Dear Daughter

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Anais Nin

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.

The Cherry Tree

The man has decided to cut down the cherry tree…. By himself. He grabbed a pair of goggles. Yes, goggles, the kind one would use in a swimming pool and bustled his way out of the chipped white backdoor. Armed with a saw under his armpit, his goggles on the other, he marched up to the tree. Chest lifted as if he was ready for battle, and he is. His tilted head examines the cherry tree’s long tilted trunk, and its wispy vein-like branches.  I tilted my head too as I watched him, hoping that he did not know that the thick brick walls of my kitchen serve as a veil to my curiosity about my neighbor. What an odd man he is, I thought. What an odd thing to do on a gloomy Thursday afternoon.

His name is Paul, and I watched as Paul attempted to hack away at his cherry tree. I could not imagine why anyone would want to chop down the only beautiful thing in the exterior of his dilapidated house. It was the one of the few things that gave me joy in the spring and summer months when I looked out my window. The cherry tree and its beautiful pastel pink and white blooming flowers, its hopeful branches extended and stretched outward, like a mother’s open arms at her daughters return home.

And there Paul went, climbing up the leaning ladder against the tree to inflict damage on the first chosen branch of the beautiful cherry tree. The sharp jagged metal tooth touches the helpless bark, and I cringed at the noise as he started to saw away. I looked back down at the book I had been attempting to read, and cringed again as a few moments passed, when I heard a definitive crack followed by a singular thump. I touched my own arm and imagined them as branches sprouting cherry blossoms. I look down at my fingernails that, in my mind, are becoming flower buds. I look down on the lines on my palm to the little blue veins on my wrist that are turning into little twigs and branches. My mind saw my forearm as a strong thick branch, and my feet felt heavy like formidable and solid tree trunks…..

I thought back on the nights when I felt alone, and in the quiet silence of midnight, I’d stare out the window at the lonely beautiful tree standing by itself in an unkempt backyard, next to an even more unkempt house. Well, if the cherry tree can stand beautifully on its own. Then so can I, I’d used to tell myself.

Goodbye Cherry Tree, I whispered to myself, You will be gone a few days from now. Your carcass violated. Bits of your previous state bunched up and tied together with pieces of yarn alongside the edge the sidewalk. No one else will notice or care. One day, I will even forget you, and your beautiful flowers, and your resolute solitude. The day will come when I will hold a piece of paper and forget this was once the cherry tree I loved. And like Paul, easily dispose of you, insignificant little object on my desk that you have become. But with every fibre of my being, I hope not… because I will never be like Paul. And I will never ever be afraid to feel.

I am PMS-ing and holding a gun…. What were you saying again?

I think it is funny, how I can go from one extreme to the other….So here is what I drew in the span of a few days… I went from fury and rage to melancholic quiet to blasting Diana Ross in my room…

Canadiana!

Sleazeball?….. I think so!

Remind me never to do online dating... AGAIN

Tags: Comic, guys are gross, online dating, second cup, sleaze ball, toronto