Hope Dies Last

Hope Dies Last
Copyright @aladreth

"The luck will alter and the star will rise." - John Masefield 

Carol was wide awake exactly two hours before the alarm was to go off this morning. That gave her two hours to think.

There were positive things and there were negative things to think about for that amount of time.

First, and foremost, was how to decipher this new life of hers.

Her first life was pretty cool.  But it ended some time around the year she got married.  She tried to carry that first life into the second life and all hell broke loose.

Not once, but twice.  All she could say was, "I'm sorry."

She said, "I'm sorry," various different ways.  She really meant it too, when she said it.

She loved the way her naked body felt in the bed, the crisp sheets against her skin. Her body was soft. There.  She said it.

She was, what one of her lovers called, "A Namio Woman."  He liked women like that, so that was good.  Most men didn't like women like that, so that was bad.  She wasn't no hard-body-athletic type and she sure wasn't in the best of health.  But, she loved how she didn't wake up with arthritis in her hands anymore since she had been taking a most wonderful miracle health food derived from an Indian herb and a Japanese cheese.  It was amazing.

She liked her "When Pigs Fly" earrings.  She would wear them to work today.  She hoped the new tall girl would ask about them and that would allow Carol to talk about Mardi Gras circa 1989.

Yes, everything was connected.

She thought about breakfast.  Two boiled eggs mashed with mayonnaise on one slice of whole grain bread. She would also have an orange. And coffee.  God love coffee.

She thought about that twat of an ex boyfriend of hers and how he was liable to kill her one day.  Just right out of the blue he would show up and since he didn't give fuck all care about life, he would take hers too.

She remembered chips she had received from an anonymous twelve step help group and how she had read somewhere she was to never throw them away if there was ever a chance she would return to the group.

She remembered her ex sponsor's words even though she had not seen her in years.  One day Carol said to her, "I am killing myself with, insert addictive substance, here."  Her ex sponsor replied, "No, you are aren't actually killing yourself, you are cutting ten years off your life." And then she added, "Ten out of ten people die, so don't take life too seriously."

Her ex sponsor was wrong.  Carol was killing herself with her addictive behaviour, slash behaviours.  She thought about how others in the group would talk about how those behaviours had served her well before, perhaps masking pain, or somehow comforting her, but now they were just part of the "stinkin' thinkin.'"

Gotta love the cliches in twelve step groups.

Her favourite twelve step cliche of all time was, "If you pray for a Cadillac and God sends a jackass, ride it."

And ride it, she could.

So, she would be okay.

Carol was in love again but only with the idea of love.

God forbid she ever tell another man that she loved him.  It made men just evil when you said you loved them.

However, the idea of love.  Ah, love in perfection.  It made her think of thousands of honey bees in a church court yard.  Beautiful honey bees with the faces of men. Half of the honey bees were saying, "We, we, we." The other half of the honey bees were saying, "Oi, Oi, Oi."

Carol was so in love with the idea of love.  It made her think of painting the sky on the face of a gorgeous man, eight years her senior.  Painting it right on his face, with glorious bold strokes and then forcing his mouth open and poetry would come flying out of his mouth like those honey bees.

His lovely mouth.  Oh, so lovely, the entire universe of philosophy and scrambled eggs was in that mouth.

Her mother hated the last two big Christmas gifts she had bought her, even saying, "Just take them home with you!"  Her husband had only had sex with her three times in three months, and two of those times had been when she had to bribe him with a six hundred dollar getaway at a cabin.  Her mentally unstable ex boyfriend was a total stalker.  We already mentioned him, didn't we?

She could hide under a rock.  Carol could just hide her head right under the crisp cotton sheets!

But the church court yard of honey bees was calling her.

photograph copyright 2007, RIP 

story previously published, 2009

Our Shangri-La

"As long as I know that you understand," he whispered. "But of  course you do.  It's a great satisfaction to have got somebody to understand.  You seem to have been there on purpose."  And in the same whisper, as if we two whenever we talked had to say things to each other which were not for for the world to hear, he added, "it's very wonderful."  - Joseph Conrad - "The Secret Sharer"

***
Prelude to Poetry; I bought you a cherry ice cream at the Kwik Stop - extra cherry, and I drove you to the mountains.

I like driving.
I like you sitting in the passenger seat.

I like when people look at us in my shiny car.  The car you call a car only "car snobs" would drive.

I turned "The Stranglers" CD very, very loud and took you to an exclusive area where all the very, very rich people live.

"Liberation for women
That's what I preach
Preacher man
Walking on the beaches looking at the peaches"

It was blaring out of the speakers, the windows were down.  My long hair was blowing all over the place.

The temperature was a perfect 75 degrees and it was 10pm on a Saturday night.

It wasn't so long ago in the grande scheme of things.

I touched your cheek at one point during our drive and it was wet.  You were crying. I knew you were happy, though. I was very happy myself.  I licked your tears from my fingers and carried on eating my own ice cream with one hand while driving with the other.

The homes were massive with great big windows and the ceilings were so high. Looking in the windows from the winding roads, we didn't see anything.  You couldn't see anything unless you had binoculars.  And we might be voyeurs, but we didn't have any binoculars on us that night.

We didn't speak, except for one time.

You said, "Shouldn't you turn the music down?"

I asked, "Why?"

You said, "Well, because of the fancy neighborhood we are driving through."

I answered, "We are rebels."  I leaned forward and cranked the volume higher and fixed my shirt where "The Girls" could breathe the fresh mountain air and then I howled like a great big ol' she-wolf.


***


Our Shangri-La
© aladreth

I bought you
a book
that would appeal
to your hippie
light on money
heavy on love
sense of style

We laid in bed
reading about
the haunted
Catskill Mountains

Woodstock, way before
the music appeared
there were arts,
crafts,
handmade houses
from hemlocks,
creek rock,
bluestone,
chestnut,
scavenged pieces
from barns, dumps, cabins,
schoolhouses, churches

we learned an astrologer
high on the mountainside
always knew
where her stars were

Queen Basil gate greeted us,
autumn leaves used
for insulation

you traced your finger
over photographs
of carved doors,
skylights with seashells,
round windows,
crooked brick pavers,
painted karma
oak sanctuary,
shelves sagging
with books,

"Yes, that does look like
Mary Jane in those porcelain pots."
"And there's the home of
our favourite
hippie priest."

I wrote on the cover page,
just for you, my lover,
"Choose my favourite bedroom"

Turn yourself inside, mister,
be straight, be gay, say
you'll be
everything for me

and you do, oh, boy
do you,
as you lean
over me
everything forgiven,
accepted
still bearing same scars
but soaring freedom inside

your lips against my forehead
then my voice in your ear
calling you horrid, dirty names
all these words
for many months

all of you
all inside

all death and life
breaking forth

our Woodstock,
our Shangri-la

breathing
areas of previous
occupants
garments
hung ready
for settlers
boon boom

strangely expecting
hung clung
corporeal presences
to reanimate them

your breath
almost to climax now
yes, almost there,

the page
laid open
to where
our Bob Dylan
used to sleep

and falling now,
halcyon times
recite those Shakespeare lines
by reams,

in the seams of
tight lace and leather tied,
tongues from a Pentecostal invasion

Oh, my God,
Thanks for warning me,
you nearly skulled me

"Fancy that."
"I wasn't even aiming."

previously published 

copyright 2007-2013

The Nuns of La Padina

THE NUNS OF LA PADINA

COPYRIGHT 2013

@aladreth

In the San Juan Quin Valley, there is a little known convent called the Nuns of La Padina.  I knew six girls who went there to study.  They were quick to point out they signed a contract stating they didn't only worship God, but worshiped stones as well.  I wasn't sure why this was so important that they tell everyone - but it was.  

These girls wore their habits, but they were quite naughty before they came to study how to be a proper nun.  They had been really bad girls before they signed on at the convent.

One in particular was Leah, and she was a thief. 

One day I was in a car with her and I was so thrown off about how she was like, often saying to her, "See, how you are like!?!" 

That particular day, she had her nun's outfit on - except with six-inch high heels!  She looked like a dirty slutty whore, posing as a nun.

"I bet they have to tie you up to get you to say your bedtime prayers!" I said.

I imagined her tied with red rope around her wrists.  Thick rope.  Tight.  Permanently in the position of praying hands.

I was so caught up about her that day, I left my purse in a Chinese carry out.  I went back in to the restaurant and at the counter was a man named Thomas paying his check.  I teased him that I was a 'Doubting Thomas' myself right at that moment, worried nothing would be left in my purse, if it had even been recovered.

He let me go in front of him.  Then he stood next to me. A form of support.  Solidarity in a stranger.  I had lost something important to me.  My purse is a monument of nostalgia and love and promises and just all good stuff.  All my memories are locked in that purse and I carry it with me to remember everything from the past.  

One day Karen told me about one of her friends who would collect things and put them in her purse.  I asked, "What is wrong with that?" Knowing I did the same.  Karen replied, "She does it because she is broken.  There is something wrong with her.  Something happened in her past."  I just nodded and held on to the information.  There must be something wrong with me, as well.

Thomas felt for me.  I could tell.  Bones and sinew over a body of pain, I could see and he 

'got' me already.  Well, I guessed he did, because as they were locating my purse that had been returned by a nice do-good person, he put together a package for me.  Something like a little care package.

A plastic bag with candies and frilly bookmarks.  Little verses and fortunes he had collected by the cash register and purchased.  Oh, and gum.  Cinnamon flavour. 

Also included was a card he even signed as I was looking through my purse to make sure all was there. 

Credit cards? Check.  

Cash?  Really? Someone left the cash?  

They probably felt sorry for me as it wasn't much and I carry silly things in my purse.  

I was so grateful, but still so shook up.  I had almost lost my life.  Yes, my purse was my life.  And unless you have just about lost your life, don't argue with the fact that a purse can hold everything. I've seen women, on the news, in the middle of flash floods on the roof of their cars, holding tightly to their purse and the reporters from the helicopter commenting, "Let go, Lady! Your life is more important!" 

But, it's not true.  Their life is in their purse, man, their life is in there!

Roger, or did I say his name was Thomas?  I don't know because the rest of the night I didn't call him by his name.  I just called him, "The sweet boy."  Well, the people behind the counter knew him and seemed to 'tsk tsk' him, even making a comment about why would a nice, tall, good looking man like him want to risk his marriage.  

I looked over my glasses and rolled my eyes. Did they really think things would go that far from a goodie bag?  Well, I was sentimental.  

But excuse me!  Why bring up his evident better looking self! Sheeesh!

I asked him, "Can you write your name and number down in the card?"

Then another girl from behind the counter spoke up and said, "Roger Thomas, don't you dare! You are married!"  He looked at me and shrugged and then leaned down and whispered into the back of my head, right behind my ear, "Not happily."

"Oh, it doesn't matter, dear," I cooed, just as much to the girl behind the counter as to him, "It's just a thoughtful thing for you to make a nice little package of gifts here for me.  Just because I lost my purse? Oh, it's so sweet."   

I pondered, "Is he younger than me? He really looks it," and "I wonder if he has kids."  The kids thing bothered me.  I suppose every adult is free to do what they want.  I wanted to pretend this was a dream.  He wasn't married.  I could just erase that bit.  

What would be wrong with a dinner with a tall guy who just bought me stuff I was so nostalgic about?  It reminded me of airport departure goodbyes already.  Tiny books of kisses, signed, "I have so enjoyed our trip together.  I love you, I will always love you.  Here is a tiny book to prove it. Goodbye now, but we will see each other again. I am your slave forever."

 I still have that book. Tear stained book because I took that book in the airport bathroom and bawled like a baby in a stall as his airplane left.  

But, enough about airport departure goodbyes and stupid tiny books about kissing.  

Silly, really, when I'm not even much a kisser.  

Silly, really, because he's gone.  Long gone.  

And there was Thomas.

He was silly himself, I could tell.  He had on a yellow and red striped shirt and it was not in fashion.  But, oh, he was so good looking.

I sort of threw some of the hard candy at his chest and said, "I don't need these at all! Can't you see how fat I am?"  

"Good," is all he replied, as he caught them and stuck them back in my bag.

Leah was waiting in the car as I dragged Thomas out, holding his hand in one of my hands and his package of goodies in my other,  and my recovered life over my shoulder.

I pulled him in to the backseat and scooted over.

"So, you found everything, eh," she said turning around toward me, and then to Thomas, "She's quite persnickety," Shaking her head, "You've been warned." 

I defended myself, "She's not even a real nun, Thomas!  They don't worship God out there at that convent!  Just stones."