Again I write from many years in the future to tell myself the exact same things I was telling myself in the past. I say to write more, to feel more, to express more and yet the frequency with which I find myself actually doing these things is rather minuscule. I live now with two writers who write things I do not really read and I remember my life's goal of writing and caring only about the written word and one's ability to capture difficult and complex things with a subtlety of language and I balk at how blatantly I have disregarded all the things I used to bet my life on. The memories of how beautiful it was to express things, to create people who I loved and who I could count on to be exactly who I expected them to be, were still so fresh in my mind despite so many years of disregard and disenchantment.

I live the life I always used to be so afraid of- a life lived running from writing, running from the knowledge of what writing brings. I've inspired those around me to write, to think, to be more and yet I continue to be less and less. There was once a time when I lived and breathed to write. I woke to words and they spilled forth from my fingers in hurried lines- the pen scraping and scratching for hours. There was once a time when I thought in words, when I walked up and down the street mumbling character traits and perfectly alliterative sentences. Now I fill my head with the words of others to drown out the deep silence that has overtaken me somehow.

Age builds up and I continue to rely on others to give myself worth and meaning. I offer myself up to far too many and find myself alone in my small house with one other who fights himself to tolerate me. I find myself alone in my small room listening to the same things I was listening to ten years ago and being similarly if not more so moved by the brilliance of Bob. I've been reading old blogs- nearly 10 years old- and I balk at the brilliance, at how much I love the girl that I was and how smart and lovely and caring and deep she once was and I see, now, brighter than I've seen before, how I need to become her again, how I need to need to write, how I need to love to write and how I need to try to write and write no matter how much I think I've failed. I see all these things I wrote before and at the time I found them absurdly trivial and shallow and as though I was writing just to write but looking back after so many years, I am so glad that I wrote all that and so glad that it still exists despite my completely ignoring it for ten years. All hail the interwebs.

And I listen to music that I heard first from Walker thirteen years ago now and it sounds equally as important as it did the first time I heard it. I knew then that all this music would change my life because it was changing my life as I heard it and I knew that I had this extremely emotional, visceral connection to what I was listening to.

The Interpreter.

In the unfathomable epicenter of some giant structure, I lay in wait, in wonder. I watch from out of new eyes at the world building up around me; it's ancient motivations still making their way out from the depths, from the heights. My thirst is for many things which I cannot explain, which start at my foundations and work their way up. There is a light, a light from so long ago, and it burns within me- wishing me alive, wishing me awake. Some of those who pass stop and stare; they absorb my aspirations, my meanings and then they continue on their way, a glance back every once in a while.

In the sunken ships at the bottom of the ocean, I swim through coral built up after years and years of abandonment. My eyes are accustomed to the lack of light, to the things that usually go unseen. There is a whole world beneath me still, and a whole world above me. I am pushing through this life, an interpreter of all the world's woes, of all the world's wonders.

And yet, no one sees me but those who set out searching; no one finds me but those who dedicate their lives to what I am, to the energy which flows out from all things. I can feel my importance in the world of humanity, in the world of animals, bacteria, in the way the ocean's waves slap against the shore, in the patterns that birds make as they fly the skies in flocks. But, sometimes, in the rushing hush of people shuffling through each other, past each other, I wonder what I'm doing here in this life. What role do I have? What am I but some long lost idea, some antiquated notion that all things have a center- all things reach their goals?

I suppose, I am everything. I am the blood that drips from the teeth of the alligator; I am the lion that lies down with the lambs. I am the etches on the walls of caves and the paint that forms the picture of what it means to make. Consumption and disillusion, excitement and desire; I am all of these things and more. I am only sitting and waiting in the wings; I am everywhere- wishing to be used up- to be made into something more.

Going Into Gehinnom. (Some Days it Shines Just Like A Diamond; Other Days It's Black as Coal.)

"Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the fastest who travels alone." - Rudyard Kipling

I raced to the edge of oblivion, looked down into it and saw that it was nothing. I pace along the edges, glancing every few moments into the blackness, somehow expecting something to rise up from the nothingness. Perhaps it is a memory I wish to see floating up from those dense depths- an old love, a new one, a realization, an epiphany. But, no matter how often I peer into that inconsolable hollow, I cannot help but see the reflection of my own lack staring back at me with a silence I cannot quell.

I push my glasses up my nose; I squint my eyes, open and close them again and again. I brush the hair from my face, wipe the sweat from my brow. Patrolling the perimeter of the pit, I wait for something which I know will not emerge from the emptiness. There is a vague memory of how I arrived here, of walking up cobblestone steps which shattered into shards beneath my shuffling feet. There used to be something which surrounded me but, just now, I cannot remember what it is. Everything grows dimmer, fading into the corners, taking backward steps away from the quaking cliff. I can no longer hear the birds caw but I remember I once could; that memory, at least, stays with me- those yellow-hooded blackbirds bending their eager necks and craning them up toward the sky.

The edges where I am standing crumble a bit and pieces of mud and sand slip and slide into the darkness but I do not hear anything but the echo of a song I once knew; it feels like forever ago. I'm sure that it is just some kind of delirium, but I could swear it was rising up- climbing slowly over the crag, dusty fingers clutching the edge- calling me, beckoning me back with it. It whispers, "You are weary, weary from travel. We will scale all the way to the top of the tower of Babel."

The song's singer, its writer, calls to me from somewhere out of reach and I push my face further and further into the nothingness, trying to make out the next verse, which I've forgotten. The ground crumbles beneath my palms but I am only focused on the soft, rustling sough which sings quietly- murmuring almost, "We are weary, clearly we are." My knees shake on the loose soil; I can feel my body propelling itself forward but all I hear are the sheltering words sounding out from the depths of the dusky drop.

I am falling into the fissure and all around me is silence. I can feel the shaking, the howls of his lost tribe's lament, which rings in my ears and turns the darkness into day, even as I weightlessly plummet forward, patiently awaiting a landing that never arrives. I hear the singer, "All the rails have unraveled. Babel is gone. To dust and to gravel. And the saddest of songs."

I Used To Be Such A Good Swimmer.

I am floundering on the shores of my own bad decicions, stranded on this island alone and forsaken (by fate and by man). Regret and loss swim in the shallows waiting for me to wade in so that they may wallop me with their great mass. There is an undercurrent of blistering cold watching for the tops of my two knobby knees to appear before pulling me beneath the surface. Just now, I can see all these things and I watch them from the shore; the waves break mistily against the sand and in their foamy beauty I see an echo of who I once was, of the giddy, love-struck girl who swallowed your music in gulping mouthfuls and sprayed it back out at everyone she could. The strange thing is I set off for these shores of my own volition. I hoisted my sails and raised my flag and departed for this far off land full of strangers and sunshine. And I left you- to live as a ghost in my heart- naively expecting that you would be my Penelope and fend off all potential suitors until my dramatic return. But, I cannot provide a dramatic return, as much as my heart pulls me to you- I know that you have found another to lose yourself in-to find yourself in.

Fueled by some ancient manifest destiny, I took off across the country, guileless in my expectations, that everything would come together where it needed and we would spend our hours productive and resourceful. But, no matter how productive anyone is- he will never live up, in my eyes, to the promise that you have, to the deep and intense beauty of your songs that strikes me deeper and harder than anything I've heard or seen before. I hid from myself those last days before leaving, I cowered in the darkness of corners, pretending that all would be well and that there would not be the great unraveling that my mind kept whispering to me about. And now I am here, still unsettled still staring longingly at the past and wishing things were done differently on both sides. Pangs of jealousy seize me and the tears come crashing down. It is funny that I am now suffering at the mistake of my own hands, my own heart. I live out my life here in this sunny state living side by side with a sadness so great it spills out over everything. Sometimes I wonder if anger is no better than complacency but they both weave a wicked path which leads to nothing but despair.

I am drowning in wild, emotional abandon, heaving heavy breaths that choke out at their ends. There is an emptiness which lingers, longing, and it feels like the pit of my stomach hollowed out. It has been years since I have cried so much, since I have choked on the sobs that spilled from my lips and ignored the snot that dripped from my nose in a steady, sticky, stream. It has been years since I have felt an emotional release so strongly, so steadily and for so long. Yesterday was the 6th day in a row and today marks the first day without crying. I need to get a hold of myself. I need to figure out what I want in the world.

Regret and fears chase each other around my swollen and tear-addled brain. I have done the wrong thing. I have hurt someone who may be the only person who can give me the things I need, who I can give the things he needs. I made a choice fueled by alcohol and fear; I chose the one who hurt me because he was willing to leave. I knew he was like this- the Jekyll and Hyde- the drinking, and I thought, for some reason, that it was okay. I hid myself behind the delicate clanking of a drink and told myself there was nothing left for me in Baltimore. And, it's true- for the most part. I needed to leave, to find myself somewhere else- but I also needed to get myself there on my own and not rely on someone else to do all the legwork.

And in my haste to leave the barren city that held little for me but memories of the past, I made the most important person in my life a memory. I abandoned everything I had worked to build for so many years and no one, not even him, asked twice. I wonder now, surrounded by the marks I have made, facing the mess I have made of the most honest and productive relationship I have ever had, if things really were as bad as I thought. I had backed myself into a corner, screaming to be heard and he sat there stone-faced, trying to understand but failing. And I flailed my arms and jumped up and down and he said, "Stop jumping. It's noisy." He fell into a darkness that I could not contain, that I could not alight. And I stayed there with him, trying, but often failing, to be a support system.

I, repeatedly, ran to others to satisfy my need for emotion, for words, for fiction. And I was wrong on so many counts that I have failed to realize until now. I want to shout apologies across the barren mid-land plains. I want to say, "Don't forget me. Please don't forget me. Make it easy on me just for a little while. I know you think about me. Let me know you think about me too." I want to say, "I'm sorry, so sorry, that I was such a fool. I didn't know love could be so cruel. You tell me mistakes are part of being young. But, that don't right the wrong that's been done. Love is blind and I was too blind to see. "

There is an all consuming sadness and it grips me often, more so now than ever before. And now I am fading into fog, mired in the muck, fighting to breath beneath regret and fear and sadness. I miss having your hand to hold. I want to light the path, yours and my own- to be what we once were, to work toward the dreams of our youths and the dreams of now. I want to not be afraid anymore. I want to fill the hole inside me that was torn so long ago when I was such a small, fragile thing. It's been a long life of denial that I have lived beneath the lie that I am not affected by the large number of family members that disregarded me as a babe but I am finally forced to come to terms with it and I can only hope that I can find some way to plug this constant outpouring of emotion, to stop from becoming a walking embodiment of my own fears. I can only hope that when I have figured out how to be someone by myself that I can figure out how to be someone by your side.

I am drowning in my own lack. I am reaching up for someone who isn't there. I am slowly sinking but struggling. I always used to be such a good swimmer.

Rediscovering the Deluge

I have been lost beneath a cloud of expectations. I have dwindled away days and days hiding in dreams and waiting for something to shake me from my slumber, to make me make something of the days. I have wandered through an unknown city, searching for something I didn’t understand. It is only just now that I have understood (again) that it is not in another that I will find any sort of salvation but it is in my own ability to make something of myself. The dreams I have trapped myself in are loose fitting and ill conceived. They are vague and silly dreams and yet I always struggle to return to them- a sanctuary from the constant calling to create. But, why should I dismiss the need to make things into words? Is it because I have made so much and seen so little come from it? I ask too much, perhaps? For someone to feel the way I do about words. I have known people who embrace words, who keep them close in form and function, who delve deeply into all ways of expressing. I have let myself go; I have lost- if momentarily- the passion for creating. I have let it lay dormant while I ache for what once was. And it is only now that I am finally finding myself again amidst this unknown land, beneath the weight of everyone else’s successes and failures.

I spent the day on a snowy mountaintop, remembering how the words used to flow through me, enrapturing and encapsulating everything in the world that I wanted, that I imagined I could keep in the palm of my hand. And I stood there with the wet, stinging wind smacking my face, careening down the mountain on a wooden board, feeling the tug of muscles I had never used in such a way. And I found myself tired but fulfilled, for the first time in ages. I recalled the memories of snowy days of my past and the envy that I left my home town right before the deluge. I would have loved to have watched the snow build, layer after layer, and then melt slowly. I would have loved to have fallen backwards into the fluffy white depths. I did just that on the mountain. I stood elevated thousands of feet and felt the mountain beneath me, traversed it’s hills as an amateur snowboarder- scared to go careening off the edge and down hundreds and hundreds of feet into the trees. It was that fear that finally pushed me to begin again the daunting task of attempting to always make something, to try to make every day into words, into palpable memories even if it seems that nothing terribly of interest occurred.

There is a sudden resurgence of desire, of passion, of need. At another time I might have attributed it to the weather but hardly changes around here so it must be me who has changed. Perhaps it is I who have picked myself up by my bootstraps and demanded that something be done, that writing be made, that things be created and recreated. I have let down my writing friends for too long- left them lingering without a real beautiful word from me. It has been such a while and I have been so behind, suffocating in a world of nothingness, of neediness. It is time to shrug off the shroud of who I once was, who I was last week, yesterday, and today and make tomorrow into something worthy, make myself into something worthy.

More RAM.

I walked through this day filled with the rhythms of James Joyce's words. I sat in a pub with a slightly chilly Spring breeze at my back. Everything was slightly surreal and it all glowed a golden hue beneath the slowly setting sun. It's hard to focus on putting inner thoughts into writing when everything around you is in the midst of a shift. The ground beneath your feet is not solid and the words come shakily as well. 

The future is unknown but I suppose no more than normal. There is always the unknown, the unknown is just getting a little bit bigger. And we are traveling across a great expanse of it. I always think about what stories you will tell when the thing you are looking forward to actually happens. What will happen and how it will be articulated. 

I think that once I feel slightly more settled there will be a torrent of words which will pour from my lips and fingers and bleed on pages and pages of paper and take up bytes and bytes of space on computers. I might need to get more ram.