hold the regrets

nothing to write about. nothing to talk about. i utterly fail the telephone. my brain and hands are on autopilot and bored tearless and fearless and flying through slow cool dreams. robotically i perform my most necessarry duties as late in the day as possible, loaf around and read and watch a movie and recite books by memory to my girls as they flip the pages back and forth. it feels as if I am the snow outside, looking in the window at the warm house and fractured family, slowly melting into this dark cowl of night.

Lyli and Scarleht’s concepts of time are evolving rapidly right now, having both added the words ‘soon’, ‘almost’ and ‘mai-yo’ (tomorrow) to their formidable employ of the word ‘now’ and the phrase ‘right now’. We stay in a hotel for a night in The Dalles (like anyone not from right around here knows where the hell that is), forced off the rainy dark roads for the first time in all our road trips. The girls love it, run shrieking down the hallways, jump on the bed for hours. We horse around, order salmon thru the roomservice for dinner, look out the window and babble at the highway outside. We practice our colors in English and Spanish, their favorite is ‘Morado’. Upon finally reaching Portland on Saturday morning we visit Auntie Jess and Uncle Mike #2, check out the farmer’s market at PSU and have a lovely scramble at their apartment.

Mike gives Scarleht a Rubik’s Cube with financial advice for stickers. A women at the market spies her tpy and explains to her son that it’s a Rubik’s Cube. I correct her, saying “Actually, it’s an financial Rubik’s Cube.” She replies right off the cuff: “Of course, what else would she have?” We part ways without another word and get lost in the crowd. After claiming the purple wooden cow in the center of the market and fiercely defending it from a few other rug-rats, Lyli notices a little boy crying with his papa. “Eyo-person cwying.” We go over and Henry (as we are soon to learn) stops crying. His papa and I chat for a few seconds, nothing meaningful really, just tiny-chatter and then gone in the sea of people as my Chai Latte arrives.

A nice break before the return of the I-5 demon gutter run back to Oly and the shelter of home. I drop the girls off with Steph and try to work at the bookstore but I am frazzled from eight days of travel and can only manage meager efforts while I reboot my head.

They’ve started asking “What is it?” “What is that?” “Whata Papa Do-ink?” and I love it. Now I can really start to craft their moldable little minds into the sharp tools they will need to combat this future world we’re throwing up. Just kidding...? sort of... I toss an old animal textbook down on the floor and Lyli flips through it for almost 20 minutes (longest single book session I’ve noticed yet).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Please and Politely have become everyday words we work with to learn how to live with each other in relative peace. I almost broke down in tears last night when Lyli and Scarleht both said “Thank you for cooking dinner Papa.” Kisses and hugs all around. I am short of breath. Their long sentences string together with a few enunciated words, new and old, at the beginning, a series of tonal approximations of the words they already know (cadence carrying meaning as well as words), and then another series of new and old words, fairly well articulated, at the end to cap off the thought.

Scarleht practices her mad jump skills on the couch to my left as the fire crackles in our woodstove. She climbs up to the arm of the couch, balances perfectly and then leaps off, landing upright on a cushion. Only days ago she was still diving head first, with no thought of landing the jump. I shudder, picturing my children base-jumping off skyscrapers for kicks or maybe cash if they have some crazy government job to piss off papa (or pay for my kidney machine).

My mood seems to be a slowed down version of my girls’, shifting several times over the course of an uneventful day of talking to myself and echoing my children. Mercurial and tempestual and drifting with the winds as I wrap my nightmares up with dreams, sprinkle sugar on top after baking and devour, hold the regrets.

dreams, dances, denver. houses, homes, hopes. ferries, friends, fantasies.

Best vacation ever to Denver and a few points east of everywhere I'm used to. At
Red Rocks I learn that 'unconformity' is a geographic term as I gaze in awe at one
of the most amazing landscapes I've ever laid eyes upon. My friend Alyson spoils me
with a fabulous feast on Saturn's Day and shows me little bits (and beers) of the
city. For a smattering of days I am injected with a feverish fervor for the Denver
Broncos and am transported to have-to-be-a-football-fan-land. Aly's family seems to
like me, and I them, an interesting laid-back bunch of people. Plus it's always
fascinating to see where a good freind comes from. Too short a trip but there will
be others and it was a quiet, quite necessary break from my usual routines. However
cool my life may seem it's no less stressful than any other, and it doesn't serve
solid interests to compare one's miseries and happinesses to those of others
anyway. That just leads to a deep solemn grave of resentment and judgement.
Entranced by snow on the Rockies I try to put my future in perspective, aided by
the mere presence and rose-tinted lenses of a dear old friend's beauty and home and
roots and dreams. For once I abstain from the dark halls of bookshops to which I am
eternally addicted. Saving that experience for a trip to Denver with my business
partner Dave, having recently reconciled the shambles of our relationship.

All in all a soul-searching expedition that let me know my self and my own desires
more intimately than before.

My recently discovered cosmopolitan capabilities know no bounds beyond the
occasional economic restrictions that tend to bite us all in the ass every now and
then. Upon arriving back at Sea-Tac Rob picks me up and we dash to our friend
Ryan's new house he has purchased in Seattle off of Ranier. A fixer-upper he plans
to pave his future with, further injecting me with a wide variety of dreams and
aspirations I used to think were unattainable or far far away. But dreams are what
you make of them. Don't think for a second that just because you're young and poor
and a parent that you can't still travel or that you have to press pause on all
your fantasies for eighteen years. If it needs to happen then fucking find a way to
make it work. Quit yer stupid job and find a way to work from home, everything else
will fall into place.

A forty and some excellent tacos chased with top shelf tequila and a sobriety break
later we abscond to the ferry docks and take the 10:30 over to Bremerton, vastly
preferring the hour long ferry ride and easy drive down Highway 3 to the horrors of
Interstate Five, the demon gutter. Packing for another trip at 1:30 in the morning,
hurriedly packaging up the onslaught of orders from a weekend away from my central
-brain-hub-desk-literary-internet existence. At 2:30 a.m. we make the late-night
run to Oly and spend several hours talking and dancing to Zorba the Greek at Rob's
house. Then it's up early for a nice couple hours with Steph and the girls, the
longest time we've spent together in some time. It feels good, friendly again, as
if our harbored guilts and blames have evaporated given time and space. We don't
talk about much important, just hang out with the girls and then head downtown,
Steph off to work, me off to Portland in my shitty station wagon. A mostly
dependable car, just uncomfortable to drive. Windshield wipers on the fritz and
smearing the outside world that rushes by along I-5, I find myself driving in the
worst conditions imaginable. Pouring torrents of rain and waterfalls kicked
backwards by the thrumming thunder of eighteen wheelers. I hydroplane at 85 miles
an hour between two semi-trucks, sweating while the girls (thank god) sleep in the
backseat. Ten minutes later I find my station wagon perpendicular to the freeway,
still travelling in the right direction at sixty-five m.p.h. Behind me everyone
slams their brakes on as I cooly look to the right out the passenger window at two
dozen speeding cars rushing towards us. A quick counter-intuitive crank of the
wheel and we whip back around and speed off while I-5 South comes to a virtual
standstill behind me. Never done that single-handedly before! I count my blessings for all the driving experience I've got shoved under my belt and down my gullet. But christ, I've never been so scared in a car before.

Finally we leave the rains behind and make it to Portland for a quick beer and
words and smoke with Jess and Mike and Sparky Mark (proud new owner of a 1960s
speedboat my mind can only drool over) and friends. Then off in the dark (dammit)
to Walla Walla, arriving exhuasted around 9 pm. I recoup, sleep until 1 pm (thanks
Mom!) as mi madre takes care of the girls all day and I run around getting all my
errands 'round town done or at least kickstarted to allow for an easy-going
Thanksgiving with the folks. The soundtrack in my head plays songs from high-school
brought on by simply being in this place of my abandoned youth, songs from college
inspired by folks I think of missing, songs from Denver I couldn't manage to expell
even if the desire were to strike. Tomorrow promises more books, coffee with the
Burgesses and a drive back across the state to Portland and a small party for my
girls and their P-Town aunties and 'nuncles. Back up to Oly and a kid-free weekend
of working at the bookstore, unwind, regroup, try to plan out my schedule for the
next few months (something I've never been good at). I plan to sigh and relax and
spend next week (at least 3 days straight) wrapped in the comforts of a home grown
less lonely because of the sweetness of words and hearts and the reassuring
kindness of fresh dreams being realized and old wounds being licked finally.

My muse and music merge to become an image of a life that makes me cry with joy for
the possibilities it holds in store and I pretend these tears are merely warm rains
preluding a springtime of the soul. Sometimes it takes a healthy dose of happy to
realize you always carry some, just have to learn to find its depths and wrench it
up to see how light and bright your eyes are capable of shining.

I give thanks for my darling daughters and inimitable parents.
I give thanks for my beautiful shining friends who have helped and continue to aid me along this winding road.
I give thanks for my baby mama and wish her the best of wellness.
I give thanks for this world of continuous wonder in which we live.
I give thanks for your song inhabiting my warm den of dreams.
I give thanks for all the parents, young and old.
I give thanks for all the children who will carry us to the edge of life and beyond.

I give thanks.
I give thanks.
I give thanks.

i wish i could get away with this

Well, that's what happens when you post a link to an image inside your own private gmail inbox... no one else can see it! shocking! sorry that took me so long to fix.

“dear mr. _________________, you are not my father, please stop writing me letters.”

It’s hard to be a single parent in this incestual, sexy, alcoholic, uber-social setting of Olympia. It’s hard to have one night stands when all you have are single nights chopped up over weeks and so many friends to see and social obligations you'd rather not have. You aren’t supposed to care about one night stands, but what about when that’s all you’ve got? How do you get to know someone before they get to know someone else better? They pretty much have to be addicted to you from the get-go for it to have any chance at success and the odds of that happening don’t make me overly hopeful.

It’s hard to kiss someone and then not see them for a week or more and try to hold onto the hope that they still think of you, even though time must move so much quicker for one of their breed (versus us breeders).

Love a thousand miles away that feels as close as yesterday,
love next door that does not stay, instead a thousand miles away.

I bless the fire with wine and forget all my lines.
Ashes smudge the keyboard as I juggle emotional stones in this glass house of a heart.

“They told me I couldn’t see my daughter again until I stopped shooting smack, my husband cleaned up before I did and took care of our girl for a year and a half while I was in rehab. Now everything’s fine, we’re just flat broke.”

hammering home

I wrote this at the beginning of July, I just never had the guts to post it for some strange reason.

Over and over again I must have the importance, nay, the dire necessity of taking my twin girls Lyli and Scarleht out into the world hammered home. Having grown up almost entirely removed from the torrent of society before becoming a dynamic party hub in college I have reverted to my introspective hermetic self since I caught the papa bug, even more so since moving to a rural area outside Olympia, even more so having recently separated from my baby mama. I usually spend my half the week shacked up with my girls and leave the socializing time to Stephanie as it seems to be more important to her and something she enjoys doing despite the stresses of going anywhere with twins. At the farmhouse we invest our time gardening, going for walks up and down the long driveway and the abandoned logging roads, chucking rocks into Puget Sound, reading and learning at a breakneck pace.

Every few weeks I realize that I have not taken my girls out for a spell and have to kick myself and do it. It’s not that I don’t enjoy being in public with them, although there is that awkward unwanted feeling imposed on papas by our culture, I suppose it is my way of giving them what I got and what I value so much now in hindsight: a sheltered but open view of the natural world, a place to do things with one’s hands, a break (at least for the beginning) from the endemic hustle and bustle and frantic pace of life these days, a slow yardstick with which to measure the rest of life. So, being an outsider from the get-go, not to mention attending the radical anarchist hippy college in the woods, tuned me in to those frequencies and I feel them everywhere, from the playground to the Food Co-Op to the freeway. Many of the encounters I have with other mothers and fathers are valuable and lift my spirits but the overall vibe I get from society at large frightens me. I suppose we are indeed rarely spotted beasts in this patriarchal nine to five piggy bank landscape the majority of fathers are locked into.

Almost immediately after becoming a father I felt ostracized (I’m going to assume I’m not alone on this one) to a certain degree from my group of friends. This may well be due to the simple change in levels of responsibility, a forced art of the long view, new time restrictions brought on my parenthood, and/or economic limitations. Work ethics change, social schedules change, I know for me at least I pretty much had time to hang out with anyone who had time to hang out with me, observe my new lifestyle, lend a hand. It was hard as well, not having my masculinity affirmed in the ways I had grown accustomed to and having to learn new ways to feel like a man. I think that’s what I miss most from my male friends, is that support one feels when a common bond is present. Jesus, that’s a whole other essay. I’ll skip back to present day and leave the rants for elsewhere.

These past few weeks have been hard and strange, my partner having moved out and going from taking care of my girls almost all of the time to just half… now a creeping loneliness and stagnant static fills my free time. I almost have to make myself have fun or work or just sit and look at something, now that I sometimes have time to look around. At the bookstore I walk around like a zombie shelving books, smoking cigarettes and talking off and on with Rob. I hate it when reading becomes a chore or a self-help necessity. It’s like coming down from a hard party or a conference that you’ve just slaved away at nonstop for months. Everything else by comparison seems dull and unproductive, lacking that luster which accompanies the always-busy and the polaroid of the happy family. Some of it I’m sure is due to the sensations lost and gained by losing or changing our family structure, or pressing pause (or is it guillotine?) on a relationship or whatever it is confused parents do when they think they don’t need or want each other, whatever it is we think we are doing right now.

Are we gaining something from this time apart? Are we rediscovering our true selves or undergoing radical new changes that have been shelved for too long? We question our every decision, past, present and future, hoping to unearth some revelation that will explain the rocky roads. Is this a futile move? Perhaps, but the lessons learned along the way are still lessons, even if you walk the road alone. Have faith that life goes on, that there is time to invest in oneself as well as those one loves. Have faith that your children themselves are the answers you seek, the way they look at you and learn from you and love you unconditionally. These are some of the mantras I mutter to myself between breaths or beers, trying to dispel or embrace this mix of hollow heartache, foreign freedoms and fresh horizons.

It is only by experiencing and taking part in the spaces and places around us that we may come to learn what sort of world we really want to live in. Armed with these new tools we actively fashion our future.

so...

I'm addicted to good beer
I'm addicted to sunshine and gasoline and pumping my gasoline and watching beautiful women pump gasoline
i'm addicted to cigarettes and woodsmoke and smog
i'm addicted to frozen pizzas and organic vitamin supplements and
certain kinds of cough syrup
i'm addicted to writing and reading and computers and children and parents
and... did I say sunshine?
I'm addicted to a veritable plethora of colorful chemicals in my drinking water, my french fries, my rainfall, my food, my clothing, my cleaning products
I'm addicted to sex and tongues and shoulder blades and loneliness
I'm addicted to television and movies and radio
I'm addicted to the fringe, the underbelly, the counterculture crazy, the voodoo shamans on barstools and their crows that haunt our streets

Where do we draw the line between addiction and habit? How do we
delineate between physical heath and mental health and their paradoxical panacea?

Our vices and our virtues bleed into time across the same value line,
biorhthymically complimenting each other's inadeqeucies and acting together to help us hold ourselves above water. If heady dank local beer and an irregular sleep habit is what keeps you going, what keeps you sane, what keeps your family on track then
so be it. So be it if you spend enough on beer over the years to send
your kids to college... would you, would they have ever made it to the
point where they can question "which college should I go to?" WITHOUT
that beer you drank to fuel you through shoring up the foundations of your own business? Through dealing with the trials and tribulations of shoring up a nuclear family? Silly questions in my mind.

How do we attempt to justify our own ineptitudes and failures? To what extent do comments and criticisms from loved ones play into our cycles of binging, purging, being?

Look what a kiss will buy
or sigh giving
or die living

An odd day yesterday, completely unpredictable, like I like them. A blue foul funk of a mood blew over me so I bought some bookshelves and played blackjack at the casino. Sure, I may have lost money, but I bought the experience, I bought the drive home, the presence of mind it gifted me, the tips for the dealers, two beers, and an hour of pure random entertainment with older strangers guffawing at the outside world inside a dark dank cave where daylight fears to tread. It was great. And I got to smoke inside! [a luxury here in Washington State] So I proceeded to spontaneously stop at Sage Books in downtown Shelton 'cause I wanted to write and had not a pen upon me and they have one of those nifty free internet 'poo-koos' one can utilize at one's leisure. Then a drive around the island, a beer, some beach before the darkness settles. Tenses and times merge within me. I take the weekend off to winterproof the house a bit, build shelves, push books around, get some yardwork done. Today I end up sleeping until 1:30 p.m. Suppose I needed it. My inner workaholic yanks his hair out. My inner shrink taps his foot and frowns. My inner witch brews tonics. I do what I can, take some time for myself, go with the flow and forget about everything I planned on accomplishing this weekend. Fuck it. Do what makes you feel good and keeps the moss off the stone.

"Exactly how much cocaine can you fit in a #4 diaper?"

I've decided to start posting excerpts from some of the e-mails and letters I receive whose overall content and subject matter is too private to post in its entirety.

"I'll be in the military until both my girls are all grown up..."

"The bitch gets pised[sic] when I wanna go drink with the guys!"

"She split right after _______ was born. I've had to hold down two jobs while someone else takes care of him, I barely make enough money for us to eat and I never get to see my own child."

"I'll just hire someone else to take care of her, I mean, it's not like I don't have a life."

"We had twins once, but both of them were stillborn."
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I will piss on Rupert Murdoch's grave

This is absolutely disgusting to throw all over myspace. Why can't we at least be blessed with a nation of hypochondriacs into herbal medicine?

I'm sorry, I believe that there are strange ailments and mental imbalances out there but I refuse to believe they are as widespread as we make them out to be in the United States and Canada (I can't really speak for anywhere else as I don't follow BigPharm overseas too often, though I should). I also don't think we should be baiting people with ads hinting at things they might have... how can we get away with luring vulnerable souls and still deny the idea that our very culture breeds these ailments and afflictions and the weaknesses susceptible to them in the first place?

Okay, enough ranting. I hope Tom pulls my plug for this one, that meddling bastard.

Magic Bottle

Lifted from my roomie Eamon's livejournal...

Yesterday, I was watching the twins while Sky was grabbing us some food. I was working on the computer, so the girls came over and commandeered my lap as usual. Scarleht grabbed this little corked bottle off the desk. Sky had given it to her to play with the other day because she was jealous of her sister's sparkly wand. He told her it was a magic bottle. This time, I told her it was a magic bottle with a song living in it.
"Nooooo," she says.
"Oh, yes," says I.
"Open it and see..."
She uncorked it and I began to sing twinkle twinkle little star, as they are currently obsessed with the song. They run around the living room chanting "Tinko, tinko, diamon tar!" over and over. It's really cute and a little irritating after an hour. I got about three words into the song and she slammed the cork back on the bottle, so I immediately stopped. She opened it, I started from the beginning. She would alternate long openings and short, and I'd start from the beginning every time. (Lyli just sat and watched all of this.) Finally, Scarleht held it open until I finished the song. We sat there in silence for a few seconds, then Scarleht demanded, "Moh song!"
"No more song honey, it all got out."
"All gone!" says Lyli with a scrunch nose grin.
"We'll have to wander around and look for the song, now."
The girls quickly slipped off my lap and looked at the ceiling. It was funny to see them actually looking for the song. We walked around the living room for a minute before I told Scarleht to bring me the bottle. I gnashed my teeth in the air and made strange noises and let slip a word or two of the song before gnashing more. Then, as the girls gazed in wonder, I spit the song into the bottle and corked it fast. I handed the bottle back to Scarleht who stared into the glass.
She held it up and said, "Tinko tinko, Unko Eamon."
"Twinkle twinkle, little star," I replied.
And now I have to sing a song everytime she brings me her bottle.

there is no more perfect drug than having children

they keep me up for hours
make me fiercely productive at times
and profoundly lazy at others
jerk my emotional yo-yo

initially they spark and then eventually totally ruin any chance of a "solid", "normal" relationship with someone else

they make me happy, mad, sad, distressed, impressed, frantic, stoic, hungry, not-hungry, dirty, clean, arrogant, very, very small, tired, tall, strong, weak

they run the gambit from Ground to God and back again to smash me against the rocks of exhausted single parenthood, leave me wanting merely a massage, a meal, a bath in someone else's love for I cannot find my own but am filled to overflowing with my children's

i bear witness daily to these little miracles that run around building themselves with my gentle guidance and the experience itself rebuilds me at the same time and part of me is filled with wonder and part of me is filled with fear and part of me is worried that i don't know how to steer
_____________________________________________________

thanks for the comments recently, they warm my soul.

First Papa Party!

But only one [future] papa showed! Actually it was better that way. My new friend Aaron came out for five or six hours this afternoon. He will be new father to a little son in two and a half weeks, lives in Longview and is probably the coolest person there. Our conversation ranged from serious topics of parenthood, sexuality, drugs, relationships, and family to books, broads, kids, crushes and cigarettes.

Six were supposed to show but I was more than satisfied with one, especially after my night lacking sleep but stuffed with salmon coming up the creek. Gretchen's birthday inspired me to have more birthdays thrown here in these humble woods. Long witty conversations, free vietnamese kung-fu books for all party-goers, a smidge of whiskey mixed with roadside sins.

We talk and walk around our dreams together, words relenquished in the dead of night to ears I wish were closer than the stars. But wings are cheaper than harps these days and our clouds cannot help but cry.

Aaron is dismayed about portions of his existence but holds his head high. I try to assuage his guilt with tales of my own woes and wonders of papahood but most of his mind is minding its own business. I watch his roving eyes caress this fresh landscape like dawn's sun bathing trees in light. His giddy fear resonates across our shared emptiness as we fill each other with hope disguised as hunger. I revel in the morning of his transition despite our collective worries and whimsical forethought regrets.

His tales of love unrequited from his own end remind me of me and I tear up, talking circles 'round my self until the knots knit themselves a nest in which to nuzzle and puzzle. I cannot help but feel the sage and wish that I had had one or two or ten at a similar point in my life. Aaron speaks of his reluctance to read parenting books, a natural aversion to the accepted obligations of those expecting, a willingness to brave the storm with innocent eyes. The map is not the territory and relying on the map can get your hopes up only to dash them and can lead astray even the most dedicated and cautious travelers. His hopes and aspirations and fears quell my own restless heart a bit, persuading poems from the stone that was my soul.

10 top reason used to argue gay marriages

Please excuse the atrocious grammar and spelling, but I had to repost this on mere principal 'cause the heart is in the right place and I didn't have time to copy edit it.

1) Being gay is not natural.

Rebutle:

Then we must also reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay

Rebutle:

In the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society

Rebutle:
Can we never adapt to new social norm? Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

4) God said man and women, not man and man.

Rebutle:

it wasn't that long ago that the arguement of "GOD'S WANTS" were used in courtrooms around our nation to inforce that:
women are mans property
blacks shouldn't marry whites
and because God said it was wrong divorce was illegal.

5) Straight marriage would be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed

Rebutle:
The divorce rate for hetrosexual marraiges ages 20-40 have continued to rise 3% annualy making it likely that by 2007 53% of hetrosexual marriages will end in divorce.
To think that the sanctity of Brittany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children.

Rebutle:

More then half of the worlds children live in orphanages, foster care, and the streets. Hundred of thousands of children will die in these orphanages every year.
But we want to argue that marriage need to have the out come of children,
Then you most also argue the marriage of infertile couples, the elderly and gay marriage from being allowed to marry because none of those marriages can produce children of the own.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children.

Rebutle:

Since straight parents only raise straight children.

8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion.

Rebutle:
With thousands of different religions in this country and a US Consitution founded on the belief that church and state should be seprate and all should have the right to follow their own faith. A Country founded by the belief that no one religion would dictate our country's out come. We can not inforce law by religion, unless we are prepared to determin the our country's founding fathers were wrong.

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home.


Rebutle:

It saddens me that we as a nation feel that a single mother, single father, or relative can not possibly raise a successful child consitering that as of 2003 US Statics reports state that:
42.7% of American Youth are living in single parent households,
with that percentage expecting to raise 1% per annual calender

10) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior like allowing a person to marry their dog.

Rebutle:

If you can train your dog to sign his name to marrage certifcate then the speak his name to a judge then who am I to argue... cause that talent.

"No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed" - Helen Keller

kitchen floor

Lyli tells me my beer is cold as she and scarleht cook their white rice and tomatoes in their ‘ayuh oben’ [little oven]. Then we play one variety of the new hand-warming game. What else is new? Spinning until dizziness sets in, the jump game on the sofa [which looks like a gymnastic event for dwarves], Eamon teaches them to ask ‘what is it?’ today, they refer to Alyson’s myriad bracelets as a little song, they have begun to go out of their way to do something nice for each other once in awhile [oh my god, yes!], scarleht dabbles in fifteen word sentences occasionally, they dress as twinkle twinkle little star for halloween [stupidly entertaining american holidays tend to piss me off although I enjoy how happy they make other poor saps].

so many aunts and uncles around this past week, too many to count but shining stars, all of them. auntie smash gets to spend some quality time with the ladies, as do auntie jess, auntie aly, auntie caitlin, and two too brief encounters with auntie crystal, to name a select few. I love it when my girls meet my powerful lady friends, however awkward any other fallen bones may be, it warms my spirits like nothing I have ever experienced before, merely to have them observe a sliver of my newfound self: me as papa rather than me as drunk or me as ex-lover, or me as ex-[fillinyerblank].

as for my own weekend, suffice it to say I danced through life and time with my favorite people on this planet doing what it is we do best: letting loose and talking from the heart. distance tears my troubled heart a new one but my friends help me heal when they can, without even trying, without crying or fucking or bullshit and I love it, I love the raw elemental feel of these beautiful folk I’ve found over the years and lives, truths and lies.

my head spins in new directions, romance and reality lay seige upon my soul at the same time, my thoughts torn in so many directions I can’t… just can’t… can barely breathe sometimes it all happens and then isn’t happening so fast and then I’m alone with my thoughts once more and she’s gone out of my life for awhile again except for words across lines I wish were written.

it rains all day and I love it, the mists hang like white ghosts from these trees romancing apples and I think about the future, I think about the past, I delight in the present… this gift that keeps on beating out its heart upon my scattered days as my dreams weave a slow rug out before my confusedly determined toes.