All the Feels

I am here to say that I have been pleasantly surprised by the quiet unfolding of events over the past few weeks.  I feel lucky/blessed/etc/etc to be in this place, but the truth is I have put in a lot of work and made several fucking hard decisions to get here.  And, yes, I was not expecting this "so soon," but I can't deny that something is happening.

For now that is enough to keep me hopeful, to continue getting to know this peculiar person and to be okay with all the not knowings of something new and real and fragile.

It's not the worst place to be, I suppose.

On at Least Trying to Be

In the words of Hush Puppy: "I wanna be cohesive."

My painful realization of the day yesterday was this: I am obsessed with pursuing/being in a romantic relationship.

So...shit.  This self-awareness endeavor is no joke. 

Now what?

Things I Wish Would Happen But Will Most Likely Not Be Today, Etc.

Though I hate to acknowledge/these things take time/They cannot be rushed/or fast-forwarded/or ambushed into action/(which is what I'd prefer they do)/Perhaps for now we can sit/Walk the lake/Hope for good things for people who are not ourselves/And maybe "3rd times the charm,"/or 4th/or 5th/or maybe no charms/Just a peace and hope for what is to come/But still trying to be okay with the quiet,/the sadness,/the humility of solitude.

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear. -Adrienne Rich

Childhood is a strange country. It's a place where you come from or go to - at least in your mind. For me it has an endless, spellbound something in it that feels remote. It's like a little sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you're dizzy. -Lyall Bush

on sleeping hiccup attacks.

So there's a little creature in my life that sleeps on his back, dawdles in the bushes, and dreams long and hard. And I've never had a tiny heart rely on my own so much for everything. Oh, wait, I mean EVERYTHING. And this wasn't exactly how I had planned things: jobless, carless, moneyless...and yet, I can't complain when I think of all the little things. That I haven't been faithful in. All the big things that have yet to happen. And all the big things that already have in spite of myself.
I guess what I'm trying to say is just this: I'm still here. Things are happening. She is faithful, even when I am not. He cannot deny Himself.

And, proof:

like a river

Some times I get worried that my life isn't turning out quite how it should be. Some days I wake up and wish I was going to ride my bicycle to the letterpress factory or retirement center instead of the animal hospital. I wish I could go on walks with my dog and play fetch at the park. I even wish most of my ships were further along than they seem to be.
For me, it is hard mostly to be content in today. I know it is an important skill to have, seeing as life is just a bunch of todays strung together, so I am working harder at that. I think contentedness and inner peace, in general, are lacking in a society that slyly questions satisfaction and pushes its students towards insatiable desires.
I took a trip to San Francisco a few weekends ago, which is where I took this picture. There's nothing incredibly symbolic about it; it's just open books that look like they're falling from the sky, and the sun happened to be shining at that point in the day. I am warming up to that city, but I wonder if I woke up in an apartment in North Beach if I'd be any more peaceful than waking up where I am today. I'm pretty sure there are things that need to change inside of my own heart before I could truly live a life that is turning out quite how I think it should be. "Whatever my lot," I suppose.

on naming things.

I spent the better half of the past two weeks transporting my self around town by any means other than Jetta. Jetta was spending some well deserved vacation time, housed in a garage, having her insides examined and receiving new organs as needed. I spent the majority of that time either begging rides off of e, or riding my bicycle from point a to point b. Let me tell you some thing about bicycles. There are a few different kinds; mountain, road, hybrid, commuter, to name a few. Giant is a sort of crossover, not purebred, but some mix of the above. I have had this lofty notion in my head for several months now that I will soon be trading in Giant for a SSS (sweet, sleek, sexy) Bianchi. Though we have never met, Bianchi and I will be good for each other. Sometimes a girl just knows these things.
And so I faithfully rode my Giant up and down the coastal highway two and three times a day, convincing myself that if I am "still riding this old thing!" (after a year?!), that probably means I will be the perfect candidate for Bianchi in the near future. (I can barely feel its weight as I sling the frame over my shoulder and climb the stairs to my apartment...)
Alas, I am brought back to reality as I lug Giant's deadweight up to the safety of our second-floor balcony.

on holly avenue.

I
know
that
atonepointisaidthati
neverwantedanychildren.

Well, throw that cutie pie in a bassinet & call me a sucker.

cold was the ground.

A certain friend of ours pointed my head in the direction of a compilation album entitled, Dark Was the Night. Now, I didn`t really know how I felt about compilation albums that weren`t classified as soundtracks, but, fortunately, I was gifted, and began to listen.
Even though I prefer Blind Willie Johnson`s original title to the Kronos Quartet`s; I suppose their efforts would make him proud.
But mostly, on part 2 of the 2 disc compilation, I found myself watching our mice crawling upside down on the roof of their cage and replaying Stuart Murdoch's (think Belle & Sebastian) "Another Saturday" quite regularly during my six-am-just-before-dawn car drives.
Here are some of my favorite words from his song:
Look ahead with hope and cheer (Look ahead with hope)
Look ahead with blazing spirits
'Cause the One that made us wants us to spread joy amongst the living
And though times may be hard (Times, they may be hard)
And the week behind was painful
He won't ask us to shoulder a weight too much to carry on another Saturday.

I have heard that His yoke is easy, and perhaps a burden that is a little bit lighter than we`d prefer to carry.

on some thing a long time ago.

"For God is not a God of confusion but of peace." -14:33.

All the Pretty Horses.

Since it took me so long to actually get to this book, &even longer to read it, I figured that I would give you an honest, yet humble review.
I suppose my favorite thing about this book was that it took me a while to break it in. Or it took a while to break me in. Western fiction is not a genre I have any particular affinity for, and there is plenty of other literature in the world for me to sit around with. So, even though the book came highly recommended from a reputable source, I would be lying if I said I wasn't mostly intrigued by the cover.
McCarthy's mastery of style, however, could not be ignored, and luckily, like a green colt, I was broken in after about sixty pages. The poignancy of McCarthy's diction, the structured coherence of his characters, and his overall knowledge of the craft made this novel worth taking a little more time on.
Here is my favorite passage in the book; it's on page 135.

She watched him, not unkindly. She smiled. Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten, can they?

Find this book and read it. There's some caballos in it, too.

greetings!

indeed, it is a rare day that i do not thank Jesus for you.

on eating old birthday cake.

"i know i`m not sposed to miss you guys like this: rubbing two stones together in my hands, between my fingers before throwing them out, out, out into the water of a made-up lake. and i know it`s only been a few hours since i`ve been standing here, toes on the shore`s lines; close enough, but not quite enough to feel the water`s quiet tongues gently lapping. but to just all sit around for a few years, living off of old birthday cake and lukewarm water, dying tulips &penciled-in cows..."

amateur cartography.

he held my face in his hands like a first-time explorer grips the page:
turning it this way &that, up &down, read it left to right.
he followed the lines with his fingers
to the corners of my grinning cheeks &crinkled eyes.
stopped.
stared intently into the newly formed lakes,
hot brown on soggy paper.
sighed, marked the spot with red marker and
gently started to crumple the map.

little bird.
any one only knows the girl
with the wrist-watch
&
punch-stained lips.

but,

it`s quite possible
she`s a
bit
more
than that.

july third, two thousand seven

"&I dreamed of syrupy fingered innocence, stickers on the car windows, laughing, crying, unbroken circles of families in sundresses & linen pants & camping, fishing & gardening & standing up for the softer ones, & gentleness & scrabble, orange juice, & "have a sunny side up day" notes in lunch boxes, and resting & moving & mattering & selflessness as constant as my mother`s arms, in a world not made for families & black sheeps, but we are these things, and have made it a home, anyway."

i don`t want to let go of the wrists

i liked your teeth & floral print skirt,
&even though my one-bird aviary pales in comparison to your full-fledged menagerie...
hi, [i don`t mind.]
stranger[`s] paths have crossed,
if only for a couple of minutes.
thanks for looking me in the eyes, shaking my hand, &
oops.
how am i going to get my bicycle home, again?

965

some times i wear dirty shirts &shoes, out of forgetfullness.
& why is that man still playing fetch with his doberman on the lawn?

w: "i cut my thumb! look!"
[i look. minor injury.]
a: "i think you`ll survive. do you want a band-aid?"
w: "nah. but you know what?"
a: "no, what?"
w: "i like my grandfather`s hands."
a: "what do you like about them?"
w: "i like that they`re old and cut and wrinkled. it`s because he was in the war. i hope mine look like that some day."
a: "they will."

bryce graham

it`s been a quiet day here: too warm to fill my lungs with too many promises for the first day of summer.
you`ll understand eventually, i suppose.

but to night, i can hope for this:
warm food,
yard work,
lemon sorbet,
&faithfullness.

Wish you were here.