8/8/08

i was thinking again today, walking to the store after sharing some laughs and stories with the amazing people i work with, that i’m the luckiest person i never imagined i could be. being here in this city, and being in a place with you that is so different (but yet, so similar) from where we started, makes me wonder for the first time of everything that could be ahead of us. that’s as far as i’ll dare take this tonight in the middle of these uneven spurts of ennui, but it’s a thought. just a thought. 

me, 2004.

“society today underestimates the value of taking oneself out on a date. and buying popcorn for oneself.”

“i also realized more completely exactly when the other half of myself will find me—when i have reached my own zenith and understood that there is no missing half.”

“this film is like bitter coffee drunk cold when standing wet in a grey drizzle. alone.”

“on the way home, i got to look at bright waves up against the beach and an endless lot of cars, each one bumped or bruised enough that no one wanted them anymore. i wondered what stories they would tell. if they could.”

“a wise person once told me,

that we only need to will our future in order to experience it. without visualizing the place we are meant to be, without living the connections we need to encounter… how can we expect to visit these places and know these people?

answer me that.”

(that was a good year. a good, quiet year full of so much understanding, so much of being alone in the most wonderful way possible.)

8/28/06

there is this thesis floating about me.

it has to do with how we bump and scratch all of these people as we move through life. we learn things through them, we pick up new obsessions and tics and appreciations. each one is sort of leaving a post-it note on us as we pass through, most of these post-its come with both dark and light experiences and loves. but we bring every piece of this patchwork quilt with us each time we jump into another person. and even when we don’t jump, we just sort of move and separate next to them, we are still carrying these pieces. 

i feel like i could draw up an intricate map connecting things like the coltrane music gordon taught me to love and the night i found myself craving every inch of your body when you played that live coltrane record in the dark of your room. or how sean made me appreciate jimi hendrix when i was sending him postcards in high school from the rock and roll hall of fame and this weekend, while thumbing through your music collection, i found a “new” hendrix song i love so much i went through repeated inner meltings for quite a bit of an afternoon. there’s also the story of how the first musical i ever saw became the first musical i ever performed in, and how somehow last week sean found himself in the house in san francisco my rose used to live in… regardless of the fact that they have never met and barely heard of each other.

it’s these scraps, these puzzle pieces that i’m picking up like magnets as i walk through life. they’re filling up my edges and, in a way, making me whole. 

and on the other second hand, i feel the need to say how much i love it when a) i feel like i know myself better than i ever have and b) i am going places and doing things and seeing things on sometimes an everyday basis that are everything to do with me, they are the everything i have loved and appreciated since i could open my eyes and take in the world.

they are everything i woke up one day not so very long ago to realize i was missing.

…

also, this.

…

also! i need a place to arrange all of the bits and pieces of words and things like poems i wrote over the years. there is some good shit that i completely forgot about. that i wrote! i wrote that! how… hmm. how should i do this.

looking at pictures in the distance

because these pictures are places i am tapping into once again, tapping and tripping and falling and bruising and bumping into these things inside that are emerging and breathing and feeling. and they are so good.

someone is pushing me again. in all of the right directions, in all of the right places. and in turn, i will push myself.

10/23/05

and so later in the conversation she says,
i’m moving to san francisco in january. like clockwork gears rotating into a perfect click there i am, and it has hit, hit hard like bricks and buildings. like sunshine and fog and cigarettes and kisses all come true.

(when i touch you there’s words on your body.)

3/3/06

tittle tattled through a folly
dumped lovingly into your
palm green hands and
shifted vicariously among
streets and vacant lots
bigger than us
and wider than the city

walked harmoniously through
slick beaten rain and
washed shores above
rain coats and waving patterns of
wind, i think

i may have ended abruptly
used my words to a wounded
disadvantage and
blazed through your triumphant
abandonment of me
in fields of thick
strings and taut bulbs

this is the place where
elements of nauseating
uncertainty fold
larger states erupt
time moves faster than
clocks and
i am no longer sure of
my awkward steps

7/14/05

this is what happens when the days are quiet. 

when the stifling comes only from what you know is here, but won’t show itself quite yet / when people are telling me not to be so silly, that my words will prove me wrong / i’ll meet someone and get all gooey and ga ga and barf all over the carpet / i’ll stop listening to songs by trespassers william and i’ll close my eyes so i can keep smiling / but i say, i like these songs, however dark they make me feel / and i’ll write about what it is to feel wistful and i’ll / make them see that life is not always one color or the other—there are deeper, darker places we usually choose never to go / and they will pass me by and i will stay here / what happens when all i want is to take myself out onto the beach and read my magazine, listen to my songs / they will not tell me these things about love, about what i will be like when i find what they want / because i’ve found the place in which these needs are forsaken / they are removed like holes cut out for the eyes of a mask / whatever money you charge me and hours you take of my time, i don’t lose i only gain / and from this i am still becoming / though stuck i am never misplaced

then. (and now.)

it’s a terribly good feeling when you can lose yourself for just a little while in the folds and creases of the life you’ve already seen and know without any doubt that you’re happier. that you’re just, simply, happier.

7/10/06

criss-crossed smiles
inserted delicately between billows of
untapped clouds and
spinning stars

are

lurking.
they are in front of the
moment and 
slipping idly about the
edges of my back
carefully
(simply)
exquisitely forming
a warmth and a buzz
that gently stirs me

reverent of the way you turn onto me
in the night

10/7/05

this is the crack in the sidewalk where
bigger questions breed
bigger answers
and we are
waiting for something to
break the glass
empty the void
vomit understanding
over the porcelain trap too
taut
for me to even consider forcing it
awake

…