just a sidenote

today i am going to write about christmas.

and i am not going to write about consumerism, or church and state issues in sonoma, or anything like that. there's enough people yelling about that these days, and i am not in the mood for a shouting match.

it's just a day, really. and we have all our funny traditions about it, decorated trees and silly hats and semi-obligatory presents, and all that. and so significant to so many people! so interesting. we've melded our very american pagan with our very american christianity, added several hundred years, and look what we've got. a giant franchise of a holiday that's mostly about staying inside and making a fire because it's cold out.

but it did a lot for me, this year. a lot. because, with all our disagreements and no real ability to reconcile them, it got my family to sit around and get each other presents (or promises of such) and drink egg nog and eat cookies and just be happy for a day or two. and even if we can't totally accept each other, and even if we can't agree to disagree in anyone's head but mine, we can sit at a table. and we can listen to obnoxious christmas music and i can be coerced into breaking out the violin, and it can feel like nothing's changed. an unfamiliar feeling these days, in this place.

i don't know where i'm going with this. it's just really, really nice. and weird, and probably short-lived, but nice. so happy christmas, and happy whatever else you celebrate, and if you don't celebrate anything then just have a really, really, really good day.

it really is a wonderful life. put some rum in your egg nog and enjoy it.

volcano rocks at octopus o'clock

whose side are you on?
whose side is this, anyway?
put down your sword, come lay with me on the ground.

pearl bracelets and octopus o-clock, it is sunny here in the winter. there are no clouds, even, today. and i am here to be moved. so move me, if you will, or let somthing else do it instead. for me, there are no others, only unfamiliars.

there is an upside down trash can in my backyard. it's cracked from the sun, probably been there for years. it is right next to the volcano rock. i don't know where the volcano rock came from. i don't know where the trash can came from either, or why it is upside down in the backyard. when the flowers move, the wind moves them too quickly, and the world looks like a giant stream of photographs. fast-forward reality, like on planet earth. a flip book, maybe? i think i live in a flipbook, maybe, made by someone who wasn't quite sure how to make a flipbook. so you flip through it and the motion makes sense for a minute, and then all of a sudden the picture completely changes and you're lost. like they had to make 3 flipbooks for a 4th grade project and at the end they glued them all together. things change so fast, here. i wonder how many years longer the upside-down trash can will be in my backyard. i wonder how long this will still be my backyard.

strange thoughts, these days, she wonders what they are. it is strange to be happy because of real things (or less real things, depending how you look at it), and not just because we decided to be. and there is no drama here, not on the everyday. deep down, there are things here that are deeply, deeply dishonest. but on the everyday, we coexist just fine. i smoke my cigarettes outside and keep my secrets to myself. everyone here keeps their secrets to themselves. it is their way.

so jigsaw puzzles and red wine, it is. not so bad, she thinks. you never throw anything away because you don't know who you are, and just in case the real you is in that stuffed animal you got as a gift from someone you don't remember, you keep it in a box. outside your life, but not outside your potential self. just throw it away, she says. you don't need that anymore.

catching

are you afraid?

and if you are, what of?

are you afraid that they will desert you?

are you afraid they'll never come back?

it is ok, you know, it's ok,

they may come back or they may never,

but here, here you have everything.

and in the dark, she hopes

she laughs out loud,

she hears you, here.

and she can only hope, only hope you are here with her,

and not just a ghost.

she hears the ghosts, many times, these days.

she doesn't sleep well, these days.

but it is a different unwell, and maybe a different sleep.

it makes her eyes water,

but not in the old way.

we know better than that, now,

and we no longer let it catch us.

letter to the editors

darling reader,

as you may have noticed in recent days,

i have decided to be more honest with the internet.

not that the internet was ever the one we were worried about. i've always felt comfortable with the internet. it's the editors i've been concerned about. the editors- who mention disapprovingly, as if it were in passing, a piece of my vocabulary they don't approve of. a stray "fuck", no doubt, who made it past my diligent self-censor. the editors- who want something else but this from me, who wish i would write more conventionally, who wish i would live more conventionally. the editors- who know very little and assume very much.

if someone (you, perhaps) were to read this blog, to click around for more than 30 seconds, it would appear that i had a severe writers' block from the month of october until now. it would appear it had been a long time coming; there's less and less every month since i came back from jordan. it would appear.

this is not true. i am the anti-writers' block, these days. i write every day, these days. i am, maybe, only writing, these days. but i have gotten painfully sick of self-censorship, and so nothing has appeared here for months. and now, as silly and cliche as it sounds, the time has come where it is impossible to do anything but say what i feel. this is no hide-and-seek, i am no pretender, and i can do no halfway-dance tonight.

so. although this will be painful, and although my most recent attempts at honesty about everything on the home front have gone over like substantially-sized lead balloons, i will write what i feel. i will be what i am. i am what i am, and no ultimatums of yours can stop me.

so, to the editors, to the disapprovers and the doubters, this is for you. these are all for you.

walking less, she hopes

walking less these days, she hopes
and hopes
and hopes
until there isn’t anything left of her.
nervous?
i don’t know why.
a silly kind of worry, said a wiseperson once
when things are so good you’re afraid to lose them.
silly, maybe.
but here we are.
with too much time on her hands to worry about
all the things she hopes he won’t worry about.
and so, walking less,
because there’s nowhere, here, to walk
she thinks
she writes
she hopes
she asks for things she’s never wanted more
from fates she doesn’t believe in.

one long swim

crescendos, rising, falling, sinking memories, sinking notes. bottles on the ocean, we write love letters to a world we only thought we used to know. living as ghosts in other people’s reveries, we walked like them and talked like them, danced like them and loved like them. we lived in their cities and we wore their clothes; there were colors, there, or so we thought. and who could blame us? no one ever tells you there is more than you can see. we were happy, there, in our way.

and then came the day when we went to the beach.

and perhaps it was the wind, but we saw the dead pelican mangled in the seaweed, and it spoke to us. it called us by name, slow and quiet, and it whispered familiar words in languages we didn’t know we knew, and the sand spun beneath our feet. we were seized, possessed, by worlds unknown and unforgettable, and the pelican spoke louder, we could feel him in our blood, singing every heartbeat for us. and what he said was, slow and hollow,

one long swim, that’s all it takes. one long swim.

and we stood on the edge, the water just brushing up against our toes, and we took off the clothes our mothers gave us. children we were, of apple juice and guns, and we put our glasses down and dropped our pistols in the ocean. we left them there, on the sand, and peered into the horizon’s shimmering, imaginary line. like a mirage, it was. one long swim, we thought out loud, one long swim.


and so we swam. into nothing we could know, toward nothing we could see, we swam into the currents and the kelp and the sky. tasting the salt on our lips, breathing heavy and more desperate than either of us would care to admit, we hurtled toward the nothing as if we knew its name. as if we could smell it, taste it somewhere in the back of our minds, like a blurry memory just beyond reach.

one long swim, that’s all it took. and now, now we write love letters to the people we left behind, asking them to visit sometime. asking them to look up at the sky, sometime. we don’t know if they get our bottles. we don’t know. but we send them anyway, a daily ritual of something kind of like love and something kind of like show-and-tell, something like a whisper in the night that you tell yourself is just the wind in the trees. it’s nice here, we say. the colors are different, and we don’t have costco, but you can wear a funny hat anytime you want, and when it rains the trees like to swing dance. it’s nice here, you should come visit. and really, all it takes is one long swim.


crescendos, swirling compasses, we rise and fall with the waves and we listen to old radio shows. these are days of long nights and longer mornings, days full of juice and empty of promises, days of things unknown and unforgettable. we are, now, unknown and unforgettable.

we are, now, here and there. in the sun and out to sea, alive, and just around the corner.

the unbelievers' creed

there are things that need to be said-- heard, listened to, believed, or not. there is, she thinks, she knows, freedom in the saying. there are, she thinks, she knows, risks worth taking and similar things.

the unbelievers’ creed

Out here, we are wilder, they say. There is little left to lose for those like us.

But the unchained melody is still ringing in my ears, cuts me to my core like an owl through the night. Out here we are free, out here we are we. Out here we are forgiven, bound only by our own promises, our own desires, our intuition of the forces that we want to [ought to] be. We are our own, a people of the forest, of the trees and the wind and the oceans and the clouds, unchained clouds. Destiny has nothing to do with it.

Separate me, break me from the prisons of my time, my lines- of lineage, of blood and water, consequence and circumstance. Burn the bridges, bomb the walls, and rip to shreds all the tiny threads that bind me, let me see things as they are. As we are. They are to us as we are to something we don’t call god, and that god is to us as the sun is to the west. We only meet in parting, in a slow dance in fading light. And how are we so far, so close, orbiting around each other. Mercury and venus, our hands only ever brush for briefest moments. Come to me, fill me up, let me see things as they are, above, beyond, inside and out, around and around in dizzy circles of drunken understanding. This is clearest to us now. We are what we are, and we see what we see. My universe is mine alone, only I can see it. And we all have our own, vast universes, coexisting and colliding, as i crash into god into you into the mountains where no one lives but legends. We are legends of our kind, of our time and our persuasions. Why don’t you be my persuasion, see me here as I see you; let us have a sunset of the mind.

Rushing water on the page, tiny fish give tiny kisses, where does all this come from, what are we trying to hide? The sun streams from the doorway til all we see is light. Here, here there are trees to climb, rocks to break and unlived lives. Here, there are stars to wander, in this field of gold and blue. When blue was gold and the sun went down forever? There’s no forgiveness for things like that. No forgiveness for things like that. Things. Like that.

I am an American aquarium drinker, and I will use this as I can. And I am wrong, I know I’m wrong, but I feel that I deserve it. There are days, I think, when we deserve to be wrong; it is what we are. And I am not a fatalist, I don’t believe I’m here because of you. who are you? I’m not here for a reason, there is no such thing as destiny. But there is no such thing as luck either, coincidence is as much a myth as our creation. We are all myths. And there, somewhere between fate and myth, between circumstance and consequence, there are two tiny eyes that watch the world, indifferent. Like two tiny stars in a constellation neither of them have ever heard of.

What if they knew? What if stars knew that we called them ursa minor, that we name them to control them, as we have since we invented adam? Would they shrug, or cringe, or laugh at us in their own, giant, burning, sad version of denial?

And what am I, here? Without a god that I can name, with a truth that I can only taste, with only a whisper on the wind that stirs me to revelation? Where will I go, what will I do, with my ghost of a god who pulls no strings, with my ghost of a self falling and rising, with my stars in the sky that have their own names, where will I go? Layer seven of a dark, mythical ring that they call a lake of sulfur? That they call a place for sinners, for unbelievers and rejectors, a place for those who dare to walk alone into the dark? Our bravery betrays us in our quest for peace, for a truth that matters in a world that maybe doesn’t, for a life that is made of more than empty promises and fiery threats. We are the sinners, we are the doubters, the questioners, the unbelievers. The pinnacle of human, our blessing and our curse. See that’s the thing, we don’t believe in curses. Or punishment, or violence, or unbreakable rules. We don’t believe in judgment, or salvation, or submission. But we believe in lilies, and in poetry and open windows. We believe in life and death, in life by seeing and death by ignorance, in atoms and in planets, in love without a cause. We believe in broken fences, red wine and candlelight and midnight, we believe in eclipses, in sunsets on the porch. And we believe that we are what we are, and that should be, is, enough. We believe that life is life, that love is love, that we are pieces of those glued together like broken plates, that what we see matters more than what we hear, that faith is something unbound and unchained, candles in the wind and lives torn apart by living. We believe in swirling smoke, in choices and in loss. In Kerouac and Sartre, in darkness and in light, in complicated realities that dance too fast to keep a rhythm. We are strangers in a strange world, twirling around a strange universe, a kaleidoscope of unknowing until we can’t stand it anymore.

Long live Muhammad, long live Jeremiah, long live Abraham and all his many, starstruck sons. But I am tired of Abraham, of men and sons of men, men who were revolutionaries for their time. for their time is nothing, means nothing, means water under the bridge-- I am not their time, we are not their time. A little girl in a garden is closer to god than all the prophets in the world, with their books and their salvations. they are gilded chalices, seedless cherries, synthesizers set to piano 2. They are lipsticked girls and decaf coffee; leave your books and leave your letters; leave your damnation and your pride; leave your so-called revelations and remember what you are. We are where we are, we cannot be another. But my visions are not their visions; I am no prince, no son of god, no daughter- their god has no daughters. No prophet, no prostitute, no virgin and no king. I am a woman. And I see what I can see, from the cliff we are all perched on, waiting for the fall. We are all, really, waiting for the fall. The piano is a heavy one, the rope is straining every moment. And when will they accept, when will they see, that we are what we are. We are not gods, we are not worms, we are open eyes and open wings. And you can pour as many drops in the ocean as you like, it will never be fresh water. You can throw sugar to the wind until the ground is white, it will never be sweet. You can burn the earth til its charred and black, it will never be anything but home. And I, I will build castles of stone and earth until we all spiral into the sun. I will drink from the rivers until my lungs are turned to gills. I will flail my arms until I am an eagle, stand in the fire until I burn like gasoline. There is no sun, we say, unless there is an earth. And I say no, say that they are all stars in the distance, that we are not the end of time. The end of history is not ours to make, the beginning of the end is a slow lullaby. We are immortal, in our way- everything we are is recorded in the stars and in the spaces beyond them, where there is nothing but Picasso and light is mixed with dark.

Light us on fire, they say, and I say let us burn. Let us be what we choose, let us choose what we believe, let us believe what we feel and let us feel without bounds. let us, unchained like the wind, blow like the chaff their god has always rejected. Let us fill our cup before it is filled for us, let us love as we can, let us be what we are until we can be nothing anymore. Let us run out, run our course, and then let the nothing come. Because we are not afraid of silence, we are nothing but the music of the space between the notes. Let us know, let us speak, let us drink and then, then let us sleep, and wake up next to each other intertwined, can’t tell my sleeping, dreaming arms from his.

As if we were one, we say. If only we knew. If only I know. If only it was so, if only we were unknown.


Remember, she says; a remembering people. Wings, faded, in the photographs of our childhood memories. There are rubies to be found, but Cortes was only ever looking at the ground; and we will never see the earth until the sky has overcome us.