IMAG0915

IMAG0915, a photo by favorella on Flickr.

IMAG0915

b&f wordcloud. because i should be writing.

backs of stars

steps so light you barely stir the dust, winding winding up, past the stubborn scrub brushes and the thick and peeling trees, up up up winding on light-stepped feet, dust on your toes, salt on your lips. clouds heavy and dark and excited, there on the horizon, you have climbed so high you can look right into the eyes of those clouds, see right into their souls. you keep you big toothy grin and wriggle your fingers in a friendly wave and you walk higher higher winding and you can see clouds' crooked parts and receding hairlines and botched dye jobs. you are that high. you are mountaintop now, and treetop, and swaying in the wind. your foundation is good, solid, your roots are deep deep deep while you go up and around around. there is always something new to see: hello there, hello. you watch your feet and the dust doesn't stir and there is plenty of time for everyone to move out of your way, light step, and then you realize you are holding finders with the one you've known all this time, and there are ways your body moves, it vibrates, and only she can name it for what it is, and it surprises you both every time. you thought you were so still and steady as to be like the wind or the ground beneath your feet, but you are vibrating and she holds your fingers and and and you have stopped moving. there is great risk here in this moment, up so high and so blessedly light footed. having made the acquaintance of the clouds, having been greeted hello hello, having climbed so long and so far. there is great danger in this choice. you take your steps back, you walk up up up and around and the wind picks up to help your momentum. it is only gravity keeping you here, and your heart, and so you release the fingers of the one you are holding and hold hands instead with your sweet old heart and you climb up to the backs of the stars, so high, and you have reached a resting spot, backs of stars. you rest and you find yourself covered in light. behind the stars light, the kick up no dust and dance around to songs you used to know, light.

(freewrite: the backs of stars: 13 minutes

from the quiet animal, by julia cameron
10/12/11)

how do i convince myself?

it is walking to the center of the place which is as far as you can ever walk, carrying a thing which is heavy with everything because your desire is everything and everything that ever was, will be. it is a sky full of planets and it is also the salt dried on your palm. it is a small brown sack filled with all of the things and it is tied tight with leafy green vines and thick red thread and the long hairs from your elders. it is a small heavy thing and it smells of freshly turned earth and freshly born child and freshly stormed sky. it is a small heavy thing, your desire, it is a small heavy thing and it pulls you forward, turn around this way this way this way, always forward. never mind it feels backward or to the side, ever forward. small heavy thing it wants to go to that place in the center which is as far as you will ever walk, which is a place all lit up with shadow and sounding like what all the sounds sound like,children laughing, water flowing, birds winging. it sounds like all the things, plants growing, cells dividing, ideas forming, it is the place in the center all shadow and light and it is this place in the center where you will dig a hole with your strong hands, using your strong back. you will lay this small heavy thing which tastes like desire and you will sit patiently and watch the water table rise and the planets orbit your sky and the dust will lay itself easy on your desire and it will grow itself into a tall magnificent thing that reaches deep and high and wide.

(freewrite: an area of your life you could use some advice about: 11 minutes)

a world as small as this

that was the summer it was dark all the time. all the summers before and a small few after were bright suns and starlight, but that summer was every moment dark. the kind of dark that is moments before thunderclap, but the thunder never comes. the birds were quiet then too, come to think of it. no bird songs and also there was no running or bouncing the ball on the side of the barn, or flipping through the comics on the porch. the dog slept through all the days and nights and the milk didn't sour, even when i left it out too long. that was the summer everything was off and nothing was right. that was the summer no one asked where i was going or where i'd been. the screen door didn't slam and the ice cream didn't melt. the chickens chased the cat through the yard, circled the tree and then they all laid down to rest together. that was the summer it was dark all the time and no one even talked about it, not once. clothes hung on the line for weeks  and i'd take a sock when it was a sock i was needing, leaving the rest there in the wind that didn't pick up and the sun that didn't pick up and the whole damn planet that didn't pick up. clothes hung out for weeks until they stopped fitting anyone i knew, not for us growing, but for the pants and shirts and socks shrinking down to fit the size of people who lived in a world as small as this. little gnome people, hobgoblin trickster people, the kind of people who grow tired of the light and move underground where the only clothes you need are to cover your crawling knees and maybe a glove for your dragging knuckles. that was the summer it was dark all the time and the trees grew faster than ever before and the honeybees life-cycled in half a day, never even losing their stingers. that was the summer of everything backward, ice melting where there was no heat and the tips of my fingers numb like they'd never known anything to touch. the path from here to there and there to here wore right down to the brown dirt and then into the deep black dirt and then all the way down to the water table and the path flooded itself right good and then it was the river from here to there and there to here. but my clothes never did dry, and when i walked on land, the land she didn't want none of the water i was shedding, so everywhere i went was a puddle.

(freewrite: that was the summer i... write from a gender not your own: 18 minutes)

what happens when i think of condoms

the night i lost my boy virginity was also the first night i ever saw snow under streetlights. the world was pink and clean and i had just had sex on sheets with robots and airplanes on them. the world was pink and clean and still. i stood at the window and thought: what was all the fuss? he owns a 24 hour fitness now and has two sons with different women. he used to hang by his toes from a chin-up bar and tell me he was bruce wayne's cousin. also he would sing busta move to me, and depeche mode. and he folded his jeans tight at the ankles and wore white tube socks with sneakers. also he would jerk off into those socks and let his mother pick them off the floor on laundry day. what else? he was not very nice to me. but he was older and rachel was dating his best friend so it was convenient.

i should have dated his best friend. you know, if those were my choices and i had the choice to make again. chris lived in capehart, which was the run-down housing project where only white people lived, because only white people lived in maine. he lived there with his mom, but she was never home and the only sign she was a real person was the box of tampons next to the empty diaphragm case in the bathroom. he lived there with metallica and mötley crüe posters and beer bongs and a kind of desperation in his eyes that made me want to make him feel special. i think we almost kissed once.

now i'm remembering x, who came to the apartment i shared with my boyfriend y, who rachel called "lick my butt". when i asked her to guess his middle name, initial L, "lick my butt" was what she said, because he was kind of a tool. but i would have been homeless without him, so when he bought me the too-tight pink and black lingerie from kmart, i wore it and took acid while we played nintendo and watched smells like teen spirit for the very first time. okay: x came to our apartment one night at like 3 in the morning and we sat on the stoop for hours while lick my butt paced and chain smoked upstairs. x told me he was in love with me and didn't know how he could live without me. i already knew i was queer, and was just biding my time until it was safe to come out, so i couldn't bring myself to commit to anything, even though he was my best friend. a few months later, i masturbated for him after i told him i was a dyke. he left then for twenty years. a few months ago he told me he had been homeless in colorado springs, dealing meth and almost dead. now he has two gorgeous daughters, one with a healed hole in her heart, and a wife who looks something like me.

(freewrite: a condom: 16 minutes)

silver-bellied

"in order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart." 

i think she was trying to tell me something different this time, something other than: i love you. thank you. you saved my life.  she has said these things before. and i look off at the surface of the river and notice the silver-bellied fishes leaping like videos of whales after they've been freed from some monstrous net or water gone suddenly too shallow. i don't hear her when she tells me about love or gratitude. i don't hear her but i cry big loping tears whenever it happens and i always think: i should be writing this down. because the not hearing means not remembering, and i've always wondered if things might have gone differently if anything she had said had stuck.

silver-bellied memory splash down deep and all that matters is deeper, deeper and cool water on my skin. the vague idea that above me, beyond the surface, is a danger of some kind. shadowy and expansive, elusive, the kind of danger that surfaces when the water is still and all is right in this world and the next and our bodies are well and alive and the ways we move prove it. and prove love. and prove faith and fate and magic. the ways we move there under the surface is magic, is silver-bellied reflection and we breathe water like air there, together, while above the stillness, just beyond the place where we might begin to hear and remember, is a dark-bellied shadow threat of a danger. it's a thing we've dreamed of, but speaking of it would bring us closer to it, so we go deeper deeper and the water is cool and our bodies are well and good but that deep makes us forget how to remember and so i always wish i would write it down.

when you tell me i am the one you think of when you want to be so present you lose all the parts of yourself that keep you trapped at the surface. that i am what you think of when you want release, when you want desire. i wish i would write it down, these slippery words. i say thank you for saying that. i say: all these years i thought you were ashamed of your love for me. i say: all these years i thought you'd have me be invisible. and she says oh oh no, that is exactly not what i wanted. and i forget again that she is trying to tell me something different this time, she is trying to tell me something i can hold long enough in my hands that i will remember how it feels. remember how it silver-bellied itself between my fingers and weighted down my palms and wet my skin right down to my bones, blood, beating heart.

(freewrite: 14 minutes: write about what the heart has to do with being powerful)

“Tenderness contains an element of sadness.  It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived, but it is a natural situation of fullness.  You feel so full and rich, as if you were about to shed tears.  In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart.  If a person does not feel alone or sad, he cannot be a warrior at all.” -Chogyam Trungpa

things i need to hear myself say

things i normally write about: 5 minutes

1. trees
2. water
3. critters
4. horizons
5. skies
6. seasons
7. salt
8. skin
9. longing
10. tangles
11. little girl
12. silence
13. shooting stars
14. underwater
15. alone
16. aurora borealis
17. porches
18. no family
19. wind
20. stones
21. magic
22. love
23. flying things
24. invisible things
25. secrets
26. windows
27. open heart
28. open hand
29. listen
30. remember
31. the house
32. the field
33. the path
34. the river
35. the tides
36. returning
37. releasing
38. telling
39. love
40. hope
41. roots
42. bones
43. making it up
44. floorboards
45. being old, being young
46. hands
47. desire
48. rain snow electricity
49. storms
50. breathing
51. knowing
52. trusting
53. forgetting, remembering
54. arc of spine, arc of story
55. yes

what do i want to understand or grasp?: 9 minutes

i want to learn how to tell a whole story. it doesn't need a beginning middle end; those don't make sense to me. it's never the beginning, what we think: it all started long before we thought to notice or name. and endings are happening well before we let them, before we will call it the end or say goodbye or see the next steps to the next paths.

i think i write the details of a story. the underbelly underbrush memory of a story. i want to write a thing that carries us from one to the next, and it's okay if it goes back again. i want the movement. i go in between worlds, my writing is in the liminal spaces, so there is movement there. maybe what i want is an arc. a trajectory.

my characters are nature, are girls searching for family. my characters make small circles and know their worlds to the detail, but they make small circles. i want flight and falling and speeding through the sky bullet in a hurricane. also i want slow crawl, glacial, sleepwalking to the streetlight; this is what i have. i don't think i want a new way, or a different way. i want more of it. i want to write and write and write until the pieces fit together with some sense of familiarity. it doesn't need to be comfortable, just yes.


(things i need to hear myself say: sharon c.l.)

muses

the dirty-kneed little girl, orange and yellow striped t-shirt. dusty arms and tangled hair. she hunts around the world for treasure and secret things, she holds hands and cozies up with all manner of creatures in the crook of an old root's elbow.

and the one who is older, much older, with her long silver hair. she waits and watches and remembers. she glows with wisdom and kind eyes there on the side of the road, just so, just here. c'mere she says and her fingers are long and knuckly, with raised veins all the way up her arms. c'mere she says and she wears a white dress and turquoise stones and the little one comes to her c'mere and we all three must ride. there is sun and setting and the horizon with any number of beginnings and they walk me through it, dirty-kneed and silver-haired, they walk me through it and we find the things together. and every finding is a deep well of rejoicing, another story to lay on the pile, old stones heavy on top so the wind won't bluster them away.



(freewrite: who is your muse? 5 minutes)

when you look at me

it's like being underwater. when you open your eyes you are blurred blind and your ears are filled with salt moving through tunnels and canals.

the octopus who learned how to unlock the treasure. the bear and her honey. the whale and her song.

climbing the rope ladder into the canopy, swimming into the cave with the smallest opening, barely big enough for your collarbone wingspan. stretch long and sleek, eel, snake, wisp of smoke, trail left behind. trail left behind. bread crumbs. secret cottages hidden behind ivies in the dark forest. fatten up the children, pinch your cheeks for color, to seem alive. gnarled walking stick and animals under your covers.

make yourself small and quiet, little mouse under a leaf. inchworm catching her breath. it is night time, it is change of season, world on her axis. the tides are shifting and what was there yesterday is below the surface today and where there was nothing, the hope of something, now there is treasure. unearthed. tangled roots. time capsule. pop gun, matchbox car, kazoo, dried leaf from the season you found the thing you were looking for.

when you look at me.

soft hiss of a release, then we move on through traffic, down the path, over the hill, under the stairs. make yourself small and quiet, learn how to notice the things that need noticing.



(freewrite: when you look at me you see... 12 minutes)