Run fast enough and the world falls away. A lost
thought in between dreams and alarms turned to snooze.
A San Andreas fault in reality, but
I've watched the sands of my life falling through an hourglass
then turn back, a gravity and plate tectonic miracle.
The push and pull of taking action and receiving
no reaction; the land does not fade at the horizon
of each moment. I breathe and continue to exist.
So I'm rushing through the atmosphere, letting
the hourglass fall, forgetting time
and space. Gravity won't get my messages; maybe
I never called at all, never wrote a jot. Leave earth
to itself and its quaking tensions; was it a 2.1, an 8?
I'll never know, I'm in outer space.
Built a rocket and a shuttle. Used words and dreams and meta-
phors to fit the moldings, to mold a hinge. A door
into possibility is no door at all. Run fast enough
and the Earth falls away, her blue and green eye
sparkling in the black. The moon a mote of sand.
But it's not enough. Run fast enough and it's not
the correct application of pressure to the cornea, not
the right electric signal to the myocardium. Push
and pull, but the gravitational field of self
won't bend. I am alone in my house on a saturday morning,
listening to my heart beat. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and again.
Run fast enough, but I just got out of bed. I walk
into the kitchen, hold the hourglass; walk into the study, spin
the globe to find a future. Australia seems nice enough. But
my mind walks ahead, into the moment in the shower where
I cry because I'm missing. I turn my head to hear the sound.
The time it takes to leave the house and find myself again
is no velocity, but the speed of the sound
that rises over the songs of birds in the trees outside. If
I listen hard enough, the world falls away.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
chicadee in the airport
i walk out the gate, having landed safely. i call you on my phone and you answer. so reliable. i come down the escalator, sad that the stairs are blocked, and i cannot enter wildly, joyful. we hug and i know this is something that is important. i smile and see the same strange lightness that i feel in your expression, hear it in your voice. we leave the airport and listen to punk rock.
we stand on a mountain in the sky. inland empire, inbound lane. we sit on the warmth of your green car and i feel the steel beneath me, the warmth of you shivering beside me. i know you want to go, but i can see the stars. i can see the stars. i feel hope and firey enthusiasm to be breathing, to be here now. i can see the stars, and then we're in the car, leaving.
we are lying on the couch watching movies. we are wandering in a garden store, searching for plants. i want to leave you a garden to remember me by. to visit when you smoke, when you take the dog out, when you need to feel loved. we are sleeping in, and i am in love with the spare bed because it is twice the size of my bed at home, and it is spare. i am only a guest but i feel as large as life here. at home, i am only one of many, lost in the crowd.
we see a movie, we eat meals. i remember the warm conversations, i remember searching for thrift stores rabidly, as though i needed to buy souvenirs to stay breathing. we eat frozen yogurt at ridiculous hours; i always get fruit, sometimes with cookies. my favorite part is the meals where i make you food. i never realized that i love to cook for others, but only when they don't ask. i give with joyfulness, but only when it's unheeded.
i can't recount everything. memory bleeds and i see gray sweatshirted young men in the airport, traveling in gaggles of testosterone. opposite gender, just as jerseyed, sitting on the floor or in the plane. talking loudly, no sense of self, only a sense of selfish need. i see the bird in the airport for a moment; i want to get a blended coffee drink but i have to repack my luggage. i almost cry and then it is there.
it doesn't sing, doesn't look at anything. just sits on a ledge, sings a note, and flies on.
it was a song, this week. a song that will resonate in my head for months, for years. i have to remember what i said, to myself as i lay awake the nights when i thought, when i remembered, who i am in this place that i call my home. life is what you make of it. and i will make into a song.
what you got? i got my little black dog
we stand on a mountain in the sky. inland empire, inbound lane. we sit on the warmth of your green car and i feel the steel beneath me, the warmth of you shivering beside me. i know you want to go, but i can see the stars. i can see the stars. i feel hope and firey enthusiasm to be breathing, to be here now. i can see the stars, and then we're in the car, leaving.
we are lying on the couch watching movies. we are wandering in a garden store, searching for plants. i want to leave you a garden to remember me by. to visit when you smoke, when you take the dog out, when you need to feel loved. we are sleeping in, and i am in love with the spare bed because it is twice the size of my bed at home, and it is spare. i am only a guest but i feel as large as life here. at home, i am only one of many, lost in the crowd.
we see a movie, we eat meals. i remember the warm conversations, i remember searching for thrift stores rabidly, as though i needed to buy souvenirs to stay breathing. we eat frozen yogurt at ridiculous hours; i always get fruit, sometimes with cookies. my favorite part is the meals where i make you food. i never realized that i love to cook for others, but only when they don't ask. i give with joyfulness, but only when it's unheeded.
i can't recount everything. memory bleeds and i see gray sweatshirted young men in the airport, traveling in gaggles of testosterone. opposite gender, just as jerseyed, sitting on the floor or in the plane. talking loudly, no sense of self, only a sense of selfish need. i see the bird in the airport for a moment; i want to get a blended coffee drink but i have to repack my luggage. i almost cry and then it is there.
it doesn't sing, doesn't look at anything. just sits on a ledge, sings a note, and flies on.
it was a song, this week. a song that will resonate in my head for months, for years. i have to remember what i said, to myself as i lay awake the nights when i thought, when i remembered, who i am in this place that i call my home. life is what you make of it. and i will make into a song.
what you got? i got my little black dog
Thursday, March 05, 2009
We are all made of stars colliding
We are all moving so fast, so far away from one another.
This hit me today. I began the day trying to do 2 hours of work in one, skipping a class, and then colliding with a class that is trouble, precisely becuase they know they're smart. They're so smart, though, they don't know that they do not know everything; thus the problem. We dealt with things, and I moved on to more ridiculous amounts of work followed by class and then, a glorious break via food and a movie with friends. Only I had a headache and followed the movie up with a two hour nap with a heating pad on my face.
And when I woke up, my mind was clear for the first time in ages. I could remember waking up to my parents, my siblings, to various roommates. I very clearly tasted evenings that are long gone, moments of joy impossible to quanitify (root beer in iced mugs with bare feet and a summer sunset, fighting over movies with sisters, a friendly smile). And I longed to feel connected again, to my family, to my friends, or to anything more than this room with its collage of troubles and dreams. This room that I fill with my life to prevent it all from slipping away somehow.
We go through each day, just trying to get by. We promise ourselves that we'll buckle down, we'll fix things, we'll get everything done in time, albeit without the bows and silver lining. And while we're busying ourselves, the life we mean to lead drifts away: talking in cafes with people you love, having vivid conversations with strangers, meeting and getting to know each other, finding and working for what you believe, discovering something simple and beautiful, tasting the day passing by. We are all so isolated, in our lives with our days mapped out like accountant's records. But we are each a chemical process that cannot be stopped: the division of cells or the cohesion of gas into stars. We are always becoming. I am always becoming. And I cannot hold these webs of being back; I cannot stop living my life no matter how hard I try.
These are the ones you love.
This hit me today. I began the day trying to do 2 hours of work in one, skipping a class, and then colliding with a class that is trouble, precisely becuase they know they're smart. They're so smart, though, they don't know that they do not know everything; thus the problem. We dealt with things, and I moved on to more ridiculous amounts of work followed by class and then, a glorious break via food and a movie with friends. Only I had a headache and followed the movie up with a two hour nap with a heating pad on my face.
And when I woke up, my mind was clear for the first time in ages. I could remember waking up to my parents, my siblings, to various roommates. I very clearly tasted evenings that are long gone, moments of joy impossible to quanitify (root beer in iced mugs with bare feet and a summer sunset, fighting over movies with sisters, a friendly smile). And I longed to feel connected again, to my family, to my friends, or to anything more than this room with its collage of troubles and dreams. This room that I fill with my life to prevent it all from slipping away somehow.
We go through each day, just trying to get by. We promise ourselves that we'll buckle down, we'll fix things, we'll get everything done in time, albeit without the bows and silver lining. And while we're busying ourselves, the life we mean to lead drifts away: talking in cafes with people you love, having vivid conversations with strangers, meeting and getting to know each other, finding and working for what you believe, discovering something simple and beautiful, tasting the day passing by. We are all so isolated, in our lives with our days mapped out like accountant's records. But we are each a chemical process that cannot be stopped: the division of cells or the cohesion of gas into stars. We are always becoming. I am always becoming. And I cannot hold these webs of being back; I cannot stop living my life no matter how hard I try.
These are the ones you love.