Anatomy of a Dress

Zencast guy just said, “Forgiveness is giving up the hope for a better past.”

&^$*%(!

erica: ugh.
do you have any suggestions for easy/funny halloween costumes?
me: Oh, dude, I am baaaaaad at that. Get some bad ’80s dress from Goodwill and go as Sarah Palin at the Miss Alaska Pageant.
erica: i already said “everyone else is going as palin”
but palin in miss alaska could be funny
me: Oh, that’s true. Well, she is the new village idiot.
erica: she is cra cra
me: She’s the special kind of woman-hating woman.
Dude, that is so hard! I don’t know.
She could wrap herself in a bedsheet and go as Martha Graham?
erica: OMFG
that would be HILARIOUSSSSSSS
me: Totally. Rock the bun and the frown, you’d be IN LIKE FLYNN
or whatever that expression is
6:22 PM erica: “rock the bun and frown”
amazing
why are you even thinking about martha graham?
me: Oh yeah, that’s weird isn’t it?
Ha! Busted!
I got really interested in her a few months ago because I am working on a poem that I THOUGHT was about Clytemnestra
but it’s actually totally about Martha Graham.
erica: that is kind of amazing
me: I saw this like, 7 foot drag queen do a tribute to Martha Graham (who was like 5′2″ btw) a few years ago and it STUCK, dude.
Plus, I went to the show with Jimmy the Carrot so you know that shit is SEARED into my MEMORY
erica: omg Jimmy the Carrot
weeeeeeird. lets erase moments from time
and that will be one of them
me: Oh man, but then I’d lose the Martha Graham-impersonating drag queen!
Alright, we’ll just erase dinner afterward.
erica: HA yes
me: Okay I HAVE to go running. I was trying to put it off because all the yuppies are going to be at the gym after work, but I can’t WAIT any longer I am ANTSY.

Hey guys, you know when like, your friend or you little sister or hell, your fuckin’ neighbor takes a pottery class and makes some assy lopsided unidentifiable whatever and glazes it absinthe green and you have to go, “Wow, that is um…quite a remarkable personal expression”?

So, I finished writing a Statement of Purpose essay.

I cannot cannot cannot wait for November.

I was 100% prepared for any suspicious voting hijinks when I went into the Records Building downtown to cast my early ballot this afternoon. I brought my driver’s license, passport, social security card and a copy of my birth certificate, two pieces of mail with my name and address on them, my voter registration card and the provisional voter registration card I was issued when I registered to vote, and the phone number of my county election commissioner in case I was forced into a provisional ballot.

Turns out, I didn’t need any of it.

Voting took 13 minutes from curb to curb.

I pretty much voted straight party, except in the case of one district court judge seat, where a republican and a libertarian were running, and I voted third party there because I support a multi-party system, the idea of voting for anyone in a party with an ideology so wildly opposed to my general existence as a woman in a lesbian relationship is distasteful and just wrong, and the guy’s name was Bill Strange. How could I NOT? Also I abstained voting for county sheriff because I hate the incumbent democrat and see above, re: voting republican EVER.

So yeah, guys. Vote early. The quarter in your parking meter won’t even run out. And there’s a little Greek cafe in the records building with killer-smelling gyros.

I don’t have a lot of childhood memories. And I also don’t ever have flying dreams.

I just went through a box of photographs, looking for some baby pictures that might jog my memory–or reinforce the sudden notion that all my childhood stories are inherited–when I found a sheaf of college pictures. Phil and I on the futon in the midst of a lovefest on Cranium night when David and Hoku were in town, Julia exhaling mightily into that gatorade bottle we filled with dryer sheets to try to mask the smell of pot (remember that thing?) Andy in a dress, Erica in a trucker hat with a Fu Manchu, Jacob very stoned, Julia and Becky and I in our Mardi Gras masks, drunk me at some random party with about 40 dollar bills folded neatly and tucked into my cleavage, my vigorously wrapped sprained ankle, Becky with cinderblocks duct taped to her feet, roll after roll of us unbelievably baked in Lee’s institutional dorm room–and now I’ve ruined it all by cracking myself up.

The surge of emotions I’m reexperiencing, powerful and conflicted feelings looking at old snapshots with lovers, looking uncomfortable and lonely in Ireland, awkward and stoned in Amsterdam, overjoyed and a little chubby at the Antrim coast,  the affection and familiarity of Julia looking over John’s shoulder at something, the rapture of Phil’s AHA! face–the immediacy of all these emotions instantly recalled in perfect clarity and intensity…does make me wonder about “letting go” or “getting over” the past. It may not be Claudia Rankine’s dying down in the heart at all. Maybe it’s more like a tent pitched on shifting sands. Move to another stretch, wait for the wind to change and push this bit of emotion and memory off to the left, or under that bit of brush. But it’s all still there, all still as intense as ever, all still parts of a whole–integrated, maybe, but distinguishable parts.

In other news, I just love this man.

I feel a powerful depression comin’ on.

It’s only two more blacks in the flesh.

It’s just glass-eyed dolly snarling from the bureautop.

The first chapter forcefully reiterates the concept of self-knowledge, as in if you are afraid, the animal inside you is trying to live, listen.

Dream of a hard brown poison rocket, an ankle-kiss
left by a shining rope in the dust.

So, listen. You don’t look like a puddle of wax in those sheets.
You can’t lie still, you have to wake up, you have to jump up hissing, all claws and teeth and eyes–

It’s still night. There is a man in the closet or he is a purple coat.
When the limbic brain is screaming, listen:

don’t be food, say no to the wish for bound arms and tape
at your teeth, swoon of terror, your rescue, the bars rattling in

leather gloves
tickling your throat with a knife. As in,
a little fear goes away.

Gotta gotta gotta change that ending!

Disaster, the Besnard Lakes

Wow I am in AGONY writing this personal statement.

Does anybody want to read my MS and tell me what needs fixing, moving around, throwing out?