learning the limits of the warmth of a hand

thanks for stopping by- and we are fast approaching a year that i have been doing this writing and sharing craziness. stay tuned for some best of to celebrate. . . all my thanks always.

Limitless. He longs for a limitless existence. Where he can go where he wishes and do what he wants. He brings in those close and then pushes them away. In silence. In deciding when this conversation is over. He keeps the smile and laughter as he pours drinks for you and the others. One of his choice of numbness.

He will not tell you his story. For people usually do. He started to talk of the past- even though it was one of the first things he began to tell you. But then he tied it neatly up in the box of him. And pushed it down the stairs to ship again to the coldness that was left behind.

He plays in the rules that keep him safe but pushes the lines that make scare you. Rules about eating and cleaning and being. But finding every way to not feel. Feel. Socially acceptable or not.

He looks at you and says he is a hard nut to crack but he will warm up. The chillness of him doesn't seem like one a coat can protect. Coldness to me is like walking away. Although comfortable. Although reminding me of what was. Was before. I want something different now. I do.

But how can I see this man. Next to me. And this bar. In this bed. In this moment. Words of warmth spoken fueled in twilight and alcohol beverages and mutual attraction and the longing of companionship. He reminds me of someone. But. As I blend these two men into one. Into one story. Into me. For he just told me where he was going and when he'd be back. I can't help but think. That my mistake last time was beyond the temporary. Was not surveying the scene and taking it in. Ignoring and the queen of seeing what I wanted to resulted in my heart on the ground and me begging for someone to put it back where it belonged.

But this time. As I sit next to this man on my respective bar stool. I know. Now. What I see. And in seeing. It is different. And the barrier I build around my heart needed. For not everyone you spend time is a soulmate. His hand touches my leg. Squeezing it in familiarity too early. I reach my hand into his and squeeze back. We don't let go. I feel the hotness of his skin under mine. For this moment. Side by side.

alcoholic bones: inherited but still mine, without stopping i remember i ain't no winehouse

Without stopping. I hadn't had one of those without stopping nights in awhile. The one that the motion propels you through with the help of alcohol and banter and the next place until you wake up the next morning to your head feeling as if it might explode. You write a letter: dear head, please don't fall apart. Not now. Love, me.

See I used to have without stopping nights all the time. In my younger years- the debut of adulthood and experimentation- I wonder if I mix these three alcohols will I hug the toilet later. Oh most likely I will. A weak stomach. I do. Have. Later in my working years. When I had cash to burn. Burn and a job I didn't like. In a group of friends. Who all seemed to follow suit. Or when I was depressed about what I wanted. My only solace was the pouring down of the medicine ordered by me. It felt so comfortable. It felt like home. For it was.

Not everyone has a bones such as mine. These alcoholic bones originally believed to be from my descents- my grandfathers or great on both my irish sides. No closer in my body these bones made a tight fit around the joints. Closer to me. Around the veins and organs and the pulsing in and out. Not just my grandfathers, and maybe a few cousins, and maybe a few aunts or uncles but the closest you could get. My parents. Both. Of. Them. No one told me. To watch out because of my parents. No watch out because of those far away folks, they said. No one wants to say. Addiction you have inherited and dysfunction now not distant relative but your sibling. Living in your home. No one says it. For denial is the way you go on in the island of my family. So it has been. Until. One day you realize. These bones. These ways. Are part genetic. But part learned. And feel like home. It is scary to admit aloud in someones eyes but dysfunction is my friend and alcohol could be the only home you've known. Comforting things not so comforting.

But it changed for me. Not in meetings. Not in saying aloud my name is kate and I might be alcoholic. Hi, Kate did not reverberate against my ears. Not in my dad checking me into rehab and me saying no, no, no. No intervention. No I walked the line the best I could. Until I had to slow it down. I wasn't figuring myself out anymore. Binge drinking became less cool. And so did the throwing up. And wasted days. I was running away from who I was. What was too hard to feel. So now I don't drink like I once did. I go out regularly and might have a beer or two. It might be because I am happier. It might be because I thought about it. It might be I never wanted to be a drunk. Destroyed and broken.

But as I wake up in this brightest room in all of the mission. My head ripping apart and my fear of my stomach release. I can't help but think without stopping nights are still part of me. Even if they don't happen as they once did. Even though this hadn't happened in almost a year. I will always have these nights a piece of me that wants to keep going and not caring. Until the am. In the brightness of this new day. And I realize I can dabble in the without stopping nights. But I am not built for them as I once was. I turn over and will my head to stay in one piece and roll into an embrace. My head will stay in one piece. I got to keep my heart in one too.

i just had a good argument with a punching bag

A good argument. I just had a good argument with a punching bag. I can say I won but let's see what happens when I wake up tomorrow. Will I be able to move? Will my hands stretch above me for the awaking my body to the morning? Will I lay there thinking maybe the wrapping of the hands in yellow and putting on the gloves too big for my tiny hands wrinkly the same make as my mother and brother might have been a better idea than reality.

I had a good argument with a punching bag. I won. For I can still move this am. And it felt really good to just take my fists into something heavy and hit hard. The jab and the hook. Sometimes more powerful than I expected sometimes weaker than I thought acceptable. My friends face on the other side cheering me on but I still fear I might sock her. You are supposed to dance around the bag. You are supposed to block your face. You are supposed to wait for the buzzer. You are supposed to call out the numbers. You are supposed to do a lot of things. But a good argument with a punching bag. That should be prescribed. A great way to get out what you can on an object that can't fight back expect for a swing your way. I guess you could fall over. But still the risk or pretty low in a world where we unload our truck or empty are bucket on the wrong person all the time. Sublimation at its best.

I used to be scared of punching. Well let me take that back. My father used to stand in front of me on the grass in front of our yellowish house next to my tree swing and have me punch his hands-left and right left and right-for I should learn how to punch and I should not punch like a girl. Strength I felt in my chicken arms as I pounded against the weathered hands of my father.

This was before I feared punching and fights and the temper that lived inside my father. My father the sweet man he was, he is, had been raised in the don't ask don't tell of baby boomers so many emotions trapped inside and anger and sadness and desperately shy at one point all mixed into the perfection of him being a fighter. My dad used to get into fights. Street fights. I don't know when it all started. But I do know there in the story telling there was always some type of justice. That guy called my teammate the n word. Or that guy stole from the store I worked at. But somehow the justified crossed over to someone cutting you off in a car, to little league, to a nephew during a drunken poker night. See there might be justice in fighting in protecting but some fights are not about the punching of the opponent. Its the punching of ourselves.

I learned early on. To try and calm my dad down. I learned early on how to break up fights. One of my first memories of college was me breaking up a fight between two soccer players one from Berkeley the other from oakland. They all had a few lbs on me. But I jumped in. I learned early on that I was scared of anger. Scared of anger and fighting and punching. I learned early on not to touch it or taste it or play with it because it would lose control. But tonight. As I punch this bag. With my wrapped hands and red gloves. I pound out anger. Anger in a way that doesn't scare me. Only scared party is that bag, of the hook. And as I end class I can't think how much I want to call my dad. He would be proud I could punch and not punch as a girl. We all get to choose how our family lives inside of us. As I punched that bag. And had a friendly argument, a good argument with anger.

please change the reel

written from the quick write shadows. have a great weekend! and all my thanks!

Shadows. The shadows grow from the ground, the pavement, the grass into full formed features growing into a person. I look and see. Quickly. Take my diagnosis in and keep walking. Walking. Away. Down. The street. Home. But sometimes its hard to shake the shadows of my neighbors , of my friends. The shadows of people and the what they might do. What they are doing. Makes me want to turn off the film reel in my head. It makes me want to stop seeing. Because once I see. I can't help but think. Think about that shadow of that person. The darkness. The sadness. In what could be.

The other day. I had a day at school. A day full of running up stairs and meeting of kids and learning things I would rather not and keep going up down the stairs across the hall and the listening and supporter of dreaming and planning and shaking of hands and hellos along the way. Hi Ms. B. So as I leave my day. I need some quiet. Some solitude. A pause from the reality that is. And sometimes I get. At a cafe. With a trashy mag and sun beats on my face. Or walking. Walking to the next thing. The world somehow looks different and so am I. In pausing. I see tv slowly around me as I walk into it more real than reality tv or a sitcom crafted. And I don't long to speak to anyone. Which is for me the rarity of all rarities.

As I picked up K from school. From guitar. Excitement to see his face still dosed in exhaustion of giving to others. We walk down the street. Home. To get the car. And I glance ahead and to the left to take in the scene. What me and K with his new glasses and guitar upon his back might be walking into. I see a group of man on the corner. Typical for my hood. And as I glance to my left. I see a shadow. A shadow of a man. A glimpse of a family. The woman seems upset and is lifting her child up the stairs who still resides in a stroller. She is speaking to her husband or boyfriend. Some reassurance. I look to this shadow of a man. And he has a knife open. Open in his right hand. He is upset. I look once and twice. And his shadow is growing. Growing on his porch with his family. In front of his house. My face might not have stayed street. I tried not to look shocked that on a Tuesday afternoon most people hang with their fam with a knife open. All I know is get out of here fast. For K is attached to my arm.

So we walk hard around the corner. He didn't see the shadow. But I did. I exhale once we turn the corner. Open the car. K runs to the car. I get in. And sit there. I didn't want to see what I just saw. I never what to see it. The shadow of a person's potential haunts me. I close my eyes. Breath from the bottom of my legs. And turn the ignition. And keep going. Going home.

true story: i just got hit on by the energizer bunny of linguistics

hey folks- this is based on a quick write for it was a crime. enjoy and as always thanks for stopping by. . .

It was not a crime to walk way from him at the corner of Guerrero and 16^th right before the strike of new day. He sat there- more like stood there-with his appropriate uniform of bartender-but he was off tonight- the tattoos that clung and danced up his arm kept company by his tightish button down plaid shirt sleeves traveling up his arm. His ears had spaces growing for what I could never figure out- it just looks so very painful. Metal circles pushed the space between his ears to what he has created.

Talking non-stop, talking from the happenstance of standing next to him at the bar. At the bar earlier in the evening. It isn't a crime to talk to someone at a bar, of course not. Its the common ground church of the 20 and 30 somethings. The rotary club of our generation. The school of life. Where we put on our best dress-sometimes- and stand together as we befriend each other sprayed in our choices of denial, or release or freedom or poison or just the need to play some trivia on a Tuesday night. The light of a bar the next day always awakens the reality of what happened there in the dark could never with the lights falling down with the sun shining in.

Not a crime to speak to someone I didn't know. For I always do. Its one of my favorite pastime other than making out. Its half the eating up of time and space. But the other half is sometimes a conversation breaths air into my lungs. As soon as this man began talking I knew something was wrong with him. I just didn't know what. See I spent the last 10 hours figuring out what was wrong with others. At my jobs. I didn't want to figure this guy out. This reader of problems and hopes and dreams even deserves a night off. His language quick and fast sprinter like but there was not an end to the 100 meter dash. Just going again and again the energizer bunny of linguistics. He reminded me of myself upon too many coffee cups swigged down my throat. A Carl Lewis of sorts. But the finish line forgotten. I begin to look around the room. For my friends at the bar.

It was not a crime to have him join our trivia team. Our group small against the other big. He was a good team player. Sometimes. In and out. Outside. For a smoke. And back. To the bathroom. And back. The quick fire quick and the movements of the hands jerky. It is not a crime to see a man falling into pieces in front of you on a Tuesday night. But it might have been a crime for me to do something. To try and pick him up and super glue- I think I got some in my back pocket- and say how can I help you. He fell apart little by little I watched as he fell to the sticky bar ground. Just watching. So when his word of me and my beauty. Came. And his love for my last name. Everyone does love it. His desire to find a woman who bears the strength to keep her name. My beauty. He was a lapsed Catholic. You can't leave- we need more drinks. High five, we won. You are so beautiful. I would love to kiss you or have sex with you. You aren’t leaving. You say you will come back. I want to leave with you. Are you hungry?

He trails behind me as I exit from the wooden picture of the city corner canvas. Walking through. Don't leave your friend, I say. Don't worry she won't leave. She owes me a bag of coke. Do you guys want some? I got to give it to a guy who would share in the world of the drug of choice of secrecy. I decline and say I am trying to quit- the standard line for these type of situations even if the truth is my nose does not travel across white lines. It wasn't a crime to walk away from him on that street corner still talking and swaying and moving and begging and falling and complimenting- it would have been a crime to do any more.