Random Acts of Awesome

Magic is the sense of power swimming through your own veins. The knowledge that, while you are really very tiny, your brain is really very large. And inside your brain, there are a million billion roads that are constantly being traversed by the energy that spawned stars and worlds, that created dinosaurs and elephants, that built Rome and destroyed the Mayans. That energy isn't a closed system. It's constantly being fed from the outside by little droplets of experience, crafted and shaped by knowledge gained and lost. Experience and knowledge that has been purified in the minds of a million billion others, energy that has been consumed and shed by trees and plants, oceans and mountains, ants and apes. A connection of the neurons, if not the mind. You can choose to consume as much stimulation as you possibly can. And you can acknowledge that what you can possibly do is far greater than many believe. What is possible can be defined by what is wanted, not what is given. ...

I get it, dude. I do. I look more exciting than your beautiful wife, sitting to your side with a brand new baby on her lap. Blocking access to her womb and her heart, a tiny little presence that has supplanted you completely. My breasts are hugged by a form fitting shirt, framed by a vest designed to make them appealing to you. Hers are covered by flannel, comfortable and soft for a baby to rest against. My hips are mine alone, not occupied by a tiny being that has sucked all the sexuality that created it right back into itself, for the moment. Ah, for the moment. All the moments. That's what you need to remember, as you look at my hips and breasts longingly. The moments you've helped create. The depth of sexuality you're missing, that's causing your eyes to stray, have nothing on those moments. I hope, for your sake, that your father taught you the breadth of moments available to you now, the depth of the beauty you've created. Because without that knowle...

Every now and then I start dreaming about becoming a foster parent. It's a weird thing for me to dream about. I'm not super IRRESPONSIBLE, but I'm not the most responsible person in the world, either. And I have a hard enough time taking care of myself, making the right decisions for myself. What would I do with kids? I'm also not the most selfish person in the world, but I AM selfish. I love getting things my own way, I love peace, and I love comfort. Being a foster parent would be pretty much antithetical to those things I love. But yeah. I think about providing a home for a sibling group. It's incredibly difficult to find homes that will take larger groups of siblings together. And I can't imagine what it would feel like to have that entire structure ripped out from under a child who's already experiencing something awful. I think a big part of me dreaming about this is the idea of a ready made family. Which is fucked up. But I lost my family (for a...

The sun is shining, hard and bright. The air is on the verge of chill, that special early spring cold that feels like a harbinger of green and smells like heaven. My shoes are bright red, a smear of color that startles me every time look down. I'm standing at the bus stop, watching traffic go by, and thinking about how much I've changed. The knowledge that I'm being stared at doesn't feel as heavy on my 35 year old skin. The almost tactile sensation of eyes running up and down my body is no longer an invasion. Knowledge has given me this power, these shields. I know what would happen if I accepted the invitation inherent in these looks, and I am comfortable in the knowledge that I don't have to. But I can if I want. I can make whatever choice I deem fit, and I know I can live with the reality of those choices. Youth was beautiful. But knowledge is powerful, and I prefer this power given to me by the years over the frail beauty of inexperience.

And I have no privacy... It's interesting. Applying for the Amtrak writers residency has tested my sense of privacy. There's a part of me that FAR, FAR prefers to stay small and under the radar. That part of me is OK with people reading my stuff, but prefers not to think about it too much. It's uncomfortable with praise, and suspicious of it. The other part of me is pretty convinced that my destiny (said with heavy emphasis on DES, and trailing emphasis on tiny, ending with a long yyyyy)(just because) is to be a well known, beloved writer. Not an author. I don't have many fiction stories rolling around in my head. But a writer. Someone who uses words to capture moments in time and presents them to the word in a such a way that every brain on the surface of this planet can read them and find themselves inside the structure. The two parts of me are unbalanced (SHOCKING, I know). They're both coming from a relatively unhealthy part of me. Fear of and absolute nee...

Don't call me beautiful. I know you think I'm pretty, it's a part of why you're hoping to get in my pants. I can sense your attraction, and yes, it's nice. But don't call me beautiful. Call me thoughtful. Oh, that's a good start. Adorable is ok too, but thoughtful... you hit the nail on the head. Stop calling me beautiful, because it's got nothing to do with why I'm interested in you. You make my brain sing, and if I don't make yours do the same, we're not going to have much fun. I'm going to get sick of your pride in parading my tits around. Quickly.

Here's the train of thought that led me to my story about trees: Trying to fall asleep last night, contemplating the familiar sick little feeling of unease in my belly that's making my heart race. Thinking about how often I've felt it in my life. The words "The decision branches I'm taking aren't leading to my long term happiness." Spending a good amount of processing time thinking about what decision branches mean, and how the choices we make create these branching patterns. Really enjoying this thought process. Thinking about pulling back into my trunk, since the branch analogy naturally leads to picturing myself as a tree. Trying to imagine pulling my sap back in to my core, and choosing to create another set of decision branches instead of wasting resources on already created patterns. Thinking about what kind of tree I want to be. Definitely not an Aspen. I hate those trees. An Oak. Or a Maple. Or a giant, gnarly old Beech. No, a...