March of the Winter

It seems odd to me that some people are robbed of the enjoyment of a beach. Ever since I was born I have felt an affinity with the ocean; it’s giving, healing water and yet its desire to destroy. It is a thing that cannot be tamed, cannot be loved. And many have fallen victim to it, many many have died. I had an uncle once who I never met that drowned in the ocean, so I too have reason to be in reverent fear of its power. But I do not like to think of the ocean this way, as a force which can kill. I prefer to think of it as a rough love which knows no restraint. I am reminded of Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”. I think of Lennie holding a tiny mouse in his oversized hand, so enthralled with it’s movement that he unknowingly crushes it’s tiny vertebrae, and even as it remains lifeless has no understanding of the weight of his actions; only that he loved the creature flawlessly and passionately. It is so that I imagine the oceans rough waves. They are not cruel, they are love of a pure yet misguided kind. It is made clear to me now why sailors and pirates of my literature have fallen in love with the sea, personified it, and characterized it with the gender of a woman. I am that ocean. I too can only love in rough, often fatal blows.

I no longer want to be a part of the land of the living.

Whenever I listen to Ben Folds I pretend that I'm "Kate" or that "Brick" isn't really about abortion, but it's just that one line : "now that I have found someone, I'm feeling more alone than I ever have before": repeated endlessly.
I wonder what that says about a person? I'm beginning to think that, all mediating circumstances aside, I am just a lonely, morose and darkly pensive person. I'm still working on the what-to-do-now 0f that realization. I feel like no one could ever be expected to love someone like that.

New Years Resolution

whatever happened to this thing? When I moved I left too many things behind.

It has been a long time since I have been close to someone in the way that I could touch them whenever I wanted. I forget the sensation of touch, the intimacy of being inside-out with another person. A few weeks ago as I rode my daily commute on the bus, a young man sat down on the plush micro-fiber seat next to me. With so many people jammed together in the vehicle like cattle, our limbs were pressed up next to each other. He wasn’t aware, but this rare moment of skin to skin contact from elbow to thigh both thrilled and excited me. I wondered how long it had been since I had been held, hugged, or even offered a handshake. All at once I became overwhelmed with the sadness of it all, the fact that he could sit absent-mindedly next to me while my heart became flooded. I thought I might give it away then, and my ribcage, like a dam, would break to pieces while I burst and melted into the carbon fibers. I hardly noticed when my stop arrived, and solemnly walked into my home, dropped my bag and considered crying; but I wouldn’t allow myself the luxury.

Matter-of-Fact

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

I buy myself flowers

I've also started sleeping in the middle of the bed surrounded by books, signals of independence, or loneliness - or hopelessness;; can't tell.