Sky, Ground, Sky
January 12, 2025, a new type of Dog Ear
This entry is actually a transcription of a recording that went nowhere, me talking to myself in the in between moments. The original recording was full of dead air, but I wanted to save it. I may or may not do this again. I want to practice using my voice more often, more poetry, less pretense, and when I remember, voice notes have been really helpful for my experiments.
This was a day, a weekend actually, of a lot of odd, beautiful things coming together, a culmination of work done and continuing and getting a moment to see itself. A weekend of sweating. A weekend of friends. A weekend that inspires a life. This recording is inconclusive and all over the place, and that’s what I like about it.
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00:07
I bounce on the lap of silence and Savannah says, God is all ears today. I speak to myself out loud like Walt. I walk in circles like horses and the horses today looked fucking sad, man. Brunette and soft and sad. Doing this thing where they would lift up one back foot. Just resting the tip of their toe on the ground. If a hoof is a toe, that point, in the middle where balance is most easily found. Taking aim, just straight down into the ground like that. And it looks like it hurt. Looks like being outside hurt. I was outside. You know. I had my layers on. It was sunny. Yesterday was cold. So today, it's January. Even the light is warm, casting half hearted on this strange little neighborhood street. And there was snow, but not a lot. And it came down, it came down while we were driving last night and got me soaked in feeling. Certainty crunched under my fucking cowboy boots in the snow and suddenly I didn't want to go.
02:08
Staying home is easy in the winter but it feels so stagnant. It always feels stagnant. J and I talk about loneliness and embarrassment. We talk later than I thought we would, up later than I thought she would stay up. We talked unfinished and away from each other. We become loving like children again, looking for adventure, just chasing the feeling. How often we find out? It's good. And how often we find out? It's bad. She said, lowly company and I said my own. I know I'm in love, but I feel so far from it.
My inaction, like electricity. Shaking down to my boots, man. I felt it in the driver's seat. I felt it here in the kitchen. I felt it stretching my goddamn hips out in that crazy barn this morning.
03:53
You see, I have a friend. I met her creating art together, stewarding community. We talk about possibility a lot. I call her the Rabbit because she's a symbol of change and strength and softness. Because she's quick and kind of all over the place, but sweet. You'll know when she's upset. And because she has a little bunny or had, took her to the beach on that full moon, a couple years ago. J and Hill and blankets on the beach, a fire on the beach. And oh, look! The Rabbit's here, showing up to these things too.
She had a sauna hookup in the city. She's the reason that I celebrated my birthday exactly how I did. Hallelujah. Glory. You know, when the right idea just comes to you so easy and then you can get to work and ask for help? God. That's so beautiful to me.
I feel this community in my knees, man. I guess I feel everything in my fucking knees, man. I guess I've been walking around the city and really feeling a part of it, man. And everyone's sick of the city, now. Even me a little bit, the way it's going, the way it's climbing. Oh, that Chrome. God damn. Parking lots built on the coast, hotels built on the parking lots. We keep trying to get out of it. Every time someone says they're leaving, I literally cry. I literally start - the tears just come and I don't know if it's because I want them to stay. Or if I just want to go. Or if wanting to go is an old part of me, not wanting to miss, not wanting to miss out, not wanting to miss anyone. Youth, so afraid of missing. Maturity, knowing that’s all life ends up being.
That's the war I've been fighting to talk about, about indecision & embarrassment. I thank God that I started fucking talking about it. Writing about it before talking about it but turning the words into sounds. The way my feet are still standing in the same footprints. I can see the snow around me and It's hardly touched except by those coming. Animals passing. Taking a sniff or keeping their distance. Goodbye, I don't know.
So, the Rabbit, she asked me to be a part of this workshop type beat. Somatic movement. She kept saying this word, polyvagal, Polyvagal Theory. Poetry, movement, sweating and sweating.
07:57
And last night, we were sweating and sweating and it was the good kind, too, because it wasn't suffocating. No, it wasn't suffocating. More like Silk. Eucalyptus oil. We talked about the eucalyptus in California lighting the whole place up. That red red city. Everything burns better. We wonder what it will become. Now, it's been flattened. Blank canvas style. And we drive around these neighborhoods, man and we're like, Who lives here? No really, who lives here? And how often are they here? Because this place looks empty. It looks big, expensive and empty. Just right around the corner from our places, temporary in a temporary city.
09:11
We wrestle with, if that's possible for us. Desiree has a plan. She says, When the world goes up, we're coming here. We're invited, I'm inviting you. You're invited. Somewhere to run. Up that crazy, crazy incline and onto that vast, beautiful uneven plot of land in the woods, by the sea.
Where we were just last night. Glass where it felt open. Birds nests in the windows. So many books and instruments. And photography of family. God, they live. This family, they were away for the night and we were invited in, a million dollar home of people I've never met before. I love learning about people through their homes, that's what made cleaning fun. I looked around this property after we came in from the sauna, in from the cold, fresh off the icy highway. Only curious.
10:33
The Rabbit looked around too. And she said, What, I gotta become a doctor to get this? I'm never gonna have this. This is how the other half lives - along those lines. Something like, Who do I gotta marry?. Something like, What part of me do I have to sell? Something like, What is possible for me? Shit, a few times she said, I'm playing pretend! I'm pretending I live here because I, I never will!
11:17
I thought about what my lover told me, what we talked about the other night before when we went to eat street food in the middle of the night. No, it wasn't that late. But it was dark and we were talking about entitlement and people looking for their happiness above, I don't know, stability or betterment. Prioritizing individual fulfillment above all else, above everyone else. Something that T strives for, I see it all the time, is to be of service. To maintain and take care, you know. He did learn from some of the best. He prioritizes that over most things. And I think both instances can use surrender, one way or another.
12:40
I remember asking, Well, do you think I'm sort of like that? Daydreamy and naive and entitled, selfish even - on a bad day. The Fool card on a good one. I don't know. We’ve been asking each other questions more directly lately, our values connect through a root system, growing different types of trees.
13:11
What's the point of an undercover cop? Look at him out my window, now. Anyway. And he said, No. You think about others, you’re considerate, you think about consequences. Things bigger than you matter to you. For so much of my life, I've had this story that I was selfish and out of touch, broken like that, broken like some, but maybe I've just been shy. Leaning into ARTIST comes with these questions of balance & worth, of time & priority, of something or nothing. We're at this crazy point together, T & I, where we're looking back on it all, and really trying to talk about the things we haven't. Well, then that's because we've run out of things to talk about. Or what?
14:43
But there are muscles & knots that I fear just take so long to work out. It hurts and when it hurts, it feels good. But it still hurts. Our thumbs are working out these knots whenever we can. Out of kindness and love. And I'm looking at this house yesterday and today, last night & this morning, with desire & value in the car together, a car of possibility. Maybe a truck. Sun on the dashboard. Shining bright, frozen world.
Yes, I say, I'll come back when the world ends, why not. I say, Give me a call. I'll clean this woman's bathroom anytime she wants. Because that's what I can offer. Even though I've never met her, I just want what she's built, on some level.
I'm not about to become a doctor. Not like that. And like the Rabbit, I too pretend for the day that we really have this because it feels like today we have this. This plot of land. This living soil. This beautiful house. Four saunas - four - scattered around the property. Horses and dogs and cats and chickens and goats, a tree to pray to and a family to work for, friends we trust with an open door.
17:00
We stared out into the black night from behind the steamed glass of the sauna while we sweat and sweat. Animals listening into it all the bath house. Animals finding rest in the winter. Bare breasts and dry scrub and moonlight. I start to learn how many of us are on the same beat with each other, same rhythm, the same paths.
Everyone that's come into my life in the last couple years, I've been feeling things click along piece by piece. A body being built, bone by bone. Let's walk out into the world and be bigger than it or at least even with it.
18:10
This whole time, I'm turning into a truer self. I can be present and joyful like my grandfather taught me. And I can say the things that I say, talking like myself, saying the things that are always true, always true though they may fall flat until you see their shadow cast, like every branch and twig onto the snow, like that. Light and dark, the outline of us.
19:02
Our impact. Our collaboration.
19:18
& at that house, on that property, I was saying things, like, We're here now, aren’t we? We’re here now and now that we've seen this, we know it's possible. And now that we know it's possible. we can take aim. Bring it closer." Celebrations of Now don’t have to last very long, they just want to be acknowledged. Call me naive & optimistic & I’ll keep bouncing. I've been called magnetic a lot lately. The way I've always been like this, the way we all are and we recognize it. That's what I learned from my friends. They show me that. They show me that the people you're around are who you become. And the things that you attract, you're calling in on some level. Energy is in the room with us. All the time.
20:41
The Rabbit still feels her ancestor's wrath and suffering. And Desiree is still in shock, because her loans are all paid off. And me, I'm talking about grace and communication. Attracting and deflecting. I picked up a book last night. The section outlined was the Myth of Separation.
I said I wouldn't steal anything when I got to this house, but I did take one thing. There was an envelope in that book, ripped in half. At the top in pencil capitals, it said Myth of Separation. Marking the page. Marking the first paragraph. And I took that and stuck it in my book next to my own torn envelope, my own bookmark right now, a list for this weekend that I haven't looked at. But it's in there. I'm getting things done slowly, surely. It's 2:41.
22:13
And I almost didn't go.
22:22
I don't know
22:27
If that's because I've been wanting to go, or because I've been wanting to stay. Not enough alone time, emotions crashing out into comfortable indecision. I decide anyway. I go anyway. My shame has cast the smallest shadows, but there are many of them, covered in snow and dream. This time of year where it's just so evident. The dark and the light. I'm looking at footprints in the snow from my kitchen window, and tire tracks. I think all the metaphors are writing themselves and they always have been and I am just casting some light, maybe. Giving voice to something.
To celebrate sweat on a Sunday in January. To be in fleece and alone. To have your things living around your house. And your friends living in your body. In your books, marked up, but half-read and dishes that don't need to be done right now. Prayer will be moving later and reading, receiving, and I'm thinking about painting and scanning and draining and I'm wondering who in front of me should be here, who I can trust, who can trust me? Last night, I said, Maybe I trust too easy.
I think about that conversation with T again. Do I trust too easy? Am I begging to be taken advantage of? No, I've never carried that with me. And yet, has it been cast? The Rabbit talks about perceivability and Desiree talks about her mother. The animal moves the only way it knows how to move. Whatever comes naturally.
25:53
I'm trying not to analyze intentionality. Uh, it's in the way and I guess I'm a little dizzy from looking at the sun and snow for so long. I'm thinking it beautiful and looking at the crooked fingers of the trees reaching towards the Sun. The sun hasn’t been home as much lately. Blue and empty today like moody winter Blues. I don't know, crooked. Did I say that already? Fuzzy buds. The Magnolia just chilling out. Just, why not show a hint of what they've all become?
27:22
What was that quote? That was in the bathroom in the bathroom with the Zebra wallpaper all red. It was so cool. I think I screenshot it. The Rabbit had to pee after we went for a walk in the snow. Our tits out below the Moon. I fell on the ice of course, chasing the crossroads as if they were moving. I wanted to explore each direction and fell on my way back around. The Rabbit heard me and came down the slope, frozen near the birdhouse, frozen above the farmlands, frozen beyond the sea. We went into the main house to use the bathroom and this quote, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Screenshots, maybe.
Yeah and it was right below the mirror and this bathroom was right by the front door. So thoughtful. Here it is:
For what it's worth. It's never too late or in my case, too early. To be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. We can make the burst or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle, you I hope you feel things. You've never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life, you're proud of and if you're not I hope you have the courage to start over again.
<3
Okay yeah I love this concept. So so good