Because I had forgotten to introduce:
The Princess Goddess Divine Lucia, also known in the nearerthanyouthink land of Pell-Mell which is inhabited mostly by creeps and geniuses who think they are one and the same, as Noir Dixie Susan the Black Eyed Happy Smudge of Tara in the Night Sky with Diamonds
Drifting offshore for three days - seems right, hiding in broken words from Macedonia: "I determined to not come to you in sorrow again"
*
The way it all is is like the moon, it comes and goes. Hormones or darkness or depression or syndromes, whichever. It was months ago I first thought about giving it any name at all.
I liked when I was smaller to think mood swings hung from metal poles in parks. I thought a lot when I was older about the links between bipolarism and creativity.
I think I knew heavy things since I was 16, so how could I help being almost angry at what was so unimportant and why was I supposed to care for nothing but boys and my face, when the whole world was hurting and needed me to stay awake and cry for them. A confounding thing it is to have friends and wonder why if they are friends, I must always be the youngest even if I am oldest, and always be on the outside of this joke that I don't even want to get anymore. I never asked my friends if they thought they had a little bird in their head sometimes, or if they ever knew they were supposed to be somewhere else, or if they could always remember things that happened very long ago like I can. I can remember a field of windmills with no end, and two laughing puppies, and baseball. Sometimes I can remember drowning, being pushed under and frozen scared and the inexplicable thing of after - always being drawn from my core to the water I am terrified of. Still I don't put my head under. Ever.
But all between what is past is the dancing, the barefoot walking, the singing at the Spinet because I am not the same way all of the time. Sometimes I wake up and stay in the air for a long time. Sometimes I come home and I am happy; sometimes I am OK enough to say sorry for when I wasn't, and to play Mozart for a long time. The way it all is is like the moon. It comes and goes.
Still there is one place where I am pierced through with something like a star shining in, and that has never gone.
This morning the little boy said, hey, and he was wearing a scarlet string around his neck that held a cross the size of his finger, the clearest red. Where did you get your cross, I asked him, reaching over him to turn the page of his music and he played with the string of it and said quietly, a miracle, looking down at it like he wasn't talking to me at all.
When my mind gets bad and I am crying to heaven why the hell, I try to sing that song that is small and about Jesus, and I try to think about the little boy's hug. Both always make me cry more of course, but good tears are better than bad, even if they look the same.
And I think of the first time I thanked God for music.
And I remember a long time ago I realized it took no one too special to be sad, but to be strong & steady took soldiers and brave ones and beautiful little fighters, and I think as I am falling to sleep that someday, maybe I will learn that.
_
I've decided to talk about books now. When I was four I was reading and I couldn't be stopped. I was like K and started a new one every two days. This year I think I have finished three books. It was January of this year I read A Christmas Carol. And then I read Beowulf. And then I read 420 pages of another book that hurt too much and then I stopped reading. I was exhausted from the weight and I was not OK enough to pick up anything even something light until a long time later. Last night I finished The Five People You Meet In Heaven. This is important to me. It is probably my first whole book since then. And it was not difficult, it was small like a new step and when I was finishing it I cried, not thinking I was silly for crying at all or wondering why I was. I don't know why this post is all about crying. At this point I feel the calmest I have for a long while.
.
He was nothing now, a leaf in the water, and she pulled him gently, through shadow and light, through shades of blue and ivory and lemon and black, and he realized all these colors, all along, were the emotions of his life
Last night furied and sobbing I threw all my pillows to the floor and then I got down,
and I sorrowfully gathered them back to me because I don't know how to sleep without holding
breathe
ink on the back of my hand found in the morning. remember this.
There is still something of my simpleness in me that brings calm, or only perhaps something in meaningless repetition until it finally means something, everything and I can close my eyes. It still scares me when I forget to breathe. I dreamed in this new way again that I held a very little boy that I did not know in my arms because he was afraid and told him no one in there will hurt you and then he felt safer and said to me i'll take care of you when I thought it was the other way around and he was so small and I don't try to understand my dreams because I don't think I will but I always keep them close in case... in case?
Work through the painful memory. Describe it. Feel it. Describe it and feel it until it lets you go.
How can you hold to steer if you're covering your eyes with both hands.
The things that can't haunt are so few always always at night and every thing I remember I remember everything, drowning and frightened and fearing the splash my blindness my kindness and goddamned lies I don't want to hear you I don't want to hate you but I don't pray mentioning your name less it's break him to halves for the hurt he did
Wake up
It's morning now, do nothing but run - I run until drained
and then I showered with all my clothes on, just for the water
kneeling in the water falling
Who made me this but you.
Oh my God
and these days' mercy cutting so deep
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
the lord is near to the brokenhearted
well how could I know till this mornin what it was like to have no grasp on a wheel that being a fool I could hurt more than me or that it was sure at least once to lose the games that they were seeing real to wonder would chris chris chris ever learn and I didn't know not till this mornin funny how all of the sudden you get wise
My piano has been cleared off and open since yesterday and I keep meaning to put back all the stuff but it sounds so bright and right without it. The little boy was here this morning and we peered into the depths and he said how does it do that and I told him about the strings and hammers. But then we had to have a lesson and his mind started to run away very soon. Sometimes when that happens he rubs his eyes for a long time, blinks and says to me i'm sleepy. Sometimes he fiddles with metronome and the music box and the lamp. And sometimes like today he gets very done with all this and says i don't want to and gets up and looks for Flash. It distresses me because I want to think it's not my fault.
Just in case it was I took him to see Puppy because I promised him a surprise and he was so so happy. After they played from one end of the room to the other he pulled her up on his lap and sat in a chair and there they were: puppy sleepy and boy through with lessons, quiet at last.
I've been outside since he left. Whatever was out in my knee is back in and I was running. I ran so much now my foot is hurt. But I will keep running.
It's summer. What else is there to do but this?
Don't I wish.
*
if you were falling, then I would catch you
you need a light, I'd find a match
*
File under:
learning simplicity
I straightened up with flowers in both my hands when I realized, I am happy.
It is a watermelon day and the sun is unhurried. It is an ice cream day. It is a wildflower day. Most importantly it is. I've found out something about myself which is amazing which is that I am not afraid. And I am not sad. Not careless. But not sad.
I think whenever I need to wherever I am I can come back here, to right here where I have been firmly planted, with the trees by the water.
It is healthy they say to get feelings out. Right now I feel like a rocking chair which is nice. So I'll only let a little of that out and keep the rest. I am only writing because I am aware. The Paterfamilias just got his new generator and is carrying it back and forth with the tractor like Kiddy does with his toy when you give him a toy and he's not sure what to do with it. Flash is Kiddy. Kiddy is jealous of Puppy. Puppy is sprawled sleeping. So far we are calling Puppy, Puppy. Names for her are hovering - what do you think?
The daisies are from my field, the west one: that fills up with them every year,
that the sun loves, Kiddy plays in and I walk
through, while precious things catch my fingers:
my favorite flower.
They remind me of innocence. Winsome.
I told her I didn't come to her house only for the piano. Which was true and mostly not true, because heaven almighty, I would rather stay there in the center of that tall room at those perfect keys than be anywhere else on earth. There was a boy there too who knew everything, not as in morethanyouandlikestoshowit but he knew his music and what he could do which was everything and every thing, and was the sort that would ease through it all breezily amazingly and then ask you to play. It took me some time to remember I could at all, but I could of course I could and then we played together which was best. The boy who could play anything loved the Beautiful Piano too. He said it just gives back to your hands and it does, it sends the music right back into you and it swirls and grows and makes more and more until you can't ever get away or want to. Later I tiptoed back in when there was no one anymore, like I just wanted it to be and I played the pieces that I always imagine in Beautiful Piano notes because they deserve them, like the Chopin oh my soul the Chopin and I played Satie and I played Schubert and I played Alicia Keys and sang until I could have cried to have to leave mmm sometimes I feel like I don't belong, anywhere. Today I haven't played at all. And I won't until I will; it seems like every time I go from there, for a while my head and hands are left behind.
*
if the weather gets better we should get together
spend a little time and we can do whatever
and if we get together we'll be twice as clever
so staple it together and call it bad weather
mm hmmm
Jack Johnson
I was peering up through the wire of the fence I was holding a piece of music just large enough for me.. I was asking why I was shy in my way, I was feeling clear clean and all tainted with love.
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Right now it's so 90°. Fervent.
Right now the sun has not stopped being out for seven million or two days and the Cardinals are winning just because I am happy even if they're not really winning but scoreless it's all just as fine
The Young Man we were all supposed to marry is leaving the countryside and I am baking today away to celebrate, the air is made from vanilla cakes and kissy frostings and salty sweet macaroons I'll sell my confectionery candied dreams and never leave my kitchen windows, never be done dancing on this the barest floor. Shouldn't we make divinity? Because I don't know how to make divinity and all granddaughters should as all grandmothers did, in the Christmases in big houses. My hands since childhood have been sere like theirs, I suppose and turn and twirl breathing in spice tastes and you, such an active imagination
You get used to things since it's been like this every time, a sickness like speeding and a simplicity like singing lullabies to yourself and what it all means is I don't know but really
who do I think I am trying to be me when the field is daisy wild and you and I yeah we were it so baby let me follow you down baby let me follow you down and I'll do anything in this godalmighty world if you'll just let me follow you down
When he came yesterday I was out taking the mismatched blues and pink and smooth white of the linen off the line, and Miss Susie told me he said there's Christina! as they came down the drive. I never realized before that he knows my name. He always just says, hey. He said hey when he jumped out of the car before it hardly stopped. He said hey when he paused his lesson to tell me about his stuffed animals and all their names. There is a dog named Fido and something named Jack and they all live at the end of his bed. He has about as many stuffed animals as I have pillows, and he loves them. I didn't know how to say to him I understood but sure as heaven and sure as hell, I did.
Today everything is hoppin'. The weekend is beginning really early and SEVERE EMERGENCY MODE has begun here in preparation for The Other Reunion. Yesterday didn't happen because tomorrow is so engrossing. So there's a lot of buzzing but I'm hardly involved in any of it. I myself have been walking about in the sun barefootedly and I looked at the garden for a while doing mental weeding and then I picked up the gladiolas the storm had blown down and brought them inside. They are in a vase on the dining table now and I can't stop looking at them. They are so fabulous and bold and tall and content. They make me delighted.
I am considering in my mind a complete overhaul of the Spinet. I was considering in my mind chopping it all to splinters with the Paterfamilias's machete and making a resolution to give up every other luxury I would ever want to use money for like education and food, and taking all the money I have and buying a sleek black grand piano, a Steinway I think, a really really really big one. But then, I thought, where would I put it. Plan B is overhaul. First I'm going to dust it off lovingly. This is what we call small steps.
My dear little piano. We are both so poor and beautiful.
I am very untroubled and silent, only being Now and only thinking about the little boy coming today in four hours. When I was looking at the spinet earlier doing all that considering, I noticed that it has slowly and surely changed since he began to come play it. There are sheets of smiley faced stickers where all my Beethoven used to be and there's a glass full of colored markers on my pile of staff paper and little scraps we've practiced drawing treble clefs on and the metronome is sitting open and askew in a prominent place because all of the sudden it is fun? Whence cometh this? My piano is becoming a teacher piano. It's a mommy piano. This is terrible and different and so OK.
Sometimes you can hear the sound of the creek, even if you're not near it.
*
*
And somehow everything seems good, even if it's not.
When I woke up I was perfectly surrounded by my pillows and I was holding one comfortably in my arms with my head on it, and the morning was gentle and my hair was brushed away from my face and I didn't never ever want to get up from that. Monday is my day to straighten myself out, and I put my dreams in order first. There was 1)about a fast food place and meals called things like Visa Combo and MasterCard Platter, which made me laugh when I remembered because at my fabulous office job I just started running the credit cards and apparently I can't get work out of my head even if I don't ever think I'm thinking about it and 2)another about a deer who ate all the good things from our garden but no one thought of being angry, she was so fawn coloured in the sun. When To Do's are done today, I think I should sing and I probably will, because I feel alright after not feeling so alright and I didn't dream about the things I had for three nights previous and it is summer. It is still and hot outside. REALLY HOT. I like it. L of the quarry cliffs just came back from Colorado where it is, I am told, not humid at all. I'm not sure how people there remember to start dreaming of sprinklers and fairs if there's no oppressive and suffocating mugginess to remind them what season it is but anyway what I meant to say was she came to see me twice in the past week because friends help friends do hard things, like kicking habits. L's a good kicker. Last night when she was here we sat across my bed and talked about the things that are happening for each of us and how they are different yet so the same and she asked me are you sad and I smiled and said no, a little sadly but not a lot.
Yesterday evening I went on the smallest walk, on the road in front of the house back and forth never leaving its sight because I didn't want to be far but I did want to be with the fireflies, and twilight and thumbnail moon. The dirt road is smooth as paper. I was just now wondering why I am writing any of this but it is obviously important and sometimes if you're smart you just stop that wondering and haul yourself out of bed, and have a day.
The best thing to do was be away, seven hundred miles of highway away to see family to wonder about home and why it means more to me than any where in the world.
But Mississippi is more loving by far than flat land we had been through. I may love that place if only for the trees. I could touch a window and say pine forest at every one that passed, and smile. Everything reminded me of dreaming.
Reunions are probably grand were you ever unioned in the first place no one knows anything or one, see you next year . Nice, quiet on & off, for me. Strange to be shy around family to have the sameness and yet want to be different (yet want to be same) I realized this half of my crazy clan could split again, when reintroductions faded, and the grey and older talked under tall trees, being the ones who know the purpose from before and speak in remembering, being walls removed from the insiders who know bass and music loud enough to start your heart and if you aren't careful they'll make you dance.
What I liked was that to everyone I was uncomplicated. She's Bobby's girl, and being this daughter and not so much else, I didn't mind me.
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And next week I get to meet Mum's side! May the Lord preserve us. But on my turf, may He be thanked.
I mean to make sense but there isn't any time. So before I forget here is the most important reason I am writing, to say you see I am right here, I haven't drowned or died yet. Flood is moving along. The River crested in St. Louis Monday, we crossed it twice back & forth - the Missouri too, Coldwater Yazoo Big Black and Pearl. There are two or three of my sisters and brothers who look at me when we cross any bridge at all.
There
now so long until
