I am too exausted for a cleverly written sonnet. I am nearly too drained for sitting up, let alone disguising gritty details in eloquent verbage.

Tuesdays I work late. I do a nine hour day. It means I can do a 7 hour day on Friday, which makes me happy. Fraidays are my best days, my favorite days. I like them because the work of the week is done, but there is not yet cause for begining the work of the weekend. It's a play night, a bonus evening given to transition into weekend. Friday. *pleasant sigh*

I began moving into my new place last weekend. I have a coworker that I have just fallen entirely in love with. She's young and vibrant and not weathered by the winds of life yet. She's bright and buddhist. She's my new best friend, almost instantly, and it's a done deal. She's been helping me move. We went out to the bars together, we went shopping together. It's been a really long time since I met a girl I like as much as I like her. It's really nice to have someone close to hang out with. She looking forward to doing her laundry at my house--so she doesn't have to use her apartment laundry mat. I'm looking forward to it, too! 

My neighbor is my maintenance man. He's also an english prof at the university, and my co-worker's advisor. (Seems like a big coincedence, but it isn't, really, it's just a small town.) He winked at me so many times I asked my friend if he had a winking "thing." She swears she's never seen him wink in her life till then, and that he is not afflicted by turret's. How cute. He's very friendly and we'll get along well. Friend wanted to try to set us up--but I pointed out that it'd be really dumb to date your neighbor...A break up could mean a move?! Ugh! I'll pass.

Jaden wants me to reaffirm a commitment to monogamy, though I've not seen him since before Christmas, the time before that was two months prior. We're 8 hours apart. I tried to explain about women in their early 30s being like teenage boys, hormonally, but he tried to talk me out of it rationally. Seriously? No matter how logical my spock-ian lover might be, one simply can not talk a woman out of hormones that are being released into her body even this moment, as she sits typing.

Yes, yes, I know it's not love, just an expression thereof, I understand it's not what makes me important or valuable, and that there is much deeper fabric that binds two people. I just don't care right now; I want sex. And I want it more often than once a month... A lot more often. I tried to tell him, I wonder if he listened. I was honest, without being hurtful. I acknowledged that I am behaving as if I am single. We discussed options, if we'll see each other again or not. It was tabled for now. I don't like burning bridges, and everything he said to me felt loaded. Besides, he was so drunk I didn't figure it mattered what I said.

Fires are burning, and there's just way too much life to be lived. I don't want anyone to get burned because I burn. I can't stop burning. I love, and I live, and I need and I seek. That's all, it just is. I just am. I am honest, though, and although I attempt to cause as little pain as possible; I do cause it. In Jaden's case, I feel justified, somehow, perhaps because of the long months I've spent in dreadfully sorrowful states over his absence; and I can not help our situation. It is in the hands of the fates, whether we will meet again. I don't want to think about it anymore.

My ferocious is distant, but doesn't hold me so far from himself that I can't bear it. I would probably be a wreck if it weren't for his acceptance of me. I have been lost. He is reassuring. He is comforting. He is enchanting, even in his mourning. He thinks of me, and attends me when I require it. With all the moving I'm doing, it's really not a bad time for him to be busy, also. I adore him, I miss him. I ache for a time when both of our lives can slow down and meld a bit. But I can wait for it. I'm patient. Sometimes. On this matter, I believe I have eternal patience. I will fill my time with other things, until he comes to fill it for me.

My Starscatterer. Makes my heart beat forgotten rhythms, my breath keeping time. My mind is engaged and my tongue twisted. I am shocked, and not. Feeling like I'm a beautiful dancer at an elegant ball. I know I only look good because he leads me; I don't really know the dance, but it matters not, because he knows it well enough for the both of us, and I follow well. The sky tonight is so bright, the stars are over-pronounced, if that's possible! My Starscatterer gathers them. He's always done so, and I suspect he always will. I miss him, in a something from very long ago kind of way, and feel the tension growing. There's a story here, a solid entwined and interconnected love story, a deep sweet fairy tale, and I mean to write a part of it...Live a part of it.

Tonight I've stolen a star, and I've got it in my pocket. I'm taking it to bed with me, and waiting to see if it's owner comes to claim it. Tonight, Orion and I sleep with a stolen star.

Her language is lacking and incomplete, the thoughts she desperately attempts to put phrase to muted, quieted, and left unformed in between the word given to an idea and the speaking of it.

She gives up at eloquence and simply whispers,    "Come closer, you, I wish for more."

He turns from her, looks away and closes his eyes to her; he holds himself away from her, in the safely distant and foggy softness of the memory of her, saving him from the hotly glowing burning of her.

He refuses to see the brightness of them as a thing that they share; for his fear of the darkness when the burning ceases, fire turning to ash and tear. He gives her away, trades the possibilities of her for the fuzzy memory of what might have been, of what had been in times before. He refuses to see her, and her tears burn as they fall in scores.

From the dark she whispers, "Come closer, you, I wish for more."

He whispers answers to her, drawing her into him; his gaze, his language, his phrase. His whispers command her breath, the beating of her heart, her thoughts and daydreams. He seeks to find her, to tend her and keep her as his--merge with her once again, burn with her, souls entwined. He comes to her to claim her, atavisticly blending his flame with hers, that neither ends nor begins of its own accord.

Faintly, she whispers, "Yes. Come closer, you, I wish for more."

Words do not give meaning to the ache of love lost, love missing, love separated or past. Words do not speak the language of the pain in the fear of heartbreak, the impossibility and improbability of the necessity of breathing a next breath.

It is much she would ask of him, she knows not that he will relinquish it to her. She has no words for promises or conditions. She has no wonder for the what will happen next. She is not bothered with the details of possible ache of heart... It, to her, is just another state. In a fairy tale world, he would not deny her.

Sometimes, he whispers of promises she can't bear to believe, for the fear of the unfufilment of them. Sometimes he speaks aloud his intent to be one with her again. Sometimes she believes him, and her heart is warm and her flame burns brightly, longing for the touching of him.

But always she wonders, is this the dream or the waking?

"Oh please," she begs in a desperate whisper, "Come closer, you?"

In Pennsylvania, where my life began (this time around), there is a great lake, whose sandy beaches are shallow with only the gentelest slope, that you wander far from the shore, yet only knee deep. Far is relative, though, for here on the coast of la pacifica, one could go several times over the same distance and be only knee deep, if not for the constant crashing and physical manifestation of the effect that the moon has on our seas. Distance is relative, too, as space and time. When I was six, it seemed a very long way from the blankets and suntan lotion, and coolers with soda and snacks. Now, now it is not so very far, but farther by a goodly distance than one finds in any of the lakes in the Pacific Northwest. Lakes here drop steeply to deeper depths. One doesn't casually enter most bodies of water here, taking their time, toes squishing in sand, sun warm, a leisurely stroll to wet. No, here, one foot can often be the difference between stepping off and being soaked to the top of your noggin, and standing on practically dry land. If one is going to swim, one simply jumps in and swims! 'Tis my practice anyway, in life, and in the dog days of summer. (Though perhaps I am growing to better appreciate the beauty of a gracefully smooth entrance.)

There are jelly and juice grapes owned by the Welches which grow everywhere, and after harvest, they rot in the sun in great piles; the scent of rotting grape carcass is pungent and inescapable, as it ferments into what will never become wine. There is a penninsula I used to visit, where the deer congregate in unreasonable numbers, and it has always been one of my favorite spots on earth. When standing with your feet in the water, you can look out over the water and see Canada. Huge ships carry cargos and toot their horns, and the deer eat berries from the bushes behind.

There are cornfields there, for miles and miles. My great grandfather owned the first farmstead ever established in what is now Pittsburgh. It was also the last standing farm in Pittsburgh, as my family was last to sell to the onslaught of city development. They took up residence on a new farm he had purchased, near Penn State Univeristy. I never met my great grandfather, because he died before I was born. In fact, he died before my mother was born, even. It was an accident in which he was crushed by a piece of farm equipment, an event that would forever alter the course of his current, and future offsprings' lives. My great Uncle Bob and Murray (whom I call Uncle Moo) carried a bit of guilt about them over their father's death, and they never did leave that farm, not even after their mother passed on, and in fact, they live there to this day. Uncle Moo had many agricultural papers published in his time, and developed, utilized, and introduced no-till farming.

When I was younger, I remember hay rides, and pig pens, and the cows milk, still warm. My great grandmother had a sweet tooth always, and so there was honey (on this she was firm, no one had the authority to limit my honey consumption) to go with my breakfast. Oatmeal and honey (as much as I wanted!) and real milk were a heavenly treat, fit more for dessert than breakfast, to me.

Once my great grandmother was quoted in the newspaper regarding her one hundred and first quilt as having said, "I prefer quilting to eating." I own one of her quilts, though I dare not get it out with all the animals about. I've made several quilts, none of which I feel are any better than mediocre. I will have to do a lot more quilting in my lifetime. It is a talent I wish to more firmly possess. My great grandmother lived to be 98. Perhaps I will have time to make 101 quilts in my lifetime, too, though on days like today I wonder where I will ever manage to find the time. My grandmother lived to be 89, but I think it was the loss of my grandfather that ended her sooner, more than failing health. When he left, she left...and neither came back, though she was still there, just a shell of the person she had been. 

My grandmother had become a nurse when my grandfather went off to the war. She was quite possibly the kindest and most patient  woman this world has ever harbored, and in twenty years I never saw her angry, not once. My grandfather was a chemist. When he came home from the war, he sold agricultural chemical products. He was successful. They had two children eight years apart. I spent a lot of time at their house, in spurts, until I was in my 20's. None of the other 3 grandchildren ever did.

My grandparents were very influencial in my life, and it is sad to me that theirs ended just as I was growing old enough to form adult relationships with them, understand them and appreciate them. Such is the way with the cycles of life. Not really fair, that we've so little time to learn from those who are the makings of us. I've always believed that we are more our ancestors than we have any idea of--if you are a rebel, chances are it's come right down the line to you, and in their own ways, your ancestors were rebels in their own days. Family ties are important to me, and are my deepest obligation. Family reunions are still held at the farm.

It was on this farm, where my mother was living and going to school, that she met my father. And it was deep in the not tilled cornfields on a late spring eve, in a house-sized stone building with arched paneless windows, that I was conceived. But that is the story of my beginning, not of me, not that they are separated all that easily, just another piece of my identity...

Some days, I play with fire. Hot, angry, flames, dancing the lines between toasty and burnt. Some days I drive too fast on the ice, feeling the adrenaline coarse through my veins... But not yesterday. Yesterday was a needle day...

Razor sharp sleeves of silvery cold metal breaking into the fiber of me, permanently etching dark vines across me, piercing me, decorating me, poking me, pinching me, coloring me, prodding me, sticking in me, and leaving me--as always--aching for more.

Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in... and there, baby, there. (Oh yessssss, there!)

Gushing, hot and sticky and coalescing erotic exotica... And You, and that space where I'm neither here nor there. Needles. Ink. Blood play for the new millenia; the adventurous, the trusting, permanent adornment for marking the torn... I am melted, a rose with no thorn, drifting, a flower with no root, merely a petal on the wind, a hinted at secret carried in poetic motion on the rise. A whisper loud enough for the whole world to feel the vibration, singing my giving of self unto you...m'lord, singing of being yours and yours alone.

So it begins again, and so shall it be. I would not undo what could need to have been. Do what you will with my mind and my flesh. Push me and mark me, poke me and watch me bleed, touch me and stroke me and guide me too deep--hold me close, don't let me go, nooooo, pull me back to your reality, I'm grasping and searching and kind of dizzy. The prick of a needle the buzz of a gun, I so easily see, this is merely the begining of a continued journey. Every inch of broken skin is the song you leave on me, the marks of your tribe, you imprint upon me, and while part of me wonders what I'm thinking, the rest of me falls into step, and knows precisely the path to follow, because your hand is there for me, if I will but grasp it and believe. This time I don't intend to let go. Does it show?

(I never really did, you know...)

 

 

It's been a long week. Everyone else seems happier about me getting my new job than I am. I just can't get excited about it. I've been forced into a system that I hate and disagree with. I don't think it's good for me. I know I make my choices to do it, because the pressure from not doing it is too much to bear. So... I will do another good job of doing my best at another not-so-good job in a long series of not-so-good jobs, and try not to bitch about it too much, until finally I can't take it and the pendulum will swing and I'll quit it and then get faced with more pressure to find another new job. Wonder why I'm not thrilled... Not that the job is bad, it isn't. I'm constantly busy; the only pressure I really feel is from my own self.

 

 

Wise people keep telling me to settle down and ride with the flow of life, stop trying to swim against the currents of the universe. I can't seem to relent to the current, yet it does indeed pull me along as it wishes, heedless of mine. I guess that's the point. I'm drowning in the struggle of it, and yet, I'm sailing in its highs. Perhaps I am right where I am suppose to be, I'm simply supposed to be ...lost...