it's always about time, isn't it?

what is there to say? i'm blissfully happy, and to write is to think and to think brings fear. 


i'm starting to realise that quantitative priorities may not, indeed, be priorities at all, and here i am left adjusting to what other people call living. it's a terribly strange process. i feel upside down, with that same giddiness and my head about to burst. the first inclination is of course to keep track of all of this, write it and analyse it and let it slip me back into a familiar melancholy.


i suppose i shouldn't want to. 


yes, it's all rather mixed up these days. 

and so: she and i, we're dashing off to see the redwoods this weekend, the first road trip, it's going to be magnificent, yes! and quite intense if you're one of those still fumbling about with living. but hey, trees and wine and cigarettes and weed and the california coast, and maybe i'll just lose myself in the woods for a time, come back when something makes sense, or nothing at all.

i won't let you go

but i'm just so afraid of not being alone

this is called bravery

what is there to say? i'm avoiding those black welling pits inside me because i'm just so fucking happy. but they're boring through me, i smoke too much, i'm afraid to sleep, sporadic moments of panic spread hairline cracks and i feel so fragile.


i have to deal with them. i am scared of nothing else on this earth. but i have to. 

terrors in the night

take pills to sleep and instead dream of dismembered body parts, dragging my own legs through the grass. late-night friends' cigarette smoke wafts in through the window and is it hot or just me that's soaked in sweat? reach to call 911 because my mother is threatening to kill me. i don't know what's dream anymore, what's waking, i'm turned upside down, i can't stop chain smoking because that's the most i do anymore. i've become so benign, so happy, so frightened. 

this is the unknown, the shady area no one talks about. what do i do in the interim, when things are better but not yet whole? 

i'm not east coast anymore, you know

why must i always be in airports, eating terrible things? i'm gone now, no more mother with her questions and secret covetous glances, no more cousins no more bug bites no more beautiful green land and ancient trees, no more crickets, no more cottage being slowly overtaken by the earth.


i found i could touch everything again, on the wooden swing with the wind on my face at sunset. isn't it always thus? it's terribly cliche but it's so, you can't always love the things you loved as a child, and i spent the remaining days on the roof and writing and staring out into the trees, trying to imagine how to make my own sanctuary like this in the west.

my mother said so i hear you're seeing someone and TELL ME ABOUT HER and i blushed and turned up the water so i could feign not hearing her because the key is navigating these situations so they occur in the right time and place. or maybe i am just a coward. it is easier to assume she will not approve, one more black mark, one more reason to not go home.


and now. will all her piercing looks and stabs in the gut come gushing forth in tears and sick and blood this week? will she have gotten in and felled me to my knees? stay tuned i guess. i'm feeling ambivalent.

lake house

i don't own this place anymore. i've lost the ability to frolic. too many people are watching, the dynamic has changed, the blueberries won't ripen until late july and i have forgotten how to lose myself. 

i'm not all here, i'm drunk on too much wine in a family that doesn't drink, i'm throwing up in the woods behind the house in the dark, i'm in the cottage listening to the rain fall on the roof and it's lovely here but i'm numb, i'm as if underwater, in a dream, i can't quite touch.

i'm just waiting. i just want to go home to the girl i can't tell anyone about.