Tuesday, February 24, 2009
oh oh cheri
i didn't go to class because i didn't want to walk in the rain. today is one of those days where i woke up, lay in bed, moved to lay in the tub, got dressed, and re-dressed, and have been reading and stopping to wonder if today is one of those days where i am not greater than the sum of my parts, or if today is one of those days where maybe i am best being defined or explained by my belongings or what i am wearing - that i am just a green tweed hat and typewriter key earrings - that i am a messy car and cluttered apartment. for some reason, that seems calm and still, for i expect little and have little expected of me...a day that has been reduced to, or at least punctuated by tea stains and tobacco, literary theory and lost spectacles, an old sweater, and shoes falling to pieces.
spring jasmine
nearly a year ago, i had a dream that i have often thought of, but never written down. this dream was both nightmarish, and oracular, and it woke me up, feverish but subdued, at that really early morning time characterized by half-light. i dreamt that i was being shown a book that had pages made of leaves, green and glossy, bound by twine and twigs. in this book were photos of the most bittersweet, elusive, and fantastic memories - photos of he and i laying in his twin bed, near the heater that would spark, photos of my brother, photos of my mother and i when i was young and she was carrying me up the stairs, photos of me laying on my aunt's outstretched legs while grandpa fished for catfish. the oracle, or shaman showing me this book had a deep gravely voice, and i feel sure that it was grandpa. in the photos, above my shoulders were three small captures of light, like dust. but i was told that this was actually three evil spirits which i carry on my shoulders, and that are always present, even in the most simple and sublime of moments, moments like the first time you touched me, or moments like when you first brushed your hand on mine to hold it. and i could sit now and try to describe in some new way how much this dream upset me, but i can't. all i can say is that it did, in one of the most profound ways i have ever known. and though nightmares should elucidate and disappear when you wake up, and put on your shoes, and walk out to the street, this one never has. it feels as confusing in my mind's vision now as it did that morning i woke up, in that bed that wasn't mine and i saw the white sheets with small seaglass blue dots, and the light beginning to tear through the bamboo shades on the window, my hair tangled, my eyes still with sleep in them.
poppies
i like saying i'm from california.
and i was thinking about how it went from home being in lake oswego to not having a home for a few years and freaking out about it to the one day i said "yeah i'm going home for a week" and referred to home as california. it makes it seem like that's how it's always been, and, and it should be, like my parents met and married and split but my family my roots are all still down there, hanging out, excited for me to visit. maybe i like this because it will envelope everything until i was seventeen and push it away, and that's how i'd rather remember things
and i was thinking about how it went from home being in lake oswego to not having a home for a few years and freaking out about it to the one day i said "yeah i'm going home for a week" and referred to home as california. it makes it seem like that's how it's always been, and, and it should be, like my parents met and married and split but my family my roots are all still down there, hanging out, excited for me to visit. maybe i like this because it will envelope everything until i was seventeen and push it away, and that's how i'd rather remember things
Friday, February 20, 2009
in the middle of a shrieking laughter, of absolute joy and hysterical delight a sobering thought ran through my head as we were running around and doing what we do - making things with fiber, filling our lungs with smoke and dousing our bloodstreams with alcohol. in the middle of this creative bliss, as we were walking i suddenly thought, "this too shall pass." and though those words are often thrown out in heartbreak or sadness as comfort, i realized that he was right, happiness, like everything, comes in waves, and i thought about it passing. and i thought about holding on to things, and that grasping is the greatest source of disappointment and sadness, because its never really ours, its just a series of events that involve us. people are never really ours. or at least you were never really mine.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
needles only prick
the spring wind was not as it should have been: a thin zephyr playing with our clothes as it whips through the trees. no, that day, the day i left home, it was the kind of wind that is frustrating and intent on making you close your eyes because its stabbing them with your own hair and blowing your clothes against your body in the most unattractive angles.
my mother and i stood in the strange circular driveway of the house on 4201 haven street. we stood underneath the huge fir trees that grew all over the neighborhood, dwarfing us, two women of approximate equal height and weight, two woman of equal determination, two women who were acting though they hated each other, and only acting that way because they both know they didn't. i shouldn't say "two women" because i was 17, and in age and maturity, a girl. we stood, eye to eye, a few feet apart, it some strange hypnotic staredown, neither speaking.
it began as some sort of manic dream a few months ago, when i called my mom to say i was still unhappy at the college she had chosen for me, and that i wanted a change of scenery, and that i wanted to go to california and spend time with my father, who i never really knew. i've examined my intentions time and time again, and have had years to do so, to think and rethink about why i did that, if i moved away like my mother thought because i hated her, because i hated how she raised me, because i was ungrateful and abandoning my role in their family. and i have come to the conclusion that those things weren't true, but have also grown to understand why she thought so. i have thought that she has abandoned me - and at the time it was hard to understand it as any other way - she took me off her health insurance, she told me i could never come home, not for holidays, not ask for money, and told me that she knew what i was doing, had been where i was going, and that it was going to be a trainwreck. california was not a golden utopia of free thinking and promise in her mind - it was "her old stomping grounds" where she rambled about, and apparently, did not care to see me visit.
and as i stood there that day, i knew that i had no idea what i was in for. and, at seventeen, isn't that the thrill of the world? preparing yourself go to out and experience "it" and having no idea what "it" is - and not knowing i would find myself in different houses with different roommates - find myself living with a circus, with beautiful women and men, finding best friends, realizing age is inconsequential but also inextricably binding, losing innocence, finding myself in houses with numbers 29, 1964, 1323, 2759, 3548, or 1122, reeling and wounded from relationships, euphoric from sublime nights of running through barky twists and tangles of grapes, seeing fires, seeing oceans near fields of callalilies, seeing almost every mile of the eternal interstate 5, and ultimately having if only a minimally clearer sense of who i am when i wake up in the morning.
even then, thinking now, i was excited about bad relationships, heartbreak, cars breaking down, getting lost alone, working bad hours for bad bosses, though i didn't consciously think those things, but i think i was - because it was new. because it seemed important. because i felt like those things had to be experienced. because those were the stairs that break underneath your weight but allow you to feel like you have some immeasurable amount of treasured independence.
but all this, and an entire world more was to come, and i knew it, i could feel it, and it terrorized my stomach and raised my pulse, and like screaming and crying and laughing all at once, it was unstoppable. it was compulsive. it was pleasure, it was pain. growing up young, being treated as child but held to the responsibilities of an adult, all of it felt like it had funneled into this day, the day i moved out for reals, for forever, and this set into motion a series of events and stories that could only, for lack of a better name, be labeled as a girl growing up.
my mother and i just stood staring until my younger brother came outside. weeks of exhausting phone calls and fights, weeks of packing, and i had come home to get a final few boxes. after this there would be finals, my first year of college behind me, and my dad would drive from california to pack my entire physical existence into his subaru, and drive ten hours back down california, where i would unpack and try to orient myself in the dizzying mass of new highways, jobs, and people. but i think mom and i stood there in silence because we both were too confused to speak for fear of crying, or for fear of saying more mean things. and we had done both.
so i sighed, but couldn't hear it over the terrible wind, which was now pushing streams of pine needles and small branches down onto my car, onto my mother and brother and i. i knelt down to hug my brother, but as i did, he didn't put his arms back around me, didnt push his head into my stomach like his normal hugs, he just stood, stiff and unwelcoming for a few moments while i squeezed his small 10 year old body. suddenly, i felt him break in my arms, instantly melting into a wave of sobs and weeping, and his small fists began to wrap around me and pound into my back, eventually until he was both hugging, crying, and punching me all at once.
my mother stood watching, and began to slowly shake her head. she may have been wearing sunglasses, but she could still see right into me.
my brother turned to her and buried his face in the skirt of her green corduroy dress, fist fulls of the fabric, still sobbing; my mother's head was still slowly shaking.
i reached to hug her and she reached back. for about five seconds we stood hugging, my brother huddled between us, the wind blowing pine needles onto us, pricking the back of my neck. then i eased back, my mom let me go, and i stepped a few feet back towards my car.
my mother stood watching, still shaking her head, reaching down to console my brother, who, i was told much later, slept in my bed for weeks after i left; who, i was told much later, cried himself to sleep on my pillow every night.
that was it. it felt as final as it ever would. i turned and got into my car. as i backed out of the driveway, the scene was unreal: seeing the wind bend and curve the trees, completely silent and still in my car, as i brushed pine needles out of my tangled hair, watching my mother stand in the exact place in the driveway as she picked up my brother, much to large for her five foot frame. seeing the trees fold to the wishes of the wind. watching as my mother did all this while still slowly shaking her head.
my mother and i stood in the strange circular driveway of the house on 4201 haven street. we stood underneath the huge fir trees that grew all over the neighborhood, dwarfing us, two women of approximate equal height and weight, two woman of equal determination, two women who were acting though they hated each other, and only acting that way because they both know they didn't. i shouldn't say "two women" because i was 17, and in age and maturity, a girl. we stood, eye to eye, a few feet apart, it some strange hypnotic staredown, neither speaking.
it began as some sort of manic dream a few months ago, when i called my mom to say i was still unhappy at the college she had chosen for me, and that i wanted a change of scenery, and that i wanted to go to california and spend time with my father, who i never really knew. i've examined my intentions time and time again, and have had years to do so, to think and rethink about why i did that, if i moved away like my mother thought because i hated her, because i hated how she raised me, because i was ungrateful and abandoning my role in their family. and i have come to the conclusion that those things weren't true, but have also grown to understand why she thought so. i have thought that she has abandoned me - and at the time it was hard to understand it as any other way - she took me off her health insurance, she told me i could never come home, not for holidays, not ask for money, and told me that she knew what i was doing, had been where i was going, and that it was going to be a trainwreck. california was not a golden utopia of free thinking and promise in her mind - it was "her old stomping grounds" where she rambled about, and apparently, did not care to see me visit.
and as i stood there that day, i knew that i had no idea what i was in for. and, at seventeen, isn't that the thrill of the world? preparing yourself go to out and experience "it" and having no idea what "it" is - and not knowing i would find myself in different houses with different roommates - find myself living with a circus, with beautiful women and men, finding best friends, realizing age is inconsequential but also inextricably binding, losing innocence, finding myself in houses with numbers 29, 1964, 1323, 2759, 3548, or 1122, reeling and wounded from relationships, euphoric from sublime nights of running through barky twists and tangles of grapes, seeing fires, seeing oceans near fields of callalilies, seeing almost every mile of the eternal interstate 5, and ultimately having if only a minimally clearer sense of who i am when i wake up in the morning.
even then, thinking now, i was excited about bad relationships, heartbreak, cars breaking down, getting lost alone, working bad hours for bad bosses, though i didn't consciously think those things, but i think i was - because it was new. because it seemed important. because i felt like those things had to be experienced. because those were the stairs that break underneath your weight but allow you to feel like you have some immeasurable amount of treasured independence.
but all this, and an entire world more was to come, and i knew it, i could feel it, and it terrorized my stomach and raised my pulse, and like screaming and crying and laughing all at once, it was unstoppable. it was compulsive. it was pleasure, it was pain. growing up young, being treated as child but held to the responsibilities of an adult, all of it felt like it had funneled into this day, the day i moved out for reals, for forever, and this set into motion a series of events and stories that could only, for lack of a better name, be labeled as a girl growing up.
my mother and i just stood staring until my younger brother came outside. weeks of exhausting phone calls and fights, weeks of packing, and i had come home to get a final few boxes. after this there would be finals, my first year of college behind me, and my dad would drive from california to pack my entire physical existence into his subaru, and drive ten hours back down california, where i would unpack and try to orient myself in the dizzying mass of new highways, jobs, and people. but i think mom and i stood there in silence because we both were too confused to speak for fear of crying, or for fear of saying more mean things. and we had done both.
so i sighed, but couldn't hear it over the terrible wind, which was now pushing streams of pine needles and small branches down onto my car, onto my mother and brother and i. i knelt down to hug my brother, but as i did, he didn't put his arms back around me, didnt push his head into my stomach like his normal hugs, he just stood, stiff and unwelcoming for a few moments while i squeezed his small 10 year old body. suddenly, i felt him break in my arms, instantly melting into a wave of sobs and weeping, and his small fists began to wrap around me and pound into my back, eventually until he was both hugging, crying, and punching me all at once.
my mother stood watching, and began to slowly shake her head. she may have been wearing sunglasses, but she could still see right into me.
my brother turned to her and buried his face in the skirt of her green corduroy dress, fist fulls of the fabric, still sobbing; my mother's head was still slowly shaking.
i reached to hug her and she reached back. for about five seconds we stood hugging, my brother huddled between us, the wind blowing pine needles onto us, pricking the back of my neck. then i eased back, my mom let me go, and i stepped a few feet back towards my car.
my mother stood watching, still shaking her head, reaching down to console my brother, who, i was told much later, slept in my bed for weeks after i left; who, i was told much later, cried himself to sleep on my pillow every night.
that was it. it felt as final as it ever would. i turned and got into my car. as i backed out of the driveway, the scene was unreal: seeing the wind bend and curve the trees, completely silent and still in my car, as i brushed pine needles out of my tangled hair, watching my mother stand in the exact place in the driveway as she picked up my brother, much to large for her five foot frame. seeing the trees fold to the wishes of the wind. watching as my mother did all this while still slowly shaking her head.
Monday, February 16, 2009
"the end of summer" only means anything while you are in school..or does it? what is it about the end of summer that is so bittersweet? ending a romance at the end of winter isn't the same, or with spring, or with fall, but what about summer makes it so painful and pleasurable? and thinking of that, i was thinking of all the times i have laughed and screamed and screamed and laughed and cried all at once and wonder if those are the times when we feel the most alive, or if its at the late months of dusky summer, either way, it feels like dust is settling and now we can see it because its all on fire, the sky, the city, the winter.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
but we were so much better then
is this twenties? is this city life?
is this portland? just getting better at
rolling cigarettes and seeing with rain in
our eyes, avoiding literary theory at all costs
you don't have to open yourself up to everyone,
you don't have to open yourself up to anyone
we were so much better then, with callalilies ahead
and turning up the best part of the song, saying the best things
now i don't know who is asleep on my couch or what i've been
doing in my apartment for the last few days
or if i want to stay in portland
or if i was so much better than i am now
low eyes, blowing smoke at the fremont as i walk
into the hollow, wondering if this is as good as it gets
is this twenties? is this city life?
is this portland? just getting better at
rolling cigarettes and seeing with rain in
our eyes, avoiding literary theory at all costs
you don't have to open yourself up to everyone,
you don't have to open yourself up to anyone
we were so much better then, with callalilies ahead
and turning up the best part of the song, saying the best things
now i don't know who is asleep on my couch or what i've been
doing in my apartment for the last few days
or if i want to stay in portland
or if i was so much better than i am now
low eyes, blowing smoke at the fremont as i walk
into the hollow, wondering if this is as good as it gets
Monday, February 9, 2009
i'm thinking that life can't be moving in any linear way, in any straight line. it has to be spinning...and that's why i want it so badly to slow itself the hell down. what moves in circles what spins records spin and the faster they spin the more obnoxious and distorted they sound, and sometimes something comes out of it thats well and ok...and usually not...and pottery wheels spin, and the faster i kicked the wheel the more quickly the clay would be thin when i was raising its walls, and if i focused and was careful i could make something come out of it that looked ok once it was glazed and fired, but was structurally unsound, but when i wouldn't focus it would fall in on itself, a wet slow mess and thats because it as spinning, spinning so quickly
its not that i wouldn't pick you, if it were just up to people you know, if you could just pick a person, i would always pick you. but you have to pick people and situations and timing and behaviors all at once and i can't pick those things can't control those things
i feel honestly like my body is refusing the past few weeks, like i've been consuming and consuming and not thinking and pushing and clawing and its ridiculous and finally my body had to refuse it, had to reject it and render me delirious and tearful. and it strangely felt like that's how it was supposed to be.
i feel honestly like my body is refusing the past few weeks, like i've been consuming and consuming and not thinking and pushing and clawing and its ridiculous and finally my body had to refuse it, had to reject it and render me delirious and tearful. and it strangely felt like that's how it was supposed to be.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
i say it feels unreal, like a dream - but only because it feels like it has been some strange dim night for the past two weeks or so. it has swept through like a dream, feels transcient and fleeting like a dream and the only way to recover is to realize that you've been forced to grow up, to realize things about yourself, to realize things about you and other people, and who they are, and where the good people are and what they look like and who is worth really hanging onto, and who felt you aren't worth hanging onto. we all need work. and i wonder if i've been choosing to not callous or bruise, thus remaining slow and half-healed, because i've realized as soft as i want to be, the world is brushing and rushing against me and that's exactly what it should be doing. i can't list everything i've realized, and sometimes i like to think that it would just be different if i had a mom to ask about it, if she would know, but then i realize that she too has been swirled into her own part - she is the chemical reaction created by light filtering through the silver and dye in photo negatives, as they are put in old projectors and shined onto the walls that i'm standing in front of, trying to manipulate her image, i want to call it a reflection, but the actual term, which is so heartbreakingly true, is that it is a projection. this aside, i want to tell people i love them, and that i miss them, and want to hold their old shirts, and childhood photos, and little things they have left behind in my arms and curl up with them in some strange sublime summer night and not even care if time is standing still or walking decidedly forward. i still say it feels unreal, like a dream, where suddenly you think you see someone but it is someone else, the cast is strangely fluid, and your secrets become known but for some reason its ok, it's all right, you don't think twice. maybe that's the trick - deciding your decisions and never questioning them, so maybe stop bending your will for the sake of others, but this would also exclude forgiving - or thus being forgiven. i think that i am living in some place between those two - accepting apologies and asking for them, simultaneously, from everyone and myself.
Friday, February 6, 2009
these lyrics
have made me want to cry for...years now..i guess
" all those evenings on the back deck of our first apartment
they meant everything but the wind just carried them off
and we can't go back now, just a passing moment gone "
" all those evenings on the back deck of our first apartment
they meant everything but the wind just carried them off
and we can't go back now, just a passing moment gone "
Thursday, February 5, 2009
i'm trying to remember an adventure that hayley and i had...and it seems like i have a million hayley stories and memories but maybe not of just her and i.
i remember swinging around on the tire swing when sarah g. accosted her for losing her glitter handle silverware. i remember when erich saved rose petals with the unfortunate idea to spread them on my bed, which i immmmediately shut down and was grossly offended by because 1. my bed is not, nor was not some stupid add for a romantic getaway, a honeymoon suite, or a lover's play place 2. i hate roses and was mad and sad that he hadn't figured that out yet and 3. who the fuck does that??
anyways after i had shut down the gesture, because, i am a bitch, erich and hayley giggled and ran around in the yard throwing the petals everywhere, and i stood on the porch laughing and screaming because i had just raked the entire yard and now there were rose petals all over it and i realized that i kind of had kids, though one was my roommate and i was dating the other one. but i guess we were all just kind of kids that summer.
i remember being in the car in canada and hayley found the cookies that rachel had baked and made a huge deal in telling us that we were NOT to eat them, she was saving them for her friend. nonetheless, hayley managed to paw one away, and as we crammed into ali's car to sleep in snowy canada, all drunk beyond repair, hayley lay face down munching ever so quietly her stolen treat, then decides she doesn't want it, grunts, and throws the cookie. i never laughed so hard.
ali and i have a million stories, on the other hand, of things that we've done, trouble we've gotten ourselves into.
i'm trying to remember what it was like, living on haven street, not being able to drive, having to be in at a certain time, living in between the most passive agressive man in the world, and my mother, quickly still becoming the thing that makes me the saddest. anyways, i'm trying to remember what it was like then, when ali threw pinecones at my window to wake me up and show me her haircut, when we forged a path between our houses, when we would slide into the pool naked and giggling because it sounded hilarious, when we would sleep night after night in sleeping bags on the trampoline. i came home once, deflated from hanging out with someone, and there was a note on the door saying, "you had a bad night, i know, meet me on the trampoline."
once, i think on my sixteenth birthday, ali and i were reduced to wandering about and we went into some houses that were being built on our street and stood and explored the hollow skeletons that now have become structures that people will connect to and find refuge, or have a home in. that's a weird thought - being in a house, someone's a home before it was every really formed, when it was just lumber and nails...and then what do houses do when they grow up?
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had sex, how holding hands seemed so much better than
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had a panic attack, a migraine, cried over a friend, cried over a boy, cried about my mom, or what it was like before i ever missed home because i had never left it. what was it like when i lived with no internet no cell phone and couldn't drive or leave the house
what was it like before i had any independence?
i remember not knowing north from south, literally not knowing north from south.
what was it like to be fifteen?
i remember swinging around on the tire swing when sarah g. accosted her for losing her glitter handle silverware. i remember when erich saved rose petals with the unfortunate idea to spread them on my bed, which i immmmediately shut down and was grossly offended by because 1. my bed is not, nor was not some stupid add for a romantic getaway, a honeymoon suite, or a lover's play place 2. i hate roses and was mad and sad that he hadn't figured that out yet and 3. who the fuck does that??
anyways after i had shut down the gesture, because, i am a bitch, erich and hayley giggled and ran around in the yard throwing the petals everywhere, and i stood on the porch laughing and screaming because i had just raked the entire yard and now there were rose petals all over it and i realized that i kind of had kids, though one was my roommate and i was dating the other one. but i guess we were all just kind of kids that summer.
i remember being in the car in canada and hayley found the cookies that rachel had baked and made a huge deal in telling us that we were NOT to eat them, she was saving them for her friend. nonetheless, hayley managed to paw one away, and as we crammed into ali's car to sleep in snowy canada, all drunk beyond repair, hayley lay face down munching ever so quietly her stolen treat, then decides she doesn't want it, grunts, and throws the cookie. i never laughed so hard.
ali and i have a million stories, on the other hand, of things that we've done, trouble we've gotten ourselves into.
i'm trying to remember what it was like, living on haven street, not being able to drive, having to be in at a certain time, living in between the most passive agressive man in the world, and my mother, quickly still becoming the thing that makes me the saddest. anyways, i'm trying to remember what it was like then, when ali threw pinecones at my window to wake me up and show me her haircut, when we forged a path between our houses, when we would slide into the pool naked and giggling because it sounded hilarious, when we would sleep night after night in sleeping bags on the trampoline. i came home once, deflated from hanging out with someone, and there was a note on the door saying, "you had a bad night, i know, meet me on the trampoline."
once, i think on my sixteenth birthday, ali and i were reduced to wandering about and we went into some houses that were being built on our street and stood and explored the hollow skeletons that now have become structures that people will connect to and find refuge, or have a home in. that's a weird thought - being in a house, someone's a home before it was every really formed, when it was just lumber and nails...and then what do houses do when they grow up?
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had sex, how holding hands seemed so much better than
i'm trying to remember what it was like before i ever had a panic attack, a migraine, cried over a friend, cried over a boy, cried about my mom, or what it was like before i ever missed home because i had never left it. what was it like when i lived with no internet no cell phone and couldn't drive or leave the house
what was it like before i had any independence?
i remember not knowing north from south, literally not knowing north from south.
what was it like to be fifteen?
1. do not be crazy do not be crazy
2. do not be worried or nervous
3. do not make fun if that kid in class AKA punmaster 8000
4. attend class
5. I CLEAN MY APARTMENT FOR NO MAN
6. weekend weekend
7. do not space out in jazz class
8. do not think about moving or leaving
9. do not get sick
10. stop being tired!
2. do not be worried or nervous
3. do not make fun if that kid in class AKA punmaster 8000
4. attend class
5. I CLEAN MY APARTMENT FOR NO MAN
6. weekend weekend
7. do not space out in jazz class
8. do not think about moving or leaving
9. do not get sick
10. stop being tired!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
when i close my eye covers im back in california, on the ferry, on 29, and i smell jasmine and my skin is prickly and warm and i hear laughter in the distance and the sky clears and breaks and opens and cries and burns and then i think about all the house numbers
29
1964
1323
3548
2579
1122
what do those mean
29
1964
1323
3548
2579
1122
what do those mean
past, present, failure
my mandolin is still broken everything is missing strings, there's a moth in here
theres a tear in my coat, i found a table, plant grew, tarot cards can't know shit or can they
past present failure
the middle, tea, anatomy, disposable, embellished, gold, silver, grommets, green
past present future
never forget teeth imperfections knit lashes wit crashes
1. do not be crazy or sad
2. focus on those who love you
3. remember
my mandolin is still broken everything is missing strings, there's a moth in here
theres a tear in my coat, i found a table, plant grew, tarot cards can't know shit or can they
past present failure
the middle, tea, anatomy, disposable, embellished, gold, silver, grommets, green
past present future
never forget teeth imperfections knit lashes wit crashes
1. do not be crazy or sad
2. focus on those who love you
3. remember
trees please
how can i be both anxious and apathetic at the same time about everything? i woke up this morning to the sound of them cutting down trees, maybe even trees grow too big in the city, in portland. i feel like i don't want to leave, and i feel like i do, and cheers to duplicity, duality and any other big damn word i could think of having to do with...shit what?
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
smoky city
i know how many steps up the stairs it takes, the distance to the street, the number on your door, the way to the fire escape. i wonder if i could recognize you in some setting, in some bodies other than these.
i can't tell the difference between hot and cold anymore. the city smelled smokey, i swear winter is being burned away, not soon enough will we shed our winter skins, for it is hardening and tightening around our chests, our eyelids, our lips, so that we cannot feel the brushing fingertips
i can't tell the difference between hot and cold anymore. the city smelled smokey, i swear winter is being burned away, not soon enough will we shed our winter skins, for it is hardening and tightening around our chests, our eyelids, our lips, so that we cannot feel the brushing fingertips
Sunday, February 1, 2009
i know that this emptiness i feel without you is nothing in comparison to the emptiness i felt with you.
i know? i think? either way, it seems that we always lived best in bittersweet, we always lived best in shytown. certain chords and smells are burned into me forever, and always, for everyone i can't forget and shouldn't but maybe should i feel weighed down by all the places i've been and places i've lived and people left in all those places then i don't know or i do know or i shouldn't know and i can't know anymore. coming and going is more normal than it should be, and we both know this, know the tangerine tinge of the streetlight, know the poem i wrote about standing in your room in the middle of the night and being unable to see the night from the shield of condensation we're all just becoming condensation of each other and blending and breathing and beating and moaning and occasionally we'll run into each other but call it kissing but it still seems so silent. but it still seems so violent.. there are worse things you could do to someone than love them, never forget even artichokes have hearts, never forget we made it, the broken mandolins, guitar strings, the woods, the creek, the walk, the bog, the abandoned house, the time in the backyard where the piano was hauled out and in and tuned and i always felt awkward but wanted to convince myself otherwise. i wish you could just come home and we could lay in clean sheets and never leave but i dont know who you are. who has been here forever and why and never and forever are so fucking scary but so fucking constant, if there is one thing that is never or if there is one thing that is forever what could it be if you would choose? what would your body be made of if you could choose? do you wish you could choose? its so fucking slow its so fucking fast its so fucking sad but its so fucking beautiful, as if we are in a car, plane or train and see that it is moving, told that it is moving, but we feel as though it barely creeps forward but do we care afterall? who do we know when do we know them how do introductions ever happen do i over think why can't my feelers, tendrils go away and what is this consciousness i see but do not experience or am aware of. i want to climb out the window and to be aided by rope and honey and fire and a gun in my garter and know no man, know no woman, feel no pain except the physical or maybe the emotional and i wonder if there is every any difference any difference between anything or anyone ever. im bad at people. im bad at talking, i've been stuttering again i've been falling again, i've been lying again, and i'm sorry. i've been good and i've been so used to disappointment and shelving my feelings that why should any of this suprise me? i haven't been sleeping but i have been eating and drinking and whiskey is a volatile friend but whiskey is a consistent friend but who are my friends i wish you knew what i think but i really wish i knew what i think and at the same time its more interesting but i dont when you said the best thing, remember when you said the best thing? you said to me and i closed my eyes and you couldn;t see because it was dark but then again do you remember? it made me think i may not be alone but we all know that's not true and thats ok it really is because if theres anything to be valued it could possibly be the truth but THEN AGAIN to we even know that? fold it crush it bend it break it but then pin it onto your chest right onto your skin and relish the sensation. all of it.
i know? i think? either way, it seems that we always lived best in bittersweet, we always lived best in shytown. certain chords and smells are burned into me forever, and always, for everyone i can't forget and shouldn't but maybe should i feel weighed down by all the places i've been and places i've lived and people left in all those places then i don't know or i do know or i shouldn't know and i can't know anymore. coming and going is more normal than it should be, and we both know this, know the tangerine tinge of the streetlight, know the poem i wrote about standing in your room in the middle of the night and being unable to see the night from the shield of condensation we're all just becoming condensation of each other and blending and breathing and beating and moaning and occasionally we'll run into each other but call it kissing but it still seems so silent. but it still seems so violent.. there are worse things you could do to someone than love them, never forget even artichokes have hearts, never forget we made it, the broken mandolins, guitar strings, the woods, the creek, the walk, the bog, the abandoned house, the time in the backyard where the piano was hauled out and in and tuned and i always felt awkward but wanted to convince myself otherwise. i wish you could just come home and we could lay in clean sheets and never leave but i dont know who you are. who has been here forever and why and never and forever are so fucking scary but so fucking constant, if there is one thing that is never or if there is one thing that is forever what could it be if you would choose? what would your body be made of if you could choose? do you wish you could choose? its so fucking slow its so fucking fast its so fucking sad but its so fucking beautiful, as if we are in a car, plane or train and see that it is moving, told that it is moving, but we feel as though it barely creeps forward but do we care afterall? who do we know when do we know them how do introductions ever happen do i over think why can't my feelers, tendrils go away and what is this consciousness i see but do not experience or am aware of. i want to climb out the window and to be aided by rope and honey and fire and a gun in my garter and know no man, know no woman, feel no pain except the physical or maybe the emotional and i wonder if there is every any difference any difference between anything or anyone ever. im bad at people. im bad at talking, i've been stuttering again i've been falling again, i've been lying again, and i'm sorry. i've been good and i've been so used to disappointment and shelving my feelings that why should any of this suprise me? i haven't been sleeping but i have been eating and drinking and whiskey is a volatile friend but whiskey is a consistent friend but who are my friends i wish you knew what i think but i really wish i knew what i think and at the same time its more interesting but i dont when you said the best thing, remember when you said the best thing? you said to me and i closed my eyes and you couldn;t see because it was dark but then again do you remember? it made me think i may not be alone but we all know that's not true and thats ok it really is because if theres anything to be valued it could possibly be the truth but THEN AGAIN to we even know that? fold it crush it bend it break it but then pin it onto your chest right onto your skin and relish the sensation. all of it.
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