At the Laundromat

Watched, she pulls the door closed behind her, shutting out the heat that threatens to sweat her dry. Eyes Cast to the floor, she carries a basket of her under-things to a washer in the back and dumps it haphazardly in. A single sock ends up in the neighboring machine, and a pair of striped panties falls to her feet, blue on grey and lace edged. She scrambles after the sock first, lips tight with heat and consternation - five pairs of eyes flick to the moment of bare flesh and away again as everyone pretends not to notice the koi peeking out upon her briefly bared midriff. The panties are next, crumpled between her near-dead sneakers, but no one looks this time; her eyes are everywhere at once, prancing about the room in her embarrassment.

Metallic clunks seem to chime the time as she jostles coins out of her pocket and into the slot - and then she has slid across the room and onto an empty table, basket abandoned on the floor and a letter in her lap. She pushes herself back to the wall, drawing her knees to her chest as she does, and sets her sea blue eyes to the letter. She breathes heavily for several minutes, eyes locked to the lines in her hands. Eventually, her eyes flutter closed and she presses her face into her legs, the letter left to crumple between her cheek and her thigh.

A long overdue update

It has a been veritably long time since I have regularly written. This blog has suffered more than any one other thing, save perhaps my own psyche. A quick game of catch up, then:

 

Over the past few months, I have been lost and found and lost again; over and over again, in fact. I moved to Los Angeles and fell in love with the city, and then moved back to Boise. My heart has been shattered and left to rust, and picked back up and pieced together with loving eyes and hands. I have lost many friends and stood silent as things have burnt to the ground around me. I have had moments of sheer ecstasy and utter desperation. I have given up and then stood back up.

 

I have learned so much in my life over the last few months; the sorts of things that never go away, that resonate through every inch of me and most likely will until the end of time.

 

Everything is looking up. I am content in my position in life, though never complacent. I am recalibrating and recalculating.

 

I am here. And I am alive. So terribly alive.

 

Viens avec moi.

xx

Into the Night

It is still; standing in the brisk arms of yet another sleepless night, I am finally at peace.

Something just fell into place. Within me, a sort of joyous resolve is blossoming.

I am awake in a way that I have not been in far, far too long.

I feel as though I am floating just outside of my body, watching it act upon its own. Watching my fingers press these words onto paper that doesn’t exist – I am at peace.

I am loved. In ways that I can never do justice with words or images or poetics. She has made me whole again, though she doesn’t know it.

In mere days I will have my muse incarnate inches from me, and my soul rejoices.

I, who do not believe in a god or a hereafter or a power other than that of love and hope, am fully here. And there is nowhere that I would rather be.

My mind is writing too quickly for my hands to keep up, so I continue in the halting style that I have long become accustomed to - though it is for reasons new to me. Things are being lost in the mental maelstrom, and it matters not.

I am alive.

And the world is beautiful and broken.

There is so much to be done. So much that must be written, and even more that must be seen and shown and lived.

And the stress of it… has melted away into pensive determination and creative flux.

For such an extended time have I felt lost in the sea of ‘must-do’s’ and goals that seemed Sisyphean; no more.

Success is as possible as you allow it to be.  

Success is.

You just have to find it within yourself.

And you, my dearest one –  you gift me with this, and you know it not.

Know it now.

I am still; standing in the brisk arms of another sleepless night, I am at peace.

Viens avec moi.

xx

The Raucous

So great is our fear of our own potential that we will sabotage our very dreams and call it life...

Big things are on the horizon.

For me.

For you.

Commit.

And don't let that commitment lie forgotten.

So caught up are we in this political circus that we have forgotten or misplaced the fact that change comes from the smallest moving parts of any whole - in the national arena, that's us. You. Me.

And we are so easily led to distraction from that point.

The point where we stop blaming situations and circumstances and past experiences and take charge of ourselves.

Do you have a goal?

Do you know a love?

Do you know what you want?

Commit to it.

Allow yourself to have/know/be it.

And then chase it with your everything.

And don't quit.

Ever.

Blog on a bike?

Worth a try, I suppose.

Two and a half weeks ago, I spent more than eighteen hours in this gym in seven days. I dropped eleven pounds. I believe this is indicative of a few different things:

1- I managed to really let myself go after last summer.

2- We are far more capable than we give ourselves credit for.

An old Bosnian man just approached me. He noticed my back injury; while my first reaction was discontent that I let it show, he explained that he has lived his whole life with an oft debilitating one.

A heart warming conversation and twelve miles later, I have a short list of recommendations and a renewed sense of strength.

Never quit. Not in this moment or in your dying breath. Fight with everything that you are, and you will never have reason for disappointment.

a recap;

"Toska. I still don't really know what it is but I don't think anybody is supposed to." - Mina Mangano

I can honestly say that I have never been happier to see September go. Ever. So, it is with zero animosity that I say: 

“Fuck you, September. Fuck you.” 

melancholic metanoia. 

“Happiness abounds!”

toska.

“It’s going to work out, though. Right? I mean, doesn’t it always?”

a one-carton-week.

“Where are you right now?” “.”

asphalt.

“Don’t be stupid.”

still here,

another year

“She sleepwalked from moment to moment, and whole months slipped by without memory, without bearing the faintest imprint of her conscious will.”
― Ian McEwan, The Comfort of Strangers

Another year has passed, now, and I’m trying to figure out the precise meaning of it. 

[Another year older, another year more jaded, more bitter, more…  these are what pragmatic minds might jump to. With such a mind, hope and optimism are things of youth- nearly synonymous with naivety; it seems a rather negative approach.]

{Another year wiser, another year closer (to goals, not death), another chance at _________...; this approach is too much the ‘ne’er say naught’ persona.}

This is how I think I must reconcile it:

The last year has really brought me into my own, if only mentally and emotionally. I finally know what I want and how I want it, and I am moving in that direction. Progress is being made, though enough progress there never was. If I could make a request for what this upcoming year leaves me with, it would be patience. And maybe some wisdom. It’s time to put the young man to rest.

To those of you who read this:

Thank you.

Simply for being there to read it.

For being.

                Viens avec moi?

Adonais

... this journey of ours.

“It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turned out after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.”
― Ian McEwan, Black Dogs

As we hurry toward our respective train cars, fearing missed connections and the delays that accompany them, we make ourselves intentionally, if subconsciously unaware of our destination; that is to say that we refuse to recognise that our trip must end.

The important bit is that we don’t numb ourselves to the entirety of it, this journey of ours.

No, we cannot help that the train tracks end.

No, we cannot know when they will.

No, we cannot change that.

We can change our urgencies.

Be urgent to enjoy the scent of the air.

Be urgent to enjoy the momentary caress of a breeze under a summer sun.

Be urgent to lose oneself entirely to a lover’s hands or the promise of lovers’ devices.

Do not concern yourself with maintaining your wholeness – it is through our brokenness that we feel the world; it is in our shattered states that the world commits us to memory. It is the cracks in our being that make us who and what we are. It is in our crooked limbs and minds that our souls take form.

Do not live vicariously. Live profoundly. Live so that, when this train jumps the tracks, you aren’t met with the terror of mortality, but the promise of a realistic immortality.

Adonais

xx

Let's try this again.

“When she was strong enough, she went out one early morning and buried the wedding-dress decently under the apple-tree. Her breast felt hollow, as if it were her heart she had buried; but she could move and speak, still.” – Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

It’s truly been a lifetime since I’ve written anything longer than three sentences. There’s one. Two. And now we’re done.

Lost

It’s a death of the soul.

As I sit here, perched above the lights and sounds of a tiny farm-town as it settles down

into the night, I let go. The first wave

is a tender hand, painting with wet fingertips

across the canvas of a cheek –

my breath hitches as it turns, for I

know the wave that approaches now,

can feel it in the recesses of my

quivering essence.

Drowning is feeling the life pressed out of you.

Ten million hands pressing against every inch of you, exhausting your will first, your life second.

They don’t press hard – that would incite fight.

They gently tuck you between their sheets, and

whisper you into the night.

The second wave is upon us,

wait, upon me, as I recall that I am alone,

and it threatens to capsize us

or me or

whatever there is left.

I’ve fought myself out of fight, I think. So I sit above this sleepy would-be city and watch myself drown.

The Origin of Art

At the beginning of time, there was an enchanted forest. Through this forest ran a river that shimmered with all of the colours and hidden hues of the world. At the heart of the forest, the river fell in thick sheets; a waterfall that rose to the heavens fed it endlessly. The river snaked through the forest, feeding the trees- the trees stretched into the sky and hummed with a nearly electric life.

Every night, as the stars peeked out upon the forest, all of the creatures of the world would gather about the base of the falls, for from behind the wall of water came a most lyrical voice.

This voice spun stories and near tangible tales, explaining and entertaining with rhyme and riddle- the creatures of the world were enthralled. Each night, the voice whittled something anew, speaking of worlds the creatures had never known.

The creatures wanted greatly to meet the voice. They wanted to know the source of it as well as it seemed to know them. To this end, the creatures of the world began to plan.

It was arranged that the birds of the forest would carry the beavers into the heavens to find and block the source of the falls. As the birds and their cargo departed, the rest of the forest gathered about the base of the falls, silently waiting for the cascade to cease.

As the water haltingly stopped, the creatures crept forward, craning to see into the dark cave beyond. What came stumbling out was unlike anything any of them had ever imagined. The two legged creature stumbled forward, a limb raised to shield his eyes. The beauty of the forest struck the man dumb, his alluring voice failing him for the first time.

Over time, he regained his voice and began to resume his musings. The creatures of the world took turns guiding him about the magnificent forest, teaching him what they could about the way of their world. Still, every night the man would gather the creatures and entertain them with his stories.

Unnoticed by the jointly entranced creatures that sat and strode alongside it, the river began to dry. As the last dregs of its water disappeared, communication between the creatures and each other, as well as the man, became increasingly difficult. Soon, the magic of the forest had faded into nothing, and the man was left alone in an empty forest.

He began to walk, and as he walked, he listened to the birds’ lamenting songs; he faintly recalled the dark, endless edges of his cave and the stories that he spun the faceless voices through the falls. With a soft tread and a softer breath, he sang back to the birds. He began to recount and re-create the beauty he had so briefly known- the birds listened intently, and repeated his melodies back to him.

To this day, man, still walking, seeks the colours that have fled from the world- through paint, song, dance and prose he pulls them momentarily back into existence for all the creatures of the world to know once again.