a place for my happiness.

I wish there was a place for this
lined with felt
and vaulted.
I would put this feeling there
kept safe,
tied closed
with velvet.

(photo) on fuji superia 800iso film with Nikon FM  

Broken Spines

Our love meant I carved a space
on the bookshelves
and against my body in bed.
I made empty the places that once were full.
And then filled them again
with you.

They became our broken spines
until I searched for Salinger
in October.
(I'd forgotten he wasn't mine)

[on film with my pentax k1000. Book pictured is Jonathan Safran Foer's 'found' work Tree of Codes]

Autumn Colour Week: Brown

a worry stone: chestnut

brown.

worn velvet, in my pocket

[ It was Autumn Colour Week at Poppytalk.  Thanks for tuning in, and for all your kind words about my photos & little three-line poems. Welcome to fall! Monday was red. Tuesday was yellow.  Wednesday was orange. Yesterday was gray.  
(photo) on drugstore film, with Pentax k1000]

Autumn Colour Week: Gray

the present world is obscured

in gray.

here but leaving, like breath.

[ It's Autumn Colour Week at Poppytalk. I'll be writing a little three-line poem and sharing a picture for each day. Monday was red. Tuesday was yellow.  Yesterday was orange. Please Join us!
(photo) on fuji superia 400 film, with Pentax k1000]

Fall Colour Week: Orange

a tumbling collection

of orange.

both warty and smooth, at once.

[ It's Autumn Colour Week at Poppytalk. I'll be writing a little three-line poem and sharing a picture for each day. Monday was red. And yesterday was yellow.  Please Join us! (photo) on Kodak Porta 800 film, with Pentax k1000]

Yellow: Autumn Colour Week

burning holes into the gray

yellow

startling and defiant.

[ It's Autumn Colour Week at Poppytalk. I'll be writing a little three-line poem and sharing a picture for each day. Yesterday was red. Today is yellow. Join us! (photo) on fuji color superia 35 mm film with Minolta srt201]

Red: Autumn Colour Week

even after the first frost

red spreads

across blushing apple skin.

[ It's Autumn Colour Week at Poppytalk. I'll be writing a little three line poem and sharing a picture for each day. Today is Red. Join us. (photo) on fuji color superia 35 mm film with pentax k1000]

Like a Text Message Sent at 2 a.m.

I walked from my apartment, barefoot across jagged asfault, down an alley way, across the boardwalk and finally to the sand. The water was inky black and barely visible. I screamed, and the sound was instantly taken away by the full and faint hum of crashing waves. Nothing echoed back. I love you, I shouted. And, then it was silent. No words would be great enough, no noise loud enough, for a response from the infinite emptiness before me.

No Place Like {This}

I don't have my name on a lease. I don't even have a room of one's own as Virgina Wolfe would put it. I am, for all intents and purposes, house-less. But I am not homeless.

All my things are lying on the floor of my room. These are the only things I was able to carry here, in a few fruit boxes I filched from Wholefoods. I don't have any of my stationary, or any furniture that isn't made of metal, or even a bed that is made for more than one person. But that is where I sleep every night; in a bed that is intended for a college dorm or for some toddlers first 'big-boy-bead.' The sheet is two sizes too large for the bed. I say "sheet" singularly because the bed has only a comforter and a fitted. This single sheet is flannel and snowflake print - which luckily becomes more seasonally appropriate as winter approaches (but was no where near that when I moved in in July.)

Luckily, I am able to pass this off as an utter lack of regard for material things, something I admire, and the rest of the household nuances usually fall under the heading of creative or liberating. The first time I unloaded the dish washer I had an anal-retentive-anurism when i realized we had no silverware organizer. I literally pulled out the rack and turned it upsidedown over a drawer that was a tangled mess of forks, spoons, and knives. Anytime you need something to eat soup with you are running the risk of becoming the next captain hook. Because, you see, the hard thing about finding silverware by sense of feel is that you don't know you have gone too far until you have - and your hand looks like it got caught in a weed-wacker.

My old, newly collegiate-self, would look at me sitting here writing this from a filthy floor in a hall (since we only get our bootlegged internet in a small corner of the house) and think to herself 'this girl is in hell'. And, believe me, sometimes, like when I get dog hair in my food or have to wade through waist-deep laundry to get to the laundry machine, I do think that.

But those moments are usually drowned out by the sound of my roommates recording vocals in their showers, or by the hum of a machine sewing a jaguar costume large enough to fit a 200 lb man. It's hard to hate being somewhere when you love the people you say goodnight to, and even harder when you love the person taking up 3/4's of your baby sized bed.

There are rare nights when I come home to a house that is dark and empty, and I walk through a door that is constantly unlocked, and up a creaky flight of wooden stairs. I don't wash my face, but credit that to the constant rain water, and crawl in to bed.

Sometimes I lay there, alone, in a strange house inhabited by relative stangers. I press my face into a pillow that smells like the sholder I'm used to sleeping on, and hear the kind of silence that comes between tracks on a cd.

And I only think one thing: I'm home.

--
* image is from the 2003 Jane editorial 'No One's Home' photographed by Christophe Rihet. All too accurate! also, i'm really happy today for no real reason!

In All Honesty

Aug 6

"The world tastes different on my tongue. These full mouthfuls are palpably: joy.

Joy in each breath, into my lungs, into my blood. Joy then pulsing through my veins and vessels, making even movement - Joy!

Because it is joy carried in every blood cell, traveling to and from a heart that again enjoys beating. It beats so blissfully.

These beats - they purr softly in your arms, and race under your touch or even under your gaze; green eyed and gently passionate. A visual kind of caress that in itself can evoke the deep throaty sound of contentment so small - so nearly inaudible that is is felt, rather than heard. "

(image) it's all make believe

It Reminded Me of the Pain I'd Never Not Known*

From my old sketch book, written 11/22/2007, fall junior year.

"It is a demoralizing moment when you learn that you have a self; a pained private self, that only you can know. Each of us posses this self, hides it away behind laughter and shared experience.

It is this secret self which harms us, holds us, which must be beaten back every morning with the desire to smile, to hope, to live. It is this self which holds on to and locks inside it every unkind word - silently rapping against the light in your soul with a low mournful cry "I hurt. I hurt.", a call that must be suppressed if we are to love, to feel, to survive at all. A call that eats away at your stability like termites to a house until not a gale force, but a gust (a word, a flower, a memory) leads you to crumble and splinter. In ruin, in weakness, in vulnerability - it is here you have no structure at all.

and you find yourself in the rubble. Now your whole self "I hurt. I hurt"

and you vow to build it stronger "I hurt. I hurt"

and you banish away the pained secret self, to a place where you can't hear it, but it kills you - wordlessly."

{* title allusion: Nicole Krauss, The History of Love: A novel}

Heartfelt Citation

I did not write these words
but tonight they are mine.
I read them, and reveal them
like rubbing out the impression of a grave stone
with charcoal on newsprint.
Old words condensing to new words -
as if drawn forth
latent with in the paper linen

It Was Written (Portland 9/30) :

I'm laying here in a bathing suit next to a river I have just been informed is made of snow melt, in a park in the middle of Portland, on a patch of grass, between two bridges. This is not what I was planning on when they said "waterfront", and I look ridiculous.

My bikini is bright yellow and pink floral print and is made entirely of ruffles. It's the kind of thing that an old woman might wear, or maybe a toddler, but I am so obviously neither of these things that I look cute, in an ironic sort of way. The bathing suit itself is not why I look ridiculous.

It's because no one else is wearing a bathing suit at all. I look displaced and out of sorts, like a tourist, a foreigner, or that I got dropped off here against my knowledge. I look like I don't belong here, and the writer in me notes the metaphor.

Regardless, I start snoozing in the middle of this city oasis in something that covers a little more than a bra and panties. It provides me no coverage physically, or with a defense should I be groped. "well why was she wearing that?" But for some reason that fact that it is the middle of the day and I'm on a beach towel makes my outfit and behavior somewhat acceptable.

A copy of the book I'm reading lies next to my head like a bright yellow thought bubble "No One Belongs Here More Than You" it assures. But I'm not sure if it's talking to me.

The sprinklers just came on, and I go running, so I have no time to decide.

And, suddenly my bathing suit seems practical.

Paradigm Shift

when people thought the world was flat
why didn't they draw the stars as little lines in the sky?
short dashes
not dots
or did they think our planet was the only
one?

An Excerpt

"She knew the world, and thought about the world, and the world hurt her. Small things often stirred the demons, whose faces she hid close to her chest like poker cards. The smell of lavender made her cry. And when she cried it was like someone splashing through puddles: rain pouring from deep brown eyes, down cheeks freckled like mud. In the most twisted way she still looked happy, and in the most twisted way she was. "