Bias, Loyalty to Self, and Compromised Judgement

I know I have my own bias, my own assumptions in the way I view life, make judgments, and form opinions. No being alive is a purely rational actor, I don't believe we are capable of it. Of course, this belief in itself is no doubt in part the product of my assumptions. Since we can't trust our judgement, because we can never have a monopoly on the facts, we can never have all the information, and we can never be sure in what ways our subconscious and hidden urges and hidden wounds might nudge our opinions, and never be certain to what extent we think the way we do because we were taught to, or because we have assumed a reactionary attitude against what we were taught, in the end we must accept that every opinion and every judgement is a choice, and one which requires a small leap of faith. It is because of our unreliable intellectual capacities that I do not believe it morally acceptable to assume positions of absolute certainty. I find those who claim certainty, whether in the name of science or religion, passion or empiricism, to be fool-hardy and arrogant. If one believes one is certain then, in my eyes, one has only demonstrated that they are deluded by their own fantasies, that they are convinced by their own "superior" faculties. They merely demonstrate to me an inability to either understand or accept the inherent limitations of the human mind and the human perspective. While there are individuals who possess unique and indeed, wondrous faculties of the mind, even those most splendid and impressive of intellectual individuals, Beethoven, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Marie Curie, Temple Grandin, and other spectacular and shining individuals of astute and unique mind, are still subject on some level to the same weaknesses as everyone else. They still view the world through the lens of their own life experiences, their own emotions, their own impulses, and their sympathies lie with themselves when choosing a side in a debate, to some extent regardless of whether that debate is scientific, moral, religious, personal, or public. In other words, even the judgement of the sharpest mind is compromised by its implicit and instinctive loyalty to itself. This is also way we require massive quantities of data and evidence, and require scrutiny, before we accept things as common knowledge in fields attempting to describe fundamental elements of reality such as science and medicine. But, even in groups we can not transcend bias. Even if the group can agree and be cohesive, if science has borne out any evidence worth considering at all, it has shown us that even groups who develop cohesive agreement are still subject to that compromised perspective- they become collectively loyal to themselves, and subject to that same self-affirming bias, but on a collective level. Obviously, intensive citations and examples are needed to substantiate this opinion, and as I said, I will not be a hypocrite and claim to be above this self-oriented bias, but those substantiations will have to wait for a later, more finished draft. Right now I am just trying to get my ideas written down. 

Chasing the Hourglass

I don't know what I am doing here, alive, on earth. Each day I wrestle shadows, fight invisible battles with assailants no one can see. Some of them arise from poisons festering in my own heart, but others come from places unknown. Even when I know their cause, that knowledge gives me but feeble advantage. 

There are so many particulates, pieces of reality, like little grains of sand, wearing me down: time and age, fear and entropy, apathy, sadness, and loss. They are all scars on my heart and mind from the things I have done, seen, and known. It can't be undone. I don't get to start over. I have to keep going, I must stay the course. 

Any and all new beginnings I may have I must engineer for myself. Yet, how do I remake the fabric of myself? I feel like I am drowning in quicksand, and the quicksand is really just a tiny desert passing through an hourglass, marking time. I can't overcome it, surely? Time marches on, unerring, a certitude for us all. I am so tired, I want so much to surrender, to leave off this battle of being, but I have so much left to do. 

I am alive, I have a life left to live. Of what consequence am I? I am just another finite iteration of consciousness in an infinite chain of iterations of awareness.

Once, I was such a warrior, such a fighter, or at least I felt and believed I was. Now it feels like I burned up all that fire just trying to survive. Where did it go? Where did come from in the first place?Once, I had all this rage, and it fueled my every endeavor. Somehow after so long, that rage turned from a fuel to a poison, a bitterness that began to eat away at me. 

I am adrift in the world with my well-intentioned, deep-seated godlessness. I have tried too many times to adopt gods, or to create them myself, only to find either result cold and unconvincing. I would rather live in the world where I know my loneliness, my sense of absurdity, is an intuition based on reality. A figment, whether adopted from the stories of others or from one I make up myself, is cold comfort on a journey I must ultimately make on my own. 

Even with my life partner by my side, as comforting as his companionship is, it is not imbued with the super-human qualities we attribute to our gods. I am not disappointed when he can not rescue me from the whirl-wind of life, when his only option to provide me relief is to join me in its peril. I would always take true human comfort, as rife with limitations as it is, to the figmentary comfort of religion. 

 If I want to survive I must relinquish my demons, I must surrender the spite and ardour upon which I survived for so many years which is now killing me. Perhaps if I can achieve that then I really will start new, because never before have I lived, created, endeavored, and dreamed in the absence of my spite. What might I have to offer, if my creativity arose from love, acceptance, and forgiveness, instead of rage, spite, and sorrow? 

In the moment of this realization, I longed deeply for a god upon whom to cast off this cape of misery, an immortal, divine power that could take my burdens from me. But that is not how the world works for me. Love is the divine, love is the power I need; through love I can forgive the transgressions of yesterday, my own, and those of others. With love I can heal the pain of disappointment from hopes that failed to flower; love can soothe away my resentment and sadness. The time has come to shed some of this pain, to let it go, to relegate it to the past where it belongs, and start new. So I tell myself.

If only the truth of life were as elegant as the stories we write about it. 

Investigating the Philosophy of Perception: the Relationship between perception and reality, and beyond

 Cogito Ergo Sum, said Renee Descartes. This thought, this revelation, was momentous in his explorations of Philosophy, his investigations of meaning, consciousness, and reality; it was a turning point in modern Philosophical thought. The other day, standing in line at a Circle K a mile south of my house, I stood behind a tawny, dark-haired young woman on whose neck was tattooed the simple statement, "I do perceive." In a brief moment of solipsism, I wonder if I had invented her, and that moment, standing in line, right where I could see those words.

At the same time, I felt a resonance; I am here, I am aware; and that simple statement made me feel a kind of kinship with this stranger.

Some philosophers argue that from this concept, one can surmise that all of reality exists the moment the individual perceives it, or that the only reality is ones consciousness, and that all of perception is but a dream occurring in the consciousness of the individual. In this theory, the only thing that exists is the individual, the self, who is dreaming life, the world, and all other beings. Therefore, the only being who truly exists, who is actually real, the only being who possesses agency. is the self. All other elements of reality, including other people and creatures, who appear within the dream of perception to be "conscious," are just figments of the dream, being perceived by the dreamer, who only exist on any level the moment the self perceives them, and to a lesser extent, when they are thought of by the self in their "absence."
These concepts, ethically challenging and outrageous as they might be, are all consequences of accepting the idea of solipsism. Solipsism is the name for the philosophical theory that, summed up in a blurb brought up by a quick word search on Google, "the self is all that can be known to exist;" or, as Wikepedia puts it, "the philosophical idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist[; as an epistemological positions, it] holds that knowledge outside of one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside [of one's] mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist."
There are a multitude of potential challenges to this theory. Imperative to exploration of the internal cognitive subjective existence versus the external world of theoretically objective reality is consideration of the numerous cognitive processes necessary to our awareness of both subjective and objective being. In the very process of analyzing and weighing the gap between these concepts of reality subjective cognitive processes are necessary to development of questions, justifications, rationalizations, data collection, asserting positions or opinions, and drawing conclusions based on that rigorous contemplative process. Because all elements of the thought process are necessary in initiating the conceptual dissection of this idea, I consider even my emotive reactions relevant.
When I consider the idea that I am alone, that all of the seemingly external components of reality are a fantasy, that every person I know, every bird I watched take flight, every sensation of warm, wet, cold, hard, crunchy, and the rest, are all inventions of my mind, my first sensations are of shock and incredulity. I don't believe it, it feels like it doesn't make sense.
I know that it is a concept that has been thought out, considered, justified, rationalized, chosen, concluded, by various thinkers in slightly different ways; I understand it as a concept, how much effort has bee put into the generation of its various iterations, I comprehend the rational being employed to support it. Yet despite all this, it feels like nonsense, it feels like a jest, it seems as if it stands in defiance of the very nature of reality and existence, and it feels absurd. When I seriously consider it, and let wash over my whole self the belief that only I exist, and all of this, and all of you, dear readers, and all of the people you talk to about this, every one you know, every one you love, every one you have heard of, everything you have ever done, every home, block, town, state or territory, country you lived in, was merely a dream I dreamt; is all a mere extension of myself, of my mind, in that it only exists because of me, and only exists within my mind.

But why am I not aware of myself outside of the dream? Why, as I dream, do I only exist as a tiny being within the dream? Am I asleep, in some vast, strange, cosmic sense? If I am all that exists, and all of this "reality" is my fantasy, then I was not created by the fusion of my father's sperm and my mother's egg because those people, that time and place, did not actually exist. Which means that, if my self, my consciousness exists, that this body, this form, and it's interaction on every level with my fantasy, is a part of the fantasy, as was my creation and development resulting from my parents reproductive cells, and the growth and development I underwent as a fetus inside my mother's reproductive organs, and my birth, and my growth as a child. I am not a human being, because those creatures are a creation of my imagination.It follows from this theory the this self that is being claimed is in itself is a fantasy. Why should we rely on our own subjective consciousness alone? If it only exists in the fantasy, it is in truth, only another facet of the fantasy.
Further more, if this were the case, how can autonomy be possible? If all of experienced reality is a fantasy, it is merely an elaborate game, and no true choice exists, because there will never be a truly external force to act in relation to.
That name, all those features and characteristics, all that history, are inventions of my fantasy. So I am some other kind of being, with some other kind of energy composition, some other kind of body than the one I am dreaming I have. Because, since all my bodily functions, and all the habits I employ to care for it's needs, such as eating, defecating, washing, dressing, sleeping, using sanitation in various forms, first aid, medicine, and the rest, are all figments.

They must not exist in the reality which contains this consciousness, what ever reality it is that exists when, or if, I stop existing.
If my consciousness were the only remotely real thing, then that is no reality at all. I have no opportunity to excersize true autonomy, and no ability to garner anything meaningful about knowledge or reality, because I would be fixed in a reality which, though created by me (somehow) is ultimately beyond my control, and simultaneously due to it's fragmentary nature, ultimately, irrelevant.
The only choice left to me is to affirm, regardless of my ability to verify it, that external reality exists, though the nature of that reality may be far more obscure than one might imagine; and to thus within it, do my best to act autonomously, or at least, under my own moral dictate that I attempt to do so regardless of whether the the world is a mathematical certainty at the end of the day.

What philosophy gives me is a chance to evaluate the nature of reality, knowledge, and choice. At the end of the day all the questions I can ask, all the investigations I can I pursue (and so far, I intend to continue in that vein)come to one thing. I have to make my choices the best I know how. 

Let The Brutal Honesty of These Painful Moments in Life be my Art

I love you, I say, and you say, "I love you." Yet as I stare at these words, I feel their meaning lost on me, from you, now.

I believe in redemption, I believe in forgiveness. I believe in love.

You tell me how sorry you are for not being the person I needed, for not being able to help me, to take care of me. You tell me that you realize now that you don't know me at all. If I am a stranger, than how can you love me? Who did you think I was? What was that person like? Was that idea of me a good thing, or when you say that, are you merely talking about certain parts of me that you perceived as the "the real me," which you considered separate from other parts of me which you held as anathema? Or was the entirety of the me you thought you knew a corruption, a tragedy of spoiled and marred innocence turned dark and sour? Or, did you hold me in a regard of hope, waiting for my redemption, believing that in the years of conflict in my adolescence I had been some how tainted against my will, and made a puppet, but that I would rise above this external influence, to see the world as you do? In realizing you "don't know me" are you suddenly afraid that I am a monster you simply have not been able to comprehend? Am I alien, foreign, unknown, dangerous, a threat? Or, do you finally realize that all your assumptions and assertions about my identity and experience were flawed? Do you realize now that they were skewed not only because you were experiencing it from your perspective, but because you were imbuing those experiences with assumptions of connections to  things that had nothing do to with who I was or am? Have you considered that you projected onto me the influences of persons like Donna and my mother, where there was no such connection to my thoughts or identity in that regard, and asserting, based on your experiences of them and associations and ideas about them, a dis-ingenuity to my words, expressions, and behaviors, a cunning and an intent of manipulation, a dishonesty and laziness which I do not possess? Has it finally occurred to you that I was not lying, was not faking it, was not parroting my mother, was not possessed by my grandmother or any other demon, was not out to torment you, was not just trying to get my way? Have you finally considered that maybe, just maybe, I was truly lost in unspeakable emotional grief, torment, sadness, darkness, and an overwhelming feeling of futility and meaninglessness? Is it possible that my heart was wounded, that my young, hormonal, developing mind was crumbling under stressors I could hardly comprehend much less cope with? Furthermore, that when I tried to express how lost and bereaved I was, tried to ask for help, admit that I was in a bad place, that I was lost and hurting and confused, I was met with criticism, hostility, incredulity, and condemnation.

I try to confide in you, give you pieces of my life from my own internal, first-hand experience. When I was eleven, twelve, and thirteen, and said I wanted to kill myself, I just wanted to die, you firmly believed, and continued to believe for years hence, with a deep sense of disgust, revulsion, incredulity, and shame, that I was merely saying that to manipulate you, to hurt you, to shock you, and to get my way. When I expressed directly the sense of bleakness, meaningless, and darkness closing in on me, you thought that I was pre-occupied with it, that I wanted it, that I had some kind of naive romantic entanglement with ideas of evil. You also believed that these thoughts and feelings were a direct result of my mother's influence, that she had some how contaminated me with her own bizarre thought patterns, and, or, her partner and friends had. But I did not relish evil ever; the evil that I laughed about was a parody of evil, like an evil care bear, or a nerdy, insecure vampire; not true evil, or true lawlessness; I still believed in love, compassion, justice, and goodness. Younger girls came to me in school to confide in me, to seek advice, because they were struggling to do the right thing, to know how to ask for help, to stand up for themselves, to prioritize their own values, to legitimize their self-worth, to cope with their body-image issues, to deal with bullying or sexual harassment from peers, and I always talked to them, tried to help them reason it out and find the answer that would work best for them, that would help them; if they were really in trouble, after talking to them for a little while, comforting them, summarizing what I understood about the problem, I would refer them to a teacher in the school who I knew was resourceful, kind, compassionate, and trustworthy. That was at ISA, in Seventh grade the second time, and in my Freshman year of high school, ages 13 and 15.

In my writing during my early teens, and when I talked about my thoughts and perspectives, when I spoke of pain, of meaningless and nihilism, the possibility that no benevolent God might exist, you again thought of it merely as a poisonous extension of my mother's influence, and convincing, detailed parroting of her own ideas and feelings, and perhaps also of those around her. You seemed to believe I reveled in the nihilism, in my spiritual doubts, in my mistrust of the world and the universe, in my sense that darkness was closing in on all of us, but you were mistaken. I was terrified. I had believed in a benevolent, all knowing, all powerful God, a God that was in all things, and all people. I had believed that while Christ was the son of God, and an extension of God, and God was in him, so were we all children of God, extensions of God, and that God was in all of us. I believed Jesus Christ was a divine mediator, an avatar of the all-being, created to communicate in a human way God's eternal, divine, unconditional love for all humanity, and all creation. I also believed that the soul never died, and life was a journey of learning, a class room which we entered again and again, each time with a different face, to learn a new lesson, or sometimes to learn the same lesson a different way. I believed that sometimes when we struggled to learn certain lessons which we had aimed to learn, we could get caught up in a cycle of ever increasing pain and suffering, never growing or transcending, sometimes even regressing for seasons beyond number; and I believed that God had created Christ and awakened him in a divine way to help show us the way, and that he died on the cross as a painful symbol that would burn into our memories, that we can pray to him, to God, to forgive us, to guide us, and to move us forward on the path to learning, to help us transcend those things which we struggled to learn, and over come them, there by continuing moving forward on our path of learning toward transcendence: reunion with the all-being, love, God, Nirvana.

I also believed, not even exactly consciously, that God had created a divine order, where love and goodness were always triumphant over evil and darkness.

Sadly, certain things happened which irreversibly shook my faith. I believed God would intervene, would show Her mercy on me by sparing those I loved from pain, by not taking away from me those I held dear, by giving me the chance to mend and develop my broken and underdeveloped relationship with my mother, and to be a bigger part of my sister's life, and various other things. I think in a childish sort of way, I believed I was special, that I had a purpose, that I had a path, a destiny. I didn't think my destiny was more important than that of any one else, I thought every one had a destiny, and not a rigid fixed one, but a fluid destiny with various possible out comes, but all in a similar direction. You all seemed to think I was special too, and Grandpa seemed to think I was some how chosen for something, or something like that.

I didn't expect that God would spare me pain and suffering over others, either; I just thought, well, God, Benevolent, all powerful, all knowing; it's God's job to spare people unnecessary pain and suffering when at all possible. I assumed that there was a greater plan, and of course, humans have free will, so I assumed God couldn't tamper with things that would mess up the plan or interfere too directly with free will, just because certain rules were put in place by all of us as God-extensions alongside God, in order to have the project that is earth-life.

But seeing Megan, a child, pre-adolescent she may have been, but still a child, being hit, called names, shamed by her mother; hearing Megan tell me how her mother told her she wished she'd had an abortion, hearing how Megan had been abused, had been passed around between family members all over the country, how she felt unwanted, how her mother left her alone all the time, I began to doubt God's benevolence, wisdom, and power. I loved her so much. In so much as an eleven and twelve year old can, I was in love with her; my best friend, my first girlfriend, my first love. I prayed and wished that if there was any power in the Universe at all, it would give me the pain, the curse that seemed to follow and haunt Megan every where she went, that if nothing else, I could take on her burden for her. There were times when I thought my prayer was answered in the subsequent years... but of course, I am skeptical of all that now. Seeing her suffering, being so helpless to help her, and going to Junior high, where I was so isolated and Megan wasn't there, I missed her terribly as I saw so much less of her, and I couldn't fit it, and several of my teachers seemed to decide I was a bad apple as soon as they laid eyes on me. The world started closing in. Everything was wrong, everything was falling apart, I didn't know how to deal with it, I didn't know what to do. I started forgetting things all the time, I found it hard to think, and as I fell further and further behind in school, and things spiraled more and more out of control, all I wanted was to escape. I wanted to escape the terror, the fear, the sensation of worthlessness. The word failure echoed in my head constantly, reminding me that my life had no value, I could not fulfill my most basic purposes, to fit in with society by doing well in school, impressing my teachers, fitting in with my peers, being organized, keeping my room clean, and maintaining a positive and productive outlook on life. The things I could do were meaningless except where they contributed to my productivity in school; my love of crafts, art, and writing, reduced to the margin where they contributed to my success and understanding of those courses. There was nothing of value about me, I was a pariah, a shame to my family, condemned and disdained by my instructors, shunned by almost all of my peers. Even my father, whom I looked up to so much, whose approval I longed for so deeply, could only look at me with frustration and disappointment. You were ashamed of me. I started talking to my mother more, trying to confide in her about what I was experiencing, how school was going terribly, how I wasn't getting along with any one at home, how I felt so alone and as if no one understood me, and she comforted me, told me that I was still worth while, that there were still good things about me, that I was a worth while person, and should just keep trying my best and hopefully in would be over soon, and things would get better.

Then, half way through the school year, just as for the first time in my life I was finally bonding with my mother, and when she was the only parental figure I had who didn't constantly seem ashamed, disappointed, and angry with me, who seemed to like me and think I was a good person even though I was messing up and didn't know how to succeed, I had been really enjoying the emotionally calming effect I experienced, playing, hanging, talking with, and taking care of, Aurora, too, and I loved her immensely. She was a newer and very different part of my family, not a grown up, not one of my "Parents" as I called the five separate adult who cared for me, but another kid, and a younger kid, a little one, who needed me, to love her, to give her attention. We had grown quite close, and I needed that loving relationship more than ever, and suddenly, it was ripped away from me. I felt hollow. I felt dead inside, empty. I stayed with them, at mom's, the weekend they left. I remember sitting next Aurora, between Mom and Michael in his big, old, 1970's truck at his rattled it's way down the freeway to the airport. I was wearing black-rimmed sunglasses with red lenses. My eyes welled up with tears as I thought about how long it would be before I saw them again. I had watched my mother go many times before, and I could be angry at her... but Aurora, Aurora didn't even have a choice. I wanted to keep her, to take her home with me to Dad's, to keep her, to make her my sister everyday. I felt so abandoned. She just packed up her stuff and left me behind, kissed me goodbye as she boarded the plane and flew away, and my dad found me at her boarding gate and drove me home. She offered, at some point, for me to come too, to follow after her, but at the time that was a knife twisting in my heart. I couldn't bear being asked to choose. I adored my father, and my grandparents, even my Uncle, they were my parents too, they were my family too... It wasn't fair for her to go away, to split us all apart, to make it impossible for us all to be together. I didn't let my face move on the walk back to the car, I kept my face still. My Dad parked on the roof of the building, because he thinks that's fun. He brought my Step-sisters with him, I believe, Megan and Jen, or maybe just Megan, I can't remember, maybe I'm wrong. When we got to the car he sighed, and I think he said something like, "Good riddance," maybe not so harsh, but some expression of his relief that my mother was finally gone. Then, the tears I held back came, and streamed down my cheeks. He looked confused, I think. It was almost as if, it seemed like, he expected me to be complicit in his resentment of her. But I wanted my Mom and sister back, I wanted them back more than anything in the whole world. How could God, the Universe, or any body, take them away from me like that? Why? Why did I have to lose my mother again, and when I finally felt as if I'd really had her for the first time since I was a tiny child. It took Dad a minute, but he did realize I was experiencing grief, and he reluctantly gave me a one-armed hug, and reassured me I'd see them again. I'm sure I snapped at him, maybe even yelled at him. I was so angry at him for not understanding, for being so caught up in his own resentment of her to see that I was hurt, that I was distraught, that I was heart broken, because I had just lost two of the people I love most in the world. I knew from years of silence, years of pretending that I disappeared when I went there, of pretending that my mother and anything that happened with her didn't count in the rest of my life at my Dad's, that even my grief was unwelcome, that it was a faux pa, I was breaking character, I was messing up the act.

You never considered that it was sincere, and that you were misinterpreting it all together. You never considered that I might truly be in the midst of such darkness and pain. You believed it was a petulant act, orchestrated to get under your skin. You considered even that I had been brainwashed by mother to express these thoughts, these feelings, these attitudes as a method for her to get some twisted revenge against you; even considered that I was possessed by the soul of my dead Grandmother, for the same person, to wreak havoc and take some twisted revenge against you. Failing that, as both of those are stretching reason, you simply thought that perhaps my blood was tainted by their foul inheritance, and as their spawn I had early developed a complex and sadistic technique of tormenting you, and making you miserable, purely for my own indulgence. 

Reaction to Hardcore History podcast

Hardcore History- Logical Insanity Podcast

How soon we forget the mistakes of our past. I find it challenges my credulity that in many cases, if anything is learned at all, it is learned at best one nation at a time, and nations throughout the humanity continue to take these heinous approaches to power struggles, global, local, or civil. I don't think its a matter of "first world nations" having gotten the space to make these mistakes. These are mistakes we have made, and are making, as a species against ourselves.

We made mistakes in the first and second world wars of blindness, of distance, of disassociation. We still do, all over the world, and we progressively grow more callous as human beings toward violence committed by our own hands against other human beings. As people, we allow cultural delusions to desensitize us against murder, such as labels. We dehumanize our opponent, call them Westerners, Americans, Jihadists, terrorists, Muslims, Christians, etc.; it is that easy. Labels are used as license to kill millions of people, world wide, all the time.

Think about that the next time you use one.

What it Means to be in Love

Just because we're different

doesn't mean you've got to hate me

just because we're different

doesn't mean I've got to hate you

I am the woman I grew up to be

and your the man that you grew into

On the way to raising me

Lots of pain, and lots of tears

lots of broken promises

Lots of hopes and fears

But if I don't try to see you

and you don't try to see me

if we don't sit down

and try to get perspective

we both lose

we both lose

Cause I'm the little blond girl

you loved so dearly

whose not so little any more

and I'm sorry I grew up angry

But that's not all I have in store

and maybe I am different,

even in the best light

from everything you thought that I would be

But I'm still me, and when I look you

torn and hurt as I may be

I'm covered by a flood of happy memories

Just you and I, we sat out for so many hours

rowing on the lake until your legs turned red

but the truth was it didn't matter

'cause we were there together, side by side

and I didn't have to know what you were going through

to be there cause I am your daughter and I love you

in the dark places just like in the light

I haven't done a good job all the time

The fault for that is mine

And as for all the guilt you carried all the what if only's

Well here's what there is

beauty to be found here if you look

maybe we're not well equipped for truth

And I know I have a daughter who you love like all the world

and I know I have a daughter who saved my whole world

And yes we love differently

but I hope we love her just the same

Because she's her, for who she can be, will be, who she is

and if we love each other

we will teach her what love is

so know I love you Daddy

I still want to hold your hand

Remember what your mother said

and I promise I will too

Your a daddy or mommy

not for ten years or twenty two

but for life

And I still want to be here,

despite all the strife

When I look in my girl's brown eyes

theres one thing I hope she knows

no matter how deep the water gets,

no matter where she goes. even when she sins,

even if she lies, even if she hurts herself,

or tries to take a life; even if she's an astronaut,

a republican or born again,

and thinks my soul will burn hell

I will accept her, and love her, and give her all I can

Because I can, because I love her,

that's what moms are for 

I always had faith that you would be there

that you would love me to the core

but some where in this mess you lost sight of me

and thought I was some kind of changeling

but the daughter who got sick with sadness

the daughter that ran away

is the same girl that came back again

and she came back again to stay

and she could have moved on,

to California or Oregon

but she stays in this hard dry land

to be with her father, who she loves,

even when it hurts

Doctor Who and Trans

I am a TARDIS: I am Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. So much more more than my exterior, it is merely a disguise, a way of blending in, like a chameleon. I still don't always fit, but my exterior visage and dimensions remain the same regardless of what new world I have landed. I am this ship, and it is me, but I am so much more than I seem.

I am bigger on the inside, I am riddled with passage ways and rooms; I am full of memories, and a font of possibilities. My potential adventures are endless. My dreams are new worlds, my foot steps passed up realities.

I am bigger on the inside; my extery structure serves merely as an interface between myself and the external world. I am vessel through which to see new realities, and I am here to see them. I use my journeys to fight injustice, to more fully realize myself.

People call me "Miss," "girl," "mam," or refer to me as "woman." But for all the effect it has on my identity, they might aswell call me a phone booth, or a car. There is so much room inside me, for love, for life, for expression and creation, for experiencing new worlds, and synthesizing new knowledge.

I am a trans dimensional being. I am not what I seem. I am bigger on the inside. I have room for passengers. There is more to me then meets the eye, and I do not fit in the world of limited identity definitions as laid out by the world I was born in to; I couldn't if I tried,

I am not what I seem, but I am not disingenuous. I am more than you can handle, and I don't quite fit, but I wouldn't change it for anything. I am a being of the mind, I am a creature of time, of learrning, of exploration,

Beyond man or woman, beyond gay straight or bi, beyond human centric existence, I am a consciousness, learning. Growing, experiencing, and my vessel is this body; an amalgam of DNA in XY configuration, replete with hormonal, neurological, cultural, and psychconditioned quirks: but a vessel still. More anything, I am this consciousness. This journey, this awareness, transcends all that humanity and culture can impose on me.

I am me.

Tales We Tell

My heart is the tome of stories I gave you from my dried and cracking lips on a warm desert autumn night long ago. You didn't know what you held in your hands, what you heard in your ears; it's nothing really. Its that small scrap of fabric you found in the dollar section; that cracked old frame for the photo of your grandparents; an inherited old suitcase, well-worn from travel, that you use, because even old and broken things need love, and they're beautiful, in a special kind of way.

 I gave you myself, I gave you my life; my darkness and my light. I chiseled out the characters, I painted the shame in shades of grey, and in an hour of darkness when you wondered if I would survive the weight I carry, I painted in bright lights what I think hope is. Most of all, I gave it all to you. You took this, naked and exposed piece of me, and doubt was in your eyes. Who would give themselves away like that? You tucked it up on a shelf for occasional revisiting, hid it in the back of a closet; away from the eyes of jealous lovers and false friends, never quite believing it was real.

That's okay, and if you throw it out with your old sneakers in the spring cleaning, that will be okay too. It was a gift, from me to you, and it's not worth much really; its yours now.

Perhaps, in a time of pain, you try to remember the few people in your life who were real; who tried to be honest, who gave up something of themselves, and you will think of me. Maybe, when you are in an hour of darkness, and you struggle to paint the shame in shades of grey, and fight to survive the weight on your shoulders, you will try to remember what hope is, and you will give me a call. You will wonder when you do, you will know this is the moment of truth; but I answer the phone, and the breath on the other end of the line is the same breath that delivered this gift to you.

I will not come to recollect it, I did not leave it with you by mistake. Poor as I am in this world, it is my heart I have the most of which to give; in this one way I am wealthy. I will give myself away again and again, in the strange hours before the dawn, on a warm, a balmy, or a freezing night. I will remember, even if I don't answer.

What you didn't realize, was that when I left, I took a piece of you too.

Nello

I loved the way your cold blue eyes looked through me. In a world where every one would only look to see what they wanted to see, to see what they expected, when you looked at me I knew you could see me. My scars, my shame, my dark secrets were to you were as much the familiar features of an old friend's face.

So we found each other, two young strangers in a strange land, two orphans, two children on the brink of womanhood who knew how, strong as love is, it could itself be broken.

But we had each other. So much cruelty had plagued my life, and you were kind, and you were gentle, and you were smiling, and making jokes. The shadows of suffering in your heart only made you more tender toward mine. You looked at me with prematurely jaded eyes and told me, you are so much more than you think you are.

You are the only person who could have said that to me then who I would believe.

Love comes in a billion forms, even more. Love is like water, love is like air. The truth is, it is a power that we fight to describe yet evades description. But you loved me Nello, and I loved you, and in that moment, we were orphans, and when you are an orphan, you choose your sisters, and you were mine. I know you still feel it, just like I do, far far away. I am grateful.

Being Human

Stafford said a writer should always write, and I try, oh I try. As prolific as my pontifications have been over the years have been however, its those times I don't, or can't write I seem to find myself wondering about. Stafford wrote every morning, for example. Usually, when I awaken in the morning, I have grown used to waking feeling ill. Every muscle in my body is stiff, my head pounds, my teeth hurt, I struggle to maintain smooth control over my muscles movements, instead shambling and stumbling through the house as if half-alive to see to my preparations.
I have so many ideas about what is right and good, so many ideas of injustice and cruelty; or of oppression and corruption, of freedom and liberty. But holding these dreams tight inside my chest is the knowledge that life is full of hard decisions, life is full of doubt and regrets. I recriminate this culture, I recriminate this world; I recriminate the masses and I recriminate those who rule with iron fists of power, loaded with money and bullets. But I don't know if I have an answer; I could follow in the foot steps of so many philosophers before me and try to devise some theory of society, some theory of justice to try to solve the woes of world; like Mill, Engels, Russel, Hegel or Marx, or so many others. But the truth is, I don't think there is some magic answer that has simply not yet been discovered, so I can not dig it out for you; I can not even dig it out for myself and say objectively, "This is truth! This is all that should be!."
All I can do is try to find what seems like truth to me, and I won't pretend that because it feels true to me that makes it the absolute truth. If you want my opinion, there is no such thing; I am fond of Sarte, Hume, Beauvoir and Camus.
As confined as I find myself within this consciousness, in which I can verify nothing external, I choose to believe, based on how other beings in this world seem that I am not alone. The best I can do is reach out to others in the world, my loved ones, my friends, my children, my lovers, even strangers, associates, and persons with whom I only contact for "professional" reasons, is to try to share as best I can the knowledge and value of our common humanity.
We are all born, we all love, we feel, we all hunger, we all hope, and one day, we all die. Why don't we try to remember along the way that all 9 billion of us are facing those same trials, those same hopes and heart breaks?

Wings

I didn't question why she sold her body and her time to older men, I asked her why all she bought for it was drugs. She hadn't bought underwear in fifteen years, but soft bare skin beneath tight jeans or sheer dresses was more inviting for her purposes. Three babies shared the floor while Mama got the couch, and around the house she wore the raggedy old cotton under pants. Her eyes had grown dim and distant, her cheeks and sockets hollow, and sharp angles outlined her frame. Hungry for home, for love, for shelter, she was starving for safety. The tender embraces of strangers became a comfort to her.

After years of abuse she’d finally left the lover who gave her those three young boys, only to take a phantom to her bed. This time, her bed was warmed by the darkly shrouded father of dreams, heroin. She used him to quiet the aching of her battered body, to soothe the scars left in her heart by a life time of cruelty from those who should have cherished her. The oily darkness of her somnambulist state made her numb to the heart break of her own inadequacy, and to the tragedies of the heartless world.

No one is born this way. So many words are inspired by her, words of resignation, words of condemnation, epithets. Ava's own mother had three husbands and five children. A bed-ridden, arthritic pill-popping middle-aged woman, she offered little support to a difficult situation. Her father was denied her by a set of ugly circumstances, riddled with misdirected accusations, leaving Ava with the guilty stepfather her mother favored. 

Her step-father molested her when she was under the age of four; memories of it were put aside firmly in her mind, and blurred distinctly by the terror of those disturbing experiences. Her favorite elder brother began the affair which made her the object of his sexual appetites and explorations when Ava was only six or seven, and he was seven years older than she.Her step-father was not, in fact, her brother Randy's father either, though Randy too, had spent part of his child hood in a home with his mother where he was also a step child of this man. His behavior begs the question as to where he picked up this pattern of exploitative sexual abuse. The strange illicit affair continued through and beyond her confession that her "Daddy" had touched her, in reaction to the good-touch/bad-touch lectures she received in school for the first time in second grade. She said, looking back, they didn't say anything about kids touching other kids, she just thought as a little girl that maybe it was just something brothers and sisters did sometimes. She was, in a way that is often instinctive of human beings, loyal and protective of her beloved brother, also; she wouldn't have wanted him to get into trouble. The illusion of willingness she held protected her from acknowledging the fear that compelled her to be complacent to the demands which held behind them threats of force, violence, and cruelty. The more she could convince herself it was okay, that she was truly her older brother's willing lover, the more compliant she would really be, and there fore, the safer from violence and aggression on top of the interactions she was already being compelled to perform and participate in regularly. 

Time and circumstance swept in again separated her from her brother, when her mother kicked her out at around age twelve, forcing her to go live with the only father she'd ever really known, her step father. She was insulated from fearing him, and instead trusted him and loved him, having been convinced by her mother's insistence over many years that Ava's biological father, not her step father, was the one who had abused her. Being an early teen of twelve, she had begun to push her brother away in what ways she could, and his attentions had grown distant as he began developing relationships with girls his own age. Moving out only solidified that distance, but it was still a great relief to Ava, because one of her other brothers had just begun to show a similar perverted interest in her. She caught him a couple of times peering through a crack in her bedroom door, or boldly just sneaking into her room at night where she accosted him and sent him away. 

At her step-father Charlie's town house, it was just her and Charlie, and in keeping with the story Ava had been fed, he didn't try to touch her again. Only, she would catch him, looking at her now and then, in a way a father shouldn't look at his daughter. She spent her high school years holed up in her room with friends. She found herself a female friend, they had one of those kind of high-school girlfriend relationships where they were glued to each other's hip; their names became one, synonymous word: Ava&Courtney, Courtney&Ava. With a flare of bisexual curiosity, they developed a sort of infatuation for each other that meshed well with their close friendship. Both only fourteen, Courtney, on Ava's invitation, moved into the little condo Ava shared with her "Dad" Charlie. Courtney's mother was also estranged from her, and her father was neglectful and absent-minded regarding his children, so it was a simple matter for Court' to gather up her clothes, favorite books, diaries, and teddy bear and move into Ava's bedroom full-time. They lived like that in a little bubble of girlish adoration and dysfunction, sharing anorexic diets and Adderall binges to whittle down their already tiny, frail, 110 pound-bodies. They decorated the walls of Ava's room together, from floor to ceiling; painted it in finger paints, wrote messages in marker, pinned up posters, photographs, event flyers, music show tickets, movie ticket, stolen street signs, pieces of silky underwear, and all the flotsam and jetsam of an unsupervised teenage love-affair. 

Of course it didn't last, and the end was in it's own way, a small tragedy. A boy came along a shift their tight duo into an awkward, ill-fitted tri. Courtney fancied George, but George fancied Ava. Ava was famously susceptible to flattery and false sense of acceptance she received from the sexual attention of males. Very soon, Courtney gathered up her things, and moved back home.

The high school sweet heart she escaped with, bore three sons for, and remained loyal eight years to, beat her, controlled and belittled her, and turned her into a pet. Love never did her any favors, not with Charlie, not with Randy, and not with Courtney or George. True to human nature, however, Ava kept right on loving in all the ways she knew how. 

She spent eight long years trying to love George, but George was just another model of the same trope she'd had to fight for her life all her years against. He was an abuser; he pushed her, shoved her, poured boiling hot coffee on her, told her who she could talk to, where she could go, who she could be friends with, put her down, accused her of cheating on him, punched her, pulled her hair, screamed at her, threatened to kill, and coerced her into sex any time he wanted to, disregarding her desire or notable lack there of. She tried to be complacent as she learned to be, complacency was supposed to protect her from beatings and cruel words. But George and his drinks weren't satisfied by her complacency, and he made sure she knew it every time he got drunk and decided to tell her all the made-up, jealous, insecure delusions he used to justify beating her. Often as not, he smack her around in a drunken rage, and once he got out the adrenaline and started to cool off, he'd be touching her, holding her close, stroking her arm, kissing her face, and trying to work his way back into her pants. All of this she endured while she suffered through three pregnancies, three births, and spent all her time caring for, teaching, providing for, in general, properly Mothering, the three sons that he fathered with her. Ava was consumed by mothering, she ate, slept, and breathed motherhood; it became everything she was. Ava had lived a hard and confusing life, and finally, she had a sense of purpose: Love these children, care for these children, be a good mother and make them know they are loved. But if anything, rather than appreciate or admire Ava's devotion to motherhood, he seemed jealous. His accusations of infidelity generated by this sense of jealous were just laughable; with three children under the age of four, and only a husband to provide some half-assed help, she didn't have time for even a one night stand. 

Eventually, she had endured all she could take. Trying to be a strong woman and good mother, she left him and took a job. She was smart and charismatic, and tried to start a healthy life. A low rent, utilities-included apartment and right below her rediscovered blood-father Allen and half-sister seemed cozy. Meeting Allen again for the first time in seventeen years induced several revelations in Ava. His love and support, and constant reminders of her inherent value as a woman, a person, and a mother helped give her the strength to walk out on George. Meeting Allen cleared something else up for Ava too. For years she has harboured secretly in her heart her misgivings about the story her mother had fed her about who had abused her. Interviews with the young Ava had yielded reports from psycho-analysts that she had been essentially brain-washed by her mother to blame Allen, and in her interviews provided little details as to the experiences she has actually had. She feared it was true, and feared for many, many years for the half-sister she knew Allen was raising. Nestled in her mind, though, was the true memory she had been to delicate to reveal to investigators, or in detail to any one, as a child. Having loved and trusted Charlie, her heart pressed her over and over to distance Charlie from the details of that memory. When she met Allen, though, she found he far from filled that space. He did not fit the memory of the man who had sexually abused her in the shower when she was two or three. Suddenly, in the wake of that realization, she realized that Charlie was the one who fit into her memory; suddenly she re-integrated a memory of him admitting to her, once, when she had grown into an adult, that he had touched her, that he had just been, "curious," supposedly because of Allen having touched her. It all came together with sickening clarity, his half-hearted admission, his weak justification attempting to redirect the blame at Allen; her memories, the fact that her mother had recently broken up with Allen when the accusation came out, and that Ava's mother's relationship with Charlie had still been new and fresh. Many parents don't want to believe these revelations when they are revealed, especially when the person who stands accused is a trusted friend, beloved family member, or worse, a spouse. Ava's mother had every motive not to want to believe that Charlie was guilty, it was much safer for her to blame Allen, whom she had already rejected and pushed out of her life. She blamed him, attempted to press charges, leading her 5 year-old daughter into telling the story in a way that implicated Allen, (strongly enough that investigators noted the obviousness of this psychological tampering,) and, when the investigation failed to demonstrate his guilt, she simply took Ava away, moved somewhere with out telling Allen, and hid Ava from Allen for the rest of her childhood. By doing this, she protected her relationship with Charlie, protected herself from the awfulness of the revelation that a man she was currently in love with had molested her child, and acted in a way that she and others in her life could see as adequately protective of her traumatized daughter. Its doubtful Ava's mother realized her bias, and likely even that she didn't realize the degree to which she had led Ava in her retelling of events. She acted based on her own instincts, her own perception of what the truth had to be. 

Unfortunately, it just so happened in the end, that the person who had truly been wronged in the situation eventually came to believe that her mother's version of events was incorrect.

Painful as it was at first when she realized the man who had actually raised her had been the one who had betrayed her in that awful way, she also rejoiced in discovering her real father as a loving, caring, invested man; and her long-estranged half-sister whom he had largely raised on his own to be a healthy, content, normal teenage girl with no battle scars or horror stories from sexual or any other kind of abuse from their father. The greatest scar Ava's sister Rachel seemed to bear was the neglect and eventual abandonment by her mother, exacerbated and likely partially caused by Rachel's mother's methamphetamine addiction. Her father, however, had always been there for her, remaining by his wife's side, believing for many years that despite his wife's issues it wouldn't be fair to Rachel to rob her of her mother. Finally, when Rachel was nine years old, she told her father, Allen, that she didn't want them to live with her mother anymore; that she didn't like sharing her life with the life her mother was living. Almost instantly, Allen had them pack up all their necessary items and pick up and leave; all he wanted was to do what was best for Rachel, his baby. All of these details served to further encourage Ava in the trustworthiness of Allen, and she accepted him into her life as her father, and as the grandfather of her three sons.

Allen wasn't perfect either, though, and it's hard to form a strong bond with an adult daughter who has been estranged for nearly twenty years. He had lost the chance to see her grow up, to know her in that special way that only parents who raise their children can known them. His patience was often short, he was, much like Ava, a perfectionist about cleanliness of the home, proper hygiene and personal care. He found the sprawling presence of Ava's three sons, their squeals, shrieks, laughter, and mess-making, initially charming and lovable, but soon grew to find them very frustrating and straining. Initially, he'd been delighted to have her come to live in his apartment with her children, to help her escape the awful abusive marriage she had been trapped in for so long. 

Soon, though, trying to make the most of the situation and be supportive despite his increasing short fuse, he had helped her to get the deal on the apartment downstairs from his. When she struggled to make rent, for a little while, he helped with that too. Much like his patience though, his financial resources were not infinite. Ava struggled to work enough hours to make enough money, while still being available for her children as Allen and Rachel were her only source of child care, and they were growing less and less accommodating. Life taught Ava to be willing to sell herself out for security, if the things she face seemed too hard or too frightening. She fantasized about a man with resources whom she could enchant and entice with her beauty to rescue her and her sons from poverty.

Then, a sweet talking man as old as her Daddy promised to save her if she would just be his. She quit her job and rent was paid for months. Gleaming, she primped and smiled, cleaned house and read self-help books. She grew righteous with his sage advice, she was obedient, and she played only the games her told her to, dreamed only dreams he allowed. So needy of patience, gentleness, shelter and love, she gave him her heart and hoped to gain his devotion in exchange.

Months went by, and his promises grew, his financial investment in her bloomed, and so did her hope. Rent was paid and her sent her to bar-tending school, attempted to help her get her GED, and took her to nice restaurants. He talked business, and let her help him on his landscaping jobs. He lived in a city a thirty minute drive from her north Phoenix apartment, and would pick her and her kids up to spend days at his place. Then his eldest daughter visited, and saw Ava in a pair of sneakers she had rejected a few months earlier. Disapproving whispers grew and spread among not only his older children, but his friends also. Over time he began to falter at her entrance, stopped smiling, and stopped giving her advice. He stopped holding her after he used her body, and stopped asking her over and stopped using her at all. Finally, complaining of work, grown kids, ex-wives, and trust issues, he stopped kissing her goodbye.

With almost no family and no affluent friends to help her, distanced from her step-father in light of the revelations she had come to about his deeds, at the limits of the financial and emotional support her father Allen could provide, and with friends who mostly faced similar hardships to her own, she faced parenthood, unemployment, empty cupboards, and eviction, alone. With her loneliness, the pain in her body that had haunted her intermittently for years expanded, rendering her motionless and apathetic on the couch. Just after the birth of her third son, she had seen her primary care doctor, and then rheumatologist; the first told her she had Fibromyalgia Syndrome, the second told her that in addition, she also had  juvenile osteoarthritis, and that it had been ravaging her spine undetected for at least 6 years. Suggestions that the cause of the latter condition might be genetic offered little comfort, she was twenty-four year old and her body was already falling apart. 

She needed a man, she insisted. The doctors warm, glowing Percodans came to dampen the pain, along with x-rays exposing the brittle spine of an eighty-year old woman in her curvy, winsome twenty-four year old body. She started chain-smoking and drinking black coffee. She searched and hoped for a stable, healthy life.

Instead, a cherub-faced mulatto with the body of a Greek god came along and wrapped his arms around her. Honey filled his voice, poured over her bitterness like balm. He was a dancer at a club, but he said he loved her. His pockets held a remedy for what ailed her: crystallized excitement, meth-am-feta-mean. She was off the couch and dancing in no time. She moved so fast she became invisible. The boys played as if she weren't there; they screamed and destroyed, stole from and hit each other. She planned schedules, chore charts, discipline strategies, ways to make money. She planned so much she was too busy to do the work. Her wings grew so big she forgot how to fly. The patio of her sub-level apartment became a meeting place for the neighborhood, full of people waiting, telling stories, making phone calls, and meeting up. She would laugh and dance, leave and return, all through the night while the children slept.

One day she woke as if from a dream. Flinching with a start at the mess and the noise, she sent her cherubic gladiator packing, swept the patio, and closed the door. She was alone again. She bartered, cleaned houses, begged and cried. A ten here and a twenty there wasn't enough to pay rent. Finally, she gave in and reconnected with her reluctant step-father, having never confronted him with her revelations, but non-the-less playing on his guilt which he couched in the guise of fatherly affection, and persuaded him to pay her rent. She was too bewildered by the chaos and the demands of motherhood to look for work, and after a year of trying to be free, she sulked back to her ruthless, wreckless high school sweet heart.

“I just want us to be a family again,” he said. He came with pockets lined with anesthetic. Pills were hard, but she used to stop; coke was worse but she quit that too. Meth was bright and terrible, but she had put that behind her before. Then there was Smack. Nose, mouth, veins, no road was too good for the dream-maker, the faster the better. By this time, I’d been gone a while from Ava's world, trudging through my own disasters and hiding from the heart break of her downward spiral.

I was sixteen, and the walls of the room she had in her step-father’s condo were covered in an impressive collage of posters, paintings, and stolen street signs. She beckoned me forward. She grasped my face in her hands and planted her mouth on mine. Hers were the first lips I kissed. Warm, wet, and full of passion, I didn’t expect to be sparked a light, for my cheeks to burn. She released me and laughed raucously with jaded eyes, and our friends hooted and laughed with her as I tried to orient myself. For months after that, passing her in the hall at school, it was hard to grasp how she could pretend to so much passion.

Eight months pregnant with my daughter, my belly swollen and round, and her son was still in swaddling. She’d disappeared junior year of high school, trading text books for menus. My fiancée, Danny, hadn't really had the change get used to the presence of babies before, having been five when his twin brothers were born, and not having much close contact with extended family, so she brought Xander over to remedy the issue. Xander was her first son, seven months old on the day she brought him to visit us; no hints were even being whispered yet of her two other boys, yet to come. She was eighteen, and I was nineteen, about to turn twenty a month before my little girl would be born. “Before you have the baby,” she advised me, “get a pedicure. It’s really relaxing and soothing to your swollen feet, and then when you’re in labor you can focus on your pretty toenails.”

When she had a bad day back then, she would vent her rage sanitizing bathtubs, washing dishes in scalding water, vacuuming, and rearranging furniture. He husband, George, she said, was completely self-absorbed, didn't take fatherhood seriously, and only wanted one thing from her. We began spending a good deal of time with each other, a pair of the few members of our small social circle who had children early on, weathering the storm of new motherhood alongside the seasoning process of transforming from an uninitiated youth into a hopefully competent, respectable adult. Yet even when I visited, George remained a shadowy figure in the background; he seemed to have little to do with who Ava was, what she wanted, or what mattered to her; not because she didn't love or want him, but because he was so aloof and disconnected from her interests. She seemed so indomitable with her plans, her routines, her laughter. I’d get sick or have to work doubles when times were hard. She’d arrive at my door, mop, broom, and sponges in hand to scour my apartment. “You deserve it,” she’d say. “We have to take care of each other.” I couldn't argue with that, life is hard enough with out having people you love and trust who you can rely on to help you through the tough times. She wouldn't have so much as let me touch a mop handle in her apartment if I’d tried, but sometimes I’d come over and sneak in a meat loaf or a casserole. I got my license and a mini-van long before she did, and I'd drive over to the apartment she shared with George, and she'd load Xander up in the van next to my little Ayala, and I'd take her with me to grocery store. This spared her negotiating favors from dubious relatives, or having to negotiate the public transit system with an infant, a heavy stroller complete with baby carrier, and a load of groceries on her own.

We were artists, or, we were becoming artists, together. I’d pull together desks and tables, set out canvas and acrylic paint, and cook a lean meal. We’d spent the night singing to music and making beautiful messes. No anesthesia needed then, we had our laughter, our creativity, and our friendship to carry us through. We’d go down town on Wednesday night and help teach spiritual art to teens at a down-town church in a struggling neighborhood with our former high school art instructor, take trips to first Friday and admire the glowing galleries. Life began to whisper hope into our hearts of a life in which we could make beautiful things, do beautiful things, make a difference in peoples lives, and find good and honest ways of taking care of ourselves and our families.

We were still swapping recipes and editions of Family Circle Magazines when she told me she was pregnant again. Her lips pressed into a thin line and she cursed in fear, said she didn't know what she’d do. I knew what I would've done, but then, I wasn't her. I tried to help her stand by her decision to bring that child into the world, with love and hope, but I was scared too. Along came Zachary, born big and always growing at a pace that seemed to allow him to outgrow his older brother, Xander. Two months after Zach was born, I was getting married. After four years of a turbulent and passionate love-affair and the birth of our mutual child, I finally tied the knot with Danny, in my iridescent olive-green a-line wedding dress and black combat boots, crammed into the courthouse with thirty relatives and our chubby-cheeked eighteen-month old daughter in tow. Ava was overcome by the demands of a two-month old infant and one-year old son, and wasn't able to make it that day, but our friendship continued to grow. Six or seven months later, it was Ava's birthday, I was throwing her a birthday party at my apartment for grown-ups only, and as I tried to hand her one of my special margaritas, she shook her head, smiling wanly. “I’m pregnant.” She said. Knocking back the glass of triple sec, lime and tequila myself, I admired her bravery as I counted my blessings.

We both bore the brunt of our husband's short-tempers, harsh words, and demanding temperaments, but while George got physical occasionally he hadn't yet pulled the horror-film evoking stunts that Danny had. The youngest boy had just been born and my own life as I knew it, and all that I expected to come, was counting down to the day of reckoning when it would all turn upside down. My little girl was growing taller every day, and more timid and watchful of father's hair-trigger temper as she did. She had already begun to develop a charming sense of humor, aimed at diffusing tension, in response to the constant sense of hostility between her parents. “You need to leave, he’s going to kill you,” Ava told me one day, as I sat sobbing on her couch in her apartment after fleeing from a particularly brutal conflict with Dan. So I left. Married June 15th, 2003; Separated, September 8th, 2004. Likely I'd succumbed the common delusion, that some how imposing this sense of "legitimate" commitment would some how resolve the failures of my relationship. I cried as I watched my hopes and dreams crumble, and she soothed me and hugged me tight. She told me I deserved to be safe, I’d find love again, and I’d be happier alone. When I had to return to the apartment for my things, sweet Ava came with me, armed not only with her usual tools but also with boxes, packing tape, and newspaper. She brought her indomitable sense of organization, and her overwhelming smile. I howled and pulled my hair as the remains of my life were packed carefully into labeled boxes. She did most of the work and told me again how wonderful I was, and how things would get better.

That was years ago now, and after holding my hand at a pivotal time in my life, her own flight to freedom led her instead to a fall. Perhaps the weight she carried in her wings was heavier than mine, for no words and act of help I offered could assuage the oncoming descent. Her fall was the kind that strips a woman of her titles: mother, wife, friend, artist. Part of me says inside, “There but for the grace of the universe go, I.” I know, behind her jaded eyes is the woman with the overwhelming smile, the mirthful laugh, who is determined, hopeful, and striving; the woman who once helped me save myself. Though I can’t take her weight, or give her my wings, I will always remember.