Typewritten touch, tainted.

Morning. Sort of. 10:40am and m'love is in the bathroom, trying to talk to his sister and shit at the same time. Being efficient and therefore incomplete with his Zen mornings, in the interest of pleasing everyone. Thing is, 'everyone' doesn't include me, for better or worse, since I'm his Zen enthusiast rather than temptress - so of course, now I'm always also incomplete.

Yesterday we went and saw his sister at her new, unwilling home, locked under the staff of a supervisor's key in a shipwrecked inland mental (health) institution slash drug rehab and treatment center. Heavy. Sad. She looked and felt as though she didn't belong (thank god), so the problem was that she was there nonetheless, and for an indefinite length of time. Watching him not watch her was hard. He would stare beseechingly into her face as he spoke to her, but when she answered back his glance would unfailingly wander out toward the (caged) freedom represented by the wide windows. They overlooked a lack of civilization; green lolling hills speckled and graced with indigenous trees.

Here, the sun is finally starting to break free of its shady gray confines, and his typewriter and mp3 player still wait patiently for his return. His water cup is drying and his coffee cup remains in his grasp, away yonder in the lavatory where he's perched. I sit pseudo-meditative with my sight fixed on the waxy leaves of a ficus plant arranged in a strange horizon-line perspective before me. A tiny beige spider flinging itself up and down its swinging strand, so like dancing rather than weaving its wiry web. My water glass not empty; my coffee mug getting there.

The view is of the drained and covered spa out back on the patio, and the bizarre black dog doing her secret deeds behind it - something about plucking unwitting quarts of half-and-half from high counter-tops and surreptitiously burying their corners just an inch beneath the dark soil.  Cartons still fully intact on account of the gentle grasp of her bite.

-L (1/23/12)

"Never so alone as when the familiar is haunting."

She was working to remember what more there was to say. She hoped something would come soon.  But the walk home was wet and the memories slipped into each other with finality, dismayed by the plight of hazard lights. By morning all would likely be lost except the urge to try again.

And it always came back to this: this walk. Along the bike path by the levee, following the flow of a premature stream.  The issue as it stood: what ought to happen next?  This phase in her life coming to a gradual end, with an endless slew of options opening up ahead.  Of choices waiting to be made or unmade, or else needing to be made manageable.  The whole lot of 'em were hard-pressed to appear savory since darkness scampered in now so early in the evenings. But when the winter went away, she will have had to make a decision.

The problem was, none looked much better than the next.  A stark similarity had struck all future dealings that claimed to come into her mind, and the overall feeling was gray.  Not good anymore than bad, but then, not much of anything else either.  Hard as it was to admit, she felt at her best when pretending.

"And maybe, somehow, this scam will still save her soul."

But then the night went torrential in the instant next.  Her pathway bled steam in a trickling upward vapor, clearing the way for her feet to rush headlong ahead, meaning to beat the downpour. She began to believe there was none so complete as those at peace with their past.  Still her feet took her all the way home, in just the same way as they always seemed to.

-L (1/21/12)

Maybe moving on just means selectively forgetting, and collectively remembering.

Jukebox (4:27)
by: Ani DiFranco

In the jukebox of her memory
the list of names flips by and stops,
as she closes her eyes
and smiles as the record drops.

Then she drinks herself up and out of her kitchen chair
and she dances out of time.
As slow as she can sway,
as long as she can say,
"This dance is mine."
"This dance is mine."

Her hair bears silent witness
to the passing of time.
Tattoos like mile markers
map the distance she has come,
winning some, losing some.
She says, "My sister still calls every Sunday night
after the rates go down.
And I still can never manage to say anything right,
but my whole life blew up
and now its all coming down."

She says, "Leave me alone,
tonight I just wanna stay home."
She fills the pot with water and then she drops in the bone.
She says, "I've got a darkness
that I have to feed.
I've got a sadness
that grows up around me like a weed.
And I'm not hurting anyone
I'm just spiraling in."
She closes her eyes
and hears the song begin again.

She appreciates the phone calls,
the consoling cards and such.
She appreciates all the people
who come by and try to pull her back in touch.
They try to hold the lid down tightly
and they try to shake well,
but the oil and the water
they just wanna separate themselves.

And she drinks herself up and out of her kitchen chair
and she dances out of time.
As slow as she can sway,
as long as she can say,
"This dance is mine."
"This dance is mine."
"This dance is mine."

-L (1/10/12)

"We. Featuring the words of Arundhati Roy."

I feel like I ought to post this link once every six months for the rest of my life.

http//www.weroy.org

So there's once, at least.

-L (1/1/12)

Merry Christmas.

Day after Thanksgiving, II.

i am grateful for the folks in my life whose eyes reflect me from before the after. for shared grief, when going alone goes nowhere. for the faith that one day i'll once more recall gratitude in all of its full-bursting brightness, rather than having to tell myself that i ought to, almost all the time now...

i am grateful for that one shred of hopeful in the frail form of an email. for writing within the inherent limitations of context. for building words atop each other recklessly, and for the haphazard sentences sure to follow in the failed fall's wake.

i am grateful to be awake, and in waking to give free reign to the things i've really no power over anyway. for that peaceful sensation of powerlessness, to look time straight in its dozing eyes. for being able to admit each moment's beat; to feel the flow of perceived time in its singular rhythm.

and for gratitude endless, allowing me even now to be grateful.

-L (11/25/11)

"Pass the time with you in mind..."

(How hard it is to write now. Like the stagnant sink of quicksand.)

KS,

I feel you in numbers, now. I see you in exit signs; mile markers marking 427 miles; digital digits lighting up 10:10 of whatever section of day in a sickly pale green or piercing red. I hear you in sad stricken songs suddenly on the radio, singing words you used to sing to at 21 years old--and at any year before your last.

It's true that those exist still, in some way, intangible though they be.  I wish I could still see them.  I wish the past year didn't so consummately consume those shadows of the past.

It's 11/11/11 today.  I will post this at 10:10pm.  Somehow this small act of remembrance seems significant in ways that much else fails to.  In casual, cryptic fashion, I fashion my months around the trilogy of days that signal missing you.  Nine...ten...eleven.  Today is 11/11/11.  You died on 10/10/10.  I want these simple truths to ring out loudly with simultaneous recognition; to somehow soften the aching harshness therein.

What else is there?  Another year.  The first, really.  A book called Blue Nights that I expect to be a comfort--or at the very least familiar.  The nearing to change, transformation, anythingotherthanthis.  Decaf in the morning, pretending to wake me up.  Another project to dive into, fixing other people's problems to not focus on my own.  Letting my eyes adjust to the blur; no longer fighting for clarity.  Rolling through the days with the gratitude of steam.

And meaning well in the mean time.  Or else selling the sweetness of discreet distraction.

-L (11/11/11)