Stihdjia

I recently drove up to Ithaca to visit a gal I knew in high school. She is a prodigious talker. If there was a competition for talking like there is for hotdog eating - she would win, hands down. I arrived in Ithaca close to 11pm and she talked pretty much constantly until 4am.

The next morning she was waiting for me when I woke up. When I finally crawled out of the guest bedroom she unleashed all the things she had been wanting to say while I slept. Later, as I was leaving (she had a haircut to get to) she just couldn't stop herself. She talked faster the closer I got to the door. When her mom gave her the gabby hand signal (you know, thumb to four fingers like a crocodile mouth) she turned to me and said, "Sorry, I just hate it when my friends have to leave."

In some people this rampant talking might be annoying. But in Emily, my friend, it is simply charming. She may not have brevity but she sure makes up for it in gravity. Suffering, oppression, love, sex - there is no catty gossip. There are no blanket generalizations. She relays experiences and stories in copious detail as if to protest the stereotypical nature of language itself. In short - she most definitely calls it like she sees it. That is to say; precisely as she sees it.

In a my encounters with Emily over the past few weeks I have come to love her dearly. She is the kind of gal who would stand defenseless between you and a dragon saying "bring it on big boy." If you were, that is, to somehow find yourself face-to-face with a great dragon, as I was when I went to see her.

I have a couple other friends with this noble way about them, Liz, Danielle, my sister. They are brilliant, all of them, floating atop dragon fire with speech, while calmly restoring your sense of worth and peace with knowing glances and small hand squeezes.

I myself am a watcher, a thinker, a writer. I only unbridle my feelings in great moments of tragic passion. I dance like a madwoman alone in my living room. I belt out some knee slapping, twang banging country music in my car. I write the things in my blog I wish I could say aloud. I hide my deepest feelings in stanzas and iambs. I push my most visceral repugnances and sexual desires into canvases. And, well there is sex, though, that only comes along once in what seems, for me, a great while.

I guess you could say I am broken like a horse. I direct all my longing to run free and be myself into the most subjugated of possible avenues: running circles around a track with a crop to my backside and a little man on my back. But I do so love my wild friends with what Neko Case would call electric-wire-tongues.

Perhaps the most endearing thing about these friends of mine is that they have no idea how great they are. Could it be they think their honesty and righteousness a weakness? I do remember Emily talking herself into a few cauldrons back in our high school days.

For some reason these women look at me as if I am wonderful. This, I try to understand, but it takes a lot of conjecture and postulation. Perhaps they think me strong for being able to put all my emotions into a ball. But this isn't greatness. It is the only way I know how to survive when I fight the dragons alone, waiting with my sword, after years of preparation - waiting to find the one weakness I can exploit.

But really, sometimes, most times, I would rather just let it all out.