Little Lady.

Standing on the street corner beside tourists swinging cameras and kids from shoulders and hips, I am hungover. My head is thick with leftover gin. It would have been a better idea to stay in bed.

I stand, confused. This city’s strange to me; I don’t know where I’m headed.

Pulling up behind me, he rings the bell on his bike – a stiff reminder I should have taken a Tylenol or two before braving the world.

“Where you headed today, miss?”

“I’m in search of the perfect cup of coffee and something to kill this hangover.” A smile, hesitant. I think I may still be drunk.

“Hop in,” shrugging a shoulder toward the passenger cab tugging behind his bike.

“What’s the catch?”

“I don’t feel like working today. You buy me a cup of coffee, I’ll take you on a tour of the city unlike anything you’d experience with these yahoos,” he points to double-decker buses manned by sour looking guides dressed in period garb, tugging at lace and cummerbunds desperate to escape the heat.

“Yeah, okay,” I sigh.

“Climb in, little lady.”

“Right, only on the condition you please not call me little lady. Or ma’am. I’m not that young, but I’m not that old.”

“Sure, whatever you say princess.”

Weaving in and out of traffic we leave the tourist trap and cruise down residential side streets with clapboard fences and overgrown gardens. No one knows where I am or who I’m with. And what if this fellow’s only stolen me from the busy pedestrian street to skin me alive and leave me for dead in a dumpster behind the A & W, where I’ll be found by the late-night shift worker as he dumps the day’s grease trap over my quickly rotting body, flies swarming in and out of my mouth, my eyes glass marbles staring straight at the 14-year-old kitchen monkey who before that moment thought his only real problem was whether or not to tell Sarah he’d like to be her boyfriend?

Instead, we stop at Serious Coffee, a bohemster café complete with hippy-grain muffins and home-brewed dark roast. Not a bad start to curing the hangover.

“The best coffee in town,” he says, handing me an extra-large. “You cold? I’ve got a blanket in here you can use. I wouldn’t want you suffering from a chill while I do all the hard work up here,” a wink, quick and sparkling.

We tour through old China town. Pulling over, he ushers me out of the cab. Walking down a desperately narrow street he talks about the old days, about the thousands of people crammed into impossibly small places, the half addresses for half floors. We walk into the door of a shop crammed high to the roof with trinkets made of wicker, wood, tin, painted bright colors. We walk through room after room, small hallways leading into open spaces, the inventory a never ending collection of silk-bound journals and parasols. Nodding at the girl at the counter, he leads me out another door back into the street. There’s the bike, but that’s not the door we came through.

Huh. The hangover, it starts to wane.

Spinning through the market, we smell flowers and put our hands in vats of bulk grains. I splash my hands in the fountain and pose for touristy photos – broad plastic smile, standing with strangers.

Out of the market, he pedals us uphill toward the park – an open heartland of acre upon acre of gifted trees not native to the area. Eucalyptus in the middle of a west coast island. Monkey trees wrapping around Maples.

We stop to feed the ducks and even though I hate birds I let them eat right out of my hand because in the soft sunlight they don’t seem as dirty and plotting as they do in my imagination. We wander over to the gazebo – an orchestra plays and a little girl in a sundress spins circles around the crowd, her steps ill-timed and dizzy.

“I’ve been doing this for almost eight years now, you know? Being a tour guide, it’s not a bad lifestyle – get up in the morning, talk to people, put a little cash in my pocket. It’s not glamorous, but I don’t mind. Sure I sleep in my van, don’t have much to call my own, but I did that once, I was a real greedy bastard, working the oil for more money I didn’t know what to do with.

“You think about giving up all them comforts for a little freedom like that? Sell your stuff, give up that apartment of yours, see where life takes you? I wouldn’t go back. When I was traveling, I saw a happiness in people that was never because of money, you know? Those third world countries, they’ve got nothing like we do but what they do have? That look – you know, that satisfaction. They know what happiness is. They find it every day in the people around them”

Riding along the border of the ocean, we watch kite-surfers twist over tail winds. We stop and pick chestnuts from a tree in the bluff. Up the street and around the bend, we stop at an old lady’s garden and eat flowers from the dirt, rub fresh lavender on our temples.

We go to the wharf where we watch a fat seal eat salmon right from the fingers of a little boy.

“That seal eats better than I do!” he says.

I smile.

We walk along the dock, peering in the windows of houseboats.

“Can you imagine – two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars for a boat you can’t take away from the dock. What’s the use?”

Good point.

We sit on the edge of the dock and share a smoke. Whale-watching tours heft tourists to and from the shore.

“Whales guaranteed today!” the salesman yells from the opposite side of the dock.

“A hefty promise,” my tour guide says.

Planes pilot into the harbour, landing softly on calm waters. It’s a perfect day to cure a hangover.

Back through town, we ride to the shop where he parks his bike.

“A burger and a beer: a perfect way to end this day,” he says.

“Sure.”

“Don’t say much, do you? A little shy?”

“Hardly shy. Just taking it all in. Thanks for today – I had fun.”

We talk with the other tour guides, all of them far from home, all of them in search of something the corporate world never gave them.

I contemplate trading in my plane ticket for a seat on the couch in the cab lounge, but instead we walk over to the pub and devour greasy burgers and kick the hangover with a few beers while listening to an old guitarist pluck the blues in the background.

My tour guide waves goodbye and wishes me well.

“Safe travels, okay?”

I nod.

He doesn’t ask for my contact information, he doesn’t make a move.

“Good luck in your search for happiness, little lady.” That wink again.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Muse(ic)

Aoide pokes Calliope, a song leaping from lips to page, invoking an electrometric backslide of bursting notes, translating trance beats to linguistic feats – inspiration begetting music, music begetting story, story begetting inspiration. And so continues the revolution of creative process.

Thank you, muse, for herein lays inspiration:

listen

I promise: the electric arc will be famous some day.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

postscript: where do you find your inspiration?

Black Sharpie.

Drilling the toe of my shoe into the ground, I sigh, hands pulled tight behind my back; I torso-twist side to side: the defiant stance of my long dormant toddler, impatient, pouting. If it were appropriate, I’d jut out my lip. Stick it far out so you could see just how well I could pout.

When you ask what’s wrong I’d say: nuh-thingah. I’d even add an eye roll for real dramatic effect.

The third time you ask what’s wrong I’d still say: nuh-thing…but this time I’d let it trail off into a nearly inaudible, defeated whisper so you’d have to lean in real close to hear if I was saying anything at all.

You’d throw up your hands, you’d shake your head, you’d walk out of the room. I’d stomp my feet, I’d huff, I’d crinkle my face into a distorted grimace of obvious emotional pain and distress.

Action, reaction.

When you come back into my room to raise your voice, I’d thrust out my arms, splayed fingers pushing, nails desperate to dig in. You’d grab my wrists, snapping them loose. You’d tell me: listen to yourself.

But I wouldn’t have said anything yet.

Big arms around little shoulders, you’d pull me close so I could smell stale sweat caught in the armpit of the same dirty shirt you’ve worn for three days and I’d breathe deep so I could remember this moment.

But, drilling the toe of my shoe into the ground is hard to do when I’m standing in the foyer still wearing the work high heels with the scuffed toe I coloured in with the black sharpie last week to cover up the fact I don’t have the money to buy new shoes; sticking out my lip doesn’t have the same effect when it’s stained red with wine, sedimentary crumbs locked deep in the chapped crevices of the bow of my smile. Eye rolls are reserved for the backs of heads only when I know no one’s looking because obvious displays of dissatisfaction are inappropriate, you know; stomping, huffing, crinkling – so unbecoming of a lady. My nails aren’t long because I chew on them – boredom, nervousness – leaving nothing to dig with.

You reduce me, when you make me feel the way I feel. Boiled down to the basest of emotion, I’d throw down my fists on the kitchen linoleum if I knew it wouldn’t make you leave.

I don’t ever twist or jut or roll or whisper or stomp or huff or grimace or thrust or dig or throw down because I want you to think I’m cool, wicked, fun, awesome, perfect.

I want you to think none of this bothers me.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Swollen Tongue.

I eat your words, every last one of them.

Your rhetoric, a thick coat of greasy lie clogging airways and pores, fills the air with this stench – the kind sticky and arrogant, fingering its way into the web of my sweater. Gluttonously, I munch on the first course, licking slippery lips after every bite. I wait with fork clenched between white knuckles for the second round, contemplate licking the plate with my swollen tongue when it’s over, plead to have more, please – please, more. The third serving rich and creamy, weird comfort in the congealed sauce slick with slutch scraped from the bottom of the pan. I devour it, sticky scraps stuck to cheeks and chin.

I eat and I eat and I eat and I eat, each dish more elaborate than the last, a little thicker, a little heavier, a little less nutritious. My stomach, it stretches with pain, lungs pulse from too little breath; the heft of digestion slows me down, makes my eyes water and my guts scream.

But, you bring more.

I’m so full I’m ill, so ill, my stomach threatens to split the length of me, spilling your secrets onto the floor between us.

You bring more still.

Dessert: finally the last course. Fingering the spoon on the table cloth, I take it up, motion from meal to mouth, inhale the last of your sickly sweet style.

You lean closer in on the table, eyes sparkling, convinced that yes, oh yes, there. Clapping your hands, victorious: she’s eaten them all.

Bowels churning, my guts heave, pushing broken, undigested language out my mouth, your verbiage a sour nostril spray of chunky chitchat and acid-dyed dialogue. I puke all of your pretty words right into your lap, unapologetically.

The body has a particular knack for ridding itself of that which is not good for it, afterall.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Badly Drawn Eyeliner

Flipped ponytail, flippant remarks, she barges in the front door thickening the room with cheap body spray and naiveté. Drawing attention to badly drawn eyeliner, swiping a finger over mascara too thick for soppy eyelashes, the green shadow a stolen treasure from the bottom of her mother’s make up bag, she cracks gum and smiles bravely.

Inside, inside she’s nervous, her stomach marching lines of nausea up and down her esophagus, her thoughts a quickly confused jumble of would-haves, should-haves translated into laughter; laughter, trill and twisting – a sure sign of an inability to relegate feelings in a situation she’s not comfortable in.

The surface piercing in the exact same place as her friend’s, the mark of best friends forever – the mark they’ll both regret in four years when it’s pushed through soft skin and left a red, sore scar on a chest bone too embarrassing to reveal in low cut shirts.

Peroxide hair and grease-dark roots means she’s not slept at home in days and the cracked foundation collecting in the crevice below the piercing in her nose shows she’s not washed her face, either.

Filling dead air with puffy words, the occasional twenty-five cent vocabulary back flip proof she’s not nearly as vacant as the stereotype she perpetuates, the room is the confused energy of a confused little girl.

Sliding cell phone, giggling at sly text messages, “what?!” the insultingly effervescent reply to nearly every topic of conversation not held inside her phone.

I have to remember, I was her once; I have to remember, I’m not her now.

I smile kindly, look her in the eye, examine her discomfort, relish in my strong confidence, my clean hair, my defined standard of expectation of those considered friends. These markers of personality hang neatly around me – an aura of calm.

Her weak words and little looks of insecurity compliment my assuredness; a learned confidence is a gift worth being patient for.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Conversations with Myself (Canto II)

before it all got lost up in the mess he said not all men are bad and i am not like your dad | i will hold you even though you’re slightly mad | i am not a man who will ever break you | we had pennies in our pockets | we had hope in our eyes | he said girl you’ve got a million different faces | so why’d you put on that disguise | well you can take what you want | cause i’ve got nothing |

Sliding the brush out of the tube – a careful twisting, a slow, sure extraction – I swipe eyelashes, staring myself down.

Blink, blink.

“I know better.”

Mirrored peptalk, blood red mouth pursed, shining pearls biting bottom lip.

“Why’d I spend so much time dressing up in disguise?” flipping clothes off the bed, pressing silky shirt against soft belly, bare breasts. The shirt tossed aside for another and another. The perfect outfit: confidence, actualized.

A bobby pin spread wide, feet pushed apart, legs open, hair snug and slipped in, forced tightly. Wet hairspray.

Spritz, spritz.

“There’s masochism in making the same mistake over. The hurt, expected – no different than past experience: the pain a little deeper, a little harder, a little faster.”

Wincing, a zipper pulled taught across skin, leaving marks on the flesh. Slipping toes into shoes one size too small, a firm fit. Pointed heel digging into carpet, pressing.

“That pain, it felt good.” Fingers fondling the clasp, choking beads around white skin, pulling tight, pinching. Just enough.

Looking in the mirror, slender hands fingering beads.

“No.” A little more, please. Choking beads pulled tighter, a breath escaping parted painted lips, a quick gasp.

“I’m just fine on my own,” smoothing shirt over skin, touching clad legs, pressing away worry, welcoming trouble.

One last look in the mirror, a small smile, eyes sparkling. A laugh, breathy.

“I’m just fine on my own.”

Slammed door, clicking heels. Confidence: self actualized.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

We Could

Tick, tick.
Numbers falling off the calendar, a pile of mangled integers.
That wily six stabbing Monday in the eye.

Exactly one hundred and four days, I’ve known about you. Seventeen days short of one third this year. Seventeen, the most random number.

I think we could be friends. We could share ice cream even though I’d turn it down after only the second bite because I don’t really like ice cream much, but do really like watching you eat it. We could laugh at inside jokes never said outside. We could be close, we could.

Smack, smack.
Two commits suicide with Tuesday; sliding off the page, they’re both tired of this count down.
Broken feet, formal fonts cracked.

But you’d tell me, you’d say: one third this year, it’s not long. Not long enough to feel sad.

And I’d smile, I’d laugh: nodding to convince you to convince me. I’d agree.

Drip, drip.
Thursday’s got a tear in her eye as she lets go of thirty’s hand.
They’re giving up before the rescue team hurries in to tape Friday back together with Saturday, before someone finds nine and ten clinging to each other in the waves.

You’d push my hair out of my eyes and you’d tell me, you’d say: it’s been good, it’s been on purpose, I will remember you.

I’d watch you walk away and I’d not tell you, I’d not say: we could, just for one more day, sit together right here on the couch. We could pretend time’s not run out, we could.

Slip, slip.
Another month gone. And another and another and the leaves have changed from wet to green to gold, the seasons waging bets on how long you’d stay.

If I’d ask you, if I’d beg you to sit right here with me just for now you’d smile, you’d look away: you’d sit a little longer and touch me like you care and I’d believe it was on purpose just like you said.

But you’d find your shoes when my eyes got too heavy to hold open because you’re no good at saying goodbye.

I promised you I wouldn’t be sad when you left. These falling numbers, all these days losing face, they know.

I lied.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Counting on You

(back by demand)

**

I get up at 6:42am. The alarm radio blaring, the announcer recounts the top 5 news stories of the day. I take a 12 minute shower and think of you once while I wash my hair but urge the thought down the drain with the suds. I spend 10 minutes carefully applying makeup no one will take notice of and another 10 combing my hair the same way I comb my hair every morning. I give 2 minutes’ thought to my wardrobe, not caring particularly because it’s likely I won’t leave my office for the duration of the day. I allow 1 minute 30 seconds to brush my teeth before leaving the house.

I take 547 steps to the grocery store to buy lunch for the day and another 287 to the coffee shop, where I spend $2.76 on 1 extra large dark roast coffee with room for cream which I pay for with a crisp $5 bill. I think of you 4 times between the front door and the coffee shop, once as I count my change and once more when I take that first sip of coffee. I use the remaining $2.24 to pay for the fare to ride the 135 the 12 blocks to work. I get off the bus and walk 627 steps to the door of my office.

I use the third key on my keychain to unlock the door. Inside, I punch in my 4 digit security code to turn off the alarm. Mine is the third office on the right. You will not visit my office today. I section the 7 and ½ hours of my work day into partitions of 3, 2-hour sections and 1, 1 and ½ hour section and bill any 4 of my 14 clients for each of those windows of time appropriately. I spend ½ -hour outside in the sun over lunch after carefully applying an SPF 15 sunscreen and putting on my pair of chipped, white sunglasses. Outside, I eat 1 small salad, ensuring I chew each bite 30 times. I take 4 bathroom breaks – 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon – a consequence of the 1 extra large coffee. I accept 27 phone calls and 17 emails – a slow day. I walk home after work. A good 2,742 steps to my front door.

I smoke 1 cigarette after work on my balcony and contemplate opening 1 bottle of wine but instead drink 1 glass of water while preparing a meal for 1. I eat in front of the television, allowing myself 1 hour of indulgent programming. I turn off the television, turn on my favourite CD – 67 minutes of music – and read 98 pages of my book, stopping twice to pet the cat 3 times under each ear.

I walk to the window 4 times and see the same 3 people standing in the parking lot each time. You are not 1 of those 3 people. My phone rings 3 times and each time I ignore it. You are not ringing me any 1 of those 3 times. I wash my 1 plate, 1 fork and 2 pots and spend 11 minutes drying the 4 dishes and putting them away in their 3 respective cupboards.

I check my Facebook, myspace, email, blog and spend 27 minutes thinking of 13 ways to waste time so I don’t pick up the phone and dial your 7 digits. I boil water on the back burner of the stove to make 1 cup of tea. I sip it, staring at my pack of smokes, contemplating having a second. I don’t. Instead, I take 8 minutes to wash the makeup off my face and brush my teeth and turn to bed. I arrange my 4 pillows and choose 1 book from the pile of 11 next to my bed. I turn off the overhead light and snap on the bedside lamp. I read for 22 minutes, until I fall asleep with the lights still on, still counting on you to think of me.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

642: The Balance Number. Describes how you react to life’s challenges. It motivates us to handle life’s challenges at best. Reveals strengths in emotional or turbulent times.

5: Five is conjectured to be the only odd untouchable number (a positive integer that cannot be expressed as the sum of all the proper divisors of any positive integer).

12: The word “twelve” is a native English word that presumably arises from the Germanic compound twa-lif (“two-leave”).

10: Ten is symbolic for sexual intercourse between a male and a female.

2: The Life Path 2 suggests that you entered this plane with a spiritual quality in your makeup allowing you to be one of the peacemakers in society. Your strengths come from an ability to listen and absorb. You are a fixer, a mediator, and a very diplomatic type of person using persuasive skills rather than forcefulness to make your way in the world.

130: In Chinese Numerology, 0 is a number that’s discarded. 1: Practical. This includes manual labor, athletic ability and physical coordination, and plain old common sense. 3: Thought. Intellectual capacity, creative ability, and the capacity to carry out ideas.

547: In Leet Orthography, representative of the word “Sat,” or abbreviation for “Saturday,” named for the Roman god Saturnus. Medieval and Renaissance scholars associated Saturn with one of the four humors of ancient medicine, melancholy. Physicians, scholars, philosophers and scientists, which includes writers and musicians, seem to have a strong Saturn placement which tends to lean such natives toward melancholy.

287: The number 7 occurs 287 times in the Old Testament. Seven deals with the esoteric, scholarly aspects of magic and is representative of scholarly activities, mystery and active esoteric knowledge. Seven represents activation of imagination, and manifestation resulting in our lives through the use of conscious thought and awareness. Ruled by Saturn, Seven represents impractical dreaming.

276: 2+7+6=15. The 15^th card of the Tarot deck is representative of The Devil. Perhaps the most misunderstood card of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really “Satan” at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. With Capricorn as its ruling sign, this is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild – or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement.

1: In Indian Numerology, the psychic number reveals the way you look at yourself, who you really want to be and what defines your basic character. It represents your basic predispositions and talents that lead you to interact daily in a particular way. 1 as a psychic number represents a disposition that is sunny, energetic, radiant, confident, proud, self centered, goal oriented, socially active, leader vs. follower, self actualized, authoritative. 1 can also be cruel in intensity, arrogant and ready to rule, yet on account of the regal qualities also a protector and provider. Known for lavish gifts, boldness, with good endurance.

4: The symbolic meanings of the number four are linked to those of the cross and the square. Almost from prehistoric times, the number four was employed to signify what was solid, what could be touched and felt; an outstanding symbol of wholeness and universality, a symbol which drew all to itself.

224: 2+2+4=8. The Dharma chakra, a Buddhist symbol, has eight spokes. The Buddha’s principal teaching — the Four Noble Truths — ramifies as the Noble Eightfold Path. In Mahayana Buddhism, the branches of the Eightfold Path are embodied by the Eight Great Bodhisattvas (Manjushri, Vajrapani, Avalokiteshvara, Maitreya, Kshitigarbha, Nivaranavishkambhi, Akashagarbha, and Samantabhadra). These are later (controversially) associated with the Eight Consciousnesses according to the Yogachara school of thought: consciousness in the five senses, thought-consciousness, self-consciousness and unconsciousness-’consciousness’ (alaya-vijñana). The ‘irreversible’ state of enlightenment is the Eight Ground or bhūmi.

135: In astrology, when two planets are 135 degrees apart, they are in an astrological aspect called a sesquiquadrate and is usually interpreted as providing an influence of irritation or agitation on the planets involved.

12: In antiquity, even before Christianity, 12 was a perfect, complete number.

627: “Reason Number 627 to See the World – to see how the world sees you. I am still walking around in my same body, with my same life, and the same personality, but out there is a whole new set of eyes, a new batch of teachers. Every moment, every nod of a passing stranger gives me a slightly new perspective of myself, of the other people who live on this planet, and how I might live on it differently with them. Tiny little lessons, each step, each glance is a moment to see something new.”

3: Feri Tradition (sometimes spelled Faery, Faerie) postulates the existence of three separate yet interdependent souls as a part of the natural psychic structure of the human being. Although a multitude of different names are used to describe them, they are sometimes called the fetch, the talker, and the Godself. The talker is that part of humans which is self-aware and deals with language, rational thought, and the gathering and dissemination of knowledge. It is the first line of communication with others. The fetch is emotional, pre-verbal, primal, and childlike. It is concerned with generating and storing energy, with the maintenance of the physical body, with housing memories, and is the first to feel deep emotions, such as fear or falling in love. Finally, the Godself is the eternal part of humans, a direct connection to the Goddess. It is said that the talker cannot speak directly to the Godself as they do not speak the same language; therefore, Feris approach the Godself by way of the fetch using symbolism (art, poetry, music, visualizations, etc.). A central practice of Feri concerns bringing these souls into alignment so they may communicate freely, granting the practitioner a deeper awareness of their own personal Godself and the Goddess.

½: one of a pair, as a partner

14: The number of lines in a sonnet, meaning “little song.” Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14 contains one dominant image, that of a young man’s eyes as stars, from which the poet attains his knowledge.

15: In tennis, the number 15 represents the first point gained in a game.

30: In ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ the French existentialist Albert Camus comments that the age of thirty is a crucial period in the life of a man, for at that age he gains a new awareness of the meaning of time.

27: The smallest positive integer requiring four syllables to name in English, though it can be unambiguously defined in just two: “three cubed.”

17: There is an unproved conjecture that 17 is the value most likely to be picked as a “random” number.

67: considered a “lucky prime” or a lucky number that is also a natural prime in mathematics. In a sense, such numbers are doubly “lucky” because they’ve survived two different sieves. It’s known that there are infinitely many primes and it’s known that there are infinitely many lucky numbers, but it’s not known if there are infinitely many lucky primes.

11: Number Eleven possesses the qualities of intuition, patience, honesty, sensitivity, and spirituality, and is idealistic. Numerologists believe that events linked to the time 11:11 appear more often than chance or coincidence. This belief is related to the concept of synchronicity, the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related.

13: The number of Norse gods (there were 12) at a banquet that was crashed by the evil spirit Loki (making 13) who killed Baldr with an arrow/spear made out of mistletoe using Hodr, thus marking the beginning of Ragnarok, the final battle waged between the Æsir, led by Odin, and the various forces of the giants or Jötnar, including Loki, followed by the destruction of the world and its subsequent rebirth.

22: The number 22 is significant in many systems of numerology, often called the Master Builder or Spiritual Master in Form. This ‘master number’ includes all the attributes of the number 2, twice over, and also those of the 4. People who are 22s are said to find themselves feeling as if they live in two worlds, one which is overwhelmed by the mundane, and the other by the fantastic.