blue aliens

It was the Wednesday of finals week, and, like any other studious student at my university I decided to take a little vacation in the middle of finals week. An eight-hour, life changing, outlook altering experience.

I’m not sure if it’s still the afterglow talking. I never am any more. Perhaps it was a permanent change of outlook, perhaps it was just coming with the arrival of a summer I don’t think I will ever forget.



The terrible thing about college is that you have to fit your life into a car. Moving out is worse than moving in, because somehow you have managed to accumulate an astronomical amount of crap. The amount of garbage pains me. As if we college students aren’t producing enough already, they actually have to bring out a walk-in dumpster. I spent most of my last day trying to surreptitiously fill that dumpster with the empty handles from our room without anyone seeing me. I have actually danced inside one of those dumpsters, but we will come back to that later.

What you bring to your dorm is your core self, the basic things you need to survive and the little mementos you’ve picked up along the way that you need to get by. Some bring more than others, and more of different things. I always love going into other peoples’ dorm rooms because you can immediately tell what kind of person they are. If they have a lot of photos of their friends, they have posters of their favorite bands, they have books, bongs, bulletin boards, each object gives a little insight because they chose to bring it here. The neat, sparse ones are the ones that fill me with a sort of unease. This is someone, I think, who is not so grounded, who can pick up and take off in the blink of an eye. I am part of both of these worlds, in that I have put up and taken down the same set of pictures dozens of times, in dozens of rooms in several countries. I put up my cluttered mess of a life and I take it down again like it’s nothing. I can’t live without my stuff but I can go anywhere because the stuff is two-dimensional and I can just pack it up and take it with me. I don’t accumulate dust, really. It’s a shame.



I was giggling for much of it, simply because it was such a new, different feeling. It was like being in love for the first time, when the feeling is so sweeping that on its way by it grabs your lips and pulls them into a smile, or like bubble baths or trying champagne for the first time, where you just feel silly and you want to laugh.


That is the danger in it, though. If you got a chance to go to heaven, would you ever really want to leave?

family

"that guy really cares about you, you know."

oh, if only you knew. if only you knew.


fish (water): constant flow, power, drive
peacock (earth): remember your worth, take pride, earthly beauty
swallow (air): dreams, higher power, higher ideals


even if you don't know where you're going you can at least remember where you came from

they say that god makes problems just to see what you can stand.

we really fuck each other up sometimes, don't we?

or maybe we help each other, too, by fucking each other up. maybe in the end it helps you get to where you're supposed to be.

promise me you'll always stay

it's a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown

airport thoughts.

This is a melee. There is so much noise. It’s almost too much humanity to handle without headphones on. The old moccasin man in front of me is doing Sudoku in pen. There are babies gurgling, handhelds clicking, and plastic voices coming over the intercom.

I am angry. I guess that proves that I care.

There are few things I love more than traveling alone. There is a simple independence in it. You casually buy a sandwich and a bottle of water, sit at your leisure, casually keeping an eye on the time. You don’t have to talk to anyone or deal with anyone else’s crap. You’re going somewhere, getting away for a while, just you, yourself. You can probe the corners of your brain in the quiet. They fucked up your sandwich, it’s not what you ordered, but it still tastes just fine.

There are no outlets in this place.

A father is lovingly gazing at his son, a reminder that he is not alone, and, if he’s lucky, he may have a few more generations of remembrance than the rest of us. In our hope to leave our mark we leave our children, and we hope to god they will like us so they’ll tell the world about how great we were, or we thought we were.

I’m going somewhere today. I’m always going somewhere. But where am I really going?

We actually put thought into things like matching our bracelets with our headbands and shoes.

You can see the world in an airport. All types of people. The business executive taps away, the clefts in his forehead growing as you watch. The harangued parents sprint back and forth in some bizarre relay, handing off babies and bottles and clinky colorful toys. Restless leg gal jackhammers the ground in the hopes that she might be able to sink into it and hide for a while. You can read the sadness on some, and you wonder where they’ve been, where they’re coming from…and why they look so god damned exhausted with life. Give me your tired and your sick, your weary and your broken? They’re all here, lost in the limbo that an airport is; a junction between this place and the next, suspended somewhere between numbness, sterilized silver countertops and really ugly carpet.

You just watching life froth and bubble in front of you, passing you by. Waiting for something to pick you up off the ground and take you somewhere new.

the potential kills

I remember
picking out the white tie and the teal shirt for you to wear to work
while you razed the foam from your face in the predawn.

and while I am lost in the potential
of what I could make right in his world
I remember
what I made right in yours
the days when the orange juice swirled with the alcohol in the late afternoon
lounging in your lime boxers
and white shirt that gloved my gauntness.

as you razed the foam you razed my soul
from its forcibly thinned frame

I can connect the dots with your freckles
and make it seem like today is forever
we lie in each others' fissures and deepen them unknowing
the damage we have done.

and while he makes pain for me
yours lingers on
and together you make for me
an endless sea of insecurity.

maybe one day
you will knock on my door
and as I appear in my oven mittens and apron you take me
into your arms, baking, love
and teach me how to fill the cracks.

but that day will never come
and while you are wandering, love,
I will have found someone new
who will teach me how to fix myself.