Making Myself A Home, Late Late & Always Moving

November 2023 / Nightmares & Morning Pages

11/2: I got stuck somewhere else this morning, again as I laid in bed, bullet holes in my phone. I can write about blood & piss & waste & dust but I don’t yet know how to write sorrow or explosions, black out or annihilation or hopelessness. I cover my eyes to cry even when I’m alone. This morning, I want to be held tightly for the rest of my life. I want to hold the world the same way. I want us all to hold the world this way - the one world we’ve got. November, here to retell that under the poetry of death is death itself, stomped underfoot back into the Earth to feed it. I have cried so much this year.

This week, when I cry, it is just a little bit here, a little bit there, spontaneous but not swallowed. But whatever, it’s okay, so many of us in tears this week. I dress up as myself & go to work. I am not asking any questions today, unwilling to hold any new information. I wrap my arms around myself until someone else can do it. I think of all the ways I am impatient w/ pain & get frustrated. I forgive and move on, ask myself what I need and am patient when that changes. I remember I am magnet. I remember I am soft & alive. My voice used only to connect today. Today, I am imagining myself as a home by the beach, warm in the sun. I have no fear as the ocean rolls up to me (w/ all she carries). I am full of love, full of love (everyone I love living inside of me).

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11/3: I left my book at work so I’m taking myself out for breakfast after grabbing it. I’m sitting farther away today at the hotel bar for breakfast. Am I Babitz today or Didion? I am extra sensitive to mirrors in places of transition, everyone in the world doing what they do (me too). On the walk from where I parked down to the ocean front (I look across the street and see only shipping containers but I know the sea is there) I passed a mother and daughter walking the block. The little girl about 4 & I am table number 4 today. She looked up at me and said “purple light.” Purple has been lurking in the corner - this whole year spent between cobalt blue & crimson red. Now, magician’s purple around my hunched shoulders.

When will freedom come, now that I an letting the emotions (w)in? Now, my protective shell is softening & I am yolk spilling on your plate, feeling so much, oozing w/ it. Watch me, catch me w/ your tongue. Yes, my pain is messy, messy w/ your pain, it all builds up together. Yes, it is right here, right here, I am dripping in it & not all of it is mine. Turns out, I have a hard time feeling my feelings. I know they have power, I know they can be turned into something. I am shy to that power. My brain interrupts, gets right to work - the Meaning Maker!

11/4: Four days into November, a cathartic & overwhelming start, first one and then the other in reverse. It’s just T & I this morning, French toast & pumpkin espresso. Yesterday I worked in bed like college, my Mud playlist rolling. Everything digital takes too long & for too little pay off but I am choosing bravery, rejoicing in “why not?”

Last night I met up w/ a friend for a dance class under black light, hips & thighs stretching and shaking like a storm, like mixing sugar into my coffee, like we needed them to. After, we went for a glass of red & a spliff all along the West End of Portland. I’ve been missing this side of town, even w/ so much going out of business & struggling towards newness. It is an uncertain part of town. When I first moved to the city, it was w/ T on the outskirts. I would walk just over an hour from our first apartment to the new boutique hotel where I was working, right on the edge of the West End. Since living here, changing homes & gigs & habits, I feel integrated further into this desired little city. There’s a new girl in town and she’s only here for a few days. In the shooting in Lewiston, we lost members of Maine’s deaf community and she is here acting as an interpreter at their funerals. I ask her the sign for “screaming” and she holds her voice out in front of her, it is violent in its silence. She works around the clock but while she’s here, she’s dancing & drinking w/ us. I felt so much relief sitting by the window we pulled open upstairs at the Jewel Box. The curtains interrupting conversation so softly, knees and arms resting on knees and arms, eye contact easy in this city, sweat expected. My friends and I, you can smell us coming. I think to myself: I just need my friends to get through this thing life is turning out to be.

This morning into afternoon has been about movement & being safe at home, boxes, boxes piled up in the basement, books & clothes & whatever else of ours all piled up wherever else here. We take a break w/ water & fruit, look at the clock, feel no rush. This pen, dying in my hand, each day a leak w/ purpose, I am scribbling & scribbling, asking it to sing w/ its last breath - sing for me a song of mundanity, the bliss & restlessness of her, our lives so short in song, all songs lost & left w/ the wind to carry.

11/5: It is newly 8 AM and I’ll be going to work my Sunday away shortly. We gained an hour - daylight savings - between night shift & morning shift. Last night, I worked the door at SPACE for The Halluci Nation show, a sold out sweaty show, the door only slow for an hour. Maine’s indigenous community seriously showed up - beautiful tattoos and beaded jewelry, so much joy and excitement for the show, for being together. Portland was the last show on their tour and the loudest, they said - encore! Encore! Thank you for coming out! “Get home safe” said w/ worry and intention. Infectious spirit, this music is for you!

As the performance bloomed, a ten year old was up on stage dancing, the whole room in love with him. After, he came up to the counter, asking if it was recorded, he wanted to see. I had to tell him no, we don’t record the shows. Whoever passed him praised him as they went - a lesson for youth on the power of experience lived at its purest. An 80 year old elder sat close by, dancing in her seat as I was dancing in mine. So many embraced her before the end of the show. Here (at SPACE) people feel safe & seen at every turn. I look to this as an example, as proof that art is worth investing, that making money & running a business successfully can be done responsibly w/ love & art at the fore.

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11/6: In my bed, I feel the most honest, most handsome, most alive. I don’t like to make decisions this close to newness, while the world is soft and unsure, blue at the opening of the day. My cat says, “every time you hold your phone you could be holding me” and I listen to her, pull her into lap. This is how I multitask in the hologram - buzzy w/  a to-do list and all the feelings I thought I would grow out of.

How I step on hardwood kitchen floors like holy ground, socks off in the near winter, and I shiver from top down. My spine tired in this body & now I will be honest about it. I am texting my friends about the spiders in my house, sitting on the kitchen floor, remembering an ancient sadness. I am brown now, like the dirt below this filthy hardwood kitchen floor. I am rooting myself in, saying “I will remember how to grow like this! I know where the sun is!” 

I am sad for my first sadness, deep as it was, young cyclone. I am inconclusive by nature - I don’t ever know what I set out to say. I am on a journey w/ my words, can keep going on and on w/ commas. As a Meaning Maker, I am not here to prove a thing to anyone. This is compulsive. My these is life & the experience of it, to feel both small & large here, to disguise & disgust & discuss, w/ Truth always in the room.

Perhaps I’ll find my conclusion at the end of it all but most likely, it will be found for me and w/out me, like all the artists I admire. They give me life & I give them their conclusions (on an on and on). What meaning do you want to hear? I can get us there together, we can weave this into whatever you need it to be. The complexities are generous, only asking of awareness. Meaning, a choice w/ no hierarchies, no “better” no “worse” only evidence and arrangement. There is proof of this all over - our human war w/ words, our news simply arguing reality, stories & experiences taken out of context & given new context all the time. I am a Meaning Maker in a world that twists & turns, a world stuffed full of knowledge that it has replaced religion. Confidence in knowledge and ego in knowledge - the stubbornness that knowledge brings, I no longer have patience for it. As a Meaning Maker, I divorce myself from knowledge near completely. I work off of feelings & touch - where my belief lies, belief so flexible that each day is elastic.

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11/8: Wednesday morning, slanting towards the sun - someone in the world saying “hallelujah” in a tone of voice full of relief. The same way I know there are atrocities I know there are miracles, too. I will not call this optimism or hope but rather joy, dug up. Clarice wrote, “So I love, as an answer.”

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11/9: I’ve been awake for a few hours now but I spent them still in bed, warm as the first snow fell outside. Mallory & River were curled up w/ me, feeling no rush to get up or out. I sit w/ breakfast now, counting 9:30-10, 10-11, 11-12, 12-1 until I have to go to work. It feels like a generous morning but I’ve lost days just sitting at the kitchen table w/ my coffee. I am taking my coffee up to bed. I keep coming back to comfort, comfort especially while doing difficult things. People do not talk about the weather because there’s nothing else to talk about. People talk about the weather because it is something we share, something we experience and deal w/ together. In the winter, when there is more maintenance & less ready-desire. When we resist the urge to hide, to take our coffee back to bed, weather unites us w/ where we are and everyone else who is here w/ us.

11/10: Getting frivolous w/ milk & sugar, getting out of bed after being awake for an hour - does anyone love their bad habits as much as I do? Yesterday grew into irritation and irritation, we can live through. We just have to get rid of the energy of it somehow. Laughter is the the best way I’ve found. I’m taking note of which emotions are useful and which are a leak, a drain, a sieve, a faucet left on, dripping precious, dripping for days. Art can come from all of it eventually. This is where the art of words become tricky. Have I ever trusted myself w/ this? I am thinking of my writing, work that finally feels like a craft w/out feeling like a lie.

There are endless opportunities to lead w/ love. The strategy of love, mistranslations but effort made, an American “bon matin!” I am throwing out my old scripts and finding what really holds, seeing how much complexity weighs. Comfort in difficult moments, like wearing slippers or holding hands. I am thinking of my responsibility, my many mistakes of cowardice and pride and pain. Sometimes I need a lot of space to see them. They are equal to anyone else’s - anyone else’s are equal to mine. Responsibility, the same. I see this as a good thing. I have seen proof that not everyone sees it as a good thing. The frustrating beauty of relating.

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11/11: This is a girls’ apartment and we had a sleepover. Strings of dried orange slices and the sun screaming through the 3rd floor windows, counting green leaves between yawns, disco shimmers all in the corners. I made everyone a set of dice w/ clay and they hold up. More music in the house please, let’s make this morning even easier - easy to wake up in, easy to love, easy to leave. We can create this anywhere. I’m thinking of what is truly temporary, everything raw & right now - it all gifts us permanence, all our lives.

11/13: My mom’s fridge has always been covered in magnets. My whole life, fridge doors lined in them. One side of destination magnets and the other side aphorisms, eroticisms, quotes and poems, mostly about wine and being insane. The magnet I bought in Paris, I know, is on there now. This morning, I’m thinking of one of the opposite side, one I would read and reread growing up, a haiku. I look it up now: credited to 17th century Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide. It goes, “barn’s burnt down, now I can see the moon.” This one always opened me to optimism. I think of change as a force, interrupting the mundane, the comfortable, the expected. Change both as tragedy and beginning, moving from one state of being to the next. Also, in this magnet, in this poem, a vision: the moon in full few after hiding. As a kid, I imagined the proverbial barn in flames, kissing scorched Earth. I imagined smoke meeting the moon and mixing w/ clouds. The moon bright and always full. It felt like finding nature again, life again. The barn represents a kind of civilization, a place to keep and tend to wild things. It is only the material and mythical that we lose when the barn burns down. “Now, we can see the moon” - wild, wild, belonging only to sky - the Right Now and the Eternal meet in the sky. No more systems. No more distractions. I think of all of this because the couch is gone. ‘Couch is gone, now I can see the floor.’ It needs sweeping. Hello Monday.

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11/14: Morning comes to those who laugh, easy newness in the soft revolution of joy, animal in its instincts, mouth open and any sound coming out! I am once again studying laughter and finding a future there. Last night, a few friends and I went to a comedy show. A poet we knew was performing, she’s marrying the two together. As soon as she got on stage we were smiling and we didn’t stop.

11/18: Small messes, longer projects, future underfoot. Ok, I know how to be here w/ the trusting, changing waters of time, know how the waters rush in the rain and how leaves clog gutters. I know to eat and be eaten as all things on Earth know. I learn I am plump and alive w/in myself. I have found strength in my sensitivity from some other well besides stubborn indignation, somewhere more like forever, more like movement, more like acceptance & curiosity. Time shared when I allow it to be, love that goes everywhere I go. This month, at the halfway point, has shown me that I can have consistency w/in my inconsistency. I don’t know if the mornings are best to write or if it’s better to spread it out. What does nighttime writing look like? Will time ever truly feel like a free thing?

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11/19: Pink blush on the cheeks of the world, the sun a smile along the horizon. It turns to fire over the mountains, a lit match between teeth. There were tears first, tears before the blush, rain before the sunset, spitting & desperate, our November. It is newly 4 PM, the sun still sleepy from summer, says goodnight w/ a rainbow in the fog. We keep driving South, somewhere the lights stay on all night, defiant in joy we dig up from the land. To share food, to share time, our homes temporary and hard to leave. Not so dark beyond the clouds - days when you just feel underneath the world - blue clouds glow red like skin slapped, like inner glow, just barely red under the bruise.

I have two new zits, middle of forehead, middle of chin, the line connecting them alluded to. All my energy in the middle, tense and soft w/in the same emotion, a sigh that has been traveling to me through centuries (released!!) I find, when it gets cold, I like to live along that line, pulled tight tightrope balance swinging back & forth, seeing things topside down, feeling things inside out. It’s Sunday night and I am watching a video while I brush my teeth, a poem being read, reminding me love is real.

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11/20: Dog-Ear, free to read for now

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11/21: I am losing myself to you, have lost myself to you before, a crash and (we know this one) a crash and we become one. Touch reborn in fire. We are only breath, breath and nerves and yes, yes with our whole chest. Poetry needs sex but sex does not need poetry. These are things I forget to write about but am always writing about. My body is a little different every day. I am alive in it, alight in it, changing too. Touch is the only thing I know as real. Remember: a raindrop on your lip is an invitation to drink, a hand on your thigh is an invitation to live. I touch my softest self and apologize for making desire our enemy.

The life we are afraid to dream of is real & free. It is lightning of nerves, lightning of breath. Life is here. Death is here. Magic, too. You and I, we’re here, made simpler through pleasure, made endless through this moment, on & on, animals at the mercy of the sun.

11/24: I’ve been alone since it got dark, spent the day bleeding & painting - satin white trim, that old empty room, the one that gets the best sunlight. We have been in the transition of home for almost 2 weeks w/ almost no time here until this weekend. Every morning, I’ve been waking up anxious for change and in the evenings I enjoy the slow metamorphosis, grateful to have it at all, excited to try something new soon. The right party can save a life and I am here, painting the trim of all the walls. I am wearing my comfort grays, thinking about the wound of Christ and laughing w/ my friends as if they were here. I hear “no one is saved anyway.”

I believe I am nearly 29. I believe life keeps going. I believe in the dirt between my toes and the ache under my shoulder, left wing ripped out and, and I realize the glory of an empty house, w/ windows no one can see into. I sit on the toilet, door open to Desirability. I say, “look here, we don’t have to be enemies but we can’t be friends.” I believe I am nearly 29. I believe I am made of Earth. I believe in my mistakes, live in my mistakes, am uprooting myself from soaking wet rotting soil (of shame! shame!) and going to look at the sun. I’m going to take whoever I can w/ me.

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11/27: Dog-Ear, free to read for now

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11/30: Crying to Don’t Think Twice like I’m sixteen again, lovers & friends & how love gets to stay even when we don’t. Mornings like this, I pretend I have already lost everyone, for as long as I can stand it (not very long). I mourn the imperfections of love alive as little endings themselves and I cry at the beauty I got to hold for however long. What else we come to learn about pain is that all becomes golden around it, timeless and immortal gold. I read “nothing gold can stay” when I was 10 and cried Truth’s cry even back then.

These days, I’ve been saying “tutto passa, tutto passa, everything passes” like I believe it but I don’t, or can’t. Everything passes but it all passes onto the next passing thing, movement like wind, movement like waves, on and on and on. When we can choose to see clearly is not the moment the fog clears, this too happens on and on. Seeing pain is slow, it is not the same as staying in pain, it is in context. When we can see, we can choose, really choose (choice is to be celebrated, always). We can learn what choosing ourselves feels like (heart, body, soul, guts) - we can choose ourselves in the way that we are also choosing others. This is a revolutionary act. It does not feel revolutionary. It feels indulgent. Well, I am indulgent but this is what it has taught me. It is different in the body, the choice of fullness, there is no panic at the bottom of it.

Tomorrow is the start of December and the sun waited on my wall for me to get up this morning. I have felt loneliness in so many of her forms. This one, where I can quietly be w/ all I love in my solitude, this is my favorite.

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