In Stockholm.

The snow came, at last. It is winter. Little children stare wide-eyed and laugh, adults pull their coats closer and tighten their lips. Little whisps of icy flurries pounce at unsuspecting victims turning a corner and the subway is packed. Tomorrow, we decorate for Christmas, my boss says, and I can't believe how quickly the time passes.

Was the cold snow not just thawing? Was I not just sitting on that balcony at the end of the street and seeing the sun return to a city I barely even knew?

I biked home in the black Stockholm night the other day, saw the city glitter below me, saw the water tremble and the rooftop mosaics sleep, and then I knew: I love this town. I didn't mean to, Lord knows we got off to a rough start, but there it is. You make your home where you unpack your bags. You never fail to leave your heart. Sometimes it simply takes a little work.

Break Up.

The words evade me, of late. They tip-toe past the tip of my tongue when I race to work or sit with friends, but when I sit at the computer, nothing comes out. I discover old lovers in my box of sheet music; the notes ring  beautifully, but the meaning lies flat against the weighted keys. Time passes, as it will.

There is much to say, it will arrange itself in my subconscious eventually and march out like prose through my hazy eyes, I know it. But I miss the words while they are gone. I miss the way they calm my trembling nerves and the soft smile on my lips in their presence. I miss the way a chest full of words makes me feel like home, no matter the street where I sleep.

(When the truth is, the same can be said for you)

Truth

When the November night is dark
and the fork in the road lies treacherous ahead,
When life muddles my vision
and blurs my determination,
When I am lost.

No matter.

I am,
as ever
grateful
For you.

or Alive

Today I laughed. A great big laugh that began in my spine and rattled all through my bones and echoed in my gut and tickled my neck and sang through my apartment and did not stop till it was finished. It kept the dark night far away and the oxygen in my lungs lighter to breathe. It made the mess of my home and the mess of my life easier to bear. No matter what: today I laughed.

When You Go

I woke up at three in the afternoon. Twilight was just beginning to sink its teeth into the world; I couldn't tell what kind of weather the day had been. The wine bottles had emptied, one by one, and by the time we walked home, the clubs were closed, morning was waiting in the starting blocks. I dropped him off at the apartment by the bakery, and we saw a hundred loaves fresh out of the oven, it seemed impossibly quaint and smelled like comfort. When I reached my own apartment, the old lady across the street had her lights on; we live in different time zones. I dreamed another reality and didn't want to wake up, when I did.

He writes to say inspiration is failing him, that every page is a struggle. That he would much rather sit in bed with his girlfriend and drink coffee, listen to music. But that he will continue to write, despite the heartache inevitably rearing up around his main character, because he has people around him who believe in him. Because we need him to finish. I write him a long email of encouragement, of how worthwhile to fight when the battle seems poised for defeat, of gathering the last bits of strength and proving yourself, if only to yourself, and of the satisfaction that lies in accomplishment.

It was not until later, after I'd pushed send, that I realized I was really only talking to myself.

On Deadlines.

Suddenly, everyone is dying. Every new blog discovered is a farewell letter to loved ones, or the painful monologue to someone lost. I watch Bergman movies and the dead are ghosts, but they are gone. People reflect on what to make of it and everyone declares they will now go forth and live their lives better, love one another more, sweat the small stuff less, and appreciate the single moments because they are what make up this blessing we call life.

There is only the one, you know. It would be best to use it wisely.

But the truth is, we don't know what we've got till it's gone. We will all plead when the grim reaper knocks on our door. We will all procrastinate even paradise, as long as we can.

Billbored (sic)

Society, how sad. I walked around downtown yesterday, on that busy street I so rarely visit, and fumbled around racks of clothing and ideas of what a successful, happy life should look like. A million eyes and not a single one looking into another; elbows downtown are a little sharper, apologies a little harder to come by. No one looking like the pictures but everyone consuming like hell to try. It's been said before, but it's still as depressing to see and I left in a hurry.

We ordered another glass of wine, sat close together, laughed heartily at our flaws and at our growing bonds. They make it harder to leave, they always make it harder to leave and I wonder why I cannot let them be reason enough. They make my heart rest easy, make my smiles feel genuine; I sat there on the sofa and let their voices flow through me like medicine.

But again it ran out as soon as they left, and the cigarette left a bad taste in my mouth. I woke up at four a.m. fully dressed with the lights on; the ghosts lie heavy on my chest sometimes, they knock me out.

One day we will look back on this life and it will be but a distant, silly memory. And we will laugh.

Strange Things

The evening grows late. I long to resign it to the wastebin, to sleep again, because at least sleep makes the time pass, makes the life pass and there's a short moment in my dreams when I am carefree; it's appealing. The headaches always begin with such strange visual dances and I have to try so hard not to look mad in my attempts to focus.

But I am not tired. The black stars in my eyes disappear and all is perfectly clear. And just as I begin to turn off lights and take off clothes, tiny trickles of words begin to migrate to my mind, to my fingers. It cannot be helped, streams of stories run from my hands. For a moment, I forget impending commitment and hopeless mornings. For a moment, I forget the dull throbbing of my mind against its restraints.

And in this one moment, I am happy.

Fireside

A few hours on another couch, a few hours of normalcy and smiles, you think it'll put air in your lungs but you walk home later with bricks in your belly. Their ever-comforting light only keeps the monsters away while it's near. Your parents call and you turn the video off, try to keep it short, try to protect them as long as you can. Your voice is weary.

She told me, a while ago now, how her father had to take over her finances and give her an allowance again. She could not handle the slightest responsibility, if she managed to put her own clothes on and get to work. I thought it seemed absurd, in a way; how hard can it be, after all, even when your medicine cabinets are stocked with your insanity. I walked home tonight unsure of what kept me out of white rooms with padded walls and was humbled with recognition. 

As long as I do not breathe, I cannot feel. Pull this straitjacket tighter. I will rest in confinement, a while.

Stupor

Apathy reigns surpreme in the little apartment at the top of the hill. A moving body carrying a black hole gathers more and more mass, absorbing energy from the matter nearby, ever swirling, ever building, a steel figure of indefinite shape and emotionless muscle. Winter lies dead outside, the streets a graveyard of leaves, the sky an indiscernible color for a few hours before the power goes out again and all is black. It begins again; it returns every year and you know this, but you are helpless at its hand.

I sat at the piano and attempted to remedy the lump in my throat, the pit in my stomach, but my fingers fell heavy at its keys and every misstep was a reminder of criticisms past. Nothing is holy, nothing is only yours. I long for a great big kitchen knife to run down the length of my belly to lead this black matter out, but I know it is to no avail: skin will always heal, if crookedly, and you will be no freer then than now.

There is no salvation in flight,
nor in resignation,
nor in blood.

This is the script you were handed.
This is the part you have to play.

November.

She says I think of you everytime I want it all to be over and it keeps me alive. It was her I called the day you died , all the boxes packed in our apartment and spring on the threshold. How quickly life can alter your perceptions, your persuasion and I swore I would never create such a devastated mess as you left behind.

and I will not.

I will not.

I promise.

Bakom Västerbron

Why the hell wouldn't you move? Just go already. Go. Something in her eyes was so sincere, it felt as though the idea were entirely new to me, and it seemed so simple. What are you waiting for? and I stared into my beer with tingles up my spine. My boss looked at me the other day and said maybe this'll be a good kick for you to go; this is not what you want to be doing forever. You realize people are living their lives by magazine print and rule books but maybe you don't have to even though it's hard to remember. You shuffle around a dirty apartment but at least the life you live is yours.

The days at the office provide a few hours of refuge; you relish putting on clean clothes, having coffee breaks, making small talk, sorting papers, as though you were perfectly normal and you would go home later to dinner and order, to going to bed on time and instead you fall asleep just before morning and miss your alarm. The feeling creeps back as you climb the steps to the door, you return to a cavern of solitude, of dread, but of words, and you love their greeting you at the door.

Time does not run out, the money does not run out, it is merely the fates conspiring for you, they lead you to the place you cannot go on your own. Already you are saying your goodbyes, already you are bracing for the storm.

We decide not to jump off the bridge. There are bigger leaps, to be taken.

Paradise Cove

All these words, so many words, but they have all been told, have all been written already and better in rows of shelves and eternity. Demons arrange themselves comfortably on your furniture; they fiddle recklessly with your sensitive decorations and stretch their clammy fingers to your skin, and burying yourself in that bath tub will not get their smell off your body. I don't want to die; I just don't want to live and it echoes through your mind even with the music turned up so loud. Like staring into the sun to sneeze, you create playlists to push buttons in your interior but you don't know where you want them to lead. They make your voice tremble.

This apartment is losing its shimmer. I go through it looking only at things that can go, that will go, when the bags get packed. I detach myself from the comfort of Home, from the beauty of streets known, of people loved. The music makes me dizzy. We are born screaming, but I appear to die in silence, withering. I can feign surprise, but this was happening all along and I always knew it. What sounds like victory rarely seems it, in daylight.

Still Remains

It was summer, maybe it was the first summer after we moved to America, maybe the second. Public television was airing the miniseries The Octopus late at night. My mother adored it and would stay up to see it. I was never much for mafia dramas, but I also never could go to bed on time, and an entire summer passed with us keeping company in the basement of our old house. She would clean--she was always cleaning when she got the chance--and I would build fantasy worlds out of LEGO blocks, knowing full well I was too old to be playing with them still. When the latest Octopus episode would be done, we would turn on the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Central Park CD a little too loud, and I'd sing along as she vacuumed the books one by one. I didn't understand why people booed as they thanked Ed Koch, I didn't know why the guys who were selling loose joints would donate half of their proceeds to the city that night, but I always smiled when they mentioned how nice it was to do a neighborhood concert. When I hear studio versions of The Boxer, I miss Art Garfunkel's misstep in the beginning, and I always hear 500,000 people cheering at the bit in the Sound of Silence about seeing 10,000 people maybe more. To this day, those are some of the best times I've spent with my mother. I think she knows.

To Make Nice

Dinner invitations. Regular society knocks on my door and I go into the fresh air, enjoy it even. But I miss that dark, messy corner where my word processor lies, I miss the world that swims around within it. It is all rain and heavy sighs, but it sooths my angst, did you notice? I thought today If I could do this, and nothing but this, all my life, I would, and didn't realize until later that some people do. That it was what I thought I would do. That I could be dirty, ragged, Bukowski all my life and no one could berate me because it was the Way. Across the ocean, slippery ballots determine the Brave New World, and I go to sleep with a knot in my stomach at the possibilities. I hear your voice in my ear and I think your skin would be soft against mine but it's too late now. And I'm tired. Tomorrow, tomorrow we will have answers in our headlines.
And Bukowski and I will drink a beer. Hide another day from the light.

Bitters

A day comes and goes without my knowledge. The blinds are down, the music is loud; there's no telling one moment from another. She writes and says We just don't have that much work for you after the end of the year, and I can't help but think it's a sign it's time to go. Perhaps it's sooner than you planned, but what is there to wait for. The miracles you've been scouring the South Island streets for haven't come, have they?

And now this story, it gathers potential. You see your slew of unfinished books in cupboards and on shelves, you smile at them dearly still and know the symbolism they incur lying there. No matter. You weave around you scores and scores of letters, of words, they keep you warm at night, they keep you sheltered through life. It is such a dreary world out there, does it not only hurt and tear at your flesh? You are better off in literate dreams, and you build it, now. When I was little, I read Alice in Wonderland and believed with all my might in the possibility of such silly madness.

We have to believe in something, after all.

Monday, 1:23 p.m.

I am writing again.

Entire stories paint themselves on the canvas of my interior; I step into the other world and forget where I am, what is happening. I look up from my computer and realize sadly the dreary scene around me: blinds closed, bed unmade, one p.m. and I am still undressed. In my mind, the storm rages around me, feelings stir. The wind whips at my coat tails and the city lies dark around. In my mind, years of other peoples' lives flash before me; I have lived them, too. In my mind, life is bigger than just the measly one we are offered.

Years of disapproval and criticism bark at my door; I know I will let them in and they will tear my every page apart, until I start over, until my life peters out into oblivion. So it is. But for just one moment, the words swim undisturbed through my veins. The world is endless in imagination. For just one moment.

All is magic.

And So It Goes.

She looks so much like her mother. Those eyes, deep, slanted, she laughed in such a way it made my heart melt. She falls asleep, and we talk of their upcoming move in the spring. New York, it's all in order. Perhaps there are different ways to go about doing this; perhaps none of the ways are wrong. The important thing is that you get there. Did not their eyes light up, just as mine will, talking about it?

We sat in the backroom, all cozy lights and opportunities for indecency. A thick fog lay outside. The November night is so dark, always so dark, why not place a warm body next to yours to endure the season, but you go home alone because his crooked youth bores you.

Sometimes it seems this life is too overwhelming; you don't know how people contain it within their bodies, within their hearts. You bleed all over the streets and are too tired to gather up the mess. Your roommate has her power back, everyone has fled the neighborhood. You wash away as the floods recede. You dilute with the tide.

Sunday Times

I saw you in the street today. You look alive but you are dying. We are all dying, you are simply doing it more eloquently, more urgently. A reminder, perhaps, for the rest of us but it's too painful to see the steps, the falling apart, the relentless fight even in the face of hopelessness.

I can't reach my roommate anymore. Perhaps she is out searching for food, batteries, water. The world goes on but downtown New York remains in the dark. New stories write themselves in my interior; they make do with imagination, but still scream You should be there. In the stores, they've begun hawking Christmas decorations. It seems abysmally tacky. I'm still wearing my summer jacket.