Little Story #6

Michael Pollan has written a book about the use of psychedelics for the treatment of depression, anxiety, end of life and maybe other things. I haven't read it yet but I did listen to him having a very interesting discussion with Ezra Klein on Ezra's podcast. I listened to it twice.
Being a sixties kid I have great affection for psychedelics. I strongly believe in the positive impact they can have on our inner world. I did them in high school and for years after that I tried to make sure I did them once a year to sort of reboot my perseption.
I went to an experimental high school in Maryland. One of my English teachers did a class called LSD Psychotherapy based on the book of the same name. Rumor was that he came to class tripping and it was probably true. He sat in the front of the room staring at us not saying a word. The strangeness of this was augmented by his extremely thick glasses and wandering eyes. And his enigmatic smile. At some point I stopped going to class. He approached me in the hall and asked why. I said - I expect most of these teachers to fuck with me but I didn't expect it from you. I got an A in the class.
I dropped some acid one day before school. A guy walked up. Asked what I was doing. I said I was tripping. He asked where I got the acid. I told him. He said - oh a bunch of people freaked out on that yesterday.
Uhhhhhh.....
It was really strong Acid. The entire trip was me thinking about what it meant to freak out and trying not to, which was actually quite funny.
I never understood people taking psychedelics and going to a party or a concert.I was such an alienated teenager. I thought I would probably freak out in that kind of situation. Tripping wasn't about fun for me. It was serious inner work. Well. Maybe not serious. There was always giggling.
A few years after high school when I was living in Boulder a friend came to visit and brought something. Maybe mushrooms. Probably mushrooms. We decided to have a "straight" person around while we tripped.  We chose my best friend at the time. She was an extremely abstract thinker. That trip was all about the ludicracy of having her as the "straight" person. 
It's interesting to think about another person as the anchor on those trips. Another thing Michael and Ezra talked about was the nature of consciousness and brain science. Michael said that if they could switch consciousnesses for a minute it would be really disorienting. Our sense of ourselves and the world is based on so many things. Where we were raised, our height and weight, our family, so many things. There are obvious commonalities in the human experience but we experience things differently. 
The last time I remember tripping was on mushrooms. I spent most of the trip laying on a bed staring at  picture of my guru. It was ... a trip. It ended with me sitting on the steps of a porch staring at a very tall tree waving in the wind. Something about that calmed me. It's strong memory that I recall in a very physical way. 
I'm a little bit afraid of psychedelics now. I worry about what chaos may exist in me. There's probably way less chaos than there used to be but I know it's there now. I'm not trying to avoid it. I'm just not sure I wast to immerse myself in it. But ... maybe someday.
Heh.

Little Story #5

On the morning I published little story#4 I was feeling bad. I didn't love the post. I felt like it needed something but I couldn't come up with anything. I also couldn't come up with anything else to write. I didn't think I could keep doing the little stories.

And then a friend (you know who you are) said some extremely cool things to me about my writing. It wasn't just the thing they said. It was the feeling of someone getting what I was trying to do with the writing. Not everybody can do that. They may like the writing but can't articulate why. It's such a balm when they can. 

I did four semester workshops and a summer workshop in my MFA program. I hated most of that experience. It made it hard for me to be open to feedback. We brought copies of our writing for every member of the workshop and discussed the feedback in class. 

Allison Krause was one of the people killed at Kent State. She had graduated from the high school I was newly attending. The hippies in the school wanted the flag lowered to half mast for her. The jocks did not. A fight broke out in the yard around the flag pole. I wrote about it for a workshop. I wrote about a back and forth fight in which each sentence ended with the word fuckin. One of my fellow students gave it back to me with the end of each word circled and a g added. I guarantee no one said fucking on that yard that day. 

I wish I could remember who but I remember reading someone talking about writing feedback. They said that most of it was beside the point. 

The best feed back I ever got was about organization. It came from David Meltzer. He was reading something I wrote. He circled things and drew arrows to where he thought they should go and he was right. It changed the way I edited my own work. I asked JoAnne to read a poem of mine once. She said, take out all the ands then put back the ones you really want. 

These little stories are harder to write than anything I've ever written before. I feel flaccid and lackluster.  I don't really understand why. I got the idea because I was telling so many of my stories to a friend. If anyone talks to me long enough I start telling stories. And I want to hear their stories.
I am editing but I'm trying not to edit too much. For now, it only matters that I get something written. The goal is to write one a day for the month of June.
One of the nicest thing a person ever said to me was after reading set of essays I'd written was - if there were more I'd still be reading.  

Little Story#4

Ripped from the headlines.
I was in a play with Roseanne Barr. When you read that you should call up the way Meryl Streep says - I had a farm in Africa - at the beginning of Out of Africa. I always do.
It was decades ago in Colorado. She was just beginning to be known as a comedian in Denver and I had my little rock-n-roll band in Boulder.  A Denver playwrite had a one act she was entering in a contest the title of which was Hey Hey Big Girl. It was about two sisters who owned a dress shop. I was the very fashionable one and Roseanne was the slob. There were three other women in the play but I don't remember their parts. The sisters fought but I don't remember why. I think there were songs. I don't remember much about the play at all except that I thought it was dumb. So did Roseanne.
We performed at the contest and once more at a friend of mine's dance studio. After the studio performance Roseanne over heard the director being asked what it was like to work with fat woman. She said she had lost weight.
Yep.
I loved Roseanne. She was the first fat woman I'd ever met who wasn't ashamed about being fat. She was direct, smart and so much fun.  I haven't met a lot of fat women without that shame. Even in the size acceptance community. I haven't met many fat women with whom I had such a great connection. We were fat. And that wasn't all we were. We were women with dreams and talents and plans.
I saw her twice after the play. We talked about writing our own play. She told me she was leaving for LA to do the Comedy Store but she would be back. I said she was going to get famous really fast. She assured me she'd stay in touch.
She did get famous really fast.
She did not stay in touch.
I watched her career and always felt like I was on a similar path.
I wasn't.
At some point in life I realized that not getting famous was the best thing that could have happened to me. I don't think I would have done well with fame. I think I would have done a lot of drugs and died. The very limited experience I had with a very little bit of being famous was alienating. I just don't think I would have handled it.
If you told me then that Roseanne would say the kinds of things she's been saying I would have thought you were wrong. There was no evidence then of who she became. And ... I kind of don't care why it happened. Did she have some kind of breakdown? Was it drugs? Was it fame? I have no idea and ...again ... I don't care. I don't care because there's no way for me to really know. And it doesn't matter. She's been saying some really crazy stuff for a long time. I kept thinking there was joke that I wasn't getting. Because none of it was funny. I've always been sad about the loss of her friendship and it's clear to me that we would not have been friends for long.
You can say that racism lives dormant or quietly in white people. I wouldn't argue with you. In America we have all been cooked in it. I can say that I have done a lot of work to uncover my own and I feel like I always will need to do that work.
I don't feel bad about what's happening to her. I have a list of people I'd like to see be held similarly accountable.
I lost a friend years ago.
I've been losing her ever since.

Little Story #3

Oregon is the farthest north I've ever lived. The long summer days are even longer here. In late May it's already getting light by 5AM and stays light till 9 or 10.
Because I worked so many breakfast shifts I've always been aware of the lengthening of days. It's nicer to walk to work in the light.
Walking to work in the morning you see joggers, other workers, sometimes in uniform. You see people coming home from a possibly long ribald evening. Makeup has lost its line. Clothing is rumpled. We pass each other. The workers with a day just beginning and the players with a day finally ending.
In New York I walked with my eyes down, careful to step over the streams of urine flowing from a wall to the curb. Broken vials of powder. Still burning stubs of cigarettes. In some parts of San Francisco it's similar. But New York has 24 hour mess and throb. You need to be alert.
I live above a coffee shop in the middle of a small city downtown area. Oak Street is also highway 30. Semis that look like they might be bigger than my condo go by all the time. The mornings start early with delivery trucks, breakfast smells, mufflers grinding. If I wanted to sleep late it might be a drag but I never do. I wake up earlier in the summer.
I always went into work early. I'd set up and then make my own breakfast, drink coffee and smoke some cigs. I miss the coffee and tobacco combo. The still dreamy drifting minutes before the work begins.
People who are outside a lot love long summer days. I'm not outside but I do love having light late into the evening. But I also enjoy the fall. I like things getting darker and colder. I like tucking in. The dark days last longer here too.

Little Story #2

My parents were together for the first three months of my life. They had a dog named Pride. When they were divorced my dad said the only thing he wanted was the dog. Nice thing for a girl to learn about her dad.
Apparently, Pride sat beside my crib, guarding me. The mommie told me different stories about what happened to him. I think she gave him to a family who owned a farm. Maybe she was being vindictive or maybe she thought Pride would be better off with them. Pride jumped over a fence and was hurt badly enough to die. This is the narrative I grew up with and am not at all sure how much of it is true. Except for the part about Pride sitting by my crib. I want that one.
I was afraid of dogs as a kid and am still uneasy around them. I like them very much. I just feel nervous.
When I was very young Grandmom sent me to the store. I must have been old enough to go but I know I was very young. There was a short cut through the streetcar tracks. It wasn't really dangerous because the streetcars didn't go that fast. It was easy to stand on the side when they went by. (Or stand in the middle when two went by and enjoy the thrill. Probably a bit dangerous.) But she told me to go around the long way. I was walking down the street when a small dog came out from behind his house and began to bark.  I stood very still and began to talk to him. I was terrified. I talked. He barked. Eventually he got bored and went back behind his house and I hurried away. The trip took way longer than it should have (despite me taking the short cut home) and Grandmom was worried and mad when I got home.
Years later, I was living in my first tiny studio and going to a community college. I walked to and from school. I was headed to school one morning when a really big German Shepard came running out from behind his house. I thought I'd walk around him and stepped off the curb. The mirror of a truck hit me in the head and I spun around. My right foot went under the back wheel of the truck.
I had a surgery to close the hole on the side of my ankle. I think it was a four hour surgery. Maybe five. I was in the hospital for a month, home with my leg elevated for a month and on crutches for a month. I have a really big scar. It looks like someone has taken a bite out of my ankle.
If my parents had stayed together and I had grown up with Pride I might not have been afraid of dogs. There's really no way to know. But videos of babies and young children with their dogs put a lump in my throat.
As do videos and pictures of dad's with their daughters.

Little Story #1

Not waiting for June because ... I need to jump in.
The stories are still quiet but for one. And it makes me a bit nervous to tell it because it's about me and God. It is true that I'm thinking a lot about this kind of thing but it isn't true that I'm getting religion. I'm not trying to inspire belief. I have no belief. But (as I mentioned in that post I was whining about not getting any reaction) there is a connection between my feelings about God and my sense that it will take some kind of divine intervention for me to find a partner.
And me and God go way back. My life story has been a religious studies program.
I put a new picture in my FB header. It's a picture of me at about six years old. I'm sitting by a small pond, holding a doll staring at a tree. I have no memory of that moment specifically but that is how childhood felt to me. Alone. Lost in revery. Clutching a simulacrum of a friend. I really used to stare at nature. I remember marveling over leaves and rocks and water. I may have been praying. I was always praying. I did the usual our-father and now-I-lay-me prayers but mostly I had conversations. My dad was absent. I think I re-parented myself with God and I think that was really smart.
But none of that is the story. The story is about a key.
My grandmother had given me a key. I don't remember why. It must have been a key to our house but I don't remember our house being locked. I think I was supposed to give the key to someone. Somehow, I lost the key. I was distraught because I knew my grandmother would be mad. She was never a violent kind of mad. At least not physically. But she could make you feel emotionally smashed. I remember frantically looking around. I was tugging at my pockets. I sat down on a stool and prayed. I begged God to help me find that key. And then I fell off the stool.
The key was under the stool.
Looking back from my current perspective I feel so much tenderness for that little girl. I wish she hadn't been so worried about her grandmother being angry. I sort of love that she believed that a deity would hear her and help her. I'm really happy that it worked out. She lives in me. I am still a little girl beseeching.
I think the re-parenting ended when I went to India to be with Baba.
I actually have a lot of stories about things working out after beseeching God for one thing or an other. There's the how I got the money to go to India story. I'll save that for another day. 

Little Story Project

I really enjoyed the month of poems. Posting something every morning took me back to the days when I used to blog every day. I looked for poems on the interwebs during the day. At night I looked through my books. I woke up every day with a poem at the ready.
I miss blogging. I just don't have the same drive to do it. I don't have much to add to the political conversation. There's so much noise and I don't want to be part of it. My life is fairly boring. When I write a post like the last one I wrote and get no feed back it makes me sad. I always wanted my blogging to be part of a big conversation and it never felt like it was.
My blog-roll is token. I don't really go through it. I scroll through Facebook and Twitter and Instagram but it doesn't feel the same.
Also.
I've been wanting to rewrite my book and ... I just don't do the work.
So.
I had this idea to write little stories every day for a month. Memoir-ettes. I had the idea because I had been telling someone a few of my stories. The minute I decided to do the project all my stories fell silent.
This is going to be a challenge.
I was going to do it for the month of June. Which is a few days away. Which feels like a stall.
I thought about doing as Tweets. I thought the constraint of 280 characters might be cool. Tamp down on my loquacious self. But when the stories fell silent I decided I should just ... do what I can do. Just do it. Just write.
Judging by how long it has taken to write this much ... how many times I stopped to make food, sing along with a song, play Pokeman, any bleeping thing ... I better not try any constraints. Not this time. The goal is just to write. Get that muscle working. I'm not looking for advice. I should (maybe) be better at hearing advice but right now I'm working with a clenched jaw. I'm on my tip toes. I trying to sneak past my ... self.
Which is not to say that comments won't be welcome and they don't all need to be hyper-positive. (Although ... um ... praise is OK.)
(Heh.)
So I'm going to post this.
And then have a panic attack.
Nah. 
I can do this.