fences dos

boundaries have been a huge theme in my life lately - osmosis was needed but leads to weakness, trees need bark to stand as tall and stretch both ways, to the wisdom of balance between sun and ground.

Fences

We both own the fence that stands between us--
some days tall planks that break up the horizon line,
splinters stuck in my soft feet and fingers
some days barbed wire, sharp confines
and skinny sticks I helped my father plant

and when the land falls away around me
and I'm not floating but falling, that fence
stands upright and I can never
see your face, I can never
find the gate, can't unlatch the limbs
that separate
from safety

if it were me I'd tear this aging wood
from the earth's heart, plant orange trees
and grape vines to bring everyone
out of their houses, to end this self-imposed
dichotomy, to start great conversation
and end the hunger
we constantly live with

but isolation is a two way choice--
how would we divvy up this fruit,
how do I know when empty space is all
that keeps you coming back to me-—darling if it
were my choice, we'd build a bonfire
and hold hands dancing, but
it never is. What lies between us is
a product of two wants, twin necessities
in the form of sturdy posts and
deep, deep holes that kill my back in digging.

Without a fence the roses would spread and
hummingbirds would sing in the morning and
I wouldn't miss you daily. Shoulds and wants cross
over until a stockade of fingers and thorns keep
us away, and for now trees grow tall and
pollen doesn't drift over barren fields,
and someday when the land is older,
the house paid off our hearts unlatched
the planks will wear away as something
bright passes between us, builds
something better in its wake

salvaging

Keep falling for boys that can't love me,
trying to salvage what's left of us,
children of the age where the war is never won—
like backroad trucks pulled by magnets away from ourselves,
sold for spare parts.

To distant from that loss, of being wantneeded in the world,
I salvage
other things—
cedar planks by the railroad tracks
where bone-thin birds nest—
these once were a barn,
held sweet hay, thickropes calmcows
some young man's livelihood.
Piling them in my truck, each splinter
is a hail mary, a curse I let rest
against my teeth. The house of love
is not filled with velvet or satin,
covered in glitter or stripped clean of
bright hair, or even bound in black leather...

As a child I saw houses collapse in upon themselves
like trees falling, some ghosts's life
imploding nail by nail,
sometimes for years.
Houses came down and fences
went up. Dad told me how lucky we were,
to have redwood fence posts,
their invincibilities
while my life continually crashed down
around my ears, left my sparrow bones
ringing shrill as bells.

I could barely see over the
blessed golden grass
that fed each sweet-eyed cow of ours,
clambering over russet posts
I thought I could smell the sea,
the shaded dirt, baby ferns curled
like sleeping cats—I thought
why not build
with this
as the years got leaner and leaner
and the boards on windows I looked through
were torn at by breezes and typhoons,
sometimes pulled off by pianist's fingers and
doe-eyed promises. Saving relationships--
with my father, girl-dog, old car,
these boys that come to me all soft hands
and words that twist like willows
is a dusty age-long fight,
a journey by bus and foot pushing
a shopping cart, folks avoiding
your crusted crinkled eyes, and you trudge
up the road towards a dirt floor
and missing walls and sagging cross beams
and a single chair you could never find
a cushion for, thinking why am I trying
and how will I eat tomorrow,
staring at a pile of redwood planks
as boys leave helplessly,
wordlessly,
one by one.

Some step on nails,
some I send the dogs after.
They never think to bring tools
but termites, magpies come in their wake,
a reverse plague of reminders and constant cleaving.

When the fences go down
the houses will still
be falling, ravens always at the door
as I struggle to lift one
last beam
one steady once-tree
to keep the roof from caving...

a response to: people who say I worry to much

for acs

to worry for her,
einstien of strings and written word,
is to fall into a groove--my addiction to
defending what I hold dear.
A high school career spent in
worry and wonder,
my stomach flips when her parents name
flashes on the caller id
hoping it isn't time yet...
it's a habit habit habit I can't break--

spent hours last night staring at
our empty phones,
the clock in my head - 12 1 2 3 - he whispers in the dark
she hasn't come back yet
what are we afraid to say?

her mother at my doorstep,
have you seen her
our worries twin in the gray morning light.
teenage frantic phone calls,
clawing myself apart with anxiety
fear of and for another's life -

mis conmigos family of soul energy
intertwined like branches and shared sweatpants
all our mugs filled with bitter coffee.
always those I turn to, those I think I can walk away from -
how far would I have to go -
the reason I no longer need Adonis,
no more honey-eyed savior-heartbreakers for me--
Only my firefly self and lightbright friends

Listen:
if you found your wolf-spined lady,
your lion-eyed summerlovergirl

woke without them

what would you do at midnight?

spent last night dreaming of
the dark rain world outside,
a night haunted by men worser for
the year's wear
our naivete
what I should've done - should have asked for numbers,
called the house,
should have given her my pepper spray -
pray and how close those words sound
both defense and plea

my fire-souled manic girl of stringed things
would you have loved yourself a little more
if I had said it sooner?

better safe than sorry darlings -
how to say or show it? I love you and
I don't think I can ever worry enough--

"Steps of Greiving" & Clarification

eta: I can't get the expandable post function to work, so that's why this blog/post is sooo long. rargh.

First of all, muchas gracias a daisybones for linking to me from her blog! (Even if it was "just" a credit link) Much classier and wittily written I assure you... go check it out! I'm tickled that such a beautiful artist woman linked to moi, heee hee ^_^

Okay, so here's what I would like to put under my "..." of the description on the sidebar, but I can't because blogger is hard to navigate/edit. So:

To clarify, I'm undergoing a healing-wholing from what Western medicine calls "rheumatoid arthritis" and "christ, chill out please!" (acute anxiety disorder). I've come to believe that chronic illness springs from damaged energy, repressed emotion, something that needs nurturing... And that all difficulties are simply opportunities for expression and wholing of the self. But of course, we can't be idealistic every day....

In the RA vein, here is an excerpt of the best writing assignment evere creative nonfic piece I plan on submitting... soon... seriously, any minute now. I don't feel that terrified/sad about the RA as often, anymore, but this piece basically exemplifies the tumultous emotions of diagnosis, to prognosis, to my worries, up until about six months ago... I've undergone a lot of dealing, a lot of new ideas about illness/disease since then....

Steps of Grieving

“Ten years ago we would have given you painkillers and hoped for the best, but now we prefer more aggressive therapies—before the body has a chance to deform or deteriorate.”

Aggressive is codeword for terrifying; though in the grand scheme of things I should be thankful. These nuclear-toxic pills he’s telling me about—“disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs”; they weren’t meant to shut down my self-destruction. They’re made for malaria, cancer, the kind of illness you think of when you hear disease; my lifespan is jeopardized but no more noticeably than a heart murmur or chronic sadness. Five to ten years reduction, on average. I’m almost twenty and I’m faced with mortality and another affected woman’s motto—I’m living a good life, not a long one. A life sentence and how much I don’t want to believe it, to believe anything. I’m angry, almost—with quality and quantity in the balances, God must owe me something.

But it’s killing me, that thought, the loneliness, like an alcoholic I’m self-destructing, my own immune system chipping away at what allows the fluidity of movement, lets one bend easy as waterfalls. If we knew why we wouldn’t say incurable. I could twist the staircase of my genes enough for the information to walk upright; I could turn off the switch into a low power state and finally sleep without the knowledge that my own flesh is silently scraping away at itself, misdirected, a tide pulled to loss by an ill-intentioned moon. Autoimmunity, I’m thinking; the doctor’s steady voice reeling me back to now from a dream of subconscious suicide, a dream I can’t wake up no from matter how many times I rub my eyes each morning.





“At your age the kidneys and liver should bounce back rather well. Side-effects are rare and usually mild—though usually the only reason a patient will stop taking a drug.”

Hair-loss, vomiting, vivid dreams; later, mood swings, water-retention, anxiety, insomnia. My mother jokes that cortisone is the equivalent of PMS and speed, but otherwise only nods at our earnest dialogue. I speak up, my voice, shaking, asking everything I can—how does it work, what are the options, no really please how does it work? It takes me a half hour to get the man to say “The drug interferes with antibodies’ communications with each other.” He wryly asks if I am a biology major. I shake my head no. Words are the only thing I love enough to keep living most days. Poetry as condensed emotion, all feelings held in this petite jar of false fragility, three stanzas. I can’t give you morning stiffness or blows to the knees, disabling fear or creaky heartache, but words—these are the only things I can shape without tiring or shaking myself to terror. It’s a tragedy, drama, monologue and dialogue—but mostly dark comedy, plot twists so common that corners no longer leave me surprised.

Irony makes me sicker than the drugs themselves. The doctor and my physical therapist with their voices turning somber when we talk about “the rheumatoid” it feels more like a death-sentence than the thing that gets me out of bed every morning. Always, your age, your tenacity, your youth—after the first college semester of cheap wine I have to swear off alcohol, the doctor encourages “smoking the good stuff”, chemo has given me a life-time prescription to the morning after pill. These bones are mine but my age is an idea, a date on a card, a day of the year, a constant reminder; a year into college and I have spent two paychecks on necessary drugs that can kill faster than cocaine. The sterile paper warnings tell me to not brush up against pregnant women—and to not become so myself— because, combined, the medications have a ninety-nine-percent rate of birth defects and miscarriages. I cry sorry to my body for this poison, this toxicity, I wonder what else I’m killing as the white blood cells dip dangerously low and chemical waste seeps from my fingers—six months out of high school and I consider getting my eggs frozen. I’d have to go off treatment for a year before conceiving and to breastfeed, and I hate to say it but I am just as afraid for my own pain as the well-being of my babies. I know the standards women are held to as creators, and even more terrifying is being unable to find a man who could see this decomposing girl bright enough to care that much—one who’d care enough to wait for me, for our children. Romantic overtures turn into cold stutters and some nights I hope these beautiful woman parts will become barren as tundra. I’d still be lonely, but at least I’d have an excuse.

---

all work writing and bitchin' metaphors (c) treesa dee, in all psuedonyms and actual names, in all times hencetoforth, past, and present, etc, ad et al. if it isn't awesome you can have it. but well, it totally is.

Lungs

Hopefully once school starts my writing will be more current; less musing on the past...
---

I was born three months premature, and from the second I was in the doctor’s hands, from November 1988 until March 1989, I had slim white tube go from a ventilator directly into my too-tiny lungs. The wailing cry most babies set up after birth, to tell you that they’re scared and healthy and here? I probably never had that, my mother doesn’t remember. I suppose my first breath was the spring they took me out of the incubator to go home—still only 4 pounds after months of IV feeding. A month later I came right back, with pneumonia complicated by infection-related asthma… Of course I don’t remember that, but I can imagine what it feels like: drowning. I already what bronchitis and asthma attacks feel like, like a fist clamping down to stop your lifeblood, like there are holes inside and no breath makes it to the bottom of you. To have water in them, overflowing each miniscule aveoli in my already bird-like body, doctors with sandbags and buckets, as though your lungs were a lifeboat and the perpetual wheeze and gurgle of a five month old child the winds of a storm.

In folk medicine the lungs are where sadness lie: in the winter, we get lung-sicknesses when we lose the light of the sun; we stop breathing from grief… I still feel sadness there, between my ribs, in the heart chakra (which rules the lungs). It’s a spiked flower opening, a pulsing loneliness, like all the holes in me from sickness, all that pain leaks from one rent in my heart. And what am I sad for? Regret over clothes and my lost grandparents; why the hell don’t boys love me back; my mother’s sister; my elbows don’t straighten; disease; failure to accept what is: they bang up against each other in the dearth of my chest.

Though I’ve struggled to breathe my whole life, two gifts, music and yoga, helped me overcome that. I was told I’d never master the flute because of my breath, the asthma, yet I worked so hard at it I forgot about those handicaps. Each practice I strove for the full, perfect breath, one that fills from the belly to the tip-top of the breastbone. I learned how to ration, how and when for quick Inhalations and big gulps of air, how to preciously siphon it out, note by note. The headache of held breath, the push of lungs to get out that final trill. I was absolutely grateful to realize how precious the flow of air is, how glad I was to find some beautiful use for it.. After I began playing the flute, I rarely had asthma attacks and never got bronchitis or any other terrible lung trouble again—amazing, the doctor’s said, after ten years of breathing hell. However, I still had terrible fatigue and moodiness (partially the RA), still couldn’t get a good breath all the time, still hyperventilated terrible when startled or anxious…

But then came yoga: oh, yoga. The first six months of my practice, while weirdly uncomfortable and painful, at least taught me the three-part breath. It was joy, epiphany, orgasm, to realize that there was a set way to get these perfect, blissful breaths all the time, to realize that this is what we are entitled to, that full lungs are not just random, fateful happenstance! And it all clicked in the last few months at the new studio, how to breath with and into movement, to wrap the breath around you like a cloak… It has truly been a blessing, to realize how blessed I am, to get so much more life and tapas into my system. Ironically, my first breath was a doorway to pain, sickness, and life, all at once, now my breath is the first step to health, the first step to nourishing my grieving lungs, to breathing with the full body like tall plants do, turning to face the sun.

On Music & Grieving

(I realize that these posts are really long. I'm still learning--how to write prose for an audience, how to edit in blogspot, how to uncomplicate myself... Bear with me, lovers...)

Part of me is still grieving for the lack of music in my life—and no, that’s not a metaphor. Looking through the closet I caught myself thinking, My tuner, why is the tuner not on the piano bench—and then I remembered, with a pang, that I no longer need it. Not even why, but just that simple fact: I am no longer a musician. And it is just like a death. I did the same thing when my grandfather died when I was about 13—caught myself hoping he’d give me a ride home from school. Wondered why we needed to feed the cows every weekend, why his denim jacket was still over the chair, who would open the pool door, then that quiet voice—Oh. Wait. That’s when you remember. And music is a strange thing to lose, because of how it permeates our culture, how much joy and expression I still find in listening to it. I’ve felt a kinship with certain musicians, and like most kids of my generation (or just most kids?), music has gotten me through rough times. I’m not just talking about Alanis and I having angry girl scream-time over a terrible break-up, or Matchbox putting it perfectly:

Music introduced me to art, which introduced me to artists, which introduced me to some ideas:

a) Its normal to feel things deeply, analyze the world around you, and be sensitive and complicated and “emotional” and “touchy”

b) In fact, a lot of people feel this way

c) But are a bit “messed up”, and usually not accepted by the status quo

d) BUT they also make beautiful art. Also, you’ll get along with them.

e) All of this is perfectly okay, maybe not in society’s eyes, but in something higher—whatever made you this way, whatever source this beauty is derived from.

f) Anger & intelligence = depth &also =superattractiveness

There was that. And then there was music. Sounds. Lush sound that filled your ear in perfect interweaving harmonies and always reminded me of moving landscape. I can’t tell you how full my head is when any more than three notes are played, piano or orchestra, keys and chords that swell until light is pouring down behind my eyes. I had only two instrumental pieces for a long time, the Main Titles and Farewell of Spiderman, by Danny Elfman. I still find the synchronicity angelic, perfect rhythms and tempo lull me somewhere between meditation and heaven. Music is one of the few things, that experiencing it never caused me anxiety, and (until now) was never something I associated with my “weaknesses”—in fact, in my own pursuits as a musician, I pushed myself for four years straight. Every time I felt fatigued or achy or plain depressed, I made myself go to practice, stay late at pit, or play at home, memorize the music, cheer at football games, stand up straighter, lift my arms higher and get goddamn better at what I did. It was one of the few areas that, when I made mistakes, I didn’t panic for too long—I was simply happy to be doing what I was doing. I’d remember, each time I slipped up, No girl you’ve done that and it was wrong, remember? And then that was it.

But there was always something missing—I simply couldn’t get myself to pay attention to music at home for more than a half-hour at a time. My fingers lacked some quicksilver-gene, and my tone, while progressing, wasn’t much compared to my fellow section-leader, a “natural”. I know now that if I had just worked a bit more on those solos, maybe I could have graduated to harder and harder pieces, but somewhere along the line I gave up. I can’t stand playing by myself—without a band to play with, without community, music is just less to me. So in a way, I almost shouldn’t be grieving no longer playing my flute. I have no band, no time, and jesus Christ in heaven it makes my shoulders hurt.

But still, I walk past my piano bench and the music is still set out from last summer. I live in the house my grandfather built, sleep next to his bookshelf—This Old Barn, On The Trail With Luis & Clark, Airwar:Terror From the Sky. I cook in the same kitchen we gathered in the morning after he died, a shocked winter, the stovefront empty without his bustling. I suppose I could sell my flute, donate the sheet music, get a new iron skillet and redo the wallpaper… But this living alongside ghosts, is it really holding me back? Isn’t it pain that pushes us forward? How much do I need to keep in the cupboards so that I don’t forget the love and lessons that quiet patriarch and stubborn instrument have shown me?