Wheel of Time

Back to Songwriting

This is a link to a rough draft of a song I wrote. I've written, re-written and scrapped this one so many times, and then suddenly, after months of being unable to produce anything at all, this little ditty just finished itself.

the bravest thing I've ever done

I was probably eight, and playing
in the yard because it was springtime
and my mom told me that I had to stop reading
the Bible because it was just a bunch of begats and begots and
it made the church ladies very nervous.

You sent me outside to get some fresh air, which
was not so mean, because I was losing track of the order
of the biblical stories; some were clear-cut and concise,
 others were pieced together, like
the yo-yo quilt we had hanging as a shower curtain in
the only bathroom of the house.

So I was pretending that my cat was a
pilgrim on his way to the holy land, and
I followed him over limestone outcroppings,
avoided the places where Ellie said there was poison oak
down to the path behind my house owned by a man
who mumbled to himself and rarely washed
his hands.

and he still owns fields where
he keeps dozens of horses; the setting for
a fantasy of a girl of eight who thinks
that reading the Bible is a satisfactory
activity on a June day.

We pass old Fords and boxcars and budding wineberry bushes
and black-eyed susans and I lose track of my
white cat, Snowball, named in an age before irony was
 the common tongue spoken in our home.

 I do not know the way and I keep walking, never thinking about
who might have written the graffiti on the trees, and why someone
would dump a rusting 50's style car into the woods, or how long ago
the pile of ashes in front of the boxcar had been a fire.

At the end of this seemingly endless path, there is a gate--
and in the gate there is a field and in the field there are
probably five unbridled horses running and walking, but
mostly just standing around.

So, of course, I climb under the fence and enter.

I walk to the top of the hill and just sit in the field, and watch
the horses do their horsey things, I think about how
this is freedom because I didn't have to spy through
the slatted gate or step up on my tiptoes to
pet their velvety noses, I just had to sit quietly
and wait for them to come up to me, and some
of them really did.

And that is the bravest thing I've ever done.

Excerpt from a dream journal kept in Irving, Texas.

in trying to sort out what I am and what i want, I have been following my father's advice, and looking through my dream journal for answers.


August 20, 2013

In the dream, I am on an old-style airplane. Like the ones Wright Brothers flew.  Two of my old lovers are sitting in the back; they are merged into one person with a flickering face, changing constantly between the two that I have known.

We are flying over sights just like the ones in the American Airlines inspirational video.  Above is blue.  Below is Canyon DeChelly--even more beautiful than I remember. 

I blink, and the controls change. Now they are modern and complicated, full of command buttons and a joystick instead of the yoke I'd seen before.  

The plane is falling. Gradually at first, then into an impossible tailspin.  Trying to help, Brendan(s) tries to crawl up to me, just as the airplane pitches forward to an impossible attitude.  He is thrown from his seat and into the air, holding on to me by linked pinkies.  I try to fix the positioning of the airplane, but the engines are out. heis screaming for help, asking and begging me to fix it, but I can't. 

He tumbles out completely, face still flickering...

I slide out of my seat, simple and light, and follow his descent without protesting. Because, what else could I do.  

In the air, We detach from one another, and I watch him become a speck and then disappear below me. I am suspended in the air,  floating like paper in the sky. Before I hit the ground, I evaporate into that robin's egg blue and the  green-speckled clay of Canyon deChelly. I become nothing. 

Tonight, I want to dream something new.  

It's not about the destination, it's about the lunatics on the bus.

Passive Aggressive Letters to the Passengers on the New York-bound megabus, departing Washington DC Wednesday, January 22^nd, 11:59 pm:

Dear man just behind me and to the left,

No one understands love gone wrong like I do. I’m really sorry about Shanna.  She sounds like a dick. You said it yourself; she disrespected your grandmother. You know what I think you should do? Forget that ageist assclown, and get off of the fucking phone.

No one on this bus is going to appreciate your self-righteous indignation, so why waste your poetic sermon on deaf, silently enraged ears?  No, good sir. You keep quiet until the morning. Then, at the crack of dawn, go to the top of the Rockefeller Building and dispense this diatribe on the unsuspecting tourists who pay fourteen dollars to climb to the top of a building in the middle of winter.   

Like the rooster of our generation, you’ll wake them all to the sunrise of this new day, this brave new world where love has lost for once and for always.  You’ll crow a song of anger, a song of love, a song of Shanna; that cold, shrill voice on the phone who keeps hanging up on you.  That’ll teach her. That’ll teach them all.

Dear man just next to him,

Weezy does rule. And I am very curious to know whether rapping his songs aloud is some kind of elaborate protest against the man just behind me and to the left, an open audition for any booking agents or club owners who might be taking this bus, or just an ardent display of fandom. However, after seeing Weezy live in 2009, I came to the realization that his stuff is way better when heard through a sweet set of speakers. It just doesn’t translate as well to live performance, y’know? 

Keeping that in mind, please, shut the fuck up before I strangle you with your Skullcandy earbuds. 

Dear man just in front of me,

At first, I thought you were watching American Horror Story: Coven, but then Woody Harrelson showed up, and I don’t think he’s on that show.  In fact, I think this is a movie.  And now the plot thickens--Christopher Walken and Colin Farrell are onscreen.  Kind sir, what the fuck is this cinematic revelation? Why is everyone in it? Is that Kevin Bacon?  And did you seriously bring popcorn and beer on the megabus?

Man in front of me, I think I love you.

Dear very well groomed man just to my right,

Your Louis Vuitton bag is a decade out of season, but in a really great way.  I especially love how it appears to be actual Louis Vuitton.  Like, Louis himself made that initials-speckled purse on your lap, and you are wearing the hell out of it.   Since you’re on a megabus, you appear to be a bargain-minded, gentleman, so I feel compelled to divulge a little secret…

Did you know that Sonoma for Target does a really great Vuitton  knock-off these days?

Never mind, you're way too classy for that shit.

To the group of five nineteen year old boys who just boarded in Baltimore, smelling strongly of weed,

 Good on you.  But, no—you cannot sit next to me.

Might I suggest that you go sit with the guy just behind me and to the left, now loudly weeping over Shanna energetically enough that I am convinced he is the Edgar Allan Poe of our generation, and Shanna is his Lenore.  Sounds like he could use a bowl or two.

Dear Shanna (who is still on the phone with the man just behind me and to my left),

I cannot believe he is forgiving you for this shit. It’s unacceptable, and you know it. You can’t treat a person that way. Especially when he needs to express his forgiveness at such a decibel.

This whole bus hates you so fucking much. Change your name. Change your address. Cover up that tattoo of a peace sign on your upper hip. I’m fucking coming for you.

Nobody likes you when you're 23.

Things To Do Before Turning 23:

1. Blog about how I feel about getting married at 23.

2. Reference other blogs about getting married at 23 in my argument.
Note: It is best to ASSert how wrong the other blogger is, and how much her personal choice has placed all women on a nonstop train headed straight to misogynyville. It Does Not pass Go. It Does Not Collect $200. It cannot be the Tophat.

3. Justify my conclusions with gratuitous purple prose and personal anecdotes,
EX: how I realized that love is just a construct when I looked into the blue eyes of a person I thought I loved and saw only iris and pupil and a big coward so I decided to pretend we never met and be alone forever instead.
OR about how when you know you know and I totally, like TOTALLY know that this is absolutely the best my life will ever get so let's throw a fucking party and get a ring and dress up fancy because by 35 everyone has gross wing-like upper arms. Arms like that look terrible in a strapless white princess gown and no one's grandchild will ever admire that kind of body type so let's take the pictures now!

4. Reblog likeminded women warriors championing whatever it is that I personally believe; force all Facebook friends to comment, pontificate, elaborate and masturbate their way through the article.

 5. Learn how to shut up a cat in heat.



 In other news, a 60 year old man named Ira really wanted to take me to see Malcolm Jamal-Warner in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, so I guess I haven't really got all that much to be jaded about.

PS: I do not care if/when/how you get married, as long as you have an open bar and you invite me.

Five Things I Used To Care About, But Then I Graduated From College.

1. my diet

There was a time when I ate a lot of kale chips, didn't buy bread, and avoided eating anything that was delivered via a window into my car. Then I graduated from college. Turns out, kale is really expensive when the rent is due, and when life feels like a post apocalyptic hellscape, you really need to eat two crunch wrap supremes and have a stomache-ache to match your soul-ache.

 I'm trying to find a middle ground between this bizarre slew of fast food binge-fests, and my clean colon past, but i seem to be hovering by that 24 hour Taco Bell on Stadium a lot more, lately. At $1.75, A 7-layer burrito is cheaper than groceries.

  2. my body hair

This started with the STAPH FEST 2012, a happy time, when I got a flesh eating virus in my armpit and then couldn't shave for two months. Since then, I've been very relaxed about the state of my extraneous body hair. Let's be real: I'm blonde. I'm not very hairy. I don't try very hard as it is. Now, I only shave my pits if it's a birthday, or I'm on a date that doesn't involve someone telling me about how he plays the baritone recorder.

  3. Having Non-Ripped Underwear

It all comes down to cost. Look, I know that "5 for 25" is supposed to be a good deal, Victoria, but it simply is not. It's not a good deal, honey. And I know that hand-washing and delicate cycle are a thing...but laundry is a pain in the ass.

 I'm in that middle ground where I can't just buy undies when I run out, but I can never remember that since I don't have coin laundry, I can afford to run my panties on the "delicate" cycle. As a consequence, I find my panties hugging tight to my blue jeans after putting them through two cycles in the dryer on the "Summertime on mars" setting.

  4. Being Friends with my Exes

Ex-Friend Boy(noun): An ex boyfriend who you attempt to be friends with.  This relationship generally consists of awkward coffee dates and half-hearted hellos at bars, followed by a speedy departure, because one of you is probably on a date. "You're really cool with each other",  but it is a shallow and uncomfortable situation, and generally results in unnecessary rage and resentment from one or both parties.

Look, a relationship is essentially a friendship, and breaking up is,  generally speaking, the equivalent of saying "Hey best friend, you're really going nowhere with your life, and I'm seriously hoping for something better." It's not criminal to say that, and in many cases,  it's totally warranted. But it sucks to hear, and it's mean.


If you don't want to date me, that's cool. I'm hairy and my underwear are weird. But, like, then let's just not hang out. Let's call a spade a spade, and a douche-bag, a douche bag, ya feel?


**This rule doesn't apply if you are in an awkward, tiny friend group, or you need a lighting designer for your senior thesis.

5.  Having People Think my Hair Isn't Dyed. 

If Shakira Can Rock Four inch Roots, then SO CAN I.

--SheWolf OUT

A wall of words, from a month on the lam.

On a bumpy bus ride, one of a thousand rides home from somewhere I’d rather be. I am not, but not unlike a New Yorker walking through Times Square. It’s so bad that most people would rather run in front of three lanes of cars than stay on 42nd and 7th for any measurable amount of time. Midtown: to wander through crowds of lost tourists who are constantly moving and pushing and side-stepping toward the shiny center so that they can hug a bed bug infested homeless man in an Elmo suit or pay three hundred dollars to see a man in a Superman costume dangle, his torso wrapped in airplane cord. Midtown gets us all down.
And all you want to do is go home or go to get on a train and into a better neighborhood where these people who feel nothing do not go for fear of the danger that this city hasn’t had for a decade.
New York wants you to stay alive. It urges you on, it invites you into cash-only pizza places in Jewish neighborhoods where little boys hold their hats in hand so that they can wear a bike helmet and speed by the emptying Brooklyn street at dusk. It is the systolic and diastolic when your heart is so broken and torn up and in rebellion of your passion that it all feels like more of a joke than it usually does and you have no choice but to laugh like a madman when you are finally alone, but not alone, on the subway. Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, so the city is faithful still. And even those theatres overrun with commercial nothingness and corporate sponsors are packed on a Wednesday afternoon, each dying soul hoping to find the gospel for even just a moment, in between advertisements for Coca-Cola and exhausted references to William Shakespeare. He got it right, the rest of us are just pretenders, so they say. So someone says.
So what if everyone dies, so everything. Some people are in the business of preserving life for as long as possible; I’m in the business of enjoying it in the tiny sips it has been doled out to me. If it’s all over tomorrow, thank god because I have run out of activities. And since everything is made up as it is, I prefer to count my currency in mirth. Even in lack of mirth, because a negative number is just that number with a stepladder in front of it. At least I know what the gutter tastes like. At least I know.
I’d have that eternal mirth, and you your pragmatism and realism and so-called clarity, which is fear dressed as ambition for Halloween. And if all of these scribbles mean nothing and are not admirable, then so do those microscopic scribbles that sometimes behave and sometimes do not. I am failing to see much of a discernable difference between what I do and what you do.
Remember a half smile at the thought of staying. Remember the catch in your throat at not knowing but deciding to know anyway. Remember remembering how good it felt.
But then the canopy gave way and suddenly I am flighty and temporary; live a life in distortion, distraction, sure to fall and never get up again. So, by the beckoning of your bootheels, I took my love and my confusion and my stray dog gypsy life and I wrapped it into a bandana and tried again somewhere else.
Again, and stated clearly for the record: I’d have forged a path in precision and forsaken calamity because I, in no uncertain terms, adore your carefulness and your little drinking problem that you cultivate like a garden so that you can still retain some memorable pith. And stated once again in booming resonance I request only a stay of execution, not a life in any sense of the permanence that it is not.
“Everything is temporary” and a wry grin. And so it is. But that’s my point, you idiot.
In New York, it is too loud to think on love too hard, and yet the thoughts infect the mind, even when sitting on a roof that shakes hands with the empire state building, eating a salad with too many capers. Even when watching a little girl rebel against the adults like I used to do long ago when I believed in something more than the eternal wrongness of my singular self.
Where does all of the love go for bottle blondes with good singing voices and too many tattoos above the waist? And we are off again down rabbit holes of what-ifs and if-onlys and how-coulds, where I think of post-bacs and post-docs and my grade-point-average, which are as meaningless as taking a yoga class or having a drink but someone thought to create a hierarchy, under which I am well suited but ill fitted.
Jabber jabber jabber I’ll talk until I say it right and the key is revealed and I found the crack in your logic but there are a million faults in the wall of china and everyone still wants to climb all over it like its nothing. In the end, I know that you see the cracks, too, and the plain truth is that it was fun while it lasted but never meant to last because who stays with anyone who is such a hanger on.
And isn’t it just your ego, oh eternal discontent, that made you feel so guided toward a man who just wanted to be nice because the Midwest teaches manners and you just don’t know what that’s like and you think he might stick around because you think you are so special but what do you know about mitochondria that isn’t from A Wrinkle in time? Not so much anymore, like you said, you were smarter in high school when you had unbridled potential and now you are bridled and double bitted and ready to be ridden into intellectual poverty and not a good investment. Try for someone with a trust fund; they can take a gamble like you, if they’ve got the stomach. You’re only twenty-two and have been put out to pasture for idle behavior, so what good are you for but idle amusement.
But then the sun still comes, though it is early to rise and bed thanks to an adjustment of our clocks, so I'll keep my optimism in my back pocket and keep trying to make a straight line out of a spiderweb.