I wrote out a man's name in letters bold and free on the horizon, on some seaside beach in a nowhere town under three duvets and a pacifier, but the sea came and washed it all away, and reminded me that just because things rhyme, i've got more worthy things to say than the names of men.
the book i'm writing is a daily confrontation with somebody i used to be, and i find it very painful and alien at the same time. all the ways in which i still misunderstand and underestimate myself. and worse, this little voice at the back of my head that just doesn't care, and says sorry, i'm just not there anymore. i want to read something else, about somebody new, not necessarily something tame.
it says change it, make it a new story, this, whatever it was, is a eulogy that in context, makes little sense.
and i get this feeling like a rush and a fever inside my head, this sense of we've wasted all this time already, i don't want to waste one again. a minute or a year. some lessons were painfully slow in coming. some were just me bashing my own head to test the gravity of walls. it worked well for a time. i've learned tremendously much about walls, and this desire to move, to be, to experience is nothing new, but each year, it comes more impatient than the last time.
it's tapping its foot in the door, yelling "got everything?". it's shoving me out the door. it's rushing down my bloodline, and seizing itself by the hooktails inside my throat. i call, it answers, we start the dance again.
we should totally go here.
and jump out a plane.
and go across this big, suspended bridge and try not to let the wind push us. no, i'm not accusing the wind of murderous intentions. are you?
i'm finding it easy lately - and by lately i mean months, the way old people do - to burn bridges and cut ties. which is nuts to someone who spent years obssessing, pouring over details, mythologizing unremarkable men and exploits.
how. why.
now, hardly even turn my head. didn't work? oh well. how much water should i waste on dead plants.
i look at old things that made up my skin in the way you do a stranger's tribulations. i can't help feeling a bit bad about that, actually. but i've grown up enough to pick apart the traces of my own disappointments and traumas in the things i write, and find i've gone beyond grief and irritation alike. now, i just sort of look at it and nod politely. offer up some lukewarm platitude like, that must've been just awful. yes. how terrible for you.
but i don't really care. i wish this was rage, except i don't really. i'm so tired of rage, of blame. it's like someone packed it all up one night, while i was asleep, and took it far from my life.
how interesting to have arrived here. i want to hail all this adventure in my life. i want to go. but i don't want to leave my feet behind. i want to swim in the sea at sunset. this summer, want to cook outside, and drink cheap beers from the store and kick up my bare feet on the chair next to you. i want to feel like i ain't got enough time, because the trtuh is we don't, none of us.
i wanna restructure this stupid book that i don't think is stupid at all really so that it matches who i am now and feels like a beginning, not like an ending, long drawn-out.
i want so much. different than i've wanted it until now, and i'm not entirely sure what to do with that. wanna try? hold up my hair, pinch my hand, check if it's really us.
it's terrifying and exciting being alive right now. not as in 'where we are as a species', thought that too, but i'm selfish and i'm young and think of myself perhaps too much.
i think whoever i was before has paddled out to sea and isn't available anymore. i get that, and wonder how long before this version paddles, again. except now's not the time to be thinking about that.
oh, and i love the way i feel my shoulder blades after a workout, after two weeks not moving much. who woulda thought, for someone who never liked working out. guess that's one more thing that's different now.