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If I could make my mother say and mean anything, It would be, you’re right, I am narcissistic. You’re right, I failed you back then. If I fail you now, then you’re right in the worst way.

I wait for you to show some guts. You cry. I wait for you to remember how we were children, and you had us go into the house first, when you thought there might be an intruder, because you also thought you were acting crazy. But you also called a neighbor, a man, to come with a flashlight, and lead us through the house, peer in the closets, make sure there was no intruder. There was never an intruder. But there was never a real defense, either. I still dream that intruders are out there, and the windows are cracked, and the lock is cheap, and all our lights are on, and they’re watching us. In my dream, I ready for battle, because mom will not. Mom will fold.
You wonder how. You’re so strong, your family loves you (but doesn’t feel safe around you), you’re so smart and beautiful. You never had to be single, receive any real harsh criticism, or come up with your defense. You never had a plan to get us out, if the building burned. If anything, you wouldn’t believe the smoke, and we’d all die, waiting for a man to tell us if the fire is real. You came a long ways, but still fell so short. What did it say in your diaries? I’m your hottest critic, I have no drops of mercy for you, mother. If father wasn’t pouring the cooling ice of mercy on your head every minute, I would help. But you been helped. We helped you. Didn’t we? Didn’t we? Didn’t we? We helped you, and think we still will. Maybe they will, but I won’t, lying witch. You lie, you pretend, you fake things, you evade, you dodge, but you don’t stand firm on your self worth. Why not? Do you have none? At 75, even? No fucking rock beneath you to know that your family loves you? That you’re a basic person, a quarter heroic, a quarter pathetic, and half unmade. Why can’t you know that, and then know it for us? What you did to us is hard to describe, but we find the ways. We find the words, and you don’t decide. You don’t decide what words are accurate anymore, you lost that right by showing poor judgement. So much poor judgement. So much luck your kids didn’t die or kill themselves. And even if you make to your grave holding faithful to the deal about how your parents loved you, but we don’t. If they’re good, we can’t be trusted. But they weren’t good. Were they? They were bad people. Racist people. Patriarchal people who hold women down. Who fear black men? Who hated Obama. Who hated niggers. Didn’t you come from that?

So what happened to that? Huh? Where did it go. Oh.

Women who went schizophrenic because they followed the power signals. But you never owned your power. That doesn’t make it unreal. Your power was real to us, and you abused it, and nothing can make that go away, except you owning it, mother. Own your fuck up. Own your fucked up ness. Because we all know. We all know you’re high, and drunk, and still have no self esteem, or right to life, at 75. The only thing you know how to do is bully me. And look what I became. Thank you. Got my muscle up. Ready to kill intruders for my children. There’s no forgiveness for bad parents who aren’t actually sorry.

Good Night, Boomers

Your fear of us and of this makes a wall. If you had no fear, there wouldn’t be a wall. We would be close, like red and white blood cells. As long as you fear this, nothing I say and nothing we do will get through it. Which means you’ll never know I love you the way we might without the wall between us. They don’t believe in the wall. Do you wonder? How all of it is a collective loss. A waste of the time left. With the small comfort that time’s not real.

Guitar

I started learning to play guitar in 2002, in Brooklyn. Somehow I had my sister’s acoustic guitar (later on, cats knocked it over and broke off the neck), and I had a book of basic chords. I would wake up earlier than going to work required and practice guitar. All along, I thought, THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE EASIER. HOW can there be that many people who play guitar if it’s so hard? This question still lingers. Took me like two decades to be able to strum the majors and minors. I had two lessons back then. Since then I learned all chords and scales. I practice strumming along to gangster rap, for the rhythm. I can improvise. Because I’m my dad’s daughter: piano-offspring. I will play this shit well before I die. Long after I can sing well or look attractive. But that’ll be enough I think. It seems like piano was easier than guitar. But I always wanted guitar because it’s not huge and heavy. You can move around with it on. Like piano, it’s your hands doing separate but related things. As a singer, I was an excellent mimic, and then I had original sounds. So I mastered my own goals, and in dreams, I still play gigs, everywhere. I still go to the studio, figure out equipment, record shit, meet with Mark, and other musicians (my bandmate). In my next lifetime, maybe I’ll be unstoppable, and not waste as much time, worrying. I was capable of waking up early to practice, but not staying up late to perform and party. For that, I crashed out. If I had both abilities, I would’ve made it big. I believe that. I chose to get enough sleep rather than do speed. With speed, I could’ve sped up and been outgoing or been able to earn wages plus rock out. I couldn’t but who cares. I’m still gonna play guitar. It’s one of the only expectations I still have for myself. I thought if I had free-time, I’d be constantly creating. False. But I still play guitar every day, and I walk my dog. So I’m fine. Life is a full-time situation, without wage-labor added to it. I’d be fine not working. But I don’t know if I’d finish my novel. Lately, only guitar is soothing. The novel sleeps, perhaps forever, but likely only another month or so. Guitar is harder than it looks, even manually.

infinite seconds of humanity

this might be pathetic but one of the things i appreciate about being an aide or teacher or nurse is the moments you get while the client or patient goes potty. there are at least 30 seconds (could be more, if a bowel is going to move), that you must just STAND THERE. as i am, i don’t want to do much more than stand there. i crave moments of standing there. i might stretch. i might take a deep breath. i might hold my breath and get a little head rush as i breathe out. i might do a “wall sit.” i might stretch my calves, or quads, or chest by spreading my arms out against the wall behind me. these are the things i need to do the most. and in that moment, i get paid to do them. then my clients asks for a wipe, and i wipe their butt while wearing a glove. then it’s back to work. but this break is more worthwhile than the “potty break” itself that employees try to utilize to get a little tiny bit of time back. Shitting on the clock is what we’d call it. this lady told me she’d take naps in the stall. other people go on their phones and communicate with their real lives. it’s like having to go to the bathroom is the ONLY TIME you’re allowed to have a little privacy during the work day. even at lunch, people don’t relax. i learned to eat while helping others eat. i feed Will with my left hand and myself with the right hand. i hate the smell of shit, just like anyone else. but at least it’s a small price to pay for tiny moments back from the Master Gobbler of Time (your boss).

What weapon will you use When they come for you and yours? Lenin said everyone must be armed, he said each person, that means us. We don’t have a militia to join, but we should still pick a weapon. For some reason I think of the tricky, shooting needles that burst from the sleeves of assassins in Dune, the famous sci-fi book, which I read. The needles were crazy. Very low likelihood that I could get those to use. More likely it needs to be various household objects. But then you need to picture them, and picture yourself using them, to bash your attacker’s head in, or slice their arteries, or achilles, or ACL, or foot/feet. You’ll have to do it, if you wait. We have to do it if we have for them to come. There’s a choice is going to meet the advancing enemy army, sneaking up on them, sabotage and subterfuge. That’s one option we have. It requires meeting the right people, and a hell of a lot of luck. You can call it the Mandate of Heaven, if you want. To lead an army of hackers onward, or be in that army, in the dark, the high guard that goes beyond our lines, and into their territory, teasing them and leaving them clues to shit their pants about. If you’re going to be a sneaky fellow, leave a witty message, that’s for sure. They have no idea what we can do, if we all wake up, or even if a lot of us wake up. If we can fully discard the HYPER-NORMALIZATION of “They come for other people in the day and in the night, but they’re not coming for us.” EVER? or NOT RIGHT NOW? They’ll come, though, and what then. What will you use? They’ll use gas, bombs, and guns. What will we use? Or will we run? And if so, where? Will it be easy to tell, or hard to tell, when the move is worth the risk of death, or even suffering, to someone you love more than yourself?

Curtis

Occasionally, Curtis appears in dreamworld, where he’s the plug for drugs. When we were kids, we didn’t do drugs, but he was a bad boy and while sweet at heart, bad news for all girls unless they wanted to get pregnant fast and then again until he’d move on. I used to to talk to him on the cord phone in mom and dad’s bedroom and he’d tell me about all kinds of things I couldn’t imagine, gangs, people getting curb stomped, drama at 1st Avenue, which had all-ages dance parties on Sundays in downtown Minneapolis in the 90’s. Curtis was the first boy who shoved his whole tongue down my throat when I “kissed” him and grabbed both sides of my booty, while standing up wearing cut off shorts in the alley down the block from my house, in summer, I probably sneaked away. Curtis was my best friend’s cousin, that’s how we met. She lived on 38th and 11th. Me on 10th. Curtis lived in a home for delinquent boys on Chicago ave past the cemetery and McCray Park, where we ate free lunch in the summer times. I snuck out and met up with Curtis in the graveyard one afternoon (he sneaked out from the home for bad boys). As we walked in the graveyard, I thought both that it was PERFECT to do a gothic thing as a date, and also unsure about my next move. There was this idea that Curtis was going to buy me a Raiders Starter jacket (like I said, this was the 90’s). I know I wanted that jacket but also wasn’t sure if I’d really get it. Curtis climbed the side of our household wall to suprise me at the bedroom window. This isn’t going where you think, though. He just jumped back off, laughing. I really liked Curtis voice on the phone, but physically he was scary like a monster. He was light skinned with gap teeth (like me) and huge blue eyes (like me) and blond, black-people’s hair (mixed). The blue eyes were clearly malevolent and insane. Which he was. But also nicey nice, outgoing, confident. I didn’t choose Curtis to take me over the virgin bridge, but another hack, similarly young, mixed, but a much more smirky, amused face with normal and warm brown eyes. Blue eyes always scared me. I have blue eyes, which look normal on me. But Curtis never had a chance to pass for normal with those pale psychotic eyes. I saw once again in like 1999, as adults, he was genial and friendly. He actually didn’t turn out scary at all. But was a menacing 14 year old he was! And now I dream that he’s the plug for my drug hookup. And then last night I dreamed his old face appeared before me, like a 75 year old face, not 50 or so, his actual age, like an old man face (repeating myself). And it was hard to find him in it, actually looked nothing like him, but it was. And then I dreamed I kissed a black man (I probably kissed hundreds of boys in the 90’s), and it was vivid. When lips are softer, larger, and warmer than your own. And you kind of hate yourself for being inadequate.

At some point before we were born, we may have agreed with the powers that be to live in this time period, with the pros and cons being arguably complex, but most of all agreeing to bear and then act on the knowledge that climate science experts were right from at least 50 years ago to today, and that extinction is the most likely future (ashes), as a FACT. Seeing leaders in 2026 barrel ahead toward the worst, most depressing possible ending with the most possible suffering, nothing at all to hope for. And then as a white person making a choice to know about the history of slavery worldwide (its possible for them to avoid and “not-know” it), and see the threads that make it into the current international fabric of war, fossil fuel with its rape-filled, relentless death, poverty through the microscope, environmental catastrophe, not to mention prisons growing as fat as caterpillars, including throughout starvation, to know that we’re e not on a flotilla with the sacrifice, and cry for the dying history in tents and see the ashes of libraries, museums, temples, cathedrals, monuments, villages, cavernous appetite for erasure by the robot class, that will be 2020, the median point in your years, with the ultimate agreement (so said the fortune teller lady): we agreed to bear it and very likely to also act on it (it looked easier from far away).

When I started studying special education, I realized, everyone is special. i also realized how special I am, and how there will be no accommodations for the handicap of Humanity. When I learned about neurodivergence, I realized, or I already knew that everyone is neurodivergent. People are in different states or levels of sleeping or awake.

Whether I spend 3 and a half or 7 and a half hours with Will, it feels timeless. It feels long, but also tolerable. This job fits with my broken down state of depression. I don’t have to plan, organize, promote, or try to sell anything.
I don’t have to pretend I’m professional, bourgeoisie, cultured, or motivated. The main crisis in teaching for me arose by realizing that like the students in my class, I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to set fake goals for them, and monitor their goal progress. I don’t want to plan lessons. I don’t have anything fun or cute in mind. I don’t have any school spirit. I don’t care about holidays. I don’t even care about technical birthdays. Every day is the same to me.

Any day can be Christmas. Christmas isn’t real. Any day can be Halloween or Easter, just pick the right kind of candy. I’ll buy candy for kids. I’ll buy them shit, but I won’t be on the board of PBIS or plan or attend special events.

Every day is the same to me, and I want it that way, partially to match the kids, the people with Autism, for whom nearly every minute is the same, or could be, or should be, and age ain’t nothin’ but a number, like Aaliyah sang.

For the first hour or two I spent with Will today, we watched kids songs with “movement.” I forced myself to sing softly, do the motions, and get in the “fun kid mode” with him. I started thinking, Is this what everything’s come to? Me dancing to Elmo? But I know that on every basic level, I need to breathe deeper and move my body. So this makes me do that. So I told myself, tomorrow isn’t real. No one knows if civilization will last even 10 more minutes. Just be present, breathe, move your body, use your intuitive-communication with Will. Make today real for him, or with him, because tomorrow is a black hole or a bright neon light to him and always will be.

So I sang as many nursery rhymes as I could. But negative thoughts pestered. I remembered my repeater dreams where friends from high school point out that I can’t sing beautifully anymore. And I thought, I bet even Will’s parent noticed that I sound like a smoker. I keep coughing. They’ll pretend to believe me if I say it’s a cold or allergies, but they’re very smart people.

I helped Will eat (I fed him, fork to mouth, or fingers to mouth). He floated in and out of scripted worlds. But later he created novel sentences (nonsensical on the surface) which means they weren’t from any tv show or song. He talked about CHERRY TREES. It turned into a Berenstain Bears script, but at first, it was novel.

I think it had to do with his happiness that someone’s finally washing his parts. I’m serious. He’s never used his hands to wash anything other than the left hand washes the right one, with a mechanical squishing sound, as he scripts into the mirror. My flatmate also makes that horrible sound while washing her hands. Hers is a little different, it’s fast and slimy.

Nobody has ever washed Will’s parts, which means, they’ve never been washed other than with the swishing of bath water. For a few reasons, his presentation has no sexuality, but puberty inflated his size and covered him with hair. I cleaned out his belly button, full of lint.

I use the soapy washcloth to get in the folds of things at the mid-range. And I can tell Will anticipates it with positive nervousness, and says like “woah!” and then starts jumping happily (once he’s out of the bath). I scrub him down with the towel (also no one’s done that for him). They usually just dress him while he’s still half wet. I have enough sensory issues that I’m almost incapable of doing that to him. It seems cruel. And I’m paranoid about all kinds of mold and the smells that result.

So I scrub him down with the big towel (that kind of stinks… I’m not in charge of the laundry but would like to be), especially his big, hairy legs. But I also scrub his hairy chest and belly and the patch of hair over his area, which is still pretty new to his body.

Then he likes to walk to his room naked and jump in place or in the mirror, scripting from movies and tv shows and saying, “Will. AT THE MIRROR!” And smiling and saying, “That’s a great one” or “1, 2, 3, Say cheeeeese.” These are favorite scripts. I’ve probably done 1, 2, 3, Cheese over a hundred times (at least) with him.

The skill I have really boils down to mimicry. I can translate other’s mimicry and perform it. When I thought I was a great, child singer, no one said to me: You’re just a good mimic. Which is good because that would have been rude. It takes decades to put sorrow into your voice, and to know what you do and don’t believe.

One time at an economics summer camp that I attended in the 11th grade of high school at a local MN college, for some reason (probably my bragging) I was singing His Eye is On The Sparrow for a group of peers in our “cabin,” and while I tended painstakingly to technique, at the end of the plain looking girls asked me, “And do you believe that?” Or, “Do you believe that?” (his eye is on the sparrow)?

I forgot my answer but she definitely called me out. I would throw all that paternal individualistic religion hoo-ha in the compost bin. There’s no individual, invisible, male spirit with his “eye on me.” The only thing with its eye on me is my superior-self, the dream-self that negotates meaning between the sleeping, dead, past, the present (hopes and fears, plus sensory and mental blossoming), and even knows the future based on trajectory, memory of past lives, and intuition. The manager of the house, my body, my behavior, the one who secretly loves me unconditionally.

Jobs I don’t mind:

This is factual record, not poem:

Washing hair, sweeping, dusting, washing humans, trimming skin and nails, narration of events, shrinking concepts to the smallest word container, and vice versa. Painting after thoroughly cleaning the walls. Reading aloud to people. Singing or dancing with people. Sitting in silence with my eyeballs and ears open watching someone to make sure they don’t have a seizure or try to kill theirselves or anything, summarizing speeches, making people laugh at horrific jokes, removing dead skin, cutting hair and trimming facial hair, plucking stray hairs, feeding people based on the other person’s rhythmic attention (not shoving food down their throats). That’s it.

ALL PARTIES

I was attracted to Bill, yet scared of those potentially soft-bougie politics. Snotty behavior, which reminds me to provide soft tissues for a soft thanks. Mostly, I want to talk or listen, to practice it not hurting and/or make sure it still doesn’t hurt. They tried to laugh, but it got not funny, death as fear. People said nasty things. People remembered things differently. Some people sold themselves. Some simply reported on this. But shit well nothing worked out, really for anyone. All parties were happening on the wrong tracks.