(no subject)
the sun is setting earlier. i forget this. the skies have been grey, the chill creeping through walls and open windows and cracks under doors. i've been falling asleep in the late afternoons just after my showers, not bothering to get dressed or find a book, just getting covered and curling up. i put on kate's second mix cd and just lay and listen, lying directly in between the sounds floating from speakers and those rising from the streets, creeping into the attic through homemade curtains hung over a homemade window. the rain is falling and the water is working it's way through grooves in tires and climbing up into breaks and gears. it gathers and rests in corners, and where the asphalt sinks, then releases, spraying through air, falling, gathering and resting again, then repeating the process. and continuing to repeat. the wind blows through trees and sends my curtains shaking, then leaping, then falling in slow and graceful movements, then in short and concentrated spurts dancing and jerking in desperation all over again. fading grey light sneaking in through transparent white sheets in a blue room, leaving everything glowing a deep and dull glow. and as if the soundtrack were made for the scene, three or four minutes in nina simone begins singing "wild is the wind", and my breaths feel tight and fragile, pianos first sparse and twinkling, then rolling and dancing like waves, layered and falling and crashing all over themselves, singing as if she were raising every spirit that had ever been inside of her, bordering at every moment on a howl. so unerving, gutwrenching, soothing, sensual, sedative- joy and lamentation so inseperable. symbols rise and crash. everything builds into crescendo. it feels like the world and everything in it is being pulled directly into that moment. it's so much my heart can barely hold it, and as it all collapses in exhaustion it's not a moment to soon. so when the cowboy junkies begin singing "blue moon revisited", it feels like exhaling for the first time in months, and i feel so relieved, calmed, transported. to georgia at the end of winter in jakes apartment where i spent so much time hiding away in different seasons of my life, laying on my pallat on the floor, staring at the ceiling, the whole world blooming all around me, so in love with everything, and i start falling in and out of dreams, and so many times and places. donna's apartment in new york city, kevin and donna laying in the bed above me, heat of metal pipes against my skin, the same grey and white light creeping in through a dark room. to delia's room in new jersey, laying in bed listening to "nebraska" mixing with the sounds of cars from an open upstairs window, late on a cold and rainy afternoon on my first day in town. or on my last day, ida and frankie stubbs singing us in and out of sleep, laying side by side on our backs, underneath a half fort of sheets, haphazardly held up by pushpins on white walls, watching breaths rise and fall, wishing so bad i could find a way to stay, or even just say so many things i felt but i had no idea how to say, and of course, never did.
and so it goes. as "climbing to the moon" and "sleepwalking" play everything slows, motion and colors blend and blur, the wind keeps blowing and the room keeps glowing, into deeper and deeper shades of blue. i'm tranquil, waveless, clinging to both asleep and awake so tighly until they're so interwoven and inseperable and then there's no more clinging, there just is. and it's will oldham singing "in a bed by the waterside i will lay my head" and cat stevens picking and plucking and jeff magnum singing "her life was a hurricane of love and real embrace", all fading in and out of one another with no apparent lapse of time in between. just sound and feeling and touch and taste all one and the same, shaking and stirring my soul. and before i know i'm hearing indian summer, then billy holiday singing, and all i can think about is late winter and early spring, lindsey and i skipping classes, sitting in a giant dying tree, looking across a feild at the inbetween class exchange. me eating oranges i picked from the trees with the juice and cold on my hands, the warmth of cigarettes on hers, both of us flicking people off and shouting and laughing for no apparent reason at all. talking about life and love and hopes and somehow this sends me to highschool, and kevin and i, running around banging on classroom doors or running around in the woods when we should have been in study hall and then us, laying in a field by the bleachers, crying till we couldn't see straight anymore, the week i cried more then i ever have in my life. that morning having woken up after having slept in, and feeling so alive for the first time in months, sunshine through open windowns and my skylight, beige carpet and white counters and green leaves covering trees through a picture window. crimpshrine singing "situation" and joy erupting out of my chest and so short of breaths that my voice was literally crumbling as i danced and sang along with every bit of breath and voice my lungs could pour out. going into school, sitting on coarse carpet with kevin laughing and laughing and laughing, fucking with everything, "rookie of the year" on the television and us turning up the volume till it felt like the tv would explode, just to loosen up our laughter and watch the teacher swell.
so when a teacher says "did you hear that lew german passed over the weekend?", you don't take him serious. he has to be fucking with you, or confused, or joking. you don't tell 17 year old kids that their best friend died in the middle of class as filler conversation, with no details or information or confirmation or anything else. you don't say "they think it it was a drug overdose or suicide" about someone who didn't use drugs and loved life more than anyone you'd ever met, whose eyes burned and smile shined and voice sang with so much more love and life than anything you'd ever seen. and you don't tell them two days later. they would have already known, right? right. but wait, it doesn't even matter. there's nothing to say and nothing to know. you just don't do these things. it doesn't happen.
but apparently it does. and it's hard to know when i started realizing this, actually believing that this was my life, but years later i still have these dreams that he's here. that he just went away and now he's home and we can live again, make good of all our plans. tear through our days and nights and laugh and wrestle and sing and scream until we can't breathe and not let go of anything, ever again. but we can't. and those are the times when waking stings so bad that i can barely bear it. but there's no other choice. you're breathing for two now. you just have to keep waking.
and so i'm drifting through dreams. i'm thinking of lew. i'm thinking of alan. i'm thinking of mitch and i'm thinking of joe. i'm thinking of so many friends and loved ones who just couldn't stay, whose gentle wakes made giant waves and carried us to the shore. who rose into the sky and sunk into the soil, who became the rain that falls and the air we breathe, the food that feeds the birds that sing. who became the sturdy ground beneath our shaky feet, turning our legs of spaghetti into pillars our strength. whose echoes and ripples sound through our songs, all quiet and calm and clement. spiraling shyly and soft into snowfalls and squalls, windstorms and whirlwinds, tornados and tempests.
and i'm thinking of nicole. so many lives we lived in so short a time, too thickly intertwined to do anything but tear our lives apart, tear eachother apart, rip out the stitches and scatter the ashes until all remains and reminders were gone. until we could identify nothing. remember nothing. it just hurts to bad any other way.
and of course i'm thinking of kate, this bright and shining burst of life, these puzzling peices of something so good and promising, so full of drive and fight. i'm thinking of myself as this living, breathing remain of so many people and places and things, a collection of livewires that were too volatile to remain. i'm thinking of her as the same. i'm thinking of the impermanence of things. soon she'll be a literal half a world away for a longer period of time than i can imagine. there's this improbable if not impossible future, there's this diving headfirst into a pool that's draining faster than you know how to fall.
and so i'm thinking of all these peices we carry. these lives like hurricanes, of love and real embrace, lived deeply and passionately with so much love and care, so much hurt and ache. i'm thinking of so many futures that never came. so many loved ones that are so so far away. and i hear this wind. i hear it blowing through trees and sheets, howling and crashing, setting my room into motion, the colors colliding and shadows singing. this invisible and soundless force tearing like wildfires through sawgrass, setting a sleeping world on fire. i feel so many breaths inside of me, some aching, some rejoicing. all breaths i feel so proud to bear. i'm in and out of waking. i hear the words "but love is not a victory march. it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah". the music fades and this chilling cold and warm burn sting and glow all through me. i feel something like a pulse, of everything- like gold set to flames, like diving into the iciest waters, like all feelings in the purest form, one in the same and nothing else.
i feel cold and i feel broken, i feel warm and humbled and whole. and every breath i draw, dear lord, "hallelujah".
and so it goes. as "climbing to the moon" and "sleepwalking" play everything slows, motion and colors blend and blur, the wind keeps blowing and the room keeps glowing, into deeper and deeper shades of blue. i'm tranquil, waveless, clinging to both asleep and awake so tighly until they're so interwoven and inseperable and then there's no more clinging, there just is. and it's will oldham singing "in a bed by the waterside i will lay my head" and cat stevens picking and plucking and jeff magnum singing "her life was a hurricane of love and real embrace", all fading in and out of one another with no apparent lapse of time in between. just sound and feeling and touch and taste all one and the same, shaking and stirring my soul. and before i know i'm hearing indian summer, then billy holiday singing, and all i can think about is late winter and early spring, lindsey and i skipping classes, sitting in a giant dying tree, looking across a feild at the inbetween class exchange. me eating oranges i picked from the trees with the juice and cold on my hands, the warmth of cigarettes on hers, both of us flicking people off and shouting and laughing for no apparent reason at all. talking about life and love and hopes and somehow this sends me to highschool, and kevin and i, running around banging on classroom doors or running around in the woods when we should have been in study hall and then us, laying in a field by the bleachers, crying till we couldn't see straight anymore, the week i cried more then i ever have in my life. that morning having woken up after having slept in, and feeling so alive for the first time in months, sunshine through open windowns and my skylight, beige carpet and white counters and green leaves covering trees through a picture window. crimpshrine singing "situation" and joy erupting out of my chest and so short of breaths that my voice was literally crumbling as i danced and sang along with every bit of breath and voice my lungs could pour out. going into school, sitting on coarse carpet with kevin laughing and laughing and laughing, fucking with everything, "rookie of the year" on the television and us turning up the volume till it felt like the tv would explode, just to loosen up our laughter and watch the teacher swell.
so when a teacher says "did you hear that lew german passed over the weekend?", you don't take him serious. he has to be fucking with you, or confused, or joking. you don't tell 17 year old kids that their best friend died in the middle of class as filler conversation, with no details or information or confirmation or anything else. you don't say "they think it it was a drug overdose or suicide" about someone who didn't use drugs and loved life more than anyone you'd ever met, whose eyes burned and smile shined and voice sang with so much more love and life than anything you'd ever seen. and you don't tell them two days later. they would have already known, right? right. but wait, it doesn't even matter. there's nothing to say and nothing to know. you just don't do these things. it doesn't happen.
but apparently it does. and it's hard to know when i started realizing this, actually believing that this was my life, but years later i still have these dreams that he's here. that he just went away and now he's home and we can live again, make good of all our plans. tear through our days and nights and laugh and wrestle and sing and scream until we can't breathe and not let go of anything, ever again. but we can't. and those are the times when waking stings so bad that i can barely bear it. but there's no other choice. you're breathing for two now. you just have to keep waking.
and so i'm drifting through dreams. i'm thinking of lew. i'm thinking of alan. i'm thinking of mitch and i'm thinking of joe. i'm thinking of so many friends and loved ones who just couldn't stay, whose gentle wakes made giant waves and carried us to the shore. who rose into the sky and sunk into the soil, who became the rain that falls and the air we breathe, the food that feeds the birds that sing. who became the sturdy ground beneath our shaky feet, turning our legs of spaghetti into pillars our strength. whose echoes and ripples sound through our songs, all quiet and calm and clement. spiraling shyly and soft into snowfalls and squalls, windstorms and whirlwinds, tornados and tempests.
and i'm thinking of nicole. so many lives we lived in so short a time, too thickly intertwined to do anything but tear our lives apart, tear eachother apart, rip out the stitches and scatter the ashes until all remains and reminders were gone. until we could identify nothing. remember nothing. it just hurts to bad any other way.
and of course i'm thinking of kate, this bright and shining burst of life, these puzzling peices of something so good and promising, so full of drive and fight. i'm thinking of myself as this living, breathing remain of so many people and places and things, a collection of livewires that were too volatile to remain. i'm thinking of her as the same. i'm thinking of the impermanence of things. soon she'll be a literal half a world away for a longer period of time than i can imagine. there's this improbable if not impossible future, there's this diving headfirst into a pool that's draining faster than you know how to fall.
and so i'm thinking of all these peices we carry. these lives like hurricanes, of love and real embrace, lived deeply and passionately with so much love and care, so much hurt and ache. i'm thinking of so many futures that never came. so many loved ones that are so so far away. and i hear this wind. i hear it blowing through trees and sheets, howling and crashing, setting my room into motion, the colors colliding and shadows singing. this invisible and soundless force tearing like wildfires through sawgrass, setting a sleeping world on fire. i feel so many breaths inside of me, some aching, some rejoicing. all breaths i feel so proud to bear. i'm in and out of waking. i hear the words "but love is not a victory march. it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah". the music fades and this chilling cold and warm burn sting and glow all through me. i feel something like a pulse, of everything- like gold set to flames, like diving into the iciest waters, like all feelings in the purest form, one in the same and nothing else.
i feel cold and i feel broken, i feel warm and humbled and whole. and every breath i draw, dear lord, "hallelujah".