Greek Chorus

I have company this late night/early morning. The Greek Chorus.

I watch the 2 am repeat of tonight's episode of Intervention on A&E and I see...I feel...the women I've known in my life sitting around me in the den. The tv is low to prevent problems. The lights are down because I want the dimness, only leaving the hood light of the stove on. The cat grooms itself amid shadows, white on black in gray and a permanent muted state, it manages to locate a warm lap of one seeing himself on an episode of Intervention...with the Greek Chorus.

Here's how it worked: The sofa was too far away for the volume to reach my ears and maintain quiet and so I moved to the singular chair with matching footstool. That caused the cat calamity in that it had just finished all the licking preparations before the proverbial cat nap. I moved, taking the remote, grabbing a fresh beer at 2 am, and slunk into the unfamiliar and still-not-worn-in-yet chair. Intervention came on and it was some boob who messed his life up but shoot! he was a smart and good guy, kinda talented too. I zoned into the drama, the cat groomed on the footstool in hesitation, my beer disappeared sooner that it should.

Somewhere in the drama of how this goober on Intervention was shooting up smack 8 times a day I started to nod off myself, bored and it being on into the morning hours. But something he said grabbed me: "Here I am, killing myself daily, when I know how much she loves me." (referencing his only soul connection, his ex-girlfriend, as she sobs to the camera about how jacked up he was).

But that sentence hit me, hit home, hit the stones of my soul. And the Greek Chorus wafted onto the opposite chair, the long sofa, the footstool, and peeked from the hallway. I felt other eyes as well, though undefined, in the darkness of the hall...like one of them had gone to pee or to my room or was hiding for revenge.

Across the glow from the tv was Jenn in the big chair. Oh, I had heard it a trillion times from her how f-ed up I was, how I was missing it, how I had it and was blowing it, how could I let it all go and lose her?

Next, at the far end of the sofa (my damn cat slinking up to her lap, traitor!) was Tyger, no words to say, no adminitions. Her eyes cast lost, cast deprivation, cast woe, cast failed attempt. Those eyes, those shining eyes peered from the dark and told me what I could never have as she slowly stroked my white, deaf cat. Not a word was said...and truly, I felt no pain. My heart was broken already.

Beside her sat Amanda/Autumn, a twin figure. Two women who entered my life one after the other, both bearing bad news about where I was going and both only concerned about themselves, merely observing my sinking ship which floated away, as they did from me, without even a postcard to remember.

And then the shadow came from the darkened hallway. These words haunted me, poetic and precise and diplomatic and deeply slicing and then gone. What was I to think? The fear, the cut...the denoument and discarding of attention. That ghost shrieked back to whence it originated, a whirlwind in a lonely closet of a disorganized mind that can't be straightened not matter how many unappreciated times you locate the missing set of car/house keys.

And near me, always close to me in who I really am, she lounges on the footstool. A smile bursts forth from those drapes of darkness; the one from all those years back. Hey kid, have another, c'mon. We aren't done yet, I haven't finished talking! Are you listening? Are you registering again and again and again and again the circles of my life that I choose not to break? Oh, let's have fun and forget it. Let's just have some more of this good, gd, good time, so shutup, wake up, continue to listen again and that's right...shut up, listen, again.

Selfish but haunting like the howl of a wolf, cunning feigned closness like the clasp of a crab claw, evil is the black of the night reflected in calculating eyes. Memories fucking finally expressed on all you wenches in my blog writings like the cautionary pottery of other historical bitches, left as postmarks for mankind to beware your kind...and only now, eventually, understood by me.

After writing, after venting...I go back to the den. My soft white cat lies asleep at the edge of the couch...waiting for the stroke of ghosts only she can see and I still feel.