Bathwater So Hot It Feels Cold.

Today it got colder. I tried not to be alone. I ended up folding clothes and making myself dinner. I made a telephone call that was neither brave nor regrettable.

I was as happy as I've been in a long time for about an hour.

Cheers.

To being a second best, and being best, and not being good enough at all.

To waking up at four in the afternoon, wearing the same hat and shirt for the third day in a row, the voices of strangers in my house drowning out my bad dreams with something a little worse.

To the sky, which gets far darker than your eyes ever will.

Far From the Twisted Reach of Crazy Sorrow.

In English we're reading O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Our teaching had us write lists of what we carry, physically and metaphorically. I wrote a list of memories, guilts and unaccepted apologies. I wrote that I carried a heart. When asked to circle which thing we'd be willing to drop first, I got scared.

Last night, all of the things I carry transcended me, suspended themselves in the air above my head. The detachment was slight though, and comfortable, if not a bit shaky.

There was mild surprise that I could exist without all of it. And now I know.

115th Dream.

I found my friend in her hospital bed, hair dark and uncut, shining under the fluorescent light. She shared an air-conditioned room divided by a plastic curtain with a woman who was dying.

"I don't know you, stranger," I said to her, "but I love you. Everything will be okay." I choked on the words, tears all in my mouth and she repeated them back.

When I woke, everything was still so tangible.

It Was For You, Too.

We all have a breaking point. I found mine today when my newfound apathy shattered and bled and everyone got so worried. I didn't mean to cause alarm.

But how could I stop before I cried it all out of myself? How could I stop on a day that the Orient Express is off the tracks for good and I light my patchouli incense with a bic lighter?

Sle--ee--ee--ee--eep.

and it's been a long time since before I've been touched, now I'm getting touched all the time

My grandmother bought everyone a scratch ticket. The only person who won was me. I plan to spend my two dollars on something marvelous.

Like parking in a city garage or something cold to drink on those wintery streets.

Bitter Taste.

Last night was no good. I saw the end coming from miles away, from weeks ago when I walked in the cold the same way, with my brother silently by me. He even got my coat for me, held it up for me. It was a surprisingly profound thing to happen.

I am certainly not grateful enough for the things I have: a window facing east, playing cards, honeyed tea, paper to fold into cranes, endless ink, promises to return books.

It's CDS' birthday. Hopefully a good one.

Stick-shifts and Safety Belts.

Yesterday I waited three hours at the Safety Council to take my license road test. The lobby was jammed full of anxious, fidgety people of all ages watching the parking lot from behind big glass window panes. Nervous about the falling snow and parallel parking. It's funny how such strange situations can bring humans together so quickly. I met a man from Adelaide, Australia who had just moved to the States, perfectly friendly and unafraid to break a silence. Something to appreciate.

The wait did pay off, too. Otherwise I might not have recounted the wait nearly as fondly.

My parents threw their annual "End of Season Hawkwatch Party" last night (yes, I know). There are friends that have been coming every year for twenty years that were so excited and congratulatory toward me. They don't have kids of their own, I was amazed at how proud they were of me. How is it possible that we can forget people that care so much?

And We Lose Respect So Fast.

I'm feeling accomplished because for the first time in a while I was able to sit down and really write.

In light of my recent study of the literary Brat Pack, I decided it was time to expose my own world, hidden behind the mask of fiction: our regression to decades past, the apologies we carve into our arms, the comforting myths of gods and last resorts, the nonchalant drug addictions, undefinable loves, the faith without the practice, the beautiful lies we spend our whole lives painting, the irony and symbols we string 'round our necks for the world to see, the way we throw everything we are and more at the people we meet, thinking that someone out there must be looking to take a chance too.

Forever or Until.

god, it's great to be alive, takes the skin right off my hide to think I'll have to give it all up someday

Everything in my life must be connected by magnetic charges. I am nothing but a web of my own thoughts and actions, memories attracted to the present, maybe even the future. The good and bad drawn together like keys fitting into locks, something true, tangible, fitting into an empty space.

I've been having vivid flashbacks more and more lately. Soft flooded summer skies, flight, the least sure I've ever been. There's no definite relativity to the time that's passed, each second was uniform and out of place. It's taken so long, but we've grown up so fast it's funny.

and if I ever treated you mean, you know that it was only because I'm sorry i couldn't have you for my own

- m.ward

Looking For Replacement.

The shade was drawn this morning but I still woke up with the sun in my eyes.

And Today Was A Day.

Holidays don't do much for me anymore. I spent my Thanksgiving quarantined in my bedroom while my family celebrated downstairs, couldn't take any chances getting my grandparents sick.

Laying in bed, I was thinking about how all my life I've saved last resorts for help and how the few times I've been reduced to them, I've found that they've never really existed at all. It happened today. I shouldn't have been alone.

I suppose I should say what I'm thankful for, although so many blessings have come with curses, "our double-edged sword" you called it. I'm thankful to love and to be loved. I'm thankful you're alive. I'm thankful for songs that have been written about me. I'm thankful for our night at the ocean, the cigars and shooting stars.

You Don't See It.

I stumbled through the dark room crying, thinking about the light from the television on my face, wondering if my tears were illuminated by it, and then about other times I've done the same. Waking up on a couch and facing a grey August morning, my face beautiful in the light, turned away, hidden. Trying to come up with a spontaneous, sorrowful Kerouac haiku in my head. Even this morning, disappointed in the gold first light, casting a perfect shadow on the wall above my pillow. Desperate times call for a desperate, misplaced kind of confidence, I suppose.

Thank you for getting me out of there, for walking with me in the night. It didn't feel as desolate as it would have otherwise, in the middle of the wind and stars.

I Wanted To Live Deliberately.

I watched "Dead Poet's Society". It ended, sky darkening. I put on my ski jacket from when I was twelve and my mother's boots. It wasn't very cold outside. The ground was very wet. I hung upside down from a swing, legs wrapped around the ropes. I stayed for a minute or so, then went back inside, not with the words "carpe diem" on my mind, but "put to rout all that was not life".

Meet Me in the Morning.

Days have been good, slow and comfortable. Nights have been bad, anxious and sorry and desperate. It's the dreams that get me. I can't even remember them now.

And So I Did.

He was a stranger to me too, sitting at the head of the table in a wheelchair, next to my grandfather at the nursing home. He looked tired, too wise and weather to be upset. Someone said he was ninety-seven years old. He silently watched the feeble conversations unfold, between the nine people there that were not him. Maybe he was listening, maybe not.

Eyes sweeping, caught, with some hope for recognition, I saw him looking back.

"Hey-" The words caught me by so much surprise I nearly didn't hear them, "Keep smiling."

Get Well Soon.

I've taught myself how

and now I can't seem to stop

folding paper cranes.

Eyes Stung with Nighttime Cold.

Being tired beyond emotion isn't as bad as it sounds. Or as good.

Hold Onto Yourself by the Sleeves, I Think Everything Counts a Little More than We Think.

I've got little poked holes in my fingertips, the result of nothing more than nervous habit; my fingers fumble with and occasionally through the backs of my earrings. Three times in two days, I've stuck myself. Now when I reach out to touch, there's pain. My connection to the tangible world is flawed.

Usually I try not to look for symbolism, irony, et cetera, in my own life but I've been short on sleep and if I'm too tired to be mindful, I forget.

The Rate at Which the Universe Expands.

Almost falling down from the earth into the stars, smoky, sandy mouthed, we must have seen ten shooting stars. It didn't feel any different, to be one of them. Too have other stars staring back. There was no warmth or shine, only distance, a satisfying nothingness to existence.

The greyscale beach blended into the end toward the east; toward the west, everything was real. The night was too cold for gravity; something else was keeping me grounded.

How Strange It Is To Be Anything At All

There's something that feels so wholesome and safe about sleeping on a mattress on the floor of a best friend's gold-lit bedroom, a mug of Egyptian licorice tea in one hand, a pen in the other, a mattress at my feet.

I feel restored. I have hope for people again, it's magnified by the conversations we have, by the world through someone else's eyes, by the parallels I draw between us.

I feel like I'm looking in a mirror and I'm not sad about it. We'll both be just fine. And then better.

This is a thank you.

First Time for Everything?

Today I sat by the window with the telephone to my ear. On the other side of the line, my father said "I love you". His voice was distant and maybe shy. I said it back, louder, because for the first time, I meant it.

This had never happened before.

Singing, I Don't Exist.

I've been living for days to come, for a smile to fade the scars, for salt wind to wake me up, for a Kerouac night in the woods, for you to come back, for something to write.

I've listened to my four Regina Spektor albums on repeat for the last four days. Nothing else. "A man destined to hang can never drown". Nothing seems like it's meant to be anything lately.

I sound like those mornings I used to cry because the bloody red of the sun rising was the only evidence I could find that life exists.

I Wanted to Tell You Good Morning.

Rainwashed cold world at firstlight made breathing easy, grey wisp clouds still lifting away from the ground.

Running Away Worked For Her.

I stayed home sick yesterday. Watched Out of Africa, about a woman who leaves Denmark right before the First World War and starts a new life in Kenya. She observes "When God wants to punish us, He answers our prayers."

Now, I don't believe in a god, but somehow that still seems true.

I Don't Believe My Conscience Will Ever Be Clear Again

I've been blocking it all out lately. I don't want to process or analyze or even remember.

Today I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts, to figure out what they were. I was selfish. So was he. I screamed to get my way. He screamed back. I was crying. He was indifferent.

I picked up the nearest thing I could and threw it hard. It hit him.

Maybe my wall finally shattered. I don't know what to do with all this glass. I can't remember ever being so embarrassed.

I'm sorry. This is an apology to him, as well as myself.

Ted Kooser Taught Me How To Enjoy A Birthday.

From an adrenaline fueled storm of heart beats beneath superficial lights, breathing in smoke and gasoline, breathing in the thrum of engines, to the cool shade of a tree on the edge of a field, face down in the freshly cut grass in the afternoon where my heart must have stopped. I'd forgotten how tired just living makes me.

I've woken up though, it's morning, cold and bright. And it's my birthday. That doesn't happen all too often.

Whenever it's anyone else's birthday, I'll ask them if they feel any older, half jokingly, but they never say yes. If someone were to ask me, I think I'd always say yes.

A beautiful friend of mine recently said something that really resonated in me, " I must be young if I can still get excited about feeling old."

Counting Cars on the New Jersey Turnpike.

They've been saying "I love you" from far away.

A Negotiable Term, What Gets Said's Not What's Heard.

I took my tea outside this morning to watch the light aurify the flowers in the garden. Maybe I turned to gold to, for a moment, immobilized by a naive awe of the world which only ever happens early.

I can't help but worry the words are directed at me when Oberst sings "so you're giving advice as if you had the right to use a word like 'love,'" but then again, whatever small amount of wisdom I've found inside me tells me no matter what the trouble, choosing love will always be worth it.

Crash.

Easing my way back down to whatever sort of normalcy I personified before, I seem to have hit the bottom harder than I would have expected.

It physically hurts my heart. Nothing new, though.

I have come to terms with the fact that my conflict wasn't societal so much as internal. Where I'm having trouble drawing conclusions is how I feel in regard to the past month or so. I suppose now that I've made the decision to come back down, it doesn't matter so much.

I could really get used to you loving me again anyway.

Mountains.

I finally got out into the woods as I'd been dying to do for a while. The trail I took was one I hadn't been on in more then ten years. As I walked, my vaguely remembered familiarity with the mountain made me smile. Eventually I came to a little clearing where a large boulder had been deposited by a melting glacier thousands of years ago, a place that's existence had been buried deep in my subconscious for more than half my life.

I had a flashback to being a very small child, with the same light caught up in the trees, and our long-lost family friend, with his faded red sox cap and salt-and-pepper beard, hoisting me up onto the slanting rock face.

On my return I was able to pull myself up and scramble to the top ridge of the boulder where there was a perfect indent for sitting. I stayed for a few minutes in the warmth of reminiscence and then decided I should continue up the trail if I wanted to get to the summit for it got too dark.

Ten more minutes of hiking and I remembered Jack Kerouac's musings over an old Zen saying in his book Dharma Bums, "When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing."

Within a second, I had turned around and was on my way back down to the rock with a better way to get to the top in mind.

I climbed up the cool grey of the stone once more and sat to meditate.

Wind of Change.

Impermanence does not favor, especially me. The only things that seem to stay now are the frustration, the desperation, the guilt and fear.

I'm suspended above the ground. Less than an inch. I want to feel the green earth on my palm but I'm stuck in a dark void of space. I'm looking for words. Any words. Lend some to me?

Should Probably Feel Cheap, But I Just Feel Free (And A Little Bit Empty).

I've been losing sleep, writhing, trying to untangle myself from my sheets and everything that's been restraining me, everything I've been conditioned to find truth in. I'm unconvinced that it's possible for two people to need anything the same way, though I'm not as bothered by that as I would have used to be. I'm starting to believe in keeping what I love close, separate. It's not something I will regret. No matter what happens, I will recognize myself and my experience. I can be happy and I can try to show you how too. Not only does it make my heart hurt, but it makes sense.

I'm ready to live the way I want.

Caught Up.

I've strung so many parallels from the present to the past lately that I'm tangled in my own knots. If all conflict is inner conflict, like they say, I have an overwhelming amount to think through and little desire to make the effort. Nobody ever taught me what to do when hope is betrayed and

I'm not yet wise enough to see many answers inside myself.

Just Now.

I stare absently at the horizon. The greens of summer deepen and shift with wind, the deafening rustle of leaves.
I blink and my eyes focus. The evening is still.

Serendipity.

Sunlight reflecting off every drop of dew that slicked my bare feet, I decided I wanted blueberries for breakfast.  Just to eat them off the bushes.  It didn't take me long to lose myself in the mindfulness of the morning.  I took everything in, slowly and with amazement.

Some almost non-existent impulse made me turn around and when I did, I realized I was not alone.  My guardedness and conditioned fear quickly dissolved to interest. 

"Hello!" I said, maybe too excitedly.

The man was middle-aged, grey-bearded with a kind face.  He figured I was the owner's daughter and asked me some questions about the farm.  He drove more than an hour to get here early. 

"I took my girlfriend out here last year," he told me, quietly trusting, as though it was a secret.  "She thought she was in Heaven.  Picked only half as fast as me though.  Everything with her is a meditation."

"Well, that's a way to live..."  I admired the thought.

"Yeah, well, it's hardly a productive way."  

I laughed.  I was very grateful for his conversation. 

Just Let Me Have My Coffee Before You Take Away My Day

I let myself fall asleep well after midnight, hardly feeling at all. I was inadequate and hollow, without enough justification to be upset, and light to the point I believed I could float away. The thought struck me, so I tried.
I woke up with the sun. The memories took their time gliding back to me over echoes of time and space.
The color of the sky this morning is not something I can trust.

Worth a Million in Prizes With My Torture Film

There was a '69 GTO in my driveway. Red, convertible, thrumming engine. And then I was speeding away, on the black leather back seat, rushed with sunlight and air, a new best friend grinning by my side, looking up, up, up.
We went out to the Old Stone Church which stands above a town that was flooded a hundred years ago. We went down to the river, bare feet on the slick, mossy , the cool of water in the air. When we got back, he stared and stared out my window. The light softened to purple, the city was somewhere on the horizon. Driving back, we followed the setting sun. Neil Young's falsetto resonated from the speakers.
A perfect surprise of a day.

A Wrong Exit Somewhere.

Driving back from our long-weekend in the Green Mountains, we came upon a little town that had been built at the turn of the nineteenth century for need of nothing else but a canal. Bellow Falls. After eating lunch I was restless to get back in the car, so we walked down to the water and behind some old brick apartment buildings, their fire escapes and alleys shadowed away. Sets of train tracks went this way and that. Street were wide and for the most part empty. We couldn't seem to find the falls and when we asked we found out they were closed. The man who informed us didn't seem to heed the government's warning about the bridge being unsafe and gave us directions to hop the cement barriers and go take a look. And we did.
We stood out on the crumbing bridge, a hundred feet above the river, the rocks. We stood level, as equals with the sky-seem of horizon.

Nameless.

Occasionally you meet someone and it's immediately apparent that they have the potential to change your life, and not only that, but you were meant to meet them. Right place, right time, just what you'd been begging for when they stay up all night because they're not sure when the next time they'll see you is. When while they still hardly know you, they can expose their entire soul to yours and afterward give you their most prized possession. It's only material after all.
The shrine in the garden, the tea on the bench, the cigar smoke filling up the grey sky sunrise. He taught me that to know someone you must see part of yourself inside them. Over only a few days he became a guardian angel. There are not words for how grateful I am to him and to my experience.

Sabbe Satta Sukhi Hontu.

Today I leave for four days and nights of quiet mindful meditation and solitude. I'll be spending my retreat at a nearby Buddhist center. Without any communication, distraction, or luxury, it seems to be exactly what I've been begging for.
"Wisdom of no escape" means that I cannot escape anywhere and anyone but myself. I will suffer before I learn and once I learn, I have the promised potential for wisdom. The ideology is almost to make your heart as vulnerable as possible, fill it with love and anger and fear, let all of that completely break your heart, and then let it all go. Everything.
Your subconscious becomes your conscience, so I've been told. The significance of certain occurrences in your life take prominence over others in the most unexpected way. I'm certainly uneasy to experience this for myself.
I hope I can let the nothingness wash over me and nourish what I've been so deprived of. I hope I can regain some strength. I'm sure no matter if my experience is positive or negative, the change in me will be good.

Fists Clenched.

I'm stuck in a destructive mindset. I've been tearing my life apart, little by little. Dissolving memories into nothingness. My walls which I once decorated with photographs and quotes are now bare pine. Scattered souvenirs from my childhood have been thrown out. I provoke fights with the people I love, testing unspoken promises. Last night, I cut my hair off over the wastebasket, just for the change, just to get rid of it.
Somewhere in my mind this behavior makes sense. Maybe I'm trying to blame my suffocation on the material world. Maybe I'm discarding the excesses of my life in order to get to the heart of whatever is the matter. Maybe it's just an easy distraction for me, occupying myself, intent on accomplishing something.
I can only hope I can stop this before it spreads to other aspects of my life. Is this the greatest or the least of my worries?

Kleio, Muse

I've always found it necessary to lose myself every so often. I can dissolve myself into a memory, a song, a book and stay there until it's safe for me to return to whatever reality I need to escape.
My copy of Herodotus' Histories has been doing me a lot of good as of late. Even the simplest stories seem to be shrouded by the ancient mystery of prophecies and fate that has me completely suspended in a state of perpetual captivation.
The book is an especially ideal place for me to go because the world I live in is so dissimilar to what took place thousands of years ago in the stories. The only constant seems to be human nature itself and that's not something I can hope to ever change.

Tapping on My Roof and Walls.

Morning thunderstorms, ones that wake you up in soft rumbles and lulls of rain, have always been my favorite sort. When I don't sleep through the whole night, I can't ever remember my dreams. It hasn't bothered me too much lately though; dreams too often disappoint me.
The sun is up, some ways behind the mass of cloud that has enclosed the mountain. It is a monochromatic, dark, grey-green out the window. Probably the way nature should be.

Especially At Night.

I get scared these days, the sort of fear that shimmers like heat all through my body. I hate it almost enough to love it. Almost.
Everything I see looks like an infinity sign. I'm too scared to think about what that might mean.

Collapsed in the Act of Just Being Here.

By morning my heart has slowed to a near stop.
The sun wakes up with me these days; I find myself less alone once I open my eyes and yet, just as lost in the light.

April Showers

When the storm finally came, I placed the marker back between the pages and slid book the onto the shelf. I sat by the window and waited, as the rain streaked over the glass window, painting over the world outside until there was just grey. It was a nice storm, with rain falling loud on the roof, bright daytime lightening and rolls of thunder that made the broken storm window shudder a bit. I sat silently, smiling and scared.

See The Sky About to Rain.

It falls as rain now, not snow. The sky is heavy with clouds and cool grey. Looking east, towards where the sun would rise, I remember a morning more than eight months ago that looked the same way. A drizzled lack of color that gave us more hope than any classic pink-haloed sunrise ever could.
Maybe I don't need angels.

Don't You Cry

Today I made a decision. A big decision. The decision to let myself fall back, to give up fighting and blend into the hurt. Usually, I'm not one for making up my mind, it's a very rare occasion when I knew I'm about to do something bad and don't care. Ink tore across a black page, "just you wait (because when i get myself alone) i'll set everything in it's place again." I mapped out the consequences in my head. I couldn't wait.
Tears were in my eyes and I tried my best not to blink so they would stay there, blurring everything around me. Making the world obsolete. I tried not to mention it to anybody, I knew every word that they would say.

So here I am now, alone and unscathed. I'm stronger than I thought because nobody had to stop me this time. I stopped myself.

Dear Friend

You're a writer. Writing can save lives. No pressure.

Envy for Everything Else

Jealously takes me the same way heavy sleep might, smothering, a late night inconvenience . I can feel it pushing into the most private corners of my mind, sinking into me, cracking my tired bones and seeping deep into them, all shimmering and hot.
I've been far too jealous lately. Not even of people. Jealous of anything that isn't me. This morning I woke up jealous of the sky, quiet and cold and clear and infinite. It was born, reflecting in my eyes. Color spilled into it and then me. The metallic sunlight was real. I just wanted to be real too.

Melt Me.

Some days my words are frozen, numb. They form like ice cubes in my mind, all nicely stacked; they're building blocks, the ones with the sharp edges that scrape at your skin when the tower you made, taller than you, falls down. I tell myself that patience will thaw the words out, make them liquid, flawless, but the sun rises, the heat comes and my mind is still cold .
Being alone is no help. Come warm me up.

Feeling Not So Well

It's been a long time. It's been getting harder. Patience is a virtue and I am not virtuous.
Some nights the frost has been creeping up my windows, swirling in paisley patterns. I wake up in the morning with dawn's winter-pink fingers creeping up behind the glass.
Tonight I remembered my real worst fear: nothing being wrong. With me. The blood tests came back negative, I'm not dying, so now what? I have no more excuses, no maybe way out. I should be happy. Am I happy?