and galumphing and galorpfing in his tallshipwaders
he took my wordmaps to his long tweed pocket
_____
and i know those books his fingers read
and i felt the telling of his head
and i heard a little something in his voice.
_____
the thing, i felt, was distance
-not an esoteric kind,
but a long away voice of tracks once "v" now "1"
a voice with something in it that is
Gone.
_____
and i smelt of snow on mountains
and grew moss in my joined places
and earth was soft and damp to me
and warm lap whispered
"Go"
_____
stop too long the earth rejects me
home is heart and little else:
i am meant for motion
_____
i'm meant for many things
many things
far obscured
wondrous
unstill
lightninbug chances
_____
i'm meant for many things still, i suppose.

nightwriting.

In the interests of wresting my creative life back outta the hands of my beloved devil weed, I'm nightwriting again. Fumbling for flashlight and pen, scribbling just outside of vision, trying like hell not to edit not to edit not to edit.

To clarify, the devil weed doesn't kill my creativity. It actually allows me a convenient means of changing perspective, especially when I'm angry, frustrated, homicidal, and having a difficult time seeing any point of focus but my own...which is much more often than I care to admit. Unfortunately, it also changes my perspective on, say, just how much time I've spent taking in as opposed to putting out.
Creatively.

Ahem.

Keep an eye out for nightwritings.
They'll be a little closer to the nebulous bone centers.

Anniversary 2: DeathMatch

I've been lying in bed, awake awake awake, listening to the rain that's not raining, to the thunder that ain't rollin, to the stuttering scramble in the back of my head that wants to talk about stuff that I find rather trying.
Or boring.
Or...
Or, fuck, just kinda self-indulgent, these 716 days later.

Squirming under my own deadlights.

I've been assiduously avoiding all mention of memorials, of Tragedies, of Community Grieving and alternative therapies. I've glanced at and tossed every email with mention of Survival or Healing. I'm trying to stay out of the glare of notoriety that follows follows, sometimes, even down here. As occasionally desperate as I am to talk and write about the Living Room Murders (which is how my head classifies that rot)...
I'm really pretty fuckin tired of even thinking about it, much less writing or talking.
Guess even I've gotta vomit sometimes...

Thing is...

The thing is,
is that while I'm still plagued by weeks-long nightmares now and again, I'm doin pretty well for myself. The sun and sand and thousand Anole lizards have done me a world of good. I do not, as has been suggested, feel guilty for surviving. Why the hell should I? I miss Jesus/Jeremy like nobody's business; think about him often when I cook, when I taste a good Malbec; but I'm doin okay without him, y'know?
Without all my beautiful Seattle family.
I gotta.
Just, y'know...
I just gotta.
And that's just how Life's gonna rub me right here.
That's just the rub, and they ain't nothin wrong with that.
Ain't nothin but a seasonin.

I learned a long time ago that, for me, the best remedy for damned near everything is perspective. Loooots of perspective. And the best way to jumpstart that heave-ho of a gargantuan process is to physically change perspective. Go check out the view from the other side of the living room. Go from Seattle to Key West. Switch climates, countries, cultures, cant. Switch up everything so as to force the brain out of its cozy little ruts of erudition. It is high time for another jump and shimmy, if I may say so (and I do), but for now,

For now, I know I made the right move. My Seattle family seem to be leaving the city, one by one. Two of them, completely separately, have said it felt like the city just didn't want them anymore.
The city wallows in its mourning.
The city does not understand how to bring laughter out of no-laughing-matter.
The city takes itself (and us) way too muthafuckin seriously.

We die tomorrow and
and every day we wake up breathin is a beautiful day.

Lemme reiterate:

We die tomorrow
(ain't got time to waste on hurtin)
and
and
and
and every day we wake up breathin is a
Good
Goddamned
Day.
...A good goddamned day.
(oh lordy i do love drawin breath, i love it and i try to be conscious as all hell of my continued ability to swell my lungs with oxygen and nitrogen and a thousand airborne chemicalspoisonsdiseases, because i am alive alive alive. i am alive.)

I just kinda dropped off the face not too long after the Thing, so I kinda feel obligated to acknowledge it somehow, to give some sorta shoutout to my misrepresented, misunderstood, monumentally beautiful family.
To tell them that I think about them every day.
To let them know how much their lives mean to me.
To remind them...

Just to remind 'em how fuckin awesome it is to be alive, and how ridiculously fortunate we all are to know each other.

Now that the sun's up, maybe I can get some sleep

Maybe I can get some sleep

maybe sleep....