Postcard Part 2

The people hunched

blotched colors one tries

to force meaningful

but they only blended

until the stench stemmed

from each of us

His car smelled like 1923.

You can feel that

someone was here

but they won't let you

see him

A lens is just a roundness

that chooses who to take

capture

usurp into exhibit

I'm a part of that

The crowds are erupting with tongues of necessity

the licking is sanguine

with slippery speech

I can't translate it anymore

for I may be that delicate

kind of lazy

that yawns upon devastation

but cries at silence

It doesn't even need water.

Nothing I've made has sprung

quite like this before

I think there may be joy

in the soiled scaffolding

of such palpable hope

and these tiny fingers

trace the lines of earth

until they are parallel to the start

angled at end

Postcard Part 1

~This will be the beginning of a 3-part postcard series that were written beneath the copper tree during a bike tour of East Austin art galleries. It was a very magical, sweaty day and I tried to not think when I lifted pen. This seems to almost always create better pieces. Don't take my word for it though, I am a liar.

See what you think.~

Part One:

I'm on a roughened bench

sitting beneath a tree

dilapidated copper and dripping silver leaves

I sincerely believe

this tree sprouted in a dream

and now buds to reassure me

of this

The evening sort of aroused us all

The shade became exotic

part of waking that creaked

in my consciousness I wondered

if you sliced through my bones

what poetry you'd find

Arteries are clogged

stuffed wine-tinted hyperboles

that hold graceful little hands

It smells like a sack of seeds

with the freshness of frothy tide

I wished for more.

I feel the hour relay a beautiful

exhaustion and a timely numb.

As I sit, and write on a post

card that never gets mailed

each year the addresses lose houses

connecting them to me

and I sit beneath a tree

this deathly little tree

Target coffee shop and foggy vistas

It was an early morning. You know, a real-teacher haunting of around 7:30 and you've already been up since 6. It was foggy on the drive, something I am particularly adverse to given my past with pesky trees and T's in the road, but I had to meet one of my student's mothers. And it was well worth the trip, as she teared up with pride at the awards ceromony and proceeded to clutch his chubby little cheeks in her small hands.

I needed coffee.

I purposefully use the verb need, because at this point, it is the elixir that resurrects most of us. We are just ruins, vacant vestiges before we are aroused by the bean.

As I sat at the Target coffee shop, sipping a Cappuccino, I saw a Hispanic man walk by with a Hispanic downs-syndrome boy. Their interactions were minimal, and the age of the boy was one that couldn't be discerned.

They turned the corner, exiting the grandiose automatic glass doors, and the older man suddenly disappeared behind a column. I bit my lip, at first questioning his actions, moving my head vigorously to find the boy. The boy waited and then, with a smile so electric I nearly yelped in my chair, peeked round the corner and found his father.

It was a moment of the purest delight. Perhaps it was a game they played often, even more so did it touch my heart then, because he found that kind of inconsolable joy with every new start.

I watched as the fog hung low, gripping the cars in the parking lot, possessing the morning, but the man just grabbed his sons hand, and they walked, smiling into the mist.

And it was nothing more than a trip to Target, on a Wednesday morning, at 8:23.

Shalloween Freedom

OK, for once, I didn't feel the effects of Shalloween. There were no random make outs and slurs laced with drugs or Smirnoff. And, could this be a first? No bare asses hanging out of any costumes. Phew. If I saw one more slutty maid's butt...........

I was with an awesome group with inventive costumes. I mean, the fact that I could dress up like Sylvia Plath and actually have people recognize me is a big step up from gettin shwasted on 6th Street. Instead, there was creative concoctions to drink from and a strobe light that made the beams of light coming at you palpable. There is nothing better than seeing a well-organized Halloween party. I mean, a fire pit out back, a skeleton greeter at a creaky door, and even ghouls awaiting you in the bathroom. To say the least, I was dancing with more than one bloody creature last night.

Ladies.....Halloween has not always been our most adorable and classy day of the year (in fact, most of your costumes start with slutty as your adjective) but, this year, I saw many of you looking downright homely. But hey, I got quite a few laughs, and could it be that the evolution of men (or perhaps I am just entering a more pleasing and mature age bracket) is really occurring and they now really appreciate a good, well-thought out ensemble? I mean, smart people are sexy, and it's about time we all started acknowledging this!

I will give away one Halloween outfit that I saw, in case you need something for next year....some guy bought REALLY hairy arm/sleeve things and said he was the 2nd Amendment. Can you guess what he was? The right to bare arms! Brilliant, I mean really top notch.

So get your pens out and start documenting for next year, because let's face it, you're getting too old to be a sassy devil or the oxymoron that is a slutty angel.

Happy Halloween!!!

Austin City Budget Limits

So, as most of you know, ACL was this weekend. ACL is one of the biggest music festivals in Texas, and certainly the 2nd biggest in Austin (second only to South by Southwest). But, the problem is that it can be a little pricey, and you have to rely on potentially pretentious Hipsters to choose bands you actually like. This year I, unfortunately, was too poor to go on any of the days, and worse yet, I had to watch all the college students around me wave around their 3-day wrist bands like they were snooty religious zealots showing off purity rings to the damned. How is that I have a reasonable job and can't afford a one-day pass, when these fools don't work at all and are going to the entire music ensemble? Well, I guess that is just life, and I have to admit I have blown a VERY substantial amount of money travelling, so I can not be too harsh of a judge.

On the brighter, and creatively frugal side, I did make an effort to at least hear some music. Miss Heather and I biked our butts downtown and, once seeing the herds of people, decided to park our bikes prematurely. In case you don't live here, let me tell you that it is not SO close from downtown to Zilker. But, it's October, and people were walking with vigor and biking with sloppy grins so all was fine. I even saw a rather mystical man painting with the same intensity I have seen mother's exhibit while tracing the lines of their daughter's faces. At times it can be nice, too, to be swept up in the crowds of others (especially the intriguing outdoorsy crowds and those wearing flowy skirts and Indiana-Jones type hats.

After finding the correct, ACL outsider/hovering crowd that was the same likeness as us, we proceeded to wander the trails and outskirts of the temporary fencing in order to listen to any and all bands. What was not expected, was the wildlife that seemed particularly vivacious on that Saturday afternoon. Turtles were abundant, and jumping off logs like synchronized swimmers in snug one-pieces, and we saw a few feisty swans have a go at some grackles. Per usual, there was that one couple that insisted upon feeding these "delicate" creatures, only to find that the power they can cock their necks with is really quite frightening. So, while some people moshed on the insides of the festival, I climbed out onto a sturdy branch and watched as the most peaceful part of Austin refused to be rippled from its lazy afternoon rituals. And hey, we even got to grab a beer and watch some football afterwards, so all in all I would say it was a rousing success (and very reasonable workout) for one day!

I suppose the best part of Austin is that even though you FEEL like everyone else has money, in reality, there are many people that are in the same precarious, unsteady boat as you, and you know what? You're gonna have a lot more fun winding through the river than the others, and it feels kinda nice when you finally let yourself fall in :-)

Besides, isn't it better to have those unobtainable dreams dangling above you like lovely bobbing clouds than to pluck them down one by one like bruised apples?

Fall-ing

Some people just look at the sky and don't listen.

There is always silence, if you seek to find it. It is hard to be around these people, who are disappointed at the slightest thing, and can be surrounded by friends and all the while wishing for someone else.

I too, am guilty of this. Do I not crave my friends from home? Do I not project their faces, qualities, quirks upon the skinned slabs of others? Yes, indeed I do. But I do try and appreciate those around me, and instead of making irksome faces at those that do not come, I try to hug those that did.

You must cherish the marbles you do have, and put them in your velvet casing even if they are scratched and not as beautiful as the ones you once had. If you don't, they will roll out, one by one, and become lost in the edges of carved tables and sneaky floors. Better to have any game to play than none at all.

But I am guilty, now, of judgement. And that is a gruesome thing to be a part of. So I will just sip my coffee and appreciate this lovely Fall Sunday where all I do is Spring up into the person I want to be on the weekends (but rarely get around to being). One that fills their blustery days with tennis, coffee shops, bikes and baking.

Yes, I think today will be a lovely day, and I will sing to the leaves. I suppose they may be scared, so close to death as they are. But we will celebrate the life, the life, and watch as they spend their last days here in a fiery blaze that we will think about deep into the bleakness of winter. There is always a beauty at the end, for it is a continuous wheel that begins again.

It will set you free

There is a tide inside of us, that whips and tosses all of our sanity until it is frothy and trapped in undercurrents of despair. I have felt this, the strength of the ocean. Recently I have found myself walking up to it and letting it chase me up the beach until the game grows old and I know longer have control over how much I am made to run.

And I thought, the cacophony of the ocean could never be silenced. And if it could, is there any joy in it? For when we are given silence, are we not holding our ear out to to the sky just waiting for a speck of sound?

But this, it is too loud. I do know the difference between a hymn and the sound of a broken string.

Through grace, through months of beatings by this body of water, I have sooner found that no matter where I stand, I am an island. That I am made for others to want to destroy but I reach deeper than my land shows, and there is hidden strength beneath the line of water.

And perhaps the waves come for me not because I am weak, but because I am that glorious land that has risen, risen above the sea.

Now, as I lay my head to sleep, the ocean cradles me in its fury until I am woven in its ways and we create a work of art that has an incandescence.

That incandescence is what will set you free.

Honesty fits a little smug

Alright, so.....I am supposed to be honest so I will be. I guess I do as I'm told. I woke up this morning, rubbed my eyes with the unnerving feeling that my roommates had left the house over an hour earlier. But, they are getting fat checks so no bother to feel TOO guilty, as my "part-time job" so far has paid me nothing for the HUNDREDS (dare I say thousands?) of hours I have been enslaved to its creation. So, I decided I would take a trip to the library given my particularly flexible schedule. I was gathering up Dylan Thomas, throwing him on top of D.H. Lawrence while slipping in the fabulousness of Gertrude Stein. While I gathered six wonderful books, including the one I LOVED about the friendship between Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, I found myself pondering....

Why am I so reluctant to let GO of books? In every city, most small towns even, these books are readily available and in circulation. And yet, I find myself wanting to OWN OWN OWN them. I have grown used to how their spines rest on my dresser, how the colors of their covers add contrast to the others. It is like a big messy painting over there, and when I remove even one, their is a significant loss in vibrancy.

I would like this to be the ONLY reason. But, if we are being honest, then I to admit that a part of me wants people to KNOW what I read. For them to see a copy of Dante or Kundera and know that I have read them, digested them. ICK. That is painful to even write. But, it's true, isn't it? I mean, I think a lot of people feel this way, which doesn't validate it in any way, but it does make it a much more interesting topic to delve into.

Think about it. We are choosing books based on the complete trajectory of not only the great literary canon (which is painfully limiting) but also by how the books represent US. They tell people how smart we are, how meta-cognitive, how worldly and well-travelled. They even tell about our fantasy life; can you be swept up in the allegories of C.S. Lewis? Facebook, mass-produced clothing, Target, you are constantly trying to chisel the individual statue that is you. You want to look so effortlessly polished and unique that sometimes the statue becomes too thin in places, from over-exertion, and it begins to disintegrate.

I am guilty of this too. Certainly the US heightens this feeling of wanting to be ORIGINAL. But why do we pine for it, when it is already innately true? My fingerprints are the most rare things in existence, because they can not be replicated or copied or seen on anyone or anything out there. But somehow, I want someone to see an old floral Victorian chair and think, "That is so Kristen."

Strange, because no inanimate object can BE me. Only I can.

Why are we playing this elaborate game of cut and paste, where we run around trying to glue claim on simple things? My hands feel sticky from it, and sometimes the scissors slice too deep and we end up losing more of ourselves than we intended; all while trying to claim territory for our selves. We can't just shove a flag into a style or song and say it is ours, that it is the reflection of some fickle piece of our soul. It is just ridiculous and, dare I say, SHAMELESSLY self-indulgent.

But I am guilty of this a thousand times over. Every day, every minute, I am trying to cultivate a uniqueness when all I really want is to feel a sameness with someone else.

So for today, I will drop the library books off, push them away like precious jewels into the unyielding tide, and I won't look back because there are thousands more waiting, breathing on the shelves, for me to choose them and bring them home into the cozy nook of my room.

Maybe this time I will read them as they are, and hate them or love them based on the guttural, not the societal. I can let them speak to me, in whatever language escapes the dusty lips of the page, and I will listen.

(We can dream, can't we?)

The Epoch slots of being

I sit here in a coffee shop named "Epoch." It is, so far, my favorite coffee house that I have found in my tour of Austin. It is a neat pocket of Hyde Park (a northern neighborhood) that stretches from a funky street filled with vintage clothing stores and ambiguously-named businesses. After being in the mind of my 17 yr old character, Ian, all morning I find I am quite excited to write from my own perspective. It can be quite exhausting keeping up with the elaborate plot of Ian's life.

I start to wonder about this Epoch word, and learn that it is a subdivision of the geological timescale that is dependent on rock layering. We are currently in the Holocene epoch. What most intrigues me is the obsession of man to label increments of time. That we are so dependent on these labellings to quantify change, when innately, change is endless, inevitable, and impossible to swallow.

I wonder, about the layering of rock, and how humans can be labeled in the same fashion. How we are each just layers of experience, that are stacked from our ribs to our softest, most exposed pieces of skin. There are so many things that make up the rock; heartbreak, sadness, loss, joy, hope. When I start to feel that I am crumbling, it is nice to know that I am made up of many levels, and that when a part of me disintegrates, that it only makes way for the next, fresh layer to become exposed. That the pain is part of this grand stripping and the only thing we really fear is the anticipation of the transition. My layer now, is sandy and feels like it sinks into every part of me. But, I know, in the parts of me that are open to truth, that I am made from the holiest parts of earth. Even when it all falls away, erodes and violently cracks until our ears bleed, that there is always more beneath.

Sometimes, the shininess of the redemption can make you cry.

And there are some people, that can dig in you, feel your grittiness in their hands, and love you anyways. They are the excavation team that are trained to find every last uneven part of you, that will flatten you out when you become uneasy mounds of self-deprecation.

Maybe you have to own a shovel, to be my friend. Or, better yet, maybe I am only given people that enjoy geological surveying. They wear those white safety helmets and goggles, and smile with fat grins at the challenge.

I hope, that I am at least that piece of earth that feels like home to others. That when they're tired, no matter which layer I'm on, that they can roll out their sleeping bags and lay upon me. And as they stare up at the sky, and I cradle them and weep, that they see all the complexities of the stars and translate that into something wondrous.

For, I ponder, what is the point of being constructed like this, formed by symmetrical compartments of evolving land, without being able to feel the weight of your lovely little feet?

Drumsticks that can't be eaten

Yeah yeah, you live in Austin and you think you are a ROCK STAR! I am sad to say that your geographical location doesn't make you Kurt Cobain. I mean, if I was moving to London, I would not start saying things like, "Oh! I've to go to the loo!" Ick. So why, I beg you, must you pick up a guitar and strum with your fat little fingers and yell incoherent words at the blue walls of my house? I feel that my weird hobbies only harass me, only batter the skeletal structures of ME, so it is especially irritating when someones pipe dream comes splashing into the precious spaces between my ears.
But, I do want to support musicians, and that infiltrating creative energy that slips in the cracks of Austin's steamy streets, so I let the music continue and try to string thoughts that can be rhythmic on SOME level. After all, I live in Austin, and there is certainly a plethora of goodness swirling around for me to reach up and smile at, to let a few slinking irritations at my ankles be left as nothing more than minor annoyance. Every one's an artist, and hey, everyone sucks at some point.

Did someone say a raccoon tail and whip?

Have you ever wondered what happens in 'Writing Groups'? Yeah, you know you have......so did I, at least the occurrences in random meet ups with strangers. I was genuinely interested, so, what do we DO with interested minds? We indulge them. So I have started going to a writing group here in Austin and it is pretty sensational. It isn't just the allure of talking about writing styles for two plus hours, but it is being exposed to a certain KIND of person.
Now, some of us hide our artsy interior better than others; I for one own a dismal amount of tight pants and battered instruments. Instead, I hide behind my bubbly exterior, secretly enjoying that the artistic community may find me to be an absolute bore when it comes to looks. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I can wear my feathered earrings or Thai dress, and my hair does have that out-of-control curl thing happening, but overall I scream Kindergarten teacher more than free- verse voyeur.
That is what I like about the meet ups. They are pretentious, but in a "prove it" kind of way. No one is in awe that you can write, they are there to make you better. They can't be too hotty if they are meeting with us nobodies, because if you're really good, you've got print on your fingers from your last publication.
So, we meet at Dominican Joe's which has such a pleasant atmosphere I would consider giving birth on the bottom level, should the occasion arise. People scatter in, one by one, and I of course come up guilty of judging. But, right away I like them. There is one girl, blond with small pointed features and a conservative black dress, that I secretly think may be here because she wants to exchange cookie recipes. As I think this, she introduces herself and says, rather blase, she writes erotica. I am pleased by it, by people knocking me off my lovely horse, and I remember why writers are such an amazingly diverse crew.
We are everywhere, don't you worry, sitting next to you at work, sleuthing in the park for that one clue that will finish our character's personality. And we steal, OH HOW WE STEAL! You don't want to meet me, because I will take your name, your mannerisms, and maybe even your deepest darkest fears. I will gather them from the scrapyard of your life, and start building a lopsided house that faces west and gathers sunlight in the evenings. You may see a dark piece of you past nailed to my roof, keeping the rain from coming in. How else do you expect us to find enough parts to build the edifices of our imaginations?
After the introductions, I pulled out my newly revised poem, "Exodus" and timidly place it on the table. The erotica girl smiles and puts a stack of papers down, too. This, I think, is going to be interesting. The last person to contribute is this amazing woman with corn-roes in her hair that look like fabulous little wrenches coming out of her head. She is boisterous and published already, and of course her resume includes being a poet in residence as well as a coordinator for the Austin Women's Festival. Instantly, I am intrigued and embedded in her fabulously crafted self.
So we start reading, and I find that the erotica pages are turning themselves. The writing is so honest, so free, and frankly I feel like a cave woman that has been living under a big rock labeled "PRUDE". But hey, I am still young, right?
The writing, all of it, is amazing. The poems from Ms. Fabulous are sexy and violent while also bewitchingly insecure. The erotica piece from the teacher lady, has not only proved to be informative but it has also caused our group to unite in a way only overt sexual awkwardness can do. We go over each of the works, mine first, and everyone gives their comments with a level of professionalism and emotion. Then, Bam, I am getting complimented and I feel like maybe I can hang with these cats. I swear their is an abusive boyfriend in me that keeps whispering, "What are you doing here? You can't write like THEY can! Look at her hair, and the way she dresses, you are out of your league country bumpkin." Usually, I find a large, sharp object to whack him over the head with, but sometimes he makes me feel genuinely plain, like a white t-shirt at a craft store you buy for $6 because come on, everyone knows there must be something MORE you can do with the pathetic rag. I guess if you're gonna be plain, you want to be Banana Republic plain, at least.
And we digress, as writers do, when the editing is over and we have discovered that the erotica author is writing about her own REAL LIFE experiences. Somehow we are all in deep discussion about what kind of narrator is best to explain the innovative acts within a sex party. Sometimes, people add in too much of their own personal desired, and I secretly note that I do not want to do that quite yet. Then, Ms. Fabulous starts talking, and I am in rapt attention. She is so exciting and passionate that I want to roll her down a hill just to watch the grass light on fire. We talk about women's rights, of course, and of course a poetic gal with cropped hair chimes in, and I forget the poor men in the group. Of course, I guess that is the price you pay being around a poetess, most of them use men as catalysts to an experiment, not someone they actually go over their data with.
Finally, I look at my watch and realize it is probably time to go. The married guy next to me looks eager to leave, but I can tell he is too nice to jump up. I start to shake my keys, the leaving dance, and finally find an opening and we leave together. I wonder if he will come back next time, if any of the new guys will, and I unlock my car.
As I'm driving I wonder why I always want to leave things. Why, when it is still good, to I feel like time won't permit any more. I am UNEMPLOYED and yet I felt like I had "things to do" at home. I guess that is our sick little tendency to not overstay our welcome. Besides, it is always good to keep people wanting, right? No one wants to be the writer that was all talk and no prose.

As the flames flames were rattling her world, she thought, at least my death would have an incandescence.

I wear sunglasses when I want to lie to myself

The fan roars in my room, perhaps it wishes it were a helicopter, and I almost want to rip it from the ceiling and set it free out my window. Its artifical wind moves the inanimate particles around my room, and I see a picture flap. As I move closer I see something amazing, and utterly impossible for me to digest; the version of myself as I was as a child.
When we are babies, one of the things we are drawn to first (other than our darling mothers) are mirrors. We are fascinated by the matching thing that moves with us, and we struggle to understand what that thing is in front of us.
As children, our faces are compact. Our noses are cute, little markings, a hill with slits. Our lips are narrow ways to filter a smile. And our cheeks have the loveliest texture, one you will spend your adult life pumping with moisturizer to try and excavate.
But as I stare at a picture of myself, I wonder who that girl is. Why is it so hard to accept that she is me? I see her, looking at me, and I think that accepting the Self is that daunting equation that never balances on both sides. But there is one thing, one thing I see that tells me that she is me, I was her; those eyes.
Our eyes are the only constant we are given. They are the same size, refusing to grow, to shrink, to comply with gravity. The sit, huddled in the socket, seperated from the weak parts of the body. And how strange to use them, these blue eyes, to examine ourselves through a picture. So many levels of self-image collide that I am floating between shattered perception and the concrete certainty of being alive.
She is adorable, I think. Does this make me a narcassist? I think it does. But it's true, I was so sweet once.
I think there is safety that there is still a part of me locked away, unshaken by the quakes the years have upturned. That one day, when my back is arched and my skin hangs like forgotten streamers, I will hold my youth beneath my brow, slightly above my nose. That though the world may become more blurry, less poignant, these eyes will still hide beneath the curtain of my blond eyelashes, secure in their steadfastness.
And yet there is a sadness in it. A sadness that I am the one person who sees these eyes the least. That my moments gazing into the mirror, hoping to dip into my head through my tear ducts, are a seperated vision, nothing compared to how others watch me. They see me from the angles, the sneaky sides and forgiving heights. How unfair, how angry it makes me, to not know myself as well as them. But perhaps that is best, for I do not wish to fall into the lake of my own pleasant reflection (as our poor Greek friend).

So for now, I will stare at pictures, aghast yet satisfied that I am unchanging in the ways that are most important. That no matter how my hair lightens, body expands and thins, I will look out with the stoic poeticness that makes up the best set of all: my eyes.

Heat Advisory

They're telling us to stay indoors. It is going to be deathly hot, they say, and your body will work as efficiently as it can but at some point, you will drop onto the pavement. I figured, quite naturally, that this was in direct effect to my internal anger and frustration which certainly had the potential to have infiltrated the Austin area weather system. My anger had slept tightly with me in the previous night, roaming around with torches in the spaces between my ears. When I awoke I had hoped it would be gone, but I could still feel the footsteps.

I decided that, being at one point accustomed to that degree of air hostility, I would go to the Hope Farmer's Market in East Austin despite the heat. If you haven't been to this part of town, then it's hard to describe the juxtaposition. From East 5th and Waller, where the market is, the buildings still rise like unhinged sunflowers smack in front of you but it feels like they must be a clever mirage of wealth. It's like there's a concrete mote (I-35) keeping you from the castle, but then again, not everyone wants the deed to a fairytale.
On the East side, shops and local vendors are popping up, and people that want to actually be a PART of a diverse community, instead of keeping it in their backyard like an unruly puppy, have concluded it is a place that is a manifestation of one's projections and a lovely but volatile piece of town that brings all kinds. There is a new 'trend' for certain people to move to the East side as a sort of statement.....excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth. But, in the defense, and someone who themselves almost lived there, I hope some of these people are moving there for a diversified lifestyle, and not to just be a floating ghost. Needless to say, the East Austin is a very difficult place to really understand. This, of course, pleases me immensely.
As I walked through the market, crunched the lose rocks under my torn flip flops, I was thrilled to see the bicycles entangled in each other, leaning on the abandoned warehouse walls. Did I mention the market is right next to the train tracks, in an abandoned warehouse? Oh, well, my dear you have not seen half of its charm! Everything is open and there are bright colors flung around the room. As I admire the local crafts, like Spanish hand-painted tiles, I find myself drawn to the brightness outside. I hop off the step and sink into the earth, immediately smiling at the joy of feeling a slight bounce beneath me. I like it when the ground moves, like it's whispering, lungs contracting.
As I walked to the produce stands, I see a perfect bundle of parsley and bring it to my nose. It smells like how I envision my hair would, high in the branches and sprightly winds of heaven. I then walk further to find I am drawn to many of the smiling faces around me. Some I even recognize from before, but they don't know me, and there is a mild comfort in my anonymity. There is a father with a small girl, who is looking at eggplants as though they are fat purple accessories. She holds one up, twists it, and gives it a quizzical stare. I am secretly hoping the eggplant will sprout a hand and give her a thumbs up. The sign above the vegetable labels it "Nature's gem." I smile at her, how could one not with those rosy cheeks, and move on to become yet another slave to the carbohydrate as I purchase a fluffy circular loaf of sourdough wheat bread. After a while of wandering, the heat slips up, swirls around my ankles and then lingers on my neck until I am swooning at the thought of air-conditioning. I will admit to feeling mildly wimpy at my own pleasure in electrical salvation such as fake air.
On my drive home, I start to feel heavier. I think I had, for a small while, forgotten my sadness; for we all know anger is really just sadness with different glasses. My head has literally started to droop, an unattractive quality that may make me look five years older, when I see a gathering of people under the freeway overpass. Without thinking, I pull in. It is my experience that most of the good things in my life are prefaced by a large gulp of non-thinking. This makes me feel mildly less guilty when I am hungover and thoughts refuse to link together and instead hover like blurry moths.
As I pulled in I immediately rolled down my windows. There was music, vibrating in tune with the cars flying above, honking below, and the heat seemed to actual steam. But, the music floated out to me, wrapped me in it, and I had to listen. I don't think you actually pick your music, it finds you with serious intention. There were some RV's around, and a small podium where a man stood with a thick book. Ah yes, it was Sunday.
The guitar stopped and the man at the podium flopped the book open. Everyone was quiet as he began, "The Lord brought us together, brought us this music to rejoice in this day, in this heat, in His grace." There weren't enough chairs. People were standing, leaning, pacing. An ambulance screamed behind the preacher, and he paused, yielding to the cries with his eyes closed. After it passed, he began again.
There was one man there, a black trash bag slung over his shoulder, unkempt in physicality but he had found a church, in the useless organ of the city, beneath the freeway. Isn't that all we really look for? A church, in our town, in ourselves? As I looked closer, I noticed the people, and though their clothes gave me ideas about their way of life, nothing translated more profoundly than the way they listened. Their ears, their bodies, their eyes, were that universal canvas that begs to be dripped, carved, embroidered into something beautiful.
As I drove away I could see anger hovering outside my car door, at one point it even scraped my window with its overgrown nails. But I was safe, at least, for a little while, and the next time I saw anger again, at least it would be me that opened the door.

Some say that staircase led to nowhere

I came here to sit, relax, indulge in a character that may be more of myself than I care to admit. But the conversations sort of hang in the air, suffocate me until I inhale deeply and relent. A man walks in, crosses his legs in that feminine way that seems anatomically wrong. He is more nervous than her, but I think he is running the interview. And OW, that was painful, that pause and the one after that, and worse still the actual words he strings!
"My journey with God..." was how it began, and her hair was all tight curls and sweetness. "I want to change the world."
They talked at length about her family and already I know too much. Don't they SEE me sitting here? Then, they bring up Cambodia, and I wonder if she has ever felt the heat of SouthEast Asia. And she is so naive that I want to smack her and then I remember no one ever smacked me. Maybe they should have, maybe it would have roughened my flesh for what was to come.

Man, that phrase scares me: "I want to change the world". It's like it's a monster with no pupils that watches me through the window. I know it's there, even when my blinds are closed.
Are we all, in a way, trying to inflict change? I intentionally use the word "inflict" because to change the world is a violent endeavor. I don't mean to say you need a machete, per say, but you have to have an internal darkness to feed a proper erupted passion. I once went to Peru, back when my eyesight still existed and the frizz in my hair was maintained, and I thought the burnt cheeks of the street kids was almost endearing. I would spend my money buying swollen, warm rolls to them as if that one meal would be a long-term enigma. But I barely fed them, barely spoke for them without my own self-serving tongue dancing the conga. That is what was the hardest, as I showered in icy water with my hair never drying, was knowing that I was getting infinitely more out of the experience than those I supposedly came to "help". Quickly, my ability to use the Spanish language overshadowed the grabby kids that sold finger puppets at 2am in the Plaza de Armas. I, in fact, was mourning the loss of my ability to do anything worthy in the world.
But let's not be cynical; I think there is so much to do, so many things you can let yourself be used by, but you must know that you are a selfish, selfish little human.
When you discover this, or perhaps just accept it, things become easier. The women in Thailand, for example, don't become charity cases you wish to free from the grips of sexual slavery, but instead the women you sit with in the unyielding heat, and gently drape an arm around.
You can only help others when you are in a place to help yourself. When you believe that you are the savior to anyone or anything, you quickly become a demonic presence that can cripple even the most stilted individuals.
You are just as needy as anyone else, and what you give can only be quantified in what is reciprocally gained. As I watched my Thai students fall to the projections of their teachers, their parents, and left to learn with no paper, no fans, no passion, I realized that my steps into that classroom were my own selfish being wanting to FEEL something.
FEEL SOMETHING!
Isn't that what you want? I think we all want it. We are so damned numb that you could saw off our feet and we would drag the stubs of ourselves pathetically around hardwood floors. So we do things like skydive, travel, dive with sharks, to be shocked into feeling. But we forget that feeling is not something that HAPPENS to us, it is something we must BECKON. Yes, reel it in like the slimy salmon in the river, and if you're really lucky, it may jump freely into your net.
I have learned, finally, that I can feel something while I drive through the Texas Hill Country and stop and devour a fattened peach. I feel the same thing there, that I felt biking the Mekong Delta as the sun flopped from the sky and left a bloody trail.
So don't escape what already is, find a way to translate it into what you want. There are so many languages, can why not find one that slips gracefully off the tongue?
But, what do I know? Being the unemployed gal that I am, I am just in an elephant dress in some coffee shop where two streets meet, listening and writing and dreaming while the coffee powers the volatile machine that I am.
So, leave me to it, will you?

An Apostrophe to the English Language

You've gotten slutty, haven't you? You used to be clothed and fluid; draped in silkened skirts you were once incandescent. Now, I can see your pale skin and it looks blotchy, hopelessly clogged from the pores of England to the layers of Oregon. Your limbs are like bleached noodles and, oh, how I wish you would cover up! But you don't, and the days of lovely symmetrical parenthesis and the subtle sensuality of the semi-colon have thus vanished.
Your used now, battered, cheapened so now only your nakedness, the lines of your bones, are the only thing I see when I trace you. Do you not remember the days of flowing silk? How I could slip you on and feel like magic was innate and palpable?
It hurts to see, but worse yet, to hear. The music of the words is now a distant moan that keeps me up well past two in the morning, and the dog is uneasy with the sound. I lose you in traffic, the sirens are paralleled to the movements of intonation, that once made Mozart himself weep.
Kids can't even, in their cornered innocence, make you beautiful with their pen. They can not swirl you, stroke you, the way their bending wrists once could. Now, they beat you with their fingertips, use devices to decode your meanings.
You are in every one's beds. You slink up from the ground with vacant eyes, a shadow of the brilliant figure you once were. I fear I have lost my desire to read you, as you are now, sold into a screen.
But there is hope. I think, there is hope. For you are frozen in the spines of leather, and I look for you, keep looking for your pristine, purest state, out there, in the forgotten shops hidden in the earth's lonely crevices. And, I do wonder, if your evolution is the best part of you. For I fear that no change is far worse than any kind of progression. And you are everywhere, in the throats and monitors of billions, and I secretly await how I will see you next, you fickle, fickle girl.

Taza Fresca Cafe

I decided quickly. I guess it was the rain that did it, the interesting kind that comes in summer and rises from the pavement like invoked spirits after death. I want more than what's in my head. I want to see it, see this, words that swirl and move more than the floatings of thoughts. Sitting here, I realize that I am a victim of narcissism. I guess, in a way, we all are. I just admit it, and keep writing, because I think I have to.

I have moved to Austin and am committed to trying to live in one place, for a whole year. I haven't done this since 2006, so you can imagine how my feet move, even when I think the seat feels nice. But maybe this is good, maybe it is human to want to settle. But, then again, I'm an American, aren't I? John Steinbeck new this, and he allowed us our travelling, because it is our heritage to keep plowing onward. Maybe, just up ahead, there will be an ocean, and what if I spent my whole life smelling salty air without seeing the whipped spine of the sea? That, dear Shakespeare, takes all the tragedy you ever had, and trumps it like an earthquake.

People in Austin are dying to be unique, when in reality, the most unique thing in the world is not the death, but the birth. So I hope I have been reborn, baptized in the simmering water of the Green Belt, because I wish to be extraordinary. I believe we all do, and can't feel whole until we stand-out in a way that lets us be remembered.