Book in now a few weeks

Mpst of this was written that week, I'm trying, things happen, always happening, living in a changing world, that's why I love it, and why plans and goals are so breakable. Can't all be Phelps I guess. Well, the new goal is have it finished by April 3. The problem, as it has long been, a place of one's own and finding that.

And the faces are still old that I see talking in front of me, in the old wild and old west’s mountain. “People out there just lived by the law of the west.” A fault, a transgression, heaven on high forbid a backstabbing, and it’s taken care of, right then, there, on the spot or week(s) later, if planning need be done. Problem solved in such a way. Now that old western code is dying. So are those who carried it for so long. I know. I see. I’m not blind. Not completely. I’m praying on my knees. My grandmother, Mamacita, and Aunt Mimi, they must be dying, too. But that, them dying, that’s just unthinkable. I was raised women in this family never die. We were gods alright, immortal, conniving old bitches. Circumstances, health, those points are virtually moot. Women out last the men. And then they exhaust their age, out live by far too far the ages for which they were meant.
Mamacita knows it. She used to talk more about death, talk about giving all her things away every other day. “Lindsey, like anything you see? Want to take it from me? Can’t take it where I’m going.” Those words probably spoken in some mocking manner. “I’m dying. Going on to heaven.” But now, it’s coming. Everything’s end is being brought to the doorsteps. And it’s me, I’m going to be a part of what’s left of her. Important because I’m the only woman, I might outlast the odds. Important because I bear her relief, her shape, her semblance. She knows it. This she knows, too.
She took us back to Marathon, some town, not battle of the Greeks. Not much more than some rich and artisan resort and a hunter’s get away. Pronghorn, whitetail, Mamacita, herself, sports a horny toad on her back. Some of the grades at the public school only have a handful. The grave yard, a windmill turning, divided in two sections - gray and color. It’s Catholic and everything other. They say Mexican and then the white. No grass is growing on or by or over any of the plots. The windmill keeps on turning. Loose dirt, hard rock, covers Mamacita’s family, the Henderson family, going back to my great-great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson H., mason, the last in his family. The rest, god bless ’em, found Mary Baker Eddy.
“Lindsey, come over here,” this is before she had decided to pop a squat on sacred ground. “Come over here and look at this memorial stone. All the names of the kids, myself and my brothers and sisters.” And on that rock, the rock for the dead, is Mamacita’s very own little pride and joy, perhaps her last, perhaps one that will forever remain, live longer, longer than the whole lot of us.
JANE, engraved plainly - 1918 - ETERNITY
Is she a prophet? Dear God, let it not be. Is she conjuring up dangerous spirits, playing in times made only for the immortals? Has she been one all along? Or has she ventured out of her league? Now treading hot water? Her gumption. Her pride blaring in a sacred place’s face - I’m living forever you sorry case of pathetic sons of bitches! Try and stop me! According to her, they long have.
“See there, Lindsey. I know Tom probably tried to claw it out.” the edges around her mythic word are worn, chipped, coloring to red, somehow. Did it mean eternity would bleed? “Surprised they’ve left it in. Been there over 30 years.” She gives a laugh, a hyena screech. What was there prior, false prophets had placed. 1918-1972. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It didn’t take her long to break her binding stone time chains.
Will it be pride before the fall? Tough cookies, Mamacita, we all have to die. All will eventually pay the piper. Sitting in this hotel room, I really don’t think so. That doesn’t seem to be this particular case. She must be a prophet, she’ll live forever. Her simony and black magic, or white it very unlikely might chance be, it’s transferred her to me. I’m a host body, chosen to carry the soul of the dying and eventually dead, just not me. She did not misstep her grounds. It was not blasphemy she chiseled in the yards. She’s a god amongst God, and though for the life of me I don’t see it, Christ has traveled across her face. ETERNITY, the residue that remained. ETERNITY - you greedy ole broad. What foolishness to not want to die. Wait, is Christ really still there? Or do some truly sell their very own soul to the devil? A saying come to life in darkness, blood and fire. This is poof balls, stupid vary colored gumballs. I’m talking about my grandma. Her ouiji boards and spirit writing, they didn’t turn her into anti-human. She turned herself. Oh mouth hands, stop. This is grandma! No, Mamacita. No, she’s human. Somehow. And by god, God help me, I’m gonna see you in that wrinkly mean old biddy’s face.
“Has she always been this way?” I ask Aunt Mimi, we’re talking just like gaggling high school girl friends.
“As far as I can remember. She’s the baby. A spoiled brat. She was a mamma’s girl. Always in the kitchen, while I was sweeping, cleaning, ironing. She learned to cook. I worked.” And Lawdy, the dirt starts pouring. Everything from my family that I wouldn’t have had the courage to imagine, everything that I thought I wanted to know, silly stupid me, what comes of knowing secrets hidden decades in family’s past? What right is it of mine to know? Family? Blood? No, no, not even, quite frankly, neither just not strong enough. They both, Aunt Mimi and Mamacita, could have died, silent on these matters, on most. Their twenties only a vague outline for their earthly story.
Curiosity, tenacious ambitious twit of a twat scheming inside of me - I that I accidentally invited the devil into my temple.
Only now do I realize the force of this mixture bubbling inside me.
I asked away. Made the right response. Asked slowly, my reporter skills finally coming to full unabashed use. Draw it out, appease them, make feel like the big shit shot, and then it will all come rushing out.
I wasn’t thinking about seeing God. The time of the first prayer, the knee faliing, too far gone…no. It’s still prayed. Either my divine mercy or self-inflicted earthly curse, eternal, may we hope not. At first I never stopped, pray without ceasing you people of Thessalonica, oh, and you there, Lindsey Bright, you, well good God, you better start praying as well. And then, later, I laughed. Because in my first part of my prayerful, brimming holy pilgrimage further than the seas, in that glorious national park, first stop exit, I thought I couldn’t get around faces any more fucked up. Could thre be anyone harder to see God in, with the exception of my dear blood close family, than these weird, freakishly creepy hombres y mujers?
I should know not to make those statements, shrill thoughts, don’t give air to them, but I’ll never learn these old wise rules. I feel ignoring the thoughts, cute as they sometimes are, would be a little too dishonest.
Next challenge, and yes, I’m narrowing it down and jumping a bit around, but we’re still A.B. and still in the park. My roommate. Miranda or Mary, neither was actually her name. I think it was Yi-ting or tang. Taiwanese, but she picked Anglo names.
A magician’s hat full of key foreign assimilation tips. Goody good. Her name tag stated Miranda, she always told me Mary, keep on turning. Or burning. I opted for the shorter.
She was the twelfth roommate I’d had in my line of linear time, what a bull and cock crock of shit theory. I’ve never put them on a scale, and I’m not going to try, even in unemployed economic downturn days. I won’t try that, not without a Norm’s Diner nearby to reward myself with a Super-Scooper-Schooner. Mary was just Tawiwanese at first, loud and foreign. Alright by me. I was glad, thankful, full of praise, I wasn’t with the girl I trained with. Her computer desktop was the Mona Lisa on a MJ leaf. She ended her tour getting caught snorting Zoloft, what a bummer of a high, and was given the heave-hoe out the do’. What a dumb thing to do, but that god, she chose her path. Mary was my height, almost my build, but thinner here and there. She was great, better than the other, at first. Aren’t those the ones that get you in the end? Her hair was thick, matty black. She could pull it back, but it poofed, full of volume no matter what - voom-va-voom. She had been there, weeks, no more than three. Arrived in a bus full of fellow countrymen. Soon, I had found a yellowstone bunch - me and Mary and a good deal rest of the Taiwanese. And she was funny, she joked, well, really she was loud and would make loud noises. Seemingly astonished by everything I said. We walked around the geyers, w hole big group to the top geyser look out during a full moon. What fun and adventure for a young pilgrim girl out in the world trying to get caught up in staring an praising everyone’s faces.
She worked in a gift shop, too, the one with the schnass-pu-tazz. I was cutting the muster at the Lodge, the eehh, it’ll do shop. We got the painter, the photographer and potter. Last year for all but Mr. Photo Man. After a week, our schedules changed. we weren’t working close to the same times. But, and this was the first step towards wow, I think this is strange, that different shift time, it didn’t matter. She’d be there. Off her shift and right onto mine. I began to feel a little weird, but knew how to ignore these things. My emotions were crazy, erratic, those squiggling feeling not to be trusted. I was used to school, not the gift shops of a big park. Ignore all emotions for first weeks in any one of new locales. She followed me dusting around the sstore. She staid by the counter side while I took money for the register, until a manager said. “Shoo, girl. Business to do.”Then, way back then, her face, at the windows, walking one way then about face and the other. A large flat palm moving side to side. When I counted my drawer out, there was she, “Hey! Lindzz-say!” I couldn’t escape. The air getting thin. Heat and water closing in. No way out, so we walked together through the buffalo to our 2 bed little dorm room.
We had our fun times. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll give her and everyone that. I was more suspicious of my emotions than her potential leech attack. Should I have been suspiscious of either? No, of course not. What kind of nonsense life had I begun to start leading? It all is. All sprinkling nonsense, nonsense, and the pitter patter god, god, God, god, god and the hooves thunder SHALOM.
She was learning Spanish, her English already passable, communicable. She had the temperament for these new tongues - she didn’t mind screaming at strangers. I had come with a gift from mi hermano from El Paso, Cantiflas, and it was a huge hit. “Cantiflas! Awh! We grew up with it as kids,” the Colombians said. Mary, she’d seen it, too, in a Taiwanese school. So, we knew what we had to do. Talent show, and choreographed our Cantiflas dance. We were surprisingly passed over for a prize.
This is just that you know we had our time. But she was getting emotional. She would cry when anyone left. “I still cry at home when I pass my old schools. I don’t want time to go by.” I didn’t know then and don’t know now if these are words from a wise child some natural philosopher, an artist of living and taking breath, or if they are the words of a crackpot, a psychopath, a person denying life it’s full embrace. I complain tto other, now, about her being the latter. Really, I can’t condemn her of that. Just sensitive, when I always wanted Christ to be strong.
She followed me more. She followed me on her days off instead of going off, having fun, with other friends. “Lindsey, we’re worried about Mary.” The Taiwanese delegation had a meeting with me. “She is crying a lot. She screams and cries.” “I know,” I said. No, duh. I’ve seen her, this whole time, been living with her doing that. “Isn’t she always like that?” I posed to the delegate table. “She is like a chile. You must treat her like a child.” My god, I didn’t want a child. Let them come to me, and I am you. Good grief. I asked for it, didn’t I? And I tried, for the sake of Taiwan, to oblige.
It didn’t work, matters got worse. I never had lived with anyone so obsessed with me. She made me gifts, wrote my full name on all her things, on everything. She tried to play the boob game with me. You grab the other girl’s boobs. “No, no, not in America,” I told her and swatted her hands away.
New strategy: wake early, leave, don’t look back, day after day. I woke before I knew she would. I hiked, I went to the firehole runnin river and found myself a tree near shore. It wasn’t only Mary, it was all the faces getting to me, magnifying so great to a point I couldn’t take. I needed to have time to be away. I prayed, and read, and listened to the flowing water, stroking my hand across it. This was working in a national park. If I had read Edward Abbey then, I would have been worse off, expectations for natural revelations. I can be so greedy, I had my big one, my sweet innocent boy, that should be enough to sustain me. This wilderness was filled with people and they all wanted ice cream and pins and porcelain toilets to press asses on. Can’t really blame them, pretty normal wants to have. But I was telling myself I was searching for gods’ faces all the while seeking grace, peace, some piece of sanity in quiet solitude.
I watched the progress of buildings. The parking lot was set to expand, not on its own, but by the hand of man. I saw the neion flags stricking out of the ground on thin silver wires. No good fucking bastards, they are! They were rubbing up agaisnt my little spot. Beware of people’s little spots, we’re a selfish race, in general terms and we’ll fight to death. So as I was walking, almost everyday, back into the light where crazy Mary would surely find me, I grabbed the neons and threw them in the aird. Playing my own game of darts with invisible gods. I knew I’d lose, but I’d play the game while I could. I sprayed those neons all the land. No order for you idiots fucking up the wilderness. I’d fucked it up, too, yeah I knew. I really doubt if my spots still there.
Finally, fake Halloween came, and ame and Mary had fun, but then I couldn’t take the closeness, the need, and I ran leaing quickly, without notes, in silence. But here’s the thing, maybe you don’t see why I got weirded out, got freaked, maybe you see no reason at all. A person following you, wathcing you, wanting to walk everywhere hand in hadn withou all the time. All the live long, long ass time. The same time she weekly stopped to the passing of workers back to their homes. Not by some ritual, but an internal ticking that shook her and made her cry. She tried to sleep with me, didn’t tell that yet. Welp, it’s the god’s honest truth. I’d be in bed and she’d get out of hers and come to mine and try to wiggle herself under the covers. “But this is what we do in Taiwan.” Whimper and whine without offering a cup of wine. “I don’t care. Get out. Get out. Get out now.” The extent you did it to my the least, you did it to me. Well, too bad. There were no walls, no private, no space. All gone and she’d chase me around, except for my ever sacred dawn, I couldn’t take it. This was the real-life talented Mr. Ripley, though I’ve never seen it, pretty sure I was living it. And the stories you here, the warnings before the almost grown leave home: Beware of psycho roommates, they almost chant, but did the chanting chorus know this? That this could be out there?
How did it take a month to crack, to split in silence and put my avoidance back on full? Besides ignoring my emotions for two weeks, we did have our fun, and were people way more fucked up, thanks to Mary, some she brought straight to me. Whore Island was directly across the way. One on one, with unexpected careless smiles, Christ winked, and he still does with those eyes some days in the mirror or glass or shiny water top. ‘It’s alright, I got this one, child,” he says. Did he? Or did I make that up? Was I supposed to give them their grace? I didn’t know. I took the wink, and went on. The Jamaican man, he stared as I or any walked past. “We’d kill any homos in our country.” Ah, well, good to know, sir. “What you like? I bet you’re a real treat. Real good between the sheets.” Okay, see ya round. “What, girl? No fun.” Walk, then run, run, run. The Americans, they were the worst. Oh, boy, oh yeah. That short little blondie, up to my shoulder. His roomie told me he claimed to have meditated with the shamans, and sitting across the room, threatened to push the guy through a wall. When he sat across from me, those beady eyes looked, no wise eastern saying, or dip-shit threat. Just lazor eyes and “you like you’d be fun to fuck.” Alright, okay, scooch my chair away, no more talking or being near me. Those were some, but remember, I told you Mary brought one straight to me?
Mary spoke of me strangely to others she met. She seemed to think she could sell meto an American JP for fried morsels of tofu. And this American was that face that showed to me more fucked than the rest and then some. He had tatts, head to toe, a carrot, his favorite the weird dildo he was, on a calf, never eating veal for realsie reals. He walked in the shadows, stalking with crazy Mary, outside the shop windows. She threw me with him one stalking day in such a way, I had to move with the both of them. They brought me to the gym, ooo a game of soccer, his trick du jour of the trade of his straight edge way. Wow-ee, what a kick, mister! I didn’t bother to say, and before the evening adjourned and adieux’s flew all round, this son of a gun reached into his pants, and that JP took the liberty to put those two little balls of his out on display. “What dja say? Oooo-eee, those sure are purty?!” Mamacita said laughing, the story, I know now, nothing compared to her day. “No, I just turned the other way.”
There somewhere in Mary and what I took to be gross JP was Christ, somewhere playing, somwhere praying. This Jack, joke, poor postherd, patch, matchword, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. What did Christ do when JP tet the girls down and med them see goats and boys and girls give, get, bestow, receive shockers and cockers? Ay-yay, Christ, do you simply close your eyes? Like me, look the other way? In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, sine he was what I am. I didn’t know, didn’t wait to find out. I ran from him, head down, phone to ear, lips moving and feet, work it, my baby dogs. Were these his imperfections? The places of fear he covers with actions, with shows, with displays of which I didn’t want to understand? Underneath, that was Christ. Where Christ most desperately needed to be. There, in some filthy, pitiful weakness, always nailed there dying away.
Those were the ones, the boys not unlike the first, but man, wouldn’t be ‘til later I’d see all those faces, altogether, dancing in the mirror. The rest, well, they were kinda fun.
The Polaks and Ukrainians, the Czechs and the Slovakians, the Turks and Colombians. I seemed to get along with all just fine. There was one, mmm, Felipe, gods mother full of grace must’ve sent him my mercy straight from that country of Colombia. He had the smile of a happy, so jovial, pure, here-I-am man of man. And I searched his favce and saw his teeth, his short black hair pushed to one side, tall slender body. One or two crooked teeth making my own quiver. My boy! My boy! Reincarnated so soon! Ah, aww, he was bare, standing there, standing everywhere. “I’m here. Honest. Honest, right here.” And Christ winked again, “It’s alright, girl. I gotchya, always got you.”
The Polaks became my fast friends. Three took out my dead mice, one by one and then two at once, one unsheathed a machete vowing to kill the whole gang. The one, people thought was me, and two years later, I went to her land to see what living her life would be. Neat, but dear, no, not for me. A white people, within weeks, people thought, I was just another Pole, some said I’d pass for Slovak, one was pretty sure I’d been a Frenchie all along. Most were funny, some, when finally they did speak, were really damn funny. I don’t think there was one I didn’t like. Even the short, red, stocky young bull, skin tight as a sausage wrap, lips pooching out, moustache hairs touching his nose. Us two didn’t hit it off, but there wasn’t hate or threat, no ill regard on either part. I could scan his face, and then I’d smile, I saw us all.
The Ukrainians, hah, I don’t know why I’m breaking people up like this. Like I’m some dirty categorizer thinking everyone need be known by a country of blood or birth or taxes, and if possible, broken down accordingly. I didn’t know many, just a few. I stared at the guy in red and white tight striped tank top. I know, eye-brows up, how cute. He looked like a dancer or gymnast and when he appeared, magic - thin air, then him there -I always smiled. On another thought, maybe he was Polish, wearing those colors like that. Forgive me, it seems I forget. Such a cursed thing, this forgtting. Especially for the young, when the times they no live, they will ever tell them, dwell them, ruminate them, a vision of themselves, ourselves, in our mind, in the air, for ever living those young times. And here I am forgetting. What a giant turd I am.
On with the Ukraine and their men,
Ondrej, Andreii if you dig, a definite Ukrainian, a Russian loving Ukrainian is more. His face lit up like a puppy dog when asked if he’d ever killed someone. “Ya! Ya!” And then he spoke on about the guns and automatic weapons he holds. Aaarrrrr, sure knows how to turn this girl on. Ondrek lived upstairs from Mary and me, up the stairs and a few doors down. I’d only been out of collegea few months and there was this one thing I really missed, one thing I thought, “I could start it here, in yellowstone. Oh, I could start one up reall good here.” It was a summer camp for adults, foreigners and US fucktards alike. Yee-haw. And here was tough Ondrej, they j prounced like a short ‘y’ which Mary could never get right. I liked, Ondrej, really I did. His expressions, careful, hard, tough, he was Ukraine, country and belief. He was taller than me, stronger than me, made sure to let it be known that we was more powerful than woman. And his face, oh, there is gentleness when his face flashes, the gentleness his face showcut him up and cut him down. His face flashes, I bust a gut laughing. Poor, poor Ondrej. Pobocito. He came in the room the wrong time, my meat, my feed for my yearning to prank - target redder than Russia across his chest.
Warm up time, pranking stretches. Three 6 Mafia was blaring loudly. Two international students lounging in front of me, class time, come to attention. Let’s practice English. “Fuck Tha Police! Now, please, repeat. Now, scream it. Yell it, the only way it will count. Very good, very good, you two have me impressed.”
The time went to talk and talk went to chat, and I went straight to razz-ma-tazz. “So wait, you don’t have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“Ondrej, do you have a boyfriend then?”
“No! No! I not gay!”
“My, my what a response. Are you sure you’re not hiding anything?”
Mean, I think, I know now, and still I laugh. Maybe the devil’s in us as much as Christ. Some people, we’ve all heard this said, say God sure does have a sense a humor. Or maybe, that’s god fucking with us, and that night and those to come, my prank time with tough Ondrej is just divine nature.
“Are you sure, Ondrej, that you are not gay? Your roommate, well, mmmm-mmmm-mmmph, is all I can say.”
“No! No! Not gay! Not gay!”
And Mary joined in, louder and laughing, but he came at least a little prepared.
“I not gay. You want, I show you I not gay.”
He was lounging on the floor, reaching out with both arms. Sweet Ukrainian lover. “I show you.” His baby blues flashing, I can’t believe I didn’t piss my pants. This young stud, 20 years old, killing record on his rap, was lounging, offering himself to my roommate and me. And I couldn’t stop laughing or razzing this poor song of a soviet buck about havin a likin for the cock-a-toos.
“Now. I kill the gays. I show you how I not gay.”
He left the room with only telling, not showing. And then Mary and I started off on a fun run. Sorry, Ondrej, but a key part of life is learning to laugh ‘til you wee your self a little about how ridiculous your own living has been. Not in Ukraine, you might say. Oh well, welcome to the US of A. Let’s roll the story on.
I found a portrait, a school pic, a heavy set girl, bland face, we slid it under their door, knocked and ran. On the back, “Is this your type, Ondrej? Just ask, her number’ll be yours.” I dug out the employee welcome packet. Some warning literature about AIDS and HIV, I knew it all too well. I cut out a picture of Keith Ubran’s bum and a hand coming coming, playfully, towards it. Pasted the butt next to the warning and hi-lighted the words referencing the dangerous of anal penetration. Same drill: knock and run. Written on the back - caring friends looking out for you, that’s all.
We talked and joked when we passed, though on a minimal level. When I asked, “Is that your boyfriend?” he’d get mad and walk away. My gosh, true asshole I was. Respectable, Russian lover, that you didn’t hit me. One smack and I’d be done for. The pranks were drying up, for a week, 10 days, nothing, nada, only loud winks in hallways. Then, came fake Halloween, that’s when we reached our climax, and started downhill racing for the not too far pranking end.
Doing laundry, there, lost, without an owner, no apparent claim, a black lace thong lay. “Gotchya, big guy,” and I grabbed the panties in my nails and held them far from me walking back to my room. “Mary, we’re gonna need an envelope.”
Same drill - knock and run. A note inside, “I thought you boys might need a costume for tonight. I hope you don’t fret and fight.”
Neither wore it, and I’ll back to that night, but the next day or so, Ondrej was in the dining hall. “Please, please, no call me gay. I not gay. It look bad, you say that and make me look bad. Then people really think that.” He was sincere. Tears were contemplating taking a wild slide down his muscley red cheeks. “I not gay. Not gay.” Sweet killer Ondrej had a soft, sensitive side known to the west as ego, reputation, appearance to the world. Perhaps the only missing chink in the dragon’s armor. The joking, the razzing, in some state it was probably illegal harassing, stopped that day. I wasn’t sure if I felt bad. His sad face, firm cheeks reddening like Red Delicious apples - I see it, mostly in a flash. And almost every time, it makes me laugh. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. Well, I’d been hankering, ever yearning, for a good old-fashioned pranking war - to prank and in return be pranked.
God, I saw God. I did. Sometimes Christ’s not hard to spot. Would it have been better if I kissed your feet than push black panties under your door? I’m not sure how to praise a human God.
It is finished, Ukrainian man. I hope you laugh, Ondrej. I never did think you were gay.
The international worker’s I’m listing, they don’t sound jacked up - they’re not. Those Americans I spent little time dashing out before, a handful of paper upon the page, they were the dumb, the weird, the freaky, the ones that eventually, after a curse under the breathe - go fuck yourself, you sick dirty pig - Christ’s passion could be seen. Most needed there. Enough of that for now, let’s have some girly, giggling, girly fun and finish up speaking of my Ukrainian loves real quick. ‘Cause everyone knows, don’t you?, that one Ukrainian lover never does the trick. Two, on the other hand, woop, there it is!
Yura, he was the second Ukrainian, and he walked each step strength, strength, strength. No Russia lover, not this one. He was a protestor in the Orange Revolution. A real-life living revolutionary…..mmmm, dreamy. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t communicate to Yura how that melted me. I’m going to warn you readers now, hold onto your butts, this is a legitimate lobotomized camp love story in the tell.
He worked in the kitchen as a cook. I swear, I just heard a thousand ladies swooning. He was the soup cook. A European white turning brown-red, ruddy, in the sun. Short hair, an almost shaved head. Didn’t look like anything grew on that round face. A smile, that’s what did it, such a sweet, innocent, baseball-boy smile. Coming round the bases behind only Felipe and that humanly boy from Sonic Youth. Reddish lips, puffed the right amount, though to my chagrin, our lips never locked, touched, smooch-a-rooed. After we both left, I received an email from him. “I go swim,” was about all it said. I laughed and laughed, and I knew, goodness, that was that. His face still shows on the sequence from time to time, but it’s not playing sweetly all the time in the front of my mind. Then his face was only showing when I took the time to look, the time to see, to have a little looksie in the mirror between me and me.
Since he’s Ukrainian, he’s the one who first came onto me. Not by guns, or the telling of the killing, yet still by force, the card some men love to play and show. First, first, first! He smiled, cooking his soup, he smiled at me, passing through the line. One day, he held up a flat, spread hand, look here, American girl, these are the fingers that want to touch you. Of course, I didn’t think that then. I smiled back, blushed redder than him, lowered my head, raised my eyebrows and let my eyes take little, last peek. Search his firm, bubbly face of international good will.
Then phase 2 - the eating is more than eat and drink.
He came out from the back. “No, let me get new soup for you.” Boy, I sure could pick ‘em. Got the soup chef making everything fresh for me. And when he came back, after the fresh soup was in its place, the force came in his stands as he staid and lingered after his soup job was done. I searched his face, he didn’t seem to do the same to mine. He grabbed me, not like an enemy, like he had every right to. Hand reaching round, crossing my back, my side, landing, up and down, his fingers stretching on my belly. His legs, he didn’t waste time. Let’s help prop her up, the legs said, and Yura put his thigh between my knees. Oh, Yura, you’re a, yura, Ukrainian dog, that’s what you are, Yura. But a revolutionary, of the minor sort, and a sweetheart and in his eyes, I had no doubt a god looked through them. And all of this, the grabbing and petting, what choice did I have? Don’t contest me. Lindsey, I said to me, you’re living. This is life, it don’t happen twice. Living amongst the midst of Ukrainian male-jonesing for you mist. At least it was the cute one, the one that looked less like Putin in all but the chest.
All of it happened at the far end of the salad bar in the far corner of the employee dining hall, when I passed by with my tray, and then he emerged from behind to give me fresh soup. His words weren’t all too sweet. “You work out?” “No.” “You look you work out. Flat stomach.” It was obvious how much he likey. His hand proclaiming it was the truth. And that was all but that until he stopped working 100 and more hours each week - post-communists still had some communism in their work. His last three days, he took off, and he came to see me, he grabbed my hand, his fingers played with mine, he walked me from place to place. He went into detail about his weight work out, the strength he built. He came out a door he saw me pass by, his shirt off - showing me that Putin chest, ow ow! His fingers felt for mine, then down to my thighs, spread and close, contract and release, beating his heart beat above my knee. Walking back, he spoke words, what a sweet racist he was - blaming Mexico’s people for the out of shape cities the US had. I laughed as he spoke. We’d have even less if we spoke on some equal language plain. It was nothing, nothing much, and then came some fake holiday dance night in the employee quarters of the park. Was it Christmas or Halloween or just an eighties dancing night? I forget which. Then, nothing much, but several dances. Me laughing, him holding me close to his Putin chest, grinding of some variety I believe the kids call it. My cackles way throwing off his game. Dance song, heavier, faster beat. He bounced back and forth, a golden necklace chain bopping-boop-bop-bi side to the other side in accordance with the eighties monster beat against his Nike Air Jordan tee shirt. What am I doing, shaking my rump, sliding up close to this orthodox Russian Christ? Immortal diamond, you and I. And that really was it, then left, a part, and you know the rest. He go swim now, and a sweet smile is reflected back at my face.
I’m standing outside, Terre Lingua, the desert and mountains igniting all the colors of the sky. I’m puffing away on a cigar. A tiny, tightly wrapped and rolled, Matador. I took a tin box, space ‘em out to last the entire time. That was the plan. The night before, when I packed and slept, didn’t think it’d be a problem there. First night, air hotter, drier than El Paso, hair getting dusty, picking up sweat on the side of my face. Mamacita didn’t mind if I smoked inside the hotel room. Aunt Mimi, she couldn’t give a damn. “No, it’s a nice night. Looks to be a beautiful sunset. Anyways, it’ll be nice to be outside.”
All this way, upping and going, I’d arrived and left each place alone. Even to college, B.B., a semester abroad, A.B., I’d gone and left, but a day in London, alone all alone. And A.B. I traveled with millions of words in my bags, thousands of faces glazed in my mind, living quite rightly, so fully in my soul. With Christ in each and he in me when he is me. So alone to the eyes and mouths that said, “How brave, that little flower child can’t stay away from adventure. She’ll be gone to the next when she feels the challenge is off.” Could be, maybe it should be just like that, like I have people say about me. They, though, yay, most of them don’t flat out stare in the sun of the son glass. Walk alone, you say, my God, not me. But out in this desert, Christ, I feel alone. This one face staring in me, out of me. Those hellish eyes waiting in that room, to shoot ruthlessly right at me. I came with two women, each of my own flesh and blood. My God, my god, why this? Why is this so goddamn hard? This cigar is making me sick, so you let the fire die. The moon and that room the only thing left lit. I have to take a shit, so I’ll go on in.
“I sure am disappointed with the two of you girls,” tears had glazed and now made glisten her bright blue eyes, white pink with red lines, tear ducts and lid brims filed down. The dam didn’t, nor could it, hold anything back anymore. It poured at all times, good and bad; I’d say sorrow and joy, but Mamacita and joy might be a lie at the time. Anytime? - may that not be so.
“I really am. I am very disappointed with the two of you.”
“What did we do?” I was almost laughing at this preposterity. I was shocked, too. I’d driven her in a car this long way, back to the streets where as a girl she played.
“Well, I’m sorry for living,” Aunt Mimi was exhausted, tired of it all. She stared at me bewildered and rolled her eyes round her sister.
Disappointed in us? C’mon, Mamacita, please. We didn’t piss our pants, didn’t pull down our britches every chance we did get. We didn’t almost flip off the road, didn’t go the opposite way down the state’s One Way. Didn’t try to drive parallel to a truck solely to flip him the bird. That was you. All of those things were you, you old hag.
“Not one of you mentioned my new hair cut.”
I erupted in laughter. I couldn’t hold back. How much did this moping, pitiful old woman want? Immortality and praise, the meagre lot of the gods.
“Aunt Mimi mentioned it when we picked her up.” The dying probably didn’t hear. Ears gone bad. I think she hears only what she wants. What will do her something, some good, some foul. What she loves to hear, somehow, always find their way flying into her head, the words she holds on dearly to, words that enable her to be pissed off. She could be dying, might have been singing her swan song by giving us her family, her last hell. Losing hearing, ability to use both hands, ability to see everything, to hula hoop round and round her waist. Who wants to accept a god coming to their last? If Hades lay in the skies for all the world to see, and moped around, crawled and couldn’t walk, and then slowly, over years, died, the world that accepted it would shed tears of sadness and probably die or live like a dead for a god is dead., the rest and most wouldn’t accept it. The world in which we were raised changing by the dying of our supposedly immortal gods.
Mamacita’s face scrunched, like she got hit by a brick, thrown by me, hitting her right in the gut. She stares, turns around, and continues to stare.
“How could I not notice it? Those spiky things going everywhere in front of my face for five hours.” Aunt Mimi, each word a gust of air, exasperated. 94 years and 90 spent with this.
“You know, I like it. I think it looks good.” Now, she’s better than the both of us.
“So do we.”
“So do I.”
“I used to have that same haircut for years.” I throw my hands more than the others. My arms still move more than the others.
Mamacita, straight now, straight as a board. Proud and tall. “Well, I like it,” she turns, not hearing anymore. Done for the time. Said her peace, her mind, to her, what was right. To her, it’d be right if we bowed, waiting and kissed her feet. And we should, and she should. Every being praised and every being raising then bowed, the human waves creating the wind. Sometime hence, we stopped adoring each other and the wind took off on a fancy of its own thinking - it was free. Here and there, now and only here and there, a few souls humble, a few knees bow. “I love! I love! I love you! And you! I love you all! My river of life! My beating heart!” Too few, though, the wind is flying, no longer guider by humanity’s love.
Mamacita, disregard for the reason, the true intent behind the action, stands, moves, chin up and haught, claiming her bows with each glance, gave and giving: 1918 - ETERNITY, didn’t we see?
I plop myself on a bed, Aunt Mimi on the edge of the other. It almost rolls off her, water over rocks. Closer look, being more attune, the rocks have changes. And so she has.
She, that prophetess, about face and soldier’s steps to us. Two skin colored and clear small things, flapping under her hands direction, one in the direction of each our face.
“I took my ears out.” Oh, she looks smug now. “Now, you girls can talk about me all you want.”
“Just what we’ve been dying to do,” Aunt Mimi mumbles, and I suppress the snorting laughs.
I grab the Matadors, a light, and then head outside, sometime, if not after, then sometime with those two.
Mother of my father, why aren’t you dear, grandmother? Objective, watch it like a movie, disconnect and watch from afar. Might be the only hope of getting through. Tried it. At least, tried to do that. This woman. I can chuckle at some things. I can drop my jaw, amazed, in awe that this is really happening to me, in front of me. Be grateful to have these feelings roaming my veins, moving my body, my form to do this or to do that. Glory be the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, this little one, hah, I’m still alive. And true, yes, I am strengthened. This wasn’t the movie experience on the reel in my lofty head. Now I know, first, before her autumnal waning season of her long, long life, my pride has come and this is one of my falls. My intent afore this trip was far from pure. Intrigue, curiosity, wanted to take stories, make plenty of funny little anecdotes, entertain. Gather material, write her story and her’s, aunt, a part of it. What they wanted to done, for family’s sake and want, this was done. For me, and not them, I wanted to discover who this woman was, who she know is. This woman, Narcissus Jane, my mamacita, who are you? And I dared to stand close and stare, then ask who are you that they say we are alike? Knowledge sought for knowledge’s sake. Nothing more, only so that I may know. And tell stories, fascinate friends, isn’t this a weird life I’ve had? I’m getting my just deserves.
Puff, puff, the faint smoke disappearing under the stars. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, ain’t that right, Sainte Patrice? God is love and God is Christ and God so loved the world. I search her face, and though she’s said it, I don’t see love. It’s silly, now, to cry. Why Christ, have I become so blind? Blessed are the merciful for they’ll obtain mercy. Oh mercy me, I’m afraid I’ve missed the boat. I can no longer see Christ, I can’t find love in this woman that’s such a part of me. What of one? One is all, don’t you know? One is all. And there goes Christ dying again, for you and me. Help me, Lord, help me. You there, driving on this dirt road, help me. Help me! I’ve come to the desert, a purpose and two ladies back to their old home and now, I’m becoming blind and all alone! The moon winked this time. Sister Moon and Stars made in heaven bright, precious and fair. Christ was somewhere.
Sometimes time is just fucked. Augustin, he pondered and thought - never present, always just gone. Einstein, every westerner remembers, he broke it up, blew it up huge, stepped inside for time and addressed the world, “Don’t worry, don’t fret. Not all of you are crazy. It is as we humans had suspect. Time, my dear friends, is relative.” And I say it’s round, enough of the phallic time line. My time is mine, what’s mine is yours. Yet I’m telling points of tales linear so as not to confuse you. You didn’t live, didn’t see, didn’t feel, slowly, take it slow, explain, one step at a time, I tell this to myself and you. I say I’m doing it this way all for you, for the reader if any. Grab your mind gently with the hand of words and take it along on a walk. Yet I know, I’m not alone. You’ve seen and felt, too, that you are alive and if well, still living. Not much different, down, down, down inside the soul, much the same, Christ and nature to blame. So I’ll continue on, tell this next one, and then, since we’ve all been swimming in the same waves of the same sea, I’ll jump like a fish, turn circles like Shamu.
And the faces are young, some are old, some spread over the hill, and the faces are three in one.
This next bit is short, on the surface the cause being the dates - Morelia, Michocan, Mexico, October 21-28, 2006 A.B. Under that, the meat and heart, there were faces and gods, and there everyone seems to know how the gods walk. Mexico, Mexico, down south in Mexico. I saw faces, these on the plane, passport checkers, luggage takers, people in cars and people waiters.
People often look at me and speak, “I can tell by that look, I can see the wheels spinning in your head.” Way down south in Mexico, the were spinning hot and faster, no bother catching or clicking, no bother making each rotation caught. They were off all tracks. Cuts and ridges, screws and bolts, wheels were moving to fast for ‘em. Nerves all in my body, squeaming and screaming - what am I doing?! Marching. What else am I to do? Beat that snare, up tempo for up and down feet. Arriving was something, I tried real hard to pretend I never heard of vomit and kept it way far down. Mexico, language school, learn to teach English, ESL, yeah go to Mexico for that. It made perfect sense.
Alright, here’s a quick background, a little inside the player’s brain, if your interested why I chose. If you don’t care, skip the paragraph to the next. I needed out of Yellowstone. I was skippin’ on my contract by a month. The internationals had gone. I was left with a bunch of American jack-off and two mousy looking Polaks. Kinda cute, but they couldn’t keep me there. My room had three mouse holes in it. Any mouse traps I lay would snap, fill, then place ‘em again, and another little mouse would find a way in. I didn’t know where to go. I hadn’t planned past working in the gift shop, liked to keep things open ended. Home was an option, back to El Paso, where I’m writing this now. No, no, I couldn’t go home so quick, I didn’t like home, in a week I’d be wiggin. Language school in Mexico. I wanted to learn Spanish, embrace the culture. I found one on-line. I tried to call them, no one answered. I sent emails, no response. I think their only existence was an out-dated web site. More googling, and presto, Centro Lingua, or some such name. I thought about for a day, then bought my tickets and set the dates at the school. Original plan: October 21, 2006 - May 20, 2007.
A lady, she sat somewhere near on the plane, she saw me and thought of her daughter, 10 yeas close to the same age. A face in a face, transported and implanted solely by youth. “And you don’t know the language? You sure are a brave one.” Only moving on, I’m only moving on, following peaks, taking a ride on a whim blowing in the wind.
The woman got me a cab, told the cabbie where I needed to go. I’d written the address down, handed it to him and stared at night in a foreign state. My dark sister country, mysterious mystic. Santos. I’d looked at the land’s northern landscape every day growing up, and when I go home. Time to really get to know her, I told myself. Bought one book, read half weeks before I left. We got to the city, 10 pm - family time/work time. Took a turn down a street, another, and I thought we passed the same one twice. It came to a stop, I took out a huge red bag, traditionally used to tote three or so bowling balls. Knock, knock, ring-a-ding, from that front door, I never did get an answer. Is Mexico my whale? Will it spit me where I need to go or will I go back and have to find that out for myself? The gated garage, one car, a man did come out. My spirit raised, for a minute - alright, this was gonna be alright. The man mumbled fast Spanish, slammed the door. I looked confused at the cabbie and tried again. Same thing happened, this time with more of that rumored Latin heat. Huh, off to a great start, the dent of any worded thoughts. A week before I’d tattooed a Tatanka, bison, buffalo, just one, outline of the Brown Buffalo on my right forearm. Seeing it, remembering raised more emotions, more terror, this gazebo of regret upon me, inked my innocent youth away. Now I was grown, alone, in southern Mexico. Male buffaloes know when their time is coming and travel alone to meet death. Emotions went everywhere, no t knowing anyone, not having a place to sleep. Nothing. And I was too numb, zoned, verging on catatonic to have seen any faces to help me, too numb to barely move. I didn’t even pray that I would. “Welp, God, I guess this worked.” The cabbie, young hero he was, made the man answer, wrong address, it turned out. That man wasn’t expecting any white girl to come wanting to share his room under roof. So back to the cab!
We drove on a couple of blocks, round a square with grass and tree, then we found my new host family rest. Mother, father, two young daughter, and one teenage son. I never did figure out their ways, not too mention their names, but what was late for me was still early for them, even the youngins. The past 10 arrival was alright by all of them. The whole gang was up; I met every member of the brood. The teenage kid, he likes the foreign girls staying with him. “Last one, we always went out to party. So I was only 15, she didn’t care.” And from then, I thought that girl was how I should’ve been. However, it was not. I roamed the streets and went to the language school. Traveled around the historic center of the city. Really was quite a beautiful city. Yet in the residential streets, lurking still, that smell, like they haven’t quite gotten that sewage system down, the government just doesn’t give that much of a shit. School was nice, I guess. I was only there five days. By the third, I bought a phone card and called people from home, “this might have been a mistake.” “Well,” they told me, “you can always come on back home.” At first, for some, for all, I don’t really know about all that, but for me, after your parents split, didn’t feel like I could go back home. Needed some time away from home. My mom said with my buffalo I’d never be alone. My and the buff, out on the Mexican town. The buff walked on only to die. I almost started to cry. I was so young and already so accepting of my inevitable death.
Things I saw next, they didn’t change much, they didn’t make me stay. An overture of colors, a symphony of city sounds, park smells, a poetic tongue. I write it sounding wonderful, because it was. The place was never a reason for me not to stay. Awkward break up, this time it really was all me, only me. All inside of me. I left and flew north, north and to what was left of my home - please, I don’t say it for anyone to pity me. My culture teacher, he was suave. I was supposed to call him, contact hin, look for his art at the El Paso Community College. And I wanted to, intended to, really, really meant to. Didn’t happen. My gosh, years later I havent’ even looked and like an old fart too full, too used, too done to care, I’ve long forgotten his name. He was cute, he was smooth, he looked slick. But sometimes its not the time to travel to a foreign coutnry. Sometimes and this is how it is most times with me, there doesn’t seem to be anything else for a person to do. I didn’t know what else to do. Planned in a rush, not in dreams dwelt on as a child. There’s those times, some call it depression - disjointed chemical levels; me, it felt like a sheet was up netween me and real life. I kept on, walking to the snare beat. It’d been that way for a month, sincve leaving Yellowstone with this real flimsy Mexico plan. I was raised in America, born with the feeling I was too succeed, above the average soul, born to be great. Well, unless I slept every history class, hadn’t heard of any great people making their start aimlessly shooting down to southern Mexico. Two weeks before, I ran bare-naked and exposed down the halls of the boys dorms - how ya doing alma mater? - everything out for the eyes except those modest little toes. I wasn’t naked, I wasn’t stuck on the streets, but from what’d I’d read, what that 15 yr old host teen kid, these adventures weren’t supposed to turn out like this.
I knew there was one other person learning Splanish at that school, one other - that was it. I didn’t realize their speciality was teaching English. My bad. The girl, she was white, real whit and blonde long hair. A wSwede. I saw her leaving one day, and walked, chased after her. Then I broke into a run. “Hey! Hello!” down the main street. She walked through some big wooden doors, into a court yard, students milling everywhere. Lost. I walked on. I didn’t know where. No map. If I could find my way back, I’d keep on walking. Might take hours when it should’ve taken much less than one, but I’ll get there. I’ll make it at last.
And down the streets, colored so bright, every color of the rainbow used. Finally, a place that claims their right to daily celebrate. We are alive! Ha ha! Every street said it, nearly every house. So vibrant, everywhere, not ashamed, see my colors, feel their rays of reflecting sun light stream onto you. I walked, smiling inside, wishing there was someone to share with besides ever present buff. Even though it was A.B., after my boy, this time the faces were staying still. Staying a little too down.
I found a church, many churches, small and large. And in most I passed, I stopped, dropped to my knees. Oh sweet Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven especially those in need of your mercy. Lord, I think I need your mercy now. The church, Virgen of Guadalupe, I was told many make a pilgrimmage there, walk ontheir knees down the aisle to the alter, make cries, sighing pelas. I got on my knees, too. I felt all eyes looking, but that was me, paranoid, afraid, a sheet away from reality. This was a church, well adorned, well adored, well used to congregants amkeing penance, prayers and adorations. Mo one noticed me as I noticed them.
I went to the bathroom, the one in the house. Took a shower, in the mirror everything blooming over my face, and I missed every imageinside, wanting them back the way they were, in whole, alive and by my side. And I saw the woman on a chair outside the cathedral, saw my host father, tired breat a job unsure but stil quite happy to have a person to speak English with. I saw my teache, working on his masters, dreaming he wont’t need it - his art about to take off. They comforted me morein my facve, inside of me. I knew if I left, the faces, I wouldn’t find them how they were. Everyone changes, and that’s okay. I stared and enjoyed them, c’mon gang, troops, an army growing each day, let’s go on some adventureas and see what happens. Was I their host showing them a good time. No, that doesn’t make a bit of sense. They weren’t separate from me, living in me a part from me. They were me, a piece of me.
I was walking in the park, then down a long brick path, trees over hanging, going to the Virgen’s pink lovely house, and I saw him, not once but twice. That just had to be a sign. A simple man, blue jeans, brown boots, a tucked in buttoned up shirt. Black hair, frothing gray and white. A dog, hopped up on the wall, at his shoulder, on a loose hanging leash. I think our eyes met. I stared long enough, plenty of chances for it to happen. Soft brown eyes, looking up, then down, humble and way. I was thikning if I should try to copy the image to film, for myself, so others could see. Nonsense buffonnery is what come over me. There was Christ, simply looking after me, and I was more concerned with how to frame it, shoot it, keep it. Someone get Martha back inside of me! Then the next, on the way back and the next day, he was there, same facem different shirt, same face though importantly making me stare. Hard to say what exactly it was in his fce that got me. Not many there seemed to show much pretense. I saw him walking one with the ground, the earth, the sun. A strong walk, yes forgiving, not for itself, but to others , for all that had been done to him. A face not sorry but repetenent for all he’d done, for all the world had done to them, the cretures of humanity. Maybe it’s the norm amongst elderly Mexican men. It didn’t seem old, nut fine with time, with it coming, with it goingt and then with his own dying. He was one, everything, and he knew it and walked on, Not proud, never proud. Walking like he had spent his summer hours all his life sacrificing for the good of the world.
I forget about hat dog walking man. I forget the dad and the artist teacher man. I label the experience “silly trip” and file it in “things that failed to work out.”It comes out in conversations as a joke, me not thinking things through, jumping then seeign where I am. “I forget you went down to Mexico.” “Yeah, I forget I did that, too.” I don’t. It’s not dwelled on, thought of, recollected to bring much joy, but I never forget I went. I can still God walking his dog. No hurry. No worry. And he’s in me, keeping a steady pace.
And in the mirror in that house, when I was in the bathroom and the family seemed far away, Mexico seemed far away, everything with a name of letters and sounds was out there and only the world of faces was inside and around me. I was confused, maybe even a little scared. Questions and their marks filled my conscious brain. Some little me telling the bigger, movable me, get this right, think this through, you’ve got a lot of shit you have to do and you’re wasting your time staring. I couldn’t move, I felt safe, alright. This was there, it was alright. Oh, and I was nervous, I was anxious. It wasn’t the place, no Morelia, lovely city, I don’t blame you. It was you plus me at that weird ass time. I thought too much, I thought I had to do too much. I thought I had to know too much. What about then, what was next. And then, when I went into my room, the mirror wasn’t around, tiredness came over, and as I went to an early sleep, I thought, this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. And then on the fourth night, I though, fuck this, this just doesn’t feel right, out of tune, I’m not even really here. And I thought, and justified both ways, the feeling inside me was too strong, so I decided as fast as I decided to come that I would not stay.
That old man is who I envy. I’m glad I swallowed him whole. Have him forever as part of my life, my being of action. He wouldn’t have felt those feelings. He would have walked, knowing better than to panic, than too rush. He knew some secret I hadn’t learned yet. Some secret about greatness, about success. About us all being the same, no matter how much we strived to be a success, we would never be greater than the one next, and knew something more, something I have yet to learn. He knew it deeply, never having put it in words, it was written all over him. God is here, everyone relax. And I wish I could say that I saw that and knew it and took it and acted on it. But I couldn’t. I saw God in the faces, yes, but I didn’t feel like I could stay. That sheet flapping between me and reality glazing me. God and dog in hand, forgive me, for I have sinned in what I have done and what I have failed to do. Dog and god in hand, forgive me for I got on a plane and made it back to the pass of the north, El Paso del Norte. God walking dog, have mercy on me!
Pst, they have, he has, mercy ,mercy, it hasn’t stopped falling all over me. Here’s a show of it, the reason being, I really don’t know what. Don’t concentrate on that. Don’t ponder the why or stay on the figuring.
March 15, 2009, Canutillo, Texas. St. Patrick’s Cathedral, church and parish. I’m not yet Catholic. I’ve talked to priests plenty of times. Then I move. It’s an area I feel much about. I love, I love, and that means God. I go to church, raised to go to church. I still go, have always gone. Sundays, yeah, sometimes I miss, but they don’t seem right to me without it. St. Patrick’s, it’s the closest church, just right on up the road, northeast of the Rio Grande, it was running that day by the way, all the dirt in the river bed was covered with water running over it. It’s a sight not common these days to see. The third mass on Sunday is in English. “As always, there’s plenty room in the front,” the greeter man told me. I was late. I’d seen this man before. He’s shook my hand, greeted me before. He might have even read scripture one of the Sundays before. Each time I go to this place, a hundred gods stand before me. Maybe it is Canutillo, or maybe it is the church, or maybe it the people God selected to fill with love and send them down to bless the earth. And this, the rocket blessings, are the mercies I’ve found surrounding me.
He shook my hand, the greeter man, in gray dress slacks, a black button up shirt. His build was average, on the slim side for his middle age. His face was smooth, shaved with care, anointed with perfume of the whores. Eyes were dark and as deep as they went, not a bit was unkind. His hair slicked back, half an inch away from a pompadour. He had reason to boast, could have been proud. A warm hand shake, expressing more than brotherly love, fellowship with many, belonging. No man was alone. I bowed in acknowledgement, of his words and inwardly to his divinity. I took his words, used them, and went to the side, and traveled all the way to the front. An entirely new view.
A young girl pushing age into teenage loves moved a smidge over and pulled a younger girl, sister mayhaps, off the cushioned kneeler. The little girl looked at me, smiling, happy, and I smiled. The missal, that was all she needed for a good time. Dropping it over the pew and running to pick it up, looking around as she did, and gigling when eye contact with any other had been made. The mother, or care taker, or the adult in charge for the day, mother is what I really think, she had thick black, made slick and in long curls. Her eyebrows penciled nicely in. Big hoops, big lashes, big nails done right. Her velour track suit, black and nice, with an old English roaming design. Her lips were big, colored in full. She grabbed my hand, smile broadening, “Peace be with you.” Words clearly spoke, understood, with intent. Peace be with you. She gave me her peace. I gave her mine. Her face looked like it could have been hard, like at times it needed to be hard. And when it looked in mine, when I saw it look in others or stare at Father, or bowed after taking the holy eucharist, her face was pure. It was open, it was ready only to love. It might have done things, seen things, gone through the shit. Christ had come, praise the Lord, it was all okay.
And then the high school boys, their football shirts, their hoodies, their tight striped shirts, the slicked, shaved done up hair. Smooth faces of youth, slight scruff of men made sure to be shown. I see them after, they joke and laugh, wipe their nose with their thumb as they laugh. And then wait for their moms, wave to little kids, pick them up and twirl them round on the loose dirt, rocky streets. Four sat together on the same pew. Cool, in the real cool of their life, and they all knew it. They joked, but then time came to take the Christ, and their hands pressed against another and raised to their faces. Some stopping rocking against their chest with each step up. Their mouths open, the priest body of Christ, placed on their tongue. Amen. Blood of Christ, and their hand touch the stem and take a sip. Amen. The sign of the cross, a kiss afterward, maybe two, on their hand, to Christ. It is to Christ right there. Back to the pew, each one bows to their knees. Their heads bowed, some rocking back and forth. Eyes closed, tight, not even a buddy by their side. They stay down, don’t look around. Hands pressed together, folded as children are taught for prayer. Their lips move, brush against their hands. Then their head, heavy from the thoughts, the plans, the pressures of the last week, falls a little lower and rests on their hand. I don’t even care if I get caught in the stare. I smile if they see, hope that they know all it means is I’m glad they’re there.
Before this, when all the parish fell like one to their knees, prayers before the Son of God is ingested as a part, the man to my right. I think I heard his name was Frank. He sat towards the front, in the pew that faces the altar from the left, if you’re in the back. He couldn’t stand to get in line, so he sat and waited for the sweet words Body of Christ, Blood of Christ and the forgiveness, love, unity that would come. He got to his knees, he had some ailment, some earthly disease that caused him trouble to walk, made his speech only a tiny bit slurred. I was on my knees, he on his. Father, forgive me, he said. Forgive me father. Father, forgive me. I have sinned, father. Sinned in what I have done and what I have failed to do. Have mercy, father! Oh, have mercy. Only say the word, father; father, only say the word, and I will be forgiven. Oh, have mercy father, on me sinner. I’m sorry, father, I sinned. Only say the word, only say the word, and father, I shall be healed. Have mercy on me, father, for I have sinned. I have sinned against you. Have mercy. Forgive me my sins. Only say the word, father, and I will be forgiven. I will be healed.
What were my prayers to his? What could he have done to make him cry out so? He loved. He knew love. He was there with his family. Maybe other things had been done, actions done in the dark, deeds conspired at night. Now, he did not hold back, he poured out, cried out, sat, bowed, helpless, crying out to Christ. And there was Christ, living in him, must have been pleased. Another one of his flock knowing nothing can be done on one’s own. Individual success, personal achievement, what of it? Mercy, forgiveness, love, all this man sought.
Like him you are to be. Like me you are to be. Oh, humble me, that’s the mercy I beg be upon me.
Back to faces. Ho ho, the faces I still wish weren’t a part of me. Power to select, to choose and pick, to sift through and say, “this one, this one here is inside me, but that one, ugh, god, that one ain’t coming near me.” Doesn’t work that way, hot shot, never will. I wish, sometimes I wish it did. I never hope, though. I never pray it’d work that way either. My prayer was said. All the faces, and now I’m in a room with two little old biddies, bitches I almost said.
Shower time came at night, both women sitting on the edge of a bed, a chair, and the clothes casually, slowly started coming off. Shoes, then socks and tights. Earrings, hearing aids, necklaces, porcelain horny toads placed on the dresser, put in a travel bag with special compartmental places. Seven o’clock, tired, long day, bathe and get into bed. Layers of clothing peeled, frequent stops made in between. There was Aunt Mimi, sitting, top half naked, her one tit chest completely bare, underwear britches, skin colored, tight, that go down to the knee, her one boob bouncing off the top elastic band. And Mamacita, bra and panties now, wrinkled skin everywhere, from her head to her feet. Her stomach, made sure it would stay flat all these decade years, now wavy, rolling waves of loose skin. Her black bra loose fitting, she already took her falsies out, now the bra held up space and air and minute old lady humps.
The feeling toward Mamacita is nothing new. My relationship with this woman was never near perfect. She was the other grandmother, the one that was not quite right, the one that was not real sweet. It was she whose company my brothers and I were threatened with it if we did not stop crying, fighting, if we did not obey our parents command. The threat worked, at least for me, I always quieted down. It’s normal, the grandma’s, aligned to a child on opposite ends. Neither were on ends of a line, only separate lines on a circle. I didn’t understand her then, and I didn’t try to, didn’t think it mattered if I did or didn’t. I knew where I felt okay, and it was never with her. It was tiny things then, that would send my stomach turning, flipping in ways beyond my control. The shocking things, ways treated that normally wouldn’t be imagines, I only see now, now that I know everyone else didn’t grow like this. Mamacita would yell. She didn’t like the way I spoke, my inside voice was too loud. During my etiquette classes I took after school in kindergarten with her, she told me to speak softer or go outside. Only, I wasn’t allowed to go outside. I was nine; it was time for awards, for all participants on the swimteam to be honored for the participation. “Did you wash your own hair?” Yes, Mamacita, I did. There was nothing wrong with it, my hair had garnered compliments all night. She looked disgusted. “You don’t know what you’re doing.” That week she took me to the beauty school, “Teach her how to wash her hair. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” She told the students, who I see now probably didn’t want this old woman to talk any longer, my shortcomings in shampooing and conditioning. She made jokes out of me, out of my brother, except perhaps the one that she liked. She made us the butt of many of her jokes. “Go ahead, tell them what you call me.”
My collegiate attempts at mending relationships with Mamcita didn’t go any better. I saw it then as time to forgive and forget, not to live in the past, but that is exactly where Mamacita lives. “I’m sure glad you called, Lindsey. Was just thinking about how that brown bag I gave you is doing. How’s it doing?” It’s nothing much. I was never beat. It’s nothing much, yet still, there’s so much something I want nothing to do with between us. I might have become a big baby, gotten lazy, decided that she’s chosen her path, no budging her, my hands are up, let her find her own blind way to her grave. The power of love has failed too many times to save her.
Her body is weak. She tried to hula hoop the other week. She couldn’t do it, tried to keep the hoop up with her hands. “No, it’s too big.” I handed her a smaller one. “No, it’s still too big. I used to do this real good.” It’s the hoop’s fault and not her own, but I can see, she’s too old. Her body is actually changing, for the worse, going south, preparing for the soul’s last breath. “She’ll out live us all,” my dad jokes, and it is the fear. The most mean sibbling, much more mean than Mamacita I’m told, she made it over the 100 year hump, smoking and drinking the whole time. The meaner they are, the longer they live, that’s the family hypothesis. “Just checking to see if you’re still alive,” Aunt Mimi’s daughter says when she checks in on her. Just checking, that’s all. In the old age, she tells the same stories more often, making sure their recorded, making sure they will live on. It has become very important, as it has for the last 15 years of my memory, to record her stories, have it in writing, have her legacy in tact.
“I was born right across those mountains over there on a ranch. My mother’s water broke and she said john, you got to, you got to deliver it, you got to deliver this one. John, I don’t want you putting your boot heel in my groin like I saw you do that I cow I saw you deliver the other day. So, It was a model t, you know a model t pick up and she said we’ll never make it to town, 12 miles to town, I was the number 7, number 7 baby it would never make it to town. She made it and I made it and papa delivered me.” She tells it several times this trip. It’s popular to be her age, to have grown up in this west Texas mysterious beautiful mountainous land. Old frontierin’ pioneer ranching women are all the rage these days.
And there she is, walking in front of me, bra and panties. This is my blood and my flesh. If I grow and age, that will be my form, the shape my body will take. “Are you sure no one needs to use the john?” she screaches it every time she asks. “Doll, you’ve only peed twice today, are you sure you don’t have to go?”
“No, we are fine. Go on in.”
And as she closes the door, and we hear the water rush on, we’re high school girls, it’s gossip time. But it’s different, not like what it was getting the scoop on different people. It’s not the same as reading about pop, cool, hot, vogue stars in the celebtrity magazines. They are me, too, I guess, but in some distant world, their subtelties, their flaws, their vulnerabilities haven’t changed the contours of my mirrored face. This owman, these women, the stories heard, somehow affected me, through the years, through my father, through those the Bible and others told me I was supposed to love.

Book in a Week [or 10 days, 2 weeks tops] March 9-10,2009

- for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins
I go to the restroom, washing my hands, my face, my teeth, or there only to see the image above the running water - the mirror image of my face, me looking at me. My eyes lock with my own eyes. There upon my face is ever face flashing, the flashing of every face I have ever seen, the faces of those I’ve never met but words I’ve read, their script written across my face. And the face of the gardener I said a high-pitched ‘hello’ to as I walked the dog the morning after the rain. The next door neighbor, his face, talking up to me as I puffed a cigar and listened to my friend’s words through the cell phone. The face of the lobbyist I once joked with over long business conversation and interviews made on my company’s line. My father, my mother, the woman my father married and their biker friends that revved their harleys and choppers when they proclaimed “I do. I do.” - The Annihilator, Preacher, Pastor, the Bandit decked out in his wheel chair. The face from the first daydream I ever had that distracted me from my teacher’s words, and yes, Mrs. Haw’s face too. Mamacita, a portrait, ghost-like, hovering above my features - my grandfather, never met, never given hope that he’d be walking the streets of gold after this world has given up on containing me and truly let me fly free. The Polish priest, Wieslaw, round features, round nose, wavy black hair, the streaks of white making a strong thrust for domination. “You are a good woman,” he told me in Warsaw, he says it again, now in the mirror, now spoken as a part of me, myself speaking to me. My brother, my brother, the lady my Virgen de Guadalupe, as a tattoo on the forearm of the man who passed by walking into the movie theatre, his dark skin my own, his ink staining holy features over me.
I was baptized once in the pool in my backyard. I had just turned fourteen. A Lutheran pastor and a Canadian youth minister dunked me under the clear, chlorinated water - in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Amen. I wore shorts, Hawaiian print board shorts and a Baptist church camp t-shirt to remain modest in the eyes of the church and the eyes perchance looking from above. My stick like body, devoid of all curves except shoulders and head, with a t-shirt clinging to my ribs. In the books it is written, “Lindsey Hope Bright was baptized into the Christian church on August 14, 1999.” Place, time, setting, none are specified. Now the pastors doubling as dunkers are looking at me, from me - I’m being baptized again, now in the waves of humanity. A thousand faces come over me, part of me, showing through me. The baptism happened everyday now. When I fix my hair or comb the black mascara brush through my lashes - I just high-lighted Rginald Brown’s eye, the first principal I ever worked under. His pretty eye winks back at me.
In them all, I am and they are. I touch my cheek and stroke the mirror, God is staring straight at me. I cry a tear, not all of the time, and Jesus weeps again. We are one, we are one with all the faces. And though I don’t see it, God sends a dove down and it lights up my face. He is well pleased.
It started when I was 19, the faces upon faces. The realization, divine revelation, why not? Close enough for me. The vision of my beautiful reality.
Sonic Youth, the Glass House, Pomona, California, July 20, 2004.
I turned 19 the day before, teenage years almost behind., Then, for some reason, I thought a person left years behing, after a certain click, both year and person fled opposite in the contrary gaze of Janus. A friend took me to the show, a birthday present. Really quite nice. Lauren Ashley Rutledge, my second roommate in college. Her face stretches my lines in the mirror and makes a fit that I can see. Songs are played, distrotion, a womanly looking man holding his arms, twisting back and forth in front of us, eyes always closed - he was the music’s. Let the music stop and the beat die, and he’d walk again, but the man would never again, if ever he once was, be a man walking alone. I wasn’t a fan, not of the man but of the band. I liked the one cd it’s a rule that a majority of teenagers are supposed to like - Goo. And I rocked myself as words came that I did and largely did not know, blaring into my ears released through speakers and set dancing by the launch of the amp’s vibrations.
All that was fine and some would even say dandy. I’ll say dandy, too. Then, I walked out, yes, I did. I walked out and with a brush and with a look, with a notice and heart lurch, my mind, my soul, every little part of me different.
The lights were on outside the Glass House. A warm summer night away from the cool breeze of the beach. I walked through the glass door, a boy walked through at the same time. Our arms swished together, fabric against fabric covering our young and delicate skin. He was my age, younger or older by dates that never mattered. Not in this night or those of my future I’m living and lived. My eyes searched up his features and then charged into his. It was a moment, maybe a tenth of a split of a moment, and he looked away, turning his head, walking with a group or just one other, the way away from me. His hair was dark and so were his eyes, the same as every boy I think about for years at a time. His skin was fair, it looked soft. His skin was shiny, some hormone obsessively occuppied with creating oil to strategically place around his fine face. There were shades of red and pink over a white canvas, a candy cane sucked by a child. And on his right cheek, the cheek he turned so quickly away from me, a tiny swirl of the Milky Way galaxy. Showing in pimples and zits, whiteheads and acne.
My spiritual stopped and changed and jumped a thousand leaps because of this boy, and this boy will never know.
I didn’t want to look away. I stopped in the motion of the exiting crowd, longing to look at him for as long as his steps would let me. I didn’t chase after him, only stared and glared. Probably looked like an obsessed stalker or a person who let their screws become all too loose. Maybe I was both. By some ordinance, I probably am both. I was drawn to that boy, an attraction that reached, and multiplied and leapt in my soul. There was beauty, the was truth splashed all across this boy’s face! I wanted to cradle his head in my hands and adorn each individual pipmle with kisses surpassing those given to Solomon by all of his wives combined.
The only reason I was attracted, am attracted, were the zits on his cheek, his one cheek, his right, oh so right, cheek. Beautiful, beauty - your flaw displayed fro the world to see, your weakness in front of all’s eyes.
“Ashley,” that was the name my friend wished to be called, “I have a crush on that guy over there. Look at him. So cute, so dreamy, so dear and wonderful.” I pointed and blushed and swayed my body like a little girl. She looked, but couldn’t see him all or closs - already lost to the corwd, to the night. Ashley shrugged.
When I sit on the sink counter and push the bridge of my nose together with my two forefingers, it is that boy’s black and whiteheads that exude puss. It is because of that boy that never wear foundation or concealer. I am tempted, especially when I’m going out, when my emotions are wavering, when I question my good looks. When I see those blemished on my face, I want to hide them, make them go away. Match goopy liquid with the color of my face - a ghostly white with hues of pink, shades of red - white man’s disease showing up everywhere. The first step to looking good is great, clear skin. That’s what the make-up artists to the stars tell me on TV. But when I think of mooshing on some skin colored liquid and powdering over it, the boy’s face looks back at me. Without his zits, his face never would have caught my faze. I can’t sabotage another human’s shot at revelation by smothering my face in cheap, fake skin. It’s our faults that bind us, human to human. It’s our faults that brought a god, God, to walk our land, to take our skin. This weakness makes 6 billion gods stumble around sea and land, across the whole globe. Heloise wrote to her lover Abelard, the scholar, I am greater in my weakness and therefore almost above you. We are alike, we aare weak. It’s no wonder I wanted to jump that boy - a man displaying his humanity. No apology. He was human after all that was all.
I wander and digress, losing my way in this story, but like life, what one way is there? The slogan of the Jesus Movement is now only seen on government signs for various downtown streets. It seems we’ve found too many ways, too many ways. I will choose one and release my words to march on it.
I leave the bathroom, face bare, whiter than the clouds on a sunny day., A pimple here, a ded from where I scraped the head off with my long finger nails. I know what my face looks like, the flaws that blare at people’s fce more than my dark blue eyes and black lashes. I don’t walk out with overpowering confifdence, but I hold my head somehow, someway, and I have a little smirk. I’m living true to ideals, and honestly beofre all the faces inside me.
It was in eighth grade, the year before I was baptized, that my mother chased me around the house, powder and brush in hand. Picture day. “No! It’s a lie! It’s a lie! Fake and plastic.” “That’s what I used to tell my mother,” and she brushed away, taking the shine my face. She paid for my clothes, my school and she’d be the one paying for my pictures. I let it slide, not borhtering to wash my face when I got to school. I hadn’t seen the boy, my boy, the crush of a life. Really, I thought in the mirror I loked better.
I’m older, there’s no more picture days, there’s no camera that can capture all my faces.
The faces are older now. I’m in a hotel, I forget the name. It’s in the Chisos mountains - the menu says the view is the best view out of all the restaurants in Texas. It’s not in the eyes of the beholder any longer. Big Bend Resort, sounds like it’s the name. The view is something else, I mean really, it’s something else. It’s the first time I’ve been there. The first time in my life I’ve seen the window in Big Bend National Park, past the little gap in the mountains, little peaks, mist around them, the flarind skirts of circling flamenco dancers. Mexico, there, somewhere on the other side. The disctinction of land, I haven’t learned to make. The sun is rising, maybe it has risen. Clouds are blocking the sun, lounging, sprawled over the mountain tops. Perhaps the therapeutic massage will make the land green. It’s coming season for greening to begin. In West Texas, the first week of February isn’t far from the first days of spring. After the thunder comes, the Apache woman a year or two ago told me, stop and get out of the car. Everyone must be pulled, time for the short and stocky to grow and the tall to reach the sky. The thunder hasn’t come yet, and I’m sharing a hotel room with my dad’s mother - Mamacita she makes me call her. Her older sister, Aunt Mimi is there, too. It’s some old timer, some pioneer’s reunion.
I’ve brought them out, first time either has left El Paso in three years. Aunt Mimi doesn’t expect to leave again. Five hours drive south. Mamacita pissing on the side of the car twice. I can’t see being raised without plumbing as an excuse. A sweeter more naïve gal might see the age of 90 being the reason, but I don’t buy that either. A part of it, maybe, is playing, but I see the eyes she rolls, darts, shoot my way. I know the eyes. She’ll give hell while she can, and I’m a living person. I’ll get her hell. These are the same eyes that look back at me from my own. I shudder and wash my hands and face again. Out, damn eye, out! But they’ll remain, forever. It is these eyes I seaerch, where is God? God? Any, one or all? I find none. I remember a tape, ole Lonnie Frisbee died of AIDS after the Jesus Movement got ways, he’s giving his testimony, screaming out, “God, if you’re really real, reveal yourself to me!” In these eyes, God, I’m waiting. I’m still waiting.
“Anybody need to use the john?” her voice is shrill, any expressive tone fluxuation vomes off as a shriek.
“No, I’m good.” I’m lying on the bed, the one furthest from the bathroom. Both women seemed impressed that I had made it through the night without taking a trip to the can. “You didn’t get up one time all night.” “I know, you just slept there.” So, now I’ve one the prize of bed by the window.
“No, we don’t need to go. You go ahead.” Aunt Mimi is assertive, almost fed up. Surprisingly, she’s also fully dressed.
“Nobody needs to take a piss?” Mamacita is standing by the bathroom door, not hunched over like many her age, but not straight as a board either. Her knees are bent for balance, for support, for lifting her own mighty and slight weight. She’s wearing underwear, black panties. She’s already flapped her fake tits in my face and she’s holding pajama’s to her wrinkled, waving, slacking skin, her flat chest left slightly exposed. In this state, the most helpless, unclothed, it’s the closest I’ve come to glimpsing God. But then she’ll speak, poof, vamoose. She’ll look, she’ll lift her legs over her head - she might not be able to hear like her 94 year old sister can, but she can bend and twist and flex a shit loadf more. Each rotation of the foot held above her body while she eats grapes on her back is a “take that” to Aunt Mimi. Don’t be fooled, fool, I know. I know. I swear. I swear it is.
“Lindsey, I’ve got a question for you,” I don’t know what to expect from her mouth. I don’t know what to expect from this trip anymore, every topic has been breached through tales of life and family - everything from douching to stealing a whore to abortions and a skull in the beans. “How does she stand herself?” a pause and finally I’m laughing. I can’t stop laughing, ole Aunt Mimi has started the laugh factory rolling. “I don’t see how she can stand herself.”
“Neither can I. I don’t think anyone can,” and I really, really, almost a tiny bit shamefully can’t. Respect your elders, respect those above you, respect and understand, those two, I pray, don’t go hand in hand. I can’t, not yet. Not again, before the trip, before this time. When I look in the mirror, her face always flashes, and by dern damn, it pauses. Same eyes, same nose, same small mouth and cheek bones. 67 years between us and still we look alike, everyone on the streets knows we belong to each other’s blood. Even so, when those beady blue eyes look at me, from her face or my own, where is God? Hello, Christ, are you going to reveal yourself? Why do I even care? I can roll on, go on. One life will stop another begin, and my maybe one might not be mine, maybe I’ll go on, rolling or flowing, falling or crawling, hell, maybe I’ll even be jogging.
It’s not only the boy, but yes, of course, he is part. This is waves, this is water, this is a river of life pouring out of me. Once I sang it made the lame to walk and the blind to see. Even opened prison doors and let the captives free. Well, who doesn’t flow in this river? So this boy is flowing, he’s rushing and then he’s wading, and then going on down, always a part, only a part.
I graduated college one year and 10 months after the boy - A.B. I left California, the southern part, by the beach, the land that contained the buildings of my small school. I left California the day after I walked across a stage set up at the fairgrounds. By the fourth of July, holiday of wars and freedom, I was in Old Faithful, being old faithful in a way to that old national park. Working, on a register in a gift shop. Cleaning before closing, dusting before opening. Before the boy, B.B., and then a year after, I didn’t want Yellowstone, no fucking menial job. Graduate school, yee hah, I had my one way. One way to life, one way to academia. Then I fubbed, I blubbed, I made a boo boo, something happened. The one way machine went haywire when I fell to my knees, silly girl that I am. “God, if you were Jesus and Christ was human, fully human, all human, make me all human, too. And if all these faces, these feet patting, these hands waving, clapping, shoved in pockets, if all are human, you must be there, too. Show me.” That was that, simple and short and sweet. But here’s the thing, the mistake of the blessing or the blessing of the blunder, it came from a heart, my own, and I was going to live by it, be true to my words, my prayer. What else was I supposed to live for? My one way was one of many by the time I lifted from knees. Since, I’ve been searching for God in all the places with any faces.
Day 2
> - Going to a Target restroom was probably not the best idea for a place to write. I always feel unsure and awkward in public restrooms, so I write fast, afraid that any second I’ll be discovered for what I am - a bathroom writer. Ah! - I’m sitting on the toilet with jeans on, toilet paper draped on the seat. The lid squeaked and I was positive the weight of my Levis was too much for the toilet to bear. This isn’t working, and I’m tired. Maybe the library is open. - In the library, probably a quarter past noon. Not going as planned. What does? Some things I’m guessing, for the people who plan. My own-I grabbed 4 books, poetry and Borges, something Dillard edited on memoirs. I’m on the round table facing a shelf of fiction books, E - F. I’ll open the books I took every now and then, look absorbed because I didn’t bring ear phones, even sans device, to alert the library patrons I’m zoned, in my own. There were two mormons outside, so you can understand my fear. A hill-billy shoo-bop rocker, the folks from the military, a man speaking to a woman with his hands, the greatest fear - the one the bike peddling suits were speaking to - I heard them say, “We can talk all day,” and the man in the striped polo staid and said, “You see, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of discernment.” “I can understand,” the dark haired suit finished his apple. The talkative talker walked in, “Hello, m’am. Good morning. How are you, miss?” None directed toward me, but still, heart pounds and pauses, head down, eyes away. Yes, there was God, gods waiting to use the public library - give us our pantheon! We must sort and consort. But they say to be fearful of them gods. I was. What would I say? Shit, I’d shoot the breeze. I know I could do it, but I’m tired, not finished, work to do. - <
There were faces all around, I didn’t know the names to any. My mind recognized them as man, woman, ?, curly boy, burly boy, big girl, blonde girl, not sure there and so on, so forth.
Day 2 in the big ole yellow walled park, at Mammoth, they told me it was training. An old register filled with monopoly money, the only item occupying the room. Then lunch would come, alone I’d go to the employee dining hall. And I thought I saw God, sitting there alone, a super jug chugger from Circle K by his hands, plastic and with a handle. Holds a good deal more than 32 ounces, I figure, I guess. He didn’t press it to his lips, he sucked from a straw, one that must’ve witnessed a year or so pass. I’m not sure he got any drink that way, the beige thickened saliva mixed with phlegm mixed with plaque mixed with crumbs mixed with shreds of meat mixed with bile mixed with chew. The outside thinning plastic wrinkled and crinkled. The build up blocking any puncture wounds. An analogy for the man’s own veins, I was too young to think that, then, even though really, I’ve always been old. He was set, broad and wide, a belly bouncing round over the binds of his pants. A t-shirt hanging over, letting a breeze come right on in. His hair, that’s what first got me. Wild, white, like straw bleached and dried stuck in an old pumpkin in all possible directions. It come round his face, reached his chest, looked like it irritated his upper lip. His lip, the challenge, the devil’s temptation. Not for being drawn or aroused, oh dear God, oh sweet Lord, have mercy! No. The temptation to think this man was not like Christ. What horrid monster those lips did purse over. The mouth would open, some piece of Jell-O surprise would squiggle-squish in. No matter the color, his teeth wouldn’t stain for an instance. They were mangled, taking their cues from his hair that this was not an ordered world and this universe was indeed chaos. They darted here or there, and now, were stuck still. With gooping crud dried on, his teeth screaming Scrape it off, man! Please, scrape it off. This shit ain’t right! We still got a fucking job to do! It was grey, in certain lights turning green or blue. Don’t ask yourself or me how I got into those lights, I’ll tell you, but cross yourself, you really might not want to know. That was the color of his teeth, that dark grey goo of on-coming death building a fortress upon his gums. Still, still, my vision, I was sure, was clear. What comedy and terror I now have when those teeth flash in the mirror. Part of me, oh me, oh my. Maybe always they’ve been or perhaps came about solely due to my own instigation.
Time for dinner, at 4 pm, when me and all the old men take our meal, I sat by him. Gather your gumption, Lindsey Bright, You’re on your own living life, make a choice and go, go, go. I don’t remember what I first said, but when he spoke back, I felt the hands of decay lurching at me. I smelled something rotting in there. Still, there he was, Christ somehow, similar somewhere there. Truth be told here, real quick, I didn’t see this because I’m any sort of a saint. A reader and an idealist and a big ole dork to boot is really what I am. So when I looked at this man, Richard Brautigan in his western outfit in the San Francisco park appeared. The face of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on the back of his novels. Three pictures all side by side. Father, son and the holy ghost - hot damn! And all in one? The luck. Who was I to look away? To shy away just because rotting physical neglect blared? No, no, I thought I was certainly in for a real treat.
“I’ve worked here several years,” he told me, reaching back, going for one of the tales of the forgotten old. “Started working first at Fisherman’s Bridge in 1968.”
“Really? No way.” 1968, a time I always wanted to be. I wasn’t, never would be, but this man was.
“How long you been here?” he continued to ask.
“Oh, I just got in. Still going through the training.”
“Ah. You going to stay at Mammoth or where’ll you’ll be heading off to?”
“Old Faithful in a few days.”
“Which place?” he asked with an interest and a wince.
Of course, he was drawn to me. A young woman, tight skin, even acting like he’s alive. I probably took him back years.
“I’m not sure. Don’t know.” Later I thought this answer, this sliver of spoken ignorance was my saving grace. Now, years later, who knows, I don’t know, big deal or not. I thought more then, felt a little different, it was how it was. I let my actions take me and my squeamish emotions rule my actions. So be it.
“Well, that’s a crowded place down there.”
“I bet a lot’s changed since you were first here.”
“It sure has.”
And we agreed to meet later, same day, still light out, but later for us old farty folks. At five or around six.
“So what brought you up here?” he asked, sitting outside the fancy old hotel. I answered by rambling on, bull-shitting the truth in nervous chatter.
“Wanted to leave, get away, really be around nature. You know?” Oh, I was deep alright. A regular thinker. The water in an endless well. He didn’t care.
He nodded and smiled - for me, goose bumps and swallow that nasty bile - then, “Do you know about this place? Here, let me show you around.”
And there it was, this meeting had become a date. This 70 year old didn’t see me as his granddaughter, not a young one to which he’d impart wisdom. His game was on, he was out to impress.
But there, still, was God, so clearly to me, through the likeness of Brautigan and Vonnegut.
We did the walking tour of historical Mammoth. I listened and nodded, “Oh really? How neat.” Boredom was coming, but the situation offered light intrigue. He read the sign in front of the old buildings, he read out loud, but I read faster to myself. I looked up and around, always sure to look amazed. Why did I care if I hurt his feelings? I don’t even remember his name. The Jews, some don’t say God’s name.
“Well, I’ll be, sir. Is that really so?”
When a hand of boredom has started its idle play, my tongue is always the first game it grabs, a wonderful source of thrilling endless thrills. Words flying, rearranging themselves. Meaning’s never sure until the landing.
“Wow, whoa, hey, do you think they ate people inside of there?”
“That was the old jail, from back when Ulysses’ troops were still here.” The signs, yet again. Oh bother.
“And on the prisoner’s tray, what was there? Indian meat? Prisoner’s bones? Did they only serve buffalo back then?”
He paid no mind and read the rest of the sign. Then guiding me to the next, like he was any type of guide.
“Do you want to go to the gateway of the park? Gardiner, Montana? I can show you around the town. Maybe get a beer?”
“I’m too young! Just too dern young. No drinkie drinks for me,” said in a nervous terror that I was excited to have.
“Well, how about an ice cream then?”
And I said yes to Summer Decay Santa Claus. He was still, perchance, the trinity there, though I was definitely beginning to have my doubts. It beat the signs and his voice with death’s scent pushing their words out as if that grey goop had crafted them all on his own.
To his car, out behind the workers’ dorms. The elk were nursing far away. There’s no longer moose enough to be in our way. And the buffalo, as many as they are, were treading the migration trail, south with them and they all went. I don’t know what type of car. It was older and the red paint was rusting. Inside, the seats in front had rugs, shag carpet, hanging over them. Wooden beads laid there that massage the butt. Everything inside was dust. It was a two-door, probably ‘78, it jerked as he shifted. I wasn’t sure he knew what the hell he was doing. Then it hit me, as we left on the winding road out of the national park, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even know this strange, rotting old man. I was going, puttering along in some trapezoid vehicle, wheeling over the roads. He was no longer reading signs. He was spurting out the information he’d learned from the employee packet. After working at the park over 30 years, good to know something was retained in there. The questions he asked, I could make them up, but I don’t remember. I was beginning to panic at the time, and simultaneously analyze my panic and subsequently laugh at it. Really, afraid this man would do something to me? My answers were curt and short. I think the real reason, I didn’t want to be there, stuck with him anymore.
“Sorry. Can’t have milk. Lactose intolerant.” “Oh yeah, well, I really have to watch my health right now. My blood results haven’t come back yet. The doctors really think I have AIDS. Guess, I’ll just have to wait and see and then live accordingly.”
“Really? Is that so?”
“Yes, sir, it is. Fingers crossed, I’ll make it ok.”
What I said was true, and I know I said it more times than ought. There wasn’t a need for anyone else but myself to know. But once I knew he saw me as an option for his old woman, my claws came out with mischief and I felt justified to fight this god, hah!
“There’s this program at the campground. One of the rangers’ informative campfire speeches. Really was planning on going tonight.”
“You want to go?”
“Don’t think I’d like it if I missed it.”
And we were driving back into the government’s sanctioned human/animal playground. And I mentioned having AIDS one more time, just in case he thought a grizzly campfire talk would get him some action. I suggested the event as my only way out. I had no weapon, no gun. I could jump from the car and tuck and roll. Paranoid fears, but man, I tell you, just glance at that old man’s hair. It’s a crazy world and crazier shit has happened. I couldn’t think why I was in here. The voice of my brother was in my head. Lindsey, you’re a girl. You can’t do the same stuff as us guys. Wandering about on your own. You’re gonna find yourself in a world of trouble. I was there, I must’ve been, in that world. This was trouble. So spit out AIDS one more time, yeppers, just might have that sexually transmitted disease.
He pulled the little crap box car around the tiny, coiled road into the campground. It was dark, and it was a full house. There were two young men in front of me. This was it. I was woman. Hear me roar you Vonnegut-Brautigan impostering mother fucker! And, goodness, he was still Christ, and I was letting the devil slide right on into my veins. He would speak - I’d have a short answer or pretend not to hear. But to the boys on that long log bench, I was all ears and hair twirls, little giggles and sweet arm touches. “I do hope you two gentlemen enjoy your time here and I hope I see you before you trek on back to Canada.”
“You have a good time yourself. We’ll look you up in Old Faithful.” But they never did. And the car ride back, only five minutes, was still and quiet.
“I had a good time. I hope to see you later. You said you’d be in Old Faithful, right?”
I didn’t answer. And maybe it was just for that that it was he, him, old man smell like dying but hey, sweetheart, does that make me any less human? Any less Christ? Perhaps you forgot. Christ died and then appeared to the ladies. Well, him, he did look me up. And call. And come. Karma of some kind. But fear, awkwardness, my God, the unknown. I went into hiding, highest level of avoidance code on and activated.
On the phone, “Umm. Gonna be busy. Then, too. Yup, then, too. Yeah, guess I have made a real go of it up here.” click off before too much goes on.
He was there, I went to the back. Took a smoke break without ever having smoked. And when I saw him elsewhere in the park, walking alone, like the buffalo when he’s about to die, I ducked and prayed the rapture’d zip me up right then.
Son of a bitch, is it any wonder I still see him poppin up over this face? The god I raised up and hacked down without ever having bothered to give him a reason. Sorry, man. That fear, sometimes, it gets you, gets you, gets you.
And the faces are still old that I see talking in front of me, in the old wild and old west’s mountain. “People out there just lived by the law of the west.” A fault, a transgression, heaven on high forbid a backstabbing, and it’s taken care of, right then, there, on the spot or week(s) later, if planning need be done. Problem solved in such a way. Now that old western code is dying. So are those who carried it for so long. I know. I see. I’m not blind. Not completely. I’m praying on my knees. My grandmother, Mamacita, and Aunt Mimi, they must be dying, too. But that, them dying, that’s just unthinkable. I was raised women in this family never die. We were gods alright, immortal, conniving old bitches. Circumstances, health, those points are virtually moot. Women out last the men. And then they exhaust their age, out live by far too far the ages for which they were meant.
Mamacita knows it. She used to talk more about death, talk about giving all her things away every other day. “Lindsey, like anything you see? Want to take it from me? Can’t take it where I’m going.” Those words probably spoken in some mocking manner. “I’m dying. Going on to heaven.” But now, it’s coming. Everything’s end is being brought to the doorsteps. And it’s me, I’m going to be a part of what’s left of her. Important because I’m the only woman, I might outlast the odds. Important because I bear her relief, her shape, her semblance. She knows it. This she knows, too.
She took us back to Marathon, some town, not battle of the Greeks. Not much more than some rich and artisan resort and a hunter’s get away. Pronghorn, whitetail, Mamacita, herself, sports a horny toad on her back. Some of the grades at the public school only have a handful. The grave yard, a windmill turning, divided in two sections - gray and color. It’s Catholic and everything other. They say Mexican and then the white. No grass is growing on or by or over any of the plots. The windmill keeps on turning. Loose dirt, hard rock, covers Mamacita’s family, the Henderson family, going back to my great-great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson H., mason, the last in his family. The rest, god bless ’em, found Mary Baker Eddy.
“Lindsey, come over here,” this is before she had decided to pop a squat on sacred ground. “Come over here and look at this memorial stone. All the names of the kids, myself and my brothers and sisters.” And on that rock, the rock for the dead, is Mamacita’s very own little pride and joy, perhaps her last, perhaps one that will forever remain, live longer, longer than the whole lot of us.
JANE, engraved plainly - 1918 - ETERNITY
Is she a prophet? Dear God, let it not be. Is she conjuring up dangerous spirits, playing in times made only for the immortals? Has she been one all along? Or has she ventured out of her league? Now treading hot water? Her gumption. Her pride blaring in a sacred place’s face - I’m living forever you sorry case of pathetic sons of bitches! Try and stop me! According to her, they long have.
“See there, Lindsey. I know Tom probably tried to claw it out.” the edges around her mythic word are worn, chipped, coloring to red, somehow. Did it mean eternity would bleed? “Surprised they’ve left it in. Been there over 30 years.” She gives a laugh, a hyena screech. What was there prior, false prophets had placed. 1918-1972. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It didn’t take her long to break her binding stone time chains.
Will it be pride before the fall? Tough cookies, Mamacita, we all have to die. All will eventually pay the piper. Sitting in this hotel room, I really don’t think so. That doesn’t seem to be this particular case. She must be a prophet, she’ll live forever. Her simony and black magic, or white it very unlikely might chance be, it’s transferred her to me. I’m a host body, chosen to carry the soul of the dying and eventually dead, just not me. She did not misstep her grounds. It was not blasphemy she chiseled in the yards. She’s a god amongst God, and though for the life of me I don’t see it, Christ has traveled across her face. ETERNITY, the residue that remained. ETERNITY - you greedy ole broad. What foolishness to not want to die. Wait, is Christ really still there? Or do some truly sell their very own soul to the devil? A saying come to life in darkness, blood and fire. This is poof balls, stupid vary colored gumballs. I’m talking about my grandma. Her ouiji boards and spirit writing, they didn’t turn her into anti-human. She turned herself. Oh mouth hands, stop. This is grandma! No, Mamacita. No, she’s human. Somehow. And by god, God help me, I’m gonna see you in that wrinkly mean old biddy’s face.
“Has she always been this way?” I ask Aunt Mimi, we’re talking just like gaggling high school girl friends.
“As far as I can remember. She’s the baby. A spoiled brat. She was a mamma’s girl. Always in the kitchen, while I was sweeping, cleaning, ironing. She learned to cook. I worked.” And lawdy, the dirt starts pouring.