Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

1.21 GIGOWATS

Papa's been on my case about laying cards down but I could really give a fuck so I've brushed it off every time he's brought it up. (He already said I was going to "get it" come Halloween which is an idle threat right here, right now, when daffodils are in bloom, and the trees are budding, but if you get around to asking me again on October 30th you'll probably find me desperately looking for a cheap Delorean. <- LOL! EVEN IF I CAN'T GET THE FLUX CAPACITOR TO WORK AT LEAST THERE SHOULD BE A BRIBE UNDERNEATH MY SEAT!)

64 Degrees and Cloudy

My grandfather said I was a healer because I kept dried plants in jars in my bedroom. I’d run naked in the woods and wade through Midwestern swamps wrapped in transparent curtains I found in a box in the basement. When I came home I smelled like Horsemint and mud, and my mother swore one day I’d be raped and I wouldn’t have anyone to blame other than myself. It never sank in. I eventually retired the curtains and purged my bedroom closet; years worth of collecting and drying gone in an instant of puberty. It wasn’t my thing, I resigned, it was my mother’s thing.

I saw my grandfather again at my mother’s funeral. I brought him coffee and listened to him reminisce, in that slightly senile veteran sort’ve way. He always had the same three or four stories he’d tell continuously though the day. Every day the stories would change, but he’d relive them the same way, so there was a familiarity to all of his stories, even the ones not yet told.

Sometimes a concept would stick out and he’d repeat the same idea, worded slightly differently every time, like he was working something out with each new variation. Like he was clicking the Rubik’s Cube up one to see if it got him any closer to the overall picture he was seeing in his mind. It’s a haunting, exciting thing to be in the presence of someone who has something, and despite the age, despite the milky cataracts, despite the touch of dementia it’s still there, bright as ever, attracting people like moths to light.

He looked at me and said that I knew. One word was worth a million. You look outward for validation or confirmation, but it was never there for me. It was never me; it was always someone else. (It’s funny, now, looking back, to see how BIG this thing is-was-is, and how it was so influential that it crept into other people’s lives, and shone through them while I stood on the outskirts, just at the edge of their “illumination”.)

Strength can be so fragile when it’s sitting on a cusp of doubt. He looked at me and said that I knew, and I nodded, and my entire life changed. It’s funny how even in silence you can hear the transformation of a curse turn into a blessing, and despite how catastrophic the fall is (how the dust rises from the remnants of the Tower, how you breathe it all in and experience the almost biblical moment in a burst of agonizing emotion (i.e., realization, grief, despair, gratitude, humility, exhalation)) it leaves a promising foundation for the future.

I finally felt set apart for not being obvious. And, three years later, the jars are back, filled with ash, bones and graveyard dirt. It’s funny how these things come full circle, leaving just enough for you to rebuild on.

Captive

Writing is -
a caged animal
born in captivity
pacing
waiting
for the right time
to break free.
- Ms. Graveyard Dirt, '97

Sometimes the need to write SOMETHING, just ANYTHING, gets so fucking intense that it completely incapacitates you, and you can't do anything but feel like a part of your soul is caged and barely restrained behind iron bars.

And even though you feel lost and aimless, you also feel agitated and manic, and all you can think about is how writing isn't that much different from that tiger in the zoo that you wrote about years ago, and how the relentless panting on the other side of the glass isn't that much different from the suspended, anxious feeling in your gut, and how the determined pacing on the other side of the glass is really just a reflection of the restlessness of waiting for something that's inevitable, but not yet tangible.