He said that he always intended on living in NYC.
He said that everyone should spend at least one year of their 20's here.
Wise words.

I would have come in my 20's too, had I known.

I wrote this back in March

All this talk about heartbreak on a physical level has me thinking.

When you meet someone and fall in love you part of that process is opening your heart and your life up to that person. It can at times be a tension, a process to make enough space for the both of you.
And if it ends there is not only heartbreak and pain and sadness, there is also this emptiness left behind.

They say the hardest thing about divorce is that married couples tend to divide up jobs and knowledge. It's like you share a brain. And when you part company it's like half your brain has walked away from you. So the best way to ge through is to have other people around who can help you navigate
At this point you have choices

To close back up.
To claim and inhabit that space yourself.
To keep it open for towards what the world has to offer.

On some days we mope

In place of the pain
There is a terrible numbness.
I can't feel my extremities.

But unlike exposure to extreme cold - right now

I can not even feel the center of me.

I know that this is a process with stages.
and that it takes time.
But I can't help but wonder that winter could arrive so early this year.

je suis tres fatiguee

Je ne comprend pas pourquoi tu es en colere de moi.
Souvent tu dis de moi que je ne pense rien et je suis un cochon et je suis un menteur etc.
Si j'ecris que tu dis que je suis une limace qui ne bouge jamais c'est la meme sens sous jacent - la meme chose, n'est pas?

Tu n'aime pas ma voix forte, mon nez bruyant, ma grand appetite, ma rire enorme, mon velu corp, et ma tete indecis.

Le pire c'etait que tu es en colere a cause de ton peur qu'il y a person qui croire que tu es grossier. Seulement ca.

Si le grand public ne sais rein, tu s'en moque completement.

desire, a fuel for living

The heart needs an anchor to keep from drifting.
The soul needs hope to keep from sinking.
The mind needs a puzzle to challenge its thinking.
The girl needs companions for a night of drinking.

There never enough time.

Squeeze blood from a stone.
why not?
This expression - used to describe an impossibility
no matter how hard I squeeze - the effort put forth
nothing comes out.

Today I make truth from the tale.

For behold!
After hours and hours of squeezing there is blood on my hands
and a very thin trickle pours off that stone onto the ground.
Yes, blood from a stone.
You know what they say: No pain, no gain.
my hands slick and raw from the effort

And they said it couldn't be done...

"I'm no fucking buddhist, but this is enlightenment."
-Bjork

It is rainy and I am blue. I wring my heart and rivers pour out.
Today it feels like it will not stop.
Somedays I am not up for much.

games we don't admit to playing

i push you away to see if you will bounce back to me
to test the elasticity
of our ties
but you are clever,
you carry a knife
in case
you decide the force of my push should propel you away

echoes from last autumn

a window opens and birds fly from the attic
swirling in the dusk
chasing invisible patterns to the sound of crickets
black against the greying sky

this turn of the season means nothing to me.
In my heart spring is a far distant echo

running the hamster wheel of procrastination

I do not want to but I have to
so I drag my feet and howl and scream I make a sandwich and call my friends watch TV do the laundry take a nap
kill time in all the worst ways imagineable

until there is nothing but do it.

And afterwards I think, hey, that wasn't so bad...
Lather rinse and repeat.

what Buffy goes through

Life is lonely even when someone loves you, when you have someone to love, when you are jostled in a crowd, when you have a community, friends, and family.

Because in your head it's only you.
And no one else knows what that's like.

We approximate shared experience, drawing pictures on napkins of the essentials but each of us exists in the details. The particularity and the specific minutiae of our secret codes, our individual selves.

It is the times when you are alone and the only one. The only one going through it, the only one who can do it - that are the shape of your destiny.

the girl with a bad attitude

I am clawing at the walls of the glass jar with the screwcap with the holes punched out on top.

I am mocking myself in a mirrors curved in the shape of my fears.

And now, I am sleepy.

the waiting

if there is nothing
but the waiting

how do you pass the time?

do you
relive the past - dwell on your sorrow
fall back on routine
seek distraction - intoxication
fleeting fancy - passing pleasure
do you pray?

your boat,
drifting off course,
overcast nights on uncharted water,
unfathomable depths below.

be comforted by the immutable fact
that the ocean has a floor
and its creatures know
no better than you
their place in this world

the motions

there are moments that I forget myself
and I breathe
then I remember
and stop

The Mall

I see it, I want it
I buy it,
The instant gratification
irresistable

No one gets everything they want in life
but at the mall I sign my name, surrender my time
For things to hold the place of what is most desired

I take it home, set it down
with the rest of my
dust collecting collection

And feel empty

Dizzy Ditty in the key of D

days drifting down delay
they devolve enough today

today, today
for me to say:

Darlin', Darlin',
Darlin' its delightful
dealing with the dreamy things you do

ooh hoo,

don't you doubt
and don't despair

there's adoration for you
everywhere.

long ago and far away

the memory of you
next to me on the cliff above the Pacific
so cold and misty
looking down at the swelling, swirling wet
crashing on rocks

I thought
about the future and change
about dancing with you to the tin tune of the grinder's organ
not caring who was watching or that I did not know the steps

I thought
if I jumped I would end first, before our love
I would end embraced in this moment where
you loved me and I loved you
before everything changed.

You asked what I was thinking
I smiled.
I shook my head and took your hand
and we walked down to get soup and hot coffee

and slowly, ever so slowly
after that day
everything changed

everyone needs a hobby

I throw things to see them break
I throw things to hear the sound they make
I throw things to watch people duck
I throw things to transfer energy
I throw things to get them away from me
I throw things to get attention
I throw things to watch them splat
I throw things to have them thrown back
I throw things but I can't catch
I throw things

but you're not into that
you don't want to throw things

okay.
you don't throw
that's good to know

FS said something the other day that struck me.
She said that the thing about survivors is that they are always survivors. They never stop being survivors. They can not let go of the habits and patterns that helped them survive.
I ask myself the question that I cannot answer and I cannot ask another.
Is there a point where you stop surviving and start living?
Is there a point where you open the door to that mental prison and walk out into the rest of your life?
Is there a point at which you say "yes this happened to me and I survived and because I have survived I am now going to live."

the nature of want

I used to think (and still do) that the essential part of being alive is the wanting.
(Very non-Buddhist of me, I guess)

It seems a simple process - you want something. you go get it.
As with many things now I'm not so sure.

There's
What people tell me I want
What people want for me
What people want from me
What I used to want
What I think I want
What I want

And then there's what I want that I shouldn't have
what I won't admit to myself that I really want

Often I want things that are contradictory or mutually exclusive.

All this even before the things we do to get what we "want."

So much conflict in this world could be resolved by being clear about what you want
upfront and negotiating from there.

I used to think that the great tragedy of life is that people don't get what they want.
Now I think this is the tip of the iceberg of desire.

one compromise too many

i am not myself today
i have forgotten the words to that song

feet bound into small and curious shapes, mincing cautious steps
hands tied in the gesture of social niceties
and everything tied to the hem of my dress
dragging and pulling and weighing

three years ago i went back to touch base
it was the juxtaposition of who i am and who i was
who i thought i would continue to be.

i know how i got here but i don't want to be here