“We
all have interiors that want to be seen.”
Fibber McGee’s Closet, you don’t want to open it
too fast. My interior is not a Fibber McGee Closet…go ahead, take
your time. Peek in slowly, I miss details about my life at first
glance too. You can get lost in there, I get lost in
here. Pockets, reticulations, like a fox makes, retracing her steps
so that none can follow. Sorry grandchildren, my path
might seem to lead you down a blind alley, just keep going.
I’ve always loved walking in the dark, feeling
my way. My interior self sorted instead of stacked. Think
of a wall of conglomerate strata, neatly tucked into place. Think of lots of
shelves, bottle lined, blue, green, brown glassed. Of secret rooms, burrows and
warrens, fur lined and wormy. Think of revolving doors, a little sticky but
with a push you are in. Of labyrinths on islands for the really sordid
moments, the ones that you truly want to see what happened. Veneer
is for the window shoppers and think of open books with cryptic code signaling
lost chapters, or those I tried to toss but everyone learns there is no away.
Think of buried treasure that I lifted from my dreams and in the stories that
you tell me from how you remember us living through that. Of detritus in
every corner and a thin coat of dust on every thought because there are
giga-flashes of insight conjured by this life that I have yet to understand,
never mind pass along.
Here I rise at sixty-six – a holy number
somewhere- in a life that is sum of every volition and accident, every
intention and consequence, every moment and breath I conjured. What
do I share? Mostly my Readers’ Digest version – rated PG. What I
hold, burns my fingers while it has tempered my wits, it's also given me a soft
belly and crick in my neck. Sure, I’ve grown more self -aware than
self-conscious, still working on self-love (were you also tricked into thinking
about esteem as vanity?) I do believe it’s better to be vulnerable if you want
a kinder world. A place that breaks open its days in pink and fuchsia, sweet
juice spilling around the cracks, tears rising to soften the trauma we’ve
inherited. Ever wonder if our big purpose is to ferment the days of
our mothers and grandmothers, make them digestible for our children? Me
too.
Here I stand at sixty-six marveling at the
confidence I am afforded. because I was incubated in sharp scrutiny and
self-doubt. A child rearing strategy surely passed along and not
invented by my mom and dad. They thought it would keep me self regulated and
safe. Instead I was hobbled because I wanted to do and try everything,
and they were so tired of reining me in. Life seemed too dangerous, they’d seen
children with big dreams ground up in humiliation and disappointment. Or so
they said.
Maybe I marvel at the credence I am given now,
but I think it looks good on me too. I have adopted a tonic of
gratitude for those moments when the hag talking shit again haunts my
contemplative spaces, I've adopted a bluff for that biddy: generosity. The
more I give, the less I regret. I pepper my torrent of giveaways with the
remorse and apologies I’ve carried. If these pangs of contrition
have made the best memories sag, I might expect to find those recollections
permanently warped and twisted. Still the most beautiful of
long-lived trees marvel us with their arabesque postures and scrivener rings.
So it’s good to celebrate that carbuncle of worry and admire the work it hues.
Right?
And the formative episodes, for this person I am
now, so many rose out of expressions for which I was most admonished.
Audacious, foolhardy and bloody-minded – here were the words of my
upbraiding, more days than I can count. The dissonance of daring to
bring out what my heart asked me to do, to be, to say rang like Miles Davis’s
Bitches Brew and Nina Simone’s dark velvet laments. You're thinking, I
could have danced in defiance – I think I did or else I'd not be writing this
essay. And the knots around my heartwood, struggle born are my
burls. With a little polish, really beautiful. They'd
make good bowls.
If I pushed the limits, it was my roots’ need to
crack the sidewalk they had crawled beneath as we all slept and grew and
carried on with the regular things in life – the chop wood, carry water
moments. I mostly closeted my Lilith, my Artemis, my Sophia because clomping
around in those big mythic shoes bought giggles and taunts. I’ve
grown into them now. My feet, inelegant and large, with a little fungus colony
under a toenail. It reminds me that I am no mere homo sapien, but symbiotic,
far larger than the sum of my parts. My feet are red shoes that fit
like doeskin slippers. Let me rephrase that: my large, inelegant
feet are doeskin slippers.
Call me a late bloomer. Sixty-five, the age I
began to take my own advice: to trust your gut, let your heart inspire the
important decisions. My tarot readings present me with the major
arcana cards as they support pivotal points on my Celtic Cross
spreads. Again, and again, the High Priestess or Empress or Magician
or Star look back at me from the axis. If I were reading the spread
to another, I would congratulate them on their personal
evolution. It’s time that I heeded the acumen of my
years and relaxed into the directives of my own intuition without apology and
with appreciative attention.
Now for my quantum leap.
Revelation #1: After thirty-six years of
marriage to the King of Swords/of Cups, I know beyond a doubt that I don’t want
to be a wife any longer. Told him so too – which took a bunch of
gumption and more than a little plucking up to do. No offense to him and I'm
not entertaining divorce. We will always be partners. Simply
understood - there is no wifely archetype constellating me. Those stars do
not align with my wild triskelion pieces. Maybe I took up the mantle out
of expectation, wanting to please and do the right thing for love and
respect…you know how that song goes. The role that feels best is and maybe
always has been a more hand-built model. For now I'm keeping it simple.
Living alone while being deep in family and community. Permission granted
to trust this imperative.
Revelation #2: My gut and vagina
announced no more hetero-normative behavior. I'll be just fine at home as a
solitary. I've exfoliated a charade, dried up and contrived, stale and
lifeless. Maybe you think that was not always so. What about the
copulating years, decades of pleasure in holding my fellas
hand and making out and fucking and fellatio. Was I dreaming, was I mad or
compensating not being pop's favorite? Do I psychoanalyze to understand
– or just tell you - that was then, and this is now. I'm a bisexual baby,
and I get to change my mind.
Revelation #3: Then there are my heart alliances
– they have vexed me more than any carnal urges. I have fallen hard
for several for no apparent or sensible reason. Laurie Lewis sings,
we don’t choose the ones we love, love chooses us. Apparently, I have a love
line running through many life times and my heart does not forget.
Revelation #4: So here I stand, a sturdy draft
horse with the gumption and imagination of a Appaloosa pony. There
is plenty of kick in my stride, and my bones still want to settle into doing
what inspires me, stepping back from duty for duty's sake. Every
crone recognizes that there are more springs behind her than before, and if not
now then when. Apparently now is the right time to air out my
closet, retrace foggy corridors, to re-sort the cellars where I have shuttered
away my best parts. There are dormant aspects stirring, ready to move to
the front of the line.
Revelation #5: And if I belittle my peers for
their apparent infirmities and ailments which center our conversations, ringed
closely by their storied past, it is because my axis-mudi vibrates with new enterprise
since I have only just mustered the courage to really actualize. May my aches
and stiff joints give me a little longer to dance. And friends, please accept
my apologies.
Revelation #6: And if I withdraw into a quieter self,
it is because I want to pay attention. I need to pay attention. The way ahead
is new and untracked, and beauty surrounds me again. A Renaissance is before
me, I'm sure you understand.
Revelation #7: And if I hesitate in sharing my
present state of "mind and being" with you, it is because there are
ghosts in my head, and I am still my sternest critic. I've imagined what
you are thinking because in the echoes, I have already felt that flak. Here is
the sturdiest harness, the hardest to throw off.
Revelation #8: And if I love rivers most, it is
because they have been my favorite mirror. Never the same and more
admired for it, let my confluence ride here.
Revelation #9: And if I love walking the two
tracked lane, appreciating the stories most forgotten or maligned, giving space
for the inconvenient and embarrassed, it is because out of these moments tumble
the touchstones that brought me here.
And this we know, it's good to howl with the ones that brought you.
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