History
11/12/2023
09/03/2023
04/02/2023
A Story Unfolds
We stared at a map on the wall
During a break from paying our dues
Just you and me and the man in the tree
Lens focused on capturing what cannot be seen
A howl from the other room warned of a time to come
That would define us all too soon
Like brilliant silver light from a dying moon
Like a tangled romance getting bad reviews
Life doesn't always fit the narrative you choose
And love isn’t a commodity to be consumed
We eventually stopped staring at that map
Found a road that’d take us where news traveled slow
Like a pattern on the loom we began to emerge
To live our lives without the urge to edit and reframe
We are like a vine that can’t be trained
Disparate threads wind their way to disarray
Like brilliant silver light from a dying moon
Like a tangled romance getting bad reviews
Life doesn't always fit the narrative you choose
And love isn’t something to be misused
Fold back the corners to align the pattern
This highway is long and the journey rough
The signs marking the coastline invite you to stay
But only if you don’t mind perpetual sunshine
And if you can find the throughline along the way
We never found our destination but ended up in heaven all the same
The sea still roars, waves crash even when no one’s around
The two of us left behind the blinding light of recognition
Forever to wander the sacred enclaves of truth and intuition
The stars burn for you and me in our perfect patch of desolation
No song sweeter than the murmurs that call us home
Like brilliant silver light from a dying moon
Like a tangled romance getting bad reviews
Life doesn't always fit the narrative you choose
And love isn’t something to be refused
12/25/2021
The Limitations of Expertise
Who's story am I allowed to tell? Can I hand over free rein to my imagination so it can wander unchecked as it dictates the rules of an existence lived outside of my skin? The safe play is to write what I know; access to opportunities and the freedom to consider more than one path in life. Does my background translate into an echo chamber, or an offensive display of privilege? Either way, not much of a page turner and closer to a head-scratcher.
What’s it like to be human? I think I can speak to that experience with some level of expertise, but what’ll it take for me to offer a more inclusive narrative of who we are as a species? Here today and destined to become a memory, if we’re lucky. Stardust, at the very least.
06/30/2018
Surreal Estate
If someone uses the phrase "safe as houses," think twice before you accept their invitation to come around for tea. Houses are portals to places we've never been, and would do well to traverse with care. Is it hospitality or the promise of the unknown that propels us to cross the threshold as we stand on the stoop examining the door? It is power all the same. This old house is charming and a curse. A house needs good bones to support dark corners and hidden rooms. Buyers, cellars; agents of forces too great to contain. And gardens are camouflage for that which must be kept covered.
03/09/2018
dinner
longing for the old country
where its inhabitants would eat your tender belly
and spit out what would be left of any backbone
you are neither just off the boat
nor are you 15 quid short of the price needed for membership
your contacts are clouded by a pretty shade of pussy willow
while you struggle to juggle disparate worlds in the search for the perfect
ISO
02/02/2018
Can I Have Your Number?
A number on the bathroom scale does not determine health or warm fuzzy nudges of "I am the best lookin' bitch on the block!" Rather, how many times I can walk around the block before I get winded is my measurement of cardiovascular wellness. This bipedal mode of locomotion is also a super way to decipher what my back, knees and feet feel compelled to share at any given turn. HAPPY 2018! HAPPY I JUST CELEBRATED MY ___ BIRTHDAY! Again, numbers can be a confusing language when discussing health, and whatever the opposite is. But I will throw out a figure which will help in the writing of this here Love Letter to the Body: 22. There was a time, not so long ago, when I supported an extra 22 pounds on my 5-foot-nuthin' frame. Pleasingly Plump I may have been, but according to this I was overweight, and my numbers (damn pesky things!) sucked. Yeah, this was also a prolonged Blue Period, too. At a heavier weight, I was three pounds away from a number I knew was my Point of No Return. Once I hit that designation on the scale, it was only onwards and upwards for me. My health history and decades of family photos provided all the data I needed to choose a course of action.
Today I feel just right, someone in an official capacity thinks my numbers are acceptable, and I get asked at work what size pants I wear. Unless you plan to buy me a pair of jeans, I humbly submit: What the fuck? Ah, shaming. It does a body good (as in it doesn't really do anything to me, but the numbskull flapping her/his gums apparently gets a boner.)
For the remainder of my journey, I want health and well-being to take center stage, not a dress size or any kind of movement other than that of the bowel. Now to get my Hashtag Game on:
#FoodIsFuel
#HealthNotHate
#KnowYourFamilyHistory
#SayNoToTheShameGame
12/19/2017
The Grid Life
I've tossed all my maps on the Yule bonfire, so you're my guide now. What will the world look like when we make up new coordinates? Ah, the fallacy of maps! They seem to ask: What has power over you?
Maps suggest the uncomfortable, too: Greenland is Bigger because White is Better.
Paper trails, that's all they are.
But the big reason why you hate maps is they take us where we have to go, and that's no way to find home.
10/25/2017
Do like you do
The things you make define who you are. You do what you do to pay the car note, but don't forget to write notes, play notes. Leave a story behind for others to try on. Thoughts and Words and Actions matter. Just know that what lights you up may hardly start a spark in the people you love. So continue to photograph toes. Keep on studying the history of Pidgin. Build your time machine out of all your other half-assed projects.
In order to let go, you'd have had to have clung to something. Watch what happens when you breathe and unravel your beliefs. This shit is for real. What splendid fertilizer!
09/01/2017
No Good Reason
A bromide that sets my teeth on edge is Everything Happens for a Reason. It's insensitive to use that phrase in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, but it's because of this deadly storm that I'm thinking about why we tell ourselves the things we tell ourselves. If we say a sentence, do we understand the meaning? Do we believe the message that comes from an innocuous string of words? How do I process Everything Happens for a Reason after I've read this?
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