Some true things about my brother

My brother Ryan is going to have another birthday next week. My brother Ryan is gregarious, funny, charming and (perhaps except for the cab-door ears) pretty good looking. It is also an incontrovertible fact that my brother Ryan is, sadly, dead.

I love my brother. I'm living in a world that is just wrong, wrong, wrong without him. He was ferocious in a way that I could understand. He was an angry dude with the muscle to back up that short temper. It got him in a lot of trouble. But he was blood. He was bone marrow. He was strong in ways that made his weakness all the more tragic.

He could hold a grudge because he was so sensitive inside. And a lot of people let him down. People who should have done better by him. People like me. Oh, sure, the parental units have their crosses to bear. The Navy could have taken better care of the thing they were shaping as a weapon. His friends could have tried to talk to him about his drinking problem.

But I might be the worst of all, because he has been gone a while now and I just can't forgive him for leaving me. I'm selfish. I want him. I want him to talk me into getting a tattoo. I want him to sit me down on the back porch and pour me a shot of bourbon and give me endless shit until I swallow it, feeling it burn all the way down while he laughs at my watery eyes. I want him to meet his niece and lift her up in the air until she giggles so hard she almost pukes. I want him to track down that asshole that date raped me and the criminal that did that horrible thing to our sister and make them suffer pain. I want him to show me that practiced Billy Idol-style sneer until he breaks into that big, raucous laugh. I want him to be ten again, when he would really still allow me to wrap my arms around him and pepper his face with kisses.

I want to hear him say he still loves me, because I really need that right now. He's seen the worst of me and loved me in the face of all of my fury and mental collapse. When my father unceremoniously dumped my ass out, he found ways to come and see me, even though he was only eight. He was the only one that could get me to come out when I was so broken inside I would just hide behind furniture and scream if anyone tried to come close. He would crawl under the desk with me and curl his body against mine until I stopped shaking and agreed to go buy him an ice cream cone. He paid sometimes. He always had more money than me.

And he does say he loves me, but he's a ghost. Or I'm making it up because I want to hear his voice so badly that I will allow myself any amount of self-delusion to have him close to me. There isn't anything funny he can say or do to lighten me up anymore. I'm too serious without him. Too self indulgent, too vain, and too fucking sad.

I miss him. I miss him like I pulled my heart out of my chest and left it in the desert wind to dry out rather than have to feel the throbbing pain of his absence every time it would beat.

I promised him I would love him always, no matter what. I always keep my promises. I'm still kicking his ass next time I see him, but after I'm done blacking his eye, the chocolate double scoop is on me.

Getting Myself Kidnapped

I'm all about getting out of Dodge once in a while by myself and stirring up some trouble. I like the idea of getting myself kidnapped and having some new shit happening to me. It really shakes the cobwebs out of my brain. I need to do it more often, actually.

So, this weekend I am hitting the road in search of a little peace and quiet, as well as some fun talks with total strangers and coffee in a different city. I often make it to San Francisco, so this time I am going to Palo Alto, scene of many of my teenage crimes. It will be interesting to see if it looks any different to me. I seem to remember good bookstores.

I'm hoping to get a few ideas or do a little writing while I am there, too. I'm taking stuff with me to support that, but who knows? I might just hook up to my iPod and recline on my hotel bed all day just to get some rest. Either way, I'll be back home on Sunday, hopefully with renewed energy for my daily routine.

Strange Planet

Spinning on the periphery
A lush planet intent on a stable orbit.
It might not be the center of the universe,
But it gravitates nonetheless.



What strange creatures live there!
Endless streams of writhing lemmings
Cooing, gurgling dolphins in the spray
And thriving societies of hermit crabs.



So lovingly it rotates
Showing every continent to an effulgent sun.
In longing sighs it turns its seas
below the daily horizon.



Those darkened, paranoid chaparrals
Teem with life and wayward daydreams.
Psychropiles abound in the polar caps
And cry for light, glorious light.


(c) Stacie Ferrante
2-21-08

Hands

Who gets to decide

Where I will lay my hands?

When did my flesh and bones

Cease belonging to me?

Fingers hesitate on buttons and keys

On skin, on lips, on knees.

Clutching like claws to fight the need

To feed the hungry integument.

Have I lost the right to tickle?

To poke, to caress, to gouge, to stroke?

I can rend the bread at table

But can only build with empty clay.

Never mind who holds the title on my lips

My hips, my back, my hair, my womb.

Just for today, I want my hands

Just fingers, palms, nails and scars.

(c) Stacie Ferrante

6-26-08

World on Fire

I should really post a picture of my sexy new glasses, with frames picked out for me by the sweetly flaming boy at my eye doctor's office. I told him I was going for a "funky, naughty librarian" look and he delivered it in spades. What does that have to do with the fires that are raging in California? The smoke has travelled over the Sierras and into the little desert valley where I live, making everything smell like an acrid campfire and making contact lens wearing impossible. The way my eyes felt this morning, I didn't even want to try to jam my finger in there.

I hate fire season.

• My lungs get really unhappy with the smoke, and I feel more inclined to keep Little A indoors, which makes her cross.
• Sometimes the fires are caused by lightning strikes, and we never get enough rain that falls all the way to the ground to put them out.
• But some fires are man-started. Seriously, who lives in the middle of a bunch of sagebrush and decides to flick a lit cigarette butt out the car window?? WHY??? I was benind a guy in a Jeep who did that yesterday while we were at a red light. I very nearly got out of the driver's seat in my car and brought the burning projectile back to him. I wanted to flick it at his crusty gray mullet and say sweetly "Excuse me, sir. You dropped this..."
• Likewise, who goes camping and doesn't adhere to the basics of fire safety, or learn how to properly extingish a campfire? I learned how to do that when I was about six. I also learned to not feed wild animals and how to secure my cooler from bears, although I would say I have a more than passing interest in camping issues. People do a lot of things wrong when camping, in my opinion.
• I like taking long walks outdoors, but my lungs really can't take this. Yuck.

How am I doing?

Most of my friends and some of my family know I have a blog. Some of them read it. All of them tell me how I should keep in touch more often. Even the ones who read it regularly never comment on the blog, or they mention it in passing when they finally pin me down on the phone.

Mostly people call me and say: "I never hear from you, but I hear from your mom (or your other friend or your husband) that you have a lot going on. How ARE you?"

Maybe people just don't find my writing very entertaining, or what I share here seems withholding in some way. It is true that the minutiae of my life is not chronicled here. But how I am doing overall seems pretty well covered if you are paying attention.

I'm contemplating my life and my art and my identity and my worth. That's how I am. I'm thinking about how the world in my head sometimes gets mangled when I try to lay my hands on it and bring it to fruition. I'm wondering if I get points for good intention when I try to be of comfort to others and end up being inadequate. I'm wondering how I can be getting a bunch of things I have worked hard for and still find ways to feel like I am not enough for the world.

I'm thinking about the nature of motherhood and wife-dom and womanhood and lover-ness and artistry. I am pressuring myself to fit all of that into the crucible that is my limited 24-hour day.

Is the real question "Are you cracking under the pressure?" because a lot of people tell me that they could never juggle the number of plates I have spinning on a daily basis. I have been known to hold down multiple jobs and freelance writing gigs and still feed my family and write notes for whatever creative writing projects in the margins. I have had two pieces of paper on my desk: one with a diagram of the nucleotide bases in a genome that codes for a specific amino acid or some such and another with a heartrending and almost too personal to share bit of poetry about how much I still long for my dead grandmother's hands on my fevered brow. Ambidextrous me, I drink coffee lefty so I can write righty. Little A imitates me by putting her play cell phone to one ear, while juggling a book, a teddy bear and a sippy cup. She mutters, "Yeah, me too." into the phone.

So, am I cracking? You mean more than usual? Aren't we all?

Song from my Mixtape #2

This isn't my usual musical taste, but I dig this song, and it seems to fit my mood today. Sometimes I just wonder if love is enough to fix the things that feel amiss in my life. Sometimes I think it is, and sometimes I doubt it. I think that when I doubt it, it is because I forget how strong love is, even though it is seemingly so fragile.

Dixie Chicks

"More Love"

I'm so close to you baby

But I'm so far away

There's a silence between us

And there's so much to say

You're my strength,

you're my weakness

You're my faith, you're my doubt

We gotta meet in the middle

To work this thing out

More love,

I can hear our hearts cryin'

More love,

I know that's all we need

More love,

to flow in between us

To take us and hold us

and lift us above

If there's ever an answer

It's more love

We're afraid to be idle

So we fill up the days

We run on the treadmill

Keep slavin' away

'til there's no time for talkin'

About trouble in mind

And the doors are all closed

Between your heart and mine

More love,

I can hear our hearts cryin'

More love,

I know that's all we need

More love,

to flow in between us

To take us and hold us

and lift us above

If there's ever an answer

It's more love

Just look out around us

People fightin' their wars

They think they'll be happy

When they've settled their scores

Let's lay down our weapons

That hold us apart

Be still for just a minute

Try to open our hearts

More love,

I can hear our hearts cryin'

More love,

I know that's all we need

More love,

to flow in between us

To take us and hold us

and lift us above

If there's ever an answer

It's more loveI can hear our hearts cryin'

More love,

I know that's all we need

More love,

to flow in between us

To take us and hold us

and lift us above

If there's ever an answer

It's more love

More love