Seconds of Pleasure

Isn't that just like life, full of seconds of pleasure and moments of pain. I grieved for about an hour and some change over the loss of a really pleasant relationship. My grieving was cut short by the following poem:

INTRODUCTION TO POETRY. by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a colour slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
And feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

*let it be noted: Billy Collins is the former U.S. Poet Laureate*
Anyway, the poem talks about a thing that is inexplicable and personal, the meaning of a poem, which more often than not is a feeling, an image, a tug at the heart and/or head. And often, that's what relationships come down to: A feeling, an image, a tug at the heart and/or head.

Lately I've had a lot of beginnings and endings. I've started quite a few ventures and seen a few others come to close. I've learned that some people don't quite fit in my life as well as I'd hoped they would and I've made space for others. It's a great process just because it is, indelibly, just that: A process. For once my head is not turned in 50 different directions, leaving me exhausted and indiscriminate. I am awake, I am aware, I have enough time to see the changes coming and to start bracing myself even if I don't feel like 'getting it over with already.'

For once I'm not out looking for trouble, and for once, i have no qualms about enjoying trouble when it comes knocking.

This time in life is a state of grace. Thank god I found Billy Collins' poem today and realized what a great gift I've been given by being offered an 'out'. I can see, clear as day, that the ending of a relationship does not end friendship, camaraderie, affection or love. It just acknowledges that the nuts and bolts no longer fit together and that people require change when they are uncomfortable.

Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

Darvocet, Diazapam, then MORE Darvocet

Well, the painful period has begun. My title is the list of pain meds I take to take the edge off. Once I laughed until I cried as I thought of the medical adage "stay ahead of the pain" like it's a relay race. If you can just hand off once things start getting a little weird, then you might not suffer the stuff that renders you mute and paralyzed.

So, I'm working on staying ahead of the pain. Tomorrow I start my testosterone. My (male) surgeon says I should become more rational, logical and less likely to commit a homicide than I was on progesterone. We shall see, i reserve judgement on that. I may also start growing a beard. We shall also see about that.

Despite being notoriously slow on the uptake, I have managed to oufit my myspace page and my blog with jukeboxes. I just love reading with good music in the background. I hpe it makes the reading better, perhaps lends a certain je ne sais quoi to my words that make them more compelling or funny or interesting, like, maybe you'll read for 10 seconds instead of 4.5 (cause I know you landed on this page by mistake).

The painkillers also lower my inhibitions and they open doors in my memory that I can usually ignore or keep closed by a chair propped up against the doorhandle. Life is less messy without all those errant memories. A few minutes ago I remembered my plans to kill myself if my surgeon at Stanford turned out to be as big an asshole as every other doctor I'd met with to find out what the frick was wrong with me was.

Needless to say, he wasn't. I was going to jump off the golden gate bridge, it was very popular among the war protesters at the time and it was pretty much a sure-fire way to get life out of the way. Initially I planned to drive off the bridge, but since that had become popular as well, they'd started constructing these concrete barriers and i figured i would drive into one, ruin my face, break my sternum and still be screwed six ways to sunday.

My books on endometriosis say feeling hopeless, anxious, fearful and suicidal are perfectly normal, so I am reassured. Plus, I haven't made any attempts on my own life in heck...not concious ones at least. I had lunch the other day with a really beautiful woman with whom I have business interests and I was just chattering on and on about the surgery and the journey and she listened, she was a great listener and she knew of my surgeon and she knew enough about my disease to be a good listener. And at the end of the conversation I remarked on her license plate and she told me her husband had bone cancer. And she had already remarked how you can look at a person and judge them and never know what they are living, enduring or have lived through.

It made me think of all the people I've worked with over the years who when i made a comment like "my bad is murdering me" would tell me I was too young to have any serious medical problems. Proved them wrong, i did. I knew a girl, a woman who was at least 5 years my senior a couple of years ago who spent her childhood battling leukemia. How many people are walking around on the sidewalks with lacerations to their spirits that have maybe healed over but the scar tissue is at least as big as milwaukee? I try to be a good person in the world, when people get angry with me I'd rather take the emotional blows because i figure they might have some demon that makes them take aim at whoever seems least likely to understand their pain and anguish.

We all just want someone to see us. Even if they can't tell us it will be alright, we want someone to recognize the personal and individual hell we are suffering. I'm no saint and I will drill someone a new asshole if I'm in the right, or wrong, frame of mind, but generally, I like to be the good-time girl, life kicks the shit out of us enough without my adding to the fray.

ah, i'm ahead of the pain again. time to get some work done. love.