A met another ghost on Monday. The ghost of an unborn child who haunts his parents relentlessly. I have a new friend from school. I wasn't really sure if I wanted to be friends with her and had been brushing her off in a careless and hurtful manner. There goes the image of Meredith the kind. One day she asked me why I shut her out so often. I must admit that I often let a curtian fall in front of my eyes, mind, and heart whenever she started down a tangent that didn't coo to my fancy. I answered blandly that I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to be friends with a person who held some of the opinions she had demonstrated. I could see her swallow and tread carefully with her next few words. She described her life in Sweden, thousands of miles away from her family in Uganda and gave me an image of loneliness that cut me deeply. What a brute I was! When I was young and untarnished I always thought of friendship as something to be offered to those who needed it.. not those who were cool enough, or who fitted into a preconceived image of what a friend should be. Certainly one of my very best friends doesn't fit the bill.. but somehow that never mattered.. I loved her to the ground anyway. So I took her into my heart.
On Monday she called my celly. I was at school surfing on a natural high. The life was coursing through me and I was shining. Immediatley I heard that panic seeping through the phone. Contractions. The baby was only 5 1/2 months old.. too early. Way too early. I went immediatley to take her to the hospital with my heart chewing away at my throat. When I got there she was standing with a stocking covering her hair and a bathrobe on.. nothing else. She seemed rooted to the place with fear. We joked a bit and I made her life despite everything, then we drove to the hospital.
In the examination room the doctor squirted some cold gel onto her stomach then pressed an instrament that looked like a dildo to me against her tummy.
A heart beat.
It was regular, alive, unbelievable. It beat proudly through the silent room echoing in the ears of every person present. A heart beat. That was the baby.
The doctor, a thick beefy woman with stubby fingers and very wide nails smiled a hearty smile. She launched into an explanation of how in the sixth month of pregnenecy there is a section of the lower abdomen that is often over streached and hurts quite a bit... Nothing to worry about.
Then she did a physical exam and her face changed. While we watched my friends insides statically on the screen, we all saw it. A distinctive contraction. The doctor couldn't measure the cervix because it was changing size. And still the heartbeat. It was still there, reverberating trough the empty chambers of our hearts.
It is worse than I thought at first. The chance of you loosing the baby is very high.
But not certain, I said... pleaded.
Very high.
The doctor left the room to consult with a more senior doctor and my friend sat there, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her husband, who had joined us after we got to the hospital sat there stupidly, frozen to his seat. I gave him a solid jabb in the leg and pointed at his wife.
Go home and wait it out, said the doctor upon her return. We don't know why this happens sometimes and there is nothing we can do about it. Come back and check yourself in when the baby starts to come.
We left feeling desolate and a little sick to our stomaches.
And the heartbeat, that wonderful and dreadful heartbeat, echoed in our ears.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Icy Deeps
On my way out to the barn I drive by a small, dark pool. It sits on the outter side of a curve in the winding road and seems to be carved out the forrest. Last spring there was a layer of ice over the dark water long after the large lakes and the ocean were melted and now, in the fall, the ice has begun to grow like cancer. It streaches over the surface seperating the icy deeps from the outside world.
I notice this seemingly harmless pond every time I drive by. The cows don't pay any special attention to it. The birds fly over it unaware. Yet there is a feeling of darkness that seeps through the still surface.
Two days ago I began imagining a mermaid kindgom under the ice. My mermaids were not sexy sea virgins, but the stolen souls of heroine addicts, taught, streached, bony. Their luminescent skin enemated a silvery green hue and their dark eyes sucked the light from the surrounding world into their void. I shiver in my mind.
I want to write something about this lake, inconspicious and shrowded in mystery. I want to know what breaths in the frigid, lifeless deeps. Days and days go by and my book sits still.. still and lifeless as this little lake.. and I am filled with longing.. heroine? Writing? Cold?
I notice this seemingly harmless pond every time I drive by. The cows don't pay any special attention to it. The birds fly over it unaware. Yet there is a feeling of darkness that seeps through the still surface.
Two days ago I began imagining a mermaid kindgom under the ice. My mermaids were not sexy sea virgins, but the stolen souls of heroine addicts, taught, streached, bony. Their luminescent skin enemated a silvery green hue and their dark eyes sucked the light from the surrounding world into their void. I shiver in my mind.
I want to write something about this lake, inconspicious and shrowded in mystery. I want to know what breaths in the frigid, lifeless deeps. Days and days go by and my book sits still.. still and lifeless as this little lake.. and I am filled with longing.. heroine? Writing? Cold?
Friday, September 21, 2007
My Unicorn
The unicorn.. a mythical creature spawned from an overactive imagination and longing. A horn that neutralizes poison and is wholey good, strong and wild... The unicorn is an untameable creature.
The one who slips away.
I wonder if we could tame this unicorn if we would begin to notice that its stall needs to be cleaned just as a regular horses does, and that its coat sheds in the spring and that everyonce in a while it gets a gummy eye infection. Or perhpas not. Perhaps it shimmers in the moonlight and awakens the lust and longing within us. Perhaps.
I have a unicorn.. a ghostly creature that lives in the periphery of my consciousness... slipping in and out of my hazy thoughts and dreams.. always functioning as a meter stick for my self worth and finding me lacking.
How strange that an imaginary creature is to thoroughly embedded in my unconscious... that a creature born of a wilderness that is untamable, the mind, that is perfect beyond conception, that shimmers with light, should be what i measure myself with. I have never properly laid hands on this beast. My sweaty, dusty, now totally white Gus is so much more real.. so much more loveable... yet it is the unicorn by which I measure myself.
Oh to face it and feel the roughness of its horn, smell the pungency of it's cloved hooves... I want it to step out of the shadows and show itself! Then I want the sun to shine throught he dust and watch it dissipate into nothingness.. the faced ghost laid to rest.
Unzipped
Every once in a while I think that the wrinkles are starting to fall out.. somehow my life has been hanging up in a steamy room.. and if I just wait a bit longer I'll notice that it is perfectly pressed... without any reall effort of my own.
Then I come crashing back to reality.
My life is a pile of sweaty clothes that have been carelessly thrown in a pile and are now starting to smell even worse than expected because they aren't drying properly.. never mind washing, folding, or ironing.
Is it possible to continue and emotional outpour, even for someone you love, if the recipient has their head too far in the clouds to have any idea of returning your devotion and care?
Bah.
After this day... this some what chatty, lazy, hopefull Friday.. I had saw my life through a glass of milk. Then the zipper on my riding boots broke. Damn. I'm unzipped again.
Then I come crashing back to reality.
My life is a pile of sweaty clothes that have been carelessly thrown in a pile and are now starting to smell even worse than expected because they aren't drying properly.. never mind washing, folding, or ironing.
Is it possible to continue and emotional outpour, even for someone you love, if the recipient has their head too far in the clouds to have any idea of returning your devotion and care?
Bah.
After this day... this some what chatty, lazy, hopefull Friday.. I had saw my life through a glass of milk. Then the zipper on my riding boots broke. Damn. I'm unzipped again.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
A Tare in the Sky
I had a day bursting with anxiety today. No reason. Life has been bubbeling along like a brooke in the spring as the snow begins to melt. But I havent' been sleeping well. Vivid dreams have been assailing me and keeping my mind from melting into a restful oblivion for eight hours a night I need. As a result I have developed a very unattractive habbit of chewing the inside of my right cheek until it starts to get sore and bleed.. and they I chew off the tender scar tissue. I'm becoming neurotic.
After a somewhat wasteful but relaxing morning, I left my cozy apartment and the anxiety fell over my mind like a veil. Nothing in particular. I felt emotionally blind, reaching in front of me with a long stick but only touching a spot here or there without getting any real pictuer of what was around me or what was going on. I had lunch with Peter and gazed disinterestedly out the window at people walking by. Then we went and bought him an expensive and very exciting new guitar. I wanted him to have it and thought it was a very good expenditure, but my ability to share in his excitement was dulled by my pattering pulse and mild irritation.
On the way home I stopped by a store to look at wallpaper for our new bedroom. We have decided to wait a little while with the bathroom renovation but I really wanted to change something in the flat, to put my stamp on it and declare to the ether that this is now me, my place. I looked for quite a while, comparing the shades of cream, white, gold, beige, silver that were blended together in various luminous striped patterns and settled on one. Then I rang Peter to tell him about it. He was still filled with his guitar and totally disinterested in bedroomwall paper. I ended the conversation and stood alone in the middle of the store feeling heavy. So I decided to buy the wall paper.
I got up to the counter and struggled my way through ordering the desired design in Swedish, then I looked at the paper up close in the brighter light of the check out counter and felt a knot of anxiety grip my throat. Were the darkest stripes too brown? Maybe they were too much colour, too much solidity, to much to much to much. I walked back to the shelf and grabbed the lightest silvery white striped paper I could find and went back tot he counter.
"I've changed my mind. I'll take this one instead."
I said that in Swedish of course and it took me a minute to be understood. Then I turned, still heavily, to wander out to my car and head home. But I never made it even to putting on my seatbelt. I knew that my first choice was right. The pale option was cold. Too cold for my bedroom. And it didn't have enough flexibility of colour. I got back out of my car and hurried back into the store. I explained to the only sales woman I could find that I needed to look again. The colour wasn't right. "Of course" she said. We then proceeded to spend about fifteen minutes snipping bits of paper for me to take home and examine in the light of my room with my furniture. At the end of the encounter I said that I'd call and confirm or alter my order and that I was glad they hadn't sent it out yet.
But they had. While I was standing talking to the woman, another sales agent had called my order in. It's all computerized now you know. After you choose there is no turning back. Don't even think about changing your mind. Or pay a 30% fee for being a pinnipanna, a scatterbrain, a woman with a cloud of anxiety eating away at her self confidence like coke eats away at tooth enamal.
Bah. "Leave it," says Peter... "It can't be too bad if it is just your second choice." So I call the store and say alright, don't worry about it. Then drive home now hosting a creature in my belly wich is circiling discontentedly around the axis of its body, hunting in vein for the perfect position to snuggle into.
At home I tape the two bits of paper to the wall. Damn. It is 2019 I want.. not 2018. Should I spend the next six years encased in four wall of silvery chill because I had an anxious day? No! I won't. I don't give a damn if every single person on the planet thinks I'm a silly feather head. I call back.. again.. and change my order.
The creature stills and the knot loosens. I knew I was right. 2019 is perfect. Every time I walk by the two unevenly taped up bits of sample wall paper for the rest of the day I feel satisified. I chose well. Warm, creamy, a streak of gold, a breeze of white.
Then I take my brown-eyed, loving little dog to the barn and spend two hours brushing and riding my horse and talking with my dog. As I'm cooling Gus off with a slow walk around the ring, I drop the reins and claps my arms around his neck inhaling his horse hair, sweat scent and soak up the sky. There is a rip in it, and through that rip is splashing warm fushia, gold, and amber. I chose well.
After a somewhat wasteful but relaxing morning, I left my cozy apartment and the anxiety fell over my mind like a veil. Nothing in particular. I felt emotionally blind, reaching in front of me with a long stick but only touching a spot here or there without getting any real pictuer of what was around me or what was going on. I had lunch with Peter and gazed disinterestedly out the window at people walking by. Then we went and bought him an expensive and very exciting new guitar. I wanted him to have it and thought it was a very good expenditure, but my ability to share in his excitement was dulled by my pattering pulse and mild irritation.
On the way home I stopped by a store to look at wallpaper for our new bedroom. We have decided to wait a little while with the bathroom renovation but I really wanted to change something in the flat, to put my stamp on it and declare to the ether that this is now me, my place. I looked for quite a while, comparing the shades of cream, white, gold, beige, silver that were blended together in various luminous striped patterns and settled on one. Then I rang Peter to tell him about it. He was still filled with his guitar and totally disinterested in bedroomwall paper. I ended the conversation and stood alone in the middle of the store feeling heavy. So I decided to buy the wall paper.
I got up to the counter and struggled my way through ordering the desired design in Swedish, then I looked at the paper up close in the brighter light of the check out counter and felt a knot of anxiety grip my throat. Were the darkest stripes too brown? Maybe they were too much colour, too much solidity, to much to much to much. I walked back to the shelf and grabbed the lightest silvery white striped paper I could find and went back tot he counter.
"I've changed my mind. I'll take this one instead."
I said that in Swedish of course and it took me a minute to be understood. Then I turned, still heavily, to wander out to my car and head home. But I never made it even to putting on my seatbelt. I knew that my first choice was right. The pale option was cold. Too cold for my bedroom. And it didn't have enough flexibility of colour. I got back out of my car and hurried back into the store. I explained to the only sales woman I could find that I needed to look again. The colour wasn't right. "Of course" she said. We then proceeded to spend about fifteen minutes snipping bits of paper for me to take home and examine in the light of my room with my furniture. At the end of the encounter I said that I'd call and confirm or alter my order and that I was glad they hadn't sent it out yet.
But they had. While I was standing talking to the woman, another sales agent had called my order in. It's all computerized now you know. After you choose there is no turning back. Don't even think about changing your mind. Or pay a 30% fee for being a pinnipanna, a scatterbrain, a woman with a cloud of anxiety eating away at her self confidence like coke eats away at tooth enamal.
Bah. "Leave it," says Peter... "It can't be too bad if it is just your second choice." So I call the store and say alright, don't worry about it. Then drive home now hosting a creature in my belly wich is circiling discontentedly around the axis of its body, hunting in vein for the perfect position to snuggle into.
At home I tape the two bits of paper to the wall. Damn. It is 2019 I want.. not 2018. Should I spend the next six years encased in four wall of silvery chill because I had an anxious day? No! I won't. I don't give a damn if every single person on the planet thinks I'm a silly feather head. I call back.. again.. and change my order.
The creature stills and the knot loosens. I knew I was right. 2019 is perfect. Every time I walk by the two unevenly taped up bits of sample wall paper for the rest of the day I feel satisified. I chose well. Warm, creamy, a streak of gold, a breeze of white.
Then I take my brown-eyed, loving little dog to the barn and spend two hours brushing and riding my horse and talking with my dog. As I'm cooling Gus off with a slow walk around the ring, I drop the reins and claps my arms around his neck inhaling his horse hair, sweat scent and soak up the sky. There is a rip in it, and through that rip is splashing warm fushia, gold, and amber. I chose well.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Fat Man Basking
Today while I was driving back to ElGargantian for the second time I noticed a very fat man wearing a bright blue tshrit streached luxuriously in the sun on the side of the road. His moped was lying at a slightly skewed angle a few meters away from him as the traffic rolled by. It was a very odd place to be basking... and a very odd time of year. I was sitting in the car with the seat heater on and my fall coat, but there he was... like a giant blue whale on a browning green lawn in the crisp early fall air. Good for him, I thought!
Uninspired
I'm having a bit of a problem... I have lost my belief in my book :(.. not that I can actually write it or anything.. but in the essence of it. Over the last year I have come to believe more and more that it is next to impossible to get away from things that were hardwired into your being at an early age. Yes we all have control over our own destiny to a certain extent.. but it is very hard to see our own weaknesses and quirkes... we're too close.. and they are so incrediably deeply imbeded into our psyche's that they are part of the way that we think, breath, interact, feel, make love... everything about us has a trace of our child self shining through.. like a ghost. I don't have much time to write more now.. but I have a lot of thoughts on this subject.. so I'm sure I'll get back to it.
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