Summer Spiders & Smiles in the Sky
August 12 - August 18 / Nightmares & Morning Pages / cover photo from Man Ray's L'Etoile de mer
8/12: The sun rises slow. I wake up w/ a stranger’s desire in my heart, wondering what the fuck I’m supposed to do w/ it now. It turns out, I am soft & susceptible. It turns out I’m still waiting for my money, & for my mouth to stop watering for lives I don’t want. There are endless kinds of love, breathless wishes the heart makes, doomless love that we feel like a powerful wind when we are all closed up w/in ourselves.
I talk to an old friend who almost forgot what I looked like. I clock in and refuse to forget myself on someone else’s dime (I do it all the time). I turn into myself w/out asking why and I see what happens. On a side street in my city, I write like it matters. No weekend long enough. No summer wet enough. No dreams this morning. If I’m a let down, I will still break down - my Future holds every possibility and every fistful of dirt. I fertilize my head at strange intervals of the day. I know when it’s just me loving me, I wonder, do you?
If I let you down, I will do so by the water where we can wash clean and float in the filthiest love, rivers of silt too close to the city. I’ll stack rocks up along the shore and on the windowsill of my kitchen, lay my missteps on top of yours and call it good w/out ever really looking. I forgive like a quick rain in the middle of an August day. Do you know what I mean when I say my pain is humidity? Humidity until it breaks and the world is clean again. You are new to me; can I be new to you too? And when the Earth gets thirsty again, heavy again, will you count the lightning w/ me, drenched in our imperfect moments and more adorable because of it?
My love, my world, all sunshine now. July August September, onward under balls of fire, hoping my nonsense get through to you.
✺
8/13: I’ve got possibility all over me, like I was spilled messily into life, uncontained and tangy. I’m thinking between extremes (w/ practice, w/ patience) listening deeper to what life could be telling me. The noise of August: deep sighs coming in from the window and whipped through the fans, spiraling like dough on a bread hook. The crickets singing their feral love songs every night. Leaves clinging to their last green and me, as restless and rustling as them w/ my sun-licked uncertainty.
The Rabbit is meeting me for sushi - summer movies after February’ parties. She and I, entertaining every road, every way we could go, saying, As long as I’m making something, I’ll be good. She wears a pink shirt w/ script that reads, Written by Sofia Coppola and I wear these same soft, white pants. We see some short films by Man Ray, we get hypnotized and then we roll our eyes.
Last night, as the city decided on blue, I was down by the docks w/ friends. Lobster traps and long ways down, the smell of life in a salty brine. I think of my grandfather and great-grandfather pulling up clams, pulling up oysters, smelling like this. I think of shucking knuckle deep. I think of my blood dripped and lost at sea. Al said she wants to work w/ the dead. We share fries w/ the Future, truffle and parmesan at our picnic table slanted on Wharf St. I say something about how she’ll always have a job, Death only certain only for each of us, a business that could always use a more loving hand.
As the sea climbs back up its ladder, I drift more towards life, towards what could never be known, a free thing that still scares me when I look over the edge. Someone online, their mother dies, and they are writing about this trip they will take, how they waited to travel to stay close to their mother and now she is gone, how their flight leaves before September begins and their grief, how it is larger than they could have imagined. Somewhere, a fisherman cuts his line, cuts his losses. Somewhere, a horse thought broken rears up in glory. Somewhere, I am swimming naked in a distant end of the Pacific, not thinking about who misses me.
✺
8/14: I wake from the hallways of my mind w/ blush toned art on the walls and locks kissing keys, a room of mirrors I once knew how to dance in, a room I once felt free. I left feeling denied, running out and pretending alone until I woke up deep in bed and almost late.
My friends and I take photos of the moon w/ her right in the center and far away, a luminescent crumb on the landscape, a chipped tooth in the sky, and we don’t say we’re happy to be alive but if we’re looking up, that’s enough. Endless, infinite, untouchable love like a mobile over our city, over our heads when we sleep, when we try to sleep, when we are awake when everyone else is asleep.
This week of working and running and even when I am home, I am trying somehow not to be. My future is on my plate and it’s messy. I eat it outside while it drips down my chin wet and red, watermelon eaten on the porch. I absorb my familiar comfort and convert it to energy, to gas, to go get going go, to use my restlessness to build myself a soft bed of stars, twinkling unmoored on the sea. So I’ve been busy. This morning, it caught up to me. Only Wednesday and needing more sleep.
I keep thinking something like home will grow inside of me from the swallowed cherry pits and blankets of milk foam, my voice finally a song. I come out of myself whole, red and brown when the leaves die. My throat gets thick w/ lactose. My voice, a deep tenor asked to sing only at the death of things.
The sun stays low to the ground when she creeps in this morning, shy and orange, like I pretend not to be. I lay on the ground w/ tracks of clay, tufts of hair, and it’s all orange here. I hear the stars breathing deeply before burning out, bodies martyred for wishes. I keep the moon in the center of my eyeline when the tides roll out. I am home even when home doesn’t want me, or need me. I give life some air back from my lungs w/ exasperated gravity of gratitude and I get back to the things I have to do.
✺
8/15: Dreaming again, dreaming again, night flowers bloom in the dark and I am restful enough to see it, to remember, family and friends and unimportant failures in my dreams. Dreams, where no apology is necessary, where all is unlimited under the smudgy stars in the imagined sky.
When I wake to linen and a gray day, my lover and I laugh small before even speaking. My messages to be answered center around some creative Future, strolling in slow. I dress slouchy and silly as summer adds a little distance; less eye contact, less blaring heat, but still an iced coffee in the fridge before work. I’ve forgiven apologies not extended. I’ve given friends something to dream. I believe in my hands, small and silvered and scarred as they may be.
I see my friends and serendipity follows. All Your Yeahs is playing. It is a sleepy day w/ room to swim after dreaming, spent mostly behind a desk. I roll backwards and it looks how forward was once thought to be. Names I haven’t heard in a while and room for a youthful chaos in the creation of maturity. The thread of love makes it easy, makes it easy, makes it easy to leave the pain where it was punctured. I feel the dirt as it makes room and look them all in the eyes like the first time I thought of forever, even naively.
Night falls at noon. The sea runs expressive from the shore, her scent all over the city - unfiltered, unfinished, filthy. When the rain does finally fall, after all that heavy shadow, after that build up of grime and doom, doom like destiny, destiny like a watering - if you believe. A watering like tension breaking. Do we define hallelujah differently? Do we lay all our yeahs at the feet of infinity, dry as a desert? Or can we rejoice when they scorched land can’t stop sucking? Can our love be in unison as it faces opposite directions? And when the rain is finished w/ her wetting, will we be simpler and standing w/ more room to breathe?
✺
8/16: Spiders lurk in the forgotten corners of me, hammocks in my forgotten places, holes of blue sky right through me. Spiders mending - a little pink, a little raw - all the parts of me working together. I sit here smoking after a bitchy day at work. My summer is all audio. Crickets & cars, fireflies dead in the dirt. In the house behind me, D is laying out silverware & T is tossing the sauce around, metal on metal. They’re in there bitching too but I, I am out in the blue. I’m smoking and flipping through my obsessions, like wormholes, like screws spiraling into my memory, the soft pink of me.
I look up at the topless frame of the sky just in time to see the moon steal a peek at me. I haven’t looked at the sky much today, details lost in the most delicate fog, like mesh over the lens, mesh over skin. I see the clouds dance by on a curtain, like waves across the pink lemonade moon. I ask her to do it again, by that I mean I picked up my camera and pressed record, flashed that red recording light up at the sky.
She followed through w/ her provocation, clouds softly brushing like a silk robe over a sunburnt shoulder. The moon is brighter by the minute, clouds soft and blue like tides, touchless, passing over. Clouds in front of me, not in front of her. She’s neon now. I tell her, I want you right where you are or she says that to me but I say it out loud, working the day through my throat.
How soft this night has become now that I’ve faced it. Sat outside until dreaming. This morning, I remembered my dream split up into three, taking me season to season. The night bruises, deepens. The moon now, a dirty tangerine. I remember a kind of tenderness and relief, sticky like sumac and a smile in the sky.
✺
8/17: It’s 3PM, it’s Saturday. I sit where the sun can see. This morning on my knees, cleaning the brown off of the white cabinets w/ the grace of a stranger. Detached, sympathetic, determined, mildly and morbidly curious. Decidedly, how I’d like to be. This morning, my body met me there. My home is all kinds of little messes, the ones puppeteered by Time - how else would we believe in it? The church of Time is rot and decay, when life gets fuzzy, is eaten, is beautiful, is expiring eternally, like giving in, like we can hear it, can hear the drums, the dog whistle coming up from the dirt.
A moment or two ago, I came outside after accidentally cleaning the house. I’m going out tonight to see friends, Red’s birthday in our city. A moment or two ago, I stepped over a small apple from one of the trees in our yard, way over here on the small brick path in the green. Red and rotting and dropped. Yellow turning red turning yellow, turning brown, unfinished but aging - muddy soul somewhere now in my yard, dancing and yipping like a wild thing.
A young squirrel licking claws sticky w/ cider, still in the beginning of life. I’ve seen a young squirrel here since the spring, eating w/ all these eyes on it, but I don’t see it now. Now, the cloud cover gets yanked up halfway w/ a chill. I think of my mother and the sun shines brighter. I’m dreading winter.
Now, I remind myself. I adjust the alignment while it’s still green and there is so much gratitude in my teeth.
I think of little G’s fingers in the grocery line, touching all the gum, all the candy, all the colors. I live w/ fingers outstretched, reaching and sensational. Row by row adjusting, aligning, evening out. I figure, I’m not doing anything better - if no one wants to do it, then I will. I think of the messes I have grown comfortable w/. Sometimes I make them just to leave them. Sometimes they’re the only way I recognize home. I know, I talk about belief when I feel the most out of control, I do things in three when I start to believe in magic again. I realize the chain around my neck feels heavy when I am yanking so hard to get away from it.
I think of my body and let go let go let go down the line - neck and shoulders and hips and the twisted roots between the eyes, like untangling threads of silver and when I reach the end, I laugh.
✺
8/18: I hear the rain on the trees but I don’t see it. It wasn’t there a minute ago when I was hollow and sitting outside. Sunday, alone this morning, before T comes home and our friends come over for espresso and eggs. I was out last night celebrating Red. I ride the night through to the end. I got home late and dreamless. Now, I am in that upstairs room where I talk to myself and the world hears me. Daydreamer, daydreamer, have you been dreaming through the fog? Seeing how it all ends? Wondering how to be a better friend?
Sunday has soft eyes on me. I cleaned the house yesterday, but I left the spiders alone, their webs in lonely corners, their homes here w/ mine. After a shower, I sit on the tile dripping. I watch their wire bodies turn to stone.
When our friends leave, I reevaluate alone. My lover keeping busy when the clouds roll in, a day that changes shapes. Last night, the dance floor changed colors and I couldn’t choke up the freedom I was reaching for.
My friends beautiful on a dance floor of throwbacks and glory, eyes everywhere. There are some performances I can’t tap into anymore, some freer, younger, still dreaming version of me, selves I judged too harshly on the road to Now. I call them back but their eyes are closed in the sun somewhere.
I am happy to be here w/ years to celebrate and gifts to give. I am not drinking but I am spilling some honest parts of me. At the bar, eyes everywhere everywhere. On the dancefloor, a rare sighting - the Mayor of Bubba’s: white haired and squeezing through the crowd, sunglasses, loafers, a red suit, a rare bird in flight. Some kids rush to take a photo w/ him. Some kids bump into him w/out looking, w/out knowing. The lounge is overrun w/ dancing feet and sweat and it’s crowded across the three dance floors, a legacy he leaves behind.
Daydreamer, daydreamer, how do you dance w/ a flat expression? My eyes close when the feeling is released through my hips. Daydreamer, happy. Daydreamer, holding on tight. Daydreamer, practicing surrender, finding emptiness instead. Look at me, look at me. When I am lost, I am in love. When I am in love, I am lost. Look at me, look at me. When I am holding on, I am happy. When I am happy, I am holding on.
This entry is a part of my Nightmares & Morning Pages series, where I write every day and share the good stuff. Subscribe to keep up with me & share what you like (please).
My messages & chat are open for inspired journal prompts or anyone who wants to pick apart the world with me. Catch you on the next go around 𖦹
G