even as i stand here
so i find that i've been much more prone to writing for myself to others than simply just writing for myself lately. not quite sure why a particular, intended audience has been the force to spark words from me as of late... but it has. so the following are snippets from an email that i've sent (somewhat) recently... that i thought some of y'all might enjoy. (it starts out a little boring...gets better further down.)
that i thought i might want to look back on...
i have (at least!) three roosters living in very close proximity to my bedroom windows. i've named them: jorge numero uno, jorge numero dos, and jorge numero tres with respect to their individual "shifts." one starts his crowing sometime between 4 and 4:30am. i endure this for quite some time. then jorge numero dos kicks in around the time i can almost start thinking about falling back asleep. his shift continues for a good half hour. the third jorge decides to start up right *after* i've just fallen asleep. that's when i decide to go on a bike ride or (if there's someone next to me) wake them up. the crowing. i've found it quite comical. mostly because i have no other choice... well, i'll be moving soon anyway. to a rooster-free zone. the fallacy that they only crow at daybreak gets me. they crow *all* the time. it also amuses me that the noise roosters make in english is supposedly "cockadoodledoo." hmm. whereas in spanish, they say "quiquirrriquiqui!" i'm not sure whether the roosters in my neighborhood are english or spanish speaking...but they do a lot of speaking...i'm willing to bet that they're bilingual.
i'm insomniatic. it comes and goes, ebbs and flows, shines and snows...but even when i'm going through a long stretch of getting insanely good amounts of sleep, i still feel its presence somewhere in the back of my brain, the base of my spine, the pinky toe on my left foot... i caught it from my father when i was very young. when i read one hundred years of solitude for the first time it all finally made sense. i think i was about 12...i had simply experienced it nebulously and inadvertently before.
wherever...wherever is one of those english words i can't wrap my brain around--who said it was ok to remove an "e" without inserting an apostrophe when condensing two words into one?... wherever i go my eyes seem to gravitate toward trees, the moon, the sky, changes in light... weeping willows will forever have a special place in my heart because they are the tree i identified most with as a child...sat under for endless summer hours in solitude. as an adult the first tree i fell in love with was a magnolia. and i actually fell in love under a magnolia as well... pink and white petals from overripened blossoms cascading down our hair, shoulders with each warm breeze... that one still lingers in sticky, infrequented reservoirs of my heart.
smells...sounds...tastes...touches...they are endlessly connected to memories for me...so much so that i frequently find myself in a state of nostalgia. with smells (most often--though words soemtimes as well), however, i often have difficulty connecting the emotion that's running through my body (sparked by whatever's affecting me in the present) with that of the past.
i love clutter (to a certain degree), wildflowers blooming along the roadsides, city sounds. i love the way some of my middle school girls will be visibly happy to see me, do the casual hug thing (where they weakly wrap their arms around me and mostly just lean into me), catch themselves being uncool and slink off like it didn't ever happen. i love the way my younger girls don't give a damn and scream out my name when they see me coming and throw themselves around me. i love bodies of water with powerful energy that draw me in...not mattering whether the draw is physical at all...and the way ocean sounds lull me to sleep and affect my dreams. i love dreaming...hmm...yeah. i love having little trinkets and bits of wire on my desk to fiddle with...similarly, having little things to amuse me in my pockets, usually accompanied by scraps of paper. i love oddly textured paper, books, libraries, words...people who command words (because although i am in a perpetual state of love and lust with words, they are always failing me). i love secret spaces, hidden places. i love labyrinths. i'm growing to love my neighborhood's noises--especially when i've been awake for an hour and the person next to me wakes up laughing at the ridiculousness of jorge numero tres crowing at such an absurd hour. i love sex so mind-blowing that it brings out new, never-before-heard noises...and so intense that you can lay together in rays of sunlight and complete silence, conscious of your lover's pulse in the most peculiar place, entangled intimately without the slightest insecurity...and after sometime tacitly intuit when to start all over again. i love falling for someone so hard that it hurts, makes you pull at your hair, claw at your skin. i love those nights when streetlight casts through the raindrops on my windshield creating beautiful circles of light on my leg, only to be wiped away one second, replaced by an entirely new pattern the next.
that i thought i might want to look back on...
i have (at least!) three roosters living in very close proximity to my bedroom windows. i've named them: jorge numero uno, jorge numero dos, and jorge numero tres with respect to their individual "shifts." one starts his crowing sometime between 4 and 4:30am. i endure this for quite some time. then jorge numero dos kicks in around the time i can almost start thinking about falling back asleep. his shift continues for a good half hour. the third jorge decides to start up right *after* i've just fallen asleep. that's when i decide to go on a bike ride or (if there's someone next to me) wake them up. the crowing. i've found it quite comical. mostly because i have no other choice... well, i'll be moving soon anyway. to a rooster-free zone. the fallacy that they only crow at daybreak gets me. they crow *all* the time. it also amuses me that the noise roosters make in english is supposedly "cockadoodledoo." hmm. whereas in spanish, they say "quiquirrriquiqui!" i'm not sure whether the roosters in my neighborhood are english or spanish speaking...but they do a lot of speaking...i'm willing to bet that they're bilingual.
i'm insomniatic. it comes and goes, ebbs and flows, shines and snows...but even when i'm going through a long stretch of getting insanely good amounts of sleep, i still feel its presence somewhere in the back of my brain, the base of my spine, the pinky toe on my left foot... i caught it from my father when i was very young. when i read one hundred years of solitude for the first time it all finally made sense. i think i was about 12...i had simply experienced it nebulously and inadvertently before.
wherever...wherever is one of those english words i can't wrap my brain around--who said it was ok to remove an "e" without inserting an apostrophe when condensing two words into one?... wherever i go my eyes seem to gravitate toward trees, the moon, the sky, changes in light... weeping willows will forever have a special place in my heart because they are the tree i identified most with as a child...sat under for endless summer hours in solitude. as an adult the first tree i fell in love with was a magnolia. and i actually fell in love under a magnolia as well... pink and white petals from overripened blossoms cascading down our hair, shoulders with each warm breeze... that one still lingers in sticky, infrequented reservoirs of my heart.
smells...sounds...tastes...touches...they are endlessly connected to memories for me...so much so that i frequently find myself in a state of nostalgia. with smells (most often--though words soemtimes as well), however, i often have difficulty connecting the emotion that's running through my body (sparked by whatever's affecting me in the present) with that of the past.
i love clutter (to a certain degree), wildflowers blooming along the roadsides, city sounds. i love the way some of my middle school girls will be visibly happy to see me, do the casual hug thing (where they weakly wrap their arms around me and mostly just lean into me), catch themselves being uncool and slink off like it didn't ever happen. i love the way my younger girls don't give a damn and scream out my name when they see me coming and throw themselves around me. i love bodies of water with powerful energy that draw me in...not mattering whether the draw is physical at all...and the way ocean sounds lull me to sleep and affect my dreams. i love dreaming...hmm...yeah. i love having little trinkets and bits of wire on my desk to fiddle with...similarly, having little things to amuse me in my pockets, usually accompanied by scraps of paper. i love oddly textured paper, books, libraries, words...people who command words (because although i am in a perpetual state of love and lust with words, they are always failing me). i love secret spaces, hidden places. i love labyrinths. i'm growing to love my neighborhood's noises--especially when i've been awake for an hour and the person next to me wakes up laughing at the ridiculousness of jorge numero tres crowing at such an absurd hour. i love sex so mind-blowing that it brings out new, never-before-heard noises...and so intense that you can lay together in rays of sunlight and complete silence, conscious of your lover's pulse in the most peculiar place, entangled intimately without the slightest insecurity...and after sometime tacitly intuit when to start all over again. i love falling for someone so hard that it hurts, makes you pull at your hair, claw at your skin. i love those nights when streetlight casts through the raindrops on my windshield creating beautiful circles of light on my leg, only to be wiped away one second, replaced by an entirely new pattern the next.