What if I moved these words somewhere else?
How would you feel about that?
Facebook has certainly helped me announce each blog entry,
but it often feels like a strange place to promote my recent material.
So, I am moving this lengthy monologue to patreon.com,
on a page called ginna's vino & the bean (after my original blog)
which will also give my readers the chance to support me
as I document my experience in the coming months,
develop the material in L&BIQ into a single written work,
share other projects, and generally persevere.
i don’t defend against the claim
that i’m emotional.
i am
and will always be
a gross little sac of fluids
roaming earth
and trying not to leak
too publicly
but,
-- and i hope i don’t sound defensive here--
when i’m referred to as emotional,
i wonder
what’s the alternative?
who isn’t?
who doesn’t have emotions?
do you suppose
the claim is not that I have emotions,
the claim is actually
that I express them?
an expression
which, i admit,
does have an attractive alternative:
no red eyes
no snot
no leaking.
some might say that I’m “in touch”
with my emotions
while others would say “touched.”
some might say “she feels mad”
while others might say “she’s a madwoman”
because yelling in the lunchroom
and sobbing at an airport
are not for everyone
which, I allow
is why i sometimes
stuff
to be on the receiving end of my emotions
must be exhausting
and so
if i can’t stuff
i take my less-enjoyable emotions
-- sister-emotions, Anger and Sadness
two pissed off skinned-kneed twins--
for a walk (Anger)
or a drive (Sadness)
so i don’t,
you know,
scare any nearby children
-- -- --
when we were kids
my older sister had this trick:
she said if you have a big hard cry
and your face is red and splotchy,
the trick to wiping the evidence away
is to swipe your index fingers across your tongue
and then swipe you own spit under your eyes.
it probably didn't work,
but she was my big sister
so i did whatever she said.
mostly.
i distinctly remember applying this method
riding home after auditions
when i didn't make the dance company,
back in the eighties
in the back-seat of
the burgundy colored station wagon,
and she
--who had made the dance company--
taught me to wipe a little spit under my eyes.
which i did.
there were lots of rejections for me.
my big sister somehow never got rejected.
just never
when I did not make the cheerleading squad freshman year,
she was a junior and she, of course, did make the cut.
then she searched our small Catholic high school high and low
until she found me in a far bathroom stall
a mess of snot and tears.
she laughed a little
which i couldn't understand at the time, but i understand now
because,
as she said,
“it's not that big a deal.”
uh...
easy for you to say, sis.
said late-nineteen-eighties-me
and then she instructed me to wipe my own spit under my eyes
and i did
and we exited the bathroom
only to have me repeat the pattern:
tears, spit, tears, spit
on the way home
--now in a wood-paneled mini van--
and
over and over
over the course
of the rest of that day.
she made the cheerleading squad
(I gave up on the third try)
she made the dance company
(I made it, but had to try out three times)
she made the Nutcracker
(I had to try out three times)
and so it went...
my acting apprenticeship
(three auditions)
my first Shakespeare company
(three auditions)
for years, when i got rejected,
which I do now for a living
i would think,
"one down, two to go..."
and i'd lick my index fingers
and swipe the soft and puffy space
right below
my eyes
-- -- --
i didn't cry a lot
in the first 99 days of lockdown
or maybe i ought to say
"i don't recall crying a lot
in the first 99 days,"
but i do now
in my alternative
shelter-in-place
my hometown
my ohio.
in ohio
in 2020
i take frequent drives
in my car
my car!
yay car!
yay, suburban culture that embraces the automobile over public transportation!
this little spaceship of solitude
where i have the added benefit of crying in private.
where the low-rolling wave is always floating there
right behind my dam face
my damn face
and i never know
when i drive
how the columbus DJs will factor in.
i have a special relationship with columbus DJs --
a special relationship
with a collective of individuals
that spans over three decades
of which none of them are aware
it is a fabulous reality
driving west on I-70
and hearing Whitesnake
No, I don't know where I'm goin'
But I sure know where I've been...
or anything that was
super popular between ‘87 and ‘94.
on I-70,
with the right music,
time
.
.
is not a thing.
life loops.
i’m forever sixteen,
twenty, thirty, ninety…
Hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday...
i’m living in an overlay
over younger days.
the I-70 west of today
casting a shady filter
on the I-70 of nineteen-ninety-something
we’re both there,
sixteen and forty-six,
singing,
wailing,
(possibly speeding.)
I-70 west
where i am no stranger
to that low rolling wave
(i can’t imagine it feels like this for everyone.
does it?
i look forward to your feedback.
this is what it feels like to me:)
a low rolling wave
that rises
right behind my lips
where I am still safe from a storm,
but then higher, to the space between lip and nostril
where it swells
where I am less safe.
sadness is pressing from the backside of my face
this is mild danger,
these are potential tears
but not a real threat
until the pressure mounts behind my nose
--the nose knows no strategy
the nose is the weakest defense--
if the swell gets that far
i might as well put on sunglasses
pull over if i am driving.
and if the nose somehow finds resistance
and doesn't give in,
the pressure switches tactics
switches direction
to ambush at the throat:
cue the choked and hiccuped speech
forget it;
don't bother trying to talk right now.
try some nose-breathing
and wait it out.
turn on the radio.
dear DJs, what will you do today?
80s rock?
windows down and howling
good old fashioned grunge?
to conjure college
90s ballad?
oh, people,
with a flashback ballad in the background,
i
cannot
stuff
-- -- --
when we were teens
and riding together in the car
Here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known...
my big sister taught me to punch to ceiling
of the Chevy Nova we shared
when we passed through yellow lights.
i committed to this action the way others commit
to the rosary
to this day,
i
never
not
punch
at a yellow light
never
my husband teases me
about this arm-reflex
and for a long time I played it off
taking the joke
and then one day
he mimicked me
laughing about this completely arbitrary safeguard
and i came back with a disproportionately
emotional response:
i never said it worked!
I was hit by two different cars
two different times
at the same intersection
in the early 90s
did i smack the ceiling of the car?
if i did
it did not prevent me from getting hit
so maybe it doesn’t work
or maybe
because I walked away unscathed
it does.
life loops.
i still hit the ceiling of the car
reflexively
religiously
simply because i have no good reason
to stop doing things that i did with my big sister
(he still teases me about
smacking the ceiling
at yellow lights
but i have chilled
so
okay
progress)
-- -- --
on today’s drive
in Ohio
in 2020
it is raining,
(oh, the poetry)
and then
-can you believe it?-
Bonnie Rait on the radio
I can’t make you love me…
DJs, you outdo yourselves.
rain splats in huge drops against the windshield
I can’t make your heart feel
Something it won’t...
i do not pull over
or swipe under my eyes
i got no one to see
i got no one to see me
-- -- --
there was this time
my little sister Kelly had play rehearsal
and my big sister Katie and I were supposed to drop her off.
Kelly was properly buckled in in the back seat
and only a little nervous that we were
only narrowly on time.
Katie insisted that we lock the car doors
and I insisted that we didn't;
she was keeping us safe by making sure no one could get in,
i was keeping us safe making sure that if necessary, we could get out.
there’s no way to know
if such precautions
actually
work;
neither approach guarantees safety.
the argument escalated
we ran further late
tears were shed
and Kelly skidded into rehearsal
with about twelve seconds to spare.
i do not remember if the car doors
were ever locked
or not
we laughed about it later,
but i still could not understand
what about my unlocked passenger car door
could drive my eighteen year-old sister to tears.
years later when she died in her crushed car,
i’d have bet large sums that her doors were locked
windows up
the ceiling dutifully punched.
-- -- --
i do not understand anything.
every lesson i learn
loops.
i relearn.
or unlearn.
i’m still a seeping sac of fluids
swiping spit
under my eyes.
my way
is not the right way
it is the absence of a right way:
stuff
drive
leak
i never said it worked
it’s just one way
a way
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