Translate

Sunday, January 20, 2013

for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

Happy Sunday, my darlings. I hope you’re all alive and well, and managing to avoid the flu epidemic. Fact: the flu vaccine is only 62% effective according to this moderately depressing article released by the CDC. I’m currently lying in my bed trying to keep my lungs in my chest. But! Had I been a responsible adult human being and taken recommended preventative measures, there’s a 3-in-5 chance I would still have the flu right now. Full disclosure, my illness is probably sleep deprivation and not an aggressive virus. We’ll never know for sure.

Sometimes I write poetry. And sometimes I participate in events where said poetry is read aloud to real life people. And maybe they like it or maybe they don’t but they’re always gracious enough to pretend. January 9th, which was already 11 days ago because the world is a surreal time-warped place, I read in a 3+3 poetry feature hosted by Stone Soup. The host selected three featured poets, and each poet invited an additional reader for a total of six poets.

You guys. All the feelings! I have a confession. I think I’m addicted to poetry. Standing in a room full of friends, strangers and everything in between with adrenaline singing in my fingertips and the microphone popping with words that came from my head… I don’t even know. There’s something transformative in the sharing. Like my body functions as conduit, but the word are what’s Real and Alive. I opened my mouth, closed my eyes and just let them become. Thank you, Stone Soup, for initiating me into the poetry family. Sharing a stage with so much talent was rewarding and much-needed.

How does one celebrate a successful night of poetry? Chopsticks, obviously. Nothing says “I’m an artist, goddammit” quite like karaoke, Wednesday night and Chinese takeout.

Chopsticks occupies a very specific segment of my heartscape. After the very first Stone Soup reading I attended, C invited me to Chopsticks for drinks. The walls are papered with polaroid snapshots, strangers’ faces like you’ve suddenly been dropped into real-life facebook. My human eyes take so much longer to process that much happiness than my restless fingertips do. We spilled stories back and forth across the pool table; sinking the past two years into corner and side pockets like memories could be corralled with the right geometry. That night I met Josh the Magnificent and tried not to stare while he feigned smoking a colored pencil. Chopsticks heralded the beginning of a Portland I didn’t know I would need so desperately. Also: karaoke seven nights a week. Obviously that’s a thing, because why not?

Things you don’t expect to happen on a Wednesday night:

·         A gaggle of gays head-banging to your rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

·         A middle-aged man taking off his shirt and aggressively flexing his muscles in your general direction before dropping down and doing many, many push-ups on the dance floor. Don’t worry, he was escorted off the premises shortly thereafter.  

·         Hand-feeding your friend tater tots because she won’t eat them off the plate and you’re mildly concerned she might die if she doesn’t immediately ingest some form of grease and carbohydrate.

·         Drinking PBR in bed at 2am, nestled between your friends, all warm and sleepy until you can’t keep your eyes open anymore.

Altogether, Wednesday was a successful culmination of the many hours spent worrying, writing, swearing, re-writing and talking out loud to myself in inappropriate settings. Thank you to everybody making it possible to pursue my dream of being a poet. Or a rap artist. Whichever comes first.

All my love, creeps.

-b

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose


Hello weirdos! I’m writing to you from internet Station 9 at the Woodstock Public Library. Why you ask? Well, it’s not for the ambiance. Although the facial hair in this building is astounding. No, it’s because I’m a damn fool, and also I left my laptop on the stairs. The same stairs that I blindly charged up on my way to a friend’s birthday dinner last week. Turns out LCD screens don’t love being trampled? Learning all the things every day! Anyhow, my laptop is somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Smalltown, Somewhere. Shout out to my mother, who predicted my destructive tendencies and put a 1-year full warranty on the Samsung.

I hope 2013 has been exceeding your wildest expectations. Thus far I’ve managed to gain 4 lbs., spend money like life is Monopoly and shirk any form of adult responsibility. But more importantly I’ve eaten good food, danced like I know how to dance, sung all the karaoke and laughed more than I remember being possible. The sun is shining. There are poems humming in my fingertips. I haven’t cried yet this year. And yes, of course I still think about you, but only in that good aching way. The kind that reminds me I’ve still got a heart, not a dead animal sewn into my chest. The ache that leaves me clean.

Mostly today, I’m reassembling my life into some semblance of order. This includes mundane chores like grocery shopping, cleaning my bedroom, going to the gym and paying my bills. I know, I know. I’m living the fucking dream out here. But I can’t spend every day belting out 80s rock ballads until 2am and ripping paper towel dispensers off bathroom walls. It’s just not a sustainable lifestyle.

The past week was exceptionally nonproductive because 1. Lo visited this town and 2. The Stone Soup reading was successful enough to warrant insane celebration. Also I had to watch the Hunger Games four times. Had to. You guys, Jennifer Lawrence is just so perfect.

While I appreciate all of the things about Lo, I’m especially enamored of her ability to self-entertain. Namely because I worked 90% of the time she was here, grudgingly and distractedly. But each night she was there in my house, building beer can towers with Friend or waiting for me to feed her bacon sandwiches. [Note: shout out to ULOL for buying said bacon, and not criticizing the way I cooked it… too much.] While she was here she accomplished at least three goals: drinking ruby beer, thrift store shopping and eating conveyor belt sushi. I’m glad I got to participate in two of those three conquests. Lo, good choice on the blue dress. I hope you bedazzle the hell out of it.

Lo being here meant my bed late at night, talking about home. We talked about last winter, all the sad people burning their lives down. Rage catching herself with her forehead and me getting sent home from work because tequila. And it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t, it wasn’t... But we laughed because what else are you going to do? Sometimes the most absurd thing about life is just living it. We talked about the people that I know still exist because they have names and faces. Their numbers are saved in my phone and sometimes I see them living their lives through a computer screen. I wonder if they think of me, a name and a face living my life.

We ate too much, drank too much. We sang Bohemian Rhapsody twice, which seems completely necessary. We played Chuck, Fuck or Marry until we ran out of movie stars, cartoon characters and planets.

Jupiter, Mars and Saturn… Well obvs fuck Jupiter because size might matter. Marry Saturn if you like it enough to put a ring on it.  

Nostalgia ambushes me at the strangest times. Like when I’m drinking black coffee and the light falls just-so through the window and I remember Thanksgiving morning and the way my throat weighed one million pounds. Lew talks about the stars and I miss the way yard couch sagged under our weight, how we fell asleep before the meteor shower, woke up cold and covered in dew. Orion’s belt makes me crave small, bitter apples and heavily peppered venison jerky. Sheryl Crow makes me think California coffee shops and extra whipped cream, but only sometimes. Memory is a constantly shifting geography, hard to navigate, harder to predict. Lately my mouth aches for butterscotch and bananas. 

Lo, it was nice to go home without leaving my bed.

Many miles of love.

-b

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Like a Fucking Dream I'm Living In.


Hello kittens, and welcome to 2013! Did you all celebrate the New Year safely but also fashionably? I hope you all had mouths to kiss at midnight. I finished the year on a sweaty dance floor with approximately one million lesbians. You guys, I’ve never seen so many asymmetrical haircuts in such a small space.
"Holy shit, is that a mullet? I think that's a legit mullet..."
I’m uncomfortably recovering from massive quantities of champagne with chocolate and all of the water. I spent 90% of today horizontal. My heart keeps doing weird flutter kicks and my brain feels like bruised fruit. Some not-so-small part of me can’t believe I survived 2012. One year ago today I woke up on Leif’s couch with my small, broken body. I tasted like a stranger and cheap beer. Lo and I dragged E out of her house for breakfast Somewhere Familiar and we laughed or maybe just pretended. I remember my hands felt like a foreign country. My tongue was always too thick back then, and sometimes it still is but I’m learning to accommodate it.

It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

Today the sun danced kaleidoscopes across my bedroom’s yellow walls. Lew painted me verbal pictures. We shared surviving stories. Time drifted in and out of the spider web in my window. I felt peaceful and sleepy and just comfortable. I misplaced my heavy heart for a few hours. Happiness doesn’t leave a scar, but it certainly left an impression.

You guys. It’s been a strange/wonderful/fucked-up/exquisite year. Let’s recap…

I moved to Portland

Remember that time I packed all of my worldly possessions into the Biscuit and transported them 582 miles West? I remember like it was just last year! I’ve lived in Portland 10 months and 13 days. It feels like a lot longer, but in a good way. Like part of me has always been here waiting for the rest to catch up. Leaving home has not been anything like I expected. I’m not any braver or kinder or more intelligent than I was in Missoula. But I am more me. I had to define who Me even is without the trellis support of rugby, longtime friends and my family.

I don’t have it all figured out. I probably never will. But I think that’s alright because I am the human being story I’m telling myself, and that’s fucking beautiful.

I got a semi-adult job

I say “semi-adult” because most days I feel like a child, wearing pajamas and humoring people with my well-rehearsed anecdotes. But also I have health insurance and paid vacation, thus the Adult part. The Boulevard isn’t a perfect fit. I’ve never used the words “certainly”, “absolutely” or “fantastic” so many times in my entire life. There are days I want to throw the printer through a window, flip ‘em the bird and storm out like a hardass. Or, you know, just turn in my two weeks’ notice like a sane human being.

But! I value the Boulevard because 1) it pays the bills/keeps me fed and 2) it has forced me to socially engage with some of the strangest, most lovable human beings I could ever hope to know. Also it supplies me endless material for a collection of humorous short stories I intend to write someday.

I attended A-Camp

This summer I spent a week on a mountain with 300+ lesbians. I listened and wrote and watched and learned and grew. I left with a sense that I am capable of anything. Anything. That feeling of still, quiet determination is absolutely priceless. A-Camp help my hand while it forced me out of my comfort zone. Then it made me an ice cream sundae and asked me to process my feelings. I hope to someday be surrounded by that many awe-inspiring women again. A-Town for life!

I had my first poetry reading

On September 26th my hands and voice trembled in front of a microphone. I cracked open my geode heart and spilled purple across the stage. I moved a stranger to tears, and an old man with patchy whiskers told me Write and keep writing and never stop. This month I get to do it again with new words I’ve polished riverrock smooth in front of mirrors, on the city bus and in dark alleyways. My heartfelt thanks go out to Stone Soup for the opportunity to share my words/thoughts/feelings with the world. I’m hooked.

I learned to say goodbye

There’s a scene in Homeward Bound that resonated with Little Me. (Note: if you haven’t watched Homeward Bound recently/ever, do yourself a favor and watch it immediately. Please and thank you.) Shadow falls into this boggy mud pit and when he realizes he can’t get out he looks at Chance with his big, sad golden retriever eyes and tells him “I’ve taught you everything you need to know. Now all you have to learn is how to say goodbye.”

And I don’t think I ever really understood that because my Goodbyes have always been See You Later or Talk to You Soon. Goodbye doesn’t mean much when I am still clinging with white knuckles to the front of your shirt. Thank you for teaching me the lesson of letting go.

All the living are dead and the dead are all living. The war is over, and we are beginning…

I love you all more than you can imagine. I’m glad we survived. Thank you for sharing this year with me, for tolerating my jumbled ramblings. I hope this year brings you all the love your hearts can feasibly hold. Here’s looking forward to new experiences/scars/stories/dreams/lovers/friends.

Happy New Year.

-b