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Here in the LII of my life, I'm sobbing in a room in Northern California - near everything I have ever dreamed of: solitude, San Francisco, proper pay job, architecturally-stunning apartment near a body of water... all the important things.
and my intelligent throat burns as my fingers tap to the tune of the drugs - both self and prescribed that allow me seemingly to put forth.
instead, I'll write today's essay on how it feels at 52 to look at me of I don't 32. god was I fucking beautiful. now my lungs hurt. my heart feels like lead. my head is a wet sponge of lava tears oozing as I recall life on the fourth street in a little historic town that captured my soul as Athens had ignited it.
The thing about me now and the photo then and the subject speaking - that you wouldn't know without being me - is that not ONLY am I saddened that I am no longer young and beautiful and unpolluted of my own self-destructive pay-day-loan-like lifelines; but also, I have the knowledge that the same alone and lost and dripping blood that that woman with her beloved cat on her arm (that was our heyday) .
Now, I sit in similar black chaos of my own choosing.
as a billie holiday song,
"in my solitude, you haunt me..."
for me, I am haunted by a cove of a universe likely mostly lost to me but perhaps possibly salvageable - a brigadoon.
there's this other writer that has one - wines burg, OH? or something like that. For me, if I always yearn and never touch - what a waste. speaking of waists and touching - not to lament yet here I'll die? with skin as silken as a purse on the waist and oboe curve warm and cognac while the clock ticks. I'll sometimes touch my torso myself and be comforted by my own flesh. I haven't slept with anyone since July 7th. I haven't had sex since July 3rd. As with all last sex sessions with my spouses, this was a memorable one... I suppose there must be a part of me that knew?
Anyway, it's Padz' birthday I don't need another soliloquy on why the fuck I chose number two. that can be something for Edith's birthday - feb 14.
I tell you I don't recall much of California padz, and that's because I was SO SPAZED OUT and unsettled and unsafe in my head that I couldn't even relax enough to dream/create/play/see her. It's a retrospective tragedy for me, and as a second time mother, I recalled that and was so horrified that I would put my miasma tragisima and general sad depressed vibes onto my cat edith. it was tragic. I was not in a good place and only through the help of three pills a day prescribed by dr. crow that I am even able to not go into the dark side.
but this is about July 15th
my holy day because people I love were born on this day.
the spouse I threw away for a ring toss
I've never gotten a cat on my own as a single parent, yet I've burned two cats as a single mom. (and god, I miss you edith and am so sorry for the pain I didn't screamingly advocate that you had earlier... sorry I didn't realize sooner. the vet said you had such good fur you brave warrior hiding pain so stealthily - my mother's heart breaks to realize in retrospect what it all was and ...) it can be about Padz now again too because both of your lives and deaths taught me so much as a human being on planet earth. my relationship with you - the responsibility of having you as my companions.
I think about getting another one... but knowing I'd have to handle any pain or death - I don't want to take that on just yet. mamma's fragile.
all those who don't care.
padz.
shared
her
grey
cat
life with me. In Wilmington, she was our child. when she died, mark was shocked when I called him on the phone.
to me, I had really considered him someone who raised me. He was also the father of the most important being in my life. I can look around me to the right is the canvas painting of the mt. Shasta where I threw her ashes in a children's park. to my left is the robot picture other kristen made and the stone I got when I was out of my mind and wobbling on my legs getting out of the vet after losing my cat and walking in to the first open door....a crystal shop.
now things are so different. I would have to lure with my fire and wit if I wanted to lure at all - my shine like 32 is now encrusted.
and I bleed... padz. you WERE LOVED. YOU ARE LOVED. I LOVE YOU allways. forgive me.
I wish I could show you the photo. I used to do it a lot when I was a bored housewife watching all my children with Susan Lucchi for the kitsch of it - take photos. My #1 was a photographer and it rubbed off on me. This one was black and white dian Arbus-like. my expression is norma Desmond. I'm lightly holding the wonderful pawpadz in her favorite position on my shoulder (she used to love to dance with me). (would that I were happy and safe and loved and knew it and didn't earthquake my life out of fear that it was too ok and ruin all my love for all of it...)prison of my own making.
that's why I cried.
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