DISCARD - The Scheherazade Project

This is my first contribution to The Scheherazade Project. Visitors from Project's roll, you are welcome to comment and/or criticize, and have a further look around if you like - though I will warn you it's been a very sparse summer for writing here. My regular friends - I hope you enjoy my new sporadic writing experiments.



Discard

An unnatural twist of my body to view the dress from odd angles. A flop of the arms and graceful bend of one knee to test how it hangs in a casual stance. A profile study to see how badly my mother's-belly shows. Not too bad.

I absolutely hate trying on new clothes. Hate. Especially dress clothes. If there's one thing I'm not, it's a dress-up person. I had been trying on dresses designed to fit women shaped like no one I'd ever met all day long and had about had it.

But this one. This one's not bad.

The attire for my reunion was indicated as "casual dressy". What the hell does that mean? I'd spent a perfectly good football Sunday hoping that such a piece of attire would reveal itself to me at the parade of stores I'd visited. On the racks and on the mannequins I saw many things I found tolerable. But in the dressing room, everything looked the same. Horrid.

Except this one. This one's really not bad.

It was appropriate, really. Struggling to find something decent to wear now, for a reunion with people to look back on the glory days of when I struggled to find something decent to wear then. I never really fit in. When clothes became important status symbols overnight, people who were once my friends mocked me and my knockoff jeans and my unbrand sneakers. We were not poor, but my brother was in college and we needed to budget our money, so I was told. It's a bitter cup which serves you the brew that despite your heart, despite your loyalty and bonds and memories with others, you are a bird worth no more than your feathers.

I cried. Every day. But I never let my parents see.

By the time I was earning my own spending money and could buy some nice things for myself, it was too late. I was mocked for wishing I could be cool. Sometimes you just can't win. If people decide they don't like you, nothing will ever make them like you. Eventually I developed a real nasty attitude toward everyone in my life, and upon collectively celebrating at our graduation, I looked upon my fellow classmates and thought to myself, I couldn't be happier that you are all out of my life - you can all kiss my ass.

My best friend always kept tabs on everyone after graduation through the grapevine and would keep me updated, as if I cared. She informed me with glee about the cheerleader that gave birth to her own brother the following winter. She could barely contain herself when she heard about the class president getting a botched nosejob. I could barely make out the news about our class cutting buddy's suicide through her tears.

That last one bothered me. A lot.

Another twist. So as to see the opposite angle. A smooth of the hand over the butt. Definitely a thong kind of dress. A shrug of the shoulders to see if the material bunches up around my boobs. It doesn't. It flatters well. It will be nice to display that I actually did end up with boobs, and didn't even have to pay for them like everyone else. Though I'm sure they wouldn't believe that. It would be impossible for me to come into my own.

Hmm. I wonder who's been beaten up by time. Who might be bald now. Fat. Ugly. Who else had plastic surgery gone bad. (Smirk) This might be fun after all.

I feel good about myself these days. I don't care what anyone thinks of me, except myself. And I think I'm pretty killer. I look young for my age - I still get carded. And I make more money than I know what to do with. I credit that to my frugal upbringing - I just can't spend it all, yet I still live very comfortably. Some might even say extravagantly.

Still, I know how it will be. People will ask you, as if they care, as if they'd ever had an interest in you at all, what you've been doing with yourself. But they won't hear a word you say. And before you even finish your sentence, they'll begin rambling about their own lives. And always something to top your successes.

I know, without a doubt, that it'll be just the same as it was.

You know what? I hated every one of those people when I went to school. And I have no desire to see them now.

I carefully remove the dress and lay it on the dressing chair. I put my jeans and tshirt back on and slide my feet into my sandals. I gently place the dream dress on its matching satin pillowed hanger. I let my eyes glide over the buttery sheen of the material.

I then drop the dress, hanger and all, with a silky plop onto the dressing room floor before walking out.

I'm actually glad I wasted my weekend doing this. They can still all kiss my ass.

Auras

I was talking with someone the other day who told me that they can sometimes see auras, which I find fascinating. It brought to mind an experience I had once - I blogged about it about a year ago, and thought I'd share it again. It was a very interesting experience.


Aura Streams
Original Publish Date September 4, 2005

I am curious about a great many things, it's just how I am. When I lived in the city I used to frequent a new age bookstore that offered free seminars on various topics during evening hours. I became a semi-regular attendee, as I tend to find myself often searching for things more interesting than my own small existence.

One of these evenings fell during a time in my life where I'd made a recent snap decision. I was freshly divorced and still reeling from the emotional blows of that debachle when the relatively new man I'd been seeing bought a house and asked me to live with him. I agreed and we'd begun settling in, but I was unsure on whether it was a good idea. I'd decided I loved him and it seemed that he loved me, but I had lost all faith in my judge of character. I felt he was a good man, but was wondering if I would be just as wise to take flight before I got in too deep.

I went to a seminar at the bookstore just to get away and focus on something different, hoping the distraction would help me think more clearly on this situation when my thoughts returned to it.

That night's discussion was upon reading auras. I take such things with a grain of salt, but at the same time it is my nature to not rule anything out, especially when I know little about it. If nothing else it seemed interesting enough to serve the purpose. A woman that had the "gift of seeing auras" led the discussion. She said she'd been able to see auras her whole life. I don't remember her name, but she had a kind face and a way about her that set you at ease.

The discussion was much more detailed than I'd expected, and quite interesting. She explained about different colors and what they each tended to represent. She talked about auras being the manifestation of a person's spiritual energy and emotion, how like with personality differences, some are more strong and easily seen than others, and how some emotions can cause such a shock to your system that it can cause injury to the body ~ Of how sometimes words or non-physical actions that are damaging to your heart and soul can consequently be felt in and throughout the body and this is why many will speak of physical pain while suffering from a heartbreak. She likened it to being beaten up from the inside out. She talked about how some auras can connect, and the connection can be seen even when the people are not in the same room or vicinity, their auras flowing into each other in streams and blending like warm currents.

All the while the woman cast glances at me. She looked at everyone there, but I was sure she was looking at me more than average. I didn't think much of it at the time, until she interrupted herself.

"Excuse me," she said apologetically, looking straight at me, "I don't want to make you uncomfortable or embarrass you, but your aura is just - I'd like to tell you about it if you don't mind."

I was a little surprised, but didn't mind the call out at all. I wasn't sure how much stock I'd put in all of it, but was rather interested in what she'd say, so I agreed.

She proceeded to tell me that she could see that I had been greatly hurt deep inside recently - my chakras were practically bleeding out. I remained unreactive as I could past simple interest, but was captivated by this, as I knew no one there and no one knew what had been happening in my personal life. She went on to say you'll be fine though. Your aura is the most stunning bright blue, the brightest in the room. You are strong, and you're going to be fine. She smiled, and I smiled. And that was that.

She went on to read a few others there and continued her interesting discourse, and at the end invited us to stick around for further, less on-the-spot chatting about the subject. I remained, and waited my turn. When we had the time, I told her that I didn't know much about auras before tonight and that her reading was dead on, I had indeed been hurt very badly and doubted my abilities to recover, but was feeling a little more confident now after her encouraging words. She smiled and said, I'm glad you stayed because there is something else I wanted to tell you. Remember what I said about auras connecting, and some can stream to each other even when the people aren't together? I said yes. She said, there is someone in your life who loves you. Really, really loves you. Their aura is finding you and encirling you, I could see it the moment I saw you. It's coming from that direction.

She pointed in the direction of our house.

Ten (now eleven) years later, while things haven't always been a dream, never have I been so loved.

Poor Pluto

Lyric of the Day is being bypassed this post … I don’t want to bore anyone, but I’m a science geek, and I have a bee in my bonnet about something.

So I guess we only have 8 planets in our solar system now. Poor Pluto has been stripped of her planetary status. Mercury through Neptune are still considered “worlds” but poor Pluto is now declared a “dwarf planet”, which under the new definitions are not planets at all, but merely round shaped objects that just kind of hang around the vicinity of our sun.

Honestly, is this really necessary?

Pluto was named a planet in 1930. Nearly everyone who is alive today has been engrained with the Big Nine. Mercury Venus Earth Mars Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto. Many of us even learned a cute little phrase to remember them. “My Very Eccentric Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” – or something similar to that, depending on where you grew up. It worked well. Everyone was fine with it. Is it really necessary to derail everyone’s ingrained knowledge of our planetary system?

Okay, so Pluto's smaller than they once thought. So what? Plus I did hear that there was discussion of Pluto and Charon both being deemed planets due to the fact that it’s since been discovered they actually orbit around each other as they orbit the sun. But then it seems they decided to just kick them both out. If the size thing may have been looked over in and of itself, I guess maybe the dual-orbit thing was poor Pluto's nail in the coffin.

Listen, I can dig there being new guidelines. Space studies have come a long way since 1930. But couldn't we grandfather Pluto in? We all already know Pluto. We all love Pluto. Isn't this kind of like saying, "Well, Hawaii, we've rethought things and have decided that since you are just a bunch of bits of land in the middle of the ocean and the rest of us are attached to something, you aren't really a state. We're going to demote you to a territory."

Okay, maybe not the same. But you get my point.

Alas, hence - thanks to the Suberbrains’ meeting in Prague, now a bajillion textbooks need rewritten and replaced - databases overhauled - long-embedded lessons deprogrammed – Trivial Pursuit games updated – It’s astronomical anarchy, I tell you.

I’d like to know who’s going to pay for all this. I bet it’s not this guy! Caltech’s Mike Brown, one of these poofy-pantalooned geniuses invited to participate in this decision, said about it all, "The public is not going to be excited by the fact that Pluto has been kicked out, but it's the right thing to do."

The 'right thing to do'? What the crap?

Whole Lotta Nuthin'

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Lyric of the Day:

Nuthin' from nuthin' leaves nuthin'.
- Billy Preston
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That pretty much sums it up. It’s not that my life is nothing (er, nuthin’), but I just don’t seem to have anything to write that is of the creative line lately. I’ve been trying – doing lots of thinking and meditating on conjuring up something creative – but it’s just not there right now and hasn’t been for the majority of the summer, if you haven’t noticed. So I’ve decided to give up for the time being and just do a little rambling, and maybe it will lead back to other things. I’ll call it a return to roots. After all, aimless rambling is how Clew’s Blues started in the first place … Plus it will give us a time to catch up, right? ;)

First and foremost I wanted to announce that I’m going to kick Naïve’s butt, and everyone else’s too, who told me to watch that stupid Napoleon Dynamite movie. So y’all watch out. ;). BTW, if anyone’s interested, I have a nearly brand new copy of Napoleon Dynamite for sale. Cheap.

I picked up some new pj’s for Incrediboy this weekend. Hub held them up and said these are so big! I said well that’s the next size up from what he has now, and those are getting too small. That’s when it hit me that my little baby boy, who weighed less than 8 pounds at the start of his life on the outside, is now half my height. And I’m not a short woman. And as happy as that makes me, it also breaks my heart.

We’ve discovered a new way to harass Most Beautiful Dog. I don’t remember why we were even doing this, but if we go “beep beep beep”, like a truck backing up, it makes MBDog nuts and he will either go on a mad tear (much like the Globe of Death evening), or he will attack you with boxing paws and big slobbery smooches, powerful enough to knock you into the next room if you’re standing. Such a strange dog. The same thing happened with a certain song from a diamond commercial when he was a pup – but that trigger has passed. Perhaps this one will too, but for now it’s pretty amusing - until something inadvertently gets torn up. Then I’ll be mad.

I had a strange dream the other night. I ran into some people I haven’t seen in many years but used to spend a lot of time with. I was happy to see them but they didn’t remember me. I said how can you not remember me? We were like family! And one of them said, well you’re so ugly I don’t see how I could forget you! Then they all laughed at me. It was just a dream, but even after I’d been awake for a while, it still hurt.

Here’s the latest burr up my butt. Everyone knows I live in the country. The road we live on was no doubt once dirt, but has just been topcoat sprayed and scattered with a small amount of fine gravel once a year since God knows when. After about a week, the loose pieces of the tiny gravel fuse with the topcoat and the road is smooth and renewed again. It’s a darn good system, too, as my road is in fine shape, and despite a decent amount of heavy truck and farm equipment traffic is at least twice as smooth a ride as anything in the city. There’s NOTHING wrong with my road. But we’ve heard through the township grapevine that there are plans to completely tear the road out and repave it with a new asphalt road. WHY? Why can I not even move to the middle of cornfield central and still not escape road construction? (Ripping hair out by the roots) ARGH!

Well, that’s about it. Oh yeah, I’m kind of planning a trip but I don’t want to talk about it yet because the details aren’t finalized. But I’m excited about it. I’ll be seeing someone I miss a real lot. So much that I probably won’t even kick her butt even though she deserves it. Refer to earlier in the post ;). Stupid Napoleon Dynamite.

Have a great week, everyone.

Flashback Friday - A Day Early

I have been longing to write but still have not tracked down those elusive muses. In lieu, I am reposting a story I first shared last summer. I hope that those of you who have not read it before will enjoy it, and those who have will enjoy the revisit.

I hope to share some new storytelling with you soon.

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ANGEL - A True Story
Original Publishing Date August 30, 2005

It had been another rotten day in a rotten week in a rotten relationship that was once good. In all my 23 years I’d never met a person more infuriating than he. My frayed nerves nagged for the numbing effects of a drink or two, and I left the apartment we shared to check out the new bar at the corner. Hopefully the bartender wasn’t chincy with his pouring hand.

The music suggested a fantastic experience was going on inside, but the place was virtually empty. A man with a face like a horse sat at the other end, seemingly sizing up what he considered to be the end of the road. Two men played darts on the far wall, conversing much more loudly than necessary.

I sat down and ordered a drink. Something with whiskey. I nursed it as I sucked down a few cigarettes and turned the conundrums of my relationship around in my head like peculiarly shaped stones.

I hadn’t noticed, but someone had appeared next to me at the bar, a respectable distance from my personal space. He ordered a Coke, and after receiving it mentioned that I looked like I could use a friend to talk to.

Snapping out of my own thoughts, I looked up and gave him the nanosecond size-up.

I don’t think I’m particularly beautiful, so either I look easy or men just take a shot at anything they can, hoping eventually they’ll strike oil – because I can’t even go out and sulk without some macho Cro-Magnon hitting on me. And I’m pretty critical about anyone that approaches me in a bar when I’m obviously brooding. But he didn’t fit the profile.

Dressed in a dull moss maintenance shirt washed several hundred times before sat a fifty-something black man. His eyes were deep and wide set in high freckled cheeks. His skin appeared weathered, creased with the footprints of many smiles and worries and deep, deep love for someone. Receipts and business cards hung in casually contained disarray in his breast pocket, and a pack of cigarettes with one or two missing. Above the pocket was a patch that said, “Terry”. His words were relaxed and tasted of somewhere southern … Southern Georgia? Southern Ohio? I couldn’t tell for sure.

Against my immediate instincts, I decided he was harmless and managed a thin smile in response. We began chatting easily there at the bar – I don’t recall the beginnings, but eventually we were talking about me and my stewings on that particular night. Not directly, though. Rather, he had this way of making idle comments, which applied to my thoughts in uncanny ways. After a few hours and an ashtray full of cigarette butts, Terry politely wrapped things up. He had to go, having a previous engagement that evening, but gave me his card. It simply said “Terry’s Janitorial”, and had a phone number. He told me to be happy, and he’d see me next time.

As my relationship spiraled downward, I frequented this certain bar more and more. On particularly sour days, I seemed to usually find myself there with Terry again. He’d ask me how things were going with my “gentleman friend” (as he would put it), but not in any fashion coming across as presumptuous. It was as if he were designed to ask these things, and you’d accept them the same as accepting a cup of coffee. He had a way of appearing at just the right times, and I came to enjoy the talks we had, as they helped me think more rationally about the chaos in my life in those days.

One day was especially bad. Things were beginning to dance on the edge of violence. I was thinking of leaving but had no place viable to go, really. I dug out Terry’s card and called the number. There was no answer. I went to the bar, hoping I’d catch him. He was there. “How are you doing, honey?”, he asked. “Okay,” I canned, unsure if I really wanted to get into it. He placed his hand on mine, gave me a don’t-bullshit-me smile, and said, “No you’re not, but we’ll get to that later.” We talked a while about nothing in particular, and then he told me a story about a lady friend of his who found herself in need of a place to stay. He let her stay with him for a spell (completely honorably) until she was able to continue her life on her own two feet. He said he got a lot of reward helping his friends who needed it. I offered no indicative response to that, but I remember Terry ending our talks that evening with, “Call me if I can help you with anything.”

We were an oddly matched duo, having little in common at first glance. A twenty-something white girl, heavy on eyeliner and hair dye and rocker swag, and a middle-aged black man in work duds. But we mixed well. We connected on some level unrecognized to a passerby. Our friendship continued for several months. I called his number several times and never got an answer, or even a machine. But infallibly he would appear in my life within a few hours. Sometimes at the bar, sometimes on the street as I walked to or from work. But somewhere.

As it were, my deceptively deep series of talks with Terry had helped me correct my path, and bring back into focus the long-clouded visions of my worth and life. I eventually took charge of my situation and straightened out my own mess by cutting my ties with said “gentleman friend”. I felt empowered and couldn’t wait to tell Terry. I went to the bar several evenings in a row, but he wasn’t there.

I called the phone number on the card. It was disconnected.

I never saw Terry again.

Fun with Idols

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Lyric of the Day:

It's my life
My time to find the answers
Dont always know what kind of
Road's in front of me
But I'll go slow
Want to remember every moment
That passes by because
This ride means everything

- Bo Bice
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My insincere apologies to anyone who doesn’t care, but this is the highlight of my summer.

I went to the American Idol show with my friend Dawg on Friday. We started the day off with lunch and some drinks at a nearby restaurant and then headed over to the arena about 2:30 to see what might be going on. We noticed a clump of a dozen or so excited looking people to the right side of the arena and went over to be nosey. It seemed that Ace had just been out signing autographs. We decided to hang out and see if anything else interesting would come up.

About 20 minutes later CHRIS DAUGHTRY came out. He signed autographs and chatted with us all – he was so very nice and gracious. It was a nice surprise and a real pleasure to meet him! (And whatever cologne he was wearing – it needs to be the mandatory scent for every man in the country. MAN he smelled good!) We hung out for a few more hours, hoping to meet Elliott and of course Taylor, you all know I love Taylor- but then went inside. As it turned out, Taylor came out about 10 minutes after we left, dang it. But meeting Chris was enough to make my day!

The concert was a lot of fun. The first half was a bit cheesy, but the second half ROCKED. Chris’s set was kick BUTT, and Taylor’s was beyond words. Both of these guys are such great performers! They're loving what they're doing and it shows, and I hope that fresh wonder is never spoiled in them.

Saturday we went to see last year’s runner up, rocker BO BICE with opener Saving Jane. SJ was really great – they sound wonderful live. But Bo. Bo rocked my world. He’s touring with his hometown band SugarMoney and these guys are the real deal. They ROCK and ROCK RIGHT! They performed a bunch of Bo’s solo album stuff (including my favorite, U Make Me Better, which Bo said is coming out as a single soon, yippee skippee!) and a few covers, including Ides of March’s Vehicle and for their encore, Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird. The place was THUNDERING!!! Now I know some of you (you know who you are) are going to crack on me, but you guys know my fondness for the great classic roots rock sound and I tell you this is one of the best old-style rock shows I’ve ever seen. My voice hurts down through my lungs from yelling so much :)! I have a photo I took at the show I wanted to add but Blogger's having another stroke, so maybe I'll be able to add it later. It's a nice shot - You can see Bo’s electric smile :) …

I haven’t been to any live shows in quite a while, and this was a pleasurable way to break my streak. I feel renewed. Even if you don’t like the American Idol Machine, check out Bo Bice if you have the chance. Absolutely fantastic show.

I’m starting a new blog writing project very soon. Stay tuned and thanks for hanging in there with me. Hope you all are well. Much love! ~ XOX ~