Left-handed Art

My sister tells me her dreams.

Dream #1: An African Warrior is living in her garage. She asks him, "Do you eat here, do you sleep here?"

Dream #2: She finds two severed arms, severed above the elbow and below the wrist. They have hanging tendons. She picks them up and finds that they are floppy and hilarious.

This is the story that came out of my brain, after she told me her dreams.

Two Sisters are walking down the street. One is dressed conservatively in sleek black and white, and she's wearing heels. The other is in earth colors, wears flip-flops, and is wearing a scarf that serves no purpose.

The two one-armed Sisters link elbows and walk into a garage. It is the Warrior's lair.

One Sister giggles.

The other frowns. She wants to scratch her nose but she can't.

The garage has throw rugs on the hard concrete. There are beautiful tribal wall hangings and a round wooden table, with three high-backed upholstered chairs. The sisters take seats across from the African Warrior.

She leans in, ten lacquered nails resting on the table.

"How do we become warriors?" the flip-flopped Colorful Sister asks.

"Fuck everyone."

"Fuck everyone?" the high-heeled Black and White Sister asks. "My boss, men, women, hermaphrodites, my husband, my girlfriend, everyone?"

"No," the Warrior says. "Fuck everyone. Their opinion of you doesn't matter."

Black and White Sister stares. "Do you realize we have two arms? Between the two of us? When we tell the stories of how we lost our arms, people form opinions of us, as if they hadn't already been thinking nasty horrible things when they see our one arms. I lost my arm in a slow-speed chase of an ice cream truck last July. My arm got stuck in the freezer in the back of the truck, and the music was so loud, the driver didn't hear, and everyone who saw me running behind the truck thought I was an overenthusiastic ice cream lover, and they thought I was screaming for ice cream, and all they did was wave at me. My sister here, she went zip-lining in South America, fell sixty feet into the waiting maw of the jungle below, and lost her arm to flesh-eating bacteria."

Black and White Sister and the African Warrior look expectantly at Colorful Sister. Colorful Sister smiles serenely and says, "I understand."

"What is it you understand? Not to go zip-lining in South America again? Not to wander into strange people's garages?" Black and White Sister is red-faced.

"Fuck everyone." Colorful Sister extricates her arm from Black and White Sister and high-fives the Warrior.

"Now we will draw severed arms, and give them personalities." The Warrior leads them to a section of the garage splattered with paint.

Black and White Sister crosses her arm. "I came for enlightenment, I came to feel better about my situation, and you want us to draw?"

Warrior and Colorful Sister kneel on the floor and begin mixing finger paints. Fleshy colors mostly.

Colorful Sister quickly sketches her arm onto the canvas and just for giggles, draws it severed at the wrist. She draws a forearm with an elbow really, and some silky tendons hanging out where the fingers should be. It is whole, beautiful, all by itself on white canvas, glowing, no hint of flesh-eating bacteria anywhere.

Black and White Sister kneels down and mixes her finger paints. She sketches a hard form, almost a 3-D boxy stick arm, with five strong fingers, all in a fist, except that the middle finger is raised high, tall and proud.

The Warrior beams.

Black and White Sister surveys her work with satisfaction. "So you eat here, in this garage?" she asks.

"Yes," the Warrior says, gesturing to the stove in the corner.

"You sleep here?"

"Yes," the Warrior says, gesturing to a mattress with neatly folded blankets behind a colorful hanging tapestry.

Black and White Sister looks at Colorful Sister. "I don't get your Northern Exposure, Twin Peaks, One Hundred Years of Solitude symbolic notion of life and why you dragged me here."

"Fuck you," says the Colorful Sister.

The Warrior beams.

The Sisters hug, thank the Warrior, and leave the garage, arm in arm.

Warrior's husband comes out from behind the colorful tapestry. "I'm glad they're gone. I wasn't going to get in the middle of that."

Beecher's Birds

"There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away." - Henry Ward Beecher

The greatest gift you can give a writer is to ask her to write.

Why haven't I been writing? I feel like an old cooked transulucent onion, stuck to the bottom of the stove, nothing to offer the world. Depression, maybe.

I am the woman who gets invited to a meeting to hear a grand new idea and then when she shows up, tries her best to control the meeting and everyone there.

I am the waitress you will take your sandwich order and bring you the special anyway.

I fight and manipulate to make sure my way holds in spite of any new information or dissenting opinions.

I am a fighter who can win any battle at work and has all the connections and they have no idea who they're dealing with and I like it that way.

My soul has bags under her eyes.

I have had to fight at work, for about 15 months now, and maybe a little at home too, fight to keep my identity. But in the process I've holed up and blocked myself from change. Survival mechanism, I suppose.

In all the fighting and surviving and winning I can't imagine any fun or enjoyment in life. Writing, sex, food, play, exercise hold no allure for me. In my fortress it's no fun. Those little birds of Beecher's are on the tin fortress roof, so small and delicate in the sunshine that I can't hear them through the stone.

So what advice do I have for myself? What is this warrior princess to do?

Well, the advice that will always hold true for me, no matter if I'm six or ninety, is don't take myself so seriously.

And I feel my sister on the sidelines with her sign that reads, "Let Go." Learn to let go.

What if I did show up to a meeting and didn't try to drive the outcome? What if I learned to listen?

Now my sister switches signs. The new one says, "Letting Go Is Not Giving Up."

Sisters

"Beside a well, one does not thirst. Beside a sister, one does not despair." - Chinese proverb

This has for a long time, ever since I discovered the quote, summed up for me the power my sister has in my life. Annie senses my moods, delicately and swiftly confronts me with them, and gently allows me to be honest with myself without losing face. Today I was feeling sorry for myself, and Annie made me feel better. How does she do it?