Water

I suppose rivers do not inherently have names and they all lead, in the end, to the same place.

But we name them different names anyway.

They also all seem to naturally have small or large places of calmer water somewhere along all that flowing.

So I suppose community could be constant, in a specific place and still dynamic.

And also with places of rest.

I don't believe in a deity but I believe in gratitude, grace and friendship.

My friends and my life partner make me feel loved, valued, appreciated, competent, funny, wanted, essential and a part of their life that is magical and irreplaceable. 

And I strive to do the same.

To have an opportunity to not only have true friends but to be a true friend is something I am so grateful for.

However, due to the move and the Pandemic I haven't been able to see my friends as much and it has been hard to find a place here.

Being a part of a community is my life's blood and I don't have a solid one here. 

I was a part of Redlands. 

I was a part of my friend group. 

I was good at my job. 

I had goals and aspirations. 

 I had places I haunted like Stell and Tulip House.

 In DC it is very transient and hard to find a constant PLACE here. 

Despite all of the good things and people in my life 

my mental health has been the worst it has ever been. 

I'm uncertain how to fix it and I've tried everything I can think of.

It's hard to not feel trapped by it and also hard not to blame myself for all of it.

I have adopted some new maladaptive coping skills over the pandemic.

I have relapsed into old maladaptive coping mechanisms during the Pandemic.

My main fears are that I'll essentially fail at being a good friend and life partner because I cannot trust my mind to not fail me. Because my mind is absolutely restless. 

And it will fail me and my heart if I cannot find a way to make it stop.

A talk I had with a friend made me realize that I think, in part, I am grieving. 

A great many things.

And it is so heavy that I am afraid I cannot keep it up.

And I don't know how to carry or heal from all of it.

And for one reason or another my mind will not let me put it down or rest.

And it's something I am angry I have not figured out how to do yet.

I have no insight to tie all this together or reassurances to offer.

But hopefully I don't drown in these rough waters.

But mostly I hope I don't pull anyone under with me on accident.

If you like music here is a link to a playlist.

Summer Velvet

Tattered Tale

 I've recently been "washing out" all psychoactive medications to try to find my "baseline." 

Well, let me tell you, my friends, my baseline is looking pretty chaotic.

Like, I had hoped that after almost a decade on some medications I'd be okay to quit taking them. 

I am in a healthy, loving relationship with an amazing partner etc. working at a job I like, I have time for hobbies and sleep now.

So, naturally, I decided to shatter that balance.

And because I don't wish to bore you with the particulars  I have, instead, implemented the use of GIFS (this is one of the many maladaptive coping skills I have honed to a deadly double edged blade of "Dark Humor" meets "Total Despair and Confusion" that both meet at the nice sharp knife point of "My Loneliness is Killing Me but So is the Anxiety that I am Both a Burden to Everything and Selfish Beyond Measure.")

And to add a bit of a challenge to it, I'm only using New Girl GIFS.

So now that we have that all cleared up we can begin.

Well, most days it starts out well enough. 

Then I say hello to my dog Ezra and proceed to try to ignore the snakes crawling around in my body

So I head on in to the bathroom to try to look into the mirror and repeat sage advice I've heard from others over the years hoping this time it will take root within me.

So I try to start my self improvement journey yet again.

But this time make it doable.

Then I eat mashed potatoes and corn with cheese for breakfast.

So when that doesn't work I try to remember how far I've come in the last 28 years.

When that doesn't work I like to ruminate on our super fucked up world.

And while doing this my body likes to do weird shit for no reason.

It doesn't make me feel better. 

So I just keep trying to shut it down so that leads to making it worse actually.

And then I get angry and overwhelmed and try to talk myself into not feeling guilty for making decisions to help myself even if they make me feel selfish. 

And as you might have guessed by now. 

That doesn't work.

 So then I change tactics.

Aaaaaaaaaaand now I'm hungry.

We're tailspinning, tailspinning, tailspinning...

Trying not to break things including myself

Oh and there is intellectualizing

Lets try all the coping skills we know.

Nope. 

Still Spiraling. 

Deploy self-hatred.

Feelings:

Then you cry yourself to sleep after maybe trying weed as a last-ditch effort.

You wake up and feel both hungry and hungover and like a terrible person. 

But what do you say to someone who saw you being so..... weird?

Yes.

 That's it.

Let's call it what it isn't. Because that helps.

Now.

Do it again.

Here is some music that makes it more bearable.

Sharp Objects Playlist

(I swear it's one of the best playlists ever.)

Arterior Motifs

"There seems to be no barrier between any one object and any other, just a continuous flow of life becoming art and vice versa"

-Donald Judd

"This nigh-mystical concept is a kind of Eamesian just rightness that arises organically from a series of patterns and activities set by nature that are allowed to generate structures of their own"

-Excerpt from The Longing For Less

"A lot of people will walk right by it and not know that's it. They stand in front of [The Earth Room] for ten to twenty-seconds  gaze at the field of dirt, and wonder what they are missing instead of thinking about what's right in front of them. The reaction has something to do with our expectations that art should be readily apparent and distinct from the mundane world around it, or that it should offer up a message in the first place."

-Bill Dillworth 

It's been a while since I have written.

Because writing about life or feelings or observations feels like trying to make something that is naturally messy and fluid into something neat and solid and that can feel odd.

A few years ago I did a bit of an overhaul on my life.

I think trying to simplify my life (i.e., zero waste, owning less, buying less , etc.) was my way of trying to, in a practical way, strive for selflessness. 

I am speaking of selflessness as in a lessening of the distance. 

I wrote a blog post about it over a year ago that goes more in depth about what I mean when I say "selfless" if you're curious. > Smoke and Mirrors <

I was trying to make a life that allowed grace to have space to be seen in it always. Even though grace is always in it, as is its nature. 

( I understand "grace" to be the unselfconscious breathing life. Think dust motes in the early morning sun. Your favorite mug. Your unmade bed. Window panes in older houses. Or nature in general even.) 

 I didn't want to be ruled by my own discontent. 

And I feel more discontent or disconnected the more out of context I feel.

Because I think a part of what grace is, is context. 

Which leads me to another thing I have been contemplating. 

As far as art goes I appreciate knowing about the artist's life. 

I find the more I learn about a particular artist the more their art deepens for me. 

Their art work stops being "pieces" and starts being a big thread of their life. 

Ups and downs and different experiments and ideas.

Much like so many people and things in life. 

Stories are my life's blood. 

But I sometimes find myself using the "curation process" of simplifying my life as a way to make sure I myself take up as little space as possible.

To take up less resources. Take up as little of my body as possible. Take up less time. Take up less energy.

 Take up less everything.

I think that I, unfortunately, learned early in my life the lie: 

The moment you become "too much" is the moment you become unloved and unlovable.

In my head this lie pertains to me only.

I don't look out at any other person and think this is true. 

And I don't know why I can't make myself un-believe it about myself. 

Maybe with time that will change. Maybe I will look over my life over the years and see the thread and all it's stitches and this will just be a few rough stitches in the line. 

Most importantly,

I keep forgetting that"curation" is not a taking away of things it is the choosing of things.

The point of the space is not the emptiness, it is the potential of it. 

The point is not to remove the content it is to allow freedom enough for you to see it as it is for you where you are.

 The emptiness to witness how the context of your life plays out in front of you as art.

Whether they are real, fantasy, non-verbal or musical stories have taught me so much. 

And slowly over time I've collected wisdom from so many different places people and times that if the lessons were put into a room, you might think they would clash but I think somehow they might manage to flow together rather gracefully. 

(Vivian Maier)

Music to Breathe to:

Chewing Cotton Wool - The Japanese House 

Bad Dream - Vancouver Sleep Clinic 

Seneca - Novo Amor

After All This Time

September 2014

         Do you feel it dripping

                                               wet as my lips 

                          -- fresh from sipping this warm tea.

February 2015

I started dating someone 

that wasn't you.

Nov 2015

The whiskey is wearing off 

And he is striking the gavel

again.

I offer a thought.

But it doesnʼt reach him
And my words

fall into this empty tumbler 

Iʼve set spinning.

Dec 2015

You see,
I spent a lot of time walking
for the next two months.
    ---Missing the smell of oranges.

February 2016

           It is thick like the big red trees. 
                         It whispers

                                      –smoke rings that drift.                        

July 2016

The last thing I can remember really

is thinking that the door by my bed

made the room seem

bigger than it was.

My voice has gotten very small.

What an odd time to feel nothing.

August 2016

Today

Not today

Not today 

Not today

September 2016

I spent a lot of time

with my dog.

Watching movies.

Reading books.

And running around a forest 

near my parents house.

December 2016

My life before July 

feels like all my fault a dream.

I forgot what it was like

---being here.                                      

February 2017

              It is sharp as the Liberty Crown. 

                                    Shifting like the fickle clouds.

                               

May 2017

We were so close.
But I am glad now
that we didn't try to build us
In that field of hurt.

(It still scares me to think that I might have lost you in it.)

June 2017

I remember standing there 

watching the snow begin to fall from his mouth again.

It's funny how tired the cold can make you.

 August 2017

                                Your music

             -- a warm breath.

September 2017

We talked but my tumbleweed words 
rolled by him, 
the space between us an empty town.

It's funny how tired loneliness can make you.

November 2017

There was whiskey 

and there was 

you 

brushing a strand of hair 

from my face.

I remember our knees were touching.

Dec 2017

              It clings like mussels on a ship. 

                              always dripping away 

                                                                 under ground. 

January 2018

I went to The Falconer 

a lot the next month 

or so.

But that ended too.

February 2018

We talked for a long while.
You shared
some of your stories.

(How have you always known how to love me?)

March 13 2018

I was so surprised to see you

I hugged you 

twice.

(And felt the room get colder when you left.)

March 20 2018

And after all this time

                                        a kiss.

April 3 2018 

My life

is crinkle cut fries

Silver music 

and you

In a Golden-Hour frame.

(Thank you)

May 30 2018 

I see your lashes 

and wonder if I will ever 

feel them on my face again.

(You were leaving in a few hours.)

June 17 2018

Finally,
        Butterfly Kisses. 

Music

Alina Baraz - Lavender and Velvet

Ravyn Lenae - Moon Shoes

H.E.R. - Focus

Teyana Taylor - Never Would Have Made It

Light Years

 The shadowless true noon is not the only time life is beautiful.

Instead it is far more common
to see in yourself or in another 

 Not a fault in their or your nature
 but simply light shifting as it does.

 Like the slow lifting of a veil or like
the quick clicking and shuttering shadows
on your face while passing quickly under trees.

And even when you can't find the Sun uninterrupted

There is still wonder and kindness and peace and love and freedom
in the dripping of light through the leaves.

And to see in myself light and shadows and their ability to coexist is a hopeful thought.

Tribute : Tenacious D
Golden Green: Agnes Obel
I Want A Life For You : Saturday Sun
Stone : Agnes Obel

Zack Knight: La la la

Prose and Cons

         


                                       You see, it's never a good time
                        --to ask for their hands to help you catch the slipping things inside you.

           Is that why you read him poetry instead?

                                         It is hard to tell if you have been whittled down
                          -- to what you do for people.

          Is that why your humor is almost always settled in the shade (dressed accordingly of course)?

                                       You see your hands
                          -- a failed utility.

           Is that why you run?

                                       And your heart
                         --Well at least you've tried, by now, to laugh louder than  
the faulty ticking.

        
                                                           

Aisha Badru - Splintered

Rosemary & Garlic - Old Now

Birdy - Shelter

Grey Matters

TODAY*

Today.

Today I wore a dress. 

Today. 

Today my lover's kiss 

Hangs on me -a shift.

Dripping-sweat from a glass rim.

Landing-sharp leaves from this tree
Overhead.

*(This is a short piece I wrote a bit ago)

Music 

Tornado of Souls : Megadeth

All The Stars : Kendrick Lamar, SZA

Bottle Tops : RITUAL ft. Mononoke