Walking on Thin Ice

CHING

reflection of Jeff Chiplis’s neon art
photos by Lady K

CHING

weird to be here,
perhaps I oversteer…

after all, I’m not indispensible
whatever the majority decides
it’s all up to you
nothing is set in stone
let me know if it’s
ok or not

keep your computer safe
you must be logged in to do that
don’t mind our police

lady k

more Chiplis art

reflections of Chiplis art

astro man at my art opening (friday)

Smith reading from On The Road at the
Bookstore on W. 25th

I’m a little egg

Lady K, 1976?

From my writing project:

That night, Mom and I took our bath together. I liked this time with her. When Grandma gave me a bath, she was in a hurry, and rubbed my face too roughly with the washcloth. I still feel the harsh washcloth in Grandma’s fingers, scraping my ears. But Mom lingered in the tub.

The water smelled like iron and sulfer. It was from the well. The bathtub was yellow and smooth. I sat between Mom’s stubbly legs.

Mom layed her head back and closed her eyes. I leaned against her thigh. I felt the washcloth float against my skin. I grabbed it and squeezed water out. It trickled and plinked. I put the washcloth in my mouth and sucked it. It tasted like soapy iron.

Mom started to sing an Irish tune in her clear, soft sweet soprano. The steamy air in the bathroom contributed to intimacy, made it a world enclosing just Mom and me. Her voice was a reedy instrument.

When Johnny comes marching home again,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
We’ll give him a hearty welcome then
Hurrah! Hurrah!
The men will cheer and the boys will shout
The ladies they will all turn out
And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home.

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums,
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye.

Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven’t an arm, ye haven’t a leg,
Ye’re an armless, boneless, chickenless egg,
Ye’ll have to be put with a bowl out to beg,
Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye.

I felt a constriction of my throat, and my eyes burned like I was going to cry. I didn’t know why, but I loved that song, and I loved her voice, her passion in singing it. I thought about the chickenless egg and the bones, about the drumstick I ate for dinner.

“I’m a little egg,” I thought.

“Do you know what the song means?”

“No. I like it.”

“It’s about war. People kill each other in war. Governments send our young men to fight wars and they die, or they come back without arms or legs.”

“Why do they do this?”

“Because some people are bad. There are good and bad people. There are good and bad wars, too. But all war is horrible for the people who are in it. Grandpa was in a war.”

“World War II.”

“That was a good war. We fought against the Nazis in Germany. The Nazis wanted to kill all the Jewish people. Grandma’s Jewish, and her brother died fighting in the war. But there was a bad war just a couple years ago. Your Daddy Wayne wouldn’t fight in it because it was a bad war. That was Vietnam. I met your Daddy when he was hiding out from the war.”

“Why was it bad?”

“Because we wanted to kill people because they didn’t want to live the way we do. But people all around the world are different. They don’t have to live like we live. We killed them even though they’d never done anything to us. Our government was wrong, just like the Nazis were wrong in World War II.”

This was news to me. I didn’t know who Mom was talking about when she said the “government.” I didn’t know who the Nazis were or why they would want to kill Grandma. The world had a darker, serious cast to it.

“But we’re all OK now, right Mom?”

“We’re fine for now, honey.”

Lady K & Mom, 1975?

synopsis 2002-2006

I left my husband in 2 oh oh 2 for poetry. A month later, I was laid off and a firefighter poet moved in with me. I never got back into an engineering job. I resorted to web development for a couple years at less than half my former salary. In March ‘05, I became suicidal from the pointlessness of what I was doing at the office and the futility of my lukewarm relationship. I decided to try bulimia, hoping that if I got thin enough that someone would find me attractive and rescue me or that I’d die bent over a toilet, heart attack from electrolyte imbalance. The firefighter got sick of my sickness, dumped me in June ‘05.

I met Smith at the start of my activities in the poetry community. He had a croaking whisper of a voice. He often came to readings smelling like grass. I was jealous of his irreverent poetry, the compelling stories from his past, his outlaw art and his 20 year ArtCrimes publication. I read and re-read the last issue of ArtCrimes, thought it the epitomy of cool. Though jealous of his edge, it didn’t keep me from thinking highly of him, wondering about his life.

I commuted with him to a poetry reading in September 2005. After the reading, we talked past midnight. I asked, “Don’t you want to hold me?” Smith reluctantly agreed, knowing this would complicate things.

We did a full body press. It felt good, right, for both of us. We started hugging, kissing, touching. It’d been at least fifteen years since Smith’d touched a woman. He said, “You can sleep over if you are too stoned to go home.”

I said, “Only if we don’t have sex. I’m involved with several other men.”

So we went to bed in our clothes. I said, “It’s too hot.” I took off my pants, my top and my brassiere.

Smith said, “Oh, no, Lady. Panties go too.”

And that was that. I dumped the other men. Two weeks later, Smith gave me the keys. He said, “It’s not fair for you to wait for me to answer the door.”

And two weeks after that, I moved in.

Smith’s skills as a mainframe programmer were becoming obsolete, and he hated the work. He retired in December 2005. He planned to “fake it” until March 2007, living off his savings until he was eligible for early social security. He convinced me to drop out of the office world, “retire” with him, become his artistic collaborator.

A week after I moved in, we decided to move to Europe. Smith proposed October 16.

Right before retirement, he casually mentioned that he had nodules on his larynx. I freaked out, had him get a biopsy. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx. No health insurance.

There were two months of radiation treatments in January and February. At the same time, I was cleaning Smith’s condo and painting and repairing the walls and floor, which were damaged from twenty years of his rough art practices. We’d decided to sell the condo in order to travel, but now we had to sell it because now most of his savings were gone from medical expenses. (I’ve since read that people without insurance pay on average 3 times more than what the treatment costs insurers. This makes me severely angry.)

We were going to get married in January, but couldn’t because I couldn’t dispose of my previous husband. So we married March 18.

During this period we had three art shows, the release of the final issue of ArtCrimes, and bunches of readings… and we created art and wrote about a quarter of his memoir.

I’d never been so happy and sad at the same time. Sad because of the painfulness of dealing with Smith’s illness, and happy because I’d finally found the partner I dreamed of, someone who was a companion, someone with whom I could do art and writing and conversation.

We closed the sale of the condo in June 2006. We had to wait ’til July to see if the radiation treatments worked, getting another biopsy. Regardless, Smith decided we were going to go to Europe whether or not he was cured. As soon as we had the money, we bought our flight tickets to London. In the back of our minds, we weren’t sure they were going to let us leave, that it wasn’t permitted for us to live our dreams. We felt we were escaping.

The July biopsy showed him in remission. August, breathless, we left the country.

We’ve lived together 24/7 since December 2005. Smith’s voice has healed. He sounds like a wise cowboy.

I’ve never been so happy and so sad. I’m happy because I have my road-tested companion, love of my life, and a manuscript… and pictures I can hold in my palms. My thumbs can travel to all the countries we’ve seen.

But I’m so, so sad as well. Now that I have someone to care about, my heart has a home in the world. I’m compelled to care about the world to make it a safer place for me and my love. All global terror is personal terror for me, inescapable from my quotidian existence: the political terrorism of our imperialist institutions, the WTO, the IMF, the non-sustainable practice of globalization, our genocide of 1 million Iraqis, our de facto genocide of 100,000 Indian farmers, my recent disillusionment with the Democrats, realizing their complicity in perpetrating mass corporate and political crime. What is happening to our home, the world? We’re shitting in our own fish tank.

here there be dragons

Lady K added this blurb to my myspace base….

“Born in Bitterroot, raised on Paradise Prairie. Farm boy, car thief, Naval Academy, expelled for dope, high society marriage, armed robbery, jail, escaping the cops, illegal loft dweller, ArtCrimes, rat attacks, overdose, overdose, overdose, celibate, remarried, expat…”

most wives wouldn’t collect this particular set of facts to advertise her husband to others.

ikipedian names of gods - Abba - Allah - Yahweh - Elohim - Holy Trinity - Deus - Igzi’abihier - Jah - Ngai - Mi’kmaq - the One God - Bhagavan - Brahman - Paramatma - Ishvara - Vishnu - Shiva - Supreme Cosmic Spirit - Krishna - Baquan - Waheguru - Anami Purush - Radha Swami - Bahá - Mwari - Musikavanhu - Ahura Mazda - The Great Spirit - SUGMAD - HU - Shang Ti - Khoda - there’s more, but that’s already too many gods for now.

soap opera synopra past year point five:

18 months ago, i read my dead mom stories at Borders. lady poet followed me home, asked if i could keep her. told her no. she moved in 4 weeks after anyway. week later we decide to marry, sell studio, dispose possessions, live in europe. ex-lover threatens to kidnap her, kill me - or worse. we discover my throat cancer, which takes our minds off our stalker. throat surgery. my 8 weeks radiation brings out her bulimia. marry. publish ArtCrimes 21. 3 art shows. multiple poetry readings. 6 articles in press. discover polyps fill my nose from eyeball to brain pan. more surgery. root canal. sell place. pronounced cancer free.

8 months ago we leave america, wander through england, amsterdam, krakow, croatia, italy to south of france. we’ve left a series of cyber tracks, assorted oddities in word and play along the way. in two weeks we train, 2 days barcelona, train, 2 days madrid, plane, few months morocco. after that, not even The Shadow knows.

i’m in a place i’ve never been and never thought to be. fairy tale lurks ahead in secret keeping. we’re on a map where tomorrow’s big red letters saying “Here there be Dragons !”