Pomegranate Repost

I'm sort of busy, so I'm reposting this longie but goodie, one of my meditations of yore. You might want to go away & return to read it in bits, but make sure you do come back for all of it. It will change your life.

I love eating pomegranates. I love how the fruity little regiments are all lined up, these little podlings of bursting juice and one hard little seed, waiting for me to pluck them from their nests and explode their flavor onto my tongue. It's meditative, in a way: Pluck, pop. Pluck, pop. Pluck, pop. Meditative ... … Meditative ...

Shopping at Macy's last Sunday was a head trip. They are playing Christmas Music. Christmas music!!!! On November 6th! Apparently, according to their customer service, by "customer request" they start the music the same time they start their holiday displays, which is now. Apparently the customers didn't realize the start date would be just after Halloween. Hearing "Chestnuts Roasted on an Open Spit" or whatever, as sung tremulously and nauseatingly by Aaron Neville, over the high-volume / low fidelity dressing room speaker, was just as bit much for me; I was already aggravated with trying to stuff my 42 D's into a 40 C.

Also in Macy's lingerie department, there was a man. A creepy man. An oldish man, maybe 60, with slicked-back hair and a loosely fitting suit. Shiny shoes. Looked like a smoker. This man was fingering the panties. Yes, he was petting them and draping them across his hand in a very unsettling way. Unsettling to watch, that is. I was picturing him whispering, in his mind, yessss ...…oh yessss my pretty things ... this is where her kitty goes, right here ... where my hand is ... my hand is touching the lace that will be where her kitty is ... Ew. Later he would be pulling out these mental images and repeating these phrases as muffled shouts into his pillow. Then again, maybe he was just shopping for his girlfriend. Or niece. Or something. What do I know? I don't know from perverts.

I used to work with Miss Diane the mirror lady. From Romper Room. Yes, it's true. She is now a teacher aide in a Connecticut school district. She gave me this postcard to remember her by. She is nice, a little bit wacky; she wears flip flops every day because (according to her) her feet get hot from all the hot peppers she consumes. She doesn't say "I see Billy, I see Bobby, I see Molly, I see Sally" to the kids. I know you were wondering that.

When I was in 6th grade, I was running down the hall with clogs and I sprained my ankle. The janitor found me on the floor and carried me to the nurse's office. I felt a little embarrassed about that, especially when I (we) passed some other kids; they weren't my friends, so it wasn't too bad. Actually, did I have friends in 6th grade? I don't remember any. I was sort of weird. In 6th grade I hated this kid Julian who had a mop of curly hair and who always had some sort of crust around his nose. That's all I remember from 6th grade, besides simple machines. Oh, and Mr. Shaw, my social studies teacher. He looked like the Heat Miser, but he was really nice. I did steal his eraser, though. He had a really slippery, white eraser, which was resting on his desk and just calling out to me. I took it. I still have it. Sometimes I cuddle it at night and just cry and cry.

In 7th grade I wore a pink velour v-neck sweater with a white dickie under it to school. I loved the dickie; all the warmth and comfort of a turtleneck, but without all those annoying sleeves and a shirt bottom to tuck! I didn't change for gym that day for some reason (now they call it PE, but it's gym, dammit!); I just took the dickie off. The v-neck was horribly low cut, and during kickball it slid really low and when I bent over I could sometimes look down and see my own little budding breasts peeking out. I hoped no one else could; I just pulled it back up and kept running, my little pointies just bouncing up & down behind the velour. When I went back into the locker room, some 8th grade girls were there and one of them said, "why don't you wear a bra, you slut?" I didn't know what a slut was, but it didn't sound good so that weekend I asked my mom for a bra. She took me shopping and we got a training bra (that's a little bra with 2 wheels on each side, so you can train yourself to lie on your stomach and slide, which you'll be doing a lot of in just a few short years!). The first time I wore it was at my cousin's ice skating recital, and my aunt (who was sitting behind me) snapped the back of it. That was a high point in my puberty.

Hmmm, I'm just noticing that this post has a definite, albeit weak, erotic thread to it. But not normal erotic, more like back-pages-of-the-Advocate-type-stuff. I don't read those, but I have heard rumors (sexy couple seeks bedroom third; he sucks your nose while she watches! Please be disease and drug free!) Trust me, I don't know from pervs; I'm just telling my story. By the way, does Astroglide wash out of taffeta? Just asking. No reason.

I think I missed out on a drama career. I was a star in my third grade production of The Mikado (I was one of the 3 Little Maids From School). Martin S. was the lead. He was The Mikado, and he was a fourth grader! A man!!! You can see how much I love him in the photo above.


I haven't baked an apple pie in several years. In fact, I think the one I dropped on the floor was the last one I baked. We still ate it; the parts that weren't actually sitting on linoleum. It was a bittersweet time, filled with deliciousness and self-loathing, all packaged into one psycholgoically f***ed up bundle. Time to heal and bake another one. My favorite pie is -- of course -- pumpkin.

When I was a lifeguard, a little boy came up to my chair requesting some First Aid care. He had a swollen lip. I asked him what had happened; had he scraped his lip on the bottom? Hit it on the edge? No, he told me. He and a friend were playing in the creek, and one of them caught a baby snapping turtle. The friend told Boy that the turtle smelled, so Boy bent down to smell it and the turtle bit him. I guess it held on for a while, because there was a nasty welt.

Lifeguarding was such a great job. The best days were rainy days, when nobody was at the town pool (a manmade lake, really). We would float around on kickboards and search for money on the bottom of the pool. There was a lot of it, because of all of the people who swam with cutoff shorts. We would take all the money we found and order pizza for the lifeguards. We didn't spend the turds we found, we just left them to roll around on the bottom. Domino's doesn't accept turds as currency.

All of the young girl lifeguards were subjected to a ritual known as shake-n-bake by the older (college-age) lifeguard boys. Two or more boys would grab a girl, dip her in the water, then carry her up to the sand and dip / roll her until she was covered. Ahhh, good times. I loved being an object. I wish somebody would objectify me now; life is easier when you are a piece of flesh and not an intellectual, professional woman.

That's why I liked Little House on the Prairie so much. Boy, those women had it easy. All they did was sit on their asses and sew quilts all day. At night Pa would come home with a bear leg or a rabbit and they'd all sit down to eat it in the near-dark cabin. So cozy, so simple. Oh sure, sometimes they had Scarlet Fever or Malaria and one or the other of them died or went blind, but they were living it up on the frontier!!!!

So, I've plucked all the seeds from this pomegranate. My belly is full and my mind is emptied for now. These meditations are really helping me to get in touch with the Great Unknown, I think. The Dalai Lama would be so proud of me. Don't you agree?