anniversary.

I noticed a strange red bump at the joint where my elbow is.

I noticed how his girlfriend is obnoxious, though loving, when she is drunk.

I noticed the vase that we used for the fourth of July picnic,
knocked over,
leaning
on a watering pail,
both left out on the patio table.
The vase’s water brown,
the flowers dried and bent,
just abandoned
even after their scent and color has faded.
Died.

A new visiting nurse came to check on my grandmother today. My grandma had trouble recalling what it was that had caused her back injury. I wondered if the nurse imagined that we were not taking good care of our grandmother. When the truth is that she had given up long ago, resigned to a life of stillness, similar to death but still breathing, still observing, like a ghost who hovers over the lives still growing and aches to be able to participate. Only she can. Or maybe she can’t. Maybe her body is spent and all there is is rest until the final rest.

It saddens me. No one can argue that living with someone so close to death is depressing.

She is a person whom I have come to know in the winter of her life. She is the woman who gave birth to my mother, who is responsible for partially shaping who my mother is today.

It is not surprising that my mother developed so much ambition. To escape.

Funny that I am mostly comfortable.
I’m not, totally, but
mostly.

There is this desire to be free. But what would I do? I would struggle more than I do now and probably create some level of drama for myself just to feel entertained.

When living here I am entertained by the drama of three generations of women, still all trying to figure out how to exist. How to coexist.

Isn’t it funny that we expect world peace when the common family unit requires so much repair? How many people can actually say that they have a good relationship with their parents? I wonder.

I’ve always thought that a person I could be seriously involved with would have to have a good relationship with his mother and father. Or at least one parent. It’s like a sign of how well someone can accept someone loving them unconditionally even though they are faulted. Human. Capable of making mistakes and always requiring some sense of growth to be…fulfilled.

Boy you don’t even know.
That’s why I’ll keep my distance.
I could love you so easily.
But I doubt that you are capable of
giving the love I need.
And I’ll forgive you for making it
hard to ignore,
How I like it despite how my mental jaw drops
to the floor
each time you enter
the room
Baby I try not to swoon
you make it hard to keep it together.
You got some strength
of mind
and a body to match
.

I can’t even try to type about him right now. It’s so silly.

I just hate how I even noticed him. How I paid attention to what he was wearing because I thought he looked so good in it. How his words were so well put together. That’s hot. And then he stays after class to talk to me about my trip to Florida? To find how old I was? He was clearly flirting. Clearly. And it can’t be because he’s trying to bribe a good grade out of me. Because he clearly has the brain and ambition to get his shit done right. But that just makes it harder not to think about…anything.

I get mad sometimes.
At myself, for behaving the way that I did
because of my emotional hope
rearing its desirous head.

In high school I was so boy crazy. Not at first. Not until I began to realize that I was not what boys seemed to want. It wasn’t about putting out—it was something else. And for years I believed that it was because I was overweight. But then I did realize that I hid my body anyway. That had I carried myself with more confidence, it would have been easier to attract the opposite sex. And the moment I began to feel better in my body I saw that people, not just men, but people reacted. Positively.

That’s why it’s difficult for me when some girl is standing if front of me reassuring me how amazing I am. Does she think that I don’t know that? Does she think that I need reaffirmation from a complete stranger? Granted, it is nice when someone who barely knows you feels confidently that you are an amazing person. But—I don’t know. It’s a little degrading, I think.

Maybe not. Maybe I’m being more judgmental of a drunk girl than I need to be.

I hated how he reached around me as I was hugging his girlfriend. How he grabbed my hand as I walked by. Reaching out now, after all this time. Groping for my acceptance. And me reciprocating.

I hate that he still has any power over my ability to just enjoy the evening. And I know that I let him. But it’s like a secret that I have to hold onto. That even though outwardly it is over, it is resolved, I have this little piece of me that wants to cling to him kissing me and holding me and admitting how much I mean to him. That’s a sweet part of our abstract history that I cherish.

Why does sex change things? Because then, on a whole different level, someone wants to find a way to make you happy. It’s like their egos recognize that they can’t truly make you happy happy. So then they want to be the one to be the source and the fulfillment of corporeal desire. Since they can give you nothing else in the way of spiritual appeasement, they seek to worship and appease the temple that is your body. At least he should.

And that’s the thing. If I can’t be with someone, I can’t be with him. If my body doesn’t feel right under his hands, then that’s it. And there are few hands out there that have really made it feel right. Fun, yes. Entertaining, sure. But deeply satisfying, rarely.

I get mad that I shared my body with him—only because he was probably too fucked up to register what it was that I was sharing with him. This vessel. This one-of-a-kind all mine shape. I let him inside me. I kissed him with real kisses. And all I got was civility the next day. A shallow disregard of what had happened. Part of the haze that was being drunk.

The vase tipped over, just about to fall, to clang against the metal of the patio table.
Caught on the arm of a watering can. Collecting drops of the rainwater that drips from the sky and through the wooden slats of the second-floor deck.

The cold water.
Coming
down.

I think poetry must be an auditory experience.
I am not much of a reader of poetry. Unless I am so moved to read it aloud. Words on page can be lovely, pretty, well-shaped and pieced together,
but their sounds are meant to be made. Their consonants pronounced,
their weight added to by the cadence of an individuals voice.

I miss singing with a band. I want it so badly to be a part of my life. And it is just done. Gone. And I have to start again.

I know it isn’t as if that were the first person I made music with. But it is so difficult to find a guitarist with whom I have a true musical chemistry. Someone whose soul can groove the same ways mine wants to.

Damn.

Process

When I went to Italy with a Shakespeare class from my university, I intrigued a younger man.

He was, in short, exactly the type of guy your mother would love for you to bring home. He was polite, good-looking, with curly blonde hair and anxious blue eyes that were as lovely as they were calm. I knew from seeing him interact that he was in love with knowledge, that he craved more and appreciated every little bit that graced his perspective. But I also knew that he was young. And though I was only 26, I felt a lot older than he.

We started talking one night when I decided I wanted to hang out with the younger kids on the trip—the ones who had just or not quite turned 21. They were all about staying up late in the apartment and drinking wine. It’s easy to bond with drunk happy people when you’re an open person, willing to share in the fun.

Throughout the night more of the roommates went to bed until a few of us were seated at the living room table. He took a seat adjacent to me and we began talking. Somehow we got onto the topic of mushrooms, which he had just tried for the first time (another indication of his age?) and we shared stories of our experiences with mind-altering drugs. It didn’t take long for me to realize, again, that outside of our apartment were the streets of Florence, covered in night and dozens of smells and sounds that I had never met before. So I suggested we go for a walk and he agreed a walk was a good idea.

We roamed aimlessly, allowing our conversation to turn as many corners as we did, somehow always circling back to something familiar. I was thrilled to have such an interested listener. He kept posing questions. Some of them stock (if you had three wishes…), some of them more unique. Most of them requiring a thoughtful answer—the kinds I like. I enjoyed his conversation, enjoyed hearing some of the conclusions or discoveries he had come to at that stage in his life. Our conversation roamed with our feet and I was simply pleased to be out on a promenade in the streets of Florence, discussing the things that really mattered in life.

The next night I decided to visit the kids again. They had purchased a few bottles of wine during the day and were all too happy to share. We played games and laughed and enjoyed being in a new place with so many new, fun people. I had a considerable amount of wine, but ran out of Camels. I found myself leading a group of us through the streets of Florence, scouting out a place where we could buy cigarettes, picking up another bottle of wine along the way, asking in very poor Italian where we could find cigarettes. Even in my inebriation, I was embarrassed to be the drunken tourist skipping through the streets with only the need for cigarettes and more cheap Italian wine. Not to mention the fact that I was leading a group of young drunk Americans behind me, encouraging them to let loose, disregard the stereotype we may have been perpetuating.

The wonderful thing about Florence was that it was not asleep yet. During the time when my mind had only begun to feel more alive, there were people out walking. Walking home, walking to a friend’s, or just walking. I was so infatuated with the streets of Florence. Their age, and therefore wisdom, seemed to seep through the soles of my shoes with every step and every glance. Sure, Italians are people like us, and they take their environment for granted like us, but to live in a place that had its golden era and had settled into something more calm. Sure everywhere you walked you could not avoid capitalism. But here had been the birth of the Renaissance. The rebirth of culture out of the Dark Ages. But I digress.

When I finally found a cigarette it was from another American wandering back to his own apartment after a night at the bars. He asked where we were staying, I answered vaguely lest he try to follow some of the naïve blonde girls with me. I thanked him for the cigarette and kept the group moving.

At the door of the apartment, I still had half of a cigarette to finish. Most of the group decided it was too brisk to stand outside, so they went in. He said he would stay with me while I finished the cigarette. We sat on the stoop and continued our conversation from the night before. Opening up a little more, sharing a little more. Becoming a little more comfortable with each other. People were walking by, I paid little attention to them. But I do remember looking up at the awnings and second floor balconies of the buildings lining the street. The street itself, with huge worn stones that more shoes than tires had passed over. The glow from the lights reflecting off the moisture on the street, making discreet halos in the darkness. A darkness that was not malicious or mysterious, but romantic and warm, despite the chill in the air.

He eventually talked to me about his girl trouble. He had a crush on one of the girls in our group. They had fooled around. He wanted to be close to her again. But she, along with a couple other girls, had repeatedly blown him off or excluded him somehow during other parts of our trip. I didn’t dislike the girl he had a crush on—in fact she and I had had a lot of fun drinking together. But, I told him that she was obviously not into him. Or that if she was, she was manipulative and not someone he should waste his time with. I said, “So you should just kiss me instead.” He nodded, I laughed, and we leaned our heads closer until we were kissing, there on the doorstep of an apartment, in Florence, at three in the morning. We hummed Beatles songs and chattered long after my second cigarette had burned out.

He had other friends on the trip, so I did not expect him to spend all of his time with me. I did not hang out with the kids during the day—I preferred to spend time sightseeing with the older students (a nontraditional woman who turned out to be a good friend and who, a year later, moved to Florence permanently and a grad student, like me, who was nearly engaged). But when I did run into him, and if the girls had abandoned him, he would tag along with me and my group.

Once we were on our way to a famous book shop where they made the covers for and bound the books. We watched as the craftsman poured paint into a vat, traced designs in the thick paint and glue, and carefully laid a piece of plain paper over the top to absorb the surface design. I was with the older students and a couple professors. After the demonstration, we split up, but one of the professors walked him and me back to the apartment. He was staying in a room with the only male professor on the trip (the one who walked us back) and a few other boys. I went back to his room with him since no one else had yet returned from their outings. We decided to take a nap, and so I curled up against him in a twin bed, in the heat of the day. I remember hearing the professor return and come up to the loft where the beds were to retrieve or put away something. I knew he was trying not to look at two of his students lying in bed together. I wondered what he thought of me (robbing the cradle?) lying there with this boy I had just met. I remember wondering why I cared.

We walked together again in the narrow and wide passages of Venice. I walked until my feet hurt and then walked some more because there was always some other part of the city that I hadn’t seen, or that I wanted to see more closely. We ended up in a square with a restaurant and some locals. We sat on a bench where three friends, one with a guitar, came to sit and sing songs. They played a couple English songs, a beautiful Spanish lullaby and some other Italian songs that I wished I’d understood better. I sang along with the English songs I knew. He encouraged me to sing louder, but I didn’t want to steal the show (and be that American again). We were hungry so we went into the restaurant, which was busy, but had wonderful (we were in Italy!) food. We talked over dinner about relationships and I reassured him that I was not looking for a one. And that there was no need for him to feel obligated once we got back from our trip. He said that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend either. He seemed relieved that I brought it up. Seemed to have even more respect.

We sat on a corner, near a tiny dock and stared out over the Grand Canal where the lights of the city glowed in ripples and into the watery air. Mid sentence he leaned over to kiss me. It was one of the nicest moments of my life. What I was saying, I don’t remember, but I knew he did not lean over because he was trying to get into my pants, but because he saw something in me that he adored and wanted to be closer to.

He later confessed that he had fallen in love, essentially, with my mind. But not so much with the rest of me. Of course my ego did not take this well, but, as he had reminded me mid-first-kiss in Florence, I was seven years older. There was too much distance between where we were in our lives for it to feel like anything more than teacher and student. I was foolish to hope that we could spend more time together romantically, but I was willing to try. And eventually he admitted he could only be friends, then I gradually lost touch with him.

I’ve run into him a couple times. Once when my band was performing at an arts festival for the university. Once at a bar in town shortly after he had turned 21. He was sweet, polite, sincere. It was nice to see him. I even felt a little boost knowing how good he looked, how intelligent he was, and how I had managed to intrigue him. To capture his interest within towns whose surrounding had much more time and wisdom to them. I’m glad he ended up walking with me, kissing me, instead of a girl who would not have appreciated the experience to the degree that I did.

One night, as we sat in front of the Duomo in Florence, down the street from our apartment with a very cheap bottle of wine, I said that I was in a state of disbelief. The place felt surreal. Too beautiful to be real. The time with him felt dreamlike—too perfect to last. “I wasn’t expecting this to happen,” I said.

“Neither was I,” he replied. “But I’m glad it did.”

That can be said about my entire life.

Process.

Where to stretch it out. Where to add more detail. What details matter? I would have to go back into my writing from the trip to try and regain a more detailed sense of what I felt. I would have to look at the pictures, the notes, the postcards from the trip to sharpen the memory and include more sights, sounds, smells, tastes.

I cried in front of The Birth of Venus and spent nearly as much time in front of Springtime. I had never thought that I would look directly at a Botticelli. Or Michelangelo. Or any of the other artists I had learned about in Art History. And we were there because of William. Some gifted Brit who created and rewrote plays that took place in the birthplace of the Rennaissance. Who used the setting, already so rich, as the background to for his ideas to form and express. It was all so romantic. So lovely. And I was broke, and felt underdressed and had just broken up with my boyfriend (my decision, at nearly a year I just didn’t feel the same inclination to continue being with him). And my father had died four months before. And I had just started playing in a band. It was really the happy climax to a very tumultuous time in my life. I was also in my last semester of grad school, trying to work on a thesis that had no thesis, just so eager to soak up whatever experience came my way because I was acutely aware of how precious every centimeter of space and time was. And how much of it flooded my awareness. And he was someone who understood that inherently. Who appreciated life and was so optimistic because he had not yet been devastated and repeatedly disappointed. He was privileged, but understood his fortune and planned to go in every direction that his passion led him. I was still cradling that idealism though it was encased by years of negativity and self-limiting thoughts and behaviors.

At the core of me, there is a strength that no one can tamper with. But on the surface is a very vulnerable, very impressionable person. Amid the layers that protect this strength are aspects of a being unique to the times and places it has moved through. I am privileged. I recognize my good fortune. I know pain and it has not driven me to the point of hopelessness though it has tempted my patience for this body. It was so nice to feel recognized, to feel adored and appreciated. To feel interesting but not interrupted. To have space and to receive closeness. If I could find a person like that in every place I visited, who lasted as long as the trip, I would feel content. Because the person, like the place, is not home, but offers some level of familiarity that makes it easy to feel welcome, cozy.

I like being single, but tonight is one of those nights when I cannot help but want to share my bed. To be close to someone else’s skin who holds me because he wants to hold me and breathe in the smell that is only mine. It is hard to concentrate on other things when this desire works its way into the foreground of my thoughts. And so, for now, I am done telling stories because they might all lead back to this point tonight. Ah—the daily paradoxes. But for now…sleep.

Busy Body

My mother set out chairs and tables
As I scrubbed shit off the bathroom floor, and off the wall,
and the lid of the garbage can beside the toilet.
I pushed a mop across the tiles
and used an old sponge to clean the sink and toilet seat
while sweat dripped from the tip of my nose,
from my temples, down my neck and down the center of my chest,
to form dark spots on my camisole,
hidden by a thin gray shirt layered over top.
There was no window in the room. I was dripping
with sweat,
inhaling waste and cleaning products,
working diligently in preparation for the arrival of the guests—
the high school students who were attending the summer arts academy,
fifty or so of them. I volunteered my house as a meeting place since the coffee shop where we typically take them
had closed.
I vacuumed the hallway to pick up bits of urine-soaked,
dried toilet paper that fall out of my grandmother’s underwear.
She shoves the paper there when she runs out of pads.
Or the paper comes from a pad that is so full
it begins to fall apart. The pieces fall out of the bottom of her pants
as she shuffles down the hall and back.
To her chair,
to the kitchen,
to the chair,
to the bathroom where she seldom showers,
to her bedroom cramped by misarranged furniture
and piles of clothes, papers, and packages
that haven’t been opened or returned.

I am skeptical of being able to grow old gracefully.
It terrifies me how my body is already so different
from how it was ten years ago.
My mother is still beautiful, still graceful
(even with one and a half fake knees, blonde-white hair and ivory skin),
but I haven’t many of my mother’s body genes.

Outside,
after the food has been set out, the chairs arranged, the atmosphere is nearly set
save the dead mouse, courtesy of my smallest cat,
rotting near the table by the stairs, where people must walk to reach the patio.
I choose a small stick from the wood pile and go to the mouse,
its gray fur stained on the sidewalk,
its little mouth open,
tail curved stiffly up like an apostrophe.
I use the stick to flick the mouse from the walk,
onto the dirt next to the table,
onto the dirt under the stairs
past the table where it is hidden
from people who won’t be looking.
A worm falls out of its body.
The flies scatter from it and find it again where it has been relocated.
The decomposers follow the sweet rotting scent to help the little rodent flesh break down until it is unrecognizable and then gone.

The guests arrive.
They find chairs and many go to sit on the fabric my friend has laid across the grass farther down in the yard.
I am busy, busy, busy
helping people get situated,
showing kids to the bathroom,
setting up the coffee pots, getting napkins for the girl with a nosebleed,
getting paper towels for the girl who stepped in dog shit,
getting Benadryl for the girl with allergies,
getting plastic spoons and knives and Tylenol for the boy with a headache,
turning on patio lights, running up to the bathroom, running to my room for books of poetry to read when there is a lull with the kids who haven’t filled up the sign-up sheet to read their own work.

Coming back downstairs, I notice my cat following me (the older one).
He’s been cooped up upstairs all day so I reach down to pick him up
and carry him outside and he cries as if…
he reaches out to swat me as if he’s hurt
and I set him down outside and I see blood
pooling around a wound near his hip.
I look down at my shirt and pants where a spray of blood and puss has made streaks, darkening my already dark denim pants.
I don’t have too much time for concern—
I run inside to change and wash my hands and arm where blood is smeared.
My cat hides on the other side of the house,
no doubt running his rough tongue over and over and over the wound
that looks like a hole where a fang has pierced his skin.
I haven’t the money for a vet.
I pray his special cat saliva will do the trick. I pray.

My mother tells me my grandmother, her mother, is sick again,
and so grandma has changed her mind again, and won’t be going with my mother and sister to Oklahoma.
But they’ll only be gone a couple of weeks, not a month.
Still.
This means I will not get a break.
I will not get a break.

Summer camp will end
and I will attend my friend’s wedding where I will be forced to confront the fact that I am single (is it my body? My body that doesn’t look but feels so different than it did ten years ago?)
and then there are other obligations
and there is grandma who barely ever does
anything besides sit in her plush recliner and watch Fox News.
And it’s back to work for minimum wage
while the collectors keep calling, keep asking, and I keep telling—
I have no money. I have none. Yes, I’m employed but not full-time,
not yet, but I’m busy, busy, busy like it is full-time
and then it’s back to teaching—
teaching for more money
but still while working minimum wage
for the benefits in case this body needs another organ removed or a cavity filled or a virus killed or a wound healed (my saliva isn’t special, unfortunately).

And then the year will be over, just like that.
And I’ll be working and paying and doing and
cleaning up shit and
trying
to help my mother
and looking forward to sleep in a bed that makes my back ache
so badly I never sleep for more than a few comfortable hours. (But it’s still difficult to get out of that bed).
Still.

I make time for friends.
I talk to my mother about how difficult it is—
all of it. (She admits to me that her own mother has her feeling suicidal.)

And I need to quit smoking.
Lately I’ve developed a cough.
Something gets caught
in my throat, in my lungs, and I cough,
choking for a smooth breath of air.
All I worry about is losing my singing voice.
Because other than that, anything else would mean a break.
A vacation.
An invitation to the decomposers
to find me and
return this tired body to the earth
where there are no obligations or loneliness or debt or anger or pain
just miles and miles of quiescent dirt and rock
and freedom.

It pours...

So ready just to get out; it’s time to clean my head out

remember how it is my own

don’t wanna live like Frankenstein, feelin like this brain ain’t mine

it’s frightening how many people go down.

They give away everything that makes them theirs

they sacrifice ideals for a mediocre share

of the pie that someone never baked, it’s just another figment in the game

working just to reach death with a sense of pride, a crying shame.

So i’ll shake my head at the customers who buy into the scheme

it’s gonna take a lot more than your marketing trickery

I see past all that shimmer

i see past all that noise

there’s nothing there but a heart soaked in need.

***~~~***

So many kids came in tonight to buy condoms. Guys. And on one hand I was really glad that they were using protection. On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder how many were doing without, since Kwik Fill is the only gas station in town that sells condoms. That’s ridiculous. Either a whole hell of a lot of people better be going to the free clinic for free condoms, or…I don’ t know what. That just bothers me. One kid was so cute. He asked if I knew a place that would sell latex-free condoms. Nothing in town, I said. And then he started to explain how sometimes she has a reaction and sometimes she doesn’t. Part of me was taken back at how willing this kid was to talk to a stranger about his girlfriend’s profelactic needs, but the other part of me felt glad that he wasn’t ashamed to talk about it. Again—it’s reassuring how many kids—mostly men—are buying condoms.

I just had the urge to know how many condoms get disposed of a year. How many people who clean hotel rooms have to tie up tiny clear bags filled with someone else’s reproductive fluids. How many condoms litter landfills, like little dull deflated balloons, cradling what was once a potential life—and thank god it isn’t or maybe there should have been some that made it through.

I don’t understand how any organization can be against contraceptives. How can a God that wants us all to live good lives possibly agree with a world that overpopulates itself in the name of survival and legacy? Too many people and not enough food. What kind of God wouldn’t want people to use a little More restraint when it came to procreation?

I meet people who still talk about having children like it was something that they couldn’t control—like having kids is just something that we’re all eventually supposed to do. Where are all the people who don’t assume this? It’s amazing to me how many people I encounter who assume that I will eventually be a mom. Like some day I’m going to wake up and think, “Yes. Even though I’ve never had any desire to be a mom, even though my goals lie nowhere near ‘having my own family’, i just need to be pregnant.” And I realize there are mistakes. And that people, women can’t bring themselves to snuffing out that life before it begins, but really?

Anything has potential. Anything. But you’ve got to take its environment into account. And it’s a collection of sentient moments that add up to make a person a person who participates in the world.

Really, how is an unborn, undeveloped fetus any different than the roadkill you passed the other day? Did you mourn for that chipmunk? You didn’t know it. You didn’t have a connection to it. Yet people freak out over an unborn child. Because it was a divine creation. No one cries for the trees we kill or the yellow jackets they have to poison or the deer splattered across the road. These were all living creatures, with brains and nervous systems. These were all God’s creations. So until people become a little more Buddhist and truly learn to revere life in all its forms, then I don’t want to hear another goddamn word about how abortion is wrong.

I don’t know where that came from.

And on the other hand…

He sent me a text message a day or two after i’d seen him and asked me if i was on birth control. I explained to him that i don’t want to take a pill that regulates my natural functions when i don’t have to for my health. i explained that i’d never had an issue with it in the past—meaning i’m responsible—and that he needn’t worry. “word” he responded. and then he said something about how he just hoped that if something happened i would “take care of it.” and my first response was what a dick he was for acting like it was something that i, alone, should have to bear the burden of. i wasn’t even thinking about the emotional aspect—i was thinking financially. i can’t afford to pay for that shit on my own. and he was damn sure part of the reason…and it just pissed me off. first that he even had to question whether or not i was responsible enough, then to say that he hoped i’d take care of it. sure, i’d kill your unborn child without you knowing if i could afford it. is that what i was supposed to say? i have no issue with getting an abortion, if the need arises, but i’m sure as hell going to do what i can to prevent it from even being an issue.

and he wasn’t even that good in bed. fuck him.

what does he think is going to come of this? why is he a part of my life? that’s a serious question to be asking ourselves at this point in the game. we’ve only known each other for two months. but let’s consider the logistics of the situation. he has no job, no car, no source of income. he’s miserable more than half the time because of where he is and there is no indication, whether from his attitude or his efforts, that things are going to change. three quarters of the time when he talks to me, i feel like i have to reassure him that things will be okay, but i also remind him that nothing will change if he doesn’t will it. he’s so negative. and then, one-sixteenth of the time, he just talks about sex. about fucking (like it would make everything better? like he has no control over his hormonal desires?) and the rest of the time i just feel like i’m friends with someone young. with someone who doesn’t have his shit together and sees strength in me and just wants me in his life so that he feels connected to something that make sense. or he just wants a life that doesn’t require him to worry about any little thing. he wants comfort and to be spoiled and to be preoccupied so that he doesn’t have to define for himself what his life is supposed to be. he has no real interest in caring about me—his lack of effort and his being jaded by girls took care of that. he just wants and wants and wants and can’t give worth a damn. so why did i? or did i? was i just interested in fucking? perhaps. and perhaps that’s why this is getting old fast. because if the sex isn’t worth it…then none of it might be worth it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

my thumb is so swollen. these pustules are pushing up from by my nail, which i have trimmed short, and the whole thumb is a third bigger than my left thumb. my hands are covered in patches of dry skin and these tiny blisters. and i find myself wanting to pop them. and i can’t keep my hands moisturized because i have to wash them so many times a day.

apparently, without this little blue light that goes with the water filtration system, our water is not clean. there are traces of fecal matter (from other people’s septic systems, my mother assures me—as if that makes it better) and if we have to ingest any water, we should boil it.

we live in a house that we pay so much money for and in and we don’t have potable water? what the fuck? maybe i can’t live here much longer. but where would i go that it would be any better? any healthier? amidst pollution, how is it possible to find a place that hasn’t been contaminated? and if too many of us find places like that, aren’t they only bound to become contaminated? isn’t the curse of urban sprawl that there will be no place left to live and breathe? i used to think that’s what the jetsons were—a farcical look into a future where we have so damaged the earth that we have to live above it, high in the clouds, where the air is cleaner and where we aren’t surrounded by our own waste. i admire people who truly make an effort to reduce the size of their carbon footprints. i really, really want to live around people who are aware like that. i still live in a place where not everyone recycles. where recycling pick up is a lie and they send the things to the same landfill with other unusable garbage.

when i think of the trash heaps like pock marks on the face of the earth, it makes me feel nauseous. it disgusts me. it makes me embarrassed to be a human being. how infantile to think that we can just throw things away and they disappear with no repercussion. how utterly naïve and selfish.

i’m apparently in a very angry mood. but it wasn’t hard to get here. and i’m not really letting it affect me to the point where i’m going to be up all night fuming about it. i’m just thinking. and it makes me think of what i need to do to get to where i want to be. i want to earn a living to support myself and have the ability to leave less of a mark on this world than the average consumer. i want to live healthier, breathe better, eat better, and be around people who do not judge, who do not agree with capitalism or any sort of system that enables prejudice and greed to thrive. i want to be around people who think as well as they party. and have the conversations to prove it.

finis.

sounds out and in

8/4/07

the crickets maintain a resonant high-pitch
to compliment the clicking of acorns and leaves
falling against branches and the soft earth.
a veil of clouds drips with tiny beads of rain,
syncopated movements tempted by gravity
spread delicate by an invisible air,
pushing pockets of water across a thin layer
between earth and sky.
a rhythm forms, pulled by the strength of a core
suspended in an immaterial expanse.
i know that i am not alone.
yet the channels through which this reality are linked
to the universe within me are unique
to the senses that persuade me to remain fluid.
so small against the width of infinity.
so much feeling beyond the scope of words and expression.
and my ephemeral heart beats despite a corporeal sadness.
patience.
things will not get better.
they will not get worse.
they will continue as they have always been
and it is through my perceptions
that what i truly feel
is distracted and led down meloncholy and dead-end avenues.
it is the way i am facing
when the light strikes my eyes
that determines what i see.
(i used to hate the sun. but now i simply recognize that it is a wiser heat than i. but it is also impossible to wither in its presence. only to be transformed.)
people believe that fire releases the soul to the heavens. and it is a fact that, with those rising flames, so too travel the altered molecules of what was once flesh, up into a sky that carries it off into space. into the space that surrounds us.
but one doesn't require a pyre to join the stars.
to meet the ancestors built from the dust of what came and went before.
before now.
there is no name.
there is no way to bring it into being.
because there is no beginning.
there is no end. only change.
only recognition and recollection.
revolution is the moment more becomes self-aware. conscious. creative.
and destruction will come at the hands of all parts of the whole.
the darkness and the light will waltz while
the illusions of beginning and end manifest among the stars and the earth.
constellations will contain and explode,
shifting with the exhale and the inhale
and the music between the night and day.
and my ephemeral heart beats despite a corporeal sadness.

arrogant animals

7/8/07

alright. so my friend and i were talking tonight...

before i begin my rant, let me offer a disclaimer of some kind. i do not really believe that anything i say has any bearing on what people believe. as far as i'm concerned, people who think for themselves are not simply going to agree with what someone else argues, regardless of how intelligent the argument is. but, i can't help seeing connections where many of the most common arguments fail to see them...as with most of my rants, this is mostly me just trying to organize some thoughts, in this case, based on a discussion...

so.

i have plenty of friends who at some point in our relationship have asked me why i chose to be vegetarian. i provide them a summary of my reasons/beliefs knowing full well that they probably don't agree with me on some key points--which is fine--and i often say that i'm not some crazed animal rights activist. i'm not going to stand outside of sax and spraypaint the fur coats that come out the door. there seem more immediate capitalistic issues to protest against...

but my friend and i were talking about the ethics of hunting. i know plenty of people who, although they hunt, do revere nature and follow practices based on the sacredness of nature and all her creatures. those who do not waste any part of the animal they take. those who do not believe in hunting as sport. etc. but so many of the points i have heard in support of hunting involve the idea of populations control. when there are too many deer, for example, deer starve because the food in an area is less than sufficient for a large population. if the population is not controlled, deer will appear even more frequently in human territories, threatening the tranquility of highways and backyards alike.

my response to this, usually only in my head, is that the only reason the environment cannot sustain a large population, of anything, is because people have restricted and depleated the parts of the ecosystem that would provide for the animals relying on it for sustenance. who invaded whose territory anyway? i don't know enough about this. and even if i did, the other (silent) issue seems to be that people are superior to animals, and therefore deserve first dibs on all that an environment has to offer.

i know i sound like some buddhist, tree-hugging, idealist. but there are many philosophies that entail an equal amount of respect for all nature's animals. the belief that humans are superior relates to both empirical and religious ideals. the empirical being that humans are "more intelligent;" the religious being that god gave adam (and therefore mankind) dominion over the animals (he named all the animals in the garden of eden, etc).

in response to the idea that people are more intelligent beings, i am forced to question (again, usually in my head) how human superiority is gauged. other mammals, reptiles, birds, arachnids, whatever--other animals--do not cause the grand-scale destruction that humans do. they do not engage in wars; they do not destroy environments (and when they do, you can almost bet on human interference--humans who have imposed an order unlike the...uh...natural one); they do not interfere with the ability for other species (of their OWN) to thrive.

and if people are so much more intelligent than other animals, how can we justify the mating rituals that influence so much of our behavior. we wear flashy clothing to attract a mate, reproduce, repeat. we go to clubs to meet potential mates (i'm sayin'--not all sex leads to procreation but the quest for sex, the mission to copulate is still strong among us). we carefully craft our own little nests. we form communities, cliques, groups that compete with other groups. our society takes survival of the fittest to the extreme on many levels; it's a dog eat dog world.

so if population control is one argument in support of hunting. then why fret over murder rates and death tolls and plagues? aren't they forms of population control in a world that is already struggling to support the population?

just what is the "natural balance?"

there are too many...internal contradictions in the arguments i've heard regarding the ethics of hunting. most do not approach the issue from the standpoint of taking life. immediately people turn to population--to statistics--to numbers that objectify the living, breathing things to which they are referring. the same way that statistics simplify, dehumanize the devastation of so many deaths.

and as i continue to consider my own beliefs regarding the value of life i have to wonder how many spiders, houseflies, mosquitos, raccoons, slugs, whatever i've killed (out of annoyance or fear !). and then, some people would point out, that plants too are living things that breathe and eat and grow like people do--so are they equally sacred forms of life?

native american belief systems (not all of them--i don't want to overgeneralize) follow the idea that nature provides what each form of life needs to survive, to thrive. indians did not over-hunt. they did not wipe out the buffalo. they were not responsible for endangering species. but they weren't vegetarian.

and it isn't as simple as saying that vegetarianism would solve any imbalance. the issue has too many levels, with centuries of socio-historical factors.

so usually, when people ask me about why i'm a vegetarian i bring up a few key points:

i don't enjoy the taste of most meats. the ones i do miss, i have found substitutes for that do not require the death of any animal and usually help out some soy farmer somewhere.

much of the meat produced by larger companies is not healthy for consumption.

the conditions in which many animals raised to be killed are terrible. how can people distinguish between the quality of life most cats and dogs enjoy (at least in our country) and the quality of life for so many chickens and calves.

the process of turning cattle into beef is inefficient; we could feed the world with the grains that are used to feed cows who only provide a fraction of the food for a fraction of the population.

and ultimately, just because i can drive a car, put sentences together and be much more selective about with whom and why i fornicate, doesn't mean that i am superior to othe animals who also have their own forms of communication, their own social orders (which they have maintained for how long?) and create their own small empires, as discreet as the networks of insects beneath the places we tread.

so.

live the life you want. but please don't try to convince me to eat a burger. i have my reasons and after thirteen years of being a vegetarian (i'll explain why not vegan another time), understand that my beliefs are the result of years of asking myself repeatedly WHY i have chosen to live this way, and finding more and more reasons (statistics, facts, etc) to support the choice i made and far outweigh the evidence that opposes it.

this is why i need conversation

8/6/07

because when words go firing through my delicate mind, they are looking for a proper outlet. sometimes it's satisfying enough to flood the page, or the screen. but those vehicles have no response. no critique. no opposing or parallel idea.

until then it's mental masturbation.

**************************** ***************************

coconut skin sprawled across a bed that makes my body feel small

arms outstretched appear weak against the size of the room

the carpet is far away

and suddenly i am insignificant despite the comfort of this flesh.

no goosebumps or sunburn or orgasm

could make this body more real,

and yet it is easy to slip out of the moment

to lose concentration

to falter among thoughts prone to thorns.

i've been fighting my way back

to greener pastures in the landscape of my identity,

it is a common effort--to return to myself--

one so often necessary because i am so often

thrown.

shoved to the terrain just beyond my control;

forced to create paths that lead into myself

without using the shortcuts of denial, distraction or deceipt.

*********************************************************************************

i've been thinking about people needing other people. regardless of how alone each of us feels during certain parts of our life (and in certain moments of intense emotion), i do not believe that we are ever alone. okay, maybe there are people out there with no one to talk to. but more than likely, there are people out there who lack the motivation to reach out to someone; there can't be that many hermits in the age of hotlines and the internet.

i've needed people for a whole list of reasons. and when i say need, i really mean that without these people, i doubt i would have made it thus far into my life. it hasn't been easy. it hasn't been ten shades of hell, but it hasn't been a breeze. and i, like so many others, find myself questioning the scope of it all from time to time. so the reason i need people, is generally to maintain my sanity. writing helps, but through writing i am only trying to connect--to link some part of my experience to the world. and, as i began talking about earlier, this is why conversation is so satisfying.

now. i cannot bring myself to believe that i need someone for a more specific reason than this. a more specific, personal, romantic reason than this. and at this point in my life, i can't think of why anyone would want to put up with me. someone asked me the other day, if i did not believe in marriage, what did i want out of life? did he think that marriage was all life really had to offer? this kid was young(er than me), and i assumed he still had plenty of faith in the whole "there's someone out there just for me" ideal. it's funny that i've lost that idealism, but managed to maintain so much else. i'm not a total cynic. but i'm not as optimistic as i was ten years ago.

i would like to say that i am a nonconformist. but to be a total nonconformist i would have to rebel against more than i do. and there are certain social practices i participate in with as much enthusiasm and curiosity as the rest of the herd.

i would like to say that i'm a unorthodox. but again, i'm presuming to know what is normal. and nowadays, i hope, the term "normal" is just about useless.

i know who i am not, what i am not. i may still be working on who and what i am--which is fine. if i had already explored every aspect of myself, i'd be a fairly shallow person. and i don't know how much time i have left. but that shouldn't matter anyway.

i used to always say that if i can go to bed feeling full, feeling content. if i can die before i wake without having a sense of regret or want, then i've lived that day well. this forces me to live in the moment. but i'm realizing, the older i get, that it isn't even about finding what's special about the moment. it's grasping that the moment is perfect. that it is what it is. that the consistency of change is the only constant, and everything in the wake of experience unfolds with utter beauty.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

i've got to break a habit of worrying, but it's more addictive than cigarettes.

i've got to find an embrace that doesn't release me too soon or hold me too long.

i've got to find a niche that doesn't crowd me.

i've got to find more reasons to keep moving.

it's never enough and it's always too much.