A Poem of Mine

Scared as I am, I'm going to share a poem I wrote at the beginning of last summer. The germ of "Behind the Plots" began years back when driving on Pinelawn Road -- a strip comprised of cemeteries, florists, monument stores, and vacant grassy lots.

Behind the Plots

This land is prime land,

For condominiums.

So many hopefuls could start here -

Behind the plots.

If you could just tell people to stop dying,

To stop doing what you’re doing,

A developer could take that healthy,

Fertilized, treated lawn and

Cut it up, lay the foundation and

Build some real nice starter homes.

They’d have to face the wrong direction,

Of course,

If you didn’t want to see the headstones

While you graciously acquired dish-pan hands.

For a small price reduction it might be worth it.

So what if your backyard

Was supposed to be a graveyard

And your child plays where others should rest?

This is your start

And you worked so hard to have him

And space is so limited

On this beautiful island.

That open-armed statue was something.

Virgin Mary waiting to receive those

Victims of carcinogens,

Who thought the green grass would make

A suitable resting place.

They’d feel at home under the fake green grass that brought them there.

Inception: Am I Dreaming Right Now?

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats, The Cloths of Heaven

Without divulging anything about the movie Inception, other than the fact that it deals with the slippage between dreams and reality, I need to tell you how my life, in one instance, became curiously akin to the film.

On Monday morning, after I pressed the snooze button for the second time, I fell into a deep, lucid dream, which is not at all unusual for me. In this dream, I was in my parents' basement digging through a box for a stuffed animal my grandfather bought me over twenty years ago. In reality, I'd been thinking about my grandfather a lot lately, and I'd been meaning to search for the stuffed animal I was seeking in this dream. As I got deeper into the box, memories and keepsakes were flying over my head until I reached the bottom and pulled out the bear as though it was victim to a rip-tide. Then I woke up.

I was sad to be awake and far from this childhood treasure again, but the moment of contact filled my heart with light.

Last night, after dinner with my parents, I asked my mom if she knew of a box of my belongings in the basement. She said no, but I went to look for it anyway. I felt a pull towards a corner of the basement I'd been in plenty of times, then I lifted a cushion, and found a box that said "Helen" on it. I don't remember filling, moving, or seeing this box before, but I knew it was mine due to the dots I'd drawn on the serifs in my name.

Furiously, I dug through the mystery box, handing this to my mom and that to Danny and, at the bottom, I found the bear I touched in my dreams. A miracle of the subconscious kind.

Now I know how Heidi Montag's mother feels...

(Pre-Ethan)


"We all have red hair on the inside." - Sherman Alexie @ a reading of his latest work War Dances

Last night I was sprawled out on the couch with my boyfriend and our dog Rita, who got a haircut last Friday. A bad haircut. Maybe I wasn't clear with Ethan the groomer, or maybe he just did whatever he wanted. Hair dressers are funny like that - sometimes they listen, sometimes they black out when you say you only want a trim. It's possible that hair dressers of canines and felines are also wired for selective hearing.

Nonetheless, when we picked Rita up, I almost cried. I certainly cringed, but I almost wept when I saw her shaved butt-cheeks and face. The mohawk we requested looked shitty too. Rita had been transformed into a Poodle-Bat hybrid. A Batoodle.

I felt differently about Rita and I was ashamed. As the weekend progressed, Rita seemed a little withdrawn and I wondered if my unfavorable reaction to her had something to do with it. Then, last night, something came to me when I was petting her and I yelled, "Now I know how Heidi Montag's mother feels!"

When your human or fur-child goes through a dramatic physical change, it feels like part of them is lost - it's not the same thing you've been loving for however long. Conversely, the changed party acts strangely. Think about it. Our personalities form in tow with our physical appearance and must change if we go through some outward transformation. I'd certainly be more bitchy tomorrow if I grew some D's tonight.

Even though Heidi's mom smells like a famewhore, I feel her pain - though mine will be gone in about two weeks.

(Post-Ethan)

A Baker's Dozen...

"Larry has been absorbed, as he wished, into that tumultuous conglomeration of humanity, distracted by so many conflicting interests, so lost in the world's confusion, so wishful of good, so cocksure on the outside, so diffident within, so kind, so hard, so trustful, and so cagey, so mean and so generous, which is the people of the United States." - from The Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maugham *

In number there were a baker's dozen of us. We were all women, but that's pretty much the only commonality. Some had just obtained their high school diplomas, while others were worldly businesswomen in their mid-50's. Some of their bellies hung out, some of their tits hung out, some were so covered-up that they looked like schoolmarms.

One came in late and made me cry.

Sue-Ellen** was escorted into the conference room thirty minutes late, claiming she had gotten lost on the way - valid, considering this was the first day on the job. When it was Sue-Ellen's turn to introduce herself, she burst out in tears - her partner died a little while back and she could not run the business alone. Confounding all this was her mother's passing a few months ago. Sue-Ellen's tears became my tears and I took the pooled water away from my eyes with bare hands. Telepathy, or some sort of connection, if you will. Another woman, one of the schoolmarm variety, said, "We all have mothers and we understand why you're crying." I loved that. That was cool.

Sue-Ellen could not read the script we were given and I attributed her poor performance to sadness and I wanted her to make it to day two. I would give her a chance.

I read this way and that way for this person and that person, knowing that I'd have to sound like I could turn a profit. I passed. I made it to day two.

Sue-Ellen did not; she got the boot for causing the women on either side of her to become dizzy from inhaling the alcohol which seeped from her mouth and pores.

*Thanks to Maeve for recommending the past two novels I have written about :)

**Names have been changed to protect the identity of persons depicted in this narrative. It's so widely-read that I fear for her well-being.

The Beginning...

"That's the trouble with telepathy, you know. Most of the time the lines are down." -Jane Smiley

When I read this line in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres, a modern retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear, I thought that somewhere out there, a telepathic line might be connecting me to the author. The line ricocheted from the back of my throat to the top of my head and from ear to ear. I was prompted, then, to reach into my nightstand and extract a notebook that holds scores of quotations from the pens of best-selling authors, folk musicians, canonical writers, and even me. This notebook is like a jewelry box containing precious heirlooms and I revisit it sporadically, especially in moments of inspiration, weakness, or transition.

Today is one of the latter days.

Tomorrow, at 9a.m., I will begin what may be a new chapter in my life - I am going to try my hand at publishing - a seemingly related field. For now, it looks like a sales position, but, as I understand it, there is room for growth and right now I'd like nothing more than to grow.

Skepticism is always the result, and sometimes the cause, of these moments of flux. Have I not been receptive to those around me? Has my telepathic line been out of order because of my self-doubt and fear-of-the-future? Is this all a mistake? I wish people talked about this telepathy thing and said things like, "Are you ready to connect with me now?" and you'd sit or stand face to face and tune into one another. Then again, telepathy might just be another way of saying "truth" and losing your fear of telling it. It seems like decorum and protocol stand in between us.

Tomorrow, my lines won't be crossed and I'll see where they take me.