Had definitely already taken a sleeping pill when I wrote that yesterday.

At least the main objective was accomplished - slept for a 12 blissfully uninterrupted hours.

It. Was. Amazing.

at last, she sleeps.

Perhaps it is the changing seasons, the barometric dips in spring's pool, the stars aligning, some pervading air of unrest... have not slept for many days... and apparently I am not alone (for once), but seem to be learning of many friends who share this current nocturnal unrest, this series of waking nights woven with bizarre dreamscapes and the scrolling demiconscious thoughts.

Tonight, however, I will sleep under the protective wing of Night. I crumple weakly and wearily and dazedly into her feathery bosom, sink into her 1000 thread ct embrace, and pray that I dissolve seamlessly into slumbers beneath the ambien veil...



Thus, my favorite poem... a beautiful beautiful beautiful dream of a poem:

Variation On The Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again & become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.

- Margaret Atwood

____________________________________

... and perhaps another vivid glimpse, the images the images the images...


The Top of the World (excerpts)

V

I go out.
I dream that I am going out into the snowy night.
I dream that I am carrying
With me, far, outside, there is no turning back,
The mirror from the upstairs bedroom, the mirror from
Summers past, the boat at whose prow
We, simple, pushed forward, questioning,
Deep in the sleep of summers that were brief, as life is.

In those days

It was through the sky gleaming in the mirror's waters
That the magi of our sleep, as they withdrew,
Would spread out their treasures in the darkened room.

VI

And in the rustling of the night sky
The beauty of the world bent down
To see her body reflected in the closed water
Of the sleepers, which branches out among the stones.
She brought trusting mouth and breath
Close to their lightless eyes. She would have wanted
Her brighter breast to appear beneath the shoulder
In the folds of her still closed robes,
Then day was rising around you,
Our earth the mirror, and the sunlight
Hemmed your bare neck with a red band of mist.

But here I am now
Standing outside the house; everything is motionless
Since it is only a dream. And so I go on, leaving,
It hardly matters where, against a wall, beneath the stars,
This mirror, our life. And may night's dew
Condense and flow, over the images.

- Yves Bonnefoy,
from 'The Top of the World'

Slice of heaven.

Today is a day of promises and bargains made with sunshine, quiet joy in a bright day, sweet grassy breezes, wide-eyed optimism...

It is so beautiful, so fresh and vivid here...

Simple pleasures:
Sapphire skies.
Converse All-stars. (Pink)
Sunglasses.
Cold drinks.
Hope.
Friends.
New chances.
Love.
Raspberries.
Open-air balconies.
Clean sheets.
Feeling healthy (or getting there, at least).
The city skyline.
Long walks downtown.
Driving with the windows/sunroof open.
Love... real love... savoring it where I can find it, where it will always be.

_______________

"The desert is beautiful," the little prince added.

And that was true. I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...

"What makes the desert beautiful," said the little prince, "is that somewhere it hides a well..."

I was astonished by a sudden understanding of that mysterious radiation of the sands. When I was a little boy I lived in an old house, and legend told us that a treasure was buried there. To be sure, no one had ever known how to find it, perhaps no one had ever even looked for it. But it cast an enchantment over that house. My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart...

"Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert - what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!"

"I am glad," he said, "that you agree with my fox."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Oh, Bluegrass...

502 Single's (Nick Gerlach, Matt Niehoff, Ivan Arnold)


Bonus: My best friend dated Guy #1 (Cletus). I was there when they met. And today she sends me this video he made. Totally. Worth. It.

Especially since I'm living off a diet of Airborne, saltine crackers, cough syrup, vitamins, and herbal tea. So incredibly miserable. And I sound like Peter Brady when I talk... you know, in the episode where his voice changes and they all sing that horrible horrible song about it. It's incredibly sexy, let me tell you.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...

In my opinion, one of the most incredibly seductive poems she ever wrote... reminds me of "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," in a way... a sexosensual carpe noctum, no?

*God do I hate sleeping alone.

Blossom

In April
the ponds open
like black blossoms,
the moon
swims in every one;
there’s fire
everywhere: frogs shouting
their desire,
their satisfaction. What
we know: that time
chops at us all like an iron
hoe, that death
is a state of paralysis. What
we long for: joy
before death, nights
in the swale - everything else
can wait but not
this thrust
from the root
of the body. What
we know: we are more
than blood - we are more
than our hunger and yet
we belong
to the moon and when the ponds
open, when the burning
begins the most
thoughtful among us dreams
of hurrying down
into the black petals
into the fire,
into the night where time lies shattered
into the body of another.

- Mary Oliver

April: Month of Epiphanies

Spring is naturally a time for growth, the return of roots and fresh blossoms. A time when the barren winter landscape slowly dons its green summer sundress and the birds return north to reclaim their arboreal homes.

I've grown suddenly aware of the effect of six months of freeze... for me a temporal pause in my own evolution, a reckless abandonment of my identity and escape into a trial version of myself... like a Mardi Gras mask I wore six weeks too long or a Halloween costume that I forgot to put back into the closet.

At first I thought it was myself I didn't recognize in the mirror. Now I'm thinking otherwise.

Tonight I had an incredibly important conversation with someone who has been like a grafted tree attached to me since I was yet in the flush of early youth, a slip of a teenage girl tentatively walking seaside along those island shores... someone who is unmistakably an integral part of me. Someone I love dearly. For me, family. Someone whose infinite love for me in return I don't feel I have fully acknowledged during this period of exploration mentioned above... I should not have taken that for granted, but I am sure that I did. And that hurts too... but in a way that is necessary. Good, even. I need to feel this brand of regret, this particular shame associated with facing my actions and choices and not really... liking much of what I see.

These past few days I have been agonizing over things, many things... thinking that I was surrounded by people I didn't recognize, people I really didn't know in truth. People whose actions shocked me, hurt my feelings... and yet... now... maybe it's actually the opposite of that. Maybe it's me that they don't fully know. Maybe I'm not the person they think I am.

He said to me that it wasn't me who had changed. That it wasn't me who was unrecognizable. That I am still the same, still the one he loves as his own blood. Still bonded at the soul to him for what dreams may come.

That nothing I can do will make him question that fact.

(We're family, after all.)

That I'm not the same person with him that I am around this other environment, this other circle I have so deeply ingrained myself within, a world that brings to surface different aspects of myself.

I have known this in some locked-away page of my inner dialog for a while now, known something like a whisper in the dark before I fell asleep, something I couldn't quite make out in the night's blackness. But it was there. I know it was there.

In my desperation to forget the painful reality of home, the blurred lines between sadness and anger and resentment and confusion and paralyzing fear, I've flung myself headlong into a bizarre alternate dimension where everybody has something to hide... something to forget.

We're really just a cliche country-western song lyric. Drowning our sorrows. Numbing the hurt. Dancing and spinning so fast we hardly remember our bearings... except... really aren't we just drilling a deeper hole? Has any of us truly moved past that original sin? The root problem?

It seems not.

The only anti-venom to poison in this case is love...

...and how I managed to keep it, I'll never know. These are the people who stick, like barnacles attached to the hull of a ship even as it's sinking. These are the people who grab their instruments and serenade the doomed passengers even as they refuse to abandon the doomed vessel. And these are the angels of mercy who are still here to help me piece myself back together now that I finally hear the S.O.S. signal on the intercom.

I don't know what I am that I deserve this blind love. I don't.

And so much is changing in my life - like Mary Poppins I'm riding the wind as it changes directions, grabbing my umbrella and flying into the horizon, the next phase of my life.

I just realized tonight also that I owe a debt of gratitude to another someone in particular for first striking the flint that lit the candle by which I now read my life's hieroglyphs. He was perhaps the only person in whom I truly saw reflected the reality of now, saw not only the 'me' of today in his eyes but the 'me' of yesterday, figuratively speaking. And it certainly was unexpected, this clarity. And maybe I'll never get the chance to tell him about it, to thank him for it. Because I didn't like the fact that the two reflections were so polar, so dichotomous... I don't think I was alone in my disappointment. Which was an awakening, a moment in which the two universes were jarred just enough to slightly shift on their axes... and then I knew. 'The curtain rolled back'... something had to change. Somewhere in that mysterious no-man's land between new and old lies a balance of the two, a soul whose path has given rise to priceless lessons in life and some minute bit of wisdom, understanding, peace.

And it's not about apologizing... I know that. It's not about pitying myself or hating myself or cursing the gods for my stupidity or flinging myself onto the flames of the funeral pyre... those are all still just selfish actions that focus on me, and me alone. And that's exactly what I must turn away from... I don't know how the hell I am going to rectify certain scenarios or relationships... some things are still so raw I don't even know how to approach the wound without risking gangrene. And dear god I don't want to amputate. And I need serious help along the way... the family tree is withered and weather-beaten to say the least. We're all suffering. Some of us silently, some not. Like the tides, we always return to the same place in our rhythmic pull toward one another.

What I can do, however, is take care of myself. 'Get myself out of the way,' as Liz Gilbert writes, that others can be the focus of healing and love.

Time to grab the garden shears and prune away the weeds so that sunlight can reach the seedlings below, that there can again be a revival of growth. Strip it down to the basics. Take the first steps along the path to atonement... because it's long and uphill and littered with obstacles and surprises and temptations. My life has become a series of Chaucer tales.

I don't know where to start, and I know it's going to be damn difficult to keep myself from overcompensating, overwhelming my loved ones with apologies rammed down throats, overly verbalized pleas for forgiveness.

Ironic, really... a couple days ago I decided that I was going to try and stop talking so much. Decided I needed to listen more thoughtfully, listen like I did before, back when I was more of a vessel for helping others, providing audience to fears and tears that weren't my own. And you know what? Yesterday that became a literal reality for me. Today is my second day with a serious (and painful) case of laryngitis. Truly, I have no voice. Speaking in this state is almost out of the question, physically at least.

It's truly all connected, isn't it?

When life sends a message... it really sends a message.

[And I'm listening... I'm listening...]

moving on up...

Wild day at work. And thus a terrific opportunity for me to completely lose my voice and resort to using a tone that can only be defined as part cabaret telephone actress (read: breathy), part hollywood slasher monologue (read: 'the call is coming from inside the house!' or, more accurately... 'RED RUM RED RUM RED RUM'). Yikes.

Had a date with myself at Barnes/Noble. Spent half an hour trying to find two specific things... found neither of them... but did manage to find a fantastic Donald Hall collection (excerpts soon to be featured here, I am certain) and this marvelous little number called Other People's Love Letters. Think found.com meets postsecret with a little more organization and author permission slips.

I.
Am.
Obsessed.

Am most impressed by the variety of 'letters' featured, from the syrupy honeymoon sap to the raging break-up emails to the dear-johns to the sign-the-divorce-papers-already to the sext messages to the elementary doodles to the letters to deceased lovers. I'm telling you, this is completely engrossing.

That hopelessly dangerously devastatingly romantic side of me (the one I don't like to admit I have) is going wild with the creative possibilities behind these mysterious and essentially anonymous pieces. Who are these people? What happened to them? Under what spell or constellation did these events occur?

I'm completely inspired... both as compulsive letter-writer and dreamy letter-recipient. I'll end with a few shared stolen thoughts...

_________________________________

What I Want

Tonight, there are two things I want.

The first thing I want is a park bench.
Wooden, weathered, solid, comfortable.
And with a view. Doesn't have to be of the
ocean. Could be a simple garden.
Or a squirrel in a tree.
Would you sit next to me, on my park bench?
Would you take my hand and help me
watch that squirrel?

The last thing I want tonight: you.
You and me. You, me, and an entire day
for us to spend together,
any way we choose.

____________________________________

The man of your dreams,
perhaps not
maybe just one of the
many that have fallen
but for now I am
ridiculously happy
to be the one who
curls himself around you.

____________________________________

Dear Lindsey,

I am so hating men right now.
Mart dumped me, because I lost my mind and had a weak flashback moment with Miles. Then I dumped Jim for Aquaman. And then, Aquaman dumped me for his beach house (not kidding!). He actually said "I only wish I had met you after the summer." ????? What's that supposed to mean?!!????

My feelings are so fucking hurt. I feel it in my arms and legs. It's like my blood is sad. I feel so stupid for having hope, for letting myself feel things for him, for calling when he wasn't calling back. Total humiliation.
I hate feeling so weak and so vulnerable.
I hate that I miss him, that I miss Mart. I hate that I am alone.
I hate that I made him into a superhero he was not (He dives for ship wrecks and he has a delicious body, but he is NO aqua man.)
I hate that I bought him jumbo bags of peanut M&Ms because they were his favorite.
I hate that I want to sleep all the time.
I hate that I even thought for a second about not moving to new york because
of this.
i hate that i will see him in the gym.
i hate that he doesn't want to kiss me.
i hate that i called mart this morning just to hear his voice, just to hear
him say he misses me.
i hate that all i want to do is read lame magazines and watch daytime tv.
i hate that every time i cry over one boy it is like crying over all of
them again.

________________________________________

Can't Stop Thinking 'Bout You...

Keepin' my eyes on the road this time around
Keepin' my hands pressed to the wheel
Something so strange as a woman has got me down
Ain't gonna be your damn fool again

Drivin' tonight just to ease my mind
A man in this mood is a most dangerous kind
Then there was the time my head went blind
Couldn't see the sign at the time
Years would go by before I wondered who
Or where or what or why

Lovin' you was like lovin' a house on fire
Burning and learning when the damage was done

Now I'm tired and I'm scared and wide open
To the rest of my life
And I almost had it all
I'm sick and tired but I'm hoping
That a cure will be found
Cause I can't stop thinking bout you
I can't stop thinking bout you

Here face to face with what I've been running from all these years
Hangs a dark cloud over the moon
Pull off to this roadside dive and maybe test my sobriety
Order a tall cool ginger ale

Lovin' you was sort of like lovin' a fifth of the finest bourbon
Was it your quality or high quantity that's put me in the shape I'm in

Now I'm tired and I'm scared and wide open to the rest of my life
And I almost had it all
I'm fooling myself by thinking
That a cure will be found
Cause I can't stop thinking bout you
I can't stop thinking bout you

- Martin Sexton

[one of the absolute finest songs for melancholy hours like these... if you ever have the chance to hear him live... GO.]

It's time to start being a better friend... and stop talking about myself so much. When did I turn into such a raging narcissist? Maybe I spend too much time alone with my thoughts, too many late sleepless hours with nothing but my own spinning microcosm of a life to distract me.

... in the words of my college darlings OK GO, "get get get get get over it."

Time to get back to the roots... back to a higher circle, a world that loves me back... back to a lifestyle where I respect myself in the morning, don't allow pettiness in others to poison my nights... I refuse to allow them to determine my perception of myself. Damnit! Don't make me defend my actions, dismiss me for calling you out on your own patchwork morals, leave me bruised and labeled an unkind term. I won't be pigeon-holed into that role anymore. Get somebody else to do the dirty work, take on the role of 'bad cop' and face the brunt of the backlash. Or try it yourself for once.

I can't believe you called me that. After all this... everything...

What is wrong with me? How could I have been so blind to who you really were to me? Why did I think we were on emotionally equal levels with each other? When it was so obvious all this time...

I really don't want to sleep by myself tonight... but I need to get over that too. In the end, I shouldn't require anyone else to complete me or hold me steady, right? But... is it wrong to just want somebody to hold me anyway?

Ugh. Get it together, Mitchell.

Enough, I say. Enough.

"The Curse of the Liberal"

A long and difficult 24 hours. A reminder that in the midst of every storm is an eye, a center, a Halcyon of tranquility absolutely untouched by the ravaging destructive force surrounding it... that is where I need to go.

Was talking to E about it... our 'happy' places, tangibly speaking. Mine is in front of the Harrison windows at the IMA or in the Lilly Gardens... E prefers the Baroque wing. It has to do with the light, for both of us... E and her Caravaggio, me and my blue-dazzled gold atrium. (I love the Chagall windows in Chicago for the same reason). It's our romantic dispositions, our need to highlight beauty or brush things unwanted into shadow, filter the world into multi-colored kaleidoscopes... take what exists in plain and make it bloom in rich jewel-tones.

On a more figurative level, I have decided I need to get back to a place where I am happy, happier with myself. Lose some of this guilt. Disassociate myself from scenarios that bring me little more than regret, bruised feelings, the sense of compromise... I know who I am. I know what I am. Lately though I don't seem to know what I'm doing.

At all.

My world is filled with decisions that seem to been cataclysmic... I put my faith and time and energy into the wrong things, wrong people even... and along that path of choosing and prioritizing other people - people who, in hindsight, deserved some priority themselves - I seem to be crushing innocents under my wheels like that monstrous tree-eater in Fern Gully.

Still working on why exactly my judgment has been so terribly wrong, how I seem to be swept into this pattern... what I need to change. Was speaking to M up north this afternoon while I waited on my brakes to be repaired (replaced, it turns out), literally shaking my fists at the sky in a mock display of rage against the fates that had led me so astray... "It's just the curse of the liberal, you know?" he said. "We want to believe that everyone is inherently good and noble at heart."

... and worthy of second chances, I thought to myself. Worthy of me trying to save them, coaxing their better selves into the open, dismissing transgressions again and again and again in the name of forgiveness and love. It's who I am and one of the greatest gifts I can offer... but unfortunately I become so blindly loyal to the ideal inner soul of a person I often fail to recognize the actual person before me, refuse to 'leave a man behind' (in the military sense)... my stubbornness is hardly a secret. My pride too.

At what point will I allow myself to throw in the towel in the name of self-preservation? In the name of my own integrity? Why do people keep taking advantage of my trustworthiness? I'm trustworthy out of principle, a firm (very firm) belief in the right of privacy, need to respect others, honor them with space as they so require, a desperate attempt at keeping relationships cordial and kind and removed from the hurtful childish cyclone of gossip or pettiness... it's worth trying, damnit. Of course this is a failed mission from the start, I know that as well as anyone... hell, I like to gossip too. And I watch E! news far more than I should. But I hold bonds of trust sacred. I really do... and it's a lonely lonely road. Keeping secrets for others is taking liability for them yourself, submitting to the burden of the weight of words. Confidentiality... necessary but often agonizing (as E so painfully knows)...

Should I consider this spring - still just hoping to survive it - my trial by fire? Of natural cleansing perhaps, like when forests burn down and regrow anew from the charred ashes of previous generations of seeds? Is it time to start planting? Cultivating new life? New relationships? Do I even remember what it is that truly fulfills me? The real me?

What sort of labyrinth have I gotten myself into?

And where is my Daedalus to show me the blueprints to freedom?
________________________________

In spite of everything, I still believe
that people are really good at heart.
I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation
consisting of confusion, misery, and death.
I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness,
I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us, too,
I can feel the suffering of millions, and yet,
if I look up into the heavens,
I think that it will all come right,
that this cruelty will end,
and that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals,
for perhaps the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out.
- Anne Frank

Ouch. You have no idea. You really don't, do you?

Ice cold.

To what extent is it a good thing...

... to be cynical?
... to be guarded, emotionally?
... to wear one's heart on one's sleeve?
... to remain at arm's length from those who frighten/challenge you?
... to admit that first impressions are clouded by self-doubt/distrust?
... to indulge in snarkiness?
... to admit to being less than yourself?
... to be honest?
... to change?

I'm fairly level-headed, in my opinion. Yet I have a tendency to take the 'bait,' that same pride-singed reaction as during the middle school years of never turning down a 'dare' in games. Sometimes I forget things... like the fact that not everyone knows me well enough to judge me based upon the sum total of my self and not merely the biting comments and asides. Humor is only funny when it's shared, not when it is exclusive to its originator, isn't it?

At what point do I run the risk of turning my heart into the equivalent of Steve McQueen and his baseball in The Great Escape? Thumping, repetitive, rhythmic... and solitary. Untouched by the sunlight of the greater world. Enclosed within a self-erected (in my case) fortress without windows. There comes a time when acting in the name of self-preservation is little more than miserly, callous even. To protect one's feelings at the expense of others'... I fail to see anything noble in that.

And of this I know I am guilty... often.

The time has arrived to evolve past this immaturity, no matter how deserved the tightly furled petals of original heartbreak may have been... Recovery. Forgiveness. Acceptance. Tenderness. Growth. Spring renewal.

Anais Nin once wrote something - her exact phrasing escapes me, surprisingly - to the extent of 'and the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.'

If the earth is renewing herself, so then should I, no?

It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

- Margaret Atwood, 'Variations on the Word Love'

Her name was Lola...

A glorious Sunday of sunlight, dog walks, brunch, best friends, and a knock-'em-dead hangover.

After a sufficient recovery period (aka nap, ibuprofen, mass ingestion of hydrating liquids), I must try to recount some of the grand adventures that were last night.

Preview, in brief:
1. Marathon bar crawl.
2. Elise scratching phone numbers into the bathroom wall of one of such bars. ('FOR SEXY TIME CALL...'). Don't mess with our family. We defend our own.
3. Impromptu 'no pants party' once we got home.
4. So many cocktails... My. God.
5. Abundance of photographs that seem to resemble the zombies of Shaun of the Dead far more than our actual likenesses... eeks. The crunk eye. It'll getcha.

Oy vey... the madness that is my life.

Tradition.

Wednesdays are kindof a big deal. This has been mentioned before. It remains so.

[Example at right, 2 weeks ago.]

However, in lieu of partaking in typical Wednesday activities tonight, I am staying home, staying sober, and uploading photos of previous Wednesday excursions.

... which is kindof like actually going out, right?

I am in pajamas, a robe, glasses, slippers, and my hair is being held atop my head with a pen I took from work. And shall return, incidentally. I made fresh chamomile tea. I might eat a grapefruit. Or a popsicle. Or I might go crazy and have both. Feeling so healthy I hardly recognize myself.

Additional Potential Activities for Tonight:
- Tackle Iron/Mending pile. Really.
- Fill out app. for job promotion
- Mail electrical bill
- Finish book about Josephine Bonaparte
- Work on birthday gift projects... most of which are far beyond 'belated' at this point
- Clean microwave
- finally watch The Passenger

It's good to be the Queen.