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.