Memoir

Fields of Dreaming Bodies
A memoir by Marialexa Kavanaugh

It’s for you. You ravishing Santa Fe teenagers that gripped my heart in your hands and massaged it. It’s all for you. The DNA of this gift is manufactured out of soul, even though its blood, flesh and guts are in the form of writing. It’s a sonnet for my slaughtered confidence, a romantic poem for the city that was my infatuated lover. This gift is the structure I pieced together with the bones of the past. This is memory, love and death hailing down from the tips of my fingers.
I never meant to lose the game. I never meant to see my pieces splinter and fracture to nothing. I never meant to lose not only the game, but my reason for playing it. I never wanted to feel the knuckles of defeat socking me where I felt the most confident. Above all, it was never my desire to abandon everything that erected the memorial to individuality and light that I was back home, I only meant to survive.
It’s snowing today. In Santa Fe the air would still be clogged with the fresh cologne stench of autumn, so different than where I abide now. Santa Fe is astoundingly gorgeous at this time of year, and I miss it now while I’m packaged in thick layers to shield me against the brutality of rocky mountain winters. In Santa Fe the sunsets would be like supermodels for the cat walks of the heavens. The earth would still be dry as a heartless person’s cheek. In Santa Fe the teens will be like acne erupting across the plaza. In Santa Fe a thin girl with spouts of chestnut hair will be contracting over a pillow, her liquefied soul bubbling out of her tear ducts because adolescence will persecute the emotional, and she can’t help feeling week, especially when her dearest friend was tugged out of her life.
Homesickness is cancerous. It starts as a hideous welt and is nourished by animosity and tears. Then the fertile lump inflates ‘till it governs your soul. It refuses to yield until you bow your head down and capitulate. Then it simply slurps the enthusiasm out of you, morphing you into a carcass. I have been the prey of this emotionally ravenous disease.
Now I look out the window into the snow and all I can do is give everything that kept my flames licking and blazing back to all of you. “You love to write so much Mimi. Write us a song.” My lovely Kailani would ask me every time I showed her one of my poems.
“Ha! I’d love to actually! It might suck miserably but it will have meaning and if I get hit by a train tomorrow you’ll have some way of remembering me.” I replied happily.
“Yeah! And I’ll compose it for you, and train or no train we’ll have like, all this sentimental poetry and music about the days when we were young!” Said Kailani, always the enthusiastic musician.
“God am I going to miss these days of just being a kid and innocent and fun and not giving a damn.” I murmured regretfully. “High school awaits.”
“Worry about high school later darlin’. We have songs to write and green chilli burritos to eat!” Kailani always played the optimist when her friends needed it. This is as close as I’ve got to a song for you guys. But it has as much soul and stamina as and honey-soaked lyrics would. And it was the magician that any song would be, for it inspired me to dance.
I was the dancer, we were the teenagers. We got stoned off the mutual pissed off sensation that mashed up our brain. We used hostility as drugs. We towered over anybody who dare inflict suffering on to our pride, we became tyrants of authority. Santa Fe teen culture, however, is so much more than the hallucinating urge to demolish. Our story is about how you hibernate with your anger and with your friends. It’s about the fumes that radiate off of risk-taking, and the sanctuary we all huddled in because we needed to raise an army against any dominant force. But most of all, it’s about love, baby, love.
Downtown Santa Fe is like a sauna where the only scent snuggled into your nostrils is this delicious and flavorful concoction of cigarette smoke and chili. The girls smell like vanilla and the boys smell like a decomposing childhood. We were bad and we were brilliant. We screwed up and neglected the pollution we inspired. This is because we see beauty in graffiti and dirt. We see hope writhing in the greasy sadness of tears. We conjure up these fascinating alcohols of the strongest love and hate tousled together.
Perhaps the magic was purely an illusion, the spell binding concoction was merely lying in tiny throngs of Cathedral Park. To tell the truth, despite our hurricane-struck hair and outrageous clothing, I think we summoned the magic. It was the squealing, caterwauling teenagers of Santa Fe that stirred up its alluring potion of love and hate. We were the wizards. It’s hilarious to think that a bunch of chicken fajita-polluted teens could be so divine and dominant, but it’s the way things are.
During the school year, downtown was our sensual, irresistible lover. The passionate affairs took place at Cathedral, Ecco (the mouth wateringly delicious gelato parlor), or any of the hidden wrinkles of space at the plaza where we all unzipped our dogmatic demeanors and let our inner beasts loose. During the summer, we were the political and social authorities of downtown. All year round, the teens of Santa Fe had some sort of flamboyant friendship with our city. We whispered in its ear both vile and beautiful things. Now, alone in the mountains, I yearn for that tender sisterhood I shared with home.
One of the most enthralling yet anesthetizing days was when an emotional heap of us went to prowl and unearth our territory: the plaza. It was Montana, a candid and sincere comrade I’ve doted on since the days since we still thought barbies were the authorities of the universe and all we wanted from life was a smooch, a blessing from Mama. Kendall, an electric and resolute comedian, yet loyal sister and buddy never missed out on an opportunity to plunge her flag into the plaza soil, marking her land. Alec, a concentrated and cool preppy, often with a envelope of girls flocking femininely about him also tagged along just for the sanity of socializing with chicks who wouldn’t salivate adoringly all over him and coo mercilessly.
I felt privileged to b with Alec, for he was such an alluring alpha male among his worshipping throng of preppy converts. Yet I didn’t see in him the kind of qualities I thirst for in guys, and treasured and polished our friendship above any guy-to-girl tension or inert electricity. The four of us spent an entire day languidly slouching and swaggering about the convoluted masterpiece we call home. We were adrenalized by the temporary buzz of a Starbucks frappuccino, and currently immersing our awkwardly adolescent bodies in the luscious swords and blades of Cathedral Park grass. We were enjoying the brands of conversations estimated important in the claustrophobic niche between childhood and the stress and deadline stuffed days of growing up.
“Ah! Mark said he thinks my mom is a babe! God what a creeper.”Montana exclaimed in a successful attempt to both intrigue and disgust us.
“ Mark is a child-molester, scary man thing. He looks like he’s 110 instead of 14! He has a friggin mustache. What fourteen-year-old who is hormonally stable has a mustache.” I contributed to our grimy feast of gossip.
“Ha! I wonder what the earliest age for a human being to grow a mustache was! I mean, can you like, pop out of the womb all hairy and hormonal. Jesus Christ what an ugly little fellow that baby would be.” Kendall said.
“Shit! Kendall what the hell goes on in that brain of yours.” Alec said while shaking his head in wonder.
“Mark’s baby! Mustache baby would be Mark’s baby!” Montana squealed, flailing spastically on the ground.
“Come on Tana Mark is just a happy little fellow who doesn’t have the social graces to pick up a razor and shave!” I said. In that moment, in that shelter, petrified cluster of time, I was at bliss. Life was swimming and drowning and failing miserably at succeeding in weaseling their way out of this labyrinth that is humanity, but I was still and save and content with my head snuggled into Kendall’s abs. Squealing and whinnying and chirping about absolutely nothing, rambling about crap. Yet in those blunt, naked and exposed conversations about utter nothingness, my true colors radiated.
I don’t think I was ever as pleased with the way the world was revolving as I was while, downing Starbucks and gossiping relentlessly with my dearest friends. God do I miss you guys, I’m sure I always will. I miss the Fe and the little aesthetics that give it such a spunky swagger and style. Like the way that if you learned how to spit in gravity’s face and flew above Cathedral park, taking in an aerial view of it, all you would see is this massive field of dreamy bodies flopping over one another in a careless display of love. I miss the steroids-addicted mess that urbanization is, and while sitting in a glossy movie theater you know you are in the arteries and veins of suburban America. I miss food so spicy and temper- mental it’s as if it’s going through adolescence. I miss flavor and flamenco dancing and graffiti taking on a bullying and badass demeanor even though it’s only really gushy and profound poetry.
I miss the way perfection was taboo, and how if your life was entirely screwed up and in disarray you were labeled as an artist. What I’ve learned from these bruised months of homesickness, however, is that those merciless pangs of hollowness and loss are never your knight in shining armor. They never conjure up miracles to mend your torn soul, they just keep you lonely. Of course I will never stop missing you kids. But my story can’t be about the empty caves in my chest that you all used to fill. My story has to be about how I persevered. This little chunk of writing is like the golden gate bridge between you and I.
Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
On these pages are all my toxins, my guts and my blood. My intention is not to depress, just to get those pollutant gasses out of my system, and finally be able to have some form of documentation as to how much I care for you guys. How much I absolutely adore you. Year 14 of Marialexa Kavanaugh’s life was one of anguish, beauty, and hope. The hope that I would enter high school with all of you was my fuel, and I guzzled it down. I was a brilliant merit scholar with populous throngs of friends blowing me kisses every day, and a future any day- dreaming adolescent would lust after. Nostalgia snarled with my memories, I reminisce on possibly the most transforming year of my life. Fourteen. An age where the world and I butt heads and I ended up being the one to result concussed. An age where I tackled those dreams of mine and utterly consumed them. It was an age where love scared the crap out of me but I still fell for the earth’s creatures. It was the age where I garnered up everything in my embrace and then had to lose it again.
I never thought anything could kill me, but ripping myself apart from girls like my dearest Eva nearly did. I never knew that the last time Theo laughed at one of my jokes would scar me and pierce me forever. I wish I had known, because guys, if I had known how much this would end up hurting I would have written a thousand songs for each of you. I would have dictated the heavens to give me the gift of light, and I’d eject that light upon all of you.
I used to be so extraverted, people felt my energy like a tornado battering them. I used to be gilded and kind, open to love and the affection of the universe. I was Maddy’s life long link to childhood- the puzzle piece that completed our incredible jigsaw. I was Sarah’s only candle as she navigated her way through too many God forsaken tunnels. I was downtown Santa Fe’s duchess, and though I may not have had the crown squatting on my head I still had rank and reason for smiling at all who passed me. I remember all the I love you Mimi’s, and I know I held a place in the world. In your world.
Nowadays I’m a little less vibrant and a little more faded into the mirage of the crowd. I don’t appreciate the sunrise for its intoxicating beauty, and the sunset seems like a warrant for my execution. At night time the stars are masqueraded by a bridal veil of my longing and helplessly wishful thinking. It’s all just dark, dark, dark. You all used to be my torches, I fed off your light when stranded in gloomy tunnels.

After searching mercilessly for another torch and coming up with ash, I’ve had a baby epiphany. The mountains are lovely here and the air tastes like that of utopia. I accept that in Colorado, and will accept much more that traverse my path. It will bandage the battle scars from my hatred and ignorance. And hell, it might work darlings, it might work. But the epiphany elasticizes beyond acceptance of Colorado and where I am now. The thudding soul of the epiphany lies within the fact that despite my pacification with Colorado, I will never lose you guys. We all need our guiding lights, and I found mine in all of you.
But I have to show a little empathy for the girl who always gapes back at me when I look in the mirror now. She may not be gilded on every surface, but the melancholy has only made her more durable. That girl that used to whip out rows of straight As and blow kisses at humanity is still there. I thought I’d sucked the light out of her and buried her under mounds of dirt. But no, she is still alive. She comes alive in this proclamation of individuality. Marialexa comes alive in writing, in dancing, and above all, in the memories of all of you.
So I raise my glass and toast you. I let you know that with every bird chirp and glorious dawn, it is another day to come to the realization that I love you. I always knew that I would have a gorgeous parade of brides maids at my wedding, and they would consist of all of you. I thought my groom would be the boy that coated my summer in faith, laughter and tears of forgiveness. A fourteen-year-old’s dreams can conquer the universe, however, and my new arch rival Reality tells me that this certain boy is sending a world other than mine down to its knees with laughter.
I’ll never assassinate the sentimental adoration I had for him though, just like I’ll never stop caring for all of you. I may not call as often as I wish, or email every day. It’s hard to keep in touch when you feel like you’re in the midst of a blood-shedding battle with high school and youth. This is my way of tossing all those fractions of phone conversations and letters into one big cauldron of love, my undying love for home and the friends that made it so sparkly. During sleepovers we all used to strangle the cruelty of school and growing up, and due to my lack of social vitality I’ve had to look all those terrifying things straight in the eye. So without colorful pajamas, facials, and movie marathons, this is my way of slipping into the genuine Marialexa, who cares more about giving fruitful hugs than about the meaning of life.
To Marialexa, otherwise known as Mimi: this new, regretful me wants you back in my body, and I am not going to lose you, the true me who harbored and returned so many people’s affection. Yet I will sign the peace treaty with this new me in permanent ink. Accept, forgive, but never forget. To all of you: Keep going down town and flourishing, towering above your kingdom of freedom, art and love. I’m still with you, I will always be with you.