untitled

Capricorn lover

or leave her, the decision was
I’m clipping my nails because it’s the only thing
on my to do list
that I think I can actually accomplish
What?
and did we?
accomplish anything.

Something stirred in me

the sugary bottom of instant hot chocolate
from a paper packet
someone found on the shelf
of this house
that doesn’t belong to us.

Use the tea bags twice

because that’s frugal that’s fair
that’s showing that you care
about something, about how wasteful we
are and I dunk it twice
dunk it with fervor because believe
me I’d rather punch a bruise in my thigh
than get up and open another
it’s too much to open another
what if I don’t finish?

I set out to write a story on a stormy day

but I’m getting a Morse code of phrases
phrases that mean more than I’m capable
of writing.

11 guavas on the tree outside shiver in the rain

the tank is full, beyond
and spilling over. We have an abundance
Of water.

Everything is changing and everyone I know is changing

It’s unsettling.
I feel age all around me
I don’t want to grow old.

2013 in a Blogshell

Another year has grown up, expanded and begins to fade.  There is a storm outside my curtains, rain, lighting, thunder, the works.  I am contemplative and in awe, perhaps more this year than any other before it.  Life is unexpected and I am shocked continuously with everything that I must learn, haven’t learned or learned seemingly by accident.

Thinking on writing this blog post, I tried to remember January but it seems more than 12 months away.  It seems long ago, in a distant land that is and isn’t home.  I suppose I’m always in awe by how much changes in a year.  As with every year, I will try my best to do those beginning months justice.  I don’t have my journals so I’ll get no help.  It’ll be an interesting illustration of what I think are the brightest, hardest, most memorable bits of 365 days.  On y va!

January:  New Years Eve and the beginning of a much too long saga of distrust, hurt, jealousy.  Known in the gut and admitted aloud.  I soldier on, stupidly, regardless.  This is the beginning of the end of our relationship.  Meanwhile I dream of school, of getting out of PTA, of everything that is comforting and yet, not enough.  I want more.

February:  Relationship is rocky and will continue to be despite best efforts.  Make a very cute video involving a Ernie puppet.  Makes her cry.  A happy moment.  A photo album too.  Continue to trudge along at PTA.  Still adventuring and going to the beach.  Working and living.  Simple life.

March:  Dad’s birthday, get him a gift certificate from fishing store.  More adventuring on the weekends.  Lots of time spent with friends and girlfriend.  Then an informal call from a professor at the University of Montana telling me I got into the program.  So, so, so, excited and happy!  Nervous too.  Other two colleges—University of Colorado and University of Oregon—also offer me admission.  I weigh my choices.

April:  I make my decision to attend the University of Montana.  I’m excited but also very nervous as my entire life will be changing.  Every day I go to work, I think about how I can’t wait to be back at school so I can acquire the skills I need to a get a job that I enjoy and that challenges my mind.  Also my birthday.  A lawn party is planned but it rains so there are no games to play on the lawn.  Play games inside and have mixed drinks.

May: Make 2 years at PTA.  Relationship continues to be rough.  I’m leaving, things are coming to an end and I feel another has already been taking my place since January. 

June:  Continue to work, continue to be in relationship.  Working and living and trying to have a little fun.  These months are blurry.

July: Girlfriend’s birthday but we don’t spend it together.  I continue to prepare myself for school.  Try to soak up time with the ones I love.  Lots of crying.  Finally tell boss that I will be leaving PTA.  Last day August 1.  Dad and I go 4 wheel driving down to beach.  Very nice.

August:  Done with PTA, never thought I would see the day.  Nice going away party at work.  Boss makes a heartfelt speech, I’m touched.  Going away party with friends.  Nice, bittersweet.  Spend last couple weeks with grandparents and my parents.  Fly out to Montana in the middle of August.  Difficult flight, badly delayed, have to run to gate.  Get into Missoula, catch the Green Taxi.  It’s 100 degrees and I’m dressed too warm.  Get to apartment, feeling alone.  Roommate will arrive a week later.  Girl I’ve been talking with but never met, we meet and she helps me with my errands…getting things for the apartment.  Intense orientation for Journalism program.  I wonder if I’m going to make it.  A trip to Butte, Montana.  What a different world!  I bike everywhere and love it!

September: Classes in full swing.  Getting used to being in Montana.  Hang out with the Journalism grad students the most.  Go to Glacier National Park.  It’s beautiful!  Very busy trying to learn how to be a student again and learning the ways of a journalist.  It’s uncomfortable sometimes.  Mountain biking with friends and hiking too.  Start bouldering.  Buy climbing shoes.  Get a job working at phone-a-thon.  Bring the bling-bling Bre.  I don’t like it.

October:  Getting much more settled into school.  Grad students are my group of friends and we go on adventures together, ie Ghost town.  Mountain biking, biking to Albertsons, getting closer with my roommate.  Fall in love with rock climbing.  Jump off of wall and sprain my ankle really bad, then get very sick at the same time.  Low moment, bed ridden for several days.  Get better, start biking again and top rope climbing.  Love it!  Beers at K House.  Dinner party at my apartment.  It's a hit.  Day of Dead parade.  Good times.  Buy my own harness and belay device. 

November:  Semester is whipping by.  Trying to keep it together.  Lots of roommate bonding time.  Still biking though it’s starting to snow now.  Series of really cold days, -38 with the wind chill.  Still working and really disliking my job.  See Iron and Wine in concert.  Making friends outside of graduate student circle.  Roommates birthday, lots of fun, food and blazing saddles.  Thanksgiving at Kevin’s house.  Nice, mellow, low key.  Start trying HIIT workouts because I can do them from the comfort of my apartment.

December:  Very busy beginning weeks, final papers and exams.  More snow.  Still biking, still climbing.  At 5.10s.  Movie nights with roommate, Titanic and hot buttered rum.  Return home to Hawaii in the middle of the month.  Rachel picks me up from the airport.  We catch up it’s so nice, like I never left.  Lunch at Miyos.  Staying with my grandparents, also very nice, also like I never left.  Good talks with friends and family.  Went out with researchers to Hakalau, pretty cool.  Trying to look for a story for my professional project.  Spent Christmas with my parents and enjoyed myself.  Mom took a few days of vacation.  We hiked part of the Ala Kahakai trail and it was wonderful.  Got a go pro for Christmas, so awesome!  I can’t wait to do some sporty things and shoot some video.  Learned how to tile and I finally, finally opened my eyes.  This is the biggest breakthrough yet. I suppose I was finally ready to see the truth.               

View

I sit in the back bedroom of my grandparents’ house as I did over 22 years ago.  The view from my window is static, water tank with a liner twice removed, a chain link fence that slopes like the worn back of mule, rusted too, but sturdy somehow.  Everything here, despite its age, is sturdy somehow.

The word processor took my little finger beats and a story of two people talking, talking about something a five year-old would find important, something I’ve since forgotten, though I’m sure it was probably important.

The light, as it comes across this window in the back bedroom of my grandparents’ house is not static.  Every morning there is a new cadence, wild orchids born in the night, project into the sky and scoop up the rising sun in the cups of their pedals.  Solar energy.

The cat, Valentina, with freshly licked fur, balances on the rim of the water tank facing the rising sun.  She closes her eyes and warms her pink nose in the sun.  Right paw slips and dips into the water, she shakes it feverishly. 

“Someday I will write a book,” I think.  “Someday, Valentina, in all her fluffy glory will be world-renown, preserved in my pages, sunbathing beauty, little feline muse.”    

peek

December is trotting along quickly.  The sun is beginning to open up on the mountains.  Everything is frozen. 

Montana looks beautiful from my window.  I try to catch some of the rays like a house plant.  It's much too cold to go outside, -20 by some estimates.  The day is a beautiful woman I cannot touch, admire from a window on the third floor, but don't dare to touch.

Two cups of coffee are beginning to open up my mind.

A cool river courses through my thoughts, a glacial pool, somewhere in September.  These thoughts are crisp but scattered like the remnant leaves of winter deciduous trees.  It's been a full few months.

I approach this blank page somewhat timidly though I try to pretend to be brave.  I haven't written here, like this, in quite a while.  I think I'm changed. 

The mountains flex, static ripple of muscle brushed lightly with snow, stand akimbo around Missoula like a ring of Paul Bunyans.  I smile, because that's what I heard you're supposed to do when you're overwhelmed, and touch the window.  My hand yelps.  How did the peoples of long ago make it through these times?  We're so fragile now.

Cup three and the train is humming along.  Sometimes writing feels like running with no fatigue, with no wind, with no pain.  Just endless miles of page and new trails all the time. 

I pant and I tap the backspace key.  Edit, edit, edit.  It's slightly haunting.  My steps not as quick as they used to be.  But I'm not a child anymore.  I can't just spit out whatever nonsense comes to my mind.  Can I?

Hello, I am writing again.  Writing for the sake of it and nothing else.  How beautiful.

Thank You

To all those who’ve loved me and continue to love me, thank you.  I am eager to embark on my newest journey.  As I pack my things into boxes and sort through the articles of my life, I am reminded of all the love and support that surrounds me daily.  I see pictures and cards and rocks and books and blankets and a sewn bear.  These are the material and I pack these things gently, preparing for a voyage yet to be realized.  Greater, of course, is the love, all the words I’ve shared and laughs and yes, even a few tears, it is the love that I jam into my suitcases, stuff into my carry-on and cram into boxes.  So much love, it’s everywhere.  I can stand anywhere at anytime and know it’s all there, every last kind thought, every last sweet embrace, every last wish for my happiness.  I am filled with love.  My life is rich because of the beautiful people who are a part of it.  I go forth with confidence, gratitude, humility and hope.  Thank you.  I love you. 

Last Day

Perhaps it all coincided with my final day of work.  Finally I would be leaving PTA, something I had dreamt about for nearly two years.  However, rather than feeling free, I felt heavy and at odds with myself.  Perhaps it was because my schedule was changing, there would no longer be a routine and therefore, as is the case with the breaking of any cycle, there would be a greater degree of uncertainty.  And while this was true, the greater sadness came in the missing.  I was going to miss working there and not just because I didn’t have a reliable schedule.  Of course, I didn’t want to say it out loud, to admit that PTA had some affect on me that was anything other than frustrating.  But yes, I was getting sentimental.    

It’s difficult to explain but fairly easy to understand.  I wish I could say I happily shed PTA like some hot and restrictive coat, but the fact was, while often times hot and restrictive, PTA had clothed me in a way.  It gave me something to do, reliably for ten hours (twelve if you count the commute) a day Monday through Thursday, I befriended many of my co-workers and even loved a few, it gave me perspective.  It was a big part of my life.  In a matter of ten hours, all that I worked at, all the certainty that came with the routine, the familiar jokes and comforting faces would be gone.  Yes, I will miss it.  Yes, I am happy for the experience.  Yes, I will never forget this place and I hold no ill feelings toward it or anyone who works there. 

 They say in death a person becomes more calm and accepting.  The hope is that you look back on your life with gratitude and look at the people who have affected your life with kindness.  I suppose making a big shift in your life is its own kind of end; you remember those things coming to an end with gratitude, remember people with kindness.  I am shocked at my reaction.  I am scared.  I want to leave and yet I want to hold onto so many things.  But that’s the thing about change: you can’t hold everything and everyone as it is and as they are because nothing is meant to stay, things must change, it’s a law that cannot be broken.  Nothing remains, not even ourselves.

I know I will have to make way for new adventures, new people, new tasks, new triumphs and frustrations and I am scared but I am also excited.  What does remain is my earnest gratitude. Thank you PTA for all that you’ve given me, lessons I’ve learned, people I’ve met, many beautiful skies to hold in my mind.  What a good journey it has been. 

Beach Rain

It had decided, quite suddenly, to rain.  There was nothing to do but wrap my towel around me and nestle into the sand.  The rain felt comforting.  I pulled the towel tight to my body and laid on my side curled up like a fetus.  I wanted to be born again so maybe I could sleep again.  Sleep soundly like I haven't in too long.  I didn’t want to open my eyes, though I could feel you looking at me.  What could I do?  There was and is nothing I can do that hasn’t already been done.  We’ve exhausted the resources and we’re still hungry.  I try not to think of you.  Try to find me some other food. 

We had changed as we continue to and in the brief shower I felt the pull toward symbolism, the drops on my face masking tears that had been running continuous for months; I felt a symbolism, a desire to call the rain savior and I felt oddly at peace.  The rain had come to take away all the everything that had been lingering on me from the moment I realized there was no changing some things, that “it is what it is” cannot be riled against no matter how you kick and scream.  At the end of this day and every other you will be you and I will be me. 

We are beautiful people.  In the rain its clear to see that we are so pulsing with life, so craving a union, a special tie that we both deserve.  We hold each other in revelry, in bliss, in love.  We hold each other prisoner.  And we are beautiful people with a magnificent infinity of emotion, love so thick it's palpable, so thick it pushes out the oxygen in the air so that when I get close to you I feel I can't breathe. 

 

The rain taps on my soul softly, "You are forever changed, forever bound to one another.  What that bond be called is really of no consequence", says the rain, "rather it is that you loved and continue to love. Such a bond will never be broken and will never be forgotten."

I smile and hold myself close.  I am thankful for all the love I have in my life.  Drops fall endlessly, whispering “love yourself, love yourself"

breath

You were telling a story about intuition and declarations

I had my head on your chest
listening to the story of your being.
There is a song in your breath
the inhale, deep and long
and tat, tat, tat of syllables
then the inhale, deep and long
tat, tat, tat about the vortex
I am in one
in you
that vortex
that beautiful, complicated vortex
drawn in like a breath, deep and long
and tat, tat, tat along your skin
I love you
is my exhale, I love you.

You were telling a story about intuition and declarations

Your lungs singing a song of life. 
I had my head on your chest
Amazed
something so simple
made me the happiest girl alive.   

in repose

the lions are in repose
in repose
in repose
I wish only my thoughts would lay so sweetly in grassy pastures
my thoughts that torment me
my thoughts that hunger
the lions are in repose
in repose
in repose
but I am awake
without solace
without a soft bed
without.

the lions are sleeping
all small and handsome
in some chamber
called "deep"

a clamor
and the difficulty of
getting out
and getting through
and getting under
under a something
but what?

my spirit's been shot
it is in repose
laying still in muddy water
stirring no silt
calling out for a discussion
of the most painful of
primitive parts
lion's teeth
the higher mind
love
the higher art
love
the higher death?
love?
is it loneliness
the thought of being left behind
by love
what is worse?

partridge

I push on keys
in hopes of releasing
some hard spots in me
grown over and
lined with duff
but still as tough
as a new bone
torn from skin
of an adult
partridge.

who could tell you
what this all means
and why my hard spots
are in heart
instead of knees
grown over
by some sort of need
to protect
or stay protected.

but I've always been
the slim imagination
of a bird
never quite in flight
but dreaming
of a tall tree to squat in
for life.

a partridge in a bush
without a branch to leap from
without nest to nestle
without a song to sing.
just hard spots
like calcium deposits
in all the wrong banks
along all the wrong banks
of rivers that
cannot and will not yield
for a partridge.
a partridge that wanted to trade its wings
for a bit bread and a loving coo
a loving coo
three notes long
whispered for eternity.

but a bird is a bird is a bird
and so it must continue
onward, if not upward
in search of what
it does not know
but something
inside that makes a partridge
move, move, move
ever toward a new roost
a better roost
above ground
beside a river
but not so near that it'll get swept up
above ground
in a tree
in some distant place
in some foreign world too new
for a partridge to even dream.

she follows the sun.

ship-log 1

I hear music in the clack clack of keys
i'm writing this publically because i'm re-introducing
or perhaps returning
from a journey
in a land of many splendid things
a land of waterfalls and beauty
and deep dark secrets of
need. 
welcome me. 
I welcome me.

we are strangers to ourselves
you and me, me and me, this you outside of me
that I have for so long held beneath deck,
in some deep sea trench
because it didn't fit. 
and now i'm feeling quite alone
having severed my surrogate self
that I had at some unreality believed
to be an intricate, important, essential, intimate, intrinsic self. 
but this was really you. 
you not me.  you.

the world is not ending though I think sometimes that perhaps it all unravels at 27.  how silly.  how very 27 of me. 

there is so much to the story,
so many lessons, lessons to lasso letting go. 
how do you hold onto the letting go? 
go away from me
but stay always. 
it's a jar without a lid trying to preserve something transient.

she looks at the coffee cup you gave her for Christmas.  It feels out of place here on her desk.  It should be on some wooden table over looking a forest of snow covered pines.  she sees into the future, snow covered pines, she sees you in a coffee cup with snow covered pines, the lines of you metaphoric because you are a memory.  a memory.  a permanent piece of ceramic incarnation, a tale of love and woe.  a tale of sorrow and such sweet harmony, such sweet honey and milk and sugar and caffeine, a feverish, fiery, glowing revelry.  

The truth is I'm mourning.  Yes, mourning.  I miss me.  More than I miss you.  That's a truth.  That's a truth.  Where is my mooring?  Where is my morning star?  I know I left it here somewhere.    

duration: my coffee is gone.  duration: i must walk along to work.  to work and walk and talk some words that mean nothing to me really.  but i get along, along like the crunch, crunch of snow underfoot.  i have to learn to write again.  the muscles are weak with disuse.  faccid.  tired.  the coffee barely lingers behind my eyes, not even a smokey reminence that it ever existed. 

swim

i've been living quite within myself.  wading in the pleasure centers in my brain, between fiction and non-fiction.  i see the waves coming towards me.  i'm in a low, squat beach chair, my rear end centimeters from the sand.  i'm watching whales and you.  both mysterious and guarded, beautiful and incomprehensible.  i catch a tail sinking back into the deep.  i make up what the body must look like.  make it up from images i've seen on tv and drawings in books.  it is, i proclaim, a whale.  and so it will be from now into the future as i have recorded it, as i have named it, as i have laid claim and tightened down on it.  forever, this story in my head. 

i've sent out a message on the rolling seas.  whales.  and so many things.  bigger than me. 

(it feels good to clack, clack on the keys again.  i warn myself to not make any grandiose statements such as, "i'm back, i'm writing again".  writing doesn't like being called.  writing is the most beautiful of dancers that really doesn't want the audience until it's performance is complete and the images and phrases are echoes left by feet already treading upon new landscapes.

it's tuesday morning.  my breakfast consists of peanut butter toast and coffee.)

the waves peak like so many hungry mouths, all sky bound, all reaching for a distant star with their wants and dreams.  i see reflected in these open chasms, the shouts of so many thoughts carried from distant shores, rolling along, one self affirming message after another, all proclaiming, "I am here!"  and so we are, remarkably here.  i walk to the water's edge and attempt to catch a falling wave, to cup the water softly to my ear, to hear it's cry, to know the news from some other time zone.  but water drains quickly from my eager palms.  i scoop and scoop like a child playing and each hand full falls away from me.  i am bid to immerse myself.  immerse myself in the hollering of the world.  i walk back to my beach chair and watch whales.  the water's too rough to swim.

i send out a message with the tide.  there are so many things i don't understand.  i look up at the clouds, mouth open and eyes closed: why. 

nonsensical lines. the writing practice.

I have been on a wondrous voyage that has kept me from writing to you.  Now I find myself stricken by some sad common illness and my prancing about has come to a halt.  As it should, for now is the time to recount the months since your last letter.  Erving has been a doll, having three pups of his own to care for he has somehow found space in his heart and room on his financial teat to support me.  I’ve met a young man named Clyde and while I don’t much like the male species and quite truthfully am disgusted by testicles, Clyde and Erving have shown me that not all males are created equal.  Ah, but perhaps I’m jumping ahead.  Such a little field mouse I am.  Let me start at the beginning of things.

                I came to these dreary neck of the woods to do one thing: find the elixir of life.  Yes how very common place you might say, how very prosaic but I have never been one for imagination and rather merely find myself the owner of a body in a body of recycled tales.  That was of course until I met a peculiar mushroom named “Wang-Fun”.  Fear not, I did not consume this little fellow as you might assume because how else would I deduce a name such as “Wang-Fun” but truthfully it was written as plainly as I write to you.  These letters, “Wang-Fun” were painted on a little sign beside the most blue of objects.  Fearful of anything foreign, especially Asian, I thought not to approach Wang-Fun.  And yet there was a certain draw, a certain need even to converse with this strange little creature.  I did as any sane mouse would and logged down the details of Wang-Fun’s location and returned to my office to mull over my peculiar stirrings.  As I sat upon my rubble mound called “thinking chair” I pondered.  Clyde was soon about and questioning me with his one good eye.  I try not to stare directly at him because I think he feels inadequate having only one eye.  Mostly however, I fear his blue, blue eye is too big, and deep and infinite for a small mind like me.  I only came for the elixir of life not the purpose of it. 

“What now you be pondering?” he asked gruffly

“A blue mushroom called Wang-Fun”

“Wang-Fun at the bottom of the hill?  Wang-Fun blue radiant?”

“Yes”

“Hrm” he responded and laid himself down by my feet.  He started licking his paws.

“You know anything about him?”
“Everything”

I waited for him to elaborate but Clyde had clearly finished talking.  I prodded him, “What is everything?”

Clyde rolled his one eye, “You expect me to tell that to you in just one lifetime?  You’ve got a lot of patience to grow” he chuckled.

“I can’t get that mushroom off my mind”

“Join the club”

“What is it about Wang-Fun that makes me want to know him?”

“What is it about anything that makes us want to know everything?”

Clyde was getting heavy again.  I didn’t like when he got all heady, I felt out of my league, 10000 below.  A drowned mouse at the bottom of a milk bucket.