on tuesday, in the span of 3 hours, i managed to spill a bottle of sparkling water in my bed, step squarely into my tv dinner, and lock myself out of my room in my towel. also, when i tried to pick up a prescription, the pharmacy told me i was no longer covered under my health insurance. yes, when i let my thoughts paddle furiously upstream, my ( Read more... )

"busy-ness is poison to creativity, and poison to spirituality, and poison to living a full life. i am one of the most prolific serious writers alive today, and part of the reason is that i spent so much of my twenties doing not much of anything, if you look at it from a production standpoint, but doing a lot, if you look at it from the perspective ( Read more... )

you made a metaphor about your own hands and calluses and i was proud like a mother watching her son hit a homerun in little league. but now i'm thinking what happened was the phenomenon of shakespeare and monkeys. you talk a lot and once in a while your lexicon is bound to catch up with poetry. you told me you were disinterested. dis.interested. ( Read more... )

at midnight, the tang of broken berries, stirred-up gravel, and even a bit of baby shampoo hangs in the air on state street. it smelled like camping, like god behind the ears, like the sweet release of the city. it was quiet. i counted six cars (and one train) that passed during my half-hour shuffle home. and i couldn't help but do a little dance ( Read more... )

if melancholy were a song, it would be iron and wine's passing afternoon.


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you're the type of people who can sit on benches with beat-up suitcases, wear grandfatherly shoes, and have it be dapper. but i picture myself doing and wearing such dandy things, and it feels too carefully considered. and what does it mean if i like the decemberists? that my toes are curled around the edge of the first day day of my life. the ( Read more... )

i suppose i should play this like a chess piece, be happy it makes it easier to leave, but it still stings that to you, i’ve been demoted to a two-day piece of fish on the first day. or whatever that saying is. i didn’t mean to invade, perhaps i’ve made myself too at home in you. by anne lamott’s definition of home (where when you show up, they ( Read more... )

i bought a harmonica at the skagit valley co-op. because it felt right and because baby, the times they are a-changin'. i like the feeling of holding cold metal between my lips. and it's instant gratification at its best. now i just need to remember to move the harmonica and not my mouth. and the farmer's market was a big patchwork within itself, ( Read more... )

if god offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose, the colors of your soul are eggshell, slate, and calamine. what i remember about that night, is that magic is not only possible, but probable. and that you will have intimacies that i can only observe from the roadside. like a lonely nebraskan selling pies on the interstate watching ( Read more... )

i'm starting to think those ecstatic persian poets were not faking their glitter-dipped declarations. i've been feeling an energizing cool, and what's more: it's been semi-consistent! i've made peace with leaving. now i know for sure that that different expressions can come from the same core (like pink ladies and red delicious. you can be pink ( Read more... )