Pretty Ugly

Sometimes it's pretty. Sometimes it's ugly. And why can't we remember things as they Are? Sometimes I remember it so pretty. And then, I go back, and see-and it's not pretty. It's not ugly, per se, but it's not pretty. And sometimes I remember it so ugly. And then, I go back and it wasn't so bad. Stepford Children... "I'm ok, it wasn't so bad."

And then I remember, the things Are the way they Are, but we can't see them for that, we see them for what We Are. And sometimes, we're pretty and sometimes we're ugly. And the same movie, the same song, the same word, the same phrase - sometimes we see it pretty and sometimes we see it ugly.

So what the hell am I talking about here? The song? The movie? No, the poem. The message. What Arthur brings to the page - sometimes I remember it pretty and sometimes I remember it ugly. And always, I'm surprised but what is there - and how it's different every time I look back and examine it.

All I know is that even love can suffer from this pretty ugly dilemma. Even hope. Because sometimes it looks desperate and sometimes it looks redeeming. Sometimes it looks childish and naive and sometimes it looks like a triumph of the spirit. It all depends on where we are.

Still another challenge of writing - should I concern myself with the purity of the message and how it's received? The words so concise, it won't matter who You Are, the truth is self-evident and unchanging. Or is that the beauty of art, of writing, of the process - that we discover our own truth in words that can change as we do... and it's a mind-bending, ego-less way of being a writer if I can do that.

That's the question I must resolve through the work, the discipline of the words of the action of writing, of putting it all on the page... pretty ugly language bending it's way and discovering a new country, getting a glimpse of the eternal universe in a way never before considered. That's the hope anyway. And always I will go back and forth like the pretty ugly dilemma and wonder, and agonize, if I am up to the task.

I know when I write. I know how I write. Have I ever hit those moments, those times in life where it just flows and it's easy? Always forever striving for the balance and thinking that the anguish of my life can somehow be eased with the frantic sessions at the keyboard and in the notebooks by my bed. So what happens when I'm not in the anguish? What happens when I'm in the pretty, in the light, when I am joy? Is it only the pretty that will show up? And is that what I want? Will I even remember the ugly? Because the ugly seems more beautiful sometimes. And how can you touch the something beautiful within everyone if you don't break through the ugly barrier with the familiar of what we know and something that people can relate to?

We cannot know Pretty, Beautiful, Hope, Love, really know it, experience it, embrace it - without knowing, without having understood the Ugly, the Grotesque, the Faithlessnes, the Emptiness.

And isn't it true, that when I have seen the archetypes of yearning and anguish and self-involved pity, people just feeling sorry for themselves and running over others to satisfy what cannot be satisfied, isn't it true that I have seriously hated those characters? Yes, it's true. I've hated Madame Bovary. Hated her. Hated her. I wonder if I read the book again will I see the pretty? Because now I can relate.

So I want to create these characters, these slices of true humanity and I'm so tentative because I don't want to create the ugly part of them... because what if it exposes the ugly parts that we don't want to see? I only want them to be pretty. But what's the use? How exciting is it - how much writing can be done when the story goes like this...

She was born on a beautiful day. From the beginning she was embraced as a precious gift, as evidence of the undeniable love that can exist between two people. And the three of them created a family. Of love. A complete circle. And it just got better. And it never got worse. And they all lived happily ever after. The end.

Even Maria Shriver dropped to her knees in disbelief, in overwhelm when confronted with the beauty of her work, of her effort, of her life. And the solid beauty of her parent's love never in doubt, the undeniable talent and intelligence of who she was as a woman, a mother, a daughter - was always acknowledged by a core larger than herself, through their words and their love. Always. And still, she hit the floor with the news of her worth, of her talent, of her contribution.

We are so blind to the pretty because we believe in the ugly. And we doubt the pretty because it doesn't stay that way. Sometimes it's pretty. Sometimes it's ugly. And it's because of what we Are... and we think pretty is a fluke and ugly is the truth. Even in the everyday, most of us cannot believe. Cannot have faith. It's the pretty. Only the pretty that is true. It's the truth so entirely that encompasses the ugly completely, and ugly becomes a part of it... but pretty never becomes a part of ugly. It just can't. Ugly is a drop of water in the ocean. Pretty, beauty, who we Are is the Ocean. Can't be separated, can't be quantified, can't be overwhelmed by the drop.

Saturday Night

Around 8:30, she started to feel a certain pounding in her heart. And a wave of some emotion she couldn't put a handle on swept over her. But he noticed. He saw it instantly when she leaned back in the chair, eyes shut, and lifted her face toward the ceiling for just a fraction of a moment.

"What's wrong? Why are you sad?"

"I don't know." And, truthfully, she didn't.

So, she ignored her pounding heart, and the ache, the yearning that tinged everything a darker shade, the way their television has always been too dark, the way you can't see some of the details that are there in the dark corners, in the dark frames.

Watching the movie, sitting next to him, she decided to not feel sorry or scared for herself. It was a scary movie, a thriller, a psychological thriller and visually graphic, grippingly tense. She normally didn't sit next to him while they watched DVDs anyway. She normally sat in her chair, he sat on his couch, because his couch was front and center of the television, of the surround sound speaker system, and though, they could both lounge comfortably on her chaise lounge, he preferred to sit, front and center on the loveseat, his couch. And if she wanted to join him, well, ok, but he wasn't completely at ease and neither was she... they both sat up on the loveseat that was his couch. Paradoxically, very little loving ever happened on that loveseat.

There were times she had leaned into him, but he would move his right arm out of the way with a trace of impatience, the fraction of the thought, "Now what does she want?" briefly apparent in his body language and his facial expression. And then, he would set his arm over her shoulder, not to embrace her, but to figure out how he could get comfortable with the inconvenience of her in his arms. Then she would lean away sideways, and lay her legs over his. The blanket over her legs was even more of an imposition on him. He didn't want to be covered, he wasn't cold, so he put up with it for a while, but would shift and move the blanket away, and then notice what he was doing, and put it back, with a sigh.

Yeah, it was better, especially since she was feeling a little tender - to just sit up.

When the movies were over (they had watched two, along with some of the extra features), and the guests had left, he asked, "Do you want to go back to your chair?" It was because of the guests that she had sat with him. So the guests would have a place to sit. And now, he wanted to get comfortable. To finally relax.

And she did go back to her chair as they watched the second movie's director commentary. It really didn't matter anymore. She no longer needed soothing comfort and she had really gotten over everything. Because the strange feeling, the pounding heart had stopped sometime between 12:30 and 1 am.

She had been watching the movies, but a part of her was front and center of the strange sensation through her body and thoughts going through her head, her very own private surround sound theater of imagination happening.

Was it because of the decision to not feel sorry for herself? Was it because she herself created the ache and the yearning? All she had wanted was for someone to hold her hand, or stroke her leg, comfortingly soothing her through the intense drama of the movie. You know, like any girl would. But, no, the feelings had started even before the movies had started. So, while a reasonable explanation, and a more practical, realistic one at that, it wasn't it.

Here's the part that she really remembered. There was a time during those four or five hours, when she distinctly felt someone else thinking of her. Someone miles away. He could have been on the other side of the world, but she felt him. And she heard, literally heard, a song playing. Every word, every musical note, every part of it. As if a radio was playing somewhere else in the house. That was what had occurred to her in the first wave, that someone was thinking of her. Someone she knew, someone she couldn't have. And, it had gotten stronger with the song, and it made perfect sense, and she didn't doubt for one minute the truth of that thought: He was thinking of her.

He was reading her letters or rereading them, or thinking of them in his head. Listening to the song that she had sent him, either really listening to the song or reviewing it in his head - considering every lyric. He was thinking of her, even as he was loving someone else. Even as he was touching someone else or maybe just touching himself. He was thinking of her and feeling so sad too. Feeling so guilty for the dilemma of them, and feeling responsible for her pain, confusion, wanting.

He was taking the song literally, and maybe more literally than the words of her letters because whether or not she had known it at the time she had sent it to him, the song evoked a sad truth, more truthful than her letters, her words. There is always more message in the things that are not said, than in the things that were written. Always. Her letters tried so hard to be positive and hopeful, and to never blame, never want more than he could give, and never offer more than he could take, but so often, all of that was there in the things she didn't write.

She heard the song along with him, as he was thinking of it, as he was thinking of her. And she really listened to the words too. She was watching the movie, but another part of her, a deeper, more everlasting part of her was listening to the song with him. Contemplating certain lyrics, contemplating the chorus and together, though miles apart, she felt the truth of her written and unwritten words, the song, the poetry of their connection and she felt his pain too. His guilt. She felt that. And there was even a moment, where she said, in her mind's thought, "I'm sorry." Because she felt guilty too. She regretted the pain he felt. That she had caused, what her desires, what her yearning, what her hopes, sometimes knowingly and sometimes unwittingly stirred up in him. "It's ok, baby, it's ok." She wanted to comfort him, soothe him.

Just like every time else she ever thought of him - she also felt actual physical sensations of him. She felt his hands on her, his mouth moving across her body, she felt his kisses. And a part of her, a playful part of her, kept track of time... and thought, "Wow, two hours, three hours... and the loving doesn't stop. You go, boy."

As always, the conflicting playfulnes of their connection, and the more obvious, more damaging, more painful reality of their connection was there.

When the feelings had passed, as they always do, strong emotions always pass, she tried to remember the song. To test the theory of her imagination. There was a moment when she couldn't for the life of her think of the melody at all. And then, she laughed at herself and thought, "You're probably just playing games with your head. You know the song. Come on - you know it." And it was that feeling, that tip of the tongue feeling, where you know the word you can't remember, the tune to the song, the answer to the question, the name to the face. But he wasn't listening to the song anymore, and so she couldn't hear it in her head anymore.

All she knew, all she believed was that she got to share, four or five hours with him. Communicating with him, touching his heart, his mind, sharing something. With him, as she sat, at home, on a Saturday night watching movies, and he was wherever he was, with whoever he was with, doing whatever it was he was doing. That is, besides, thinking of her.

My Immortal

Yea... this is it. This is Emma's state of mind... this is Jeremy in her head. And who knows really why it touches me so...
_______________________

I'm so tired of being here
suppressed by all my childish fears
and if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
because your presence still lingers here
and it won't leave me alone

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you'd cry I'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
and I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have...all of me

you used to captivate me
by your resonating light
but now I'm bound by the life you left behind
your face it haunts my once pleasant dreams
your voice it chased away all the sanity in me

these wounds won't seem to heal
this pain is just too real
there's just too much that time cannot erase

when you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
and I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have... all of me

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
but though you're still with me
I've been alone all along

when you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
when you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
and I held your hand through all of these years
but you still have... all of me
______________
Can you believe I have been trying to listen to this song for 20 minutes to confirm and verify the lyrics? I listened and listened... and the phone would ring about halfway through -- three times that happened. That has to mean something. I guess it depends on who was calling. I guess it also depends on who I was hoping would call? How come I don't have more friends? Ok.. that's an aside for another day.

Party Like It's 1999

March 8, 1999

Who is really the hunter, who is being hunted, really? It sounds so animal, it feels so wild.

Your kiss could make me sane. Or it could drive me crazy. Your choice. Or mine. It's the same, really.

I picture it more as a journey. A destination that we knew of all along. The something within us that made us believe in something beyond ourselves. When we were five years old, when we were fifteen - what sustained us through the dark nights and gray days.

Somehow everything was going to be all right.

We would find each other - eventually - inevitably.
___________________________

So what do you think of that? How's that for your memoirs? Crazy words in my journal from ... um... fucking 20 days shy of SIX YEARS ago. What the hell?

And here's the first blurb on STORIES THAT NOBODY HEARS --- written sometime after March 22, 1999 and before April 11, 1999.

If you want a love story, if you want a sob story - you haven't come to the right place. Go away. Go away now. (Note to self: Secret fear that people will.) When you are your most vulnerable, when your actions speak of volumnous weakness and cowardice, you probably don't go crowing about it on The Jerry Springer Show. No, the loudest, most obnoxiously vocal of us have only fingers to point and accusations to scream at times like that. I know there was something I was thinking of. Something that, or rather, someone, that I was particularly proud of because they had confessed it all. All their shortcomings, out in the open. Who was it? Was it you?

Look at me. Look at me. Look at my face. It means don't look at my actions, my body, my clothes. Look into my eyes and see me.

It just is. What I've done. It just is. I don't believe I need to feel one way or another about what is, let alone, what was. I believe that's what God does just acknowledges what is and doesn't feel one way or another.

It is just a story and it means everything and it means nothing all at once. Find meaning in it, or make it meaningless.

What did Jesus say on the cross? "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." And we don't. It wasn't, "Father help them, forgive them, because they're killing the Son of God. Because they're being blasphemous towards You." But I believe it was, "Forgive them because they're killing... out of fear, out of ignorance, simple reactionary nothing." All the things that when piled high on a pedastal - are nothing.

And what if I cause, if I be the cause, behind a whole new revolutionary way of thinking? If I say, "You are the power." I think Jesus' quotes are completely misinterpreted. I believe he meant (hahaha, I know, I know, "God meant..." hahahaha... "God says"... I mean, seriously, you think I don't know how that sounds?) (But, still - I say it - so there!) not "follow me" like, "pray to me" "It's only through me", that "without me you are lost"... but really like "these things are truth". And if you love (or don't love) one another it's going to be Ok.
__________________
And then I go off into some crazy rant that makes no sense - I know how unlikely we all take that to be, but it's true. Makes no sense at all. I'm almost tempted to scratch it all out of existence right now. But I'm gonna leave it because maybe one day it'll make sense again.

"I'm becoming the woman you've wanted. But I don't want you anymore."

I don't know where that's from... but it's written on the side of the page and laughed on the page, and I laughed aloud just right now when I read it. Funny shit. These are the stories that I tell myself and try to determine whether or not they've been heard before. The trick is to give voices to those who have been silenced, or who have never spoken up. The idea is to bring forth a truth that exists in the corner of everyone's life, universally pertinent, and somehow recognize how alone that truth feels. That's why this shit is hard. That's why it takes so long. That's why I doubt myself.

Time to let it be a different story. Where there is No Doubt... where there is only Faith. Where I shine... where I remember, and by remembering for myself, help others to remember - "I am a child of God. I came from the womb of creation."

Memoirs

"This is so crazy I couldn't even write about in my memoirs..."

And I thought, it occurred to me, that it was true. I don't think I could even write about it in my memoirs. Because there would have to be such an explanation behind it and it still wouldn't make sense. It couldn't be articulated. Someone would either understand, relate, get it -- or they wouldn't. And, most of the time, I don't get it.

So instead, if someone were to look at my journal -- the one entitled, "A Woman's Journal" they would find all these poems, frantic quotes from movies, letters to no one in particular, it would be a mystery. Like Beethoven's, Immortal Beloved. Who the hell was that letter to? You know. Speculation abounds - but no one would know. Because it just wouldn't make sense. How the train is always two minutes too late. You answer the phone on the last ring, but the caller has already begun to put the receiver down.

to be continued...