Amy's way or the highway

old women in malls

I had to return some curtains at "the mall." Yes, it deserves quotes. Malls aren't real. They're twilight zones. They're black holes. I can't find my way around them. The maps are useless, which of course is as intentional as last minute items in the grocery line. Oh, yes, before I leave, I should buy a 2.99 candy bar from South Africa. What?

I go into a bubble when I enter the mall. My skin films up, and a waxy leak coats my bones. I start to sweat old lady smell. Is it me or them? It's us.

I end up in stores I wouldn't go into, unless trapped in this consumer eddy. Crabbe Tree and Evelyn(is that the name). What am I doing in there? Like me, it's coated, but in perfumed powder. I start to need pajamas from there. Neeeeed. The young pimply saleswomen don't help me. They know I don't belong there and don't bother with me. I'm picking up things like I'm at a garage sale, seeking a find. They are talking about their co-worker who is trying to bond with them on MySpace. They hate her. They don't have a size Medium in the coveted pajamas. They say "goodbye" to me, the way you say goodbye to someone whose entered your Deliverant town. Like good luck out there.

Two old women block my way out. One says to the other, "make sure you get those tests. I had a friend who was in getting her colon cleaned and they found a lump. They had to cut six inches out of her liver. So make sure you get those tests. "

I called my mom and she and my step-father were on their way to the hearing aid store. tomorrow they're going to the doctor. thursday the dentist. We don't climb to the top of mountains, my people. We maintain. We return curtains.

I buy some rainbow Kale(why?) at my pristine organic grocer and my friend, Abdul, the checkout guy, says "careful today. It's 6-6-6." I listen to NPR on the car radio on the drive home. Women aren't having babies today for two reasons. Fear and embarrassment for the devil's birthday. They either got c-sections yesterday or they are squeezing tight until tomorrow.

we must be bad, as writers

My drooling dog brain is hanging out the window, licking the dust from that road. We must be bad at times. We absolutely must(whatever bad means-believe me I know) so we cannot be so precious. We are too precious as writers. We need to let whatever is coming out, out. WE cannot always be fairy castles. Sometimes we are back alleys. Sometimes we are morons. Sometimes, when we edge ourselves further enough out the window, we are Joyce. Sometimes we are ourselves and the skin rashes.
I am on a whole new level of learning right now. My current teacher does not want me to intellectualize anything. She just wants solutions, action. BLESS HER!
The rewiring process is slow, but only slow because I do not live forever. She's like the yoga teacher who told me to stick my ass out more(I mean truly was she a yoga teacher? Or an ass guardian angel, because yoga teachers don't say that. They say "down dog") anyway, my writing teacher, like my yoga teacher rewires my bad habits. In their genuis, indeed teaching well is pure creative genuis...in her genuis, if I can open the flaps of my ears warriored over with fences and obstacle courses, if I can ignore the din of the past and the failures, and I listen, and I stick out the ass,  I am spring.

Fish Out of Water

Today is the day I start this Blog. My excellent teacher looked me in the eye and said "You should write a blog." Here's why she's right. For the same reason my parents told me "if you talk too much, you'll get high blood pressure." This is how intellectuals tell their children to shut up. It's wordy. In my defense, they taught me how not to shut up. Now they were telling me, that if I didn't shut up, I'd perish.  I wasn't afraid of perishing. Apples perished. Churches parished. Did people perish?

Here's what scared me. If I stopped talking, god would yank me up and give me some other earthly task. As a talker, I was doing my job, fulfilling my destiny. Maybe God would hear my silence and morph me into the copper that borns a penny, that ends up flattened under a train.

I've made a decision. I'm not going to be brilliant today. Who knows? Maybe I'll be brilliant tomorrow. Maybe it won't happen until I'm eighty. Maybe I'll be brilliant in my next life as a dandellion. Maybe how yellow I am will impress a kid and yank me up.