Adventure!

[this is my 250th post]

When the end comes does it crash like cymbols, loud and echoing? Or does is simply meander away when you aren't looking? Does it stalk off pissed off at the way things went or does it come on gradual, like the end of the day, slow -- the way you boil a frog.

Draw me a picture of the beginning. Time before time. Tomorrow. The next day. What colors should I use to scribble my dreams?

I feel as if I'm leading a hundred different lives.

Yesterday I held hands with the past. We walked the streets in ways we never had, talked of things we'd never talked about, and lived a way we'd never lived before. It was the strangest feeling. The weirdest was not feeling sad at goodbye because you are simply happy to have had an opportunity to say hello. Who knows when we'll see each other again? Remember when all that separated us was cloth walls and a couple feet?

I miss tent sleep overs and cooking ever meal over a fire. I miss writing by the ocean and having a huge whale blow of some steam only ten yards away. I miss the way the sun never set. The way the fireweed was always in full bloom. But mostly I miss how completely free I was from everything: rules, parents, society, television, movies.

Life unencumbered.

Tomorrow I'm back in the fray.

And somehow, things have changed. I woke up a different person today. Shed a layer of my self and revealed new colors.

I am invincible.

And here are the things I'm dreaming and scheming for the next 365 days.

I consider "Walking By" (something corporate) to be my favorite song:

It's been three years, and I still miss your quiet footsteps beside me as we walk down the beach. That stupid grin you'd throw back to me as you raced ahead to let me know, yeah I'm still here, but do you see how fast I can run?

Your tail wags conducted my heart beats. We were always so in sync.

I still expect to see you every journey that brings me home and am disappointed with every front door opening that fails to reveal your smiling face.

I know my grief is not rational, that I've moved into some sort of realm where this is absurd but I can't help it -- I just want to see you again.

I've been thinking that maybe Christmas is hard because it reminds you of the things you want the most but can never have. One more day -- not even that. Just one more walk down the beach.

I think of you so often.

Dear Samantha,
Can you feel my heart woven into yours? I remember holding you in those last moments reassuring you that it was ok for you to die now. Go, rest in peace. It's okay for you to leave me.
My most selfless hours. But how can your peace be restful when now, I'd utter just about anything to bring you back... Were you watching as I had to edit the present tense verbs out of this like crazy? To me, you still aren't gone. You are still here, breathing, running, watching, hidden from some secret post waiting for me to find you.

The beach grass has receded further and the tides swing larger, but they are still here. The sea glass comes and goes but still needs collecting. The cabinet in the bathroom still smells like dogfood every time I open it. But where have you gone?

I walk the beach expecting you to return to my side, but still you aren't there. My heart calls for you, but all I find is broken bits of glass scattered across the sand. The universe mocks my grief with shooting stars suggesting that I could wish you back. But all the birthday candles I've blown out are a poor reminder of the long years without your calming presence my side.

All those times you ran off on your own adventures and now you're on the biggest one of all. I hope you find what you are looking for.

Where there's gold, there's a gold digger.

All those times, I could never find the right words to say. Clumsily searching for some sort of antidote. Cure. And then I let time slip by without saying anything at all. Which was worse?

In the early morning everything unravels; The night comes but never at the right moment. Too long, too short. The stars fall off their woven masterpiece. Everything collapses outwards away from its itself til nothing's left but beads and yarn.

So stitch me a sunrise. Show me those perfect winter mornings where everything's illuminated. Trees sagging under inches of new snow - bending but beautiful. Show me the world painted over where everything familiar is suddenly different.

And it is.

I didn't want to say goodbye to you. It's not like I didn't know this was coming but it still all feels incomplete. Hello. Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye. Endless cycles. Revolutions. Me caring, you looking so indifferent. I hate this feeling, this constant inadequacy.

Who knows where I'm walking. I have a broken compass in one hand and a treasure map in another. Maybe I'll get there, someday.

sorry I've been gone.
My free time has been devoted to a writing project I developed over thanksgiving break. I'm finally putting pen to paper. I've never been this excited to write a story down.

I will try to write more here, but my mind is pretty focused on getting this story written.

Hear you me.

maybe, if I catch the clock right, everything will undo itself.
maybe, if I stare at pictures of you long enough, you'll come back to earth.

We weren't even good friends.
But your absence from this world has shaken me and I find
I am mourning for you as if you were kin.

Are kin.

It could have been any of us.
It could have been anyone.
Why you? Why now?

You didn't get to finish your story.

My heart is with you.
My love is with your family. my family. our family.

May angels lead you in.
Rest in peace.

1. Shoot rusty cans off a fence
2. Run a marathon
3. Skydive
4. Through-hike the Pacific Crest Trail
5. Travel by horse across Mongolia
6. See great white sharks fly
7. Milk a cow in a metal bucket
8. Bike across the main island of Japan
9. Finish the Iditarod and Yukon Quest
10. Write a best seller

free[dumb]
freedom.

freed[won]
freed one.

Lovers are parasites you need to pluck from your soul.
The line has been crossed ten-fold.
You are water under the bridge.
A splinter that has been removed.

So long, farewell, good riddens.

In my bones lurks centuries of living.
(do you know what I know?)

I want to start my life already. Buy myself a house at the edge of this flat world, settle down, and watch the currents slip by, watch every thing fade off into that unknown place...
(do you hear what I hear?)

My favorite time of year are the two seconds when I think I know where tomorrow will bring me. When I think I've figured this life of mine out. But everything is always changing.

Today I am in Boston.
Tomorrow I am in New Hampshire.
In June I'm in Thailand.
In July I'm in Utah.

[Except nothing is etched in stone.]

I want some sort of stability yet I hate being boxed in.
I want to travel the world. I want to share this love of life with everyone on the planet....

The people you love always end up dealing the sharpest blows.

To the warring factions of my heart:

Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground.
The battle is lost.
The war is over.
Stop. Stop. Stop.

To the humanity within me:

Be divine.
Find yourself a god you can pray to
change your heart.
Little one, you are so much stronger
Than the way you act.

In the quiet of night my thoughts come alive like a million little insects crawling over my skin. How can you sleep when you're being invaded, attacked.

Every action is a simple response to another.
Every action a way to erase the one prior to it.

Condemned.

The heart is a maze with a thousand dead-ends. (I don't know where I'm walking.)
Sometimes I wish I'd just shut my mouth, shut my heart, break-down, melt-down, quit the game, walk away.

The end result is never worth the price of admission.
Lets be serious for just a moment: Love is just a game.

You just have to throw the cards away.
52 card pick up.

Chaos.
Anarchy.
Disaster.

In the end the whims of one person or another, aren't enough to shake me.
A single breath of wind cannot move a mountain.

Stand tall.

I want to write my soul down
Feel the words of it pound out
In pictures and letters
Bound it up in poems and lectures
creative adventures that let you
See and understand my heart

From the start I want you to know exactly where I stand
Because someday the mystery of my life will unravel
In front of God and I want to make sure
he knows the journey I've traveled

So when I fight Him about having stolen
I can say "look I took it on accident" or
"That time I yelled at my mother
Another part of me was mourning inside
Wondering why the love inside me had died
And yes, I am reticent so here read this,"
Shoving the papers on His desk
"Now you'll know what I really meant."

But mostly I want to show myself I'm trying
Because I'd be lying if I said I had an excuse for every sin
I need to know what to fix and why
So when I say goodbye to this world
The story I've told will be one that says
I'm trying

I want to spill myself open
Return my soul to the ocean by revealing my guilt
Because there are days I know I've built up my perfection
But really, it's just because I fear rejection.

I need you to know I'm not an angel.
I don't wear a halo.
And if you want me to say why,
I'll say so.

I have stolen.
I have cheated.
I've denied and wrongly pleaded.
I have bribed and been the briber.
I have lied and been the liar.
I've been the bully and false-crier.

I do these things and do them still
And everytime I think I've conquered I lose my will
There are days when I wear eight million facades
And I look in the mirror and ask
"Girl do you know who you really are?"

I want to confide myself in thousands of pages
So I can rip off my masks and put one less on back later
So that one day, all that's left is the raw uncut unfinished me.

I'm not perfect, I know, but I'm trying
Because its the little battles in our heart
That let us know whether we are living or dying.

This is the slow-down before the speed-bump. The big decision. The all or nothing.
The path you want to work vs. the one you should take.

The added fact that clouded vision makes both a nightmare.

[Crackberry on]

Supposed learning has me bored. Remember the questions that used to make you think? Where did they go?

They must have flown away with the ozone layer. Now, they are haunting martians...

We are left with statements littered with "like" and "you know?"

Teach me something worth knowing. Stop wasting my time.

[Crackberry off]

Every moment things are changing. Tonight, I wish I could teleport myself and stand there hugging whatever bits and pieces of you are broken. Tonight I wish I could put you back together myself, bit by bit to make you whole again.

Crash.

I wonder if you've woken up yet? If you can feel the broken bones? If you can feel my heart breaking with each second that goes by where I don't know the outcome of any of this.

You who formed so much of who I am.

Two spoons, two cups.

Remember those journeys we took to the end of the world?
Remember those hours we spent, transcending time until we were in a world of our own creation?

We were invincible back then, so if anything happens meet me there.

The ins and outs of best friends are complicated. We grew up and grew apart, but we are just different branches from the same seed. You can't leave the people you grew up with behind. (so don't)

Hold on.

I will be pulling on your line,
Keeping you grounded.

And just like that the waters are calm.

I lose myself so easily.

Less stress.

breathe.

breathe.

None of this really matters in the big picture.

breathe.

love.

The shell is cracking.

The edges are wearing thin.

Put me on the phone and I'll explode.

Scorched forests. Ashen skies.

I can't breathe in my own body sometimes.

I just hold it all in.

Water behind the damn.

I'm not passive aggressive, I just don't know how to handle sadness.

Throw the smile back on sweetheart, it feels so much better.

It all breaks down.

Flood.

Catastrophe.

Tears.

Do you remember the Call of the Wild? We used to live our lives so that they revolved around the sun, the moon, the earth. Now, they revolve around so much more, so much less. Light switches and shopping malls. Facts that have no relevance. Yes I know genetics are important but isn't the feel of earth in your hands and seeing something you cared for grow up into something you eat important too?

We eat fruit whose seeds we've never seen. Who's roots touch earth that never dreamed of baring them.

Six billion people. That's six billion hearts filled with love, with hate, with some sort of passion of something that keeps them alive. Six billion - and growing and lots of them go by without knowing the impact each one of their footsteps takes.

Today, wilderness is a shattered illusion. Trails through trees. The United States has laid down so many roads it would cover an area bigger than the entire state of Georgia. "We paved paradise / to put up a parking lot."

I want my hands in dirt and my fingers in fur.
I want to know that I can grow and live and be at peace with the world; that each footstep I take may not bruise the earth, but will help set her free.

I want to be the voice of a new generation, one that says, "I will speak for those who cannot speak, I will do for those who cannot do, and I will live for those who cannot live -- but most importantly I will live with a love that envelopes all and judges none. I will love the Earth who is my home and I will love all creatures great and small for no matter how different we may be, we are united together in our struggle to survive. "

I want to teach people that money does not buy happiness, it only invites injustice.
Lets live.

[need sleep]

The way you feel walking through a corridor of trees on a fall morning is the same feeling expressed in this song. Except I know the world is beautiful. So incredibly beautiful.

If only we could turn our lights off to see just how much the world shines.

I want wilderness.

Dear Rucks,

Beyond the blur the neon signs have cast, there's a message waiting. I've scribbled constellations across the sky trying to send your ship sailing in the right direction. My direction. In the morning, you will wake to the smell of coffee and wood burning in the stove. My hands will bury themselves in your fur.

In the fall, we'll spend the day walking through leaves and you will run through the trees, unable to see their changing colors but able to feel winter calling out to you from your bones. I will smile the way you do when your heart feels complete. You will run up to me with such intensity you'll knock me down. We'll laugh then, playing in the fallen leaves.

In the evening, we will sit, you there, next to me or at my feet. When the snow comes, we will rejoice, for we will play in it, doing what we were made to do: run. At night, we will sleep outside. You in a bed of hay, me next to you, wrapped in a sleeping bag.

We will cross the North. We will dance beneath the northern sky and watch the greens and pinks of the lights capture our hearts. We will be our own wolf pack.

We will be wordless, but we will be speaking the same language. We will be lost and found and lost again. We will be wholly complete in our understanding of one another. And your existence will take shape and be certain because of my existence and my existence will take shape and be certain because of your existence.

Over time, we will gain friends and our pack will grow. Micah will join us. He'll be strong and you two will be brothers. Slowly, our team will grow. Until we are one of many. A family shaped by mutual interest and adoration.

You too, will grow old. Your muzzle will slowly turn white and you'll get arthritis in your back legs. But don't be afraid because when you can no longer walk, I'll carry you wherever you need to go. And when you are too old to pull, you can sit in the sled and stare up at me or up over across the landscape or your family.

One day, your heart will stop too because we cannot live forever. But I'll carry you wherever you go. I'll carry your heart in my heart. And on those cold January evenings when the wind blows just the right way, I'll swear you are still there, standing in the room beside me or sitting at my feet.

Dear Rucks, I love you already. Please, find your way home.

The decisions most pertinent to your sanity are the ones that keep you awake all night. You can't build a life on someone else whether it be love, happiness, idealogy... it's all got to come straight from you, straight from the heart.

I want to travel across the country and see the rocks and stars that shape this earth. A cross country adventure. (Or a run away plan, who knows?)

There is so much to see, to much to do.
How can anyone stand to sit in front of the television letting those precious minutes slip by...

you are the shining light
my true north
the magnetic pull of the compass

if i could walk on water
make you believe or
make you forget

drown me in love


the color of blue
never looked so deep
as when it was outlining your siloutte


you are not the one i wanted.
you are everything i needed.
unsaid words.

and all i want
is a verbal agreement.
we see the world the same...

and yet
forever indifferent...

The smell of autumn always sends my heart toward home, toward the future. In my mind I already have two dogs. I already have a dream rolling like a snowball down a hill, gaining speed and gaining mass. Oh, do I dream big dreams.

As the days get more and more colorful I find myself wanting less and less. The reds and yellows of a humble autumn are enough. Slowly, you fade away.

Someday you walk to the back of the room and just sit and watch. Other days the light of the moon reveals all the words no one wants to say. The elephant in the room.

I miss the way the grass sounds when the wind runs his fingers through it. I miss the intimacy you share with strangers when you sit around a fire and talk about that moment exactly how it is. But mostly I miss the sound of your voice pulling me back home...

Home.

You who are my home my hopes my this and that and the other. The look on your face always driving me mad!

Love. Love you are so fickle so sickly faint hearted is that why you've stayed away?

Notes from my actual Journal on my flight to Alaska:

The way you can rewind time to see yourself in the past. I’m watching a movie of my life trying to figure out how I got here. The sum of my life at any given moment is where I am. Yesterday, I was popping tic-tacs. Today, the adventure begins.

Strange, but I’m not scared or nervous. I know this is where I am supposed to be. I know I got this life of mine right so far. Sometimes you get so certain you are doing what you are meant to that you have no room in your heart to be afraid.

I know this is strange to say but the feeling that fills me up more than any other is “home.” I’m going home to the sea, home to the mountains, home to Alaska.

In a sea of people I find myself swimming in ideas. The economic meltdown has me trying to untangle knots and webs that were in place long before I was born. I have so many ideas buzzing about solution some of them are just salt on the wound.wouldn't it be great if everything unraveled like waves upon the ocean

The dark of night can only last so long. With eyes on the future the sun never seemed so bright. I miss the cold breezes by the ocean that pause just beneath your neck waiting to kiss you, making you feel so at home and so alive. I feel like the warm refrain of that jazz song that always gets caught in your head the one that makes you feel happy and sad and so incredibly alive all at once.

For some reason, the saddest songs always resonate the most in my fragile bones.

I miss the rain on the days where all I want to do is stare out the window and think about everything that's floating in my heart. Sometimes the moments around me feel like music, feel like words, feel like the vision of a heart on fire.


Here we go again. The clouds are the pillows in the sky that we rest the dreams we can't reach on. The ever repeating chords of the piano. The faint riff of a guitar line. In my head symphonies are birthed in every breath I take. The way I see things is in progression.

"I am in love with myself and no one else" The human said.

Nights with friends are always the best.

From up close everything is so starry eyed and clear. Until you factor in the distance and everything that's still unspoken. At the end of my day with or without you there I feel full up. I can't complain about this life of mine when even the smallest things line up so perfectly.there is far too much to be grateful for and I can't help but revel in simple pleasures.


The way songs have been colliding with my soul leaves me feeling like that moment in spring right before everything's about to bloom.

And for all the bad things that still remain in this world I can't help but think that we shall overcome. The light of the sun still burns in my soul.

You know I may not have everything but I certainly have enough.

Tonight even the universe is singing it's applause on my tent roof in the form of a thousand little raindrops. Tonight is the end of something and the beginning of something else entirely new.

Everyday a promise.
Everyday the possibility to begin again.

Tell me again how we were running
So fast that our footprints became stars
How our hands were latched
Together holding on the way
Wings do to their body.

Tell me again, how it was
And the way our voices intertwined
And filled up the night
like water does in a bucket
Till we were overflowing.

Then show me how it stopped,
the way time can sometimes
And everything changed forever.

Tell me you’d do it again.
Tell me you’d fix it if you could.
Tell me this isn’t worth dying for.

In the dark of night the lime light always looks so delicious. Plagued by those deep desires everything becomes that much more clearer. The lines blur over. Fact grows less confident, fiction grows more bold.

In the bright glow of the sun the path you must wander becomes so clear. Like the ridge line on a mountain top, only less easy, less fun and the views are far more hazy - but still every bit as exposed. Just keep one foot in front of the other.

Things like this are oh so trivial.

Just the second hand smoke. The after effect. The awful alternative.
the fun part is knowing your there. the not-fun part is knowing that you don't care.
Shock-therapy: "cut the head off the dog" (Bolivian Economics style.)

at trust at love and hope.
in the still of the night the quiet is always the last thing you want to hear.

you can fake it for the air waves.

I'm sorry.

I can't be everything i want to be and i never own up to everything i want to be. second chances are the first start to everything. Stop fucking with me.

I can't deal with plagiarism. I can't deal with anything that I can even misconstrue as being anything else than what it actually is.

In the midst of a storm, you always find yourself thinking just as you've reached the calm. The tide is rising. The damage is about to come.

Left.
Right.
Wrong.
Back.
Forwards.

Fuck directions

hopelessly hopeful.

you can never say what you need to. Speech is silver, but silence is gold.

Love love love
hate love love hate.

Upside down and inside out... from comparing myself / to everyone else around me...

"Please put the doctor on the phone cause i'm not making any sense"

my back has been breaking from this heavy heart.

Come back with the answers.
Stop running.
Just stop running.

Gray sweatshirts are the furthest place from home. Embrace the anger.
Love the hate. And just move to the beat. Just move on. Fairytales are way to overrated, you are way to smart for that shit.

you get so confused by simple things. stand tall, fly straight, QUACK.

stop falling short. you are so much better than what you are settling for. Set the bar high. Fuck the fact that everyone falls short. Fuck. It doesn't matter


***

life is short so love the one you got...

it is the little things


the smile during the day

that certain note from that special song

it gives you hope

it gives you life

enjoy it

swim in it


because it is your time, time to shine, time to smile, time to be you


nothing else matters but that moment in time, that pull in space

love it, hold it


live it...

***

easier said then done.

If you can't love the one you love , love the one your with. Except

Every fucking time it's always that one look that "if i could look" that "god I want to look" that FUCK THIS IT ISN'T FAIR LOOK. God. Someone should just be like FUCK YOU, you suck. I rock. fuck you fuck you fuck you... HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO FUCKING TELL HIM?! At least 9 tonight. He hasn't got a clue.

I know. I know who I should love. Who i want to love. But it isn't logical. So confused.

***

fate fell short this time / your smile fades in the summer.

so goddamn ironic.

you think you can let an idea go until you remember how brightly the fire burns inside you.

The way life unravels forcing you to choose is so unfair: The ethical course of action versus that of your heart. How can you compete - when one goes against the very nature of your humanity where the other goes against the nature of your soul. Dishonesty.

Always choose human. Always choose the moral path.

Is honesty always right? Dishonesty, too, can be a virtue. It is not always proper to "spill ones guts." The writing on the wall is sometimes in hieroglyphics and maybe, it'd be wrong to decipher it.

I can't get you out of my head. My eyes close and I sleep to dream and dream to sleep and wake to find that all my actions revolve around that one glimmer of hope that doesn't exist. Painful.

Remember that time when you were eight years old and you went out in a fighter plane? You fought the migs not because you didn't care for the enemy pilots but simply because you didn't know what other choices where out there....

But somewhere in all the years you grew up and learned. It's not as simple as A or B. Left or Right. Every path has ten million forks and it's up to you to find the right one.

The ins and outs of being yourself are never more tricky than when it involves someone else...

If I could rewrite the past, I'd write it so that in the present you wouldn't be flesh and blood and bone. You would still just be a figment of my imagination.

You would still just be petty stone uncarved. An idea of an idea of an idea.

To love is a painful ordeal indeed.

1.
Last night you
wandered in my dream
tail wagging

A little skip in your step
your brown eyes
big, wide and begging

A hello long overdo

2.
The ruffles in my sleeping bag
Cling where you should lie
and feel nothing like fur.

3.
Once wandering,
we found a dead deer
And you

In solemnity
Barked
once
And lay nose nudging
her feet

Saying, I'm sorry
I'm so sorry, We
Didn't make it in time
Like you were best friends

4.
The conversation
We had when you were dying

You waiting for me
Then looking fervently
Into my eyes, asking

And me saying, yes, yes,
It's fine, I'll be fine.

5.
Me, on the beach alone
Searching for somewhere
to put my head
To mourn.

From the inside out everything is all wrong. You look like a dorwning man standing in that puddle, she says.

She says.
He says.
They say.
He says.
She says.

Are you hearing this???

copy that...

cycle it over.
Relax.
Repeat.


The passage of time is a fickle thing. One moment your up to your head in fireweed the next thing you know it your up to you knees in books. In and out and in between pages, places, faces.

So many different races going on right now. I'm not sure which ones I'm racing. I'm not sure which one's I've lost or won or am just standing on the side-lines cheering.

"Boy, why are you crying?"

Lost your shadow again. Well I won't sow that sucker back on. Drift on guiltless. Get swept away among the stars. Scream your freedom. Sing your shame. Stutter all the in betweens and you-know-whats and all those secrets lying precariously inbetween your lips.

Sometimes your fingers hit the keys and spill secrets that aren't even yours. Sometimes you start typing and the rhy-rhy-rhythm catches you so off guard you start writing something and you have no idea what it means. The sound of your subconscious is a powerful thing.

Let that lion roar, baby.

And sometimes you get so lost at Staring at the stars you miss all the rockets sailing just past your head.
Don't wish on shooting stars. Wish on stars that have the courage to shine where they are.

Nature whispers secrets in the wind and if you're quiet you can hear them. The pitter-patter of fox feet on the lawn always reminds me of spring time, even in the fall.

Somedays you wake up with hairpins and bow ties. Sometimes you wake up with lives (lies) sprawling out at your fingertips and you don't know what to do so you WRITE. Right.

You write the wrongs or the wrongs write you and you right the wrongs and you fight the write but you can't fight the right because write always wins and you right yourself up just to see your head spin and you write the right that you want to be right but it always ends up coming out wrong and

there we go.

Another deja vu.

Did you know, I can see angels kissing the devil inside of you.

The truest miracle of All.

And you can't get the record out of your head that keeps spinning and saying ALL WARS START IN OUR HEARTS AND THAT'S WHERE THEY SHOULD BE FOUGHT and you can't stop dreaming of this and that and the other where you right the wrongs where there is PEACE ON EARTH and GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN and all that stuff everyone remembers at christmas but forgets the other eleven and a half months of the year.

Did you know in World War One on Christmas at a battle field two enemies who were shooting each other the day before played a game of soccer together? The next day, they blew each other to smitherines.

I don't understand.

The ins and outs of ins and outs of ins and outs of in and outs of in in in and out out out

Please. Please. Please.

you write what you think before your mihnd can digest it and end up throwing up everything that doesn't make sense at the moment.

Did you know, I can see the devil kissing angels inside of you

And look

look

look

on this day a savior is born

and on this day a kingdom is born
and on this day a star is born
and on this day a doctor
and a lawyer
and a mother
and a boy destined to murder

they're all born.

Everyone born.
Living
breathing

Oxygen
the ins and outs of breath in your lungs an automatic response from your brain --- the will to live --- oxygen becoming carbon dioxiode becoming food for plants becoming food for you again and again and again

Up.
Down.
Up.

Lungs upon lungs of movement. A breath of wind (God's whisper).

And all of a sudden you lean closer and say, look at this, look at this, a perfect snowflake.

And I once thought that if you had perfection in your hand it would stay there
But all it does is
melt
away

the moment you grab hold of it.

I once saw a perfect flower
but I passed it by
and left it

for someone else
to pick

and play
games.

who knew you could float so well when you are such a dead weight.

the good.
the bad.
the inbetween.


face off.

I remember that night when I first emailed you. Before you were signed. Before anything big had ever really happened. We talked on the phone for hours, that first time.

Then, remember those first few nights when you were shaking on stage and your voice cracked at all the wrong times? You had to dance real hard to make it look like you weren't having a seizure. I still don't know how you didn't manage to drop the mic. Everyone was screaming. I wasn't there but you shared stories.

And then you were an explosion. Your face was everywhere, still is. The first time I heard you on the radio you were on the other end of the line. I was listening to you in double.

"Are you playing our stuff?"
"No, it's on the radio"
And our giggled excitement.

You sent a lot of dead end emails then. I emailed back exits for you.

Little escapes to nowhere.

But you started dating that girl and the emails are less frequent, if at all.

Now, the best conversations we have are you on the radio and me listening casually along with my friends who don't know any better, don't know anything. The stuff at your core is always the last layer revealed.

"This song is my favorite." They say. "I love it." But they don't know the eight different drafts you jammed through the line that one night at two in the morning, waking me from needed sleep.

Your word choice is wrong.
Your rhythm is off.

And you saying, you can't play a lick of guitar. you can't keep rhythm in your own stories. you can't can't can't.

But I could write a good line and you could keep a good beat and we really did make some beautiful music those nights on the telephone. You with your guitar playing a lick resembling the melody, me saying whatever came to mind.

Still, your favorite moment was always the pause in the track. The little space of infinity between one song and the next, where, for just a second, everything is perfect.

I want my first book to be killer and something I'm proud of.
This book about my trip seems dumb to me, but I keep writing.

I have adventures unravel like roots in my brain until things are growing so chaotically I can't make sense of it all.

Yesterday I spent two hours reading 120 pages I wrote in the ninth grade and was amazed and what I'd written and what I could do with it.

The question is, will I?

Novels about people fall into two categories: ones that are escapist. Generally adventure story. Plot oriented. The other are undoubtled about the human condition. The second type is rare as it's harder to write. The fine details that define our lives take great observance to capture...

I started another blog to catalogue my favorite quotes because I have too many notebooks lying around the house with scattered leafings of some such line from some such book. This way, I can have them all in one place and labeled too. Nifty. Eventually, I think I'll share my collection but for now it's under strict LOCK DOWN.

The way the world works you either find yourself at the top of the pyramid or somewhere in the middle making sure the whole thing doesn't topple over.

Somehow, I think I'm standing outside the system watching it work, watching it fail.

Are you meant to live to make yourself happy by pursuing your own dreams or are you meant to live to help others and in helping make yourself happy?And if both paths lead to the same destination, wouldn't it be more prudent to take the path that's more inclusive?

But how do you know that both path's will lead you to the same place? If all it is, is FAITH, than isn't that a question of "Is there a God?" Because isn't the point of religion GIVING UP YOURSELF and how else can you give up yourself but by giving up that which you want most whether it be becoming a ROCK STAR or MUSHER or a LIBRARIAN

To me, dog sledding seems like a selfish sport. More concerned with mutt than man. But I live it, I love it.

So the question is, do you pursue what's in your HEART or do you pursue what will help the hearts of those who need it most?

AND WHY ARE THERE NEVER ANSWERS TO THE HARDEST QUESTIONS

and maybe the whole reason we ask them is because we already know. Maybe the reason this question still floats into my head and causes chaos the way a machine gun blast causes chaos in a resturuant because I keep CHOOSING the WRONG answer.

The chaos of being home is amazing. Rope swing jumps at two a.m. Summer has never felt so alive as in the midst of lightening bolts and fireflies. The world will fall apart and put itself back together in a matter of minutes.

Ghosts are the conversations you have in the woods when no one else is walking. Ruminations on so many people, places, things. Don't fear the dark. There's nothing there we can't handle. The way people change is fascinating. The way you measure your change by other people and how they have or have not changed. The way you measure you by what used to scare you and what doesn't.

There are sharks in the water, but you still gotta breathe deep and dive...

The last few days have blurred together with surprising easy. Cape Cod summers are fast. Night and day shift so quickly - always something new to call your attention.

On Wednesday old friends were surprised. I was surprised - their reactions, my own reactions to certain people. The way things changes and things don't change... That ever repeating cycle. Yes. no. Yes no. Yes. no... (rain, shine.)

The way the water is a million degrees is frightening. I could live with the salt on my lips, the wind on my face, and that vast endless blue stretching before me for a billion sunrises and sunsets.

The way I know what I know before you know it, terrifies us.

The only thing missing on days down at the water is the smell of wet fur and hosing down that shining face so grateful for all those thrown sticks or balls or whatever it is you have, you think this is all you need.

Ocean. Sky. Boat. Friends. Dog.

***
I want to wake you like a sunrise
Blow stars into your eyes
So you can see galaxies every time you awaken
(I hope you are shaking with love of life)
***

Anticipation is the best drug. I can't stop smiling. I can't get a grip of myself enough to write coherently. I don't even know why I'm so excited. I feel like the universe is being born inside me and that every minutes something grand is going to happen.

I'm having to beg the clock to move. The second hand has virtually stopped and time likes teasing those eagerly awaiting. This is the moment before the gun is fired, before the ribbon's ripped, the bottle broken on the ship.

Just take a deep breath.
The world only moves slow for so long girl, cherish it while it lasts...

The way you say goodbye is in long exaggerated gestures. Always overly dramatic, but always from the heart. It's hard to leave a love behind. Especially when your lover is something intangible: the perfect summer, the contour of the land, the way everything always comes out perfect here in Haines.

The way the phone-line goes dead and all your left with is static. Redial, call back. Except imagine if you didn't. Imagine if you let the static take over for two full years and then randomly, as if on queue you and the telephoner redial within moments of each other.

BREATH IN

Everyday I feel more and more confused about my next move. Certain and Uncertain. Clear vision. Blindness. The worst is misplacing the only outline you have out of this place. I have no idea where my phone went. I've been in three places. One. Two. Three. Where could it go? It's in NONE of those.

My mind is falling apart.

I flash back to the last time I lost this lover that I cradle oh so close to my ear and remember finding it in that part of Boston I'd never even been to. What?

The improbability drive has stolen my phone. Again. Hopefully some depressed robot isn't using it as a spare part resource box. Hopefully it is so improbable that I'll ever find it again that the improbability drive will spring once more into action. Can't use what you don't have.

Life life life.

And then some days you run into the people you want to see and don't want to see all at once. Temptation is such a dangerous word. Balloons falling through the sky. Impossibly possible. Wanting and not wanting. Living and not-living.

Sick is a temporary hiatus in all of your normal proceedings. Sick is that momentary lapse from life. Sick is not fun. Sick is not social. Sick sick sick of it and sick and being sick and feeling sick and looking sick and coughing and sneezing sick ill awful gross. DISGUSTING. Breath in. Hack up a lung. Breath out. Tired tired tired and sick and sick sometimes the sky looks the way you feel all gray and numb and tired.

Sometimes everything you're feeling manifests itself as the weather and the world just says "me too" sometimes you can't stop bitching and moaning about not feeling well because, well, you don't and everyone else never gets sick and here you are. SICK. The ins and outs of my white blood cell count, the amount of sodium or potassium in my blood, the number of platelets and the amount of calcium.


The ins and outs of not knowing when to give or when to take or even just when to let up, give up, and let things roll the way they will. When to help, when not to help. The constant nagging thought of wondering how much of this life really belongs to me. How much of it belongs to you, and him, and her, and that guy over there...

how do I know whether to keep it or to just...give it away.
And would it really be that?

To help, to live forsaking myself.
To live, forsaking others.

Is there a balance, or is it black and white?

FREAK OUT.

- Fade in -

In the moonlight, I would swear you were an angel with a halo made of stars. Still, you don't even know who you are. [ And that's what makes you beautiful.] Sweet sweet sweet love of mine. You've got that magic spark. Oh sweet love of mine, so divine.


There are a million names I"ve been calling myself these days and all of them start with beautiful. Last night I felt like a stegasourous in the ice age. So out of place you could see me growing extinct. You could see what's left of me sixty-five million years into the future. I froze so competely. Just bones. Bones and bones and bones. I wonder what the archeologists will say when they excavate me carefully dusting around my bones. Trying to presevere my remains. Even that's an awkward process...


I feel like a sunset exploding. Yes, I know that doesn't make sense but still that's how I feel. Calm beauty exploding into gorgeousness. I dance the dance I need to dance but add my own moves. [the waltz has never looked so jazzy, so new-age, so sauve.]

They say you can't go home. But I'm not so sure what the hell that even means anymore. You can have a million homes. Home is where you're heart is, and mine has never been so decidedly pinned down. Every day is a new game of pin your wings down. Every night is another chance to take off and fly. Someday I'll wake up and realize I have best friends everywhere. All the world is a friend you just haven't met yet.

When you stray out far from your roots like that windy vines wrapping itself upward and away from its origin, you learn that all the people at home, even the ones you didn't know are family, and you learn that all the people here, the ones that you just met and take you in are family too.

lovely lovely lovely
little life of mine.

- Fade out -

Cold streak.

The crazy lights of merry go rounds and ferris wheels. Unrivetingly not chaotic. No carnies, no fried dough or cotton candy, just people, music and good times. The music floats through your brain the way the clouds merrily toss themselves just above the ocean water, skimming the surface.

Rain rain.

Been trying to think less. Ease the pressure on my brain and all those other needy organs. Just don't worry. Hakuna Mattata. Ins and outs of whatever comes your way.

Tonight we dance in the rain. Tomorrow, stars and boulevards.

It feels like the leaves should be falling back into the earth to start that whole decomposition process. Lovely Lovely Lovely...

Climb mountains. Cross Oceans.
Move.

Stop the tape. Don't record here. Sometimes you have memories playing in your head and all you want to do is hit rerecord. Fast forward. Stop.

In and out and in between.

Hear the music. Hear something...

The sun's chased the moon away. Today I'm swimming in my own skin and I've never felt this close to drowning and blowing it all up big. It's strange how the things you miss are so simple. The welcome home. The goodbye, have a nice day. The call to see where you are.

You're supposed to leave the nest but who knew it would be so hard? I guess it takes a lot of falling before you fly. Last night I sat on a picnic bench to stare at the gray gray sky.

Somedays your the man holding the knife, other days your the man with his hands up. I walk around rhyming in my head. No steel attached to my belt, no lead. Just hands in the air crying "peace! peace! peace!" I want people to stop hurting and feel the love that blankets them like sunbeams after a rainy day out in the wind.

I walked with the sun last night and saw her til she came around and showed her lovely morning reds. Behind the sea she lurks when no ones watching. She saw the scared look that came across my face and the way I shook in the night off the ocean's afternoon reflection.

Walk up the hill. Cool Off. Walk down the hill. Cool Down. When you get all shaken up it takes a good friend and a good dog to get you back in your senses. It's strange to think there are people in this world with only vilence on their mind. Conflict resolution should be ranked higher on the "to teach" list apparently.

Words are swords in their own right and you can swing them as fast as your tongue can spit. Hiss. Hurl. Words hurt, but steel hurts too.

This morning as dawn gently crawled through the window trying not to wake me, I realized how much I care about what people think and how it shouldn't matter. Lately, I've been wondering where the urge to want people to like you comes from. I'm not a weak person, yet I'm terribly sensitive.

Toughen up.

Colors float across the sky like a spilled water color. The other night I found myself awake in one of Walker's paintings trying to escape. Strangley headed creatures would not let me escape their grasp.

Last night lessons were learned and lines were drawn. It was clear who the real family was and who it wasn't. In the end we boiled the ocean and burnt the field and ate everything we could get our hands on: halibut, dungeoness, asparagus, corn, baked beans, baked potatoes, onions, grilled bananas, sheeshaw. Our moods were red helium balloons let go on a bright summer day in the city. Our stomachs were anchors nailed to the ocean floor. We swayed.

Slept inbetween worlds last night. Not at home, but not-not at home. The hotel is a strange place to find yourself wandering at night. Be wary of spooks.

XO

It's a strange phenomenon that happens. Why do we have to justify sadness. Totally lost it last night and just wanted to be home, in my bed, under my sheets with my hand running across the top of that wooden windowsill.

But I wasn't at home.

Four cloth walls only protect you from the elements. They don't keep secrets safe. Walls of wood and stone are so much more suitable for those nights you feel alone and just want to cry yourself to sleep. Plus, cloth doesn't slam. There's no loud comforting noise to show your pissed off.

The way you just want to scream and do and don't because you want to be loud and don't want to be loud all at once. For some reason, sadness is shameful. Tears are stains not stars so you don't want anyone seeing them fall down your face. No one makes wishes on those...

I just want to live and love and breathe.

Painful realizations are always the ones that come when you're already feeling down. The fact my family can afford to come but won't. The fact that no one fom home ever calls except my mom and sister. The way you call people and leave messages but no one ever calls you back. And the fact that everyone else has a million people calling from home. What's up with that?

And slowly I'm learning the worst torture is to get a message and not call back, leaving someone waiting for the other end of a conversation to start.

Radio in.
Static.
Static.
Static.

Cut the line.

Strangely, I'm learning that even if you think of someone as family, they may not feel the same. I've got you're back broski, but do you really have mine? And I'd give you this skin off my back if you needed it - you probably woulnd't do a damned thing.

Fire burned.

It's strange to watch the progression of days measured in wildfowers. From small little stalks with roots and shoots to budding purples and pinks across the field. Everything is a glow with color. Flowers are fireworks in the grass. They linger and then slowly explode, decompose. Their sparks not burning, but still oh so bright.

Camera eyes always capture the worst moments. Looking back you always remember the oh no's and oh why's. Smiles fade. You remember that time you cried. The time you lied. The time you did everything you didn't want to.

Sometimes I think I try to rationalize my sadness. Try and make it logical. When I can't, I make up a new past where everything seems reasonable and I'm not responsible for why I'm down. It's someone else's life and I'm just empathizing. Patting them on the back and saying I wish I could take this on for you.

I enjoy a good cry when I'm down.
I just hate to admit that I like crying for the sake of crying.
No reason needed, just that I feel down...

Words are explosions you can control. I do not speak projectiles. I do not vomit rockets as if I were trying to hail you. I speak butterflies on warm summer days gently floating across the air. I speak mountains into existence. I speak the dreams in my head they come out like a needle and thread and weave their way into reality. I speak visions. I speak so you can see the unseeable, the unknowable, the unthinkable.

Music is nothing but movement. Wind. The skies are blue. The hills are green. In love and so far out of it. The same old shennanigans never work the same way twice. Shake it up a bit. This morning I could breath into my reflection and make the girl starring back at me shimmer and shine.

Ripples are the only way anything ever starts. One. Four. Twelve. You always start alone (or do you?). It always ends in multitudes.

The way I have been thinking is anything but train-like. I have tree root thoughts these days. Everything is growing up and outwards. I'm growing jungles with all the things I think. Pirhannas are living in my waters. Best not fall in.

blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Haines Base, Haines Base,
Returning in 3. 2. 1.
Over and out.

It's amazing the things you can do while the sun's still shining. Isn't it strange how days always seem to slowly drift by but how time still passes so quickly? The days are stacking up like granite slabs to build the next wonder of the world.

I love how everything you see always seems more beautiful. Every moment just zen. The blades of the grass, the way the sun catches the waves rolling into shore with their long hellos and slow goodbyes, the dance of glowing emberss on the wind like little stars travelling just about your head little constellations trying to guide you home.

Yesterday was nothing short of amazing. Somedays you just live the dream. Paddle. Hike. Climb. Good company. Great Views. What more could you want?

More later.
Xo.

The sun is always rising. Last night I was greated like an old friend by someone who, really, should have been a stranger. An aquaintance. Things are different when you only know so many people. Things are different when you've shared a tent. Who knew four woven walls could change so much.

It's strange how one person can change a group so much or so little. The arrival of new faces always sends me soaring. The return of old faces is always oh so centering. It's strange to think that after the weekend we're heading towards winter again. The ball has only just started rolling.

Last night Walker and I cooked asparagus, mashed potatoes, vegetable stirfry, salad, and steak. You think living in a tent would present a lot of challenges, but strangely it's freeing. It comes down to you and the essentials.

I finally got a library card yesterday. $20. And I rented two books. The one book I just started is sickly disturbing memoir about an obsessive father. Check it out: House Rules by Rachel Sontag.

Yesterday I walked through a forest that has been talking to itself for longer than I or more parents or my grandparents have been alive. Roots run like secrets across the floor stretching out to say "hello, I'm here, I miss you." Phone conversations to the other side of the forest are wired in easily. It's never been as easy to send a fax from here to there. Your arms are all branches and you've never looked so green.

Out here, the burning embers of a fire are the only television you'll ever need. The lack of electricity is dazzling. Do you remember when every falling star was an omen? Now we can't even see the sky. The sun burns slowly illumanating every corner of night. In the city, the sun sets and gives birth to the artificial glow of streetlights and headlights and --- the whole world is drowning out the stars.

I'm alive and well. The glow of faces by the fire never made me feel so warm.

At night, cruise ships light up like fireflies spreading love across the ocean. But did you know they're tearing the lover they call out to open? 6 inches per gallon. Can you fathom that? You don't have to be deep minded to realize that's shallow progress.

We may have big pockets but the earth is on a limited budget and she's running out of cash. Soon, we're giong to have to hitch hike our way out of this place.

Hope your towel is handy.

The way the sun shines out onto forever creating a golden ocean could make you cry. In the right light, it almost looks like a serving platter. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and find an enormous feast spread out over the ocean. Eat up.

The mountains look like giant lizards that long ago found themselves in a warm sunny spot and decided to lie down and ended up being absorbed by the ground. Trees slowly weaving their way in and amongst their scales, until one day you couldn't even see their faces.

Do you know what a thousand years of snow looks like? The bluest ice you've ever seen. The way those swedish eyes will stun you, so will the cold snow that carved them.

From where I'm standing I can see a hundred years of history. Below my feet is a foundation put up in 1902. Everything decomposes into something else. Sometimes you see the world just as it is. Mostly my mind reads in metaphor. Today the sky is sleeping on the rocks letting the gentle till of the ocean wash her back. She's singing "the field's are burning, the fire's warm, come on mama, take me home."

Somedays you get so out of touch with a conversation you just sit there and mock it in your head. God or no God, live laugh love and celebrate life. Simple pleasures always taste better when your smiling and surrounded by the people you love. Last night at the campfire everyone started takling about religion but I couldn't be moved to say a thing. In the end, the things we know about are enough. In the end, the mystery is what you need. In the end, quiet faith keeps it real.

No matter how far we've come, it says a lot to say that by a campfire near the ocean settled down between some trees is still the only place I'd like to be. We dream big and live big, but in the end all it takes is a couple of happy souls and some warm embers to catch your heart on fire.

Love this life. Dig the simplicity. Breathe deep. Sometimes the only way to fly is off the deep end. Sometimes the only place to breathe is underwater. Catch a wave and choke on it. The suck in that sweet oxygen after you break the surface. From the bottom of the pool the sun always looks a million times more inviting. The light at the end of the tunnel. That next place.

Keep swimming kid. Jaws is in the water, but who gives a damn.
Living never felt this good.

More later.

Sometimes you find yourself in the unexpected doing unexpected things. Crave the moment and don't let it slip away. Forest Gump said life is like a box of chocolates but I think he got it all wrong. It's more like a popsicle. You either enjoy it or it melts away in front of you. Get messy.

There's something familiar in the mountains and not living with a solid roof over your head. 24 days in the mountains and 3 more months in a tent. that 24 day was something else. You get to this place where everything comes together so that whether things work out ordoesn't matter because there you are. In it. Living it. One deep breath at a time. Simplicity at its finest.

Alaska living is refreshing. It always rains and shines and gets too hot and too cold all in the same day. There's something grounding about the weather's daily unpredictability. Sunny to rain to cloudy to hot to throw on your mittens cold to rain to sun to sun to sun to rain. Magical.

At work. On my feet. I'm not sure what tonight is bringing but Ian (a boy at the campground who's taken a vow of silence) wanted to have a pasta party. I'm down.

Sorry. I missed the blog too.
XO
-Red hoodie out.

The clock is tearing itself from the wall again. The ins and outs of an arguing couple blaring between the shattered pieces of its gears. The way the days are painting themselves out looks like that scribbled nightmare where you had left for good this time and were saying that pasta was only good for throwing at the ceiling anyways.

From the other side of the world, the secrets your whispering are gearing up to create storms here. Stop spluttering nonsense and start screaming your lungs out. I want tornadoes to wreck my shores. Butter-fly effect your heart out. The levies have been built, the base has been fortified. Bring it.

I don't even know what I'm saying. This has nothing to do with anything except for the fac that the words that I'm writing must come from somewhere within my brain.

Bleeding rainbows in my eyes.
Time to stop writing. For once, I've confused myself...

There is a whole wide world out there and I don't know where to start. Sometimes, I spell confusion with whatever's handy: Shattered plates across the kitchen floors, old card games thrown out too soon. I was thinking about that time when the world didn't seem quite so scary. Everywhere you go there's another wall being put up, another bomb being dropped. I'm tick-tick-ticking wait for it all to start.

Somedays summer floats just behind your shoulder, waiting for you to turn around and kiss her. The weather has been absolutely amazing the last few days with the wind whispering his secret every chance he gets. The subtle sounds of someone singing you're almost there.

The things they don't teach you are that sometimes you have to create a little pain.

I have loved deeply and I have hurt deeply.