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”]

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”]

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”]

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”]

CONTROL (Chasing Ovation Never Truly Renders Optimal Lives)

Because small steps would take so long, you demand the leap right away and wonder why no one jumps into the abyss.
Instead of the little good things that accumulate, you focus on the bad that has not yet materialized.

Go ahead, say no again, and enjoy the safety of your cocoon. Alone. One more brick in that wall you so desperately want someone to break down.

If only you would let yourself color outside the lines, even if that wouldn’t earn you top marks. You’ve long left school, so who is grading you now anyway other than yourself?

But all your life’s a show. You run the scripts you’ve practiced many times, always performing for an audience of one, always waiting for the applause that never comes. Maybe then it is time to go back to the drawing board, shake it up and see if doing it differently won’t change the results.
After all, anything else has been defined as insanity.

Aren’t you tired of holding yourself back?

Sure, your legs are not as dependable as they used to be, but they’ll still carry you forward if you ask them to. This body has betrayed you in some ways, but in others it has always shown up for you – it’s time to return the favor.

Maybe you’ll find you can grow beyond yourself. Maybe just this once the grass really is greener on the other side. Or at least maybe there will be trees and you love trees.

Enjoy the days, embrace the weeks and let the months do the heavy lifting. Time has stopped making sense anyway.

“Yeah, I know, if I stepped aside,
Released the controls,
It would open my eyes”

[Part 18 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

TRICK (Twisting Reasons Into Careless Knots)

Oh, to not only suffer but suffer well. With a suspicious heart always focused on what isn’t yet and what will never be, happiness is the enemy. The consoling thought is that great art springs from despair and other people’s joy makes most people nauseous.
Once more into the depths then, to where the voices sing songs of the quiet times, hindsight, contemplation and questions over answers.

I always was sadder than I had any right to be – objectively. Seems reasons work retroactively too. Maybe my soul knew the things to come long before and so I was prepared when the time came.
Now I just want to make a mess of things, say yes to everything I know won’t last and live in the space between today and tomorrow.

If you held my hand, maybe you would feel the melancholy seep into you too and see how it adds a hue to the world that’s hard to shake. Maybe that’s why you wear your sunglasses at night: reality is too bright unfiltered.
Those rings I wear tonight I wear to feign the grace I wish I possessed and wish you’d notice. What I am really saying is not in the many words I speak. They are a distraction – my greatest magic trick.

And I am so disappointed you fall for it every single time.

“So it falls apart, it falls apart
Just like you wanted it to fall apart
It falls apart, it falls apart”

[Part 17 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

OVER (Old Visions Eagerly Return)

In a time where time has stopped making sense and only moves in circles, I yearn to leave the track and swerve to the left. But the hourglass just gets turned over – and over, and over. Lessons not learned keep the plot ever the same and an ending cannot be found.
So there we are in perpetuity and all that will help is to find new ways to walk this figure eight. Next turn I might prance instead, then gander, then sprint – and hope the pictures on the walls will make different forms if passed at different speeds.

But a closed loop returns you to places you had left behind and I get tangled in the webs I’ve spun from your blue shirt and the walk through snow in Vienna. What was it you wrote onto that car window with icy fingers?
It would not be hard to find you now, but I am not sure I could explain the tangled strings that hang from your fingertips and tug at the very soul of me. For what are they to you but figments of my imagination? And to that, I am sure, you wouldn’t live up to anyway.
You are not full of magic; you have been circling your own figure eight and it’s unlikely you still wear the same shoes.

If there is no forward, if there is only round and round, then how do I keep the ghosts from haunting me? How do I start a new web when no new fingers appear to hang them from?
If all there is are do-overs, then why can’t you and I do over what we did once – painful conclusion and all? At the end of it all I won’t even ask you to stay. Because although we’re all stuck, we’re all moving. On our treadmills, our rowing machines, our stationary bikes – all those contraptions that make us think we’re going places.

My place has always been people and you’re my favorite one. Your well springs eternal and I have discovered oceans in it. Teach me diving.

“What happens will be
Pain of my own making
Cut short by eternity”

[Part 16 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

STOP (Safety Transforms Other Priorities)

If I squint, I can see things clearly, but that seems dangerous for the road ahead. I treasure depth over breadth, but my depth perception is currently off. So I stumble forward with what I hope is awkward, perfect grace. And I try to be kind, because that’s a choice I still have, when others seem to be dwindling or have been taken away. It’s not that I wanted to say yes, I just wanted to have the option.

Now everyone relies on me giving them time, when that is the one thing I’m not willing to part with. I don’t have enough of it and I can’t make any more. The roots are all growing back – in the garden and on my head – and it’s not a pretty sight.

Projects inside piling up when the only ones I’m interested in are on the other side of this door. Even the cat is sick of me.

At the worst of times the stories in my head have gone quiet and so the pages of all the notebooks I found in old boxes will stay empty for a while longer.

I surprised myself when asked if I would return to a time, a place or a person I still named you – after all these years. Why do I still believe you hold some kind of key? That my choices would have been different if I could return to my cheek on your dove blue shirt?

Once, in a dream, I breathed a sigh of relief, felt my shoulders relax and the ground give way underneath. I was both falling and free and knew that’s how it’s meant to be.

It’s not often you find yourself suffering from too much of a good thing – or a thing people tell you is good, only you’ve never liked it much – like bacon.

I’m having too many cups of tea while knowing I’m not everyone’s – nor do I want to be. Just don’t be a coffee snob.

 

“To fall asleep I need white noise to distract me
Otherwise I have to listen to me think
Otherwise I pace around, hold my breath, let it out
Sit on the couch and think about
How living’s just a promise that I made”

 

[Part 15 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

TIME (Tiny Increments Move Everything)

I call it one thing and you call it another. And I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but I’d like you more if you spoke the truth.
There’s so much these days I don’t say, because it’s better to let the pieces of my soul settle after the shake-up.
As I contemplate engraving the memory of the impact, I try to define the Before. The caesura that heightens both the prior note and the chord to follow. It’s time I learned an instrument.

Generic phrases flicker across my screen and I despair at all the laid back, easygoing people who don’t take life too seriously. If this is the only life you get, the only heart to feel with, the only eyes to see out of, then don’t you want to make it mean more?
In a room full of people I can feel completely alone and so I learned to like my own company. The IPO wasn’t great, but now it pays dividends to loyal traders.

What a lot of life you can squeeze out of time when you accept that once even a diamond was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Or maybe it’s time squeezing life out of me.
Some chapters need more words than others, and I have left my place on the shore. The water is warmer than I imagined, and my body remembers how to swim. My mind alters between reminiscing about the shoreline behind and planning for the adventures ahead.

I feel the wheel ticking along, in step as ordered, and then – click – I feel the disconnect. Though I hope it’s just the heating coming on.

 

“What have I become?
Truth is: nothing yet”

 

 

[Part 14 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

SEQUEL (Soon Enough Questions Unravel Every Layer)

I was right and I was wrong and I liked that I was right about how wrong I was going to be. Funny how I choose the same thing over and over, but I am not insane: I don’t expect the result to change.

When I walk the streets I came from, I can feel my soul chafe now. Like a wool sweater you can never take off. A low-key itch you just can’t scratch, an edge you just can’t smooth, a contrast you just can’t blend in anymore. Maybe I never truly belonged here.

I carry pieces of here with me, they are part of my mosaic. Maybe I am too close to the puzzle to make sense of it, I can’t read my own mind. But more and more I am convinced the puzzle forms a circle and tracing the outlines and creases I am bound to return to places and people I let go so many times.

This time, again, I let go and I smile.

Space and time suspend across the years and across the table, and the feeling is both lighter than air and heavier than lead and it’s not the alcohol to blame.
I’m never the same after, though the details why always escape me. You’re hard to remember, but impossible to forget.

What started as a single thread has become complex knit-work and I don’t care to take it apart. I wrap it around my shoulders as I step outside, lock the door behind me and venture on.

And then I catch myself looking back over my shoulder.

 

“Is it all in my mind?
Am I lost in my own head?
Worrying about something I should have said
You’re the only thing I don’t regret”

 

 

[Part 13 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]