A Force/A Stranger

I've seen fairy circles and fireworks, and I can no longer see you.  Fourth of July explosions of emotion flash across my eyes, a blurry filter between now and then.  I'm addicted to coffee again, addicted to thinking and wanting to throw up and expel the last eclipse and the next one and long car rides to nowhere and memorial fires and mini bells.  In Deutschland hast du mich vermisst.  I close my eyes to a fantasy world.  A world where I was never hurt, where I can still touch skin, where the Promised Land lived up to its name.  Like black waterfalls, I gush something sinister.  Something that I think I can control, but gravity is stronger than I am.  I am a force.  You are a stranger.

Just Some Good Arcade Fire Lyrics


Now the music divides us into tribes
You grew your hair so I grew mine
You said the past won’t rest
Until we jump the fence and leave it behind

With my old friends, I can remember when
You cut your hair, I never saw you again
Now the cities we live in could be distant stars
And I search for you in every passing car

Halfway

Some photos are put away.  Some time has passed.  One foot out the door.  The other one in.  Check out.  Checked in.  Highs and lows.  I'm halfway.  Some nights I sleep.  Some days I'm afraid.  I knock on your door.  You love me halfway.  I walk in with a smile.  I stay silent sometimes.  My mind is open.  My mind is halfway there.  Nails are half painted.  Hair just below my shoulders.  I met you four years ago.  Four years to halfway.  Half of my heart sinks.  Half afloat.  Hate is love.  Fear is unknown.  I roll like a stone.  I crash like a boat.  I tick like a clock.  I explode like a bomb.  I am a ghost, and you love me halfway.

Reflect/Deflect

I walk to a place outside, away from home.  It takes an unknown amount of time to get there, the same amount of time to return.  When I get there, I pause.  I face myself, she faces back.  We stare at our reflection, waiting for the other to make a move.  When she moves, I move.  We step back.  We turn.  The walk back is vapid, lame.  I didn't realize what I left behind for her.  She took my grief.  She took my volition.  She took my strength away.  I won't make that walk again for some time.  I can't face her again.  

I Killed a Squirrel

Thump.  It's dead.  I'd rather not call the furry animal "it" but I am not familiar with gender indicators of squirrels (and even if I were, smushed genitals aren't exactly distinguishable).  Just moments prior to me taking the life of this creature, another one of its kind escaped the wrath of my vehicle.  And yet, through life's sense of humor, I killed the next squirrel that dared cross my human path.  Roadkill is never given much thought.  It's gross to most of our kind.  Just another obstruction to our driving.  That poor squirrel took a gamble and lost.

Today I visited the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art which features an exhibit using board games as a medium to mock the gamble of our modern life.  There always seems to be the path that we should take in the Game of Life and the one that we end up on.  Each seemingly trivial choice we make leads to some greater final destination.  What keeps me up at night and rocks my dreams is the uncertainty of which decisions are not trivial and how we might know that now.  I suppose the answer is that we can't know now.  The decisions that we make in the present work themselves out in some way into the future.  The great unknown.

I am not good at meditation (and I don't actually know how to properly do it), but when I attempt it, I imagine myself as a house.  Like the type of house you drew in kindergarten: square frame, two windows and a door, and an equilateral triangular roof.  I have function but no emotion.  As this house, I quickly pass through landscapes: a jungle, a hilly town, a desert, and alas, an open body of water.  There I float.  I feel no cold nor warmth, yet I sway as the wind sways.  I float.  There is nothing around me but sea and sky, and there I float.  I float.  I float.  I float.