living life out loud

Malnourished Heart

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ Leave a comment

Numb from shock

Arisen from the depths of you-hell

Sooty and scorched

I made a catapult from leftover heart shreds

And slingshot essential soulparts

To the netherlands of the void.

No map, no key: safe from seeking human grasp.

Whatever was left of my battered soul

I tried to serve to the world.

But tough in-spite-of life meat

Makes for a bony bounty.

Anemic and spent

I am calling me back.

There’s a welcome home mat

In my hungry-heart self.

I will feast on my fullness

Grow meaty layers of love.

Then pinked-up and throbbing,

My catapult in hand,

I’ll release to the stars

Any memory of you

To burn into ash as I rise.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: catapult

Night Moves

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

This was it.

The night of graduation. Four years complete. The party had long since started.

I’d taken ecstasy and was well into hours of drinking, running from party to party offering intensely felt goodbyes and impassioned promises of staying in touch forever to pretty much everyone I ran into.

Emotions were high, and so was I.

It was at the fountain, as Deborah and I danced around the falling waters, that he passed by. I realized in that moment that I had been looking for him all night, or perhaps just my body had.

We both yelled out “Heeeeey!!!!” as he passed by, and then I impulsively said, “I’ve been looking for you!”

“So have I!” he stopped and said.

“Let’s meet up!” I said.

“Yeah! Let’s meet up! Your room, midnight,” he suggested.

“OK!” I gleefully yelled at his back as he ran on with his fraggle (gaggle of frat brothers.)

My high ratcheted to interstellar levels.

I’d been in love with him all semester, since the choir ski trip. He finally noticed me one day on the bus when I made everyone laugh by reading a cheap romance novel aloud in a sexy voice.

After that he started leaving me hand drawn cartoons and notes, and then we started meeting up and hanging out here and there.

We never went on dates, exactly. My sorority and his fraternity did not mix, so it was a bit like the Capulet – Montague situation going on. I guess you could say we kept in on the DL, though that phrase was yet to be coined. I was so bedazzled by him that I didn’t even notice that it was happening.

He was just the most amazing guy. I had a huge physical attraction to him and he made me laugh so hard. He was creative and smart and I just got weak in the knees around him.

Though we’d fooled around, we’d never taken to the next level. Not that I hadn’t wanted to.

But I was not super comfortable with my sexuality then. I still felt conflicted about really owning it (all that inherited and social conditioning that a “good girl” didn’t admit to liking and wanting or even having sex.) So I tended to sort of deny my own sexuality while at the same time pursuing it.

But I knew one thing in that moment that night when I ran into him at the fountain. I wanted that boy.

And now here it was, the last night of school. My last chance.

After the fountain, the goodbye tour continued, as did my drinking and drugging. I had no purse, no watch, as I had long ago learned that I would lose anything not on my person. I remember riding on the back of somebody’s green moped through the night to hit all the spots, laughing. I was giddy with anticipation, and hazy with inebriation. In the back of my mind, all I could think about was meeting up with him.

At a certain point I suddenly snapped to attention. What time was it?! It felt late.

I grabbed the nearest wrist and strained to read the time. The big hand was on the 6, and the little hand…fuck! It was 1:30 AM! Noooooo! My last chance! And I missed it?!

I starting running at full speed across campus. Maybe he got caught up too. Maybe he’d be there, sketching funny drawings of me dancing around the fountain,

When I finally reached my dorm room, my heart sank into my gut: it was dark. I fumbled for the key under the mat and entered the room, tears welling in my eyes. I blew it.

Why had I played it safe all semester? Why had I passively let him call the shots? I really liked him. I really wanted him. I may never meet another guy like him again. Damn my stupid Protestant good girl upbringing. I’d missed yet another opportunity to really live.

I closed the door, and as I turned, my body became aware of another body in the room.

My eyes, adjusting to the darkness, began to discern a shape in my bed.

“Cal? Is that you?” I asked, my heart doing flip flops in my chest and my mind, reaching for possibilities. Maybe my roommate had gotten into the wrong bed…was that Kim? No, she was already gone. Maybe…hope against hope….

“Yeah. What took you so long?” That voice. He was there. In my bed. Thank you Jesus.

In what felt like the most bodacious move of my life, I slipped my dress off and stood there, in my naked desire.

I whispered out into the darkness, “I want to make love to you. I know we’ll never see each other again, but I just really want to. I just want this one night. OK?”

I risked humiliation in his rejection or total disappointment in his gentlemanly restraint.

I risked my imagined-but-until-that-moment-still-crucial-to-my-self-delusional-upbringing-repressed-sense-of-my reputation.

I risked my own potentially life-long regret in the light of day.

I took a deep breath, and I think in that very moment, I changed in some very crucial way. I already knew on some level that no matter his answer, it was my asking that would always matter.

I waited through seconds of heart-aching agony and anticipation for him to reply.

“Yeah, sure, me too,” he whispered back.

My entire body sighed in relief, and then vibrated in pure desire.

I walked the few steps over to the bed where he lay, looked down at his face in the moonlight, and began to descend.

 

Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: descend

Freefall

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

I love to jump off cliffs.

This runs antithetical to just about every way I was conditioned growing up.

I come from very fearful people, stoic Protestants who practice “keeping things in the family,” “never let them see how you really feel,” and “stick close to home.” Cautious, careful, deliberate action-takers. Spontaneity? Not so much.

I never questioned it growing up. It was normal to me. Things like traffic and weather dictated activities. Never let them see you cry. Don’t show weakness. Therapy might as well have been witchcraft.

It is imbedded in my code, this desire to avoid potential problems. This fear of something bad happening if you are not careful at all times.

And yet.

I am no adrenaline junkie or extreme sports athlete. While I do enjoy a good rollercoaster ride now and then, I have not been ticking off a list of things I must do such as skydiving and bungie jumping, though if the occasion arose I might do those things.

But.

Years ago, at a quarry in Vermont, I discovered that inside me is a kind of a dare devil all the same. That there are times I want to take risks, when I must, in fact, take the leap.

I love to stand at a precipice and then jump off into a deep body of water. I just love that sensation in my body as I step off into the air, my heart in my throat as an unheralded scream of joy-fear comes out of my mouth. Those moments of being totally free and falling through the air are just so life-filled, so in the moment. I experience the rush of my own full life force. There’s a feeling of being at one with something outside of me and yet within myself all at once. And then, the landing into the water. Being encompassed, becoming one with it in those moments in the muted depths before surfacing. Astounded at having been saved once again.

Maybe those moments are my church, my sanctuary.

For those seconds I am not thinking, not watching, not taking care.

I just am, and I am far from alone, and it feels great.

I know that experience now, and I seek it out in other ways. In my work as an actor. I feel that same way when I fully invest in my character and truly lay deeply personal life and death needs on the line and take that same kind of leap into the scene. My partner and I leap into the air of the play and sometimes find astonishing moments of true experience together. Surprises, places unexpected. When it is over, the same astonishment and gratitude for having landed safely. This is also my church, my sanctuary. It, too, is holy.

My early conditioning and the family encoding have not gone away, maybe never will. I can still catch myself getting very anxious when it is raining hard and I am in the car with my husband, feeling as if we should go straight back home. I carry unwarranted dread around at times like a Pashmina shawl. It can feel comforting and necessary.

But that’s OK.

Today, I consciously choose times to allow my spontaneity to take the front seat, put caution and fear in the back and assure them that “I got this.” I look for more places to find my free-fall worship, and I’m so grateful that I do what I do for a living.

Acting as I know it is not for the feint of heart, and I am honored to embody the lives of people who are fighting to live better lives, love more fully, taking risks to get what they need.

For them, and for me, I am happy to take that step off into the air and see where it takes me.

#freefall #risk-taking #acting

Inspired by The Daily Post Word prompt: precipice

 

 

 

A Turncoat Collaboration

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 6 Comments

“Traitorous cooperation with an enemy”

It’s what I entered into with you

But I didn’t know that at first.

At first, you were my soulmate, my joy, my everything

There was nothing that you could not make better

No feeling you did not temper, no event that you did not help me through.

After my first taste of you

I chose you, again and again.

Like a vampire needing the invitation to enter my doorway

You waited patiently for me to choose each time

Knowing that I would.

And one day, I found that

choice had become need; need, compulsion

I was a turncoat against my own life force.

In a battle with the dark side

I was sided with the enemy

inflicting sabotage against my own forces.

I surrendered and I survived, even thrive

Yet I see you there, ever waiting for an invite inside

That slight grin on your face, as if to say, you knew I’d be back.

I say no invitation today, old “friend.”

I am in cahoots with my life now.

 

Prompted by the Daily Word Prompt: collaboration

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Final Word

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It’s just this:

You shattered my essence

I know they say that the human soul can never be destroyed

But it can be damaged

And you did that.

But I gathered up the slivers

And the shards of Who I Really Am –

The me I was meant to be Before –

And I put my self together again.

Whole.

I did that.

So, guess what?

I win.
Inspired by The Daily Post daily word prompt: final

Lifemaze

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All I ever wanted

was someone to come along

to take my hand

and lead me through the maze.

Short of that, a map to guide my way would be nice.

I used to think everyone else got “the handbook.”

Now I know we are all in the same boat:

there is no handbook. We are winging it.

At the very least, I’d settle for a signpost now and then.

It seems that the whole point

is to find my own way,

and to help those I meet on the path.

Thanks, Universe.

#maze #life

 

Free Fall

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 3 Comments

I’m in the middle of a massive shift.

The last time I felt such a massive shift in my life, there were all of these external changes happening.

In the space of three years, my mother died, I planned a wedding, my brother died, I got a mortgage, bought an apartment, my father died, I got married and moved from Manhattan to the Bronx.

By the time I was settled into our new apartment, I didn’t know which way was up. I literally did not recognize the outer landscape of my life.

With so much having changed on the outside, it made sense to me that my internal landscape would need to recalibrate. I was living in a new world. I needed to find a new true north.

This time though, there’ve been no circumstances creating the pressure that precipitates such movement. This time, the shift has come solely from within, a seismic shifting of the tectonic plates of my very soul.

It is terrifying and yet so right-feeling at the same time.

Everything in my life has come into question. A massive excavation. A massive exploration.

It’s as if I have been squeezed out of myself and am born anew, looking around. And the one thing I can see clearly is that my whole life I have been in pursuit of one thing or another. Popularity, academic excellence, talent, money, happiness, fame, career success, love, a thinner body, a better me, forgiveness, acceptance, self-love, a desire to live, a desire to stop wanting to die (they are different,) peace, direction…fame (I come back to that one because that is a huge one)…you name it.

I’ve been running around like a woman with my hair on fire for as long as I can remember, and I couldn’t stop even if I had ever wanted to, and I didn’t. There were times I wanted them to stop, for life to stop, for the pain to stop, for everything to stop, for me to stop being conscious. But I never wanted and could never imagine not being in pursuit.

Until now, that is. Now, I just want to…stop.

That is the seismic shift I am in right now. I am shifting from a life of pursuit to a life of, what? What is the opposite of pursuit? I don’t know.

Is it simply being? I don’t even know what the hell that is. Is that really OK? What will happen? What if I give up the pursuit of pursuit? What will I do with my life if I do not pursue something?

Who will I be? Will I fall I back into the chasm? Will I be falling into the obscurity I have so feared?

And if I fall into the chasm of my own soul, will it be a free fall that lasts forever, or will I land on soft ground at some point? This cannot be yet another pursuit. I have to let it be whatever it is. I cannot fall back wishing it to be one way or another at the other end.

I just have to fall back. And that is terrifying and yet so absolutely right-feeling at the same time.

I’ll either see you on the other side, or I won’t. Deep breath. Here I go.

 

 

Ceasefire

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I was clearing out papers and photos from my life –
An envelope my Dad had given me after my Mom died

She’d saved every note and card I’d ever written her

And the truth staring me in the face

As I read through them was this:

I have never been OK with myself

Always searching for answers – why me, why not, what if this, what if that

Working to improve my self – this dress, that diet, walk this way, talk that way

Every day a struggle, so hard to get through

The bitter pill of life I just could not swallow

It caught in my throat, choking my voice

And I grasped at the ever-dangling carrot of a better me

And wore myself down to nubbins and grace

Today I will Just breathe

I will live in the questions

Stop searching outside for the answers

I will wear life like a loose garment

Listen to the breezes blow

Seek comfort in my own heart

And choose to forget whatever it was I was fighting so hard to be

There are no more truths to swallow

It is time to simply be

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Essential Excavation

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 2 Comments

I pulled down the walls myself

I was the one who built ’em

They were mine to demolish

I removed each stone, thanking it for its work

I excavated my own soul

I dug until I discovered the me I was before.

Anemic and shivering

I performed CPR on my self

I pinked up, began howling

Raw and primal, hungry

My natural beauty exposed

No renovations necessary.

#soulexcavation

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old Baggage

Aside ~ ~ Beyond the Skinny Branches ~ 1 Comment

When I was in junior high school, I begged my parents to go in on a purse that I was desperate to buy.

Not just any purse. It was a Gucci Speedy/Doctor bag. (We didn’t call it that then. I only know that’s its name from researching this…it is now considered vintage! Ouch!) It probably cost a couple of hundred dollars, which was a lot in those days (at least to my family) to pay for a purse, or anything, really.

Everybody had one, or so it seemed to me.

I went to a large public high school, so there was a mix of economic and racial backgrounds, kids from many different backgrounds.

On any given day you would see the many different lifestyles reflected in the fashion of the different groups. Sometimes what a kid was wearing reflected their socio-economic status, but not always.

There were “Stoners” (or “Partiers.”) The “Kickers” (this was Texas after all — so these kids were cowboy/farmer types.) It being the 80’s, there were the “Punkrocker” or “New Wavers.” ( I know, this is beginning to sound like the movie “Pretty in Pink.” That movie resonated for a reason, right?)

It was the height of the Preppy or Preppie craze, and though Houston, Texas was not NYC, we did get the fashion trends, albeit maybe a season or two behind. So the other main group was the “Preppies.”

The majority of kids in the Preppies definitely came from upper middle class to wealthy families. Looking back, for a public school, there were quite a few kids that came from great wealth.

I didn’t really fall into any one group. While my family was white-collar, sort of upper middle class, my father, having come from next to nothing, wanted to be sure that we were not spoiled. We never wanted for anything, but we lived fairly simply in comparison to some of the other kids in my school.

I was never one of the popular kids. I was an outcast until I lost a bunch of weight at 14, when suddenly I became of more interest to the “in” crowd. Though my outsides changed, my insides were the same. So though I was allowed around the in crowd now, I never felt a part of it.

There were others like me. We found each other and created our own group. We didn’t have a name, at least that I know of.

We were sort of mysterious: people knew we had fun going out to clubs and bars and hanging with older college kids. Though we had friends across all the groups, we would hang with just each other outside of school. We dressed in a mix of all of the fashions of the day.

But back to that bag. The bag that “everyone” was getting. I just had to have one. I had some money from babysitting, but not enough for THAT bag. So through the implementation of Chinese water torture on my dad, I promised over and over dramatically that “I would never need to buy another purse again for as long as I lived if I had that bag!”

Eventually, I wore my parents down. I got THE bag.

I have no recollection as to whether or not obtaining the bag actually brought me any pleasure whatsoever. I ‘m pretty sure that the amount of time I actually used it was very brief, much to my father’s chagrin.

Years later, after my Mom died, when we were sorting through some of her things, my Dad reminded me of that bag and that promise. We laughed about it, but I felt a cringe of guilt at how easily I had let go of that bag after having fought so hard to get it.

I think it’s because I really had no connection to the bag itself. Only to the way I wanted to be seen carrying it. The lifestyle to which I wanted to be associated. Which was not reflective of my own style at all, or even who I really was or even wanted to be.

But I wanted to feel like, or to be wanted by at least, (or to be seen by others as being wanted by or as one of “them,”) those popular girls, and so I got the bag. It didn’t make me feel any more a part of the “it” group than I ever had. I was an outsider and I always would be, bag or no bag.

It makes me sad that the girl I was then didn’t feel good enough in my own esteem to have seen that bag for what is was: a status symbol. It wasn’t the bag I really wanted. I wanted status. How I wish I could go back in time and tell that myself that being an outsider was actually pretty cool. Now I know the kind of status I needed would never be able to come from anything outside of my own heart. I wish I hadn’t sold myself so easily and so cheaply.

After my Dad died, I found that old Gucci purse in a box in the garage, where my Dad had kept it for me all these years. It was in mint condition, barely used.

Maybe you are hoping I’ll say I started to use it again. Or that I sold it at a profit on Ebay.

I gave it to the Salvation Army, where I hope it became a found treasure for someone who really wanted it for its beauty. I hope it is being put to good use in the world, as should all things.

Today I carry a very practical Lug Moped Day Pack bag as a purse. It costs about $35.


It’s light, leaves me hands free and has just the right ratio of open pockets, zippered pockets, divisions and space. (As it turns out, I am quite finicky about a handbag’s function, would love to design my own ideal bag, but this is as close to my ideal as I have found to buy.)

I have no interest in designer handbags. I may admire their beauty sometimes, and be amazed at and appreciative of the women who pay for them, love and carry them. But they were never my style and probably never will be.

I can live with that.

#purses #handbags #self-love #Iamnotmybag #theeighties

Inspired by The Daily Post word prompt: lifestyle