Telephone Line Through Time

some will strut and some will fret see this an hour on the stageothers will not but they'll sweat in their hopelessness in the ragewe're all the same the men of anger and the women of the pagethey published your diary and that's how i got to know youkey to the room of your own and a mind without endhere's a young girl on a kind of a telephone line through timethe voice at the other end comes like a long-lost friendso i know i'm alright my life will come my life will gostill i feel it's alright I just got a letter to my soulwhen my whole life is on the tip of my tongue empty pages for the no longer youngthe apathy of time laughs in my face you say each life has its place(from "Virgina Woolf" by Indigo Girls")On the cusp, in BeijingA few days ago I said "I've decided to spend the next few days making time to have a discourse with someone I used to be. I hope she and I can forgive each other." The process thus far has involved me sitting down and walking backward through time through my own eyes. Self portraits walking backwards from Boxing Day saturday back to 1998. I have the path collected, keep walking backwards, keep peering into what it was like to be her, be me, be Bridgett, be Brian, be Lady, be all and who I was. I recount my own holy names and sides of my own multi-faceted being. I open up the eyes and find slices of who I was, who I am reflected back.There is a reason that the snake is a symbol of eternity, of time and eternal life. I shed my skin, I still live. I slither into my own heart, a totally and wholly new being. And yet if I replace the axe head and replace the handle am I still the same axe that cut down the cherry tree?I have had so much bitterness towards her, towards me, towards who I was. Who I had to be after nights of knives in high school. I sit at her altar and remember the channels changing. I unwrap decisions in my own eyes. I remember how beautiful I was and how ugly I thought I was. You will not appreciate your beauty or your youth until it is gone the addage goes, and I count grey hairs and am grateful. I stare at my basque forehead, my irish eyebrows, my long line nose, my flip-top ears. I stare at the details of what was passed down from other generations, my pre-destined death as a young child echos out.When I was 7 or 8 my father's mother showed me a picture of me. But it wasn't me. It was her mother. Who died when she was 23. Who looked just like I did at 23. I was told by my grandmother that she was afraid I wouldn't live because I had her mother's face. And she was right, and yet she was wrong.Change skins, change faces. Side by side I compare 2001 and 2009. Same facial expression. Same cheeks. Wider eyebrows. Facial hair. Silly hats. In my mania I am the same. I am beyond gender, I am a cartoon. 2003 and 2009. Disappointment in partnership weighed side by side. Same eyes. Gods those eyes. Post it notes from purgatory. Silver has gone to gold, but I am still me. If I am me in my extremes, the rest is all details. Breasts, body hair, skin, sighs... its all details. I wasn't supposed to be Bridgett, I was supposed to be part time. And so what?So now I sit, and try to look at all she was, all I am. Try somehow to make sense of it all. How can I build a wake if I have not mourned, have not looked back. So I look back.