snap

It's something like inhaling a little bit of glass along with cold air that's scooped up from the top of the waves, with the water as it is this time of year, so refreshing this time of year, so cold that it almost snaps you in half this time of the year.  This might not be the story that goes anywhere near a platform on the edges of the sea, where young lovers wonder if they might not be so young after all.  Let's say they are, or were, young, last year, already a year before last year, last year by now is something else altogether.  And last year doesn't quote the shadow dances of two young lovers by the edges of the sea, and this year might be willing to not do the same, and all of it is a little like inhaling a little bit of glass. 

With a little age, a cigar blooms, and it looks like mold to anyone who hasn't lived through it long enough to smoke their way through these things to know things that only the wise ones know.  With a little age, these hands are covered with a little bit of bloom, maybe not so tired, maybe not so withered, but showing signs that those kinds of gravity might show in another decade or so.  With a little age comes the knowledge that there are some people you meet again and again, and there are some people you only know for a little while.  Some of us, with a little experience, but no age really necessary, know that it's not up to decide who gets to be in which category, but we have our ideas, and we have our hopes about who gets to stay, and who has to go. 

With a little age, one might begin to learn that the worst thing in the world to say to anyone you want to cast in the role of someone who stays is that we might be running out of time.  No one likes to be rushed.  No one likes to think this might be urgent.  No one likes to be watched that closely, because everyone who walks on wires in front of thousands of people eventually falls in front of thousands of people.  And when we fall, we break like glass, and the ground swallows us like we were shards of  broken glass. 

With a little age, one might decide to write the most emo thing ever written, and decide halfway through to completely fail, in front of at least 8 people a day.  But this year, this might be the last year, and maybe, just maybe, if we pretend that the calendar ends, then we might decide that we should bring only those who are the most important, to bring them closer, and let them know that to lose them might feel very much like December in the last year of the world, and it might be more interesting to split and break into a thousand shards and fly apart in every conceivable direction, and to let the pieces scatter, so that anyone anywhere anytime for any reason might find one of the pieces and ask for a reflection of the world, what does the world look like, what does it look like in this reflection, and anyone anywhere anytime for any reason might see the same thing at the same time, so they might know, this was important, this is what was marked, this is what mattered here, and this is what mattered when it shattered on the edges of a platform by the sea, and this is what matters when it shatters on a porch in a backyard where hearts are unburied, and this is what matters when it shatters on a morning when it only seems like the dogs of the desert are watching and caring, and the rest of the world is still so very asleep, or exhausted already for having been awake to long, the dog snaps at the hand, the neck snaps at the cold too unbraced for this kind of morning, and an eye snaps open and shatters in a thousand directions, making urgent sounds on the sidewalks of the world, even though it won't do anyone any good to know that time is getting to be as shallow as a breath or a wave and as cold as it has to be for this time of the year. 

again with the faeries

I'm carrying three backpacks, and they're all getting overfull with dust and charms and old coins, and I tell myself I can carry them for a lot longer.  But the faeries, they come, or they never leave (I thought they'd never leave), and they keep finding more threads to put into the things I'm carrying, and they don't seem overly concerned with keeping them sorted, so everything gets tangled and heavy, and I complain.  This is me complaining, this is how I complain, this is what it looks like when I'm complaining.

They send wild black birds to stand in front of the moon, so I stop looking at the moon, and start praying to the birds instead, and it all feels like a gorgeous mistake.  I understand in a moment, and it flashes, and I understand, I'm supposed to pray to the bird and not the moon, because the bird can hear me better?  Or the bird can take messages up and down?  And the mad faeries shake their heads, and tell me, no.  It doesn't matter what you pray to as long as you pray, because this is a clear season of more light, and the things that got blurry are unblurred, and everything you see as blurry is only a mistake of the light, or something still in your eyes, you need to get your eyes cleaned again.  Call the shaman, the one who unravels these things, and get that looked at so you can see.

Because if you see, then you'll see that all of this is really very perfectly clear.  Put down the things that are too heavy and pay attention to seeing, and pay attention to the breath, and the rest of this will all become perfectly reasonable.  Because all of this is right outside the door.

 I don't understand in at least seven languages.

The maddest of the faeries, my new one true god(dess), stops the calliope every once in awhile, just long enough to point this out:

You are missing something very obvious, and it's so obvious because you are paying attention to it, and if you stopped paying attention to it, then you would know what it is, and then you could maybe learn how to give it the right attention. 

I don't know why my god/dess/es/401 or so, are not very kind, but I haven't been very kind, because deep despair is my drug of choice, and that feeling I had when my heart hurt when I was seventeen is the music I play when I want things to go dark again.

It is very dark under the lap of the sea, a dark and vicious hole that is old enough that it doesn't have to justify itself, but I have to explain why I'm here, every time, and state my intentions.  And I get the strong suspicion that the same intention, repeated over and over, sounds stupid to the things of the sea, and they are letting me repeat until I can hear in my own head how stupid these intentions sound, and try to forget what I know, and leave behind what I want, and pay more attention to the sounds of the waves in my head, until I can hear that they are the same sounds that play outside my head.  Because this is balance.  And it's not as mysterious as I thought it would feel, so I don't trust it, and that mistrust puts me into turmoil that I can't blame on anyone but myself. 

This is what I hear in the waves:

This is the mystery, it's right outside your door, the mystery happens right outside your door, the mystery happened right outside your door, it is happening right outside your door.

Because I am in some kind of mood, I take this idea of the door, and take this idea of bags, and the things that I carry, and the things that I have to leave before I can cross the threshold, but because they are in a mood, the faeries jump on the unraveling threads from my head and they explain, no, it's not a metaphor, it's a door.

I think I see what's going on.  And I would love to explain that this is all so tangled and complex and impossible, but it's not.  Because full moons have always been good to me.  And they make magic when I am looking away, and paying attention to the thing that I should be focusing on, it has something to do with the breath, it has something to do with the moon, it has something to do with these bags that I carry, and how the things I've been collected have all turned to salt from looking back for too long, and salt is the best thing there is to seal a doorway, sealed with a kiss.

art and life

please forgive me, i know i get these things confused, and maybe there is no real line between them, and i know that already, and this is already resolved because it's already set in motion, but (to make excuses) these repetitions are madness, an unbearable madness, but when they turn into a metaphor they become so beautiful.  and at those moments, all of our failings and fragility become powerful in that other light.  and if i could live in that light all the time, whatever is unbearable becomes the thing that opens up to something more utterly beautiful than we could create with our mad designs.  in this, however, i think this is something i need to leave outside the realm of art and life so i can get to the next thing that's calling, those things that are desperately calling at my doorstep at three in the morning when everything is becoming heavy, sucking in the last part of night before it gives over to the day again.  this, i think this is something that can live or die without my desires anywhere on the table, and maybe then it will have a chance to grow.  but i don't know who i'm supposed to be in this next part, who i am supposed to take with me, because all the personas feel wrong, and none of them are lovable unless they are myths.  and i can't regenerate ears the way they do in cartoons, and all my spirits carry scars and lost parts with them, and some carry holes in their hearts into eternity.  art is myth is a key to unlock a destiny, is an accusation against reality.  when my feathers are sticking out, i am not safe.  and when the woman with brooms comes sweeping again, this time angrier than the last time, it's time to leave the room until all the ghosts have argued themselves to sleep.  it can take years before a construction of a persona reveals itself to be useless, but just a moment outside the room to connect to the heartbeat.  the path is the breath.  the breath is the road to the heart.  the mad fairies there, those are the ones to pay close attention to, they find the gifts left on the table, and when i'm lucky, and when my heart is beating, they wrap them up and send them back before i have the chance to open them.  a tragedy averted.  this is a fantastic love story.  there's not enough time to sort the truth from the lies, and there's not enough room to write the same stupid love song over and over again, not with the music that's just on the other side of that thin veil.