LJ Idol 10: Week 0: Introduction
Just breathe
She whispers it to herself. It’s a worry stone, a call to mindfulness.
She flicks ash off her fingertips; blows smoke into the air.
She needs a place to hide; thinks the pain in her shoulder is a pinched nerve.
She is given permission to seek refuge in the beat up beige and blue, faded but still mostly functional, Ford Conquest parked along the side of the sprawling corner lot community where she currently hangs her pointed hat.
She tries to remember to introduce herself by the right alias, making sense of her tumbleweed life: The place where she is Sparrow; the place where she is Rebecca, Becca, Bird, Faerie Ann, Wanderlust.
She flips through her latest notebook searching for inspiration.
She feels unoriginal. She is the metallic creak of the step up into the wood paneled and brown carpeted interior of the decrepit caravan.
She catches her reflection beyond the herons etched into a decorative mirror, runs her fingers through the bright purple spikes that took thirty two years to grow in.
She wishes she took more chances when she was younger.
She’s jaded and armed with sharply edged rhetoric but still afraid of the mundane nothingness to which her path could lead.
Who knew it would be the pound sign and not bar codes that would brand us, she speculates as she opens the windows against the oppressive mid day heat.
She’s trying not to forget she has wings and not so secretly wishing for rain; resisting the impulse to run away again.
She is the most at peace when she is in motion.
She reminisces about highs and bad trips. The most expensive thing she owns is her pair of hiking boots. She writes tawdry romance novels that she never lets anyone read. Has let countless cups of coffee grow cold at her elbow. Would almost always rather be reading.
She longs for wild Oregon forests, dusty Arizona truck stops, San Francisco rooftops, her best friend's front porch.
She reaches out across the wires and they trade favorite iconic cinematic introductions:
“Thank you Max, for that marvelous introduction.”
“How do you do? I / See you’ve met my / faithful handyman…”
“When I introduce you, and tell them who you are, I don’t think anyone will stay for dinner.”
She can feel Saturn moving forward again. She has been reborn in the cosmos. She lives in a perpetual state of forgiving and forgetting and not actually giving a fuck.
Surrounded by blood this time she is trapped among palm trees and plastic pink flamingos.
She watches her grandmother conjure bubbling pots of the most delicious food to feed the tribe of lost souls the woman has taken in, and who fill the rooms of the way-station community that have currently sent her into hiding.
There is nowhere for her to write here.
She contemplates the park a few streets over but instead lays down on the flower print pull out couch. The sun slants across her face and she recalls that sensation of waking up covered in sweat as she tries to find a comfortable position for her shoulder.
Just breathe, just breathe, just breath… She whispers to herself.
---------
go read other entries for this week:
rookies: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947581.html
Vets: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/947738.html
signups are still open (join in the madness fun madness ): http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/945807.html