introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K

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life is a run on sentence

-nine pm - thirtieth of may--farewell to the last king of may

"you're the kind of girl that fits in with my world. i'll give you anything everything if you want things."~the song on the cd that hat left at my house a long time ago that nobody knows who it is that sings. yeah. it reminds me of new york, too, mark, darling.

so. yes. i know. its been awhile. don't think for a moment that i haven't been kicking my own ass for it. i've been dying to update, but have had a lot of trouble finding the time. my days are spent there and they fly by so quickly and so slowly all at once and when i come home, there isn't anything i want more than to take a shower and fall into my bed for just a few hours so i can be awake when he come home to talk the things we talk to each other. i wake early, i work (if you could call it that, really...), i sleep, i barely eat, and all i can think about is how its all bringing me one day closer to the west coast; how its bringing me closer to the what-if's with which we play; closer to you and to myself and the life i'm going to make my own. life is a run on sentence these days.

i spent this afternoon writing a letter in the woods. i spent this afternoon collecting the things that i want to send to you in case i should find a way to the post office before the week is out. i spent this afternoon soaking up some of the sunshine that finally decided to show. every day since i've been back in this horrible sprawl-mart town, i've lost a little bit of sun from my skin and the tan lines that had been getting so dark on my wrists are fading like the thickness of my wrists.

i'm trying so hard to stay focused here but my surroundings require nothing more than zombie mentality and i know i'm better than that but who says i'm better? perhaps i'm pretentious and perhaps i'm lofty but i know that this isn't the work that i'm meant for. each day that goes by, i'm closer to california. each day that goes by, i remember why i left all of this non-glamour in the first place. i was going to get an education. i was going to get a real job. i didn't care what it was. i just knew i had to get out of that rut.

i'm glad now, that i came back. had i simply stayed at my office job, i might have lost my ambitions again in the cushy comfort of way above average pay per hour and a town that i knew like the curve of the length of my body. i'm glad that i came back to make the barely-liveable pay. i'm glad i came back and realized just how much it strains my mind to know exactly how the day will go to the hour, to know how much i've learned about myself and about people since those years ago.

and if it seems like i'm thinking a lot about work, that'd be right, i suppose. i mean...its all i see for most of the daylight hours. i ache to be outside. i ache to watch the light change. i long to hear the wind in those woods that i haven't seen in weeks. i want to see sunset on a lake. i want to be outdoors. i want to be with you in the woods warning you of the tretch and laughing and just being with you. i want to not smell like grease and i want to not be their entertainment. i want to not have sticky fingers or feel the filth of cash in my fingertips. i want to have clear pores again...my god, this is raking havok on my skin. and i know the freedom will come....its not so long now, is it baby?

tomorrow will be the last day of may and then, i get the feeling that i'll be counting down. i already have the feeling of homesick-ness and i think that thats what i wanted to talk about most, tonight.

i am entirely too nostalgic sometimes and knowing that is half the battle. no, really.

as we drove back from syracuse on sunday night, the sun set behind us and i watched the sky fade from bright reds and pinks to a gorgeous lavender. i watched an entirely too picturesque moon hang over the highway. i had taken the back seat so that i might sleep and my eyes were getting heavier by the mile. sometimes, driving does that to me. as i started to drift, i felt the ache of longing for all of the things i haven't shared with those closest to me. i thought of all of the things that i haven't had the chance to revisit except in daydreams. i thought of all of the things i may never see again and of all of the things that will change while i'm gone....

i mean....i wasn't gone for very many years from this sprawling corporate suburb town. i remember when there were lots of trees. i remember when there were only maybe twenty houses in my neighborhood. i remember when there was a strip mall and two grocery stores and i had only ever heard of a walmart in other towns that we'd visit on vacations and had no fucking clue what a target was. now, when i come home, there are new stop lights and new buildings and new housing plans and i could go on and on. i really despise it here sometimes...especially in the mornings: the traffic makes me nervous and anxious. but where was i...ah, yes.

i was thinking about how things change so much. when we'd first come into syracuse on saturday night, i asked my father to drive by our old house where i'd grown up. i asked my father and he told me that it didn't look anything like i remembered and that it would only make me sad. i had to see it. and so, he drove past. mom and dad pointed out old neighbor's houses and listed the neighborhood's dead. the ritchells. mr. o'neil. they were so old when i was so little.

"are the nowaki's still alive?"

"yes," my mother answered.

"god, they've got to be so old."

"yes."

and so it went. we drove past the house. the gardens that my father and mother worked so hard in during all of those years (and i can't even begin to explain the size of them...rows and rows of corn, vegetables, fruit trees and strawberry patches, blueberry bushes, honeybees, rows of grapes of all sorts, asparagus...i could go on and on but i can't ever relate the size of them without someone getting that glint of disbelief in their eyes.) were gone and instead, a warehouse decorated the surface of that portion of earth where i'd played all of those years.

the curtains in the picture window were the same, only more grey than i remember. the wrap around driveway was still gravel and the mailbox was the same, only more rusty. a block of wood stood out of the ground where my father had built that teetertotter that also swiveled around in circles. i dont remember what he'd called it. we all fell off of it and it was promptly dismanteled. the base was still there. i wondered at the condition of the ball bearings that i liked to roll around in their groove sometimes. i wondered if they were still even there after all of these years or if some things just completely rust away into nothingness.

and i looked at what was our back yard which had been drained of its mucky swamp and whose trees had been removed, but for the willow that my father tried to cut down and kill all of those years ago for the sake of the strawberries. the willow lived on. the strawberries are gone. my mother and father were right. all of the work and all of the memories that i'd had for the house were finally buried in me someplace as i looked at the structure. i remembered the inside vaguely and part of me ached to go inside and part of me knew better to just leave it to memory and never go back again.

and so it went for most of the weekend.

i walked through the houses of my grandmother and aunt. i walked through the rooms of my great grandmother's house, remembering all of the things about it that people remember: the scent of age, of antiques, of old things. i looked at my great grandmother with new eyes, realizing that i may never (and probably will never) see her again. i wanted to hug her more. i wanted to tell her that i loved her...and i did...but it stung with too much reality for my taste. i smelled the smells. i looked at the things that have never moved from their dusty piled spots. i remembered so much that i'd taken for granted....i saw things with new eyes: the eyes of a person seeing things for what they know to be most likely the last time.

and so, i hugged with more fervor and i told them i loved them....all of them...well, except for my aunt and uncle who were exceptionally quiet. i met my cousin for the first time..he is seven months old. he made me want to have babies. i'm still so back and forth on that, sometimes. i need to get my mind off of my uterous for at least twenty more years, i think. he is adorable and the next time i will likely see him, he will be walking and talking. i'd like to think he'll still have that bleached blonde-white fraggle rock feather hair. i love his hair.

and we rolled out of town with the smoothness that we rolled in....on the "satin ribbons" that my father calls new york roads. he speaks comparitively, of course. comparitive with pennsylvania roads. my father is of the opinion that everything is better in new york. we road out of town smoothly and i left the town i'd grown up behind...left them all behind.

and as the sun set behind us...or was it in front of us?...i curled up in the back seat and turned the miles davis on the cd player (this time with headphones so my father could listen to the radio; jazz puts him to sleep...and was doing a lovely job for my aching mind at loosening the knot in my stomach) and thought about all of the things i've wanted to share and hadn't realized.

i thought about camping in the adirondaks and about that turtle that my mom took our picture on every year. i thought about maine. i thought about the camp on the great lake ( i don't remember which one it was...i was so little then) where the nowaki's used to take us and the smell of noxema that she'd slather onto our sunburned skin...i remembered Friendly's and "fishamajigs". i remembered all of the places i've been and how i have always wanted to share them with my mark and my brian, and now, my darling T. and i will...but i know that nothing will be the same. i can only hope that i've got the words to relate the memories. i can only hope that i've got the extensive vocabulary to relate the essential feelings of the thing.

and so, i go to work in the mornings and i come home at night and fall into bed after i've talked to him and he's salved my heart and soul a bit. he has a way with me that nobody else has. he has a way of making me look forward and remember that everything before made me who i am today. hard determinism at its finest, no, sam?

lately, life is a run on sentence.

and i'm getting like i wanna fall into bed in a bit...but i want to give a great big hug hug to a certain new york artist that made my day a lot bit brighter yesterday with her fan mail and instant messeges. thanks, j. *beams*

and....because i can't say it enough...t...i love you.

be well, cats...enjoy the sunshine and the last cool nights before the relentless heat of summer.

until.

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.what came before. - .what happened next.

a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017
baseball season to football season, abbreviated - 25 september 2017
the doodles - 11 july 2017
at arm's length - 4 july 2017
like a sea-mammal needs a bicycle - 30 may 2017

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