Author: cborsello

Jersey Girl, born on the beach.

Church Kitchens

Church kitchens are a combination of dollar store half-price bins & yard sale Pfaltzgraf, quite the statement on remnants of a Lost Civilization. Roadside collectible shows go away – let’s just inspect the contents of church kitchens!

We have eight million toothpicks, fourteen pepper shakers & ½ of a salter. We have a huge tub of ice cream (vanilla) with two scoopers, and no one eats ice cream in Florida during the chilly season.

The refrigerators are full of inedible cupcakes with giant swirls of pure colorful cane sugar on top & a bite of pretend-it’s-your-grandma’s icing. However, it’s grandmom on Alzheimer’s.

We have six tubs of butter. Oat butter (what?), plant butter (what?), Land O Lakes in three sizes, & vegetable butter (what?) Bet our ancestors never thought “progress” to include such – it was hard enough to get salt on the table in the “auld days.”

We have a sea of bland silverware including three-tined forks & spoons with odd handles obviously the last of That Which Did Not Sell tables all over the flea markets. (“What’ll we do with this? I know! Give it to the Church!”)

A recent Christmas party has left us with more to add to the collection. A forest of plasticware vies with a stack of disposable baking pans tucked for invisibility behind the coffee cups we don’t use. 99 wine glasses – & we do not serve wine at our church for any reason – fill two cabinets I dearly want to put something else into. But we have nowhere to put the wine glasses.

We are victim to renters who feel each & every one they must bring a box of plastic forks as some esoteric ritual of entry. Um, suggestion: just put a buck in the kitchen basket instead. Yesterday I passed along the guilt to Goodwill, sending over a huge trash bag full of plasticware. It’s my sin, too, when these reach the ocean floor, but I’ve done it behind my own back, yeh? I don’t get to the ocean floor much, anyway.

We have the empty ice bucket with the scratch-off label saying “Do NOT put this back empty!” on it. We had four bags of English Toffee Coffee (what?) which I surreptitiously trashed yesterday. I cannot believe anyone on earth wants English Toffee Coffee & the aliens are bringing plastic spoons when they land, so no need there. (These were donated by the fella who one day brought us the whipped cream.)

We have four jars of CoffeeMate which I did not know was still even in production, except perhaps in some Iceland communities where they drink tea. We now have an entire 6’ shelf of unmatched, variously-sized napkins & a ministerial preference for uniformity in Sunday settings. We have four cans of whipped cream total for Sunday consumption.

A Church Kitchen literally runs on sugar. Inedible cookies vie with the refrigerated “cupcakes.” Even the kids who come through ignore the sweets having been warned their heads will fall off if they eat this stuff. We do have one minister who raids the room every day for a treat; however, she’s switched to pretzels. We have no pretzels.

We have a tubular package of hamburgers from last July 4th which I will also surreptitiously toss one day when the freezer burn on them pushes on the empty ice bucket. Mixed in with all this in the freezer are ice packs for emergencies, two first aid kits with no bandaids, a bottle of Manischewitz vying with four jars half-full of pickles for shelf space.

It’s kind of like what you’d find after nuclear winter in a looted market. The Country Time Lemonade which our congregants avoid in favor of the Arnold Palmer mix seems to grow a can of the powdered chemical nightly. Don’t even ask about the dishwasher pods which were incidentally put on re-order with Amazon during Covid Closure.

One shelf has nothing but cheap [plastic] containers in the hope someone will put a few of those burgers in for take-home.

CONCLUSION: Try not to eat out of a church kitchen except on potluck day when you can see the provenance. I now have a secret which I’ll tell here, in utter confidence, to the entire world: Generally, on Sunday the two hotpots with regular coffee are consumed religiously while I throw out the decaf so carefully made earlier… I was refreshing the bin of coffee packets & noticed someone put decaf in the regular bin so everyone has been drinking decaf for the past month. Shhh! I’m not telling.

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Christmas Day 2023 Sequence (Poems)

Let the wind in –

Let it curl my hair & offer me that breath which is proof of life.

Let there be a bit of woodsmoke on it to sing in my nostrils,

Let my ego drop away

Begone

For just an eager minute.

Let me turn into the next me, wrap that around

My chill at growing

My reluctance to leave the warm nest

Where all I do to be fed is open my mouth & call.

Isn’t the wind a wonder?

I am emptying my head as fast as I can,

Emptying it of this reality: these thoughts

I am mounting motors I know not how to use: Dreams

The hot-air balloons of flying away …

I take no direction

I simply take off

Alongside the wind.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I once taught these things,

These rusted lessons I found in the damnedest place,

But who wants to learn these?

What matters is I took the topic & turned it into a way to serve others

A knowledge of unremembered interest

In a library class.

That was a lifetime ago – that was in Maryland.

That was jobs ago, a career moved behind me now.

Half sticking out of the shadow bag, catching on things.

I will teach again, for that is what I do; I have a lot to say

That would interest some to know.

Time occludes my life when it only occurs in one dimension.

I grow in so many.

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Before I go under…I am worn the next day

But I birthed the poem.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Poems come on the edges of sleep, riding that tide I thought

To lift me from the beach.

I am removed, outside mine own reality.

Just beyond that I thought truth to be.

Only that thought washed up & curling in the glistening sand

I must go look; I cannot let it wash to sea, it is mine

I claim it: I own it: I remember it. Be warned:

I fight for that which is mine & if you claim this errant thought,

I will snatch it back.

But you are busy with your own beaches & deserts & skies

I leave  you to your tides, your errant ways, your tickets to ride.

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

I am emptying the trap of dreams

I am replacing the bald facts

Laid on calendar & table

With these ideas, this ephemera, this eponymous

Rainfall, each drop begetting its own growth.

The dreams clatter out on the counter:

Some scuttle away on more than four legs

Others land, heavy, solid, well-thought-out

But no longer fitting, become animé to my

Artfully drawn Reality.

I mark their fall with crayon, the outline subject to rain-erasure

But not my fault dreams change on the morning.

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

It isn’t easy to talk about the future of Mankind

We could go either way; any way; the other way

That one the women are always whispering about:

World Peace.

Whoa, whoa, I know what you’re saying here

You’re putting your hope in the backpack for the Warrior

While your dream curls up in the basket of the Mother,

Its full lips reaching, trembling with love.

There is no other way:

The fight for life begins when

you put up your own.

 = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

0

Lament

Today I thought again how much I miss saying, “I love you.” I say it to nothing, to no one. Sometimes alone is all there is but who wants to go there … live there? I am an orphan by circumstance & alone b/c I can’t love myself enough to let others partake. It was not always like this but I opted for justification, not extension.

I turn on the Radio Lottery to see what’s being sung to me. “Not a puppet on a string.” All those simple lyrics from a less fraught time now seem so appealing. I once felt every song I heard is God singing to me. I still feel that. It started with ‘If You’re Still Within the Sound of My Voice’ by Linda Rondstadt.

I heard this one day & realized God was singing to me. That my life was music & there was always a song to tell my story. It was something in the song, something about a train calling from faraway that put the thought in mind. But to love you until I no longer have a will.

I realize all that’s wanted from me is this love I have so much trouble giving & receiving. I tell people I’m really mean on the bottom, underneath the nice. People scoff. Do I know a truth they do not? Yes. I am less than worthy. I am unjustified.

But I get things done, so I’m worthwhile.

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Misfits, Anon.

Misfits, Anon.

That would be me. That would be this Fool mincing along the edge of the precipice. When things are beginning, that is all one can see – that beginning leading to another & so on. There comes a time when I realize I am re-remembering things; I am repetitive? Am I then redundant?

Does it matter when no one acknowledges the pull of the moon, too?

I live as close to the ledge of make-believe as I can. Dreams come true. Tiny wishes are generously granted, often unprompted. I have one cause for Thanksgiving. I am investigating myself more in an effort to find out how & why I am here, I came to be, etc.

I feel as though I’m in a playground after an extended spate of serious trekking. That over-the-Alps-Trail led to some plastic ballooned exaggerations of a slide or swing set. I have walked down an Alpine lane which led me to another ending, then? This happens & more than once in this life.

Why do I look to history & not consult my own?

It is trying out some things new, over which I breathe in twice before I tackle. I have always tackled writing it & feel practiced at this. I want to take a lead & share that which is helping me now. It’s a moue to that which has kept me sane in background, an arrow in my quiver to be deployed as useful.

I need practice in, like “Where exactly is it I go?”

I step in & out of lives like I recall playing “Go in & Out the Windows” or “Umbrella Steps.” The games I played were all about hurry up & wait. Early grooming? No wonder it can feel repetitive, dancing in the same footsteps. (Traveling this with someone who has witnessed it for you before is most helpful & I finally have Forever Friends, just none are local.) But I enjoy this reality as it works & grows in power & effect for me.

Traveling holidays alone is a repeat of Times Before & made tolerable by these. Early angst loses steam in favor or just get some tinfoil turkey so long as there’s mashed. Who can get excited? Later I will break bread with others.

Yet, the meaning of Thanksgiving has softened somehow as has its messages to individuals. It’s meant to be a time of looking at life – counting acorns if you will.

0

O Florida!

I remember that pale sky of autumn when the sound du jour was rattle of leaves. Not happening here. I figure FL should be the “clammy state” & not just for marine life. 

Things are resettling at work. Now it’s a drill & somewhat of a bore, but I have time to do other projects of organization, must must prioritize & sort. Place was a total morass of files & is about half a morass. Heh heh.

Slept well after watching a very complicated Chinese soap opera. Boy, those royals are a drain on the economy. 

Woke to sort the kitchen cabinet. My roommate brought home a ‘Ninja’ cooker to air fry. Guess she’s gonna air fry air since she eats nothing much needing cooking & does 90% of her cooking at her work where the fridge bulges & you can only work with the first thing on the shelf cuz every square thought of an inch is occupied by 3 jars with a teaspoon of something protein in each. She has cooked, um, 3x since I’ve been here except for two batches of vegan potato salad for picnics. The interesting thing about vegan food is no one eats it but vegans. I know, don’t mock, but once you mark it “vegan”, it is safe from being eaten. We leave with this much & come home with two tablespoons missing from the dish & enough vegan potato salad for 3 weeks if anyone ate it. Christ, it was boring when prepared, after 3 weeks, Beyond Burger additions do not help.

I plunged into Detwilers yesterday looking for berries, but tired of strawbs & blues were priced to where the zeros wrapped around the containers. So I got other stuff & this time I shopped their meats which are mostly from their own farms & of course not being commercial, taste funny. But hey, no taste. I can eat it! I saw a piece of steak – probably should not share – but it looked so good & I heard my body groan. So I came home with the perfect vegan onion (really?) & two chunks of extremely tender meat. Ate my old brown-edged onion so as not to disturb perfection & sliced a pepper in that, sliced the beef thin, Goodness, did I enjoy every bite. And then I found gorgeous jade-like Pesto to yum on.

This morning I have bacon! And one quiche shell so will make a perfect quiche. I thoughtfully pushed some guy’s buggy along, as he watched me do so, got 3′ before realizing that wasn’t my cart. Neither of us was embarrassed, it’s Florida, you know? We kind of grinned, I kind of bowed my head & said something about being on the other side of the aisle, oops. Checked out at $112 with enough food to refill the fridge, move over all the veganish stored in the freezer (of which none has disappeared since I’ve been here as only the potatoes do). I seriously must make a menu to use the stuff up. I’ve got news, the only way to remember anything is to go shopping when you’re hungry.

I indulge. 

So realistic Friday has become Saturday & I am tingling with the thought of going to the flea market on Tuttle again. Must be Fall!! The yellow flags snap in the hot breeze, sun hats & ball caps are out, I have polished my new & lovely dark glasses & the lemonade stand is grinding away somewhere in the afternoon. Time to examine tiny treasure, thimbles, stem arms with minute hinges. O Lord, the bargains groaning on the tables! And there’s a flea happening over by work, too, at a church which could be New Old Treasure gleaned from whatever underground stasis room passes for a basement here. I might find … wait for it … an alligator head! 

I ended the PO box yesterday. I guess I’m moved in. Home alone as roomie away in Ft. Myers bringing back the first mattress she ever truly loved, best in the entire known universe over which she has lusted over since spending the night at her friend’s home years agone. Not sure where the old one is going but perhaps there’s a corner at some flea market unfilled. 

V., her office mate, don’t get me started – one of those “I love V. BUT” is how anything about V. starts, yeh? runs a floating storage unit, like some riverboat casino, you never know what you’ll find it it but guarandamteed if it’s supposed to be “right as you open the door” it will be in the darker recesses of the unit rubbing the Arkansas border, with four empty boxes, one birdcage, two litter pans & a baby gate slung in since the last time “up front” was a euphemism for accessible.

The Ninja. Didn’t this start with a Ninja? Why name a cooking appliance after a cult of disreputable assassins? The Ninja is stored in the back of the bottom cabinet now. The 16 nesting bowls (one of which is used for vegan potato salad twice a year) are stacked off to one side, the knife holder is carefully facing away from the opening… the 47 plastic containers saved from every meal out since plastic became a viable takehome medium, are trash-bagged, well, recycle bagged. She made the (mistake?) statement “we’ll never use all those, might as well get rid of them” in my hearing. My radar heard “incoming!” & I found the single paper bag in the kitchen & filled it immediately with these. There is never enough Tupperware unless suddenly it is in a box of overflow for V’s storage unit. 

No wonder the American world is awash.

Ah well. Let’s keep rowing. I need to find room for the two bottles of soy & 3 cans of beans on my side of the cabinet. The day is always dangerous that begins with knocking the coffee filter off your cup at the edge between counters where all can run calmly down to unreached depths. Might be a basement down there? I think I heard an alligator gnawing coffee grounds. 

love,

c

2

The Fringe Element of Genius

Genius is the real Breakaway Civilization. It’s not the place where the rubber meets the road, it’s the place where the tires leave it, fold up under the vehicle and you hear that Star Trek sound track as this fades into a streak of meteor. I never liked that piece of music. I remember once reading how someone thought “boldly go” was the name of the destination streaked to. I didn’t understand how such a cool show could have such a poor scant of music as a theme.

I digress.

Genius is the point of the lever where the world turns, tips, tilts. It is a scream in the psyche as an idea takes off or lands in the same nanosecond. It’s where nothing really matters besides being a human at the top of your game & realizing everyone else really IS following behind, dragging little red wheely suitcases. It’s an old golf joke – “hit the ball, drag Charlie.” And the sound track behind you is the one you associate with the monster coming closer, the limp-gimp of a simpering squeaky wheel sounding the inevitable.

I am ready for change. It comes upon me suddenly, does change. It takes a breath that won’t release & chokes off the chance for future air. It tunnels vision, limits thinking until let go. It demands every scintilla of attention in an arc of trajectory that sucks the body after – grabbing mind & heart first. The rest must somehow catch up, blurring into elasticity, some cartoon of impossible Gumby proportions. It’s unexpected (to say the least). It sometimes never does reunite into a single being & part of me is left behind forever, a note hanging, an echo from a room away. The suspense is excrutiating. The relief of the end goal divine.

I am finished with this job. It served me for a year. I helped it get on its feet, patted its little behind, tickled its curly scalp & now, with it barely standing, I realize I can take no more. It’s a job where they consciously reject change, deleting the better they can do to serve in favor for what has already proven trite. It scales down thinking & smashes any attempts to improve with sure, strong strokes like pummeling bread dough.

I don’t have to fit any mold any more. I can wipe the webs from my face, I’ve made it through the darkling forest & into a clearing where nothing shows beyond the sky. This is the place where wings dance & possibility bubbles into its opposite number.

I will watch them shrink into a distance as they fight hard to maintain small rather than mainline growth. When I move into this grace where the limitless opens a side to the ship’s skin, I will walk through & claim my own wild ride, turning in that ticket of a year in seatbelts for one deep breath.

I will never exhale!

0

One By One

One by one, the rituals remove

My good deeds countered by my faults

She cannot read my writing, this old friend

To whom I wrote each week.

“Will you type them?” she asked

Innocently

Not knowing that my fingers on a

Keyboard do not say the same words

As wrapped around a pen.

Not knowing I choose not to do much

Personal stuff at work

Where everything personal becomes not so.

I miss the tiny steadiness

Of reaching for a pad

Of buying stale cards at thrift stores

Of watching the words emerge in ink.

Thus both lose.

I can no longer write her,

She can no longer receive

My epistles about funny stuff:

Finding the plastic alligator head in the pool,

Getting my foot stuck in a trash can like in the old cartoons.

Soon she will say why don’t you write me? Are you okay?

What shall I say?

Bringing It On Home

Few know how I pull apart my life

Like making jerky, the strips start lean & tender

Stringy with juices, tasty on the tongue.

Sometimes I examine them twirled on a fork before ingestion

Sometimes I just cram them into an open maw

To chew for the texture,

Devouring my life for the nourishment

Derived from death.

As if.

Long Haul Covid

Executioners – Death By a Thousand Cuts

I can write now, of food, having achieved the space

Where taste is gone, where smell is a quick pat to the memory only.

I spoon the soup

Knowing it needs salt but why bother? I cannot enjoy it,

Only feel the spice upon the outer edges of my tongue.

Tho I crave just that feeling, that rapid glance of

Rounded taste. So soon removed.

These round-heeled bastards

Who have stood over a witchy brew

Of hate & harm & laid it upon my (no more) senses,

Now deprived two of five or maybe six.

Me, who has none to talk to

Except pieces of paper,

Except computer screens,

A.I. faithful to the last

Like some I Robot, some Elysium “Humans need help!”

I weep, eyes filling so I close them as fingers know their way

These keys true in place, holding still

For constant batter, for endless barter

My thoughts lifted into blue light

Also harming me, but what else is there?

Without these I may not exist beyond life.

Nor will I after too much time.

But Freddie sang it best:

“Who wants to live forever?”

Isn’t one Eternity of dying enough?

Bravely Do I Face Each Day

Pulling the world behind me,

A mule of effort & bray

Harnessed into the money straps

Living a life where I claim my due on Saturday

A life of stolen glimpses of a sunrise here,

A star inside a flower there.

My eyes do not so much as see

As look beyond – there must be a beyond

Or I am well & truly lost.

That this is illusion I do not doubt

That this is only a frequency I found on an old radio

A melody of sonnet & sound dislocated from source…

An afterthought from the mind of solace…

I live & do not die today,

Balanced at an edge I do not well perceive,

The Fool dancing the abyss along the arroyo

Defining gravity.

Falling away into Time.

What’s In A Poem?

Another poem breathes out, like a sigh of words

That do not rhyme

“Don’t poems rhyme?” ask outsiders.

No, Virginia, or at least mine do not,

Scraped as they are from the raw undersides

Of a lonely life

Made livable by no expectations of more.

The water wings of verbal misbehavior

In a pool of living light

Holding me in suspense

Will anyone hear? Will anyone see?

And, saved for last,

Will it ever matter?

I have crossed the tracks of positive thought

To existential angst

This 3 a.m. of a potential new day.

Why did I ever peel off from God

To come here, of all places?

Where the only realization is unreality?

Why would I leave rational thought

For the insanity of trading death for life

To eat & live &  breathe?

Movement powered by the lost & found, by sea wrack

Seeming so useless, yet sustaining in its way.

Life For The Living

My appetites stay with me

All that’s left

Now there is no life, no best friend, nothing

But a Universe of spirit to bathe in

With a body incapable of perceiving this element.

Is it to the good I continue on?

I would not know,

My nose pressed to the window of eternity

As though I will dine at table there.

The machinery remembers me

I have no doubt my car still feels my foot feathering the brake,

Mashing the gas, no matter  who owns her now.

I have left poems in unlikely places

On circuits of memory which knew my bank balance,

My destinations, my ideas & my names.

No initials carved into wounded trees

Once thought to live forever,

No tinted-rose lenses

No petals strewn on aisles nor elbows fitted into mine.

I have learned not to be lonely, a lesson unsought indeed.

Too much attention to the singular

Teaches separation so well it’s no longer felt

The proprioceptors dulled to route & routine

I arrive through neither fault nor favor

But a foolhardy trust

In a system I cannot even prove to exist.

I live & move & have my being

Like a fish, being asked, “How’s the water?”

I have no answers anymore

Even questions are dull, cutting no edges

Drawing no eyes.

I tire of energy fields

Wanting to power down

To rust in a field

Open to the sky.

Reprise

It’s the death of a thousand cuts

The littlest wounds bleeding

I do not notice seepage

Only its results

And these only in the long hours

Awaiting second sleep’s

Uneasy dreams.

I cannot lay my choices off on others anymore

But sit with them scattered all around me

The winds of salted time

Peering under them, lifting edges

To find other sides.

A 52 Pickup of a life

Having played every card.

The End

0

Lesson 4: A Course In Miracles

Often cartoons have shown me a perspective so different it becomes a real moral lesson, like a famous Fable or best-seller flashing into the world, capturing fancy & highlighting a twist which drags some illogic out of the shadows. In doing so, it gently illuminates a belief system for for what it is & what it seems to be, stripping away falseness & opening the higher-mind’s eye for a moment. In that moment, we bring about some change of heart – enlightenment – & are changed in ways we forget almost right away. Or ways where that change becomes a change of direction completely, taking us to a new destination.
This is what humor does for me. It redirects thought. Rather like a good drug.

I have been advised by our teacher to study the Course in Miracles more intensively – to take it seriously as a serious study. 
For me, the Course makes a cartoon of my life! It starts with saying thoughts are meaningless, neither good nor bad since they are not reality. If we’re off (away from Heaven) playing (making unreality seem real) & so intent upon the game we ignore the gentle calls of Heaven to “Come home! Dinner! (true nourishment for this sliver of soul webbed in a bodysuit)” Often we starve or arrive at a place so famished we take whatever is offered – be it flesh, fowl or a fugue state in the weakness of hunger – as the idea this is what our Mother/Father wants for us. Of course it’s not true…but our pretense is SO real, so intense, so void of course. Then going Home is frightening, fitting this tininess into a corner of the firmament where it will seemingly become lost. 

Even though we are a drop in that ocean so talked about & we see individuality as the be-all, becoming again the Ocean is losing a self that we cherish, thinking it’s the only one we will ever have. 

The human mind (an oxymoron?) mostly reflects upon what “is” but poorly shadows the reflection. Even though we achieve great things, the only call is to love enough to share ourselves with everyone/everything/every.

We motor along a highway admiring the sights, taking in the World’s Biggest Ball of String, when the destination lies straight on. We meander & take a winding path back to Source because it entertains, because we have been convinced politics or habit, vice or volunteerism are all valid realities in which to settle awhile & enjoy life.

To a point this is what we are here to do. In this doing, we unwind that Biggest Ball of String to individual strands of color & depth so much involved in this we miss that we are knitting together Creation.

I believe soon will come a time when we reach the center of Great Undoing. We will hear the echo of a tiny laugh, almost a giggle. We will lift a hand & exit this universe for the glory of creation spinning it forth. We will grow from frenetic to kinetic, from possibility to pulsation, an emanation of Love so powerful it cannot help but make more of itself to love.

May it be So!

0

LETTER TO A PRISONER OF WAR

I want to visit a prisoner of a relationship of war

A victim & perpetrator in a crime of passion

For which he suffers incarceration:

A young man who never integrated his freedom

Who took blame by the elbow & made it a confidant

So now he lives with it (if his sentence truths out)

For ten years more.

Who made his prison?

Does he know he has the tools to escape?

Being a handyman, he knows tools…

Oh, he tried. I saw him trying. I heard his “no”

Echoing in her matrix of sensuous “yes!”

Who took his body on that wild

Nightmare of a ride through rage & pain

Of hurt & ill-wishing

Of all the darkness of a 2 a.m. vendetta?

What occupied his mind as he ran

From the scene

Shirtless, reeling with fever?

Did he try to think himself back to innocence

To that hour before vengeance overtook his mind

Overpowering his soul?

How could he know in that moment of lighting

The match he used for the pleasure of tobacco

To a world of merciless man-made justice?

Who is to say he should not pay, this youth

Made of abusive put downs & unmanned

By his own son’s cautious return into his life?

He, who will know little now of light

Bored beyond numb, attacked on all sides

Caught in unending scream, this

Boy-man snared by untrue love

By masquerade of truth

By the Jezebel of his own choosing?

And what of she … but I cannot admit her yet

Only knowing part of her soul squeals as only a

Trapped woman can.

I have no mercy upon her now, no cooling

Forgiveness for her unending miserliness

In wishing him such as he suffered at her hands.

I give this to Mercy with no words of intercession,

Only the mute knowledge of a mother

Wanting only to spare this son

His punishment.

I give this now, knowing full well the law will

Extract many pounds of flesh

Until it reaches bones & gnaws these to salt.

All for an “I’ll show her!”

He’s foresworn an entire lifetime

He might have spent in living

Had he spent a moment in thought.

I cannot end this here

Yet there are no more words to say.

Carol (for Brandon) 9/20/23

4

The Recovering Psychedelic

Just when I thought events could not become more tangled at work – which is my main proving ground at this time of my life – they rewrap the Maypole with a swoop. After all, I did not think I’d be working at this age. Just days shy of the third-quarter-century mark, I thought I’d be reclining with a large-print book in a hammock, sipping chilled lemonade. I seem to be left with a bowl of lemons instead.

So much of the story I was told is so patently untrue! No wonder I reject nonfiction, favoring the flavors of myth. The tenets of truth have snaked back upon themselves. I am looped in lost causes: the world is not what it was meant to be & nothing like I am supposed to be convinced it is. At this time, I should be well-marinated in fear of all kinds. In truth, I’ve adopted a kind of “Well, it is enough to be what it is.” I swing the spotlight of focus to fall upon the study of love instead.

But love’s a hard sell today. Love’s the used car salesman with the toothy smile, the circus barker shouting wonders to be seen just inside this tent right here, Little Lady, the priest slicing a tomahawk hand to separate body & soul, ostensibly in blessing. Love, like truth, has become unrecognizable except in parody & mushy sentiment. Yes, my eyes still prick with tears at photos of kittens. But love is more the tears in reaction when the sun rises over an edge to the East, huge, quivering, brilliant, scintillant. One sunrise is so much more than my entire life will ever be, yeh?

I do not know if these words will capture fame, but they have encompassed my fate. I wonder who understands them. I get few comments & faint praise. Neither of these decides me in any other direction other than to continue on with them. I am building my own structure in my own time with my own hands, my own materials. The wind whistles through; pages flip & tear; bytes devour meaning.

I have come to understand there is no insurance policy for Stupid, no shield for accusations of others telling me I’m less than I am. I understand their need perhaps better than many when I get their rightness bears them up more strongly than mine lifts me. But I have withered from a shining mare on the hillside, satin & thin-skinned, to a burro (or an ass) with a wrinkled muzzle sprouting strong black hairs.

I’ve done my share of walking in circles. I’ve borne the curses of others & found self unresentful, if stung. I am quick to educate but students do not always care for the diploma I confer.

In the long run, my truth means more to me than that of others. Is this not the way it is supposed to be? I have changed from inattention, unconcern, bullish insistence & sheer perversity to a half-paid attention with overtones of belief bobbing about. I know my truth; it’s only yours I doubtfully accept.

A friend likened me recently to a dragon & I have one as my spirit totem, so this is not a totally fabricated tale. Dragons are aloof, she said – I thought it was sheer neglect of humans. I don’t know anyone like me & I hardly “know myself” in the classical sense of the admonition.

For me, it has not been about that although it’s bruited as the Meaning of Life. Mine is the role of observer, not the participant, in most encounters. If these point up where others “went wrong,” this is my marvel, not my blame, my preference, not my alignment. Because in the end of my time, when I roll out of that swaddling cloth & tip the lemons to the ground, I will find myself at a beginning once more.

Let me in, God, I will say. Could You just let me in?

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