Ends

A year ends, how quickly it passes. You remember its infancy, how it seemed a beautiful new opportunity to contrast the year that passed but then buried itself in so much sludge again. Still, you know you will forever look back on the year fondly, caress its memories and remember that you were more you at the end of it than when it was new and unwritten.

You approach the new year cautiously, afraid suddenly to lose what you have packed in your bags, afraid suddenly because there is so much to lose. Winter creeps into your heart, into your hopes, you know it's only in your head, how can you possibly explain this entire life to someone else, what if you drown in the ice after all and haven't written all your words yet no surely you must survive. I sing again like I haven't in years, and the stars are burning, they'll melt the frost, they'll lead the way, tomorrow is a new year and everything that is to come is too beautiful not to tell.

Paradise Cove

Wake in a daze, thick layers of clothing but the radiator came on and steam runs in rivulets down your windows: don't come to New York if you're not interested in suffering. Stay in bed for hours before braving the snow, it looks nothing like the white sands of Venice, but you have no regrets. This is your home, this is real. Your shoulders are still brown. Your dreams are yours to own.

A new year beams on the horizon. It's asking you for everything.

And you have everything to give.

Terminal 7

Los Angeles on a Friday morning is quieter than you'd expect, still and soft in the sunlight, pleasant. It's always pleasant. You get to the airport early and maneouver the hiccups until you end up with a direct flight next to each other and an upgrade. There's even time to sneak out of the airport for a last In-n-out meal and everything makes you laugh, it's a dream.

The forecast on the other coast calls for an ice age apocalypse; it's never been so cold. Your travel companions rebook their travels to stay perpetually in SoCal sunshine and you don't blame them. A week of summer underneath your fingernails, a week of sunshine on your shoulders, it sinks into your spine and you do not take any of it for granted, don't ever look back and think I did. You can still feel the pull of the ocean, of that last perfect wave in your muscles, of the way it feels to step into the sea when there is nothing else ahead of you but cool, salty freedom.

The forecast for the other coast calls for an ice age.

But you bring a fire that doesn't go out.

Puddles

It catches up with you eventually, the race, the weight of family tracks in your innards, the wheels get stuck. I sat on the couch in apathy and watched a house of cards tumble around me, felt myself carried away with the wind. He writes from an airport and says look at your feet, how they touch the ground, how you touch the ground, and I did. They do. I took a deep breath, let the earth sink back into my feet, put on my running shoes and pounded down the Pacific Coast Highway to the place where the great waves roar and I dove right in.

There's a magic in salt water, there's a medicine in the cold ocean, I let it thrash me in and out to shore a few times before I emerged brand new. There's a smile based in my shoulders now, a California sunrise behind my temples and tomorrow's forecast calls for blue skies again, the story isn't perfect but I keep writing it and that's the point.

These tracks are only to show me where I've been, they don't tell me where I have to go.

But Soft

How strange it is; you step into that little box and emerge in another world entirely. Escape the clichéd bottleneck highway and drive down a wild canyon at sunset, watching the pinks and purples wash across unending sky and dive into a quiet ocean. In the early morning, colder than you thought palm trees would allow, smile at strangers and wave cautiously at gracious drivers; my brusque New York energy stubs its edges against California sunshine but it only makes you appreciate the grit of your veins more. It is too pleasant here, you hear yourself say in your head, what art could they possibly accomplish? You miss dirty Brighton Beach and noisy Second Avenue; you miss the rattle of radiators and 4 am street corner arguments beneath your window; you miss impatient cashiers, seamless transit currents and skin that doesn't all look like your own. They say everybody moves to the West Coast eventually, but I don't know. This pleasant beach breeze looks like a postcard.

And in the end there's no place like home.

To Palm

The flight leaves so early, we all pull down the shades to sleep like a tired unit in agreement. I wade in and out of in-flight entertainment but perk up for mysterious reasons 2 hours before landing. Pull up the shade. Crisp white peaks of the southern Rockies spread out below like quiet mile posts. A few minutes later, the arid red deserts of my home rest underneath us, snaking rivers carving intricate patterns into the rock and giant buttes reaching like monoliths into the sky. I think I saw those mittens in a movie once and I'm not sure from which side of the camera. The familiarity is reassuring; in a tin can full of strangers, I smile.

We are not stopping here, we do not stop until we reach the coast, until we reach the palm trees and sunshine we've been promised, I refresh the arrival data and count down minutes. Four hours of sleep and I should be more tired. But there is life to be lived, and precious moments to squeeze out of the last of the year, you read through a journal and cannot remember who you were at the start, but no matter.

You are here now. You are happy. And the forecast calls for sun.

Tick

Race
Race
Race
The clock runs away from you and you can only barely spot the Red Queen in the distance: too much left to do and never enough time to do it. The season yells its cheer at you from static speakers, there's a hollowness in people's eyes that do not line up with the smiling billboards. But I sat on the living room floor of a sleeping apartment in the mild afternoon, taking slow breaths and allowing the light back inside my rib cage. I let it grow there until it needed out again, spreading out along the walls, seeping through the cracks in the doors, and beaming across the entire island. When I opened my eyes, the Red Queen sat quietly by my side, the countryside still swirling around us but we left it be. Good things are to come, only good things, I spent a lifetime building this fire and now here it is, ready.

Now here I am.
Ready.

Rash

The weeks race ahead, a year twists and yelps in death rattles disguised as cheer; you write a hundred lists to keep track of what it was you wanted to do before the slate is washed clean, but at the end of the day only one thing matters. You sit at your word processor and wonder at possibility. For so long the pages were built with fear, like you were pummeling toward a destiny you didn't think you could handle, and now you know the opposite is true. That you kept running not for the sheer desire of punishing yourself against the brick wall, but because inside your twisted scrap metal of a chest beat a heart that could not be silenced, even by you, and it believed even when you doubted, (especially when you doubted,) it carried on. Behind you lie printer paper piles, not of failure, but of lessons learned. You see now they've lined your house, they've packed your bags, they've softened the blow. You see now they made you the home for which you were always searching. You see now they built the staircase to the precipice on which you stand.

A year comes to a close, a climb. Around the corner lies a blank page, an open door, the top of the hill and all you have to do is run out to it. All you have to do is fly.

6

Sit at the bar digesting visions of French countryside and a life in art. Stare down a perfect drink at a pair of unwavering eyes and see the plan draw itself in front of you. The only life that matters is the one lived in art. Hold that to your core and the rest will arrange itself according to the map. You wish you had a notebook -- nothing ever sticks in your mind if you do not write it down -- but this will remind itself to you again, and again, you know it. The only life that matters is the one lived in art. It all seems simple only because it is. Live in art and none of your life will have been in vain.

For a short moment, you have no fear.

Perhaps that is what you should remind yourself.

Cleavage, cleavage, cleavage

It wears her. Out.

Overnight, the temperature plummets. You look out the window and everything looks the same, except the sidewalks are empty. Everything withers, a year comes to a close, you gather up the threads and attempt to see the weave they made. A new year lies in wait on the horizon, bright and shiny like an unwritten page. You vow to choose your words carefully, but with courage. Blessings pile up around your tattered clothes and unkempt hair, a radiator slaves away underneath your broken window, and typewriters don't care about the weather, they only care about you having something to say.

I still don't paint futures,
but I am still here.
I am staying on the page.

Thaw #3

Recovery is slow, but steady. I sat down at the word processor to find that everything I thought lost in the snow was still there, waiting, biding its time until I was ready to unearth it. A little matchstick girl sits freezing in a corner and I've been so afraid to touch her lest I could not carry her out, but I am not afraid now. Not all days carry a great torch, some only a small flame, but even a little ember may thaw some ice, and every day you do not freeze is a day you win. I know her path, even on days when I sit silent and the page freezes white I know her path and I will clear it for her, every day I do not freeze is a day I win.

Is a day I bleed with purpose.

In the Pines

The sky is grey, the air has that cold look it gets in December and it's clear what's about to come: snowfall. How many hours left, you lift a finger into the air and try to taste it. A day ago the sun shone bright, as you lay writhing in a bed trying to out the demons. They fled on their own, but not without tearing through your flesh first. You cannot eat, cannot think, only sleep and count the money you're losing. Try to imagine there's a lesson in there somewhere. While you sit at the kitchen table, upright at last and staring down a cup of coffee like it's a game of chicken, a mouse scampers across the living room floor to hide in a yoga mat. You throw it out on the fire escape, watch it flail. Namaste.

A social media reminder tells me it's been 6 years since we went to that bar, the unassuming one in a terrible corporate neighborhood but it was perfect and we shared such joy in knowing it. We never went back there. It's just as well. Don't fix what isn't broken. And if it's broken but you don't know what to do about it, sometimes the only thing is let it go.

Namaste.

Baby A

We stood in an abandoned playground and let an entire tree worth of leaves shower down on us with every gust of wind. Little droplets snuck in under our coat hoods, and even with the mild Temperatures it was clear this was autumn weather. Undeterred, she pulled me toward the steps along the side of the fence, leading up to a gate and out into the rest of the park. She held my hand fast to steady her little body as she took step after step up those steps. At the top, she turned around, wavered, and walked back down again.

A hundred times we've climbed these steps, a thousand since she learned how to use her feet for walking, and still the same joy at accomplishing it each time, still the same pride and relentless tenacity, again and again she climbs and descends,  climbs and descends. An entire playground was built around her, with colorful construction and inviting adventures, but she needs none of them. The boring, every day rut of walking a few steps is something else completely to her, and I follow her up, down, up, down, in a state so mindful, so near zen, that I understand what they mean when they say children are wiser than we are.

She looks up at me, beaming. Claps for herself and waits for me to join, applauding her wondrous achievements and delighting in the feeling of mastering something new. The lesson lines up in front of me and all I have to do is see it. Do something new, something you couldn't do before but you learned. Now do it again. Be as thrilled about it this time, and next time, adore the sensation and rejoice in your strength. We never master, we only find new things to learn. One step at a time.

Be here, now.

(The Line)

And so it was that I returned on track, that I picked up the pieces of my defeated faith and singed ego,  and sat down at the blank page again to carry on. The day escaped me, the night raced in a blur of Story, I remembered again why I came and why I remained, I remembered there were words to say that have not yet been written and the job is mine to do it.

Another day of work came, of dear reunions and strong drinks; I sang through them all. In my chest beats a heart again, it has always been there but now it holds me to my promises, this is comforting. The Word whispers its secrets again. My skin tingles in magic.