this is always. it’s been so long since i’ve had the delicacy, the indelible excruciatingly juicy licking lips-ness of a wine night on my own. of going out on my own and coming home on my own and meeting this dashboard with the appropriate mixture of precipitate. i have no idea how i’ll fare through this tonight. i’ve just been reintroduced to how it feels.

does anyone ever listen to chet baker? anyone? i drove home with one of the best things that ever happened to me, driving deeper into my being seeing as i’m appropriately primed, and then i walked in and chet-dear was already playing in my computer speakers.

so lucky.
“i only know what i know. the passing years will show; you’ve made my life so young, so new. and time after time,…”

so i added some beats…and honestly just computer-mixed 3 chet baker songs, all ending in my funny valentine, of course.

anyway, it’s been a long time.

i have a thousand delicious things to tell you, but i can’t pull them from me at present.
good night.

benumbing the impulse. living to keep it, keep it close and keep it secret. keep it out of your sight and mind.
but it’s not even what i really wanted.

living here now, in the weight of the world that i know. and built. and must therefore be an addict of because i made and maintain the structure, i wonder when i decided to do it like this. so unreactive and protected. so playing the hand right close to this chest, right under my freckled nose and in my view like a grasp at straws attempt at maintaining control.

the only time i remember feeling comfortable, i was on the downside of a roll. i wasn’t revamping and premeditating and choosing my words. i was just being and still. and my mind existed – for the last time that i can remember – at the same speed as my breath. and when i spoke it was exactly what i wanted to say. and when i breathed, there was no panic chopping off the end of that breath. remembering that, and how different that is from daily existence, i guess i’m in a constant state of inflammation. weird, psychosomatic inflammation maybe.

i’m realizing how much i really love to experience things, to feel them, physically, to their fullest. to stretch out every possible perceived or imagined experience. stealing completely totally selfish moments. I may not even answer you should you bother me. my strange private love is baths. extremely hot ones. kelly comes home and finds me upstairs, red-cheeked to hell with the wet in my hair a mixture of perspiration and filigree-scented water. i feel the burn on the thin-skin part of my ankles…and i notice the nonfeeling at the padded part of my legs. i feel the water droplets form at my hairline. honestly. i lie there and concentrate, and i feel the droplets forming and then falling from the top of my head. it’s a meditative experience, but fully conscious. This act of feeling.

so likewise it is intensity that i love the very most. intensity in all things sensual, not sexual but in regard to feeling. intensity in my aries that i could never help but fall for. intensity in your nonstopness. intensity in your vision. in your creating. in your very way. In your eye for the image. In any kind of originality. intensity in how you don’t break eye contact even when you’re just casually talking to me.
because i don’t want to be the first to do it.

so it is with this love that i fall for those expressing. i fall for your words – casual for you, but strange and consequently shocking to me. i dont know how you put them together so effortlessly. how you know how to say everything. how i hear your voice when i just read a broken sentence and I imagine it to be soft and intended only for me. and it is with this love that i fall for the artist. everytime. a little bit of me, even though i’m no longer a girl, still loves to fall in love with my amazement at what you have done, artist. how on Earth did you think of it? how did you execute it? how in god’s name did you muster the courage? the idea? the utilization of your goddamn hands? how did you do it? it is with intensity that the bold in your brush takes away my breath and leaves me dazzled. it is with bolded vision that i listen with my eyes closed at this sound you’ve made, the artist, creating human expression experienced through another of my delicious little senses. visually then physically, my breath gone. Every time. it is awe. because you are creating. expressing something. and I think I will always be a lover for that.

…by starting new ones.

if i can.

the dying-to-jump-in-the-cake little blonde is my nephew

you know what, jay? you’re probably a really great writer. you’re probably much better than me. you at least do it for work; i mean, you practice it everyday and have probably honed a style and a personal practice that i don’t even know, have never really known even though i’ve worked with you and talked to you almost daily through two jobs and as many years. you don’t worry your head off about it and you’re probably fantastic at it. i bet you just get it done.
interesting.

i’d like to know.

last year, when jay and kelly let me sign us all up for a meditation class, a handful of moments from the experience were really poignant. one- when i was finally quiet in that dark room and relaxed, with a healthy grip on quieting the voices and concentrating on the exercise, i would notice that random parts of my skin would really itch.

and maybe not always skin. sometimes some part deep inside my side, say – or some random somewhere else would PING with a poignant PING of immediate “Fulfill me now!” attention. some, i’m sure, i know i invented. some occurred regardless, separate from my ability to control them.

(or my perceived ability to control them)

all i could think of, concentrate on, was touching the tiny spot that was poignantly PINGing me with its ischy demand. sometimes i touched them, relieved them, fulfilled them. and sometimes i ignored them for the sobriety of feeling what it was for them to subside. for the elbow itch to completely dissipate. I mean clearly, i was already closing my eyes and concentrating in a dark room. A place where one can feel anything one concentrates on.

my youth, i believe now, has been characterized by the immediate gratification of so many of those immediate NOW moments. it’s been such a sloppy undisciplined existence. it’s been so much giving away. i think that aging is spending time with yourself, knowing yourself. And probably knowing at any moment what you’d rather be doing.

like next week when i have that day off, all i want to do with it is stay home and catch up on reading. read all day long. instead, i’ll let myself be swayed by whatever immediate desire appears the night before. i will. i always do. i subsequently do nothing and devote myself and all of my time to nothing.
it’s just how it is now, youth.

but i understand it. i’ve had an absolutely wonderful time with it; i’m not even clowning it. the key is to take a moment and hold off – just don’t indulge the Isch…this new word i’ve created. it has meaning to me now though. the second part of the Isch is the hardest i think: it’s giving yourself the goddamn minute to realize that the immediate NOW desire isn’t really what i’m hoping it will be like. It really isn’t. It won’t play out that good really, not as good as i’ve imagined. just get past that fantasy moment and don’t bite the apple.

close to impossible.

the thing is that i have no pictures. i just don’t have any. i go over the same the same the same images i have on this desktop and somehow they feel like no pictures. *smile* i guess i better just get around to taking some.

When I grow up and one day become a parent, I’m going to teach my child to tell the truth faster. Just get to it, regardless. I would have no real idea how, but I’m kind of thinking about it a bit. Perhaps I could figure out how to teach something like that. Being around some children in my years, I’ve noticed that in general – not in all cases but in general – children go through a thing where they’re figuring out their boundaries, the rules and what they can get away with. Some can become real sneaky sneaks. Some, I imagine, are born with a personality of ease and rightness, but others are really opportunistic. I was one of those others…and I can tell you, it’s taken DECADES to eradicate the behavior of self-first, without a care [at the time] given to the cost.

Did my parents just hope it would go away? Or did they actually believe me all those thousands of times I told them I was at a Courtney’s or Keely’s or an Allison’s…when I was actually trying to go out with the kids who had a big brother who bought them Bud Lite and wine coolers. No way they believed me the thousand times I told them that I didn’t know where we were going. No way. Were they just tired or something, or had I actually fooled them?

As hard and as difficult as it would be to break a child of the habit of lying, I think, if it is possible, that it would be worth every effort. Because this isn’t completely a sentiment stemming from regret, it’s also the knowing that life could have been just plain easier. Certainly better. Plus, I would have grown up to have been a total badass.

The complete ease by which I grew to be a liar carried me through my college years where I became glib. A real phoney, if you’ve seen Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I believed the ridiculousness I spewed and it alientated me and it really hurt others, and by result, pushed me deep into my own more than was probably healthy. Who knows – I probably had the boys confused most of the time. But the more I retreated there, the more I started to live there, and the more I did that, the less grip I had on what was true and what was my invention ["it could be plausible. it's possible it could have happenend this way!"]. You see where I’m going.

So I say, teach them to tell the truth faster. Get through the angst and the fear and go for the money. Forget pretty washing over disappointments and get to the pulp. Wish someone would have stopped me, The Steamroller, but then again…could they have? They could have shown me The Beatles at least.
“boy, You’re Gonna Carry That Weight a long time.”

Imagination and commitment. I need these things in droves. Right now, I’m sitting in a Board of Director’s meeting and I’m thinking about all the things I’m groaning after. “I’m so limited,” I’m thinking. I’m so enveloped in work and petty office frustrations. I need money for this and this and this. I’m so tied down here. Lilliputians Overtaketh.

Que?

When did it become like this? I remember having imagination to spare and tossing it about like lame little sparkles. Who listened to me then and why did they? I thought so many things were exciting. I had enthusiasm. I grew up in 2 years somehow. I have no idea how. Or why.
Y, I want to go back.

A job used to describe my physical location most times. “Whatcha up to?” “Eh, work.” “Call me when you’re out?” “Of course, Hole.” It wasn’t where I lived and what I was “doing.” It described what I was frittering away at until I could escape into the freedoms of a day that lasted for hours and hours. I feel like I leave the office and have 30 minutes of my own time before returning to the office for the next day and the next go-round. Somewhere along the line of job after job I’ve grown up. I care about being a badass at work. I mean, it’s only natural. I’m trained for reward. It’s the Pavlovian response to even a liberal arts education. It’s what you do when you’re building a career in your 20’s. But I really don’t want to build a career exactly. What I want to do is maximize my life and become a breeze. Like a physical breeze, that you feel, when you’re around me.

But it’s a hard pull, you know. I look up to my friend who has her masters and is enjoying living in Sicily, honestly, because Exxon sent her there. They made her fluent in Italian and they gave her a house in Sicily and thousands upon thousands of dollars. Where is the healthy line between the desire to increase position and the desire to free oneself from the magnetic fields? Is it honestly a tug-of-war where one side loses the ground that the other overtakes?

Yes, I know. I’m discussing a topic as trite as time, but it’s real to me -thus valid. I’m looking at my reflection in this computer monitor, in this meeting, and really wondering who the hell I’ve become and when I became it and why it’s so stiff and when I decided to sign on for this unsexy beastiness. Because you really don’t know these things. You realize one day that something is different and you think differently about things than you used to, then you judge whether you like the change or not. I’m not hating this grown-up thing I’ve become, I’m just thinking that though my actions and choices brought me to this, I’ve done nothing to guide it. To lead my change into a fresher perspective. Instead of driving the car…i think i AM the car.

Freshness and freshness and some damn imagination and LUST.
Are you reading me?

I feel played out. And warpy or something.

driving through the small stretch of Montrose from his house back to mine tonight, it struck me again how incredibly temporary Houston feels to me again. it reminded me exactly of when i moved here a handful of years ago and didn’t invest in a single thing. couldn’t afford a single thing, but didn’t spend a dime on anything other than $2 paper at Texas Art Supply that perhaps i could use to recall some form of an attempt at art. i mean, i wanted to live in a more interesting place, but i just couldn’t afford it right now.

i think it’s been 4 years since that point. and it feels temporary to me again like its really just a matter of time. not like an inevitable threat, but a huge, immense kind of wandering. everyone else wanders, mentally, for a moment. Then they actually move. i spend years at it.

and the severe work hate has enveloped me again. i catch it every 1.5 – 1.8 years and goddamit, it’s happened again. stenchy work stench like i just want to shake it from my shoulders like its an old cape with a bug in it and i’m doing the heeby jeebies to shake the bastard off.

and honestly, really, how on earth would i even begin to sell this? How could i even position the idea to appear as something good rather than something a bit leaning toward frightening. although i vehemently believe in it, it’s pret-ty scary how selfish i can be.

Or from where I let go, I guess. I think of it like water skiing: bouncing along, working out those gams, twisting and flying and showing off the sweet stuff. But when you let go of the rope tied to the engine pulling you?
It keeps going, flying off into the near-distance. And you don’t go backwards, you just stay where you are. Right where you let go of the juggernaut.

And then you start sinking.
A little wobbling while you’re doing it, but eventually downed right there where you are. Left, right where you let go.

An analogy perhaps? “Mayhaps,” she says.

But let’s not make this about that now. Naw, not this post.

Really. Can’t. Get. There…frm..hrr….sputter, sputter, put.

I get the wildest, most fantastic emails from nasa sometimes. This, literally, just landed in my inbox: Earth is orbiting through a swarm of space debris that may be producing an unusual number of nighttime fireballs. Fireballs? I want some! One at LEAST. Where can I get some fireballs? Don’t they sound like the best thing ever?

Alright no. But FUN. Fireballs sound ffing fun is what they sound like.
I win.

I know I could choose to leave over the matter of a preference. I know the option is there. I’m just not cashing it in this time.

Encantada Out-