they've gone away.

They’ve gone away. Those moments. In real time. They stick. These moments. Sometimes playing like a reel fed into a now defunct

machine that played films in the little town where I grew tall and sick of the things that made most sense. I am here. I am here now on this couch in cotton pants belonging to a man I’ve learned to love through all the thoughts that threw themselves at me along the way. And I guess it’s time to say it’s fine. It’s time to lay my heavy armor down and press pause on the type of fight that drove me forward all these years. It’s time to learn to trust and smile and mean it when before it was all a stage and make believe. I’m scared, but it’s okay. I’m happy to throw all I have in and hope for something beautiful. If I lose, I lose by trying. If it hurts, at least I felt at all.

our towns, close.

I’ve lived in a town dotted close on the map to the town where you reside. We may have frequented the same coffeeshop on the outskirts of our towns. We may have shared a word or two in line for a bagel. You may have showed me the cover of the book you were planning on reading for free on your daily visits. I may have read it already.

You may have stopped by for tea on your way through my town to yours after being out at shops looking for a silly hat to wear or shoes. I may have kissed you. You may have liked it.

I may have allowed you to sleep next to me because it was getting late and your town seemed like a far off destination. We may have stared at one another in sleep. We may have ordered breakfast from the coffeeshop.

We may have become friends who listened to songs and cried because they meant something. I may have listened to stories that you told and thought they were brilliant. We may have moved in closer proximity to one another’s town, but not the same one.

I am afraid to move.
You are afraid to move.
We decide to sleep it off.

greek town.

i found this while getting some story pieces together and i found it to be a valid reflection on my rollercoaster love/hate of being wherever i am at the moment. enjoy.

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Mother describes him as “aloof”. By “aloof” she must mean that he doesn’t make eye contact when I speak to him. I find him to be aloof as well, I guess I just never really noticed.

Every time I come to the city I end up with some kind of head cold. Congestion. Bags under my eyes. I think it’s great. I always end up figuring something out while I’m here and appreciating something I forgot to appreciate before. This time it’s the trees. I am awed by the trees and the un-palmish nature of their leaves. The sizes. Everything about them. Driving up through Wisconsin, I stuck my hands out of the window and bounced my fingertip from one treetop to the next. Smiling. Announcing every now and then to the boys in the car to take a look. To check out the trees.

He made me sit in the back seat. He called “shotgun.” I was pissed. It is not such a fine line these days between being a child and learning the value of respect. A man in the lot at the Phish shows told me “I don’t think they realize how incredible you are” as I walked behind them. I laughed for a second. I think he’s right.

I don’t want to go back to Miami. Back to jobs that model confinement. I don’t have to. I don’t have to do anything.

I have a perfect seat in a restaurant in Greek Town. I am in front of the open window, facing the street and a restaurant called Parthenon. There are bikes shackled up out front. There are trees that look like elm trees, but I’m not certain.

People here say “Real Good” when asked how things are. They are always, “Real Good.” I like that. I like that real well.

kitchen.

It’s midday and I am cleaning the kitchen because I am convinced that in the two years I have had this particular kitchen, I have never really cleaned it. Not really.

Moths fly from the bins that hold little plastic baggies of cumin and allspice and curry. A family or two of spiders dance in webs that may have been in the family for generations. I feel like all kinds of bugs are biting me.

I find the charger to the old purple dirt devil while I am using the red one to clear out the webs. I suck up a pregnant spider and it gets stuck in the sucker hole so I have to pound the vacuum against the granite floor and wonder if the lady is going to birth a thousand spiders inside of the damn thing. I think that now that I have two of them, I can throw one away. I then chide myself for even thinking about being so wasteful. Maybe I’ll just leave it in the alley for parts.

I find three or four re-buys of plastic wrap, aluminum foil, some kind of herbal cleanse and tums. I am having a hard time executing all of the moths and as I swat each one I watch as it turns into a sort of dust in the sunlight streaming through the backdoor windows.

I get to my cookbooks and they stare at me, defeated. Forgotten. Each one reminds me of a mini-series of stories. The notes I made because a friend loved my shepherd’s pie. A thoughtful dedication written by someone I used to know inside of another. Later, the same person deceived me with nearly the same level of eloquence.

And I am sitting amongst all these cans of tomatoes and boxes of spaghetti in a green terry cloth bathrobe covered in dust and cobwebs and exploding into tears. Head in my hands. Holding the purple cookbook that I was so proud of owning. Holding those old memories and feelings of joy that I felt when creating something with love. Feeling disappointed in my lack of care for these precious things. My lack of care in general.

I remember things I love and somehow forgot. In that, there is something real.

human.

We try and make it simple. We think of possible outcomes, shortcomings, perceived realities. We do this because we are human. We do this because, in certain moments, we believe that it is our job to figure it out. We lie to others because we are attuned to make-believe, dressed in costume and painted in beauties of our own design.

We try and complicate things. We ask why and when and how without pressing pause. We laugh because we’re nervous. We laugh in times that, to others, may seem inappropriate. It’s not for lack of knowing. It’s because we know that a smile can change the meter of conversation. Make the rhythm of the moment more bearable. It’s because we know that everyone needs relief. It’s because we may not have an alternative for that particular breath. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes we forget where we are or what we are or if our intentions are to give or to get.

We are grand performers. We all have something we are afraid to share. We complicate things. We try to make it simple. We are not simple. We are human. At least for now <3

life as a kite.

I fly in my dreams. It’s not a bird-flight. It’s not graceful or pretty. I simply flap my arms as hard as I can until I lift off.

It depends on the situation, the color of the sky and the weight of the air, but I either drag slowly across the horizon, hitting my feet on every treetop along the way, or drift so far from my origin that I disappear from myself and my dream all together.

The latter are my most favorite dreams of all.

There are only two times when I have been consciously unconscious. When I have meditated without following a step-by-step.

The first was while floating naked a hot spring in the Rocky Mountains alone in the middle of the night. The mountains are the only place to see stars. They move and dance sweet for you. They shoot back and forth. They glimmer and fade and make you feel a part of them.

As I floated on my back; toes and breasts and face exposed to the night cold, I flew away while I thought of silence and while I stared at the most brilliant star my skies had ever seen. The sparkle was dreamlike. The scope of it’s shine—immense.

I laughed and cried for no reason because of this star and the sky that night and the warm water all around me. It was beautiful. And sometimes, when I’m sad, I go there in my head.

The other time was in India in a holy city beside the Ganges. I was traveling alone and then with a friend and the air was heavy there. Bodies were on fire in the river and spirits were floating to heaven all around me and I sat on the roof of a building watching the poof of pyre smoke fuming from the ghats in the east and feeling uncertain and questioning all I ever knew. A strange sadness was falling all around me until I turned my head to the other side and saw a hazy sky filled with kites.

Hundreds of homemade kites with beautiful children guiding the strings and I couldn’t imagine the beauty of this scene in a place that was such a celebration of death.

Life, in the form of paper vees and boxes shot around me like the mountain stars and I cried alone on the rooftop because I was happy and because life was beautiful.