I usually always pick the loneliest and ugliest ones, for fricks sake.
::
Dave is coming back today after being away for over a week. I miss his presence in the house. It's hard, running into the laundry in the middle of the night holding a huge carving knife ... screaming I CALLED THE COPS to all of the imaginary murderers. Real hard. I'm so tired.
Yesterday I walked into a large shopping centre that sells clothes like this:
After I took that photo, the salesgirl came up to me and said, "It's beautiful, isn't it?" I looked her right in the eyes, to detect any trace of humour ... no. She was serious. I said yes, it really was beautiful. (Fo' yo MAMA.)
Nothing was good. Uncomfortable in my own skin. A raw nerve ending. I wandered around. I sat having a chicken burger in the food hall at 11am, like a lost and lonely loser .... because I was a lost and lonely loser. Hey that's ok - it was the truth in that minute, Know Thyself and all that. I rang my sister Linda and she made me laugh so hard that people were giving me dirty looks. I am a loud laugher, people. At least I'm not sitting there feeding my kids nuggets and coke at 11am. (Just sitting in my glass house made of chicken burgers.)
I got a Chinese massage for 1.5 hours. It was the best. The woman treated my body with such tenderness she brought me to tears. She seemed to care more about me than I cared about me.
There's only curtains partitioning people in the massage place ... the chick next to me had a mobile phone that just kept ringing. Her ringtone blared, all four times it rang ... "Wake up in the mornin' feelin' like P. Diddy ..."
I was all Zen until Ke$ha kept interrupting. After an inordinate amount of time spent on my buttocks, I started to wonder if my massage therapist was coming on to me. What would I do if she did? It must have happened, somewhere in the world. If I googled "massage therapist made a pass at me .." I would probably read of someone's account of that, somewhere.
Do you ever get the feeling that google spoils finding shit out now? Back in the olden days, we had a stack of encyclopedias. My second dead dad used to just pull a random one out most nights and start reading it. Mostly because he was a wanker.
I wanted to get all Banksy-ified and write in a simple "E" to this next sign. Can you guess where?
::
This post isn't going anywhere. Is it supposed to? My Spirit is a sad sack this week. That's ok. All I want to do is write poems. Every day in April for Taylor Mali and every Friday for Amy Turn Sharp. The whole world is a poem. I haven't written one in years. Well, only if you don't count my blog posts. Or the way I fold the laundry ... the way I love my babies ... the way I think about my first ever suicide note at the ripe old age of seven. All poetry.
The gap in my husbands bottom teeth is a poem. The letter from his oncologist. The cobwebs in the Buddha. The lines on my face; the marks etched into my chopping board and my heart.
Where do you hold your poems?
how can we add that E? That would cheer us all up,.
ReplyDeleteThat shirt/dress thing is UGLY.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like the leopard is sniffing inappropriate areas!
I actually googled "massage therapist made a pass at me" and your blog post came up first. That answers THAT question.
Also, I'll hold you on my shoulders so you can write an E on that poster. Just for shits and giggles x
LOL ahh that really looks like the Riff Plaza, if it is I'm moving to your 'hood. Totally unrelated but when I was trying to be a hairdresser I used to get a bit horny washing peoples hair - yer that's pretty creepy hey, I'll slink away now *eep*
ReplyDeleteIt's totally cliched but I keep my poems in my baby's wonder. Nawww.
ReplyDeleteYou know, if you go back to "Camel To" wearing a high vis vest and put out some witches hats while you scale a ladder to fix the sign, NO ONE will question you. Such is the awesome power of the high vis. Gotta love culture jamming :P
Wow. Your last few lines left me breathless...
ReplyDeleteSo of course, I googled: "massage therapist made a pass at me". To which the first half of the page resulted in your blog! LOL
ReplyDeleteNot only is that dress horrifying, but the fact that people actually make mannequins with nipples is even worse.
ReplyDeleteWhat's worse than the mannequin with nipples are the fake perky nipples they sell to put in your bra to make it look like you're not wearing a bra, but you're "turned on" (aka really fuckming cold). Poetry is my morning coffee, waiting for me to drink it, and me waiting for it to be drinkable.
ReplyDeleteThat reminded me a bit when I went around the local town on my own. I have no sense of direction and got lost a few times even though I had being there many times before, I felt like a loner and loser as everyone seemed to be in pairs or in groups, so I would pull out my phone every now and again to pretend to text someone or actually text someone, just to make it look like I had friends of my own (I do have friends if you was wondering)
ReplyDeleteReading your post made me so sad for you, but then I realized I was seeing me in your words too. I was sad for both of us. Wish I could give you a hug, or at least squeeze your buttocks :-)
ReplyDeleteNamaste my friend
You should have called me, I would have sat and had a chicken burger with you, my friend.
ReplyDeleteUmmm did you want to put the E beside the cut and make it cute? ;-)
I wish I could write poems.
Is that a leopard on your pussy or are you just glad to see me?
ReplyDeleteapologies x
Just discovered you in the X factor top 25. And I can see why. You write like the wind. It flows, it's breezy and it's easy to sit here and listen to it. Love it. xx
ReplyDeleteYou know I used to be connected to this tap of poetry -- it was just there -- more than any other kind of writing (there's a story behind how i came to write short stories -- maybe I'll write it someday) and then one day I woke up and they were gone. Gone. Like my dad's spirit.
ReplyDeleteGone. The strangest thing; my constant companion. Maybe it's like a seance and I just need to summon them back -- do you think?
I love you lady. It's a misty day here and I spend it sometimes dreaming of what the trees look like in Australia. My biggest fear is that I'll never get to see them.
Love, love, love, (and united in annoyance of Ke$ha who W LOOOOOVES)
P
I didn't mean that comment to sound SOOO mopey. Jesus Spring better arrive SOOON. THere are still chunks of ice on the edges of my yard and it's getting me down....XOOXO
ReplyDeleteOh man it looks like the stores at the flea market I avoid, a mannequin with nips that rock hard is never going to be good!
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing more uplifting than a "Camel toe" joke. Thank you. I truly needed that today. I was having a sh*tty morning until I read your post. Well, it's still sh*tty, but you at least made me smile.
ReplyDeleteAlso, be careful Googling about massage therapists coming on to you. I have a feeling you will find a few Penthouse Letters in your search.
I have the best massage therapist. I want to keep it that way, non-sexual. Everything out the windows when she works on my buttocks--she continues her ways....I'm glad.
ReplyDeleteI love poems! I keep them here in blogger land but I really love how you ended this... beautiful! :-)
ReplyDeleteI love the randomness of this post--totally stream of conscious and similar to the directions my mind goes when I'm trying to write something. I love your sense of humor and the details you choose to focus on in your post. Great job and gorgeous ending :)
ReplyDeleteI'm with Vee. I dare you to call me sometime when you're feeling odd. I don't care if you wake me up. Although I won't be able to make you laugh as loud as Linda does. :)
ReplyDeletePoems. Hmmm. I carry them in my armor. To cushion the space between the real me and the sharp and confining things that grate on my too thin, Irish skin.
Under the furniture among the crumbs and the dust and lost bits and your shock and disgust at what I don't do, but should.
When I cook for real ... in the tomatoes and the garlic and the basil.
In my photos. Words are awesome. Pictures go where words cannot, with less effort and sometimes more grace, if less precision.
Poems in the rage ... oh. the. rage. In the peals of baby laughter. In the way he seduced a room full of Other Mothers at a meeting last night, as though they were there ~just~ to see him (of course?) when they wouldn't look kindly at me except he opens people with a wave, with "So Big." With breathy "Gahs" and a blinding, toothless grin over his tiny green shirt with four colorful, Bad Boy, graphic skulls on it. The way, when he has them eating out of his hand, he thinks better of it and collapses his face into the crook of my neck and feels shy. In my blessed relief that he's social and fine. In the way he looks eight years old when I hand him my cell phone. In the tufts of hair that stick up as though he just hatched yesterday. In the renaissance ringlets of Three. And the peaches and cream of his cheeks under the deep blues. In the charm of his new words, words that are bigger than he is ... falling sincerely into streams of thought like the proverbial rubber tree carried lightly by an ant. In gawky Eleven. In her unholy, mad cow, totally *&^%ed girl dramas and how I can't save her from Them either. Or save her from herself. I can't even save me. In the letting go. In her learning. In her unmet needs. In her raw nerves. In how I hear my own rage in her bickering and lording over the younger ones. In the wicked humor and the streaks of bright light in Eight. In how he doesn't know his challenges from his strengths. Yet. In how he misses me since his brothers were born and how he doesn't say it because it just is. In his gorgeous jawline. In the smell of boys. In my first bucket of tea. In that two inches at the back of my husband's neck that gets farmer-tanned in summer under a streak of white hot white where his dark hair is trimmed. In my bed when I make it. In everything that's broken around here. In everything I don't understand that cuts me.
I'll stop now.
XXOO
Sometimes, after I come here and read one of your posts, I can't even speak.
ReplyDeleteI love your last 2 lines.
Thank you for the lovely walk around inside your head.
Thank you.
I have been looking blogs of note for weeks, waiting for something to speak to me, and here you are ..thank you. Now devouring your blog post by wonderful post.
ReplyDeleteThank God I've read your blog today I am feeling off today too, sure as they say loneliness loves companion... hehe
ReplyDeleteI like your blog entries it's all as real as you can be... a constant reminder for me to free my mind and keep on blogging no matter how shitty things might be nothing beats writings that come from the heart that's where all my poems stay ☺
I have a really loud laugh too. I receive mixed reactions of either smiles or distaste. Either way, I feel great afterwards.
ReplyDeleteOK, take two (where did the first disappear to?)
ReplyDeleteI can't decide which is worse, that someone thinks they'd look good in that dress or that someone designed that thinking someone would look in that dress.
Also, in midst of writing post for the weekend about google and how it's taken all the ambiguity out of life when I saw what you said above (see, there's a reason I say "Only connect"). Too funny. Though you say so well in two sentences what I bitch and moan about for paragraphs (excess is, after all, the American way).
I had to look at the second photo several times, trying to work out where you'd put an E... you see, in my mind, it already said "camel toe". It took a few moments to realise the E was in fact missing.
ReplyDeleteAnd now I'm craving a Chinese massage...
It's 8.48am and I came here to read these comments and you are all just so bloody amazing and wise. Who said people are arseholes? You are most definitely *not* arseholes, you are cool. And not because you're saying nice things to me, but because you comment with such a way that lets me to peek between your lungs, into your Hearts. That's what's missing from the world, you know. Heart. It has been extremely odd, being on blogs of note after a huge blogging conference. My readership totally did a Waynes World .... SCHWING! Completely freaky. The stupidest first-world problem ever.
ReplyDeleteThanks for telling me where your poems are, thanks for saying hi. xxoo
Write a poem. There is nothing better then seeing the words of a poem typed out in front of you.
ReplyDeleteu knw, i sort f waited til every1 had commented...i am truly glad i follow up on ur blog. Giess bein blog of note is no small play..nt work either, at least the way u put it.
ReplyDeleteThoughts and words and pictures and everything just flowin and ebbin and tiding and stuff. It's like a trackless train of thought if u know what i mean..
Took me a while to get the camel toe joke, i don't know if that means my mind is essentially not corrupt(not that all these good people are) or that i'm just a whole lot slower. All in all, ur post was a slice of literary heaven and i wait for the next piece..
I wish I had some poems...all I know are a few Shel Silverstein (Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place) and that Dorothy Parker poem regarding suicide (my aunt actually paid me to learn that one - she tried to put some poetry in me, but I was resistant). I am too practical and pragmatic for poetry.
ReplyDeleteDo you think designers and ad people are sometimes just making fun of the rest of us? Because that's what I'm getting from your pictures.
It's a good thing I don't worry when my husband's not home. I would spend half my life running around screaming at imaginary intruders. What do you need to do to make your home the safest place on earth, whether Dave's there or not?
This is beautiful. This is what I love about you. You can tell the raw honest truth and still have it be a poem when you're done. I sugar coat the truth in a poetic crust to make it more palatable going down and by the end it tastes so sweet, I'm not sure it's the truth anymore.
ReplyDeleteI don't hold my poems anywhere. 99.9% of the time I think poems are for pussies. I think death is about the only time poems come into their own. Because despite studying English at a tertiary level I am clearly an uncouth lout.
ReplyDeleteWell check out my blog...its about finding inspiration although I am an artist I like to participate in anything that has to do with creativity like poetry. I am just journaling the things I do daily to hopefully get inspired one of these days I decided to blog about because I figured i am not the only one going through this.
ReplyDeleteA lot of my poetry goes in my blog but some of it hides out in a journal or my cell phone.
ReplyDeleteI hardly ever know where it's going - like you with this blog entry. That's the way I like writing, full of mystery and surprises. You're spinning the web of who you are without quite knowing what pattern it's going to create.
Well at least with the 'E' it would make sense.
ReplyDeletelove that leopard print dress who makes it ?
ReplyDeleteLoved your blog... I'm a lonely looser too (aren't we all?).
ReplyDeleteI love you Eden. That is all.
ReplyDeleteThat is a serious ugly ass dress. And is anyone else disturbed by the fact that the manequins have nipples? Seriously?
ReplyDelete