Two Swords

"Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world." - Lao Tzu

I'm trying to be open. Or should I say, I have no illusions about having a choice in the matter. My eyes could never close tightly enough or long enough to shunt the truth away.

I wish I could see the warrior in myself. I read about ancient Rome years ago, and a certain type of gladiator called Dimachaeri - "two swords". They fought with no shield. I always saw myself and Jaye as two swords. We fought back to back many times, and even slept that way to show fear our faces. I've mapped roads into deep cold and darkness with her help. I question the kindness of now. I feel the quiver underfoot and question foundations of solid rock. Can I trust it to hold me up? Is it the pulse of the living earth in the bedrock or an impending failure I feel rising through my legs?

Where can I go to still myself? Where can I shut off the answers that bring more question and uncertainty? Is there an ordinary world? Is there lasting peace? Does God care. Does He.

An entire week has melted away without my notice.

I've been feeling really silent and withdrawn, and I haven't been online at ALL since Sunday. Feeling bad hasn't helped, but mostly it's because I feel faded out and have nothing to say. I didn't even realize so much time had passed. I've been lost up in my head. Remotely viewing. Caught and suspended between times. It's as if I've lost my mooring and am drifting.

The outer world doesn't seem to exist. I feel disconnected in a way that has caused me concern and bafflement, though I know where it must originate. The bafflement comes from which string to pull in a ball of a multitude of strings.

It's strange. I'm not afraid of it, but I can't seem to get loose either, or care to try. I'm just floating. I'm on mental walkabout where conversation is impossible because there's no one around but me. I feel like a ghost.

There are too many triggers, too many things on my mind to even begin to focus on just one, like being attacked by hornets - it doesn't seem to matter which one of the horde stung you.

I have felt this way before, a few times, usually in the aftermath of something truly horrible or exhausting. I just power down and go dead in the water. Talking to me is hard, even in person, because it's as if I'm not even there.

I remember once when this happened - it was, as I said, after something terrible and upheaving - my mother saying to me, "Go back to fishing, Peter..." (After Jesus was crucified and the apostles scattered, everyone felt at ends and shaken. Many of them went back to what they knew, sort of a consoling reboot, I suppose. Peter went back to fishing.) I sat for hours and hours every day saying nothing, writing or drawing.

I feel like silence is coming out from me.

A Good Day with Henry Ford

Yesterday, my dad came by and picked me up so I could slalom around in his 1995 convertible Mustang to see how I liked the car. The clutch is tricky (modified) so I guess he expected that I might need some break-in time with it, but no. It was so on, it couldn't be off. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's drive the heck out of a car. It's in my blood. Once I get a steering wheel in my hand, I'm gone, baby, gone! I don't know what it does to me, being in a car, but I come alive, and by the time I got home, I was glowing all over. Dad said we could borrow the Mustang until he sold it, which is fine and dandy by me! I've been a little high ever since. I can't describe it. I have such an attachment to cars that it goes beyond just a utilitarian thing or a thrill. It's why I became a mechanic. Some indescribable thing in me.

When I get to manhandle a V8, I turn into a beast. My dad was riding shotgun (which he never really does ever) and I could tell he was proud of me. It's because of him that I took to cars like a piranha to water. There hasn't been a car yet that I couldn't drive and I'm proud of that. It really is an S-like fusion between me and the car. I get the "feel" of it, orient myself and then I'm off like a bat out of hell. My first driving test ever at 15, the DMV lady told my mother, "That child can up/down shift and accelerate through turns. You'll have NO problem with that girl."

(I wish I knew how to float the rear-end through a turn though. I need to pester Helpful Bear to show me how.)

We stopped in the empty subdivision we were tearing around in to get an up-close look at a very old huge oak tree. We got out of the car and walked around the tree and were marveling at the sheer size and expanse of it's canopy, and pointed out places where the limbs had fused together and re-branched all over the place. I stood on a gnarled root and patted the tree and said, "Hello, tree! We live next door!" My dad laughed at me, then said, "Hey, look. A deer." It was standing not too far away in the old clearcut left by the power company. Interesting.

Things Jaye and I Did Together Yesterday

• 1. watched "The Young and the Restless"
• 2. ballet-danced to hold music
• 3. were chased by a palmetto bug

1. [Scene:]

M: "That Billy Abbott. Needy much?"
J: "Adam and Sharon are totally gonna do it."


2. [Scene:]

J: "I'm in the queue on hold. Watch them hang up on me..."

[hold music playing on speaker phone]

M: "Say... is that Swan Lake... no... The Nutcracker..."
J: "Sugar Plum Fairy." [arches her arms, rellevee]
M: [joins in unison, pirouettes]
J: "Now, turn in reverse!"
[pirouetting in reverse]
[line goes dead, music stops]
J: "See! Hung up on me!"


3. [Scene:]

[Twins at the computer, heedlessly goofing off]

Lalalalalablahblahblahlalalalalblahdeblahlalalabla hblah!!

M: "Ack! A palmetto bug!"
J: [leaping from the computer chair] "Where is it?!" [sees it] "EEEWWWWW, gross!!!"

[the palmetto bug begins to charge at us]

J: "#@%*&$!! It flies!!"

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys]

M: [climbs up onto the exercise bike]
J: [scuttles behind the computer chair]

[Nasty villainous bug advances brazenly]

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys]

M: [swearing] [climbs up on mother's bed frame]

J: "I'm gonna throw something at it!"
M: "What?! Jaye, gross, don't!! ... something?"
J: "Something!"
M: "Like what?!"
J: "I don't know!"
M: "Wait! It's going behind that storage container!"
J: "Where is it?!"
M: [eureka] "Ok! It's gone! Run for it! GO GO GO!"

[Twins flee the room shrieking like alarmed monkeys]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

J: [shuts the bedroom door behind us] "There! We're safe!"

[bug comes staggering out from UNDER the gap in the door after the humans]

M: "It's still chasing us!!"

[Twins shriek like alarmed monkeys and flee upstairs with the phone to call for back-up]

[phone mother]

[Mother laughs mockingly because she's got an unholy deal going with the bug underworld and is unafraid]

[Twins sit upstairs and sulk until she comes home from work]

Fambly Togethernesses

From Rio's diary...

Thursday -- Awake and unwell. Curled on couch. Jaye is now awake and is smooching my head... Overheard from the next room: My mother crowing in a silly manner about how great her lime Popsicle is, and my sister informing our physics professor friend that his neutered dog's compulsion to mate with orange juice containers and car tires was a combinant sign of scurvy and wanderlust.

Friday -- After reading a short article from the Victorian times about how printing presses would save the world, Sis and I amused ourselves by writing silly stories back and forth:

Me: There once was a Victorian girl named Prunella who was very negatively charged so when she fell into a black hole, it evaporated. Moral -- Don't drink cordials and drive your printing press.

Jaye: There once was a Victorian girl named Charles who was diagnosed with hysteria but really it was because she was a boy. Moral -- Liqueur causes your children to heedlessly use printing presses.

Sunday -- Mr. Smooch managed to shove his paws beneath the back glass door, pop the lock and swing the door open. He marched into the house cool as you please as if he belonged there. HOME INVASION KITTY....

Mom continues her fad of eating tons of canned corn. We tease her about it.

Me: Some poor chicken is being cheated out of his dinner.

Mother: (facetiously) But, honey, what use is it to him? Everyone knows that chickens can't open cans.

Me: (blank stare)

Jaye: Ahee hee hee!!

Cirque-squirrel de Soleil

My dad told me on the phone the other day that he'd finally discovered the key to the mysterious rapid-emptying of his bird suet feeder. Behold, the glory that is nature... Dad said the thief would hang by his back toes, then curl up to get more food, before dangling down again to eat, like so:



Squirrels are like criminals - they put a lot of energy and effort into being lazy. Also they wear tacky fur coats.

Rudie Can't Fail (And Neither Can Peaches)

Gifted a copy of "Essential Clash". Much excitement. It has some of my favorites on there, like "Straight to Hell", "Train in Vain", "Rudie Can't Fail", and "Bankrobber". It would be darn near perfect if only it had "The Call Up", but I'm not complaining too loudly. A word of warning, the double CD case is a nightmare. I had to pry it open with a small screwdriver and that, of course, didn't go as elegantly as prying with a small screwdriver sounds. I have trouble listening to the Clash sometimes because I still can't wrap my brain around Joe being dead.

Captain Slack and Fandragon dropped off some Ramones a few weeks back too, so I'm rather delighted. Yay, music!

And I promise this is the last you'll see of Peaches for awhile, but it was just too funny not to share. I was talking on the phone with Dad and happened to look out the back door. What a nutter. She looks like she's been shot with an elephant dart.

Mizz Peachz, Maxxin' n' Relaxxin'

Tell me she doesn't look kinda chubby. I went outside yesterday to help Mom bring in some heavy things from the car and I stopped to pet Peaches and I swear it was like squeezing an overstuffed pillow. Of course, she loves being squeezed because she's a freak like everyone else around here, but good grief, kitty, time for some Spanx, I think.

In other news, I feel really sick and can't believe I'm awake.