something I found in my notebook from awhile back

Dusk has fallen; the bright streaks of the sunset are fading into themselves, leaving behind the faint glow of an already forgotten today. We stumble over the sand, clumsy on the uneven ground, holding hands in a chain, a family. We walk past the smoldering of the campfires, the light and heat of the people telling jokes and strumming on their guitars, just being people.

We all somehow let go of each other's hands at the same time, and I stand at the water's edge and take in the ocean in front of me, an unending body of water that stretches off into the horizon. The tide comes in, leaving foam at my feet, a constant constancy, nature's pendulum, and I walk down the shoreline, in awe of this force and power of the ocean, hearing the chatter of the people as mere background noise as the roar of the ocean gets me from the inside out.

Shadows dance across the sand, and lights shine down the walk, strings of lights restaurant owners hung up to illuminate the outside, or just city lights. The breeze blows my hair across my face and I breathe in the fresh, salty air.

In that breath all the beauty of this place seems to hit me. I am frozen in time, and this is exactly when their voices sound across the shore.

It's time for us to leave.

And it all hits me then, or you know, as he says, "in terms of everything."

We're always leaving behind the things we love most.

It is so bittersweet, and he is so far away from me still.

I'm sprawled on one of the many couches in the basement, chain-writing key signatures on a 12-stave sheet of staff paper when they enter, two girls, wearing striped socks with slippers, and they turn their heads over their shoulders and ask, "Hey, do y'all mind if we play some Enya?"

There are so many things I could say, most of them going something along the lines of, how could I mind? Enya was my idol. Enya was a goddess. Enya was the familiarity of my childhood, of the memories I couldn't recall till I heard her music and it all flooded back to me, a wash of sound. 

I'd been in the car coming back from a ski trip with one of my friends and I was overloading him with Enya, and he told me sarcastically, "The lyrics are very creative," to which I asked, "What?" "They're the most repetitive thing I've ever heard, the same thing over and over" and I just looked at him. Because that was the magic of Enya, a ceaseless repetition that made the words spin over you in circles, pulled you into the music and warmth of an abstract vision made only of dreams. 

Enya was powerful, and spiritual, and showed me glimpses of stopping clocks and the thoughts of trees and the moonlight of the Caribbean ocean all through the medium of sound. She was genius. 

But you wouldn't say of any of those things to someone you've just met, so I said, "Of course not, I love Enya!" Understatement of the century. 

But really, it made my night. 

simple observations

The first time I saw it, it was a withered thing left forgotten on the cobblestone in the stark, cold sunshine of the early morning, and I wondered at its presence on the pathway, where it had no doubt been subjected to a large amount of foot traffic.

Of course it was only a flower, and most people don't think about flowers having a story, even if they'd noticed its discarded shape in the first place.

But it was there the second day, maybe twenty feet from where it'd been before, a knarled, discolored thing that I noticed fleetingly as I hurriedly chained my bike to the rails.

It wasn't there on the third day, or if it was, I can't say that I saw it.

through a certain shakiness of sleep

The room is dark and hot, but it is not the room that is hot, for the fans are running full-blast, and I am sweating.

I am once again on that brink of sleep, (as always seems the writing calls) but this time is different. This time I am on that brink because the lack of sleep has taken over and made the decision that I need rest, while the chemical pounding of my heart and my own unbalanced internal clock have determined otherwise.

So it could be called a dream, I guess, but maybe not. We are all four in a car, the four of us sitting hours before watching the telly on that lazy couch, but for some reason we're transported to a parking lot in a car, and we're trying to close all the doors. Three closed. And then there's a deflection where real and unreal meet; the car door begins closing, but then the door of the dark room rushes open and my caretaker enters to grab a pencil or book or whatever it is as I mentally fumble.

I sometimes wonder at the irony of time, and timing, and why things happen when they do.

words written last night

...and btw darling, we were right about red and happiness. I am learning that you need people to love. I already knew this...but people. Babes they are the key to the world.

You know that song by the Beatles? And it goes "all the lonely people"? I love it, but it's wrong. They're not lonely.

And babes? You know that letter I wrote you the other night? I was wrong. I didn't leave any of my soul there. It's all here.

STRANGER DANGER

The world is a big, scary place.

There's no denying it. Virtually everyone attests to this fact in one way or another,
at least every once in while.

So why have a blog?
And more specifically, why do I have a blog?

Isn't that making yourself more vulnerable?
Isn't putting your own words on the web
kind of like running naked through
a dirty alleyway in a big city
in the cold deadness of night?
In other words, just plain stupid?

No, it is not.

Words do not amount to contact information,
phone numbers, locations, social security
numbers.
Words cannot wholly define who you,
he, she, it is, or who I am.
Words can only try.

They all think they're beyond their years
when they say
you can't try, you can only succeed.
But here we meet it face-to-face,
and Memory speaks her testament.

How to define a person?
You can know someone your whole life
be their best and closest, dearest friend,
and still, you will not be able to define
exactly who they are.

And neither will they. I guess that's an
assumption - but with these turbulent,
swelling, instinctive feelings that
only make us human, how can
we possibly justify our every
darting thought?

And so the words really do
try.

You can't ever fully know me,
because I don't fully know myself.
Reading a blog only discloses
part of the mind,
and thus part of the person.
But you can try.
It's not as if there is no progress -
it's true
You will get closer and closer
with time
As with anything, really.

You just can't fully figure me out.

But that's a challenge.
Your first step, I assume, would be to
read my blog. ;)

P.S. God forbid you take that winking face the wrong way.
P.P.S. I'm in a churn-out-the-writing mood tonight. Anyone else feel that way? (I ask this to the open air, of course. I mean, shouldn't we refer to the title of this post?) Ahha. Perchance I shall finish my physics in the morning...

I don't need an answer - I just need to ask

Why would you ask me now, after I've already made my decision?
What is there to change except my own mind?
And why is time always so inflexible
       everyone warring for my same two minutes
       which are by goodness sakes already taken three times over
       by three different sets of people?
Why is it impossible to find a compromise?
Does the flock, the herd, always win?
And whyyyyyyy
Why doesn't it matter except to me?
Why does he always win
though he cares only half as much? (if that?)
Why is the last time always the hardest?
But also the most beautiful?
Is that why it irks me so?
Why can't I accept the "If they don't want me,
I don't want them" mentality?

[Why can't it be easy?
Why can't it be doable?
Why do I have to bend over backwards trying to
make something work
that obviously doesn't want to work
in its own nature?]

Why?

Please don't ask me to come up with answers.
I'm not expecting answers from anyone.
I just need to ask the questions.

Fourfold by One

I sit cross-legged at my window, staring through the glass and into the night. The houses are ghosts, eerily lit by the warm glow of the streetlamps. The light overflows from its source, spilling onto the street, giving it a depthless effect. The unforgiving wood of the wall behind me digs into the side of my back. I sense my own shadow in the transparency of the window. The lit-up screen of my monitor is now a bright reflection hanging from the modest leaves of our tree in the front yard.

I follow the light back to my actual monitor with my eyes, then get up and relocate to my battered desk chair. The music, so familiar, soothing, and beautiful, fills my ears. I breathe through my nose and sense the freshness of the air after the rain, although my allergies have completely masked my perception of scent. The fluorescence of the screen gives an electric look to the room.

From the door the lit computer monitor stands out against the cool ocean hues of the walls, and the street lamps’ illumination stands out beyond my bedroom windows. The song is heartbreaking, now, and the lilt of Marketa Irglova’s voice is hauntingly melancholy but still beautiful. The floor is only half-visible under the mess of discarded clothes and papers. My dog lies under the glass desk and rests with her ears perked up. She is in no doubt listening to the music.

I lie sideways on the ground, resting my head gently on my dearest sister dog Penny, her soft fur against my cheek. This perspective is different than all other vantages. The song is now Coldplay, and we are six inches away from the speakers, and it is as if we are inside the music. My head rises and falls with the slight movement of Penny’s chest as she breathes steadily, in and out. The sound of her breathing becomes the beating of her heart. I am on the brink of dreams. The room fades into darkness as my monitor powers off, and the music continues as we fall asleep.

Zzzzzzzzzz

Electric
pulsing
blinking
psychedelic
optics
reflection
light
trippy
waves
cloud
mist
iridescent
caffeinated
haze.

It's there but it's not;
It's not but there

Nowhere
Everywhere

Like the river
racing
across an empty

v o i d.

I must say
today
I don't have a brain.

ring-a-ling

I don't know you,
    and you certainly don't know me
but somehow there's a sense of familiarity
in the crackling of the phone line
over the 500-mile distance.

There's only one thing
that could bring us together on this April evening
only one thing
and as of now it's perhaps more effective
in these circumstances
than I ever could have imagined.

I invite you to extract your guess from
the cool night air - it by no means
will be hard to name.

It's the one word that encapsulates them all;
it is not vague;
and it should never be underestimated.

Music.
I tell you, my friend, it is music.

35mm polaroid

The room is decrepit, the skeleton of what it once was. The walls are crumbling, charred marks running from the ceiling to floor, sheetrock gaping from its burned innards. The floor is covered in a thin sheet of shattered glass which catches the faint light, and there is a fragility to this light so that it could not be called real illumination. The wall is a marred mirror opposite the ruin of the staircase, and in its warped contours an image lingers in perfect clarity: a girl with flaxen hair tucked behind her ears, balanced on her toes, holding her arms both backward and forward with a still precision countered only by the stillness of the room, melting into sateen that discloses the grace of her lithe figure.

She sits in the rubble and watches her own reflection from her wheelchair.

hopefully, the end of a lapse

My dearest Courtney,

Thank you for today - for the few hours in a cramped sunlit space where your laugh made it impossible to actually feel cramped. Thank you for sharing with me the music on the air, plastic-knife batons, psycho, flannel shirts, dresses, shoes, cell-phones, again, your laugh, and dreams, the present abstraction of our very futures. Two o'clock on a Sunday; orchestra rehearsal; such a beautiful day spent in such a simple way.
But in all truthfulness, I would like to thank you for your inquiry on the matter of fact none other than my writing. In doing so you have in all hope set this rusty pendulum back into motion - something much needed and certainly not overlooked.
Pretty sure I've told you before, but you're kind of amazing.

Love
Christine

St. Patty

rain rain rain rain
the shamrocks
must be waterlogged
on this passionately gray
St. Patty's day.

It's ceaseless
this torrential downpour
on the rooftops drumming

oh, to have recorded the sound of rain if only for a minute
in my memory...

the earth is soaked
but most definitely green
as literally green as attired me

the roast is ready
and if you squint
you can see the leprechauns out dancing
in the middle of the street...

My favorite day of the year.

don't ask why it's that
may be the green
(an excuse to dress
in its every shade)
pinching (who doesn't
like pinching, besides
the one getting pinched?)
rainbows (or the end of
them, anyway)
and four-leaf clovers
(the best luck around)
or perchance it's that my blood
is Irish;
but however
whenever
whatever why,
my spirits today could travel high
up and up to light the sky.

eyelashes

the sound of rain in present memory
the crackle of the radio
and the wavering of streaming thought
hum of an engine
splashing through puddles
warm exchanges
the fist punches
a downpour through glass
the first pad thai
and two loves,
the first unexpected but the latter
already held close and dear
to the heart.
but then also
the burn to those
who are perfectly content
in flaunting what to me
is an absence, while to them
most easily and readily accessible,
although they would never know
they were doing so;
and of course the glares
of those whose eyes cannot
withstand the fluorescent lights;
and those who are
 distasteful (there really is no
other word to describe it);
and most devastating of all
the cold passivity of time
and closeness
in her queenship's acquaintance
(although it should really be
in her regard, as reactions
can of times be bitter.)

No, I should brush it away,
like a clod of mascera off my lashes
but really and truly
I sometimes lose faith in humanity.

Impromptu Visit. Well, I wish

the streetlamp
is the only illumination in the night.
Just a shadow
and it's cold
and I shiver
as the leaf crunches underfoot
which really
shouldn't be there at all.
I jerk head around
but there is no one
just the stillness
and the faint flicker of wind
and streetlamp
and shadow
and I see the window.
two steps ahead and I
am there
knocking ever so quiet
pressing face to the
cold windowpane
eyes meeting the sight of
a bleary-eyed boy
yes, my dear brother
suited up in flannels
Happy Birthday
I whisper through the glass