Dear J,

 Has it already been so many weeks since you’ve gone? Near the beginning it felt that every empty bar stool or open space at the worn out wobbly picnic tables at Ten Bells was pining for you. We were pining for you too. Many a pint was and has been hoisted in your honor, sir. I can only hope you were able to get a minor buzz off the breath that exalted your name.

 

You asked in your message how things were. As far as a generalized response on an un-smart phone can go, I’d have to stick with OK. To tell you total and absolute truth it feels like the world has been turned on to automatic. It’s all work, food, drink, weekends spent in a blur of activities and mayhem only to revolve back to work. Let me tell you, after this last celebration of my trip around the sun, I am finally beginning to feel my age. Its pure vanity in some respect as I have noticed more signature lines around my eyes, an underlying impression of lack of sleep or proper nutrients out side a bottle of beer, are starting to press on my face like worn out memories. This along with the general decline in my energy level and total disenchantment with anything remotely youthful in pop culture and so on. Yes, I’m becoming that woman, and hey, if that ball hits my yard its mine now! Calling all feral cats! 4pm dinners are soon to follow.. oh my old heart!

 

All kidding aside, how the hell are you? Nice haircut. It reminds me of when we first met. The first impression of you as a clean cut kid has come full circle. It looks as if you have stepped into a ready made family. Good show. No, I’m not being unenthusiastic about this at all. I just seem confused, but what do I know? It isn’t even really my business. As long as you are still writing and writing in earnest I can only see this as a positive direction. Three squares and a person to love you is always a good thing, but of course this is only my impression. Please do tell me what is going on, and also send copies of your newest work. I have missed your presence here. I am quite sure that my latest writers block coincided with your departure.

 

I miss you. X+ misses you. We’ve had some parties on the porch and at the usual haunts and the conversation always turns to you. Did you know how much we all love you? Well, I keep thinking about the park and our hangover talks and just the feeling of knowing you were somewhere in the building with a handle in your bag. Speaking of, Mad Swirl has been tremendous with its new private room in the back of the bar. It’s small and intimate and they have a dedicated bar back there. You can smoke whatever you want and there are no loud and obnoxious barstool drunks to perform over. The guys are getting ready for the grand trip across theAtlantic. I managed to scrape up some dough for the cause and have a brand new Mad Swirl T shirt to show for it. Des is settled in your old space and it is looking remarkable considering the state it was in. No offense but that was rough! I suspect your lovely lady of late must be keeping your bachelorhood habits at bay. Please tell me more about her, she looks lovely. Please tell me you have been participating in the vibrant poetry scene as well. How are all the regulars and have you heard anything that has turned you on? Is there more than one regular reading going on weekly? Is there any money to be made and do you know if they need any features for the fall? Is there anyone who I should get as a feature here? Oh, Poets on X+ is going well, and I am hoping to continue after the summer sponsorship from WS. Even if I have to hold it at the Casa De Salas the reading must go on. That being said, when do you think you might make it back up here? I’d love to have a welcome back feature for you when that happens. Regardless if you are coming back to stay is not an issue, because I am not sure if that is even in your future plans, but I would love to see you before the end of the year with poetry in hand. 

 

How is work and home life? Do you see any of your old friends? What kind of hours do you work? Are you maintaining a regular schedule for writing or are you doing it on the fly? Have you considered keeping a blog? It’s really been helping me stay consistent and I am writing more frequently because of it. I don’t think there is a large readership so it is still kind of just for me. I have been studying Strunk and White’s and trying to get more serious about my skills. My job has been taking up a lot of my time and I don’t think I will be pursuing school as I thought I might be this coming spring. I have also taken on a few more books that I am reading during my commute. I just finished ‘Go’ by Holmes, which was a predecessor to Kerouac’s On the Road. If you should run into a copy I highly suggest it. It’s really illuminating on the character that Kerouac played in the early formation of the beat scene and because it is not personally written by him, it gives more explanation on what kind of person he was. I know it isn’t purely autobiographical but it is really entertaining. I swear, the bulk of the book is about their parties, sleeping partners and drug use! We could be writing a great American novel based on just that, don’t you think? Well I guess some things never change, and poets have always known how to party! Now I have just started the collected letters of Neal Cassidy, and if you can I suggest getting your hands on this one immediately! Whenever I read collected letters I run to my desk and start corresponding right away. So here is your letter. I couldn’t think of any one person that I’d rather spend my time with this morning, avoiding work. I do miss you dreadfully. I can’t wait to get a great big bear hug from you soon. My love to your loves, and I hope this letter has found you in the best of health and spirits. Write back super fast, as I await your response.

 

Love,

Opalina

 

P.S. I almost forgot! I just got interviewed for an upcoming article in the OC Advocate. I dropped your name a few times. Let’s see what happens with this. I can only hope some paying gigs or more exposure for X+ to follow. I will send you the issue when it comes out.

 

P.S.S. I’m still in contact with the kid. He seems to be doing well, and his writing is coming along superbly. I am trying not to input too much collaboration with him and he is still finding his own voice. He say’s he’s on the wagon. One can only hope. <3 Ops

There is nothing to do but write.

Sometime I avoid writing like the plague. I don't know if this is human nature, but I kid myself into thinking I'd rather sit and stare at the blank page than fill it with something that may bring me some ease or even joy. Well, writing is hard. I don't think you should believe anyone who says it isn't. If it pours out of you like some kind of miracle, then enjoy it. I don't think anyone can expect that and not be disappointed. It does not happen like that for me, and I have tried to learn to not be too hard on myself.

Is it a talent to be a writer, or is it sweat and toil? Is it a bit of both? When I can manipulate the quiet moments in my mind that allow me to slow down and write, I can be free. I see that my greatest obstacle is my own self. I sit at my desk and look out into the world and am hit in a million different directions of ideas, memories, fears, desires and wild living textures. How can you look around you and not be inspired by this amazing world? I cannot allow myself to give in to the noisy brain and muffle out the solitude and silence that my writing mind craves so much. Solitude is hard for me. Silence is deafening. I like to drink and smoke and laugh and be surrounded by people. Its the softness in humanity that keeps me from hitting the bottom. Why am I so afraid of the bottom when I know that is where the richness lies? Why do I keep myself from tasting the satisfying experiences that make me who I am? Embarrassment, harshness, self loathing, and other useless traits of being afraid in your own skin. Can I write these feelings away as easily as I can drink them away? I don't know.

I had a friend.
This is a familiar beginning to many stories I have to tell.

I had a friend. In some way it started good and ended terribly wrong. I was a very sensitive child (surprise) and I can remember how easily I was hurt when a friend would stop being a friend to me. At that age I suppose it is easy to move from one person to the next and we begin to learn the social structures that we are to live and work in for the rest of our miserable lives. We get hard, we get mean, or we get hurt. We manifest that pain into harshness, cruelty or totally withdraw. If you are blessed you fall somewhere in between.

I had a friend. She was very nice to me.

When I was in the fifth grade something changed in me. I spent half the year in a coma which had me following the social grooves without skipping a beat. I had a crew of mean girls that accepted me, zits, fat and all into their squad. I was making good grades and I was dressing in the top of 1980s fashion. I had what seemed to be the perfect line to get me where I should be. The popular kids liked me and forgotten all about the orthopedic shoes in 3rd grade and the crying fits of 4th grade. I was in.

I had a friend, she was very nice to me and one day I broke her heart.

Stella had big green eyes and dishwater blond hair in lazy curls that hit her shoulder. She was short and a little stout but lovable in her knitted sweaters and baggy corduroy pants. She wore black rimmed glasses and she was fantastically smart. We talked about all sorts of things and she had a bookish mom and dad. I went to her house one day and reveled in her house filled with maps, bookshelves and exotic decorations from other countries. It was a far cry from my wood panelling living room with world book encyclopedias from 1968. I adored her. I wanted to be her.

When the mean girls started to bring me in I found out fast that I couldn't be friends with Stella. She was a nerd. She never wore blue jeans or make up and she sat in the front of class and always raised her hand. The Kingpin Meany knew we had been friends and would do mean things to Stella to see what I would do. I would watch helplessly with a cold exterior my friend being bullied and terrorized. She never made eye contact with me when they were tripping her, stealing things from her desk or calling her names. One day the meanies and I were joking around and I said I thought that Stella had started stuffing her bra.They had a good cackle over that and Kingpin told me that I should go and ask her the next time the teacher left the classroom. I felt sick to my stomach because I knew I was going to have to do it. It wasn't a suggestion, it was an order.

This is very hard for me to write. I had a friend, she was very nice to me, she was smart and adorable and everything I wanted to be. Her parents had a nice big house with a swimming pool and her mother baked hand made cupcakes with pennies baked into the bottom of the paper muffin cups for good luck. She wore hand knitted sweaters and once gave me a knitted beret that she worked on all summer for Christmas. She laughed like an elfin queen and she had a garden of flowers in her yard with butterflies. She gave me flashlight when I spent the night and was scared of the dark. She was a good friend, and she was very nice to me.

In front of the class, my fatness in baby blue slacks and sweater vest over button down striped shirt.
Finger pointed down on her head
Under horn rimmed eyes
quivering lips
I broke my friends heart
to the laughter of sloppy sweating boys
and scared little girls
tittering giggles
Stella Harper
with mouth open in a dry 'O'
turning pink as
a salmon
eyes slick and watery
as the fish's blank dead stare

Something changed in me that day.
I woke up.

I finished that year in a general decline of grades, social standing and self esteem. I stopped hanging out with the meanies and they retaliated in full force. I didn't care anymore. I stopped wearing my preppy clothes. I got beat up a few times. I started bringing my tape recorder to school and would hang out on the top of the monkey bars listening to top 40 Casey Kasem recorded on memorex tapes. Sometimes someone would make their way up to the top and listen with me. Most of the time, I was alone. Stella's family moved that summer and I never saw her again.

I have never forgotten how easy it is to be mean. I can be mean. I can be good. The meaner I get, the more closed off things become. The noisier my brain gets and the more I can't stop the chatter and remember these things. We are the walking scars of our past. We wear makeup and expensive clothes and cut our hair and curl our eyelashes over the scars that rest inside. Can you write yourself out of a scar? Can you make it a part of your landscape without tripping you up over and over again? I don't know what this post is about, but I feel better for writing it. Maybe that is the answer. There is nothing to do but write.

all i have to do is...

Today was bad. Bad, bad, lunatic bad. The impending full moon has made everyone I have come in contact with fucking crazy. Tell me you didn’t have a bad day and I will call you a liar. Our bodies are more than half water and the moon pulls at us like some crazy tidal wave of emotion. I’m telling you, that honest everyday good natured people have their claws out tonight. So BEWARE.

I’ve laughed it off. I ate salad when I wanted a cheeseburger and I’ve held my tongue all day. At one point we were driving all around town looking for a place to eat and everyone was closed by 7:30pm. I know it’s a weekday but damn. No noodles, no barbeque or any of the fine eats that only a payday Thursday can bring, just a salad and, you can’t win friends with salad.

A (dare I say) protégé of mine sent me his new work and it was such a fine piece I had to smile. It’s a good thing to get away from the city, even if it is to another city. It’s a good thing to suffer for a while but have a warm sack and a good meal to look forward to instead of beating the streets looking for a cig butt or a paper sack to kill the boredom. Everyone should be homeless for a while. I lived in a car for a month, myself. Sadly the years of a constant roof over my head has made me soft and forgetful. I apologized for being such an ass to the kid. That’s what he is, a kid, and the streets made him stressed beyond belief and I forgot what it was like taking a bath in a gas station sink. I forgot, and well how in the hell could I?

My thoughts are wandering tonight. I don’t promise anything out of this hot mess. I promised myself I would write every day, and I already broke that promise. I was thinking about you, sweet blog. I promise that. Sometimes the only way you can fully make the most out of the daily mundane is to dream about who or what you love. Today when my husband picked me up from work, we drove in our broken down car on the highway overpass reaching up to the soft clouds in the blue blue beautiful sky with smog and exhaust, but it was beautiful all the same. He said he had been thinking about me and how beautiful I was the night before when we danced together to the conjunto music. It was a great night. We danced and danced and so you think about these things when the car won’t start or the rain comes down on you and you forgot your umbrella, or the insides of your sandwich fall out to the ground or you break your last cigarette in your purse. (all of these things happening to me today) You even close your eyes after some particularly rude person tries to undermine or blame you for something wrong you didn’t do, and remember the swaying rhythm of his body next to yours, the faint scent of beer on his mustache as he kisses you dizzy and you laugh and laugh.

Some days you love and love and love until your heart bursts and all you can do is smile, even when the world and all its really minute problems are trying to pull you away from your daydreams. I say, never give up. All you have are dreams to fill your pillows with and love to keep you dreaming.

Was a wave

The back of her head

Acorn cap tilted to lazy sun and cloudy sky

Soldier steps in scuffed shoes, pocket hands in woolen caverns shorn hand sewn threads of cat cradles in fingertips

Clutching

Stones scattered of

Archaic stories of black mud and eons of travels spread like

A million stories in her head

Were she was a wave

In the invisible but tactile breeze

A nuance to send a pinwheel

Or love letter floating

To her future soul mate

Or self

But now 

She marches into the olive grey

Building

That smells like succotash

Elmer's glue and crushing non acceptance. 

There are dried prunes that have been painted over on the ceiling of the din of the cafeteria

Urine stains in the special ed room

And a teacher that drags her to the front of class by the ear and smells 

Like her daddy when he's 'tired' 

A boy who kisses her on the lips by the swing set is covered

In dried yellow mustard from lunchtime corn dog

His blonde Snow White mess of un combed hair delights her

Differently than her own jet black and stiff to the chin.

instinctively mysteriously 

And wild she pulls the edge of her red ice skating skirt up and over dimpled thighs

Showing her white cotton with butterflies while hiding her shy face behind the length of the fabric, in snarled embarrassed fingers ducking down to cover her smile completely.

They are married now, 

he shrugs indifferently, 

she's chilled by mid day clouds

And lowers her skirt after forgetting

And he runs 

Back to the sand dunes

To make work of hot wheels and idle 3rd grade gossip

King of the teeter totter

Leaves the queen

of the merry go round

To swing alone

pushing herself higher and higher

Were she was a wave 

on the hand of her mother dropping her on the corner

Pink apron and worn hushpuppy shoes

She's pushing higher now

legs like telephone poles digging feet deep in the moist gravel as they pass the ground beneath her pendulum escape,

Mamas face,

The squeaking chains 

Moan and shriek 

Like guardian angels

Taking her away on kite paper wings

Toes touching lazy sun 

she sings

Fate, fat shaming and fearless friends.

The year is halfway over. It is not unlike the adage of the half empty glass, is it? I wouldn't call myself an outright pessimist. At least not on the surface. I've always been the punchy kid in the background with optimistic fists and determined attitude. I'm always the one to lift the situation up and turn that frown upside down. Plucky. The good gal. The one everyone can count on. But deep inside I've pulled the blankets up to my chin and have settled in for that long sleep. I'm not really insincere at all. I believe in you! YOU. But I'm damn glad I don't have to depend on me. Cause anything good and just can't and won't happen to me. Fat girl syndrome maybe. I'd say always the bridesmaid but I've always been too fat to fit the dress.

I love myself. I hate myself. I'm too cold. I'm too bold. And it shows

Did you know there are some people that HATE  fat people? I mean they hate them for no other reason than that they take up more space than them. Maybe that's it! Maybe they are so selfish they can't even stand to have to share a little room with someone.. How ridiculous. I'm sure it's not too taxing to share some room with 2 other 'normal' sized people. Huh. I used to hate skinny people until I realized that me hating them was like them hating me. There have been lots of advances against racism, bullying and equal rights for everyone but Fat people. I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but until you've lived as a fat, non white woman you won't understand the sting of everyday life.  It can be exhausting. You learn to work with blinders on, to not see the disapproving glances or your own reflection in the glass of the building doors. I think of myself in this crazy professional job and think I'm pretty much doomed. I'm not plastic and easy on the eyes. I work in a capacity that does not utilize my strengths and won't be up for any real promotion like I thought I would be. I'm older than the people I work with and way fatter.but this is important:  I want to tell you when I'm not at work I feel sexy and happy and comfortable. I really do. And it's because of my friends. 

I talked about the poets I used to know as trust fund babies etc. well that's not the case for the poets I have experienced in the past 10 years. I have the honor to work with and along side of the most talented, creative people in this entire population of DFW. They really work at what they do and they make life flourish around them. I'm a solid fan girl of them all. I have been around their magic night after night and never tire of their words. It's not unlike the camaraderie of the Beats I imagine. I like to think we've got a good thing going and to top it all of they are amazing people.  My goal for 2014 has been to continue to connect with the people I admire most on a personal level outside of the performances. I want to know what makes them tick, thus this is my love letter to them. I want to write about my experiences on and off stage. I want to tell them who I am and what being around them has made me become.  We are all the sum of the parts of our life. I could never have felt accepted and loved without their support. I'm still trying to find my ways. Sometimes this comes across as cold and withdrawn, other times loud and helplessly obnoxious. But it's funny that every time if come back down from that ugly high I have a pleasant landing spot amongst friends. The glass all of the sudden seems half full to me. The year is still open with possibilities, and fat is not a four letter word. 

The problem with blogs.

Is that I get very excited with something new and wear it out within a few weeks or months (if I'm lucky). The first blog I had was very severe and dark and misanthropic and frankly boring. I somehow managed to have a following for about 3 years. I think my followers were just trying to see how far I could go with out ending up on a clock tower or a very low bridge. ( i hate heights) That alas, never happened, and I wonder if anyone every thought if I just did myself in or faded away. I guess I did both because I melted into the real world.

There are two levels of existence for me. I live in a highly textured fantasy world that I have been building since I was able to read. I would knock down the hallways of my childhood home rehearsing the lines of dialog I would try out on my mother or father. It was real mental anguish to just open my mouth to be heard. It's strange to think that my reality is that childhood that follows me everywhere. It's still a struggle to speak..unless i'm on stage.

My vivid imagination creates a background in which I can be free. Well, that and alcohol.. lots and lots of alcohol.

I also have a very short attention span for things that make my brain have to work.

What were we talking about?

Well, here it is. I have been swimming around with this idea in my head that I was going to come home and lay into this new blog and give it my millionth go. I am the worst about keeping up with my writing. I go in and out of creative bursts along with my nagging bipolar emotional roller coaster days. It can be a real strain on keeping things normal. I am not normal by any sense of the word, but who really is. I mean, I wouldn't want to be friends with anyone who is normal. Good thing I don't have that problem. My friends are wacka doo.

No indention in my paragraphs, and probably no spell check. I don't have time for these things. I've got a teenager on the brink of graduation and I never see my husband anymore. It's not that I don't want to see him, be we have both been sucked into the never ending void of blue collar drudgery. Long hours and not enough sleep (or sex) keep us running around in this grey circles. Every once and a while we can light up a smoke ( you decide) and we can have a nice conversation before one of us inevitably falls violently into a narcoleptic fit of sleep. We've been together for 18 years, my old  man and I. We've been thru all the things they tell you about, all the good and the bad and the yadda yadda yadda, but I like to think we've achieved it with a real sense of style. I don't know many more couples that have been together as long as we have. I think it has a lot to do with stubbornness. We both set our goals high and will not give up until we are drinking real champagne and farting thru silk underwear. Hey, whatever works.

We met doing performance poetry, which is different then slam, which is what most people think I do who have never even seen me perform. I ask you, do you want to see a 41 old fat woman slamming in a bar? That would be so Rosanne Barr/ 1980s of me, and although I love Rosanne ( she is a fucking genius if you ask me.. and please do some day) that's not my bag. I don't really know what my bag is these days. I'm just trying to get dinner on the table on time. I'm just trying to figure out where we go when we aren't here anymore and all that existential crap. I say that in the most zen way possible, and I don't capitalize zen.

I've been consistently writing and performing poetry for almost 20 years now. Most of my contemporaries have dropped out of the scenes, gotten law degrees or continued to blissfully live on trust funds that originally brought them out to the coffee houses in the late 90s to get their boho kicks. Some of them have died and are getting their kicks somewhere else. Some of them are still writing and even have some kind of job that allows them to stay creative and in the game so to speak. A few are even published outside of Kinko's or their own computer printer. I've not been that lucky so far, but i don't blame anyone but myself and the male dominated culture that surrounds me creatively (kidding...?) But really, there is a real madness to my life. I'm telling you I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.