asecretsharer's Xanga

Snow Day

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:28:18 GMT

Only the rush of water beginning to boil in the tea kettle and the faint trace of a distant train's whistle hang in the quiet of an empty house. The silence is as steady as the snow piling along rooflines and sidewalks. Nothing interrupts but the occasional footsteps of the broom bumping against the backdoor or the aching of old wood. It must be morning. Although I have been awake for many hours and should now be in class, I remain in the kitchen, complacent and covered in a blanket. I meant to do homework and the dishes. Instead, I try to fill the pages of a blank journal, only to lapse into rambling, quieted thoughts. Barely a week ago, I admired how cleverly, how valiantly they avoid their destinations. Forcing currents of air to carry them this way and that, how unsettled and smiling each of them seemed. Restless snowflakes skidded from the sky, and spiralled their resistance. But now, even the sky is sleepy. Today, the snow falls steady and uniform, without argument, to the ground.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 22:23:46 GMT

An idea flashes into my head. Before I have time to click the pen into a useful position or settle the notebook in my lap- a matter of less than one second- the thought sparks and evaporates. The end of a finished match.

After lighting long red taper candles at the dinner table, the match's small red bulb turned crumbly black. When I was young, I always tried to leave matchstick words on the table cloth- the white one with the stitched edgings, borrowed from some relative after she died. Only, I never knew what to write. The match, a tiny pencil, would hang above the white expanse waiting for the flare of creativity to fire it into motion. Finally, I would light on something worthwhile and begin the straight-edged letters of my name. Always my name. Before I ever finished a single letter, my mother would snap her fingers or freeze my hand with a silent frown, if company was present. I'm not sure I ever left more than a charcoal-colored smudge and a broken match beside my empty plate.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:28:17 GMT

I am thinking of the leaky faucet in the laundry room, of bathtubs, of Lake Michigan, of childhood summers spent running on the edges of the Outer Banks. Ocean delicately, sneakily sliding back sand from the shore-line, consuming it, sending it down to uneven terrain lost in blackness. Metronome tap of water slowly chips fragile white from the porcelain basin, and the yellow stain grows microscopically bigger daily. Car wheels squeak their way through a thick layer of ice, and spin in the drifting snow on early morning drives through -3 degree air. Everything is shifting.
In my cup-holder a glass of water has stayed frozen solid, cracked vertically along the sides, for four days now. I press my fingers into its hardness, its fiery cold. I marvel at the slight, damp impressions they leave- semi-circles of warmth- and the white threads that emerge from transparency. When the cold breaks, I will bring the useless, plastic cup into the house and throw it away, and go in search of water that does not show me its whole.

Monday, January 14, 2008

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 03:19:16 GMT

Inland today. Everyday. It is almost a desert. Lips cracked and tired eyes, I am wordless. The ocean is a long way off; it is breathing in steady waves of snow, cresting at the edges of my driveway. I marvel at the pristine crest of waves, thrown glitteringly in arches against cement, and beg them to stay pure and frozen forever, until they melt, receding back into themselves.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 23:03:24 GMT

Creaking wind forces its way around corners of this house which is only beginning to sag under more years than anyone should stay on earth. The vacant chill of pending winter crouches in the few remaining leaves brave enough to resist the season. They maintain their clinging vitality, fighting to the death and denying the outcome repeated year after year. The ruthlessness of time and life emboldens the beauty, producing brave color among the leaves. Cold air, still fresh and free from sun, wobbles the bike wheels and makes me cry on morning bike rides to class. Daily, I rush into artificial warmth in a whirl of breathlessness and tangled hair, allied in resilience with the leaves.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:00:06 GMT

Musings and sleep shadow my eyes in the comfort of half-light which provides no hint of time and obscures the identity of the person sharing my room, my bed, my life. Looking at the body, perfect in its fathomless functions (exhale, inhale), and the face warm in its familiarity, my waking thoughts stretch themselves in the direction of love. Love. direction? It's so easy to love you underneath soft light and red blankets, when words are lost behind your closed eyes and the knives, for once, have left your voice. Even in the tightness of shared space, there is something as free as falling asleep and wind on my skin in the silence of trustworthiness. I need this in the daytime; maybe then I wouldn't have to sleep. Unless I wanted to, unless you're with me.

I'm not watching you sleep; you would hate that. I'm planning our future, or futures - when life here is as good as everywhere else, and you'll breathe as steadily in the daylight as you are in this dawn moment, and we'll live in the flexibility of simplicity together or separately but freely, and you would believe, even if just for one whole day and night that I love you, that you're safe, and perhaps, maybe then your edge which always scrapes me, drawing blood or tears, will turn soft and safe like these bedsheets.

Love could be shaping those futures, asking you to listen, engaging when you talk, moving here or there in companionship. Love could be making choices, embracing hurt, stripping bare in discomfort, being emptied to empty, when those things stop working, stop pleasing. Love could be letting you sleep in my bed. But I'm always too tired.

weathery confusion

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 15:39:04 GMT

this could be winter circling too slowly around the capitol landmark. the snow that spins around my blindsided eyes, cuts my skin- still dressed for summer, ridiculous costume. waving a hand in front of my gray eyes it’s only rainwater, slightly off-colored season, that invades my day. how can it always steal my frame of reference, forcing me back to the same old paths i’ve walked again and again; different terrain, same view for years and years? even steady westward expansion provides no new perspective. vulture-like loops take me there rendering exhilaration (or maybe surrendering), but always bring me back again. here – wherever that is. gas prices and truck-stop coffee leave me common, senseless. dizzy? in a bed somewhere, or on the floor distinctions of self are useless deceits; not quite distant, but separate enough to forget. separate enough to misunderstand the difference between existence and perspective. feeling loved feels better than being loved, and being is better than feeling, but coexistence is always an impossibility. there’s too much friction in the place between being and feeling, fear and love, everything and everything to sit and be. of course these are all lies, if truth exists outside the corners of a mind. the weather lives in patterns, dependable but not boring. yet. she gets her moments of defiance, like snow in september. rain. fall rain. rain in september. perfectly normal. return to the present.

roadtrip musings

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:10:43 GMT

There is a disarray about it, the simple authenticity of which lends to its beauty. In a caress so intentional that it is almost gruff, wind lifts my hair from my neck and slides smoothly down my arm. Cascading from my fingertips, it feels momentarily like I am the source of the wind or perhaps simply wrapped intimately enevelope-like in it. Clouds have intertwined themselves horizontally along the edge I am always approaching and never nearing. Layering of color against color and the occasional reminder of a sun hidden elsewhere. A deep breath. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. The darkened edges of cloud embankments that speak pending rain are not the only reminders of the morbid legal system which even now, despite the exhilerating interconnectedness, exists. But wrapped in warm air and cool wind with my hair whipping against my skin, an excited current urges you're free. you're free. you love this, but there is so much more. The beauty, despite its mysterious accessability and genuine intensity, is nothing more than a hint of a soul which is worthy of much greater appreciation. These creative outpourings are only the faintest whisper of unimaginable beauty buried in the layers of the spirit who not only established the horizon but kindly set the clouds in it. And then in yet another display of beauty he has liberated us to revel in it with purpose and freed creation itself into meaning. A sense of deep-rooted peace carries me back to the moment and the sky and the clouds and the farm-land and time and ceaseless motion; I smile an accomplice smile, making headway through the wind on a mission which finally has hope.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:56:29 GMT

this indoors morning, capable of nothing but a hazy voiced song which spreads like cozy fabric to the corners of a room only nearing familiarity, holds nothing for me but a somewhat unwelcome sense of nearness. the day as it stands in meek melancholy arrived sometime last night, and has already begun its creeping departure. so quiet, so rainy, the coffee's so black and i'm not quite alone in a comfort of redolent hues. then, the inevitable emergence of a map - still, flat, impassively incomprehensible as usual. even in grieved silence, its lure entangles me hopelessly and locks me into mystery. water-logged movement, cautious in monochromatic automaticity, represents the object of the day. the sparking friction between the tic-toc of my heart and the hash-marks of calendar time for once dissolve. after a deeply-drawn drink of air, it leaves behind only a slightly flat dampness, which could be the art of solitude, smudged like glass beneath ineffective motion. everything is so very, very static (i feel the need to whisper). but nothing ever stops long enough to know. beginning and ending days awash in different colors, relocated from wet to dry until the tide turns to face me with her gentle pull.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:54:07 GMT

Unseasonable regression represents itself in layers of fabric, colored by themes and past moments. Long sleeves, long pants- they could make me impenetrable, or at least invisible- if I lived somewhere else. Dressed for another season; I'm wishing but not ready. Is this the birthing pain of what is called a home, or the hammering blows that create a life? The sharp tearing of hollow solidity's finality and the unforeseen realization of a fortress' abrupt demise, obscures its beautiful purpose in the accompanying ringing pain. It has left me searching for breath. In these moments restlessness claws at my heart, like sinister evening breath which rattles dead leaves from their companioned branches in autumn. Pangs for precarious adventure, otherwise known as resigned departure, or maybe more accurately escapism, but honestly just terrified flight, entered subtly and became suddenly ferociously rhythmic like the bass line of a concerto. My mind states promises which bounce off of my warm coat to fall dead within the steel and glass confines, while my heart delights in nothing but the endless motion of going beneath my feet.