The Deep End of the Soul

This weekend is the anniversary of the worst thing that ever happened.  For me, life is forever split in two parts: before the fire and after.  The timeline eternally broken in this way.  I think about it daily, multiple times a day, a constant grieving.  This time of year is always particularly difficult: death anniversaries, birthdays of passed loved ones.  My alter grows.  I find myself swimming way out in the depths of my feels.

I don't believe in ‘silver linings’: the good that I’ve often heard people say comes out of horror.  I strongly reject any insensitive notions that there is some ‘bigger purpose’ in suffering or in tragic loss.  Some ‘greater plan’.  Nope.  No thank you.  We just do what we have to in order to cope and to heal.  In my mind, there’s no way to ‘make sense’ of the terrible awfuls' of life because they don’t.  We can feel gratitude for the time we had, as well as deep grief for those we lost, but I know I will always be heartbroken.  I will always wish it different, no matter what we make of it.  I’m learning that this doesn’t go away.  I have spent a lot of energy holding others up, or holding myself up for others.  As time goes on, I am struggling to hold anything up.  I am dropping things.  Bits and pieces falling all around.  The urge to let them all drop at once intensifies.  I suppose I am just now getting to some of my feelings.  I’ve always taken a long time to process big pain.  

In a way, grief has become part of my tether.  Tying me to those I’ve lost.  I don’t want to let go, or move on.  Instead I carve out space for grief to live with me.  I keep it close.  I tend to it, care for it.  I try to be patient and kind.  I try to be honest: living in truth.  I don’t have to be ok even when it seems I’m supposed to be.  Even when I pretend to be.  As I make more space for the griefs, I find that I have less space for the beefs: the arbitrary battles that keep us separate.  I have less patience for those who cross boundaries, yet I don't feel as called to 'fix' things outside myself anymore.  The space I have for peoples innate flaws or shortcomings has widened, as I have learned to appreciate people as they are.  Life is just too damned short y'all.  

I’m learning that there is a very real fallout that continues for years, decades, lifetimes after collective loss.  I suppose that is part of the grieving process as well.  Pain has changed me.  Everything shattered, everyone dispersed.  Distance where we used to be close.  Neurotic caution where there used to be fierce invincibility.  Habits became crutches became addictions or sobriety.  Many of us were already grieving big pains, or have grieved more losses since.  These losses are not necessarily connected but it all has a tendency to feel tangental as the grief compounds.  Past, present, future losses all jumbled together.  Even friendship endings seem to fester in the bigger wounds.  I still feel the gaping holes and spaces in everyday life where loved ones would be.  How things would be, could be, should be.  The justice that was never served.  The feeling of being out of place, in the wrong timeline.  A terrible awful upside down world that doesn't have everyone in it.  I find myself getting caught on the sharp edges: Why do bad people get to stay while the good ones are taken away? 

I brace at the shadow synchronicities.  All the things that had to come together for things to be as they are.  All the ways they could have happened to make it come out differently.  I replay everything in my mind on a loop.  The way things weave together, where they break, where they fall apart.  I obsessivley study the connections, contradictions, and how cruel it all seems.  When things happen in life that are this terrible, it often feels intentional.  

The truth is, I’ve never stopped bargaining: How, why, what if?  What could I give?  What could I trade?  To change the outcome.  Still angry.  It should never have happened.  The bitterness settles in the back of my mind, caught in that dark damp crawl space behind the knot in my throat.  I don’t believe in ‘god’ (not in any traditional sense anyway) so the injustices of this universe are incredibly senseless to me.  There’s truly no purpose in this.  The idea that loss, in general, has some kind of meaning is just so insulting imo.  People say what they have to in order to move forward and our various forms of coping are valid.  However my heart often feels stuck here, broken in this moment in particular, grief preserved, frozen in time; petrified stone, hollow fragments of memory wrapped up in the earth.  As people seemed to move on I have often struggled to move at all.  I give myself grace.  I am aware of how the trauma of loss can stunt us: the long drawn out spaces where action could be.  I try not to judge the parts of myself that waded in the shallow ends of life for far too long in order to feel 'safe’.  As a way to cope with something that will never “make sense”.

As typical for me, I struggle to find my words.  The lump in my throat always there, swelling up, tight like a fisted grip on my voice and on my breath.  I inhale deep to catch it again, a reminder to breathe, to live, to love.  To keep going.  To be grateful: every moment precious and the opportunity to ‘age’ an experience we don’t all get to have.  I grieve and honor loved ones who never made it to 20, to 30, to 40, to 50.  So for all the sads, the mads, the bads, and the terrible awfuls', I’m just so grateful to even still be here.  What a fortune it is to exist spanning decades. To bear witness to time laid out across this life.  To look back.  This catharsis of remembering.  

I find comfort in ritual: tending to my alter.  I do the things we loved to, as well as the things we always said we would.  I’m inspired by the way many have turned their pain into art: creating to cope.  I continue writing my words, dancing my dance, priming my soul.  Documenting my thoughts.  So just in case I am ever lost, I can find my way back home: to my voice.  Breadcrumbs back to memory, to soul.  My atheism often feels betrayed by my own quiet hope that we will all meet our lost loves again someday: In some other dimensional fantasy where the timeline fits.  The right side up.  I’m learning that hope, is part of grief as well.

Six years later, I am admittedly often still looking over my shoulder.  Wondering, worried: Who will be next?  When will it be me?  Am I ready?  Will I be afraid?  We’re they?  I try not to think about it.  I realize I stopped breathing, and walking, I inhale to take a step, and exhale to take another.  Moving forward.  I remember what breathing is, what walking is, I return to the present.  I tell myself that I’ll never again take this life, this body, for granted.  I’ll never stop dancing.  It’s ok to feel however we do.  There is no manual, no god, no lesson, no purpose.  Just drive, and joy, and beauty, and pain, and love.  Cycling through, again and again, until we are dust.  Rest in beats, peace, power, and love.

My everything to everyone today and always<3.

An Erotic Rant.

(for 50 Shades of Bay)

Let me ask you something.  Have you ever gotten acid reflux from giving head?  Well, I have.  Have you ever noticed how the guys who want you to swallow also happen to have the rankest jiz??  I consider myself a cum connoisseur (yes, considering how many chefs I've banged, I could get a Michelin Star lol).  If I could, I would serve up my favorite cum in five courses and sling it at prix fixe prices....'cause when it's good, it's GOOD baby.  Like 'make whipped cream out of it and mix it in with your coffee' kind of good.  I'm not someone who squeams easily.  I can appreciate a range of flavors.  I have a seasonally refined palate.  I've tasted the rainbow.  The worst the best and all the flavors in between.  I'm someone to listen too, or at least believe...a little.  So listen, when I say it's bad, it's pretty fucking bad; and if it's giving ulcers...it's time to see a doctor.

He was sweaty, his scratchy balls smelled like over-baked yeast and no doubt reflected his diet over the last 10 years: cheese, meat, booze, cigarettes, and cocaine.  So, I considered I might be dipping into an aged scotch, a fine wine barreled long before my birth.  I figured there might be an unloading of flavors...perhaps some, not so tantalizing.  However, I refused to give up, and it was taking forever.  There I was sucking, and jerking, and praying...

I was not only surprised, but blown away, by his unique blend of rotting cream.  Comparable to that pint of half and half abandoned for three months and curdling quietly in the back of the fridge.  "Whoops!" he says as he pours his irrefutably pungent essence into my hungry wine soaked belly.  I didn't flinch, I held the load in my oral chamber swirling his fluids that seared my taste buds and dripped out the corners of my mouth.  As I boldly braced myself to swallow the human toxic waste, my throat fought back, kicking the cum back up and out.  'Down the hatch!' I thought to myself (To be fair, there's not really many opportunities that one gets to think that to oneself so I took it).  The putrefied jiz slithered down my esophagus.  My stomach began to seize, and as he placed his hands behind his head smirking in satisfaction, saying something absurdly obvious like, "damn babe, you really got me," I leaped off the bed to the bathroom sink, where I spent the next 10 minutes, releasing his demons down the drain...and perhaps even some of my own.

No matter how many times one has given a blow job, you never forget the first time you puked.

The Ginger Complex

There are many randomly acquired theories I rely on to hold up the precarious philosophical foundation that is my belief system. Theories such as:

The best part of waking up is candy.

Never trust anyone who listens to nickelback.

There is always some brunette ruining my life...

....usually of the coke-infused hipster bitch variety.  They're either dating my ex, fucking my ex, flirting with my ex, playing pool with my ex, is the ex of my ex, or is my ex. Interchangeably, the term "ex" can be modified with the term "bae", "crush", or (in a more recent case of ruining) "barista putting whole milk in my coffee instead of soy".  Either way, my very biased theory will be just as equally true and stand to be just as equally aggravating. I am constantly amazed at how often there exists a brunette that intimidates me to the brink of such obsessive fury...that it interferes with even the simplest decisions or actions required for me to go about my life in peace. I rarely make new year's resolutions, but this year I decided something must be done, about my dark haired nemesii.

I began by taking a critical look at my slightly over-dramatized portrayal of the situation. This battle of the locks may exist mainly in my neurotically created reality, but it's fueled by my socially structured insecurities as a red-head. So, to be completely fair, my defensive behavior is simply a misunderstood side effect of too many years as a lone warrior.  Lack of tribe, pride, and confidence in the fact that I am a member of one of the most enigmatic cults in the world: the ginger heads.

Everybody loves a redhead, because being ginger is often like being living gold, a rare ginger trait that causes one to wander in constant flux between magic and trouble. Most people see you as treasure, because you belong to a fading clan, who's ginger gene is so recessive that eventually one day, we will no longer exist. This is the reason we have endured years of childhood taunting that involved, hair pulling, brutal nicknames like "carrot top", and humiliating comparisons to the color orange.  As youth we are treated like sideshow freaks, and eventually left to believe that we should give up, shave our heads, or dye our hair another color (brown??) in order to fit in with the rest of humanity and face our recessive weaknesses in silence.  It has taken me years to realize, that this teasing, was just a wicked attempt at destroying the incredibly strong intuitive sense of specialness that all true gingers enter into the world with. Why would anyone want to bring a redhead down? Because everyone knows, that a ginger in her fully empowered state, could probably take the world.

Yes, our spirit lives up to it's recklessly infamous nature. Ginger is warming, healing, and sweet with a little kick. However, being genetically rare comes with some weaknesses. I recently saw my physical therapist who, as she nursed me through yet another ligament injury, lectured me on being careful with myself, because I'm "special". The special she referred to was not the golden-spicy kind, but the kind that has virtually no potent dna remaining, leading to easily tweaked tendons and inflamed joints.  In addition to temperamental connective tissues, I regularly see an acupuncturist for my overly sensitive food/environmental allergies that constantly have my immune system in a state of repair. Yea, sometimes being ginger isn't so glamorous.

However, when it is glamorous, I'm a fiercely bred cocktail of Samson, Rapunzel, and Pippi Longstalking.  Some kind of sacred rock star: an image that requires a massive amount of flair. This persona can be intimidating to live up to, and I will admit that I have had to rally on more than one occasion to back that mane up. Often, I can't even wear my hair down, because when I do I get mobbed.  Apparently, we are fading faster than I thought. It's a scary ginger deprived world out there, and it's challenging to endure when you have scandalous brunettes putting undesired bitters in your cocktail.

Perhaps it is simply jealousy. Pure envy that brunettes don't need mascara to have eyelashes, or that they can easily pull off red lipstick, be "tan", and wear green without any uncomfortable leprechaun/Peter Pan references.  I once heard someone refer to brunettes as treacherous. Very true, and probably the most untouchable trait of all. A redhead can pull off a lot of things: fiery, flirty, foxy, etc...but I couldn't pull off treacherous if my sweet and sour soul depended on it.

Maybe, it's a simple enough answer, that my intimidation exists because I know that brunettes are their own dominant genetic cult. The ones that will ultimately live on, because no matter how novel it is to be redheaded, the brunettes have already won this futile battle of natural selection. At first glimmer, people cannot resist the opportunity to satisfy their curiosity surrounding the shiny glowing light of a genetically unlikley redhead, but eventually their practical biological instincts take over and they powerlessly flock back towards compatible brunettes for more resilient odds in pro-creation.

I recently met a brunette with a mean case of ginger fever. Now, being ginger I never get ginger fever (no, statistically, that would be like dating a distant cousin).  However this woman couldn't stop gushing about the undying love she had for her gingerbread boo and the many ginger babies they were going to have. I wasn't sure whether to be honest and crush her dreams of the next ginger baby boom with cold hard data, or to bite my tongue and relish in this rare moment: a peace-making between enemies, and a cursory fondness for all ginger-kind.

Death by Cheese: My Love/Hate Relationship with Dairy

I dislike labels. I dislike any label that would render me deficient in some way, lacking of a skill, or other wise common human process. These types of labels I dislike usually begin with non, anti, in or end with ism, ite, or ant. So, when asked at dinner, if I have any dietary restrictions, cringing at the encroaching label and all of it's stereotypical connotations, I will deny it. I will toss up a chuckle and shrug, brushing off any possible side effects, explicitly renouncing affiliations with any such label, club, or group. Then, I will eat your brie and regret it silently when I am alone, in a dark corner where I question the very moral fibers of my being. Why? How? What, was I thinking? Once again, I vow to stop the vicious life-long cycle of abuse then and there...to boldly face the label that has been quietly stalking me for some time: "lactose-intolerance".

It all began with an innocently seeming vegetarian/vegan experiment, which, like an unruly wheat-grass consuming Frankenstein, went horribly, horribly awry. This madness, lasting five years, brought me closer to the world of food sensitivities in a way I never thought possible. Five complicated years of faux meat patties, soy based dairy alternatives, and raw food juice fasting. Never to fear, it is as gross as it sounds. It is also not very cool at parties, restaurants, nor on dates.  Eventually I emerged from the ashes of my social life, setting my weird veggie investigation aside (for a while), but dairy and I were never the same again.

My ride on the plant-based food bus was momentarily brief at the time.  Regardless of precious lost hours spent aimlessly wandering the soy section, I managed to not only date but fall in love with a cook. The kind of traditional chef that eats meat, cooks with grease, and serves in courses. This drastic change in lifestyle has caused quite a raucous in my gut. Requesting my dear fellow to prepare cuisine suited to his french preparation-ally trained liking, that does not include the pre-fixe bread or butter, is a challenge. Not the ambitious "iron-chef" kind of challenge, mind you, but the "argue over the menu for an hour-I stay up alone watching Netflix and eating popcorn for dinner" type of challenge. Thus lie the underlying enablers of my repeated patterns for self-inflicted violence: returning again and again, to my abusive lover, like a pawn with a death wish for dairy.

Perhaps it is the ginger in me: the diet of cheese, bread, olive oil, and wine deeply ingrained into my dietary lineage. Or perhaps I am just ridiculously stubborn.  Or perhaps it is because I, like many, am caught in the ravage battle between the attachment to my own suffering, and the addiction to my own commitment-phobia (a debilitating side-effect of living among SF's alternative foodie cultures).  The fear of formally obligating oneself to an isolated self-restricting nutritional claim only to be sent away to some warped commune where members are confined to kale-beet "kool-aid" therapy groups, rice-dream shake cleanses, and gluten-free meditation walkabouts, is a very real and wholly justifiable fear of mine.  Once you open the door to anything labeled "non-dairy" all the freaks come out to play.  Strange parades of folks with juicers, dehydrators, and sad cheese-less, wheat-less "dinner" parties where all the sauces are made with nuts.  No, I need to make it clear: this is NOT a choice, I would never choose this fate. No this, my friends, is a tragedy. A terrible gastronomic tragedy with no cheese plate or ice-cream cone at the end of the meal. The oddly incorporated lives of these hardcore herbivores seem exhausting to me, and I refuse to identify with their cause or accept any substitute.  These surrogate food-movements exist mostly to make sense of such cruel realities as those of my current digestive state, to help us deal with what we don't understand, and to make us feel a part and validated in our edible dilemmas.

So why all the drama?  It's a matter of taste, principle, and desire. Truth be told, my love for cheese goes far beyond my love for my intestinal tract.  Faux cheese, like faux ginger, is not hard for me to spot, but significantly harder for me to swallow. You just can't fake the good-stuff, so why would you even try? More importantly why would you even want to?  Many non-dairy spin-offs often contain unnaturally derived ingredients that can do more harm than good.  I feel as though in our venture for health, wellness, and the pursuit of a toned digestive tract, we have totally lost sight of reality as well as any sort of place resembling the point: eating and regret should never come within twenty four hours of each other, and calling nuts cheese feels like the dietary manifestation of blasphemy.

Despite my current "hater" status, I have been forced by the clutches of dehydration (and those who share a bathroom with me) to come to some kind of resolution.  Within my soul search, I have found that avoiding what my body doesn't understand, indeed reduces chronic cases of PTDS (Post-Traumatic-Dairy-Stress), but leaves me little freedom.  Conclusion?  I'm simply not ready to break up, but I must find peace.  So, instead of taking sides and waging war, I choose compromise.  These days, I enjoy small thrills involving low-lactose options: goat and sheep milk products, as well as the occasional slice of buffalo mozzarella.  I tread cautiously through the dark allusive free-sample fueled underworld that is the cheese aisle at Whole Foods, bringing forth from the shadows deliciously androgynous, bipartisan crowd pleasers like hummus-avocado dip and wasabi almonds.  Caving-in just enough to get out both alive and unmarked, my new lease on life brings relief to my unsettled belly, yet goes unnoticed by most players on either side of the nutritive debate.  Flexetarian, Vegan-ish, 80% plantasaurus rex are labels I throw out there if I must.  I say I'm doing it for the earth or the baby cows, but I'm not dogmatic nor do I believe in enforcing my plant-based policies on others.  I am satisfied in this arrangement, but no matter how far off the radar I go, I never refer to dairy as my ex.  

For You

Nothing to say, nothing to be.
Just time for you and time for me.
A storm of secrets quickly kept,
a sky of truth with no regrets.

Watch you sleep just to see you dream.
Smiling, sighing, laughing...sleep.
Happy.
To adore you.
Night, kiss, sweet, love.
Honest.
To tell you.
Catching the minutes with seconds, and wasting the moments with thoughts.
Once is for always, and today is for something.
Anything.
To believe.
Hard, fast, falling, hope.
Freedom.
To be with you.

Never will be almost gone.
We will still be burning on.
A soul of gold in the heart of life.
Truly yours, forever mine.

Spoken for...

I feel that now might be a good time to admit that I've been living life for all the wrong reasons. Or waiting, not so patiently, for all the right ones. I figure, if I admit this now, I may still be able to squeeze some truth out of this falsely motivated existence, and if it's too late, well then I have nothing to lose, because it's over.

I often wish I had more, or less, to do with the outcome...and endlessly wonder what would happen if I did? I am told: "it's a balance" between going and stopping, doing and letting, living and sleeping, smiling and maybe smirking with great lipstick. However I am haunted by the constant of options, and devastated by the realization that they may be one in the same: the capturing magic of trouble, and this troubling fantastical place of magic.

So sometimes, I just sleep. Until I wake, with a decision: to drink coffee, to check my email, to go to work, or to lay in my bed, all day...paralyzed by an aimless daydream of composure. I try to imagine what balance looks like: an even scale, an equal checkbook, a picture perfect couple hanging delicately on the wall of a house surrounded by a caldesack of wood chips. If I could just see it maybe I can create it for my very own, and living wouldn't feel so god-damned isolating. As a child, I was once told that, during the fall equinox, if you are located perfectly north on the earth, you can balance an egg on it's top. Driven by obssesive curiosity and a spot of hope that northwest was north enough, I spent hours that day trying to make the egg stand with no success. I would often wonder: If I travel to the north pole and complete this task, that I might finally find my state of equilibrium, and the ultimate liberation of a perfectly executed moment. Or if the story, like this simple concept of balance, is just a ridiculous anecdote, given as an attempt to keep our attention focused so we don't fall into the ever spiraling abyss of the unknown, unstructured, and uncertain.

Sometimes I feel that I may already be deep in that abyss, and perhaps may even prefer it over this impossible alternative of balance. Never ending, there is comfort and stability in darkness. The painful separation of loneliness is numbing, and eventually, the fear of being different no longer exists. These depths are addictive, as is the alluring drama of everything and nothing at once. I wish I was hooked on harmony instead, gladly striving for freedom in reconciliation. However, for me, a cave of reality is far more familiar than bliss. The path to enlightenment is so easily sold, but so hard to have that I can't stand to buy it anymore. If this delightfully obscure delusion is motivation to live, I'm not sure I want to.

Resos:

Wear my hair down more.
Mula banda.
Get back to Berlin.

Therapy.
Refining yogi.
Flying.