Sunday, July 20, 2008

Taking Stock

1. It's not worth the energy to try to change/convince/enlighten someone else. It's not going to happen.

2. I am allowed to "go through the motions" with parts of my life, and instead focus on my own growth and fulfillment outside of those parts.

3. Pleasing people and giving goodness are not the same things.

4. No matter what I do, no matter how loving or thoughtful I will try to be, there are always going to be people who won't like it, and they will make sure that someone hears about it. Because there is absolutely no way of avoiding that situation, (meaning , no matter what choice I make in any given situation, someone will always think it is the wrong one), it can't possibly be useful or important to pay much attention to that, or to take it personally.

5. I have overcome challenges before, and I will continue to overcome them throughout my life.

6. Nothing is ever as difficult as I think it is going to be.

7. It's time to stop feeling ashamed or embarrassed about my thoughts and feelings. I also don't need to feel ashamed when I do something with genuinely good intentions and it doesn't go well. Maybe I need to rethink something, or do it differently, but I don't need to feel ashamed for trying.

8. Just because someone doesn't like me, it doesn't make me unlikable. There will always by people who don't like me. Every person on Earth has people who don't like them.

9. Sometimes being different makes things harder, but that doesn't mean there is anything wrong with it.

10. I will never, ever be perfect, or have perfection in my life, so I should probably stop wasting time striving for it. Even if I were perfect, it wouldn't guarantee me perfect love, or it free me from disapproval.

11. I have a huge fear of disapproval, and I invest an enormous amount of energy into trying to avoid it, even though I know it is unavoidable. The same is obviously true of pain and death. But do I really want to live my life just trying to avoid unpleasant things? What a waste of a life.

12. This is the only life I am ever going to have.

13. Inspiration: "The whole world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is not to fear at all." -Rabbi Nachman or Bratzlav

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

When I was in love with someone's hands

I wrote this poem after a trip to Chicago in April, 2006.


The hands of my friend
Hover over his camera
Like hawks kettling over a small animal

The ripple of wrist and tendon
A deliberate caress
Of a heartbeat, a shadow
Of a second in my life
I have already discarded
And forgotten

This reclamation of my lost memories
Carelessly left
Half-formed expressions
At last made ancient and whole
Monuments to my inattention
Saved and constructed by his delicate hands

We live our lives greedily
Discarding each moment
As though confident
In the countless others
That will follow
But my loyal friend knows better

My friend's exquisite hands are never hungry
For anything beyond this moment
Beyond this story
Beyond this light, and this breath

All that we have lost is captured and kept safe
By his elegant hands

Witches

I have this vision of creating a series of poems based on my family's stories. This poem comes from an old family story about when my grandmother and her sister were little girls.


We were witches, once.
We hid under our
Dining table cave and
Committed horrible, witchy acts.

Witches eat children
Everybody knows.
With scissors
We cut our baby dolls to
Pieces
Heaps of wide fleshy loops
In the empty pot
Like a soup made of band-aids
We imagined the cries of our babies
Of their mothers
As we cackled.

In the morning
We had
Nothing
To cradle.

Monday, July 14, 2008

New York Vignette

I went to New York. "The City" as those assholes like to call it, like there's only one. I like to go down there because it wakes up this part of me that feels like it sleeps a lot of the time. I like the pigeon carcasses and the blistered feet and the yelling and the gray, predawn light as we are getting ready to go to sleep. Everybody's apartment is small and dirty; everyone has a fucked-up toilet or shower. I love to see what people are willing to sacrifice in order to live The Good Life of New York.

I sat next to this man at a bar on Bleecker Street. Handsome older guy, bald, thick New-York-Italian accent. It was five o'clock in the afternoon and he was shitfaced. Coral-pink shirt. In front of him, placed carefully in a row, was a gin and tonic, a cup of espresso, a glass of cognac, and his Blackberry. He welcomed me like an old friend, kept calling me baby. "Do you know who I am, baby? Do you know who I am? I have a lot of money, baby. Do you know who I am?" Faced me with a big smile. Passed his hand over his mouth. Smiled again, this time with his front tooth missing. Tooth in, tooth out. Showed me his Blackberry. "Do you know what this is?" I looked at him. "Yeah, it's a Blackberry." Asked me if I have one. I don't. He seemed disappointed in me, "Don't you know where we are right now? Do you know where we are? You need to get up on this high tech shit." My explanation that I don't need one was dissatisfying to him. He changed tactics: "How 'bout you give me a little kiss, baby? Huh? How 'bout a little kiss? No? Well, how 'bout just one on the cheek, then. Just one on the cheek, baby?" He rolled his eyes and muttered angrily under his breath when I refused. When I asked him, "If you were my husband, would you want me kissing strange men in bars?" he looked away, no longer hearing me. We sat side by side at the bar, not speaking or looking at each other. A few minutes later, I took a phone call. As I turned my head and began to speak, I felt a hand massage my thigh. "Inappropriate!" I scolded, turning my body away. The hand massaged my thigh again, creeping upward. Phone and drink in my hands, I slipped out of my seat and moved to a table, never looking at him again. About ten minutes later, he shouted angrily in Italian at my friend, Bill, and then left the bar.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Discovery of a Long-Lost Brother

I almost never write about B, so I found this journal entry dated 7.25.04 and put it in here. This is where it all began.

I am in Utah. My parents came a day early so that we could have some family time. In a sense, it's nice to have the "whole" family together, at least what's traditionally the whole family. I felt a bit lost and alone, which is funny, because it's my family. But I sense the difference--no partner, no person on my team. And Kristine and Charlotte [my nieces] are so excited to see their grandparents that I feel sort of left in the dust.

At the moment I am hearing strange squeaking sounds. Are my brother and his wife having sex? Interesting. Well, it's stopped now, so if they were it didn't last very long.

Today when my parents came, they said they had something important to tell me and my brother. It was something life-changing, they said, but it didn't involve illness.

Yes, my brother and his wife were definitely having sex. I can hear them talking right now, and after the squeaking stopped, I heard my brother let out a big sigh. How awkward.

I was trying to figure out how my parents would be doing something life-changing, and whether it would be good or bad. My first guesses, all instantly rejected, were: moving or selling a house, getting divorced, changing religions or becoming vegetarian, or someone realizing s/he is gay. What else could it be?

My dad sat us down and had us read a series of emails, which essentially revealed that my dad has another son, or so we believe, that he didn't know about. The son was conceived with a girlfriend who my dad had briefly dated before he and my mom were exclusive, and who had moved away after a few months. I guess this woman called him at some point to say that she was pregnant, but then he didn't hear from her again. At the time, he wasn't sure that she really was pregnant at all, or if he was the father, or anything. She didn't contact him again or ask him for money or anything that he can remember, so I guess he figured she hadn't been pregnant, or maybe that she'd had an abortion. Apparently she hadn't. She had given her son up for adoption through Catholic Charities, and my dad's name is listed on the adoption certificate as the baby's father.

The son has met his birth mother and apparently has a good relationship with her. Now the son wants to meet my dad. His dad. The son is about 40 years old and he lives in Boston. We don't know his name or anything because his attorney is the one who contacted my father. The son could live in my neighborhood or I could have passed him on the street a hundred times. My mom and I are dying to know what he looks like and if he looks like Dad.

I wonder if my dad will cry when he meets his son. I wonder if it is really his son. I wonder if the son is a nice person. I hope he isn't trying to get something from my dad, or trying to trick him or hurt him in some way.

I can't believe that my father has an unacknowledged, illegitimate child. Just yesterday, Kris and I were sitting around wondering if either of our parents has ever had an affair. Also, I was recently saying that my dad should become a politician because he has not secret scandals or skeletons in his closet.