Here is what is this about. I don’t know what I’m about. Funny. People look at me funnily. I’m not sure why. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know why. Even if I knew why, my memories have, and still are. The experiences are now flat. Flat as a photograph.
Time is a thing that speeds by on a billion schedules, pattering its way around the world in an infinitely interactive lacy web. Life billows. My heart-my heart my heart my h-heart hear-t beats to its own fucking drum. I have a past. I have a history. I have a story. Stories. I have things. Like my blue Le Creuset dutch oven, which I purchased at the Crate&Barrel. I worked at the Estée Lauder counter inside Nordstrom. When I worked in The Stanford Shopping Center I purchased a lot of things.
Somewhere. Things. My bed. My paintings. My Dutch oven I purchased at th
I have a heart. Full of Iron. I feel the iron. Non-melodiously, I feel it in my erratically beating heart.
Born and raised in Northern California, I moved to the Sierra Nevada high desert just before I turned thirty.
Most people call me Feisty. Go to Amazon, search Lilli Feisty, and you’ll see why. I write. I play with my dogs. I write letters to my kid. I knit. I write. I read. I
I used to write romance novels. Now I write my memories. I love pretty stories, even when they’re not pretty.
Today I woke up in Scotland. Now, we’re in a tavern/pub. It’s upstairs. It’s around noon. We parked on the dead-end ally, on the right side of the street, the front of the small car facing the two story building. We walked inside, turned right, and walked up to the second floor. It’s pretty inside. It’s all wood. Shiny, caramel wood walls. And bar. The left side of the pub are windows.
There is random stained glass; flowers, a cross, a pretty mosaic. Outside is grey. Wet. It seems like we are, often, walking through clouds.
It’s fun to try and order vegetarian food. We sit at a high table, climb onto a shiny chair, and see what’s written on a chalkboard behind the bar. We are meandering in the highlands, with Cawdor Castle being today (or tomorrow’s) destination. You order soup and a beer. I have a cider and a salad. Later I’ll ask you to stop at a market so I can get some cookies.
Now, a local asks us where we’re from. We are told that this man’s son is currently in New York, but the father doesn’t seem to know why, exactly. He drops his shoulders and laughs. We laugh too. We’ve observed that Scottish people have big smiles and big laughs, so it never feels super gloomy here. Not really.
We haven’t yet been invited to the Scottish boy’s birthday party, that happens later. We’ll see a young man lifted up, while sitting in a chair, and he’ll be carried around the large room to pick up the £1 notes his friends and family are waving at him.
I’ve been coping better in unfamiliar places. Jay has, without purpose, made this happen. I never feel unsafe with him. He’s confident, he’s the smartest person I’ve ever known — that never changes. It took me some time to realize I was safe, with him. I’d never known what it felt like to be safe. It gave me a sense of safety that would grow, allow me to take a lot of risks. Taking risks, with Jay, is what forced me to start living.
I fell back asleep. I wanted to travel more. I wanted to go back to that super scary Scottish road that wound and wound and wound…But. I woke up in Hawaii. That was okay. I loved waking up there. Especially Kauai. It wasn’t our honeymoon. It was when we stayed closer to the North Shore. We drove our red rental car to a spot on the road where there was a sign that pointed to the right side of the road. Beach Access. We parked there and hiked down to a beach. We walked through all the trees and mud, and then to the sand. We set up on the beach. We saw fish. We swam in the ocean. Every time I got into the water in Kauai I was in awe of the warmth of the ocean. Every time. Until our honeymoon I’d had no idea that the ocean could be so warm. It wasn’t in Half Moon Bay. Or Trinidad. Those were the only oceans I’d been in, until I met Jay.
I woke up again, today. I was in my art gallery. I loved my gallery. Jay came by to set something up on my computer. I’d been looking at the DWR catalog. I wanted to get Jay something nice. I wanted to get him something that was beautiful, and wouldn’t be uncomfortable. I wanted nothing to hurt his back. I was researching the Eames Lounge Chair. And Ottoman. It was beautiful. I knew he’d love it, but wouldn’t ever buy it for himself. He hurt his back while swimming in Kauai. On our honeymoon.
I was sipping a cranberry martini that Jay had made me when I started waking up. In this room. In Dallas. I hadn’t opened my eyes but my face was wet from tears. This was normal. Flynn hates me. I gave him many reasons to do so. He’s not my son anymore. He’s a man who hates me. I’m sure there are many others. I am on the bed, in the hospital, Jay is holding my hand. I am pushing Flynn out of my body. And I’m doing it with no pain relief. Jay keeps telling me I can do it. You can do it. So I do. That was January 7, 2005.
I never wanted to believe all of the things I knew were true, about me, for other people. I’m a piece of shit. And I’m insane. It says so right on my medical records. So far today, many times, I’ve wished I could rewrite my story. I don’t think it’s fair that I inherited a disease that didn’t care to reveal itself until I’d already thrown away everything, including myself. And, now, I see a life, my life, that hasn’t stopped living just because I’m no longer in it.
Every day I wake up all over the world. I think about how to stop the incessant waking up. So far, none of my attempts have worked. The other day, I woke up in Ireland. We’d just hit a cow. And I went to sleep in Dallas. By myself. Knowing that the biggest memory loss I’m living with is the fact that I’m hardly a memory, for anyone, anymore. I hope that, soon, I wake up in that little white villa, in Andalusia. We drive to the convent, on that 5′ wide, windy road, and we eat those delicious chocolate treats the nuns cooked. Jay purchased a flower from a nun. He gave me the flower. I hope that I wake up again here, soon. And that I never go back to sleep.
Don’t know about you But I am un chien Andalusian.
when she looks at you you know what you are. its not easy to take. its an unaccustomed sensation. it is a deep current. her eyes wake it in you. it is something from our deepest core. it is where we all came from. before so many things happened. before we got wrong ideas. before we became liars and cowards and brutes. before we lost our colors and faded. before we became cardboard. before we learned to hate. before we knew doubt. back from when we flew like birds. she looks you in the eyes and you remember yourself. you remember who you are. you see who she is. it hurts but it has to happen. you come out of your own stomach. if you can see her, really see her, you give birth to yourself.
nobody else has eyes that can do that. only her. only her. this is a beautiful and pure truth.
What do you do when you’ve lived your life and survived? A soldier with many many wounds that’ll never heal.
Do you procure a pistol and, finally, write your final chapter? After the ending of the story you type, in caps, THE END? Where would you shoot yourself? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Your throat–Tomorrow?
Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don’t own a shotgun.
There are many variables in something you’ve seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. In the film, wealthy people are poor.
You have bleach. You also have a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax, Fort Mason Center.. Additionally, you have a very sharp chef’s knife. But the knife was a birthday gift so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like an acute challenge and you’ve never been good with details.
It’s a method of problem solving. It’s a process of a set of rules. It’s Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you how to multiply numbers. They tell you that x=0. But they never call it a language or reveal that zero means nothing.
What you want to do is you want to put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy—the whole point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. But a field doesn’t require the heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. Natural. Earthy. Dirty.
A woman with red hair, wearing a black dress and red shoes, smiles while swinging on a rope swing. It is hanging from a tree in a wooded outdoor area.
I am my own world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds. My ether, with floating, evolving, melting snowflakes.
At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask, because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.
The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. Friends visit only on weekends. The phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop. Like snowflakes and people—flowers melt.
How are you doing? The soft voices that asked the caring questions begin to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. And topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living.
But I cannot, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. My life—my world— has been demolished.
My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes and my friends eat at home, or the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise because it is now missing my favorite sound. Now nothing seems right.
Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person’s existence? In the beginning—disbelief, shock, a phone that becomes a cold thing that no longer brings me silly messages from the now dead person. I start feeling more feelings, and they are feelings that slowly start to fade as I acclimate to what’s missing from my life every fucking day.
Then—then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I lol. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. Then—when I’m kinda functioning without that constant feeling of emptiness, loss, grief—that is when the death hits me. I’ve returned to the normal headspace.
Life goes on and so do I.
I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what’s under the now scarred skin: severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images. Those things haven’t started healing yet—and I know that the deepest cuts never will.
In the passenger seat, I see the stars come out of the sky, yeah, they’re bright in a hollow sky you know it looks so good tonight.
My sky is exploding. My stars are combusting. I am a passenger. Newly healed and freshly sore. Waiting for my stars to come out of my sky.
And I knit and I knit. A scarf for Darlene. Darlene will smile. I’ll feel her smile in the yarn coming alive in my hands.
I can not, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be. My life—my world— is lost and I’m still trying to find it.
My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes and my friends eat at home, or the homes of their friends. Somehow, they’re still living lives. I envy that.
“Time is a circus, always packing up and moving away.” – Ben Hecht
Here is what is this about. I don’t know what I’m about. Nor does anybody else.
Things, such as time, are war. Games. War games. Time—is of the essence. I grasp the heavy rifle in my hands. I blast the dry abyss with bullets of memories, leaving sparkling lights that, slowly, dim into the darkness. Frequently I wish I was still younger. The terrain in my head, then, was a much smaller area to blow up.
Time after time—we do not have the luxury of forgetting that time is of the essence. The second hand unwinds. I got a suitcase of memories, I almost left behind.
Days and time whirl us up in its violent tornado. Lives living a billion schedules, pattering around the world in an infinitely interactive lacy web.
Somewhere. Some wheres. Somethings. Things. My bed. My paintings. My Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Blue Azure.
Now. I’m a writer. With published books. My published books are romance novels. Now I write my memories. My memories are rarely the same story accurately remembered. So. So I’m forcing myself to scrawl each version of the stories I remember. Then I just try to fit all the pieces together in a way that—fits. Or—doesn’t.
I love pretty stories. I love writing. Now I write. Now I’m in the middle of a tornado. Throwing the letters & words & exclamation points!!!
A person wearing a blue face mask lies on a hospital bed, about to enter a CT or MRI scanner. The circular opening of the scanning machine is visible in the background.
My brain is inside my skull. I know this is true because I’ve seen it.
I’m not sure why, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know why, and even if I knew why, I wouldn’t remember anyway. Time. Flies.
Inside my brain, carnival loudly attack me with their fake noises. Tacky. Frustrating. Exhausting. But. What isn’t?
I want to see flowers. I want to feel warm water. I want to feel waves melting around around my body. I feel stupid. I feel smart. Do I feel smart because I’m so fucking stupid? Feelings are supposed to be shown, not told, when writing. Show don’t tell. I want to feel happy. I want to eat. I want to know. I want my hair to not fall out. I need a break. I need a brain. I want a break that lasts me the rest of my life and beyond.
I don’t want to be standing on the gymnastics floor, eight years old, with my gymnastics teacher, Wayne, behind me. Gently reaching around to push his hands down the front of my shorts. I told my mom.
She stared at me. Then started crying big, heavy tears. Then her face was wet, her eyes turning red.
I want my hair back. I want my life back. I want a sandwich. I want ice-cream. I want to eat with love. With people I love. And who love me. I want to sleep. Forever. I want to live happily. Indefinitely. I want to hold my newborn son, every one of these days. I want to be in love and mean it. I want to hide in a lake. I want to hide with fish. I want to write about people who exist, and who are good. Instead I’m swimming fiercely in rocky, murky water. My legs are drumsticks. My legs beat beat beat. The wood, shattering on the wet, sharp rocks. I taste blood. I remember the metallic, plastic, blasting—the sound of my typewriter smashing cement after I threw it over my second-floor balcony. Little brown buttons with letters in a dark courier font splattered the ground. H and I, two stated.
Whenever I find myself in the hospital room, standing next to the bed on which is resting my dead mother, in indecipherable spans of time, I am looking out the window. It is Summer Solstice, which means I am nearly exactly 17.5 years old. I am staring at the white blinds, which are slanted open. I look through countless strips of plastic. I am looking at the sky. The sky is blue. Above the top of the concrete roof of the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital. The sky is blue. It’s that clear, clear, clear, clean, Windex blue. It’s the blue that occurs only briefly. It happens on days with a slight breeze and little pollution. Danny and I left the trailer in San Jose. We left after the call came, around 7:30 a.m. Now, it was around 9:30. It wasn’t yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00. It would start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I’d never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat, and clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows. I would not–did not–think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. It was all dead. She was dead. Standing on my balcony, in Reno, I watched the explosion.
When the typewriter hit the concrete, the black ribbon spool still pressed against paper. After the ancient typing machine crashed onto the ground, I remember brown leaves drifting around my brown typewriter. They moved like ballerinas, floating in the blasted air. Today, now, I want to see the brown leaves drifting across the scuffled concrete of my patio. I want to look between the brown patio steps and see the ground. I want to hear the shuffling sound of shoes. People walk on the other side of the fence. They’re unaware of what they’re missing over here.
What I want to be is home. I want to be cooking paella on my stove. It’s in our house. I toured it with Jay and a real estate agent. I want to be in our kitchen. I stand in front of the counter, chopping vegetables on the countertop that I designed. I want to boil water on the stove that I, after much research, had installed. Our 5-year-old son watches something silly on the TV with J. J is sitting on the long sofa. He holds a shot-glass of to-be-sipped-slowly tequila in his hand. They watch the green Bang & Olufsen television. I want to be there, at home, where I was–where I thought I was–safe. Safety is an observation.
A two-story green house with a wraparound porch, perfect for observation of the surrounding forested hills, features lush shrubs and a well-kept lawn, offering both beauty and a sense of safety beneath the blue sky.
I am my world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds.
At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. “Hey there, how’s everything going with you?”? They ask because they truthfully want to know. They carry books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.
The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives
How are you doing? The soft voices that ask the caring questions evolve in tone, speed, and intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life—the lives of the living.
Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person’s existence? Have I started adjusting?
I start feeling myriad emotions. I brush my teeth and think downward dog. I boil jasmine tea in my electric kettle. I call my doctor to make an appointment. I Organize some yarn.
I’m new here. I navigate the unfamiliar terrain of amnesia. I knit together a semblance of connection, one stitch at a time.
Michelle O’Kane 