Aquarian blood

Sun drops falling like how raindrops would if this were anywhere but this exact place in northern California and I am drowning myself in things I wrote but never said to people I should have just said things to. It's this thing attached to my wrist, says "courage," says try harder, says make an effort, says stop making promises, says stop making yourself so sad or so sorry or so and so's hardest memory. Stop starting things you never finish or finish the things you start thinking about starting but don't let anyone tell you to start or stop doing things you feel like starting or stopping like hand making clusterstuffed pillows with amanda poss as a career. If there's a place I can see myself, it is standing next to you in the pouring rain on a sort of sunny kind of day in the Marina, holding hands, dressed in rented skin and original content. There, and being 37 and running a successful pillow stitching company with Amanda, and knowing you like being around her for a lot of reasons like her sense of humor and knowing she liked your more recent blog posts. Sometimes I struggle finding myself in words I have written and boys I have loved. Hank told me we are cold by nature, Aquarians, piled in this triangle of shoes and stories on and on and how do we even know each other? He told me the only important thing in the world is to learn how to love, how to love is the only important thing in the entire world and I am standing in that shoe department with this person who is somehow a stranger and somehow a friend and I want to leave just because I feel a little bit like crying. The thing about heartbreak is that when you don't talk about it, you have to deal with it and even when you are over things, you still have these little cracks in your heart. I am having these conversations and thinking about how sweet you were in the pouring rain and how when you threw your head off all I wanted was to kiss you with the rain falling on our faces like how my mascara ran down mine the first time I heard/watched somewhere in the bottom of the rain. Water is different, but I wonder if I ever will be, if I ever will be always warm, and if I can learn to love, if i can ever be something more than a hollow chocolate bunny on my favorite day of the year...

angels in the outfield or in hell or anywhere but where you would expect to see them

The frustrations of normal people getting to me, wondering when things got to be so overwhelming without me noticing, me noticing things have generally always overwhelmed me and not knowing what to do about it, it being something or some things or most things that I happen to catch on to faster than most people but not having anything to do with things that I necessarily want to have anything to do with. It's just ideas, and things happening, and hoping that the things I think about are going okay but I feel like it's easy to forget how heavy boots are when you aren't the one who wears them and maybe you weren't even there when I picked them up and maybe it's me forgetting how easy I have it or maybe I still feel those weights no matter the problem. I don't know how better to express myself than clouded verse and tears of anxiety and a lack of clarity. When I look in the mirror, I am staring down the ugly cousin of self awareness and a sense of inability or inactivity or institutionalized misunderstanding. I am staring myself down until the glass starts cracking, until I break my knuckle bones from the thought alone, blood or something less gruesome spreading like silk against melted sand. I know you don't know what I mean and I know I shouldn't be complaining. I think it would be a lot easier if I either just let go or said something but it gets so hard to disappoint people when you don't know who would be willing to celebrate you for doing exactly nothing. I speak in tongues because it takes away some of the pain when you are misunderstood if you don't say what you mean in the first place. It's not anyone's fault but my own if there's anyone to blame at all. I just feel like it's anything now, anything pushing me and I know my job is so small here but why do I feel like that angel, the one who had to pour the fire over the people on the book of Revelations and he/she/it didn't even get a NAME in the book. He didn't ask for that job, just happened to be strong enough to carry a really huge ass bowl. I think they forgot to put the part in about how the angel was crying, crying so hard he believed he could put the fire out that he was pouring over the sinful people, because he didn't want to hurt anyone, and it wasn't his fault, and he didn't know how to just tell God he didn't know if this was maybe the very best plan to make things better. I don't know if that's exactly what I mean, only that sometimes the best way is being the best for something and other times this is the most difficult thing if those things you are brilliant at feel like fire against your own fingertips, burning your face by distance and default, leaving you to look in the mirror with a face you can no longer look at without remembering the screaming of all those people you didn't want to scorch, remembering yourself how you were when wrinkles were still for grandmothers and you, alone, were at least worthy of the quiet.

Millermania

 "Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away.  As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday."

Henry Miller from Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch

bigger things.

The thing killing me most and slowly is judgment, a painful intolerance for the imaginary, the complete misunderstanding of some definition or another, ready to pounce when somebody is sure something someone has done or somewhere they have been makes them something or another. What do you know anyway? Mentally incapable of dealing with the ordinaries or traditionals because they make you sick doesn't make you insane. Emotionally inequipped for dealing with people who don't ever know how to get to the bottom of it, who aren't willing to dig within themselves to discover, recover, reinvent, reimagine, reanything. I'm sick of it. Insanely. I should be put away. Put me away. I just want to eat this smoken salmon onion bagel and read about Jewish mysticism and not talk to anyone about how many choices they believe I or you or any of us should be making. We are the children of stardust and we have no time for definitions. Or if we do, we have time only for those sculpted from imaginings birthed between something authentic, something completely unable to be articulated, we are searching and growing and developing and waiting for God or someone close enough to just hold us in His ladylike hands and we are more than speech and we are alone because we are too many. We are alone because we are too strong. We are alone because we like to cry, to bury ourselves in silence and discomfort and the promise of honesty, somewhere over or under or beside the rainbow, laying naked in grassy fields, completely uncovered and sometimes sad. It's not a problem. It's a gift. It's just a gift we don't understand yet. But when you are crying in the night, completely stripped and alone, too overwhelmed for blankets or physical company, hold out your left hand and I will hold out my right, reach for you in darkness and tears, and I will promise to come back to some version of you, and I will forgive you, and I will let you know, like you let me know, that crazy is just a word like foot or empty. You are a gift. You are a child. You are bigger. You are significant.

Success in the form of rain drops--- no, a hail storm, like magic or the overwhelming desire to eat once you realized how long you have holed up in your room hoping that tomorrow you will not wake up in tears or maybe just to wake up and remember you can feel someone else's shoulder, and that's a really good feeling. A lot of feelings are good and even the ones that feel bad are still good feelings. I was pouring through spanish journals and crying over darknesses and missed opportunities in Germany with the sun crying on my face, insisting that I cheer the frick up, and I just kept reading, deep into the story I wrote about the time Adrian had to be taken to the hospital during the 311 concert and how I realized how I trap these men into missing me instead of letting them miss me and how many postcards I kept to not write on and notes on American literary masters and on and on and on into the depths of the colorful version of me. In the back were trapped notes about the time you went to the hospital in an ambulance you never should have taken and how they called you by a name that is only partially yours and the tears that poured were from surprise mostly, forgetting that I felt like that reading someone's open heart and especially yours at the time. Disconnections are funny in a particular way, like how somebody smells after they get to your house and you know that they thought too much about something small the whole drive over and you don't want to talk about it, or don't know how to bring it up. Something beautiful happened in the lines you didn't write, that I would come to fill in over time, and that is how darkness is a song between two broken hearts and that you taught me how to tell the truth. There is nothing sad or lonesome right now and nothing to complain about or cry over. Sometimes I just do those things because I can't handle too many highs, feeling like traps, or trapped into feeling guilty just because I'm not over the top happy to match all those times that I am. It's not something people are sure of or can do anything about, like how I can't describe the pain running along the back of my thighs because I finally ran as far as I possibly could while laying down. The thing about me is that I am afraid when I'm not moving that I will not end up anywhere else even though I know I am doing just fine. I can't continue to share everytime people are thought of because of something i see because I am like Julie's Stephen, and I am the boy in Santa Cruz, and I am holding onto hearts because I am cruel. And I am apologizing to God and I am running in circles, drawing infinity, sweat dripping from a dog's hot tongue, tied up in something inexplicable but not NOT comprehensible. I am softer somedays, when I am wrapped up quietly in you. I am soft in your shoulder, soft waking up to the sound of your ambition, forward and older and singing lullabies with you.

Waking up with nothing to do and feeling like that's all right. These are the gifts of my life.

Something less than impressive.

Shame on them if they can't understand ya, or if they bother trying too hard when everybody smart knows that's never been the real point. Real silence is sometimes most favorable in uncomfortable climates. Broken down about three blocks from here, I raised my hands to the sky and laughed at these ugly birds flying in a V shape because I remember being small on a wooden playground doing the same thing at the same ugly birds and that phrase "flying V" because that is simply what was going on. Now, going on, I am rolling along like I would on train tracks if I were a train or like after breadcrumbs if I were those kids in that story or maybe desperate enough as a regular person in their twenties like anyone else. It's not easy, you know. I have been trying to tell people this. Being in my twenties doesn't make me feel much different from being in my anythingelses. I just want to wake up and do things and not think about things that need to be done later- it's not in my nature to plan my life. It's in my nature to love life, to love it for what it is and as I see it, naked and glorious and primal and sensitive and moving... but I'm about as sure now as I was five or fifteen years ago what I want to be when I grow up because I still think I pretty much like my life as it is, I'll take it as it comes or pull away when I don't like it. I feel like I am doing all right. I feel like I am tired of questions, of certain brands of people who are against my truth's encouragement because I just want to do these things I like to do and not feel too much like there is much more I need to do. I would like to write and have nobody bother me about it. I would like to believe in God and not feel like anybody needs me to go to church to prove it. I want to sit on my butt and do my laundry and sing along to bad music and cry when I'm sad or just overwhelmed and feel like this is enough or at least kind of enough or at least kind of something more or less less than too much to handle. I am sitting here feeling better because at least you know this is how I feel, even if you can't understand it or respect it but at least I told you or tried to. I don't know what I was trying to say. Just that I feel better for saying something. I don't know. Give me a break, all right? I'm just letting you know.

Feel it in my bones

There was never a tomorrow to begin with, only ever the one moment at a time, one foot through one pant leg as the other one was already one foot out the door- but it was never a bad thing, really. It only feels bad these days, when thinking of how easy that would have been, to just sit down and say, hey what about this, just forever. And I don't think it would have made me happy the same way, but it would have made me. I think sometimes about my refusal to write, when I know I could take things seriously, but I am armed with hurtfulness. This is maybe my gift. I am still trying to figure out what it would mean to be gifted, just in general. Leslie is always saying that, "just in general" and its always applicable. I'm still searching for my catch phrase, feeling like it is more of a catch all of the things one doesn't want to bother saying, something for me like, I'm never going to be quite good enough so how about I just do as much as I can and worry about inadequacy and that way we never have to talk about how you aren't exactly ever giving me the credit i deserve. And this I mean just in general, not you or you or even YOU, but just for everybody kind of and I feel like I'm dissolving or disproving or disarming my mentors by making us all softer because quite honestly thats the world I would love to live in, always apologizing and hugging and maybe lots of crying and lots of warm soup all the time and happiness too of course, and trembling close to you and soft laughter, or no laughter just constant fake stories that crack us up after the joke has been over and I just don't know what the difference is really sometimes. You're far away now like the way I talk about my dad being drunk. It's funny how we remember things and funny how I have a hard time remembering anything at all. Sometimes I just miss coming home to the sound of Matt screaming old cowboy music and how soft it felt to have a sort of brother and how even in the lonely moments I was not very lonely in that house, ever. Me and the cats and the cockroaches and our Matthew and it was like a real family abandoned by our psychologically upset mother who is really just another girl our age who wears very nice dresses and I love that heart, the heart in that home and those memories and all our visitors and especially one or two very important visitors and the cold cold air that killed Steve's snake and nailing blankets across doorways without doors and the way it sounded when I remember living quietly. I'm happy now or something closer to it. I am thinking of this and thinking of making good food and thinking of being someone's mother without having to take care of anyone or much of anything at all. I want you to know that no matter how much it doesn't seem like it, i'm always up to something, always writing something, always carving poems into the sand that you won't pay attention to and I am always filling my pockets up with rocks and I am always going to love the way it sounds when I am close to the ocean, asking for waves and depth and the promise that tomorrow sure as hell won't be any easier if it comes at all. I just wanted to say that in the morning when the sunlight crept through flimsy haunted windows, there was you and me becoming something before I ever met you, long before you came to California, long before I creeped your livejournal or watched your fingers dance along guitar strings, long before your hair grew longer, long before leaning on tree stumps in the backwoods of a Lawrenceville I'd never been to before you, long before you figured out that this wasn't about anyone in particular, it was just me, a little girl version of the same girl now, crossing her fingers and walking across the street to see if her friend was playing dead or really was dead, wondering why I could never be so brave. A flair for the dramatics and a kiss on the cheek. Just tuck me in. I'm tired now...

It's not your fault if they can't love you.

"Blessings! Blessings on you, one and all! I blessed the trees, the birds, the dogs, the cats, I blessed the flowers, the pomegranates, the thorny cactus, I blessed men and women everywhere, no matter on which side of the fence they happen to be. This is how I like to begin each day."

-Henry Miller

Wild lilac and lovely lupin and driving to the point where the signs finally say we are there, yet and Big Sur is here and where Bibles are printed in neon jackets with members only scratched out on the horizon because my mom always told me growing up that God doesn't care what you wear to church because he sees you naked in the shower. The last time I dipped my toes into the crystal ocean, I gave forgiveness a big hug and told it how sorry I was and let my new polka dot bikini be my blessing shouting out to God that I love Him and I listen to gangster rap because it makes me feel anointed and I cry often when I am alone because it is when I feel most affectionate with words and it is overwhelming to know exactly how you will die without knowing any gypsies to fool you into thinking otherwise. I will tell you this: I may never know how to let you love me, but I will share my pizza with you, and I will always ask you what you want, and I will always keep trying to figure out how to spell my name in stars so you will always look up and know you don't need loneliness and I will always want to hug you so big that your last heartbreak forgives itself and I will love you so much that God may be proud of me and I will thank him for teaching me that it is blessings all of it blessings and i will thank them each for their contribution to my spectacular formation of loving and i will raise my hands to the sky to thank the boys who loved me because I am sure now that I want to love you if you will let me. They asked me between stories about the Holocaust and being 21 if I was going to marry you and I felt overwhelmed by sadness and swordfish. Irregularly aware of why people make harsh divorces I just don't know if I am your one, but I am one at least, at least one year of knowing you were important and you only sometimes telling me otherwise. With words, I am better if written. With words, I am clumsy. With you, I am sure, sometimes. I look out the window after fish and hear my favorite song buzzing through the wrong voice and I see you glowing at me from the tip of the airplane's wing and I am lost in eternity with you, I am dancing naked alone with you, I am reading Harry Potter for the first time with you, I am drinking an entire bottle of Simply Orange: No pulp with added calcium because of you, I am crying on my birthday with my ex boyfriend because of you, I am delicately arranged silverware at a grandmother's birthday table with you, I am everybody's least favorite Beatle because of you. I am happening in outer space to the rhythm of something dirty and patient somehow. I am loving you even if I am the only one because at the end of the earth, I will be unending like God's love, like hard days, like sky fall, like breathing, like miracle, like all the good things etched in a kitten card in poor handwriting. I will be there in the earth unending loving the way you say the name you've given me.

I feel good about the way it sounds to exhale.

don't look at me that way

Drawn curtains and hoping to hear of someone else's heartbreak and using the same letters to spell different words over and over again until the letters dance up and form something incredible and I think about all the things you say every time you say anything at all and I think about how I don't know how to do it again. I don't know how to escape you sometimes but I remember that I have been here before, similarly, just not as much. When Sam was tutoring me on triangles, he said the way I think about things in crooked, and thinking about triangles, I'm not sure I trust myself enough to let go of straight lines. I don't know how to draw and being this terrible at math, I know I will always be alone. I think about how long it took for my heart to break yours and how uncomfortable it can be when ventricles become triangular or something different from what I expected at all. There's this thing I do when I'm crying in front of somebody I love where I can't look them or myself in the eyes and I wonder who I get that from. I wonder who taught you how to love and how to unlove and if you only unlove and never quite fall out of it, how old does that make our devastation? Is this math? is this a problem? is this something adult or something more like holding hands on swing sets?

When the fog clears, I promise I will have the answer.