Maya

Surrounded.

The stuff pushes in, new stuff; Christmas stuff and clutter. I have a tendency to be overwhelmed even by too many groceries after a trip to the store, the consumerism of Christmas always freaks me out a little. I don’t know how to catalogue things, except books. I have just gotten done giving things away, things with emotional weight; I never keep such things. They stay new and perfect if they are full up with expectations that never realized fruition, or a disappointment that hangs over my heart. It’s so much easier to gift wrap my emotional bounty and give it away in parcels,

But there is always the incoming. The influx.

I don’t pretend to be well, but tomorrow and the next are also parcelled into organization bits. This year I will synthesize a little bit more of the love offered. I’m frowning over a sum, bent over the computer. The stuff has a presence of its own, looming and omnipresent as rock formations in my mind.

What she does, the kitten, is she leaps into the middle of everything that seems so serious and so much. She’s a little girl cat, and she’s one of *those* girls, you know: The kind that prove boys aren’t _quite_ the most lovable things on Earth. She’s all round tumminess and slightly slanted green eyes, and she can take the distance from the couch to the arm chair in one leap, no sweat. She lands in the pile of my terrible stuff, and I’m laughing, suddenly, because there’s a ribbon caught on her whisker, and she’s a rakish pirate cat. I push it all aside, very matter of factly, and retrieve my wayward cat.

Strange magic, Maya. You turn my sink and soar into a comical flounder. I want to write, to respond to people far enough away that I can get close to them. And of course push away those who have gotten too close, find some way to word my regard and still carefully post my ‘Keep Out’ borders, but you won’t stay on the floor, will you?

She jumps into my lap with the stubborn, single-mindedness of a girl cat. Gracie was the same way, but Gracie didn’t leave four tiny holes in the skin of my thigh, rousing me to holler from the pain of her stubborn climb.

You’d laugh too, to see her looking wild and alarmed, rushing away from the shout, to hide behind a pile of ‘Shall i keep them?’ books. She knocks things down. She doesn’t listen. She hops into my lap over and over while I’m sitting at the keyboard, thinking I will write the twisted etchings of my mind.

I have to take my hands off the keyboard, and wrap them around this little, purring body. She doesn’t understand anything. She doesn’t know I’m a failure, that I make some sort of living off of introspection, that I hate myself, and the holiday, and love my family and hate their presence and hate  hate hate the STUFF; she’s a fool.

And she’s real. And soft. And alive.

And I’m in love. 

Passing thought

If I were going to be with someone
I guess I’d be with you.

I’d have to unlearn the ways of solitude, I suppose,
and meld my skin against something
more solid than the steadfast dark.

But to take your small sips of mellow observation-
for that, and other small occasions,
maybe I’d change.

Pulling pants on in the bleak, chill morning,
seeing how your hair settled and arranged
around eyes too old
for a heart-shaped face.

Watching you take it in
the way you must have taken it in at age 5-
thinking, weighing, deciding-
choosing to be silent. Feeling the kindness in that
as I sidle apologetic
through your door.

There’s such a wait in you, such a patience;
such an assured thing, but I feel your delicate,
your parent wisdom
set among bird-feather bones.

I will bring you home flowers
to bemuse you.
We’ll eat soup.
I’ll show you what I’m good at.

In an odd moment
I can let go of who you could have been
and who I could have been,
for in the odd moment
I’d be admiring of
what we seem to be.

I mean,
what we’d seem to be If I was with you, because

I guess I’d be with you
if I were going to be with someone.

Honest to gosh

I was very kindly tagged for a unique blog award yesterday, by Julie over at ‘Thinking About’. While it is always flattering to have someone honor you with an award, this one is rather near to the heart, because it’s the ‘Honest Scrap’ award- for bloggers who display remarkable honesty in their daily posts.

When you get the Honest Scrap award, you are meant to grace your readers with 10 honest things about yourself, and then pass on the award to other blog friends who write honestly and truly about themselves and events in their life.

So without further ado:

1.  It seems right to begin with a few words about honesty. I do try- in both real life and on here to be direct and straightforward. That was not always the case, and I’m certainly not always successful. When I fail, it’s usually because I fear something- the consequence of being truthful, and that kind of makes me hold the truth in even higher regard, cus I feel weak when I fail at it. There’s a difference, though, between honesty and brutal honesty; and a question each person has to ask themselves if they write in a semi-public forum such as this: Where do I draw the line between privacy and honesty? Not everything is meant to be expressed. I think though, that if you feel the *need* to write something- there’s usually a reason, and the best anyone can hope to do is be as honest and objective as possible when that impulse takes hold.

2.  In that vein, I hereby freely admit that I’ve eaten 4 cinnamon rolls in the last 24 hours. They were not giant cinnamon rolls, but they weren’t like one inch tall, either. I make no excuses. I baked the darn things, and I wanted to eat some. They were good.

3.  I tend to think people are paying keen and interested attention to my every move, even when they couldn’t care less.

4.  Things have been pretty sad and upset around here (romantically) the last 5 days. The reason for that was, painfully enough, an honesty issue. I honestly don’t know what happens now.

5.  I’ve voluntarily watched ‘The Mummy 2’ sixteen times. And I’d watch it again.

6.  I’ve been fired 5 times. There was no consistent reason. I’ve come up with a few explanations, but mostly, nobody should ever hire me to do any kind of clerical work, ever. It’s remarkable that I kept applying for those kinds of jobs, but I did, and remarkably, they kept hiring me.

7.  It bothers me, I’ll admit. In my twenties, right up to about 29, I thought my friends were blessed fools to get married, and I thanked my lucky stars that I didn’t follow suit- though opportunities came up a few times. It would have meant a whole lot of extra pain, expense and bureaucratic paper-work which I would never have gotten through (see #6), because none of those relationships lasted. My relationships continued not to last. I continue to be grateful never to have gotten legally entwined with the wrong person, but-

It gets lonely. There’s always the newness and the fragility of the fledgling relationship. There’s the in-between time. I see people who’ve had stories together, history together, and I just wish the person I’m meant to call my own could get here. He must have time management issues, like me.

I’m going to give him crap for being late.

8.  I’m text-book PTSD, and, not unsurprisingly, prone to depression. This sucks. But I can’t maintain a bad mood any more consistently than I can maintain a good one, so that’s kinda nice.

9.  I haven’t had a girl best-friend since I was 16 years old. My best friend has been a guy. My current best-friend is probably some form of soul-mate, which might sound romantic, but it really means you have absolutely no tolerance when you see them wussing out, or fooling themselves. That honesty thing again (it goes both ways). Still, I’m glad that he’s there.

10.  My daughter is the person I’ve failed the most, and the person I love the most. Which leads me to this bit of skewered wisdom I’m going to pass on to all y’all: The way someone acts isn’t necessarily the way they feel.

We’re human. It’s a pretty knackered species.

I hereby present the ‘Honest Scrap’ award to:

Rao @ Age of Geek,   Christina @ Trees, Flowers, Birds,  LB @ Lazy Buddhist,  ybonesy @ redRavine & Beda @ anhinga

Each of these people has displayed remarkable honesty, expressing what many people think but are afraid to say, opening the door to more honest exchanges.  There are others I thought to tag, but may have refrained due to your current real life situations- which might be making things busy or difficult at the moment. Peek in and say hi, they all like visitors.