Pray for me, girl.

At five o'clock every day, the janitorial crew comes in and cleans our office. I've been here over a year and a half and they call me by my first name. I don't know their names, although I'm sure that I've asked before. To me they are Ms. J and Mr. Joe.

Mr. Joe is silent, aside from shushing Ms. J whenever he thinks that she's being too sassy about the inhabitants of the other offices they clean. He wears dress shoes, slacks and a polo shirt tucked in with a belt underneath his uniform smock. He has a gold watch on one wrist and carries himself with a lot of dignity. I like that, even though it kind of makes the fact that he vacuums my floor sting. But he has to put food on his table, and it's not my responsibility to provide him with a more respectable job.

Ms. J is always tired and hot, her feet hurt, her back aches. I know this because she tells me, and then she repeats it under her breath as she empties my trash can and dusts my desk's ledge. She likes me because I don't boss her around or tell her she should be more vigilant about the scum around the drain in the kitchen. I'd like to tell her that it's because I just don't care, but it makes her so happy that I can't. She calls me 'girl' and always asks how my dad's motorcycle accident wounds are healing, even though I've told her for the past six months that he's fine now.

Ms. J's niece is 'mixed'. But she loves her so much anyway that Ms. J is going to go home tonight at nine after working since five a.m. and wrestle her niece's uncooperative 'halfie-hair' into a mohawk because her mother won't do it for her.

She's the only person I've ever lied to about loving Jesus. I don't know why, but whereas I'd normally not hesitate to admit that I am not a Christian to anybody else, she looks at me so earnestly and hopefully that I just can't say it to her. Much like the fact that my silence regarding her cleaning skills stems not from genuine appreciation, although I do appreciate it, but from a spectacular lack of involvement in how clean this place is or isn't.

I feel okay about lying to her. It clearly gives her some measure of comfort to hear that I share her beliefs, and Christ knows we all need that sometimes.

Trimurti.

The Trimurti Sadasiva stared impassively with three sets of eyes, a chameleons range of vision, at the pathetic pilgrim I'd become. Searching, yes, always searching for the thing I couldn't name with words or pictures or wild gyrations or dreams, I had arrived after so long at the altar of answered questions. So I opened my mouth to ask, and silence wound itself out of my parted lips like an unraveling ball of twine. Just a gasp of tangled half-thoughts and riddles posed to draw out my meanings for no one, not even this God. Sinking down and on the brink, my eyes blurred with emotions I'd thought long spent.

What did I want? Pity for the miles I'd crawled on humbled knees, bloody with a journey's long desperation? Compassion for the tear-spent nightmares and groaning hunger always gnawing, never sated? Why was I here? To validate my flight from oblivion? To etch out lines suggested in shadows? To unveil some fallacy of purpose? I raised empty hands that offered no tribute of wealth or devotion and waited to be understood.

Unblinking, my God's face emerged from the field of opposites like a perfect earth emerging from heaven and hell. It's sexless voice a whisper threading my atoms like a skilled seamstress, filling my mouth with It's words- 'My child, whom I neither adorn with praise nor condemn with judgement, there is no answer to be found.' And weeping, I embraced this reverberation and slipped from the temple no more a pilgrim searching for truth but a pillar rising underneath it.

gregorian 201

I can't help it. I love my birthday. I love the summer, too, I don't care how hot and sticky it is. Winter clothes are perhaps more flattering as they provide more layers to hide my shame under, but you can't go swimming in January. Not pleasantly, anyway.

For all of my love for my actual birthday and the sweet anticipation of awesomeness, I HATE the birthday party part. The anxious hours leading up to the moment of truth when that first person rings the doorbell, pacing around the coffee table all laid out with food and convinced that nobody will show, or worse- only two people will show- pass, thanks anyway.

I remember feeling the same way when I was a little kid and not having any control over whether or not I got a party. I'd specifically request to not have one, and my mother would affectionately laugh right in my face and say, 'Pick out some invitations, because YOU ARE HAVING A FUCKING PARTY.' Only, she didn't drop the 'f' bomb. Mormon and such. But she did make me a cake with rainbow icing one year, so she gets to win anyway.

Things that happened on July 20th that are if not flat out awesome, at least interesting-

- 1300ish: Edward the First of England uses his newly invented WarWolf to conquer the Stirling stronghold in Scotland. In spite of the Scot's attempt to surrender. Famously quoted as saying 'you don't deserve my grace, only to submit to my will' or something like that before he proceeded to catapult the everloving shit out of them. (That's right, I went to college. And my major was medeival/early renaissance studies. I memorized this, like the history dork I am, my freshman year.)

- 1921: Alice Robertson is the first woman to preside over the House of Representatives.

- 1968: the Special Olympics is founded. I used to volunteer at them and it was pretty ok.

- 1969: Apollo 11 lands on the moon (maybe).

- 1976: Viking 1 lands on Mars.

- It's Colombia's Independance Day and Argentina's Friendship Day (wtf?!)

On my actual day of birth in 1982-

- the Rolling Stones play in Nice, France.
- the Ramones play in New York City.
- the Talking Heads play in Milan, Italy.
- there is a total lunar eclipse.
- during the third inning of a baseball game in Cincinatti, a young man commits suicide by jumping off the stadium. The reds lose and fire their manager the next day.

Births-

- Alexander the Great
- Gregor Mendel
- Natalie Wood
- Petrarch
- Sir Edmund Hillary
- Eunice Sanborn, a supercentarian born in 1896. Which means SHE'S STILL ALIVE!
- Hyacinthe Rigaud, a Baroque painter famous for his portrait of Louis XIV
- Santana
- Paul Cook from the Sex Pistol's (this fact played more than I'd prefer to admit into my 14 year old fandom. Shut it.)
- Chris Cornell (see above)
- Stone Gossard (again.... what can I say. It took so little to make me happy back in the day.)
- Chuck Daly
- Omar Epps (FAIRYLAND)
- Gisele Bundchen
and Billy Mays. That's right, he had a birthday. He did not spring fully formed from a bottle of OxyClean like an Athena of Infomercials.

Deaths (a short list, I promise)

- 'Pancho' Villa
- Bruce Lee
- Tammy Faye Bakker


See. Told you so.

five.

i have been holding the ocean in my mouth like a fabled chinese brother. all the treasures and bounty of the sea lay bare on the sandy expanse where water once kept them secret. i swallowed it to show you everything i've been hiding, so that you could gather it up and take it away. but i can feel the waves press against my lungs and my heart and it's only a matter of time before the tide rises out of me to cover it all back again. so, please come back to shore before i drown you, because i have no brothers to save me from the death devices of the angry crowds.

it is not more than it is.

oh, eleanor, your promises lay flat against my heart.  in spite of it all, i can still feel the space where you laid your hands in rest across my neck.  i defiled my temples and abandoned my posts to keep that memory, the only one i have.  here, where i last knew that touch, i named you everyday in the blades of grass at my feet and the quiet pulse of blood in my veins.  eleanor, eleanor, eleanor...

i can recall an earth-warm place where we sat drinking tea and asking the winds our fate.  like a mist, your lilting voice spread wide and soft against the heavy night, a solemn prayer, a humble offering.  you heard a call and i followed you into the tangled wood, torn skin and skirt a small price to pay for the humming of our fingers as they brushed each other.  at the end there was only an empty field, a broken camp fled of dancing women and fortune tellers.  we scoured the ground for a sign and found a handful of coins.  the gypsy faces printed on the wooden tokens were a poor excuse for divination, so we took our cups and swirled our own tasted tea leaves to read our future path. the result was muddled and false.  so you left me standing there with the cups and the coins as you promised your way backwards and away from me.  

and i stood there as the world grew in around me, listening for the familiar tremble in my heart, waiting for you to come and find me.  i rooted myself down so that you would always have a home.  i stood silent under rain and snow and punishing sun so that you could always find me. but, even though i have been waiting for a thousand years, i can no longer remember who you are coming to find.  so i let the cups and the coins fall from my aching fingers and i lower my tired arms.  all the broken pieces lay like shattered suns across the kitchen floor, and i will not sidestep them today.  for all that will not appear or disappear, i lay myself open to see it tumble out- the cowardice and fear and schizophrenic crush of everything i cannot see clearly, just in blurs, as i fall/fly past.  

i will not wander the earth for you, i will not stay in this place til you come for me.  i will walk until i remember my own name and then i will stop and dance with the world and say 'thank you'.  

monday, monday.

i'd like to get the week started off right by over-sharing a little and then being hateful for half a minute.

last night after a dreary rainy day, hubbends and i finally retreated to bed. and with the window open and a light drizzle and breeze going... it was peaceful and calming and pretty nice. well, you know how it goes, snuggling turns into kissing turns into making out and all of a sudden neither of us was wearing any pants. all in all, the evening was turning out precisely how i wanted it to. and then-

living in an apartment building, no matter how charming and vintage-y cute it may be (and ours is), is not without certain inconveniences. and being that our bedroom windows overlook the parking lot on one side and the sidewalk between buildings on the other, let's just say that i've been privy to more than a few middle of the night shennanigans, including lesbian catfights, blackout drunk chicks and their sober boyfriends, urinating off of balconies, nasty breakups and much much more. i've become pretty adept at tuning it all out.

but last night around midnight, at the most indelicate moment, one of our dear neighbors rolls up and before the engine is even shut off i can hear wailing and screaming and out and out caterwauling from inside the car. it's an infantish child, less than a year for sure, screaming it's little head right off. fine, whatever, it's a baby and i can cope. i can think of a more romantic soundtrack, but how long could it take to pile it indoors? i've got my eyes pressed tight, trying not to lose momentum. and then the 'mother' starts SCREAMING at the kid and then says this, 'SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP...... THERE, NOW YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT!' and the berating of the infantish child continues into the apartment where we can still hear it behind closed doors and across the parking lot.

f.y.i.- child abuse = instant mood killer every single time.

as if to confirm all of my hateful thoughts last night, today at work i arrive to find clients in a foul mood waiting to be let in. they don't have an appointment, so they're just sitting impatiently on the couches in the reception area until they can be worked in. they wander in and out into the elevator lobby to talk on their cell phone and eat a ridiculous amount of fun size kit-kats. their little toddler (2? 3?) follows them back and forth, not that they're paying any attention. anyway, one of the times they come back in to the office the door shuts between the mom and the kid, leaving him out in the lobby. he starts screaming and jiggling the handle, which he obviously is still to little to open fully. the mom keeps texting, sits down on the couch and starts unwrapping more candy. kidlette is crying pretty pitifully now. and NOBODY seems to notice. there are three guys and two women and they couldn't look or act less concerned. evenutally i get up, making sure to glower disapprovingly, and pick the kid up and bring him inside. i set him down and offer to get him a soda and a colouring book. the mom looks up and yanks his arm to pull him to her feet and says, 'boy, you is nothin' but a headache. you best sit there and be quiet. he don't deserve nothin', ma'am.'

....

i don't think that there are enough ways for me to shake my fists and grr and fume about the unwavering commitment to refusing to be a decent parent, fuck that, to being a decent human being that just seems to want to ruin any sort of faith in humanity that i might have.

useless and useful.

coffee should come with grades so the masses can understand what they're about to do to themselves. the freeze dried mini-pellets of murky tangyness provided by the good people of this-is-the-cheapest-brand-available would rank 'e' for 'evacuant'. possibly because i have to use a bag and a half to two bags of coffee dust in order to catch a buzz on less than half a pot, it sends me into near convulsive twitches of the intestinal region. ugh.

usually the threat of this discomfort is enough to drive me from my insanely comfortable sleep/half awake cuddling (which always seems better after the first round of usually three snooze button fests) to make enough coffee to catapult me through the morning, but this was not one of those mornings. i shouldn't complain since i did this to myself, but christ on the hill this is tortuous.

i planted my little pots and window box full of greenery last sunday. tri-coloured sage, french lavender, oregano, lemon thyme, rosemary and portulaca. i wish i had more space, but the next door neighbors commondered my second window box for some plant or another that i'll end up taking care of when they lapse into their next inevitable drug addled vacation from reality. it's not such a big deal, i'm just not a fan of yellow carnations.

now how to put them to use.

lavender- relieves stomach ailments ranging from gassiness to nausea, promotes intestinal health, repels insects, eases tension and anxiety, is an antiseptic and painkiller among other things.

sage- anti-oxidant, anti-aging, anitseptic, anti-inflammatory, improves memory and digestive health.

oregano- reduces water weight, relieves fevers, eases cramps, kills bacteria, etc.

thyme- a powerful antiseptic and expectorant, eases bronchitis, chest ifections, gastritis, dyspepsia, indigestion, stomach cramps and asthma, calms the nervous system, induces sleep, dispels nightmares, lifts the spirits during depression and increases energy.

rosemary- strengthens memory, sharpens senses (especially sight), stimulates circulation, eases pain, soothes anxiety, promotes good digestion and has anti-aging qualities.

portulaca- is pretty.

p.s.- i found the world's smallest die at my desk just now. is this a sign from god? if so, way to be cryptic and nonsensical.