(no subject)
latitude of the heart
Don’t worry about me because I’m doing swell. Even when I’m not swell, I’m learning and scraping away the translucent onion layers that guard like many veils. I used to think that I was broken: transparent doll-eyes, skin so used to bruises that it permanently darkened, rug-burn corduroy knees, half-tilted smiles turned to the ground, and a Molotov cocktail heart waiting to explode. Now, I know that we break over and over again so that what heals and grows back is better. This reminds me of welding-especially when using two different metals. What is created through the melting process becomes stronger than the original two metals. Necessary breakdown for transformation. Alchemy. Metal-genesis.
So, I’m hanging my hair with stars and my smile with memories, crafting a spinal cord of steel wire. I want to be delicate, yet unbreakable. I feel like I’ve traveled so far in the last year-by mind and foot. I had the good fortune to have a last love affair with New Orleans in spring before the hurricane. August, I drove thousands of miles across state lines to land in Portland. My sleek, golden vehicle sped through sleepy Oregon towns peppered with mountain lodges that possessed the names of spirit animals or ghosts. I swam with dolphins and giant stingrays with hawk-spots in Florida at Discovery Cove. Never before have I shared water with creatures so intuitive and gentle. I want to do this every year of my life and find fins etched of clay and sand where my calves and too-big feet once were.
December cradled me in lagoon waters at the beginning; the salt stung my lips and made my skin smooth and rough at the same time. I haunted rainy streets near Japanese pagodas and ate sushi on a little private lawn. The grass ran along a human-made river with Koi that glistened jewel-like in the sun. There’s something about eating outside that enchants me. I want every meal to be a decadent picnic and like eating foods that I can play with-fat Greek olives, loaves of French bread, cheese from the Netherlands and France.
The end of the month had me walking the pockmarked streets of a Mexican border town. I wore sunglasses at dusk to obscure the tears rolling down my cheeks and bit my lower lip so hard it bled and swelled. My love and I ended that trip in the living room of Logan’s parents, a place where I’ve always felt so accepted and appreciated. We saw Melinda and Greg during that trip, too, and watched a pirate-gypsy band play in the middle of a Bisbee street right as the clock struck twelve. A gypsy-dog licked my fingers and kept rhythm with her tail. O, how I miss living with and learning from dogs.
Christmas day, my lover and I went on a nine-mile hike at the Joshua Tree National Park amidst rocks that looked like monoliths and elephant faces. I’m still working out five times a week, so I wasn’t even winded or sweaty after scaling very steep, rocky paths. We ate by firelight and washed our sweaty skin by water-pump, made friends with a band of roving chipmunks, listened to coyotes in the wash outside our tent in the early morning, and found small, funny, proud Joshua Trees to name and make our children. I’m never happier than when I’ve got the road winding beneath my feet and a story writing itself on the inside of my wrist.
There are so many stories here inside of me. I’ve been waiting for the right time and processing a lot of what’s happened in the last year. There’s been so much joy, but also loss, sorrow, and broken bridges. Then, there have been beginnings and faery-lights and raucous dinners attended by armies of friends and clay-spatters on my boots and in my hair after work every day and poems, poems, poems, and hiding my love and then, setting the horses of it free and seeing that my veins will always roll with blood that gallops like horses, not anything lesser or more timid. I just play the part of quiet-girl sometimes because I need my midnights alone and no other way, unless it’s half-smeared lipstick and his hands in my hair and water coming from my eyes and my thighs. Everywhere. We go everywhere with a glance. We’re going to Burning Man in August, Thailand in November, and New Zealand and Australia in December. Our passports will be well stamped and curled from good use. We’ve a thousand plans, my love and I.
And then, I crash into reality and remember things like my Grammy dying this autumn. She meant more to me than any other woman in my life, and her absence weighs on me heavily. I’ve felt lost since she died, like a part of me went into the grave with her and decided to curl around her body because her spirit was no longer holding that post. I’ve tried many times to write about her death and who she was to me, but words just don’t do the woman justice; words are false and don’t hold the truth of blood. She taught me everything I needed to know to be human, to be real. I want to do the same for her in my words, so I am choosing them wisely. I’ve spent my mourning cutting hanks of my hair off (no one knows why it’s grown even messier than usual, but that’s why), smearing my face with ashes, wailing for her, and also remembering how fiercely she lived her life. I want to remember more than I want to forget. Sometimes, I feel so selfish for missing someone that’s died because I know that death is only a doorway. There’s so much more than this physical flesh to us. There’s so much more life than this one.
My tears feel like clouds on my cheek, if only because I’m smiling as much as I’m sad. I promise not to be gone away so long the next time that I need to wander and make adventures. I’m always needing adventures and the wanderlust that is as prevalent as the silver I wear on my wrists and fingers. Nothing golden here. Only silver. Something that bends and gleams with the sun.
Ever the dichotomy,
jewel
P.S. Three things . . . One: I'm going to update this more. I always say this, but I mean it. Two: I'm in the planning stages for the Slab City Slam (Arizona's largest slam poetry event) with my Arco-conspirators Dan Seaman and Ira Murfin. It might be our best year yet. Lots of good things on board for it. Three: I've been reading everyone the whole time. Still, tell me some news, good or bad. I'm feeling disconnected from all in these parts. I'd like to reconnect.
Don’t worry about me because I’m doing swell. Even when I’m not swell, I’m learning and scraping away the translucent onion layers that guard like many veils. I used to think that I was broken: transparent doll-eyes, skin so used to bruises that it permanently darkened, rug-burn corduroy knees, half-tilted smiles turned to the ground, and a Molotov cocktail heart waiting to explode. Now, I know that we break over and over again so that what heals and grows back is better. This reminds me of welding-especially when using two different metals. What is created through the melting process becomes stronger than the original two metals. Necessary breakdown for transformation. Alchemy. Metal-genesis.
So, I’m hanging my hair with stars and my smile with memories, crafting a spinal cord of steel wire. I want to be delicate, yet unbreakable. I feel like I’ve traveled so far in the last year-by mind and foot. I had the good fortune to have a last love affair with New Orleans in spring before the hurricane. August, I drove thousands of miles across state lines to land in Portland. My sleek, golden vehicle sped through sleepy Oregon towns peppered with mountain lodges that possessed the names of spirit animals or ghosts. I swam with dolphins and giant stingrays with hawk-spots in Florida at Discovery Cove. Never before have I shared water with creatures so intuitive and gentle. I want to do this every year of my life and find fins etched of clay and sand where my calves and too-big feet once were.
December cradled me in lagoon waters at the beginning; the salt stung my lips and made my skin smooth and rough at the same time. I haunted rainy streets near Japanese pagodas and ate sushi on a little private lawn. The grass ran along a human-made river with Koi that glistened jewel-like in the sun. There’s something about eating outside that enchants me. I want every meal to be a decadent picnic and like eating foods that I can play with-fat Greek olives, loaves of French bread, cheese from the Netherlands and France.
The end of the month had me walking the pockmarked streets of a Mexican border town. I wore sunglasses at dusk to obscure the tears rolling down my cheeks and bit my lower lip so hard it bled and swelled. My love and I ended that trip in the living room of Logan’s parents, a place where I’ve always felt so accepted and appreciated. We saw Melinda and Greg during that trip, too, and watched a pirate-gypsy band play in the middle of a Bisbee street right as the clock struck twelve. A gypsy-dog licked my fingers and kept rhythm with her tail. O, how I miss living with and learning from dogs.
Christmas day, my lover and I went on a nine-mile hike at the Joshua Tree National Park amidst rocks that looked like monoliths and elephant faces. I’m still working out five times a week, so I wasn’t even winded or sweaty after scaling very steep, rocky paths. We ate by firelight and washed our sweaty skin by water-pump, made friends with a band of roving chipmunks, listened to coyotes in the wash outside our tent in the early morning, and found small, funny, proud Joshua Trees to name and make our children. I’m never happier than when I’ve got the road winding beneath my feet and a story writing itself on the inside of my wrist.
There are so many stories here inside of me. I’ve been waiting for the right time and processing a lot of what’s happened in the last year. There’s been so much joy, but also loss, sorrow, and broken bridges. Then, there have been beginnings and faery-lights and raucous dinners attended by armies of friends and clay-spatters on my boots and in my hair after work every day and poems, poems, poems, and hiding my love and then, setting the horses of it free and seeing that my veins will always roll with blood that gallops like horses, not anything lesser or more timid. I just play the part of quiet-girl sometimes because I need my midnights alone and no other way, unless it’s half-smeared lipstick and his hands in my hair and water coming from my eyes and my thighs. Everywhere. We go everywhere with a glance. We’re going to Burning Man in August, Thailand in November, and New Zealand and Australia in December. Our passports will be well stamped and curled from good use. We’ve a thousand plans, my love and I.
And then, I crash into reality and remember things like my Grammy dying this autumn. She meant more to me than any other woman in my life, and her absence weighs on me heavily. I’ve felt lost since she died, like a part of me went into the grave with her and decided to curl around her body because her spirit was no longer holding that post. I’ve tried many times to write about her death and who she was to me, but words just don’t do the woman justice; words are false and don’t hold the truth of blood. She taught me everything I needed to know to be human, to be real. I want to do the same for her in my words, so I am choosing them wisely. I’ve spent my mourning cutting hanks of my hair off (no one knows why it’s grown even messier than usual, but that’s why), smearing my face with ashes, wailing for her, and also remembering how fiercely she lived her life. I want to remember more than I want to forget. Sometimes, I feel so selfish for missing someone that’s died because I know that death is only a doorway. There’s so much more than this physical flesh to us. There’s so much more life than this one.
My tears feel like clouds on my cheek, if only because I’m smiling as much as I’m sad. I promise not to be gone away so long the next time that I need to wander and make adventures. I’m always needing adventures and the wanderlust that is as prevalent as the silver I wear on my wrists and fingers. Nothing golden here. Only silver. Something that bends and gleams with the sun.
Ever the dichotomy,
jewel
P.S. Three things . . . One: I'm going to update this more. I always say this, but I mean it. Two: I'm in the planning stages for the Slab City Slam (Arizona's largest slam poetry event) with my Arco-conspirators Dan Seaman and Ira Murfin. It might be our best year yet. Lots of good things on board for it. Three: I've been reading everyone the whole time. Still, tell me some news, good or bad. I'm feeling disconnected from all in these parts. I'd like to reconnect.