Baby Geisha

by Trinie Dalton

  Shrubbie suggested that while I wait for alpine animals to show up, I might research cannabis not only for her benefit, but to better my understanding of marijuana’s magic. Here are selected excerpts from The Alpine Weed Research Journal (dedicated to Shrubbie).

  Day One: Reading medieval herbals for hemp’s medicinal cures. In Culpepper’s Complete Herbal (1649), the seed emulsion, dropped into your ears, is said to “draw forth earwigs and other living creatures.”

  Day Two: I smoked a bit of Shrubbie. Snipped a bud with newly purchased Swiss Army knife. She winced. Went to sleep trying to decode words I imagined in scrambled cursive, words like uphill and reinstated.

  Day Three: Read about Fitz Hugh Ludlow, 19th century American writer who documented his addiction to THC. Once sober, he satisfied his cravings for hash by blowing colored soap bubbles.

  Day Four: Pruned Shrubbie. Sang her a birthday song, said, “Make a wish,” and blew some candles out for her. Sometimes, when I smell Shrubbie, I get the munchies. But I so admire her palmate leaves and her strong pungent stems that I don’t have the heart to kill her. Last night I told her I loved her. She is, at present, my closest friend.

  Three months later, I’ve finally made owl contact. I think all it said is, Stay away from my babies. I stashed a dictaphone in its nest and caught its hoots on microcassette. When I played the tape for the lady next door, she seemed only momentarily impressed. It’s easier for me to talk to animals than to the people here. Swiss-German sounds like spitting and rolling spoons on one’s tongue. Maybe humans experience nature in the same way we experience being in a new country. I am merely skimming conversations. Are all humans missing 99% of the forest action? I don’t feel like I’m missing that much when I hike.

  Plants and animals communicate differently than humans, namely they don’t hide their feelings. It’s documented that animals and humans share emotions: rage, fear, curiosity, sexual attraction and lust, separations distress, social attachment, and happiness. But only humans can think ambiguously; only humans can have malintent towards something they love. I think about this when I think back to Francis. I loved him, but only sometimes.

  Shrubbie loves me unconditionally. I know what Shrubbie needs because she’s learned English. She needs a lot more than just water. Once she told me that she’s lonely when I leave the house. Another time she said, I’m so healthy, maybe I will live forever. Her enunciation sounded like Haiku. That was our most poetic moment.

  The fourth month into research, my first big breakthrough occurred with a pine marten. His coat was four kinds of brown.

  Interview with Edelmarder

  How old are you?

  –Don’t steal my nuts.

  Do you like eating pinecones?

  –I have cousins to feed. Don’t steal my pinecones.

  What was the saddest day of your life?

  –I’ve learned three things from tragedy. One, keep your tail away from bicycle wheels. Two, buck teeth are nothing to mock. Three, there’s a reason you never see martens at the beach.

  Can I pet you?

  –I climbed a tree once, to check my stash. Winter was coming. I heard bees leaving a nearby hive; they had their eyes on some sap I’d gathered. Soon, they surrounded me. They threatened me with their stingers. Give up the sap, they hummed. Never, I clicked back. A Sap War was brewing. Then I changed my mind. I put my tail up for a baby bee to rest on. I pet her, groomed her, and said to the queen, Your baby is good. I’ll trade my sap for her. Plans were hatched, I raised her, and now I have a tamed bee colony and more honey than I can chug.

  Do you have any regrets?

  –I wish I could eat you.

  I went home and played Shrubbie the tape. She swayed breezily when she heard it, claiming the marten sounded like a dolphin, so I checked to make sure I had the right tape in. We both had a good laugh. But then when I told her what the marten was saying, she said, All that small mammals think about is their stash.

  You’re my #1 stash, I thought. She wasn’t my buddy anymore; Shrubbie was my object of desire. I wanted to devour her. She was dripping with sticky resin, and I wanted to cook her into a tray of brownies. I wanted to sizzle her in butter. Whoa, I thought, I’m the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” and I’m already living in a gingerbread house.

  That time Shrubbie said she sought eternal life, was she trying to imply that she was too beautiful to harvest? Was that her way of begging for mercy? And what did she wish for on her birthday two months ago? Why did Francis have to be so nice? I never realized being too nice could make someone not love you anymore. My Shrub of Emotion was so ripe.

  “I love you, Shrubbie,” I said, clutching a pair of Swiss-made Precision Scissors. “But you know I have no choice.”

  THE SAD DRAG MONOLOGUES

  Starring in order of appearance:

  Chimney Sweep/Crackhead/Mime

  Pink Hobo

  Popcorn Maiden

  Too Cute

  The Fresh Prince/Black Pearl

  Smoky E.L.F.

  Koshare Wildcat

  SMALL TIME SPENDER

  I’ve noticed a new austerity floating around town like the ghost cocaine left behind. Austerity: eat that organic raw honey sparingly! Don’t overdo that boutique goat cheese that roars at you like a lion from the fridge, Cheese up in here, bitch, eat me! Like what, you don’t have an unlimited cheese budget? You don’t drive around in your Porsche macking cave-aged gruyere? I’m over it. I’ll live in the cave without cheese. I subsist on stardust now. Oh yeah, I lived on stardust back in the day. Wait, specify stardust: uppers or enlightened matter? In my new austere world I’m referring to the holy stuff, that which we consist of even though we think we’re separate entities. Drugs make the cave more fun, douche bag. What business does pure cocaine have in a meditation cave? All alone with no one to talk to all night, no disco, no one to freak with on the dance floor? Remembering that night I danced perfectly with my hips in the West African funk circle at the nightclub. Remembering when I took a tumble down the stairs to drunkenly lament my friend’s broken hip, the one he’d broken falling down stairs, then taxied back to where my man had returned early, furious, to grope the hotel room’s toilet seat, barfing and huffing the minty designer shampoo sample for nausea relief. Remembering that time I did lines in the stretch Hummer and threw champagne glasses out the truck’s sunroof. That was the opposite of austere. I’m talking about transcendence here, overcoming my intense desires. I’ve spent the past year apologizing and confessing. Just like how I write stories now, in poetic free verse, as if sentences are too decadent. All those words. Parse it down; you talk too much. I hope I have the flesh left to tidy these sentences up in the future, so I can call myself a storywriter instead of a poser poet, so I can call myself an author instead of a skeleton.

  Austerity. I remember W.H. Auden wrote satirically about it, about the war, society, and other lofty topics. I read him in awe then, said, I’ll never beat Auden. I wrote a prose paper about how Auden’s poetry flogged me. I used wordy sentences, like tissues I’d blown my nose in, and hoisted them as my tattered white flag. And here I am, defeated again fifteen years later, eating trail mix for dinner, trying to be austere but failing miserably, pretending to be a poet but failing miserably. I’ll turn this into a story so that no one knows it once tried to be a poem. No one will suspect that I paced around the room eating my meager cranberries and cashews pondering the meaning of life, feeling lonely because earlier, in the bathtub, I read about how the self is a falsity. The text warned me that I may feel like a balloon set free in the sky and that some who feel untethered by this message resort to nihilism. There is no self. I have my comforting turquoise desk lamp turned on and a sweet ska soundtrack, though, so I’m all right. I won’t drift away. You can’t pop me, universe! I might eat less or sleep less or feel compelled to leave those fancy pants behind when I covet them on a mannequin in Manhattan. I might shop for underwear in packs now because in my new austere universe lingerie isn�
��t my number one priority. But sure, I’ll admit I’m suffering because I wish I had a grand budget. Austerity is, at its basest, a cover-up: sad drag.

  This austerity extends far outside me, though. My friends are sober now because they’re out of drug money. One artist I know donned a robe in the form of a bed sheet and declared himself done with materialism. He’ll be the canvas from now on. Performance art is totally in. I splurged on a five-dollar Barbie make-up kit to paint my face like Vishnu, and called the photos of my face art. But really it was just the goddess of boredom heckling me in the bathroom mirror, rearing her ugly rainbow face. Everyone’s getting in on free hobbies like dream yoga. We’re starting to believe in the afterlife in hopes that the coke there will flow freely. Bardo will be our happy hour.

  This austerity extends far beyond drug use, too. Home birth rates are up. Is that because women really want to have babies in their beds or because they can’t afford the hospital? I know I for one don’t want to pay some dude to pull a baby out of my vagina when I can do it for free on the front lawn. Men are jerking off to more refined fantasies, not to every half-baked pornographic whimsy after breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They pass this restraint off as Tantra. When I flip coins now to make decisions, I don’t just drive to the beach to see dolphins if it’s tails. I might save on gas and google porpoises instead. It’s a thrifty universe. Super cool brother, think you’re a lover, but you’ll discover you’re just another brother.

  The all-loving, all-embracing, wise universe: the Jewel Tree Meditation is free! I finally understand where Ginsberg’s lines came from! Hookers, wake up and realize that you don’t need to give blowjobs in the park for this free deal you can get super high on. Enlightenment awaits us, in the form of Stevie Wonder. He’s living with his hot wife in Detroit. Time to write a fan letter. Enlightenment wears dope sunglasses.

  The tortoise who rationed her desert willow blossoms, and the prose writer who rationed these words, packing lines that originally slithered down the left margin in short cheapskate clusters—the greatest irony of all because poems use more paper—groove to Stevie together on their sandy patio while wondering when people will get rich again and how they will spend those riches after enduring austerity? When will monks grill porterhouse steaks at the Zendo? You think you’re cool, but you ain’t cool no more.

  ORANGE

  I can’t help but see the pink juice in the syringe when I look out the window at my potted pelargonium, the flower my cat used to daintily sniff before I put her to sleep yesterday. There was that moment, after the shot, when her head relaxed, dropping into my cupped hand like an orange, and then the pink killed her within a minute. I was only bold enough to usher her out because the doctor told me the barbiturate would take her almost instantly. That didn’t sound half bad. I wanted a shot too until I saw my kitty’s pupils dilate and the doctor touched her eyeball to make sure she didn’t blink. I thought of my mom and hoped for her health. Then I wanted to go home to ensure my husband and dog were still breathing.

  I know animals don’t live forever, but I wish they would. I wish all the pets I’ve had would hover around me to let me stroke their coats one last time. But then again, that would be creepy: simultaneously seeing all those members of my different lives. See, when I took a few moments to pet my cat’s corpse, on one hand I lamented her death. But on the other, all of my living and dead snapped forward—and I understood the confusion of them crowding around me, spiritually overpopulating my brain with too much psychic baggage. If everyone and everything I loved were alive, life would be a labyrinth that led right back to where I started, here at this steel table, feeling abandoned by my cat, still with her eyes open, still her body warm but obviously emptied of its generous purring and miniature heartbeat mechanisms I used to press my ear up to her fuzzy belly to appreciate.

  When I got home, I tearfully ate a banana and a phrase came to mind. No one is your enemy; to hate others is to hate yourself. Desire causes mental poverty. Then, I felt bad for wishing the dead to life, or for wishing to trade the dead for the living, for to wish is to disrespect the dead and myself. At that juncture, my wishes rearranged themselves into regrets for not having mummified my feline, as it would have been nice to be together in a stone tomb someday. Did the Egyptians have it right, letting the dead go only temporarily until they met again in the afterlife? Here I am, analyzing this pink poison. Is the pink juice in the syringe the Nile? There’s a hole in the mummy theory. It’s a fake-out like wishing the dead to life. How are two spirits who graduate into alternative matter ever going to meet up? The Egyptians were wishful thinkers. When we say goodbye, we won’t see each other again. That’s the hard part.

  Sometimes people say to me, we must have met in a previous life. I’ll take that fantasy today. Maybe I will meet you, tiny meow-head, in the next life. But I doubt it. I cry some more, and I put my banana down because I’m too sorrowful to eat fruit. Fruit is silly at a funeral. I lie on the floor and sob pathetically, demanding myself to stop guessing where my dead relatives went or how bad it will suck when my elderly dog departs, because those past and future anxieties are what I’m truly crying about. I dial my mother to say hello. My husband comes home and hugs me. Living in the present is best, and even heartbreak is okay.

  MY PANDA EYES, MY SUNRISE

  Since you moved out I’ve been living on popcorn. One bite at a time, telling myself this snack binge is a healthier addiction. I remember the football-sized jar of worms pickled in liquor at the agave farm, when I visited tequila’s house in Oaxaca. On her porch, Sweet Reposado’s, were cow-sized blue agave plants, desiccated like jerky, which is how I felt after I slammed several shots, rich idea-wise but as poor as a hand towel. I’d have some right now if I weren’t shoveling an enormous bowl of popcorn into my mouth. To tequila, an underworld promontory, I’ve dedicated a costume: panda eyes for my past lucky days, my sunrise. Replacing tequila with popcorn is like switching a pal out with driftwood. What good is a log if it doesn’t make the party so aggressive that it slaps you on the back? The grub is come, right? Semen? Wasn’t it phallic that tequila farmers decided to praise their fat worms, selecting something maggoty to swallow that’s high in protein? Sobriety is not going to be easy.

  The day I visited the tequila farm was the day I felt as supreme as a Mixtec goddess, high on those Sierra Madre valley views, high on the clouds drifting through the cornflower-blue sky above the silver blue agave, it was so damn blue. Looking at the blue with you. Oaxaca: I played a flute and rolled in hibiscus blossoms to try to replicate that day on the farm, but nothing comes close. A photo can’t touch that acrid stench of fermenting agave wafting out from the wooden well, where burros stirred twizzler sticks into a frothy ring to pulp the plant.

  Tequila’s summer lightning storm, boom! I knew if I didn’t take that day by the reigns it would spank me with its prickly pear paddle. I started a fire after I licked every last pupa off the spiky, succulent leaves, and barely escaped because my passport was still alcoholic when I arrived at the airport. I have a headache remembering how horny I was. Popcorn works better than aspirin, but it doesn’t bring back my libido. I haven’t craved sex since the minute you walked.

  I am lamenting the loss of two you’s: you, lover and you, drink. I am not one to order my losses, sorting them into black and white like a skunk’s tuxedo. Houndstooth is my mourning gown. I would like to wrap houndstooth around my head like a television-snow turban. Pile-driving popcorn into my mouth is like popping cassettes into a tape deck. I’ll have just enough muscle left to peddle back out of the succulent’s center. The road’s yellow dividing line is a pollen-heavy stamen, along which I used to hunt that nectar, tequila, a very sickening syrup. Teosinte, corn’s earliest relative, wedged itself into rocky crevices until humans realized that it could be tamed into something edible. Pre-corn to popcorn, the path of that plant usage has been illuminated. Today I might be a clown with sorry red rock star eyes, but tomorrow night I’ll attempt to eject my rowdy
claws to come find you, to haul you back.

  THE CELEBRITY BEEKEEPERS

  I was going to write about celebrity beekeepers. I’d been brewing an elaborate tale in my head for weeks about Solana, the diva, who only eats baba ghanoush and suns herself on patios while her bees feed on peach blossoms outside her bay window. And about Rhonda, the feisty one, who attends awards ceremonies in cocktail dresses with no underwear on beneath her skirts, and who prefers to strut on mirrored floors. And maybe there would be a man in there, just maybe one male beekeeper, a boy slave who keeps the bees organized, because Solana and Rhonda are preoccupied with being photographed from flattering angles. The innocent boy-child, with a clownish name like, oh, I don’t know, Defithedra, something invented, because he is mythic basically, living in the shadow of the B-List celebs who call themselves beekeepers, while they wave their martinis around on the red carpet, though Defithedra does all the work. His name rhymes with Ephedra because he’s always up, always keeping those bees in line, always cracking the whip on those ornery insects. Slave and slavedriver.