Saying no, eating dirt, and grieving.

It's been a long time since I listened to someone eating a carrot over the phone.

Please verify this is a raw carrot.

When you quit smoking, you should carry a bag of apples around with you.

And you should eat an apple every time you want to smoke.

Revel in the crunch of my carrot.

I eat a dirty, crisp orange carrot like someone might take a bite from a wiffle ball bat.

Everything is surreal in my world.  

To understand me, you must know this fact.

Everyone is a cartoon character bred with some kind of saint.

My friends are patron saints of every problem which has a word to define it.

Every malady known to Meghankind has a patron saint with the cure.

All roads lead to Meghan.

Hear me now and forever hold serendipitous peace in your heart.

Hear me now and feel the blessings wash through your skin and know that I want you to be happy.

Hear this message I send.

Hear this and ease the worried wondering that haunts and plagues you.

Hear me telling you that all these problems will solve themselves as my vehicle (made of words)  (made of love for you)

handles the corner like German engineering and makes a U-turn to set your nerves at ease.

I feel your fear vibrating into my cells.

I transform it.

I chain smoke into the night like the engine of a train barreling through tunnels carved into mountains.

All night I build bridges made of stars and the smoky celestial fog collected in my proverbial pockets.

Sometimes I paint, it's true.  But the only thing I have painted lately are the parts of skin above my eyelashes.  Stone-scraped mica powder in colors of black and purple and white.  It's all for you.  As long as I put color onto something, I can still be the artist that I am.  For now, my eyelids will have to suffice as canvas.  

After thought:  I also paint my toenails.  And that is for you as well, but I digress.

I called my friend this evening to invite him to the costume party.  His son was with him.

He suspected I might only be asking him because I knew he already had plans.

This was not the case.  

Bring him too, I suggested.

The answer was no.

There are some no's I can respect and others I cannot. 

This time, I respected the no. 

I respected it because I fully respect the owner of the mouth the words came from.

Sometimes I can manipulate a maybe.

And a maybe can sometimes turn into a yes.  

But, I have learned in my years that the burden of an unnatural yes can be too heavy to hold for any length of time.

I do not have any unnatural yeses in my pocket at the moment, except my own.

( My unnatural yeses are in the form of discipline and commitment to self-improvement.  A whole other can of worms.  I can carry my own weight and I ain't nobody's ball and chain.  This is gospel. )

I digress.  If you stay long enough, things will come full circle.  I promise.

I spent today trying to find something to get excited about.  I only have myself.  

Back to the subject, I went to the party wearing vampire teeth and glittery-red fake blood dripping from the corners of my mouth.  I drew some bite marks on my neck and donned a polyester red robe.  I sprayed red-glitter hairspray all over my head and there was glitter all over my chest and shoulders and the sink in the bathroom too.  

I drove my car listening to no music into the country.  I drove too far and became lost in an area of town where only a city girl might be scared because she has watched too many horror movies about the woods and killers who hide in the dark and jump out in the street feigning injuries or hitchhiking and then murder everyone because ( the murderer had a fucked up childhood ).  

At the party I saw a friend of a dead friend of mine.  We never met before this summer, but we have a dead friend in common.  The new living friend was tweaking out on a breakup because his ex-girlfriend was there.  It's always bad when a breakup is fresh.  I know, I know, I know.  I have blood dripping from the corners of my mouth and I think fondly of my victims' absence.  

Like I said before, no extra weight in my pockets.  I haven't drawn an uninspired yes from anyone in a while. 

My favorite part of the evening was when a toddler dropped his gummy-eyeball candy on the ground.  It rolled like a golf ball down a hill. The child was dressed in a tan footy-lion costume. He squatted halfway down, bending his knees, and pulling up his chi from the earth.  As he raised back up, he yelled a long noooooo from his diaphragm. It was as if he expected the command of his voice to raise the gummy eyeball back up the hill and out of the leafy dirt on the ground.  

I nearly expected this myself.  

I went to recover the candy eyeball for him.

It was covered in dirt and caked with leaves.

He looked at the eyeball in my hand and put his own hand to his mouth.

I assume he wanted to eat it.

That is why I like kids more than adults sometimes.  They are not afraid to eat dirt and be passionate about the things they want or to grieve the things they have lost.  

To be continued...