Festivities

12-20


Just so I don’t forget
the colors of the paint upon the wooden kitchen floor
and the low hanging canopy with strings of lights.
Passing around glassy relics
from face to fresh friendly face
Loud smiles
hazy air hanging low around the table.

Just so I don’t forget the crowd of beanie-wearing men in corduroy jackets,
the faint woodsy scent of herb clinging like a coat.
The technicolor lights granting new clothing to each person,
the colors changing everything into an alternate world,
a different place, washed in the light.

The feel of light blue seersucker on my fingertips, a broad expanse to cover.
The eye contact that betrays my true thoughts to the observant,
an observer that understood immediately.

Just so I don’t forget the way it feels to be circled by the shark in water
with eyes that look on with calculating need.
Knowing that I am the moment’s chosen means to an evolutionary end.
The distinct and sudden awareness that I am a sheep in the presence of a wolf.

Just so I don’t forget: “because I’m in. I’m mega in.”

Tree

Banjo and Sharpies

Some nights are for coloring notebooks and shoes with sharpies in a tapas bar at the beach. 
For driving in the drizzly rain, looking at the hat (that I made!) warming my little sister's head, 
singing loudly to Frank Ocean.

Some nights are for fingers flashing wildly, on strings made of steel on stretched drum, on strings made of nature and knots. For music and the hum of vibrations, pleasant to my ear and my life.

Soup's On

12-15

There are frames of footage
where my fingers forget their footing
and sit motionless for one blessed minute of the never-ending day.

In this instance again my hand is unfamiliar,
static and stationary as opposed to feverished and frenetic.
Normally I only catch glimpses of my fingers
in the snap second moments of focus in between the blurs
and fans of my constantly fruitful legerdemain.

The philosophy finds framework in the success of selective movements
since fingers that fly shoo all thoughts that maybe I’m actually a loser,
so long and lanky digits loop around with ink in hopes of pinning down the sights I think

and then move on to string to soothe my brain’s wandering,
to build each loop in empty air is paradoxical paradise and I can’t keep my fingers away...
With no exceptions today.

Between dribbles of slurped soup and heady bass lines from junkies stooped,
my words charge forward from the source unknown.

Wait

I haven’t been writing recently because I’m fed up with feeling unfulfilled, stuck in a loop of repetition.

I know what all of my problems are, and each time I mull over a problem and realize that the only solution is waiting...each time I ball my fists and clench my teeth in a searing moment of temporary fury that is quickly swallowed up by the ever deepening pool of my own resolve.

Through the years of playing therapist I’ve done for family and friends, I’ve always held the position that you don’t get to whine about a problem if you know how to fix it but refuse to deploy the solution. Maybe the solution forces you to face a hard truth, or maybe the truth is that having a problem to whine about is more satisfactory than fixing the problem - there’s a bunch of reasons why but I have always had short tolerance for people who ultimately just want to whine and I have not been shy about pointing out to people that that’s where their true problem lies.

But... where do I fall right now? what about the down time?
The ugly awkward limbo that exists in between deploying the solution and feeling that the problem is solved?

I don’t feel like I am just ceaselessly whining to myself in my inner monologues because I feel like I have already taken as much action as I can at this immediate moment.

Now... is that true?
I guess that’s debatable.

Now if I can allow myself a moment of vulnerability... I am hurting because I am caught between multiple rocks and multiple hard places. I have deep visceral feelings and longings (oh to have a little girl’s hair to brush) that have to wait (oh to stand in front of a classroom) and I have no ability to even steer the wheel to get back on track (oh to have control of my life) so all I can do is knit manically to take my mind off of what doesn’t exist (oh to give control of my life to someone else) to the point where I find myself picking mercilessly at my own skin because my fingers can’t hold still (oh to have fingers that could just sit still).

Oh, to have a heart that could just sit still.

You and the fire and the breeze

12-1

Proving as always that the calendar pages run as fast as they can while my eyes are closed, taking chunks of time with them with every mad dash... all of a sudden we have entered the last month of 2012.

I would say that this is a time for reflection on the year that has passed behind me, but come on I participate in that brand of masturbatory reflection on the daily.

But hey- when has that ever stopped me?

I’m in a good mood today, realizing that I enjoy when the lack of money has a hand around my throat for the same reasons I’m attracted to power play in other areas - not having money frees me up to stop worrying and planning, and hey I can’t stress about spending money if I don’t have any. And, humorously enough, my life isn’t really significantly impacted (the small moments anyway- writing at Panera with steam rising up from my coffee). Somehow it works out that my “luxuries” still find their ways to me.

This is clearly because somewhere along the way I picked up the ability to find happiness with wherever I’m at and whatever I’m given... certainly a useful skill, so thanks Universe for whatever it was that you threw at me to make me this amicably adaptive.