Thursday, April 12, 2012

moss


I am not playing flute. I am not sitting still.

My head is going a mile a minute.

I am not not-thinking. I am twitchy.

My organs wind around my soul. They are covered in moss and other plants that thrive in damp dark conditions. Everything is dark green and smells of dirt and tears in me. If a surgeon cuts me open, moths burst out of the hole, rushing toward the lights of the operating stage. A tree is growing in there. It is a weeping willow.

I know women like me, whose insides are forest floor and a labyrinth of grief organs. But we don't wait for our children together in front of school. I used to dream of a city-state of the babylost. It would be a large swath of land in the middle of nowhere. We would set up a small town with dirt roads and be surrounded by a large fence made of recycled soft things. We'd build a jizo garden and cry and hold each other, and just know that babies die. And because babies die, everyone knows that nothing is guaranteed. There is a kind of freedom in that, and at times, an oppressive fear. The town accommodates you wherever you may fall on any given day. No running with sharp objects in Dead Baby Bloglandia. We abide here, unless you can't, then we take you to someone who can. I drove into this town and imagined each of you. We boiled herbs in a large cauldron. We chanted and held the one grieving hardest and then the one grieving least, but we held each other. We created the rituals I craved after she died.

I have no right to count my grief organs anymore. It feels that way. My living out number my dead. She is just one. And my two are bouncing on rubber horsies through my house, giggling. But there is something unsettled in me, something that is drawing me out of this house, into the wild. A homestead in a grove of trees. It is a lie that I keep telling myself--that I am like no one here, and no one likes me here. It's when I feel like this, that changing my space will change my head space that I need to remember all I have been through and how deeply that rewrites your insides. It plants terrariums in you. It makes you a mountain of a creature, carved and alone. That is okay. There is a beauty in solitary land, so empty of humans it exists without its story being told.  And yet, I am human. I craved storytelling. I crave connection. That is exactly why this space exists. And why I still need to write.


13 comments:

  1. I could use that town right now. Where I wouldn't have to bite my tongue whenever anyone congratulates me.

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  2. I was thinking the other night that maybe the rest of my life will exist without friendship - the kind of friendship I used to have in abundance and need. I don't miss it, necessarily, but wonder will this life without others (besides husband and kids) be enough to sustain me over time. It's lonely sometimes, I suppose. I wish there were such a place - I need it sometimes.

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  3. I have multiple drafts of an email written to you in my head on this very point. It's coming. And in the meantime, I am here with you. And, by the way, I like you plenty.

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  4. I need to remember all I have been through and how deeply that rewrites your insides.

    *****

    Can I venture in your world?

    Anne Morrow Lindbergh, thanks to Brianna:

    "When you find a person who has the same thought as yours, you cry out for joy, and you go and shake him by the hand. Your heart leaps as though you were walking in a street in a foreign land and you heard your own language spoken, or your name in a room full of strangers."

    Yes ~ I like you plenty, too, Still Life Angie.

    Cathy in Missouri

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  5. "It makes you a mountain of a creature, carved and alone." Damn, Angie. That's perfect.

    I wish, often and often, that I could live in the city-state you describe. Or at least meet up for coffee or tea there on a regular basis.

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  6. I'm such an idiot, I can't think of anything I can say to this, except "yes, exactly" and "thank you".

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  7. i love your writing. i love reading your blog. it helps me to feel less alone, i too sometimes feel that i don't belong.

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  8. Oh Angie, this post spoke to me more than anything you have written in a very long time. Maybe because I caught up to you and have two living children now as well, I don't know, but I just want to say yes, a resounding yes. And that with you, I'm forever abiding.
    All my love to you, dear Angie.
    xo

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  9. I am so glad that you are writing, and that you keep writing. Keep writing. I love the imaginary land of babyloss, full of hot teas an ritual and knowledge that babies die sometimes. Leave it to me to get a yurt and gather nettles and potatoes and make a soup for lunch.

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  10. Oh my - Angie. Never stop writing here, please. Even if you stop craving connection, even if you stop needing to write. WE need you to write - blisteringly, humerously, powerfully, truthfully.

    I have a weeping willow too.

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  11. I love the idea of your BLM community. Makes me want to run out to the car & start driving. (And I don't drive, lol.) ; )

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