Little Bits of Space

It is Monday morning, another cloudy awakening, and I perform my rituals with such a fluidity I think I might be breathing water. I have found myself, of late, struggling to find that perfect space where I am whole and beautiful and not lacking in all the greatness of individuality. It is so easy to fall into sisterhoods, relationships, the many delights of love. For so much of my life I have been prone to the draw of companionship. While I am a lover of quiet moments to myself I also seek the wholeness of contact.

I wonder why I think I am innately such an independent woman. I did, as a child, play alone quite happily for a better part of my days. My mother says that, as a baby, she needed only to place me in my crib and I could be left alone for hours, amused but for the blossoming little plants of imagination soiled in my head. That carried on for much of my life. Playing outdoors, walking to the horses about a mile out and bringing them fluorescent orange carrots. I always found such a peace in the orchards, when alone, save for the cryptic white of the branches and the ancient knots of gnarled wood.

And then again, in my travels, I met myself. I remembered how to laugh at the thunder and sway my hips to the blown grass where the hills were just land that had risen up above the rest. The days in Ecuador, in the city of Cuenca, where I wondered the streets and plopped down in moist cafes to drink coffee and sing sweetly for my swirling veins. Finding a river, that appeared over a rickety bridge, and losing an afternoon in unpolished grass. The incredible fear of ordering for one, with a forced-foreign tongue no less, and conquering even the mocking nights of silence.

But now, it is harder. The cacophony of sirens and rowdy bands makes it hard to remember the girl, those curls that wrapped around small ears, for now I am in a house with paper walls that may fall to the ground with just a slight blow. And the people are kind and intriguing and I stay indoors gladly, but for the sunny days that won't be turned down, and I enjoy the translations of their thoughts to mine.

And I am trying to remember what it means to be perfectly at peace. I asked my dearest friend, last night on the phone (for it is all we have, in the distance) what she does when she wants nothing but isolation. She told me that it is never a problem wanting space, it is only once you have it, that you must wrestle with demons. For the quiet can consume you, and all you remember is laughter in kinship and the delight of hands. So you must trample the memories, just for a little while, and greet yourself as though you are the newest of acquaintances, and say something like, "Hello, Kristen, it has been a while. It is so joyous to see you again." Be sure to speak sweetly to your lone self, for she can be fickle and scared as easily as a curious turtle who wishes to see the stars with a long, unabashed neck.

You must date yourself. A lost art, like that of spinning flower stems into earthly crowns. You must ask yourself to coffee, just to start, and sip foam while reminiscing and asking subtle questions. After a while, you can move on to more intimate endeavors, a long dinner, walks in the park and then, finally, a trip to the mountains where you camp beneath an immense sky that will surely bounce back all the great poetry of you.

But, go with caution, for once a self renders scared there is barely any space left to find her again. For she hides quite well in shadows, no matter how small the room.

I believe each of us must continue this battle. Whether married, single or newly enchanted with another, we must seek out the solace of ourselves, and delight in what creations we are. For, if I can not find a way to truly love my time with me, how can I expect another to cherish that very thing? Indeed, I cannot, and do not wish to miss out on my own company (no matter how self-destructive I may be feeling).

So, load your weapons and begin, for there is much land to conquer within ourselves.

Conversing with Mozart: Tri

"What are you thinking?" I asked
for I was bored and found reading dull
just then, as the sun was falling

"I'm thinking of the people."

"What people, Mozart?"

He smiled, in a knowing way
his little secrets were his most
delighted in quality

"The people I played for."

I wondered of the royalty
the height of prestige
that sat before him
clapping demurely, once
upon that time

"Kings and queens I'm sure,"
I whispered
wondering if my art has
that power to stilt hearts

"Yes, there were those
but they were numb
to the jilt of notes.
It was the people of Praha
that crowded the streets
shoulder to ear to arm
they rejoiced in the sounds
and for them I was magnanimous."

"Only for them?"
I asked, thinking still
of capes and velvet

"It was all for them, dear girl
in the streets, on top
a darling city encased
in a greyness of hope
we met each other
the people and I
and I can't forget them
every little roundness of face
and the eyes that thanked the angels
those eyes that met the angles."

I feared he might cry
he was always doing that,
crying
when he thought of faces
for he too could not face
that they are gone
we are gone
he is gone
and yet barely here
in song.

Conversing with Mozart: Dva

"Is it you, again,
dear Mozart?"
I stared at him
on my wall, dangling
his little tears falling
like the rain of a true
stormed poetic heart

"My dear," he whispered
"you can not know the fate
of loving two cities
but never quite having
either in full."

He choked, fighting
another round
then continued,

"I loved her first,
my sweet Salzburg
but it was Praha
that showed me how to trace
a lover's spine
with the breath of song."

I sat up, quite awake now.

"But I do, dear Amadeus,
for I, too, have loved
the skeleton of an empire
and then been besotted again
by the lines of trees."

"And do you think," he began
composing himself
"that it can ever be enough?"

I waited, knowing
he needed my words that way
and finally, I spoke.

"I fear it will never be all
nor will it ever lack in full
we will instead feel
the incandescence of joy
while rowing through
our torrents of sorrow."

He sighed, eyelashes coming down
like a curtain around him.

"But it will be enough
I suppose
to keep us here."

And he was right
even then
at 3am
but even rightness
has a sadness
and he was of two loves
that would not let him go.

Conversing with Mozart: Jedno

I hung him
by my bed
on a long, frazzled line
where I clipped him
on a clothes pin
so he was angled just so
I could ask him what I wanted
as he wept for dear Praha
(we have that in common)

I asked him one night
late, the ugly hours
what it meant to make
that kind of music
and he told me this:

There is no music.
There is no music
like how the wind moves
nor a higher note of perfection
than fall of sun into night
And If I stole from anyone
it was the innocence of love
I just touched the keys
and tried to remember a name
a taste of earth
and the colors of mist that hang
But remember this
there is no music
here
but there will be
and, oh, how we will dance.

The Year of Elephants

I held a banana out
yellow and whole she took it
there were only females
males are too aggressive, not safe
for the children

I watched as she snatched it
my banana
maneuvering that protruding limb
with a surprising grace

Her eyes were big black quarters
that lost the longing for trees
and stand within the ridges
of a grayness of face

She walked, lifting each side of herself
a weighted wooden marionette
who forgot if she liked the dancing
or died within it
as I crawled up on the neck
the hair stuck up like sharpened pencils
and the tusks bolted below
she can not know
what her ancestors died for

There were markings on the ears
warn from those years of cyclical
when all you bleed is progress
her crackled skin was punctured
by her only friend
chiseled from the machine
of man

When it ended
I looked upon those eyes a second
thinking, my God,
that could have been me
with the stolen gleam
of long, rotting story

Lord forgive me, for I have dreamt again...

Oh dear. How the rain pelts and makes me fickle. It is just as I have feared, I am feeling antsy to the point of nausea. To be free, slung to my backpack and clutching a passport, but now instead find myself receiving continuous streams of mail to a little blue house in the center of a city.

But, no bother, things on the literary front are looking up. The exorcism of my characters has proven to be both violent and rewarding, and I am at least wise enough to know that both are part of this process (though my wisdom doesn't stretch much further than this).

I have found myself wondering this week about the concept of distance. I have been on this for some time, and have been so enraptured that I fear I may digress from more important or realistic things at hand.

As Heather and I, dressed in our going-out-best, entered the night bus to the sound of coughing, laughing, and vibrations of IPODS on parade, I had to wonder at the immensity of distance that exists between people. How my life, to me, is the centered pinnacle which all other things rotate around, is merely a distant star to others, if seen at all. But each of us find ourselves the victim of this self-obsession, and I don't believe it to be so much indulgent as it is natural, but still it is beyond me to comprehend that each person feels the same kind of oneness with themselves as I do with me.

That, in my day, all things bounce into me, through me, and at times off me, but no one else can sincerely feel those hits. They see them, at times empathize with their impact, but they will never truly care about my beatings like they do their own. This, is an incredible thought.

Mark, that by incredible I do not mean brilliant (otherwise, shame on me for my pompous tune) but instead I mean that it is so vast that I don't believe anyone is capable of stripping it to its nakedness, watching it shiver there in the corner.

There, across this coffee shop, is someone making a latte, and they are at work, thinking about temperatures and foam and perhaps why their girlfriend keeps her eyes open when she kisses him, and I won't ever truly feel any of that pain. Or the man across from me, flannel-clad he has been typing vigorously for over an hour, and his eyes have that look of true passion glaze but I feel nothing. All I feel is a pull to my computer, my thoughts, and my dearest Ian as I continue to chisel away at his little imaginary world that will, if I'm lucky, really only touch a few people.

Just something to think of, on a gloomy day: The distance between us is great, but it is important to know, in a way, that you are the only one who can center yourself properly. No one, not even your most cherished and trusted companion, or dearest mother, can know every intricacy of you.

And, I think, there is a liberation in that. So rejoice, and celebrate yourself, the way Whitman once did, and I do today as I turn my phone off and let myself write in the peace of afternoon mist.

Navrat: Return in Czechlish

Publish Post

Oh, it's you again....well this is awkward....I haven't called you in quite some time. Lookin good though slick, not noshing on too many holiday treats now are you?

Update: Back in Austin after the usual tumultuous time home where I nestle by the fire, go out on the town and am shoved into the past with such a velocity that I think I start to like it. But I am not alone in this, the strangeness of home and history that breathes upon you and the bricks that your little hands touched so many years ago that sit in front of you now, red and white edges, and you can't remember the girl you met and were.

Strange to think one chooses their life. Austin did not choose me, at least not in full. It was me that strapped belongings to my car, drove across country and gazed into the Grand Canyon. It was also me that saw the architecture of Santa Fe and tasted street food on South Congress where the rotating cupcake decorates the sky like stunted skyscrapers. I suppose it is strange to think I came here because I could, and there is both unease and freedom in that.

As I get older I suspect more in more that I have something in me that won't stay quiet. Sometimes it is yelling at me to run, to choose, to try all the trivial and epic things that should potentially lay dormant. Sometimes I try and slap this something across the face, just to see how it feels, and to see if it will slap me back. I have to say, it has a real right hook.

Note: Austin is still a great place to live. It still is where my room is, yellow and vibrant, and my little blue house sits with dying plants, hanging from hooks in a formal balance next to the door. People still think that Austin is an adjective, which is disconcerning, but it is not exactly avent garde to lack an ability to find yourself, now is it?

Blah: Our house is impossible to heat. There are scratches in the wooden doors as though wild dogs smelled raw meat there. I can always see the outside, or hear it, even when I try and escape it.

I suppose what I need now is some space. Going home I was pulled in every direction, delighted to be the daughter, the silly sister, and the kind of friend that is absent, so in turn has to make every moment something noteworthy and worth all the days and incidents in each others' lives that are missed. How I didn't see her band play that night when they hit a perfection of notes, how she cried on her pillow, wept for the confusion and I was thousands of miles off, two hours later, reading or watching bad T.V.

So now I just crave a delicate alone. Like, when I once traveled through Ecuador, sweating but satisfied with the looming chunks of day that could be filled only by my movements by a river. And my time in Ireland, when I experienced the rare phenomenon of being one's own sanctuary and confidante, and when I smiled out a bus window, it was for me, only for me, and how lovely it was.

But it is not so easy to do when there are people around you who make the time more exciting. For exciting is always the recipe for companionship, and my room, though lit in the night with exquisite, luminous lights, can be a lonely place when you are out of practice. And I fear I am, out of practice, with knowing my self in desperation, for life is finally easier and it is harder to chase down turmoil. Perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps I should let trouble dance and mock me and just look away, but a part of me knows that the juicy flesh of being alive comes from the dancing with the impossibly difficult.

But I do not tempt it either, for I know how that ends.

So, for now, I look at pictures and hope the memories solidify enough to let me grab onto them when I need to, for all signs are pointing me to this lovely time of stability. (And, of course, I use stability lightly, for Heather and I out on the town can quiver the very streets themselves.)

So go on, I'm done for today, and now my coffee's gone cold.

~Kristen