do you have any questions for me?

the next doris is going to be partially about questions. so if you have any questions for me, leave them here in the comments. so far the questions I have are - what do you want to do most. who do you want to be most.

road trip, day two

day two. Little Rock.

once, years ago, when I was driving to move to Ithaca NY (but got so tired I ended up just moving to Asheville instead), and the truck was so full of stuff there was no where for me to sleep, and the roads kept icing over and the freeways kept shutting down, I ended up in Little Rock, at Rice St. house. It was a big old house with lots of kittens and people. It was the first time I traveled alone and got to call friends of friends and be just welcomed right in to their house like I belonged there. and now these years later, we stay at Collins house. this big beautiful sort of falling apart house, that he's fixed up some but says there's raccoons in the attic and if he ever buys the house he's tearing down the back half and adding another floor.

Down the street is a house show that we get the last song of. Old punks. still rocking. and they come over to Collins house, and Anna from Sofie Nun Squad which was this amazing punk dance band with like 10 people in short shorts and so many instruments and so much dancing and movement. from the moment they hit their first note to the last, they were jumping up and down and running around, and it was the best, the absolute best. Collin is working as a restorator now. Up on scaffolding, scraping paint off and trying to get to the old original art underneath things. and Theo came over and I'd never met him before, but it was like I had because he used to run a distro for a long time that distro'd my zine, and he wrote too. He's a botanist and loves it. He says - every day I am happy to go to work. He has a kid now and I say "I'm thinking of having kids" and he says, "you should totally do it. It is the best thing ever."

parent death

One of the biggest things when my mom died, was I thought I had to get it all figured out. All the complexities of our relationship, all the unsaid things, all the unmet needs, all the mixed feelings of love and abandonment, betrayal and goodness. I was afraid that there were all these things left undone that now I would never be able to resolve. But the truth was, maybe I never would have been able to resolve them, and maybe I would have been able to. and in time, even with her dead, I have. There is this peace about it now. In the sorrow and bitterness, in the beauty of how she moved and how she survived, and the strength she passed on, and in her pain.

The thing that surprised me was how long it took. Like, for years it hurt. The first three years were the worst. I think if I had know in the beginning that it was going to suck for three years, I would have may be taken it easier on myself.

Not that it totally sucked all the time. There were times when it was easy, times when I would forget. Times when I was worried that I wasn't sad enough. Times when I was worried that I was more sad about my failing relationship than my dead mom. I thought I had to get it right. There is no getting it right, it will all come. there is time for it all.

What I needed most was for the people around me to know that I couldn't hold up my side of things. Every task was difficult, most of the time. Cooking, figuring out what to do with my day, holding up my side of the friendship, calling people, reaching out, making plans, answering the question "what do you want to do". I couldn't care take. I needed taking care of.

I read a lot of trashy books. Weird pseudo-feminist mystery novels like by Elizabeth Peters, or Rita Mae Brown. Trashy pseudo-historical fiction, like Zorro by Isabel Allende. Paperbacks. Best Sellers. Shit I didn't have to think about. I read a book a day sometimes.

Part of what I needed was just to get through the day.
Part of what I needed was to do the normal things I did.
Part of what I hated was people being normal around me.
Part of what I needed was for people to be normal around me.

I wish more people had just brung up questions about death and mom in the beginning of each time we hung out, so it wouldn't be looming over us, waiting to see if it would be addressed. Like, they could ask questions about my family, about funeral stuff, about if there were things I was realizing I needed, about what she was like, about did I want to talk about how she died. did I want to talk about my relationship with her. did she read to me. did she know I wrote a zine. did I have ideas about what happened when you die. anything. anything to break the ice. And if I didn't want to talk about it, I could have just answered shortly, abruptly, I could have said I didn't want to talk about it right then. I could have said anything, instead of always waiting to see. Instead of feeling like a freak and a burden. Instead of feeling so locked up and terrible and pretend.

road trip

tour diary
day one. escape from Asheville.

How do you leave a place you've lived for 12 years. with bitterness and sorrow? with tenderness and pain?

I got out. It felt like I was just leaving for a little bit. everything in storage. Michael in the seat next to me.

First stop, Ida.

Ida is some land in Mid Tennessee, near the Radical Fairy land, it is transgender sanctuary land. two houses, a few trailer, a few barns. Maybe ten people living there, something like that. Big gardens. and in September, the Ida Palooza music festival. The first time I went there, I fell so in love. I cut them wood. I made tortillas. This time they were rebuilding a barn that seemed unsaveable. they are good at saving seemingly unsavable things. like me. like my heart.