Intersection
I think about Shannon -- about her bright light, her tough girl determination, her brat girl brow, her “grrrrrrrrrrr” growl.
Bella the beautiful kidney lives inside her now. Works hard and steady, throws off heat. I don’t even think of Bella as ever having been mine. It’s almost as though she always belonged to Shannon and that I was growing her, holding her inside my rib cage for safekeeping until Roachy was ready. This is why healthy people have two kidneys: to give one away at the right time and in right circumstance. Shannon was both of those.
I believe that all paths cross for a reason. If you looked down on the world as map face, you would see little red dots blipping along a wad of tangled veins toward and away from each other…bouncing and ricocheting like bumper cars.
Some crossings are of little consequence; some have meaning – a sense of sweetness perhaps, or they present a shopping list of challenges to overcome. Many have great meaning. Others are devastating. Calculated into the topography, serial killers meet their prey in a murderous moment that was always meant to be. Was Joni Lenz born only to be murdered by Ted Bundy? No, of course not; she was far more than that. But it was her destiny. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she chose it; but the fundamentalist school marm in me would say that she did, if my philosophies are to be consistent. Whose baggage is the aborted baby...that of the mother, or that of itself? How do you reconcile a drowned puppy? I just have to ask: How did we become so flawed? Are we too far gone?
Our disease is organic like rust on metal. Cannibalistic. We feed on ourselves until we fall apart, and it is a slow, steady, mostly irreversible degeneration.
But there are no mysteries really, only answers unrevealed –tucked just out of sight, most of them. Easy to miss; easy to find; pick one that suits you. Someone somewhere has the period that punctuates the end of this painfully long fragmented sentence. They’re just not talking. So, keep your eyes open to decode the finger spelling. The clues are probably silent and they will no doubt come from a stranger in close proximity, appearing to look the other way.
Dangeous Curve: Proceed with Caution
Fact or fiction: I picked my parents and I, on the astral, consented to my own conception. Well, since it’s well documented that fact is stranger than fiction, I’ll say yes. Admittedly though, the deeper meaning of life is most times inaccessible to me. I just can't quite get to the core of it. I'm too myopic, my growth is stunted, and I can't extend my reach. Deep thinking has never been my forte.
But, here's some history: In 1949, Apartheid was institutionalized in South Africa, Britain recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland; unemployment in the U.S. was at 3.8 percent; a first class postage stamped cost 3 cents; the Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named “Ponder”; and Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman.” Also in 1949, I was born the second daughter to Luther and Lee Fowler – by then a short-fused, hot-wired loveless marriage between two working poor people with no parenting skills. I was born disconnected; I grew up with my phone off the hook and a hat pulled over my head. I was hiding out, crawling under the radar, cleverly disguised as Baby Duck & Dodge.
But this is what I know: children hear “I love you” and they might believe it for a minute because mommy and daddy would never lie, but really they rely solely on intuition, at least until everybody else’s volume goes up, theirs goes down, or is drowned out. Intuition turns to slush under the oppression of inaudible noise, high-frequency silence, and deafening chatter. We become mind numbed before our core beliefs can take hold. The roots start weak and cannot penetrate the earth beneath them. It becomes the birth of chaos on a personal level, which threatens to become despair, depending on which way you’re wired.
(Just now, I remember: In hypnosis once I went back to the “in-between” – that lull between last death and next birth. Then came the Moment: one heartbeat between my mother and me. We were together then.)
The lives that parents build around their children can be either a home in most senses of the word or a prison. I was inmate number 10031949. Honestly, I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. The emotional meltdowns have already occurred; therapy has been commenced, capitulated, and aborted; all the drugs and alcohol have been consumed; all the relationships in the wake of the pre-awakening have been destroyed and the inhabitants thereof decimated; all the air time required to get this mess on the table has blown through and taken the wind out of the sail. On most days, it is simply information that can be conveyed without flinching. The stutter has fallen from my tongue and my throat is clear. These days, it is what it is, and about that I am no drama queen -- just a little animal they named Jean.
When I found my sense of self-determination, I changed my name to Ruby to celebrate my parole. I am proof (as many of us are proof) of the redefining process and of self-rehabilitation. I scratched around for joy inside a family that has always been joyless, but it wasn’t until I threw myself out of the nest that I found a happy heart and the fibrous grit of something more substantial beneath my nails. I survived by flight response – fly or die. When I lit down, I went immediately underground in order to save myself. In doing so, I had to leave others behind, but I swear they were already gone. Honestly, I could see it in their eyes.
Only because I’m old is it a long story of how I crawled out from under the strangle hold of my kudzu family eventually to cross paths with Shannon. It helped that I was nocturnal. I came alive as they slept, slipping out of the house into the dark. I took to walking the railroad tracks…quiet enough there to hear the purest of sound: night sounds uncensored…crickets, the stirring of the brush, the half-clack and half-clatter of a trestle picking up vibration from miles away. I welcomed the complexity of the silence, the sharpening of the senses, even the fear that coursed through me on moonless nights while I prayed that the only boogie man was the one sleeping with my mother.
When I encountered dead animals, I caught onto the tails of their spirits rising and they caught onto me. I learned from them how to move quietly with my belly low to the ground, but it took so much longer to finally learn to love them. They allowed me my cruelty as they loved me unconditionally. My own meanness was the last straw that finally broke me open years after these midnight escapades. Even then, as the pent up tenderness poured out of me, I continued to drown in my own confusion and self-hate. And, they allowed me time and time again.
They are the perfect vibration – holistic, simplistic, and understated. They offer themselves up as they bare their throats and bellies. When we tear into them, we are the ones who really die. Their essence safely ascends from out of a dull-eyed carcass, the violence and stench of which flies up our asses and eats us alive from the inside. This is what becomes of all perpetrators.
A Little White Cat Dies on 11/05/03
If I am to watch the animals, I need a simple life, less consumed. I must sit quietly or I will not ever see them if they are to be more than a blur in my vision.
On the day that Pango was to die, all the animals rallied around her. We sat quietyly biding time until her date with fate at the vet's office. It was a cold day, mid-thirties, but sunny. She loved to sit in the sun and dream, I imagine, of catching birds. (She could, you know, were it not for that bell on her collar.) I gathered her up like a bably in a bundle and we sat in the warmest spot of sun. As she lay in my lap snoozing – running pain free through her kitty morphine dreams – I realized I was much sicker than she was sick. She lay there dying yet I could live forever deep in my own disease of someone having stepped on me and made me mean. A crappy prognosis. I asked her to forgive me; I believe she did. Now, on to forgiving myself.
Bella the beautiful kidney lives inside her now. Works hard and steady, throws off heat. I don’t even think of Bella as ever having been mine. It’s almost as though she always belonged to Shannon and that I was growing her, holding her inside my rib cage for safekeeping until Roachy was ready. This is why healthy people have two kidneys: to give one away at the right time and in right circumstance. Shannon was both of those.
I believe that all paths cross for a reason. If you looked down on the world as map face, you would see little red dots blipping along a wad of tangled veins toward and away from each other…bouncing and ricocheting like bumper cars.
Some crossings are of little consequence; some have meaning – a sense of sweetness perhaps, or they present a shopping list of challenges to overcome. Many have great meaning. Others are devastating. Calculated into the topography, serial killers meet their prey in a murderous moment that was always meant to be. Was Joni Lenz born only to be murdered by Ted Bundy? No, of course not; she was far more than that. But it was her destiny. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she chose it; but the fundamentalist school marm in me would say that she did, if my philosophies are to be consistent. Whose baggage is the aborted baby...that of the mother, or that of itself? How do you reconcile a drowned puppy? I just have to ask: How did we become so flawed? Are we too far gone?
Our disease is organic like rust on metal. Cannibalistic. We feed on ourselves until we fall apart, and it is a slow, steady, mostly irreversible degeneration.
But there are no mysteries really, only answers unrevealed –tucked just out of sight, most of them. Easy to miss; easy to find; pick one that suits you. Someone somewhere has the period that punctuates the end of this painfully long fragmented sentence. They’re just not talking. So, keep your eyes open to decode the finger spelling. The clues are probably silent and they will no doubt come from a stranger in close proximity, appearing to look the other way.
Dangeous Curve: Proceed with Caution
Fact or fiction: I picked my parents and I, on the astral, consented to my own conception. Well, since it’s well documented that fact is stranger than fiction, I’ll say yes. Admittedly though, the deeper meaning of life is most times inaccessible to me. I just can't quite get to the core of it. I'm too myopic, my growth is stunted, and I can't extend my reach. Deep thinking has never been my forte.
But, here's some history: In 1949, Apartheid was institutionalized in South Africa, Britain recognized the independence of the Republic of Ireland; unemployment in the U.S. was at 3.8 percent; a first class postage stamped cost 3 cents; the Kentucky Derby was won by a horse named “Ponder”; and Arthur Miller wrote “Death of a Salesman.” Also in 1949, I was born the second daughter to Luther and Lee Fowler – by then a short-fused, hot-wired loveless marriage between two working poor people with no parenting skills. I was born disconnected; I grew up with my phone off the hook and a hat pulled over my head. I was hiding out, crawling under the radar, cleverly disguised as Baby Duck & Dodge.
But this is what I know: children hear “I love you” and they might believe it for a minute because mommy and daddy would never lie, but really they rely solely on intuition, at least until everybody else’s volume goes up, theirs goes down, or is drowned out. Intuition turns to slush under the oppression of inaudible noise, high-frequency silence, and deafening chatter. We become mind numbed before our core beliefs can take hold. The roots start weak and cannot penetrate the earth beneath them. It becomes the birth of chaos on a personal level, which threatens to become despair, depending on which way you’re wired.
(Just now, I remember: In hypnosis once I went back to the “in-between” – that lull between last death and next birth. Then came the Moment: one heartbeat between my mother and me. We were together then.)
The lives that parents build around their children can be either a home in most senses of the word or a prison. I was inmate number 10031949. Honestly, I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. The emotional meltdowns have already occurred; therapy has been commenced, capitulated, and aborted; all the drugs and alcohol have been consumed; all the relationships in the wake of the pre-awakening have been destroyed and the inhabitants thereof decimated; all the air time required to get this mess on the table has blown through and taken the wind out of the sail. On most days, it is simply information that can be conveyed without flinching. The stutter has fallen from my tongue and my throat is clear. These days, it is what it is, and about that I am no drama queen -- just a little animal they named Jean.
When I found my sense of self-determination, I changed my name to Ruby to celebrate my parole. I am proof (as many of us are proof) of the redefining process and of self-rehabilitation. I scratched around for joy inside a family that has always been joyless, but it wasn’t until I threw myself out of the nest that I found a happy heart and the fibrous grit of something more substantial beneath my nails. I survived by flight response – fly or die. When I lit down, I went immediately underground in order to save myself. In doing so, I had to leave others behind, but I swear they were already gone. Honestly, I could see it in their eyes.
Only because I’m old is it a long story of how I crawled out from under the strangle hold of my kudzu family eventually to cross paths with Shannon. It helped that I was nocturnal. I came alive as they slept, slipping out of the house into the dark. I took to walking the railroad tracks…quiet enough there to hear the purest of sound: night sounds uncensored…crickets, the stirring of the brush, the half-clack and half-clatter of a trestle picking up vibration from miles away. I welcomed the complexity of the silence, the sharpening of the senses, even the fear that coursed through me on moonless nights while I prayed that the only boogie man was the one sleeping with my mother.
When I encountered dead animals, I caught onto the tails of their spirits rising and they caught onto me. I learned from them how to move quietly with my belly low to the ground, but it took so much longer to finally learn to love them. They allowed me my cruelty as they loved me unconditionally. My own meanness was the last straw that finally broke me open years after these midnight escapades. Even then, as the pent up tenderness poured out of me, I continued to drown in my own confusion and self-hate. And, they allowed me time and time again.
They are the perfect vibration – holistic, simplistic, and understated. They offer themselves up as they bare their throats and bellies. When we tear into them, we are the ones who really die. Their essence safely ascends from out of a dull-eyed carcass, the violence and stench of which flies up our asses and eats us alive from the inside. This is what becomes of all perpetrators.
A Little White Cat Dies on 11/05/03
If I am to watch the animals, I need a simple life, less consumed. I must sit quietly or I will not ever see them if they are to be more than a blur in my vision.
On the day that Pango was to die, all the animals rallied around her. We sat quietyly biding time until her date with fate at the vet's office. It was a cold day, mid-thirties, but sunny. She loved to sit in the sun and dream, I imagine, of catching birds. (She could, you know, were it not for that bell on her collar.) I gathered her up like a bably in a bundle and we sat in the warmest spot of sun. As she lay in my lap snoozing – running pain free through her kitty morphine dreams – I realized I was much sicker than she was sick. She lay there dying yet I could live forever deep in my own disease of someone having stepped on me and made me mean. A crappy prognosis. I asked her to forgive me; I believe she did. Now, on to forgiving myself.
posted by Ruby Fowler at 6:39 PM
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