Picture Book…

The death of Michael Jackson marked the beginning of a personal photo project, a simple P.O.V. “thing” that makes me believe I am more important than the average creature. I am, just ask my kids… not my son, he’ll drool on you! And so, the idea is to look back on these as I have my escapades of the past, yet this time what I do matters, and the most mundane of situations are relevant enough to capture. If my life has become simpler, if my world has become smaller, if my view of the universe is still eschewed, at least someone else can bear witness. And so, on June 25, 2009, the King of Pop Michael Jackson died… I was working on a paper regarding merit and affirmative action for my Philosophy of Human Conduct class and my world kept on spinning. Still had to feed my son every three hours, still did some puzzles with my daughter, still had to figure out the positive points of affirmative action in America (yes, found some!), still had too many cigarette breaks.

Above are two great reasons as to why my creativity has taken a catastrophic hit. I honestly do not believe I will ever recover and yet, I consider myself quite a creative person still. At least I would like to believe I still “got it,” understanding how lucky I am for the opportunity. Happiness comes in the most ambiguous of packages, while philosophically, happiness could be just an over-inflated sense of accomplishment alone. I did nothing but inconvenience myself, these kids gave me some validity, while I had been walking around with too little of it. However, having young children gives you the opportunity to look at life with a wide lens and so I have found the limitless possibilities for creative intention… through their eyes and sometimes at night, through your own, fresh and clear.

Last Saturday, a few friends got together to help Aubree and John move into their new place. She is about six months pregnant with their second child, having been married almost four years. They are a great, young couple I have admired for a long time. Making marriage work, watching great indie films and raising a beautiful child, I once felt rather clumsy around them. Cynism tells me couples like them do not exist and most people go through life either never finding each other, or worse, unable to “get together” (trust me, the experience still fresh… *smile*). But I am not a cynic and truly believe it will happen for me, the holding hands so long they sweat and handwritten letters for no reason. I have never married and at this point, will NOT settle for anything else but the butterflies; I am 32 years old with two children, too much to lose and the hopes of full self-reliance going strong… so close I once lived it! My friends are in love, are yours?

Tomorrow? More pics and finding some idea as to what I am trying to do here… with the pictures, not my life!

“There is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.” -Thomas Hobbes

Beast of burden… for your pleasure.

Rikki Don’t Lose That Number

We hear you’re leaving, thats ok
I thought our little wild time had just begun
I guess you kind of scared yourself, you turn and run
But if you have a change of heart
Chorus:
Rikki don’t lose that number
You don’t wanna call nobody else
Send it off in a letter to yourself
Rikki don’t lose that number
Its the only one you own
You might use it if you feel better
When you get home

I have a friend in town, hes heard your name
We can go out driving on slow hand row
We could stay inside and play games, I don’t know
And you could have a change of heart

Chorus

You tell yourself you’re not my kind
But you don’t even know your mind
And you could have a change of heart -Steely Dan, “Pretzel Logic”

It’s the idea that most of us would appreciate having someone around you can always count on. I mean, it is the essence of most friendships and the nerve of a few relationships to expect less. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s that one person that will wait for you, the one person that will love you like no other and commit their talent and emotion to someone as undeserving as you. We have seen people wait for years, married people and uninvited guests, the catalyst for all that is passionate and wrong. If we can’t even stay together long enough, then how is it possible that we are able to find that person?

Oh yeah, like there are dishes and they pile, then they smell, then you have no choice but to move out of the house and pay, like a shitload of money for the damages… just sucks, okay? When Kyle speaks, sometimes from the most ridiculous side of his brain, girls, girls -gay girls, clean girls, slightly polished and engraved girls, girls with power and girls with sandals and socks-, they listen and they love the sound of his voice. Get to know him then you’ll know, this man will be a child for while. But this is my excuse for creating him, he exists in the gut of every man stifled by even their own burdens and fear, let’s not forget fear. Kyle was superman, fearful of nothing but doubt… maybe its’ subsequent regret. But cool girls didn’t give a shit, he’s so young there is always time to make up, for that hit of acid or splash of paint. He’s my fear of rejection, aesthetics and phantom frolic. It is too late for me to do a lot of things, but I will never regret creating him. Kyle makes risk look sexy, innovation for the intoxicated and foolish. We could imagine a man of thirty after the deluge of responsibility… but I prefer it like this, payments of less than a grand a month and smiles as wide as the tolerance for alcohol. The secret is, I don’t know Kyle; don’t care to ever meet him nor fall in love with him. He must stay… lost. Maybe I’ll have him let go of Alice, she is, after all, too real to mention.

“You f’ing bitch, let’s work it out!”

People, people everywhere. Your family, your friends, your neighbors and co-workers. I write because of people, those that are here, influencing my everyday and those I wish I had met (or have, but because we are who we are, we refuse to fight for their stay). The book’s about people, they interact and have meals, some will see each other every morning and sleep with others because they need to. We need that piece of chocolate or that stolen moment with those that belong to the night, take afternoons as burdens. Kerouac wrote because “we’re all gonna die” and I wish he had understood how important that statement is for those like me, pretending to write to get published and accomplishing very little while pursuing the laundry or checking the mail. I’m tired of equating everyday life with the ordinary, we NEED to do a few things in order for the fun to soak, without the roof or the money, how will I ever get the time to write? The manuscript is done, it’s been done for three weeks now, I just don’t know if it’s me or something I would ever want attached to me. These characters… these people exist because “I believe in what I saw,” not because this creative mind hails them from scratch and bone. Six years ago I met this incredible man that introduced me to William Blake, that imagery, the magnificent collaboration of the senses; it was ridiculous of me to believe that I could do that by putting a few plots and personalities together based on real, walking, breathing humans. And no, it does not matter that they are actually written how I saw them, what I imagined their souls to be like. My concern is this new idea I have, of manipulating a character’s every move and thought through a torture device called a script. Maybe even getting my feet wet with a small play based on charcters from the almost-defunct manuscript, a few short stories of value and some forethought. Just an idea, while I pay some bills and go to bed too early… I think of my mother and what she wrote to me, quite recently in fact, “The day you stop rebelling against yourself, then I will know you are no longer you.” Intervention, anyone? Get a few of the faces I see and kiss everyday to write down how my walking away from the struggle has affected them, maybe a few pictures of Kerouac and Jack Johnson propped on easels as my friend Mel -tears streaming down her face- recalls the day I helped her daughter with her Edgar Allan Poe assignment without opening a single book. Just awful! Nah, it’s all about how I live my life and how I want it to go, the goal is to write and write, fingering these keys like I used to pick at the guitar and take the kid to school, watch her grow and work hard at whatever makes things easier for us. And I’d like to do this as “people” whisper how crazy it is for me to believe this’ll work. And I am… crazy enough to believe in the things we want, for our life and the lives of the people we love.

Wiki -this!

We have forgotten that love is irrational. It doesn’t care of timing or distance and sometime soon it will catch you letting go of something that never was. Perpetually passionate about everything of little importance, at this age the responsibilities you have tried to avoid get brave enough to knock at your front door. If I could be twenty-two for twenty-four hours, I would do nothing, just enjoy the ride. Why change this course? It’s been bumpy and serious but for fuck’s sake, haven’t I learned a few things? It isn’t that I don’t want to talk to you, I miss you, it’s just that it makes me sad… and how much happier are you without my shadow?

I’ll take you to the store, he says and so it begins where we ride sinister. Innocently chatting of those things that come easy between two sinners, Katie floats down a cloud somewhere as they retie that knot. It was easy enough to forget that two random people as themselves could find such rare loneliness in common, never left alone but so quiet and damp down in the basement. Freedom to be us is being welcomed to dirty deeds.

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely.

New characters emerge

 …from the shadows of those I had to let go…

The concept of compatibility is more of a variable than hard fact; in every situation upon which two people connect through some abstract reasoning, compatibility is the scapegoat. Attraction, also a matter of compatibility, for every fish needs a hook. Kyle had this simple idea of love and companionship that poured through his mother’s heartbreak. Now a young adult, the idea of being taken care of comes in a pretty little jar labeled Katie. After a few months that dragged as years and behaved as such, with seasons and mistakes, cheating and promises, he settled in for the long haul and kissed her eyelids every night. Falling in love is this, quiet, I guess. Some of us crave the wind, whipping, a little angry; some of us wait for the opportunity of parks and hidden treasures. Kyle found the storm and it just waited there for his call. Whatever we need to tie down, do so before the ache gets fierce…

At the edge of a cliff….

maybe a few steps down, exaggerated notion of life-changing encounters being these outrageous leaps of faith when there has always been a sturdy ladder nearby. And I mean sturdy, sometimes even some concrete steps with a railing and comfy shoes. But whatever, this whole thing of having lost something so big ’cause you were afraid of this leap is as valid as the courage very few of us find to do the very thing that turned out the pick of destiny for them. Understand? If it happens to be that if you know what I’m talking about then it was recent because the flow of life grabs that pang in your stomach to make room for something else; after all, no love is ever gone “for good.” I would like to thank you for giving me hope, for allowing me to talk too much, right over you and about unnecessary things that just NEEDED to be said.

As much as I have gained in the last few months, those few things I’ve lost have saddened me and in the business that I am now, “sad faces” are an absolute no-no. Having to believe that things would work themselves out has been a challenge, but let me tell you that it took a lot of strength, the emotionally draining one, to get to a certain level of confidence that would allow me to battle through. It is seven-sixteen am and my body has an alarm clock that reads “up before six… ALWAYS!” No coffee -Have I lost my mind?!- instead I checked on the kid and sat here, in front of this old friend with a thin layer of dust over a few of the keys. (For those of you that have been anywhere near a small child for longer than four hours understands the great invention that is the diaper wipe!). So this is it, for now. As I had promised, once I settled into a routine I will start writing more and hopefully this is the beginning of my lesson in self-discipline, not just being organized but multi-tasking and still keeping the desk clean. I miss… too much, yet only two or three people… see how that works?

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” -Dr. Seuss

Beautiful Wife…

I am now aware how much in the past I’ve been living, maybe influenced by the sixties but more or less entangled in a love affair with the memories of an aching past. Enough with characters and characterization and horrible depictions of people we never truly knew, enough of salty inspirations and sweetened misjudgments. If reality is harsh, the thought of lying by calling ourselves “artists” and “intellectuals” in order to force-feel a certain notion, is even harsher still. Written many stories and faked my way through a few poems, yet, how is it that there hasn’t been a single character I’ve created without being influenced or inspired by someone I’ve met? If we have decided that living as I have until now has led me to nothing but uncertainty, then there must be a similar understanding about my talents as a writer, as a parent, and ultimately, as a person -a woman- occupying this decaying earth with people more deserving of the blessings I’ve been given. Then again, why so hard on myself? If nothing else, I’ve learned a few lessons that made me a better person than I was before. And to you wordpuppet… thank you, “for things you don’t even know.”

Information Travels Faster

I intentionally wrote it out to be an illegible mess
You wanted me to write you letters, but I’d rather lose your address
And forget that we’d ever met and what did or did not occur
Sitting in the station, it’s all a blur
Of dance hall hips, pretentious quips
A boxer’s bob and weave

And here’s the kicker of this whole shebang
You’re in debt and completely fooled
That you can look into the mirror and objectively rank your wounds
Sewing circles are not solely based in trades of cloth
There’s spinsters all around here taking notes, reporting on us

As information travels faster
In the modern age, in the modern age
As our days are crawling by so slowly
Information travels faster
In the modern age, in the modern age
As our days are crawling by so slowly

Information travels faster
In the modern age, in the modern age
As our days are crawling by so slowly
Information travels faster
In the modern age, in the modern age
As our days are crawling by so slowly -Death Cab For Cutie, “The Photo Album”

Run To You

It means to follow dreams and break curses, survive mistakes as we’re making them. It’s an abstract thought that made itself into friends and family and wine, unadulterated joy and possibility and you. They say that when the artist becomes involved with the muse, that veil of mystery is lifted. I would expect the same for myself, except this sense of normalcy I’m craving also involves passion, it requires sugar and damned be that sweet tooth! Also… we’re not artists and the muse may be just an idea, an abstract thought.

I had to move on, baby
For when I tasted my own tears
They were too sweet
And I knew that I had come too close -from “Deeper Than Love” by Antony & The Johnsons
Max had fifteen ways of getting out of trouble and when one would fail, the others became a matter of life and death; commitment meant just that, means to and end. The last time they spoke he was nervous, why has friendship become a scapegoat? If you are selfish enough to want someone around after you’ve broken their heart, then you’re someone that draws their strength from greed. This trouble entailed keeping her around for physical and pseudo-emotional reasons stemming from poetry and Belle & Sebastian songs. Calling her in the middle of the night and emails full of candied tears, nothing landed so Plan B became serious. Now we are all serious, where are your writings and where is your character? Max wrote himself in and out of charm the popular vote was created, “we were friends before falling” and fall flat did I. Besides, more like hiking than climbing, is the hope that survives the trip to the very bottom of the pit, measuring on our way down. “We will be friends in another lifetime, when we’re both cats!”

It’s queer how out of touch with the truth women are. They live in a world of their own, and there has never been anything like it, and never can be. It is too beautiful altogether, and if they were to set it up it would go to pieces before the first sunset. -Joseph Conrad

“The Book” and stories for believers

What is sex without a respected friendship that transcends lust? And what is poetry without the muse that moves you to write it? People have relationships without the duty of remembrance. They hold hands, comfort and expect the same in those they love. It doesn’t happen, it isn’t that simple and it can’t be done without heartache. We have drinks and sex, but when we walk away instead, we lose on something valuable. This was the way we believed the world to be, almost inconsiderate enough to forget each other after sharing even a passing word. But it was every day interactions that made things easier to criticize, watching television and feeling for yourself like a five minute session alone and a hand, deciding on careless wandering, while knowing that falling in love should’ve had an access code. Mine is zero. So the evenings came and there was us, who expected nothing, who wanted everything; stepping out into the unforgiving night, poetry under arm and a taste for dry martinis –to soothe some angry souls. Neither of us smile, we strut, we writhe, aimless talk to politics and conspiracy theories as the sleeping world marched by to the beat of the same drum. We were deaf, but listened carefully for the sound of a sigh, the pin drop of opportunity. I was twenty-four years old and tired, we had been dragging a label meant to express our progressive views on the universe without thinking that it would affect the way we cared for one another. But taken as temporary rebellion or mainstream counterculture, coming of age it wasn’t the sixties out there, this freedom was not new and we walked into it knowing it was ours. We had been “marketed and commercialized” before we could say grunge and sometime during the reality of death and missing each other while standing in line, we were older, but alive. We had survived that cynical storm, the few of us that didn’t buy it, kept thinking we were artists, philosophers, even. Contemplating GOD on train stations, after sex, while being handcuffed and booked and coming up with nothing. We discuss this, Nietzsche, possibility, maybe UFO’s because we’re here and we’ve got a few questions. But that’s a secret, mate, marks and sub-labels hide the simple truth, we are all searching and afraid. The best storm shelter I was never told is in someone’s arms; someone naked, someone true. If only it was that simple, an express check-out for that perfect fit true and pure perfection as a well-placed metaphor between angry lines of poetic salvation. Save me! I’m lost and sick, carrying the weight of another generation in haste. No one rushes through plate-glass windows, no one even knocks, no one calls. So we go back into the night, blending in with the secular breathing our precious air, wearing our insignificant contradictions. There we are sitting in corners growing just one year older, whispering Revolution! Plotting escapes, we have no idea where to go. Yet, something amazing starts to happen when two lost souls begin to “hatch a plan,” without realizing it, we have begun to save each other. Artists, writers, people that get it especially, forge bonds through emotional torture, whether they’ve been tortured or just have a knack for pain. Either way we pair up, we look at each other one of those nights and through it all, we would like to believe. -from “the book we may someday finish” and “Relevancy of love and counter-action” by me.

My friend has wanted a baby since she was playing with dolls, her body refused to cooperate and for years she was empty, holding our children with longing. She brushed my daughter’s curls and sang lullabies to her niece. Saturday afternoon she became a mother in her own right, her husband wept and at the sight of the new princess, so did we. Congratulations to the new family, miracles happen and so I see.
The problem with the book is that I never thought I would meet any of them, I could bend them and make them cry, make them believe in love and jump. Ten years ago, I was limited to other people’s battles, no reason for worrying about futures and the state of my finances. I wrote about the people I knew and the ones I imagined into lung capacity and if the “40′s are the new 20′s” (thanks, babe!), I must have always been fashionably late. So now I know them -”so sad about Max, why is it that Alice always attracts drifters?” Stay tuned!- and with the idea that no legitimate writer spends two lifetimes on a single-themed book, timelines have been thrown out the window. And if I must, two to three books for posterity, on the shelves of those that knew me, dusting away while their lives move and so do the bookcases. I have to work, I have to make good, I must dream less but just enough to stay me and if time allows me, know those that have come into my life like angels, smiles of possibility and venting the loss of imagination. Maybe it will be a matter of real-life plot-twists, I have jumped and the writing stops just so I can live and spend time with the family I’ve yet to have. My daughter may have siblings or an extremely happy mother that has achieved a few goals in order to make her life easier -those trips to the mall I dread! That’s dreaming and when they come true, one more skeptic gives the plan another try.

Heart Cushions

I haven’t stayed up this late in months, so through the light of nothing I’d like to step on the concept of love like most people around me have. I would like to have sex, raunchy and mean, while someone waits for me in a cold bed. I’d like to exploit the gifts of guile and trick an innocent face into treachery and paste. Instead of falling and staying low, I could pace an empty hall and wait for the lie to just come to me, ingest drugs and drink massive amounts of alcohol. Yet… something tells me I couldn’t stomach neither the drugs nor the mistakes, neither the karma nor the drinks.
So affections fade away,
Or do adults just learn to play
The most ridiculous, repulsive games?

My problem with it all is that these are the reasons people fall out of love, not because it isn’t there anymore, but because we are quite aware we really don’t have to. I have been looking for a serious writing partner for years and how did this search merged with sex and attraction, I have a few clues:

1. Loneliness
2. Lack of inspiration
3. Romanticizing creative fiction
4. I wanted to get laid and then write about it…

Now that all of my friends have some distorted view of another, about what it means to love and be loved, I feel desperate to fill an imaginary void somehow. I don’t want that, the state between sadness and Illinois, the time right before you die; I want to understand that there’s no hole and no glory (tee-hee), no poems to describe or neat hemp notebooks to get it all down. But there’s magic, there HAS to be, otherwise the flutters and the dreams have more to do with impulse and neurology and when does it start getting fun? Right after you meet and right before you excuse yourself into an affair… when a touch or a kiss or paper and pen come up short but all together and it’s worth writing, worth writing about!

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” -Oscar Wilde