9.28.2010

To Jacob Miller:

where are you now?

where were you then.

there is a cold space where you were and

emptiness where there wasn't

excepting yours--heart so lonely.

jacob. there is a world left without you. and none know what to make of it.

Kissing the Sun

I always come here for the same reason: I need a little bit of therapy. I'm so burnt out and haven't had time for much of anything but obsessing over schedules (which, it seems like, how can I possibly be scheduling this much and not really actually getting anything done? Whatever.) So, the point is, life's losing its vitality, there's just been a lot of keeping my nose to the grindstone, but I have had a few moments of respite. Here are some things that have flit through my mind, just in case you're interested:

the way i felt on wintry nights in texas when we'd go out. the cold air went on forever and stark'd the stars and that's what i remember best. and it hit me today that what i had time for in high school were feelings and i miss that.

it's exhausting to be conventional and the moments i'm freest are when i'm thinking about things that don't even make sense. happiness hits you when you describe the things that you want.

crying in the shower is right in a way a lot of things could never be. it's intimate and it's warm and it's release.

does life really make sense all of sudden when the nurse places the newborn in your embrace?

all new yorkers are ancestors of fishermen and sailors. their ghosts surround us. i only wish scaffolding and taxis didn't make it so hard to see them, it seems like they have a lot to say.

oh hey! dreams and wishes and desire. yum yum.

musk is the fragrance of creation. i never knew that but that makes me want it in bushelfuls.

"he loved her with his heart."

a professor that smells like flowers stained by light is an impressive thing, indeed.

you've opened me up so please, i don't want to shut back down.

man walking down street looked like my idea of a man.

So it goes.

No More Rain

Outside the window people walked, but they all looked like angels.

The sun shone around them, something I'd never seen before.

It was like the sun wrapped them in wreaths of her light. They were all so beautiful, that was what was beautiful about it at all.

I felt relief knowing there was no more rain.

In My Bathroom

I thought of you the other day when my knee was bleeding

and my back leg was bleeding and my womanhood was bleeding.

All three bleeding all at once and I thought

wow this is a lot of blood to be coming

from one person all at once

but im still kind of relieved because it seems

that all these molecules

turning from blue to crimson

say what i mean even though

i dont know how.

They're dribbling: scary and a lot. Scary, and a lot.

This Much I Know is True

Well, well, well. What a whirl, what a whirl. I moved back to New York a few days ago and I'm really quite frustrated with the number of emotions I've experienced. Initially, I dreaded leaving home and getting back in the grind. While we were in the air, I started to get excited, remembering that distinctly newyorky rush I get when I'm walking around the city. Then, I spent just a little bit too much time on how happy I was, and started to get nervous. I started remembering that being in New York really meant that I wasn't going to be at home with my mommy and sisters and friends and the hard-leafed trees and soft, wide sunsets. Aggh!

When we were in the taxi and driving up through Brooklyn into Manhattan, panic truly set in. I felt nothing but remove and could not remember why I used to love this place, which now felt as if it had come back into my life much sooner than I wanted it to. It seemed so greedy. I had only been able to leave it for two months and now I had to come back, and in order to be there, I had to recondition myself to toughness and patience.

Then, of course, spending the day in and around the Hudson and all of those neat little stores you found scattered all about, my rush of New York love swelled within me and I felt so happy to be back, knew I could live here forever. That lasted until the next morning and then dread set in and then happiness and then remorse that I had to leave my mama again again again and then, upon moving-in, elation at how perfect my apartment turned out to be. And then dreading the next day, when she would have to go back. Home.

I could (can) never really settle on one emotion. Do I hate New York? Or do I love it? Do I want this independence? Or do I just want to stay at home, living life the way I love to lead it? Why do they both feel right at times and so wrong at others? Frustration. Frustration that will continue on into the next few weeks until I finally find my inevitable groove. This is who I am, and how I work. I dislike it, but it's how I process.

The most beautiful and frightening thing: I realized that the greatest gift my mother ever gave me was allowing me this much fear. I don't know what to do with it, but I have it. That's my beginning.

Freud Didn't Tell Us Anything We Didn't Already Know

If you can't write what you think, then what's the point in writing? If you can't say what you mean, then what's the point in speaking? These questions, which I just a moment ago realized how to say, make life difficult. Where is the point if it's not where you want it? No direction home kind of thing.

Of course there's a reason and it lies in the fact that those things I can't describe keep me going. They give me something to live for. I wouldn't want my life if it came mystery-free, sans aches. Those questions point to insurmountable challenges. And as long as a challenge is insurmountable, there's always something to hope for.

There's my superego and my id when I think, when I write, when I live. There's the way I could say things that are clear and incisive and people-friendly. There's also the way that I could approach life that is distinctly my own. It'd often be meaningless to passer-by, incomprehensible. Hell, I wouldn't even know what I meant. I would just know that it's what I wanted to say. I think ids are far too easily beaten down by superegos. Who's to care if we speak garble or say things the way they come to us? We're given information from our brains in a raw, beautiful form, I think. We repackage it soon afterward so that it can be presented to others. Maybe what we need is a little bit more intellectual selfishness; people can figure out things as you say them or not.

Even this piece has yet to be examined by me, the writer. I'm sure tomorrow I'll see that it's full of logical flaws and morally reprehensible. For tonight, though, I'm saying these words as they come to me. Freud would probably say these paragraphs indicate that there's something blocking my own consciousness and that senseless paragraphs are a means of escape. That's a thought.

And the funny thing is I don't even much subscribe to Freud. I think he didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.

/Fragments/

A loose leaf in the wind's whoosh

floats above streets where mommies

push strollers and daddies rake leaves.

After sighing upon birthday cake with breath much fraught,

we nearly burned the table to death.

Did then we see pieces of eternity? We'd know now, as eternal as

we're likely to see.

Rapunzel hung upon her hair a sign that commanded "no tress passing";

it didn't stop her from finding happily ever after.

sometimes leaning against the kitchen sink it feels like someone loving to hold me and i forget about my face's red