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Rasami’s Gold Leaves

She was a bit of an alchemist, sorcerous, witch, none the right word for a female being who can just with her wishes make magic. I turned up in her shop, a small shop, filled with light and lightness both. She stood behind the counter strewn with cut flowers holding tiny plant leaves between her fingers. Lightly she worked her way up the stem to the broad expansion of green, touching gently, purposely. She smiled at me, said she had been expecting me. A wave of coming home came over me. The crowd who had followed me squeezed into the space around me, behind me. The weight of expectations and neediness and want gathered behind me, pressed against the walls trying to be quiet but spilling words, and breath as their plump fleshy bodies filled the less spacious space. In the middle of this confederacy of dunces and bloated desperation wanting a piece of me I stood holding space, watching her with the leaves. The leaves turning to gold in her hands. The tips of the former green leaves gleamed in the light. Pure gold. She smiled and looking over my shoulder to the door behind me said “someone is here to see you”. I turned around and this small man with the sweetest face looked up at me. A familiar face but unfamiliar body, his ruddy complexion and reddish blond hair in curls he reminded me so much of someone I cared for once upon a time, or maybe he was the face of many. It confused me and comforted me at the same time. He emitted a light much like the light inside her shop. His head floated low, bodyless, his beautiful eyes looked up at me and he spoke so many things. He told me how perfect I was, how much he loved me, how beautiful I was, how kind, how gentle, how talented and smart and creative I was. How he couldn’t believe how someone like me existed. Until this moment I had unknowingly been guarded and I felt my heart open, my walls fall, I felt such relief. I struggled to memorize exactly what he was saying so I could remember later and he then told me that I didn’t need to do that. He was going to pack it all up and put it inside me, that that is where it lived and would always be with me. He changed before my eyes into a mechanical flattened shape that hovered in the air folding itself into a compact box that gleamed like the gold in her hands but with buttons and hinges and fasteners. After it’s last fold it rushed towards me and into the open doors of my heart. My body filled with warmth and I felt stronger than I ever had before. I felt loved. Supported. Important, valued. I felt too that I radiated that which filled me. Love.

I turned back to her, still at the counter, massaging leaves into gold and she said “There. It was always there. Now you won’t forget it.”

I turned again to look behind me and the obese crowd had disappeared. I breathed in the light, the floral sweetness, the clean bright sunlight air holding me.

She smiled as she continued to turn leaves into gold.

Ancient winds

In the heat of the summer afternoon I tiptoed through cactus and “over 25 documented prehistoric Indian sites, shimmying through canyons, over rocks and through washes with Jack ambling behind me. This was a not uncommon experience for me, exploring a rugged desert place previously inhabited by those who were here before us. But this felt different. Every step further from my camp, felt further from where I should be. I peered down kiva entries I was told earlier that I was welcome to explore, and normally would have descended the tourist approved ladder, but while looking down into that square hole this time, my heart screamed with a thick black tarry NO! Internal instinctual alarms rang loudly in my being NOT to do THAT. Later that night I laid in my tent, next to Jack. The moon was nearly full, the weather was hot and still. I fell asleep feeling unsettled. Nightmares of snakes and old voices sending warnings woke me. I was cold yet soaked in sweat. My tent rattled and swayed in gale force winds that showered the thin walls with the red earth. Sand that had found it’s way through open zippers covered my skin, my hair, and I felt something move on my forehead, on my arms..ants. Nearly one inch long ants walking confusedly on my skin, on Jacks face. I shook the ants off and Iaid there for awhile, never before feeling so strongly like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be. I swallowed my fear, thinking I was drawn to this place for a reason, there is something I am supposed to overcome, or learn, or evolve into. I trusted the winds coming down from the cliffs sweeping over and through my fragile home were spirits daring me to look deeper within myself and gather strength, or flee. I closed my eyes and listened.

#short

2am halle trot

I woke suddenly. It was late. Between 2 and 3am. About the time my neighbors usually come home from the comedy club and I listen to their little dogs feet frantically scrambling across the whole of the house below me, desperately trying to reach them, door slamming, toenails scratching, voices of love that are hard to hate.

But it wasn’t them.

I heard her pass my door. I did.

For sure it wasn’t them.

Down the hall. To the living room.

A heavy stepped, quick gaited trot to the living room. Her round brown body adding weight to the footsteps, and her nails clicking in a marked but different way than his. It was a distinct gait.

Are you sure it wasn’t him?

I laid there replaying, listening, waiting.

I heard him sigh. He’s in his bed, sleeping soundly next to me.

Is that really what I heard?

Maybe it was another animal, in through the dog door? Or worse, a person I misheard as my dead dog.

No. That was her. I know those footsteps.

It was her.

Trotting through my house at 2am, my Halle.

#shorts

we went a walking

Before the big storm we went a walking. Under the cover of darkness, past the time most walk quickly and uniformly with taut leashes on timed routes we walk freely, haphazardly, here and there. To the park, past the homeless camps battened down with tarps and carts, down cozy porch lit streets and around the school yard where we aren’t supposed to be. Sometimes running, sometimes pausing to look, or smell, or listen. Listen. It’s cold. It’s dark. It’s magical. The snowflakes fall around us, making our journey less anonymous this night. Seemingly intentional paw and boot prints mark our path with clarity, for a moment, until the snowflakes fill these voids too. His gallops lift my spirit and my occasional voice assures his. Moments of loneliness together fill us.

#classyjackaloper #shorts

being here now

Note: A lot of the time I am thinking forward, worrying, planning, hoping, dreaming, stressing. It’s exhausting and frightening and unfulfilling in nearly every way. For a few years now I’ve been meditating and trying consciously, actively, to just, be, in the moment. Just be present. More and more often now I find myself slip euphorically, deliciously, fully, into what can most closely be described as an altered state. This was one of those precious moments.

I stared into the sink. This is what it feels like right now I said to myself. The buzz of the walk-in buzzed next to me, the exhaust fan with the upside down switches hummed above me, she talking and laughing stirred the pots up front, on the burners blazing at full speed, clanking the metal paddle against the metal pot in a zig zagged hiss, and it smelled so, Strawberry. The stereo speakers spoke a mix picked by him today, hip hop with an occasional Mexican love ballad that he would translate for me later, and the sounds of the washed dishes I just finished clunked about in the warm blue water under my hands in the suspended stainless steel sink. All of it so comforting. This is now. I stared down into the sanitized water filled with tools and vessels and suddenly felt like I had X-ray vision straight from the comic books. This is what it feels like to see right through things I thought. This is what it feels like. This is past, present and future wrapped into one moment in a kitchen, on a street, in a city, in a state, in a country, on a continent, on a planet, in space, in time.

#thoughts shorts

A summer symphony

We entered that cool dark space in the brightest of the moments of the day, stepping trustingly into the blackness. The smell of old wet wood and languid waters shared a rhythm with the gentle knock, knock knocking of the leashed row boats against the slatted walkway and the lap lap lapping of the lake waters against the boat house walls. But wait, what is that tiny cymbal? It was a single rainbow feeding on tiny water walkers, curved lips breaking the surface in measured s shaped movements. It was the most peaceful of symphonies on that late summer day.

#shorts #summerstory happybirthdaytome

Pork chops & telemarkers

A short play about living a long life.

Setting: Johns bedroom. Dark. Blinds drawn. A hospital bed wedged between the big screen TV, the bankers desk, a small chair for the occasional visitor.

Characters:Wayne 72 yo white male. Just arrived from appointment with aortic surgeon, aortic surgeon who Wayne respects very much, enough to suggest to his daughter to try and contact him in hopes that maybe just maybe his single daughter will actually find a man.

John: 60 something yo mexican male, walking quad, well read, depressed but concerned friend, quirky beyond standard definition of quirky

(Preceding dialogue included 25 minutes of lecturing by my fathers best friend to my father about managing his diet and stress)

"You gotta change your fuckin' attitude about that thing."

(That thing being a pork chop, probably bought on sale)

"But I wouldn't want to eat just beans and beans and beans."

(John eats a lot of beans.)

15 more minutes of John lecturing Wayne about making better choices about his diet and stress level and then discussion about a mutual friend who had to wear a colestomy bag and potentially killed himself by overdosing on blood thinners. They both agree it's possible..

(Johns phone rings)

"Hello?"

"This is Quality Healthcare providers...."

Wayne: "Oh god."

"..we offer affordable health insurance from A+ rated insurers.."

John: "You can suck my dick you can eat shit and die go to hell.."

"..for a free quote you can press 8 to speak to a licensed insurance agent"

John: "Why don't I fuck you up the ass?"

Wayne: "God."

"..thank you.."

John: "That's the 5th time today. Sounded like the same voice. "

Wayne: "That's weird. I don't get that one."

Ensuing discussion about insurance and telemarketers. They make a plan to go to Safeway together.

Curtains close.

#shorts

The last days of 49

We meet in the middle of the park, 9:05. A nightly routine that begins with hugs and ends with hugs and in the middle are lots of talks of varying interests but always there are..dogs.

This night my head is filled with so much pressure. The bridge of my nose hurts from the pressure of the new glasses that it took me 2.5 years to finally order. The anxiety stays away until night where it claws at me, tearing through any sort of comfort I've managed to eek out between sessions of meditation, my nightly date with that man with the nice accent and soothing voice. But the mounting tension of cresting the hill and not feeling good about it has been unbearable. So tired. So often.

He tells me of his sinus issues. As he has almost every night for the last 8 months. Not the meditation man, Dan.

I rub Jacks haunch that trembles from a recent run. I try not to worry. That will come later. Usually around 4am. ‘

Dan yells loudly "INDIE! Goddamn it! Get OVER HERE!" at intervals that could almost be measured with a metronome. She races back. Not to him. To me. I wonder if that's a flea crawling on my leg and if the cold drink cup Cricket's mom has loosely hanging down by her side is in fact filled with straight vodka. I decide it is as he leans over and whispers that he is going to keep track of when she comes to the park. He's decided she has planned drinking nights. I remember when I was sure Dan was drunk every night. Then I realized he was just, absolutely unfiltered. In a pure and honest and terribly self focused way. I've decided I'm tired.

He's decided he's going to Keri Beaters house and walks with me in that direction until he reaches the edge of the park and decides he's real tired too.

"Good luck with that."

"What?"

"With dealing with our approach to being senior citizens."

I weigh the words as I walk with my boy and his slow gait and realize "our approach" probably didn't mean how we will be different senior citizens in our childless singleness and unrealized potential as creative peoples, but that "our approach" simply meant the imminent arrival of not being young.

Both versions are starting to be ok with me. Maybe I will sleep tonight.

#shorts

Indelibly

He had mentioned to her that he was thinking of getting a tattoo. In rememberence of his deceased girlfriend. Seems like a nice idea she said, with every bit of honesty. It did. What a beautiful display of honor she thought to herself when he mentioned it. She knew the girlfriend too, had actually known her before he knew her, and she tried to imagine what the tattoo could be. What would be HER she thought to herself.

She and he had recently embarked on exploring an attraction that had sparked sometime in the last year, in the many times they had grieved together in the midst of a small community of friends who loved her so. He was lonely. She was curious, and yes lonely too. It was a slow descent, and then the bottom dropped out. Maybe it would be a quirky phrase of hers, or perhaps they shared a place on a map he could have placed on his skin to forever mark her existence in his life she thought. Or maybe she had shared some symbol with him, something like a star or a celtic sign..was she irish? She didn't don't think so.

"I'm going to get the tattoo in a few minutes."

Startled it seemed so spontaneous, it was only a day or two since he had mentioned it to her. But it had been over a year since she had passed, probably it wasn't spontaneous at all.

"Oh..ok." she tried to play it cool. Suddenly there were unexpected twinges, small little bolts of..what felt remarkably like, jealousy.

"I just don't know where to get it." he continued on.

"What is it?" she haltingly asked.

"Her handprint.....I probably shouldn't get it on my ass." he continued opening doors within her he had no idea of as he blindly forged into the dim house.

She asked if he had her handprint and he produced a life-size black handprint on an 8.5x11" sheet of printer paper. Something suddenly felt terrible. "where did you get that?" she asked, not wanting to know the answer. This handprint wasn't from her kindergarten days, it wasn't filled with beans glued to the paper to look like a turkey. It was, a thick, black hand with clear white lines that a palm reader could read but it didn't look like it could be her hand, it looked too thick, to big, too dead..but she knew it must be.

"I got it while she was in the hospital the day she died. One of the girls on the organ donation team did it for me."

She pictured the team in scrubs inking her lifeless hand and pushing it hard against this piece of paper. It seemed to her like the most pointless and disrespectful attempt to hold onto something that wasn't even the something they wanted to hold onto. Her mind flipped back and forth between imagining the act of collecting this final evidence of her existence and a clay paw print she had seen others keep on their mantle after their dog died. Then as she was processing this horrific new information, the even more horrific realization came to mind. He was putting this permanently on his body. And she couldn't say no, or yes, or anything other than.."are you sure? are you of clear mind and spirit?" "Yes. I'm going to put it on my shoulder I think."

"His shoulder" she repeated to herself. The bare shoulders she had wrapped her arms around days earlier. "My dead friends handprint forever on your shoulder", she thought to herself with a sinking feeling, the heirarchy was inked. There would always be someone between them.

As she fixed dinner alone her phone chimed. A photo appeared with his bare soft shoulder covered in a dark life-sized handprint. She felt selfish and hurt and so so sad, for her friend, for her boyfriend, for her children. For herself.

"Looks just like it. He did well." she managed to type, evading any true opinions or emotions on the matter. She twirled the zucchini noodles on her fork and stared out the window into nothing.

#shorts

Changing of seasons

The other day I was walking and looking. I saw rocks and dusky skies and the spotted rump of Jack leading the way before me. I saw the stream running low, trickling where weeks earlier it held much more might, the evergreens were ever, green, but the squiggly ground cover below wasn’t this time but instead a pale yellow. I spotted red peeking between fans of summertime leaves and the crickets stayed silent for a moment. The most magnificent early display of days to come though, was the field of bold grasses swaying in the lingering light, yellow tips flush with future lives. The light echoed amongst the dry shafts and shattered in a brilliant display I needed to touch. Rough and smooth and oh if there were better words to describe sounds I would use them here for it was the sound that touched me the deepest. I wish you could have been there with me.

#thoughts

he drinks too much

i smell him. sour and sweet acrid and dour. oozing out of his pores sludgy sticky and dank. was it a case or more?

#shorts

who understands?

No one understands me, I sometimes think in moments of self pity.

My father called today to ask me why it was he shouldn't have the dye in a routine CAT screening of his heart next week. He knew that I had intercepted an attempt to do a CAT scan with dye after a bad reaction and scared the doctors into not doing another when we were in, but he couldn't remember why.

I am his dot connector, his translator to all that happened to his body in those 3 months we sat together in many different shaped white boxes, with windows that held the world in a perfect rectangle. I was his mouth when he couldn't speak, or when no one understood his way of speaking in riddles and answers from the wrong way around.

I explained to him how his body reacted last time. How he nearly died, again, and was in ICU an additional week. How he had to go through another round of dialysis.

He thanked me, then in his way, asked me about Jack. He didn't asked me anything actually. Instead he commented on a photo I posted a day prior to the world, which received overwhelming response from friends and fans. Well meaning, but sometimes condescending feeling comments about how happy he looked, or what a good boy he was, or what a big smile he had. No, he cut straight to the heart and said. "Your best friend with his big dark round eyes, looking at you to help him."

My father is not a dull man. Even when countless doctors and nurses discounted him, made notes in his chart about confusion and sent palliative care women in to talk to me. I knew he was only clouded and I knew enough to speak for him as if we were the same person until he could speak for himself again. He always has been a robust and eloquent speaker.

Today he returned that favor for me. He's the only one that saw the photo the same way I did. A swirling moment of trust and love and complete surrender and fear in a single photo. He saw it. Just as I saw it.

My father, he understands me.

#thoughts wayne

The silence is what happened

He looked around startled. Face filled with questioning and preparation to defend. Defend what I'm not sure. Us. All of us I guess. He is a noble and genuine man. He has shown this on more than one occasion. I like to watch him, when its safe, when the group is distracted, when I know it wouldn't be inappropriate. A handsome man, a funny and sensitive and smart and loving man he is unpredictable in his conversation. Which is the quality I like the best. And I like to watch it forming, the response, the joke, the thoughtful question. His face changes from information gathering, to laughter at a speed that I find fascinating.

"What was that? What happened?"

He was the only one that noticed. I knew. Exactly what he meant. I knew the second he stopped and looked around. Conversations surrounding us both. Talks of shoulder pain, and dog sickness and apple fritters and what the big surprise was going to be that night, and of the lingering nasal issues and which dog was pooping where. A usual chaotic and oh so peaceful gathering of the clandestine Dailey Park Dog group that apexed on Tuesdays, lovingly called Coosedays. These people, united by one thing. Dogs.

"The cicadas stopped singing."

"What?"

"The cicadas. The bugs that only come out in late summer. They stopped. All at once. That's what happened. The silence is what happened."

"Oooohhh. Yes."

We stood together, silent waiting for them to start again.

#shorts

Sexwork is work

I spotted her coming from the back bathroom.

20something. Beautiful but with an easy to crack finish. She had just freshened her lipstick, and straightened her going out dress that was short over her fishnet stockings. She wore those what I like to call Elizabethen heel boots. Pointy toe, lots of laces. Probably a zipper up the side, I didn’t notice, I was too distracted by the soon to be tragic circumstance.

I leaned in as she passed me, not looking at me, striding confidently back into the thundering room of drinkers, laughers, players. “You have something on your shoe.” I said.

She broke gate. Startled. Flustered. Looked down and saw what I saw. Streaming flags of toilet paper attached to the bottom of each foot.

I continued, not looking back.

“How embarrassing.” the other woman said to me as we went to where she had come.

#shorts

Everything sucks.

Today while trying to fix the stove at the pizza kitchen I broke my phone. While trying to get my phone fixed I worried about driving with expired tags. While driving with expired tags I argued with a loan officer about the car loan that ..I ..just..want..finalized ..so I can drive a car without expired tags, to a new kitchen, or maybe no kitchen at all..maybe I'll drive to Tucson and start a new life with a new phone and and old dog that needs acupuncture. Maybe I should learn acupuncture.

#thoughts

Wayne & Jack

I stood next to his face, stroking his silken cheeks and over his eyes, across his forehead like he likes. His eyes wide in fear I stroked and promised him it was going to be alright. Never blinking, trying to trust me, despite the fact it was I that brought him to this position, in this place. His heart, so forgiving. Mine breaking as I swallowed my worry. Laying on his side, the X-ray machine marked the spot on his side.

We wheeled into the lobby of the hospital, his head slumped down in his wheelchair, flannel shirt covering his gown, my brothers ball cap covering his overgrown hair. He insisted. A tiny granule of vanity remained. If he had fear I didn’t see it. I had fear. We waited there, with the others in the lobby. They looking like they had just come in for a checkup, dressed in street clothes and mostly looking normal. Us looking curious. Like escapes from prison. They looked at us when we weren’t looking. I wheeled us around the corner and we turned our backs to their eyes. He shifted in his seat, I shifted on my feet. I clenched my handbag under my arm and rested my hand on his flanneled shoulder. We waited silently.

“Please step away from the area so we can take the x-ray.” I quickly backed up. His head sprung up wild eyes questioning my departure. “It’s ok Babe. It’s going to be ok..I’m right here. It’s ok.”

Is it going to be ok?

They took him away from me, behind those closed doors with the radiation warnings. I peered through the small square window where I could see them lifting him onto the table. The circular hood blocked my view as he disappeared into the tunnel. This was different than all the wheeled carts they just brought in to his room all day and all night. Waking up from worried light sleep, on the easy to clean couch, to a square patch of light splashed across his chest I would watch and silently wait.

His neck relaxed. He believed me. At least long enough for the machine to peer into his body revealing rib bones, a spine, his thorax and a giant cavity filling, massive, heart. How can an animal have such a big heart?

His heart was fine, but the supporting actors weren’t. They were failing. His aorta separated into layers, the red current of blood splitting and finding it’s own channels to move through. Sloppily.

His heart was fine, but the supporting actors weren’t. They were failing. His spinal cord pinching the pathways of his neurological life force.

On his back, legs splayed into the air, cradled by a blue v shaped cushion, her holding his tail out of the cameras path, him trembling, he shat. Feces involuntarily pushed out onto the table in fear.

Through the double doors he was pushed towards me to continue his journey back to the other facitlity. He looked defeatedly in my eyes and in a low voice confided to me he had shat his pants.

“It’s ok Dad. It’s going to be ok..I’m right here. It’s ok.”

#mydad mydog classyjackaloper wayne hospitals shorts

Pulsing energy or centered calmness?

Ambling down the two lane highway at 55mph they both shared the view from the left side.

He, half body out the window, nose to the air, body rigid with the wind ruffling his black, brown and white mottled fur.

She, saddled and ready to ride, wistfully watching the scenery go by.

He, soaring through the air, vibrant energy magnetically keeping him both inside and outside against, all, physics.

She, serenely letting the wind feather her mane away from her eyes, lidded with full bowing lashes, she stood sure footed in the small wooden trailer behind.

Same destination, two ways of enjoying the journey. Which one are you?

#thoughts

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