Grape Jelly God: The Nut That Wants to Be Written

So, as we march ahead into the great 'unblock' my mind wrestles on a story. A dr. once told me that these moments that are stuck are really just the culumination of an epic folded into a single moment or 'nut'. It tells the whole story in a flicker. These nuts are what I think I might have the gift of finding BTW. These are the nuts that want to be written. When I was just 14 or 15 I had been writing a great deal already on my own as you know and finally there was an assignment! A chance to put it 'out there'. And not just with any teacher, but an honest cooky one that had a dark northeastern haircut, heavy glasses, and black toothpick leggings that ended above berkenstocks. She had brutal demands on testing our discipline and writing for 2 minutes constant every day I remember. (Hmmm...Not too different from what I am doing now in 'group' I suppose....) So, I elected to write a short piece about a night when my 2nd cousin and I when were just girls. Inside I FREAKED when I got my paper back with an A-. Truely, I was not an 'A' student, and so my eyes could hardly sustain it's perfectly pointy heaven reaching redness. (Remembering this even now, I would like to thank the academy....) I couldn't be more surprised- 'such an interesting story' she mentioned at the top. I felt like I finally had a soul! You can't imagine how desperate I was to grow a real soul when I was 14 at Bishop McGuinness; where most upper classmen wore ColeHans and drove Mercedes. I would raise above it, yes ma'am. Me and my big-eyed soul. It didn't even matter that my lanky puppy eyed art room loitering boyfriend had just broken up with me. Even better for it. I could write for MILES. Until the segment of Greek Tragedies began. Now, I am not being a dramatic by recalling that the topic was specifically and serendipitously- GREEK TRADGETIES. Mother will try to change the story here to say that it was an 'Earth Day Celebration', but this is a very damaging revisionist claim that I will debunk pre-emptively. Her mis-remembering it as an earth day celebration finally reveals to me her astonishing rationale for the actions she was to take. Looking back, I think I understand her sensitivity. I had quite suddenly it seemed, joined Greenpeace had and expressed my strong desire to stop eating animals. But my grandparents had been life long hog and sheep farmers and so my parents were not only outraged, but looking for the liberal enemy of influence in retrospect. Finally! I have achieved a level in psychotherapy where I can actually decode their weirdness!

Nothing is ever perfect on the other side. Freedom of choice, and the beauty of imperfection are burdens for sure. No wonder the churches of the world are united in separating the world into dualities. As a poor teenage farm girl in a family of 12, family was a precious commodity for my mother. The germanic dialect they spoke in her community was nearly extinct in all the world, having come to the Americas almost 90 years before her. Imagine sharing 1 whole chicken for dinner between 12. 3 teenagers sleeping in each double bed. The girls all using their brothers faded works shirt for sanity napkins over and over. Add to that a couple of hours of hard farm work before school in the coldest of winter days, and no shower at all before going on their way way to learn to read and write. Maybe they could keep it together like this long enough to get through eight grade, which is all anybody really expected anyway. There were cousins abound already, and nobody remembers how two native sisters ended up being adopted in her mother's sister's family. Their long dark straight hair and dark eyes stood out in contrast to the light curls and blue eyes on Sunday morning mass. Their new older brothers suited and solemn, having lost their father several years before them. Maybe their mother and uncle-father wanted to build upon a family of their own? Maybe observing my mothers harmounious family in the farm house across the street appeared to be a well oiled machine; it's half a dozen sisters keeping up with the meals, the ironing, the milking... Today, white families taking in native girls is illegal. Because like my mother's dialect, the native people are nearly extinct in all the world. Because in the past, they were treated like property. Not just farm hands and housekeepers like my mothers sisters, but objects of long term sexual child abuse too. After my mother witnessed this with her own eyes, having discovered this 'in the act', you would be certain it would change her, yes. But when she reported it and tried to get help, the adults all invited her into the secret to hold and to keep and protect and perpetuate. Because family was important. What would the community think? So, when the native sisters ran away, the people said they had become 'go-go dancers', and pretended to be outraged that any real human woman would would use their sex to survive. They pretended to reserve the moral high ground, on side of the line that separated the right for the wrong in an alliance that protected them from the sinful and savage and the disconnected lonely souls of the world. And as the story comes to an end, the boys die as old men that glow in the rightousness of the Lord. Like a fucking saint. I know, because I read it in his obit. And me, all I had to survive was some self-imposed seclusion with a stack of journals in my room.

My block was made, not born. My girlhood was voratiously chronicaled. My family moved around twice before I went to highschool, but it happened that around the time that I was learning how to write, we moved as a family out of state for the first time. It was my mother that suggested I keep in touch with my elementary friends through letter writing. As time went on the other kids lost interest in writing, and when the letters stopped coming back to me as quickly as I could send them, I began to adopt pen pals sometimes 3 at a time in various parts of the world: South Africa, Yugoslavia, New Jersey. Every letter I kept. After I would write my letters, I would fold them for their passage (in the appropriate-envelope-folding manner I had learned in school), and I would feel a bit sad because a piece of me was gone and never to be seen again. And so, I began journaling and writing poems as well, to keep some of my offspring around to see and to touch and to go back and visit sometimes. I had a lot of time on my hands, I guess you could say... By highschool, I believed that my journals were not a safe place for me to write. Even though my mother had on more than one occassion told me her sacrad girlhood journals had being pried upon by her mother, I knew she was just as likely to do the same. We had a passive agressive relationship: She permitted me to leave the house one day a week outside of school, and I spent every minute of all other days with the door closed in my room mostly writing poems or journals or letters to long distance boyfriends in an act of defiance. Unfortunately, I wasn't locked in the house because my family enjoyed my company too much, but rather my mother, suffering from severe depression preferred to lock the world out. I was devestated, and angry, and powerless. (It is very painful for me to remember this now. It has greatly shaped my outlook on life and parenting in such a significant way.) Some journals were written in a secret code that probably I couldn't crack to this day. They still sit in a closet in my parents suburban house somewhere I think. Dozens of them. Unreadable. Untranslatable. My young adult self insisting to never ever be understood, or cared for, or comforted even by my future nurturning self. So writing for me began as a way to cope with friendships separated by distance, and a youth that suffered at the hands of my mothers depression. At that time, the internet didn't exist to expand your world, your knowledge, your mind. You could spend time with a stack of encyclopedias and write letters to people in far away politically turbulant countries and just desperately try to make your world bigger than it was. That's all I could think to do: Write.

Calluna Vulgaris Lives!

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? Today, I turn around in my recovery. Today, I conjure Calluna, and lick her fur. All of the world that knew her is dead and gone, and all of them should stay that way...but it's her voice that I want to catch in a clamshell and reclaim anyway. It's mine after all. Just getting logged into the account took 30 minutes, but longer than that, coming back to the warm gun took 10 years. Part of this recovery is 'group', which asks of me some steady and consistent writing (which is the hardest bullshit part of recovery.) None of the other blocked persons in the room are having to paint 3 paintings a day, or built three pots, or dance three songs; they write. Just like me. I thought 'group' would introduce me to some insightful active introspective people. Nope. Blocked retards like me. Damaged and hideous and their voices crack like prepube boys and they are downright miserable people. At least one sociciopath and one psychopath for sure, and imagine how crushed I was to discover this. That's group for ya: Looser City. In the car this morning, I started talking to myself in rambling sentences like I do in deep heartbreak- heartbreak that proceeds Calluna. Back when Calluna was Jane with a diary and dozens of my mothers shoe boxes full of letters. Ugh. That girl. 'Just write, Bitch.' The voice in the car says as I open the door to step out. Now, I'm logged in, and hoping that I can stop my hiding in the dishes that sit too deep in the sink... But...but..maybe Calluna isn't even Calluna even more. Maybe at the end of this, I'll just find Edward Norton curled up in a fetal position rocking back and forth with soft moans.

I know what you mean about avoiding the 'crafty'. I spent a lot of time rebelling against that stuff because it DID NOT fit into my fantasy feminist image of who I wanted to be, but somewhere in the road I started to feel a little isolated by that. A friend of mine's mother who is a college professor had to correct me and my misunderstanding 'NO! We (feminists) fought all of those years so you COULD do all of those things! That means everything you want to do.'

I also remember another big misconception that I had for most of my childhood was an awareness of the distinct dichotomy of all things. Thinking that everything was 'good'vs 'bad' or 'beautiful'vs'ugly' or the 'right way'vs'the wrong way' was just devestating to my confidence...but safe. I was incredibly shy. I didn't understand the subjectivity of all judgement and I thought everyone knew something I didn't or couldn't! When I got into college I majored in history and enrolled in an experimental critical thinking cirriculum offered by my school...my professors asked me to write extensive papers based on a theory of events in history and prove that theory with evidence. I was stunned and confused and frozen up inside! I thought history was 'just the facts' and that my education consisted of only absolute truths NOT hypothosis! I actually argued with one of them about this! (I wonder if a professor lives for that 'a-ha!' moment, or if they just shake their heads inside thinking 'What a hick!'). Anyway, that was a major breakthrough for me because I was free to experiment in life and in art. Everything changed! So...not everybody loves a painting because a painting IS good. Some people think it is good, and some people prefer another. Sometimes the OUTPUT is insignificant, but the sentiment or emotion is...or the craft process is enriching to the artist and meaningless to the viewer. The important thing is that creating and applying inpiration is a form of worship and a giving up oneself.

My mom always says when viewing a Picasso cubist work 'Ridiculous! I could do that!'. I tell her now...'No, you couldn't. You can't. I'll give you 5 years to complete it, get started go! You cannot get that out.' I'm not sure if she understands what I'm saying... it's not that the act of painting is too technical, but rather the emotion too abstract and the canvass too concrete for her to apply herself to render...for any of us to render!

I am in a swim meet, a marathon; there are laps...maybe 60. Okay, less a marathon and more a swimming obstacle course, and there seems to be a lot of competition. Competition like the traffic in the morning- competitive like that. It has dives, and climbs, and currents, and little stations where you stop for mandatory snacks such as the crusty honey sweet crossaints like the ones we get on the lunch menu at Chedders. I haven't trained for this race- like I never went to the pool to practice. I haven't gone swimming in years, but I ROCK! As the laps add up, more and more swimmers drop from the race. I make it to the final 20, the 10...but as I swim the water is receeding. I do belly flops into 2 inches of water and make the motion of strokes to the next station. At the next tasting station women sit casually sprawled about laughing at another apparently concerned about swimming alongside them-they are HIV positive. The snacks at the station have run out there, but I make motions to be eating the prescribed obstacle; my hands miming the bread....my jaws taking bite by imaginary bite. This obstacle took 5 bites when it was stocked. I mouth 1-2-3-4-5.
I am in the final rounds...down to two and then....

3 Months Old

I recall specifically: a dog, a man, a house and to travel east-coast-west-coast and beyond. Today I woke up and it has come to pass.

Now the burden of squeezing forth another vision with a new name. Two weekends worked in the past three, and the doctor tells me to loosen up my grinding fist, my clenched eye lids…and get to the business of dreaming. I remember this is how I held my body when I pretended to be asleep as little girl and heard my mother coming in to check on me.

‘Don’t forget the fun part’ says the gleaming head-shrinker, her finger waving in the air.

The dream:

In his sleep I hear my husband saying ‘Uh-ha. Yeah. Uh-ha. Uh-ha.’
‘Whoever you are listening to all night long, you will agree with their every word.’ I say. He has no memory of his nightly conversations, but denies his passivity and blind faith nonetheless. He only seems to be going along with what is being said, he explains. The reality is something different, but not sure what.

Mine, a no better sign: I sit onboard a home made rocket ship in the middle of a city loft, and nothing ever happens. The mechanics are faulty…but the party raves on and I step out of the canister to refill my empty glass, or to see if Alex might about