Thursday, December 01, 2005

places

why is it that you have such a hard time getting angry with the people you love?

why can't you simply say things like "you lied to me," "you really didn't mean that," etc...
we cant't accuse those we love so easily huh? well fuck me!

even after years and the facts are clear, you can't even find the strength to make the accusation. doesn't that just drive you penguins? well i think it turns me into an anchovy to be a quick snack for some tuna. i'm going to turn into fish fodder in monterey bay. it will be my way of being close with nature.

i can't even run. there is nowhere to go lest i opt for the artic or the serengeti. i think the jackals would like me better or perhaps the walruses. i belong in extremes. these middle grounds have nothing for me nor do they want me here. i am a danger to all.

rain

today the skies agreed with my mood. steely blue grey with streaks of rain. now only if i were in scotland.

taste

moments exist between the lines that we speak
tonight it is the place where i find myself

pointing out the obvious is fruitless
and placing blame brings no resolution

so i sit in the wind and wait for rain
wait for something to wash away this grime

knowing that family is not something
one gets out of, not cleanly at least

it is the plague of genealogy
the fascination of one looking for roots

our roots may be common but they bear
very different fruits indifferent to taste

so is my taste to change?
how does one tell one's heart to change in taste?

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

tonight tonight

tonight i am alone, not just alone but lonely. i feel far away from all that mean anything to me. my only comfort is the sound of music in a language that i don't fully understand. it is the language of my birthplace but my relationship with it is touch and go. it may be a sign that i need to go home.

the songs stir something inside of me but i can't quite put my finger on it. they leave me with a general impression of being misplaced. probably accurate.

in this state, i draw images. i draw and draw, not knowing where these images, these faces are from but i keep on drawing. drawing helps keep me from the things i should not be dwelling on. it is the only thing that works. there are strange faces and strange animals in this realm but they are helping to keep my mind on track. well, on track for what i can't say but it is better than losing my mind!

so the graphite goes to paper and forms appear, i wish life could be so simple...

restless in suburbia

ten things i'd rather be doing:

1. hanging by two fingers on a rock at joshua tree

2. sitting at a cafe eating raw oysters in the 6th arrondissement in paris

3. taking a road trip on the alaskan highway

4. fishing for trout in the eastern sierras

5. getting lost in mid-town manhattan

6. sitting atop a staircase at angkor wat, cambodia watching the sunset

7. talking to strangers in some dive in copan, honduras

8. quiet time inside of the cathedral at st. bertrand de comminges

9. watching the stray cats at the old roman coliseum at arles

10. eating a crepe from the street vendor on rue cler

i think there is wanderlust building up in me...

on my mind today

today, this poem rings in my head like a litany. i don't know why, perhaps it is cyniscism but i don't really believe there is such a clean answer or reason.


The Shortest Distance
by Erin Lambert

Perhaps the dead long for light, long for the sky and stars.
Why we fold them in boxes, shelve them neatly in rows
six feet beneath a world they lived long enough to die in,

I do not know.

I thought as a child that the hell-bound had it easy,
already down there, not much distance to go.
Those in limbo could rest awhile, stretch their bones
back into the earth and fashion new lives from memory;
live ten thousand lives in dirt and darkness.

But who can help those deserving heaven?

Even the statues turn away; angels with eyes lifted
or heads bent in prayers for the living because soon enough,
our turns will come. They try not to hear the dead who are good
tossing in their graves with desperate talk: Which way is up?
Was that a crow this morning?

Because the good are perfect, they are not tortured by memories
so they forget themselves. They lie with the damned
and those left to wonder, who try to give directions with talk of love
and light, the shortest distance between ground and sky. Remember God?
Those in waiting ask the good who, dumb as dirt, stagger for the answer
to a god too distant to wake the dead.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

fireflies

fireflies

they skirt in settling air
of the evening sky
with boundless energy

in sudden twists,
in blazes, in bursts,
invisible paths of
fading luminence

wings soflty humming
rhymes in motion
ghostly melodies

night sky is the stage
the firefly is the player
the plot a challenge
to meet destiny

if one could follow a muse
if one could follow the spirals
an ephemeral trail of lights

fickle skies

today the sky was fickle. it started with the familiar grey windy and damp airs of autumn and then the sun broke through and took the morning. typical california. it reminded me of the things i hate about los angeles even though i'm 500 miles away. the bright autumn sun made me restless. it made me want to be outside on the side of a mountain when i could not. i am not fit for suburbia. it is killing me.

2:46am

somewhere out there i know the sun is rising. in this place, i am caught between wanting to be in the safety of darkness and the renewal of morning's light. i have no knowledge of how to make such a decision. i have no knowledge of what these primal urges inside really mean. it is a language that i've never learned. at the middle of my life, the basics of love and hate are alien to me. how have i gotten this far? all i know are to stay or run. how do they translate? have i always been this way? i don't remember. i thought i knew what feelings were. i guess i was wrong. so now i have to learn. another language to learn, i am good at languages. however, this language involves a grammar that has no rules; a vocabulary that has no etymology. all i have to use is the bareness of my heart, a pencil and a paintbrush for those moments and phrases where all i can do is to paint a picture.

...

an hour and forty six minutes past midnight.

i am wide awake and conscious of the hurricane that lives inside of my head. i feel like new orleans looking at walls of grey with specks of blue. at least there are specks of blue, it is just a matter of getting there.

i can't say that i know what seeing walls of grey really means. my sense is that i don't like it. it won't kill me or anything like that, i just don't like them. not that i am a blue sunny sky person either, i just want to know what the in between is. right now, it feels like a state of teetering between the here and now and the there and far away. my flight instinct is going through its checklist though there is no destination. what does that mean?

i surprise myself by seeing how blunt i am about what is going through my head in this medium. i think it is an exercise for me to face myself, if that makes sense. it is really not a confessional. it is more of a conviction or commitment so that i stay my course whatever course i decide on. strange and roundabout way of doing things i admit but sometimes that is what it takes. it does no good to be confessional and to trash your limbs about in saying what you are going to do. it is better to put it down somewhere that is not secretive and then go do it. now i just have to figure out the details of what i'm doing...

shells

Shells
by Kathleen Raine

Reaching down arm-deep into bright water
I gathered on white sand under waves
Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone
Inhabit a finite world of years and days.
I reached my arm down a myriad years
To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor,
Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation.

Building their beauty in three dimensions
Over which the world recedes away from us,
And in the fourth, that takes away ourselves
From moment to moment and from year to year
From first to last they remain in their continuous present.
The helix revolves like a timeless thought,
Instantaneous from apex to rim
Like a dance whose figure is limpet or murex,
cowrie or golden winkle.

They sleep on the ocean floor like humming-tops
Whose music is the mother-of-pearl octave of the rainbow,
Harmonious shells that whisper forever in our ears,
The world that you inhabit has not yet been created.

Monday, November 28, 2005

cold from another place

the weather changed today. it was very un-californian. when i stepped into the hotel lobby and prepared to walk out to get some food, i realized it was like a cold rainy autumn evening in switzerland. the ground was littered with damp maple leaves. the air was fuzzy with light streaks of rain.

it didn't look real, more like someone put a motion blur filter on the air in photoshop.

the lobby door was actually closed. i put on my jacket and walked through the door into the cold of a different place. i wished i was in the other place that the cold remined me of, but that is far from here. it must be the figh or flight reflex. or maybe it is just avoidance behavior! something i might have picked up from someone i momentarily became enamored with *grin*.

i would confirm that but that person has disappeared!

i'm trying hard to amuse myself.

the walk in the light rain across the street, passing the parking lot and into the alley then onto the next street to the restaurant was refreshing though. i didn't mind the rain at all. well, i never do. not ever since living in scotland, how could i?

i walked into a new vietnamese restaurant and sat down. ordered my usual dish, i wondered how this new place would make it. it was quite good. it was slow so the chef came out and sat down. we chatted and ended up talking for over an hour. we traded stories about our last trips home to the old country. we talked about the restaurant business and cooking, it was a nice conversation. he even broke out some special lotus tea he brought back from vietnam on his last trip. it was a good experience. it relieved my restlessness, at least for a short while.

it made me realize how much i need to meet new people constantly. i think i am a social nomad...

Sunday, November 27, 2005

need for change

i am at the cusp of the end of one chapter of my life and start a new one. there is a sense of relief because at this point i feel so broken. it is not that i am in pieces. i am still in one piece but it doesn't feel like it is a healthy one piece. so change needs to happen, where it will take me i do not know. i only know i've slowly become someone i don't remember. maybe i'm schizo or have multiple personalities, i really don't think it is anything that exotic. i've just lost something and i need to figure out what it is i've lost and why and how to replace it or regain it. in any case, change is the only certain thing and i'm looking forward to it whatever it might be.