I try out
for a solo
singing
my director
is pleased
I am growing
she says
I am beautiful
she says
I look like a different person
she knows
a little of what I have weathered
my patient
is 86
and her husband died
in December
she misses him so
as she comes into the room
one day
she says
you look as if you have wings
and are ready to take off
and I freeze
for a moment
in surprise
that she can see
my wings.
I really did not want a tour of the DMV.
I arrive early, just as they open the doors, and there is already a line. We file in, each taking a paper number. The people in front go straight up to the desks. One window processes two people in only ten minutes each and then promptly puts up a closed sign. I guess it’s exhausting, working so fast.
Everyone waiting looks strained or sullen or stressed at the DMV. Shoulders hunched, heads down, the ones in power suits on their phones, but the phones keep cutting off in the DMV. Some sort of special shielding, I would bet.
I have number 17 and get to go to a window after 2 hours.
The clerk smiles at me. She is pale, pale, but has horns and pitch black wings, no feathers, like a bat.
“Unitarian!” she says, grinning.
“Um,” I say, eyeing the wings.
She looks wicked and then her wings are classic white feathered. She is browner and well, I’d guess Filipino. “Worried?” she says.
“No.” I say. “Tired. Sad. Curious.”
“What would you prefer to see?” she says and morphs. Now she has one bat wing that changes to black feathers then through rainbow feathers, to the snowy white feathers on the other side. Her skin tone is very dark on her right hand and then lighter across to pale with red freckles on her left hand.
“Nice.” I say.
“Which heaven would you like?”
“Unitarians do not believe in hell. Send me back.”
“You just got here. Violently and by surprise.” she wrinkles her nose. “Riots again. Sorry about that. We have opened a Unitarian space.”
“No. Send me back.”
She sighs and pulls down a heavy paper file. All the papers have gold edges, except for those with black. “You found your true love.”
“Yes. So what. We didn’t have time to make it work.”
“Don’t you want to wait until she dies so you can head down at the same time?”
“No. She’s only 32. And there is work to do.”
She is paging through the file. She snaps it shut. “Two week vacation. The minimum required. Go to the door on the right.”
I sigh. I want to argue but I’ve done that before. She will add on an extra week for every word I say.
My memories are intact here. Of all the lives. It’s always a bit overwhelming when I first arrive.
I go to the door on the right. A small page with grey tattered wings opens the door for me. I think it is a boy but he is wearing a Tinkerbell style tunic.
“I am your guide today.” No, it is a girl. I think. They may be able to morph that too.
We go in the door. My guide is shedding feathers, one every few steps. I pick one up. “Sorry.” she says. “Puberty. So, where do you want to spend your two weeks?” We are in a half circle shape hall, with hallways branching off. The hallways have no end that I can see and there are open doors all along them.
“I just want to go back.”
She pats my arm absently. “Oh, yes, they told me. You have to take breaks. You are wonderful, though, we love you.” She is leading me to one of the halls towards the left. We go past two doors and to the third. “See?” she says. “Unitarians. Of course, they can come in and out and go in all the others and argue with everyone. We wouldn’t want them to get bored.”
The room is empty at the moment. “And I guess they are all in other places!” The room across the hall seems to be a classic hell, with demons and pitchforks and a grim rocky landscape with pits of burning tar. I can see a dinosaur caught in tar, and a really huge crowd of people. There is a lot of screaming.
“Some people insist.” says my guide. “Where to next? Evangelical? Valhalla is rather fun for males and certain females, we’ve got fluffy clouds and harps, or are you more interested in touring Asian, African, Australian? We do have paleolithic sites and many people are interested in Egyptian themes. The cliff dwellers interest many as well. “
“Atheist.”
She frowns. “Of course, but that room shuts down consciousness and you have to have two weeks of consciousness before you can go back.” She is leading me back into the central half hall.
“Ok,” I say, giving in. “I am not trying to be difficult, you know.”
“Yes, and everyone told me correctly that you are difficult. All the ones that go back over and over are difficult. And there are more every year.”
“Take me somewhere new, ok?” I am looking now at the frieze over the door that will take me back. Two weeks. I can manage. I am resigned. The frieze is cupids and then male odalisques, then female, then leopards, and then they are cupid fauns with horns on their heads, morphing towards adulthood. Yet the carved letters stay the same:
Deus Machina Verum
and I follow my guide into another hallway to find a place for my two weeks.
_________________________
This poem inspires me to post today’s story: https://narble.blog/2021/08/17/if-there-are-no-dogs-in-heaven/
I think the hell in heaven also fits today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt: scorch.
I was asked to write a poem from the perspective of the angels in my dream. I have posted this once before, but not with all the other Falling Angels poems. It is a sequence of poems responding to a dream.
Falling
We are stars
We are born
We are made to burn
We flame
We explode or burn out
We are made to die
We are angels
We are made to fall
We all fall
We are white falling in black space
Or black falling in white space
If you prefer
It doesn’t matter
It is the contrast that is important
There is no light without dark
We are angels
We are made to fall
We all fall
Do you fear
your fear?
your anger?
Your grief?
falling?
death?
We fall for you
If you reject
your fear
your anger
your grief
falling
death
We will fall for you
We accept falling
All must fall
If you accept
your fear
your anger
your grief
falling
death
We will fall with you
You will fall with us
I do not think of emotions as bad or good. None of them are bad or good. They are information, controlled by electrical impulses and hormones, evolved over millions of years (or endowed by our creator, for those who swing that way).
I don’t dismiss emotions. I listen to them.
I think of myself as an ocean. There is all sorts of stuff happening in the depths that I don’t understand. Probiotics, for example. I don’t take them. If not for penicillin, I’d be dead many times over, from strep A pneumonia twice and other infections. I don’t think we understand probiotics yet. We don’t understand the brain, either.
The emotions are the weather in my life. I don’t really control them but they don’t control my ocean, either. Some days are sunny and gorgeous and then a storm may blow up. I am afraid of hurricanes, one destroyed my grandparents’ house in North Carolina, on the outer banks. I think all the cousins still mourn that house. And I miss my grandparents too, all of them. And my parents and my one sister.
See? The weather got “bad” there for a moment, but it isn’t bad. Storms have their own beauty though we hope to batten the hatches and that not too much damage is done. Maybe there is rain, scattered showers, sun breaks, a lenticular cloud. In the Pacific Northwest on the coast, the weather can change very quickly and we have microclimates. My father lived 17 miles away, but inland from me and in a valley. It was warmer in the summer and colder in the winter.
My goal with my weather emotions is to pay attention to them, let the storms blow in and out, and try not to harm anyone else because of my weather. When my sister was in hospice, we had a sign up in my small clinic. It said that my sister was in hospice with cancer and that clinic would be cancelled at some point with little warning. Patients were kind and gentle with me. And then it was cancelled, when she died. I got cards from people. They were so kind, thank you, thank you, and I could barely take it in. My maternal family then dealt with grief by having lawsuits. I don’t think that is a good way to deal with grief, but we just see things differently. Maybe it’s the right way for them. I don’t know.
Whenever I was having internal emotional weather that stirred me up, I would tell my nurse or office manager. Because they will sense my weather and need to know what is up. I had enormous support from them during a divorce, while my partners treated me horribly. My nurses and office manager knew me and my partners didn’t. My partners distanced me as if a divorce were catching. Whatever. Their loss.
Sometimes patients sensed that I was upset. I could tell by their faces. If they didn’t ask, I would. Bring the emotions out. Reassure them that I AM grumpy but not at them. Stuff in my own life. No worries.
Sometimes clinic is about a patient’s weather. They ask if they can tell me something. Often it is prefaced by “Maybe I need an antidepressant.” or “I feel really bad.” When they tell the story, usually I would say, “I think it is perfectly reasonable and normal that you feel angry/hurt/shocked/horrified/grieved/upset.” And then I would ask about an antidepressant or a counselor and most of the time, the person would say, “Well, I don’t think I need it right now.” What they needed was to know that their weather was NORMAL and REASONABLE.
I am seeing things on Facebutt and on media saying that mental health problems and behavioral health problems are on the rise. Maybe we should reframe that. Maybe we could say, “The weather is really bad right now for everyone and it’s very frightening and it is NORMAL and REASONABLE to feel frightened/appalled/angry/in denial/horrified/confused/agitated/anxious or WHATEVER you feel.” This weather is unprecedented in my lifetime, but as a physician who had very bad influenza pneumonia in 2003 and then read about the 1918-19 influenza, I have been expecting this. Expecting a pandemic. Expecting bad weather. This will pass eventually, we will learn to cope, be gentle with yourself and be gentle with others. Everyone is frightened, grieving, angry, in denial or in acceptance. The stages of grief are normal.
Hugs and prayers for all of us to endure this rough weather and help each other and ourselves..
I took the photograph in color. My program made a black and white version. It looks like the back of a stegosaurus to me, a dinosaur now living as a mountain.
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: rainbow. Because sometimes the rain and sun combine to make a rainbow.
It is easy with you
All the places you’ve been offended
Where you haven’t been treated right
A bike shop
Food co-op
Coffee shops
Restaurants
It’s easy to hide my physical body
Where you can’t find me
But what of my mind and heart
You always feel it when I go
I go to the Beloved
I give up
I cast myself into the abyss
Grief, denial, loss, bargaining, abandonment, hopeless grief
I throw myself over the cliff
Over and over
I resist
And then let go
It’s not wings
Because the cliff is a waterfall
I don’t want wings
And the Beloved laughs
Wings form
I refuse to fly
I won’t I won’t I won’t
I fall towards the water
Each time I wonder
If this time the Beloved will not shift
I hit the water
Safe again
Scales and tail
And I can breathe
And swim free
To the sea
For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: vessel.
I took the photographs recently, from North Beach, second one zoomed all the way.
I go in the sea
of dreams
open the chest
the trunk
the saddlebags
Empty the dirty laundry
Of emotion
On the floor
Grief and joy
Fear and hope
Mine
All mine
There is a place
Beyond words
I see you in that place
It is very old
And very young
It is so frightening to go there
Lose words
The first time
It is haunted and hunted
Are you aware
Of that place
Do you go there
Of your own volition?
Or do you struggle
Fight and suffer in the
Choppy boundary between air and water
Fear drowning
Water surrounds you
Above you too
You are in the wordless place
Over your head
Are you too deep?
Open your eyes
In the green water light
A mermaid waits to lead you
To a rope to a raft
And me
But first you must open your eyes
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