I Poke, You Poke, We Poke

"Oh, so you're a writer?"

The question was asked of me last night at a bar in Old Town, Lansing, called "The Chrome Cat" (or, as my former roommates often called it, "The Platinum Pussy").

How does a person like me -- like us, reader -- respond to such a question? I mean, yeah, sure, I write... much more often and better than the overwhelming majority of a population tht tlks like this 2 each other, evn when they spk! Not saying there's not value in that. Just sayin'.

I've spent the last 7 months of my life escaping the life of the mind. I got my first two graduate B's, broke up with my life partner, and basically ended my relationship to school for a while. I felt completely strung out -- completely untethered to all the things that had grounded me for the previous years. The process over the last 7 months has been to find a new grounding, like, the one at the end of my own legs, the one between them, and the one inside my mind. Trusting that those things can ground me even half as well as she did has been, if not the hardest thing I've ever done, the most isolated. The way I feel about the cleaving cannot be put into words, so I haven't shared it. I'm counseling myself through it, sublingually.

And so up creeps the rebound. They say she looks like her. They say they look like each other. They say they can't believe I never saw it. They say it's so obvious.

These next two certainly don't. One is thin, fit, reddish-brown hair she wears in low pigtails or wild down either side of her face. She's older, has a son, is extremely intertwined with her family. One is softer, brunette, a poet. An intellect. She reads what I read, knows what I know and then some and other stuff but right around the same areas. She teaches. She writes. She's a scholar-wannabe, like me. She has a daughter.

It's hard to find a dyke my age without offspring.

It's actually hard to find a dyke my age.

Neither will identify as lesbian. They're both resisting any identification with that. I get the sensation that they neither involve themselves with the queer community, although The Poet referred to herself as queer (I think she meant in thought and not in affiliation). That's strange to me, since all I've tried to do is to establish a presence in the lesbian community in Lansing/EL these last few months. They both pass for straight on the street. I'd never flirt with either of them if I met her at a bar. Then again, I don't flirt with anyone at a bar. I just dance and let the ladies come to me. ;)

But this is the problem. I'm so nervous about picking up women that I just don't, so if a pick-up takes place, I'm the one picked up! Any old riffraff from off the street can come hit on me; I'll just choose the one that suits my current mood. This has led to nothing but disaster in my past.

I've digressed.

To Be Fair: A Perfect Lie

Time's the revelator.

These last few weeks have been turbulent. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. There have been days when I could have blinked my eyes and been, at least momentarily and by absentia, a Christian, basking in the glow of the savior's unconditional love (while ignoring the sting of his father's unconditional scorn). Pushed, pulled. His love is like a see-saw, baby.

There have been days when I could have stayed in bed, a pool of my own filth from not having showered the night before, the night before (the night before?). The point of getting up, though, is to not waste a day. Yet I've wasted days. Before this box, with Net-Flix: L Word, X Files, Nip/Tuck. LOST.

It's a presence that affects me. It's been trying to push itself out, through my pores, the press of my kidneys, the inner lining of my walls, my fifth point of contact. It's an obsession that I can sometimes control. I tell myself I'm living for me. I tell myself I'm living life the way I want to. I tell myself I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. I feel sexy. I feel confident. I feel independent.

I feel like a fraud, on days like today. I look back on the months I've spent here in complete ignorance of some things, incomplete knowledge of others, alternatingly blissful and tormented, and I wonder how I managed to wrestle the presence into such a tightly-confined space, at the furthest outreaches of my consciousness, bound up with abjection. On days like today, the presence is a warm, velvety, glowing orb of light situated so centrally that, as a result, I must look through it to see everything else. It hinders and interprets my visions. It filters all introjective missives, allowing those that fit its agenda, forbidding those which make good and perfect sense.

I'm not an empty vessel, created just to house this presence and let my Me parts hover about its comforting radiations. I am an empty vessel, just not for this.

(The most completely filled I've ever felt was when I was completely filled with sadness. No other emotion can quite saturate my entire being and penetrate the depths of soul as this one. I know I'm not alone, but when I'm there, I feel it. I feel more than anything when I am there. I feel the most I've ever felt, the most of myself I've ever known, when I am there. It's the worst place in the world, the fullness of myself in sadness.)

I've got to tell myself something that will irrevocably connect myself to the deepest part, to see that I'm already filled, to acknowledge what fills and completes me, then to embrace, believe, accept all the good that I already am.

"If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you." -- Jesus (The Gnostic Gospels)