Prompt # 99

I haven't slept well at night since I started cutting back on the smokes. Since I quit completely I am either knocked out cold or wide awake with little in between. Yesterday I was mean to A. To be fair, never say to someone whose just quit smoking I assume today is better than yesterday. Assume fucking nothing. Whisper. Duck and roll man. Duck and roll. And I didn't say anything mean. I just yelled. I can't smoke 

into the phone

I can't smoke. 

Like that is all the pertinent information I have. 

So yes I am still talking about it. I am feeling less like stealing the money to buy a pack of cigarettes and running to the 7-11 today. Yesterday was bad. This morning feels like a gnawing in my gut, a slow foggy feeling like what am I forgetting? Oh yeah- forgetting to smoke. Dummy. That's what's wrong. I think I've been up since three or so. I couldn't write. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think. I watched dumb television and told the cat it's not morning yet, go to sleep. My son emailed me back yesterday when I wrote him apologizing for eating all of his extra thin fancy Trader Joe Ginger snap cookies which are delicious- not to worry about it and did I need anything and I joked Heroin. I settled for ice cold fizzy water. I don't know why cold water helps. It seems to. Also my daughter had a lime Popsicle in the freezer. That was as happy as I've been since I quit. It was ice cold and felt good/tasted good. 

It's like when I was pregnant and everyone just sighed and handed over what they were eating. I never craved specific food, just whatever YOU had, that's what I wanted. It looked better, smelled better, tasted better than what was on my own plate. 

I do that with writing. I admire YOUR writing instead of resting in my own. I wonder how come I can't write like that? I start doubting myself and comparing myself to other writers and thinking nobody will ever want this crap. Because look at that writing there? Everybody else's writing seems the most delicious  I like the crunch of your words better than mine. I like the way her words sound in my ear when I read them aloud because she has the lyrical thing down. Or I read a book that blows my mind and I am high on that book and excited and telling everyone in the world to read it until one morning I wake up and go wait- I don't write like her. What is the fucking point? It's a temporary condition- is it writing avarice or lust? Jealousy doesn't seem quite right. Avarice plus insecurity maybe? I don't know and It's so dangerous to write without a safety net/seat buckle/ cigarette in my mouth. 

***

One of the last cigarettes or When it's good you aren't wearing your pants. 

Game day here in Berkeley is a horrible horrible day. Unless you want to Cal and worship the game of football and it makes you happy to decorate your car and your children and your husband or wife and then you and your family and friends make yourselves at home on all the sidewalks and people like me, who live here, mostly hate CAL and wear my pajama pants out because I feel like shit, can't move down the sidewalk. So I take a break. I sit down in a little quiet spot in my pajamas and t-shirt and smoke a cigarette. The sun is too bright. Everyone is too damn loud. 

Two girls maybe twenty approach me after they do a routine with each other for me showing me how cool they are? Or is it real?  I think good god, please let them be playing, let them not actually be this shallow/artificial/hairsprayed/no goof, no real, even their laughter sounds canned like the old sitcoms. And I am sad for them until they turn on me. I am already cutting back so I'm already cranky. I don't know what number cigarette this will be- but it's important that I smoke it. I'm broke I can't buy more. They are wearing clothes that cost more than my back pack or phone or possibly rent. Girl number one- says give me a cigarette- I say no I don't have extra. Girl number two says your smoking one. I say that's right. Girl number one says is it your last? I say some stuff about money and what I don't have to share right now and they both start riffing on how sorry they are to bring it up, sorry we asked/sorry to hear that/hope that doesn't make you feel bad. I feel the smoke making my lungs and brain happy while I watch them do some crazy whisper pantomime? Are they trying to be mean girls? They should have worked at Oakland Unified Schools. Man I worked with some mean girls. The kind that leave you bruised when you annoy them. That's before they are actually pissed.  All I could think was thank god I am not wearing my actual pants. That god I am not wearing my pants. Because they made me mad. And I wanted to engage. You know actively with them. The way we did at Oakland Unified. 

Speak closely and personally to them. Knock their heads together like in the movies. I was out of mind with angry and I still had my cigarettes. I am thinking I should only wear pajama bottoms till the withdrawal symptoms are gone. The world is safer when I'm not wearing my pants. I might be safer when I'm not wearing my pants. I could have totally taken them. Unless they had a cute little rhinestoned pistol somewhere. See what an asshole I am? 

It rained last night. Somehow in all the hours I was up I missed it. That makes me sad. It is also sad that my handful of cigarette butts in the downstairs planter are mostly wet. 

Smoking a butt or two on my way to quit is always helpful. Because they are disgusting. Because I drag too hard and it makes me sick. All part of the process. It's not as tidy as using one of the nicotine replacement systems. But I just get addicted to those. It's the nicotine that is my drug. The cigarettes are the best delivery system. But I chewed the gum for three or four years. I think that's how I got my latex allergy. Living on that gum. The patches make my heart race and I'm allergic to the adhesive. So it's just gross quitting cold turkey where once in a while I smoke a disgusting butt. And it's safer if I don't wear pants. 

That is all I have today and where does that leave us? 

Fighting? Anger? What tips you over or a character over into irrational? When was the last time you felt the urge to physically fight someone. Or maybe it's never? 

What is that like? 

Fight or flight. I have lived in this place for a long time and as I've gotten healthier I land in fight more often than flight. That's not healthy either but it feels good to me. Anger often feels good to me. It's impetus,movement, change. I don't want to get suck in it but anger is a good way to shift things. That's what she says drinking her green tea and not sucking on a cigarette. I feel like I'm weighed down in kryptonite. Coated in it. In the babble stage of this trying to write to you. 

Can I find a poem? Lets see. Not yet but I keep falling in love with these serious black in white head shots of women poets from back in the day. That would be an interesting story to write. 

Here is an audio clip of a short one- since there is no text I'll leave it a surprise. 

The Poem I found is longish but quite beautiful. I like it. It has fight in it and persimmons and precision and a girl and painting and the world. So that's a good enough poem for me today. 

No line prompts because they all have cigarettes. 

May this day be good to you and your creative. 

Persimmons

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner   

for not knowing the difference   

between persimmon and precision.   

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.   

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down newspaper.   

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.   

Chew the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.   

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down.

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.   

Naked:   I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo:   you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,   

Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.   

Wrens are small, plain birds,   

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.   

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;   

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class   

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun   

inside, something golden, glowing,   

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,   

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,   

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding   

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night   

waiting for a song, a ghost.   

I gave him the persimmons,   

swelled, heavy as sadness,   

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking   

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,   

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.   

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,   

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,   

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times   

eyes closed. These I painted blind.   

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,   

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

Li-Young Lee, “Persimmons” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.