on the christening drive

 

“I wish we were driving in a firework thunderstorm” {me}

“Congratulations” {he}

 

OhhhhhhhhhHHHhhhHhhh I’m breathing a new independence right now, I think I might be taking more than my fair share of the sky tonight.  And there’s stars out!  I smiled so much it hurt, but in a good way, and only for a second.  Somehow in the same frame of time I was flying off to fantasy-land, while being sobered by that frantic joy.  It was that kind of feeling where simple is right, gratitude is key, and companionship is the kicker.  There was this tickle of curiosity and satisfaction just for being in the place I was in, at the time that it was.  There were a lot of pure moments on that drive.. 

frames.

“The way we see other people is usually the way we see ourselves. If we have made peace with our flawed humanity and embraced our ragamuffin identity, we are able to tolerate in others what was previously unacceptable in ourselves.” –b.manning

-after reading this, I realized- damn. I’ve got some work to do in both respects. The source of value we hold for ourselves, and the way we treat others and perceive their value- these are the separate but layered frames that ask how seriously we’ve taken life, and then go further to dictate the answer.

apricot contentment

Right now it’s lovely you see because in this exact moment I don’t care for makeup, or blow-dried hair, or busy agendas, or having some place to be. 

I only want my candle burning that smells like spiced apricots, and the playlist I made precisely for moods like this.  And for my hands to write, and create.  I’m so grateful for those.  I shouldn’t let a day go by without being grateful for my hands and eyes.  And actually, it’s such a shame I don’t use them well more often. I use them all the live-long-day.. but all too often in such futile and narcissistic routines..

PRINT, CUT, MOVE AROUND, JOIN TOGETHER, REARRANGE, WRITE MORE BY HAND. THIS IS HOW I CREATE.

>a note I scribbled to myself one day as I was frustrated typing on the computer. It felt impersonal, unnatural, and so forced. I still felt like I wanted to get something on the screen, but then I realized I’d rather get something down on paper. So for me what works is writing words then cutting them apart and rearranging them, letting me visualize connections and transitions- the flow of my thoughts. the flow of language in fact, becoming something physical i can hold and move and make. mmm this method naturalizes the creative process for me rather than forcing myself to sit down clean and cold at a keyboard, sinking me into my own wallowing attempt to write a bit of magic that became nothing more than obligatory and lackluster..

--yes this works for me. it moves me forward.

{And james, please keep reminding me that scrappy is exquisite and that unpolished can be even more striking than the refined.}

Learn, but hold on loosely..

I woke up, looked in the mirror, and did it again.

Took a sip of coffee, did it again.

Putting on my shirt, stepping into some too-tall shoes, doing it again.

Yes I know, I already know this is a waste, please don’t think I’m unaware. It’s just that it’s harder than I can say to just stop something so addicting and creepily comforting, cold turkey. In those moments that are dangerous, the ones that teeter totter between settling for contented, comfortable self depracation - and decisive confidence.. in those moments i try to remind myself that I simply don’t have the time. (or i shouldn't give it time). I have got things much more eternal to get to, thank you. Be on your way, there’s nothing for you here.

Its like I’ve been this all-too-hospitable caretaker, in fact a protector, of my insecurity. But I know I have real guests to attend to, productive parts of my life throwing pebbles at my window for attention, while poisonous insecurity dressed up as a helpful friend, is uncovered as nothing but a snarled and hurtful weight in me.

I won’t call them purposeless though. Struggles are anything but purposeless, I’ll stand by that. There just comes a point where it is most certainly time to move on and away from them. In a way, these things we wrestle with, that we’ve clung to forever it seems, have been a close companion. No doubt they served to teach us things we’d never know otherwise. But as with all good things, we have to be able to let go of the thorns in our sides that we’ve ironically come to hold so so dear.

snippet

 

It’s night now, it got darker earlier than I wanted, t’s been doing that more and more.  And I’ve been letting mediocrity come too close lately.  Not in the routine of schedule, but in routine of thought. I’m getting lazy on my ideas. It’s a sad and wasteful thing.. for me, it’s spending countless hours crafting these intricate plans to paint more color into my life, and then just waiting and staring at the paints until they dry up, so I can say “ah welp, guess it’s too late now..”

 

I find myself swimming in all these unfinished or un-started projects and un-actualized ideas. Oh the sting!  ‘...So go, do.’ (I try to urge myself to get a move-on) (it often fails)

 

But I did have this moment, it was a sudden kind of thing while we were at Denny’s [and by the way this was a particularly juicy episode] and as we talk about our plans and ideas that make eyes sparkle, I was so stricken by the realization that we can, in fact, be the stories that we so desperately want to write into existence.  The ambition we draft into words and poems and stories may just as well be made real through our trips. and talks. and tears..

skinny love.

There was this song playing yesterday when we were in the car. It’s one of those that always ends too soon.. the minor chords make me melt just in themselves, the lyrics ring harshly the truth of a painful love. I don’t know music in a technical sense, but I could describe this part in the song where it shifts from a patient and pensive sadness, to a more raw and bold sadness that’s dying to speak itself out of existence. It’s this part that makes me double over with feeling.. you can hear the singer wincing through his words, expelling breath just to get out the next word of truth to himself.

It’s somewhere around this point in the song that I said, ‘man, there are those parts in songs, ya know? where you feel it so much and so deep that you need more.. yet it’s so good that I couldn’t ask it to deliver any more to my audible satisfaction. It’s like I want more of it, beyond music. I wish it could take me into its world so I could touch its sinking sadness the way I hear its sadness. And so I could see it writhing the way I hear it writhing. I’m thinking that the layers of this music have just got to be able to take me deeper than a song..

But then, maybe that’s the beauty and real power of music- it creates a desire to expand sensation beyond the ears.. it leads to a place of experience beyond what the song delivers literally- chords and words. It’s taken one medium of expression, and I- one listener at the least- am receiving that expression outside the medium in which it was dealt. I say that I ‘hear the singer wincing;’ I’m hearing something that’s visual. There exists this translation of the senses where they begin to melt into each other, it deepens the process of feeling. And I do truly feel it, but I struggle to find words that can describe the feeling I get when his hands trickle down the guitar strings and the chords imply on his behalf, 'between you and me, you have ceased to love, but I never will.'

I’ve never known heartbreak like that firsthand, but I’m trying to describe the sensation in my chest when I imagine his. It’s similar to the feeling immediately after you hear something tragic or devastating.. that kind of somber shock. It’s something to me like a quieted scream, a radiating sense of reality. Not as blatant as a vibration, but more active than an emotion. It’s a rush of energy, that somehow is anything but energizing.. it’s the most draining of energies. Maybe this sensation is actually the felt translation from emotion to physical experience. It typically forces me to draw a deeper breath, or else it would be too easy to choke on the quiet pain.

I’m realizing this is starting to sound awful; but although I may not be successfully describing it, the experience isn’t actually awful or ugly, not in the slightest. Though tinged with pain and heartache, this sensation brings the overwhelming understanding that this, this is a moment of real life. This means, if nothing else, that I have participated in life with another. That I have been present, I must have given of myself enough to create a void that was then filled with some part of another being.. and although it’s now left an emptiness that hurts and hurts and hurts- it means I participated. I gave some and I received some, and that means I have, as John Berger would say, ‘increased my capacity to be human.’ This is not a given, it’s not as easy to do as it is basic to describe, and it’s not always joyful. This give and take, it doesn’t always feel effervescent and exploding with gratitude for the reality of existence. Quite often, it feels like shit. But what I mean to say is that the effervescence and gratitude are not all that life should aim for. Maybe we shouldn’t strive just for the good and sparkling feelings of joy, but also to find satisfaction in the experience of pain, for these affirm both sides of existence.

So above it all, above the temporality of shock, and beyond the sting of the start of heartbreak, it is a sensation that confirms- you have been present, you have let part of the outside in, and you have left a part of yourself on the table for another. And I do think, that in itself is a vast and stunning accomplishment.