Leave a legacy on

When given a moment alone with ourselves a voice speaks up. Yeah, it's you. Maybe not the nicest you. Call it our subconscious voice, our hyper-critical mind, the hamster running on the wheel, a monkey mind, the ego, the problem solver-engineer or whatever title you may give yours, it is an all too familiar voice. And much like our closest family members lilt and intonations, this is vocalization we immediately recognize and listen to our entire lives without ever seeing the source. It is a mutable voice. We are even able to ignore at times-as if we could really be thinking about nothing (not in a Wittgenstein sense). That would be a nice staycation. I am not certain about the source of this voice, its sorted past, its questionable intentions, but mine nags me about the same thing all day every day. For as long as I can remember hearing my own thoughts, I have never thought of it as (a) God or a higher power. I have no proof that this voice is trying to help me or the Universe.
At times I feel like one of those dolls with a pull string in her back. The recording seems to offer only the following encouragements, “You should be writing”, “Reading, Read,”, “You are wasting valuable time”, “You could be writing”, “You could be reading”, “Write, Write,”, “Stop wasting Time”, “No wonder you are behind” and it’s not just that the voice is relentless but cruelly condescending. I probably need that, but it just never lets up, it never offers encouragement. If I write all day until my eyes are fogged glass, my fingers cramp, my pinkie stained with ink, that voice still chimes in to criticize me if I stop to eat or heaven forbid, lay my head on the pillow without a book or piece writing to edit.

John Irving said, “Your friends and family may honestly want you to do what you want to do, but they also want you to do things for them. Worse, they want you to do things with them-go to lunch, go for a drink, go to the movies. They may want to know how long it’s going to be. They will probably not accept the answer a writer has to give: It may be quite a while, it may be forever.”

I am poor in cash but rich in life experience. I raised two kids that turned into kind adults that love and respect me more and more every passing year-really. I am in a mutually loving long term relationship that is not bound by marriage but respect and fueled by making each other better navigators through life while sharing an incredible journey. I have cut the chords and anchors that bound me to my own childhood history and am now able to write right now. Money is tainted. It should leave a red residue. I do take (verbal) donations. I then give them away. I try not to get attached to any-thing. I am able to manage and budget but do not covet those with more money and less time to spend. Having loved ones support you in a creative endeavor is a suspension bridge, you can trust it in a storm. Honestly though, these same supportive loved ones simply cannot love me when I am the writing me. I am far away, I am untouchable sitting in the dining room, on the couch, I am out of office, I am late, I am jumpy, raw, I am smiling for no reason, I am irritable, and-in mid-sentence-
Unfinished and interrupted, all of my aspirations and notions are always simmering at the back of the stove while I am providing nourishment for others.
These words that taunt me, all the words, I wish to trap and splatter across white paper-they will wait, will be there, will come out, will participate with others and make some sense of all this disparate non-sense...One day, if I am afforded enough time, I will have something of myself that lasts forever. Someday my words will last an eternity. These shared words will be an investment, each and every word chosen with thought will never wasted. When I say how proud I am, when I tell them they must listen to their little voice. They call me a mentor, they say my failures inspire them and hearing them say I love you is the brilliant ending of the book I cannot seem to finish.  Not a single penny nor second-thought is wasted. I remain unfinished and completely full, filled, forever.




Painting by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 'Portrait of a Woman' c. 1787 in [Public domain].

Penitentiary pals S.W.A.K.

We've been In(ti)mate(s) for a while now, half through,

you’d think after all this time we'd be better friends.

I know, It’s not easy, accepting one's flaws, accentuating the positive attributes, letting failures and ugliness go out the barred window with the subjective death row sentence, the brutality of mortality!

Learning to like yourself shouldn’t be detention, but feels like incarceration I hazard to guess. We are all pre-loaded with the operational software to love ourselves. It comes out as algorithmic survival, a defense mechanism, calculating but unaware. And even self-destruction is a necessary part of self-love. 

Oh, liking oneself is much more complex, if we are to be completely honest with ourselves. 

I cannot stand looking in the mirror, and do so hopefully only twice a day, like brushing my teeth. In fact, that is when I do it, and neither are pleasurable to me. 

My lips specifically have abandoned me. They were never really there from the first word. I was designed for listening. Unable to wear lipstick, nobody can read my lips. This is my silver lip lining. 

And I am deathly jealous of the red, blood and bright, dark and demure…the quiver, the nibble...mesmerizing lips. 

These luscious sets are second best to the eyes, but one is more confident with lies. And I prefer the naked truth.

I feel pretty when my brain fits just right.

My hands have no fingertips. On some of the fingers anyway. 

I have burnt them off learning how to love with food over the years.

Now I can get away with murder. 

As with a pianist, one would think my hands are precious to me, I look at these often. No, they are not pretty either. I don’t like manicures. My nails are usually short, trim and nude and crude extensions for me. 

Occasionally I will paint them and it makes me like my hands for a bit-until the paint chips-which is instantaneous. As you can guess, painting my nails feels fruitless, like dusting and TV.

These are just the top coats of course, exterior paint. The interior is my sanctuary.

Find your voice. Use your voice. That’s the voice. No, it never sounds the same when it comes out. Do you like your voice? Mine sounds like someone took a vagrant identity and slapped it in my body.  And yet I love when people speak poetry, like French and Italian, it moves me out of body.  A way out of my personal prison of personality, pseudo-sounding reality-purportedly, yet we are all trapped on our islands of I and should be kind to the natives who were there before you decided to ‘arrive’.

Since we are cell mates, I just had to say, I have no intention of biting the hand that feeds me.  

Please pardon me-

I am sorry, 

I am famished, but I still do not like me.  

Image of Miss Kate Heffelfinger, 1917[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.