You know how it is Ca…”When you fall off a horse, the best thing to do is to get right back on.”
I’m not sure who said that first, but it was told to me with a trademark smirk some time ago by my cousin Billy while describing the ensuing drama after separating from his wife. I’ll leave you to wonder what he meant but the important thing is, it was Billy who said it.
Billy was the first person (other than my Dad -always my biggest fan) to tell me that I should write. “You should write a book,” he said to at Thanksgiving once (like one he describes in the letter on my blog entry "Thanksgiving..."). Of course, we come from a long line of native New Yorkers so it came out more like “Yu shud ride-a-book”.
I haven’t written that book…yet. But I do write. I have for as long as I can remember.. Even if the only people who ever read what I write are family and friends and the occasional performance art audience I would still write. It is my lifeblood. But what Billy said has stayed with for some time. Get back on that horse.
Because I’ve been writing things down all my life and writing poetry, prolifically, since I was about 13, my daughter will someday pick up the boxes of so many notebooks, notepads, typed pages and napkin scribbles I’ve saved and discover exactly who I am. She'll also find out who I was and in some ways who I will be, all in my own words.
When she opens that box, she will meet me as a brainy, insecure adolescent who puberty was VERY unkind to, with a monstrous unrequited crush on a kid we called Danny Gonzo and a penchant for ballad meter.
She will know me as an even smarter, happy, if less-than-ambitious teenager, with good grades and good friends who are still an important part of her life.
She will know me in my twenties when life was really fucking rough and I experienced more in ten years than most people do in a lifetime.
She will know me in my thirties when I started learning from my mistakes instead of repeating them. When finally, I got comfortable in my own skin, with my own face and felt truly beautiful for the first time. When I found my groove and my muse and I got real.
She will see me perform at so many open mics and even do a regular gig at Mo’s cabaret show at the Duplex on Christopher Street. She will know me when I wrote poems fiercely and frequently and found her father. Or, rather, when he found me.
She will know me in my forties…which began with her and which continue to be the best years of my life. Hopefully she will know many more decades of me…because I will keep writing it all down. I can only hope that she learns something from it all, is proud of her mother and the life she led and finds out things I never got to find out from my own wonderful, loving parents.
It’s been far too long since I posted anything or put up any new poems. It’s not that my now almost 2 year old daughter is a drain on my creativity but that I’m happier spending that creativity on her, making Halloween bats to hang at Daycare as opposed to writing. I’ve written and forgotten more poems and essays since she was born than I could possibly count.
But now, I felt like I had to post something, if only to get me back into the rhythm of it. Billy said I should and because my wicked awesome, painfully funny and talented cousin Billy is just one of those guys you listen to, I’m going to get back on that horse.
I like to call him Verse.
