deciding it was time to write i moved to light the living room candle, discovering it’d been hollowed out, rendered useless, like a pint of ice cream put back in the freezer with two bites to its name. i went upstairs to pull a new one from my bedroom stash, and on the way to the closet found myself collapsed and scrolling on my bed, and by the time i realized what i’d been doing in there, i was already downstairs again, staring blankly into space, harboring scarce to zero recollection of the ordeal.
the candle is now lit, though whatever light left in my brain seems to have gone out. i go to the coffee shop with a migraine, assuming the excedrin will kick in by the time i get there. it doesn’t, but i work anyway. a woman on tiktok told me i should do it even though i’m tired. i should do it even though i’m grumpy. i should do it even though there’s a pain behind my eye so sharp it could cut clean through my skull and land in my matcha, so silently torturous it wouldn’t even make a splash.
on sunday at the park a strange man approached me, told me a new pillow would probably fix my neck pain. he’d been reading my energy, he said, and i needed to break the pattern i’d been perpetuating with men – letting them possess me like a weapon they could wield.
“i claimed a piece of your soul,” he said, with a smile so ominous i assumed he was doing a bit. “it’s to protect you. that person will not be able to hurt you anymore.”
he continued on, articulating a variety of true but hardly beautiful details about my past, and the longer i listened, i felt a creeping darkness close in around us like a premature dusk.
it’s hard to accurately stress how truly sinister this interaction was. feeling definitively cursed, i threw my tote over my shoulder, walked light speed down some street, just trying to get somewhere else. a perfect fall sunday: squandered by this odd entitlement to my unseen contents. i felt like storefront with its glass smashed through.
amy winehouse spoke for everyone when she said what kind of fuckery is this. (did you know “me & mr. jones” was originally called “fuckery”?)
one of my mother’s closest friends is an energy healer and reiki therapist and perhaps the singular spiritual practitioner i trust is not making shit up. immediately i texted her describing the incident, how disturbed i felt, the alarmingly nonconsensual nature of the exchange.
“oh yes, i can see why that would be disturbing,” she replied. “we will definitely clear this!”
short of sprinting from the scene, what else could i have done? i hear so often protect your energy, but this guerilla soul-stealing ambush was, unfortunately, not in the handbook.
how much energy protecting is reasonable before it starts to feel like never leaving the house? not driving to avoid a car crash? not eating to avoid food poisoning? this is the paradox of living a “safe” life – at some point, it’s just impractical, and you accept your weird curse for the anomaly it is.
my restless leg syndrome is opening a franchise in my arms. either that, or i spent sunday night tossing and thrashing, exorcising whatever demon the curse guy imbued in me. (which i’m definitely over by the way!)
after about an hour of psychosis-inducing anguish, i typed restless leg syndrome treatment into google. avoid or decrease the use of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. sigh! i hate when what i need is both obvious and simple. and what i need is not what i want, and what i want is not what i need.
i mulled it over, stood up to stretch, considered what i’d have to do to make sure i’d end up doing nothing. i blamed 2017, the restaurant industry, and everyone but myself. i’m still trying, like last year, and the year before that. i tend toward restlessness already, always have, always will, so if god’s using my legs as a punchline, i don’t care, that’s pretty funny.
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on saturday D picked me up on his new motorcycle, and we rode up into the foothills to watch the eclipse in the cemetery. my first time ever on a motorcycle (don’t tell him, but i prefer an e-bike); i felt safe in his padded jacket and helmet we were surprised to notice fit us both pretty well, given that he’s 6’5” and i have a huge head.
we arrived just before peak and put our glasses on and looked. it was mostly overcast, but there it was, all bright and mystical, from behind the clouds appearing to play peek-a-boo with the ground. the night before A and i watched the johnny cash biopic, walk the line, and i couldn’t help but hum “ring of fire” as i watched the moon absorbed by the sun like a cell, a biological process exemplified in every life form, earthbound or otherwise. it was beautiful and awe-inspiring and it didn’t change my life. i went down, down, down, and the flames went higher.
from our spot in the grass, maybe a hundred yards away, we saw folks in black gathered at a funeral, their somber shapes lined up in a thematic crescent moon formation. for this literal lowering into the grave, we decided we might lower our voices, as up until then we’d been quite literally hollering at the sky.
life, a round thing, is always ending and beginning. oh, to leave this plane like the lorax through that hole in the sky – a portal on the other side of which i can only imagine the expanse.
D offered his glasses to a man with a dog, and they talked about the best off-roading trails in the canyons.
“my favorite part about having a motorcycle is that everyone assumes i know what i’m talking about,” he laughed. “i know nothing about that thing other than i ride it.”
glancing over at the funeral, formation had changed. now they all stood, laughing, smiling, glasses glued to the misshapen sun.
“corpse” feels to me a frigid term to describe what actually is: another brave body for which the light will leave, and return.
“life, a round thing, is always ending and beginning. oh, to leave this plane like the lorax through that hole in the sky – a portal on the other side of which i can only imagine the expanse.” Love. Also love the last line.