Sunday, September 15, 2013

marriage.


Scott puts up his hand for a high-five, his feather tattoo showing. I align my hand with his and slide my fingers between his long skinny bones. 

"You're a fuckin' weirdo... but I dig you." He says. 

"I am a weirdo." I say, implying the vast difference between our levels of normalcy. 
"Aaaaaand I am playing Pokemon. So...there's that." 

Beside him, the old Gameboy graphics blink blurrily on the screen of our flat screen desktop computer. Big block letters await his direction. He has muted the music. He isn't working in the morning and this is how he relaxes. I try not to judge his refusal to spend free time reading books about global warming, fruit or water depletion. If there aren't dragons, swordplay, magic or journeys on horseback, he isn't interested. Currently, he's waiting for the Star Wars book he ordered to arrive at our local libray. Until then, it's child's play. 


"When are we going to get our next tattoo?" I ask.

"I don't know. When we reach the next phase of our marriage. I think we're still in the feather phase."  He says. 
"So when the feather settles." 

Eden



I started eating a diet of raw fruit and vegetables last month and it makes me quite happy. It isn't just because I'm eating the food I crave and enjoy the most, but that I am physically happier. It must be some kind of sugar satiation of something--eating the food my body is biologically meant to consume---I don't know! But I'm happy every day. Scott has noticed. Strangers too. They talk to me all the time as if they can sense the smile I have suspended between my skull and skin. 

"Thatta wolf?" I hear. 

Three middle-aged men sit on the back steps of the Baptist church on Wilson Avenue where "JESUS DIED FOR OUR SINS" stands straight and stiff above them on the spire of the church. Below the cement steps they sit on, the door to the basement is propped open. There an older gentleman toils with a large standing fan. Upstairs, the 10 o'clock choir sings. These gentlemen are dawdling for donuts and coffee, I suspect.   

"No, she's a dog." I say, looking back. 
"How you doin' young lady?" One says. 
"Good, thank you." 

I now look at the world and how I live in it, differently. No longer do I allow the logical, plotted reasoning of my head to dominate and suffocate my heart. I look at everyone I pass now, no longer fearing they will ask me for money or directions or help. I think we human creatures have become so conquered by our creations that we often forget parts of us we were born with like instinctual compassion. For before we built cities, before printed paychecks, before there were mortgages and banks and governments and car accidents, before police officers and dictators, gas chambers and air conditioners, before there were beds and lawyers and Wall Street and nightly news stations and zoos and nursing homes, before all that, there were people who lived primarily on their instincts. Before we mixed cement and built skyscrapers, we came together and lived, traveled and survived together. Before we wrote the word, "love", we loved. Before there were pornographic magazines, online dating sites and pub crawls, we discovered pleasure through procreation, through love and food. We picked and we provided. But now we compassionate creatures are stuck in the steel and concrete world rich men calculated into budgets of labor costs, real estate mogul fees and state tax percentages. Now we must work something called jobs or we go hungry because food is no longer free. We have left the jungle behind, returning only to cut it down for wood, fuel and cattle grazing. Cowardly, we hide from our destruction and pollution within sealed glass windows, painted plaster and bricks,---breathing our filtered air, drinking our filtered water and eating our pre-packaged filtered food. We are like astronauts. We are like pampered babies with perpetual colic, lying upon our perfectly stuffed cow skin couches as we complain about tummy aches, indigestion and constipation. The news anchors tell us what to do and who to trust. Trust no one. Humans are terrible creatures, they say. We should hide in our locked homes and never emerge. The president is out of control. The illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs. There are countless countries pointing nuclear weapons at defenseless civilians somewhere. We are curious creatures indeed and in need of intellectual stimulation, but the tricks of the media have possessed the masses. We have forgotten the sun and the trees. We have forgotten the ocean water. Instead we sit at desks and order our smoked salmon sandwiches with chips and chocolate cake and discuss how else we can control the environment for our financial gain. As I walk in a summer storm, wind bursting through branches above, I can't help but laugh as Mother Nature proves her power to those below running from her rain. 

A man sits sweating on the sidewalk in front of McDonald's. He says hello and asks for change. I tell him I don't have any. In my fanny pack all I have is brass keys, a sandy tennis ball, plastic poop bags, a broken watch and a couple handfuls of kibble. 

"What kinda dog is that?" He asks. 
"She's a Shepard Keeshond mix, we think." I say. 
"And a poodle!" He says. 
"A poodle?" I ask. "You think?"
He nods his head and I chuckle because I'm not sure if he's making a joke or not. 
"Have a nice weekend." He says as I walk away. 
"You too. Try to stay cool." 

Today, I sit on my mattress eating half a watermelon. My sheet and quilt hang in the bathroom drying, while underwear, towels and handkerchiefs tumble in the rumbling dryer in the basement below. Sticking my silver spoon into the pink, it crunches like snow. I twist and lift up hunks of juicy fruit, chewing briefly before it coasts down my throat to fill my belly like a swollen water balloon pressed to a garden hose. With both hands, I lift the green and yellow patterned bowl and drink the rosy rainwater. 

What if the bible is right? What if the Garden of Eden, when humanity lived in the jungle, was truly a time before sin. A time when people had all they needed and wanted. A time when all desires were met. A time of peace. World peace. Imagine that, John Lennon. Imagine living in a society free of jealousy, spite, vengeance and greed. A society without violence. Without murder and wars. A time before armies and kings and palaces and slaves. A time before weapons. Is it true we left the place where we were meant to be? I wonder, for look what we have become. We praise the progress of technology, medicine, and of corporations, but still so many are dying. Dictators conduct mass murders cowardly behind chemical warfare. Gang initiations lead to random drive-bys in cities all over the world. School shootings shock, sadden and frighten us all. Drug-addicted bank robbers kill witnesses so that they can continue to pollute the body they take for granted, the life they've failed to fix. Drunk-driving vehicular homicides. Arson. Bombs. Factories falling down. An obesity epidemic. So many unsatisfied people in this world looking for relief through acts or lifestyles which only perpetuate their in-satiation and perplexed inner-turmoil. People justify, reason, even preach from dinner table pulpits why they believe what they believe. But maybe heart disease and heart attacks are a sign. PAY ATTENTION TO ME! The heart cries through chest pains and left arm tinglings. But we don't always listen. Instead we tell ourselves to leave it to the brain. The doctors will cure me. The surgeons will mend me. The occupational therapists will teach me to walk again. Scientific studies in the news warn us what to do with ourselves. As if we aren't all experts! We all should know how to make ourselves happy and healthy, but we doubt all we know instinctually because "they" know better. If they say red wine, whiskey and chicken are ok, then it must be! Hooray! But we are animals. We are. Animals meant to find our food, animals meant to procreate, shit and run. Animals meant to laugh, hide, carry heavy things and swim. We are animals, perfect animals in fact when we live the way we are meant to live. When I listen to my body and give it what it needs, I believe in God. I believe in Science too. This is not a contradiction. To me, God was the first Scientist. 

I want to take a voyage to the jungle. I couldn't move there. My heart wouldn't allow it. I have a life here in modern society and would not abandon it for any other--no matter how sweet. But to know where I come from helps me understand where I want to be. And this piece of history--this ancient human piece--- may never be repeated again. But perhaps after the end arrives, we will be given another chance to try existence over all again. I think my soul might be quite old. For I think it knows, deep down in the DNA of my spirit, that everything is a circle: a perpetual pattern of fresh beginnings and bitter ends. 


A Wise Friend

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