About Time

“Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away." - Ben Hecht

Here is what is this about. I don't know what I'm about. Nor does anybody else. 

Things, such as time, are war. Games. War games. Time—is of the essence. I grasp the heavy rifle in my hands. I blast the dry abyss with bullets of memories, leaving sparkling lights that, slowly, dim into the darkness. Frequently I wish I was still younger. The terrain in my head, then, was a much smaller area to blow up. 

Time after time—we do not have the luxury of forgetting that time is of the essence. The second hand unwinds. I got a suitcase of memories, I almost left behind.

Days and time whirl us up in its violent tornado. Lives living a billion schedules, pattering around the world in an infinitely interactive lacy web. 

Somewhere. Some wheres. Somethings. Things. My bed. My paintings. My Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Blue Azure. 

Now. I’m a writer. With published books. My published books are romance novels. Now I write my memories. My memories are rarely the same story accurately remembered. So. So I’m forcing myself to scrawl each version of the stories I remember. Then I just try to fit all the pieces together in a way that—fits. Or—doesn’t. 

I love pretty stories. I love writing. Now I write. Now I’m in the middle of a tornado.  Throwing the letters & words & exclamation points!!!

A person wearing a blue face mask lies on a hospital bed, about to enter a CT or MRI scanner. The circular opening of the scanning machine is visible in the background.

My brain is inside my skull. I know this is true because I’ve seen it.  

I’m not sure why, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to know why, and even if I knew why, I wouldn't remember anyway. Time. Flies. 

Inside my brain, carnival loudly attack me with their fake noises. Tacky. Frustrating. Exhausting. But. What isn’t? 

Safety Is An Observation

Michelle Looking Through Giant Glasses

I want to see flowers. I want to feel warm water. I want to feel waves melting around around my body. I feel stupid. I feel smart. Do I feel smart because I'm so fucking stupid? Feelings are supposed to be shown, not told, when writing. Show don't tell. I want to feel happy. I want to eat. I want to know. I want my hair to not fall out. I need a break. I need a brain. I want a break that lasts me the rest of my life and beyond.

I don't want to be standing on the gymnastics floor, eight years old, with my gymnastics teacher, Wayne, behind me. Gently reaching around to push his hands down the front of my shorts. I told my mom.

She stared at me. Then started crying big, heavy tears. Then her face was wet, her eyes turning red.

I want my hair back. I want my life back. I want a sandwich. I want ice-cream. I want to eat with love. With people I love. And who love me. I want to sleep. Forever. I want to live happily. Indefinitely. I want to hold my newborn son, every one of these days. I want to be in love and mean it. I want to hide in a lake. I want to hide with fish. I want to write about people who exist, and who are good. Instead I'm swimming fiercely in rocky, murky water. My legs are drumsticks. My legs beat beat beat. The wood, shattering on the wet, sharp rocks. I taste blood. I remember the metallic, plastic, blasting—the sound of my typewriter smashing cement after I threw it over my second-floor balcony. Little brown buttons with letters in a dark courier font splattered the ground. H and I, two stated.

Whenever I find myself in the hospital room, standing next to the bed on which is resting my dead mother, in indecipherable spans of time, I am looking out the window. It is Summer Solstice, which means I am nearly exactly 17.5 years old. I am staring at the white blinds, which are slanted open. I look through countless strips of plastic. I am looking at the sky. The sky is blue. Above the top of the concrete roof of the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital. The sky is blue. It's that clear, clear, clear, clean, Windex blue. It's the blue that occurs only briefly. It happens on days with a slight breeze and little pollution. Danny and I left the trailer in San Jose. We left after the call came, around 7:30 a.m. Now, it was around 9:30. It wasn't yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00. It would start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I'd never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat, and clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows. I would not--did not--think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. It was all dead. She was dead. Standing on my balcony, in Reno, I watched the explosion.

When the typewriter hit the concrete, the black ribbon spool still pressed against paper. After the ancient typing machine crashed onto the ground, I remember brown leaves drifting around my brown typewriter. They moved like ballerinas, floating in the blasted air. Today, now, I want to see the brown leaves drifting across the scuffled concrete of my patio. I want to look between the brown patio steps and see the ground. I want to hear the shuffling sound of shoes. People walk on the other side of the fence. They're unaware of what they're missing over here.

What I want to be is home. I want to be cooking paella on my stove. It's in our house. I toured it with Jay and a real estate agent. I want to be in our kitchen. I stand in front of the counter, chopping vegetables on the countertop that I designed. I want to boil water on the stove that I, after much research, had installed. Our 5-year-old son watches something silly on the TV with J. J is sitting on the long sofa. He holds a shot-glass of to-be-sipped-slowly tequila in his hand. They watch the green Bang & Olufsen television. I want to be there, at home, where I was--where I thought I was--safe. Safety is an observation.

Life's A Party

So is death.

I am my world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds.

At first, it’s a party. People come over.  They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook.  "Hey there, how's everything going with you?"? They ask because they truthfully want to know.  They carry books and ask you to go on walks.  They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life. 

The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives

How are you doing?  The soft voices that ask the caring questions evolve in tone, speed, and intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life—the lives of the living. 

Now. For whom do I cook?  Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person's existence? Have I started adjusting? 

I start feeling myriad emotions. I brush my teeth and think downward dog. I boil jasmine tea in my electric kettle. I call my doctor to make an appointment. I Organize some yarn. 

I'm new here. I navigate the unfamiliar terrain of amnesia. I knit together a semblance of connection, one stitch at a time.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky

My 6th Grade Brain Assignment

Every day, exponentially expanding, are my thoughts. I then forget them. I have a room and all I see are things I've collected over the past two years. Yarn and knitting needles and more colored pencils and more yarn and. . . and the rest is mine, my things. My things fit into a box. My small purse and my three backpacks. My two photos of myself and my son. My flute. My ancient tv, on which I watch Friends and Sex and the City. My old bathrobe. 

My photos are in my old house, where my son still lives. We were sitting on the sofa, the sofa I chose with my husband. As far as I know, my ex husband, my son, and the new wife still sit on my furniture. 

My things represent my life because they are my life. My life is in this room. My blackout curtains block out the back of a giant satellite dish. It overlooks the pool five stories below. And across the way there is another giant building with the exact same apartments housed within. Each has a minuscule balcony that nobody uses unless someone is smoking. Sometimes I smell cigarette smoke from the twenty-somethings who live next door. On Saturday nights they play rap. I have never met them.

What's familiar to me are my knitting needles and my yarn. I know people I see on my decrepit television. I know when the tv finally dies I won't have that. I try to focus on what I do have. Still, less and less do I have any wish to bother.  But, I'm still a writer. I still have that.

I want to finish the hat I'm knitting for my son. I want to finish something. I wanted to finish my life, but I haven't and I won't. When I die I hope there's something good to do. Something to finish. 

I have memories, and I want to talk about them and, more than anything, I want to see them. I want to go on a drive through Hope Valley. I want to buy a sandwich at the Genoa Store. Then, I want to drive to the Playa and get in a truck. I want to drive into the desert and find hot springs. I want to smile and drive that weird road that seemed to go nowhere. It had nothing particularly memorable about it, except that it was old. There was a town with a Smith's, a gas station, and an old church. I want to see those things. I want to see a sunset from my own porch. I want to make toast in my own kitchen with my own dishes. I want to drink water from a glass I remember finding at a thrift store. Instead, I'm just sitting in this room. The dark curtains hide an outside that means nothing. I'm looking at Facebook and seeing familiar faces. I'm confused because I have no reason to make new memories. I have no way to do so. I have no relevance and nothing I see is relevant to me. I'm a million miles away from anything familiar and I'm driftless in my sky.

The Brain — is wider than the Sky
Emily Dickinson, c. 1862

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

A person with short, pink-tinted hair and glasses is wearing headphones and a hospital gown while sitting in a hospital bed. Medical equipment is visible in the background.

The Dead Hospital Rooms, My Mom

I often find myself in the hospital room. I stand next to the bed where my dead mother is resting. This happens many, many times at indecipherable periods. I am looking out the window. It is June 14, meaning I am nearly 17.5 years old. I am staring at the white blinds. They are slanted open. I look through countless strips of plastic. I am looking at the sky.

The sky is blue. The sky is above the top of the concrete roof. It is on the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital. It is blue. It's that clear, clean, polished blue. The blue that only happens for a little bit of time. It seems on days with a slight breeze. It occurs on days with little pollution. Danny and I left the trailer in San Jose. Danny Lee Clark Junior (he's dead now, too) and I went after the call came. It was around 7:30 a.m. It was around 9:30. It wasn't yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00 and start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I'd never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows. I would not--did not--think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. I realized that I'd never seen her face so smooth, the lines around her eyes were softer. Everything about her makes me think that she was finally at peace.

Death is Nature

What you want to do is you want to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy, the point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. And water. And soap.

A field doesn't require a heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. It's a method of problem solving. It's a process of a set of rules. It's Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you your times tables, and that X=O but they never call it a language or reveal that zero is simply the answer this question: "What's inside her head?"

Meanwhile, at night, when you lie in bed, concentrate on the areas that bother you (your sinuses) let your mind sort of float through your sinuses. Then feel that the spirit of the lord is flowing there, soothing & healing - drying up your sinuses (you can even try it at work when you are troubled). You can ask Him to remove  the pain. Just say, "Please, Jesus, take away my suffering." Just try it.

--Kathy, 1976

It's like when I would wait to take sex phone calls, like from the guy in Santa Clara who got raped when he was thirteen. While biking home from school, a gang of teenagers threw him off his bike and beat the shit out of him. Frequently. That man paid me $1.99 a minute to listen to the story and I was never given an algorithm for that. He raped himself every day, having unprotected sex with strangers, and then paid me to hear the stories. I could not fix him.

It took a lot of years to understand algorithms and I still don't. I was never very good with math. That's where they trick you. It's not about math or numbers or logic. It's not, but they trick you. Logic. They throw around so many terms, all the terms, and they leave you. You wonder what the words mean: are they word problems? Calculus? Blind luck?

While your brain still functions, kinda, you think about the parts of your life that were good. Or, you just make up some good parts. Isn't that what you do? What you've been paid to do? You make up pretty stories, write them down, and sell them. 

Romance novels. A bunch of pretty stories.

Are memories just a bunch of polaroid pictures?

I’m not myself. I’m not Michelle Kathleen O’Kane. I’m just a foggy picture of whatever I once was. 

Now I’m an instant photograph. I’m searching for light to provoke my emulsion. I’m collecting layers—negative and positive layers, which helps to me diffuse into the infinitely developing image.

Time travel is complex, and fortunately I visit a person, place, or thing, that memory is ever the same twice. 

 This place. The soft grey shawl, my WIP on my bed. The book on my nightstand. French. 

Me Before and Me After incessantly converse about me. Every memory—every snippet of what used to be my life. 

My life used to encompass the worlds of seeing new places on other continents. And writing romance novels while I still believed in romance and excitement and love. Memories of sharing many meals with people I loved. 

I wake up while driving in various cars, and I’m always the driver. Frequently I am 280, approaching the 101/92 exchange. Aware. While I’m driving I surround myself with the color-changing hills. I’m humming along with Elvis Costello.  I’m watching the detectives. (The Angels Wanna Wear) my red shoes. 

I’m now pointed west, driving to Half Moon Bay. I’m in various makes of cars, all of which I owned. Today I’m driving a clutch—my blue Ford Ranger. This is the car I purchased with money I received after my mother died. I am now 18, and she’d died just a few months ago, while I was 17. 

I drive past memories. The Half Moon Bay Nursery, on the south side of 92.  on the south side of the road and now I’m just starting to drive through the outskirts of the town. My town. My ocean and sea salt and blue blue blue sky and sea, white wavy clouds tying the sun and sea together. 

I’ve finally come to realized and understand how crazy I am. 

I haven’t watched a movie with another person in over 5 years. I haven’t laughed with someone in as many years. A few times something I’m watching or hearing has caused the sound—the sharp chirp of a laugh. The noise scares me. Hearing my own laugh is such an unfamiliar sound that it shocks me. Then, of course, I’m sad. 

I’m rolling myself down a hill. I’m rolling across the green, twinkling grass and behind me is the grass, a 5’4” lane that I’m creating as I roll away.

That’s me. Again. 

I’m jealous of so many things I see on tv. Landscapes and cities and people at tables with white espresso cups. 

Lifes.

Retrograde and Antegrade Amnesia: The Battles In My Brain

My memories are scattered. Sharp fragments. Bloody, jagged, lost pieces of time.

I am wandering the rocky streets in Bilbao, alone. I’m wearing the Teva, which I hate. I sit in front of the Guggenheim, crowded with tourists, and watch. They all seem to love their fucking tevas. They also love their daybags. They seem to think they're on the  Camino de Santiago. I realize I'm judging in a really annoying way. I'll write about it later.

I am wearing black laceup boots. With a skirt I picked up in Barcelona. It's lightweight, gauzy, and makes me feel like I fit in with the Spanish women. Step by step, I walk, little pebbles shifting beneath me. I scatter my shadow over the rocky streets as I go. Each step connects me to the disjointed fragments of memory from before.

Dirty, smoky air fills my lungs. I see scattered fragments. Fragments of things, pieces of people. Blood on sharp, hot metal. Even people seem cut and raw, like they are made of shrapnel. The world outside blurs with the world inside me. Both are filled with remnants.

I am my own world. Love, grief, memories. Words and war.

In Memoriam

At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food, flowers, and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.

The memorial is the final phase of people gifting their time. Soon, they must return to their lives and reconnect with their own families. Friends begin visiting only on weekends. The phone rings less. Walks grow shorter, then rarer. Casseroles stop appearing, their careful wrappings missing in the kitchen. Flowers wilt. Leaves drip onto the table. Like snowflakes and people, flowers melt.

How are you doing? The soft voices ask these caring questions, but slowly their tone changes—speed, intonation, their topics shift. Soon, conversations turn to life again. The lives of the living. I notice the shift as I stand outside of their worlds, unchanged.

But I cannot, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. I don't think I'll ever rebuild.

Now. Who do I cook for? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort anyone? How do I live in a world without that person? At first, there is disbelief. Shock. The phone is just a cold thing now. No more silly messages. I start to feel more, and then less, as I get used to what is missing from my life every fucking day. The repetition changes me. Life outside keeps going.

Then things start to seem almost normal. The world keeps going. I notice. I cry less. I laugh. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. This uneasy normal settles in. It never really fits with what is inside me.

Life goes on, and so do I.

Shock and disbelief are gone. I am not numb anymore. The fresh wounds are covered, but the pain inside stays. Under the surface, I still bleed. My mind is full of hazy, painful images.

Memories. Trees, babies, and so much beautiful food. Love. Hate. Sadness.

So many memories are fading and breaking down. Like old photographs from the last century. The images blend and dissolve together.

I know I will remember everything again. And again. But my memories will not be the same. They change, just a little, every time I remember.

My friends go out to dinner. They take day trips to the lake. They eat at home or at someone else’s place. They return to their worlds. My world is too fucking quiet. My brain is a smoky battlefield of memories.

[imagely id="2026"]

Lightening in a Bottle of IV Fluid

Or Maybe Midgets

I’ve Got A Theory

They say it’s a FINE line
between love and hate,
Pleasure and pain,
Jesus & Satan
Buffy & Spike
He lined it up for me, with a credit card, at its limit.
Just a little bit of afterglow
Snorted off dusty white
Desert gold dust
enlightening my nose,
clogging my brain—
My BRAIN. If only—
If only I knew then what I’ve forgotten now. 
Dogs and protesters and coffee pecks and specks of nicotine
Bunnies!.
Baked Ziti: Anger, distrust, manipulation: 
Burrata cheese.
When he knew me, I wasn’t equipped to know he.
I didn’t have a stake to stab my own head.
I had a knife, but it was lost in my pocket
A person needs a stake, metaphorically, etc.
in a situation like that—
stabbing is the only thing that works.
Just ask Giles!
ground zero of my life. 
again
Sometimes, just for a few seconds of eternal minutes,
When I wasn’t crazy,
and when he wasn’t a bit hazy
and when one of us wasn’t—wasn’t. 
We were—
We were—

BUNNIES! BUNNIES! IT MUST BE BUNNEEEEEEES!