. I did manage to accumulate many of those kinds of things but it was later, after my teachers started saying I looked like Brooke Shields and suddenly out of nowhere I had some value.

The Inconstant Muse

1. Something Happened

It was a cold, lightless day, perhaps it was January; the weather had that distinctive, hopeless feel. I was in my mother's car, coming back from San Antonio, I think. On the corner of Magazine and Butcher streets, I remember seeing black branches and telephone wires outlined against the sky. There was nothing special or unique about this moment. There is no reason it should have lodged itself in my memory. Bur there it is.

The moment fades, or rather fails to continue to exist.  I am sitting in my apartment. Through the windows I can see remnants of the lowering gloom. Fear is running though me like electricity, like a red-hot grid of nichrome wire. There'd been no segue from there to here, no awareness of movement, only nothingness, a numb and fathomless void.

I take out my notebook and write the words "something happened", as if this could help me reconstruct the missing time. It couldn't, of course. It still can't. I can only recall suddenly being there, in that dismal place that smelled of rat-chewed paper. What can you construct out of nothingness, beside the alarming certainty that for a moment you had ceased to exist?

2. The Curious Tale Of The Invention Of Prozac

It was a couple of years later, in the middle of summer, I caught a bus to Waco. It was hot and sunny that day. I wore a crop top with a sunflower print - sunflowers being the thing that year - and jeans with navy blue flats. I had a tiny handbag and eyeliner that matched my shoes. It was an ill-fated romance I was having up there in Waco, though it might be more accurate to call it a waste of time. Whatever it was, the ride to get there was 6 hours of sheer and utter boredom, although if you think about it, the sort of excitement you'd get on a bus is probably not the sort of excitement you'd want to have anyhow.

I've never been able to sleep in a moving vehicle, and back then there were no clever phones to occupy your time. On the way to the station, I'd stopped at the new grocery store on the south side of town to grab a bag of Gardetto's and a magazine from the rack. There was no sense in being hungry as well as bored. Thus fortified, I got on the bus.

It wasn't until halfway through the trip I'd started flipping through the magazine. That particular bus took a long and torturous route once it left Travis county, so unless you enjoyed looking at dilapidated buildings and cedar brakes there wasn't much to see. Memory tells me it was beginning to get late in the day, although that might have just been dimness from the tinted windows. If I had to guess, I'd say it was about 4 o'clock.

That was the year Prozac Nation: Young And Depressed In America was the hot bestseller, which I hadn't read because I was already young and depressed in America and didn't feel the need to read about it. Elizabeth Wurtzel was everywhere though, and she was in this magazine, too. I remember her photo next to her byline, wearing a lavender-colored blouse. The article was about the invention of Prozac, how she'd gone to research the story of the drug that had saved her life. I read the article, which was somewhat of a disappointment, and nothing much interesting happened on the rest of the trip. I left the magazine on the bus when we got to Waco and that was that. Whatever else was in the magazine, barely a hint remains with me now.

...

Years pass. Waco, with its dour atmosphere and concrete skyline, recedes into my history. The dismal apartment recedes, too, thank god. I move away, and life goes on.

And yet. The memory of that bus ride and that article come back to me again and again. They show up in unguarded moments, prodding at me like a troublesome ghost. Here is where I wish I were a better writer, because how can I truly describe the eeriness of these moments? The way it brought to mind writing in my notebook that "something happened"? The way what should have been a simple memory seemed as if it were hiding something I should have known all along?

Around 2010, with growing uneasiness, I finally decided to look up the article. Perhaps it would give me a clue as to what was wrong. The magazine had a large and thorough archive that was easy to search. Nevertheless, I could find no such item. I looked up everything Elizabeth Wurtzel had ever published. Again, there was no such thing. I searched for other writing on the subject, but there was nothing that was familiar in any way. Frustrated, I looked up the actual history of the invention of Prozac, and discovered that almost everything I'd remembered reading in the article was wrong.

And then comes the funny part - because the Cosmic Joker has a way with these things - I realized that the author photo I so clearly remembered wasn't of Elizabeth Wurtzel at all, but Elizabeth McGovern, the actress. No sighted person could possibly mistake one woman for the other, but here I was, with both images in my mind, somehow without questioning it. How could this happen?

There was an obvious explanation. I must have fallen asleep on the bus, even though I'd swear I hadn't, and dreamt the article. No, this isn't a usual thing to happen to me, but who's to say it can't, after all. Nothing mysterious then, only an ordinary foible, mistaking a dream for reality.

Except...except...I realized (and records bear this out) that the store where I'd bought the magazine and snack hadn't even been built until a year later. This is the point where the dream theory falls apart. I rarely went to that side of town unless it was to go to the bus station. I only used the bus when seeing Waco man. I was no longer seeing Waco man by the time the store was built. And the only time I'd buy those kind of snacks or that certain magazine is for a road trip. Anyway (for what it's worth) I remember it as clear as day: me in my sunflower top and my navy blue shoes, excited about seeing my boyfriend, waiting in the express lane, plucking that magazine out the rack, the smell of the brand new store, the high windows, the light on the south side of town.

There is no boredom, road hypnosis or toxic traffic fumes to confuse this part of the memory. It is untrammeled. And here the eeriness comes over me again. I would swear - will swear - I got off the bus with the memory of reading that article. But now I have to ask...when exactly did the false memory sneak in and replace apparent reality? And what happened to the reality?

Where does memory go when it disappears?

I suspect only Mnemosyne knows.

Temenos Tropicalia, Or The Color Of Sacred Space

Last week, my son and I went to lunch at a restaurant with an unusual color scheme. Despite the statues of Buddha and the mandala wall hangings, it had a distinctly Jamaican flair.

It had been my son's idea to eat there, he had been wanting to come for a while.

After we'd ordered and sat down at the table, he told me why.

He said, I don't understand it,  but for some reason this feels so much like home. As if I came from somewhere that looked just like this. But I can't think of where. Just 'home.'

While there were a few places in Victoria that had bright color schemes, they were few and far between. While it's possible this is what he was remembering, what he wouldn't have known (unless he'd read that post linked above) is that I've had dreams of similarly colored places my entire life. And if anything feels like home to me, I suppose that would be it.

It occurs to me that perhaps sacred space doesn't always need to be a space at all. Maybe it only needs to be a color.

Charmed Life

Divination is something I've been interested in as long as I can remember. Not that I believe that the future is set in stone - far from it, actually - but the methods used are fascinating.

Since I don't believe in a predetermined future or fate (in most cases), one may wonder why I have such an encompassing urge to go around reading arcane signs and symbols everywhere. But that's the answer, isn't it? Because they are arcane symbols. Not only are they beyond language, but often go where our conscious minds can barely reach. They tell us what's in the hidden parts of our psyche, the things we already know without knowing.

It's a bit like throwing dust into the wind. It makes the the invisible visible.

Given this, it's only  natural that I prefer forms of divination that employ meaningful symbols. Tea leaves and tarot are probably the best known of these, but charm casting falls into this category, too. In some ways it's even more so, as one can choose whatever charm seems personally relevant to represent a situation.

For instance, a bird charm can symbolize happiness to one person, industriousness to another and gossip to someone else. The important thing is to know what each charm means to you, specially. No good getting meanings out of a book, unless you happen to be in complete agreement with the book.

If you're anything like me, you're always collecting odds and ends and shiny things. Potential charms might turn up in the bottom of your pockets. your jewelry box or your junk drawer (unless you're one of those crazy neat freaks who doesn't have one). The best charms are the ones that come serendipitously, just when you need them. Some of the charms I use were found, some were given to me, a few I made myself - not very well, but good enough to get the message across.

Charms can be cast and read whatever way you like, but my preferred way is to make a basic (and in the example below, a very bad) sketch of the astrological houses. I don't bother with the more detailed meanings of the houses here, just a truncated version that tells me what's going on where.

(Seriously, what was going on with my ability to draw a circle here? I blame the cheap chalk and the rough paving stone. :p)

 After giving the charms a good shake and tossing them into the circle, we read where they fall.

So what of this fortune? Well, first of all, the charms representing the evil eye and jealousy are not in play, so that's a hopeful sign. Second, the 8th and 9th houses are empty, so death, taxes, sex, philosophy and religion are pretty much not happening right now. On the other hand, luck, spirituality, stability and secrecy/privacy are in the 1st house, the house of self. Longevity, personal power and information are in the house of material possessions. I suppose that means "hang in there, things will get better"?

Memory, energy and protection are in the third house - that's communication, so that makes sense too, but betrayal is in the 4th house (that little green thing is a coiled snake, by the way) and that's not so good - even though I know who it is. Gossip is in the 5th house, with deception just creeping in, but peace is there, too. This also makes perfect sense, for reasons better left unsaid (since I don't want to add gossip to gossip) and theft is nearly in the 5th house, but - mercifully - in the center of the circle, so I don't consider it to be a factor at this time.

Love, marriage and social life are in the 6th house, representing health and physical labor (too true) and transformation and money are in the house of marriage and partnerships. This could mean my husband will be paid for his work (*update* yes!) but that's also the house of enemies. Let's hope it's the former.

The female figure and the deer are in the 10th house, status, and it's anyone's guess what that means. My status is of  a woman who is shy and vulnerable? That I'm a woman who protects the vulnerable? Or that I'm simply a woman with a lot of deer visiting her yard? Well, all of these could be true, but the meaning is not clear. This is the only one that has me a little worried because it is hard to read.

The house charm is in the 11th house, community and groups, and since we are still considering moving to a new community, that fits as well. That's also the house of ambition and goals, and since that little pink house technically represents my "dream house" (literally a house I dreamed of, here ) that's also appropriate.

The 12 house, the unconscious, contains the symbol representing the world at large and the one representing attack or aggression. Well, one only has to open the newspaper to see the world is in some kind of crazy flux at the moment, that a raging undercurrent of something is at work. The collective unconscious must be in a right state about now. But the attack, aggression - whether that's something else in the undercurrent or something more personal remains to be seen. The 12th house is also the house of hidden enemies, so time to be on guard. Let's hope there are no other foes coming out of the woodwork

So, in essence, this fortune could be read as, cheer up, things could be worse. Also, beware of snakes and gossips. Well, that's good advice for anyone. ;)

...

How ever these charms fell and however accurate they may be, do I think that this is the work of an invisible hand? Not very likely. (Not saying it's entirely out of the question, just that it's not likely). No, I think what I'm looking at are the inner workings of my own mind. Those things, thoughts, ideas, and perceptions bubbling away unawares, potentially bursting into reality for good or ill. 

If you think about it, the idea isn't that much stranger than the concept of unseen forces intervening in our lives, which is a common belief worldwide. The universe is mysterious but so is the mind. The mind, I believe, is about as mysterious as anything could be. And I do love a mystery.

Especially when it's got a great plot.:)

November Night

My previously mentioned experiment to lower my anxiety levels was having excellent results - I'd only had one serious anxiety attack in a week, which is a great improvement - but having my psyche in (apparently) better shape brought out an old nemesis. Quite suddenly, I'd fallen ill with what seems like a total body breakdown, some systemic illness erupting in assorted peculiar ways. Conversion disorder, anyone?

On one hand, it hardly matters if this is my unconscious way of expressing self-hatred through illness. The fact is I'm ill, in pain and life has become extra difficult at the moment. Naturally it's very worrying (and oh so convenient, smirks my punitive super-ego). When one is beset by illness and worry, it's damn nigh impossible to take the necessary steps toward self-improvement. Which, obviously, is what's on the other hand. Of course there is a chance that I'm simply ill and the timing was purely happenstance - there is a chance, but I know my neurosis, and I'm not buying it.

Still, I'm dedicated to finding a solution. I am determined to work my way toward some type of  inner peace. If joyfulness is too much to ask, then contentment is perfectly acceptable. I'll keep working at it, even if I feel I'm falling apart.

That isn't the point of this post though. What I came here to say is quite different, really.

Before I became ill, there was this one night - the tenth of November, I think it was - the weather was warm, the sky was lowering and grey. I'd felt well and strong enough to take the dog for a walk. It was sunset and we went the long way, since it was that sort of evening. Silhouette birds swooped low over trees and there was a sprinkling of rain every now and then. There was a feeling of walking upon the crust of the earth - which of course we always are, but really feeling it, you know, walking atop this ancient and marvelous place. The beauty of even the ragged rocks is apparent at times like these. The hills and creeks seem to contain some ineffable secret.

At home, the boys had got hold of a projector and were playing with it on the lawn, shining pinpricks of light at the house and trees. They laughed so much, chasing around in the surreal landscape they'd created.

I consider myself fortunate that happiness, when it does come, seems to come for no particular reason. There is no set criteria of events that must be met; I know from experience that such criteria would never be met. Instead it comes at random, perhaps triggered by some confluence of factors impossible to define or maybe nothing at all. Again, it hardly matters. There was nothing special about November tenth, except that I was happy for half an hour. Because it was random, it could happen again at any point. Therefore there is a reason to keep going. I don't dare give up, because happiness could suddenly appear with no warning. It's worth it to keep going. When those fleeting moments of happiness do appear, I wouldn't miss them for the world.

The Secret Files of Victoria Phantasmagoria

Some people say (well, Malcolm Gladwell says, in Blink) that you can learn as much about a person by staring at their bedroom for 10 minutes as you could by knowing them for months.

I don't doubt this, actually, based on the idea that a person's bedroom is a private place, shared with only a chosen few.

It occurred to me to wonder if something similar could be judged by the contents of one's computer picture files. At the very least it would tell you about a person's interests and tastes, their hopes and dreams, much faster and perhaps more accurately than they themselves could.

With this in mind, I took a look at my own files:

Well, I suppose that about sums it up...