introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- it slips away lights off - twenty third of july, 2002 "jesus stares at me in my chair with his big blue eyes and his honey brown hair and he's looking at me from way up there on the wall."~patty griffin i had a million things to rant on about. a million things that have bothered me that i haven't had the patience to find the words to express exactly how it all went down. there were the fifty or sixty people at the lucinda williams concert that migrated to the front along the sides, standing right in front of those of us who had, for two hours, i think, been sitting waiting patiently, enjoying the sunset of evening and the chuck profit show preceding. we'd been sitting, waiting anxiously to see her and enjoying the gratis-ness of the thing until all of them....talking and drunk and ridiculous...came hoarding up the side path and edging us in and in and in and sitting in front of us so that we couldn't see the face of the woman singing those sweet twanging tones....and i'll never understand why people can't just sit and enjoy a show like that...a nice quiet evening where the energy is in the air and you don't need to stand up to enjoy the music....i'll never understand why people need to yell an artist's name over and over, even when she is talking...as if she's going to just stop what she's doing to say...'yeah, what? i'm sorry....was there something you need?'...or maybe i'm just selfish and jaded about concerts...i was just...i don't know...aggrevated because people have no natural respect for anyone else in the world. and then, it was the worst week ever, maybe. the machine picked up on the fourth ring and i heard my own voice mechanicalize and materialize on the speaker. leave a message. we'll call you back. sure we will. when we wake up. i was groggy and it was ten minutes before the alarm would go off to get us out of bed to go to the woods for our morning hike. i was groggy but aware enough to recognize my mother's voice. to realize the seriousness of the situation. its your grandmother. she's got cancer. she's seeing an oncologist a the end of the month. hell, i don't even know what an oncologist is. and its cracked this globe of spun glass i've lived inside of for all of these years because hey, people get old. they get cancer. they die. and she's old. and she has cancer. but i don't know what to think or how to take all of this precognition of death to come....she's my grandmother. and there's this sense of guilt that says i should've written more and that says i never got to know her just so....not well enough. not well enough to say much, really. just enough to remember riding in the back of her silver horizon to go swimming in the summer when we were little. enough to remember that she was the one that came to stay with my little sister and i and fed us tv dinners when my brother was busy being born. enough to know that she made some truly awesome christmas cookies. and raspberry whip on angel food cake in summer, when the raspberries were fresh and lucious and huge from our garden. enough to remember going to her house after school that time to sew those pillows on her sewing machine when i was taking that home ec class in sixth grade. enough to remember what it was like to play solitaire next to her at night for that month or two i lived with her. but its just not enough. and i don't know how to take it. and add to that knowing that she doesn't have plans for a funeral...or anything like that...hurts a lot. and makes me wonder exactly where we're all supposed to find closure. because me. and my brother. and my sister. we don't know what this is like. and this...is gonna make our worlds come crashing down around us. and that hurts. and that same morning, on returning from the woods, the realization that the bike my father gave me that was his...the one i rode around at college...the one with the basket...was stolen from under the light downstairs. stolen. taken. gone. vanished. so the time came to call the police and file a report. missing. old. my father's. no idea how much it was worth. sentimental value. which, i might add, officer, is a little ironic, seeing as the man is still alive and no, we're not really talking right now..and he doesn't respect me enough to let me be me...but damn, you know, its just that....its my dad's and thats why it matters because i love him...but...i've got to be true to myself on this one. its time for me to be an adult. and yes, i know, officer...an adult who locks up her bike at night, even if it is a quiet street...an adult who realizes the world isn't exactly inherently good. yes, officer. (on a sidenote: they found the bike three days later in the bushes by the ohio river with a soft front tire about seven blocks away. i picked it up that same day. but i realized that i miss my dad. but i'm just not ready to compromise what i believe. so i'll keep the bike and do my best to keep on keepin' on. oh, and thanks to the moon township police because....i was really missing my bike a lot. i won't call you pigs ever again. for sure. promise.) and there were other things, small and unimportant. i had a million things to which i planned to devote much time and explanation....but tonight, when i got off that bus and stepped onto the sidewalk and looked up at that sky and felt the breeze of the cool front moving on in and hearing the rustle of leaves that hasn't sang on the air very much this summer, most of it just slipped away. the moon is full tomorrow and i'm trying to be that girl that lets it hurt less and takes it as it comes. i'm trying to be better, and its not as easy as i thought it would be. no worries. no cares. its all going to be alright. i just need to find a little peace. xoxo ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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