HE GOING WITH ME MUST GO WELL ARMED.

After fighting it almost all of my life, I surrender. I have walked so many different paths trying to find my way, trying to do something good, something that mattered and I always told myself that music was too trivial, that I would be wasting myself, that I wasn’t talented enough, not patient enough… everything I could tell myself to stave off the longing in my heart. I realized at some point that I can’t change what I am, that Chopin will always make me cry, that the inflection in the voices of playing children, the rhythmic whirr created by the friction of tires against the road, the snoring of my dog will always write a continuous stream of sheet music across my mind. This is my identity. I am lucky enough to hear a small piece of the symphony of the universe.

I cry when I listen to Chopin, because the beauty just rips me open, cuts through every layer of my being and I just feel free, as if I were just a note in a song, with no needs of any kind and only existing for the sake of being myself. It is the gratitude that I feel that makes me cry. The Chopins of the world live in a place where they can hear the music behind a storm, the music that clouds would sing themselves, were they not voiceless. They can see the bright hues of emotion painted across everything they encounter, the brushstrokes of passion and perception. I was asking myself one day, if these great artists live in such a magical world of brilliant sight and sound and imagination making the world around them into an infinite masterpiece, why wouldn’t they spend their entire lives basking in the radiance, live a life of pure ecstatic beauty, just wandering around the world trying to hear and see everything, saturate themselves with extraordinary experiences? How could that ever be less appealing than laboring to make their experiences into something physical and palpable,
struggling to prove themselves against the adversarial onslaught of the myopic, the ignorant, the insensitive, the empty people and making sacrifices all the
way?

After turning it over in my head for some time I realized something. We have to make our art now if it is inside of us, we must strive to capture every moment that we can, because man is a predator and destroyer of beauty and will succeed in his quest eventually. We have to make our songs now before there is nothing to make songs of, before man has dominated and destroyed the Earth, we have to leave behind hope for the hopeless, solace for the tormented, life to glow in the shadow of death. These things have been left for us and we too must leave them.

The pale light with its soft blue begins to expand in the corners of my eyes, the first prominent noises begin to grind against the recently empty streets, the creschendoing, sighing roar of tires scuttling into infinity, the birds eclipsed by their tidal of friction, the barely perceptable smell of dew and ozone, as it will rain undoubtedly today. Dawn is emotionally confusing. It feels as though you have been let in on some secret, as you watch it occur, as you know viscerally what the day is made of, where it has come from, as most people sleep and are unaware. At the same time, you are discovered in your own secret, as light begins to flood all places it can reach and the people slowly filter into the atmosphere, it is known that you are restless. What all this means, in short terms, is that I have been fucking. Although I firmly grasped the potential idiocy of such an act in my mind, one knows this idiocy with one’s mind by knowing this idiocy with one’s body. As much as I am woven with fibers of djinn, leaving a trail of broken hearts wherever I go, making people feel all the things they were too scared to feel, shaking things up, breaking plans, leaving them pining as I self-replicate all over their consciousness, making a brutal destructive fever, I am just as much on the other end, having those funny feelings that simply have no home, the long silences where I try to sort out truth from fiction, forcing myself to keep it all silent, for once you give it a name you set things into motion and what if, what if, what if. As I caught myself starting to slip, as the spectre of carnality crept over my desire for friendship, I tried to think of escape routes. I came close to going the infantile road at one point and sending my friend a text message from a bathroom, telling him to call me in a minute and make me leave, I thought of saying something repulsive that would ensure the forfeit of my seductive powers, such as "you better go on and fuck me, you sexy rebound" (which is not necessarily a true insult, but I know that this is not how I want it to go down, I know this is not normal, I know that we are settling for less than perfect conditions, I know that we are lonely), I said for sure to myself that most of the feelings I generated were things that could never be welcomed from me by my lover, and this I believe to be true and, additionally, I think that, were these feelings entirely %100 mutual and welcomed and both parties really wanted to try to make it work, well… I am not so naive that I don’t know that everything would even then go down in flames and shatter into a million pieces upon impact. Although among the two of us, I am surely the naive one. I am surely the one who has not yet found the moment of experience to successfully stamp out the burning dream of the L.

I understand confusion. I understand doing things that you’re not proud of when you are in certain places in life. I really do. I just wish when I was snuggled up so close, you could find a way to maybe tell me that you do this out of habit, or loneliness, or to feel less awkward about our time together, so I didn’t have to wonder what you were feeling but not saying. And I wish it didn’t feel so good. I wish it didn’t slice right into the deep, deep core of me and unlock me like a bursting-full treasure box and make me feel all the scary things and want to say the scary words. But that’s not your fault and I don’t want to make you feel shitty for that.

So as most of my entries this is actually a note to myself for when I sober up, for the purpose of mortification to deter further mortification. All of my nosy, non-comment posting bastard friends, feel free to throw a log on the fire.

Her lovelike cancer
destroying all in its path,
what a dirty bitch.

A good time tonight
going out to forget her
I love *the Husher.

I need to cheer up.
wiggedy wiggedy whack.
I could always fuck.

"Single" is scary.
They’re all in a line outside.
Tell them I’m not home.

*the Husher is a band I went out to see tonight and do so periodically. Check out www.thelhc.com or thehusher.com for details.

for no other reason than self flagellation I put in this poem I wrote for her but never gave her
and once again I am back to left-shoe, still waiting for suitable right shoe

sometimes it feels like we are in a pretty snow globe
we are curiosities;
points of interest for casual conversation
you and I nestled away
in a little plastic cottage
on a little plastic hill
with the gigantic lukewarm unchanging snow flakes
they shake us up, up, up, up,
we watch them fall like slow white stars
I think about the people like us that came before us,
if anyone has loved anyone like we love eachother,
and I am so sad for them
that’s why I can’t let myself be afraid
ever, if I can help it
and shame is permanently unknown to me,
I think of how hard it was to even put my arm around you
and how hard it was to be with you every day
wondering what I could do to make you mine
I shudder to think what would’ve happened
if you hadn’t drunk yourself silly that day
and asked me if I liked you as much as you liked me
when my heart was pounding so hard
that all I could say was "more"
and even now I can hardly explain
how much it is that I like you
I know
that I feel my heart expanding
like it could reach the ends of the earth
it could wrap around the planet like a big blanket
I feel like I will never die
or age
because every moment with you
is so big
I feel like I can take care of you
and you can take care of me
which makes us equals
which makes us stronger
which makes us perfect
which completes the dream
that I have carried in my left-shoe heart
looking for my right shoe, always,
dreaming, always, of the day
I would make my home with you

So to update earlier, when it didn’t hit, it is starting to hit quite hard. Last night I was snapping at all my poor friends so they took me out on the obligatory breakup bender, as really I don’t drink at all, except for those, which I do because they are the only thing that will keep me from calling up some other crazy bitch and banging her for a night and having an even bigger mess on my hands in the morning. It is really quite ugly to be in the place where you know that all you really want is a happy family and to have put basically all your muscle and wit into building one and then realize you’ve managed to find one of the very few morons who actually can and will play out your worst nightmare. What a bitch-a-rooniedoonie. I am incredibly dizzy from the extremity of this cycle. I am rifling through the exact same internal monologue I did 6 years ago when I ran away from my father: "Well, I had the courage to get the fuck out of there and that’s good. It had to be done, the promises are worth nothing, this kind of thing doesn’t ever turn around unless they go into therapy and (he/she) is too much of a fucking coward to face down the piece of shit that (he/she) is and own up to (his/her) actions. (He/She) finds it a preferable alternative to thoughtlessly continue to be a sadistic predator who destroys everything of value in (his/her) path. How could (he/she) fucking do this to me. And now I have nothing and no one. So what now? I guess I don’t really have to worry about where to stay, I can figure things out, but my home is gone… and my family. I wonder what of my stuff I ought to get. I need to figure out when (he/she) isn’t going to be there. It feels so weird to be free. Almost completely numb. I guess you get so used to oppression that it is the only thing you understand. You come to count on the stability of it. So it’s over. Finished. I’m so tired. I don’t want to build. I don’t want to try. I don’t want to fight. But I will. I just have to live in the moment and just move, don’t think about it."

So after a long day of not eating a single thing (I figured it would be fine so long as I chased everything vigorously with soda, total mistake), so many drinks later, I discover that I am capable of drinking past my clumsy honest intellectual phase, which is kind of my true self which appears when I drink past my artifice, even further into an even more clumsy and wolfish woman chaser. Who knew? And you actually can drink yourself happy, despite the rumors. Unfortunately "happiness" is about 1/16th of a drink and 20 minutes away from "dry heaving with the side of your face smashed against the toilet seat because you have much more alcohol to expel, but nothing left in your stomach to make that possible." But I swear that I was laughing all the way there including when I told Billy that Captain Morgan had to report to lieutenant bathroom, which was incredibly funny at the time, but not at all in retrospect. Yes it was definitely the captain that did me in. Thank g-d I slept like a motherfucking baby. Or did I pass out. Who knows. Well anywhoozle, I woke up at 8:22 AM and stumbled into my room (was on the floor). I remember the time because I was born at 8:22 AM so it was a bizarre coincidence to me. A "thinker", as it were. And boy does my stomach feel disgusting. What a nightmarish disaster.

Fortunately, dealing in nightmarish disasters in my strong suit. Well, here we go again.

so I had this awful scene with Kristy today that is made for tv movie caliber. It was enough to convince my teflon brain that I am long overdue on sending her on her way indefinitely. So I did. No more girlfriend. Back to sleepless nights, being James Dean, etc. We’ll see how this plays out with the pup. It still hasn’t really hit me yet.

One way that I am stupid is my obsession with mixtapes(cds). I feel the need to soundtrack myself. So I am currently concocting the break up mix, which has caused me to dump lyrics in a pile in this entry, which may or may not mean what it means… I packed my shit and left, but I told her I’d think it over a while. It’s not going too well so far. I can only sleep a little at a time, because I keep having dreams about her and waking up. One might say I’ve got it pretty bad. I’m just hoping that by the time I know she’s at home and awake I will have passed out from exhaustion and will be incapable of crawling into the warm comfort of her arms and begging for her forgiveness. I love her desperately, incoherently, truly, only, completely. I am at this point in time finally mature enough to handle what that means and what I want and am moderately capable in the execution.

I guess where I am setting my priority bar is about here: I fight to grow and learn and to have experiences worth having, if I allow something to prune my growth or to make me ignore what I’ve learned and experienced, then it is not healthy. Being a grown up is about making healthy choices. This is why I have always wanted to be a grown up.

*wordtrack* snippets of my 26 break-up-able songs
We don’t talk much, we just ball and play, but then we move like tigers on vaseline. When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window and I’ll be gone, you’re the reason I’m moving on, don’t think twice, it’s alright. If I didn’t go, I b’leive I’d blow my stack, I love you baby, but you gotta understand. I once was better, I put off all my grief… and so I go to hell, I
wait for it, when someone who’s loved me grieves, when someone like me
grieves.  Take it easy, take it easy, don’t let the sound of your own heart drive you crazy. Hold to your gun, man, and put off all the beasts. The big fish eat the little ones. Fixed up outside and broke within, she always said goodnight. You’ve got a nerve to be asking a favor, you’ve got a nerve to be calling my number, I know, we’ve been through this before. Can’t you hear me? I’m calling out your name. You can’t find the words to say, all the things that come to you, and I want to be there too. You’re on a golden sea, you don’t need no memory, just a place to call your own. You make me feel so unreal, I’m so gone. Did we toil in vain hope that wisdom came from what we’d done? And if you’re scared by what you’re left with, destroy the answer that you found. Always someone marches brave, here, beneath my skin and constant craving has always been… craving. I think it’s so real, I am beyond fate. Nervous messed up marionette floating around on a prison ship. Now my hands are bleeding and my knees are raw, now you’ve got me
crawlin, crawlin on the floor and I’ve never met a girl like you before. Cupid’s trick comes down to shake and deal the stupid kick that makes me real. With you I stand in hope that G-d will save us from ourselves, every cry a wasted moment until another day is lost. Don’t want to see the day when it’s dying. She’s shaking down an absence they’ve known from shock, reaching around for the hands of the clock.  There is an absolute zero, but you won’t find it on your own. So tired of playing with this bow and arrow, gonna give my heart away, leave it to the other girls to play. We’re going to have to move on, I feel alright and I cried so hard… the ridiculous thoughts… don’t fake it baby, lay the real thing on me, the church of man, love, is such a holy place to be, make me, baby, make me know you really care. Once you have a love and you let it go, now you know what matters. I wish I could eat the salt off your lost, faded lips. Call me on my cell phone, I’ll call you back to see what you’re gonna tell me. We can find new ways of living, make playing only logical harm and we can top the old times, clay making that nothing else will change. 

My girl went to florida last weekend, without me. I was happy for her but so jealous. It seems like forever since I’ve been home, as in my ancestral home, the place that seminoles defended for so long… there are so many anomalies inside that place and they seem to be cloaked, as if the great blanketing foliage of the everglades could encode the pages of history so that the white man would just meet it confused and leave it behind. Everything broken down into the scales of the alligator, the motion of the water mocassin, the glistening nightfall. I can’t keep the shore, the balmy heat, the fertile earth out of my dreams and daydreams. But for those few days it was just me and the dog. I took her everywhere with me.

My apartment was temporarily populated with Noah "the naked", Billy badass and Kevin (in addition to Molly Mcdog and I). Billy and Noah were drinking and the rest of us were not, but generally a good time was had by all. We were having this long precarious moment of socratic irony juggling Kevin and Noah, for Kevin is uncomfortable with nudity and Noah always starts taking off his clothes when he drinks. Billy and I were aware of this conflict and trying desperately to find ways to keep Noah’s clothes on and I was thinking up excuses to take Kevin other places. In the meantime, molly is giving everyone kisses and may have gotten a nip of something firewaterish off uncle billy’s beard. She proceeds to vomit on uncle noah’s sock. Nowhere else, just a very neat vertical pile on Noah’s sock. Friday and Saturday blur together in my head as a sea of partying at my apartment with the rotating cast of Noah, Billy, Ped, Mark and Kevin, interspersed with emotional revelations. Yes, I need you.

Confusion and contemplation. I find at every turn that the people who love me, fear me so deeply. They fear my heart and what I can do to them and what I can make of them. I have spent so long making myself docile, coming to the place where I give love slavishly and yes, I belong to you, my lover, my friends. I am yours to hold and count as one who holds no one above you. I have chosen indenture and deference to give you a safe place to love. You are my great treasures of existence that I would chase to the ends of the Earth. I have built my life on you. You are what makes me sink or float. You are what fills my mind each moment. When you withdraw from me, because you are afraid, I am less whole, less human, less alive. I will always dream, until it happens, of the day when you will love me more than you fear me.

The boomerang comes back around and my guardian must be guarded. I only hope that I can honor him the same way he has honored me and that I can make him healthy as he has made me. The world would be worse for the wear without him.

I went to Antioch and said awkward hello to my past. I saw the face and heard the voice of my former lover and part of it felt pleasant, I just thought it would be awful. Then there was Amy and I stole her away, took her from the place that she said she hated so much to my parents. I knew it would be a boring trip but I just hoped that she would see that I wanted to be with her, stand with her and made time to do so. I speak with actions and people just don’t understand.

Everyone who meets my dog loves her. I spent a lot of time just holding her and petting her and playing with her this weekend and I’ve come to see how much like me she is and how much she is like her other mom. She brings me a lot of comfort.

it is strange to me that your eyes seem endless when you are sad, when
you are being ferried away on that long ride inside your brain, I could
just jump inside and fall and fall… when you are with me and I can
capture you, delay you, splash along the cold shoals with my pale feet,
grabbing your hand and laughing, your eyes inhale so much ambient light
and suddenly you are not timeless anymore, you are not a legend, at
least not in a different way than we all are, you are like a twin to
me, two halves of the universe locked seperate inside us… when we
play and laugh it is almost like a procession through a magical forest,
beads of light soaring through the night sky, the spiraling trees
bursting with life and free of any shadow of death, their perfect
canopy woven high above, the grass soft like the fur of an old, strong
trusted beast-friend. Our undefinable bond somewhwere between the
relationship from one to one’s self, the stars and the night sky,
dreaming to waking, calm head to proud tail, helios and selene. I
claim you, brother, like all who have hearts full of magic, I claim
you. Walk with me and let them all see our secret, let them all see the
legend of us, let it be new years’ eve until the end of time wherever
we are, all of life our promenade, our lark.

Last night I was dreaming of my lover, missing her, longing for her, loving her. Lovesickness, the feeling of the thread of light that chains me to her being streached too far, being drawn, called, pining, longing. Bright afternoon and I miss her still. I will go to her now.

Her hair is short and soft like baby hair, just not so fine. I press her to my chest and run my fingers through it, sick with myself for making her sick with herself. She has been physcially sick for days. I try to care for her, guard her, nourish her, wondering how many moments we have left between us. I look to her and try to make a plan, try to brace for the storm that waits for us.

I had the perfect dream. The sky blazed a sweet cloudless noon blue, not to make you squint with brightness but still making everything so vivid. I waded through sand, passing through it effortlessly, slowly, not a speck of sand adhering to my feet. The shore greeted me and I came upon two strangers, an old man and woman, unconcerned as if they were in their beds somewhere, several steps ahead of me in their own dreams. My toes reached into the place where the sand becomes compact and firm and cool with moisture and finally I was ready to be with my beloved ocean, the wildest, most beautiful, mysterious creature that I have loved nearly my whole life. My intangible, uncontrollable companion. I call to it with my heart. It listens and moves in its most graceful, awe striking way. An imperious wave crests inches from my face, its body entirely vertical, and remains suspended there, shameless in the infinite, the flawless, like ke ter, the mythical crown where the most curious, unrelenting, devoted of the dying seek to touch the immortal, raw energy and emanation. We just faced eachother for an endless string of moments, it claimed me and I claimed it. Mermaid-soul that walks the Earth.

I love her. I am repulsed by the thought of life without her. We are both exhausted from fighting. I am considering taking more space to give us more endurance and she begs me not to, which is an easy sell, because when I hold her, I don’t want to let go. The conflict comes when I am away from her and the shadows of fear chase me into dark places inside me. I try to tell her that we must have a plan if we are going to war against the chaos of the world and of eachother that will come between us. She believes that speaking its name makes it stronger. This is very difficult to reconcile. She is volatile, angry, full of shame— things that I have mostly crushed in myself or have been crushed in me by others. I cannot always soothe her. I wonder if we have taken things too quickly, as is natural for me to do, I who am rushing through life trying to devour the experience, the knowledge, live more fiercely than those around me who have bided their time for nothing. This is one profound impact of my mother and father, who sold their lives to their employers and forgot what humans need in order to grow and feel and belong. The days that they can live out before this epiphany comes are fleeting and few. I can only grieve for them as a sympathetic stranger.

If I have one obvious oversaid thing to say to those around me it is that it is remarkably common to find onesself trapped in hoardes of caricaturishly sadistic, selfish, deceitful people. The worst thing of all is to have them make you ugly, make you lie, make you lash out and try to hurt others. Even if it feels like it gives you room, extends the radius of space like a burning torch between the crowd and you, I am convinced that this feeling is an illusion; this is the greatest possible breach in such a situation, it is the comfort of conformity, the relief of imitating the oppressor rather than resisting him. At the end of the day there is one less ally on Earth for those who are trapped in a similar place. I would ask you to love yourself enough, that it might not feel so bad to be different.