Walking Backwards

She was sitting in her room. The overhead light was off and just a tall floor lamp provided a slight glow to the quiet chamber. Soft light illuminated her white naked legs, her black and green tattoos that coiled around her thigh and calve. Her thin fingers held the pages of a red-covered book open, its pages a pale yellow, its words in deep black.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

The words went through her like waves of truth. They wrapped themselves around her, plunging deep into areas she left dry and untouched.

She sat still on the soft bed, letting the sentence roll through her, letting it resonate wherever there was space. She held on, letting the next sentence wait.

She actually made efforts to remain sleep. She took steps in the opposite direction. She turned her back on the path every day, walking backwards, throwing stones, doing all she could to remain asleep, to remain where she was.

Every argument.

Every eye roll.

Every long tangent of jealousy that held her down like a drowning girl in a shallow pool.

Every reaction of jolting anger.

She sat with the book open, her hands still, her eyes soft and unfocused while the words traveled deep, coiling around the sinews of habits and pride.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

This is what she did, everyday, perhaps every hour, as rage poured through her heart, dropping her far from the mountain she was climbing. She remembered sitting on the same bed earlier in the morning, staring up into the aluminum covered piping that ran through a part of her room. She sat there for nearly five minutes, staring into the foil, finding shapes and faces and reliving the comment she heard the day before. The four words that pierced her, the four words that she holds onto for hours, holding on o them, letting them form more bubbles of anger and reaction.

It was what she did, she found ways to remain asleep. It didn’t just come naturally. She made an effort. She actively put her attention on things she could not control. She didn’t focus on herself, which would have been the one place it would have made a difference and instead focused on every misstep of those around her.

“I will stop making efforts to remain asleep.”

Could she actively relax and let go of those efforts? Could the anger just fall away like old skin? She imagined herself on the same bed, still and calm, a slight smile on her face while rage just dripped off, falling to the earth and turning into green sprouts and vapor.

Her machine was trying, actually making an effort to remain in the dirt, to keep as far away from the mountaintop as it could. It tried everyday, reminding her of pain, of pride, of the way it all should be, but was not.

As she held the book open, her eyes softened and she took a deep breath, allowing the exhalation to cleanse her. Moving her eyes slowly onto the next sentence.

Eyes Of Dust

I look out the window as the train leaves. I am on it, in it, watching a dusty landscape sketched in the shades of white and black. Little dots of brown vie at the edges of the breathing photo and start to scream, warning me of stories better left untold. Of crimes unpunished, of little mouths that cry in hunger and weep tears for a life that will never be. I try and look past it all, searching the mountains for words of poetry, but their shadows, all too real, pull my eyes back. Escape is for the blind, for the heart that has stopped bleeding, for an eye that loses no kiss of salt. I stare in the face of sorrow, pulling its sharp scent in, letting it wrap me with its tears that cannot be shed.
Thin trees dot the land, their scrawny branches hold a few struggling leaves. Dust swirls in tan gusts with every fierce blast of wind.
The elements slap their worn brown faces, those people without tears. The sun takes the side of a heavy handed capitalist, a punishing, unrelenting heat shines never-ending. A cold dark night takes the side of imperialism, the blackness of their glossy boots, their smooth lead of total end.
It whispers in my ear, it is a blue breeze that holds a song waiting under heavy rocks. It whispers… there is a small white flower, a flower easily overlooked and forgotten, only a little girl with bright eyes in a landscape bleached of color. Only she will see the petals before they wither and crack in the sun.
I watch tin roofs that hang by threads. Soil has turned to dust, for the rain has found other places to drench. I see myself in the window, a strange reflection in the afternoon sun. I am spotted in the remnants of dew, I am a silhouette, only a shade different than the surrounding mountains and thirsty crops.
As we leave, I take a thin breath. A pain burns from within, coating my throat, stroking it like the hot hand of Satan, up and down my windpipe, down my vertebrae and into the ligaments of my toes and back up through my torso, escaping out through my fingertips, lingering in a spiral below the crown of my head.
What I see dries my eyes, leaves me without tears, without a drop of moisture in my mouth of desert and skin of old parchment. I am old, a thousand rings surround me. I find myself without a drop of life, breathing in only more heat, more sorrow, more dried up dirt and old wrinkles that had never seen the clouds. But from the front of my soul, something burns and the part of me that dies is like the weeds I never knew I was. I am quiet, but I burn. The worn streets sweep something into my memory, a feeling I cannot contain, an energy that seeks a cup, that reaches out with hungry hands to hold and grasp a metal chalice. I open a door once nailed shut. These people with their rough skin and old eyes, they speak of the conquerors, they talk of disease and death and boils, the masses of hungry, oppressed, searching for a road beyond the small corner they have been given. I shined a light into that small adobe cave, I looked with all the eyes I had, writing, talking, seeing what was there, searching for the answers that tried to evade me like pregnant clouds.
There was a light, a road that traveled a thousand years to end up at my toes, moving up and down, playing games with my limbs and organs until it spurted out, drenching the land with water, creating a road that would last another thousand years, turning past wide stones and tiny sprouts. Water pressed against the rocks, pushing in like woman with soft, giving curves, but it kept moving, never staying, never resting.
The train moves and I watch them walk with their wide hats and their children that look into the sun. There are girls that know of need and dust, dust that finds its way in, working itself into every crevasse, coming in through the ears, through the stomach, seeping in with the toes. They walk along their paths, they walk with wide brimmed hats, they walk with skin dry and cracking, for the hands of their masters had ruined the sprouts, had taken away the rain.
I began to bubble, I could not watch their hats disappear over the mountain crests. I could not continue along this mechanical route made of wooden beams and metal and thick nails. As it poured from my skin, an 'it' which I cannot describe fully, because to see it is to feel. To watch from a train window, to hold their stories, to give your tears for theirs that cannot flow, to hold a thirsty child and see an indifferent hand move through the air sweeping every bit of life into a metal vacuum…to see this is to feel It. To burn from the toes, to burst from the skin.
What I see moves in shades of black and white, screaming of gray and crying for the missing red. The dust, that ever-present dust was talking, finding its way in through my ears, finally ready after all these years to really hear. To simply observe and move on would have been one route. There were a thousand trains, each headed in another direction.
There was the island, there was the medical position, there was Cuba, there was the girl that needed attending, there were a thousand ways, some that I cannot name and describe, some that float by like leaves on a river, floating away before I can even see a shade and shape.
There are so many trains, there were, and I touched them with my hands, feeling the electricity of each, the pulsing hearts, the rhythmic pounding. Some were safe, in some I saw bullets and sticky blood. There were a thousand and I touched them with my fingertips, moving towards the one in which I sit, staring out a window at broken houses and dry people and land that has stopped crying, for there are no tears to spare. I sat with them in hunger, felt their need, the desire of all humanity, the hearts one step away from silence. I sat and touched them with my fingertips, drew in their breath and smell, weaving them into me, turning them into paintings that are colored in black and white and vibrant red.

In The Moment

She wiggled in bed. At some points she was purely wiggling, her body moving huge blasts of energy in unpredictable bursts from toes to fingertips and then back again. Other times she convulsed, her torso lunging forward with wild power that rivaled thunderstorms and bursts of natural fury. Her arms, legs and torso moved without her consent, buckling on their own, reacting to energy that had reached a peak. Her mouth opened, letting out sounds that broke the boundary between moan, pain and pleasure.
She had reached the mountaintop, a place that had once burst with rainbow colored hand gliders and parachutes. She used to sail down the rocky cliff-side on gusts of earth-scented wings, content to fall once again to the place she had come from. Now, it was the same mountain and the same breeze with its salty smell. It was the same place, but she was not jumping. She stayed at the top, holding hands with the man that had brought her there, holding onto him as the wind tried to push them over the edge and back towards the waiting ground.
And now she held back, holding onto the strings, breathing in spite of the breeze and the cries of energy that desperately wanted to move up and over, falling back to where she had once been when her clothes were on and the bed was still uncrumpled and her mouth unkissed. But she was here now, pulling tighter on the strings as the roar began and the convulsions started.
‘uuuuahhhh’ she let out a sound into his bearded cheek.
He lay still as her body twitched beside his, breathing gently, showing her how to relax.
She took in big gulps of air, holding them, forcing her body to breathe slowly, to do what she could feel was happening beside her.
Another convulsion.
Time passed, ones turned into fives, fives turned the clock until the birds sang outside his barred window and her breathing returned to normal. The hand gliders and parachutes melted back into her bloodstream, sitting eagerly on the edge awaiting another opportunity.
Soon she was getting dressed. Pulling on her jeans, her socks, stuffing her bra into her sweater pocket. It was probably cold out, as it had been when she arrived. She put on her jacket, her scarf and gave him a kiss goodbye.
She started her car on the street beside his house and began the short drive to her house which was just a few blocks away. The streets were empty and she began to think, going back to just a few moments before, back to the bed, back to the warm skin that was not her own, yet was. A part of her leapt away, once again wishing to be there, to be with him, not just kissing, not just touching, it was the mountain, the fall over the edge, the sinking into the abyss. She craved that, though they did not jump.
She spoke, ‘you cannot be in a constant state of orgasm, not like the kind you are wishing for.’
She guided her car down the small ramp beneath the subway platform. She remembered she could be happy. ‘Be here. You can be happy with him in bed, but when you are here, driving, you can be happy too.’
She looked at the road, at the subtle curve ahead. She sunk into the curve, putting her full attention on the shift of the yellow line. She turned the wheel of the car with her whole body, feeling pleasure as the car moved. Feeling the dark night coming through all the car’s windows. She smiled.
She thought about all the things she did, all the places she went, all the times she could just be happy if she just remembered to enjoy it. It was hoping for other things, longing for the bed, for his skin, ultimately for the mountaintop, it was the longing for something else. It was the torturous road she liked to walk.
She drove along the dark road, through the two lanes of parked cars. She could be there, in the car, driving, not wishing for someone else, something else.
Not needing anything to happen differently.
She felt that truth wash over her, she understood the source of her daily pain. Her body vibrated with the kisses from the mountain top while her body relaxed into the night around her and the slow drive towards home.

Abandoning Desire

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

It is my prayer but the ears are closed and the mouth cannot move. My eyes close and I see the sphere of the world mounting over a black horizon. I am naked and the stars begin to fall in mathematical succession, one after the other, falling like beats on the measure. It is precise and I try to grab them with my extra arms but they slip like butter through cracks in the sidewalk, they fall and take the light with them.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

I hear screaming in the distance, a tight space with black bricks and stale smoke that feels like mud as it enters me and smells of old tomatoes. The screams circles me with its sharp shrillness, circling me endlessly like the dark sun that cannot explode, a sun collapsing in on itself, taking every bit of matter with it.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

The chains around my heart cannot let go. The rust is there, the reddish brown crust, the dark spots and hints of green. The links clink and add to the melancholy of the inverted sun. The chains are strung up like Christmas lights in a forgotten memory. Faded yellow and blue, purple that looks like pink. Those thick chains are nailed into old black bricks that have taken on the scent of old tomatoes and cigars. Walls and walls, chain after chain.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

I walk naked through a dark barren landscape, I feel small pebbles beneath my toes and watch the falling stars. My white skin calls to the animals with red bulging eyes. Froth gathers at the corners of my mouth as I imagine my own destruction, a sun cannibalizing the galaxy.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

A soft breeze moves over me as I move up and down on a swing. It is day and I can taste the smell of jasmine on my tongue. Another thought that springs from a time that never existed. Was it a song? A nursery poem? The breeze continues playing its tune over the curving contour of my torso, finding places to hide, finding darkness even on a summer day.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

It is my hope. But I feel the relentless pull. Thick black hands cling to my ankles like serpents from the hell dimension. The wind comes over the horizon, finding me still naked, finding me with pebbles below my toes and hidden stars below my breasts.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

And with the fall, and as I watch, I crumble into the void that opens wet and wide to accept me. It takes in the falling stars, the inverted sun, the pebbles and sticks and the wind that longs for a place to rest.

Reminder

The TV was on and its volume was turned very low. I watched the bright Technicolor images move across the screen though eyes that were almost ready to shut. Letting my body melt into the plush suede cushions, I held the remote in one limp hand, ready for another attack of toothpaste and car insurance ads.
In front of me, people in bikinis and board shorts were furiously diving through a pool of mud, frantically rooting through the mess for little bags of sand in an attempt to reach the blue finish line ahead of the pack. As the screams of the contestants came through the living room speakers, I heard a faint sound from the other room, something foreign to the sound of cheering and sloshing that came to me through electric magic and science, or science that was so amazing, it was magic. Aiming the remote at the cable box, I turned the volume even lower and strained my ears for the sound, had I heard something?
Waiting…fixing my eyes on the hardwood floor…waiting…there it was, a little cry.
I left my embedded place on the couch and opened the door to the babies' room, where two dark wooden cribs sat against opposing walls, perhaps clearly defining the roles they would one day assume when they were grown men and left their wooden cribs and baby blankets.
Jonas, the six month old and the younger of the two, was crying. As I looked into the crib, I saw him on his back, his little legs wriggling in his sleeping bag-like-jumpsuit that covered both his legs. His tiny hands were balled up in fists.
Reaching into the crib and pulling his little body towards mine, his cries came up to envelop me. He was unable to clearly say what bothered him, but something was not quite right. Was it the lack of light? Was he lonely in his crib surrounded by only darkness and tall bars? I brought him to my chest, covering his body with my arms, stroking his head of thin silk hair, bringing him as close to my heart as I could.
I remembered the song practiced years ago while standing in a circle of three in a dimly lit room, it was the melody I strained to reach when it leapt up the scale. I sang it here now, in this dark room. I sang it for Jonas, ‘nothing ever has happened, nothing ever will happen…”
Over and over, the two line song came out, reaching up and then descending only to start over once again. He stopped crying quickly and I held him in front of me, propping his jumpsuit covered legs on my stomach. Jonas looked at me with alert wide eyes, eyes that were quickly turning from baby blue to a metallic brown. He wiggled slightly, his body bobbing and moving with currents of electricity and unanswered curiosity.
I stopped singing and looked into him, seeing nothing that can be explained, defined, or understood.
“You know,” I said clearly, “nothing has ever happened, nothing ever will happen.”
His eyes widened. We went into each other then, me looking into him looking into me. I understood it. Him looking into me looking into him, understanding.
There was no woman, no baby, no crib or parents at a party. There was no game show on a television in the other room and no sore muscles from a day standing in the sun.
Here the words made sense, in a chamber of feelings without words. In this place, we were the same thing, two parts of the same fabric, not separated by bodies and memories or contorted into a canvas of unequal shapes and designs where egos dance.
I had spoken and we both had heard. His sudden jolting was mine as well. Oh yes, nothing has ever happened. Nothing ever will happen. Nothing ever has. Nothing ever will.

The Beauty Of Loss

I see thousands of pretty sights.

There are lush and delicate weeping willows whose long drooping branches blow gently in the hot September breeze. I glimpse them as my car continues along at 45 an hour on a newly paved street. I smile, seeing the contrast between the long green branches covered in tiny leaves and the dried up hillsides in the background. I know I will never be here again.

Each vision is beautiful and ephemeral, slipping from sight just as fast as I look.

I am sitting in front of a bread bowl of clam chowder in Monterey. My parents and sister share the wooden table of the restaurant with me. I look up through the front of the restaurant which only has a wide-open roll up door, there is no barrier between us and the foggy day outside. There I see her, walking on the worn wooden pier. A young woman with short dark hair and dark eyes. She’s wearing a low-brimmed hat from the 20s which covers her eyebrows. For a second I see her. She’s smiling brightly, her eyes revealing flirtation and mischief as she turns to someone behind her and smiles even more broadly. She looks like a painting, like a vision. Her body keeps moving though her head and eyes are focused on something behind, a young man, I imagine.

I see thousands of pretty sights. Each vision is beautiful and ephemeral, slipping from sight just as fast as I look. Each worthy of a photo but I can’t even grab it fast enough.

I’m on a train weaving through the Italian countryside. It’s fall and the sky is heavy with gray clouds. As we move at seventy miles an hour, I catch a glimpse of lives beyond the train window. Women hanging up their laundry on old cords between barren trees. Huge persimmon trees with bulbs of orange fruit hanging like Christmas lights on a dark fall day. An old woman walking with a bramble of sticks balanced on her head.

I see thousands of pretty sights. Each vision is beautiful and ephemeral, slipping from sight just as fast as I look. Each worthy of a photo but I can’t even grab it fast enough. They roll in me, through me and pass by just as quickly.

There are people sunbathing on a long cement wall buffered from the Mediterranean by a few dozen feet of large white rocks. I watch the hundreds of sunbathers through the tempered glass of an air-conditioned bus. On my ears are large headphones pumping the hard beats of a Bjork song. As each beat drills into my ears I match it with my eyes, jumping from one person to the other. The tan lovers, the older man laying down his towel, the group of girls sweating in the sun, the mother and toddler. A collection of people moving past me in perfect rhythm to the sounds in my ears. I quickly grasp the moment, feeling its preciousness slipping with each second. The song will end, the cement wall will not go on forever, the bus will change lanes. Soon it will end but as I watch I am struck with each moment of beauty. They mark me as I pass, weaving their way inside without even seeing me inside the bus. I wonder how I could even look at them without the music, they fit so perfectly together. But as the song ends, coming artfully to a close, the bus shifts and the wall ends. Tears rush to my eyes.

I see thousands of pretty sights. Each vision is beautiful and ephemeral, slipping from sight just as fast as I look. Each worthy of a photo but I can’t even grab it fast enough. They roll in me, through me and pass by just as quickly. I gasp and cry, letting salty tears pay the price for the beauty that moves past, forever marking me, for a passing moment, making me remember.

Rockabye Baby

I heard him from the living room as I was browsing TV listings with a responsive remote, heard the small little gasps he made seeking air to fill his little lungs. By the time I opened the door to his bedroom, the gasps were turning into high pitched wails. I reached into the wooden crib and opened my hands for his little body, bringing him to my chest. I carried him from the room, leaving his brother in the arms of his own dreams in the darkness.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with concern, giving his downy covered head a few soft kisses.
In the dim light of the hall, just a few steps from the kitchen, he was not consoled. Wiggling in my arms between gasps for air, his face contorted into a red mess of anger. A sudden fear ran through me, “he’s choking.” I held him upright and patted his back and he cried harder. He wasn’t choking, just mad.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked with a smile, looking at him.
His face was completely red and his little mouth opened wide with each wail, showing the pink soft gums that would one day house two rows of teeth.
Cradling him in my arms, we went back into his bedroom, I groped around his cradle for the pacifier I expected to find in the left corner. When my hands found nothing, I turned on the light to look again, I still didn’t see it, though I had the memory of his father placing it there earlier. I took a quick look at Noah sleeping in the other crib against the wall, his body in a contorted angle on one side, undisturbed by the noise.
Jonas continued to scream, and we walked back into the hall, taking a few steps to the kitchen. Moving him into another position in my arms, I scanned the kitchen, searching for another pacifier and finding one the side of his automated jumper. I inserted the pacifier into his open, crying mouth, he did not latch on.
I brought him into the living room and sat on the suede couch. I sat him on my lap.
“What’s wrong baby?” I asked smiling at him.
I kissed his head again, feeling the few wisps of his silken hair on my lips. I tried the pacifier again, he didn’t want it.
“What’s wrong baby?”
Not a bit of anger or agitation in my voice, just pure questioning.
“What’s wrong honey?”
I tried holding him in a variety of ways, but nothing seemed soothe him.
Then my eyes fell on the mechanical baby swing by the window. I tried to lower him into the seat, bumping his little head on the three stuffed animals that dangled from the upper plastic arm of the mobile. I realized that his legs couldn’t spread because of the baby suit he was in, it was like a sleeping bag over his legs that snapped at his chest like a vest. I pulled him towards me again, brushing his head against the stuffed hanging animals once more. I let out a little embarrassed laugh and his little face scrunched tighter.
I unsnapped his jumper and then his legs were free, I lowered him into the seat. There was a seatbelt, but I didn’t worry about snapping him in. I sat right in front of him, just inches away and turned on the swing.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I held out my two index fingers and he grasped them, holding on tight with his own little fingers. I looked at him, his eyes were still all scrunched up and wet, his mouth was open, showing his red gums.
“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock…”
On the edge of my mind, I remembered the preschool I had worked in for a week, one of the little boys there liked the song, “itsy bitsy spider,” and we sang it to him over and over when he was crying.
“when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
I opened my eyes wide as I sang, smiling at him.
After repeating the song several times, insisting on the melody, his crying slowed, then eventually stopped.
He looked at me, with his eyes that were turning from blue to brown. They would open wide as I reached for the high notes with my voice. I pushed on him gently with my fingers even though the machine was rocking him, pushing just a little so he could feel me. He looked at me, seeing me, seeing deeper than what was available in the mirror. I looked into him, seeing beyond the baby, seeing a universe of beings.
“Rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
As I sang, and as his crying became a thing of the past, he would break out into a quick smile every now and then when our contact grew strong, then he would sharply turn his head to the left or the right, grasping for something with his open mouth.
I kept singing, kept looking at him, kept providing a bit of pressure with my fingers as he rocked up and down on the swing. He repeatedly returned my contact, his eyes opening wide from time to time, perhaps seeing sound and feeling color. Between phrases I would purse my lips and blow on him gently, letting my breath move across his soft face.
Experimenting, I stopped singing for a moment. When I did, his body would start to squirm once again, preparing to cry.
“rockabye baby, on the tree top…”
I started to forget the lines, or I was repeating them so much, it seemed like there were lines I had skipped, but I kept going, dropping any armor and image, just giving my rawest self.
Soon, I felt like improvising and started making up another melody. From time to time, I went out of tune, and found it difficult to get back. I kept my eyes open, a smile on my face even when I remembered another me that would care about performance.
But here, with him, my desired image was easily dropped. I felt only love for this being in a little body. We could be together without my human ways, I could give my voice to him, calm him, love him with my most intuitive self.