A Mind, Lively and at Ease

I’m surrounding myself with an amazing life filled with everything I love and all the incredible, awesome, and amazing things I can imagine.

     She sat in the wind, looking over the edge within a trailer that stood on the side of a hill next to grazing goats. It tickled her, cold and shifting in the fierce haze of late morning over the pasture. Purple set over pale green stalks of hay and weeds, grass and mire.

     Their yelling woke her. So, picking up her puffy coat with wool patches all over the front, she stepped out the back door while her dad was in the bathroom and after she heard her mom leave for the gas station or something. A quick walk down the gravel and dirt driveway, she crossed the old paved road their house stood creaking beside. Past two old broken down trucks, then to the gate that Pepper waited behind, the horse nosed her hand as she unchained the metal from its fence, pulling open with a tug and slamming it back before any unruly kid could cross. 

     She made way for their old fort, hidden behind trees, mattress springs and pieces of cars she couldn’t even name. Rae wanted a sympathetic atmosphere to soak herself in, and the tin palisade could do well for her spirit. The fort was something they added onto over the years, just as her Pop added old cars to rust in this piece of the woods. At first, only a hand towel hung from a branch marked the land of their country as a flag, but then they gathered hubcaps, old televisions, a couple of broken chairs, and, most of all, building supplies to create a half-structure residing—ruined before it had been abandoned, wasted before resourced, half-imaginary and half-standing.

       But, she veered away from that certain home. Without a friend or sibling by her side, it felt like a patch of bones in a haunted forest. 

      The loft could harbor her feelings, but she last knocked her head into a beam when they played tunnels, weaving about the edges of haystacks where the angled ceiling met floor. Luckily, she missed the long, exposed roofing nail nearby.

     Her dad would only return out to the barn to work on some cars. That wasn’t a choice. The apple tree was too small for her to climb easily now. The choices were narrowing down. She sat on a clear section of the rolling pasture, having never truly entered the forest beyond, thinking.

     The sky didn’t have shape-seeing clouds, only a heavy mist that accompanies the morning. She wished they could have saved it for later. She wished they’d just get divorced like they’re always promising each other. She pulled clumps of grass out of the ground. A cow eyed her nearby, chewing and turning it’s head to the side to let one large and wild pupil set on her. Rae barely noticed, pouting into the ground and digging up more clumps in anger. 

     Maybe she could run away. She bet they wouldn’t miss her. She could go see Pop, or just live off of the land like one of the books she read for school mentioned. She figured she would only need a few things. 

     Dirt soaked into the knees of her corduroy overalls, sticky and sharp green grass goo and clay. She picked her nails with a grass stalk, pondering an escape. Perhaps one of the cars here actually worked…

     That thought was interrupted with a rumble, and she peered into the mist. In an instant, she began to run over the field, gleeful, as fat drops attacked her bare head. She twirled, arms open, singing, wet with surprise and dripping with the sheer enthusiasm of bounding over a hill, farm animals at her heels. 

     Rae sought shelter in a trailer perched nearby, empty except for junk and aging objects of little worth. The doorless door, a gaping and wide arch, opened a few feet off of the ground, and she pulled herself onto it’s floor, gasping for breath and shivering in the chill. She sat in the wind, waiting for someone to find her, waiting for someone to notice that she ran away to a trailer nearby, across an old road, on their pasture on top of a hill, and seated in a pile of junk. 

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

One of those days I can spend hours staring at a wall, listening to music and thinking. 

In truth, I’ve never been so highly aware of the new year. Most of which, I’m avoiding the talk of it, or cringing when people talk about it. Not New Year’s Eve, certainly, I’ve got a myriad of plans. That’s not a problem. 

No, the real trouble comes from my mentality of it all, that I’m caught in a world of wrongs and mistakes. 2011 was terrible, horrible, devastatingly shocking and awakening. I don’t expect less from 2012. I don’t think I have the right to look forward to anything more than hurt and loss. 

All I can see is a down hill slope. 

Yes, that’s pessimism from me, of all people. I’m not so concerned about myself. After what hell I’ve been through, I know I can survive any emotional disaster with a level head and a piercing gaze that will pin a person down if I feel any injustice. I wish I hadn’t had to do that over the summer. I think I saw the sick bastard shiver, begging for reconciliation, begging for me not to call the police. 

I should’ve called the police, sent his ass to jail, where it belongs. 

Nope. Not worried about whether I can get through it all. 

I’m worried if my laughter will ever sustain a few minutes, if my smile will come more naturally, if I can go without passing by his apartment complex and almost gagging from a stomach eating itself from disgust. 

I’m worried that my inspiration will only ever circle this subject, or that I won’t follow through with my work, that I’ll dissolve all of my resolve to waste away in a television coma world. 

I’m worried I’ll be so caught up in surviving, that I’ll be unable to live. 

Both the nemesis and hero of books. Thoughts?

     The Amazon. A mix of two rivers that clash together—dark black and muddy brown, rushing up against buildings and huts, stilted one room constructs and walls that hid a city nearby. One thing you don’t hear about is the variety of color that hits you from the land, that the people there paint everything to be seen and viewed so as to give a passing boat more chance to glance over at whatever Portuguese phrase is shouted across the water: bright reds, blues, and yellows that strive to come out of green banks and cloudy sky. 

     It’s overpowering, scary, and a little too much to take in at once. Everyone’s lives surround the ability of a mass of water to propel them further downstream or, more importantly, allow others the passage to come to market. The water tempts you to dip your toes in because the sun’s making fun of you and beating down your neck, but you know that whatever lies beneath it’s surface wouldn’t be quite as friendly as the Gulf Coast. 

     People chat across floating barge stores, yelling to ask about each others relatives and the weather. You’ve drifted into a floating city, moist and airy within the tremulous wake of a temperamental river.  

     Then, you approach a dock hidden by tree roots and a variety of bright green flora, and a trail leads you into the legendary rainforest. Yellow barked trees, ants as large as your thumb, large and frighteningly scaled snakes draped on branches. It grows steadily darker as you proceed, a thick atmosphere you didn’t think existed on Earth. It seems like your lungs are breathing the purest mix of oxygen and water vapor, deepening into your blood and sticking onto your neck and legs. Vibrant greens and browns meet every turn, but when you notice a spot of color, it seems like the brightest hue you can imagine. Rich and over-saturated, the hike follows an unbelievable aspect of life and an experience which returns only with a quick, calm shut of the eyes. 

     The hotel smelled like my Grandmother’s house. Mildew, a scent that recalled summers in Georgia and country music, sweet tea and biscuits, David Letterman and line-dried pillows and sheets, because her house had the insulation all wrong but they only found out during renovation. We were at home. There was a picture of a naked man in a drawer, with only boots and a hat on standing next to a pile of hay. It was ripped out of a porn magazine. My mom, the epitome of inappropriate, showed it to me—fourteen at the time—laughing. I blushed. 

     The rooms were lavish, lush, a bit outdated but still enormous and expensive. Dark and exotic wood floors resounded as we set down our luggage on oriental carpets and sat on the king size beds. For once, my sister and I got our own room, which was exciting for a middle class family used to piling up in a room of two doubles at a Super 8 or whatever cheap hotel gave my dad a AAA or military discount. The room had a television, which felt out of place in the middle of the Amazon and having seen daily the horrifyingly disadvantaged and impoverished people of Brazil. The economy made travel cheap for Americans, having such a large gap between the wealthy and poor. Those in power lived in penthouses while most of the country lived on the tops of hills so as to let their waste carry itself down with gravity because there wasn’t plumbing. Seven years later, I’d be curious to see the changes, but it sounds like an increasingly familiar distribution of power. 

     Outside, on the right of the hotel, before you got to its gardens and other various improvements, exotic animals peered out at you from metal cages. Jaguars perched lazily on branches, and monkeys made friends, spurred by their innate curiosity. Tourists made lazy strolls around the bars, snapping photos before they were off for the day. There was a strange balance of voyeurism and care, interest budding off of concern for the strange species, but it garnered from their captivity rather than a pursuit for equality. Human dominion wins over pieces of this lush sample of biodiversity, surrounding it and categorizing the remains. We walked on.

     I think I swam in a safe part of the Amazon. The details are fuzzy, but it was a small slice of paradise affixed with thatched roofed gazebos and bamboo matted reclining chairs. My mom’s smile was wide under her straw hat. My sister Jessica looked out into the distance, surveying the calm waters. Dad talked with our guide, watching birds fly up and over, calling out whenever one splashed down into water nearby. I closed my eyes, letting the voices blur into the wildlife cacophony of frog croaks, bird songs, and the river’s sweet streaming music of coursing water. 

Telling someone that they’re the “coolest boy/girl you know” is flattering, but affection should be based on personality, not SOCIAL STANDING. 

(Unless meant in the way that your personality is just absolutely awesome, then that would be great BUT seldom does this comment mean anything more than the essence of being “cool” which really is only a bullshit societal construct of worth and value within a competitive species… and therefore only a generic idea of “OH YOU JUST FIT IN SO FUCKING WELL AND EVERYONE SEEMS TO LOVE YOU SUPERFICIALLY” 

Yes, I’m ticked off. And bored, which just helps to get me aggravated.)

it’s too cold to go outside and hang out for a long period of time in the gazebo but not cold enough for a solid reason as to why you don’t brave the chill anyway.

Really, it’s like 55 degrees. Get it together, body. 

I’m afraid of apathy, but also delightfully consumed by its power. It’s that easy motion, to just give into the moments and move along with the wave instead of kicking and fighting everything like there’s hope in surviving. 

There are things you can plan and things you can prevent, but the most important ones happen unexpectedly. A friend might say something to provoke you, get a shift in your emotions and the direction of your intent. She withheld it, though. 

I don’t know what to say anymore. I guess I shouldn’t even try. I’m so overwrought with upset feelings that I can’t write a single objective piece. I even wrote “subjective” instead “objective” at first in that last sentence.

I give in to music, to feeling like shit, to accepting that I may not have everyone that I want in my life. 

I have family, and friends that are considered family. Isn’t that what the holidays are all about anyway, despite religion or tradition? 

I’ll never stop trying to add to my family, though. Never. That’s a promise. I’ll never stop caring, even though apathy seems so appealing and nice. 

I cry like it rains, in bouts and droughts. My feelings accumulate all over the place: underground and high over head. They’re there. They’re there to stay.  

So I have 30 in my drafts section. I posted an old one today, but it was hard to wrap myself around. The emotions and memories feel too far placed to allow me a place to stand within the text, and I wind up disliking every word I wrote. I had to delete it, keep it on my laptop for sentiment’s sake, but there wasn’t any level of satisfaction involved that accompanies a good amount of other things I post. 

The sentences dry up in pace with our friendship. Perhaps I can’t relate because I don’t want to allow myself to feel sympathy toward someone whom ultimately hurt me. Either way, I’m left frustrated and restless, itching to write without words or a starting place. Strangely humorless, as well, which seldom happens. I’m known for inappropriate jokes, when everything’s gone to shit I point out something ridiculous in a nervous tendency of mine to always try to make the situation cheerful and happy. Usually this habit only makes things worse. I’d find that amusing if I weren’t so half-tired and feeling unaccomplished. 

I’m tired of writing about the writing process when I know I should be caught up in the act and not drifting along talking the talk and not walking the walk. 

Apparently the medicine I take manages to extremely increase the effects of alcohol. 

Wish I could explain that to the people I pointed at on the street and yelled, “You’re missing out! You are all missing out! Shannon’s boobs are amazing!”

…as I had one hand on her boob. 

Really? A couple of beers and I’m grabbing my friend’s tit and defending her single state? 

I’m torn between embarrassment and amusement.