All things considered, I’m well adapted. I practically glide through the streets, end up at home without even thinking about routes or streets. The cold sometimes cuts, and the chatter and clatter of neighbors sometimes irks but it doesn’t phase me. Sure, I miss the quiet. The utmost serenity that comes from a much less densely populated plain. But I can go without, for months at a time even. The bills here are biting, and the pay never seems to take into account the education I’ve received to be here but I survive. Sort of.
All things considered, I am doing quite well. It is only when I let the blinders fall into place, when I forget to consider all things, that the ache comes. I miss the people who I once held most dear, who once held me quite dear. I wonder if I’ve proven something or accomplished anything here, and long to be close and relevant to the ones who know who I was before I ever left. It stings to know that proximity holds such ground, and that out of sight sometimes really does mean out of mind.
All things considered, I’m more than a bit needy. I have no right to ask for the attention I do. Nor do understand the insatiable hunger I have for such regard. I don’t want to interpret these wants as needs, and I intend to break the cycle of it all.
All things considered, I ought not complain. Ought not, but am.
I’ve been in a honeymoon phase… with the ampersand. It is the most gorgeous and elegant piece of typography I can fathom. It varies from typeface to typeface, with some that resemble the original Roman ligature and others that are more traditionally accepted Carolignian style. I love them in ways that are all completely justified. I use them in my screen prints, in my designs, and I have several decorating my apartment…. apparently the most recent Riv stage is covered in them as well (great designers think alike.)
And just because I feel like it, I post about my love here. Of course, I must include a full history and a photo of the first ever screen print I did ages ago… clearly revolving around the ampersand.
If you live inside the old graveyard
your skin and bones get kinda hard
you blame it on all of the ones who left you
If you’re in the closet with a broom
why don’t you sweep around the room
make little piles of all the things you don’t understand
But it’s in the mouth it’s in the blood
it’s sweet the taste this bit of love
poor skin too thick to understand
the gravity and graceful plans
in the place that’s made of old relations
where some got loved some got hated
how absently you move around
how listless
how in the night the battle raged
under the blankets where we brave
at least enough to recognize the storm is just a storm
Shine the lights across the bridge
the surface you can’t follow it
the glossy name the wind in fits
gets gerters bucklin’ at their beds
Will i be this way when i’m dead
will I go home and go to bed
will I wake up and wonder did something happen here
The weatherman well he should know
the doctor too from down below
they call to one another cross the wild and windy night
don’t forget
you’ve got love
you’ve got bravery
you’ve got trust
you’ve got bodies
responsibilities
there’s still mountains that’s pushin’ up from underneath
you’ve got pain
it’s not so strange but now you’ve had enough
don’t forget your bones and skin
or where you go
or where you’ve been
it’s in something the pictures can’t capture. the way the lights streak out in a million of the tiniest little rays and become a blur of colored stars. in the way the quiet takes hold of you, so peaceful and alone yet completely aware of the chaos that comes in the morning when all of the family that sleeps, in homes here and far away, will gather in a whirlwind of bickering and laughter. somehow despite the knowledge of such calamity lingering, nothing can shatter the warmth and tranquility of this moment. i hold onto it, as long as it will allow. wrapped in blankets and surrounded by the only the glow of the tree. for reasons buried deep in my faulty memory, this is the only thing that signals christmas to me. sitting alone with the tree, late at night.
give it a minute. let it settle into your brain. the sparkles of a first snow, the skids of first steps in the glistening white. a privilege of first come, first serve to the white world of winter. no one stirs at the hours i must, the stampede is still fast asleep. before the plow, the shovel, the trouble i tread, sneaker clad, through the shimmers and glimmers. fresh fall for a fresh bruise, as if God looked down and new this swollen soul needed a good ice pack.
the still and the quiet still intact, flakes flounder through the sky at a the flowing pace of feathers. no tracks, no flecks of dirt, just the cleanest blanket of white Chicago has ever seen. the newborn snow melts into a layer of glitter on my bundled body and i exhale a cloud of warmth. my bruised knuckles and blemished pride fade from mind, and my tense demeanor softens with each subtle squeak of snow beneath these scuffed chucks.
this pulse is broken, pitters and patters led astray. get weaker weekly in denial of malfunction. puncturing in the name of pathology and beginning to wonder if, just as pain, desire and disease are just constructs of my brain, built to defend against the misplaced malice of my world. blurred and burning, vision eludes me. what then, when the heart and eyes fail. when you cannot see or stride, or pull out from the inside. make a mantra of His provision and peace, pull together the shards of hope and look blindly in the direction of happy. as if that is was even slightly what this life were about.
there must be a crack in this wall, a secret passage i subconsciously left for myself. through the fog of cynicism there had to be a freckle of light, something buried deep telling me to leave an escape route. there is no rewind, no fast forward, no pause, no stop. only a play. only ever just a play. so figure out the play. figure out the way. figure the way out.
he said i’d been writing the same thing for years, like i’d not even grown an inch. i shutter to think that’s true. to acknowledge that this could all be the whining of some twenty something year old who never let go of hurt long gone. to think i am one of those three lettered heartaches walking the streets with wounds they chose not to nurse.
and when the death swells up around me, not even close enough to touch, i shudder and fall. sure that while death doesn’t scare me, it somehow intensifies my fear of life. i sit and wish for tomorrow, only to realize tomorrow seems no brighter, nor the day after…
i fear the words i have to say. i fear saying the wrong thing to you. to you who death reached out grabbed by the throat, while i was only near enough to cringe at the hold it had you in. i fear my weakness, that it’ll never be strong enough for you, when you need support the most. or that my selfish weeping will offend you, you who feel this loss so wholly.
so i write this, cause i never have been able to say the words that matter. not at your middle school bonfires, or trips out of state and not now when you need them more than ever.
here it is again. that wonderful moment where, even though you shouldn’t stop moving, you finally feel like there may be just a minute to spare. to breathe. to sit in the back of an empty studio space, alone with the screen and inks, the tables and chairs, the recently erased white boards, and just breathe. armed, of course, with your trusty keyboard and headphones, ready to take on the world. knowing that this moment will pass too quickly and your breathing will inevitably increase in frequency but decrease in depth. that the feeling of readiness and determination have to quickly compute into action and perseverance because life is too short to only always have goals and no gumption. because God put us here, gave us all this, and can so quickly take it all away. because dreams of making a difference don’t make a difference, just the initiative and enterprise born of those dreams does.
so breathe now, while you can, and keep moving. it may not get easier, but you wouldn’t have it any other way.
I am at the same time inspired and encouraged. I can’t seem to ruffle through all the feedback and all the quotes I want to take from this film. It is incredible. I want to be one of these people, I want my creativity to solve things… and yet…
