The tear that welled into the right eye was just the beginning of the storm. As it overflowed the margins of the eyelid and slid gently down the curve of cheek, others were gathering; spontaneous mass too damp to combust but no less a conflagration. An explosion of feeling and emotion taken by the body and translated into concrete terms. Breath heaved into tremulous lungs no longer good at extracting oxygen and shuttling it into the blood. A bellows working overtime. Tiny hairs along the skin erected, throwback to the time when body pelt would raise to let the watchers know stay back, be warned, all is not well! And everywhere the muscles tighten and release, flesh ripples down the flanks, quick quiver held in check gathering itself for action do we fight or do we go?
And underneath it all, the engine pulses. Deep clench, light flutter pushing all the body's tides through narrow conduits that rush them on their way, tearing at the passageways made weak by time, turning switches on and off as needed, triggering adrenals, hormones marching to their embedded drumbeat, now strong, now gentle, pouring forth to cluster on the battlements if needed. Heartbeats echo on the narrow bars of bone confining its extravagant surge of action and reaction, throb in the hollow beneath the larynx that moans and hisses as the lips pull back from teeth admitting a fast indrawn breath; instinctive grimace in the face of threat, of pain. Then will exerts its pull and tears drain back unshed, lips compress, teeth pressing on the inner surface, biting down to hold the fort together no shriek of pain escaping.
I just stubbed my toe.
was asked in the forum today (or yesterday probably by now). So I thought for a moment - as if I haven't had the thought a thousand times before - what do I want? Besides mango sorbet or chocolate chocolate chip ice cream. I once wrote out a list of attributes that would add up to my ideal man on the theory that the Universe could not fill my request if I didn't actually make it.
I suppose one could be excused for expecting the freakin' Universe to read your mind but if 'they' are right and the almighty is a HE well, mind reading is definitely out of the picture! Never hurts to cover all the angles or the bases for that matter.
I have always thought looks were unimportant but my sister pointed out that I always bring home eye candy with brains. Truth is, if you asked me to describe any of my partners it would be their eyes and voices I remember, the things I notice first and things that will turn a yes to a no very quickly if I linger over a nicely rounded butt and muscled (hairless) back. Maybe my sister just has the same taste in men as I do.
Then there is scent. Each of us has our own intrinsic aroma although with all the additives to soap it is getting harder to rely on the nose as a guarantee for compatability and health. An otherwise perfect man who smells 'wrong' - not unpleasant or unclean, just not a match for my receptors - will not raise an eyebrow for me, far less a pulse rate.
An aptitude for using the brain encased inside the skull is an essential. A good mind meld will make me your fool, and I will tolerate a great deal for a mental fit. Too much on at least two occasions. Emotionally available would be enchanting, to actually encounter that once before I die...! My first husband was so available he had no boundaries at all, my first (and last) experience of very, very needy.
An ability to have fun and laugh in and out of bed, to appreciate that the most sublime sensations available to us come encumbered with elbows and knees and incongruent heights and some very strange positions and occasional stranger sounds and natural reflexes; gods, if it's taken too seriously it becomes a farce of dishonesty and posturing. And where's the fun and pleasure in that?
So I both know and don't know what I want. It might be easier to list what I don't want and the odds are, that because i am a woman some of my definite deal killers would be on a general list of 'not desired'. Well may be I'll write that but not now. Now I need to make a final forum run then go to bed. I can sleep for six hours and be on time at the wedding.
Such an exquisite agony suffusing every joint, and every bit of it well-earned and relished! I live in a body that complains. The joints creak and ache and sometimes swell because throughout my life I used them all, thoroughly and well. I danced. Started ballet a tad too young for growing bones and danced on a shattered metatarsal once after another nymph on stage missed her mark and found my foot. The show never stops for injury although rehearsal might.
At London School of Contemporary dance I left my bloodied footprints with the others as we did floor exercises that crouched us low and dragged us forward, seeking shapes and statements Graham would have loved and later with my own troupe, working hard I heard a quiet snap and felt the sting, much harder than a rubber band against the skin, as a ligament parted and cartilage tore. And still I danced.
So all my joints are filled with crystals earned, the diamonds of performance with a small genetic contribution; so now three plus hours on a dance floor, floating free of inhibition, giving up control to terpsichore, my Muse on many levels, comes with a price. A price I know and have paid willingly before although it gets a little steeper every time.
The party ended early. Well, the wedding was at four and then moved forward through the night until the witching hour. Rain clouds glared and frowned around us, all outdoors, but held on to their bounty. Vows were exchanged, sand mixed, brown and blue, in bottles to symbolize the joining of two lives. Speeches were short and funny and the food was excellent with grilled marlin, roasted pork, bajan ham, lamb stew; spanish rice and black eyed peas and rice alongside scalloped potatoes and sweet potato salad. And salads, vegetables, the works.
I did not sit on the beach at dawn and watch the sunrise. I came home, deeming a six hour wait untenable when Morpheus was tugging at my wrist so tenderly. And I can be up late tonight skywatching for the Perseids to fly.
I have a prayer to all the gods: Please never let me dance in moderation. Let me never count the morrow's pain and hold back my soul today. Please grant that I shall always be exalted by the music and carried to the place where spirit and flesh combine and flow like water finding its most perfect level. And help me to keep healing fast.
Things to do on Friday usually all fall under the category sleep as late as possible. This week has been better than usual, I woke at 9:30 a.m. instead of five. If I prise myself away from the keyboard and go into a flurry of happy homemaker activity I could tire myself out enough to sleep again, then go to the Frank Collymore hall for a cocktail party at seven, watch the play Uptown Bangarang by Basil Dawkins from eight until about ten, ten thirty then drive over to the station, make coffee, run around doing vocal exercises to suppress the recurring frog rasp in my voice and then hit the switch at midnight and tell the Caribbean good morning.
Tomorrow will be a bit of a challenge. I usually get home around six or so after the show, have breakfast/dinner, some sort of meal and then wait as long as possible before crashing into sleep. This week I have a wedding to attend which will mean keeping some internal switch on alert so I can be where I am supposed to be on time. Then the party afterwards, where I intend to dance and do some serious booty shaking. It has been way too long! I have selfishly worked hard to avoid being the designated driver for my mother and her friends as they will all be ready to leave early and if I stay the course I will drive down to the East Coast and watch the sunrise on the way home. I am going to crash and burn anyway so I may as well ride the kite into the sun and burn in glory with the day!
It is a long time since I have moved into tomorrow in my mind, even for a moment, and here I am almost forty eight hours into what has not yet and may never come! All at the thought of dancing? No, more the thought of being held and twirled around the floor. The thought of catching eyes with a partner and laughing for the joy of it. The flirtatious glance, the uncomplicated lust that won't be fed but feels like such fun beneath the skin. And then the beach at night's end. Sand coarse and squeaking as I walk. The endless rush of waves and foam about my ankles. The taste of ozone as the wind swirls on sweat damp skin, stealing moisture, leaving salt behind. Then the sunrise breaching clouds, spreading the day's virgin blood in delicate tendrils tinting the horizon, surface of the ocean and gleaming red across my cheeks raised to praise the morning. At this moment only dreams and possibilities.
And I have the power and the will to make them truth.
The sunny Caribbean drips with rain, echoing with thunder up and down the sodden, sullen, sky. The yard is ankle deep or deeper where water will not drain and the street lights shine, still on, as morning is not bright enough to trip their sensors. I look south in search of blue. A gentle sign that roads there might be passable. Modern times have changed the land and water gathers, pools and blocks the way instead of running off to reservoirs or to the sea.
Ah, progress! So sweet a word to greedy pockets without a thought to consequence or future! Let's build a stadium right on the edge of town, impeding traffic, shortening tempers every game, road rage the brand new feature of the year! Let's spend $150 million for a fleeting month of cricket, world cup where no one came particularly to see the game.
The local ladies of the night complained that their investments in new clothes all went to waste. Business was not good. And all the houses hastily thrown up, lives mortgaged for the big killing in high occupancy stakes...for naught. The hotels themselves sat empty and the cruise ships sold ten day cruises for less than US$100 - my friends all cruised up and down the islands for a week or more; I would have joined them but duty called and I was just back from New York so I fed the fish and cat.
The shades of grey are shifting, now more steel than charcoal; perhaps a touch of pearl, all luminous, in places as the storm rolls further north and onward out to sea. A tropical depression, perhaps a wave of weather passing through in noisy squalls, pissing on the world with great disdain. A comment on our petty, pointless peevish bickering? I doubt it. Why should the weather care?
Too bad the storm has passed so completely. I'll have to go to work.
I sit in a steamy afternoon and ponder who I am and how I got here. Why do I care? Usually I don't but now and then I want to understand the me that others see and talk about. The me that pleases, disappoints, succeeds, and fails, in interactions where I had no intention whatsoever; just happened to be sitting in a chair close by and, when asked a question, answered and became the one who formed the whole. A talent to relinquish if I knew where the return desk was!
I wear a diadem of labels gifted me by family, by friends, by those who never met or spoke with me - not even once - but heard a tale or two about me, instantly expert on my inner workings, inner thoughts and motives. Some of them I earned. I live my life, embrace it, as I wrapped a careless arm around old Cupid's neck in Picadilly Circus saluting London with a song.
And yes, I did run, stripping off my clothes, in the street, quite true; it was all I could think of to do. I was in a show, forced by the model in front of me to exit on the wrong side of the stage, no way across to my next outfit but out and around the whole building and I had 45 seconds for the change. I made it. Yes, indeed I disco danced on crutches, refused a Porsche, left a lover at Heathrow when he offended and went off to Majorca, leaving him to go to Paris all alone. Stood up to be counted no matter what it cost me and smiled sometimes when I was afraid.
So why today, this introspection? It started (again!) to rain so I went down and took in my mother's laundry, and thought of how I am not the daughter she would prefer; no interest in a family tree or sudoko, no longer her 'soul food' as she used to call me. A fall from grace made all unknowing. And I thought how pleasant it would be to be judged on what I do, rather than what anyone thinks of me.
And then I thought, how boring. No mystery, no scandal, no eyebrows raised and voices hushed when I am around. Come let me be a steamer trunk and every label marks a journey I have made, a summit scaled, a goal achieved, a story written bold and large upon the page. Please let my epitaph be She Lived And Breathed And so enjoyed her Being! Much more fun that way.
A rainbow and a palm tree reflected in a puddle in the supermarket parking lot caught my eye, pulling it up from some dismal internal consultation to the sky arched over my head. A double rainbow to the south east, all open ground out there once you drive five minutes, so it's rainbow chasing time.
As soon as I clear the houses and hit open ground there is a field and there, in the far left corner, is the end of the rainbow touching down upon the grass. The grass is sodden, knee high and burdened with water from the storm and the mud squirms beneath my bare feet as I hop, skip, jump my way across the field hoping that all centipedes and other stingered things are snugged in burrows far from the water and my unprotected feet. I can walk on rocks and glass, have stepped on thumbtacks and not noticed till I hear the click like taps beneath my feet, all legacies of Martha Graham and years of barefoot walking, but I am not proof to things that sting and bite unwary flesh.
The rainbow moves, of course, It always does, I have never caught one; but when I reach the spot I marked as the end I stop and stretch up high because I know to anyone else I am standing in the middle of the end of the rainbow. It's all a matter of perspective.
Sunrise is getting later and later as the world shifts and turns on its axes, tilting its way into tomorrow. An interesting side effect of this is that my Friday night on air time is getting longer too, as my show ends when I start the 'sunrise theme'. In about another six to eight weeks I will be presenting the only six hour 'dark of the night' morning show in the Caribbean. A glorious idiocy!
Of course, once we make my birthday (the winter solstice and the shortest day) the pattern will reverse and my time on air will shrink. Time is an inconstant, fickle guide to live by.
I am tired. And sleepy. My former husband could never understand that it was possible to be one without the other. After a meal, or in the dense summer heat, it is possible to drowse with sleep stalking all the edges of your being without being in the least bit tired. Breaking all the rules, just supine in the sun, a tumbled sprawl of limbs weighting into cushions like a cat, not tired at all, but oh so sleepy.
After lifting weights, washing the car or cleaning house I can be achingly, sweat-dripping weary where my muscles tremble with a delicate, continuous vibration from being pushed, and my bones are outlined in the burn of lactic acid but my veins are full of blood bursting with oxygen, careening round the body beautiful in a hectic helter-skelter fairground ride of bliss. I may not be able to walk, but boy, am I awake! A buzz, a hive of what comes next?
Then there are times like this, not often, when I have pushed the limits on the whole of me. Sleepless beyond the norm and energy burned in double time. Maintaining an adrenaline high for a quarter of a day, draining all the glands of all their juices, until I languish like an underwater fern brought to the surface; just tossed upon the sand. In NY I would simply go to Dr. Li or Dr. Bao. Surrender to their needles, each placed to replenish qi, bring balance back to foundered batteries. I would drink the pungent tea the stomach fights against; but once it's down the symptoms settle and healing can begin.
The needles first, and then hot stones and finally the coarse touch of salt. Huge crystals all suspended in tiger balm, or something like, raked across my skin; deep massage that wrings pain and tears from some points touched - a fleeting agony that does not stay in memory or you would only do it once!
But I am here, not in NY. My fumbling fingers seek out the pressure points I know, and wince away from trigger points so congested I will never bring myself to press hard enough to ease and unravel them. I need an acupuncturist, or at least a good shiatsu practitioner, to help me through the crisis I have wrought on my system. Lacking them, I shall lie on rocks smoothed by the sea arranged, mandala fashion, to stimulate, sedate and heal. Miso soup and sunshine layered with sleep until balance is restored.
It might work.
How do people communicate? Not well. That is proven a thousand times a day. Words gone awry, misunderstood. Worse yet, misused, aimed like cudgels or knives depending on the skill of the one who wields them.
I write. Words please me, tease me, dance around the corners of my mind in dark or shining pictures of what is or might be real. Sometimes I write well, sometimes less so. I always start with a blank page and dive right in and let the movement of ideas and words take me where it will. Unplanned. Informal. Without structure.
Yet there is always thought behind the words. All the thoughts and observations, details I have seen and noticed, feelings felt, songs sung, pictures seen, all of this informs the way the words sprawl and spread and then arrange themselves.
While I acknowledge all emails, a letter that comments on the details of my profile will merit more attention than one that says interesting profile, tell me about yourself. If I reach out to say hello I will compare and contrast my experience with yours. Where might we have room for conversation to grow? A dialogue develop, making a connection rich and fun and worth persuing?
I thought of leaving yesterday. Deleting all my blog, making sure I have copies of the poems I post in the forums as I usually write my morning and evening greeting there and some of them are good. So many choose to use words as stones to pierce and wound, perhaps if we were standing there before them they would use fists and sticks as well. Harmless words are twisted into insults, and insults are escalated into battles royal until heads and profiles roll and threads are locked or deleted.
I believe in freedom of speech right up to the point where the speaker starts to say that others have no rights and should not be allowed to speak. And therein lies the problem. If you should say that I should die and others, fired and stirred by your polemic, follow through and kill me...well I am certainly at a disadvantage!
How do we find a balance? I used to be adept in debates, able to turn fallacious logic on an end and break the spines of arguments like sticks until one day my opponent lost his temper and broke my nose. It has never been quite the same since and I, for the most part, will now refrain from the fine art of structured discussion and argument unless I know you well.
Language is eroding, becoming single letters in a time-starved world and reading is a skill no longer taught as a matter of course it seems. The newspapers here are travesties of poor grammar and ill-written pap in a land that once could claim 98% literacy. But I still write for personal and public consumption. If brickbats come, I'll hope to catch them.
How did it get to be Friday? I hadn't quite finished with the rest of the week yet! Having an official holiday in the middle of the week always seems to interrupt the rhythm of living, and I tend to use Wednesday as the anchor...two days going up to Wednesday, two days coming down from Wednesday and then two days nowhere near Wednesday.
Monday is a bank holiday too; so a three day weekend will compound the internal circadian confusion which, added to my usual Friday to Saturday routine, will ensure I stay lost in time and space for quite a while. There is a reason I have only one clock and do not wear a watch. On some level I don't believe in time. Oh, something passes, things change. My mirror alone is proof of that, but is it really a minute? And why 60 seconds? Why not a hundred? Or three?
Who picked the pace and made the labels stick? Don't answer, I can google it myself. The pulse, the thud, the heartbeat that I do not feel or hear on any conscious level, measures out the time, the days, the tempo tempus takes upon my journey from egg plus sperm to bones alone melting slowly into soil designed to nourish the next crop.
And when that beat stutters, takes a pause, a skip, a jump, I look around disturbed by what's not there. A silence that rings loud because it shouldn't be, echoes of mortality and dissolution. How did it get to be Dieday? I hadn't quite finished with the rest of my life yet. That's what it felt like. A slight, unsettling displacement in time and space, the known all unfamiliar, something passes, things change then the hiatus ends and forward is on again.
Each moment makes its little loop
in time, slip stitch, cross stitch,
knit or purl and make the link
one unto the other;
chain and fabric
woven of the weeks, the days,
creating tapestries that glow
with all the colours
of our lives so choose
bright primaries, all gaudy
in the light, and blend in
delicate pastels and white
to ease the shift from
one shade to another.
Live like vivid flowers
that do not know they are
beautiful, grow strong
and flexible like grasses
falling before the wind
the rain, all hailstone crushed
and rising once the storm moves by
to dance again. Time pulses on
something passes, something's changed
but hope can be eternal.
I have had reason, in the last twenty four hours to give some thought to what constitutes an apology.
If someone causes harm either inadvertently or intentionally and wishes to make reparation they apologise. They take responsibility for their action, say they are sorry and make a commitment not to repeat the action in the future.
Closure is achieved when the person receiving the apology accepts said apology and forgives the action. This acceptance does not say the action was acceptable, just that it is forgiven.
When does the recipient accept the apology? When they can genuinely forgive the harm done to them. It may be immediately, it may take a couple of hours reflection, it may take days.
Last night I acknowledged an apology, I did not accept it as I had not finished processing all the information and I was still in the midst of my feelings; plus it was followed by the suggestion that my 'fragile heart' was the thing responsible in a large part for my hurt. A good apology does not make any excuses or shift any of the responsibility.
This morning the apology was retracted with more rage and insults directed at me, a reiteration of the original offence and a demand that I should apologise. For what? For being honest enough to admit I am not ready to forgive?
So we know what that means: the apology was worthless. It was about the giver feeling better about the offence, not about the offended party healing.
It is not true that words can never hurt. They can rend and tear, end lives, careers and cause unhappiness when used as weapons. That the blood they draw cannot be seen makes it no less vital.
I drove home in the rain today. Real rain, heavy, sheeting down to bar the view of the roadway. Too hard, by far, to be pushed aside by even the fastest sweep of wipers. And traffic slowed not whit but raced and overtook and skidded on the curves abandoning all common sense while I abandoned hope.
No, not abandoned. I had no hope today. I moved through the moments gingerly and did my job. Conducted an interview, recorded an audition and made all the right noises inculcated by years of practice. I functioned and existed. I did not live.
I watched in stunned dismay as the flash drive suspended round my neck swung out on its cable and plunged, strange hi-tech diver, headlong into my near boiling coffee. Of course it is the type that has no cap, no protection but then who would have thought it vulnerable to death by coffee? Not I.
I pulled a playlist for Friday's show, about three quarters done now, to be typed and prepped and timed so I can plan and fit the features(including the one that still is not 'playing' right) into their places. The show is never seamless as it's live and s**t happens as it always does in life, but I like to do my best in getting all the parts in place and balanced to give the listeners something that will keep their dial turned to our numbers. Of course after one a.m. I am the only live show on the island so anyone who wants a human voice will tune to 90.7 if only for the pleasure of turning me off again.
A part of me is grieving. I am so used to feeling 'plugged' in and full of zest and now I feel deaf and wordless. Clumsy bandaged hands and empty brain devoid of substance. I've let something break and don't know how to heal it because the blow was unexpected and I didn't see the point of impact, lost it in the overwhelming smash of it. By Thursday any imbalance engendered by the new supplement will resolve itself but deep inside I feel fear for the first time in forever.
I fell out of the moment and stuck in a present filled with echoes from the long dead past. All the voices that told me I was no good, nothing, not enough, a fool for dreaming. I grew up in a time where teachers were not inclined to bolster self esteem, in fact they called it ego and something to be dismantled at all costs. Very politely of course, but any pretention must be suppressed. And I survived and prospered despite them all.
The greatest gift I ever had, was my father saying, when I turned up at his office on his birthday with fish and chips and an excellent wine, that everything I am and have I owe to myself because no one ever helped me. And then he said "you've done it all so well, girl. I am proud of you." I was thirty and my eyes still burn to think of it. I'll get through this. Feelings are not facts, they are just feelings and will pass. Maybe this is a good time to pull out all my deep dark agonising angst poetry and prose and blog about death and destruction and night terrors that used to wake me screaming. Or maybe not...although there is one'deep dark' piece I have always rather liked as it is so over the top it is high camp.
Tomorrow is a holiday, Emancipation Day, so I shall go to work late and pull a short shift. And I can work on that piece some more. Perhaps if I use a completely different theme it will come together better. There is always something else to try!
bajanblue Blog (295)