6

Pick Your Own

If you can pick your own name.  A name that fits you. A name you would prefer to hear called out to get your attention for the rest of your life. What would it be? I am no name snob that’s for sure. I like all names, I don’t think a person should be forced to keep their birth name or made to feel guilty for wanting to change it. If you discover your true name is something totally different from your birth name I say take that name and claim it as your own. It’s unfortunate that it can cost you an ass load to legally change it here in america though.

So obviously a day came in my life when I asked myself, “Who the fuck am I really?”  Through many years of adventurous discovery I found myself.

I am HOPE.

Although not the name given me by my parental units.   I am HOPE.   No joke.   I am the ever living,never letting go, always feeling, loving you, holding on to that last glimmer of……… HOPE.

My mother named me Tonya Hope. In my humble opinion Tonya was a trailer trash stretch of her imagination for a cool “new” name but the name Hope was a gift from the universe.  Yes folks I can love myself that fucking much.   My name was gifted to me from God.  It really is a meant to be kind of thing. Not everyone can say that. I have the uncanny ability to forgive, to love unconditionally, to move forward to a better future with a light always burning in the distance.  I don’t care how depressed I have found myself in my life, I was never void of some idea of a brighter future.  That is why I have always been a cutter and not a slicer. Gotta love that imagery.

Wikipedia says,

Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one’s life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.^[1] Hopefulness is somewhat different from optimism in that hope is an emotional state, whereas optimism is a conclusion reached through a deliberate thought pattern that leads to a positive attitude.

Poem for Hope
A Hong Kong Proverb As long as we have hope,
we have direction,
the energy to move,
and the map to move by.
We have a hundred alternatives,
a thousand paths and infinity of dreams.
Hopeful, we are halfway to where we want to go;
Hopeless, we are lost forever.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Emily Dickinson

So what name do you give yourself?

0

Payin’ Up

Pay pal is empty?  Gotta fill it somehow.

Don’t give up just because you think your “broke”.  You always have resources.  Your change could be just under that cushion.  It is within your grasp.

4

Paying Attention

Observing and listening

The thin girl with her mother searching for school clothes.

Mother says, “do they only make these pants in XX or husky?  It’s so difficult sometimes to find clothes for my daughter, it seems the world is becoming naturally geared toward the overweight and obese.  They tell me I have to find her clothes in the ’slim’ section, as if she is some kind of freakishly small person.  She is normal and healthy a minority I suppose.”

In the parking lot at the Wal Mart on a Saturday before noon. I am located 1 car away and my windows are down, I am in a truck that sits high.

They park 3 rows away from each other. She is in her turquoise Trans Am. There is tape on many of the windows, grey and peeling.  She is blasting her rap music, while yelling on her cell phone that she is in the second row of cars from the main road, first parking stall nearest the cart return.

30 seconds pass.

A man dressed in a sideways ball cap, sweat stained wife beater, and baggy jeans exposing his red checkered boxers, weaves in and out of cars heading in the direction of the woman in the Trans Am. As he approaches he is looking into each car he passes. He reaches the Trans Am and without a knock or hello enters the passenger side door.

The woman turns to him. They exchange words.  The woman repositions her body so she is facing the man. The man reaches down and unbuttons his pants, and pulls his penis out.  The woman proceeds to pleasure him to climax.  The woman sits up and reaches behind her seat and pulls out what appears to be a little girls dress from a pile of laundry.  She uses this pink fluffy thing to wipe her mouth and tosses it to the back again.  The man hands the woman a small bag with white powder in it.

The man now zipped up, gets out of the Trans Am and walks back to where he came from, again weaving in and out of other parked cars looking into every window.  The woman left only after dipping her head down into the seat next to her and sniffing.  She brought her head up quickly and plugging each nostril one at a time inhaled fiercely.  She then started her car and attempted clumsily to back out of her parking stall.  The man  got into his car and sat talking on his cell phone.

In my house.

The dog brings her ball inside the house. Her tail is wagging. She drops the ball in front of the 6yr old, she ignores the dog. The dog drops the ball in front of the 3 year old, he ignores the dog.  the dog whines  and uses her voice in some manner that is not quite a bark nor a whine, almost like a human grumbling. The dog picks up the ball again and drops it in front of the  2yr old boy.  The dog speaks to the small child and the child looks at the dog and smiles, picks up the ball. He tells the dog to sit, the dog sits.  The 2yr old throws the ball with all his might across the house and yells “get it.”  The dog bounces happily toward the ball that only went 8 feet or so, and quickly returns to the smallest child.  The child says to the dog, ” LEAVE IT…..GRRRRR”.  The dog drops the ball and this little game continues for about 10 more minutes.

When the playing is done, the youngest boy and the dog lay down on the living room floor together.