Happy August

I usually analyze long gaps between posts, concluding that I can't record the times I'm living if I'm too busy living them. But then the day comes when I'm too busy living to keep living, and I dial it back, and remember that of the hundreds of potential pieces I've thought about writing, I've written.....four of them. Or something equally pipsqueaky.

a couple things:

it's a shame that knowing life is short doesn't make it longer

by the time you think you've got your head wrapped around life, it'll be over

therefore, don't regard lightning speed as the bar to catch up to and pass, but as a guaranteed thrill ride.

haha I'm gonna need you to print that on a motivational magnet and sell it in bulk.

Basically, I feel both ahead and behind every single day. Like an old soul that never gets off at the right stop--or books flights for the right days. But I'm pretty uniformly content with how life is going right now. And contentedness for me includes depression and worries, because if I shoot for 100% happiness, I'll always lose, and I'll always be sad that I'm losing, and that's no fun.

What is fun is continuing to grow my breadth of experience. What's fun is knowing that I'll be home soon. What's fun is having a pint of Mocha ice cream in the freezer...

brb

{that picture I did take!}

I just typed something that I swore I wouldn't delete in the morning, and I didn't, because I deleted it tonight

*********

[well I didn't take the picture or write the phrase,

but I put the phrase on the picture!]

tidbits

things from Virginian travels!
first, verbatim snippets from last week's late night musings, re-read only now:
[all incomplete. teasers, really.]

she greeted the sun with a forlorn smile,
chin upturned as a sunflower’s might be,
finding the heat and then staying within it,
and it felt like holding onto a hug for too long.
like the sun would let go if it could
like if the sun were not the anchor, but a ship
not the refrigerator, but a magnet
he would meet his maker and then leave her
abandon his roots in the ocean
the kitchen
and say he’ll be back soon
but not mean it.
______________

the blinks they sink like soap in a drink like bubbles that think what they float above is the monster, that what they float above is the answer, that what they float above is the primer before the paint, the "will not" before the "ain’t," the pinks before the faint.
______________

and as you sing along, I sing a different song, a song you won’t know how to sing when I’m gone, won’t know how to take for too long, cause I’m going to the riverbed, going to the river, dead, as Virginia Woolf, the rocks in her pocket and brilliance in her fingers that couldn’t trump the wanderlust in her heart. the wanderlust for another world. and the only other world was one she couldn’t reach in this life, and who knows where the other life is, but it’s not here
__________________

how much for that lover in the window
the one with the shaggy blonde hair
it sounds funny I know
but it really is so, oh,
I’m my own...
I’m my own.

***

and an excerpt from Judith Minty's "Letters to My Daughter." I found a copy at a secondhand store. It's really great.

"This week I received two love letters,
one from a boy still in high school, another
from an older man in his twenties,
a man who whispers about mountains.
Your father doesn't read my mail. He pretends
disinterest in the postmarks, the crimped penmanship,
the shy poems folded inside.
Even when it mattered, he never wrote me. I think he was
embarrassed by misspelled words, stammering lines.
But now he watches me as I watch for the mailman's truck. He notices
how my fingers stain the curtains when I part them,
that I float through snow in my bathrobe to the mailbox.
I hide the letters in dark drawers and pull them out
when I can't remember my name. They smell like wild violets.
Your father? Lately, I find him bent at his desk,
hands knotted over blank papers. I must tell him
those young men are only in love with poetry."

what up, what up

the words in my head are like a swirly tornado. tempestuous and dangerous, but mostly air, but every once in a while, a cow or a VW van, and those hurt, or at least smack you pretty hard, and in the case of the van, they might kill you.

I want a crown of gardenias

and a king-size bed with four posts that I'll drape Christmas lights around with a big down comforter, one that's white, one that's covered in my clothing on the left two thirds because I only need a third of a king bed to sleep on. but I can clear off the other two thirds for a guest if I REALLY like them, and I REALLY like not that many people, actually.

I want my own trolley to ride around America on a track crafted with the signed-in-writing promises of a people welded together by the pitfalls of life, the crests of the good seasons, the days when the leaves look like fall but they don't, cause it's spring, and the fireflies are out.

I just held a turtle and he crawled back into his shell, but it's probably just cause I was smiling so big cause I was holding a turtle! There are a lot of things I don't know how to explain, like how living near a good coffee shop makes my soul feel like it's resting in sunshine, or how heartbreak is thrilling, or how New York is impossible to parallel and just like everywhere else at the same time, or how I think I know how to love a turtle more than I know how to love a dog.

I'm too young to be a hippie, too young to be a yuppie, too young to be a beatnik, too young to be a hipster, even, but every label I'm too young for is just one more I don't need to sport, just one more I can learn from. and whichever bandwagon I hop on, it will have its certain smell, you know, its certain decor. and I don't know where it's going, but I know I like it, because I'm on it, and I don't hop on things I don't like. if I can help it.

and don't you know, I always do my best to help it.

and the part of my best that isn't good enough is being subjected to the wrong judge. as in, no bed-clearing for you! but I'll lend you my spare pillow.

Monday, Monday

why so screwy, font? sigh..

***

Your depths made a pressure that punctured my works
and all your fluids couldn't tolerate the force of my thirst
I love the place, where we shared our tiny grace
But just because it's real don't mean it's going to work

--"True Affections" by The Blow

She closed with this song tonight at The Drunken Unicorn, and I danced like I dance, and sang all the words I knew, and reflected on the life I've lived while loving this song, which feels like a lot.

I talked to her after the show and told her that her music fills a void in my music taste that I didn't really know I had, but that I'm glad that she fills it. She thanked me for standing in the front row :) and then she signed the poster I stole from the wall.

I just love nights like these. Pondering events of life with Mol and looking forward to new adventures and contemplating choices we've made and choices we're about to make.

And as I drove home and sang along with Ingrid to the song I think I'll get married to once I find someone who can take me on, I remembered the mixes I've made and the paper hearts I've cut out and the letters I've written and thought, I'm good at loving.

And you know, that's better than being good at being loved. And musing on that put me at an ease that counteracted my typical drive to think less. I let me think all my thoughts, and I smiled.

[this isn't the lost notebook poem. I just sat down to write and this sprung out. in fact....] Sprung

(this reads best when read in silence)

no you don't HEAR me because I'm not screaming, I'm typing typing typing and it's how I SPEAK but you don't HEAR me because it's commonplace, it's all commonplace. here's the thing, my dear, this is the thing, says Fink, this is the thing, that you are all yous and I am a me but pronouns they sway and skew and you all think you're you and you all think I'm me, but what I want in a you is for you to be me. what I want in a you is for you to make free see be flee FLEE from how many times I've looked at you, not the you YOU'RE thinking and thought: if you KNEW how I care, you'd put its S back on front, tack it on like a memo to a tree, tack it on like it's got no place to be, I said if you KNEW how I care, maybe you'd reciproCARE, sit on a brick wall after using her in a stall, sit near a fountain of youth, a fountain of knowhow, a fountain of know how to fix what we have. know how to fix what I do and do again, know how to fix what I need from a friend. you'd tack the S back on front and bottle the Scare, bottle the wares, bottle the growing you think you know how to share. you think you know how to fare, pride yourself on pride, forgetting the times you've tried to glue what you thought fit together, but you don't KNOW cause you can't HEAR me. and if you could you wouldn't care, you see, the way you muse on others forces me to muse on THIS and when you ask me the matter, when you ask me what matters, I stumble because you're not what I'm used to, I said I'm used to sending the friend in after me, waiting the months to think I'm fine, underestimating the amount I've learned and now call mine, I'm used to the games and break and swine, but you, you had the pearls, you had the girls, but I didn't care, you see, I could look past and passed the past and pass the past and trade him in like you said to do, trade in those years for a fresh set of cheers, trade in that future for a new set of fears, and the fear it would swim like my heart did to him. swim like my heart, swim like my, swim like, swim swam swum, swim like my heart did to him before its feet felt the scum of the pond bottom it sank to, the pond bottom it pushed from, now doing the backstroke on a surface that gleams with the moon in the day and the sun in the night, doing the macarena on a surface that I thought I'd broken through. the surface of you I thought I'd sprung anew but I must not know what I'm TALKING about, cause the caps lock's on lock and I don't know what you're talking ABOUT. the stings of notgoodenough reflect on your handling more than my bantering, more on your stammering than on my flattery, the stings they POISON and you're too hurt to hurt but you HURT me. I'd already healed and you HURT me. and I don't care what you say, I don't envy the play, I don't seize Seize the Day and you don't care that you .hurt. me. so I transfer cities, transfer headlights, transfer moonshine, transfer what's mine and he's scared shared dared to think it's him but it's not, it was me, it was me chasing, it was me chasing the sting with the sweet, the lost with the heat, it was me chasing anything but what I'd been chasing. anything but the green-eyed prize that cared not when I cried, and when I say cried I mean tried, cause I thought it'd hurt more than it did! I thought it'd hurt more than I did when I stood on the street and thought **a heart breaking** and thought **a life changing** and thought of new horizons, watched his tears and thought **time taking** but thought (new horizons) and the tears I shed cast crowns. the tears I shed lay down on a bed of __seldom__ lay down on a bed of (boredom) cause pain it is monotonous but you've gone and learned a double twist, you did keep in touch, you tied the ties too taut til my freedom was strung up in the You up above! strung up in the You full of love while the haters they love not the love but the dove, chasing peace to the streets, chasing calls from the fleets, they hate the love I'd Love with, hate the dove I'd Shove with, cause you don't HEAR me. you don't hear me. don't hear how to sit there and be happy how to sit there and stay sappy how to sit there and grow strapping, you see, my obsession with dreams are obsessions with things I know not of, things I know caught the dove, things I bless with word of mouth. qwerty of mouth, drrty of mouth, sleight of hand, contraband, foreign land, you see, you don't hear how to sit there, in a car that drives countries, like a scar that knows plenty. if you knew the scars, knew the tar and the char, you'd tack its E back on like the ink into skin, tack its E back on like I forgot to say "when." so the scarE keeps on scarring and the stare keeps on marring all I'd worked to keep barring. and the fountains keep flowing and the sins they keep showing all you thought you were knowing but the passive aggression and neediness mentioned are lowing. lowing like the tide of what's true. lowing like red hair burned blue. lowing like my need has for you.