Leap Day

Wednesday night at the opera and it reminds you; the special shadow that leaps across the garments, the sound of orchestras tuning through ambient buzz, that moment when you realize you were somewhere else completely and it only happens like that here.

The moment you are reminded there are other things you are meant to be doing.

Spring ran rampant through the parks today, spread across icy grass and pale skins, tickled long dormant limbs into dance. There will be snow again, there will be ice across the waters and it will seem as though this early sunshine was all in vain; hope is desperately frail in the beginning.

But as I walk, long strides across the island, my blood leaps, and skips, and courses quicker every minute. I forget to sleep. I remember to laugh, great big laughs from deep in my belly effervesce through my body. It is divine.

The city is beautiful at twilight. High heels clicked across cobble stone streets. It will be alright.

In Tune

Do you know, there was a moment today, when it was late afternoon but the sun was still bright, when I thought it'd be cold but the breeze had a warmth to it that hasn't passed through these grids in ages and the birds sang just so, that I forgot all my troubles.

I remembered them later, of course, over a sink full of dishes, but no matter.

Something stirs within, flutters, prepares to break free.

Something magic.

What You Need

Sweaty, crowded dancefloor, no movement voluntary but an effect of the swaying nearby. Crowd surfing like it's the nineties and it makes you laugh, it rebuilds your hope. The line was too long, a miracle snuck you through, you are on the other side of the waters and still the town seems so small, the crimes so innocent.

You build a new life here, with people of old. There is comfort in familiarity, confusion in geography. You do not mind. The bed is twice as full tonight and you adore the voices around you, the morning ahead. You gave him, perhaps, the wrong number, but there is no telling until later and now you can but laugh, and laugh, and remember to get off at the right subway stop.

The morning will still be february, and cold, and maybe snowy, but this night is all sparkles and power ballads and rose petals, ironically but still. This night is sparkles. You cannot ask for more.

Dirty Shoulders

Of course you dreamed too big, too beautiful. Of course you set your sights on the impossible.

Of course, you crashed, and burned, and drowned.

But if you did not dream, you would have never gotten on that plane to New York, all those years ago. If you did not dream, you would never have traveled all those miles, to all those places, met all those people. If you did not dream, what word would have been yours, at all?

I brush myself off, carry on.

What else is there to do?

Voluntary Insomnia.

But the rain will wash the snow away.

Forward. Fast.

It rained all weekend; cold, icy February rain and it broke your heart with every slam against the window. But when you stepped out this morning, the rains had washed the snow away, the streets lay barren--thick with gravel, but barren. It was light before you were even out of bed. Spring is not impossibly far away, after all.

I saw a picture of your house today, the view from your rooftop, all summer sunshine and lush green trees. The hesitation in my chest was but slight, I laughed and dared to hope for the impossible. You do not know yet how good we would be together. You do not know how much I would love your view and your streets; I would cherish them. I hope you can hear it, when I tell you.

It was light when I walked home from work today, too. I don't think I needed that hat pulled down so far. There was life left in me, and hope, and giggles. Spring is not impossibly far away. Life, is just around the corner.

Thumbs Held.

You had words, and ideas, lined up for miles. Had hours to yourself and no one to interrupt your restless meanderings, your impatient heart.

And then the inbox rang with the slightest tremor of potential, with just a morsel of hope, and your words stop dead in their tracks, quivering, unsure where to go.

I must bide my time now, wait for answers beyond my control, hold my tongue. I count the minutes, remind myself of realities, forgive myself the wasted words.

The puzzle pieces will fit, eventually. The picture may not look as you had planned. But it was never painting that was what you do. And the words will be waiting, till you've found them a home to grow.

Re:read

Belief & Technique
For Modern Prose
by Jack Kerouac
List of Essentials

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

Play. List.

she'd ash on the carpet
and slip me a pill
and she'd get me
pretty loaded on gin.

How I wish I had a Sylvia Plath.

But do you?

Polaroid Life

It was a long walk home, mostly uneventful, slushy sidewalks, all that new snow and it'll never be spring. People walked carefully in the slippery undulations of the streets, always staring anywhere but at each other. How gray this nation in February, how sad its people.

But at the edge of my vision, something moved. A young man, twenty maybe, it's so hard to tell these days, skinny legs and skinny pants, navy blue wool jacket, came running towards me, one hand in his pocket, causing the jacket to swing back and forth as he went. The other hand clutched a cigarette, and, as he ran, he took a deep drag, held his entire hand over his face, crossed the street, his breath came out like a great big puff of smoke, a locomotive racing through the industrial working city. He looked like a young Beatle running down the streets of London. For that brief second, I was watching a movie, I stepped straight into it and through it as he ran past. To wherever he was going, that was such a rush, that required him to smoke and run at once. In no time at all, it was over, he had gone.

But the feeling of little moments of magic, little breaks from reality, remained with me all night.

ific.

There's a nail above the kitchen door frame, I hadn't seen it before and suddenly it was there. Empty white wall, nail. It seemed to be lacking a clock hanging from it. I suppose in the back of my conscious mind, that's what a home looks like.

This apartment is no such thing.

Outside the kitchen window, snow flakes flurried upwards, sideways, great big flakes like magnified dandruff against the black black night, and all I could thing was how much it felt like I was looking into the swirl of a Dyson vacuum. You know, the kind with a big plastic container where everything flies around like a tornado. I felt like I was sitting inside an aquarium, looking out.

This empty apartment. These echoing rooms and half-eaten makeshift excuses for meals, this twisted unmade bed and sad air. This is no home.

But if it isn't beat, I don't know what is.

Dollar a Day's Worth

When we stepped out into the late morning sun, I heard birds, the kind you hear in spring, and I didn't have to wear my gloves for a bit. The snow was thawing in sheltered corners, drops of water glistening, and people smiled as they passed. I know it is too soon; I know this is but a false start. I am encouraged, nonetheless.

Later, I walked to my sister's to pick up pots and pans, the details of a home for my shell of one. I crossed the cemetery, the church rose statuesque and quiet, as it always does, the ground was thick with snow, the early evening black. A letter landed in my inbox, tales of babies at risk and parents in fear, my helplessness painted trails behind me.

It will be alright. We must wait, we must be patient, we must weather this storm. Spring will come, in time.

Literally, too.

Urban Deli

The shower was long, but I had saved up minutes from so many lost showers; it seemed fair. For a moment I considered canceling, I was still tired, but I longed for the company, and I trudged that slushy hill down, the same street all the way down to the end, that street stays with me, hiding behind the main artery of the island, always linking to whatever alveoli carry another breath of oxygen for my life here.

She had a new apartment, it was beautiful. Do you know, tonight, for that brief hour before you all appeared, I looked around and felt like I could live here. Weeks pass, entire lives up and over, the island remains.

We ended up at the same bar, always the same blocks covered, comfort in routines. I walked home later, the same street but uphill now, a cobblestone home so many months in the making. The hours with you, I needn't think forward or backward. Your voices in my ear are a refuge, I am comforted. I vow never to stray, to go too far away or too long without. Your voices in my ears, I am safe.

On Timing.

A full moon came and went while I was busy turning out my insides for some common winter virus. I slept a hundred hours in its wake. Now my days and nights are turned upside down, but it's too late.

This empty apartment is at its best when the full moon comes in through the kitchen window. Like a sliver of magic where you thought none would be. I leave my blinds up. To no avail.

Any Human Heart

The world is at war.
Nothing has happened. Nothing bad, anyway.

I have a secure nine to five job, for the first time in my life.
I go to work on the tube. I have an office, secretary, decent salary.
Although it seems strange to be wearing a uniform.
I feel I'm betraing my vocation.

I'm meant to be writing a novel.

Monday Mornings

The baby cried at seven-thirty. Her mother passed me, told me to sleep a little longer. Jet lagged weariness gave me another few hours, I woke thinking there is nothing sweeter than good sleep and longed for more. But in the dark night, in the old apartment, at the end of all the travels, my eyes are wide awake.

It begins now. Life. It begins, again, now. You commit to a city, to employment, to apartment hunting and social spider webs. You commit to a spring that has to come, eventually, and to looking ahead when it's much sweeter to look behind. You cling to that smile in your pocket, like a talisman you rub nervously, pray it will carry you through the rough spots.

Life begins every day.
It's just a little more obvious, today.

For a While

Long long time ago
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.

We tell stories, all night we retell histories past, and I don't know if they were that fantastic or if there's nothing new to say. We sit in a bar that was once the place for our regular club; the memories pile onto what was once a dance floor; we are older now, it is but a bar.

There's a new generation hanging on our ankles now; we are still the children we were. Some things never change and I love that they don't.

But I also love that they stay where they belong. I have another life now. And we can't go home, again.

Svartensgatan

The hallway echoes when I enter, the door slams shut fifteen times after I pull in my suitcase behind me. My now-former roommate has left a few trinkets, a love seat, a few cups, a toothbrush holder. Every piece warms my heart, reminds me of a home we had; I am left now with only questions of what home this will be. I fall asleep quickly, deep jet lagged sleep with no regard to circumstances. Once I wake it is time to leave, to drink, to forget.

We sit in a corner, the regular bar, the familiar warmth, and try to catch up on the weeks that were. An early train departure lies in wait, still we order just one more round, twice, but it will work itself out.

Can we just decide it'll be a fantastic spring? she says, in the swirl of messy stories and confused question marks of what is to come. Good things will come, I know it. We part ways on the corner, the same corner as all those months ago but snowed over now. The cold bites my cheeks, wakes me. It'll be a fantastic spring. I know it.