Wednesday, January 9, 2013

santa rosa plums

lucien painted naked pictures of his daughter, rose. she posed for him on his couch, strong muscles, wide-open legs, hair in all the places a woman has hair, self-involved.

the line i punched into my cell phone last night: i was retrieving my tool kit, when she drove away on three wheels.

my words, written for me, dropped, message in a bottle for the sea and foreign eyes, are not for anyone to own. whether arranged in mocking betrayal or overflowing heart, i'm emblazoned by the imperfections of dancing. do not read this as an excuse, read it as a conversation with probabilities both imagined and real, filtered through conditioning, perception, but with angst to occur.

i've encountered things and people who defy sense and logic and this uncertainty has it's inspiration, proof, of a mysteriously unknowing sliver of universe.

unpredictability is what she taught me, through months of invisibility, ringing taunts, the arrogance she met her body with, time.

i let it sit. i think i was waiting. we happened, existed in something magic for a moment, spent all this time planning our escape, then i became flustered, she ran away, never together realizing. the pain isn't even a faint echo no more.

as for you, i know you, in between the moon and you, i hope you are living, breathing, feeling, trusting your gorgeous intuition. i was driving somewhere, i can't remember the street, when the impulse of love returned--not the sadness, egoic futility, taunting glimpses of what was and could have been, but-- right-there-i-can-feel-it-for-the-people-in-my-life-again, love. nostalgia dims love, it wears the mask of love but it's grief, regret. love is only momentous and accessible in acceptance for what is, what is, no matter how alone or together we are, love wakes us up to ourselves, here.

i'm not enlightened by what i know, feel, i'm strange. i'm not centered because i'm a mess, only, somewhere in this scattered crazy moving internal/external reconciliation are pieces of warm life evidence and ability. i do know, that in this town the best truths are improvised moments between characters stripped of their costumes and dreams, naked with each other in a thai food restaurant, standing face to face at a venice handball court counting numbers with a dreadlocked guru, finding evidence that someone's been with us the entire time, teaching girls to skateboard, climbing sandstone peak for a new year with that sunset, huge moon, yelling at strangers, drinking wine, an owl, drive home in peace, lovemaking, a cafe here, a cafe there, my independence zigzagging a flowing trail through paths both paved and wild, in this grid and chaos, flashes of brilliance woven into the fabric of a city founded for it's light, climate, proximity to the edge of the world.

i was born in van nuys hospital, i picked my brother up somewhere nearby twenty-something years later, all my siblings keep picking each other up all over the place. my mother's childhood lives in that valley, says she feels most like herself gathering stones at the beach and swimming in the ocean. my father's los angeles begins working at a prison hospital east of downtown, living above dodger stadium. i'm shading in all the space between, then coloring beyond their lines. i grew up eating blood red plums, summer juices dripping down my chin, warm on the outside, dripping with refreshing pulse within, minerals coursing through earth, tree, body.

i'm continuing with change, unfolding in glaring inevitability and stark reminder, contrast, opportunity for growth, recognition, spirit. and now, awakening to the next impossibility, another skin of life, new.

sitting in this achingly beautiful room, on a somehow forgotten block of bohemia, i am grateful again.