Faerie Tent

I have always thought I’d die by falling. Falling from a high cliff, or maybe, a mountain. But, a cliff is romantic, mythical. The Cliffs of Moher, Ireland. Many years ago, I walked those cliffs. Near the edge. A backpack full of Chapstick and a little money, not much else. Nothing to see but green and sea, the occasional cow. I got quite close to the edge, the moment the rain began to come down in torrents, the ground beneath me sliding, pushing me towards the edge. Often, I fall in dreaming. Wake up to wipe moisture from my forehead, clenching my fists to bring myself into present, to warm bed.

Lying on the air mattress in the bright, blue tent, the screen windows opened towards the thick of giant trees and blue sky, Aimee Mann singing Stupid Thing into my faerie ears, the psychedelics rearranging the mystery into moving parts of nature's tapestry. I’m thinking, you should get up, go out, explore the mountain, make the best of moment. I got up, got back down. Restlessness. Challenging myself to be still. Be fine with stillness. Being with stillness isn’t my thing. I’m a mover. Nomad. Moving from place to place, person to person, experience to experience, searching for the same feeling I got, when in 1996, I took LSD for the first time, on the beach of Ocean City, New Jersey with two high school friends and a straight boy named John, whom I barely knew.

It’s funny how we can have one moment, one pivotal moment, we are consistently trying to re-realize whether we know it or not. The first kiss. The first penetration. The first time we rolled our balls off at a club party with a DJ we thought was God. Everything after lives as second best to the first. The first boyfriend. He made me so angry, making me really feel, something, if that something was the shifting of plates deep within the earth that drove me to near death. God, feeling feels good. A pill down the throat brings up what shit lied inaccessible in the gut. I used to cry at commercials about puppies and fabric softener, but even those do not affect no longer. I feel, but not in the same key. Soprano turned to contralto in my thirties and now everything is Carmen when you want La Traviata.

There’s something to be said about the regulated mind. It’s calming. The mind needs vacation. So, she takes it and puts you on the do not call list. Not every day can be the drowning in booze and emotions, ordering cigarettes from Postmates because you’re too fucking drunk and anxious to leave your apartment.

I know people that died in their forties, fifties, sixties, running every day to the last on an empty gas tank.

The big, blue tent, enough to hold me. Sitting on top of a mountain, the mountain, a nearby ravine, where you dig holes and bury your shit into shallow ground. Voices of entertainment make noise as they pass, but you can choose whether to engage. You’re an adult. Their entertainment is not yours without asking. 

I see specialness. Little moments of this thing that younger people possess, an unbearable lightness of no fear, the no fear you wish you had and sometimes want to go back in time to say, hey fear, I don’t see you but I do and choose not to engage. I’m attracted to that. I didn’t grow up in that. I don’t regret not growing up in that luxurious openness, the queering space, because I needed my thing to make me into what I am. I’m still learning. I’m curious. I want to do good things. Secretly, I give the last of my bank account to support those who need it. I stopped telling people about my good deeds years ago. If they aren’t silent, they aren’t good deeds, they’re ego. Now they're ago. Damn.

Feet carry me from my tent hive, remerge fruitful to find faeries amongst foliage, getting what they need from Mother. Mother is wet ground, azure, floral, sacred chemical distractions that make wings to fast movement, spanning myth and reality. You touch. Smell. Mouth feel. Mouthfeel.

I love so hard, I censor myself.

Today, in fairyland, I make a new death pact. I see clearly. My body on a raft made of refused wood, raw edges, rope and neoprene harnesses, sent down the river, not the river I've sent many people down in the Great Before. The faeries make bows and arrows from faggot bundles, treating tips with bourbon and gauze, fishing out plastic lighters from Rite-Aid, alighting the tips of macrame arrows. Good stance is required for the Last Positioning, the Great Last Momentum, aim high towards the rolling river, pull back the string and shoot. Let go. They strike still flesh, and even though I’m dead, I feel their entry. Burns, but only because I float not too far above, empathetic to the experience.

The river runs. Many arrows miss the mark. The arrows are laughing all the way to the finish line. Only takes a couple to light the booze and privilege which walked many years through my veins. I float up, giving one last look at the shoreline, the people who brought me joy, who, some, met me in the second half of a life. And I give them a slow clap, an upturned nose and side glance, waving a wave that says, I’ll be back bitch, but you won’t know me because you won’t know the child I’ll be, to grow up, to do it again. But every lifetime, I become more aware. And we’ll meet again.