I stop short on my motorbike no more than fifteen feet away from an elephant. I haven’t seen an elephant in the road over here before. In fact, I’ve never seen an elephant that wasn’t in a place an elephant was supposed to be, like the zoo or a circus. And let’s be clear, I don’t think an elephant should be caged in any of those places either because that’s cruel. But cruelty makes money so I guess elephants are just another victim of capitalism in the grand scheme of things. She is waving her trunk back and forth across the pavement like she’s sniffing out buried treasure. The broken chain around her back right foot jingles with each heavy step she takes. There’s an elephant farm just up the hill. “Farm” may be a generous term. I think today is the day she made her break for it. I guess this elephant and I have that in common. I made my break for it 6 months ago. I ran away. I traded one jungle for another. I can’t sit still if I don’t feel safe. I’m not sure if I’m any safer now.

There are three broken coconuts on the side of the road. Their water seeps out in tiny puddles on the asphalt as an army of leaf cutter ants marches past me with their green flags waving overhead. The air is heavy with smoke. A farmer is burning banana leaves and plastic bottles in front of his hut which creates an odor that smells sweet and toxic. Smokey season makes the horizon beautiful and hazy in the vibrant orange and red sunset. It’s so hot that the white line of the pavement looks like it’s undulating. It reminds me of those old movies where someone is walking through the desert looking for water, or maybe they’re looking for a 7-Up, and this wasn’t a movie at all, but a Superbowl commercial I saw once. Sweat drips from my the tip of my nose and streaks down the center of my breasts to my belly button. I’m wearing my pink bikini. It’s too hot for clothes and besides, I left my clothes in a pile at the back of the party this morning anyway. I don’t want to go back there yet. It’s not as fun when I’m sober. I lose myself in drugs. I disappear. I don’t want people to see the real me. They might not like what they see. I don’t like it, and I know they won’t either. I’ll make it easy and reject them first.

There’s a thick layer of dried mud on the elephant’s back. I imagine she’s hiding years of painful memories tucked deep between wrinkles of her gray skin. She lifts her head and looks right at me.  I always assumed elephants had black eyes, but hers are gold with a white ring around the iris. She is the most beautiful and terrifying creature I have ever seen. For a split second I try to calculate if I can rev my bike fast enough to zoom under her tall legs and be on my way. She looks at least 9 feet tall, but I must admit, I’ve never been that good at estimating anyone’s height, let alone a behemoth, so I decide not to take my chances. I don’t know if I’m still hallucinating a little bit, but I’m pretty certain we’ve synchronized our breathing and I can feel her. She is wise and sad. I have been sad for so long, I almost don’t notice it anymore. I’m just numb. I feel nothing. I am nothing. I never have been.

In an abrupt, unceremonious way, she exhales and turns away from me to walk up the hill. I guess she’s had enough freedom for one day. I have too, so I turn my bike around and drive back to the party.

I recall being about eight years old and getting it into my head that maybe, just maybe, I could write a novel. I sat down and started writing a scene about rugged adventurers meeting in a dusky tavern, gathering to the call of a wizard who had the need for some assistance on a dangerous quest. I knew I needed to describe the environment so that my readers could understand where this was. It was a tavern. What was in a tavern? Well, I had to begin somewhere, so I started to describe the chair by the door, the grain of its wood, the scratches and the stories they told, the dancing shadows of candlelight and drunk farmers playing on its stillness. 
Three pages later and all I had was a fucking chair. 
I am making a map of novel writing, and while in the valleys of realistic characters it says, “here be dragons” in the wasteland of descriptive scenes it warns, “this way lies madness and death!” 
But you won’t beat me. Sure, I am not the chest-beating champion who guffaws in the face of your monstrosity, but I am the one who plays the fool until I see where to cut. And yes, that means I know how to take a beating. 
I feel those beatings in the morning, lying in bed. The blankets gathered upon me look like intricate landscapes I wish I could shrink down into and explore. There’s a curl in the fringe of the sheet that makes a cave where I am sure I would enjoy spending an evening, an evening away from the beatings, in the healing darkness of withdrawal. 
But these havens are too distant for me to reach, too small. My body is a giant amongst them and was I to move to enter and explore, they would be crushed by my magnitude. And so I am still, just looking for this one brief moment at this tiny world that is free from the beatings, free from the need for strategy, the need for cleverness. A world where I wouldn’t have to be so patient. ​

I am the daughter of a mother’s mother’s mother, who burst into this world in a different century, without a spark of passion. She was not born from love.

She didn’t emerge into this world from lust, or love, or a high so high that the ages were rocked and the waters were made to run clear once again so that generations forward could remember this and bow in reverence to the soil.

No, the women I come from grew corn. They grew wheat. They grew pigs and tomatoes on square plots of land so flat and plain that a man could lose all sense of north if an East wind didn’t force the sun below the horizon each night.

These women seasoned their kettles well, with buttermilk and lard that made their children practical. Made them judicious, appropriate. Toes squished into black laced up shoes aching to be barefoot, corsets squishing ribs into warped triangles.

I enter their kitchen but all I smell is the corn and pork and dried bones of their men. No spice, no salt.

I enter their parlours where they thighs knit together, so close and withholding and bound and secret that the universe would explode in relief if they dared to sigh. Where hardened fingers spin lace for peplums, embroidered for their daughters in a series of tiny knots using only a sharp, tiny needle.

I enter their bedrooms sparse with matrimonial beds split into two, but too short to ever hold my own long legs. There’s no smell of sex or roses or beeswax candles...not even a whiff of something rank.

These women, these old crones of mine who birthed cold grandfathers and terrified fathers--they lick spoons with hairy upper lips and tongues dry, like soured milk on a plate. They kiss their children with frigid, puckered lips and hide the honey. These women hold their husbands in their boney claws and when they hold them in their mouths, they bite down hard. These women deconstruct life by night while they cultivate food by day.

And so I reach. Back down my spine, tapping into who I’m born of, praying for a sliver of light, a glimmer of magic. It’s impossible, like a day-time nap where the sun streams through a curtainless window, forcing day-blindness inside my dream, and I fumble to see straight. Fumble down, fumble back, fumble out, but never in.

There’s nothing I can do to reshape these women. I cannot kiss their children. I cannot hold their faces with my soft hands. I cannot make love to their men or show sugarless knitting circles the very TRUTH of ecstasy and rapture.

These women have never seen the Ocean.

I am the daughter of a mother’s mother’s mother who was born to give milk. I try to understand, but I am not these women.

I am the daughter of a mother’s mother’s mother who was born to give stew from a heavy, seasoned kettle and honey from the trees out back, and to ooze milk from my own loins no less than bone-deep. I pick the raspberries and keep the leaves, suckle the juice from life as I hold my child head. I try to fix and salve and adjust their pain, but I see only Love next to this salty shore, the only one that has ever felt like home.

Grandpa is laying on a floating dock
His gills filling with ocean songs
Waves of breath floating at a shallow depth
And crashing with unconsciousness
Or perhaps the deepest layers of consciousness unknown to us mere mortals
He’s a merman now
Swimming with his beloved
My grandma with her porcelain skin and soft voice
Whispers of melodic Parkinson’s skewed her songs into theta waves of pure emotion
Grandpa reaches into the void where he enjoys eating strawberries and chocolates
While talking to his mother
My great grandma Anna
Everyone says I look like her
I smile and remember the taste of dried strawberry dust from Roca
Kneeling in the dirt with ladybugs and Tinkerbelle
Weeding through the rows of firetruck, sun and pearl berries
Finding the juiciest and most succulent ones to top dad’s cheesecake
His love blossoms in pastries
Decadent, creamy delights
Fueled with fire and water
Creating an Earthsong of affection
Something to smack our lips on and lick off sticky fingers
I eat cheesecake for breakfast because treats like this don’t come around too often
Grandpa is swimming in the liquid that fills his lungs
We all start our lives immersed in water
Only fitting to end it this way
A sailor’s euphoric departure from this dry world
Into the blue of deep and tranquil oceans
Ethereal and weightless
Surfing on the backs of manta rays
And sleeping in turtle shells
I eat corals and betel nut wrapped in curry leaves
Like I did on silent evenings in Didhoofinolhu
The Maldivian nicotine that proceeded smoking brown sugar
When the constellations turned 180 degrees in a fog of stars
Nights so clear you could taste heaven
The cream and berries of dad’s cheesecake
And my grandparents swimming in the lagoon around me

Once a year or so, I pull up a saved Facebook post from a lady who I barely knew growing up and read her 216 words she wrote the week my stepmother, Louise, died. It always makes me cry, and I can’t figure out why. But I need tears more than I need answers, so I give those words to my heart whenever I feel it.
Louise was a real character. She was a rough and tumble biker chick who knew how to not take any shit from anyone. Before she shacked up with my dad, she used to hang out with the Hell’s Angels and was known to even be seen on the back of Sonny Berger’s bike from time to time. Now I am not saying that makes me Jax Teller or anything, but I’ll be damned if I don’t feel cooler sometimes knowing I was in part raised by someone who knew she was part of such infamous legendry.
Sometime in her late teens, she and a few other ladies in her sisterhood got into a terrible accident resulting in oil burns across their bodies. I knew these scars well, both on my stepmom and some of her sisters, for we frequented swimming holes as a kid, and those splashes of terribly warped flesh were there for all to see in their swimsuits. They were all broken people, sure, but they had started with some kind of deep inner strength that kept them proud even having been torn from the ranks of “beautiful young women” far too early. Something in them was so unyielding they knew they were still sexy even though there was evidence to the contrary.
And the men around them, broken and strong too, the men such as my dad, preferred their women like this. Someone who could take a beating and still show up for the party. Someone who could look trauma in the eye and give it a coke-trembling grin while they tried to choke something worth having from the tyranny of tragedy that was their life. A life that hunted them like a beast, and took everything it could from them the moment they let their guard down.
I hear she died still devoted to her excess, still trying to find the party in the war. I remember the last few times I spent with her, years before she passed, before she and my dad broke it off for the last time. As a kid, it was just do my chores , go play, and leave her alone to read the day away. But eventually, I was a young adult, and she and I could talk about the books we had in common. We’d talk about riding dragons with Anne McCaffrey and being vampires with Anne Rice. She had a wall of fantasy books that I could draw from. Something I will always be grateful for.
I remember one time when she and my dad were fighting, which was the usual, she said something awful about my dad to me, something I don’t quite recall but certainly was aimed at reducing his manhood to nothing. It didn’t phase me because I guess I don’t care what others think of my dad (he doesn’t seem to either). But I cared about Louise, and so I said gently, “if ever it would help for you to talk about it, just let me know.” She didn’t seem to care at the moment, rightly so, so I turned to go, but then, “hey,” she said, so I turned back. “You’re a good one Gabe.” I said thanks, and meant it, but was sad because I knew this meant we would never talk about what was really going on.
And she faded from my life like that. She gave me so much. She showed me how to be proud and strong, even with a mangled body. She once told me she was proud of me because I was the only one of “her kids” to make it into college. She had been a part of raising quite a few kids from different men. I didn’t have the heart to tell her when I had dropped out.
And so I read those 216 words, and I cry. But today, I finally know why I cry. I cry because while I told Louise, “I love you” all the time, I never told her what I really wanted to. What I meant to say was thank you, Louise, for being one of the few who could ever understand me. For showing me that broken and strong is possible.
The broken and strong don’t tell each other with words how to do it, we stand up and show you.

     I see him every afternoon. Muscled calves flexing in the sun as he lunges across the court. Return the ball or flash a smile. It’s all blinding. The allure. Concentration of effort. Pure and pinpointed. Crushing.
    Unaware of my gaze. Maybe.
    Now that I think of it, he could be watching me, too.
    It gets so I don’t have to use my eyes.  I can feel his movements; taste the sweat trickling through golden hairs on the side of his neck. Back and forth. Baiting the hook. Tracking. Tracking. I stay focused on the game, engaged and tracking. As my pulse races and my undershorts grow damp.
    The perfect L of the vastus intermedius (times 2!), and the one, crooked incisor – they’re like catnip. I want to roll on my back and wriggle; purr and claw and bite. …Which only hones my resolve.
    Oblivious to females at first glance. At least he’s curious. The females watch him, and feel the catnip. It make their hips wiggle, too.  I see it. The males write him off as a dreamer, a dork. There is no place for such beauty in their pantheon – or for such remove.
    Hard to pin down. Hard to define. A hard man is good to fine. And enjoy.
    I walk to the net and stand. The sun bright and brassy, like every other mid-valley afternoon. Distant sounds of splashing in the pool and birds chirping in the parched trees. His white clothes stretching delicious over tanned skin, and balls scattered at court edges.
    My undershorts need a tug. Shoelaces need a pull. I feel my heart beat, steady, and my eyes take in everything, without moving. I stand, transfixed. Motionless. Love swelling in my breast. Like a bird, pinned in the crosshairs, knowing its goose is cooked.
He’s somewhere beyond my peripheral vision. He’s not all the way grown yet. But he’s big. And strong enough to take down. His father. Or me.  Lion cub with lethal paws, innocent, kills without intending. Trying to figure it out.
I turn my head and smile. Not aware until it’s too late. That I’m the one who’s been hunted, and bagged.

I am lost to this world. All is spinning around, I’m disoriented and falling backwards in the
abyss. Nothing to hold on to, all is slipping and sliding through my fingers like sand. Sinking
in the vortex, sick in what I think is my stomach, the whirlwinds are swallowing me whole.
The last thing I remember, I had my hands on the ridge, hanging from the big flat rock, my
fingerprints must still be on the stone. I don’t know what happened. Now wind blowing in my
ears, going on and on. Stark smell of metal or blood and a roaring I’ve never heard before.
And it is dark all around.
Is this the belly of the beast? The end of times? The new world?
There is nothing and nothingness. Just darkness and falling and roaring. I strain to curl my
body into a fetus, my head in my arms. I still have a body, a body that is moving with
unbelievable speed.
Where am I? Who am I? What the fuck! How long has this been going on? How is this going
to end? I try and stretch my body, spread my arms and legs like I am flying.
I am flying in a way, just dropping with enormous speed too. I move my arms back and
stretch my legs and I seem to be moving forward somewhat. It’s hard to tell, because of the
vast darkness. Then I realise my eyes are shut hard. When I try to open them just a tiny bit, I
understand why. The wind of the speed is cutting in them so painfully, that it’s impossible to
open them.
Fuck me! What the fuck is happening? The dizziness is overwhelming and I feel nauseated.
Then the light flashes start, violent luminescent blue, like lightning in my eyes. My brain feels
like it’s splitting open. Unbearable pain everywhere.
Then all of a sudden all is still. Like I slashed through a veil into another world. Whiteness
everywhere and divine silence. All sound has stopped in this instant.
It’s like I’m in a world made of snow, all white and silent, but not cold. It’s like there is no
temperature. If anything it is pleasant. I’m not falling anymore. If I even still have a body, it is
floating like mist.
There is clarity, so much clarity about what is. I am this.

I want my mind back! What did I think about before this hideous pandemic? It's kind of like when I was pregnant, all I could think about was wow there is a baby in my womb. And all day long I'd be in baby land. Or when I had breast cancer and all I could think about was how can I heal, I want to live. Or when I had fantastic sex after a long dry spell and all my mind would do all day long is go back to particular moments; the hair pulling , the strategic bite, the breathing, on and on.
In the past the baby was born, the cancer was cured and the lover faded away. I want my mind back!
But this pandemic seems to change everything. I wake up heart pounding and all day it's there. I meditate and pray and exercise but it's still there. I try to be vigilant at night but it is still looming.
God help our planet, God help us please. I want my mind back!
It's so frustrating how unprepared out country is. The USA had time to start to prepare. To recommend social distancing in January not March. To give incentives to companies to make masks and protecting clothing for hospital workers, and even get the public prepared for closures. But human nature seems to prefer denial. It won't come to America. We are invincible. But it came and it's bloody scary and it isn't going away any time soon. WE are all vulnerable. We could be carriers, we could get sick, we could die .
I want my mind back! I want to think happy thoughts, see friends smile and do kind things for each other in person. I want to think about what to bring to the next pot luck, or how I can help a friend in need or maybe even fantasize about seeing that lover again.
I want my mind back! So please everyone wear a mask, do social distancing, stay home as much as possible, take vitamin C and D and immune boosters. Thank you everyone for all the fun things you post and the information on how to stay safe. I want this pandemic to be over sooner than later I love everyone and want you to be safe. Then I can have my mind back.

In the old days, we used to make long journeys across desperate terrains. We would bundle our dreams upon our backs and put one foot in front of the other as we made our way through landscapes that threatened our every move. We knew very little except that we did not want to be where we once were, and that we were sure there was somewhere else we wanted to be, if we could but get through this place of dangerous passage. Surrounded by Indians, we pressed on.

Now don’t get all flustered about my use of the word “Indians.” I got it on very strong, heard it from a white guy who heard it from a white guy who heard it from a white guy who wrote it in a book before the age of fact-checking hearsay that what Columbus really meant was “una gente in Dios,” or the people in God and that “in Dios” eventually became “Indians.” So that it is actually a really beautiful name for a people. Oh wait, I just googled that urban legend and it turns out to be bullshit. So much for beauty. Surrounded by white colonialists and historical revisionists, we pressed on.

And so here is where we got. All that talk of Dios pushed us from coast to coast, leaving fields of bloody self-entitlement in our wake and a deep lineage of coverups and self-denying bypass that leave everyone at least a little fucked up in the head and more than a few of us shit out of luck when it comes to knowing where we come from.

Myself, I was born in a stolen land, by the side of a beautiful river where it becomes one with another river and they carry on like they were never two. Well, I would say it is beautiful, inspiring a way forward even, and that it gives me a sense of belonging to somewhere, but we already established that beauty only comes from lies and that belonging is not something we are entitled to since our forefathers took it from everyone else. Surrounded by rapists, we pressed on.

So this is what we get. A mess of a situation filled with resentment and pain. I got more than enough good intention to convince myself I am one of the good guys, but when you pull the curtains of social order aside I am just another low ranking white devil, trying to make my way through this hell realm we call capitalism and only having a decent life because of the privilege my skin, my balls, and my location give me. It certainly isn’t of my own doing that anything good is coming of it.

But it could be. Surrounded by honesty, maturity, and possibility, we press the fuck on.