what I have left

The walls are better at listening than you or I are
And I guess this is due to their immobility
And lack of lips and mouth and tongue to fill the air between us.
Their spatial awareness is superior to either of ours,
Like how many words it takes to fill the room
And tip the emotional scale,
until there is not Oxygen enough for after thoughts like human lungs.
I have never seen a wall's proverbial ears
but I suppose this is not their only secret.

----------yep. I wish I had more; but that's going to have to do for now.

Fascinating.

there are no drugs for this

My past is being rewritten for me it seems, and not in the typical 'fell back in time and made different decisions' sense... if that is typical. It is a very different kind of being rewritten. People I know keep remembering things differently. Not anyone I live with in Portland. And not any one particular person. But I have had about three weeks of  people who either do not remember at all or who have totally rewritten a past that I shared with them.

It is a very ambiguous sense of loss, a very certain alone-ness, and very likely steps toward losing my own grip on reality. My past and my reaction to it have made me who I am. Memories are important if fleeting. Count how many times God tells the Israelites to remember, to teach their children, to take care not to forget. I am not unaware of how much my whole life has been built on the breath of God willing me to make it long after I am tired and do not want to try anymore. I do not want to forget a thing, good or bad or even ugly.

However, I am afraid these past few weeks have made me question if I truly remember my own life. There are enough people telling me that what I know is wrong or worthless, I feel I have lost all my anchors in the past. It brings about great existential questions like, "If my remembered past is remembered wrong, am I still who I think I am?" and then "Should I be me or someone else?".

The answers may seem obvious to the reader. I however, have had a heck of a time trying to even match words to the feeling and now that I have perhaps, I hope, the answers will feel obvious and real. But the truth is, I still feel the weight of those questions and others wearing me down inside much more strongly than I feel their counterparts. This wont be forever, I hope; but if I am extra exhausted in these coming days, it is because I am trying so hard to remember history that no one else wants to and I do not always remember the value of.

I have tried to see 
the world through your eyes;
but they are closed.
There is nothing there.
If I could but see the pictures
painted on your sleeping eyelids,
maybe I could understand.


Tell me,
could you wake if you wanted to?
Your sleeper's life must be so beautiful
to have held you asleep for so long.
So much more beautiful 
than your memories of this waking life.


You told me once that you
no longer remembered
anything but your somnambulance 
and I wept.
I cried the tears you could not.
I cried until the clouds above 
were tired of my rain.


I wept because you will never know 
the color of my sky
and I do not quite remember 
the color of your eyes.
I imagine them to be the same though,
your eyes and my sky,
the one forgotten by the other
and yet the same stardust and storm.


I wish I could see the world
and your own sky 
through your eyes,
sleepy as they may be.
But there is one problem.
I am wide awake.

from Wednesday with love

Apparently, Wednesdays are going to become "talk to a random stranger in the commons of building 3" day for this term. I'm ok with that... It's just funny to me how these people find me. First Catarina and now, this last Wednesday, I spent most of my 2 hour break between classes talking with a woman named Michelle. She has children about my age and is taking a Spanish class in the room next to mine so we ran into each other at the table I always sit at before class. It can be difficult to get people in the city to come out of their shell, their routine, or whatever but Michelle found me and was more than willing to bridge the distance.

She told me about her studying nursing for her second career. She will be over 50 years old when she graduates her program. She asked about what I was doing and we connected on not picking 'womanly' professions (she used to be a truck driver). We talked about her daughter, about her friends coming to her to understand 'man speak' or their husbands coming to her to understand women better. She thinks it's funny because she herself was married once, divorced, and decided she is 'not the marrying kind'. And yet, people keep coming to her for advice.

It wasn't until the end of the conversation and the beginning of my class that we exchanged names. When I asked hers, she looked surprised like she didn't expect me to care. It is funny how much more personal a name can be than all of the details that make up one's living and moving about.





In other thoughts, I need an art project. I have a back log of art projects. But none of those will do. Regarding the one project I would really like to finish, I am at an impasse. I broke it and, well, I know how to fix it... but I can't. I don't have the money. And so I wait. Artistic pressure is building up inside me and I may well burst if I cannot relieve it soon.

I want to move. I want to change. I want something... different. It is time for a new thing. I know it is coming. I know that even if I beg it to, life will never be static but still. Every time I find my footing, surface from below the breakers, and remember the taste of Oxygen, I long for the undertow again. If I am not nearly drowning, I am not living enough. Or so my impatience seems to indicate. I should learn to enjoy just breathing. And maybe that will be the foundation of some art.

You steal gravity out from beneath me,
Let it slip down my quickly swallowing throat
And ask me to speak.
But my words have too much added weight...
Instead of flowing up and out of me,
They fall and fall hard
Downwards.
Inwards.
Up and down have moved
And somehow my lungs or my heart or both
[I cannot quite tell which yet]
Have become the center
Of my known universe
Threatening to suck everything inside
Until the hungry desperation subsides
And I burst.