...

(work with what you have. you need never deal with nothing here.) crustacean-colored gathering. together again, no more than once, counting further downward. / chip-jagged painted nails; faint drastic imagination fallen through the cracks. crayon-tinted dreams of living, and driven through the day. drunken cellars weave the statement; nails jagged, chipped paint. / color in a coward's dream, deem it worth the frozen frame. fantasize sequential time. minor flame seeps salty inside. not delicate--not now. notice... veins that flood rain, rather than blood, and drain the light of bitter taste. / to tread water joyous, at ease with fate. (it is not that this is hard. easy comes with many choices--many more than hard.)

"I already told her, if she needs a valium I have that."

(Always another blank page.) Caverned canopy, brooding beneath the branches of a nameless tree. Triggering the moments my settled thoughts await.

(Crapola, m'crazy dear!)

Not every beautiful person, somehow knows of every other. Instinct knows no exception here, and beauty neither needs it, nor necessarily denies its needfulness. (Focus, focus, focus!! And on something other than yourself, please.)

How is this, that one might stand before a typewriter, above an apparently transparent surface, and think she has a right to know God completely, and even something of herself? Don't ask me, I'm just the kid with always something to say.

(When will the frankness of all the folks, finally be revealed?)

"...and it wears her down to the yellow bone. Makes her think of the times in her life when she was afraid, but of what exactly, now she has no idea. Now, it seems there's nothing left worth fear, especially hers. Not even the god she thought once that she could imagine, and conceive of in every way applicable. A body can do only one thing at a time. Either we're here or we're going; now or then or not yet around. Do you know this yet? Do you feel the truth of it there, somewhere behind your cinnamon eyes?"

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (11/27/08)

Pending 52+ minutes to establish connectivity...

We are so young! We've nothing true yet to say...

I'm stuck presently in between feeling I know something about the world--what with its widest range of emotions to offer--and then again a creeping sensation dawns on me that delusion of youth must surely be part of my own apparent knowledge. What the fuck does that mean? Only that I think I'm not an example of the socially-decrepit folks that can glance-without-glancing at a person that walks into the same small room with them--while I'm just as surely not able yet to function fully in the presence of a life-revelation, made by a person I don't know well enough to know how to console. Somehow, I feel I've yet to earn the right to try to express that type of condolence that this person would deserve, in that I suddenly only know of this person's life, one sad and profoundly personal thing--not a single ordinary moment of his everyday life can I claim a part in, so how could I even begin to comment casually on a moment that has changed him forever, even as a fellow human being?

But still, how could I ever imagine a separation such as this, between two distinct lives? Isn't it so, that each life is just as separate from one as it is another? With this so, my so-called separation becomes meaningless since it does not afflict discriminately, and instead holds true for every creature on this earth. Might as well then be counted out, as far as comparative calculations go... So why can I not recognize this on a practical level and meet every person's glimpse-of-life, as they choose to share them, evenly, and with the certainty that my own would be just as foreign to their eyes--especially when every day a new language is somehow learned by ears once deaf to it?

Well, here's the real bugger of the situation--we believe ourselves to be timed animals, in a very concrete sense. Death appears to await us!--just as much as do deadlines and done deals. We think we feel ourselves limited in this way, and each moment of every houred day appears to reveal this to us unarguably though unwittingly. We're on our way in only until we must be on our way back out again. The only thing I think we might miss, which I do believe we must make time to describe at least here, is the chance to acknowledge each other. Those moments so much more than making eye contact, are akin to those faraway gazes peering off from the shore at you, while you and your crew's time-hungry captain is passing one more unnamed landmass by. Those gazes, those that happen to meet yours, they are the only good evidence you have that the most primal mysteries of this world may lay boldly in the lives of every person you'll never know. How do we likewise pass by even one opportunity to seize the tiny bits of seconds we're given, and try our very goddamnedest to make ourselves known!--in a godwilling deliberate attempt at understanding the life of someone else?

Man. For my sake more than/as much as yours, I hope any of that makes sense.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (10/5/08)

Wha...wha...wha...wHAt!?

“I aspire to be a recluse with a beautiful view.”
"Don't say that.‭”
“Why not‭? ‬It has nothing to do with you.‭”
“Of course it does.‭”
“When are you coming back‭?”
“I'm not.‭”
“Then it doesn't.‭”

Our last conversation is more real than any of the memories leading up to it. It's always like that for me, once something is gone it's as if it were never there at all. My recollection fades with the passing of time--it's only this that doesn't change. But at least I know I'll soon stop thinking of these final words. Only when we fill the void do we realize how empty we really were. Whoever needed that kind of knowledge?

Alright. So apparently I'm kind of mad. Hmm...

My pact is to exclude expectation wherever possible--but the one instance that this exclusion doesn't touch upon is when that expectation is given explicitly: when I am told that something will happen/or be done/or is the way someone feels...I expect this to be true, or else truly fulfilled.

This is not to say that I don't also expect things to change, whether they be feelings or plans or minds. And I'm all for that too, when the changes are positive or of a greater priority. But the original expectation is not void until equally explicitly so--if you profess the intention to perform an action, then you must also profess the retraction of this intention. Or else what? Well, or else you're just a fucking liar. What else?

I expected him to call. Or else I expected him to be unable to do so... Fuck.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (9/30/08)

...

Wet ink shine resigns itself to dullness. Soothing scent of flowered tea jar, not competing with the pleading of a glance grown withered--the countenance of frustration and its need for nameless destruction. Then there's always something farther along--touched-up rhythm resounds in life's pneumatic bloodstream. Tapped-out, not sullen-quite sounds mark bittersweet ears immortal, not merely hearing ruckus. Late nights the swing-setters--happy folks come out their gladdened homes! Wearing white & black, to keep the colors for a moment their own. Imagine the image of freedom displayed. Legs that pump slowly; heads that lay back, hands that hold light and dare the wildest spread of open arms... Who skips this bliss, every night you don't know to wonder? Where does it come from, the body-dwelling fullness of spirit that springs to blessed distraction of breath? Until wondering so, soon becomes itself a wonder, wandering about without dilemma.

...from old lovers to ancient impressions, we hope.

How many times undone can one person be, as they're careening through the facade of their favorite fantasy? - Ani D.

Ran merely through a person of my past--'tis it, and simply.  How is it that we can think of one another in this way?  As impressions made subtly upon our lives, rather than as holders divine of a life untold to us?  Still?  Or from now on.  My eyes are tugged curiously to the potential of these thus-far daydreams, but are already denied, seeing from out this me-shaped filter.  "Alas" or "Hallelujah!", and there be no alternative.

The unmoving breeze would otherwise be scented with incense.  My desk chair squeaks inexplicably beneath me, without the encouragement of my restlessness; with the conviction of a creature beyond the promise of loss.  I play recklessly with strange combinations of words, really having nothing but convoluted anticipation to confess.  I'll write again when I remember how much there should be to say -- while we figure we still can, of course.

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (9/16/08)

Y Teulu

mi esposo, James Arthur
mi mama, Mary Ann
mi papa, James Ivan
mi hermano mayor, Jacob Richard
mi hermano mayor, Robert Joseph
mi hermano menor, Alex James
mi hermana hermosa, Katie Sue

I look at plots, now, and imagine the hands of the gardener-lover.

What is this bit of insanity i'm falling in with, like a bad crowd? It's been just about a year and a half since I gave this book my pen--which is about head to head with how long I've been with M. Strange, that just this journal has been given over to neglect, and none other. And now? Well, I've got some things to say.

(A girl wearing all black, but for her blondblond hair, bicycles right past with ever the slightest smile...:)

On Thursday, I learned that my grandmother has been diagnosed with uterine cancer. I'm going to call her today, then perhaps I'll have a better idea of how to react to this. Recall that her husband passed away with prostate cancer some time ago--now let it go. Also, yesterday M and I spent our afternoon and evening in San Francisco. We met an amazing man named 'Bobby' - bladed like a champ w/dancing in his legs; drove a super-stylish convertible; smiled with purpose & abandon! - and we bought a burger & chocolate shake for a faith-filled woman named Latoya - pregnant & HIV-positive; just out of her grandly-loved Sacramento, which still held the threat of an abusive husband; stoked with gratitude for God & his gift of us, to her. I don't yet know what to do with these living people & the impressions they left me, but I think their lessons must prove easier translated, than that of my beloved grandma.

Did you know that a needle exchange program allows heroin users to get clean needles for hits? The unjudged junkie may go unchecked with this, but the spread of HIV is drastically stinted. The world is full of goods & bads. But I still think that countries should only allow a small percentage of their land to be outright 'held' by 'foreigners'. What's it mean to be a citizen of a country, mostly owned by citizens of other countries?! And also - HIV-positive Gabe from Melaque deeply penetrated my carefree demeanor, that night we met, but he gave me a lime popsicle in atonement.  (And none of that has anything to do with sex.  Honest.)

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (8/17/08)

Euphemism for sex.

"The world is absurd, and beautiful, and small..." Maybe, maybe, maybe. I keep wanting to cry, too. Ha! I don't really know why either, just something about needing to...maybe. Last night I fucked up an explanation, as usual, allowing the words to get in the way of honesty. I tried though, real fucking hard, but they still came out as though half-assed and fully judgmental. (Okay girl, no hypocritically judging yourself now either...just take it easy and go kindly with your own heart, like you would anyone else's.) What shall I learn from this? For one, maybe that the things I want to say...well, in order for them to properly match my feelings, i can't change them midway to compensate or adjust to my listener's reaction. Right? On one hand, everything's in flux to a certain degree, and I love that I can be flexible enough to change how I think through something even smack dab in the middle of the thought. But then...what about changing the way I happen to be feeling? Not so much in the way that i feel about something, but rather the source of the feeling, honored as a thing in itself? Is it fair to discount the fact of it, by trying to change it just enough to make it welcome to another person? Or to make it about this other person, rather than owning my own emotions? I mean, what if he doesn't feel anything at all? Then where do i stand, except alone anyway AND suddenly confused?

God. Does it help to be this abstract? I don't know, but what i do know is that we play different roles with every person we're with. And the fact is not that they're all masks, but rather that all of them are equally true, even when they're not equally appreciated. So what do we want now? What is it that appears not to be fine with us, anyway? And what's it have to do with anyone else, regardless of how much I love him? The deal is this, then: I, really-truly, don't want something from someone if they don't want to give it to me...but this certainly becomes complicated when the act is less about giving or taking, and more about the simultaneous combination of both. Or even, something that might reach beyond either, like a type of sharing of an experience to the most intimate degree. Like the ideal of 'making love'? So...then what follows if i don't want to take from someone, anything not freely given--and yet at the same time i wish to give something of myself, which makes for an automatic rejection if I'm already accepting the other person's resistance as their own? And differently, at the same time as this strangeness goes on, a big fucking part of me wants so much to look beyond this singular dimension of sex as an always inadequate game of give and take, and move beyond it to a mutual welcoming of something altogether different. Thus we'd realize that any satisfaction or dissatisfaction resultant of the absurdly habitual games, just overlooks this point, and misses a potential even while actually wanting nothing less?

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/27/08)