Who paddles this boat?

Deadlocked in oblivion we stumble through excuses
Addicted to infinity we’re serving different muses

Melted out of wailing woe awaits pearl-shining madness
Dissected skin and paper bags reveal a beaming sadness

Grasping for sense and sanity we falter at intrusions
Shaking from weight and liberty we suffer fast contusions

Scoured nights of vanity we gave up on controlling
Basing beliefs on clarity is seldom real consoling

Overturned the verdict that sentenced us to bravery

Note: I wrote this in 2007.

The Rock

The smooth black rock feels heavy in your hand as you caress it with your fingertips. It’s oddly familiar now, every day being passed between the two of you and you suppress the urge to throw it into the nearby lake. Because that wouldn’t change a thing, no matter how much you both believe in the ruse you created.
This morning when he handed it to you, he looked more tired than you have seen him, his skin paper thin and you worry one scratch will tear him open. Maybe tonight you can convince him to just leave the rock with you, just for a night, just so he can sleep. If he believes enough, then maybe he will find respite while his worries stay hidden in your back pocket.

But instead, you find him drunk – on alcohol and pain – and when you finally get him to lay down in his bed, he reaches out his hand and asks you to stay.
So now you hold the rock and you hold him and engulfed in the darkness you think there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.

You remember every line and feature on his face on the day he told you why he had lost his joy. His eyes the same light blue, but void of lightness. Distant, distracted and dismayed. You sat next to a shell of him and realized at once how much you missed him. For one like him, who did so much, to be condemned to do nothing, was a punishment not half as cruel to watch as it must be to feel, and it tore you apart.

And when one day he moved as if all his limbs were made of lead, as if gravity was all but trying to pull him into the ground and even rising from a chair took Herculean effort, all you could think to do was take his hands and say: “Leave it with me. Give it to me, just for a few hours, while you go out there and do what needs to be done. I will keep it safe, and I’ll return it when you come back. But just for now, let me carry it for you.”
His eyes locked with yours and you saw the click when he chose to believe that the air you put into your pocket – the air you later replaced with the black rock – really did contain all that was troubling him and that he could leave it behind to return to when his job for the day was done.

You didn’t take it lightly. For it to work you had to believe the same as him. Coffee tasted bitter that day no matter how much sugar you added, and you caught yourself taking heavy breaths before every human interaction. But when you caught a glimpse of him, he was the man they needed him to be and there was a bit of color in his cheeks.

That evening though you had to watch his heart break all over again, when he came to collect what was rightfully his and you hated every moment of the ritual that was now established. His head instantly dropped, the color faded from his cheeks and the wind that had wistfully blown through his hair hours earlier now was in danger of knocking him over entirely.

The only cure for it was the counterweight of relief in the morning, when in one fell swoop you could see the vigor return to him as the little black rock was passed back to you. He never handed it over easily, looking somber as he held your hands and pressed the smooth stone into your palm, curling your fingers around it to make sure you held it tight. As if it was important it didn’t get lost, impressing on you how much his sorrow meant to him.

In the little rock in your pocket you hold his entire world. The people he loves, the future he imagines with them in it, and the twist of fate that has put all that in jeopardy now and out of his control. It makes you want to find a cushion to rest it on, like one of those jewelry boxes you store precious things in, to show him that you understand the care, the tenderness and devotion he feels for those trapped in that rock.

As you hold him now, in that darkness, listening to his steady breath and feeling the warmth of his body, his despair gives you hope: that love exists, that it comes in shapes few recognize, and that it’s worth the pain of leaving it all on the line.

All There Is

If this is all there is, I am not sure I want to go on.
The “all” of it is endlessly complicated and messy while stuck in it and only simple and clear from a distance. Like an Instagram filter that tricks you into believing.
And I know it’s not true, that I’m the loneliest one in the world, but if I had known I would have to walk this path alone forever, I may have chosen differently. I still might.
Because what do I really need all this space and room and time for? When all I have to show for my last weekend is another story I started in my head that I will never finish, because it’s the same one I start over and over with an ever changing cast solving ever the same problem, the one at the core of me.

In a room full of people, I sit in the corner now or clear away empty glasses. And when someone asks me how I do it, how I find a balance, how I find my energy, I smile and I lie and I don’t say that I have long ago figured out that if I try or if I don’t doesn’t matter. It always ends the same. With me here. And only me.

There’s too much stuff and too much baggage and time only ever moves forward, so I keep putting one foot in front of the other, but my heart’s not in it and I can’t remember the last time it was. Like that last time you saw someone before you knew it would be the last time – it has slipped away into the fog of memory. The one that sometimes extends a long finger and robs you of something else, something small, something it thinks you won’t notice or miss – until you do.
I can’t remember the smell of my mom’s perfume when I was a child. The fog has taken that too.

The things I won’t let it take, the moments I cling to as if my life depends on it, have long stopped serving me well, because they are from so long ago that the real memory and the story I have told myself don’t match anymore. They are just a construct now, of what I wish happened, of what I think I should have felt, of what I hope I will feel one day, again.

When life was ever-changing, people ever-moving, it wasn’t so obvious that this is all there is. At least I don’t think there was ever more of it, I just thought there was. Or I didn’t think about it all. But once the thought hits your mind, it’s impossible to breathe it away and I won’t let my mediation teacher tell me otherwise.

I try on other languages for size, because maybe I have just been using the wrong words and that’s why no one hears me, or really gets my meaning. If so many others have figured it out, then what am I missing? They can’t all be pretending, the odds clearly point the other way. That’s why I scan every room and every face for another pair of eyes that look at light just to see the shadow.  

And if I found you, I would take your hand and tell you all the words you have always needed to hear. And I would know what they are, because they are the words I have waited all my life to hear. And I would mean them, like I know you would. And you would be loved and you would be whole and you would be seen. And for one more moment, that would be all there is. And for that moment, that would be enough.

LIVE (Letting Irrelevant Variations Evaporate)

Recently I have grown tired of labels, categories, definitions and concepts. They all seem to get in the way of just being.
At times I found being difficult, but now I realize it was growing pains and never settling for less, which sometimes meant I went without. I still go without some things these days, but when I remember that the alternative would be to compromise what I stand for, then the choice becomes easy.

There can be comfort in finding a word for something you have always felt you are; a recognition, a reflection, a sense that you are not alone, not singular, that you belong. But every label I try on for size eventually chafes or itches or rubs me the wrong way. And so I flit between here and there, walk this way and that way, take a bit of some and more of another. Ever the tightrope. Maybe one day I might fall off and land in the camps assembled on either side.

I’ve peeled away so many layers to examine if something went wrong in the assembly of me that I forgot the possibility that there might not actually be anything wrong at all. Humans, after all, are not measured in perfection, and what others sometimes have perceived as my flaws – like my love for melancholy or my desire to always do better – might actually be my strength and the very pillars from which everything else suspends.

Once winter has come and gone, it might be time to shed the security blankets I have been dragging along, because they no longer serve me. To accept that the easiest thing I can do, the easiest way of living this life, is to just live and be.


“The house don’t fall if the bones are good.”

[Part 22 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

King of Secrets

There never seems to be an opportune time to fall apart. Every morning in front of the mirror you ponder the option, then turn and go on with another day you wish you could skip.
The collection of secrets you keep is growing so large even you have lost track and now sometimes little things slip out. You never meant for anyone to know that on a night as dark as it was long, you swam out as far as your arms would take you and didn’t care if you would ever make it back.
You craft ever new rope ties from routine, rules and rationales and use them to restrain your soul while she uses them to restrain your body. By giving up control you control everything and build your own safety net.
If it were up to you, every day would be the same, so you could learn it inside out until you could finally play it as perfectly as everyone expected of you.
You never realized how much the voice in your head sounds like him. While on the outside you are free of him now, on the inside his reign is never-ending. The only one who dares to contradict is the same one who is luring your secrets out of their hiding places, and though you believe her in the moment, you struggle to remember her words when she is not around. And she’s not around a lot.

On the first morning after his death, you woke up so relieved.
Two years later the shame of that relief has you desperately trying to remember the last words you said to him, or the last words he spoke to you. Anything that would convince others of your grief. You don’t realize no one needs any more proof.

Sometimes you imagine you can outrun it all. But at the finish line of yet another marathon the elation lasts only minutes until your demons catch up with you again. That is why lately in your dreams you are taking off on a trail into the sunset and you feel such joy watching yourself become a dot on the horizon, never to be seen again. To just fade into the landscape and finally, endlessly, just be.   

SHADOW (Some Heights Are Descending Omens of Will)

Most days I like the shape on the sidewalk beneath me more than the shape I’m in. It’s the only reason to dislike sunny days, because the contrast increases. In the grey of the other days, everything looks the same and nothing reminds me of the vision I have for myself.

All the angles look better in black and white: the ponytail bouncier, the legs longer, the waist thinner. I’d rather be the girl in the shadow than the girl in the mirror. The shadow that’s always a step ahead, rather than the real person one step behind.

Then, out of nowhere on the sidewalk, I am confronted with death. Brought to a halt by the inevitable, I ponder what it really means to be alive – and if I should do this creature the last honor of a more dignified place to rest.

If this is “it”, then shouldn’t there be more of it? Is it meant to be this hard and hearts this heavy?

The girl in the shadow grows longer now, reaching further ahead into a future that still awaits me.
I follow more slowly now, not sure I want to catch up, because when I do, there will be here and what if it’s no better than what lies behind?
Walking downhill seems easier until it’s not. Until the weight on your back sends you stumbling forward and gravity threatens to pull you to the ground – and maybe into it.

So I look for the next incline, because if I can keep climbing, then there is a summit still ahead and everything’s not lost.

“Take me back to places I feel loved in
Maybe failing that, take me to Boston”

[Part 21 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

Silent Volumes

If only you could make someone understand. If only for one moment they could feel what it’s like to be you – to really grasp the reality of being contained in your body and your mind. Words never seem to get it quite right, no matter how many languages you learn. At the end of every day that grain of loneliness remains at the bottom of your soul, even on those nights when there’s a warm somebody beside you in bed.

You can’t remember when you stopped trying to explain, but years of flooding the metaphorical airwaves got you nowhere closer to feeling truly seen and so you decided there wasn’t much point. And some might think you have always been this quiet and monosyllabic, but they don’t know the epics you revealed to the ones who came before only to earn puzzled looks and rejection for being too intense. The bottom of a glass was no friend either, but made it easier to bear for a while that when you spoke people listened, but didn’t hear you.

Sometimes you wonder if others struggle with the discrepancy between sense and meaning, but no one else seems quite that melancholy.

It’s not that you think what you have to share is insightful or profound; it’s just your little corner of existence after all. Yet somehow you are convinced that if for one moment someone else could grasp the core of you, the Gordian knot of your life would come undone and finally you could breathe – and smile.

You don’t ever smile. Not with your heart. You do your breath work every day and try to breathe life into the parts of your body you rarely acknowledge otherwise, but somehow there is never enough oxygen to keep your flame burning bright. So you walk through life with your dimmed light and every day is just another obstacle course to get through.

Your ribcage is just that: a cage. To keep your lungs from expanding wide enough, to keep your heart from beating loud enough, to keep your soul from spreading its wings. Your spirit chafes with discomfort at being trapped in this form, but you hide it well by draping it in expensive clothes that draw clean lines when on the inside there is nothing but convolution.

Once – at the top of a lonely mountain in a far-flung country you travelled to – you screamed into the void. It was the loudest you had ever been. But the echo the valley underneath you returned brought you to your knees in tears and ever since then you’ve been so quiet.

FLIP (Forcing Lightness Into Patterns)

The items on the nightstands rearranged the other way around take some getting used to. I still reach for all the wrong things. Like the sunshine that is inevitably going to leave.

And I built some things, but I was never any good at DIY, so these storms ahead might well blow it all down. I see the clouds gathering and this time I am not sure others’ encouragement is going to get me through.

Now nothing is ever enough, only of food there is always too much. The army I am feeding never actually shows up at my door and every infrequent knock still scares the cat into hiding.  Were it a more regular occurrence maybe she’d get used to it. Like me she needs it to happen more often.

It’s a familiar longing – that more people should take from me – and for fractions of seconds I actually believe that what I have to offer is enough. The rest of the time I feel the absence of everything and everyone that is not here.

In my head I always give reality less credit than it’s due. Things rarely turn out as grim as I imagine, but these blankets of sorrow have been my comfort for so long they become hard to shed. My skin is sensitive and prone to bruising, so be gentle with me as I try to lead with hope.

And maybe, instead of me having to ask, for once just read my mind, just give me something, anything I need.

“Saddest songs always find their way to you
Don’t mistake the lonely sound they make for truth”

[Part 20 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

EnTRoPY

I was in love with you once. I remember it as clearly as a crystal winter’s night. In the popular notion love is fuzzy and warm and consoling. My love for you chilled my very bones. I hated that I loved you from the minute I started to. Everything I ever perceived myself to be froze up while I loved you. There was no movement left, within or without; my soul was preserved in its state and couldn’t evolve while I loved you. Gelid air filled my lungs and I wandered around my own self as through an empty warehouse, my footsteps on cement floor echoing back at me, everything aglow in blue faded light. Dust gathered on the shelves I used to store my feelings on, all the boxes that held my features had been swept to the ground by your consuming nature. For the first time I realized how infinite my soul was and how deep it went. Endless corridors lay adjacent to spacious halls and boxes I hadn’t touched in years – or ever – stood around in disarray. Yet every move I made seemed unsafe, might disturb your curve and so I quickly stopped to stray. You on the other hand had found your perfect playground. You burst through the door and filled the corridors of my soul with everything you were, thoughtlessly opening boxes I could never tape back shut. And while I loved you, silently stood and watched you throw around my childhood memories and my deep contempt for stupidity, I still hated you for being who you were. So selfish and so arrogant, so convinced of your own intelligence and so reckless. I never saw you in the daylight, only saw your silhouette in the shallow gloaming of my warehouse. It was the only way I could stand to look at you at all. And yet I say I loved you. And I do because you, at least, were real and intense. You touched parts of my self no one had ever reached and with your touch gave them life and made me aware of their existence. You made an impact, you moved the boxes, you didn’t just peek into them. You rearranged and reordered and realigned me according to your taste, your knowledge and your pleasure. You put me to use when I had felt useless all my life. Suddenly I wasn’t lonely anymore, there was someone else living inside me, the voice was existent and my questions received an answer. I didn’t want the noise you made to leave me again. Just the sound of your breath next to me in bed was enough to assure me I was alive and this world not as desolate as sometimes it looks in grim daydreams we have.

You took what you needed from my warehouse, carried it around with you out there in the world, never gave some of it back. I didn’t feel like I ever gave you anything. You found all things worth taking by yourself while I just stood there and consciously observed you robbing my soul as if it was just that: a warehouse without an alarm system. You left some things behind too. Going through the boxes now I find them; scattered, useless things you didn’t need or didn’t want anymore, like your nicotine addiction. I couldn’t keep you for long. The corridors and halls seemed endless to me, but you soon found their limits, stood in front of the walls that held in my soul, and decided you needed to break through. I never fixed the hole you ripped for your escape and sunlight is now pouring into the room I kept my dignity in. I stand in it a lot, my arms crossed over my chest, and marvel at the bright whiteness of everything beyond my wall. The light is so radiant it almost becomes a corporeal force, magnetic in its power, and I wonder if one day I will step outside and leave who I was, carrying just one box to my new warehouse, the box I built from dreaming.

None of what I feel today is hindered by the memory of you. I am not bitter when I talk about my love, it left the same way it came in, sudden and without a warning. And in the end it doesn’t matter why the boxes are in different places, as long as the places are meaningful to me. That is what I am left with; I am back at square one. I assume the boxes were in purposeful places before you came and where they were defined who I was. It was a maze and I was looking for the pattern. I have to start over now, the pattern has changed, but the game is still the same. The arrangement of my boxes still says who I am. I just have to read it right, read it better than the coffee grinds left in my cup in the morning. Sometimes I am tempted to test my memory and put everything back the way it used to be, to return to delivery condition. But then I wonder if who I was before was so much better than who I am now. And how can I judge, when I hadn’t figured me out back then and I haven’t figured me out yet? And with each day I wait to convert back to Old Me, the more the memory of it fades and I stumble upon crates and cases and chests and coffers I don’t recall the proper placement for.

Every now and then I attempt to move a box, store it away on the designated shelf, attach a tag and cross-reference it in the index cabinet. I successfully hoisted the box of bashfulness onto the top shelf of the recycling rack. And the carton of cataclysm was lighter than I thought, while the canister of capability took all my capacity to even be moved an inch closer to the can-opener. And did you know that doubt simply evaporates if you lift the lid off its crate? I still don’t know why the jar of jealousy stands next to the flask of faith, but I am sure I’ll make sense of it soon. In the meantime I lavish the liquid in my ladle of language.

As of now my legs wobble with every step I take, they are new to the motion as I am new to every experience post the era of you. But like a child with every stumble I gain more confidence, hone my senses and earn my keep. Strange how nothing has changed without like it has within. I might go and buy a dust brush, see if I can’t get these hallways to shine.

NOISE (Neglecting Other Interpretations Seems Easier)

If I could get out of my own way I would, but when I try, my good intentions spin me back around until I get dizzy and hit my face on the concrete of the moment.
And I could say I didn’t mean it when I said it, but I did – only maybe I said it too soon, or too loud or too much.

So I run ahead and hope you’ll catch me – I’m not in great shape after all.

Recently I knocked over the drawing board that held everything I am made of and now I am picking up the pieces, seeing if there aren’t other patterns I can make with them – or if I even need every one of them anymore.

Like that shame I felt when hardly anyone turned up to my eighteenth birthday party. Does that still have any bearing on the person I am or the person I am trying to be?

But although some pieces aren’t strictly necessary to get the picture, I’m fond of the nuance they add, so I keep them anyway, pin them back up there, just a little left of where they used to be. A shift in perspective.

And all the while, as I kneel on my kitchen floor, my hands dripping with melted parts of me, I wonder if the more I try, the less I will achieve.
Maybe I don’t need to tell my story for you to be able to read it.

Oh, to be easy-going for once, to go with that “flow” others so lovingly talk about.

For now what flows are words out of my mouth and I don’t think I have ever quite understood that you can never take them back and more of them don’t always make anything better, just noisier.

Maybe I’ll see how long I can go without actually speaking and finally let silence have its say.

“Sleeping became useless when the thought had hit my mind.”

[Part 19 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]