I Am Purple

I am purple.

I am dark without being dismal.

There are so many variations of me that most people don't know what real purple is.

I am not the color of choice for most people, as I am not conventional.

I am not standard.

Sometimes it's hard to match me with other colors if you are color coordinating.

I am often seen as a flavor rather than a color.

I can stand out around certain other plainer colors.

I have been associated with bruising, with sweetness, with mountains majesty, with anger and with royalty.

I am purple.

I Am Purple

The Sound of My Own Thoughts

(From "The Misadventures of No One Famous" my memoir)

This entry was written before i found out that i had Graves Disease. My thyroid had been dying for some time, according to doctors, and it was literally in the death throes around this time, causing me a great deal of mental anguish. To anyone who has suffered from thyroid disease, you know what i mean. Happily, i had my thyroid nuked, and am now on lifetime medication to control it.

They should only enjoy the fruits of those dark demons,
but never have to do battle with them.

I've lost the sound of my own thoughts. I have so much trouble with that: just having a thought, recognizing it, communing with it. I noticed this the other day in a rare moment when I was having a smoke break alone on the front porch. The thoughts marched in and out of my brain and I didn't recognize them. They were disjointed, odd, meaningless--rather pathetic, actually. I can't recall now what they were exactly.

I know much of that is because I've spent 24/7 for the last year and a half with a loquacious partner. I love her stories and she is intelligent and interesting and quite often hysterically funny. But I crave some solitude, Some quiet--some time to reacquaint myself with my own thoughts.

That's why I'm sitting in the driveway in my van writing this.

I'm about to enter a new chapter in my life. It could be the best chapter ever, the one I've been waiting for like some ticket-less wannabe passenger on the train of real life. I watch the trains come and go--see other people boarding and going somewhere. I wish I could go too. But am I running away, or running to? No matter where I've been or who I've been with, I never can count it as a success. I always have some screaming ugly in my brain, ripping my psyche to shreds, leaving me feeling victimized by my own mind. My error, I think, is in the notion that "success" and "normal" are terms that apply to me in the most fundamental sense. That's when I had my little mini-epiphany. All these years, I have struggled to do the things i felt i must--offer what little talent i had to the world, hoping to finally create stability and calm in my day to day life--finally place my energies into art and writing and music.

But the reality is that those things are merely points of light in an otherwise darkened room. I still have difficulty dealing with stress. I continue to impose order on my chaos, inventing still newer ways to obsess and control the minutia of each day; still am thin-skinned and self-loathing and angry that I can never be that person I was before everything good in me imploded and rained down like shards of glass, cutting me, creating more wounds in my scarred skin.

I don't think highly enough of myself that I can just dismiss my hideous behavior with, "Oh, it's just the way I am, and I don’t care if anyone approves." I'm not strong enough to change certain behaviors--the chemicals fighting, brawling, wrestling in my brain are too powerful. And I'm not so naïve that I believe it's acceptable to behave the way I do. I hate who I've become, yet I have been incapable of changing that reality.

I'm a nut-case. Crazy. Sick in the head. Messed up. Mentally ill. How tragic that is. What a total pathetic loss. Potential, just jack-hammered into smithereens.

The safest and wisest thing I can do is never again fool myself into believing that I can maintain a committed, co-habitation with anyone else. It would be asking too much from another human being. I should never invest too much emotionally in the success of a lover, or the success of keeping one. It’s a fond, fruitless wish, and exercise in futility. The people who cross paths with me, or count themselves as a friend or acquaintance, should never have to see the ugly side of me. They can enjoy my momentary calm, the fleeting generosity and kindness, the humor over a cup of coffee, the painting I just finished, the song I just recorded, the novel I published--and never have to endure the stomping rages, the tearful despondency, the invisible self-esteem. They should only enjoy the fruits of those dark demons, but never have to do battle with them.

The real challenge, after truly accepting these things about myself, is to embrace fully that I will never again enjoy the company of that SELF that has been usurped by this new self. I have changed, slowly but surely. I must release my hold on the hope that I can be loving and kind and generous and easy-going most of the time. It has become obvious that the person who possesses those qualities is now possessed by this demon. My only hope is to keep the demon in check when I am in the company of others, and let her rant and rage around in the safety of my solitude; and to glean some creative penance in songs and books and art. I've run out of time. I'm 40 years old, and what could have been changed is now only a dream. And like a dream, I must allow it to fade from my consciousness and never let it interrupt my day with the should-haves and whys that torture my waking moments.

My dog loves me and he won't walk out. He'll be the constant companion that helps me feeling needed and loved unconditionally. He won’t argue and push all my buttons. He will give me hugs and make me smile and laugh, as he has always done. He will not have pressing needs and agendas and ambitions to tax my strength. He will only ask for food and water and a pat on the head, and a trip outside to relieve himself. He is the only one who can safely build his world around someone like me.

The Sound of My Own Thoughts

From Crayons to Gel Keyboards

The Evolution of the Writing Instrument

When I was a toddler, I recorded my lofty thoughts with my favorite Crayola, teal blue, from my selection of 64 crayons of "Different Brilliant Colors." I recall that I never wrote on walls or furniture as some children are wont to do. I preferred to save my creative endeavors, and felt it unlikely that I could rip down part of the wall and hide it in my sock drawer. So I wrote on paper. Colorfully.


As I grew older, I moved to pens and pencils. Colored ones, at first, so that the transition from rainbows to uninspired black lines would not be overly traumatic. Bic, Eberhard, Trusty--always number two, because number three was too light, and any other one smudged. I filled spiral notebooks and steno pads with stories and poetry, and even wrote my first novel in one of those record books with the hard covers. I had to have a pen or pencil that flowed (or flew, if past tense rules are followed logically), because my mind would charge ahead and I would have to write quickly to keep up. This is probably why my handwriting became such an infantile hieroglyph.

I spent my entire young adult life (as if I'm some doddering old lady--although, come to think of it, I have been known to dodder on occasion) typing up my quaint little stories on what I now (lovingly) refer to as a Smith Corona AK-47. The bell at the end of the right margin informed me of an empty clip. It wouldn't have been so bad, except I was continually chasing this piece of machinery across my desk. I knew I'd either have to nail it down or buy a heavier model.

The heavier model turned out to be an IBM PC, which seemed the ultimate technology in 1985. I felt so important. I had an actual computer to take care of all that busy work that often dissuades writers from finishing those laborious and voluminous novels. I went through just about every obligatory software there was. EasyWriter, Easy Working Writer, Professional Write, and finally, WordPerfect 5.1, which I learned to hate, then found MS Word, which i use to this day.

Irony available here: upon editing and updating this piece of writing, I had to convert it to Word (for Windows)--the program I have used for the last five years--and I won't change to anything else again. I mean it. Really.

Consequently, I have a profusion of floppy disks that hold various writings within various programs. The transfer process began to get old after I finally got everything switched over to Professional Write, and then discovered WordPerfect. I swore up and down that I would never change again; WordPerfect was the program for me; it was too much trouble to switch everything to another; I WOULD NOT learn another damn program. Then I realized that it really was difficult to remember all the function keys. I still had to glance at the cardboard reference chart suspended next to the monitor to remind myself that center was Shift F6, not Ctrl F6, or Alt F6. After two years of this continual referencing, the idea of Windows with icons that I could simply point to and select, grew more and more appealing. I exercised my female right to change my mind, and announced that my very next purchase would be Windows. But only WordPerfect for Windows, since I had slaved over it for two years. I had to save at least some face.


So now that I have trudged through the Swamp of Software, survived the Morass of Manuals, and emerged a Word Processing Force to be Reckoned With (or, With Which to be Reckoned, if I want to be grammatically correct), it eventually became time to retire the old IBM, since it was showing signs of not only wear, but a sort of computer strain of Alzheimer's. So my IBM PC-asaurus, has faded into a fossil in some technological graveyard of keyboards, joysticks, CPU's, LCD Monitors, and dot-matrix roller printers, and undoubtedly a 22nd Century archaeologist will dig them all up and snicker at its crudeness.

From Crayons to Gel Keyboards

A Proper Kiss (poem)

One might say she'd been around
the block a few times, while romance-bound
in search of an innocent charm she insists:
matching lips, for a proper kiss.

they had been short and tall and fat and slim
and she kissed every blessed one of them
but none of them offered her what she sought
the smooching seemed to be for naught

one was rough and one was wet
one was as sloppy as one could get
one was there and then was gone
one got worse as the kiss went on
another chapped her mouth and face
and pushed her pug nose out of place
and still another she'd have to say
was, "swab the deck and anchors away!"
but not a one was worthy, you see
to be what a proper kiss should be.

then thinking her quest to be fruitless and vain
she swore to never kiss again
and stopped in at a local pub
to toast her failure and in the club
was a young woman lounging at the bar,
seeking some solace, and not getting far,

a beer in her hand and a frown on her face,
saying, "Can i get a beer in this place?"
she sat down next to the frowning face.
A double-take, she took a look
And in her heart sank one big hook
The frown was melting as the barkeep served
the beer she needed to keep her nerve
and then she heard the frowner say
"It's on me" and the two shared a smile.
"Sit down, girlfriend, and stay awhile."
And so she did and halfway through the frosty brew
she found herself admitting to
a failure in finding one living soul
to kiss her proper, kiss her slow.
The other one held back a grin.
"I understand the dilemma you're in.
Forgive my boldness, dear,
but i have a solution, if you'd like to hear."

An answering nod gave her the nerve
and she said, "the reason those kisses don't serve,
is simple as this, i know we just met,
but you haven't kissed a woman yet."
And after the revelation sunk in,
she suggested the two of them go for a spin,
just a short ride
to a quiet place by the riverside
she sank into arms that held her fast and at last
as the sun was sinking low
A proper kiss was had by both.


Charcoal (c)Jae Baeli

A Proper Kiss (poem)

Pity Not Thyself

Pity not thyself, nor thine appointed plot
Thou art not disgrace, nor pitiful, Soul
Struggle not to be what thou art not
For therein lies no heart Consoled.

Pity Not Thyself

Sex & Love

We say, "Making love" and "having sex."

But it seems to me that love is something you can't "make" because it can't be manufactured. It exists on its own and sometimes without our permission.

Conversely, sex isn't something that just exists as a power of its own--we must pursue it. We make it happen.

Thus, we should say, "Have Love," and "Make sex."

"I'm sorry, we can't meet you at the restaurant, we're Having Love."
"Oh, well, you should just do what i do, and Make Sex."

Sex & Love

All Hallows Eve

The prevalence of pumpkin-faced bags
filled with papers or leaves
peppers the yards in my neighborhood
preparing for All Hallow's Eve.

And in some windows are jack o'lanterns
imbued with a candle's light
their eyes and nose and mouth cut out
into faces of the night.

On a nearby lawn, a plastic image:
A specter of spider's stance,
its legs perched horribly round its frame
deterring a second glance.

And crispy leaves made crunky
by the cold October rains
mix and mesh in a potpourri
filling the air with champagne.

And soon, the night will tremble
With pleas for doorway treats
Goblins will gobble them up with delight
While devils play tricks in the streets..

All Hallows Eve

Tryst

An old friend and previous Tryst visted me recently. We had met in the Army years ago, and had a little fling, although it was a bit one-sided, as these things will be when one person is gay and the other gay-curious...but we maintained a long distance friendship over the years and even had a few visits with each other....some of them included sexual activity...I had always had a mad crush on her. She was so alluring...sort of unattainable, and a hell-cat, but so sexy to me.

Well, during her recent visit, we got along great, and did alot of talking and drinking coffee...we always do that. It seemed like we'd just seen each other last week or something. We can always sorta pick up where we left off. But during our talks, i was trying to get information about where she was mentally in our relational dynamic...were we still Tryst-partners? or just friends?

I steered the discussion toward sex and relationships. It was hard to tell, because she'd say one thing that led me to believe she was not interested in doing ANYTHING with me, and then she'd say or do other things that contradicted it. Mostly, it was the words not matching the body language.

But by Saturday, i had given it lots of thought, and sorta OVERLAYED my newest beliefs and growths over that old pattern of the "me and Brittany" map...and i decided that it was much more important to me that we have a strong friendship, and that i wouldn't want to undermine it by having EXPECTATIONS...and i tried to get real honest with myself about that. I decided to let go of the expectations.... and i did. It felt good.

Then that night (or wee hours, actually) i was spreading out my sheet on the sofa, and she said, "You know, Jae, you don't have to sleep in there on that tiny little couch. You can sleep in here with me." But she said it in a very platonic fashion, so i knew she was just being nice.

I teased, "Are you sure you're not askeert a me??"

She rolled her eyes. "You don't frighten me, Jae."

I said in mock disappointment, "Dammit."

So we got in the bed, shoulder to shoulder, both of us reading in the lamplight...and she put her book away and rolled over, saying "Nite." I told her goodnight, and continued to read for a while...then i got sleepy and turned the light out and went to sleep..... ....in my sleep, i became aware of my name..."Jae...Jae.... Jaaaaaaaaee......"

I opened my eyes and she was looking at me, lying on her side, her head propped on one elbow...."I've been calling your name forever..."

I was so groggy, and just as i wondered what time it was, she said, as if she could read my thoughts, "It's 3:10." I sort of frowned at her, like...don't freak me out.

She just smiled..."I need to talk to you..." It was dim in the room, but as i tried to wake myself up, i just noticed how beautiful she looked with that new red hair, her face softened by night.

"Okay," i said, trying to clear my vision. I put some drops in my eyes, and pressed the edge of the sheet to them to absorb the excess moisture that spilled out. A little refreshed, i said, "I'm still a bit groggy, but what do you want to talk to me about?"

She said, "You've only been asleep about a MINUTE!" I couldn't believe that, but i guess it was true. I must have gone straight to REM...

So i said, "So talk."

"I've been thinking. I'd like to take you up on your offer..."

Now, my heart jumped, and i began to frantically search through the fog of my brain for just WHICH offer she may be referring to...

She interrupted my scavenger hunt with, "--you know, i've known you for ten years, and in all that time, you've always been a great friend to me, above and beyond...and you've always treated me with respect and love...I mean, if i can't trust YOU, who can i trust?"

As i was spreading glue on all the pieces of this, attempting to press and hold until it all became one piece...she leaned down and kissed me. I was shocked, because she had never been that aggressive with me...

She leaned back and said, "Are you awake, NOW?"

laughed, and sputtered, "Um...yes...i do believe i am getting there quickly...." Yeah, like the spray of a water hose on you while you're standing in snow. Of course, my brain was still fuzzy, but all the other important parts were wide awake...i think actually that my brain was in shock, but my body completely understood...

So i kissed her back, and she kissed me back, and we kissed each other back and back... ;> And i turned her to her back... ;>

Without getting into the lurid details, it was clear that her barriers were not quite so strong as they used to be...And afterward, she held me and kissed me, and we fell asleep feeling intimate...at least i did.

I brought her coffee in bed the next morning, and went to check email while she woke up. We didn't speak of it the next day, and she went back home that afternoon. But she left looking happy and satisfied. That was enough for me.

Tryst

Morphing CD Player, 22 Dogs, 6 Girls, & A Pig

Dream:

I was at somebody's house. The rooms in this house were large and open-like there were no walls separating them. I noticed how many dogs were running around, and i began to go from room to room counting dogs. I counted up to 22. There was also a big pig walking around. Obviously a pet, but very odd. A bunch of girls living there-maybe 5 or 6...

In the main room, there was this odd sort of contraption which at first was just a CD player, and while I was doing something next to it, I bumped some kind of "On" switch. The contraption began to morph into several other shapes, becoming larger. I was trying to stay out of the way of it. The effect was like computer generated graphics from a movie...Then it began to play a CD, and then became a coffee table. An ashtray rose up out of it, and some drink coasters.

Then from underneath, it released these little disc-shaped vacuums that went about the floor sucking up dropped ashes, debris and dirt. (I swear to God this was before that commercial about the Roomba FloorVac) The discs had tiny radio antennas on top in the middle. They looked like little fat, black frisbees. This is when i understood why this house could have 22 dogs and 6 girls and a big pig.

Morphing CD Player, 22 Dogs, 6 Girls, & A Pig

Terra's Sense of Smell

My girlfriend, Terra, has recently discovered the power of her own gift of intuition. She's a baby- psychic, really. She also has an uncanny sense of smell. Once when we were getting in my van, she sniffed the air like a bloodhound and said, "Someone just lit a cigarette-" and then frowned over at me, since i'm a smoker and she's not, and we always go round and round about it. It wasn't me, and i accused her of being so sensitive, that she imagines things.

Well, we pulled away from the curb, and around the corner. And there stood a young man puffing away. She looked over at me victoriously, and i could only shake my head. Scary, really, these visions of things and people and objects that prove accurate. At night while she's falling asleep, she has graphic images of snakes and big rocks falling on her head. This sounds like the sort of images i should be having, but i digress...

Terra's Sense of Smell