Second Sister
under a canopy of light
Human relationships are curious fragile volatile vessels of hope, expectation, baggage, need, remembrance; like dark blind rooms where shiftless spirits continually crash and burn, crash and burn until enough light leaks in through the pulled shades that we begin to see our own shape in the gloom and we learn the boundaries of those others we are shuffling with in these dark chambers here on earth.Hazelnut orchards are eerie low canopied rows of green leaves shimmering like exotic feathers absorbing sound so that time has no real value in them. These hard edges of our tangled relationships become like so much moss gathering in the elbows of wiser beings. Beings that need no speech, no legs, no president to scoff at, and no crooked health insurance to keep them limping chronologically to the finish line.
I have been suspicious of of hazelnut orchards of which there are many in my area. I have smelt magic in them and felt their ominous quietness reaching out to engulf me, to absorb me, to subsume me. I have edged closer and closer to hear the melancholy music that seems to be pocketed inside the rows, muffled by the velvet dimness within tidy row after row after row.
Today we visited some new friends at their hazelnut orchard. At last I walked the barky lanes and looked up at the light from within, from the filbert underbelly, and I think now that all the peace in the world is right there. Everything is muffled; footsteps are soft even as they crush leaves, voices mute against the close air, and the light is filtered in such a way that you can see into the heart of the sun.
This has all reminded me of my gold fall-fairy glitter that I'm afraid may have been lost at last in all my many moves. I need to send some to a friend who is a second sister to me and needs it. My mother used it to make me my first (and only) magic wand when I was five years old and needed to turn some stupid mean twin girls into elephants. My mom had a big bag of this glitter and kept it for years. Not tiny squares of foil but big flaky chunky opulent flakes of magic. When I was twelve or thirteen I had completely forgotten about the magic gold "dust" because I had grown so old with worry and things I couldn't yet name that festered and threatened everything. I had no time to think of stupid glitter.
One day my mother had a garage sale. I remember looking through the things she piled in the driveway somewhat dispassionately, as though all those things hadn't really been ours but belonged to strangers. I flipped through books and casually opened a couple of boxes she was unloading when I saw the paper bag. With a slight stirring of genuine interest I opened the bag. It was like all the stars in the world had burst open in my eyes.
I am not a particularly sentimental person. The only reason I tear up at weddings is the same reason I have to choke down inappropriate laughter at funerals: a reaction I have to crowds of people gathered for any reason they care deeply about. It annoys the Jesus H. Christ out of me that I find myself choking up when I see people marching solemnly and that I am completely lost if the marching is accompanied by a band.
Suddenly I remember being woken up by that eerie funeral piping music in Glasgow that still haunts my head and I'd give anything to hear it again because it sounded so pure and sad and gorgeous like all the pride and sorrow and laughter that humans experience in life gathered into a chorus of sweet fight...I am going hopelessly off track. I wasn't kidding when I said hazelnut orchards are enchanted places and you can't be untouched by them if you listen to them.
When I opened that bag and saw the glitter sparkling back at me I felt that I had found all the good magic in the world. Glenda the good witch has nothing on this magic. When I waved that wand at those horrid blond ringleted princess girls and told them I had turned them into elephants the most incredible thing happened: THEY BELIEVED ME AND CRIED. Don't feel too sorry for them. They had spent plenty of time making fun of me. Me with the straight bowl haircut. Me with my funky hand-me-down clothes. Me who had my metal lunch boxes smashed every week because I was different. Or because I wore the scarlet letter "L" for loser on my chest for all to see. Those girls were mean. Lots of people in that rough grade school were mean.
I got mugged for my milk money by a classmate's sister if that gives you some idea of the kind of area we lived in at the time*.
By the time I reunited with that glitter I was already a very weary citizen of the world. I knew what kinds of things corrode families so that each person in them lives like a lonely planet on its own orbit in the same house. Sex held little mystery for me even though I myself was still a virgin. I knew who was president at the time and that I wouldn't have voted for the bastard. I knew about wars and nuclear power. I already knew that unrequited love sucks and that religion is an elastic thing when you want to win an argument but excessively rigid when you want to kill someone. I want you to understand that seeing that glitter was like finding hope in a garbage bag.
That glitter reminded me that sometimes magic isn't about tangible rewards but about manipulating other people to believe the fantastic so that you can win just once in your life. It reminded me that sometimes a person is an elephant just because you wish they were. It reminded me to laugh. It reminded me that there is power in being different, in being set apart. I was still a summer away from discovering the true power of not giving a god damned shit whether popular girls liked me or not and that not caring made the popular girls kind of itchy with irritation because me not caring meant that they had no power over me. They became nothing more than adolescent windbags while I became interesting and, if not loved**, at least more noticed than any of the cheer leaders.
That glitter gave me courage and hope.
Relationships hang in the balance all the time because so many humans choose to live in the dark. I was thinking a lot about this as I was picking blueberries and it came back to me in the hazelnut orchard: that there are a couple of very special people that I wish I could claim as siblings. I have a blood brother and sister that I love so much it hurts me that I can't give them the whole world in a basket and I'm not even sure they feel my love like that because we also kind of drive each other crazy.
So listen to me, second sister, go to an orchard and lay down with your face to the canopy of light and hear the music pocketed in the leaves, humming through the grooves of bark scrawled with lichen. Feel the rhythm in the soil beneath you rising up through your bones; your heartbeat, your breath, the soughing air through the leaves, and let the music run through your veins like a broken dam washing the ravines free of branches and debris; just as though the whole earth was starting over.
Your scrappy wild full spirit has finally found purchase and it takes my breath away.
*We lived in Richmond right near the boundary of El Cerrito and the school "Mira Vista" was in El Cerrito. Richmond has many areas. Areas for rich mostly white people in the hills. Areas for the middle and lower classes of mixed races to live- where we were- and then there were the flat areas where you didn't go alone if you were white.
**Not loved is right. While many people who had previously written me off suddenly respected me when I stopped dressing and acting to try to fit in and started being myself, there were rocks thrown at me, my locker at school was spit on, and scariest to me because I hate loud noises: a firecracker thrown at me and my friend. Nice.
I have been suspicious of of hazelnut orchards of which there are many in my area. I have smelt magic in them and felt their ominous quietness reaching out to engulf me, to absorb me, to subsume me. I have edged closer and closer to hear the melancholy music that seems to be pocketed inside the rows, muffled by the velvet dimness within tidy row after row after row.
Today we visited some new friends at their hazelnut orchard. At last I walked the barky lanes and looked up at the light from within, from the filbert underbelly, and I think now that all the peace in the world is right there. Everything is muffled; footsteps are soft even as they crush leaves, voices mute against the close air, and the light is filtered in such a way that you can see into the heart of the sun.
This has all reminded me of my gold fall-fairy glitter that I'm afraid may have been lost at last in all my many moves. I need to send some to a friend who is a second sister to me and needs it. My mother used it to make me my first (and only) magic wand when I was five years old and needed to turn some stupid mean twin girls into elephants. My mom had a big bag of this glitter and kept it for years. Not tiny squares of foil but big flaky chunky opulent flakes of magic. When I was twelve or thirteen I had completely forgotten about the magic gold "dust" because I had grown so old with worry and things I couldn't yet name that festered and threatened everything. I had no time to think of stupid glitter.
One day my mother had a garage sale. I remember looking through the things she piled in the driveway somewhat dispassionately, as though all those things hadn't really been ours but belonged to strangers. I flipped through books and casually opened a couple of boxes she was unloading when I saw the paper bag. With a slight stirring of genuine interest I opened the bag. It was like all the stars in the world had burst open in my eyes.
I am not a particularly sentimental person. The only reason I tear up at weddings is the same reason I have to choke down inappropriate laughter at funerals: a reaction I have to crowds of people gathered for any reason they care deeply about. It annoys the Jesus H. Christ out of me that I find myself choking up when I see people marching solemnly and that I am completely lost if the marching is accompanied by a band.
Suddenly I remember being woken up by that eerie funeral piping music in Glasgow that still haunts my head and I'd give anything to hear it again because it sounded so pure and sad and gorgeous like all the pride and sorrow and laughter that humans experience in life gathered into a chorus of sweet fight...I am going hopelessly off track. I wasn't kidding when I said hazelnut orchards are enchanted places and you can't be untouched by them if you listen to them.
When I opened that bag and saw the glitter sparkling back at me I felt that I had found all the good magic in the world. Glenda the good witch has nothing on this magic. When I waved that wand at those horrid blond ringleted princess girls and told them I had turned them into elephants the most incredible thing happened: THEY BELIEVED ME AND CRIED. Don't feel too sorry for them. They had spent plenty of time making fun of me. Me with the straight bowl haircut. Me with my funky hand-me-down clothes. Me who had my metal lunch boxes smashed every week because I was different. Or because I wore the scarlet letter "L" for loser on my chest for all to see. Those girls were mean. Lots of people in that rough grade school were mean.
I got mugged for my milk money by a classmate's sister if that gives you some idea of the kind of area we lived in at the time*.
By the time I reunited with that glitter I was already a very weary citizen of the world. I knew what kinds of things corrode families so that each person in them lives like a lonely planet on its own orbit in the same house. Sex held little mystery for me even though I myself was still a virgin. I knew who was president at the time and that I wouldn't have voted for the bastard. I knew about wars and nuclear power. I already knew that unrequited love sucks and that religion is an elastic thing when you want to win an argument but excessively rigid when you want to kill someone. I want you to understand that seeing that glitter was like finding hope in a garbage bag.
That glitter reminded me that sometimes magic isn't about tangible rewards but about manipulating other people to believe the fantastic so that you can win just once in your life. It reminded me that sometimes a person is an elephant just because you wish they were. It reminded me to laugh. It reminded me that there is power in being different, in being set apart. I was still a summer away from discovering the true power of not giving a god damned shit whether popular girls liked me or not and that not caring made the popular girls kind of itchy with irritation because me not caring meant that they had no power over me. They became nothing more than adolescent windbags while I became interesting and, if not loved**, at least more noticed than any of the cheer leaders.
That glitter gave me courage and hope.
Relationships hang in the balance all the time because so many humans choose to live in the dark. I was thinking a lot about this as I was picking blueberries and it came back to me in the hazelnut orchard: that there are a couple of very special people that I wish I could claim as siblings. I have a blood brother and sister that I love so much it hurts me that I can't give them the whole world in a basket and I'm not even sure they feel my love like that because we also kind of drive each other crazy.
So listen to me, second sister, go to an orchard and lay down with your face to the canopy of light and hear the music pocketed in the leaves, humming through the grooves of bark scrawled with lichen. Feel the rhythm in the soil beneath you rising up through your bones; your heartbeat, your breath, the soughing air through the leaves, and let the music run through your veins like a broken dam washing the ravines free of branches and debris; just as though the whole earth was starting over.
Your scrappy wild full spirit has finally found purchase and it takes my breath away.
*We lived in Richmond right near the boundary of El Cerrito and the school "Mira Vista" was in El Cerrito. Richmond has many areas. Areas for rich mostly white people in the hills. Areas for the middle and lower classes of mixed races to live- where we were- and then there were the flat areas where you didn't go alone if you were white.
**Not loved is right. While many people who had previously written me off suddenly respected me when I stopped dressing and acting to try to fit in and started being myself, there were rocks thrown at me, my locker at school was spit on, and scariest to me because I hate loud noises: a firecracker thrown at me and my friend. Nice.