death and rebirth

C called me from his car, on his way to Sunday morning dance. I had plans for lunch with G after dance, but I wasn't planning on going to the dance, but since C was going, and since he called me, I decided I would go. And I'm glad I did. I didn't dance with C for more than a few seconds, but I got a big hug and that was ample. I did dance with a lot of other people, people I haven't seen in a long time. It's nice to leave it behind for a while sometimes; it makes it more special.

G and I ate a macrobiotic lunch at Casa de Luz, after each buying a box of Girl Scout cookies from three persistent girls and their stage mother out in front of the yoga center where the dance happens. We scarfed down a few Thin Mints and Samoas (the two most popular GS cookies, according to Wikipedia) on the way and had a nice high fructose corn syrup buzz going before we ate the deadly nightshades, ginger sweet potato tahini soup, etc. All good. Intense conversation.

I've decided to just be who I am around the men I love. These are the soft, straight men who are as attracted to me as I am to them. Naturally, the attraction is different for each of us, but it is strong and it is nice, and I'm not going to shy away from in. I'm diving in. Clench your fists! Hold your horses!

Life's too short. I had a realization today at the dance while L and I were locked in an embrace on the floor sobbing, her likely for her recently passed father, me for my recently passed cat, both of us for the other's broken heart. (I had an image of her heart, a cartoonish vision of it, broken in two by a jagged line, coming back together and the line disappearing as my left ear then right lay in the middle of her big bosom.)

C saw us embracing. He later commented that he saw us, but he wasn't aware of the tears, just the embrace. He was at the same moment that he saw us locked in a metaphorical futuristic embrace with a thin woman he had met at this very dance. He told me about it; he shares deeply with me, and I with him. Recently we had a very deep conversation and I fell in love with him, right there in his pecan shell colored eyes. I told him so. He smiled. I don't want to get into his pants, but I love him. We have become very close in the last couple of months. Since Christmas, I guess, when he came over for our Orphans' Xmas Brunch.

Maybe I shouldn't post this online for the world to see. I've been bruised by my candidness before. (I've gone back and "changed the names to protect the innocent.") But I also have been having a hard time blogging. Since Timmy. I haven't been completely warped by sorrow, but I have had my moments. I'm in mourning. I noticed in the midst of this that this feeling feels very specific; it is not similar to the feeling I get when I am depressed. It is pure sadness. It isn't attached to any deep hole that depression is. Timmy is very real; and now he's gone.

I've been distracting myself a bit. Or trying to. During these exercises I did a bit of writing again. I've been stuck on chapter 10. But it seems to be cranking up again. This is a very good feeling. The summer before I turned fourteen a great calamity pulled me from my gritty sheets to the door across the hall from my bedroom. The summer before, my half sister, newly pregnant, and Marco, the Cuban who had done the deed -- the man who supposedly belonged to our mother's best friend -- left Black Lake in the RV named Lady Liberty. She sailed out quietly like a houseboat under the full moon, left lot number ten empty except for the succulent weeds and a rusty barrel barbeque pit. Now the sun was in place of the moon, just as full but many times hotter, and another boat-like creation was floating into Black Lake, much bigger, like a brown and white ship, pulled behind a noisy truck on big wheels belching blue smoke. I stood in my underwear and watched the commotion until mama stirred coughing on the sofabed, still asleep, a hand reaching for a cigarette. The TV was on, playing music to accompany the cartoons I normally would find myself sitting in front of.

S says he likes it -- I read a bit to him last night. Maybe he's being gentle so as not to discourage me, but I think not. I don't think he would lie to me. Definitely not about this.

I wrote what I wrote at home, on the front porch. I had tried -- and may try again -- going to a nearby coffeeshop (20 minutes by bike) to write. I have been trying to create a schedule for myself. I carried my entire novel, all 35 chapters and some notes in the big European bicycle basket to the coffeeshop. But I was distracted. I had gone hungry, and then overate. It wasn't even four o'clock and I wanted a cigarette. And J called to ask if I could pick P up from school. I couldn't. --I could've, but he didn't want to pull me away from what I was doing.

I wasn't doing anything.

The day before, Inauguration Day, the first day I didn't feel like crying since Timmy's death, I took my truck to the mechanic, and thought I would find a coffeeshop and sit while it was being worked on. I carried my entire novel in its bulky three-ring binder, plus other necessary items, with me. But I needed to stop by C's work for some Chinese herbs. C is an herbologist. He recently gave me a salve that markedly reduced the spider veins on my right ankle (caused mostly by my 11 years as a transcriptionist, relentlessly pressing a foot pedal), so when my shingles scars -- I had shingles when I was six years old -- started flaring up, I thought to ask him his opinion. He rattled off a list of Chinese words that sounded like a song. Pills and another salve. I told him I was taking my truck to the mechanic a few blocks from his office, and he told me the hours he was free, so I carried my entire novel the many blocks (more than I thought), and I've had a crick in my neck since then.

I got the meds and headed on to a coffeeshop and ended up at a cafe next door to his office. We wound up spending the afternoon together enjoying inaugural events, visiting a shop where he bought herbs and I bought white sage, which I used to sage my bedroom, the house and yard, and cried even though I didn't think I was going to that day.

At the cafe, I did what I'd been trying to make myself do for a while: I put the chapters of my novel in chronological order

3, 10, 17, 24, 31, 4, 11, 18, 25, 32, 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 6, 13, 20, 27, 34

which is the story of Randy Reardon, then the story of the title character's parents

5, 12, 19, 26, 33

then the performance art pieces that the title character writes (supposedly)

7, 14, 21, 28, 35

S finds all of this numerological stuff boring. Or at least my fascination with it. I think he understands that it's important -- and necessary -- for me to play with the order of the chapters (which directly affects the story itself), but when I start talking excitedly about it, his eyes glaze over like I'm talking in depth about the latest features of a Texas Instruments calculator.

But now I only have to carry around five chapters at a time with me.

I dressed, made my way to the kitchen and carried a box of Fruity Pebbles out the front door with me to watch the new home being backed into lot number ten. Several men, darker and skinnier than Marco but with the same oil black hair spoke their foreign language over the noises of the truck and the complaining parts of the trailerhome all morning until I reached the bottom of the cereal box and was sticking tongue-moistened fingers down in to the bottom for the last bits of multi-colored sugary dust.

A day or two after Timmy died, P came home with the head of a gray felt cat she was working on at school. I don't know if the project started before Timmy died or if the opportunity to memorialize him came about suddenly, but I was definitely touched by the final product, and particularly by the fact that she insisted on naming him Timmy.

The top picture is the headstone for Timmy's grave. I liked the quote by Anatole France so much that I used it on his stone (though I didn't give credit to the person who said it).