Friday, May 22, 2009

Dolphin skinned ducks

I just rose from a dream. My head is still thick with a dispute with my landlord, who in real life is a difficult friend. I was a student and we had a quarter to quarter lease, I was having trouble coming up with my rent for the quarter and explained to him that by the end of the week he would be paid. I went out with friends and returned after a few hours to find that my room looked completely different, devoid of signs I'd ever lived there and was rented to someone else. I had come in out of a downpour and headed straight there to remove my drenched clothes, the new tenant had to lend me somethings to put on before I could go downstairs to confront him.

He had a flat beneath us, the wooden stairs that led from my room ended in a small space which was enclosed by a wall 5 feet in front of me, to the right a passage with a frosted glass paned window looking out onto the street, and to the left was his door. As I came to the end of the staircase I saw him sitting beneath the window on a nest of rugs and pillows with my longtime friend, who was apparently now dating him and had helped him to get rid of my stuff. I thought of my friend "Oh it's just like you to be that opportunistic" but instead addressed him.
"Where is my stuff?!" "How can you do that? Did you throw them away?"
He hesitated just to be difficult, then said slowly uninterested in my pique, "Where is my rent? You promised me I would have it on Tuesday"
"I told you you'd have it this week, how can you do something like that without letting me know?" "I'm not paying you now! Clearly I can't pay you rent for someplace I can't live. Please use my deposit, take what I owe you up to today and let me have the rest back."
"Fine." he said.
I turned to my friend who'd found the walls and whatever activity she should see on the street through the frosted panes riveting and said "You know that's not right, how could you let him do this?"

The dream is a little muddled after that, I learned where my stuff was but could not access it, I tried to steal towels from him to make up for the money he was holding for me, and followed him around to try and steal my money from his wallet. An old family friend, a man I often wished had been my dad came to speak with him about giving me my money back. Our apartment was adjoining a mall, and as we crossed the pathway to the mall to look for him we end up going in circles which lead us to a deeply sloped canal of moss green water that eased silkily between the walls and disappeared under a square tunnel.

There was a competition of two teams sliding down the canal, and we jumped in on the team against him. I slide down a narrowing lip that emerges from the right wall of the canal. I am afraid I might crash into the wall, but I am ok as the lip narrows to deposit me into the larger body of water, then reunites with the wall. We emerge from the canal on the street in front of our building. We have not found him, and somehow I am alone again. I feel as though I have found something of value of his to hold on to and now he is willing to negotiate.

He says, "Ok. You can have your money, how much do you think you should get back. I said "You'd said $40", I was optimistic though I thought he might only owe me $20. He looked at me as though he knew something I didn't. "Add the days of the quarter that have passed and let me know if I really owe you $40." I do the math and realise he owes me nothing.

We were sitting on the stoop capitulating and we looked up to see a glistening flock of mammoth ducks. Someone remarked "it looks like they just came out of the water". Hundreds of feet into the sky, they were featherless with thick skin drawn tight like a dolphins and so large we could see the coat of water that shimmered on their gun metal grey skin. As they powered in flight above us, we could feel feel the weight of them shift the air, and see the compacted muscles flex beneath heir glistening skin. Their back ends starting behind their wings were formed by whorls of skin folding around and around like a danish to form the shape of a turtles head. Their flight seemed to be held back by the brilliance of the sky, and looking up, the whole thing seemed framed in slow motion.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Pro Life V Pro Choice

In case you underestimated just how much thought I've given the pro-life/pro-choice argument, you ought to know when I got pregnant at 19 I dipped pro-choice real quick. Based on a loose observation of my friends, it seems 3 out of 5 of us have. For some of us it happened with our boyfriends, for some of us it was a result of rape but none of us is "that girl" everyone thinks is the one that has abortions. We are all middle class girls with solid backgrounds and good reputations who were not provided the right tools to prevent this happening.
If you were a friend, or have ever asked, this is something you're likely to know about me, because one of the bones upon which my life is framed is the idea that if I can do it then I ought to be able to talk about it.

When I decided to have an abortion I was numb to the repercussions, and I mistook that for a certainty that some women suffer, but I HAD to do it so I would be ok. Before I would ever talk to a woman considering an abortion about the agony of giving up your child, I would tell her "Listen to me now, if you're allowing the idea that you wont react like other women to influence your decision, don't. This thing hurts like a motherfucker, for some of us it's before, others right when we walk out of that office, and others don't get that broadside till 50 years after the fact. Know this shit hurts like a motherfucker and it will turn your life upside down and drain you off all the substance you are made of and it won't be ok. Not for a long time.

The years after my abortion were a dark period when my dreams were overrun with blood. I floated just under the surface of life unable to look myself in the eye or think about what I'd done without recoiling in shame. My days ran together as litanies of "I'm sorry", and I was frozen by my inability to undo this terrible thing I'd done. I wouldnt allow myself to grieve - I didn't deserve it, and there were too many times I had to be rescued from that battle, pressed into exhausted tears in dirty bathroom stalls all over the city.

It was a dark time when the agony of my choice was pressing the life from me, and if I could have died from the refusal to live, I would have.

One morning as I sat on my third floor balcony looking at another day moving purposefully by me, I recognized I was a cop out. I was sitting on my balcony weeping about what a terrible person as was, refusing to move forward while people everywhere were pulling themselves away from unspeakable tragedies. I was a pussy looking for any excuse to stop living and my child deserved a better fate than a stolen life carrying the blame for my failure to live. I could end my life, or choose to live it in honour of the choice I'd made. I realised that life was about making mistakes, and the important lessons were to be found in how you moved on from them. I had not failed at life because I had an abortion, I had failed at life because I allowed that to make me stop living, and that epiphany shamed me into accepting responsibility for my life.

If I were faced with a woman who's had an abortion I would tell her "It gets better". You never forget, and perhaps you shouldn't. I cannot forget, I will not. I carry my child every day with me in my secret places, and I live to honour the life that had to be sacrificed in order for me to find my way through mine. And fuck it... every choice, every lesson was bought at a high price so it has to be worth it.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

the colour of my dream

This morning I dreamt I had a little boy. A son with copper skin and curly hair whose velvet baby skin felt right against mine.

My story starts among the rumpled white sheets of the bed of my boyfriend who is an ex in waking life - but I am maybe 23 in that dream, still past the time he and I were together. We are lying in his twin bed which is tucked into a 90° angle of the room facing a window. The sun pours across our idle conversation and unrushed intermittent make out sessions when suddenly a flood of memory comes to me. I had been pregnant. "Do you remember me being pregnant?" I ask him. "Did we have a baby?" "Suddenly I am sure sure I was pregnant, but where is my baby?"

Sitting on the out side of the bed, the white wall against my back him against my left side and the sheet resting around my legs, I search my memory and feel a trauma that blocks the release of any details beyond a baby bump noone knew to look for because I hadn't told; being in a yard when my labour pains started. Not knowing what was wrong but trying to get away from my family before an investigation revealed my condition Being asked "What's wrong?" Then "Oh my God she's pregnant!" Then nothing. No story I must have told or the decisions that had been made.

The dream segues to a beach. I am standing in front of a roughly constructed wooden stall that sells beads laid out on a counter, hanging from hooks, and from lengths of cord strung end to end in every available space, about 100 yards to my left I can see the deserted beach. The vendor is rastafarian, his locks are coiled around his head, his dark skin, smooth and shiny from the heat makes me think of an eggplant. He smiles at me from where he is leaning with his arms and legs crossed in the far right corner of the stall, but says nothing as I browse his selection. An SUV pulls up behind me parallel to the stall. I turn to see it is driven by my best friend from high school and inside is her daughter and a little boy who reaches for me and calls me mummy. "This is your son" she says as I reach for him. As soon as he is held against me I am drenched in the certainty he is mine. But where was he all this time? Who is his father? Who knows what happened to me?

I am wearing three strands of beads around my neck that hang almost to my navel and he loves them, my best friend says "He loves beads". He calls them something unusual but fitting (I can't remember.. maybe stacks), so I take him back to the bead stall because I want to make him happy. He looks like me and my family and the bead man says "that's a beautiful baby, is he your son?"

All the beaded jewelery is laid out or hung unclasped, so he doesn't understand that worn a lot of them are shorter than they appear. I shower his cheeks and the top of his curly head with kisses and he scans the beads and selects a short multi stranded women's necklace made of delicate pink translucent beads, I pick it up between kisses and explain while I clasp it "Look sweetie this is not the type you like, it's too short". I also can't afford the $32 it costs so I scan the selection for something he might like better that's also in my price range. Hugging him against my right hip I reach for a necklace of bamboo beads that's hanging on a cord strung from end to end of the stall and ask him... don't you like these much better?

I can't remember if he does, but I walk towards the water with him, and lying beneath us in the sand us are two oversized necklaces with beads as large as my head placed about a foot apart, one coral coloured with each divided by a smaller gold bead, I point to the other made of irregularly shaped jade hued beads and say "See don't you prefer these?"

In the distance I see a black shape gliding on the water, perpendicular to my gaze, it looks like shadow so I raise my gaze to what looks like an oversized black bird large enough to be a small plane flying low to the water. The black material flapping behind it reminds me of the plastic I used to use for making kites as a child. The shape hurtles towards the beach, the wind pulls back the black material to reveal a blue van which lands on its wheels revs a hard left, splashing the waterline down the beach.

I am back in bed with my boyfriend who is trying to make love, he is showering my with kisses that have no effect. I am still on the outside of the bed and he moves to stand facing me so his dick is pointing at my face, then smiles expectantly. "No, I'm sorry, I can't do that" he seems puzzled but gets back into bed and reassures me "You don't have to, it's ok"

He starts to deliver more kisses that have no effect and suddenly I am crying "Do you know what happened to my baby?" "How can I find him?" I look forward, to a life marked by the longing I feel sitting in this bed and repeat "I need to find him. I have to, I cannot live without him". "Where is my son?"

Monday, May 11, 2009

crash of the elements.

I dreamt this morning that I was dragon boat racing on the ocean. The air was thick with heat and the sun was the kind of blinding that presses your eyes into a squint. Each time the drummer hit, I could see the sound flash outward and shatter the light into millions of diamond shards that scattered to glint across the water on either side of her.

How can I tell of the synchronicity and crash - all twenty paddles smoothly arcing forward in anticipation of the hit, then slicing into the water to send up a spray of trapped light that mingled with the fractured light.

That dream = magic. Mmmm.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Lemme just lay some framework

Healthy relationships are a defense mechanism. Most of us would be fine living loosely inside our interactions with people, but our tendency to fuck up necessitates some borders to protect us from each other.

We exist on different notches on this spectrum of "healthy" in our relationships, some of us allow all people to be very shitty to us, some of us allow some people to be very shitty to us, and others allow a little shittiness from a lot of people, because healthy notwithstanding we all have to put up with some degree of shit since we really can't always be ramrod. We can't. - anyone who can is also probably alone.

I suspect there are people who think I have an unhealthy relationship with the older of my two sisters T because I would spend every day of the week with her and complain that I miss her when we're apart too long, or go out of my way to make her happy. See the thing is, I accept some degree of bad behaviour from certain people, but membah mi tell yuh, everytime you fuck up yuh name mawk innah di book and that shit has a limit. Except with my sister, all the shitty you don't get to be with me is resting on a platter that girl gets to keep because I trust her, and I am gonna love her no matter what she does. And I don't care what you say about that. She's the one person I am completely dedicated to and yuh cyaa talk to mi bout dat so don't even try. I. Will. Effin. Cut. You. If. You. So. Much. As. Look. At. Her. Sideways. Much less try an seh sup'm.

The good news is, she is great to me. She's the most amazing big sister and everyday I'm so amazed to have been gifted her. Because we trust each other our relationship is that one place forgiving and being forgiven any fuck up is automatic. It's crushing for me to consider disappointing her, but despite all my apprehensions I'm always surprised to find she she loves me no matter what stupid shit I've done this time. She doesn't judge me for being needy, or unfair or hate me for being mean. She's as much as said she doesn't understand me, but doesn't give a shit about my oddities cause she loves her some little sis.

People have said our attachment to each other is cloying, but i'm telling you, they just don't get it. We had a very bitter relationship up until my college years (the first ones), and it has been a long hard struggle to get to where we are now, and we're making up for all that lost time.

In my very roundabout way I'm trying to say my sister is my safe space in this world, regardless of the messups and hard truths I am always certain there is one place I'm ok when it comes down to being loved, and I will do whatever it takes to give her that same certainty... cause oh man I love me some big sis.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Story come to bump.

I had this friend once, well really this model I met on the set of a music video exchanged info with and spent hours talking to for months - maybe years even - after (it too long ago and too long since we've fallen out of touch to remember) . Anyhow, she was an amazingly talented writer - usually the type I go for - and she turned me on to Bright Eyes.

Her lead up to them included the statement " I love Conor Oberst, I think we're soulmates and I'm going to find him". This was for me very odd, because I thought Jamaican girls were entirely too self possessed to make statements like that. Anyway, *story come to bump, because for weeks The Smiths have been on loop in my head, slicing into a mango just now I realised I kept repeating to myself "I didn't realize, you wrote poetry, I didn't realize you wrote such bloody awful poetry".

I'm beginning to think that this endless loop of The Smiths means something... but what? Why Morrissey have you rented space in my brain to erect a billboard I CANNOT decipher. Stop it. If you've got a message for me can't you come into world of normal and tell me like a regular person would. Plus.. you're freaking me out. Seeing how I talk to dead people and all.

*I'm not sure how to translate that... something along the lines of the story has come to a head.

More of same

I have given a fair amount of thought to the social conventions to which I find myself subject. Primarily that love and trust are such unsafe actions that we are forced to invest our emotions/vocabulary in words like "moved" and "inspiration", when what we really mean are things like "I like what I see and I would like to look at the pieces you are made of".

I realise from my own experiences of being burnt that it is necessary to guard ourselves in this coded language, but it makes me feel so cheated of the time I spend tempering the headlong rush into discovering whether I like someone/thing or not, or puzzling how to feed my curiousities without misleading anyone into thinking I care more than I do, because even more distressing than this preoccupation with self-preservation is an underlying dedication to the ego that disgusts me into becoming a recluse.

Humility has gone the way of the dinosaurs people; we have fallen to such a preoccupation with self that we think any action directed towards us has no room for motivation that has nothing to do with us. I enjoy interactions with people , but really I don't give much of a rats ass about YOU specifically (in a forest for the trees sort of way), so if you're going to sour the whole thing by blowing my attentions out of proportion I'd rather not bother.

Without putting too much thought into the possible ironies of this post, I suppose my pique may be an example of a raging ego. Unfortunately for us both, at the end of the day, we will find that everything we've done was purposeful, but we spent too much of our time on lessons that should have been easily learned - and for me perhaps that means I should be more forgiving of people who have an overblown sense of importance, but it's difficult, because battling people's ego when I could already have moved on to the next thing leaves a most sour taste in my mouth.

Disclaimer: this post is not directed at any one/incident in particular.
actually, come to think of it, the post is directed at all the casual acquaintances who piss me the hell of by thinking they're that important.

this one time at...

In my blog surfing someplace I remember seeing a 42/365 challenge - don't quote me on that. What the challenge entails is everyday for 365 days using the number of words that correlates to your birthday (the author was 42) to describe someone who has affected your life.

I'm not up to the challenge of blogging everyday for a year. A. whole. year. As it is I can barely hold down once per week.

All that blah blah notwithstanding it made me think of my friend Shani. We girlfriends were hanging out one weekend at her apartment when I snuck away to sit and sob alone in her darkened kitchen. She heard me - how could she not, as full of drama as I was then - and came in to find out what was wrong. After my half choked half wailed outpouring about my hellacious breakup she placed her red dixie cup on the counter in front of me and said " Pour all your sadness in this cup and then we'll throw it away". It was of course completely wasted on me, because *ah dat deh time mi buss out eenah waa peice ah cow bawlin an seh "All my sadness couldn't hold in this cup" and throwing my arms out to indicate her open living space (kitchen, dining etc) "All my sadness can't even hold in this room".

We were still teeneagers at the time, so as any good teenaged girlfriend should, she also called him up and cussed him out for making me cry - even though the whole thing was mostly my fault. This was maybe 10 yrs ago and I still remember the sweetness. Oh Shani, you're just the best friend a girl could ever hope for.

*that just made my crying more dramatic, and I said