when my heart had eyes only for you

Are the weeks going by faster? There is still so much to do... the ramps are up, and they will be gone before I know it. This spring is such a sweet season... I wonder what summer will bring. 

After work today I sped back to second base to give chelvin a ride to the dealership so they could pick up their car. I stole some snacks from the lobby and a couple cups of coffee for the road. But before I knew it we were all at trivia night, at least all that made it. We were a good team, but we didn't make it. Still it was a lot of fun, and I was able to see Toole for the first time since landing back in town. It was funner still driving around with him and Max, and seeing my friends get along... 

It is nice to bring people together. Maybe that is why I like food so much... for laughter and for friends, for conversation and for memories. The scents, the smells, the sounds.

We went for coffee afterwards to console our defeat but not our defeated spirits. Melissa wasn't able to make it due to a toothache, and I was disappointed that I didn't get to say goodbye to her. Thoughts of her paced through my head since last we had seen each other, and our short rendezvous only made them pace faster. 

There was a weird incident across the street from the coffee house as we were about to head out. Something about a weird drunk korean, cognitive dissonance... But whatever. Let bygones be bygones, at the end of the night I went home a winner. My friends and family make sure of that... when I'm not able to. But sometimes people really ask for it, at least in retrospect. 

the list goes on

I began my old handyman job this week. The days have been staggered with very little sleep, but it is a pleasant blur between working and talking, lots of driving and of course thinking. Deep thinking. Which responsibilities do I want? I want all of them these days, all of the time. I find such great satisfaction in fulfilling them... in exceeding them. I find myself so contented when I find ways to make someone smile... and even in the dark they all make me grin. Sometimes I even smile at myself.

Right now there is a room in the top of a barn that has a bed all made up and it is really there and it looks so cozy... I just hope I can find a way to make it cozy. The carpet is down, the hooks are hung, the nooks and the crannies are ready to be filled. I have hung my favorite notes from a tree next to the stairs to my room... I just hope that the wind will find them and carry them upon her back into sweet dreams.

There were sweet treats and just desserts for trivia night's victors. I paid my bet, and then some. It is the most fun with strangers I may have ever had. Even if they weren't all strangers, it still felt very new. But frightening. I think that's what made it so fun. Even if I am ad-libbing all the cues, it felt good and that may be all that matters to me now. It is good to be reminded of how it feels. To be noticed...

But it is difficult. Especially when you can notice pain.

Today I woke up after 3 hours of sleep. Chelsea woke me up so I could take them to the dealership to drop off their new car. I went to work, driving in loop-de-loops. I came back to the house and noticed an erie stillness to the house. They were brooding. Over the car? No. Money? No. Over each other? Maybe over themselves...

I can make them smile but I don't know what else I can do. I listen, but I don't dare assert my most private thoughts. They seem to have hardly helped me, and I cannot imagine them helping anybody else. But isn't that what best friends are for?

Top 5 Responsibilities of Best Friends:

1. If they lose a bet, you always help them pay.
2. When they need a sweet treat, you make them a baker's dozen.
3. They pull you out of ditches, when the dirt roads become ice roads.
4. In nice dreams and in nightmares, they are always near.
5. When they forget the rest of the list, you remember it for them.

wander in the honeycomb

For the last time I stood on the shore of my dream. I caught her exposed and in the dark and the salt and the rain we were able to have one last intimate moment. Her breath was cool and her eyes were dark. I stood on the side of our road performing ceremony. I in clothes to keep my blood hot and my heart skipping beats. She hummed in the chords of the wood frogs, toads, and peepers. 

The wind so wide.

The fog so fine.

A palette very simple. 

A warm grey.

A party in purgatory.

A fond farewell.

She so dark.

She so blind.

Me, my love, and I

say goodbye

Then my mom drove me almost all the way back. All I can remember is setting my alarm and then laying down on the couch. I know there was so much more, but I have not had sleep enough to recall any of it. At least not now. 

Slowly I woke up. Passover was a bright day. But cold. I made it to dinner, and it was everything so much more than I expected. Fun, funny, flirts, and food. I made some bets, and lost. Made a date for trivia night. Not with anyone in particular, though I have to admit I did hope. Had plans for drinks after dinner, but they did not go according to plan. For the weekend's final twist, a comedic tragedy. Justin really let me have it. I don't know that I deserved it, but I am grateful anyways. I really value perspective, and do not feel I have ever had enough. I would like to feel very far away. I feel I am a stranger.

quickening days

Began insulating and installing drywall in the barn with my brother today. Very tired. Max and Chelsea came out at the end of the day after going to grey rock for veggies and pork. Went for a beautiful walk down to the trout stream in another of my dreamy places. The grass was so green, right where we were standing. Nicky came on the walk too. I would like to take her for more walks.

time trials

Began the day by jumping up from a very deep sleep. The kind where you find your body very heavy. Max and I bucked up a log which had fallen from their yard into the neighbor's. The homelite chain was dull, so we drove to his cousin's work in camillus to barrow the eccho. Chelsea waited at the house for fedex to deliver the check for their new car. By the afternoon I had finally made it to the bee farm. Bickered with my mom about chicken's for a bit, then took off to my brother's place. We rototilled two long rows and planted roma tomatoes, yellow cayenne, and endive. We were feeling experimental, for sure. I saw some dead cows and calves behind the new barns. It was weird feeling numb to the scene. I felt unphased. I took a photo of a calf. It seemed disgustingly peaceful. I am left perplexed.

But then my brother took me up the hill and into a field. I felt I was walking into a dream. Perched between all the hills and holding its ground adamantly sat a stone foundation. Wedged into her own tiny hill, the old soul was slowly crumbling. But it was so beautiful. Her dimensions deep, her footprint open, I longed to pour all of myself into her. Give her three stories, a pond, and my life. I wished I could fill her with all my hopes, and that she would let me gaze down upon the valleys beyond her belly and up into her hidden hills. The fields were her finely formed patchwork skin. She has been abandoned and I long to be the one meant to find her.

However now I realize that it can never be and that I am just embarrassingly confused. I know my dreams. They know me, and I know they are me.

I do not know why I was abandoned, but I long to be found. Who else but me can love something which is so long forgotten? I shall wait patiently and always will be searching the hills for her to return. But I do not know if I hope for it.

Ten years may tell.

second winds

They always come on the cusp of our dreams, and their philosophies bring parallels to ponder. This one is about love.

It begins with a girl. But she and I are not in love. No, but I see how it could happen. It would begin with me giving up and learning to give in. I, for the first time, would have to be the one to force her move. Such a future is a world I do not dare glimpse. But I am human. I am curious. And I would be nothing if I were not willing to indulge the daring.

I see a beautiful garden. One I have been in before. She and I are still waking. The night was long. Long enough for an apocalypse and then a quick creation. The morning is still wet and shivering, but the fresh light evokes life into this new world. We find that we are friends. There is nobody else to find. And we find that very special. We know not why, and decide to know not. We choose to not touch the fruit on that forbidden tree. At least not yet. Let's enjoy the garden a little longer. Because once our bodies meet and flesh tastes flesh, that is when we will find the garden gone. A cemetery in its place.

I am afraid of looking back and seeing. Stretched until they are touching the horizon I see they are terribly transformed. They were all my gardens, my testaments to my soul, the plots for all the life I had sewn and nurtured until they were beating with a beauty which was bursting forth with fruit so ripe and ready. Now they burn. And they are all scorched cemeteries.

My mantra, at least for my dreams tonight: never again.

the list goes on

I do not have long to write tonight. I need to sleep. There is so much to do. Today after the opera, my own haunting phantoms left me exhausted. It was terrific. Cathartic. And the bright day was so intoxicating, I found a hammock and fell into a most peaceful moment. The sun shone through my weary shut eyes. Something in the pattern of light on the backs of my eyelids connected me to many moments, all bathed in the same bliss. It was love and lust and life.

Then after chores and dinner the pack went for a midnight stalk around the park. It is good but it is not easy. I have begun compiling a very complete list. I would like to put everything on it. It is already very long, and yet it just looks so fucking empty. So I will keep filling it until my life has been filled. Even if is filled with nothing...

morning on the third day

Last night you made me so crazy. I was dizzy. I was standing still but all the world was turning. It felt like death was circling.

Now the sun has come up again to save me from my most mortal sin. Her amber glow amuses me, then at last abuses me. I see her mock our love. Can I make this into my mantra? This is my life after all. A story from mythology, and it makes me feel like I could be a marbled body. Sun, she rises. Sun, she sets. And from the twilight, where my two feet are firmly planted, I can see it all. My love, she rises. My love, she sets. For God is cruel, and that makes the Devil so kind.

But enough poetics. These are all just ideals I want to believe in. But I think it really might be signs of an addiction. I need to quit believing in love. I need to accept that maybe, just maybe... love is not so perfect. I joke about my faith... I need the world to be more than the sum of its parts. I want life to be imbued with purpose... with meaning from a higher power. I do know this. I still want to find out what love is all about. Not just any kind of love. I want to believe in the love I had for you. I want to believe in the undying, in the eternal, in love which never surrenders. I know my heart never will.

And I know that I am loved by many friends and family. In my heart I love them too, but there can never be enough time or room in life to share it with everyone who deserves it. All I can do is try to show it by being me.

Tonight I must remember just to write. There is solace here. And I love its sweet relief. But it is so tiny, I feel I have not fed it in years. All that time I was feeding myself to another... and what was born of all that love? She now says she is a glutton. Maybe one day she'll be born again.

stale appetites

Ate nothing but sugar today. Whoopie pies and kid's cereal and sweet buns, stomach aches and head aches and heart aches abound. Now I am just very stoned, and my thoughts are sparse. It was a grey day, but warm. Didn't, matter. I did not go outside. I was too tired. Last night I drank whatever I could get my hands on, and will probably soon finish off whatever I missed. It is the only thing that helps me numb the total rejection that I feel when trapped with someone who acts like a total stranger. And they are. I do not know who this person I am living with is. Neither does she. I am almost sure now that she is lost to me forever as a friend, let alone as a lover. But I have always known and accepted the impermanent. Still this death seems so premature. I wish it could have felt complete. Now is not a time for wishing though.

I am ready to give up trying to stay in Cabot for one more month. It is too hard to say goodbye, and it is too hard to go out and try to enjoy myself. It is just too late to try to make any good come of any of this. I do not have the energy to deal with this house, nor with the things in it, or the people living here now. My head is just so clouded, the thoughts are thick and I cannot think through them. It is just all doubt, regret, lost hope.

I try hoping for my future, but I abhor any vision I can muster. Any positive situation I could hope to find myself in seems so fake, so forced. I feel so inadequate. I only feel comfortable with visions of a transient life. Floating free from anywhere or any situation that would dare pin me down and dissect my motive. The selfish. The egotistical. The glut. The pessimist.

The other day Martha said something funny. Said she was glad to see me, that she could not stand to see or work with anybody else. She liked how I was always so cheerful and positive. If only I could fool anybody else, mostly myself. But then I would be such a fool. I feel I could self-immolate from the shame.

Tomorrow I need to pack. I want to be ready to leave by the end of the weekend. I need to be able to leave at a moments notice. God knows I hate to see them pass me by.

I still wonder whither shall I wander?

dull stars

I tried to go to sleep early tonight, but with my eyes shut my mind's eye opens. And it flickers through thoughts and scenes from my life's future, past, and present. But it is hope that must keep me awake. Escaping from the calm in the eye of the storm my ship now sails back into an ocean who is dark and the roar is swelling. The terrible waves are growing.

I am feeling manic. I have not slept well on this trip. Time is slipping by quickly. Deadlines and dates are coming up faster and the seasons are changing swiftly. Peepers are peeping, the ramps are tufting through winter's stale cocoon, fiddleheads are on schedules, the bees will be arriving the first of May, and I have not yet even planned my date with destiny. Although I hope she is very far away. I plan on going back to Cabot for the lat time and in two weeks returning to what I hope is a very quiet welcome home. I would like to be drowned in salt and sweat and to be consumed by responsibility. To what? It does not matter as long as it is to no end.

Today I woke up early. I planned on slipping out of the house unnoticed, but was caught whilst pouring coffee by Kevin and then by Chelsea. I could not resist their company, and although I was up at 7, I did not leave for Harvey's until 1. Breakfast, brunch, a walk and then a talk. Hugs goodbye, I will see you all, all too soon. Sped to the farm and dabbled in carpentry, caulk, and foam. I think the barn is ready for the three boys; I do not know that I will be able to keep great care of them, I can only try.

I made a carrot cake for my mom's birthday, and an apple upside down cake for her fiance's. There was no powdered sugar, so the frosting was a grand experiment with creamed honey. Sometime's it doesn't matter how badly you fuck up as long as you are so sweet.

A last list of present fears:

the red devil dying
bills and debt
rent
removing all traces in cabot
moving belongings
not getting bent
mom's colon cancer
balding
hepatitis
winter is coming
careers
planting season is here
presence unwelcome
and ontop of it all, the stars are going to be so dim. So dull. The clarity of my dream is fading. I will be part of no farm on no hill east of no green mountain beneath a sky filled with such diminished beauty and surrounded by so much noise and nature so tarnished. They are selling the hemlocks off by the foot. I am going to feel so far from what was my dream. Unfortunately it was my dream alone. No goats, no close neighbors, credit in the gutter, and no dear friend who would dare be intimate with me.

I need to sleep, tomorrow's loose ends and all the driving, eating, talking, and more driving. And always in a new and unfamiliar place. I just want a home.

second to last

Wide awake past midnight. Caffeine doesn't keep Chelsea from sleeping, but I think it is keeping me. I should be so tired, and I need to be up early tomorrow. Today, I mean. But my mind is busy turning over thought after thought, churning together all my nostalgia. It's an unavoidable process. It is being reacquainted with a once familiar smell, home, or path. The faces of all I admired and the paths I once followed so faithfully. 

Right now I want a chance to know myself. Or rather, to find someone who can really get to know me. At least get to know how I have become whatever it is I am now. Which feels an awful lot like who I was a decade ago. I am afraid I have learned nothing, although I tried to learn it all. I think I would like to find a good therapist. 

I don't know what I need therapy for... just that it would be nice to have confirmation of all that I feel can never be confirmed. My first attempts at relationships, platonic and intimate. My failures in college. My inability to steadily nurture life long relationships (maybe because I never could imagine my life continuing this far). Looks like I need therapy for depression, but fuck that. Life is depressing, and should be. Life is also joyful, as well it should. We all need to take the good with the bad. It does no service to yourself or others to deny any part of this world.

But then I wonder if all I ever needed were a few close friends to confide in with all my fears and doubts and crippling anxieties. I never did have such friends, though there was so much potential. Timing really is everything. So is place. Unfortunately my poor timing seems to be turning into a clinical condition. At least it seems I may be out there in some textbook, already dissected and studied and buried in peace, or so they may think. 

But there have been moments, long ones too, where I think I was in the right place at the right time. But was I right? To have ever met my ginger english teacher, rugged art teacher, or granola eating pig. Only more time and more places will tell. 

In a few hours I will have yet another undeserved shot at righting all my wrongs. Spend some more time with Chelsea, at an ll bean sale. Drive out to the bee farm and continue trying to carve out a tiny space to call my own, no matter how temporary. Try not to give in to all the negative outcomes my eyes cannot help but see before my heart.

I am going to miss my home on our hilly ridge, between two great river valleys and the scores of mountains who made our skies so brilliant. I will miss stepping out the front door at night and feeling such pervasive peace. No hums, distant roars, or ticks. Just enough points of light on the distant hill to make you not feel painfully alone. And then looking up at her most beautiful tapestry, the stars and the clouds with theirs seas of blacks and blues, purples and reds. The moon in all her masks and all the celestial bodies dancing through the divine court. I will miss being able to feel alone, and knowing I am alone. I will miss the purity of the season's sounds. The beats of the woodcocks, the hoots of the owls, the laughs of the coyotes, the silence of winter, the rustle of fall, the solo and the duet of the rains and the winds upon what was once our home and our hill. I will miss the sound of Martha coming and going. 

It is so noisy and feels so crowded now. And I am not even in LA.

winter moon's march

I am very tired tonight. Maybe the past few months without sleep have finally added up to the perfect toll, or perhaps the impending weight of the future is finally becoming tangible. Dreams and nightmares are both illusory visions of one reality whose substance is made of their intersection.

the moon marches through february's final night
coursing through shadows of fall,
a winter who was hardly here at all,
spits us into our next season
like the dirt road spits you into the ditch

countless branches does the moon cross
as the sap begins it's flow
and the frost become dew
it's a year of fortune's tossed
through the sea and the storm

the ladybugs are wandering
the bluejays are mocking
coyotes make their den
and it is the last gibbous moon
i shall see from my dearest home yet

whose dreams i wish i had been able to see
for myself
for the terror
the tribulation
and the good times

the moon's march is on

brushing teeth before bread

It's hard to remember where I woke up today. But it was at Chelsea's. I woke up in time to get to the farm for the interview, but I woke up after Max had returned from work. He must have immediately started going to town on his new girlfriend, because I could not get his attention to tell him that he was blocking me in. Half an hour later I find his keys in a box next to the front door, and off I go. It is a good test drive before my trip back to Cabot tomorrow, and like a madman I make it to the honey farm just in time. From there my mom and Harvey pile into my car and we drive 15 minutes to the prospective employer's homestead.

It is perched on top of a hill, nestled on all sides by other hills. The day is grey and rainy; this is March weather in February. Standing next to the pond the sky seems to surround the farm. They have over 100 acres and have plans to purchase another 100. There are pastures, forests, and springs all around. It is a modest building for a bakery, like a longhouse; it has a packaging room, a kitchen, and what seems to be a temple to the oven. They say it reaches 900 degrees and can take 72 hours to cool to 350. The walls of the oven are several feet thick and it looks like some sacred beast. It has a heart chiseled from an old church above its door.

First I meet Brian. He seems firm yet thoughtful. I soon discover he is a philosopher. We exchange life synopsis'. Then I meet Amy and I can now be relieved that neither one is as pretentious as other's I have known. We talk for about an hour and then go to look at the high tunnel greenhouse's which are for sale. It is fun to dream... and more fun when you can dream with a belly full of yummy bread.

After looking at the greenhouses we looked at one of the "shacks" which hires can live in. It is a simple yet elegant one room tiny home. There is a chair, a desk, and a bed. My mom says it is just like Van Gogh's room. Except there is one extra desk and the bed is a bunkbed. This would not be hard to change. But then I glimpse another "shack", but it is across the pond and up a small hill. It sits in a field of overgrown pasture and the treeline is just behind. I wonder what it looks like inside. Hopefully I can find out tomorrow.

I was invited to a second "interview" tomorrow morning for a bake. I am nervous, but maybe that is because I do not want to invite too much excitement. I am slow when raising my hopes. My sails are heavy, but ready for any storm.

When we returned to the honey farm I cleared out a space in one of the barns for my stuff. It felt good. Restoring order to chaos is so satisfying, even if it involves sweeping rotten fiberglass and buckets of raccoon scat. But now I have one small corner in my new life to call my own, even if it is just a dark corner in some rotting barn's attic.

complete the following...

When I look at the sky at night I see through clouds thick and thin, past moons and planets and stars, at the light behind the furthest galaxy. I try to see through the light towards that first night.

When I think of my mother I can only hope to make her proud, because I cannot make her happy the way I knew her when we were still a family. But our broken family lived on and now is bigger than I ever remember; also she is very happy, even if it is different, even better than I remember.

From the time I was born I have wondered about the world and become lost in thoughts sometimes very deeply. My wonder will continue until I am dead, and then my thoughts will be lost to even me. At that point I may keep wondering why.

Sometimes I like to think about all the futures which the past has kept from us. All the turns I took which diverted me and led me to my current path. It is weird to be leaving the NEK, and even weirder to be looking forward to returning to the salt city.

In the middle of winter is when I cradle beauty all around me and try to warm my heart with thoughts and plans for the first glimpse of spring. I sew my hopes into the frozen soil.

When my father saw me trying he probably could not help but relate, because in the absence of ever really knowing my father I conceded to trying to see my father in me. I now have many more than one father.

If I were able to tell you it would be okay, it would. But I do not always know this. I have only ever been so lucky.

At times I wish I could do it all. I know I could. But there just is not time enough for all my hopes, heaped upon my heart, to be fulfilled in just one short life.

When someone who loves you realizes they are not in love with you, that is okay. Love is happy by itself, but with a friend it grows.

A person feels wonderful when they feel truth. The warm rhapsody of finally knowing brings such serenity. Like seeing every star in the night at once, a bright flash.

In the woods I found her. She is secret, but so radiant. She is mother and father, animal and plant, sun and stone. She pulls at the compass needle and turns her tides with no regard to man's carnal endeavor. She is everywhere, and always will be.

At night when the fire is lit I sit and I guard its warmth, feed and nurture its tender flame. I am a firekeeper.

I could be happy if only I could accept the suffering I glimpse all around me. Many times happiness ripens into guilt, like entering a secret garden and tasting forbidden fruit. Such fruit is unbridled joy.

Standing on the beach feels like standing on the edge of all eternity, the infinite on either side is vast and formless; only where they meet does life take shape, a spiral of exquisite detail down to the quantum level.

People are lucky when the times are kind, but the luck is sweeter still when fortunes forebode. Luck hides around every corner in life's labyrinth.

a tiny end, another beginning

After our conversation that one night last week I found a peace seldom felt these days. Before the lullaby of our breaths and heartbeats had carried us to sleep, it came. I had you so perfectly cradled in my arms you could not wiggle. And you did, but my embrace is steady from patient years spent practicing for these moments. Your desires had you uninhibited. When your body wants something you do things you do not understand, it is just a feeling which must be indulged. But the moment revealed to me a great vision when you finally let yourself go. You brought it to me when you returned from a leisurely splash in a green sea. Your salty waves carried lost lust ashore.

This vision had you laying upturned upon my chest, and I was the foundation for the comfort you were furiously nurturing. Since we were already pushing such fresh boundaries I felt to free to talk, and the truth in the words I found were of our great peace which had risen and fallen. I had never known peace until I had met you. I talked to you about the moments we had shared which were most dear to me. From the chaise lounge to the nest, in war and in peace, through travels, chairs and tables, our tiny moments of purity had really followed us everywhere, I had thought. But now I must wonder where it was lost.

In your peaceful afterglow, we froze and I was finally able to remember amidst the calm after all our recent battles. One story I had forgot, a tale from our antiquity. Genesis. It begins like waking from a dream. Remembering a wet summer night who lingers in the morning's feverish fog. It happens swiftly. We sit in limestone pools and feel the cold stream's current rush through us. We are not alone, but what we shared was only ours no matter who was there and what was told. You are virgin soil, beauty so natural that it inspires imagination. Yet seeing you left nothing to imagine; the glimpse gave only longing.

Water is draped around us, quickly trying to cool us. Our bodies flirt with the cool cascades. We are so cool. We enter the wet prism of Buttermilk's forbidden stream, and the black striped lines of Ithaca's curved geology frame us for our shot at love. The water falls around your neck and shoulders like a dress, with showers of pearly beads sprinkled upon your chest. But your eyes are open bright and as the scene all around us fades we join together in a spotlight. There are looks. There is touch. Below the shadows of the water's dark mirrors there are two creatures who desire. We give in and slide down into the next pool, together. This is how desire moved us. This is how time changed us.

Our story ends and the scene is about to change. May this young heart's folly never rest.