Oh yea.

I forgot about this place.

I'm over here for the time being: www.samoanqueens.wordpress.com

Maybe I'll come back later.

Alabama

In January of 1983, a figure was carved out of muddled red clay on the banks of the Coosa River. For the next several months, through the relentless heat of the Alabama summer, the small sculpture baked in a kiln disguised as a womb, until, finally, it emerged in October, a girl. Her bones are made of Alabama Clay, the river's remnants are still flowing in her veins. If you look closely, at her hips, her wrists, her collar bones, you can just make out the sides and tips of weathered Creek arrowheads. Her brown eyes are dark, cool caves where catfish rest in the summer; her unruly hair, a cotton field, dancing in the breeze.

I've wasted 24 years pretending I could escape the South, that I could belong somewhere else, but with each loss, every death, my bones howl, and my heart breaks, for home.

hostage monologue

It is 2008. It has been for, like, fourteen days. (Where have you been?)

Wesley and I moved to Georgia in 2003. Just seeing those words typed out on this screen is making my whole body itch. We bought our house in 2005, without considering--well, he may have--how long we'd be here. I'm starting to think that we'll be here forever. Are you trembling with fear? Is that just me?

I have always been the one in this relationship to day-dream of new faces and far-away places, but, lately, when he suggests such a life, I am instantly afraid. Where will we go? What will the people be like? What if it's awful and I hate it and I have no friends and what about school and our life here? I've never experienced these sort of feelings--this attachment to a place. I feel weak. It's disturbing. This may be the first time in my entire life that I've grown to love a place--to feel as though it is my home.
Perhaps Georgia is my captor and I'm experiencing Stockholm syndrome. At any rate, suddenly and unexpectedly, I fear change.

And then there are days like today, when I couldn't care less about caution, or the wind. Today, when I feel like I will die without a change of scenery. I want somewhere else--where I am surrounded by new people, new street-signs and skylines, and everything I see beneath the sun is brand-spanking new to me.

Maybe it's time. Maybe it's been time.

But where would we gooooooooooooooooooo? And how could we leave the Falcons?!?!?

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

A few months ago, I made what, at the time, seemed like a very attainable goal. I decided to go 90% handmade this Christmas. And when I say "hand-made," I mean "hand-made by me." I did not take in to account the fact that I work full-time, go to school every night, and generally do not have any "extra" time. There are, what, ten days until Christmas? (Oh my, I hadn't really counted that until just now.) I've been knitting so much that my right index-finger has become a bit inflammed, which really puts a damper on my whole hand-made thing. I will never knit with a needle smaller than 10.5 again. (Okay, that's totally a lie, but, um, whatever.) Knitting is definitely one of my favorite things in the world, though. I can't wait until I'm finished with these Christmas gifts so I can branch-out and try some new techniques. I would love to try some socks (with 10.5s? reeeeaaaally?), and some beanies, and, and, and, uh, everything else in the world. It's seriously addicting. Despite the fact that my finger is throbbing and every stitch is painful, I can't put down what I'm working on now, and that's why I'm trying to blog. Very unsuccessfully, I might add.

One year today.

When I was a little girl, maybe third grade or so, I played baseball for an all-boys team. I remember my dad standing on the edge of the practice field, smoking a cigarette (Doral Full-Flavor). He came to pick me up in his old Dodge Ram pick-up. (It was an ugly shade of green and the whole family could fit in the front seat--all five of us.) I don't remember the name of my team, though I played three seasons with them, but our uniforms were gray with our names printed in red. I was number 2 or 7; it changed from year to year.

We were practicing ground balls. My dad was standing a few yards away, watching but not watching, smoking and waiting so he could go back to the house and finish whatever it was that he was working on then. He always cupped his cigarettes; filter between thumb and forefinger, turned in toward his palm. It was a habit now, with the three of us kids, so he wouldn't burn us if we played too close. Anyway, Zach--who I secretly loved--was throwing ground balls to me as we rounded the end of practice. Baseball after baseball: bump, bounce, through the air, and a solid thud as it landed in my tiny leather glove. Bounce, bounce, bump, thud - again and again and again. Routine. But the boys didn't like having a girl on their team very much, and occasionally they would push me down and pick on me; all the things that boys do to girls at that age. I think Zach knew how I felt about him, which was the most vile, repulsive and embarrasing thing in the world to 7 year old boy. Oh, he hated me. And I could see it with each ball he threw. Faster and angrier they came, and with each thud my palm grew weary, and with each trembling catch my father would yell, "Don't be afraid of the ball!" Until, through the air, a baseball flew with no intention of bouncing or bumping, no, but focused, indeed, determined. Until I heard a crack, a pop! and tasted blood. Until, in my gloved-hand were two bloody teeth, and at my feet, a ball. Practice was over. My father walked, slowly, toward me, while the coaches swarmed, and he grabbed my hand in the midst of them, and we walked, slowly, toward the truck. Once we were no longer within ear-shot of my team-mates, he told me not to cry. "You better not let those boys see you crying." So, I waited until I was sitting high-up in that Dodge Ram pick-up, and the door was closed, and my seat-belt clicked, and we were bouncing, bouncing, dust rising from the gravel on the road, and my team-mates grew smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror, and my tongue found it's way into the empty space where my teeth once were, and my Daddy squeezed my hand and said, "It's okay if you want to cry now."



I thought I'd never stop crying.



But I did.




I thank God for the peace He has given me through this year. Sometimes I find myself so confused: is my father really gone? Did I ever have a father? It's as though my brain starts shutting itself down when I think of him. The shock is setting in all over again. Tears come, occasionally, and-just once (last night)-anger, but I have been able to catch myself for the most part and cry out to Jesus, and He comforts me.

Are the lights still bright on broadway, Joe?

"future men will write in their
histories
that we misunderstood death
that we were scared
of growing old, incapable of seeing
how we would be young again

and thinking that youth was
behind us instead of ahead
we worshipped youth.

... they will write,
that we raced eatch other,
lied and cheated and killed each other
because we thought we had only one chance
at everything."

- Joseph Pintauro from the book to believe in man

in the mourning light

My family was once a family of shadows, and when my father swallowed his last pill, a light was shown on all of us. Secrets and rivalries were revealed and then forgotten. We were all standing there, squinting our eyes, unsure of ourselves or one another. I knew things in the darkness- factual, undeniable things- that were unmasked as lies in the light. And as the rays bent and shifted through the cracks and crevasses, searching out every niche and hiding place, I saw the beauty of our secrets; I knew I would keep them always.

I have learned to hold my head up and weep without moving or shedding a tear. Somethings must be dealt with quietly or not at all.

And so I continue to deny the effect, but some nights I awake in fear, tears rushing from my eyes like mighty rivers, and I tell myself that it is only a dream, but it isn't.