all fall down

Trying to focus on my own breathing
In and out, in and out
trying to keep it steady and calm and to somehow feel less overwhelmed
it's like late at night
after you've fallen asleep
the way I sit on the phone still
and listen to you breathe
in and out, in and out
let the fact of your continued existance be the gentle background noise to whatever else I'm doing

It's a good reminder.

things said and unsaid

You can't
laugh
and say Like I was saying... oh no wait, I didn't tell you.
No, no, you'd just worry
and think I won't worry anyway
worry about what thing you haven't told me
what worry-worthy, laugh-worthy truth hangs between us
unknown
but still potently dangerous

so you told me
of course
because you know me and you know that I will worry regardless
you know the way I hang on every word you speak
and the way my heart clenches when I think too hard about you
and all the things in your life which terrify me

and you were right; I'm worried
terrified, even. Of course.
and so you asked me if I was ok,
like there was every any question
asked and said of course you know I'm not
(how could I be?)
talked about it as though I have a right to this
the way the air leaves my lungs like I'm in a vacuum
the way I want to cry but can't quite find the tears
the way the words hover just out of reach
and I asked you if you wouldn't feel this way if you were me
and you said you would
so there's that, I suppose

but yes. you act as though you know
as though you're confident now
in the feelings I wish to deny
in the places I leave silent
and the words I choose which aren't quite answers to the question asked
and you act as though I should feel this way, as though it's ok, it's fair it's allowed
as though I have any right at all
and it makes me hope that maybe I do
but then you fall asleep

next time, could you maybe breathe into the phone?
so I can listen to you sleep
and know, for now at least, that you're still there
you're still ok
and I can close my eyes in the dark
and relax
and breathe

reach out and grab hold of the sky

I'm going to miss California.
I'm going to miss the ocean and the palmtrees, the friends I've made and the shape of the air, the color of the sky.
I'm going to miss the ships in my harbor and the sunsets over the bridge.
I'm going to miss the godawful hot and the surprisingly, shockingly cold.
I'm going to miss the dry desert air and the crazy-insane winds.
I'm going to miss the way I feel when I'm here, when I'm looking at the shipyard and smiling and smiling and smiling, when I'm standing ankle-deep in the Pacific and watching the oil rigs out at sea, when I'm climbing strangely-shaped trees and seeing the land drop away below me, cliffs a straight fall to the pounding waves beneath.
I'm going to miss California, because I love it.
I rather don't want to leave but it's really too late to take it back,
and I don't think I'll become who I would want to be here.

But I'll have to come back. I will. Because in a great many ways, this is the home of my heart.

leave me alone and I'll come home

I am adrift

Which is funny, really, all things considered
myself, adrift amongst the waves
waving or drowning?
or both all at once

I've lost my way and don't know where to find me
and maybe that's ok
maybe none of it matters
not the fact that I sleep at night
and awake in the morning
and eat sometimes and work sometimes and have time to read and to sit still and just
be still

maybe none of it matters.
Maybe it's not bad.
It's certainly restful.

But I've never liked restful
Never liked silence or stillness
Or endless days which march after one another in a single-file line
Uniform and predictable.

I've lost my way, on this vacation in the sun
and now I don't know if there's a real world to go back to.

what a ship really is... is freedom

And I, and I, and I, she said, am in love with life. Not in a gentle, sweet, and charmed sort of way, but in a no-holds-barred, screaming through life in the dark or with the lights on, pulling and yanking and holding too tight and running running, forever running, to see the brightest sun or the widest open blue ocean.

What is life, if not a hundred thousand priceless moments of pure emotion? Why spend your time doing anything but seeking the shortest distance between them? Why waste your life away in mediocrity when it could be technicolor splashes of light strewn across a razor-bright sky?

I, for one, see no reason to sleep through the best things that could ever happen. Why would I? Why would anyone ever?

The reason I love standing at the edge of the ocean is the same reason I love staring into the sky is the same reason I love the open road: there is nothing, nothing more beautiful than a wide-open horizon stretching into forever before you.

I need to sleep less, not more

'I'm like a shark,' he said. 'If I stop moving, I'll die.'

but I've been quiet in the water for days and days
(for weeks and weeks)
and no one can see me breathe anymore
through the haze of my own sloth
the cacophony in my own mind
the sheer impenetrable baffled stressbubble that surrounds me
if I'm lucky they'll believe my radio silence stems from business
not from utter lack of anything to say
I am making no progress and I hate it
hate it enough to rage against myself endlessly
to shout and scream and rake nails down the inside of my own head
but not enough to fix it
not enough to make a change
to take the necessary steps towards resolution
towards an end to this deliberation
to do something instead of just sitting
and waiting
for the world to swallow me whole

the inside of my head is dangerous
mazelike, labyrinthine
I get lost there so often
and I don't really know how or why I am made of so little action
I like to think of myself as someone who leaps, who takes risks
someone capable of follow-through
but really, here I sit
and wait
wondering if, perhaps, it wouldn't be easier...

but of course I'm too addicted to adventure to ever actually want that
I just need to bring myself to seek it
again