I'm going to get her back.

I went to first through fourth grade at the same school. After that it was one year here, one year there, one and a half, two and a half, two… Then university became one here, one home, one there… I was usually the nerdy outcast. All of this is to say, some people have things in their lives that others don’t. And that’s okay. Some people have nice cars. Other people have fifty year marriages. I had a fascination with books. Other kids had friends.

Not a big deal, I didn’t have close friends. Not long term anyway, but it didn’t really upset me that much. I had other things they didn’t have. I learned about philosophy while they had sleepovers. Who cares. That’s life.

One thing I do have is extremely vivid dreams. Quite frequently I have a memory and I’m not sure if it actually happened or if I dreamed it. I mean to say these dreams are indistinguishable from reality. I wake up disoriented and confused. Last night I could fly. I should be able to fly now. Sometimes I’m in waking life and realize what just happened was in my dream the night before. That’s disorienting, too.

The first person who became a real, long-term, close friend was A______ W_______. I don’t know why she picked me. We were working together, and she was simply kind to me. She’d share some of the food she brought in. Then she started bringing in special things just for me. I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought she was hitting on me. I didn’t know how friendship worked. After the third time we hung out I walked her back to her car and asked to kiss her. She laughed and asked for a hug instead. She wasn’t scared off. She helped me understand what friendship could be like. She was my friendship teacher. She moved to Florida before social media was a huge thing. I was sad. We still loved each other very much but the distance meant we drifted a little.

Another thing I have that some other people don’t is cooking skills. I mean I’m really good. I don’t know how to make bad food. What does a lifelong friendship matter when I can rock your world with chicken saltimbocca? You know how people make food with weed, and it always tastes like compost? Not my cookies. I make the butter first with a secret trick, and then I add delicious strong spices. Maybe ginger, orange peel, and lemongrass. Maybe cinnamon, clove, and vanilla bean. My pot cookies are the talk of the town at any party they decide to visit.

I think Andrea found another queer student before she found me. We were at university, and I had just changed from social chairperson to president of the campus queer straight alliance. If I remember our first encounter correctly, it was a sunny day in a long hallway, well-lit with natural light from windows the whole way down. It was one of those days, it was some of that light, that just gets inside you and lifts you up. And there they were sitting, the beautiful pair of them, and maybe someone had told them I was the QSA president, and they shouted out to me, and in that magical way that only exists in oppressed communities, we instantly fell in love and became friends. We started planning our “wedding.” It wasn’t real, of course, except that it was. If you know, you know.

That’s a thing I have. A skill at making communities. At bringing people together. You have family vacations at Hawaii every winter? I put people together who support one another and stay in touch for life. That changes the world, you know.

How exactly did Andrea and I become so close? What were the steps? I can’t retrace them. One thing I don’t have is a great memory. Seriously, I can forget anything. Once, a friend told me that the two years we spent having nightly conversations on the phone had meant so much to them. I have no memory of that at all. This is to say, I cannot remember a time when Andrea Milligan was not my very best friend in the entire world. Once it happened, it had always been that way.

I still wasn’t one of those long term friend people yet though. Andrea and I were friends in university, but I was only there three years. But somehow, it lasted. Bless technology I guess, the introduction of social media, messaging through phones, video chats. We were never not in touch. She was my best friend, and it lasted and lasted.

We used to do everything together. I mean we were a single unit item. You didn’t see one of us without the other. More people than I can count assumed we were a couple. I mean it happened a lot. Straight people, queer people, people who knew us well, people we’d just met. They would either ask outright, “Are you together?” or they would invite one of us to something and say, “Bring your girlfriend.” We would collapse into laughter and fall upon one another, which maybe didn’t help their perception but we didn’t care.

We’d have sleepovers four-fifths naked. She helped me unlearn my shame around my body. Look, sleeping in your underwear is just more comfortable than sleeping with clothes on. And one thing we had in common was how much we embraced how lazy we were. We could sleep all day. One of us would wake up and take video of the other one snoring, then fall asleep and the other would take video of the first one snoring. We’d share it later and laugh.

We’d cook together and laugh. We’d go to movies together and laugh. We’d go to protests and chant and march. We’d get new partners and gush over them. We’d go through breakups and have nasty cries and get sloppy drunk. I’d host parties with my famous cookies and all our local community and beloved chosen family would come and eat and giggle. After 7 years as friends she shared with me an article she read that says, if a friendship makes it to seven years, you’re going all the way. We were going all the way.

So much so in fact that when she got a new partner that refused to meet me on my trips home from the opposite side of the globe (I think Andrea never forgave me for moving so far away from her, but she still loved me), I didn’t mind. We’d both seen each other through terrible choices in relationships. This, too, would pass. I mean, the woman was literally married. That’s not sustainable, right?

My friend Keith killed himself over depression. My roommate Angela killed herself over depression. My roommate Tommy had an accidental overdose. My classmate Aaron fell asleep driving and crossed the median. My dear friend Sean killed himself over trauma. My adopted baby Nic killed himself over depression. Lucie laid down to sleep and never woke up and we never found out why. This is a short sample of the long list. Death must be one cool motherfucker. She takes all my favorite people to hang out with her. My first brush with a suicide was in sixth grade. My grandparents were dying before I was born, when I was two, when I was in fourth grade. Death has always been close by, eyeing my nearest and dearest. We’re very well acquainted. I am quite accomplished and practiced with grief.

Once after my roommate Angela died I had one of those vivid dreams. She was dancing around in a corset and a billowing skirt, her famous red lipstick flaring across her smiling mouth. But I thought you died, I said. She threw her head back and laughed. Please, she said, like something as weak as death could stop me. Then she kept dancing and I just watched and watched. I woke up disoriented and confused. It was so real. Was she back?

When I finally met Andrea’s new partner, who I will not name, she seemed nervous. Things seemed off. Whatever. Then she flew off the handle over something that was nothing. Weird. Then she demanded Andrea leave my vehicle and go into hers and talk about how horrible I was for the better part of an hour while I waited. Okay.

I had come back for another visit and to finally meet the partner. The spin was, some friends and I were actually having an intervention for Andrea the next day and she didn’t know it. We thought she might be abusing painkillers. We didn’t know we were having an intervention for the wrong substance.

Yeah, the painkillers didn’t help. But now we know who was placing them in her palms to be swallowed down. If that woman, who is already in trouble for physical assault with a deadly weapon, doesn’t stand trial for the murder of my best friend, … it’ll be her loss. As many people as loved Andrea, the woman would be safer in jail honestly. This is not a threat, it’s just a fact.

Have you ever met a person that just… like was the literal embodiment of unconditional love and support and who would celebrate and affirm you exactly who and how you are at all times? Maybe you think you have, but if you never met Andrea, no you really didn’t. That person you’re thinking of wasn’t a third what Andrea was. Honestly, fuck that person. How dare they pale in comparison to the greatest platonic love of my entire life? They should just retire and stop failing to hold a candle to my Andrea.

That was the thing that Andrea had that no one else had.

She once went to a party with red duct tape across her mouth. She managed, without ever speaking, to simply gesture and convey her meaning to enough people that an entire photo album exists of her “kissing” random strangers at this party. She would find lost kids and bring them to our QSA. She was in touch with more people than I have ever met, at all times, telling everyone sincerely and thoroughly how much she loved them. She brought me so many wounded birds that we would nurse back to self love together. Once a meeting at my house spontaneously devolved into a party where three of us were naked and the other six were painting all over the naked ones. This magical joy would just happen around her, and you felt loved and accepted and part of something, something good, something whole. That was her thing. She had that.

We did the intervention. It was hard. She agreed to go to a facility for an intake interview. She aced it because of course she did. She was a boss at stuff like that. They sent her home. I went back to the other side of the planet. I heard The Girlfriend had Andrea locked in a bathroom with a gun. Another friend went over to try and save her. The Girlfriend almost murdered two of my closest long term friends. Andrea didn’t file a restraining order. I get it. I was in an abusive relationship before. It happens. They make you crazy. You think only you understand your relationship. The outsiders, they don’t get it. They don’t understand what you have. It’s you two against the world.

During all of this, Andrea lost her mother. They were thick as thieves. It’s the kind of loss you just don’t heal from. And I couldn’t console her. I had to stay away. I had to wait until she was free from That Woman.

I didn’t mind waiting. I would wait for her. She’d get this relationship out of her system just like we both had all the other shitty partners and then we’d be back together again, good as new. Four of us, friends of Andrea’s, had united to try to do the intervention and we stayed in touch afterward. We all tried different methods repeatedly to try and help. We each played different roles. We figured, eventually she’d wake up, or we’d get through. We would get her back. We were going to get her back.

I don’t know what time Andrea laid down with The Girlfriend. I assume there were pills involved. The Girlfriend posted that the love of her life died in her arms as they slept. What time was it? Was it the same time that I became inexplicably tired very early in the evening and went to bed? It was 3 or 4am local time when I woke up to the “news.” It was still speculation at that point, the reports were coming in. I sobbed well past sunrise. Denial, anger, bargaining all at once. She isn’t dead. We can still get her back. I hate that woman. The wrong person woke up.

Around 7 I went back to sleep. I had a dream Andrea and I were in bed together. I got so excited. She was laying in the bed four-fifths naked under a thick blanket. I got on top of her and bounced and bounced. She was laughing like crazy. I was snuggling in all her chubby bits, tickling her with my nose and kissing her everywhere. I’m so glad you aren’t dead, I said. I knew it wasn’t real. She said, I did it to bring my mom back. She said, I knew if I faked my death she’d come back. Her mom was there too. We all laughed and bounced and cuddled four-fifths naked and the best friend I’ve ever had, the longest the truest, Love walking in human flesh and touching everyone she met, she was there again right beneath me. I woke up disoriented and confused. My friend is not really dead. I’m going to get her back. This isn’t real. I haven’t seen any obit or autopsy. Love can’t die, right? We’re going to get her back. I get to keep my best friend. I get to have that after all. Andrea, call me. I’m confused. Remember the article? How we're going all the way? I’m waiting. I’ll keep waiting as long as it takes.

enough soul and a home

enough soul and a home
after francine j harris

Every soul deserves a good arm
chair. and a grave.  The soul says,
no more cell in my living room.
in my grave.  There's a christmas tree
still up in the corner, in May, garlanded
with teeth.  and souls.

Take it down, says the cell.  to the grave.
I stopped listening to the cell.  Carved
off my ears with a wooden spoon,
put them in a soup
for the soul.  for the home.

No one eats in this grave.

What a kitchen it is, the way these souls
are made up of cells. in the hallway
a dirt-garland shovel falls.  echoes
in its cells.  Rotting flowers

for the souls, and in the bedroom
souls lined like soldiers on the dump
of a bed.  I can't hear them any more

in our home. After all, there's enough windows
here to open every soul. This hissing
and thump are the cells.  are the sounds
of cells who can't let go.  are the song
I cannot hear.  Is it finished?  says the cell.
says the soul.  as it loses another hand
in the sink.  in the cell.  Don't let go.

We'll home together soon.  We'll all
home our souls good for good.

26/30: Two Bad Ants

for Dan

I've just found
one ant
in my sugar bowl.
Not moving.
What a beautiful death.
I stir neighboring granules
into my coffee. Her friends
will say of her, She died doing
what she loved.

I drink my coffee.
Outside the strong sun
is bragging.
A full orchestra of flora
casts cooling shade all over
a slender highway
dancing up a mountain.

I go outside.
I crank my motorbike.
I do not put on my helmet.
I punch
the gas.

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Bad-Ants-Chris-Allsburg/dp/0395486688

19/20: What do you remember about the earth? -Bhanu Kapil Rider

I remember the entry:
the red, wet pain of it,
the exploding in my lungs.
I did not remember it while I
was still there, but here
now, I can feel it.  The slap
of light, the deluge, the shit
and shit and tears.  An opening, a bang
of sweetness.  The years that followed,
as muscles bettered and nerves mored,
as thought thicked and beautied.
Til I could make and speak and run
and make and love.  Til I made
love and unmade love and love
unmade me.  I do not remember
the exit.  I was there, and then I wasn't:
just so.  What I miss most
is the fertile black of it under
my nails, the hot rain soaking through
everything, breezes strong enough
to buffet a body, the visceral, the honest,
the bliss: to stand on the side
of a mountain, silent, breathing every
atom in.

16/30: Catching up, and a silly ode

Today I woke up and my friend was still dead.

I took off work yesterday.  Keith and I hadn't been close since I left the Hot Springs area, but he was always someone who had significantly impacted me when I was younger, and you don't just lose that.  I was some sixteen, seventeen year old punk kid who tried writing and was scared, and he was one of the people who encouraged me.  He and a short list of others made me believe I had value, my voice was worthy of being heard, I should continue trying this crazy thing called art.  We'd catch up whenever I went back to visit, but he always seemed a little distant.

I guess now I know why.

Depression is a motherfucker.  And that ain't the half of the reality.  It KILLS people.  Don't think of suicide as selfish.  Think of it as tragic.  It is not something people do with the intention of hurting others.  It's something that happens when people cannot possibly hurt any more.  I wish I were back home right now, I wish I could gather with everyone who wants to honor Keith's memory.  I wish I could shake his daughter's hand and tell her how honored I am to meet her, after hearing so much for so many years about her, about how much Keith loved her.

My friend isn't coming back.  When I go visit home next month, I won't see him.

So I have to hug the ones I see even harder.  Love them even louder.

I love you.

Hi!

So you're reading my blog!  Wow!  Every year I get more readers, more views, more comments.  I remember once, talking to an ex-lover about something I wrote and said, I mean you probably haven't seen it---

He interrupted, "I read everything you ever write."

What kind of mad praise is that?  My whole heart sat with that and still sits with it.

I saw one day last week I got nearly two hundred views. In one day!  I mentioned it on Facebook, and a few different people said they'd been poking around, catching up, reading old posts... Think about how much it means to be SEEN in this world.  To know that people are looking at you.  On purpose.  Because they want to see you.

SO many of us don't know this feeling.  I think Keith didn't know.  If he'd known how many of us read his book, how many of us looked forward to seeing him again, would he still be here?  Would that have been medicine enough?

You are my medicine.

Say something.  Leave a comment here, or on a past post you enjoyed.  Or one you didn't enjoy!  One you hated!  Tell me what's working for you in the piece, tell me what isn't working for you and could be tightened up.  Tell me what you miss.  Tell me who you love.  Let's communicate and celebrate - we're still here on this side of the ground.

Yesterday's poem was part for Keith and part for all of us with depression and life-threatening mental illnesses.  Today's poem is part for Keith and part for celebrating life and part for poutine.

Yesterday was hump day.  The 15th of the month, out of 30 days.  So now we're coasting downhill toward home.  Why not write a silly poem?  I've been serious all month.  Today let's celebrate something that made me happy.  Today, that thing was a poutine burger from A-Chi, the best burger joint in Pingtung and maybe even all of southern Taiwan.


I neglected to take a photo before I dug in. I was too excited to have it in my mouth.  Halfway through I thought, I should write a silly fun poem today, for Keith, and took a photo.  No "after" photo because you've all seen a blank plate before.

Ode to the Poutine Burger at A-Chi:

Behold the meat patty,
so full of potential,
so undirected: raw
in the cold air, behind
a tightly sealed door.  Behold lettuce,
ripe tomato, white onion thinly sliced.
Pickles bathing, relaxed,
in their vinegar.  Behold cheese
and bun.  Take all of this and you would have

a burger.  But today
is not just any day. Today we add
mashed potatoes, brown gravy plus cream
and mushrooms.  Today, I glut.
I debauch.  I celebrate another day
on this side of the ground with
GRAVY.  There be no tidiness
here. No means to dainty my way
through these pillows of exploding mash,
these gravyfalls of deliciocity!  This
is bliss, and it's all over my face:
someone once
told me
a terrible joke.
I will now suffer it upon you.

What's the difference
between pussy
and mashed potatoes.

Pussy makes its own gravy.

BUT NO PUSSY EVER COVERED MY FACE
LIKE THIS.  Oh, poutine burger, inappropriately
named, in this country without curds I don't care
what I look like, seated outside at the table
in front of the restaurant, I wear you without shame,
I wear you with prize, nose to neck, sweet sweet
poutine burger, I left my last wife,
the chili cheese burger with real pickled jalapeños
FOR YOU, in this country with no chili
and no pickled jalapeños, for YOU, oh my love,
there can be no other above you, no day of work
is too terrible that you cannot wash
it away with your sauce, gravied potatoes, gravied
bun, gravied lettuce and gravied onions, gravied red
ripe tomatoes, oh my god, gravied PICKLES.
The occasional saucy mushroom tries to escape

but my fries are at the ready.  POUTINE BURGER,
never leave me.  POUTINE BURGER, never die.
POUTINE BURGER, only you
can stay
my wandering eye.

15/30: For Keith, who stole pencils

There is community and then there is
community. Some you can see.  Girl Scouts.
A crowd dancing under manic lights. A weekly

cancer support group.  The huddled prisoners
of war in their cells.  Two bodies passing in a crowd,
a nod when they recognize each other's tattoos.

Participation in community begets love and loss
and loss.  One scout moves to another town, one dancer
kisses friends goodnight.  Cheryl doesn't show up

for this week's meeting.  Tomas doesn't come back
from interrogation.  Some loss is heavier
than lifting. Who can say what the community feels?

I can.  Today I heard of a poet's death, his lifelong struggle
with a disease no cheaper than cancer. Keith took his life? No.
Depression did.  A poet, depressed, still writing, he was

my community and on this unholy day I feel
my own death here in the room.  It is small
as a baby's fist.  A sour, overripe plum

cradled between my teeth. It poisons my thoughts.
He isn't coming back like so many others and this disease
is killing my friends, my heroes, my mentors, our

artists, and one day it might kill me.  A fruit
I cannot spit out, fermenting, brewing a wine
no one should drink.

Keith's Obituary

Keith featuring in High on Words, a radio show

Buy Keith's Book Here

The poem Keith wrote when Pete Seger died:

Pete

I listened to your voice
more than I did that of my own parents
though I did hear theirs
much more often than yours
your voice told me not just
what I needed to hear
but what I wanted to her
as well

Now, I will bid farewell
to part of you
but not the part that matters
the part I still posses
so do millions of others
all around this world
some are still around campfires
as I once was

That’s when we were first introduced
it did not matter much
that you were physically absent
from that introduction
we still formed a bond
that will not be broken
not even with that hammer
the one that works morning and evening
all over this land

We still have a bond with
millions of voices loud and soft
and those voices are still
as effective today as any hammer

“If I had a hammer
I’d hammer in the morning
I’d hammer in the evening
All over this land…”

January 29, 2014

13/30: landai

In honor of these women, today I write landai:

Sisters: they tell us we are not enough!
But they are forests chastising matchsticks.

---------

I loved him too much so he told me to go.
Now I laugh as he begs for a bite!

-------------

I fear to go home because I fear I won't want to leave.
Or worse: never want to visit again.

------------

Zurima asked for love, then for fire, then water.
Now all she has is dust, rocks, and stars.

----------

I have seen death, danced with it, kissed.
I ask you: What now do I have to fear?

4/40: foreign / black

The stars aren't going
anywhere.  Look down.  Look where your feet
are going place one, two, left and then right, keep
going.
Today another stranger took your photo just
for being a foreign face in a rural place remember
when you used to smile for them? Now
you just get angry, get thirsty for a fist, one and one
half short years and people wonder why black men
get angry even as they call them “thugs.”
Look down.
The stars are going nowhere, your anger
is spreading like wildfire, you swore the man thought
you were going to steal his bicycle, locked eyes with you
and shook his finger no but everyone
at the table was deaf, did you just catch him mid
conversation? Remember how your teeth
tasted the blood?  How your fists curled up
like nightmares?  Last night in the market
buying dumplings a three year old called a stranger
AMERICAN.  Rather than correct
his politics (USAian) you said in his tongue
some of us are Canadian, Australian, English,
Scottish, South African and he said no Africans
are black. What would you face here if your face
were black.  If your fists curled up
black nightmares if your teeth tasted
black blood, remember how
just a few weeks ago the police
let you go, remember how you woke up
the next morning, right here, on this earth,
not anywhere near
the stars.

30/30: this time it's personal and it's naked and it's ugly.

And it's prose.  Whoops.

I'm feeling extremely restless.  Something about spending an entire day expecting to learn at any minute that any number of people I hold very dear had died.  Something about this ovulation being extra cat-in-heat-like.  Something about too much introspection and existential thought.  Something about I love a man on the other side of a globe and what am I even stringing him along for if I will probably just let him down by going to bed with someone and never live near him anyway.  An open relationship in theory and in practice are different animals.  A past lover asked if I wanted to get down.  I wanted to get down.  I went to see him.  It was fun and it was fine but how will the man I love be after I tell him?  And I left still feeling cat-in-heat-like.  I wanted to go to any bar and go to bed with the first person who made eye contact.  I wanted a stranger to slap me full across the face and tell me horrible things about myself.  I went home and wrote a tender poem about my love then spent my whole dream fucking strangers who said yes.  So instead I drive too fast after school down rural highways and the wind is too cold because I don't have a jacket and it hurts my skin and I like it.  And a car in front of me is kicking up dust and it's stinging my skin and I like it.  I follow the car down roads I wouldn't otherwise have taken because I want the stinging to keep stinging.  And the cold and the sting is making me tear up and I like it because I have an excuse to shed tears and a reason for them I can name.  I'm driving too fast and I'm fantasizing about leaping off and flying for a few seconds.  I hold the accelerator down until it will go no faster and dream about brick walls.  And what am I even doing staying up too late every night and I just want to sleep all day and why am I going to work what does this work mean for me for my future what is a future do I even want one?  What is living for and can't I just sleep under an overpass and start drunk fights with strangers and get my teeth knocked out?  Why do I feel like shit and why do I want someone something to make me feel like shit?  Because then I'd have an actual reason for feeling this way that I cannot otherwise name?

12/30: After Jan Beatty's "Shooter"

Poem Removed because Wicked Banshee Press is going to publish it!  Link up when it happens.

8/30: For Noah, who tried to run

I may have my detractors, but you must
give me this much, at least:  Never
were any children more clean,

more well behaved, more perfectly still,

more faces of angels, more Sunday best,

all arrowstraight and godliness.  What is a bathtub

if not a baptismal font, scrubbing every speck

of sin away?  My three boys, the disciples, John,
Paul, and Luke one by one and then Mary,
sweet Mary, the baby that broke

this camel’s back.  Noah saw her there, floating

face down in the holy water, Noah my firstborn,

my eldest, my king

                                         of troubled seas
and he was afraid.  I sang to him to coax
him back, and I sang to him as he struggled

beneath the waves, then placed him there

in the waterstorm he was named for, holding Mary

in his arms, my Alpha and Omega together

and my three straightarrow boys laid out

in the quiver of the bed where I made them.  I loved them
more than I loved God, so I sent them home to him
so nothing could come between us.  Their earthly father

loved me still, told people he wanted me to smith
more for arrows for him and for God.  But I failed him,
failed our quiver, failed God.  My babies stumbled

because I stumbled and when I let their souls fly

I gave them that gift at the cost of paradise, knowing

full well that eternity shall deliver my reward.

7/30: ghost line from Melissa May

The day I killed my mother, I got out
my Sunday best, washed it again, just
to be sure, pressed it with starch,
curled my hair, flossed.  I wrote her
a love letter and wrapped it
around the blade.  I ate well,

two eggs over medium, bacon medium,
toast and gravy, orange juice, coffee, hot
and black.  I went to the chapel and prayed
for the first time in years.  I kissed
a stranger and stared directly
into the sun.  The day I killed my mother,

I went to her house, rang the bell,
placed the love letter directly into
her heart and then left, cut off
all my hair, didn't cry, burned the clothes,
didn't cry, tore the pages from the books
she'd given me, carved her name
into the soft flesh of my belly, didn't cry.

Ode to the Scar on my Hip

(after a prompt by Jon Sands)

In these ways you are like myself: you are obstinate
and ornery, slow to heal and forget, a survivor,
victorious, particular about when and how
and by whom you like to be touched.  You
are a beautiful testimony of survival, you,
so like a tiger, a dragon, a snake, your softness
and hardness, your teardrop shape, the way you perch

on my hip like a lover, as raw and pink
as a baby's first wail.  Do not be afraid
of lasers, I would never threaten you with them.  Do not
be afraid of reopening.  You, so like a medal,
a ribbon, raised like a ridge, a mark
of exclamation.  You talk shit on oceans
and riptides and rocks, your makers, you tell them
then will never take you down.  You drink tequila,
neat, no salt, no lime, no
back, while you do ballet stretches in front
of a mirror.  You paint.  I remember

the days and days it took you to heal, as you lay
open, stayed open, shining like an overripe strawberry,
still pregnant with the ocean's salt.  The world teaches us
we should hide our scars; instead, I framed you
with a tattoo, you deserve a frame, a parade, a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a star
in the sky, maybe that one there, on Orion's belt,
just at the hip, a cake, defiant
with ten dozen candles.

Beach!

When I was in Mexico, I wasn't updating because I was in a bad place. Here, things are a little too awesome to update often. I'm super busy all the time, so there's that. I had a homestay with a Hakka family, an old ethnicity that came over from China around 5-600 years ago, I'm told, and got along fine with the Aboriginals. They were so great - I felt the warmth and hospitality from the first minute I got into the car - a mother, a father, and triplet daughters sixth-grade age. I hope to post about that soon, but now I have to talk about the beach.

The last time I saw the ocean was pretty perilous. I was really cautious about getting back in the water again. This isn't the calm, clear Lake Ouachita water I know so well, this is tides and waves and currents trying to pull people away. I mean, that last experience was a Lesson Learned, and learned well. I desperately wanted to be in water but I was scared, too.

But the intoxicating beauty there... This island is so gorgeous - the Portuguese called it "Formosa," beautiful, and rightfully so. It reminds me of home, only MORE. More green, more mountains, more heat and humidity, and then of course there's the fact that there's ocean to be found everywhere. My study program had an excursion planned to take us to the southernmost beach on a Friday - I planned to stay as long as I could. Booked a room for 10 for Friday night, but everyone was full Saturday. I figured I'd play it by ear.

The school's tour took us first to a sort of museum about what-all could be found in the area. It was fun, but it wasn't beach. Then we were taken to the farthest-south tip of the whole island, which had a lighthouse, and lots of trees, and shops... but it wasn't beach. Then they took us to a spot where we had the single best vegetarian meal yet which was delicious but still not beach. Then we were given some time to stroll around and look in shops which were also not the beach and then they took us...

...TO THE BEACH! Oh...

I mean it was just lovely. A little bay, called "South Bay," and it had some silly music blaring like many beaches do but we went far enough away from it and I slathered up in sunscreen, and we negotiated an umbrella rental from some women who were covered head to toe like mummies because you have to stay white here or you aren't beautiful, and then I jumped in. Even though I was very careful I was caught in something of a weak current at first, but many others were as well, and we worked our way out of it right away. From there I would stand in a shallow part - there was something of a sandbar that went out a good ways - anywhere from knee to neck deep, letting the waves move me around. After a couple hours the buses left, and those of us staying... stayed!

Night markets are awesome here and every town has a few, so once the sun had long set we showered up and headed to drop our bags off in the hostel and check it out. It was great! I ate everything... Stinky tofu, big-sausage-with-little-sausage, fried mushrooms, some japanese gooey rice thing I don't even know what it was with black sugar on it, grilled corn, fried pineapple, mango ice, .... and more I'm struggling to remember. Went back to the awesome room and laughed with 9 friends well into the night, pillow fights, silly jokes, then passed out.

Woke up in time the next morning to check out, left our bags there and headed out for adventure. After breakfast we went to rent bicycles because there is a national forest park that sounded wicked awesome.

Yeah. The map was flat.

After I don't even know how long of biking it felt like an hour but was probably only 15 minutes at an angle that felt like straight up I backed out. I had been going slow because my roommate had too, and I didn't want to leave her behind. Then I realized I had actually been going slow because my back tire was dragging inside the wheel cover, and I was having to fight the friction to get anywhere! Of course this is Taiwan, so it was crazy hot and crazy humid and this was tougher than Monkey Mountain, the sweat was dripping off of me. Turned it around, took it back, turned it in, got my refund, and headed to the beach! I was pretty frustrated because the long version of this story involves a lot of awkwardness due to the size of the group, a lot of "What do you want to do" and "Well what about this" and "What if we" and "Well let's go" and "Are you ready" and "Where's so-and-so" and then even when I got to the beach we were waiting on people and it was getting on toward about 4PM and I had hoped to go snorkeling and I was starting to go crazy from all the waiting and not-doing-anything...

Finally the people we were waiting on showed up, but we'd been waiting to get on their scooters, and they'd gotten too few and didn't have helmets. So they headed off to another beach (Why? The one we were at was fine?) and we had to taxi to get there. More frustration! We started walking and finally caught one and finally got to the other beach and finally spotted our friends (easier than most places - just look for the tall white folk) and then FINALLY I was in the water and oh!

Just wonderful. Again.

That night most of the group that had stayed headed back. I couldn't go back yet. I felt like the day had been wasted and I still wanted to snorkel. We perused the night market again...

...oh! I forgot to say how the night before we met the princess of Taiwan! Yes! She told us so herself! Well, she told us in Mandarin, then a boy told us in English, but he also said, "But this is bullshit!" But then she pointed to a sign (presumably, that she had made) and chattered in Mandarin, and the boy told us that the sign said, Princess of Taiwan, and she laughed hysterically and then showed us that she had been sampling her own wares, which was flavors of millet wine and liquor that I bought a bottle of and she had been forcing us to take shots of. What a great lady! Of course I took a photo with her...

...and as I had failed to find a place to crash and as my friends had crashed on the beach the night before, the one boy who'd stayed behind and I headed to the beach. We had a tent someone had lent us, and we set it up, and promptly strolled around the beautiful night beach. What a drastic difference from the night market! The market was crowded, packed with people, you could hardly move - we stopped at one spot to inquire about foot massages (only to find there had been a price increase over the price our friends had paid the night before - weekend price hike I guess) and ended up just sitting at the table there to avoid the madness for a bit until we had enough energy (and our full bellies had relaxed a bit) to head to the beach and set up.

It was so quiet there, almost no people except for some random fishermen with ten foot long poles with lights on the end, and the occasional bunch of kids come to set off fireworks. Fireworks are pretty popular here; they go off all the time and due to some sort of language disconnect, whenever we ask why there are fireworks, we receive not an answer but another question: "Do you not like fireworks?" No, I think they're swell, I'm just wondering what the reason is. We found a mat someone had left behind and set it up as our front yard and laid upon it, laughing our butts off as we swapped stories about our experiences and interactions in Taiwan thus far. We decided it was just too damn nice sleeping under the stars to climb into the tent so we didn't. We just passed out on that mat under the stars.

While I woke up several times during the night because of how uncomfortable the sand was, I woke up at one point because I was freezing! I remember being crazy excited to feel cold for once. I crawled into the tent and passed back out. I woke up once because the sun was coming up, and we'd talked about watching the sunrise the night before, but having had such a crappy sleep, I couldn't move. Later I woke up again because I heard a pack of wild dogs talking trash outside the tent... and I still couldn't move.

Woke up later and felt tired, sore, and stinky... but then, when I woke up, my front yard was THE OCEAN, so yeah I didn't complain. I jumped in for a swim and a rinse and then we packed up the tent and headed up to the 7/11 for breakfast for three reasons. 1) Money's running out. 2) We had more than enough local cuisine at the night market the previous two nights and 3) They have air conditioning. Anyway, no matter what we get there, it ain't gonna be like home. We must have looked a sight, but we loaded up with a bottle of water, a bottle of Pocari Sweat (the local answer to gatorade), a slurpee, and a mess of food each, paid, and set up in the window seats. Oh how we laughed at our situation and the whole unlikeliness and wonder of it all.

At that moment, I felt perfect. I didn't need snorkeling. I told him so. I had discovered I had twice as much money as I thought I had the previous night so I said I'd like to try to go and find the things I wanted to buy at the night market the night before but didn't. We walked up the road but none of it was anywhere to be found. It's literally a completely different street at day and at night. So we turned around, found a random shop to go potty, and hitched a bus back to Kaohsiung so we could train it on into Pingtung. In the train station, we sat down on a bench next to a woman with a tiny precious dog... and promptly fell to cooing over the dog. She loved us, she kept taking pictures and texting them to her friends, so we took one with her on my camera, and then the train came, and we got back to campus and shook the sand out of our bags just as the rain was beginning to fall...

And that was just two and a half days! Can you imagine? So sorry I haven't been updating, but man it's awesome here! And there's still homestay weekend to talk about! This weekend I'm staying here. We're free, no excursions or plans or anything, but the program switches our study companions and roommates halfway through. That's a whole blog post itself there, the reason I think they do it, but at any rate I love my roommate so much and I will be crazy sad for her to go. We're going to spend the weekend having adventures here and next weekend I'm going to visit her in her hometown.

day 20 pome 18: silver

Ode to the Silver Hair on My Crown:

You weren't there at all, and then
you were, fully formed. That is, there never was
a time in which I saw a hair
half-silver and half-brown. No,
just last week you appeared in the mirror,
no warning, no call, no letter. And I

stared. I thought of pulling you out,
and almost did, I'm sorry to say. But you
were silver, not gray, silver in the way
of stories of magic, perhaps like a
Pegasus hair. I used to believe
in Pegasus, back when I was much
too young for you to appear on my crown.

But here you are, and I, nearly thirty,
have already accepted that I am not
immortal, nor magical like Pegasus. At least
you are silver and shining, not dull,
not flat, not a white that might yellow,
and so you shall stay, in order to teach
your sister around you how to shine, for soon

enough I will be forty, then fifty, and then
one day, dead and forgotten but perhaps
if I can leave this life as a Pegasus
none of that will matter. Shine on.

Day 16/30, poem 14/30: more from the list of deaths

The Spectacular Voodoo of György Dózsa

If he had one magic, it was
to inspire, to fill, to nourish and he believed
that the self was enough, or should be, should
serve when food or clothing are in short supply,
and the rebellion, the movement, should carry
always on. Shortages
could not destroy him, losing control
of the people under his command
could not destroy him not
in a time when an order to desist
"on pain of death" meant quite simply
that, when Lords were tortured
to dying and governors and bishops impaled, he knew
he could only carry on. Capture, of course,
was eventually inevitable but the way in which
his men were starved for a week before his execution
was original. It was creative, even
honorific, the way in which he was killed
by executioners cooking bits of him, alive,
and feeding him to his hungry men, a sort
of praise, allowing him one last time
to fill, to nourish, to inspire.

((This is partially from the death list, partially from a prompt by Rachel McKibbens and partly who knows what))

The List of Unusual Deaths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths

I like the impressive suicides, the ones in which
you can really tell they meant it. The man
in Australia, 1995, who did it with a shotgun:
once to the chest, walked 15 meters, once
to the face, tearing away his throat and his jaw,
walked 136 meters and lay down on the slope
of a hill. With both hands he held the barrel
to his heart and pulled the trigger
with his toes. The man on death row, 1930,
who knew about the nitrocellulose in the red ink
on playing cards and so, stuffed his cot leg with them,
blowing himself up, as if to say, even in death
you have no power over me. Delicious. I like

the modern deaths, not necessarily the ones
that happened recently, but the ones
that could not have happened without technology,
the man in Texas in 2003 stepping onto
an elevator, decapitated, just like that,
the man blissfully jogging on the beach, 2010,
who didn't hear the airplane making
an emergency landing over the sound
of his iPod, and also in 2010, the owner
of the Segway company who drove his Segway
off a cliff, accidentally, and drowned.

...blah blah blah maybe there's more to this poem
when I revise in May but for now I'm damn tired.
My back has been hurting severely since Friday morning
(which makes this Day 5 of Crazy Chronic Back Pain
Spazstravaganza '11, and yes, I've been counting)
and it's time for my damned nap. Love you.

11/30: Passive Murder

Easy Ways to Commit Murder
Without Even Trying!
-----------------------

When you think something is stupid,
or silly, undesirable, or otherwise
awful, say of it, laughing:
"That's so gay!"

And just like that, Justin Aaberg,
at 16, will decide he would rather
hang himself in his bedroom than
hear that phrase once more. His
mother will find him, and only then
will she find out he was gay.

Men, when you compliment your male friend,
before you even take a breath, follow
it up with: "No homo!"

Easy as pie, Billy Lucas, age 15, will hang
himself from the barn rafters. Asher Brown,
13, will shoot himself in the head. Cody
Barker, 17, an activist working to make
his school safer for kids like him will decide
it isn't working.

Call a boy who's sensitive a fag, whether
he is gay or straight. Call your friend
who pisses you off a fag, doesn't matter
who he fucks. If you yourself happen
to be gay, shrug it off, or laugh, when
people use this language. Don't get
angry, don't rise up, don't speak out.
Laughter is safe. Laughter keeps them
your friends.

Seth Walsh, 13, will try to hang himself,
but fail for 10 whole days, kept
on life support, until, in the end,
you kill him. Tyler Clementi, 18,
will put down his violin for good,
stroll out to the George Washington bridge
and leap over, finally free for at least
a few seconds. 21-year-old Jeanine
Blanchette and 17-year-old Chantal Dubé
will stroll out into a field in the woods,
swallow your words along with the pills,
and lie down together one last time.

Vote to take homes away from foster children
just so they won't end up fostered by
The Gays. Vote to take marriage away from
The Gays. Vote in any way you can against
The Gays. When a news story, television drama,
or commercial comes on with any reference to
the gays, change the channel. Don't question
your privilege or the ignorance it comes with,
don't cross dress, do not acknowledge your
sexual desires and curiosities, do not ever,
ever, ever challenge heteronormativity.

Raymond Chase, 19, Providence, Rhode Island,
Felix Sacco, 17, Saugus, Massachusetts,
Alec Henrikson, 18, Salt Lake City, Utah,
Brad Fuglei, 19, Omaha, Nebraska,
Marcus Wayman, 18, Minersville, Pennsylvania,
the list goes on as long as my heart's
astonished silence.

When you go to wash the blood from your hands,
I hear ammonia can stop it from staining.

9/30: grand folks jelly

In this world we live in today with the whole damn
internet I visit my friend's profile page and see
an entire folder of photos labeled "Gramma Jean!"
just like that, exclamation mark and all. In one
she wears a pirate hat, grinning, in another,
silly sunglasses and a genuine laugh. One picture
is of her at the base of a giant statue of Superman,
one hand planted firmly on his tall red boots,
the other flung out to the side. My favorite,
which is to say, the one that makes me hate
my friend the most, is the one in which Gramma Jean
has climbed behind a plywood cutout of
Supergirl's body. We're talking six feet tall
and fine as hell, a patriotic hourglass, and the smile
on her face is priceless, y'all, and the caption
is a quote from Gramma Jean! herself, it says, "this
is how I really look, not like a little old lady,"
as if she had to tell us. My father's father

died before I was born.

I once dated a boy
with three whole sets of grandparents. He was
thirty years old. One set had divorced early on
and happily remarried and he legitimately had
three entire pairs of grandparents. He called them
all the time on the phone. My mother's father died

when I was two years old. There is a photograph
in which he is holding me; in this picture his lap
reminds me of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: vast
and steady as stone. I have, of course, no memory
of him at all.

Another friend not only has both sets of grandparents
but for most of his young life had his great grandparents,
too. My mother's mother died when I was nine and I
did not handle it well. My father's mother physically died
my junior year of high school, but her mind went
years before that. I see photos of a longtime friend
on her profile page with her arms thrown around the neck
of her grandfather. My friend is nearly forty.
The old man may be wearing wrinkles and age spots
but his smile is young, and wild, and wide. I cry.

6/30: Write a letter to someone dead.

Dear Gin:

I'd like to say first that I'm sorry
I haven't talked to you in so long but now
that you're dead it's difficult,
naturally, I'm sure you understand.
To be fair, I haven't heard much
from you either. I guess I wanted
to thank you for a few things. First,

for trying so hard to make me a lady.
Sit up straight and cross your legs and
use the smallest fork first and all
the other seemingly trivial things
you'd remind me of that added up
to make a larger message: be lady-
like. And I am. Lady-like, anyway.
Then, for being so darned beautiful

in all of your old photos, for meaning
that I came from Beautiful Stock, that I
might one day grow up to be beautiful too,
and for the other photos, all the ones
of you in foreign countries, which gave
me permission to travel, in the way those other
photos gave me permission to be beautiful.
It's important to have permission
to be beautiful, I think, what with all
the messages women get today, and also
to be able to travel on your own. Thank you

for so many things. Thank you for
every single school year, the way you would
send my mother, my sister, and I off
to the big city with your credit card
because we two girls would outgrow our clothes
too fast for our parents' budget,
and you knew this, and you loved us
and wanted us to have nice things. Thank you
for the story of the way you and our grandfather

met. For the story of how his parents
were just country farming folk, never sent him
in to school, and the system found him,
third-grade age, and brought him in, and showed him
the third grade classroom, and said, you could
go here if you wanted, these children are
your age. Showed him the second grade classroom
and said, this is right in the middle, if
you like, showed him the first grade class
and said this is the beginning. What do you think?
And my grandfather, the love of your whole life,
just a boy, looked up, smiling, and said:
What classroom was the black-haired girl in?
Of course she was you. This story gave me
permission to believe in love. Do you see

the trend, Gin? O woman who refused to be called
Grandmother because of what it might imply,
woman who threw respect to the wind and said
instead we should call you by your nickname,
Gin, from Virginia, the name I now bear in honor
of all your stories, thank you for what
your stories teach me and thank you, even,

for the story I hate to tell, the story
my father told me, the story in which it is
late September, 1957, and my father is watching
you do the dishes, happy in the kitchen of
his childhood home, happy in the way that only
a privileged white boy in Arkansas in the 50s
can be as he watches his beautiful mother
do dishes, smiling, in the home his father,
who loves his mother, built for his family,
whom he also loves, and shows it. In this story
you are elbow deep in suds when the trucks go past,
down the highway which runs right in front
of your house, and you look up, and you see
the line, as dark green as they tell me
your eyes must have been, and you throw

down your dishtowel and you run out into
your front yard to shake your fist and scream,
as if it were anything other than ineffectual,
at the 101st Airborne on their way
to do nothing other than help a few kids
go to school. Thank you for what I've learned
from this story too, that even gods
and goddesses can be wrong, that it is
my destiny to learn from my heritage,
that my shame is my teacher, that I
can be like you and different at once,
that I can be lady-like, beautiful,
well-traveled, deserve nice things and
deserve to be loved but that I
should love others, too.

Sleep well,
your loving granddaughter.