I like the Prince song better but if you must be up in arms, pick your shoulder exercises wisely. Debates happen when two or more people get involved. I’m posting this dammit. What?

My horoscope mentioned a desire for intimacy today. So I will share my journal entry:

September 5th

I continue to run from my thoughts because I am afraid of them. Why would I want to leave this lovely middle place where I know where everything is, at least I think, and squeal in delight when I have a pretend discovery of something new, forgetting I discovered said thing last week? The fear of the unknown, good or bad, is a terrifying thing. It makes us all do things that we subconsciously don’t even realize. Watching Harlem dig at her hot spot, I realized that she was living in that moment. She did not care if her leg was bleeding; it was itching and so she scratched it. Sometimes we miss things like that because we tend to rationalize the behavior to fit our own. It is simpler than that. She just wanted to scratch right now. What do I want to do right now? I have a hard time thinking about right now independent from tomorrow. The past keeps changing so I don’t necessarily think about it so much. For example, in relation to my dad, I had stock memories. I remember telling him that snow looked like flour. I remember his desire for new Sunday cars and nice clothes. I remember he always had money in his pocket but did not spend as though his pockets were too deep. And now I see my dad probably made a smidge more than I did. Had hustles on the side he carefully shielded from us. Bought furniture that would last for decades. Only bought nice suits. Very rarely wore everything in his clothes immediately. He lasted. I’m reading Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking and finding it to be the only thing I can relate to in terms of my mourning process. Yes, she lost her husband with him she had a daily individual codependent relationship with. We do have differences. But the desire to recount what one was doing prior to the collision course of death, trying to recount the times you could have prevented the inevitable, rehashing what you now see as “signs” that your departed one had to have known something was awry and that there was a time coming, even if subconsciously…all these things are familiar to me as my face in the morning. I vow to not forget my father’s long strong hands, always smelling bee pollen moist lotion because they tended to be dry. He will not be a coffee table book I have put away. Sadly, my grandmother, who passed not long after my father, is a different story for me. Actually it’s not terribly sad. She had a long life. She was a ghetto Jackie Kennedy. Always in fashion and style, never any money with eight children. In photos she is the epitome of Vogue for the streets of Cleveland, social circles that were grandpa’s poker parties, lodge parties, fur stoles and collard green dinners. I inherit her socialization. Things can be like they are in your magazined head no matter where you are. You can be at the Opera when you are just going to the neighborhood bar. She was always happy. I can’t imagine the secrets she took with her. Her family is now fraying at the seams. So much drama, so much left over grief that has not alleviated itself, so many Peter Pans stuck in the real world…I wonder what she says to us all now. She didn’t have many answers while she was alive. She was one of those people who agreed with you all the time. So I don’t ask her things in death. I do ask for her prayers since she was a social church goer, she is much closer to any religious favors than I would be, in most Christians eyes. I usually ask my dad for answers. Daily. And I get them. Eventually. This is the magic in the thinking. I assume since I ask, it is my father who answers. Via God. But still the magic is that I am answered. Having someone with whom I shared so much love on the other side of a mountain known as death, in a valley I cannot know for sure, answer me says that there is a faith there worth exploring. My father was by no means a church goer. He had respect but he did not have the desire to believe he needed to be told what to do by a man who had the same Cadillac as he did. That tends to be my thinking. I am not sure what this process says so much as I know that it clearly outlines my own sense of desire for an intimate bond with someone or something beyond earthly boundaries. There is a spiritual intimacy that I would like to spend more time with. I don’t want to be the crazy girl who tries to get you to her young hip traveling church extolling the virtues of a Rock Star Jesus. In fact, I don’t want to tell you anything at all. I am content with quietly moving up passed the middle.