on paralysis, of the morning variety

i want to sleep in the daylight when it's safe and stay in bed where it's safe and hold the puppy and talk to everyone i know.

but.

there's something to be said for fighting the past and being brave. i'm trying to remember how.

surprisingly

there's a 3 where the 1 was and something has shifted. but i'm not one of those who writes when they're ok. a sudden longing for my hemingway books stored in a garage in the valley or maybe they're lost forever, i won't know, and i'm trapped in this in-between place where i do not know the things that belong to me. you took so much and pretended you didn't.

i'm not living in my head but in the past again. i'm spending days fist to my gut because i want a physical reason. you ought to have socked me before i called the cops but that would've made it believable, wouldn't it?

ambiguity and lies and i'll never know, i'll never know.

who i'm talking to here is interchangeable, depending. you two are each other, don't you know. my god i hope you know who you are but you'll never read this. you'll never have the luxury.

the road goes ever on and on

i'm living more in the present than in my head these days. i'm told it's a good thing, i'm halfway there. 


so this blog is going private. it's going to be different, i'd imagine, i can't say how. but let me know if you still want to read. 

one day we'll have this all straightened out

why can't everything just be somebody else's fault, just once?

if i could really believe it maybe i could've had the appropriate comeback, said all those things thought of later, and not withered into an apologizing pathetic mess. 


as it is don't think i'm worth nothing. i've left a note stapled to his palm tree saying:

Kindly post a sign if you'd prefer our dogs not pee on your lawn. 

We understand that you are not an animal person, but surely you're aware that, like yourself, dogs have to go.

How are we to know that you will wait until after the pee to speak up, when, helpless, all we can do is shout apologies over your insults? How do you propose we rectify the situation now?

We do not appreciate being yelled at simply because we did not know. 

anonymous, of course. i'm eagerly awaiting the retaliation. this should be good. 

again

i feel dead. 

each time as if the first time. that thrill of excitement coupled with a vague familiarity. has this happened before? what happens next? 


now that i'm dead, what can i accomplish?

please

no whisperings nor scurryings in the brain, just some quiet before the confusion takes over, please, just that, please

whiplash

and so drink wine in the dead of night because your back hurts, chain-smoke as if it kills the pain rather than occupying endless hours. wear your grandmother's old silk robe that smells of lavender and tobacco, don't bother about tying the sash. when rouge-stained cigarettes and ash coat the floor take a valium, take whatever they've given you, pass out right there until your spine wakes you screaming. 


and for heaven's sake don't show the girl who loves you how useless you are, clean up the wine before she wakes, brush your teeth, don't tell her how you're dead sure somewhere down by your gut that this will go on forever and she ought to leave you before you slip away into a cripple, a wino, a waif.

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.

purgatorio

first time forever in an airport and not hungover and wanting to die. i have a bubble-wrap of joy around me, a lovely hummingbird waiting for me at home. 


so. five days with my family, the very nexus of my distress. is this just anticipatory numbness, or am i really feeling all right? yes, go on, give me your third-degree. don't expect my affection because i won't do it anymore, i can't, you're a black hole, you're sucking my insides out. i am still strong yet. i will not let you leech my joy. i will not be your charcoaled remains.

it's sunny outside, and hot and dry, did you know? not for long. i'm sitting here in limbo, in no-place, the spaces between worlds, a confluence of ten thousand anonymous people in rows of space-age chairs, bad carpeting, useless knickknacks for sale, just waiting. i, for one, am waiting to be judged. 

unicorn

yes, i've fallen in love, darlings! 

i never knew it could be this good, that life could be this good, she could be this lovely, i could be this ok. 


and don't tell me it won't last; i won't listen, i'll cover my ears and sing and daydream and skip in the summer sun with my legs bare. i mean, wouldn't you?

reverie

you see, she is stealing all my time, or am i giving it to her? gladly. my heart is on fire and it renders me clumsy and inarticulate. broke my thumb in the car door last week, you can imagine how it is to type, compensating for the space bar with whichever finger is convenient. i don't mind. if only my words would come out with grace, if only i did not have to tell her through my fingers on her skin, in her hair, small kisses in the night, how my chest will burst with this madness that some i suppose call happiness, this strange foreign state i cannot bring myself to believe in.

an inverted world in which sadness is comfort and happiness the unattainable challenge, the unknown fear. well, i'll be the warrior here, the conquerer. fuck cowardice. truth is, she's just as scared as i am, just as inarticulate, and oh how just as brave.


my hair is honey blonde and red now, have i mentioned that yet? a friend said today i was glowing, she said at first she thought it was my hair and hot pink sunglasses but no indeed, i am bursting forth from inside, luminescent. you caused that, love. phosphorescent fungi in the pitch dark, readmitting radiation slowly over time, bright enough to light a path long hours into the night, for days, for weeks, for years. 

i see color again in the world and pick her bouquets of aged flowers, it's never enough, i don't know what to do with all this joy and you know, i'm afraid of it, i'm awkward when it comes to love, i'm afraid to let the fuck go because isn't this somebody else's life i'm supposed to be living?  and what we do in the in-between times when it's just the two of us, is that really for me alone? i find i close my eyes and look away, she shines too brightly and i'm afraid to see this for what it is, that is to say, those words not-yet-to-be-said but which clog my throat and hitch my breath. yes, and i'm falling.

i'm trying not to over-think things, i'm trying to let go. i've passed the point of running now, you're worth it, love, you're worth it ten thousand times over, if only i could tell you so

intensity

a picnic on the beach, blue cheese-stuffed figs wrapped in bacon and a bottle of wine and i'll kiss her in public and i don't care, and all i can think lying curled up with her nights is this is too good to be true, i don't deserve this, she's going to find out what a wreck i am and back away and break my glass heart.

red wine and chain-smoking i say too much or i say not enough; never the right things, anyway. i can't explain to her how my chest is imploding because it's too complicated, how i'm trying to stay present, i'm trying to ignore myself, i'm trying not to tell lies and i'm shit-scared here because happiness is not what i know 


but all i want is to trust 


and she's worth it and oh fuck am i scared

if a beginning is even discernible in the midst of irrelevant events

afternoon sun on the back of my neck, you sit with me while i drink my tea and smoke and then walk me to the corner, you didn't have to, we both know that. i insist you make blueberry muffins and tell you i'll come tomorrow, i swear this time i will. 


we're playing games, aren't we, waltzing around each other in this in-between space where i don't know you and you don't know me yet but there's something charged here. i'll keep the secrets buried and maybe they'll dissipate on their own. i'd forgotten how it was to laugh like this, how my skin sheds, how light i am underneath.

 you can't break my heart because for now i'm just dreaming. in my head it's lovely, the fast-footed dance so captivatingly sweet, when there are still ten thousand outcomes, still elbow room in the world, when possibility is more potent than desire. 


i'll see you tomorrow, i suppose. i won't sleep tonight but i'll never tell you so. 

trying to catch the horses

the earth spins so fast with so many sounds of freeways and fire and ice cream trucks and i can't keep up, the long-lost brief smells of horses and leather and hay. i can't keep up, i'm exhausted, i can't catch hold, or is it me who is skipping about too quickly to keep pace with?


i'm in a time-muddle. i feel afire. 

but aren't they lovely, these early sunny summer days?

Trying to Catch the Horses

When I give up and turn my attention

to the purr of the grass, the clatter of the aspen,

the clouds lifting off Mt. Teewinot,

I become a curious god, a tar baby,

a clump of grass they must graze. 

I reach up and touch the blue with my fingers,

not just the air above my head,

but the sky itself as far as it goes. 

-Dan Gerber

must we have to try so hard to not be dissatisfied with everything?

You need not leave your room, remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
(from grey)

in the interim, shall i watch fellini films, listen to bowie, grow antique roses on the windowsills?




is it so hard to imagine sitting so still, stilling the mind, the body, stilling the heart? what terror is there in this attention to time that we spend so long evading?

new task

my lips are eroding with how much i haven't said. coy smiles and downturned eyes are all that's needed these days, an opportune blush, a placid face, a complacency with awkward silences. nobody cares much for anything beyond themselves. i dreamt last night my fists spoke for me.  if only words could bring forth such blood.


i'm rapidly losing faith in confidentiality, those things i've said blown open over and over in the past week. what need have i for words, anyway?

i'm fifteen years old again, they're taking everything from me, they're reading everything, i've no space left.


i'm trying to burn a hole in my stomach. a secret cavity, sore to the touch. i'll hide secrets in there, they'll cut me up and they'll never know because i'll never tell, innocuous grapefruit juice top shelf in the fridge--oh yes, this is a vice they can't spurn me for. i'll be the rogue but i won't be the child, i'll cheat, oh yes, i've always been a cheat, a liar, a fraud-daughter, too many pejorative adjectives affixed to my name. don't think i can't wield those too.

intermittency

waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. 

trying to determine who i am without the rebellion.




deny me all you want but i stand by my lies, they're all i've got

tell me again about unconditional love

my brain goes off half-cocked and freezes there. i learn things every day and all they do is clog my synapses. i see white everywhere i go, black static at the edges, the swoop of motion, the rattle of keys. i'm trapped in this room because i cannot face the outside world.


you've always been a country girl, she says, maybe your anxieties are from that city. but then: until you find God again you'll be out of kilter, so i'm not taking anything too seriously. i give her back one of her awkward silences, a debt it'll take more than my lifetime to repay. 

i'm about to be caught in my lies, the biggest ones. waiting on the cusp, it's sunday, no mail, no phone calls, just waiting. cigarettes taste like ash in my mouth, hot and dry. thank you now you've ruined this too. 


truth is, i'll never be you

i'm wearied now of owning my own heart

yes, i offered to pick her up from jail this morning because i have a need to prove i'm not useless because i am a good friend. i have no intention of getting in the middle, she's all yours, my dear, you know she's not my type. don't mistake my awkwardness for disappointment; i am merely trying to memorize the feeling of being valued. of course you need to rush in and save her, of course i'll go back to doing whatever it is i wasn't doing before.

but hey, i'm good in a crisis, i'm good at 3am when you're stranded drunk at a gas station in pasadena in your short black dress and heels, where the cops left you after they cuffed your girlfriend, ma'am, is there someone you can call? yes, of course there is, i'm good, i'm here, i'll talk you through it, i'll save you until she's free again and you can rush in, the heroine. 


really, it's just the coincidence of sobriety and reliability. i'll never be the loose cannon, the rogue, the one asking to be saved. vicarious drama is, in the end, only a surrogate, and i'm excruciatingly bored. 

salinger

how can one person feel so much at one time, and feel nothing? i am not in my body just now. dissociated, they tell me. fancy word for momentary brain-deadness, for separation of mind from body or mind from itself. 


it's terribly peaceful and i'm quite frightened. 

i'm wearing that placid face, i can't feel my legs, i want a cigarette but the thought of leaving the house, of existing in the outside world is making me tremble. cocktails of pills are all that's keeping me conscious through these blurring endless days. 


i'm turning into a ghost. i'm excruciatingly bored and what a waste, what a waste, i'm slipping out of sight, out of mind, out of hand. 

hero complex

my dear, is it you who are distancing us or just the semi-gloss of making up with the girl we both know is pulling you down? you can't save her. no one can. i can't save myself either but the difference is i don't let you try. 

not-feeling is a lost art. i have become too triangulated in your relationship, the third party, the convenient one. 


i'd tell you this if you fed me red wine by the bottle, asked me about my sudden retreat. but i'd like to think i'm in the right in my silence, that truth is too rash and acknowledging my existence as such too fanciful.

susurration

i never said yes, i just didn't say anything at all. you didn't ask and i pulled down my sleeve in what i would call a surreptitious gesture. silence speaks for us and that's all that's in my head just now. don't interrupt. it's hot out already, it's still morning, the smoke stalls in a cloud around my face. blocking the sun, i guess. i feel poisoned. 


everything ends up too repetitive after a while, you know? 

you're here but i'm not. not really. my apologies. 

when the rose sun sets over the hollywood hills

and a quiet in my head in direct contradiction with the city, everything embossed with meaning and placement in space, that car to my left, red light means stop as in stop the car not cease all physical movement, my fingers growing tired of holding this cigarette, the bones and muscles working just so for just so long, repetitive movements through space are nearly but not always predictable.


and a warm nostalgia for things having been, the lost circumference of one's thighs, a whole absorption in this one book at this one time in which this particular writer's words spill out of you later on, ingested and chemically altered to become your own, a loss of friends, a loss of joy, a loss of complacency with lazy sunday afternoons.

but still glimpses, yes! early-afternoon brunch, a swept floor, the coolness of indoors and a curtained soft white sun, casual cigarettes and the right book, the right voices wafting in through the screens and it's ok because, you see? fleeting remembrance has so much more depth and the twilight still holds the echoes of the fire of the setting sun, ten minutes past. 

vacuum

ages in the sinkhole. if only i were not mired in something so basic as the human condition.


i just feel so terribly ordinary, you know?

la la land

the meterologists here are great at telling us what the weather is, not what it will be. they lie again and again and i am forced to strip off jackets, sweaters, knee boots in a sudden midday sun. you think they'd learn but this is a city of denial.


the future tense is impossible to comprehend without hope in the equation. that's all we're built on, west of the san andreas. without it we'll slide off into the sea. good riddance. no one would miss us.


they'd miss the movies, though.

partial suicide

let's pretend it was the tequila, a bad reaction to tequila that made me vomit all over my boots for hours, reduced my limbs to dead weight. i don't remember blacking out, but who does? just hands, being carried, the irresistible pull of gravity on my body, the inability to do anything but be swept along. yes, the tequila. 


slumped over my roommate's arm i looked Death in the face and said, all right, i'm ready. 


it was terribly peaceful. 

woke in the morning, surprised that i had. can't shake the disappointment. there was a beautiful finality about the whole evening. 

three days i've been in a daze: what next?