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Monday, May 17, 2010

Superpowers

(this is an old photo, which I love, you can see the redhead in my lap, just barely... but there is a jumping skinny superhero behind me, in my lap, and OF ME... all abound, around. )


I am a woman of super powers. Without saying a word, I can make you think that I COMPLETELY get you, that I have experienced your life EXACTLY, that I am a woman of mystery and have a totally wild past which, if you just knew me well enough, I would blow your mind with...
its a superpower, and it is Super. but its also a cartoon. so, that makes it, un-real. as in, not the truth. i'm not going on a pitch for what the truth is right now, or ever really, but it isn't the thing. not the thing, its something else,
and it isn't what they ever think it is going to be. . . i've got that lady's smile.
i'm beginning to go down a long junior high type spiral and i would just prefer not to.
===
superpowers. today i gave my son a story about a superhero who fought with a dragon after bringing the lady of the woods back to her castle. it was a lovely story and the superhero could press his nose and get a head full of porcupine quills, the better for battling with...
the battle itself was undertaken mistakenly because the dragon was having a tantrum and couldn't hear the superhero saying the magic words, 'please, dragon, please'...

and the battle was ended when the dragon was preparing to roast our superhero but instead hiccuped and laughed at the absurdity of it all. . .
making it possible to hear the magic words, of course...

it was wonderful to be making C. giggle, he's experiencing a lot of anxiety about growing up, which I find to be something mysterious and mystical in a four year old, although I know it to be a fairly common sensation. A desire to stay small. I wonder sometimes if that is what our nation's weightloss world is about, a desire to retreat to a smaller space in the world. not for everyone, i know, there IS just healthful living and so on, but the idea of wanting to be small/stay small raises many questions for me, some big, some little:

i'm short, is that the same as small?
when i was sickened by crohn's initially, i was a super skinny, mini mini, everyone noticed, commented, wanted to know what i was 'doing' and so on, only one person asked me if i'd been sick, was he the only honest person in my life at the time? the only man? i donno. either way and if so, where is Andy Sherman?

what is it about- a four year old being nervous about bigness? is it the changes, the newness of new schools?
why do we think smaller is better?
digital/tinier/micro/nano... its the anti-american ideal?, no? what our country is aging into, now that we are leaving our teenageyears?
what will the cowboys have to say about this?

2 comments:

Still Life With Coffee said...

I hate those long junior high type spirals. here's to using your super powers :-)

Owen A said...

your superpower of identity [the well phrased feeling - {that we the reader may not have had the courage to use latin alphabet to name} causes the flash of recognition- the jolt of connection across the ether is both lasting and precious-[to the reader]- while at the same time being fleeting and insubstantial ][leaving you the expresser empty of the identity feeling that you may be surprised to hear a reader label as their own]
this me-too-iguana effect- of our difficulty in expressing our own visceralthoughts: wanting to "sign-on-to" however we see ourselves in the electric light- expressed so witfully :
the question to me is; what does the catharsis cost?
the one who runs the flags up- show which way her soul twists in the wind
there is loss is in the expression- yet remaining below/whole yet emptied/looking up at the semaphore sent out-
it is a signal of the courage to speak out- speak up-
to say
to name
the thing that haunts