Little Weirds(37)

I’m tired of looking for a place in another.

“I know. That’s why I’m here. I found the place where you’re supposed to be. I figured it out. And it leads to all the other places you will ever want to go.”

Great. This man is still talking about his trip to South America. I think I can hold the listening face a little longer. Can you make it brief?

“Unlikely! (I’m from you.)”

Okay, go! I will stick my finger in the cake while this man talks, I guess.

“Why do you have to stay here pretending to listen to him?”

Good point. I just walked away from the man, saying that I have to use the bathroom, but of course I am going toward the bar. I’m going to drink wine and watch my grandmothers as they sit or dance.

“I’d really like your undivided attention. You’ve never given it to me before.”

I haven’t? Who exactly are you, in me? Are you my date to this wedding?

“I’m you, you know that, don’t be a smartass just because you are drunk. Maybe now is not the best time.”

Okay. But I’m glad you’re here. And will you not give up very easily, please?

“No. I will not give up. I’m here to remind you that there is much more than this one moment of being uncomfortable. We’ll talk tomorrow.”



I woke up the day after the wedding and I was in a state of contentment. I had breakfast in a clean dress, by myself in the hotel. I wasn’t thinking about alone and fine with that versus alone and devastated. I was working on new terms with my deep-self.

I scanned the newspaper and I said, “Okay, let’s get a new plan together. Do you have thoughts?”

“Yes. I’ve put together a little list of oaths and goals. If you live by them, you will clear a path to the place for you.”

Great, let it rip.

“Okay, first: You will wear all monochromatic outfits.”

Oh, damn. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

“You will have hardly any plastic in your house.”

Yes, I get it. Go on and I won’t interrupt but just know that I. Am. In.

“I know you are. More now: You will not turn on the TV very much. You will take the houseplants seriously, very seriously, maybe even researching how to fix things like mold or gnats in the soil.

“You will cook yourself meals and stop doing that thing where you wait until it is the time in the evening when you are both hungry and lonely and end up getting some huge soup delivered and then splatter yourself with it.

“You will really let the dog know that he is your companion and you are his.”

Yes. I know you. I just want to interrupt to say that I forgot you and I’m sorry but I do know you.

“It’s fine. Listen now: You will be cleaned by your own focus, by not being seduced into self-indulgence. You will become a peaceful authority who says no to that voice that wants to undermine and splash you with the gloop of self-doubt in an effort to stall your emergence.

“You will tell yourself that good, gentle civility and loving self-discipline are essential.

“You will not be exhausted anymore by the fight with the misogynist in your psyche. You will remember that the misogynist in your head is peddling propaganda that has been written in your own blood, forged in the fires of your own personal hell. You will admit that this has been a very big problem for you.”

Oh my goodness.

“You won’t let the idiots and the assholes get past the front gate of your heart. They can yell from the sidewalk. They can yell terrible things, because they are shut out and can’t stand to be let go, but you will not let them in now.”

Oh, damn. Yes.

“Repeat this in your head: There are no odds to beat anymore, just some real junk to dump. You dump your junk. After you dump it, you don’t sort it in your mind. You dump your junk and you walk away. You wear all one color on the outside, swirl with every color on the inside. You walk forward. You keep your head angled up so that you see over the fray. You protect yourself and all the little weirds that make up who you are.”

We sat there and had the coffee and eggs in the in-between world, the often scary but necessary space between old patterns and new behaviors. I didn’t know it then, but I’d made it to the holy land.



I can’t remember the plane ride home, but if I’d been cheering in the sky, that wouldn’t sound like gossip to me. It would sound like a reasonable report.



And now it is now, which is the future. I have been living with myself. I have been living by the new creed. I’m trying to say what changed. I was at the end of a long wander, of a long time of separation. I thought the separation was one from other people, but of course, the call was coming from inside the house, as they say.

I write this in a small room in my home, during the time of the morning when it is cool and blue. Everything is a variation of eucalyptus. Outside, the air is blue and the leaves are types of blues and the chill in the air is a good blue as well. I am running cool too.

There is no sun up but it is not night anymore. It is the in-between time that most people say is just for animals to wake up in, the space between day and night when ghosts have to go back to the flat realm where they file away like love letters, apologies, curses.

I am awake in the blue hour and I sit on a chair in a nightgown and just out of view, a ghost is whirled away and replaced with a lizard that creaks up an eyelid by my garage.