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.