mmmm

I have loved pie for many reasons in my life. And now I keep finding more--especially juxtaposed a long work week.

I like my job, but I am still learning where I fit there. I am still drawing boundaries and forming a workplace identity of sorts. I want to be reliable and helpful, but ours is an industry of constant crisis and need. It becomes difficult to know where the real crisis is and what is something that will be there tomorrow. I was asked to work this weekend. I said no. Why? Because I am tired with a deep tiredness that pulls on my bones stronger than gravity. And because I need time to do other things that make me feel human. In short, I need time away from the machine.

I needed time to make a pie.

I have on several occasions given all of my reasons for loving pie. I must at this point add a few more as my appreciation matures. Now, I love making pie because the butter I knead into the crust slips between my fingers and into all of the cracks, cuts, and callouses I have earned. (I used to have such beautiful hands.) I love that fitting a crust to a pie plate is just the right shaped to massage tired muscles in hands that have been stretching and wrestling, grasping and tightening. I love that I can take as long as I need to and no one yells 'hurry!' I love that I can have a glass of wine while I work.

My list of reasons to love pie keeps growing. But I think that an important reason that has been there all along, though often without words, is the shape. Pies are a circle. They have no points or rough edges. They have nothing hidden away in some secret corner. Just a circle, wrapped in crust. And I? I am... so unlike that. I forget to share myself. I take and I take. I do it to take care of myself. I do it so that no one else has to. I do it because I'm not sure anyone else wants to. Even when I take care of others...I often forget to give any bit of myself.

Pies don't think about that silly stuff. They are not brownies with the corners that often get burnt while the middle stays gooey. They aren't cookies all broken up into pieces you can fit in your hand or pocket (or stolen on the sly). They don't freak out if they leave the freezer (like ice cream). Nah. They just go from mixing bowl to oven to plate with all of their messy insides...still messy but ready to share at a moment's notice. Wish I could be like that. Guess I got things to look forward too.

Anyway, I like pie. I identify with it in that, it is effortlessly what I am trying (with much effort) to be.

Seeing.

I have begun taking walks as prescribed by my mother. I forget why. There was some very important health reason. Muscles? Maybe... Stress relief? Sure... Better sleep? Could have been... Less headaches? Sounds right... Anyway, yesterday being the exception, I have been walking about 20-70 minutes everyday. I feel like I am seeing the world for the first time some days. I used to look at the details of other people's worlds and lives. I am only now reclaiming that. Here's my album.
I realized that I stopped taking photos in the city because I don't like being watched while I work and here someone is always watching; and because everyone is a photographer here, I felt like I had to know what I was doing. I needed to choreograph my seeing; but that's not how seeing works best. You should see the objects and people on their terms, put them in their best light and angle, and forget about how you look in this process.
And so I walked and kept on walking. I saw and I kept on seeing. I saw so much that I forgot I could be seen.

And then I saw things that I could not photograph. I saw where wealthy neighborhoods fell away into *other* neighborhoods as if a line had been drawn. Feeling seems a lot like seeing when you begin to see abstract concepts. You close your eyes and the feeling is still there with senses that have not yet been named, telling you about the worlds out there.

4 of 10 [a little late in coming]

5:00am
My alarm awakes before me
--as is its habit.
It has no tact
Just that constant war cry,
Like an ambulance or squad car
All lit up with lungs yelling for a race
Or chase.

But the blankets...
They wrap around my limbs
Like stolen goods;
And sleep comes like a thief.
I am just a bystander
yet the alarm holds me
Always in the searchlight.

Hands in the air!
Reaching for the sky
--and my towel.
Apparently, I have aided and abetted
A criminal.
That...and I assaulted an officer of the law
As I hit snooze and, eventually,
OFF.

Now I am to be escorted
Downtown.
I stumble down the stairs as though drunk.
Breath tested for alcohol.
None found.
(But I should brush my teeth anyway.)
That will wait. No time.

I am hurried into a small room
With a bright light
And a loud fan
And told to strip.
A splash of warm water in my face
And a set of clean clothes later...

And I am a responsible citizen again:
Ready to contribute to society.

1 of 10

If I had a super power,
I think it would be something obscure
Like metaphor.

That is how I conquer my days anyway
--if you can call it conquering.

The secret is to never
EVER
look life in the eyes
but never look away.

Always call it by name
as if you know it
and all of its tricks.

I have made up so many names
for the faces life has made at me
but they keep working.

Names,
they soften the edges.

Metaphors,
they sound like names.

The tricks I play
as I spin the only language I know
are the only defense I have,
the only barrier between me and powerlessness.