(no subject)
you could see your breath outside last week, all fuzzy earmuffs and winter woolens and dreamy grey afternoons in the upper-thirties. bits and pieces and pumpkin soup, good company at a low table, and a sleepy mi-ke calico.... finding bearings suddenly and repeatedly in a certain feather, or configuration of tall windows across the street. the threads that ride by on coattails; long lean lines of a greyhound in the park, the cover of an old art-deco textbook, and a girl sitting quietly with a paintbox in her lap sometime circa 1927. the smell of old office supplies at an estate sale. a woman's silhouette down a dark street.
it rains and rains and rains, and i sit here loving it with both hands around a mug of russian caravan tea. fell asleep next to the space heater on one of the coldest nights, curled up under several layers with a tangle of christmas lights overhead, and dreamed long and deeply about bright sun and plants the size of houses. energy is neither created or destroyed, and our whole entire world is made of swirl... things that just shift and move to become other things over and over and over. and to think i have a dinosaur spirit to thank for keeping me warm at night, some creature that lived and died millions of years ago and went on to become 750 watts of overpriced electricity and a kinetic thermal reaction on my skin. we paid one hundred and ten dollars this month in utilities for our share of (wind and water and nuclear reaction and) this. the streets are bright this time of year with them, in twinkling white and all kinds of colors. i put on the kettle to start the fire with one, and taste it in my tea when it's done. these words are written on their exhale. tires are squealing on wet pavement outside and traffic is moving down market street, propelled by an entire army of looming ghosts from the jurassic. we are drilling up miles of wilderness preserve, and we are killing men, women, and children every day in another country... for the love of dead dinosaurs. i wonder if they shouldn't be printed on our currency, and replace our bald eagle with its arrows and olive branch in the middle of the presidential seal. we're a strange place.
woke up sunday morning to the most glorious thunderstorm, the kind we never ever have here... louder and louder in dreams until it was right outside the window. hungover and still in party clothes, all brocade and fake fur, i threw on a trench coat and went out into the weather in some sort of morning-after dapper... which is perhaps the best kind. passed someone stumbling home from the same party with a wordless and bleary smile. the streets were full of christmas shoppers. up steep sidewalks in the grey, turning to cobblestone, and up even higher through all kinds of dirtbarkflowersandfenceposts... wet greenery, muddy ankles, layers blown open and the air positively alive.
time and place folding in on themselves... looping and jumping and vying for focus, blending and rolling and lining up and scattering again. the back streets of a city i'll live in at some point. the thing just out of the corner of your eye, passing by in the slightest change of temperature. numbers and names shouting over the rest, and i'm not sure if it's remembering how to listen or how best not to hear that's required. i only want to see where these things go.
up to katehill hill, one lonely monterey pine on a slope and i curled up wet in the branches... writing, plotting, planning, looking down over a windswept city and people walking their dogs in northface jackets. no one looked up. red mud and wet bark and i'm remembering the day we all went out to meet the storm front at point lobos, the first winter i was here. it's starting to rain and i'm thinking of briones and camping up the coast, of a solitary drive to jenner and a field full of slot-eyed goats. lights are coming on and the wind is picking up the drizzle. sutro tower's getting half-eaten by the fog.
i was on a plane bound for seoul, for new year's and most of january, right up until today. to teach art and english at a day camp. things keep moving...
...keeping busy around a revolving sense of disconnection still at my back here, but after voicing a few intentions i've just come to roll with it for the time being. laptop's broken, telephone keeps losing messages, and answers don't come to honest inquiries. and somehow this is all just fine, or needs to be. i don't know that there's anything more for me to do than blink once or twice, and listen and learn, and simply watch the clouds move. they'll go where they go. i can only assume i'm where i'm supposed to be. and have put myself to work hunkering down and seeing an opportunity to catch up on a good number of things otherwise.
sunrise in an hour, after the longest night of the year, and this is the first of many brighter days...
love.
it rains and rains and rains, and i sit here loving it with both hands around a mug of russian caravan tea. fell asleep next to the space heater on one of the coldest nights, curled up under several layers with a tangle of christmas lights overhead, and dreamed long and deeply about bright sun and plants the size of houses. energy is neither created or destroyed, and our whole entire world is made of swirl... things that just shift and move to become other things over and over and over. and to think i have a dinosaur spirit to thank for keeping me warm at night, some creature that lived and died millions of years ago and went on to become 750 watts of overpriced electricity and a kinetic thermal reaction on my skin. we paid one hundred and ten dollars this month in utilities for our share of (wind and water and nuclear reaction and) this. the streets are bright this time of year with them, in twinkling white and all kinds of colors. i put on the kettle to start the fire with one, and taste it in my tea when it's done. these words are written on their exhale. tires are squealing on wet pavement outside and traffic is moving down market street, propelled by an entire army of looming ghosts from the jurassic. we are drilling up miles of wilderness preserve, and we are killing men, women, and children every day in another country... for the love of dead dinosaurs. i wonder if they shouldn't be printed on our currency, and replace our bald eagle with its arrows and olive branch in the middle of the presidential seal. we're a strange place.
woke up sunday morning to the most glorious thunderstorm, the kind we never ever have here... louder and louder in dreams until it was right outside the window. hungover and still in party clothes, all brocade and fake fur, i threw on a trench coat and went out into the weather in some sort of morning-after dapper... which is perhaps the best kind. passed someone stumbling home from the same party with a wordless and bleary smile. the streets were full of christmas shoppers. up steep sidewalks in the grey, turning to cobblestone, and up even higher through all kinds of dirtbarkflowersandfenceposts... wet greenery, muddy ankles, layers blown open and the air positively alive.
time and place folding in on themselves... looping and jumping and vying for focus, blending and rolling and lining up and scattering again. the back streets of a city i'll live in at some point. the thing just out of the corner of your eye, passing by in the slightest change of temperature. numbers and names shouting over the rest, and i'm not sure if it's remembering how to listen or how best not to hear that's required. i only want to see where these things go.
up to katehill hill, one lonely monterey pine on a slope and i curled up wet in the branches... writing, plotting, planning, looking down over a windswept city and people walking their dogs in northface jackets. no one looked up. red mud and wet bark and i'm remembering the day we all went out to meet the storm front at point lobos, the first winter i was here. it's starting to rain and i'm thinking of briones and camping up the coast, of a solitary drive to jenner and a field full of slot-eyed goats. lights are coming on and the wind is picking up the drizzle. sutro tower's getting half-eaten by the fog.
i was on a plane bound for seoul, for new year's and most of january, right up until today. to teach art and english at a day camp. things keep moving...
...keeping busy around a revolving sense of disconnection still at my back here, but after voicing a few intentions i've just come to roll with it for the time being. laptop's broken, telephone keeps losing messages, and answers don't come to honest inquiries. and somehow this is all just fine, or needs to be. i don't know that there's anything more for me to do than blink once or twice, and listen and learn, and simply watch the clouds move. they'll go where they go. i can only assume i'm where i'm supposed to be. and have put myself to work hunkering down and seeing an opportunity to catch up on a good number of things otherwise.
sunrise in an hour, after the longest night of the year, and this is the first of many brighter days...
love.