Streamlining

So what I've been doing lately is streamlining and redesigning my life -- getting rid of real weight, getting rid of dead weight. Pruning branches back to foster new growth in areas that have been stunted. Adding in some new plantings to fill in the holes, hoping they grow into beautiful perennials. Giving extra special care and feeding to things that have begun to wither from neglect. And ruthlessly digging up and discarding the ones that suck essential nutrients and vitamins from the soil of my existence.

I don't garden.

But I am stepping into the sunshine and basking in its light.

Of course, there are moments when I step back into the shadows and start to act like a fungus instead of a flower. But I'm trying my hardest to stay aware of those moments and not beat myself for them, but instead move gently and inexorably, back into the sunlight.

I am and always have been a light-seeker. My name (my real, given name) is translated from Gaelic as "bearer of light." Broken down as a derivation of my mother's Japanese name (my mummy, for whom I was named after spending four days as, simply, "Baby Girl ______ "), my name means "love." My second name means "A Pearl." How lovely. Born from an imperfection, formed by layers of protection, and its luster caused by a reflection from within. Now that I think about it, I am so lucky that my parents so thoughtfully chose my names. Whether they knew the meanings of the names, I can't speculate, but I can do my best to live up to them.

So I am trying to choose the things that move me into the light.

The first thing was stepping away from F. A relationship in which I gave away my light, and didn't know I was sending it into a black hole.

Lately, I'm choosing simply to slow down. I found myself night after night, in 'Salem's Lot (remember, that's the East Village), bouncing between one of two bars. Sin or Fish. Fish or Sin. And there I was, speaking disdainfully of all the sad drunks who have populated the Fish Bar for the past decade, it seems.

You see them as soon as you walk in. They are The Regulars, clinging to some long-ago past, or burying some present sadness, in their pint-sized cocktails and frequent visits to the john, from which they emerge, sniffing and rubbing their noses. It appears the 80's have come back in more than just fashion!

One evening, I decided to drink nothing but club soda while I was there. And I looked around, sober, at all these sad people, drinking their sad drinks, living their sad, stuck-somewhere-in-the-past lives, and realized -- I was becoming one of them.

In the corner, there's the EVG. This is his castle. He rules absolutely here, in a world of don't ask, don't tell, and most certainly, don't stand too close. The bartenders watched us sit together, watched him flirt with me openly, with carefully expressionless faces. Part of me wants to walk in sometime and just have a conversation with one of the regulars, "Of course I fucked him," and dispel the notion that he has been domesticated. He slouches in his corner, glowering like a lion in a cage at the circus. When he rises to his feet, all six-feet-six of him, it's like watching a time-lapse film of a redwood growing, or Godzilla emerging from the sea. Something dangerous and slightly menacing comes off him that makes other men step back and give him clearance. For some reason he took a shine to me. And for a very short time, I believe, took the shine from me. Or rather, should I say, I gave it away. Now that I think about it, not only was he a completely unreliable booty call, he was an unreliable source of pot AND he's a carpenter who built a shelf that FELL DOWN. Pretty much the only thing he had going for him was his purty face and um, other things.

I was at the eye doctor again today, and I remembered something my friend Jayne once said to me -- that if something goes wrong with your body, it's a manifestation of something going on with you. Meaning, that persistent cough? You've got to get something off your chest. For me, I guess, it was this eye thing (a whole separate essay, I promise) AND the persistent cough. There are things I need to see, I wasn't seeing, and dammit, my body was going to make me pay attention and SEE. (The cough? Well, that's just from smoking. Probably.) When something damages your eye, endangers your vision, you suddenly get real interested in seeing, not just looking at.

I am really trying to see.

Remember, I tell myself: Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

So, I'm not really hanging out in 'Salem's Lot anymore.