Shadowplay

In the crumbling pieces of dead, dried flesh lie your ideas of yourself.
knitted together macabre-like,
a chainsaw divides a wire which connects the
flat, pinky tissues together.
Forming the face of an egotist
come one come all,
there is a matinee showing
a second try at life,
again more words to be found at the bottom of the barrel head.
dirt gets mixed in with the decapitated beauties,
killing one killing all
until there is nothing left, but billowy white
floating in the space which lies unabashed
between the places in the wax.
Dripping down your thigh, on its way to mine,
let it find home, and see yourself through its
safer shore, the one at the end of a long,
and journeyed tale.

~ M. Lucia

Haiku for the Rest of You

My only weakness:
I could never suffer fools.
Choking on themselves...

~ M. Lucia

The Point of No Return

In my sight
in all my sights
I come to the depression between
the bone and the sorrow.
When the medial of my
wicked selves sweeps up
after dark and stands naked
in the windows,
on the wharf of the watched world.
Sail on by, street
paving the planners' way home
Late. again-
Boom says the punk inside of
me crawling, my son stands with
oversized, idle boots.
The legs shake one by one -
stop, freeze then
retort, both at the same time.
One heel up towards me,
one pulling back to the wall.
Aren't we all sitting up in the shitter
reading past pictures
in the paper
chewing the fat of our
complacency, at low tide.
We'd be better served
ripping out the stitches between our lips,
sending the fools among us out to massacre,
and breed a new, clean rising fire;
one they can't see, smell,
or trample on.

~ M. Lucia

The Adventures of Small Man

Small Man is one of those people who look like the non-little-person / non-child-actor cast member(s) of the Munchkin scenes in Wizard of Oz.  I know it's an obvious reference but in this case it really is the best way to describe it.  You also see it from time to time in certain freakishly small immigrants (Italians in the 20's and now Latin Americans)--regular bodies, just tiny.  And usually pronounced eye-brow ridges.  I know; this is all disgusting and I should stop writing it--one shouldn't be thinking these things let alone saying them.  And actually using the name SMALL MAN is reprehensible, but I'm not sorry.  I mean him no ill, I'm just saying is all.

I pass Small Man every day driving to work.  He's walking up the hill I'm driving down.  He looks very industrious.  He strides with a purpose, quickly up the incline.  It seems to not bother him.  His boots are large and practical and efficiently and tightly laced, his pants some non-de-script brand encasing his lower body like a super-heros.  Plaid shirt is well-tucked.  His face concentrating, no-nonsense, serious.  His eyes might even show a little anger.  In any event, his whole person should be set to music--action music, Super(small)man music.

I provide the music myself now when I see him.  "SMALL MAN!!!!" I yell in my ironic-announcer voice and hum the Small Man theme.  Our schedules overlap but the timing fluctuates.  Sometimes it takes until I get all the way down the hill to see Small Man; sometimes I see him right in the beginning.  When I don't see him right away looking for him will take on an urgency.  "Where are you Small Man??  Where have you gone?"

I think Small Man knows I'm looking at him.  I don't know if he's self-conscious about his stature or if he just has Super-Hearing, but lately when I yell "SMALL MAN" inside the car with the windows up I think he can hear me, and he's not happy.  I wonder if maybe I'm Small Man's arch enemy but just don't know it.  Perhaps he thinks to himself "there goes Large Man.  Look at him with his fancy suit and his grossly large features.  Him and his big hair.  I HATE you Large Man!!!!"

For "Lola", or As-Yet-Unnamed Lola

Night alone in the room
cherry cola,
and Lola oncoming.
There is a star outside the window,
no other star in the sky.
Gabriel is here-
shining peacefully upon the both of you.
I look for you over from the view of the bridge.
So happy to witness him;
No one left on the street but me.
It's that mixed up, murky confused kid
of a world, except for Lola.
He and I look over to all of you now,
in triumvirate of 3. Cannot stop smiling---
Lola's coming, Gabriel.
A fog horn booms, sounds as deep as her heart.
Just above the clouds, still and centered,
Here runs in to the center stage, Lola.

~ M. Lucia aka Aunt Ginny

6 Inch

The question that paced limply round my mind was would I still be able to defeat the might of an entire army with just the brittle jawbone of an ass (arse? does an Irish donkey go by arse?)  Would my ability to slay without the toss of my long biblical hair hold weight? A very valid question for someone who let the other girls play with her hair at school, who occasionally flung it in the face of women who needed a wake up call, who loved having it pulled while being fucked, yin and yang in perfect harmony, who could count on it to cover the tattoos when skillfully placed clothing failed...I refused the complimentary glass of wine, since I knew I'd be drinking whiskey within the hour, also apologizing profusely for such an offence as saying no to the vino.  I saw the long dark tree trunks of hair fall one after the next to the floor, half wet and half dry, just like me.  I haven't felt this way in awhile, like the first flutters of love, the intent lightness of lust, imbued in the shoulder bones, now slowly more and more exposed as I let loose with my past and let it braid its slipknot secrets down, with a swift tailwind.  Nothing but a wavy brown mound of interwoven, dead hair, swept up into a pile that looked like the cheap toupee of a wannabe gangster.  Pity - I didn't want them to take it away.  I kept a lock of the complete half a foot, two years worth, 6 inches of hair..."what are you, a Jew?"  Always the most inappropriate thing said becomes the thing I smile at the most; sceptre in ashes at my side.  Nice to dethrone yourself sometimes, tie yourself down, crumple the crown, and look forward to the night all the same.

~ M. Lucia

A Gamble

The morning sun tumbled into the living room like dice chasing down green felt
skittish, bounced, bump.

The pert coffee tables' fierce leg toeing its shadowed line deep into the fleshy carpet, across the childlike smiles of my warm sun
selfish, diagonaled, dark.

The silken ties of the tent felt only when the penumbra intrudes and the Frost wind rips
tauten,billowed, blown.

Craving freewill at the mercy of the squall, navigating opaque truths-
Choice is only free when the alternatives are known.
shaven,bared, bone.

Not tangible, I suffer the difference on my skin between sun and shadow
foresaken, trampled, tied.

Feral Feline

Occasionally a bird would attempt flight, winging from some bush or stand of grass, but then vanish, yanked violently back down into the scrub, made a meal presumably.  From under the dumpster the eyes will stare impassively.  Some make that noise walking to their cars in parking lot, trying to woo them from out of their hiding place.

"Kiss, kiss, here kitty kitty."

Is there a flinch?  Not even in an ear.  Maybe the eyes narrow but maybe really that's just me projecting onto them, wanting perhaps some emotion, a reaction maybe, a sign that they could be comforted, poor babies, in their poverty.  But they know that I would only pet them, a scruff behind the ears, and then leave them like everyone else.  They know this in their DNA.  Its been bred into them over the generations--a river-bound culture of solitude and of Darwinian death.  Who needs a vampire movie?  A zombie story?  Linger sometime after the trains have gone and the commuters have charred a path up the hill.  Wait for the mist to part and allow yourself stillness for a moment, focus there, on the underbrush, and you will see them.  You will see the low crouch, the tension under mottled fur, the clawed feet perfecting their launch pads, the tail-end hooked, measuring wind and balance.  Eyes like cold empty death, waiting, counting down, sensing every inch of vulnerability.  Bird, human, cat--blood pounding in unison.

*  *  *

And then she appeared.  A slender tower, even from above.  White haired but hooded.  Hands pocketed.  What shadow had she stepped from?  Maybe it was the pigeons that called my attention as they quietly fled, wings impossibly silent.  Were they afraid?  Alone, I swallowed hard and her head turned, or more like tilted.  I looked down on her from the station as she stood at the fence around the vacant field below.  The lights of the power plant a few miles up the river signaled a toxicity in the air.  I imagined her eyes following the cock of her ear, her eyebrow raised in consideration, coming to a conclusion about me as her witness, or maybe inviting me to flee in this one afforded moment, to take flight with the other birdies, safe home to roost at my sitcom hearth, my candy-dished coffee table.  

She stepped, impossibly, through the chain-link.  My eyes strained to decode the illusion.  Where was the gap?  What shadow conspired to trick?  But then her gliding gait was yet even more magic, her stride a wind-part on the weeds.  What was this thing?  I felt a bladder urge, like a shiver of fear, and I held myself to stop the flow, like a child dancing in front of a TV cartoon not wanting to part with the color and delight.  No color here though.  What I watched was a drab autumnal blanket of weed spread at dusk, carpeting down to the slow-flow of water, the Hudson here an eddy-turn north against the stoic, estuarial tide, a bold ignorance of the commerce of humanity.  And there, at its center, a white witch.  

She called them to her with raised hands and the drape of coat over her shoulders and arms.  And they came.  They moved like lions, a pride of cats, a community of monsters, through the grass and reeds, out of hiding places and off of regal perches.  They closed perpendicular through the concentric wraith-wreath around her, deliberately.  At her feet they would one by one disappear under the narrow circle of her long skirt, an impossible amount vanishing inside her clothing until all were gone.  A wet draft rose and the moon light broke free of the sooted clouds of night.  She bent at the waist drawing into herself and the air was charged with the static foretelling of a lightening strike.  A warm flow ran down my legs and the acrid litter-box stink of stale piss burned my nose.

Then, a white cloud of hot light mushroomed with the witch at its center.  It was for a moment like a summer day and then gone.  I was knocked back sitting into a puddle and banged against the brick wall of the station.  The roughly finished cement of the rustic building digging into the scalp at the back of my head and the nape of my neck.  I don't know if I slept or just waited to clear my head.  There was a light in my face and a man's urgent voice.  I shaded my eyes and saw a police cruiser idling at the curb and shafting a flashlight at me, the obvious drunk passed out at the station.  

"Hey!  Move along buddy."   

I stood.  Smoothed my suit coat.  Tried to gather myself and give an impression of sobriety.  Down in the field all was still, dark, empty.  

"Take a cab would ya?  Do me a favor, OK?"

"But I'm not...I haven't been-"

"Cab."

"OK."

He drove off.  I went down the metal stairs to the street below.  The cabs lined the fence on the other side of the tracks and the drivers dozed waiting for the next train.  I sat on a bench thinking I should wait; give my pants a chance to dry out.  From under a car in the parking lot a pair of eyes reflected greenly, indifferent.  I looked away.  

ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE FLESH-EATING OEUVRE - 1

XOMBIE - That word, the brand name really, dominates the pink packaging, the 'X' and the 'O' part of some tic-tac-toe theme that was hard to decode at a glance, but, then again, who ever lingered long enough to ponder the packaging with such a promise of adventure inside?  And, truth-be-told, the crude marketing and packaging that had rolled-out with the toy's initial release persisted even now, adding that campy quality that had become such a part of the product's overall perception and XOMBIE company gestalt in the minds of the American public.

The packaging was pink because it was a XOMBIE - Girl, with 'Girl' in smaller lettering but indicating that this was the girl-directed version of the #1 'toy' in America, the run-away popularity of the product even now memorialized by the president of the US on the cover of Time Magazine laughing along with his photogenic son as Pogo, the "first dog", ran in terror (though never really in any danger-thus what otherwise might've appeared to be callous laughter) from the family Xombie (-Boy in this case) as it lurched and shuffled its 6-inch body (the action uncannily frozen in time in rich saturating color by Annie Liebovitz) across the Rose Garden lawn, the gnashing of its teeth and darting of its rancid bloodied tongue appearing blurry in the photo contributing to the overall quality of action, caught in the act, while at the same time, like a Rockwell painting, showing each face telling a different story, zombie-flesh-lust, bug-eyed canine & glaring, over-the-shoulder panic, toothy presidential glee and blue-blazer, red-tied confidence.

This packaging, OUR Xombie's packaging, had already been disassembled and left here on the dining room table along with the UPS box it came in and the family scissors that had been used, with no apparent physical damage to any children, thankfully and miraculously, to slice everything open.  Also on hand here on the table were the "directions for care."  The Xombie itself was no where to be found and my wife's car was not in the driveway.  I maintained my typical well-worn serenity but began the search.  Quick glance in the living room?  Nothing.  Kitchen?  No.  I'm reading the instructions.

"1. Remove Xombie from box.
 2. Peel back plastic cover but do not remove.  Avoid physical contact with dry ice.
 3. Fill loaf pan or similar container with warm (not hot) water.
 4. Submerge Xombie, in packaging with plastic cover, in warm water.  Let stand for 24 hours.  THERE IS NO DANGER OF XOMBIE ACTIVITY DURING THIS STAGE.  EVAPORATION OF DRY ICE MAY APPEAR DRAMATICALLY OMINOUS TO YOUNGER CHILDREN AND OTHER HOUSEHOLD PETS.  IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT PATENTED MELTING BE ALLOWED TO PROGRESS OUT OF REACH OF INDIVIDUALS 16 AND UNDER.
 5. After melting process let thawed Xombie stand on enclosed drying rack for 20-40 minutes.  Some odor may be noticeable and is completely normal.
 6. Use alcohol swab to disinfect the index finger of individual to whom the Xombie will link.  (XombiCO and the AMA recommend parents of small children perform linking steps under the care of a family physician.)  Use enclosed needle pen to quickly pierce the flesh of the disinfected finger.  Squeeze digit to bring forth a small drop of blood.
 7. Apply a small but firm amount of pressure to your Xombie's abdomen below the ribcage.  The Xombie's mouth should open.  Some additional odor and/or mucousy disgorgement is normal at this stage.
 8. Holding the finger with the drop of blood at least one inch above the open Xombie maw, allow at least one (1) droplet of blood to be released into the Xombie's mouth and then release the pressure on the abdomen.  It is recommended that no more than three (3) drops of blood be consumed by Xombie during linking phase as this may cause increased flesh-lust in activated Xombie.  
 9. Let Xombie stand an additional 10 minutes.
 10. Use enclosed band-aid to dress the bleeding index finger.
 11. After 10 minutes Xombie will be ready for use.  PLEASE SEE 'SAFE PLAY AND CARE.'"

I had heard the Xombie preparation was elaborate but everyone I had talked to had said it ended up being a lot easier than they had thought.  I open the door to the basement.  There is a foul stench and what sounds like  small sneezes - like little 'a-choo' sounds from Tinkerbell.  My daughter immediately goes into defensive mode at the sound the door yanking open and my agitated footsteps on the carpeted stairs.  Before I even turn the corner she starts to explain.

"There's something wrong with this one Daddy."

I reach the bottom of the stairs and see her sitting on the floor in the shadow of the television, enveloped in a horror-movie cloud of vampire fog, billowing and snaking in the drafts of the basement.  The fluorescent lights cast a greenish glow on the scene.  At her knees is a large serrated bread knife, its edge almost absurdly bloodied.  She is holding her hand suspended above an area of carpet to her right that has become blackened by the blood collecting and absorbing into its shag and pooling in the empty Xombie-less space in the block of dry ice resting there.

"Angie told me she fed hers blood to make it come awake but this one is broken."

The fog parted for a moment and I glimpsed a tiny, raggedly-dressed "man" laying on its side.  The tiny sneeze sounds were its retchings--it was violently aspirating my daughters blood onto the freshly painted basement wall and onto the Wii console tossed in the corner.

END OF PART ONE...

Chin Up

It is how you carry yourself that makes an impression on people. It matters not how fine the cut of your trousers or the quality of your cashmere. You could look quite regal in a sack if you comport yourself well. Walk tall and straight and at all costs prevent the soul suckers from making eye contact with you. Do not look for solace where it cannot be found. You should be the only one who is aware of your burdens, the secrets you keep in the tuck and fold of your skirt, hemmed within an inch of your knees and stitched up tight like Frankenstein. 

The passion of black and white

Today it is raining and I am lost
Not depressed as one might expect on such a day
I've been kicked into that pit before and climbed out hand over fist
But in the nebulous funk of truth and lies and electronic devices
I have no pithy Haiku
There is no unconditional ear-
My mother has crossed the line from being helpful in my life to being protected from it.
I have noone else's husband to tell me I'm great
I absorb the quiet in my life
this is preceived as less passionate than those who are vibrant and outspoken
but there is no deception in my actions
when I am with you, it is you that I am with
I don't think that needs to be loud to be heard
I could never sustain two watered down lives
Slogging through the emotions of both
All that passion diluted to
ironically mediocre

Bicycle Thief

Someone took my bike.  My $100, bought off of craigslist, vanilla coloured California beach bike.  Bought right around the time I said yes to this place (after many gin and tonics at Rocky Sullivan's, the bar below and to the left - then called Liberty Heights Tap Room and owned by my current landlord.  Rocky's, where I had first cavorted over whiskey and Guinness with the minstrel boy from Birr nearly a decade earlier, was on Lexington Avenue in the 20's, then.  He and I certainly took a lot of cabs together).  Now, the Irish bar of my earlier memories had found its way to this neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I finally would descend to the waterfront, and ascend in every other manner.  I felt it fate and knew it was right.  I had been working my way here for awhile.  The three gins helped a great deal.

Whether I said yes to the place or bought the bike first I can't remember.  I rode the train with my friend Lala, down to the Orthodox Jewish avenues, South.  Early Saturday morning - Hot, dusty bare streets.  No one out.  I met the girl who sold me the bike in front of her family's house and then, she sold me me the bike.  I love the Cali beach bikes, but suspected even then that the hills around here might pose a problem.  There were similarly vanilla coloured fenders, sold separately and to be put on later.

We filled up the tires to the max and rode all the way from Avenue U back to Red Hook.  Prospect Park's hills proved my first challenge.  This would not be easy.  I wore summer dresses to the angry, shouting chagrin of Latino ladies who caught their husbands looking at the tops of my thighs as I passed.  I would yell back to them "Mind your business!" (internally: "Dumb Cunt.  It's not my fault your thighs are the size of a whale's.  Try eating fewer empanadas".)  This would distract my biking, so I would cut out those angry retorts quick as I could.

My stuff was in the local storage (where the bike was going when I was done with it that day), as I waited for the dual apartment(s) to be renovated - always taking longer than they said.  I had been staying with Jack, and just past the last golden arc of dramatics that would burst that impossible bubble.  Was well over a year and a half after, before I finally walked away, and still credit any and all of my love/relationship fucked uppedness to he and I (not just him, of course.  Who could blame like that with a straight face?)  Lala and I were going to share these two apartments, joined by a pocket door and taking up the entire 3rd / top floor of the building.  Like living alone, but that I would use the only kitchen on her "side" -- Fine by me, as she wanted to be able to sit there and "look at it" and I much preferred the street side (I liked to see people coming), the warm, southwest sunset light and the roundabout view of the waterfront.

We headed, sweaty and unkempt, to the local bar, which I never had the courage to head into, when I had lived previously in the adjoining neighbourhood ( I know I could now probably fall asleep there and feel safe as an unwanted orphan in a basket, drink in hand).  No one was there, but for the short, boyish blond bartender who clearly, like others we found out (and us too), had escaped to the waterfront away from something.  We sat there in the cool of the bar, drinking beer and watching T-Rex videos on the TV screen.  Then, he walked in- whirlwind, vulnerability, young dark haired man with the sweetest white pit bull puppy ever.  We talked for a good long while, and Lala could talk anyone's ear off, so I listened mostly, commenting when I felt I wanted to, and caught him looking at me rather intensely more than a few times.  When we finally left, he told Lala it was nice to meet her, and then put his hand on my bare shoulder and said with much solid and isolated intention "it was Really great to meet you, M_ _ _ _ _ _" (this was before my childhood nickname of Mimi was resurrected and sticks to this day in the neighbourhood); eyes alight, warmth of his smile, little did I know all that would transpire from this man-child.  Somehow, in my fateful way, I sensed that there was plenty more to come.  I was already in love with his dog.

Point is, I rode that bike a lot that first summer, mostly to that bar, to his house on the back streets I now drive home from the bar along; in the cold, slightly drunk, and even managed to make it up the steep hill to the train station for a good deal of that Autumn.  But the logistics of that half commute bike ride were too much for me - the bags, the dresses, the boots, the makeup and the sweat.  It was rough, and after one too many haughty Smith Street women commented on my dripping face, I decided to hold off for a bike with gears, or just ride it when it cooled down some.  Between that time and last weekend, I probably kept the bike chained up outside my front door for over two and a half solid years without use.

It was embarrassing, really.  Recently I thought about getting it fixed up, and received many a promise to help do so, but they never came to pass.  The tires, flat beyond recognition, the spokes and kickstand all rusted to the hilt.  Not sure I could even grease them free.  Not too long ago, someone from Rocky's (or patron) draped a blue motorcycle cloth cover over it; a cheap something to cast veil over this eye sore - this reminder of my laziness, my complacency, my inaction - I found it funny, and even showed him that last late night I stayed up and out to hear his woes, even when he wasn't speaking them out loud very much.  He had his trusty flashlight out and checked it out.  Said it could be fixed, but I knew he had a lot on his mind and didn't want to make it a point.  I would do it.  I would.

Then, Halloween night.  Well, the night before, technically, as it was a Saturday night.  I had my trademark bruises on, my operatic makeup, my torn clothes, my strength shining out happily from my victimized costume and fur coat.  Happily drunken on white russians, I posed on my dad's old car (now mine), still alive and kicking due to myself and some others.  Splayed on the hood, I raised my purposefully torn black stockings up into the night sky and stared off into the distance, beyond the frame, to a light somewhere which reflected the industrial waves of the nearby water and the deep boom of a boat in the distance.  All for the camera, as the inner egomaniac in me always wanted to be an actress.  I was giddy, and shallow.  I think I got punished for it.  My mother visited the next day, on actual Halloween, and remarked "your bike is gone...do you know that?"  I was shocked, but at the same moment, relieved.  I looked outside and even looked a second time, when we went downstairs later, as if it would re-appear all souped up and ready to go, shiny and vanilla as that first day I rode her to my home before it was my home.  She was gone, blue cover and all.

I thought I was being reprimanded for not taking care of her, not helping her, or minding her or getting her back on the streets I loved.  I'm sorry I forgot about her, but I knew some kids must have just up and awayed with her, for parts, or maybe they could get her going again.  Why anyone would choose this bike, after all that neglect and time, I know not.  I still can't figure out how they broke the massive, heavy chain and lock I had around it.  Then I think it was him (who studied lock picking for one of his many past times), who looked with so much intent at the bike that night a week prior, just as he once looked at me, the first times we spent in each other's company.  Maybe he had stole it and has it back at his house and is working on reviving the bike, as we speak.  Maybe.  I'll find out at some point.  Wherever she is, I hope she knows I loved her always, even though I didn't show it much after the start, nor keep up with her as I should have.  That empty space in front of my home looks completely new to me --- in all the time I've lived here, over three and a half years nearly -- the bike was always there.  Feels strange to come home in the cold, in the dark, to that empty space.  It's a new chance, though, to put something else there.  Pity- I still have the fenders, which I never did get around to putting onto the bike.  What the hell am I going to do with no bike, and ultra smooth, never-before-used, vanilla coloured fenders?

~ M. Lucia

Ode to Eire

Thick and viscous, membranes pulsating within the droplets of sweat that come from hard work in a damp climate, Ireland soars on its knees for you, muttering and scraping its legs and soles of feet as it moves along, beast of a brain incapacitated by drink and obligation. Wanting the other guy to know he’s no better, but stepping back into the shadows that others placed for it when its turn arises…the spotlight shining a rare but soft sun around the back of its neck, sore from crouching in safe houses, empty embellished halls of parliament, and on the lawns of Trinity, where it still is quite legal to shoot a catholic, if warranted. Ireland warrants every minute of every workday, no time for payday, already spent and around the bend it ambles; insides of lungs, stomach lining and bladder eviscerated by the amber clockwork that ticks beneath the witches’ brew – Barry’s, Guinness, Hard Grain in every corner, never to be swept up, just swept under the rug. Into the gene pools of the world. Hands cover mouths which talk double time to your front and your behind, the ever shifting necessity arriving and departing of perfect social hours intermingled with quiet, shameful alones. Shake any family tree and an Irish woman falls out---between her knees, falls from the tree the hoards of red blooded over workers, overbearing mothers and easy lays (on St. Patrick’s Day). Girls with something to prove, everything to lose and a collective heart beating which tries ever to not look at its own face, impossible to stop believing what reflection is shown to it by the empires that laid claim. Embedded with myth that knows not a reality or a truth; one that is forever trapped by the original name with which it was once slain and re-connected. Trembling and hopping mad, spinning in Celtic circles of death and reclaim, until it finds itself yet again, sneaking around the house at night, out to visit with the Thing it most enjoys, covertly wrought over, to the extreme, alone, so no one else can sit and judge, or try to understand. Secrets seem to hold more weight, fleshing out the poem into a lifetime of land reforms, of contradiction unsatisfied and identity undone, all in the timbre that fills out its life in between lives, in the notes that are heard, before and after, but never during the outpouring of song. Drowning in these sound waves, Ireland comes up for air, flails its arms about and screams like a banshee on a late night visit to the off licence.

~ M. Lucia

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A Brief Lesson in Stoicism

I was reminded, just now, that I am indeed very much a practicing Stoic (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca were all famous Stoics etc.) which does not mirror the modern definition of being stoic. In a nutshell, and without reverting to a classic definition, Stoicism is about the art of living, and contemplation.

Examples – walking down the street to pick up my CSA (local farm vegetables, fruits, eggs etc.) on a weekend day, I start looking at every detail in the road, the weeds growing out of the cement, I then contemplate the particularly vivid teal blue mixing with yellow in the sky and think about how people who lived and died tens of thousands of years ago saw such a sky and how lucky I am to be alive right now.

Later, when I am talking to someone close to me, I look into their eyes and think about who they are, that mask-less, mental-less, none experienced Spirit who I share with in my life and how we found each other in whatever means we know each other and I See them, and am thankful for this, since there are those in which you never know when the last time will be (stoics call negative visualization, but its not “negative” in the way we think of that word).

Then, perhaps later on, I can’t help but feel invigorated by the colourful lights in my local pub, and appreciate that feeling of comfort, beauty and modernity they imbue to me, as I sip my Dark n' Stormy (cocktails are a very valid part of this conversation) and love every elongated second of living in ITS moment, its taste- the rum, the ginger, mixing in my mind, illuminating my heart and my belly, making me drunken and happy for that tiny fact of experience.

This is only the tip of the icebergs, but it’s a wonderful world to live enveloping. I feel lust most days, nostalgia and sadness for those lost, regrets around every corner, and have cried numerous times over so many petty, and sometimes profound things, some as a willing participant and some as a witness. I have fallen down the black hole of my own psyche, and control fetishes, and impossible dreams. But sailing around all of these awfully human experiences is this stoic idea of the moment, of appreciation of the final taste, kiss, laugh, fist fight, flight of fancy, misunderstanding or zealous exclamation, of the being in the here and now and allowing that to include the highs and lows of our humanity as we find them, surging up to our brain sensors when we hold your hand, or in the last precious drops of whiskey on our tongue, the entire of civilisation’s (and that which came before and will come again) blue sky swimming in our wake.

~ M. Lucia

Afternoon in a Darkened Room

I was dead tired.  The kind that couldn't be cured with coffee, tea, alcohol, walking around, daydreaming, inappropriate acts in the ladies toilet, nothing. Now I was in the land of naught, in the tiny treatment room, dressed minimally in tans and whites, like a holiday inn in Virginia, the same I once sailed through with the gypsy family, the tiny coffee maker, our sneaking the german shepherds into the room under cover of night, through the first floor (always requested) sliding glass doors.  My mind couldn't fashion any more distal memories, as he put the needles in, like usual, or what I had come to expect as usual.  Just as when using his elbows to break up the obsessive thoughts and lack of relief I felt in my lower back that day especially, I had breathed into it, I was a pro at wanton release.  I let him separate every part of my ass that he could muster- I'm sorry.  My sacrum.  The place where women hide all their secrets.  At least I do.  I let him go to work, after which he burned me with moxa, causing my arms and hips to involuntarily twitch...I wondered if this lack of control is what my brother feels when he twitches.  No wonder he got so angry all those times.

I was so tired, and couldn't wait to lie there, in that small, dark room with my body, held down as I oft enjoyed (whether needles, or the strong arms of men, or my clothes chosen for the constriction of their vintage tart appeal).  I wanted to hold down my thoughts most of all.  They could slap me like a whirlwind, and give me an instant hangover.  The champagne the night before did me in bodily, but things in the head space are never what they should be, I've come to learn, when I awake at 3am, the witching hour, and cannot go back to sleep.  It was hotter that it should have been that night, and I had felt the bubbles of the alcohol from all day brunch rising through my stomach to my head, so I had the window open again.  I lived on one of the quietest streets in the one of the quietest neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but for the cacophony of school buses racing their wares all yellow and bright right after 6am or so.  But it had been dark outside, and they were asleep.  I had awoke and got up for water and the bathroom, and then been back in bed, my ears were working overtime.  I heard everything...especially the insane cries of the many gangland birds who assaulted my eardrums and dream thoughts with their ornithological arguments, the same strangely shaped, small black birds with pointy beaks like nails on the face who wolf whistled at me sometimes on my walk to the bus, making me pull down my skirt and glare sideways at whomever was responsible.  I heard their conversation in my call to fall back to sleep.

Here, back in the room, the needles were in.  My head clamped down by at least five, the usual "tune up" he assigned to my arms and hands, Large Intestine 4, my personal favourite, right next to Large Intestine 5, the "Anatomical Snuff Box"...I loved saying that.  It was like a copper coloured word from the turn of the century, when snuff and spitting tobacco seemed like something viable, as a past time.  I guessed right at my ailments and the Doctor again said to me that I was a natural, and that when I was licensed, I could come work for him.  I hoped again, in a dull, settled way that this might come true.  He dimmed the lights and left the room, only returning to bring in my favourite part: the heat lamp, offering soft heat to my damp stomach, stuck with a sun and moon of needles.  It's hard to keep calm when you have about twenty needles in your skin.

I, however, was aces at relaxing and emptying my mind of the worries of the weekend - his vulnerable eyes, his arguing at me about what an awful, useless person he was, those written words..."I wish you had left me to die, I have nothing to offer you...nothing to offer you..." making my chest hurt, and those wordless moments when he looked at me, after I talked his self effacing logic into another corner, and I looked at him, remembering who we once were, calfs on the way to the slaughter, at the border fence, with not the energy to re-claim our freedom and pull our heavy, lumbering limbs, sunken in the graves of our own mental making, back up into the run, into the wild spaces our brains inhabited.  I suppose I had wasted a good deal of time in the dark thinking of him, of this, of the usual connections and souls that I held around me as an orbit, spinning a waltz of emotional proportion and experience.

I was still so tired, and nearly fell asleep a couple times, shades of grey, a seaside breeze, the water lapping at Bray, how every time I found myself at a beach on Long Island, I'd look out as far as I could see and hope that I could sense Ireland there, waiting for the gypsy girl to return to her drunken, sorrowful boys and their adoring, clueless ways.    But here I was, lunchtime nap in needle land, my body registered with small, but sizable shocks the energy moving up my foot to my leg.  The warm, orange disco ball of light on my stomach, mother to all yet no one.  The session took longer than I was used to, and I kept drifting in and out, trying not to control the situation which was stuck on the fence post in my head.  I heard the tiny voices from the other rooms, and yet none too clear in mine.  A field of war, the past never had enough of to be satisfied, and my absolute joy at this and every moment.  Deity, climax, death chamber and leaves blowing in trees all my children in each second passing, muscles relaxing, brain re-organizing, love reborn, dying and coming and blowing kisses into the next millennium, as I would meet it completely, as I am, as myself.  Capital M.  In the hiding place of my little heated table.

Finally, after more tastes ran their liquids up my spine - whiskey, wine, the fucking glory of a rum at Christmastime, and the thoughts sought to work themselves out, I gave in, further again, you know, when you can hear your hips un-click and you let someone into you, wrap your mind, legs, godhead around them.  It was happening, it could be felt the world over...the door opened slowly and without much sound.  It was a woman- tiny, Asian, of course, in blue scrubs.  The doctor I deduced from all the voices during my time "asleep" was overly busy today.  She took out the needles, after turning up the lights, which I was not ready for her to do.  My eyes barely tried to open even when she was nearly done taking out the needles (not as adeptly and covertly as he did, by the way).  I kept smiling and felt that strange heady feeling that I had experienced before - space, caught and let go, in my recesses, in my opinions, my quiet, dark escape called awake by this day time witching hour.  I wondered if he would ever come out of this rabbit hole.

I remembered early on, when we first met, and he tried to decipher the dead, provincally roman (and grammatically incorrect) words on my first tattoo.  He pulled my blouse over to the side, and perused, as she looked jealous, as I knew her to be.  Something was mentioned about my father, and he remarked that he looked forward to meeting him...she retorted in a start, but with absolute sincerity, "you can't, he passed away a few months ago..."  He had, without missing a beat, said quietly "I'm sorry to hear that".  I had paid my fee, dressed and walked back out into the streets.  The only thing I could think of was how, when he had said that, he seemed more genuinely disappointed at that fact that anyone I had ever met.  The birds stopped screaming in my ears, and I felt a surge of atomic palpations carry me as I crossed the street, back to work.

~ M. Lucia

Silly Mommy!

Dragging herself out of bed, the groggy mommy reached for her purple robe and put it on as she shuffled her way to the bathroom.  After splashing cold water on her face and brushing her teeth, the somewhat revived mommy then headed for her daughters’ bedroom to wake them up.  “Time to get up, Angels!  Please get dressed and come up for breakfast.”  Their daddy had already kissed them "good-morning" before he left for work.  Pulling her robe tighter around her, she then made her way to the kitchen.   It had snowed the night before, and she could feel the morning chill seep through the bottom of the doors.  She put on her over-sized fuzzy slippers and got to work.  First breakfast then lunches.  As she busily got to it, she found herself thinking about her husband.  He was always happy in the morning.  Singing in the shower, smiling.  She, on the other hand, had to make an effort to shrug off the temptation to crawl back into bed and go back to sleep.  She was not a morning person.  A bowl of cereal, toast, juice and water made up their breakfasts.  “Come and get it!”  Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apples, cheese crackers, fruit juice, cupcakes and a note completed their lunches.  The girls came running into the dining room, laughing and giggling.  The inspired mommy set off to get dressed when she realized what time it was.

”Hurry!" prodded the now panicked mommy.  "We're going to miss the school bus!"  Getting the girls to the school bus on time was essential.  After breakfast, it was rush rush rush with the teeth brushing and the tangled hair combing and the getting-the-shoes-on-at-the-last-minute.  “Damn!”  The frantic mommy had forgotten to heat up the car, and being that it was so cold out, the engine needed time to warm up.  She grabbed her keys and ran outside into the crunchy snow filling her slippers with each sinking step.  Cursing under her breath, the stressed out mommy attempted to open the car door when she realized it was frozen shut.  “Son of a bitch!”  After working it a little, she was able to open it causing an avalanche of snow to cover her shoulders as well as the front seat of the car.  Not wanting to waste any time, the irritated mommy sat on the front seat, soaking her behind as she started the engine.   After blasting the heat which was freezing cold, she reached for the ice scraper on the back seat which wasn't there.  Now, the angry mommy was cursing expletives under breath as she made her way to the windshield, using the sleeve of her robe to wipe off the snow.  Her happy husband, in his cheer, forgot to put the ice scraper back into her car.  Covered in snow and feeling the chill, she hurried back inside to get to her daughters.  "Let's go, Ladies!" yelled the shivering mommy.  The bus stop was less than a minute away.  She could do this.

  

With numbed fingers, the frazzled mommy buckled in her little ones.  She was not about to miss that bus.  Getting into her seat, she tried to shut the door when she realized it wouldn't.  That is, not until the car was warmed up.  About to blow, but being painfully aware of her happy little angels in the back seat, the controlled mommy held the door closed with one hand while clutching the steering wheel with the other.  As she made her way down the long driveway, she prayed for the ice to thaw on her windshield so she could see where she was going.  The morning sun wasn’t warm enough to melt it, and the car heater hadn’t yet reached the defrosting temperature.  As she entered the road, the blinding sun reflecting off the snow-covered road caused her to slow down to a snail’s pace.  A quiet hysteria started to mount as she leaned toward the window, peering through peephole of visibility that was beginning to form.  Finally nearing the bus stop, the adrenaline-rushed mommy felt victorious as she looked at the clock on the dashboard and noticed she was two minutes early!

Idling on the empty road, she wondered, ” Where is everybody?"  She could feel the panic rise in her again.  "What's going on?  Did we miss the bus?!  Did the bus driver come early?!  Nah, he’ll be a little late because of the snow.  He always is.  Where the heck is he?!  I don’t want to you to be late for school!  I'll have to walk you in!”  As she proceeded to lose her mind, the little ones in the back just waited for their mommy to return.  When she did, they were finally on their way to school with the door shut, heat blasting and full visibility.

Still buzzing a little, the perturbed mommy remembered that she was in her robe and slippers, and it was obvious that she hadn’t run a brush through her hair.  Imagining herself walking her kids into the school nearly put her over the edge.  “Crap!”  The agitated mommy drove a little faster than usual until she entered the school zone.  She wasn’t in the mood to get pulled over by the Sheriff again, embarrassing herself and her children.  

As they slowly approached the school, the frenzied mommy noticed it was deserted.  Huh?  No teachers.  No buses.  No morning hustle bustle of parents dropping off their children.  What the…?  And then it hit her – there was no school that day!  It was an in-service day, and if she had bothered to read the notices brought home in the girls' backpacks...

In that moment, the incredulous mommy did what she always did - she laughed...out loud.  The girls chimed in.  "Silly Mommy!"  You got that right.  Feeling relieved, the smiling mommy turned her car around and drove into their better, calmer day.

-LD