The Great Wide Sky

One of the things I love best about Oregon are the gorgeous skies. California doesn't have them like we do here. Vast skies of clouds and blue and always moving, shifting, changing, and breathing. It makes my breath spread out farther and go slower. Especially when I'm on farmland and I can see so far all around me.

Picking fruit and vegetables is meditative. Rhythmic. I like doing it with friends but last summer I found that I liked doing it alone best of all. Alone in the tall bean rows with the sky talking to me above. I like to bring my headphones and listen to music. I let my thoughts do what they like to do best: live a life all their own. I have an obsessive mind. It can be a great weight on me at times playing the same tapes over and over and over until I want to rip them out of my skull. Often times, though, when I let my mind wander it's like my dreams. It says what it needs to say without filtering or trying to cover up its irrationality.

It usually runs through old unsatisfactory conversations or situations and comes up with new endings, better endings. A frequent activity in my head is letter writing. I don't write letters much anymore in actuality but I write them constantly in my head. I also have these great long monologues, stories that the universe keeps waiting for me to tell. Sometimes I speak so eloquently in my quiet reverie of picking fruit that I wonder who is really speaking and I know I'll never speak so eloquently when I race home and try to recall the perfect words.

Sometimes I want to sing along to the words in my music out loud. I wish I was the only person in the entire world. Because if I was then there would be no one to question me or wonder if I'm on enough medication.

I miss playing my favorite game. My favorite game is dress up as another version of myself- who I could have been, who I might become. My whole life has been one long dress up session in which everything I do becomes a separate life: when I was a costumer I was a poor dressmaker working 14 hour days to make beautiful clothes for rich patrons that I would never myself be able to wear. I had needle holes in my fingers from hand stitching corsets* and I imagined myself hunched over candle light in a bare stone walled room to stitch gold bullion trim to the hems of gowns.

I dressed the part and my life unfolded accordingly. When naked I want to crawl out of my own skin. I have never felt I belonged in a body at all but when I dress up I can do anything, be anyone, and shine. I didn't love my body or hate my body for its faults or virtues. I never really had body issues exactly. I mean, like any young person I would complain about my thighs or my sizable ass which even when I was at my thinnest never disappeared. But I did always appreciate that I could dress my body up well and become invincible.

It isn't an acting bug either. This is something else. I hate acting. Trying to get me to do some "fun" improvisational acting workshop is like trying to pull teeth from a giant agitated steaming buffalo. There is nothing I want less than to dress up to go on stage. I have never wanted to literally play roles. The enjoyment for me is that we all play roles in life anyway and I enjoy dressing the part for them. Making an occasion out of the ordinary. I have always appreciated the ambiance and the story one garment can tell. I am never not me when I dress up. I am always myself; a self amplified perhaps, but still the same self.

I have always enjoyed watching others to see if they see behind the curtain. If they see that today I am a poet of rare grace. I wonder if they see that today I am a spirit wandering the ragged moors of my imagination in a gown gathering moss and fragile fibers of earth behind me like reluctant ghosts. I wonder if they see that I am a baker in a small town with flour on my cheeks and skill in my hands, I wonder if they can smell the warm yeast and taste the crust in their own mouths as I walk by. Does anyone actually ever really see me?

Now there is nothing to see. I have become ridiculous. I have made a disaster of my body; breaking my bones and becoming too large for any dream but one of being the bearded** fat lady which holds no romance for me. No aura of interest and no hidden treasures wait there. I know there is a reason I have come to this point and until I figure it out I will not be able to exit this nightmare that my own shell is. I have made dressing up impossible. Which makes me feel lost.

In spite of these reflections I did feel answers stirring as my hands reached again and again for more berries. I commune with the plants and become like a branch myself. covered in fruit. I'm not sure sometimes if the trees and grasses can all hear me. I think they do.