Thanks

 
11-24

This morning I have seized the opportunity to rest in this calm before the storm, taking advantage of steaming caffeine warming my body. Sitting cross-legged, meditating, reflecting.

I would hate to think that I lost my ability to write about positive things, 
so let me take a minute and describe what is waiting for me when I leave here.

On the other side of this cup of coffee is a rush of faces to greet and enjoy;
a smattering of lips for me to upturn... and I will upturn them all.

There are breads to bake, rising slow and fragrant, glistening in the transformative glow of a dinky oven light bulb. There are vegetables to peel and chop, dips to assemble, a kitchen to dirty and clean and mess up again. 
There will be me, wrapped in an apron, standing for a second of slowed down time as I survey my kitchen, my meal. My holiday dinner.

In the parade of faces to come, there are faces that I am indifferent to and also faces that make my heart beat so loud as to betray myself, faces that I wish to impress. And, as a counterpoint, the faces that act as a shot of comforting dopamine, or perhaps oxytocin as the warm hands snake around my waist in a gesture of friendly love.

This dinner is for all.

It is very important for me to take on this role as I know that if I don’t, it won’t get filled. 
It’s more than that though - I’m viewing this meal as a test run, a learning ground for future years as a matriarch,
 the woman who brings and holds her family together.

Perhaps that is the underlying fear that supplies this rush of energy I feel right now in the face of dirty dishes and hungry faces - if no one actively holds my family together then it will fall apart. I refuse to drift from the family members that are important to me.

I would seem that, as with most social conventions I’ve come across in my adult life, the only compromise that can entice me to participate is that I get to do this shit my way now. It continues to humor me that I hated (hated) the holidays when I was younger because it meant nonstop work from sun-up to last-guest and, of course, now that I’m an adult I feel really off if there isn’t a maelstrom of chaos for me to jump astride and tame.

It’s empowering, this role of the dominant female, of barking orders (politely and sweetly, naturally) and having them filled. Knowing that this group of people are laughing wildly in the same room together because I brought them together. To see tangible record of how loved I am, and how my friends love each other, and how many good and decent people I am privileged to know.

I’m just saying, I am pretty fucking thankful today. Pretty fucking thankful.

Plot twists

11-14

The problem is the transition.
I can handle the departure -
I am schooled and steeled in the ways of departures -
and I am never one made anxious by arrivals either,
which bear only the jittery excitement of “new.”

The problem is the journey. The “getting there.”
There are all sorts of pitfalls and flat tires and countless digressions that a journey can take,
unexpected plot twists that cannot be planned for. 

The problem is that I feel so inspired by the darker moods of life, 
so much so that I edge closer and closer to the toxic pockets of oozing sludge.

Beautiful Cusp

11-2

This is such a funny and unique thing I am feeling right now.

This brief flash of heartbreak my heart conjures up over something as real as television or a book.
This brief feeling of loss when I didn’t have anything in the first place.
This brief frenzy of typing miniature conversations, an exercise in quip and wit

I am happy for you, stranger, that you have finished this bout of “transitory” 
and that you are on that beautiful cusp of “settled.”

Recaptured

[I wrote this in August, but it rings true right now]
 

8-8

And then there are days where I feel an incomparable swell of gusto. Enthusiasm; confidence.

I am a grown person that can get by on nothing but still be happy.
I am a grown person that can make bosses buy business cards with MY name on them.
I am a grown person with friends that have couches like the most dense clouds for morning lounging.

Shit, I’m a grown person that lounges in the mornings.
A step further, I’m a grown person that is starting to LIKE mornings.

I like mornings. Hmm... that’s kinda revolutionary.

I think I like mornings now because of the two-hour gap between taking my husband to work at 8am and when I have to be to work at 10am. Those two hours give me time to slowly wake up and actually feel the process, feel myself becoming more alert and aware. On mornings that I don’t have to be up at 7 I end up sleeping almost right up to very last minute before getting up and forcing my way into the car and into my desk chair...tsk tsk. I can very clearly see a difference between early-morning-Keri and I-just-got-up-seven-minutes-ago-Keri.

Added perk: being awake when people are hot air ballooning.

My Introspectrometer (it’s KrebStar) is working overtime lately and I’m liking what I’m seeing. There are facets of my personality that started as inklings and planted seeds and I am now noticing the fruition of spoils coming to light.

In particular, the love that envelops my being; love for all things and people. 
A general blanketed love for all of existence and all of existence’s sadnesses and triumphs.

Sludge

10-30

It grows difficult to differentiate between fantasy and reality, with made up scenarios lingering in my mind.

But it’s a secret to hold, something that is mine alone,
and for whatever reasons my natural tendency to compartmentalize is roaring up again.

But it doesn’t matter, because none of this is real. Right? It never is.
The obsessions come and go, they grow and wither and new ones will take their place.
It is simply my nature.

The ugly voice that speaks, slow and sludging, says that this is an indicator of something wrong.
I’d like to ignore it entirely, this ugly voice, as I very often do, but...

But what if the voice is right?
What if the thoughts and urges that I’ve always chalked up to cycles and hormones is simply who I am?
Who I am at the core, in the compartments where all of the dirty secrets are stored?

What if I am simply not done growing yet?
To be even more bleak: what if my compartment of dirty secrets is not done growing?

To which of course I will respond and say that my willpower is stronger than any sludgy voice, 
and that is all that life - and our choices therein - comes down to.

More drunken scribbles

5-13 night

I’m not even sure who this life belongs to, this life of mine I lead on the empty days alone. I’m at a bar at 6pm on a Sunday, sipping at a beer. This is my first beer in a while, and I swear to God it is more delicious than I remember.

I am taking care to take each sip slow, experiencing each fizzy bubble as it pops on my tongue, embracing the orgasmic bitterness as the cold starts to slide down my throat leaving the aftertaste behind to linger on my tongue.

I love the parade of tattooed limbs wearing black and white band shirts. I am amused because I looked up the band that is playing here tonight (their final show, no less) and they are a hardcore and grunge band. The reason for my amusement is that inside Burro Bar there is loud hip hop music playing, and outside the bar there is a flock of kids that, and I am definitely stereotyping here, don’t like rap/hip hop.

I’m sitting facing the window and a kid that was in LaVilla when I was at DA (and at DA when Madge was at DA) has just joined the throng of b/w band shirts. He rode my bus when he was an itty bitty middle school baby, and now he is here at a bar on a Sunday wearing a Charles Manson shirt.

The word “emblazoned” comes to mind.
Young and beautiful, with new stubble.

I know none of these people, and I want to know all of them. I think that my entire life exists on a plane of cognitive dissonance. It strikes me that I am quite intoxicated.

aaaaaaaand now the music is switched to fit this evening’s targeted demographic. Being here makes me crave that thigh tattoo - maybe a knitting related tattoo.Being here makes me wonder how many people attending this show are going to have B-movie monsters as tattoos.

I am entering Stage Two intoxication.

The more I think about it the more I place moshpits at hardcore shows in the same category as self-mutilation (and then a Phantogram song comes on...whoa). Both are voluntary inductions into pain, that is inflicted upon self in an attempt to take control of the pain themselves.

Anniversary

11-12

For a moment all of the clouds of extraneous thought have cleared and all I can see is you.

For all of the pulling and pushing that I do, you stay the same.
You are solidly stentorian, savvy with the safekeeping and sensory salutations.

I can feel that we have melded, two beings careful not to tread on the others toes,
two beings that are self-same, sweetly singing songs that dissolve into Muppet giggles.

Permanent copilot, a system of checks and balances
has been achieved through your smile and mine and
the feeling when my cheek is squished on yours.
It’s enough.

Our entire existence is a satisfying stretch from the comforts of a warm bed.

Trouble

10-4

It is past 5 and so I am taking myself off the clock.

Perhaps I should get fatter so that I can stop flirting recklessly with people I should not be flirting with at all.
Perhaps I should figure out what is the cause of my inability to keep my inner sex panther caged up.

Perhaps I will stay glued tight to the door frame, looking trouble in the face but only looking.

I can feel the bones of my ribs now, and I want to run my fingers over them again and again. Playing that old children’s piano ditty of running your knuckles over the black keys on the piano, feeling the knuckles I now have knocking on the ribs I now have.

I think that I have not devoted enough time to the weight I’ve lost this year and the many ways that I have changed mentally and emotionally as a result. I probably should, since spending so much time as a fat kid makes me too delighted to receive inappropriate attention which is, well, inappropriate.

Broken Reverie

11-1 

The moment that the reverie breaks is a moment with no fanfare or parades. It’s just...a moment.

A moment of sudden recognition of my surroundings, opening my eyes like “wait, where am I?”
It’s a sad moment when the fantasy begins to wither.

The most disconcerting thing to me in all of these loops of infatuations and obsessions is how much farther my inclination to take things has become. How much stronger my desires grow and how the whispering voices corral together and throw words of warning and danger at me. 

Words like “you can’t” are drowned out by the resounding chorus of “you want to.”

No, the most disconcerting thing is how hollow I feel sometimes. Like I know that I’m not being truthful at all, like I’m lying to myself by not admitting what it is that I want, what it is that I’m doing and most terrifyingly what it all means - and I’m lying with these silent omissions of what it is that I actually want and what I am really actually feeling right now.

But how to put it into words? I’m writing here in what is ostensibly an entirely private record and I can’t do it.
I can grasp the feelings and try to wrangle and pin them down but they just won’t let me translate them.
Like translation into words will only butcher what is essentially a pure and innocent feeling.

But it’s not innocent! It’s not innocent and it’s not pure, the way I dream of being overpowered, of having control taken from me, of being rendered helpless so that I can relax for once. So that I can enter the bliss of being free from responsibility and expectations.

I think I’m just tired.

Maybe I should just eat something.
Maybe I should just cut my hair.

Distant Collar

11-4

[not my words, but they are on my mind]

To ease my burden,
lay upon you

and transfer my aggravations
into the warm abyss of your body

where they disappear and become
the positive glow of your green eyes.

Tradition

Perspective

10-28

It’s funny, the circles of weaving we create. The comfort in this is also a comedy; I can’t help but laugh at the feelings these circumstances dredge up inside of me. About all of this; about any of this.

The difference in age makes a difference in the level of objectivity I have with which to process this situation... and also makes what was a big deal 6 years ago into a simple laughing matter now.
I wish there was a way to communicate with younger versions of myself - I think 17-year-old Keri would appreciate the copious amounts of humor and irony in these cycles we spin through.

It’s a thing I feel fortunate to witness, though.
These ways in which our lives drift together and apart, spinning ourselves accidentally into each other.
The people that come and go, the people that stay.

Words are said and
they linger, familiar.
They’ve been said before
with cheeks upturned

There are downturns of cycle where I find myself more focused on all of the boxes left unchecked
and they stare me down with a sudden and desperate urgency.
I am the very definition of adventurous to a fault.

But. I am patient, and imaginative. Strong willed and adamant as well.

But. I am also a child that rails irrationally against authority.
A dirty hippie with desires to push boundaries of social convention.
I am an observer and a collector of genuine spirits.
I am a lover with a writer’s heart and a Bacchanalian taste for frenzy.

Duck and Dive

10-23

More intoxicated scribbling:

Waiting for a voice to call my name
Waiting for the water to kick in
Waiting for the drinks I shared with my boss
to subside

Waiting for the curtain of my hair
to reveal a familiar face
lurking beneath the fog and mist

In a strange city, In a strange bar
Waiting for a studied stranger from afar
Waiting for a stranger with no cellphone (but a car)

and jukebox lights
and potential dog fights
beautifully ballistic bar nights

The Faces: Transit

10-24

         Take two.

         As birds move from tree to tree
         I am also transitory, directed
         by the fickle whims of my own gender
         though sometimes

         sometimes a man with silver scruff
         and mossy river stones for eyes
         will casually take a seat

         And sometimes stroll down
         dark city streets sleepy and hushed
         the others fill up loud bars
         and quiet beds;

         you fill up my head.
         I crave imagined murmurs,
         guttural and gruff,
         that lips might allow to escape

         in a small hot breath

         like the fever of Bukowski’s fingers
         on typewriter keys.

19F

10-26

I went on a business trip this week and I am not all back yet.

Fuck, I don’t even have words. There’s too many places to start, too many new emotional avenues.

I could talk about how it felt to be the youngest person at a swanky business dinner by a good 20 years, and the resounding clink of my glass against my boss’ as we stood as humans listening to music in a bar together and not employer-employee. How it felt to know that my charm works as well outside of the office as it does inside, and to know that I am a welcomed presence. It kinda gives me a whole lot to think about. Is there an actual future here for me? Could I spend a few years working hard for these guys and actually get somewhere? Can my short-term goals already have changed this completely?

My goals haven’t changed. They just seem so intangible right now.

Fuck, everything seems so intangible right now.
I’m in another head-in-the-clouds phase, where my body is present but I am most definitely somewhere else.
I’ll make eye contact and hold conversation, but I’m out flying. 

Oh yeah

10-19

That moment when summer’s fever breaks
and a light breeze lifts the locks of hair that hang around your face

It’s a moment I forget about without fail, and I am ever surprised by
the gentle dark that washes over the sky
as I’m driving home from the grocery store after work

I had the comforting thought earlier that this haze of smoke
constitutes a cocoon I am swaddled in-
not a detriment but a halfway home for a metamorphosis.

I don’t know if this is just an upswing in mood
or if perhaps I am just gaining a peace, a sense of ease.

 

Chicopit Bay

10-13

My words are a little sticky this morning, syrupy with resin from Friday night’s sport.

There’s a lot built up in my fingertips, a lot of semi coherent thought and globules of miscellaneous emotion to sort through. I feel like a mermaid and a watchdog and a little girl, all at once. I feel like femininity incarnate, but also masculine and commanding.

A late summer wind is picking up, not to the level of “problem” yet but just strong enough to kick sand on my sheet, just strong enough to create a rush of miniature roar in my ears as the wind dips and glides around my earphones.

Sometimes there is simply too much to process all at once.

For instance, the water and its constant shift of color 
and the tree that grew tired and slumped over where it stands, 
leaning an arm down into the cool stream below.

The tiny soldiers in trisections of exoskeleton, 
mean-mugging me with menacing mandibles
as they brazenly march onto my blanket.