Life in a Gold Gypsy Bag

Oh, Dear Corrigan,

You have loved gypsies before.  You have shared your soul with one or two.

You wanted to know what was in my gold gypsy bag.  We sit across from each other at an all night diner and dig through my bag.  You drink your coffee.  I drink my orange juice.  You warn me about it.  You say my stomach will be upset drinking orange juice at 1am in the morning.  I tell you that you will never sleep drinking coffee this late.  You wink and tell me you plan on being up late and drag your foot to my leg and run it down to my foot and then you smile.

You tell me you are in love with a neurotic woman.  I am sure it is me.  I have mystical powers.  I am an Empath and I know and feel.  I expect tonight we will love each other again.  You will take me and hold me.  You are a romantic and you wear the smell of a man who is romantic.

One by one I show you my life.  You are in there.  That Viking coin.  Or did you say it was Roman?  I think you told me it was Viking.  You were in the forest and
found it there.  You brought it back to the cottage for me.

There are gold scissors.  They do not cut straight.  They lay by the quill you bought me in an antique shop.  It is from World War I.  You told me about the artists.

There are aspirin in a silver box.  I am worried, like you, that I will die.  I will die the way my father did.  You will die the way your father did.  We worry about this with each other.  We assure each other it will never happen.  Still, I carry the aspirin because aspirin will save me.

There is a shiny marble candy corn to represent my love of Halloween and a "Go Texan" key ring with the keys I will need one day.

See this? An elephant made from silver.  We love elephants because the women rule.  They kick the junior boy elephants out of their clan.  I like the way they mourn.  I seem to be mourning or trying to. The elephants will cry and cry and waste away over the bones of another elephant.  I admire this ability to grieve, so I carry this elephant with me.

I show you a handcuff key.  I lost the other handcuff key in a sleazy motel on the Las Vegas Strip thirteen years ago.  He was a Corrigan too, that man I handcuffed in a chair.  From then on out, I would wear the handcuff around my neck because I didn't want to end up at some locksmith in the middle of the night getting him out of the police issue handcuffs.

There is perfume.  I love perfume.  Oscar de la Renta.  It came from an enemy.   Well, she wasn't an enemy when she bought it for me.  Then again, they say to keep your enemies closer than your friends.  Maybe we were always enemies.   Friends are few and far between.  We both know this.

A glass bottle of tiny turquoise.  Drops of copper I got in a Bisbee, Arizona mine.  Three SD cards full of pictures ... still hoping those pics of Mother and me in the mountains, on the porch of the Lodge, overlooking the Elk feeding off the homemade bread, will return.  We had beautiful hats that day.  I handmade them for us to wear.  It was Mother's Day.  Why do things have to be so hard?

There is an empty tiny book made in India.  The paper has small pieces of dried flowers and I will write in this book tiny letters to you.  Oh, wait.  You are flipping through the book and find one word.  "Yes."  We talk about Yoko Ono and John Lennon and the YES on the ceiling many years ago.  Yes.  Yes, I want you.  Yes, let's do this.

There is a barrel of monkeys, bright neon yellow and green.  It reminds me of laughter.  See here?  My lucky paintbrush.  I think the painting was a four thousand dollar painting.  It never sold.  But, the paintbrush is; oh, so lucky.

I let you smell from a small jar.  It's Rosemary aromatherapy oil.  I tell you all about Rosemary and how the Italians plant Rosemary at the garden gate for remembrance. I smell this oil to remind me.  I have an excellent memory but I do not want to forget August 28, 2002.  Never do I want to forget the day I said, "This can't be happening"  162 times in a row, rocking back and forth.  I slept on his bed.  I recorded every event as they happened but I have never wrote it.  But, I will continue to open the gold gypsy bag and smell the oil.  The oil of remembrance.

I show you the ring from when my husband was leaving me.  We were in Barstow, California.  I hate Barstow.  Years later you see how things go, don't you.  Don't you just.  How you may have played a part in the misery.  Another ring as well.  My ancestor's ring.  Simple muleskinners.  Simple handcrafted metal ring with a stone found from a river.  A river where corpses have floated down.  Corpses from horrors of war.  Brother against brother.

I realized one time the love of a child.  She wrapped up the cutest little Asian doll that had a superhero outfit draped around her little shoulders.  This was her toy she gave me for Christmas.  She wrapped up all her favourite toys.  She told me she loved me this way.  So, I carry it with me.  To have the love of a child is the most precious gift you can have.

I have an unpolished Apache Tear in here from the Trail of Tears.  It is pitch black laying on the table.  Your beautiful broken hand holds it up to the light and you see through.  Straight through.  I tell you the story of the Trail of Tears.  We both agree on the horrible abuse, lies and prejudice.  We like the same things.  We hate the same things.

There is a money clip from 2000.  A grey timber wolf.  It reminds me of being free and running with the wolves.  I will give it to you probably.  You lose so many things, you say.  But you won't lose this.

I show you an English half penny from the Victorian era.  A lover from Cambridge, England sent me 30 or so of them in little black velvet bags with Jane Eyre stamps.  I gave them away to my dear Sisters in my Sister group during a Victorian Haunted Halloween Party I threw.  I made a beautiful scrapbook from newspapers from the Victorian era.  They were quite bawdy back then.   I bet you didn't know.  Oh, then again, I bet you do.  I kept some of the coins and stamps.  I love things from England.

There is a dark green pendant.  I am not sure what stone this is in the pendant, but there is a soul in it.  An old woman.  Her soul is inside here - you can see the universe - all the stars in people's souls.  Here, I hold her soul.  She does not mind because I took many of her things that were just being thrown away and she had worked so hard on her knitting and she loved her jewelry so much.  They say we attach to things.  They say we imprint on things.  She imprinted on her things and even entombed herself in this stone.  Therefore, I must keep her.  I must carry her around.  One day she may leave us.  I don't mind her, you know.  You won't mind her either.

Corrigan, can we go to Savannah, Georgia?  I hear there are more ghosts there than any other place in the world.  I know a lot about ghosts.  I know a lot about hauntings.  I really do.

Just for now, though, take me home.  For I've told you.  I've told you my life in the gold gypsy bag.