|oystershell|

ON SE TAYLOR STREET

that's where i'll be spending my days.  3 days.  3 days.

and i have strep throat.  which is just about right.  a week and a half left in town and strep throat is just about perfect.  i wasn't going to go to a doctor, but dad made me.  dad picked me up, drove me down to the walk-in clinic and sat with me.  which is good, because untreated, strep throat can become a real asshole.  which is good, because i wasn't going to do anything at all.  except stress.  so, after two hours of telenovellas in the back of some farmacia on mission street, i have strep throat and antibiotics and codeine and 3 days. 

and with three days, i'm finally able to relax.  after stressing about having enough money and having the right place to live and selling all my stuff and closing up shop here on clayton and being sick.  and now, now i can relax and let myself be excited and have strep throat.  and so that's what i'll do for 3 days.

MEME

jen did this.

1. What song are you listening to now, or did you most recently listen to?
"sweet sweet heartkiller" by say hi to your mom

Who gave the best live performance you've ever seen?
goldfrapp

3. Who gave the worst live performance you've ever seen?
her space holiday

4. Do you have a favorite musician that would surprise people?
laura nyro

5. Do you have a favorite musician that would embarass you?
i have to say, i really like the new paris hilton song.

6. Which two musicians do you want to have hot, passionate sex with?
conner oberst (bright eyes) and joseph arthur

7. Which musicians have you been listening to most lately?
rachael yamagata, joe purdy, and mat kearney

8. Who did your parents listen to while you were growing up?
my mom listened to really bad 80's music like the bangles and heart.  my dad listened to classic rock, like dylan and the stones.

9. Which musicians do people say you resemble?
i get jeff buckley on at least a monthly basis.

10. Who do you need to see live before you die?
Radiohead

11. Which musician do you find overrated?
(jen, we're getting divorced) scissor sisters

12. What were your first three cassettes?
wilson phillips
appetite for destruction - guns 'n' roses
forever your girl - paula abdul

13. How many songs are on your itunes/ipod?
5149 songs

14. Name 5 obscure bands/musicians you think people should try:
camera obscura
joe purdy
iko
sparklehorse
joseph arthur

15. Put itunes on random and name the first 15 songs to play, no cheating:

-barely breathing, duncan sheik
-usa #1, avenue d
-rock hard times, the eels
-ghost, howie day
-light years, heather nova
-breathe me, sia
-she's not here, eskobar
-mysteries, yeah yeah yeahs
-my neck my back, khia
-wrong time capsule, deerhoof
-peacekeeper, fleetwood mac
-fight test, the flaming lips
-slave, dave garza
-don't need a reason, beth orton
-closer to you, wallflowers

and now i tag: vesper, barillius, racho, colette and j

ELEVEN

i'm running out of days here.  i'm running ragged trying to figure out how to make the most of them.  i'm running ragged with a sore throat and lots of snot.  i'm packing, i'm cleaning, i'm selling, i'm trying to make those last few necessary dollars, and mostly i'm trying to convince myself this is actually happening.  i think the most frightening part is that the countdown has officially left weeks and turned to days.  eleven days.  in eleven days i will be in a van with my dog and my mom and i will be leaving california with a great deal of permanence.  eleven days.  eleven days i imagine i will spend hoping to god all my friends come to visit me.  because no one wants to be alone and forgotten.  sadia and colette are the only ones thus far who have signed up for a visit.  and it scares me.  not so much the fear of being alone, but that i love my friends so much.  so much more than i think i will ever be capable of showing.  so much so, that it makes me question leaving.  they are the only things that make me question leaving.  i have great friends. 

but i am leaving.  and i know it's time.  san francisco has taught me all it's ever going to.  my time in new orleans was spent finding myself.  creating myself.  accepting myself.  my time in san francisco has very much been about learning to incorporate all that i found in new orleans with the real world.  relationships, jobs, scraping by, deaths, fights, tears, good food and better wine.  new orleans was a piece of cake.  san francisco was much more trying.  but i learned a great deal.  and i look forward to whatever portland has to teach me.  if the last few days have been any indication, i think portland will be about making peace.  about letting go.  about forgiveness.

i learned last night that the person who molested me as a child was himself being molested.  and absolution hit me like a ton of bricks.  all the hatred and resentment faded away.  and i suddenly, for the first time in my life, felt sympathy for him.  and with that sympathy came regret for all the time and energy i spent hating him.  hatred is something i learned at a very young age.  spending your early years being molested by one family member and then watching your grandfather break your grandmother's bones and your family's spirits, hatred comes easily and like a fist.  and hatred consumed me.  and forgiveness was fleeting. 

unfortunately, after all the bad was said and done, the hatred stuck with me.  i spent so much of me youth angry.  angry and bitter and terrified that one day i would snap.  and this carried over into my adult life.  i didn't trust, i was explosive with loved ones, and i simply was not capable for forgiveness.  and because of this, i alienated myself from many great people.  i hurt many loved ones.  and in contributed to the destruction of the best relationship i've been in.

i have reconciled with the demons of my youth.  i did years ago.  but now i hope this change will bring forgiveness and ease.  that it will help me welcome and accept vulnerability.  i think in moving to a new city where i essentially know no one, i have definitely opened myself up to vulnerability.  so it's a step forward.  it's one more step to a greater me.  and i hope i will be able to see people beyond how they can hurt me.  and perhaps see how they can love me.  that i can accept and even embrace what i cannot control.  leanr to just exhale and let go.

so, eleven days.  eleven days.

JACK AND COKE

this is where i live.  in this country.  this is where we live.  we walk on sidewalks, laid over soil that has buried many people before us.  we walk with importance.  our lives, our routines, our tasks, even our problems are all so important.  the decisions we have to make.  so important.  even though they've all been made before.  even though one day we'll be the ones hidden and forgotten under sidewalks.  smiling up at the importance of everything that surrounds us. 

i've been spending a lot of time thinking about everything that surrounds me.  and even more, of everything that once did.  i watch how the timelines can sometimes get ahead of me.  how everything that was can somehow lay sidewalks down before me.  but this... this is what i do.  i am sentimental.  i can't stop thinking about everything that came before the importance of now.  how the importance of now so often becomes all that came before. 

i don't know how to let go.  of much.  of anything at all, really.  i keep my ear to the ground.  because it makes me (sometimes unbearably) sad to think of the bodies that lie beneath me.  sometimes it is all there is inside of me not to go limp, fall to the ground with my fists forward and punch the earth till it's soft.  till the bodies are exhumed in a fit of sentiment.  but i let my fingers fall to my sides, and i walk very carefully upon the pavement, and i swallow all that tries to climb out of my mouth.  and it takes all of me.  every muscle, every bone, every boner, every song in the background, every picture wrapped in newspaper, every ring left from every jack and coke on every wobbling table in every bar i've ever been.

and i get home.  and i exhale.  and i try to go to sleep.  and hope i don't regret it. 

hope.  hope and regret.  sometimes i think that's all we're really made of.  and i wonder why we can't just bury both.  why we can't punch and scream them into the earth.  why whenever we try, we only further exhume the importance, evidence and concrete of each.  we've all been here before, so why is it all such a big fucking deal?

i am sentimental.  and so i wring my hands.   i don't know how to let go.  of much.  of anything at all, really.  and so i wring my hands.  and so i make a bed in the dirt and keep my ear to the ground.

ICE AGE

there's a disconnection.  i'm not getting through to myself.  there's a message, lost amongst frayed wires, trying to get to me.  and i can't reach it.  i can feel it, but i don't know what it is.  i don't know why it exists.  i don't know how to hold it in my hands and understand it. 

so i bury my face in the pillows with frustration.  i sleep in late.  i try not to feel anything at all.  what's the point of feeling something, when you don't know what or why you're feeling it? 

i take off my clothes.  i stand in front of the mirror.  i'm losing the weight i had gained.  i haven't had much of an appetite.  my hair is finally the length i've wanted it to be again.  but i think about cutting it all off.  all of it.  just a thick stubble, and i can lose my face in jacket collars and oversized glasses and thin, cotton hoods.  frayed seams and hot teas.  long sleeves, blue jeans, rings and a commanding gait.  the kind that keeps you quiet.  the kind that's loud and silent all at once.  the kind that tells you i am strong, just not right now.  just not right now.

my brows have been heavy on my eyes.  and i've been thinking and thinking.  my lips have been dry.  and i have been wringing my hands more than ever before.  last night i got really high.  big cakes and birthdays and beers.  pictures of absurdity, moving slowly, moving morosely from frame to frame.  i came home, and i crawled into bed, and i just wanted...

someone here.  and i just want...

to know how i feel.  to know that i feel.

WINE FROM A COFFEE CUP

tomorrow.  tomorrow i will get up and i will go to work.  because i have to.  because i have to.  because if i don't, i'll undoubtedly get myself into trouble.  not the kind of trouble that is immediate.  the kind of trouble that sneaks up on you and hits you on the head with a golf club.  i would very much like to retire at 25.  spend my days drinking sangria and sitting at little wooden tables in coffee shops that bustle in quiet ways.  talking about what we do with the time, and what seem like accomplishments versus what seems like wasted time.  the time we spend sitting at ergonomic desks, staring into screens, wondering how we got it wrong. 

is it really october fifth?  am i really waking up to calendar days falling away?  am i really drinking wine from a coffee cup?  that i am.  and it's not because i've boxed up all the wine glasses.  no, they'll be the last to go.  it's because the wine glasses are all in the sink.  just wasting away.  and i... i can clean up after myself.  but i just can't seem to clean up a mess.  when the mess is surrounding me, i sit on the ground and i improvise.  i'm the type of person who drinks wine from a coffee cup.  and then from a paper cup.  and on a good night, maybe even from the bottle.  and when i'm down to pots and pans, and improv has exhausted itself, i turn the music and my sleeves up, and pick up the pieces.  all the little pieces, all at once. 

and then everything just feels so clean again.  cleaner than before.  nice.

i can clean up after myself.  but a mess... a mess needs to build up big and bulky.  it needs to overflow into nooks and crannies.  a mess takes some time.  the house wouldn't feel quite as clean otherwise.  i might not want to kiss him so bad otherwise.  you might not miss me so much otherwise.  we might not learn as much.  we might not make the most of everything, otherwise.  of time.  of each other.  of reconciliations.  of staying home sick.  of wine from coffee cups. 

tomorrow.  tomorrow i will get up and i will go to work.  unless.  unless you want to bring me chocolate twists in bed and let our feet touch under the covers and maybe kiss me once or twice.  and try to feel me up.  and sit in our respective corners of this bed, and drink coffee, and talk about the things people talk about over doughnuts and coffee.  and catch each other catching each other.  furtiv...

i guess that's not our thing anymore.  there isn't much left of anything that was ever ours.

...and catch each other catching each other.  furtive glances. 

GREY

tall pumpkin spice lattes make the cold air feel so fresh on my face. jeans tight, hand in pocket, headphones over beanie, i step in time with the beats. the leaves are starting to fall and pile in the streets and gutters. more and more we are finding ourselves around a table, sharing food. deep red sangria in tall, thin glasses. the bars between are fewer and fewer, but we're laughing all the same. to stay warm, to make the most of what we have, to silence the echoing cavaties we're all in some way feeling resonate. we have sleepovers, we talk late into the night, we don't make plans- we just fall into time. we walk the city's grey streets, under the city's grey skies and we know, somehow, we all do just fine.