Freedom (revisited)

I never post the same entry twice, but I am making an exception for a friend of mine who I hope will keep the following in mind whilst navigating about temperamental relatives throughout the holidays.

You know who you are.
Please, be wise with your precious energy.
You matter more than any tedious, dysfunctional drama.

Freedom













There is a moat.
It surrounds me.
They cannot cross.
All runnels leading have been dammed.
I am safe.

It is a boundary. It is mine.
They shall not pass.
The bridge shall only draw upon my judgment, upon my command.

I no longer have an obligation to engage within the inherent presentiments of dysfunction, derision and delusion.

They ring the bell, but the bridge does not lower.
I control the counterweight.

Impatient, they ring for the ferry.
Blinking. The boat of Charon does not appear.

Universal: them and us.

And so, upon these banks they are inclined to leave us handmade baskets brimming with fresh fruit—messages—: persuasion. Anemic at first, and so we are inclined to pick through them at our leisure.

Hours. Days. Slumber.

They ring two, three times more and beckon for attention.

No.

They ring repeatedly and begin to leave patronizing messages, ripe with urgency and concern, as their arrogance will not allow them to consider that our silence has a greater meaning: not now: no.

No.

They give up quickly.
Time intervenes.

Everyday. Progression. The New Normal.

They Reform, restructure and begin to ring again.

The hypervigilant moat begins to leak; rust begins to form around our recollection. A formidable fog of nostalgic memory rolls in: a photograph-- Tribe surrounded and smiling.

An olive branch is extended and we contemplate acceptance.
Subtle. Pavlovian.

No.

Weakness. We assess the caller's identity and wager: perhaps I have overreacted. Perhaps I am part of the problem. Perhaps I am able—this time.

No. 
No?  But...

And so we gamble.

Hello…

We abandon our hypervigilant, detail-oriented condition for real-time interaction. There is no need for conditional division; for boundary, for there is no harm: we are of the same tribe.

Yes.

And so I would argue with the fine doctor.

* * * 


They are Traitors.


Traitors who are literally teeming with derision, negativity, disconnected outrage and delusions of grandeur.

Traitors who commiserate and conspire.

Exponentiation. Virulence.

How have you been?
This is not a question: it is a code for contempt.

They emerge from their histrionic dens not to listen: no.

Vapid inquires, for they are vampires whose self-centered mission remains: to suck and to spew: to suck our spirit and to spew their sanctimonious rhetoric.

Blathering on and on.
Sucking. Exsanguination.

What have we done? They are vampires and we have knowingly invited them in.

Echoes.
Ringing.

Repeat.

Awareness.
NO.

Recollection returns.

A fleeting specter where time has stood still.

The formidable fog of nostalgic memory lifts: a photograph—tribe surrounded and smiling. It is propaganda. I see it. We see it.

Present.


No.


We did not respond, the bridge is still intact and our feet remain dry.

Escalation.
Ringing.

Not now.

Live.  Life.  Living.

Baskets. Piled, they begin to fray; the fruit begins to seep and rot but still, they sow the seeds.

Sunshine. Friends. Contentment.

A heaping, putrid landfill forms along the bank, the soil tinged with their pestilence.

It is a plague. They are a plague.

Persistence. Insistence.
More messages.

They ornament their disdain and hunger for this emotional ambush with concern for our well-being. It is circuitous. It is a lie. It is a trap.

It becomes about the why are you, the where are you and the what's going on? 


It becomes about their graciousness and our silence.

It builds.
It becomes about our immaturity and our capricious temperament.

Our silence simmers within them.
It becomes about our self-absorption, our audacity and our impassivity; our inability for functional communication within the company of pure righteousness.

We are a predicament: their predicament.

The silence begins to boil.
It becomes about our disrespect, our disobedience, our ungratefulness, and three baskets later, our more than obvious defiance.

Yes, it is a Defiance. It is a Precedent.
It is our Recollection that they are vampires and we must not knowingly invite them in.

No.

* * * I would argue that when one makes a concerted effort to negotiate with one’s detail-oriented condition, one risks the unrestricted access of one’s own foolish, Pollyanna judgment and the consequential invasion to be dawned upon by the traitors in our tribe.




Illustration: Gustave Doré Charon from The Divine Comedy

E.T.A.

I came home today to find this upon my doorstep.

Now I must admit to some serious trepidation, as I'm not entirely sure how to process the creepy particulars of such a premeditated decorative invasion, if only to mention that upon reflection I do recall seeing a gaggle of 20-somethings roaming about the neighborhood with what appeared to be literature before my departure this afternoon. In fact, upon further reflection I believe there was a mysterious van parked outside in front of my house as well.

So okay, I guess I'll get The Kid on the 25th. However, I have a few questions. For instance:

The 25th of what? Of December? Of August?

Are we even referring to a specific day within a specific month and if so will I need to be home when The Kid arrives?

Will The Kid need accommodations? If so, for how long? More important, will The Kid have all the appropriate shots and vaccinations so as to remain sterile and less than a spewing vessel of viral plague?

Will The Kid be traveling alone or will The Kid have a companion?

Will I need to collect The Kid--'get The Kid'--from the airport or the bus station? I guess what I'm asking is this: will The Kid need a lift?

What do we mean by "get." "Get" The Kid as in I'll be given The Kid? Or "get" The Kid as in I'll be required to retrieve The Kid? Although it seems entirely clear that someone somewhere will be getting something at some point--particularly on or within the 25th of something--the message itself is a bit remiss with regard to efficient details so as to allow The Kid a seamless arrival.

I have a sudden urge to barricade myself into my home. I'm just sayin'.

jenji

UPDATE: "A Kid" did indeed show on Christmas Day, however whether or not it was "The Kid" in question remains to be seen. It could all be a terrible coincidence.

Delayed Post

July 4th: East










July 4th: West

The entire weekend was riddled with filmmaking, improv, creative energy and good friends, while our venue for The 4th provided an astounding view of innumerable fireworks displays--pro and amateur alike--all while perched high above the downtown skyline.

No injuries to report despite the rickety trap door.

jenji

My Memorial Day Morning

Back to the single woman living alone and "you're-screwing-up-my-evening-now-scat." (YSUMENS) *see here
On Sunday afternoon there were several baby robins wandering around and about my yard. The birds were only able to fly about two feet off the ground and appeared merely days away from being able to care for themselves. Robins are extremely doting parents and they didn't seem to mind when I would pick up a baby and shuttle it back into the play area before it was hit by a passing car or mower. They were great parents--I know this because I had been watching their ritualistic feedings throughout the spring--granted, with voyeuristic binoculars in hand (my neighbors already think I'm eccentric. Big deal). The chicks would chirp from a low perch wherein the parents would bitch and moan at each other to get the babies fed. Mom and Dad yank the worm out, fly over and drop it in the kid's face.

Rinse and repeat.

So, on Sunday/Monday morning I went to bed at around 3 a.m. Just on the brink of slumber I hear a high octave chirp outside my bedroom window. Naturally, in classic "you're-screwing-up-my-evening-now-scat" form I ignored the chirps and figured I would let nature take its course. Very Darwin, very Survival of the Fittest.

Chirp. Ignore it.
Chirp. Ignore it.
and yet again, chirp. I ignore it.

By this time I'm not looking out the window out of sheer defiance, rather than fatigue.

Then I hear these frantic high-octave chick chirps and the parents throwing a complete shit fit in my driveway.

I AM IGNORING YOU!

sigh. I just want to sleep--

--in only a few hours my neighbor will wake to obsessively vacuum his car out, followed by his predictable 8 a.m. lawn maintenance. Seriously, would it kill the fucker to sleep in just once?

Still ignoring the chirps.

Then it came. The knock at my front door at 3:30 a.m.

Oh, now it's on!

I get up, bitch and moan my way across a pitch black house and open the door.


I look down to see this staring back at me:









Okay, not exactly that...more like this...




..and no, it wasn't Harold. He's much too metro to go outdoors at night. And by that I mean that he's a pussy in every sense of the word.



It was a baby robin scared out of its mind fluttering against my door with a big ol cat lickin his chops a foot away, ready to pounce.

Let me be clear: The bird knocked on my door.

I'm just sayin' I had already handled him most of the day and now he knew to knock.

He knocked, I'm just sayin'.

Long story short, the baby robin would never survive the night with that big bad lion out there, so we had a sleep over. I put him in a spare bird cage that I had and he slept in my bathroom. Occasionally I'd hear a chirp, but overall I think he slept quite well. Harold could care less, as his bawwwwls are far too hypnotic for him to pay any attention.

The next morning I got up and well,
as I said, my Memorial Day morning went something like this:


Breakfast






"Oliver"






Mumbling Co-dependent up the tree in her jammies.








Oliver happily back in his nest.








Oliver let out a chirp that sounded like a birdy version of thank you...

Or was it...

"You dumb bitch, this ain't my nest!"

jenji

YSUMENS

As a single woman living alone I must say there are moments where one might think that one would be alarmed if one saw a shadowy figure in the window while watching television late into a Friday evening (that was last month).

Or one would think that one might find it odd when one hears the voice of an inquisitive man mumble into one's ear "mmmmhharmmruffyouknow?" from within the wall of one's laundry room in the middle of the day (that was last week).

Further, one might seriously freak out if one wakes to see a faceless figure standing above one while sleeping peacefully (this happens all the time).

Especially if one lives alone, right? Well, one would think...

When it comes down to it, there are certain circumstances in the life of a single woman living alone where panic would seem logical, yet I tend to adopt my maternal grandmother’s innate (and I would argue, practical) response to an alarming situation—denial. Make no mistake, it’s a ballsy, proactive, you're-screwing up-my-evening-now-scat kind of denial. I refer to it by the acronym, YSUMENS.

You see my grandmother would regularly encounter peepers who would peer into her windows at night while she would cook or sit at the kitchen table. These guys were bold enough to actually peep through the old-school mail slots that used to be cut into your front door—very muppety if you ask me. In fact, after a night of bumper to bumper, one-way traffic peeping, one could count the number of cigarette butts heaped beneath the windowsill from the previous evening of peeping activities.

Today, modern DNA technology would have every one of those peepers identified and thrown in jail to be sure. However, decades ago grandma’s response to this breach of privacy was neither panic nor even fear--she would simply whip her dishtowel up into a tightly wound weapon and aggressively thwack it at the window or door without missing a beat of any conversation that was taking place around her.

THWACK!
And with that, the peepers would scatter like vermin. This thwacking is similar to that which takes place during middle school pool periods across the country.

I’m just sayin; the woman had balls.

As a single woman, I find that this ballsy, proactive, you're-screwing up-my-evening-now-scat kind of denial works well. Although, I have yet to thwack a dishtowel at anything since the summer of 1982. And my reaction to the shadowy figure in the window last month? It was to simply stare straight ahead at the television with an expression that said,

"I can sit here and act like I don't see you all night, so either do something or scram ya jag-off!"

Or my reaction to the man's voice in my laundry room
(remember,"mmmmhharmmruffknow?")

Yes, it seemed like a question at the time regardless of my inability to translate “mmmhharmmruffknow?” into English. Basically, my inner dialogue was (and I must say, I may have even said this out loud), "I know, I think you're right."

And finally, the faceless figure above my bed as I sleep?
Well, this was a bit different you see because I was half asleep at the time and also pretty sure that these figures were extraterrestrials. More on that later.  So naturally my reaction was a bit more...um, Hollywood.

Ahem. You see it was summer and I actually woke up repeatedly screaming, "people next door...call the police,” from my bed. I was full of piss and vinegar, but not nearly so alarmed and clearly too sleepy to either flee or call the damn police myself. Not screaming out of fear, no. In fact, I later came to realize I was paralyzed, but still, more on that later.  I was merely screaming for added volume (and probably theatrics), quicker recognition and a speedier response by the authorities—whether Mulder and Scully or Officer Doughboy from Headquarters I didn’t really care—only that upon their arrival I could return to my slumber sooner rather than later.

Did I mention this was in the middle of August and my windows were wide open? Wait, wait…did I mention that I can easily hear a mouse fart from my neighbor's house during a sleet storm? I can’t imagine how The Born Again Family next door didn’t hear me; still, the police never showed. No good Bible beating dunces. I guess that's why my neighbor once described me as enigmatic. Yeah, yeah, get in line.

By the way, it turns out that the shadowy figures above my bed that have been plaguing me since childhood and the subject of so many of my film works are in fact common for those with narcolepsy and goes along with sleep paralysis, so I'm no longer concerned for experimental probing.

So, what is this phenomenon of ballsy, proactive, you're-screwing up-my-evening-now-scat kind of denial? Is this an extreme form of liberalism at work; in that I assume that we are all equal to do as we please no matter the circumstances because peeping, poltergeist and alien probing remains a universal right of every organism?

Or is it a sloth like laziness that has managed to render me sedentary and apathetic toward any proactive action that might say, require me to drop the remote and/or think too hard?

Or, is this just plain mental illness? Freud would probably site Plato’s definition of hysteria (hystera is the Greek word for uterus):

“when it (the uterus) remains barren for a long time after puberty it finds it difficult to bear, it feels wrath, is goes about the whole body, closing the issues for air, stopping the respiration, putting the body into extreme dangers, and occasioning various disease.”

Here is where I would tell Freud to kiss my skinny, barren ass in a wrathful manifestation of fury.

It's not mental illness. It's a strain of resilience.  In fact, I would recommend that young girls are taught that the ballsy, proactive, you're-screwing up-my-evening-now-scat kind of denial is indeed a practical approach to coping with the various challenges that a single woman may encounter whilst living alone; that is, peepers, bumps in the night, voices in the wall and bags of flaming shit on your doorstep.

Which will bring me to my next post.

3:30 a.m. on Monday, May 28th…there was a bump in the night…

a big one...
to be continued…