It has to be summer.

When I meet the blank canvas I am faced with questions. I am faced with wondering if I am full of ideas or full of breath. Jack is at work right now and the house has a sense of quiet I will notice until he comes again. I loved his lips this morning. I love his eyes. He is so perfect. I know this sounds cheesy but I don't care. Being in love is a wonderful thing. I am not in love in the manic drunk way that it was when we first met, not it is such a part of my being I feel normal again. Not that the manic drunk feeling doesn't come again when I see him, when I hear his voice. It is just astounding to me how one can actually get used to being happy as much as they had gotten used to being sad. That is what amazes me, how for years pain was my food and now joy is breath and life. I told Jack once that every time I am around him I feel like I am on vacation. It's so true. He is everything I could ever want. I wish I could make a proper tribute. There are no fights, nothing to disagree on. Why should love be about fighting? Why should love be about getting the last word? It's not. It's about opening your soul to another and trusting them with your everything. Knowing Jack loves me, that he has given me his heart, why would I ever want to win a fight or get the last word?

I am so excited that it has been 2 years since I met him and that we are on the verge of another summer together. I feels so good sitting here in his room, looking at his shoes and the picture he has of us taped to the inside door of his closet. I think of his soft and gentle voice, his laugh and silly sayings.  Love is so strong and real to me. Other things don't matter. Perceptions of self in unflattering lights are false illusions. They don't hold weight, they can't hold water. It is so difficult to break free from that false illusion I hold of myself, of feeling less than what others are. But I will be the master of contentment. I will be a warrior of light. Every day can be lived in bliss. Every day can be lived with so much light and so much warmth. I think of the happily ever after and I was googling pictures of ballerinas last night. I think that is how I want to look on my wedding day, like a springtime ballerina...

Joel will be moving soon and that is a point of transition I am facing soon. Things have fallen in place so much in these past two years I think I really am ready for it. I am ready to grow up after these seven years of healing. It is a wonderful thing to let go of being fragile and helpless. It is a great joy God has given me to be independent, to be strong and capable. I think I tend to sell myself short and think that somehow I can't get things done. I can see, though, how these past two years have been preparing me for what is to come. I just had to look back and let God enlighten me. I will always face times of doubt, when I think somehow I am not passing the test but that is when I need to continue to look at God. God gives me everything I need. I look at Jack's books and hats, his t-shirts hanging in the closet and I know he is all I ever did need.

This has been a great year of change. I lost my grandpa and have learned to reassess everything. I think I am finally free. It will continue to grow. The flower will still bloom, the years will still pass. I don't think I will age. I have let go of that thought. When the spirit is young we do not age. We are free from the heavy burdens of cynicism and doubt. Things can be as pure and lovely as they were when we were children. I feel a time of rebirth. It has to be the summer. It has to be summer...

I find it so hard...

I think the coffee is still coursing through my veins. Profundity entices me but nothing comes out. Squeezing words out of the anguish is easier than out of joy. So I will think of happy words.. bliss, felicity, joy, ecstasy. I will be met with the salt air, the fog, the sound of the ocean. I remember the sound of the fog horn at three in the morning and watching the orange clouds roll by over the pavement. That image on California and 8th will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Like November 3 1993, the first time I saw The Ocean Blue, or Stockton earlier that day. Long red hair and a black dress, opaque black tights and black patent leather mary jane shoes. I remember the way my boxy black patent leather purse with the silver snap smelled like the peppermint oil my grandma had given me that summer. It came in handy for early morning kisses after late hours of 15 year old drinking. The juxtaposition of alcohol and innocence is alarmingly amusing now. I remember wandering around the community college in Stockton that day. It was still warm in the valley and I was hoping the boy with the shoulder length hair and the trench coat would follow me and my friends.

Every min ute was like a song on an autumn leaf. Strains of warm sun on my hands and the soft swell of November wind. It was all like a floating dream, warm soft and tenuous. The smell of peppermint and brown lipstick haunt me know, the sounds my old friends haunts me, too... Girlish laghter light and low, knowing and yet unknowing. I twisted a magenta curl around a pale finger and simpered at a boy who sat next to me in the theater. Trying on his sunglasses at the community college field trip the theater was split into red and blue.

"This looks like what the world would be like if you were on acid. Not that I have ever done acid." I was quick to add. I might have told him I liked to drink. Maybe it made my 15 seem more like 17, or maybe it was blatant honesty. Wouldn't a boy in trench coat be the same?

I caught the eye of another boy on the stairs. He was talking to a statuesque strawberry blonde in a close fitting black shirt and black jeans. He kept looking over her shoulder and smiling at me. He was a boy I met in a vision when I was 12. Too young to understand the Eve of St. Agnes. I wasn't Catholic anyway...

I can't wait!!!!

This I call my sailboatThese are all my friendsThat beyond's the shorelineAnd that is where it ends
High and dry are we?
Stinging sighs the salt airTaste it on your skinStomach's sense of flyingThe feeling of the wind
High and dryHigh and dry are we?
This I call my sailboatThese are all my friendsThat beyond's the shorelineAnd that is where it ends
High and dryHigh and dry are we?

The Coffee Cantata

Life, love and the pursuit of spiritual enlightenment. What a marvelous afternoon it was at Paradise Perks. I have abandoned my blog for too long. I must remedy this. What's new world? It is a wonderful feeling to no longer worry about whether or not I am "seen". In the end I only want this from the All Seeing, All Knowing.  I will be in San Francisco next week. The Ocean Blue is playing at Cafe Du Nord and I am going to be able to attend both sets. This is going to be like a miracle, a brilliant fantasy. The music means so much to me and I have not been to Cafe Du Nord in years. It was once a speakeasy in the 1920s. A staircase leads you down below the street level to a luscious lounge with red velvet hangings and baroque furniture. The is a small ball room with a black and white checkered floor that remind me of the final scene in Twin Peaks when Agent Dale Cooper see the backwards-talking ghost of Laura Palmer. This will be a great homecoming.

I think of so many things as the holiday approaches. This has been a hard year. Now my mom is moving away from the house I have known for 11 years and it truly pulls on my heart strings. Last night the coffee from my writing group keep me aake and I kept obsessing on 2004 and the early days in San Jose. So many images flood my mind from that fall and winter. I remembered the way the icy cold would cut through my stockings as I walked the dark walk through the parking lot of the train station. I remember the oat cakes and bad coffee I would buy at the magazine stand at the train station and the December issue of Roling Stone with Lindsay LOhan on the cover, so fresh faced and nubile. I remember Howard Stern railing against the FCC on my discman and playing Warren Zevon as he bid his approaching farewell to mainstream media. My heart hurts at those times and I feel the psychic burden of memeory. I have struggled with memory for so many years and yet my unconcious mind was filled with so much joy. It is interesting that in the concious world I was feeling such pain yet when I fell asleep my dreams reflected a happy place to come. I dreamed it was next semester and I was in Lisa's class. I was creative and successful. Jack was by my side and we were happy and in love. THe great thing was that this was not a memory dream, a looking back on happier times, this was a projection of the future. Then I turned over on my side and cuddled in close to Jack and felt so much love. It was amazing. The begging for crumbs of memories was over. I was able to curl my arms around Jack and feel his safe, warm, gentle sleeping body next to mine and I thanked God for sending me such love and light.

I must stay focused on the daily miracles and let go of old grief. It doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is the future.

thinking

thinking so much i tend to want to burst. why must i obsess on time. i think it must be the fall, it gives time for reflection. i am a reflective person by nature and here i am, unable to write with a pen for fear of it's physical obviousness. but i can type and not a soul suspects. i like that the window is in view, the sight of the trees beckons me with the many shades of brown and orange. last night we read a poem about san jose and it still brought a point home. i don't want to be a gloomy gus and i think it is just my fatigue talking.

he is so beautiful. i don't need to know his past because he is my future. i want us to travel, see the world. he is my blessing from heaven. i'm finally in love again. it takes away my pain and my breath.

a decade under the influence

it's so hard to get a firm grasp on ten ears, to completely digest what two pentameters of years can mean. i was goth then. i saw some old pictures with my raven colored hair and a satin black corset. my mom and step-dad are getting a divorce. goodbye house in san jose. goodbye cinnamon rolls and coffee. goodbye to old memories of my cell phone and louis. so much happened there. so many years make me sick. i don't want to look at old pictures, i just have to convince myself to start taking new ones.

new is good. i am in love again and it has been nearly a year and a half, jack is wonderful. my heart is just so heavy at the years. i treasure them. i curse them. they pass and grasp and hold me. a decade and i will never know. i will never understand what happened in 2004 because i guess i am just not meant to. it's not important now.

but i will miss that house. i will miss the train station. i have no reason to go there now. it is a sorry and sad state.

blog, blog, bog... always waiting and hoping it drove me insane. i was feasting on where you want to be crumbs. scraping the vinyl plate with my finger and never getting any closer, cloaking with metaphors like heathcliff and peter parker. it is better now.

i won't ever know.

i can't let it matter anymore.