The Salt Mine

I'm used to being good at what I do, at least professionally. I hate it when I do shit poorly. I don't like doing a bad job. I'd rather do something I know I can do. This can -- for a Taurusy Taurus like myself -- lead to ruts. I know this. I can adjust. Sometimes it is too late. And sometimes it's just late.

I'm hoping this is one of those cases of just late.

The truth is that this job is really fucking big and I need two of me to realistically get it done. Or another half of me. So I'm getting another, well-trained half-of-me part-time. I'll try not to let it bother me that it's a CTO level and that I'm not in it.

Although some days it is like getting punched in the stomach, repeatedly. As in: remember, you couldn't do this job, magically, when it was finally recognized as a need. Too slow, I was having a life, focusing on love and the pursuit of a really fucking long commute.

I cut my commute in half. And I'm about half-a-brain back. But I insist on having a life, and other desires. And yeah, maybe that might take me away someday. But until then, I'll be holding onto my job with both hands. Thank you very much.

soup for one

soft sadness descends
dread drips into every crevice
I am anxious and I don't know why

I split my brain
simultaneously seeing myself
from the outside in
I sneer and critique
every trite mechanism I employ
makes me sick

I wonder if I have any realness left
I wonder if my ability to conversate
has also left the building

I am sticky with sadness
I cling to any well wisher any
sign of affection and then I sneer
again

push off push away pushing myself down
I would rather sleep, than breathe
it is easier
so quiet in the darkness behind my lids

much better than the repeating defeat of
looking for that which is not there
no email no note no text no photo
I look and look again
Spam and discounts, groupons for love

I have piled up the expectations
heaped on my own shoulders
I believed my own hype
I'll believe it again soon enough
Maybe this time I won't be so cocky
I won't think: oh yeah, all that
I won't think: maybe the next one will be better
I won't think: I deserve more

Even though I do.
I deserve love without fear, it's true.
I want what any artist exploding with passion wants
to express, to emote, to feel with every cell

Careful.
Lest you explode all over your options.
Yes, bub -- I reassure myself -- pulling back from 11,
Fierce and fine is love
When it comes

Not the metered interview, not the self-doubting,
self-editing.
She didn't even burp.
It all feels like dishonesty to me. But this is it.
This is how it's done. Welcome to the Right Way.
We know it doesn't fit. Yes.
Keep moving.

Yes, it is hard to find someone with whom
casual conversation is authentically interesting
You may not stay here.
Wander on, just like you said you would.

La vache qui rit... the bear who weeps...

I gave up cheese for New Years, so of course my mind immediately went to cheese when I formulated this phrase in my head: "the bear who weeps". I don't recall how to say "weep" in French or I surely would've treated you to a story of Le Ours qui did something Francais.

No no. THIS bear weeps. I do. I'm leaky, like all through the eyes. I cry when my congregation's cantor sings Oseh Shalom in her amazing voice. I tear up when I watch a sappy Hallmark commercial. I wept a little driving home last night, because I was just SO BUMMED OUT. And I wept just now, reading this blog from Mom on a Wire: http://bit.ly/ifmR7q

I worry, occassionally, that I'm TOO sensitive. Lord knows, I'd like to turn it off from time to time. Usually once a month, actually. (checks calendar...) And then I think, "No... someone needs to feel all this." Someone needs to feel the depth of the despair, so that she can pull those despairing up.

Right?

Or at least describe the despiration to the local media, so someone can, like, send a truck. With a rope.

Hold Your Breath

Don't breathe, don't move.
It might go away. This moment
this inbetween this not rock not hard place

I am random, I see that now. Periods.
Capitals.
I used to drive people crazy with my hand written poems
starting all over the page.
They said, why here? Halfway across
light blue lines on smooth milky white.

I am making time stand still
Time in the big sense
I am taking mental photos of how this feels
I am memorizing the luscious swing of my own hips
Documenting the pull of my shoulders
as I hold it all up.

I'll hold it up.
Until I get tired and then I'll
hand it over
let it drop
cry.

This is the sweet spot
between freedom and beloved capture
between knowing for sure
and playing the game

This is the moment to freeze in time
knowing there's more
not knowing what it will be

There will be more
clicking
electricity
hands and hair
skin

There is always the Long Term
after the rush is over
when the wave receeds, still standing
and fixing eyes on each other
knowing this stays

I get this, in doses from far away,
unsullied by the usual complications.

I get love and pets, in words and smiles
near, far
copious from some and others I gratefully wait

Gratefully, I wait.
I promise I will wait. Sit. Breathe.
Here I am, complete and whole,
a show of my own.

And you are?

New Year, Mutherf*cka

And it's time to shake off the dust. Time to get your afram up and going. Ladies and gentlemen I'd like to welcome you to two-thousand and eleven and please note: there is no getting off this train. We're all on it together and yes indeedy we are hurtling down the track at breakneck speed. Now if you'd all just mind your step, I'm sure we'll be fine.

I know, I'm too late to jump on board with some schlocky 2010 retro-perspective. I'm really too late to make any sordid predictions about 2011. Mostly I'm just oddly happy about being able to say "eleven" a lot. And randomly insert "this one goes to eleven" as a non-sequitur. I'm pretty sure 11 will be an awesome year, if only because 12 is supposed to suck so bad. End of the world and all.

Here are my two second recommendations for living life at 11:
-- sing
-- dance
-- fall in love, without jumping off a cliff
-- dance, more

O that I could tell you to FEEL. This feeling thing, this mind-wrecking plummet, somersault, upswing and crash landing. Feel before and after keeping your feet in close proximity with the Earth. Feel those feet, your feet, and you. Dance, the weight of you in the middle. Focus, baby. You're a fucking rockstar and you can do whatever you imagine. Rocking back and forth and you know how that goes: listen Shlomi, all is one and one is all; everything is beautiful, and amazing. It's all in how you look at it.

The Occassional Dread of Being Awake

I'm having a hard time going to work recently. In part it's because me and my team have been getting hammered with criticism, relentlessly since last fall. That's bound to wear on a Bear.

Part of it is the weather. Blazing hot temps that peel the sticky hooks off my wall and drop my shit to the ground while I'm at work. I come home to stretched and torn latex paint, and my frame drum looking at me from the floor like, "What?"

Most of it, I fear, is the love thing. I don't gotta love thing. Or rather, I've got bad case of the fucked up blues. Lauren's birthday just passed. Not that I noticed. It's been (counting... on fingers first and then on the calendar)... years. Three apartments and two girlfriends ago. Three if you count the one month stint.

That's how I mark time. Ages of my life have names. The Heidi Period, when I went on tour one summer, following around the remnants of the Grateful Dead and driving my ass off. The Lou Period, which is a lot like college. The Lauren period, when I lived richly. The Gena Period, when everyone thought I was crazy, including me, and I loved her like crazy.

That's the recent one, the one I'm stuck on. She called me after she emailed, proving that she really "demanded" a response. The non-response was not acceptable. She tried to keep the crazy out of her voice, like she had done so well in the email, but I heard it. And I was even more sure of not responding. Then another email: "Why won't you respond?"

So I'll answer her here: Because I don't trust you. You know I care about you and you'll use that to the best of your abilities, which are vast. You know I still love you, and so seeing your face or hearing your full voice (not through the digitation of the phone) or (God forbid) touching your skin would be the end of my resolve. Because I miss you so much it keeps me on my knees and hiding in my house, even while I know what I really miss is just part of my imagination. It is the image you want to project that I was happy to buy into. But you can't keep up the charade. And the results when it crumbles is disasterous. And in the end I give everything away, and you consume the life of me.

And the truth is: I don't know how to not give everything away when I fall in love. That's what I do. And so later, when I come to, and we're moved in and everything is in it's perfect locked down place, I will need room to grow, and move, and change, and expand.

Mental Blocks, building with colors

I stop myself from writing here all the time. I think: That's not enough. Not meaty enough. Not long enough. Half the time I've got just a few more characters than 140, so it just seems like a Monster Tweet.

Alas, I create my own roadblocks. So. I hereby commit to stop fucking myself in the head and just let it go. Let it go so easily that I don't think about some schmuck reading it and shaking her head at my poor word choice or self-inflicted passive voice.

I promise to relay and relate every flinch and flicker... okay maybe not everyone but the ones I'm instantly motivated to share. Because, if I wait, I might change my mind.

Folks tell me they love the honesty, etc. That's because I don't think twice. Ima Jack Kerouac that shit. Pound it out and hit publish.

Fearless writing. So there.