Category: Love
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Essay #37: thanks
My friend Anger came to call and I finally let her in. Turns out Shame had been shrouding her like a dense fog, blurring her edges, slurring her words. She was almost invisible. Acknowledge my feelings, said Anger, loud and clear now that Shame has evaporated. When I am ashamed to be angry, I cannot…
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Essay #36: patagonia
My father is going to Patagonia tomorrow, to build a bridge. Just like old times. When I was a kid, he worked for the federal Bureau of Public Roads, building bridges and roads in the mountains. I remember riding shotgun in a yellow-orange government truck, somewhere in California or Oregon or Washington. I remember evergreens…
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Essay #35: bat qol
“If it bothered Avery, it can’t continue.” –letter from a mother to Dear Abby about her daughter and possible sexual abuse, published 10/21/2011 Another mask smashed to the ground yesterday, taking a bottle of holy water with it. I made it a few years ago, after Emmett died – a white wolf-dog face with an…
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Essay #34: security
I never thought it was necessary – security. I thought it was a mirage, an impossibility. Amused and bemused when others thought it possible with locks and alarms and stocks and bonds. I was wrong. Here are some definitions, courtesy of msWord: the state or feeling of being safe and protected freedom from worries of…
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Essay #33: perspective
“What your father sees and hears is not what you see and hear.” –Terry Pratchett, Mort And vice versa. Consider the physical perspective: Dad is taller, so his eye-level is higher. We see different berries on the bush. Wheelchair-user Nancy Mairs wrote Waist-High in the World, which explores this very thing. Experience also molds perspective,…
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Essay #32: masks
Last October, I drove to Arcata, where my brother was living, to rendezvous with my father. I hadn’t seen him in 11 years. While I was gone, someone burgled my loft. They dumped out a duffel bag and filled it with art supplies, jewelry findings, and a wooden sewing box containing a rose-gold bracelet my…
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Essay #31: Elizabeth Kuehnoel
“I want to speak to god,” said the dark-haired woman, backstage after the show. I was dressed in crimson, with red gladiolus blossoms and white orchids in my hair. I had just sprinkled the audience with rose petals and performed “Can You Surf?” – a poem about god and love I’d adapted for a trio.…
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Essay #30: down days
Have you seen the George Clooney film, Up in the Air? His character travels year-round, home only 43 days out of 365. His family and co-worker give him grief because he doesn’t want to get married and/or have children. They tell him he’s too isolated, he must be lonely. But he isn’t lonely until he…
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Essay #29: restore
Restore: to bring back to or put back into a former or original state: renew; return ~Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary When I was a kid, I sang with brio, mimicked Flip Wilson, beat on the drums, banged on the piano, dressed up in costume, and put on plays and puppet shows. At one point…
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Essay #28: permission
Someone recently asked permission to use a poem of mine in her movement therapy class. She invited me to attend when she read it, with the added incentive, “You can dance to your poem!” This pissed me off. Who the hell is she to give me permission to dance to my own poem? I kept…
words & art by shé 