Rant and Ramble

it's all the same.

take something out of reach, and its charisma bubbles up out of nowhere, it suddenly transforms into something to be coveted, something to pine for and gloat once having. we with our taboos against alcohol and sex and the varigated urges of the human flesh, who then learn no compromise with our desires. rare the party that ends without someone passed out in the bathtub or at least clumsy sex behind some locked door. the examples shine brilliantly - look to europe, the ever end of pointed fingers. but in denmark we watched fullfrontal shower shots for shampoo commercials, lesbian porn on at three in the afternoon, and no one in the rumorful town i lived in knew anyone who had gotten pregnant in highschool, equivilant thereof, watched ten-year-olds buy vodka but at the bars only a few belligerents to spoil the fun. puritan roots dig deep, guilty pleasures as though pleasure should be hidden, stashed in the bottom drawer behind the socks and pulled out with a furtive glance to take in a stifledfrenzied rush, hurry to finish before the guilt sets in. i see no glory in ascetic simplicity at the cost of true, deepfelt enjoyment. taurus i may be, but i don't think salvation stems from denial.

nor gluttony, don't read me wrong. though in truth, i think them both merely two heads of the same hydra. we are not a culture well-versed in moderation.

the day sifts slowly away, light reaching through my window until it gets lost in the shadows of tightpacked buildings. i have errands to run but don't feel like walking alone, so i read a book and watch my sunflowers wither before my eyes. bright yellow pulled in on itself, becoming an autumn color, rusted, pollendust dribbling on to my desk.

we hiked through the woods near his house, and i wished to myself that there had been such trees where i grew up. soon, it began to snow, and the path grew thin, rocky. sweeping to the left was a deep valley and a black lake, and out of the corner of my eye i saw a flicker of movement.

the horse galloped towards the lake, blinding white and blending into the snow that now fell thickly all around us. i grabbed his arm and tried to run after it, but he pulled back and i stumbled on alone. hitting the water i couldn't breathe, swallowed by deepness, but i flailed back to shore where the horse lay shivering. its ribs stuck out awkwardly, still half covered in the icy water, and i could feel its desperate hunger, its consumate sadness. sobbing, i pulled a glowing green leaf from my pocket and lured it up the hill, where it stood shuddering but beautiful beyond words. i couldn't find the trail, and he had left me there alone. after a moment, the horse turned away and disappeared into the snow to die. the wind screamed and snow smothered me, and long after i knew i was dreaming i couldn't wake up.

you have to do what? she asks, again, as though she were incredulity personified. i sigh: dots. i have to arrange five dots on a square so that they represent musical terms. you know, legato, staccato, crescendo, the like.

oh, she says, pretending to understand. i see.

i sit down to sketch and write a song instead.

oh lord, how i love the rain. i want to go running in it, pull my clothes off and spin in circles as the sky pours down, tremble with the trees for the pure delight of it, let all my leaves drink deep, fill my roots with water.

this morning crouches grey and drizzly, wind humming, the sun on its tiptoes to see over the clouds. i smile in my sleeveless shirt and feel like home.

sure, during the day it might be bustling and sunlit and only smelling faintly strange, but at night this house gets big, dark and creepy with alarming speed.

"you walk through my walls / like a ghost on tv / you penetrate me" -ani

i have deep bruises that surface randomly, aching violet and tender green, wrists and hips and thighs, strangers which show up without invitation or precluding event. they are fading now, most of them, turning sickly yellow, staining my skin.

there have been bruises i bore proudly, badges of courage from drawnlong das boot games or kickboxing classes gone awry, a black eye well-earned by a ten foot fall face first into a granite boulder. there have certainly been a good number of bruises resulting from nothing more than an ill-placed table edge, or occassionally blossoming around the crescentshaped scab of a bloodgiving. i bruise often, i bruise easily, and i almost always know what injury lurks behind the welling of blood beneath my skin.

but i now i am hurt and i don't know why.

happy birthday, peter!

it shouldn't be this hard to be happy.

which doesn't sound quite what i mean; i am happy. that's the hard part.
i think.

i've always had a hard time with moderation. i tend towards the extremes, a predilection which makes me a vegetarian, influences strongly my decision to abstain from drugs, and for a long time represented my reason to abstain from love. because my intensity exists almost against my will, and seems to breed two distinct reactions: either a feverish response in kind, or abject terror. sometimes, the first turns to the second with little warning.
the result? a few high climbs followed by steep, steep falls, a few attempted flings which failed miserably when one or the other of us fell in love, and two exceptions.

the first is a story unto itself and doesn't warrant a repetition here.
the second happens to be the best thing that's ever happened to me.

so, what do you do when confronted with someone who breaks every conception that defines a relationship for you? who, in fact, refuses to allow the connection between you to be labeled "a relationship" at all? who seems to know exactly what you hope he will do, and who has a depth of tenderness and perception that you have no idea how to grasp?

abject terror.
and once you get over that, and once you start to get over the disbelief and into the fierce, possesive joy, you (if you're me) begin to doubt.
you don't doubt him, you've never doubted him. you doubt yourself.

because it's never worked before, nothing, ever. and this suddenly has become the first time you really want it to. and despite all feeble attempts to the contrary, you don't know how to do it. any of it. all you know how to do is throw yourself, and stand slowly back up once the broken bones heal. you don't know what to do when he catches you, you only know that you've never been held like this before.

light streams in through the silk sarong that serves as my curtain, and the tree in the alley outside my window seems to house a remarkably energetic bird. for a while last night i found myself gripped by the unreasonable but insistent fear that i might die in my sleep.

it is, incidentally, a beautiful morning.

have you heard those horror stories about people who get only part of an anesthesia, and have paralyzed muscles but remain fully aware, feeling every slice of a c-section or amputation without any ability to react? it was like that.

not nearly so dramatic, of course, nor so painful. i could hear everyone bustling around the house, had completely awakened and wanted to get up, but my body refused. for fully half an hour i struggled with half-sleep, my mind racing but my muscles dead to the world.

i never quite shook the feeling; all day today, i've been lethargic and woozy. i didn't feel hungry at dinner, and though i slid through a modified version of my yoga routine with little trouble, i gripped the handrail tightly all the way up my stairs and didn't fall.

it's like the city itself is mugging you, reaching up from behind with a towel drenched in formaldehyde. except that instead of formaldehyde it's all of the air, wet and hot and incapacitating, urging your blood to slow down, just a little. just a little more. three flights of stairs and i'm panting, knees shaking and knowing that today it isn't really so bad.

but the air slowly gathers itself into rain and lisps down like a benediction, and the trees sigh with it and the windows fog. and i can lick my lips and taste it and know i am alive.

it's greener here than i'd remembered or expected. we've been doing the headless chicken dance trying to get everything moved in, and since i elected not to haul furniture 3000 miles, trying to get everything bought.

at the sprawling antique store, the chainsmoking owner leered at me over an overpriced 17th century german bedside table and we shook our heads and went to target in spite of ourselves. the conversation began with the idea of handmade furniture versus the Qbits modular furniture system, and, with a few quotes from thoreau, spiraled quickly into a denunciation of cars in favor of sparrows with maybe an electric hybrid in case you needed to haul something. like furniture.

oh come on, god. find somebody else to piss off.

i was a mermaid for a long time.

for a while i believed i could breathe underwater. i'm not sure i ever specifically tested this theory, but i never drowned either, so maybe it was true. once, during fouryearold swimming lessons that i don't remember, the instructor got tired of my impatience, and after the eighth or tenth time i jumped off the wall before it was my turn, he didn't swim out to save me. my mom tells me that i paddled about valiantly for a while before slowly sinking to the bottom of the pool. eventually the lifeguard pulled me out, and five minutes later i jumped off the wall again.

thirteen years later i breathe little underwater snorts through my nose at the end of a hundredyard heldbreath sprint. i don't choke and the coach smiles at me as i hit the wall, gasping.

in the intervening time, i gathered a modest collection of flimsy blue ribbons, took nintey minute showers, and one midnight was pulled screaming from the ocean by four friends who i hadn't heard yelling until they took hold of my arms. we decided one summer that the only way to approach our water was to holler at the top of your lungs while running as fast as you can, and not to stop either until completely soaked.

as far as i can tell, that's the only way to approach anything, really.

we splashswim bobbing
across the lake,
stretch on a rock
sunsoaking,
courting slow death
through melanoma.

the light blinding
and the girl on the dock
has a spine
like a string of hard pearls
under her skin,
painful shouldershrug
as she wraps small arms
below martyr ribs,
shivering in the heat,
posing;
her thighs don't touch
as she swings her hair
and stares.

i walk back barefoot
through the woods
bikiniclad,
distracted,
pausing in clearings
to feel the sun
on my legs.
my tooshort hair is long dried,
my sister paddled back
boyfriend in tow
to the safety of cutoff shorts.

my ears are full of water,
and i can hear my heartbeat
scream with each step.
somehow,
no one notices my passing,
or when
as i trample their lawn.

let the packing begin.