henry miller

"Only a few days before, she had clung to me desperately and then something happened, something which is not even clear to me now, and of her own volition she boarded the train and she was looking at me again with that sad, enigmatic smile which baffles me, which is unjust, unnatural, which I distrust with all my soul. And now it is I, standing in the shadow of the viaduct, who reach out for her, who cling to her desperately and there is that same inexplicable smile on my lips, the mask that I have clamped down over my grief. I can stand here and smile vacantly, and no matter how fervid my prayers, no matter how desperate my longing, there is an ocean between us; there she will stay and starve, and here I shall walk from one street to the next, the hot tears scalding my face."

build this fire

there is an algorithm for understanding defeat. not the bottom of a bottle or another pair of legs around your waist, thrown against the wall in that movie sex act. the white cloud of surrender requires hurting first, like you wouldn't believe. thank god we forget how much it really does ravage us, or we wouldn't do it once more.

examining each threadbare circumstance until we are singular again. reclaiming a center of universe. wrangling the mind back toward, right here.

the bar in silverlake, dancing uncomfortably wrong in our booth, the two of us making seductive jokes in elmer fudd voice. a bottle of champagne on grass, sun, people, guitar, alive. this is where you stop.

"he was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice, we manage to endure the burden of the past." -marquez

i can get a little deeper now without it ruining me. it's strange how the same things that haunt us end up becoming our solace. first you have to stare at em directly, then look from every humbled angle, disentangle, unwrap and breathe. sometimes it's like those snakes in a can, popping out, scaring, alarming the lower mind, it'll be all right.

walking, running, getting sick, sweating it away, the body does most of the work if we treat it with love, creating, dash a bunch of old charcoal crisscross along a page and build something new again.

i set words to stone, a caveman on a silver lit cave wall, deep within the marrow of these collective bones and temporal flesh there exists some kind of primordial magic moving in streams, magnet with collective unconscious and ancestral sacrifice.

and one day, out of the ashes or exquisite bliss, i will create something astoundingly beautiful.

patrick's roadhouse

i wipe sugar from the table, creating is not supposed to be sweet. but when i saw my little sister communicating with the ocean, ducking waves, rising up, fixing her ponytail, i was reminded of my own ability to swim.

me gustas tu

i remember this cafe, mornings crackling with the pain of ending and beginning.

a large industrial fan shoves air back and forth, beads of sweat roll down my back most days, summer will end. human relationships bring it all out of us, holy shit.

social networks are metaphors for our egos.

i wanted to write something to protect myself, but i'm raw. i'm indefatigably vulnerable. it's an amazing freedom, knowing you're going to allow everything to hurt and restore if given time.

time is a medium, don't fuck with me. i will worship the ability to pass through, i will honor the magic. that much i will do.

the terror half-hour, remember it? i felt an earthquake at 3:32am this morning. like a waterbed rolling back and forth, the ground providing catalyst for movements of lovers. lips on lips, hearts beating perpendicular, one collection of delicate storytelling, athletic, culminating, caring. one day the earth will crack and explode uncontainable like a woman's climaxing.

stroll the streets, meet the moon, white through clouds, sky blue, life outdoes any filter and i will grasp and cling, breathe, ascend and descend imaginary stairs and some mornings bite the world and tear it apart with my teeth. i will repaint it, i promise, i will draw lovely shapes again, there's still that life-altering magic, good attitude, good attitude my friend.

i remember the adrenaline of loss and regeneration.

the days turn and somehow life brings us together grateful

a fallen buddha beneath a little tree. three million caribou cross the arctic. a young girl so careless with her time. i walk face first into spiderwebs of my own design. get all tangled up, silk thread across my mind. and you and i were you and i again, sitting across from one another at a strange memory cafe and empty indian restaurant. now in our late twenties, yes. you wore a hat, i had the same shirt on that i always did. conversation always alive, we've always been able to share the world. i walked around today, knowing you are my best friend. we've beaten each other up, made love vigorously, cried on steep hills, laughed like maniacs under full moons, moved together with bounding love, on islands and off, brought it to land, earth, water, the big blue is huge, mediterranean alive, a couple of kids grown up in different saltwater, united by warm blood, it's all the same, it's all the same my dear friend. you've made my days meaningful.

a work of fiction

the night before you left, your disease warned me. it smiled in my face like a devil. your body limp; you were submerged somewhere far down below, drowned. "i'm going to continuously disappoint you." you said. i disagreed, i fought, tried blowing it away in a hurricane of my love. i felt your racing heart on the kitchen floor, blanketed you in care, kept showing you the waves.

those were tears in your eyes when we said goodbye the next day. i got to work and cried.

that kid who follows you around, dresses you in splendor, he's not your best friend, he's a blind eye. you'll find plenty of those, swirling like helicopters around your image, willing to look away for the shine. but friend? right now, the disease is your best friend. i hope you ditch it for good. i wish you luck, i wish you love. i'd do anything if it would make a difference, but distance was the demon's best friend.

santa monica

she had this worldly accent and a voice different from any i'd ever heard and she knew how to push through a lot of the bullshit.

do you know what scares me about you?

huh?

it's that you're not afraid to be miserable.

which might've been true. it's tough to tell, because i've been feeling feeling feeling ever since.

graham greene

"he couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined--the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch."

proper bonsai care

life is what happens when we're falling in love. proper sunlight, plenty of water, never let the soil become dry. always admire once a day, a good one can last over 150 years. a good love can go forever. i believe in love, which is strange, because i'm more confused by myself and earth than i can remember. we've landed on mars, our planet is a bunch of gravity, you don't start shaping the tree for at least a few years. and when the weather dips below 40 farenheit, the organism must go outside for warmth. i get the feeling that time is still and we move across, creating the distinctions and writing stories linear, stories quantam. the thing about this tree; you can talk to it like a monk, give it all the attention in the world, kiss it goodnight, but it has to thrive on it's own, so do i, so do you. we share this time together, make it what we may, wonderful, fascinating, and as harmony accords, this tree will gift itself in agonizingly beautiful formations, provided by sunlight, care, freedom to grow.

capo 2

sometimes i feel i'm on a train
of which i have no control
holding on with everything
when i just want to let go

it's everything, it's everything.
it's everything, it's everything.

this isn't an exercise
more like the real thing
it's not some final prize
it's everything

you said move along
or you'll get run over by the wake
you still believe life is long
but we should not hesitate

sometimes i think i'm on a ship
far out to sea
it's going down real fast
and i'm letting go of everything.