late night kerouac:


We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.



The world you see is just a movie in your mind.

Rocks dont see it.

Bless and sit down.

Forgive and forget.

Practice kindness all day to everybody

and you will realize you're already

in heaven now.

That's the story.

That's the message.

Nobody understands it,

nobody listens, they're

all running around like chickens with heads cut

off. I will try to teach it but it will

be in vain, s'why I'll

end up in a shack

praying and being

cool and singing

by my woodstove

making pancakes.

some new photos posted.
I.

with blueberries, somewhere in the middle of maine

“And in the end, we were all just humans…Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

there was a boat, and there were only small amounts of wind. the water was too cold and the air was barely salty enough, and we paused too long for lack of breeze.  but, well, nothing worth anything ever happens without some amounts of interruption. there was music at night, my toes against his thighs. We walked and stood in line, we ate pastries and pasta in the wrong but ever-so-right order. At night, the dark knight appeared as well as so many questions in our fingers. 

and, well, there was only one way to find out the answers.

II.

driving, autumn in vermont

it was more of an exhalation than an entire breath-

we were unprepared for it. but we folded it until it felt small in our hands and held it quietly in our mouths while exchanging questioning glances. 

it felt too late. but really, it was exactly how i had hoped. it was gripping, the humor and the exaltation. no roof, stars, impatient water, interminable road, infinities that felt familiar, unbearably tangled hair, warm hands, muddy dashboard. 

and blue. 

“If something anticipated arrives too late it finds us numb, wrung out from waiting, and we feel - nothing at all. The best things arrive on time.”

- Dorothy Gilman

“You will go on and meet someone else and I’ll just be a chapter in your tale, but for me, you were, you are and you always will be, the whole story.”

- Marian Keyes, The Other Side of the Story


“What a terrible mistake to let go of something wonderful for something real.”

- Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More Than You

she walked slowly without help, it wasn't the first time she had gotten up, but it definitely seemed novel. the handrail seemed to strain under her desperate clutch.

everything expanded with the heat, including the sweat, her hair, and the time she spent thinking about him at night. the wooden floors. the venetian blinds. nothing grew smaller, everything swelled. her eyes in the rain.

this is torrential, the battle between the present and the past. the future hovers quietly, without a sound mostly, but when she takes her finger out from the dam, the noise is deafening. rocks against the pavement, toes against the water

she eats microwaved broccoli, slowly, drinking tea and knowing everything (not knowing anything at all). white blankets cover her legs. the sunlight leaked slowly in from the doors.

the night before, she dreamed about him

his hands, the way the hair on the back of his neck feels, the color of the soles of his feet
that morning she woke up, counting her breaths, the heat expanding against her knees.

the only thing she spends money on these days is containers, bags, boxes. she places them strategically albeit haphazardly around the room, catching the heat, catching the memories, catching the past, catching the words he didn't write. she lied to herself. her silence lied for her. her silence expanded. she blamed the heat.
she tried hard to remember the emptiness. she held on. she has a bad habit of not letting go, so she had to replace him with something to hold onto but the emptier something is, the more yearning it has to be filled. it sucks something into it, and she watches helplessly as the vessel she kept hollow on purpose began to overflow. into the hundred bags around the room, onto the sagging floor, so many places, in every corner. it didn't care about darkness or light. it kept filling until

she opened her mouth

nothing else could happen. there was no immediate need.
yet she opened her eyes

it all poured into her body through places she had forgotten to close

summer was visible, and she made a plan.

the slats of the pool lounge chair made red marks on their thighs

her fingers found his lips.

it wasn't a love story, because the lukewarm champagne was too strong to offer any conclusive evidence.
it wasn't a love story, because the sunlight makes you dream things that are not there
it wasn't a love story, because skin on skin on skin will get you drunk, and you stay drunk, and you can't get enough
it wasn't a love story, because her fingers ran across places that she had already dreamt she'd touch

it wasn't a love story. and she never lies.

we talked about Trayvon. about the color orange. about generic brands. about logos. fluorescent lights. we prayed the way we pray. we did laundry. we touched our faces. we unraveled string. we made ravioli. we talked about NPR. we listened to NPR. we cleaned yoga mats. we wiped off tables. we wiped off sweat. our eyes overflowed. our wine glasses overflowed. we listened to reggae. we listened to jazz. we listened to Anthony Hamilton. we listened to R.Kelly. we drank sangria. we ate the fruit. we dug around the bottom of the cup to eat more fruit. we took sangria-soaked fruit to karaoke in to-go cups.  we stopped saying i love you. we started saying i love you. we spoke another language. we made up a language. we sang along to otis redding. we memorized the words to the songs in Aladdin. we went barefoot in your house. we ate off of paper plates. we ate off of fancy dinnerware. we talked about the color green. we sat by the water. we sat by the buildings. we sat in your car. we sat in mine. we fogged up the windows so that we could write messages on them. we breathed out. we breathed in later. we talked about the weather. you said, "pray for me." i studied the books on your bookshelf. you studied the books in my eyes. we ate peruvian food. we threw a football together. you let me put you on a canoe though you are scared of water. you carried me to your car when i couldn't walk anymore. you sprayed me with water first. i dumped water on you back. you took me to the rooftop. we danced there. you said you liked the color of my skin. i laughed because i didn't believe you. you said you liked my legs. i laughed because i did believe you then. we listened to Misuko Uchida play Schubert. we ate hash browns. you washed my hair. i touched yours. you let me sit on your white carpet. you showed me how to do a push-up. i showed you how to type fast. we met up at the park. we pretended not to know each other. we acted like we didn't want to get on the carousel. we ate cake instead. we went go-karting. you won. you beat me at pool. i beat you at nothing. we drank margaritas. we sweat. we talked about failure. you pretended to be Batman. you almost invited me to a wedding. i almost invited you to stay. you almost told me you missed me. we almost crossed each other's paths. we almost made ourselves cookies. you almost let me go. we were never sure of anything. we were certain of everything. we visited art museums. we listened to street musicians. we talked about the news. a year later we might have acted like we were strangers. we smiled still. we listened to the city. we almost won the race. we never began. when finally you said, "i'll meet you in chicago," i knew i'd never see you again.

i have all sorts of expletives that i want to say right now. though i might offend you... all i could think of when i read this was "jesus fucking christ"


Alberto Ruy-Sánchez's III. Concerning Time in Mogador

III. Concerning Time in Mogador

Nineteen

They say that according to the calculations of the most ancient African astronomers, the sun slows down when it passes over Mogador, lingering there more than any other place on the planet. That is why time is measured here at a leisurely pace and things in the world are perceived differently, with a certain throbbing intensity.

Twenty

Because time in Mogador passes differently under the sun than in the shade, and with even greater distinction from day to night, very infantile elders and extremely wise babies may cross our paths, as well as meticulous lovers who in the blink of an eye can cover an entire body with deep caresses and kisses that last a lifetime.

Twenty-one

Even the sand in the hourglass falls differently here, at times very quickly and at others more restrained. Each hourglass is believed to carry an internal wind that controls the shifting of its small dunes. And they say lovers with a penetratingly slow touch acquire and develop an inner wind that commands all their movements, setting, in particular, the cadence of their urgent caresses. 

Twenty-two

In Mogador, the heart is considered the most precise clock, or at least the most respected, not just for its consistency but for its ability to distinguish the profound nuances of each instant. It is a clock that falls in love, becomes frightened and aroused. Those skipped heartbeats become milestones of life shared by more than two and at times by all. The history of this city is measured by inflamed hearts. The rhythm of blood in the veins, what one poet called “the music of the body,” is a kind of national hymn for the Mogadorians. And making love with a very erratic heart is how it is best interpreted and sung, to such an extent that at official ceremonies foreigners are amazed to hear the most patriotic Mogadorians nearly moan their hymn with an enthusiasm more amorous than warlike.

Twenty-three

Another clock that is very respected in Mogador is the sea with her moving insistence. The waves rise and fall against the walls, sowing in the city a stubborn sensation of the constant rhythm that touches everything. Here, the moisture on the skin, on clothing, in corners, books, and even the air are a clear measure of time. In Mogador time is liquid. They say it calms thirst and eases the penetrations of lovers. And so the gesture of anointing a lover is often accompanied by a fluid smile and the saying, “To love, give time.”  

Twenty-four

The waves and tides are pendulums of that expansive clock of the sea. In Mogador, lovers sense that their city expands within that immense saline clock, and desire incites them to caress bellies and backs like an undulating swell. And they enter each other like tides obeying the moon, embracing with enthusiasm the magnetic allure of the stars. To love, here, is to measure time.

“Let me touch your time with my hands,” is a common but rather desperate saying, used to request a much longed for intimacy. But if someone here brashly tells a lover, “give me time,” it is considered an obvious act of pornography. For some it is insulting, while others find it very exciting. Time in Mogador leaves no one immune.

Twenty-five

Singing and dancing is yet another way to measure time in Mogador. The heart is a bass drum or, if you prefer, castanets hidden deep beneath the skin. It is a kind of ritual guitar: the gambri, with strings like arteries. Time dances in the veins of lovers and expands its volume when the uncontainable blood swells the sexual organs. And it beats and beats reinventing the rhythm of the clave (one, two, three, one-two). They dance to measure scattered time, to discover it in the body of others as in a broken mirror. And, if everything falls into place with a certain grace and finesse, the moment arrives when the time of one person is within the time of the other. And they say that a clock is within another clock when lovers are united and chime in unison to the beat of their hearts, as if dancing. But it is not advisable to coincide with absolute precision, absorbing the same fragment of time, for that is when time stops, like a heart stricken by a severe case of arrhythmia.

Twenty-six

Every day in the squares of Mogador, the story is told of a pair of clandestine lovers who began making love in an excessively rushed manner, beneath an old staircase in the marketplace, under the shadow of an ephemeral wall of flour sacks. And when, with haste and reluctance to part, the couple finished their “quickie,” more than twenty-seven years had past. Their respective spouses had remarried and their children had moved away. Unbeknownst to the lovers and without them ever being exposed, the flour that shielded them had become loaves of bread. “The inevitable happened,” says the storyteller of the Square of the Snail, “and it is not the first time this has happened in Mogador: the excessive impatience of those who desire burns the surface of time, which as everyone knows is as smooth as silk, and lovers fall into one of the abysses of the calendar. The same kind of abyss of time that always leads us to believe, whenever we are making love, that only our love is eternal.”

Twenty-seven

They say, with rhythmic insistence, that time in Mogador is another entrance to the body: an open and deep sex, a long good night, an appealing mystery. An apparition.

i.
the children of flight attendants, who leave at their whimsies

ii.
the way my mother puts cubes of watermelon in those plastic buckets that chinese restaurants give you when you order soup for take out

iii.
waking up once at 1am, another time at 3:32am, and finally again at 6:59am. each time waking up in a panic, thinking of you.

iv.
hoping someone else is as excited as i am to live on a sailboat for a few nights. no rhyme or reason, no hope even that it will cure me. just being on the water is enough.

v.
how much i love bananas. my mother calls them the lazy girl's fruit. and damn is she right. i love just peeling it open and the mushy sweetness and the perfect number of spots, and the way the black grows on the yellow peel and it's an achievement to taste it juuuust right.

vi.
reading writing that reminds me of the way i used to write, and being consumed by nostalgia for the girl who ate peanut butter off of one chopstick, who believed in soul mates, who fell asleep to the smell of tiger balm, who always painted her toenails silver.

vii.
feeling your absence like an x-ray. this is exposure, this is vulnerability, this is absolutely medical.

viii.
it's my birthday month. this month, my birthday lands on a Friday. that should be more special than zodiacs or astrology significance, combined.
 i ate my first caramel apple this year.
i had stopped answering your calls. i remember, vividly, the sheets around me that were as rumpled and as distraught as my tear-soaked cheeks. i remember floundering helplessly, on a Monday evening while the sun was almost setting, parked in an empty lot, hands shaking while they dialed your number. a few minutes later, you found me, and you stood in your perfectly pressed white dress shirt and your meticulously knotted tie.
the wind found its way toward this empty lot, and it was chasing itself against my back as i pressed my face into you. i remember that all i could think about was that i would get your work clothes all snotty. i was desperate to cry into you and terrified to do it at the same time. come to think of it, i think most of my time with you, i felt similar conflicts in my heart.
we listened to country music and rode the ferris wheel. you took my hand and won a purple dinosaur the size of my face. we ate various carnival renditions of meat. as we were leaving, i gazed at you and your smile, and then, i bit into my very first caramel apple. you saved yours for later.
that was us.

in the midst of all these roaring movies of apocalypses, i feel compelled to think about how i would feel about  falling in love. perhaps these days spend in the haze of anesthetized heartache would suddenly seem even more beautiful.

perhaps i would suddenly remember with more fondness than disdain the mornings when the sunlight is just turning from grey to amber and i feel all of myself ache for arms around me, when i can't hear anything but the fan turning, and the house sighing from the summer heat. perhaps i would think back with disbelief on these moments spent swearing to myself that love is an awful, monstrous thing, that i wish to never fall in love again.

perhaps silently i would plead, like jack gilbert's prayer, for another chance: "Let me fall / in love one last time, I beg them / Teach me mortality, frighten me / into the present. Help me to find / the heft of these days."

shh, quiet, there it is.  i can hear it beginning again.

* * *

I cannot count the times I have cursed my lack of urgency. If ever I love again, I will not wait to love as best as I can. We thought we were young and that there would be time to love well sometime in the future. This is a terrible way to think. It is no way to live, to wait to love. - Dave Eggers

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

— David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King 

"I think it’s so fascinating how human nature (objectively depending on what culture we’re speaking of) has names for everything we have. this is a desk. this is my femur. my tibia. my foramen magnum. this is a mug. we can’t see anything without naming it or else we ignore it because it is too much just to see the essence of something without categorizing it into something that we can just barely understand"

- via commovente

everything is perfect without you.
the morning begins with silence and sunlight.
there are no good mornings.
i let the emptiness fill all the crevices, i let it creep under my blankets next to me.

you sleep perfectly without me. on the side of the bed you prefer, underneath the turning fan. no body to make you unbearably hot in the middle of the night. no head cradled in your arms to make your shoulders ache. no tossing and turning to keep you awake. no cold hand warming up on your chest. no blankets stolen away from you.

everything is perfect without me.
your happiness will bloom, for it is spring.
you will find her, or maybe you already have.
you will give her a nickname, you will call her by that nickname fondly.
she will make you laugh again.
you will hold her, and layer by layer you will forget our past.

i stare out at the buildings, at cities, at empires that took decades to build and only a single moment to level.

you will do what you want to do. i will go the places i want to go. there will be no more rules.
everything is perfect. but our imperfections made me feel complete.

I wish in the city of your heart/ you would let me be the street/ where you walk when you are most/ yourself. - robley wilson

 (thanks to kristan)

this something that seemed longer than the minutes waiting for you. this something that dug deeper than your fingers in my hair. this something that drove me further than fear did. this something that bound together my legs stronger than your sheets when tangled in the mornings. this something that felt colder than the ice pack against my skin. this something that struck louder than brass bells at your church. this something that felt more empty than the hunger i felt in your absence. this something that resembled betrayal pooling together from my disbelief at your words. this something that felt more shallow than the lyrics you quoted me in place of conversation. this something that felt more substantial than the substance of your body.

there is a cycle here, i see it. it forms tirelessly in my mind, the mold you fit us to. i see it and i don't run.

head down, thunder and rain outside. inside, brewing clouds.
your secret steps were almost melodic in their silence. it was easy to see the color of you, when you speak only in black in white.

most days i take your hands in mine, turn them over and over.
i remember thinking they were always cold, when you first touched me. i wondered if i would ever feel their warmth.

i remember your stormy temper, even then.

nowadays, i take what i can find, build my ships stronger. i take what i can find, build my ships faster.
it is slow, this building.
it is slow, this weathering.

harbor has seemed a safe bet, but i skip anchor completely and search for you in the storms.

i loved you only a little, because it is much easier to manage smaller quantities of things. i loved you in parts, because it is less risky to do anything in parts rather than all at once. the wholeness is too much to gamble, too much to lose.

i risked some things, and hedged with others. i crept out and made small fires when i could, but poured water everywhere before the fire could spread. i ran inside caves for warmth instead.

when i discovered chances to stay, i looked for escape. i ran in the directions that took me farthest away from you. this touching, in the air. i waited, breathless, for your hands to follow mine.

we both watched each other, circling, waiting.

when watching a mirror, no one makes the first move.

Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is:
Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and the end of time.
Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.

-Tom Robbins, from Still Life With Woodpecker


(Thank you, Eddie)

Whenever I see him, Loren says, "do you know (insert poet's name)?" 

I always tuck the names of the poets into my pocket and research later.

Today it was Linda Gregg. 

From "The Art of Finding"

I believe that poetry at its best is found rather than written. Traditionally, and for many people even today, poems have been admired chiefly for their craftsmanship and musicality, the handsomeness of language and the abundance of similes, along with the patterning and rhymes. I respect and enjoy all that, but I would not have worked so hard and so long at my poetry if it were primarily the production of well-made objects, just as I would not have sacrificed so much for love if love were mostly about pleasure. What matters to me even more than the shapeliness and the dance of language is what the poem discovers deeper down than gracefulness and pleasures in figures of speech. I respond most to what is found out about the heart and spirit, what we can hear through the language. Best of all, of course, is when the language and other means of poetry combine with the meaning to make us experience what we understand. We are most likely to find this union by starting with the insides of the poem rather than with its surface, with the content rather than with the packaging. Too often in workshops and classrooms there is a concentration on the poem's garments instead of its life's blood.

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries. But both must be ruled by faith.

-Anais Nin in a letter to Leonard W.

tell me that my silence creates a possibility that is greater than words


--

the things that impacted my life with a magnitude that i expected:
- dancing tango
- my relationship with my mother
- the sound of laughter
- being in water
- being in love
- being heartbroken
- altitude
- tequila
- talking to strangers
- poetry
- constant travel
- creating photographs
- living outside the United States
- other people's writing



the things that impacted my life with unexpected magnitude:
- drinking water
- wearing color
- my career in business, which a friend told me i would "most definitely fail at."
- tofu
- Capitalization and. Punctuation!
- running
- the heat
- the cold
- living in Texas
- shamefully, Starbucks.
- practicing yoga
- discovering blues dance
- avocado
- my relationship with my father
- humor
- new york city

untitled
July 1, 2008 – 6:43 am

last night, before you came to bed, i dreamt about the ocean. there were children and lovers and hopeful mothers and it was a funny time of year (when the sun sets so slow and all you can hear is wind).

the calligraphic clouds draw fearlessly from our strength, and i watch the waves wandering closer.

i’ve been waiting all this time for something to break. i’m balanced here earnestly waiting for inevitable collapse, and still you patiently build sand castles around my feet.

i strum

March 11, 2009 – 1:04 pm

i’m dancing unconsciously again, to whatever music they are playing in the Starbucks downstairs.

my god, she says.
i wonder what your mother was doing when she was pregnant with you, because music courses through your veins like this unstoppable force.

–

i think about the one a lot.

he’s probably a poet, throwing verbal tantrums and spreading it across pages of moleskines like peanut butter on bread. he probably has a bit of money tucked away in various tattered pants pockets so that at any moment’s notice, he will suggest that we run away to a different continent and experience each other in a different context of life. he’s probably an amateur chef who loves to cook simple breakfasts, and he will let me photograph him in colorful aprons even if he forgets to wash the dishes most of the time. he’s probably a photographer who finds his muse in my eyes and composition in my unruly hair. he gives me piggy back rides. he lets me stand on my tiptoes to kiss him. he kisses me in the rain. he’s probably a musician, who is fascinated with the bandoneon and the piano and plays the djembe. he only snores when he’s very tired, or has a cold. he’s probably a computer nerd who used to play computer games, but has converted to being well-read instead. he looks good shirtless and he drinks dos equis with lime. his dark hair is curly and untamed in the mornings. he knows his current events, and has strong political opinions. he is fiercely loyal, too pragmatic for my taste, but he still loves me for who i am, and listens with sincerity when i have romantic volcanic catharses. and damn, he can move his hips on the dance floor, and he doesn’t care who sees. he sings in the shower, and is more successful at folding laundry than i am. he forgets to put the toilet seat down and i work on biting my tongue. he is a swimmer, and when he swims, he carries me with him.

–
i don’t have time to feel, so in turn i have nothing to process.
but i will say that last night i had the window down, and i was driving to the yoga studio, and i was singing alanis morisette or jason mraz or something that falls between those genres, and i smiled and felt good again.

–

in austin, tu and i studied the art of a heart on a fork.
our hearts are little strawberries, roots stretched across the soil, feeling deep, delicate and they can get cold and sick so easily but when they finally come through, oh, how sweet they are. and we have festivals to celebrate them, and it’s a cycle, you know, one day again after the frost, they’ll ripen again

but aren't we the powerful ones?
the soft ones, the alive?
the treble clef in our hands, the music in our eyes?

x