How to want three things at once

I just woke up. I know it's after four. Don't judge me. I worked last night and it was so fantastic to take my mind off of the drone. 

Back of my mind the ropes of tight muscles in my back and body that ache against the dull pull of dedication. 

On the off chance that there maybe something more that I should be doing I sit quietly and don't move. 

Thinking back on the years, the time when I knew less and felt more, I had visions of a god and of streaming light. Now I just watch and feel my skin differently than before. I grow out of the pieces. 

One for the record

I spent one more night in the hospital. I've begun to think that maybe I like it here. The aound of the pumps and the diffuse voices checking vitals at three am. My head hurts.

She is impatient and demanding and pious. Why haven't they ..... yet? They broke routine, have forgotten me, didn't change my dressing, brings my meds, towels, warm blankets, warmth and warm blankets are a very big deal these days, the used to bring me warm blankets but they seem to have forgotten that too.

I watched a little football yesterday. The person I was with told me to look at the ceiling. I tried to take a picture of the glad that was a snake or dragon or beast on a Harley that said "brotherhood" across the bottom. I felt sick. I am in the wrong place. This hick town is full of bigots. I am afraid they will run me off or worse, turn me straight, afraid of difference, intolerant.

I think and hope we can go home today. I have a huge project due Monday and the clock stops for no one.

Come in my Dreams

This is my third morning waking up in a hospital room. I am exhausted and can only imagine how my mother is feeling. 

The cafeteria coffee is not bad. It's hot and I put three packets of brown sugar in it to mask the flavor.

After having spent a fair amount of time in hospitals this year I've learned a few things. There will always be that family eating in the cafeteria. You know the family I'm talking about. The silent spoon family.

I feel like furniture and I like that. There are chairs everywhere and I fall into them, disappear and am campflaged into the rigid foam.

I remember last thanksgiving.

And the one before that. 

Counting beans

Three magic beans to send me to heaven

It is supposed to be our final day in the hospital. I am thin on sleep. Everything has ground to a halt. That's what illness does. It demandstransitipming.  that everything around it stop and pay attention.

I've begun to recognize that I have a hard time transitioning. From being awake to asleep, from the air to the show from the shower to the air are all unpleasant but from asleep to awake is by far the most challenging. If I drink then many of those are solved: I don't have to fall asleep, it is unlikely that I will actually gain alert awareness the following day.

Sleep in a hospital is bizzare as I never really reach stage four. I feel the lack of REM in a definite decrease of creativity as well as a faultering verbal filter. 

I don't know about all of this. This care giving, yet I am in many ways the only person who is qualified to advocate and care for my mom. I understand her diet, how she thinks. I can communicate with her.

Drinking thin white coffee I lean my back against the window and listen to the pages go out over the intercom. I know it's time for me to pack the miso, keiffer, and dhal back into a box, but I am waking slowly and it's thanksgiving and I am transitioning awake for three more minutes. 

From the bottom

I spent the night in a hospital last night. Not me, I'm fine. My mother.

Under normal conditions she is challenging. Under the duress of age and pain and opiates she is fragile, confused, demanding.

Her piety shows itself in her ongoing desire to simply tolerate pain as a part of the human condition. This and her very specific request that her medications are not laced with eggs, gelatin,  animal byproducts. She will literally chose death over changing her diet.

Which leads me to the real point of suffering. Her spiritual path, provides her days a dogmatic structure of good works and repentance, speaks to the truth that this is a plane of suffering. That all humans are here to overcome the suffering that they created in past lives and in this life before setting out on The Path. Accordingly, this world is also a toilet in comparison to ascended realms.

I am somewhat bitter about all of this crap because I see the perpetual suffering that religion creates. The belief that pain is a punishment, that it's somehow deserved. It is also the most important thing in her life. More important than either my brother or I are or have been. And that's okay.

I watch how beautiful she is in all of this and am grateful that I am here. I speak her language which is huge because it helps me filter and buffer her interactions. 

I am not a terrible daughter. We may just have different values. 

Instincts and Survival

I am unqualified to be in a caregiving position. I am not patient with illness or my mother. The ill version is spectacular in her independent need to suffer. 

This morning she said she would like a juice smoothie. What kind, my brother and I asked her, berry or something else. No not those I just want a plain one with macca with a coconut milk base, I don't want all that sugar. Mom, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find that for you, I said. Well, I thought, that's what I get for asking. 

I went to the mess hall and bought her a green juice. Oh this is not bad she said, sipping it down.

Now we're arguing about her diet. That she doesn't eat and has osteoporosis and is a vegetarian and is unwilling to address reality outside of her perception. 

Three broken glasses

I will take you anywhere

Tonight is a slipstream, a progressive unfolding of events. I remain translucent, sneaky, hidden in shadows. The haunts are jammed, cluster fucks of ambient texture. People dancing swerving against the rhythms 

And all I can think is this is death

Renegade Heart

of mine longs

to linger over our perfection

***

Today the library was having a book sale. I bought five. I am thrilled. I am also now behind on my reading. All of the books and projects pile into folders and stacks. The words against the grain linger on my tongue.

Amiss, I feel that. Perhaps, again, as always these days, it is the annual circadian rhythm that takes me back to places of emotion. I have set a standard that is within reach yet I watch my eclipse. The cold has overtaken me, it is almost winter.

**

I have suitors: those who would presume to know me; an other whom I adore. It gets lost in language. I am, again, against the grain. I wonder if they would like me in deep disguise. More precisely I wonder if they could help outfit the disguise, help refine the longing.

*

It is now later than I would like; I have a stack of As to keep in line and the clock seems unwilling to wait for me. 

The Sleep in my Eyes

As I wake earlier than I tend to like

It's just passed six as I scratch my head and measure coffee into my stainless steal stove-top espresso maker. I am a mix of emotions these days, full of secrets that spend their momentum rattling around the empty cage in my chest.

Climbing a mountain yesterday talking about rape, how to stay safe while running alone, and the importance of bystander intervention. What is inspiring to me is that I am part of the conversation. I have started taking the risk of opening up the dialog and taking measures to say yes, I think about this everyday that I leave my home. I think about this while I am in my home because I live alone. I am by no means a victim. What I am is nails and furry; what I am is sadness and human.

As an artist this is the conversation that interests me. The conversation about rape and equality, the conversation about being human in this world, the conversations about gender and sexuality. I want to be certain and clear that it is understood that I know men have their balls in a vice over this. The beautiful men I adore who are thoughtful, creative, and speak up to be out and fully expressed, we know those are not the things that go bump in the night.

Hard freeze

It froze last night. Frost and sunshine and breathing out steam, this morning on my way to school I tried to remember what all I have to do today. Last night a big white man told me that women are ruled by nature and men are autonomous. Really. Because women get periods and therapy. Perplexed and unwilling to generate statements or generalities, I spoke only of personal experience. He continued trying to generalize all men black all women white. I realized at some point I was telling him politely he was an asshole because I create value on a person to person basis not on who or what they claim to be. I am much more than a gathering reduction of hormones. I said this after he and a friend wrestled in the mud.  He claimed, again, that men are self-governed and rational.