Sam is here this morning keeping the coffee and the Baudelaire in full swing. I have nothing if I didn't choose one hell of a group of educated men who can quote with confidence and creativity. He brought his guitar. Hopefully he also brought a pocketful of nails with which to finish sealing my fate because if I have to listen to singing preachers today I may as well just stop breathing now and prevent the inevitable stabs of remembrance. Not that I could tell Sam that it hurts. He knows it hurts but really I would no sooner wish them to stop with the music than I would ever want to stifle a good memory.
For the first time in the history of Henry, something else also happened today. I ran out of cookies. On purpose. Henry is very surprised because Mommy is usually better prepared than this and what the heck, mommy?
No worries, there's fruit, granola bars, fruit bars, bran bars, popcorn and crackers. He won't starve, I just want to see if he can get through a day without cookies. Yes, I realize I may be scarring him for life, I don't care. He needs to break the cookie cycle. He's soon to be as tall as me, if he outweighs me by the time he's ten what the heck am I going to do then?
In other news, Sam's quiet confidence inspired me to get the ball rolling and make an appointment to get my tires fixed. Fucking car. Drives me nuts but at the same time, I don't take it for granted. I even cleaned it last week, including the steering wheel and the shifter knob, which meant Ben almost lost control just starting it up and called for a soapy cloth and a towel to clean the shininess off both. I try. Did I mention I try?
You all think I'm some sort of spoiled playboy centerfold who sits in her turret eating grapes and reading Nietzsche while my knights fight over me...
Okay, well that's besides the point.
I have nails in my tires. Know why? I'm magnetic. We've been over this before. The same freakish power that enables me to kill car key fobs, Xbox 360s, and laptop computers just by virtue of my very presence also enables small, pointy metal objects to skitter across the road and fling themselves into the treads of my tires in their bid to be close to the source of all melancholy.
Whatever, go with it now, okay?
Melancholy is a superhero and she has long blonde-white hair and a black tutu dress, black garters and high-high black stiletto boots on. It's always windy and raining outside when she's around. Her hair whips around so fiercely you can hardly see her eyes, but you feel them on you. The room feels heavy when she's there but you can't take your eyes off her. She has dust from the cemetery caked under her nails and her lipstick is smeared from being kissed and left. She never smiles, she just stares, and her power isn't so much the magnetic anomalies but the power to absorb all of the sadness around her.
She's a giant grief sponge.
Yes.
Marvel will never hire me. That's okay. I'm not looking. I'm busy trying to morph, so I don't have to listen to Sam.
Wednesday 30 June 2010
Tuesday 29 June 2010
I don't think I'll write about the pictures so here.
(Pictures. Yesterday I did another photo shoot for a band that Caleb has interests in. That is all.)
I am here.
Just unimaginably tired as of late. Trying to keep the running around to the minimum. Trying to engage the children in helping and having fun when I'm dealing from a deck missing so many cards we're down to faces and twos of clubs. The children started summer vacation today, too soon on the heels of a six-week spring vacation for the move and I am sort of out of sorts for the time being while I figure out what to do. I'm in bureaucratic heck for a bit trying to organize our city membership for the pool. I was hoping to jump the children right into daily swimming lessons.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to know where to begin entertaining them in this fresh new environment, but thankfully they are a bit older as to not need constant entertainment and I was never the kind of mother to fill their dance cards. Instead I always allowed for a lot of imaginative, free time in which to just play. They're going to take turns again each night helping me make dinner. They're going to continue with their chores which are augmented when they are not in school. They're going to unwind and be kids, make God's eyes out of sticks, poke at slugs and pick berries.
They're going to do math, too. A textbook came home from school. Math is not our strong suit. We can draw you anything or write you into a corner but we can't divide fractions and Roman numerals are a fun pastime when confronted with graphics from the Super Bowl only. We'll get there. Every child has something to work on, every grownup too. I'm just eternally grateful they are happy and healthy and adaptable and they are grateful mommy buys them cookies and video games and can pump up a bike tire and start a food fight because some parents don't.
They're going to be kids. There's not enough of that these days.
I want to be a kid. I want to stay up too late, outside in the heat after dark and eat sour gummy bears until I feel sick and read with a flashlight in the tent and turn brown from the sun. I want to count the stars again. I want to grab a hot dog at the beach and call it dinner. I want to rejoice in the fact that I have enough change for the salt & vinegar chips AND the new Archie comic.
That kind of kid. The kind I was when I was Henry's age. He's going to be nine in two weeks and it wasn't until I saw his 'promotion' to senior elementary that I realized my youngest child isn't even in a primary grade anymore, and how strange it feels that they are racing past me on the way to their own lives and I am still stuck here so awkwardly between doing what Satan and Lochlan tell me to do because I will forever be a child to them, and thinking outside the box as a mother, because there are things I want my children to experience, and things I hope they never go through.
I can't live my life through them, and I can't live their lives for them. It's not an easy dance but I will learn the steps I'm sure.
Maybe I'll do some math too. You know, just in case I ever need it. It will come in handy when I gamble. I hear you get further by counting your cards anyway.
I am here.
Just unimaginably tired as of late. Trying to keep the running around to the minimum. Trying to engage the children in helping and having fun when I'm dealing from a deck missing so many cards we're down to faces and twos of clubs. The children started summer vacation today, too soon on the heels of a six-week spring vacation for the move and I am sort of out of sorts for the time being while I figure out what to do. I'm in bureaucratic heck for a bit trying to organize our city membership for the pool. I was hoping to jump the children right into daily swimming lessons.
Honestly, I'm at a loss to know where to begin entertaining them in this fresh new environment, but thankfully they are a bit older as to not need constant entertainment and I was never the kind of mother to fill their dance cards. Instead I always allowed for a lot of imaginative, free time in which to just play. They're going to take turns again each night helping me make dinner. They're going to continue with their chores which are augmented when they are not in school. They're going to unwind and be kids, make God's eyes out of sticks, poke at slugs and pick berries.
They're going to do math, too. A textbook came home from school. Math is not our strong suit. We can draw you anything or write you into a corner but we can't divide fractions and Roman numerals are a fun pastime when confronted with graphics from the Super Bowl only. We'll get there. Every child has something to work on, every grownup too. I'm just eternally grateful they are happy and healthy and adaptable and they are grateful mommy buys them cookies and video games and can pump up a bike tire and start a food fight because some parents don't.
They're going to be kids. There's not enough of that these days.
I want to be a kid. I want to stay up too late, outside in the heat after dark and eat sour gummy bears until I feel sick and read with a flashlight in the tent and turn brown from the sun. I want to count the stars again. I want to grab a hot dog at the beach and call it dinner. I want to rejoice in the fact that I have enough change for the salt & vinegar chips AND the new Archie comic.
That kind of kid. The kind I was when I was Henry's age. He's going to be nine in two weeks and it wasn't until I saw his 'promotion' to senior elementary that I realized my youngest child isn't even in a primary grade anymore, and how strange it feels that they are racing past me on the way to their own lives and I am still stuck here so awkwardly between doing what Satan and Lochlan tell me to do because I will forever be a child to them, and thinking outside the box as a mother, because there are things I want my children to experience, and things I hope they never go through.
I can't live my life through them, and I can't live their lives for them. It's not an easy dance but I will learn the steps I'm sure.
Maybe I'll do some math too. You know, just in case I ever need it. It will come in handy when I gamble. I hear you get further by counting your cards anyway.
Monday 28 June 2010
Bumblebee.
Remember how Bumblebee used songs because he no longer had a voice? Yes, that.
It's evening, you're tired
You sleep walk, a robot out to the street
Are you crazy to want this even for a while?
you're driving, it's rush hour
The cars on the freeway are moving backwards
Into a wall of fire
Backwards
Into a wall of fire
We're done lying for a living
The strange days have come and you're gone
You're gone
Either dead or dying
Either dead or trying to go
Good morning
Don't cop out
Saturday 26 June 2010
Spinning unrefined sugar.
(Filling in the holes for you, I tend to leave out a lot of things sometimes.)
The smell of burnt fireworks and sweet corn, fresh hay and cows filled my nostrils and was chased with Lochlan's sweat as he paced slowly in front of me, smoking, smiling.
Good show tonight, hey?
Late summer is always best, I think.
Yeah.
He stopped and leaned against the back of the wagon where I sat with my brown legs and bare feet dangling over the dry baked dirt road. Dirty feet. Tired girl. My braids were all apart, my hair was filthy. I was down to three t-shirts and two skirts for free time and I figured the tan would cover most of the dirt. Some towns allowed for open fires and on those nights Lochlan would heat some water and pour it over me. That was as clean as we got most summers. I would come home on the final day in rags, voice hoarse from calling to the crowd, the sweet that offset the harsh from Lochlan playing the man. He wasn't a man yet, he wasn't even twenty years old. It was a joke but we played off each other well. I could predict his dares. He played up my sweetness to the crowd. They ate it up and we made hundreds of dollars. Enough for a carton of cigarettes for Lochlan and a new bikini for me, maybe there would be a beach within walking distance at the next town. Maybe we could eat for a whole week straight. Maybe not. He had to buy parts for the truck. Tires. Gas.
Nights we slept curled together on the single cot in the camper we borrowed for free. We had a box of cookies on the floor and a six-pack of warm beer underneath the truck. Sometimes I would sleep in the cab of the truck at the drive-in, flushed against his shoulder, my head absorbing his heartbeat. Lochlan would act out the movies for me later on, with his own interpretations. To this day Ladyhawke remains a favorite just for the fact that I laughed so hard at his dialogue I wound up on my knees in a field of strawberries throwing up blue cotton candy from the effort to stop.
I never said Lochlan wasn't a romantic. He pulled it off before there was money, and group dynamics and children. Before there were portfolios and educations and careers and debt. Before we had fifty dollars to spend without having to worry about more than a week in advance. Back then the future involved counting towns and bottles of beer and sneaking into other people's trailers to borrow marmalade and bread that we wouldn't return and picking nickles off the sidewalk in town and charming the older people into buying me two ice creams which I would then take and walk back to give one to Lochlan who would be fixing trucks and trailers all day when he wasn't posting signs ahead of the shows.
Eat fast, baby. It's melting.
My favorite nights were the too-hot ones we spent sleeping in the truck bed so that I could look up and see the shooting stars. We could claim them if we said we saw it first. He let me win. He taught me the constellations and how the weather worked. He showed me how to fix a two-stroke engine and how to steer an ox. I learned how to make a barbecue out of a tin bucket and some charcoal and I can open a beer bottle with my teeth.
But mostly he worked with teaching me how to use my pretty looks to get things from people. How to charm them into doing what I asked and how to keep them from realizing they'd been had through until we were long gone.
And it worked, for a time. Time, it turns out, was our enemy.
Only the most hardcore, hardened people can make a life out of that circumstance and we were neither. We were two dumb kids along for the ride, killing our beach country summers, loving each other, letting history write itself while we held each other in the heat and promised each other the stars above.
Time was pushing us along, pulling us out of the present and into the future. Lochlan needed to go to university. I needed to start high school. He had to get a steady job and have a shower more than once every four days. I had to be domesticated and learn to stop stealing things for his approval.
We needed to take our secrets and bury them in the center of a cornfield and then we needed to forget that location forever and leave them there to become part of the land. We needed to get along better and stop fighting.
We couldn't manage it.
I walked away from him and he turned the tables on me, deciding that he would be the one to end it first because of my stubbornness. Telling Cole that we were no longer together was his ace. Cole was still in high school and suddenly I had a ride every day in his car. Suddenly I wasn't a child anymore to him either but an equal and we spent our time listening to more music and working on the boys' cars. It was stable. It was good. On purpose, the implicit opposite of life with Lochlan, who wound up being the most stable person I will ever know, ironically.
Lochlan engineered Cole's interest so that I would still be close by and still looked after.
Cole asked me questions sometimes about Lochlan and I would lie easily. That was part of the deal Lochlan and I made in the fading sun and the dirt, in the coming darkness. I could hardly see but I could follow as Lochlan explained why some things were wrong and why we shouldn't tell and I knew he was right and it was easy for me to agree because I took half the blame. Cole died not knowing. He died and Lochlan was not his best friend by a long shot and Jake didn't get all of the history and neither has anyone else. What they understand is that Lochlan wins, every time and he keeps a sure confidence in that knowledge because of history and really when Caleb gives me a hard time it's NOTHING compared to when Lochlan and I are at odds because there are so many years and so many memories to feel my way through before I can hit on some socially acceptable and presentable way to respond.
It's the only thing I can do.
I told you when I admitted that Henry belonged to Caleb that I still had secrets. I told you I would never share them and I keep that promise because it's important to me, it's important to Lochlan and no matter how far he goes and no matter how many people I marry he is my own personal albatross and I feed and pet him daily because I don't mind having a permanent anchor to earth in him. I need him because he makes up part of who I am. We joke that he raised me, because he was trustworthy enough to be entrusted with my supervision as a child and then suddenly I wasn't that child anymore but I see him in the mirror when I look at myself. We have the same visceral reactions to things and the same habits collecting shiny things and things of value and then needing nothing but air to actually exist on. We still pour water in almost-empty shampoo bottles to make them last and we both prefer food cooked outside to anything else ever. We both drink our beer warm and pick our colors for cotton candy (blue, always blue) when everyone else says they don't care what color they get, and we both dream of those nights asleep in a field at the end of the dirt road that leads to the ocean, the road littered with ticket stubs and pieces from the first time I ever had my heart broken. Don't you ever question my loyalty ever again. You don't have that right.
What are you looking forward to most this summer, Lochlan?
The fair. Late summer. The usual. You?
Same.
Fumbling through your dresser drawer forgot what I was looking forThe hottest nights were the ones I looked forward to the most.
Try to guide me in the right direction
Making use of all this time
Keeping everything inside
Close my eyes and listen to you cry
I'm lifting you up
I'm letting you down
I'm dancing til dawn
I'm fooling around
I'm not giving up
The smell of burnt fireworks and sweet corn, fresh hay and cows filled my nostrils and was chased with Lochlan's sweat as he paced slowly in front of me, smoking, smiling.
Good show tonight, hey?
Late summer is always best, I think.
Yeah.
He stopped and leaned against the back of the wagon where I sat with my brown legs and bare feet dangling over the dry baked dirt road. Dirty feet. Tired girl. My braids were all apart, my hair was filthy. I was down to three t-shirts and two skirts for free time and I figured the tan would cover most of the dirt. Some towns allowed for open fires and on those nights Lochlan would heat some water and pour it over me. That was as clean as we got most summers. I would come home on the final day in rags, voice hoarse from calling to the crowd, the sweet that offset the harsh from Lochlan playing the man. He wasn't a man yet, he wasn't even twenty years old. It was a joke but we played off each other well. I could predict his dares. He played up my sweetness to the crowd. They ate it up and we made hundreds of dollars. Enough for a carton of cigarettes for Lochlan and a new bikini for me, maybe there would be a beach within walking distance at the next town. Maybe we could eat for a whole week straight. Maybe not. He had to buy parts for the truck. Tires. Gas.
Nights we slept curled together on the single cot in the camper we borrowed for free. We had a box of cookies on the floor and a six-pack of warm beer underneath the truck. Sometimes I would sleep in the cab of the truck at the drive-in, flushed against his shoulder, my head absorbing his heartbeat. Lochlan would act out the movies for me later on, with his own interpretations. To this day Ladyhawke remains a favorite just for the fact that I laughed so hard at his dialogue I wound up on my knees in a field of strawberries throwing up blue cotton candy from the effort to stop.
I never said Lochlan wasn't a romantic. He pulled it off before there was money, and group dynamics and children. Before there were portfolios and educations and careers and debt. Before we had fifty dollars to spend without having to worry about more than a week in advance. Back then the future involved counting towns and bottles of beer and sneaking into other people's trailers to borrow marmalade and bread that we wouldn't return and picking nickles off the sidewalk in town and charming the older people into buying me two ice creams which I would then take and walk back to give one to Lochlan who would be fixing trucks and trailers all day when he wasn't posting signs ahead of the shows.
Eat fast, baby. It's melting.
My favorite nights were the too-hot ones we spent sleeping in the truck bed so that I could look up and see the shooting stars. We could claim them if we said we saw it first. He let me win. He taught me the constellations and how the weather worked. He showed me how to fix a two-stroke engine and how to steer an ox. I learned how to make a barbecue out of a tin bucket and some charcoal and I can open a beer bottle with my teeth.
But mostly he worked with teaching me how to use my pretty looks to get things from people. How to charm them into doing what I asked and how to keep them from realizing they'd been had through until we were long gone.
And it worked, for a time. Time, it turns out, was our enemy.
Only the most hardcore, hardened people can make a life out of that circumstance and we were neither. We were two dumb kids along for the ride, killing our beach country summers, loving each other, letting history write itself while we held each other in the heat and promised each other the stars above.
Time was pushing us along, pulling us out of the present and into the future. Lochlan needed to go to university. I needed to start high school. He had to get a steady job and have a shower more than once every four days. I had to be domesticated and learn to stop stealing things for his approval.
We needed to take our secrets and bury them in the center of a cornfield and then we needed to forget that location forever and leave them there to become part of the land. We needed to get along better and stop fighting.
We couldn't manage it.
I walked away from him and he turned the tables on me, deciding that he would be the one to end it first because of my stubbornness. Telling Cole that we were no longer together was his ace. Cole was still in high school and suddenly I had a ride every day in his car. Suddenly I wasn't a child anymore to him either but an equal and we spent our time listening to more music and working on the boys' cars. It was stable. It was good. On purpose, the implicit opposite of life with Lochlan, who wound up being the most stable person I will ever know, ironically.
Lochlan engineered Cole's interest so that I would still be close by and still looked after.
Cole asked me questions sometimes about Lochlan and I would lie easily. That was part of the deal Lochlan and I made in the fading sun and the dirt, in the coming darkness. I could hardly see but I could follow as Lochlan explained why some things were wrong and why we shouldn't tell and I knew he was right and it was easy for me to agree because I took half the blame. Cole died not knowing. He died and Lochlan was not his best friend by a long shot and Jake didn't get all of the history and neither has anyone else. What they understand is that Lochlan wins, every time and he keeps a sure confidence in that knowledge because of history and really when Caleb gives me a hard time it's NOTHING compared to when Lochlan and I are at odds because there are so many years and so many memories to feel my way through before I can hit on some socially acceptable and presentable way to respond.
It's the only thing I can do.
I told you when I admitted that Henry belonged to Caleb that I still had secrets. I told you I would never share them and I keep that promise because it's important to me, it's important to Lochlan and no matter how far he goes and no matter how many people I marry he is my own personal albatross and I feed and pet him daily because I don't mind having a permanent anchor to earth in him. I need him because he makes up part of who I am. We joke that he raised me, because he was trustworthy enough to be entrusted with my supervision as a child and then suddenly I wasn't that child anymore but I see him in the mirror when I look at myself. We have the same visceral reactions to things and the same habits collecting shiny things and things of value and then needing nothing but air to actually exist on. We still pour water in almost-empty shampoo bottles to make them last and we both prefer food cooked outside to anything else ever. We both drink our beer warm and pick our colors for cotton candy (blue, always blue) when everyone else says they don't care what color they get, and we both dream of those nights asleep in a field at the end of the dirt road that leads to the ocean, the road littered with ticket stubs and pieces from the first time I ever had my heart broken. Don't you ever question my loyalty ever again. You don't have that right.
What are you looking forward to most this summer, Lochlan?
The fair. Late summer. The usual. You?
Same.
Friday 25 June 2010
The gardener suggested black mourning bride flowers and I laughed, quite inappropriately.
My apologies for not posting sooner, apparently there was some concern.
I'm fine, mom.
The bite looks awful. It's like a puncture in a red hive surrounded with a bruise that fades into veins. I'm rather translucent anyway, one of those pure white alabaster-fleshed humans with the visible roadmap of veins all over. Add in a few bruises and really, I may as well be inside-out. We've decided this was a zombie spider and sometime tomorrow my arm will turn completely grey and then the whole transformation into the undead will occur sometime early Sunday morning.
So with what little time I have left I went down to goth up the local nursery because what is an undead without black flowers in her garden? My quest for shade perennials led me to these things called bowles black violas, which seem to be a type of tiny pansy-poppy and are very pretty! I got some bleeding hearts too (bleeding! hearts!), and really, so much for my modern ski-chalet mansion. I should just paint it black and be done with it.
I'm not dumb. This house cost a lot more than the last one. If anything, the next color scheme will be darkest blue with very very pale yellow or white trim and maybe some highlights in pale slate blue. Why? Beach colors, the natural choice after Everything Black.
Don't you think?
Okay, maybe that's just how I operate.
(I think I'm delirious. Damned zombie spiders.)
Gave up lunch for coffee. Staring down the last two days of school and then I'll be forced to switch gears a little and run the kids around town a lot more than I do now. I need to get them registered for swimming. Henry needs another haircut. So does the dog. Henry also has a birthday approaching. Ruth is going through a truckload of paper drawing lately and I'm at the office supply store almost once a week because, like her father, using the other side is a horrific suggestion obviously made by someone who doesn't understand her art. (Cole girlchild.)
Pfft. Hi. This is your mother. USE THE OTHER SIDE OR NO MORE PAPER.
And then I buy more anyway, because certain things I won't use as punishment. Namely, anything remotely creative. I will never care if she passes math, I will care how she harnessed her imagination today, thank you very much.
(I will be soon requiring her to do extra chores for paper money. No worries. I like limits. Limits make for happy-everybody.)
And I wish Ben was home right now. I miss him alot lately. Not sure how much time I have left before he can say that his bride is the undead princess over there, limping along the street dragging her swollen, punctured arm behind her, searching for delicious human rockstars on which to feeeeeeeeeeed.
I'm fine, mom.
The bite looks awful. It's like a puncture in a red hive surrounded with a bruise that fades into veins. I'm rather translucent anyway, one of those pure white alabaster-fleshed humans with the visible roadmap of veins all over. Add in a few bruises and really, I may as well be inside-out. We've decided this was a zombie spider and sometime tomorrow my arm will turn completely grey and then the whole transformation into the undead will occur sometime early Sunday morning.
So with what little time I have left I went down to goth up the local nursery because what is an undead without black flowers in her garden? My quest for shade perennials led me to these things called bowles black violas, which seem to be a type of tiny pansy-poppy and are very pretty! I got some bleeding hearts too (bleeding! hearts!), and really, so much for my modern ski-chalet mansion. I should just paint it black and be done with it.
I'm not dumb. This house cost a lot more than the last one. If anything, the next color scheme will be darkest blue with very very pale yellow or white trim and maybe some highlights in pale slate blue. Why? Beach colors, the natural choice after Everything Black.
Don't you think?
Okay, maybe that's just how I operate.
(I think I'm delirious. Damned zombie spiders.)
Gave up lunch for coffee. Staring down the last two days of school and then I'll be forced to switch gears a little and run the kids around town a lot more than I do now. I need to get them registered for swimming. Henry needs another haircut. So does the dog. Henry also has a birthday approaching. Ruth is going through a truckload of paper drawing lately and I'm at the office supply store almost once a week because, like her father, using the other side is a horrific suggestion obviously made by someone who doesn't understand her art. (Cole girlchild.)
Pfft. Hi. This is your mother. USE THE OTHER SIDE OR NO MORE PAPER.
And then I buy more anyway, because certain things I won't use as punishment. Namely, anything remotely creative. I will never care if she passes math, I will care how she harnessed her imagination today, thank you very much.
(I will be soon requiring her to do extra chores for paper money. No worries. I like limits. Limits make for happy-everybody.)
And I wish Ben was home right now. I miss him alot lately. Not sure how much time I have left before he can say that his bride is the undead princess over there, limping along the street dragging her swollen, punctured arm behind her, searching for delicious human rockstars on which to feeeeeeeeeeed.
Thursday 24 June 2010
They don't have ears either.
Oh dear.
I was poking around in the garden shed late this afternoon and I've been bitten by a spider. We are waiting now to see if my arm falls off or if I grow some extra limbs or maybe later I could stand up high and see if I can spin a web and swing down to the beach.
For now it's very red and bruised and tender and a bit warm and not unlike a bee sting. I think I'll live. Well, I hope I will anyway. Not the blaze of glory I would hope to go out in, anyway. A bug bite? Come on.
I was poking around in the garden shed late this afternoon and I've been bitten by a spider. We are waiting now to see if my arm falls off or if I grow some extra limbs or maybe later I could stand up high and see if I can spin a web and swing down to the beach.
For now it's very red and bruised and tender and a bit warm and not unlike a bee sting. I think I'll live. Well, I hope I will anyway. Not the blaze of glory I would hope to go out in, anyway. A bug bite? Come on.
In brief.
We don't grow complacent for one another. Ben and I understand that in the blink of an eye or the turn of a heart or at the root of a bad decision life can change, and just like that everything is suddenly unbearable. We don't take each other for granted and we don't lie. We don't let each other hang, toes touching the breeze, without a net below.
We just remember to breathe and we do our best and when I wake up in the dark, in the quiet hours he is there and he is half asleep but still he pulls me over him and I am warm and I sit up and he holds my hands palm to palm and keeps me centered and I take what I need and when I am barely finished he slides me off and down underneath him now and his hands slide against my skin and his lips land on the top of my head and the bruises are set in stone from his hold. When we return to sleep we know it's for minutes only and then suddenly I can hear the alarm. Ben turns it off and returns to me and I am gathered into his arms and he squeezes me tight against him. I am waking up one goosebump at a time, incoherent, sleepy, feverish. He kisses my cheek and he is gone for the day and once again I am left to my own devices which are those that you kick-start and then proceed to use for trouble only.
He smiles when he leaves, and we begin the countdown to his return. Rocketman. Workaholic. Lover.
Yesterday after he sampled all of the baking I did (pie excluded, I will make that today), he offered me a motorcycle ride. A thinly-veiled attempt for some much-needed time alone together, something that once again seems to be in such short supply and it pains me. He drove up into the mountains, far away from everything and I clung to his back as he drove fast, too fast, and so very Ben-like. He leans and I am afraid, he races down the highway when there is no traffic, chasing the thrill that brought him to me in the first place. The attitude he wears like a cheap t-shirt slogan that has brought him everything he has and taken away everything he thought he knew:
Fuck it. Going for it.
Ben's a survivalist, a quiet man, a psychopath. He doesn't say much to very many people, he's busy saving all of his words for me. I cherish them, you know. I roll them over in my hands, feel their smooth letters and sharp edges and I keep them all, filed away alphabetically in big manila envelopes right beside my work. We both need to work on saying more, more often.
I would have started with Slow down, motherfucker, but frankly I was too afraid to open my mouth and maybe change our wind resistance or something and kill us both.
I told him this and he laughed.
We just remember to breathe and we do our best and when I wake up in the dark, in the quiet hours he is there and he is half asleep but still he pulls me over him and I am warm and I sit up and he holds my hands palm to palm and keeps me centered and I take what I need and when I am barely finished he slides me off and down underneath him now and his hands slide against my skin and his lips land on the top of my head and the bruises are set in stone from his hold. When we return to sleep we know it's for minutes only and then suddenly I can hear the alarm. Ben turns it off and returns to me and I am gathered into his arms and he squeezes me tight against him. I am waking up one goosebump at a time, incoherent, sleepy, feverish. He kisses my cheek and he is gone for the day and once again I am left to my own devices which are those that you kick-start and then proceed to use for trouble only.
He smiles when he leaves, and we begin the countdown to his return. Rocketman. Workaholic. Lover.
Yesterday after he sampled all of the baking I did (pie excluded, I will make that today), he offered me a motorcycle ride. A thinly-veiled attempt for some much-needed time alone together, something that once again seems to be in such short supply and it pains me. He drove up into the mountains, far away from everything and I clung to his back as he drove fast, too fast, and so very Ben-like. He leans and I am afraid, he races down the highway when there is no traffic, chasing the thrill that brought him to me in the first place. The attitude he wears like a cheap t-shirt slogan that has brought him everything he has and taken away everything he thought he knew:
Fuck it. Going for it.
Ben's a survivalist, a quiet man, a psychopath. He doesn't say much to very many people, he's busy saving all of his words for me. I cherish them, you know. I roll them over in my hands, feel their smooth letters and sharp edges and I keep them all, filed away alphabetically in big manila envelopes right beside my work. We both need to work on saying more, more often.
I would have started with Slow down, motherfucker, but frankly I was too afraid to open my mouth and maybe change our wind resistance or something and kill us both.
I told him this and he laughed.
Wednesday 23 June 2010
Four and twenty poison blackbirds.
Don't carry me underBen is home today and so the baking will be as follows: apple pie, banana bread and blueberry muffins. If time permits I will do mini pies, otherwise one big one will suffice. He eats, holy, does this man eat. I am so happy to have him home today.
You're the devil in disguise
God sing for the hopeless
I'm the one you left behind
So I'll find what lies beneath
Your sick twisted smile
As I lie underneath
Your cold jaded eyes
Now you turn the tide on me
'Cause you're so unkind
I will always be here
For the rest of my life
He has given up on the fool's errand of trying to keep me contained and has progressed to talking about putting a rope swing out in the orchard, far enough from the cliff but close enough that when I swing out I would have that thrill.
Thrill. Not the right word by a long shot. Welcome terror might be closer.
I was driven in town yesterday to get my lunch by the water, promised the breeze and white linens by Satan but it turned into a working lunch and didn't involve any food. Eventually I called for the car and came home of my own accord because Caleb wasn't getting the message that these are not papers I need to see and why does he continue to waste everyone's time with this? He always said time is precious and time is money and any other stupid quote millionaires throw around when they want to confirm that you're aware of how much money you have and I guess that's the crux of the issue, isn't it?
He wants to know how high I'll go.
How much it will cost him to get me to leave Ben and just give in. We already played this game and Batman even got involved (which he only does when things get really out of hand) and Caleb had gracefully bowed out but really he didn't, he just switched gears and came back with a larger, sweeter offer and I'm still forced to politely decline but there it sits and I don't want this pressure, frankly because in his family hearts are defective and unpredictable and...
I don't love him.
Caleb doesn't seem to care about that part but it's my bottom line, something he should understand. I just keep refusing and he keeps offering more and it's reached the point where I'm even tired of the sweetness because behind it stands that elephant and I try not to encourage the whole zoo-thing. I told Ben what it was and his response was to offer a trip next month. Back overseas, check out Wacken, perhaps go back to Venice for a few days. That's his knees jerking in response and I said no more suitcases, no more reactions. This is where Satan is, and here in Ben's arms is where Bridget is and where Bridget promised to stay.
We slept easily. Soundly. I'm not giving in to the living and I'm not giving in to the ghosts. I just want to bake some things for the boys and keep the children entertained and safe and maybe have that swing put up. I think that would be nice.
And on the upside, I was forgiven for throwing the bracelet in the water. Chastised but forgiven all the same. Which leads me to believe that I could get away with murder.
We won't go there.
Tuesday 22 June 2010
The voice of irrationality.
I ran. Fast. I'm quick for such a little thing.
Lightning flash and she's gone. Out of your sight. It brings up the familiar bile, rising in your throat but you choke it down and take off after her, screaming her name.
He caught up with me halfway across the field and threw his arms out around me and we went down, crashing to the grass, his head smashing into mine and suddenly it was night and the whole meadow was stars and fireflies and then it was day again and I'm sitting up but he won't let go. I start to twist away and he squeezes me. Squeals escape and it hurts and I kick him repeatedly and in a blink I am pinned to the ground, the morning dew soaking into my dress and my hair and I spit curses at him and snarl.
He laughs.
Calm the fuck down, Bridget.
I manage to turn my entire body over but my arms are still facing him. Oh the pain. He turns it up another notch.
Jake! Let go!
Are you going to stop fighting?
No.
He rolls his eyes and puts his head down against my shoulder. Our breaths are hitching, caught. I'm crying and he doesn't care. I keep fighting but he's like stone and after a minute I just give up. I can't get away from him. He won't let me.
My breathing slows. My chest stops thumping like a jackhammer. I'm quiet. He turns me back over but I just stare at the sky, watching the clouds move quickly. My green eyes mix with the reflections and turn gold. Precious resources, the sense I will need most when I can't hear anything anymore.
What will they do, piglet?
Lock me in the library.
Sounds familiar. You pick the locks yet?
Yes. And I think they take their cues from you.
Why would they do that? I'm dead.
No, you're not.
Maybe it's time to let go.
You say that like it's my choice to make.
I shove hard and he backs off. And with that I am up and running again, across the wide open field toward the cliffs, toward the water. Maybe the roar will block out Jacob's bad ideas. That's why I put him down there. So that I couldn't hear him when he tells me what to do. Everyone does enough of that, I don't want to hear it from him too. I don't want to hear them screaming my name. Not anymore. I only listen to Bridget anyway. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Okay, so not exactly. Thankfully if I stand right at the edge, when it's very very windy I can't even hear the voices in my own head.
I'll be spending a lot of time out there. I have an endless supply of bobby pins with which to pick the simple locks on the doors they secure in front of me and I've already figured out how to disable the stupid alarm. I'm not afraid that I am giving away all my secrets by talking about that here, this is as fruitless as their efforts to break the silence, and as useless as my efforts at change.
Lightning flash and she's gone. Out of your sight. It brings up the familiar bile, rising in your throat but you choke it down and take off after her, screaming her name.
He caught up with me halfway across the field and threw his arms out around me and we went down, crashing to the grass, his head smashing into mine and suddenly it was night and the whole meadow was stars and fireflies and then it was day again and I'm sitting up but he won't let go. I start to twist away and he squeezes me. Squeals escape and it hurts and I kick him repeatedly and in a blink I am pinned to the ground, the morning dew soaking into my dress and my hair and I spit curses at him and snarl.
He laughs.
Calm the fuck down, Bridget.
I manage to turn my entire body over but my arms are still facing him. Oh the pain. He turns it up another notch.
Jake! Let go!
Are you going to stop fighting?
No.
He rolls his eyes and puts his head down against my shoulder. Our breaths are hitching, caught. I'm crying and he doesn't care. I keep fighting but he's like stone and after a minute I just give up. I can't get away from him. He won't let me.
My breathing slows. My chest stops thumping like a jackhammer. I'm quiet. He turns me back over but I just stare at the sky, watching the clouds move quickly. My green eyes mix with the reflections and turn gold. Precious resources, the sense I will need most when I can't hear anything anymore.
What will they do, piglet?
Lock me in the library.
Sounds familiar. You pick the locks yet?
Yes. And I think they take their cues from you.
Why would they do that? I'm dead.
No, you're not.
Maybe it's time to let go.
You say that like it's my choice to make.
I shove hard and he backs off. And with that I am up and running again, across the wide open field toward the cliffs, toward the water. Maybe the roar will block out Jacob's bad ideas. That's why I put him down there. So that I couldn't hear him when he tells me what to do. Everyone does enough of that, I don't want to hear it from him too. I don't want to hear them screaming my name. Not anymore. I only listen to Bridget anyway. She knows exactly what she's doing.
Okay, so not exactly. Thankfully if I stand right at the edge, when it's very very windy I can't even hear the voices in my own head.
I'll be spending a lot of time out there. I have an endless supply of bobby pins with which to pick the simple locks on the doors they secure in front of me and I've already figured out how to disable the stupid alarm. I'm not afraid that I am giving away all my secrets by talking about that here, this is as fruitless as their efforts to break the silence, and as useless as my efforts at change.
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