The Taste of Cherries and My Everlasting Love of Necessary Thieves

I coddle my hooligans when I'm not bullying them. I'm visibly charmed by their extra-curricular excesses and their anti-social tendencies. My love for chaos, conspiracy and the dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.
                                               - Anthony Bourdain

There are many things I have seen and tasted in life.  There are many things I am seeing and tasting in life, currently. But for some reason, tonight, I want to take you back to one of the most innocent moments I can remember in my life.  A moment that feels like it should have existed in the 1950s. A moment that feels so pure in comparison to anything else, arguably, that has transpired.

(pause)

When I was a child, I took a piece of candy from the Brach's candy display in my local supermarket.  It was the candy by the pound bulk bin display.  As my mother pushed the cart past the display, I took the piece that I wanted (a candy coated gumball, if I recall correctly), and placed it on the bottom of the cart. The part underneath the cart, for oversized or heavy things.  Somehow, I got the piece of candy to balance between two of the long, parallel, metal bars that made up the shopping cart.

When we got to the line and we emptied the cart onto the black rubber-ish conveyor belt to check out, the candy remained under the cart. We placed the bags back in the cart and walked out to the car.  I took the piece of candy from underneath the cart.

From this point, my memory gets fuzzy.

One of the strange things about having neglectful and/or abusive parents is that, as you grow up, there are moments of potential tenderness or normalcy that become sublime in their stature.  There are only a handful and so, like some type of strange worry doll, we run our minds over them again and again building a fiction of tenderness and lesson that may or may not have ever existed. Generally speaking, there will be two stories that exist in your mind.  One is an idealized version of what should have happened, usually made up of snippets of television shows and of stories from what you've witnessd or heard about other people's parents.  The other is what actually happened. Over time, these stories intertwine forming a strange rope that attempts to lasso any actual facts but, by adulthood, the fiction is as valuable as any type of truth.

What I recall is that I took the candy off the cart and held it in my small hands, twisting and turning it around in a guilty worry waiting for my mother to notice it.  I waited until she asked me where I had gotten the candy and then I readily confessed to her what I had done.  She turned the car around, marched me back into the store, and had me tell the manager what I had done. I felt ashamed, but I also felt loved. I was glad that my mother had fallen into my trap to love me.

Yet at the same time, I have this memory of the indescribable flavor of a singular, stolen, candy.  I recall the texture of the candy coating over the bubble gum.  As I type this, the memory becomes more vivid.  I am certain that it was a candy covered piece of bubble gum. I can feel the shatter of the candy against my teeth, and the incredible mix of sharp candy mixing with the malluable tough of the gum.  I recall the color of it: Red.  The taste of it: Cherry. My palms start to sweat, and my heart starts to race - not with fear, but with anticipation and want.

What is it that truly happened?  More than likely, a combination of the two. More than likely a child who stole a piece of candy and fantasized while chomping on the stolen gem, and for hours and years afterwards, of the intervention of the care and attention of an imaginary parent.

Be well, be loved,

(If you aren't? Just imagine it. Make it up in your head:  It will come.)


k. 

We Part to Meet Again

Good morning.  It is currently 7:36am on a Sunday and I am showered and wrapped in a towel typing this.  I am very excited for today and woke up with that feeling of a having a spring within one's heart, scrunching and expanding and just generally causing your eyes to widen and pulse to quicken. I have that nervous feeling in my stomach - the good kind. The kind that makes you think of that Bjork lyric:

Unthinkable surprises 
about to happen
but what they are...

In any case.  More later today. I have an appointment with said surprises at 8 am sharp.

Happy Mother's Day to all of those who have mothers, are mothers, have lost mothers, don't ever want to be mothers, have strained relationships with their mothers, are mothers who have strained relationships with their kids, and/or who are just badass mtherfuckers who love fully with clear eyes and open hearts.

(pause; time elapse)

3:27 pm - The same day.

I am slightly sunburned and happily so.

It was hard not being with a person I love for so many reasons today. A hug. A sprawl in the grass in the sun. Fifty questions about her favorite things about her mother. Fifty stories to hear about what made her laugh about her mother until she cried about her mother.

But what else can you do other than step out the garbage can you've been placed in and maintain that even broken glass reflects light?

Bling out that garbage can, albeit sadly, and let's go.

"1. Letting go, which is represented by the bones."

 A list:

Early morning bakery for warm pastries. Good coffee. Good conversations with a sailor.  A three mile walk and conversations about mothers and sisters. A bookstore. A lighthouse. A picnic. The genderqueer fabulousness that was walking along the shore with their parents. Conversations about the appropriate type of products to use on your car. The moment in an artist's jewelry studio when three dykes rolled up on their motorcycles and walked in and the hilarity when the gray-haired dyke looked at my handkerchief hanging out of my back pocket, then up and me, and we both just smirk-smiled in that coded and hilarious way that we do. Conversations about love, consistency, exercise, health, happiness.  We riffed for a while on the invisible but visible hostility we've seen strangers throw towards read-as-masculine-lady partners we've had and the invisible but visible way we intervene- sometimes with our masc partners not even being aware of it. Laughter that felt really easy and good. Gold nail polish in the sun. Me driving while my co-pilot navigated. Dust on our shoes. Flowers everywhere and sun. Lots of sun.




This is life.  You absolutely have to live it.





be loved; be well,


k.

(Bjork lyrics from  It's Not Up to You)

(images: Mine, although the art piece is by Morgan Brig Sculpture. The quote is from the piece, which has three components to it. One held bones, another roses and another poppy seed pods. All of the parts were on miniature copper ladders that all had wheels on them. The statement with them read, There are big lessons in my life that are ongoing. 1) Letting go, which is represented by the bones. 2) Learning to love better, which is represented by the roses. 3) Acknowledging that many of my assumptions are actually illusions, which is represented by the "opiate" poppy seed pods.  The wheels are for the coming and going.)

(title: A very good friend of mine and I have matching necklaces of scissors. We met when I was 19 and have been friends ever since. We have never lived in the same town or even the same state.  The scissors, which she bought for us, came with the quote that is the title of this entry.  It represents all of the people I love who are sprinkled throughout the world. It also represents people who are not able to be in my life at a given moment in time. The love continues; Our lives continue: We part to meet again.)