Davka *heart* The Toads!

I just can't get enough of these little creatures. A group of us went late last night to listen to them and were so in love. I called everyone this morning and said, "the toad tour bus is leaving!" So, we all went again. The activity has waned considerably, but I spent hours today hanging out at the pond- watching how easily nature just chills: turtles floating slowly across the water with their little heads bobbing up and down, deep bull frog snorts and splashes, fish feasting on the new toad eggs, thousands of insects in one handful of wet leaves. The geese were backflipping to bathe and the ducks were floating in pairs. I am so happy outside away from people and the city.

Yesterday an amateur reptile and amphibian expert showed up and told me all about the toads. He has lived in my neighborhood since he was a boy and the cemetery pond is where he has always gone to get away "from the shit in the city." I told him if the cemetery didn't exist, I would have surely lost my mind in Pittsburgh. We talked about a lot and he reminded me of my boys back home- knowing every detail of the natural world around him. He had the keenest eyes ever, second only to my dad who can spot a deer hundreds of yards away in the woods while we are driving on the highway at seventy miles an hour. My dad never takes his eyes off the road, but somehow manages to spot them and he will just point and say, "deer" and I will squint to see until they appear as little patches of brown in the green. This guy found the translucent strings of beaded toad eggs where I would have never seen them in a million years. Actually, I have pretty keen eyes, too, but not like this. I didn't have my camera with me, so I am swiping these images from the web, but you have to see!



When he pulled them out of the water, the sun was shining through them and they looked like long strings of glistening rosary beads. There were millions of eggs in the water and he said only about five percent would actually survive to adulthood, but that would still be a ton.

We walked around together like two little kids for an hour digging in the mud and discussing life and everything around us. He was best friends with the young cop who got murdered in the shooting a few weeks ago. It was crazy to hear this because after that happened, I had been on my bike in the cemetery and unknowlingly, three of us rode right into the funeral service and were so struck with the sadness. My friend D wanted to stay and listen to the taps and I told her I just couldn't. It was so surreal. So sad. D told me all the terrible details that the news hadn't shared- one being that the young man's face had been blown off. I looked at all the mourners and said, "So many people over there had their lives destroyed this week." That night while falling asleep I had a very intense flash of a vision where I saw the funeral again, but this time I saw the young officer laying out in the grass naked and his mother was laying flowers onto his body, whatever was left of his face was behind a tree. It was so scary and sad that I shot up in bed and felt so terrified. I was under a lot of stress that week and I began crying because I was seriously afraid that I was developing some kind of schizophrenia. My therapist soothed me about it the next day and told me I am psychic and when that happens I need to light candles and burn sage and, most importantly, not be afraid.

To meet one of his best friends and to hear more details about his life was really difficult and transformative at once: he was a traditional Italian boy (our neighborhood is "little Italy") who's mom cooked dinner for him every night when he got back from work. He played hockey. He was a computer programmer and became a cop to make extra money to help his family- two years in and he is dead.

The man today in the cemetery really surprised me when he expressed sadness and compassion for the killer and his family. "I don't hate him," he said as we squatted next to each other staring out into the water, "He must have been really sick. And his mother, I can't imagine. Her life was destroyed too."

I guess I fell in love a little with this guy. We talked and he taught me things and he rode off on his motorcycle in his dirty chef uniform and I told him we'd be seeing each other a lot this summer since we shared a serenity place. He said he hoped so. I was really buzzing from the whole experience all day. Before he left he said, "Don't the toads look like little grumpy old men?" I laughed. "Yeah," I said, "they look like the little strong men in the old carnivals."

Before I left I looked down and there was a little male toad right by my feet in the mud. None of them were singing so I knelt down really close to him and imitated their song. Sure enough, his body stiffened into alert and his chin blew up into a bubble and he was singing in response to my singing! Then all the other toads started singing! I cannot describe to you the ecstacy this gave me. I did it over and over again, calling all my friends to leave our little love song on their voice mails.

Damn. The red fox that kissed me in the dreamtime wasn't kidding- nature loves me and wanted me back. It is absolutely the only thing that make sense to me and the only context in which I make sense.

My friend this morning was like, "Wow, I wish it was this easy for us. Next time I go out I am going to jump up on the bar and sing like that and watch the ladies come running." He then did his best impression of the toads and it nearly killed me. We laughed and then felt sad, like where did we go wrong as people? He asked, "Do we ever live this simply and beautifully?" I said I think we do. I said the fucking human couple is quite exquisite when it isn't fetishized and seen as taboo and people are pretty incredible when they aren't all fucked up on fear.

Yeah... tat tvam asi. We are that.

Here is another video. Thank you toads for the best couple of days I've had in a long time.

Springtime Sexy Amplexus

Today was so exciting. I went to the pond early and heard the toads singing. For a few days there will be a mating frenzy in the pond and it was so, so beautiful to watch and listen. I lost myself in their songs and chirping. I watched the males singing and the females chasing the males, then the males chasing the females. I was so excited to be witnessing it. There were hundreds of them. They were all around me, hopping over my feet, singing on a shoe floating in the water- everywhere.

It happens once a year for only a few days, triggered by the weather getting nicer. The toads come out from hiding underground and flock to the pond where they mate for a few days straight and then they hop back to dry land to disappear underground and into the woods.

The males sing loudly and the "experts" say they are calling the females toward them, but I observed many males singing all day in one spot on certain branches or floating leaves and they never moved to mate. I walked away from the pond to follow one song and found an old man toad under a rock, singing loudly. I believe the singing is not only and individual call, but a communal one as well- a powerful, primal praise and call. The old man toad wasn't joining in directly, but he was hearing it and feeling it and singing to them all.

There were a few people there and some tried to catch a toad or two which made me sit there worrying I was going to have to yell at them if they hurt one or tried to kidnap any, which would ruin my high. But, sure enough, everyone was enamored and amazed by their singing and I heard each potential toad-stealer concede, "No, they belong here. We have to leave them here. This is their home." We all looked at each other and nodded, smiling.

One girl said, "everything is alive! Everything comes back to life now! Even me. I had a hard winter." I told her I did too. Her boyfriend said every day he came home from work she was crying. I said, "that sounds just like me." We watched the toads singing and kind of just shook our heads in agreement. Winter is hard for us- the women weep and the men watch and wonder why we are so sad sometimes. The women are weeping for Tammuz- because he leaves us and because his singing is so, so beautiful.

I wore my shortest shorts and tore my shirt off and didn't care who saw me. I walked home dancing and booty clapping, feeling so in touch with my body.

Here is a video I found on youtube of a toad singing. It makes me want to cry! It makes me want many lovers! It makes me so, so happy! I spent all night listening to them in the darkness with the city off in the distance and I am going back first thing tomorrow to watch them play. Sexy, sexy spring- hear it singing! Call your lover and let her know you want her- NOW- it's what you were made for!

I'm the Queen of Weave!

Well, not really, but I feel like it! I have cover art, a nonfiction piece, and two photographs being featured in Weave Magazine Issue #2!! My girl (slam poet extraordinaire) Dane Kuttler has a poem published too!

Come out to the release party and see me read!

lostmissing

This piece is a part of the lostmissing public art project started by mattilda bernstein sycamore. Check out the lostmissing continuum at nobodypasses.blogspot.com

Sometimes My Love Is So Selfish

story coming soon...

Great article on the dangers of being child-centered in parenting.

Who's In Control by Jean Liedloff

Spirit Animal??

Last night I had a dream that my twin sister and I were floating on a raft in this beautiful ravine, watching bald eagles and other birds fly while little fish were jumping out of the water, splashing our skin. It was so beautiful. Suddenly this little baby red fox jumped onto our raft and onto my shoulder. I was rubbing her little belly and she was hanging out with me like a best friend. A man showed up to take our picture and when I looked at the little red fox, she was waiting to plant a huge, human sounding kiss on my face. It was so adorable. I woke up laughing, literally.

Thanks dream-world, where-ever that came from, I needed it!

To S.

I found this drawing in an old sketch book I hadn't remembered for over seven years. We unearthed it from the bottom of a closet at my dad's house yesteday. It's a picture I drew after coming home from a friend's funeral. He hung himself on Christmas Eve when I was twenty years old. He was my first kiss. He was

so

beautiful.

I don't want to tell you about him. I don't want to give him to you. It isn't because I hate you, I just don't know how I could. Remember when we were sitting in the dark and you gave me that story about the man with his dead daughter's name tattooed on his arm that you met in California? This is the story I wanted to tell you in exchange for that one.

This picture was the way I saw his mother when I walked in to say goodbye to him. All my hometown boys were standing around looking stunned and no one was speaking. My knees buckled at the door when I saw him from afar- the black suit, the stiff hands, the bloated neck. Ebony walked in with me and when she saw him she started wailing, "I guess this is it, C. This is it."

His mother was guarding his casket with such dignity- the stone face of a sphinx or a sentry- daring anyone to judge her or her son, God help them, God help him.

I said hello to her and gave her a hug. I said I was so, so sorry. Her eyes were glazed with high and razor sharp with something I have never felt, and hopefully never will. I said, "I'm Jessica," and before I could continue she said, "I know you are. I know all C's friends." It wasn't unkind, but it stunned me. She was a good mother and he was a good boy, she said without saying. This is always what parents say at suicide funerals. "He was a good boy." I have been to several.

But her eyes were so powerful. It was as if she was standing with him and we couldn't see him and she was preparing herself to walk with him through a long cave to another world and there, she would say goodbye to her heart, her womb, her everything. It was as if the Catholic church we all grew up in had said no, they wouldn't perform the service because suicides are damned and she said, ok, then I am damned, everything she ever was canceled out. I will never forget it.

I can't imagine what a mother loses when her child dies, when he kills himself. Her mind? That's just where the losing starts and that's if her body is merciful. I imagine it is as if your entire life is sucked backwards into thin air with a slick, quick sound. A terrible sound.

The first time I ever climbed your stairs I had a vision so profound and distinct of a young man who had shot himself in your smoking room. Remember I told you that? Every time I climbed those stairs I saw him dead in the corner and felt the heavy weight of his sadness and you said, no way, no one ever died in the house and no guns would ever come in in the future. You said no way, but it still made me shake and sweat and feel nauseous every time I climbed up to come get you to watch a movie or to go to sleep or to just make sure you weren't od'ing.

And remember the time at the top of those stairs when I blew you for a half hour because you said you couldn't come when you were high and I was so determined? You laid back and your ab muscles clenched your beautiful body into such symmetry I was scared- scared of what beauty like that could do to a woman's heart. When it wasn't working, I laid on my belly and you climbed on my back and I knew you always fantasized about coming on a woman's face, so I twisted mine toward you and pulled my hair up, an invitation. You said that as soon as you understood the signal, you blew. Funny thing was, most of it ended up in my hair and not on my face and we laughed about this. As we sat in the dark afterward talking, the moonlight from the window on our bare skin, I felt the back of my head and the hair was matted thick with come and I became so silent. You asked me what was wrong and I said I just had a thought, a very sick one. You asked me what it was and I told you: I imagined that the come was blood and I was a dead boy with my brains shot out.

We laughed, a little disturbed, but not entirely because we both enjoyed sick, random thoughts and you were pleased that I had I shared it with you. Something about it turned me on- who knows? I'm a Scorpio and we love scary things. But soon the sexual energy wore off and I was just wondering what the hell it meant. I went to bed touching the back of my head and I didn't wash my hair for days because I needed to feel that ghost and what he was telling me.

After C's funeral I said fuck the church and painted a picture of an Angel tearing through time and space and sky in a rush of wings and other-worldly screams to catch him where he was falling fast out of his body and into the darkness. I painted this angel screaming and lifting him up and out of there into blinding light of unconditional love. I wanted to give it to his mother, but I never did. I regret it and maybe now it is just too late. It hurts to remember. When my grandmother died a few years later, her headstone was, by chance, right next to his and this gave me so much comfort. I like to think I made it happen- her watching over him forever, like I conjured that shit out of cheap acrylic paints mixed with tears that night I painted my angel.

I don't know what we do to get through our lives, S, but we get through them. We talked a lot about the pain of seeing our parents look small or feel embarassed. This was a metaphor for us of one of the worst kinds of ways to feel and neither of us could bare it.

Just imagine your mother if you hurt yourself. Imagine what that would do to her and then don't do it. Ever.

Imagine her if you live. Imagine her shock (please, live) if she knew you came in my hair.

Going Private

Hey, I am setting this blog to private for a short while because I need a safe space to clear my head of some personal drama. You know how it goes. If you want to keep reading, just send me an e-mail at

pearlcrusher@hotmail.com and I will add you to the list.

peace, davka

photo: "The Comfort In Sleep" by Marcia Jones (http://www.myspace.com/untitled1972 )

April 6th

April 6th is an important date for me. It marks the four year anniversary of my grandmother's death and the one year anniversary of my mom's overdose, which I am sure some of you remember. Here are some links to older blog entries that can give you an idea of what I was going through at the time:

http://www.davkadeergirl.com/2008/04/i-cant-write.html
http://www.davkadeergirl.com/2008/04/even-if-you-dont-believe-in-it.html
http://www.davkadeergirl.com/2008/04/its-3-am-and-i-cant-sleep.html
http://www.davkadeergirl.com/2008/04/update_23.html
http://www.davkadeergirl.com/2008/04/kim-phuck-running.html

This day last year started a very intense cycle of running, hiding, loving in darkness, clinging, crying, going crazy, finding friends that were so amazing in kindness and love I was knocked off my horse on my own road to Damascus (that's a biblical reference for a metaphor of just being so amazed its indescribable.) I also found out a lot about how shitty some friends can be when challenged with any kind of being there for someone else. I also found out that in pain and fear, we can cling to people who are really not worth any attention because we are so afraid to let go of anything that remotely resembles stability and here-ness when our minds are slipping. All in all, I made a lot of mistakes out of fear and pain, but I am proud to say I still moved forward and kept my spirit in tact despite all of this trauma and experienced so much love and beauty that I am forever changed for the better, only temporarily out of service in self-esteem and hope.

I can't even tell you all the crazy, traumatic events that happened during this year. I will soon begin to tell you about the terribly unhealthy relationship I held on to and suffered through with a very rich, selfish heroin addict. While telling you that story I will tell you the micro-story of fiercly loving this handsome, crazy sad boy through his sickness and how I also crippled him with my own sickness and how I may never figure it all out. I will tell you about the intense community I was so lucky to be apart of in Rick's recovery. The ecstacy of being there for a friend and knowing that this being there, although it was at times terrifying, was the purest love on the planet and just in helping him fall asleep by singing to him and rubbing his neck and arms, I experienced a texture of feeling so rich it was like going lucid in a dream and flying where-ever I wanted to. I will also tell you about how hard (what word is big enough?) it was to watch an able-bodied, beautifully perfect best-friend get shattered and broken to the point of being declared living-dead ("persistant vegitative state" ) and then seeing his eyes open and his tongue come out on command, that tongue coming out on command shocking the doctors and making everyone cheer and cry and it was like the first word ever spoken by a human being. Sitting by his side on Christmas night and he is writhing and grimacing every minute in some pain the doctors can't figure out and you are holding his hand, holding back tears, hoping your lover isn't dead in a mansion so lonely, even his mother won't come to visit him, and you fall asleep into dreams of your friend's beautiful body restored and you are making out with him in a hospital full of sick people, but his hands open and his mouth speaks and you are so happy you just kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss until you see that half of him is missing, he is a shallow bust, like a doll, where is his back- you feel for it and it's gone and you wake up to another day of just getting through it because you are not yours and you have no choice (a line sang by regina spektor on the radio that keeps you going.)

Oh, I have so much to tell you, so much to think about. I am so excited to be alive and love is so real- it was given to me by others. Rick's beautiful lifelong friend Kate using the sucking straw to clean mucus out of Rick's mouth while the sun was shining through the hospital window on her lovely skin shining from inner beauty and compassion and I was so tense with worry I was ready to have a psyhotic break (not kidding) and then suddenly she was sucking at his lips with it and making cute little noises and Rick smiled so big and she laughed so beautifully and the Grace mystics and visionaries have been seeking for milleniums hit me like....... like..... (what word is big enough?) like my first experience of the ocean, like my grandmother's hands, like listening to my mom's belly growl when I was little, like my addict lover's humor and care when he was happy, like my twin sisters singing, like my father's garden, like my first orgasm, like my life... my life...

I want to give it all to you, the love, the pain, the "crazy bitch" I am because I feel so much I can hardly contain it sometimes.

April 6th. My grandmother is with me always. My mother is alive and happy. Rick is recovering and can talk now and make me laugh and can sit with me and watch tv and whistle songs to me to cheer me up. My heart is broken from losing friends (I will tell you about that too) but I have enough amazing friends to pull me through-

making tea in my kitchen and my girlfriend brings over a cd to take to Rick, his favorite song by Townes Van Zandt "White Freight Liner Blues," comes on and Davey and I start singing it, whistling and remembering Rick's hobo wanderings and sweet anarchic, wild love- I drop my teacup and start crying, crumbling until Davey sweeps in and lifts me up and starts two-stepping with me across the kitchen, my face buried in his neck, my snot on his shoulder and we kiss and cry together and have hope together, together. Togetherness is all we have, all that matters. Remember that. Live that. You better live that.

Crazy is not being there for each other.

http://pennyscout.wordpress.com/2008/12/27/remythologizing-the-breaker-of-hearts/

"To many people grief, their own and especially other people’s grief, is an
inconvenience. If we were to truly feel it, we would be unable to get anything
done, to sleep at night, to go to work.
Exactly.
Perhaps the work we do is not the work we need to get done. But there is more to it than this. There are times when awareness is not enough, for self-preservation is our instinct. There are good reasons many of us do not allow ourselves to fall apart. The threat of death is real. If we lose our jobs, we lose our ability to feed ourselves, or
our children. If we display our full range of emotion we may lose relationships
when those who see a part of themselves in us but are not willing to go there,
feel threatened and run. Did anyone ever tell you things have to get worse
before they get better? This is one of those times.

Be brave."

-Penny Scout, Remythologizing the Breaker of Hearts

The Best and Worst Year of Some Kind of Thinking

When you're sad, take a picture of something that makes you sadder and say, that's beautiful.

Cigarettes floating in rain water in a rusty wheelbarrow left for dead in the backyard. There is a fisher price play-kitchen sinking in mud. Everyone who visits me says, kids must live here. Then they see the slugs that have taken over the fake faucet and friends are dead. It's what Nietzsche would have said if he would have lived long enough to stop caring about the bigger things that never touch us. I used to believe in resurrection and, I guess spring is the perfect time to think about it. I used to sit and watch myself write in the reflections on the windows and that way, I'd make myself who I wanted. But when was the last time a rainy day like this moved me to words and tears? The new baby next door is crying, crying. When was the last time I brought a boy home, but couldn't call out his name because I couldn't remember it, smile lines. Natural laughter. No fight, no blame.

When you're sad, take a picture of something beautiful and say, that is mine. That loves me. She sits with me all night and I say I don't want to speak so she undresses and I watch her move through the apartment. My eyes are thirsty for this. I'm stoned on pills I swallowed to stop the crashing. The red sea of sadness parted for a minute so I could breathe, miracle. Friends who feel you and love you when you're crazy, miracle. I tell her I feel like shit. I'm calling different people and crying, hysterical. She draws me in purple ink from across the table, a sweet smile on her face every time our eyes meet. She knows I've had a hard year. She's had hard years herself so she knows what to say, when to shut up. Blessed are those who others call crazy when they feel and act on feeling because they shall be comforted and in that act is the real stuff, truth. Being there for each other in these endless end-times- radical. Knowing real love is the rain outside and her smile and the plants on the windowsill become the garden. You always wanted to know where it was.

The pink of the hen and chick plant makes me think of young skin, succulents, and from somewhere comes a memory of reading tarot cards in a bar in South Dakota this summer. Annie the bartender saw me sitting with a friend and came over. She asked, "What's my destiny?"

Out came the two of cups, mixed happiness. She says, "What does that mean?" I say, "It means you'll love him, but he won't love you back." She says, "Ah, hell," and smashes the fire of her her cigarette into the floor. The girl she is with looks nervous. "Well, ok," Annie agrees, "It's worth it."

It's worth it, it's worth it, it's worth it,the rain hits the windchime outside, makes it go for a moment. I say, oh no, that's not what you were made for. But it's worth it- the dream of knowing someone else completely in one kiss- impossible- but worth it, the wanting, the needing, the "crazy bitch" that always comes sooner or later from the one who can't understand his own feelings, let alone yours. Worth it?

"It was just a mistake," D says to me over the phone. "We all make mistakes. Just let it go. Be easy on yourself."

I had a really hard year. It started last winter. Joan Didion wrote a book about being obliterated with trauma, loss, and pain all in a short period of time and she called it, "The Year of Magical Thinking," When I heard the title I thought she called it that because that is what it took to get through it. Magical thinking. But she really called it that because that is what happens in the depersonalization and hopelessness of trauma, the human mind tries desperately to believe in magic- a superhuman ability to control the world around us and to find meaning in things that, if they are understood to be meaningless, would be just too terrible to imagine and the mind would break, shatter.

I guess this year contained both for me. I had to fight hard to see beauty in small things just to stay alive and I also made big mistakes by imagining goodness and beauty and magic in people that were actually quite empty and selfish. I had amazing friends who held me up when I couldn't stand and I had very shitty "friends" who leaned on me when I didn't have the strength and then called me crazy when I asked for reciprocation. In my sickness, I went toward sickness and tried to believe it could just magically disappear.

In time I will tell you what I mean and what happened. I haven't been writing because I haven't had the strength or the "why." I still don't, but I have real friends who keep telling me it's worth it.

Good Friends

help you heal. music in the windows. she's eating my blueberries. waiting in the hen-house. skull earrings, she stares through the rain to my real face. never tells me i'm draining. she has no boyfriend trying to fuck me and if she did she would believe me because,

"you always hear the other girl out." liars on fire.

it was a cold winter.

p.s. i'm back. the internet is back on. i've got a lot to tell you.