junkies

I think, perhaps, the only thing more depressing than an old junkie (of which there are few) is a pair of teenage junkies making up stories on the #10 about how "sleepy" they are to excuse the fact of their "falling asleep" on some old woman's shoulder.

richard

I met a delightfully spontaneous character at the reading I attended last night (where Matt Love and Cheryl Strayed both gave great performances at the Blackbird Wine Shop) when I accidentally shattered an empty wine glass after the penultimate song of the evening. This man, who I later learned was named Richard, says to me, "Blame it on me. Nobody's gonna mess with me."

I then ran into him and his friend at the bus stop, where he chatted me up all the way to the next bus transfer and the whole ride we shared. He was this strange blend of old school New Yorker with a penchant for old school gyms and a kooky west coast old school Dead Head. He provided a near endless stream of hilarious one-liners and story fragments. What he shared with me in the twenty or thirty minutes or so our paths were crossed included the following:

several Woody Allen film references; a story about Ox, the big guy at the gym (always make friends with the biggest guy in the room and the guy with the biggest heart-- if they happen to be one and the same then you're in real good shape); an offer to set me up with his Irish friend Patrick; stories about the old MacTarnahan's and before that Finn MacCool's; several Grateful Dead fragments, most often involving people that you wouldn't have first guessed might be into the Dead; jokes about misfiring synapses; meditation; yoga; the phrase "coat hanger shoulders" which came from a story about his grandfather's tailor; various passing drug cultures references; Timothy Leary; Ram Dass; more about Ox; zero points; "I am 'anonymous' Bosch"; moving from solitary exploration to making peace with journeying on the path with others ("I can party by myself all day long, but I've finally reached a point where I'm cool with hanging out with other people again"); good folks to have at your side while navigating the bardos; why he doesn't need fruity hair products; and a lesson in what he called the New York shmear, which involved palming a $10 bill off during a handshake to smooth things over with someone (I inferred that given when he learned the lesson, $10 went further than it might now).

He was one of those characters you know you may never meet again and sort of wish you could have recorded for posterity because the riffs he went off on were full of things you couldn't possibly script any better and you know you'd laugh just as often and hard listening to him for the tenth time as you would the first. At least I think so... His friend Lee kept saying, "Richard..." in such a way that she may have meant anything from "oh you!" to "are you drunk?" or "why are you bothering this woman" or "I've heard that story before and it gets more elaborate with each telling." In any case, I found both of them delightful and hilarious.

weird baby

I have recently had my third dream of being in a car that has crashed into water in (I think) the past year. In all three there was a moment of realization that we were traveling too fast, taking a turn too quickly, and that the vehicle (in two cases a car, in one a Volkswagen bus) was ultimately going to land underwater. I don't recall being particularly frightened in the first two and certainly wasn't in this last dream. I only recall being the driver on one occasion, and in that case, it was a fall from very high up on a very long and narrow passage (read: cartoonishly impossibly high and long and narrow) and in this last one, I was actually very casual about the whole affair. I simply unbuckled my seat belt and climbed out the window onto the hood where I hopped from the car to a dock that we'd aimed the car for when it hit water. The really strange part of this dream was that I carried a baby in my arms the whole time. It seemed like it was my baby, but at some point after I'd climbed off the car I began to remember that I didn't have any children. I looked at this tiny human and wondered, if he didn't belong to me, who did he belong to and why did I have him? It was a beautiful day and despite managing to get out of the car without getting wet (while holding an infant in one arm) I found myself sitting in the grass, damp, and wondering where on earth this baby came from.

thunderbird

I dreamed of oceans and birds last night. In the first dream I was living in a house by the beach. There was a door in my kitchen that led to another dwelling space next door. Two separate houses that could function as one. Apart from walking around the house, dragging my toes through the sand, I don't remember much about this dream.

There was another dream, perhaps an extension of the first, but the beaches here felt more tropical than the first. I felt imbued with more jungle energy, I suppose. There was a man. He wore a shirt made of thin strips of leather knotted together. They trailed out behind him as he walked. I stood on the shore, facing the ocean. I looked down to notice my hands had been bound with thin white rope. The man approached me, but the sunlight was such that I could never quite see his face. I knew only that he was no threat to me.

The man attached something to my bound wrists, then walked toward the water and retrieved a large, flat board. He began moving rhythmically, his hips slowly bucking. He raised the board and moved it through the air in a stylized fashion, like I imagine I might if I were working with a sword, or a fan. He was moving in the service of something. Then, the board seemed to become an extension of his arms. His movements took on a wave like quality and he lifted into the sky. His strength rippled through the air toward me and I realized that I, too, was lifted up. His hands directed the board and the full length of his body snapped to attention with each wave. Each wave transferred to me and my body moved in time with his, though I trailed behind him as we moved higher into the sky. My heart was full and I felt happy, bound, as I was, to this man.

Then I dreamed of a bird. It seemed this (part of the) dream was a return to my house-attached-to-house at the beach. I found this bird in the front yard. The sun was low in the sky. All the colors of light were reflected in this bird's eye as it looked back into my own. Something was wrong with its wings; they'd been bent back, so while they were not, technically, broken, the bird was unable to fly. I leaned in close and spoke to it softly. I don't remember what I said, but I know my intent was to let it know I was going to help and to trust that I was not aiming to cause pain, though pain was probable.

I placed the fingers of my left hand at the top of its spine, at the base of the skull. I ran the fingers of my other hand along either side of the spine, which grazed the injured part of the wings. The bird's body immediately went into spasm. I paused and took a deep breath. I whispered something, almost a kind of incantation, holding my face low to the bird's back, as though I were trying to infuse its body with my words, my breath. I felt the light on both of us. I used my fingers to elongate the bird's spine. I dug into the space beneath its shoulders, to lift the scapula away from the spine so that I could create enough space to reverse the direction. It continued to spasm and its eyes locked onto mine. I don't know how I knew what I was doing, but I knew it was necessary and right.

I can't describe the horrible sensations I picked up through my fingertips as I did this, but I was able to return the wings to their correct position. The bird went limp in my hands and for a moment my breath caught in my throat because I thought, perhaps, I had killed it. Then the bird began to vibrate, small movements, but more and more quickly, and as these vibrations increased, its body filled my hands with heat. The heat transferred between us and soon there was a ball of light between my hands and I could no longer see the bird. And then a bright flash, the sound of thunder, and my hands were empty. I looked into the sky and saw my bird was there, flying, fine. And it was only at that moment did I realize tears had been streaming down my cheeks for several minutes.

fear

I awoke this morning to a random feeling of fear. Sure, I could attach it to something specific. I have plenty of questions swimming around in my head (does it mean what I think it means? am I over-interpreting or interpreting incorrectly? should I be interpreting at all? how do I know? am I missing something? will he run away? will I? can I count on anything? am I being naive? and so on...) but as I sat with my fear this morning I found that it didn't matter whether I could answer any of those questions. My fear would have found something else to attach itself to and so it seemed perhaps better to simply acknowledge its existence and to thank it for what it was trying to do for me, even if what it was trying to do wasn't particularly useful or helpful, since, at one time, it probably served a real purpose. As I did this I found it gripped me less. I don't feel any more certain. Many questions still swim around in the back of my mind. But, somehow, I don't feel completely derailed by it. I didn't let that fear turn into certainty that something was horribly wrong and, as such, I'm still feeling pretty good about things. This seems like progress.

happiness

I haven't felt bad in days. Since Thursday, to be precise. I haven't spent a lot of time asking myself questions that I can't possibly answer. I haven't been second guessing everything. I haven't been waiting for the floor to drop out from under me or for disaster to strike. I've been pretty much happy. At some points, I've even felt ecstatic. I am so in love and so uncertain of everything, with one exception, which is that acting on and engaging that love feels very right. I feel like I should spend less time doing things that don't feel as right and more time engaging in things that do. I don't know what happens next. I don't even know that I want to speculate on it, because then I'll be forced to deal with those unanswered questions and it will take me away from the happiness I've been feeling, right here, right now, and, for some wonderful hours, in the arms of the man I love.

now

How does one know when something is truly over, when the old chapter is closing and a new one beginning? Is it a sign of strength, tenacity, and honesty to hold on to something, even in the face of its apparent loss, or is that simply stupidity, weakness, naivety, and denial? What does loving look like when it encompasses also continually letting go? How does one walk away from the deepest love ever known, especially when shared with one's best friend? I feel as though I know and understand less today than ever before. The only thing that is certain is that I am confused. The sun is high, my heart is broken open, and I have no idea what comes next.

rilke

Your work needs to be independent of others' work.
You must not compare yourself to others.
No one can help you. You have to help yourself.
Criticism leads to misunderstandings and defeatism.
Work from necessity and your compulsion to do it.
Work on what you know and what you are sure you love.
Don't observe yourself too closely, just let it happen.
Don't let yourself be controlled by too much irony.
Live in and love the activity of your work.
Be free of thoughts of sin, guilt and misgiving.
Be touched by the beautiful anxiety of life.
Be patient with the unresolved in your heart.
Try to be in love with the questions themselves.
Love your solitude and try to sing with its pain.
Be gentle to all of those who stay behind.
Your inner self is worth your entire concentration.
Allow your art to make extraordinary demands on you.
Bear your sadness with greater trust than your joy.
Do not persecute yourself with how things are going.
It's good to be solitary, because solitude is difficult.
It's good to love, because love is difficult.
You are not a prisoner of anything or anyone.

—Rilke

not going anywhere

the grid plan

"I made the comment about how, you know, the Grid plan emanates from our weaknesses, this layout of avenues and streets in New York City, these systems of 90 degree angles, and to me the Grid plan is puritan. It's homogenizing in a city where there is no homogenization available. There is only total existence, total cacophony, a total flowing of human ethnicities and tribes and beings and gradations of awareness and consciousness and cruising.

And this woman turns to me and she goes, 'You know I never really thought of that.’ She goes, ‘I can't imagine it. Everyone likes the grid plan.'

And of course the question is, like, who is everyone? I mean, it’s just what I had said. I mean, whoever that is under the white comforter, cuddled up with 34th Street and Broadway, existing on the concrete of this city, hungry, and disheveled, struggling to crawl their way onto this island with all of their machinated rages and hellishness and self-orchestrated purgatories, I mean, what does that person think about the grid plan? Probably much more on my plane of thinking, my gradation of being, which is: let's just blow up the Grid plan and rewrite the streets to be much more a self portraiture of our personal struggles rather than some real estate broker's wet dream from 1807. We're forced to walk in these right angles, I mean, doesn't she find it infuriating?

By being so completely allegioned to the Grid plan, I think most noteworthy is this idiom: I can't even imagine changing the Grid plan. She's really aligning herself with this civilization. It's like saying, 'Oh I can't imagine altering this civilization. I can’t imagine altering this meek and lying morality that rules our lives. I can't imagine standing up on a chair in the middle of the room to change perspective. I can't imagine changing my mind on anything. I, in the end, can't imagine having my own identity that contradicts other identities.'

When she says to me, after my statement, ‘Everyone likes the grid plan’ isn’t she automatically excluding myself from everyone? ‘How can you not like the grid plan? It’s so functional. Take a right turn and a right turn and a right turn and then there’s a red light and a green light and a yellow light. It’s so symmetrical.’ By saying that everyone likes the Grid plan, you're saying 'I'm going to relive all the mistakes my parents made. I’m going to identify and relive all the sorrows my mother lived through. I will propagate and create dysfunctional children in the same dysfunctional way that I was raised. I will spread neurosis throughout the landscape and do my best to recreate myself and the damages of my life for the next generation.'”

~Timothy Speed Levitch
from "The Cruise"

my love

The following poem is titled "My Love, A Partial Explanation" and is written by Shaindel Beers. I just discovered it tonight.


You ask what was different this time,
and I answer that it was the combination of rocks and water
and make some obscene joke about the sexual escapades
which would have ensued had we been in Maine or Oregon,

but this is because I don’t know how to tell you about your eyes,
which you think are brown, but which I know are gold-flecked
in different lights, and the way they smiled
when we talked our odd talk about relationships
and the stars; not really astrology,
more astrodynamics and Eagles’ lyrics with a bit
of quantum theory thrown in for good measure,

and I don’t know what you see in me,
but I knew you were closer to the truth than anyone else
when you said that my body reminded you
of South Dakota, because I always knew I was a plains
state—only the colors of sand and wheat and
eyes as grey as storm clouds, which used to anger my mother
because she thought if only I’d had more color,
I could be beautiful—

The other day when we watched the geese,
and you said, wistfully, Soon there will be goslings,
I didn’t mean to be a bitch and say Poor, monogamous bastards,
but sometimes life is so structured, and I’m always
on the outside, never quite able to figure out the rules
that everyone seems to take for granted.

I’ve been told that loving me is like loving a guard dog,
you’re never sure if it’s love, or if you’re just grateful
that you’re the one thing it won’t kill;
and I don’t know how to stop this,
it just seems to be my way. The way that giraffes
are my favorite animal, not only because they’re so gentle,
but because a mother giraffe can decapitate a lion
with a single kick if it threatens her calf.

disclaimer

Man, I love clearing stuff out. I love the fragments I find. Things scribbled on tattered scraps of paper that at some point I'd found intensely amusing or important. At the very least, these were things that it felt useful to write down, as though they may one day have a good home somewhere. Well, I guess this is it.

(Disclaimer: some family members may find the following a bit too personal. Personally, I found it hilarious and not such a big deal, but I also find that to be the same about my lack of understanding of what constitutes inappropriate dinner conversation, and I've made more than one of you squirm with that...)

This is in keeping with previous efforts to capture and record some of my dream imagery. I don't even remember when the hell I wrote this... Here we go. What I found on a purple sticky note, word for word:

Dream - in house - group house - more like a hotel-type situation but in a house. Old Marine (now security?) says to me, "I love you." And I ask, "What? Why?" He explains that they're moving my stuff out of my room temporarily and one of the little kids of the people helping with the move found my vibrator under the bed and the kid thinks it's the best toy ever. I turn the corner to see the kid switching it on and off and squealing with delight. Hilarity and embarrassment ensue.

possessions

I am working my way through a stack of boxes that I have been ignoring for months. Where the hell does all this stuff come from? Truly, it's rather overwhelming...

I have boxes full of manuscripts, teaching materials, evaluations, old photographs, pages torn from magazines, pdf files of obscure texts, articles of interest. I have boxes full of old art supplies in various stages of use and decay. I have an obscene number of paper clips and, I can't believe I'm going to write this, I think perhaps I have too many shoes.

I ignore these things because it is easier than dealing with them (or that's what I tell myself, despite the evidence to the contrary). But lately, I can't ignore this stuff any longer. It's all making me feel crazy. I feel anxious and on the verge of tears just looking at it all, though paper shredding has proved to be surprisingly cathartic.

What's interesting, though, is that my anxiety and such is not produced by nostalgia, or even any memories attached to these objects. They are just objects in space, most of which have been boxed up long enough to prove they hold no special significance. But they exert control over me somehow and I find it hard to decide what to keep, recycle, throw away, give away. I overthink everything.

I find I construct scenarios in which said object might be useful (one day I might want to show someone the array of flyers and postcards I produced during my bookselling and event planning days, right? no? oh...) or hang onto things I might at some point wish to consider using in class. Even the desktop of my computer is littered with icons for websites I found interesting and might want to return to... I open seventeen tabs at a time, because, you know, there are all kinds of things I don't want to forget might be cool, or useful, or odd, or lovely.

It's madness! And this madness must be brought to its end. My work, possibly over the next several weeks, is to unburden myself of everything that really doesn't matter. I don't truly care about this stuff. I sometimes fantasize about having a Fire Sale. As in, please buy my shit before I set fire to it, because, frankly, I could use the money and I have to get out from under all these objects. Suffice to say that my work is cut out for me.

raw

I thought, perhaps my heart is so huge it has taken me nearly 37 years to notice I don't know my way around it... well, I am plunged into it now. There are no words to describe this rawness, this wounded bird. All my thoughts turn to ofic oqiruoylf qocinfdfn ;owcemr'utiqut when I try to articulate anything past this guttural howl.

petty griping

I'm in love and I'm scared. To say I have trust issues is an understatement, but then, surprisingly I manage to be rather trusting most of the time. My worst defense (offense?), it seems, is to pull away and become distant. That, or I push those I want closest to me further and further out of reach. This compulsion is maddening.

My sense is that I can let go of that fear, that need for distance, if I can relax, which is made easier if my beloved assists me in that regard, but that seems like a recipe for failure (not because he can't or won't or hasn't, but because it calls on the external to accomplish work I need to do internally). The trouble, of course, is that I am profoundly sad and often hurting most of the time, which means I find it very difficult to truly relax.

I know how to lounge comfortably, or blow off some steam, but relaxation-- truly letting go and dissolving all my tensions --feels damn near impossible. And because of this I am afraid I am driving away the man I love. I see it happening and yet I don't really know how to stop it.

we did it again.

My sister and I, once again, decided to do the open mic thing this past Monday at Three Friends. My lovely friend Matt Love was one of the featured readers for the Caffeinated Art Series. You can listen to me and Kiana here. I come in at 11:49 and Kiana comes in at 15:38. I love us! Hope you enjoy something of it too.

ch-ch-changes

I have been moving through the world in a bizarre state of sweet sadness lately. I don't know if it is the changing of the seasons that is getting to me, or the fact that, once again, I've had to accept that love and awesomeness aren't always enough, or if it's just another mood cycle for me. Whatever it is, it has been affecting me deeply. I am ready for this term to be over, to be done with grading papers and evaluating students. I am ready for the world to burst into blossom, to feel the sun on my back, to have more time to write...

I have been thinking a lot about a new friend. Well, a friend I made and then pretty much lost almost immediately. His name is Chris, a.k.a Cat, and he is a member of the USMC. I will admit that I didn't know much about what it is to be a Marine when I met him, but my conversation with him made me realize how, despite having strong opinions about war and government, I had managed to grow up woefully ignorant of how the military functions and what life must be like for those who see combat. Meeting Chris made me radically rethink a lot of things. I've been watching documentaries and other films, I've been reading various news reports, and researching USMC training. I have been thinking a lot about how smart and funny and sweet Chris is and feeling rather stupid about how irrationally heartbroken I've been to think of him being shipped off to Afghanistan and what he will likely encounter there. I've been thinking of how little the media shares of what these men are doing there (laying roads and building the necessary infrastructure, in addition to taking out military targets, like high ranking members of the Taliban) and how little we hear of just how horrifying Al Qaeda and the Taliban really are... it's not just sensationalism. There are some messed up things going on over there and reading about it makes me grateful to have been born a western woman in the era I was born.

I can only imagine the sorts of things he is likely to face, the things he has already seen and survived. I had no special fondness for men in uniform; I have not developed any sort of military fetish. I had the good fortune to meet one amazing human being and to get to talk with him, to learn something about him, and to have my eyes opened to things I had not looked at directly before. I gave him my address, if he wanted to exchange letters while he was gone, but in the end he made it clear he was not comfortable investing in a new friendship when he would be leaving so soon.I think I understand this now, though I didn't at first. Who am I to him? Apart from family, it seems there are few who would really be willing to support a soldier deployed overseas and who, sadly, may not return. Why would he believe a new friend be willing to endure the emotional strain or loss, or maybe more to the point, why would he believe that such a new friend would actually be invested enough in that friendship to care at all?

I have had only one friend ever who I corresponded with while he was in the military. I went to high school with him and we'd been close friends before he joined the Navy. We exchanged letters while he was at sea. He is now married with children and we are not close now, but I remember that friendship fondly and I remember how important those letters were at the time. Chris and I didn't have time to develop a proper friendship, and yet he's already had a big influence on my life. Perhaps the fact that I am at a crossroads in my life made the conversation I had with him more significant than it might have been, but I like to think that we connected in a genuinely human way, and I hope that he is not anxious about leaving and that he is safe while he is there. I hope the Pashto he has learned will spare him from having to ever fire his weapon and that he will eventually return home and will be able to live his life in whatever fashion he chooses. Again, I feel stupid for being so sentimental, so moved by such a brief exchange with someone I hardly even got to know. I'm almost certain I'll never hear from him again, and just as certain I won't ever forget him. Weird.

I guess knowing he is leaving (maybe even this week?) has brought him to the forefront of my mind again. Thinking of his circumstances sort of puts my life more in perspective. I'm listening to David Bowie's lyrics "Every time I thought I'd got it made / It seemed the taste was not so sweet / So I turned myself to face me..." and I'm thinking of what it must be like to carry your life in a bag, to know that any day might be your last, and to move through your day unencumbered by fear. I am actually fairly self aware, as much as any monkey can be anyway, but I realize that I am not always as honest with myself as I'd like to be. I sometime listen to my fears and accept less than I want or deserve. I sometimes don't reveal what is my heart, or hide behind a wall of armor for fear of what might happen if I stood as naked and vulnerable as I actually am. I am at my best when my fear is least. So, in the service of this feeling, I have taken to running, to focusing on getting stronger, to making some important changes in my life. I have renewed my desire to rid myself of all unnecessary objects and unproductive habits. I want to distill my life down to its essentials. I want clarity of purpose.

I'm not there. I am as confused as ever. I am on the precipice of letting go of a very significant relationship in my life; I honestly don't know whether to hang on or let go, or what that will look like either way. I only know that I need something to change and that I must clear out what is unnecessary in order to create the space in which I can see what I truly need and what I want my next move to be. I also know that meeting Chris has somehow set the wheels turning in my mind and I have been reevaluating what is important to me as a result. Whatever my politics are, most of the gripes in my life pale in comparison to what he is going to face, what he has already seen during his last tour. I will, thankfully, never see combat myself, nor will those I hold most dear, but I don't want my gripes to be petty.

I want to have the courage to honor my heart in all facets of my life and to commit to what my heart directs me toward, no matter the obstacles. I have always had a fierce determination to live my life with authenticity and integrity. I guess I am feeling like I must take it to the next level. I want to move forward without fear. I want to know what it is like to live my life without fear. And, as I said before, I want clarity of purpose. Winter is transitioning to spring, old ways are passing and new possibilities are unfolding. The world is awakening; its riches are stirring. I am stirring too. I am not content to be less than what I am. Big changes are afoot and I have no idea where I will land.

design or dumb luck

I recently had a student tell me that she knew she couldn't get away with bullshitting in my class. I took this as a compliment. She then wrote her final paper using the Harry Potter story as her guiding metaphor and comparing me to Albus Dumbledore. Despite what that may sound like, she was well within the parameters of the assignment and did a really great job on first draft (all I've seen so far), so I took this as an even greater compliment. Then, last night I was told by my lovely friend, who also happens to be a poetry editor, that she'd recently received a note from a writer submitting poems for consideration and in it this writer said that she really loved the magazine and especially the poem "How To Live With It" written by yours truly. That was a pretty sweet compliment to receive. Small moments such as these make me think that perhaps, whether by design or dumb luck, I am on the right track.

a good day

Today was a good day. There were bicycles and didgeridoos and blossoming cherry trees. There was sunshine and loud tailless kitties and fat little dogs and dogs that looked like you could strap a saddle to them and be taken for a ride (Great Pyrenees). The afternoon reflected off the water as the trains slid slowly by... It was a good day.

I should have been grading papers, but I wasn't. I was trying to feel light. I was trying to keep moving. I was also (again) looking into the tall arched windows of an old abandoned brick building. (The Yale Union Laundry Building-- don't suppose anyone knows who owns it and what their plans are for it?) And then the sun slipped down the sky and the air cooled and I closed all the windows and doors. It was a good day and now I am sitting here in the quiet, sad, and too much in my head.

I have recently asked for something that I really want, something I am afraid I had no right to ask for, something I am afraid I will never know in the manner I wish to. I am trying to be patient, but every minute that passes makes me feel a little sick, makes me feel a little closer to receiving words I don't want to hear. I spent the day running into the wind, trying to escape what I fear is inevitable, trying to be absorbed in the small wonders of my life. Today was a good day, but it hasn't distracted me from this looming question. I am, it would seem, very adept at torturing myself this way.

I have been researching cities I am toying with starting a love affair with. Seattle and Chicago, so far, top the list. I think about the mountains of Colorado, or the desert blooms and lightning storms of the southwest. I dream of the tropics and the light in San Miguel. They might all become a home to me. They might all prove to be welcoming. But in all of them, I'd still carry this weary heart, and while I might be taken by a sunny afternoon, I never forget what beats behind these ribs. I'd like to comfort myself by stating that it's a good thing to never forget one's heart; that even when it has been blown apart, it resonates with all that is worthwhile and still has something to teach, some important wisdom to bestow, if one can quiet the mind and simply listen.

When I listen to my heart, I hear your blood moving beneath your skin. I hear the breath beat of your living heart against my cheek, under my hands. When I turn to meet it, I see your face looking back at mine and for a moment I know, with certainty, that I am not alone in this world. It is hard to be quiet and patient now. I want to punch you and run away. I want to tell you that you never mattered. I want to do anything to prolong the time between this moment and the one in which my question is answered, finally. I am afraid. This missive is my effort to acknowledge that fear and to set it adrift, to help it along its way, to break its hold on me.

I want to say I will miss you, my beautiful friend, but I said I wasn't going to succumb to preemptive heartbreak. I have, however, succumbed to some sort of illness and it is at the feet of this illness that I lay all the responsibility for this nonsense. I will miss you, though, should things resolve that way. More than you will likely ever know. Certainly more than I will ever tell you.

another open mic

Here is another podcast from the Show and Tell Gallery Open Mic night at Three Friends.