scrap thoughts:

I lift my head up for a breathing look, here, above the ocean of my living:

how strange, how lonely and afraid I feel, when so much of my days are filled with the pressing hopes and loves of others.

how constantly ravenous for love (the distant flutter of wings, suddenly up close), despite just how much of it I have somehow stumbled into receiving.

I remember that it is human to be afraid. I look at the snow. 

I remember that it is human to long for that which you already have. 

I am, as we all are, a creature of longing. I am snapping with the jaws of time. 

I sit at my kitchen table and I imagine, briefly, a row of plants on a sunlit porch and the sight stabs me in the chest.

I think: I just want to be the kind of slut I want to be forever, and I want that to be yours and yours and yours, to hitch our circus wagons up and take in tightrope walkers as they come. 

I think: these boys all mean a lot to me, and I need to find someone I could ever trust to read this compare and contrast essay I’ve been writing in my head, this painting of the different locks they pick in me. 

I think: I’ve gotten in over my head and I probably like it. 

My skin breaks out in red because I like sleeping in your cum.

I tattoo your name on the inside of my mouth while I’m dreaming. 

I’m in love all the time, I’m in love all the time, but time is always running out on me, collapsing in on itself. 

I am lulled by a chorus of voices, but yours is the one that speaks my name the most. 

I want all my one night stands to know how fucking cute you are. 

and in the early morning of Valentine’s Day, asleep in my childhood bedroom, I dreamt of kissing a man that I, by contract and construct, love at a distance, sitting across tables in silence. Wrestling each other to the ground off some old scenic couch, strangers and friends buzzing through the warehouse around us, and you told me how much you were trying. You told me that you are weird, and that loving you is hard, and you stuck your fingers in your blond hair that way that you do, and you told me that you’d been trying so hard, learning to let people close to you despite the labyrinth in your heart, despite the spidersilk and bulletproof and kiss-and-go. I kissed you on the floor in a leg lock, and your complete lack of reticence hit me like a truck in a sexy way. You told me you were still learning, but that you were making progress, and you got up to take a piss. I sat on the couch again, and someone I did not recognize came up and sat near me, and I had no words to explain how I felt, except the mild desire to punch something, but in a good, cute way. 

[maybe abandonment issues are good for the skin]

I’m explaining it to my best friend and as I say it I realize it’s true– for so long now my love and my plans have been all or nothing, the affections I receive have been all or nothing

either you’re obsessed with me or you’re goddamn ghosting

(I mean you in the general sense)

(I realize this is, in addition to being true, not actually true)

either you’re speaking your love for me in a lust-filled recitativo, a repeat until end of drive space, a gleaning out of marriage leanings, a complete devotion in all unwaking hours, the twining through of all my days,

or you’re threatening to leave me on a midnight sidewalk in the San Fernando Valley, asking me how much money is in my bank account, asking me nothing and answering me nothing, sliding your hands in to other hands while I think about sleeping in a park, while I think about sleeping in a snow bank

and so many people have disappeared on me that I assume that it must be my fault

and I’ve still never seen Gaslight and I’m afraid to

and I never got a letter back from that wife in California

and I don’t know man it’s hard for me I guess to know how to be exactly the right level of casual in literally everything

so mostly I keep to myself in a life full of crowds and ex-lovers

I’m gonna figure it out I’m gonna figure it out I’m gonna figure it out

how not to be so afraid that everyone will leave me

because everybody knows that everybody will. 

In an effort to clear my head before sleep, an uncharacteristically uncryptic set of words. 

Today was difficult. Most of the last few days, difficult. 

Ridiculous, really. Here, these tasks, not back-breaking. Illness that could be so much worse. The sense of shame I feel in response to my own weakness is, perhaps, my most debilitating weakness. 

I realize you have a cold, but you can write a fucking email without letting panic crawl up all your limbs.

I realize you have a difficult combination of ambition and sloth, but you can live your life without spending quite so much of it berating yourself for not doing more. 

A migraine lay me low in the bed of a man I adore, and I felt briefly the sickly sweet temptation of the give-up girl I have at moments been. Let me just lie here for days, set down all the things that keep me running so frantically from place to place. But no. That is not my style, not for years. And while beds are more appealing with men in them, a great deal of the allure is in those who will eventually have places to be, who expect the same of me, because the world is full of things to throw yourself into.

I am in such a better place generally, the last month or so, than I have been in ages. I have mostly disentangled myself from the thick pitch of one of the worst depressive episodes I’d had in years. But my anxiety this week has been at points almost intolerable. 

It is perhaps the various minor stresses of graduate school, when I’m itching to only focus on my project–when that doesn’t terrify me to the point of paralysis–and feel so ready to be out of school again. It is also the desire to immediately make plans for a future that is not quite close enough for me to do so, a few too many steps in the way between, a few more questions to be answered. There’s a part of me that wants to run away back to Los Angeles immediately and be on vacation forever. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time. 

There are of course exceptional moments: pride or at least relief in the face of completed tasks, laughing until I cry with my best friend, drinking and dancing and beautiful sounds, dressing like a fool, free drugs and dumb jokes and your body and how could days really be that bad when I’ve seen your cum glinting in the winter sunlight and you smile that dumb way I really like after you’ve said something clever and I have some friends that are really really great and for five minutes I’m not flat broke and I get to make art a lot and fuck it’s not even that cold out?

I guess what I am saying is I need to get my shit a little more together without beating myself up. I guess what I’m saying is that’s hard for me. I need constant reassurance and snacks, like a little nervous dog when I want to be a majestic wolf-summoning witch woman. 

I guess really what I’m saying is that I need to lay off the extra-caffeinated Starbucks, because it gives me panic attacks that make me feel aggressively inadequate, and yes I know exactly how not punk rock that sounds. 

thisbedisaship:

I no longer know birthdays; aside from my immediate family, a few somehow-still-remembered childhood friends, my most recent exes, that’s the type of information I glean from my machines. I do not mind this. I do not think it signifies some end of sympathy, some un-fuck-giving of friendship. It’s more like the way I sometimes rely on autocorrect while typing—I have the ballpark information, and these funny little ticking beasts make me more precise. This does, however, occasionally lead to surprises.

I for some reason bother to click “and 1 other,” to know who else is turning something, who else is going to a fancy dinner or ignoring a barrage of notifications, who else is going to get way too drunk or get some jewelry. It’s you. You won’t be doing any of that. Not ever, no, not again. I don’t think I ever saw you on your birthday; our friendship was for summers, and for long-distance calls. 

You’re in the ground, or in some scattered ashes, I was no longer close enough to know. You are over, over, ended. But your voice is still playing through my speakers, like it always has. 

I suppose this is a reason to write music. So that even in the face of a sudden drop dead, even when the pieces of us that belong to you get pulled through our chests and plunged into the dirt, into the late-night waters of the Long Island Sound, even when I will never, ever see you again, not to laugh at our matching tattoos or smoke cigarettes in the driveway of my mother’s house or trespass in New York City private parks, even when it will never stop hurting to know that I should have gotten on that fucking plane to Texas like I said I would, even when the closest I will ever get again to holding you is your beautiful shaking girlfriend crying in my arms, even when my shit memory is fading and fading, I will always have your voice. We will always have the sound of you to hold us. 

Fucking hell, Jay. I miss you so fucking much.

I don’t even know how old you would be today. I guess I could do the math. Thirty-six. 

There we are, all those years ago, somewhere floating in time. And even when my body joins the pile, every grain of sand we stepped on will remember. 

Jason Rosenthal, I will miss you always. Thank you for everything.

—-

If you want to hear the sounds I’m hearing, here are links for streaming: 

On the Might of Princes - Where You Are And Where You Want To Be (2002)

On the Might of Princes - The Making of a Conversation (1999)

On the Might of Princes - Sirens (2003)

I suppose this date will always catch me off my guard. 

Miss you, Jay. Always will. 

so here, huh, the dream hovers above my lips. above the grey horizon. suddenly my desires are taking on new coherence, sweeping all my shuffling self up with them. a crystal, a laser, a shaft of sunlight, a clean sweep. 

for the first time in a long, long time, I feel like I’ve climbed out of the hole. 

sure, I’m broke as fuck and getting sick and always never catching up with all these little tasks like sand in my eyes and sure I worry that I’m in love at all the wrong times, that I’m in over my head at most times, that I’m a fraud and every time I forget someone’s name or accidentally say something bigoted everyone who has ever met me immediately knows and hates me now, and I’m still a little too preoccupied with getting everyone to like me and tell me I don’t need a nose job or whatever, but it’s fine. even though I need to get through this last winter-that-feels-like-a-winter. 

it’s fine. 

because I am excited about things, unapologetically excited.

because even if you don’t love me (who knows?), even if I owe lots of money to everyone ever (maybe one day I won’t?), there are such things as sunshine and good work and somehow managing to be a real adult and a little kid at the same time. 

I am still late to everything all the time, but I’m starting to have more to say when I get there. 

I suppose you could say I haven’t written in weeks, I suppose you could say that and in a certain sense it would be true, true, but let me promise you with wet-lip fervor I’ve been making my marks beyond missives, carving in the surface of my thoughts with the tongue of image–

here, you are seeing this, and while you may well forget it, this small cloud of time pressed itself against all your dumb impressionable wits, and all your pretty drunk amnesia cannot undo the fact. every cd skip, every lighter flicking on, every eyebrow arch and stone-cold cleverness, every shoulder that rests against another shoulder keeps on in you regardless. even if my words are full of lies, there’s a full life marching up behind them. 

and here I think I’d forgotten all my French
but when you whisper in the girlish quiet
the sibilant flood returns.

I want to pour language all over you
like a blanket
like cum
like how I want you to hold me. 

me and my tongue full of scraps want to set up shop in your closet, or perhaps at the foot of your bed, send words down from the window, bedsheets-long. we can call you Rapunzel. I’ll keep you safe. I’ve never kept anyone safe in my life. that’s a lie. we can call me Lady Witch Next Door. we can call us survivors, ethical thieves. 

(I’m not sure what I’m talking about, either, but these days it’s usually about you. well, okay, it’s usually always about me, but these days I seem to often think of you at the same time. I can be a narcissist for two.)

Steam rises from thousands of palm trees at once, except the steam is a strain of sound, a drip of guitar, a piano laugh. We catch a glimpse of it through the car window. I spend a foolish moment remembering what I have at various points described as love.

The sun is licking us like a big dog, and my heart is pulled pork disintegrating into tastes and small sounds of indulgence. 

Each of us is a royal princess on a couch cushion. We will build a blanket fort in paradise. I lay my head on your chest. 

I just want to be able to write love poems without feeling like a creep. 

I just want a place or two or five to put all this longing, all this affection I keep generating that has no path to run down. 

The gaping mouth of all my stupid loneliness encompasses everything around me.

It’s so trite it tastes like flat ginger ale, coating the inside of my mouth: I spend a great deal of time in crowded rooms feeling incredibly alone. 

Remember: this massive tide of desire that rocks itself within me always, this is not a shackle, this is not a punishment for wanting, this is a way the words can come forth. Dense-packed bricks of feeling press themselves out from under my fingernails, from the corners of my eyes. 

The sink and scream of a ravenous heart is what drives me to make my little marks on the world, so I should be thankful for my discontent. 

(the horrifying realization that I find myself needlessly alone so many nights because there’s a standing invitation that neither you nor I asked for but there it lays // when did it happen that pretty boys who are nice enough stopped being nice enough // I don’t know what I want but I know I want a lot of things // I should stop not leaving the house until it’s dark out // I should stop having sex dreams about ex-lovers // I feel like I’m going crazy most of the time, and regardless of anything I say or think most of the blame there is mine // I want to sell everything I own and buy a truck but I guess I need a driver’s license first, huh. )

Boys with Peter Pan faces and winter soft sweaters, warm cheek next to my cold one growing flush. My sidewalk rage. My dismissive wave. The thoughts that float on down the street to hold a hand. Lost mornings, messages unanswered, the sickly panic that follows through the days, let me tell you I don’t know how to be a person but I’m trying and I’m trying and I’m trying but I’m too sad to be around strangers but I don’t want to be alone but I’m trying and I’m trying and I’m trying. 

(of course the devil was the card I drew today)

some words on death

I’ve been so focused on the horrific political violence in the news and in the world lately that I found myself caught off-guard by feelings about other kinds of loss.

Seven years ago, in December, a boy I knew died. Young man, I guess. He seemed so much older than me, and it baffles me to think I am five years older now than he was then. An acquaintance, I guess, a friend-of-friends, very close to people I would later be very close to, a crush more than anything else, someone I wanted to know better than I did. Twice this week I’ve come across textual references to his suicide that caught me by surprise. 

How strange, when googling someone I met in college, for the absurdly innocuous reason of trying to accurately remember the color of her hair– I had somehow forgotten she had written his obituary in the school newspaper. 

Reading a book about death by someone who knew him better than I did, I should have known it was coming, but I was still so ill-prepared. The brief remarks hit me right in the guts. Thud, thud. 

I suppose the shock of losses do not fade, but rather they are joined by others and that changes them. A polyphonic chorus swells until the coda of its hearer’s death.

Sometimes I stop believing in time,

(sometimes lately I can’t stop feeling terrified that my father has died when I remember no one has heard from him in weeks, that he never called me back when I stood waiting for a stoplight to turn on his birthday and sang into his machine, that even though I know my uncles would know if anything really bad happened and someone would tell me, the thought keeps jolting through my brain)

(sometimes lately I can’t stop feeling terrified that this boy I spend some time with will get hit by a bus or fall off a building or any number of things I’m scared to write down because I don’t want them to happen, I get terrified that suddenly he’ll just drop out of the world and I know this is my anxiety talking, the obsessive-compulsive evidence of how much affection I’ve come to feel, and really I should just get some cognitive behavioral therapy and get laid more)

and I know that each moment that occurs hangs somewhere in time, and we are passing a handle of Jim Beam back and forth in someone’s living room until you fall asleep there and I stumble home, always. 

item: reading the news makes me depressed. 

item: declining to read the news makes me depressed. 

item: I’m still alive enough to feel like shit. 

item: I will likely die a violent death, but not likely at the hands of the law.

item: I feel embarrassed by my own emotional response to the news: instead of political action motivated by clarifying rage, I want to crawl into bed for at least a month with a man and two bottles of whiskey and three packs of cigarettes and watch old French movies and cry at the car scene in Jules et Jim and then the movie’s over and we don’t have to feel sad anymore, or rather I can feel indulgently sad all I want, because the turmoil of lovers is a different sadness from genocide. 

item: I seem to keep walking from room to room, object to object, tab to tab, knowing I was just about to do something.