update part 2!

That loosey goosey update of mine the other night was the most read post in a long time. I can take a hint, you guys! I know my floofy writing is a little too floofy and makes the eyes and brain go goo goo, but whatever. I'll never stop writing those posts. But maybe I should start writing more loosey goosey posts alongside my floofy ones? Yes. Yes, I should. Enough with the MAYBES and the PROBABLYS, Meg! Be more assertive and sure! But it's hard when the entire world is gray and I know that the maybes and the probablys are actually the most honest words in this imperfect language of ours. (Ours? So we claim the language? We are hilarious and territorial creatures.)

Update! Part 2! I plan on updating for infinity. I can't wait until I get to Update Part 348,662,145,998,037,001,782,221,155,831,520,404,001. That update will tell ALL of my secrets. And I'll make sure I include some cool cat photos. So stay tuned!

This update will be short. I'm too sleepy to be creative or insightful or long-winded. Lucky you!

*I want to get into football. And Christianity. Preferably progressive Christianity and dada football. You know, like the players just run around in circles and cut their hair with scissors made from the teeth of alligators and they also make touchdowns with urinals. I want to get into these things.

*My secret dream job? Broadway star.

*My secret football fantasy team? Duchamp, Höch, Man Ray, Schad, Stieglitz, Taeuber-Arp, and Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

*If I could be anything, I'd be a baroness who also happened to be a Broadway star.

*But seriously, though, I really want to get into Jesus. I wonder if this is possible? Am I just trying so desperately hard to find an identity and a community and a plan of salvation? Please answer these questions for me and then please be the sole person who will provide me with all three of these things. No pressure!

*I could never live in Hong Kong.

*Everything is so quiet right now. TOO quiet. Did the apocalypse just happen?

*I do not understand the word "update."

refuge

Refuge is not a choice. It is built into my bones. It might need to be excavated and discovered over and over again, but it lies within my very being. Do I believe this? I could be lying to myself.

I could be playing the part of architect, designing a haven above my heart with chambers placed where I need them the most. But it's just the design. I can't claim to be skilled in construction. (I hit my thumb, not the nail, with the hammer. I give up and leave the skeleton behind, without walls. Who will live in an unfinished house? Where will the framed pictures hang?)

People want to display their love and hide the side of them that's unrefined.

To live my life as if it's the opening night of a show at a pristine gallery is not a choice. I cannot define the avalanche of events that forced me here today. Might as well invest in a mop because the water from the melting snow will warp the wooden gallery floors.

Maybe no one will notice. Maybe everyone will be too occupied with observing the nonexistent art. They will discuss and critique and leave before it gets too late. Time to clean up the cocktail napkins and half-empty plastic cups. They will go home to warm sheets, not warped ground beneath their feet. (I have impeccable balance. I believe I can keep walking.)

My refuge is lost. I tried to follow it down halls and patterns and shades of amber that caught the light just right. I was distracted. I was lost in the thought of how odd it was that these pictures could hang so straight on what was wall-less. If nothing else, I have confidence in these cocktail napkins. They can be discarded without display and easily replaced. Am I envious of a square of paper?

Refuge will be found on the page. Refuge has already been found on the page. Refuge refuses walls because refuge is a harbor, a way out. All it takes is for me to forget about the uneven floor and remember to walk.

update part 1

An update on my life:

*I have a million crushes.

*The left side of my body has been mysteriously numb since Christmas.

*Meghan Wiemer: Discovered in 2014 that she is a huge fan of British literature.

*Meghan Wiemer: Future 5th grade teacher???

*Are you there, God? It's me, Meghan Wiemer.

*I'm cold. Constantly.

*I walk in circles. Literally. And constantly. And concentrically.

*I have recently -- very recently -- googled the word "concentrically" because I was unsure of what it meant. I am still unsure, but I am sure that I am fine with being unsure. I am NOT, however, fine with being uninsured. Please. Somebody. GIVE ME INSURANCE. Obama? Jesus? A rich, long lost uncle? An employer?

*Still unemployed.

*Still crazy after all these years.

*Still single.

*Not ready to mingle.

*Except for with some of my crushes. Hey, crushes, let's mingle and then read British lit together in the bathtub while simultaneously applying for Medicaid.

*Got a butt massage yesterday.

*I am super bummed out that the grocery store stopped carrying the popsicles I love. I would give my left nut for a box of those popsicles right now.

*Butts-n-nuts.

Night Night.

may

It took me nearly 30 years to realize that the Mayflower was an actual ship, not just a lie like Washington and the cherry tree. We were told "truths" in grade school that are now suspicious. In my defense, I call myself a victim of public education. Call me ignorant. Call me gullible. Call me a poor patriot. Just include a life vest with your words because I will undoubtedly swim like a stone when this ship goes down.

But 1620 was so long ago. It's so long ago that it's hard to imagine it being an actual year. Did the pilgrims look back on 1619 and lament? Did they kiss each other at midnight with their pilgrim lips and look forward to the new year with naive hope in their pilgrim eyes?

They set sail into a vastness which might have proven to be fiction. They held on to their visions and their anchors. They weren't even aware of someone almost 30-years-old existing centuries ahead of them. We both doubt each other's existence. We both embrace the vastness blindly. The only difference is they settled.

So there was a Mayflower. But maybe it doesn't matter. The pilgrims could have floated here on a chopped up cherry tree for all I care. What I care about is how many shoes and boots were on the ship. I care about the unidentified passenger who searched for lost pilgrims in the forest and then sailed back home. Why did he return after coming so far? I care about the waves and the storms and the days of boredom with nothing but emptiness and promise ahead.

I'd rather it be fiction. I'd rather tell the story myself and let the souls unfold on a page under the protection of my wing.

amoebae

We are not amoebae. We are not shapeless. We are definite and defiant, even when we feel frail and fragile.

The left side of my body began to feel numb shortly after Christmas. Or was it after New Year's? Not sure. But I'm sure that it started with my toes and traveled up my calf and eventually into my fingers. It was as if the left side of my body ate a hearty holiday feast and was now napping off the overindulgence. My right side was awake. My right side was alert, taking on the weight left by the left. Where is my heart located? Somewhere in the middle, maybe? I hope. I hope that important muscle hasn't fallen into a frozen mess. Messes seem to be a fad these days, but fads crack. Fads crack and expose the bored current of water beneath. It's bored, but steady. It's at least reliable.

Amoeba move by using pseudopodia or "false feet". Pseudopodia are formed by the amoeba by throwing out the ectoplasm, followed by endoplasm flowing inward.

My frozen limbs forget how to function, so they retreat into fictional worlds found beneath covers, covers made of both cloth and board. I can move freely inside the flow of words where truth also withdraws. We paint each other out here. We paint and make the ice melt with each stroke of the brush. If there's such a thing as light, it is found within the shade.

Recently it was proposed that the majority of amoeboid lineages are, contrary to popular belief, at least anciently sexual, and that most current asexual groups have probably arisen recently and independently.

The way my feet fail me. The way my finger freezes in a curious curl. The way my heart is bitten by an unsuspecting frost. The way the thawing begins to take place in a foreign land. The way the skin is shaken awake by an unspoken language. The language was never dead, it was just never heard.

Speak. Speak and let the warmth of your lips pronounce every syllable.

bluff

I memorize lies because the truth speaks spontaneously. There are lines to learn and reasons to rehearse. No one wants to be caught speechless in the middle of the stage. The spotlight on the lies blinds and makes it so you can't sleep. Wear an eye mask maybe? Block out the light and have pleasant dreams. Problem solved. Or better yet, don't sleep. Use up those hours to hear who speaks while everyone else sleeps.

But I will sleep. We do sleep. You sleep. Someone here must sleep because all eyes can't stay open and all ears can't stay open and all beds can't stay closed to the inhabitants who wish to hide inside a subconscious dipped in the day's events. We are tenants of our mind. We pay for the utilities, but everything else is taken care of. We just have to remember the quarters for the laundromat. That's it.

It doesn't slip away when we slip away, though. It stands solid as ice, frozen to our hearts that listen for truth, but only hear lies. It stays and plays with the idea that we aren't quite right. There is the sinking feeling that our lives are lived on stage with directions and props and cues.

Inside of us rises the desire to seek a god or a star or a job to pay for our way back to health. With enough padding, we will heal. The blood will stop with enough cloth. We close the wounds and turn around to face the open window.

There is a mountain range ahead, lying. There are paths to walk, leading. There is a life out there, waiting.

inhabitant

The body as a house. The head, a roof. The skin, some siding (maybe some bricks). The feet, the foundation.

Your dreams, your betrayals, your hopes, your disappointments. They emerge from this house and wander into other homes, kicking off their shoes and making themselves comfortable. Maybe they open up other fridges and stand there, hungry. Maybe they bathe in foreign baths, watching the water rise as they sink deeper. Maybe they become careless and leave the doors unlocked when they sneak off into strange sheets and even stranger dreams. Maybe they'll come home if you leave the lights on.

But keep it dark. Don't chance it. Let the dreams, betrayals, hopes, and disappointments continue to wander and be lost in their own journey. They aren't yours. They were never yours.

They were occupants, merely tenants who were usually late with the rent. Be your own landlord. Be selective. Begin to house what will flower, not what will wilt on windowsills.

The body as a house. The house as a sanctuary. The sanctuary, a beginning.

ambulation

How do I put my best foot forward if my left one is numb and my right one is wearing a shoe a size too small? I guess this is one of those times when I must choose the best of the worst. Still, these feet have moved me from place to place, from love to heartache, from lakes to deserts rich with bare bones. Still, I cannot choose. Still, I wonder if I'd be better off with talons instead of toes. Still, the numbness may never go away.

So I stay. I refuse to move unless I can bribe someone else to clean up my mess. And it's just one mess, comprised of tragically beautiful teeny messes. I invest in my injury and call it nobility. I deny my delight and call it humility. I call out to a self still cemented in the ephemeral.

I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't mastered the art of the gait in which the body vaults over the stiff limbs. The key, unknown to me, is that only one foot at a time leaves contact with the ground. There is a period of double-support.

I fly solo. No, not fly. Crawl. Limp. Remain.

fracture

Tell me a little bit about yourself, he said. Okay, I said. Okay. I am a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own gravity. I am somehow important globally and I might be in danger. Am I in danger? I asked.

He stared.

Staring doesn't help the problem, I noted.

We have a problem? He questioned.

I sat. This interview (or was it an interrogation?) was going nowhere, but at least I'm not going to sink. Going nowhere is better than going under, I thought to myself. I think a lot to myself. I think little of myself. I got up to leave.

So where are you going?

And then I stopped. I don't know, I wanted to say, but I didn't. I remained silent and he remained seated and outside the door the sheets of paper kept sliding through the printer, copying off the names of people I'd never meet or be or provide for. I could never provide stable ground for anyone because I am shrinking. I am disappearing. I am moving and not moving and apparently contradicting.

I am just telling you a little bit about myself. Just twenty percent. The rest is resting beneath.

Do I have to decide? Do I have to check a box to say whether I am a glacier or an iceberg? Am I whole or have I broken off? Where is the in between? When did I separate from myself?

coalesce

There is no part of us that isn't a cloud. Our eyes, our teeth, our hands.

Your hands are the jars which catch your lightning bugs fingertips. Your instinct to become an insect when the moon is frozen just-so in the Jell-o of the sky is almost frightening. How do you know when to transform? Why do your wings have a mind of their own? I suspect you've dabbled in some black magic. The lonely sphere reflects itself in the mirror you shattered years ago. Has it been seven years? Should I buy you a rabbit's foot to counteract? Not that I believe in that junk. But you might. Abracadabra, darling.

And you might release those fireflies. Your matchstick fingers might strike and light up the entire field of wheat that died from the drought. The fact that we are clouds doesn't mean we contain rain. We yield, we migrate, we hunger.

We are not heavy enough to fall under gravity. You ignite. I burn.

Your light fingertips create a chemical reaction on the cracked skin covering my clavicle. You tap a few time on the bone, but no one is home. I can't answer because I'm too busy surviving in other climates.

We are still resistant. We are still trapped in our jars. We still remain stationary, waiting for a collision that will never come.

Still, we light up the whole night sky.

eviscerate

Eviscerate is such a beautiful word for such a horrendous act. Torture is usually disguised in attractive clothing.

I could never remove the blood from language as easily as I remove the stockings from my legs each night, bent over the bed in a weariness that won't disappear. To remove the blood would stop the heart. I can't walk around barefoot without a pulse, you know.

A dead language is the saddest story never told. Our stories go unheard because the ears can't hear what hasn't been spoken. I speak to you with my fist full of my hungry heart. Here. Hear. It's here. It never died. I've been feeding it oxygen when you weren't listening. I've been telling it to breathe, breathe. I wait to hear it inhale before I exhale in relief.

So go ahead and interrogate and condemn. Take your knife and make a horizontal incision. The only thing you can remove is what I haven't used in an attempt to revive. I may be tired, but I am alive. I may keep pacing this floor, shuffling just enough to produce an electric shock. But at least there's a beat. At least there's a belief that language continues.

It continues in the eyes, in the fingers, in the soles of our bare feet.

nest

When I build my nest, I will build it with handwritten letters, words whispered in vulnerable moments, eyelashes, canned jam. I will weave a structure out of sentiments to act as a sanctuary from myself. For myself and from myself. I will be wise enough to know that wings grow weary. I will be, but not today. Today I forget. Tonight I obliterate.

The bones in your hand began to demand my attention. They were so noticeable, so sharp. I placed my palm on top in an attempt to disguise what my eyes didn't wish to see. You age and you grow thin. You grow up and your skin fades.

I talk too much about birds. They are too poetic to ignore. Hollow bones and nests and flight. Hatching, migrating, living without teeth. You don't bite, you fly. You don't chew, you swallow.

But your ground is covered now with snow. It won't be plowed ever because no one knows of the roads you take. You hide your path, you have your own direction, you don't need to advertise your biological urge. Just build for continuity, not congratulations.

You are in charge of your construction. Use your tools and your instinct. Will you evolve? Or will you become extinct?

resuscitate

He isn't the flat, polished surface I wish he'd be. He is sandpaper, he is coarse. Within him grows scrub oak. He is a cover, but sometimes he is where wild cats hide their kill. I want to be the victim of a panther. I want to hide inside of him. I want to explore what I cannot currently see while the rest of me returns to the thirsty soil.

But I don't want him to be this. I both don't want and so so so desperately want. I don't want it because I want it. I've grown accustomed to denial and isolation. There is a cleanliness found in the lack of craving.

But I'm on the verge of caving in.

I'm on the verge of a cliff that I overlooked two years ago. I regret not going over the edge. Why didn't I jump and trust in the branches to break my fall?

Because I don't want to fall. Because I don't want to break. Because I'm as starved as the ground for water I won't drink.

I've drowned before. I know what it's like to lose oxygen. Then again, I don't know what it's like to reach the rocky surface and inhale the sage-filled air. It might just revive. I might just survive.

I want to fall into the pool of the moon with you, baby, and rise up in the desert sky.

wishbone

We break bread with each other and once we're done we break the bone of the bird we just tasted. We'll digest her soon, but now we must make a wish. What did you wish for? I'm guessing new socks or a functioning heart. If I had gotten the bigger piece, I would have wished for wings or at least the shape of wings to be ingrained in my brain.

Sometimes all it takes to fly is a good memory. Sometimes all it takes to fall is a bone to break.

Who said fowls can predict the future? Maybe the prophets of old figured out a code written within the bones. We are blind, but at least we can believe.

I want to start strapping parachutes on each little bird. Let them fly as fast and as far as they'd like until they reach the limits of the sky. Not to worry, though, for the descent back to the nest where you hatched will be blessed. Unless the chest strap fails. Unless what's close to your heart doesn't open. If your heart doesn't open, you will crash and lose the nest. Your hollow bones will snap into two pieces. Who gets the bigger half? Who will rise from your fall?

When will I get my lucky break?

confessions

I need a priest because I have a confession. I have a couple of confessions. Confession number one: I don't know if Catholics confess to priests. I am mostly ignorant when it comes to Catholicism. Here are some more confessions for your pleasure and horror:

Confession: I love and hate my writing. I love it because I sometimes come up with these really great (humble opinion!) phrases and genius (I'm a genius!) ideas. I hate my writing because it is all half-baked. They are just idea seeds, not flowers. And it is too flowery without the actual flower. I am abstract and wooey wooey and feel like I'm a freshman again in creative writing one-oh-one.

Confession: I obsessively bake vegan pumpkin cookies and hide them in my room. They are accidentally vegan. They do not accidentally end up in my room. Is my OCD an accident? Nature Nurture Nutella Nuremberg Iceberg Titanic Sink Ship I Am A Sinking Ship. I am more of a tugboat, not a British passenger liner.

Confession: I have not had my period since the spring of 2011. My bones are like a type of confection, consisting of flat broken pieces of hard sugar candy embedded with nuts such as pecans, almonds, or peanuts. In other words, my bones are brittle! I cannot have children! I save a lot of money not having to purchase tampons. Help.

Confession: I miss my wooey writing. It was almost a distraction. Confessions are too much for me. Confessions don't distract. Confessions look everyone straight in the eye. Confessions confront.

No thanks.

Well, this break from floofiness was fun for a second. Smell ya later.

mud

In order to have a proper existential crisis, one must begin to think of all the things they will never do, the people they will never see, the places they will never experience. And how it all does not matter, that long after one ceases to exist, these things will go on doing, these people will go on seeing, these places will keep providing experiences to the millions of others who are still breathing. And so just start running around in that hamster wheel and you'll soon be on your way to a terrifying dead end.

But is that the end? Could embracing the inevitable be a way to begin? Maybe it's the only way. Maybe we are stuck in our own timid mud until we can accept the fact that the mud is a mixture of what constitutes 70% of us and the skin of the earth. Mud seals. Mud refines. Mud heals. Mud is home.

We were the children who made mud pies. We let it ooze between our toes while throwing fistfuls at faces. There was a lightness that hardened over time. What used to be a playpen became a pit. What adhered us together ended up cracked.

Is it as simple as how we define a life? Is that the way out of the crisis? It might very well be that we'll still be stuck in the mud of missed connections, forgotten dreams, lost paths. But we can begin to see the mud as the protection that it is and ourselves as the lotus that may bloom soon enough.

Hope might be vicious. Hope might be the rope that ends up as a noose, not a ladder. Then again, hope might lift what would otherwise sink. Hope might be worth the risk.

current

There are ways we anchor ourselves to our past.

We connect to a bed, whether it is the daybed of our childhood or the nights spent in strange sheets during our terribly reckless and fun twenties.

We move from bed to bed, from room to room, from year to year, but we stay stay stay in the muck of what should have been forgotten.

We remember.

We sleep on pillows of mud that emit dreams of days we wish to relive, days where we can now know the consequences and choose wisely. Days when we forget our skin and instead envelope the air that disappears as quickly as it appears.

You cannot see the air except for when you breathe.

We fill our lungs and plunge into a sea contaminated with lost friends found in lockets, wedding rings that fingers outgrew, peaches that grandma canned and no one ate, movie stubs, love letters filled with intensity and typos, a marble that holds a story known to so few, and a pack of Lucky Strikes never opened but kept as a sort of Talisman.

We try to dive, but we only surface. There is a lack down there in the dusty water. We begin to realize that it's the peaks we wish to see, not the depths.

We want to taste the peaches when they are ripe, not canned. We want to smoke every last Lucky Strike until we can step up to the plate of the present and hit a home run.

We want to run home.

We want to run until our legs give out and then we'll crawl. Our home is not the past. Our home is a stranger waiting to be met.

Don't let the heavy weight of the anchor keep you from drifting.

devoid

I want to live a life devoid of a center. I think I'm succeeding. I've turned away, I've avoided, I've disappeared successfully. I am not sure some people even believe I exist outside of the screen. And for that I am delighted. Let me mold into whatever shape you've created. You've created me. I will only cease to exist when you decide it's time.

Every night I look forward to my plan to make cookies. I make them because it's a habit. I make habits. I never ever break them because what's the point in destroying what you've worked so long to create? Oh, I remember. Detachment. Enlightenment. Equanimity. These are all words I've seen printed on the backs of books. Nice words. Words that calm and entice and somehow force you to fork over the eighteen ninety-five. Thanks for the tips. Now let me make some more tips so I can reclaim my eighteen ninety-five.

I haven't always been such a cynical postmodernist. Once upon a time I searched for fairies under four leaf clovers. The only problem was I never found any. And as it turns out, I'm allergic to clover. If I begin the hunt, I break out into hives. I do not hunt for fairies anymore. I roam the ground looking around for broken bottles left by souls who consoled themselves with the liquid of life. If it's death we want, we first have to taste what the breath has to offer. The beating, the breath, the broken glass reflecting a sun that just won't leave us alone.