11/21/11: I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing. - Anais Nin... time is commodified into "this" experience. more or less, it defines us; we define it. we negotiate our bodies within it spatially, while we navigate our moments based on time's rules. we spend it, it's saved, wasted, wanted, made use of, bought, sold, traded, measured, and cut short.our time lust can (and will) determine our preoccupation with every. single. fucking. thing.measured in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years, decades... just take a look at the writing on the wall: there with our bodies and buffalo was also a way to measure how this experience has served us so far. (see also a preoccupation with the need to record it... c'est la vie.) it's about legacy, isn't it?we're scared to die.our humanness allows us the terrible quality to be compelled to describe what that means. it's disconnecting, distracting, and (frankly) counterproductive to actually preserving and spending wisely how brief this experience truly is. while we're separate, we're connected; while there's community, we have walls; in silence we hear out own wails; in din and chaos, we find peace. so, we measure. we have art. figureheads. words. things that unite, things that distract. tools and skills to survive. even lack of the former, absence of the latter.almost one year. 3 1/2 seasons. 11 months. 51 weeks. 359 days. whispering in your father's ear that it's okay to leave doesn't mean i've made any peace with goodbye. having the strength to invite never means the same in the outcome. we were left. his absence reminds us of that. so too, we are forced to remind all else of his legacy.so, that's time. time is never what it was meant to be, and not at all what we expected from it. be careful with yours. take risks. make confessions. love harder than you can dream. we have no idea when the last grain of sand will fall, but make sure it measures a hell of a lot more than you ever expected.4/23/12:If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur. - Pablo Picasso...I’m reminded of this post when I try to think about my relationship with the intangible and how equipped I am to negotiate the rub of this human experience. It’s a safe assumption that anyone, basically, is more than “qualified” to navigate from A to B without too much of a hiccup – we learn in err and still keep truckin’ – so, that’s comforting. I suppose it depends on where A begins and where B ends; however, it isn’t too much of a trek with any preconceived goal in mind. Or is it? It is. That’s the trouble. We forget that things take precious time. We forget that blisters still have to heal if you wore rotten shoes. And we forget that when we unpack our knapsacks chock full o’ our past, others are also doing the same. Tight corners and crisp folds to hold dear our insecurities, failures, fears, shame, and doubt all tumble out and scurry when you un-do that knot.Is it more about what we carry with (within) us, or more about ditching that sack in the next pond we find? And is that we forget, or is it that we’re truly creatures of habit and recreate the same spin on the wheel again and again? Are we learning, or are we being reminded?My internal compass will always have the same cardinal directions: passion, heart, family, and empathy. I’ve been following the path due passion for a minute now – I’m bound to see that “X” marked somewhere. And even if I don’t dig, this treasure map has still got my words scribbled all over it: this way to home. If A is always the beginning, I’ll always be looking for C. I hate endings. I might have an explanation somewhere on my back, but I’m not about to go digging through it. I’ll just let it settle in its appropriate layers for anthropology’s sake. I’ll leave it with the dinosaurs. 17 months. 68 weeks. Almost 500 days. Even if I’m still chasing the same piece of cheese, I’m going to make damn sure I roll that wheel somewhere beautiful.

"your mouth is poison. your mouth is wine."

In the spirit of the holiday, I’ll re-post something from a blog last April:

April 13, 2011

never date a miniature gamer.

Recently, on a strange cocktail pseudo-date, I was asked about my worst date ever. Until today, I eased myself into the idea that “The Boy Who Cried*” was the worst “type” I had dated, but nothing so far has categorically fit into the “Worst Date Ever.” So, I suppose I had no real acceptable answer. However, while thinking about creating this blog (you know, this thing you're reading) on “dating 'mis'-adventures” on my commute to work this morning, I remembered a man I dated for about six weeks a couple years ago. It's amazing I'd forgotten about this. It all came screaming back.

So, "this guy" (I will continue to refer to him as this, so get used to it) I was introduced to by friends was super smart and he was a writer. A WRITER! Naturally excited to spend time with someone I could carry on a conversation with, I overlooked small details like that he met weekly with friends to paint small figurines of warriors and play games with them (the friends AND the miniature warriors). In hindsight, the latter should've been a flaming red flag; however, I was young and somewhat inexperienced in dating (code for desperately lonely), so I casually dismissed this "hobby." I mean, we could talk! Not pretentiously cerebral while also being real, engaging, even current. Right? Regardless: in addition to miniature figure gaming, this fella drank his weight in scotch (he was a big guy) each night, his car smelled like dirty laundry, and for Valentine’s Day he got me a bouquet of rainbow pastel-colored roses. Disgusting. This now brings us to Valentine’s Day two years ago: my worst date ever.

I should have really seen this coming when a few nights previous to our date I received a picture message from this guy on my phone of his step-mom and dad making out. First, WTF?! Seriously. Second, who takes a picture of this and sends it to someone they’re dating? Tell me, please: WHO? The icing on the cake: apparently these folks of his, in addition to matching the classiness of their son’s photo snoggy skills, are swingers. At our dinner, he asked me if he could take a picture of me so his parents could see who I was. I agreed, of course, assuming he’d just show it to them. Oh no – he loaded it into a message and hit send right there. Okay, so a little weird, right? Picture-messaging a photo of me to your dad and step-mother? Yeah, I think so too. Except, this wins: the reply text he received (and immediately showed me with a grin) from his step-mom. It simply asked: “Can I play with her?” Oh. Fucking. Christ. Throw up. In my mouth. Oh. Total sad face.

I broke up with him the next day.



************************************************************************************

By no means an audiophile, I position my somewhat novice expertise (see what I did there?) to allow me a certain “green-ness” when compiling “you oughta” lists. Not any random litany, but indeed the best kind: pop the ear buds in, turn the volume up, and grab the tissues – this is the heartbreak month. Smack-dab in the middle of the dreariest month of the year is – you guessed it – Valentine’s Day. We could revisit an abandoned(ish) blog of mine to see how I spent it two years ago (four words: pastel tie-dyed roses). And last year, I was crying in my bedroom over Los Angeles and an abandoned plane ticket. And for the rest, from what I can remember, well, none of them involved copious amounts of romance, really… unless that means leaving love notes on index cards for your mother wherever she could find them, or looking forward to that box of Godiva chocolates from your father. Romance schmomance – love is forever present in my life. For whatever defeat I’ve encountered, something or someone has always helped me back up to the surface for a little gasp of air.

Needless to say, I’ve survived plenty of days like this one.

Not all of these are for the broken-hearted. Sometimes, you just need a little catharsis. A little reminder. Something to move you through whatever-this-feeling-is. Sometimes, just one line is all you need.

So, visit iTunes, buy these tracks, and open a bottle of wine.
You’re welcome.


Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – Stars
I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You – Colin Hay
Lies – Trifonic
Mercy Street – Peter Gabriel
Make This Go On Forever – Snow Patrol
Sheets – Damien Jurado
Holocene – Bon Iver
Nicest Thing – Kate Bush
Sweetest Kill – Broken Social Scene
Burial – Alexisonfire
Like You Said – Tiger Lou
Sæglópur – Sigur Rós
Sodom South Georgia – Iron & Wine
Romulus – Sufjan Stevens
Gorecki – Lamb
Hand on Your Heart – Jose Gonzales
Raise Your Weapon – Deadmau5
Set Fire to the Rain – Adele
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
No One’s Gonna Love You – Band of Horses
Skinny Love – Bon Iver
Goodmorning – William Fitzsimmons
Daniel – Bat For Lashes
Element – Moses Mayfield
Poison and Wine – The Civil Wars
What Else Is There - Royksopp
One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead) – Stars


I love holidays. Perhaps this one isn’t my favorite, but I believe in love; it’s only whatever you make of it. Head-first, fast, and overwhelming – it starts and ends about the same. For Los Angeles, for Detroit, and for myself: I love you.

ex oh ex oh. HVD.

the feverish hoarding of goodbyes.

wislawa szymborska died today. her words always meant so much to me - they helped to sew shut wounds when i couldn't see enough to thread the needle, they helped to locate heat when the windows were sealed with ice, they echoed across continents merely for the joy in the beauty of words.

i can't feel anything but gratitude that i felt/feel the impact of the blow. it doesn't have to be an explosion... sometimes a slow burn is enough (it's more than enough) to draw out the memory. these memories carry us through, don't they?



A LITTLE ON THE SOUL - W. SZYMBORSKA

Periodically one has a soul.
Nobody has it all the time and forever.

Day after day, year after year
can pass without it.

Sometimes only in rapture
and in fears of childhood
it dwells within longer.
Sometimes only in the astonishment,
that we have become old.

It rarely assists us
in strenuous pursuits,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases
or tromping through a road in tight shoes.

While filling in forms
and chopping meat
it usually takes the day off.

In a thousand of our conversations
it participates in one,
and not even necessarily in one,
preferring silence.

When our bodies start aching more and more,
it silently leaves the ward.
It's fussy:
it doesn't see us immediately in a crowd,
it sickens at our attempts at mere advantage
and the shrill clamor of business.

Joy and sorrow
are not all that different to it.
Only in the combination of them
does it stand up.

We can rely on it,
when we are certain of nothing,
and when everything seizes us.

Among all material objects
it likes best clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which work fervently,
Even when nobody looks.

It doesn't say where it comes from
and when it will disappear next,
But it clearly awaits such questions.

It looks like,
as much as we need it,
also it
needs us for something too.


Translated from the Polish by Rick Hilles and Maja Jablonska


maybe it's for my father, or for jay, or my grandparents, for leanna or tom, and heather, or perhaps just for the moment in time we are all stuck in the ether - fixed - waving goodbye. though through the veil, it looks much like hello.

so, for the thousands of goodbyes and lost tokens, for the hundreds of broken hearts and aching spirits, for your unrequited confessions and risks unrewarded, for the lack of change to place in hunger's palm, for the words that don't do justice for the sunset or the thick silence of sleep... i'll tick each goodbye as a mark on the wall, with the promise of reunion to pay in kind.

until we meet again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmQuIsDnQ3k

(you are still next to me, alright.)

forgiving hera.

"The Hydra’s gain from loss, with doubled strength, was all in vain."
- Ovid, Metamorphoses

in each face i saw the same slanted eyes
staring back with each aching lunge
nine sets of teeth glinted at my reach
lest you forget the story i have the golden sword

just scales protected that hollow
you were nothing but simple cells
and sticky fluid among the algae

but her love for you was not lost
she was intent on paying tribute
she set you among the burning stars
flanked by cancer your prize was

flumes of smoke that would curl
like singed hairs like halos like hot
breath lifting through this ether

without her i would not know you
my love drops at her feet
so now i just nod my head
to see you hanging behind the night

a serpent's face set on fire

so eve ate the fig.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar


i forget that i'm turning 30 this year. perhaps it's because i feel as lost as i did five or six years ago, or perhaps it's due to the pattern of mistakes or missteps i continue to make. despite this, i am a different woman making the same choices... possibly it's a lesson i need to learn and re-learn and re-learn. i'm not where i imagined i would be at 30... not even close. and with the same heaviness in my heart, it's hard to shake the feeling that someone is trying to teach me the same damn lesson. maybe we have a "life theme" set out before us - a preconceived map that routes us to the same people, the same events, and in my case, the same heartbreaks. i'm not suggesting my theme is centered on unrequited love, though maybe it's disappointment. expectation. fear of confession. fear of losing. fear of failing.

what is even harder to imagine is that my dad has been gone for over a year. 2011 just whirled me around and then off she went... thankfully, with very little cuts and scrapes left behind. i transformed. i recovered from miles and miles of a broken heart. i helped a friend through his own heartbreak. i laughed more than i ever thought i could; i cried as much as i always have. i forgave. i created. writing a poem felt like falling in love. i went brunette. i got tattoos. i went camping with my sisters. i lived for months in a gazebo. i made some great friends. some great lovers. some great teachers. i moved. and i missed my dad.

maybe this isn't the best i can do for the not-even-72-hours into the new year; however, i intend to make it worth something. it's not a lot, but it can lend itself to being more than i need.