Friday, August 10, 2007
june 2007
Hey...CanJ here...just click on archives 2007 in the right navigation bar and everything will show up on one page. :)
Saturday, June 30, 2007
nicole torres from denver colorado
Nicole torres...out of Denver Colorado. She has a website. She is awesome.
from Allison ..fellow women studies major...as well as anthropology etc...check out their anthony gamroth photography on myspace he's awesome
I looked through your website. Sorry it took so long, I just finished school today. I wrote a 32 page paper and my bitchy teacher didn't even comment on it.
Anyhoo, your website. I am impressed. It is comprehensive, and your used of media is skillful. I think that your mission statement could be a more detailed. It is not a straight forward web page, however, it encourages exploration which in my humble opinion, keeps the veiwer intriqued. The website and all of your work is a beautiful and elegant representation of your lifestyle. It is not an in-your-face pride parade, it is honest, and a celebration of who both of you are.
Carrie, your writing had moments of liturary genius, and trust me, I don't give that compliment to many people. I enjoyed the honesty and natural dialog in your story Passings. I am also fond of Wyoming Fences, which is a beautiful look into your soul. Keep writing, you have an audience.
Jesse, as always I love your work. Freedom's Painting Unfinished is a piece that I have not seen before, and I can say as someone who has seen your progress over the past few years, that you keep improving. I have always loved your sculptures, and I wish that you included individual photos of each. You as well have an audience, and I really hope that you get your break into the art work because you deserve it and you have a lot to give to the art world, both intellectually and aesthetically.
All around, I love the website, I love its honesty and its elegance. You guys represent the gay community with pride, yet you both do not seperate or ostrasize yourself from those who do not live the same lifestyle. You are a bridge of understanding and compassion, and your website reflects this. Good job you two, I'll be visiting you site often and look forward to new additions.
Hope to hear from you soon,
~Allison
Anyhoo, your website. I am impressed. It is comprehensive, and your used of media is skillful. I think that your mission statement could be a more detailed. It is not a straight forward web page, however, it encourages exploration which in my humble opinion, keeps the veiwer intriqued. The website and all of your work is a beautiful and elegant representation of your lifestyle. It is not an in-your-face pride parade, it is honest, and a celebration of who both of you are.
Carrie, your writing had moments of liturary genius, and trust me, I don't give that compliment to many people. I enjoyed the honesty and natural dialog in your story Passings. I am also fond of Wyoming Fences, which is a beautiful look into your soul. Keep writing, you have an audience.
Jesse, as always I love your work. Freedom's Painting Unfinished is a piece that I have not seen before, and I can say as someone who has seen your progress over the past few years, that you keep improving. I have always loved your sculptures, and I wish that you included individual photos of each. You as well have an audience, and I really hope that you get your break into the art work because you deserve it and you have a lot to give to the art world, both intellectually and aesthetically.
All around, I love the website, I love its honesty and its elegance. You guys represent the gay community with pride, yet you both do not seperate or ostrasize yourself from those who do not live the same lifestyle. You are a bridge of understanding and compassion, and your website reflects this. Good job you two, I'll be visiting you site often and look forward to new additions.
Hope to hear from you soon,
~Allison
Thursday, June 7, 2007
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Parting by C.B.
I don't think you care,
that I don't love you like that and
I wish that I did, but you don't
love me either
and I slip my ring off my finger.
Cicadas screaming in the trees,
echoing in the silence,
of this almost empty house.
You lying on the bed,
staring at the ceiling,
a look of anger, or maybe pain this time.
And I slip my ring off my finger.
Torment hangs in the air.
You say that God hates me now---
that I have broken a promise,
that I have broken a vow,
And I slip my ring off my finger.
A piece of you and I,
as big as the univers,
is swinging in the back yard,
and my love goes out to him,
and your love goes out to him,
and even as we share the same pain,
I slip my ring off my finger.
It is time to become two instead of one,
A mother and a baby,
a father and a son,
we will be a family even though our marriage is done,
and I slip my ring off my finger.
I give you a kiss and pat your back
and now that the last of the boxes are stacked
you kiss the baby, and then kiss me back,
and salute me, as you sigh, and walk through the door.
And I put my ring in it's velvet box
And shut it.
that I don't love you like that and
I wish that I did, but you don't
love me either
and I slip my ring off my finger.
Cicadas screaming in the trees,
echoing in the silence,
of this almost empty house.
You lying on the bed,
staring at the ceiling,
a look of anger, or maybe pain this time.
And I slip my ring off my finger.
Torment hangs in the air.
You say that God hates me now---
that I have broken a promise,
that I have broken a vow,
And I slip my ring off my finger.
A piece of you and I,
as big as the univers,
is swinging in the back yard,
and my love goes out to him,
and your love goes out to him,
and even as we share the same pain,
I slip my ring off my finger.
It is time to become two instead of one,
A mother and a baby,
a father and a son,
we will be a family even though our marriage is done,
and I slip my ring off my finger.
I give you a kiss and pat your back
and now that the last of the boxes are stacked
you kiss the baby, and then kiss me back,
and salute me, as you sigh, and walk through the door.
And I put my ring in it's velvet box
And shut it.
Finally-Comfort by C.B.
I try-
But I can't get this stupid door open again,
and I drop my papers,
As I pick up a plastic truck.
The phone rings, more bad news,
another bill that was forgottern in the
turmoil of our lives,
So here we are---
sitting right here on this pink bed,
sun bouncing off of prisms,
a room full of tiny rainbows.
There should be loving on a day like this,
your shirt sexy as it falls ever so softly
over a tan shoulder,
But not today---
because tears are sending
streaks of black makeup,
from bright blue eyes---
to quivering pink lips,
so i hold you tighter,
and caress your hair,
and wish that I knew how to be
strong for you.
The phone rings again,
and we can't handle anything else today.
So I stand and shut the door,
and know that if the phone keeps ringing,
the kids will wake up---
and I will have to leave you,
to take care of them.
So we both cry a lot,
and then a soft kiss,
and we go to the kitchen
to make dinner.
It is so hard----
when things keep going wrong.
The car breaks down, and
so many bills that we have to pay.
I get scared because i have never felt safe,
to not have everything in its place.
But, that is not security,
and that is way I never
had enough.
During Dinner,
You drop gravy on your shirt,
and then you make a silly joke
and start to laugh,
so hard,
that you end up falling on the floor.
I pull you up into a hug,
and feel happy in spite of all
of our trouble.
At night,
I lie next to you,
your hair falling all around,
feeling your soft breath on my cheek,
and i finally feel safe.
You moan in you sleep,
when baby stirs,
and with a kiss I rise,
to check on our boys.
This house is quiet,
nightlight sends shadows down the hall,
I peek in their room,
and know that they are safe.
It is new to be this comfortable,
but I am not going to be scared.
I am just going to go back to bed,
cuddle up real close to you,
and know that I am loved.
But I can't get this stupid door open again,
and I drop my papers,
As I pick up a plastic truck.
The phone rings, more bad news,
another bill that was forgottern in the
turmoil of our lives,
So here we are---
sitting right here on this pink bed,
sun bouncing off of prisms,
a room full of tiny rainbows.
There should be loving on a day like this,
your shirt sexy as it falls ever so softly
over a tan shoulder,
But not today---
because tears are sending
streaks of black makeup,
from bright blue eyes---
to quivering pink lips,
so i hold you tighter,
and caress your hair,
and wish that I knew how to be
strong for you.
The phone rings again,
and we can't handle anything else today.
So I stand and shut the door,
and know that if the phone keeps ringing,
the kids will wake up---
and I will have to leave you,
to take care of them.
So we both cry a lot,
and then a soft kiss,
and we go to the kitchen
to make dinner.
It is so hard----
when things keep going wrong.
The car breaks down, and
so many bills that we have to pay.
I get scared because i have never felt safe,
to not have everything in its place.
But, that is not security,
and that is way I never
had enough.
During Dinner,
You drop gravy on your shirt,
and then you make a silly joke
and start to laugh,
so hard,
that you end up falling on the floor.
I pull you up into a hug,
and feel happy in spite of all
of our trouble.
At night,
I lie next to you,
your hair falling all around,
feeling your soft breath on my cheek,
and i finally feel safe.
You moan in you sleep,
when baby stirs,
and with a kiss I rise,
to check on our boys.
This house is quiet,
nightlight sends shadows down the hall,
I peek in their room,
and know that they are safe.
It is new to be this comfortable,
but I am not going to be scared.
I am just going to go back to bed,
cuddle up real close to you,
and know that I am loved.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Passings ~C.B.
“And that’s why I don’t think that it’s relevant. You know, it shifts, and that’s why it doesn’t matter what’s going on right then. I don’t think that it’s a philosophical point…just the way it is.” Max shifted her weight. She stared at the side of Annie’s lovely face as Annie artistically lined her lips with a brown eyebrow pencil. “Do you understand what I’m talking about now?” She asked and then smiled as she picked up the comb off of the side of the counter. “Are you pickin’ up what I’m puttin’ down?”
“I guess…no, I guess it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe what I should say is that what you’re puttin’ down is way too heavy for me to pick up,” Annie laughed as she strained to lean closer to the mirror. She carefully inspected her eyebrows, looking ever so closely to make sure that there wasn’t even one eyebrow that might be verging away from her perfectly sculpted arch. As usual, unsatisfied, she rubbed the top of her nose roughly and then with a loud ‘shit,’ started searching through a basket, overflowing with junk, and spilling all over the countertop. After a couple of minutes of searching, she became noticeably impatient and aggressively spilled the contents from one end of the countertop to the other. She tossed aside; hair ties, brushes, half-used containers of base, free samples of expensive hair products, bottles of unknown medicines, fingernail clippers, and numerous other things that looked more like garbage than necessity.
“Hell yah!” Annie gasped as she grabbed a pair of tweezers and held them up in the air for Max to see, “I was afraid I was gonna have to go lookin’ for ‘em.”
Max threw the comb into Annie’s enormous mess and looked up at the framed photograph of trees in the snow that was hanging high on the wall in front of her. Then she lowered her gaze to stare at the bare, white wall across from where she was sitting. This was easier because she didn’t have to strain her neck. There was sunlight coming in through the vertical blinds, creating a grey, and dark white pattern of shadows that danced softly on the plaster. While she stared at the movement, Max thought about the ways that the shadow was alive. Blinks and flutters created from the hide and seek game of the distant January sun gave the impression that the shadow was breathing and moving with a strange and exotic life form.
Max could hear the dogs moving around in the living room. Outside, she could hear a neighbor, (maybe the one across the street), closing a car door and then the slow, painful, lurching of a car engine that didn’t want to start because of the cold. The world was moving, and almost without notice, it was walking away.
Max leaned down, put her elbows on her knees, and then rested her head in her hands.
“Wow…I see you’re gettin’ comfortable,” Annie removed a tiny, discreet hair, threw the tweezers in the middle of her huge pile of junk, and walked out of the room. She came back momentarily, and set down an old, black and pink, flowered, dirty, base and powder covered, bathroom bag right in the middle of her pile, opened it, and started digging deeply into it.
“Like it matters,” Max replied with boredom, “from the look of your mess, you’re gonna be here awhile.”
“Yeah, and lucky for you,” She pulled out her hand to reveal a tube of mascara, opened it, and moved the brush quickly in and out. Then, she closed the bottle, threw it back in the bag and asked, “Do you know where the new bottle of brown mascara is?”
“Jesus Christ Annie! How should I know? Why don’t you look in my makeup bag? Or, better yet, why don’t you look through that huge pile of junk that’s all over the counter.”
Annie opened the cupboard and pulled out Max’s tiny, clean, coffee colored, travel bag, opened it up, moved her hand around, and quickly produced a tube of mascara. Without closing the bag again, she blindly tossed it back into the cupboard.
“O.k.,” max said as she stared with horror at the ever-increasing mess. “Maybe this story will help you understand what I’m trying to tell you…when I worked at the nursing home… when I was twenty… there was this lady.”
“Yeah,” Annie turned away from the mirror and looked at Max with and eyelash curler covering her right eye.
“Yeah well I think that this lady’s name was Mary….I think… anyway… I really dug her you know. Anyway, when Mary was young, she was incredibly beautiful. There was this huge, gold-framed picture of her above her bed that was probably taken in the twenties or so. She looked like a real movie star. For real…she looked more like a movie star than anyone that I’ve ever seen in real life. I used to go
into her room and stare at that picture all of the time. It was really something. Plus, this lady had money. Her family was really rich. They were one of those families that are always there; being mean and bossing all of the staff at the nursing home around about Mother. The staff fucking hated them, and that made everyone act a little bit distant with the old lady.” Max sat up straight, crossed her leg over her lap, and turned to watch Annie squeeze blackheads out of her chin.
“Anyway, this old lady… she acted crazy. She didn’t talk, and she slumped in her wheelchair. She slobbered, and sometimes she’d finger-paint the walls with her shit. You know…the kind of resident that can be a real pain in the ass. But even though she acted like a billion other residents, there was definitely something different about her. You know what I mean?”
“Not really, sounds like most of ‘em at the nursing home that I used to work at,” Annie, finished with blackheads, sat down on the floor to dig through the cupboard. After pulling everything out onto the floor; she found both the curling iron and hair dryer, stood back up, and without putting anything back in the cupboard plugged them both into the socket. Max had to raise her voice to talk over the roar of the cheap, five-year-old, dryer.
“Yeah, it does sound like a lot of ‘em. But, this old lady had a twinkle. I can remember her sitting there with her wrinkled fingers in her bowl of mashed potatoes. She was smiling, and she had food running down her shirt, and slobber coming out of her mouth. You know, her lips were still beautiful, even with wrinkles. Plus, she still had all of her perfectly straight teeth, even though they had turned dark yellow.
Annie shut off the blow dryer. She brushed her long-beautiful hair, sprayed hair spray on it, and then wrapped a long chunk of hair around the sizzling curling iron.
“Wow,” she said, “still had all of her own teeth huh?” Ann smiled in the mirror to look at her own beautiful, white, perfectly straight teeth, “That’s really something. Not many people keep their teeth in good condition.” She pressed the button on the handle of the curling iron and released a beautiful blond curl, hanging like a spring delicately over her right eye.
“Yeah… huh?” Max said as she picked up a crisp, new, magazine out of the basket sitting beside her and began to flip through the pages. She stopped occasionally to glance at a picture of some beautiful, young, rich, movie star as she talked. “But… it was her eyes that got me. I’d be sitting there feeding her, and she’d be staring at me, and I was sure that I could see a smile in them. Those beautiful blue eyes were hidden behind all of those wrinkles but they were still full of life. They weren’t dull and faded like eyes usually get when people are senile….Anyway… I started talking to her all of the time. I’d go and sit with her and talk to her and she’d just sit there and stare at me.”
Max got bored with her magazine, discarded it, and grabbed a crumpled, dusty Smithsonian from below all of the brand new issues of US and People.
“That’s something I don’t get about you,” Annie said looking at herself in the mirror, a piece of hair from the back of her head wrapped in the curling iron, “You wouldn’t see me spending all of my breaks and free time sitting around talking to some old lady that wouldn’t even talk back to me.”
“Yeah… but, that’s just it. She did talk to me eventually, and when she did, it made complete sense.” She held the magazine wide-open at arms length to look at a picture of a painting by Frida Kahlo. “Anyway, back to my story, I talked to Mary all of the time. Then one day, I decided to start going in before the start of my shift so that I could put makeup on her. Nobody worried about her makeup anymore. I was sure that I could see her perk up a little bit when she’d get some makeup on. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Annie said, “everybody feels better with a little makeup. You should try it yourself.”
“Whatever…” Max sighed, “…Anyway, this one day, I think I went outside to smoke during break. When I came back in, this other aide, that was a friend of mine, was in the hall all pissed off. She said that Mary’d made a huge mess by getting shit all over herself, the floor, and the walls. She said that because she had to clean up the room, and Mary, she wouldn’t be able to get all of her people up before they had to go to dinner.”
“Oh I fucking hate that!” Annie created a cloud in the tiny room as she sprayed more hairspray on the back of her hair.
Max lay down the magazine and grabbed a fingernail file that was lying in Annie’s huge pile of junk on the cupboard.
“Yeah I hate it too. So, I told the aide that I’d help her clean up the mess. Anyway, when we went in the room, my friend said that she needed to try to find someone from the maintenance department so that she could find out if she could get a new privacy curtain since Mary’s was all dirty. I was a little irritated because I figured that meant that she was going to stick me with cleaning Mary up by myself.
Annie put another chunk of hair in the curling iron, “yep, that’s usually what that means.”
“Anyway, I put Mary in her wheelchair and started to wash her up so that I could take her to the lobby and go back to finish my people. I was washing her arms and I said, ‘God Mary. Why in the heck did you make such a big mess?’ She sat up straight in her wheelchair and looked right at me. Clear as day, she said, ‘Does it matter? It isn’t your mess is it? Beside that… I wanted to see if I could.” For a minute I thought that I had gone crazy. I must have looked at her really strangely because I had never heard her sound so with it. You know? And then, she smiled at me. There was that twinkle in her eye and then I knew that it was real. She wasn’t crazy….she was just acting like she was.”
“Man,” Annie was rolling her last curl into the curling iron, “that’d piss me off. Jesus Christ. She just made that huge mess because she thought it was fun. That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, but that’s not it though. The point was that she was there. I didn’t know why she was lying but that didn’t matter. I thought it was pretty impressive that she had made everyone, including her family, believe that she was completely senile.” Max watched Annie fluff her hair with her fingers. “Anyway I started to go in and talk to her even more than I had. I’d go in and tell her stories every day; just stupid, little stories…sometimes about things that were happening to me, and sometimes about things that I’d made up. But, she didn’t talk to me like she had that day. She just looked at her hands and kind of smiled while I talked.”
“Is this story going anywhere? Because… it stinks,” Annie began to pick stuff up off of the counter and throw it chaotically back into the basket.
“Yeah, this is the part that I am trying to get to. One day… I went in and told Mary a story…I don’t remember what it was about. When I finished, she smiled lightly, and slowly raised one of her wrinkled fingers up to her lips. Then, with a voice that was crackly from not being used, she said;
‘Now I’m going to tell you a story…Once upon a time….there was this man…..everyone in his town told him not to say devil three times…they said… no matter what you do… don’t ever say devil three times…and then one day…he said devil three times.’ I stared at her, ‘what happened then?’ I asked. She raised her head, looked right into my eyes, and then very seriously, she said, ‘Nothing…that’s all that you need to have in a story…that and nothing else.’
“O.k. Was this story supposed to have anything to do with time at all?” Annie stopped what she was doing and stared at max. “Because, if it was, then I don’t think that I’m getting it. Was she trying to tell you that you talk too much? Cus, it’s pretty fucking funny if you talked so much that you brought a poor little old lady out of dementia just to tell you that you’re too wordy.”
“No,” Max handed Annie the fingernail file that she had been fiddling with, “but that’s pretty goddamned funny Ann. What I mean is that Mary’s been dead for like eight years. But, that day still sticks in my head like it just happened. That’s what I’m trying to say about time. It just goes away. It’s kind of like when I had the baby. I just kept telling myself that it was all relevant. The pain wouldn’t even be a real memory in a month, a week, or a year. It’s like my grandma. Remember how she used to look at her hands all of the time in her last years. She’d just sit and stare at her hands for the longest time. One time, she held her hands up and said, ‘I don’t know what happened. My hands used to be so pretty and strong. And then… one day…I just noticed that they were as thin as tissue paper and had these god-awful brown spots all over them.’
That’s what I mean about time. Haven’t you ever listened to a tape of somebody that’s died? Try it. Use the Carpenters, they work really well. Listen real closely to it when you’re all alone. In between the words you can hear her breathe. That was just like yesterday where time is concerned. But it’s nothing now. It’s not even important. Something as important as breathing, and it’s nothing. Do you see what I mean?”
“Wow, that’s a happy thought. Thanks for that. You’re so weird Maxy. Oh well. How do I look?” She turned toward Max and struck a vogue pose just like Madonna, with her hands moving up and down to make a picture box around her face.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Max said truthfully.
“Good… Are you finally finished?” Annie asked as she put her hand on the doorknob.
“Sure…as soon as you get me another roll of toilet paper.”
Annie left, and then quickly came back into the bathroom. She threw the roll of toilet paper in Max’s lap. “But you better spray…I can’t believe, that after almost twenty years, I still have to sit in the bathroom with you while you shit.”
Max laughed and threw a ball of clean toilet paper trying to hit Annie before she shut the bathroom door.
“I guess…no, I guess it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe what I should say is that what you’re puttin’ down is way too heavy for me to pick up,” Annie laughed as she strained to lean closer to the mirror. She carefully inspected her eyebrows, looking ever so closely to make sure that there wasn’t even one eyebrow that might be verging away from her perfectly sculpted arch. As usual, unsatisfied, she rubbed the top of her nose roughly and then with a loud ‘shit,’ started searching through a basket, overflowing with junk, and spilling all over the countertop. After a couple of minutes of searching, she became noticeably impatient and aggressively spilled the contents from one end of the countertop to the other. She tossed aside; hair ties, brushes, half-used containers of base, free samples of expensive hair products, bottles of unknown medicines, fingernail clippers, and numerous other things that looked more like garbage than necessity.
“Hell yah!” Annie gasped as she grabbed a pair of tweezers and held them up in the air for Max to see, “I was afraid I was gonna have to go lookin’ for ‘em.”
Max threw the comb into Annie’s enormous mess and looked up at the framed photograph of trees in the snow that was hanging high on the wall in front of her. Then she lowered her gaze to stare at the bare, white wall across from where she was sitting. This was easier because she didn’t have to strain her neck. There was sunlight coming in through the vertical blinds, creating a grey, and dark white pattern of shadows that danced softly on the plaster. While she stared at the movement, Max thought about the ways that the shadow was alive. Blinks and flutters created from the hide and seek game of the distant January sun gave the impression that the shadow was breathing and moving with a strange and exotic life form.
Max could hear the dogs moving around in the living room. Outside, she could hear a neighbor, (maybe the one across the street), closing a car door and then the slow, painful, lurching of a car engine that didn’t want to start because of the cold. The world was moving, and almost without notice, it was walking away.
Max leaned down, put her elbows on her knees, and then rested her head in her hands.
“Wow…I see you’re gettin’ comfortable,” Annie removed a tiny, discreet hair, threw the tweezers in the middle of her huge pile of junk, and walked out of the room. She came back momentarily, and set down an old, black and pink, flowered, dirty, base and powder covered, bathroom bag right in the middle of her pile, opened it, and started digging deeply into it.
“Like it matters,” Max replied with boredom, “from the look of your mess, you’re gonna be here awhile.”
“Yeah, and lucky for you,” She pulled out her hand to reveal a tube of mascara, opened it, and moved the brush quickly in and out. Then, she closed the bottle, threw it back in the bag and asked, “Do you know where the new bottle of brown mascara is?”
“Jesus Christ Annie! How should I know? Why don’t you look in my makeup bag? Or, better yet, why don’t you look through that huge pile of junk that’s all over the counter.”
Annie opened the cupboard and pulled out Max’s tiny, clean, coffee colored, travel bag, opened it up, moved her hand around, and quickly produced a tube of mascara. Without closing the bag again, she blindly tossed it back into the cupboard.
“O.k.,” max said as she stared with horror at the ever-increasing mess. “Maybe this story will help you understand what I’m trying to tell you…when I worked at the nursing home… when I was twenty… there was this lady.”
“Yeah,” Annie turned away from the mirror and looked at Max with and eyelash curler covering her right eye.
“Yeah well I think that this lady’s name was Mary….I think… anyway… I really dug her you know. Anyway, when Mary was young, she was incredibly beautiful. There was this huge, gold-framed picture of her above her bed that was probably taken in the twenties or so. She looked like a real movie star. For real…she looked more like a movie star than anyone that I’ve ever seen in real life. I used to go
into her room and stare at that picture all of the time. It was really something. Plus, this lady had money. Her family was really rich. They were one of those families that are always there; being mean and bossing all of the staff at the nursing home around about Mother. The staff fucking hated them, and that made everyone act a little bit distant with the old lady.” Max sat up straight, crossed her leg over her lap, and turned to watch Annie squeeze blackheads out of her chin.
“Anyway, this old lady… she acted crazy. She didn’t talk, and she slumped in her wheelchair. She slobbered, and sometimes she’d finger-paint the walls with her shit. You know…the kind of resident that can be a real pain in the ass. But even though she acted like a billion other residents, there was definitely something different about her. You know what I mean?”
“Not really, sounds like most of ‘em at the nursing home that I used to work at,” Annie, finished with blackheads, sat down on the floor to dig through the cupboard. After pulling everything out onto the floor; she found both the curling iron and hair dryer, stood back up, and without putting anything back in the cupboard plugged them both into the socket. Max had to raise her voice to talk over the roar of the cheap, five-year-old, dryer.
“Yeah, it does sound like a lot of ‘em. But, this old lady had a twinkle. I can remember her sitting there with her wrinkled fingers in her bowl of mashed potatoes. She was smiling, and she had food running down her shirt, and slobber coming out of her mouth. You know, her lips were still beautiful, even with wrinkles. Plus, she still had all of her perfectly straight teeth, even though they had turned dark yellow.
Annie shut off the blow dryer. She brushed her long-beautiful hair, sprayed hair spray on it, and then wrapped a long chunk of hair around the sizzling curling iron.
“Wow,” she said, “still had all of her own teeth huh?” Ann smiled in the mirror to look at her own beautiful, white, perfectly straight teeth, “That’s really something. Not many people keep their teeth in good condition.” She pressed the button on the handle of the curling iron and released a beautiful blond curl, hanging like a spring delicately over her right eye.
“Yeah… huh?” Max said as she picked up a crisp, new, magazine out of the basket sitting beside her and began to flip through the pages. She stopped occasionally to glance at a picture of some beautiful, young, rich, movie star as she talked. “But… it was her eyes that got me. I’d be sitting there feeding her, and she’d be staring at me, and I was sure that I could see a smile in them. Those beautiful blue eyes were hidden behind all of those wrinkles but they were still full of life. They weren’t dull and faded like eyes usually get when people are senile….Anyway… I started talking to her all of the time. I’d go and sit with her and talk to her and she’d just sit there and stare at me.”
Max got bored with her magazine, discarded it, and grabbed a crumpled, dusty Smithsonian from below all of the brand new issues of US and People.
“That’s something I don’t get about you,” Annie said looking at herself in the mirror, a piece of hair from the back of her head wrapped in the curling iron, “You wouldn’t see me spending all of my breaks and free time sitting around talking to some old lady that wouldn’t even talk back to me.”
“Yeah… but, that’s just it. She did talk to me eventually, and when she did, it made complete sense.” She held the magazine wide-open at arms length to look at a picture of a painting by Frida Kahlo. “Anyway, back to my story, I talked to Mary all of the time. Then one day, I decided to start going in before the start of my shift so that I could put makeup on her. Nobody worried about her makeup anymore. I was sure that I could see her perk up a little bit when she’d get some makeup on. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” Annie said, “everybody feels better with a little makeup. You should try it yourself.”
“Whatever…” Max sighed, “…Anyway, this one day, I think I went outside to smoke during break. When I came back in, this other aide, that was a friend of mine, was in the hall all pissed off. She said that Mary’d made a huge mess by getting shit all over herself, the floor, and the walls. She said that because she had to clean up the room, and Mary, she wouldn’t be able to get all of her people up before they had to go to dinner.”
“Oh I fucking hate that!” Annie created a cloud in the tiny room as she sprayed more hairspray on the back of her hair.
Max lay down the magazine and grabbed a fingernail file that was lying in Annie’s huge pile of junk on the cupboard.
“Yeah I hate it too. So, I told the aide that I’d help her clean up the mess. Anyway, when we went in the room, my friend said that she needed to try to find someone from the maintenance department so that she could find out if she could get a new privacy curtain since Mary’s was all dirty. I was a little irritated because I figured that meant that she was going to stick me with cleaning Mary up by myself.
Annie put another chunk of hair in the curling iron, “yep, that’s usually what that means.”
“Anyway, I put Mary in her wheelchair and started to wash her up so that I could take her to the lobby and go back to finish my people. I was washing her arms and I said, ‘God Mary. Why in the heck did you make such a big mess?’ She sat up straight in her wheelchair and looked right at me. Clear as day, she said, ‘Does it matter? It isn’t your mess is it? Beside that… I wanted to see if I could.” For a minute I thought that I had gone crazy. I must have looked at her really strangely because I had never heard her sound so with it. You know? And then, she smiled at me. There was that twinkle in her eye and then I knew that it was real. She wasn’t crazy….she was just acting like she was.”
“Man,” Annie was rolling her last curl into the curling iron, “that’d piss me off. Jesus Christ. She just made that huge mess because she thought it was fun. That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah, but that’s not it though. The point was that she was there. I didn’t know why she was lying but that didn’t matter. I thought it was pretty impressive that she had made everyone, including her family, believe that she was completely senile.” Max watched Annie fluff her hair with her fingers. “Anyway I started to go in and talk to her even more than I had. I’d go in and tell her stories every day; just stupid, little stories…sometimes about things that were happening to me, and sometimes about things that I’d made up. But, she didn’t talk to me like she had that day. She just looked at her hands and kind of smiled while I talked.”
“Is this story going anywhere? Because… it stinks,” Annie began to pick stuff up off of the counter and throw it chaotically back into the basket.
“Yeah, this is the part that I am trying to get to. One day… I went in and told Mary a story…I don’t remember what it was about. When I finished, she smiled lightly, and slowly raised one of her wrinkled fingers up to her lips. Then, with a voice that was crackly from not being used, she said;
‘Now I’m going to tell you a story…Once upon a time….there was this man…..everyone in his town told him not to say devil three times…they said… no matter what you do… don’t ever say devil three times…and then one day…he said devil three times.’ I stared at her, ‘what happened then?’ I asked. She raised her head, looked right into my eyes, and then very seriously, she said, ‘Nothing…that’s all that you need to have in a story…that and nothing else.’
“O.k. Was this story supposed to have anything to do with time at all?” Annie stopped what she was doing and stared at max. “Because, if it was, then I don’t think that I’m getting it. Was she trying to tell you that you talk too much? Cus, it’s pretty fucking funny if you talked so much that you brought a poor little old lady out of dementia just to tell you that you’re too wordy.”
“No,” Max handed Annie the fingernail file that she had been fiddling with, “but that’s pretty goddamned funny Ann. What I mean is that Mary’s been dead for like eight years. But, that day still sticks in my head like it just happened. That’s what I’m trying to say about time. It just goes away. It’s kind of like when I had the baby. I just kept telling myself that it was all relevant. The pain wouldn’t even be a real memory in a month, a week, or a year. It’s like my grandma. Remember how she used to look at her hands all of the time in her last years. She’d just sit and stare at her hands for the longest time. One time, she held her hands up and said, ‘I don’t know what happened. My hands used to be so pretty and strong. And then… one day…I just noticed that they were as thin as tissue paper and had these god-awful brown spots all over them.’
That’s what I mean about time. Haven’t you ever listened to a tape of somebody that’s died? Try it. Use the Carpenters, they work really well. Listen real closely to it when you’re all alone. In between the words you can hear her breathe. That was just like yesterday where time is concerned. But it’s nothing now. It’s not even important. Something as important as breathing, and it’s nothing. Do you see what I mean?”
“Wow, that’s a happy thought. Thanks for that. You’re so weird Maxy. Oh well. How do I look?” She turned toward Max and struck a vogue pose just like Madonna, with her hands moving up and down to make a picture box around her face.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” Max said truthfully.
“Good… Are you finally finished?” Annie asked as she put her hand on the doorknob.
“Sure…as soon as you get me another roll of toilet paper.”
Annie left, and then quickly came back into the bathroom. She threw the roll of toilet paper in Max’s lap. “But you better spray…I can’t believe, that after almost twenty years, I still have to sit in the bathroom with you while you shit.”
Max laughed and threw a ball of clean toilet paper trying to hit Annie before she shut the bathroom door.
One thing is always another by C.B.
You love to sing Janis, Bonnie, Or Melissa Etheridge,
But...today it's the blues,
Etta, Billie, and Bessie, and another sad, sad, song.
Particular attention to cleaning,
sunlight curls falling in your face,
you bend a little and your shirt rises on your back,
as your voice goes up and up and up.
You should be famous...
with a crowd of a million,
standing as I am...
mouth slightly smiling...
idolizing the beauty of this sound.
You flick your hair with a soapy hand,
while a prism's rainbow dances on your cheek.
I brush your neck with my lips,
and you jump and giggle....
splashing my shirt with soap,
and then a kiss.
You are sad my baby.
What's wrong with you?
The sun shines bright and your hair sparkles gold,
and I have to run my fingers through it.
I think...maybe you feel unapprecciated...
as I am sure that you are,
with a voice like that,
with talent like yours,
with a face that beautiful...
And what do you want?
I would try to help take you somewhere that people aren't
so country, and introduce the world to my baby...
maybe then you'll lose the blues,
and start to rock again.
I touch my lips to your cheek and ask,
"Sweet baby, why do you look so sad?"
And then I realize that today it's none of that,
But only because I was nagging again,
and you thought that I was mad.
But...today it's the blues,
Etta, Billie, and Bessie, and another sad, sad, song.
Particular attention to cleaning,
sunlight curls falling in your face,
you bend a little and your shirt rises on your back,
as your voice goes up and up and up.
You should be famous...
with a crowd of a million,
standing as I am...
mouth slightly smiling...
idolizing the beauty of this sound.
You flick your hair with a soapy hand,
while a prism's rainbow dances on your cheek.
I brush your neck with my lips,
and you jump and giggle....
splashing my shirt with soap,
and then a kiss.
You are sad my baby.
What's wrong with you?
The sun shines bright and your hair sparkles gold,
and I have to run my fingers through it.
I think...maybe you feel unapprecciated...
as I am sure that you are,
with a voice like that,
with talent like yours,
with a face that beautiful...
And what do you want?
I would try to help take you somewhere that people aren't
so country, and introduce the world to my baby...
maybe then you'll lose the blues,
and start to rock again.
I touch my lips to your cheek and ask,
"Sweet baby, why do you look so sad?"
And then I realize that today it's none of that,
But only because I was nagging again,
and you thought that I was mad.
The Heartbeat of Words, By C.B.
I'm not sure...
That i remember who that I am...
You do,
Because unlike me....
You were there.
Before my five years of silence,
story hour....
and year after year of
cartoons during the day,
and his angry words at night.
And I forgot about poetry.
And I forgot about life.
I think about the people
that I always wanted to be,
Poets every one,
and I wonder where they have been hiding for so long.
Juana Ines De La Cruz,
with the beautiful, rich, Spanish sounds,
poetry that sings love from long ago.
And Gertrude Stein,
with her life of art circles,
and love,
that calls out the same name in passion,
over, and over, and over again.
Her huge self worth, and always the love,
of words, of life, of food, and forever Alice.
Or, Emily Dickinson
with "A Certain slant of light,"
but...always and forever...
my Sylvia, with "Edge," and her haunting voice
echoing in my soul,
and she was always "The last Words,"
and she was the life that I led.
Or the songs,
words set to rhythm,
and the heartbeat of life,
beauty in every one.
Johnette Napolitano, with her unforgettable voice,
singing poetry that was as much mine,
as if I had written it.
Or, Tina, with her strength and beauty,
and the music that gave me something to look forward to.
Patsy Cline and Billy Holiday,
Notes like no other...
to become part of you...
as they sing to everyone...
we are always here.
The voices and the words
that are as much me
as I am me.
All hidden beneath piles of dishes and dirty laundry,
And the baby's cries,
and his angry screams.
But...you just...
(with no effort at all)
pulled them out of the closet...
and handed them back to me,
And they will be cherished.
That i remember who that I am...
You do,
Because unlike me....
You were there.
Before my five years of silence,
story hour....
and year after year of
cartoons during the day,
and his angry words at night.
And I forgot about poetry.
And I forgot about life.
I think about the people
that I always wanted to be,
Poets every one,
and I wonder where they have been hiding for so long.
Juana Ines De La Cruz,
with the beautiful, rich, Spanish sounds,
poetry that sings love from long ago.
And Gertrude Stein,
with her life of art circles,
and love,
that calls out the same name in passion,
over, and over, and over again.
Her huge self worth, and always the love,
of words, of life, of food, and forever Alice.
Or, Emily Dickinson
with "A Certain slant of light,"
but...always and forever...
my Sylvia, with "Edge," and her haunting voice
echoing in my soul,
and she was always "The last Words,"
and she was the life that I led.
Or the songs,
words set to rhythm,
and the heartbeat of life,
beauty in every one.
Johnette Napolitano, with her unforgettable voice,
singing poetry that was as much mine,
as if I had written it.
Or, Tina, with her strength and beauty,
and the music that gave me something to look forward to.
Patsy Cline and Billy Holiday,
Notes like no other...
to become part of you...
as they sing to everyone...
we are always here.
The voices and the words
that are as much me
as I am me.
All hidden beneath piles of dishes and dirty laundry,
And the baby's cries,
and his angry screams.
But...you just...
(with no effort at all)
pulled them out of the closet...
and handed them back to me,
And they will be cherished.
Coming Home by C.B.
So...we are coming home. But why?
The September night chill
Sends us cold and fear,
Bouncing through the barren land.
Dark and alone.
Off of the empty lightless prarie,
Off of the small city streets,
And out of the frozen hearts of the people.
Your blue eyes wide,
You fiddle with the radio,
Irritated at the crap that you find.
We have left top forty,
We have left the sun,
We have left the lights,
We have left the fun,
But most of all we have left society.
Your hand holds mine as you turn
to look at nothing.
Every mile tells us that we will be trapped,
With no art.
Worse than any rural hell
that we could have imagined.
Uncaring faces staring at us from these streets of ours.
Memories of abuse and craziness,
Mine and yours,
And the cruelty of this town's people
day, after day, after day.
These are not people---
they are stale demons,
working in the same places year after year,
never seeing anything new,
never learning to care.
These do not accept change,
and they do not accept difference.
So what are we doing here?
I turn on the lights, as our kids run
around this 450 dollar house.
Putting down the bags
a twinke in your eye as you come in
carrying a box from the car.
"Look baby....the neighbors left us
our complimentary white sheets and hood,"
you laugh.
And we both smile......on the outside.
The September night chill
Sends us cold and fear,
Bouncing through the barren land.
Dark and alone.
Off of the empty lightless prarie,
Off of the small city streets,
And out of the frozen hearts of the people.
Your blue eyes wide,
You fiddle with the radio,
Irritated at the crap that you find.
We have left top forty,
We have left the sun,
We have left the lights,
We have left the fun,
But most of all we have left society.
Your hand holds mine as you turn
to look at nothing.
Every mile tells us that we will be trapped,
With no art.
Worse than any rural hell
that we could have imagined.
Uncaring faces staring at us from these streets of ours.
Memories of abuse and craziness,
Mine and yours,
And the cruelty of this town's people
day, after day, after day.
These are not people---
they are stale demons,
working in the same places year after year,
never seeing anything new,
never learning to care.
These do not accept change,
and they do not accept difference.
So what are we doing here?
I turn on the lights, as our kids run
around this 450 dollar house.
Putting down the bags
a twinke in your eye as you come in
carrying a box from the car.
"Look baby....the neighbors left us
our complimentary white sheets and hood,"
you laugh.
And we both smile......on the outside.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
To Catch Faith: By C.B.
So they hurt me,
and you were hurt too,
and the scars on my arm----
are nothing compared to the scars in our hearts.
But still,
the silence screams
when the saints are all gone,
and nobody listens,
and we are stuck.
But we believe
and try not to lose faith
even though noone was there
when the damage was done,
and the world preaches guilt---
but doesn't repent,
and the weather is gray.
The soldiers are marching,
painfully leaving their towns,
to go to someone else's.
We watch with fear
when towers fall in ours.
Loud angry voices
tell us to hate,
and we wonder----
where is our God, of love,
from sunny Sunday school classes,
and young hearts
wanting to believe that
God is there
and really does care,
and we are all "precious in his sight".
When love finally arrives,
after a lifetime of pain,
and someone tells us that
what was said was all a lie,
and we are sitting
in a white room,
in a white chair,
in the middle of nowhere,
arms stretched out----far,
crucified by doubts and fear,
that their anger
will enter our lives,
and we will also lose our love, but most of all
our faith.
and you were hurt too,
and the scars on my arm----
are nothing compared to the scars in our hearts.
But still,
the silence screams
when the saints are all gone,
and nobody listens,
and we are stuck.
But we believe
and try not to lose faith
even though noone was there
when the damage was done,
and the world preaches guilt---
but doesn't repent,
and the weather is gray.
The soldiers are marching,
painfully leaving their towns,
to go to someone else's.
We watch with fear
when towers fall in ours.
Loud angry voices
tell us to hate,
and we wonder----
where is our God, of love,
from sunny Sunday school classes,
and young hearts
wanting to believe that
God is there
and really does care,
and we are all "precious in his sight".
When love finally arrives,
after a lifetime of pain,
and someone tells us that
what was said was all a lie,
and we are sitting
in a white room,
in a white chair,
in the middle of nowhere,
arms stretched out----far,
crucified by doubts and fear,
that their anger
will enter our lives,
and we will also lose our love, but most of all
our faith.
Wyoming Fences by C.B.
Miles and Miles of white, grey, tan, brown, and blue, all lined with perfectly straight, horizontal, steel, barbwire, and wood, the kind of disconcerting materials that exist to trap, hurt, enclose, and imprison. Since the day that I returned home these are the thoughts that have fenced in my attention. I am utterly aware of the situation. I drive 25 miles, 2 to 3 times daily, staring at the sides of this beautifully desolate Wyoming highway. These colors, are my colors, they follow me everywhere. They haunt me, whether I’m in a towering gray and asphalt city, or basking by the sun-filled, blue, white, and yellow stretch of beach that lines the sea. When I am gone, I find myself longing desperately for the air, the desolation, the distant hope of the mountain, the miles and miles of hilled, sage-brush ridden, blue and brown, or white and grey, prairie and sky connection. I, as almost any native, seek for the sight of the beautiful and swift antelope, the cautious and ever-present deer, the dangerous, strong, gliding, and preying eagle, and the ominous and encircling, flesh-hungry turkey vulture. These, and the other animals of this mountained region, are my family; they are the watchful ancestors that have been in my vision since I was first aware that I had any vision at all.
However, since returning home, all that has captured my vision has been the never-ending rows of fence that threaten and entrap me on the dangerous, bloody carcass-ridden, hard, ungiving, lonely, and desolate highway. The fence exists to threaten me and my kind. We cannot stop wondering, worrying, and obsessing. It is haunted by the shadow of a beautiful boy, a kindred spirit, a soul, tortured for God-only-knows what reason.
His mother came to speak at a meeting at our college. She sat; eyes cast downward, hand-wringing, heart breaking, and remembering. Others thought selfishly of personalities that she knew, but most of the students there thought of shared fears and similar plight. Although I too shared these people’s exact same plights and fears, I could think only of my tiny, beautiful, blonde-haired, sonny, children, (both boys,) one in brightly-colored bug boots, butterfly-net, and silly safari hat, and the other in cut off cacky shorts, football shirt, baseball-cap, and flip-flops. More than the fear of what could happen to me, my heart wept for this woman, driven by the sadness and pain of a loss that I could not, and did not want to imagine.
“What do you think that a family like ours should do?” Asked my partner, unusually serious, fear dancing in her beautiful sky-blue eyes, while her hand clenched mine tightly underneath the table.
“You should leave and move somewhere that you’ll be sure to be safe. Somewhere that there are others like you,” Mrs. Shepard’s eyes were serious and her voice was kind but sincere. Through the rest of the meeting my partner squeezed my hand until my fingers turned purple and numb.
The 20-mile drive home from that meeting was hard. We talked of finances, fear, beautiful-murdered boys, bigotry, and moving. We cried and expressed some fear for ourselves, but mostly the paralyzing fear that we shared for our wonderful children. However, we couldn’t move. We were trapped here by something much stronger than fences. We were trapped in Wyoming by the strongest thing that could trap people; money.
“I told you we shouldn’t come back here and now we’re stuck. We’ll never be able to leave this state and support the children. I don’t care what you say: it just isn’t safe for people like us to live here.” Tears created makeup lines, streaking her perfectly applied makeup.
“It isn’t all that bad. This isn’t some foreign and strange place. Wyoming is where we’re from. I’m not sure what’s to blame for what happened to that kid. It’s horrible sad, but that was an isolated case. We’re from here, and we aren’t at all like the people that would do those types of things.”
“No… we just spent our whole lives surrounded and abused by those same people,” silently crying, she turned her face away. I was left, heart-broken, to try to concentrate on the road and not the fences that lined it.
The next summer, I drove 2 hours, to my hometown (another tiny Wyoming town), to spend time with my ailing grandmother. My father, who I usually don’t see, came over and asked me to go for a ride with him. I went. I thought that it would be good to make an effort to try and find a common bond, despite the childhood pain that had erected a barbed-wire fence around my heart. I needed to understand my displacement. I needed to find out why I was plagued with these contrasting feelings of belonging in Wyoming and being a foreigner in my own home.
My father and I drove for a very long time, chattering meaninglessly about hunting, boating, and fishing. We left the highway, many miles outside of town. We drove across the empty, cactused, prairie; lurching over bumps, and climbing over hills that were much too steep. We zigzagged down tiny, almost bone-dry streams, and between small red-rocked canyons, We, unusually happy in each other’s company, wasted away the afternoon. My father followed many fences, stopping occasionally to open a make-shift, barbed-wire gate, or to instantly turn off the truck and, (always a dead shot,) to lean far out the window, rifle in hand, and aim at anything that he saw moving. A loud bang and I turned my head so that I wouldn’t have to see the little puff of dust in the distance before he would prop the rifle up between us and turn the ignition. Finally, after hours of driving, we came to the top of a very large hill. From this high point, I could see a tiny, dilapidated, wooden lean-to in the distance.
“That’s were we’re goin’ girly,” My father smiled, “I think that it’s time that you understood some things about your blood. We aren’t like other people. We’re part of this land. Your Uncles, (my family,) and I are all the same and I think that the problem with you is that you don’t know who you are. I think that this’ll help you.”
“What are you going to show me?” Apprehension filled my stomach with dread.
He began to drive toward the small shack. I could see a broken fence; about six feet from the front of the shack, stretching so far to either side that it disappeared into the horizon.
“Yep….this is what you need to do. When I get upset, or hurt, I drive out here and take care of my pain. This is the only thing that works for me, and I think it would work for you too because my blood is what’s runnin’ through your veins. Anyways, I come out here, (where no one in the world could hear me,) and I scream, and scream, and scream. After that’s all done, I give an animal the face of the person that’s hurt me. I charge them with the crime and decide the appropriate punishment.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will once we come atop this little hill.” He came to the top of the tiny hill, stopped the truck, opened the squeaky-truck door, and steeped out. He walked to the front of the truck. There he stood, 6 ft. 3 with shaggy beard, flannel shirt, torn jeans, and the build of a quarterback. He opened his arms wide to either side, the rifle still in his right hand and hollered,
“Out here, you’re in charge! You have all of the power! You are the king, the judge, and the jury! This is where I leave all of my pain, and this is the only thing that works.”
As my eyes came into focus, I gasped and tried desperately not to scream. The fence behind my father, for miles and miles in either direction, had heads, decapitated, partially dissected, and stuck on wooden fence poles. Antelope, deer, buzzards, badgers, rabbits, prairie dogs, coyotes, fox, and many others stared accusingly at me through empty, black eye-sockets. Right behind my father, and directly in front of the fence, was a circle, the size of a mini-van, filled with mutilated, headless, decomposing bodies, bones, and limbs, all cut, stabbed, shot, and beaten.
“See,” my father said, “this is who you are, and this is where we belong.”
However, since returning home, all that has captured my vision has been the never-ending rows of fence that threaten and entrap me on the dangerous, bloody carcass-ridden, hard, ungiving, lonely, and desolate highway. The fence exists to threaten me and my kind. We cannot stop wondering, worrying, and obsessing. It is haunted by the shadow of a beautiful boy, a kindred spirit, a soul, tortured for God-only-knows what reason.
His mother came to speak at a meeting at our college. She sat; eyes cast downward, hand-wringing, heart breaking, and remembering. Others thought selfishly of personalities that she knew, but most of the students there thought of shared fears and similar plight. Although I too shared these people’s exact same plights and fears, I could think only of my tiny, beautiful, blonde-haired, sonny, children, (both boys,) one in brightly-colored bug boots, butterfly-net, and silly safari hat, and the other in cut off cacky shorts, football shirt, baseball-cap, and flip-flops. More than the fear of what could happen to me, my heart wept for this woman, driven by the sadness and pain of a loss that I could not, and did not want to imagine.
“What do you think that a family like ours should do?” Asked my partner, unusually serious, fear dancing in her beautiful sky-blue eyes, while her hand clenched mine tightly underneath the table.
“You should leave and move somewhere that you’ll be sure to be safe. Somewhere that there are others like you,” Mrs. Shepard’s eyes were serious and her voice was kind but sincere. Through the rest of the meeting my partner squeezed my hand until my fingers turned purple and numb.
The 20-mile drive home from that meeting was hard. We talked of finances, fear, beautiful-murdered boys, bigotry, and moving. We cried and expressed some fear for ourselves, but mostly the paralyzing fear that we shared for our wonderful children. However, we couldn’t move. We were trapped here by something much stronger than fences. We were trapped in Wyoming by the strongest thing that could trap people; money.
“I told you we shouldn’t come back here and now we’re stuck. We’ll never be able to leave this state and support the children. I don’t care what you say: it just isn’t safe for people like us to live here.” Tears created makeup lines, streaking her perfectly applied makeup.
“It isn’t all that bad. This isn’t some foreign and strange place. Wyoming is where we’re from. I’m not sure what’s to blame for what happened to that kid. It’s horrible sad, but that was an isolated case. We’re from here, and we aren’t at all like the people that would do those types of things.”
“No… we just spent our whole lives surrounded and abused by those same people,” silently crying, she turned her face away. I was left, heart-broken, to try to concentrate on the road and not the fences that lined it.
The next summer, I drove 2 hours, to my hometown (another tiny Wyoming town), to spend time with my ailing grandmother. My father, who I usually don’t see, came over and asked me to go for a ride with him. I went. I thought that it would be good to make an effort to try and find a common bond, despite the childhood pain that had erected a barbed-wire fence around my heart. I needed to understand my displacement. I needed to find out why I was plagued with these contrasting feelings of belonging in Wyoming and being a foreigner in my own home.
My father and I drove for a very long time, chattering meaninglessly about hunting, boating, and fishing. We left the highway, many miles outside of town. We drove across the empty, cactused, prairie; lurching over bumps, and climbing over hills that were much too steep. We zigzagged down tiny, almost bone-dry streams, and between small red-rocked canyons, We, unusually happy in each other’s company, wasted away the afternoon. My father followed many fences, stopping occasionally to open a make-shift, barbed-wire gate, or to instantly turn off the truck and, (always a dead shot,) to lean far out the window, rifle in hand, and aim at anything that he saw moving. A loud bang and I turned my head so that I wouldn’t have to see the little puff of dust in the distance before he would prop the rifle up between us and turn the ignition. Finally, after hours of driving, we came to the top of a very large hill. From this high point, I could see a tiny, dilapidated, wooden lean-to in the distance.
“That’s were we’re goin’ girly,” My father smiled, “I think that it’s time that you understood some things about your blood. We aren’t like other people. We’re part of this land. Your Uncles, (my family,) and I are all the same and I think that the problem with you is that you don’t know who you are. I think that this’ll help you.”
“What are you going to show me?” Apprehension filled my stomach with dread.
He began to drive toward the small shack. I could see a broken fence; about six feet from the front of the shack, stretching so far to either side that it disappeared into the horizon.
“Yep….this is what you need to do. When I get upset, or hurt, I drive out here and take care of my pain. This is the only thing that works for me, and I think it would work for you too because my blood is what’s runnin’ through your veins. Anyways, I come out here, (where no one in the world could hear me,) and I scream, and scream, and scream. After that’s all done, I give an animal the face of the person that’s hurt me. I charge them with the crime and decide the appropriate punishment.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will once we come atop this little hill.” He came to the top of the tiny hill, stopped the truck, opened the squeaky-truck door, and steeped out. He walked to the front of the truck. There he stood, 6 ft. 3 with shaggy beard, flannel shirt, torn jeans, and the build of a quarterback. He opened his arms wide to either side, the rifle still in his right hand and hollered,
“Out here, you’re in charge! You have all of the power! You are the king, the judge, and the jury! This is where I leave all of my pain, and this is the only thing that works.”
As my eyes came into focus, I gasped and tried desperately not to scream. The fence behind my father, for miles and miles in either direction, had heads, decapitated, partially dissected, and stuck on wooden fence poles. Antelope, deer, buzzards, badgers, rabbits, prairie dogs, coyotes, fox, and many others stared accusingly at me through empty, black eye-sockets. Right behind my father, and directly in front of the fence, was a circle, the size of a mini-van, filled with mutilated, headless, decomposing bodies, bones, and limbs, all cut, stabbed, shot, and beaten.
“See,” my father said, “this is who you are, and this is where we belong.”
"Which George Elliott?," by C.B.
I am walking. I am stuck in between rows and rows of suburbia. The houses are arranged in a square. The world is dark, grey, and colorless. I notice that one of the houses looks just like a house that I lived in on an army base. I know that I loved the house and I miss it. The back door is open a little way, and it looks like no one is home, so I decide to go in. I figure that I will be able to see the house and then I will be able to walk out the front door and exit the maze of houses that I am imprisoned in. I walk into the house through the back door and find myself standing in a kitchen. There is spaghetti sauce boiling on the stove and a wine bottle on the table and I realize that someone must be home. I walk through the kitchen to the doorway that leads to the living room and see someone sitting on the couch. The lady's pretty, however unformed, her face is one of any face. I know that she is no one.
"You know you could have used the gate. It's right next to the side of all of the houses." She just flips the page of the book that she is reading.
"Sorry," I say and walk out the front door onto the hot, overcast street.
I walk down the dark street and end up at an ancient wooden market row. There are rows and rows of booths set up in a line made out of old, dark, weathered wooden crates. There are a few people walking around and the vendors are distorted, freakish, and frightening. I want to look at all of their booths. The first booth is run by the oldest man that I think that I've ever seen. It's filled with Asian antiques stored in tiny worn leather trunks. I decide that I would like to look for some Asian things for my son. The man is staring at me and his form is fading in and out of shadow. I can't find one thing that I don't think is an Asian version of some cultural cruelty such as the African- American mammy salt and pepper shakers. I am disgusted and walk to the next booth. My fingers can't help but feel dust etched, and stained glass carvings. I think that it is strange however that the pictures are not formed. They are ugly, lined, jagged, pieces of haphazard color. I turn to walk away, still searching for something that I want to see or keep for later. In the center of the rows is a table made out of wooden crates. There are books that are not in English. Three old, wrinkled, grey women are running this booth. They are all dressed in long, calico, dingy-colored, floor-length dresses, white aprons, and scarves. One of the ladies tries to talk to me. I can't understand the language that she is speaking. She is trying to tell me where she is from. I think that she says Serbia. I ask her if I am right.
"No! It is by *********ina," She looks agitated.
I say that I am sorry and turn to walk away. I walk a few steps and feel a heavy tap on my shoulder. I turn and she is standing there with a tea colored antique paper in front of my face. It has three strange circles drawn in a row. She taps the paper forcibly and points at me.
"I don't understand what you mean. Is that a drawing of where you are from?" I am backing away because she looks very agitated.
"No! You need to know this," she says in broken English. She points at the paper again and then points at me.
"I'm sorry," I say, I can't understand. I turn and run away from her. I am walking toward the end of the strange mall. There is a dark corner filled with very old things. A table lies covered with antique jewelry and trinkets. I reach to touch one of the necklaces and a wooden fence slams down between the table and me. An old deformed man and shadowy-vague, ancient woman are sitting by the table. The man stands and walks to the gate and grabs it with both hands.
"This table's only for the locals. Ma's got enough problems without your freakish kind comin here. You don't want to make the locals angry. It's enough that we have to deal with all of the foreigners," suddenly 'Ma' begins to cackle and he starts to scream and shake the gate. I turn and begin to run. I have to get the hell out of this insane place. I am running toward the street when Joan Jett grabs me.
"Hey man, I was looking for ya. I kept trying to sleep in your car like you told me to, but your cell- phone keeps ringin. It really started to piss me off because my head's poundin like crazy, and I need a drink. So anyway, I finally answer the fucking phone, and it's your aunt. She says that you need to come home quick because George Eliot died," she roughly shoves the phone into my hand. "You better call her."
"No way, I'm busy. Besides, I didn't even know any George Eliot. The only George Eliot that I know of is the writer of "The Spanish Gypsy," is that who she's talking about?" "Yeah that's the one. She said that it's important that you go to the funeral. Everyone'll be expecting you. Oh yeah, she also said that you needed this," she pulled a wrinkled copy of, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, out of her pocket, "she said that you need to make sure that you never forget it."
"You know you could have used the gate. It's right next to the side of all of the houses." She just flips the page of the book that she is reading.
"Sorry," I say and walk out the front door onto the hot, overcast street.
I walk down the dark street and end up at an ancient wooden market row. There are rows and rows of booths set up in a line made out of old, dark, weathered wooden crates. There are a few people walking around and the vendors are distorted, freakish, and frightening. I want to look at all of their booths. The first booth is run by the oldest man that I think that I've ever seen. It's filled with Asian antiques stored in tiny worn leather trunks. I decide that I would like to look for some Asian things for my son. The man is staring at me and his form is fading in and out of shadow. I can't find one thing that I don't think is an Asian version of some cultural cruelty such as the African- American mammy salt and pepper shakers. I am disgusted and walk to the next booth. My fingers can't help but feel dust etched, and stained glass carvings. I think that it is strange however that the pictures are not formed. They are ugly, lined, jagged, pieces of haphazard color. I turn to walk away, still searching for something that I want to see or keep for later. In the center of the rows is a table made out of wooden crates. There are books that are not in English. Three old, wrinkled, grey women are running this booth. They are all dressed in long, calico, dingy-colored, floor-length dresses, white aprons, and scarves. One of the ladies tries to talk to me. I can't understand the language that she is speaking. She is trying to tell me where she is from. I think that she says Serbia. I ask her if I am right.
"No! It is by *********ina," She looks agitated.
I say that I am sorry and turn to walk away. I walk a few steps and feel a heavy tap on my shoulder. I turn and she is standing there with a tea colored antique paper in front of my face. It has three strange circles drawn in a row. She taps the paper forcibly and points at me.
"I don't understand what you mean. Is that a drawing of where you are from?" I am backing away because she looks very agitated.
"No! You need to know this," she says in broken English. She points at the paper again and then points at me.
"I'm sorry," I say, I can't understand. I turn and run away from her. I am walking toward the end of the strange mall. There is a dark corner filled with very old things. A table lies covered with antique jewelry and trinkets. I reach to touch one of the necklaces and a wooden fence slams down between the table and me. An old deformed man and shadowy-vague, ancient woman are sitting by the table. The man stands and walks to the gate and grabs it with both hands.
"This table's only for the locals. Ma's got enough problems without your freakish kind comin here. You don't want to make the locals angry. It's enough that we have to deal with all of the foreigners," suddenly 'Ma' begins to cackle and he starts to scream and shake the gate. I turn and begin to run. I have to get the hell out of this insane place. I am running toward the street when Joan Jett grabs me.
"Hey man, I was looking for ya. I kept trying to sleep in your car like you told me to, but your cell- phone keeps ringin. It really started to piss me off because my head's poundin like crazy, and I need a drink. So anyway, I finally answer the fucking phone, and it's your aunt. She says that you need to come home quick because George Eliot died," she roughly shoves the phone into my hand. "You better call her."
"No way, I'm busy. Besides, I didn't even know any George Eliot. The only George Eliot that I know of is the writer of "The Spanish Gypsy," is that who she's talking about?" "Yeah that's the one. She said that it's important that you go to the funeral. Everyone'll be expecting you. Oh yeah, she also said that you needed this," she pulled a wrinkled copy of, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, out of her pocket, "she said that you need to make sure that you never forget it."
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