a thank you note

dear friends and family,

i got up this notion to write everyone at once, to dramatically indulge in the entry line "dear friends and family" and to take this moment to say thank you for everything each of you are to me. now, i cannot promise that this email will be grand or poetic, it won't be the sort of stuff that has Renee Zelwiegger saying "you had me at hello", BUT it comes from the heart and i mean every word.

some of you i've known for about a year (BB represent!) and some of you i've known my entire life. i have been so fortunate in my few years to have the most sincere and good people surrounding me. the love that i feel from each of you, in your own way, is well beyond any of my words. i cannot thank you all enough for the support you've given me in our time together, especially during these rocky few months. i want to tell you, that your talks in person, on the phone, in emails and facebook, in spirit, have made a huge difference in my life and my happiness. for all the advice and the laughs, silly photos and heart-to-hearts, for the hugs when i really needed to be touched, for the SOUL RECOGNITION, i thank you.

this saturday night, jan 30th, i'll be boarding a plane to ontario, CA (california that is :) ). i will be spending 6 weeks learning how to better conserve our natural lands. i'm nervous, excited and eager to be learning new things. i'll be back in Hawaii by mid-march. i don't have a physical address yet, but as soon as i get one you'll all be the first to know :)

the world seems to be splitting all the time, trying to balance the light and the dark. we live here like trees, our life bifurcating like branches, growing ever closer to a beautiful sun. my friends, my family, i carry you in my boughs, you encompass my heart in rings...we grow with each other, ever upward, ever outward, ever inward, forever.

with love

bre

seed 1

i gasp in this waking life, thrown ashore, my chest heaving in this consciousness. but once i've calm myself, i'll see that i have legs and a little imagination to get me through this. i run open chested into the wind, taking in and releasing in equal measure, images of you sprouting in catatonic and psychadelic beauty in front of my mind, in the fore front of my mind. i run open chested into you, heart first, i've never felt so free, i've never felt so vunerable. i hear my heart, familar, soothing, a stabile and safe place to lay your head.

life's questions

there are many things i'll never understand. i could innumerate them here, but who wants to read a list of unexplainables. we spend our lives trying to answer questions that don't have answers, to solve the insolvable and we die still wondering. once you've stopped wondering then you might as well stop living. but this is a bold statement isn't it?

i am told to write stories, to put down the events of my day, to inject a little humor into the mundane, to hold the obvious up to scutiny's light. but my days are unremarkable, and perhaps entirely boring, but they are above all, mine. i work at a hospital. i catalogue and deal out pills. you could say i'm a drug dealer, but the hospital doesn't like the connotation of such diction and so i work in the "pharmacy". i wear really white shoes, my clothes are ironed and my hair is neat. don't you trust me now? my white shoes squeak when i walk, squeak with all the things i want to say, but keep locked away, carefully guarded, even more so than the psychotic protection of the narcotics. i make my rounds, run the same pattern day in and day out. same room first, same room last. not much changes, well besides the drugs and the patient, but my job is the same. one tray of drugs out, and a new one goes in. sounds easy enough. it's easy to get lost when you first start, the drug names are more esoteric than breeds of unicorns and of course, these letter combinations (i wouldn't call them "words") make no sense to me, that is, they have no meaning. i might as well be dealing with hyloglephics. i let my eyes take a beating, i match up the curved and straight lines that denote the powerful substances i hold in my hands. vials and pills and solutions and powders, am i an alchemist? if so, tell me where the syrrum of happiness lies or the elixer of love. but i don't find any of these. i see only medications for insomnia, for tremors, for constipation, for nausea, for hypertention, for rash, for fever, for pain. i don't make the coctails either. not in my job description. i just fill what some invisible source tells me to fill then i go a knocking on doors. "pharmacy" i say, my shoes squeak, i try a smile, but i'm not even fooling the patient. if i can't fool a dope, who can i fool? perhaps i'm the dope or i'm the fool? i haven't decided if these are mutually exclusive terms quite yet. just another of the questions i ponder in the long list of questions i ponder. i switch out the trays and try not look at the patients, whether this is for my sake or theirs i haven't quite ascertained. it's difficult, i'll admit, to see such sickness everyday. to see people at their weakest and most vunerable. the smell of death fills me and all i can offer are some white tablets no bigger than the head of a thump nail. it's a crazy business, drugs; i feel i might be too soft for this sort of thing. my heart sinks when i see you, mouth open, barely breathing. what are you thinking? or are you? what do your dreams look like, can you remember? to feel so disconnected from the content of the cure and yet so accutely connected to those who rely on those cures, is a very strange middle ground. nothing seems to happen as you expect it. i can honestly say, i never thought i would be working at a hospital, i never thought i would be seeing people the way i've been seeing people, to be in charge of all that i'm in charge of, to belong to a system that i begrudgingly believe it. and so i'm left wondering, the same questions that i started with at the beginning of this entry, the same questions that i have always been wondering. the human quest for reason, for meaning. why are we? who are we? why this path? why here? why now? where does this go? where does this go? where does this go?

morning thoughts/mourning thoughts

it's 5:45 am and i am getting ready for work. i arm myself with discontent and clothes that make me look old, at least i think so. the day comes into view shortly and the way it looks always depends one the agenda behind my eyes. today, work, from the morning to the evening. i may see the sky for a half hour if i'm lucky. but of course, i'm dramatic, making my situation seem dire. the situation in haiti is dire. world povery and world hunger is dire. my job and my thoughts for the morning are irritants, uncomfortable friction against my soul's desire. this is in no way a dire situation. sometimes i need to remind myself of this fact, yes, things are what you make them and honestly i have it too good to be any sort of martyr. everyone deals with things they don't really enjoy in order to set themselves up for greater success in the future. keep your eye on the prize sort of mentality. and yet, i think, when do these adages and chiceed sayings become inadecate? yes, like Rocky, i need to remember never to give up kid. and i think, well, i don't like this very much and things about my current state bother me. however, do i put up with it? delay gratification? we cannot be content all the time. this is true. and so what do we strive for then if not the prize, or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if not a delicious cake that we not only have but also consume? and so i sit, drinking my coffee and feeling perfectly content to stab at this keyboard with my sleepy fingers. where does the time go? well, if there is one thing i am sure about, it's the uselessness of bemoaning the loss of time. time, time, never promised to stay, never gave the illusion of permanence. and here i am, spending time...

sunday morning and i am sitting in bed with a cup of coffee hoping to drive out the best prose anyone in this small corner of this virtual world has ever seen. whether or not will truly happen, is of course, up to my environment. i am finding more and more that my ability to write is very directly affected by my environment. today my father is home. he's a loud individual whose steps can be heard through even the deepest sleep. and of course, he thinks it acceptable to open the door to this room and walk in and immediately start talking. if i had to describe this feeling, i would say it's like having a very expansive presence, perhaps not unlike a giant in a small space. that presence takes much of the air, and it's sheer volume and mass alters the flow of the energies around it. i'm not trying to be negative, rather, i'm stating exactly what i feel. i can never write well when my father's around. his presence preoccupies my mind...ah, but there is always times for challenges and herein this premise i begin to write while a giant looms above me.

i have been working at the hospital for three days now. i will try to describe it a little for you all as you're so kind as to be curious about my new job. things have been really rough in spots and tolerable in others. it's a difficult position to be in, mostly because i'm in no way trained or really prepared for this sort of work. i have no knowledge about pharmacutials save the brief social and medical theory research i did for my thesis. but i have no practical experience. i know what pain meds are, but i'm not even allowed to touch those and so, i'm still at a loss. the position is temporary and they are treating me like that. this isn't to say that my department isn't nice, in fact, they are very nice, but they are not taking the time necessarily to train me as one would do for a more permenant employee. but the good thing is the feeling is mutual. i don't like working at the pharmacy so i don't mind that it's temporary.

the work is tedious and daunting. anytime you're dealing with drugs you really don't want to make a mistake, but that's why there are so many eyes to check and see what you're doing. so that's good. the people more or less responsible for training me is mike. it's an ex-navy man who was trained as a pharmacy tech. he's very knowledgable but doesn't always explain things, he just kinda does it. but yesterday i worked with asheley and she's really nice. she explains a lot more.

so my job is pretty much to make the pharamists job easier. i fill all the meds i can (these do not include the narcotics) and i make the rounds delivering them to the patients. i put in one tray of drugs and take out the other. it's definately nerve racking especially since i don't exactly know my way around the hospital yet. but i'm learning. seeing the patients is difficult, and really paying attention to what sorts of drugs they're on makes it even harder. i don't think i could work in this field for long and see all that sickness all the time.

it's exhausting work, not physically but mentally. i miss my freedom that's for sure. but i know money is money and i need to get it. i got offered a chance to do a 1 1/2 month long training program for trail work in CA but it started Feb 1st and i knew i wouldn't be able to make it by then. part of me wonders though, how things may have changed if i went. who knows how long this pharmacy job will last and who knows how long i'll be living in HI. it's all a mystery. i'm just glad to be sitting in my bed instead of working in the austere office of pharmacy.

sorry this wasn't funny or incredibly poetic or even enlightening. i do really have a difficult time spitting things out sometimes. but i hope this at least gave you a small idea of what i've been doing. hopefully, if things go as i hope they will, i'll be able to write another breedom today, perhaps with a bit more solace.

love all my readers!

a job? what's that?

today is the day. after months of waiting, i strap on the old ball and chain and head out into the great yard that is employment. today, today, i pretend for 8 hours to really dress this nice in my "outside" life. today, today, i learn the ways of the pharmacy. i pause a moment and think, wow! life sure is mysterious! the pharmacy, really? and yes, the pharmacy really. i don't know what's in store for me but i hope i catch on quickly. regardless, i know i'll have some stories to tell, people are endless wells of interest and material! well, i should probably figure out my outfit. the next time you hear from me, i will have faced the employment god and she will have touched me on the shoulder and said, "welcome to the commodification of time".

a rainbow and you

you've been gone for days and when you return i don't really see you. you exist as a complaint, a pain in my chest, a knawing ache in my side, real but not visibly real. i try to be hard, pretend I'm Clint Eastwood and practice asking the question, "are you feeling lucky?" the truth is i cannot, despite my best efforts, be that harsh, my voice quivers and my mind plays a montage of happier times. granted these memories are old and the video is beginning to skip, but certain shots stick, like they've been super glued to the inside walls of my skull. perhaps it's best to remember you this way, to remember you as the disillusioned, puffer fish little girl remembers you. why not? and yet, things have changed, walls are crashing down about our heads, i have the sense to duck, but you, you are staring straight up at the collapsing ceiling hands in the air ready to brace the entire thing. this weight is too heavy for you, but you stand in the center of the room swearing and crying out like a madman. i cannot help but want to help you save this, afterall we both live here. but i've lost alot of faith and i've seen the cracks widening for years. i take up a piece of crumbled wall and try to place it in a crater size hole. this place is really falling apart. i tug at your shirt and say "i'm not feeling very lucky", i nod toward the door but you growl at me, tell me i don't work to save anything. i look at you, who would want to save this? this faulty structure with its collapsing walls. lets build another, i say, lets build another and re-set this foundation.

you've been gone for days and when you return i don't really see you. it isn't until i look up at the sky that i find a new memory to add to that old tape. a rainbow. the first one i've seen in a long time and it comes in with you. a rainbow, brightness and color, pure. suddenly i don't think you're shouting anymore, suddenly i see the good in you. suddenly, i miss you, just a little. suddenly, i see you, i see you as that puffer fish girl did, i see you and think perhaps we'll both make it out of here. brighter skies ahead in a new land where we can re-name one another.

i put myself anywhere now. the crown of my head snuggles into the dirt. i let my nose bend, feel the individual grains pressing into my pores, filling me slowly, filling me deliberately. i didn't always nestle to the dirt, i didn't always know it as i know it now.

to see someone in thier normal suit, knees in the earth, chest hovering, rolling their head in dirt like a baker rolls dough, or a man rolls a joint, or a gambler rolls dice, to see a perfectly dressed human human crown to crown, would perhaps, unnerve you. it unnerved me. i thought surely this woman had lost her mind and then i checked myself, perhaps i was seeing things. the first hypothesis was false, but the second one, the second one exactly right. i was witnessing something, something strange, something that made me sweat, something that when i closed my eyes i couldn't shake, something wholly different, something scarily free.

she was black, as dark as any human i've ever seen. she was black in the way that everything else seemed sharp, clear as the focus of ten thousand lenses or she was black like an absolute, no room for exceptions or additions or she was black like perfection, yes, that's it, she was black like perfection. she had long hands that spread themselves out along the sides of her face and she kept rubbing her head like that, rubbing it, softly, in loving and exhausted swirls. with her hands and face like that i could have sworn she was looking into something, trying to root something out, or perhaps to root herself in. she looked exhausted but in exstasy like when you've run a really long time and you collapse to the earth and breath, breath, breath again. maybe she had been running, maybe she came from very far away.

i turned around to see if anyone was looking, but people bustled about in their bubbles as people often do. i looked back, the scene was as i left it. a beautiful, young black woman in a business suit rubbing her head into the dirt. the dessert is tan, tan in a static, photographic way. the elements seem suspended. i feel no sense of heat, i smell not her sweat, i hear not the movement of the dry dirt beneath her forehead. all i see is all i see. this could be an advertisement, i can't be sure. the world is so virtual now, who knows if i simply lost myself in an ad for all natural facial toner? but something tells me that this is a message from a wholly different source. the motion is slow and it looks as if she draws the same pattern. i try to look away, but even when i do, i see her in every blink.

the wisdom of a fern

i take two sips on my coffee before the fingers press. building worlds one tiny symbol at a time, is remarkable to me. here are lines that we've learned and processed and made our own individually but share collectively. here is the power to create, to fashion something out nothing, to sculpt the air. i am truly amazed at the writing craft and every now and again i gauwk wide-eyed and open jawed at this beautiful artform. it is like seeing a person, really seeing a person, having over looked him for days, months or even years. and so i'm here writing my ars poetica i suppose. there is a story stored up in these finger prints like there is love in this body, but i cannot help but stare in awe, stare an artist to her craft and caress it in my mind like the lightest touch drawn across the cheek of a lover.

i fear starting again, facing blankness on the page. i feel it's like an empty club; none of the hip, cool phrases are going to want to waltz in there unless there are at least a few other words to keep them company. writing, as i've always said, is a fickle, fickle thing.

i take a long break and sip at my coffee again. i write alot about coffee, perhaps because it's by my side in these cool and soothing mornings. the world is coming into focus slowly. i've been up for 2 hours at least. the sky is trading in the new born white for a faint blue, the grass is green, green, under the one big star, the air is slow and thick in it's chill having laid in the slopes of the night. a hapuu fern pushes up against this window, green leafy bits flattened against this plane like an anxious child waiting to go outside. but this backwards, a plant that wants to come inside? what could it possibly want to do in here? this cold box with it's 5 walls? but then i realize it's not begging to come in, it's not even trying to push this obstruction out of its way, rather it's growning with this window. adaptability juxtaposed with rigidity, life and death, movement and the fixed. the fern will push up and up and maybe, if given the time, it could cap this house, grow over it, a green hill in the landscape, a trellis of human invention.

how must one live? how should one live? there are many books to tell you and even more talking heads to assure you that they have discovered the recipe for living, proper living that is. but i think, and this is just my humble opinion, that the guides for good living are all around us. look at the trees and rocks and mountains and ocean. look at the rivers and lakes. look at the fish and the algae, look at the birds and the bugs, look at the animals, look at the sun and the stars and the moon. look at the soil, look in the soil. it's all there. all that we want to know, it's all under our feet, it's all around us, it's above and below.

granted the world is a different place. we have more complex enemies, we have man-made diseases and bombs, we have hate and greed. yet, yet...i look at the fern outside my window, a fern like a person, growing as best it can against an immovable object. i look at this fern pushed up against this glass, living, living within a molecule from the edge of this rigid, lifeless entity, living, living with its lot. i look at this fern and i think, what if all that seperated us from our true selves, from that "good life", from the nature of what we are, was simply, a plane of glass? what if we have been looking out the windows of our own fabricated worlds thinking the entire time that there was no seperation, that we were living as we were meant? there are so many illusions that make me think i'm outside, when i'm really inside, make me think i'm interacting when there's really sound proof glass all around me. but this fern, this fern has managed to talk some sense into me. break the glass it says, break the glass and come out of hiding. i see my body plunging into the glass, there are blood drops like dew all over me. i'm curled up next to the fern, blood sinks into soil. i give it happily, happily to save my life.

sun sets images and thoughts

the folding over of days are like waves
collasping into spun out lines
sunsets left behind
in hopeful discussion of a new day.
wake up tomorrow will we?
will it be this way ever again?
is that the beauty of each day?
you can't take anything back,
all in,
all at once,
brilliant.

declaration of i

i rock,
i rock,
i black porous rock,
i round,
i round,
i round heavy mass,
i sling,
i sling,
i sling out toward
i object,
i object,
i object returning
i mud
i mud
i mud of the earth
i out
i out
i out slung object
toward,
toward,
heavy mass
i returning
i returning
into earth
i round
i round
i round and rock
i rock
i rock
i rock round and round
i rock
i rock
i rock black and porous
i rock back to forest
i me
i me
i

open ocean composition

sometimes worlds collide and there are things that cannot be understood. worlds collide and words become filters for days. the verbage is confused and the signals are crossed in choas, pulsed out coarse and raw like something outside of you, inside of you, trying to get back...outside. messages from an alien nation. to feel alien, to feel out of touch and so unsure of what you want. you want everything, and that's just it, you know very well that you can't have everything. you sit on a rock and think. you sit on a rock and think that perhaps nothing is how you see it. perhaps you see nothing. either way you accept things the way they are, or try to at least.

***

there is a shell riding on the back of a woman who was a tree. remember that story? remember the time? and so there is a shell here, as real as anything. you can feel there is a shell here, slung around the neck of everything wild and fiercely free. you hold your breath and your heart starts to go. you feel your heart go. it's in your chest wild and fiercely free. images come over your mind and you are kissing and being rushed up against and its hard to breath in such close quarters, and you're wondering what's happened to you. it breaks. your heart. sweat pouring like blood and you hear helicopters above you. it's a very anxious and acidic moment.