for Sahalie

My weekend has been full of animal dreams, humid depressiondepressiondepression,and the stories of people who have lost the best thing they had.

Hearing animals is the first sign that I'm slipping under the grey horizon of depression. Just hanging, on some animal level. I can't form thoughts. I have no concept of ideation.

But if I could just be alone, I would be happier than ever.

It was while I was in this state that my husband insulted me and became publicly angry and disgusted with me. I am trying. I don't wallow.

"Can't you focus? Don't you remember? Don't we do it this way every single time?"

He is concentric. I hear his intelligence enfolding us beyond the freeways we took to get here, and Mt. Diablo which fucks with my orientation, and the number of cups in the inventory and the dollars whispering 'more like me, please' in the cashbox.

I hear the birds as usual. Not in the trees; on the ground.

I see kids in line for their soccer photos. This is a first-wives' community, not like our usual East Bay suburbs. Everyone walks slightly abashed. "Broken-in-a-good-way" like my angel Grandma used to say, an approxiamation of some Native glyph.

A big brother holds the hand of a small girl with her arm in a purple cast. Two boys with secondhand uniforms take turns carrying a curly black lamb. The lamb is radiating contentment in cool waves. I am as unsurprised to see him here as he is to recieve my handfull of melting shave ice.

A deaf mother with two children with ancient, beautiful eyes negotiate with me for water.

"Water", signs the mother to the Big Sister in what must surely be the most ancient sign in human language.

I turn so she can read my lips, but she only looks at her daughter. Her slight straight shoulders are worn down like a statue in a town with acid rain.

"I'm sorry, we're not allowed to sell water. I don't have any".

Husband rolls his eyes as a line grows behind this small brave tribe, their simple need, their limited glossary.


More blurred gestures, and the boy and girl this time look at me.
"Can you split one?"

NO, no, no, the mother shakes furiously.
I can hear her, but she signs to the girl as if I can not, and it is relayed to me, "Two, whatever you want".

I imagine how she lost her hearing. How did she meet the man who gave her the graceful children with the core of sadness to their beauty? How does she armor her ego to go into this spinning world with the limited vocabulary of Up or Down, winner or loser, ambitious or........depressed?

When I hand her the change she finally meets my eyes. "Thank you", she signs, and says.

My fingers ached to remember the Sign for Peace, but my mind and body were blank.


The two little boys behind this group left me my first ever tip. (!) Funny.
They were taking turns listening to 'Vertical Horizon" in an old mpg player.

"Are you vertical or horizontal?" the oldest asked.

My feet longed for a dirt path to root in. My head ached to stretch upwards through the grey ceiling of depression. I am here. Wherever I am , I don't skid around on the surface of the possiblities. I don't cast a net for better opportunities. I bloom where I'm rooted. I take everything out of a situation there is in it.

My mother says things like "OH, you would LOVE this new movie I saw! " and, "Everyone listen, you HAVE to hear about this new club!". She recites the same stories about herselfselfself to new groups of strange people.

"Charming!" "Exciting!" "Delightful". That's what people who met me first say when they meet my mother.

I know a million like her. She is bored by herself, in every sense of the word.

My mother lives in a surface, horizontal world. I dive in the oceans at each end.


"I am vertical", I said to the kid.

"Ha!", he said. "I thought so".

I can't explain how I hear what I hear, but I do.
You, sweet boy, will talk to a psychiatrist ten years from now about the night your parents didn't come home and your sweet healthy normal history was transferred like an egg in your pocket to that cold brutal foster home. That lamb will charm until its affection bores by excess, and it will live in a dog run until a deferred, irrelevant death. I will make shave ice to finance the education of a son who once was a fierecly loving puppy that turned into a moody independent tomcat.

The younger boy of the two counts his change with one injured and blinded eye.

"I'm vertical too.", he chortles. "Buy yourself a coke". He hands me a dollar tip with "War is good business/Invest your son" in my writing.

Husband can roll his eyes to Montana. I give the kid a sincere thanks. I find some shade under a tree with birds whose mother is pushing them from the nest.

We only have to chose vertical or horizontal because the world is a game where you have to be a winner or a loser.

The sacred hoop is broken. But I can feel the broken pieces fluttering like the wings of the doomed baby bird above me. We are rebuilding the Hoop with blinded eyes and scarred throats, with partial minds and mending hearts.