New Blog

Dear friends,

I have decided to move back to my old blog, which I started before my mom died. Please come find me at www.theshortestskirtever.blogspot.com

Love,
Ana

Dreams

Lately I've been thinking less of the events that grabbed my soul in their arms and shook it like a baby. My brain matter was shattered for months, it is still creased and in some places healing.
It was event after event after event but finally things have slowed, I have had to push out everything disturbing and quiet things on my own. My mind is the sound of a river flowing, whoosh, whoosh, the sun setting and rising, the crickets chirping and quieting. Things happen and I observe them, I observe myself observing them.
In one week it will have been ten months since that fateful day after many prior fateful days, the day that was the exclamation point to a run-on sentence, the ball of the point slamming into my head and awakening me with an explosion. I am not grateful for that day, how can I be grateful for that day? I spent six hours at a round table near a bar at the fairbanks airport sobbing into the phone, spreading the news but not in a Frank Sinatra-like way. There was no celebration. There was no singing except wailing.
I'm not going to go into detail, the details are preserved for my word processor, my word processor never tells, my heart has been hardened not only by my mother's suicide but by other, smaller betrayals, but my heart is not hard. My heart is not hard, it is a cracked shell covering the softest part of myself. Touch it. It will yield, slightly, but don't break it, although if you do it will heal again. My heart can heal from anything, that is the thing I have discovered, that is the secret e.e. cummings told me in the poem I sent to my mother. Her heart is in my heart. My heart developed in her body, everything else grew around it. I am nothing if not an extension of her, but I am not so lost as she was, I am not so lost as I was, while she was here to pull my strings, the invisible strings we were connected by. Her hands could never loosen on the ends of those, I was her own puppet but she couldn't love me like a master is to love a puppet.

I dream of her, most nights. And if I don't dream of her then my dreams remind me of her. She is not gone, but she is not here.

Dreaming of my Mother

In my dream
my mother says,

do you remember that concert I took you to
when you were a teenager?

I say,
yes.


We are sitting at a table.


She says,

you didn't like it,
did you?

I reply,

I didn't like anything
you wanted me to like
when I was a teenager.

I'm sorry.

I know it hurt your feelings.


She said,

No,
I should have just gotten out of your way
and let you be who you were.


I wake up.




Now are we healing our relationship?



How can we heal our relationship?


When you've elected to leave
so abruptly?

The gun,
still in your hand.

Noise

Lately life has been
clambering
all around me.

My mind is less loud.

I structure sentences and dream of stories
where I am the main character,

I write nonfiction as fiction and pretend
everything is all right.

There is so much noise
it feels like a mass
individual noises combining
and hurling towards me.

This is the pressure
I press upon
myself.


What can or will I be.

Who am I now
that all of the things
I defined myself by
are gone.

So many questions that aren't questions
but answers.


Who am I now,
what will I be
now that all of the things
I defined myself by
are gone.

Airport Security

I wonder about the security scan
at the airport.

I will raise my hands for seven seconds
and appear nude on a screen.

Will a man look at me
or a woman?

Will the string of my tampon be visible
beneath my underwear?

Can they see each pubic hair?

Last time I went through the scanner
I accidentally left a dime in my pocket
and the TSA agent apologetically groped my thigh
until she touched my pussy.

I wasn't wearing underwear,
and I almost instinctively reached down
to swat her hand away,
but I restrained myself
and felt my face brighten.

How much can they see
on those things,
and where do the pictures go?

I want my breasts and my pussy
to be my own,
but they never have been.
Never will be.

Alaskan Surfing

This is amazing footage of surfers in Cook Inlet, Alaska, surfing a tidal bore. The use special surfboards and paddles to be able to keep going when the waves get smaller. It looks super fun!

Procrastination

Lately I've been spending a lot of time avoiding things. This has led to many interesting internet discoveries. I am going to start posting them here!


Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.