Map/Quest

There is a line of boats, along the docks at the south end of my island. Houseboats, with potted plants and hammocks, bicycles and mail boxes, they lie there, steady through the rains, through the nights. I walk past them when the sun is out, in my incessant, futile attempts to tread my way to enlightenment. Their loosely hung lines writhing like giant entrails on deck, doesn't it seem they could simply abandon their moorings, take their dinner tables and residents, and escape into the world, into the ocean foreverland, into unknown adventure, without ever losing footing, losing the sense of home. Doesn't it seem they could be the snail, and carry their homes with them always?

Today I walked slowly, closing my eyes and turning my face into the light. The joggers disappeared, the school children and parents on leave, the Swedish air, as I imagined skyscrapers towering at the edges, the sounds of impatient cabs and the humidity of late August in a land far away, and I prepared for the lighter heart and easier smile such visions always invoke.

But no such relief was to come. I faltered in the imagined avenues. They tumbled and evaded my grasp; they shrugged at my longing and looked the other way. For a short moment, the New York City grid was no home, not the soft landing it always is. For a short moment, I imagined I did not belong there either. For a long moment after, I felt more homeless than ever.


. . .

I suppose the trouble
is I wish
you would be
the home I carried
with me
always

regardless the land
under my feet.

Lex

If you never say your name out loud to anyone
They can never ever call you by it.

The Other Night You Wouldn't Believe

It gets dark early now, that proper dark that seeps into every crevice, there didn't use to be so many lights on in the apartments across the street, everything is different and when did that happen?

Did you land yet, did you arrive? Have you seen how dark the streets have gotten, how cold the wind? Did you forget to look, when summer was young? I have been waiting for fall since May. I have been waiting for death since my youth. Better dread arrive so one may have it out of the way; it's the wait that'll break a heart. Are you still on cloud nine, and is it brighter, there?

You should stay,
as long as you can.
I'll take the heartbreak,
so you don't have to.

To the Moon

Happiness is having a ticket
in your back pocket.

I have three.

30

It occurs to me that I may have had this life thing all wrong all along. It is so easy to listen to Voices of Reason, to march to the same beat, the same tune, to build your ideas on what life is about off somebody else's blueprint. 

Here's the thing; you do not care about success, about money or climbing the career ladder as very far as your particular assets allow. That was never your thing, but you've started to believe it is... That you are at an age now where you can no longer fuck around.

You have been mistaken.

You want to write, you want passion and madness, ecstasy and alcohol, you want life, and you miss New York. 

So I propose this. If, by the time you read this, you do not have an inspiring man by your side, a finished manuscript in your drawer, some sort of functioning madness in your spine... Get your shit together, save your pennies, and go back Home to New York.

I don't care how you think you are old; I don't care how you were unhappy and unsuccessful there as well. You still loved New York every day you were there; you still had purpose and remembered what it was to be inspired. 
And if you haven't found that in Stockholm yet, fuck it. 
Just go.

Worry about the Rest later. 
This is your life, even at 30, 
even at 40. 
I want you to live it all you can. 

Eves

All week like a long preparation for the day that arrives tomorrow. All year, perhaps. I was always a step ahead in expecting disaster, age, death. One day I will lay in my grave, eyes open, heart beating, and tell my grand-children that being prepared is just good common sense. My entire youth was spent preparing for old age, and subsequently always feeling too late for the experiences of my time.

Perhaps then, 30 is not the time when it is all over. Perhaps, this is the time when my age catches up with my anxiety.

Perhaps now is when I say fuck it, and live.

Alternatives

The sun came out just in time for the surprise. She appeared around a cliff as we scrambled with putting straws in drinks and synchronizing song. She smiled that contagious smile of hers and we knew we'd done well. Summer lay like a picnic blanket over the city as we sat with our food and our giggles on the top of the hill overlooking it all. The water sparkled that way it does that makes you think somebody paid it, a canon went off, Stockholm spread out below us like it was in on the celebrations.

The night continued in a rush of mad rambles and misplaced lipgloss. Of dancing on the upholstery, of serenades and unabashed laughter. If the next 30 sees me with you people, I'll be fine, she said, and we couldn't picture a future where it was not so.

I came home inebriated, dizzy, the night gets dark now; I forget what it's like. The lights were out on the church, and it loomed sadly with just its clock faces alive.

The scene seemed to be telling me something. I don't want to know, what it was.

To Keep

Hatched

I nest.

Every day a new cupboard, a new shelf to clear and clean. Bags of recycling and trash build up in the hallway, every thrown out piece lightens my load. I am preparing this home for a rapidly approaching day, when 20-something is over and a new decade begins. The scent of household cleaner and symmetric order my only crutches in navigating the process of acceptance ahead. These are the terms of service you agree to when you choose to live. The years will pass, regardless.

We stood outside the bar when she saw her friend. His grandparents were visiting from Australia, doing a tour of the various grandchildren and great-grandchildren scattered around the other side of the world. We were impressed by their coming such a long way, but the colder the evening grew, the more we learned of their years past. Of eating whale meat in Barrow, Alaska, of skinny dipping off the Great Barrier Reef, of all the stories that make up a life together, and a life in the world. Their eyes sparkled at the memories; I saw 50 years of travel in me yet.

Perhaps the cleared closets aren't so much for order and control. Perhaps shedding the heavy trinkets of a life in stability will simply make it that much easier to soar.

Motives

...but perhaps
the problem is
if I don't belong
in New York

then I don't belong anywhere.

And I can't bear to be homeless
again. 

The Flowers

Things I have loved
I'm allowed
To keep.

the Chill

Something has changed, you know. It's not in the cool wind that blows from the sea, it's not in the way the leaves have turned that deep dark green, the last shade before their inevitable death. It's that the nights are dark now. The sky is black, and the street lights mere spots of light to guide your way. Suddenly, across the street, I see lives on display in lit apartments, like cinema screens appearing all crisp and clear in their dark theaters.

I think of you again now. I hadn't, for a while, there were distractions and summer grass, there was a busy schedule and not much time left over for meandering day dreams. (no, that's not true. I did not think of you because I do not let myself. Some paths are better left untreaded.) But here you are, back on these streets, back in my air, the gnawing sense in my gut that will not be coaxed to rest, it is you. I bide my time.

And hope your dreams are sweet.

Swept

So this thing with you moving all the time, this thing with New York, what is it you are running from? she said. The office still reeled from vacation vibes, no one was working much. We sat barefoot on revolving chairs and talked about the future, instead. I'm not running, I declared, I just love New York, I want to go home. For once, speaking of other places on the horizon in terms of not being the endpoint of escaping someplace else, seems true. As though all my talk of the City genuinely stems from a sense of belonging and is merely the endpoint of a steady trek towards mental sanity and emotional stability.

But Sunday afternoon arrived with a storm, a pressure system building all across the coast and it stirred the fallen leaves in my apartment, stirred the dusty corners of my subconscious. I began to open drawers, sort out the unused trinkets, upgrade to a larger trash bag. I considered whether I needed half of the contents of my closet, whether I couldn't simply burn it all and start over. Just a month ago I was bringing old building blocks of a home into this small space and wished I could properly make it mine. Now the walls close in and lay bricks around my feet, make my dead skin cells itch with the ache for renewal. I want to molt, I want to leave, I want a plane ticket in my hand and the wind in my face, I want a white blank page and a land of boundless opportunity. I want my blood to rush madly in my veins, I want laughter to bubble in my chest, I want explosion of the heart.

I pretend I am not running away from Stockholm, from the frail tendrils of roots I have sent into this mountainside; I pretend this move to New York is simply what makes sense, that my heart is lonely without it. But the truth is nothing has changed.

We are forever running to stand still.

Flake

In the dream, I carried my child in my arms. A son, all white hair and plump flesh, he fit so snugly in my grasp and looked at me with his wise blue eyes. We sat in the backyard of the house where I grew up, my parents inside, waiting. He was so small, he should have been too young to speak, but when he turned to me, the questions were perfectly formed. Where are we? he said humbly. We are at grandma and grandpa's house, I replied. But where is our house? Where do we live? he continued.

There is no 'our house'. 
We have no home. 

No matter the silliness to follow, something about seals in icy waters in the same backyard, no matter the long scene before this, mostly concerning a water well in a town square, no matter the nonsense of dreams as the leftover debris of a long day, getting swept up and carried off to the dumpsters of the mind.

In my dream, I carried my son in my arms, and told him we had no home.

If I ever have children, in the waking world, I pray they know how to pack a light bag.

Where You Belong

Take it easy, he says, it'll be fine. 
Shaking fingers reach steady keys, a trembling voice touches the microphone, softly at first, then louder, the spine straightens. Soft notes stumble across rolling tape, little paw prints etch their ink into just a few minutes of air time. Glasses of wine empty, temperatures rise, the cats traipse along the edges and keep quiet when he pushes the record button. An aching mind finds a million mistakes, but a singing soul knows no steps off key. The night grows longer; we sit at a bar around the corner and speak of life, while music falls to the sidelines.

But when I return home, the to-do list long and the alarm clock looming in hours near, I hear a song stream from my phone, and it is as though all the anguish never was, as though all the questions and all the life that run in a million directions simply rest, simply wait. Four minutes of air in my lungs, of calm in my mind.

It's not that big a deal, he says.

He has no idea.

Parklife

Warm Wednesday afternoon, yellow August light and longer shadows, park littered with relaxation. Fingers run through long, lush, deep grass, skin soaks sunlight like were it water in desert lands. The moment lies resting, content in its stillness, in its ability to simply lay there.

There in five. Grab a bite?

Life continues.
I return.

Back to School

The trouble
with self-imposed exile
and burrowing
into silent corners
of solitude

is that they
are
so
damn
comfortable

and impossible
to try
to leave.

Inflate

I leave with shame in my gut, after all. My mother's words of gratitude fall flat at my undeserving feet; I ran out too early, there was more to be done. I was just so tired. I longed for a moment to myself, a moment at home. My body crumbles beneath me. I should have done better.

It will be late Saturday evening before we reach Stockholm central station. It will be a sunny evening spent behind glass, it will be a lost opportunity to see friends in the old hometown, it doesn't matter. At the end of the journey lies that tiny apartment, lies a soft bed where I may rest. At the end of this journey lie three days of unwritten pages, of unclaimed vacation moments, of the opportunity to put yourself back together. Sort the memories, write the to-do lists, drink your cares away.

Summer is young, yet.
Sleep a heavy sleep.
Wake up
Brand new.

Gold coins

"...how would love solve all that? How could love possibly make me unafraid of death, of old age, of overwhelming choice, of missing the ones left behind?"

If there was a pill,
For the fear
Perhaps I would take it.
But they don't medicate
Against life.

Be So Nice

A hundred pounds of lead melt slowly into my legs, the thick liquid heavies my spine, my eyelids, everything is treacle, I cannot speak. I arrive back at the apartment and collapse, my to-do list long and the day so short. Vacation seems an obscene word when it drains the body so; the days merely pass, get cold again, it is fall and we won't know what happened. We sit at the bar and don't know where we left off; I don't even try to find out.

I wash the island wear, fill up another suitcase, brace myself for the task ahead. The train leaves a sunny station and heads into monsoon country out west. Weekends are booked well into october, I know it will end in a puddle of inertia. The rain turns to hail along the railroad tracks.

Symbolism is a slap in the face.

Barefoot

And above all,
love what you do. 
Don't do
what you do not love. 
It's that simple. 

(concert notes)

Gloria

Quiet calms lull us into archipelago life. Mornings turn into afternoons, into evenings, into new days and slightly more freckles on the skin. I walked down to the ferry dock one day and received visitors from other towns; we trudged the bit back to the house in carefree giggles and breathed the country air.

But in the soft summer evening, she found a golden ticket with my name on it, and how soon again we felt the ground in sweltering asphalt beneath our feet. The rain passed, our clothes drenched, my cigarette papers melting between my fingers, but the sun returned and brought Patti Smith with it, what were we to do? We squeezed further into the crowds, let a thousand breaths and arms and laughs warm our bodies, and we gave in to the magic of poetry.

How beautiful an August night in the Venice of the north, how sweet the late sunset, how soothing the skyline of ancient houses and tall-masted ships behind the stage, how quaint the little city that calls itself home. We have a million opportunities, the world is ours for the taking, and the moment doesn't need a restless urge; it is fine.

And yet. Patti dances around on stage, with her wild hair, with her swelling heart, with her passionate rage and lifetime of baggage, and she whispers of words yet unwritten, of songs yet unloved, and I know. In a world full of uncertainty, in my ragged maze of a lifeline, in my wrong turns and failed promises, there is but one truth. One day, when the years have grown too many, when the missteps have amassed in my suitcase, when regrets pile up and I imagine that simple life I could have chosen if I'd only let silly notions of madness go, I pray I may remember this moment, this feeling, and know that this was right thing, that this was the one truth. I must go home to New York. 

There is no other way. 
And there never was.

and Ages

I hear waves crashing to the shore. All night I hear them; I cannot explain it. The sea outside lies still, the woods silenced, there is no sound. If you hold a shell to your ear, can you, too, hear the steady beat of the ocean? Perhaps old age and tinnitus catch up with me. Perhaps it is merely that lurking insanity, finally able to make its voice heard when urban cacophony lies miles away.

The entire day passed in a fog of indifference and rain clouds that never made good on their threats. But evening came with such a calm to it, such soft August sunlight, I made my way down the slippery hill for a swim. Not a sound, not another human around, I slipped out of my clothes and into the water; it deceived me with its velvety demeanor, it was freezing. I twirled around underneath the surface as the last rays of the sun set fire to the trees. By the time I came up, it had set behind the metropolitan area in the west, the light was gone, the day over. My skin felt entirely new around my limbs, my heart felt old in its rusted cage of ribs. Such are our lives.

The blood courses slowly,
in the end.