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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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1:25 am
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when i remove a sense of blame, from him and from me, and acknowledge the real truth of our incompatability, i feel a kind of peace and warmth toward him.
i realize now the big issue is just being alone, being by myself but not stuffing that lonesomeness with my usual bad habits and instead processing, growing, getting into new constructive habits.
i kept thinking about him, all day today. amazing how much it affects me, how much unresolved feeling there really is still. so much heartache and nostalgia and longing tonight. i wish we had been better when we were together. i wish he was what i remember him to be, a kind of canonized eulogized version of his actual self.
but though i don't miss all of it, i can't stop missing his body, his smile, his warmth. those eyes when he smiled. making him smile all the time.
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| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
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9:59 pm - stuff
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gave boz his stuff back today. sitting with him, i trembled. i don't know why he has such power over me, except that i feel understood by him and to lose that is a huge feeling of isolation.
i was thinking on the train tonight that it's hard to love someone who has rejected you. all of the ugly stuff i threw at him, partially to prove my incomprehensibility, feels like my fault. and i had a deep feeling of regret on seeing him happy, and remembering his kindnesses to me. so many of them, the kind of love and doting that i imagined a perfect lover would give, and which also felt hollow somehow because it didn't satisfy.
i relaize now that some of what i wanted from him is what i needed to give myself. and though there are many moments when he was not a good person, perhaps he did his best as much as i did. he certainly doesn't seem riddled with guilt or regret. conversely, he seems happy and fine, and so we sat much in silence and i did my best not to let myself go into his mind, remember how it felt to be loved by him, his face so open and warm, almost like a child when he was, well, with me.
walking through the village together, and allowing for huge gaps in our catching up, the spring cherry blossoms had begun to fall and coat the sidewalk like snow. we went to the park we always did and watched dogs as we always did and he laghed at the butts of the fat ones like he always did. he sat beside me, and i beside him, and i remembered the paired feeling i had when we were a good couple and i missed him so deeply, and regretted not even lasting a year with him, not even having a christmas together to actually see snow.
i don't know if i want him in my life, i don't know if i am able to have him in my life, but i do think he was a good person and still is. despite it all, i am glad to have known him and was sad to see him go again today.
part of me thinks that moving on is about deleting a person, and dealing with the void they leave after they vacate your life. i don't try to fill friendships once occupied and now absent as holes. i try to let them stay, wear them, be grateful and open to them. something in me says that i don't even need to turn him into an absence, that i can carry him with me forever, love him forever in my own way, which is half nostalgia (there are so many good reasons we aren't together) and half genuine love for another man who deserves happiness on his own terms. i think the healthiest thing i can do is always let myself love him, as i do everyone. and in some way, loving someone who rejects you is about not being afraid of the rejection, which is simply acknowledging the love.
i'm left feeling jealous that he is with someone, and seems happy. jealous of the money he's made and his new move out to williamsburg. i know that in context i will be just as far along and happy as he is in a few years. in fact, i know that my own work on myself (which caused so much of our breakup) will hopefully help me be happy and healthy in ways that he isn't. perhaps that's a small way of diminshing how content he seems as i struggle to find work, to find love, to keep my friends and yet to be authentic and honest and self-loving. but i want so desperately to be myself, to be free, to live the way that i know life is for me, to respond the feelings and sensations it enlivens in me without needing to own or impede others.
in some way, he taught me how and sparked this thinking, though johnny, jeffrey and buddhism have truly set it in motion. marie and others sustain it now, even as i can't keep up with it myself. yeah, in the end, i wished only to hug him, to be told by him that i am still beautiful inside and out, that he loved me, and still does.
relationships don't have to end, though they may change. i think it's okay to say -- i love boswell. i love his smile and his simplicity and his practicality, his doting and his generosity and his gratitude. and so it's easy i guess. i want to be a loving person, my heart to be open, and it just has. like that.
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| Monday, April 20th, 2009
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8:59 pm
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consulted the i ching today. thunder over thunder on a rainy afternoon. and i am ready to face it and i know how to grow and be still.
(thank you howard)
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| Sunday, April 19th, 2009
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9:27 pm
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i feel so lost and hurt today, more than in a while. i don't know what to do, for the first time in a long time -- i just have no feeling of things being okay. nothing in my life feels right tonight.
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| Monday, April 13th, 2009
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10:28 pm - rock dove
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like the silent sidewalk bird,
my mouth is opened as in song
hunger rises like a word
and moved, i mutely move along.
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| Monday, March 23rd, 2009
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1:01 am
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it always seems to me that i'm running away from the obvious stuff, the obvious truths, and that the only thing that really tires me is the extension of all this hope and all these fantasies that i've hoisted up to keep myself from being in touch with who i am, and how i feel.
washing the dishes, and the warmth of the water, and realizing that the best thing to do with feelings is to feel them. to let them come and not to add to them or fight them, but let them pass through and respect them as a part of who i am.
lately, the feeling is that i can just drop all the stuff that's weighing me down and live happily. but that means the end of so many relationships, desires, projects. people push me away or simply let me slip and i don't bother to push back or to try and be recognized. something so passive has dominated my way of being but today i see how simple it might be to just decide to act upon what i know i like and don't like, what i know i want and don't want.
it's liberating, but freedom is scary and often those who go off in search of themselves will find that process has alienated so many of the people in their lives. but i have always been a curious person and have always been bad at lying. i know who i am, i know what i feel.
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| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
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11:38 pm
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it's so so hard to let go. i watch the snow, i run til i can't feel my body, i give and i listen, i wait...
it's a process more than an event. you do it every day, every time you have something, you hold it as lightly as possible, or else it squirms. i wish i could live so that life moved through me, so i wasn't afraid of losing it.
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| Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
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12:21 am
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i was knitting with a friend today and she mentioned a pair of socks she made for a mutual friend. in them, she knitted a few lines from nerudas "ode to my socks" and i read it tonight, and it struck me. i especially love the end, the part about using what is beautiful even if it eventually means its destruction, change, or loss. it's something i have a hard time with -- letting myself embrace temporality, letting things come and go. tonight especially, i miss my friends, old lovers, and my family. but i am glad that i have "used" them too, that even for a while those relationships filled some part of my life. let us be brave enough to always love what is around us, even if it means saving the last bruised fruit from the checkout line, or building a sandcastle at high tide, or rushing to read a poem by the light of dusk...
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
knitted with her own
shepherd's hands,
two socks soft
as rabbits.
I slipped
my feet into them
as if
into
jewel cases
woven
with threads of
dusk
and sheep's wool
Audacious socks,
my feet became
two woolen
fish,
two long sharks
of lapis blue
shot
with a golden thread,
two mammoth blackbirds,
two cannons,
thus honored
were
my feet
by
these
celestial
socks.
They were
so beautiful
that for the first time
my feet seemed
unacceptable to me,
two tired old
fire fighters
not worthy
of the woven
fire
of those luminous
socks.
Nonetheless,
I resisted
the strong temptation
to save them
the way schoolboys
bottle
fireflies,
the way scholars
hoard
sacred documents.
I resisted
the wild impulse
to place them in a cage
of gold
and daily feed them
birdseed
and rosy melon flesh.
Like explorers who in the forest
surrender a rare
and tender deer
to the spit
and eat it
with remorse,
I stuck out my feet
and pulled on
the
handsome
socks,
and then my shoes.
So this is
the moral of my odes:
twice beautiful
is beauty
and what is good is doubly
good
when it is a case of two
woolen socks
in wintertime.
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| Saturday, January 24th, 2009
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10:23 pm
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1. i'm glad that there are other people in the world who like music, who sing and hum and tap their fingers without even thinking. who quote musicals when they don't know what to do with their lives. who can shed a tear for the beauty or the sadness that a note, or a gesture, or a coo contains.
2. i'm glad that sentences mean more and less than words. that paragraphs mean more and less than sentences. that things get stronger and weaker as they grow. that evolution is a natural progression toward dissolution.
3. i'm glad that people mix foods together. mashed potatoes touching corn. or the first person to put cilantro and coconut together. that things like relish, taboule, and pesto exist.
4. i'm glad that sex is still something most people like to do, even if it makes them feel guilty or silly or gross. i'm glad that day after day, people think about fucking or making love and that, at the end of the day, people will always laugh at a joke that involves a dildo or a dog sniffing your crotch.
5. i'm glad that people draw and photograph each other. i'm glad that my parents took video of me growing up. i'm glad that of all the things in the world to salvage from time's progress, sometimes -- and often -- people choose to document other people.
6. i'm glad for world religion and sage advice. for folks who've gone ahead and take the time to look back when it's safe to.
7. i'm glad for children who cry when they're sad, laugh when they're happy, and aren't afraid to ask what they want for. i'm glad for kids who touch things they shouldn't, who break and discover, and don't scar badly.
8. i'm glad for the way movies take images, sounds, dialogue, and stories and put them all together. they remind me of campfires, faces lit with light, and everyone still, listening, watching, thinking in silence.
9. i'm glad for quiet, for space to think, for a soft place to sit and ask myself who i am. for the opportunity to befriend that voice in my head that so many others have tried to coopt -- to turn into a voice of recrimination and self-hatred and religiosity. i am glad for my mind's resilience, its fertility, its ability to resist all that and grow, remain curious, break open.
10. i'm glad for animals and their odd shapes and noises. how they always seem both human and not, how they live and sniff and lift off into flight or move through currents with their mouths wide open. how they live without fighting life.
11. i'm glad for people who study boundaries. who keep pushing the world larger. the scientists and philosophers, the people who see truth as an unknowable void they can sense but not quite grasp. people who see no conflict between curiosity and criticality.
12. i'm glad for families, the odd way it feels to belong to one, the way it feels like you're supposed to leave them, though their pull is constant as gravity. and the comfort they provide when they're good and even when they're dysfunctional, how warm they can be after a while out alone in the world.
13. i'm glad for seasons. when the world changes, i change with it. and it's good to have winter to move deeply into things, or summer to become entropic and light. i love the way spring makes me think of the future, and autumn of the past.
14. i'm glad for my body. all the corporeal pleasures that come with opening and closing, breath in and breath out, leaking, consuming, and deep deep sleep.
15. i'm glad for revelation. for the clarity that comes with letting something go. the courage that comes with knowing something is true, even if it isn't convenient. the strength that comes with belief and wisdom.
16. i'm glad for coworkers. the friends who are always a little more objective but also always on your side. the quick intimacy that comes with telling someone that the customer they just helped was hot, or an asshole. and how nice it feels to do something nice for someone you wouldn't know except they stand beside you all day being bored.
17. i'm glad for christmas lights. the soft glow of nostalgia, the blurred purity of electric light against the blades of trees, the shingles of roofs, or the half-lit vignettes of my memories.
18. i'm glad for swimming, gymnastics, diving, tae kwon do, trampolines, running, and all the things i can do at the gym to feel weightless and awkward as a crane.
19. i'm grateful for compound colors like aquamarine, seafoam, slateblue, and coral and rust. how they always shift depending on how the light hits.
20. i'm grateful for things that can be said in words, that leave me rummaging through a feeling even after nothing comes.
21. i'm grateful for awkward pairings. couples that don't make sense. or giant musclemen walking daschunds. two leaves fallen on the grass from two different trees, or the way two raindrops might find each other and melt into one after falling down a window in different directions.
22. i'm grateful for vistas. the world turned into geometry from the window of a plane. or the clearing at the top of a mountain climb. the way a highway looks like the edge of the sky when you're going up a bridge, or how the ocean is the edge of the world when you're standing in it at midday, two blue halves meeting at a horizon.
23. i'm grateful for stars. the way we turn them into animals and people and stories. the way everyone thinks they can find the little dipper -- and usually do. the way we talk in lightyears around them, or lie on our backs and feel their comfort one moment and then wonder at our incomprehensible smallness.
24. i'm grateful for my mind. bigger than the solar system, as it can wrap itself around all the stars.
25. i'm grateful for life. the miracle of coming up out of nothing and returning to it eventually. how it connects us and inspires gruesome and outrageous acts, how it spurs people on with its promises and unfairness, how it grounds us, moves us, and leaves us without comment. and though we are smaller than it, how it never speaks -- how it leaves the commentary to us, our choice to do with it what we will.
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| Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
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12:05 am
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the ambiguous colors of lancaster:
dilapidated pastel cerulean-grey.
rusted red with orange-brown patina.
light green with ochre and thinned brown glaze.
grey-purple with fine black edges that melt into white.
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| Monday, December 15th, 2008
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7:32 pm - woodsong
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Woodsong
(for Boswell)
What good could come to awkward us,
who never knew the names of trees,
to let love rise, a wilderness
of sick-sweet blooms and tangled leaves,
too green to miss the poisoned net
of veins that spread from tip to chute
or taste the bitter pit inside
the flesh that fills all friendly fruit?
We loved like fleeting seasons, fast
as light bruises in hoary dusk;
we yawned against the touch of time
and shed the days like swollen husks,
as sure as morning always more
would ripen in our hungry hearts.
I miss our limbs, their fingers forked
like branches from the body's bark.
The claims we made when intertwined
like nature's claims, both sure and mild
have bent two crossing trees to graft
then wither dumbly in the wild.
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| Monday, December 1st, 2008
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11:28 pm
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it's so hard to wish you well, thinking i may not get it myself. so hard to see you happy and smiling and not know about the times you've broken down missing me. i know they're there, i know you broke as hard as i did, and i can't say i didn't want you to feel the pain of it all as much as i have. now that i'm getting ready to move on, the last thing i want is a burnt bridge or a broken heart. so i'm gonna sit here for a little while longer, singing sad songs to myself and thinking about how hard it is to admit that you weren't ever out to hurt me, even though you did. and how i wasn't a bad person, even though i did shitty things. we did the best we could, and you're going to keep being lucky buddy. i hope it rubbed off on me.
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| Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
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10:28 pm
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i hadn't allowed myself for a few weeks now to think about this, but there was a moment, and part of me thinks it was the only one, when we were together and i looked into his eyes and loved him the way i loved things as a child. and maybe letting that moment go is the only thing i can't do in this whole fucked up process, and maybe i shouldn't, but i should cultivate it instead and heavy and heartache as i feel, maybe i should be grateful for that single moment when i realized i could love someone.
i feel as if so much has evacuated my body, my spirit. nothing, so little, is left, and i am bereft and grieving, and i wish that it was okay to talk about these things as much as i want to talk about them but instead i sit alone in silence and note how the trees have lost their leaves the third new york year in a row and how hard it is to pick up a phone sometimes just to ask someone to listen to me cry.
i started a poem about those trees a few days ago, the line is something like "between us nothing" and how close i feel to things, even things far away seem utterly close and resplendent, shimmery and vast and open, and nothing i can say into this or into the world or into a phone receiver is deeper or truer than that simple feeling of proximity to things that comes with being so raw, and so emptied, as to almost need those trees to survive.
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| Wednesday, September 17th, 2008
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11:31 am
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more and more i think of things i want or have wanted and imagine myself giving them away. it feels good to let them go, but i feel disembodied. i wonder if the lightness and the glaze in the eye that folks seem to have when they have been through tough shit and understand their smallness is a loss of that embodiment, if letting the body itself go away is the answer. i am thinking about how it feels to run, to run and run and sweat and not to exist anymore except as ears and pores and soreness.
then, once the breath is settled, i think to myself -- but oh! feel that breeze!
look at that flower.
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| Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
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4:58 pm
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the way things sound, the way they taste. the smell of things that are rotten and sweet. the way it feels to be afraid, the same heart heaviness as being in love. the way it feels to have something and then to want to protect it, to save it. all of these feelings. the way it feels to move through a cloudy day and wait for rain's relief. the way it feels to hold something smaller than your hand, or the way it feels to have a body flat over yours. the way it feels to make something. and then to give all of it away. the good smells, the rot, the heaviness, the rain, the lightness of hands and the weight of bodies. everything we take and use to make something new -- it feels good to give them away.
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| Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
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10:57 pm
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| Thursday, May 29th, 2008
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1:27 am
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i have been trying lately to make the right decisions, not only for now but also for the future. to set things up so that they will carry on forever in a general direction until i resemble my image of happiness. i talk a lot about saying goodbye to things and people, but i think it's even harder to say goodbye to that image and to live more in the present. i can't always tell what i want -- it's a balancing act between getting what i want and paying for it. i feel the ripples of all my decisions and i know that i am always about to disappoint someone. i have to weigh that against disappointing myself -- a craving, a rule, an idea, a goal. the truth is that i don't always know if i'm wanting something in the present or in the future or in the past.
i forgot what i was going to say all i know is that you have to just keep going and people will help you and saying goodbye is really hard even if something was shitty or even still is and what's shittier is not knowing if you're going to be able to say goodbye to what you're living right now. is this a good life that i'm living? will it hurt to lose this good life? i'm in transition, i'm always saying goodbye nowadays.
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| Thursday, May 1st, 2008
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2:40 am - celebrate
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tomorrow (today) is my thesis show over in chelsea. the first time i've been proud of my art in a long time. and i'm happy, and i have good friends, and new friends too. boswell, a guy i met about a month ago, he and i are "together" now, he's my first boyfriend. and people are in town visiting, and some are leaving soon, and i am 26 soon and graduated. i will miss jon, but will have a new roommate. and i will get hugs tomorrow at my show, from such good people who love me, and that will be the real accomplishment of all this time -- that it only changed me for the better, mostly. that i've grown and lost and loved and lived and said yes to more things than i can possibly say in the past two years -- awful ugly pretty and true -- and that now i am older, and wiser, and happier, than i have been in a long time.
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| Sunday, April 6th, 2008
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9:20 pm - sex and childhood
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some thoughts i wrote while on manhunt:
i dont' know. i think it all goes back to when we're kids and we try to cook with mud. it's physical, it's half imaginary, and yet it's very real if you can get someone to believe in it with you. sex is like makebelieve for me, you enter this moment with someone, however constructed, however brief. i've always felt playful in bed, even when i'm so far gone that i can't even talk. it's the same dizzy feeling as spinning around and around until you can't stand up. we learn it as kids, and we look for it as adults. and, to extend the metaphor, that's why cuddling is great after sex --it's naptime after recess.
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008
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12:42 pm - cozy in my skin for now
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what my life really needed was more variables and a really stable equals-sign.
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