praying

Oh.  God.  and this is how you get down on your knees and pray.  this is how you move when you don't think you have an ounce of energy left in your body.  this is how you walk backwards into the same place you've been in for the last eleven years of your life and realize it will always be comforting in its familiarity, but it won't quite be home.  this is how you force a reality: this is one this is two this is three this is four.  and one is two, and two is three, three is four, and four is five.  when you get back to one it's five and nine and sometimes twelve and this is how your force something to be real.  the only reason i'd begin to think there might be something wrong is because i have a hard time doing what i'm supposed to be doing.  the problem is there are two "supposed to be" 's going on.  one's driven by the everyone else and the other's driven by the naked good.  the raw love.  the dawn and dusk of the every day.  the first is the one that counts with numbers that men make, and other is driven by the rise and fall of the sun.  one was before the other, and the latter is taking over.  i can't keep myself in a controlled mind inside a body of a frame that is told how to live.

it's sad that these days

how to live and

how to love

are only one letter in difference but belong to two schools from opposite planets.

so this is how i'm doing these days

this is how i walk into a church and pray, because lord knows i'm drinking my addiction like the sweet virgin mary drinks up my tears... like the emptiness left in a church on monday.  i drink coffee like it will save me, because lord knows i'm looking for something.

karma.

police.

this is how you pray.

l'imparfait, or, my new job.

oh.  some things just sound sweeter with time.  some things smell sweeter with time, too.  it's probably halfway to disgusting, but i always like the split second i inhale when i'm tearing off my work clothes and i smell old coffee grounds lingering all over me.

i can't believe i've been doing this for three years.  the unfortunate thing is, i'm at a new store and i don't have the energy or the focus to put the right words together to get myself away from the god damned register so i can just sit and make coffee.  it calms my nerves.  it's stupid, i know, but it's one of the better habits i've acquired.  but i've been forgetting stupid things like re-brewing coffee...i haven't been on top of my game for almost a month now, and i've never been out of the loop for this long.....

...............(but how do i tell my boss i'm still wrestling with the idea of people in the family trying to kill themselves?  and how do i tell her i'm mourning for his loss and the pain i feel so deeply for my best friend?  you can't explain that shit.  i can't explain how i've been extremely sensitive my whole life.  i blame it on my great grandmother who i have the oddest suspicion was a mystic- and god damn it being the thing i love that i've inherited from her)........

.....but things will carry on. i know i'm the impatient kind.  i know i'm the quiet kind.  i know i'm the every which direction but the one i look like i'm headed toward kind.  i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place and i know this one well because i dug the entire grave myself.  back to back and front to front, it's like one long dance where nobody moves.. and here i am.

i can feel my edges sharpening.  i can feel it when i walk into a room, how everyone sees my five-foot stature and silent shape move around, my hair that has finally grown back and my tiny white frame that holds it all together.  i can feel it when everyone looks at me (and i can feel it when nobody looks at all) and i can feel my edges sharpening because i just don't want things to go back to how they used to be.

"and a physical return does not mean an emotional return" and i can hear those words ringing like "oh. fuck," because i'm always going back for more.  i keep doing it until i get it right.  i know i do.  i always have.  but the difference is i've always gone back to the emotional state... they had always walked hand in hand.  but now the 'had' is a moment in time that is solid.  it's a place.  it's a point that has ceased to move.  

c'est pas le passe compose- c'est l'imparfait, non?

but i'll always be going back for more

because i've never spent just one day on a masterpiece.

and this one

is my life.

i'm just.... betraying a few more monsters i guess.

not really enlightening...

but lord have mercy, this month has been hell.

ive been trying to find some sort of enlightenment in each day, some sort of little lesson to be had with each and every new day.  it's almost a waste to go through an entire 24 hours (and if you're like me, you go through those 24 mostly awake) without discovering something or learning something new.  so here i am, sharing my enlightening experience of the day to the random few that sporadically follow along.

it's really a silly sort of comfort to hear a song come on and realize you know all the words, not because you've desperately listened to it on repeat after buying a cd, or because it's one of the top 100 or something, but because you've absentmindedly listened to it more then enough times over a significant amount of time.

i found myself in this situation today.  it was something like comfort to realize i know all the words to more than a handful of songs playing in the coffee shop- the melodies, the harmonies, the clicks and beats and what all comes with it.  maybe the comfort is in familiarity.  or maybe the comfort is imaginary, because i'm sitting in a tullys, and i swear to god they've had the same playlist since i started and stopped working for them.

really, tullys.

you've been playing "anchored down in anchorage" for a long time.  as far as i can tell, it's been on your playlist since 2006.  the same can be said for a handful of eighties one-hit wonders and a few undiscovered tracks that will probably never make it big.

it's not bad.

but.

come one.  it's been almost two years since i've left your company.

not much has changed?  i've included a photo of myself circa 2007 when i had no hair and wore a tully's apron.

check it.

only as the day is long.

and today and tomorrow are like now and nothing because all i can down is coffee and all i feel like is drinking that god damned black liquid till it runs through my veins and a breathe and i sweat and i cry coffee. and i count and i wait and i storm the four minutes for a french press because they feel like forever every time and by the time i stop and look i realize it's already friday.
and i stop. and i think to myself "where did the week go?" and wasn't it monday i decided i had to make new descisions for myself? and wasn't it wednesday i drove with the windows down blasting rancid taking the 405 to renton, exit five? and i think to myself "god damn" because he shouldn't have died. he shouldn't have taken his life and he shouldn't have felt this way and all of a sudden everything happens all at once and i don't know if i'm driving or dreaming but everything i ever meant to do surfaced to the top of my mind and i wonder where it'd gone this whole time.
and it shouldn't have happened. and i see steven crying on the ledge of a nondenominational undiscriminatory church-like setting and the only reason i know it's him is because he looks exactly like how i've always remembered him in my head - i can see him just how he looked when he was ten. or twelve. however old we all were when we were little and we were still growing up and our friends or our old boyfriends or or damn near aquaintances didn't go off and take their lives. that shit wasn't real yet.
and then i'm there. and i think to myself "lord, do i even know a soul here" and the believers and the non believers alike are all thinking to theirselves at some point or sometime after "is there really a god? are there really souls?" and nobody knows what to do with themselves because we're all afraid when we can't explain what's going on. and it shakes our earth because we don't have any more answers than the person next to us and all at once.... all at once we're all at the exact same place for the exact same reason.
and i don't even know if i have an answer anymore because good people shouldn't go out like that. not with that kind of bang. and later in the night i can hear danny sherrand telling me that "god is the distance between you and what you do." so i take my place in the back and i don't even hear the tears come our my eyes until i've soaked my skirt and god damn it all because i can hear his voice still. i can see him following us back in january when we bough books and made dinner and played music.
and i don't know how to digest this, it's like a piece of meat too well done and too big and already swallowed and stuck in my throat. it's like a drag too long and caught up in my lungs and i can't cough to get it out. it's like all the walls that stop me from moving forward because i can't see over it andi don't know what sort of colors are on the other side. i don't know how to digest it because it's not the first time and it's not the fifth or the last. and god damn.
and i start weighing out all my everythings and nothings i've learned. and i've learned how to do this well because lord knows i've been dealt some cards, and lord knows i've been dealt the kind of cards you don't know how to play. but we're not gambling and it's not a game. so we're not playing, we're all just living and breathing and trying to move one foot infront of the other for this, because we all know one thing: we all know it wasn't supposed to happen and it did.

i can hear all the souls morning and grieving and i can't for one second bring myself to believe that this is okay,
that what ryan did was okay,
that the only reason it feels bad
is because of the social structure
we've built up for ourselves over the years.
i guess i believe there's something greater than us because i heard each and every word dripping out of the mouths and the eyes of each person who loved him. and i believe there's something greater than you or me that i can't begin to dare to put a name on because it's so beyond you and me and your brother and mother and i still can't put a name on it... and i can't put a finger on it, either, but there was something so immaculate that happened on wednesday. you could just breahte in all the numbers of so many people that loved him for a minute or a day or a lifetime and it was all the same because love is love is love.
and you can't tell me you can scientifically explain that.
and that thing, that thing that we call love, that somthing that's so much greater, that something that caused his best friend and his sister to cry so loud from the gut of their souls.
i can't tell you that that was just a chemical reaction in their brain. i can't tell you it was somehthing girls do, either, because i have never seen so many grown men shed tears. i can tell you everyone was there for the same reason, and everyone was doing the same thing: holding on and letting go of something scooped out of their soul- something so much bigger than one or one hundred human persons.
i can tell you something brought a lot of people there that day. i can tell you that no less than two hundred people gathered. i can tell you a lot of things. i can tell you how they smelled and what the backs of their heads looked like, what they wore and how they did their hair for the occasion. i can tell you i took off my glasses. i can tell you we were mourning for the same loss. i can tell you we were mourning for the same life. i can tell you something so specific was evoked within each and every person in that building. i can tell you there was something more than just bodies there. i can tell you people were moved to tears.

and so i'm sitting here with my second pot of coffee. i'm still pouring over my theology books and my french books and i'm breathing just to keep it going. i'm digesting, but i think everyone is. and one thing happens, and then the next, and then i realize, i recall, i remember, that some things can only torment us only as the day is long. so i shift my eyes over to the microwave oven: the one that flashes green and tells me it's ten fifty-seven. fifty-eight. one more hour for the first day of may. tomorrow is a new day to re-adjust and re-digest.
only as the day is long.

i like girls who wear abercrombie and fitch

soundtrack rackin back to nineteen-nineties
like we're twelve and ten all over again
and maybe, baby, you can hear when we steer clear
of the noises we make when we're covering pain
and the plastic sounds of boy bands and other nineties fans
sinks in
because beauty is only skin deep they say
but i guess i'll take it any way i can get it these days.

but god.
really. party like it's nineteen-ninety nine and all these are the classics. because, hey, we only live once. and these still sound like nothing we've ever heard before, cheesy and otherwise :)

never ever - all saints
waterfalls - tlc
bye bye bye - nsync

every other time - lfo
steal my sunshine - ?
tubthumping - chumbawumba
zombie - the cranberries

i want it that way - backstreet boys
don't speak - no doubt
say you will be there - spice girls
and
of course
summertime girls - lfo

barbie girl - aqua
livin la vida loca - ricky martin

ha.