Sandra Dee

You like me because I tell you what you want to hear, she said and laughed, but she was right. The reasonable voices, they make me cringe and gnaw at me in my dreams (all murder, lately). There's no reason not to go, just as soon as it is at all possible. He writes me with temptations of summers in Alaskan cabins, for a second anything seems possible, isn't tomorrow November and don't we usually open the door to mad hatters and crack delusions in November? 

A storm rages through New York. It leaves oceans and devastation in its wake, lost urbanites on pilgrimages to the nearest wifi-carrying coffee shops, they gather in masses at dry street corners. My roommate picks up the phone because it is the last rotary phone in civilization and doesn't require the power grid to be working. You should be here, braving the storm with us, she says. It's so good to hear your voice. 

I can feel the darkness
creeping in.

...and the time has come to start...

...and the time has come to start...

...and the time has come to start...

Diaries

No word from Scribner’s. Their silence and businesslike judicious patience is driving me crazy with tension, worry, expectation, disappointment — everything. And the novel is yet unfinished, really, and the time has come to start typing it and straightening it out. What a job in this weary life of mine, this lazy life. But I’ll get down to it. The news that Jesse James is still alive is very thrilling news to me, and my mother too, but we’ve noticed that it doesn’t seem to impress the New York world at all — which does bear out, in its own way, what I say about New York, that it is a heaven for European culture and not American culture. I don’t get personally mad these things any more, because that is overdoing things in the name of culture and at the expense of general humanity, but still, I get personally mad at those who scoff at the significance of Jesse James, bandit or no, to the regular American with a sense of his nation’s past.”
       --Jack Kerouac.

Be Your Emmylou.

They sang the words New Jersey Turnpike and I began to cry. Twenty years of America in my ears and I am still lost and unable to find my way. The concert hall lay quiet, dark, as their voices curled out into the night. The aftereffects of last night's wine bottles thrashed in my system, screamed insults and pleas at my unrelenting skin. Stockholm's cold, but I've been told I was born to endure this kind of weather. When I was a child, at some point I realized the immense Bigness of life, the madness of me being alive, how incomprehensible our places in the universe, and it terrified me. For a split second, tonight, I had that feeling again: entirely overwhelmed by the prospect of living a life, and of wasting it. I cried into the circus floor and wanted the show to be over. They changed the clocks last night, and I'm still not going to bed on time.

* * *

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad.

Saving Daylight

In my dream, I held your hand in secret, we couldn't help ourselves. I woke with bread crumbs in my bed and sunshine in my room, empty bottles on every surface, dread poured through every wrinkle of my skin.

Sometimes the nights are too long, even when they are over so quickly.

Softly

It snowed today.
It hit me as I biked past the central station, light wisps of white dust sweeping pleasantly around me. I wanted to be angry at the approaching winter, at the seasons changing too soon and me in my white summer jacket still. But as I crossed the bridge and passed the parliament building, quiet and dark in its after-hours suit, I looked up at the south island and saw that special hue the sky turns at the year's first snow fall. How dark, and yet how illuminated. How quiet the air below.

By the time I'd come around the Old Town, the snow had increased. The glittery sprinkles turned into big, wet flakes in the air, like heavy eyelashes batting against my skin and a million of them fell into the black sea, were never heard from again. I had to keep my head down, but snuck peaks at the city as it fell below me on the hill, subdued, sparkling, silent. I thought the first snow fall is magic, and couldn't help but smile. An hour later it was over, the streets glistening with thawed crystals, the street sweeper no busier than the warm night before.

Why don't we play pretend at this, after all? We can break each other's hearts, and be done with it.

Afters

There is a moment
just as the effects
of the alcohol in your bloodstream
begin to wear off

and the light,
serene,
tickled feeling
of an evening
goes with them

that you seem to see
life
exactly as it is
in its sad reality
and its flatline
of emotion

and you decide
it's better
to live
in illusion.

October 24, 2012

The night is late
-again!-
the night is always late
always blacker
than ever before.
I know it must be an illusion.

Allen keeps me company
always Allen
always sweet sage poet Ginsberg pigeons
and New York brick and silence
He knows.

The feeling
creeps
in again
-How familiar-
That this life has one path
of love
and family
of steady incomes
and a rested soul

and another
of long nights
all darker than the previous
of the glow of type
of inestimable sadness
and 80 years fighting
for that short moment
of feeling
that your body is not yours
that it is owned
by a spirit stronger
than your veins

and when you wake up
there on a white sheet
of paper
your blood
you leave
a Word.

and it was worth
the every black
dark
lonely
empty
tragic
painful
night
in its wake.

Island in the Sky

eternity
lies waiting

for you.

Winds

The church clock strikes midnight, and my body is in a frenzy, making up for an entire day of inactivity. My mind races with inspiration and joy, but the alarm clock looms, my empty bank account screams at me to never say no to hours. Rows of contact sheet prints run along my line of vision, images built in the land out west, images that create the Great Space within. The red rock runs smooth along the edges, deep canyons and gasping heights in the clouds twirl through my interior, blows me away every time.

The days are too dark, too real. The view through a lens is a relief, one step away from the agony of what life is. I can rest in pictures.

I never really sleep, in real life.

an Evil Hour

The warm fog lay thick around the suburban construction, made the black, quiet night ominous and mysterious. We took the last train home and I sat alone on the subway in false lashes with masquerade gear in my bag, tulle and lace spilling out of it, but the light in the subway is garish and casts such a hard light on the drunk, tired faces within. We all look away and pretend not to see others, to not risk seeing ourselves.

I'm going for a walk, he said, though the night was dark and the hour of the wolf was near. I need to see the ocean. In my mind, I saw the water black ahead and endless, the wind whipping across cliffs and through the pines, cold, vicious, calming. A therapist once told me to picture a place where I could be at peace, to stand there, imagine the moment; it was always the sea, always far enough out that the wind would catch my hair, beat at my skin, drown out the Everything Else.

Stockholm was a monsoon today.

The floods that run in streams down the street,
are nothing like the sea at all.

Lagged

I fell asleep sitting up; I awoke with a start and tried to will my heartbeat to keep still.

The clouds are different here, they melt into each other and spread low across the land. The people do not smile,  will not look you in the eye; I forced sunshine and shrugged at the suspicious faces on the receiving end.

My apartment lies cool and calm at the top of the hill, sweet gestures from houseguests scattered around the room. I sleep a heavy, dreamless sleep too early; it can't be helped. It is dark out. It will be darker still. I saw your face on the screen and though you don't know me, but you don't have to. The suitcase lies open, yet to be unpacked, in the hallway. I set extra alarms, for fear of the time zones.

I try to keep this new blood in me, as long as I can.

Outbound

The bags lie packed in the corner of the room. There isn't enough time, there is never enough time and yet here we are, the night before takeoff, and it arrives ruthlessly. I stared into the sun today in the parking lot and I remembered, this is what it's like. This is the sunshine in which I grew up.

Tomorrow I return to darkness. It is what it is.

Sunshine can remind you of the fireworks you once owned. Sunshine can help you own them once again.

Tumbling

There was rain in the mountains today. Great big clouds hung across the ridges, dipping their toes in the valleys and smelling of wet grass and dust. We haven't had any rain all summer, I am glad, she said, as we braved the trickle. We are still so poor. I don't know how we'll do it anymore. 

It seems all the lives around me crumble and build with the tide, lately. We catch a moment's breath, only to have our sand castles toppled over, and we begin again. She arrives with the plane; he got a job. We can move out of his parents' by Thanksgiving. Months ago we feared she would not live to see the summer, under his thumb. We pack the million grains of ancient rock, make our walls and windows, see the great wave come in.

I drove through the mountain pass alone today, the golden aspen trees glimmering in the mountains, the highway swaying steadily, and it sank in: I swim through the same hamster wheel, season after season, and now is the time to step off. I am tired of rehashing the same compulsive repetition.

Now is the time
we built our towers
of concrete. 

Red Rock

I am afraid of heights, too, you know. We climbed to the top rock and dangled our legs a thousand feet over the canyon floor, my nervous laugh echoed down the valley. My feet tingled. All day spent on two wheels, navigating slick rock and deep sand, our bodies ached and still we couldn't make ourselves stop.

Enormous red rock faces stood up straight on our side, reaching for the sky. On the other, a steep cliff to the bottom, the curves of the track like a miniature model below. The wild west stretched to the horizon and never ended, the sun beating down as it does.

This country built me, you know. It is in my veins, it is in my voice, it is in my bones. I am red rock a billion years in the making; I am wide open spaces and desert sun. We fall asleep early with aching muscles and battered limbs.

We are fine.

Moab

Hotel sheets pulled tight across tired muscles, twenty years of coming here and we still stay at the same dingy inn. The bathroom smells of chlorine, but these pillows are the most perfect pillows in the entire world.

It's many years ago we were here, do you remember? Months of New York City screamed in our brains, we were exhausted of the adventure. Middle of January, we drove down through light dustings of snow and were maybe the only patrons here. We went out to the monuments, rocks carved by ages, by eons, we were all alone and the silence left a hissing sound in our ears.

You were afraid of heights. We stood at the edge of the impossibly deep canyon and you trembled violently, but made yourself go to the edge. We were so tired, we were reeling from what we had seen and didn't know who we'd become, yet.

I thought of you today as we hiked to the arch at sunset. Wondered where you were. We shared such a strange existence. Today I don't know who you are.

The pillows are the same, as ever.

Wasatch

(There's something in the way the moon shines over the mountains in the west, and the road curves just so under the stars, and the twang in peoples' smiles, I sleep easy at night, I haven't a thought, not a feeling, in all the waking hours. I try to write, but I come up quiet. America sings in my veins. I listen.)

Departure

Sunrise over Stockholm; the little city sleeps. I drag my bags along Bondegatan, the air crisp, the stores silent. We cross the water and the horizon has that pink hue, that near-light, the distant island ablaze with foliage fire.

It's too early in the morning, my body screams, my eyes falter, but I know it's just a countdown of minutes, just a limited unease. In a few hours I am on that plane, in a few hours more I am Elsewhere.

I locked the door to the apartment I love so much. Said I'll see you soon. I leave home.

I run straight into the arms of another.

Away

He said Dolores,
I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering, 
I'm afraid that I will disappear

No Sham

Visitors stream in and out of the little apartment near the church. I shuttle back and forth to the train station to pick up, drop off, introduce and show off the city that will not stop raining. We discover new hidden corners together, but I always walk them past the lookout, past the old wooden houses where families would toil and never grow old before their backs broke in them. I do not know the sparkling City at the center, where the successful toast and maintain the economy, and my guests do not get to see it.

I think this adventure was simply meant to be, he says as he surveys the streets that will be his while I am away. I have no agenda. I will simply go where I go. My ticket burns in my back pocket; in a few days will I not myself be navigating the wild highway of America, staring into the sun? We cannot stop to see where we are going, we haven't the time; isn't it better just to go?

I think of all the angels that have opened their doors and spare mattresses to me, all these years. How I delight in opening mine. Wandering souls unite in discovery, in the delight of the adventure.

It is the only way
to live a life.