she came bearing gifts

I have sung her praises before, and now I'm going to sing them once more. sara kaye larson is a masterful adventure companion. she is currently in LA taking a break from the hot wet heat of memphis. I am thankful for the unbearable tennessee summers. sara is here. with sara, comes new experience. trips to northerly lakes at dawn, prison museums, ghost towns, historic walks, beautiful buildings, desert thrifting, and hollywood hotel pools. sara reminds me that I shouldn't wait for her visits to discover my own downtown. all I have to do is open up and get out.

an important reminder

love is alive and well. believe.

eye on the prize, I wake.

I'm silly. I stay up till 4 AM watching silly movies, eating silly snacks, thinking silly things, getting silly stomach aches. there's nothing silly about heartache. but it is often very silly how we choose to move through its murky waters in search of a day at the beach. white sand. turquoise water.

I am ready. I am ready for land. 

today I woke up with a different feeling about the day than many of the days before. I didn't dread its empty contents. I didn't feel weighted down by its absence of plans. I got out of bed (which may not be regarded as an accomplishment, but is). I showered. I ate breakfast. I left my house. I went for a walk. I am here, trying to say more than "I don't know". I mean, I don't know, but I want to say something regardless. I walk a path paved in what was and I am moving forward grateful that I have made it here. each step is a victory, in any life. each smile an achievement. the little things are as big as you let them be. life's as simple as you allow it. happiness is the goal, all goals melded for the sake of joyful alchemy. eye on the prize, I wake.

walk it out

I haven't been feeling completely awesome lately. yesterday I decided I would take a walk and see if that would help. it did. a lot.

strange new flowers

the words we spoke
were living things
our breathy exchanges
resuscitations
each departure a death
each hello a wet birth
learning language like a child
I bury the words I used before
strange new flowers burst from the grave
I seek new names for each bright blossom

my island

Life is never easy for those who dream. -Robert James Waller

I used to hear music and ache. I felt the gape like a wound. I want that was the thought burning through my veins. but now, I hear music and sing. I feel its presence like a warm blanket wrapped around my dancing skin. I am that is now the thought that hums in my brain.

it takes so long sometimes, to arrive at ourselves. if I think about it, I guess it takes a lifetime, some people getting closer than others, some never even taking the first step. lately I have had a heightened awareness of the struggle to just be. I am surrounding by people begging the question how. how do I ignore what I'm told and hear what I know? how can I become unafraid to follow my fear? how will I know if I am making the right decision? all these questions that we ask ourselves as means of delaying action. the distractions from the actions that will free us from all the dissatisfaction. if it were easy, we would lose interest. it's supposed to be hard. it's supposed to be terrifying. it's supposed to seem nearly impossible. how else would we know what is possible? how else would we find ourselves?

I by no means am done discovering, but I have seen the outlines of my shore. it took me so long just to arrive at the knowledge that the destination I seek is in fact there -- but it's not some distant island I'm sloshing at sea to reach. it is in me. so close. so far. slowly I add a new coordinate to my map. x moves around marking a different spot each day. some days I am courageous enough and patient enough and strong enough to unearth the treasure, and some days I stay anchored in the boat, shivering in the cold of my own fog. I let myself have those days. I am learning to let myself have all the days, the glittering gold and ruby days, the gray and unfriendly days too. they are all my days. I am all my days. what matters is that I believe in my island, and it's not even about reaching it, it's about knowing it's there.

don't take it personally if I punch you in the face

soooooo much to catch you up on. I got my belly button pierced. ok, so maybe not. but I did do a lot of other super talk aboutable things that I am drawing a complete blank on right now. I think I believe if I simply sit down and type, they will all spill out and then the events of the past few days, weeks, months, whatever, will in fact have happened because they have been historically cataloged in my blog. the only reason I have this blog is so sometimes, when I forget that I am living, I can go and scroll through all the posts and reconfirm what I already knew, I am indeed alive and living. I have thoughts and feelings and I share them with whoever it is that happens to stumble across this thing (and which google analytics tells me, is either an incredible speed reader or doesn't read this at all, given that 83.59% of my visitors spend less than 10 seconds on this site). a fact that I do not take personally.

I am in the habit lately of not taking anything personally. like when I get towed and have to pay the city of los angeles $300 dollars (which I would have rather spent on a plane ticket to spain) to get my car back. these things happen. I will be honest, there was a moment (and I let myself have that moment), where I thought, poooooor me. boo to the hoo. but then I thought, well, so to the what? I had to cough up some cash I don't really have. I'm still alive and mostly well. I still get to laugh about this in a couple of years when I'm laying poolside at my hillside estate. just another thing to slop into my bucket loads of character I've been collecting in all my odd jobs and various life "experiences" (a nice word used to describe those indescribably difficult times we always manage to somehow pull through). we all rule. because we are living, and continue doing so.

well, it seems I can't think of all the things that have transpired since I last thought to write any of them down. fortunately I have photographs. I will let them express what my words are lacking.

my rite to party

the morning before I left idaho to return home to LA, I was enjoying a delicious breakfast prepared by my lovely sister and her lovely boyfriend. halfway through the meal, my lovely mother quickly got up from the table and returned holding one bright pink birthday candle. she lit the candle and stuck it into a rosemary breakfast potato sitting on my half-finished plate. my family sang me happy birthday while we all laughed at this loving gesture. I made a wish and blew out the candle exactly one week before my birthday.

tomorrow is the last day of my 28th year. it feels monumental. many a birthdays have passed without me giving them much thought. but this one is different. this is the kind where I feel impelled to shave my head or climb a mountain or buy a really nice bottle of whiskey aged exactly as many years as me. I find myself craving a campfire wreathed in the smiles of my loved ones. an island getaway. a big dance party where everyone dresses up as their hero. a poolside lounge at a desert nudist colony. shit, I don't know? something special. I think the point is my desire for the ritual. fighting for my rite of passage to party. a ceremony of sorts to celebrate who I've become, because quite frankly, for the first time in a long time, I am really proud of me. I've worked hard for that feeling and I want to embrace it while it's here, sing it a song, take a picture of it to hang on my wall. I'm not sure yet what exactly I am going to do on the 30th, but something tells me it is only the beginning of what is going to be a celebratory year (and life to come). 

we all daho

sometimes you sit on a boat, budweiser tallboy in hand, laughing with your family, watching the sunset and you think to yourself, "boy howdy, I am lucky." then you remember luck has nothing to do with it. you deserve all the blessed moments you receive.

babies are cute

meet alistair wesley mcintire. he is a true delight. I had the privilege of kickin' it with him and his awesome mama michele while I was in idaho. in case you forgot, allow me to remind you, babies are cute. they are also incredibly wise -- they haven't forgotten yet what it's all about. eating, sleeping, pooping, laughing, loving, living -- the rest is just excess. do yourself a favor, spend some time with a baby and remind yourself of that fact.

desert dance party

sometimes you just need to drive out into the desert and dance. sometimes your friends, who don't live in the same town, drive out to meet you. sometimes you climb a mountain to watch the sunset together. sometimes you stay up late together in strange motel rooms drinking whiskey and talking about life and love and loss while eating potato chips and tootsie rolls. sometimes you take a walk in the dark together. sometimes you make each other laugh, really hard. sometimes you wish they didn't live so far away. sometimes you build an imaginary jet in your head, put all your loved ones in it and fly them to your side. sometimes you are perfectly content to look at pictures of them by your side. they make you laugh even from afar.

snot is slippery

I just ate shit. not literally. I mean to say, I fell. or rather, I slipped. upon inspection, I appear to have slipped on dog snot. wish it had been a banana peel. I'm always wishing for the real life experience of cartoon comedy. but alas, it was only a tiny globule of mucus that turned the otherwise safe terrain into a treacherous path. I made a GRAND entrance into the cafe. an accidental performance piece. I think everyone was expecting me to be extremely embarrassed about it, I mean, it was possessing of all the qualities that would make it so -- über hip coffee shop full of über hip people sitting quietly enjoying 6 dollar cups of coffee while staring at macbooks . . . and then enters in the girl on invisible roller skates. bags flying limps splayed. it was hilarious really. everyone was more embarrassed for me, than I was for myself. people sat stunned, silently waiting to see if the earth was going to slip out of orbit, if I was going to turn into a tomato face and run off never to return. but then I just got up, brushed myself off and laughed. here's the problem with "playing it cool" -- it means you're playing. you're not actually cool. to me, coolness lies in ones ability to be the real deal. the bumbling idiot who makes no apologies for their truth. I was super cool in my uncoolness this morning. for this I am proud of myself. the baristas were proud of me too. they told me that I fell very gracefully and gave me my coffee for free. I'm half tempted to slip on snot everyday.

flip flop

what do you do when you realize you are a character from the movies?
the older woman always wearing smudged coral lipstick.
the incessant dipshit always telling shit-for-brains jokes.
the sexy beast who lives upside down but longs for right side up.
lips pouted.
looooong gaze at the camera.

I know what I am doing.

this is my movie.
I am the star, the muse, the director, the perpetual entertainer.
I am the asshole laying out the mixed nuts, arranging the napkins in a fan.
I am the producer of this box office smash that wonders why it flopped?

will it flop?
has it flopped?
did it flop?

flip flop I am a fish out of water learning to swim.
time smoothing out the raisins of my fins turned fingers.
I can feel again.
who needs water when there is music?
I am a professionally untrained dancer.
my hips lead the way.
they’ve never done me wrong (I left that up to the men that loved them).
oh how they loved them.
oh how poorly.
no one loved me half as much as I loved them.

my hips, not the men.

the top of rock bottom

please excuse the mess, I am under construction. 

I am a mess. a beautiful, ravenous mess. I will have my way with this journey. I will carve out this path. I will make decisions that shock and horrify. I will betray others so as not to betray myself. I will not look back.

I will eat giant pieces of charred meat in the middle of the street. I will drink tall boys during the day. I will sing too loudly in quiet places. I will take long solitary walks up steep hills. I will laugh at inappropriate jokes and cry at silly things. I will forget to eat. I will struggle to sleep. I will embrace the cliche of a meltdown. I will melt and rise up, a microwaved marshmallow. some graham crackers and some chocolate and I will become s'more and s'more amazing each day. it may be sticky, but it is oh-so-delicious and well worth the mess.

I don't remember writing this last night

“oh the little things. well I’m relatively available for the making of magic or the scraping of the mundane. either way. it’s the little things.” ~me to a friend via text

holy shit, this is what it really looks like. drunk. alone. on a thursday night. life being a series of surprises, but not of the cupcake variety. not the surprise where a group of your favorite people jump out from behind a couch in the dark to wish you a happy birthday. surprise! you got what you wished for. you are drunk. and alone. and now what? sitting in the dark surrounded by blessings. scared of the implications. now what?

live. dance. sing = to yourself and no one else, for the time being. laugh, on the phone with friends even though it’s not as good as in person. pine for things. long for a shorter wait. this is what you asked for. embrace the melancholy. this. is. what. you. wished. for. don't be careful.

don't be careful.

embrace the crazy. the blissful indifference. the not knowing. the desire for something undefined yet somehow palpable. everything becomes unspeakable for the blabbermouth me. embrace it.
I am embracing the beautiful speechless me. what can I say?

this is what this birthday looks like. a cake with no candles. no light, but sweet just the same.

how I spent my easter

ostridge eggs are colossal. you need a chisel and hammer to break one open and about 20 people to eat the insides. for those curious, it tastes like a chicken egg, only milder. this was definitely the highlight of my easter weekend. gross and wonderful. practicing the religion of laughter. amen.