Gatherings of Wines & Just Desserts!

Still have exams to contend with--the first tomorrow morning, in fact. But the other night was entirely worth tomorrow's potential stress. It was a dessert and wine party, from 9-1 am on paper--but of course, the long-train ride and intended study hours meant for me, it was from more like 9:30 - 12 am. Considering I never meant to stay past 11, however, the party was a really good time. Great people to meet (besides L & J, that is, who of course I'd met before :), like four water signs--2 Scorpios with great tattoos, one a Piscean photographer/slash film-maker, me, and a lovely girl with a sad, long-distance story, who was nonetheless about to leave for a nine month stint abroad--traveling everywhere from New Zealand to Japan to China to India to Amsterdam to Spain to Scotland. !! Doing what? Well, street performing, probably some of the time, or whenever a decent theater/venue failed to present itself. So amazing, all of these folks' stories. And the wine!! And the understanding!! Divine. So, then it was over, and I scrambled out having missed M's call. All the lovely time spent, still recognizing sharply how much fun he'd have been having, were he with me.

On the train(s) back home--an hour-or-so-long journey. I stuffed myself into a corner and focused on the good tunes pumping into my eardrums, wondering if I'd miss another call while underground. At a nameless stop, two people wandered into the train, among loads of others, and sat near me. One was a kid with a satin emerald coat: dark-hair & eyed, swaying as though to the music of his own massive headphones. He sat down heavy on the seat right in front of me, not looking at me and my having to move my knees out of the way to allow it. The other was an older, dark-skinned man--clearly homeless, clearly intoxicated, holding an old plastic water bottle full of booze in his right hand, and eying me meaningfully from the slightly deformed half of his face. He sat down right next to me, so that I was effectively locked in to my corner seat, between the two of them.

What ensued was subtle, most of the time, and my attention was taken up mostly by my latter neighbor--though my former still stayed in the back of my mind. The guy next to me was named "Wilton", and the first thing he said to me was a half-question, half-demand--wanting to know what I was listening to and wanting to hear it for himself. I took off my head phones with a smile and let him lean towards me, pressing one of the speakers to his ear. I asked, laughing at his bewildered expression, "Do you like the Indigo Girls?" He asked back, "Were they ever on TV?" and I said, "Probably!", not having a clue. Seeing my smile still fixed, he naturally misunderstood it, and put his big hand over mine, folded in my lap, leering, "Well, hun, if you like what I like, and if I like what you like, maybe we can like things together, sometime..." Tightening my smile but not letting it go completely, I pointedly removed his hand from my lap and let it drop back onto his, telling him easily, "I don't think you like what I like, but thanks for the offer." Luckily, he took the hint and it wasn't too bad after that. He told me thanks for chatting and he'd let me get back to my music now, but when I did he asked me if i had any Michael Jackson before launching into his own theories of the life, times, and tragedies of said pop star. The gravamen of his point i could even partially agree with--which is that no one really knew the guy at all, when it came right down to it, and the fact that half the world loved him with all of their might really has nothing to do with it.

All the while this back and forth went on, I was half-aware of the kid right in front of me. No longer looking straight head or swaying, he'd bent down to hold his head in his hands, elbows propped up on his skinny knees. At this point, being confused again by the continuing semi-conversation, Wilton began to tell me how i was mad cool for talking to him, and was i sure i didn't want to meet him on the train again next Friday, but before the lady doth protest too much, the train came to another halting stop and the kid in the thing green coat stood up shakily and meandered off. That's when Wilton stopped mid-come-on and looked down between where the kid's legs had just been, "Whoo-ee!" he exclaimed, "That kid done just lost his shit!" I looked down and sure enough, a giant circle of chunky puke had appeared right where a moment ago it wasn't, and right-quick I took the opportunity to grimace overtly and get myself out from my locked in corner, telling Wilton there was no way i could sit next to a pile of puke for another hundred stops! I climbed through the suddenly open space, careful not to step on the defiled place floor of the A-Train, and switched seats to a nice snug spot between a couple Asian girls a few sections down. Wilton, too, got up, and wandered to another seat. When he bent down to sit in it he somehow managed to spill beer over the front of his pants, and it was then that I noticed an open beer can tucked into the inner pocket of his jean jacket. Seeing the spill himself, he got up again and wandered further down the train from me, not really grinning anymore, and then out of my sight.

Looking straight ahead myself, now, i noticed the advertisements that took up the whole top part of the train I was on. There was a picture of a gorgeous black woman in evening gown, with chains in her teeth. The chains flowed over to wrap around the neck of an equally gorgeous white woman, similarly dressed, whose head was thrown back in ecstatic laughter. It was a Remy Martin liquor ad, and the caption read: "Things are about to get interesting." I laughed out loud and thought--that's not drunk. Tonight--just now--pawing sober girls and losing your cookies on the fucking train...this is what drunk looks like. Still, I had to give Wilton credit too--I'd just seen the difference between a professional alcoholic and a silly amateur kid who just couldn't hold it together. Well, I guess everyone has to be good at something. And anyway, who ultimately turned out to be the more offensive, right? Ha! Sheesh. Anyway.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (12/6/09)

M,

I love you. And still...
...you've never nuzzled my neck;
...you've never met my whole family;
...you've never touched me so softly, or gently;
...you've never kissed my toes,
.....or asked me, "Can I give you a massage?"
...you never hold my hand
.....or stare at me
.......or make me feel beautiful
.........or strong
.........or loved.
After all this time, you still give me reason
...to question you.
.....Your commitment,
.......your authenticity,
.........your eyesight,
.................hindsight,
.................foresight.
I ask you to write down key words,
...the substance of your love--
.....Me. "Why?"
You do write me. (Why do i love you so much for that?!)
...It reiterates in short-hand what you've
.....already expressed.
'That I'm a great girlfriend.' Not Me. What I Do For You.
You then give me permission to come home
...even though you don't guarantee that you'll be there.
And I'm not sure if I want it--either one. Anymore.
...Because where's my permission? My allowance? My
.....guarantee? My promise? My compromise? My sacrifice? My
.......evidence? From You. You never question how I love you,
but it's not because you're more secure.
...It's just that I don't let you.

... (Remember?)

"No time like the present to be where we are!" Right.

Toothache. Two and a half years old; almost as old as we are. Just as biting, here and now. Tomorrow is my last class before exams: a question and answer session. Optional. I'm going, but I don't have any questions to contribute--they'll come, i know. I go to listen to the answers. I will go to learn how to ask...what? Anything. The point is to keep talking--to remind everyone you're still there. To remind yourself that you're still here, even though you're counting down the days.

Twelve left. But they won't just pass, you will chase them away. Everyday, filling your time with worries and false confidences and sudden arrogance and sweet songs and almost-theres! Not waiting like you'd like, but walking to the end of the line--only to remember the inverse relationship of an end to a beginning; that beginning to its end. I wonder if I'll even notice when the one meets the other and begins again? Probably I won't. "But the circle never cared so much as the square."

Silly stuff. Really, I'm just too full of everything out there--in here--that we let ourselves be filled with. It's like that coffee cup that you can't even sip down for fear of spilling. And I'm not ready to spill. And I should probably cut down on the coffee anyway. So I end-without-ever-beginning to mention the reason I came in the first place. Better to guess, and no good having to remember. Tonight, anyway.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (12/4/09)

On hearing of too many deaths at once...

Go figure. That knowledge that sits in your stomach...it's unnecessary to bring it to the forefront. Not before you, rather some thousands of miles away--and sometimes even in the cold thickness of an ancient book--but still there. You can feel it cooling your toes when you lose your socks; it's present in the chilly air of an empty walk. Leaving school late again, but no idea how the hours got to go without so much as your notice, let alone your awkward consent. Beloveds and strangers; admired men and humbled women; folks suddenly described in a court case, when just barely before were walking--thinking--breathing their taken lives for granted.

I think my life for granted, too, but still have it for now--at least this whole. Not with the far-gone ones, nor either the far ones, gone; their passing happened over the telephone. I mourn them only in my mind, and as though on my own, all the way out here. Saying the names aloud, no recognition dawns in any one of my companions' gazes. Or rather, none would, should I dare to speak these names. Better for now, i think, not to see their anonymity reflected in the eyes of sudden friends--point-blank, like the shot-gun blast sought the bad man's abdomen...not right? Maybe no one deserves that fleeting surprise. But then, why should expectation be held at all merciful? Why the wait, taken any less for pain?

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (11/16/09)

"Since when did our personal problems become public discusion?!"

("Since you started considering me the problem, and stopped being someone I could talk to.")

How did it get to be October anyway? It isn't that time is flying, it's more like I'm flying head first through the days. And in the mean time, the reality of my life has converted to virtual, and the digital age is our heartless/brainless/unwilling accomplice. It's been exactly 2 months now, and so far somehow we're still holding on, aren't we?

This evening my plane will land onto a journey of 2 more hours of public transport before I make it home. Meanwhile, I imagine you're standing perfectly straight, but itchy in the rented linen of a groomsman's tux. After the succinct choreography of the outdated ceremony, I hope you can now revel in being gosh-darn done with a good deed, and maybe even drink a bit in the goodly company of the sweet folks we befriended yesterday--who will be joining you even as I cannot. And all the while I'll continue the journey back to my adopted home: mercilessly far from you, but mercifully lacking in absent memories of the us we used to be, and have.

I told you while we drove together--top down, basking in my father's mustang's borrowed freedom--that if you decided that we should see other people, keeping in touch all the same, that I would be at a disadvantage. I tried with all the articulation I had in me, (whatever was willing and able to be mustered at my beckoning,) to explain to you that the difference between being jealous and not, (and I mean real jealousy here, the knee-jerk, pure bodily kind,) seems to lie in the visualization of your lover's other choice (of lovers). To you, anyone I might meet would be a stranger; for me, there'd be a damn good chance you would fall into the company of a woman I already know--or at least know of. And i know it's similar to the way that you are still living there, while I'm safe in a brand new place. How you're in proximity to the places we loved so well together, littered as they are with our own sweetly shared experience. But the other side of that sharp-ridged coin says that I will suffer the same cruel familiarity if you let yourself love someone i could see whenever i close my eyes--knowing both that she wasn't me (hard enough), but also that she was her, and still managed to take my place.

I shudder at the thought, and hope truly that your being where we once were is not a pain to you, but rather an occasional relief, in that we have christened those places you still haunt, home--in ways that are secret to anyone else--and with a warmth that my present life lacks completely. Like everything, these swords have but two opportunities (not) to sever so cleanly.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (10/11/09)

"And other things..."

...like what if my brother's plane were to crash, now that I've convinced him to come? Spur of the moment, on the eve of his very first child, already loved more than I realized an unborn soul could be. What if I were the proximate cause of that tragedy? AND had to live to see what it did to our sweet grandmother, who we're all flying out to see? (The old woman doesn't even know we're on our way--she never would have asked us to come, let alone expected that we would...she probably wouldn't even have allowed it, had she known. And if we don't make it, good lord forbid!, I hope with everything in me that nobody ever tells her. How utterly ridiculous that would be!)

Then, that final little nothing, which could suddenly swallow a survivor up with its difficult, nihilistic summons: what about all of my stuff? My stupid, absurd, mountain of STUFF!? And my beautiful dog; and my reliant roommate; and my unfinished plan; and my abandoned school; and my bills & purple truck? All of it's stacked suddenly without keeper on the other side of the country, forever waiting for me to come home. Because if I don't, it all scatters--I'm the glue that brought & holds all of it together. But someone else will have to go there to collect, divvy up, discard & keep track of so many things which are utterly without meaning, without me. Without history, once their record keeper is lost. None of it's valuable (to anyone else)--and yet it would need to be "handled" by somebody. Who would take on that burden? My mother? My dad? Would i have him bury his mother and daughter--both born and dead in the same month of different years--on a whim? To God, the universe, and EVERYTHING, I ask that the answer to that last question is 'no'.

Because it's true. Besides all of these negative reasons not to crash, the positive one is simply the sweet fact that i still need to be alive. I love life, and mine entirely/especially. (Even when I'm beating my body with a pillow of exhaustion, all the live long day! :-)

I saw a woman on the train this morning, maybe my age, sitting abreast a stroller and cooing earnestly to the content baby boy slowly staring around him. (A little 'stare bear' indeed...) His mother couldn't seem to stop touching him--his cheeks here; his foot in the miniature sneaker there; adjusting and re-adjusting his sleeves, blanket, jacket, knit cap; pushing his stroller out, then rolling it back in again, unlocking and locking it in place. At one point, she leaned over to put her face right near his and kissed his nose, (startling him only slightly as he took all of it swiftly in stride,) whispering words on her breath to the effect of: "I love you more than life itself. You know that, baby? I love you so, so much..." And another little kiss to brush his cheek, unbelievably soft--as much her kiss as his skin.

And i thought of them--not dead at all, like the rest of this morbid monologue. But alive. Very much alive, and living for years and years. I projected them into the future: in ten years they'd be about 35 and 11...another ten, 45 and 21...and maybe then a new cycling life would come into play, soon thereafter. Like a child of mine one day--how I , too, would fly that child across the nation with a hardly a day's notice, were I to be sitting gently with my dad on his deathbed. So these two, mother and son, now forever a part of each other's lifetimes.

And how beautiful that is--and impossible to truly imagine, if still somehow the easiest thing to believe. The natural simplicity of such cycles, even as i artificially look at them from outside, because of course I never could be (separate).

Even here, sitting on the same plane--still awaiting take-off almost half an hour later. I am listening again to the mantra of how the 'software issues' the pilot has been having are not resolved, but will be ignored for the sake of going forward. Yet I'm not scared in the slightest--even while the children in first class scream heartily for several minutes at a time, perhaps feeling the risks everybody convinces themselves that they aren't taking. After going on & on about pummeling aircrafts bringing unthinkable tragedy, it's hard to explain why I'm not worried now...actually, I feel more like that lovely little boy: ready to take it all in stride, since there's no choice in the matter anyhow.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (10/9/09)

There are ROCKING CHAIRS in the Charlotte, NC airport!!

(White ones, in fact.) The whole sprawling thing is a shopping mall, being circled by low-flying aircraft. It's a dizzy ballet, but the Bally's around the bend will keep you fit in body if the five Starbucks will take care of your soul. (Wow, this is already sounding kinda dark...)

But I'll knock it off. I only have things to be grateful for, even if they sometimes exhaust me. See six hours ago: I'm sitting on a plane in North Carolina, waiting for my layover to come to its un-intrusive end. The floatation seat cushions are looking very much attached, and it's another reason why I hope we don't crash. But the real reasons would shame me to my core, so tiny and unnoticeable they are, (just) before departure.

I'm thinking of the reason for this trip--to see my tiny grandma sleep peacefully upon her death bed. My presence merely waiting, on the off-chance that she wakes up--maybe wants to say hullo. I worry about how horrible she'd feel if my flight doesn't make it where it's supposed to be going, but crumbles like seasoned croutons on its way over Memphis, instead. Why so pointless a thing is possible, I have no idea. But I pray I don't become the bearer of the blame for that guilt that would grow inside her--or the anger--there on the door-step of eternity where today she talks freely to God.

"And other things..." (Which I'm determined to come back to later!, but at a decent-er hour.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (10/8/09)

Remember, it's mind over matter: if you don't mind, it don't matter!!

Blue Moon reveries and the sound of unfinished business. Still, even unfinished, often content. Like now, sitting cross-legged in this striped armchair, not thinking about time.

My love shared this nice thing with me: "Time is an insult to the present, mockingly saying that over there and then is somehow better or more important than this now," -Bucky Fuller. Don't know who Bucky Fuller is, except that the name sounds likely to have fit somebody, at some point, and I'm apt to think he may have been worth talking to. Something about Rubik's cubes comes to mind...?

Well, then. Just thought I'd process here for a moment. It's been a while since I have, and in the backwards way that most things are, much has happened in the 'down time'. For starters, cuz you know I'm a lover of lists: my lovely grandma has cancer in the form of tumors all over her organs; last weekend i drove a round trip of 24 hours to see my brother for 8, in a sort of family reunion after five years of blind silence on both sides; my mother must deliberate over the question of whether or not she'd be willing to lose her uterus, to beat the wicked odds; another brother--seen more often than the other, and yet further from my heart than anyone else i love--unexpectedly gives enough of a shit to work our issues out, all of a sudden, after several years of bitterness wasted, and the unexpected joy that arises from a once more normal conversation...; my great love, sending me off but left behind in an acidic mixture of willingandunwillingness; another brother's first baby, still just barely on the way, and coming full speed ahead into a life where you're not there; new place, new people, new priorities popping up in every which way and going any direction allowed; old faces, appear and disappear in mind's or mine-own eyes; exhaustion, sometimes, and endless study-sessions, too; the aches and pains of refusing to grow any more than absolutely necessary; gratitude, whenever one can remember to feel it...

Sheesh, it always happens like that. After the list, we realize just how much we're up against (and for), and realize that just the process of naming the things, and getting them out there... It's more than enough to relieve the soul of its shiny burdens. I hope i don't sound too dry--i love everything, really-truly.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (9/19/09!)

1/19/09: The past being curiously relevant...

You do not conquer things. Not possible. You may get to know something for a while, spend your time with it, keep it near you until you think you recognize it. But when it's gone, it becomes someone else's thing to change. And it leaves you behind. Whatever you knew about it--all of it will change. Be them relationships, or simply those facts told to you in a classroom. The closest you get to keeping something static and close by is through the change you yourself embody by having known it. The only thing you get to keep--how much it has conquered you.

For my part, I appreciate being changed by things. This change attests to the effect of this thing upon me. It speaks strictly of its importance to my life, and I feel i can gauge my progress somehow in this way, by evidence of the things i have both lost and have become.

The point of my entire delusion of existence is again unclear, evading me. I feel myself as a vague presence in the world. When I sit still, I feel my loose clothes flutter around me, moved by an air or another human being. When i move, I sense the world around me moving too, sometimes with me, and yet sometimes against. I feel a certain agitation has been abating for quite some time, so that I'm no longer moved to make arbitrary adjustments in a violent right of way; a screaming light winning out behind my eyes, now no longer overpowers the glow of either night or day.

I find myself taking ridiculous risks. Feeling uneasy about them, as uncomfortable as a freezing stone wall--lost from sunlight and pummeled eternally now by icy waves. Still, i choose to step into their uncertainty with enough regularity to worry the people around me. Or rather, the ones that seem to love me. These risks are small but many. Taking them feels wrong and natural, and so far I'd say they've yet to get the better of me.

I'm always spilling things on myself, so I suppose I still presume the existence of 'self', 'things' (outside of the presumed 'self'), and the possibility even of all my fuck-ups. I still like to close my eyes tightly and intentionally focus on the blindness, to the soundtrack of the world unabated/unrelaxed/not on pause. I still want things that I do not really want at all, as though bodily desires, or even those of the soul, operate on a separate sphere than the faithful demands of myself named 'self'. But to derive a point from any of this? To find a center? Summarize my sum of all desires into a project worth a lifetime? I don't possess this degree of ingenuity! I don't even know where to begin...

Listen: Rock-climbing, and the way my forearms look afterward. Barefoot feelings in the instance of carpet, versus the shock of concrete. Eyes that look my way or away from me, with specificity. Eyes that peek, and glance, and give and plan and take apart or put back together again. Hands that hug strongly, seen pressing solid against an envied back. The name of those hands; being blank but not empty, you're sure. Making lists--how we're doing--and how doing so fills your mouth full with the words your hand is writing. Thoughts of "travel", false as that cornered plant, but places other than your own made so vibrant in your memories, so much more real sometimes than here, or there. But you hope not--you even fear it. And how by now, your frantic handwriting shows it all....

How shut down you manage to feel sometimes, even by the absence of a blank page, or the present imminence of a blanker stare. How utterly entranced and loving you become by the music making your day come alive. How crazy you really, really are. To fall head over heels for a well-built chair, means that eye contact with said chair must needs become forbidden. And so the concept of "forbidden", too, is real, and taken seriously.

How you subscribe to such ideas (with profound loyalty). You vest in them, bet your life sometimes, unwittingly. And still you stay reluctant to admit your life to be something possible to wager on, likely to be bartered at all. Ah, the things we think we believe!, and more particularly do not--how they have nothing to do with the things we're acting upon. Everyday! Accidentally, almost, and letting the wind decide. We fancy ourselves to be free, after all, and freely led. And frank with life, but even so, riddled with these moments of anti-life.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (8/28/09)

...

Iron bar skims softly down my bare foot. Skin keeps imprint of its presence one moment at a time. Sesame seeds dot barren along the fake stained burgundy of table-top red. False plant in the corner, too scarred to turn back now.

(Oh, god, this is hard! How I wish I knew where I was going with any of this... But a story takes so much more of myself away with it then maybe I have to spare.)

Shit, man! My life has just taken a nice complete U-turn--

So Jesus Christ. Seriously. And here I am sitting in a Motel 6 in Salem, MA, wondering where the last two months went, and how the hell I managed to get here without really recording a mere minute of the endless time it took. Tomorrow I officially move into my new surrogate home in the Bronx, and I'm feeling rather out of body about the whole-crazy-hidden Truth of it all. And what else? The Law School of it. And the Absent Family Life of it. And the Abandoned Lover of it. And yes, the godforsaken invisible circus where the time already is counting down to the countdown--since really nothing has yet begun.

In the mean time (always), the Road Trippin' it from the West Coast to the East Coast and then some has seen its share of good and lesser wakeful days. Cuz shit, see where the game of association shall take us?: Taos and Dixon and Prescott and pool and The Rio (un)Grande and not NiagaraFallsGrandCanyonRockyMountains and Louisiana banjos and Wagon Wheel and hot springs and Colorado Springs and BIG CITIES and Syracuse and small cities and Omaha and carcarcar with dogdogdog and Sierra and meeting-the-mother-for-the-first-time and not Boston and gas stations and their coffee but not their food and 'jesuschristo we're tired!'s and feeling like you could go all fucking night long and the somehow stopping anyways...

And anyway, it could've gone on much longer, and in fact actually did. But as for my memory, only the bits and pieces of it serve as balm to the massive black absences of the rest, and I'm not sure if that's good enough yet. But hey, i haven't an alternative either. So that yes, in-the-mean-time i suppose I'll just have to allow in the content of all of it, even before I've earned the wisdom which bespeaks of its form with any sense of clarity. Until then, I guess I'd better go get whatever-it-is i can get, eh?

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (8/19/09!)

Rants...

So last night, he leaves me a message that says, "When you get here, lets spend 16 hours together, since that's how long it would have taken me to drive there and back--or rather, let's spend a couple hours since that's almost equivalent, when you get here. So that's what i was thinking, all that time I would have spent alone, let's spend it together..."

Okay, so I have some problems with this. For one (though it took me longest to think of it, for some reason), if we're gonna say it's all for the best, than let's say it because it's probably better that he's not here distracting me to no end by being around when I'm supposed to be moving. (Because of course I'd rather spend time with him than fucking move.) Or even, let's say that it's best that he's not here so that he can't stress me out when he's feeling uncomfortable in my transitioning house, or by himself dwelling and regretting the 8-hour drive up that might not have felt leisurely to him for whatever reasons. Point being: if it's hypothetically better this way, let's consider how it was in my best interests, not his--considering we're talking about my neglected birthday, here.

Secondly, the "16-hour drive" note is just a statement that says it would have taken effort to get his ass up here. Great! Effort shows by action the worth you feel something has. In this case, his making the effort to drive up here oughtta be outweighed (or even serve to value) by the occasion of my birthday party. And yes, he should have wanted to show me that the effort was worth it to him, just like he should have wanted to see me, especially on my birthday, enough to make an effort to that end.

And finally, along that same line: "16 hours together" instead?! (I'm not even gonna go into his immediate back-tracking that shrinks that number down to 2 the same minute he offers it.) Well, hell. Why couldn't we have spent that much time together either way, if he wanted to? I am going to be down there for a week, after all. Driving up for my birthday shouldn't/wouldn't have canceled out future time spent together. Frankly, the quantification is vaguely insulting--again, sounding like a quota he evidently feels he needs to meet for our relationship. Fuck that. See me if & when you want to see me. DO NOT fulfill imaginary quotas, or meet arbitrary expectations, that will make you feel like shit later either way. I do not hold on to my disappointment now, any more than I resent him for not showing up. But the only reasonable way to let go for me is by coming to peace with the fact that HE DID NOT WANT TO COME. Do not down play this. It is what it is. And yes, I have a right to be disappointed about it. But the fact that we value romantic gestures very differently (especially here and now, when I'm merely weeks from leaving California, regardless of the fact that he'll start my journey with me) is okay.

And this is how I'll make peace with my disappointment. NOT by saying it was best for him not to exert effort, or that he'll make it up to me later at his own convenience, once I make the drive all the way down to him--first to SoCal, and then to his neck of the woods in Encinitas. Because yeah, I'll do that--but no, it doesn't make up for the past, any more than it's much related to the fact that he didn't come. I'll do it because I want to see him. Because I always want to see him. And that's just the way we work.

(Besides girlfriend, don't forget that you've been thinking about it for a week and he didn't start until it was too late to take it back--or how you knew it would be that way. Sigh.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (7/23/09)

An ode to Luna bars and Harry Potter!

Last night I went to a writer's meet-up group and got some nice little feedback on my stale old mixed-up jumble of a story: "Your writing is a powerful emotional tool--but use it wisely."

The problem is, God if that's actually a good description of my writing! More likely, it's a reflection of an emotional snippet of a page or two, which was written almost two years ago, probably. ("When did you say you wrote this?" "Um, I'm not sure... Maybe a couple months ago?" You lying nutcase! What's the point, anyway?)

Yes, anyway. That's all I wanted to say. I don't feel like thinking too much more tonight. After all, I reckon my mind has recently been swept up and away by a nice little fantasy story, just recently...

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/17/09)

Pep-Talk!

What was it again? Stolen? The fact of my missing life's calling seems to me a natural thing. Not so much 'stolen' as gone away. Gone traveling, but we think for just a bit. And who talks about us when we're not around? Not even like cruel gossip, but just in the sense that we are on the minds of others, earning their concern & deserving of their good intentions. I feel like I don't appreciate myself enough, nor the good I do. I feel as though those around me are placed in danger of making the same mistake each time I make it in front of them, by devaluing the work I do or the progress I make. What is the saying? "Stress is the denial of what IS." And just WHAT is!? I need to look around myself, honestly. Determine which aspects of my life truly do not reflect me, and change them. And the ones that do reflect me? Well, learn to approve of them, and thus learn how to accept what IS--whichever 'is' you are.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/8/09)

...

Drop of voices falling in a crowded room.
Hum of late morning's buzz like a radio show.
How powerful women will the nights to end.
Mouth-throat dry, sticky to a stunted tongue.
Tales of baby chicks named Stella, says the River Daughter,
updates of domesticity, known futures in advance.
While waiting here, in limbo for the waiting days,
watching people 'chase the trees', all the way to Montreal.
"Not much going on, just a whole lot more of the same,"
she says, speaking to a two-year-lost friend.
Seeing her past breach future memories,
then break-in to her present discontent.

"To leave the house of fear..."

There's this guy at a coffee shop that seriously messes with me. I never can tell how I was feeling before I talk with him, or how it relates to the way I feel afterward. All I know is that I've gotta let go of the implications therein, whatever they may be. I've got to deny the call to clumsiness that beckons me in his stoic presence, reflecting everything but me in his eyes--dark eyes, obviously.

(But I was worried, I'll admit it, or rather concerned when I heard tales of a bad bike crash, and knew it could likely have been him...)

And then, I'm not even certain of his name! I think I know it, but I've never asked nor has he offered. He has this air of unapologetic arrogance, that I can neither condone, nor completely ignore, as it seems more steeped in self-deprecation than in conceit. It's like that other bearded boy, erring on the edge of misanthropy--not for a second accepting another's joy or happiness as a thing that ought actually to exist. Go figure.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (4/6/09)

Half-Assed & Drowsy Lament.

Day 7: I'm filling up my days with a meaningful jabber of activities. Poised between distraction as necessity, and my refusal to consider regret an option when we can see instead the future. Whatever the shade of context--I miss my invisible one.

I ran into this evening a fate that seemed far worse than mine: A man who lost his still-young wife to a heart-stricken disease. And merely months ago. This sentence, then, I must be grateful not yet to serve. The stairs that await my lover's steps, forever forsaken? If so, at least I do not know it now.

Here are the state of things: One shred of hopeful in the frail form of an email; my extremities aching with an unparalleled brash of exertion--the brief discomfort, a comforting thing; building words atop each other recklessly, and haphazard sentences sure to follow in the failed fall's wake; the peaceful sensation of plain powerlessness, to look time straight in its dozing eye.

I heard some of these words read by twin poets tonight: Matthew & Michael Dickman. My own thoughts feel numb and uninspired to compare with the maroon music of theirs. But the truth of the matter is that the words I choose are in fact inspired--only that my inspiration has ceased to show itself clearly. Rather, his foggy image maps onto my mind, merely a blueprint of what was and will be--but what is just isn't, in this much-too-long moment. (And anyway, all the words are as torturous to say as not, so I suppose I'd better--just in case it helps to say them.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (6/7/09)

Afternoon in Guadalajara, Mex

scraps as crucial as oxygen,
as forgotten as reality,
as taken as a life, for granted.
she lays bent against a dirty column,
seeing all of it in the black of closed eyes.
thoughts incomprehensible run past her vision
at times with the lightning of an unknown past,
sometimes with the stillness left to tomorrow.

...

persevere until
that hinted of end
swallows all of it over again
decide then--where else to go?
and where the stopping point begins,
when it begins to win.

We should learn how not to be ashamed of desire, unmet.

Like in limbo. A place where the before is at least as eventful as the after, but the now is an unasked question. Hanging. Wine covered up by quasi-carbonation and a phone loudly not ringing. When love calls like duty calls, the moment stagnates like a pristine dress--worn not for the lack of promise.

It's a crack waiting to happen, breaking down the center of our hearts. These plans too terrified to be made; this double-jointed heart at odds with your impervious schedule, so expectantly arbitrary. Where's the hope in falling, love?

When you won't be found. Lose yourself willingly, but only by yourself. Come down from the joy; climb high out of the wallowing and follow the steps you're going to take. Better to be there knowingly, be it with misery or companion - or companionable silence. Re-read the words that make the writing of them worth it, and try not to wait for the call.

But why (not)?

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/13/09)

...

Slim. And beady eyes bulging. Beauty lies, too. Don't think too full lest you stop believing. End before beginning, playing out reality. A slim reality, anyway.

Unfortunate Philosophies & Despairing Revelations

I'm a little bit needy, I've discovered. Is it worse when in comparison with other couples? Or only now, when massive change is imminent and artfully unspoken? Either way 'twill be at least partial relief to let it go, this need in wait of fulfillment; this heart-squeeze of hope.

What cold secret compels a lover to look at his love with weary exhaustion? Why would I ever choose to follow suit, seeing the struggle of growth shape a relationship as though it were a fight we were forced into--as though just being here smacked suspiciously of an extended workday, too much for you to bear?

My inside voice is screaming, 'Why not see the future?!' It seems readily apparent to me tonight: my wanting you? You're gonna miss that when it's gone. Why you're missing it now, I can't understand.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/12/09)

"There is nothing as humbling as acceptance." -W.E.

Abstraction comes so much easier than incriminating details. 'Long-distance relationship'--a contradiction in terms? I find myself riddled with jealousy these days, with a vigor that I've never considered myself capable of. No, there's no being above anything earthly, as long as we're earthbound. And still the phone doesn't ring.

Really, I should make the attempt to fall asleep. Early mornings don't agree with late nights, or so they tell me. I guess that's all I got anyway. Consummately distracted, you know.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/8/09)

"The tears will help to keep your need at bay." -Beth O. (Ahhhh!)

In the time it takes to take a breath, the splendid second side swipes depth of focus, telling of a moment's motion muddled gray and glowing fuschia--scented sweet and taking notion--wrings exception from the bland folks' trust fund and pays beyond your imagination.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/8/09)

...

Distress call. Derogatory confession in dark crystal-reflected company. Quitting entire populations & listening still to lies--we float warm through our own impressions of a likely reality. Wishful thinking on songs, at dawn's last unlit plateau. Look down to beat-up, well-loved flat sandaled memories--beautiful? Of course, that morning-after awards fumbling, must be savored and kept well-hidden from proponent fools of well-rehearsed love at first touch. Curvaceous lettered thoughts in-bred from scrawling, scribbled (raw) & bloody emotion coloring that tearful pink. Stressed lull, lullabying the frozen infant to wiggle, once more its toes.

Un-painting.

I wrote it on my canvas with a paintbrush, fancying myself a writer. "Write about the lives you represent. Write in the forgotten, as though memory were necessary. Type out black and gray, the versions of existence you seem to remember, the feeling of someone almost there with you, who you can't quite recall. Whose face faces yours blankly, flutters on the edge of recollection before just gone--now that you've gone away. Disappeared entirely to wherever you are this time? No one can mourn for the selves they buried, intentionally all alone. And then the voice, it spoke from below, not from above. I could not understand the words it wore..."

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/3/09)

Tropical melodies for a Saturday evening.

I'm not stoked about the gradual phasing out that happens with most people from our lives. It's such a LAME shortcoming, so unintentionally unfortunate, and utterly self-pitiful. But what can you do? The process takes two, at least, and it still seems preferable to many people than taking some semblance of responsibility for the deaths of the relationships we half-heartedly enter into. (What is it?: "El cielo es azul, just don't go telling everyone." - C.O.)

Ha! Well, to be "not stoked" about something is nonetheless not that freakin' bad, eh? My weekend is meant for maintenance, I'll maintain, but I believe it's my greatest weakness by far. Instead, six-mile-muddy Buddha-charmed hikes trump, and hours of reading sci-fi-fantastical works of art. My mind's a mess when it looks at the bigger picture, but ah, what splendid focus it can muster! One thing at a time, and the mention of a holistic healing of self is as meaningless as an abstraction of language from a word.

What else? Cold feet, and the insured certainty of self-deception in everything we do--still hopefully in these tiny-tiny ways. For instance, finally taking the time to write something (silly) just when comes to us an opportunity to do something readily necessary. As though utility were something shameful! and to be denied whenever possible. Cheap? "Whatevs."

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/2/09)

Mmm... Sweet potatoes are sWeEt, Potato!

The key is to not stop -- to not gain comfort from cessation, or give servitude gently to sleep. But it is very much a challenge to keep awake through bad dreams, and ever more so through the unimagined pleasure of those we deem good. Goosebumps break out like the prickling of gratitude, tipped at your toes when they watch as though dreaming, tight-rope walkers' feet that don't belong to the ground, nor their routine. Brittle red ribbon, hung loosely like expectation unmet and focus as yet unlooked upon. Throw away the silly reasons why! This minute exists solely for the self you mean to be--but only right this minute--look not beyond, because vision stops dead there. Look not above, because you'll only catch god's henchmen looking down, sick with jealous love. Not resentment, but admittedly, hardly love at all by now. Then look not below either, except to dream wonder into the earth, your stepping stone sufficient. Question lightly the hand-written note, even as you enjoy its solemn or joyous message. Massage into stress the hope of new life, and old alike. Ancience like spearmint breath warm on waiting skin; newness like carrots that burgeon--singularly miraculous, each crimson-orange crown resplendent with green and traceless of gray. Decay like brave sacrifice, understanding the ridiculous self-flattery imbued in the prospect, still unhumble in the lesson learned in giving up for the sake of balance. Giving over to the blissful, beatific utopia of KaRmic VisIon--a universal scale weighing out the promises, promising aLL to all it holds dear. Shatter the concept of considerate justice, at the expense of experience allowed & entrances wide-open. Honest.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (5/1/09)

...

Which flavor determines you?
Which color-coated combination?

Honey chestnut; chocolate-tainted cinnamon!
Blackened blueberries; desert-tinted cafe!
Date-coated flaky coconut flooding cream!

Bright white chili water drains streaming from gray eyes
and oh! if there's no such thing as taste...
Breathe deeper, and take note:
tomato-scarlet brandished
multi-grain cous-cous,
separates and joins to fall like sand falls
always made or unmade, really the very same.
Think into your blessed cherry-blossom messes
glide-float-fallen, cradled with bedded-down brown grasses.

(No dear, I want you to untangle your hand from my hair,
please, unwrap your draping arm from my tense shoulders
and go. Soft joy-faux pleadings, take them from my ear
and tuck them back there in your wallet of unholy white.)

...

fluttering chatter lingers by the swing-set
grandparents step separate, back from boy
playing in the sandbox, silently judging the sunlight.
talk of past years, but few still, through
the voice of an eight-year-old speaker--
where history is mysterious pretense
stepped-in for living desires.

where thought-stream dives beneath
written word, the back and forth,
exchanges of energies divide/derive.
shoed feet on man-placed sand, out of sync
with expectation, the grains barely can
(re)cover their ground. lain almost
by accident about our uncovered
fingers, between our invisible sounds.

Hotline duty persists, and thickly through the night.

Put the secret back into the day. Shape the clay frantic, drive the doubt back into the ground. And remember: "Feeling sorry for himself, isn't suffering."

It means that I'll be okay, with or without my lover--being my lover. But it also gives cause and allowance for his being so. It means that I am a many faceted creature, full of Spirit & Earth & Emotion & Mind. All, and even in balance. And though this remains true of me, this balance is of course encouraged and brought to gracious fruition through my relationships.

I like reading cards frantically until their stories can be seen through relation and pattern, as though repeating their words through their truths. I like that I might be a Queen as easily as a King; a Page as much as a Knight. I like seeing the same cards, and being awed by the strength of my particular 'universal' meanings--all the better for just that moment's possibility!

[So here's the deal: we got into Law School on the other side of the country. If I'm picking up and leaving everything, indeed, I need to know it in six days time. This isn't merely a matter of 'where the cards fall'; the touch of my hand shall be blindingly apparent.]

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (4/16/09) <--!!!

6 minutes to go and counting...

Where'd that feeling go? Where's that irremediable joyous glow that shined a warmth from your belly outside? Just recently we feel half off, don't we? Sometimes we can be reconstituted by the borrowed beauty of music passing us by, but where went its source out of our frame of vision?

The old tricks still apply. Several times a day, like a habit-trodden path is wrought, I find myself visiting spots that up-heave the soul like a sand bar launches its waves several feet into the air. I exist now and then, like this, and in between feel barely necessary. It's not a sorrowful space to inhabit--more like the push of darkness, against you and on all sides. In some ways soporific. And in an offhanded vague sort of way, sometimes worrisome. I'm calling it a phase, if you're asking.

In the mean time, revel in the words already spoken even before your lips shape the sounds. Take a measure of solace in the euphoria you still inspire in the dog that waits for you by the raised platform of your front door. And stick it out, one step at a time, to avoid whatever potential damage might potentially be avoided.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (4/5/09)

Glimpse into history.

[Come on, love! You must shape these things into something...]

Stare at a fabric folder (perchance purchased in Persia?) and consider this, your predicament. Paint her deep orange--bruise her bright yellow--and our masquerade fades off.

These words...these words...all you know in the dimness of day, and surrounded by darkly-writ sunshine. Where else could there have really been to go, then? And how can we think to express this? Oh abstraction! Fucking cowardly distraction! When commitment threatens a worthy conclusion we run at blurring speeds somewhere far away. Such eventualities bite into your shield of pride, good darling. We love & we don't! We love & we don't! What then?! What of it?

No. I don't want my time in between that bliss of loving you--to anymore resemble waiting. I exist even without you, love, strange as this is to express. The green of the trees look not so heavy here, almost floating their tips to the lightness of beige. And then suddenly we're working--oh yes, again. How we don't make sense with such dedication! (To be taken every which way.)

You'd think to express any feeling that runs so deep--you'd think it would have to be easy. (Ah, well.)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (12/12/07)

...

Threading string spins delicate the blanket. Woven through fibers chained unbreakable, its links fragile as the reciprocal breath of eye contact with a passerby. And in that instant you recognize your own tread, rocks rhythmic and signature, and just as easily passed by. Quiet the glance given the mind's eye from behind, over the wishful shoulder, beyond what would be there. Driven frantic, next steps solidify a wake; white rapids, salvation of unawakened seashores.

...

See what I've created.
Look at what I am,
at how I seem to be.
Deep breath difficult
still so sweetly desired.
Dear frozen/thawed/perched
pen, above the thirsty page.
Indifferent? (Please.)

"We do not feign tortured, my daughter and I."

And anyway, the prayer of the priest is to make peace with the lot of his life. While the girl on the motorbike too big for her, she talks dirty (of engines) with the fellas she rides with.

Just then, and when the light turned rosy, the stalking women spoke loud of ambrosia! Filled the sky to its atmospheric brim, with claims of last sight at first whim.

[Peole think it right to opine on what is offered them... Even so, what have you to offer?]

To allow--What magnificent madness is this?! To stay awake, and in waking give free reign to the things you've really no power over anyway. Indeed, to allow, and of course to enjoy, each moment's beat; the flow of perceived time with its singular rhythm. And to write within the inherent limitations of context? Gratitude endless, allow me to be grateful.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/20!/09)

For the day preceding a birthday.

Love to write beside the fact of lines. Sleep so quiet in the midst of chaos like anarchy's latest dream. Just try, just for an hour or so, and decide to last that long. Along the river's panel of glaring critics, be blinded by the fading light, if only for the round of night, and shirk the girth of day. Dream dreary if you'd think to dare, make allies of the light and dark, still one, still un-unified. Ewe-music, not silky like love's version of sex, but wool-fuzzy instead, and really much warmer than need be admitted.

Imagine being caged--designated animal, and left to chew at your rapidly healing flesh. Where would you end up? Who could you easily trust, then? Or carelessly converse with, when each person's eyes ever hold the silent, eager nature of intention? And when do you stop wanting, somewhere within yourself? When does one cease falling for life's promised offerings? Maybe it's ungrateful to wonder.

You should know that I love an awful lot about you. Your compassion, if not pure love; the question, grave, of whether you can think of me without the aid of my absence; your spring-endless source of creativity, without wonder; your messy soul, and artist's fingers with critical glance; your selective silence, hidden between the barrage carrying over of never vicious sounds--not quite aggression in music, but determinedly determined, having somehow learned to separate the two, my dear? Oh, I do love you, even though I want more from myself than I've any right to expect you to supply, as though in supplicant offering. What do you have to do with that? Only that i wish the answer were 'something'.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/18/09)

Confessions of a misplaced home?

When I was sixteen years old, my mother began seeing other men. 'Other', meaning not my father; 'my father', meaning her jaded husband. There was no deceit involved, never the behind-his-back affair. It was not her way--she was always very open about her infidelity. Wanted to share it with the family. Encouraged him to pursue similar past-times. She was so caught-up in the illicit excitement of all of it, or so I tend to think, that she never particularly focused enough to see the daily hearts being bruised. Thought this "new development" of their "relationship" would ultimately prove a deeper bonding between her and my father; as a transcendental step in their evolution.

She believed this, I believe, wholeheartedly. Even when she moved four-hundred miles away from him, "temporarily" leaving her kids and the only home they'd ever known, to take a new job in the same city as her at-the-time lover. Even now, she thinks she believed we would all have been able--let alone willing--to follow her. The fact that there were five of us kids, three dogs, a cat, & two cars living in a house that still needed to be re-hauled, cleaned up, and sold in the wake of her absence, somehow didn't seem to stop or strike her as unlikely odds. Even so, I can't help believing her: we just never crossed her mind.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/17/09)

"You're beautiful, and smart, and worth every moment of the day." -Anon

She stared up at the canvas and smiled its blues and oranges. Across the street from the cafe, she stayed vaguely aware of a presence she would soon need to acknowledge. With all of her will, though, she tried to keep present with this moment: its view of a desert painting; its scent of roasted caffeine; its impression of waiting like a solid thing to cling to, with her fingertips or toes; the signature of an artist to symbolize it all. "Tyler Burke," a name she did not know until then, but one her semi-present self still hoped to remember.

And back across the street. Yes, eventually her mind shifts back there. To him, waiting across the street. Her yawns came more frequently when she thought of him there--were they reading the future? Dreading it, or finding more comfort than she was comfortable with? Or better yet: fuck him/it/everything--maybe she was just crashing. Jesus knew she had every excuse to be tired after twelve straight days of fine-tuned, screaming stress levels. And every right to let him wait.

She remembered the confusion especially well. Again, finding it necessary to stop the thoughts comingcomingcoming--to listen and pay mind to her body, in a way she'd once taken for granted. [She wanted to see stars not but for the darkness, but brightly lit of their very own accord. No comparisons; no relief--just boundless gratitude to be there to see.] Ready or not, she told herself futilely consoling--here we go, dearest.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/14/09)

On trying to get The Secret Life of Bees to play for me...

Loaded up with some coffee and lemon water, feeling nothing like a watered-down dream. I hope for the definition of 'best' to come soon. Feeling good and necessary, writing words like their good lives depended on it, and I know. Mugs so satisfying, painted on with gala apple-likenesses. I realize, if I called my parents right now, chances are that they'd take my call. At least to call me back. What an unseen Blessing, this little thing swears itself to! What if my parents were unknown to me? What if I didn't have any at all? (And never knew the difference?) Still, I go days and weeks at a time, never worrying much myself about it, and daily fail to call...

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/12/09)

"100 telephones shake and ring. One of them's from someone who knew you." -Guillemots

My core muscles are burning out the breath from my lungs, like the flash-pyrotechnic game of pistons. My dog's ace bandaged back leg jumps up before she does every time she tries to arise, cuz she can tell it's wrong, doesn't belong. Hungover from an evening spent with poets--feminine like something sacred, and sharing like their creations don't belong to them at all. Like possession is a thing imagined, barely recalled of an uncomfortable dream from the night before. So that now my night before was a dream best remembered?

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/8/09)

Faretheewell folk...

I heard this tonight: "Worse than being hit, worse than being molested, worse than being lied to, is to not feel credible: when nobody believes you." My stomach tightened when I heard it, and my eyelids began to burn. I listened to the woman that said this to me as hard as I could, trying like hell to take it to heart--trying not to say a word. I had heard her voice crack when she said this to me, and then I heard it solidify again as she proceeded to take her stark revelation and churn it through the structure of her mind. Organizing it in her thoughts. Explaining it away again.

I know that when we say things like this they feel hyper-real through their confession, but that their reality fades and flows with our proximity to their context. But even knowing that she would forget the power her own words had on her, and on me too, I couldn't let them go. I didn't want to. I wanted to hold onto their stinging power as though it were truth, simply. I wanted to take that representative truth along with me, through the colors of my days and nights. I wanted to hold it up to other truths, to look at it again and again through the lenses of separate experiences, and the feelings that are foreign to its understanding of the world. I wanted to compare, organize, and double-check so that I too could be willing and able to explain it back, and keep it at bay.

Cuz you know what? That shouldn't be fucking true, even though it is.

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/5/09)

"This was back in '92. She was like, 'Do I look sexy?' And I was like, 'Well yeah, you're fucking hot." -Renegade announcer over megaphone.

If you stop haunting me, I'll stop writing these damn things. But we only ever come close. "It's not optimism," she said, "it's self-preservation." 'Displacement' is the ability to talk about something not currently present. As I'm displaced by you? In honor of Aristotle then!, and On Marvelous Things Heard: tonight we heard some marvelous things indeed. Nothing like a poetry slam in a cramped one-room bar!:

Sincerity comes reluctantly with explanations in it's mouth, in this, the wake of secrecy.
Your hands tend to the unspoken for, their touch, an intrusion upon shame.
With a voice descending the depths of disillusionment,
still your hands return, having never learned the difference.


Such a thing not even read, though it's just as well. Beautiful words, formulated for to break predictions into tiny pieces, move me to the point of an absent smile that lasts the night, which might carry me to sleep in peace. But they run the risk of addiction too--not sleeping when I lay my head down, but bound to the books that come close. "Great Scott!" (But not quite that yet either, hey? And anyway...)

Faretheewell folk,
-Talthea (3/2/09)

"Blue would still be blue."

Such a mess! I'm not even sure all what, just that it's all bad. Just got my LSAT score back today and guess what happened--it indicates that I'm just exactly as average as I would have thought. Such a bummer. I was aiming low too! I was like, "Okay, see here universe, let me have at least a score of *blank*, and I'll be satisfied. I don't need to be no superstar, but seriously, at least a fucking *blank*, k?" Well shucks, just about missed that there target by 10 freakin' points! And on a sliding scale of 120 to 180, there's a whole lot of room for disappointment from one to ten.

But what? What's such a mess as all that? Come on now, girlfriend, even before you took the ridiculous test, you'd all but convinced yourself it was pointless. Not because you had such an unrealistically low estimation of yourself, but because you knew you couldn't choose to go through law school anyway, if it meant turning down the writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. So where's really the issue? Well, the fucking issue is that so far I don't know if I'll get into either program, so to have it be such a suddenly fat chance that I'll get into the one, less preferable option, means that I'm riding way heavy on the hope of the other. God, I hate that feeling. The one of insecure expectation, where you know you're more invested than you ever meant to let yourself be...

And then there's the mean time. Right now. Sitting cross-legged on an upside down painted-metal trash can, finally writing something other than excuses for why I'm barely writing at all these days. When it comes right down to it, right now, while listening to Guillemots' Sao Paulo without having any idea how the song is suddenly almost over, I want to be able to believe in the fail-safes I've built up throughout this process of subscribing myself wholly to an abstract and finite amount of possible futures for myself. I have no idea what all the fuck is going to happen in my lifetime. And honestly, at some point I learned how not to take issue with this fact in the slightest. What throws me off is when I put some stupid specific expectation out there on the real world--somewhere out there outside of myself, where I have little to no say on how things are unfolding. So really, I should just quit guessing my way into cheap misery--or at the very least, get back to guessing myself out of it.

Whatever. Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (2/27/09)

"And he would go to picture galleries they said and he would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did not." -Woolf

What is this? "Promises kept" that are our lives perhaps--unduly given? [Think of the steps in between...how we take them the same, as is our existence this equivalent.] "Narrowing" like guarded eyes, but with breath ever thinning down to our given finitude. Unawaiting any acknowledgment.

[How the fuck do you express a tree?! Happiness like a concrete picket fence?]

Walking past a house today & I saw that the front door was open. From the street the TV was in view. It was showing a commercial for the truck that was parked in the driveway.

"I make my kids read the Declaration of Independence every night." [Weed-ridden footpaths and bike trail unbeaten, tease out parallels unrealized alone.]

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (2/19/09)

For when the gu zheng rings a holy sound...

The state of this space rings with content. Rain falls light and clangy. Jasmine invading the apricot tree, symbiotic and welcome in the winds of this season. Days later, only a moment has passed. To look out, the sky as dark; the wind as howling; the black striped yellow streets wet. For a small time only, the sounds make no difference. They sound like sleep-preparations. They sound like timelessness, every night pretending itself the same as each come before, each following after. Innocent like silky curtains, fluttering in the wintry glow of a companion. Almost quite forgotten; the float of anticipation, not promising tomorrow.

Faretheewell folks,
-Talthea (2/15/09)