These nights as they were.

Remember when we used to write ourselves to sleep at night?  And managed somehow not to fall again awake?  How our eyes stayed closed, all night, and we never had to try to remember how feeling so, felt.

It's hard for me to remember now.  Now that you're not here to remind me.  And by 'you', maybe I mean 'me', the way I used to be.

I watched an old YouTube video I'd made of myself, for M., singing to him on his birthday in 2009.  God I looked young.  And happy!  Deliriously so, back before I knew any other way to be -- except vicariously.  Such a bizarre peek into my own once-mind; once-energy; once-unrecognized fate.

Tonight one of your songs came through my headphones.  Although it's always been there, all this time, it suddenly appeared as though lost for ages.  Indeed, it had been, somehow.  Lost amongst and amidst and underneath the many-blanketed boundaries of far less dangerous songs.  And I heard it again.  Tore into me briefly; too easily; still familiar.  Before the numb set in again.

And it was like I realized for the first time how thick that blanket has become; how unavoidable. How indistinguishable.  Only in contrast with a context that used to drench me in my own tears, could I see it as something separate from myself.  Something I've not become, so much as am covered by.  Perhaps shielded.  Perhaps shrouded.  As one would shroud the newly dead, as though not wishing that one to see.  To see its own cessation.

But so as not to leave it there...

-L (9/9/13)

"Counting my losses, wasn't sure if I should count you." -D

"Fear is the opposite of faith." But fuck faith. And fuck fear, too.

Luckily, when you've had your heart torn in a major way, all subsequent disappointments seem insignificant by comparison.

"But I refuse to be concerned with condescending advice, cuz I'm the only motherfucker that can change my life." -I.T.

-L (8/19/13)

"'Would that life were a song!?,' blazed those olive eyes."

(OUCH! God forsaken.) I fell out of bed again this morning. It's a mad thing, this bewildered occupancy you've taken up in my mind.

Indeed, like grinning men in beat-up cars -- wearing glasses and looking straight ahead. Like tiny-tiny girls as cute as this -- muttering with a purpose. Oh! Like skateboarding women, holding on strong with one hand -- tattooed calves painted.

What if you knew me? What would your opinion look like?

I don't understand... I like being so separate. We are arbitrary and irreparable, like the smell of pine on my palm and the utter listlessness of a waning light; like pursed lips in anticipation, waiting to flinch. Is it lyrical, at least, the meaning beyond the words?

"And they've got these long benches, see, and you have to stand up and hunch over to eat so all the chili falls out! It's awesome...it's awesome."

Now I'm feeling more at peace. It dawns on me that within our mind and soul's creativity IS the place to dwell. And that I haven't read my Tarot for quite a long time... So there it is, my conclusion: I always start the Fool, and after the journey, end up the Magician again.

-L (8/5/13)

"When you record the moment, you record the death of the moment." -D.C.

Where am I at? And how do I feel? Such complicated questions, every time. Easier to talk shit on paper/in person than it is to cop to the fact that we'd really rather not know.

But know we do! Can't not. Still, "don't waste your worry on me, I always find what I need. Come and go as I please -- I've got my skeleton key." -D

Stuck in this tight spot between wantingwantingwanting and utterly unwilling to give any more than I'm given. Not sure if I should get over this, or just hone it down keenly into the sharpest of survival skills -- exploited in every sense of the word. Follow myself into the foolish fellowship of the fallen, rather than picking myself up again and moving the fuck on? It's only that I'd like to learn to keep still; to cease with the ceaseless motion that's haunted my movements for years now. Learn to sit with it.

"'I miss being strong,' she told me, and leaned down to give me her lips. We went on, reaching out toward bliss & contrition -- but really, it ended there."

Well, well then. And even so. Every minute of every day has a place to be; a person to see; a date to keep. I look around sometimes in wonder, wondering how I made it here with everywhere I've been before. They say hindsight is 20/20; it all looks like a big freakin' mess back there to me. Deductive reasoning be damned!

"I left through her big oak-black front door, seen only in the brief dark of the evening before, and didn't intend to enter through it again."

-L (7/29/13)