at least I know that I'm not alone
with being alone -
a hundred thousand castaways
looking for a home...
~the police
as I used to sit, so painfully alone, and now I can call a dozen people at any given moment, and one or two of them will know what I mean totally and completely, even if I can't manage to get the words out right.
there's so many things flying through my mind right now. the springtime night time slushy snow outside my window and in my hair, the cd in the stereo (iron and wine), that police song I heard tonight, how I really like that one jack johnson song that's out but the rest of the album kind of blows, how I have tickets for josh rouse at the paradise two weeks from saturday and how his album didn't get under my skin the way I thought it would, and how I could go see howie day solo instead at some college in worcester, and how I'd be alone and old and tall around a bunch of college girls in their low-slung panties with their fake bags, talking over all the songs. or that's how it was at toad's place at least the last time I saw him. and what could be better than the version of morning after that makes my toes curl anyways?
and about how I hope I really do get to be the forty-eight hour east coast wonder intern for kexp, and how I don't like being tight on money right now, and how nobody wants to buy my tires. and I've neglected my cat lately because I don't stay home after dinner to try to break the compulsive eating habit and how I've been really honest at meetings and how The Boy had emailed me this morning and how I wrote back and hope that I said what I felt, I think I did mostly.
she's sitting with me now. I'm a lousy mother sometimes but I love her madly always, like a little dog, following me around and sleeping curled up spooning in the night warm and purring with her front paws streched out just so.
~~~
all this slush and I've said too much? and did I tell you about the black and white photograph in my mind, and how the songs still make me think of you sometimes... to stay unedited and free, to tell the truth, to maybe just send you some mixes and not expect anything. I'm scared to speak for fear of saying the wrong part out loud, yet I know I must put forth everything I have otherwise there's no point to any of this. the look in your eyes when you looked in my eyes that I can't forget and still just wanting to talk to you is all, really... but if it was just that simple and that small, it would have left me already, and maybe my bones hold more than I know.
and I don't want to paint this picture of wanting things that I don't need can't handle but a part of me does and a part of me doesn't and I don't want this place of waiting and wondering I just want to know what I think and what you think and then you think about how the fun part is about the not knowing, because once you know that's it, it's out there. all at once I have no business being here, but then I can't not pay attention to something so loud. commanding, like bright eyes.
you have to listen to it completely or turn it off.
~~~
so I've been toying around with moving away being in the one and a half ish year plan. I told my mother today that should anything happen during her surgery that I would stay long enough to settle her affairs and then I would get the fuck out of here. not just boston or anything, like seattle or oregon somewhere or san diego. it was very matter-of-fact today, talking about making adjustments to her will, when neither of us wanted to say, "you know, in case I die during surgery or if the cancer like, kills me, so we won't have to worry about it then". like we were talking about the proper way to cook potatoes or manage credit card debt or something. it's this strange place I've never been but it's also kind of simple. I don't know what else to say about it.
so the moving thing - at first I was like, well, once we know her health is pretty much in the clear, I could maybe go north and then still be close in case I had to come home and I would be able to work out of the company's massachusetts office and it would be a safe way to change. but lately it's been... I don't know. like I should save every cent and just go do something else completely. something fulfilling and fun but fun doesn't always pay the bills. I couldn't go write, because then I'd have to write, and then I'd be writing about having to write, and I might implode. some days I would rather scrub bathrooms at some non-profit organization's office than do my job, because it doesn't satisfy my soul.
this is all new to me, catching glimpses of this and wondering where I fit in all of it. so I'm talking to kristin, last night or no, yesterday at work and I'm equating it to a playlist. like, you know you've been digging on this handful of songs, but the order isn't quite right, and how you have to put them on the playlist in a particular order otherwise when you listen to it you're constantly like, do I want that song next? does that really sound right there, was that the feeling I wanted then, does the flow work...
(I want your
flowers
like babies want
god's love or
maybe
as sure as
tomorrow
will come)
that's stellar.
so, you have to do the playlist - you have to do what you know. you put down the first few songs, and if you go past what you know works, you have the order disorder thing. I do at least. now, there's always the caution-to-the-wind element, where you do the unplanned and are surprised at how it works so perfectly, but I - I don't know. I was going to say, you can't go three thousand miles on a maybe, but then you could if it was the right one. with stakes this high, I think kristin put it the best:
that I will sit straight up in bed one night and know that it's time.
and for this moment, that's all I've got.
~vvb
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