Morsels

sometimes I catch myself trying to force thoughts into status-sized morsels, and then I remember that's what this is for.

I just want... so many experiences. adventures. destinations. the rearview mirror. I always want to go. to go and be gone.

and some day I may want roots, an anchor, lead feet, down payments...

and some days I want to love somebody, more than I want to be loved, though I refuse to invest the first without affirmation of the latter, and it strikes me today that I'd rather the gypsy adventure than the adventure in love. that one I've tried.

it strikes me today that I dread salesmanship for the same reason any stretch of time without a transition in sight makes my skin feel four sizes too small: fear of rejection.

no one leaves you if you leave first.

unoriginal and straightforward. nothing to dissect and nothing to wonder. but it's there, and it's true.

and the parallel causes me a bit of pain, somewhere southeast of my heart, as though my abdomen maps the country and Georgia throbs with the stagnance of overripe produce.

perhaps tattoos, for me, are a manifestation of this pain.

I hate to run, but I love to run away, and I crave the out-of-breath feeling--the one that arriving in a new place borrows from exercise, the addictive cocktail of discomfort and adrenaline--I crave it every moment it's gone.

Shade

And just like that, the converse swoops in and I am filled with peace. I can think of few things but warm sun and hot coffee, easy laughter and the reliable progression of a good book. I praise God for the times when such pleasantries cloud only my windshield; there are times when I feel they've retreated to my rearview. See: previous post. But like time passes, so do the moods, not only inside time but beside it, as comfortably and calmly. The transitions shake me like tropical winds, but from afar, I am sure I am nothing but a lone sailor on a tempestuous sea. The same clouds that rain create shade--I both curse and praise them.

I love God more clearly than I ever have. I love Him with the sort of gut-replacing, profession-requiring, woe-eclipsing, sun-brightening ferocity I've only ever known for... well, nothing. How can you love someone who loves you perfectly any less than completely?

I don't know if I'm doing it as ambitiously or efficiently or glamorously or memorably as possible, --in fact, I'm sure I'm not-- but this whole living life thing, I do recognize every day that I'm doing it as I'd wish I were. That I've taken steps to amass a set of circumstances I fall asleep thankful for. And by taken steps I mean remained mindful of what obedience to God can provide. He is good. And as a result, if you ask me, most evenings, I'd reply with the same.

Crawling

The anxiety that is worsened by music and by words is a vague and disconcerting one. It won't slow down. My skin is crawling, and the sleep I don't want is the only escape. It's like a silent scream

Grace

Shall we write a bit from the stream of consciousness? The stream of sub-consciousness? I tilt through a drug-induced fog, filled with the nausea of too many contradictions. Spinning with the knowledge of both paradox and purity, strung up with so much to say and no effective way in which to say it. I sing weakly of smiles aimed at backs of heads, I laugh loudly and it means, "I love you." I dream of old loves and of new and I worry not when I wake which is which. I plan to elope and I imagine the view from atop an elephant and I am consumed by the absence of pain and the evanescence of mystery. I stare at pixels til they picture me flying; I comfort the elderly as they mourn the futility of comfort. Fingers run the curves of bodies and the curves of sidewalks, the bends in backs and roads, the heaving of breath and of traffic. Intimacy is stop and go, tornados swirl fast and slow, you mustn't assume that she won't go. Birds fly in patterns because the sky's demand it. I would draw for you what I see, but then you could see it too, and it is mine. Don't you see? Ah. The sea.

It is so late. Too late. The world is massive and it suffocates--there is more space than we know how to fill, and we've none of it left.

I wish I had a giant Lite-Brite of the universe, and I would prick each memory that makes me smile, and they would alight the sorrow-darkened skies, and the contrast between the two would create shapes you'd decipher as stars and worlds and galaxies and rockets and ships and monkeys and plums and we'd pick the ripe ones and press their wine, we'd take rockets to the worlds and ships to the stars, and we'd say, aren't we just the happiest monkeys.

And we would be. We'd be the happiest. Some will disagree, and we won't blame them. We are too busy whistling, too busy squeezing hands and lemonade, too busy tying headscarves and shoelaces, too busy smiling at backs of heads, at the stars, at each other.

Flame

brain thoughts:

I don't listen to instrumental music often enough.

the idea of a puppy kind of makes me want to find the place in which I'd like to stay put, already.

I have quite a bit of tattoo real estate left. this is good.

I'm in love with somebody I don't yet know.

I don't know where to go or what to do or who to see, but I trust God and his love for me and its evidence in His provision, and that knowledge is all that's worth searching for.

Road trips are the best escapes, and that's why I think the flexibility and freedom on a motorcycle will result in the stability I need to move ahead with work and education and friendships and just general peace, really.

I have so much I'd like to do, even the things I don't yet know I want, and it pains me more to imagine still wishing for them ten years from now with no means to do them than it does to imagine leaving as soon as I get comfortable again.

I have to leave. I'll be back.

I'd like to adopt a few of my children.

I don't know why I haven't been to a concert in ages, but it doesn't concern me much. I'm more intrigued by the break from habit than I am by the opportunity to continue it.

I'm not as moody as I was before and I don't know why. it's usually the lack of understanding that triggers it, and so I'm standing by. but for a long while now, I'm never without reason to smile.

God answers prayers.

I am traveling without traveling. I am on the cusp, the brink, the wind. I am a hermit and gypsy and nomad, I am Tinkerbell, I am the Little Prince, I am Fantastic Mr. Fox. I write and read this story, I take pictures I wish required a darkroom to develop. I love loving even more than the people I love sometimes, and I wish someone would climb trees with me. I want to go rock climbing and camping and hiking and skiing and I want to play poker and catch fireflies and hold my breath for as long as I can. I want to listen, laugh, and speak, in that order, and never before listened, laughed, or spoken to. I want to give and to receive, I want to float and to burn, I want to jump and to fly, I want to connect a string between two cans and call it a zipline.

I want to work on the knot within me for as long as it takes, and I want to find what oils it free.

I will turn the oil to flame. I'll use it to light my way home.

Conch

I have so much to say and I am so behind. I am getting started and I don't know that I'll ever finish. But the frequencies in my mind have been quieted and I cannot waste this time. When in newly awake silence you turn to God and ask, what now? and He says Maybe you should write.

well, you open your laptop and you get to work.

***

Melts

I'll name my first son Frank. Honest.

Other things:

Sometimes my brain spins so quickly that the heat from its rotations melts its will to continue.

Sometimes the girth of what I want to say and the weight of my inability to say it fuse as a scream within me, a scream that I save for the insides of refrigerators.

Yesterday I woke up to heart pain, its beat weak and sporadic. I knew a heart could hurt, but I didn't know a heart could hurt.

The so far unseen manifestation of my painful self-awareness is an electric tingle, sprawling head to toe.

People find my dark as evidence of wrong. My light is evidence of right, but so is my dark, and those whose brows that furrows can only grow so close to me.

How do I rid myself of the homegrown obligation to write what I'm thinking? I don't even know how to think what I'm thinking. Praying what I'm thinking is enough of a feat most days. All days. I feel behind and inadequate and mis-purposed and... tired.

I do not write because I am tired. Sometime I do not smile because I am tired.

Sometimes I use my last energy remembering that I need to rest. To be still and know.

I am still. I know what I know.

Still, what do I know?