Realizing

Lately I have been still, too still.  Too… here.  Which is fine- all of us wayfarers need to be still for a little while.  To let the dust settle, to let our world slow long enough to recover it's natural rotation. 

But settling dust runs the risk of becoming gathering dust.  And that just will not do. Gathering dust is what chokes the air, what makes me choke.  It makes me itch. Dust brings on the Longing and puts ideas in my head. Dust brings on soul-sneezing.  

Which inevitably makes me reach for a tissue called wandering. 

And originally this was going to be a post about traveling- but it's never really about that.  I reach for a tissue called wandering; I have a nomadic, distant soul.  I recently told someone that I systematically burn my world every six months or so.  And I do it because I can- but almost because I have to.  I keep burning and burning- and then running because ash is so very similar to dust.  

And I have to go. 

And because I do this so well, because I am so practiced at the burn-and-run… I keep everyone at arms length.  I keep distance- however fractionally measured. Inevitably I push people away, not because I don't love them, not because I don't feel so deeply and so profoundly.. but because I am bound to hurt them by burning, by running.  I am bound to hurt the people I know simply because I cannot be still, I cannot be wanted.  I go so often that I forget what it means to stay. 

Most days I am fractional, marginal, existing on the edge or fringes because I put myself there.  There is safety on the edge.  I jump and am gone. 

I jump and am gone. 

201

After two hundred posts this is where we are.

From point A to point B: New Hampshire, China, New Zealand, New Hampshire, China, Malaysia, Austrailia, North Carolina, New Zealand, North Carolina, Iceland, Alaska, Mexico, North Carolina, New Hampshire.  Beginnings and Ends and beginnings in ends.

I think I stole that line from someone.

The point is… here's to a lot more.  A lot more places, a lot more blog posts.  So many more reasons to write.  Here is to 201 more.

For my Loves-

Here's to you.

Short, Sweet, and to the Obsessions

I may or may not have skipped a month in my obsessions confessions. Possibly because one of my obsessions was just WAY TOO embarrassing to throw out there... ever.  Possibly because I am still obsessed with the same stuff as earlier in the summer.

But because I owe my leery followers something... I give you a short and sweet obsessions list:

KEXP.  How the hell long has this been around and I'm only now figuring out the level of awesomeness of Live on KEXP performances??  In particular, I am digging on this linked performance- but I'm pretty sure I've already exalted the greatness of Augustines.  In fact, Henry and I had their album cranked this morning, driving home to Windsor from our weekend adventure with Auntie Iris in Maine.  Coffee and Cruel City kept me awake while the pup napped on the front seat. 

The Gaslight Anthem (yes, most definitely still still obsessed with them) releases a new album in August.  (Holy Shit, yes I did just get tickets to see them in Boston in September).

Aaaaannnndddd this song is on that album.  And it's not just that it's GA or that Brian Fallon sings the way a wood fire smells (okay, maybe a little)... it's what the song is saying.  It is absolutely what the song says: And I came to get hurt/Might as well do your worst to me. That idea slays me- absolutely slays me every time I consider it.  It is the heart-on-the-line version of picking a fight.  I came here to get hurt.  I know it's going to happen.  I want it to happen because at least it's something.  I came here with knowledge- bad knowledge- and I am accepting it all.  I want to be hurt (and maybe I want to hurt you a little, too)- so let's rumble.

Tom Wisdom.  Surprise!  An actor crush?!?!  Who, me?

Also, this dude.  16 saves later, the US still lost.  But hell.  Tim Howard?  Yes Puh-lease. (Also, for those of you who like a good game of doppelgänger- head to the Wild Rover in Manchester, NH.  The head chef there sports a striking resemblance to Howard.  Which is to say, he's beautiful.) 

This one is bad.. but Facebook on my phone.. ugh.  I hate even admitting that, and I'm certainly not dignifying it with a link- but who knew it would be so useful for posting in the moment?

I think that is all, for now. 

Until next time, My Dears..

Dead Horses and Depressed Dogs

One of two things was going to happen as I let my Internet browser pop up.  I was either going to google 'is my dog depressed' or I was going to write a blog.

I will google that query a bit later.  

In the meantime… 

I have been all over the world- my adventures are what initially inspired the creation of this blog page. It has surely become abundantly clear by now that I do love traveling.  I love that I have been all over the world.  I love that my passport expired with only one blank page left in it.  I love that there will come a point in time when I get to look back on my unholy mess of a life and think 'yeah… I did that.' 

And I have traveled with others- friends, parents, lovers.  I have traveled on my own.  I have moved across the world, across the country on my own.  I have driven tens of thousands of miles on my own; logged the same amount of flight distance on my own.  Been on trains, on boats, on my own.   

And it is never the big moments when I feel on my own.  It is never the big moments- staring at the aurora borealis under a foreign sky, seeing foreign mountains in their full glory, watching the sun set over and over in more perfect, more fiery and foreign and golden ways- when I feel lost for wanting someone near me.  It never is.  

It is, rather, the small moments.  It is shoving my carry-on into the overhead storage space, knowing that in x-many hours I will be touching ground and having to pull that thing out and start all over again. It is carrying a fifteen pound bag of dog food, while pulling along a fifty pound dog, up to an empty apartment- over and over and over again.  It is finally settling down for a second... only to feel the drip-drip of a leak in the ceiling of said empty apartment.  

A not-pink paw shot of DJ Jazzy Hen-Roots

It is countless gallons of gas pumped into a slowly-dying jeep.  It is the laughter and love that I feel every day, laughter and love that is even directed toward me, the luckiness I am constantly reminded of, the goodness of my life… on my own.  It is the plan- the stuttered, scared life plan that never comes to fruition because it's a bit sad, planning a life of one (two if you count the dog).  It is the fear that my dog is depressed… but no one to bounce that off of (excepting google).  

Those are the moments when 'on my own' is not on my own anymore, but alone with a hint of lonely.  Those are the moments of containment, of putting myself away for another day.   And don't get me wrong (this line I have used so so so many times- it is like beating the hell out of a long-dead horse), I love my life.  I own my life, all of my mistakes, all of my moments of grace.  

But once in a while, I'd like to share what I own.  

With someone other than a maybe-depressed dog who currently sports hot pink front paws- Henry-1, Hi-Lighter-0. 

If You Knew

How I miss you- 
You would not stay away, today…

Fuck all, Mr. Buckley, get out of my mind.

For a long time I have had two… sort of impossible romances.  Impossible because both of my others… are dead.  And both have been pretty present in my life of late, for their own reasons.

Jeff Buckley.  Jeff Buckley.  Great Scott- he had me from the first sigh of Hallelujah.  And his story, so tragic, so rock and roll, has kept me ever since.

The son of Tim Buckley, the had so very much to live up to.  And yet… he did.  Grace.  Need I say more??  Grace, the one album he released while living, stacks up beyond anything that anyone had done at his age, during that age.  At 31 he died, drowning in the Wolf River.  All that passion, all that potential- gone in the wake of a passing boat.  But still his voice and the things he did with lyrics are timeless (impossible).

It's never over- 
My kingdom for a kiss
Upon her shoulder

It's never over-
all my riches
for her smiles when I slept 
so soft against her

It's never over-
all my blood 
for the sweetness of her laughter..

I mean, come on.  What on earth else does a girl want to hear but that??  What else does any one want to feel but the profound need to be with their impossibly never-ending (it's never over) other??  And who but Buckley could express that, like a miracle?  Like marveling?

And so he is on my mind for what he knew of love.  Of impossible love, of my love.  Of the way I think or want or wish love could or to be.

And then there is Eliot.

If there is one person who I could revive, literally bring him back to live simply to kiss him on the lips and tell him that his talent is visionary and bold and yet beautiful and mystical… it would be TS Eliot.  And I know that I have been on and on about Eliot.  All the time and forever.  But I started 'All Hallows' Eve' by Charles Williams, recently.  Which is a book for a book club of sorts- a book for which Eliot wrote the introduction.

And in it he wrote about Williams:

'To him the supernatural was perfectly natural, and the natural was also supernatural.  And this peculiarity gave him that profound insight into Good and Evil…. '

And next to that, in the margins, I wrote… Thank God.

I wrote that in the margins because we on the margins understand the significance of marginalia: Because Eliot, in interpreting Williams, somehow managed to interpret me.  Or at least managed to make me feel not nearly as alone in my interpretation of the natural…and everything else.  And so I had to add myself, in scribbled pencil on the side of the page, to this book.  

And Eliot, these days, seems to be doing a phenomenal job of expressing exactly what I am feeling. His poetry perfectly maneuvers the complications of the heart- spiritually, psychologically: with emotion.  Eliot, in his honesty and challenges, brings me a sort of literary and human ecstasy.

I suppose the reason I know and love these two so well is because they have each known and defined some version of me.  These are the two, although there is another, who I come back to as touchstones of goodness- of grace- of Love.   And I suppose the reason they have been on my mind so very much is this fear that third

(Who is the third who walks always beside you
when I count, there are only you and I together…)

The third who knows me and knows love… The fear that I have lost the third.

And until next time.. Be good.