“I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.” ~ Sadegh Hedayat, Boof-e Koor

Moonlight over Sandesfjorden by eivindtjohei (FCC)

Note: I could not get my computer to work yesterday evening, so this post is backdated. Sorry . . .

“I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.” ~ James Joyce, The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Thursday afternoon. Very humid, mid 80’s.

Moon on the Lake by villemk (FCC)

I showered today. To most of you, this might not seem like such a big deal, but since yesterday I never made it out of my pajamas, and spent almost the entire day in bed, it’s a big deal for me.

So much has gone on in recent days that I feel as if I’ve run a marathon in combat boots: my entire body aches and is rebelling at just the idea of sitting here.

We found out the total amount needed to bring our mortgage current plus the attorney’s fees, and it isn’t pretty. I had to tap a source that I really did not want to tap, a relative (indirectly). Not my mother as she does not have the funds, nor do I want to have to hear from her about what a failure I am again. Unfortunately, this source could very easily let slip to my mother what’s going on.

I know that I just have to suck it up and deal with whatever fall-out there is, but the thought of the what-ifs is significantly adding to my stress level. This whole mortgage fiasco is beyond anything we have faced in years. The idea that I could lose this house—as old and decrepit as it is—just breaks my heart. The idea that we could become displaced scares the crap out of me. So if I can secure the funds from someone who is willing to help, I cannot allow my pride to stand in the way.

“I count the clouds others count the seasons
Dreaming of archipelagos and the desert
I have lived through weeks of years.” ~ Susan Howe, from “Hinge Picture”

Acitrezza Faraglioni Moon Rise, Sicilia, Italy by gnuckx (FCC)

Oddly enough, I began the week on a good note, but that was doomed to pass quickly.

I saw Dr. K. on Monday and talked out the whole issue of going back to work, the possible risks and possible benefits. I told her that I would be pursuing this particular position purely for the money, not because I’m interested in the job itself. She then put it to me in a way that I could really appreciate: If I went back to work for a job that I was not invested in emotionally, a job—just a job—then the chances of my health problems being exacerbated would be greater than if I went back to work for something that really meant a lot to me, like a university teaching position.

When she put it that way, it made complete sense to me. Sometimes it takes an objective third party to make you see what’s been in front of you the entire time, the reality of it all.

And for me, the reality is that if I could go back to teaching English for a college or university, I wouldn’t care about the salary because I would be doing something that I really love.

Anyway, that was Monday. It’s been downhill, full speed ever since.

“I am not good at noticing when I’m happy, except in retrospect. My gift, or fatal flaw, is for nostalgia. I have sometimes been accused of demanding perfection, of rejecting heart’s desires as soon as I get close enough . . . I know very well that perfection is made up of frayed, off-struck mundanities. I suppose you could say my real weakness is a kind of long-sightedness: usually it is only at a distance, and much too late, that I can see the pattern.” ~ Tana French, from In the Woods

Fratarski Otok Moonlight by cinemich (FCC)

I’ve been trying not to just sit around and eat chocolate, even though it seems like a pretty good idea to me. Those 90-calorie fiber brownies? Yep, those? They taste like powdered cardboard. They’ll do in a pinch just to get the flavor of chocolate near the taste buds, but as far as filling that need for chocolatey smoothness . . . nope, not even close.

Then there are the 100-calorie snack packages. Do you know how many chocolate chip cookie thingies they put in one package? Eight, and they are the size of a quarter. Yep, 100 calories of pure chocolate air.

What I want is a carton of some kind of Ben and Jerry’s, preferably with the highest fat content possible, and a big spoon, and no one around to see me indulge. That or a bag of Pepperidge Farms cookies. Those would be good too.

Instead, I’ll just sit here and type and hope the cravings go far, far away. Men simply do not understand the whole chocolate thing. It’s not just for PMS. It’s for stress. It’s for depression. It’s for happiness. It’s for celebration. It’s dopamine with calories. Given a choice between Godiva and heroin? Godiva, hands down. Adult acne be damned.

“A dreamer is one who can only find their way by moonlight, and their punishment is that they see the dawn before the rest of the world.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Lunar Reflections, Fort Fisher, NC by Donald Lee Pardue (FCC)

Well, that little interlude helped a bit, that is until I remembered that yet another Law & Order franchise has been ruined for me. “Law & Order UK” killed off the Matt Devlin character, played by Jamie Bamber (who was also Apollo in “Battlestar Gallactica”). I loved him. I was already pissed at the loss of Ben Daniels, whose Crown Prosecutor James Steel was as sharp as Linus Roache’s character of Michael Cutter.

Bamber’s departure comes as a result of his casting on “Precinct 17,” of which I know absolutely nothing.

And “Law & Order SVU” is also going down the tubes with the departure of Christopher Meloni and the addition of two new cast members. Okay, so this is not important in the grand scheme of things, but as I am a diehard fan of all things L&O (with the exception of LA, which I cannot bring myself to like), the loss of the original, the tossup of SVU, and the big changes to UK make me terribly unhappy, which, as you know, is so unusual for me.

“It’s like morphine, language is. A fearful habit to form: you become a bore to all who would otherwise cherish you. Of course, there is the chance that you may be hailed as a genius after you are dead long years, but what is that to you . . . Time? Time? Why worry about something that takes care of itself so well? You were born with the habit of consuming time. Be satisfied with that.” ~ William Faulkner, Mosquitoes

Moonlight at Redang Island, Malaysia by Christian Haugen (FCC)

So, here I sit. The house is quiet. Everyone is at school or at work. Everyone, that is, except for me and the dogs and the dust bunnies . . . I’m sitting here with the sun in my eyes, the afternoon sun that is streaming through Eamonn’s bedroom window. If I do that thing that kids do, you now, close my eyes almost all the way, then I can see light refracting off my eyelashes.

Remember when you first discovered how to do that? I don’t either.

For some reason, I cannot get my YouTube to work at the moment. I keep getting a 502 error, whatever that is, whenever I set a playlist to play. I tried signing back in, but nothing. So I don’t have a song for this post, which is okay, I suppose, as I don’t yet have a theme in mind for the images to go with the words. It’s that kind of post: disjointed, fragmented, bumpy.

I prefer for my posts to be like the kind of ride you get in an Infiniti, or something along those lines: smooth, comfortable, almost quiet. Instead, I have a 4×4 kind of post going on, and I keep hitting all of the potholes. My suspension is shot, and I’m badly in need of a tune-up.

Oh well, never going to own that muscle car that I always dreamed of having. You know, the one with the motor that growls low at stop lights, the one that slides in and out of cars. Nope. Not going to happen . . . ever. A muscle car needs to be low to the ground, something that my body just won’t do.  No black Ford Mustang with a sunroof and speakers that make my tummy vibrate.  Just please don’t put me in a white sedan. I think that would be the end of me.

What am I going on about? Who the hell knows.

More later. Peace.

Music by Tom Waits, “The Part You Throw Away”

                   

“Since I last wrote summer has gone. It’s autumn. Now Jack brings home from his walks mushrooms and autumn crocuses. Little small girls knock at the door with pears to sell & blue black plums. The hives have been emptied; there’s new honey and the stars look almost frosty. Speaking of stars reminds me—we were sitting on the balcony last night. It was dark. These huge fir trees ‘take’ the darkness marvellously. We had just counted four stars & remarked a light, high up—what was it? on the mountains opposite, when suddenly from far away a little bell began ringing. Someone played a tune on it—something gay, merry, ancient, over and over. I suppose it was some priest or lay brother in a mountain village. But what we felt was—it’s good to think such things still happen to think some peasant goes off in the late evening & delights to play that carillon. I sometimes have a fear that simple hearted people are no more. I was ashamed of that fear last night. The little bell seemed to say, but joyfully: ‘Be not afraid. All is not lost.’” ~ Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to Richard Murray, September 5th, 1921

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“We are little flames poorly sheltered by frail walls against the storm of dissolution and madness, in which we flicker and sometimes almost go out.” ~ Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Morning in the Forest by Paulo FLOP (35photo.ru)

                   

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Saturday evening. Gradually clearing, low 70’s.

Beginning by bachkatov (35photo.ru)

A slow day. I stayed up quite late and got up quite late, so I’m feeling more than a bit discombobulated, that, and the omnipresent headache that is thrumming in my temples.

I should mention off the bat that this post’s images all come from 35photo.ru, a site that I found through tumblr. I apologize if I have inadvertently infringed on someone’s copyright, but I looked carefully at the images that I downloaded and did not see a copyright, part of the problem of using a foreign site.

Last night (early this morning?) Corey and I had a heart-to-heart talk about what we are facing. He has very mixed feelings about the job with the sheriff’s office, which has caught him off-guard, and he is considering trying to pick up a hitch with the shipping company that approached him right after he had enrolled in school. If he does a few hitches with them next year, he can make as much money as he would make in a year with the other job, and he can still go to school.

I really don’t want him to have to postpone school for two years because he has already waited so long on this particular dream—a dream deferred, if you will—and, truth be told, I am not to keen on the idea of him having to work in the city jail, just too many possible bad scenarios there. But ultimately, I will leave it up to him.

The downside of going back to sea is that we have to come up with the money to renew his licenses, and he would probably not be able to go out until the beginning of 2012, so a few more months of this.

“You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.” ~ Philip Levine, “Our Valley”

Into the Mist by kicik (35photo.ru)

He also admitted that he does not think the idea of me giving up my disability coverage is the best idea. When he asked if I wanted to go back to work because of the money or because I wanted to go back to work, I immediately said that it was the money, and that’s the truth.

I have agreed to postpone submitting my application package a few days (as the deadline is not for another five days) until I can give the issue some more thought. Of course, having said that, I must admit that today I feel worse than I’ve felt in weeks, what with my back and my head, and I realize that the stress is probably a factor in that. So the question is, how would I do with the stress of a full-time job?

I have no idea.

Any type of job that I would take would be a high stress situation as that is the nature of marketing and publishing—constant deadlines and budgetary factors. Client whims and needs. All of that. I must approach this with my mind fully aware of all of the mitigating factors, not the least of which is the disputation of my graduate school loans. If I stay on disability, my loans are phased out. If I go back to work, they are reinstated, as they should be, but that’s a big chunk of change. Getting a graduate degree from a private university, even one for which you work, is not inexpensive.

More to consider.

“This body, which has become a sarcophagus with stone handles, lies perfectly motionless; the dreamer rises out of it, like a vapor, to circumnavigate the world . . . he tries on one body after another, but they are all misfits. Finally he is obliged to return to his own body, to reassume the leaden mold, to become a prisoner of the flesh, to carry on in torpor, pain and ennui.” ~ Henry Miller in Sexus

Untitled by Philip Peynerdjiev (35photo.ru)

I want to pause to acknowledge that some beautiful verse has been showing up on my tumblr dash lately. As I’ve mentioned before, I garner most of my quotes and poems from my tumblr, which I find to be an inspiring resource. I had never heard of Matthew Harvey or Lucian Blaga, both of which I have included in this post.

Corey had a chat with Eamonn today in which he reminded eldest son that missing classes is unacceptable as we footed the bill for his last ditch effort to do something with his college career. The proposition was that he would work his hardest and make A’s, B’s at the very least, so that he can bring up his GPA and possibly be accepted into the radiation technology program.

In the last week, Eamonn missed one session of each class, and he is carrying a low B in his biology class. He admitted to me that he did not study for his recent test.

Why doesn’t he get it? Why doesn’t he understand that we invested this money in him (money that we could ill afford) because we want him to succeed, because we want him to have a career and not to have to work in some low-paying job for the rest of his life?

Corey told him that he (Eamonn) is acting like this is still high school, which is exactly what the problem is. I could go on ad nauseum about how this isn’t how he was brought up, how my family has a strong work ethic and a deep belief in higher education, but the truth is that Eamonn is spoiled, and that fact lands squarely back in my lap.

It’s hard to be a single parent. The desire to give your children everything, to be everything, to make things seem as normal as possible—these things can cause a sense of unbelievable guilt, and Eamonn is good for piling on the guilt, telling me more than once that he blames me for the divorce. It’s an argument that I cannot win and have long since abandoned trying to gain any ground with, so admittedly, I spoiled my children as much as I could.

Still, this sense of entitlement makes me want to scream.

Same old song and dance, I suppose . . .

“If there is no fog on the day you come home I will build a bonfire
So the smoke will make the cedars look the way you like them” ~ Matthea Harvey, from “In Defense of Our Overgrown Garden”

Foggy Night 3 by dimitri bogachuk (35photo.ru)

In other news . . . Brett is still sick today, so he’s been quiet and resting. Em went shopping with her aunt, which is always a good distraction for her. She has developed a nice relationship with both her aunt and uncle in the past few months, and I know that fact means a lot to her.

Alexis has spent the fast week or so in Maryland with Mike, who is due to finish his hitch there soon. He makes good money while he’s there, and I think that the time that she spends up there with him is good for their relationship. Plus it means that she’s not just staying in her apartment alone sleeping. I know that she’s been incredibly depressed since losing her grandmother.

Yesterday was Ann’s birthday. I called and texted but never got to speak to her, so I left a voice mail in which I sang “Happy Birthday Mr. President” á la Marilyn Monroe. I’m hoping that she wasn’t too depressed. The first holidays, birthdays, anniversaries after losing a parent are so hard. It still bothers me to be on the card aisle before Father’s Day. I’m not looking forward to Thanksgiving or Christmas without my m-in-law, which is probably why I dreamed that she was decorating for Christmas. It will be so strange for her not to be here.

I’ve been borrowing my m-in-law’s car to drive back and forth to ODU when Corey is working. We’re hoping that our neighbor who is supposed to be working on Corey’s truck will finish the job soon. He’s been paid in full, and we have the parts. We’re just waiting on the labor now. I still need to make arrangements to have my uncle’s Explorer shipped from Florida. And Brett still needs to get off his butt and take his DMV test to get his learner’s permit, which he has to keep for 30 days before getting his license now that he’s over 19.

Always something.

“Such a deep silence surrounds me, that I think I hear
moonbeams striking on the windows.

In my chest,
a strange voice awakens
and a song plays inside me
a longing that is not mine.” ~ Lucian Blaga, from “Silence” (trans. by MariGoes)

Cape Fiolet by Dimitry Tokar (35photo.ru)

Yesterday, while I was on my way to ODU to pick up Brett and Em, I had the local classical station on, and some symphony was playing. Forgive me, but I did not get the name. It was not one with which I was already familiar. But I turned up the tinny car radio, and listened to the beautiful music, which ended perfectly just as I pulled up.

I remember when I was teaching at ODU, fall would always be the time that I would switch my car stereo to classical, and one day Mari walked in and said, “Geez, how many times are they going to play “The Emperor’s Concerto” (Beethoven’s fifth concerto)? I had to laugh because I had just been thinking the same thing as I walked into the office.

It’s funny how Mari and I were so synchronized in our likes and dislikes, how we changed with the seasons, how our moods were affected by the weather and by what we wore. I remember one day when we were out, and I made her go to what was then Hecht’s department store so that I could buy a blouse to change into because what I was wearing made me feel so ugly. She completely understood.

God I miss having that in a female friend. But mostly, I still miss Mari. When I was going through my files before updating my resume, I came across a resume that I had put together for Mari back in 2005 when she was trying to get a job down here. I hadn’t realized that it had been that long. We were both working so hard to get her down here, but it never happened. That’s over six years ago.

It seems like last year. Does time pass faster the older that you are? Or does it just seem to fly away on the wind when you are running so fast to catch up?

More later. Peace.

Music by Jeff Beal, “Waltz for Mary,” perfect day for some keyboard

                   

Fall

Fall, falling, fallen. That’s the way the season
Changes its tense in the long-haired maples
That dot the road; the veiny hand-shaped leaves
Redden on their branches (in a fiery competition
With the final remaining cardinals) and then
Begin to sidle and float through the air, at last
Settling into colorful layers carpeting the ground.
At twilight the light, too, is layered in the trees
In a season of odd, dusky congruences—a scarlet tanager
And the odor of burning leaves, a golden retriever
Loping down the center of a wide street and the sun
Setting behind smoke-filled trees in the distance,
A gap opening up in the treetops and a bruised cloud
Blamelessly filling the space with purples. Everything
Changes and moves in the split second between summer’s
Sprawling past and winter’s hard revision, one moment
Pulling out of the station according to schedule,
Another moment arriving on the next platform. It
Happens almost like clockwork: the leaves drift away
From their branches and gather slowly at our feet,
Sliding over our ankles, and the season begins moving
Around us even as its colorful weather moves us,
Even as it pulls us into its dusty, twilit pockets.
And every year there is a brief, startling moment
When we pause in the middle of a long walk home and
Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies;
It is the changing light of fall falling on us.

~ Edward Hirsch

“Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers.” ~ Roberto Bolaño, 2666

Falling Rain by nyello8 (FCC)

                   

“Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.” ~ Henry Miller

Thursday afternoon. Rainy, humid, and warm, high 70’s.

Rain by Debs (FCC)

If I put this into words, then it becomes real, which is why I have avoided writing for a few days. Everything is falling apart again. How did we get here? We try and try and never seem to make any forward progress.

Our mortgage is going into foreclosure. We are becoming the statistic that defines the middle class: living from paycheck to paycheck, owing more than we make, existing instead of living. And because of this, because my back is against the wall, because I cannot continue to allow Corey to bear the bulk of this burden, I must do as I must. I must apply for jobs, go back to work, my health be damned.

Perhaps if I can get a job, everything will right itself. Perhaps if I go back to work full time, the incessant stress from never having enough money will abate and some of the stress will go away. Perhaps if this happens, Corey will not have to feel as if he has failed us.

I cannot continue to weigh the pros and cons of giving up my disability coverage. While I mull over the what ifs, we are sinking, taking everything and everyone with us. I can only hope that if I do manage to get someone to hire me, that my health will improve as a result of the outside stimulus. I suppose the deciding factor was that when I was looking at openings online, I cam across a marketing position at ODU for which I am perfectly suited.

Perhaps it’s karma, fate, that I find this position at this time. Who knows? I only know that I am so tired of being buffeted along the wind like a fallen leaf, tossed here and there without any control, without any clear direction, left up to forces external.

“Would that I were a dry well, and the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Rain by Marcus Hansson (FCC)

I drafted the following a couple of days ago after seeing a picture of graffiti that said, “Imagine Life without Liars.”

imagine life without liars
peace without pain
truth without terror

pretend we can converse in our sleep
wake in our dreams
return to the beginning

how can we find fault without favor
break the bone without blood
rend the silence without sound

make believe the moment is momentous
the dregs are delicious
the echo is eternal

let us have love without loss
less without want
want without guilt

expect it not to be so
suppose that it might be
possibly perhaps perchance

I’m troubled by the last three lines . . .

“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Umbrella, Leaves by mysza831 (FCC)

When I finish this, I need to update my resume, a depressing thought. Posit: Who will hire someone my age who has been out of work for almost three years, regardless of my qualifications and background?

I don’t know what I’m opening myself up for, what kind of reaction to expect other than what I’ve set myself up to believe. I know what I can do. I know what I hope I can do. I know what I wish. Are the three the same? Probably not, possibly not at all.

I like to think there are always possibilities . . .

Star Trek: Wrath of Khan—the best Trek movie ever. Ricardo Montalban with his mullet and bare chest.

Friday afternoon. Stormy.

Anyway, sorry about that little interlude. I actually left this post yesterday to go ahead and work on my resume and cover letter. The killer is that while I know that I could do the advertised job with no problem, how do I explain my three-year hiatus?

On a brighter note, Corey had the first part of his interview with the sheriff’s office this morning: the written test, which he did quite well on; however, he learned this morning when talking to the guy who conducted the test that the department works on a 12-hour day with a monthly rotation, which means all days for a month and then all nights for a month, which pretty much screws any hopes of going to school for him. And, it’s a two-year commitment, so his plans for college would be put on hold for that long.

He’s going ahead with the interview process, but we are both bothered by the commitment and what it means to postponing his dream of a college education yet again.

“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we’re alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.” ~ Don DeLillo, from Point Omega

Fallen Leaves by crabchick (FCC)

So today Brett went to the student health center while he was on campus. They tested him for flu and told him that he just has a cold. I know that he must have felt terrible to have gone to see someone on his own; he said that he threw up while he was at school. Completely unlike him. Last night, Eamonn had a rash all over his arms and shoulders. He’s already had chicken pox, so I know that it wasn’t that.

We’re all literally falling apart here—people, dogs, computers, house . . .

The sky outside is white. White skies are very depressing and unforgiving. There is nothing beautiful about them.

Now, the sky has opened up, and it’s pouring. Kind of the perfect backdrop to this post. The temperature is dropping, and it’s raining. Welcome fall, which came in at 5:05 a.m. In spite of the sky, I wouldn’t have it any other way for the first day of fall.

I’ve already moved my sandals to the back of the closet and brought my boots forward. Now I just need to get my sweaters out of the trunk, and I’ll be all set.

Last night I had strange dreams. In one, I was sliding down these sand dunes, like surfing the dunes. People were scattered all over the dunes on towels and blankets, and I was sliding in between them. When I got to the bottom of one dune, I lost control and ran into a man’s Buddha alter. He had placed fresh orange slices in a bowl at the base of the Buddha. I apologized to him profusely and offered to make recompense, but he was quite sedate and kind, and told me not to worry about it.

I also dreamed about my m-in-law. It was my first full dream about her since she died. We were in her living room, and she looked quite normal. She had been moving the furniture around and was decorating for Christmas. I asked her to let us help her move the furniture. She was lucid and conversed normally, except for the comment about visiting Saturn from the roof of the building . . . I have no idea what that means.

I awoke from the dream with a fierce migraine.

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” ~ Joseph Campbell

Ripple Rain by tiffa 130 (FCC)

Isn’t it always the way that immediately after a doctor’s visit, something happens? I had my med check with my psychiatrist on Wednesday during which I told her that my medication was working well. Now I find myself depressed so completely that I feel covered by a shroud. I know that yesterday before he went to work Corey told me that I should just go to bed and rest and read. I must have looked like hell. I did not take his advice and stayed on this stupid computer for hours trying to make myself look marketable on paper.

It’s been over 24 hours since I first began this post, and I am no more certain of anything than when I began. Am I doing the right thing? Am I jeopardizing the little bit of guaranteed money that our family receives from my disability by attempting to go back to work in the hopes of making enough money to dig us out of this hole?

And just when I thought I had made peace with the idea that I would never be able to go back to work full time, I revisit the issue. A person could well and truly go crazy pondering these things.

I don’t know what to do. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?

Sometimes I wish that I drank or perhaps did something to alter my reality . . . not really.

Sometimes I wish that I could be Eamonn: He has never understood this thing called disability. He has said numerous times, “Why don’t you just go back to work?” I truly think that he believes that I left work out of choice, that I just sit around on my ass all day doing nothing because I’m lazy. To him, it’s all so simple. You need money, so you go to work. And god help me, but I cannot help but hear his father’s voice when he talks like that.

But said like that, it is all so simple. Maybe it’s just me making it hard.

Enough. Since the computer keeps locking up on me today, I think I’ll call it a day.

More later. Peace.

Coda: The storm has passed, and the sky is the most beautiful pale crimson and orange . . .

Music by Melody Gardot, “The Rain” (what else?)

                   

Zacuanpapalotls

(in memory of José Antonio Burciaga, 1947-1996)                          

We are chameleons. We become chameleon.
—José Antonio Burciaga

We are space between—

the black-orange blur

of a million Monarchs

on their two-generation migration

south to fir-crowned Michoacán

where tree trunks will sprout feathers,

a forest of paper-thin wings.

Our Mexica cocooned

in the membranes de la Madre Tierra

say we are reborn zacuanpapalotls,

mariposas negras y anaranjadas

in whose sweep the dead whisper.

We are between—

the flicker of a chameleon’s tail

that turns his desert-blue backbone

to jade or pink sand,

the snake-skinned fraternal twins

of solstice and equinox.

The ashen dawn, silvering dusk,

la oración as it leaves the lips,

the tug from sleep,

the glide into dreams

that husk out mestizo memory.

We are—

one life passing through the prism

of all others, gathering color and song,

cempazuchil and drum

to leave a rhythm scattered on the wind,

dust tinting the tips of fingers

as we slip into our new light.

~ Brenda Cárdenas