when

When it's very cold outside 

but warm inside

and I'm a little bit sad

but safe. 

That's my favorite part of living.

waves

did that happen?

did I almost drown in the ocean,

unaware that I was at risk

until the lifeguard was swimming toward me?

do all of the contents of your life feel more and more like this as you get older?  like a story that happened to someone else.  like a scene from a movie, remembered hazily?  near death experiences remembered apatheicaly through a fog. 

where does it go- 

the feeling of living?

dear diary

Sometimes when I'm writing something,

a letter or a text or a post or a newsletter that only like 10 people read,

I think "what if something happened to me and these are the last words that people would scrutinize and dwell on, reading them over and mining for great meaning in every possible symbol and sign?"

Then I remember that my mom, after watching Ladybird with me, didn't see us there at all.  Instead, the whole thing reminded her of her and grandma.  Missing the point entirely.  

(or did she?  It hardly matters.  I can still feel my quiet, resigned disappointment at her reaction- twisted like a dull knife)

I guess the point is, there's no guarantee that anyone in this life will actually understand you.  Not even if you share blood or a roof or trauma or years.  

Sometimes- most times- you're just writing for yourself.  

stop not

What if, instead of becoming paralyzed whenever I think of starting to write more again, what if I just stop not writing?  For some of the most important years of my life, I couldn't help but document.  The need hasn't gone anywhere.  It's been channeled and diffused, but I still feel compelled to slow living down in order to look at it and mold it... to see it instead of just experiencing it.  What if I got myself a little notebook?  The physicality of those little notebooks might have been the link that kept me red blood alive.  

When I considered the disconnect between me and mom the other day (moments before drifting off, naturally), I felt a flash of fear that maybe she would give or throw away the crate of my journals and diaries that have been kept in her basemen for twenty years.  She's hinted at what a nuisance my storage has been for nearly as long... and has even given some of my old things away without asking.  Who's to say someday it wouldn't be my journals... in a fit of spite or daffiness or who knows what asinine reason there might be.  She believes in Qanon doctors, for chrissakes.  

At this moment, I feel more urgency to recover those journals more than I feel the need to build any bridge across the enormous gap that exists between the two alternate realities mom and I exist it.  

actually

 What do mothers and daughters talk about?

somehow

When it starts to announce itself

it is almost as if remembering an absence.

It's startling really.  Stops you like a head cold.  

oh yes, that's right-

there is no point 

An absolute miracle

and utterly meaningless

and we balance both, somehow.  

All this filling of days and 

charting of paths- 

visions-

finding people and letting them go-

giving things away only to wonder where they went-

and none of it able to withstand the force

of one natural disaster

or nasty cancer

or coincidental encounter with a violent lunatic.  

At the same time, 

the idea of its going-

that there is only one of every day 

and that there are only so many days to experience at all.

It's enough to celebrate and enough to mourn,

enough to feel something-

even to imagine

a point or a choice.

depressed or devastated?

what day is today?

subtraction

sometimes I get angry all over again

even now

waking up in the middle of the night with the thought

*thousands of dollars*

like a heart gasp

the thought that the pattern happened more than once

the shame in generosity

the way holding someone else's hand meant I could never get ahead

the way the man who read my palm, voluntarily, at the corner store

knew and warmed me, even

and still

my heart is a calculator who will wake me up at night 

to tell me something isn't right 

years, even a decade, after the subtraction

spring

 There are these little flashes- 

some temporary vision of what enormous joy and dread it is to be human. 

A glimpse at your own capacity- 

or the crushing weight of clear scenes from paths you never took -

people you never became-

commitments never kept or made at all. 

And it is only a moment and at times even that feels too much.  

And then the intensity will lift, just as suddenly, and you'll have a hard time recalling what it was that had you on the verge of tears in the middle of the afternoon over a month ago.  

living

What is it like to be alive?

Left with impressions, mainly.

Staring out the window of a bus.  

The smell of laundry by the side of the house.

Grandma's hands, coloring in circles.

We encounter dozens of world views and philosophies throughout our life.  Most of us end up settling into the one we were raised with, or something somewhere in the neighborhood.  Defined, eventually, by the ways we stray and the ways we stay.

We spend the first third focused on our own personal and immediate dramas, unaware of a wider world, no thought to roots from which we'd sprung.  We spend our middles over thinking and fretting over everything- turning over awkward things spoken years ago and weighed down by some feeling of never quite being able to do enough.  Eventually we return to our small worlds again, concerned only with our own daily acts of living and surviving and remembering and forgetting.  

no ache no nothing

My god

How do any of us, actually?

There isn't time enough to 

Exist

Or to consider any of it adequately. 

Here we are.  Trudging forward

It flares up like a hemorrhoid now and then for years 

until finally, it's gone entirely.  

It is unfathomable. 

The need to have -

Gone

And arms feel light like wings,

Not empty.

why I'm crying today

Today I'm crying because I've never written a novel

and I likely won't start today.

What exactly am I grieving?

The loss of a potential that is still very much alive?

maybe the years have made me fearful

maybe the risk to try feels more intimidating somehow

maybe there is so much to grieve in the world

that this is just a very literal way to process

not knowing where to begin

endeavour

The Endeavour space capsule landed back on earth today

and I couldn't bring myself to care

and I couldn't stop crying.

I think I must have hit a depression bump, I tell him

and he looks at me sideways

and keeps chewing his food.

So here I am at the start of a new month

in a year that seems to be starting

to swallow me whole.

x

It seemed much easier,
then,
to spell out a thought and place it in the world.
Even in the midst of anguish or confusion, the visceral and new sense of disillusionment made expression all the more urgent and worthy and deserving of a space to spin or echo or simply exist.

Maybe that's the difference.

As much as the world seems entirely consumed by chaos, I no longer feel the poetic confusion of delusion propelling me.

Heaven and hell have collapsed and here we are... unsurprised and tired as we navigate new horrors.

weary query

when the sum total of lived experience results in
no expertise
only a curiosity that does not wane
a deep love and simultaneous repulsion toward humanity
a desire to continue wandered exploration
without qualification

it stings at the sides of my intellect and ego
to know that all I've done or imagine myself capable of doing
will not open a single door in sight

how to convey the quality of my humanity
my charisma
my tired and underused potential
in a cover letter or resume

certificates lapsed
degrees covered in dust

i do not want to play
these merit games
that feel entirely divorced
from pulsing hearts

much

the enormity of all that could be written
dulls my resolve

fear and disappointment

Things That People Buy When Preparing For The Worst:
toilet paper.  all of it.
cleaning supplies.  all but the organic shit.
pancake mix.
spaghetti fixings.
frozen pizza.

I wander from room to room and refresh my newsfeed every few minutes.

Several times a day I feel a huge swelling of sadness for the world,  I feel it in my chest and my eyes.  Little hellos of despair.  But the weight of it doesn't stay.  Yet.

Yesterday I encountered my upstairs neighbors at the grocery store where they loudly told me that this was all a conspiracy.  The "real" truth was that this was a way for the governments of the world to control their people.

The horror I felt then and the rage that followed when they sent me youtube links might be the worst pangs of despair yet.

I am so disappointed in humanity.

I don't know what I need in all this.

Very little, I think I'll learn soon enough.

We are all petulant children in the backseat asking "are we there yet? are we there yet?"
unready for the ride that we are on

and to what end.

still, I suppose

I came across the name of a former acquaintance today and it occurred to me with some surprise that in all these years I had forgotten about him, he had continued to exist.  He's continued to live out the same hours and days as I have, in some removed unknowable place in the world.  He has had heart swells and truly terrible days and humdrum commutes and mornings without alarms and delicious meals and hurried meals and heartache and loss and sour stomachs and good laughs.  He's aged.  He's forgotten people of his own.  This is a mere acquaintance, I'm talking, whose regular presence and then absence from my life was hardly registered.   And yet he remains out there, continuing.

"That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

ok.

But to what end?  Who even notices or cares?  Who is this play for and how is my small and ordinary life in any way a contribution toward something?  Though I do suspect that there's something honest just below the surface of this daily surviving, existence as a whole seems remarkably unimportant.  An unimportant miracle, you might say, given that our emotional spikes and delusions of grandeur demand some pizzazz.

But truly, we are here until we are not.  Even though our little lives do in fact impact everything, the grand total matters very little- not in the end and not even now, really.

Still, I suppose I am glad I am here.

finity

I could write about how perfect the air is here.  How I live on a mountain near the cloud line with a view next to god looking over the city.  How the waterway was lined with cars today full of seniors dressed to the nines, windows rolled down just taking in the day and the scene before them.  Cute dogs nearly outnumbered the people and not a turd to be seen.

but instead I'd like to write about how I had to borrow a pen from a person at a cafe today because, despite time and freedom, I somehow forgot one of my own.  In a hurry to return it, I came around a turn quickly and bumped a man's elbow, causing him to splash two hot, full cups of coffee all over the floor and the woman he was with.  In that instant the whole world knew what a clumsy, useless human being I am.  How, despite my efforts to organize, I am a chaotic force.  Hardly adult at all.  Apologizing profusely as the world continued to turn, I wondered if I could ever return to this perfectly located cafe again.

a quick spiral toward something inarticulate- wondering if I've already peaked- if there's anything ahead for me- fear of old age- changing shapes- I used to be able to focus for so long- what am I capable of that I'm not tapping into- is this laziness or rest- what matters really

Once I had regained perspective, I was shocked to recognize how violently inner workings can swing from hope to despair.  I suppose I've lived on that swing for most of my life, but for a little moment today, and lately, I was able to just sit near it and observe the changes.

I don't know where I am but I do know that it's happening too fast.

Not anchored nor floating.  Feeling like I'm getting away with something, but detached from a sense of reward.  Walking quickly and checking the talk, though no one is following me and I have nowhere to be.

Perhaps not the best time to begin Infinite Jest, but I do hear it calling.

probably

My life is a regular practice of trying to figure out what to pull closer and what to let go of.  Push away, even.

What I do know is that there's been a recent swelling of words that I cannot stop.  Something in me that's wiggling into form.  A hand trying to keep up with my thoughts.  Digital notes deciphered later.  I feel helpless to it.  Overcome.  Like something I have only to remain patient for but keeps me in an alert, restless state.

"I might be a writer someday," I tell him, testing the weight of the words against the hollow of my hope.

"Probably," he says, without hesitation.

So it is.

I wonder what it would mean for me to surrender to it entirely.  Am I ready?  Am I worthy?  Does anything I do mean anything, actually?  At what cost?

jesus don't want me for a sunbeam

The Giving Tree

In Vancouver, we stopped to look around near a one thousand year old tree in Stanley Park.  Visitors could walk beneath the hollowed area at the base of the historic tree.  I watched in horror as a grown man, with a woman and child in tow, took out a knife and began to carve into the underbelly of the tree.  I said nothing.

A few weeks later, my silence haunts me.  When I was young, I had no problem calling out adults decades older for acting unfairly or inappropriately.  I can think of a handful of occasions without effort. Why is it that I find myself so timid, now that they're my peers?

Rather than confront the man, I walked away so I wouldn't have to witness the abuse. 
Complicit. 

Was I afraid of how he would react?  Maybe.  But I think maybe the root of my inaction is more despair than fear.  So I somehow prevent the man from desecrating the tree...  There are a hundred ancient trees lining this road that his blade could find as easily.  Somewhere along the way I guess I started believing that people can't be changed.  That putting out fires exhausts the water-thrower and doesn't save the forest. 

So maybe my saying something or simply asking him what he was doing might have planted a seed of thought or understanding in him that would eventually lend itself to seeing the world differently. 

So what.

By 2050 the global climate will inevitably have increased by a degree despite our half-ass efforts. 

Why should I write a poem if I am going to die?

And yet, tonight on my walk,

I carried some weight

of silent complicity.

Lessons I'm Still Unlearning

In my first years of college I was home for winter break, looking through a box of high school letters and photos.  I was newly Christian at the time, and looked at my "old life" with curious speculation.  I don't remember what prompted the advice, but my mom suggested I just get rid the pictures of my on-again-off-again high school boyfriend and I.  What was the point of keeping them around, anyway?  Besides, what if someday they brought pain or discomfort to my future husband?  Easier to just throw them out. 

I woke up the other night suddenly with the memory of a small lock diary in my mind.  The diary that contained the narrative of some of my first experiences with men.  Thoughts and feelings and lists.  Aches and resolve.  Glimpses into my forming heart.  Now just nebulous mysteries, really; it did not survive the cut.  Those sixteen-seventeen year old words were thrown out, along with piles of pictures, in a sanctimonious act of victory over a shameful pass.  A washing away.  A making clean.

What a perfect symbolic scene that was.  My mom, teaching me to sacrifice myself to protect the potential fears and insecurities of a yet unknown future man in my life.  Trading my own history and memories for the comfort of the other.  Stand by your man to the erasure of your own identity.  I was learning.

21 Days

The truly terrible cacophony of smells and noises.
You try finishing your dinner with someone across the curtain shitting the bed.
Someone in the hallway on the phone, crying.  "There's nothing else they can do for her."
That was the third floor.

On the seventh floor, a man with green socks gets to walk laps around the hall all day.  There's the obese man.  The young man.  Nurse Joan with a beard and venom toward Hillary Clinton.  Chatty nurses.  The nurses who zone out to your TV for awhile without really saying a word.  Packs of visitors who travel in a cloud of stale cigarette smells.  An endless ricochet of beeping IVs.  The neighbor needs help going to the bathroom for the fifteenth time since I've been there.  Wants to tell the nurse a joke.

There's a look of desperation on everyone's faces, and not just here.  On the highways too.  No one's seen the sun in months.  Not really.  It's just a hurried shuffle from vent to vent under layers and layers.  It takes a toll.  It hasn't even been a terrible winter but there is an urgent lean toward Spring.

I feel like this is doing something to me.

I'm here and there's nothing I can do except be here now.  Minutes and hours indistinguishable.  Surprised to see it's still daylight out of the windows by the elevator.  There nothing more to do except be here and that is enough for now.  But there's the very real knowing that I can't stay.  I cannot.  A matter of self preservation.  96 Westbound takes me to 19 or 23 again and the highway is an endless tongue lapping up depression, bare tree limbs on both sides of the sky, reaching and never filling the space.  In gatherings around town all I see is a sea of camouflage and disease and addiction.  A town full of trauma.  Pale like there's no telling what's spirit and what's flesh.  Haunted, not holy.  I have no idea how I escaped all of this.

Seeing dad withered away to skin and bones is a confusing overlay of life leaps.  Like seeing him truly for the first time and like seeing him for the last time at the same time.  They're the kinds of visions you push all the way to the bottom.  The kind you stand on with all your weight so it cannot possibly surface.  The kind that has you crying driving up the parking ramp.  A3Fish.  A2Apple.  21 Days without a full night of sleep.  Without a shower.  Without any real idea of when.

What are we?  There is so much going on inside.

ash wednesday

Ash Wednesday.  Sitting on a bench outside the cathedral (historic but unimpressive). Even after Mardi Gras discourse I will assert with confidence that there is no God, not here not anywhere and I'm no worse off for knowing it.

There is a magic to it all. Some unnamed connection between the details of every day and one. Some pull toward a city or repulsion from. Energy and exhaustion. And yes, even love.

But let's not shout about knowing.
Let's not lean in to italicize the greatness of our truth.
Let's not give it names or dogmas or presume to know the facts of an abstract.
Let's not.
Why would we?

"Even with all we understand about the world, there are still things that cannot be explained by science."
Why presume humans are capable of understanding everything about everything? Isn't that the height of hubris? We humans, self-crowned animals that, evolutionary speaking, are barely a blip on the radar. Like America in regards to history. Barely an etch on the timeline but certain it must be the pinnacle. Vanity cloaked in virtue.  I will not.

Some people are not so much the marrying type. They just know, privately or together, until they don't or until forever.

The identity of an artist got all muddled in talk about instruments and motives and just knowing. Trying to measure different states of matter on a solid scale. The words words words kept on and kept clashing. And all along we mean the same thing. What matters most, motive or material?

Depends on where you live.

On the way home I watch 42 grams (42 grams being the supposed weight of two souls yaddyaddy). Husband and wife team who give up everything to pursue their dream and achieve wild success in the Michelin world of art. What emotion! Passion! Purpose and meaning!

A closing black screen noted their divorce less than two years later.

When asked recently to name a current obsession, I came up blank. Truly blank.
You know, I quite prefer it.

feverish

Five hours into her hospital stay, she begins to run a fever.  Ice packs come out.  Two more bags drip fluid.

It's funny how much effort goes into avoiding the fragility of it all.  They talk about starting her on antibiotics.  "That doesn't sound good," she says softly, but goes no further.

Funny how often we live with that terror in the room.  When is a sign a sign?  What is normal about any feeling at all?  The unthinkable stretch between 0 and 10.  When the baby is born, at last, isn't that only the beginning?