i have been in the sun
and squinting
with headphones on
and if i didn't tell her,
i could leave today.
i have been working on a botany coloring book. i'm very excited about it. i figure, if i am going to have so much time on my hands since i still couldn't get my residency, i might as well teach myself, with the help of books and downloaded lectures and podcasts a-la Demetria Clark, and see about the apprenticeship i have wanted for however many months now.
and i have only half of my 101 things of 1001 days list completed. it's quite a difficult list when you're not just saying "send in a postcrossing" or taking ideas from the hundreds of other lists that exist for this. it has to be your list.
and note, i'm making my own ice toddy coffee starting today. yum.
my mother will be here soon and i am almost a year older.
how about that.
i am sharing some music
DJ Shadow is a favorite of mine. the Mamas and the Papas just goes without saying.
love--
i woke up feeling gritty and cranky
on an overcast day with damp smelling air,
the stretching skies the color of tired water.
strange things like teddy thompson's sally brown
and joseph arthur's coast of high barbary.
i guess those who listen to melancholy sea music are supposed to wake up feeling sandy and shaken.
death and oblivion, the american way.
and i'm really a superhero.
and i have been sneaking photos of people in motion
(they're too caught up)
and we sneak out of windows to sit on rooftops
and listen to the people walking home from bars.
and we smoke cigarettes and type one-handed
and we think of the way our lover moans in the dark.
and we hate the way the moon makes us strange and angry
but we're all going to make it,
because we all fall in love with anything daunting.
there is a connectedness in the colors in the air, and the way we breathe in deeper when we think it's safer and cleaner.
there is a belief.
it is okay to rub your toe in the gravel.
it is okay to mess up the hair in the back of your head.
and it is okay to stay or leave
because the seasons still change and so do we.
and this morning i cried when i saw a ladybug on the bridge with a crumpled wing. you had me walk away when i said that i want to take him but i will cry when he dies.
and there is plastic where a tree should be.
and every bridge that i have crossed, heavy-heeled and hopeful hearted for the escape from you, you, you
are all the same.
it's okay .
there are really two of me.
a man said "you are many different people, aren't you?" and i turned from him with his drink in my hand and soberly said "yes. i am." and we left it at that.
i rolled my own cigarette on a porch while the creek rushed behind me.
took the bus 18 miles up the canyon and listened to the wings of ravins sift through the air,
the creaking of trees,
the breeze on my knees.
the romance of the vanished,
or does vision determine the view?
i have been listening to a lot of jason euringer and sarah harmer and po' girl.
wet
dry.
nevermind my big ugly foot.
i have been thinking about the ocean, lately--
tore up some crappy canvas from the winter and stretched linen over the old frames and let summer in.
i am looking at a house in nederland this afternoon.
it will either be perfect and i will move immediately in and be a coffee brewing hermit or it will just fade like a notion.
also, i think the time has come for me to start my list of 101 in 1001.
and a song, to share.
i guess all i can say is that i am glad i am capable of self-transformation.
and that i am glad to have a friend like you.
you told me some people are destined for things,
that i was destined to be sad. that sadness was my destiny.
and i'm stubborn. i am stubborn.
so, for almost 8 months now, i have been proving you wrong.
the people who allowed for that sadness to sit inside of me,
i have moved away from.
mentally.
and in moving that way,
i have been able to move on without running.
physically.
those people notice that i have changed because i am short with them, i won't let them in and i don't care about their sadness, i won't let it be.
this is where i am.
and, my friend, we rode in the sunset after eight months of being apart, and it was delicious.
it was beautiful and warm and i forgot that you had ever even left.
i have gone vegan because of intestinal bleeding.
now my body is happier than it has been in a long time.
i have been painting in a different style than i ever have before.
bright colors on linen.
this is me, right now.
i want coffee so, so badly. but the grinder is so loud and scott and caitlin are sleeping, or trying to.
i have been playing around on the computer, making mix cd's, rereading a favorite novel for the 3rd time, scratching different spots on my back--i like how it feels so good to scratch even if you don't need to, and listening to the sound wind makes. it comes in from the open windows, sneaking in with merely a ruffle of a curtain, a wisp on your cheek. then it slams the door, but only enough to make you look up. it's a lover that you will never have to hide in the closet. a chill that is merely fleeting. a sound that isn't really a sound at all.
there's always the wind.
i have been wondering if there really exists that moment of silence,
between the wakers and the sleepers,
having no set sleep schedule has proved that
even the tiniest of towns never sleep.
he stopped listening to music
because even the wonder of the cello
had become as simple as the ring of
tinnitus as thermostats interrupt air-conditioning fans.
but isn't that what makes our hearts, our senses
reverberate with pneumatic pumps,
from the familiarity of faces and sleepless machines
to the darkness between blinks?
i said what i always remember to be the way everything carried on afterward.
and when i dance, when i move that way, slowly, inexorably,
it feels primitive, rooted, connected to the dirt of the earth and the light of the stars,
a spun thread pulled across the span of generations.
and you asked me when i would turn into a tree,
and i say i won't,
only then it was a secret that was growing.
i cast one last look back behind me before i shut the door,
and thought about how nice two cups on a table can look.
and how she told me she wants kitties,
but will wait patiently, of course, for mine to die first.
and it's funny that no matter how uncomfortable i am,
i will not move if there is a sleeping kitten in my lap.
and i wish you could see how comfortable, cute and quiet they are
when it is just me.
how i miss driving through the mountains,
and how being offered a ride,
even though i was ill-equipped for hiking in the cold mountain rain,
i couldn't pass up the opportunity to find my tread among the pines.
and though it has been months since i have been so deep
and isolated in the woods,
it hasn't changed the fact that i still wish i lived
in a tiny cabin or a yurt
where i could relearn how to be a creative, self-sustaining animal.
and i am probably missing a sprawling beach that i have never seen,
wanting to belt out with the voice i have,
wanting to miss a good night's sleep
just to blow smoke rings into the night sky
these are things i think about,
but wouldn't make sense to say aloud.
i really don't understand why the government makes it so damn difficult for people to go to college.
do they want everyone to just be uneducated suburban driving morons?
literature, science, cultural studies, eh, who needs it.
i'm meeting with CU's admissions this afternoon. the deciding factor.
what an awful, backwards system.
i smoked a vanilla cigarette
in a red slip
in the dark
while a beer can in the road
winked in the streetlamp
its other bright red eye.
i have been feeling stagnant.
standing, sitting, lying, blankly
riding buses to cities with no destination.
i am hours past him and i
sitting at a cafe table
and feeling that we will never do anything,
ever do nothing.
and then i leave and get drunk and watch music,
and my clothes smell like cigarettes
and i am miles past him and i
lying in bed and feeling that we will do everything,
i would do everything,
just to know that
nothing is not an option.
we stood huddled on a patio and talked about
inadequacy
and tumultuous,
tedious
social relationships.
him and his gait,
her and her cleavage,
her and her pigtails,
me and my sandals,
him with his stature.
i came to this place on a bus
and wandered through the city streets
on a clear day with my internal forecast blaring,
"scattered buildings and scattered minds--
there's a front moving in and it tastes a little stale."
and a different bed tonight
doesn't quite make up for the fight
or the lack of explanations and closure
for the gaping wound
that i have poked at and kicked around
these different city streets,
but the weather forecast is always the same,
no matter where you go, there you are,
and scattered buildings and scattered minds--
there's a front moving in and it tastes a little stale.
