I Could Have Been Any Woman

I could have been any woman.

Wrapped in a head scarf, armed with a semi-automatic. I could have been hiding in caves, listening to the vanishing drone of a plane. I could have been a pious woman, mountains of cloth covering my breasts, staring into a bubbling pan of oil and chicken. I could have watched as verbal slurs vanished into the air, forever marking the children they touched.

I might have been anyone.

Driving a convertible down a street of palm trees and purses more expensive than houses. I could have been her- she who detonated explosives in a tent full of young pilgrims. She is in me, the girl with nothing left to loose. The self righteous woman. The zealot. The victim fearing her own family. The opportunist. The lover. The mother. The solider. The guerilla. The addict. The farmer. Them and a thousand others, they are all in me. It would have only taken the right man. It would have just taken a spark and a quick glance and a moment of elation. Not much. A hard cock, an orgasm. The rest of me would follow- blindly, lovingly, would follow to the farthest jungle to the tallest building and their leather swivel chairs.

She could have been me.

I might have been her.

It would have just taken a kiss, a passionate kiss that would have ignited every cell- every bit of longing- it would have just taken a firm cock and a tender stroke of my hip and I would have been gone. Following. Moving like an animal on a leash, learning from what I saw.

Just give me a kiss.

But I met him, and I saw a blue shape moving down a sunny street and I heard his call and I touched my window and looked back, staring backwards as the car moved on. I found him later on the beach, and later his lips, and soon his cock and then I felt his tongue and much later, cementing me to him, the orgasm. Days later I slept with him in a vacant house and soon I watched him ask strangers for change and we bought malt liquor and hid from the police.

It was me.

Then he asked and I gave. There was money. Tears. There was time. I inhaled his cigarettes. Another flash… tongue, an orgasm. I would stay for anything. Just another orgasm. Then I watched him cook his dope and one day I felt it going through me and then I watched as he crumbled. I held on, trying to preserve what I remembered, that one day I touched my window. The flash of blue and his shape, the certain-ness of my hand hitting glass. It was what he was, he was what I became. I could have been anyone, but I chose him. He chose me. I followed his tongue, his body. I followed him, but I could have become anyone.

I could have been any woman.

Looking For Escape

The afternoon sun is still bright. I’m surprised, because the clock reads 7:30pm and I expect the moon to be out and the stars to wink and say it’s close to bedtime, but the daylight is still so bright, and, despite my mood, there still appears to be enough time to work on more projects before slumber calls me to its den.
I lay on my soft bed, paralyzed, as though I’ve awakened in another realm from a coma, only my surroundings are unpleasant, like a hospital that smells of sterilizer and death. I’ve opened my eyes from a restful nap, only to remember the cause for my unrest, the cause for my initial weariness an hour before. I lay in bed, motionless, the same frown that I wore an hour earlier still remains, the feeling that something is not quite right. The overwhelming feeling that the world around me is wrong.
I lay in bed, wondering if a shower might do the trick. Maybe I’ll snap out of it then… but the mood, the relentless malaise that is real enough to smash, and yet vaporizes as I try to find a reason for its form. It did not change when I got something tasty to eat the other day. When I felt sad and alone and just a little grimy, when I thought that surely some oral pleasure would snap me into happiness, I ate the Thai food, I ate the pupusas….what I wanted was not delivered, the noodles, the sweet soda, they looked like what I remembered, crispy and stuffed with cheese, cold and sweet. But, it just wasn’t as good as I remembered and the wait was extra long and the restaurant smelled a little weird and the traffic was bad. And after all that I wanted from that snack, placing my hope for happiness upon it, it did not come with the order. I left feeling defeated. I lay on my bed remembering
And the piece of chocolate? Try that. Maybe…I get the cookie, I take a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but I grab a spoon with the same limp arms and I put a bite on my tongue with the same sad expression tugging at the corners of my mouth. My eyes are red and the sweetness does not bring me a smile.
And the nap? I escaped the feeling momentarily, but I awoke to my neighbors screaming and they sound like chickens dying and why do they keep scraping their chairs on the ground? I escaped it for a moment with closed eyes, but it’s all here, still here.
Maybe a shower? Can’t I just rinse all this stuff off of me? Can’t I send this weirdness down the drain along with other sediment my body rejects? And I lay here, my mind strategizing for a quick fix, a lay, a bite, a laugh. But I know. It cannot be bought away, eaten away, slept away. It follows me, it’s inside me. It colors my eyes, turning my brown irises into cloudy lenses that distort the world into obstacles and enemies and everything that comes towards me is an assault to my existence. I cannot escape what’s inside, turning me into a woman lost in a house of distorted mirrors.
I know the change has to come from within, but I’m having a hard time reaching inside. I’m the shell of what I remember. The silt at the bottom of a pool that cannot be cleaned. I don’t like it, it feels awful, and only I can change it. Laying here, I wonder if I’ve actually tried. I’ve tried the old standards, the ones that never worked before, but have I tried anything new? I’ve sat in the hole all day, wondering how I’ve got here and refusing the lifelines sent to me and ignoring the ladder by my side. I need to try something new.

What Will You Be?

"Who will you be?" she shouts from the sandy beach shore. "what will you be when the clouds part and darkness descends with droves of hungry black-haired beasts?""Who will you be?""who WILL you be?"Implying that tomorrow is the question that needs answering.The looming monstrosity of the future.It reeks and hints at madness.
But soon THEN will be NOW.It is a cycle of concerned predictions and worries, a repeating pattern with an unattainable end, always beyond the horizon.There is nothing to attain.You cannot "be." There is nothing to be.All are words.

Wealthy,
Famous,
Happy,
Content,
Father,
Mother,
Satisfied,
Broke,
Doctor,
Musician...

Words like these can never describe "you."You cannot "BE," for you are none of these, and yet, quietly, all of these.You may have a son, but are you really a father? Is your Being a father?Can you be happy?
A happy emotional state does not continue endlessly into time. The subjection of time and movement will crush all these fantasies. It will all come to change, for it all does. Each second that passes changes us in a subtle, yet deep way.We cannot perceive the wearing of time on a wall, the molecular breakdown is too slow to watch, but after twenty years, the cracks in the paint and the crumbling stone reveal the long traveled path of change upon the buildings’ surface. It was happening all along, right next to you as you ate your morning cereal, it was just moving at a rate we could never perceive in motion.They ask what you will "be."In Spanish there are two different verbs for "to be." In English we say "I am happy." "I am a doctor." "I was born in Mexico." English speakers use one verb to say what and how they are. Within the language, it implies that this "am" is a constant, a non shifting idea. In Spanish, there is a distinction between a fixed and transitory state. The two verbs used to describe these states are "ser" and "estar." One implies that you "are" feeling happy, yet it is not a fixed emotional state." You use the verb "ser" to describe a more permanent statement, like the location of your birth.While this is more accurate than the English language, it stops short of recognizing the impermanence of all states, even the ones that seem permanent. Our language, the way we speak and talk about ourselves and our world has deeply influenced our ability to comprehend other states of being, other realities. The words we choose/speak have influenced our ideas and perceptions, going very deeply into our subconscious realm. These provide the machine with fuel to continue in its current perceptions of "being." We walk around with beliefs in what we are, we hold tight to the ideas of where we come from and where we want to go. These beliefs restrict us and freeze us into repeating activities.We "are" none of these. My Being is not Jewish, my Being is not a young woman. My Being is not a salesperson that likes pizza. These are the roles my machine plays, they are part of the play that this human known as Lydia recreates every day. My Being lacks a definition, it is beyond the temporary nature of earthly roles.

And so you cannot "be," but you can "do."

You can Work, you can push your earthly machine to work for your Being. You can create the discipline within yourself to Work NOW, to use what lays at your fingertips to move your energy and create.