Peace, Love, and Passion, Please...

I like to drive slow....creep along and daydream, sing really loud, to Primal Scream and Led and Stones, chain smoke until the ashtray looks like a Blooming Onion, and flash two-fingered peace signs at the folks cussing me in silent screams as they zip past me.

I like to ride in fast cars. To pitch my contacts out the window in an act of littering defiance so the highway is a blur. To feel my hair madly tangling with every mile we fly, blonde speghetti in the wind.

I like to dance to make believe music. To dip low, and long, and pretend I'm a ballerina on top of a vinyl jewelry box. To dance in the street barefoot, under full moons and pouring rains and streetlamps sweltering in the heat. I like to dance really, really slow to fast music, and lightening fast to so~slow~it's~a~lulabye~music. I like to be asked to dance. And sometimes I like to say no.

I like to laugh until I cry, choke, cough, spew beer everywhere. Until I can't remember why I'm laughing and have to cross my legs so I don't accidently tinkle. Hell, I like to laugh so much, I don't really care if I wet my pants, send my gum richocheting into your lap, get the hiccups. I just like to laugh.

I like to Love. Hard and fateful. Ridiculously comitted to the moment. Wreckless and silly.

Forever can be a really, really short time...

You gotta make the most of it.

Peace doesn't have to be a Fairytale

Little black cowboy boots, scuffed, the pink and blue embroidered flowers natty and dirty. Good. I didn't want flowers. Jesse James didn't wear bouquets on his toes and neither did this 4 year old. I wanted 'em dirty, and a little too big, so my toes could scrunch when I had to stop in a hurry. I wanted 'em pointy, like the school pencils the big kids carried to school on the first day. I need them that way so I could Kick harder, write my name in the sand in Giant Letters, and squash things on the ground, round and round, until they went splat.

Giant blue blow up pool, tilting just a little bit to the left, so there's a deep, deep end where the water is cooler and my imagination can dive, where I can fall off an innertube backwards and suddenly be scuba diving in a bottomless sea.... three feet and 6 inches under the surface of reality. I know how to pretend. To float. To dream. To make make~believe the best true story that ever happened.

We pile up on the couch and plug in a gazillion cords, punch all the buttons, bop the broken TV on the head a few times and laugh. Grrrrzzzzghaplumph! Dusty ole video rattles in the box below the set and a giant Warning flashes across the screen.....It's starting. The B rated movie at the dirty old, last one standing, Drive in. We scooch the coffee table really close to the couch, because there's really not a lot of floorboard in this old mustang. He lights the mosquito coil and tosses it in the ashtray. I balance the bucket of buttered pop corn on the make believe console and we laugh. Climb into the backseat and pop open the cooler. At intermission we throw popcorn out the window so everyone will look and see the Peace Signs I scribbled with my toes on the fogged up windshield. We laugh and hide under the blankets, 16 again.

"We're broke, but we've never been poor" she whispered, Kissing me on the forehead and handing me the whacked off above the knees vintage prom dress...and the blue suede heels two sizes too big. "Stuff kleenex in the toes, and have a good time tonight, you're Cinderella".

On our way out the door, she made us pose for pictures. She held the little Brownie camera up high, eye level to our smiles and clicked. Over and over again. It never flashed. The make-believe film didn't budge,

but our memories did.
Forever.

Standing outside....

I tried to squint. To just peek, to abandon peripheral vision and logic, and the hand~me~down wisdom I wear like tattered jeans.
To peep through pretend glasses, sprinkled with rhinestones, and tortouise shell rims.


To float.

To play driftwood again.


But in the wee hours of the night,
My eyes pop open
and the new words ticker tape by me,
bleached out confetti hung out to dry on the line...
Somewhere off in the distance,
the old words,
bouncing off a Drive-in movie screen,
silent now,
are bigger than life....


And I'm haunted.



By the laughter. The naked laughter of wreckless nights.

And
the skinned knees
of crashing...



Haunted...
by the accidental high
of wildness.


Ghosts never slam doors. They rattle chains, but they never slam doors.....

In the morning, I'm putting dead bolts on.

And tomorrow night,I'm dancing....

Slow Dancing to Fast Songs

At 17, I did it barefooted and braless, Pink Floyd pinging off the neon walls. Climbed right up on the coffee table and danced, dipped, ca-chinged to the sounds of the cash register clanking...

Bubble eyed gold fished swam in the bathtub, lost in the psychedelic world we painted on their clawfooted world. Christian smoked a fat one. Strangers came and went. And the music played on and on and on.

And we danced.

At 19, I wore neon green platforms and borrowed white painter paints. I rubbed elbow to elbow, knee to knee, through a sea of strangers drinking nickel beer and danced up the steps and down again, Making grand entrances over and over again.

We danced....

In and out of my twenties,
in and out of revolving bars
into raging oceans,
waist high in midnight currents....

At 30 I danced out of one life and in stilhetto heels and a drippy hippy satin dress, danced right into my next....
Tom Jones and the Art of Noise....
The Kiss....
Off the dance floor and into a sea green pool....
Navy blue fabric, and tea stained lace floating,
swirling.....
And we laughed...

Until we cried...

And in slow motion, a gazillion years passed and I watched black and white re-runs...
the music slurring, blurring, getting buried under dust bunnies...

Until I remembered...

And it wasn't exactly like riding a bike....
It didn't come back all at once...

Not until I closed my eyes....

And danced again...

Rikkity Tikkity Tink!

It was cold and our laughter billowed out in whispy cartoon clouds, mixing with the tart aroma of candied applies and mustard slathered pretzels. My fingers were almost frozen and I kept tap-tap-tapping my boots on the wooden steps trying to keep warm.

Half way up.

We laughed harder. More on purpose. More out of silly make believe fear.

The wooden track wobbled, shook, seemed to tilt in the air, as if the faintest breeze would topple the entire roller coaster over on it's side, and spill it into the boardwalk, a mangled erector set, glowing in the dark. The music stopped , or maybe it didn't, and up ahead of us, the white faces of instant ghosts climbed from their seats, teetering for just a moment to gain their strength, to breath again, and then the tentative laughter of those surviving this trip began again as they descended the other stairs. Free and Alive.

"Next" he shouted, gruffly arming Kimbies and I into the first seat, alcohol breath tucking us in. He started at the back.... one, two, three, twelve, thirteen, running the wooden track, slamming the safety arms down into lock, lock, lock....his dirty fingers barely grazed us, and the little train began to climb. We gave the arm a little wiggle. It bounced straight up. We slammed it down. It bounced again. We screamed. And screamed again. And went higher and higher in tiny rickety bursts of strength. We rounded the highest corner and snapped to the left. And began free falling. The two of us, elbows locked, parachuting. Choking. Huge fists on our necks, faceless fingers twined into our clothes, our hair, holding onto us by Angel's breath. We hit the bottom and slammed hard to the right, left, and I forget now, if we were shaking from the inside or the out, but I remember dying. Just before the next climb.

That was 25 years ago.

The first of many, many "never again"s.....

I woke up this morning with cotton candy in my hair. Two tattered ticket stubs stuffed in the back pocket of the crumpled jeans on the floor.

I woke up smiling.

You gotta love the fair......

Nana

When I was 14, she was 66....
Blonde banana curls cascading down her back , dread locked ahead of her time. Skinny little legs and Blue Mascara. Patent leather pocket book exactly the color of The Yellow Submarine. My Nana. Skinny's Nana. Kimbies Nana. She was wild.

She laughed with no reserve, head tilted back, guzzling the wine of stolen moments from a long fluted glass.
She danced with the abandon of a Ballerina in red slippers, with the wind up wings of a Go-Go dancer, with the free spirit of a magpie faerie.
She told stories in a whispered language only those in cahoots would ever understand or remember in the morning.

She was tickled pink when women burned their bras, but believed in keeping the sexiest ones, the ones in ice cream colors and wicked lace, for the night time....
She rubbed elbows with everyone....catching their magic, and savoring it....
She Loved scary movies, patent leather boots, mini skirts, red lipstick, smokey bars, storytellers, rock and roll, Liberace, romance novels, and her handsome hubby....
She was wild....

She taught us secrets we'll pass on to our daughters and nieces....

I felt her,
heard her,
hugged her...
on Saturday night.....

And I know when she peeked down,
eyes sparkling,
head thrown back ready to laugh,
she was thrilled.

You taught me well, Nana.
I wore fishnets with the combat boots.....