Cora the Performer
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Maybe next week I won't write about love... baby steps

12/11/2013

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http://youtu.be/cL-Ba962yWs

I grasp my fingers, feeling my alligator skin, half listening to the various arguments in favor of, opposed to, and whatever. I look across the table and am more concerned with her current emotional state than any of the words that are floating about and the politics hanging off of them; pulling everything down with their weight.

This silence is deafening... deadening... I just want to hear some words, some feelings, some openings, some closure. I always have needed a "how are you?" to match my endless stream of consciousness questions deflecting from me.

My theory is that they feel so intensely the way the world affects them that they can't totally understand how they affect the world, she said. All I could think was that she must be talking about me... You and I are alike in that way, yet so opposite in the way we react to/ communicate/ interpret/ experience that....

I run my fingers over the sandpaper that is my knuckles, and try to focus on the conversation. It can feel so lonely here sometimes, even though there are at least hundreds of people around on a good day. But every once in a while, you have a moment or an experience that makes you stop.... stop all the internally focused monotony, and realize that your actions impact others... Partly, it's the grading. I mean, not for everyone, but at least for me, it's a built in fail-safe. You enter that number and look at the total and see the result... It's a moment that I dread, but one that happens every semester. And that moment stops me in my tracks. It is one of those "flashes of compassion," as Pema calls them. It stops me and makes me feel that soft spot...

I'm sure you have them too, but I am pretty sure you have totally blocked yourself to them; preferring to maintain a narrative that involves never crying, selfishness, and excellent skills of dishonesty.

I feel the tingle of my fingers, almost frost-bitten, grasping onto the brakes, as I ride in this moment. I think of everything I wish to say to you, but each word seems to freeze and shatter as I imagine my fingers would right now, smashing into the billions of pieces of this narrative. It's why I don't have time for bullshit poetry, I think... It's why my words are always disjointed and only semi-poetic on a good day... I don't know what to say to you, how to articulate this experience, my needs or my desires... but I tried, and I try, and I will continue to try to say these things to you or you or all the you's that grace the series of words here and in my head, which is more than I can say for most people that have penetrated the fortress that is 10 years of grief.

I look down at my fingers on the keyboard. They pause. I don't know how to finish this... I never know how to end things. I just leave; Close the door and try not to look back; make a clean getaway... But these words creep out of my fingers non-poetically wishing I knew how to end this or that, start that or this, attach and love, affect and be affected by...  


http://youtu.be/zPRDBn2GHUY


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manifestation was the subject

12/7/2013

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The subject was manifestation. I think it's like learning a new word, she said. You suddenly start seeing it all over the place.

So, that is how it was tonight. I knew I would see you. The word was riot grrl, and everything was set up for this manifestation. I recognized the back of your head, the way you sat and everything that radiated from your body. Perhaps I felt the resentment like lasers from your red plugs. I was holding her, leaning into the love that has become my sweet life... and I looked up just in time to see you make a 180. Perhaps it was the whiskey; maybe it was the friendship, but everyone instantly said "wow. what was that?" For a split second I felt guilty-- like it was my fault....  like I had done something bad... But then I remembered that it was all on you-- a resentment you hold tight to... A resentment born of your own sad stories...  a resentment that surely kills you slowly.

It's sad really. I know it is yours to hold, but I still feel sad about it. I watched the documentary and thought back to the 19 year old me and you. I remember driving to the coffee house, hoping to meet some goth girl.... And I remember sitting down with my super goth journal, ready to write about the sadness that was my life... I looked up to see this amazing blonde punk butch coming to take my order. Nothing was the same after that moment. If I could point to one moment that defined the rest of my life as a dyke, that would be the one. You. The punk I never expected.

Fast forward 17 years, through heroin, cocaine, crack, booze, love and heartache.... and I wonder what we have manifested.... what are we manifesting?

I want to say love. I want that to be the word I see all over the place... but then I think back to the last year and the word that comes to mind is "shut down." The words of this documentary radiate through my stories, my veins, my words, my herstory. For a split second I feel guilty-- like it was my fault... Like I had done something bad... but then I remember that it was all on her-- a sadness she holds tight to... A manifestation born of a self-fulfilling prophesy of selfishness.

Fast forward 14 months, through cutting, whiskey, random lovers, weed, love and heartache.... and I realize what I have finally started manifesting....

The subject is love. It's what I see all around me, in me, and before me, I think.

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the winding road

12/3/2013

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I reach down and clench the door handle-- the "oh shit bar," my brother used to call it. I grasp on out of fear, and remember that time on my birthday when we drove on those winding roads. I kept grabbing the handle, while trying desperately to hide my anxiety... and you kept saying you could see all. I think back to that time and remember thinking that you didn't see all. You saw so little. I grasp on and wonder what you are doing at this moment, letting my mind wander to the past, out of genuine fear of my present. I feel like I have been transported to some weird past vortex. I know no one here and everything is unfamiliar; like this feeling of loving without reciprocation... this feeling of vulnerability and lack of strength (I want to say weakness, but that's not it)...

I push down on the pedal, and pull up on the other... and I feel a sting on my arm. For a split second, I feel a flash of shame, thinking this sting is something of which I do not speak. But then I remember the night before in the tattoo shop. I let my mind wander through the mazes of cycling meditation and experience the winding road in front of me. I think to that moment on the land when I felt shame. It was so expected and so surprising at the same time. I had been there for something like 10 days and had not even remembered the marks that advertise my self-hatred, my struggles, my shame. I felt a tornado of emotions from fear to elation to confidence to happiness to love to anger to exhaustion to those unnamed feelings that happen only on the Land.... but no shame. And we sat there in the field and it came in a flash but took over my body like a jolt of electricity trying to kill me from above and below and beside... And much like electrocution, I was not the only casualty. You reached over and pulled down the fabric of my skirt. I can only imagine that you were trying to hide the reminders of my imperfection, your vulnerability, our similarities.

And my mind wanders down the winding roads it traverses as I ride, feeling free and not scared like it has on so many other winding or treacherous roads. You and I really are so similar in many ways, I think. Similar in completely incompatible ways. We both need our independence, but in completely different ways. We both close into shells we have created over the years-- protecting ourselves from the lives we inhabit. We both experience shame in the most intense ways, even though it looks so different on each of us. I have seen that face when you are at your most vulnerable, and as much as you would deny the truth of those moments, I know what I have seen.

But in the end, I am ironically the one who didn't want to continue to grasp on to the "oh shit bar." I am the one who wanted to throw my arms up in the air and scream "weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!' as I hurled myself off the cliff, letting myself fall. In the end, the one ironic difference is that, while you might have seen all, you couldn't ever be seen completely. You couldn't let go of your own "oh shit bar" and just experience the terrifying joy that are the winding roads.

So I will let go without you. Let go of the shame, the fear, and the not strength... and just experience the winding road of now.

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    Cora Leighton

    Thoughts about womyn, bodies, performance, life, play, and general randomness.
    If you think things are about you-- they probably aren't.

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