Tequila Sunrises and other shots.....

5:34 A.M......

Mad cats spitting over chicken bones owned the abandoned Tiki Deck. Their Halloween silhouettes arched and tiptoed across the splintered planks, smiling with greasy lips and staring at me with liquid eyes. I mimicked them. Arched my back and tippy-toed past their rheumy faces, past the early morning stench of Friday night beer bottles....

And dove..... feet first,

fanny next, over the mountainous sand dune, onlto the cold wet sand, bulldozed flat by a midnight tide....

The sleepy pink sky flirtatiously batted her eyes and golden streaks of her mascara rained onto the the glassy sea.

"Good Morning Sunshine".....I whispered.....

"I've come to find peace"......

And then I ran.....in the cold coquina laced sand. Barefooted and free.

At the frothy water's edge, I paused to twirl, to point my toes, to be five years old again and was greeted by myself, a mermaid ghost doing water ballet in the mirror on the thin morning tide. I smiled at my own reflection until she was swept out to sea...

Mounds of blackened sea weed littered the shoreline - dividing the hard cold surface of the morning from the soft sugar dunes of the night. I lifted a foot and sent a tangled mossy pile of it flying....watched as a bridal bouquet of barnacles, treasure shells and bottle caps freed themselves from the knotty web in flight.....

A few more steps and.....

Half buried and half alive, a billowing orange blob lay breathing, exposed and then hiding again with each lick of the waves. It wallowed, quietly gurgling and then gasping. It's lungs filled with water, and then it lay breathless and empty again. I crouched near, but not too close. And then with one steamroller roar, the ocean flipped it on it's belly....

"I'D RATHER BE IN BED"

Giant letters tattoed on it's fluorescent chest.

I drug it's water logged ugliness to safety, into the arms of the Sun. Lay it, flattened, on a mound of sand just high enough to be an island.....

I salute you, sweet stranger,

wearing those dollar-store words....

And once here,

flinging them off in a fit of freedom......

Because,

of course,

there's no place anyone would rather be...

Than here........

"Tell Me About Your Rings..."

"Tell me about your rings..." he said so quietly, staring at my hands and the mismatched collection of meanings displayed there. This stranger, that I had known for only an hour or so curious as to the stories displayed on my fingers. Why did he want to know? What was he looking for? I looked down at my hands through his eyes..."What love story goes untold here?"

Instinctively, I reached up and touched my love beads, old and oiled with the patina of a thousand thoughts, touches, moments. I'll tell you about my rings, sweet stranger, but these trinkets, closest to my heart, that is where the love story lies...at peace....at rest....

For 19 years, this tattered string of leather (oh, it's been reincarnated a few times!) has been tethered to my neck. The three little clay love beads, once a swirling kaliedescope of color, now muted and sepia at best, were sculpted at my kitchen table, late late at night. Paige and I on an endless mission to spread peace and love to the world at large. We wove peace grapevine wreaths in those days , did string paintings of the world at war with peace watercolored across it's face. We believed. If we loved, we hoped, we prayed, we dared.....peace and love would come to all.

For a million moons, only the little love beads, strung like lonesome soldiers, dangled here. The soldered welded Peace symbol was a Sunday afternoon gift from my neighbor, Joe. God bless my Joe. I was hot, and tired, and trudging through knee high grass fighting a lawn mower with an adolescent attitude. I was overwhelmed with life and bills and the endless, never ending,rocky road trip that my life had become. In the blazing Sun, with tears and sweat fighting for first rights on my cheeks, I screamed at the sky above, at the random birds....at the top of my lungs....."I just want Peace!" The raspy choking lawn mower I was sure had camoflouged my impromptu rant. I kicked the dirt and kept mowing.

Joe never explained himself that day. He didn't have to. When I rolled the mower to the gate, he met me in the driveway. The little Peace Symbol still warm in his hands. I touched it. Felt it. He passed it to me. The first trinket to join my love beads. In the weeks to follow, it began to rust and I worried. Joe had sculpted this for me on a hot Sunday afternoon and I wanted to wear it forever. I rubbed it. Never ever took it off. The rust gave up. In the end, peace wins....

There is a tiny little "I love you Mom" charm. I can still see my daughter's eyes, 8 years old and so excited she had to help me unwrap her little gift. I hope that for as long as she lives, she can still see the look in my eyes. Love.

An Italian horn. A gift from a friend when all my good luck spells were broken. When peace was lost. When I had not yet discovered the yellow butterfly of San Marino. She dug it out of her jewelry box. To her, it was the yellow butterfly. To me, it was and always will be, reassurance, a reminder that hope is sometimes all you have....don't ever, ever let go of it.

Four hearts in the shape of a clover. This little one is etched with the markings of sand and time, a little jewel lost to sea and washed up at my feet by the tides. A precious promise from Paige, lost almost immediately, I ached and searched and finally, too many beers later, cried. Not because the little charm was lost forever, but because I wouldn't have it there, to touch, when I needed to remember, to hold real, her thoughts. And so it was meant to be, that when we least expected it, a little glint of silver glittered, and in the miles and miles of salty sand, I reached down and there she was. The mermaids charm.

May our lives be blessed. With simple things.

Peace and love

Love story to Joe in the January archives of www.Justgivemepeace.blogspot.com
Self portrait in love beads and Joe's precious Peace symbol all over the pages of Just Give Me Peace

The Leopard Skin Tan

Artwork (c) Singleton 2006
SOLD

The blue lagoon is vinyl and blows up and is balanced perfectly on the edge of my world. It cost exactly $218.00 and is worth a million lotteries. The hurricane tarp, draped over the leaky roof for months, is the perfect palette for paradise to plop on, and I have an orange and green sponge wedged under the PVC ladder to “prevent tears” in the liner. Ahhhh….cheap and tacky….and peaceful…. The lazy round river, 3500 gallons of water in a giant fishbowl in my back yard. You see, I am a mermaid. An old dried up one, but a mermaid nonetheless. Kind of like when you have a party and accidentally leave the can of open sardines out on the counter overnight. They’re not quite what they were the night before. Neither am I.

The backyard is private (not as private as it used to be), but it’s mine. There is a fence all the way around it that says “holler over” or “stay out” depending on the time of day. And back here, I can parade around anyway I like. That’s the law. (I think) So back here, I roll my tankini up to become a makeshift bikini and I bask in the Florida sunshine. I float in lazy circles in the blow-up pool, padding off the vinyl walls. I hold my breath and open my failing eyes and stare at my underwater toes….I used to have a mermaid tail and these forty something toes with red polish look silly on this temporary ocean floor. I try it with my glasses on. Big Bad underwater Blur. I float. Eyes to God. Rump drifting vicariously close to the river’s floor. I am a mermaid. And when my fingers wrinkle and the phone rings, I plod up the ladder and park my “out of water” body on the deck. All washed up. Periwinkles and sandspurs at my feet.


By night, the only tell-tale sign of the real me is the leopard skin tan. Mermaids tan evenly. Old ones don’t tan in the folds.

The Mermaid's Gate-Singleton-Outsider Art

Our painted house. Here at the end of the hall, is the Mermaid's Gate, doorway to my own private domain. She was born on New Year's eve. From the deck, the sky above us exploded like a giant bag of jiffy pop...and electrical parades of color rained down upon us.... The endless night was strobed with dancing technicolor stars and it was beautiful.

Then the bats came. They swooped and plunged too close for comfort. Perhaps frightened by the noise or the thought that the world was ending, they were zig zagging madly through the spectacular light show. Casting dark shadows, their swooshing, flapping sounds drowning out the celebratory cannon blasts and static-like explosions. Finally, they won. The fireworks just ceased to exist. Only the smell of burnt resolutions lingered through the night.

I came in and flicked on the lights. It seemed the world outside was satisfied with their sky shattering farewell to 2005. All was quiet. I pulled out the paint and made my New Year's resolution: This year I will be a Mermaid. And I will float in peace.

Death of a Mermaid, Singleton

(c) Singleton 2006




and now you see all of me....
floating...
face up and eyes closed....
as if in peace....



"ashes to ashes
dust to dust
light as a feather
lift me up...."