A trip to the desert

I have just come back from an extraordinary trip out west to Santa Fe, NM. I participated in a week long writer's conference studying under Natalie Goldberg. The focus of this conference was Creative Non-fiction. Through my work with Natalie in her workshops, and her methods of writing practice I am developing m,y own strong writer's inner voice. It was an amazing journey. I had to reach deep down and pull out the essence of me. It was emotionally charged at times but it has left a lasting impression on me.

I should reveal a truth here. One that I came to on Wednesday, June 15, while sitting in the garden of St. Francis Cathedral. I came to this writing conference hoping to meet a man. I knew that I would benefit greatly from all the workshops, but secretly I was hoping to meet a man at the conference that would be revealed as my soulmate. That struggling, tragic, writer/poet, that would share all my grief and sorrow. I was hoping to meet someone of like mind and same depth. Imagine my surprise and disappointment during the first night when I saw that the conference was composed of mostly middle-aged to older women and two men who were also older than I expected. I thought great there go my chances at romance. Sitting at St. Francis I had my epiphany. I wanted to meet someone because I have been so lonely lately and I feel that time is slipping away from me. And that if I don't meet and marry someone soon then I never will. I cried on the bench facing St. Francis statue and prayed for some peace. It dawned on me that something extraordinary was happening to me. As the rest of the week wore on I realized what it was.

I am alone becasue I don't let anybody into my heart. I reveal nothing about myself yet people openly reveal themselves to me. I met the most courageous and extraordinary women at this conference. Each one of them in my workshop has been hurt, has suffered, has overcome great obstacles, and have continued to forge ahead. The revelations in their writing was honest, real, and raw. I came face to face with my own fear of being revealed. Why? Nothing can be as bad as all that. I came to admire and love these women for all that they were able to do. I left that conference feeling that I made some real connections and life-long friends. Now I must continue to work at getting over these fears and self-doubt. The Monkey Mind that is never quiet must be taught to stay focused and positive.

I will continue to write more of my adventures in the desert.

The Power of Love (Pt. 2)

Last night I felt it. That spark, that kindling flame, that love indeed will come back to me. That I am very capable of feeling it. I just have not found the right person yet to give my love to. But he is out there. Waiting for me. Probably asking himself when his love will be returned. My hope was reborn through the friendship I have developed with another man who has become very dear to me. I have imagined a life with him but I recognize that he is not free to love me. Yesterday afternoon when we spent considrable time talking of his troubled marriage that tiny hope was lit like a flame. But the flame that burns twice as bright dies twice as quickly. Then this morning that flame was put out. And yet I feel very relaxed. Very confident. I may not be the one for him. I may only be here to offer him the moral support he needs. I can love him for a tiny bit. It's something. Not all that I want, but in the grander scheme of things, this tiny bit will open the door to more.

And who's to say that this love won't blossom into something greater on down the line? I honestly don't think I can wait for him to decide to leave his wife, start his life over, and hook up with me. That is such a long process but life takes many turns. All I do know for sure is that I don't want to see him die. I would rather see him shackled to that horrid marriage than see him dead.

What I am trying to say is that my faith in love is slowly returning. I never expected it to be in this form but it is returning. And perhaps that is why God put him in my path. To help me see that all is not hopeless. That faith and love will win out. I love you M.W. Just a tiny bit. That's all I can manage. I will not come between you and your wife. I will not wrench you away from your family. I will not give you any more of me other than my friendship. And this little tiny bit of love that you have sparked. And for that I thank you. I don't want you to know about it however. So hopefully you won't read this. But if I didn't write it down I would forget.

Tired of my own skin

Ever have those days when you walk around and it feels like you're tramping in the same muck? You move in circles and see that the bottom of your shoes are filthy from the same treads you've made a thousand times. Oh to lay down fresh tracks! I so desire to get out of my own safe circle of being and explore a new place. A few days after school let out I found myself at home. I slept late, I moved about my little house, content but so very angry and uncontent. I wanted to go somehwere but I couldn't think of a single place in this huge city that I live in that I haven't seen hundreds of times before. This city, my city, it is my second skin. I live it and breathe it every day. I walk among its streets and trees moving within the elastic of my body. I stop to admire the views but it is still the same view that I've seen.

I want to experince something new. Each and every day I want to feel a different sensation upon my flesh. I want to breathe smells coming up from ground I haven't trudged upon. I want to see visions that come from a place I discover within the confines of this sprawling city with its limbs spread wide but still by its sides.

I want to live a different life from my own just for a short while. I know I would miss my own life and I would want to return to it but I really want to try out another life. Like a new dress. I want to wear a different name for a day. I want to be Rebecca. My clothes would have to change too. Rebecca wears designer clothes only. Coco Channel. And she wears high heels, red lipstick, and gets her nails done once a week. She is utterly insupportable. She barks at every one around her, she orders people around like they are her own personal slaves, and she expects the world to grovel at her feet. She came home one day and found the maids trying to fix a huge mess they'd made in the kitchens. Rebecca screamed at them for 20 minutes, reducing them to tears, and ordered them out of the house and never to return. She didn't pay them their last wages, she didn't even let them get their belongings. She is a horrible person indeed. But the worst thing she ever did was to whip her pool man with a leather strap. The man actually left one leaf in the pool and when he tried to reach for it she caught him across the right cheek with her strap. He fell into the pool and when he came up he was bleeding and crying. Wrethced woman he yelled. He pulled himself up from the pool and staggered away still cursing her name.

Rebecca woke up with a frightened gasp. She'd been ahving such terrible nightmares that she was this awful, rich, despotic, bitch that everyone despised. She reached over to pull on her terrycloth robe, a bit frayed and worn, but still her favorite, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. She started a pot of coffee going while she went to the front door to get the newspaper. She brought it back in, poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down at the table, and opened the paper. The coffee cup fell out of her hand when she looked at her own face blaring up at her from the newsprint with the headline "Heiress arrested for murder of magnate husband."

The power of love (Pt. 1)

I have been thinking lately about the nature of love. PArt of the title of this blog is love and yet I have skirted around the issue for fear of saying out loud what is truly in my heart and on my mind. I have been questioning myself for the past two years on whether or not I can truly love someone else. Love is such a multi-dimensional and complex emotion that I can not simplify it into a black and white issue although my tough outer shell says "I either love you or I don't".

I have been in love exactly three times. The first time was to man I thought for sure was my soulmate. I will call him M.R. I loved him dearly and blindly. I almost married him. We were together for two years. I did everything for him. And when he left me I wanted to die. Never had I felt rejection so keenly. It was a knife to my heart. I begged and pleaded with all the gods in heaven to return him to me. And he did come back. And swore he wanted a life with me. After a while it was me who wanted a life without him. I don't know why. I don't know what happened. All I knew and felt was that all this immense love I felt for him dissapated into the ether, carried away on a hot wind one summer afternoon when I told him it was time to say good-bye. He calmly accepted it and the last memory I have of him is him sitting on the dusty driveway of his home watching me drive away. I have never seen him since. It's been 16 years since that day and I have not regretted the decision I made. That love died.

It was reborn in my husband. Again, that intense, passionate, all-consuming love that I was capable of came bubbling to the surface. A hot, tumultous, whirlwind of love that swept me up in its throes and raced me to marry him. I loved S.B. like no person has ever loved another. That is what all the romance novels state. And it is true. Each and every person feels that his or her love is exactly unique. It is and it isn't. It is the ultimate paradox. Every person feels love differently yet I believe that at the very core love is the same. It is our mortal flesh which twists it into those intense feelings I have experienced. I loved my ex-husband to the point of insanity. To the realm of obssession. And he loved me the same way. We each gave it 100%. And I ask myself "Why then, with so much love to give and to have been given, why then did love die?" It was love but it was a conditional love that knew only limits, restrictions, terms, and sorrow. It was doomed to fail. I believed with all my heart that it was forever. I told myself that no matter what happened this was FOREVER. And I tried with all my might, with all my body and soul and heart to make it forever. And one day I woke up and realized that forever meant death. It was the most horrific experience I have ever gone through, but I realized that in the midst of giving away all my love I had stopped loving myself. Even though my heart was shattered into a thousand shards that pricked and slowly bled me I had to walk away from my marriage and from that love. Now I look at my ex-husband and feel absolutely nothing for him. Open me up and you will not find a shred of that immense love that was once there.

The third person I loved was M.F. But right from the start I knew it was doomed to failure because that was a toxic, poisonous love that came from a very dark place inside of me. A place that wanted revenge for all the hurt, pain, and sorrow I suffered. A black love that was returned by M.F. in a tie that bound us, for three years, into an affair that brought us together, flesh melding with flesh for the sake of satisfying our bodies and lust only and in the knowledge that all we had to do was call the other and we would come running no matter who else was in our lives at the moment. It was such a dark love that it drove me and him to subject another person to our will. After that our lives began to change and I realized that this love would only bring me ruin. And I made the painful decision to leave him behind. He knew it too and he stopped seeking me out for a while until he appeared in my life again a few weeks ago. We may have been together for a few hours but I felt nothing for him. That love now too is dead.

I am afraid to love again. I don't want to love this way anymore. I want to be able to love completely and freely and unconditionally but I don't know how. What does it mean to love unconditionally? I did that with my first two loves. I gave them everything. All they did was take and take. I was left with nothing. Now I don't want to love because it will mean I will give my power away again. I have hardened my heart and I have not allowed anyone access to it although I have had many chances in these last four years to open it up. But I haven't. I have locked it tight. I have deliberately sought out casual relationships based on sex only so that I don't have to love anyone. But I am losing myself again. In trying to keep my love all to myself I am once again dying inside. And each and every day of this past year has been a stab to my heart. I want to be in love. And I want someone to be in love with me. I want to feel that immense power again but I don't know how. I no longer want casual relationships. I no longer want to give my body away. It precious as is all of me and I am learning my true value and worth. Now I need to find someone who sees that value and will give me what I deserve.

Dreams of blood and sugar

I have been experiencing the most vivid and disturbing dreams lately. I feel sucked into a strange world each night where all the darkest things within me reside. I have always enjoyed dreaming and I record my dreams when I can in my dream journal. But the last couple of nights I have been dreaming of blood. At first the dream seems so innocuous. I am trying to find games to play with children that I am looking after and then the dream turns into a search for items to be used in a ritual. I see a man with a long beard pour blood into bowls of sugar and then he begins to eat it. I am disgusted, repulsed, but fascinated as well and I can't look away. And everywhere in the dream, on the walls, and on the floors, I see strange markings. The man calmly looks at me and continues to eat.

Then last night I am dreaming that I am in a sterile white office, a doctor's office, there are so many people in there, too many for one single visit. I am watching as this woman is being told she has to have a blood test because she is diseased. I stare, again fascinated and unable to look away, as she tries to understand what the nurse is telling her, that she could have HIV and they need to draw blood to run a test. I watch as the blood is taken out of her and put into a glass bottle, not a tube, but a large bottle. The blood is red, it's roiling with clots, moving in the bottle as if it were alive, and the woman is asking how soon will she know the results. I turn away from her and there seated at another end of this white office is a man I know. He's from school. He's smiling at me and I at him. He just appeared there and just as quickly disappeared. He had no part to play in the dream, he had no reason to be there. He simply was there. As if my mind pulled him out of his sleep and deposited him in my dream for the briefest of seconds and then he was gone.

I can always tell when my dream is not a dream such as in that instance with that person. I can usually tell when my dream is just a dream and when I become aware of it then all bets are off. I can do whatever I want, fly if I wish, have sex with whoever I wish, stretch out my hand and change all the world around me. If I dreamed I was holding a rose in my hand and if when I woke up I actually had a rose in my hand would I then think that the dream was still happening or would that be the proof that my dream world and my waking world are in fact one and the same and I can do whatever I wish? When the dreams become nightmares I am powerless to stop them. All I can do is wipe them from my mind. I want to uncover what my mind keeps hidden from me.

Sometimes it is safer to live in the dream than it is out here. As long as you know it is just a dream and you can always change it when it doesn't go your way. But then again you can do that out here too. Hmmmm..........strange worlds we live in.

Dear Dr. McS.

There are a few questions I've been going over in my mind that I would like to ask you. Let's cut to the chase and I'll start out with why are you such an asshole? I look into your washed out blue eyes and see coldness there. You are the head of one of the largest urban schools in nation's 4th largest city. But do you really know what happens in your school? Did you know that one of your AP's lets certain things slide when it comes to a particular teacher because of a personal relationship that cropped up between them? However, if that AP caught me doing something out of bounds you'd definitely hear all the details. Did you know that the students of the school know about your shower, your nice ice-chest, and all the other little perks in your office and ask me why their classrooms are so over crowded, why the desks are falling apart, why there are holes in the pipes, the AC breaks down and we all suffocate while you relax on your laurels in icy comfort? Do you care that your teachers all suffer tremendous amounts of stress due to over-crowded classrooms, insufficiant supplies, the seeming neglect that they get from the administration, a technology dept. that doesn't work, APs that don't give a rat's ass, and the overwhelming discipline problems they face on a daily basis?

Oh yes, I heard you say once that you worked very hard to keep all the BS from reaching our ears so that our lives will be easier. If this is easier then I would rather hear the BS because honestly it couldn't be much worse. When was the last time you walked into a teacher's classroom and actually observed teaching going on? When was the last time you stopped and talked to a teacher that you normally wouldn't speak to unless you were reprimanding her for some transgression? Do you know all your employees by first and last name? Do you know who is married? Divorced? Who has kids and how many? Do you know their birthdays? Their triumphs and their sorrows?

The fact is our school is an exceptionally large one. I realize that it must be very hard to run a school that large and keep your sanity. But if you ran it like a human being instead of a business and saw people not data, numbers, percentages, and sucsesses/failures than you actually might have a school with a staff and with kids who gave a damn. I am angry and bitterly disappointed with the shabby treatment I have gotten from your "exceptional school" over this past year. I have worked my ass off for you for three years. I have sponsored clubs, organized banquets, chaparoned dances, covered other teacher's classes at the drop of a hat, actually went to the Bridge to talk to one of my students going through the program, and I question if it was all for nothing. That is three years of my life that I will never get back. Three years in which I could have been somewhere else but I wanted to be a teacher so I could make a difference. And I know I have in all the little ways that your grandiose ideas could never appreciate. That has made my three years worth it even though for the past month I have questioned my very reason for living and have lost my faith in people, the educational system, in love, in compassion, and in justice. Damn you for shaking my faith and beliefs this way. And thank you for being such a jerk because it makes me appreciate my true friends all the more. You will not destroy me. You can knock me down. You can fire me. Put me out on the street with no recommendation but I will survive this. My faith may be shattered but it's not completely gone. I will get it back. But look in the mirror sometime and ask yourself if you could ever be so lucky.

I like going out but hate the negative attention

It's a Saturday night. My friend M. and I are out on the town. We go to a pub that plays live music. It's a Poison cover band. Hilarious. That took us back to our wild 80's high-school days when these hair-glam bands were all the rage. I personally hated the music but thought the boys in the band looked good in their tight leather-studded pants and lace-up black combat boots with more rivets than my pair of Jordache jeans. Then these two weasels come sidling up, stale breath exhaling through a puff of even staler cigarette smoke, drinking a watered down pitcher of pale beer. They offer us some and I steadfastly refused to drink the dregs from that pitcher and instead insisted that weasel #1, who was hitting on M., buy me a Shiner, which he did. Weasel #2 was shoulder to shoulder with me and rubbing the back of my velvet dress. He gave me the creeps. Weasel #1 leaned over, put his arm around M. and gave her a kiss. She told him where he could go. In no uncertain terms we let them know we weren't there for a quickie and we left.

It is a cruel game we play with a double-edged sword. My friend M. and I love to go out, have drinks, talk to guys, but then things get weird. The weirdest freaks come up and start talking to us. If these two weasels had been cute cuddly bunnies instead would we have fended off their advances? Would we have gladly given up our digits? And then there was one who seemed to be a prince in the guise of a frog who I kept smiling at. He ended up next door at the next bar we went to. The smiles and eye-contact continued. He came up and began talking to us. We smiled some more. He was an older guy, tall, blond, gold chain around his tan neck, big white straight teeth, kaki shorts, deck shoes, a casual green shirt looking like he was about to catch the next boat out of the marina and go sailing on a moon-lit ocean stream at midnight. Then he opened his mouth, started talking about his thoroughly menial job without inquiring what I did, and the spell was broken. He was just a frog after all. I should have known it by the green shirt he was wearing. He left and I let him get on home to the podunk town he lives in.

An intellectual, an intellectual, my kingdom for a long-haired, bespectacled, brainy, literary, tragic poet type who weeps at obscure films by directors with unpronounceable names, intellectual. Where the hell is he? Lost in a dusty library? Can't find his way out of the labyrinth?

It's only life

Let us just say that my faith is shaky but not gone. I still have faith but perhaps I need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and a huge risk, and simply let the universe take measures for my future. I will continue as I always have. My faith in people like my best friends is very strong. They don't let me down. Ah I don't know anymore what I'm raving about.

Today has been a better day. The weekend is almost here which means that copious amounts of alcohol will be consumed. It's the end of the school year. It's the end of another saga for me. My future is uncertain. I feel like I am dangling on the edge over a black abyss. I should just let go. I have gotten used to the whirlwind that is my life and usually hit a point where I say "Enough" and then I start over. That is what this will be like for me. My summer will be one of hustling my ass to get another job. I suppose I could beg my present employers to let me stay here but I think I would rather swallow hot coals than do that.

A loss of faith

I have lost my faith in people. I find that most people will not do the right thing or stand up for others. I have lost my faith in my career as a teacher and in the public educational system. I have lost my faith in love because every night I go home and I feel my heart breaking, splintering into tiny fragments, like shards of glass, and they catch and tear at my vulnerable insides.

I have not lost my faith in God or in spirituality but it is being shaken to the core. I still believe that this crisis will pass, but I have been telling myself this over and over again for years. When will it pass? When will I stop waking up in terror every night? When will I learn to fuse all my fragments together so that I can be whole?

How do I get my faith back? How do I get my confidence back when at every turn the universe seems to be against me? I am equally blessed and cursed. I am thankful for everything I have. I realize that it all comes from God. But I am floundering in a world that rejects my values and is determined to lay me low. It is easier to just fade away, become a shadow, lose myself in the multitudes, and never so much as squeak or make a peep. Sometimes I wish I could just shake this rotten world tree because people need to be bothered, truly bothered with everything they fear. Including me. What I fear more than anything is losing myself and losing my faith completely. When that happens I will die.

Chaos of desire

The crisis seems to be passing. But I know that it will only be for a short while before the maw of despair opens its black mouth to stare me down again. And I shall face it again and come through it again. This vicious cycle for me will never end.

On another note last Friday night at an open mike poetry reading I got the courage to stand up and read my poetry and prose for the first time in public. There were maybe 12 people in all in the dark, upstairs room of Helios. I was received with applause and praise even though my voice trembled, my heart beat furiously, and all I could do was stare at the page in front of me instead of at the audience. But I also felt elated. That night I felt like a true writer for the first time. I know I have been one my entire life, since I first learned to spell my name and read a sentence, but something about bringing what's deep inside of me out into the open felt really good. And terrifying. Because there's always this little voice that tells me I'm no good, all I write is shite, and that secretly people are laughing at me. Sometimes the only thing that will shut that voice up is writing more sentences on top of sentences that say "Fuck you! I am good, in fact real good, and there is nothing you can say that will keep me from writing. You'll have to pry the pen and paper out of my cold, stiff fingers before I give it up. And since I don't plan on giving up ever then I guess it will be a hot night in hell before my fingers ever get cold." That and alcohol works pretty well too.

Before the other people arrived at the poetry reading I was actually sitting at the bar downstairs at Helios drinking a whiskey and coke, tying a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue and teeth, and writing a poem. Here it is:

Blazing Yellow

Flowers on a street corner
In a small patch of earth
Surrounded by concrete
And the blur of cars rushing past
Only there to amuse the vanity of
The wealthy owners of that corner

They still grow, bloom, smell sweet
Attracting the bees and the hot breeze
On this day they were noticed
By her as she walked along the sidewalk
She stopped, she looked, she smiled
She closed her eyes and breathed in
That fragrance so sweet

She tried to guess the thoughts
Of the blazing yellow flower
Whose image now seared her memory
Whose language now echoed in her thoughts

Connecting a color
To a phrase
To a man
To he who said
Blazing yellow was his color

In my notebook the essence of the poem is exactly the same. But when I just wrote it here it changed and formed into what you've just read. There is another part to it. I see it now. It will have to be written at its own time later.

After the poetry reading my friends and I went to a place that I have been going to for over a decade. That particular bar deserves its own page but I will have to find the right moment to divulge its secrets later. Suffice to say that every person I have ever taken there had never been there before. Each person leaves with his or her own impressions. My friend M said that if a guy ever took her there on a first date she would be pissed off and wondering what he wanted from her. Her date J, I could tell, will be coming back there some day with a date who is more willing. And I smile my work to see. How I influence those around me.

But something even more interesting happened. Before my friends got there they popped into a palm reader's house on a whim and forked over $10 a piece to have their fortunes told. I laughed at them over my Stoli screwdriver and told them I could have read their palms for free. J stuck out his hand and said go ahead. I took his hand in mine and peered at the lines there. Almost every person on earth has the same basic lines. I looked at them for a few moments before I told him what he had just paid $10 to hear. So who is more credible? Me for not charging him or the palm reader for being a professional reader? It's tricky isn't it? M wanted her hand read too. Which I did but I hesitated. Friends are harder somtimes to read for because there are certain things you know about them and the rest is easy to guess. I happened to guess right. It wasn't their lines I was reading. It was them. This is hard to explain. I just know things sometimes. It comes through like small voices talking to me. Or waves that break over me in subtle ways. Sometimes it's actual mental pictures that I see. I don't go around talking about this, though. Voices and pictures in the mind sounds crazy.

It was an interesting night.

I hurt myself today

I am bitterly disappointed in the culture of the school that I work in. I am in trouble yet again. It is true I have been distracted, I have been too focused on my unhappiness here and my frustration at working for an enviroment that does not support me to notice that I should take more care with what is going on with my work life. But I do not live for the job. I have this job so that I may live. Therefore, I make mistakes. But those mistakes have called me out yet again.

And last night I stood in my kitchen, a knife in my hand, pressed up against my wrist, I slid it across my delicate skin, my hands shaking so violently trying to maintain my iron-will control over myself. But I wanted to open my veins and let the blood flow out hoping that all the hurt would flow out with it. There is too much hurt here inside. The mask I wear for the world outside is always one of sunny smiles and soft deceitful wiles but deep down I scream, I scream silently a mouth gaping open in horror and no one hears the screams because I won't let them out. Like my love that I've buried under a sheet of ice.

And all these things that have happened to me have made me go numb. I feel nothing anymore. My ex-lover appeared in my life again last week after nine months of being apart. We were together again, our bodies familiar with the movements, our faces one above the other, smiling empty smiles. He has long dark hair. Eyes like blue marbles. A full sensuous mouth. A desire that comes to the surface for a few minutes. My body lying on a bed and I'm above it watching it all detached. My body is touched, penetrated, squeezed, kissed and left exactly as it was found. No marks. No evidence that he was ever there. Not even a strand of his long dark hair.

I haven't called him nor has he called me. We could drift apart again for another nine months or nine years and it would not matter to me. I do not love him. I do not love the man who loves me that lives in Austin. I do not love the man I work with, my friend, also my ex-lover, that I see everyday, that I talk to everyday. I do not love the man my heart does not allow to penetrate my sheet of ice. I care for them all. And I always will. But I do not love them.

This job will end soon and I will be cast out into the world. My faith must remain strong because I suspect that the crisis isn't over yet.

Give me a reason

My jaw aches from chewing this gum that I found in another teacher's desk. It was almost the last one. I left her one in the package. I never chew gum but today my restless body needs something to do. And it is never a good idea to roll around on the floor in front of people who simply won't understand.

AGHHHHH, I open my mouth wide and sit here, clacking away on these keys, listening to all these people moan, whine, complain, crabby-assed, bitter, old women, too much crap has been taken and none of it let out. I at least have my escapist fantasies to keep me amused. I envision myself walking through a bog, the muck catching at my legs, wanting to pull me down. The mud glues my hair to my forehead, it's so long that it catches in the roots, painfully it gets yanked from my scalp. But I continue to trudge through because I have to reach the other side. If I sink what then?

What utter desperation on my part to simply fill up these empty spaces with words that come from nowhere but ultimately have a destination in mind.

Too many sleepless nights

I can't sleep. I wake up all through the night. I scream sometimes. I shake, my heart beats like it's trying to break out of my chest, I cry. This can't go on.

My mind plays tricks on me. I know it does. It confuses friendship with other things. Like my feelings for him. This can not be. I can not be the destroyer of a mind unlike my own. I can not desire things that can never be. I must conserve the good, the honest, the pure, and true, and not seek to destroy like I always do simply to remake in my own image. I may be an aspect of the divine but I am not SHE. I am very confused by all of this. I fear my own dark nature sometimes. Perhaps that is what is keeping me up at night. I try very hard each day to stay in the light. But sometimes a very black thing rises up inside of me and tries to pull me back down into the tumultuous broiling heat of my own dark passions.

No he can never understand this. And he can never forgive this in me. And he will judge me. Always, that feeling of being judged. Always these feelings for the wrong person.

Friendship is better. I am free. He is not. That is the way it has to be.

Continuing the dating diary

Internet Dating

In this area I have quite a few tales to tell but I'll start with one that really blew my mind away.

Internet Date #4

(In the interest of not wanting to reveal the real schumck's name out of my redeeming nature of being a nice person the below mentioned schumck's name has been changed.)

Andy and I were matched through one of those sites that picks your best match based on your personality profile. Andy and I quicky went through the getting to know you stages and began to email each other. From there we jumped right to the phone calls. For two nights we talked on the phone for well over two hours. Andy talked a mile not really giving me a chance to respond in turn. I felt like I was under interrogation. His questions seemed more like a survey for what makes the perfect wife for Andy than what he's interested in in a relationship or even interested in me. Then the conversations started to get rather weird. He asked what I looked like since I didn't have a picture posted on my profile. I told him I was a full-figured woman with a voluptuous body, a beautiful face, dark brown eyes, and auburn hair. He didn't know what voluptuous meant. He said he liked petite women. I told him that was definitely not me. Then he told me he was an athelete and that if was a matter of me losing weight he could always put me on a program and help me with that.

I didn't like that statement. That meant that he would not be happy with who I am. While it may be true that I don't have the body of a supermodel I know what do with the one I've got. I'm happy with my curves, my rounded soft body, and I've never had any complaints. I don't need someone to criticize me or watch what I eat or bug me about lsoing weight. I know what I have to do without having my future partner tell me.

But, the part where it really got weird was when he started asking me what I fantasized about, what did I like etc.....Which is fine, when you're in the relationship. Not when you're talking to someone you haven't met yet. I mean should I charge him for the phone call? Because that is what it sounded like he wanted to get into. Too much too soon. And then he began asking me if I were a dominant or a submissive in a relationship. That raised my eyebrows too. What the hell is he talking about, I thought? The only context I have ever heard those terms was in S&M. He kept talking about some "research" he did on a new relationship strategy which he said couples "sweared" by that kept their marriages alive. He said that one person in the couple assumed the dominant role and the other the submissive role. Then when the person who was the submissive did something that the dominant found to be offensive, say for instance coming home late or burning dinner, then the submissive had to be spanked by the dominant. I sat there and listened to this fool sputter his way through an explanation of this arrangement and he asked me which I would be. I told him that I was not about to let anyone spank me just because he thought I had done something wrong. He sort of laughed and said I sounded like I would be the dominant one.

Now another woman might have cut this off right then and there. But I am of the kind who is a glutton for punishment. I agreed to meet Andy for dinner. He lived very close to me and we met at a restaurant that is exactly between both our houses. When we met face to face I was shocked by how short he and rather petite he was. Not becasue I have anything against short men, but because on the phone he had told me so many tales of how he was so atheletic, how he once tried out for a pro-football team and he used to be a dancer. He had alos told he had graduated from a major university with a BA but later changed his story to say he was working on getting his BA in a roundabout way. Which I took to mean he was getting a fake degree. I was already regretting my decision to meet him.

We went to a Mexican food restaurant and he never once touched the chips and salsa that was set before us. I found myself being very self-conscious about eating any in front of him too. I knew this was definitely not going to work. The conversation was polite enough but when the food came and he unwrapped his silverware he rubbed the fork, turned to me, and said he didn't think the fork was clean enough because he had heard that restaurants didn't use hot enough water to wash them. He actually got up from the table, fork in hand, and went to the bathroom to clean it. I sat there utterly perplexed at where this guy turned up from. A spanking obssessed, delusional, paranoid about unclean forks, weirdo. I should win a prize for this date, I thought. But while he was gone I took advantage of the situation and scarfed down some chips and salsa. I'm Hispanic, duh, I have to eat chips and salsa.

He came back satisfied that his fork was clean and we proceeded to eat our dinner and talk. The whole time he bitched about his cold, frigid, bitch of an ex-wife who sucked him dry out of child-support for their daughter. I had had just about enough. Here's a tip to all single men: when on a date never, ever bring up the ex. Expecially on a first date. If you must talk about her then do so only to mention that you have one but then move on. Women don't want to hear about the ex. I had to get out of this as gracefully as possible. I am a really nice person who doesn't like to be outright rude. So I told Andy that I had to cut the date short because I had to go pick up my son from my ex's place. That's my way out. I usually schedule my dates mid-week when my son goes to his dad's place. That way if the date sucks then I have my ticket out. I said good-bye to Andy and had no intentions of ever seeing him again. The very next day I e-mailed him and told I wasn't what he was looking for. Good-bye. Good luck.

I went to pick up my son and heaved a huge sigh. Perhaps the next date will be better.

Breakdown is imminent

The year is drawing to a close. But the stress of this job has finally taken its toll. My nerves have cracked like the shards of ice that I've erected around my heart so I feel nothing. But the shards are cutting deep and my heart feels like it's falling down a very dark hole taking everything that I am with it.

Today during my free period, I had a meeting with the principal over an incident involving one of my groups that held an illegal raffle ticket sale to raise funds for their banquet. I didn't know that it was against school policy. I don't look at all those manuals they hand us at the beginning of the year. The meeting was very short. Not even five minutes. I wasn't in trouble. I was simply told not to do it in the future. No write up. No other words were mentioned. But it has been one big build-up of tension, frustration, and aggravation that has led me to this point.

I lay my head down in his office. Did I mention that we work together? That we see each other nearly every day and that for the past ten months we have been nearly inseparable? And so he is a part of my stress too although he is not aware of it. But the otehr day he did say he had turned my world upside down in relation to all this rebellion I have been feeling all year. Yes, I agreed, and I replied that I had turned his world upside down as well, although I didn't say in what way. But he agreed as well. I can only imagine that the unspoken things we leave hanging in the other have to do with more than just work.

Back to the story at hand. I lay my head down on the conference table in his office. He was off in his corner working on his computer. I had my back to him. Had he looked my way he would simply have thought I was taking a much needed nap. But I was trembling, the tears sliding down silently, staining the table, and I was tense. Had my fingers the strength they would have made grooves into the table. Had my fists been able to pound the table and break it they would have. Instead I lay there feeling that at any minute I would lose myself utterly and have to be led out of the school on a stretcher.

How much can one person take? How much can the body hold before it bursts? I feel like I am going to burst at any moment and I will run all over the table and the carpet, a river of blood and tears, sorrow and horror, running watery red over everything.

He didn't know what was happening to me. Because I didn't want him to know. What can he do? What can anybody do for me now? It is like nothing can console me now. I am feeling like a walking shadow. I am disappearing. I am losing myself in junk food, my body puffing out, my legs ballooning under the injections of salt I give them. I can't help it. It's like I am trying to put layers of insulation over me so that I don't attract attention and no one will come near me. Someone would have to peel back the layers to find the core of me. He once said he wanted to do that. But what if he found the core of me and ran screaming from me? That I could not take.

It's better this way. All alone. Suffering in silence.

Dating in 2005

It is a fact. People are out there right now hoping to make the connections that will win them a place in the kingdom of their prescribed heavens. It seems that everytime I go out with my girlfriends we find ourselves in places where the meat is young, fresh, and on the prowl. Quite frankly it bores me. But I go because my friends want to go and what the hell I'll spend a few hours out at the local hangouts and observe the mating rituals of this rare animal called the human condition.

Whole pages can be dedicated to the myriad and fascinating ways people date nowadays.
I'll start with The Blind Date.

The Blind Date
Well meaning married friends always want to set you up with someone they think is perfect for you. Why do they think this? I can only think it's because the prospective guy in mind happens to be around your age and single. No other reason. Afterwards, when you've endured a few, fruitless dates with said individual, you've smiled his way, you've tried to make conversation inwardly you want to strangle your friend and ask her "What the hell where you thinking setting me up with that guy?"
One of my my friends is an immigration attorney and represents many clients seeking political asylum from their governments. She praised the qualities of one particular man, I'll call him Ben, and gave me his phone number. I called him and agreed to meet him at the Borders cafe. He was from a Middle Eastern country, his native language being Arabic but when he had to flee his country or be killed he went to Mexico. He learned to speak Spanish in the four or five years he was there. Now he is in the United States. I speak fluent Spanish, (that must have been another reason why my friend wanted me to meet him), we got along okay, but I didn't think we had much in common.

Still, not wanting to completely blow him out of the water, I agreed to a second date. He took me to a Middle Eastern grocery store, that had a small cafeteria, for dinner. That's when I knew this match was not for me. I forced myself to eat a greasy gyros sandwhich all the while thinking what length of cord would fit around my friend's neck. Ben worked for an uncle in his grocery store and he was used to keeping very late hours since the store didn't close until 11pm. This particular night he was off but when I suggested we could go get a beer at Sam's Boat after "dinner" he revolted utterly and said no, it was way too early. It was 8pm.

His bright idea instead was that we go back to his apartment because "he needed to get something". Red flash bulbs went off in my head but still I agreed to go with him. He lived in a part of the city I don't venture into very often and for good reason. But the apartment is right across the street from his uncle's grocery store. Did I mention he didn't have a car? I was the one driving. He showed me his small modest living space. It resembled a monk's cell. There was only the barest minimum of furniture that can get a person by in a living space; a table, some chairs, a sofa, a televsion, and upstairs, a bed. Nothing else. Not a single picture on the wall. No photographs, no posters. The apartment could have belonged to anyone. There wasn't a single thing in there to give any indication that a man named Ben ____ lived there. But what was truly unforgivable was the utter lack of reading material in that place. No books, no magazines, not even a dog-eared tv guide. I put Ben to the test and asked him if he read any books. He said no, never. that sealed his fate. I am a voracious reader, a writer, a lover of the written word, a connoisseur of all things bound, whether they contain my words or the words of someone else. To tell someone who loves books and writing that you don't read is like telling a surgeon that you don't believe in all that new fangled gadgetry like lasers to perform surgeries.

Once the tour of desolation was over he proceeded to call someone, I am assuming in another country, because he spoke Arabic. He left me sitting on his couch for almost an hour while he talked on the phone. All I could think about was what excuse I could give this guy to tell him it was time for this "date" to be over. And I was thinking of the earful my friend was going to get from me for setting me up with this jerk. I think Ben finally got the idea that I wanted to go. I said I had to pick up my son early from his dad's the next day and I needed to go home. As if this experience weren't bad enough Ben continued to call me for the next week. I have a rigorous schedule. As a single mom and a teacher I have to get my child in bed early and then go to bed early myself because I get up at 6am to get us ready for school. Ben was calling me at 11:30pm after he was getting off work and I'd already been in bed and asleep for an hour and a half. He told me that in Mexico he would work unitl late and then stay out until 3am so he's used to keeping really late hours. Well, guess what buster, we're not in Mexico and I have to be in bed early. He actually told me to make an effort to stay up late so I could talk to him. I told him I wasn't going to do that and there was no point in continuing our dating. End of story.

Later on my friend said she had thought we might get along because he seemed so soft-spoken and that he had really pretty green eyes. I wanted to slap her.

What is a sin

Desires for someone else that is not available to you? Would that qualify? What if he feels the same desire? Then we are both sinning and we are both damned. However, I really don't believe in the nature of sin. People make mistakes. People pay for those mistakes. But everlasting damnation, fire, brimstone, and suffering the fires of hell for committing sins I just don't believe in.

I follow my heart. The heart cannot be ruled. Niether can love. It happens or it doesn't. My heart desires this man. My love is wrapped up tight andI won't let it out. Because I know that he is not free to love me. Therefore I can desire him but not love him. If he told me tomorrow that he loved me then perhaps I would unlock my heart and desire and love would be fused into that passioante feeling that has been denied me for so long. I long for that feeling to return. I do remember what it felt like to be in love. It was wonderful and scary. It made me tremble, it made my stomach flutter, it made my breath escape through the small part of my lips. My body remembers what it was like to be in love. My mind remembers each and every moment that demonstrated that love. Those memories are faded now. Like the love I remember.

I am on a quest for the divine. The divine love that God feels for us and that we feel for him. It is possible to feel it here on earth. I am on a quest to find it and I come to it through the people I meet. But I am searching for that one person who will understand this quest and not be afraid to face it with me. How then can all these feelings I have for one person in particular be a sin when I am sure he could be the one to go on this quest with me?

God put him in my path for a reason. Why if not to explore this love and unfreeze my heart?

Beyond frustration

Today was a rotten day. Today I yelled at some of my students because they are such buttheads. They don't do their work, they disrupt the class, they continue to act like damn fools, and it doesn't matter if I write them up because the climate in this school is such that nothing gets done. At this school discipline problems get sent to the SAC room. The kids sit in a room all day long and either sleep or talk to their friends. They don't have to sit in their regular classes so what in the hell kind of punishment is that?

I am so tired of being so angry. I go home angry. I go to sleep angry. I wake up angry and the whole damn cycle starts over. My mental state is crumbling. My reserves of energy are depleted. I don't want to care so damn much anymore because I feel that I don't get any appreciation for it anyway. I want to run away from all this craziness, go to a beach somewhere, open up an island bar, serve tequila sunrises all day to tourists, and write by the beach susnset every night, to the sounds of the surf, late into the night, and wake up to the gritty feeling of sand between my toes, ready to open my bar and start again.

I can't keep this up. Living shouldn't be this hard. Where was the bend in the road that led me here? I want to go back to that road, at that moment in time, and try the road less traveled. What am I talking about? I did choose the road less traveled. It isn't the road, it's the people who have gotten in my way that are the problem. I see my road cleared of all this clutter but it is way off in the distance and I want to reach it, hurry up and reach it, but I keep getting caught.

I have to stay positive. The school year is almost out. I must keep at my writing. I must continue to immprove upon it because that is the only thing left to me that is truly mine. Everything else is only borrowed things that I am paying for on borrowed time. It will get better. I tell myself that it will get better.

Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror

Today he said I had a beautiful face
Today he said I was many things
Today he said that not everyone is so strong or understanding
Meaning he or she?
Does it matter?

For all the things that were left unsaid:
I want you selfishly for me alone
I want you by my side for always
I want you there to hear me cry the tears of rage I feel deep down inside
I want you to hold me in the night when I wake up in terror
Screaming and clawing at my eyes
I want your body simply to make me forget the world outside exists
I want you to dare to open all the boxes of my being and not run away
I want you to want me fiercely for that is the only way I know to be wanted
I want your mind
I want your soul

Until you learn to ask for what you want for you
Then you will never have me
I know what I want
Do you?

Constant Never

From this city there starts a line going across the mountains and deserts. It ends on the sunny coast of California. There I've been and there I've seen. Another line took me to Colorodo and Nevada. Snow capped mountains, high altitude, in one city a simpler life while in the other a fantasy. Then there is the line going east, first across the Mississippi river washed up on a truly decadent city then on to another more subdued place with no less a fantasy than the one in Nevada. Where or when will I be in another place with a different face?

I want to wake up in a strange bed with a beautiful stranger. I want to wake up in one city and go to sleep in another. For breakfast I would like croissants with butter, chickory coffee, and strawberry jam. For lunch I would like sausage on a stick from a cafe in west Texas and for dinner I would like Alaskan King Crab that was fished out of the icy waters that morning. Perhaps you could join me in each and every place. That I would like too. But please don't talk too much because sometimes I don't want to talk I simply want to feel. The rough fabric of the blanket in a Motel 6. The grease on the formica table top in that diner on route 66 . Stopping by a cemetary thrown down and forgotten by the side of the railroad tracks and rubbing my fingers over the names of people that ended up where they weren't even born. And to feel the skin through the shirt, to run my hands down the groove of the spine on a living statue, to feel that hardness and that softness between my fingertips. The heat of breath upon my shoulders and in the hollows of my throat and my hips. Lovers are lucky they have a lifetime but the annoynmous bodies in the empty rooms across the landscapes of America's hotels are even luckier because they have the freedom to choose where they go, who they see, and where they lay their heads down for the next night, in the next city.