introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- change so suddenly, just like mercury. -ten nineteen pm. - seventh of june, 2001-finally. "i'm wiped and i'm wired."~ani difranco random thoughts. very random. i'm tireless and utterly tired at the same time. tonight, i'm an enigma. i've packed my things to fly to him and my head is a jumble of useless retained details and my heart is full of emotion and my body is begging me to lie down for just a bit til he comes home to talk the last digital talk we have before tomorrow morning when i step off of that boeing seven whatever model...off of that jetway and into those arms i love so much. i've packed my things and as i folded my clothes, i thought of so much. i wondered what BW meant the other afternoon when he asked me what i'd been doing on monday night. i know what i'd been doing: i was talking to t. i stayed up and wrote a bit after we hung up because i'm always so charged by his voice. "you were messing with my head on monday night. i was really stoned. what were you doing?" i don't really know how i could mess with his head from my room as i wrote. we'd had that talk about energies and the sprial dance and did i reccommend that book to him? i had meant to. i never know when people are going to look at me like i'm whacked out of my mind for talking about such things as the vortexes (vortexi? whichever.) in sedona and the energies i feel when i sit so quietly out there in those woods and listen to the ground sigh and breathe. i am not a lunatic. i think that some people have just forgotten to listen. i think that some people probably never knew how. and i pushed those thoughts and the guilty feeling i've since gotten about playing go fish with him. its not that there is a damned thing i could feel for him but its just that he reminds me so much of you and you were all i thought about when i was stealing his fours and stealing his kings and stealing his eights but it wasn't you and i don't want to have memories of thoughts of you. i want to have memories of YOU. ah, once again, i'm confusing myself. and my mind whirred on like the blender dean was using well past midnight when he and carrie stole into the house after my father had left for work to make milkshakes. i heard the blender. my mother must've slept through it. my mind blended and pureed and mixed and chopped and all of the other functions that such an expensive blender might do and i came back to those overwhelming feelings of...of what, exactly? just neverousness and self conciousness that i've been trying to ignore; that i've been trying to put aside because i know that they're unfounded. they're all so important to you, though. the best friend with the boyfriend and the tattoo and all of the things that i imagine for us someday that i won't care if we never have....the mother and sister with the accents: the women that i know are most important to you and, therefore, to me...but i'm really nervous that they'll want something better for you...something different and i think i've got a pretty good handle, sometimes...on mothers and sisters. but i'm not going to be afraid or scared or any of that. i'm just gonna be me, like s said. why is it that, with anyone else, i can just say 'fuck it' and let them take me or leave me? with them...its so different because...because they're of you and you are of them and i've never wanted to fit in so badly in my life. but that doesn't mean i need an accent, i suppose. not that i'd mind having one. the clouds were covering up most of the sunset and as i went out on the step to smoke a pall mall from the blue box with the matching pastel blue lighter (i have these monochromatic days) i could smell the sunset. smell the sunset? yes. that. the scent of the flowers was so strong it was like perfume out there and i wanted to capture it and bring it with me and put it on your pillows before i left. i wanted you to smell springtime that clean. your words passed through like text in my head. "i want your scent on my pillows." nobody ever said anything like that to me. i thought i was the only pillow sniffer...the only one that clutched pillows close to remember. scent is so strong a sense. this week has been so olifactory. and the pillow thing...it made me think of sam and how i would smell my pillows in the daytime when he'd be home sleeping. it made me think of how his grandmother's house smelled. it made me think of how it smelled when we woke, there, on the sofas pushed together that were never really comfortable but that were enough because we'd spent all we could on hotels. god, i was so different then. and i understand why it never worked now. it wasn't you. it wasn't respect or love or any of these wonderful things you give me. i smelled the sun set and watched the grey-purples fade with the light and then, the buds must have closed up as they do in the dark. when i was little, i loved to watch the flowers in the garden on the side of the house right next to where the honeybees were. the bees would go into the white wooden beehive at night to sleep. i remember the first time i noticed that the flowers closed up like that. it still makes me smile. i never notice when they do it but i love that they do. and so i finished the packing and i put on some counting crows. i debated on whether i'd wrap up your gifts but couldnt' find any paper and we don't get a newspaper here and i'm not done reading my newsweek. so. i will hand them to you and i will be nervous about it. i always get nervous about giving gifts. i never know if they'll like them, although, secretly, i know i'm a good gift giver. i'm proud of these last ones. i worked hard on them. i've found my digital graphic voice...or at least a whisper of one. and i put the cards in the pile of things for my blue messenger bag. i packed up the backpack. i am not that heavy a packer. three days in a backpack. i am a good packer. i get it from my dad who could fit a lifetime's worth of belongings into the back of a truck in forty five minutes. sure, i left some behind but i hardly remember those things now. sometimes, i wonder what happened to my smashing pumpkins subway poster..the one that i'd told to stop smiling that night. i wonder if one of them took it. as much as i hated them, i would like to think they did. that was a good poster. it freaked collette out that day when she first pulled down our oversized blind to find billy and d'arcy and james and jimmy staring back at her. she had no warning. and i know you're coming home soon and i know that in less than thirteen hours, i'll have your arms entwined with mine...in the hug that i've anticipated for weeks. and i'm so sleepy because i never got that nap but a night without you is like a night without stars. even in the overcast, the stars are still there. i like to catch a glimpse of them through the breaks in the sky. they say that there will be the tails of tropical storms passing through and i wonder what rain sounds like w here you are. i wonder what rain smells like. i wonder how much a foal can grow in a few weeks. i wonder what your voice sounds like when you whisper to keep from waking your mother. i wonder how i'll be able to sleep tonight. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
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