Moving to the beat..

Typically I arrive at the blank page with something to say. Naturally I have nothing to say to the computer or the blank screen before me, and so I pick up a notebook and instead of writing I'll sketch, but I do have something to say, it's just that it is not something I know how to articulate and it's probably best said to someone who could say something back, but here we are once again; the keyboard and myself, with all this space between us.
My cousin came over today. I helped by picking her up at work and driving her over, but that is what cousins are for right? Anyways, she blurts out how achy she feels and how she forgot to eat lunch at lunchtime and found herself sliding out of her chair towards the floor when the clock neared the three o'clock hour. Lunch!! She remembered, solving the mysterious melting of oneself much like ice-cream which has tumbled onto a chin, rolled down the chest to flop in a soft finality on the top of a shoe. Once she ate she felt much better. I love hearing these stories; it really helps to ease my own judgements on what I feel I should be or how my body should behave when I'm hungry.
While I was waiting for her to get off work, I chatted on the phone with my old roommate and we discussed her upcoming wedding plans, bridal shower, and housebreaking of her new puppy. She has to be one of the easiest people to get along with and for this I admire her.. however.... I hadn't really had anything to eat in a while aaand she kept interrupting our conversation to chat with her fiance about the misbehaving puppy, so I got a little annoyed. Me?? Annoyed at her??!!! What was happening here? For the first time in the six years we've been friends, I just wanted to get off the phone. The thing is that I do miss her and she lives 8-9 hours away with no traffic so it's not like we ever hang out anymore. But something has changed since living with her. That something is me and my newfound annoyance at the phone. I hate being on the phone sometimes. Especially when I'm hungry. It was so much easier when we lived together! We'll always have the Sunset district I suppose. Green tea and a bowl at midnight.
But my cousin's stories remind me I'm human, and my friends reaction at buying real estate which goes a lot like "oh no, does this mean I'll be tied down to live in one place forever"? reminds me of the ways in which other people come into our lives and shape the way we think and feel. They open a window of perspective that blows in like a breeze in springtime, fragrant and new, comforting and familiar while altogether different from the air I breathed with the window closed.
I quit my job a couple years ago, deciding that money would never claim my soul. So now I'm broke but free to move again. My dad and I had a dinner date a few weeks back, just the two of us, like old times, and I asked him if he believed there were people who could never settle down? That while some people wanted roots, others, like myself, wanted perpetual freedom, to move, to leave, to re-invent, again and again? "It's possible." was his only reply. His family has all settled down in a small town, close together. My mom's side of the family, it's a different story. Their numbers reach the thousands, and they all scatter and multiply. My generation moves across known borders. Traveling here and there, searching, seeking, exploring, resting...yes, when we stop moving it is more like rest, because like the watery trails which call our names, something inside, written in the very blood that courses through our veins always wants to leave. Something inside me always wants to leave, especially once I'm comfortable and familiar once more with my life and surroundings. It's not that I don't enjoy my life or take pleasure in the company of my friends and family, but something in me just KNOWS that movement is the only way to retain the part of myself I would never want to lose.

Found: One Random Story.

Shotgun Blossoming

Caught me off guard; the poem continued, but as it was only one of several hundred that would follow, I read it and crossed it off my syllabus moving on to the next title.

However, those two words have never really left me. It's weird. Sometimes I'll be driving and I'll see a row of blossoms, and I'm transported back to that page, on the left hand side of the book, second poem down,

Shotgun Blossoming.

How peculiar. I wonder how she thought of that? I would never think of a shotgun blossoming! The implications.. ... the questions.. what does it mean? I love the way it still captures my attention. The way the words are naturally drawn out. The art of language is the art of sound.

My words have wooden beams and dusty chicken feathers floating down. Rays of light.

Sweaty foreheads.

Rollercoasters.

On the adjacent lot to my cousin’s small apartment was a large empty house. It was one out of the three homes which occupied the surrounding five miles of land. The side lawn had a rusty slide and an old oak beside it. The tree had a swing. For the most part, my brother and myself grew up with our cousins, so they were very much like our brothers and sisters.

Due to a miscommunication clarified decades later, for days at a time, I was in charge. I was seven and had an assistant who was five. The rest of our playmates were three, three and a half, and four. This meant I made up the rules. This meant I needed an assistant who could see beyond playing the part of the jaguar or the babies in our games. The three year olds wanted to be protected, and the four year old wanted to growl. As The Leader and The Assistant we’d instruct them on where to play and wait until we had something conjured up for lunch, or a snack, or a bandaid. Lunch was usually graham cracker and peanut butter sandwiches, with a small side of chocolate milk because we are almost out of milk. After lunch, we would do one of several forbidden activities. We would either: Walk the half mile to tell stories or race twigs on the small bridge over the creek; climb a commercially sized agricultural supply of hay bales housed under one dark roof; climb the wooden tow cart and pretend we were caught in a powerful storm at sea; or most forbidden of all… climb in through the window the house next door. It would appear we did a lot of climbing.

Once inside, we sometimes played Freddy Kruger movie scenes there…. which, in this particular memory, is exactly what we did.

That night, as with all nights, the silence was so consuming we could clearly hear the toilet running next door while warm in our beds. We went outside to listen to more carefully, just to confirm it wasn’t a ghost crying . The five of us went outside into the dusty summer heat that cries for another shower, and laid our hands on the back of the cats sleeping in the flowerboxes beneath the windows.

They slept under our lulls.

The blinding night extended all the way to my nose and no further, as the light from the house kept it at bay for one moment more. Shapes moved in the distance. Coyotes perhaps, or wild dogs. We stood on the step in front of the door, ready to run for any reason. The flowers were blooming, the night warm and scattered with dangling diamonds of fire.

I swear this time in my life formed so many of my peculiars.

Spiced Wood

Drenched Roses

Sheets outside the window

Infinity disappears down

a dirt road.

This was my seventh year.

How very different the world is now. A child recently asked me what I thought progress was, and I thought back to that night, and the inarticulated treasures I had been given in the hours of play. Whatever the real world was at the time, we were not in it! But that's the beauty of children I think, that they can play out a bit of heaven here, and practice in their games, caring for each other, saving one another from harm, or loving the lost and angry character who washed ashore many years ago in a terrible storm at sea, with all their hearts; until they come to trust in others again. Children can group together and protect each other, and we can only hope, the bit of heaven they taste in their youth, carries on into their adult lives. With that being said, if one night, you hear children laughing outside, and it's nearly three am, it may just be my childhood seeking me out.

The several thousand dollar pen

A few weeks back I was told that so and so is buying a 400 dollar pen for someone else. "Will the world never cease in wastefulness" was my first critical thought but I kept it to myself, asking instead "what made the pen so special?"

He didn't know.

After the pens arrived,( there was more than one ordered ) rather unimpressively in their satin lined boxes, I studied them carefully for a moment, then went on to thinking about the all encompassing revenge that consumed The Count of Monte Cristo, who was really just Desmond stripped of innocence and naiveness. I wondered if I would be able to sustain myself on revenge for so long. His father, did after all, hang himself out of shame. Things were different back then. Hardly any father I know would take things to that degree, and no one should expect them too! But it's not fair to say that the father is acting dramatically either; but rather, a quiet window into the culture of that time has entered our hands. Once upon a time ago; a dad would kill himself out of shame for his child. What sort of family life did this imply? I'm interrupted from pursuing this thought any further by the tablet shaped brochure handed to me of some lovely pens made by Visconti. Visconti is not the maker of the pens who claim to be worth 400 or so. These actually capture my eye. The photographs are perfection!! The line of light perfectly balanced across the barrel of the instrument, the engraved point, gold, silver, gems, murals, all handpainted and embossed with the promise of a beautiful line flowing with the ease of a sailing cloud. The pigment of the ink darker and richer than anything I've ever seen on paper. Italian school children congregate to sing over the artist's shoulder as he painstakenly dips his quill in gold and begins his work. One pen at a time. Painting can only commence after a long meditative morning.. Visconti historians seek out memorable events and create a beautiful pen to honor those events. Art, religion, music, they have it all! Some pens have nearly 2000 seperate pieces, all coming together to make a really pretty pen! I'm not serious about the singing children or some of the other stuff, but I have researched the cost of a nice brochure, and trust me, they went all out. Poets were hired to write the inspiring quotations next to the Alchemist pen. We received a book sized brochure of extremely high definition photography and printing, all featuring the photograph of a singular pen. So how much are these? I'm not sure. Just to see what would happen, I researched further and found the price could only be found by downloading a price request from their site, filling it out and sending it back. Does this mean they are willing to negotiate? Would I someday want to own a pen like this? Most of me wants to say no, of course not. Who cares. But someday.... someday would I MIND owning a beautiful pen hand made by one artisan? A perfect writing instrument embellished with real jewels? What a useless little thing, but really, I wouldn't mind at all.