18 August 2017

Time is Lost

Have you ever suddenly realized something that it feels like you were in a balloon the whole time and it suddenly popped?
The rubber membrane surrounding you burst into a million pieces and you see your thoughts and plans and ideas disintegrate into thin air.
And the realization that you had is about time?

All the time that has been lost?

Like holding playdough too tight in your hands.

Bubble bursting.
Time is lost.
Time is lost.
Time is lost.

Money is burning.
Time is money.
Time is money.
Time is money.

Money and Time.
Never seem to marry for me.

Gone, but not forgotten.


16 August 2017

Hands of Time

My ring finger on my left hand bears no ring. It never has. They say rings signify insecurity.
A small piece of knowledge I picked up from my best friend's dad. He was a psychologist and the smartest person I know. I believe everything he says - even though he can fill a story with more bullshit than truth. You know when he does that, though, because he'll bellow out a laugh after - look down and rub his bald head, belly bouncing from laughter. His nearly toothless smile propagates mine. We'd all collectively laugh - or add to the sarcasm we are usually drowning in - launching off each other's energy and wit. He is the guy who calls me kiddo with affection. He's the one who offered the advice about my breakup.

"When the foundation is broke, it can never be replaced." That was after I left my boyfriend the first time.

I thought I could defy him - like I can all the people who look at my hand. My lonely, empty hand - bare.

Maybe forever.

People can't believe I've made it this far without getting married once. How could I have survived the wolves all these years. Little do they know I am one. I suppose there are more unbelievable things.

Like a broken foundation.

I refused to listen to this advice. "I'll show him. I'll show him I'm not like the mould. I'm different."

In the end, or what is at least an final intermission, my friend's dad was right. The foundation of our relationship wasn't built without cracks, though it wasn't damaged without repair. And after five years of wet concrete and caulking the cracks, maintenance of rusted pipes and even the purchase of a new home - the foundation remained compromised beyond anything we could fix together. The structure was there and the interior and the exterior - while often messy, cluttered and unkept - was operable, tolerable. I guess just not solid.

And now, three years later, my home is still at times messy, cluttered and unkempt, my own foundation appears to be settling. Maybe I am breaking the mould. The foundation is jiving together without luxury travel plans and a large bank account, even with pools of tears soaking into it. My foundation is getting stronger - and not only to support the structure of my self - but grounding too. Deeper and stronger. Organic. With personality and color.

"Why would you color concrete to support your house?" they'd ask me. "What's the point if it is covered in dirt and houses the musty smells and damp leftovers of yesterday's experiences? Where dreams go to age like a fine bottle of wine - becoming better over time?"

My hand is bare and my fingers are short, just like my grandmother's hand. But her finger always had a ring on it. That was what you did back then, especially if you were 14 and pregnant. Her nails were always painted and when they chipped, even if it was two hours later, they would be redone for dinner.

Dinner tastes better when women with finely manicured nails serve it.

I used to never paint my nails, because I had the unfortunate curse of biting them.

"Boys won't like you if you keep biting your nails," my dad told me growing up. It was a threat that if my ugly behavior wasn't corrected, there would be consequences. It was saying my habit made me less desirable, a trait we didn't want. I tried to quit, but if I was stressed, or bored, or if they weren't exactly symmetrical from one side to the other, they wound up in my mouth. I'd only notice when they started to bleed.

I've told lovers this over the years - especially after I learned the advice from my dad initiated sympathy. Which I could then use as a tactic to get what I wanted. Which was essentially for them to tell me they loved me despite this ugly part of me. This was in some way a signal of their unfettering fixation on me - a most worthy muse.

Clearly this strategy as failed me. It's clear by my bare hand. Not only just the place where a westernized version of love is to be displayed, but by the bare hands - ten bare fingers - signalling freedom - a carefree spirit - no obligations or personal risk. No one at home. Security.

These hands are not cluttered like my house can be. They are unattached to material. They are dirty under the nails I used to bite and still do at times. These hands do not know how to be harnessed - but they know how to be held. Entangled, entwined, involved with another set of hands - who hold mine - who I can hold. That's part of my foundation.

Instead of concrete - colored or not - my hands find foundation through touch. My hands are sometimes cracked from the dry Interior winter air, the thousand times sanitized throughout the day, sometimes bloody from picking at the skin around the nails and hardly ever manicured.

Maybe my dinners don't taste as good because of this.

15 August 2017

Seasons

Changing seasons.
Changing reasons.
The life of summer
beginning to die.
The vibrant days of sun
surrender
to the thick
blanket of night.
The temperature drops
slowly at first
then beneath the frozen
ground.
Underneath the harvest
of growth
the temperature waits in a
stilted slumber
frozen
but not dead
until the sun slowly returns
burning with it any sense of
darkness and of cold.
Slowly creeping back to life
a faint heartbeat can be
heard
and eventually felt
again.
Life blossoms.
Vibrant life returned.
The sun will again render
laughter, light, and love.
   

10 August 2017

The Fair

Crocodile tears fall down my face, as I walk the mile to my house.
A man I didn't know brought them to me.
I inherited his energy - he handily passed it to me.
I still have it. It is lingering.

I cried hard and maybe it wasn't only because of the man in the essential oils booth.
Maybe it was something else I was breaking through.
That was probably it.

That man.
Kicked me out of his tent.
Before I could call him an asshole.

09 August 2017

Applesauce Text

Even though I know I shouldn't, I do.
I text.
My curiosity has gotten the better of me, and I feel just so...
Lonely.

The text is sent. Something silly with momentary meaning.
It doesn't matter what I say, just something to let him know I'm thinking of him.

Or let me feel less lonely.

Now it is just about waiting for the return text.

It comes.

The same type of empty reply we both are accustomed to expect.
But a way to communicate, nevertheless.

I miss you.

That is all we can muster.
Our hearts have been churned to an applesauce consistency.
Thick, mushy.

Our appetite is briefly satiated.





08 August 2017

I just can't

We're on an island remote from Alaska, but not too far, just in case there is danger. Like Russia. There are bluejays talking to us. More like barking at us. They seem curious of who we are, there in their territory. We are the invaders. They make sounds communicating with each other in a language I can't understand. But maybe I do.

They're trying to figure out who we are as well. And how territorial we will be. With our food. And our space.

The bugs don't care about us or those mouthy birds.

They are just flying around, buzzing past ears, landing on dewy skin. They are interested in the food, too.

But they don't eat much.

In the distance is a soft lapping sound from the salty ocean water. A sign of life that has passed us by. A sign that life continues to move, although we stay here.

Inside and all around, life is busy, although we are still. 

05 August 2017

Sour and Sweet

A flower with beautiful petals smells sweet. The collective scent of millions of them infiltrate our senses as we hike through mostly untouched land.

"If the air begins to smell bad, that is a sign of a bear," we were told once.

Back then, we were fresh-blood cheechakos. Wide-eyed Pollyannas with bright smiles and adventure paving the way where money never could.

That hike was through Southcentral Alaska. I was with Denise and two boys we befriended on the ferry. Ian and Aaron.

The hike was to last three days. We packed out our tents, sleeping bags and food. Headlamps, shoes and socks. We were barely a week old in the Last Frontier, but we had been creatures of nature for weeks traveling here.

I remember the first time I walked into a Wal-Mart again after sleeping outside and being on the road. The florescent lights jarred me - the air, stale - although cool from the summer temps.

Everything was fake. I didn't need anything here.

I just needed to be back outside where I could hide within the sour and sweet smells of plants I didn't know the name or purpose of - but welcomed all the same. 

Lost: Part III

Like a braid weaving in and out of strands of hair.
Each one a borne follicle of DNA that advises how to proceed.


Hair - blonde
brown
blue
white...silver -

The color of hair can indicate the life of the person who bears it.
And can indicate the life of friendship relative to that person.

Or it could be genes.

Like braids of hair, friendships swerve in and out.
They weave,
heave,
grow,
retract.

Dry up.

Sometimes, they are revived years later.
After the death of your mother
or your cat.

Rivers braid themselves this way.
Fostering life from the moving current.
Cultivating life underneath.
From the shore,
the stream looks calm,
or perhaps the current,
obvious.

Underneath, there is another current that could sweep you away.

Friendships
like meeting a person for the first time
and knowing somewhere,
you've met before,
although they come from Mars
and you're sure you've never met anyone from Mars.

But you know, your lives are entwined -
somehow.

And then, the friendships that go away
leaving a hole
maybe scarred,
maybe charred,
maybe void of nothing.

The friendships that remains are consistent
as consistent as the river moving,
interweaving.

04 August 2017

Lost: Part II

Lost earrings.
Lost socks.
One match for the other
one way of making a pair work.

When one sock disappears,
what does the other do?

My lonely socks
continue getting washed.
Like the washing machine is the suspect for a disappearance.
The reason which deems the other socks' sole purpose as unnecessary.
Disregarded, in a way.
Loss of meaning and purpose.

For a sock, finding a match proves a restless cause.
There's always more cushion in a younger sock.
The seam doesn't fit quite the same from the right to the left foot anymore.
The color doesn't match.
One sock survived a load of wash that died pink.

Together, it's unnoticeable.
But there will never be another sock to match the hue so discreetly.

And while there might be another sock that can fill in on unnoticeable nuances,
that will never change a sock lost. 

Lost: Part I

A part of the path of journey is getting lost.

Losing your self.
Losing your way.

Finding that once lost,
another path can be found.

Discouraged.

Afterall, why would the need to ever find a new path exist,
if it weren't for being lost?

I suppose one could come to a fork in the road.
And we all know the brilliant ones take the road less travelled.

What is it to sacrifice along the way?

I'm losing my childhood cloaked in drippy wet dreams - filled by idealism and utopia.
The idea that utopia can exist on this physical earth.

I'm losing that.

By gaining realism.

Realistic understanding of a world
lost to me.

A world I must recreate.


24 July 2017

Moving Day

Some relationships come to a close with possessions being thrown out the window or the door. Some end with simply leaving what you had and starting again, including physical possessions. The pots and pans, the beloved red spatula, the stockpot used more by the party whose possession it was not.

These things are just that. Things. Plastic, mostly. Replaceable, yet functional. Possessions worth getting used to and now gone. The house feels less compound energy. The house feels empty of others. It is now just me. With possessions infused by others, but not theirs. Mine.

It’s the last satisfaction, perhaps, of taking back a possession deemed to be yours. The final takeback of any such emotion, or personal energy that might belong to you, not them. Something that, by possession, is yours, and so you must take it back. Except for the shitty things. The things no one really wants but just hides in the back cupboard. Instead of throwing it out, it will sit there longer – years probably – before it is considered again.

That shit should go too.

11 July 2017

Chance Man

How many chances do you get? And how many chances do you give? Is one more chance a chance for one, or a chance for both? And who knows when the next chance should be given, until it’s too late.

Solomon was my never-ending chance man.

Perhaps chances are exactly what we are looking for in a mate. Perhaps we are all striving to just be the best person we can be. We set a goal a day.
Meditate.
Clean the bathroom.
Read an article.
Exercise.
Cook.

But every day we did something else that was not on the list, causing us to not do the one thing that really needed to be done. Then, that catapults into another thing. A trigger leading back to an old alley of the brain, the person you once were. There are familiar doors and laughter beyond them, but the streets are silent. No one is out to meet you because at some point, you stopped coming around.


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Then it is when you realize that something about the new life, the new alley, with a brighter sky and colors of doors and happiness has led you back to a previous chapter. Not gone and not forgotten.

10 July 2017

Flirts with Apps


 Instead of going to the movies and avoiding everyone I see, I can comfortably flirt from my couch. Without making eye contact, or risking an uncomfortable exchange, a foul smell, or just the vulnerability of showing up in person, acknowledging a sense of human emotion – loneliness. Or togetherness. I haven’t quite figured it out yet.


Instead of experiencing the scents and sounds and sights of our senses, we can experience exhilaration, a human connection, confidence and a touch of sustainability. We can reassure ourselves that someone, somewhere is interested in us. Even if we are merely sitting on the couch, smelling of irresponsibility and desire.

31 January 2017

Words on the bus

The MAC bus system is Fairbanks’s best kept secret. Why isn’t there advertising on it? Lots of people who ride the bus smoke. How do I know? Because I can smell it on them. There are surely opportunities for the American Lung Association to advertise here. Also, GCI or ACS could sponsor free wi-fi on the bus system to promote ridership.

The bus system is a way to reduce carbon emissions from cars and reduces the wear and tear of your vehicle. Not only do you get to ride to your destination in a warm bus, you save money on gas. 

This is a no-brainer, people. 

And here I sit, all by myself writing this letter. Most of you reading will probably ignore my liberal-standing plea to do better by the environment and your pocketbook in exchange for freedom. But how much freedom has driving your car in the winter really afforded you? You have to start it early to get it running. You have to run it often to keep it warm. You need to fill it with gas regularly because you’ve been running to keep it warm outside of Fred Myer. Maybe you live in Ester or on Birch Hill and the bus doesn’t go to your house. This is unfortunate. Maybe you need your car because you visit clients or deliver goods. No problem. Why not try the bus on an office day? Why not just try it for one day?