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.

one day it all just opened up.

the day was ordinary-seeming, but things were messed about. my lips turned up into a sort of smile while walking, which is out of the ordinary (i've been told i frown without intention, you see) and even otherwise grumpy individuals had little effect on my outlook, which was free-feeling. i would compare it to a floating sensation that i had previously only experienced while sleeping and hovering over the landscape.

my first reaction to this new found feeling was to wait for it to pass. i have dabbled in mind-altering and feeling-enhancing enjoyments from time to time--and with those indulgences have become used to the inevitable fall. but it had been several days and the pleasure of free remained without the aid of any magical device.

i enjoy humming a tune while doing anything mundane as a way to inject some sort of peace into rote tasks or responsibilities. this humming begins without force and only becomes noticeable to me when i realize that others are present. it is then that i cease to hum (or sing), change songs (to something socially acceptable) or sing with increased volume as to showcase my need for attention and ability to utilize my sound to evoke some semblance of confidence within myself.

at this very moment i am singing.

at this very moment i am free.

everyone should sing.

everyone should be free.

old.

it's late and i'm awake and thinking about how funny it is to communicate with people who have no idea what you are talking about. it may be a story. it may be an idea. they may give a nod or a quick response to end the thought. i'm not sure.

i walked home with a friend this evening who asked valid questions and then looked away when i answered. his pace was fast and my headache was growing with each step toward home. he responded to each facial expression with a story about something he did at some point in his life that had no relevance to the topic at hand. he is older. he claimed to have understood each thing that i addressed with regard to my life. to me, age is completely irrelevant. at least age as we know it. there are young people who blow my mind with their maturity and people much older than me who blow my mind with their ignorance. age is relative.

a close friend had a birthday today and i joined her for dinner. other friends were there. there was a woman i had never met. she was annoying and twitched. i wondered what she was on. figured it was pills. she sat next to me and stepped on my feet all night in intervals that i couldn't predict. she touched my arm a lot. she made me feel uncomfortable with the volume of her voice. she told me several times that she was a photographer and that i should wear my hair down. i looked into the mirror for a great amount of time when i had to use the restroom. i pulled my hair back to spite her. it may have been a bad decision.

i feel like an alien sometimes. i talk too much and realize later than no one is listening. i talk to myself and people notice; especially when i am working. i don't really care. i know what i'm talking about. i listen. i fail to give good advice.

it's your smile i remember. never your name.

There are people in my life whom I love. So many. They are scattered across the globe. Their smiles mark my memory. Their words burn into pages of journals that may or may not be lost in storage somewhere across parts of middle America. I am not the girl who remembers perceived near-perfection. I admire scars. I admire those who sit with me and narrate the stories of their near-misses. If those I love are marked with specks of imperfection (in the eyes of others), I tend to love them more. I don’t know why. I don’t ask. I don't really care.

Judgment is a waste of time.

Numbers rarely matter.

I have only been right when I'm truly wrong.

There are many people in my life who love me. They may not know my name. They are in the small town where I was taught the importance of effort and the significance of a warm hug or a holiday parade. They are in the Rockies where I learned that when speeding down a mountain on skis far too long, I will fall and (although it may sting) there will be reddened hands happy to hand me a hot chocolate at mid-mountain, listen to a song I’ve sung one million times and still compliment me in languages I may never understand. There are those who kiss upon the awkward scar on my forehead and kiss away my often fearful tears, assuring me that everything that hurts will someday turn to something more like a brilliant powder day ending in ski-booted laughs that no one cares to capture on film.
There are those whom I have somehow forgotten who emerge while looking through photos in my papa’s attic.

It’s the smiles that I remember. Not always the names. Not always the reasons why. But if life is meant to be lived in scenes, in moments, then it’s fair to suppose that my silly spotted memory is not much of a concern.

I love the man who drove me, wide-eyed, around the deserts of India in a horse-drawn cart and the children we passed who hummed melodies as they danced barefoot and beautiful. I love the boy who taught me how to use a payphone in London. The man who changed my dead-of-night flat tire in the middle of Kansas. The street performer in Central Park who sang harmony to my half-assed Janis Joplin. The stranger on a subway in New York City who smiled as I walked into the crowd and disappeared. The grey-haired neighbor man who proudly placed a dime into my Halloween grocery sack as a little girl. The elementary school music teacher who assured me that if I sang a song, it didn’t matter if anyone listened. The boy in the airport in Delhi in the middle of the night that lead me to a sort of spiritual awakening and a hostel that even I could afford.

There is no such thing as coincidence.

It was these smiles and the thought that names, at least in my mind, never truly mattered.

Crooked teeth are most memorable.

Actions of love are rarely found in stacks of yellowed photos.

Loneliness is an illusion that feigns reality.

Smiles are often overlooked.



Loneliness is simply the effect of living without turning your head.

epiphany.

i sat on my worn black sofa and strummed the few chords that i know. i smiled and sang and appreciated the ridiculousness and utter madness of being. there was a man picking a beautiful acoustic song in the background, on my half-defunct stereo.

i appreciate things that are broken. my coffeecup handles. the high e on my guitar. my cell phone charger. the people i love. it's the broken things that inspire me to create alternatives. to live amongst the broken without regret.

i am a grand observer. i look upon everything with a sparkling disconnect. i once believed in perfection. i felt it possible to know everything. as a child, i attempted to read my world book encyclopedias from a-z. it bored me. i don't want to be an encyclopedia. i find joy in things i fail to retain. i enjoy conversing with those who believe they are the missing volume, but only because i know (somewhere inside), that they are tragically misinformed.

if like attracts like, and i'm convinced it does, then i am charming. i am broken.

i cheer for the underdog. i fall in love with puzzles with the final piece lost behind the same black sofa upon which i sit.

i fell asleep last night longing for the arms of someone beside me to hold me together, but i am only human. and to be human is to desire that dust-laden missing piece.

i propped my guitar against the wall and hummed the song i had just written. the lyrics, true and simple, failed to make it to the page. it may have been beautiful. it may have been perfect. but i am not perfect. i am broken. and i appreciate the broken things.

silence in stereo.

I love the way their mouths move, speechless. Slow-motion sunburned hands gripping lukewarm mugs of hot cocoa to warm the chill of the beach in February. The music has drowned out the verbal communication and it’s a respite for me.
I sip a Stella, adjust my headphones and stare at an unevenly spackled wall the color of nutella and marshmallows mixed.
It smells of coffee and, sometimes, cigarettes. The door is open. A table sits in the doorway. There are free papers and flyers for South Beach Waxing Co. and a burlesque show that I attended at one point with an old friend of mine. It was void of sex appeal, but the attempts at lewd Santa characters were more than laughable. I lost one of my favorite black and white earrings on the floor that night. I also left my friend to go to the deli across the street and sneak a turkey sandwich and a free bag of chips. I sat in an empty doorway and shared them both with a homeless man I recognized from my daily walks to and from work.
Everything around here is going out of business. The dim sum restaurant, the veggie hot dog stand, the local record store. I have yet to become frightened. I tend to succeed in the face of immense suffering.

six bucks.

it had been forty five minutes before i called gino's pizza, wondering if my cheese and roma tomato pizza with a two liter of pepsi would show up before the final scenes of ironman. i wasn't too concerned, but it seemed like it was taking a little bit longer than usual. to be honest, it was already pretty late when i phoned it in. joe, the new york sounding stage name of the guy who answers the phones there, says to me that the order is lost. i laugh a little. that sucks, i say.

he apologizes and tells me he'll make it now. i am satisfied. i hang up and get back to robert downey.

i get a good two minutes of rockets and fire in before the phone rings. it's the delivery guy.

i am outside, he says.
i'll be right out, i say. i think to myself that they messed up and are sending two pizzas. i think about freezing the extra one for emergencies.

i go outside in pajamas with some wadded up cash in one hand and the lining of my sweatpants pocket in the other. i hold the door open with my foot and lean far enough outside to see that there is no one around. i stay in this position for a few moments.

when i call the delivery guy's number back, he tells me that he went to the wrong place and he says to give him five minutes. there are no parts of the address that correspond to my own. he is six blocks north and four long blocks west. he sounds wasted. he slurs in spanglish. i hang up.

he calls back.
do you at least have a lighter, man? he asks.
i say, yes, i do. you can't take it, i say, but you can use it if you want.
cool, he says.
now i know he's wasted.

so by the time he is handing over the mostly cold pizza and zigzag walking back to the car for the pepsi, the movie is over. i bite into the first congealed slice and the phone rings with a time-delayed joe on the other end explaining that the delivery guy is at the wrong address, i smile. i hear the car clunking away.

i wonder where he'll choose to spend that extra six bucks.