he doesn't always smell good, but the mystery that i haven't solved is how i always love how he smells

note to ask her:
what are things you cry about?

my friend asked me what I was like in Kindergarten. I told him I was very solitary, super quiet.

And when I was a teenager, I slept a lot.

Maybe I used up all of that. Maybe that's now I can't be alone, and I can no longer sleep.

Off we go, more run than care, more dance—
If a polka could be done not in a room but straight

Ahead, into the beautiful distance, the booming
Sound of the phonograph weakening, but our legs

Getting stronger with their bounding practice:
This day, that feeling, drunkenness

Born of indecision, lack of focus, but everything
Forgiven: Today is a day exposed for what it is,


- alberto rios

notes:

- i was talking about having been sad for the past few days, and she said that every month if she hasn't been both happy and sad, it is an incomplete month. because if you're not sad, it means you're not stretching yourself, if you don't fall, you're just not trying hard enough. sadness isn't negative.
- creating
- giving yourself away
- this is about my insecurity, it's not real, it's not based on anything real

it's hard to be an island


"just because the process doesn't yield a product doesn't mean that the process isn't valuable"

"I loved to dance because I was scared to speak. When I was moving, I could feel."

-Pina Bausch, on dancing as a child.

sometimes i am convinced more than ever that when you close your eyes, you close more to me than your eyes.

he asked me if i thought i wanted us to be together because i idealized our relationship.

i think about this often, because missing someone doesn't mean you should be with him.

i have experienced distance in the past. this is the kind of distance and i feel nothing for. the kind of distance that in fact creates emptiness. the kind of distance that makes me realize that the substance of a relationship was insubstantial.

but in him, i see the extraordinary, whether there is distance or lack of distance, the fact is that ordinary becomes the extraordinary, and isn't that what idealism is about, and does it in fact become fact instead of the ideal?

"Will it be worth it?"

If we have to ask, wasn't it already?

As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what
we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again
refuse to look—is our own
inconsequence.

-Carl Phillips

Today B. sat with me in my office all day. and it was so nice. He reminded me that the most important thing to be successful is the ability to fail.

--

On the way back from lunch, we passed Jones Hall and I commented about an advertisement for the Rachfest, which I surmised involved Rachmaninoff's music. He didn't know who that was, so I hummed what I believe is one of Rachmaninoff's most famous piano compositions. And I said that the composer probably had really big hands.

B. commented that I seemed to know something about a lot of different things, (I said mostly I know one small fact about many things, but not very much) and he asked me if I could name some things I don't know very much about.

1. Politics
2. History
3. Current Events
4. Cooking

That's as far as we got.

Then I added that I was raised not to fail, but I think that my biggest weakness in life is my fear of failing. So after he reminded me the importance of failing and being able to accept it, my goal this year is to stop being afraid of failing. This also means spending time on things I believe in, but that I may not succeed at. This also means not equating things that aren't actually failure, to failure. This also means trying to achieve perfection all the time.

I want to waste film. I want to eat cake even if it means I'm failing at eating healthy. I want to try and fail at catching a lot of footballs, but end up succeeding sometimes. I want to cook, even if it tastes terrible. I want to stop being embarrassed of the fat around my belly. I want to spend Saturday nights reading books or reviews of books deciding whether or not to read them, and not feel like I would be better off somewhere else. I want to sit down instead of dancing, and love that I am watching the art of dancing (and not regret that I am not dancing). I want to sing, even if I'm offkey. I want to give things away even if it means I won't have them anymore. I want to risk heartache for love that's worth it to me. I want to throw away things that I keep only because I'm afraid of letting them go. I want to try handstands and fall. I want to sweat. I want to stop being so afraid of my insomnia, because some of the greatest, most intelligent, most artistic people do not sleep. I want to be okay with missing some smaller things so that I can do grander things. I want to write things and just keep them as drafts. I want to be honest even if it means it'll hurt.

I was sitting close to a couch which wasn't mine nor yours. Maybe it was the bed that we would sleep on that night, two girls with our pajama party.

I sat on the edge of something. and I started crying, and crying.

And you reached over and touched my face. and smiled, your famous smile that pairs so well with your now-blonde famous pixie haircut. and you told me quietly, "You are so beautiful when you cry. I wish I were beautiful when I cry."

And I cried harder, because no one had ever told me I was beautiful when I cry. The only thing I had ever been told when I cry, was to stop crying.

—the wideness, the
foolish loving spaces

full of heart.

Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns

Streams and mountains never stay the same.




The space goes on.
But the wet black brush
tip drawn to a point,
lifts away.


from Finding the Space in the Heart, gary snyder

dear love,


you dream in the language of dodging bullets and artillery fire.
new, sexy diagnoses have been added to the lexicon on your behalf
(“charlie don’t surf,” has also been added to the lexicon on your behalf).

in this home that is not our home, we have mutually exiled each
other. i walk down your street in the rain, and i do not call you. i
walk in the opposite direction of where i know to find you. that we
do not speak is louder than bombs.

there are times that missing you is a matter of procedure. now is
not one of those times. there are times when missing you hurts. so
it comes to this, vying for geography. there is a prayer stuck in my
throat. douse me in gasoline, my love, and strike a match. let’s see
this prayer ignite to high heaven.

- barbara jane reyes

for two years this blog has been set to record Pacific time. i think about the Pacific a lot. the way it feels to be alone at the water, how it would feel to put my hand in the Puget Sound. whether my hair would tangle in the wind, and if i would comb it out with my fingers like i have a bad habit of doing while sitting on other people's new couches. how confusing it is to be cold while standing in front of the sand of a beach. how much my calves hurt after dancing in the sand. how tall the trees are. how bitter the wine must be. whether the air must taste like tears.



---



"That the thing about which I feel the most shame in life has to do with email and not just one email but many and specifically a great lack of email on my part, that making photo-collage seems to be a staving-off of another project maybe a sort of Pasttime Until but I don't know what comes after the Until, that often I am happier than I let anyone know which is saying a lot because I might be the happiest person most people know.

"That the same goes for my sadness which doesn't seem to have a bottom and doesn't render me passive but active and I have to regulate that part of myself with a steel chain mostly because it doesn't scare me mostly because it's the only power that matters and it's the only power we have."

- Traci Matlock

Isn't it interesting what we are afraid of doing?

Isn't it interesting that we will do many things what we are ordered to do, without question or doubt, but when our hearts command louder than the gunfire, we insist on ignoring them?

I suggest we raise a little hell.

we sat on the floor of the store, looking through books. she looked through books about organic living and i looked through books about happiness and how to love one another.

i sit in my bathrobe, watching the movie i promised myself i would never watch again.

i'm writing you a letter, and deciding not to send it.

i'm singing you a song, and you're looking at me with shocked eyes.

i'm throwing you a football, and you don't catch it.

when my hair falls in my face, you thoughtfully knead it away with your fingers.

i just woke up one day, and i knew what i was never sure of.

with you.

there are windchimes outside
the wind makes them chant your name

"There's the loss that accompanies knowing.
And then there's the loss that accompanies knowing only that you did not, could not or would not know."
- on t's blog

from a text message I just received from a friend:

"There are years that ask questions, and years that answer"

I'm sitting here thinking to myself, perhaps that hard part is knowing the difference.

Notes for the New Year:
- multiple exposures
- trees, branches, sunlight, fog. the sunlight after seemingless Endless rain over Christmas weekend
- the word for "swing" in Spanish is "el columpio"
- it gives me particular pleasure when i remember the words "ardilla" and "berenjena"
- light and spontaneity
- 20 minute walks during the evenings
- sometimes i write you a really serious email, and then i delete it thinking i should write you a funny email, and then i delete it thinking i should write you an email talking about the bee gees and/or blues traveler, and then i delete that one thinking i should write you an informative email, and then i delete that one thinking that i should write you an email asking you about politics. every day i conclude that i will be hard pressed to find anyone i want to write so much to. meanwhile, i know you think i already write volumes, but if you could only see the kingdoms i contain(!)
- creaky knees
- being alone
- starting anew doesn't mean being without you

“About dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me it's just the contrary. Often it's something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didn't bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.”

― Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago


fog. streetlamps. your posture. our certainty, clothed in absolute uncertainty.