Delicious Ambiguity;

2011-05-11T06:11:00.000-07:00

I’m dreaming up free-falling into something deep,
but I’m clinging to the shred of five seconds
nothing but gravity has her hands on me.
Sometimes I feel like I’m getting over everything.
Sometimes I feel strong enough to put precisely my needs,
and others, I want to crawl inside a memory
of a version of myself who knew herself quite well.
Far before now. Or then.

It’s become clear to me that it doesn’t matter how where I go
because your eyes won’t look at me that way again
and that’s the home I look for in every place.
Look at all the space in the room where we once lived
when I was always trying to move-
You were on Saturday, and I, lost in the week, but
we were happy, darling.
I understand now all those things you saw in me
struggling to float to the surface.
You saw the disarray, but you heard my heart.
You felt the heat source when I was lost in the sunset
and it was enough. But I wasn’t, for me.
And only, for you, have I felt so… real.
So much more me than I could have dreamed up.
And I loved You.

You love someone else and it fills my heart to know,
but I can’t help but find that every fresh start leads back to you,
in this way or that.
We stopped colliding because I started hiding,
in the nooks and crannies of our universe,
which leaves us on the same street, in the same song,
a regret apart. Time and time again.

I realize now...

2010-11-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

that it’s not enough to have someone who hears you if they’re not listening.
that it’s not enough to feel understood if you cannot trust the person who understands.
that it’s not enough to have raging passion if there is no friendship.
that friends are the rarest and most special gift you can give to yourself, but everything must be harvested.
that all relationships take work, but none worth having should feel like work.
that when it starts getting really, really hard and you start feeling really, really far away from yourself, it’s not right.
that time doesn’t change people. It just makes you farther and harder to certain things. And closer and softer to others.
that people are innately selfish, but claiming your feelings doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you You.
that insecure people will betray you to preserve some idea they have about themselves, and that sometimes, just because you’re alone in something, doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
that sometimes no one wins. Sometimes things are just sad.
that a common spirit and ultimate values and an open mind are the greatest tools in the best romances of your life.
that a history with someone doesn’t justify not being taken care in the present. Though it is sad because you’ll never have the same history with any body else.
that today is mine. And yours. And we can make that everything.
that fearing being vulnerable is a waste of time. Everything delicious and real in life requires risk. Tell her you love her. Tell her you were wrong.
that what you do does not define you. Only weak people will judge you by which boxes you fit in. True loves will embrace your limitlessness. No walls.

Total waking up

2010-10-08T03:22:00.001-07:00

Autumn has slid her cool hands up my sides, leaving me with goosebumps. I take in how the leaves gather in dry gutters, anticipating the rain, while I walk through the damp grass. I lean my toes into dusty floorboards on the porch and look ahead- my room is aglow, beckoning. I slide my key into its lock and peer through my window tapestry to my bed, dimly lit by the corner lamp. I think I see you there curled up on the left side with your back away from me. I think I see the ripples of your spine. I think of tracing them with my fingertips and pressing our cold bodies together until we become warm.

You are not here. I know that as I open the door and see my comforters tangled into something much more lifeless. But I know before I open the door that you are not here. It is my hope that deceives me. It’s the truth that lets me down because it doesn’t. I don’t know why I hurt you.

I spend a lot of time in window panes. I spend a lot of time awake when the world is sleeping. I’ve seen 4 sunrises this week. I’ve taught myself Spanish, read Rumi’s works, and begun to read music. I’ve pulled all the photos from my walls, but yours. I think that if I think hard enough, you’ll know my thoughts. I think that if I cry hard enough, it may rain. And that if I play this song enough, you’ll hear it too.

I think every car that drives by is your car- and I watch the headlights scan my living room as they turn the street corner and disappear. I hope to hear the stopping of an engine. I hope to hear your highheels on my stoop. I hope to hear your body pressing against the door. I hope to know your arms around me. To feel your weight in my arms, and to put mine in yours, and truly hold one another, until all of this stops. Until all the drums in this big circle become one beat, one heartbeat that moves inside of me.

Seasons change as time changes and people change with that time and hard times can bring us from us and good times can bring us back, but all time is our time, and I feel this time. I think, sometimes, we believe our lives are hard, and then things shift, and we realize we were coasting all along. I think, sometimes, good people do bad things because they don’t believe they are strong enough to do the good thing. I think things are not always as they appear to be. Sometimes what makes sense is nothing sensical. Sometimes everybody loses in the name of something much weaker than the love it began with.

I know this is not simple. I know I have hurt you in ways I never dreamed I might. I know it will be hard to look in my eyes for a long time. I know you are silent, though you feel loud, because you love me. I know I am loud, though I feel silent, because I love you.

The irony is that this has become the total waking up I’ve been hoping for. Maybe it was looming ahead. Maybe it took losing the one thing I believed in. Maybe it was accountability. Or the lesson. Maybe it was this stillness and this silence I needed. I’d been running franticly for so long, I forgot why I started, and where I was going. Even this pain I’ve never felt before- of losing people I care about, and feeling betrayed by those I’d trusted and built life with… and of letting myself down… has woken me up. And pushed the blocks into something that exposes the path I’ll walk down now.

This isn’t about casualities. Or what was. And though this room of friends seems much smaller than it did, I feel like perhaps that’s how it should have been for a long time, now. Except for the missing one. I was the vacancy this year- and now, you are the one who is not here. I have miss for you.

I am coming home. I have nothing on my back and fire in my chest- there is no cover up; I am stunned by this feeling of feeling and I want to feel it all over me, even if it hurts. I may wait here for some time, for you, I know. I expect to feel cold and to go mad in moments and to feel sad for this place and to feel humbled by the possibilities. I’ve never been truly naked for you, before. I never let go and opened up. I know you think I only fight when the battle is over, but I don’t think this is a battle, and I hope this will never be over.

You know me, but I haven’t shown myself to you. I’d like to take your hands and press them to my cheeks and let you look into me. I’d like to take mine and trace your palms so you know I will not let go and I will not let you down. I have spent much of this time with you, chasing the tail of a kite, that was so high, I didn’t realize it wasn’t a kite at all- just a storm cloud blowing over. It was not real, but my hurt was, and my disarray was, and the way I confided in you and cried in you and laughed in you and loved you was real. I have felt, in many ways, like an echo of my former- something with the sound, but not the energy or awareness of the creator. I have that now. Like a root pulled from it’s source and pressed back again, like a skipping record set, life turning back toward the sun.

I will fight for you because you are good. I love you in ways I’ve never loved another human being. I believe you are my soulmate. I am not the dark, though I was in it. It’s still me, here, and I know that you know that. I can handle the slander. I can handle how the world around us will shift. I can handle feeling exposed. I can handle all of that, but to lose you.

Eternal sunshine

2010-08-14T15:53:00.000-07:00

The sunshine outside my window
deceived me today, when I woke
because it smelled like rain-
and I felt the weight dense air bears
before a clouds about to break-
we sat in that gray. For so long, love.

But it was today, I knew
would be the last day.
So I savored the small anxious moments
before I lost you
and you weren't mine any more.

It's black and white now;
I can't dispute our reason
and I won't be the one thing standing in your way
I won't tug your dress hem and look at you the way I do-
I sang you my heart song as you moved to the door
creaking over my soul's floorboards.
And I didn't stop with the click of the lock.

I held on as tightly as you held on to me.
Now it's time to leave.

I tried to take a shower to wash the ache from me
I stared at my ribs and saw the emptiness
my chest and watched my heart slide
down into my gut, where it's rested awhile.
I tried to get clean- and took in my nude body
and all I saw was you. Me and you.
I never felt alive until we made love.

That's the truth.
This goodbye tastes bad on my tongue
but I know I need to swallow it any way.
Because I'm hungry for change.
I'm scared of all I've yet to feel.
I'll Eternal Sunshine my mind to erase you
but I'll still find traces of you. In me.

Igloos of sugar cubes

2010-08-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

I'm acutely aware that it's time to demand more.
From everything. From a day. From what I fill that day with.
From you. From me.
I'm kind-of-sort-of calling this a scrap year.
Not in any way I'd take back; I learned. I did.
But I didn't grow in stride.
And I'm not walking in stride.
Most days I sit in this.
I haven't done a lot of that twentysomethingmumbojumbo
that gives a person a superficial reason
to believe they're successful.
And I certainly haven't found success in the real world.
(Wherever that is).
I just want to be proud of myself. Deep in there.
I want to know that when I say things like "myself,"
I know who that's referring to.
I want to live in a house of cadence, honesty,
integrity and deliciously lived hootinanny.
Not words. Not my house of cards.
Not in toothpicks or igloos of sugar cubes.
That break in weight. And fall in strain. And melt in heat.

AugustDitties

2010-08-11T23:27:00.001-07:00

The streetlight held the door open for me;

he knew I needed this tonight- to believe in the

grace of something figurative

like a gentleman with a light.

I suck in this stale cigarette and star-stained air and

I take his hand, though I know better.

I'm really alone, here.

We're racing the night,

into the depths of something unseen.

I'm not doing this because I believe,

I'm doing it to find something to believe in.

__________

It's below my surface because it sunk, not because it's rooted.

__________

Tired and creased,

I'm crinkled rice paper in an old Bible

with no religion, no scripture or praise

along the incision of the page

I sit in the blankness between no lines.

_________

There's so much poetry I want to write

in the late hours of the night

that I forget come morning time

so I sleep in (always)-

to preserve the limbo state

between feeling moved by something

and moving something.

I want to wake up in this-

not shake it awake every day.

I'm crazed, living in this paranoid place

where everything that rivets is so far away

and everything close is too delicate to touch

because I've melted it down so many times

that it's brittle in my clumsy, child's hands.

Mumford and Sons

2010-08-07T16:22:00.001-07:00

Roll away your stone I will roll away mine
Together we can see what we will find
Don't leave me alone at this time
For I am afraid of what I will discover inside

You told me that I wouldn't find a home
Beneath the fragile substance of my soul
And I have filled this void with things unreal
And all the while my character it steals

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think
Yet it dominates the things I see

It seems that all my bridges have been burned
But you say 'That's exactly how this grace thing works’
It's not the long walk home that will change this heart
But the welcome I receive with every start

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think
And yet it dominates the things I see

Stars hide your fires
For these here are my desires
And I won't give them up to you this time around
And so I will be found
With my stake stuck in the ground
Marking the territory of this newly impassioned soul

And you, you've gone too far this time
You have neither reason nor rhyme
With which to take this soul that is so rightfully mine

Mostly when she breathes

2010-07-19T03:16:00.000-07:00

Mostly when she breathes,
Her exhale melts candle's wax
down my bumpy wall,
filling the space like honey
in the pores of the oat nut bread
I ate in the sunrise
on the day we cried
and said goodbye.
The light outside
this room is turned off
but I feel the warmth
beneath my door frame
of a dull, flickering flame
untamed, bedside,
calling out to me-
b r e a t h e.
I remember what I've
remembered to forget
and my hand comes to my mouth,
holding in my thoughts
like a forbidden phrase
that wants out.
I remember these fingers
traced your outline
as I watched your eyes
change weather patterns
I remember understanding
"beautiful"
for the first time in a long time,
I feel this way.
Mostly when she breathes,
Mostly on my cheek.

White noise

2010-07-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

I'm clawing back these roles

like the black crayon scribbled

over your rainbow-

who's your picture of? Not what.

The wax is cluttering the space

beneath my fingernails

and I question- why there's no color here,

but the droning white of a living room

with nothing on the walls.

I can't teach you to hear the music

I do when my eyes flutter, awake

to drink in the day- and feel it all.

To feel is the guide from here to there

in this life- to live in the sound

and the guts and heartstrings

of your internal orchestra

and not in the white noise

of what you're made out to be.

You are not what you do, but who you are. You define your roles; your roles do not define you. If you live a life consistent with your feelings and gut, and stay honest with that moment-to-moment-to-moment, your life will be true to you- and unforced and uncomplicated. Only when you don't listen to that and you allow what you do to be bigger than who you are- you lose yourself. And only if you allow the way you think you should be to stifle the voice of who you actually are- you lose yourself. Learning to listen is the hardest part of life- learning to listen to yourself means facing the uglies, taking responsibility, and learning to be vulnerable, but it is the only way to turn the white noise, the dull buzz in the background of a life, into sound you can move to and believe in. And live in, fully.

Secret life

2010-07-07T01:46:00.000-07:00

It's the silence between us
that scares the shit out of me:
that fills the room
when your eyes close to the world
and mine grow wide,
and my breaths drip to my hipbones
as I strain not to move you.
This is the way I lay
and think too much
when you slip into dreams
and I, into the endless in-between, of
Wanting:
the beautiful things... I wish we were doing
the beautiful love... I want to be making
the beautiful words... I want to be exchanging.
I feel a hypnic jerk
of restrained, restless energy that keeps my legs twitching
as yours hold to me
begging me not to run, tonight.
"Not tonight, baby."
I fake contentment, because it feels good
to be this close to someone like you,
though in moments like now,
I feel like you don't know Me at all-
for this is when I like to dig
and be dug into.
In my mouth, I can only taste
the waste- of such a spark.
Can't we just run
and forget what must be done?
This is when I get real.
Instead, I feel really alone.
It's the secret life I live
while existing two inches from your face
that makes this hard,
because you're here, but so far away,
and it's simply not my place
to call you home.

Limbo O's

2010-07-06T02:42:00.000-07:00

I respond well to these moments and I don't know why.

There's some porn up on the background of my desktop. I'm not really watching it, but it's one of those moments where it's so inappropriate, it's right on. The bodies are moving in a surprisingly un-porn-like fashion- and this song on in the background makes me think of sunshine and flowers and long skirts riding the wave like sparkling pinwheels. It's so not innocent, but it is. It's so not PC, but it's perfect... like when you're in the middle of a city at 8:05 a.m. with your ipod in your ear-holes, and you're getting turned around because that street became this one, having your sides barrelled into by that one guy walking with such purpose... but you're listening to Beethoven and the gritty city becomes a ballet stage, deceptively delicate. So, the porn is on. I'm eating cold spaghetti. I feel distinctly my age, tonight. Sea of Bees is booming into the density of my walls and floor, the sound sticking to the sides and pulsating my arm hairs. "I don't need you. I don't need you, but I want you. I don't need you. I don't need you. But I want to."

How many people are lonely, tonight? I wonder.

I think I'm waiting to want something badly. To be desperate. To be hungry. To be consumed. To have nothing and everything make sense at the same time. To run, on fire, and have every molecule of air feeding my flame, burning in me, sending the smoke higher and higher. Isn't there an irony to waiting to be inspired.

I want better friends. But I want to be a better friend. I want better love. But I want to be a better lover.

I'm a shit listener. And a control freak. And a lot more gay than I thought. And a bit more discontent feeling alone than I thought. And slightly less decisive, and a lot more like the people I say I don't like.

But I quite like myself. I recognize that I'm not going to get where I want to be here. And here isn't a physical place or an emotional place or a mental place- it's holistic. Every part of this is a part of everything else. I am not happy here, and I'm happy that I can see that I'm not happy. Because now, I do something about it.

It's crazy to me how we do this to ourselves. How we put so much energy into keeping things exactly where they are, even if we're not sure that NOW is really a good thing for us- because we don't want to retrogress, and we're too afraid of what comes next. I think about 99% of my friendships post-high school graduation and how the energy I put into them exists to preserve something that's already run it's course. Just like the limbo I'm in in my romantic relationship- how we're both miserable, but even more miserable thinking about the risk involved in changing something drastically. Like the limbo I'm in with my life where I want to swallow it whole when I'm not hungry and I'm starting when my shelves are bare. Like I make it so.

The thing is, we get what we want to get. We create these realities. We create this movement. We speak through what we do and don't do.

How I lost my vision

2010-06-30T04:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you for your world
meeting mine for this spell in time
like a soft silk skirt sashays
by my hand in a crowded room,
setting my skin ablaze with goosebumps
sensationally, the white noise of the party
fades- and it's you and me.
I'll remember the collision,
rather, how I lost my vision
and gained appreciation for everything
beyond what's black and what's white
still, losing sight, of me
in way of ecstasy.

Orange peels

2010-06-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

Nothing else seems more real than the
moments that clung like fresh orange peel
under our fingernails- our citrus summer
filling everything sensual and non-sensical.
That scares me in a way that car crashes
and bike crashes and heart crashes have yet
to do, because nothing is true without you.

It's hard to believe you loved me once

in that sort kind of way

that sounds like a Berkeley stadium chanting

"I need you so much closer"

sizzling like a hot pan under coolcool water

waking me up like the strongest cup of coffee

smiling into the sharp, softness of the blue(st) day.

Because we're so far away from that now

and the maps we traced with eager fingertips

(that raced over one another's skin, too)

are tucked into journals and shoeboxes

and almost, maybe, in-betweens, one days

And our days are done

and the days that have since come,

are mine to claim- they just don't fit the same.

Complacent

2010-06-15T03:03:00.000-07:00

Do you ever find yourself completely aware that right now really counts for something?

We get so fucking complacent in our lives... especially in this age group. There's a validation to being young and free and uninhibited... and noncommital and inconsistent and fickle. The road is paved and we can sway from side to side and take respites or free-passes here and there, but overall, we are still on the same sort of journey as most others.

Real talk: Here's what it is. I pride myself on being an "old soul" and feeling very self-aware, yet I am terrified to move forward because I don't feel like my job here is done. There are so many little things I still want to get done before I can really progress without regret. I think I excuse my own complacency because I don't want to "conform" and I can write off the fact that I chose to travel instead of go the college-nine-to-five-post-grad route, but that's pretty empty. The reality is, I really don't know what I want. I don't feel the same pressure as everyone else to move so quickly through life and follow the rainbow to the picket fence and perfect family. I have goals, but I don't have a timeline. I just know that when I'm meant to move on, I will know it. It will happen for me because I will want it to happen for me.

I'm feeling a lot of things here, in this town, seemingly alone. A lot of what's happened these past few weeks makes me think that some elemental force is telling me to get out of dodge- because everyone else did, because every five steps I take here leads me to stitches or fines. Because I'm not happy. Because I want more. But I'm not ready to start over in a new place, as much as that seems like the easy fix-it. I quite like California. And my life here. It just needs some work. I don't think I recognized how much I enjoyed it until now. I'm just really lazy. I've been lazy for awhile. I'm not seizing life the way I want to. I haven't gotten what I wanted to get done done. I need to do that.

I'm at a fork- and it could be self-imposed, or influenced by the changes happening around me, or presented because my girlfriend is also at a fork and has more-or-less chosen her fate. My fork is to move or to stay. Move and start fresh. Stay and fix this.

I think I've gotten a wee bit lost these past few years. Right now, it's hard to deduce exactly why I feel that way. Whether it's the influence of what everyone else seems to be doing that makes me feel like I haven't fulfilled my necessary obligation to society. Whether it's my own disappointment in myself for not having my ends trimmed and tied tightly.

There's still something here that wasn't here before. When I got back from Europe, there was nothing that kept me in Folsom. I stayed because I didn't want to go to San Diego and I couldn't stay in Europe any more. Settling back into the ol' routine was pretty easy and has created a lot of opportunity for me, but I never really chose it; I just didn't choose anything else. There were a handful of months there, I could have gone anywhere and done well. But I replanted in the same soil. And now, something holds me here. And I will it to do so. I'm not ready to leave this behind. I'm trying to figure out why.

Or who.

Has manifested my sense of unfinished business... or impending regret... if I go.

I feel suddenly aware these days that all of this really counts. These hearts are real now. This shit is getting real. Life is hard. Life is happening. It's all happening. And it always has been. But I feel it tonight. In my stitches as they strain; I flex my hands. We can write off a lot because we're growing and this is a transitional time, but the reality is... we are 100% accountable for how we carry ourselves through every stage of life. And I'm not as proud and I'm not rising to the potential I know I could be.

I'm afraid of what I've lost. And I'm afraid of what I might lose in really coming into that knowledge.

It scares me to think of all that's already behind me. I'm almost 23 years old. Sure, that seems young. But that means childhood is gone. High school is gone. Awkward growing years and first kisses. For some, college is gone. For some, being free is gone. For some, they have willed themselves to become their second priority... after their own children, after their partner. I'm 22 and so much is behind me. Yes, so much is ahead of me, but I feel my years. And I'm not running with them like I know I could.

Watching the wheels -John Lennon

2010-06-15T00:24:00.001-07:00

People say I'm crazy doing what I'm doing,
Well they give me all kinds of warnings to save me from ruin,
When I say that I'm o.k. they look at me kind of strange,
Surely your not happy now you no longer play the game,

People say I'm lazy dreaming my life away,
Well they give me all kinds of advice designed to enlighten me,
When I tell that I'm doing Fine watching shadows on the wall,
Don't you miss the big time boy you're no longer on the ball?

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go,

People asking questions lost in confusion,
Well I tell them there's no problem,
Only solutions,
Well they shake their heads and they look at me as if I've lost my mind,
I tell them there's no hurry...
I'm just sitting here doing time,

I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round,
I really love to watch them roll,
No longer riding on the merry-go-round,
I just had to let it go.

Invalid

2010-06-14T00:31:00.000-07:00

Invalid, I am one;
Invalid, I am feeling so.

I came crashing down, again, in a not-so-deliberately violent fashion, like I seem to, though there are casualities all the same. Tragic and tame. Conscious and clumsy. Flying and frail. They told me they'd have to give me sutures as I bled on my hands and my chest and my limbs, clinging to my skin, feeling bruises swell, feeling my heart slow beneath my sundress. Things seem so easy and light sometimes and then they're not. I feel like God is trying to shake me awake. Lindsay, FEEL something. Must I make you bleed to make you care about anything?

I don't want to not feel things, but I'm becoming calloused. I feel like the natural flow of life is corrupted and barracaded; not a single trickle has squeezed by these fallen rocks onto my dry tongue. I am cracked and cracking. I can't help but think, "Man, shit is gettin' real." My body is broken. My heart is broken. Every attempt at a restart sends me instantly back to GO with less and less energy. I feel out of touch with my heart and my soul. This town is a ghost town because I feel like a ghost.

I'm trying to focus beyond now, when it starts to get good, but that terrifies me too. I'm not ready to move away from here. I'm not. I want to stay because I want my life. But my life isn't here, and it's nowhere. I am truly hurting in every facet of life. I wish I believed recovery was close, but I think this is something I sit with until I really break. And maybe, then, I see the light. Maybe when they cut these stiches out, I'll feel something real. Maybe love will be enough. Maybe I'll just know something besides this regret sagging in my soul.

Fast and far

2010-06-12T03:12:00.000-07:00

I need to get something out, but I don't know what. I don't think the thin pages of my journal could hold the weight of all these thoughts and all these feelings. God, Sufjan Stevens just came on my shuffle and I am so grateful because at least the air is a little lighter. The thing is, I'm not bad. I'm okay. But I'm lonely. And I haven't been lonely in years. 3 years. It scares me a little to think that I thought I was so independent, because I have been leaning on people a lot more than I believed.

Folsom has become a ghost town to me. My three rocks in this town are not here any more. The effect of their departures is starting to sink me, slightly. I find myself wandering... listlessly. I never thought I'd feel like I was getting an undesired fresh start, and I certainly didn't think it would be here, in Folsom, where things are always eerily comfortable and readily-available. I feel like someone pushed a giant RESET button on my life and suddenly, everything I've been working towards and building has plummeted into some unrecoverable abyss. Everything is blank. My home was never Folsom- it was my people. And my people are gone. And Folsom doesn't feel like an embrace any more.

The thing that worries me the most is I feel like this is life telling me that it's time for a fresh start, whether it's a convenient time for me or not. All the relationships which have structured my life, I have lost, at my fault, or the fault of the process of life just moving and turning, folding and unfolding. I am free of a lot of things- even freedom... in some parts. This is my chance for the New. I'm realizing, so strongly, that I don't want my fresh start to be here. I wanted it when I wanted it- the beginning of the next year, when everything was simple and comfortable and progressive and sensical. But life isn't a well-made bed; my sheets are a tangle.

So, Now, rather, begs the question. Lindsay, what do you REALLY want? With all this time and space, I'm hearing my own voice much louder and much more clearly. I'm more grateful for an ear. I'm more in touch, with everything. But I'm terrified of this, because, already, I have isolated myself and am becoming a hermit inside of myself. And my dreams are dreams alone. And the future I'm building up in my mind is not the one I've been scribbling in my journal- it's more gritty and risky, because I can't stay here, like this.

I'm lonely. I miss my best friends. I miss feeling embedded. I miss dreaming with people. I miss feeling at the tip of existance. I miss good hugs. Good talks. Good things. I am so blessed and have been so blessed. Suddenly, all the trivialities of the drama that has structured the last year, is humbled by the reality that the loss and heartbreak of losing pure, good friendships... is so much more than what I thought was important. I'd give most anything to be back on that beach that day. When things were light and nothing felt fleeting. I'm afraid I'll run. Fast and far.

Endless in-between

2010-06-09T00:41:00.001-07:00

Caught up in this
endless in-between
of hearts and heads
fears and regrets
where each step forward
leads two steps back
and each step back
brings me two steps
adjacent to the reality
I'm supposed to be in.

I'm dancing cheek-to-cheek
with this dream of you and me
but I've forgotten the steps
and I'm not hearing the music;
It scares me to find that
I've been stepping on your toes
all this time.

May this be right

2010-06-09T00:36:00.000-07:00

The tears came at a surprising place
at a surprising pace- as they flooded down
my cheeks, leaving streaks in my cover-up,
breaking me up into two distinct parts
of before now and after now.
Two faces, two lives, two hearts,
two streets, two pages, two dreams,
too many in-betweens.

I didn't cry when I said goodbye,
sunken beneath that Midwestern sky;
my heart was light, there was no fight
to be in that peaceful "until next time."
It stayed that way
until I got home- and saw the havoc
of the time before this time.
Paintings half-stroked, fires half-stoked,
music drifting over broken glass, piles of lists
kisses with fists.

This was this. That was that.
This seemed to be so much easier
when I lived in a world that wasn't mine.
How could this fit
in my life, to say goodbye, to you?
The truest truth of trues, my deep blue.
There's a heaviness to this losing you,
to not know what more to do,
to have traveled so far,
that I have to even choose.

Because you're my best friend
and so much more than I'd ever imagined.
There aren't words for the sensation of
letting you down,
or how it feels to know
I have to honor this,
and it has already broken my heart.
You've been the only thing
unfailingly true-
and it makes no sense why it's you
and me, here.

But I feel this.
May this be right. Because this will be hard.

Shit storm

2010-06-02T21:37:00.001-07:00

This is how it settles in, cold,

like snow fall, except it's a shit storm

and it's quietly subtle in that loud

and obnoxious way quiet can be,

reminding you of the empty spaces

in between.

I wanted it to be perfect

when I came home,

but it's empty and messy

and there are things missing

from where they used to be:

proof of what's gathered,

tossed aside

until now.

I'm the kind of removed,

where everything looks a tad

fucked up- dazed, disdained,

and everyone is doing it all wrong

and maybe I'm just a little sad

because I feel really alone.

And I miss you.

Tremble

2010-06-01T02:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just waiting for the storm to pass
here in this glass room where I see everything,
but can't touch it.
With cold sheets up to my cheeks,
I'm trying not to scream
when the walls tremble
and the sky whips and cries,
because this will be over soon-
the tempest of this transition-
and then it will be morning.

_______

If I just let it pass,
yes, the gutters will fill
and the wreckage will spill;
It will be a big old mess- I'm sure,
but at least, when I open my door,
I'll see it all and I can clean it up
rather than try to catch these drops
on my tongue one by one
as they fall. Missing me.

June 1st

2010-06-01T01:58:00.000-07:00

It had to be at least ten.5 years ago I set this date as the one that would change my life. I marked every calendar. I bought planners just so I could circle this day- as the day that would be the headstone for the rest. My changing of tides. My sail set.

Something about June speaks to me. June, the month of summer. Of sun. Of relentless adventure. Of freedom. I chose this day before all those other days racked up with their demands. I chose this day before I didn't have a choice. Looking at it now breaks my heart. I'm trying to see this as a beginning, but I'm really conscious of what's ending; the ironic part is every beginning is an ending and every ending is a beginning of sorts, but I'm way over technicalities right now. Right now, I am enveloped in a subtle sense of disappointment. This is the first day in years I have gone to bed because nothing else seemed appealing. Luckily, that didn't hold. But it scares me to not be excited when I wake up. To be living with this heaviness I can't seem to let down. I can't tell if this is situational or chronic.

But I watched two really great films tonight and I drank (shared) 3 bottles of wine with Carly and ate (didn't share) an entire pizza, and that was really great. I'm going to miss the hell out of that girl and these simple, effortless moments. I saw "The Blind Side" and "It's Complicated" which were both fantastic. I remember thinking, during both movies, how amazing it is when you give someone a chance and they end up being really, really good. I've been thinking all day about chances. And how you really know when you've given up. And when you've done too much. And when you haven't done enough. I want more. And I can't seem to live with that right now.

Beautiful bruise

2010-06-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

I love the way you smell wine corks
and your eyes widen and flutter.
I love the way you palm the glass
like holding a cherub face in your hands,
breathing in like your exhale
could put out one-thousand wildfires.
I love the way you hold it on your tongue
and let it melt between the buds
like toes into wet sand,
sinking beneath your heat.
I love the way your lips tint
as a beautiful bruise- the
deep purples and reds of a ripened fruit
I want to sink my teeth into.
I love the persistent sweetness
of your tongue as it meets mine-
bottles and bottles later,
I am drunk, by you.

From my journal on a cloudless day in May,

2010-05-31T01:09:00.000-07:00

I feel like I'm starting to see things more clearly, like my life is a giant Magic Eye poster and I finally unfocused on all the clutter and confusing patterns and am seeing the truer image. I feel a sense of lonely that is important for me to embrace because when I felt this space before, I just filled it with anything I could get my heart around. It gave me that temporary satisfaction- a bloat of sugar and preservatives, but nothing that stuck in my ribs and gave me energy to do what I burned to do. And all the good things that filled that space, too, became diluted- a drop of truetrueblue that drowned itself in a tub of colourless fluid that wasn't so fluid at all.

I'm longing already for a few... Torre. And Erica. My true soulmates. Trevor, at times, a healthier part of my past. Carly, in ways I've yet to know, but I know are coming. I miss these people, in the way I breathe, knowing I must keep them close to my heart and if I cannot, I must revive their impact on me and become a mirror of that in my life.

I'm excited for summer, though at times, it feels colourless too. I think I need to set markers ahead of myself- healthy and full- so I can become what I desire. I'm realizing truths about Allison and myself in this relationship that are scary, but revealing... they teach me what I deserve, and what I must become to not be in this place again.

This two week span of my life is the most intensive time period I've experienced since that upon my return from Europe- with my roadtrip, coming home, breaking up with Trevor, Trev and Katie moving. Now, having Tor and Carly leave, dealing with my DUI stuff and this break up with Allison, on top of being a workaholic and losing a great deal of freedom, I'm feeling a lot.

But there was a high point on Wednesday- a day of a lot of confrontation- when my Aussie friends came to visit me. It was amazing and unjustifiable by words to have them in my town, in my room, sharing my life with me. Being in their energy reminded me of who I am in my travels, in my element, the dreams I have on my horizons, the kind of people I want on those horizons with me, and what it's like to be in the company of those that share that fire. I keep thinking that I've lost mine, but really, it's just not mirrored in most of the people that fill my life. Most people can't even relate to a fragment of that experience that dominates my living. So much gets lost in translation, but those memories are not lost.

I feel solitude creeping in, but it's a kind of me-ness I'm welcoming. I'm astounded by how much I'm feeling. How in touch with my truths I'm feeling. How much my longing is bringing to surface feelings I've hidden from. How much I didn't see that was in front of me all along. It's coming in, like I knew it would, but I know this, I know this is good.

Wanderers this morning came by
Where did they go
Graceful in the morning light
To banner fair
To follow you softly
In the cold mountain air
Through the forest
Down to your grave
Where the birds wait
And the tall grasses wave
They do not
know you anymore
Dear shadow alive and well
How can the body die
You tell me everything
Anything true
-Fleet Foxes

Alone in something

2010-05-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

This is drawn out torture
like pulling the band-aid off
watching the skin turn white
and the hair follicles
strain under the adhesive.
It hurts; it's ugly.
The gash that is love
we're attempting to cover up
is in need of stitches,
a mending of things.
We tried, didn't we?
To stop- the bleeding,
from my heart,
from your head.
I've lost myself in this-
it's clearer to me now
that being alone in something
is better than being
lost with someone in nothing.

Ticket to you

2010-05-31T00:36:00.000-07:00

Forever and a day
is the time it will take
for me to walk away from you
until now, when this
distance speaks for itself,
crowding this space
suffocating each deep inhale
with truth of this all.

I'm tired and my bones
are heavy, cowering
to hold up my heart by
the strings woven
throughout promises with
no thought-made,
because you don't know
what weight your words bear.

Our languages are different
and lost on eachother,
our energies are combative,
our will is wary,
yet it's hard for me to imagine
being engulfed in anything else
because of the few moments
you've stolen my breath
and the whole scene we've
played in both our heads.

I'm holding onto this
for reasons I don't have
and I've never felt so alone
in a relationship
or undervalued or misunderstood
and it seems so simple that
I'd just leave this behind,
but I love you,
and I have a ticket to you;
I don't know how to be true to me
no matter what I do.

How do I exist
outside of this
when the thing that's filling me
is also killing me?

One moon

2010-05-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

And there it is,
this missing you is
coming on quick,
sitting upon me,
taking the breath
from my lungs.

It's hard to believe
sometimes that we're
under one moon,
on nights I feel
this way-
we are the same.

Maybe if I could
trace the curve
of your face
with my hand
you'd understand
how this pains me so.

Dark parts

2010-05-25T03:10:00.000-07:00

We attract, like mirrors
become what they are looking for
and at, in another-
a perpetuating reminder of
what is now
in front of you, at present.
You.

I think some people live in the dark and some people live in the light. This is an extreme measure of comparison for someone who believes most things in life fall on a gray spectrum. However, I genuinely believe some people prefer to live in the dark and some people prefer to live in the light- each type of person has sprinkles of humanness where they feel a pure sense of their yin to their yang, but feel it conditionally.

I was thinking about forming connections in the dark stages. About moments in my life where I have been lost or lonely and how I've looked to find my own mirror- without realizing it. I was looking for someone who could relate to my dark. Who felt the same sense of being lost, same sense of being alone- or the type of people who go through life never really knowing who they are- so they aren't aware enough to ask the questions to pull a person out of the darkparts.

And I'm thinking about the moment when you realize you've been living in dark and started relationships in the dark and how we wonder why they don't function as naturally as relationships in the light. Because someone like me cannot stay in the dark very long and it's where you live- and I'm beginning to see the black turn to gray, and I know the gray will soon turn to white. The flashing pillars of this deep tunnel have sun spots sneaking between their spaces and I know light is on the way. And I wonder what we look like in the light? Or if we can exist in the light?

If we attract what we mirror, must I leave you behind when this Now has ceased?

"Moths"

2010-05-25T02:58:00.001-07:00

These feet don't know this ground

and these knees don't know this weight

and the sun hits her tarmac.

Making her horizon dance

and it wobbles in the lack of wind

and the heat of new

And my eyes will be quick

and my feet will be fast

and I'll be paying attention soon

These ears don't know this sound

and this skin doesn't know this light

and the moths have all fallen away from their moon

And my eyes will be quick

and my feet will be fast

and I'll be paying attention soon.

These feet don't know this ground

and these knees don't know this weight.

-This is the Kit

Goodbyes

2010-05-25T02:42:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking of goodbye songs and it's sinking in, slowly, like a puddle to cloth, the spill is gone and the stain remains woven in small parts. You will be leaving here. And no matter how long I keep you on the phone, the time is still passing. And no matter how many songs I play to keep you on my mind, you will be leaving my life, for some while. And no matter how much I plan tomorrow and that distant day when we'll take on the world together, there's a big ol' inbetween without youandme.

My first breakdown was over Mexican, which is never a time to cry, but tears don't know any better- they just want to fall. Splash on table tops dusted with salt and strays. I looked at Carly and I knew this would be our last now. And isn't it always our last now? But we don't think about that, do we? Until we know it's dwindling down in numbers and we're more conscious of the time passing and the moments lasting. Why does it become so much more when it's near the end?

I was thinking for thirtysixhours now about lasttimes and firsttimes. Elizabethtown's scene rolls through my mind- last looks, a sihlouette fading into a crowd, a sly smile, the mystery, the infamy, the finality. I think about lasttimes, but not as much as I could, because I want to stay present, and not as much as I should, because I misplace the moment's weight, sometimes.

The truth is, you never know when it's the last time you'll make love with someone you care for. Because people can be taken from us and people can change. People can wake up and feel more or less. People can fight and people can leave. And that time becomes the last time. I think I remember our last time, but I'm not so sure my memory is coloring it in correctly, and that's the saddest part.

I don't know if this is our last time we'll look at each other this way. Or if this is the last time we'll cry over a bad movie. Or hysterically laugh and cheers to some epic drunk discovery. Or if this is the last song we'll sing together. Or the last drive we'll take that lasts longer than that perfect cd. How can we ever know what tomorrow holds? And if this change will be bigger than you and me?

All I know is I'm going to miss you. And I don't want us to get lost in the lasts. Let's be eternal.

Carly: You have been unfailing in your friendship to me. I've never felt more taken care of by a friend. More supported. Been offered more shoulders (or boobs, in your case) to cry on. Wisdom in the dull moments. A song in the exciting ones. I never knew what our friendship could be, until you followed through for me, and taught me and showed me how amazing we could be together. That roadtrip was a beautiful beginning- and I will never forget and I will never be ungrateful for the moments we've shared. I will miss you in ways I don't yet know- because they are silent and everpresent- like a lightbulb in my room, and I won't know it's brightness and the way I saw the world, until it clicks into dark- and I'll see it all. I love you all the way.

Torre: My best. You are my heart song. You are in the sky and in the rain. You are in a breath I take. And give back. You make me feel. You know everything I am and everything I feel already, but I want to say that I truly appreciate you and I will miss you with my whole heart til it bends. I hope we both grow and are renewed in finding ourselves in summer skin- and I hope that our selves come together come August and are better in that light- aglow. Every Peets cup, every wine mug, every-tall-grass-day, every rainy night... will be a little less full without you. I love you.

And goodbye to me too.

Because I change starting tomorrow. I change in the absense of the people whom I care deeply for and depend on. I change in the loss of my freedom in June. I change in the start of a season. I change in the end of another. I change because I will myself to do so, and to become better. Because I want and need to get back to myself. Because this whole ugly mess is a giant push for me to become the kind of person I've needed to be for longer than I want to admit. This is my full circle- this is me passing Go. My opportunity to implement everything I've forgotten this year. To take my first step into a healthier me. To embrace my faults and flaws and choose to embrace and move beyond them- so when I fly, I am home, no matter where I land. I believe in myself. And I believe in this.

Tall grass of my mind

2010-05-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

In the tall grass
of my mind
it is always Saturday,
and there is never work
to come
nor deadlines,
just empty pages
to be filled with
these flooding thoughts
laughter and sunshine
the rain is distant;
we can see it,
but we feel the rays of day
and this breeze
through the reeds
and nothing could be more
simple or perfect
than now.

Don't go.
Tomorrow is too soon.

My skyscraper

2010-05-19T03:42:00.000-07:00

Your legs spread apart,
your metal body, an arch.
The strong lines of your spine,
the elegance of your neck,
your bend, so crafted,
your presence, a peak of
existance, towering above
my little town of night lights;
You are a lighthouse-
calling me back to you;
You are my skyscraper:
my adrenaline rise on this high height.

This is the ice you ride upon
and in the cool, January nights
it grew thick, and held us up,
thick like the fog that drowns the sailor
thick like the fog of sweaty, sensual sex
and I trusted it's fragile strength and
built you up,
daring to climb your rungs.
But as summer rises, shining a light on

what hid in winter blankets,

I feel a crack here,

frozen water coming up for air.
Our foundation rocks
under this weight, this wait...
June is inevitable.

And each step I take throws this love
into one extreme or the other,
as our foundation sweats beneath this heat
and shifts in the winds,
teaching me that keeping it safe
means being stagnant and
holding on with my eyes closed tightly-
I must not move too swifty,
I must not climb too high,
I must not live in this love
too much, or too fully,
I must learn to swim as waters rise,
and I have to ask why it was you,
all this time, I stood, gaping at,
when our highs were only lows in disguise.

I've come to find my home
is my foundation
and the views are just as grand,
and not so dangerous.
My home leaves a light on

which burns past the storm.

This is the high I can hold on to
after the adrenaline has worn
and the sweat has dried
and the lighthouse has turned.
And I realize, I'm not sinking,
no, I'm not lost at all.

The care package

2010-05-18T00:09:00.000-07:00

Today, my love sent me a care package
full of things I already had
and I think she thought not of the contents
and more about the action-
the whole thing felt quite symbolic
because everything that fit into that envelope,
I had already given to myself
and it's always about the way things look to her
and not what lies beneath,
including Me.

She does love her lists and checkmarks
of characteristics-
don't you love the way this seems to the world?
the way it all sighs when we walk by?
our relationship has become that striking girl we've all known
walking poetry-
so intriguing, she must have a story to match it
beneath her wild mane and the hot coals of her gaze,
but there's nothing past it-
so deceptive, so disillusionary
we even fooled ourselves
because we appear so damn lovely,
it seems wrong for it to not be right.

Sometimes I feel like a Van Gogh on a wall
the dark depths of blue and the yellow
handled in hard strokes and delicate lines,
the pointilism of intention, a vision-
I want you to ask me of my colors,
why this swirling night sky?
why these brights lights? why Anything?
but you see a pretty picture
and breaking it down would be paint-by-numbers
and I am a masterpeice:
a great soundtrack in an okay movie.

It's about a call and not a conversation
It's about writing and not the inspiration
It's about a trip and not a journey
It's about a relationship and not love
Because how could you be happy
when I'm not?

I can't define a soul- you know it, or you don't
and if you don't know a full cup or happiness,
how can I explain anything?
these aren't just words lost,
it's a whole ancient language- of romantics
the soulful, the living, the raw
I am a geyser, entrenched, and bursting
reaching higher, higher, flooding this space
and you are a thimble, always filled up
(in a pool of me, my cup runneth empty)
by the littlest thing because of the way things seem
and not the way they are.

This all just breaks me
and I can't decide if it always has-
because none of this is a mystery
you've always thought of love as a choice
and I, as a rare gift
I've always thought of running free
and it hasn't been you, with me
It's always been my guts on the line
and yours in the wreckage, two steps too late
you don't get me,
and you haven't, and I've known that
from the first moment my heart hit the floor
and you moved for the door:
I think I'm scared of losing her
though I've always been lost from her.

Knowing this bears a weight:

storm clouds heavy on my shoulders

rain in my heart-

I'm running with lead sneakers far from this place

where we've freezeframed our hearts

and the pucker of this perfect kiss

because I'm intoxicated by the almosts and ifs of this

though I know my truth

and the panic that jolts my body

in thinking of moving forward this way

I rock here, slightly,

screaming the words of some one else's heart song

feeling me, living between what I want and need.

Last year, today

2010-05-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

Last year, today, I thought I was seconds from my inevitable death... on the back of a motorbike, clinging to Trevor, feeling spikes of broken glass and decayed cement splatter up on my calves. Barcelona's sun was hot on my back and the rolling green hillsides melted into the sea beneath our tires. We were chasing our four partners in crime (literally)- from all over the world, riding that high, shreiking into the skies, clinging tight to the moments we rounded those corners, flooding our eyes with mosaic rooftops and the movement of beautiful people- and I thought, today, that if I died, it would be okay, because I felt really, really alive. High. High. High.

The contrast from that high and this now seems devastating, but I'm thinking of those moments, and they remind me of what I'm capable of feeling and doing. Sometimes, I look back, and I feel let down by where I am in my life right now- but I'm reminded that these periods in life are necessary- to regroup, to grow, to look ahead, again.

Yesterday, I had a craving for Mel's Diner, for the first time since I worked there when I was 17, and sitting in those booths I once worked the graveyard shift serving, I was reminded of growth. In just 5 years, I have become someone entirely new... I think about how timid I was, how little I knew about myself, how I had no idea what I was going to accomplish and take on in the next half-decade of my life. And here I sit now, feeling reminiscent, but also excited, because I have grown so much. And I like who I am becoming. And I feel my growth from that trip through Europe every day, and all it does is make me hunger for my next adventure.

To purchase tomorrow:
1) Piano/Keyboard
2) New journal
3) Travel book on South America

Piano song

2010-05-16T19:52:00.000-07:00

You are my piano song
racing goosebumps up my arms

and your voice sings out

bellowing from a cello-
the walls of your insides,
the intensity of your core-
a gut, a strum, a string, a push,
these notes

that move me and press into

my keys, extracting melodies

that teach me how to breathe.

Good love

2010-05-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

I am tre scatterbrained and tre inspired, drinking my cinnamon-y cappuccino with two hands and watching the sun sink beyond the hills, looking a lot like this terrible three-part sunset photo set my parents had over our couch in the 80's- flamingo pink, sea foam green and baby blue. It's beautiful out though, in that summery-evening way where the air hangs lightly beneath the clouds and almost-moon, wisping over your face, and warming you.

I watched this couple cross the street holding hands. You could tell they'd been together for a long time, even though they looked about 20 years old a peice, with a baby strapped to their front and two dogs pulling ahead. I liked that they were holding hands- they they, subconsciously found the comfortable familiarity of the other's hands with all the weight of a day on their shoulders, that it was effortless and natural. I didn't even know them and I found myself feeling connected to the simplity of their love. I think about holding my hand up, and watching your hand press the window glass as we parted ways, in a way that said so much without saying a thing.

I spent all night on the phone, talking with Erica about love that beats. Love that comes on silently and strongly, in a most undeniable way. A love that breaks down the moments and freeze-frames you in your own life. That makes you conscious of every breath you take. The kind of love that wakes you up. And the way it feels to be so into someone that you can't help but hang on their every word, remember their little nuances, imbibing each detail, never taking for granted the beauty of that moment in a life that you share. It's good love, that way.

It wasn't that we talked about anything I wasn't aware of, but the way the words came out over that phone line reminded me of how the great things really are that simple. They just become a part of us. And we are changed in their light, for the better. And there's no thought about who we want to be for them; we are just... everything for that love. It's not complicated, or over-thought. It's just good. And you feel healthier than you've ever felt. And you feel closer to the things you believe in and the kind of person you are in your core. And your dreams, more attainable.

The pockets in my soy foam look molten. I'm awake, today. Exploding. Wanting to ride. Wanting to sing. Wanting to do everything in between. I have energy to do those things I have neglected to do.

Sometimes, I wonder how things get so fucked up. I feel like we can get into these places in our lives, where Now is excusable because of Then (whether that's the way we've carried ourselves in the past, or the kind of person we will be in the future). We give ourselves personal get-out-of-jail-free cards and write offs, and then we wake up- for me, 8 months later, and think, "Shit, this IS my life. This isn't a retaliation from my former, and this isn't a build up to my future- this is my present and this is what I'm owning, this is the life I'm signing my name beneath." And I have to ask myself- are you proud?

In my DUI class (which is not so horrible, by the way), we talked about a couple things that have stuck with me throughout the week:
1) Life as a series of destinations- how we excuse now over and over again, because of what comes next, and then, at the end, we look back and realize we weren't ever really happy, because we were always living for the thing we didn't have. And none of it was ever ours, and none of it ever really set us on fire.
2) The moment of epiphany- we decide we want to change our lives in a dynamic way when it becomes more uncomfortable for things to stay exactly as they are, than it would be to change everything.

They've both resonated. Just like Torre's true-blue that pierced through my mind for weeks and all twelve hours I paced my cell. I've become aware that any leap from now would've been running away, and for that reason, I'm glad that I'll be here this summer. I need to be a better person for myself, because that love I described above is what I aspire to. And I don't want to be living for the next destination. And I don't want to need to change everything to be happy. I want that happiness to be rooted within and for it to explode from me, so when I am out there, achieving those dreams, I will get everything I can out of it. And I can be everything I am for it.

I know what I need to do now. It's spelling itself out one letter at a time, but I can fill in the blanks. There's not a sense of urgency here, because I have a great deal of faith in the relationships I've built that hold me to a truer blue. And I have belief in the power of my solitude. And these words. And this sunshine. And this chance that I'm giving to myself.

Rambling man

2010-05-09T02:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I woke up at noon, after sleeping for a full 9 hours... oh man, was it sensational. I lazed around for a few hours, ate a plate of leftover contents from my fridge (little Chinese, Italian, Mexican combo), talked to my babyB about love and sex, and painted. Then, I rode my bicycle through the pools of sunshine over broken concrete, celebrating the most perfect May day. Nothing was particularly right about today, but it was a day in which I finally felt this shit lift. Blocking out my next three months is hard, but gives me a sense of peace. I will be living in Folsom, California this summer and I am going to make the most of it.

Something happened to me on that ride. Maybe it was the way the wind picked up during that particular lyric: "Let it always be known that I was who I am" or the fact that I walked into my new favorite coffeeshop and was greeted by bullshit talk and smiles or the way the rays felt on my back when I cowered over my journal and whispered my secrets into the pages. Everything is undecided right now, except where I'll be located physically; of the places I will travel in my mind and in my heart this summer, I have no idea.

I've come to believe there's a divine reason why it's me, here, this summer... and for why I will be here alone, for the most part as my closest counterparts will be exploring different parts of the world. I think I need to get back to me. I've always carried myself in this indubitably strong, fearless, raw way that I've lost in the havoc of the last year. That sense of intention and integrity has been misplaced and I am excited to find it again. Finding yourself again isn't some ten step progress, by any means, and I anticipate some peaks and valleys- but I'm happy to be back in the nature of my own humanness. To feel. To feel connected to my experiences, wholly.

When I was journaling today, I realized a few things: 1) That this will probably be my last summer here, and I think it's important that I really relish it. 2) That I haven't finished what I've set out to do in this town. I think living in the same place that doesn't challenge you can keep you below your potential- or maybe it's being uninspired by a place that keeps an individual from challenging themselves... despite what it is, there are goals here that I haven't accomplished, and I'm looking forward to taking them on.

Goals for my Folsom summer:

01) Cycle everywhere- everywhere. Everywhere.
02) Ride a century.
03) Train for a half marathon. Then, train for a full marathon. Run both.
04) Learn Spanish.
05) Take piano lessons.
06) Build a fixed gear bicycle.
07) Find myself again.
08) Read.
09) Lean on my friends. Reach out. Ask for help. Open up.
10) Buy a kayak.
11) Visit New York.
12) Visit Seattle and Portland.
13) Plan my backpacking trip through South America for January-March.
14) Paint.
15) Take more photographs.
16) Lollapolooza.
17) Take the train somewhere epic.
18) Write.
19) Hike Half-Dome at midnight, watch the sunrise.

The list will grow, I'm sure. I feel like this really terrible situation is going to encourage some needed changes in my life. I think I was getting ahead of myself. I think I was losing my reality in my dreams. The truth of it all is any experience is better when the Y-O-U you love is present in it.

I ended my night, after a shift at work, at Samuel Horne's with Tina D and some great new friends (all Folsom originals, as I call them) and enjoyed some genuine conversation, finding we're all going to be neighbys this summer. My final moment involved chest-bumping a professional fencer. Pretty awesome.

"Rambling Man" by Laura Marling shuffled on when I was journaling and riding today, and it felt so right. In a moment, I knew it was meant to be my summer song. The lyrics speak to me. They scream to me. Overcoming obstacles, not letting a bad situation or a weak moment define you. Staying true. Accepting faults and flaws. Moving forward. Diving into life. Loving. That's what I want my summer to be about.

Never let your memories be greater than your dreams.

Hearts on a line

2010-05-07T00:59:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, when I'm alone in my room,

I think I hear the distant beep of my cell phone

and I hope that it's you,

in these hours the whole town falls,

missing me.

Because I miss you.

Sometimes, I get caught up in

this unpredictable romance,

this poetry of it all-

both our hearts, on a single vein-

a clothesline between two trees,

rooted, yet free, riding the breeze.

Sometimes, when the earth is still

for just a moment,

it all makes sense- it comes on often,

in these in-between hours

when I faintly smell your amber

and find your sparkles in my sheets.

Sometimes, I realize the truth is

that I love you (for exactly who you are)

and I don't know how or why

it happened, but it happened

or what pull broke us and brought us

to us- but I love us-

(in our uncanny, sensual, lived ways)

And I love who I am with you.

Unshaven

2010-05-07T00:32:00.000-07:00

french music and a joint:
ain't it poetic?
to be me, in a plain white tee
and boy's boxer briefs-
somehow I feel sexy now
in this hazy room
stunk, with love made and
the wreaking of
todo lists undone
my unshaven legs
against the back of
an oversized arm chair
in my underwear
with my hair sweeping
in the wreckage,
that spilled at our feet
the night you had to leave,
and I'm screaming
the words
to a song I don't understand,
but feel
because, she's singing
to me, and I believe her
inhaleexhale.

The summer I wanted

2010-05-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

is a lot less like the one I will have than I can swallow, but I have faith that I'm going to be okay. There's no burst of optimism and there's no silver lining here- just reality- and the reality is that life is what you make out of it.

I wanted to disappear into flower stalls and tables, off kiltered and covered in wine drenched fruit, somewhere down Las Ramblas, in Barcelona, where the Meditterranean rises high and the nights never end early. I wanted to be a part of a city that pulsed with diversity and inspiration. I wanted to become an artist in that city- riding a vespa over cobblestone and mosaics, wine bottle in my satchel, journal and camera to my chest. I wanted to grow.

And that didn't work out.

So, I wanted to chase a dream, the tail of a kite to windy plains. I wanted to run through open cornfeilds and see the brightest stars. I wanted my pillows to smell of woodsmoke and bike grease to always coat the inside of my calves. I wanted nights of cheap beer and porch swings and the kind of conversation that is native to the midwest, in the best kind of way. I wanted to be in the center of a new world- of motorcycle rallies, and mountain ranges, fresh air, open space, different politics, Lollapolooza.

And that didn't work out.

Getting a DUI changed everything. And for someone like me, who not only fears ties, but feels suffocated and depressed by them, this is scary. But I had my breakdown on the highway today, after signing a check with my savings account written in the blank, and coming to terms with the fact that I won't be able to operate a vehicle besides a bicycle for a long time. It's scary. I cried. I cried at work too, in a pint of beer. But I'm moving forward now. I'm going to have a summer here.

Summer here isn't going to be perfect. My two best friends are leaving this little paper town. I'm going to exist for work- my relationships will be strained. I will want to run with the sun, and won't be able to get too far. But it will be humbling. I believe there must be a reason why it's me, here, alone, this summer. There is something to be learned here. Something to be had. Felt. Here. Even if it just is a glass bowl over a freebird, I will fly so far and so high when my term is lifted. If won't be the summer I wanted (not even close), but it will be mine.

I think, when life shits on us, or when we do shitty things to ourselves, it's easy to get caught up in feeling sad and sorry and listless and hopeless... but we have to remember that it goes on. That time, though valuable, is a continuum, and this will pass. We all become something new every day. I will grow, and I will be better.

Bad breath

2010-05-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

The anonymous "they" say, when you're not with the one you love, you only remember the good things. You glorify that. You forget bad breath and the way you felt that one time they really let you down. Maybe it's not healthy, but when I'm in relationships, I remind myself of this- and think, what would I miss the most? So I don't lose the appreciation for it. There are always those sneakers, though, the ones that get by you- like that one smile, or the morning you got pancakes, the day you laughed from your gut... like the bad breath you didn't think you'd miss, but you do, despite rationality.

And there are people you don't always get quite right. Maybe they were so relatable, that the lack of effort made you not appreciate the strength of connection. Maybe they were so available, you didn't learn to appreciate their presense. Maybe they were so strong, they could take a hard hit, but they shouldn't have ever had to. I think about people like this, because they are the rare gems in a life. I think about how wrong I always was, and even now, how wrong I am. How I will always be humbled by the love that wasn't so damn hard, because being hard doesn't make something meaningful. Humbled by the love that held me, when I was afraid, and my pride's dam leaked. That understood when no one would. That held on. That held me to something better, by model.

I don't think everyone wants a challenge. I think some people are content to just be loved. Maybe they don't want to think so much- maybe they just want the life that looks like everybody else's. I'm not them.

Growing up

2010-05-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

Growing up makes everything bigger. I always thought it was strange, perhaps ironic would be a better word, that the majority of a child's life, they are fighting to be bigger than life- grown up, and most of an adult's life is spent trying to get back to the uncomplicated core of love, nature, wonderment, and what's kindred, free and simple. The losses get bigger when you grow up. A tree fort becomes a double-mortgage, a teddy bear gets traded out for love that beats. I try to be especially gentle with the latter. The heart part. We can get lost, though, in that bigness. We can become so small we slip in the spaces between shoe laces and we lose our step.

Tonight, I don't want to grow up any more. I don't want to go to bed. I don't want work to await me in the morning. And the next lifetime after tomorrow morning. I don't want a DUI. I don't want my life to change for the worse when I'm supposed to be becoming better. I don't want to hurt any one's feelings. I don't want to lose great friends. I don't want to feel like I'm not present in my life. I'm tired of staging relationships. I'm tired of not feeling.

I want to run away and not owe anyone anything- not even an explanation. I want to set everyone free of me. I want good music and tall grass and red, ripe strawberries and skies that go on forever and are the truest bluest skies. No more compromise. Just my big eyes on that big road. Ahead, always ahead. Never back.

The things I always wanted, I am not contented by. The losses I feel are penetrating me. The helplessness I feel is paralyzing. I am lonely and surrounded. I am hungry and filled up, but not in my cup. I wonder if this is the fork, I'm facing. Where I wander and I commit to something that's not now nor this. I wonder if this is the point that I accept my terms and surrender to them, and start from the first square, toss my pebble and lunge forward. I wonder if this is where I grow up or grow out. I wonder if they are mutually exclusive. I wonder if this is the point I lose them both. Or when I fight- against what everyone else says, because I love her. I wonder if I'll feel good enough for anything at all.

It's hard to lead when you're anchored to something you're not proud of. It's hard to be everything when you feel nothing... except one thing. And the only thing that makes you feel is the one thing you cannot have.

Yours
I think I'm in love with
the sheer poetry of
you and me
because the sky is bluer
and words are truer, and
I am newer;
changed in your eyes.
Forgive me mine,
and I'll be yours.

Dandelion
I'm trapped in a dandelion
of attempted wishes
and cotton-dreams
riding the breeze
and landing conveniently
in my soy white mocha,
reminding me that nothing
so perfect is ever permanent,
and of that day,
in the flurry,
when they clung to your hair
and thumbed through our pages.
I'm imagining her perfect lips
part, hot breath streaming
the almost-dreaming
of spring-
a bright flower blooms,
a sun shines,
the water rises,
in her eyes- summertime.
And I'm falling.
And missing winter, when
things seemed simpler,
over hot cappuccinos
with water in my boots.
I knew you dreamed us
once- and I wonder,
do you still?

Lost in a dandelion

2010-04-30T21:36:00.000-07:00

On Saturday,
the sky is a true bathroom blue
of truth
at this coffeeshop on a
restless corner
a river away from
where I realized I loved you
once. A million times.
Loved you.
I see you breaking
and I'm breaking too,
though I'm not supposed to
but whether this makes sense
my heart is yours
and I'm lost in this dream
that's so simple, it's hard
and so hard, it's simple
to love you.
As the dandelion fibers dance
around us,
and the music tingles our lobes.
This is love,
and we know it's not perfect,
but it's right.
I hope I can be good enough
for it, one day.

A hard week

2010-04-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a hard week to say the least- and a bottle of wine and a good mixed cd deep, I am finally able to scrape the surface of what I'm feeling and so desperately need to get out. I am unhappy, harnessed by these thoughts and feelings racing and eating away inside of me.

On Sunday, a beautiful baby-blue day, after laying in the sun for hours, I decided to drive to Sacramento and wander. I had a day reminiscent of my days in Europe- aimlessly questing, following the crowd and the noise. I made new friends. I tried new things. Journaled in a coffeeshop. Had a speed-card-off with some strangers. Played frisbee in an abandoned lot with a whole bar of people. Then, I got a DUI. I'm sure I'll go into the details of my DUI in a later blog, which I hope to attack with a level of lightness and a comical quality that I haven't reached yet.

It just amazes me, how much you can be having a perfect, euphoric moment, and have everything change in a moment. This is bigger than my misfortune. I'm thinking about the things that curdle milk and corrupt good love and hurt good people. I'm thinking about how things change so quickly. How the things you know, you only know for a moment, unless you learn to know them again. I'm thinking about surprise and I'm thinking about the unfairness of life. I'm thinking about the people you know like the freckles on your face or your favorite ice cream flavor. And how you can lose them. And how, sometimes, the people you think you know one way, become something entirely new in a moment. If you open your mind. And your heart.

I was in jail for 12 hours. I met the people you don't see in Folsom. The kind of people living for nothing. The kind of people with passion for nothing. I spooned drug dealers, arsonists and murderers. I ranted into the hollow abyss of a prison cell, coated with feces and inmates discarded cloathing. I watched people break, slowly, and heard the rip of chains, and smelled vomit and dying hope. I've never been so heavy in my whole life. I went mad. Absolutely mad.

I'd spent the whole day journaling about how I felt burdened by the many options and opportunities I faced in being a free soul, feeling untied and unbridled. My heart was confused and torn. I was afraid. I was hesitant. And then, I felt real sorrow. I felt real dispair. I felt, in a moment, like whatever it was that I had ever worried about meant nothing, because I knew a deeper pain. It was humbling, to feel like what you exist for is silly in the great big world of life. To feel like an animal in a cage. To feel inhuman and unvalued.

It was the most eye-opening moment in a life time to feel what I felt that night. I hurt now. I carry with me this deep sense of disappointment and worthlessness. I feel like I am not good enough for good love. I feel sad. And lost. And unable to touch my dreams I've worked so hard for. I never thought it would be me here.

And all I wanted was to curl into the one person I couldn't have. True tragedy is really revealing.

Rain in my mind

2010-04-20T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just left my door open
and let it flood
water through my concrete sky
and pouring out thoughts
from my stirring head.
I was in the heart of a beast
of memories
when that rain came down on me
drowning me and quenching me-
how it fell.
And each time I answered
with a dream,
my roof bubbled in with a thud
and my windows trembled-
waking me up
to now
with sticky, cool up to my ankles
and a shiver down my spine,
this raining in my mind.

You and me is poetry

2010-04-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

My heart is sinking.

And the sunrise song is on.

And it just feels like one of those videos in reverse.

Like things aren't how they should be.

Tears rolling up a cheek.

Defying gravity.

But we remain, still.

Holding on to one another.

From as far away as possible.

Fingertips turning white.

As we're pulled here and there.

Because when it's done, it's done.

These black and white flashes.

Of moments- high. High. High.

Together,

How we were alive.

And there you'll be...

Without me.

I'll dream of feilds.

And blue, blue skies.

Knowing you has been poetry.

A short forever

2010-04-14T21:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry I made you wait
out there in that rain.
I know we made a date
and I never came,
even though I was there
taken by that stare
in the quiet moments
in the dull light
and a mixtape
for what seems a short forever.

I imagine you out there,
looking like such a woman
in the elements
wind raging your hair,
sun shining in those eyes-
green like the tips of pine trees,
precipitation clinging to your lips
for just a taste:
of what it's like to be a word
on your tongue
or a thought in your head.

You inspire me, even from a distance
and it's your music that makes me fill pages.

When I think of you, I see
bright colors and
hear the words that draw
tears from my eyes
our water-color painting of memories
on my sheets.
I smell the smoke of wood and salt of ocean.
I find you beautiful
in the most sacred of ways
and I'll never forget you
the way I remember you-

True.
Strong.
Alive.
Free.
Open.
Humble.
Smart.
Wild.
Striking.
Soulful.
Graceful.
Lyrical.
Loving.

There aren't a lot of people
whom you meet,
you just know will
do the greatest things;
That is you, for me.

I love you, vitally.

Like a wildflower

2010-04-14T21:30:00.000-07:00

Tilt your head back

the way a wise woman laughs

guffaw

and the arch of her back.

Stand on your tiptoes and roots,

rigid and soft,

like a ballerina

turning of lace and points.

Open your pores up-

your honey comb,

concaved to capture.

A thirsty, thirsty rose,

you are.

Cry out to the sun

in all your silent strength.

Sway in the rain.

Thrive, you will

like a wildflower:

subtle and fierce

rooted and free,

chanting on a prairie

in something like a whisper

woven into a little girl's

braid ...and me

oh, how to be.

Broken vase

2010-04-08T02:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for breaking things,

but I want to put the peices

back together any way that I can

like a clumsy child

super-gluing a broken vase

letting the paste seep through

with extra ooze in the missing parts

and the holes in between

our separate dreams.

I know it will never be the same.

I'm sorry for making you sad

or any moment less good

than you deserve for it to be.

If you'd known I'd hurt you so,

would you have done the same?

Would you still have gone all the way,

enshrouded by the rain?

I imagine you feel

I've disappeared beneath my skin,

playing pretend.

I want your pain to end,
and mis- intention
of hopeful hearts, now torn apart,

with no more words tossed helplessly

between your heart and teeth,

no more bitten cheeks;

no more of this story.

Oh, how I feel this.

Didn't we grow, didn't we grow?

Didn't we get close?

Slightly underneath

2010-04-08T01:33:00.001-07:00

California's tears came down in sheets
like a river flowing over me,
drowning me in sticky-sweet,
with only my breath above the stream.
Oh, the day you had to leave
when I was slightly underneath:
this spell, this sinking ship, your fingertips,
I remembered the way it feels to feel.

Loss and roots

2010-04-01T01:33:00.000-07:00

One. Loss.
Sometimes we lose good things. Sometimes there's no reason why, but life, really... just turning into itself and releasing itself back into the world. Sometimes those things come back. And sometimes they don't. The reality is, we never really know what we'll have forever. I feel grown lately in ways I hadn't imagined- to find myself vulnerable to feelings I thought were past, to find myself missing things I didn't notice before, to find myself grateful to have had things, even though they are no longer mine. As much as that seems maddeningly sad, it's not; I feel liberated by this. I feel liberated by the recognition that I am human and vulnerable to my life and accepting of my truths. I remember thinking, around this day last year, that Folsom was my world and that I felt teensy-tiny in the grand scheme of the world, and today, the world is my world and I am humbled by the great deliciousness of it all. I remember thinking, around this day, last year, that I wouldn't exist beyond the relationship I was in, and I find myself, now, a bigger woman because of and in spite of that relationship. I find the things that could pang longing, rather, inspire. That's the whole thing about life... it's not the only thing that changes with time; we change, we grow, we become something new every day, and we never have to lose that.

Two. Roots.
It's so, so, so, so important to take care of your roots. Most people I know focus on the trunk of the tree- the stability factor, the girth of their experiences and repertoire. Or they only see the branches- always looking ahead for the twists and turns of what it means to reach, to dream. Where these are all very important and essential parts of the tree... if we don't take care of who we are, at our core, at our lifesource, at our beginnings, at our bright, screaming birth, underneath the dirt, hidden from sight, intertwinted with the bugs and as connected as all living things... we know no joy in the solidarity of a trunk and cannot fully embrace what it means to reach beyond.

My favorite sounds:

2010-03-28T23:27:00.000-07:00

01) A hot pan sizzling under water

02) Rain falling on a tin roof

03) Ocean tide pulling back and crashing forward

04) Running fast through the forest

05) Stilletto heels on a hard surface

06) A concert of people singing together, acoustic

07) Piano

08) Deep laughter

09) A perfect kiss parting

10) The pop of fire/catch of a match

Sipping a cappuccino

2010-03-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

So, I finally decided it was time; a year after my departure to Europe, I uploaded my photos to my computer with the intention to print them off and create some kind of memoir of my trip in a more tangible form.

I'm sitting in Peets, watching the images flash on the screen, one after the other, compiling these crazy-lovely-hilarious-impactful-life-altering-delirious moments of travel and the nuances that slipped my mind, but only for a moment. I'm reminded of that unadulterated bliss. I'm reminded of the magic of travel: how uncanny and special it is to be able to see a world completely outside of your own and be a part of it for a stolen moment in time, how rare and inspiring it is to come across fellow travelers and find you're all on your own separate journeys- together- to know that you and that person will always have "that one night in Paris," how beautiful it is to be vulnerable to life the way you must be to truly embrace the novelty, history and growth that's required, how I felt consitently humbled and held to a higher standard by the life exploding around me.

And it's now, sipping my cappuccino that will never taste the way they do in Florence, I am just supremely content to have been a part of what it was and who I was when Europe and I had our affair, and the reality I created for myself because I dared myself to want something remarkable.

I have all these lists scribbled inside my journal and walls and the palm of my hand...

TBC.

To bottle it

2010-03-26T01:26:00.001-07:00

I keep finding myself living in moments that aren't mine any more... flashing through photos of other times, reliving my great accomplishments, the hilarity and disfunction of adventure, the beauty of being in love and relishing my growth and luminous quality through all of those stages. What's unnerving is how much I wish I could go back, sometimes.

It's unsatisfying to think that I want to be in a lesser moment than the one that I'm living for at present, the one that's mine. I feel like with every experience, minute or extravagant, that a person endeavors, they grow- even if it's just an eensy weensy nudge, therefore, I feel like every time a person opens themself to a new experience, they are a bigger/better/wiser person than they were before. With that as my philosophy, there's no reason why I should be dwelling in past moments. But I am...

I miss being a part of something I really, really believe in.

I miss waking up with the sunrise because I have so much ambition about my day, that I have to squeeze every last drop out of it.

I miss waking up, feeling rested.

I miss waking up next to someone that I'm in love with.

I miss the way it feels to know that they're in love with me- and not because they said it, or because they had to be tested, but because they live in it, exist for it.

I miss feeling healthy in THAT way- the way that my body has never been fitter, my mind has never been keener or more open, my emotions have never been more balanced and sensational.

I miss having a sense of pride within my accomplishment.

I miss not knowing what happens tomorrow.

I miss feeling change around me, palpable and sweet.

I miss a constant sense of betterment. And adventure. And growing, all the time.

I don't know what's happening with me. I'm not unhappy. There are peices of my life which have never been more perfect, yet I find myself restlessly turning in my sheets, pacing my room, living in cluster, and circling something I can't define.

I want to bottle the way it felt to sneak into his room after our first date and kiss, backlit by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And when we ate an entire tub of pumpkin icecream on our anniversary. And when he sang me "A Beautiful Mess" and stared me in the eyes. And when we ran down from Half Dome backwards because we had shin splints. And nutella and strawberries on the alps in Switzerland- feeling on top of the world. And that night in Toledo, Spain when we smoked hookah and cried and made perfect love. Closing my eyes and holding him tight, thinking that if I died on this motorbike in Barcelona on the highway at 6 PM, I'd be okay with that. And every Weeds night. And Industry night. And cycling, maple-bar mornings. And the perfection of not having to try hard to make something beautiful. And even now, when I realize the heights we reached because we simply loved each other and wanted to take it all on hand in hand.

But that's not just it. That's just the last time I felt really healthy.

There are moments in NOW and the recent-past that scream the same pure, uncomplicated ectstacy that those moments define: Woodsmoke nights under the stars with my two best friends, and being wine-drunk, stumbling through Santa Cruz sand, and nights of dancing on a starry-nighted floor, the nights we sing together and let our voices break, the days I stay after a long shift at work and discover that there's an old soul in front of me and that bodies and status quos define nothing. The way the rain fell that night after we kissed the first time- and how it will always remind me of you. My hand out the window, tracing that Oregon/Nevada/Colorado/Utah/California/Kansas/Nebraska sky, feeling on the brink of a great adventure, the tingling in my body after a long bike ride, knowing that I know what I'm capable of.

I guess... I wish I could just bottle it and take an open-throated gulp of what it felt like to be in love that way, and take on life that way, and be in the moment that way. I hope growing older isn't a tug-of-war between ambition and reality.

The power of three

2010-03-22T02:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt this in a long time- a strong desire to write in more than fragments of thoughts and feelings. To me, this means I'm getting closer to the core of it, sizzling hot. It's not easy getting this close to a flame, knowing that if you get too close, you'll burn, too far and you risk becoming numb all over again, and just for effect, the embers you thought were dead can pop abruptly, leaving you with the reality that some things never end.

There are a few concepts that have been floating around in my mind these past months:

One. The capacity for change:

We create our realities. Where we are very much a reaction/a byproduct of our experiences, we choose which experiences to indulge in and the environment in which to harness that growth. Sometimes I think of life as this labyrinth I'm getting through, turn by turn- that there's no get-out-of-the-maze-free card and that everything we begin must end with some grand lesson and a sense of closure. However, my experience has taught me this isn't the case- that sometimes things end or happen unjustifyingly, and we're left to swallow that we don't always get answers, and sometimes we just get duped.

There was a solid season (winter) of events that became more like a vortex of craziness between hearts and heads and beginnings and breaks. Nothing was right; everything felt like a compromised version of it's potential, but it was the reality. I guess it all hit me in a moment, like someone shining their brights in your rearview mirror- I realized, maybe none of these choices are the right ones for me, maybe this whole situation I've been struggling to figure a way out of isn't meant to be my situation at all.

I think it's a part of the human experience to believe in purpose; the concept of religion and philosophy are core examples of this- we are motivated creatures who appreciate coming to a sense of reason, who relish the concept of believing we are destined for something in this life and beyond it. As in my nature, I believed that there was a way out and a lesson paired with it, but with time, came to find the answer was that there was no answer.

And then I saw a ticket to Barcelona for $300 and a rush of ecstacy danced through my veins. Instantly, I was taken from the state of contemplation, to a whole new world of possibility- I could leave tomorrow, hop a flight and leave this all behind... which brought upon the realization that we live for and by our situation. If I were to take the next jet plane out of here, the "life" I lead outside of me vanishes, and a whole new "life" is born. And all of this for a small price. And then I thought about actually leaving it all behind, and I realized it's not about the ticket, but about the will and courage to see a dream through. We all live in a home walled in by our own fears- we limit ourselves by how much we allow ourselves to want, and how attainable we make those ambitions. Because it's true- what you truly want is yours.

Two. The nature of relationships:

I feel myself getting older, which is a beautiful thing to ride out, but I also feel myself growing distanced from the people and ideas that defined my youth. The other day, I was thinking about this one night I got my mom drunk on a carafe of wine and how she was giggling and exploding with stories from her past that I'd never heard before. And how much it's vital to our relationship and my identity as her daughter/friend, to try to always know her that way. It's sad to think that the people we see the most, we grow used to; I realized I had talked more on a coffeedate with a friend than I had with my own family and roommate- that I was distanced from them mentally/emotionally because of my proximity physically. And I don't want that. I want strength in all of my relationships, especially the ones closest to me.

But, on the converse, I realized that my attempts to reach out are constantly met with a lack of caring, empathy and interest. And it breaks my heart to know my distance is the reaction to a lack of passion and optimism in another. I don't think it's enough, to just have a history, if there's no energy put into the growth of the present. I can't figure out if this crossroads really has an "answer" or if I'll just have to follow my heart out here and call a situation what it is, which brings me to my last thought...

Three. Knowing when to call it:

I'm starting to believe a large amount of growth is reflected in knowing when to call things what they are. It's humbling and sometimes hurtful to do so, but it's also really liberating to own and embrace where you are. I believe that a primary reason why my ex-boyfriend and I parted so amicably is because we parted when things were still good; we were present enough to recognize the peak before the decline and to end on a high, rather than plummetting and crashing into a million unrecoverable peices. It's hard when you care so deeply and are so connected to a person/state of being to end it before it ends you, but for me, this has been of utmost importance. When people change in their relationships and the relationship is strained, the transformation can be stunting and frustrating. My deeper fear with my relationship was that following it to the crash would leave us with nothing good to remember it by, that we'd resent each other.

I used to have a prideful mentality about relationships; that they had to be good, consistently, or I'd simply cut them off. I neglected the fact that every relationship goes through waves of good and bad times, and that "cutting people off" is dramatic and doesn't solve anything. After reconnecting with a couple dominant figures from my past recently, I can honestly say that I am grateful the relationships ended, but I find myself comforted by the fact that we could end lightly and that that's okay. Sometimes flames just burn out, and that's okay too. I used to think strength of character was in controlling myself, in doing something bold like speaking my peace, blocking a phone number, and moving forward without a second thought. I see now, the value in acceptance- the value in recognizing that sometimes people grow apart and relationships fade and things happen that hurt, but that we are stronger than our experiences if we choose to be, and that acceptance is not passive, but demonstrates great strength.

Moreover, I am in a huge state of recognition, that nothing is quite right, and deciding how I want to approach and change that. I know there are great things on the horizon for me, if I will them to exist.

Epiphany

2010-03-11T02:53:00.000-08:00

I think it's called an epiphany and I have a love/hate relationship with how they come on. Epiphanies always seem to be pertinent to the MOST important people/thoughts/experiences in your life, and they always seem so damn obvious, and they always catch like a match when they do strike- swift, crisp, and hot.

I just spent the last hour crying hysterically over something I experienced at the very beginning of September: 6.5 months ago. I thought I was impervious to the feeling or that I'd coped prematurely and in minute increments, making it more of a mist and less of a torrential downpour... but I was wrong. The downpour hit, for the first time, last night and has moved its pattern into tonight. To be honest, it feels good to feel human. I was beginning to wonder when my game-face would give me away.

So, this is just it: I am so disappointed in myself. Disappointed because of how it all went down. Disappointed because at this moment, one year ago, I was on the brink of the greatest adventure of my life, in the greatest relationship of my life, and I had no idea how to appreciate it. The trip and the relationship had become synonymous in the sense that there was so much focus on the gritty details and none on the chaotic wonderment that was A LIVED moment. I am a million shades of envy-green toward my former, ignorant self. I'm mad, reading through my travel journals and seeing that it took me so long to just BE in the moment. And I'm sad because I became someone new on that trip, someone beautiful, someone who came back, a woman. I came back with DREAMS, ambitions, plans to change my life, new ideas, new attitude... and it was beautiful, too.

It just got lost. As much as I want to point a finger at "the real world" and "American culture", which are valid scapegoats, I know that I dropped the ball here. And as much as I feel evolved internally, I feel like I have lagged at REALIZING that in my every day experience- not to the degree I had dreamed. I'm not inspired here, and I knew that was coming, but I've let that pollute the whole scene. I'm ready to make my new life, for myself, today- to pick up the ball I dropped in September.

Everyone knows I've been addicted to travelling in any form since I returned from my Europe trip last July. I've been doing my part and saving for my next big adventure. I scan ticketing sites every day. I pinch pennies. I disappear into the Border's travel section and thumb through books, making lists of all the great things I dream to see. I've had a few impulses to just buy a damn ticket, already, and make a commitment, because I recognized that I haven't been TRULY happy since I was in Europe.

I pegged it as a need to return to the physical place, or the place in my mind that existed in that dynamic, but I realized tonight that I want THAT trip again. I want to do it with Trevor, who is a near-stranger to me now. And I want to travel with someone with whom I love that deeply, who I trust that endlessly, and who just gets it. I realize I can't have these things, and that is okay, but simultaneously, revealing. I think I "got over" Trevor because I felt like I had to; he moved away, but we never fell out of love. So much happened on that trip that strengthened our connection as human beings, and it all just got lost in that crazy transition back to life in the states and his move to San Diego. And in all those questions we needed to answer for ourselves. The relationship became just like all the photos and journal entries from that amazing trip- too painful to look at because of what they evoked that they were stuffed into albums and put in the rafters for another day. I pulled those things from the rafters last night and allowed myself to feel.

The feeling provoked my epiphany, which brings us back to the beginning.

I don't know what this all means, but I feel the kind of in-the-know that's bittersweet. I'd been staring at it all for so long, my eyes lost focus. And I was asking myself the wrong questions. I accept my truths until today and this place- and I do believe that all things happen for a reason, and in the power of a person to make IMPACT by simply making a decision and following through. I feel incredibly motivated to carry the torch of the insight/humility/inspiration I drew from my backpacking trip. I also feel like I have new eyes on why the last 6-8 months of my life have been so tumultuous and confusing for my heart.

And now, just movement, movement forward and onward. To health. To good things.

My phantom limb

2010-03-09T01:47:00.000-08:00

I try to pretend
you're my phantom limb:
a part of me, lost in a war,
that doesn't exist any more,
and doesn't hold me back any longer,
because if I keep the peice
that enables me to run
back into your arms again,
it will fester, irreparably
and poison all of me.

The truth is, I still feel you
when I'm running hard
and feeling soft,
doing the sorts-of-things
that make limbs go weak in the knees.
I find you quite real,
and the battle, too, that
I fight every day, not to love you-
to love me enough
to walk alone and able.

Short-sessions

2010-03-09T01:18:00.000-08:00

Never underestimate the power of
a beautiful woman entering a room
or "impact" in general;
I found you absolutely unforgivable
wretched and heart-wrenching
until you entered that frame-
now nothing is sane; nothings the same.
And how I long to feel
my heart in my lungs
and its beat in my feet
for always, when you do.
In other words, I love you.

____________

My head is sliding off of my upturned palm:
an unbalanced scale of apples and bananas,
intentions and actions- is
my chin falling from my wrist, plummeting down-
becoming fruit splattered on a fluorescent floor.
Seeds, shattering like a full, perfect-pink piggy bank
of half-thoughts, jingling like loose change
and exploding much less like porcelain,
and much more like the confetti that gets lost
in the fibers of carpet and beneath them,
and found years after the party was had.

_______________

Cold, cold ice is my tongue,
Your hot, hot breath, enrapturing-
becoming a cloud (as you exhale)
that dances toward me,
the dangerous, undulation of smoke.
My words are frozen
and my thoughts.
I'm tantalized by that trickle of water
down your chin, over your lovely lips-
You've melted me.
Your mouth, a convertible, top down,
in January with the heat on high.
I'm the kind of numb that's waking up-
a tingling limb of desire.
I'm defrosting, breaking like brittle,
quaking like ruptured earth,
Dripping with anticipation.

________________

Words are streaming from your lips
Like webs from fingertips,
wet, sticky, and cotton-candy sweet.

A thing

2010-03-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

Kaleidoscope eyes, how did I find you (?)
in the flurry of a winter that never ends,
saved only by the Lightness of your grace
and belief
that tomorrow is always Saturday morning.
You are hot tea on an overcast day,
the song I didn't know I was yearning to hear,
each hard, sensual kiss I crave,
every beautiful word,
a claw-footed bathtub, run over- hot,
and why I'm smiling to myself
on a day that's no more special
than any other, except that I have you.

We're in a thing, and I like it.

It's true that I think about you

2010-03-02T16:20:00.001-08:00

It's true, that I think about you
with memories strung
between the branches
of that dark, naked oak tree on Blue Ravine,
clinging to the tempestuous
clusters of clouds
that threaten to bring it all
down on me, turning reality to mush
cold, cold mud between my toes
wet, wet puddles to my ankles.

It's true that I think about you
during the last track of a perfect CD
I don't want to end, but must.
I think about you when things are broken
and not quite right,
but beautiful, in spite:
like when that rainbow
reaches across the rainy skies
and those bright pink blossoms
stare to the dark ominous skies
and when my hopeful heart
trusted your lies.

Ashes

2010-02-05T04:05:00.000-08:00

Like a knife dragging slowly
through my center, from my sternum
to my belly
cold blades sandwiched by my flesh
the feeling of pulling
and compacting
and severing all things
that give me life
and life gives me,
are your words.

They are are scripted,
passionless,
and fall upon me like ashes,
dusting me with darkness
and the remains of what
was once a fire that raged
and now, a burned up
page in a book with no end.
There's no end:
to this pain, to this game.

I wish I could spit out
this bad taste of the memory
of your mouth on my mouth
taking me
and my vulnerability
for granted
in the name of something
you will never understand
because you aren't strong
enough to be weak
for what matters.

How dare you insult love,
as you hide in the space
between words and feelings,
as I pop your excuses like bubbles
and strip you from your lies,
leaving you barren,
clinging to a faith based
in fear-
a creature of habit, you sacrifice
what moves you
in the name of a God who
takes what you love.

That is not my God,
nor is that my love,
because my love is the sunrise
and the last drop in an
overflowing cup.
My God is my love-
and a reason to believe in more,
and strength in spite of fear,
motivated by the unknown,
empowered by potential
and trust:
a faith that runs deeper
than bones and
thicker than blood.

You've pulled up all the shades
of a room I didn't realize
was darker than our darkest night,
and the light has flooded in
crowding my eyes with sun spots
that crash into each other
until they are nothing.
I finally see who you are-
more shallow than your reasons
and weaker than your insulting
idea that you "loved" me at all,
because this
is a disgrace to love.

There are a million words
and none at all,
for how I cried like all my
bones were breaking,
with the force of this storm
screaming against my windows.
How I collapsed like a body
without a soul,
how my heart slowed to the pace
of nervous candle wax,
dripping- ripping, and for
how betrayed I feel
because I never stopped giving
and you never started.

It's all caught up to me
in a gasp of too much air,
asphyxiated with the reality
that this ends here-
despite all the dreams
that breathed.
I will be okay
because no one that gives up
and no one so lost
could ever show me something
I've not seen,
or truly, ever, see me.

This is my closure.

Your best mixtape yet

2010-02-03T01:22:00.000-08:00

This is the closest I've been
to knowing my truth in this mess
of broken hearts and waiting rooms;
I'm admitting my faults and swallowing
my pride for the betterment of
your heart and mine,
and knowing, even then,
that it's just not good enough
to keep you a moment longer.

I am the dull hum of the refrigerator
and the same vein of rain sliding
down the glass window pane.
I am the skipping song
stuck on the same irritating note.
I am a cigarette butt,
burned out.

Feeling heartless and lifeless
Listless and then some more less
Because the green in my eyes
has died
as I stoic-ly gaze into the mirror
seeking out every imperfection
because of what I've done
and what I've waited too long to do.

I'm so damn sad
because the best thing I've had,
I've lost, for some time
for every right reason that
I can't deny.
I'm not who I need to be for this
and you deserve better.
I want to believe I won't
regret this moment, but I can't.

P.S. This is your best mixtape yet.

Hesitating to thud

2010-02-02T15:55:00.001-08:00

My heart is tight in my chest-
Hesitating to thud, tiptoeing
through a dark room where she
sleeps so soundly.
I think it's been breaking for
longer than I want to admit-
a little crack, a door ajar,
and all the cold air has rushed in.
I'm shaking here, choking on the fog.
I think I'd miss you whether
you were mine or not, because
having you doesn't change this
listless feeling
or your lack of passion for me.
So, what choice is there, for me,
but to leave this behind?
To turn on the light and
slam the door- and feel everything,
even if it breaks me all the way?
Because then there's nothing
left to wait on,
but myself, gathering Me.

Love me better

2010-02-02T02:11:00.000-08:00

I think there are some people who are born embodying love; I have known a few in my time. They love feircely and do everything with passion and integrity. They fall harder than most and more often than most, but because they believe in the power of the jump. The crash isn't the worst part; it's the not jumping, not saying those words, not chasing that dream, not pushing that last digit, not hopping that flight, not following the heart.

Someone that believes in reincarnation or souls living on beyond the body would say that people like that have been around for awhile (a few lifetimes): long enough to understand the beauty of giving to and spreading that love.

And some people just don't know how to love very well; they don't, for whatever reason, understand their feelings/soul clearly enough to emulate that in their lifestyle; they don't understand how to listen to that inner voice/the gut and do the impractical thing because it "feels right"; they don't understand longing or selflessness or what it's like to wake up at 4 am just to leave a fresh donut on your love's car on a day that's not so important at all. It's a language that doesn't translate from one to the other; it's a like movie or a song that's recognized and appreciated at a distance, but not felt- when the credits fade to black, it ends. They can love AT something, but not LOVE something- because of the honesty and vulnerability that requires in themselves.

And it breaks my heart because I am wildly in love with someone that doesn't know how to love me well. And it's nothing that I can teach her. It's something a person just is, in the core of cores. Nobody teaches a person how to treat love; people can shape it or aid it or affect it, but it's always you behind that love, caring for that love, being willing for that love. Nobody can crawl inside of her head and tell her when to do something differently, when to make me feel validated, when to share a thought or a feeling, when to fight, when to be patient, when to do something subtly meaningful for no reason in particular, when to do something bold, when to say sorry. It's something a person is, in their makeup, nestled between heart and soul.

It's so hard for me to know what I know now and to pretend like it doesn't matter when love is THE single most important thing to me in every facet of life. It is a huge disservice to myself to have my most intimate relationship be the one in which I am the least well-received and where I hit the most walls. My ideas of love aren't flighty. They are real and grounded and based in humanness. I don't want a fairy tale. I want raw. And you know, raw isn't always perfect or beautiful to look at, but it's REAL. I want time and distance not to matter. I want there to be no schedule. I want to not have to ask the question. I want to feel validated. I want to be vulnerable and feel stronger because of it. I want someone who believes in great love and demonstrates that in everything they do. I want someone that does things not because they are "supposed to" but because they believe. I want to be craved as I crave.

I've given up on our relationship and she doesn't even know. She doesn't know because she doesn't talk to me. She can't open up enough to be in touch with me. She can't feel my heart breaking because she can't feel her own. And it sucks. It sucks because I've given all of me to this for far too long. I've been patient in ways I've never before been patient and compromised in ways that have paralyzed my integrity. I've gone the distance over and over. I've been broken by it and pulled my peices together to be broken again.

We have a fire that blazes and a chemistry that consumes and a connection that is conditionless, but it's not being taken care of. We have everything that you cannot control- everything that people spend their whole lives hoping to stumble across- and it's not being taken care of because of a lack of effort and a lack of heart-awareness. Not even feeling, just of communicating that feeling.

I cannot convey the pain of knowing everything is had, but nothing is HAD. It reminds me of a more heart-heavy version of Top Chef- where people have put everything they have into making these beautiful, satiable meals under a time-constraint, but only what makes it to the plate gets to the mouths of the judges- everythings ready and hot and perfect, but nothing has been plated, so nothing can be had. Instead I'm hungry and I learn to be patient for the next time- and I wait, and wait, and wait. And I'm always waiting for the good love to come. And it's not coming. I have learned to call it quits, because I'm better than this and I deserve more than this. I am more fulfilled in a romantic way by my friendships than by my own girlfriend because they are receptive and sensitive and aware and giving and they FOLLOW-THROUGH.

Erica: "It's not like she even has to do much... all the rare, crazy intense soul connection is there... just take care of it. Show it off. Take pride in it. Stand up for it. Be it every day."
Me: "It's like... the plant is grounded and healthy and flourishing. She just needs to water it and shine some light on it regularly and it will sustain."
Erica: "Because, in truth, as time goes on, as it grows, it eventually becomes a lifesource within the both of you. As it should. Love isn't fragile, but it still needs to be taken care of."

And that's just it. I'm calling this what it is. She doesn't love me well-enough. And it breaks my heart. And I want to believe in every reason why I'm wrong, but I can't ignore the reality that's falling on me like icicles: I want, need and deserve more.

It's a sad reality to imbibe when you give and give and give and wait and all the "signs" are pointing toward something/someone, and you finally get to the destination and it's not right. I'm swallowing hard because it just tastes bad, tearing through my insides. I can't believe there will just be an end and that all my struggles and confusion will just stop- because there will be nothing more to answer or solve. Instead, I'll just sit, with this broken heart and too much clarity and look ahead at the big open, unwritten future.

There's an appeal to that free space in the blank pages, but the truth is, I'd already scribbled a few rough drafts of my big dreams of her and I, and throwing them away will be the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm dragging my feet heavily out this door, waiting for the grand gesture that will never come. And I'm reminded of times I have been loved well, and they restore my faith that good love is on the way in time. And this was just never meant to be.

Jellybeans

2010-02-01T00:09:00.000-08:00

This is what I wanted- I wanted to rip the bandaid off my life, I wanted to feel the air on everything that ever hurt, and I wanted to heal it. Sometimes, in order to get the things you want, you have to claim them individually, to fight for them one by one. I feel like I've been putting jelly beans in a jar and I lost count so long ago; instead of doing the math and taking a guess at the contents, I've just turned the jar upside down and watched the coloured capsules flow and ricochet from the table to the floor. Thursday was the crash, Friday was standing in rainbows, Today things are different. Today, I start putting the jelly beans back in the jar and there's something really nice about the little jingle when they rattle against the glass. There may only be about three in there, but they're three damn good ones, and right now, they're all I really need. I want to know every colour as I fill my jar back up.

May 31st, 2008

Night sky

2010-01-29T02:56:00.001-08:00

It was in my eyes, a dull green
hue, like the edges of those clouds
there, encasing that moon-
Illuminating swirling pockets
that should have been
lost with the sun hours ago-
still awake, with a lightness.
It's this time of night,
when the snails glide through
the sky, leaving silvery trails
around every wishing star
and the cannonball dreams that
left holes here and there,
that I remember the majesty
of stillness
and the intensity of silence.

The longest moving sidewalk

2010-01-27T03:23:00.000-08:00

The colorful lights streaming intricately
over this flightpath reminded me of Christmas,
but I just felt cold-
like all that Nebraska finally caught up with me
and I hadn't known cold since before her hand
touched mine,
when I sat, nervously gripping
my complimentary Coca Cola, in seat 3B
anticipating her body slipping
into the niche it was made for.

The moment our fingertips lost one another's
and I turned the corner- Cold.
So, I walked briskly through this memory-
on the longest moving sidewalk I've ever seen
into and past every
"almost" and "was" I've ever known:
Omaha: a flight right back
to undo this pain of goodbye
Tulsa: where I knew her first
Chicago and Kansas City: stolen moments of the past
Munich and Paris: I came alive here
Portland and San Francisco:
right next to one another,
taunting me with possibility
San Diego: my latest "almost" big jump: Him.
And then I thought I saw him
out of the corner of my eye,
in a tilted fedora,
looking tall, but trying not to,
as I was moving by, clutching the ticket
for where I chose to stay: Sacramento.
Home. For now.

Like a muse

2010-01-27T02:39:00.000-08:00

You love me like a muse.

I inspire you with vivid possibility,
I frustrate you with what I demand:
that what you feel, you must justify.
Emotionally and mentally intense,
you love me as you hate me,
but you always See me, even with your lids
pressed tightly together as you beg for
dreams to still your racing mind.
You need. You crave. To create.

You've never loved like that before.

You study me: my movements, my form,
my eyes, the way I look at everything,
the way I eat, the way I love, my mouth
my touch, my laugh, my vulnerability.

I've never been loved like that before.

I am the blank canvas that taunts you.
I am stretched and rigid, yet soft for you.
I am thrown from the place that I hang
and I am brought back,
stared at until your eyes forget sight,
blurred to clarity as you spin in your chair.

I am the blank canvas that begs for your touch,
to be saturated in vibrant acrylics
that coat my surface and
bleed through the divets in my woven exterior;
The canvas that begs to tell your story:
to have painted, on my face, your dream,
to remind you that every stroke is significant,
leaves texture- a scar.

We love one another like artists
love anything they have passion for.
It's the same intensity that smears
and smudges and splatters and spills
that pulls me back to you- over and over again,
because there's beauty in anything that inspires
someone to create something eternal
that breathes and speaks beyond the body.

You are the painting that
hangs on my wall, not quite right.
And I am lost in you from anywhere.

Big red balloon

2010-01-27T02:34:00.001-08:00

I'll wrap my mouth around
this big red balloon
of my love for you
and fill my cheeks with:
all the words that I can't say
and all the breaths you stole
when we were so dangerously close...
I'll blow it out and blow it up,
expanding with my intentions,
but deflating with the reality
that it's only me and this hot air
flowing into the sky-
becoming lost.

This balloon: a lung, collapsing.
Oh, it's killing me
to fill it with me,
and watch the air leak from my knot
seep out from the spaces
between your fingers.
If I didn't float,
I would have fallen,
limp at your feet,
the dead weight of promises made,
but I remain,
tightly woven about your wrist.

I watch it shrinking
there, so close to your hand,
begging for you to stretch it out
to it's fullest potential,
losing it's shape while you wait.
So desperately,
I want to breathe life
inside of this love,
but it's your turn, now.
So, I'll hold my breath
and untie this string,
and hope you grip it with both hands,
before it's nothing but
a shrived up child's toy-
this big red balloon
of my love for you.

The rain tonight

2010-01-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

Now:
I wish I could tear down
these walls of my room
like a curtain from it's rod
clutching, in my hands, layers
of cement and fiberglass
and pulling them away from
their other, one by one
until I can see the rain
streaming down every side of
this foundation's skeleton of 2x4s
-------------------------

Earlier tonight:
There's an unpredictable peace here
On this duct-taped plastic cushion,
looking at you, illuminated
in the neon flashes of the "Open" sign.
This is the closest thing
to being in the center of the storm
without carrying the sodden weight.
And I love this sound- hard water:
falling, hitting, surfacing, breaking,
pouring down the sides of this shattered
glass window, clinging to the shards
and streaming freckled-shadows
down your beautiful face
as our reflection lends belief
that we are as eternal as the lights
above our heads that disappear
into the abyss of East Natoma Street.
---------------------------

Love isn't enough

2010-01-13T01:41:00.001-08:00

An unfortunate few moments in life,
we are reminded that love isn't enough.
There must be something deeper
that binds two souls: an understanding
and will.

I feel this sense of emptiness
as our irredescent bubble has popped
and made my feet damp as I walk away,
leaving my final steps over this
familiar ground before they dry up.

It's not that I don't want it;
I just know enough now to know
what love will cut it through all those
in-between times
when the love has been made
and the laughs have left their ache.

Will we stay and linger over coffee
and always find something more to say?
Will you play me a song that
says everything I couldn't?
Will you know when to hold me hard
and when to push me harder?

I need to know what love means to you:
how it burns inside your core,
how it twists you up in knots and unwinds you,
what it makes you want to scream
and what it makes you appreciate in silence.
How far you'd go and where you'd run,
where you were and how far you've come.

It's a language lovers just understand
That anything worth being in can never
be had or controlled, but must be
earned and fought for every day,
like I for you, always.

And I know this won't be enough to keep me,
though everything we cannot control is right-
because what vulnerability and intensity
you perceive as weakness, I deem strength.
I thought you a coward when my heart-words
backed you into a corner
and you shrunk down into a ball of fear
when I begged for a fighter.

Making love

2010-01-11T04:22:00.000-08:00

Here I sit, scattered
in the remains of this storm:
My room turned upside down
by the wave of intensity that wiped
through it: the nights we laid together,
letting the candlewax bubble over
and the incense shed it's skin
on the countertops.
My whole room smells like her.
What I perceived as a lack of inspiration
has revealed itself as overstimulation,
because all these poems
entangled within my heartstrings
have begun to spin out of their knots
And the truth is rocking slowly before me:
That I do love her.
-----------------------
We made love
For the first time,
we laid together-
completely nude
and it was beautiful
in a way I cannot
describe in words:
Not based in novelty
or curiousity,
not overthought,
not emotionally disparaging
not built in fear
nor expectation
not like anyone else;
It just was.
The kind of feeling
that reminds me
why people make love at all-
why there's nobody else.
There was this fit:
wholeness
surreality
supreme
rightness
that wasn't about anything
but loving someone
so fucking much,
you need to be so close,
you're inside
of each other.

Sunrise song

2010-01-11T04:17:00.000-08:00

I can't shake that moment
When you played me this song
and told me it felt like Saturday morning
and that I did too.
The song was the sunrise;
Outside of my room, it was dark,
but I swear, I felt the light
pour through the windows onto the floor,
rising up against the walls,
flooding over us as
we curled up
and you touched my cheek.

You see, I believe there is music,
then there's the music you live your life to
and then there's the music
you idealize living your life to
which plays a scene in your head
of the woman you want to be:
dancing, laughing, making love,
and that's the music that resonates,
leaving me to believe we're more than this
because nobody makes mixtapes like this
anymore, but you.

I want to know you here and there,
Beyond all this bullshit I put you through
in one of those cities we talk about
while you play me Spanish lovesongs
with my feet on your dashboard.
And I want to laugh the way we did
the night we named my mattress
and ate bad chocolate
and called india a continent
and you soiled my clean sheets.

We must go and stay awhile
to a city of musical gods and latte art
sidewalk chalk and so much green that
every other town looks black and white.
I want to push the lines that confine us;
I want to know every extent of you
and revel in all we know we already are-

You fill my cup.

Samskeyti

2010-01-09T22:33:00.000-08:00

You played my favorite Sigur Ros song.
Tears were welling up in my eyes
because while riding that curve,
gliding through that cave of trees
toward my favorite coastal town,
it was the only thing I wanted to hear.
And I wanted to tell you that this song
makes me feel the way I do when I kiss you,
but you didn't deserve to know that.
Instead, I held my breath-
floating through an imaginary tunnel,
waiting for the light and the wish
the way I do when I think about kissing you.
And I couldn't say it
and somehow that broke my heart.

The fog

2010-01-07T13:20:00.001-08:00

there's something so 'just right' about the fog-
and its uncanny ability to blur everything just
enough to make it beautiful
and just cold enough to make you want
the things you love a little bit closer
the way the cement becomes pools of light
and the streetlights become constellations
you can grasp with your mind and taste on your tongue
it's you and me and the rain-dropped truck
it's my back warm against the cold metal
and your hands in my hair, at my neck, on my face
like we're the something defined,
moving in a watercolor world
watching the earth rise for the very first time
and i'd swear there's something right about this
way we fit together
confettied in dew beneath the tangled trees
while the world sleeps
like you, i'm awake
because i tasted life on your lips
and it woke me up

6:20 a.m. on christmas

2009-12-25T06:49:00.000-08:00

i am wide awake with the faint whir of my space heater and the occasional drop of water colliding with the steel sink, accompanying my steady breaths.

it's christmas morning and all i can think of is how badly i want an in n out burger and how terrible it is that i could be half-hoping someone was flipping double-doubles on christmas morning. animal style. i'm holding out for nana's waffles, anyways- challenging the hollowness of my stomach which has only been saturated in 3 cups of coffee and 4 pints of beer in the past 15 hours...

sometimes i feel like the kind of person who lives in a shitty studio apartment (the kind that's more like a closet with a toilet) in a big city; the kind of person you see wearing pajama pants and some peacoat missing a button they threw on in a flurry, racing out into the madness; the kind of person with their hair piled on top of their head, held together by some mystery of gravity, writing feverishly in a coffeeshop, chewing on a pencil and chain-smoking between half-thoughts.

it's moments like these that make me feel bigger than my body. bigger than this room. i've been devouring this book tonight- letting every word linger before consuming it. there's ten pages left and i put it down because i'm so damn in love with it that i don't want it to end. and there's nothing that makes you want to write more than reading someone else's great writing. it's having new eyes- unhinging sight and enabling perception.

the dust that rose in the corner of my eye began to buzz like a fly. and the white noise has become the heartbeat of my room. and my stomach churning reminds me i'm alive and of fullness. my numbing fingers scream that i feel- sensation, sensationally. and how much i miss her hand in mine, nervously sweaty or not. then, i realize how beautiful it is to have someone that can make me nervous and that i hold my breath and tilt my head every time i imagine kissing her perfect lips.

this is the second christmas in a row in which i haven't slept. i remember last year, frazzled and tear-stained, feeling, for the first time in my entire life, the child of a divorce. my brother and i were searching for home and in the disfunction of that day, ended up spooning in my car, covered in two enormous blankets that were stained with sand and dirt and wine, listening to fionn regan. and maybe we were (attempting to be) asleep in a driveway, freezing cold, but there was something peaceful about that moment we laid and in the next morning when my dad lifted the garage to see his two grown children huddled together in my tiny civic.

as this pale blue bleeds into the sky, backlighting the tangle of trees outside my window, i can't help but smile. i woke up at 2:04 in the morning with my arms wrapped around a bottle of allagash black and i couldn't help but laugh. i read a book for 4 hours that rattled me. i'm in love, whether it's convenient or not. i'm not perfect, by any means, but i'm really stinkin' happy. it's different than waking up to an empty glass of milk and cookie crumbs, but happy none-the-less.

Steel gray

2009-12-20T17:45:00.000-08:00

Those eyes were steel gray
That day in the coffeeshop
It wasn't the cloudless sky behind her
It wasn't the cold, cement floor beneath her
That chilled me
It was those words
She was and wasn't saying
The songs that we weren't playing
The risks we wouldn't be taking
Those eyes once still lakes at sunrise
Were frozen over with a brittle layer of ice
Too thin to tread
Too thick to penetrate
My clumsy words dripping from my lips
Became icicles before reaching her ears
Jutting from my mouth
And crashing at her feet

Dancing on a volcano

2009-12-20T17:24:00.001-08:00

I said I loved this dance
On the top of the volcano
It's dormant and I'm patient
I'm excited because I trust what follows
Dancing because I'm embracing this...
Potential: building, bulging, breaking ground

But I'm careful; I know the danger of this
Like ballroom dancing on broken glass
Making love on a tightrope
Holding my breath a moment too long
Falling asleep in the rain with my mouth agape

This energy is bubbling up of
Hot and smothering love
Prevented from flowing out
Turning hard, becoming molten
Sitting in my stomach,
Punctured with the tiny explosions of emotions
I must hold inside

Building trenches of void
By tearing out my insides
Swallow by swallow, these words held under my breath
Traveling down my throat, my chest, my belly
Become the veins in the soil
Pulsing blood to this longing

Like a ticking time bomb, I wait
Tiptoeing the frail edges of this beast
Peeking over to see the bubbles rise up and boil down
Kicking a pebble over to test the depths: my dare, my question?
To see what erupts first:
This feeling
Or me

Decreasing intervals

2009-12-20T14:38:00.000-08:00

The walls in this room are pulsing
Like a failing heart, in and out
At decreasing intervals
The smoke exudes from your mouth as you speak
Choking me
I think, there's supposed to be something sexy
About this drag
But all I can do hold my breath, swallow my tongue
And close my eyes
The cloud above this bed hangs over my head
Isn't love supposed to be as Light
As the foam on a cappuccino, a leaf dancing the breeze?
This Light cuts through my window in two sharp blades,
Piercing the ground
Illuminating the dust fibers caught in its stream-
Stale and dry
I'm cloud-gazing for figures in the crevices of my biscuit
And captivated by the comet of milk in my coffee
Because today, the sky is stripped like a barren mattress
Much less like something to jump into and lose myself in
I'll pour another mug, black, and hide behind this buzz
You call out to me, and I hear nothing
But a dulling echo beckoning
At decreasing intervals

An ode to red wine:

2009-12-13T02:33:00.001-08:00

I wish this could be as bottomless as real love
That I could fall forever into your silky layers,
Rich and bold and unrestrained.
I wish your warmth could permeate me
Long after the last drop.
I wish you could flow over me and
I could disappear beneath your rouge eternally.
Instead, I'll hold you in my palm
And savor the small moments
When I'm feeling loose, unbridled...
Drunk.

The Invitation

2009-12-08T01:53:00.001-08:00

"The Invitation" by Oriah (Mountain Dreamer)

It doesnt interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesnt interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesnt interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by lifes betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
remember the limitations of being human.

It doesnt interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
Yes.

It doesnt interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesnt interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesnt interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Life in this room

2009-12-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

Let us make love here:
I want the whole room bathed in light,
Pouring through our giant paned windows
Which overlook a busy city street;
It can be New York or San Francisco or Paris or Barcelona.
I just want life in this room.
I want life around me,
So colorful and consuming
That I feel insignificant and magnificent at the same time,
To the fullest extent of what that means.
I want love on my mouth
And beneath my surface: in my blood and in my bones.
I want to scream your name because it's the only thing on my mind.
Let us frolick through these winding ways,
Dancing among strangers,
Let us linger too long over just one more glass of wine,
Let us sneak away
And steal a breath from one another's lips
Against a brick wall on some pulsing avenue.
Let us see the box and break it,
Reach the bar and jump it,
Understand reality and bend it,
Create something unimaginable and seemingly impossible:
Euphoric.
Let's transcend words.
Let our love be the light in this room,
Radiating on my imperfect body.
Let you love me because I'm not perfect.
Let me love you because I think you are,
In spite of all the reasons you think I shouldn't
(But, oh, how they make me yearn for you).
Let there be music.
And uncontrollable laughter.
Let us wake up inspired.
Let there be no end.

Magic at 2 AM

2009-12-07T02:24:00.001-08:00

This was a day of contradiction: this feeling of warmth curled up inside of a snowflake melting on my outstretched tongue.

It was that day the impossible happened: it snowed in Folsom. And a brother and sister ran barefoot through pools of rainfall, ankle-deep through mud and sodden leaves to the streetlight at the end of the road. Beneath the flurry of flakes, they danced and embraced as if the decade-and-a-half between laughing wildly as a child and now was as insignificant as their lack of shoes.

As frostbite numbed their toes, snowfall clung to their sweaters and their faces dampened, they smiled toothfully because the whole world seemed to be asleep when Nature was screaming, "Wake up, you're alive" or maybe she was whispering her bestkept secret and they were in on it. They smiled because you just never really know what life has in store. And when you think you've drawn them, she'll keep pushing the lines toward the inconceivable and the impossible... and there's something so magical about believing in something that doesn't make sense in this black-and-white world that's so overly defined.

This feeling is what I recall in my sacred moments of life pressed in my mind like a wildflower between my journal pages: the three seconds I superman-ed from the swingset before tumbling into a pile of leaves or when I stood on my dad's shoulders one-thousand-and-one feet tall and swallowed the sky. I encapsulate them in a precious glass bubble in my memory and it's now, as my fingertips defrost and Fionn sings in the background, I see that it's moments like now that shake the capsule and I realize why people love snowglobes so much- the unpredictable whir of frozen clusters dancing their jubilant dance before the calm resounds. Me, personally, though, I like the chaos.

The amazing writing of John Green:

2009-12-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

I stand in this parking lot, realizing that I've never been this far from home, and here is this girl I love and cannot follow. I hope this is the hero's errand, because not following her is the hardest thing I've ever done.

Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You see how fake it all is. it's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.

It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined.

Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

Maybe all the strings inside of him broke, maybe all his ships sunk, or maybe we're grass, our roots so interdependent that none us are dead as long as someone is still alive. What I mean is, we don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors. But the one you choose matters because the metaphors have implications.

I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

He wanted to draw out the moment before the moment - because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it.

Missing her kept him awake more than coffee.

Choosing closure

2009-11-24T02:31:00.000-08:00

"So much for love, I guess. I've been wronged, but it's alright because I'm moving on... I'm gonna be carefree and let nothing pass me by never ever again." -Rosie Thomas

Have you ever tried writing a goodbye letter to someone that you were still in love with?

My bedroom is a mess. Anyone who knows me knows this is indicative of my internal state of being. The interesting thing is that I'm actually quite good right now, but there's something that looms in the quiet moments, which echoes its traces of the unresolved, the painful, the lack of closure.

A few months ago, I concluded that love was all about willingness. Tonight, I wondered if maybe moving on was all about willingness as well. The difference between knowing you should move on from someone, and actually wanting to/going through with it was my plated dilemma.

In a situation like this, when I don't necessarily believe that I've acquired a worthy lesson from the experience, or that it ended for the right reasons, or for whatever reason... basically, when I can't look back and say: point blank, closure... I have lost my trust in some sort of fate or karma.

What I have learned to trust is growth. I've been learning a lot about natural law and it's governance over the human spirit, so why not connect to the most natural of all things-- life... it's growth? I concluded this much, in reference to any relationship with fuzzy closure... An individual must believe in the capacity for growth, whether that growth be personal-- the challenge to become better, more complete, more self-aware, OR that growth be in the other person, to arrive at a place where they can reciprocate love equally. But the only growth I can guarantee is my own.

I read a blog of a recent myspace friend of mine tonight and he spoke of the exact same feeling I was mulling over in my mind; He said, "There is no end. There is only change." And further, "I just want... someone, to hold my hand. We don't have to lead or follow. It's good enough, just to hold on." Beautiful, really. Thank you Kyle.

It's hard to move on when you're still in love with the person you're moving on from. It's hard to move on when every fiber of your being believes in a better tomorrow, a tomorrow including them. But I think it's harder to live a life in waiting. Moving on from great love, in my opinion, is a deep trench for effort, emotion, and time to fill... but it is feasible. My friend posed that maybe it's not about having closure, maybe love is all about accepting that there may not be closure, that "it just is." One of my greater fears is moving on from someone I am still in love with, and having them realize too little, too late. Knowing that I am the kind of person, despite having my wits about me, who could stand before the person I love after a bad breakup and an even more difficult recovery period... have them say just a few words and counteractively-- all that progress burn up in passionate flames of "finally." I guess, it's trusting that the effort you invest will not be broken, like it seems everything else has been.

I think about the kind of person I want... and the reality is that all of these things that I hope for may not even identify this person that seems to consume my unconscious thoughts. However, in those silent moments... the still moments, the dark moments, the musical moments, I miss her. And to be honest, it angers me when people say, "You'll find someone like that one day." Who cares? The pain of moving on has nothing to do with wanting someone better, someone different, "someone who is deserving." It's today, it's now.

(September 29th, 2006)

The price of understanding

2009-11-24T02:25:00.001-08:00

"In this empty un-understanding world anyone can sell knowledge; everybody wants knowledge, and there's no price people won't pay to get it." -E.E. Cummings

Understanding. Let the word resonate with you. I have been trying to understand understanding for nearly two decades, yet I still find myself lost within it. I am thoroughly convinced I was birthed in the wrong era, because these days, few simply wonder. This epiphany has trounced upon my thoughts a few times in my life, especially in matters concerning the heart. It seems love is dead these days.

Two weeks before the fall semester started, my plans to move across the country to be with the one I loved fell to peices. I enrolled in this Philosophy course in hope to better understand the relationship between reality in the mind and heart. Upon hearing, "It's just crazy, Lindsay," I laughed to myself. Is it ever rational? I have the curse of the hopeful romantic; I would die a martyr for what inspires myself any day of the week. But then again, I think the safe road is suicide, the life in hiding is a waste, and that vulnerability is quintessential, for "only emptiness allows the fullness to exist" as Orientals would say.

Until Time Magazine plopped on my doorstep with a cover screaming, "Love is a Chemical Reaction," I thought the world was still with me. Apparently, I was grossly misled by my intuition. My eyes poured over the contents as I nodded in a state of disgust. Apparently, love has nothing to do with emotion, human connection, or that "crock" called self-awareness. Apparently, love is more like a snort of cocaine than the word allocated to universal understanding. The worst part of Helen Fisher's research was its constant allusions to romantic poets like Whitman and Emerson, as if to soften the rationalistic blow as science tore love to peices.

I say with jubilance that I contest one standard of modern human conduct and that is its reliance on technology to make sense of everything. Science has not only sucked the pleasure out of living by reducing the human experience to words and theories, but has birthed a monster through its ignorance. The western world is constantly pushing to know absolutely everything on the surface of experience, but at what cost? Identity? Love? Was E.E. Cummings prophesizing when he stated that there was no price humans would not pay for knowledge? There must be a distinction here as the knowledge E.E. Cummings relates is the empty knowledge found foaming from the mouth of the World Wide Web, not that this knowledge is incorrect or invaluable, merely lacking impact.

The triviality of the abundance of information on the internet, is, in fact, its abundance, and its constant pursuit of more, more, more. One might assume because he has the universe at the click of his fingers, he is a stranger to ignorance, but without having to earn the wisdom they seek, Occidentals have provoked an overwhelmingly lazy culture that essentially knows nothing about what they are physically aware of, especially themselves.

Socrates, who proved self-knowledge was of utmost importance, believed that no individual was willfully ignorant; however, in examining the balance of yin and yang, I would say it is impossible to have ignorance without the presence of knowledge and the ability to earn it. Therefore, individuals known for classifying too much and enjoying too little (adapted from lecture) consciously hide from who they are behind what they are. Throughout the course, Professor Buckenmeyer has referenced that a person lives within a house of words. It occurred to me much later that many individuals can hide within their house of words as well. Take a more perpetuated realm for an example- the chatroom. Billions of individuals live vicariously through chatrooms and webpages in which the words they use to define themselves present a reality that is not terribly real after all. Because the internet thrives upon a virtual reality, there is no eye contact, no touch, nor taste, vulnerability, or pure understanding. The human experience is greatly reduced without the qualifying realness of understanding; individuals of self-awareness and integrity are rare.

Therefore, I classify B.C. and A.D. not as distinctions of before and after Christ, rather, B.C. as "Before Computers" and A.D. as "After Dial-up." Somewhere in the midst of rams and bytes, the strength of self-awareness and questioning has exhausted itself.

Once upon a time, a life was marked by challenge and growth, failure, and taking chances. Much like Plato, Socrates' disciple, individuals around B.C. had no option but to pursue truth through questions, answers, and additional questions. Focus was rooted in the inquiry and not Ask Jeeves.com.

Today is a day of advancements, instant gratification, the consumer, fast food, fast cars, drive-thru weddings, high divorce-rate, and high-speed internet. It is no secret that the western world is rapidly changing as it is comprised of a people who accept and process information much like a computer itself, without question.

Individuals in AD live based on the assumption that because technology is constantly evolving and becoming more grandiose, that they, themselves, are evolving and bettering as well, projecting moral conformities and neglecting the concept of ethics all-together. Further, I believe that individuals of today rely so heavily on the artificial realities they root themselves in, they have never been farther from their own human nature, rooted out of love, self-awareness, and true wisdom.

Nothing is more causal to the decension of human conduct than the excess of "wisdom" floating about via the World Wide Web and the ignorance which catalyzes from having so much information and really understanding nothing of it.

What have I learned? The only person I can completely trust in this world is myself. Only when pushing through the things which aim to make or break, (personal questions, acquisition of my own truths, living my passions, and ridding of ignorance) can I arrive at a conclusion which really speaks of understanding. Only in understanding can I grow. Only in growing, can I effect.

"When people hear the magic name of 'Science' you can sell people anything-except understanding." -E.E. Cummings

(December 11th, 2006)

Time for the final bout

2009-11-24T02:18:00.000-08:00

I guess this is where it's all supposed to make sense. I shattered the glass ceiling. Instead, I find myself sandwiched in shards, finding no solace in the air beyond the ceiling. I hated the glass ceiling, the waiting room, the precursor to the final bout.

I lied awake for weeks, wondering why I was drowing in a sense of mediocrity, the almost which never becomes more. I wanted to change everything- job, school, friends, location, mindset, music, everything but the one thing I'd forgotten life before. Though many would say she took life from me, I still contest that she breathed it into me. She was the first person, of no relation, I would have died for, without hesitation- in many ways, I did die for her.

And yet, it has come here. Without the motivation to write and the words to justify my torrent of emotions, all I can say is goodbye. And I don't know if it's right and I don't know if it's wrong- I don't even know if such shallow definitions could ever explain my multitude of emotions.

This is a surrender of the life I knew before today, the three year relationship which has rattled and defined my existence. I find my hope had chained me down as restless wings yearned for the sky beyond the glass. Oh, how I would have stayed forever. But I know I can't, I couldn't. I'm alone now, though I know I'm going to be okay.

It's an odd feeling to be free of something you've loved and lived for for so long. I'm filled with no pangs of sadness and none of joy. Just being, breathing. Naked. Raw.

I'm watching myself walk away down the slenderly paved road, streetlamps dying as I pass them by. Slowly, my sihoulette turns, streams of moonlight piercing my curves as I look back one last time. And I shrink away, over the horizon, my shadow melting into the moon. I am gone, then. Somehow, I know I won't come back here. But oh, how I'll miss this road and it's familiar turns and the way the stars tasted on my tongue when I kissed its sky.

Time for the final bout
Rows of deserted houses
All our stable mates highway bound
Give us our measly sum
Getting the air inside my lungs is heavenly
Starting out with nothing but crippling doubt
We'll rest easy justified
Suffered a swift defeat, I'll endure countless repeats
The gift of memory is an awful curse
With age it just gets much worse, but I won't mind
I won't mind

(January 4th, 2007)

Pack of cigarettes

2009-11-24T02:03:00.000-08:00

I get this urge to buy a pack of cigarettes every now and then. Sometimes I just want to kick back and take a few slow drags- especially on days like these, when for one reason or another, I'm a kind of tired that makes me feel like I'm living in slow-motion, yet I feel more conscious than ever.

Incidentally, my light bulb in my room burned out this morning, so as I sit in my room, darkening with dusk through the windows, I contemplate: The feeling of sinking into something. And graceful inhalations and exhalations of a beautiful melodic smoke that dances to the words of "Meet Virginia" that I find myself screaming much louder than I expected.

Tonight is a good night, though crippled- it still inspires me to take a walk in a long trench coat down a faintly lit road just to blend in and stand out all at the same time, to take a jump- physically, mentally.

I'll never smoke, because I don't believe in abusing my body, but damn, I admire the sexy rasp it gives my favorite singers and the coolness it exudes over a glass of wine and a great song.

***

Lets take a chance. Lets meet eyes across the corner of a smoky, shadowy club. Lets forget there is anybody but us. Lets dance- slowly, intimately. Lets say nothing. Lets drink too much. Lets feel everything. Lets go somewhere. Lets forget. Lets remember. Lets live.

(January 16th, 2008)

Bluffing

2009-11-24T02:02:00.001-08:00

I envy you. The way you move through life with such meaning. Sincere. Each step so graceful and deliberate. Even the falls, elegant. Your eyes never leave the horizon. I want to walk just like you, confident strides.

Game-player, game-player, show me your hand. Hands that move without touching, hands that harm without intention, hands that fumble delicate fidelity and betray the trusting. You know people far too well- from the outside that is. You mimic what inspires to leave footprints within their chests. You react to an act that has yet to happen, only to inspire its birth, backwards. Manipulator- to be honest to advantage, and to never apologize for the "truth." Game-player, game-player, show me your hands. Coarse and cold, do you feel at all?

I see you.

Do you see me in here? Call my bluff. I'm begging to be torn from this table, this blurry haze of faces which mumbles incoherent inconsistencies which are lost before they exist. I want to speak, but this is not a time for words. This is my game-face, unflinching, and I'm too prideful to quit. Beat me. Understand me, and beat me at my best. Don't fold on me, betrayed by my falsifications and soft looks. Persistence, madam or sir. Make me sweat. I want to feel it trickle down my brow, and maybe, hopefully, land somewhere near my heart. I'm not that tough, you'll see.

(January 28th, 2008)

Car seats and stars

2009-11-24T01:58:00.000-08:00

From the car seat, I can feel everything: the breeze from your acceration blanketing my feet, pieces of the sky stuck to my fingertips, the music reverberating my ear drums, sending a subtle vibration through my body. Smoking as you do; my hairs a tangle but I can see you exhale through the strands. My eyes. You know they're on you. You always know they're on you. I hate that you know that. I want to touch you, but I fear being too present, that you might lose the impact of my skin grazing your skin. And I can't help but wonder how many others have lain across this seat, anticipating being taken anywhere and everywhere by you. I wonder if their hair tangles the same way and if they were bursting with things to say. I'm sure they danced. I'm not there yet, though. Not quite to the point when I know it's not all just something to pass the time, another cycle to get you through the season until you're where you actually want to be. Hiding in carpe diem's cloak, granting you invisibility in moments that demand intention. Come hither, I'm sure they said with their eyes; they wanted you. No questions. You're so good! as the seat reclines and your sihilouette breaks up the stars. And as you move on them, is it all so systematic? Is it different from she to she to she to Me? Sometimes I feel like anyone could be me in this seat. And I don't like it.

(April 27th, 2008)

The beauty of fall

2009-11-24T01:57:00.000-08:00

So this is the fall.
I think I'm starting to get it.
And why it's all so simple,
And when it's right,
How the peices just fall into place-
As if they were never not in place.

So this is the fall.
Into realness, into the supreme awareness
Where no matter what happens, I feel! Everything
And with that kind of knowledge,
Nothing is insurmountable
And everything is free to be what it (in it's rawest form) is.

The transformation-
From spending hours looking just right for you
To feeling like you're the only one I wouldn't mind taking it all off for,
From conjuring up a dozen witty things to say
To not saying a thing and somehow knowing you just might get it,
From meditating on every reason it might fall apart
To thriving like a wildflower,
By the fact that it's Alive in this dried up world and I'm Alive with it.

Black and white, the contrast from then to now
From who I was and who I am becoming
In embracing the transition, the complete up-in-the-air-ness
Of simply living for this moment.
How miserable I was before and "in love" with a facade of a feeling
Which was really Compromise buried in Comfort.

You didn't mean to do it, but when your wave crashed on my shore,
You unearthed something ethereal and honest.

And I don't know what it all means,
Where it will take me,
If it will end, nor if it's truly begun,
But I'm pretty certain that this is the fall.
So... this is the fall.

Fall was always my favorite season.

(May 7th, 2008)

Toxicity of you

2009-11-24T01:47:00.001-08:00

You're like that shoelace that never stays tied. You trip me up whenever I get moving. Sometimes I stumble and quickly regain my balance and other times I don't fare so well- falling quickly to the ground, colliding with reality, leaving permanent scars.

You get over it because you grow out of it. The memories are still potent and suffocating-a thick smoke that chokes you once it's released from its box tucked up on the back shelf of your mind's closet. People say time heals all things- from a biological standpoint, this is mostly true. From an emotional standpoint, all time does is introduce new experience which then evolves you into someone who can't relate effortlessly to the past and lives outside of it.

Time has taught me that getting over something and forgetting something are very different. Society kind of clumps them together, nullifying that getting over something involves being aware and understanding of it before moving past it. For me, getting over something is often accepting that you may never have explanations for some injustices you have suffered.

Toxic relationships rarely start out in a toxic fashion. Their toxicity is only exposed after you've become vulnerable; certainly close to someone.

I loved a toxic person once- with everything. Releasing them from my life and moving on was the hardest thing I've ever done. What's creeping up my spine tonight is how much the memories still live in the crinkled, aging paper of my journal- how alive are those nights enscribed in my mind. Toxic, it was. Toxic, it remains in many ways, if I simply tempt myself to tread those old paths.

The trick is in not treading.

(November 19, 2008)

Running together

2009-11-23T13:17:00.000-08:00

Is it enough to run and have someone run alongside you, but never dare to race, to push, to see what your made of? To be recognized, but not understood?
For many freer spirits, it can be thought of as a barefoot dash from civilization, deep breaths, quick steps, feeling candid, ethereal, part of something and all on your own at the same time. I always measured my match by who was most willing and able to simply keep up. I'm not necessarily looking for the yin to my yang or someone who can sum up all my idiosyncratic behaviors, but someone who will run like hell next to me, not because of me, but because they relish that feeling too.
And when we fall to the ground, hearts thumping beneath our flesh, we can look at each other and without saying a single word, understand. The race. The feeling. Everything.
Sometimes I feel like my mind is this whole separate being, connected to me, but living on something else. Sometimes it wanders- maybe because it's bored or curious. I think it just misses feeling awakened. Sometimes I think we're both sleepwalking.
And all I want to is wake up next to you and run like today is everything we've got. Because it is.

(January 21, 2009)

Pathetic

2009-11-23T13:14:00.001-08:00

Pathetic

Slithering, you're spineless
Needing structure to move yourself
And a strong personality
To stand in the shadow of
So no one sees who you really are

Compromising your standards
Constantly benefitting the doubt
Molding to be anything for anyone
Allowing your self to be selfless
In the name of greatness?

But for nothing but company
The temporary attention
Of someone who loves and leaves-
Just to chase a fleeting thought
And defend it like it was everything

What could have been if only...
It's always something to blame
Slithering on to another flame
Another name, another game
You are pathetic

(March 15th, 2009)

Puddles

2009-11-23T13:10:00.000-08:00

Puddles
The wind ravaging the trees sounds like a semi passing a bicylist on the high way. The rainfall whips on the concrete like the tide playing the shoreline before rapidly ascending into the air. Everyones frantic. But I feel calm, strolling home through the gutter, with water up to my ankles, kicking a bundle of leaves back onto the street, watching their bright colors contrast the dark grays and blacks of torn up tar. My hair is a blonde tangle, sopping wet as it slaps into my face, and my jacket is thrown from my body as I walk against the wind. This is the first real day of fall I've felt. It's catastrophic. Everyone's faces are painted with anxiety from the dry comfort of their cars as I walk here, confettied with backsplash. And there's something magnificent about it. I'm laughing aloud like a drunk bum, clutching my transparent clothes to my body with swagger, opening my mouth wide and tasting the rain on my tongue. Something feels right and undeniable about the malevolence of a storm- you're reminded of fear, of anticipation, of being so cold you shake, so on edge you want to scream, so aware of what you want at a basic level that you are forced into the present. Now.

(October 13th, 2009)

Jumping in Leaves

2009-11-23T13:08:00.000-08:00

Jumping in leaves
I'm rubbing the peice of paper between my fingertips like a worrystone until a small hole wears into its perfect symmetrical blue and red lines. My toes are tapping on the concrete in my bedroom like an anxious heart beat as some crunchy leaves scrape across the floor nearby. My fingers are keying my laptop like I'm somehow in control of the Over The Rhine song that's blasting in my room. "If you came to make trouble, make me a double honey, I think it's good..."

You know, in movies, when the main character is sitting on some couch, full of anxiety, head racing, on the brink of making some life-altering decision, the camera will pan the room, moving past him? If a decision has been made before the 360 capture of the room is complete, the camera will pan back to the starting point and the man will be gone. He's done something! He's taken action. And he'll be walking out of the room, grab a coat on the way out, (no, screw the coat, this is urgent), leave the door to the house open (because who cares now), steps quickening, until he's running, and running faster now, and he smiles like he hasn't felt this good in awhile, moving toward something with intensity and a confidence like he's always known he felt this way and any moment until he holds that ONE thing is a waste of a moment.

Don't you want to be that guy? I do.

The camera is panning my room right now. I'm watching it spin. As of right now, I know I'll be in the same place when it comes back around. I resent that, but where will I run? What will crack my smile? What will give me a second wind?

Have you ever wanted anything as bad as he wants his ONE thing?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've been thinking about happy the last few days. Fall reminds me of my favorite kind of happy. 7 years old. I'd wake with the sun because I had no concept of time, alarm clocks, or an agenda (I hate everything about that word, by the way, because it's so unforgivingly premeditated and thoughtless). I'd fill my body with whatever was in the house, probably something sugary because why not? I'd fling my lanky body out the door in whatever felt right for the day. At the time, it was floppy, oversized straw hats with giant fake sunflowers glued to the front. I was lucky to grow up with lots of open space to adventure in, and my brother and the neighbors and I would disappear for hours (like 10) at a time in the feilds behind my house. Every day was a treasure hunt, a duel, a construction project, a talent show, a sports rivalry, a tree climb. My favorite was when we'd rake all of the leaves from the yard into a giant pile beneath the swingset and slides and dive in. There was something about pumping my legs in the air on that swing, and throwing my arms in the air, letting out a scream and landing in that crinkled autumn mess that made everything feel right.

Now, happy has changed for me over the years, and how can it not? You grow older. You are forced (in some ways) to accomodate time... attend school, get a job, follow a social order of a sort. You fall in love. You lose friends. You gain wisdom. You do a lot. And for most people, it seems like the 7 year old gets squelched. But still, the happiest times for me are ones when I'm adventuring, without a planner, with the company of freeminded, child-like spirited individuals. It makes me wonder why people get so far away from their inner child, when it's the purest essence of themselves. I just think children are so wonderful because all they know is their inner voice, their unbiased and pure desires, the core of their feelings and motivations, and because they recognize that, they are living. I can't help but feel so much of the bullshit of today is because people stopped listening to that voice. People stopped jumping into piles of leaves. In love. In life. In it all.

I think the guy on the couch realized that.

(October 17th, 2009)

Contents of a shoebox

2009-11-23T13:05:00.001-08:00

It's hard to think of us as sealed
And neatly stacked with the other cardboard shoe boxes
With lostlove's names Sharpie-d onto the sides
That what we've made are memories
That what's been done is our story
That there's a last page
And a last period ending that last sentence on that page
A black hole... Punched
Like a time card
Like a boxer in the last round, raining sweat
As his knees weaken, they hit the mat like thunder
His fists are clenched, knuckles white, but the fight is over

I trace my fingers along the other boxes
Open one-"Egyptian goddess"- it still smells of her
Another, a photo of someone I hardly recognize
Kissing a man I haven't talked to in 7 years
A love letter I wrote before I knew love
I am a stranger to these things; I touch them
Like a forgotten friend I ran into at the coffeeshop
We small talk, but all we have is past... and it's Now
But there's still me in you- our box is beneath my skin
And in my eyes and in my heart and in my mind
Yet already I know dust will cloud these treasures
The ink in my letters will fade, the senses will dull
And you will be a sihoulette of who I knew
As we stammer over nonfat white chocolate mochas

It's not that it wasn't right; it was right
But it seems so wrong that the road just ends sometimes
Smooth pavement becomes broken and eroded
You're coasting, arms in the air, aching to hold on to that high
And suddenly the movement isn't moving you
You wake up in a trench of weeds, dandelions dancing
Before your tear-stained cheeks
There is beauty in this moment when you felt it all and lost it all
But it hurts
Sometimes you just lose good things and you don't know why
Sometimes life shows you why later... and much later...
Sometimes, you never figure out why
Good people leave and good love fades

I'm pressing your lid shut
You now sit on my shelf above where we made love
That one night when all I had was a papazon pad and a cold barn floor
You're my tree I nurtured that didn't come back to life this fall
The trembling branches are reaching away
Nothing can stay green forever, I suppose
I cut you deep and found no color, no luster, no life
Don't say sorry; I understand
I remember how it felt to climb to your highest high
And lay in your shade, and leap from you without fear
I'm writing the letters of your name, whispering them aloud
Like my favorite song from another time
I won't forget the words.

(October 29th, 2009)

Blurbs from a visit to Nebraska

2009-11-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

13 minutes:
Creative write
This flight
This night
This fight
Fog in my eyes
Melody in my ears
Coffee on my breath
Butterflies in my chest
My heart hidden between
Two different dreams
Wanting to fall
And nothing it all
Wanting to be entirely free
With you next to me
Contradictory, it would be
That I'm here in this seat
On my way to see you
And find me.

I Am:
Taking in these quiet Nebraska streets
With porches and lawns and full grown trees
Reaching
The final few copper-veined leaves
Curling into themselves,
But staying rigid-
Holding on 'til they're let go
Until they: the riskers, the jumpers, the believers
Congregate in nearby gutters

A heart spilled in ink:
I savor the moments we share because they are pure (and I know that's the most honest thing I've said all day because I just started to cry in this oversized chair in the middle of a busy coffeeshop). The moments are pure; they are the stillframes in the movie of my life, they are the way I hold my breath before I plunge downhill on my bicycle or before I blow my wish on a dandelion. They are full. They are calm. They are content. They are not thought but felt. And being with her, that way, makes me feel healthy and alive and human. I feel our love in the most uncomplicated of ways. It kills me to think it's so complicated to her. I just want her to let go. I want to say: TRUST ME. There is a reason it's me here with you through these times. There's a reason you think of me when you're happy. There's a reason I am in your smile and sigh and blush and laughter. There's a reason you don't fear my hand in yours, that the music that moves you soon becomes mine, that you dreamed that dream, that you miss me, that I inspire you. It is love: multilayered and multifaceted, fullbodied and beautiful in the most rudimentary way. And things like boxes and lines and definitions cannot hold everything together; there are exeptions that slip beneath our surfaces and penetrate us. To be moved is a gift. To be touched by a selfless love is a gift. Can we not enjoy this love? This still moment in a racing life? Everything is so fleeting, but us. I see you. Do you see me?

Pickle-juiced fingers:
Red rims of last nights wine
Match those beneath my eyes
As I drip, drip, trip over my mind
Blurring this ink with all that I think
Sitting on this windowsill
Feeling still
I'm a single pane in this big ol' place
And in that big ol' tree, I see me
Wind whipping its hair,
Stripping it bare
Accepting the gust, relying on trust
That being naked here is nothing to fear
Vulnerable toes tapping the floor
I hear your key in the door
Twisting the lock and tangling my heart strings

Bitter over coffee:
Physical barriers and limits are placed in order to keep us on our "best" behavior, when, in my mind, the importance is not in the test or the pass/fail grade, but the awareness of the question. It doesn't matter whether I slip my hand under a pillow to graze her skin- the point is that I want to and that the pillow must be there in the first place. It all goes back to this: IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT COMMITMENTS ARE MADE IF FEELINGS ARE NOT BEHIND THEM. FEELINGS DICTATE RELATIONSHIPS; RELATIONSHIPS DO NOT DICTATE FEELINGS. She says "things will get easier over time" like we're training for a marathon or parenting a disobedient child. I realize I must let this go, now. Love is something to be lived in, not controlled and put down to die. I can't help but think, shit! I am the dog chasing the light into the wall. Over and over. Until I'm senseless.

How I long to be:
A bead in your dreadlocks when you "toss toss"
The bars of your bike when you're riding the wind
The Journey song at the end of a long night
The raisins on your bagel
Whiskey in your veins
A regular at your bar
The cigarette on your lips
And the paint on your hands
The hot coffee that carries you out of bed
Katya
Your muse- the reason why
Your dry mouth, writhing, breathlessness, climax
To be seen for how beautiful I really am
In your head when you don't tell me what you're thinking
Someone you feel proud to be loved by
Someone you can see God working through
Really, really loved by you
Enough

The thing I realized is it doesn't matter how much you love someone if they don't recognize the you in that love. If they cannot appreciate all the beauty that you are and the intensity of what it means for you to love at all. You can only go so far out on a limb for how you feel before you realize you're standing out there alone. It's a beautiful thing to be selfless, but you must be careful not to lose yourself in that feeling. I have been pouring my cup into hers for so long now, I have learned to love the sound of hers running over without realizing mine has been empty.

An unfamilar feeling

2009-11-03T02:30:00.000-08:00

I have been feeling so much these past few months. I'm hurting and I'm vulnerable and for the first time ever, I'm okay with showing that. I feel exposed in good and bad ways. My relationship with Trevor showed me how amazing it is to have real, good love- the kind of love you grow with. My three month backpacking trip through Europe humbled me to the world and taught me invaluable lessons about who I am in the world. I gave myself over entirely to the experience and have walked away a more ambitious and passionate woman. Coming back to my more monotonous life has been a struggle. Having one of my best friends and my long term boyfriend/best friend move away the same week has made that more difficult. And Allison danced her final dance through my life and caught me up in her beauty for a little over a month- I find myself crushed by my love for her again that is met with only platonic intent. In some ways, I feel like I lost her too. Needless to say, I feel like I'm wandering the dark and winding roads by myself these days. I have good friends in my life; I'm happy with my life, but I do feel overwhelmed by a sense of alone lately. I can't shake it.

I've committed myself to pursuing my feelings for women, which, I think will be a good thing for me, though my experiences the past couple months have been pretty painful. I'm the emotional manifestation of a "growing pain" right now. I feel it in me. It seems pretty counter-nature for a bisexual girl to close herself off to one sex, but I feel like the ideal is out of the picture right now. The reality is, I don't see myself as able to fully commit to a man until I figure out how I truly feel about women. My relationships with women have been passionate and insane- my meaningful ones were both long distance and any others never really got off the ground. I feel slighted by that; how can I truly know if I can be happy/fulfilled by a woman until I know what it's like to date a woman on the day-to-day, naturally, enjoying simple things, being in the moment, growing together? I don't think I can. How can I know if I could fully commit to one gender until I have great love with each? After I make love to a woman, will I lie awake and think about men? I only know my mind wanders to women when I'm laying in a man's arms. And I think that's significant.

With that said, I'm uncomfortable. I'm in this new stage in my life where every choice I make is on my shoulders, for my benefit/demise. I'm not a part of a couple any more, where I have another to consider in my decisions. I'm not anticipating a great trip any more, so my future is wide open. I'm still in community college, which, obviously, I could attend in any community. In other words, my life is vacant in a good way: ready to be filled with the things that inspire and drive me. That, in itself, is also overwhelming. I feel like I've overgrown this town, and without trying, I've pushed away the walls that kept me in. And now what?

In my attempt to be open to change and what comes next, I fear I've made myself too available to opportunities... to the extent of compromising myself. I'm upset with myself today because I was intimate with someone who doesn't know me and it went nowhere... nowhere. And I have never been turned down by someone I liked before. I am meticulous about my romantic encounters- until this summer, the number of people I'd kissed could be counted on ten fingers. I've never had casual sex- only made love with people I've loved deeply. I have great value in myself and what I have to offer and the people who have liked/loved me, have recognized and respected that. It's more common of me to be unaffected by people who pursue me. It's more common of me to not be approached because of intimidation. I think I'm so used to feeling that immediate sense of someone caring for/respecting/wanting me that I'm starting to expect that same care from all of the people who I choose to involve myself with. The reality is ugly. The reality is, if I give myself away to someone who doesn't KNOW me enough to appreciate me, I've sold myself short and shouldn't be surprised if they don't want anymore from me than that. It's really kind of heartbreaking and I don't know quite why... I'm not even sure if I liked the girl.