To Soil Fertile and Otherworldly
To Soil Fertile and Otherworldly
August 27 - September 1 / Nightmares & Morning Pages / Cover photo by Eden Kalif
8/27: I sit in yesterday’s Future, in this body’s present shaped like this body’s past. My city smirks. Tonight, I leave her on read. It’s Tuesday and dust settles on spider webs. Salt still in my hair from Sunday. Motorcycles zip down neighborhood streets. The sun was in my dreams last night and that’s all I want to remember for now.
There was something born today that is stopping my heart from coming through. When I got to dayjob today, there was a square cut from the concrete, all that dry brown dirt unearthed in the parking lot. The guy working the CAT watched me take a photo of the hole. I think of my city made of sand and my soul made of stone, a paperweight on the stacks of Now, keeping it all from flying away.
I scrape my knees on the teeth of this city, still rough while waves crash. I know where to go, where no one will find me, but I want to be found in my city. I make friends w/ even the birds. My friends pick their feathers and meet me where the ground is hot and rocky, their hands out the driver’s side window w/ something smoking, fingers dancing in the heat.
I answer every silly question. I wash my face in the sink on Commercial St. and I wonder if this city is really worth it, all this digging. I hear, people come and people go but I ~ dig a hole in the ground in the rough shape of me, the shapes of me, how I am recognized even when I feel unrecognizable.
I see the bee and I think of Lazlo, of sainthood, of Lonli City. I see the bee on both sides of the bridge and on Free St. and Commercial and State St. and Congress, it buzzes throughout the city and people have opinions. A smile on its funny little face. I remember the promise I made to my late friend, to live deeply and to create where I am, to meet myself at the center of each and every crossroads. My city is a dream of mine too.
Seven bottles of Maine Root Ginger Beer rolling empty around the Soul. My summer goes green here before it slips away. I am lost in it, lost to the red skies at night. I become calm and alive on filthy cobblestone streets, hands in pockets and walking w/ my hips to where I know friends might be unknowingly waiting for me. Up towards the ear of the city, jewels on her earlobes and poetry too. I walk between the thighs of the city and down by the water where the ships come in, the loudest street down one leg and the quietest down the other, or down by her toes and up the hill where everything is a little more expensive, a little more romantic - the cemetery, the observatory, the promenade.
I’m thinking of the fireworks on the beach where the moon told me to go. That night I felt lonely but not the forever kind. I knew to come here because my friends showed me this spot. Sweetness paved the way back to the sand, back to myself, this city on the shore. I am digging, burning myself into you, the shape of me, the shapes of me, what will be left when I fall into a world too big for me. A city that turned my growl into a roar, where I’ve learned what livin’s for.
My city and the one big move I didn’t overthink. I followed love to Portland, to a new coastline, and I stayed. I learned the curves, learned my way around, am still learning, am still loving as much as I can. Today, I am the hardened layer of mud that has dried on me, a mask, a shell, a familiar script. When happens when I get tired of holding hard truths? I dig and I burrow. I get dirty and hide myself.
I hope something gets stronger every time we get softer; softer, wetter, wilder. I melt into something all the world can touch, that all the world can swim in. We need saving, my city and beyond, the kind of saving we can only give to each other.
✺
8/29: Today, I drink 2 cups of coffee. Last night, I got home in the deep dark surrounding the neighborhood. Veil thin, the Wizard and I ended our day as we began in new layers. How quickly the tree bark heals over and how we reach for layers when the wind blows. We were keeping our hands busy, our dreams busy, on our reborn summer day in our city. My hair is long now so everything feels a bit more primal. Everyone is growing their hair out - me and T and M and J, the Wizard, the Rat, the Comet, the Boss, even my mother is considering it. It would be good to see her let go. Her hairstyle is the same in every memory.
Early yesterday, when the sun was out, I was at dayjob training someone who will take my job someday. The last six years turned retail into a second nature. My voice gets noticeably higher. Fingers have become graceful between hangers and my wrist all crooked. The Wizard stopped by in black cotton full of holes and the sun shining through. They brought paper. They tried on boots. In the city to get a feel and prepare for nightfall. Last night, Workshop number 9. We wrote poems for you, Portland. We have something to show you about yourself.
I am grateful from the inching, cracking, opalescent seeds of me! Under your feet Portland, under your feet, where the artists have rooted in! Our colors start to show just as August is a kiss away from eternity. The reds and browns will reunite w/ dewy infancy at the end of it all!
Free, free into the night! When one bar closes, another opens. We run in packs across the street to the pink bar we love and the karaoke list open and our cars parked so close. The night cooled like August nights are supposed to and we used our mouths only for good. A societal splat on the pavement, meant for others to find. We hear the city sing 360 & Club Classics & What Once Was. The Wizard sang The Diner w/ the Rat and I on back up. The Rat killed Vanilla Ice. The Cryptid belted Pink Pony Club because yes, it’s still summer goddamnit. I committed to sing Patti, finally, like meant to be, like losing my breath at the end of Because the Night and loving thoughtless. Mic in my hand and my friends in our city, of course of course of course.
On sidewalks, the air is fresh only by comparison. The sea breeze creeps up, yes, even this far up from the coast. Everyone shares the mic tonight. Swirling faces drawn on signposts near where tape and paper stick to the walkable city. Six hands hover to help light the spliff against the wind. Six hands completely encircle body and flame, something like love.
We don’t mean to, but we stay until the lights flicker, until last call, until we are out on the sidewalk w/ Wednesday’s weirdos spilling into Thursday. The Wizard, the Comet and I shot around in circles. We were going to the Painted Apartment, the one the Wizard was moving into in a week’s time.
We wound down the slanted neighborhoods w/ painted doors and lush gardens. Maples and milkweed and what’s left of the hydrangea. We left copies of the Dirt1 in free libraries, trusting them to find who they were meant to find. The moon grinned wicked in the sky. When we got to the Painted Apartment, we snuck in the dark along the side and through the French gate to a secret backyard garden all overgrown in the city. The Wizard didn’t have a key yet but they would soon. We dream and dream and dream, pissing in the wind until our eyes adjust. Then, simply looking at the sky. Jupiter shone the brightest, tugging the chariot forward.
We are decidedly lost and dedicated to knowledge. We are deeply in love w/ what we do not yet know, but feel, we feel, we love what we feel. The current moment burns onto the next and we are tugged forward by something bigger and older than us, a collective dream stomping across the sky, falling and packing down the Earth.
✺
8/30: W/ doubt, w/ doubt, w/ doubt we go on. A spider has woven its web in front of one door, so we go through the other. The small finger wound I’ve kept covered is more sensitive than the one close by that has been soothed by the breeze. Everything heals in time. I pick at myself when I pick fights, when I call everything by their new names. My storytelling, the way I try to carve possibility out of old patterns and make believe. My lover lacks imagination and I lack reality. I’m outside while it is still August to practice pruning w/out knowing where to start, weeping wet.
I feel over for the pieces of me I’ve cut away when I thought myself a weed. I take so long to grow, blocking sunlight to those closest, the ones who I love forever, who forgive forever, who give and give forever. I grow into a tall nothing. Green until brown, tied down or tying down, tugging around or being dragged. I drop seeds free to grow beyond me. The truth in my belly aches wordless, hard to digest like the pit of a plum. Do I let it grow in the dark of me or do I spit it out, hoping it rolls to soil fertile and otherworldly?
I should let the free air touch the words of me while it is still warm and die when the rest of the yard dies. I wonder if I’ll see it. Instinct, wild and hopeful as youth, what will you grow into?
✺
8/31: My world and I drip together. Goodbye, goodbye to the landscapes of love untilled. Turn the Earth over. What is left will never leave you.
✺
9/1: My lover, a landscape in the living room on his belly, the ancient mountains of him. We are drying off in the sun on Sunday morning after we crash down into the Earth. This weekend, we stretched into love like it had been a while, like we were redefining it. We kneaded the dough of our nuance, became a little more than what our hurts have made us. I burnt up and became charcoal and now, my body is something I can write w/.
The dirt of us is nutrient rich and chocolate brown. A York peppermint patty on the drive North yesterday. Gas station tiramisu between our friends’ packing boxes. D is moving to Colorado and GH is moving to Asheville, one friend in love and the other looking.
We drove South then North then South to center in the Soul. This moment in my life focused on play and uprooting, so much of life paved over but cracking, breaking down, giving way to green. Desire in the dirt, a little bit of everything, where I have to get dizzy to feel the ground below me, to hear my lover for the first time say lustfully, share some of your poetry w/ me. I turn red like August turns to September.
Our rental house is full and heavy at time but all ours for Now. A place to catch all of us, a place for family to collect themselves, a place for friends to crash. Our friends’ whole lives in cardboard boxes and in the backs of their cars and in tightly packed shipping containers. My friends, our roots hold hands beneath the Earth. We will tug on them when we need to and when we want to. We will feel thumbs rubbing our knuckles in a dream. We will have more excuses to ride off sometime for a day or a life, how the families of today are built. It’s always a tight squeeze and go. D left w/ a stiff espresso martini. GH left w/ a bonfire in the rain, just like he wanted. My lover and I right there for both.
We got soaked saying Goodbye for now in the dark, then we headed home. We were outlaws. We were hydroplaning on the back of the snake thinking, What if we kept driving? The love of us shone like black water under a liquid moon, like a dam buckling and the river flooding, our bodies only feeling.
Nothing green has changed but I am freer. I know which cup has the snake under it. I know which forgotten corners the spiders are rocking themselves to sleep on. Someone else’s guilt in my throat lie someone else’s piss in the lake. We turn forgiveness on like a faucet until the water runs clear. We try new things in the dark. I hear my pounding heart, the most animal part of me. I tell my lover I’m afraid it will kill me someday and he brings up heart disease statistics. I feel his heartbeat the same as mine, panting in his chest w/ muddy paws. September now, ours each year.
I walk through the door of myself leaving coins at the crossroads in exchange for deliverance, the life offered, the life holy, ink on my hands digging deep holes in my city, tending so meaningfully to the roots.
Read the Workshop IX to find a little bit more about our upcoming literary newspaper, crumb by crumb
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