Fear and loathing

I started again down the academic path of drudgery, arranging neat sentences in tidy boxes and applying delicate logic all with the hopes of fanning the flames of my once hard earned career. 

In the interim of the last few dizzing years of heartache, poverty and tropical winds I have let loose of all this pent up logic and let out the free, strong, fearless human that was always hiding inside. I silently stole some russian courage from a man who was never destined to be a lover, just a friend. The courage to throw all care of outcome at passing cars and tread blindly in whatever direction came to me first. The courage to tell strangers to go fuck them selves if my mediocrity doesn't please them. 

This project I have really only taken on to feed some lost self identity that seems to have a claw and teeth grip on my ego. The misguided non-truth that entering questions into a report will keep people from dying of AIDS still manages to bring on a sense of awe to those whom I inform of my hard won profession. This ego dousing career that has merged solidly with my sense of self and may eventually only be hacked away against its will, has rekindled something else too. It has brought back fear and loathing and a stentch of daily anxious dread. The feeling that my ineptitute at leaping high enough to please anyone who holds power over me will render me too weak and anxious to even try. 

I realized as I waded thru these distantly firmiliar emotions that the reason I spent 17 years with a man whom when asked what he would do with his life if he had a magic wand was left without any imagination to pick a single option was for this. He held this part of me. He washed my back in the shower, stroked away my worry and accepted my troubles in his lap of solitude. He made it possible for me to be this person. This person who hides her wildness inside neatly buttoned shirts, this person who keeps tidy rows of data in order against the will of her messy unsorted brain and ensures she humbly bows to any and all authority, asking nothing more than "am I good enough?". This person I haven't seen for awhile. This person I was never meant to be. I didn't miss her. I don't want her back, my ego will have to do without.

I am told I have a boyfriend, I believe he is watching cricket with his friends in another country. He may message me tomorrow and tell me who won. He may not. He will not hear of my worries, he will not recieve my fears. He will not wash my back in the shower.

In this moment with this anxious dread eating at my stomach I want to be held and wrapped tightly. But the reality is I i no longer have someone to perform this task. If I abandon this ship I have just stepped on, poke holes in it hull and let it sink, I may no longer need someone for this job. I have become someone in the interim who no longer fits data into tidy rows but knocks down brick walls with someone elses arms. Who gambles high stakes with no fear of loosing my hand. I have simply found a realm in which I am not afraid. I am not afraid of papuan wood mafia, balinese fraudsters or javanese sand pedlers. If data and authority figures are what go bump in the night then maybe I don't need a boyfriend to comfort me, maybe I need to finally shed the last of my old skin and embrace fully the becoming that is already nearly done. The me that looks little like the girl that tried too hard to care, too hard to please and needed a man to stand waiting to play the sole role of her fulltime wet nurse to ease her thru the anxiety of modern life. I am no longer her. I live in the wild west and fight pirates. I am the boss, all 30 men who cut thru steel and wood and brick on my behalf will tell you this truth.

I am told I have a boyfriend, he may be watching cricket. He is not here to comfort me and ease away my sleepless fears of authority and untidy data. I no longer care. 

Run for your life

It happened just as you said it would, you knew the story allready. Its an old story. Anyone who listens to any song ever written would know this tale. You saw it coming like storm clouds in the distance. You stubbornly resisted, dragging your feet, a toddler who didn't want to leave the house. I understand. I do. Now, I do.

You left today again for your homeland, we have ten days apart. Another seperation to bear, but this time I am standing steady, just me. Its ok whatever happens I am basking in gratitude. You have filled me up. This is enough to last me thru the dark loveless winternights that may come. Thank you for this. Thank you for giving me humor and grace and all good things that if edible would be delicious. 

Now what? Do we keep each other or will you wander off into the Australian sunset? Is this a question we should try to answer or should we just keep holding our breath  releasing tiny bubbles and sneaking sips of air without lifting our heads fully from the water? One can't really predict the future. It is yet unformed we can only carry each moment with us slowly forward. 

I love you. My friend who shared the same salad of roasted tomatoes and goat cheese told me at dinner she had never said those words to a man in her whole life. She was saving them. I don't believe in saving, I believe in spending. When I was young I once spent my last five dollars on coffee and cigarettes. I don't care, I like to eat all my halloween candy in one setting, and have as many orgasms as time and company will allow. 

Should I keep you? Should you keep me? Or should we toss each other back into the pot. You are thinking it, I know you are. Don't worry, I am too. Its not like we have nothing worth saving. But I, like you, am as scared of making the wrong choice. You are too. Its a pop quiz that no one can pass.

How often do two people like all the things we do? Is this normal or is it like that study where people start seeing volkswagons everywhere because the idea was planted in thier head. Am I making random connections on our collective behalf?

We like spreadsheets, long neat colums with a furmula to make it all work out. We like randy newman in his funny glasses singing ironically about his height deficit. We like adventures in the mud and muck and long motorbike rides to nowhere. We like the idea of racing across the world in a tiny junky car. We like the news headlines. I could do without cricket and Australian politics but thats ok. I will give you that and still find it charming. You make me laugh hard. You wake up in the morning talking, right out of the gate, as do I.

I can spend nearly the whole day with you and don't want you to leave. I want you to let me burrow my nose in your beard and run my fingers across your curls. I want this. Is this all enough? I am not sure but I am hooked. I will omit what is wrong with you for the moment. Sure the list exists, its long even, but I won't breath life into it just yet. I will wait to commit it to ink. Tomorrow. 

You have your fingers wrapped firmly around my heart or other nameless organs. I am hooked like a carp on a good fat worm wriggling helplessly on the boat deck.

Am I allowed to love you, should I? I do. Its normal right? Its what you were afraid of, knowing you will only break my heart. Don't worry, you allready have, once a month for six months untill you declared me your girlfriend. This month is only now ending. 

What should I do with this feeling? Should I stuff it in my pocket and wait for the right day to take it back out? Should I release it to the breeze and let it blow where it may? Should I burry it in the dark moist earth and leave it for the squirrels to dig up while looking for nuts? Should I give it to you daily over coffee and hope that you will take it and hold it and give it back to me generously kissed? 

Or maybe I should run fast and hard untill I no longer feel it. Run untill someone else catches me and takes it and wipes it clean from my hands. Run befor the month is up and its time for you to break my heart again. I love you. Should I run? 

Where is your liver?

So here we are, you declaring emphatically to wait staff and anyone who would listen that I am your girlfriend. You finally letting go and accepting what plainly is. You willingly sitting at a restaurant with me and my son. Does this scare you? Are you afraid of this reality you have found yourself in?

The other night as with many nights you let me stay in your bed, you let me wriggle my curves up to you cupped in comfort, legs and toes wrapped and curled, hands grabbing fingers. So why is there something missing? Should I tell you this? Should I say it out loud? Set it in stone with my words. Should I demand in your presence that you kiss me hard and long, nuzzle the back of my neck with your nose, want me sweet and lusty like dark chocolate, want me deep and slow like rivers in the forest that meander without agenda. Want me please. 

I sit across from you most mornings in a restaurant over cappucino. I look at you and admire your hansomeness in my presence. We enjoy each others company this fact sparkles as plain as day. But do you need me like water on a hot day, do you want me as much as you want that lemon merengue pie we unabashedly shared before we ate any real food in the morning? 

The other night when we wickedly smoked a joint that would have gotten us executed in this country of ours, I wanted you badly but you couldn't even find one deep passionate kiss. You blamed it on your busy hands bored in bed without me the day before. You yourself said you were oddly wooden in response to me. Your soul appeared to the novices eye an empty bucket, there were no kisses to be found, only thoughtfully spoken and felt words. A brain attatched to your handsome body. Does your heart exist? Or does the Balinese culture have it right and it is actually your liver and not the heart with which you feel love and yours is simply damaged from too many years of alcohol abuse. 

I look at you and find you endlessly sweet and handsome, but I still have no idea how you find me. You keep this secret feeling hidden to yourself. 

I told you the story of my sordid two year love triangle which was unfulfilled but had  more lusty unbridled passion without requite than you are willing to release to me now. Is it me? Is it us? Will you take the next girl you date home before desert and throw her on the bed without conversation? 

Is this just a moment in time? A beautiful moment filled with shared laughs and intimate thoughts and long intelectual conversations. Should I not degrade this moment by talking about it? Should I leave it for what it is and not pick it apart like the remnants of a turkey after thanksgiving day. 

This is my strategic plan, my logic model, my oath. I promise in this moment to court you instead of nag you. I will find secret charming ways to winnow out kisses from places even you didn't know existed. I will not demand them but instead invoke them like spells. I will conjure them like spirits, concoct them like soups in winter. Then and only then if after a time I discover your bucket is truly empty I will have to leave you to seek out greener pastures. Pastures full with so many kisses thrown my way that I can't even catch them all. I will not release you to yourself just yet man of my moment. I still have faith that there is a heart or a liver hidden burried beneath forgotten leaves of soggy heartache. Will you let me find it? 

You like a good fat rat in your mouth

Two days ago my cat caught a rat. It was large enough that she struggled to keep it in her mouth as she ran up the stairs. Grey and furry and totally disgusting by my meagre human standards. She would release it and let it run around my bedroom and then chase it and catch it again, like a wind up toy made only to amuse her. It was difficult to watch this constant torture of even such a wretched creature. I felt a combination of filth and pitty, and without real plossible intervention I abandoned the scene to shop for groceries and pretend it wasn't happening. Leaving her to fullfill her basic instinctual cat desires in solitude and  absence of human critique. Even as my mind logically understood these needs of hers, not for sustanance but for death and torture, I still none-the-less found them hard to accept. 

I feel the same about your need to eat strange new women whole and then promptly spit them out again withought any emotional engagement. Playing, releasing and then grabbing again. You just returned from your recent romp in Cambodia. You ran off to drink large quanties of alcohol and smoke cambodian weed while having wild and rampant sex with women you will never see again. Its like watching you chase a dirty rat and put it still alive in your mouth as it wiggles and try to understand why this is what you desire to do, wrap my sad wounded mind around why this is a delectable treat for you. Applying all the science I have in my academic bucket I try to understand that this is nothing more than a savage need from your ancient reptile brain, but I still can't accept it. Not really, I am only pretending, playing it cool. 

My cat is now snuggled up in bed with me. I am trying not to think less of her for wanting the rat. I am trying not to imagine that she is any less sweet, clean, or herself for having the rat fur stuffed in her face only a day ago. I let her sleep next to me, choosing to ignore this dirty deed of yesturday. 

Unlike my cat you will no longer be allowed in my bed. Or so I like to convince myself. But here we are again in constant company. You sit next to me at a dinner party with mutual friends, we order a side of polenta and broccoli to share. Taking turns dipping crispy polenta spears into the aioli dip I find myself trying a little too hard not to imagine you with a rat in your mouth. Was she delicious?