Tag: memoir

flower ninja evolution

original ninja

i drew this picture sitting at my kitchen table, while still in high school, apparently before i developed my aversion to pencils. there was a vase of dying flowers on the table. and i was a bit into creating whimsical characters (shocking, right?) so this happened.

then, in my late 30s, living in a cooperative, getting ready to go back to school to study art & writing, i did another version of her in ink & art marker, titling it “flower ninja.”

flower ninja yellow

i have her posted on a page…probably the ancient art by me page…where she was admired & then requested only for me to realize i am pretty sure i gave her to dusty who also admired her. god only knows where she is now.
hence the latest version where i went bigger & updated her per my own evolution as an artist.

i think high school me would be delighted that something she drew at the kitchen table would one day evolve into a work that someone would actually pay for.
of course, high school me would also be utterly pissed off to find out that she is not a world-famous author by now.
“and what’s up with the ex-husband collection–why all the jerks?” she might wonder–albeit somewhat relieved that we did manage to get laid….

hmmm. i think maybe it is for the best if we do not tell high school me very much of what we know of current me.
it’ll just be our little secret.

5

misha’s birth day

i know another reason why i’m feeling warm & fuzzy towards dusty right now. when we were married, i surmised that if we were ever trapped somewhere, dependent on working together to get to safety, we would die.

my observation was true of every time i needed him to be there for me.
except one…misha’s birth.

misha is my third child. my first two were c-sectioned because my body likes to take more than 42 weeks to perfect a baby–& doctors do not like to let a woman go much past 40.
so, twice, i let them cut the baby out of me because they said that it was for the best.
when i got pregnant with misha, i could not bear the thought of another c-section.
so i fired all the doctors.
problem was, none of the midwives in madison would support my birth because i had been deemed too risky.
i had never had a vaginal birth. i was 40 years old & prone to long pregnancies. these were my crimes.
misha is the one who suffered for  them.
i found an outlaw midwife who lived one state over & would travel to me when i went into labor.
second problem…i didn’t know what labor looked like because doctors had never let me get that far.
by the time i was certain i was in labor–& not wasting the midwife’s time–misha was on her way out.
she came out fast. relentlessly fast. none of the stages of labor i had read up on were observed by misha as she rocketed out of me.
there was one doula present and dusty.
we were in a kiddie tub on the fourth floor of a 30 person cooperative.
when misha was born, she was having trouble breathing. she probably just needed a few puffs of air to get her going, but none of us knew what to do. by the time the mom down the hall called her midwife to come help, misha was showing signs of seizure.
the paramedics took her away.
the NICU kept her for 12 days.
they told dusty & me, best case scenario: misha has coordination issues & learning disabilities.
worst case scenario: cerebral palsy or epilepsy
i cried so hard as they said that. my heart broke. it was all my fault. if i had just been unselfish enough to get the fucking surgery…to have another fucking c-section…misha would have been fine.
i waited for dusty to blame me. he blamed me for everything. it was always my fault.
this time he would be right.
except
he didn’t blame me. he told me it wasn’t my fault. he zoomed me around the hospital in my wheeled chair–being silly & sweet–as i was still too wrecked to walk much after the birth. he watched the boys while i kept vigil at her side. he came to be with her when i was forced to go home & sleep.
he took care of us.
he was there for me.
seven years later, just as i would remember & be traumatized by a bad event, the good things that happened feel as fresh as yesterday.
and i miss that version of dusty.

(in the NICU…& one year later when the neurologist said, “oh…nevermind.”)

5

don’t tell…the last page?

have i finally exorcised this fucking ghost?

i hope so. i am tired of holding a torch that just burns the fuck out of my fingers. i want to move on and stop wondering which thing that i did wrong was the thing that drove him away.

fuck it.

it needs editing & more substance, etc. but the rough draft is available entirely for reading over at medium.

let me know if you have any suggestions for work that needs to be done on it. i am still pretty close to the story–i was crying as i wrote this last page. but i think in writing it, i am working out a lot of the bullshit that i was holding onto and calling love.
yay.

the journal page is from 1995 when seymour & i lived in austin, tx with peacocks on our front lawn .

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more memoir

i wrote a little bit more on my memoir.
there is now a page eight and a page nine.
i wrote page nine (i had started but not finished page eight at the time) after waking up from a dream about him. the whole thing felt so delicious. you know those dreams.
and i looked in the mirror–and my hair (at least in my mind) was all like super sexy super model hair.
being one of those people who have few & far between “good hair days,” of course i took a picture.
my dream was so awesome, it gave me good hair.
that says something, right?

little me

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if you’re gone

he was my muse
my favorite thing to draw
the only face
i wanted to see
he was my burden
my obstruction
the thing i ran away from
every other day
he was my savior
the only one who ever believed in me
he was my daily reminder
that one day i would lose
everything
everything that ever mattered
i only wanted him
after i had thrown him away
i only let myself love him
after i had lost him.

i don’t know what year this journal entry was from…maybe 1994? 1995? the poem(ish) is from today because every song is reminding me of him…again.

2

just me & my memoir

i put up another page of my memoir in progress, don’t tell, over on tumblr.

like my art journal, this memoir is a way for me to exorcise some demons. right now it is not really formatted…i am just ranting about what is on my mind for the day. connecting it all together, in the way i think it fits.
so it’s a mess. which is true to my history.

in this self-portrait, i have long hair. fun fact, for my first child, before my second pregnancy, i was guilty of having the mom bob. i had long hair for my first pregnancy because i just always pictured it that way…plus dusty wanted the long hair on me.
but then i had a baby that wouldn’t stop pulling my hair.
i freak out when my hair is pulled.
so i got a mom bob.

then i got pregnant again. had an identity crisis about being a stay-at-home mom. started wearing doc martin boots and shaving off my hair.

but for a brief time in my life. i did have long hair.

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memoir in progress

i started working on a memoir over on tumblr (link is on the right hand side there… “meet me in the sunroom”)

i am writing it on tumblr because, frankly, i fit in better with the hopeless romantics over there…the open hearts & injured souls. i get more of a response over on tumblr than i do here. i mean, i totally appreciate y’all who do read me, but there just aren’t very many of you.

so i will keep this as my “website” for business (if that ever happens) purposes…but i might start doing my ranting over on tumblr.
i am trying to decide if i should delete my blog & just keep my artwork up? we’ll see.

anyhoo. in more efforts to exorcise demons, talk to ghosts, and figure myself out, i have started a memoir about seymour and myself. i used a stock photo of matt dillon to do this quick portrait. it doesn’t look like either one of them…but it does what i need it to do.

that’s all for now.
xxoo.

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