you should just know

that monday was a day of redemption.

That I told the darling, living-shock of a bright smile, Megan, that we'd go for a little hike. But I forgot, for just a second who exactly I used to be; more importantly, who Megan and I are together. Alongside her I brighten, as almost everyone does at being near to a very dear friend. When together we let the ordinary grow up tall, and slip itself neatly between the course threads of daily living, We follow it to it's peaks, as Jack with his beanstalk, we see what treasures await us in the clouds, and then we climb back into our lives. Return home, with the twinkling merriment of being able to slide so comfortably in and out of the extraordinary. It is a beautiful life, that alongside friends such as mine.

And so, yesterday afternoon, we hiked. Among the flaxen residue of trees growing sleepy for the winter; preparing themselves, shedding their spring and summer day layers in preparation for yet another sweet winter catnap to rest them for their endless yawning eons.

And we climbed, up and up, and endlessly up. Three thousand feet of up, over what felt like as many miles. In the shadow of the mountain's ancient fortitude, we grew, within ourselves, at ever taller foot. The laughs became louder, the songs more jubilant. Drunken on the amber honey-ale of light you could touch.

And when we reached the top, we found we were not truly at the top. So, in our hands, we took the great strength of boulders, and under shaky, height fearing legs we stood at the apex, but still we stood. And the conquering became a game. I playful hide and seek with our own courage. In the thrumming darkness of this crevice, or just the far side of this boulder.

I could go on, and on, and on. You know I can. But the photos must speak, the moment can tell you. But can I just tell you, that last night I dreamt of her again? I dreamt of my current greatest fear, and she didn't win this time. I threw a trash can full of iced tea on her? Several actually. The brain does what it must to cope. And I awoke to a geology quiz that reminded me that mountains are the product of the Earth's great collsions with itself. They are war wounds. And today, the resuscitating breath of the mountain still in my lungs, breathing is easier.

I can't quite tell you

I can't quite tell you what it is I'm seeing.

Because I know I'm not seeing it all.

I know that if I could just breathe deep enough, I could leave myself.

Because somewhere, above the shuffling of my feet along the roads, and with the insulation of miles of atmosphere between the effervescent dream of a me that can truly see and the girl who is yogi-breathing her way through the day, is the vantage point from which I could make sense of things. If I could find perspective, I just know I could see the great amalgam of what is coming. I want to see that things are going to get better, even if it means that things are going to get worse first.

But I am just a girl. A girl who was made a great fool. Just a girl who accidentally rants out loud, and sometimes forgets about breakfast, and lunch, and sometimes dinner. I am, at the moment, a girl mesmerized by the rerun of her great fall.

I am Nixon, watching Watergate unfold, hoarding tapes, imagining my downfall, until it comes to me, again and again. I am Achilles, wondering why the God's did not just thrust me into the River Styx and let me try my own floundering luck at escaping my mortality, rather than leave me blinded to my weakness under the roaring sun of assumed fortitude.

But these things are not a life. And all wallowings must end. I am just a girl, and so I must look for light in the world through the pinprick left me.


So, no. I don't know what it is I'm seeing right now, because I am too close, and my view is too narrow. But I'm trying to look. Because even if it's terribly cliche; if I am willing to push forward without seeing everything, then a crack is enough to give me an inkling. To give me a dream.

(i took this photo last winter, having no idea what it would mean to me tonight.

i find great joy seeing that sometimes, we already know the answers)

for the sake of ranting in peace

I think I need a bluetooth. I have no intention of hooking it up to my phone, but hear me out.

This is the part where I have to stop worrying that this makes me self-important, or that you'll judge me, and just tell you, that for the sake of caution, and not getting hauled off to the looney bin; I need to invest in a bluetooth.

You see, I just got my hearbroken. And yes, if you've been reading, it's the same vaguely alluded to once considered boy of my dreams, and now, lately, literally, nightmares. You see, I've never actually come out and said it, because really, it's too hard to blog about a boy sometimes.

Because sometimes this particular boy had flame-red eyelashes that made you forget what you were saying,  and who plucked your eyebrows for you when your couldn't see, so you wouldn't have to look like a bush man. Because sometimes, this boy liked to break your heart. Sometimes, he was too scared to love you, and kept a back-up, just in case.

 

Boys, in case you were wondering, keeping backups is not fair.

 

So sometimes I need some help, when I make it to campus, when I'm walking by the places I saw them together, and let myself be convinced it was innocent, it was happenstance, when I am pretty sure I've become epileptic and asthmatic (because my lungs are supposed to work and whole body should do what I tell it to, because it shouldn't shake liek this), when I remember that Thanksgiving break won't be in Portland, or when she stands outside our philosophy class on the day of the midterm just to see him; when these things happen, when I have to leave the midterm because there is not enough oxygen getting to my brain, and why is my face all wet; when I'm just trying to make it home from the library through the landmine of everything I can't stop seeing,
I imagine.
It's very similar to the dreams I've had every night this week.

I walk through an elaborate discovery of her, of him. Together. I am classy (sort of). I look them in the eye. I ennumerate their wrongs, and if I am asleep and have no control, they kiss and he does the same thing he did in real life, and I am banished.

But when I'm walking, when I'm awake, I get to pick.
I am majestic and eloquent.
And I don't cry.

This is how I get through.

But sometimes, I cope too hard. And I might slip a few words out loud, as though it were a song stuck in my head.
The Ballad of The Chastised Infidels.
And people passing look bewildered, they take a few steps away.
So I was thinking, if I just had a bluetooth in my ear, they wouldn't know I was broken.
They would just think I was an obnoxious bluetooth person with a need to publicly air her laundry.
And I was thinking I could be okay with that.

So I can rant in peace, you know?

it was neither diabolical nor divine; 

it but shook the doors of the prisonhouse of my disposition; 

and, like the captives of Phillipi, 

that which stood within ran forth.

-the strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson

I have realized, that although I may be a good writer, I am censored. everything I write is vague, impersonal. And what appears to be my best blog, was the one in which I was vulnerable; in a real, not just whining, sort of way. So now I have to make a decision. Where is the line between being self-important, and wanting to connect? Why do I think it's okay for all the other blogs I read, and find it unacceptable in myself?

I either need to cross the line and let it out in all my writing or I need to pick a new love, a new hobby, a new profession. I need to say goodbye to the prodigal child. 

Advice?

and just to keep me sane

and just to ease my neurotic mind,

and just because today, a nurse, who does not know me, said "darling, fish oil, for concentration."


and because forty people this week alone said, "It's not your fault."

and because i don't believe them.

and because i'm going to fail my test tomorrow.


and because i need one thing to go properly.....

can someone, anyone,

pretty please-with-nuts-and-berries-and-chocolate-covered-anything on top

please tell me

what temperature at which

i am supposed to bake sweet potato chips?

you'd really be doing my neurosis a favor.

a reality check

i have not written a poem

in 2 years and five months.

.exactly.

i've been a poet since i the day black squiggly lines sprang forth

from the shel silverstien's page

and showed me the nimble toes of the written word.

and yet,

the poetry

appears to have dear john-ed me, dear friends.

the lyric toppling of syntax

and form,

appears to have dropped it's bouquet;

turned it's back on a hasty nuptial embrace

with the girl who 

just can't seem to commit

to who she really is.

 it's been that long,

since i believed

in my own words enough

to give them a home

and i, the prodigal child,

the seeker of life's little
nests

have denied my conviction it's home.

what i'm really trying to say is,
it's you-know-what or get off the you-know-where time.

 

So this blog is going to change. This blog is going to have a mission now. Because there's a reason i can't believe in the traipsing ballet of my own poetry any longer, there's a reason i can't pay attention logn enough to not burn the sweet potato chips. There is a reason I cannot turn away from a wilting-orange sun, which may very well be blinding me.

I have been tiptoeing around the heart of the matter. I have been not singing my story, because i was afraid no one wanted to hear. I was afraid that the overrunning well of all that I have been too afraid to say, would not be wanted. But it is time that I hold myself accountable. It is time that I held you accountable.

If you do not love me, even when I have said what must be said, then I do not need your love.


But if you do, if you even have the tiniest spark of the faintest scratching friction of love for me, you must help me.

I need to know you're there.

the rarest

i'm so sorry.

I've been having a very changing week.

a week full of blue-moon rarities.

of things i was not sure could happen anymore.

the kansas city chiefs won their third game in a row.
(football was not something i chose to love, meet my mama)

i asked for help.

and i something shifted in my soul,

something that made me say,

no

you cannot break me anymore,

when all i really wanted

was to let myself be a twig

in hands that could 

gently obliterate me

and then convince me i needed such decimation.

it is a rare day.