What we risk reveals what we value.

A man sitting across from me burst into a laugh he couldn't keep in his chest, startled a few of the subway riders around him. But he didn't notice, giggling silently to himself, so completely immersed in the pages of his short novel with yellowed pages and cracking, apple green binding. I don't remember what stop he got off on, or the name of the book, but I remember that true bursting laugh, it was so familiar to me it was almost as if it came from my own insides. Like a handshake. Or a hug from someone I haven't seen in awhile. And it had nothing to do with me.

A deep, rich rendition of 'Papa Was A Rolling Stone' filled the Delancey/Essex F stop that was so compelling I was singing it behind my face mask. Suddenly another man's voice rang out from across the platform on the opposite side, going in the opposite direction, belting out the painful and true words with the aging black gentleman singing behind me and fingering his worn guitar. I went to board the train as it drowned out the music, interrupting the palpable connection being experienced, when a very large man with dreads and a puffy tear stained face leaned down and explained to me through his thick accent that the music moved him so much - he could barely even speak. I didn't know how to handle such an intimate confession, the connection suddenly choking me, just as I was small against the tears and large figure towering over me. It may have just been a subtle lean in my direction, but I was the only person he addressed, and him being so large and wide I felt wrapped up in him practically, his emotions dripping like sweat down my spine, too raw and real for comfort. Slightly panicked for some reason I thrust myself into the faceless crush of bodies and lost myself inside the guts of the mostly silent impersonal subway car.

Sitting on the Myrtle/Wykoff L stop with my dog in my lap, a heavy set, loud, socially awkward woman started talking to my dog in the hopes for some kind of reaction, like the hobos or creepy dudes who make barking noises to get her attention while she perches calmly on my thighs like a proud little ship, anchored by my heart and nothing else. I trust her to handle herself, so remain solidly planted and dismissive as the woman talks at her, and at me. My self aware, self possessed little girl pointedly looked everywhere but at the woman making a scene till finally giving up and wandering off. Since I had stepped on the platform with Calypso sitting straight spined and tall in my arms, I watched a handsome younger man continuously glancing in my direction. Having a dog in New York City inspires a wide range of interesting and often emotional reactions in people, and I always let her make eyes with certain people across crowded subway cars, and yearn towards spiky little boys pretending not to be just as interested in her as she is in them. I pretend I don't notice, let her have these little romances with other people's hungry eyes and hungry hearts. As I sat down, he finally approached me and gently vomited up bits of his life, currently in transition. Going through a break up, having to find a new home for his dog, starting a new job. Still swimming in the romance of loving and losing, his whole presence seemed tender like a bruise. Open, honest, he was confessing his whole being to the little, warm creature in my lap, and I felt, again, like his face was in my hands, or snuggled in my lap with Calypso, though she hadn't even bothered to glance in his direction. I knew exactly who he was in that short, quiet conversation. Then he stepped off at the Lorimer stop. I may never see him again, and I surely won't recognize him if I do.

I walked past a pizza placed but continued since the two guys behind the counter stared, more interested than I am comfortable with... but doubled back because it was my last chance to grab food due to the lateness of the hour. The pizza section melted into a low lit bar and I sat in a boozy semi darkness stuffing mediocre pepperoni slices into my mouth gracelessly, while the older man of the pair came and leaned back against the alcohol regarding me and the nightly news on the tv near me with thoughtful silence. I watched him subtly as I dripped grease on his bar counter and scattered red pepper and crumbs across the dark wood surface. He was distinguished looking, of some Arabic/Persian descent that I couldn't quite place. The obvious ethnicity made me wonder what the people working around me felt about women and propriety, since I sat in a cutoff sweatshirt that left my tattooed shoulders exposed, the left shoulder bright underneath the pin-light over it. The face of a Siren from Homer's Odyssey stared drowsily at him, and he stared back, focused, contemplative. There was nothing lewd about how openly he stared, I thought, smacking and sniffling as the red pepper lit up my sinuses, as I watched him watching my shoulder. It was interesting to see someone, like in a museum, looking at art on the wall, but they were looking at a piece of my flesh, but it was so earnestly interested, almost reverent, and honest, I made no move to cover myself, or distract him from his thoughts. I waited for his questions to inevitably surface, and I answered them.
'She's beautiful' he said quietly. 'Who is she?' I gave him the name of the Greek story, but didn't see recognition in his face.
'Why that?' He asked. I explained how sometimes when we experience emotional and mental battles, that test our souls and our hearts, I find it is unfair that I don't have literally battle scars to show the world how hard I have fought to be where and what I am.
'What if you change your mind?' he asked finally.
I asked him if he could go back and change things in his life, his childhood, choices he's made before there was grey in his hair. He nodded to let me know that he understood some part of my question. Then I finished my food, cleaned up my mess.
'Get home safe' He told me as I disappeared out into the cold and dark.



I realized in my last relationship that I was being treated with more respect - simple kindness even - on the train, by complete strangers than the person I was rushing home to, and in the last 6 months I have met people who see me clearer and deeper than family members who have known me my whole life. It feels like I've suddenly discovered I don't have to vigilantly protect myself from the people I encounter, that I don't have to live in constant fear that they don't really know who I am, or care what that means. My days are filled with such rich, electric interactions that even I can feel my own realness, I can hear the heaviness of my footfalls as my body connects with the earth, with other people, because I am real. More than just a phantom of other people's perceptions and expectations, family, lovers.






It was the third of September; that day I'll always remember,
'Cause that was the day that my daddy died.
I never got a chance to see him; never heard nothin' but bad things about him.
Mama I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.

Mama just looked at him and said, "Son,
Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Hey, Mama, is it true what the say, that Papa never worked a day in his life?
And Mama, they talk all around town say that
Papa had three outside children and another wife
And that ain't right.
Heard them talkin' about Papa doing some storefront preachin'
Talkin' about saving your souls and all the time weak, dealin' in death
And stealin' in the name of the Lord
Mama just hung her head and said,

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Hey, Mama, I heard Papa call himself a jack of all trades.
Tell me, is that what sent Papa to an early grave?
Folks say Papa would beg; borrow or steal to pay his bills.
Hey, Mama, folks say Papa was never much on thinkin';
Spend most of his time chasin' women and drinkin'!
Mama, I'm depending on you to tell me the truth.

Mama just hung her head and said, "Son,
Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

Papa was a rollin' stone.
Wherever he laid his head was his home.
And when he died, all he left us was alone."

May the bridges I burn light my way

"you," he said, "are a terribly real thing in a terribly false world,

                                          and that, I believe is why you are in so much pain."


For all the times I have stumbled home from excessive hours at work, black with steel grease or the dust of the piers, not bothering to wash the black from my hands when I actually take the time to feed myself, when sleep is so much more valuable than showering regularly and even my sheets smell like steel... I sometimes desperately drag my broken body into the random Vietnamese nail salon, even though I have to face the looks of horror from the man or women handling my calloused and work stained flesh. Part of me is apologetic to them for how much harder they will have to work to make me even presentable, but some deep part of me is begging for strong hands to press into my sore muscles and strained tendons, so much I could cry.

I can't help but feel the sidelong looks from the skinny dyed blonds, old fussy women and haughty preteens around me, getting their long, feminine nails painted boring shades of pink or shimmery brown while they gossip - polluting the calm with unnecessary complaining noises I have to tune out, to catch the twang of Asian instruments adding a subtle glamour of the geisha to the odd practice all of us are indulging in, however removed most of american culture may have come from the origins of this particular feminine tradition. I am no less a woman than anyone else in the room, and so much more in need of their arts than most of the women sitting around me, but I still stick out like a bruise. I'm not there to be pampered and girly - I'm there asking these craftspeople to cut away the dead and bruised skin, like sanding weathered wood, to find the natural beauty and form hidden underneath. Sometimes I need help to find myself. I just can't allow myself to feel too deeply judged, because it is already so hard for me to ask at all.

Today, Christmas Eve, I went to one such place, near where I am apartment sitting in the Upper West Side, a part of town that always tickles me, because I feel my difference VERY strongly here. One of my secret favorite things is to have searingly colored toenails hiding inside my smelly, beaten work shoe. The woman working with me quickly erased the caution yellow remnants of polish still barely clinging to my toes, to replace it with a violent neon fuchsia... but could not hide that she paused in horror when she reached for my hands. I asked for a back massage afterwards, something I never do, but was so desperate for it I didn't care if it seemed selfish, I didn't care who saw or knew. Since she would struggle working under my shirt, I simply took it off, sitting in my sports bra, exposing my tattooed and heavily muscled shoulders - from doing a man's job for a living - and the sturdy, cheerful woman grunted and thwacked, pushed and pulled as she wrestled with the demons that had wrapped themselves into the grooves under my shoulder blades and stretched themselves down the column of my spine. The woman working on my back chatted to me about my tattoos in her heavy accent, the people who work in these places usually are extremely appreciative of them - which makes sense to me, Asian/pacific island tattooing being such a developing factor for our own culture to embrace the concept of body art that sailors brought back with them in the 18th century. To the snotty women in the room, the ink in my flesh always seem to cause a specific negative reaction, as if it were in fact filled with some sacrilegious quality, whispering anti traditional and rebellious thoughts, threatening the rules of their pink and white world.

She ended emphatically, with loud thumps of her balled up hands up and down the length of my back, filling the space with the sound of my naked skin connecting with them. As I pulled my shirt over my head, I noticed the room was silent. As I paid and stuffed my feet into my boots, I felt the difference in the room, though I don't know what it meant. Nor does it even matter.

I left at least 2 inches taller.

Reaching a fever pitch

With no way to comprehend and assimilate the unnecessary battle scars I sustain in my daily fight for sustenance and respect, knowledge and self worth, I can feel the rips in the fabric of my spiritual being, and am overwhelmed by my soul's inability to bleed the white hot pain away. So I will wear the scars of my soul on my flesh, rendered in beautiful forms out of metaphors dark and rich as the cultural history I have awoken them from.

It amazes me what comes out of us when faced with the various circumstances of daily interactions, and even more so, the blinding animal tendencies we show in the face of reason and logic, every motion and thought rooted to animal needs, the scavenger, the pack animal that wants to fit in, the small of mind and body that fill their lack of presence with useless, abusive chatter to scare off the predators and competent alike. I have seen the wolf in our blood. I do not possess an inner bull, with a fearless relationship to moving matter, nor the desire of the wolf to be in a group and protect its ideals and roles with my life, it is with the crafty, shape-shifting  coercive creature of fables and fairy tales that I have found a resemblance, a similarity in our methodology of self protection.

Backed into a corner, I met the fox in my being, his sharp teeth grazing my tongue as I talk my way out, tail swinging, to continue building my life. If only the fuzzy redness of my anger and the iron taste of my inflamed pride didn't give me away, sending the dogs baying after me, tongues wagging. Sometimes I wish I was invisible, but my anger is often so palpable, it is it's own living creature with its own sharp, brazen tongue, and there is only so much an angry red creature can do to go unnoticed. More and more I find the fox in the place I am meant to be standing, and am torn in my logical self with right and wrong and good and bad, and deals are being made and allegiances forged by the fox while I wrestle with what I believe. It is lonely, the circumstances I find myself in, I have not even recognized the quick talking and fierce person filling my shoes and swinging my hips, an abrasive and bitter individual that I have little control over. With nothing and no one I can trust, no support, back up, or kind words to fill the gaping holes in my being, not even the momentary comfort of body contact to suggest I am not wholly and completely alone, all I have to rely on is the toothy grin of this clever creature, trusting instincts that cannot come from an logical place of rules and expectations, but have been lurking in the recesses of my fleshy human form, some deep secret memory of being rooted to the earth, and have been called forth into action with flashing and intelligent eyes.