I've been looking through pictures of my life for two hours now. Nearly 70 albums and ten years' worth and I sort slowly and flip through the captions and think about that day. When I took a photograph. When I posted it. When I labeled it as what I thought it meant at the time, when I gave it, in gloss and newly cut edges, to the world so they could see what I saw and maybe feel what I felt, if only by imagining what a day in that coconut life could have been like.
Some of these pictures I knew I was taking for the sake of the me I am now. I knew that one day, I would be living a very different life. It was fine then, and it's fine now, but I did not want to forget.
Move on. Move out and move away and move on and buy a shiny car for a shiny city and learn who you are when your life is big instead of small and move on. But don't you dare forget this. You will not get, nor will you deserve, the Universe's forgiveness if you forget that karma place which turned sleepers awake and matched the blue green irises of your eyes like a Postal Service song. That place is gone, and its only hope is for everyone who loved it to remember it in their own colors so that all possible angles are covered. So nothing is left out. So that every single board has a creak which belongs to someone who gave their soul to that hill.
Do. Not. Forget.
But there's this thing about pictures. You take them when you don't need them, anticipating that your future self will be so happy to have that photo of a ghost crab clacking through the night-soaked mangroves, when what your future self will really need is to remember the way the beach smells when the sun turns in its day, and how the midnight air hasn't quite learned how to be cool yet, so it opts for total dark in hopes that you'll feel or maybe just imagine the difference.
Your future self will not need the pictures of you pretending to be the air in a Grecian windmill. Your future self will want to taste the sticky warm of fresh baklava, and the ache of ouzo frosting a tall glass, turning water to sin and tourists to dancers,
________________________________________________________________________________________
So. I wrote that last night after a picture binge (ill-advised, after a twelve-hour day worked in the concrete wall basement of a downtown hotel monster), and much of it is valid. But I found that I wrote it doing what I always do, and this is the biggest part of the problem. Not that I will forget the spray of a Dominican waterfall on my face, or the way the Northern Cape air tastes in the fog. The simple truth of this, and of a life lived a thousand ways, is that I probably will forget these things. I would venture to say that I have already forgotten a great deal of any fat number of things about each past life lived. This is growth as much as it is sadness, and sometimes, those two things are the same.
The problem is focusing so much on all those old photographs that I forget to take new ones. This is a life, too. This one that's happening. Right now is my life right now, and while I'm living inside coconut pictures, the city sun is trying to tell me that it matters just as much. It's up to me to pay attention.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Rooms with Pictures
I have spent some time thinking about happiness lately, My own, or the happiness of people I love and the people I used to love and the people who just want to be loved. I wrote a little while back about happiness being as simple as living in the moment. That it is about accepting where you are and what you are not and opening your arms to your life as it is. I was onto something, but I think I got it a little wrong. Accepting what is as what is might be contentment. Not happiness. Despite the two seeming to be interchangeable, I have come to understand them as very different creatures. Contentment is a goal, to be certain. And happiness, I think, maybe or maybe not, and maybe it's different for every wistful soul, happiness is a choice. It is a thing you decide on.
You sit down in a room with pictures of your life lining the walls and carpeting the floors. Some of those pictures are sepia. Some of them are too blurry, many too sharp, some with soft and rounded edges, some with harsh corners. Some weigh more than others, whether that is fair or not. Some of them deserve to be underfoot and some belong where the mirror should be and some are just transparent enought to let the sun come through. But you decide that. You decide where each one stays, be it eye level or hidden behind the ceiling fan. And that is happiness. Designing your minutes- your rightthissecond- around what will be easiest to see. Keeping the broken heart pictures in the room, but choosing for your own sanity to place them a little bit in the shade.
It's not simple, this. You can't save the damsel who loes her distress and we do like to be sad sometimes, don't we? Brooding. Wounded. In need of a white knight that we will eventually send away for reasons we don't understand. Because we haven't yet talked about how we have to save ourselves. I am not totally sure why that happens. Everyone is allowed some cloudy days, but I suppose it's up to you to growl at the rain or find some puddles to jump in.
How obnoxious to make it sound so easy. But is there a chance that it actually kind of....is? That true, actual, palpable happiness is up to you as much as the jeans you put on in the morning or whether you decide to thank the sun every time it rises and sets.
You sit down in a room with pictures of your life lining the walls and carpeting the floors. Some of those pictures are sepia. Some of them are too blurry, many too sharp, some with soft and rounded edges, some with harsh corners. Some weigh more than others, whether that is fair or not. Some of them deserve to be underfoot and some belong where the mirror should be and some are just transparent enought to let the sun come through. But you decide that. You decide where each one stays, be it eye level or hidden behind the ceiling fan. And that is happiness. Designing your minutes- your rightthissecond- around what will be easiest to see. Keeping the broken heart pictures in the room, but choosing for your own sanity to place them a little bit in the shade.
It's not simple, this. You can't save the damsel who loes her distress and we do like to be sad sometimes, don't we? Brooding. Wounded. In need of a white knight that we will eventually send away for reasons we don't understand. Because we haven't yet talked about how we have to save ourselves. I am not totally sure why that happens. Everyone is allowed some cloudy days, but I suppose it's up to you to growl at the rain or find some puddles to jump in.
How obnoxious to make it sound so easy. But is there a chance that it actually kind of....is? That true, actual, palpable happiness is up to you as much as the jeans you put on in the morning or whether you decide to thank the sun every time it rises and sets.
Friday, March 13, 2015
The Cost of Restlessness
Having a moment of wanderlust in a life that is finally stable and real. I don't know if this post helps me or hurts me on that front. But I do feel it all the way to my fingertips, so I will set it down here, easily accessible and asking to be remembered.
Oooh, I found a big intense entry in my travel journal. I didn't date it, but it was definitely written while on some other land mass. Probably Dominica, since I talk about climbing waterfalls. In fact, it must have been Dominica. I think I was sitting in the hammock outside our room at the Hibiscus Valley Inn drinking a Kabouli while Erin took a mostly cold shower. We had just come back from one of our waterfall days, bruised and muddy, exhausted and exhilarated. Jack and Scottie, our puppy companions, were under the hammock, keeping watch and once in a while getting up for a pat on the head. It's the same rambling as always, but it doesn't sound like my inside voice. Must have meant this one, and I'm kind of into it...
I am tired of writing on purpose now, and want just to write. We'll see if my brain and hands want the same thing.
To want to explore, one has to have explored. Ignorance is bliss and all of that and you will probably be perfectly content with all that you are handed if you never look up. If you never look out. So, record setters are always looking to break their own records. Scholars are always looking for another degree. Travelers are always looking for the next place.
What the hell does "contentment" even mean? Is it more admirable, more attractive to want exactly what you have? As you climb, do you forget to look down? It seems that wanderers often land in soft places and find refuge alone. Many age in gardens by the sea, or on white beaches and dune grass. And alone. So often alone.
The more things a person sees, the fewer people there are to relate to. "I have been here. And also here. There as well." "That's fascinating. Did you see what is on TV tonight?"
And so it goes. Many people's minds can only travel as far as their arms have stretched. This is not a rule, certainly, as daydreamers still stare at desktop globes, but it might be fairly safe to call it the norm.
So you can tap the brakes a bit, and hope to the clouds for someone else to catch up. But you could wait forever, fidgeting, restless and wondering about what more there is to see and the time that is being wasted.
Or you see only green lights and you rip out the rearview. Slowing down for very little. Stopping for nothing. And the hairs gray, and the skin wrinkles. And old, well-worn knees can only handle landing in soft places, can't they? And no one ever caught up.
If you had never climbed to that first waterfall, you would not be obsessed with climbing another. Pushing is not a stagnant act; it comes from momentum and spine strength. Movement begets movement. If your spine goes out in the middle of a push, you fall backwards. If you overestimate a push, you lose what is solid and steady and you fall face-first with nothing to hold on to, as you have shoved it all away from yourself.
And how can you expect anyone to catch up to a fall? Maybe the best you can hope for is someone to be there at the very end. Not to catch you, but to pat you on the back for landing mostly in once piece and then to reacquaint you with firm ground; to teach you how nice walking in a straight line can be.
And you still look up, but less, maybe. I am left hoping that eventually, looking at what is in front of me will be all that I want.
I don't even have a bad case of it, to tell you the truth. I am not sure that I've got the stomach for it, nor the guts. The threat of addiction is often good motivation for moderation (I liked "tions" in this sentence, huh?). And to venture more deeply into this likely means leaving most everybody behind, and maybe not being able to stop. I love to love more than that would really allow. Closeness, affection, depth of relationships. Things I think I have chosen. I don't want to be seventy, living in the rainforest alone. Even if I am happy that way, and even if it means getting to have a mango tree.
Tapping the brakes.
Oooh, I found a big intense entry in my travel journal. I didn't date it, but it was definitely written while on some other land mass. Probably Dominica, since I talk about climbing waterfalls. In fact, it must have been Dominica. I think I was sitting in the hammock outside our room at the Hibiscus Valley Inn drinking a Kabouli while Erin took a mostly cold shower. We had just come back from one of our waterfall days, bruised and muddy, exhausted and exhilarated. Jack and Scottie, our puppy companions, were under the hammock, keeping watch and once in a while getting up for a pat on the head. It's the same rambling as always, but it doesn't sound like my inside voice. Must have meant this one, and I'm kind of into it...
I am tired of writing on purpose now, and want just to write. We'll see if my brain and hands want the same thing.
To want to explore, one has to have explored. Ignorance is bliss and all of that and you will probably be perfectly content with all that you are handed if you never look up. If you never look out. So, record setters are always looking to break their own records. Scholars are always looking for another degree. Travelers are always looking for the next place.
What the hell does "contentment" even mean? Is it more admirable, more attractive to want exactly what you have? As you climb, do you forget to look down? It seems that wanderers often land in soft places and find refuge alone. Many age in gardens by the sea, or on white beaches and dune grass. And alone. So often alone.
The more things a person sees, the fewer people there are to relate to. "I have been here. And also here. There as well." "That's fascinating. Did you see what is on TV tonight?"
And so it goes. Many people's minds can only travel as far as their arms have stretched. This is not a rule, certainly, as daydreamers still stare at desktop globes, but it might be fairly safe to call it the norm.
So you can tap the brakes a bit, and hope to the clouds for someone else to catch up. But you could wait forever, fidgeting, restless and wondering about what more there is to see and the time that is being wasted.
Or you see only green lights and you rip out the rearview. Slowing down for very little. Stopping for nothing. And the hairs gray, and the skin wrinkles. And old, well-worn knees can only handle landing in soft places, can't they? And no one ever caught up.
If you had never climbed to that first waterfall, you would not be obsessed with climbing another. Pushing is not a stagnant act; it comes from momentum and spine strength. Movement begets movement. If your spine goes out in the middle of a push, you fall backwards. If you overestimate a push, you lose what is solid and steady and you fall face-first with nothing to hold on to, as you have shoved it all away from yourself.
And how can you expect anyone to catch up to a fall? Maybe the best you can hope for is someone to be there at the very end. Not to catch you, but to pat you on the back for landing mostly in once piece and then to reacquaint you with firm ground; to teach you how nice walking in a straight line can be.
And you still look up, but less, maybe. I am left hoping that eventually, looking at what is in front of me will be all that I want.
I don't even have a bad case of it, to tell you the truth. I am not sure that I've got the stomach for it, nor the guts. The threat of addiction is often good motivation for moderation (I liked "tions" in this sentence, huh?). And to venture more deeply into this likely means leaving most everybody behind, and maybe not being able to stop. I love to love more than that would really allow. Closeness, affection, depth of relationships. Things I think I have chosen. I don't want to be seventy, living in the rainforest alone. Even if I am happy that way, and even if it means getting to have a mango tree.
Tapping the brakes.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
On Being Alone
7am. I love this time of morning. This too early mountain hour where you can step outside and hear the Earth gentle-crack her bones awake, creaking from age and from wear and inhaling with the sun's rise. The Colorado mountains and that yellow sun wake up at the same time and birds flutter from their rubbed eyes. It is much too cold to be in the treeline air, and a sin before God to stay indoors on mornings like these. So my ears will be cold, but my fingers, drag racing blue ink on lined paper, will stay warm and stay awake and they will not numb with the chill because this is why you came here, Jamie. This is why you come every time. Now, write.
The sun is not up yet, and the air is still colored that frostbite blue you only see with the daybreak snow. But the pink is bleeding through the aspens now, grabbing onto clouds to climb up and up. What an endeavor, to paint the entire sky, and all for the pleasure of the birds whispering good morning.
Minutes spent like this, maybe more than minutes spent any other way at all, let me inside my own head. The hinges are stuck with rust lately, and the door is heavy with no give. I need a crowbar day.
The state of being alone can be a complicated one, you know. It turns the whole world into a silver-backed mirror and it forces you to look into your own eyes. I don't always like what I find here. Jesus, does anyone? But lately, I have been made to wonder what exactly I would be looking at in those glare moments, and so here I am. Two hours of sleep, one mug of instant coffee rapidly losing its warmth, a very cold set of ears, and a pen. Waking up and creaking with the morning. The light, the mountains and I bidding quiet how-do-you-dos to one another, as it has been too long and we are strangers again.
Interesting, how the sun awakens a valley. She stretches over the curve of the Earth to brush awake the peaks farthest from her. The foothills and the floor get to sleep in, the lucky saps.
So, here is a thing. Here is a thing about being alone in one of the only places where I can truly just be alone. I think I like it.
I read through some old journals this week. Not from nostalgia, but from curiosity. I write these things and then it ends. I rarely look back. The simple, single act of writing everything down is the introspection I need, deeming the examination of it all wholly unnecessary in that moment. When I write, it is to build a home for all the words battling for light inside my head. They float down and they stick to paper like snowflakes and the fight melts off.
So, I read through years of my life. 2006, when I met that one. 2009, when I forced him to let me go. 2009, when I returned, quite broken, to my treehouses and allowed them to get close enough to dress my wounds. When I let that island save me for the second time. 2009, Greece. 2010, heartbeats and heartbreak. 2011, that jungle gym of an island, Dominica, dripping with passion fruit, hot springs and waterfalls the blood in its veins. And I made some of those years sit in their shelves. The tough ones. The ones with claws hidden inside time-softened covers. There are words that I do not need to see again, so the clawed journals can rest.
But I found a theme in all of them. No matter whose heart I was tangled into, there was one theme- being alone. And not just for a moment. Not for a small span of time, until my hand could find another to slide into, but alone. As if I have always suspected that I might be meant for that. Just for that. And I'm not sure that it's a fate so pleading for resistance.
I do not know that I am meant for anybody. That there is a soul somewhere, bouncing off the sides of the universe, hoping to get close enough that the magnets meet. Hoping to be drawn to this inward, selfish girl. This cold person who finds the most solace in a black cup of coffee against total silence. This girl who would usually rather.just.be.alone.
The sun is out now, and warming my hands. But the more awake I am, the closer my words stay to my chest.
And it isn't sad, this alone. It is not a cry for pity, nor for affirmation that he's out there really he is you just haven't found him yet but he's looking for you just be patient.
Is he? Why?
The isn't to say that I won't fall in love again. Maybe a thousand more times. Maybe a million. I love being in love. I love every stage of it, including the one where I end up here, inside myself and writing, another solitary creature waking up with the Earth, watching morning birds flutter.
The sun is not up yet, and the air is still colored that frostbite blue you only see with the daybreak snow. But the pink is bleeding through the aspens now, grabbing onto clouds to climb up and up. What an endeavor, to paint the entire sky, and all for the pleasure of the birds whispering good morning.
Minutes spent like this, maybe more than minutes spent any other way at all, let me inside my own head. The hinges are stuck with rust lately, and the door is heavy with no give. I need a crowbar day.
The state of being alone can be a complicated one, you know. It turns the whole world into a silver-backed mirror and it forces you to look into your own eyes. I don't always like what I find here. Jesus, does anyone? But lately, I have been made to wonder what exactly I would be looking at in those glare moments, and so here I am. Two hours of sleep, one mug of instant coffee rapidly losing its warmth, a very cold set of ears, and a pen. Waking up and creaking with the morning. The light, the mountains and I bidding quiet how-do-you-dos to one another, as it has been too long and we are strangers again.
Interesting, how the sun awakens a valley. She stretches over the curve of the Earth to brush awake the peaks farthest from her. The foothills and the floor get to sleep in, the lucky saps.
So, here is a thing. Here is a thing about being alone in one of the only places where I can truly just be alone. I think I like it.
I read through some old journals this week. Not from nostalgia, but from curiosity. I write these things and then it ends. I rarely look back. The simple, single act of writing everything down is the introspection I need, deeming the examination of it all wholly unnecessary in that moment. When I write, it is to build a home for all the words battling for light inside my head. They float down and they stick to paper like snowflakes and the fight melts off.
So, I read through years of my life. 2006, when I met that one. 2009, when I forced him to let me go. 2009, when I returned, quite broken, to my treehouses and allowed them to get close enough to dress my wounds. When I let that island save me for the second time. 2009, Greece. 2010, heartbeats and heartbreak. 2011, that jungle gym of an island, Dominica, dripping with passion fruit, hot springs and waterfalls the blood in its veins. And I made some of those years sit in their shelves. The tough ones. The ones with claws hidden inside time-softened covers. There are words that I do not need to see again, so the clawed journals can rest.
But I found a theme in all of them. No matter whose heart I was tangled into, there was one theme- being alone. And not just for a moment. Not for a small span of time, until my hand could find another to slide into, but alone. As if I have always suspected that I might be meant for that. Just for that. And I'm not sure that it's a fate so pleading for resistance.
I do not know that I am meant for anybody. That there is a soul somewhere, bouncing off the sides of the universe, hoping to get close enough that the magnets meet. Hoping to be drawn to this inward, selfish girl. This cold person who finds the most solace in a black cup of coffee against total silence. This girl who would usually rather.just.be.alone.
The sun is out now, and warming my hands. But the more awake I am, the closer my words stay to my chest.
And it isn't sad, this alone. It is not a cry for pity, nor for affirmation that he's out there really he is you just haven't found him yet but he's looking for you just be patient.
Is he? Why?
The isn't to say that I won't fall in love again. Maybe a thousand more times. Maybe a million. I love being in love. I love every stage of it, including the one where I end up here, inside myself and writing, another solitary creature waking up with the Earth, watching morning birds flutter.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Writing in airplanes again...
Watching the clouds from above them almost feels like watching the ocean waves roll in. Like you could balance on the wing, arms out and eyes so open and you could dip your toe into the soft. Like you could swirl it around slowly and turn it to spun.
I wish I could get in. Sink down to my shoulders and feel the breath dense in my lungs and float. Let my fingers go. There would be nothing to grasp for, anyway.
I am looking at the lights below me like bioluminescence and it is just the same. Sparkles created by creatures I am not fated to understand, but will forever see as beautiful and confused and illuminating their own paths, sometimes interrupted by the likes of messy me, waving my arms in an attempt to float. To stay at my shoulders. To stay where it is not so hard to breathe.
I just left my soul mates. I just boarded a plane without those hearts that beat the same way mine does. I watched for as long as I could until everything looked like sky and my eyes became too tired to strain.
Oh, Maho. Filling hearts to break them.
I have always felt sad to leave these people. I am famously terrible at goodbyes. I just can't handle the question of when. I can't handle that these people are not in my every day. That I am not in theirs. It is a grave injustice and it is not one I have ever been able to accept or let go of.
And how lucky we are to be so sad. Before you can feel emptier, you have to have known what full was.
Full is a blue cup. Full is sandy speakers and a yellow floatie. Full is a family chosen for you by the stars and by the boardwalks.
But full is this, too. This feeling of being so in love with a cluster of souls that the inevitable distance between you is almost physically painful. How lucky we are that we know the true capacity a person has just to love.
I wish I could get in. Sink down to my shoulders and feel the breath dense in my lungs and float. Let my fingers go. There would be nothing to grasp for, anyway.
I am looking at the lights below me like bioluminescence and it is just the same. Sparkles created by creatures I am not fated to understand, but will forever see as beautiful and confused and illuminating their own paths, sometimes interrupted by the likes of messy me, waving my arms in an attempt to float. To stay at my shoulders. To stay where it is not so hard to breathe.
I just left my soul mates. I just boarded a plane without those hearts that beat the same way mine does. I watched for as long as I could until everything looked like sky and my eyes became too tired to strain.
Oh, Maho. Filling hearts to break them.
I have always felt sad to leave these people. I am famously terrible at goodbyes. I just can't handle the question of when. I can't handle that these people are not in my every day. That I am not in theirs. It is a grave injustice and it is not one I have ever been able to accept or let go of.
And how lucky we are to be so sad. Before you can feel emptier, you have to have known what full was.
Full is a blue cup. Full is sandy speakers and a yellow floatie. Full is a family chosen for you by the stars and by the boardwalks.
But full is this, too. This feeling of being so in love with a cluster of souls that the inevitable distance between you is almost physically painful. How lucky we are that we know the true capacity a person has just to love.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
A Shift.
Some days, when the sky is falling in more ways than two, and your eyelids are being pulled to your heels by the gravity that refuses to give any part of you a break these days, some days like this, you sink. Or some days, you take a bath, long and steaming, droplets forming on your tired neck and tired temples, candles playing shadow games with porcelain.
And some days, you write.
A shift is happening. It's palpable, the way you can feel a potato bug unfurl in the palm of your hand when you have given him the time to be comfortable there. When you have given him the time to trust it there.
I used to need to wobble. I would search for hollow things that I could wear down and through until their centers exposed themselves as empty. And then I could move on without even shells to discard. That girl is still here. She still floats wishes on dandelion air and she breathes through her eyes and she craves new worlds. But I am noticing, so slowly, that she is beginning to quiet down.
Two years ago, I would have scoffed at that. "You're letting go of yourself! You're letting the real world tell you who you are! THEY ARE WINNING!!"
And maybe that's true. And maybe it's not. And maybe every wave you face doesn't have to be another one that knocks you to the ground because it's ok to be more inside a life than ankle deep.
I can say that to myself without believing it, or I can believe it without saying it until I can't even tell the difference. But it's probably true, anyway.
And some days, you write.
A shift is happening. It's palpable, the way you can feel a potato bug unfurl in the palm of your hand when you have given him the time to be comfortable there. When you have given him the time to trust it there.
I used to need to wobble. I would search for hollow things that I could wear down and through until their centers exposed themselves as empty. And then I could move on without even shells to discard. That girl is still here. She still floats wishes on dandelion air and she breathes through her eyes and she craves new worlds. But I am noticing, so slowly, that she is beginning to quiet down.
Two years ago, I would have scoffed at that. "You're letting go of yourself! You're letting the real world tell you who you are! THEY ARE WINNING!!"
And maybe that's true. And maybe it's not. And maybe every wave you face doesn't have to be another one that knocks you to the ground because it's ok to be more inside a life than ankle deep.
I can say that to myself without believing it, or I can believe it without saying it until I can't even tell the difference. But it's probably true, anyway.
Friday, May 2, 2014
Only the Birds
In the mountains again. It is late morning, unless you would call it afternoon, in which case I would ask you to hand me my mimosa and let me live my life.
All is essentially silent except for the birds, stretching their vocals for an early spring. I am kept company by two woodpeckers, one of whom is fairly inept at a what I imagine to be his only job. The other, in turn, seems to be a mighty show off.
I can hear chipmunks cracking the hopes of seeds who only wanted to grow tall, or wide. Or beautiful.
The peaks in the distance still hold snow in their arms- a passive aggressive reminder that these tree limbs, pregnant with green buds, are still fragile and at the fickle mercy of the Rocky Mountain May. The wind blows the cold like an exclamation point just in case you had been careless enough to forget.
Perhaps the only way to be here is alone, if for no other reason than to listen to the birds. Only the birds.
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