I am hanging out at my sister's house in Minnesota. My co-worker is there. I am working on a song, singing softly with my guitar, she tells me to stop. "Those lyrics are bad. Let me do the wordsmithing. I know pens. I know paper." She begins to deconstruct my lyrics and makes up some of her own. They are much better than mine. I feel hurt, a bit like a failure. She attempts to help my niece Sarah out of her wheelchair in a harried, uncaring way. I tell her to please stop and help Sarah out of the chair myself. Sarah smiles and hums. She puts her hand on my shoulder. Her sweetness obliterates all of my insecurities, all of my fears too.
An old job, the guitar and an ocean swing
I'm working at an old job that I find boring. The people are nice, but I'm always done with my work too soon and have too much down time. So I draw in a sketchbook. The drawings looks like psychedelic sketches from when I was a teenager. They aren't very good at all and when my coworkers find my sketch books they tell me so. They ask me why I would be sketching bad sketches instead of working and I tell them I've finished my work. I tell them that my job bores me and that there is usually too much down time. My boss asks if I want this to be my last day. I shrug my shoulders and say I guess, thinking about the fact that I have no other income whatsoever and panic a bit about my lack of savings. Still, there is a freedom in my decision and I head home and look for my guitar. I bring the guitar to a coworker's house that night. Alot of my coworkers are there, but in this environment I feel like I barely know anyone at all. They all have instruments and we begin to play music. It sounds delightful, harmonious and in sync and I feel thrilled to be part of it. I panic a bit about work again, but find a freedom in the strings of my guitar. I go outside onto a porch that is perched over a deep, roiling ocean. It's dark and there are two attractive young men sitting there ignoring me. I grab onto the swing and climb on. My former boss comes with me. She seems peeved by the fact that I've come over to the house and want to use her ocean swing. Still she allows it. She floats around me as I hang onto the swing with two arms, flying over the deep, dark, ocean. I cling onto the bar of the swing with two hands and hope I don't fall off. I return to the porch and see a version of my husband standing there. He's a young man. He seems annoyed that I've all of a sudden decided to swing and play guitar. I feel a new level of independence and freedom, and the fear is almost all gone.