My Sanctuary

last week i went hunting through my backyard with a determination to see it with new eyes. I unpacked my camera, slipped off my shoes,  grabbed a cup of tea and headed into a world i last explored as far back as the sixth grade. 

what i found looked like it was out of another country. 

it looked like a place that could house magic.

it looked like a place the childhood me would be sure not to forget... 

and i guess a piece of me didn't. because this morning, the dew and the porch were calling my name, and i followed. 

the storm (an age old intervention)

It started where it usually starts. A bad rehearsal. There's no use getting in too deep into my post-rehearsal conundrums. They happen often. They last far too long. This is surely one of my top 5 mental quandaries.
This time I found myself sitting in the driver's seat of my car, looking into the rear-view mirror. A simple sight line check became an investigation of my face.
Dark smudges of fallen mascara beneath my eyes.
This lead me to unearth the traces of what I know will become crow's feet in ten years or so.
Which lead me to thinking about my future.

And the future got a little out of control.

I felt my heart beating at a heightened pace as I pulled out of my spot and drove home. The whole way I bombarded myself with questions: "How will you fix this scene?", "what can you do to make it better?", "what if you embarrass yourself?", "can you convey this extreme of a struggle?", "is your scene partner feeling sorry that he signed up to do this with you?", "if you can't do this how are you going to be an actress?"
"Could Naiomi Watts do this?...Probably yes."
Every time I stopped at a stoplight, I had the urge to plug in my ipod and drown out my thought, but I always negated the urge, with a feeling of obligation to keep going.
I felt like if I didn't ask the questions, and more importantly if I didnt have answers, then I lost.
When I got home I shut off my phone and plans and turned on the T.V.

I didn't watch good T.V.

Fuck good acting. Fuck any acting.

This lasted a while.


And then I noticed the rain.

I love night-time rain.

I love the feeling of brief containment.

I love my childhood notion that night-time rain is nature knowing every one's plans have passed, and that it's ceremony of sorts can begin.

My ceremonial response is... smoking a cigarette on the porch.

I sat, and watched, and pressed my legs against the cushions in different positions. And this storm grew wild. Awe...awesome. In the midst of my gaping, I heard the door open. In the lamp light my brother's figure sauntered out, prime time in one hand, lighter in the other. "Whoa. It's crazy, right?",he said. I nodded, and motioned for him to come over.

and we sat together, talking against the storm.

and after a while he looked back to me and smiled

"you left the window of the car open", he said

and my, "oh...shit", and his chuckle, became a dare we were both willing to take up.

and we ran.

past the car and into the street.

with porches of neighbors as an audience to our spectacle.

and I felt brave and small all at once.

and we kept on running until the storm expanded beyond our imaginations

and the sense in our feet

and reminded us we were mortal.

As I plodded into my bathroom to change, sucked into my flower print dress, I turned on the light and smiled at myself in the mirror. I could see my face, without the weight of my thought. And I loved what I saw.

king lear in the storm by john runciman 1767

Listen to these. they work magic on me.

press yourself up against the wall of a hallway and flip upside-down....then stretch and fuck around. 

A Max Poem

The Fourth

on the fourth of her wine glasses
I wrote in permanent marker “say
sorry! you must even if you don’t know why” only
to find that permanent ink is
easily re
moveable when
scribbled on secondhand glassware.
I lay on a bare mattress in
empty room
vacant house
everyone is interning for the summer
sleeping in their old beds
sleeping with old girlfriends
or the old girlfriends
of old
friends.
I am paying utilities for the first time in
my life
the whole thing makes me think
the way I thought I’d feel after a
graduation
or triumphant
promenade or
maybe even a success in criminal
activity (but I never felt this after any photographable event)
costly, I curl and ball into
invisible sheets drawing
invisible curtains so as not to
glimpse the cleared
out room where she used
to sleep
(the room where she never read
any of the obvious signals)
(or
emails
I invisibly sent her) with the
backside of my eyes
and the frontside of my
inexcusable silences.
oh! the hobbies we hope
to tragically acquire from the dealers
of substances we are too
old to pretend
we don’t use.
the fourth of her wine glasses was only a fifth of my
problems, which maybe points to the
idiocy of permanence on glass. yet the promise of
seventh chances remains
intact.

for max

I have always kept my limbs in check for you.
Each month I stamp them with the patch of a picture I found on facebook of the girl that you once sat on.
The girl who was clearly widdling down the pretty personality she scripted out in highschool, shaping her laugh into something that may fit in better to the new-found hip of the Ivy Leagues.

It looked to me like indian feathers and a paper-bag oragami hat cropped into a polaroid frame and skinny jeans.
Whatever,
you like it, and I obviously appreciate the kodak chrome lines enough to envy them.

My legs, fractionally, don't add up against the rest of me. Not like hers.

I never understood this love you had with the small and sweet.
When we drove through magnetic fields up to whyoming, you looked so comfortable against the window that I imagined you loving a girl who looked like the landscape that was pressing against your face.
Simple and beautiful with a long nose, like your mother.
I imagined a girl with a big mind, and a broad laugh, and a bad back.
And glass beads
And a skirt that looked as if the air beneath it had potential for something more than what we could offer up in highschool.
Yesterday you pulled out a picture of another.
She seemed like something new, and her face held an air of something that I think could match your mothers.
and your confederate boots would look good on her.
and I liked your smile when i said that she was hot.

everybody knows

Ryan Adams, is my new infatuation. An expensive one at that. To start, I made a serious dent on my itunes budget trying to find all of the songs I could that caught my interest in the 20 second (or so) clip. This didn’t work as much of a sift, because all of his songs are rad. After listening to him as backdrop tunes to my domestic life, I was determined to be able to play him while I was driving. Thus began my three hour "Spring Wireless" experience, which ended in a forty dollar media card. Since then I have burned his Easy Tiger album three times, and spent a good five dollars at least on extra gas trying to finish the current song.

I consider myself beyond frugal. 

He is worth abandoning habit.

I want to love so hard when I listen. I want to be infatuated and heartbroken and self-deprecating in the name of love.

 I am not in a relationship. I have not felt the pain of ending a relationship since the summer after my high school junior year, when I was broken up with at a coffee shop and couldn’t stop crying for long enough to be able to drive the ten minute drive to my house. Little me downed jager bombs with the sole intent of having the courage to drunk dial, cut off my hair and dyed it black, and wrote long (pathetically desperate) emails about my feelings on a weekly basis. (poor guy). Since then it’s been pretty smooth sailing. I haven’t been the one left behind since then, nor have I put much into any (more-than-plutonic) relationship.

Now, of course, isn’t the time to change this. I am more than occupied with a school curriculum that could be described as nothing less than life-consuming, but Ryan Adams’ lyrics on heartbreak are turning my blood in a way that makes me want to jump in to love and get totally fucked up.
You should really listen.

A Prayer For Her

A Prayer For Her

To her, 

I thought a lot about you today. 

Today I read over a case huge case. It concerned bank fraud. It told the story of  62 year old man, working his way through life, taking on one challenge at a time, trying to create a story he could be proud of. He talked about growing up in a small town, working his way through high school, and earning his way through college. Graduating and working as a grunt man to pay off loans. Taking the risk of starting his own business. Laboring through nights and weekends, giving up his social life and putting his life on hold in order to create a product. His business grew, he began employing more and more people, until the ball was rolling and he could finally rest. He married, and bought a little home, investing in it bit by bit, saving what he could. Him and his wife worked their way through parenthood, earning enough to send their children through college, and finally were back on their own. When they realized that, at the end of all this, they still had some money they could save, they invested it...their entire life savings, in a trust. A trust that happened to be involved in a huge Ponzi scheme. They lost everything.

As I read their statement, I nearly cried. I could feel how broken this man was. How he had lost something so precious, and all he could do was beg for someone to be accountable. I could feel how angry he was at the unfair circumstance. I could feel a sense of hopelessness. And still, he was putting up a fight. 

I have seen you go through a similar battle. You have been stripped down to a circumstance that is anything but fair...and there is no one to account for it. You are the one who has taken on  your health, your employment, your lack of employment, your empty nest, the errors in the paths of others. You have taken on many burdens.

It is clear that it hasn't been seamless. I can't say that you handled it with an air of ease, and that I haven't worried about you along the way. There have been times where I felt more afraid than I have ever felt before. Afraid that your spirit would break, or that your body couldn't take it. 

I can say however, that this is the strongest fight I have ever seen.

You have conquered the demons that come with  the doctors orders, you have drowsily emerged from the surgeries, you have had your neck braced, your back broken. You have had your trust crushed, and your hard work dismissed. You have had half of your home abandoned for "the next chapter". And through this and more, bitterness has never reached the table. Instead, you have never stopped picking up the phone, the ingredients, the puzzle pieces, in a brave attempt to shuffle things around until they work again. You haven't stopped showing that you still have a lot of love in you.

I am in awe of you, little woman. 

And now here you are on the first journey of what both you and I hope to be your next chapter. 

My four hour road-prayer is this: 

When you leave our driveway, acknowledge how well you prepared your suitcase of work...you are equip. Even without the papers.

When you look in the rear view mirror, please make sure you aren't backing into anything...and then recognize how beautiful you are. 

As you leave town, get excited to leave. 

When you merge onto the highway, roll down the window as much or as little as you like... you're the only one you have to accommodate. Bring a little of this back with you. 

Get lost in that book on tape. If it's bad, put in the CD I made for you before I left for college (and remember it was made for you when you listen to the lyrics). 

When you drive by Boulder, think of dad, and know he's thinking of you. He always is. 

As you enter the mountains, take in the air, live in how lucky we are and the knowledge that this is what is real... forget the petty parts of your past. 

When things seem long, recline... let your back be bossy for once. 

When you get bored, stop in a station and buy a pepsi and some lays... when I think of you, often what comes to mind is you laying out by a pool with these in hand. 

Relish in the silence that comes with not having dad deciphering a map next to you, colin playing crappy rap, or me complaining about having to eat real food. 

Enjoy being alone, enjoy starting fresh, enjoy having something to look forward to. 

you are a superior human. 

and if that's not enough, you can always look down and acknowledge the 6 missed calls I've left you today.