Cirque du Satire

 I'd always been told

I'd understand when I was older,

but now I am old

and I still don't understand this shit at all.

Marionettes dancing in time,

marching staccato, autopiloted lives.

Suffer the grime

to make it only as far as the sprawl.

All anyone wants is to be needed,

need to feel a fire, burn to be defeated.

Find words to be heeded.

 Obedience mollifies their discontent.

Tell me what it's fucking for.

Promise me no one should want something more

Dare us all to ignore

what this country is supposed to represent.

So, sadly, here's my last pretension:

still fucking the system and screaming dissention.

It's not flouting convention

 to make damn sure my life is always my own.

It's just, these days I'm fucking tired

of bigots and cheaters and assholes and liars

telling me what to desire.

I've sinned and binged. I've transgressed and I've atoned.

Just take me home.

Seed Poem #1: Cellars

A cellar is just that in the light of day:
A house of memories.
Mamaw's apricot jam.
Pink Floyd on vinyl.
The iridescence of nostalgia.
But a cellar by night is another thing:
A portrait of suffering to come.
Crimson hand prints streak a wall.
Shadowed voices call your name.
The duality of fear.

*Seed words are underlined, and were provided courtesy of S. Vines.

A real live show, with real live me.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013! Congratulations on surviving “the end of the world” and all that. It’s nice to see some of us made it. 

I myself have always disliked the holiday season. I suppose I let the traffic, materialism, and high concentration of family gatherings get to me. My friends and family generally regard me as a Scrooge, but this year has been different. My usual snide comments were replaced by Christmas carols, and I participated in the whole cookie-baking, stocking-stuffing she-bang. I guess I’ve been “in the holiday spirit”, as they say (though never about me). 

New Years, like the rest of the season, has left me feeling melancholic in the past. It felt like a reminder of my age and the things I’ve yet to accomplish. That, too, has changed. This year I feel hopeful; this year it feels like a beginning. 

It feels like a new year…like it’s supposed to. 

New Years was first celebrated when the Romans dedicated the first day of the year to Janus, the god of gates, doors, and beginnings. In fact, the word January comes from the name Janus. Janus is depicted with two faces: one is turned forward (toward the future) and the other is turned backward (toward the past). I am not a religious woman, but this symbolism serves me well in my current state of personal evolution. 

The best and worst aspects of my younger years have consumed me up until now. I longed for former glories and dwelled on the mistakes I’ve made. The thought of actually changing my life never occurred to me; I just dreamed (at length) of how things might’ve turned out differently. I had only one face, and it was turned toward the past. The foolishness of that settled in on me recently. I realized that both my triumphs and failures have made me the woman I am today, but neither has set the precedent for the rest of my life. Here and now, I resolve (yeah, I said it) to be aware of both directions in life - and to move my ass toward the things I truly want, instead of just bitch about not having them.

As I move forward into 2013, I will always remember my past – I just hope I can remember it in context with the limitless possibilities of my future. 

Cheers.

You Just Never Know

Have you ever been blind-sided by one of those stealth-Christians?

After months spent sharing scotch on nights full of foul-mouthed banter, my good friend and bartender was weighing in his half of The Friend Conversation. You know the one: the life story, greatest fears, all-too-revealing conversation that results in the participants moving from social friends to real Friends, capital F. It was sort of a big deal.

Unfortunately, our bonding hit a little speed bump when he very casually, as if I'd always known, dropped the Jesus bomb on me. It was a shock. I was quite literally speechless. The silence just hung there like a cartoon anvil that was, although I didn't immediately realize it, falling toward my head. I stammered something about being glad it worked for him. He quickly assured me he was a "modern Christian", the nonjudgmental kind.

BAM!

I am a puff of smoke filmed from an ultra-high angle, as I realize the kind of shit you say to your favorite bartender.

***Disclaimer: Despite my well-documented lack of belief, said friend's choice of faith holds absolutely no bearing on my affection or respect for him, nor on my desire to be his friend. I care very much for this person and nothing he believes could change that. I'm not a total asshole.***

Zzz

"Everything feels like a copy of a copy of a copy…""

Insomnia. Oh, insomnia, you bitch. This thing between us is supposed to be a power struggle; you are not supposed to have such an unfair advantage. We used to attack and retreat in regular intervals, but no more. There can be no sport in defeating me this way.

If you don't have chronic insomnia, there aren't words to help you fully understand the toll it takes on your body and mind. You can imagine, but you can never know. You can literally feel your sanity fade away as exhaustion pushes logic further and further into your subconscious mind. It is a kind of torture. No, literally.

Sleep deprivation has been used as an "interrogation technique" by various governments and organizations all over the world. There is currently debate as to whether it will remain an acceptable technique, due to the fact that it has been determined "inhumane and degrading". The former Prime Minister of Israel, Manachem Begin, experienced sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique during his time as a prisoner of the Russian NKVD. I remember reading one of his quotes on the subject and thinking "Oh my god! I know that feeling!". It was so strange to relate so closely to a person I previously knew little about. The quote, which I recorded in one of my many books, was "...a haze begins to form. His spirit is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire: to sleep. Anyone who has experienced this desire knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it."

Don't I know it...

I Has Arrived.

Well, I'm blogging.

Why am I blogging? ...I dunno. 

I mean, if we're being totally honest (and why not?), I have no idea. It was something between an irresistible urge and a snap decision that brought me here. 

I'm a journaler. (Is that a word? No? I'm making it a word. Take that, Webster, you uppity fuck.) I've always kept a sporadic but emotionally fueled record of my life. Tiny snippets of memories; some preserved in beautiful leather-bound journals, others scattered in yellowing spiral notebooks, and more still, scrawled on napkins, glued onto scrap pages, stuffed in the folds of my favorite books - places I'm sure to return, so that I may find these precious memories and relive them again. 

And I do. I love to find old entries and take a peek into the mind of the younger, less experienced, less jaded version of Aleigh. Often, I find myself feeling the same emotions, reacting the same way to the memory, and I know that I have always been inherently me. Other times, I find myself perplexed at my previous feelings and I have a good laugh at my immaturity or bask in a moment of pride at how far I've come. 

Sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes hilarious, often volatile, these letters from my past-self help me remember, give me perspective, and prove that I was, in fact, alive, on this-or-that date in some lost year of time. Because these scraps of paper form a record of a life that is flying past like so many birds on the wind.

So...I suppose, if I were to listen to myself, I'm blogging to remember. 

Aleigh out.