June
2, 2006
Love & lava
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Love lava! My cell phone's
lava screensaver. |
Love. Loaves. Flat tornado. Loaned and taken away.
I hate my mother. What does hate mean? What does it feel like? Lava.
My
hate bubbles like lava. Lava is a recurring image for me.
We
are stronger than we want to admit. Love loaned, on the promise
of a stare. A dog. Peed on my lunch bag, which was propped against
a tree at the when I was a kid waiting with the other neighborhood
kids in the morning.
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Poetry notebook -
lava postcard from Gretchen. |
It felt like the
dog was making fun of my mother. I know, I gotta get over it. But
my mother rarely made me a bag lunch, and when she did, it was a
big deal, mixed with her weirdness, and the embarrassment of her
lunches which were a chance for her to exercise her creativity.
My mother got a
full scholarship to the Maryland Institute College of Art, and
she was a better artist than my grandmother, but my grandmother always
had to meddle. She did it to me too. She'd grab the brush out of
my hand and paint an image the way she thought it should look.
She crushed my mother's creativity. But once in a
while my mother would get creative with cooking, or making bag lunches.
So you can see why I had to protect my mother. And then
this fucking dog lifted its leg on her lunch and
everyone laughed, and I still remember it as devastating. My mother
never did much for me. and the stupid bag seemed like a symbol
of her love and then the dog peed on it, and I can still see the
muscles in his thigh and the stretched crepe of his skin as he lifted
his leg to pour a yellow stream onto the lumpy oversized bag
my mother always put her preposterous lunches into. She sent me off
to my first day of a terrifying week of overnight camp with half
a giant barbecued chicken. She wasn't beating me. She just didn't
think.
Life is a series of situations. I am so strong.
What does that mean? I am STRONG.
What does it mean? I have been
through things – thought about things. I can counsel and I AM wise,
creative, imaginative. Once I understand I'm smart and strong,
maybe BRAVE is a better word than strong. Brave, yes.
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