You’ve gone away enough

If the light takes you in will you know where you’ve been all this time
At the edge of a cliff you could almost just slip down the side
When there’s so much to do don’t you wish you could make up your mind?
But it knows it’s elusive, it grows and it burns you inside

With my eyes mostly closed like a person who knows how to drown
I’ll squint at the sun and my shoulders will pray for the ground
Let’s throw something over, imagine it’s us falling down
And thinking of death we will watch without making a sound

But it’s just the way you are you don’t have to be afraid
The way you look at the stars and how you think that they were made
The motion will never stop turning the night into the day
You’ve gone away enough, when will you decide to stay

My trouble with everything always is nothing’s just right
Just to figure out nothing could keep you awake half the night
Not to know what you want is a terrible thing you should fight
You just suffer for the face of the dark while you wait for the light

- Mirah

this is exactly how i feel about life right now. there’s so much to do, and i can’t decide where to start, so i keep letting everything else get in the way. i end up only letting myself do the things i want to do in the middle of the night when i should be sleeping, because i spend the day not doing the things i know i want.

and nothing’s ever just right. i’m always distracted, it’s never warm enough, i’m never well rested and fed and ready. i just need to begin and stop waiting. stop holding myself to impossible standards and waiting for perfection. i need to remember the manifesto and do what i want.

i thought it would be different
but even then i was me

sometimes it scares me how everything starts to make sense. the books i’m reading are saying the same things as the music i’m listening to, and i’m thinking things only just before i hear them in a song. all straight lines circle sometime.

“But how could they do this to me?
Born head first and brought up ankle deep.
And maybe you’re a lot like me- identified for 14 years without a choice.
Terrified the morning you woke up and realized
that if and when you jump ship,
you either swim for shore or drown.
Don’t let the fuckers drag you down.”

The Distance was Long

Today is the fifth consecutive day of sunshine in San Francisco. Completely unreal. It hasn’t been sunny for this many days in a row since..March? And even then it was rare. I really, really want this weather to keep up. I like life so much more when there’s sun. But, then again, I would melt if it got hot here.

This place is weird because, for a town with such steady temperature, the weather is constantly changing. In a couple hours, it could be cold and foggy. We’ll see.

Last Wednesday my brother got in town – we did a lot of fun stuff, including: eating delicious food, hanging out with mooj, going hiking near Los Gatos, seeing the Sutro Ruins and Land’s End for the first time, visiting the facebook office, and exploring various places. Last night we saw Away We Go, and it was really good and way too cute. But now I’m tired, and there’s a lot of fun stuff coming up, but I kind of just want to sit and read, write, and make some patches in the sun, before I’m running all over the place again. I guess I’m getting old, or just more comfortable doing things alone, because alone time used to be the last thing I ever wanted. Now I just want to think, read, listen to Madeline, and make maps in my mind.

why i don’t write

there are words inside of me. words flow through me. i remember when i first realized that i think in language. it was the most beautiful thought; more beautiful for its self awareness. it was known, fully known, at least to itself.

i know, always, why i do or don’t do this or the other. it’s just a matter of admitting it. i know i, at least, always know when something is wrong for me, when it doesn’t feel right. and, yet, i don’t do things that are good for me. things i want. i don’t want to live with a box of half-assed, half-full journals. a new one for each phase of life, a new one for each promise that i would finally begin to write.

so i don’t write. i am not a writer. why. i am afraid. why. i have no words. why. i have the wrong words. why. i am not intelligent. why. i did not study. why. i got distracted. why. life. boys. why. self-loathing. why. fear. why. i am not good enough. not smart enough. not worthy. why. it has been done better, longer, stronger, smarter. i am not a writer.

i am afraid.

i am self-defeating. i am self-deprecating. i should be a writer.

but i have nothing new to say. i am afraid. my story hasn’t been told, but i don’t know how to tell it. for all my admiration of story telling, my love of recounting the past, i have never been a story teller. i am filled with ideas for entries, essays, zines, books. i make excuses. it is never the perfect weather. i am never awake enough. never motivated enough. never in a cafe, with a tea, a pen, and the sun. hell, i get anxious being alone. every day i try to shift the focus away from my self. if i think of someone else, i won’t have to be thinking of myself. i am self-defeating. this has been done.

interests: examination of the self, repetition, cyclical thought, non-linearity, lyrical prose. it’s all been done. so, so well.

but this is the story of why i am not.

maybe soon i will be able to write the story of what i am.

This is a Fire Door never leave open

Headlights race toward the corner of the dining room.
Half illuminate a face before they disappear.
You breathe in forty years of failing to describe a feeling.
I breathe out smoke against the window, trace the letters in your name.
Our letters sound the same,
full of all our changing that isn’t change at all.
All straight lines circle sometime.

You said “Somewhere there’s a box full of replacement parts
to all the tenderness we’ve broken or let rust away.
Somewhere sympathy is more than just a way of leaving.
Somewhere someone says ‘I’m sorry.’
Someone’s making plans to stay.”

So tell me it’s okay.
Tell me anything, or show me there’s a pull,
unassailable, that will lead you there,
from the dark, alone, to benevolence that you’ve never known,
or you knew when you were four and can’t remember.
Where a small knife tears out those sloppy seams,
and the silence knows what your silence means,
and your metaphors (as mixed as you can make them)
are linked, like days, together.

I still hear trains at night, when the wind is right.
I remember everything, lick
and thread this string that will never mend you
or tailor more than a memory of a kitchen floor,
or the fire-door that we kept propping open.

And I love this place, the enormous sky,
and the faces, hands that I’m haunted by,
so why can’t I forgive these buildings,
these frameworks labeled “Home”?

all I have to do is Dream

Do you ever wake up feeling ravaged by your dreams? I usually think of my dreams as holding me hostage. I know I should wake up, and have every intention of doing so, but I just have to find out what happens with this one situation, or feel the press of another dream against my eyes.

When my alarm goes off, I half-wake in a fog, with my dream’s hands all over my face. It’s less scary than it sounds. It’s not like my dreams are disturbing, or particularly crazy, they’re usually just everyday situations that haven’t happened to me. They may or may not be real places, and may or may not include people I actually know. I rarely dream of actual places in my dreams; rather, I have dream places. In dreams, I can say “yes, this is my school,” or “this, I know, is my neighborhood,” though it isn’t my daytime reality.

Some people say dreams are the acting out of our unconscious desires. Or the exploration of repressed feelings and thoughts. I think I can go for that – my dreams seem to be the acting out of my subconscious daytime fantasies, with a backdrop. There are a number of symbolic definitions for physical characteristics or the presence of elements in dreams, from loose teeth to pregnancy, water, seeing yourself from afar.

I should start writing them down, but am half afraid of what I might find. What I might have to admit to myself.

You’re here for a reason,
You’re living and breathing
And if you keep on trying, someday you’ll find out why
If I love you, I miss you, cause I probably haven’t seen you in a
Long, long time

Just don’t let it be the last time
you come into my life

Maybe all this rock-n-rollin’
Adds up to nothing
Well right now it’s the only thing that keeps me going
And this road leads home if I turn the car around
But for now I’ve gotta keep on moving

Just don’t let it be the last time
you come into my life

And I could write you a letter
But I’m not sure where to send it
Hope it’s better where you’re headed than wherever you are

Everywhere I go, everyone I know comes with
Wonder how many more can fit inside this crowded, crazy heart.

Hard lesson #43:

If you bring lunch and, on a lunch break trek, decide that your packed lunch is not sufficiently delicious and you need some tasty Chinese food instead, you will be punished.

Because, of course, you will be feeling poor but adventurous and decide to try a new dish that you have never seen or heard of, and end up ordering a plate of cabbage with some indistinguishable mush vegetables and only a few snap peas. Main problem: you hate cabbage. You hate indistinguishable mush vegetables. And you will inevitably mourn the loss of precious dollars while cursing your fickle palate.

tomorrow’s problems today

Tomorrow I Will:

compile a versatile cover letter
apply for jobs
work on URJ
read
not freak out

come rain, fire, brimstone

well, hello.

i spent last week in Fruitville, CA, doing food for the ForestEthics staff retreat. when i took the job, i originally thought “money to cook food and be on vacation? yes, please!” with a pool and a hot tub, hiking trails and beautiful views, i thought i would be kicked back half the time. i brought two books.

reality totally contradicted my dreams of books and leisurely swims. cooking food for thirty people takes a bit more effort than i anticipated. thankfully i wasn’t alone, as i thought i would be. i got to do everything with an awesome badass, who is totally deserving of that title. on monday it began at 10am – i arrived in Berkeley, we packed stuff up at her house, and then proceeded to visit four stores compiling the needed supplies: Lucky, Trader Joes, and Costco among them. i’ll spare the details, but a typical day was: wake up, get coffee going and cook breakfast in a haze, clean up, prep for lunch, cook for lunch, clean up, go to store (Costco or Whole Foods), prep for dinner, cook, clean up. party!

we partied hard, though. it was a lot of fun. there was even a silly 80’s prom that Ashley and Shana came up for. much dancing and prom picturing and later hot tubbing. and i did get to swim twice, though i got bombarded by kids – which was fun in itself. once i got home and slept, however, i became deathly ill and am still recovering almost a week later. it’s okay though, i had to get Crit spayed so we’ve been recovering together. i wish i had spent the week better, figuring out what to do with life, but i was too sick to worry about all that. and i still have the weekend!