Disjointed

I lay in bed, too many thoughts to decipher, the brain a buzz, a hum, where to begin?

Hand upon heart, it  beats, pumps, the pressure of veins pushing blood, it soothes. Head back, eyes closed, I listen. And it beats. The rain on the window. The temples on my face. Blood in a hurry. And the train screams in the distance, a howl that echoes as it flees. No time to savor in this place, everything has somewhere to be.

…everything has somewhere to be…

The End of Samson

So troubled, his mind, his urges. Just when it is all so well, it crumbles. I was afraid when he said he was home, left a no good town two hours away. My questions weren’t answered, always in piecemeal with him. A puzzle pieced story that takes days to get, extract from him the more he becomes at ease. I thought perhaps this time it wasn’t so bad.

Thursday night, I’ve painted with light, and I’m having a lite meal at a Mexican restaurant when he calls. Two days since I have heard from him, since I saw his face though I’ve called. Relapses scare me. It’s so easy for him to slip quick on that deep slope. I say meet me at the house in an hour. Ten minutes late, and he’s upset with me, why can’t I be on time?! Since when has it mattered? How about all the times he’s never showed up, never called, gotten lost in China doll’s house on the Phosphate? And he’s upset about my punctuality? We bicker, this is odd, what strange things for friends to argue about. I leave the room, sit at my computer, and wait, but nothing. He says I’m acting as a child, and I say how much older is he by not returning my calls for two days because I had upset him earlier in the week. I don’t understand the beginnings of this fight.

He didn’t start the job, I should have known then where those two days had gone to, but I didn’t push him. I was accused of thinking the worst happens. He leaves.

The next morning, at my cubicle, sleepy eyed and barely coherent, I received an automated call about a suspicious transaction on one of my credit cards. And then I knew. What he had done. Why he picked a fight so he’d have reason to leave.

Fool. Such a fool. A card that I don’t even keep on my person, and he knew. I called home and asked for the abandoned wallet of cards to be looked through. It was the only one gone. Samson, what has become of you?

I called him. Voicemail. I called his mother. She said he wasn’t home, that he came in the night before for a quick shower before leaving, before my house, no sight of him since. He has fallen again. Relapse. What house of ills does he slumber in now?

In all the years, the struggles, never has he trespassed against me like this. I’ve picked him up in the early morning hours, his eyes bloodshot, veins laced, shooing away crack whores and making threats to call police if he didn’t come with me. I’ve climbed through a window, bruised my body, in order to take him to rehab only to be told he didn’t feel up to going that day.  I have fed his belly and opened my pocket during each attempt at rehabilitation. So why steal from me? The person who has exceeded the bounds of loyal and love for him all this time.

I called again. Voicemail. This is what he would later hear: “Did you not think Chase would call me? Did you not think I’d ask someone to look in the wallet? I never want to see you again. I never want to talk to you again. You no longer exist.”

The end of Samson in my life. Ten years of friendship severed, all for a ten dollar fill up at a Kangaroo gas station.

It doesn’t matter the meager amount. It’s about trust, respect. Such sacred elements of any relationship. To break them is like desacralizing sacred ground. I am loyal until the end, and he has brought the end to fruition.

After I hung up, I cried, standing deep into the car lot so as not to be found, hiding between Silverados. Betrayal. Such a pain in my heart. Samson, you have slaughtered this friendship, its death on your hands.

Sleep on these thoughts. Hear my words. You don’t exist to me anymore. I want it to echo in your conscious, you don’t exist. Let it break your heart like you have mine. Let its ruin plague your mind. Forget me like I will forever desire to forget you.

Political Affiliation

Last week, a coworker asked me if I belonged to the democratic or republican party. My response…

“Neither. I’m an independent; I can think for myself.”

Seeker of Light

On the cusp of winter’s end, I found her. An ad, a link, and a click, all thanks to Craig. Knowing a stranger without seeing her face; revealing herself in the memories of her eyes. Discovering her story through image was like drowning…a rush of emotive fervor, a wave of unexpected calm and clarity, a final breath that holds both relief, loss, joy, life. And I think, can one cry underwater?

Severed words scattered on the page, divorced from its end or beginning, given the freedom to become something new. Make them come together. And I thought, is this the workings of her mind? Nonlinear. Like a voice was speaking on the splash, an echo in your mind, and she whispers all the words at once. The mind isn’t meant to decipher; she wants it to feel.

And even still, when I find myself on that page, the stories of her, it takes me a moment to adjust. And once I open the next visual chapter, I start slow, segue to the next only after taking in an image like breathing. The hues, the angles, these people entering her life if even for just that hour, she sees it so raw and pure. But never do I stop at the end, I pause, and then I find myself clicking quick. Each image with a millisecond of life before me, like a flip book, I press on to the next without thought. Faster, then faster, until the visual melts into a flash of colors, curves, light…it feels like the last thirty seconds of life, that last breath, the final mind bursting…rupturing…blow out.

She doesn’t know of these things…until now.

Never could I have imagined that she’d be the next great teacher in this journey I trek. What a mess she has made of me. To feel with my eyes. So often I feel like a gaping wound routinely salted. The grotesque seer, my perception shifting. Do you not see?

I speak of beauty in terms of light.

Often, distracted while driving, I find myself blurting aloud the wonderful something I have found. And now my friends know, they say, “Oh, the building. Oh, the light,” before reminding me to stay in my lane. This mind wanders.

Yes, what a mess she has made of me…

Thank you

In the Land of Shiva: Part IX

I see her hallowed cheeks, eyes bulging from the sockets. Death of life within her bones. Her frame fragile and knobby. Skin the color of the Amritsar dirt.

We locked the doors. The heat quickly festering. She’s at my window, staring at me. No words, but those eyes speak. I have the urge to take her picture.

A shudra. An untouchable. And even less to her fellow Indians, now nothing but a beggar. The girls role down the window and give her at least fifteen rupees, but she doesn’t budge. Those eyes, coma ridden, where has she gone?

I didn’t see it at first, the cloth sling across her chest, fraying at the edges, seams bound to burst. And the small mound peeking through, the crown of an infant’s head, so still is that sling, that child, unmoved. I forget to swallow the lump in my throat. I can only stare. I think, no, I know, that baby must be dead. The Amritsar heat is over one hundred degrees, streets of dirt, dry earth dehydrated, thirsty for the monsoon rains that won’t come. Her baby is dead. Doesn’t she know? And she’s at my window, staring at me. I want to cry, but I can’t even muster a no, I have to force myself to look away. But even the hazy figure I see out of the corner of my eye chills me. Why won’t she leave us? Go get her baby some milk. It is enough, more than enough. But perhaps she knows what I do, the infant in the sling is dead, no use in buying milk.

She haunts me. This woman of no name. Her eyes. That stare. So vivid in this memory of mine. I wonder if the others recall her like I. Does she still make them tremble after two years? After her, I could never say no to another with child.

The day before leaving Dharamsala to return to Delhi, I went to the Mcleodganj bazaar one last time. As I waited for taxis to return at the edge of the bazaar, there she was. And a baby that could sit upright while held, undead. I tried to ignore her, but I couldn’t. The beggar from Amritsar is all my mind remembered, manifesting itself in this new figure. I tried to walk away, but then she started crying the Hindi word for milk. She only wanted money for milk, for the baby, nothing more. I stopped, turned to look at her, that face, same hallowed cheeks and large eyes, pupils dark as coal.

The men around were looking. Rarely did they tell beggars to stop unless they got too close. But she hadn’t left me alone for several minutes. Walking beside me, feeling her breath upon my shoulder, as I walked past vendors, choosing Buddhist prayer beads and earrings. The vendors would shoo her away, but she remained nonetheless. That one word, repeating it in my ear, milk.

Finally, I nodded. Pointing to a small shop ten feet away, I said yes. The owner was not happy. This beggar woman in his store. He scowled, he told her to stay by the entrance. He didn’t want her near his goods. But I needed her to pick the milk. And she spoke words in Hindi I didn’t know until finally the shopkeep told me what she was saying. As I paid, he leaned down, whispered to me, “You know she will only go sell this. Give money to someone else.” I said what she does beyond this isn’t my business. He didn’t understand. No ghost from Amritsar was haunting him.

I handed her the milk. She asked for five rupees. I said no. And the angry shopkeep began yelling at her with words I never learned, flinging his arms, she turned and walked away. In the taxi, the bumpy path down the mountain, I hoped that she would prove that man wrong. That her child would go without knowing hunger that night.

And still, I see her so clearly. Standing before the car, one arm outreached, palm open. Bones prying through the skin. So vivid, so ripe an image. Dark skin brushed with the Amritsar dirt, clothes dirty and unthreading, and the small sling. No breath of movement, no wail from that child. It sleeps. I knew it then, but did nothing. It sleeps. And I think, what if only I had given her some milk?

Undefined

Ideas without a home.

At least until college. Before I sat in a cold room on campus and found this woman before me I had only heard of. So nonlinear. Her words like a stream of consciousness, perhaps a mild form of possession. Pacing across the room, taking her glass off to point with them towards air, as if she truly saw without them, then a dash to the board to scribble a word, a fragment…

I never knew what to write down. Originally, I tried to write it all. But by the second course with her, I stopped making notes on the regular. Often I wrote down only the epiphanies she stumbled upon in her discourse, or my own that had been jostled awake by her words. Never before her, never before in my life, had I heard the word Feminism…how strange to make it 19 years without so many thoughts, so many emotions, finding a home, becoming defined.

Sophomore year in high school, I had written a short story. A mother must survive, work outside the home in a weapons factory during World War II while her husband fights. Upon his return, she’s forced to quit her job at the factory, no need for such things anymore, he is home. Through the eyes of her daughter it is seen. Her mother won’t cook, smokes cigarettes in the kitchen, won’t even wear her stockings, and she cries so much, she has grown more silent. And father is angry, fights with her, but she remains stoic, unyielding, she won’t work for him anymore. I don’t recall the ending, but it wasn’t happy, I don’t write tidy conclusions for fuzzy hearted people.

My teacher was perplexed by the story. She didn’t get it. “So, what?” she said to me. The mother had to quit her job, that wouldn’t cause her behavior. But I stood by my story, my characters, yes, it would. I couldn’t explain it to her. I didn’t understand it fully myself. I just knew within me, in my mind, my writings, this woman would have found something, something in her, and having it taken away, she would be unassuaged, she would refuse to return to life as it once was. But I didn’t have the words. My thoughts did not yet know their origin.

I do not know how I thought this way, surely something had to have influenced me, but I can never pinpoint it in my life. To say it was innate would make me suspicious, make me wonder about my character. And my memories are fragmented, I forget so much of myself. What woman am I to be?

This week I thought about marriage. Realized, confirmed to myself, I would never take another’s last name. Most people I know think this odd. Co-workers I see almost daily find it tacky. Why marry and not take a new last name? It’s like saying you don’t want him. I say, then how much does he want me if he wouldn’t think to take mine, or better yet, know I need not a name, but only him. I think why do I need his last name when I already have my own?

And now I’m smiling. I love that thought. I’ll say it again, “Why do I need his last name when I already have my own?” It is.