Writings
Check Your Shoes For Bugs
The bugs are back and I am assured spring is here. Green is flooding my vision, I hadn’t even noticed it had been missing. I flipped my shoes and tapped them on the ground by my front door in case any guests had made them their home for the night. I remembered how my dad would check and blow into the gardening gloves before handing them to me to wear, making sure no spiders were inside. I’m no kid anymore I guess I have to check my own shit or be bitten.
Perfect Hairy Bus
Nals has fleas. She is chasing bugs in tall grass, a perfect hairy bus jumping in and out of the sunflower patch. All aboard to all fleas! The previous tenants had planted mugwort and sage, cilantro, chives, and my favorite were the tall sunflowers. They had looked like weeds most of spring, getting taller taller taller every day until one day when I wasn’t looking they all bloomed. A remarkable bus stop.
Stink
From as early as I can remember my dad has called me Stink. He’d say it even if I were right out of the bath. I couldn’t make sense of my name, I never thought I smelled any differently than others. Now I know something more about stink. I know why I stink. I learned it one morning from a barking dog and a possum that chose not to play dead.
On this morning, I woke up to get a glass of water, and my dog followed me out of bed. She doesn’t always wake up when I do, so I asked her if she needed to go potty. She did. I opened the backdoor for her and decided that I’d go pee too. I went to use the bathroom and as I sat on the toilet seat stuck in the blissful release of piss from my body, I heard a terrible bark. I didn’t even finish peeing before I ran outside in underwear and black non-slip clogs with no socks which bothered me but I was in a hurry. Outside now. God. My dog had cornered a possum and they were squaring up to my despair. I tried whistling for her to come inside, but she would not turn away. No, she Could not lose. They stood in three am moonlight on a warm Texas morning, barking and shrieking at each other. I began to chase my dog around the backyard in that very same three am moonlight on a warm Texas morning. I cussed her name and laughed, I still had to pee, and eventually I grabbed her and guided her inside. During our game of moonlight tag, I ran by the possum who was still screaming and pawing at the air with its little paws. The air stank around it, and I somehow knew that the possum had made it stink because it was scared. Your fears are simple when you’re a possum. I know why I stink.
Jay Run / Jay Mouth
I liked running across North Lamar, it was a dangerously busy road and it felt like I was getting away with something, or from something, maybe Death, and I didn’t stop running until I was in the wine aisles of Central Market because I had jay run in front of a cop car and even though I worried it would look like I was stealing something from Peoples pharmacy I laughed as I ran because it felt good to escape Death and the law, but if the officer were to chase me inside and ask to see my ID he would see the name on the prescription was Nals (feline) and I’d readily explain that Nals is my cat and she is suffering from asthma and I am suffering from hearing her struggle for every breath and tonight I am reconnecting with someone I have missed so I was grabbing us some wine to loosen my heart.
Lesson of Loneliness
Be conscious, be what you are right now. You are lonely. But it will pass once you go get a coffee and the barista compliments your hair and you fumble with words of gratitude and are momentarily distracted from how lonely you are. All the love in the world belongs to you, and you should pay attention to open-hearted people and learn from them. You’re lonely anyway what else is there to do. Things like death and endings are inevitable so you should not create any suffering along the way, no more than necessary. Isn’t it nice to lose time? There is a verse somewhere in some bible in some Texas motel nightstand drawer that says something like “Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus Christ, he was onto it- he knew how divinity saturated the air when you’re with good company, when you’re not lonely.
Good at Living? Contact me
Who here is good at living? Like really good? Will you lend me some time? Or rather, will you tell me how to lose time? Can I lose time like you? Can I be like you? Will you contact me and tell me how I can lose time and be just like you?
Breath
There is a dog that I love sleeping next to me. I lean into her face to feel her breath and its warms my nose. I’ll get delirious with her carbon dioxide and soon I’ll cry thinking of when she’ll inevitably die. Listening to her breathe reminds me of being restless when I was little. I would lay between my parents and listen to them as they slept, taking turns on who I’d pretend to be. First, my dad. Timing my breathing to his was challenging- his lungs were big, making his breaths slow and deep, and he had an irregular snore. After a few sequences I would give up and listen to my mom instead. I could never keep up.
Definition of Home, October 2023
There is a distinction between Home and House- they often work as a pair but not all the time. This is why you can feel at home in a place that does not belong to you, just as you can feel alienated in the body you’ve always lived within. Home is the fulfillment of our interiority, while the house structures our dwelling space. Our first house could be thought of as our mother’s body, in her arms is where we began building our home, and it is continuously built within our spirit throughout our entire lives.
Toy Baby
Ms. Perales had a lot of neck tags. She would pat our backs until we fell asleep for our naps, each child adding their unique shape of sweat and drool puddles to their plastic mat. I liked her firm, consistent pats, and it was only by her hand that I could trust to close my eyes around so many irresponsible toddlers. Day care was a safety hazard for me. This was my first time out of the house on my own, as I was only three, and I felt dizzy with the new. She could not stop the toddler that hit my nose with a doll’s head. Me and that doll must’ve been in pain, but my nose bled and its nose did not. It’s face was heavy and solid, as if it was a weight training device disguised as a plastic baby. In fact I am convinced it was a kettle bell dressed in limbs, a torso, and a face. Why would they give a toy baby to a real baby? My coworker once told me they give little girls dolls to introduce motherhood as the norm and reinforce traditional gender roles. I blame patriarchy for my first bloody nose.
3rd Dog
There’s a third dog and how much of this is just blind luck? I kept one part of my early Catholicism, I kept my superstition. It started some time when I was little, and it grew with me. I am keeping it at the bottom of my pocket next to some lint and the lobster lollipop I was given. Magic in my pocket. I toss it out, face up, and hope someone deserving may find it, but then aren’t we all deserving? Lucky that there’s a third dog not just first or second, not just the mean one or the one who pees. There is a third dog blind with luck.
Itchy
Self-discipline can look like Not doing something, it’s not always additive. Things such as Not scratching an itch or Not sustaining a habit that gives you a terrible headache or mood afterwards. You can practice this in your own backyard even! First, take your socks off and place them by the door, you will need them later. This first step is important because your feet are the most vulnerable part of you and should be exposed if you intend on having an open heart. Next, walk outside and greet the day with conviction. Holler or whisper, whatever feels most comfortable to you. Dig those ten toes (or however many you have) into the ground. Soon you will hear tiny violins whizzing past your ears and you’ll know that mosquitoes have already bitten you, numerously and uniquely. I find new parts of my body when I reach to scratch. Oh this is what you must Not do! Practice not scratching it.
Horse Story
What does the horse mean? Google says it represents freedom when the horse is seen untethered, but when I look around my room most of my horses have a saddle. Its form means something we have collectively agreed has value. We love the horse. Horse is important right now. Everyone has a small but important Horse story, and this is mine:
I grew up in South Texas, in a town so small they had the nerve to name it Beeville. No one has heard about it. The land was cheap, and my parents bought a house on an acre of land in their late twenties. To our left was a house I never really thought of, and to our right was a ranch. This ranch had horses and donkeys and goats, sometimes. It wrapped around our backyard with a space between our fence lines of about seven feet that created a long path in the shape of an ‘L’ (if you were a bird looking down). I was able to play back there, tearing the long grasses that hugged the fence, unreachable by my dad’s lawnmower, and I would feed the horses.
Responsibility of Sleep
You cannot remember everything you’ve ever said or how you chose to deliver those words when you said them, but sometimes what you say is important and when others hear you say it they remember for you. I once said something that was worth remembering. I was a lanky four year-old and my mom would rock me to sleep every night until this moment that I said these words to her: Mom I’m a little uncomfortable.
I was probably very uncomfortable, I was too big. My body did not fit in her arms anymore. No, my legs and arms and torso had all betrayed me and they grew every day until I noticed how I did not fit here anymore. My mom and I ended our nightly ritual of meeting at the rocking chair. Her to sing and push us into motion, the chair to bear our weight and provide the infrastructure for rocking, and me to fall asleep. After I said something, everything changed. From that point on it was up to me to lay down and sleep.
Devil’s Workshop
“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop” was a saying my mother would often offer if I mentioned being bored. This would then be followed with suggestions of what to do, and it was usually some sort of chore. She would offer these chores lightly but convincingly, how could I not help when I had just admitted to having nothing to do. I was around twelve when I stopped sharing with her that I was bored. I figured out that there are always things to do, but what does that matter when I am curious about the devil’s workshop? What she admitted to me was her own way to stay free from her thoughts, or at least have a task to place their energy into. The devil’s workshop was a place I wasn’t to visit, so of course I had to. This relationship of productivity and godliness becomes apparent when my hands cease working and I am vulnerable to thinking. I am here now, playing with the devil. Does rest condemn you? You have to rest, in fact God commands it on the seventh day. The devil’s workshop reminds me of Hephaestus’s story. Hephaestus was cast down from Olympus, and it was from below that he made beautiful metalwork in his workshop. I imagine Heaven is Up and Hell is down and down is where that little devil tinkers away with your mind’s thoughts.